Baron Klatz

Yeah, they don't do the big "here's your last chance" fanfare GW does. I think that'd help things but hearing people's mixed feelings on getting FW i'm not sure.

Oh hey, I heard that design philosophy from the designer of the God of War games. Your game needs to either make everyone happy or angry, it's only a failure if it's "meh". Edit: So I guess that rekindles hope for the Fyreslayers. They really just need more "Fyre" and less slayer in their next update. That's the biggest thing fans love about them as the Aqshy faction. Also agreed on their appealing mechanics. Another factor is how great their Start Collecting is. People that magnetize the leaders can swap them around with the Magmadroth to try out different strategies. Yeah I just know there's people who don't bother with the details when making their point. I couldn't find the aesthetics one but Novakai came in for us. Thanks! I could only find their bigger poll. Crazy Slaanesh were so low in aesthetics too. I think that goes to show how wildly these things can shift because most people I know could swear by how much they love them and the other daemon armies (especially Maggotkin, I'd hate for the heroic nurgling to see what that one poll showed).

No that was 100% new. Also isn't this the poll we're talking about? FEC are next to the Lumineth & Hedonites which you can't tell me don't do well. Yeah I really dislike these simplistic polls. Way too easy to point to the graph and spin a false narrative of why something isn't doing well while ignoring that half the NO guys aren't actually against it but had no better choice. Also no Fyreslayers flair? They should get a say with their favorite army I should think.

Even then that's actually a more recent thing. Back when the Doomseeker came from the Silver Tower his lore was he was a religious crusader looking to clear his name and win back his honor Even if it meant by dying. It's because they're slayers in name only, they're a fully functioning society of Grimnir duardin in reality and get past the faults of the old and dead ancestral dawi race. That's one of the many cool things about them. They're traditional as sons of Grimnir with fire coursing through their veins but their pragmatic through and through. They wear the bare attire but use Ur-gold to protect their skin so they're actually better armored than they look and they embrace Polearms as their main weapons as that's the sensible weapon for duardin to use. (It's something that I really like about duardin that between Fyreslayers & Kharadron there's only one troop unit that still uses axes). But yeah, definitely voted yes as Fyreslayers are awesome. Their lore is just so good including the little things like their libraries using Braille on metal beads strung on Orruk leather instead of books because the volcano heat and their own body temperature would destroy the pages. Fyreslayers just need more units and stuff leaning into their elemental nature like all the lava Fyreslayers people paint along with more Aqshy monsters and lava benders. Despite people pointing to that one poll graph(which is silly since they're right next to the still extremely loved DoK & FEC) Fyreslayers Are popular. On Facebook they came close to Kharadron in votes and are a common sight in both tourneys and on forums with people getting into AoS and loving their fiery design.

I know you said you're not interested lorewise for their design but I do think that's worth crediting here. They get their strength from the mountain so don't use overhead blows but precise sideways ones which with their super-strength is enough to crush daemon prince armor. Second is when they do that "become the mountain" stance it's a forcefield over their whole body (and helm). So the tall T becomes a literal mountain wall that hinders enemy overhead blows trying to break it. Reading more into them makes you apply "real life" less & less to the crazy things they do. Which I find very fitting as each new iteration of aelves in the mortal realms show how eldritch they are as creatures of gods & realms rather than just mortals. "So strong is the connection between Stoneguard and patron is that the average member of the caste can stand immobile for years or even decades on end without food or drink, drawing nourishment from the mountain itself. " "When thought to be ready, the supplicant is taken to the peaks of the mountain and buried alive. Should the supplicant find themself blessed, they will find themself able to breathe through the cracks. After a full week, they emerge as a true Stoneguard. " I wouldn't be surprised if it's because he had to recreate their bodies with so much light magic to purge the Slaanesh taint that they got "overstuffed". Lumineth are already so infused with aetherquartz that their bodies naturally produce light in the dark. That sounds like the bare minimum needed after 10,000+ years inside a Dark God.

Well between them saying on the podcasts they want the Alarith to be the "face" of the Lumineth (thus their position on the tome cover art) and how the Alarith units (hammers & mountains) were near the top of their best sellers list for months I think they're pretty safe. Certainly lots of people loved them enough to make some rather brilliant fanart with positive reception. https://mobile.twitter.com/laylowthetyrant/status/1245213306073149441 "Regina Reforged @laylowthetyrant · Mar 31, 2020 Tonight I did some Lumineth Fanart of the Stoneguard. I was really inspired by the Alarith that were recently revealed, and I'm wondering whether I'll stick with them or do the River Temple when that gets fully revealed! Hope you guys like it! #ageofsigmar #warhammercommunity" (Also give her other art a look over too. Some great AoS stuff there. )

Definitely agreed. A menagerie of animal armored light aelves marching with their multitude of animal helms and realm beast companions like a Hysh parade in reverence to the spirits with the vanari forming a central shining anchor for the army will look fantastic when we see every temple. Another factor I think will help is just Hysh native releases in general. People are calling the Lumineth hats eccentric but that is just how the realm of light rolls as everything there is symbolism manifested with no subtlety. You can see it with the tall hat wizard in the corebook and the Hysh chaos warband Cypher Lords practically wearing solar panel hats to reflect this. When we get other forces from there and people see the realm of light is just the place you go when you Really want your headwear to standout it'll be rather enlightening.

