Implications of the 8th Edition of Warhammer 40,000

[BunkhouseBuster]

5 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

Not quite sure why everyone is getting quite as het-up about Power points - it's the same system we use in AoS without any real issues and only intended to be used for Open and Narrative play.  Matched Play points are more "traditional"

Because it is "different" and "new" and doesn't cater to the competitive mindset that so many players have, and some of those deriding it are either not willing or not able to comprehend that not everyone is the same as them.

I post over on DakkaDakka under the same username (and profile picture), and I have at least convinced a few of the critics that it's no big deal, and that some players are just happy to even get to play anymore, regardless of the points system used.

[wayniac]

4 minutes ago, BunkhouseBuster said:

Because it is "different" and "new" and doesn't cater to the competitive mindset that so many players have, and some of those deriding it are either not willing or not able to comprehend that not everyone is the same as them.

Basically.  It's "not competitive" because you could get something FOR FREE (it's not fair!  Waaaah!  It's not fair you can do this! etc. etc.) so therefore is worthless because "real" points are so much better than the half-arsed implementation of power level.

[polarbear]

Loving what they've done to 40k. However, sad to see piling in and whatnot is similar to AoS. I find that such a clunky mechanic.

[BunkhouseBuster]

2 hours ago, wayniac said:

Basically.  It's "not competitive" because you could get something FOR FREE (it's not fair!  Waaaah!  It's not fair you can do this! etc. etc.) so therefore is worthless because "real" points are so much better than the half-arsed implementation of power level.

Exactly!  They don't want Balance (which is handled by the mechanics of army construction) but Fair games (which can be rectified by the players).

[WoollyMammoth]

@Killax
Its a good point that we don't know until we put it on the table. If there are armies that can just snipe galore then daemons will start to fall apart fast. 

From my research so far, 40k daemons are better in every way than AoS daemons. A lot of deamons (slannesh and nurgle in particular), are very unfortunate right now. Right off the bat all deamons in 40k are 5+ immune to rending, which makes them much better by default. 

In regards to bloodletters, with 40k you have one 3+ attack each (better than 4+ AoS). Then - if you charge or are charged, you get another attack, almost like having a bloodsecrator built into the scroll. Next their 4S turns to 5S, then with a herald this 5S turns to 6S, so you are wounding  on 3+ most of the time. Throw in a deamon prince for re-rolling 1s to hit.

Say a unit of 20 bloodletters charges with 40 3+/3+ attacks with -3 rend, there is not much that is going to survive that. Sure it might not blow out a horde outright, but they are going to have a pretty nasty morale test after that, most likely reducing the unit to nothing.

I'm not convinced this game will be a "shooting always wins" type game. Sure it will take some time before the Bloodletters can charge, but all you have to do is use one of the many kinds of units that pop-up within 9", then just make at least one 9" charge to deny the units shooting. For example, you can get a bunch of cheap units of Nurglings, have them all pop up on top of the enemy, and hope at least one of them makes the charge. In the case of most shooting units which are really going to take a chunk out of your Bloodletter units, they are most likely sad enough in close combat that some Nurglings can occupy them long enough to give your Bloodletters a chance. 

Lastly, I feel AoS bloodletters are vastly overrated. Sure you can give them a ton of attacks, but one -1 to hit debuff turns their swords into plastic, and -1 to hit debuffs are more common than not in competitive games. If you give the 40k bloodletters -1 to hit, it won't phase them much.

If you are a deamon player, there is a lot to get excited about for 40k

[Killax]

@WoollyMammoth - Right off the bat I can't agree with you that 5+ immunity to rending actually contributes as much to the units as you suggest, why? Because in 40K the typical hit will be landed on a 3+ and a wound on T3 (Bloodletters, Daemonettes, Horrors) is also a close to guaranteed 3+. Which leaves you with a lot of 5+ saves to try and save. This isn't half as common in AoS where we are looking at typical 4+/3+ or 3+/4+.

