Well 1 thing I'll give fantasy credit is karl franz and sigmar. They're are better than the god emperor of mankind. Or at least feel like real people with personalities.
@PancreaseNoWork you know how eldar are skinny elves imagine their was an eldar that is so buff and jacked also can bench press two thousand and such a chad that not even slaanesh can consume him because how much a chad he is once he flex his muscle slaanesh literally dies.
I cannot get over the fact that the High Elves just accepted Malekith as King, as if millennia of rape, pillage and slavery didn’t make him illegitimate despite his right. And he even got to marry the Everqueen, a person he tried to kidnap to hand over to a rape demon of slannesh lol
@@braveagentg I think so yeah... Because one would imagine that being the "true king" isn't just happening to be that guy who is in that position on the family tree, maybe that's true in a legalistic way but to be a prophetic true king in some kind of Arthurian or Messianic way you'd expect that would be the person who embodies the virtues of the Elves and their Gods above all others. Malekith failed his first test to endure the flames which is already an awful start mythologically speaking then he went on to be a completely despicable tyrant for millenia forsaking those same gods besides Khaine and never did anything to redeem himself before the "true king" reveal. So I find it a really odd and dissatisfying narrative choice, and I don't even like the High Elves or Dark Elves as factions that much so I can only imagine how mad the people who do got.
You could pull the "it was all a dream" and have someone see premonitions of things to come. Then use the player battles to show how each faction prevents their destruction. Thus satisfying GW's chaos boner and letting players stomp on it at the same time.
I just got into total warhammer and have been enjoying the setting until I heard about the End Times and how bad it was. Your idea I like a lot more than what GW came up with
@@pancreasnowork9939 "It was all a dream" is usually a shitty ending because it nullifies the events of the story and makes everything that happened in the story pointless. However, when the story is dogshit and never should have existed in the first place, that's no longer such a bad thing.
I have a personal headcanon where the chaos gods actively care about the fantasy sigmar universe more than the 40k verse. It feels like they just check in on the 40k universe occasionally rather than the more hands on approach with fantasy
Wouldve been better if queek was destroying or ruining his runes just so snikch could finish thorgrimm off * pause. But idk if runes could be destroyed
@@bigsadge747 At least according to the Gotrek and Felix novel "Zombieslayer", they can. It's not much of a spoiler, but a fallen acolyte of SIgmar destroyed the runes warding Castle Reiksguard against the Undead; and it didn't seem to take much. Just a bit of focused energy.
Lore End Times: Total Annihilation of everyone involved. Total War End Times: Archaeon spawns only to see a bunch of high-tier armies ready to tore his nuts off.
So after listening, I decided to throw in my own ideas on improving End Times without just wiping it away. (Note, I'm not exactly well versed in the specifics of End Times lore but hey, I'm giving this a shot.) 1. Malaketh goes into the Flame of Asyurian and instead of suddenly becoming the worthy king, he just stands there, not chosen by the flame but not harmed by it either as a show case of his strength and will, how he is literally willing (and capable) of overturning millennia of tradition and the gods themselves for his goals. He is not given the crown of Phoenix King, he pulls a Napoleon and takes it for himself. 2. The Skaven and Chaos don't directly work together and Skaven try to work against them, but with so many competing clans and ideas and a general lack of a unifying force, their plans often end up competing or going against each other or accidently harming other factions/unintentionally aiding Chaos. For example they might try to blow up the warpstone moon to weaken beastmen/chaos magics, but the shards come crashing into the Great Bastion in Cathay, destroying it and letting Chaos Hordes rush in. Or they might try to use magic to obliterate a Chaos Horde outside a city but the Greyseer fucks the spell up or gets shanked and so it only destroys part of the horde and clips part of the city walls. Clan Pestilence might try to poison the blood offerings of Khornate warbands, only to accidently poison Imperial water supplies as well. They aren't in some grand alliance, but the nature of Skaven means even their best intentions fuck things up for everyone involved. 3. Speaking of fucking things up, the Incarnates ritual kind of works but Manfred still fucks it up. Instead of being an idiot and stabbing Gelt in the back, his ego gets in the way and says "this ritual thing is great and I agree with it, but I think I can make it a little bit better". So he tries to add his own magic to the pot and inadvertently screwing with the ritual because even as a master necromancer, trying to meddle with literal incarnates of magic is above his station. Maybe Gelt still gets rekt by the magic fallout or something. 3A. Grimgor sort of helps the Incarnates by guarding them but not defensively, but more because "I want to fight you guys, but Chaos is really strong right now and I want a good fight with them first but you guys better be here when I get back so I can have a proper scrap". He can still roshambo Archeon for giggles but he is probably getting merc'd by the Everchosen. Skarsnik also can have a proper send off by stabbing a Tzeentch lord's attempt to fuck with the ritual out of revenge for that same lord killing Gobbla, showing that all the schemes and one million IQ plans only go so far when you have a low cunning, a sharp knife and a sneaky git looking for revenge. 4. Speaking of Chaos being strong, they do some grand ritual right off the bat that either cripples or severely weakens the other Old World Gods, perhaps even chaining them up to syphon off their power like Ursun in TWW3, leading to an initial powerspike and why there wasn't much divine intervention going on. 4A. Most of the gods were subsumed or used as the basis of the Mortal Realms. For example, Taal could have been used as the base of Ghyran, Khaine for Aqshy, and Morr for Shysh which is what one of the things the Incarnate ritual was trying to do, use those dead/dying gods as a starting point for safe havens. Mean while some gods like Shallya got subsumed by Nurgle while Tor and Myrmidia was subsumed by Khorne. However, this has an effect on them because they are absorbing non-evil aspects. Nurgle might decide to hold off on sending a plague so he can have a "larger population to test it on" but this is a little bit of Shallya's mercy peaking through. Khorne might suddenly say that he wants some more skulls of worthy champions and if you give him skulls of incapable innocents instead of warriors he'll have your's instead, but this is Tor and Myrmidia's martial pride peaking through Khorne's bloodlust. Reynault was subsumed by Tzeentch but not fully and every so often one of his schemes just randomly fails or he fails to see a hole because of Reynault pulling a sneaky on him. 4B. This is a personal thing but I think the last charge of the Grail Knights and Blood Knights together might have also had a lasting impact on Khorne, a show of chivalry and bravery that helps the other war gods sway him away from bloodlust every so often. (Fanboy bias in here I admit.) 5. Thorgrim's death in particular. Instead of being shanked in effectively an alleyway, it could be that after a huge battle where tons die, his honor guard have all been killed and the high king is just holding to life, clutching the book of grudges, a Skaven assassin/Deathmaster Snikich goes up and stabs him, gloating about his kill. Thorgrim, barely able to whisper, says he has something to say to his killer and the assassin goes in to listen, only for Thorgrim to use the last of his strength to slam the great book closed on the ratman's head, killing him in a shower of blood before passing himself. Besides being one final fuck you, it could be a metaphor about how the grudges of the past have been "wiped clean" by the blood spilled because now no one can actually read anything in the book, symbolizing how the dwarves have to work with humans and elves and others to move beyond the past to save the world. Again, I'm not a lore master but this is just my 1am inspired ramblings after listening to this video on the way home from work.
I wasn't even aware of the existence of Warhammer when the End Times happened, but somehow the fact that my boy Skarsnik, avatar of MORK, was forgotten by the DAMN AUTHORS THEMSELVES makes my blood boil.
I think Snickh carving his personal mark on the last page of the Book of Grudges after shaking Thorgrim is pretty cool but I do wish it had happend in a scenario that made, you know, sense.
Maybe if it was his last dying action because an already injured Thorgrim took Snikch with him. And make it that instead of forgetting to lock the door, Snikch either found a way around or had predicted where Thorgrim would go and snuck in ahead of time.
To be fair here, Snikch as a whole is a Mary Sue. Super duper skaven assassin with no flaw whatsoever that always kill and is never tracked and always escape with no one knowing he exist in the first place. Come on, that's not a character, that's a plot device.
They've literally teleported Snickh into an impenetrable locked room to kill on of his targets. They literally could've just had him waiting for Thorgrim. Also since the entire setting was going to go boom might as well have Grudgebearer get a "You're dying with me" kill on him.
Settra was the only person I liked in the End Times. Also half of the Lizardmen characters died without a mention, same with Skarsneeg, anyone in the east, and the Ogres
@@steffanyschwartz7801 some say he should have his own realm on AOS still going against chaos. I feel him been reduced to a skull that has been non stop insulting everything and claiming to "rule everything" would be also acceptable (more if that is just the setup to him coming back)
@@javieraravena5345 There is a book in AOS where a girl gets help from a Stormcast named like Settramus or something. Mannfred shows up to stop the girl and notes how he’s similar to Settra. Then he says he would be dead if it was actually Settra. My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.
My fix for the End Times is… let Everyone win. Destroy the World that Was, but let a few places like Altdorf, Karaz-a-Karak, the Elf Forest survive the twisting chaos and form the seeds of the new mortal realms
Yea and have em kind of linked like yggdrasil does in Norse lore so they're separated but can still be accessed by the others albeit in non convenient ways
Funnily enough the Oak of Ages did sorta survive the End Times and is in AoS, and is really important. It's called the Oak of Ages Past, and after the Necroquake Allarielle actually revitalized the tree to basically counteract Nagash's death magic-wave with her own life magic, basically helping save the entire setting from Nagash. So it's kind of a nice thing that the Oak is still so important.
I completely disagree, i think the races should fall due to their horrible shit they do to their own races, let the dwarves die by being stubborn and not being able to accept basic compromise. Have the empire of man crumble because their leaders killed the actual hero of sigmar in secret. You need to emphasise that these countries people could have held, if they werent failed by the horrible structures that were in place. They need structural reasons why characters fell and chaos was able to exploit their established weaknesses, and i think the end times should have been a long and slow death of the world (With your idea incorporated as the final stands with their empires doomed and all they could do was fight the losing battle forever)
The world is destroyed But a new one is born in the end Basically Don't completely say "CHAOS WINS 100%" Say "Chaos destroyed the world, but there's hope for the next one"
@@jackh7977 that would work a hell of a lot. Maybe have a handful of characters carry over into AOS aside from the new gods, the chaos guys and Gotrek.
My favourite piece of End Times writing was when like 200 Great Swords were sent to defend Marienburg and one dude tripped on a brick which caused the entire line to collapse
Even worse, It was a full imperial army with 200 greatswords of Carroburg, the best greatswords of all, and they all died because one dude slipped into shit
@@nostear8261 yes, one dude tripped and slowly but surely the Empire started to break lines so the Chaos army steamrolled everyone, that's basically all the End Times, the good guys could win but this tiny mistake made them lose, this can work as a plot device in a Battle but It's obvious that is bad writting when It happens in all battles, except in the final Battle of Nehekara, in that one Settra was going to win until Nagash became a God
@@MiguelSanchezDelVillar In the battle of Nuln, there is a skaven screaming bell that is destroying both buildings and artillery with its sound waves, the artillery fires a volley at it but doesnt cause enought damage to destroy it, then they fire another volley... TO THE INFINITE SWARM OF SKAVEN SLAVES, LIKE WHAT? WHY CHANGE TARGETS OUT OF NOWHERE? It goes without saying that just after that the screaming bell rings again and all artillery pieces are destroyed, giving victory to the skaven. OMG the writting, cant the empire lose a battle without looking like complete idiots?
I've generally maintained that it's pretty impressive that GW managed to find a way to find a worse copout than literally just saying "Hey guys, Fantasy isn't selling well. We're axing the setting and making a new one with new rules. You can still use your old models in the new setting though." And yet they somehow found a way to write "Chaos wins everything" in a way that pissed off the Chaos players too, because as you mentioned, all of the named characters got done horrifically dirty (and died in increasingly lame fashions), and while they plot-armored their way to victory in the story, they were fucking dogshit on the tabletop. GW used to do this thing where they'd tally up battle reports that people sent in and determine where the plot went based on who won there, but despite them wanting Chaos to win, Chaos players were still just getting fucking dunked on left right and center. Because Chaos' rulebook sucked, and instead of giving Chaos a new ruleset that didn't suck balls they just fudged the results.
Storm of Chaos campaign. It wasn't just that they read battle reports and gave new lore based on them. GW organized a global, months long pseudo-tournament that occurred between two of the WFB editions and took tallies from hundreds of gaming stores that kept track of "their own section of the war." Chaos almost won that war. It came down to the wire and was won largely because the Orc factions spent more time fighting Chaos than they did fighting Dwarves, Elves, or the Empire. The final climatic fight came down to a massive Aba.. Archeon fight at the gates of Altdorf. A massive WAAAAGH came in at the 11th hour and broke the siege, with the whole fight being played out on TT. The End Times is a vicious insult to everyone who played the game and were told that their passion and interest was helping to shape the lore to come.
They couldn't even go through the effort of making Chaos blatantly overpowered for the purposes of Storm of Chaos. They just expected Chaos to win despite the shit rules they gave them, and when that obviously didn't work, they decided to axe the whole thing.
I never knew fantasy until the Total War and from there I have found several characters I love. I don’t have the spite for AoS cause it was already established by the time I was exposed to the universe, but knowing that Drycha, Setra, Vlad, and Azhag are pretty much done for as characters brings me sadness. (I know Drycha has an AoS model, but her story of going on a rampage against the elves is pretty much gone)
I'm maintaining hope(or cope) of settras return the end times ended with him on his chariot plowing through daemons, straight into the realms of chaos, cussing out the ruinous gods. if there was ever a more perfect setup for him to come back as a rival undead power who hates what Nagash did with the place(since settra really hated nagash too)
@@OldSpaghettifactory89 He's never going to rival nagash lol, he was nowhere even near the same level in the end times, let alone nagash now. Could come back I guess, but there's not much room for actual rivals when it comes to being supreme ruler over the undead, just places nagash doesn't entirely own yet. Settra somehow also being the god of death would be pretty dumb, and wouldn't make any real sense.
It's definitely a cop out but I love the way the World of Darkness series ultimately handled its "end of the world" setting series. A big part of the World of Darkness is that a lot of what anyone thinks is going on, a lot of the history, events, sometimes even people is complete bullshit. It's a game where knowing the lore technically makes it harder to play authentically because the average character players should be creating has no right whatsoever knowing that Hardestadt the Younger has been posing as Hardestadt the Elder ever since Tyler did in fact kill him like they claim. Did that sentence make any sense to you? No? Good, now go play Vampire the Masquerade and don't worry about it. I don't know how intentional it is but the lore has so many contradicting lines over the 30 years of its life that retcons feel more like "fake news." The whole setting has so many unreliable narrators even the unnamed supposedly impartial voice in the Corebooks can't be wholly trusted. So in keeping with that when White Wolf decided to bring back the original setting they just shrugged their shoulders and said "yeah, a bunch of weird shit happened and some other weird shit has started happening too but nope, the end of the world never came. No Ascension, no Gehenna, no Apocalypse, nothing. Everyones just sitting in these tense, turbulent, and terrifying times with an overwhelming sense of dread and doom. It's 2022 and the world is shit. Just how you losers love your Grimdark Urban Fantasy settings." That's right, they bypassed and actually retconned their end of the world series by just continuing their lore like nothing happened and making the setting so close to our actual reality it's uncomfortable.
To be fair it also really wasn't White Wolf that brought them back, it was Paradox. White Wolf had the "New World of Darkness" that spawned Vampiee the Requiem in 06, after Gehenna the Final Night, Last Battle, and Judgment Day all dropped in 04. Onix Path was who did V20, and even then they didn't fully retcon Time of Judgment: Gehenna, they just more implied it hadn't happened yet, or more happening slower, and the parts of the Meta plot was ST determined. (Though one could make an arguement that with the SI now a thing, that its actually an extended Gehenna: Nightshade event going on, rather than Wormwood or Fair is Foul)
@@ssjjshawn It’s real funny to see what happens when WW doesn’t have 100% creative control. That VTM book might’ve been a good thing to be written if it means they got a corporate kick from Paradox.
