Skabnoze

@Slaanesh how did you manage to sneak out of the aelf soul-milking chamber? Tyrion and Teclis are going to be really pissed if they find you missing. And stop trying to corrupt our Beastclaw Friends - they have enough problems and don't need you adding any of your own. Don't you have some Seeker forces to go meet up with anyways?

Extra wound so that you can use the 14+ line on the damage table for the Hag.

Funny enough I was just exploring the idea of using the Troggoth Hag to get extra heroes for scoring beyond what you can normally get since they previously did not count as a leader. Guess that is gone!

And that means she also does not meet the leader requirement for list-building. I was a bit disappointed when I realized that. I have around 18 Trolls of various types (mostly old-school metal models) and I was entertaining the idea of getting her and building a Troll army. Obviously I would have to come up with battleline units, but I was a bit sad to see that I had to get another hero as well. But at least we have some cheap options for both of those. I really wish that they had put the Throgg Troll King warscroll into destruction as a leader and then Trolls as battleline if playing Troggoth allegiance. That would be another absurdly great tiny subfaction like Spiderfang.

How about disbind and unspell?

We should change it so that they have new terms. I suggest that we use the terms: "skumgrum" and "gorbugger" That should get rid of all of the confusion.

They are an ancient legend. They did exist once in the Age of Myth, but they tunneled into a squig hive cavern and were all devoured.

You can disagree if you like. That is fair. However, as I pointed out previously, every word in your argument is wrong.

I honestly hope that they get to Skaven sooner rather than later. Obviously the rats will have to wait until Grots for a book. That is simply common sense and the way that the universe should function. There is no way to argue against that rationale that is not utterly incorrect in every sense of the word. But after Grots I hope GW makes an effort for Skaven. Either a combined clan battletome or a book for a specific clan. My guess if they were to pick a clan to develop first that it would be Skryre simply because they truly embody the craziest aspect of Skaven and AoS could use another steampunk tech-ish sort of faction as a counter-point to Kharadron Overlords. The other very unique clan would be Moulder since nobody else is really doing genetic experimentation and eugenics as a theme in AoS. And of course if they did a combined clan tome then they could potentially mix together some of these themes as they already do in some cases.

Doubt it. It is almost exactly the same sword that is currently carried by the Grot Warboss on Giant Squig. Ever since they redesigned the look of Night Goblins in the Battle For Skulls Pass box set they have been moving Night Goblin weaponry to the exact aesthetic of that sword. The art style of Age of Sigmar so far has been moving each army release into a very distinct visual territory and I would be really surprised if they had more than one distinct race with stylistic choices that overlapped to that degree. I expect that Orcs and Goblins will continue to have shared stylistic elements, but I don't see Skaven and Grots overlapping. In the past Skaven and Goblins, especially Night Goblins, have had some degree of visual overlap. But I have a feeling that as they bring these races fully into Age of Sigmar and start shedding some of the baggage from the World-That-Was that they will try to push these races apart from each other and emphasize their unique aesthetics. Another thing to consider is that both Skaven and Night Goblins are some of the most unique creations of GW over the years. So I think we will see these factions keep a lot of their old identity but probably morph towards what truly makes them unique. For Night Goblins I think that will be with an emphasis on Mushrooms and Squig beasts. For Skaven I think that will move more towards their ramshackle constructions & mad-scientist themes.

It could be a 40k Ork kit, but bear in mind that Squigs are still quite rare in the 40k Ork range and they are an integral part of Night Goblins (Moonclan). In fact, the majority of the Moonclan range is either directly a squig unit or a unit that includes a squig. Out of 12 Moonclan warscrolls only 3 are not related to squigs in any way (Fanatics, Moonclan Grots, Grot Shaman). 6 of warscrolls are full squig units, 2 of them include squigs (Fungoid Shaman, Goblin Warboss), and one is a specifically a support unit for squigs (squig herders). Also bear in mind that every squig unit in Moonclan is currently a resin kit with exception of the Fungoid Shaman. In 40k there are only currently 3 different units with squigs in the ork range. Tankbustas have bomb squigs, the warboss can have an attack squig, and Flash Gitz git-finda is represented by a squig. This is a tiny fraction of the 40k Ork range as it is huge and dwarfs just about any AoS army range. It could well be that they want to bring more Squigs to 40k Orks. I am pretty sure almost all 40k Ork players would rejoice if that happened (I know I would), but odds are very heavily in favor of any upcoming squig releases being primarily for Moonclan.

