Skabnoze

My guess is that they will do something similar for the Aleguzzler as with the new Mega-Gargants in that they will either create variant warscrolls based on the options within the kit or they just will give the Aleguzzler different weapon options (they could swap out the club weapon). The current model has 4 different primary weapons - which are 3 different types of club and also a chain with a chunk of masonry on the end. There is also a weapon for the off-hand. It would not surprise me if they took a similar approach to what they have done in the past and made different warscrolls out of some build variants from this kit.

I like good models - regardless of who is making them. I find it somewhat amusing that the big monsters forgeworld makes are not really priced higher than current big monster plastic kits. I buy forgeworld when I like the models. I like the Colossal Squig, Squig Gobba, Rogue Idol, and Troggoth Hag - I think those are great models. I would have bought some of the other monsters they had, such as the Basilisk and Dreadmaw, but they never gave a compelling reason to use them in game and there is already a plethora of cool models out there to buy. I like the rules for the Bonegrinder, and I like the idea of a giant that damned big, but I will also agree that I just don't like the model. I keep trying to find a bright-side in that model that I could use to convert it into something I like and I just can't come up with anything. I dislike most of the details and the pose of the Bonegrinder. But there are other companies that make big giant models - so I will probably just convert up one or more Bonegrinders from an alternate source (assuming that the updated rules are interesting).

I don't quite agree. First, the 3 variants they showed I think do an excellent job of displaying how diverse this kit is. It took me a couple minutes of examining the pictures of these things to realize they all came out of the same kit. The basic leg and arm positions are shared, but they did a good job here with the various hand/weapon positions and different head positions that it really transforms the models. If you put all 3 of those guys next to each other I don't think you have an issue with everything blending for the viewer. And that assumes that we have seen all of the parts in the kit, and all of the various ways you can combine them. I expect there is probably a number of other details that we have not seen yet. There might be another head in the kit (maybe a helmet), more alternate clubs, other variants of the free hand, and lots of decorative bits. Just look at how much variety is within the Aleguzzler kit (and it only has 2 sprues). And from there we can talk about conversions. This kit is obviously going to work extremely well for modelers. It has a ton of bits and a good standard pose that can be changed in pretty subtle but drastic ways through how the hands and head are added. I'm sure it would not be too tough to do more drastic reposes as well. And just look at what people have done with the Aleguzzler over the years. What I am curious about is what the average army composition is meant to be in regards to these new mega-gargants vs the old aleguzzler gargant models.

I'm not calling you out specifically @KingBrodd, rather just addressing this type of comment as I have seen it a few times. I personally don't care if someone else can play with some of the same toys as I can. If some of the units from Sons of Behemat are available for use as mercenaries in any army then I just hope that GW spends a bit of effort making mercenary giants a compelling addition to other armies but that they remain an interesting and compelling choice but not the universally best choice. So far they have on the whole done a pretty good job of managing the game that way. It's not perfect but it is pretty good and easily in a much better state than 40k. But again, I don't care if some of the toys in an army I like can be used by other people. All I really care about in regards to Sons of Behemat is that their specific allegiance has fun and interesting rules. As long as I can have fun playing with these things then I don't care if other people have a reason to buy and play with a big giant. In fact, the more giants running around the table the better. Honestly, I really enjoy modeling and if some of the Gargants in this army work well in other armies then I will probably just end up with a number of fun conversion projects as I convert models to fit into other armies. I already had plans to convert a giant specifically for my Gloomspite as a gargant that had become infected by some type of shroom and was now some weird shroom-zombie giant. Think of a big huge clicker from the Last of Us with weird fungus and shrooms growing out of it's head and erupting from it's body. I might be interested in converting another one up for my Bonesplitterz depending on how the rules compare to the Rogue Idol (hard to compete with that guy in Bonesplitterz) or even for Ironjawz. Imagine a huge gargant that painted its skin mostly green, is wearing a big wooden mask (think Rogue Idol), and is covered in bones - that sounds like it would look great in a bonesplitterz force. Or imagine a gargant with a big metal/bone helmet and that is covered in a bunch of scavenged armor pieces (think like Phil Kelly's Mawkrusha) - that could look great in an Ironjawz force. I would even consider using one in a NightHaunt force as that army really feels like it is missing a big heavy-hitter. That could be a really cool conversion as well. It is worth pointing out that in 40k Knights being big killy models was not the reason their inclusion was problematic for the game. The issue once again boiled down to 40k's really awful army-construction rules. That was the reason you saw armies composed of a few knights, some choice buff pieces, a bunch of cheap goons to hold objectives, and then individual good units such as Blood Angels Smash Captains (hero with thunder-hammer and jump pack). 40k has a 100% different army construction focus than Age of Sigmar. The main difference comes from allegiance abilities. 40k restricts allegiance abilities to a detachment where all units come from the same codex. It then allows you to mix up multiple detachments as you see fit. The detachments are meant to be the restrictions framework that you play within to construct your army - however they designed so many detachment types that you can effectively do whatever it is that you want. And so then within this system you can stack multiple allegiance abilities. 40k then pulled most of the really potent abilities into command abilities, but then the game gives you command points based on how you compose your army and it does not restrict those points to be used by the units that generated them. So you stuff cheap detachments (ie: imperial guard, ork grots, chaos cultists, etc) into your army to bank up command points that you feed to the knights. None of those things are possible in Age of Sigmar. This game takes the complete opposite approach and funnels players into the most restricted builds to get access to Allegiance abilities. That is not to say that they could not write broken rules and make something bad. But I think it will be much harder for GW to invent a unit that has as big a negative impact as Knights did on 40k. Honestly, if GW did something like force people to select just ONE 40k detachment as primary and then that detachment is the only one that got access to allegiance abilities & also restricted command points use to the detachments they were generated from then knights become fairly normal. Honestly, I am expecting that the "everyone can take a gargant" rules turn out to be a bit of a dud with the broader community. The mercenary rules overall have not made a huge splash. There are a few armies and builds where mercenaries are a good choice, but choices from your army are still often better. That is the ideal place to be in and I expect that is where Sons of Behemat will end up as well. This game is just not set up for a single model to make that strong of an impact on an army outside of allegiances unless there are some crazy rules involved. The only way I can see giants making an outsized impact with other armies is either if there is some rule that lets them gain allegiance keywords with the armies they join and then get access to weird buffs - or if they have some weird potent new abilities on their warscroll that cannot be accessed any other way.