- Charging with Bloodletters can be amazing but is also drastically unrealistic compaired to the movement support AoS grands them. From WoK BT to Murderhost, 6" moves are not getting you across the field if your running around with T3 and a 5+ save.  

- Note that again Im not saying shooting will always win. I am however saying that these Daemons do not come remotely close to AoS' effects because of the synergy. 

- Lastly as for your feeling AoS Bloodletters are overrated. I guess you havn't met the right opponent playing them yet. A -1 to hit debuff does close to nothing because at 20+ they present a +1 to hit buff to themselves and gain another one if a Daemonic Hero is close. Then, if the Khorne player feels inclined to do so they can also gain more buffs through for example but not exclusively the Crimson Crown, turning their Mortal wound hits into additional attacks aswell. 

The thing is, I like the new summoning in 40K it's cool and fluffy. However with tons of units available to transport and charge out of transport we're still looking at a much more effective second turn. Remember in order for a character to summon it cannot move in the movement phase. 
Overall the balance in 40K is good and sufficient but 5+ saves and Toughness 3 isnt going to cut it against massed Rapid Bolter Fire, something that's around a lot. The Bloodletters by example are great against single wound Marines but Berserkers by comparison push out enough attacks to clean out whole units of them. This is cool but unless your going to mix it up going mono-Daemon will not work out well against medium fire arms.
By comparison a lot of AoS Daemons also win out on their Ld vs Morale. Battleshock on Ld 7/Morale 7 is going to inflict much more casualties as it would on Ld 10/Morale 10 then factor in that common Toughness 3 and your bound to see Daemon units drop quickly. 

[WoollyMammoth]

@Killax 
I'ts interesting, I guess we will have to see how things work out on the table. the 5++ might not seem great, but its better than the 5+ AoS Daemons get. Daemons are an interesting army because they are not just marching melee armies like Death and Khorne in AoS, they have lots and lots of psykers and once they move up a little bit its going to be Smite city. I can't wait to see how it all works out on the table.

Khorne and Tzeentch have really cool stuff in AoS since they have been updated, but Nurgle and Slaanesh are really boring and disappointing for the most part. I'm sure it will get a lot better when their books come out.

As for Bloodletters, I've never seen them over 20, which means you just have to make sure to kill one off to remove their +1. Khorne has a lot of buffs to give them extra attacks but +1 to hit is hard to come by. A Khorne Hero allows them to re-roll 1s, not +1 to hit. So - after you kill one, you can tarpit them easily if you give them -1 to hit, then they might have a ton of attacks but they are all just 1 damage hitting on 5s. Khorne players could take units of 30 of them, and that is much scarier, but horde armies are incredibly susceptible to things like Gaunt Summoners, Drycha, Decimators, etc. so the army will really struggle competitively. You could take a generic list with Sayl and launch 20 into the enemy on first turn, that is pretty scary, but there are a ton of equally horrific things you can use as Sayl torpedoes. 

As for 3T .. I'm painting Plaguebearers
 

[Old Stonebeard]

On 5/23/2017 at 11:02 PM, Oppenheimer said:

3) I hate that they basically tested out their ideas on WFB like blowing up the world and not using points and we all had to struggle through it and now 40k gets the benefit of it with a smoother launch.

This. Also, this. Furthermore, this.

Don't get me wrong: I like what they've done with 8th. I feel it's a vast improvement over 7th, which was really 3.4. If you go back and look at 3rd Ed., it wasn't written to support flyers, super-heavies, knights, Strength D, formations, and all the other stupid shenanigans they bloated it with over the years. 8th is written from the ground up to incorporate all that.

