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**Da Boss**

The argument about Greenskins being too similar to each other should be applied to Space Marines.

I am lucky, Orcs and Goblins are my biggest painted Warhammer army. I have a bunch of all of the units that went out of production already except the characters, and there are lots of alternatives from other companies.

But it is sad to think of the Warhammer World without my Boyz.

**Overread**

Da Boss - very true but Space Marines are an exception rather than the normal. Plus even within the space Marines once GW focuses on them for individual models we get some unique concepts like the Space Wolves.

**Cronch**

I think it might be too late for that. GW seems intent on making ironjawz the default orruks.

**NinthMusketeer**

GW will product what people buy. People definitely buy Space Marines.

**Togusa**

Overread wrote:
Well there's currently two confirmed near enough

Light Aelves which we've seen the photos of some miniatures already

Sons of Behamat which we've seen a few hints here and there, a shipping manifesto, a confirmation in a GW video that they exist (sorry are a myth) and rumour that they are giants.

After that there's a few that I think are almost certain to appear.

1) The Shadow Aelves - Malarion's army which are said to rule most of the Shadow Realm (Daughter's of Khain only inhabit a small corner). With draconic style leader and slaanesh saved warped aelves.

2) Soulblight/Vampire army for Death. Almost a certain thing considering how popular vampires were before and how often they appear in the stories. GW is most likely going to do the same for them that they've done for other Death armies; which is to take out the parts that are needed from the Legion of Nagash and add to them to make a new army.

3) Based on how GW does the soulbight army they might also do a Skeleton army. Now this is hard to predict because Skeletons could remain the Legion of Nagash and rise as its unique core feature; or they could be absorbed into the Vampire army or they could go it alone.
Ossiarchs are an undead construct army, but they are the "elite" of the bone constructs. I'd wager a regular skeleton themed army would be more akin to a swarm of undead units.

After those its very hard to predict anything;

a) I'd like to see Destruction get one or two more armies. By its very nature its one of the more fragmented Grand Alliances and thus could easily take on a few more armies of different and wildly varied kinds.

b) Grottbag scuttlers might appear. It's hard to say since GW generally has most races (esp grots and skaven) stealing KO airships and refitting them. It could be something GW keeps in the lore alone as a conversion idea for gamers; or one or two might make it as actual armies; its very hard to say

c) Dragons - I mean just look at how epic the setting is and how few dragons there are!! It's criminal!

Honestly I hope there aren't too many more armies. It's not that I don't think GW can't do it, but that there's a good few smaller forces right now. I'd love to see armies like Flesh-eaters and Daughters of Khaine etc... get a "second wave" of models to really start making them into armies rather than small force we have now. There's loads of room to add more ranged, monstrous, infantry, cavalry and other things ilke artillery and other war-engines.

I'd hate to see GW make AoS into such a huge setting that they can never find time to replace/update/add to existing forces. Since fans will eventually reach limit points on how wide (how many) armies they want and start to want to dig into those armies they collect and diversify and increase their collections of them.

They could choose to revamp Tomb Kings. Having an Egyptian undead aesthetic that isn't connected to Nagash could be really interesting.

They come from a hidden corner of the realms that even Nagash hasn't heard of and they could have their own Gods of undead who seek to butt in on Nagash's power. Rename them, do some up designing to AoSify them and boom, Egyptian Undead are back.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Da Boss wrote:
The argument about Greenskins being too similar to each other should be applied to Space Marines.

I am lucky, Orcs and Goblins are my biggest painted Warhammer army. I have a bunch of all of the units that went out of production already except the characters, and there are lots of alternatives from other companies.

But it is sad to think of the Warhammer World without my Boyz.

But the Old World is comming back, so at least you'll have that.

**Thadin**

I'm still waiting for GW to give me Biggus Space Marines on Motorcycles, or a true dedicated melee option.

In other semi-related news, Lumineth are shaping up to be another divisive faction like Ossiarchs, where some people love them and some people hate them, due to a... unique aesthetic. Makes me curious what the plan is for Malerion Elves design.

