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  1. #1

    Default Background Wishlist.

    How do?

    Fancied raising this topic for a while, but wanted to wait until we'd seen more.

    Title has it all really!

    For me? Well, main one is on its way, namely information and understanding of what Reforging costs a Stormcast. Just what is the price for their immortality? As mentioned this is currently unfolding in the Bladestorm series.

    So one down, so many more to go.

    Wishlist the first
    Better definition of the Realms. Right now, they've made it pretty clear they're truly vast. And I'm cool with that. But surely each one is going to have its tactically important areas, chunks we can get to know better and fix in our minds. Perhaps areas broadly representative, but not definitive, giving us the room to create our own kingdoms and that? Kind of like The Empire and The Border Princes in The World That Was, for a rough comparrisson.

    Wishlist the second
    What comes after the Realmgate Wars? Powerful as his forces are, I'm not convinced Archaon can maintain his current stranglehold, simply because the Stormcast have the Cylon Advantage, in so far as reforging, so far, doesn't seem to take away their combat prowess nor, importantly, their combat experience. Some form of victory for Order in his war seems fairly certain....

    Is Sigmar headed for a Pyrrhic victory?
    This is something I speculated on the AoS Facebook group that got people thinking. Take the two above points, and think beyond 'the now'

    See, the Stormcast Eternals are, functionally, unstoppable as long as Azyr holds out - and going one the background just now, it's Chaos on the backfoot. Whilst Sigmar needs to keep Azyr secure, Archaon needs to keep The Allpoints secure. The latter, to my. Ind, is a much harder prospect. Sigmar has shut off Azyr before, so it's arguable he could do so again. But The Allpoints? That's how Archaon has dominated the other realms - and that means it has far more Realmgates to defend than Azyr....it is the nexus after all.

    And this is where the Pyrrhic victory threatens to occur. In short, having re-established some semblance of order and civilisation, the Stormcast Eternals are bound to at least attempt to retake The Allpoints. Archaon undoubtedly has the numerical advantage, but that means little when your for just keeps coming back, seemingly at will. But.....at what cost?

    I'll avoid spoilers, but we're starting to see the impact that can have. Assuming the Stormcast can actually take and hold the Allpoints, their casualties will be horrific. So many will go through multiple reforging, it's going to erode their humanity - they're at the very real risk of losing that which they fight for. Who knows what Sigmar will do if that happens? What role would the Stormcast play in the reclaimed Realms if they no longer relate to the inhabitants?

    But that's not the only possible outcome...in fact it's possibly the least tragic. See, thanks to Daemons being Daemons, and Chaos caring not one jot for the natural way of things....the battle for The Allpoints could become an eternal stalemate. Archaon can never truly defeat the Stormcast - as long as Azyr endures, so do they, and Archaon can't currently strike at Azyr in any meaningful way because of the Stormcast pushing him back on all fronts. But as we know, Chaos itself cannot be defeated. Sure the Stormcast could blockade The Allpoints, tying up Archaon's best and brightest. But going on the description in Book Six of The Call of Archaon? I don't think they have the numbers or opportunity to really permanently take The Allpoints.

    So that's some food for thought. Over to anyone else who wants to chip in with their ha'penny worth.
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  2. #2

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    My wishlist:

    More wimmins.
    Less mins
    Ask not the EldarGal a question, for she will give you three answers, all of which are puns and terrifying to know. Back off man, I'm a feminist. Ia! Ia! Gloppal Snode!

  3. #3

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    The mortal human survivors have quite a few warrior women, and often leading them (Realms of Fire, Metal and Beasts so far...)

    And Death, come to think of it.

    Could be an interesting device to make Sigmar look like an old fashioned God compared to the dynamics of necessity found in the mortal realms.
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  4. #4

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    But are said women showing up in the game? Let's see... Stormcasts? Nope, all designed to look like men. (I don't care about the claim there could be a woman in a suit disguising herself as a man, that makes it WORSE.) Khorne releases? Nope, all men. Fyreslayers? All men.

    So, yeah, they're still WAY behind the curve on representing them in the miniatures line.



    My own wishlist...

    1. Give a clearer explanation of what the flip happened. I want to know how we got from End Times to here.

    2. Why are all these old characters alive again? And why did Malekith forget his name?

    3. Why did all the races change their names, when they pretty much seem to have come back as-is?

    4. What the heck are the realms? Are they real? Are they a figment of someone's imagination? How exactly do they fit into the universe at large?

    5. Why aren't we seeing the rest of the universe? Some of the fluff's hinted at a universe-wide battle, so why are we limited to eight floating chunks of land?

    6. How did the core of the "world-that-was" grow back into a rather significant size? And what are they doing with it?

    7. Retcon the story so Chaos only recently "won," rather than an unbelievable centuries of Chaos winning when we just saw that when they win they destroy everything.

    8. What are the Empire and Bretonnian soldiers? The Elves who are fighting? All those people. Are they ghosts like the Lizardmen? Or are people just playing armies that don't exist in the game universe?

