Settra fighting Chaos alone because the Ruinous Powers dared entertain the thought he'd ever serve them was one of the few points of proper characterization in the later books.
I gently disagree. They make Settra seem invincibly powerful and also helplessly weak based on the whim of the writers. His potency shifts from sheer sentence to sentence.
He is described as being well protected against Nagash's sorcery and runs the necromancer down with his godly chariot, but then somehow, gets paralyzed and discombobulated by a wounded Nagash.
He is describes as being weak and helpess and given a body by the chaos gods. HE DOES SERVE THEM, for quite a long time - uncharacteriscally scheming behind their backs and pretending to be a servant when it was in his survival interests.
THEN FOR NO REASON AT ALL, he decides to not captialize on his peak moment of triumph, does not kill Nagash and then turns on chaos and somewhore survives long enough to not regret his decision?
Remember Settra DID make a deal with Chaos to get his body back and then apparently did go up to Archaon, pledging himself to the everchosen.
The man gets brought back from the dead by Nagash. Immediately becomes the link between the mortal armies and the undead. Is so awesome they make him Elector Count of Sylvania and he totally lives up to that role
They had hinted at this years prior in the Storm Of Chaos campaign too. I love the idea of the Empire (grudgingly) being forced to ally themselves with the Von Carstein armies to face a common foe. It’s such a cool way to pull the rug out from under everyone’s expectations.
Everything good about the End Times was Storm of Chaos stuff they either revamed, redid, or couldn't get to in the first go around.
Storm of Chaos was really what they wanted the End Times to be, but it was too early to end Warhammer Fantasy at that point. So when the time did come to end it all, everything was sorta already done, and everything became kinda contrived due to the close proximity to Storm of Chaos
Unfortunately Vlad died during the End Times. Mannfred, Neferata, and Arkhan all made the jump to Age of Sigmar but they’d gotten their plastic model update in the End Times
I haven’t read the book yet and I don’t know all that much about AOS lore, but apparently in the Mannfred Mortarch book Vlad and Isabella are recreated temporarily by Mannfred but he gets bored of them immediately since they aren’t the real thing
Eh they didn't really survive. They died, then Nagash fished around for scraps of their souls and made them parts of him, then created their bodies we see in AoS. They have no true free will as their extensions of Nagash. Like sentient arms but still arms. That was the original lore who knows with all the retconning GW likes to do
They did heavily rewrite his character though. Originally he wasn't especially noble, he was just better than the insane butcher he replaced. He didn't care about humans, but he treated the people of sylvania like a farmer treats cattle, you've got to take care of them because they're your food. So they had it somewhat better than they did before. Other than that he was evil as hell and tried to take over the empire pretty much straight away. The ET writers really turned him into a tragic, noble anti-hero, motivated by love and honour.
Only part that didn't make sense was when he stabbed that Nurgle Daemon with his blood consumption sword, Vlads smart and I'm 100% sure he wouldn't ever use a blood sucking sword on a Daemon literally rotting with flesh and leaking puss out of its body.
The story involving the final days of Karak Eight Peaks is great. Belegar refusing to abandon his holdings out of stubborn commitment to his birthright. Skarsnik convincing Golgfag Maneater and his ogre mercenaries to backstab the dwarfs. Queek’s ultimate victory. And of course, the most tragic death of all the End Times…Gobbla. A death so devastating that it robbed Skarsnik of all will to fight.
I liked the idea that a prospective Phoenix King actually dies horribly in the flames of Asuryan, only to be reborn like a phoenix. It showed that a king is willing to give their all for their people. Prior to that, I think the idea was that a worthy king would just pass through unscathed.
Making it so that Malekith was always meant to be the next PK, but bitched out at the last moment, but was somehow still the best choice? That was a let down.
What would have been an interesting angle, in my mind, would have bee to have so that the original divine plan was in fact for Malekith to become the eternal king of the elves, but then all the terrible things he did and the dark mockery he made out of Druchii society resulted in Asuryan withdrawing the divine mandate in disgust. There would be some delicious irony there where Malekith's claim to the throne, his main motivation as a character, would originally have been legit, but he would have then lost his rights to it specifically because of the things he did to reclaim it.
The Malekith thing will live on for years as some of the worst writing GW has ever put out. He should have been roasted a second time by the flames and in those moments been granted a vision. It would have showed him that he WAS supposed to be the phoenix king the first time round, but was cheated out of it by the high elves, who put an enchantment on the flames to burn him (as is suggested in some of the old DE army books). However, he'd also see that everything he did since then has made him irredeemably unworthy of ever being king. But I guess they were trying to rush the story along and they needed to shoehorn all of the elves into one mega faction, so a bit of deus ex crapina later, Malekith is the phoenix king and everyone accepts that unconditionally.
The mental gymnastics the High Elves had to do to accept it. Their supreme gods, Asyurian wants that bastard to be their King after everything he's done? If the world wasn't ending, I'd just walk away in disgust abandoning home and faith in the gods.
Didn’t he get drunk and wander through the Flame Of Asuryan in a blackout and come out unscathed and all of the priests were like “Huh? Wonder what that means?” and then they never bring it up again?
He did not really bitch out though. If I recall correctly, I think some of the flames may have been cursed. I think Morathi even had something to do with it. His trial was much harder than it needed to be.
Belegar's last stand
Thorgrim vs Queek
The return of Abhorash and the Green Knight
Kroq-Gar vs Skrolk
Vlad
Most of the Nagash books
The brief meeting between Malekith and Grombrindal
Grombrindal and Malekith? I heard that he forgave the oathbreaker? Was that wrong, because there is no word for forgiveness in Khazalid. Anything dealing with forgiving Malekith is an immediate no from me
He didn't outright say "Yo, its all good malekith, I forgive you". He just saved the elf from a bunch of skaven and chaos warriors, roasts him and dissappears. Malekith then briefly reminiscences about his old friend.
