Admiral:
Thanks for sharing! Very nice Bloodthirster. It doesn’t scream Khorne like Forgeworld’s do, but it’s a neat big Daemon model.
The Warhammer world is fluffwise not much to have without its rich variety of factions and cultures, and its loads of big armies which the collector can imagine his own to be part of, since there are so many.
I sure like the End Times as a potential future/parallell universe/dark prophecy and appreciate it in that regard for the great and wild story it is, but sticking the actual timeline of future army books into a post-apocalyptic setting with vastly decimated factions (and without minor/distant/exotic stuff like Vampire Coast, Tilea, Lizardmen, Cathay) is not too clever a move. Such a world is poorer and more restrictive because it is shrunk down. Anyway, your hobby is as always what you make of it yourself. Even if GW rolls ahead with the timeline stuck post-End Times, players can always go on like doomsday never showed up or happened to someone else, and still enjoy the new models.
As for company decisions, axing factions completely in the actual timeline seems dubious since it not only limits a very rich fantasy world 30 years in the making. It also put obstacles in the way of your own design possibilities. Perhaps a Cathayan army would sell well after all in some years time? Something similar worked for World of Warcraft with their Pandaria expansion, if my WoW-playing brother and friends are to be believed. Axing the whole east in Warhammer would in that case make a retcon necessary. Granted, it’s easy to retcon, but unelegant.
Another Warcraft parallell: Blizzard’s Outland is a relatively desolate, post-apocalyptic setting, and demonstrably poorer and less interesting when compared to the pre-apocalypse, living world Draenor. That is not only down to greater experience, thought and skill when making Draenor, but also down to the fact that Draenor is a rich, living world, which Outland isn’t.
Anyhow, the End Times run presents some great models and a thrilling Ragnarök story. 