The Warhammer News Thread

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

Gobsprakk rules:

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/08/09/gobsprakk-uses-swampy-magic-bad-smells-and-a-screaming-plant-to-dominate-the-battlefield/

He's a 2 cast wizard as well.

Kruleboyz lore spells:

 

[Mutton]

It's really bizarre that his warscroll spell is the same as a normal Swampcalla Shaman. Da Black Pit is a tasty spell, but only if he gets some kind of +1 to cast or reroll. So far there isn't anything that screams "super powerful caster." If he's a cheaper monstrous hero, that could be a big boon.

Edited August 9, 2021 by Mutton

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

25 minutes ago, Mutton said:

It's really bizarre that his warscroll spell is the same as a normal Swampcalla Shaman. Da Black Pit is a tasty spell, but only if he gets some kind of +1 to cast or reroll. So far there isn't anything that screams "super powerful caster." If he's a cheaper monstrous hero, that could be a big boon.

Given the tendency of Destruction to be the casino GA when it comes to magic, there is a good chance that he won't get a cast bonus, which is worrying. Gobsprakk will no doubt be a 300 point hero minimum (large base, flying, high wounds...), so considering that Belladamma Volga gets 2 spells, +1 to cast and potentially reroll casts in her own subfaction, that would really be disappointing.

[Mutton]

42 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Given the tendency of Destruction to be the casino GA when it comes to magic, there is a good chance that he won't get a cast bonus, which is worrying. Gobsprakk will no doubt be a 300 point hero minimum (large base, flying, high wounds...), so considering that Belladamma Volga gets 2 spells, +1 to cast and potentially reroll casts in her own subfaction, that would really be disappointing.

Unless the third Kruleboy subfaction is magic focused, which I suspect it might be just based on the old teaser shield faces we've seen. Also, Warhammer Community's tendency to only give us half of the story could come into play here. I wish they'd just show us the whole warscroll for these things like they did for Kragnos.

[Talas]

https://www.cubicle7games.com/aos-soulbound-looking-ahead/

Soulbound is getting books on Ulfenkarn, Excelsis, and one book bringing the narrative to 3rd edition as well. Among other things.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

13 hours ago, Talas said:

https://www.cubicle7games.com/aos-soulbound-looking-ahead/

Soulbound is getting books on Ulfenkarn, Excelsis, and one book bringing the narrative to 3rd edition as well. Among other things.

That's neat. Once again shows that Ulfenkarn was definitely supposed to be an important new lore location from the start. The continued use of Ulfenkarn in the lore makes me hopeful that we might actually see more Cursed City stuff in the future as well (a second print run at least, hopefully expansions, too).

[SunStorm]

The recent news update on the Killteam pre-orders sounds like GW do listen to feedback especially how badly affected people have been recently with limited releases and scalpers. 

Hopefully this will continue forward for future AoS and boxed game releases. 

This quarter's financial report did also mention the webstore infrastructure and how it is their next big project to overhaul as they admit it is no longer suitable for the volume of sales. This won't be a quick fix however as I think it said 3 years is the likely timescale. 

 

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

35 minutes ago, SunStorm said:

The recent news update on the Killteam pre-orders sounds like GW do listen to feedback especially how badly affected people have been recently with limited releases and scalpers. 

Hopefully this will continue forward for future AoS and boxed game releases. 

This quarter's financial report did also mention the webstore infrastructure and how it is their next big project to overhaul as they admit it is no longer suitable for the volume of sales. This won't be a quick fix however as I think it said 3 years is the likely timescale. 

 

These new commitments also call into question the narrative we have been seeing online of GW trying their hand at FOMO marketing from Indomitus onwards. It seems like what many people interpreted as an actively malicious business tactic of purposefully undersupplying their products to create hype might actually just have been GW being unable to keep up with demand.

[SunStorm]

20 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

These new commitments also call into question the narrative we have been seeing online of GW trying their hand at FOMO marketing from Indomitus onwards. It seems like what many people interpreted as an actively malicious business tactic of purposefully undersupplying their products to create hype might actually just have been GW being unable to keep up with demand.

I think you might be right on that. It doesn't fit exactly, but I always try to bear in mind Hanlon's Razor with things like this. 

GW clearly do realise collectors editions and limited items do help sell, things like the special dice, ltd edition army books, token incentives, etc which is fine as they're nearly all optional. The problem happens when it affects "core" items like miniatures and boxed games. 

