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I have to say when I glanced at Warhammer (this is a good 20 odd years go) it did seem pretty low magic. Indeed we've had debates before on if Old World was low or high fantasy. The stories are 100% high, but the game often appeared quite low. I think because even fancy heroes were often "character on horse" type affairs.

AoS has gone wild with sculpts, but I don't think its an inherent problem with rank and file; its new technologies and the whole ethos of the designers too. Don't forget Witch Aelves are supposed to rank up and are anything but boring in terms of pose and style.

Even though I hate AOS lore with a flaming passion and always will....they have done some amazing jobs with the new sculpts. Imo the light of eltharion is one of the best miniatures they have ever done for example....and that is coming from someone who utterly loathes AOS. The new slaves to darkness box is just awesome, no question about it.

So yeah, they have some very good, creative designers working on AOS.

Even first edition had wizards on dragons slinging fireballs and goblins swinging flails weighing many times their own mass thanks to fungus brew and entire armies of undead as a normal affair. WHFB was always very high fantasy; it was the RPG that favored a more low fantasy approach.

I would agree that the Old World was High Fantasy. It also had gritty, historically inspired elements, but there was a huge portal at the north pole spewing infinite demons into the world, that's not Low Fantasy really.

AoS is definitely even higher up, but moreso it has dropped the historical influences (or they are much less important) and gone for a more cosmic feel to the game, and I think it is also a bit more...I dunno the word, maybe gonzo is what I'm looking for but that doesn't feel quite right for such a corporate product.

Kharadron Overlords just look too high tech for me. I never really liked the very high tech skaven stuff, to be honest. The Stormfiends really crossed the line for me with that. But then I also didn't much like the steam tank. But you are right, it has always been part of Warhammer. I love Dwarves is all, but not AoS versions. They are too far away from what I fell in love with reading the Hobbit.

Which is no big problem. GW still produce the LOTR game and I can get that style of Dwarf there. I think it's cool that people like the Overlords. I'm still really disappointed by the Fyreslayers though.

Ur-Gold is still pretty lazy naming to me, and Fyre itself is really cringey to me. Just call them Fireslayers and be done with it! I'm sure the details are good, but it's the design that I don't like, the giant hats and so on. I wish they'd gone even further with the elemental aspects on the models, because the halfway house is the worst of both worlds to me.

GW is fully of lazy names right now. I think its a symptom of a lore by committee of managers rather than an individual or small team of keen lore creators who have invested years into crafting a GRR Tolkien level of lore depth. Heck when you look at old lores like that many of the more fancy names are just as "lazy" within their own races. They just sound far more fancy because they are spoken in an alien language.


I think for me Old World always looked low fantasy on the tabletop. Plus things like the serpentine dragons never really grabbed me (I've also never ever liked GW's addiction to putting high backed armchairs on dragons). AoS I think isn't just more high fantasy, its also showing it off. You're not just a wizard with a robe and staff; you're a wizard balancing on a flat disk suspended on a tornado of magic throwing huge skeleton bridges across the map etc...

Thing is Old World was getting these things too - I'm convinced if GW hadn't blown up Old World they'd have had endless spells there too and many of the more fancy designs we get now. Heck they might even have got wild with rank and file; making rear and forward rank specific models; those in a dynamic for supporting and those in a charging/slashing pose.

Heck many of the new mounts we have now in AoS would rank up very easily and yet they look night and day superior to the old horses and standard infantry mounts of the Old World models

I dunno. I really like the blocks of infantry on the table, I think from a whole army perspective they look awesome. I think a lot of models nowadays are designed to look great as individual figures and especially to look great in close up photos on the internet. And no harm in that.

The lazy naming is endemic in all GW products. And like, as you say, the old names were not a LOT better, but they were just enough better that it didn't bother me as much. But that's also probably because I got into it as a kid. The kids I see getting into AoS now have no problem with the names.

Honestly I wish GW would adopt some of the rank and file concepts. They are still running aorund with their whole "1 banner, 1 musician" per 5 models madness. Which interestingly for Slaanesh cavalry who also have an icon, means that if you build them according to the best way possible (all icons, banners and musicians in each 5 unit block) there's actually more specialists than core cavalry in the unit.