That said, how did they know it would work? The End Times and Age of Sigmar.  After running WHFB into the ground, they discovered that even a hard reboot won't drive away everybody; 8th is a soft reboot compared to what we went through. The roll-out has been smooth, with months of previews explaining every aspect of the game- not, "Here's 4 pages of rules, have at it kids." The rules themselves are longer than 4 pages, to incorporate more nuance and better formatting. 8th. Ed is the roll-out Age of Sigmar should have had, but we got dragged through the mud to give a polished product to the toxic 40K crowd.

I believe in giving credit where it's due, and GW has been doing so much right recently, I try not to be salty. However, being the "learning child" so that GW can treat 40k right is getting, well, a little old.

- Alex

[KillagoreFaceslasha]

49 minutes ago, Old Stonebeard said:

This. Also, this. Furthermore, this.

Don't get me wrong: I like what they've done with 8th. I feel it's a vast improvement over 7th, which was really 3.4. If you go back and look at 3rd Ed., it wasn't written to support flyers, super-heavies, knights, Strength D, formations, and all the other stupid shenanigans they bloated it with over the years. 8th is written from the ground up to incorporate all that.

That said, how did they know it would work? The End Times and Age of Sigmar.  After running WHFB into the ground, they discovered that even a hard reboot won't drive away everybody; 8th is a soft reboot compared to what we went through. The roll-out has been smooth, with months of previews explaining every aspect of the game- not, "Here's 4 pages of rules, have at it kids." The rules themselves are longer than 4 pages, to incorporate more nuance and better formatting. 8th. Ed is the roll-out Age of Sigmar should have had, but we got dragged through the mud to give a polished product to the toxic 40K crowd.

I believe in giving credit where it's due, and GW has been doing so much right recently, I try not to be salty. However, being the "learning child" so that GW can treat 40k right is getting, well, a little old.

- Alex

I'm honestly waiting a bit to see whether or not I can form my opinion but I see this as a kind of an "arms race" in terms of improvement. Now 40k is better, now Sigmar may be better. Etc.

In my opinion Age of Sigmar wasn't the learning kid. The thing was a different parent, an abusive one, that got mid-way replaced by a more caring one. Time will tell what love do we get. And that time is the GHB II and a few improvements down the mid-term period.

[WoollyMammoth]

I don't see it like that at all. Here's the timeline that makes sense to me:

Pre-Fall 2018 - FACTS:
- WHFB 8th edition is dying. They are selling little to nothing beyond a short boost when new armies are coming out. It's been several years of decline that means for certain, WHFB is going to collapse to dust if something is not done.
- GW is engaged in many IP disputes. Over the years many companies have started to piggyback the popularity of GW game systems by making proxy models. GW makes 95% of its profits via the models, not the game system, and so they are going at these companies hard with lawsuits, but suing everybody is not a long term solution.
- Warhammer 40k has issues but has a strong player base and good sales, which can support the company taking risks to reboot fantasy.

So what does this all lead to?
- "Blowing Up" their easy to replicate IP's to start completely over, thereby negating all existing proxy companies. It also has the effect of making the entire game system "shiny and new", which can boost the entire range instead of just one army. The rules were also remade to modernize and promote growth. 

This is not some test thing to prepare for 40k; 40k was fine. This was a hail mary to get fantasy moving again. There were even rumors that they were just going to end fantasy. Luckily they tried something drastic instead. 

They took some missteps for sure - the didn't know what they were doing, and a little desperate. They tried to have some fun with it with the End Times. The first year of AoS was mostly a wash because they tried to bring it back to old-school no-points system, hoping the narrative-style gamers would carry the new system. This was a mistake, as most of the people still playing were forcing custom point systems. Finally, GW put together the GH to give the people what they want.

Since the launch of AoS there has been some very clear things - you need a more simple game system (easier to pick up) & better organized rules. They saw how people really enjoyed certain aspects of the new game rules, and they knew that, while 40k was doing well, it still needed to be updated. So they took what they learned from their fantasy risks and applied it to 40k to release 8th edition; Careful rollout, easier to pick up, more organized rules, points from day 1, etc.