I think one of the things that always bugged me about the Endtimes is that it completely glossed over a subtle but key component of the WHFB setting: it’s a world verging on technological breakthroughs. The humans are using steam tanks, the dwarfs just started making flying machines (and in Gotrek and Felix, entire flying barges). It’s essentially Early Modern Europe, which means a hell of a lot of fighting but also great leaps in science and the arts just down the pipeline (and that’s before we consider whatever Araby, Cathay, etc. are up to). All the mortal races need is just one little push to see technological greatness flourish… And who else to spur change other than our favorite big blue bird, Tzeentch? The way I see the End Times play out in my head is that Tzeentch betrays his brothers near the end of the conflict (because of course he does), and his armies end up supporting the mortal races in attaining an unsteady victory. Not out of the goodness of his heart, of course. Just because Tzeentch loves to see the shock on his brothers’ faces at having been betrayed, and because the despair of mortals who know they’ve only lived to see another day because of Chaos itself is simply delicious. Oh, and Tzeentch also knows The Great Game can’t go on if nobody is left to play it. That bit always bothered me, too. The resulting world after the End Times would be pretty fucked over, of course. Countless ruined cities and endless dead everywhere. But per Warhammer’s theme of human resilience, the mortal races would pick themselves back up from the rubble. They’d begin to rebuild. And because Tzeentch is ascendant, technological progress would be rampant. Contact between the mortal empires would flourish, with Araby/Cathay/Kislev/who knows what else playing a bigger role on the world stage. The threat of Chaos would loom overhead as always, but there’d be so many new avenues for new minis, new stories, new heroes, and so on as the WHFB world inches forward one burdened step at a time. Kind of a cop out, to be sure. But at least it’d retain the original themes of WHFB. AndTzeentch is always cool.
Would love to see Steam powered or magic powered Imperial Knights Mech, some Guilded Age sult fire arms like Winchester Repeaters or Revolvers, flying Ships. Hell they can do Diesel punk style War Hammer base off the technological advancements in which it is both gritty and grimdark but with better tech.
i think thats actually the best vision of a chaos god going good (i mean by chaos god standards). with tzeentch 100% being able to guess how society will progress he would forsee that industrialized and unified powers will do more war and have greater tensions and cultural strains, he would forsee the discontent with industrial society and the cultural upheaval and revolutions we saw in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and i could totally see him have a billion IQ play and think about the long term to maybe lose power in the short term as all major powers would be rebuilding for decades if not centuries, but when they do rebuild and old rivalries and fights over resources increase, he would be right there to gain power from it and influence the world from the backround to resemble europe before the great war, all powers anxious of eachother, differing groups afraid of the other, and religious and technological reforms constant to stay ahead of the competition. hell tzeentch alone would probably see the rise of capitalism as the best thing ever.
I always liked the idea of a Warhammer 40k end times where the goals of each faction is fulfilled with a mad scramble for everyone to beat out the others but the way they did Warhammer Fantasy made think that its better they don't do it or atleast think with half a brain when doing it.
If they do 40k end times, I want it to go like this: chaos as a whole, all four factions take an interest in the tau. Chaos started to care less about the traitor astartes and more about lighting shooting blueberries. I want the trillions of Necrons to boot up, and begin the murder fest. In the end I think it would be cool if it was a three way brawl between chaos tau, necrons, and everybody else who united to survive. The universe then ends up getting vored by space bugs. (I know that chaos doesn’t have interest in the tau because they have “dim souls”, but if Tzeech tricked the other gods, I could see chaos empowering the 5 casts.
The good news is that if they ever do an End Times 40k, the story will be told over the course of 100+ books and it won't be concluded until 2050 or so.
As much as i hate the tyranids though this is probably the main reason but writing a way to deal with the tyranids seems harder than “they roll over everyone lmao” or that the necrons remain and the tyranids leave or get into a uninteresting slugfest with literally just necrons and tyranids until the tyranids leave or one of them wins.
I like to think a ideal end times for Warhammer 40k is all the factions coming to together at there strongest to fight a new war on heaven. For the imperium, the Emperor finally awakens again at his full strength to unite the Empire again and quickly doing away the worst of the dogma, and finally start recreating machines that were on par with the dark age of technology. For Tyranids it should be obvious the full main swarm hive finally arrives to try to overwhelm all the other empires. The Eldar craftworlds unite together into the most powerful fleet in the whole galaxy and help reborn there god pantheon or at least there war god after imprisoning or weakening Slannash, breaking her curse on there souls. Now free from enternal damnation from Slannash, they want to truly rebuild their empire and will destroy anyone that get in there way. For the Necrons, they would be fully awaken in full force with all the dynasties now being United under the Silent King who help achieve there destinies of taking control of the galaxy from the creations of the Old ones and use the slaves of them to eventually gain back there flesh and souls. For Chaos, perhaps after what happened with Slaanesh and the rebirth of the Emperor, and the Tyranids main fleet eating everything, the 3 or 4 chaos gods would put aside there differences to fight as a United force to maintain there power and destroy those that would threaten there power with this war on heaven making them more powerful then before.. For Orks, they can unite together under a Super Ork lord , perhaps a true long lost Kork who wants to the biggest Waagh to end all Waugh’s. For Tau, with everything that is going on all the remaining minor races all across the galaxy fear for there lives and out of desperation all join into a super galactic Coalition with the Tau, who might’ve gotten a lot stronger after reverse engineering some Necron, Eldar , and Imperium tech to make them on par with the other factions and could finally utilize clone armies to now have the numbers to go up against all of them.
Yeah, the Skaven joining Chaos out of nowhere was just weird. The Great Horned Rat may technically be a Chaos God but only in the sense that Gork and Mork are also Chaos Gods. They live in the Warp. That's it. And more importantly, the Skaven aren't even organized enough to join Chaos. For every clan helping Chaos out in a battle two more are actively trying to screw them over while the third is having a chuckle and just sowing chaos on both sides. But honestly I think the entire premise of Chaos wins is the incorrect approach. Throughout the entire setting, every time Chaos tried to invade the world, they got stomped before they even made it past the Empire. And now they suddenly crush the world? A far more interesting approach would have been what is essentially World War Hammer where just so many conflicts break out all at once that magic gets screwed and the world is destabilizing. So the races decide that trying to salvage the situation isn't worth it and someone (probably the Lizardmen and maybe the Elves or even Cathai or maybe all at once separately) decide to concoct a ritual based on the effects of the warring that will birth a new world. The various factions now vie for the ability to influence the outcome with races like the Elves trying to resurrect their Gods, Chaos trying to strengthen the 4, the Skaven jumping on the chance to elevate the Great Horned Rat, etcetc. That way you don't have to make Chaos win and you can create separate conflicts that all influence the outcome without having to be involved in a big 'good' guys vs 'bad' guys war. Also, it's kind of a dick move that in Age of Sigmar it's basically the exactly same story. Chaos roflstomped everyone and controls the entirety of almost all of the realms while the 'good' guys are desperately trying to hold on and naturally Slaanesh can't just die either, no, they need to be slowly freeing themselves. Also fuck Morathi. Such a bland and stupid (literally) character.
they mostly just axed slannesh to keep the pg-13 (or whatever it is for games) rating. the rest of the chaos gods are things that are acceptable for late teenagers to watch and use. war, plauge, and whatever tzeentch is doing at the time are bad. slaanesh was definitely the most grimdark of the gods even if she was more subtle and slow in her corruption. that sucks because slaanesh was very interesting and was a great way to draw paraelles to real world issues, especially things like drug addiction and depravity. sure nurgle and tzeentch had thier cool moments too but slaanesh was unique in that there was no instant obvious sign of corruption. no instant plauge spores or turning into a chaos spawn spontaneously, just a slow, barely noticable fall to the darker tendencies of mankind. you don't start worshipping slaanesh and just decide one day to kill all your friends and use their bones as a dildo, its a slow process to that, and by the time you realize its too late you are far, far too down the path of no return. i like that, its much more subtly grimdark as it draws not on nature or 'too smart for your own good" energy like nurgle or tzeentch respectively but on ones own dark nature revealed. nurgle may infect you, khorne may burn you, tzeentch may play 5d chess with your soul, but its slaanesh who will have you yourself be your demise
@@sovietunion7643 well, we *are* talking about a setting where an entire race consists of half-naked women. Not sure Slaanesh is the deciding factor in the PG rating. :p But yes, Slaaneshi corruption (devoid of all the BDSM fantasy/fetishism) is interesting to look at because it speaks to so many of the values we hold high in the modern age.
@@Salted_Fysh It's kind of sad of Slaanesh is always just boiled down to the fetishism, with a slight hint of drug use and noise marines in 40k. There's just so many other aspects that can be explored in more than just one or two characters..
Have every character, I mean every character, including random imperial citizens, halfling cooks, and dark elf sailors, that’s ever been so much as named in a single paragraph of one of the novels or rules books get kicked in the crotch by grimgor
Even though I am newbie in this setting, and can see why the End Times was poorly recieved there was 2 cool things that came to mind. • Mazdamundi’s death is literally saving the entire world by holding back the moon the Skaven decided to blow up. Which wakes up Lord Kroak finishes the job. (Also he somehow survives the blast anyways, but this is Lord Kroak who is arguably the most ancient, and OP character in Fantasy). • Settra gets ganked by Nagash, revived by the Chaos Gods who then tell him to kill Nagash. When he’s about to do so, he pulls the greatest “Does Not Serve” moment ever. Despite having his greatest and destroyer of Nehekhara in his clutches, he realizes if he does this, he’ll be serving the whims Chaos Gods (plus I think as part of his revival be bound to their service.) He straight tells Nagash that he’s coming back for him, and goes on a one Pharaoh crusade against all the Chaos Gods. That is like…The most Settra thing I can think of. It’d be even better if say, ended up carving out his own realm in the Realms Of Chaos and is still crusading to this day. Still, I am sad what became of my boys Tenhenuain, Oxyotl, and Nakai. :,c Apparently Kroq-Gar’s fate was unknown too. Addendum: Gor-Rok, though admittedly having it be a huge piece of Morsleib being the thing that kill him is kinda fitting. Because I don’t think anything else would’ve been able to kill him, that he wouldn’t have been able to shrug off.
One of the best small fixes to the End Times I've heard was Kroak teleporting the last handful of Lizardmen to where Big Good was gathering. It wouldn't be much, probably just Kroq-Gar, maybe keep Nakai, Oxylotl, and Tetto'ekko, with a handful of Lizardmen committed to forestalling the inevitable instead of jetting away to space. Keeps Lizardmen a bit more in focus, instead of them all dying or going to space offscreen, and it's hardly outside of Kroak's abilities. It would have been neat to get more interaction between them and the other factions, too. Also we get to see depressed Kroq-Gar since Grymloq is dead.
Settra screaming "SETTRA DOES NOT SERVE" in the face of the now-god who just obliterated him is the single most badass thing in either Warhammer setting.
@@pancreasnowork9939 Part of me is still hoping Settra is out there, in the Realms of Chaos, carving out a piece of it for himself, making Khemri 2.0, attaining godhood, and then coming back to chokeslam Nagash through Shyish, and take this throne screaming: “I RUULLLLEE!” It probably won’t happen, but it’d be amazing if it did. Atleast Settra went out on his own terms screaming at Nagash and sticking it to the Chaos Gods.
The end times is why I am extremely reluctant to get into any GW game. As a teenager I grew up reading the Warhammer fantasy and 40k book, I loved them so much. And after I finally started earning my own money I began saving up intending to buy some used armies and then build them from there. I was so excited I planned on building a Empire and Guard army. Then the end times happened and my favorite version of Warhammer got blow up and I read about people literally burning their armies and instantly no one in my area was interested in playing it. That killed my enthusiasm for both settings because it was clear neither was truly cared. Since then I reread Warhammer fantasy stuff but mostly avoid anything 40k, no point in investing my time and energy into something that might get end times. Fortunately I’ve moved on and found other war gamers, rpgs, and book series to enjoy. But I’ll never forget the burn that Warhammer fantasy gave me.
@@pancreasnowork9939 just stick your mic down your throat and begin to drink boiling water. Should bring back some nostalgic noises. And hey if it doesnt, record it and boom you got noise marine sound effects
@@pancreasnowork9939 My friends made a voice channel in discord that somehow made everyone's voice go from sounding fine by modern standards to sounding muffled in a that reminded me of the Xbox 360 days, if not outright being from that era. May wanna give that a look.
@@pancreasnowork9939 I enjoy the content and lore of age of sigmar fine, and understand how fantasy was really kinda costing the company more than it was worth, but any real consideration towards the fanbase, or you know, the established lore would have provided an out. Sadly with GW, they almost exclusively despise their fans, and their staff. As a universe I like their works, but it is clear the goal of the company is solely profit. It becomes rather obvious in most of their settings, where there is no change whatsoever from the status quo, and the good guys must always lose but never be destroyed. The only reason we didn't get an End times 40k edition was because the company already had fantasy of an example. The excess milking of my hobby, enjoyment, and wallet really, *really*, make me mad. Sorry for rant. I have thoughts on GW and Warhammer. I hope one day insulin will be cheaper.
I joined the hobby last year in 40k, and I love the necrons. The tomb kings sound equally amazing, and I wanted them so bad. You can't believe the widening, naive eyes I had when my local hobby shop simply said "they've been gone for years." Like, they looked so cool! They had a badass name and all! Were they just not a good-profit faction? Did they just not like egyptian models? Were they squatted for squat regions? I stopped researching the dudes ages ago so I can't remember too much of them, but they were such a good concept. I simply arrived too late.
Let me tell you why. Everyone thought they were generic Egyptian undead and their rules were the worst in the game. People were buying Tomb Kings models for terrain more than for the actual army. It's kinda fitting that the old saying "the only people who like TK, dont play TK" is more relevant than ever.
Honestly out of all the named character deaths, Queek's just hurt me the most. He at least got to take out Belegar shortly before being smacked by Thorgrim but speaking as someone who took the time to read his individual book it still felt like he was done dirty. In addition save for a potential allusion to Ikit in AoS absolutely *none* of the named Skaven characters (Besides Thanquol) have had any signs of appearing in AoS either. I just miss my ratty bois GW ;-;
One aspect of this whole mess that gets missed is this: Warhammer Fantasy wasn't dying, GW killed it. I don't mean in the End Times, I mean GW was killing it long before then, through neglect and avarice. Mismanaging storylines. Wildly disparate power levels. Adhering religiously to an aging system. Refusing to update model ranges that had been going for well over a decade at that point. Charging increasingly more for those old and busted models, despite so many of them being in plastic and thus dirt cheap to produce. And massively reducing points values, meaning everyone had to spend a fortune just to have an army of sufficient size. It was a stagnant, neglected game, that was suffering under the weight of years and GW's trademark exploitative, price-gouging business model. No existing players had any reason to keep buying models, and the barriers to entry for new players were sky high. Is it any wonder the game was dying? Warhammer Fantasy definitely needed a refresh. It had _needed_ a refresh for multiple editions by the time the End Times was developed. Models needed to be redone, systems needed to be rebuilt, and barriers to entry needed to come down. (I don't expect GW was ever going to drop model prices, but rebalancing the game around lower points values could only help it). I do find the idea of creating a new timeline appealing. Take the Old World, and give it a satisfying ending. Have all the "good" nations reach a good status quo. A shining new age of cooperation and prosperity. Rifts to Chaos closed, Skaven banished underground to lick their wounds, the sun shining on Sylvania as a reformist vampire count joins the Empire and rules their lands with minimal bloodshed. All the "evil" factions retreating to lick their wounds, to bother the world again in centuries to come. Everything is pretty alright for peasants, for the moment. With a neat bow tied up on the setting, with the possibility of future conflicts, say the new version of Warhammer will focus on a brand new setting. Enter Age of Sigmar. A slightly modified Mortal Realms that was born, not through cataclysm, but because Whatever. The Ruinous Powers, banished for the moment from the Old World, turned their eyes to these new realms. Etc, etc.
