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 Da Boss wrote:
I dislike it in 40K too, but for whatever reason it REALLY stands out for me in a fantasy setting. I think I see Sci Fi as inherently less generic than fantasy. It's what makes Sci Fi roleplaying less universal than fantasy - there's fewer assumed tropes and things for people to have an automatic shared understanding.

I really don't think "elf" becoming "aelf" is meaningfully sillier than "eldar" becoming "aeldari". I guess it's ultimately subjective, but to me it really doesn't make much odds one way or the other.

Sure, it can feel a bit unnecessary that Age of Sigmar releasing a book about elephants would feel a need to name it Battletome: Trunknose Greystompies, but in the end, it'll probably settle. The same way as intentionally misspelling orc as "Ork" also eventually did.

 His Master's Voice wrote:


You need a certain level of familiarity with the setting to even consider searching for "ogor" over "ogre", and by that point, Mawtribe works just as well.

Not if you are building for the long term. Mawtribes are just one faction, or specifically one large cultural unit of ogors. The introduction of city ogors shows that well. GW wants "ogor" to become its own identity, a name which denotes a specific set of things that may or may not overlap with other things, but which is in their hands.

I am not that passionate about defending it. I am fine with orcs and ogres and elves. I think I've just gotten over it at this point.

Fantasy doesn't have as much cultural appeal as SciFi, because SciFi is an evolution of our existing world and has closer ties to it. Fantasy is a devolution. Its just a slightly less extreme example compared to say an IP based around cavemen. But they're both limited in a similar way. They are devolutions.

SciFi is so large it can encapsulate fantasy, but the opposite is not true because SciFi is technologically superior and would over ride whatever it's included in.


Society doesn't look at peasants and yearn for the fields, but they do like sword fights. But they see high tech space ships and future tech as evolutions of existing stuff they use and think that would be cool.


GW are unlikely to ever make fantasy as big as 40k due to our cultural technology paradigm. The closest fantasy gets to SciFi in popularity is the urban hidden fantasy style like Dresden, Potter or twilight. Because it connects to real people in a way that an imaginary land that exists separate to and inaccessible by the real-world doesn't.


Gw will keep desecrating the corpse of wfb in their endlessly cynical pursuit of trying to mutilate it into a shape that makes as much possible money as it can

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
I dislike it in 40K too, but for whatever reason it REALLY stands out for me in a fantasy setting. I think I see Sci Fi as inherently less generic than fantasy. It's what makes Sci Fi roleplaying less universal than fantasy - there's fewer assumed tropes and things for people to have an automatic shared understanding.

I really don't think "elf" becoming "aelf" is meaningfully sillier than "eldar" becoming "aeldari". I guess it's ultimately subjective, but to me it really doesn't make much odds one way or the other.

"Elf" is a real world, "Eldar" is a made up word. Replacing one made up word with another made up word is less silly than replacing a real word with a made up word.

And of course they do not even pronounce these strangely spelled words like the letters would imply. In English, one would expect "ae" in the beginning of the word to be pronounced as in "aether" or "aegis," but I don't think they pronounce "aelf" or "aeldari" like that, they pronounce it like it was just a normal single "e" like in the previous spelling.

 Crimson wrote:
"Elf" is a real world, "Eldar" is a made up word. Replacing one made up word with another made up word is less silly than replacing a real word with a made up word.

Eh, barely. "Elf" as we know it in modern fantasy - tall, beautiful, pointy-elved, ethereal, long-lived, generally OP fay folk - is something that was introduced to the fantasy scene by Tolkien. And so is the word Eldar.

Both are fictional.


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 Crimson wrote:
And of course they do not even pronounce these strangely spelled words like the letters would imply. In English, one would expect "ae" in the beginning of the word to be pronounced as in "aether" or "aegis," but I don't think they pronounce "aelf" or "aeldari" like that, they pronounce it like it was just a normal single "e" like in the previous spelling.

Somewhat related, "Ogor" as a name makes some kind of sense considering people pronounce "Ogre" as "Oger" already (to such an extent it's practically a meme to itself - "it's all oger now").

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Crimson wrote:
"Elf" is a real world, "Eldar" is a made up word. Replacing one made up word with another made up word is less silly than replacing a real word with a made up word.

Eh, barely. "Elf" as we know it in modern fantasy - tall, beautiful, pointy-elved, ethereal, long-lived, generally OP fay folk - is something that was introduced to the fantasy scene by Tolkien. And so is the word Eldar.

Both are fictional.

