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Chaos is still going to be Chaos. The key is that when a Slaanesh deamonette appears in the mortal world it has a degree of power through pheromones and chaos magic to basically cast a glamour over itself.

Until that is shed you might see your lover, a beauty beyond compare. Whatever your desire is that's what the deamonette would show you. You'd see yourself kissing a beautiful blond with long legs and sensual hips, her arms wrapped around you. In reality your lips are pressed to lipless sharktoothed faces; the claws are raking down your back and the deamonettes tail is flicking whilst its clawed leg runs up and down yours.

It's not until the spell is lost that you can see the truth and those who fall to Slaanesh will either never see the glamour lifted or if they do they will no longer care.



That's part of the perversion and the twisted nature of Slaanesh and Chaos. Much like how Nurgle followers delight in the fact that their arm is torn open and weeping puss and is crawling with maggots. They don't feel the pain and any which they do is freely given to the joy of birthing those maggots. Again their minds are twisted in subtle ways toward the warped reality of Chaos.



I've long hoped that one day GW might have osmeone design half-way deamonettes as models. Creatures that are half glamour half demon showing the spell being lifted right at the moment of battle. Beautiful male and female bodies dancing like elves, transforming with a wriggling mist of detail around part of the body to then reveal the horror of the hermaphrodite deamon they really are

 Vermonter wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
Tantilise and lure....

That's the funny thing about Slaanesh; the chaos god of desire never seems to understand that just putting boobs on demons with cow's heads, seahorse bodies, and or crab claws won't make them tantalizing or alluring.

I wish I could've been a fly on the wall when they were coming up with this stuff. Who said "I think bare breasts are soooo sensual, especially on crabs and seahorses," and who said, "That's brilliant! Let's go with that!"

That's the 80s for you. Also, drugs.

Seriously though, it's not like it's a terribly wrong idea. The intent back then was that the daemons were supposed to have the necessary physical features to allure and combine them with features that should not conventionally be considered attractive (unless you're a... connoisseur...) to inspire loathing for finding something that looks like a Slaaneshi daemon appealing, but falling for it anyway. The aim is to tempt the mortal looking at the daemon into finding enough allure in what they see to open their mind to the possibilities shedding common morality and conventions can provide. That's Slaanesh's kind of perversion. Working with conventional beauty is pointless when the aim is to overcome socially imposed inhibitions.

Not that GW allows for the "necessary physical features" part these days, really. They're relying more on the sanitized depiction of Slaanesh as overt uglies that use magic to help the allure along, as Overread points out.

 Overread wrote:
I've long hoped that one day GW might have osmeone design half-way deamonettes as models. Creatures that are half glamour half demon showing the spell being lifted right at the moment of battle. Beautiful male and female bodies dancing like elves, transforming with a wriggling mist of detail around part of the body to then reveal the horror of the hermaphrodite deamon they really are

I'm not saying you're wrong to like that idea, but I can't help but imagine skinny Daemonettes on huge, 50mm bases to make room for all the swirly crap you're suggesting.

Also, no to male bodies. Per the fluff Daemonettes are recognizably female in appearance. GW has screwed up enough by covering up the wrong breast on the current models (and doubling down on it on the recently released mortals...). Let's not make it worse.

So, who thinks the aestethics of TOO will be swirling hair and tentacles everywhere? Or will it be more realistic and mundane?

 triplegrim wrote:
So, who thinks the aestethics of TOO will be swirling hair and tentacles everywhere? Or will it be more realistic and mundane?

Bit of both - as it should be and would have been if they could have in the past.

 triplegrim wrote:
So, who thinks the aestethics of TOO will be swirling hair and tentacles everywhere? Or will it be more realistic and mundane?

Judging by the Ice Guard with Bear Claws riding Bears for the Ice Queen flanderisation, it's going to be the former.