As someone who got into the world with the total war series I'm at least partially blessed I get to go through the older stuff with new eyes. But it sucks how it ended up.
You say that like GW wasn't trying to kill WH Fantasy. They did it with the Yvrraine books and are going to keep doing it as long as they might have to change their settings for the better.
@@SpicyMediaReal What are you talking about? GW has been ridiculously successful for years now, they're not killing anything. You personally not enjoying something has no real bearing on how it's faring as a whole.
@@realname8362 GW ended Warhammer Fantasy and I said nothing about liking or hating the books that brought Guilliman back. Where did you pull that I didn't enjoy anything?
Warhammer Fantasy filled a niche and it filled it well. I might be a weirdo but I was a Warhammer fan for a good 10 years before I ever took more than a passing glance at the lore. There was just something about the look of all your troops arrayed in rank and file - modeled so their spears form a little phalanx and stuff like that. Moving the old block regiments was a giant pain, but it was immersive.
I also think there's something lost in the switch to round bases, in the form of the Unit Filler concept. Models on extra large bases that filled out parts of a unit, that gave players a chance to be really artistic. (Not to mention save time and money on more of the same models). I've seen a lot of images of unit fillers from the era. They looked really cool. Wish you could just do that with round bases. (I mean you probably could, it would just require a bit of extra adjudication in the rules to account for an extra large round base taking the place of multiple smaller ones.)
you're like the opposite of me. i love getting into lore and shit but haven't even touched any tabletop models for anything. hell i know most everything about fallout lore but i've only played fallout new vegas. im a sucker for getting really interested in lore and then never playing the actual game.
The irony is that in the end, The End Times was completely unnecessary. Like, what was its purpose? To drum up more interest for the fantasy setting and make it profitable again. It ultimately did that and now AoS is both profitable and a fun game to boot, but wanna know what generated more interest for WHF than any number of apocalyptic scenarios ever could? The three WHF games (Mordheim, Total Warhammer and Vermintide) that were released about a year after The End Times finished up!
Good stuff as always. Another video game I’m a little surprised you didn’t bring up was Vermintide. I distinctly remember bringing people who had zero knowledge of Warhammer Fantasy onboard with that game, and then subsequently having awkward conversations about how that setting effectively no longer exists.
Vermintide is straight up why I'm into Warhammer at all. I had a passing knowledge of 40k but was never into it. The characters and atmosphere of Vermintide just sucked me in though, leading me down the rabbit hole of Fantasy lore. Then Mandalore put out his big video on Total Warhammer which convinced me to buy that whole series, which then got me even more into Fantasy's world. I took a few more looks at 40k after that, even though I dramatically prefer Fantasy to it. But from there I found TTS, which was an amazing ride.
Honestly Storm of Chaos should have gone as the dice landed. Chaos gets utterly destroyed and pushed back further into the wastes, miles of territory cleansed of taint and absorbed by the order powers. Bretonnian, Imperial and Kislevite partition of southern Norsca, civilizing it’s inhabitants and turning chaos into a minor threat that can only spread its cults in secret and spawn the occasional cultist warband while the Orks become the dominant threat to the world. Then let the story carry on from there. The Orks get complacent after truly being the biggest and greenest and start infighting as they always do, then the order factions can push them back and reclaim lost ground. But while they’re all fighting, chaos is biding it’s time and building strength for a new everchosen to make the dark powers feared once more.
For anyone who wants more of this, I recommend Majorkill’s Fixing the End Times series. While many may see him as a memer he does put a lot of effort into it. Definitely worth a watch with the videos he has up. Edit: Man a lot of people don’t like Majorkill lol
At the very least, the Skaven should have been divided between a "We must help Chaos because the Horned Rat wants to become the Great Horned Rat" faction led by Thanquol and that one Verminlord made of the souls of the Council of 13, and a more traditionally Skaven "Screw that, no world means we all die and we want to live damnit" faction led by the (surviving) second in commands of the Council Clans like Ikit, Tretch, Sniktch, and or Throt with some minor clans like Volkyn and Skurvy showing up as supporters of one side or the other. All of the sudden Ikit blows up the moon not out of jealousy, but to try and screw over Thanquol's Skaven faction. Of course, going off of a reworked/rewritten "Storm of Chaos" timeline in the future of "The Old World" would honestly be a really good idea that wins fan good will, brings back a beloved setting, and probably makes money because people will pay Horus Heresy prices for it. All of which means GW will not do it.
Glad my boy is out here getting that NordVPN cash, stay hustling gamer 💵 On the End Times, I legitimately thing The Great Horned Rat wrote all the lore, Skaven are just getting Ws left and right, when in earlier lore the best they did was *almost* destroying Talabheim (shout out to all my Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay players who did Terror in Talabheim)
In the skaven lore, it was written that there were so many skavens in the world that they could conquer the world easily if only they could work together. The alignment with chaos was the trigger. In my humble opinion this is far from the worst thing coming from gw's end times 😀
The Fall of Cadia has issues and isn't really on the same scale as The End Times but, to make End Times sting less every faction should have gotten at least one "CADIA STANDS, THE PLANET BROKE BEFORE THE GUARD DID" moment, would've taken the sting away a bit
I think the one thing that makes AOS struggle to recapture what makes fantasy appealing atleast to me (and I say this as a Order player in AOS) is that the death of fantasy meant the death of mortals, the way AOS is written in large timescales means that only gods and immortal beings can be heroes and that alot of the average men and women like the Freeguild are just kinda forgotten about. I do hope the "put Mortal back into Mortal realms" is GWs attempt to fix this issue.
I mean...that isn't really true though. Sure, the Age of Myth lasted for who knows how long, but it's the Age of Myth anyway. The lore is however, pretty clear that the Age of Chaos lasted around 500 years (which is far less inhuman than the 10 000 years of 40k or the 2000 years on the IC, which is ignoring anything pre-Sigmar). And in an interview, GW said the Free Cities were basically 120 years old, and since some of them were build a decade after the Age of Chaos, that makes the current Era around 200 years at best. Sure, those are pretty long time for mortals, but if Fantasy and 40k managed with longer ages, AoS can pretty easily do it.
I’ll get the “wallow in bitterness” popcorn for the sequel later. Heavily salted, no butter and burnt enough to be unpleasant, yet not enough to be inedible.
The beat way to make the end times good would have been to simply let everyone get there hits in, let the dwarfs be besieged by a giant force that consists of multiple factions, and the end of the battle the dwarfs are in the citadel of there hold, while all there enemies try to bring the hammer down on them only for the scholars who had been marking grudges and crossing them out as the battle waged, ending with multiple books getting all there entries struck out and each time it happened the dwarfs were reinvigorated, mountains of corpses, and dwarf bravery on display for an epic defeat
Fantasy was only losing money because the company failed to support it and made starting an army overly difficult. It’s the same thing they do with non Space Marine factions in 40k, fail to support them, cause lower sales of those armies, and then use that as justification why most of the releases are Space Marines
An important note to WHFBs sales: it was sinking after ~5 years of full neglect. No new models, no new books, no new anything, No shit it wasnt selling. The twist to this all: the end times and the dozens of new kits made as part of it sold like hotcakes. People *wanted* to buy WHFB shit, GW just wasnt putting in the effort.
I just find it funny in Total Warhammer unless you play as him, Archaon has a high chance of getting immediately folded like an omelet, as Grim Kleeper pointed out
Nagash and the undead should have been the main antagonistic faction for the End times with the orcs skaven dark elves and chaos taking advantage of all the chaos ( pun not intended) and launching ther own campaigns. I would have also have given some of the minor factions and hero's time to shine. And made the aspects sacrifice themselves in a last dich attempt to save at least some of the old world. This would them lead directly to AOS with some bits and pieces and characters of the old world thrown in to show that their sacrifice was not in vain.
My personal version is that half the world got its shit kicked in falling into the warp while the other half survived, but was severely damaged except the empire because sigmar infused Carel Franz kicked absolute butt.
A canonical timeline split would’ve been an actually good thing to occur at the last moments of the world. Like when the incarnates are failing to close the gate after gelt gets stabbed, Teclis is like “oh fuck this isn’t going to work” and tries to rush a plan C. Maybe he’s thinking about the elf heaven and is like “I’ll try and make a new one so this world lives on” and changes the direction of the magic. Gelt gets weaker in aos for not having as much metal magic, and the world would have a canonical end to fantasy while having an actual creation to aos universe.
"like it or not, that ship was sinking" There has been no proof of this for almost a decade now. Even though the end times sold extremely well. Even though mordheim was one of the best selling GW games of all time. Even though Fantasy had objectively more players than 40k only 10 years before it suddenly became "dead weight". Those players didn't sell all their armies between the Albion campaign and the End Times. They were still playing, but GW didn't want to support them. They did everything in their power. Intentionally killing off mordheim, one of their best selling games of all time, because it didn't move as much product as the mainline games. Staggering editions by SIX YEARS. Intentionally ignoring the fans with their own canon storylines for things like the Albion campaign and Storm of Chaos (which they only reneged after a huge fan backlash). Not to mention that they NEVER released financials for Warhammer fantasy versus 40k. We're just supposed to take them at their word? No. The reason has, and always will be copyright. They couldn't stand the fact that people could produce "high elf spearman" as their own miniatures and often do them better than GW, at less price. They tried litigating, and that failed. It was cutting into their profits so they banned 3rd party minis from all GW stores, another reviled change that killed people's interest in fantasy. They couldn't stand losing a single cent, so they killed it and rebooted fantasy as 40k-lite. I don't know why I wasted so much time typing this up when no one will read it. But if you read it, you know. Fantasy wasn't killed due to lack of interest. GW poisoned fantasy for a decade before they dealt the final blow.
Funny that GW didn't see Fantasy becoming popular after Warhammer Total War released even though the same thing happened to Warhammer 40K after Dawn of War released.
So practically without Dawn of War and Total War. 40K will face the End Times isn't it? And interesting moment if GW sees that because of Total War Warhammer Fantasy become popular never seen before why not wipe out the End Times and create new narrative.
Haven't they explicitly stated multiple times that the settings aren't physically connected in any way? The only arguable connection being the chaos gods.
Look, Bretonnia is inspired by England and France. The Empire of Man is based on Germany/The Holy Roman Empire. Clearly, Empire stays on top. England and France both suck harder than Slaanesh.
Same, mate! Grail knights are awesome, and Bretonnian lore, at least in 5th edition was awesome too, or so I hear. If Bretonnia wasn't just deleted and would be ported to AoS, I would honestly consider getting into it alongside 40k.
@@TFZ. Their highest tier settlement defenses, the "Reinforced Walls", launch "carcasses". But if you look closely, they are carcasses of cows stuffed with explosives. 🤣
Having two divergent timelines "split" from Old World, where both factions win/lose, but then recollide and ultimately destroy both could have been interesting
I enjoyed the Storm of Chaos campaign at the time. I believe a lot of people read the lore/ book and critique it as such objectively but to be a teenager of the time was wild. Online campaign where you could see battle results uploaded, White Dwarf coverage of Crom the Conqueror, the build up of Valten and the build up to the Storm Of Chaos book release. It was really, really good fun. You don’t really get that sort of buzz anymore - despite the Arks of Omens stuff being kinda cool, it doesn’t hit the same.
Honestly the fact that GW butchered one of my favorite settings (especially since i played WFRP much more that actual miniature game) made me feel extremally bitter, sad and disappointed. Maybe its bc it reminded me that cool things get cancelled/left alone just bc they dont sell well. Maybe bc I've spent countless hours sinking into the lore of those places and creating characters i've grown so attached to. Either way I guess that headcanon is my only way to cope with that loss.
When Fantasy Battle existed, it didn't draw my attention like 40k. Years later when I had money for toy soldiers, my buddy and I decided to give Age of Sigmar (at the end of it's 2nd edition) a go. I picked the Lizardmen and he pick Sigmarines. We played 2 games of 2nd edition and 1 game of 3rd edition and after every game we agreed that we might as well have played 40k. Then I got Total War: Warhammer from White Dwarf. We played a bit of it, the save broke, and we got Warhammer 2, so I could play as the Lizardmen. We then played an 80 hour campaign, got really into the setting, and really hopeful for The Old World. I rebased my Lizardmen to square bases and I think he started selling his Sigmarines. The End Times were a mistake. 2 Vermintide games and 3 Total War games should be evidence enough of that.
Yeah Warhammer Fantasy was bleeding money, however you could argue that was mostly the fault of GW themselves. There where loads of warning signs that Warhammer Fantasy was starting to decline, that GW could have pick up on and chosen to correct. But they didn´t they let it continue until the end times where literally the only option.
It might be cheesy, but I’d love a bit where just some random dude a pikeman or something just stabs Archeon right through the neck or something and kills him, there’s a moment of intense happiness, finally they had beaten chaos. And as the world fades into nothing there’s this sense of victory across the entire world. And in the void as sigmar floats aimlessly a being higher then any god that ever existed reaches out and grips sigmar, it decides that the old world must live on somehow as the only world that fought chaos and won. And so it created the mortal realms to give them another chance because one day these mortals will cleanse the entire universe of chaos, a grand destiny if you would with sigmar silently working on that in some deep lore bit
I mean one cool thing they could've done alone with Manfred is after making him an elector count, let him dedicate himself to the empire, yes he wants to rule it someday but now that he has a shred of legitimacy he doesn't need to use force anymore. Instead of him betraying the rest, he is faithful to the empire, at least until the war with cahos is over, and doesn't betray the rest, no he gets betrayed, the other counts rightfully do t trust him and stab him in the back, leading his army to crumble and opening a flank for a chaos champion to stab geld. Make it so they believe the battle to be won, a ploy from tzeentch to make it not stupid, maybe even add a sneeziling little advisor that wishers in their ears that Manfred wants to betray them.
Dude, you nailed it at like 17:00 in. Like they release WH Total War, I get into it, and look to find out Warhammer Fantasy doesn't even exist anymore.
I remember hearing about how GW said you could send in replays of your battles with winners and losers and they'd write the ending based on who had the most wins. Problem is, the Empire and frens all caught fat Dubs and made Archaeon look like a little bitch so they just kinda ignored what they said.
Malal works from the shadows against the other 4 chaos gods. He gives Archeon a peanut allergy and during the siege of Erengrad he arranges for the ever chosen to have a peanutbutter sandwich. Archeon eats it and dies. End times avertet.
The God Emperor of Mankind descends in his spaceship accompanied by the Custodes to save Sigmar from death. "Come my son, it's time to lead your legion."
"destroying a world" can have many meanings, Chaos could have lost the fight for the world but left it so destroyed that the races that are left (imo all should be still there) have no choice left but to come together, to gather all magic and perform a ritual which would kickstart the "Age of Sigmar"
The thing I would accept is that The End Times is the dying dream of Archaon as he lies broken and defeated at the walls of Middenheim. I would also take not ruining the Asur lore by handwaving all of Malekith's and Morathi's atrocities away and giving Malekith the one thing he NEVER deserved, the Phoenix Crown.
An idea for magic and why Mannfred did what he did; The Eight Winds (and other Lores of Magic) would be waxing with great power in balance with the rising of chaos energy and the massive increase of warpstone from the destroyed Morrslieb. This would have made for far more powerful magic casters, but also had an increased risk when miscasting happens and an increasingly maddening effect on magic users, affecting them in different ways. If Mannfred absolutely HAD to pull a Starscream, then it should have been justified by his obsession with magic, coupled with his vampirism, that drove him to feed on Teclis' power in much the same way as vampirism might draw him to feed on blood; With him struggling to resist the urge for a good while as he tries to find his place in all the pandemonium, the conflux of magical energy present at the ritual proves to great as it sends him into a giddy, uncontrollable frenzy against his better judgement, with the guilt of possibly dooming the world and everyone in it driving him mad and leading him to double down on his quest to become the greatest sorceror in the world, working with Kemmler to form a new Pantheon of Evil. I had him in mind to be one of the big bads in my idea for a revised setting, where the ritual only served to reduce the Chaos Gods' presence in the material plane and gives the opportunity for other villains (Mannfred, Kemmler, the four "Champions of Chaos", Queek, Zhatann and more) to threaten the survivors in future supplements. A similar thing occurs with Balthasar Gelt, in a story where some characters from The Border Princes find him holed up in Gort Soll, and his increasing mastery of Necromancy has got out of hand and he's convinced that the only way the day will be saved is with an army of undead to fight their enemies (and he's only being used as a puppet by Nagash for his own plans).