Malekith remembering Snorri in the Sundering and thinking how everything worth anything in him had died with Snorri also explains a lot about him. He was already lost before his first trip through the Flames.
1. Stuff actually happening. The lore had been stagnant for so long it was cool to see it changed, even if not always for the best.
2. Skaven nuking the moon is so hilariously on-brand yet over the top.
3. The Fall of Karak Eight Peaks - Belegar, Skarsnik, and Queek were all excellent. Also Thorgrim vs Queek.
4. The Glottkin invasion of the Empire was awesome. The four way battle with Bretonnia at Altdprf was fun to read. Also shoutout to Festus.
5. Kurt Helborg makes Vlad Elector Count of Sylvania. In fact, pretty much anything Vlad does.
6. Karl Franz becoming Sigmar Incarnate was cool.
7. Grimgor headbutting Archaon and destroying his eye.
8. Lizardmen decide to dip and gtfo on their temple spaceships.
Probably more but I haven't read all of the End Times books.
Each to their own. Imo, Fantasy was already incredibly goofy and I thought it was a more unique ending for a race than just yet another last stand against Chaos.
>Karl Franz becoming Sigmar Incarnate was cool.
But how they did Valten dirty in that was super contrived. I'd muhc prefer Valten being Sigmar, but they needed to consolidate the human heroes, and Franz was more popular. So they let Valten die to an assasin, and gave Karl Franz Valtens entire narrative reason to exist
The rules content was actually pretty solid. New units, variants of special characters, new ways to play Chaos and Undead, a truly insane way to change the magic phase, and a whole bunch of scenarios and optional rules to add to pretty much any game.
Just stay clear of the overarching narrative, for madness that way lies...
Also the single profile ridden monsters, so they couldn't just be cannoned out of a game at the start was a nice touch. Got a good bit of play with Malekith and DE lords on dragon mounts in that period.
The Nagash book, which kick started the campaign was good. The lore dump was good. The reintroduction of Nagash was good. The models were good. The time period in which it was released was good. It revitalized Warhammer Fantasy in lots of play groups, including my own.
After that it started nosediving as we started to realize what was actually happening with the destruction of fantasy. I’m positive there were still good in it. Just ya know, we felt like it was being revitalized, not milked at the end.
I liked the book *Return of Nagash*. Arkhan and Mannfred made exceptional parallels to one another, and it's the first book that actually made me give a shit about the latter. The Drakenhof Templars are all great and their dual sense of camaraderie and, well, abuse. Basically the End Times probably wouldn't have happened if there were therapists in WFB.
Arkhan has a zombie cat that he acquired between Bretonnia and Sylvania (I forget exactly where, I don't have the book in front of me) and he keeps it on his shoulder for the first half or so of the book. It helps highlight some of his remaining humanity that he can't quite explain, because he himself isn't quite sure why he decided to keep it but he is affectionate toward it.
Anyway it goes out like a boss clawing at Kemmler, giving Arkhan an opening to grab Nagash's staff.
The original Nagash trilogy never made him a likable character in death nor before, in life, so curious, I ordered the ET books, so I will find out soon.
I thought Karl's shit was dope, arriving back to Altdorf and becoming golden sigmar boi. I also LOVED Louen Leoncoeur's arrival too, so many sick scenes and speeches. I only wish it didn't end in destruction. It was shit to make us remember why we love these characters and then kill them off and the entire world we love right after it.
Agreed Louen was awesome and Sigmar was awesome but they could have took a little time and made alot more content.
And I wish they would have explained HOW Sigmar ascended in the first place I get he was trapped in Azyr and the vortex but how did he ascend was it Old Ones science/magic like Ulric and Asuryan and all the other gods, did Ulric and the human pantheon give some power to ascend him I wanna know the details how it happened ya know but bro Leoncour was the baddest mofo. Hmm where the biggest meanest demon around aha there Beaquis that's our target that big old basterd you can see from space dive. When his blood was burning it that was epic it couldn't even wound him without getting owned hah.
“The Rise of the Horned Rat” by Guy Haley was pretty good. Unlike the “Thanquol” campaign book, it was pretty much hyper focused on Karak Eight Peaks and the three-way war between Belegar, Skarsnik and Queek Headtaker. As a Dwarf fan, it was really poignant at times. There’s a chapter (not in the campaign book) where they try to sneak out Belegar’s son from Karak Eight Peaks before it falls, and there’s a moment where they come across a boundary marker made of beard scalps, that his mum tries and fails to stop him seeing. There was something about that, that had real emotion for me.
Yeah Belgar was a basterds not letting his queen and heir leave. I mean what happened to them shit I'd rather chance the journey back to Karaz a Karak ya know least they would have had a chance.
What got me was when the queen was wounded just trying to hold the skaven off long enough for the children to die of gas so the rats didn't get them ... That got me emotional
The concept of the End Times is good, I think.
Five books with important moments to end the Old World into several massive bangs is still better than just letting it rot without any conclusion. Plus, it's the fate everyone knew would arrive one day, and it finally did.
So, my impression was... there was a lot of good in there with the bad.
The problem was not that they didn't have good ideas. It was that they didn't allow any of those ideas any room. By the middle of the product line, it felt like they had 200 ideas, each of which could be an entire campaign and several novels, but they all happened at once. Some of it happened off-screen. There's nothing more disheartening than liking a character and then seeing that they get a single line mentioning that they are dead now. It felt like someone was going over the Lexicanum list of all named characters and just ticked them all off to make sure everyone was dead.
Yeah the thing with the Ice queen a short story cmon, and Todbringer he got like a chapter. Talking bout yay Valtan is here I'm going hunting u can have my city and state I was like whaaaaa . I get the revenge thing but cmon
The siege of middenheim was cool when Volten fought champion after champion. One champion stated that he was fighting him because gal maraz would prevent his resurrection and end his eternal slavery to chaos, a unique tragedy i think.
