When is the new Death Battletome coming out?!?!?

[DantePQ]

Yeah but I think that with a change of policy we should look at Battletomes from Sylvanenth on. So we got Sylvaneth,Beastclaw Riders, Disciples of Tzeentch and now Stormcasts are coming. 

I think maybe there is Death Battletome coming after GW finish Slaanesh/Aelves story arc. That would make some sense. 

[shinros]

4 minutes ago, DantePQ said:

Yeah but I think that with a change of policy we should look at Battletomes from Sylvanenth on. So we got Sylvaneth,Beastclaw Riders, Disciples of Tzeentch and now Stormcasts are coming. 

I think maybe there is Death Battletome coming after GW finish Slaanesh/Aelves story arc. That would make some sense. 

Yup, I think so as well hence why I believe death might be near the end of the year or next. Since rumors indicate the slaanesh arc is happening in the summer. 

[daedalus81]

5 hours ago, wayniac said:

Yeah but all the other alliances have gotten at least 3, Death has gotten 1, and now they are updating a faction that didn't need it:

Order: Stormcast 1.0, Stormcast Extremis, Seraphon, Fyreslayers, Sylvaneth, Stormcast 2.0 (coming)

Chaos: Bloodbound, Everchosen, Pestilens, Tzeentch

Destruction: Ironjawz, Beastclaw Raiders, Bonesplitterz

Death: Flesh-Eater Courts

One of these things is not like the others.

As a percentage of major factions (4 or more listings) --

Order :  6 out of 18 (33%)
Chaos : 4 out of 17 (24%)
Destruction : 3 out of 9 (33%)
Death : 1 out of 5 (20%)

One additional Death book takes them to 40%.  In reality you have maybe 3 divisions of Death until some other faction makes it in.  

Or in other words one book will cover your whole faction.  

[WoollyMammoth]

A. There are a lot of factions that have not gotten anything
Death is not a faction, it is an entire grand alliance. If you are sitting around moaning that there is no Battletome: Skyre or Battletome: Free Peoples, well, you are going to have to wait a good long while for that, maybe years (if it happens at all). But I - and most of us here - are not desperate for a single tome. We want deathrattle, we want nighthaunt, we want soulblight, we want deathmages or deadwalkers or a resurgance of Tomb Kings or anything new. Literally throw us one hero in a board game or a clampack. Take mercy and release one little tiny hero, and it will sell out within 20 seconds of it going on sale. At this point how about just a whisper of a rumor of one new death model. 

B. The fluff leads the models and there has been no death
Absolutely false, in every scenario the models lead the fluff. Regardless Nagash has been a big part of the fluff and there has been fluff about an army of skeletal warriors guarding the entrance to Nagash's realm. There has been fluff about a sea of bone resurrected by the necromantic powers of Mannfred to create all manner of skeletal monstrosities. There has been cities of surviving humans in the realm of Shyish, some thralls in service to vampires, others battle-hardened warriors.

C. Death is not popular, so they don't want to release models.
I just got back from LVO and Death is somewhere between 1/4-1/3 of all players. There was about 4x as many death as any Destruction.

D. Death got a lot of love in the End Times so they don't need new stuff
Again, death is an entire grand alliance not a faction. That was November 2014 which was quite a while to be ignoring an entire GRAND ALLIANCE. 

I already have Nagash and multiples of everything else....

E. They are ignoring death because they cannot come up with any unique IPs.
Dead Orruks. Dead Duradin. Dead Ogors. Literally everything dies (except stormcast). When something dies, it can be turned undead by Nagash. Skeletal Dracoths, Zombie Maw-Krushas. Take literally and idea and make it a skeleton or a zombie and its now a death model. I cannot think of an easier army to create unique IPs for.

Death is the second most important magical army after Tzeentch. The lack of a spell lore is hurting really really bad. Nagash is capped at 4 spells, making his cost at least 250 pts overpriced in matched play. Flesh eaters is a very powerful army when you take the GK on foot from the Death Alliance book as your general, but there is not even a clampack for a ghoul king! There is not a single powerful batallion in the entire grand allaince either. The GA: Death book came with ONE battalion!!!

They could seriously release a 4 page errata for FEC to get them up to speed and make them a good army. Unfortunately they wont and, because they got a book too early, it pretty much hurts them more than helps them. Now it could be a decade before FEC get up to speed. And FEC absolutely gutted death, death has nothing left at all to work with. So you got a broken faction and a handful of gutted factions as an entire grand alliance and they are not bothering to fix it. At this point its nothing but wasted potential due to blatant negligence. They need to get their act together and at the very absolute LEAST release a couple of clampacks and a serious rules errata to FEC to give them allegiance stuff and a spell lore so that death has at least one decent faction to work with. Based on the popularity I've seen, they will make bank on any tiny release.