 Geifer wrote:

 Overread wrote:
I've long hoped that one day GW might have osmeone design half-way deamonettes as models. Creatures that are half glamour half demon showing the spell being lifted right at the moment of battle. Beautiful male and female bodies dancing like elves, transforming with a wriggling mist of detail around part of the body to then reveal the horror of the hermaphrodite deamon they really are

I'm not saying you're wrong to like that idea, but I can't help but imagine skinny Daemonettes on huge, 50mm bases to make room for all the swirly crap you're suggesting.

Naw you could easily do it on a simple model as they are now. You just need the swirls and stuff to be mostly a surface texture. So basically take a human and a deamonette model - mash the two together and wherever human and demon parts meet just swirl and blur the detail to create a "melting/changing" textured region. Keeps the model to the same size as they are now, but gives a sense of the visual transformation as the glamour is lost and the real demon is revealed.

 Overread wrote:

 Geifer wrote:

 Overread wrote:
I've long hoped that one day GW might have osmeone design half-way deamonettes as models. Creatures that are half glamour half demon showing the spell being lifted right at the moment of battle. Beautiful male and female bodies dancing like elves, transforming with a wriggling mist of detail around part of the body to then reveal the horror of the hermaphrodite deamon they really are

I'm not saying you're wrong to like that idea, but I can't help but imagine skinny Daemonettes on huge, 50mm bases to make room for all the swirly crap you're suggesting.

Naw you could easily do it on a simple model as they are now. You just need the swirls and stuff to be mostly a surface texture. So basically take a human and a deamonette model - mash the two together and wherever human and demon parts meet just swirl and blur the detail to create a "melting/changing" textured region. Keeps the model to the same size as they are now, but gives a sense of the visual transformation as the glamour is lost and the real demon is revealed.

What can I say? I agree with you that it can be done. I just don't expect it from GW. Subtlety isn't exactly their strong suit.

Frankly it's not even general subtlety. GW's designers heavily trend towards crisp, clear delineation, which is great for a lot of reasons, but seriously gets in the way of blending different aesthetics into each other. It's why I've been constantly disappointed by fleshy/armored Chaos models. Warriors of Chaos Forsaken, Possessed Marines, Daemon Engines, GW has consistently failed to blend organic and inorganic bits well for decades.

 Arbitrator wrote:

 triplegrim wrote:
So, who thinks the aestethics of TOO will be swirling hair and tentacles everywhere? Or will it be more realistic and mundane?

Judging by the Ice Guard with Bear Claws riding Bears for the Ice Queen flanderisation, it's going to be the former.

That isn't flanderization when bears and ice magic were something that was already a big part of their theming.

"big" part, there was a hero riding a normal sized bear and Ice Magic being the northern version of one of the winds

but going by this we will see the new Empire models wearing hoods, using Scythe and riding big ghostly horses because Amethyst has always been a theme for the Empire

expecting something to be realistic and mundane instead of over the top is naive at best

Huh, time really is a flat circle.

 kodos wrote:
"big" part, there was a hero riding a normal sized bear and Ice Magic being the northern version of one of the winds

Ice Magic was its own thing - tied to Kislev itself since its lore began, the Ice Witches were in lore a powerful, organised force - politically, magically and generally since the days their ancestor Queen rode in and took over. The idea of powerful spirits of the land were formulated long ago including giant manifestations not unlike the new bear/elemental.

Now I would agree that the bear side of things has got a bit out of hand......and I am not sure we needed a Rasputin style figure as it does not really fit.

You always need a Rasputin, how else will you get Kislevs greatest love machine?

 kodos wrote:
"big" part, there was a hero riding a normal sized bear and Ice Magic being the northern version of one of the winds

but going by this we will see the new Empire models wearing hoods, using Scythe and riding big ghostly horses because Amethyst has always been a theme for the Empire

expecting something to be realistic and mundane instead of over the top is naive at best

No, there was far more than that. Kislev had just as much of an Ice magic and bear theming as here. The Ice queen, Frozen Court, Ice Palace, Ice Witches, the spirit of the land of Kislev being a bear with their religion involving bears and a God of Bears who took the form of a bear, with that bear religion and Kislev culture being heavily linked and their society having an overall heavy emphasis on bears. Been that way since at least second edition of the RPG back in 2004.