As for your ideas of having the victories matter and inflence AOS. Why not have them do a big ritual and succeed? What does the ritual do? It makes it so Chaos can't "digest" the world even as it swallows it. The old gods sacrifice themselves to power it (so they did something) and it works so spectacularly well that Chaos in fact not only spits fragments of the old world back out but thousands of other worlds, which is why the Mortal Realms are so ridiculously huge. And also not a planet was we know it, it's still a total mess of real souls and matter but after Chaos threw it back up, that's how the whole setting change into a sowrd and sorcery mess.
One of my favorite things about Wyrd and their Malifaux brand is when there are campaigns to dictate how events unfold, they follow the results. Hell, we got 3 characters who changed based one weekly results. Fantasy got wronged
6:00 we won’t go into every single thing GW did wrong we’d be here for hours You seem to underestimate how much I enjoy your voice and long video essays
I do think it was wholly unnecessary to end the setting, Pancreas' idea of "the good guys win but at what cost" would work if crisis was averted but the civilised world was so badly damaged (Like the Empire only consisting of Nuln & Averheim) it would make the survivors question if they had the numbers to rebuild what they had before. It could see a rescaling of the hobby to begin with warbands a la Warcry and Mordheim for the first phase of stories as the first ranging parties venture out of safety to fight the warriors and monsters in the ruins of nearby lands, 500-1000 point armies in the second phase in an arc where Nagash is the big bad, and then a final phase with rules for 2000-5000 point armies where they fight the good fight to the very last against an alliance of the remaining villains. Simplified rules, new faction leaders (With Toddy, Malekith and Grombrindal leading the new alliance) and a mix of rereleased models and some of the ideas from AoS for a new status quo and a slightly less hopeful tone, would have been brilliant. The setting didn't have much more left in it, but The End Times didn't have to be the end, but at least the beginning of the end...
In my opinion a small portion of the empire should have survived with Sigmar and kinda travelled to the mortal realms. Like Middenhiem should have plopped down in Azyr and that’s it
GW even cancelled his book, It was supposed to tell what happened between the fall of Strygos and the End Times, just imagining Gilles, Aborash, the Red Duke, all remaining Grail Knights and Blood Dragons fighting an endless horde of Chaos until the world explodes feels awesome, and then maje them come back as a crusader faction in AoS
@@MiguelSanchezDelVillar Well, the Old World is coming back, the new game of warhammer fantasy could show abhorash and other characters who don't have a model and have books about them, they might release the game in 2023 which happens to be the 40th anniversary of warhammer fantasy.
@7:58 uh not sure if anything in the lore was changed but after listening to the end times audiobooks the fight with queek and king thorgrim was pretty one sided because it seems like the master rune itself was destroyed to power thorgrim up. I dont think he died because he left the door open, it lead to a vantage point very high up in the mountains and i think the Deathmaster had climbed the mountain and into the place through the window; his weeping blades pierced the armor because skaven magic (but lets be real, a blade of X vs an armor of X will always lose, a steel sword will not slash steel armor) and the door being left open meant the Deathmaster and other assassins could infiltrate the hold and open the gates. Still a dumb ending after killing a million billion skaven.
I would’ve had the entire thing and it essentially a stalemate with chaos being completely destroyed. As a bad guy was stabbed by the Schemin he should’ve casted a spell that would’ve isolated every faction from each other with any army that crosses out of their own territory being significantly weeker.
3:44 and to make the sponsor a bit more atractive, if you create a steam account in say, argentina, you can easily buy 60 dollar games for the equivalent of 3 bucks in argentinian money, even works with premium currency in some games, my friend spent like 10 bucks and now has almost every skin avialable to buy in apex
I agree with you, have something in End Time have effects in AoS. But I think it's even easier than that: have it change the world, break it a bit, but not end it. Adapt some of AoS ideas, like the realms made of magic, by having the Vortex become many little vortices, each with a specific wind, maybe even personality or character, and have them anchored in ancient places of power or mysticism. Have 300 years go by, split the Empire in three again, sunder Ulthuan but settle the Asur all over the world in petty kingdoms that may go to war with one another, and give Gelt back his necromantic dabbles, have him puppet the Southern Emperor in Nuln and create golden plated golems of machine and magic... and now you can use some Stormcast Eternals in your Fantasy army.
@@Basil_Ghothickovitch The universe in AoS is theoretically endless, but it's deep as a puddle. What if the Realms have the size of a galaxy? They're *empty*. The Old World is a planet, but is it small? Is the Earth small? To me, the Empire, Naggaroth, the Suuthlands, they feel like vast expanses. What if Ghur is endless, you only know a small corner of it and not even that well. The rest of Ghur is like it didn't exist.
sorry mate, someone has alreasy fixed the end times and five years earlier. Stop me if you've heard this one before. "This is Archaeon the everchosen, ruler of the warriors of chaos and so evil he punches puppies. Champion of the chaos gods, he would bring in the end of times. Archaeon destroyed cities, butchered his enemies and ate them raw......so he died of constipation"
Future video idea, how would PancreasNoWork would have done the end times. basically how would you have done the same end goal of wrapping up the setting and leading it into age of sigmar, but with being able to do what you wanted instead of being bound purely to what GW did
Dude the Great King Settra the Imperishable, Khemrikhara, The Great King of Nehekhara, King of Kings, Opener of the Way, Wielder of the Divine Flame, Punisher of Nomads, The Great Unifier, Commander of the Golden Legion, Sacred of Appearance, Bringer of Light, Father of Hawks, Builder of Cities, Protector of the Two Worlds, Keeper of the Hours, Chosen of Ptra, High Steward of the Horizon, Sailor of the Great Vitae, Sentinel of the Two Realms, The Undisputed, Begetter of the Begat, Scourge of the Faithless, Carrion-feeder, First of the Charnel Valley, Rider of the Sacred Chariot, Vanquisher of Vermin, Champion of the Death Arena, Mighty Lion of the Infinite Desert, Emperor of the Shifting Sands, He Who Holds The Sceptre, Great Hawk Of The Heavens, Arch-Sultan of Atalan, Waker of the Hierotitan, Monarch of the Sky, Majestic Emperor of the Shifting Sands, Champion of the Desert Gods, Breaker of the Ogre Clans, Builder of the Great Pyramid, Terror of the Living, Master of the Never-Ending Horizon, Master of the Necropolises, Taker of Souls, Tyrant to the Foolish, Bearer of Ptra's Holy Blade, Scion of Usirian, Scion of Nehek, The Great, Chaser of Nightmares, Keeper of the Royal Herat, Founder of the Mortuary Cult, Banisher of the Grand Hierophant, High Lord Admiral of the Deathfleets, Guardian of the Charnal Pass, Tamer of the Liche King, Unliving Jackal Lord, Dismisser of the Warrior Queen, Charioteer of the Gods, He Who Does Not Serve, Slayer off Reddittras, Scarab Purger, Favoured of Usirian, Player of the Great Game, Liberator of Life, Lord Sand, Wrangler of Scorpions, Emperor of the Dunes, Eternal Sovereign of Khemri's Legions, Seneschal of the Great Sandy Desert, Curserer of the Living, Regent of the Eastern Mountains, Warden of the Eternal Necropolis, Herald of all Heralds, Caller of the Bitter Wind, God-Tamer, Master of the Mortis River, Guardian of the Dead, Great Keeper of the Obelisks, Deacon of the Ash River, Belated of Wakers, General of the Mighty Frame, Summoner of Sandstorms, Master of all Necrotects, Prince of Dust, Tyrant of Araby, Purger of the Greenskin Breathers, Killer of the False God's Champions, Tyrant of the Gold Dunes, Golden Bone Lord, Avenger of the Dead, Carrion Master, Eternal Warden of Nehek's Lands, Breaker of Djaf's Bonds, and many, many more being removed from the game was fucking AWFUL. How could such a badass character be tossed aside like trash?
Well I'm fairly new to Warhammer fantasy but my fix is this: everyone kicked chaos in the teeth so hard that the three other gods went up to Tzeenche and asked if he could port them to a different timeline where they won. And before you say there is no way that Khorne would ever do that in a millions years.... ya well that was before my 10s planning for a band aid fix finished. I could honestly see chaos rewriting their loss though, like Tzeenche is the last god left with Gork, Mork the Great Maw, Sigmar etc. (basically all the other gods along with the old ones) are storming into his tower and all the other gods' forces are fighting with everything they have left, Tzeenche somehow pulls a reality warp out of his avian ass to backtrack to a point in time where he and his brothers could win. No, I'm not saying the reality where order wins just has no chaos gods, but imprisoning them should in theory be possible. Just have a greater demon led council from each of the gods' courts trying to work on some way to break them out with all the chaos-allied armies
I remember playing 40k at an FLGS in the weeks after Total Warhammer came out and almost every week I was playing on their 40k night you'd have parents coming in with their kids to buy some Warhammer Fantasy stuff just to get told that wasn't really a thing anymore. Also had a dude at the time always annoyed because wit everyone playing 8th Ed 40k he couldn't find anyone to play his 30k AL up against anymore the same way he coulda just run em up against 7th Ed armies. Just felt like a weird time to be in the hobby altogether
It literally doesn’t make sense that the skaven would ally with chaos because if they destroy the world where the hell am I. I mean THEY would get there warpstone.
Age of Sigmar just feels like generic high fantasy to me, with very clear good and bad guys. I could never get into it. Especially when i have a love for Warhammer fantasy, which is a very good Tolkien inspired universe, yet still manages to do its own things very well. Hopefully through the Fantasy games, the old low fantasy setting will grow more
You do know that half the forces of order will absolutely murder eachother, right? Like, the idoneth deepkin are soul slurping pirates who will assail settlements on the coast no matter who they're aligned with? The daughters of kaine consider violence to be a prayer? The glue keeping them together 99% of the time is, yea those zombies and rats and chaos hordes and goblins and ogres are kinda bad
Should’ve had skaven save everyone by accident. Basically a “no one destroys the world unless it us” or then realizing main chaos would murder them and their rat god so they try to stop them. Basically enough death and destruction on all sides that every faction is left in tatters and has to rebuild
You know who should have survived longer? Luthor Harkon. They should have added something like "Luthor has such a drive for vengeance again Mannfred that it kept him from death". Luthor is able to just barely cling to life although his body is beaten and broken. However his minds are in such disarray over how to get revenge he's barely able to stand is completely out of it for the rest of the books, being nothing more than a shambling corpse. When Mannfred kills Gelt and is blinded, Luthor sees his chance and, united as one again, tackles Mannfred to the ground and brutally beats him to death with his remaining strength. The exertion kills Luthor but he is able to die unified as the world crumbles around him.
The only way to make the end times good is by chaining Manfred to a mountain from the start to make sure he doesn't do anything stupid, and to make it so Grimgor head buts Archaon to death. And also chaining Snikch next to Manfred.
Total War: WARHAMMER III Immortal Empires launch trailer is what we all wanted and need End Times to be. I consider that to be the true canon and timeline.
Honestly, it sounds like GW still haven't figured out that new shiny models and lore sells and stuff left with little to no new lore involvement and dusty old decade-old models doesn't..
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damn nords pretty big businesses nice to see you moving up just make sure not to do it to fast you diabetes my cause you to feint
Well 1 thing I'll give fantasy credit is karl franz and sigmar. They're are better than the god emperor of mankind. Or at least feel like real people with personalities.
Your sarcasm is powerful.
No
@PancreaseNoWork you know how eldar are skinny elves imagine their was an eldar that is so buff and jacked also can bench press two thousand and such a chad that not even slaanesh can consume him because how much a chad he is once he flex his muscle slaanesh literally dies.
I cannot get over the fact that the High Elves just accepted Malekith as King, as if millennia of rape, pillage and slavery didn’t make him illegitimate despite his right. And he even got to marry the Everqueen, a person he tried to kidnap to hand over to a rape demon of slannesh lol
Stockholm Syndrome
Same. Also can’t get my head around them having to bullshit Skaven into nuking the moon to get rid of the lizardmem
I care more about the lizardman wipe than Maliketh becoming king
Was Malekith as the true king that weird?
@@braveagentg I think so yeah... Because one would imagine that being the "true king" isn't just happening to be that guy who is in that position on the family tree, maybe that's true in a legalistic way but to be a prophetic true king in some kind of Arthurian or Messianic way you'd expect that would be the person who embodies the virtues of the Elves and their Gods above all others.
Malekith failed his first test to endure the flames which is already an awful start mythologically speaking then he went on to be a completely despicable tyrant for millenia forsaking those same gods besides Khaine and never did anything to redeem himself before the "true king" reveal. So I find it a really odd and dissatisfying narrative choice, and I don't even like the High Elves or Dark Elves as factions that much so I can only imagine how mad the people who do got.
You could pull the "it was all a dream" and have someone see premonitions of things to come. Then use the player battles to show how each faction prevents their destruction. Thus satisfying GW's chaos boner and letting players stomp on it at the same time.
Pretty easy to incorporate the advisor from the games as the "seer" that warns each faction too, if they wanted to be lazy.
One of the only "It was all a dream ending's" I'd fully support
I just got into total warhammer and have been enjoying the setting until I heard about the End Times and how bad it was. Your idea I like a lot more than what GW came up with
Yeah, but that wouldn't satisfy GW's Space Marines obsession. Oh well, as someone who doesn't play tabletops, I'll just say it sucks to be you guys.
@@pancreasnowork9939 "It was all a dream" is usually a shitty ending because it nullifies the events of the story and makes everything that happened in the story pointless. However, when the story is dogshit and never should have existed in the first place, that's no longer such a bad thing.
I have a personal headcanon where the chaos gods actively care about the fantasy sigmar universe more than the 40k verse. It feels like they just check in on the 40k universe occasionally rather than the more hands on approach with fantasy
Maybe Fantasy IS their Great Game
@@powercorpse8386 the chaos gods play total war warhammer
@@mysteriousstranger5873 True that I encountered them in multiplayer
Except when their existence is actively threatened in the 40k-verse, hence the Horus Heresy.
@@Wanten-the-stormtrooper when they were required to take a hand in 40K, they just outsourced it to an edgy mary sue.
You're correct, Thorgrim DOES have runes on his armour specifically designed to prevent a Skaven assassin from killing him in exactly that manner.
He also had runes to prevent assassination by any other race just because he's thorough like that
But... But he left the door open!
Wouldve been better if queek was destroying or ruining his runes just so snikch could finish thorgrimm off * pause. But idk if runes could be destroyed
@@bigsadge747 At least according to the Gotrek and Felix novel "Zombieslayer", they can. It's not much of a spoiler, but a fallen acolyte of SIgmar destroyed the runes warding Castle Reiksguard against the Undead; and it didn't seem to take much. Just a bit of focused energy.
WHICH MAKES IT WORSE :(@@lemjustlem
Lore End Times: Total Annihilation of everyone involved.
Total War End Times: Archaeon spawns only to see a bunch of high-tier armies ready to tore his nuts off.
Not until Immortal Empires comes alive.
Lol
Mortal Empires is when everyone sees the fate of the world and decides to not fuck around with Chaos
@@Predator20357 Unless it is AI.
@@insanity9329 True, I guess the player is the one who sees what’s in the future for them.
Fun fact: Total warhamm 3 is the first one chronologically speaking and the first one is last
So after listening, I decided to throw in my own ideas on improving End Times without just wiping it away. (Note, I'm not exactly well versed in the specifics of End Times lore but hey, I'm giving this a shot.)