They did manage to do one thing - go out of their way to FAQ one of our only artifacts so that its summoning and therefore borderline unusable and also cause a lot of annoyance in tournaments that require to roll for artifacts. Thanks guys, keep up the great work.

Absolutely everyone who cares - and there are a lot of us - are in a state of disbelief at how hard Death is getting the short stick in AoS.

[Bradifer]

The uniqueness of Death's playstyle or its significance in terms of game balance is lacking.

I don't get the heavy feeling of summoning/regeneration/replenishment. Whole units get wiped out and there's no way to just cast a spell that says "resurrect a unit spell cost 6+, if you rolled 10+, res twice that many models, doesn't cost summoning points."

FEC is very unappealing to me. Somewhat interesting backstory (IMO) but their playstyle seems to simply be re-skinned orcs/ogres/flankers (ghouls/horrors/cavalry) with an emphasis on model regeneration & healing over raw power.

The strategy of "hey get into melee range and roll dice" doesn't exactly describe a lot of options or diversity of gameplay for an ENTIRE faction. Sylvaneth, Tzeentch, Stormcast have way more replayability and diversity among army building & gameplay options. (Maybe Bonesplitterz and Beastclaw are not super diverse, but destruction as a faction seems pretty point-and-click).

I think Death would be fine with one new grand alliance book. They can split it into Vampire/Deathrattle/FEC if they want, or stay as 2, but I certainly hope they don't truly consider making a bunch of crappy tiny little factions like (Deathlords, Soulblight, Nighthaunt, Death Walker)...Well not unless they plan on releasing about double the current # of death models.

If GW is truly listening:

•  Give one overall Death book.
• Reduce the number of factions.
• Define its uniqueness.
• Identify its strengths and weaknesses.
• Consider diversity (ranged options, make FEC work with the rest of alliance).
• Substitute a rules method and design philosophy to make summoning less bad.
• Advance story..?
• Provide some story reasons for alternate paint schemes/themes (red/green spirits...purple zombies...blue skeletons etc...)

[Guest]

16 hours ago, CoffeeGrunt said:

We get it Jamie, you're a fan of FEC. I'm not. Hence why I don't have any interest in running them. 

You might as well say, "you have the option of proxying your Skeletons as Sigmarines, do that and stop moaning." The way they play doesn't fit how I want my army to play, hence why they're the one subfaction I don't convert counts as miniatures for. 

 

15 hours ago, shinros said:

Took the words right out my mouth the reason why I want a death tome similar to tzeentch it helps all play styles. Also you won't have the problem with nagash or the mortarchs forgetting all their spells if they decide to take zombies or skeletons.

How FEC plays is not how I want to play my death army.

Well that's fine and totally understandable if your main concern is how the army plays mechanically. But the original post didn't say that, so how am I to know? All I'm saying is that there is a new-ish Death battletome out there that gives you some fun and interesting ideas to play around with. I'm just trying to help out and encourage some positivity and creative use of the material we've been given, but if you're not up for doing that then there really is nothing anyone can do to help you, so why start a thread asking a question no-one has the answer to?

[KHHaunts]

There is nothing to say they wont do another repackage soon in between the "Big" releases.

But Death has had a re release in the form of FEC and could easily have another re package release in the not to distant future.

As for new models im content that they have plans for them based on the impression i got from the lord of undeath novel (Yes i know a novel dosent have alot of clout in the model release department but its something)

Lately i have noted this issue being close if not at the top of "Things people are complaining about" following the seconde FAQ.

If GW past AOS track record is anything to go by they will not have ignored the uproar from the death community.

Either they feel that we will need something to hold us over before the big release or feel that working us all up into a frenzy is the best way of ensureing maximum sales when it does land.

I know people want to see balance across the alliances and i wish that GW wouldnt put so much emphasis on the alliances as i honestly dont think the fans view them in the same way.

I wont go into it to much but simply put:

I still say many of the armies as seperate "Things"

I couldnt careless about the stormcast order releases because to me they have nothing to do with Aelfs which is my faction.

Death is just unfortunate to have been more like a lone faction prior to AOS than an actual Grand alliance with tomb kings being the other faction that would make up this Grand alliance.

[Gaz Taylor]

I think one of the reasons we've not seen much Death stuff is because it's going to be a big part of the storyline over the next few years. We have the new Stormcast book out soon and rumours about the Aelves, so I think that will be this year's story. But with how Sigmar got help off Nagash with the creation of the Stormcast, I think this is going to be a big part about how Death will work. Also I can see Settra somehow coming back into the story and getting revenge against Nagash.