You're conflating the word with what Tolkien used it to represent

Then again, word "elf" derives from Old English "ælf" so spelling it "aelf" is not that bad.

 Shakalooloo wrote:
GW just needs to finally acknowledge that the 'Space Marines of Fantasy' are the Chaos Warriors. Evil dudes in baroque suits of armour are just cool (all the way through Dark Souls and beyond!), they have the nostalgia factor of 'they were in Hero Quest', the cover star of first edition WFB was one, and they aren't too difficult to paint.

This. But I suspect the brand-builders at HQ arent comfortable with the idea of promoting the bad guys as the face of a setting in the modern era.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Shakalooloo wrote:
GW just needs to finally acknowledge that the 'Space Marines of Fantasy' are the Chaos Warriors. Evil dudes in baroque suits of armour are just cool (all the way through Dark Souls and beyond!), they have the nostalgia factor of 'they were in Hero Quest', the cover star of first edition WFB was one, and they aren't too difficult to paint.

This. But I suspect the brand-builders at HQ arent comfortable with the idea of promoting the bad guys as the face of a setting in the modern era.

But they do so in 40K; Space Marines are the enforcers of a tyrannical fascist regime.

 Hellebore wrote:
Fantasy doesn't have as much cultural appeal as SciFi, because SciFi is an evolution of our existing world and has closer ties to it. Fantasy is a devolution. Its just a slightly less extreme example compared to say an IP based around cavemen. But they're both limited in a similar way. They are devolutions.

SciFi is so large it can encapsulate fantasy, but the opposite is not true because SciFi is technologically superior and would over ride whatever it's included in.


Society doesn't look at peasants and yearn for the fields, but they do like sword fights. But they see high tech space ships and future tech as evolutions of existing stuff they use and think that would be cool.


GW are unlikely to ever make fantasy as big as 40k due to our cultural technology paradigm. The closest fantasy gets to SciFi in popularity is the urban hidden fantasy style like Dresden, Potter or twilight. Because it connects to real people in a way that an imaginary land that exists separate to and inaccessible by the real-world doesn't.


Gw will keep desecrating the corpse of wfb in their endlessly cynical pursuit of trying to mutilate it into a shape that makes as much possible money as it can

Never really thought about that, but it's a great theory/explanation

 Ashiraya wrote:

 kodos wrote:
just that nobody really cared about fantasy Space Marines and it hindered the sales instead of pushing it

Thing is, Stormcast are still cool. I like Stormcast, I have a fair few. Following the Thunderstrike redesign, they're well-proportioned magic knights, their helmets styled after Roman cavalry masks are very characterful

My personal opinion? They made a mistake by making them so human. They really did feel like just Good Guy Chaos Warriors. The first time I saw something about Stormcast I thought they would be cool metal golems inhabited by the souls of dead warriors, quickened to life by the lightning of a god...but nah, they're just 8 foot tall goobers with the same cringe sidecut hairstyle GW use on ~40% of all their models these days.

Anyway, I've been trying really hard to be sympathetic, having a setting you liked obliterated because a few MBAs decided Line had insufficiently Gone Up isn't a great experience, but honestly watching a lot of the people who cacked smugly on the WHFB community for reacting to "bubblehammer" with incredulity at first and dismay when it became obvious things really would go down like that behave in exactly the same way...

The weird side haircut thing is quite noticeable in AoS. Maybe the Mortal Realms is like my village growing up - only one hairdresser who only knows how to do 3 haircuts.

 YodhrinsForge wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:

 kodos wrote:
just that nobody really cared about fantasy Space Marines and it hindered the sales instead of pushing it

Thing is, Stormcast are still cool. I like Stormcast, I have a fair few. Following the Thunderstrike redesign, they're well-proportioned magic knights, their helmets styled after Roman cavalry masks are very characterful

My personal opinion? They made a mistake by making them so human. They really did feel like just Good Guy Chaos Warriors. The first time I saw something about Stormcast I thought they would be cool metal golems inhabited by the souls of dead warriors, quickened to life by the lightning of a god...but nah, they're just 8 foot tall goobers with the same cringe sidecut hairstyle GW use on ~40% of all their models these days.

Anyway, I've been trying really hard to be sympathetic, having a setting you liked obliterated because a few MBAs decided Line had insufficiently Gone Up isn't a great experience, but honestly watching a lot of the people who cacked smugly on the WHFB community for reacting to "bubblehammer" with incredulity at first and dismay when it became obvious things really would go down like that behave in exactly the same way...

