Overread

Try viewing it on 360. viewed side on the model isn't actually going "down" its going forward. It's only in the photo that you've posted there where that angle of camera and model makes it appear as if its going down .

@PaniuBraniu good find and yes that shows off the "odd poses" very nicely. There's a few poses in there which show what we'd generally accept as a running pose; yet there are a couple (bottom left) that look "odd" even though they are perfectly natural and normal parts of the horses gait when moving. Which is another aspect many don't realise which is that different breeds will run with a different posture (gait); plus its even possible to train different gaits into a horse. Much like a person can walk differently to another.

If you freeze the frame on action then there are a lot of very odd looking positions that happen in very fluid motion. We don't tend to see them but you can see them with a camera. It's why some authentic sculpts of a high action moment can appear strange because its not a moment we can normally visualise nor see without the camera allowing us to freeze action at that very moment. You get the same range of oddities if you watch a TV show and pause as people are talking. The range of odd faces they go trough is really quite amazing and odd looking. Sometimes "good actors" appear more "normal" because they are posing each and every word, whilst someone talking more naturally is more relaxed and less focused and thus slips in all the oddities. It's why newspapers who want to bad-mouth a person can just take a whole range of shots and then pick out the mood they want to promote. For a horse a good example I know of is if they are jumping. If you take a photo when their hind legs are still connected with the ground whilst the front half is jumping they actually look more like they are leaning on an invisible bar rather than leaping over. A splitsecond later as the legs at the back leave the ground you get that sense of motion and power back.

My gut is that blundgeons are better, however whilst I've not yet got the kit I believe that the arm options should be pretty easy to magnetize. The arm area itself is pretty chunky so as long as its a nice fitting segment it should be easy and practical to fit magnets for both options.

If you compare Tyranids, which have a lot of build options, they use a ball and socket arrangement for the arms and other key parts. Visually on Tyranids this works as they are spacebugdinosaurmonster things. You can even look at real world bugs and see the very same exposed ball and socket joints on display so it fits with them. However for many other races it doesn't and it can be hard to disguise the ball and socket (the standard of multi-pose models) whilst at the same time achieving a higher level of sculpt quality. Heck in the wargame world very few companies actually use multi-pose models and the vast majority are mono-pose. Even companies like Reaper and Privateer Press or Infinity are all using monopose (often no option) builds. Also I've found that with multi-pose you often end up with functional limits. Core body and legs are often still fixed if varied in a few stances. Articulated legs can work, but often only on bigger or robotic kits (like the new Warlord Titan) where, again, the joints don't look out of place. Furthermore articulated legs on small models are often more hassle than they are worth for many and increase build complexity and increase chances of errors. As a result the core body already has a fixed pose and arms are often then only given a limited range of viable positions to be in. Personally I think that provided GW keeps up with some alternative parts and also keeps up with releasing more generic style monopose we'll be fine. The Warcry warbands, for all their great sculpting, fall down in this one area as they do have a good few "I'm a hero being heroic" posed models in each band which can look a bit odd when posed together in a larger group. However thoes bands were clearly made to be warbands first. The new Chaos warriors and knights we've seen don't have that same issue - they are more "generic" monopose styles and should sit well near each other.

In the Old World they had cannon and hellcannon and siege equipment. Whilst most cannon would come from a dwarvish source, the forces of chaos were equally open to corruption of captured cannon from the Empire and other forces. Meanwhile the scale of battle would also influence what weapons of war they would bring. In a full on siege of a major settlement they'd be bringing larger cannon, probably trebuchets and siege towers. All corrupted and twisted of course. Indeed the hellcanon is very chaos in that its partly alive much like the warp engine machines of the 40K game and the weapons of war like the Khorne Skull Cannon. Heck if you read Manslayer there's a fantastic scene in there near the end which really brings this whole line of thinking home (I won't spoil it)

Updated after the weekend and the new Slaves to Darkness confirmation and the release of Ossiarchs. I've also put the date - 14th December - up for the Slaves Tome as the major leak that happened earlier in the month basically has been confirmed as true.

