Skabnoze

Well, they paid enough attention to jack up the cost of a number of things - some which seem like total head-scratchers. I was organizing my office yesterday and decided to compare costs in both General's Compendium (I bought the 2016 one not long after it released - but still did not play the game then). I was really surprised to see how much the cost of some of the Moonclan heroes increased by. I cannot fathom at all why both Warboss versions warranted a 50% cost increase. The costs of many of the characters especially seems out of whack when you look at the costs for many of the Daughters of Khaine heroes. Hopefully they pay more attention with the next iteration of GHB.

I was thinking it was probably something like this. Reading the profile for each weapon I am rather perplexed as to why all 3 are not the same cost to be honest. The flat 100 cost seems to be the easiest to slot into many lists.

This can be fixed to some degree with subsequent editions of the General's Handbook. I am in the same boat as Sheriff and hoping that GW really looks at the state of things and does a decent job tweaking Destruction (and all Grand Alliances & sub factions) to make them fun for people to play again.

I find it interesting that the primary choice is always the Rock Lobber. Is it mainly the cost? Or is it the combination of cost, flat 3 damage, and potential to double fire? I ask because all 3 of the artillery choices seem useful and with their own advantages & uses, but the rock lobber is the cheapest and seems to be in most lists that I see.

Pretty sure i have seen this year referred to as the Year of Death in a number of different sites - but I could be wrong. I was replying to the "no idea what is coming next" series of comments previously. I would hope that if this year has an emphasis on Death that we would see more for them. Yes, Nighthaunt sounds great. My comment was mainly that if there is an emphasis on that Grand Alliance that I would hope they would get more releases than they have so far. For the Magic supplement - I really hope that is a game-wide supplement rather than just oriented around a specific grand alliance. Not doing so seems like it would be a big wasted opportunity. As for "wanting" you can always want more.

I thought this was supposed to be the Year of Death? I would seriously hope that meant a bit more than just a catch-all battletome like Legions of Nagash...

Sold!

Sure, but we already have 2 dwarf factions specifically for Age of Sigmar and I want some goblins.

Deepkin need a real enemy. I say we lobby for underwater diving grots!

But will he Sing with a Jamaican accent or a New Zealand one?

How dare you defame the Warrior princess of the Fathoms Below, Daughter of Triton, Arch-Siren of Under-the-Seas, Queen of Part-of-Your-World, Mistress of the Seashells! May her Royal-Majesty visit death and destruction upon all those who oppose her!

I am heavily leaning into getting the Idoneth Deepkin (I will wait until I read their rules and decide if the playstyle appeals to me), and if/when I do they will be led by Ariel...

80s cartoons are where it’s at. I am pretty sure Saturday morning has never, and will never again, contain as much awesome as it did in the 80s. Myaaah!!

Doing a “living” rule-book does not prevent them from releasing a big physical copy or a new box set. What I was saying is that the core rules are tiny and one of the smallest parts of the rules now. A big chunk of the older style rulebooks is already bound into the yearly release Generals Handbook. The core rules themselves is so small that they don’t need to do massive v2, v3, etc style releases like they used to do in the past unless they want to change the whole game from top to bottom. But the direction they have moved Fantasy and 40k both seems like that is unlikely. Matched play points already changes yearly. Most of the rules of the game are held in warscrolls that they can easily change in generals handbook, errata, or a new version of a battletome. It just seems like they don’t need the old full edition releases anymore.

I don’t think they care about leaving the current items. But I am pretty sure that they do not want to maintain them longer than they have to. Also, I don’t think they will issue future battletomes that continue the finecast range unless it is a Legion of Nagash style release - which seemed like a get-you-by style of release.

I think Age of Sigmar is set up in such a way that a living rule-set is more likely than a full new edition. The General's Handbook encapsulates the how to organize a game, and gets yearly updates. The core rules are only a few pages long. It would be very simple to alter a section of the rules, or even big chunks, and just reprint the entire rules in the back of a General's Handbook.