Which to me looks daft on any unit. A few can look neat with another banner or so, but even in 30 man units it can look strange.

I wish they'd adopt the whole concept that banners/musical instruments can just be "picked up by another" in the unit and you only need 1 per unit block. I think its far more sensible and looks better.

Despite the weakness to sniping abilities I haven't been able to bring myself to give large units more than one set of command models.

 Eldarain wrote:
Despite the weakness to sniping abilities I haven't been able to bring myself to give large units more than one set of command models.

Same. Just feels weird after so many years with WHFB.

 Overread wrote:

I wish they'd adopt the whole concept that banners/musical instruments can just be "picked up by another" in the unit and you only need 1 per unit block. I think its far more sensible and looks better.

It's to ensure you can't goof it up when building the unit. Oops, little timmy built our 10 elves with 2 bannerboys..fear not, the rules account for it!
Especially since in reality there is zero need to take more than 1 command group per unit, since you pick which models die in the unit and obviously these will always go last. There's only a handful of units in the game that can target individual models that'd go round that.

Anyway, the thing about KO (and other magitech stuff) is that in AoS it feels more appropriate cause it reminds me of a lot of renditions of greek myths, where gods use fancy-looking mechanical gizmos where basic humans still have spears as height of fashion.

I will adamantly stand by the use of a y in Fyreslayers. It is a fantasy setting, you have to replace letters with y wherever possible. It would be absurd not to.

Ur-gold I am cool with because it is still gold. They could have called it divine-gold or essence-gold or something, but the point is to highlight that it is still gold with all the same physical properties (just different magical ones). Ur-gold is a simple very dwarven way of doing that. In my subjective eyes, of course.

I have felt that many of the changes from WHFB to AoS were needless, overblown or just... the language filter prevents me from continuing, I have just finished reading a few of the battletomes in succession and have to say that the IDK, FEC and Morathi books have been absolutely fantastic. FEC especially has just been so much awesome, its a shame that they didn't continue the lore over into the models but it has still been a really evocative read. The only AoS novel I have read was Soul Wars though I have a few more in the que so I hope that the trend continues.
I also read the Stormcast, Lumineth, Beasts of Chaos and KO tomes and was not overly impressed, not terrible but not that good.
Hoping for good things for the Teclis BR book though! Started collecting Vanari Lumineth and hope they get their lore expanded in interesting ways.

I think some factions do need more fleshing out. BL seems to have an issue in that all the big names are tangled up with 40K and AoS is getting some less experienced authors. In terms of both just being new authors, but also just new to the setting. The Coverns book for the Daughters of Khaine has a few quite big errors that appear here and there in the lore which shouldn't have slipped GW's generally pretty darn good lore checking net. They don't destroy the stories, but they do highlight that AoS is, immature as a setting and has a long way to go in that regard.


As for factions I think some factions have been lucky in that they've had writers for their books that both loved the faction, but that the faction also had something to do and had story behind it. Some others are more in the background and I think their books will grow with time. It's important to remember that many of the pages of lore we get in something like a Tyranid Codex today is only after 30 years of growth and in the early codex lore was a handful of pages and a few short snippets on unit pages and that was it. In fact its one of the great things to see the lore go from 5 pages to 100 odd pages over the years.

I think the heart of GW is in the right place now regarding AoS; it just needs skill and time to bolster the lore.

One BIG advantage its got is that GW and BL are clearly under no limited mandate. Unlike 40K which had for a long time a rule that all stories must be by/about Imperials (humans); AoS has no limits. Long and short stories feature almost any race in varying roles as enemies, heroes, anti heroes and all. With the right authority and control over accuracy of the lore on top I think there's room to make the setting really grab people.

I don't know how you expand the Vanari more than they are, if I'm going to be honest.

They are moving away of the banner/icon/musician design space. It was already done in some of the old entries (Namarti Thralls) and now they have completely done it in the Hedonites of Slaanesh mortal release. The Blissbarb Archers homunculus is 1 every 11 (an extra model instead of a swap and make sense to have many for more archers) Myrmidesh, Symbaresh, Blissbarb Seekers and Slickblade Seekers got no command group at all, just a Leader in the unit and that's it. The extra rules are often just a passive that the unit should have anyway, so i can see them keeping this tendency. Im not sure if Lumineth were design similarly.

