Because the 8th Edition Dwarf models look great compared the horrible diseased-looking squatting Empire State Trooper models that GW still haven’t replaced with something that looks at least vaguely human. I think GW did it right - if you’re going to release something very generic and bland for the sake of getting factions up to speed with as little effort as possible, might as well advertise the more eye-catching parts of it to redeem yourselves a little. And in any case, Dispossessed have always been there, and are sadly part of Empire 2.0 now, which is why I really dislike this release. If GW had got their act together they could have actually made them a third separate Dwarf faction with badass-looking new releases, like a mechanical Dwarf automaton or something.
This is true, but the warscrolls for the Darkoath Warqueen and Chieftain put them in Slaves to Darkness rather than a specific separate Darkoath faction. If Darkoath were to get a tome, it’s highly likely it would be part of a Slaves to Darkness one. To be fair the Untamed Beasts are pretty much Darkoath warriors, and the rest of the Warcry gangs are all allied with Chaos, so perhaps that’s all they’re getting in terms of new models - they’re certainly not short of existing ones. Perhaps GW are going to give them superior rules when they release a Slaves to Darkness book to make them actually worth taking.
There is a distinct lack of regular humans though. Nearly everything is some fantasy creature or magically empowered human. It's kinda weird they didn't use the cities of sigmar to be the regular human faction. Much like imperial guard is the "human" faction in 40K amongst superpowered mutants, daemons & aliens that punch holes in a tank. I would expect them to be the replacement of slaves of darkness yeah. Or a rework at least. To make that a more coherent faction as well instead of a random collection of warbands from different spin off games alongside 2 or 3 genuine units.
That would have made sense, with Dispossessed, High Elves, Dark Elves and Wanderers as separate factions. Could have used that as an opportunity to bring in some decent human infantry models like the old Bretonnian Men-at-arms.
The delays could also be due to them planning to nix our finecast lines and make them plastic. They did that with sisters of battle recently, and i'm sure its no small effort to retool how your factory works and get new moulds or what not. (At least i'm really hoping for it, finecast is dodoo)
They could've at least put the focus on the regular humans. I mean, those are supposed to be the most numerous in the various cities. But yeah, they should release some normal human factions.Or at least normal-ish.
It’s pretty obvious GW have put the focus on humanity, what with the Empire soldier on the cover and the Empire army shots throughout the book. That’s why I don’t like the release, because it puts Empire at the centre stage with all the more awesome races being shoved into the background. It was a nice surprise seeing SC boxes for non-Imperial aspects of the Free Cities as it gave a breath of air after all that smothering, cloying Empire nonsense.
Yeah, I agree. Humans are boring. Unless they are wearing cool helmets that make them not look like humans. NEVER! Humans are fun to kill though. Good snacks for Dinosaurs, too.
Dwarf have factions all over the place now. There are lots of people who still love Empire though. Also its important to have humans in the mortal realms. I feel it's unfair that on Empires big release day, we get 2 start collecting boxes with Dwarf and Dark Elfs. They are good looking models, agreed. But Empire is like Seraphons. People still like them even with the mediocre infantry models they have now. Seraphon and Empire both have really great big centre piece models. Empire cav models look great, and everything Skink is fine too. But it would be nice to get new battle line models for Empire and Seraphon.
The empire is by far the most interesting faction in there by the sheer grace of being the only "regular" human faction. We have several aelven factions, we have several dwarven factions. We don't have any regular humans. And even if those aelven and dwarven factions were originally awesome, currently they're little more than the most stereotypical interpretations of their respective archetype. At least the regular humans aren't something that's really present in the rest of AoS (at least in their armies.. fluff wise they do seem to be one of the more numerous races with the most cities...). Plus, those dwarves and aelves need to compete with properly fleshed out factions. Aside from former WHFB players I don't think those are particularly popular. New players are probably going to gravitate to the newer, fancier incarnations of their archetypes.