I fully expect that, in turn AoS will be updated with the successes of 40k 8th in mind. There are some things that 40k is doing better than AoS for sure. It would be very odd if they ignore the successes of 8th and apply none of it to AoS updates.




 

[rokapoke]

1 minute ago, WoollyMammoth said:

The first year of AoS was mostly a wash because they tried to bring it back to old-school no-points system, hoping the narrative-style gamers would carry the new system. This was a mistake, as most of the people still playing were forcing custom point systems. Finally, GW put together the GH to give the people what they want.
 

It's funny how so many of the Warhammer Fantasy Battles veterans call that year/process a mistake. For me, as someone whose first gaming/GW experience was Age of Sigmar, it was a huge benefit. I didn't have to muster some enormous army to play games; rules as written said bring some models and have fun. Don't underestimate GW's need for new blood!

I will 100% agree that the release of the General's Handbook gave every gamer a lot of stuff, and that was likely very necessary to retain a lot of the WHFB veterans, but AoS was beginner-friendly from day 1 and I would absolutely not call it a mistake. 

[WoollyMammoth]

@rokapoke
The first year I was desperately organizing people. In the full year I found 3 people to play with. I organized a weekly game night. I came up with some house rules to create fun, balanced games.

A couple months I played with the same guy every Thursday. There were people playing Infinity and Malafaux and other stuff, we would never get a second glance. The first game night after the announcement of the GH, three guys came up to the table talking about how excited they were to get back into the hobby. Within the next couple weeks i got as many as 10 guys to show up for game night. A few months in, a local slow grow league started and 50 people signed up.

The GH allows for that easy entry still. Nothing about the GH says you have to get large armies. The box set can still be bought and played out of the box. You can still play open while you are getting into it.

Post GH the hobby is growing at about 50 times the rate. You can call that what you like.

[wayniac]

Unfortunately, that means people don't want to think for themselves and want the illusion of balance/points, which is bad because I thought GW had a good social experiment to bring back the actual essence of the hobby instead of degenerating everything to "competitive".  Instead we have the same type of "meta" and "competitive lists" and stuff that plagued fantasy for years and plagues 40k.

[daedalus81]

4 minutes ago, wayniac said:

Unfortunately, that means people don't want to think for themselves and want the illusion of balance/points, which is bad because I thought GW had a good social experiment to bring back the actual essence of the hobby instead of degenerating everything to "competitive".  

No.  Just no.

This has been beaten to death.  Conjure all the elitist anti-points arguments you want.  They're simply wrong.

[WoollyMammoth]

@Daedalus1969
Agreed. You can still "think for yourself" with the GH. I don't need points I need to be able to get a pick-up game where I know my opponent doesn't think its funny to have 8 stonehorns then just waste a couple hours watching all my stuff die. GH gets the game 1000x closer to balanced than "put down whatever" did, so you can have games where you don't know what is going to happen, which is a lot more fun. More and more I get into the hobby side more than the "competitive game" side, I don't care if I win or lose but I would at least like to have my models do fun stuff during a game. When one side is completely dominating due to a lack of balance, its not fun for me, even if its my side that is winning.

[karch]

On 2017-6-9 at 8:14 PM, rokapoke said:

It's funny how so many of the Warhammer Fantasy Battles veterans call that year/process a mistake. For me, as someone whose first gaming/GW experience was Age of Sigmar, it was a huge benefit. I didn't have to muster some enormous army to play games; rules as written said bring some models and have fun. Don't underestimate GW's need for new blood!

There doesn't need to be a correlation between game size and veteranness. 

AoS release is talked as a failed release because it antagonised a good part of the player base to the point of making entire communities disappear overnight. 

I know in the UK and other places AoS is on a level close or even higher than late 8th edition, but over here in the continent communities are still a fraction of what they once were. 