It would mean that the Gloomspite version would be stuck with Drunken Stagger. Since Night Goblins (now Moonclan) are my favorite army of all-time in any game I would be quite happy if the Aleguzzler Gloomspite Gargant was improved in any way. But honestly, I am holding the expectation that it won't be changed until they rewrite the Gloomspite book a couple years down the road.

With all the talk about the Gloomspite Aleguzzler I think it is worth pointing out that there is no reason at all that they have to change the Gloomspite warscroll or share any keywords with units from Sons of Behemat. They can easily use the Aleguzzler kit for a Sons of Behemat unit and simply rename it and give it a new warscroll. They have already effectively done that with the Chaos Gargant in Beasts of Chaos that uses this same model. My guess is that if they do reuse the Aleguzzler model that they will simply give it a new warscroll for this army.

That does not seem very fitting for a spell to me. I suspect that if they have standard human models as part of these kits that they will probably mainly be adornments. So things like people tied up and hanging from a belt, stuck into pouches, in crows cages hanging from their belt, running away (ie: Johan), or stepped on and flattened (like the old flat grot). I certainly hope this army does not include "little people" unless they are allies.

I caught this as well when I read that article this morning. The initial basis for the Age of Sigmar universe is so heavily based on Norse mythology that it would not surprise me at all if GW borrowed a bit more for Gargants. GW often fuses a lot of sources together. What they have shown so far is very much the fairy-tale giants of the "fee fi fo fum" variety - and I absolutely love that. But there is no reason that they could not pull other influences together for this army. The whole Age of Sigmar universe has borrowed extremely heavily from various mythologies so it would not at all be out of the norm. I hope they do mix some influences together for this army. The results could be quite interesting.

I do as well. Although I like the existing rules for the Bonegrinder and I am happy to use that warscroll I have simply never liked the current forgeworld Bonegrinder model. I wasn’t too exited for the previous forgeworld one either - but i did like that more. I mainly find the pose extremely boring and dull. For a model that large it could also use some extra details. I hope GW makes a plastic one mainly because I know what sorts of stuff they can now make from plastic and I think it would be a pretty amazing model. If they don’t remake the Forgeworld kit then I will likely use a 3rd party stand-in such as Mucklegeet the Heresy Giant (who I am now buying anyways). And on the topic of 3rd party giant models - when I get a chance I’ll make a post that links a number of them that I am aware of. I figure a few others of you might be interested in fun giant models.

If there was an army of insect shadow elves then I would probably like elves a lot more. That sounds like the best possible elf army ever.

And then if you kill them all of the objectives fall out.

My suspicion, which is based on little other then pure guessing, is that the core troops (and smallest model) will be the current Aleguzzler kit or a possible rework of that kit. Those models are on 90mm ovals - which is the same size as Ironjawz Goregruntas. That seems a perfect “small” size for units of Gargants. If they refresh that kit then I would not be surprised to see them end up on 60mm round bases instead. I expect from there we will see 2 more tiers of larger gargants. A massive centerpiece kit for a Bonegrinder or something similar with an option for a hero. And then a kit in between the current Aleguzzler and the massive one which makes 1-2 types of gargant unit and then a number of hero options. They might make more kits or do something really wacky - but the above is my guess.