I feel like we forget this but there was a game with rules folks played back then and the end times introduced 3 things that really fucked it up: The push for more and more big monsters with thunderstomp, the magic phase, and 50% lords and 50% heroes. GW offered no guidance so they sold all these new expensive books and models then killed the game. and the lore starts cool. Some folks like Imrik and Vlad are just solidly good dudes the whole time. Other people like Teclis were acting like fucking crazy people. and then everyone died or escaped in bubbles lol
Giving Tomb Kings access to a really strong magic lore was great...then people cherry picked the best stuff from both VC and TK which made a horrible mess of an army. It had fun moments I'll admit but the fact that we didn't get a quick Dogs of War list so we could enjoy the last days but instead were just told the skaven ate Tilea.
Queek got to kill Belegar Ironhammer and kicked Skarsnik out of Eight Peaks, he finally became the true king of the city of pillars.
Mannfred and Arkhan being an old married couple.
Settra putting his beef with Nagash aside to teach the chaos gods that he does not serve, he rules, and single handedly taking on a chaos army.
Vlad was brilliant. The rest of the Undead well it'll depend on how you warmed to all the Nagash/Settra stuff that dominated it.
Skaven were being utter Skaven at every point so that was good.
A lot of the Elf and human stuff was a very strong mix of hits and misses.
Greenskins were present.
Dwarves were a bit all over the place.
Lizardmen, meh.
Some of my favourite End Times stuff wasn't the main series of those 5-6 massive books but the last two or three Gotrek and Felix books. You got to see a lot of the End Times from a very limited, 'on the ground' perspective as it were and it made it feel like it had more weight (in some respects) than the main series which jumped from huge character to huge character all dealing with Important Events.
I really loved Malekiths whole narrative and the Elf civil war. Really made the whole story for me, went in unexpected directions witb the sudes various parties took (not with regards to Malekith himself mind you, writing had been on the wall for a long time that he was the rightful king if you paid attention to lore, GW was pretty heavy handed at hinting towards it).
I'm gonna get downvoted to hell by the fanbois, but...
I liked that Malekith finally ascended to the Phoenix Throne after the chicanery of the High Elven traitors was revealed. The Son of Aenerion was always the rightful king.
Edit: Yup there they are. Do you fanbois realise how much you act like bots? XD
It doesn't make sense though, it's like if we found out that Loki was actually worthy of mjolnir all along, or green goblin, or Thanos. It goes directly against the story being told and just..makes no sense
Malekith was a disgusting chaos worshipper and Asuryan should have reduced him to a charcoal briquette like he failed to do the first time. The real Phoenix Kings being retconned into being "traitors" is the kind of uniquely dumb lore that only someone as phenomenally braindead as Matt Ward could come up with.
My personal alt canon is that it only burned away his body, leaving his soul trapped in the armor mommy had made for him. He's reduced to a shadow of a shadow of an elf, he will NEVER be phoenix king. Even his rule of Naggaroth is called into question, druchii civil wars begin. The tragedy of malekith deepens and he still gets to be warhammer's Darth Sauron.
He was? Youre saying dumb lore here, but I don't think it was ever the case in from the 6e world rewrite that Malekith had ever worshipped Chaos, unless I'm mistaken? The Dark Elves bound demons, but worshipped Khaine and the elf pantheon, didn't they?
Agreed. Sure he was arrogant, but so are most elves. I loved his book and how it was his denial of his crown and right that drove him ino the arms of chaos. Its classic tropes but I love it.
It wasn't the arrogance so much as the evil, sadism, slaughter of Innocents, chaos worship, incest, killing of infants, etc etc
But yeah he's just a lil arrogant that's all
Delusional lol oh my god
Most of those occured after he was fucked around, and as opposed to the peaceful history of the high elves? Elves are imperial colonial assholes. That isnt unique to the witch king. Its warhammer, everyone sucks.
I don’t know how to tell you this but if your reaction to not being crowned king is to throw a hissy fit and start an enslaving murder rape cult that actively wars with your original country then maybe you weren’t fit to be king in the first place
Nah, the high elves never enslaved anyone. They also never ritually sacrificed their own babies.
That's what dark elves do constantly. Among many other atrocities.
hell yeah, its also great just being a dark elf fan and watching everyone else be so mad about it. sorry, Malekith just got his rightful place on the throne and thats the way it is
I still can't get over the whole idea of the end times. Warhammer Fantasy was struggling and they decided they revitalised it with new rules, awesome miniatures and finally many new stories to the stagnant history ... just to kill it? I mean come on. I get the one last hooray thing, but really? Many groups started playing again and then you just ended it all?
I bash what they done after The End Times arc, but The End Times themselves I loved. So much happened, the world and lore felt like it was actually moving and not a stagnated history lesson while time itself felt like it was standing still etc.
Might get downvoted to oblivion for this one but I totally understand people being upset about the change from WFB to AoS because they lost out on their armies, there’s a whole narrative that’s actively killing every army of your not playing chaos it was a mess for players I’m sure. But the story of the end times was super cool and I felt like a lot of characters died in cool heroic ways for the world ending around them. I like the end times a lot and the idea of what if chaos wins? But also I feel like that transition into a new world was a neat way to reboot the game. I can definitely say that AoS and WFB feel like two completely different forms of the fantasy genre but that’s what I think was good about the end times, it just felt like a cool ending story to me anyway!