Really impressive and must feel great to get a huge bunch of terrain like that build and painted up and ready to go! I've also managed to totally scupper my plans for "owning less boxes of unbuilt stuff". See I figured if I sold a load of boxes then I'd own less unbuilt stuff. Makes sense right. Of course it doesn't help when you sell stuff and then replace it with MORE boxes of unbuilt stuff. Right now I've got: 1 Arch-Kavalos Zandtos 1 Soulmason 2 Vokmortian (will either sell the spare or sacrifice him to painting experimentation) 1 Boneshaper 1 Soulreaper 40 Mortek Guard (I'll probably go for 2 units of 20 with swords) 3 Stalkers 3 Guard 10 Deathriders (probably spears) 8 Morghast (no idea yet, though in theory I could make one unit of 2 of each configuration) 2 Gothizzar Harvester 1 Mortek Crawler 3 Endless Spells 1 Bonetithe Nexus And a new hope that I can finish all of them barring the crawler before Christmas (since the Crawler is going to be one of those things that will have to be painted in stages)

Also note that I'm still of the opinion that GW doesn't mean you to put the double blade on the Hekatos. Much like you don't give leaders in other units banners and trumpet upgrades. However it something that I hope the FAQ as rules as written the Hekatos can take the double handed sword; rules as interpreted based on GW's general patterns of behaviour in other battletomes it can't take it.

But what will your mighty deathriders have for heads?

Old World fantasy (rank and file) worked with very little terrain spaced out so that you could wheel and turn the rank and file blocks. Dense terrain just didn't really work as well. AoS IS like 40K and it has free moving models. As a result denser terrain becomes far more important in blocking line of sight; in breaking up units so that they can't just charge 40 models forward and all engage at once etc... If you fail to use terrain (and lets be fair to GW they are really encouraging you to use terrain even if a lot of GW's terrain isn't the best for line of sight blocking at times) then you are setting the game up to make it easier for big infantry blocks to work and for ranged models and armies to have a much easier time of shooting. The trebuchet is powerful, but at the same time it doesn't have indirect fire. It has to "see" its target which means it in turn in vulnerable. You can't hide it in a corner behind a big wall and just let it lob out shots.

Pushfit won't stop people getting 3 or 4 or more. It's likely more to lower costs and complexity of the kit and make it more accessible to new players (which is a BIG thing for GW - they want and need new blood - esp in these difficult time when the digital market has dominated the toy and hobby sector for teens) GW knows full well their core of fans will certainly get several of these kits.

It's normal and because people weight their arguments and interpret the stats in different ways which can lead to different results. That's before they hit their local games (if they do) with the army since local game situations vary a lot. A few easy early wins and the army is overpowered; a few early easy loses and its a lost cause. The result is you get some who are dead set that something new is totally broken, whilst an equally informed group is convinced that its underpowered. In general I wouldn't pay too much mind to either group to much - get your models; build; paint; game and enjoy and see how things are in a couple of weeks/months.

This is one of those "yes you can" situations where I have a bit of a feeling that its not what GW intends and it could be Errata/FAQ corrected. In all their displays of the army and in all their chatter the greatblade unit is always different to the Hekatos. The Hekatos, Banner holder and greatblade holder are all displayed as 3 individual choices within the force, never doubling up on either. So I'd approach this one with a bit of caution since its very likely GW will rule in the future that they have to be a different model. At the same time GW could rule the other way and say that its very much intended to be the case. Either way I would recommend emailing GW with this question. The more people that email them this question (individual people not you spamming their inbox with 30 messages) the more chance there is that GW will address it in the FAQ that will likely be released in about 2 weeks time.