I also think part of the issue is coming up with something that is unique to Games Workshop and isn't just something stolen from a classic horror film or from Halloween. There are some trademark elements to this but I think it's because they want to make some cool models that make you go "Wow" but easy to identify with GW. 

With all the cool stuff they have been doing, have faith in them  

[Thomas Lyons]

16 hours ago, CoffeeGrunt said:

It's worth noting that Ghouls have very little synergy with Death as a whole...

You can just stop right there.  Of all the Grand Alliances Death has arguably the greatest synergy across sub-factions.  Many of its casters and generals buff outside of faction, whether that be a general who grants benefits to a  Death unit or bubble's worth of models, or a buff that lets out of faction stuff double pile-in.  This is in stark contrast to something like Destruction, where the only current command ability that buffs outside of a subfaction is on a super expensive model (Gordrakk) and it is only usable once per game.  There is no command ability in Destruction that is regularly usable that buffs destruction models generically.  

Or you could look at summoning.  Summoning for Order is restricted to Slaan Wizards (not even Skink's!).  Destructions summoning is effectively non-existent (a bunch of powerful monsters of questions value).  Chaos is the only one somewhat near Death, and even then they don't have the universal magic bonuses to back up the spell casting.  Death can get multiple different +1 casting to all Death casters and their summoners are available across faction.  

This is a terrible argument and shows a lack of understanding of the other factions and the bigger picture.  Death doesn't need more synergy; it needs more models and more units.  They in fact don't need new spell lores or items or whatever, because this shuts down cross faction armies.  For example, a Deathrattle book would mean that you get no wizards, so no spells (at least right now).  It would mean that you lose access to the necromancer with the double pile-in spell and you lose the 6++ (or 5++) ward save from the Death Grand Alliance ability.  What Death needs are more options.  They need some ranged options.  Hell, just a relaunch of TK would solve the issue given the abundance of ranged that is present there.

There is a reason why Death won the U.K. Masters last month.  Yes, TK is part of that, but that isn't all of it.

[daedalus81]

55 minutes ago, Gaz Taylor said:

I think one of the reasons we've not seen much Death stuff is because it's going to be a big part of the storyline over the next few years. We have the new Stormcast book out soon and rumours about the Aelves, so I think that will be this year's story. But with how Sigmar got help off Nagash with the creation of the Stormcast, I think this is going to be a big part about how Death will work. Also I can see Settra somehow coming back into the story and getting revenge against Nagash.

Yea - I'm eager to see Nagash give Sigmar his comeuppance.

 

[DynamicCalories]

Everybody wants some. Whatever faction gets an update, will annoy someone else. Everything will get there eventually. From my poor knowledge of the rules, Death isn't as shafted as the Aelves or Free Peoples. Also they have modern kits, wheras the Aleves are still stuck with snake dragons from when I was 10. All in good time.

[Ollie Grimwood]

I think Settra might be a little tricky seeing as though he wouldn't be part of the Death Alliance, there ain't no way he's working for Nagash.

I'd also say that FEC not synergiesing massively well with the rest of the Death Factions is fairly standard for reworked Factions across the other Grand Alliances. 

[Lucio]

The Death faction's in a funny place compared to a lot of the other factions, in that it's "complete", they've got all the models that they really need and so it's only the rules that are lagging behind. That unfortunately doesn't bode well for future releases as it's mostly new models that generate revenue, rather than new rules releases.

Whilst it's possible to see some kind of reboxing, or new Skeleton or Zombie set (20 Skeletons and 30-40 zombies!), I'm leaning towards no progress until someone at GW comes up with more models to expand the Nagash faction further.

[KHHaunts]

11 hours ago, Lucio said:

The Death faction's in a funny place compared to a lot of the other factions, in that it's "complete", they've got all the models that they really need and so it's only the rules that are lagging behind. That unfortunately doesn't bode well for future releases as it's mostly new models that generate revenue, rather than new rules releases.

Whilst it's possible to see some kind of reboxing, or new Skeleton or Zombie set (20 Skeletons and 30-40 zombies!), I'm leaning towards no progress until someone at GW comes up with more models to expand the Nagash faction further.

With the implementation of things like the morghast sand dreade abyssals. in other words models that arent traditional undead (Vampires and Zombies and stuff) i would be shocked if GW hasent already got a whole bundle of concepts waiting in the wings. I really dont think ideas is a problem at the moment.

You only have to read some of the threads about new death units to see the vast array of ideas made by people. Im sure those that are paid to do so can manage it.

