I have not looked at the warseer rumours on this topic but have just seen the vid on the GW site. Its pretty obvious a new Empire book will come at the end of March. I get the impression that there might be more emphasis on warrior priess and witch hunter types. I certainly hope so at least. What do you recon?

31st March is the date for advance orders, release date should be 7th April according to all sources.

List from Whineseer:
Empire Army book 33 EUR
Karl Franz on Death Claw 1 fig. plastic 43 EUR
Empire Celestial Hurricanium/Luminark of Hish 1 fig. plastic 39 EUR (no clue what it is but I guess something like the new VC thingymagic)
Empire Demigryph Knights 3 fig. plastic 43 EUR
Captain plastic 1 fig. 10,5 EU
Engineer plastic 10,5 EUR
Volkar on war altar plastic 1 fig 39 EUR
witch hunter 1 fig resin 13 EUR
Markus Wolfhart 1 fig resin 13 EUR
Empire amber wizard 1 fig resin splash release 13 EUR
Warrior priest 1 fig resin 13 eur

Empire Celestial Hurricanium/Luminark of Hish

Its a big warmachine, rumoured to be a lens type energy weapon. Typical Empire types playing with magical/scienetific engineering

I like the rumor that there will be different warrior priests for the book. Ones for Ulric and ....the death god who's name I just forgot. I hope there is one for Taal, too, but probably not.

Some special rules for different knightly orders. It would be awesome to see a book come out just for special rules and history of special knightly orders. I can almost see it being like different Space Marine chapters, but you can only change so much for Knights without genetic engineering.

Priests of Morr? I wouldn't have thought Taal will get one he's a bit wood elf-y

Priests of Morr, yes! Imagine the anti-Undead people will soon unleash on VC!

I don't see Taal as hippy. I see him as nature and beasts. Just look at Lore of Beasts to see various non-hippy spells. Maybe they can be beast killers?

Och, I don't care really, They'll die the same under Fanatics and Mangler Squigs!!

Seriously, always liked the Empire look, but, I don't know, something has always put me off doing the army for some reason!

Yeah, on the G.W site today there's a teaser trailer for them.

I didn't mean hippy I ment he's very very similar to the elven god Kurnous, plus the Amber wizards are ment to be the wild wizards that live a hermit type life in the Amber hills and other 'wild' areas in and amongst the empire.

Trust me I know the Lore of Beasts (Bretonnians) its anything but pansy. S5, T4 Peasants make a nasty suprise

Empire have already got good access to anti-undead with lore of light however I can see Demigryph Knights being a nice unit of Monstrous Cavalry (damn Empire stealing all my Bret thunder, their Knights better not outclass the chivalry of mine)

Pics are up on Warseer, from WD. :) Damn that Griffon is humongous. Barely fits on a chariot base! :o

Theo

That is one HOOOOOOOOOGE beastie!! :o

Makes the high Elf one look like a Budgie!! :lol:

Still no matter how big it is, it's still ONLY a Griffon, unles there's some uber rules for it in the new book.

I just hope that the cost and amount of artillery they can put on the table is toned down a bit. Right now their warmachines are stupid cheap and a lot of them are special choices. The Empire would be a lot more fun to fight against if they emphasized the infantry blocks, knights, and detachments more than an artillery train.

I almost always beat them when they play a ton of artillery, but it is just not that much fun of a game.

And that is one really big Griffon.

My all-orc army really struggles against a shooty Lvl4 light Waraltar list. Nothing but massacres yet. :( Rocketbattery kills like 15+ guys every turn, the other shooting whittles down my supportunits and when I get into combat 30 Flaggellants with Timewarp is no fun! xD I hope the Waraltar is just for Volkmar now, but I'm sure it isn't.

Theo

that sure is one big chicken :)

and looking at the modeli think you can count on it having some special rules.

Just saw a lot of the various pics. Looks like they are getting some crazy big contraptions like the celestial wagon thing and the wagon with the archimedes mirror gun thing. Looks like they are getting monstrous cavalry in the form of demi-griffon riders. The models looked pretty cool.

