Gang - Hello to you all! I am new to this site, but nor to Warhammer or Lizardmen. I was wondering everyone's take on the "rumor" that the Lizardmen are "kaput"?!!? Could this be real? No; right? Please advise, I do not want to see my Lizardmen go!
Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. We had a lengthy discussion on this. GW doesn’t share much in advance of when they act. There are two sets of opposing arguments. 1) “These are just rumors” versus “the source was accurate with End Times book predictions” 2) “Games Workshop is not stupid enough to alienate their fanbase in a major way” versus “GW doesn’t do much market research and have been consistently alienating their fans in escalating ways every year.” If GW creates a 9th edition that is compatible with our current models, no worries. If GW creates 9th edition in a way that drives off almost all the current players. Many players will vow to play 8th edition instead and many players will quit the hobby and sell their models. The first group will buy the second hand models of the latter group. We will maintain L-O for modeling and playing 8th edition. After all our 8th edition books and models aren’t going to disappear. If GW creates a playable 9th edition but drops Lizardmen, we will still maintain the forum for people who want to stick with 8th edition (there will likely be a fair few, because if LM are dropped we won’t be the only army). We plan to collaborate and create our own codex. The Chaos Dwarf fan base did this for a long time and were pretty successful. There is also tentative talk of a few forumites heading up a third party company and make and sell our own models under different names. GW has their specific models patented but reptilian humanoids are generic enough and ubiquitous in fantasy that they can’t monopolize it. So basically we at Lustria-Online are hoping GW doesn't screw us over. If they do, we will keep this site up to support the army as best as we can even if our forum base shrinks.
Thank you for the great reply; it gives me plenty of hope regardless. I like the idea of a 3rd party company generating models, etc. I'd "buy" into that. Thanks again.
According to Harry on Warseer (a well-known rumour guy) we will still be playable, but it sounded as if we have received our last army book, however, his comment was vague so it could mean other things, such as maybe a name change for our army.
While "doomsday" rumors are always fun, I do not think we will be replaced or discontinued. Sure we did not get the best treatment in End of Times in regards to new characters etc. But we did escape to the bubble worlds. We also got new models and army book not that long ago. If we also take into mind that the army book has some inconsistencies with the rules, it could mean it adjusted for the new version. So personally I am taking this calmly until we get the release information from GW. In worst case, it is an opportunity to pick up cheap armies off Ebay.
http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?405473-Warhammer-9th-Edition-Roundup-Discussion Read it and weep. Latest implication is that Lizardmen are still playable, which I guess is better than being outright squatted, but only in the same sense that Dogs of War are technically still playable. Or Ravening Hordes Chaos Dwarfs. But no new units. No new books. And if you can beleive the latest, Skinks deleted as wrll. Fuck that. I guess this at least explains why the 8th book feels so much like they phoned it in. Because why bother putting in more than minimum effort for something that's about to be ignored.
I wouldn't get too worked up. There certainly are some huge changes coming for 9th, given the widespread rumours and news it's fairly clear that it's going to happen. But until it's actually launched we've no way at all of knowing what the changes will actually be, so probably not worth panicing to wildly over. Even if we aren't one of the initial 6 factions at launch their is always the possibility of Lizardmen (in whatever shape they take, personally I'm hoping for a much more dynamic and slightly crazy skink-led shape) being released at a future date. In the mean time we can either use our current edition army book or just use our lovely scaly models as 'counts as' for the newer armies (if anyone asks, just deadpan "They're in disguise").
Oh god somewhere in the 90 odd page Warseer thread for the 9th edition spoilers. The original one started by Darnok.
I thought this link was rather interesting. Please take with a healthy dose of salt and please consider the source. http://natfka.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/warhammer-fantasy-9th-edition-and.html
I thought that Lizardmen are a fairly popular race. Why would they be squatted? Don't say fluff. Fluff is second to sales (maybe even third or fifth).
From Harry on warseer concerning LM: "I say again ... much depends on your definition of "squatted" ... If by "Squatted" you mean wiped of the face of the planet then ... No they are not getting squatted. Will they still exist? ... Yes. Can you play with them? ... Yes. If by "squatted" you mean the same thing that happened to squats in 40K .... they will not have any new miniatures made for them and they will not get a new army book then .... Yes ... they get squatted. Along with some others. If by squatted you mean re-imagined to the point that the new stuff looks so different from the old stuff that you struggle to put it side by side on the table to the point that it might as well be a different army ... then we are looking at a few more armies. You only have to loom through the existing range next to some of the new stuff to see where this is heading .... it's fantasy, Jim, but not as we know it." From Harry concerning fantasy armies on general: "The only way to own the IP is to loose all the generic Fantasy that other companies can copy ... normal Dwarves, Elves and sure as heck you have to get rid of the historical based human armies ... or you can go build an Empire or Bretonnian army from anyone's miniatures."
We'll remain hopeful and vigilant. Harry is a reliable source but I'm not putting stock in his rumors until I have the books in front of me. Until then he and the pessimistic slime that is Warseer can suck my cold-blooded balls. We shall remain positive.
Im still clinging to the hope that "Lizardmen" will not get more army books, But that "Saurians" will. I simply refuse to believe that Kroq-Gar becomes a shinning saurus, gets the title "The shimmering" and then disappears from the surface of warhammer. Also, if our Lizards were gone for good, I think GW would have given the big miniatures in our selection stronger rules during the endtimes, so that they would get bought up. also^2 : I think that Gor-rok didnt get a mention for a reason (see argument above regarding new models) If "lizardmen is getting re-vamped" + "no slann" I think that = Saurus will be the new leaders. Kroq-Gar = The Military-maneuver / tactics type Gor-rok = The Military-slaughter / brute-force type both reflects the saurus, but in different ways. With Tetto getting an absolutely gorgeous model, skinks will of course be the new priests. I am quite confident that it will go along these lines.
I have read Harrys comment on Warseer and I think it does change anything for us. The lizardmen book is from 2013, which means we would not realisticly expect a new book before 2017-2019. I really doubt that Harry can predict the fantasy release so far in the future, so his comment means that there will be no Lizardmen releases with 9th and that Lizardmen will probably not be part of the initial fluff. However GW could reintroduce Lizardmen later and since the Lizard remain a playable army nothing really changed for us.
I agree with you, Koranot. GW isn't going to simply dump everything they have coming up all at once. They will feed it to us in smaller portions, thus prolonging their profitability margin on this new version of the game. They have (and are) demonstrated this process with the ET book releases. There will be a gradual change. The new models will undoubtedly look and "feel" different, of that I have little doubt, but I believe that we will still be able to use our current models with them. It's just that once we start to play the new version and see the new models, we'll probably want to "upgrade" to them. I think that's mostly because they will look really, really cool. Here's hopin'.