Pizzaprez

This is what I'm hoping for too: the Beastlord looks great! He'd be right at home in Fantasy if they scoot the faction there, and I could see the Herdstone sticking around as a terrain piece. However, each edition of AoS has seen a host of kits that only exist for that one edition: the Azyrite Townscape in 1.0, the Stormvault and Warcry terrain standalone boxes, and in 3.0 we've got the construction site and aqualiths. If the past is precedent, all the construction site kits are going to phase out with 4.0 and we'll get new stuff again. That's quite a lot of sprues with only 4-5 year shelf lives tops: I've actually been considering trying to pick up some faction terrain to use in a couple projects in anticipation of them and maybe also endless spells being on the outs (there are a couple spells I'd want to grab too). I think terrain is not a great indicator, unfortunately All this sounds great! Realmgors, monster mutant incarnates, all of this is really cool in the context of "morghur wants to corrupt the realms themselves" and monster aelementors and incarnates would be such a sick idea. Like, if morghur corrupts a mountain would the lumineth want to go put down the spirit that is now also corrupted? really cool ideas!

I sort of hope they at least do some sort of livestream in the vein of a Nintendo Direct: I've never been to a Warhammer Fest, but I do always look forward to the reveals and cellphone camera pictures of stuff in glass cases (whether it's upcoming WIP models or painted stuff) With a ton of cool stuff coming out this year, I'm surprised they're swerving the opportunity to hype it up! Yeah "rats!" are cool and all, but the diversity of the ratmen is why I think they're cool. Frankensteins, crazy machinery, demon rats, wizards, Ninjas, Plague Monks, legions of endless numbers; all of those concepts should be competing under the Ratmen umbrella! It's why they have the council of 13 and everything! Their whole thing is "if only this faction could stop infighting they'd win!" I'm all for AoSifying things! If they want to blur the lines between the factions I think that'd work well: the stormfiends are an example of Moulder + Skyre, and we've seen Parasite Englines that seem like Pestilines + Moulder + Skyre, but thewiki page suggests that, actually, all the Clans may have them I would be happy to see ratsassins become an elite hero-hunter unit if not battleline, but Plague Monks are a part of the faction identity imo; filling the "sturdy chaff" role and letting one make an army with a Pestilines identity. For the most part, I would expect Eshin to be a smaller more elite force by comparison. Skaven don't really need a reboot imho: everything from them in AoS suggests they're on their same BS they were in WHF just bigger and more complicated. Give me a new monster like the hell pit (maybe just bigger?) with build options to let it represent what it'd look like in a few major clans: maybe "more" mutations, guns, and some sort of plaguebringing device. Idk! Skaven walker-tanks! any of the hybrid monsters that have come up in passing! Skaven have an extremely strong and unique identity and really they could just use some slight adjustments and new/refreshed sculpts!! At least from my perspective!

Ah no; not the Tomb Kings ones, the 7th ed Vampire Counts stuff was it for me! The AoS Deathrattle Skeletons and the matching grave guard are not really my jam. I liked the Cool Tall Skeletons for Cursed City, and was horrified when I realized they were replacing one of the GOAT kits without also replacing the matching elite skeletons! The 5th(?) edition skeletons have a special place in my heart; they were my first ever kit! But the 7th ed kit is so good that I panic bought enough for AoS before they were dropped

I gotta be the one human being on earth still loving the older Skeletons: the new ones are way too big and I loved that the kits had skulls that matched everything in the range that came afterwards for the next like 10 years! Though having built a few of the grave guard recently, I can't pretend like they aren't a bit tedious I just like my skellies looking like they could be inside most 28mm people lol

Nah I wasn't imagining like that but I do see the parallels; maybe I don't know enough about the eldrazi? I was more meaning like Morghur could be a name for the "force" that is Chaos Undivided It's usually presented as "I like the Chaos Gods as a pantheon" but the Beastmen have never loved that idea, going so far as to not be able to take chaos marks in like half their books I was meaning like, instead of "undivided" being the "whole" pantheon of gods, it's really the force that all the different gods are a face of(?) Is that the eldrazi? I only had some of their cards back when I played; I don't think I read any of their stuff past that

My gut instinct was that that sounds too op for an AoS unit, but on second thought it actually just sounds like an AoS baneblade lol. Count me in!