Yes, agreed. Those two start collecting boxes look extremely boring. Dwarfs are akually my favourite faction ever in warhammer. CHAOS DWARFS! Such an awesome faction and so perfectly suited to AoS. Still some of my most beloved models to this day. The Great Tarus, Lamasu and Doom shaker cannon. In true GW fashion, they decided to not give them a battle tomb ever. It was just some crap in White Dwarf. I like the Cities of Sigmar idea, I like that people get to play all those factions again. But Empire must come first. CA understood this, and the main faction in Totalwar Warhammer one was Empire. And it was super successful because of this. People like men as the protagonists. They like orcs as the sideline bad guys. And they like chaos as the big bad guys. I have to say, Stormcast don't really work for AoS the way Space Marines work in 40k. First of all chaos has space marines as well. The Stormcast lore is wanky to say the least! What they should of done when they invented AoS was said, "You know what Sigmar needs? He needs Empire to knights to learn to dismount from their horses and fight on foot like the Bretonians do." Why would Sigmar go back in time and start using bolt throwers and cross bows? He already had access to handguns and cannons. Stormcast out of all the armies I own, are the ones that feel like they have no character. And that's despite them having everything focused on them. Empire is just intresting looking at the models, before you even read any of the lore.
How DARE you compare us, the most awesome faction in all of Warhammer* to those warmbloods! *Including 40k. That's right. We (sadly) aren't even in 40k and we're the best in it. That's how awesome we are!
There has been a lot of finecast getting phased out or last chanced. The entire first part of 40k's physic awakening is basically just redoing Eldar in plastic.
I hotly debate this. I’m pretty sure Warhammer Total War was successful because of the graphics and awesome fantasy gameplay, not because of fractious, bickering neo-Germans strutting about the battlefield. Empire was not the main faction, just one of two hero factions against two villain factions. Just because GW and CA tried to press them more doesn’t mean they have any right to be called protagonists. The Empire were certainly the least fantastical of the 4 main game factions and the most aesthetically boring. Vampire Counts are the other evil faction in the main game, and Warriors of Chaos were controversially released as DLC. Also the thing is, the more emphasis you put on humanity in a Fantasy setting, the less fantastical it becomes. Look at Game of Thrones - the story may be great and the characters compelling, but the early series are more like an alternative Medieval setting than actual fantasy. Hold on a minute, Bretonnians were mostly mounted Knights with peasants on foot because it was above them to ride a warhorse, while Empire were jack of all trades, master of none.
You still need "regular" humans to put things in perspective though. If everyone is magical noone is. You need a regular faction to make your monsters and whatnot actually monsterous. A SCE fighting a chaos lord is considerably less heroic than a city guard pulling off the same trick. It's why imperial guard is so popular in 40K, it results in much better stories.
True, but GW could still have brought out one or more other human factions with new aesthetics and lore rather than pushing the same tired Empire theme. Perhaps they could have explored one of the human factions they placed in the Old World but never released models for, e.g. Araby, Cathay, Nippon or Albion, but reworked to suit the AoS lore.
True, though I guess those other cultures already have too much mysticism in em and lend themselves more easily to more magical factions. Partially due to the game being western focussed which makes stuff like Araby exotic & mystical by default, and partially due to the inspiring cultures simply having a bigger knack for mysticism than the inspiration of the empire had. Hence the defaulting to the empire. Though bringing in something new would be nice. Also, I'm curious how well a non-european human medieval/renaisance-ish faction would sell. I wouldn't be surprised if those factions simply aren't popular enough. Or in certain cases, would just result in outright bans of the product (e.g. china has banned stuff before cuz it represented their culture in a "wrong" way). Might just be that those other cultures are too difficult to pull off. To be honest, I'd love for there to be a few "regular" human factions. It's been well established that the various realms have a deep impact on the sort of culture that arises there. So why not have a human faction per realm. Would be interesting. Hell, at this point freaking chaos has a more varied and fleshed out culture for "regular" humans than anyone else with all their warbands for warcry & shadespire. Which is just kinda weird.