I could potentially see the catapults get their damage per hit reduced. Their number of attacks and accuracy isn't much of an issue, though the amount of damage per hit could be reduced by 1 at the higher levels when its undamaged. That could just mitigate them being very swingy in the early phases of the game without harming their latter game performance. As for the complaining about complaining about complaining if we get too far down that rabbit hole we'll go mad as a march hare at a tea party

@Izikail Don't forget the army is super new and most people won't even be able to field anything that isn't in Feast of Bones for a few weeks. So chances are people are just wanting to play around and put more toys on the table rather than the battalions. Plus I suspect some are just wishlisting more than writing out powerful lists so its more model focused. One bonus is that whilst the models are expensive the battalions are cheaper, so they aren't as much of a points sink.

Honestly the current knights are not a bad looking kit. The only thing that they sort of lack in is the dynamic of their pose, otherwise they are very nice looking models. The Chaos Warriors are dated and look it, but at the same time paint them the same scheme and mix them with the new ones and you'll have them fitting in. Plus go check the points - warriors and knights are expensive to deploy. One or two start collecting sets would likely have most of the bulk done - esp if your'e adding in the new big beasts, warbands and perhaps a few demons too.

Honestly I think if GW wanted to squat the cities range they would have done so now. The move to 2.0 is pretty much the last big bastion of GW being able to squat whole armies and at least have the community disilke it but not hate them for it totally. It's cleaning the slate of the game for a final time after the utter mess that was AoS at launch (in terms of supporting actual whole armies and such). Of course High Elf players are mostly getting the same nasty treatment that Tombkings and Bretonnia had; however at the very least I've heard from a good few who are repainting their models and using them as counts-as for other parts of the Cities Alliance. So there is at least some hope to recycle models. There's also some who think that the wide range of models removed from the HE might mean that some concepts make a return with the "new light aelf" army that GW has had in the lore teasing us for quite a while now. I think that moving forward Cities will still lose models, but on the one or two approach and always alongside model releases. Furthermore many of the "losses" will be replacements; seeing new concepts and designs come through. Indeed a big update wave could make some quite striking changes to the designs of some of the Cities models. I can also get behind the idea that Cities could act a bit like Legions of Nagash, but my gut feeling is that Order is already pretty fully and GW has a lot on their plate before fleshing out the Cities armies into fully fledged factions. However we might see nice themed releases through games like Underworlds - where GW can create themed and niche warbands without having to make a whole army. Darkoath and Kurnothi warbands are prime examples of warband concepts that are not full armies; but which attach into major armies. Letting GW explore and tease themes.

So far GW has really done well with resculpts. The new fiends and keeper (though arguably that was more a new sculpt as it was many times the size) for Slaanesh build on the original models and are outstanding replacements. The new Chaos are much the same. Taking the same concepts and expanding on them with the new poses possible now that its not rank and file and also with new technologies and sculpting methods that GW has. Also lets not forget Chaos was always going to get a big fanfare of fans because, well, they've had 30 years of fanbase growth. Bonereapers have only a few months (hardly even that and technically only 1 day of actual "models in peoples hands"). I'm overjoyed to see the new Chaos - that still hasn't stopped me putting several hundred into Reapers. Nice thing about Reapers is that with most models being 200 points or there abouts they are actually quite affordable to collect (compared to some other armies).

Seraphon, Khadoran Overlords and Tzeentch are all that remain. I'm very sure we'll see new Tomes for them early next year. That would fit with the record pace that GW has maintained this year (even after the sylvaneth delay)

I would guess the new boxed set with a big lord like that coupled to generally larger models might hit the £60 from GW price which is the upper limit they've got right now for Start Collecting sets.

I would guess the current Warscrolls are the ones you'll get in the Tome. What's likely to be expanded upon are allegiance abilities. The "Cultist" keyword might be a replacement for "Marks of Chaos" which would make sense; cuts down a lot of repetitive content on warscrolls and puts it neatly in the Battletome once. Otherwise I wouldn't expect any Warscroll changes for them.

Only thing that surprises me is the new chaos knights. I didn't think the old ones were that bad, but the new ones look really really good. I know know what I want for christmas - plus the new cat montser will look so good in a slaanesh army (I don't care if its statistically good)

Also the video confirms the new getting started set is all 3 of the new chaos models - lord, knights and warriors.