Horned Rat to replace Slaanesh in Warhammer Fantasy

[Aquarionoid]

For those unaware (which is probably everyone other than me), Warhammer Fantasy has recently gone through an "End of Times" event where Games Workshop (the creators) have decided to move the story of their mid-80s tabletop game forward and reboot it, sort of. I think it was this month or last month, but Fantasy has now been revamped to "Age of Sigmar", giving all the races new names for copyright purposes and the human faction gets steampunk space marines a la 40,000. Among the many changes, the Horned Rat, a minor god of the skavens (rat people), has now become one of the four chaos gods, replacing Slaanesh. For those unaware of Warhammer lore, the four chaos gods are among the biggest villains in the setting consisting of Khorne (always angry, glorifies valor, and loves fighting), Nurgle (ultra-conservative, disease riddled, and jolly), Tzeentch (ultra-liberal, magic wielding, and deceptive), and Slaanesh (hedonistic and lustful, basically a glorified cynobite from Hellraiser). The story behind it is that Slappy (what /tg/ calls him) stuffed his face with elf souls and is now in some dungeon in the void of space-time/the Warp, likely on death row. I can't say it's that surprising since he was the least marketable of the chaos gods (gee I wonder why). Read more here:

http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Warhammer:_Age_of_Sigmar" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[schwarzkrieger]

I only dabbled in 40k a little bit so I probably can't give a very good opinion on this. While I'm all for a new Chaos God, reading about the Horned Rat seems a little unimaginative or at least for making him one of the big four. His name is generic and lazy sounding to me, and he's muscling into Tzeentch and Nurgle's territories, as he is described as a god of disease and deceit. On top of that there is basically no reason to worship him unless you're a skaven. I guess the intent is to make him more of a credible threat as time goes on, but at the moment it just seems like a weird move on GW's part. Doesn't matter though, I will continue to follow Malal even if he isn't officially recognized.

[Raphael]

I currently play 40k and Fantasy/Age of Sigmar. I don't believe that they would ever get rid of Slaanesh for the Horned Rat. Seeing how in the newly released Age of Sigmar rules for the Warriros of Chaos (aka followers of the 4 dark gods), there is the option to give a model the "Mark of Slaanesh" and army wide benefits for doing so. Not to mention a quarter of the Daemons of Chaos "book" is Slaanesh daemons. Even though Skaven are part of the same "allied faction" as the rest of the chaotic forces, they aren't changing anything THAT drastic. You don't see Sotek the Lizardmen Snake God getting replaced by the human god Sigmar because they are in the same "allied faction".

By the way schwarzkrieger. I painted my Warriors of Chaos as followers of Malal even though he got ret-conned out a long time ago.