Nothing is impossible. But they don't seem as concerned with making sure everyone has Endless spells and a terrain kit as they initially were. And if there was any army who has magic that fits the idea of making endless spell models it would be Orcs. Orc magic has always been based mainly on physical manifestations if you read the spells going back to 4th/5th edition. Their spells are always a big green hands that pick friendly units up, green fists that pummel the enemy, big green feet that stomp on the enemy, big bolts of green energy that shoot out of a wizards eyes or are vomited out. Those armies also would have easily lended themselves to terrain in the form of totems. My point is that GW decided not to make those things for that army, and for some other armies as well, so they might not make them for this army. We might see them, or we might not.

We have no idea that this is a 5 model army or simply an army of bigger models. The current Aleguzzler is only 160 points. What if they stay the same point value and become something more like Dankhold Troggoths - which is a big model you can take in units of 3 if you want? The only inherent problems to singular models in standard matched-play AoS is that they count as one model for holding objectives and most scenarios use objectives for victory conditions. Stonehorns are good as an all monster army because they explicitly have a rule that solves this issue. I am almost positive we can expect an army of ALL big monsters to have a similar rule of some sort (if not the same rule). Comparing an army of all big things in AoS to one in 40k is not an overly good comparison because the games are fundamentally different in a number of ways. What makes all Knights good, or poor, in 40k is not necessarily the same as what would make all big monsters good or bad in AoS.

Decide how you want to play, what things you enjoy, and then strive to find people who are like-minded. If that is difficult to do and does not get you as many games as you would like then decide how much you are willing to compromise in order to play a game. Then talk to your opponents and see if they are willing to compromise a bit and you can usually get a game that both of you should enjoy. Just talk to your opponents before a game. The problem in the US is that playing miniature games, especially GW, has slowly moved to this sort of nationally shared "out of the box" game and people don't often discuss the parameters of the game they are playing very much aside from how many points it is. We have gradually eroded the idea of two people spending time together who have a simple discussion to make sure they are aligned on how to spend that time. I have rarely met people who are not willing to adjust how we play a game so that both people have a good time if you are willing to speak to them about it. The few people who I have found that are unwilling to do that I find are often not very fun to play against in general and I don't mind skipping that game.

This does not feel like an army that needs Endless spells - and it might be a reach to make them fit to be honest. If they skipped the opportunity to make endless spells for Ironjawz & Bonesplitterz then I am not sure they will make them for giants.

Fair enough, I could see it being stone. I expect the shape is misleading because I think they cropped the photo somewhat. As for the article itself, I don't quite see where it directly references anything. Are you referring to this comment: ?

I'm not quite sure. You can see the paint-strokes on that and so I don't think the torso is any larger than a standard human. But it could be a torso hanging from a gargant's belt as a snack for later. Or this might not be a torso and could be a bag or cloth that has those bones tied to it. Hard to tell in this image.

We really need better terminology around the army construction rules. If we are calling things like Daughters of Khaine Temples, Seraphon Constellations, Stormcast Eternal Stormhosts, etc as "subfactions" then Cities is a book that does not have any of those - same as Gloomspite, Slaves to Darkness, or Nighthaunt. What cities has is a 2-tiered allegiance system - which is the same for Slaves to Darkness and Seraphon. They have a base allegiance shared across the whole battletome, but then they force you to select a sub-allegiance. It does not at all help that GW does not have a generic term for these things and they keep changing what they are called from book to book. Seraphon is currently the only army book that has both a two-tiered allegiance and also a set of "tribes/chapters/subfactions/temple/whatever".

I will agree with you and disagree. I really like that for Seraphon GW created 4 basic battalions but then turned it into 8 battalions by making 2 versions of each one and tying them directly to the sub-allegiances (Coalesced vs Starborne). I thought this was very well done because it allows them to tailor the benefit to each of those types of army. This was great design in my book. Honestly, I think the whole design of Seraphon allegiance & army construction is very well done. But I won't disagree that the unit requirements for the Seraphon battalions are quite restrictive compared to many other armies. On the whole the Seraphon battalions are very specific & restricted for what units a battalion can contain. When I say that I think the Seraphon battalions are well designed I mean that from how they are duplicated the battalions and then restricted them to the sub-allegiances so that the battalions are designed for specific army types and can only be included in specific builds they were designed for. That means they have less chance to have bad outlier battalions that are overly strong in uses the design team did not anticipate. And also it lets the design team target changes more narrowly for specific types of army builds they want to emphasize in a particular army. But that does not mean that I think all of the rules benefits, point costs, and unit compositions for those battalions are good or not - I am just saying that I think they nailed the basic structure.