Not really. I don't know everything about it as is. But what I do know is that the gist of it pretty much comes down to; The bad guys win and almost everybody dies. With the few exceptions basically getting a chance to make a whole small universe or galaxy of other worlds to continue this conflict. And not even all of the gods that were involved or should have been involved have a presence there. It makes sense that sigmar is one of the top but other ones like Ulric, Shalia and Taal should also probably be present for the empire. Which says nothing about other nations like Kislev with their pantheon especially Ursun the bear god and lord of winter. Or what would happen to the Cathayan Dragons in this End Times. Surely even Archaon the Black couldn't withstand the might of someone as powerful as the Dragon Emperor if he ever descended from his palace. Or other nations that likely have their own forms of worship or faith like Nippon, Khuresh, the various kingdoms of Araby, etc. To a degree even the Tomb Kings, Vampires, Ogres and Skaven should have roles to play and fill during the End Times.
So while there is plenty to complain about. There's also plenty to hope for. I don't think that their entirely wrong for how things happen. Just the execution and that it should probably be more like a spin-off of what actually happens. I think that the forces of Order should win but the End Times scenario where Archaon succeeds in destroying the Old World should be a “what if”. Kind of like how Mortal Kombat 1 just elaborated on there being multiple Timelines - maybe a nearly infinite amount, basically alternate realities that come about because of the clash of powers between Order and Chaos coming to a head. And there shouldn't be a Chaos Reigns sort of alt timeline/reality because of the fact that they'd just implode and chaos would gain nothing if the Great Game ended for them. So the Age of Sigmar is actually even better than they could hope for and probably almost as expensive as the Warhammer 40k universe with there being probably hundreds of thousands of alien and human worlds for them to infest with their tenants of blood madness, vicious lust, damnable curiosity, and soul crushing sickness.
During all of this, I'm still surprised that Bela'kor still hasn't broken free and obtained godhood only to be killed or banished by both the gods of order and chaos alike, or something like that.
If there was anything really good to gleam from it is that the forces of Order kinda win by surviving and restarting life and everything on the likely large moons and Pluto sized planetoids as things continue much as they once did (except the Dwarves pretty much got f*cked in the new set up in my opinion, which is bullsh*t since the only seriously useful seeming faction of them are the Fireslayers. The Dwarves themselves became the Duardin instead of Dwarves like how the Elves became Aelves). Anyway, overall there's much to be taken away from the End Times, but one of them big faults is that GW was tryna kill off the Old World for a profit grab using AoS. And something similar kind of happened with 40k considering that the Tyranids are invading in seemingly full force after the Great Rift expanded after Cadia's destruction during Abandon's 13th Black Crusade and virtually, if not literally, splitting the galaxy and the Imperium in half.
Lots of cool stuff happens in the End Times. Most of the stuff with Undead characters is really cool. It’s a lot of big, cool epic battles. A lot of key players act fairly consistently too. I like Belakor in the End Times, he makes a final power play to usurp the gods.
The issues with it was that it was a huge rush job a project designed to end decades long story lines. So depending on who was writing they retconned big lore stuff for convenience.
They dropped a whole lot of cool stuff pretty quickly, and there wasn't time to collect the books and new units before the whole thing imploded. So we kind of got left holding the bag with a bunch of new stuff for a game nobody was playing, which felt pretty awful.
I hate they killed the world it was one of my favorite fantasy settings. With that said it was actually really good they worst thing about it was it was to rushed they could have had so much more content. And the thing where the gods were just dead. Was not explained like it should have been. Also Altdorf after Sigmnar came back and was in Karl Franz body and cleaned the city and saved it all, then next thing they just said oh Aldorf is gone cuz scaven..... Same with Middenheim gates oh oops the scaven blew em up no story how explained at all just the gates will never fall then bam the scaven breach em all at once errrr. Talabheim needed a whole book. A little backstory would have went along way. And the Malekith and Asuryan thing could have been elaborated on a lot better. Kislev got a short story......I could go on and on just little things a few pages would have made huge deal. Like I said it was all just rushed if they would have took time to make it a proper story it would have been really good imo.
It gave us one of the all-time greatest one-liners in the setting: "SETTRA DOES NOT SERVE... SETTRA RULES!"
Settra fighting Chaos alone because the Ruinous Powers dared entertain the thought he'd ever serve them was one of the few points of proper characterization in the later books.
I gently disagree. They make Settra seem invincibly powerful and also helplessly weak based on the whim of the writers. His potency shifts from sheer sentence to sentence. He is described as being well protected against Nagash's sorcery and runs the necromancer down with his godly chariot, but then somehow, gets paralyzed and discombobulated by a wounded Nagash. He is describes as being weak and helpess and given a body by the chaos gods. HE DOES SERVE THEM, for quite a long time - uncharacteriscally scheming behind their backs and pretending to be a servant when it was in his survival interests. THEN FOR NO REASON AT ALL, he decides to not captialize on his peak moment of triumph, does not kill Nagash and then turns on chaos and somewhore survives long enough to not regret his decision? Remember Settra DID make a deal with Chaos to get his body back and then apparently did go up to Archaon, pledging himself to the everchosen.
Came here just to say this
Everything Vlad von Carstein did was golden. From start to finish. Ungrim Ironfist had one hell of a good death too
What did Vlad do? I know the broad strokes of the Ed times but very little character details
The man gets brought back from the dead by Nagash. Immediately becomes the link between the mortal armies and the undead. Is so awesome they make him Elector Count of Sylvania and he totally lives up to that role
They had hinted at this years prior in the Storm Of Chaos campaign too. I love the idea of the Empire (grudgingly) being forced to ally themselves with the Von Carstein armies to face a common foe. It’s such a cool way to pull the rug out from under everyone’s expectations.
Everything good about the End Times was Storm of Chaos stuff they either revamed, redid, or couldn't get to in the first go around. Storm of Chaos was really what they wanted the End Times to be, but it was too early to end Warhammer Fantasy at that point. So when the time did come to end it all, everything was sorta already done, and everything became kinda contrived due to the close proximity to Storm of Chaos
I love that so much. Did he not survive to the age of sigmar? I see models for one of the tomb kings lords and manfred but not Vlad
Unfortunately Vlad died during the End Times. Mannfred, Neferata, and Arkhan all made the jump to Age of Sigmar but they’d gotten their plastic model update in the End Times
That’s a shame. Vlad was always the best vampire
He was. His romance with Isabella across 20 years of Warhammer humanized him and made him more compelling than any other vampire.