**NinthMusketeer**

I think any unique aesthetic will have some people who dislike it, and that is OK. Every army does not have to appeal to every player, or even look good to every player. What I do see is that there is definitely a strong market of people who like it, and that is what's important.

**Thadin**

Oh yeah, for sure. I think that's when the artists shine best, making something with a strong design that doesn't need to make everyone happy. I know myself, I love the Lumineth and Ossiarchs look, and only have a few misgivings with the Lumienth Heros they've shown, asides from Elthariel. Though, it could also be an issue with the paint job on them. Just gotta' keep saving up for their eventual release and see how I feel with them in hand.

**Mr Morden**

They could choose to revamp Tomb Kings. Having an Egyptian undead aesthetic that isn't connected to Nagash could be really interesting.

They come from a hidden corner of the realms that even Nagash hasn't heard of and they could have their own Gods of undead who seek to butt in on Nagash's power. Rename them, do some up designing to AoSify them and boom, Egyptian Undead are back.

They are still part of the lore of the Realm of Shyish

**Future War Cultist**

Sometimes I wonder if it was a mistake to merge the ironjawz and bone splittas. Although they’re both orcs, they are quite different. You don’t see fyrsslayers and overlords sharing a book...although then again, the differences between them are far greater. I don’t know, the lack of ‘regular’ orcs leaves a huge gap in the line up imo.

I was thinking to myself, if you had a clean slate with regards to the orcs, what would you have done? My answer is three factions; the ironjawz (leaders, super orcs, smallish army of elite armoured infantry and cavalry), the bonesplittas (horde infantry army, because not even boars are safe from their bone hunting), and the ‘lootas’ (need better name, horde cavalry army, all boar/bigger beast mounted. Lightly armoured, live to fight and steal everything not nailed down). But this is all ‘coulda woulda shoulda’ and so utterly useless in reality.

A better and more realistic idea might be to make boar mounted versions of ardboyz (‘orcy knights’) and have some sort of ardboy boss and call the ardboyz the regular orcs.

**Niiai**

Cities of Sigmar did a lot for finding homes for many of the lost armies. It is a very well done consept.

There are some armies stil missing, or could use better support. Bretonians are no where to be seen. (They would have to be rewamped into a horse rider knight army.) Vampiers could need more support. (Mind you the Ghoul Kings are vampiers, are they not?)

Tomb Kings while teqnically in the game do need a remake. Do something to them that makes them distinct enough that GW can trademark them. Some of the kits are really good, especially everything from that last generation of models. I would love to see sphinxes on the battlefield again. It would be funn if they where a Death faction that was somehow independent from Nagash. (That might make them order? Perhaps they could be order and death, that could be funn.)

As stated destruction and death both feel light. I do think that is OK. Chaos and order are much easier to make army consepts for. It is hard to come up with destruction and undead consepts. The bone reapers where a good idea! (Well done GW.) Beastmen would have been destruction if they are not tied to chaos in the lore. Having an own giant army is cool. (Perhaps we get giants with skycannons like the ogors have?)

**Da Boss**

Controversial opinion, I think we do not need lots of new factions in the game. There are loads already. Flesh out and balance the factions that are currently in play, would be my preference.

**Overread**

Da Boss wrote:
Controversial opinion, I think we do not need lots of new factions in the game. There are loads already. Flesh out and balance the factions that are currently in play, would be my preference.

I don't think that's controversial in the least. At least not for fans.

**NinthMusketeer**

Future War Cultist wrote:
Sometimes I wonder if it was a mistake to merge the ironjawz and bone splittas. Although they’re both orcs, they are quite different. You don’t see fyrsslayers and overlords sharing a book...although then again, the differences between them are far greater. I don’t know, the lack of ‘regular’ orcs leaves a huge gap in the line up imo.

I was thinking to myself, if you had a clean slate with regards to the orcs, what would you have done? My answer is three factions; the ironjawz (leaders, super orcs, smallish army of elite armoured infantry and cavalry), the bonesplittas (horde infantry army, because not even boars are safe from their bone hunting), and the ‘lootas’ (need better name, horde cavalry army, all boar/bigger beast mounted. Lightly armoured, live to fight and steal everything not nailed down). But this is all ‘coulda woulda shoulda’ and so utterly useless in reality.

