Jump to content

new death battletome announced!


tea_wild_owl

Recommended Posts

6 hours ago, stickybluetoffee said:

The only reason to republish unit rules is because they’re making substantial changes to them, as far as I can see.

When they released the bigger stormcast book that collected the previous stormcast releases together, did they actually change any of the unit entries at all, or did they just reprint them as is, in a book with some new lore and faction rules?

Granted, in some cases all some of our units might need to be competitive is some subfaction rules. I mean, could you imagine Nagash with a halfway decent spell lore?

But in other cases, like for grave guard or black knights in particular, I personally think it will take more than some faction rules to make them worth running. And with Deathrattle conspicuously not being one of the allegiances in this book, I'm not personally expecting any major revisions to those unit entries.  Not in this book, anyway.

Don't get me wrong, I'm excited for this book, but I'm not going to read anything in to it that they haven't explicitly announced. That's a recipe for disappointment.

Jan2-RumourEngine1yrcls.jpg

This certainly could be nighthaunt stuff.  Or it could be wraithbone.  We have seen other eldar previews recently.  Or it could be terrain.  Any number of things.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 615
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Wraithbone? I've yet to see a wraithbone construct that looks like that... On top of that, the eldar codex has dropped already and they didn't get any new models afaik.  The dark eldar one still has to be released, as does the Ynnari faction, but again... I don't see any flaming elements in that one. 

The only thing I can imagine that looks similar and hasn't yet been released, is skaven warpstone fire or something from Tzeentch. Their codex seems to be mostly about adding Tzaangors and related models into the mix, so I don't think we'll see a lot of new releases for them at.  I'm not a betting man, but I would put money on this thing being  a spectral model.  Except for the new custodes, 40k nowadays seems mostly about churning out codexes at an insane speed. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Elmir said:

I don't think we need to worry about there not being any new units in this book... There is literally no reason to include that "all models (so far)" bit in that description except to say that death will be getting a few more options if you can just hold out a bit longer for the release.  

Legion of the night will be especially thin in option unless they add a few more options. The herald being nighthaunt is no accident I think.  Just making it current nighthaunt + Mannfred  +knight of shrouds (+ hopefully the mortis engine) will most likely not be the end of it.  This rumour engine picture is most likely proof of that... Even my GF who doesn't even  play AoS immediately said that looked like part of my "little blue ghosts". 

Jan2-RumourEngine1yrcls.jpg

My guess is that we are looking at an early march release for the book, with a lot of trickling in of previews/rumour engines  from now on until February....

And I don't think nighthaunt will be the only ones getting new toys BTW. I really do think we will be in for a tidalwave of new models in the first half of 2018 for the death faction... Hell, we might even need to be patient until the new options in the book are all out (kind of like the death guard players had to wait until all the options in their book was out. 

I spoke to a writer at the open day (who brought the book along and locked it in the glass) and he confirmed no new models in this tome. I believe we're more likely to see a new Death faction later in the year, bringing new models. We shall see.

 

He also said he believes this tome release is more likely to be in weeks than months.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not a wraithbone construct, but the wraithbone itself.  Look at the branch this guy's standing on:

latest?cb=20130804172422

Or maybe not.  I'm just saying there's plenty of other stuff it could be.  Calling it definitely or even probably nighthaunt feels very premature.

The ghost stuff in the past, and even now with the knight of shrouds, has always been more rounded and flowy, not sharp and angular like the preview.  It /could/ be nighthaunt, but it's far from guaranteed.  Especially as, if they were about to release a bunch of totally new units, it would make more sense to do so before the 'everything in one' book, so the new ghost units could also be part of the legions of nagash or mortarch subfactions, rather than after.

Since the everything book is coming first, it just strikes me as unlikely that we'd be getting new units soon after.  Not impossible, but unlikely.  Separate deathrattle and nighthaunt books, sure, but i doubt any new model kits with them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

1 minute ago, sinksinksink said:

I spoke to a writer at the open day (who brought the book along and locked it in the glass) and he confirmed no new models in this tome. I believe we're more likely to see a new Death faction later in the year, bringing new models. We shall see.

Erm  why did they tell you such a thing? Writers would know to keep their mouth shut and I am not entirely sure I can believe you considering this is your first post on the forum.  Hell, if there are no new models it would not bother me all too much we got plenty during the end times.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The announcement already basically says it just has the existing line.  And though it does hint coyly at the possibility of actual new stuff in the future, like I said, I just dont see that as particularly likely soon after this collected tome.