Im still guessing at a deathlords expansion focusing round these *SPOILERS*

black pyramids that we see at the end of lord of undeath. Nagash is up to something and i would bet money that means more models not to far down the narrative.

Which is what i think it comes down to. Narrative. Plus if death is released someone else like Aelf or Slaanesh players have to wait. If i were GW i certainly would stretch this initial AOS expansion phase for a little while longer.

[TerrorPenguin]

28 minutes ago, KHHaunts said:

With the implementation of things like the morghast sand dreade abyssals. in other words models that arent traditional undead (Vampires and Zombies and stuff) i would be shocked if GW hasent already got a whole bundle of concepts waiting in the wings. I really dont think ideas is a problem at the moment.

You only have to read some of the threads about new death units to see the vast array of ideas made by people. Im sure those that are paid to do so can manage it.

Absolutely agree - Morghasts and Dread Abyssals are more distinct from their traditional undead roots than simply renaming 'dwarves' to 'duardin'. The claim that undead are difficult to protect under IP just doesn't hold weight for me. I get that you can't rename skeletons or zombies (although you could 'deathrattle bonewarriors' 'deadwalkers')

I don't think 'undead' is a drained pool of ideas by any means

[KHHaunts]

42 minutes ago, TerrorPenguin said:

Absolutely agree - Morghasts and Dread Abyssals are more distinct from their traditional undead roots than simply renaming 'dwarves' to 'duardin'. The claim that undead are difficult to protect under IP just doesn't hold weight for me. I get that you can't rename skeletons or zombies (although you could 'deathrattle bonewarriors' 'deadwalkers')

I don't think 'undead' is a drained pool of ideas by any means

Thanks. I wont turn this thread into a Death wishlist but i would urge people to take a look at some of the ideas for new death units for each faction.

There are some really interesting ideas including but not limited to:

- Vampire thralls

- Possessing spirits

- General bone contructs etc

I think they may take a step towards necrons with the use of black pyramids and constructs of bone (Bone tomb spiders for example) along with some twisted version of the stormcasts as Nagash has already shown he covets their "Design"

[shinros]

I don't want death to have a "stormcast" faction they don't need it leave the "Big" armored dudes to chaos and order. 

[KHHaunts]

53 minutes ago, shinros said:

I don't want death to have a "stormcast" faction they don't need it leave the "Big" armored dudes to chaos and order. 

I would agree that i dont want actual stormcasts. However.

what Nagash coveted was the process in which they were made saying that powerful constructs like the morghasts were very difficult to make and that he was quite impressed (And a little worried) that Sigmar and co had found a more "Efficient" method of creating immortal warriors then he the lord of undeath could.

Therefore i imagine that if he could wrest some secrets from the stormcasts about how they are made he could use that to give his legions a super charge. Would certainly be a good excuse for a sudden influx of new models.

[wayniac]

The other problem as I see it with Death is the faction is just straight boring.  There's no real gimmicks.  You charge up the board, taking casualties, and hope you roll enough dice to cripple your opponent.  It's literally just rolling buckets of dice, for FEC anyways.  Replenishing means nothing when it's tied to characters that can be sniped out from halfway across the board by shooting armies, same with buffing characters; nobody cares if you get a ton of buffs when the guy giving the buff can be sniped out behind two woods and a unit of 30 dudes.  The entire faction is based around a mechanic that's been gutted in matched play to curb rampant abuse (i.e. summoning) but it's left the faction with basically nothing to match the kind of armies you see today.  The fluff for FEC is amazing, it's what drew me to the faction, but the playstyle is probably the worst I've ever seen in any game ever.

[shinros]

2 hours ago, KHHaunts said:

I would agree that i dont want actual stormcasts. However.

what Nagash coveted was the process in which they were made saying that powerful constructs like the morghasts were very difficult to make and that he was quite impressed (And a little worried) that Sigmar and co had found a more "Efficient" method of creating immortal warriors then he the lord of undeath could.

Therefore i imagine that if he could wrest some secrets from the stormcasts about how they are made he could use that to give his legions a super charge. Would certainly be a good excuse for a sudden influx of new models.

Yes, he was interested in how they worked but in the end I think he is just miffed off that he can't have their souls(same with marked chaos followers) like he is meant to hence why he is building the pyramid. If he was interested in replicating them the whole plot of the book would not be about gathering the mortarch's together again so he can actually start retaking back his realm. 

I personally think he is using the information to devise a means as you said to more efficiently harvest their souls which he would share with the generals of his undead legions. I mean he pretty much taught Manny how to do it in a sense. 