A better and more realistic idea might be to make boar mounted versions of ardboyz (‘orcy knights’) and have some sort of ardboy boss and call the ardboyz the regular orcs.

They aren't merged; Bonesplittaz and Ironjawz have their own allegiances. What's merged is Great Waaagh! Which goes off the ORRUK keyword and is a mixed allegiance for all of them, Greenskinz models included. Where they to release a new faction of Orruks they could also be taken in it.

I think that idea is one that could be replicated with other factions to create new army options without sweeping new releases. An allegiance based on Duardin keyword could be very interesting with some grudge-based mechanics, for example.

**epronovost**

I would personnaly see one last death army: a purely soulblight vampire force with Neferata as their flagship leader largely inspired and functionning like the Bretonnians so various types of vampiric knights for nice little elite army with a dark arthurian medieval feel (the Blood Grail?).

I would add an "industrial" goblin/redcap destruction faction; the Scuttlers would fit nicely the theme.

A giant themed Destruction Army would also round things up nicely for the forces of Destruction and could fit the same niche as the Imperial Knights in 40K.

I would add the shadow elves to the upcomming light elves and tighten up the Cities of Sigmar to have a proper multicultural vibe and stop looking for a depo of old, but still good miniatures.

The rest is just a question of expanding current forces and get rid of the old remains of Fantasy. There is no need for each of these models to be fully integrated with the existence of Legend.

**Crispy78**

I love the idea of the industrial goblins but that may be sailing a bit close to World Of Warcraft

**DeathKorp_Rider**

I’d like a revamp of Skaven, the sculpts are so old

**Thadin**

While I agree that most of the heroes and special units for Skaven are in need of a new plastic kit instead of metal or resin, it's not really a NEW faction

**vipoid**

epronovost wrote:
I would personnaly see one last death army: a purely soulblight vampire force with Neferata as their flagship leader largely inspired and functionning like the Bretonnians so various types of vampiric knights for nice little elite army with a dark arthurian medieval feel (the Blood Grail?).

To be honest, I'd like to see more factions that don't have any special characters at all.

**epronovost**

vipoid wrote:
epronovost wrote:
I would personnaly see one last death army: a purely soulblight vampire force with Neferata as their flagship leader largely inspired and functionning like the Bretonnians so various types of vampiric knights for nice little elite army with a dark arthurian medieval feel (the Blood Grail?).

To be honest, I'd like to see more factions that don't have any special characters at all.

Is there any beside Cities of Sigmar (which are at the moment just a depo for old minis that have yet to be replaced not a proper army)? What makes you say special character are bad for an army?

**vipoid**

epronovost wrote:
vipoid wrote:
epronovost wrote:
I would personnaly see one last death army: a purely soulblight vampire force with Neferata as their flagship leader largely inspired and functionning like the Bretonnians so various types of vampiric knights for nice little elite army with a dark arthurian medieval feel (the Blood Grail?).

To be honest, I'd like to see more factions that don't have any special characters at all.

Is there any beside Cities of Sigmar (which are at the moment just a depo for old minis that have yet to be replaced not a proper army)? What makes you say special character are bad for an army?

Off the top of my head, Flesh Eater Courts don't have any special characters. I don't think Beasts of Chaos have any either.

In terms of why I don't like them, there are a few reasons:

1) I find many of them to be completely overdone. In WHFB, the vast majority of special characters were just regular models. Now they have to invent a contrived reason for virtually every single character to be on a massive base, usually riding some over-elaborate mount. In fact, they've come to embody two of the trends I really despise in AoS:
- Massive scale-creep.
- Bigger is better (whereas previously a Vampire Lord on a 20mm could be one of the most powerful models in the game, now a lot of abilities might as well read 'models with bases less than 50mm need not apply'.)

