Thursday 6 February 2014

Rumour discussion - 40K knights and the Militarium Astra


I thought I would just have a brief discussion about the exciting rumours that have been flying around of late. They can broadly be divided into two as the title of the post suggests and so I will take them one at a time.

Knights for 40k

The rumour is something along the lines of a reinvisaged Knight being released as a dataslate for use (presumably) alongside all of the Imperial armies. As an Epic fan of old I think this would be an amazing release. But how likely is it to be true?

For: it's a large kit which would be perfect as a new unit to add to the imperial side (supposedly as tall as a wraithknight) if not as a lord of war for use in escalation. Outrageous pricing and bold new directions seem to be the new thing for GW and so a dataslate in a WD later released for digital does seem plausible.  

Against: this is one of those rumours which almost seems too good to be true. Despite GW being rather unpredictable of late this would be the first instance of them releasing a model in quite this fashion and so until it happens salt should be applied. If and when it does though, all bets are off for what we can expect in future!

Militarium Astra

Apparantly the new renamed Imperial Guard. There are several aspects to these rumours and so I shall consider each in turn

Naming - the name would fit with the nomenclature used in the Imperium and actually there is precedent for a more wide-reaching name to be used, particularly as units from the Imperial Navy, Imperial Guard, auxillia, PDF, penal legions etc are all encompassed within. It would also be a more unique name (other franchises use the term) which GW tend to like. However, it may mean renaming a lot of boxed sets.

Dropping regiments - now, this will have a lot of people upset if it happens and I personally don't think all the unique regiment appearances will be scrapped in favour of all and sundry wearing the same standard issue gear. There would be an arguement for it, as GW could then just produce the one line of cadians taking up less shelf space. It would also discourage people from using 3rd party models if the background was that they all dress and equip the same. I'm skeptical, however I can certainly see Catachans going to direct only. Greatcoat guard I doubt will turn up the same time as a codex at least, mainly due to the amount of units that need replacing. 

Ogryn boxed set - a very plausible dual build set to remove the current metals. 

New tank and flyer - I can see a new tank being on the agenda as GW likes big kits these days. A new flyer would also bolster the naval part of the book (thunderbolt please!)

Veterans/stormtroopers - a much anticipated kit which will hopefully build half decent arbites too. Penal legion and the likes of Bastonne I fear may be getting the Mycetic spore treatment.

So exciting times with the advent of weekly releases and the hyper codex release schedule. I'm also hoping that a second nid and CSM wave will be hitting before the year's out too. 

2 comments:

  1. I highly doubt that they going to completely disregard almost 20 years of fluff just to save shelf space. Then again I've been surprised by GW before

    ReplyDelete
  2. Way I see it is that they;ve already discontinued most of the metal regiments stuff rather than finecasting it and catachans have been frequently identified as a poor seller relative to the cadians. I'd hate to see the regimental variation disappear but it would fit with streamlining the range sadly.

    ReplyDelete