1. Malaketh goes into the Flame of Asyurian and instead of suddenly becoming the worthy king, he just stands there, not chosen by the flame but not harmed by it either as a show case of his strength and will, how he is literally willing (and capable) of overturning millennia of tradition and the gods themselves for his goals. He is not given the crown of Phoenix King, he pulls a Napoleon and takes it for himself.
2. The Skaven and Chaos don't directly work together and Skaven try to work against them, but with so many competing clans and ideas and a general lack of a unifying force, their plans often end up competing or going against each other or accidently harming other factions/unintentionally aiding Chaos. For example they might try to blow up the warpstone moon to weaken beastmen/chaos magics, but the shards come crashing into the Great Bastion in Cathay, destroying it and letting Chaos Hordes rush in. Or they might try to use magic to obliterate a Chaos Horde outside a city but the Greyseer fucks the spell up or gets shanked and so it only destroys part of the horde and clips part of the city walls. Clan Pestilence might try to poison the blood offerings of Khornate warbands, only to accidently poison Imperial water supplies as well. They aren't in some grand alliance, but the nature of Skaven means even their best intentions fuck things up for everyone involved.
3. Speaking of fucking things up, the Incarnates ritual kind of works but Manfred still fucks it up. Instead of being an idiot and stabbing Gelt in the back, his ego gets in the way and says "this ritual thing is great and I agree with it, but I think I can make it a little bit better". So he tries to add his own magic to the pot and inadvertently screwing with the ritual because even as a master necromancer, trying to meddle with literal incarnates of magic is above his station. Maybe Gelt still gets rekt by the magic fallout or something.
3A. Grimgor sort of helps the Incarnates by guarding them but not defensively, but more because "I want to fight you guys, but Chaos is really strong right now and I want a good fight with them first but you guys better be here when I get back so I can have a proper scrap". He can still roshambo Archeon for giggles but he is probably getting merc'd by the Everchosen. Skarsnik also can have a proper send off by stabbing a Tzeentch lord's attempt to fuck with the ritual out of revenge for that same lord killing Gobbla, showing that all the schemes and one million IQ plans only go so far when you have a low cunning, a sharp knife and a sneaky git looking for revenge.
4. Speaking of Chaos being strong, they do some grand ritual right off the bat that either cripples or severely weakens the other Old World Gods, perhaps even chaining them up to syphon off their power like Ursun in TWW3, leading to an initial powerspike and why there wasn't much divine intervention going on.
4A. Most of the gods were subsumed or used as the basis of the Mortal Realms. For example, Taal could have been used as the base of Ghyran, Khaine for Aqshy, and Morr for Shysh which is what one of the things the Incarnate ritual was trying to do, use those dead/dying gods as a starting point for safe havens. Mean while some gods like Shallya got subsumed by Nurgle while Tor and Myrmidia was subsumed by Khorne. However, this has an effect on them because they are absorbing non-evil aspects. Nurgle might decide to hold off on sending a plague so he can have a "larger population to test it on" but this is a little bit of Shallya's mercy peaking through. Khorne might suddenly say that he wants some more skulls of worthy champions and if you give him skulls of incapable innocents instead of warriors he'll have your's instead, but this is Tor and Myrmidia's martial pride peaking through Khorne's bloodlust. Reynault was subsumed by Tzeentch but not fully and every so often one of his schemes just randomly fails or he fails to see a hole because of Reynault pulling a sneaky on him.
4B. This is a personal thing but I think the last charge of the Grail Knights and Blood Knights together might have also had a lasting impact on Khorne, a show of chivalry and bravery that helps the other war gods sway him away from bloodlust every so often. (Fanboy bias in here I admit.)
5. Thorgrim's death in particular. Instead of being shanked in effectively an alleyway, it could be that after a huge battle where tons die, his honor guard have all been killed and the high king is just holding to life, clutching the book of grudges, a Skaven assassin/Deathmaster Snikich goes up and stabs him, gloating about his kill. Thorgrim, barely able to whisper, says he has something to say to his killer and the assassin goes in to listen, only for Thorgrim to use the last of his strength to slam the great book closed on the ratman's head, killing him in a shower of blood before passing himself. Besides being one final fuck you, it could be a metaphor about how the grudges of the past have been "wiped clean" by the blood spilled because now no one can actually read anything in the book, symbolizing how the dwarves have to work with humans and elves and others to move beyond the past to save the world.
Again, I'm not a lore master but this is just my 1am inspired ramblings after listening to this video on the way home from work.
Last one is fucking epic
That is incredibly good
this is fantastic
My favorite is 4A, having the "lesser" gods influencing the chaos gods that absorbed/devoured them, interesting concept to consider
@@titanking9130 it really is because it can allow chaos to be more than 1d dimensional bad guys everyone rightfully wants to fuck off
I wasn't even aware of the existence of Warhammer when the End Times happened, but somehow the fact that my boy Skarsnik, avatar of MORK, was forgotten by the DAMN AUTHORS THEMSELVES makes my blood boil.
My thoughts exactly
good he deserves it and every evil faction to be forgotten
@@ronanchristiana.belleza9270 its warhammer bruh, not peacehammer
@@doodleeagle9344 i stand what i said
@@ronanchristiana.belleza9270 🤠
I think Snickh carving his personal mark on the last page of the Book of Grudges after shaking Thorgrim is pretty cool but I do wish it had happend in a scenario that made, you know, sense.
Maybe if it was his last dying action because an already injured Thorgrim took Snikch with him. And make it that instead of forgetting to lock the door, Snikch either found a way around or had predicted where Thorgrim would go and snuck in ahead of time.
To be fair here, Snikch as a whole is a Mary Sue. Super duper skaven assassin with no flaw whatsoever that always kill and is never tracked and always escape with no one knowing he exist in the first place. Come on, that's not a character, that's a plot device.
They've literally teleported Snickh into an impenetrable locked room to kill on of his targets. They literally could've just had him waiting for Thorgrim.
Also since the entire setting was going to go boom might as well have Grudgebearer get a "You're dying with me" kill on him.
@Simon Nachreiner would it not have been so badass for him to settle the grudge of his own assassination
@@calebwilliams586God that would've been cool. Like, as he bleeds out he brains snikch with a brick or something
Settra was the only person I liked in the End Times. Also half of the Lizardmen characters died without a mention, same with Skarsneeg, anyone in the east, and the Ogres
Yeah, as a Lizardmen player, the End Times fluff made me angry.
Because Settra DOES NOT SERVE
@@javieraravena5345 he rules. As he destroys 5 demons with a single backflip
@@steffanyschwartz7801 some say he should have his own realm on AOS still going against chaos. I feel him been reduced to a skull that has been non stop insulting everything and claiming to "rule everything" would be also acceptable (more if that is just the setup to him coming back)
@@javieraravena5345 There is a book in AOS where a girl gets help from a Stormcast named like Settramus or something. Mannfred shows up to stop the girl and notes how he’s similar to Settra. Then he says he would be dead if it was actually Settra. My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.
My fix for the End Times is… let Everyone win. Destroy the World that Was, but let a few places like Altdorf, Karaz-a-Karak, the Elf Forest survive the twisting chaos and form the seeds of the new mortal realms
Yea and have em kind of linked like yggdrasil does in Norse lore so they're separated but can still be accessed by the others albeit in non convenient ways
Funnily enough the Oak of Ages did sorta survive the End Times and is in AoS, and is really important. It's called the Oak of Ages Past, and after the Necroquake Allarielle actually revitalized the tree to basically counteract Nagash's death magic-wave with her own life magic, basically helping save the entire setting from Nagash. So it's kind of a nice thing that the Oak is still so important.
I completely disagree, i think the races should fall due to their horrible shit they do to their own races, let the dwarves die by being stubborn and not being able to accept basic compromise. Have the empire of man crumble because their leaders killed the actual hero of sigmar in secret. You need to emphasise that these countries people could have held, if they werent failed by the horrible structures that were in place.
They need structural reasons why characters fell and chaos was able to exploit their established weaknesses, and i think the end times should have been a long and slow death of the world
(With your idea incorporated as the final stands with their empires doomed and all they could do was fight the losing battle forever)
The world is destroyed
But a new one is born in the end
Basically
Don't completely say "CHAOS WINS 100%"
Say
"Chaos destroyed the world, but there's hope for the next one"
@@jackh7977 that would work a hell of a lot.
Maybe have a handful of characters carry over into AOS aside from the new gods, the chaos guys and Gotrek.
My favourite piece of End Times writing was when like 200 Great Swords were sent to defend Marienburg and one dude tripped on a brick which caused the entire line to collapse
Even worse, It was a full imperial army with 200 greatswords of Carroburg, the best greatswords of all, and they all died because one dude slipped into shit
@@MiguelSanchezDelVillar are y’all being serious? My favorite nation in fantasy went out like a bitch cause someone tripped on a brick?
Fucking what?
@@nostear8261 yes, one dude tripped and slowly but surely the Empire started to break lines so the Chaos army steamrolled everyone, that's basically all the End Times, the good guys could win but this tiny mistake made them lose, this can work as a plot device in a Battle but It's obvious that is bad writting when It happens in all battles, except in the final Battle of Nehekara, in that one Settra was going to win until Nagash became a God
@@MiguelSanchezDelVillar In the battle of Nuln, there is a skaven screaming bell that is destroying both buildings and artillery with its sound waves, the artillery fires a volley at it but doesnt cause enought damage to destroy it, then they fire another volley... TO THE INFINITE SWARM OF SKAVEN SLAVES, LIKE WHAT? WHY CHANGE TARGETS OUT OF NOWHERE? It goes without saying that just after that the screaming bell rings again and all artillery pieces are destroyed, giving victory to the skaven. OMG the writting, cant the empire lose a battle without looking like complete idiots?
The only good thing that came from the End Times is Vlad saving Isabella from Nurgle, greatest love story in Warhammer
What about throgg p!ssing on sigvald
Except undead are incorruptible to begin with. Or not?
@@SMT-ks8yp Nurgle revived Isabella and put a daemon inside her to turn her against Vlad and Nagash
@@MiguelSanchezDelVillar I know, but... there was no Isabella and just an Isabella-like body with a demon in it?
The relationship between Vlad and Isabella is the most shocking thing about them
I've generally maintained that it's pretty impressive that GW managed to find a way to find a worse copout than literally just saying "Hey guys, Fantasy isn't selling well. We're axing the setting and making a new one with new rules. You can still use your old models in the new setting though."
And yet they somehow found a way to write "Chaos wins everything" in a way that pissed off the Chaos players too, because as you mentioned, all of the named characters got done horrifically dirty (and died in increasingly lame fashions), and while they plot-armored their way to victory in the story, they were fucking dogshit on the tabletop. GW used to do this thing where they'd tally up battle reports that people sent in and determine where the plot went based on who won there, but despite them wanting Chaos to win, Chaos players were still just getting fucking dunked on left right and center. Because Chaos' rulebook sucked, and instead of giving Chaos a new ruleset that didn't suck balls they just fudged the results.
Storm of Chaos campaign. It wasn't just that they read battle reports and gave new lore based on them. GW organized a global, months long pseudo-tournament that occurred between two of the WFB editions and took tallies from hundreds of gaming stores that kept track of "their own section of the war."
Chaos almost won that war. It came down to the wire and was won largely because the Orc factions spent more time fighting Chaos than they did fighting Dwarves, Elves, or the Empire. The final climatic fight came down to a massive Aba.. Archeon fight at the gates of Altdorf. A massive WAAAAGH came in at the 11th hour and broke the siege, with the whole fight being played out on TT.
The End Times is a vicious insult to everyone who played the game and were told that their passion and interest was helping to shape the lore to come.
@@conormccue2871gork and mork would be proud don’t let them win
They couldn't even go through the effort of making Chaos blatantly overpowered for the purposes of Storm of Chaos. They just expected Chaos to win despite the shit rules they gave them, and when that obviously didn't work, they decided to axe the whole thing.
James workshop: *"impossible"*
Agreed the End Times were shit. Storm of Chaos was actually cool and proved the fans didn't want to squat the setting
Also James Workshop: just as planned
Hehehehe
James Workshop, author of critically acclaimed series The Horace Hearsay, starring Peterabo, Roberto Guillermito, Lemon Russian, and many more?!?!!1?
@@marconarvaez9871 And Macintosh the siglight
I never knew fantasy until the Total War and from there I have found several characters I love. I don’t have the spite for AoS cause it was already established by the time I was exposed to the universe, but knowing that Drycha, Setra, Vlad, and Azhag are pretty much done for as characters brings me sadness. (I know Drycha has an AoS model, but her story of going on a rampage against the elves is pretty much gone)
I fell in love with Karl Franz. He's the absolute GOAT
@@haydencrawford8552 Summon the Elector Counts!
I love that man.
I personally miss characters like setra, skarsnik and ikit. I know their in age of sigmar too but they just don't feel the same anymore.
I'm maintaining hope(or cope) of settras return
the end times ended with him on his chariot plowing through daemons, straight into the realms of chaos, cussing out the ruinous gods.
if there was ever a more perfect setup for him to come back as a rival undead power who hates what Nagash did with the place(since settra really hated nagash too)
@@OldSpaghettifactory89 He's never going to rival nagash lol, he was nowhere even near the same level in the end times, let alone nagash now. Could come back I guess, but there's not much room for actual rivals when it comes to being supreme ruler over the undead, just places nagash doesn't entirely own yet.
Settra somehow also being the god of death would be pretty dumb, and wouldn't make any real sense.
It's definitely a cop out but I love the way the World of Darkness series ultimately handled its "end of the world" setting series. A big part of the World of Darkness is that a lot of what anyone thinks is going on, a lot of the history, events, sometimes even people is complete bullshit. It's a game where knowing the lore technically makes it harder to play authentically because the average character players should be creating has no right whatsoever knowing that Hardestadt the Younger has been posing as Hardestadt the Elder ever since Tyler did in fact kill him like they claim. Did that sentence make any sense to you? No? Good, now go play Vampire the Masquerade and don't worry about it. I don't know how intentional it is but the lore has so many contradicting lines over the 30 years of its life that retcons feel more like "fake news." The whole setting has so many unreliable narrators even the unnamed supposedly impartial voice in the Corebooks can't be wholly trusted.
So in keeping with that when White Wolf decided to bring back the original setting they just shrugged their shoulders and said "yeah, a bunch of weird shit happened and some other weird shit has started happening too but nope, the end of the world never came. No Ascension, no Gehenna, no Apocalypse, nothing. Everyones just sitting in these tense, turbulent, and terrifying times with an overwhelming sense of dread and doom. It's 2022 and the world is shit. Just how you losers love your Grimdark Urban Fantasy settings." That's right, they bypassed and actually retconned their end of the world series by just continuing their lore like nothing happened and making the setting so close to our actual reality it's uncomfortable.
Don't worry, the Princess the Hopeful Nobles stepped in and saved everything off screen
To be fair it also really wasn't White Wolf that brought them back, it was Paradox.
White Wolf had the "New World of Darkness" that spawned Vampiee the Requiem in 06, after Gehenna the Final Night, Last Battle, and Judgment Day all dropped in 04.
Onix Path was who did V20, and even then they didn't fully retcon Time of Judgment: Gehenna, they just more implied it hadn't happened yet, or more happening slower, and the parts of the Meta plot was ST determined.
(Though one could make an arguement that with the SI now a thing, that its actually an extended Gehenna: Nightshade event going on, rather than Wormwood or Fair is Foul)
@@ssjjshawn It’s real funny to see what happens when WW doesn’t have 100% creative control. That VTM book might’ve been a good thing to be written if it means they got a corporate kick from Paradox.
I think one of the things that always bugged me about the Endtimes is that it completely glossed over a subtle but key component of the WHFB setting: it’s a world verging on technological breakthroughs. The humans are using steam tanks, the dwarfs just started making flying machines (and in Gotrek and Felix, entire flying barges). It’s essentially Early Modern Europe, which means a hell of a lot of fighting but also great leaps in science and the arts just down the pipeline (and that’s before we consider whatever Araby, Cathay, etc. are up to). All the mortal races need is just one little push to see technological greatness flourish…
And who else to spur change other than our favorite big blue bird, Tzeentch?