I imagine the new Killteam including DKoK is going to be a good test how they're going to handle things going forward. Hopefully by the time of the next big AoS release they've learnt more lessons and adapted. 

 

 

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

Stormcast Dragons rules preview:

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/08/10/magic-and-mayhem-the-dragon-princes-rules-make-them-a-ruinous-tag-team-in-battle/

 

Krondys:

"Krondys is a powerful Wizard, casting two spells per turn from the Lore of the Storm."

"He also wears the Regalia Fulmentarus, a present from his pal Sigmar which can add up to 3 to his casting rolls. And as you’d expect from a gigantic elder Draconith, he’s pretty tasty in a scuffle to boot."

Karazai:

 

That tail seems pretty serious. Since 3+/3+ is about 50% to hit, he should wipe out one wound hordes that come within 3" of him on average.

[Kadeton]

I'll admit to being quite underwhelmed with that breath attack. It's basically a convoluted way of dealing 1 to 6 mortal wounds, but with a lower average (~2.33) than just a simple 1d6. For dragonfire, that seems resoundingly meh.

(Remember the old snowball attack that Thundertusks did in the old Beastclaw codex? It started at 6 mortal wounds, and that was great... but then if you inflicted some damage on them it very quickly dropped to 1d6 and immediately went from awesome to disappointing. This dragonfire is worse than that.)

[Enoby]

13 minutes ago, Kadeton said:

Remember the old snowball attack that Thundertusks did in the old Beastclaw codex? It started at 6 mortal wounds, and that was great... but then if you inflicted some damage on them it very quickly dropped to 1d6 and immediately went from awesome to disappointing. This dragonfire is worse than that.)

Maybe I'm misremembering, but didn't a lot of people really not like the old Thundertusk attack as it was pretty much just "choose a small hero and delete them". I think this dragonfire is a better way of doing mortal wounds comparatively 

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

7 minutes ago, Enoby said:

Maybe I'm misremembering, but didn't a lot of people really not like the old Thundertusk attack as it was pretty much just "choose a small hero and delete them". I think this dragonfire is a better way of doing mortal wounds comparatively 

It's probably more fun to play against, but I agree with @Kadeton that it's not exactly super well designed.

It's rolling an extra dice and comparing it to a chart just to do lower overall damage. They could have just made it 1d6 mortals and skipped the unnecessary complexity. It's not like 1d6 is overbearingly strong.

[Kadeton]

34 minutes ago, Enoby said:

Maybe I'm misremembering, but didn't a lot of people really not like the old Thundertusk attack as it was pretty much just "choose a small hero and delete them". I think this dragonfire is a better way of doing mortal wounds comparatively 

Oh for sure, it was brutally overbearing when dealing 6 mortals a shot. The best way to deal with it? Put a little bit of damage on each Thundertusk and drop the damage to d6, and then just ignore them because using a 300+ point model to deal d6 wounds is horribly inefficient.

[Mutton]

I may be biased as a Destruction player, but I can't help but feel like those dragon rules are better than any of the ones previewed for the Kruleboyz--whose rules thus far have been a resounding "ok". That is my visceral, havenofurthercontext crybaby reaction.

[Noserenda]

Im relatively new to actively playing AoS but d6 mortal wounds seems super puny for a humongous dragon, even if the range is a lot longer than the olde dragons.

[Gothmaug]

1 hour ago, Kadeton said:

I'll admit to being quite underwhelmed with that breath attack. It's basically a convoluted way of dealing 1 to 6 mortal wounds, but with a lower average (~2.33) than just a simple 1d6. For dragonfire, that seems resoundingly meh.

(Remember the old snowball attack that Thundertusks did in the old Beastclaw codex? It started at 6 mortal wounds, and that was great... but then if you inflicted some damage on them it very quickly dropped to 1d6 and immediately went from awesome to disappointing. This dragonfire is worse than that.)

I also was underwhelmed by the breath attack...Then I went and looked at the exisitng dragons in the Game. Blazing Tempest is identical to the Dragonfire ability of the archmage on Dragon, and markedly better than the Noxious breath of the black dragon (dice = to models in target unit, 6's = 1 mortal)   and the zombie dragon Pestilent breath which has a hit roll, a wound roll, and only 1d6 mortals if you manage to score the hit.  SO in the grand scheme of dragons in AOS, it son par with the old ones we already have. The forgeworld dragons have better breath attacks, but who knows how long those will be playable. 