Lumineth have bannermen but no musicians for cav and hammer boys, only unit champions for basic infantry.

They were more or less an automatic upgrade in WHFB too, except in niche cases. And they actually cost something then.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
They were more or less an automatic upgrade in WHFB too, except in niche cases. And they actually cost something then.

Which I have considered being weird that those are free as unit with them has advantage over the ones that don't have. And then you can have multiple musicians and standards in same unit which I also think is weird.

Sotahullu wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
They were more or less an automatic upgrade in WHFB too, except in niche cases. And they actually cost something then.

Which I have considered being weird that those are free as unit with them has advantage over the ones that don't have. And then you can have multiple musicians and standards in same unit which I also think is weird.

In the original rules that came out for AoS and some of the early tomes before they got changed, you could be both a musician and a banner holder at once and still use your main weapon as normal. In fact I believe in one version of the officially printed rules there were NO limits on how many you could take. In theory this meant your entire unit could be banner, icon and musician units as well as regular troops all at once with no penalty nor cost or anything.

These days its GW's "once per the box contents" approach which is a lot better, but still not quite "sane" in my view.

"One version" of the rules being the entire first edition; you could have every single model be both a banner and musician and they did not even need to be modelled as such. The matched play rules added the modelled requirement, but it wasn't until second edition that we started to get the version we have now.

Heck, when Idoneth came out every model in the infantry units could be a champion with +1 attack! They soon eratta'd it, fortunately.

the_scotsman wrote:
That, and the individual models always looked wonky because they were designed for rank basing.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree with this, considering how much of a bugger it was to get Ghouls, Bloodletters and such to behave themselves on movement trays.

 Overread wrote:
GW is fully of lazy names right now. I think its a symptom of a lore by committee of managers rather than an individual or small team of keen lore creators who have invested years into crafting a GRR Tolkien level of lore depth.

While I do accept that GW names are... a certain type of fun, even Tolkein isn't immune to GW naming syndrome:

Treebeard, because he's a tree with a beard.

Wormtongue, because we needed a small hint that he might be a bad guy using words to corrupt.

Watcher in the Water. It watches things. While in the water.

Mount Doom, just because.

People really have rose tinted glasses when it comes to warhammer fantasy. Yeah it got blown up it sucks, but AOS never will be WHFB. WHFB only became good and better once it was destroyed I feel. WHFB got more interest from getting blown up than it ever would if it continued to limp on and exist as a half baked setting with an uncaring GW. We have gotten some of the most interesting lore because of End Times, and because it blew up. Now everyone is interested. Everyone feels INVESTED into that setting because it has permanence. I love it for that reason. I hate a lot what happened to WHFB but honestly it makes me like it even more. Its still there, and you can still use those armies. And we might get new armies to replace the older models.

And plus WHFB isn't dead its coming back but in a better part of the setting. My favorite era of WHFB the Three Emperors arc. Which is fething awesome.

Vanari / Lumineth are not 'High Elves of Ulthuan." They are more of a combination of elven races. I am fine with the setting the main draw for me for ages with AOS is that its stories are incredibly interesting.

And people here who say that stormcasts aren't interesting... They are less generic and more than they are made to be. Which is the interesting part, they are poster children but each order and hero of the stormcasts is a real hero. In that true definition, and them coming back to life has its issues, the become less than they were. From a doctor protecting children to a reformed khorne worshipper turned to sigmars light. Sigmar maybe the 'good guy' but he isn't always a great guy he makes mistakes and because of his fury, he lost Ghal Maraz and got beaten because of it.

He isn't infallible, which the stormcasts illustrate by getting their ass handed to them throughout the lore. Stormcasts have a very interesting edge. Anyone can be a stormcast, if you are a hero in life you can become a stormcast. Stormcasts as a whole yes seem generic, but you read their books and their lore they are far more than seem to be.

AOS is awesome in that regard, and their models and their units you will never find anywhere else.

I love AOS the more I read, and I hated what they did to fantasy. Honestly it gave me AOS and I've been super happy since they implemented the game's story. Of course the first edition was a mess which has been reiterated here almost every page, but thats fine, it was getting its footing.