The way I see the End Times play out in my head is that Tzeentch betrays his brothers near the end of the conflict (because of course he does), and his armies end up supporting the mortal races in attaining an unsteady victory. Not out of the goodness of his heart, of course. Just because Tzeentch loves to see the shock on his brothers’ faces at having been betrayed, and because the despair of mortals who know they’ve only lived to see another day because of Chaos itself is simply delicious. Oh, and Tzeentch also knows The Great Game can’t go on if nobody is left to play it. That bit always bothered me, too.
The resulting world after the End Times would be pretty fucked over, of course. Countless ruined cities and endless dead everywhere. But per Warhammer’s theme of human resilience, the mortal races would pick themselves back up from the rubble. They’d begin to rebuild. And because Tzeentch is ascendant, technological progress would be rampant. Contact between the mortal empires would flourish, with Araby/Cathay/Kislev/who knows what else playing a bigger role on the world stage. The threat of Chaos would loom overhead as always, but there’d be so many new avenues for new minis, new stories, new heroes, and so on as the WHFB world inches forward one burdened step at a time.
Kind of a cop out, to be sure. But at least it’d retain the original themes of WHFB. AndTzeentch is always cool.
Would love to see Steam powered or magic powered Imperial Knights Mech, some Guilded Age sult fire arms like Winchester Repeaters or Revolvers, flying Ships. Hell they can do Diesel punk style War Hammer base off the technological advancements in which it is both gritty and grimdark but with better tech.
i think thats actually the best vision of a chaos god going good (i mean by chaos god standards). with tzeentch 100% being able to guess how society will progress he would forsee that industrialized and unified powers will do more war and have greater tensions and cultural strains, he would forsee the discontent with industrial society and the cultural upheaval and revolutions we saw in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and i could totally see him have a billion IQ play and think about the long term to maybe lose power in the short term as all major powers would be rebuilding for decades if not centuries, but when they do rebuild and old rivalries and fights over resources increase, he would be right there to gain power from it and influence the world from the backround to resemble europe before the great war, all powers anxious of eachother, differing groups afraid of the other, and religious and technological reforms constant to stay ahead of the competition. hell tzeentch alone would probably see the rise of capitalism as the best thing ever.
@@wilddoge5130 so the setting goes from high fantasy with 16th century HRE to a magi-steampunk gaslamp fantasy of 19th century pre-unification Germany
the fact that AoS exists instead of this is heresy
I mean, that's if the Lizardmen don't decide to beat the crap out of Tzeentch forces
I always liked the idea of a Warhammer 40k end times where the goals of each faction is fulfilled with a mad scramble for everyone to beat out the others but the way they did Warhammer Fantasy made think that its better they don't do it or atleast think with half a brain when doing it.
If they do 40k end times, I want it to go like this: chaos as a whole, all four factions take an interest in the tau. Chaos started to care less about the traitor astartes and more about lighting shooting blueberries. I want the trillions of Necrons to boot up, and begin the murder fest. In the end I think it would be cool if it was a three way brawl between chaos tau, necrons, and everybody else who united to survive. The universe then ends up getting vored by space bugs. (I know that chaos doesn’t have interest in the tau because they have “dim souls”, but if Tzeech tricked the other gods, I could see chaos empowering the 5 casts.
The good news is that if they ever do an End Times 40k, the story will be told over the course of 100+ books and it won't be concluded until 2050 or so.
As much as i hate the tyranids though this is probably the main reason but writing a way to deal with the tyranids seems harder than “they roll over everyone lmao” or that the necrons remain and the tyranids leave or get into a uninteresting slugfest with literally just necrons and tyranids until the tyranids leave or one of them wins.
@@amyvoegerl6349 It would be so funny if a 40k End Times is the Tyranids just end up nomming everyone.
I like to think a ideal end times for Warhammer 40k is all the factions coming to together at there strongest to fight a new war on heaven.
For the imperium, the Emperor finally awakens again at his full strength to unite the Empire again and quickly doing away the worst of the dogma, and finally start recreating machines that were on par with the dark age of technology.
For Tyranids it should be obvious the full main swarm hive finally arrives to try to overwhelm all the other empires.
The Eldar craftworlds unite together into the most powerful fleet in the whole galaxy and help reborn there god pantheon or at least there war god after imprisoning or weakening Slannash, breaking her curse on there souls. Now free from enternal damnation from Slannash, they want to truly rebuild their empire and will destroy anyone that get in there way.
For the Necrons, they would be fully awaken in full force with all the dynasties now being United under the Silent King who help achieve there destinies of taking control of the galaxy from the creations of the Old ones and use the slaves of them to eventually gain back there flesh and souls.
For Chaos, perhaps after what happened with Slaanesh and the rebirth of the Emperor, and the Tyranids main fleet eating everything, the 3 or 4 chaos gods would put aside there differences to fight as a United force to maintain there power and destroy those that would threaten there power with this war on heaven making them more powerful then before..
For Orks, they can unite together under a Super Ork lord , perhaps a true long lost Kork who wants to the biggest Waagh to end all Waugh’s.
For Tau, with everything that is going on all the remaining minor races all across the galaxy fear for there lives and out of desperation all join into a super galactic Coalition with the Tau, who might’ve gotten a lot stronger after reverse engineering some Necron, Eldar , and Imperium tech to make them on par with the other factions and could finally utilize clone armies to now have the numbers to go up against all of them.
Yeah, the Skaven joining Chaos out of nowhere was just weird.
The Great Horned Rat may technically be a Chaos God but only in the sense that Gork and Mork are also Chaos Gods. They live in the Warp. That's it.
And more importantly, the Skaven aren't even organized enough to join Chaos. For every clan helping Chaos out in a battle two more are actively trying to screw them over while the third is having a chuckle and just sowing chaos on both sides.
But honestly I think the entire premise of Chaos wins is the incorrect approach. Throughout the entire setting, every time Chaos tried to invade the world, they got stomped before they even made it past the Empire. And now they suddenly crush the world?
A far more interesting approach would have been what is essentially World War Hammer where just so many conflicts break out all at once that magic gets screwed and the world is destabilizing. So the races decide that trying to salvage the situation isn't worth it and someone (probably the Lizardmen and maybe the Elves or even Cathai or maybe all at once separately) decide to concoct a ritual based on the effects of the warring that will birth a new world. The various factions now vie for the ability to influence the outcome with races like the Elves trying to resurrect their Gods, Chaos trying to strengthen the 4, the Skaven jumping on the chance to elevate the Great Horned Rat, etcetc.
That way you don't have to make Chaos win and you can create separate conflicts that all influence the outcome without having to be involved in a big 'good' guys vs 'bad' guys war.
Also, it's kind of a dick move that in Age of Sigmar it's basically the exactly same story. Chaos roflstomped everyone and controls the entirety of almost all of the realms while the 'good' guys are desperately trying to hold on and naturally Slaanesh can't just die either, no, they need to be slowly freeing themselves.
Also fuck Morathi. Such a bland and stupid (literally) character.
they mostly just axed slannesh to keep the pg-13 (or whatever it is for games) rating. the rest of the chaos gods are things that are acceptable for late teenagers to watch and use. war, plauge, and whatever tzeentch is doing at the time are bad. slaanesh was definitely the most grimdark of the gods even if she was more subtle and slow in her corruption. that sucks because slaanesh was very interesting and was a great way to draw paraelles to real world issues, especially things like drug addiction and depravity. sure nurgle and tzeentch had thier cool moments too but slaanesh was unique in that there was no instant obvious sign of corruption. no instant plauge spores or turning into a chaos spawn spontaneously, just a slow, barely noticable fall to the darker tendencies of mankind. you don't start worshipping slaanesh and just decide one day to kill all your friends and use their bones as a dildo, its a slow process to that, and by the time you realize its too late you are far, far too down the path of no return. i like that, its much more subtly grimdark as it draws not on nature or 'too smart for your own good" energy like nurgle or tzeentch respectively but on ones own dark nature revealed. nurgle may infect you, khorne may burn you, tzeentch may play 5d chess with your soul, but its slaanesh who will have you yourself be your demise
@@sovietunion7643 well, we *are* talking about a setting where an entire race consists of half-naked women. Not sure Slaanesh is the deciding factor in the PG rating. :p
But yes, Slaaneshi corruption (devoid of all the BDSM fantasy/fetishism) is interesting to look at because it speaks to so many of the values we hold high in the modern age.
@@Salted_Fysh It's kind of sad of Slaanesh is always just boiled down to the fetishism, with a slight hint of drug use and noise marines in 40k. There's just so many other aspects that can be explored in more than just one or two characters..
Tbf Chaos losing so much could be a very valid reason as to why they became the víctor
Have every character, I mean every character, including random imperial citizens, halfling cooks, and dark elf sailors, that’s ever been so much as named in a single paragraph of one of the novels or rules books get kicked in the crotch by grimgor
The end times is not the end of the world, it’s just that Grimgor is ending the baby making of everyone
Even though I am newbie in this setting, and can see why the End Times was poorly recieved there was 2 cool things that came to mind.
• Mazdamundi’s death is literally saving the entire world by holding back the moon the Skaven decided to blow up. Which wakes up Lord Kroak finishes the job. (Also he somehow survives the blast anyways, but this is Lord Kroak who is arguably the most ancient, and OP character in Fantasy).
• Settra gets ganked by Nagash, revived by the Chaos Gods who then tell him to kill Nagash. When he’s about to do so, he pulls the greatest “Does Not Serve” moment ever. Despite having his greatest and destroyer of Nehekhara in his clutches, he realizes if he does this, he’ll be serving the whims Chaos Gods (plus I think as part of his revival be bound to their service.) He straight tells Nagash that he’s coming back for him, and goes on a one Pharaoh crusade against all the Chaos Gods. That is like…The most Settra thing I can think of. It’d be even better if say, ended up carving out his own realm in the Realms Of Chaos and is still crusading to this day.
Still, I am sad what became of my boys Tenhenuain, Oxyotl, and Nakai. :,c Apparently Kroq-Gar’s fate was unknown too.
Addendum: Gor-Rok, though admittedly having it be a huge piece of Morsleib being the thing that kill him is kinda fitting. Because I don’t think anything else would’ve been able to kill him, that he wouldn’t have been able to shrug off.
One of the best small fixes to the End Times I've heard was Kroak teleporting the last handful of Lizardmen to where Big Good was gathering. It wouldn't be much, probably just Kroq-Gar, maybe keep Nakai, Oxylotl, and Tetto'ekko, with a handful of Lizardmen committed to forestalling the inevitable instead of jetting away to space. Keeps Lizardmen a bit more in focus, instead of them all dying or going to space offscreen, and it's hardly outside of Kroak's abilities.
It would have been neat to get more interaction between them and the other factions, too. Also we get to see depressed Kroq-Gar since Grymloq is dead.
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 Man, I wish that had happened. Could’ve been cool to see how the rest of the Ordertide reacted to them.
Settra screaming "SETTRA DOES NOT SERVE" in the face of the now-god who just obliterated him is the single most badass thing in either Warhammer setting.
@@pancreasnowork9939 Part of me is still hoping Settra is out there, in the Realms of Chaos, carving out a piece of it for himself, making Khemri 2.0, attaining godhood, and then coming back to chokeslam Nagash through Shyish, and take this throne screaming: “I RUULLLLEE!”
It probably won’t happen, but it’d be amazing if it did. Atleast Settra went out on his own terms screaming at Nagash and sticking it to the Chaos Gods.
My favorite part was vald being the chad
7:59
That edit looks way better than it should.
The end times is why I am extremely reluctant to get into any GW game. As a teenager I grew up reading the Warhammer fantasy and 40k book, I loved them so much. And after I finally started earning my own money I began saving up intending to buy some used armies and then build them from there. I was so excited I planned on building a Empire and Guard army. Then the end times happened and my favorite version of Warhammer got blow up and I read about people literally burning their armies and instantly no one in my area was interested in playing it. That killed my enthusiasm for both settings because it was clear neither was truly cared. Since then I reread Warhammer fantasy stuff but mostly avoid anything 40k, no point in investing my time and energy into something that might get end times. Fortunately I’ve moved on and found other war gamers, rpgs, and book series to enjoy. But I’ll never forget the burn that Warhammer fantasy gave me.
3:17 this man made a riot shield reference. Thats welcoming a long heated war. Bold and worth a like.
There should be an option to compress your audio back to early Xbox 360 levels.
I miss my crunchy gamer rage, damnit.
@@pancreasnowork9939 just stick your mic down your throat and begin to drink boiling water. Should bring back some nostalgic noises. And hey if it doesnt, record it and boom you got noise marine sound effects
@@pancreasnowork9939 My friends made a voice channel in discord that somehow made everyone's voice go from sounding fine by modern standards to sounding muffled in a that reminded me of the Xbox 360 days, if not outright being from that era. May wanna give that a look.
Man, no event was as bad in human history as the end times. I will stand by that until the day I die
Age of Sigmar has gotten pretty good but that doesn't make the End Times any less of a shitshow
@@pancreasnowork9939 I enjoy the content and lore of age of sigmar fine, and understand how fantasy was really kinda costing the company more than it was worth, but any real consideration towards the fanbase, or you know, the established lore would have provided an out. Sadly with GW, they almost exclusively despise their fans, and their staff. As a universe I like their works, but it is clear the goal of the company is solely profit.
It becomes rather obvious in most of their settings, where there is no change whatsoever from the status quo, and the good guys must always lose but never be destroyed. The only reason we didn't get an End times 40k edition was because the company already had fantasy of an example. The excess milking of my hobby, enjoyment, and wallet really, *really*, make me mad.
Sorry for rant. I have thoughts on GW and Warhammer. I hope one day insulin will be cheaper.
@@pancreasnowork9939I like AOS now but I think we need a few more characters. Like they ignored Grimgor and Settra to amazing characters
And you have my sword.
@@pancreasnowork9939 Maybe someday GW will make it not cannon, and story could continue.
I joined the hobby last year in 40k, and I love the necrons. The tomb kings sound equally amazing, and I wanted them so bad. You can't believe the widening, naive eyes I had when my local hobby shop simply said "they've been gone for years."
Like, they looked so cool! They had a badass name and all! Were they just not a good-profit faction? Did they just not like egyptian models? Were they squatted for squat regions?
I stopped researching the dudes ages ago so I can't remember too much of them, but they were such a good concept. I simply arrived too late.
Let me tell you why.
Everyone thought they were generic Egyptian undead and their rules were the worst in the game. People were buying Tomb Kings models for terrain more than for the actual army.
It's kinda fitting that the old saying "the only people who like TK, dont play TK" is more relevant than ever.
Bone reapers are decently close as an alternative
They lean a tiny bit closer towards Nids but mostly have the tomb king vibe
Honestly out of all the named character deaths, Queek's just hurt me the most. He at least got to take out Belegar shortly before being smacked by Thorgrim but speaking as someone who took the time to read his individual book it still felt like he was done dirty. In addition save for a potential allusion to Ikit in AoS absolutely *none* of the named Skaven characters (Besides Thanquol) have had any signs of appearing in AoS either.
I just miss my ratty bois GW ;-;
The named lizardmen who just got nuked off screen hurt me way more
One aspect of this whole mess that gets missed is this: Warhammer Fantasy wasn't dying, GW killed it.
I don't mean in the End Times, I mean GW was killing it long before then, through neglect and avarice. Mismanaging storylines. Wildly disparate power levels. Adhering religiously to an aging system. Refusing to update model ranges that had been going for well over a decade at that point. Charging increasingly more for those old and busted models, despite so many of them being in plastic and thus dirt cheap to produce. And massively reducing points values, meaning everyone had to spend a fortune just to have an army of sufficient size.
It was a stagnant, neglected game, that was suffering under the weight of years and GW's trademark exploitative, price-gouging business model. No existing players had any reason to keep buying models, and the barriers to entry for new players were sky high. Is it any wonder the game was dying?
