Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 BorderCountess wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Then there's good old Commander Dante who is approximately 1,552 Terran years old as of ca. 999.M41, as records indicate he was born in 447.M40.

But Astartes age stupid-slowly, so I'm not worried about Dante. I'm talking about people like Yarrick, who are unaugmented and already fairly advanced in years during the Third War for Armageddon (starting in 998.M41).

They did kill off Creed and Kell... just to replace them with... Creed Jr.

But I get your point, Sly Marbo or Iron Hand Strakken should be long retired by the Era Indomitus.

It kinda strains the game's credulity when some regular guys are seemingly immortal.

 BorderCountess wrote:
The lack of anything resembling a timeline irks me when you have regular human characters running around, like Tahlia Vedra, or other notably short-lived races like Skaven that aren't Thanquol.

It's why I hope damn near all previous named characters get dropped from the next Guard codex, because none of them should be alive in the Era Indomitus.

In his original appearance in the 2nd edition Codex, Nork Deddog was described as having retired long ago. Half the special characters in the original Orcs & Goblins army book were dead by the 'present day'. 'Historical' personalities have always been a part of GW, it's just their relatively recent insistence on a moving timeline that makes them seem out of place.

Thats my biggest issue with AOS having a storyline that is constantly advancing. For stormcasts, vampires, aelves, etc., it's fine to have characters that don't really age.

But then you get skaven and humans that constantly need some macguffin to explain how they've endured through all the crazy stuff that happens every edition. You can only use "Magic artifact that extends life" or "their god favored them" before it starts to get tiresome.

At least in 40k, you can have the humans get lost in the warp and reappear centuries after they normally would have expired.

 GaroRobe wrote:
At least in 40k, you can have the humans get lost in the warp and reappear centuries after they normally would have expired.

Don't even need that. Rich imperial humans can just buy longer lifespans. Peak human medical tech even in the dark ages of 40k is so far beyond ours it's a joke. Three centuries isn't even particularly noteworthy unless you're an active combatant. Five centuries does seem to be the limit without Mechanicus level cybernetics though.

 GaroRobe wrote:
But then you get skaven and humans that constantly need some macguffin to explain how they've endured through all the crazy stuff that happens every edition. You can only use "Magic artifact that extends life" or "their god favored them" before it starts to get tiresome.

Skaven having a life extension elixir has basically always been a thing in their backstory. It's how the Council of 13 and Grey Seers live so long and was teased to Queek by his master for years.

BorderCountess wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Then there's good old Commander Dante who is approximately 1,552 Terran years old as of ca. 999.M41, as records indicate he was born in 447.M40.

But Astartes age stupid-slowly, so I'm not worried about Dante. I'm talking about people like Yarrick, who are unaugmented and already fairly advanced in years during the Third War for Armageddon (starting in 998.M41).

I always thought of life extension being unevenly distributed in that universe but being a thing that more or less exists. Marines might have it built in to some degree due to the whole process they go through to become Marines (being able to live a few hundred years, or Blood Angels being able to live a few more hundred on top of that) to Inquisitors, High Lords, and the filthy rich also having access to the finest life extension treatments.

I can see Yarrick, as a veteran Commissar even before the Armageddon wars, having access to some sort of life extension treatment as a basic healthcare thing officers get. In the same way the Imperium's best get access to bionics to keep fighting. The basic equation kinda being even for "non world leaders" but very accomplished military officers: The better you do the more gets invested in you being able to do the job for even longer.

Commissar Cain had Rejuv as a propaganda hero, and his aide Jurgen got it as well quietly thanks to Inquisitor Vail finding him useful.

And didn't the time jump between 7th & 8th get rolled back anyway? Not completely, but from 100 years back to 15-20?

Yeah someone in marketing reminded them that if they took the story out of the 40K era then that wouldn't do the marketing any good if they have to go from 40K to 41K.


Though part of me thinks the push for Warhammer as the brand over GW or 40K is GW giving themselves room to push "WARHAMMER" to new generations and thus not be as bound to 40K

Wow, this warclans book is REALLY bad.

 Dysartes wrote:
And didn't the time jump between 7th & 8th get rolled back anyway? Not completely, but from 100 years back to 15-20?

Yes, that + they made it so that there was a historical dating error and a galaxy-wide temporal anomaly that results in different parts of the galaxy experiencing time differently so that the entire dating system has become a meaningless abstraction (basically), but also so that they wouldnt have to advance the story into M42 (turns out that imperial chronographers may have been off by about a thousand years or so, give or take, so everything you thought was happening in M41 was actually really happening in M40 instead).