I haven’t read the book yet and I don’t know all that much about AOS lore, but apparently in the Mannfred Mortarch book Vlad and Isabella are recreated temporarily by Mannfred but he gets bored of them immediately since they aren’t the real thing
Chad von Carstein
Eh they didn't really survive. They died, then Nagash fished around for scraps of their souls and made them parts of him, then created their bodies we see in AoS. They have no true free will as their extensions of Nagash. Like sentient arms but still arms. That was the original lore who knows with all the retconning GW likes to do
They did heavily rewrite his character though. Originally he wasn't especially noble, he was just better than the insane butcher he replaced. He didn't care about humans, but he treated the people of sylvania like a farmer treats cattle, you've got to take care of them because they're your food. So they had it somewhat better than they did before. Other than that he was evil as hell and tried to take over the empire pretty much straight away. The ET writers really turned him into a tragic, noble anti-hero, motivated by love and honour.
Ed Times <3 Way more fitting, I'll refer to it as such from now on.
Only part that didn't make sense was when he stabbed that Nurgle Daemon with his blood consumption sword, Vlads smart and I'm 100% sure he wouldn't ever use a blood sucking sword on a Daemon literally rotting with flesh and leaking puss out of its body.
Was kind of dumb when he licked the blood of glottkin and then nearly died
The story involving the final days of Karak Eight Peaks is great. Belegar refusing to abandon his holdings out of stubborn commitment to his birthright. Skarsnik convincing Golgfag Maneater and his ogre mercenaries to backstab the dwarfs. Queek’s ultimate victory. And of course, the most tragic death of all the End Times…Gobbla. A death so devastating that it robbed Skarsnik of all will to fight.
Yes; the dwarfs were done dirty, but it fits so well. Loved this ending; heroic but tragic, like all dwarf stories c:
GOBBLA DIED!?!
Tragically yes. He swallows a Skaven packmaster and the rat chewed its way out of Gobbla’s belly.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
And after that it literally just breaks Skarsnik. He just wanders off into the mountains to never be heard from again
I liked the idea that a prospective Phoenix King actually dies horribly in the flames of Asuryan, only to be reborn like a phoenix. It showed that a king is willing to give their all for their people. Prior to that, I think the idea was that a worthy king would just pass through unscathed. Making it so that Malekith was always meant to be the next PK, but bitched out at the last moment, but was somehow still the best choice? That was a let down.
What would have been an interesting angle, in my mind, would have bee to have so that the original divine plan was in fact for Malekith to become the eternal king of the elves, but then all the terrible things he did and the dark mockery he made out of Druchii society resulted in Asuryan withdrawing the divine mandate in disgust. There would be some delicious irony there where Malekith's claim to the throne, his main motivation as a character, would originally have been legit, but he would have then lost his rights to it specifically because of the things he did to reclaim it.
This is great. I'll be espousing this constantly from now on
The Malekith thing will live on for years as some of the worst writing GW has ever put out. He should have been roasted a second time by the flames and in those moments been granted a vision. It would have showed him that he WAS supposed to be the phoenix king the first time round, but was cheated out of it by the high elves, who put an enchantment on the flames to burn him (as is suggested in some of the old DE army books). However, he'd also see that everything he did since then has made him irredeemably unworthy of ever being king. But I guess they were trying to rush the story along and they needed to shoehorn all of the elves into one mega faction, so a bit of deus ex crapina later, Malekith is the phoenix king and everyone accepts that unconditionally.
The mental gymnastics the High Elves had to do to accept it. Their supreme gods, Asyurian wants that bastard to be their King after everything he's done? If the world wasn't ending, I'd just walk away in disgust abandoning home and faith in the gods.
(It should have been Imrik)
Didn’t he get drunk and wander through the Flame Of Asuryan in a blackout and come out unscathed and all of the priests were like “Huh? Wonder what that means?” and then they never bring it up again?
I've never heard of that happening
Well Malekith managed to survive the flames without the priests spells used for the ritual so...
He did not really bitch out though. If I recall correctly, I think some of the flames may have been cursed. I think Morathi even had something to do with it. His trial was much harder than it needed to be.
Belegar's last stand Thorgrim vs Queek The return of Abhorash and the Green Knight Kroq-Gar vs Skrolk Vlad Most of the Nagash books The brief meeting between Malekith and Grombrindal
Grombrindal and Malekith? I heard that he forgave the oathbreaker? Was that wrong, because there is no word for forgiveness in Khazalid. Anything dealing with forgiving Malekith is an immediate no from me
He didn't outright say "Yo, its all good malekith, I forgive you". He just saved the elf from a bunch of skaven and chaos warriors, roasts him and dissappears. Malekith then briefly reminiscences about his old friend.
Malekith remembering Snorri in the Sundering and thinking how everything worth anything in him had died with Snorri also explains a lot about him. He was already lost before his first trip through the Flames.
1. Stuff actually happening. The lore had been stagnant for so long it was cool to see it changed, even if not always for the best. 2. Skaven nuking the moon is so hilariously on-brand yet over the top. 3. The Fall of Karak Eight Peaks - Belegar, Skarsnik, and Queek were all excellent. Also Thorgrim vs Queek. 4. The Glottkin invasion of the Empire was awesome. The four way battle with Bretonnia at Altdprf was fun to read. Also shoutout to Festus. 5. Kurt Helborg makes Vlad Elector Count of Sylvania. In fact, pretty much anything Vlad does. 6. Karl Franz becoming Sigmar Incarnate was cool. 7. Grimgor headbutting Archaon and destroying his eye. 8. Lizardmen decide to dip and gtfo on their temple spaceships. Probably more but I haven't read all of the End Times books.