And yet a lot of that was more in the lore than on the tabletop. In a sense we always have this disconnect in wargames.

Heck I never read BL books when I first got into Warhammer; it was over a decade before I even bothered to read any. So how I perceived the setting was based purely on tabletop and the few battletomes that I'd read.


This is the same for many; they build a visual image of the setting based on the models GW sells and a few bits of lore in core books. They don't dip into the vast published history of books or previous battletomes or rulebooks etc... for bits of expanded lore

 Mentlegen324 wrote:
Been that way since at least second edition of the RPG back in 2004.

so non-canon source that is OOP
well guess I should dig out the old short stories from the 90ies to tell how Chaos actually work as it is neither good nor evil and always has been that way
(and there is a lot from the RPG and BL books that is already "wrong" because the game went in a different direction with 8th)

 Mentlegen324 wrote:

No, there was far more than that. Kislev had just as much of an Ice magic and bear theming as here. The Ice queen, Frozen Court, Ice Palace, Ice Witches, the spirit of the land of Kislev being a bear with their religion involving bears and a God of Bears who took the form of a bear, with that bear religion and Kislev culture being heavily linked and their society having an overall heavy emphasis on bears. Been that way since at least second edition of the RPG back in 2004.

Woah there, God of Bears? Where do I sign?

I think the point people are making about Flanderisation is that in the TWW3 roster reveal for Kislev, suddenly everything was "Bears! Bears! Bears!".

Outside of the Winged Lancers (that's what they're called, right?), everything was mounted on a bear. Every character can get a bear mount (and nothing else). There are two types of bear cavalry. Their canons are pulled by bears. Their two chariot types are pulled by bears. They can summon a super-duper ice bear.

All bears. All the time!

 kodos wrote:

 Mentlegen324 wrote:
Been that way since at least second edition of the RPG back in 2004.

so non-canon source that is OOP
well guess I should dig out the old short stories from the 90ies to tell how Chaos actually work as it is neither good nor evil and always has been that way
(and there is a lot from the RPG and BL books that is already "wrong" because the game went in a different direction with 8th)

Well going by an 8th armybook they were still able to get bears as a cavalry type.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I think the point people are making about Flanderisation is that in the TWW3 roster reveal for Kislev, suddenly everything was "Bears! Bears! Bears!".

Outside of the Winged Lancers (that's what they're called, right?), everything was mounted on a bear. Every character can get a bear mount (and nothing else). There are two types of bear cavalry. Their canons are pulled by bears. Their two chariot types are pulled by bears. They can summon a super-duper ice bear.

All bears. All the time!

Well, no, every character can be mounted on a bear, but they can take a war horse instead. The two tiers of chariots/sleds are pulled by bears, as are the precious few relic artillery pieces, and the elemental bear is definitely a centrepiece. But there are light horsemen dervishes, light horse archers, the winged lancers, and then the heavier Gryphon Legion, in addition to the bear cavalry.

It might be hard to optimize a force without relying on bears, considering they're presumably the top tier upgrade for leaders, but it's certainly possible to build an army without them. It's not as bad as people are remembering, though I do accept that it's a bit disappointing that it can be boiled down to "Is it optimal or is it not an ice magic/bear/magic ice bear unit?"

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I think the point people are making about Flanderisation is that in the TWW3 roster reveal for Kislev, suddenly everything was "Bears! Bears! Bears!".

Outside of the Winged Lancers (that's what they're called, right?), everything was mounted on a bear. Every character can get a bear mount (and nothing else). There are two types of bear cavalry. Their canons are pulled by bears. Their two chariot types are pulled by bears. They can summon a super-duper ice bear.

All bears. All the time!

Yup. I loved the boyar on a bear model back in the day but I winced when I saw it was seemingly the focus/schtick of the entire faction seemingly.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I think the point people are making about Flanderisation is that in the TWW3 roster reveal for Kislev, suddenly everything was "Bears! Bears! Bears!".

