Overread

GW has said nothing, in fact Gutbusters was the last of the AoS reveals (that I can recall) for the year that GW has shown off. Not forgetting that we've still more Bonereaper stuff to come. There is rumour that there is or was one more tome after Gutbusters for the year, but that's only been casual rumour. It also came with the fact that the Sylvaneth delay earlier in the year might well have pushed the tome after Gutbusters into 2020. That said even if there's no more tomes there's only 4 more to update going into 2020. So by April/May we could be fully done! Esp as both 40K and AoS no longer have any full army rumours or hints for the first part of 2020. After Sisters and Ossiarchs I'd expect a bit of a break from big army releases. That said AoS still has the dark and light aelf rumours to contend with. Thereafter I'd expect to see potential developed in Death and Destruction. Death still has Vampires who look good for an overhaul and update; whilst Destruction might get something new - who knows. Suffice it to say that even without light and dark aevles Order is very nicely full and with each of the gods doing their own armies Chaos is very full as well.

But all those are 2.0 battletomes. They don't need new Tomes at this stage. I'm not saying that one or two smaller armies might not get a 2.5 update with a second wave of models. But releasing things like Endless Spells or Terrain doesn't need a whole new Tome to achieve.

Esp if you use any store that isn't the UK store. Overseas stuff gets restocked in waves with shipments. So its likely things fall out of stock for a while before a new shipment comes to replenish them. Right now there's nothing in the UK store that you can't buy. One early indication is when the battletome gets removed. The Mawtribes tome vanished about a week or so before the preview this weekend Note that right now everything for KO is on sale on the UK GW store. As for armies without 2.0 Tomes theres; KO, Seraphon, Everchosen/Slaves to Darkness and Tzeentch. So three updates and one brand new (Everchosen and Slaves are linked on the GW storepage and for a long while we've assumed they'll be put toegther - which makes sense as Everchosen only has a small library of very expensive models to its name). Don't forget Slaves has also had model updates through Warcry.

I'd wager the next preview event should just be cleaning up releases till the end of the year. I'd not expect 2020 snippets until closer to Christmas. GW wants us spending hobby monies now not sitting on them. I'm hopeful to see a second wave of cards and model rules for Warcry to get the rest of the armies playing; the order manifest also showed at least two additional new terrain kits so that likely speaks of at least one more warcry terrain pack. There's also necromunda floating around and hints that there might be a new boxed set for it; or at least confirmation of whatever it was hinted at the Nova. Reapers look to be getting a two, three or even longer drawn out release so it might be a long while that they dominate the releases for AoS.

Yeah the names thing is a about GW being the only ones able to sell and market Ossiarch Bonereaper models. Anyone can make their own copy-cat sculpts, they just can't call them the same thing. This basically affects googling and searching in the biggest way. If anyone could sell under the names then GW loses out; but if GW are the only ones then all the google hits (or at least the first page) will be GW store, community and news articles - all ripe for directing people to GW products. They can't stop 3rd parties, just hamper their google search result rankings under specific names. Rest assured if Raging Heroes wants to make female Ossiarchs with well developed chests, they can!

GW updated the product page for the preview with the reaper spells now. There's a clearer larger photo up which shows that the bird is a bone construct. It's also reaping souls off the dead fallen on the battlefield.

Ossiarchs: 36 morghasts 30 stalkers 30 troops 25 leader total £120 Though Ogors do come closer to £85. Plus there's the cardstock which is at least £10 in there. Granted those are "worst case" prices on all of them, but they are in line with roughly what GW charges for those kinds of model from other forces. Heck DoK are still playing £35 for basic 10 witch troop sets. So might not be 50% but not 30% either- somewhere between the two. Either way its still a significant saving on the price.

Don't forget GW don't put anything in the book that isn't in a model on sale very soon after the book is placed on sale. This is mostly to try and stop 3rd parties stealing the market. In the past GW had models in books for YEARS that never came out. Tyrainds had several special character variations for their models and several units (such as shrieks - warriors with wings) that never got official models. Cities and Orruks are odd in that they didn't get any new plastic stock from overseas, but I think that considering they came hot after Sylvaneth it might have been tangled up with that overseas ordering. Ergo something went messy around then and caused a delay which might have caused a pause on GW ordering that material. So they wound up with a minimal order as opposed to a big one. They are an abnormality, but I'm sure we can expect GW to resolve it for them and we'll see new stuff come out. i'd be surprised if GW was going to rock the boat further and remove 2.0 armies in short order from the game in the future. It would be heavily counter productive for them to do so. Asides both factions are very well established in lore and the games overall structure. It would be quite a big shock for them to remove either the only human army or the only orruk army from the game. Though I fully expect to see revamped models for both likely changing the asthetic designs.

When you work out the price of contents of the box at the likely prices GW will set for the models based on the current prices they charge for things then £120 is still giving you around 50% off the GW retail price for the products; which is a very good deal. The sting of the price is more present if you only want one half of the box and can't find someone to split it with. It's a balancing act between making the box full of more models and the price of the box itself.

Those Endless Spells are freaking awesome! The whispysnake body skeleton summoning looks really awesome and the large (likely carrion) bird is great! Really love them. Also GW's painting style with them seems far better! Also on the carrion bird front one of the optional parts for the Harvester has one of its smaller arms on its body fighting holding a bone with a raven trying to make off with it.

There's always some artistic licence though. Look at the Reapers and the mounted creature has a slightly different look - more body and chunky/thick.