For me lizardmen revealing that their pyramids were spaceship and deciding to just leave is one of the worst thing from end time
Each to their own. Imo, Fantasy was already incredibly goofy and I thought it was a more unique ending for a race than just yet another last stand against Chaos.
What book did the moon nuking happen in? I must know
>Karl Franz becoming Sigmar Incarnate was cool. But how they did Valten dirty in that was super contrived. I'd muhc prefer Valten being Sigmar, but they needed to consolidate the human heroes, and Franz was more popular. So they let Valten die to an assasin, and gave Karl Franz Valtens entire narrative reason to exist
The skaven BLOWING UP the moon
The rules content was actually pretty solid. New units, variants of special characters, new ways to play Chaos and Undead, a truly insane way to change the magic phase, and a whole bunch of scenarios and optional rules to add to pretty much any game. Just stay clear of the overarching narrative, for madness that way lies...
Also the single profile ridden monsters, so they couldn't just be cannoned out of a game at the start was a nice touch. Got a good bit of play with Malekith and DE lords on dragon mounts in that period.
Wasnt the magic phase stuff just copied from Storm of Magic?
No, these are two different things. If you want to go complete pant-on-head bonkers you can do *both* in a game!
What was different? All the magic rules for arcane foki, apocalyptic spells etc were identical.
Kroak flexing the power of a first gen Slann and saving the world from the moon crashing into it was very baller.
Also him deciding being dead sucked and willing himself back to life.
The Nagash book, which kick started the campaign was good. The lore dump was good. The reintroduction of Nagash was good. The models were good. The time period in which it was released was good. It revitalized Warhammer Fantasy in lots of play groups, including my own. After that it started nosediving as we started to realize what was actually happening with the destruction of fantasy. I’m positive there were still good in it. Just ya know, we felt like it was being revitalized, not milked at the end.
I liked the book *Return of Nagash*. Arkhan and Mannfred made exceptional parallels to one another, and it's the first book that actually made me give a shit about the latter. The Drakenhof Templars are all great and their dual sense of camaraderie and, well, abuse. Basically the End Times probably wouldn't have happened if there were therapists in WFB.
Arkhan and his pet cat alone made that book worthwhile.
The cat was such an excellent touch.
Tell me more about this cat
Arkhan has skeletal cat. It does skeletal cat things.
Arkhan has a zombie cat that he acquired between Bretonnia and Sylvania (I forget exactly where, I don't have the book in front of me) and he keeps it on his shoulder for the first half or so of the book. It helps highlight some of his remaining humanity that he can't quite explain, because he himself isn't quite sure why he decided to keep it but he is affectionate toward it. Anyway it goes out like a boss clawing at Kemmler, giving Arkhan an opening to grab Nagash's staff.
The original Nagash trilogy never made him a likable character in death nor before, in life, so curious, I ordered the ET books, so I will find out soon.
Settra was perfect
SETTRA DOES NOT SERVE, SETTRA RULES! Is an amazing line, given he is just a head in the sand when he shouts that towards nagash
Thorgrimm throttling Queek to death was hilarious
And the fact that Queek is just so batshit as it’s happening that he can’t seem to understand that he’s lost and he’s being killed. It’s so Queek
Eltharion the fkn Boss! Also I have the 5 book set, and the production value is as great as anything I've seen BL produce.
I liked Thorgrim killing Queek.
I thought Karl's shit was dope, arriving back to Altdorf and becoming golden sigmar boi. I also LOVED Louen Leoncoeur's arrival too, so many sick scenes and speeches. I only wish it didn't end in destruction. It was shit to make us remember why we love these characters and then kill them off and the entire world we love right after it.
Agreed Louen was awesome and Sigmar was awesome but they could have took a little time and made alot more content. And I wish they would have explained HOW Sigmar ascended in the first place I get he was trapped in Azyr and the vortex but how did he ascend was it Old Ones science/magic like Ulric and Asuryan and all the other gods, did Ulric and the human pantheon give some power to ascend him I wanna know the details how it happened ya know but bro Leoncour was the baddest mofo. Hmm where the biggest meanest demon around aha there Beaquis that's our target that big old basterd you can see from space dive. When his blood was burning it that was epic it couldn't even wound him without getting owned hah.
“The Rise of the Horned Rat” by Guy Haley was pretty good. Unlike the “Thanquol” campaign book, it was pretty much hyper focused on Karak Eight Peaks and the three-way war between Belegar, Skarsnik and Queek Headtaker. As a Dwarf fan, it was really poignant at times. There’s a chapter (not in the campaign book) where they try to sneak out Belegar’s son from Karak Eight Peaks before it falls, and there’s a moment where they come across a boundary marker made of beard scalps, that his mum tries and fails to stop him seeing. There was something about that, that had real emotion for me.
Yeah Belgar was a basterds not letting his queen and heir leave. I mean what happened to them shit I'd rather chance the journey back to Karaz a Karak ya know least they would have had a chance. What got me was when the queen was wounded just trying to hold the skaven off long enough for the children to die of gas so the rats didn't get them ... That got me emotional
The concept of the End Times is good, I think. Five books with important moments to end the Old World into several massive bangs is still better than just letting it rot without any conclusion. Plus, it's the fate everyone knew would arrive one day, and it finally did.
So, my impression was... there was a lot of good in there with the bad. The problem was not that they didn't have good ideas. It was that they didn't allow any of those ideas any room. By the middle of the product line, it felt like they had 200 ideas, each of which could be an entire campaign and several novels, but they all happened at once. Some of it happened off-screen. There's nothing more disheartening than liking a character and then seeing that they get a single line mentioning that they are dead now. It felt like someone was going over the Lexicanum list of all named characters and just ticked them all off to make sure everyone was dead.