I have collected and played just about every subfaction within Orcs & Goblins since 4th edition and so when designed the Destruction faction as mostly the split-up parts of the old Orc & Goblin book along with the Ogors I ended up playing almost the whole of Destruction. I have always enjoyed Giants and overall they really are my favorite monster in the game - but if I were to say that I have a particular "thing" I would say it is Night Goblins and mainly Squigs. Giants may be my favorite monster overall, but squigs (of all shapes and sizes) are my favorite Warhammer creature or "thing". I dunno what it is about them - but I love the murderous little bouncing balls of teeth. That is why I feel so fortunate for what GW have been doing. I approve of all of the things they have done with Orcs - especially now with the fantastic Orruk Warclans book. Moonclan, my personal favorite niche army collection (of any miniature game ever), was turned into a full army of it's own with the Gloomspite book. On top of what they did with Night Goblins they then stuffed Forest Goblins and a full Troll army into the same book. I love Forest Goblins almost as much as Night Goblins and for many years I had been lamenting how they had been slowly removing Forest Goblins from the game (at one point only the basic Spider Riders were still in the army) - so I was overjoyed that they expanded SpiderFang a bit and kept it as a playable whole in Gloomspite. I never really viewed Giants as my "thing", but I will fully admit that over the last ~25 years I will generally stick a giant into just about any goblin army that I can - because I really like the model and the concept of the monster. But I can see how you might get that idea since I have generally been one of the only giant enthusiasts willing to come to the defense of the Aleguzzler whenever discussion about him pops up on the forums. I never even really considered the concept of an all Giant army (other than just for laughs as a silly army in 4th/5th edition) until Age of Sigmar started playing with the idea of all-behemoth armies and with Giants initially having their own sub-allegiance. Then it started to feel like an army of all Giants would fit Age of Sigmar very well and be pretty unique compared to other games. And I have picked up a small amount of Ogors with the intent to make a small hobby project for an army of Ogor Pirates. So at this point I have every army in destruction so I guess I would just say that I am an enthusiast of all things destruction.

I suspect this is going to be the case. The older Marauder Giant, and the smaller metal citadel giant were fairly human proportions and not very lanky - but the later giant models (Albion, current plastic giant, and both versions of the Forgeworld Bonegrinder) were all very lanky in design. Given the images from the video it looks like GW is going to stick with lanky giants. So if they make a really big giant kit I expect that it would be shaped more like the Wraithknight than the Imperial Knight kits.

A Warclans approach could be good, but I personally think they would have much better results if they structured a future book like the Seraphon book with the layered allegiances & subfactions/battalions focused on the chosen allegiance options. Spiderfang would work better if it was structured similarly to a seraphon Thunder Lizards army. As for the pillar, I don't think it is what the Warstomper is holding. In the Godbeasts book King Brodd is specifically mentioned that his personal weapon is a column from the now-destroyed temple to Behemat. In fact the only notable things about King Brodd is that he is absurdly strong (even for a Gargant), he wears a dragon skull as a helmet, and he carries a Behemat temple pillar as a weapon. I get the feeling that he is going to get a model and that rumor-engine pillar is meant to be his weapon.

I am right there with you. I would love for Spiderfang to be expanded more. I suspect that they did not have the bandwidth to add more kits when they turned Gloomspite into a full faction and decided to concentrate mostly on Squigs and Troggoths - which I think was the correct call concerning priorities. Spiderfang had enough to work with to get it by but it is the obvious choice to expand into when they come back around to touch the army again. I think they could do a lot for Spiderfang simply by updating the rules and allegiance abilities for them. For example, if they simply made the Arachnarok with Flinger and the Arachnarok with Warparty into battleline choices if the general has the Spiderfang keyword then I think all-spiderfang immediately becomes much more interesting. If they are going to add new models then I think they need to make a unit of grots mounted on the gigantic spiders that the boss rides on. A more heavily armed unit on 60mm bases that are meant to be either a hammer or an anvil sort of unit that the current spider rider unit cannot really do since they are mostly a skirmisher sort of unit. They could also tweak the rules and add the poison ability onto more of the grot weapons - like the boss has with his envenomed spear. If the bows & spears for common grot cavalry & the arachnarok crews had the poison rule then Spiderfang would get a big shot in the arm. They can do a whole lot for them just with rules tweaks, but hopefully they eventually do add a couple new kits for them as well. Giant spiders are just too cool for them not to come back around and expand. But I would still like a force that explored the general weirdness and variety of insects & arthropods.

What I found most interesting about the article is that the artwork for Teclis is pretty decent. Teclis himself has a much more interesting floating-in-the-air pose and the creature looks more interesting in the background rather than with Teclis trying to bounce of it's wing like a trampoline or diving board. I don't know if the artwork or the miniature came first - but the model would be better off it looked like the artwork and Teclis was floating away from the yak-sphinx with a more interesting pose than a swan-dive.