[Killax]

On 2017-6-9 at 8:07 PM, WoollyMammoth said:

I don't see it like that at all. Here's the timeline that makes sense to me:

Pre-Fall 2018 - FACTS:
- WHFB 8th edition is dying. They are selling little to nothing beyond a short boost when new armies are coming out. It's been several years of decline that means for certain, WHFB is going to collapse to dust if something is not done.
- GW is engaged in many IP disputes. Over the years many companies have started to piggyback the popularity of GW game systems by making proxy models. GW makes 95% of its profits via the models, not the game system, and so they are going at these companies hard with lawsuits, but suing everybody is not a long term solution.
- Warhammer 40k has issues but has a strong player base and good sales, which can support the company taking risks to reboot fantasy.

So what does this all lead to?
- "Blowing Up" their easy to replicate IP's to start completely over, thereby negating all existing proxy companies. It also has the effect of making the entire game system "shiny and new", which can boost the entire range instead of just one army. The rules were also remade to modernize and promote growth. This is not some test thing to prepare for 40k; 40k was fine. This was a hail mary to get fantasy moving again. There were even rumors that they were just going to end fantasy. Luckily they tried something drastic instead. 

They took some missteps for sure - the didn't know what they were doing, and a little desperate. They tried to have some fun with it with the End Times. The first year of AoS was mostly a wash because they tried to bring it back to old-school no-points system, hoping the narrative-style gamers would carry the new system. This was a mistake, as most of the people still playing were forcing custom point systems. Finally, GW put together the GH to give the people what they want.

Since the launch of AoS there has been some very clear things - you need a more simple game system (easier to pick up) & better organized rules. They saw how people really enjoyed certain aspects of the new game rules, and they knew that, while 40k was doing well, it still needed to be updated. So they took what they learned from their fantasy risks and applied it to 40k to release 8th edition; Careful rollout, easier to pick up, more organized rules, points from day 1, etc.

I fully expect that, in turn AoS will be updated with the successes of 40k 8th in mind. There are some things that 40k is doing better than AoS for sure. It would be very odd if they ignore the successes of 8th and apply none of it to AoS updates.
 

I absolutely agree with your facts, in addition I also want to add something to the IP debacle:

As we can see the head of legal that was around with all the IP issues is currently not working for GW anymore. While it's easy to blame one person, what I believe GW has realized is that they do not want to be known as the head-hunters of smaller compagnies for IP reasons anymore. It's a stigma they will have to deal with for years now because of some technical minor legal issues. Issues that didnt hurt GW at all from my perspective. (This is different from the China recasting cases). Extra bits still require you to get GW models.

What I believe to be the prime reason for GW to finally look at their rules again has to do with the external factor that the market (unlike 1999-2010) has finally catched up on what a good game can include. From Wyrd's Malifaux to PP's Warmachine, a lot of newer miniature games had distinctly better rules as what GW offered. One reason to why I believe GW didn't focus on rules too much before (which is still reflected in AoS) is because they underestimated the competition.

In more recent years GW has worked together with FFG who in my opinion are one of the best larger and still growing compagnies who do understand the importance of good rules sets. To my knowledge there are actually just a few FFG games who incorporate "bad rules". In addition both compagnies had some great advantages here. FFG's name became known in the industry because big GW was working very closely with them and GW finally (to my perspective) became aware again of how great game rules are made and how it can be a make or break point for your game.

40K basically has the recipe of what made GW great back in the 90s (before their models went up and their systems got down  ) including easy to learn Core rules with a massive faction/model depth. While the Core rules are easy to learn, there isn't some akward promotional idea behind it to say: HEY THEY FIT 6 PAGES! YOLO! but instead they have added enough depth and thought phases through enough to make it all click and sygn in logically. Because for 40K there are a few easy to learn distances that matter a lot, such as the 1" enemy model rule and 3" pile in, all the while every rule seems to have the balanced approach of adding pro's and cons.
This is what makes core rules balanced and allows GW to continue balanced design upon. One issue AoS suffers from is that it's core rules arn't balanced. There is no con to missle attacks, there are very little pro's to magic and summonning...
 