If I had to have storm cast I would have made them a bit like wraithguard, but the size of ogres. Units of 3, enchanted armour that houses the souls of sigmars martyrs, holy wrathful temple guardians, rather than glowy eyed manflesh soldiers made of lightning... They can be the elites of sigmars faithful armies, rather than. The faction itself

Like how they did eltharion

Yes wraith guards, doomed spirits thats how I was making mine too. Thats how I see them, tortured souls with an armoured cask.
Will never finish my soul wars army im afraid.

You guys know the Ossiarch Bonereapers are a thing right

 Overread wrote:
You guys know the Ossiarch Bonereapers are a thing right

Thats like saying Knights are the same as Chaos Knights.
Its different souls at war dude

 Overread wrote:
You guys know the Ossiarch Bonereapers are a thing right

I'd been doing my best to forget actually

 NAVARRO wrote:

Will never finish my soul wars army im afraid.

Spoiler:

]

Those are awesome I hope you do finish them.

I also had the idea that Stormcast were animated armor and felt a bit disappointed when they started making bare-headed ones.

But I can see why, in the end you want people to feel an affiliation with their faction, that's why Necrons got humanized as well. There's still room for some sort of Sigmar dreadnought kind of war machine but not for the entire army.

 Da Boss wrote:
The weird side haircut thing is quite noticeable in AoS. Maybe the Mortal Realms is like my village growing up - only one hairdresser who only knows how to do 3 haircuts.

Plastic mould technology doesn't help. They did resin stormcast heads for a while with more varied hair, but those went the same way all other Warhammer Forge kits did.


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 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
There's still room for some sort of Sigmar dreadnought kind of war machine but not for the entire army.

The Ruination Chamber sort of teases into this, and besides, I find them to be perhaps the most visually striking of the Stormcast.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 NAVARRO wrote:

Will never finish my soul wars army im afraid.

Spoiler:

]

Those are awesome I hope you do finish them.

I also had the idea that Stormcast were animated armor and felt a bit disappointed when they started making bare-headed ones.

But I can see why, in the end you want people to feel an affiliation with their faction, that's why Necrons got humanized as well. There's still room for some sort of Sigmar dreadnought kind of war machine but not for the entire army.

Well, for many people that seems to be true certainly, but given you, I, and a fair few others over the years have expressed a preference for inhuman Stormcast - and I know a decent chunk of people who revile Nucrons - it also seems like there are people out there who'd be happy to buy a faction they feel affiliation to in a different way than simply "they look like me and I can see that because the kits come with bare heads". I don't think *one* faction in each setting scratching that itch is a lot to ask.

You can also fix the "I need to 'see myself' in them" issue by simply not trying to position Stormcast as Land Marines. Mix them into the "normal human" faction as elite forces and the army can get all the representation and personality you like from the regular plebs, and then have a couple of themed alternative lists that let you to go all-SC if you prefer that.

Having built a few Slaanesh kits - honestly plastic is a nightmare to clean mould lines off some complex hair arrangements. All twisting around each other and blocking the blade getting in neatly.

Or you get ponytails that look cool but you always worry about the connection point breaking off at some point.

I’m gonna offer a defence of the Stormcast.

Sure, on the surface they’re Fanstartes. But, once you’ve delved into the background? They’re considerably more interesting than Just Being Fantsartes.

Each is, or was, a hero of the wars against Chaos, usually spirited away at the moment of death to be remade and reforged into a force capable of meeting even the most powerful of Chaos’ followers in battle.

They seem noble and bright and flawless. Except their immortality is kind of a sham. The initial reforging process erodes the memory of their mortal lives. Perhaps for the best, as some were made decades, perhaps centuries, prior to Sigmar’s attempt to wrest back the mortal realms. So everything and everyone they once knew are likely long dead.

And each time they fall (tough as they are, they do fall in battle), the resurrection process erodes them further. And not necessarily in a uniform way. Some might come through the process multiple times with little to no downside. Others might become horrors after just the first attempt.

Their fellow Stormcast notice this, and they know they’re damned. Damned by good intentions, yes. But still damned.

It’s debatable how honest Sigmar was about this from the beginning. Or indeed whether even he knew the true extent of the risks and flaws of the process. And we’re at least assured he’s not just shrugged his divine shoulders at it, but continues to try to find an away to fix it.

But, to those already Stormcast? They’re still damned and doomed by those flaws. Oh they’ve been granted vengeance it’s true. But at what price?

Stormcast give me Warcraft Paladin vibes, and I like that.

Another slightly belated thought? To the best of my knowledge, none have a choice in the Reforging.