And I suspect the long term play for GW is to expand the Warhammer brand beyond just its own IPs. I think/suspect that long term they are going to try to apply the "Warhammer" branding to other IPs that they license for tabletop gaming purposes, i.e. "Warhammer: Middle Earth" may become a thing one day down the line. GWs current market domination strategy is to basically compete by offering games that appeal to different audiences in terms of model scale and rules scale while still forming part of the core Warhammer brands/IP. That can only take them so far, as every time someone gets a Star Wars or Game of Thrones or Dune license, etc. its going to directly compete with the Warhammer brand based on the strength and appeal of the other IP - even if thats only short-lived. The next logical step for GW in its growth trajectory is to license those IPs itself to smother out the competition and assure that it captures those hobby dollars instead of the likes of Mantic or Privateer Press or whomever. Using the strength of its own brand to further fuel that growth in such a way will go a long way - theres a lot of people who wont touch competing games or model ranges for whatever reason. Appending "warhammer" on that though appeals to their brand loyalties and drives buyers to those other products. Im betting if they ever did rebrand MESBG to "Warhammer: Middle Earth" you'd see a massive spike in interest and sales just on the name alone.

chaos0xomega wrote:

Yes, that + they made it so that there was a historical dating error and a galaxy-wide temporal anomaly that results in different parts of the galaxy experiencing time differently so that the entire dating system has become a meaningless abstraction (basically), but also so that they wouldnt have to advance the story into M42 (turns out that imperial chronographers may have been off by about a thousand years or so, give or take, so everything you thought was happening in M41 was actually really happening in M40 instead).

Which is moronic, because the Imperial dating system already accounted for inaccuracies in dating events. Plus, Terra keeping track of the date is the easiest thing in the world - basic counting!

GW marched themselves into an obvious problem of having the timeline jump forwards, but then having no idea what to do with that time jump, and being unwilling to kill off any characters with names. I suspect that it was an artefact of whatever larger shakeup of the setting they had planned but then backpeddled following the initial failure of Age of Sigmar's launch, along with Primaris and Firstborn coexisting for so long, and Ynnari getting nothing of note.

this is just the current lore, and canon and valid/official is only what is written in the current books

so no real problem for GW to just ignore everything again with 11th, set up the thing to be 39.999 and retcon that nothing has happened yet but keeping all the new models because they have always been there since the Heresy (wouldn't be the first time)

 skrulnik wrote:

Spoiler:

 lord_blackfang wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
everything i referenced was an existing tool that was modified, not a new tool

Sorry, but no.

The Chaos Lord is the only one I had to look up and it's definitely two sprues





Eldar had a gun sprue added to the box, nothing more. Marines were always new tools.

Definitely a new sprue.

And it took them 7 tries to get the new one right. The dots on the frame are revisions.

Blessed by Nurgle


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 cole1114 wrote:
Wow, this warclans book is REALLY bad.

So, with 4 factions out now, how has been AoS 4 been now?

Both gameplay-wise and lore-wise

My local stores are all over Spearhead though

 Lord Damocles wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

Yes, that + they made it so that there was a historical dating error and a galaxy-wide temporal anomaly that results in different parts of the galaxy experiencing time differently so that the entire dating system has become a meaningless abstraction (basically), but also so that they wouldnt have to advance the story into M42 (turns out that imperial chronographers may have been off by about a thousand years or so, give or take, so everything you thought was happening in M41 was actually really happening in M40 instead).

Which is moronic, because the Imperial dating system already accounted for inaccuracies in dating events. Plus, Terra keeping track of the date is the easiest thing in the world - basic counting!

GW marched themselves into an obvious problem of having the timeline jump forwards, but then having no idea what to do with that time jump, and being unwilling to kill off any characters with names. I suspect that it was an artefact of whatever larger shakeup of the setting they had planned but then backpeddled following the initial failure of Age of Sigmar's launch, along with Primaris and Firstborn coexisting for so long, and Ynnari getting nothing of note.

I think it was something endemic with a management team that was increasingly focused on the finances of the company and not much else at the end of the Kirby era. Granted that focus early on worked great for GW in saving their finances; but it was a terrible one for lore/product focus and customer satisfaction in the long term. Old World to AoS should never have happened as it did. And yeah 40K at that time had odd choices too.



