Skabnoze

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.

Ironjawz are popular enough that not expanding the range is effectively just letting money sit in consumer's pockets. I am sure GW will do it at some point simply because it is almost guaranteed to make a splash in terms of sales. It feels to me more like it is a matter of when and not if and the same thing goes for a number of other small & constrained factions that came out around the same time - such as Fyreslayers.

While that is easily one of my all-time favorite GW games to date - I really don't see them reissuing it. The only way that I could see that happen is if it was a single very limited release like the Shadow Wars: Armageddon box. Maybe if they were releasing new Ork vehicles and packaged those in the box and just reprinted the rules as-is. It was a fantastic game and full of humor & flavor. But being just Orks it was just way too niche for the time period when it launched. They eventually had to dump the stock by giving it away free with White Dwarf subscriptions. While they have better marketing outreach now - I still think it would be too niche to find success as a real product unless they heavily changed it and brought all the other races into it. If they rerelease it then I will buy it day one, but I just don't see it happening.

You can't catch the whole army in the bubble of the Lens. Just cast your damage spells at something outside of that bubble.

Bell of Lost Souls built a 3-story ruined gothic cathedral from the Kill Team terrain kits. I don't normally poke around that site, but that article caught my eye and it turned out pretty nice.

I'm curious about why? Would it be to supplement the Gore Gruntas in a Braggoth's battalion? Their +1 to hit buff is keyword to Ironjawz only so they won't really do much for Beastclaw Raiders.

If in doubt about something rules related take the less powerful side of the argument until GW clarifies. It saves just about everyone time and sanity. I'll debate both sides of an issue if rules are unclear, but when I put the models onto the table most of the time I will play with the less powerful interaction if something is unclear. In the case of the Waaagh! ability I play it pretty much how @DerZauberer described it. I also generally don't build forces or battle plans that revolve around questionable interactions, so it usually does not impact my games a whole lot to use a less powerful interaction. But, if someone wants to go full crazy on using the most powerful of rules interactions then I will do the same, but for me those games are rare.

I don’t think most events vet things that thoroughly to be honest.

Let’s back off a bit and not crucify the guy for making a mistake that amounts to about less than 1% of the cost of a 2000 point list. This is a game of plastic toy soldiers after all.

I am on board with you that Destruction needs new battletomes. I would honestly rewrite all of them if I had the power to change it. Beastclaw are far too limited due to trying to build a whole army with 3 resin kits and 2 plastic kits. Nothing they have is terribly bad but they just don’t have enough options. Give them access to a wizard and/or some sort of buff character on mournfangs and watch that allegiance roar back to life. Even better would be to give them a couple more unit options - like a dual unit yhetee kit. Ironjawz are a bit similar. They just need a bit more variety. They could split existing units into multiples based on weapon options or make a couple new units. They also could use a couple heroes, a spell lore, and some added synergy. Bonesplitterz could use some type of centerpiece model and then warscroll tweaks. They would be ok with the number of units they have, but at this point I feel that what they need are alterations to warscrolls. But, I don’t expect GW to rework a specific allegiance first. I expect that if they do start rewriting a bunch of books, which I do think will happen, that we will see the various allegiances sprinkled throughout. I would expect that the order of books will be a combination of popularity/profitability, which ones need accompanying model waves, which ones have the most balance need, and which ones have the loudest advocates within the dev team.

I think it probably needs modification of warscrolls, tweaks to the allegiance abilities, and probably the addition of actual spell lores if we really want to maintain the current Seraphon flavor but also put them on a relatively even footing with everyone else. This is why I made the comment about them having a mess across all level of rules. For example, consider if they created a spell list and moved the teleport ability from the allegiance ability and into the spell lore. A change like this could have a few ramifications. The Seraphon player would have to make a few more choices than they often do currently. For example, more useful spells creates a real counter-point to simply using Slann to spam summoning points. Simply giving their wizards a wider array of useful options can potentially tone down the pure summoning factory. It could also reduce the range and make the spell attached to a specific wizard - which would have implications for how it would be used. Now I'm not saying that this specific change would be the ideal one - I am just trying to show how they can keep a lot of the same theme but juggle where these rules are and how they interact. I think they could end up with an army that is more flavorful than it currently is and provides a better play experience for both players if they rework the battletome. Also, GW has shown a serious reluctance to make real Warscroll changes in errata. They do the bare minimum of changes possible the majority of the time. That is probably a good idea for errata, but those types of changes seem more like band-aids than real long-term solutions. Anyways, we should probably stop derailing the Ironjawz thread.

