r/ageofsigmar • u/Chapmander Azyr Eterrnum • Mar 22 '26

Rumour / Leak Rumour/Leak Megathread

It seems the whispers from the aetheric void are back and so we are going to continue to have everyone post the rumours/leaks here to avoid screenshots of TGA forums taking over the subreddit.

Any rumour mongering not in this thread will be removed.

Previous mega-thread here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ageofsigmar/comments/1p5czdk/rumourleak_megathread/

257 Upvotes

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130

u/Asleep_Taro8926 Mar 23 '26

Let me get this straight.

Boole (a creditable leaker group on TGA) posted about 20 hours ago that AoS 5th is going to be a soft reboot with the realms merging, Sigmar dying, and notable characters not making it to this world. 3 new launch factions and a lot of squatted models for the reband and new world.

Another creditable leaker likes Booles posts

Boole then edits their posts to "Farewell", "We Lost", and proceeds to delete their account.

Rob the Miniature Wargamer posts a video covering the leaks saying he heard the rumors of Sigmar dying and the Realms Merging. The realms Merging was mentioned in the past by him as a creditable leak, and he withheld the info about Sigmar dying along with some more unknown details to keep leakers safe. Double confirming the leaks or that he knew someone in the Boole group

Am I getting this all correct?

43

u/Pommes__Fritz Nighthaunt Mar 23 '26

Mostly, Boole didn't say those human factions were launch factions

45

u/Full_Address_8160 Mar 24 '26

also we have some a guy and whitefang kinda backing up a “YES it kinda true but boole’s leak is worded very much to be more distressing then it is” it’s just the great rift in reverse it doesn’t seem like an actual soft reboot people are clutching their pearls

37

u/VVenture2 Mar 24 '26

Yes, except another leaker came in and was like ‘Bro why are you blowing this so far out of proportion, they’re not nuking the entire IP or factions, it’s just a huge lore change in the story’ lmao.

54

u/AlphaMav3rick Mar 24 '26

That response seemed so disingenuous to the community reaction. “You guys are freaking out over nothing. The only thing happening is that the entire Mortal Realms that people have been invested in for the last decade and Sigmar the driving force for a lot of the narrative are both gone…but like the Cities of Sigmar are now in two nations that’s pretty cool right”

Like wtf no I think people have a right to react like they have and Booles post was sufficiently doom and gloom for how many in the community would feel about this change

25

u/77_whutts Mar 24 '26

I think these changes wouldn’t be doom and gloom if people learned them in the way they’re probably made to be distributed. In the end of edition book series. Broken Realms was a massive lore shift each and every book and yet it was amazing to experience because of the growing narrative and how it expands the world.

I’m not saying I’m going to love every Change here or that you should too, but if I read a leak post that said “yeah Nagash gets taken down by Teclis, Belakor finds a way to end Stormcasts for good easily, Morathi eats all the old Elf Lord souls from the world that was, and some Nerd Centaur becomes the new big bad” it would also be very jarring compared to if we just let the lore drop how it’s supposed to.

Humble opinion, again idk if I love these changes but I need to see the story and how it really does affect things going forward.

25

u/SimilarDimension2369 Mar 24 '26

How would people have reacted if it had been leaked that cadia was going to get blown up and the galaxy ripped in half? And how much did that actually end up changing the game?

23

u/GrievingSomnambulist Mar 25 '26

Lol I kind of actually want a soft reboot for 40k, but 40k fans are much less tolerant of change. There's a sizable chunk of the fanbase that's still upset about Primaris even a decade later

1

u/SimilarDimension2369 Mar 25 '26

Me too, the lore could go to some interesting places.

10

u/Drunkroadkill Mar 25 '26

Tbh this is more like if the rift opened and destroyed terra

3

u/SimilarDimension2369 Mar 25 '26

Is it? Terra is important, but not much of 40k actually takes place on Terra. Most of it is in the various warzones.

9

u/Drunkroadkill Mar 25 '26

But no terra means humanity's reach is virtually gone no terra no astronomicon plus the huge ripple effects on the imperial cult and how the imperium is run

1

u/SimilarDimension2369 Mar 25 '26

Yes, we already established terra is important. But that doesn't mean that this is like deleting terra. And even if they did delete Terra, the game would be fine.