Warhammer Fantasy definitely needed a refresh. It had _needed_ a refresh for multiple editions by the time the End Times was developed. Models needed to be redone, systems needed to be rebuilt, and barriers to entry needed to come down. (I don't expect GW was ever going to drop model prices, but rebalancing the game around lower points values could only help it).
I do find the idea of creating a new timeline appealing. Take the Old World, and give it a satisfying ending. Have all the "good" nations reach a good status quo. A shining new age of cooperation and prosperity. Rifts to Chaos closed, Skaven banished underground to lick their wounds, the sun shining on Sylvania as a reformist vampire count joins the Empire and rules their lands with minimal bloodshed. All the "evil" factions retreating to lick their wounds, to bother the world again in centuries to come. Everything is pretty alright for peasants, for the moment.
With a neat bow tied up on the setting, with the possibility of future conflicts, say the new version of Warhammer will focus on a brand new setting. Enter Age of Sigmar. A slightly modified Mortal Realms that was born, not through cataclysm, but because Whatever. The Ruinous Powers, banished for the moment from the Old World, turned their eyes to these new realms. Etc, etc.
I personally feel that Nagash and Chaos should've been beaten back and left to lick their wounds.
As someone who got into the world with the total war series I'm at least partially blessed I get to go through the older stuff with new eyes. But it sucks how it ended up.
You say that like GW wasn't trying to kill WH Fantasy.
They did it with the Yvrraine books and are going to keep doing it as long as they might have to change their settings for the better.
@@SpicyMediaReal What are you talking about? GW has been ridiculously successful for years now, they're not killing anything.
You personally not enjoying something has no real bearing on how it's faring as a whole.
@@realname8362
GW ended Warhammer Fantasy and I said nothing about liking or hating the books that brought Guilliman back.
Where did you pull that I didn't enjoy anything?
Warhammer Fantasy filled a niche and it filled it well.
I might be a weirdo but I was a Warhammer fan for a good 10 years before I ever took more than a passing glance at the lore.
There was just something about the look of all your troops arrayed in rank and file - modeled so their spears form a little phalanx and stuff like that.
Moving the old block regiments was a giant pain, but it was immersive.
I also think there's something lost in the switch to round bases, in the form of the Unit Filler concept. Models on extra large bases that filled out parts of a unit, that gave players a chance to be really artistic. (Not to mention save time and money on more of the same models).
I've seen a lot of images of unit fillers from the era. They looked really cool. Wish you could just do that with round bases. (I mean you probably could, it would just require a bit of extra adjudication in the rules to account for an extra large round base taking the place of multiple smaller ones.)
you're like the opposite of me. i love getting into lore and shit but haven't even touched any tabletop models for anything. hell i know most everything about fallout lore but i've only played fallout new vegas. im a sucker for getting really interested in lore and then never playing the actual game.
The irony is that in the end, The End Times was completely unnecessary. Like, what was its purpose? To drum up more interest for the fantasy setting and make it profitable again. It ultimately did that and now AoS is both profitable and a fun game to boot, but wanna know what generated more interest for WHF than any number of apocalyptic scenarios ever could? The three WHF games (Mordheim, Total Warhammer and Vermintide) that were released about a year after The End Times finished up!
(Cue noises of extremely annoyed fans, ala 8:23)
Good stuff as always. Another video game I’m a little surprised you didn’t bring up was Vermintide. I distinctly remember bringing people who had zero knowledge of Warhammer Fantasy onboard with that game, and then subsequently having awkward conversations about how that setting effectively no longer exists.
Vermintide is straight up why I'm into Warhammer at all. I had a passing knowledge of 40k but was never into it. The characters and atmosphere of Vermintide just sucked me in though, leading me down the rabbit hole of Fantasy lore. Then Mandalore put out his big video on Total Warhammer which convinced me to buy that whole series, which then got me even more into Fantasy's world. I took a few more looks at 40k after that, even though I dramatically prefer Fantasy to it. But from there I found TTS, which was an amazing ride.
Honestly Storm of Chaos should have gone as the dice landed. Chaos gets utterly destroyed and pushed back further into the wastes, miles of territory cleansed of taint and absorbed by the order powers. Bretonnian, Imperial and Kislevite partition of southern Norsca, civilizing it’s inhabitants and turning chaos into a minor threat that can only spread its cults in secret and spawn the occasional cultist warband while the Orks become the dominant threat to the world.
Then let the story carry on from there. The Orks get complacent after truly being the biggest and greenest and start infighting as they always do, then the order factions can push them back and reclaim lost ground. But while they’re all fighting, chaos is biding it’s time and building strength for a new everchosen to make the dark powers feared once more.
For anyone who wants more of this, I recommend Majorkill’s Fixing the End Times series. While many may see him as a memer he does put a lot of effort into it. Definitely worth a watch with the videos he has up.
Edit: Man a lot of people don’t like Majorkill lol
Reccomending Majorkill is like saying Arch is a good start for new 40k fans
@@jj_see_film not even close
The Lizardmen one made me cry
@@jj_see_film agreed, he's not actually that interesting just makes genetic shitposts and churns out the 10 minute content farts
God I fucking hate MajorKill, and I fucking hate you as well for mentioning him
At the very least, the Skaven should have been divided between a "We must help Chaos because the Horned Rat wants to become the Great Horned Rat" faction led by Thanquol and that one Verminlord made of the souls of the Council of 13, and a more traditionally Skaven "Screw that, no world means we all die and we want to live damnit" faction led by the (surviving) second in commands of the Council Clans like Ikit, Tretch, Sniktch, and or Throt with some minor clans like Volkyn and Skurvy showing up as supporters of one side or the other. All of the sudden Ikit blows up the moon not out of jealousy, but to try and screw over Thanquol's Skaven faction.
Of course, going off of a reworked/rewritten "Storm of Chaos" timeline in the future of "The Old World" would honestly be a really good idea that wins fan good will, brings back a beloved setting, and probably makes money because people will pay Horus Heresy prices for it. All of which means GW will not do it.
Glad my boy is out here getting that NordVPN cash, stay hustling gamer 💵
On the End Times, I legitimately thing The Great Horned Rat wrote all the lore, Skaven are just getting Ws left and right, when in earlier lore the best they did was *almost* destroying Talabheim (shout out to all my Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay players who did Terror in Talabheim)
In the skaven lore, it was written that there were so many skavens in the world that they could conquer the world easily if only they could work together. The alignment with chaos was the trigger. In my humble opinion this is far from the worst thing coming from gw's end times 😀
The Fall of Cadia has issues and isn't really on the same scale as The End Times but, to make End Times sting less every faction should have gotten at least one "CADIA STANDS, THE PLANET BROKE BEFORE THE GUARD DID" moment, would've taken the sting away a bit
I think the one thing that makes AOS struggle to recapture what makes fantasy appealing atleast to me (and I say this as a Order player in AOS) is that the death of fantasy meant the death of mortals, the way AOS is written in large timescales means that only gods and immortal beings can be heroes and that alot of the average men and women like the Freeguild are just kinda forgotten about. I do hope the "put Mortal back into Mortal realms" is GWs attempt to fix this issue.
I mean...that isn't really true though. Sure, the Age of Myth lasted for who knows how long, but it's the Age of Myth anyway. The lore is however, pretty clear that the Age of Chaos lasted around 500 years (which is far less inhuman than the 10 000 years of 40k or the 2000 years on the IC, which is ignoring anything pre-Sigmar).
And in an interview, GW said the Free Cities were basically 120 years old, and since some of them were build a decade after the Age of Chaos, that makes the current Era around 200 years at best. Sure, those are pretty long time for mortals, but if Fantasy and 40k managed with longer ages, AoS can pretty easily do it.
@@farseeraradrel4808 they could but they haven't yet.
I’ll get the “wallow in bitterness” popcorn for the sequel later. Heavily salted, no butter and burnt enough to be unpleasant, yet not enough to be inedible.
The beat way to make the end times good would have been to simply let everyone get there hits in, let the dwarfs be besieged by a giant force that consists of multiple factions, and the end of the battle the dwarfs are in the citadel of there hold, while all there enemies try to bring the hammer down on them only for the scholars who had been marking grudges and crossing them out as the battle waged, ending with multiple books getting all there entries struck out and each time it happened the dwarfs were reinvigorated, mountains of corpses, and dwarf bravery on display for an epic defeat
"the lusty slann maid" as a Skyrim enjoyer, and a lizardman appreciator, my ears are bleeding from hearing these words.
Well now you're legally obliged to give us your spicy take on how the End Times were anything but spicy
Fantasy was only losing money because the company failed to support it and made starting an army overly difficult. It’s the same thing they do with non Space Marine factions in 40k, fail to support them, cause lower sales of those armies, and then use that as justification why most of the releases are Space Marines
Classic corporate bs. Its the same process used in the videogame industry, too.
@@AedanTheGrey definitely
An important note to WHFBs sales: it was sinking after ~5 years of full neglect. No new models, no new books, no new anything, No shit it wasnt selling. The twist to this all: the end times and the dozens of new kits made as part of it sold like hotcakes. People *wanted* to buy WHFB shit, GW just wasnt putting in the effort.
I just find it funny in Total Warhammer unless you play as him, Archaon has a high chance of getting immediately folded like an omelet, as Grim Kleeper pointed out
Nagash and the undead should have been the main antagonistic faction for the End times with the orcs skaven dark elves and chaos taking advantage of all the chaos ( pun not intended) and launching ther own campaigns. I would have also have given some of the minor factions and hero's time to shine. And made the aspects sacrifice themselves in a last dich attempt to save at least some of the old world. This would them lead directly to AOS with some bits and pieces and characters of the old world thrown in to show that their sacrifice was not in vain.
It’s my head cannon that Naki and Gor-Rok after having the moon tossed at them bench pressed it back into orbit
My personal version is that half the world got its shit kicked in falling into the warp while the other half survived, but was severely damaged except the empire because sigmar infused Carel Franz kicked absolute butt.
A canonical timeline split would’ve been an actually good thing to occur at the last moments of the world. Like when the incarnates are failing to close the gate after gelt gets stabbed, Teclis is like “oh fuck this isn’t going to work” and tries to rush a plan C. Maybe he’s thinking about the elf heaven and is like “I’ll try and make a new one so this world lives on” and changes the direction of the magic. Gelt gets weaker in aos for not having as much metal magic, and the world would have a canonical end to fantasy while having an actual creation to aos universe.
"like it or not, that ship was sinking"
There has been no proof of this for almost a decade now. Even though the end times sold extremely well. Even though mordheim was one of the best selling GW games of all time. Even though Fantasy had objectively more players than 40k only 10 years before it suddenly became "dead weight". Those players didn't sell all their armies between the Albion campaign and the End Times. They were still playing, but GW didn't want to support them.
They did everything in their power. Intentionally killing off mordheim, one of their best selling games of all time, because it didn't move as much product as the mainline games. Staggering editions by SIX YEARS. Intentionally ignoring the fans with their own canon storylines for things like the Albion campaign and Storm of Chaos (which they only reneged after a huge fan backlash). Not to mention that they NEVER released financials for Warhammer fantasy versus 40k. We're just supposed to take them at their word? No.
The reason has, and always will be copyright. They couldn't stand the fact that people could produce "high elf spearman" as their own miniatures and often do them better than GW, at less price. They tried litigating, and that failed. It was cutting into their profits so they banned 3rd party minis from all GW stores, another reviled change that killed people's interest in fantasy. They couldn't stand losing a single cent, so they killed it and rebooted fantasy as 40k-lite.
I don't know why I wasted so much time typing this up when no one will read it. But if you read it, you know. Fantasy wasn't killed due to lack of interest. GW poisoned fantasy for a decade before they dealt the final blow.
And there it is, someone gets it. They killed fantasy because they couldn't rip off Tolkien and others and still try to copyright it on their own.
You're so full of shit it's remarkable.
@@joahnaut explain it then
Funny that GW didn't see Fantasy becoming popular after Warhammer Total War released even though the same thing happened to Warhammer 40K after Dawn of War released.
So practically without Dawn of War and Total War. 40K will face the End Times isn't it? And interesting moment if GW sees that because of Total War Warhammer Fantasy become popular never seen before why not wipe out the End Times and create new narrative.
I always thought of Fantasy just being a single feudal world in the setting of 40k that got forgotten by every one 😂
Sigmar was a primarch
@@ktanner438 yeah that’s a cool idea too !
@@ktanner438 the Eldar gods are shards, the other gods are xeno shards, and the old ones made this planet away from everything
Haven't they explicitly stated multiple times that the settings aren't physically connected in any way? The only arguable connection being the chaos gods.
@@insertnamehere4932 they've explicitly stated Age of Smegmar is canon their opinion is worth shit
Pancreas... Every time you say something mean about Bretonnia, the more I love it... "FOR THE LADY!!!"🐴
Look, Bretonnia is inspired by England and France. The Empire of Man is based on Germany/The Holy Roman Empire. Clearly, Empire stays on top. England and France both suck harder than Slaanesh.
Same, mate! Grail knights are awesome, and Bretonnian lore, at least in 5th edition was awesome too, or so I hear. If Bretonnia wasn't just deleted and would be ported to AoS, I would honestly consider getting into it alongside 40k.
Still, it took TWW for them to launch exploding cows. 😂
@@Archon3960 Cows? Who? What-what?
@@TFZ. Their highest tier settlement defenses, the "Reinforced Walls", launch "carcasses". But if you look closely, they are carcasses of cows stuffed with explosives. 🤣
Having two divergent timelines "split" from Old World, where both factions win/lose, but then recollide and ultimately destroy both could have been interesting
Perfect video for the drive home to listen to.
I enjoyed the Storm of Chaos campaign at the time. I believe a lot of people read the lore/ book and critique it as such objectively but to be a teenager of the time was wild. Online campaign where you could see battle results uploaded, White Dwarf coverage of Crom the Conqueror, the build up of Valten and the build up to the Storm Of Chaos book release.
It was really, really good fun. You don’t really get that sort of buzz anymore - despite the Arks of Omens stuff being kinda cool, it doesn’t hit the same.
Me personally, I don't care how the end times play out as long as Bretonnia suffers along the way.
That's all that matters to me.
Sounds like something a pathetic peasant would say.
BaSeD!
Honestly the fact that GW butchered one of my favorite settings (especially since i played WFRP much more that actual miniature game) made me feel extremally bitter, sad and disappointed. Maybe its bc it reminded me that cool things get cancelled/left alone just bc they dont sell well. Maybe bc I've spent countless hours sinking into the lore of those places and creating characters i've grown so attached to. Either way I guess that headcanon is my only way to cope with that loss.
1:12 But the Ship was not sinking because the old World, but because of Games Workshop.
When Fantasy Battle existed, it didn't draw my attention like 40k. Years later when I had money for toy soldiers, my buddy and I decided to give Age of Sigmar (at the end of it's 2nd edition) a go. I picked the Lizardmen and he pick Sigmarines. We played 2 games of 2nd edition and 1 game of 3rd edition and after every game we agreed that we might as well have played 40k. Then I got Total War: Warhammer from White Dwarf. We played a bit of it, the save broke, and we got Warhammer 2, so I could play as the Lizardmen. We then played an 80 hour campaign, got really into the setting, and really hopeful for The Old World. I rebased my Lizardmen to square bases and I think he started selling his Sigmarines.
The End Times were a mistake. 2 Vermintide games and 3 Total War games should be evidence enough of that.
Yeah Warhammer Fantasy was bleeding money, however you could argue that was mostly the fault of GW themselves.
There where loads of warning signs that Warhammer Fantasy was starting to decline, that GW could have pick up on and chosen to correct.
But they didn´t they let it continue until the end times where literally the only option.
It might be cheesy, but I’d love a bit where just some random dude a pikeman or something just stabs Archeon right through the neck or something and kills him, there’s a moment of intense happiness, finally they had beaten chaos.
And as the world fades into nothing there’s this sense of victory across the entire world.
