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Do you think they'll be publishing Our Friend Promethium, with brightly-coloured illustrations of Pyrus the Flame burning heretics to death any time soon?

 General Helstrom wrote:


Them's fightin' words.

But the constant, suffocating and overwhelming MarySueism of the accursed Space Wolves goes unchecked...

They are doing it wrong... it should start off in a Schola Progenium. Henry wants to be a Commissar. Hermie knows all the prayers against chaos, Ran has a mind for tactical simulations. Etc.

Then a dark menacing chaos dude threatens the Schola Progenium. This Chaos Lord killed Henry's parents and want to subvert Hogwarts... I mean... the Schola Progenium.

You could even call the first book Henry Prometheus and the Farseer's Stone.

 Grinshanks wrote:
The discussion surrounding this has really brought out the worst in some of the community. Genuinely unpleasant.

What happened?

Wait maybe don't tell me. Things are nice enough here no need to make my opinion of humanity even worse .

 ImAGeek wrote:
It isn’t changing 40k from a brutal, nihilistic fantasy opera in space. It’s offering a different view into the universe for younger readers. It’s not aimed at us and it’s not gonna affect us.

Yeah, that's what scares me: it's going to affect kids .
I mean sure they'll survive, but I'm not sure it's a good idea.
I mean, what's next? Children version of Oglaf lol ?

 ancientsociety wrote:
normie

STAP!!!
Not normies.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
That’s actually a very good example of just how much you can get away with with kid’s shows, if you’re cunning.

There, two imperial officers are clearly decapitated - but none of it is seen, and there’s no double clunk as the heads hit the floor.

Also, consider this scene from Clone Wars.




It’s pretty brutal, for a kids show. Spesh when the flamethrowers are called up. None of us can be blasted. None of us ever risk a lightsaber to the face. But being set on fire and burning to death?

the star wars animted shows have always been when you step back and think, pretty violent. I can't help but contrast clone wars to say GI Joe when I was a kid

Ahhh. The PC world has finally reached 40k eh? Whelp have fun with that clown show

Are you there, God Emperor? It's me, Margaret.

Where the Wild Psychers are.

James and the Giant Heresy.

A Hundred and One Daemons.

The Little Servitor that Could.

Curious George OR Why the Boy that Knew Too Much Received the Emperor's Mercy.

The Adventures of Exterminatus Finn

The Merry Adventures of Inquisitor Hood.

Lord Castellan wrote:
Do you think they'll be publishing Our Friend Promethium, with brightly-coloured illustrations of Pyrus the Flame burning heretics to death any time soon?

Something like this would have been great. Or the adventures of a newly annointed Commisar who happens to have attracted the attention of a slightly crazy Caryatid (something similar to the stories of commisar cain, which would have translated pretty well to a kid comic).

They seems to have gone for the bland, ultra pc route. What I find weird, is that it seems that nearly all the characters hate violence. Considering that 40k is an ultra violent setting, I wonder how good of an instroduction to the setting this will be (unless they go with a growing up angle, where the characters realise that violence is inevitable, but I doubt they will).

Makes as much sense as trying to introduce someone to sadomasochism by making him read some books exalting the virtue of chastity

Right now we're literally judging the books by their covers. It's quite possible the artwork doesn't really match the stories. I'd like to at least read a sample chapter or something.

When I was that age I got into HeroQuest, which was certainly a lighter, more heroic, kid-friendly derivative of (late 80s) Warhammer. But not by that much. I mean the cover still looked like this.

Also HQ wasn't branded as a Warhammer game and wasn't actually set in that universe, so that made things a lot less awkward. Not to mention we didn't have the internet yet and couldn't google "Fimir".

there's a site which describes the characters

So one of the sigmar guys grew up a slave, forced to fight to survive. One of the 40k characters ran away to escape enforced conscription as a 14 year old. The art describing the 40k universe has a skull centre frame.
I don't think they are shying away from the central themes of the games that much.

I don't know guys. If one of the three Age of Sigmar protagonists (You know, the "light" universe of the two)...



Was born in a fething slave camp as a slave... I believe they will keep some of the undertones of the universe. And, by the way, the main baddies of the W40K one will be necrons. You know, its okay to destroy robots and make them explode. They don't bleed.


EDIT: Ninja'd by chikout.

I notice a lot of the comments are specifically about the 40k book, not so much the AoS book. And, to be frank, I think that's pretty fair.

40k is just so much more dark and dense than AoS is (which with the current Malign Portents stuff going on, is pretty grim in and of itself), and the characters just dont..... seem to work for me. A Martian Boy/Techkid, a Ganger Kid Runaway who hasn't been put to work by the bigger and meaner gangers, and (I actually have problems with this one) a Child Explorer who accompanies her mother around the galaxy.

Those three would require astounding circumstances to be in the same place, at the same time, forced together by some Necron-y shenanigans, and then go through enough that they could survive to come out alive and 'friends' in a universe like this. I not saying it can't be done, but bloody hell I want to know what sort of gymnastics the writer is going to do.

Speaking of which, do we know anything relevant about the writers?

Fair enough. I apologize for my earlier remark, Brutus

This may be a couple pages too late, but no worries man. Everyone has strong opinions on things we love. Me especially.