On 2017-6-9 at 10:23 PM, wayniac said:

Unfortunately, that means people don't want to think for themselves and want the illusion of balance/points, which is bad because I thought GW had a good social experiment to bring back the actual essence of the hobby instead of degenerating everything to "competitive".  Instead we have the same type of "meta" and "competitive lists" and stuff that plagued fantasy for years and plagues 40k.

While it's a partial illussion it's still better as nothing. The way AoS initially set up to be would have been awesome for an RPG or truely a campaign based game, but to date they didn't provide anything for that, meaning it's a 'typica' bread and butter miniatures army game.

To me the 40K points seem good enough, same applies for GH. A game without points at all however is something that drastically requires you to be a tight community, know each other and be able to understand each other social life aswell (as is the case with RPG's and D&D). The moment you want to be able to walk into any Warhammer store and play a game with a random person you don't know points will drastically ease your time here.

In any case, it's good that 40K didn't get flipped upside down/trashed like WFB did. To me AoS could have picked up a lot of good things from WFB aswell, like 8th edition 40K did. The way AoS has promoted it's Warscrolls is not bad, not bad at all, though a variantion in hitting, wounding and causing damage (like 8th now presents) means the tactical depth of the game goes much deeper as AoS. 

Currently AoS has a really nice way of dealing with board control due to how enemy models can't move within 3", I really like this part but it doesn't fully shine through in higher level games because the Shooting phase/Missle attacks in AoS are just not well developed as rules for a phase. Compair it to the limitations 40k brings and you can have incredibly potent shooting, because the moment you want to put a stop to that technically any model can do that.

[Darth Alec]

The 40k core rules really aren't That much more than AoS. It's spread over 12 pages, but with huge amounts of air on the pages. The AoS rules pages are packed. Most of the 40k changes are focused on shooting. Overwatch, can/can't shoot, weapon types, characters etc. Designed for a game designed to have much more shooting. Even the charge rules change is designed for this, to give melee a clear cut advantage over shooting once all the downsides of being a fighting force have been overcome.

 

AoS isn't designed for this level of shooting. That AoS has a problem with a shooty meta ATM is a balance issue, not a core rules issue. The best shooting units are simply far too effective for their points, or have much too good rules. Skyfires having both.

[Killax]

31 minutes ago, Darth Alec said:

The 40k core rules really aren't That much more than AoS. It's spread over 12 pages, but with huge amounts of air on the pages. The AoS rules pages are packed. Most of the 40k changes are focused on shooting. Overwatch, can/can't shoot, weapon types, characters etc. Designed for a game designed to have much more shooting. Even the charge rules change is designed for this, to give melee a clear cut advantage over shooting once all the downsides of being a fighting force have been overcome.

 

AoS isn't designed for this level of shooting. That AoS has a problem with a shooty meta ATM is a balance issue, not a core rules issue. The best shooting units are simply far too effective for their points, or have much too good rules. Skyfires having both.

And the fact of the matter is that AoS doesn't need that much more either. However between not having a rule and having it is a big difference. I don't agree that most rules are there for shooting, but I do think that Age of Sigmar needs more rules for shooting  

The biggest difference in melee however seems to be underrated, there is a big difference in how melee resolves, charges are a huge inpact because of how they obtain 'priority' and not moving within 1" per model as opposed to 3" is also a larger noticable difference in practice. 

Where I agree is that AoS isn't designed for this level of shooting, however where we dissagree is that a shooty meta comes from non-core rules, while balance starts with core rules most specifically. Being too effective for your points is an after effect of core rules not being developed well if you see shooting attacks thake over. Skyfires arn't the only issue here, every top 5 since GH's release has been dominated by a lethal dose of ranged attacks, be it comming from Order, Chaos or Destruction. The only thing we see is that one shooter eventually beats the other and thus becomes the next dominant trend.
Kunning Rukk for example remains amazing until you destroy the hero, this is what Skyfires do because there isn't a single rule in the Core rules that allows you to specifically protect anything. 