Dont' forget Gutbusters never had a Battletome - so their army was never really even worked on early. So their stats are REALLY old in AoS and very out of date. Much like Slaves to Darkness their stats are very poor compared to other armies. The 2.0 Battletomes are a big update so you can expect many things to change. Some units might get stronger, gain new abilities; you might lose some too. However you'll also get army wide abilities that can make a serious different to model performance. So I wouldn't weight things too much on how the army is now, wait and see. There's two weeks until sale and that means two weeks of preview articles that will spoil and show off some details. Plus the embargo on preview copies tends to expire when the tomes go on preorder so you'll get to see some more details from non-gw sources then. Overall pretty much every army has done well with a 2.0 battletome. Some have done better than others, but there's no outright utterly trash 2.0 battletomes.

Updated with the Feast of Bones release information. Also updated the battletome count. Including FW armies there's now 20 2.0 Battletomes and only 4 old tomes and 1 army without a tomb. Accepting that Everchosen (old) and Slaves to Darkness (never) get combined that only means 4 more battletomes for AoS to move fully to 2.0 for existing armies.

From the product photo in the pre-order preview That is the core warscroll card set so counterstrike is core rules!

Ogre is correct spelling - Ogor gets spellchecked so some of it might just be auto spellechecks.

Don't get too dissapointed. Remember there's two variations of morghasts AND the leader (far as we know) for Reapers is unique so one box would get you started pretty well with a nice core. I'm more surprised that GW didn't do any Ogor marketing before this, a bit of a slap for any ogor players who have now got to panic budget.

Getting in early - anyone in the UK who is getting Feast of bones want to swap their bonereapers for my ogors? I'll have a full set of the ogors and I've no interest in keeping them so I'd be happy to swap them over for the reaper content

That was unexpected! Soooo Reapers - really surprising that they are launching with a duel box instead of regular model boxes. It's also doubly surprising that they put a character in the boxed set not a generic leader, which somewhat devalues buying two or three sets; then again there's likely resale value on those who wait. Twin arm, regular warriors and morghasts - a nice big chunk of models! Terrain and the dice and tome. I wonder if there isn't more, its a surprisingly smaller amount of new Reaper stuff than I'd expected; then again Ogors are buffing up the overall amount of stuff with their own terrain and suchlike. An interesting release and makes me think Reapers could even be a three week affair or something GW draws out over a month or two.

They have previewed whole army releases on their own post at times on the GW community site before now. I mean I can't imagine that Reapers have slipped the October slot without GW saying something --

Another option is to cap depravity per turn so that you can only generate X amount per turn and thus 6X per typical game. That plus allowing all units to generate would mean that there'd be less pressure to only take leaders - which brings fiends and other army build options right back into the game. Meanwhile putting a limiter cap means that allied units can also join the army without eating into depravity generation because there's a limit. It also means that armies with multiple wounds and armies with only one wound models shouldn't lead to the big swings that we currently see with generation per turn. I think that would produce an army which can generate and summon units, but which isn't broken; provides a smoother more even curve of summoning potential across varied games against varied opponents and which isn't reliant upon its leaders both as purchased models and as summoned models.

Worth knowing there's a great and suitably dark Daughters of Khaine story in the recent Inferno 4 book! It really plays up not just the survival of the strong, but also a lot of the shadowy elements of the army!

That would require magical energy. Small scale it would be fine, large scale like Nagash wants for the Reapers and it might prove problematic to sustain. Also don't forget such magics would require whole skeletons to work properly; whilst the tithe can be any old bit of bone even lost limbs. In addition it might have something do with how Nagash is blending bones and souls; necromantic energies might bind specific bones closer to their former souls more so than Nagash desires. That village idiot's body can be rendered down and made into a new warrior with warriors's souls within it. You don't really want echos and hints of the old village idiot's soul sticking around.

We don't know how they work yet, we only know they aren't a swarming army like Skaven and that they were made as Nagash's elite to counter stormcast. From the display we've seen they likely have similar numbers of models on the table; however whilst they might not have the size of stormcast they might well make up for it with resurrection mechanics and the like. As for the lore what I really like is that whilst they are bound to Nagash's great plan, they are not slaves totally. They appear to have form, function and un-life beyond him. Which really sets them up well. Like the rest of Death they are only Slaves to Nagash's power, not to his existence.

As a Slaanesh fan I'd like to see it toned down not just because of how it can unfairly bias battles in favour of a summoning army; but also because (esp in teh case of Slaanesh) it can actually harm a summoning armies internal balance and options to put on the table. Slaanesh is the worst offender by far, but it neatly shows some of the worst aspects: 1) It creates summons based on opponent statistics. This means a skaven force can generate less depravity than a stormcast even though both armies have equal points. This creates a very swingy system that isn't balanced within battles. There's no real reason that a multi-wound opponent should have a harder time and generate more models for the slaanesh player than a single wound army. 2) It places pressure on the Slaanesh player to build one type of army list - a one trick pony. This can even end up focusing on very specific models. For Slaanesh right now anything that isn't 3 or 4 keepers in a list is working weaker than optimum and if you're not building around depravity generation (and summoning more leaders etc...) then the army is again working weaker. This creates a situation where army variety is seriously harmed by the summoning mechanic itself. Granted you get to have more reason to use those glorious keepers; but far less to use seekers, chariots, troops, fiends etc.... 3) It can generate large amounts which can result in a very unfair bias in points; even if the summoning is part backed into the base point costs (again that reinforces point 2 ); you're again giving a non-summoning opponent a much harder time.

Ossiarchs are set for October ordering and the 26th is the last Saturday of the Month. That and GW has done a preview today as well as two monday articles this month. Basically they will almost for certain appear on pre-order preview tomorrow and on the 26th for preorder (hopefully with some prices appearing around midweek to Thursday from 3rd party retailers)