Would be happy to be proven wrong, of course.  But getting hopes up for stuff we haven't seen is a good way to get disappointed with the stuff we have seen.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

40 minutes ago, 5kaven5lave said:

Anyone up for some rampant and baseless speculation about the new Mortarch allegiances then?

Thinking maybe that the one for Arkhan may be based on the SKELETON keyword, any thoughts?

It’s easy to pair them off.

blood - neferata 

night - mannfred 

sacrament - arkhan

Link to comment
Share on other sites

27 minutes ago, Dracothjay said:

It’s easy to pair them off.

blood - neferata 

night - mannfred 

sacrament - arkhan

Yeah, it’s in their names, what I’m getting at is which (if any) types of units will need to be paired up with which Mortarch to get their allegiance bonuses. Or maybe it is just take X Mortarch and whichever Death units you fancy to get Y bonus?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Honestly, i have no idea what will go in which mortarch allegiance, and that's what I'm most excited to see in the book.   Skeletons for arkhan, obviously, but what else?  Ghosts would fit his arcane disposition, but then again we do have fluff of him leading armies of ghouls in AoS.

Nef and Manny will get some vampire stuff, but what else?  How much overlap will there be?  And what will distinguish a 'legion of Nagash' army from a Death army in general?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, Sception said:

Honestly, i have no idea what will go in which mortarch allegiance, and that's what I'm most excited to see in the book.   Skeletons for arkhan, obviously, but what else?  Ghosts would fit his arcane disposition, but then again we do have fluff of him leading armies of ghouls in AoS.

Nef and Manny will get some vampire stuff, but what else?  How much overlap will there be?  And what will distinguish a 'legion of Nagash' army from a Death army in general?

As I said in the rumour thread. 

What I think will  happen is depending on what mortarch legion you choose you get a traits for your model. Like let's say you have a wight king leading your army? You can choose a legion for him(or general death) and he gains synergistic effects with those of the same legion. Well, that's how I would do it which makes the most sense to me. 

Since in almost any battletome you don't have to use the special characters to gain the traits. The special characters have awesome rules to make their legion traits better and that's how far I think it will go.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't expect the legions will have full access to the death line without using allies, though i do expect significant overlap.

Like, skeletons and ghouls for arkhan, skeletons and vampires for neferata, ghouls and vampires for manfred, ghosts and morghasts for all three?  Or maybe some units within a subtype might be split up, like vargheists for manny but not neph, and blood knights for neph but not manny?

I honestly don't know, but I'm excited to find out.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, Sception said:

I don't expect the legions will have full access to the death line without using allies, though i do expect significant overlap.

Like, skeletons and ghouls for arkhan, skeletons and vampires for neferata, ghouls and vampires for manfred, ghosts and morghasts for all three?  Or maybe some units within a subtype might be split up, like vargheists for manny but not neph, and blood knights for neph but not manny?

I honestly don't know, but I'm excited to find out.

I do agree, but I think all three will have access to skeletons gotta push that start collecting box. Even so I am quite excited as well to see what is in the tome especially the lore on how the living and dead live amongst one another. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

27 minutes ago, shinros said:

I do agree, but I think all three will have access to skeletons gotta push that start collecting box. Even so I am quite excited as well to see what is in the tome especially the lore on how the living and dead live amongst one another. 

Speculatively, this is one of the better arguments for how a very small part of the composition will look like. I mean, production is dependent on sales, and why would GW make such a box useless. The other option really is to change the start collecting box, and I’d imagine they are busy with other things, even if it is something small such as that. 

It also makes sense to have a core choice for such an army. The skeleton warriors are classic representstion of necromantic spells and environments, even outside of GW lore. I know it would definitely be exciting to see, as @Sception said, different compositions of such core factions depending on which Mortarch, although having skeletons be foundstion for ech of them, including Nagash,

however, i am not fully read up on the current story line. So dont hate on me here haha. 

Thanks for sharing your thoughts,  they are very interesting!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, Sception said:

 

Jan2-RumourEngine1yrcls.jpg

This certainly could be nighthaunt stuff.  Or it could be wraithbone.  We have seen other eldar previews recently.  Or it could be terrain.  Any number of things.

This is either Death or Ynnari to me , it reminds me a bit of the flames the Yncarne from 40k has but it could very well be death as well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

could be anything.  IMO, it looks a bit eldar to me, and I'd rate that as more likely than Death, given that we've seen some obviously eldar previews recently, and we're still expecting that Ynarri book.  New death units just strikes me as unlikely coming in on the tails of an everything in one book, rendering that book incomplete/non-definitive so soon after it comes out as the complete/definitive reference.  Not impossible, mind.  Just very unlikely.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think I'll be pretty disappointed if this just ends up being Grand Alliance : Death 2.0 without any new models.