The competative data we can look into shows that this issue is not a unit specific issue but rather an issue revolving around Missle Attacks or the Shooting phase. Because the moment you would only alter Skyfires the Kunning Rukks and Order ranged lists happily thake over and currently are also a dominant competative factor.

This same trend applied o 40K in 6th and 7th. There where little to no reasons in the Core rules of these systems to actively engage in melee combat. The after effect of this is that Orks, Tyranids and to lesser extend Chaos had very little to do in those systems because a lot of their designs where melee combat focused. You really cant adjust costs to any propper level if Core rules prefent or severly stimulate a particular type of play. 

Cheers,

[BrAiKo]

On 6/7/2017 at 6:25 PM, Captain Marius said:

Probably worth noting that Index Chaos is gonna be superceded by Codex Death Guard in a months time, like Flesh Eater Courts did to Grand Alliance Death... 

Don't forget to prepare for Codex: Colonies of Nurgle in a years time that will include daemons and Death Guard, superceding Codex: Death Guard.  

[chord]

On ‎6‎/‎9‎/‎2017 at 2:14 PM, rokapoke said:

It's funny how so many of the Warhammer Fantasy Battles veterans call that year/process a mistake. For me, as someone whose first gaming/GW experience was Age of Sigmar, it was a huge benefit. I didn't have to muster some enormous army to play games; rules as written said bring some models and have fun. Don't underestimate GW's need for new blood!

I will 100% agree that the release of the General's Handbook gave every gamer a lot of stuff, and that was likely very necessary to retain a lot of the WHFB veterans, but AoS was beginner-friendly from day 1 and I would absolutely not call it a mistake. 

Agreed I started in April 2016, and never had seen Warhammer before.  AOS drew me in for simple rules, no points, etc.  I have no desire to turn AOS into 40K or anything else. I want a simple game.  Sadly the new blood in AOS (in my area) seem to be the die hard points people.

[Nin Win]

The designers of 40k have talked a bit about their timeline and it looks like 8th edition 40k had its design work start before the GHB came out for AoS.  Using the same base system as AoS for 8th edition 40k was the plan all along,  There is simply too much work to be done to wait and see how AoS does during the year after GHB and then decide.

If there is to be an AoS2 in two years or so, they are working on it right now.  It's entirely possible though that the annual GHB will mean each edition will have a longer life cycle.  It's also possible that AoS2 will see the end of free war scrolls as the game will be established and the player base can be expected to either pay for an app subscription or buy a grand alliance book or something.

I hope they don't do this as I know myself and many others have made purchases after viewing free warscrolls.  I simply would not have a growing Seraphon warband had the warscrolls not been free.

[RuneBrush]

Although GW has done a lot of things recently to change the way they work, I think they'll always have different "tiers" of game, so they want something that's entry, intermediate and advanced.  Broadly speaking:

I think AoS is currently considered their entry level game - high fantasy, easy and relatively cheap to get into but allowing you to go more advanced.

40k is their intermediate game - more complicated than AoS (but with common elements), slightly more expensive and complicated to build an army.

Horus Heresy has been considered their more advanced game for a while with it's pretty high entry cost and very fixed way of building particular armies (there's not a huge amount of flexibility to "invent" your own things - verging on a historical game).

At least that's my interpretation!  I can see us getting an AoS2 at some point (mostly refinements), but currently can't imagine GW making the game massively more complicated or inaccessible.  I do think 40k has a better gap between Open, Narrative & Matched plays, so it wouldn't surprise me to see something in GHb2 or 3 bring that over to AoS too, so friendlies down the club are played Narrative, but the tournament scene is Matched.