Needs "I wasn't hot on the army until the battle cattle arrived" to balance it out. (Certainly was my stance on it. Living armor was good but bull helm priests & walking mountains are glorious.)

It's definitely well loved and even more so at times. I can't find it but in 2019 someone posted a AoS vs 40k releases pie chart on reddit. It was a 50-50 split. And as a Stormcast player and huge fan I don't see any big problem with our battletome. Sure it made us "shootcast" but we got everything we need and are a mid-tier army that can top tournaments even now. More stuff is coming, no need to rush so everyone can get a piece of the pie. We're all in a pretty great spot everything considered. (Also yeah, aelves do need a bit more love despite the opinions. Deepkin need a update with Endless spells and I think we'd all love a Kurnothi tome )

Not a bad taste to everyone. For people like me I want all my content, both rules and lore, in one physical place and can enjoy the update to update as I see the lore building between each new iteration of the tome and chronicle the moving progress of the setting. As long as there's a good chunk of new meaty content there I don't have a problem with it.(battle plans, skirmish points and art tips nice bonuses too) Slapping "free online" doesn't really appeal to me though. I remember when I joined a AoS project discord and they gave me a free pdf of the first Flesh Eaters Court tome to read. I deleted it instead, felt dirty not paying for something official like that. Edit: Oof, the Malign Portents one is such a great example of why online stuff is unreliable. Been out for 2 and a half years and trying to track down those short stories is near impossible. The narrative campaign events are straight up gone. People will meticulously copy rules from multiple editions like a duardin recording his savings but lore can be lost to the aetheric winds with how skewed the competitive scene is to the smaller narrative one.

Oh the lore books were great and I loved the campaigns like Quest for Ghal Maraz. But pretty maps and new lore doesn't bring in the crowds like a competitive edge does. Besides there's new lore books for that now. Soulbound. Edit: Ooh, that does make me hope we get a new Core Book for AoS 3. The 2018 one was phenomenal. ❤️

That was basically the AoS strategy back in 2015. Tomes were just lore books with the Warscroll library that you could get for free regardless and the campaign books were more lore with a few battleplans thrown in. Seeing how the popularity and success shot up when they put new rules and updates in those books the next year pretty much shows why that isn't happening anymore. I can understand that but once again, it depends how they handle it. Could be the Lumineth tome again with some few lore and unit add-ons (hopefully they'd completely revamp it with a new continent of lore and a bunch of tricked out new traits & spells if that happened), could be Broken Realms & White Dwarf which would go along swimmingly for the update. We need to wait and see but a 1 year update release isn't likely unless this temple is huge instead of just a small sub-faction. Haha, this forum is torture on how few likes you can hand out. Absolutely agreed.

New lore, rules for multiple new factions, matched play updates and lots of new scenarios and battles for Matched, Narrative and Open play. I count that as a lot better. How much these campaign books have jam-packed in them is why Wrath of the Everchosen was top of the best-sellers list all year long until Broken Realms took over. Same. That so much rule-wise is free warscrolls and easy to get between digital and the warhammer-community showing some of the juicier traits makes it all the better, IMO.

Depends how they handle it. Could be a new tome or they just put them in one of the Broken Realms books and White Dwarfs for their non-free rules that get added to a Lumineth tome update in the future(probably when all 4 temples are done).

This is my bet. Mortal Realms rule of thumb is 98% of animals are eldritch mix-and-matched critters unless undead(then the Ossiarchs solve that manually with bone chimera). With how much spirit foxes are mentioned for the aelemental wind temple my thinking is fox hybrids to both play off of Hysh's geomantic deserts(probably why the Slaanesh have Persian & Arabian elements as enemies there) and to keep building the oriental aelven themes with kitsune foxes. Shout-out to Gecktron for posting these images on discord and how I think they'll tie-in to being long-legged maned wolf-fox-llamas with the wind lumineth wearing appropriate fox helms as they glide through the deserts of the realms.* *(which also fits a Ghur Excelsis confrontation build-up since it's a lot of wastelands and mountains there. It's all coming together.) Edit: ooh, a homunculus would explain the odd frame and lack of hair on the feet halflings have. Fits perfectly with the mutant & opulent pseudo-persian vibes too!

Well I've been nothing but Order armies with even more Deepkin and Stormcast strike chamber this year to compliment my army narrative. Next year I'd like to expand to Ossiarchs and Flame Scions and fashion them both on the Realm of Fire for an invasion force against my realm of life & metal armies(plus firey bone golems that explode with flame samurai mercs would be several levels of awesome. )

Oh yeah, thus the skirmishes for more territory. But in the same vein that the God-king thought it was for the good of all to twist Teclis' intelligence engines into shrouded Stormvaults behind his illuminated back or Alarielle to stay in her war-aspect to make her realm hostile despite the pantheon's objections thus is it the same here as a Order god acts on their own again to defy the enemies of Order in the long run.