[BadDice0809]

The spell sounds so cool but the effects really aren't matching the flavor text here.

Overwhelming the foe with hail the size of METEORS!!!!... equals minus 1 Rend on their weapons...  somehow? 

The 'choose the best debuff' is strong and all just getting a little disconnect here.

[PrimeElectrid]

7 hours ago, Kadeton said:

I'll admit to being quite underwhelmed with that breath attack. It's basically a convoluted way of dealing 1 to 6 mortal wounds, but with a lower average (~2.33) than just a simple 1d6. For dragonfire, that seems resoundingly meh.

(Remember the old snowball attack that Thundertusks did in the old Beastclaw codex? It started at 6 mortal wounds, and that was great... but then if you inflicted some damage on them it very quickly dropped to 1d6 and immediately went from awesome to disappointing. This dragonfire is worse than that.)

It’s like a 50% chance of doing 1 mortal wound, too.

*Who writes a rule which has 3 chances of rolling 1 mortal wound.*

”A 6, that’s d6 mortals! Oh a 1. “
”A 4! At least it’s not 1 mortal. Oh it is anyway.”

Why?

At least make it a flat 1/3/6. ‘But that’s too strong!,’ people will say, and I’ll say “look there was a time when 2 Terrorgheists were running at you fighting first, fighting twice, rerolling hits and doing 6 mortals on a 6, we can handle one dragon rolling 6 mortals one third of the time. Also 20 Sentinels are still a thing.”

[Wordy9th]

First take without any context: That tail seems to be stupendously strong? Doesn’t it make any horde army defunct?

[Mutton]

Stormcast preview:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/08/12/build-all-dragon-armies-and-other-fierce-forces-with-the-new-stormcast-eternals-battletome/

 

And Sons of Behemat are getting battletome updates (tactics, strategies, core battalions...) in the next White Dwarf:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/08/12/the-sons-of-behemat-receive-a-gargantuan-battletome-update-in-this-months-white-dwarf/

[yukishiro1]

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/08/12/the-sons-of-behemat-receive-a-gargantuan-battletome-update-in-this-months-white-dwarf/

Ugh, they really are putting in faction-specific core battalions, grand strategies, and battle tactics. What a mess this is going to be. Why did they come up with this elegant universal system, claiming it would make balancing easier, only to ditch it before the first battletome is even out in order to reintroduce the exact problem they said they were addressing by making things universal? 

 

[Televiper11]

1 hour ago, yukishiro1 said:

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/08/12/the-sons-of-behemat-receive-a-gargantuan-battletome-update-in-this-months-white-dwarf/

Ugh, they really are putting in faction-specific core battalions, grand strategies, and battle tactics. What a mess this is going to be. Why did they come up with this elegant universal system, claiming it would make balancing easier, only to ditch it before the first battletome is even out in order to reintroduce the exact problem they said they were addressing by making things universal? 

 

Yeah, that’s super disappointing.

[Gothmaug]

1 hour ago, yukishiro1 said:

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/08/12/the-sons-of-behemat-receive-a-gargantuan-battletome-update-in-this-months-white-dwarf/

Ugh, they really are putting in faction-specific core battalions, grand strategies, and battle tactics. What a mess this is going to be. Why did they come up with this elegant universal system, claiming it would make balancing easier, only to ditch it before the first battletome is even out in order to reintroduce the exact problem they said they were addressing by making things universal? 

 

Well, having an entire faction based on 2 kits makes it a bit necessary to tweak the normal battallion rules, as its almost impossible to use them with SoB. 

 

And of course each new battletome is going to get its own version of a battalion. GW just cleaned the slate with version 3.0, next comes 2-3 years of overpowered rules out with each new book to keep people interested, then a general reset and version 4 will arrive. That's the current marketing strategy and its not going anywhere anytime soon, so no use worrying about it. Personally I'll squeal with joy for Warclans, Nighthaunt and Slaves to Darkness when their tomes arrive, enjoy 3 months of tactical superiority, then go back to weeping when the next battletome comes out and overshadows mine. 🤣

[Mutton]

2 hours ago, Gothmaug said:

GW just cleaned the slate with version 3.0, next comes 2-3 years of overpowered rules out with each new book to keep people interested, then a general reset and version 4 will arrive.

This is the truth behind the veil of hope. Such as it is--such as it ever was.