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Lumineth book two has to be a few years off at least, but I’m already so excited. Chariot being pulled by cows? Swordsmen? Tyrion riding a giant bull? Anything could be coming, but I’m keen.

The only one of those with merit is the swordsmen bit...and that's the River Temple, seemingly.

The chariots are horse-drawn, per the fluff. Enough of the "LULZ COWS!!1!!" nonsense.

 Kanluwen wrote:
The only one of those with merit is the swordsmen bit...and that's the River Temple, seemingly.

The chariots are horse-drawn, per the fluff. Enough of the "LULZ COWS!!1!!" nonsense.

Eh, who knows. Fluff changes. By the time such a 2nd book arrives GW could just as easily decide that Lumineth chariots are now pulled by _____.

I got in to the army for the cows, I’d certainly love to see the theme continued. Ymetrica forever!

I get why people don't like the "cows" on the alarith helmets, but I don't see why people take such issue with it as representation of the mountain spirit. Aren't bulls often seen a symbols of strength, aggressiveness, and power? The little bit of subversion of the elf stereotype makes things a bit more interesting. Conversions to either use the helmet top as a mask or to just remove the top of the alarith helmets easily solves the issue. Could probably swap in warden helmets as an option as well.

For me, it's because the cow thing just feels crowbarred in - the spearmen infantry are LOVELY, and evoke a kind of classical greco-roman vibe. The mountain theme, and hoity-toity elves being really zen and having bonsai trees and living in the mountains also works quite nicely.

I'm not going to dismiss cow elves out of hand, either. GW COULD have gone for a kind of Hindu theme, and evoked classical Indian art and militaries - Kshatriya Elves, anyone? Equally, they could've scrapped the mountain thing, or at least sidelined it more, and leaned harder (the odd thing is, through all this design chaos, this is probably what they lean hardest into) into the minoan theme. God knows, it'd be refreshing for GW to try to dip it's toes into a fantasy setting that wasn't just European in it's conception of a pre-modern society.... but that's a rant for another thread.

A thing that really irks me about the "cows are big and powerful, just like a mountain" is that...

...cows almost never live in mountain environments. They're plains animals. I've lived in two really mountainous parts of the world, and cattle? Historically SUPER rare here.

Bulls are big and powerful, sure, but they aren't known so well for their grace. Particularly the western breeds of cow GW evoke with their sculpting are timid herd animals that live on grassland. Imagine a GW elf in a china shop. Then imagine a bull. GW could've worked to reconcile that, but instead they've got a confused design ethos between classic pointy elves, light, mountains, cows, psuedo minoan greco-roman classicism also bonsai trees somehow and also hammers.

It feels like there were too many ideas, and as with, imo, too much stuff with elves in AOS, slapped them together with too little nuance.
Introducing cows as a dominant theme was going to be straight up difficult to do, because of the Beastmen already existing. Doing mountains well was going to be difficult because of Dwarfs already existing. Doing elves that had a specific kind of animal motif was going to be hard to do because of fish elves.

People clown on the Lumineth because... GW didn't really hit any of those nails on the head hard enough, and I think it's perfectly reasonable that big parts of the community clown on them because at the end of the day, GW just made messy cow elves, and that's all they're going to be for a while.

(also that teclis model fething sucks! WTF were they thinking my god take two nice minis and just glue 'em together holy moly who doesn't hate that thing)

While overall I like the Lumineth, they are a very obvious case of GW's schizophrenic design philosophy when it comes to AOS. On the one hand GW wants to pander to nostalgia by slapping Teclis and Eltharion's names on random models, but then they seem almost embarrassingly desperate to try and differentiate their design away from Warhammer Fantasy as much as possible. And this isn't a bad thing necessarily but I do think the range and design of the faction as a whole has a lot of instances of trying to do something weird and out-there and it not particularly being executed as well as it could. All this so people can say "Oh AOS isn't derivative, it's incredibly unique..." meanwhile you have Fall-from-Grace Elves who are opposed to Slaanesh and the main posterboy faction of the setting looking like they're straight out of a Blizzard game.

Either/Or wrote:
I get why people don't like the "cows" on the alarith helmets, but I don't see why people take such issue with it as representation of the mountain spirit. Aren't bulls often seen a symbols of strength, aggressiveness, and power? The little bit of subversion of the elf stereotype makes things a bit more interesting. Conversions to either use the helmet top as a mask or to just remove the top of the alarith helmets easily solves the issue. Could probably swap in warden helmets as an option as well.

That's the route I went. I looked at the cow helmets & decided that it'd take longer & be more work to convert each helmet than it'd be worth vs just spending a few more $s & putting off building the unit for another few days.

I know the cow thing as a joke and all, but I thought the fluff was that it was a goat or ram of some sort?