Thanks for compiling all of the grot rumor teases into one place! It looks like the sneaky little green gits have been up to some interesting mischief.

My comments were mainly in regards to turn-1 alpha strikes. The idea of smashing someone in their deployment zone before they can even take a turn and crippling them. I don't think that deploying to mitigate that gives up board position. Subsequent turns is a whole different thing. But, in regards to screening in later turns - armies that can quickly & easily summon cheap chaff units are going to probably be one of the tougher fights for Ironjawz. There are a few armies, such as Seraphon, who can easily conjure cheap chaff out of thin air and use them to continually eat charges and create fights that are favorable to them. I'm not saying that we cannot out-fight them, I am simply saying that they will probably be the toughest in the hands of a good opponent because Ironjawz do not really have a way to deal with things other than to punch them in the face. In that situation it plays right into the opponents hands because they are continually summoning disposable stuff into your face to keep you busy and away from the important things. We will probably have to develop good tactics to deal with this situation.

I'm not saying that there is not going to be potential for counter-play. My point is that I think people will adapt to the concept of first-turn alpha strikes as a number of forces can now do this to various degrees. If that happens then it won't be a guaranteed thing to necessarily be able to cripple someone with that tactic. And of course it will depend upon what army they are playing as some will probably be able to better handle this than others. I'm not saying it is a bad thing and everyone should forget about it. I'm just saying people will probably adapt and it won't be nearly as strong in many cases.

This is assuming that someone has one big screen rather than a layer of smaller units. For example, a couple cheap units such as skinks or greenskin orcs. But again, I think people will move towards tactics to mitigate the issue of getting punched in the face on the first turn.

You sir are a gentleman, a scholar, and a true visionary.

I agree, but I also think that terrain by nature sells less than other stuff. Everyone that wants to play needs an army. But, not everyone has a home table and terrain. Also, there are a lot of alternate options out there for wargame terrain and some of it is a lot cheaper and easy to make. I have a table, and I like GW terrain, so I am interested in more. But I still don't think that GW will prioritize it over other stuff.

Then that begs the question of what the grots are doing with helmets?

I am not sure that someone will have to give up too much if they are primarily screening against an alpha-strike. People adapted to that in 40k pretty quickly when turn-1 deep strike was a major tactic. I expect that screening will be fairly important in AoS with multiple armies having the ability to leap across the table on turn-1 and drop killer command-point combos to initially cripple an opponent. The best tactic against that will be cheap screening units and I think we will start to see that concept morph into a number of lists. Ironjawz have one of the most potent combo alpha-strike punches, but they are not the only one that can do it now.

I would not expect any big changes like that until we get new books for things. I highly doubt that Gitmob will get a book any time soon, but it might happen if GW decides to create a Legions of Nagash style book for destruction at some point. If that happens I would expect there to be some warscroll rewrites and adjustments in that book and that is where I think they would adjust the warmachines into a single profile.

I would expect that generic terrain is tough for them to slot into the production schedule. While I personally think that the more terrain options we have the better, I doubt the two story Azyrite ruins are high on GWs priority. Right now they are obviously cranking to get KillTeam/40k Terrain out. 40k is also about due for a new model release wave of some sort and you have to expect that those are in the pipeline. Then you have to figure that new models are almost always larger sellers than terrain kits and I am sure they are currently working on whatever AoS release is planned for the fall. And then you probably have to slot in time for old kit restocks. So it would not surprise me at all if the designers have no idea when a kit like that will come out. Most likely it will show up whenever they can get a bit of bandwidth to get it produced and then slotted into an otherwise slow sales release window.

Congratulations, you have gained +1000000 prognostication skill!

I am starting to really wonder about the prognostication skills of everyone in this thread. Once again, this is obviously for grots.

Well, good thing I generally play suboptimal armies and make multiple mistakes!

I don't understand why they have so much issue with pile-in. It seems to me that the intent of pile-in is to have both participants in the fight get as many people into range to fight as possible. It should have been really easy to simply write a rule that says that when a unit finishes piling into combat that it needs to have as many of it's models as close to the enemy as possible. You could write the rules so that people could shuffle models around in the combat but still need to get as many models trying to punch the enemy in the face as they can. The problem with pile-in is that you have to pay attention to each model's relationship to the closest model - and that is just a slow process. It would be better if you could just quickly shuffle your models around with their pile-in move but get more into combat. The rules for this phase are just ripe for stream-lining.