We know there are aways for enemies to stop the essence returning to Azyr, yes. And some are permanent.

But for the Stormcast? They’ve no say. At all. And so their eventual descent into madness and horror is assured. It’s just a matter of time,

That time is sort of meaningless to us though, because the implication is it takes a VERY long time, and if a Stormcast isn't defeated that often it won't really come up.

It sort of makes them into an entire army of jobbers, which isn't great in my view.

Also, two more points. Making them massive I feel goes against traditional heroic imagery. Massive monsters against normal sized humans is compelling and dramatic, but when Stormcast are bigger and more powerful than a Chaos Warrior it is a lot less so. It's a bit the same problem you face with Primaris vs. Chaos Marines now in 40K.

And lastly, the closed helm "we don't really know what is in there" look is about abnegation of the self in service to the broader ideal. This is a pretty classic trope as well, and it is often used for baddies actually. So keeping the Stormcast hidden behind death masks and so on would have contributed to their mystique and given them a slightly sinister edge that I think would really work. I like the big knights in Dark Souls that are sort of faceless, powerful foes who will relentlessly smash you down. I think Stormcast in that style are very cool.

But just bigger humans with lantern jaws and "cool" haircuts, well, alright then. I dunno why anyone worships chaos any more though in 40K or Fantasy. In the Horus Heresy novels we get shown pretty conclusively that it makes you worse than the loyalists, with pretty much no benefit. And in Fantasy you can be more powerful than a Chaos Warrior by following Sigmar with none of the nasty mutation stuff or risk of spawndom. I guess all followers of Chaos really are stupid dupes, eh?

It’s the sacrifice of self.

Not just your previous identity - some Stormcast recall a surprising amount, some not at all. But any pretence at free will.

Once you’re part of Sigmar’s Legions? That’s your lot in life. Constant warfare. Sure they’re plenty motivated because beating up Evil Doers is a noble calling. But limited respite.

It took a while for them to be depicted without their skidlids though. I think the first was the WHW Exclusive one? But, and I really don’t want to be rude or sniffy, it was clear to those who read the background they were some form of flesh, blood, muscle, lightning and just a hint of divinity beneath the plating. So those who thought them animated armour clearly hadn’t read the background. Which is fair enough. When we’re wrong, what matters is that when that’s shown to be the case we update our own understanding.


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And I for one have always liked them being an answer to Chaos Warriors.

After all, if the dark gods can empower a follower, why not an ostensibly benevolent god?

It not only gives you an even footing against them in battle, but must surely be reassuring to your mortal warriors as a result.

A little genuine hope goes a long way in a dark hour.


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I am however entirely and completely on the fence on the Celestant Prime, wielding Ghal Maraz, being able to very literally Slap The Devil Out Of You.

On one hand? It is silly, very silly.

On the other? It is kinda cool. That with the right tools your soul can be shrived of the corruption.

Exactly how it works isn’t clear. For us specifically was essentially tortured into corruption. So perhaps there was a core of his soul still resisting, and that’s what allowed it to work? That without some shred of yourself still horrified at what you’ve become, all there is is corruption to be burned away?

It's not that I didn't know they were humans inside the armour, I just thought it would have been way cooler if that had been left ambiguous.

And frankly, I'll only read background if I think something is interesting. I didn't find the initial look of Stormcast or what I saw about them interesting at all, so I never went out of my way to read any of the background.

And isn't that somewhat of the point? It seems like the background didn't really draw people in in any numbers, for whatever reason. I think Stormcast got a bit better with time, and I saw stuff like the Stonecast Eternals and some other things that I think made them look way cooler, to the point that I picked up my own Start Collecting to do an elemental golem Stormcast army to use in D&D and so on.

But say the overall world of AoS really failed to grab me. It had some interesting aspects, but they were hampered by keeping the main players from old WFB (a totally pointless decision, to me) and keeping the factions from WFB as well. I mean, I appreciated being able to still buy WFB minis for a while, and not all factions would have needed to go, but having Cities of Sigmar just be WFB factions all smushed together really wasn't compelling.

And then when they did do new factions, they just didn't land for me. The Fyreslayers (would Fireslayers really have been that bad GW?) I was properly excited for because I love D&D Azers, which are fire elemental Dwarves. I was very excited by the prospect of lovely Azer-like miniatures, but in the end the Fyreslayers just had really silly helmets and an overall silly look to me, and I think they didn't sell that well because GW have barely touched them since.