And in the void as sigmar floats aimlessly a being higher then any god that ever existed reaches out and grips sigmar, it decides that the old world must live on somehow as the only world that fought chaos and won.
And so it created the mortal realms to give them another chance because one day these mortals will cleanse the entire universe of chaos, a grand destiny if you would with sigmar silently working on that in some deep lore bit
I mean one cool thing they could've done alone with Manfred is after making him an elector count, let him dedicate himself to the empire, yes he wants to rule it someday but now that he has a shred of legitimacy he doesn't need to use force anymore. Instead of him betraying the rest, he is faithful to the empire, at least until the war with cahos is over, and doesn't betray the rest, no he gets betrayed, the other counts rightfully do t trust him and stab him in the back, leading his army to crumble and opening a flank for a chaos champion to stab geld.
Make it so they believe the battle to be won, a ploy from tzeentch to make it not stupid, maybe even add a sneeziling little advisor that wishers in their ears that Manfred wants to betray them.
GW: Oh hey guys. We just killed a good setting and your $1500 army. But don't worry, we added the Ultramarine Space Marines to the new setting.
Dude, you nailed it at like 17:00 in. Like they release WH Total War, I get into it, and look to find out Warhammer Fantasy doesn't even exist anymore.
Same. Vermintide and Total War introduce me to this badass world and then I learn that its a dead setting and Im profoundly disappointed and confused.
I remember hearing about how GW said you could send in replays of your battles with winners and losers and they'd write the ending based on who had the most wins. Problem is, the Empire and frens all caught fat Dubs and made Archaeon look like a little bitch so they just kinda ignored what they said.
Malal works from the shadows against the other 4 chaos gods. He gives Archeon a peanut allergy and during the siege of Erengrad he arranges for the ever chosen to have a peanutbutter sandwich. Archeon eats it and dies. End times avertet.
"And then EVERYONE died..
The End.."
-*a summary of the End Times, by Patrick Star*
Thank you for helping me with the grieving process as I keep playing vermintide and staring at all these square based minis
The God Emperor of Mankind descends in his spaceship accompanied by the Custodes to save Sigmar from death.
"Come my son, it's time to lead your legion."
But that would mean that Sigmar's a bad guy. If that were to happen, Sigmar would probably end up killing the shit out of the Emperor.
Sigmar: fuck off fancy pants. I am a god too and I can snap you with my hammer.
"destroying a world" can have many meanings, Chaos could have lost the fight for the world but left it so destroyed that the races that are left (imo all should be still there) have no choice left but to come together, to gather all magic and perform a ritual which would kickstart the "Age of Sigmar"
The thing I would accept is that The End Times is the dying dream of Archaon as he lies broken and defeated at the walls of Middenheim. I would also take not ruining the Asur lore by handwaving all of Malekith's and Morathi's atrocities away and giving Malekith the one thing he NEVER deserved, the Phoenix Crown.
An idea for magic and why Mannfred did what he did; The Eight Winds (and other Lores of Magic) would be waxing with great power in balance with the rising of chaos energy and the massive increase of warpstone from the destroyed Morrslieb. This would have made for far more powerful magic casters, but also had an increased risk when miscasting happens and an increasingly maddening effect on magic users, affecting them in different ways. If Mannfred absolutely HAD to pull a Starscream, then it should have been justified by his obsession with magic, coupled with his vampirism, that drove him to feed on Teclis' power in much the same way as vampirism might draw him to feed on blood; With him struggling to resist the urge for a good while as he tries to find his place in all the pandemonium, the conflux of magical energy present at the ritual proves to great as it sends him into a giddy, uncontrollable frenzy against his better judgement, with the guilt of possibly dooming the world and everyone in it driving him mad and leading him to double down on his quest to become the greatest sorceror in the world, working with Kemmler to form a new Pantheon of Evil. I had him in mind to be one of the big bads in my idea for a revised setting, where the ritual only served to reduce the Chaos Gods' presence in the material plane and gives the opportunity for other villains (Mannfred, Kemmler, the four "Champions of Chaos", Queek, Zhatann and more) to threaten the survivors in future supplements. A similar thing occurs with Balthasar Gelt, in a story where some characters from The Border Princes find him holed up in Gort Soll, and his increasing mastery of Necromancy has got out of hand and he's convinced that the only way the day will be saved is with an army of undead to fight their enemies (and he's only being used as a puppet by Nagash for his own plans).
As for your ideas of having the victories matter and inflence AOS. Why not have them do a big ritual and succeed? What does the ritual do? It makes it so Chaos can't "digest" the world even as it swallows it. The old gods sacrifice themselves to power it (so they did something) and it works so spectacularly well that Chaos in fact not only spits fragments of the old world back out but thousands of other worlds, which is why the Mortal Realms are so ridiculously huge. And also not a planet was we know it, it's still a total mess of real souls and matter but after Chaos threw it back up, that's how the whole setting change into a sowrd and sorcery mess.
One of my favorite things about Wyrd and their Malifaux brand is when there are campaigns to dictate how events unfold, they follow the results.
Hell, we got 3 characters who changed based one weekly results.
Fantasy got wronged
6:00 we won’t go into every single thing GW did wrong we’d be here for hours
You seem to underestimate how much I enjoy your voice and long video essays
I do think it was wholly unnecessary to end the setting, Pancreas' idea of "the good guys win but at what cost" would work if crisis was averted but the civilised world was so badly damaged (Like the Empire only consisting of Nuln & Averheim) it would make the survivors question if they had the numbers to rebuild what they had before. It could see a rescaling of the hobby to begin with warbands a la Warcry and Mordheim for the first phase of stories as the first ranging parties venture out of safety to fight the warriors and monsters in the ruins of nearby lands, 500-1000 point armies in the second phase in an arc where Nagash is the big bad, and then a final phase with rules for 2000-5000 point armies where they fight the good fight to the very last against an alliance of the remaining villains. Simplified rules, new faction leaders (With Toddy, Malekith and Grombrindal leading the new alliance) and a mix of rereleased models and some of the ideas from AoS for a new status quo and a slightly less hopeful tone, would have been brilliant.
The setting didn't have much more left in it, but The End Times didn't have to be the end, but at least the beginning of the end...
In my opinion a small portion of the empire should have survived with Sigmar and kinda travelled to the mortal realms.
Like Middenhiem should have plopped down in Azyr and that’s it
They should have made a part about abhorash, the strongest of vampires barely gets a mention, at least we know he fought like a true hero.
GW even cancelled his book, It was supposed to tell what happened between the fall of Strygos and the End Times, just imagining Gilles, Aborash, the Red Duke, all remaining Grail Knights and Blood Dragons fighting an endless horde of Chaos until the world explodes feels awesome, and then maje them come back as a crusader faction in AoS
@@MiguelSanchezDelVillar Well, the Old World is coming back, the new game of warhammer fantasy could show abhorash and other characters who don't have a model and have books about them, they might release the game in 2023 which happens to be the 40th anniversary of warhammer fantasy.
@@jeangale6914 i hope they use him well
Id definitely listen to an hour+ of u ranting about the ends times, please do it
@7:58 uh not sure if anything in the lore was changed but after listening to the end times audiobooks the fight with queek and king thorgrim was pretty one sided because it seems like the master rune itself was destroyed to power thorgrim up. I dont think he died because he left the door open, it lead to a vantage point very high up in the mountains and i think the Deathmaster had climbed the mountain and into the place through the window; his weeping blades pierced the armor because skaven magic (but lets be real, a blade of X vs an armor of X will always lose, a steel sword will not slash steel armor) and the door being left open meant the Deathmaster and other assassins could infiltrate the hold and open the gates. Still a dumb ending after killing a million billion skaven.
The best thing about the end times is how the amount of chaos warriors/marauder just quadruples for no reason.
I would’ve had the entire thing and it essentially a stalemate with chaos being completely destroyed. As a bad guy was stabbed by the Schemin he should’ve casted a spell that would’ve isolated every faction from each other with any army that crosses out of their own territory being significantly weeker.
3:44 and to make the sponsor a bit more atractive, if you create a steam account in say, argentina, you can easily buy 60 dollar games for the equivalent of 3 bucks in argentinian money, even works with premium currency in some games, my friend spent like 10 bucks and now has almost every skin avialable to buy in apex
1:53 I’m just saying that table over there needs MORE minis on top it
(My desk is literally the same thing)
I agree with you, have something in End Time have effects in AoS. But I think it's even easier than that: have it change the world, break it a bit, but not end it. Adapt some of AoS ideas, like the realms made of magic, by having the Vortex become many little vortices, each with a specific wind, maybe even personality or character, and have them anchored in ancient places of power or mysticism. Have 300 years go by, split the Empire in three again, sunder Ulthuan but settle the Asur all over the world in petty kingdoms that may go to war with one another, and give Gelt back his necromantic dabbles, have him puppet the Southern Emperor in Nuln and create golden plated golems of machine and magic... and now you can use some Stormcast Eternals in your Fantasy army.
Stupid Idea! One small planet vs Endless Universe.
@@Basil_Ghothickovitch The universe in AoS is theoretically endless, but it's deep as a puddle. What if the Realms have the size of a galaxy? They're *empty*. The Old World is a planet, but is it small? Is the Earth small? To me, the Empire, Naggaroth, the Suuthlands, they feel like vast expanses. What if Ghur is endless, you only know a small corner of it and not even that well. The rest of Ghur is like it didn't exist.
sorry mate, someone has alreasy fixed the end times and five years earlier. Stop me if you've heard this one before.
"This is Archaeon the everchosen, ruler of the warriors of chaos and so evil he punches puppies. Champion of the chaos gods, he would bring in the end of times. Archaeon destroyed cities, butchered his enemies and ate them raw......so he died of constipation"
Future video idea, how would PancreasNoWork would have done the end times. basically how would you have done the same end goal of wrapping up the setting and leading it into age of sigmar, but with being able to do what you wanted instead of being bound purely to what GW did
Dude the Great King Settra the Imperishable, Khemrikhara, The Great King of Nehekhara, King of Kings, Opener of the Way, Wielder of the Divine Flame, Punisher of Nomads, The Great Unifier, Commander of the Golden Legion, Sacred of Appearance, Bringer of Light, Father of Hawks, Builder of Cities, Protector of the Two Worlds, Keeper of the Hours, Chosen of Ptra, High Steward of the Horizon, Sailor of the Great Vitae, Sentinel of the Two Realms, The Undisputed, Begetter of the Begat, Scourge of the Faithless, Carrion-feeder, First of the Charnel Valley, Rider of the Sacred Chariot, Vanquisher of Vermin, Champion of the Death Arena, Mighty Lion of the Infinite Desert, Emperor of the Shifting Sands, He Who Holds The Sceptre, Great Hawk Of The Heavens, Arch-Sultan of Atalan, Waker of the Hierotitan, Monarch of the Sky, Majestic Emperor of the Shifting Sands, Champion of the Desert Gods, Breaker of the Ogre Clans, Builder of the Great Pyramid, Terror of the Living, Master of the Never-Ending Horizon, Master of the Necropolises, Taker of Souls, Tyrant to the Foolish, Bearer of Ptra's Holy Blade, Scion of Usirian, Scion of Nehek, The Great, Chaser of Nightmares, Keeper of the Royal Herat, Founder of the Mortuary Cult, Banisher of the Grand Hierophant, High Lord Admiral of the Deathfleets, Guardian of the Charnal Pass, Tamer of the Liche King, Unliving Jackal Lord, Dismisser of the Warrior Queen, Charioteer of the Gods, He Who Does Not Serve, Slayer off Reddittras, Scarab Purger, Favoured of Usirian, Player of the Great Game, Liberator of Life, Lord Sand, Wrangler of Scorpions, Emperor of the Dunes, Eternal Sovereign of Khemri's Legions, Seneschal of the Great Sandy Desert, Curserer of the Living, Regent of the Eastern Mountains, Warden of the Eternal Necropolis, Herald of all Heralds, Caller of the Bitter Wind, God-Tamer, Master of the Mortis River, Guardian of the Dead, Great Keeper of the Obelisks, Deacon of the Ash River, Belated of Wakers, General of the Mighty Frame, Summoner of Sandstorms, Master of all Necrotects, Prince of Dust, Tyrant of Araby, Purger of the Greenskin Breathers, Killer of the False God's Champions, Tyrant of the Gold Dunes, Golden Bone Lord, Avenger of the Dead, Carrion Master, Eternal Warden of Nehek's Lands, Breaker of Djaf's Bonds, and many, many more being removed from the game was fucking AWFUL. How could such a badass character be tossed aside like trash?
Well I'm fairly new to Warhammer fantasy but my fix is this: everyone kicked chaos in the teeth so hard that the three other gods went up to Tzeenche and asked if he could port them to a different timeline where they won. And before you say there is no way that Khorne would ever do that in a millions years.... ya well that was before my 10s planning for a band aid fix finished. I could honestly see chaos rewriting their loss though, like Tzeenche is the last god left with Gork, Mork the Great Maw, Sigmar etc. (basically all the other gods along with the old ones) are storming into his tower and all the other gods' forces are fighting with everything they have left, Tzeenche somehow pulls a reality warp out of his avian ass to backtrack to a point in time where he and his brothers could win.
No, I'm not saying the reality where order wins just has no chaos gods, but imprisoning them should in theory be possible. Just have a greater demon led council from each of the gods' courts trying to work on some way to break them out with all the chaos-allied armies
I remember playing 40k at an FLGS in the weeks after Total Warhammer came out and almost every week I was playing on their 40k night you'd have parents coming in with their kids to buy some Warhammer Fantasy stuff just to get told that wasn't really a thing anymore.
Also had a dude at the time always annoyed because wit everyone playing 8th Ed 40k he couldn't find anyone to play his 30k AL up against anymore the same way he coulda just run em up against 7th Ed armies.
Just felt like a weird time to be in the hobby altogether
It literally doesn’t make sense that the skaven would ally with chaos because if they destroy the world where the hell am I. I mean THEY would get there warpstone.
I miss the gothic grimdark aesthetic of fantasy so bad
Age of Sigmar just feels like generic high fantasy to me, with very clear good and bad guys. I could never get into it. Especially when i have a love for Warhammer fantasy, which is a very good Tolkien inspired universe, yet still manages to do its own things very well. Hopefully through the Fantasy games, the old low fantasy setting will grow more
You do know that half the forces of order will absolutely murder eachother, right? Like, the idoneth deepkin are soul slurping pirates who will assail settlements on the coast no matter who they're aligned with? The daughters of kaine consider violence to be a prayer?
The glue keeping them together 99% of the time is, yea those zombies and rats and chaos hordes and goblins and ogres are kinda bad
Should’ve had skaven save everyone by accident. Basically a “no one destroys the world unless it us” or then realizing main chaos would murder them and their rat god so they try to stop them. Basically enough death and destruction on all sides that every faction is left in tatters and has to rebuild
You know who should have survived longer? Luthor Harkon. They should have added something like "Luthor has such a drive for vengeance again Mannfred that it kept him from death". Luthor is able to just barely cling to life although his body is beaten and broken. However his minds are in such disarray over how to get revenge he's barely able to stand is completely out of it for the rest of the books, being nothing more than a shambling corpse. When Mannfred kills Gelt and is blinded, Luthor sees his chance and, united as one again, tackles Mannfred to the ground and brutally beats him to death with his remaining strength. The exertion kills Luthor but he is able to die unified as the world crumbles around him.
I' mean if GW treated Fantasy like some of the wh40k factions with no updates for decades, I wouldn't be surprised why it didn't sell well
The only way to make the end times good is by chaining Manfred to a mountain from the start to make sure he doesn't do anything stupid, and to make it so Grimgor head buts Archaon to death. And also chaining Snikch next to Manfred.
Total War: WARHAMMER III Immortal Empires launch trailer is what we all wanted and need End Times to be. I consider that to be the true canon and timeline.
Honestly, it sounds like GW still haven't figured out that new shiny models and lore sells and stuff left with little to no new lore involvement and dusty old decade-old models doesn't..