I have more hope now that the Empire army is moving away from such a gun-line oriented force. I just can't stand gun-lines since one player pretty much plays Yahtzee while the other actually plays Warhammer - just not fun at all.

Is it me or does the griffon head look small?

Regardless, although I don't personally like the models that much (personal taste), I think they do a great job of being thematic for the empire and help really give the empire its own style. They remind me of the old Mordheim drawings.

Think it might be partially the angle, but yeah the head does look too small. :unsure:

Theo

Eh...so far the new empire stuff is alright, demigryphs aside however the griffons are kinda overdone in their pose IMO as their chest is too puffed up, making their heads really look out of proportion to the rest of their immense bodies.

The wizard stuff is kinda weird with the chariots and whatnot; especially the giant magnifying glass laser cannon of doom for the light wizards.

One thing that really has me excited is how the plastic Karl Franz and Volkmar shows that GW is willing to make plastic kits for special characters, meaning it is very possible that if we get a new plastic Gobbo chariot it could very well have Grom in it as well.

If anything this makes me feel sad that our release was lacklustre in terms of plastics since we never got any new plastic common gobbo regiments or heroes as well as squigs. Ah well, maybe in the next wave for OnG I guess.

That Griffin model is straight up fugly. It is so close to awesome in a host of ways, but the over-puffed chest, silly pose, tiny head, and other things all contribute to make me really dislike it. Not a fan of any of the chariot-things either. The lens-cannon is just silly, the other two look like circus wagons :P

I actually like the demigryph knights, although it does seem like GW is trying a little to hard to each new book have a new big kit, a monstrous unit, etc. Like they are writing the books around the models instead of vice versa (which, of course, makes sound business sense as they get to sell more shiny models). Oh well.

I dunno, if you look at the anatomy of a bird you will see that they generally have small heads. I dont think the model is ugly by a long shot although it does look large especially compared to the elf ones. The other goodies look okay. I am not going to be rushing to buy the new large kit. The other characters and hero releases sound pretty good though. Its a shame we didnt get that kind of love'in when our book came out. My only gripe would be no war wagon still. I used to like them, in fact I had the model once upon a time.

I think the kit with the giant mirror apparatus is pretty cool as it is obviously inspired by the legend of the array of mirrors heat-ray that Archimedes is claimed to have used against the Romans in the siege of Syracuse. I think that sort of thing completely fits the arcane science/invention theme that the Empire has.

I think it is rather cool that they are emphasizing the various colleges of magic a bit more than they have done in the past. There has been plenty of artwork of giant crazy arcane inventions carried on wagons in the past. But the only representation that the colleges of magic have ever really had in the game were individual wizard models. This looks to me like a good way to bring some of those crazier contraptions from the artwork onto the tabletop and let the colleges of magic show off a bit more.

I hope for the sake of the Empire players that those things are some sort of special/rare warmachine thing and not just a mount for a wizard character. Anything that brings more variety to the Empire armies I tend to see on the table is a good thing.

I like some of the new contraptions, but the new griffon is silly due to tiny head. I know eagles have small heads but a gryphon is not shaped like an eagle. The size of the head needs to relate to the body as a whole not just the front half. I don't know why they struggle so much with monsters, the chimera and manticore were pretty below par as well.

I was not a big fan of the Manticore either, but I did like the Chimera. That said, if I was looking for a Chimera model I would get the Bane Legions one first as I prefer the classic mythological look for the monsters taken from mythology. The Bane Legion manticore is pretty spectacular as well.

I'm very fond of the Demi-gryph-knights myself, even though it seems every army gets a bit more same-y, with big kits/Monstrous Inf./Cav. The new characters look really nice though, and I'm very happy that KF and Volkmar are getting an update. Also, all three wagons and griffons are from the same two kits? Somewhat stretching the multi-use theme IMHO...

I just wonder if they get any regular troops as well.

They already have plenty of those. All their infantry is already plastic and there's plenty to choose from. Most are pretty good kits too.