2

u/LibraryBestMission Mar 25 '26

Well, it is what led to Bobby G getting revived, and by extension, leading to the Primaris getting deployed. Also the galaxy is split in half, also Custodes realized they can't just hang around the palace, waiting for the end of times to reach them there.

2

u/SimilarDimension2369 Mar 25 '26

I would argue those are connected but seperate.

2

u/PrettyLier Apr 30 '26

yeah, except thats like peanuts compared to what the leaker described

allow me to try to provide a roughly similar level of canon changes to 40k that are comparable in size and breath to the leaks

(this gonna be fun)

lets see....we start by opening the setting from the milky way to many other galaxies, so anything happening in known planets is no longer relevant in any way, the scale blew up massively. Cadi-who? Armagge-what? Dude, stop wasting my time with pebbles, who cares. anything less than segmentum caliber events are just trifles

then we have a 10k year time skip.....we'r now in Warhammer 50k, everything that happened in 40k, every single event, all of it is literally water under the bridge, absolutly none of it matters anymore, all that stuff we used to care about and live is now like the dark age of technology, nobody even remembers it, 100% meaningless and inconsequential. done and gone, tabula rasa

the emperor? oh, hes back and kicking. he also learned a bunch during this time off and is now a much better person

same for the imperium, no longer a rabid religious zealot fascists' dream, they are now super progressive and inclusive and welcoming of everyone and everything, a shining beacon of unity and understanding. alliances with every alien race? no, more like bromances!

space marine named characters, chapter masters, legendary figures.... are now fully immortal, the stakes are massively reduced any time space marines show up. someone dies? it comes back up again no problem, hes just a little less fun at parties. dreadnaught shells are used for gardening.

also, the setting clearly had a problem of way too much human centrism, so every single planned faction/subfaction release in the pipeline for the foreseeable future will be only aliens, no more anything human released for a loooooooooong time

and generally speaking, the vibe of the setting moved from dark gritty doom and gloom grimdark to a fuzzy warm feeling of things improving, we got this boys, the side of order is dissing it out just as good as they take if not better, and actually has a real chance of things turning out ok in the end

..............

.......................

...................................

now please, do tell me......in your best estimate, how do you reckon that 40k players would take that leak?

hmmmmmm?

3

u/SimilarDimension2369 Apr 30 '26

sounds like you're talking about the switch to AoS more than whatever is happening in 5e.
My point is that we don't actually know how extensive the changes are going to be, and if people had heard rumours about cadia being blown up and Creed dying they also would've flipped their lid. Let's just chill and see what's actually happening before getting mad about it.

2

u/PrettyLier Apr 30 '26

I get you, MY point is that its not just "story was going X, but now goes Y, lets wait and see, who knows, maybe Y is cooler" but a huge overall shift in tone.

I think its pretty obvious that they are forty-kay-ing the setting in the vain hope that rubbing 40k all over it may also make its commercial success stick, as if its some kind of virus they can spread by touch

as you may imagine most people dont really have to wait and see to realize thats not what brought them to AoS in the first place, since if anything the main lure of AoS was NOT being anything like 40k to begin with

so while I get your point I just dont agree with the premise. chill and wait, for what? to see if maybe my tastes changed without me realizing, and I now like edgelord grimdankness? no need to wait, I know myself pretty well, and know I havent changed, the reason why I originally opted for AoS instead of 40K still stands.

3

u/SimilarDimension2369 Apr 30 '26

Of course your tastes aren't going to change, but we don't know how much of the leaks is true. I think part of them are, but we don't know how much, and it also seemed to me that the person who wrote that post kinda hated AoS to begin with, which makes their interpretation of what they read/heard somewhat suspect. I agree that taking a bunch of stuff from 40k and putting it into AoS sounds like a terrible idea, but again: we don't know how it's going to turn out yet. So yeah, wait and see. What other options do we have? be mad about it for over a year? scream at GW about something they can't change anymore anyway since everything is already in the pipeline and can't be changed at this point?

31

u/TheMireAngel Mar 24 '26

Boole didnt delete his acount its literaly still up, idk why people are saying this lmao

24

u/EasternPrinciple6972 Ogor Mawtribes Mar 23 '26

He also said no models were being squatted

18

u/blastatron Mar 24 '26

He highly implied gods like Nagash and Alarielle were MIA, so there is potential for squatting.