I know people weren't about the "overly detailed" early stormcasts but I loved them! I would be extremely down for some extremely elaborate spiky robot stormcasts, frankly because they're not fully "human" anymore I'd love to see them pop off Man I hadn't seen the 6 armed stormcast I love that idea; I love anything that helps to emphasize "these aren't really people anymore: they're Sigmar's hammer" Space Marines get all kinds of tech upgrades, I'd like to see specialized stormcast that are physically different/unique. If a giant guy with six arms yelling "Praise Sigmar!" burst through my front door you'd know I'd be trying to hide the fact that I had the common cold I really don't want to see the Goats go to Destruction tbh: I actually don't mind "animal human hybrids" being something that's "natural" in the magic-soaked realms! Actually, emphasizing Morghur and mutation would be a pretty surface-level easy way to make it clear these aren't just some other hybrids from Ghur or Ghyran. Sigmar taught the "good" races how to be racist towards beastmen as he taught them his brand of Order. To me, that's extremely important. Maybe the goatfolk weren't, by default, chaotic. Maybe they always had a taint that they didn't even fully understand! Maybe the beastmen could have been part of Destruction, but who knows how Gorkamorka felt about 'em! If the ogroids already were bullied out of Ghur because they liked a roof over their heads, I could see the use of Herdstones twisting the realms unnaturally as problematic for Gorkamorka as well, or maybe their race really is just tainted... which would be interesting to unpack: if their fate was to always live in the woods as exiles, what does that mean for the individual? Like the goat that went to slaanesh after the newly-racist order factions slaughtered his tribe? I'm all for other fauns, centaurs, and cloven-hoofed races not being chaos by default!

Oh man this same artist had some other excellent pieces of stomcast in various states of disrepair too: I'd love love to see Stormcast on Actual Rhinos! What would a Stomcast "Land Raider" look like? I love all of this artist's work! I hadnt seen the rhinos(!) but I'd seen the rest of these a minute ago and they stuck with me. The third image in particular has been burning in the back of my head for years now: I want to try to build something similar using the penitent engine iron maiden as a base

I agree with you completely! If 40k was "fantasy in space," sometimes AoS has felt like "40k, but fantasy" and, to me, that rules. The Stormcast are, narratively, everything I'd want to see in a Space Marine! Gargantuan, heroic, sometimes terrifying or unreasonable, people with pasts, people grappling with demons, people who have lost sight of the bigger picture, people that could hand a child a flower during a siege or stomp on said child depending on who they are, really cool stuff! All through a lense of hope/trying to do great instead of "the galaxy sucks so hard, man" I think a "Stormcast siege golem filled with the ghiests of those who can't be reforged anymore" could be unique next to the Dreadnought and Grey Knight baby carrier; I didn't even draw a parallel until y'all pointed it out! I think making it look like a statue possessed instead of "box with feet" would do a lot aesthetically Stormhosts = Chapters to a certain degree; Stormcast are the Fantasy Space Marines! I wouldn't want like a landspeeder or rhino, but some other parallels aren't too bad imo: i think they're neat!

I'd adore the idea that Chaos itself has an evil sort of intelligence to it and it sort of twists into the shape the viewer wants/expects/anticipates but all those are really a front/mask for "this thing that eats timelines" It would be a fun inversion for the Beastmen too: from "ah these losers suck so hard that the chaos gods consistently stop letting them take marks after their debut books" to "the bestmen didn't really get why they hated the idea of worshipping a specific ruinous power, but now that Morghur has been revealed to be chaos suddenly it clicks" Beastmen have always been referred to as "the true children of Chaos" but I don't feel like that has been adequately reflected terribly often in their rules or narrative. It'd also be an inversion of "you really want to be a Demon Prince; being a spawn is punishment or something bad" making spawndom the "truest" reflection of chaos instead: spawns being demigods or heroes instead of fodder like the human factions It'd be a really cool way to flip beastmen into something important, terrifying, and threatening to everyone including other chaos factions! You like one specific god? You're afraid of becoming a chaos spawn with "too many" gifts? You're a poser! What a fun idea!!