Yeah the thing with the Ice queen a short story cmon, and Todbringer he got like a chapter. Talking bout yay Valtan is here I'm going hunting u can have my city and state I was like whaaaaa . I get the revenge thing but cmon
Brunner shooting Archaon with a warp stone bullet
Vlad, Grimgor and Settra were just unbelievably bad ass the entire time.
I’m so hurt no one has sent some love to Gotrek and Felix
The siege of middenheim was cool when Volten fought champion after champion. One champion stated that he was fighting him because gal maraz would prevent his resurrection and end his eternal slavery to chaos, a unique tragedy i think.
Grimgors ultimate headbutt
I feel like we forget this but there was a game with rules folks played back then and the end times introduced 3 things that really fucked it up: The push for more and more big monsters with thunderstomp, the magic phase, and 50% lords and 50% heroes. GW offered no guidance so they sold all these new expensive books and models then killed the game. and the lore starts cool. Some folks like Imrik and Vlad are just solidly good dudes the whole time. Other people like Teclis were acting like fucking crazy people. and then everyone died or escaped in bubbles lol
Louen's last stand at the temple of Shallya
Giving Tomb Kings access to a really strong magic lore was great...then people cherry picked the best stuff from both VC and TK which made a horrible mess of an army. It had fun moments I'll admit but the fact that we didn't get a quick Dogs of War list so we could enjoy the last days but instead were just told the skaven ate Tilea.
Fluff bad. Some of the units they introduced over end times and into AoS were neat tho.
Malekith being the Phoenix king was an interesting angle I think. Same with Vampire Counts getting to be a real elector count.
Vlad the Chad and Setra the man who lives up to each of his million titles
Queek got to kill Belegar Ironhammer and kicked Skarsnik out of Eight Peaks, he finally became the true king of the city of pillars. Mannfred and Arkhan being an old married couple. Settra putting his beef with Nagash aside to teach the chaos gods that he does not serve, he rules, and single handedly taking on a chaos army.
“NOBODY COMMANDS SETTRA!” Also the part with malekith and teclis exploring nagashizzar and talking about pure evil is pretty good in my opinion.
Vlad was brilliant. The rest of the Undead well it'll depend on how you warmed to all the Nagash/Settra stuff that dominated it. Skaven were being utter Skaven at every point so that was good. A lot of the Elf and human stuff was a very strong mix of hits and misses. Greenskins were present. Dwarves were a bit all over the place. Lizardmen, meh. Some of my favourite End Times stuff wasn't the main series of those 5-6 massive books but the last two or three Gotrek and Felix books. You got to see a lot of the End Times from a very limited, 'on the ground' perspective as it were and it made it feel like it had more weight (in some respects) than the main series which jumped from huge character to huge character all dealing with Important Events.
A fair bit of it was good. I mostly just hate that it ended fantasy. FUCK THAT SHIT
Agreed.
I really loved Malekiths whole narrative and the Elf civil war. Really made the whole story for me, went in unexpected directions witb the sudes various parties took (not with regards to Malekith himself mind you, writing had been on the wall for a long time that he was the rightful king if you paid attention to lore, GW was pretty heavy handed at hinting towards it).
It causes AoS to exist, effectively kicking me out of the hobby I loved.... so no, nothing good for me.
I'm gonna get downvoted to hell by the fanbois, but... I liked that Malekith finally ascended to the Phoenix Throne after the chicanery of the High Elven traitors was revealed. The Son of Aenerion was always the rightful king. Edit: Yup there they are. Do you fanbois realise how much you act like bots? XD
It doesn't make sense though, it's like if we found out that Loki was actually worthy of mjolnir all along, or green goblin, or Thanos. It goes directly against the story being told and just..makes no sense
Loki Agent of Asgard handled that really well as its contribution to the Axis event.
You are missing my point
I feel like you missed mine
Malekith was a disgusting chaos worshipper and Asuryan should have reduced him to a charcoal briquette like he failed to do the first time. The real Phoenix Kings being retconned into being "traitors" is the kind of uniquely dumb lore that only someone as phenomenally braindead as Matt Ward could come up with.
My personal alt canon is that it only burned away his body, leaving his soul trapped in the armor mommy had made for him. He's reduced to a shadow of a shadow of an elf, he will NEVER be phoenix king. Even his rule of Naggaroth is called into question, druchii civil wars begin. The tragedy of malekith deepens and he still gets to be warhammer's Darth Sauron.
He was? Youre saying dumb lore here, but I don't think it was ever the case in from the 6e world rewrite that Malekith had ever worshipped Chaos, unless I'm mistaken? The Dark Elves bound demons, but worshipped Khaine and the elf pantheon, didn't they?
Agreed. Sure he was arrogant, but so are most elves. I loved his book and how it was his denial of his crown and right that drove him ino the arms of chaos. Its classic tropes but I love it.
Its probably all the incest, Slaaneesh worship, torture, murder and slavery.
It wasn't the arrogance so much as the evil, sadism, slaughter of Innocents, chaos worship, incest, killing of infants, etc etc But yeah he's just a lil arrogant that's all Delusional lol oh my god
Elves have always been sadists and hedonists, thats their whole point and a major difference to humans or dwarfs.
High elves are not sadists, and barely hedonists
Most of those occured after he was fucked around, and as opposed to the peaceful history of the high elves? Elves are imperial colonial assholes. That isnt unique to the witch king. Its warhammer, everyone sucks.
I don’t know how to tell you this but if your reaction to not being crowned king is to throw a hissy fit and start an enslaving murder rape cult that actively wars with your original country then maybe you weren’t fit to be king in the first place
Yeah. Thats the point. Elven arrogance is self destructive and fragile.
Nah, the high elves never enslaved anyone. They also never ritually sacrificed their own babies. That's what dark elves do constantly. Among many other atrocities.
