Skabnoze

What could be better than a Giant as an ally? Answer is an even bigger Giant! Bonegrinder Gargant can now be taken as an ally and costs exactly 400. Coincidence? I think not...

Yes, you can only have a ratio of 1:4 for allies units (units not models) in addition to the points limit.

I heard that the Generals Handbook says you ignore that rule for matched play games.

In regards to Ardboyz I think we should also not overlook some of the less obvious features of the unit: model count and area footprint. I think those 2 things can be more important than we sometimes consider. I have not fully read the new rule books, but from what I understand they have now moved the core rules for scenarios such as the mechanics of scoring into the core rulebook and then the scenarios now reference those rules. Also scoring for units is tied to model-count and not to wounds. I think this makes Ardboyz potentially the best scenario scoring unit in Ironjawz and not just at minimum unit size. The area footprint of a unit is still useful for a variety of tactics such as screening, area denial, blocking out zones, etc. Ardboyz have a much larger footprint than any of the other Ironjawz units. I’m not saying that Ardboyz are better than Brutes or Gruntas, but I am saying that I think they have their own niche and role that they do better than other units. I still think people are poo-pooing them a bit too much.

Yes all the new points are in GHB 2018. I do t think the costs changed for Spiderfang.

So I keep seeing people say Ardboyz are terrible now and the only thing I see referenced is the clarification that shields don’t stop mortal wounds. Is there something else also, or is that it? That is the only change to them I see other than a general cost reduction. While mortal wounds are not uncommon, they are also not usually the most common form of damage. The ability only works on a 6 in the first place. I just don’t see this as a massive reduction in survivability. They have the same save as Brutes and now for 160 points you get 20 wounds compared to 180 points for 15 wounds with Brutes. They still seem like the best unit in the army for grabbing objectives or using as a big tough anvil. And with both banners and some shields they are still quite tough to shift off a point. Their damage profile is not that much lower than Brutes when using the big choppas. Brutes are undoubtedly better in combat and have the boss & unit weapon upgrades, but it seems to me that Ardboyz still have a place and are useful. I guess I am just missing something.

There is a lot of stacking junk that will break this game sideways for a while. I expect there will be an errata in a month or two that will have to fix a lot of stuff they did not catch on release. The Moonclan warlord command ability stacking is so hilariously broken that I really don’t expect to see it last long once people start blowing up Nagash, Alariel, or Archaeon with just 1-2 grot spears.

It is up for me now. Ogors back to 40mm. Same for Sourbreath and Rockbiter Trolls. Fanatics back to 25mm as well. Looks like it was indeed a goof up by the intern.

I still think Ard Boyz are fne. The only real nerf I see is the change so that shields cannot stop mortal wounds and honestly that makes sense to me as a verisimilitude thing. I also don't think it was that big of a nerf overall. You can still mix in some shields like before to help offset some shooting or melee wounds and I think that was what those shields were generally doing most of the time. I have not dug too deep into costs but my understanding is that smaller units are now a bit cheaper than they used to be and the full unit is the same cost. Seems like an improvement to me. Nothing they have done to the ArdBoys is going to stop my plans to field all my 100 or so Black Orcs as a full Ardboy horde. That is still going to happen...

I have not really looked into Endless spells a ton yet. I have seen a few spoiled and read some discussions about others. Long story short a number of them will indeed be useful. I think Spiderfang will benefit from this a fair bit since we tend to field a large amount of wizards. The new Realm rules for magic will be very nice for Spiderfang also for the same reason. As for combos, we don't have a whole lot of them at the moment. Basically just stack the Arachnarok shaman's spell with the boss command ability onto either one of your Arachnaroks or a big unit of Spider Riders. On the plus side, that is a nice bit of synergy. On the negative side it is about all that we have at the moment - at least directly within Spiderfang. Tactical advice would be that if you are playing pure Spiderfang then your toughest units are your Arachnaroks. Your spider riders can be quite deadly when buffed, but they are a fragile unit. Don't expect your spider riders to stick around through a serious beating. They are fast, mobile, versatile, and can be pretty nasty when you dump your main buffs into them - but durable they are not. Look into allies if you want more diversity and want to shore up your army with stuff it is lacking. Gitmob has some nice choices. You can field grot infantry to act as a more durable unit and they combo well with the gitmob shaman. The artillery is another notable pick. You can easily build yourself a rock lobba using any extra bits for the Flinger from your Arachnarok if you built the shaman version. You can't go wrong with gitmob rock lobbas.

Even the Kharadron Overlords will be surprised...

It's just speculation. But bear in mind that GW has explicitly said that the way they currently work is that the rules team goes to work once the Design team hands them a bunch of models. We also know that sometimes they sit on completed designs for a while. And we also know that their physical production capacity is limited and decides where things fall in terms of release windows. So I would expect that the Design team would have some things sitting in limbo waiting for something. Here is a hypothetical example to think of. Malign Portents added a character to each grand alliance and very much seems like those releases were matched to upcoming release books (Stormcast, Nighthaunt, Moonclan/Grots, Slaves to Darkness). It could very well be the case that they designed 2-3 characters for each Grand Alliance and then chose which ones to fit into Malign Portents. Or, maybe they have a new campaign setting and they are making another character release wave to go with it. It would not surprise me if they used that opportunity to brainstorm what Ogors in Age of Sigmar would be (like they did with Moonclan and the Fungus shaman). So it could be something as small as a single model to prototype out a new visual. I'm just shooting from the hip with ideas so feel free to ignore everything that I have said. In regards to consistency they did just consolidate all Trolls onto 50mm bases.

How do we know they are so serious? Maybe Sigmar simply has not opened the Clown Brigade Chamber yet?