Outside of the Winged Lancers (that's what they're called, right?), everything was mounted on a bear. Every character can get a bear mount (and nothing else). There are two types of bear cavalry. Their canons are pulled by bears. Their two chariot types are pulled by bears. They can summon a super-duper ice bear.

All bears. All the time!

Yeah but do bears have this

I think they arrived on horses though. Not bears.

 kodos wrote:

 Mentlegen324 wrote:
Been that way since at least second edition of the RPG back in 2004.

so non-canon source that is OOP
well guess I should dig out the old short stories from the 90ies to tell how Chaos actually work as it is neither good nor evil and always has been that way
(and there is a lot from the RPG and BL books that is already "wrong" because the game went in a different direction with 8th)

That isn't how canon works with Warhammer. Old lore doesn't just suddenly become non-canon because its old or OOP, it does so when it gets contradicted or replaced by something and even then, maybe not. Something like Gaunts Ghosts or the early Gotrek and Felix novels aren't now non-canon because they were made 20 years ago in different editions of their settings and things have changed since - aspects in them might be incorrect now, but overall, they're still just as much still part of the settings. Neither is this being lore from the RPGs something that makes it non-canon, as those were still official products. Just where was that Kislev lore retconned to make what was shown in the RPG non-canon? Or where did Kislev lore go back to being a faction that didn't have all this heavy emphasis on Ice magic and bears so that this version is now a flanderization of that?

The point is that the direction TOW and TW:W3 have taken Kislev isn't something that's a sudden change, as this sort of thing is how they were portrayed in their lore since 2004. It's not flanderization to have Kislev depicted as Kislev.

Yep There is alot of originl and old lore that has come back into Total War and 4th ed WFRP - all of which content have to be approved by GW and with whom they are offically working with on the Old World Project.

I am hoping we get more of this lore back again......blended with the new.

 Mentlegen324 wrote:

 kodos wrote:
"big" part, there was a hero riding a normal sized bear and Ice Magic being the northern version of one of the winds

but going by this we will see the new Empire models wearing hoods, using Scythe and riding big ghostly horses because Amethyst has always been a theme for the Empire

expecting something to be realistic and mundane instead of over the top is naive at best

No, there was far more than that. Kislev had just as much of an Ice magic and bear theming as here. The Ice queen, Frozen Court, Ice Palace, Ice Witches, the spirit of the land of Kislev being a bear with their religion involving bears and a God of Bears who took the form of a bear, with that bear religion and Kislev culture being heavily linked and their society having an overall heavy emphasis on bears. Been that way since at least second edition of the RPG back in 2004.

Independently of kodos, I was thinking how this would be akin to how the Empire relaunch would see Runefangs redesigned as hammers, with Greatswords, Flagellants, and Witch Hunters now also wielding large hammers instead of swords, and the Steam Tank's impact hits were now caused by a large pneumatic hammer. Plus the Helstorm Rocket Battery's rockets were flying exploding hammers or something.
Hammers have always been iconic within the Empire setting, but most of the time only as icons, a design motif, rather than being practically used. This gave a unifying theme (in addition to their broad early Renaissance Holy Roman Empire style), while making the actual hammer-wielders like Karl Franz and the Warrior Priests feel special. This is almost exactly how I feel about past Kislev versus new Kislev. Even with the above, the vast majority of the Empire's units would be as hammerless as they are now, but that doesn't take away the fact that the formerly mild hammer-theme would have been significantly expanded to the point of overuse.

