(by Boole) https://www.tga.community/forums/topic/22826-the-rumour-thread/?page=8425
We received word about this a while back — but along with it came a flood of conflicting information.
In hindsight, those inconsistencies were probably just staffers throwing up smoke because they were in shock themselves.
The worst version of the story is one we’d rather not post here. It wouldn’t accomplish anything — just break the hearts of fans and undo years of AoS’s momentum.
But after getting some images and transcriptions of the actual text from the PDFs, we had a discussion internally and can confirm: Rob on YouTube, and the Discord member were accurate.
I’ll be upfront — the people behind this account, meaning us, were never fans of AoS. More than a decade ago, we were outright hostile to it. But even we are furious at how this turned out. The dumbest scenario imaginable is happening all over again. WHFB fans won’t pay for this, and AoS fans will be absolutely livid.
What makes it worse is that AoS has never been a commercial failure. Last time something like this went down — and you all know what I’m talking about — it was because WHFB had become a genuine commercial disaster by a certain point. That’s what pushed the higher-ups into making a reckless decision.
AoS, though? It’s never fallen that low. From what we know, since 2018, it’s been Games Workshop’s second-biggest product line after 40K, for WHFB fans like us, is wild. Even if we don’t like admitting AoS counts as Warhammer Fantasy Miniatures, internally it’s been labeled as the “Greatest Warhammer Fantasy” product.
So none of this makes sense. The people still at GW who gave us info don’t get it either. Most of the people who’ve worked on AoS are baffled. But maybe Phil Kelly leaving was the first sign of what was coming.
We were going to wait until after AdeptiCon to announce any of this — because this is definitely going to trigger internal investigations at GW — but we just can’t hold it in anymore. We think it’s time to lay everything out.
As we posted a few days ago:
“Slaanesh is free. The Realms that have been mapped, the Cities of Sigmar, the Chorfs’ cities — they’re not gone.”
Because all of those known locations are being merged into a single planet!
A Battleworld!
The Realms have been combined!
Eighty percent of what AoS has spent over a decade building is gone!
And yes — this is all thanks to Archaon and the Skaven. Again.
After all of it, only the Skaven can call themselves winners. Their lore and their new model range stay exactly as they are — and they definitely come out on top.
After the gates of Azyr were breached, Archaon destroyed everything. Anything you can think of in that realm was utterly annihilated by the Everchosen.
But at the last moment, Sigmar pulled the trigger on a Big Plan he’d been preparing for centuries. He always wanted to merge the Realms into a single new planet, and in the final hour, he went through with it. So here we are.
As for what happened to Sigmar? Archaon killed him like you’d crush a child. His death is written to be even more infuriating than The Death of Sanguinius in <The End and the Death>.
You can tell whoever wrote this had it out for Sigmar — and maybe for AoS in general.
What about the SCE? I don’t think they can reforge anymore. Their god is dead.
The Aelven Pantheon?
Nagash?
The Ancestor Gods?
Gorkamorka?
All unaccounted for. Maybe Archaon killed them too.
With the Realms destroyed, Slaanesh is back among the Dark Gods, and they’ve accepted the Great Horned Rat as one of them. The Five Gods stand eternal.
This new world is called The Last World.
Its continents are made up of the regions that had maps in the Eight Realms, stitched together. And the whole thing is a blatant, low-quality rehash of WHFB.
For example: the Great Nations of Hysh, home of the Lumineth, now exist as an island nation in the middle of an ocean…
CoS have basically turned back into The Empire — fragmented, ignorant, religiously fanatical, and racially divided.
We’re pretty sure a lot of the characters AoS fans know and love died in The Last World. They’re not coming back.
As for Archaon — I’m not sure. The information we got about him was almost comical.
“The Everchosen is gathering a Chaos army at a portal in the far north of The Last World.”
We’re not even sure if that “Everchosen” is Archaon. But it sure sounds familiar.
Who’s actually going to pay for this?
AoS fans — will you?
The only advice I can give right now is: if after all these lore changes you’re still willing to buy into AoS, 5th Edition will have way more SCE models with a grimmer, darker aesthetic than 4th — and a ton of Chaos Warriors covered in spikes and Chaos monsters.
As for the rest? We don’t know. That’s all we wanted to say. We’re exhausted, and we’re still figuring out if we should scrap this account. This is so big it’s definitely going to come back on us. We have no idea if GW will change anything about Fifth Edition over the next two years, but the first draft is done, and we’ve seen plenty of concept art. So odds of a major rewrite are probably low.
The one silver lining — and I mean the only one — is that The Last World will have several new human factions.
AoS-Not Grand Cathay
AoS-Not Nippon
AoS-Not Bretonnia