But I am glad that the allegiance things are happening. One of the issues people have had is getting extra spells onto stuff like Necromancers and the Deathlords. Since all the allegiance abilities to date have been around the factions, Deathmages are never going to be stand alone. This is a pretty elegant solution IMO to get some extra depth in the Deathmages auxillary faction. I hope that the Mortis Engine ends up becoming a Wizard as well.

Also more specific allegiance abilities means they can get more creative, as the more specific you are the more wilder you can make your traits and artefacts. I mean, you'd never find something like the Ancestral Pickaxe from the Dispossessed allegiance abilities under the Grand Alliance allegiance abilities because it'd be far too strong when not on slow moving Duardin (And in fact, it already pushes out all the other artefacts under that allegiance). 

So I'm super interested to see what kinda cool allegiance abilities come out of the book. At a guess, all the allegiances will be based on the Death one + something else, unique traits and artefacts for each and then a smaller spell list, say like 3 spells for allegiance (Seems in-line with Nurgle getting 3 for each sub-faction).

 

But at the end of the day. Death's major issue (Similar to Destruction in some ways) is lack of Warscroll depth. Without new models or new ways GW thinks to re-purpose existing models, if they don't add in any new warscrolls it's going to be hard to get to the top.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I very much don't expect new models, and I don't expect this, or any release in 2018, will get us 'to the top'.  To me, putting that kind of expectation on this, or really any expectations outside of what they've already explicitly told us is coming, would be setting oneself up for disappointment.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 hours ago, Sception said:

When they released the bigger stormcast book that collected the previous stormcast releases together, did they actually change any of the unit entries at all, or did they just reprint them as is, in a book with some new lore and faction rules?

They had two warscroll changes that I remember, both nerfs. But that was moving from one Battletome to another.

When FEC got their own book, they got several warscroll changes from the GA book, including the dissolving of Beasts of the Grave as they were rolled into FEC.

What I find very interesting is the inclusion of Soulblight and GA:D so soon after the GHB. The only reason I can think of their being included would be them being altered in some fashion.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, AverageBoss said:

They had two warscroll changes that I remember, both nerfs. But that was moving from one Battletome to another.

When FEC got their own book, they got several warscroll changes from the GA book, including the dissolving of Beasts of the Grave as they were rolled into FEC.

What I find very interesting is the inclusion of Soulblight and GA:D so soon after the GHB. The only reason I can think of their being included would be them being altered in some fashion.

I think there are a few possibilities here:

A) In line with Daemons of Nurgle, they might be starting a trend of removing summoning spells from warscrolls and replacing them with more fine tuned ways of summoning such as warscroll abilities, allegiance abilities and warscroll battalions. Because of this, it's likely that all the Death factions may get an allegiance ability that lets them do some form of unique summoning. Nighthaunts in a way already have this baked into their rule that lets them place units on the field throughout the game from the Underworlds.

B) It's likely that all the Death allegiances will get spell lores. Flesh-Eater Courts are obviously being excluded from Legions of Nagash, so Soulblight are the only Death sub-faction that has casters at the moment that would require additional spells (Nighthaunt can get Wizards but only through artefacts/command trait from what I recall).

C) It's possible that they may alter the Soulblight abilities in some way, but I think this is a distant 3rd option as to why they would be included.

 

Overall though. I think it is in some ways a bit strange that Nighthaunt aren't included for completeness. It's one thing to leave out the Flesh-Eater Courts because they're not a Legion of Nagash, it's kinda another to leave the Nighthaunts sitting in GHB2017. Just like all the other ones in the GHB, I wonder if they will reprint them when it comes to GHB2018 (Or they still still stay legal but not reprinted in the GHB2017).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Both flesh eater courts and nighthaunt units are in this book, and both will likely feature in the special character and mixed death allegiances.  They're just not getting separate allegiance rules of their own in this book, which mostly comes down to GW thinking their existing line is strong enough to sell a later book of their own.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So if death gets a bunch of new spell lores...what's that gonna mean for Nagash? Because he's not terrible NOW, not super competitive but definitely not bad. Actually being able to use all 8 spells to do somethin useful would make him pretty nuts. Does he get a warscroll change or...?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.


×
×
  • Create New...