Hmm yeah this is very much what happened with the first Stormcast waves, but seeing that GW are gradually moving away from 'hammers only' here this might leave some hope for non-bear-themed Kislev units (totally into them getting *some* bear cavalry units, ofc).
Funnily now it's Mantic who are going hammers all the way with their non-Stormcast Orc faction, so I'm sure there will be also enough options for any kind of flanderized Kislev-style minis on the market once TOW arrives ^^

 Coenus Scaldingus wrote:

 Mentlegen324 wrote:

 kodos wrote:
"big" part, there was a hero riding a normal sized bear and Ice Magic being the northern version of one of the winds

but going by this we will see the new Empire models wearing hoods, using Scythe and riding big ghostly horses because Amethyst has always been a theme for the Empire

expecting something to be realistic and mundane instead of over the top is naive at best

No, there was far more than that. Kislev had just as much of an Ice magic and bear theming as here. The Ice queen, Frozen Court, Ice Palace, Ice Witches, the spirit of the land of Kislev being a bear with their religion involving bears and a God of Bears who took the form of a bear, with that bear religion and Kislev culture being heavily linked and their society having an overall heavy emphasis on bears. Been that way since at least second edition of the RPG back in 2004.

Independently of kodos, I was thinking how this would be akin to how the Empire relaunch would see Runefangs redesigned as hammers, with Greatswords, Flagellants, and Witch Hunters now also wielding large hammers instead of swords, and the Steam Tank's impact hits were now caused by a large pneumatic hammer. Plus the Helstorm Rocket Battery's rockets were flying exploding hammers or something.
Hammers have always been iconic within the Empire setting, but most of the time only as icons, a design motif, rather than being practically used. This gave a unifying theme (in addition to their broad early Renaissance Holy Roman Empire style), while making the actual hammer-wielders like Karl Franz and the Warrior Priests feel special. This is almost exactly how I feel about past Kislev versus new Kislev. Even with the above, the vast majority of the Empire's units would be as hammerless as they are now, but that doesn't take away the fact that the formerly mild hammer-theme would have been significantly expanded to the point of overuse.

I don't think that's an apt comparison at all. The Empire doesn't have hammers integrated as part of their overall culture and theming whereas Kislev does have bears and Ice Magic heavily ingrained into their daily lives and featured throughout their society, not just as the occasional design motif that pops up. Your Empire example would be flanderization of how the Empire is depicted in the setting at the moment, yes, but if the Empire's lore already had them with Hammer priests who follow a religion that worships hammers with a god of Hammers who takes the form of a holy hammer and Hammers were considered an important part of their lives and rituals and part of the Empire's overall culture and hammers were just seen as a sacred thing overall that they make use of lots but for some reason that was only in their lore and not their model range? That would be a different matter.

The flanderization complaints seem to come from people only having seen the limited Kislev model range and how there were only a few bears and such there - but that was not overly representative of what Kislev had in their lore. What we have now is Kislev being represented as being more in line with Lore KIslev rather than being some drastic change of "lets make them all about bears and Ice now" - that's how they already were meant to be.

Agreed

Also one of the main Empire Regiments that use the hammer are the White Wolves of Ulric

It also depends which bit of lore you look at. Eg in the Gotrek and Felix stories where we meet Ulrika and her family we see a Kislev that is very much horses and your basic boarder kingdom holding off with the might of men alone against the Chaos incursions.

It's that very basic, almost real depiction of an army and armed force. Bears and Ice magic do not appear.


Indeed its not until the Queens forces arrive at the siege that we see any real use of magical powers en-mass from the Ice side of things. Even then I don't have a great recollection of bears featuring. However it was very much a sign of Kislev having a greater power that just, at the time, wasn't roused to war.



It's likely many connect the lack of ice magic and bears en-mass because they are looking at Kislev as the outer holds. Those which are not powerful nor influential enough to have access to the greater powers. Furthermore those holds hold well on their own against your basic Chaos Lord leading marauders from the wastes; not whole armies organised into massive invasion forces which would rouse the armies of Kislev en-mass.


It's the same as if you were to look at the Empire through the Boarder Princes. You might see a hedge wizard or such, but otherwise you'd not see powerful mages nor steam tanks or such. You'd see a portion of the more basic forces. It's only when you see the Empire go to war at the large scale (which is very much what Total War shows); that you start to see Steam Tanks, College Mages, powerful Priests and more exotic weapons and such become commonplace.

 Gert wrote:
You always need a Rasputin, how else will you get Kislevs greatest love machine?

Exalted for the Boney M reference.