I have a good number of heroes myself - I just tend to proxy them into battle. They're all very pretty looking Oldbloods or Scar Vets.
My brother and I will be sticking with 8th and maybe try some of the community revisions for 8th. Atm, we're building up his beastmen/legions of chaos forces and stocking up on bits.
Yep. I'm all for 8th/9th Age (depending on how it goes and if peeps down my club will carry on playing it). Some of the army specific threads are pretty mental (in terms of overpowering their own armies) but i have faith that the Swedish guys will filter out the nonsense. In fact the Lizardmen is very (very) restrained and workable. So well done you guys.