    9. Some new characters. It's nice to have the Greatest Hits of Warhammer Fantasy Battles parading around, but Nagash, Archaon, Malekith, Tyrion, Teclis, the Mortarchs, Ungrim, etc. all got wiped out, and having them show back up in immortal form seems like their sacrifice meant nothing and cheapens the story. Take risks and build new characters.

    Okay, this is going to go on forever...

    TOP WISH LIST ITEM:

    Stop writing story of any kind - in game books or novels - until you have your team sit down and talk to each other and figure out a cohesive story that answers things in a manner that makes sense.

    But I think I'm expecting too much there. I strongly suspect AoS's "background" was wedged together to try to excuse them selling a lot of the same old stuff while making up new stuff, and leaving it open-ended to do whatever they want, but in a way that means hardly anything is defined. There were ways to do that better, but would have to involve retconning a good chunk of the story. Which, honestly, will have to happen at some point anyway.

    The good news there is that GW's got experience with that, because Rogue Trader's fluff was retconned in places to make a more coherent story.



    Since we're on the wishing track, here's my rough draft of a better (IMO, of course) story:

    The End Times happened. A lot of people died. But before they did, the Slann got in touch with others of their kind and managed to "save" backups of the world's people, especially notable strong warriors plucked from the Warp. The world blew up, but Sigmar saved the last bit of it, because he felt it might be important. Maybe a key to a secret weapon against the forces of Chaos?

    The world-that-was was connected to basically a gateway terminal (I might be using the wrong words here?). Effectively, a nexus of connections to various locations. Eight main gates, one connecting to varying "realms" that are, themselves, connections out to more "realms." Many of those realms are other worlds where the Old Ones and Chaos do battle.

    Chaos is taking advantage of the mess left by the death of the Warhammer world to launch an assault on the nexus (the "All-Points"), where they can then launch further assaults into the other realms. They've succeeded in assaulting and capturing various regions, but Sigmar decides to fight back, using technol- er, magic from the Old Ones. Meanwhile, peoples are being recruited from various "realms" (worlds) for the fight, and the Slann are trying to bring back some of history's greatest warriors (which they managed with Sigmar).

    So that's kind of the general gist of it. How does this work for game and background terms?

    1. Unlimited worlds means unlimited potential for new races and factions.
    2. Bringing back dead heroes (and armies) explains not just why various heroes (and villains) are back, but also gives room for adding more new heroes and villains, including some historical ones.
    3. Chaos hasn't "won" all-out, or even close to it, just made big strides, which Sigmar is leading the fight to push back.

    If/when I get significantly bored, I might actually try fleshing that out more. I think it'd make more sense and help tie things together better (and let people with older armies feel like they're not out of place).

    Crazy thoughts, I know. But hey, at least I'm not just complaining mindlessly.

  5. #5
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    Star Wars Stormtrooper armour is sculpted with pecs not boobs and they've got women inside as well don't see why Stormcasts can't be the same.

    I'm well behind on my AoS reading still only half way through my call of Archaon subscription but I hope it continues on the same lines of developing the setting and advancing through the story line. I'm very much hoping the Realmgate wars are a way to introduce and create the setting I'm really liking the use of a narrative rather than a description to introduce the new setting.

    Also intrigued by the Stormcast losing there humanity line I'm wondering if it's to allow the creation of some altogether darker faction maybe Nagash will provide them something to fill the void.
    Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit
    Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.

  6. #6

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    The two audiobooks I've not got yet involve Nagash, and the Stormcast seeking him out.

    I can tell you he's not at all pleased at losing out on dead souls, so looking forward to hearing the rest and seeing what he makes of Stormcast'
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  7. #7

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    Quote Originally Posted by grimmas View Post
    Star Wars Stormtrooper armour is sculpted with pecs not boobs and they've got women inside as well don't see why Stormcasts can't be the same.
    Stormtrooper armor is designed to be as generic as possible. (In their case, removing as many traces of humanity as possible seems to be an end goal.)

    Stormcast armor has not only a male sculpted torso (pretty detailed, too), but also has a helmet designed to resemble a male face.

    You can't equate the two.

    There might be women in those male sets of armor, but I still think it'd be worse if they were forcing women to look like they're men.

  8. #8
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    I'd imagine that it would help to familiarise yourself with the background before making a wishlist of things to add to it, or you might end up wishing for a lot of things that already exist. Erik.

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by Erik Setzer View Post
    Stormtrooper armor is designed to be as generic as possible. (In their case, removing as many traces of humanity as possible seems to be an end goal.)

    Stormcast armor has not only a male sculpted torso (pretty detailed, too), but also has a helmet designed to resemble a male face.

    You can't equate the two.

    There might be women in those male sets of armor, but I still think it'd be worse if they were forcing women to look like they're men.
    Yeah I can. They both got pecs. Which is the only really male or female thing about either. Stormcast masks are androgynous you've just decided they're male there's no male features to them. Now as far as I'm aware no statement on the fact has been made they're just reforged Heros so they may or may not be all male. However their armour is no more or less "male" than Star Wars Stormtroopers.
    Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit
    Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.

  10. #10

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    There's nothing concrete either way.

    However, we're several Stormcast Centric stories in, and no named female Stormcast.

    The legions themselves are referred to as 'men', but nothing to say that's more than just common military parlance.
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