[KHHaunts]

32 minutes ago, shinros said:

Yes, he was interested in how they worked but in the end I think he is just miffed off that he can't have their souls(same with marked chaos followers) like he is meant to hence why he is building the pyramid. If he was interested in replicating them the whole plot of the book would not be about gathering the mortarch's together again so he can actually start retaking back his realm. 

I personally think he is using the information to devise a means as you said to more efficiently harvest their souls which he would share with the generals of his undead legions. I mean he pretty much taught Manny how to do it in a sense. 

The main plot may not have been about creating his own.

But one of the prominent underlying themes of the book was Nagash observing and testing the SC. To me he seemed like a scientist who way trying to work out what made the SC tick.

I dont belive he will try and create his own but i do belive he will try and proove his supiriority by improving on Sigmars idea and creating or empowering his undead. Which could result in a resurgence of undead and the rise of Nagash back to full power.

[Broxus]

The Fleasheater court came out months ago.  This was a death battletome.  I don't think there will be one massive tome that covers every unit as you may be expecting.

[WoollyMammoth]

Death is a GRAND ALLIANCE not a FACTION
Seriously, stop repeating this nonsense. 

FEC is frankly half-assed. You look at FEC and Tzeentch - FEC is a joke. No allegiance no artifacts no spells. All it is is some (really good) lore and they stuck some different arms/heads on some different stuff and called it "new". Meanwhile all the command abilities are based around near-useless summoning options. Command Abilities are the glue that holds an army together, the awesome unique options that you can build your army around. Being able to summon a tiny unit is a really bad command ability, regardless of the infinite range, and its the same thing for every general in the book. 

Is FEC viable? For sure it is. You can take the Ghoul King from the Death book and, if you can keep this guy alive you are causing like 50 wounds every time a ghoul unit attacks, the Horrors are shredding things, T-Gheists and Dragons are causing 6 mortal wounds on 5+ to wound. You can stack 4 courtiers and bring back about 20 ghouls every hero phase. Its a tough army, because you have all these little foot guys gluing the army together that can be shot off easily, but if you can manage it long enough you have nearly the offensive power of Khorne combined with the defensive power of Nurgle. But this does not change the fact that the battletome was half-assed and the army needs an update.

 

[wayniac]

1 hour ago, WoollyMammoth said:

Death is a GRAND ALLIANCE not a FACTION
Seriously, stop repeating this nonsense. 

FEC is frankly half-assed. You look at FEC and Tzeentch - FEC is a joke. No allegiance no artifacts no spells. All it is is some (really good) lore and they stuck some different arms/heads on some different stuff and called it "new". Meanwhile all the command abilities are based around near-useless summoning options. Command Abilities are the glue that holds an army together, the awesome unique options that you can build your army around. Being able to summon a tiny unit is a really bad command ability, regardless of the infinite range, and its the same thing for every general in the book. 

Is FEC viable? For sure it is. You can take the Ghoul King from the Death book and, if you can keep this guy alive you are causing like 50 wounds every time a ghoul unit attacks, the Horrors are shredding things, T-Gheists and Dragons are causing 6 mortal wounds on 5+ to wound. You can stack 4 courtiers and bring back about 20 ghouls every hero phase. Its a tough army, because you have all these little foot guys gluing the army together that can be shot off easily, but if you can manage it long enough you have nearly the offensive power of Khorne combined with the defensive power of Nurgle. But this does not change the fact that the battletome was half-assed and the army needs an update.

 

Amen.  I am a pure FEC player.  I originally had no interest in Death (I wanted Stormcast) but read the fluff and holy crap it was amazing.  Play though, the army is straight garbage.  People say "FEC is top tier" (which often means taking a Mournghoul and/or Ghoul Patrol and/or gigant units of 30 ghouls).  The entire faction is based around summoning, but what got nerfed in Matched Play?  Summoning.  The entire army is built around characters with basically no save and a couple of wounds (big beasties notwithstanding).  What is easy to kill due to LOS and shooting rules?  Characters with a poor save and a couple of wounds.

The faction is a joke, and can't hold its own against anything.  Literally the only hope is to buff ghouls and roll a crapton of dice and hope you get enough wounds that your opponent can't save them all.  That is a piss-poor way to play an army, it's absolutely horrid design, and it's boring as hell to boot on the table.

[Sleboda]

With 40K about to get a rules rework to make it use the exact same system as AoS, we will soon see a blending of the universes. 

This means that the new Eldar God of Death, Ynnead, will supplant Nagash, and Slaanesh will return to fight this new god.

At that point, there can be a campaign book series of Death vs. Slaanesh, with aelfdar support too.

That's when we'll get new Death stuff.