Edit - Looked it up: "sculpted in the likeness of the sacred Ymetrican Longhorn, that rugged alpine beast that is said to be immortal and, therefore, embodies the mountain more than any other creature."

It could be a bull, cattle or some other bovine, just going off the Longhorn wording and appearance of the models themselves. Longhorn is a term I've only ever seen used for bovine, not goats or rams

Longhorn = bovine = cow warrior

Some people seem to say it like it's a bad thing that it's a cow mountain. I personally don't see it as a bad thing to call it a cow. Especially not when a giant cow mountain tears through the enemy with ease

 posermcbogus wrote:
...cows almost never live in mountain environments. They're plains animals. I've lived in two really mountainous parts of the world, and cattle? Historically SUPER rare here.

I mean... yaks are cows. It is true that the most popular mountain cattle animal is the goat, though.

 Albertorius wrote:

 posermcbogus wrote:
...cows almost never live in mountain environments. They're plains animals. I've lived in two really mountainous parts of the world, and cattle? Historically SUPER rare here.

I mean... yaks are cows. It is true that the most popular mountain cattle animal is the goat, though.

There are also Scottish highland cattle.
Personally, I work with a Swiss breed, Simmental, but they're more notable for resistance to weather (they cope well with any two of cold, windy or wet), than actually dealing with rough mountain terrain. Horns have largely been bred out of the breed, though, at least in the US. Same with any colors but black or dark red (with a few white patches).

Thadin wrote:It could be a bull, cattle or some other bovine, just going off the Longhorn wording and appearance of the models themselves. Longhorn is a term I've only ever seen used for bovine, not goats or rams

Yeah. Goat and ram horns rarely sweep wide like that (and those that do are usually from a different angle)

Regardless they're still ridiculous looking and impractical.

"Ya hear that 'Nor, we're supposed to be on the plains and our horns are impractical."

It may very well be the point that the symbolism seems obscure and strange to us---it is supposed to be aelf symbology after all.

Symbolism stops being symbolism, if you don't understand the symbols. And it is not like we are looking at an actual real life elf civilisation, but at something humans from UK decided to implement in to a table top game. If it is hard to relate to, then it is kind of a the designers fault.

There are also Scottish highland cattle.

Aren't they kept in the flat parts of the highlands and the valleys though? There is a no way a few hundreds Kg bull is walking and grazzing on 45 degree or stepper inclines. We have mountains too, and cows are only present in places that are flat, everywhere else there are only sheep and goats.

When you consider that goats can stand on the upright side of dam walls I think we are underestimating the capability and skill of an animal to survive in regions to which we are unfamiliar.

Sure highland cattle are not standing on dam walls, but they are capable of surviving in mountainous terrain. They don't have to climb over sheer flat rock walls, but they will survive in upland, rocky, mountainous terrain. Just because you're the beast of the mountain doesn't mean you have to climb to the top (that's just a daft thing humans do )

And as noted horns are often essential for this kind of species used to harsh winters where their horns are used to help push away snow to reach food underneath.

Karol wrote:
Symbolism stops being symbolism, if you don't understand the symbols. And it is not like we are looking at an actual real life elf civilisation, but at something humans from UK decided to implement in to a table top game. If it is hard to relate to, then it is kind of a the designers fault.

Yes, exactly. I am arguing the possibility that it being hard to relate to is the point and it was intentionally written that way. At the same time it is not completely alien--as our mountain dwelling bovine friends explained above!

It's not even really that hard to "relate" to, provided one actually reads the heckin' lore. Don't even need to read a novel for it--it's explained in the Lumineth army book fairly well.

Yeah but it's much much easier for people on internet forums to look at it and whine about it endlessly, rather than digging an inch in to lore and language. My favorite is when people try and claim that the new 40k Primaris models have meaningless names

 Thadin wrote:
Yeah but it's much much easier for people on internet forums to look at it and whine about it endlessly, rather than digging an inch in to lore and language. My favorite is when people try and claim that the new 40k Primaris models have meaningless names

Meaningless no, silly and pointlessly hard to remember yes.

We need itorators, led by Captain Latinius.

oops, another chamber opened.

Also horns are very practical for cattle, otherwise they'd not have it.duh.

Cronch wrote:
oops, another chamber opened.

Also horns are very practical for cattle, otherwise they'd not have it.duh.

You say that, but there's theory that steady increase of woodland terrain in Ireland was a major contributing factor in the final extinction of Irish Elk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_elk
Not the only factor and more recent theories also include increased human hunting (which is one of the going theories for why we lost a lot/most of the mega fauna during this interglacial period)


So the AoS cattle are fine until Alariel floods the mountains with forests!

And then we have to wait a few thousand years and they'll be all gone