It seems to me that the new piling in rules is going to enable/force both sides to engage a whole lot more of the models in units as combat continues. I don't care for the 40mm Ogors simply due to the visuals for the models, but I am not sure it is a giant nerf until we thoroughly wrap our heads around the tweaks to the new edition. Pure speculation on my part, but I wonder if some of these base increases that seem out of left field (Ogors, Fanatics, etc) are due to stuff that the design studio and modelers are currently working on? It could very well be the case that they have some WIP (or completed) designs for new Ogor models and they are planning to bump the scale of them up slightly. In the past the main driving reason for base size increases has been model size creep. Maybe when GW compiled the official base size chart they figured they would hit us with some of those changes now and let people adapt before new models come out later on? Pure speculation - discuss....

If you look at the recent errata the Legions of Nagash book effectively deprecated the entire Grand Alliance Death book. My hunch is that they may migrate the remaining Grand Alliance only allegiances into blanket books like this that have rules dedicated to fielding combined forces. No idea how far off some of these would be, but it seems like the smartest way to update them. The Grand Alliance books were necessary and useful to get rules out for the models that crossed over from Warhammer Fantasy in the early days of Age of Sigmar but they are missing too many pieces of what makes good armies for Age of Sigmar and they don't really make sense anymore.

I hope so - since I have been a huge Night Goblin fan since the 90s. But honestly, I have not really been disappointed with any of the Age of Sigmar releases for quite a while now. I am not a huge Stormcast fan, although the expanded darker fluff is starting to interest me, but even those models are quite nice and well done. So as long as they tease and give me an idea about what is coming out further than the next month's release wave I will be quite happy.

I would not be surprised to see GW drop something big and a couple months out in the Open Day. They have spoiled the majority of Stormcast & Nighthaunt already and pretty much the whole new edition. I don't think they want the hype train to slow down on the release day for the new edition - they would probably prefer to kick it into high gear. Now don't get me wrong, I think there will be more info and models from the new Stormcast and Nighthaunt books that are shown, but I would not at all be surprised if they blindsided us with a tease or reveal of some of the other things coming further down the pipeline. GW has seemed to learn more about the value of future hype generation than they did in the past.

They specifically made errata for some warscrolls and command abilities so that they cannot stack. This mainly seems to be the command abilities that allow a unit to immediately fight an extra combat like the Wurrgog Prophet or the Slaughter Queen. So if a warscroll was not updated with that restriction then it is currently fair game assuming that the GHB has no restriction.

So, on the topic of the errata and possible new battletomes I found it interesting to look at the errata for the Grand Alliance books - most especially the Grand Alliance Death book. So for each of the Grand Alliance books it seems that the errata to them is to deprecate the units that now have an entry in a battletome. For example, Bonesplitterz, Beastclaw, and Ironjawz were all deprecated from Grand Alliance Destruction. What I found interesting though was that the Grand Alliance Death errata said to deprecate the entire book: I find that interesting because it basically means that Legions of Nagash was effectively a full replacement for Grand Alliance Death. We sort of knew that anyways, as it was a much better way to play with that stuff, but it is still interesting to consider. We have been discussing the idea of a similar "Waaagh! Gordrakk" or "Legions of <insert destruction warlord>" type of book for a little while now, but this makes me think that GW may indeed actually put out a few more of them to consolidate allegiances that otherwise might not see an update for a long time (or at all). But that is just pure speculation on my part.

Yeah, I have some bases to rebase my Bonesplitterz onto (I like premade resin bases for most occasions) and I was thinking the same thing. My Weirdnob is also the metal one and a standard 60mm cavalry base does seem a bit small for his balance.

I was browsing the base size document, because I was going to go for another big fancy resin base purchase spree and I noticed that the Maniak Weirdnob is listed as "75 x 42mm". Was this how people were previously basing him? I find it a bit odd that all other Bonesplitter characters are on the same size base as equivalent infantry models. It does not bother me at all - I just find it odd.

It is too bad that the Waaagh! command ability does not persist until your next hero phase. But the ability to toss a bunch of them out there and stack them possibly makes up for it. Also I just noticed that Ardboyz have been clarified so that the shield save does not work against mortal wounds.

That is how it reads. Shame that they did not remove that bit about measuring to the closest enemy, but it just means that you will pay a bit more attention to where you position the unit in order to get this bonus. It is nice that they removed the requirement of needing to roll over 8 on the dice so now you can use charge bonuses (cog spell anyone?) to trigger this.

This errata was easy to make and had probably been sitting around waiting for the next General's Handbook anyways. They were all obvious ones that we had discussed quite a bit. I don't think this at all indicates that a new book is not happening. GW has historically dropped a fairly large errata on the release of a new edition and those often touched units that were then quickly replaced by a new army book. This just happened in 40k 8th edition with the release of all of the Index books at launch and then some of that being changed in books that were quickly released. It may also indicate that these units are unlikely to change from this version in a new update of the Battletome. I still posit that if the rumors of a mini-release wave of Ironjawz models is correct then that is going to coincide with a new book. Printing new army books is almost a guaranteed sale for GW - and there is no better time to rewrite a book than a new edition. One reason that GW regularly resculpts the same models and issues new versions of the rules is so that they can keep selling those things to the same player base - they are a business after all and why make all new products when you can just iterate the existing ones? It is also worth noting that in the Malign Portents Errata document they have deprectated the warscrolls for the Stormcast and Nighthaunt Harbingers completely. They now say to refer to their respective battletomes for their new Warscroll. I expect the same will happen to the Fungoid shaman and I would not be surprised to see these warscrolls be changed in some ways.

Another thing to consider is that if you are using matched-play points then the Arachnarok with shaman is also considered a LEADER - which counts against the total number of leaders your army can have for that point size. The Arachnarok with the flinger and no shaman is not a LEADER.