NGL, when Morghur came up in Season of War I was willing to bet it all that the 3.0 cover was a hint at his return! I still want that to be the case; have Yndrasta hit im head-on (and lose) With "beastmen are done" seeming more and more of a thing, I would be lying if I said I didn't want a Morghur faction to replace them. Morghur was always my favorite beastman character, and I remember actively disliking Malagor because he just sort of felt like a cop-out for not knowing what Morghur should be up to outside of "existing, I guess" Age of Sigmar and the End Times have grabbed all the toys from the toybox and made them do things! (for the most part; gotta assume Galrauch is still out there!) Morghur was surprisingly absent from the death of his setting, and I really liked the explanation that he could be/is some sort of ur-Chaos god: the unfocused mutation-heavy chaotic destruction of the capital "S" Self into the Evangelion orange Tang. I also liked that I'm pretty sure there was a mention of the more "normal" beastmen not liking the Morghur faction because, instinctually, they were pretty concerned that they were right about things So let him in! There are one billion ways AoS could reboot the beastmen into something a bit more focused as a "faction identity" than "these guys are in the woods and evil" especially as "in the woods and evil" is now the Kruleboyz' primary schtick. Give beastmen a focus! the Big Four each want their brand of "i get to rule/destroy/eat the world," the GHR wants things to be "desolate and ruined" not sterile like nagash just sort of wasted, Hashut probably wants to conquer everything (not just destroy), Morghur wants to destroy everyone's AT fields and melt everyone into a single insane consciousness that is him: there's more than one way to end a setting! Morghur can still stand next to the rest of the Chaos pantheon as something unique!

I would be so beyond down for this: I don't think I even considered that the thing could be the statue or be huge!! I would love a big angry Sigmar/Stormcast statue stuffed with insane Stormcast gheists!! An effect similar to the swarm of ghosts around Nagash would be cool; emphasizing that the gheists are bound to the statue! I've been able to resist stormcast so far, but with the Start Collecting! stuff for them on the outs, I may impulse buy a few of the chonky boys to integrate into their reboot unit as a "huge" body type vibe Can't hype Mierce up enough! Got in on their black friday sale last fall (they regularly have fantastic sales) and picked up the bear, boars, and the giant sharkman. Some of the best sculps I own full-stop! The camels are cool (though I think minotaur-sized iirc) and I'm going to be trying to find excuses to pick up some of their other stuff! The giant sharkman in particular obliterated my hopes/expectations, though tbh they all somehow looked even better in person. Really great stuff over there!

Historically, the movements about various races/factions have actually panned out into model releases: Chaos Duardin are the latest example of that happening in slow motion: I'm a huge fan of Steam Tanks, but with their imminent arrival in TOW I don't really feel FOMO about getting them right now today. If the Cogfort is cool looking, I could 100% see myself getting into an armored Cities force with both vehicles. Always love hearing about the duardin when they pop up: the vow of silence and white beards both stick out to me. Have they been working for that long? Does this tower require experienced master craftsmen? If the Duardin are building it I'd wager its safe to say Grungi knows what's up, and I'm with y'all hoping it's creepy and stormcast related! Grungi, as far as the grombrindal novel is concerned, still feels very close to sigmar and feels he's in a debt to help him (and is glad to do so) Imma keep riding my "I'd really like to see the Repossesed Duardin and Grombrindal" horse until the cows come home! Between too-reforged stormcast, cogforts on the offensive, and mystery duardin doing mysterious stuff I'm stoked to see what spirals out of that story. Are they going to circle back to the lightning gheists trapped in the big stormcast statues near the anvil of apotheosis? I'd love to see Grungi and Sigmar try and half-fail to save them! Sad to see the "beastmen are on the outs" post get more credibility, but fortunately with TOW the models themselves won't be lost. Hoping we're in a situation where the period with "no beastmen in AoS" is a transitionary one to whatever they become.

