Satyrical Sophist

6 is to let you deploy either a pair of threes or a 5 in a single line. I do get your point about it perhaps being a bit awkward to have to double line 10 25mm bases, but equally if you allow other stuff that coherency rule. It’s not too much of a problem letting a unit of steel helms stretch out like that, they could make a line of about 14 inches. By the same rule, 10 liberators cover 20 inches and 10 dire wolves cover 28 inches.

I wonder if that’s why they tightened up coherency. I think it might be just about possible, if tricker to pin units in position. Remember the holding unit can pull causalities from close to the enemy unit, as long as they keep within 3. I can see how it would speed up pile ins considerably though. You just need to make sure one model is within 3, and move all the others. Rather than the super awkward checking each model and piling in appropriately. Who knows how to will play out. It feels like it’s easier to explain at least.

You can’t leave combat by piling in towards another unit. It says you need to remain within combat range of any units you are already in combat range of, so you could pull away and make it harder for the enemy to get in range with the full unit, but you can’t escape combat.

I really love the burgundy set, Royal Cloak and Swordhilt Burgundy in particular.

Sure? They probably do like that people have to rebuy the paint more often. I think you think I’m defending them, I’m not. It is what it is. Those reasons are from the former product designer who was interviewed by the Painting Phase. (Think that’s right). I’m not a big fan of going straight for the most cynical take one can think of. Sure, it’s often a factor, but it’s pretty limiting to just stick to that and only that. I didn’t say I liked the pots. I said I liked them for contrasts and washes, which do get used straight from the pot fairly often. Not all the time, but fairly often, particularly for a quick base coat.

GW doesn't change their pots for a few key reasons. Brand recognition, they are super recognisable, which is a surprisingly big thing. It helps particularly with the assumption that a significant amount of GW stuff is bought for people. Straight from the pot. When it comes to basic, super beginner painting, its a lot easier. You don't need a pallet, you can stir it with a stick inside the pot etc. Dropper bottles basically require a palette, whether its wet or dry. Should you be painting straight from the pot? Not particularly, but it makes it a lot easier for beginners. When it comes to the contrast/xpress/speedpaints I actually prefer the bottles, since straight from the pot is a reasonable approach. They have a giant machine that makes those pots. I have far too many paints, a habit I picked up during lockdown when I had no hobby time. There are various paints I like a lot in most ranges, but it feels like by far the most consistent paint I've used and basically my main paint line now is Duncan Rhode's Two Thin Coats. A bit more expensive than I'd like, but enjoyable to use. To answer your Vallejo question, to the best of my ability. Vallejo have a few different paint ranges with different properties and those paint ranges have old and new versions for some of them. Vallejo Model Colour (which has serial numbers in the 70.001 to 70.999 or so) is a range that was made for painting model kits like airplanes. It has names like French Mirage Blue, Intermediate Blue. Pale Grey Blue and Blue Grey Pale are two different colours. It used to be known as a really good paint range, but time has moved on since then. They have been reformulating the range and changing their bottle design. The new range seems to be slowly filtering to the UK (at least where I am), but I haven't tried a huge number of them out. Given the good things I've heard and seen myself about the similar redesign of Vallejo Game Colour, I'm optimistic. They tend to be pretty muted colours. Vallejo Game Colour ( has serial numbers in the 72 range) is the fantasy range for Vallejo. The (unverified) story is that when Citadel wanted to change their paint line they talked to Vallejo but the deal fell through and a while later Vallejo came out with some paints that looked very like the old citadel paints with similar names. So they have paints like Goblin Green, Tinny Tin, Squid Pink. The original game colours don't have the best reputation, partly due to their age and lack of consistency paint to paint. The new range has been getting good reviews though and the ones I've used I've really liked. They tend to be a bit matter. A lot of people use the model air and game air colours from Vallejo. In particular the metallics have an absolutely great reputation, with Vallejo Model Air Silver (71.065) having a particularly stellar reputation, with either a brush or an airbrush. Vallejo also have Vallejo Metal Colours, a frankly silly number of wonderful to use silvers, designed for an airbrush but coating really well with a brush. I generally default to Duraluminum, but just pick what you like the look of. AK Interactive 3rd Gen. This is a full fairly broad range. You didn't ask about them, but they are very similar to Vallejo. They both come from the same area of spain and the founder has the surname Vallejo, so I think there is some history. They have a range of colours I'd say is a mix of VMC and VGC. I've got a number of them, but have yet to test them out really. A lot of people swear by them, particularly their pastels. There are a lot of different ranges with different properties. Some have really colours, or types of colours and mediocre or even bad other colours. Some are kind of just weird. Scale 75's normal paints are actually gel based, and produce some of the most matt finishes. They definitely feel different to use. I mostly use them when I have a specific look in mind (The main non metallic ones I find myself returning to are a set of them I use for leather, since the matt finish lets it stand out against cloth) and I don't think I'd ever base coat with them. The metallics on the other hand feel lovely to use, and have some lovely seldom seen colours. I particularly like the alchemy colours, which are very bright metallic colours designed to fit as the brightest part of gold, brass, copper etc. Quite often the final highlight of a non silver colour ends up completely silver and can wash away the general look. Are there any other paint ranges you would like to know about? I feel I might have spent too long typing about paint.