Like the Anvilgard resistance, "Anvil Unbroken!". Yeah, I feel this was a very bloody ends to a mean that should prove more beneficial to Order. Anvilgard while a powerful port city with multiple realmgates was being barely used as a spearhead against chaos as it was the farther end down from the God-King's empire. By becoming Morathi-Khaine's crown jewel for her new empire it means she can push Har Kuron to become a major threat to the enemies of Order again. Doubly so as she shifts the balance of power in the Realm of Fire. Yes there will likely be Order vs Order skirmishes now as they both keep expanding there but you only need to look at the Slaves to Darkness tome or Soulbound map to see that despite Aqshy being Order's biggest expansion it's still dominated by chaos. Morathi-Khaine can greatly help with this as not only is there tons of chaos warrior bodies for her new cities to carve into and sacrifice to empower her but the hot-blooded nature of Aqshyians that so suited Khorne can now easily turn towards this new rising goddess instead and rob them of followers.

I know I voted for Eltharion, he seemed the best bet for an AoS model to win as he was both popular and exemplified the Age of Sigmar spirit in a model, be a beautiful sculpt with an amazing epic fantasy lore (living armor protecting a reality of light magic alongside the gods that created him while echoing something from the world-that-was but still clearly being it's own thing). Happy that Teclis and Celennar got mentioned at least as they're fantastic models, I saw a lot of people for them on twitter and this one poster hit the nail on the head that this was really tough because this year has been Good for amazing model releases. "elmundos(hellmundos): @WarComTeam I vote for teclis he is fantastic, but the light of eltarion,fabius bile, ragnar, gazghkull, and all horus heresy dark angels, too many good models I see in the past that chaos space are well represented, especially Primarch, maybe it could be time for angron or fulgrim's back?"

Ohh, since you have Lady Olynder you could play on how they're betrothed to eachother and give them matching patterns or artifacts to show that (terrifying) union. Hope you find motivation to write more about your flying city, those are my favorite things in fantasy settings.

I voted NightHaunt. They got great entries right now between cheap Easy-to-builds, warbands and the Malign Portents starter sets. Great stuff to grab before AoS3 hits. They're an excellent army easy to paint, pretty powerful with potential for more attention later and to get narratively creative with by showing where they're haunting, what realm they adapted to and if they're a standing force controlling a new land or still invading letting you pick any kind of base terrain. Plus if you double back to Tzeentch (or even flip to Sylvaneth) they'd be fun to paint in Tzeentch flames(or Life spirit greens) for a corrupted force to proxy with as daemons/spites/etc.

Definitely checks out. It was always described as being too massive for a regular man(or even dawi) to use. Reminds me of a Stormcast lord-celestant cosplay someone did and just how huge those sigmarite hammers actually are. Now they need to do his Fyreslayer axe next and put them crossed on a mantle with the words "Gotrek Lives!" emblazoned on it.

I see Morathi-Khaine still in ascension. She's going from demigoddess to full goddess as she turns her cult into a full regulated religion with followers in multiple cities and gaining more divine power. That's why she's gone for such a hostile takeover. She knew the gods would abject to such a power shift as she takes a bigger (and bloodier) piece of the pie. So she went with a coup instead of groveling that'd lead nowhere. This bit from the Deepkin short story really stands out how subtle the changes are to the cult switching to a religion for her personally: "The Daughters take their time to purge every street, screaming war-oaths around their vile cauldron. The statue atop that wheeled altar has already been subtly altered, its features made more reminiscent of the reborn Morathi-Khaine. Nemmetar sees it. He wonders if the Khainites do."

Lava snowman decoy army or we march on our stores with branded tattoos in protest.

The old angry fans have that excuse and I don't think anyone is really blaming that minority. The worst portion is the toxic Total War players who have no reason to be mad but jump in anyway to earn points with the old crowd when they're not at war with the Total War history crowd. I've lost count of how many times I got hit by them on reddit on warhammer subs where i'm explaining the lore to curious people and they jump in with "that's f-ing stupid lore". I ask them "how? Can you explain why it's bad?" 80% of the time I get: "You'd know if you read the good Fantasy books!" I reply: "I have. I've been in since 7th edition and read almost every book including buying the Hammer & Bolter short story collections and even the Age of Reckoning novel tie-ins. I read them and still adore AoS novels from the Realmgate Wars onward. So can you explain in detail?" I either get silence(as they have not read any books) or "Lol, you actually care that much about dumb toy soldiers?!" They are the worst and the main reason the toxic levels are crazy high be it in warhammer tabletop forums or their own forums where they gloat at history fans for not having big trilogy games that get so much attention. That's why I'm happy the trilogy is finally getting ready to wrap up so they can move on and the AoS strategy games coming out can bring in a less bitter crowd as well Old World actually pulling in people who enjoy tabletop and not just bad-mouthing people so that community can actually heal.