I think I'm the one person who is stoked about that orruk rumor; I'd been wanting to Kruleboyz up the bigger armored Orruks; giving the ardboyz skareshields etc. making the Orruks one big diverse faction instead of three is a plus imo! Glad to hear beasts are getting a reboot; I like em a lot and theyre tied up in quite a few cool narrative threads

All I can really add at this point is that I'm hoping the initial post is more vague than it needs to be, and "beastmen" are getting squatted the same way high elves were; by getting a crazy AoS sequel-version Everything about the Morghur faction suggests Morghur is, and has actually always been, some sort of god. Iirc, the other Beastmen know *something weird* is up with the Morghur subfaction and worry that lowkey they're right about their god; though dont have the tome in front of me atm The Thondia book also talks about Morghur a bit, and that was in 3.0 Running with that, and trying to play both sides, let's just say Morghur straight up comes back and *oh man* suddenly that's why Beastmen never were fully into the other chaos gods: they sort of always had their own Beasts of Chaos Beastmen go the way of the high elves and wanderers: faction and models deleted out of the setting completely *But* GW has a surprise swerve Beastmen sequel faction in the vein of Lumineth, and "headstone and monsters" is replaced by a new range emphasizing chaos mutation/spawndom type monsters: something familiar and different That's what id like anyways: Morghur has always been my favorite Beastmen character, and I'd be sad to see the goats drop out of AoS entirely!

Yeah, I'm with you: I feel like with each round of cuts that have happened in AoS it's been a sense of "ah well they're still getting started transitioning this game so I can see where they're coming from" The first factions to get cut sucked but there was a reason WHF got rebooted, the second round when things were consolidated into Cities sucked but I felt like "alright this seems good this is cool we have a baseline now" but now with a third round of cuts to Cities to prep those subfactions for their TOW unreboot I don't feel like GW is above making massive changes to things when they feel like it I don't think its reason to get down on miniatures hobbies in general; no one can take your goatmen from you. But I do think it makes GW rulesets look like a bad investment. Sure, I could say "alright with beastmen getting shifted to TOW surely this is the last chop for AoS" but I don't feel confident in GW like that anymore. Especially since they've already set up another round of disappointment if/when the Legacy TOW factions get axed after 1st or 2nd edition. I don't see GW supporting them at all once they've got Kislev or Cathay out, and that'd mirror how AoS handled its legacy stuff.

I'm right there with you; it's weird and hopefully a bit off-base, but whitefang has led credence to the suggestion that Chaos Duardin are in the pipes, and I'm fairly sure one of those mentions was paired with beasts getting axed. Maybe "Beasts of Chaos" are getting the axe and they're getting an entirely new army with AoS flair! Could be a few different things; hoping for the best with it! Ideally it'll just be straight-up wrong I'd love to see the "repossesed" get their own Cities-tier army. Representing the "normal" duardin living out there, maybe with the Gholemkin in there too. Make it the posterboy for "Grungi wants everyone to be friends!" with lots of opportunities to ally across the duardin factions and a Grombrindal to lead 'em! I'd love to see whatever GW has been cooking between Grungi, Grombrindal, and Nagash not having the keys to the Duardin underworlds. Idk what all that could amount to, but I'd love it to amount to something physical I can paint! Respectfully, is this not the rumor thread? Haven't seen any other actual rumors to discuss...

RIP to the firstborn marines; I'd wager that's partially why we wound up getting primaris instead of a new wave of sculpts for firstborn. At this point, OG space marines are 30k exclusives; they just went about it differently. Im sure that Space Marines v Space Marines being so successful is why we got anything else for 30k: TOW doesn't have an equivalent for that outside of people thirsty for old models. TOW is not in a position where Empire vs Empire is enough to fund the rest of the game. It also doesn't need all-new sculpts: people are excited for the old stuff! Myself included! Once I circle back to my Free City and Soulblights, Bretonnia is going to be where I source a ton of my stuff. I'm with you: if Cities are becoming primarily humans, I'd love to see what would happen with a Grombrindal/Grungi "repossesed" army!!

No, but 30k had the advantage of people buying space marine stuff for 40k. Initially that's all there was to buy! If the biggest selling faction is Space Marines and you make a game that's primarily Space Marines vs Space Marines I'm not surprised that GW successfully moved some space marines! It would be as if 30k didn't focus on the Xenos races much at all and had its own special and unique version of imperial guard with its own aesthetic and design cues instead of just using the 40k one... which they do. If Games Workshop wants each of their two fantasy games to look entirely different at a glance, going so far as to only photograph old not-aos models for their books, then there are absolutely discussions happening behind the scenes about what is WHF and what is AoS at a glance. 40k was/is in a slightly different situation: they just whipped up "old" versions of a lot of stuff that could very well still exist 10k years later. Bc both games don't share much outside of Space Marines they're different at a glance. AoS was a sequel where, by default, everyone initially made it into the game. They've been culling things since 1.0; if they woke up and decided "Beasts are more iconic to TOW than AoS" it's just another cut on the pile at this point. Still hoping Beasts get a reboot instead of a chop, though.

