Age of Sigmar: We Need To Talk About ‘The Great Culling’ Of The Miniature Range
At least Games Workshop gave us a more than a year to play with our miniatures before they get sent packing.
In case you missed the news yesterday, Games Workshop announced a bunch of miniatures are getting pulled from the range from Warhammer: Age of Sigmar. There’s a massive list of Stormcast Eternals getting pulled. There’s a ton of Warbands from the Slaves to Darkness going away. The Bonesplitterz are going away. The Skaven are taking some losses (but will hopefully get a ton of those back in new kits). And, perhaps most shockingly, the Beastmen are going bye-bye.
Sort of.
The Beastmen are packing up their Herdstones and pulling out of the Mortal Realms.
Bye-Bye Beastmen
All of these models are moving to Warhammer Legends. At least for Age of Sigmar. However, the Beastmen are in a weird spot. They are actually getting moved back to the Old World. It might take awhile, but their range is basically going to get repackaged with square bases and come back in stock as a Warhammer: The Old World army.
Now, I don’t play Beastmen. But I can still see how this stings for Beastmen players. You spend all that time buying, building, and painting your army for Warhammer: Age of Sigmar. You probably played when the Beastmen weren’t doing too hot. Or maybe you picked them up when they rebounded and were actually a meta army for a hot minute. Either way, you’ve got the “Reverse End Times” problem: round bases for a square based game.
I mean, we did see the Beastmen Brayherds were on the faction list…so maybe we should have seen this coming?
The only silver lining here is that at least Games Workshop gave us all a heads up and a long runway to say good-bye and to get some final games in.
“Two factions, Beasts of Chaos and Bonesplitterz, as well as a number of older Stormcast Eternals from the Sacrosanct and Warrior chambers, will be receiving free-to-download digital battletomes. These will feature new background and rules, and will be considered legal for use in competitive play until summer 2025. At this point they will move over to Warhammer Legends, and will no longer be supported for competitive play. “
So you’ve got until the Summer 2025 for the Beastmen (and the other factions) to still be supported for competitive play. That’s more than a year out. And depending on what happens with the new edition the Beastmen might actually be solid in the new edition, too.
So Long Stormcasts, And Thanks For All The Lightning
The other faction that I think is getting hit the hardest is the Stormcast Eternals. They are getting a TON of units cut from their future army lists. But it seems like folks aren’t as broken up about this cut as the Beastmen. And I kinda get it…
We know the Stormcast Eternals are about to get a bunch of NEW kits for the new edition. We’ve already seen the new Liberators which will be effectively replacing their old kit (so really not a loss at all). A bunch of these units do double-duty with other units now anyhow. And, as of publishing this article, the Stormcast Eternals army has 73 items for sale on Warhammer.com
And yes, some of those are books, dice, and boxed sets — but that’s every army anyhow. The point is their range is MASSIVE. They had the single largest battletome in Age of Sigmar. Frankly, they kinda needed a slim down. Did I think GW would just take a chainsaw to the range and carve them up and toss them? No. I was expecting the different chambers to get broken off as separate battletomes or battletome supplements. Kinda like Space Marines and all those various flavors of Power Armour.
The Culling of the Age of Sigmar Range
But this culling might end up being a lot cleaner in the long run. GW doesn’t have to keep making these old kits and stores don’t have to stock them (if they were even selling them to being with). That’s a win for GW and the store — but a loss for anyone that actually played with these models. So try not to be too hard on those players…
I won’t miss seeing this thing though…
It seems like Games Workshop is taking this new edition launch to not only reset the game rules but also clean house on these kits. While I’m glad for the rules shake-up it, I’m a little sad to see some of these models go. I feel for the folks who have to now jump ship back to the Old World with their Beastmen. And I feel bad for anyone who played with any of these models in their armies. Getting your stuff sent to Warhammer Legends is a death knell for using those models in competitive play. If you’re only playing in the non-tournament scene you’re good to go — and good for you! But for anyone else…yeah, this stinks.
Poor one out for your homies. You’ve got (roughly) a year to make your peace with these models.