@Malakree There are lots of ways to fix Seraphon, but at this point I am wondering if there is simply too much piled on for an errata and GW plans to rewrite their book. The idea of summoning is not bad, and on the surface I don't mind how Seraphon's is implemented in regards to mechanics. We can argue about how the units they can summon are priced, but I don't think there is anything bad about the mechanisms they use. My suspicion is that GW wanted to get summoning back into the game and that they were willing to break a few eggs to do it. Seraphon have all of the issues that effect old Age of Sigmar battletomes that were developed pre-allegiances & pre-spell lores. The difference is that their issues work to their benefit rather than detriment. It would bound to happen to some army - it just happens to be the cold blooded lizards that it happened to. I think that at this point Seraphon are a bit of a mess and have issues across all levels of their rules. The one thing that GW has managed to pull off is a thematic concept - and GW has always seemed to very much care about thematic elements. I would put Seraphon in a bucket of a few other armies that have solid thematic concepts, but at this point have poor execution and need to be addressed with a new book. The biggest offenders in that regard I think are Seraphon and Kharadron Overlords (at opposite ends of the spectrum). In the past GW has often launched a set of core rules that worked pretty good but kept older army rules that did not quite always fit. In many cases that made those armies worse off, but in some cases those armies got a lot better. They have usually been pretty good about sorting it out over the course of an edition with book rewrites though. This edition just launched so it is too soon to say if that will be the case here also. But let's hope that they continue the trend. As much as I would like to see whole new armies and small allegiances like Moonclan or Spiderfang expanded the game as a whole will be much better if existing stuff is tweaked to better fit the edition.

Yeah, they dropped the ball pretty hard with that army. I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on summoning until we could see the full rules and how things would shake out. I have played these games long enough that I have seen various versions of summoning and I think it is more interesting and thematic for some armies to have summoning rather than the heavily watered down rules that were used in last edition. I did not care for summoning pretty much just being a reserve deployment in the last edition and in the current edition of 40k. That just feels wrong to me. But I also don't think every army needs to have summoning and it does feel like they slapped it onto a few too many allegiances. I get the fluff reason why it is there for Seraphon now, but I am not really sure I am a fan of that. I expected GW to drop the ball in regards to balance at the launch of this edition - they usually do. It is usually especially noticeable when they create iterative core rules editions and maintain army books from previous editions. Even a small change in core rules can have big ripple effects in books that were not written for that edition. Some of the biggest changes to this edition are the expansion of magic and adding back in full-blown summoning rules and those seem like the most likely places for imbalances to occur. I am not at all surprised to see that end up being the case. The cynic in me says this is just par for the course for GW rules. But, GW have done a good enough job charting the new course of Age of Sigmar that I am still willing to give them the benefit of doubt that they do have a plan. The Seraphon are one of the oldest battletomes and aside from a handfull of resin models they have a pretty complete miniature line. I am wondering if GW's plan is to hurry out a few army book rewrites over the next few months, possibly in model-light release windows, like they did for the 40k 8th launch. If so I would not be surprised at all if the plan is to simply address Seraphon with a full new book. I could be wrong and they simply had no idea what they were doing when they added summoning to Seraphon. It may be that they just leave it alone and let that faction be very busted for a while. Or it could be the case that they will be smashed hard when the first major errata comes out - which I doubt is too far off.

Has anyone tried using the spell portal and sending a weirdfist boosted green puke through it? It seems to me like you could get some seriously nasty attack vectors with that. An allied Moonclan shaman (either variety) seems like a good cheap ally that can caddy the portal for the Weirdnob. Thoughts?

This is correct. You get Gore Gruntas, and they have the keyword for the Battalion, but they are still Ironjaws and allies - they are not Beastclaw. So, an ability that affects just Beastclaw models, such as allegiance abilities, will not affect the Gore Gruntas. But they also don't impact the number of allied units or points for allied units. So, in the example list that was posted it was perfectly fine to still bring the Troggoth Hag as an ally.

I found it in the FAQ. They don't gain that allegiance. They still don't get access to the allegiance abilities - hence why some factions have specific rules or battalions to get around that. But, they also don't count against the total number of allied units or the allied points.

I would also keep an eye out on the skirmish boxes for those who are interested in them - such as the Weirdnob Warband.

I don't have any books on me at the moment, but is there a realm item with a +1 to cast at all? That seems like something that would exist.

You can still buy the giant in the single model box set. The same goes for the Spiderfang units. It sucks to lose the heavily discounted box sets, but the models themselves are still available for sale. But, if these boxes are going away then I ought to get the 2 Spiderfang box sets I was putting off now while I can still get them.

There might be play in the Ardfist as well. Sure, it is expensive and it hinges on a single medium hero. But even footslogging Ironjawz can be surprisingly quick, especially with Cogs in the mix. I would not rule out the idea of hurling a ton of Ardboyz across the table into the teeth of the enemy and then bringing them immediately back. It might not be a top-dog list, but I would not discount it. Ardboyz are pretty tough and fairly hard hitting. An alpha-strike and immediate recycle might be pretty decent.

I hope Spiderfang gets some love as well. Night Goblins have been my favorite goblins, and GW creation for that matter, since the 90s. So I will say that I am excited by the idea of a full Moonclan Battletome and hoping very much that those rumors are true. But I have always been a fan of Forest Goblins and have lamented that they spent many editions slipping away into the background. They almost disappeared entirely for a while with just the spider rider cavalry remaining in the army book, and I think the only reason they stayed there was that they made an easy-to-assemble kit and put it into the Battle For Skulls Pass box set. They never did resculpt the unit after that and we are still using the easy-to-assemble kit - which has aged pretty well. The Arachnarok was a very surprising addition in 8th edition. Ever since I decided to return to Fantasy and get into Age of Sigmar I have really liked that Spiderfang became it's own small subfaction. There honestly is not much to the faction, but I like every unit that they have as an option. I know that the idea of Grot Sky-Pirates has a lot of people excited, but I think they could hit a home-run by fleshing out Spiderfang more. It really is quite a unique little faction in Age of Sigmar as insects are not very common.