2) I just don't like special characters at the best of times. I want to make up my own characters, not use GW's ones. You might say 'well don't use them then', and that would be fine were it not for:

3) More importantly, a lot of them seem to have become black holes that hoover up all the good rules. As above, it used to be that special characters were just that - characters. Let me give you an example: Vlad and Mannfred were mostly just Vampire Lords built a certain way. They excelled at a couple of things (Vlad could resurrect 1/game and Mannfred had some bonus casting abilities), but other than that they really weren't all that amazing. They were fun to field in a themed-list but they didn't just outclass the regular Vampire Lords (especially since they could be tailored with gear and Vampire Powers).

But now the special characters are just outright better. It used to be that Vampire Lords could be up to Lv4 wizards, and not even Mannfred (the most casting-focussed special character) could exceed this. But now all but one special character can cast 2+ spells per turn, whilst the regular Vampire Lords are stuck at 1 with no option to upgrade that. A more minor point but Arkhan isn't even a vampire and yet he's still better at drinking blood than the actual Vampire Lords.

What I'm getting at is that in the past special characters didn't outshine generic characters of the same type, outside of maybe one specific area (and even then usually not by much). But now it seems like abilities are actually stripped away from generic characters and given to special characters to make them feel extra-super-special.

I'm sure a lot of people like that sort of thing, along with the endless scale-creep, but for me it just puts me off the game entirely.

**auticus**

Da Boss wrote:
Controversial opinion, I think we do not need lots of new factions in the game. There are loads already. Flesh out and balance the factions that are currently in play, would be my preference.

If they ever balance out the factions so that there are no more meh books compared to competitive books and players aren't punished for liking a faction that has no way of really playing against the competitive books short of asking their opponent to take it easy, I'll definitely return.

**epronovost**

vipoid wrote:

Off the top of my head, Flesh Eater Courts don't have any special characters. I don't think Beasts of Chaos have any either.

I checked an it seems that you are correct, these two armies have no special character and neither do the Fyreslayers (though I would personnaly count Gotrek as one of theirs)

In terms of why I don't like them, there are a few reasons:

1) I find many of them to be completely overdone. In WHFB, the vast majority of special characters were just regular models. Now they have to invent a contrived reason for virtually every single character to be on a massive base, usually riding some over-elaborate mount. In fact, they've come to embody two of the trends I really despise in AoS:
- Massive scale-creep.
- Bigger is better (whereas previously a Vampire Lord on a 20mm could be one of the most powerful models in the game, now a lot of abilities might as well read 'models with bases less than 50mm need not apply'.)

I fairly certain many share this opinion though I will have to disagee. I always "disliked" the idea of special character as "just like regular army leader, but with "a fancier sword and helmet". If they are supposed to be exceptionnaly important and powerful you might as well make them look important and powerful so that even an idiot could understand what they are. Of course, this is mostly true for what I would call "faction leader" the "face" of a faction in the cosmic struggle that is supposed to be Age of Sigmar while other special character with a much more classic and subdued appearence might represent a slightly improved or different version of a normal heroic unit. I like the idea of each faction having some sort of "faction leader" that is relevent at the level of gods, demigods and cosmic monsters.

2) I just don't like special characters at the best of times. I want to make up my own characters, not use GW's ones. You might say 'well don't use them then', and that would be fine were it not for:

I agree with you on that. I never used special character in 40K or Fantasy (the fact that I played Beastmen also makes difficult since our special character models were antique and really bad looking; we need new beaslord models) though I enjoyed the presence of good special character if only to help make my own fluff and define a faction.

3) More importantly, a lot of them seem to have become black holes that hoover up all the good rules. As above, it used to be that special characters were just that - characters. Let me give you an example: Vlad and Mannfred were mostly just Vampire Lords built a certain way. They excelled at a couple of things (Vlad could resurrect 1/game and Mannfred had some bonus casting abilities), but other than that they really weren't all that amazing. They were fun to field in a themed-list but they didn't just outclass the regular Vampire Lords (especially since they could be tailored with gear and Vampire Powers).

But now the special characters are just outright better. It used to be that Vampire Lords could be up to Lv4 wizards, and not even Mannfred (the most casting-focussed special character) could exceed this. But now all but one special character can cast 2+ spells per turn, whilst the regular Vampire Lords are stuck at 1 with no option to upgrade that. A more minor point but Arkhan isn't even a vampire and yet he's still better at drinking blood than the actual Vampire Lords.