I do not disagree that signs point to Moonclan coming at some point and I would be absolutely wallet-destroyingly thrilled with that (and I already own over 2000 points of pure squigs, more night goblin infantry than I can count, and at least one of every night goblin model released since the early 90s). But, the issue that I see with GW releasing Moonclan similar to Daughters of Khaine is that the majority of the range is resin (most was metal converted to resin). There are 10 Warscrolls in the current range if you don't count the Forgeworld Models. You could split that into 11 if you consider Bosses on foot separate from the Skarsnik boss. Of those only 2 are plastic sets, the Grots and the Fanatics, and neither of those are dual kits. I am pretty certain that one of GWs current goals is to remove the Finecast resin models from the range as they go now. So, to do that they would have to either remove these units or replace them with plastic kits. Or, they would need to add a new release and keep the Finecast stuff (I don't see them wanting to do that anymore). They could get creative and probably knock out a huge portion of those resin kits with 2 multi-build plastic boxes. They could make a multi-kit for the Cave Squigs that doubles as a box for Squig Hoppers and includes the herders. They could also make a kit for the Mangler Squigs that could be a multi-kit and build the Warboss on Giant Squig (and possibly the Warboss on foot with Giant Squig) - and if they wanted they could also add a unit mounted on Giant Cave squigs (like Gore Gruntas) that the box builds. And then they would probably still need to do something for Heroes and most likely they would also want to drop some sort of large centerpiece kit (they could always just make a plastic version of the Forgeworld Colossal Squig). It is doable, but they would have to commit to a decent amount of plastic box set releases in order to pull it off. But, Night Goblins have always seemed to be an in-house favorite for Games Workshop over the decades. They have not always been the most effective part of the Orc & Goblin army (although in some editions they were close), but they have always had a ton of attention whenever Fantasy Greenskins had any sort of releases (both for rules and for models), so it is obvious that someone in GW likes them (hard to not like Night Goblins though). Also the recent Moonclan Herald indicates that GW is still thinking about Moonclan - so I expect they will do something for them at some point.

Hopefully the Turtle is not the goofiest thing that we see in Age of Sigmar. I would be pretty upset if Elves manage to out-goofy goblins. The war of absurdity has begun!

His headwear in the Aspect of the Storm appears to be an ornate pasta-strainer. Idoneth Deepkin confirmed as Pastafarians...

If they have flying whales then they probably don't need Realm Gates. Flying Whales can get from Mars to Sirius after all. That may just be the heaviest matter of the universe...

Personally I'm glad that the vampire clans have slid into the background for a bit. Undead has primarily been about the Vampires for about 3 editions spanning almost 20 years. Tomb kings were a non-vampire distraction in there, but GW always neglected them a fair bit. As someone who enjoyed all of the non-vampire undead stuff and was then sad to see most of it fade out of the lime-light for so long I am happy to see the current emphasis expand out from the vampires. I don't want them to go away, but I would prefer they expand death in other directions for a while.

To play devil's advocate, Orcs have a pretty clear-cut and ordered hierarchy. The biggest one is in charge and what they say goes. The only deviation from that now currently seems to be Bonesplitterz who follow the glowiest one instead of the the biggest. A simple but effective ordering system! All the other races seem to make things way too complex...

Probably not. But I would say it is a potential issue when half the alliances have the overwhelming mass of choices that can go into soup lists and the others are picking from a handful of scraps. Certainly not the biggest problem in the game, but I think it is fair to say that it is not an ideal situation to have and could possibly lead to issues further down the road.

If Grand Alliances went away, then there is little issue in regards to list-building for having so much junk crammed into one or two Grand Alliances and the others being sparse. You still have the issue of some armies and themes being neglected, but you don't have issues with some big giant soup lists having more possible ingredients than others. If Grand Alliances went away, then the game would have a very large and diverse selection of armies currently. And to be fair, the game does. But, the Grand Alliance system puts those diverse forces into buckets that then make the distribution of armies in the game look very very skewed (which it is). That was my point in the original comment.

It's a fine system as long as you don't overly neglect half of the Grand Alliances in the game.