Eventually you just sort of move on, you know? I feel GW didn't do the setting they proposed much justice at all. The most interesting part of the whole project was Warcry, where you got some really interesting and visually distinct chaos warbands. That was cool. But then they stopped supporting it!

Again, I'm well aware I'm just one dude with fairly specific tastes and I am not saying GW needs to do what I say. I'm actually pretty surprised that AoS was doing poorly enough that they've done this, because I assumed it was pretty solidly popular, though I had noticed the forum here had basically died with 4th edition. But forums are always dying on Dakka these days because the userbase is shrinking down to us old cantankerous farts.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Another slightly belated thought? To the best of my knowledge, none have a choice in the Reforging.

We know there are aways for enemies to stop the essence returning to Azyr, yes. And some are permanent.

But for the Stormcast? They’ve no say. At all. And so their eventual descent into madness and horror is assured. It’s just a matter of time,

I just finished Skaventide and it addresses this directly.

None chose it, but no one is forced. Sigmar has the ability to peer into people's souls and see some of their true nature.

Accordingly, he only chooses those people who would undertake the terrible burden of dying again and again for the sake of the realms. He doesn't even need to ask, he already knows the answer, and no Stormcast has ever disagreed.

All entirely fair points

I think CoS could’ve come along sooner as a range. Background wise they were there pretty early on, including the Cogforts. But by delaying them, to the outside eye it could look like Stormcast were doing the bulk of the fighting, rather than being essentially an Elite Reserve thrown into battle via lightning strikes to shatter the enemy’s back.

Do agree on Fyreslayers though. Not as much fun as they could’ve been. But I love the other New Armies.


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 Ashiraya wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Another slightly belated thought? To the best of my knowledge, none have a choice in the Reforging.

We know there are aways for enemies to stop the essence returning to Azyr, yes. And some are permanent.

But for the Stormcast? They’ve no say. At all. And so their eventual descent into madness and horror is assured. It’s just a matter of time,

I just finished Skaventide and it addresses this directly.

None chose it, but no one is forced. Sigmar has the ability to peer into people's souls and see some of their true nature.

Accordingly, he only chooses those people who would undertake the terrible burden of dying again and again for the sake of the realms. He doesn't even need to ask, he already knows the answer, and no Stormcast has ever disagreed.

Don’t think I’ve read that one. Can you confirm who makes that claim? Not to argue, just for context.

I feel like the discussion of darker or more ambiguous Stormcast, as animated suits of armor or faceless warriors losing sense of self, misses the forest for the trees. The core purpose of Stormcast is to be unambiguously good supermen. They're Space Marines cosplaying Warcraft, with all the atavistic morally rough edges of the Space Marine concept sanded off. All the lore wringing some pathos out of the Golden Jesus Legion is purely post hoc.

If having blatantly obvious Good Guys weren't the corporate requirement behind the creation of the Stormcast in the first place, they wouldn't have needed Stormcast to begin with.

Dark Souls is a good reference point, as I would argue the cultural impact of that franchise reflects that the average zoomer doesn't actually need a goody two-shoes golden man to identify with. Antiheroes are popular; it's always struck me as a little out of touch that GW felt they couldn't sell their fantasy franchise without squeaky clean heroes.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:


Don’t think I’ve read that one. Can you confirm who makes that claim? Not to argue, just for context.

A Lord-Veritant named Morgen explains this to a Memorian in training (the main character) named Sevora.

Lords-Veritant have been given an echo of Sigmar's soul-sight, and when they bind their eyes, they too can see people's souls. They mostly use it to root out Chaos infiltrators and find sources of corruption, but she also used it to recruit the reluctant Sevora from the gutters as a Memorian (a mortal attendant of the Ruination Chamber who help stabilise the Stormcast's souls), explaining that while she knew Sevora would spend a long time kicking up a fuss, she was ultimately well-suited for the job and would eventually internalise that.

When Morgen explains a bit more about the Stormcast (the nature of the Stormcast, such as the reforging's flaw you mentioned before, has never been kept secret from the Stormcast themselves, but needless to say it's not exactly something that reaches the ears of every farmer and cobbler), she compares Sevora's role to the Stormcast themselves. She herself was certainly never "given a choice", Morgen says, but she is utterly committed anyway, and that is why she was chosen.

Sigmar makes mistakes, but he seems genuinely well-intentioned. If this had been 40k I'd suspect Sigmar was mind controlling the Stormcast into saying they approve of their onerous duty, but AoS is nobledark rather than merely grimdark, and there are many hands involved in the reforging process (Grungni and the Six Smiths, for one) who would not stand for deception.