What I'm getting at is that in the past special characters didn't outshine generic characters of the same type, outside of maybe one specific area (and even then usually not by much). But now it seems like abilities are actually stripped away from generic characters and given to special characters to make them feel extra-super-special.

That I think is the result of expanding the Fantasy universe from a "world size conflict" to Age of Sigmar where the size of the conflict is cosmic between planet's worth of people and countries. The leaders and special heroes of such gigantic theatre of operation are closer to gods than anything else so it should show in their abilities. We went from Tolkien/Weiss style of heroes to Homeric ones. Just take Neferata, she used to be an ancient thing in the world of Fantasy, but since she's still alive in the Age of Sigmar, she is immeasurably older now than she was. She used to be a few thousand years old (and this was a lot), now she is virtually millions of years old. That's a lot of time to acquire an extra-fancy hat.

I'm sure a lot of people like that sort of thing, along with the endless scale-creep, but for me it just puts me off the game entirely.

To a certain point, yeah, I'm that sort of people, but like everything "scale-creep" and hornate base is better use with care and moderation. Placing every idiot of a random piece of cobblestone is very stupid too.

**Niiai**

So, for the case of brainstorming, what are potensial new order and death armies?

So far people have mentioned:

Tomb Kings (anti nagash, egyptian or construct subtheme)

Steampunk Goblins, The Giant monster army (witch we know will be comming, but people will restate it)

What else could there be?

Frankenstein monsters
Zombies
Were wolves
Mummies (never mind, TK)
Troll Sub Faction
Fimir (one eyed orks with club tails from hero quest)
Creature from the black lagoon (or shark mutants?)
Elemental monsters (flame elementals sound very destrctive)
Haunted animated dead forests
Dragon themed army.

**Mr Morden**

Don't forget Skaven and Goblin flyer based armies (both in the lore)
Vampire led mortals

**Thadin**

I'd be interested to see a new flavor of Chaos Army with all sorts of nasty deep-sea monster mutants, unabashedly inspired by lovecraft. From what I can tell, thats one of the few major archetypes that GW hasn't done for fantasy. Only question being which God it would fall under.

**epronovost**

Thadin wrote:
I'd be interested to see a new flavor of Chaos Army with all sorts of nasty deep-sea monster mutants, unabashedly inspired by lovecraft. From what I can tell, thats one of the few major archetypes that GW hasn't done for fantasy. Only question being which God it would fall under.

Wouldn't such a concept step a little bit on the toes of the Idoneth Deepkin (though not necessarily all that much)?

I also see a problem with a Lovecraft inspired army in a Fantasy setting. Lovecraft works is only a thing in a universe like ours where the importance of humanity and life itself is basically null in the grand scheme of things. Lovecraft "gods" were a reflection on existential dread; the idea that being so tiny in a cosmos so huge and uncarring was the most terror gripping thing imaginable; the absolute and unavoidable realisation that all you are, love, hope, dream or could possibly do or imagine is competely and utterly pointless and useless. A Fantasy universe in which the cosmos itself revolves around human (and other mortals) conflict, hopes, dreams, loves and hatred completely undermines any Lovecraftian horrors. The monsters might be cool looking, but the Lovecraft sense of dread and horror cannot be achieved in my opinion in the Age of Sigmar universe.

**NinthMusketeer**

Extremely well said sir.

**Cronch**

That, and Lovecraftian horror doesn't translate well into model form. There is nothing, absolutely nothing scary about a squid with wings and humanoid body in 28mm scale. Or the mi-go.

**Niiai**

Comsic horror in 40K is sorta splitted 3 ways.

Chaos gods that will innevedebly kill all, alongside magic tomes, cursed items and cultist.

Ctan who are star monsters we do nor understand.

Tyranids who will innevedebly kill all, do not care about humans and who we do not understand. Also tentacles. Theit cultists are just crazy and are most certanly doomed.

Out of these only Chaos exists in AoS. But Ibdp not get the cosmic horror wibe of them. They are more swords and sandal fantasy, with barberians and evil knights. Beasts of chaos might be a bit more, with evil tribes in the woods.