Overall I do agree with the sentiment of OP. 40k has for a while been getting itself shoot in the foot repeatedly with its over reliance on the imperium and specifically the primarchs and space marines. It has become less and less interesting overtime with its lore and its stories. Though people would like to say 40k is a setting not a story. But the whole point is that it clearly is not going in that direction. With the setting just foucsing only one narrative... Space Marines. We have no stories about the eldar, the necrons, the craftworlds, the exodites, the dark eldar, we have so few actual narratives with them in the star positions.

It also doesn't help that in AOS each race's battletome specifically feels like they are written by people WHO ENJOY that faction, each time I've picked one up I feel like this is written by that faction, and for that faction's fans. Unlike in 40k which has become a complete joke when it comes to Xenos or anything but space marines. I stopped caring about 40k because it has no stakes currently. I don't feel for any other faction but the imperials, because there are no other factions (it feels like) other than imperials. The last ten releases have all been imperial space marines or the chaos space marines. Necrons got some loving but they got nothing compared to all the hundreds of kits that marines have gotten in less than a decade. Eldar have recieved three... I repeat three kits, and some of the worst lore written about a faction in decades.

AOS feels balanced and interesting, and of course some might say its because its new of course it feels like that but, I feel its more that they learned from their mistakes from WHFB and 40k. 40k has tons of issues from its characters, its inconsistent story, and also its model line. 40k's models have started to over simply to the point they have become bland and boring. Look at the major Space marine release. With the new AOs models they have character to them, you can build them from out of where they were before and make them more or less detailed. Its entirely your point, but 40k has over simplified its gothic setting into tacticool and thats not interesting to me.

Count me in as someone who agrees with the OP. AoS feels exciting at the moment, the sculpts are fantastic, I find myself getting excited about new releases, whereas 40k just feels stagnant at this point. Sick to death of Space Marines and the lack of creativity on the Xenos front. Scenery/terrain-wise AoS is also miles ahead.

But they have a market that just won't quit with 40k, so no reason to shake things up. Can't wait for the release of the new Warhammer Quest, can't think of anything I'm looking forward to 40k-wise. The new Death Guard releases were disappointing.

dream archipelago wrote:


But they have a market that just won't quit with 40k, so no reason to shake things up.

Yup, it's basically a nurgle game. Afraid of change and slowly rotting away

I was hoping for a big change this edition (like alternating activations), but it was not to be. Having a whole army activate while having most of the big guns in range from turn 1 can lead to many "feels bad" moments where you pack up chunks of your army before doing anything because you lost a roll-off.

Some of my group bought into 40k again, but they stopped playing it. Back to AoS or Star Wars Legion mostly.

I was an old WHFB player that was bummed at the launch of AoS. But the Broken Realms and Aelf pantheon has me interested again. KoW has my mass battles covered anyway, I don't have a game where I can drop down a literal God on the battlefield like Norse Mythology. That definitely has some appeal

I do wonder if part of the appeal is the novelty in terms of GW.

As covered, 40K is pretty staid. But then, so was WHFB, if not more so. Being set on a single world, they didn’t have much wiggle room to develop things.

Now, whether they had to blow it up is for a different thread. But the other options that immediately spring to mind might’ve seen Kislev wiped off the map, Naggaroth overrun etc.

They were also limited in time hopping potential, because it had such a set history, and it was largely Empire centric.

AoS has addressed much of that. What brings neat total ruination to one city, empire, or even Realm doesn’t mean the others have to follow suit. And the timeline is super loose.

We know of three great Ages. Myth, Chaos and Sigmar.

As time has gone on, the Age of Chaos is more or less down to a couple of centuries long. The Age of Sigmar is a bit more nebulous, but probably around 200 years, if not a wee bit more? But the Age of Myth? Who knows how long that was?

The people’s of that era are likewise very ill defined. Some may well have survived the Age of Chaos, and are awaiting the narrative chance to come into play (certainly Kharadron and Fyreslayer’s fall into that category).

Cities beholden to the Dark Gods are a possibility. After all, in The Old World the marauder tribes were loyal worshippers, but relatively untouched by their Gods.

This is all new turf for even long term players, without it all being entirely unrecognisable. That’s quite an achievement in my book.