The only thing I fear is that if this line is successful it could start infecting the main parts of the company. Like a slow disease tearing apart a universe I've loved for so long and reducing it to a babbling Disney Channel pile of garbage.

You all better hope this fails miserably. Because if this makes a bunch of money then this i they way they WILL go. Of that I have no doubt.

There is more diversity in that picture than on any human Codex to date.

Hey-O!!!!


Seriously, though... ... ...seriously???

 Galas wrote:
Was born in a fething slave camp as a slave

Star Wars Episode 1.

 Brutus_Apex wrote:

Fair enough. I apologize for my earlier remark, Brutus

This may be a couple pages too late, but no worries man. Everyone has strong opinions on things we love. Me especially.

No problem. I'm glad we were able to solve this without it getting crazy.

I'm laughing so hard at the idea.
I'm not opposed to 40k books for kids, but when I think of the universe at large I cannot but picture sleepless kids after the description of gauss weapons impacting on the IS (giant space sander anyone?) or sleepless parents after realizing what the Chaos marines really do now that little Timmy is hooked to 40k.

M.

I actually like the idea of this. When i think 40K for kids my mental peg is stuff like Robotech, which blew my 10 year old mind cause people were dying. Big difference from GI Joe, Mask, etc

What i think might be jarring is a kid really gets into these and falls in love with the setting . Then in a few years decides to try 'grown up 40k' and picks up something like Daemon World / Storm of Iron / Fulgrim haha. Big jump from people dying -> the nihilism of existence

Poor Darkoath Chieftain, once a hero that conquer the Silver Tower, now only a barbarian goon on par with a low rank SE soldier

Chikout wrote:
So one of the sigmar guys grew up a slave, forced to fight to survive. One of the 40k characters ran away to escape enforced conscription as a 14 year old. The art describing the 40k universe has a skull centre frame.
I don't think they are shying away from the central themes of the games that much.

Which is... kinda a different problem? Then again if these are more YA than actual kid's books I could see that working fine. Admittedly I was reading Stephen King and the Hannibal Lector novels in middle school so I'm not positive exactly sure if my idea of what is and isn't suitable for YA matches up with the rest of the world.

Still... those look like covers for children's books, not YA. And I really don't think the warhammer universe needs introduction to anyone who isn't at least a teen, even if they just barely qualify as such.

Chopstick wrote:
Poor Darkoath Chieftain, once a hero that conquer the Silver Tower, now only a barbarian goon on par with a low rank SE soldier

Whether this is good or bad, this is actually what I’m happy about - sort of.
It means the Darkoath are coming.
Proper, old-skool barbarian models shall soon* be mine!
LOVED painting the chieftain and the warqueen...

*for a given value of ‘soon’ ...

Dunno about you guys but I’m starting to get a feeling that the highly detailed posable gaming sculptures of magic super space warriors that I’ve played with since I was a child may in fact be..........toys!

Shurely shome mishtake, ‘prop...

More seriously, let’s be honest, most here are not necessarily target market, but who knows, they could be good. In terms of tone, as others have pointed out ‘kids stories’ can cover an awful lot - Warhorse is on the curriculum in schools, after all (or at least my kids one) and it’s not the only example (and to Mad Doc, to go back a bit I feel so sorry for you that you had an English teacher who made a tale of dark occultism, murder, violent usurpation and unhinged madness dull, but then is is a problem with Shakespeare in schools - I suppose I got lucky looking back, much as I didn’t have a big opinion of my teacher at the time).

It’s unlikely to affect the main lines, and it could even turn out to be an interesting ‘worms eye’ view on 40k, and flesh out some of the daily life and cosmology for AoS. Or it could fail, sink and be more or less forgotten.

Plus, I have fond memories of some of the cartoons people have mentioned in thread!

I'm a whole lot more excited about this than any of the GW releases in the last 3 or 4 years. Seriously.

I'm going to be going nuts with this stuff when my kids are old enough to read it (and I'm confident it'll be age appropriate).

I really hope they go further and introduce something to make it easier to play games based on the books - either rules or mini's packs or something. I'm expecting this will have lots of stories about adventurers being chased by goblins and the likes, more like The Hobbit, rather that Horus Heresy.

Edit: I'm loving all the outrage. It's as if the game didn't start of largely tailored to kids. I can say that and still enjoy the game, though I started playing with the mini's by about 10. Right in the middle of the book series' reading age.

Sounds like it would just be propaganda in-universe to me. Besides, it's not like there's much harm if it sucks. The 40k fluff has been a complete piss take for the better part of the last decade anyway.

i would not have touched these with a 10' pole at 8 years old.
eisenhorn though? yeah. i'd have been all in from the first book at 8.

About Kiri, raised in slaves camp.

GW released the same day as the WHA article this artwork (in the Khorne FF) :

https://whc-cdn.games-workshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/AoSFFKhorne-May21-Art1be.jpg

Looks like she had a niiice childhood.

John D Law wrote:
Ahhh. The PC world has finally reached 40k eh? Whelp have fun with that clown show

There is nothing PC here WTF are you even talking about?