I might be wrong, but didn't they say that the dawnbringers stuff is being brought forward into AoS 4?

There are whole faction/sub factions where counter charging is a massive draw. The glottkin (whose ability is in movement admittedly) has a huge part of its cost in having a counter charge command. It’s a very very powerful ability. Unleash hell is sometimes very good, but this edition is limited reinforcement sizes of units and we actually haven’t seen any real shooting profiles yet.

If you are interested in keeping on playing SCE, then the best I can think of off the top of my head is. Sequitors as liberators. 5 Castigators as EITHER Judicators (If they are coming back with new models), OR Vigilors OR two sets of crossbow Vanguard Raptors. Mounted Lord Arcanum as Mounted Aquilor or the new chocobo mounted Ruination Chamber lord. The knight incantor can be a knight arcanum. The Knight venator and the ballista are currently without easy proxying. I think there is a non zero chance we get an updated winged stormcast hero. I'm less sure of the ballista, but its possible. I had a go eyeballing how many points of units I lost, and its kind of eye watering. I have a fair chunk of soul wars and mortal realms stuff, and have a full beasts of chaos army. I think it works out as about 5k of stormcast and 5k of BoC (might be a bit under, but counting the war cry stuff, definitely over 5k). It's been an emotional time. Thematically for beasts I'm currently thinking of seeing about running them as Khorne maybe. Comparisons are a bit vaguer, but I THINK that it could work. (Bestigor as Blood Warriors, Gor as reavers, maybe even minotaur as mighty skull crushers).

I’m kind of assuming that horde and non elite options are going to have a degrade option like Nagash losing power when he has taken a certain number of wounds. Something like “this unit has 0 control when below half strength” achieves quite a bit.

SCE are a little bit stuck as one of the starter factions. I think they want one of the factions to be an easy beginner option hobbywise. I’d argue that overall SCE are actually pretty medium to paint WELL, but petty easy to get painted acceptable. Back in the day, just basecoating ret gold and doing a wash of flesh shade for all the gold, then some simple block colours makes a playable paint job. I think there is a real risk when starter sets don’t have an easy paint/play option. My understanding is that isle of blood (which I own and am painting now) was a really lovely looking set containing two popular factions that underperformed at least in part due to both of them being hard to paint and not the most beginner friendly. i feel if you don’t have SCE as one of the starter options you might want to have something similar, like slaves to darkness, or iron jaws.

One thing with the double turn that I’d be interested in seeing/testing resolving would everything coming down to one dice roll, and one that isn’t really interacted with. I wonder whether it would make a difference if it was like warcry. Short summary is that in warcry you roll 6 dice, and separate out singles, doubles, triples and quadruples. The doubles, trips and quads can be spent on abilities. The player with the most singles gets to choose priority. You also get a wild dice each turn to either save or modify your roll. So you could add a single to try and get priority, or turn a single into a double to get an ability (but be less likely to go first). I really think something like this would feel better, and it also opens up design space for you to interact with it. For example, a hero could add a wild dice, or count as an additional single for example. If you wanted to have an in game representation you could even have stuff like “unit wiped out, add a single to the next priority roll “ or something like that, to represent losses forcing a general to react to stuff. What bonuses you would give for doubles, trips etc would need to be decided. i don’t know if this would help, but I feel it might? It feels more significant than “well, this single dice had a huge impact”.

I was playing a game last week where my opponent asked me about if I cared about terrain and was surprised when I said yes. I was then surprised when he started rolling for mysterious terrain because I had straight up forgotten it was a thing. I meant terrain placement in general. I was playing nurgle and my grand strat was blessed desecration which cares about whether terrain is fully in enemy deployment.

I’ve played a fair number of games in my life thanks, in warhammer I’ve played warhammer fantasy back in the day, and I’ve played 40K 3rd to 5th, then 8th and 9th (not played any 10th yet) Mordheim, Warcry, Blood Bowl etc. Outside of GW stuff I’ve played a lot of board games over the years, and played a ton of magic the gathering, mainly legacy. I haven’t really played much in the way of historical war games, or warmahordes but I’d say I have a reasonable spread of games. The article said “choose” to take the double, which would imply that you only lose the battle tactic if you win the roll and take the double, not have it given to you. It is WarCom though, and they can be a bit slapdash. I do like the double, and I think the game needs the uncertainty. I think the game would be worse without it. Are there potentially better ways of doing it? Sure, but mostly they would require some fairly substantial rewrites. Honestly I think it would be interesting if they tested some of those ways in variant game modes, maybe that’s something that will be easier to do in the module based system. It’s not my intent to tell people to “git gud” but I can defend liking the way the double turn plays.

I think they mention that they only included results if there were at least some number of them. Bonesplitters just aren’t played in large numbers. https://woehammer.com/2024/03/10/aos-meta-stats-w-ending-3rd-march-2024-battlescroll-nullstone-cache/?amp=1