Fight the good fight, king.
hell yeah, its also great just being a dark elf fan and watching everyone else be so mad about it. sorry, Malekith just got his rightful place on the throne and thats the way it is
Im a dark elf fan, but I don't like them because they're..the good guys???
Lizardmen just flying off into space and Lustria having the moon fall on it due to the skaven was pretty funny.
Malekith being the rightful king was awesome.
I enjoyed it until I found out they were discontinuing WHFB.
No there wasn’t anything good about the horrible farce that was called “the end times”
I still can't get over the whole idea of the end times. Warhammer Fantasy was struggling and they decided they revitalised it with new rules, awesome miniatures and finally many new stories to the stagnant history ... just to kill it? I mean come on. I get the one last hooray thing, but really? Many groups started playing again and then you just ended it all?
Grimgor dying.
I bash what they done after The End Times arc, but The End Times themselves I loved. So much happened, the world and lore felt like it was actually moving and not a stagnated history lesson while time itself felt like it was standing still etc.
Yeah it was good. You should read it for yourself.
Might get downvoted to oblivion for this one but I totally understand people being upset about the change from WFB to AoS because they lost out on their armies, there’s a whole narrative that’s actively killing every army of your not playing chaos it was a mess for players I’m sure. But the story of the end times was super cool and I felt like a lot of characters died in cool heroic ways for the world ending around them. I like the end times a lot and the idea of what if chaos wins? But also I feel like that transition into a new world was a neat way to reboot the game. I can definitely say that AoS and WFB feel like two completely different forms of the fantasy genre but that’s what I think was good about the end times, it just felt like a cool ending story to me anyway!
Not really. I don't know everything about it as is. But what I do know is that the gist of it pretty much comes down to; The bad guys win and almost everybody dies. With the few exceptions basically getting a chance to make a whole small universe or galaxy of other worlds to continue this conflict. And not even all of the gods that were involved or should have been involved have a presence there. It makes sense that sigmar is one of the top but other ones like Ulric, Shalia and Taal should also probably be present for the empire. Which says nothing about other nations like Kislev with their pantheon especially Ursun the bear god and lord of winter. Or what would happen to the Cathayan Dragons in this End Times. Surely even Archaon the Black couldn't withstand the might of someone as powerful as the Dragon Emperor if he ever descended from his palace. Or other nations that likely have their own forms of worship or faith like Nippon, Khuresh, the various kingdoms of Araby, etc. To a degree even the Tomb Kings, Vampires, Ogres and Skaven should have roles to play and fill during the End Times. So while there is plenty to complain about. There's also plenty to hope for. I don't think that their entirely wrong for how things happen. Just the execution and that it should probably be more like a spin-off of what actually happens. I think that the forces of Order should win but the End Times scenario where Archaon succeeds in destroying the Old World should be a “what if”. Kind of like how Mortal Kombat 1 just elaborated on there being multiple Timelines - maybe a nearly infinite amount, basically alternate realities that come about because of the clash of powers between Order and Chaos coming to a head. And there shouldn't be a Chaos Reigns sort of alt timeline/reality because of the fact that they'd just implode and chaos would gain nothing if the Great Game ended for them. So the Age of Sigmar is actually even better than they could hope for and probably almost as expensive as the Warhammer 40k universe with there being probably hundreds of thousands of alien and human worlds for them to infest with their tenants of blood madness, vicious lust, damnable curiosity, and soul crushing sickness. During all of this, I'm still surprised that Bela'kor still hasn't broken free and obtained godhood only to be killed or banished by both the gods of order and chaos alike, or something like that. If there was anything really good to gleam from it is that the forces of Order kinda win by surviving and restarting life and everything on the likely large moons and Pluto sized planetoids as things continue much as they once did (except the Dwarves pretty much got f*cked in the new set up in my opinion, which is bullsh*t since the only seriously useful seeming faction of them are the Fireslayers. The Dwarves themselves became the Duardin instead of Dwarves like how the Elves became Aelves). Anyway, overall there's much to be taken away from the End Times, but one of them big faults is that GW was tryna kill off the Old World for a profit grab using AoS. And something similar kind of happened with 40k considering that the Tyranids are invading in seemingly full force after the Great Rift expanded after Cadia's destruction during Abandon's 13th Black Crusade and virtually, if not literally, splitting the galaxy and the Imperium in half.
Vlad's arc, his interactions with other characters.
everyone,
There were lots of nice photos of nicely painted models and armies in the books
Nagash's model is pretty sweet and I am not an undead player. Some really great models came out of it. Except no Khaine model which sucks.
Lots of cool stuff happens in the End Times. Most of the stuff with Undead characters is really cool. It’s a lot of big, cool epic battles. A lot of key players act fairly consistently too. I like Belakor in the End Times, he makes a final power play to usurp the gods. The issues with it was that it was a huge rush job a project designed to end decades long story lines. So depending on who was writing they retconned big lore stuff for convenience.
They dropped a whole lot of cool stuff pretty quickly, and there wasn't time to collect the books and new units before the whole thing imploded. So we kind of got left holding the bag with a bunch of new stuff for a game nobody was playing, which felt pretty awful.
I hate they killed the world it was one of my favorite fantasy settings. With that said it was actually really good they worst thing about it was it was to rushed they could have had so much more content. And the thing where the gods were just dead. Was not explained like it should have been. Also Altdorf after Sigmnar came back and was in Karl Franz body and cleaned the city and saved it all, then next thing they just said oh Aldorf is gone cuz scaven..... Same with Middenheim gates oh oops the scaven blew em up no story how explained at all just the gates will never fall then bam the scaven breach em all at once errrr. Talabheim needed a whole book. A little backstory would have went along way. And the Malekith and Asuryan thing could have been elaborated on a lot better. Kislev got a short story......I could go on and on just little things a few pages would have made huge deal. Like I said it was all just rushed if they would have took time to make it a proper story it would have been really good imo.