Why did they make one with 2 heads? If the empire don't figure out thats Tzeench's favorite pastime to do to animals then they need to go back to church.

Unfortunately the twoheaded one is the one which head(s) seems to be in proportion to the rest of the body.

Can't say I'm a big fan of the other things. It seems GW realised that ordinary cavalry recived a major nerf in 8th and so now they compensate with montrous cav instead.

As for the wagons... well let's just say I can't look at the lasercanon one without thinking that Superman is using it to dry his laundry, but thats just me :)

Oh well, GW models were allways a bit Hit'n miss and as long as every model is someones hit then that is fine.

According to an article showing the release schedule on Bell of Lost Souls there will be a new box of plastic knights and new plastic bowmen along with a whole lot of finecast releases. I noticed the Halfling Hot Pot was on the finecast list, so it looks like they are keeping the halflings around in some fashion.

Good to hear about the knights as the current models are very old and not on the same scale with other stuff anymore. The current empire horses are pretty static and dull as well.

Looking a the Gryphon again and the head does look too small for an eagle - which tend to have rather large heads. The chest is puffed out, but not any more than is normal for birds.

I think what is throwing off the model visually (and I agree that something does look off) is a combination of the shape of the head, the small size of the head, and the breast-plate on the beast making it's chest overexaggerating the puffed out chest look.

I think the shape of the head is one of the biggest problems. It has a head shaped like a chicken and not an eagle. A quick look through google images confirms this. The gryphon looks like a giant chicken instead of a giant eagle. It is a very well sculpted chicken - but still looks like a chicken.

But I guess that is good news for anyone making a "goblin" empire army - as giant chickens would fit that theme pretty well.

This made my day.

Seriously. Does this remind you of anything empire related:

http://wyrd-games.net/shop/War-Rooster.html

And as a Malifaux player with a huge Gremlin force - I absolutely love the mini in the above link!

I will agree that the griffon kit is ugly, imo. And I do like the demi-griffons. But... I WANT NEW STUFF!!!

Oh, and I really like all the options for the multi-kit mage wagon (that's what I'm calling it.) Cool enough to be pretty much a collector's piece, I think.

All this talk about the new Griffon kit, remember the FRONT half IS a bird, therefore it would follow the laws of nature (even for a mythical beastie) the head would be bird like.

The back end is an animal NOT a bird, therefore it's proportions would be different.
It is a Chimera, a melding of two different animals.

However the following statement is highly recommended when thinking aobut the Griffon: IT'S ONLY A MODEL...

The models look promising, I can't wait to face them on the battle field and crush them :)

Hah!

If I had more money I would so make that into a Mangler squig.

The goblin thing in the bunny costume seriously creeps me out! If I saw that across the table from me I would probbly respond with disproportionate force just to get it off the table!

I have an Empire army and think it's great to have monstrous cav. But as an Orc player I have to wait for 9th to get monstrous cav :huh: Seems that Orcs are a more natural force to field something monstrous. Ok I know it's possible to have a unit of Goblin Big Bosses on Giga spidas but forest goblins on on Giga spidas as a unit would have been fun. Oh well I look forward to playing with and against the Empire stuff.

ahhhhhhhh next army please
There was nothing there to see

The models are up for pre-order on the GW website now :)

360degree images of some of the plastic kits, and sprue shots show that there is a lot of scope for using bitz for all manner of awesome conversions - especially from the War Altar and its variants!

Really makes me wish we'd gotten some new plastic character kits - but there's still plenty of time for that to happen. Heck, someone on Warseer commented that they'd like to see a plastic Grom / basic Goblin chariot kit. I'd love to see GW make us one of those too, now that there's precedent with Karl Franz and Volkmar in plastic :D

Im actually liking the new Empire stuff (though the 2 headed griffon seems a bit weird), that witch hunter is amzing! :D

Here's a quick question, has any one seen the new war altar and thought 'Im definitely gonna loot that!'

It would make for a very bling ride for any Goblin that's for sure. Or a Pump Wagon even!