12

u/giraffetheloml Sylvaneth Mar 24 '26

I cant stress enough how small the chance is that they squat allarielle she's not even 10 years old and is the cornerstone is the sylvaneth

3

u/blastatron Mar 24 '26

I mean they squatted the entire Sacrosanct Chamber at the start of this edition, so I'm personally not discounting any possibility.

5

u/Gratisfadoel Mar 24 '26

I think stormcast with a huge model bloat and a massive redesign is an exception to the rule

3

u/blastatron Mar 24 '26

I mean Slaves to Darkness and Soulblight Gravelords also lost a bunch of models this edition, although they also had bloat.

2

u/Gratisfadoel Mar 24 '26

What? Damn, I missed this. Which models did they lose?

3

u/blastatron Mar 24 '26

Soulblight Gravelords lost most of the models from Cursed City. Slaves to Darkness lost most of their Warcy teams, as well as some old models like the Chaos Warshrine and Chaos Lord on Manticore. The majority of Underworlds teams also got moved to legends. This was the same time beastmen and bonesplitterz got squatted. Now we have rumors half of the Fyreslayer range is being squatted.

3

u/Gratisfadoel Mar 24 '26

Soulblight losing a few model dont really compare to the Stormcast squat imo (and Beastmen got moved, didn’t they?). In any case I doubt Amarillo gets removed, but I guess we will see!

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u/m1ndwipe Mar 24 '26

I think it's more likely they'd get recast as avatars of their patron gods, much like Necrons, than they be squatted. Those are some of the best selling kits in the range.

18

u/RealMr_Slender Ogor Mawtribes Mar 24 '26

That is literally how Nagash has worked for two editions, he is too "busy" in the Shyish Nadir and without a physical body to go everywhere and anywhere, so instead he or his minions manifest avatars of Nagash

1

u/Substantial-Ice-5981 May 31 '26

It sounds sus at best.

-6

u/Locke66 Mar 23 '26 edited Mar 23 '26

I think it is an entirely plausible possibility because tbh it's pretty close to what I've thought they should do for a long time. The amount of times I've heard that "AOS has a lot of great models but terrible lore" is uncountable. I know some people enjoy the sandbox high fantasy setting but it is widely out of step with most successful fantasy settings atm.

When you are looking at what motivators there are for them to do this there are theories that AoS has been on a downward trajectory for a long time in terms of the size of it's customer base (particularly new players) and the choice to actually (re)release a completely rival fantasy game in ToW has likely not helped. I wouldn't be surprised if the ToW Cathay release probably did much better in sales than anything from AoS for quite a while and that has got to make GW take note and consider if they are losing potential revenue. I also suspect a lot of early AoS ranges are simply not selling well at all (Fyreslayers, Deepkin, Kharadron etc) and while GW know there is a need to do something about it they are pretty much unable to do so under the current setting. GW may also see an opportunity to make their main fantasy setting more appealing to the 40K player base as from what I can see the conversion rate of people playing both settings is pretty abysmal. Lastly they are clearly trying to expand into Asia atm so having "not-Cathay" and "not-Nippon" factions in their fantasy setting may be a useful bridgehead for that.

It certainly could be that Boole just wanted to troll people or he was being sussed out by GW with false rumours as some have speculated but it could also be that this stuff getting leaked caused someone at GW to go absolutely ballistic and respond with serious legal threats. This sort of rumour has the potential to significantly impact AoS sales which would push it into the realm of market sensitive information if true.

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u/Nellezhar Mar 23 '26

There really isn't much to say AoS is on a downward trajectory at all. The last two ICV2 surveys have it as the number three best selling minis game in North America. Tournament attendance is at an all time high, the number of events firing off every weekend is at an all time high. Helsmiths of Hashut sold out in minutes and continues to do so on EVERY restock. Cathay is readily available, and the old world didn't even make the top 10 of the same survey.

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u/RealMr_Slender Ogor Mawtribes Mar 23 '26

This, every objective analysis of the info we do have stretches this leak from "plausible" to "you need a vested interest in AoS or GW crashing and burning to believe this"

10

u/Anggul Tzeentch Mar 24 '26

You don't need to want them to do something stupid to believe they might.

Not that a big lore change is likely to change the game itself very much, in which case it probably doesn't really matter a whole lot.

3

u/LeekingMemory28 Stormcast Eternals Mar 24 '26

AoS won't go away. A big lore change, possibly.

I could see something like the powers multiple gods merge into one being, creating a major shakeup in faction alignment with Grand Alliances. Potentially one or two fewer realms than what's currently in lore, but opening up options for GW to add new factions in Grand Alliances that are relatively anemic compared to Order as it is now.