I don't see GW putting the Warhammer franchise onto Middle Earth or anything they don't 100% own. Middle Earth is 3rd party; it can be taken away from GW very suddenly. The right owners might want to hire a different firm; might want to pull out of models entire or might feel GW isn't turning enough profit or whatever. Basically its something GW can never own and is always a risk of losing .

The same is true of Sega putting "Total War" on Warhammer, and yet...

chaos0xomega wrote:
The same is true of Sega putting "Total War" on Warhammer, and yet...

True, but at the same time Battle for Middle Earth just isn't a "Warhammer" game. It's a Games Workshop game.
Meanwhile Total War Warhammer is 100% a Total War franchise game with the Warhammer Franchise - the joint title works.

But BFME doesn't really fit into anything else Warhammer. Even its release system is different to the core games. The only connection is they are both made by Games Workshop.


Perhaps its just a time and older-gamer thing and in 5-10 years no one at all mentions GW and the brand only appears on formal documents and everything is branded and marked Warhammer and the connections to that term change. I can see that happening, esp if GW starts to explore outside of the AoS/OldWorld and 40K settings within their own roster. But I think we've still a time to go yet before Warhammer becomes a fully generic brand name.

All the games workshop branding has been slowly being stripped away, everything is warhammer now. You buy your Middle Earth Strategu Battle Game products from warhammer.com or the warhammer store, not games wprkshop. Changing the name to Warhammer: Middle Earth just formalizes what already exists in practice.

Might also be a reason why this Edition made the previous books obsolete to start a slow transition
And GW works hard for Warhammer to replace Wargaming as the generic word for the hobby but at the same time defending as trade name so no one else can use it for non GW products

The conclusion is that every GW at one point need to use Warhammer, otherwise GW would admit that something else beyond the "Warhammer Hobby" exists

The problem that always came up back in the day when young me regularly visited the local GW was that people would always wander in looking for video games or Magic the Gathering cards. So part of rebranding as Warhammer does eliminate customer confusion in that respect.

But like, isn't it GOOD for GW if they increase foot traffic to the shops? Like maybe some of those accidental wanderers think "Holy crap, these miniatures are incredible!"

 Da Boss wrote:
But like, isn't it GOOD for GW if they increase foot traffic to the shops? Like maybe some of those accidental wanderers think "Holy crap, these miniatures are incredible!"

Totally anecdotal, but never happened in my experience! The staff were always happy to direct them where they could get what they wanted, though.

 Da Boss wrote:
But like, isn't it GOOD for GW if they increase foot traffic to the shops? Like maybe some of those accidental wanderers think "Holy crap, these miniatures are incredible!"

Not when they're getting constant phone calls and dumb queries about "video game" and junk like that.

Also man reads books:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vsiu-CFSrE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsmLswwwHXI

Particularly happy that the Path to Glory seems to have come out so well.

 CMLR wrote:

 skrulnik wrote:

 cole1114 wrote:
Wow, this warclans book is REALLY bad.

So, with 4 factions out now, how has been AoS 4 been now?

Both gameplay-wise and lore-wise

My local stores are all over Spearhead though

I really don't like the S2D book. Losing 3 units, the new gaze of the gods thing, and the new marks/banner thing, I really dislike all those changes. Given they're my army of choice... eesh.

I only played 1 game of AoS 4th edition and liked it a lot.
I did not like that endless spells are for free and they are too strong for that in my oppinion.
The missions with the battle tactics seemed great though.

 Overread wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
The same is true of Sega putting "Total War" on Warhammer, and yet...

True, but at the same time Battle for Middle Earth just isn't a "Warhammer" game. It's a Games Workshop game.
Meanwhile Total War Warhammer is 100% a Total War franchise game with the Warhammer Franchise - the joint title works.

But BFME doesn't really fit into anything else Warhammer. Even its release system is different to the core games. The only connection is they are both made by Games Workshop.

Battle for Middle Earth isn't a Games Workshop game at all, it (along with it's sequel) was a video game published by EA...

Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game however...

But yes, it's a very different situation.

Ahh lol yeah I mixed up the video game and model game names!

Underworlds, but damn the gitz need to be updated to this style

Pretty awesome stuff!
The main thing stopping me from starting Gitz are the core troops, which are super old Warhammer Fantasy Night Goblins.

 Astmeister wrote:
Pretty awesome stuff!
The main thing stopping me from starting Gitz are the core troops, which are super old Warhammer Fantasy Night Goblins.

Very much my issue with them too. Everything else is great.