I'd be okay with this: one could proxy the rest of each of those factions as "beasts" to get a god-aligned "beastman" army. I'd be sad to see 'em lose their herdstone-centric monster mash though! If beasts get completely squatted in AoS, this will probably be what happens. The "we've tried nothing and we're out of ideas!" meme comes to mind here; I saw a big outpouring of enthusiasm when the Fyerslayer egg-fanatics seemingly addressed a lot of design critiques people had about 'em! I'm excited to see the future of that faction! Beasts haven't been given love in AoS. The new models they got were primarily for other armies and they got one book where they got to play nice with god-specific armies before they dropped that too. New models for AoS were often seen as stepping on the toes (hooves?) of the beastmen, like Kragnos and Ogoroids. We got new lore in the form of Morghur's AoS version, but I dont think Beastmen have got anything "AoS Specific." Not even in Warcry; Beasts got a 40k killteam instead. I've been figuring surely we'll eventually break into Azyr and the Dragon Ogors will have their time in the spotlight: it'd be a perfect opportunity for new models and a new centerpiece character! I'd be disappointed if GW dropped beasts with nothing to replace them, but I can't say I'd be too too surprised. I'm just going to have positive vibes and really really really hope that GW has an AoS beastmen reboot army hidden away as a surprise instead of them deciding "ah, well we're about to release the other niche chaos faction with the duardin; each setting should really only have one niche chaos faction."

I want to be wrong so bad! I'd be very salty if Beasts got into AoS, lost the ability to get marked AGAIN, then were just dropped from the setting entirely. We'll see! I'm hoping I/me this rumor are wrong, but I could see GW doing something silly like this.

But, as of now, GW seemingly does not want to have any cross-game models between AoS and TOW: Beastmen are one of the core Evil factions in TOW. If GW is really about to re release the old Chaos Warriors so they don't match TOW, I could see them not having beasts in both settings. They could be looking at the rumored Chaos Duardin as filling the same "[other] Chaos" faction slot. I don't think I'd be thrilled, but it could happen. I'd prefer to see a beastmen reboot, but GW has been weird.

The best-case (and what I'd like to see) is that the Beast refresh is Lumineth tier and will be unique enough to live side-by-side with the current range. The current army could get "squatted" in favor of an AoS version of the same guys and the model range scooted over to TOW. That'd please absolutely everyone!

I agree completely! They even sold the entire range of Chaos Demons with both circle and square bases in the box for years!! But there's a lot of precedent for this in AoS, even if I hate it. From where I'm standing, the only reason Cities still have Steam Tanks any Duardin is because they're filling tactical niches that the army wouldn't have otherwise. With Dwarfs getting added to TOW, I think their days in Cities are numbered. With all the narrative work they did for cities, I'm with you that I'd rather see the entirety of HElves, DElves, and WElves added to Cities rules-wise even if I have to source circle bases for them. As it stands, I think GW would rather me counts-as everything that isn't in the book by default instead of trying to strike an internal balance between like four or five different armies under the same umbrella. WElves were cut from cities, and will be back with all their missing stuff for TOW while now being unable to be "officially" used in AoS. To me, that's crazy. I'd love to build a swifthawk chariot! It even looks like GW is bringing back the old chaos warriors so they don't have the same sculpt for the same dudes in both settings. Idk; I hate it, and it's still a rumor, but it's completely within the realm of possibility for me based on how GW has handled things with AoS and TOW

I doubt GW is going to squat the Beast model range entirely; they're already in TOW and there's no way they're walking it back. I do think it is not outside the realm of possibility that GW shifts the faction entirely to TOW, selling them on squares, and Beasts don't get a 4.0 battletome. I could absolutely see a plastic Centigor kit dropping for TOW that was initially meant for AoS: folding the Beasts update into TOW would be an easy way to give that game an "army with brand new sculpts!" that they don't have to whip up fresh. This is the same GW that released those "Warriors of the Great Cities!" box sets right before they dropped a bunch of those units in the 2.0 Cities tome, lol. I'm not really pessimistic towards GW in regards to the toys they produce, but I am very pessimistic about how they handle their games and rules tbh.