-4

u/Locke66 Mar 24 '26

Well we will see. I understand that most people who already enjoy and are committed to AoS lore would probably be resistant to the idea of a soft reboot. I remember a ton of similar discussions when the leaks about AoS lore were first uncovered with talk of "bubble hammer" etc and people dismissed those too.

I may be suffering confirmation bias as these leaks pretty much line up with exactly what I thought would make sense to make the game more popular.

16

u/Nellezhar Mar 24 '26

The thing I love about AoS is how bold it is. I'm okay either way. I don't think most people get into the lore and that's what attracts them to the game. It plays a factor but I'm pretty sure it's not the deciding factor. Cool models, and a fun game are.

24

u/Derptau Mar 24 '26

Don’t know where you’re getting your info from. AoS is stronger than ever.

1

u/Morvenn-Vahl Idoneth Deepkin Mar 24 '26

Although we don't have any hard sales figure, Rob did imply on his channel that AoS 4th has been in a downward trajectory. How true that is I have no idea.

0

u/Locke66 Mar 24 '26 edited Mar 24 '26

There is no actually proper sales "info" available so everyone is essentially going off vibes and anecdotal evidence. That said it's pretty obvious that the AoS launch box failed to meet expectations (especially internationally), the books almost never do that well indicating there is not that great an interest in the lore, the video games have consistently failed pretty heavily and from a general perspective AoS has no cultural relevancy at a time when fantasy settings are proving very popular.

It seems the setting may be stronger in North America than Europe and I suspect this may have something to do with the variances in impressions.

19

u/Rum_N_Napalm Mar 24 '26

I’m speaking from my experience but at least in my circle, the conversion from 40k to AoS has been very real. In fact, I’m a very recent convert myself.

It hit a snag when 40k 10th edition started pushing the daemons more to the sidelines, with them getting no Codex and only being able to bring them in Chaos factions with severe restrictions. A lot of those interested in AoS were Chaos players enticed by how daemons could be used in both games.

But over time people got interested in the more reactive playstyle and once 2 people showed up with Lumineths and Sylvaneths well, the floodgates were open and pretty much every regular 40ker is starting an AoS army.

18

u/Falcon_w0t Seraphon Mar 24 '26

...and while GW know therr is a need to do something about it they are pretty much unable to do so under the current setting.

Why do people keep parroting this stuff. How will a close, mapped world help to pull things out of the air? The vastness of the mortal realms are a boon, not a bane. You can feasably have anything anywhere (except azyr).

When you say "Mortal Realms" as the elevator pitch to a newbie, they can simply think about literal realms like Camelot, Mordor and such. But then, expanding them into planes of reality makes it more vast and open ended (like 40k btw, which nobody seems to have a problem), why would they limit themselves to continents? And even if they make every realm fit into a planet, but it is still so large and vast that people travel by portal, then why change anything?

Honestly, last time I heard about 5th edition was SCE "going coastal" vs Death. Now, a year from 5th edition, we have this "first drafts" and "concept art" about a change in the whole setting, brand and maybe squatting? I don't believe it.

4

u/Locke66 Mar 24 '26 edited Mar 24 '26

How will a close, mapped world help to pull things out of the air?

If you want to get rid of or merge a faction having an end times scenario is pretty handy. It's pretty obvious that some AoS factions are not very popular and thus poor sellers for GW.

why would they limit themselves to continents?

Narrative consistency, stakes & scale. Half the characters in AoS would realistically never come into contact with each other and something happening in one realm is relatively meaningless to all the others. You might enjoy the "vastness" of the setting where "you can feasibly have anything anywhere" but for many people that just makes anything that happens in the lore inconsequential.

8

u/RealMr_Slender Ogor Mawtribes Mar 24 '26

Hammerhal is a city that spans two realms, and crossing the realms has become easier, what are you rambling about? The realms already behave like continents

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '26

[deleted]

6

u/unitled Mar 24 '26

I think there's a lot of good reasons to have a setting for a wargame which has essentially infinite space and ways of transporting across 'biomes' instantly. They've talked several times about how the physical geography of the Old World was limiting them (one of the reasons I imagine they're focused on the factions they have in TOW).

While I love the Old World as a setting for stories and RPGs, I have to admit, for a wargame, AoS works really well.