Nos

Shaman on Spider is showing up on most lists even without other spiders. Am I missing something in respect to his utility with Moonclan? He seems to be all about the spider buffs.

Recently sold some minis and have money. Good grief am I tempted by the Squigalanche. Every model in it is a character. In fact excluding the stabbas and shooters pretty much everything in the range is a unique model.

Da Lyin’ Rampantz

People can still sell models that no longer work with games systems. And they do. I do in fact. In many cases they sell for more money. So they dont lose any value as a product in that respect. If smeone is building an army over a year with the assumption and expectation that it will be useable in its current rule set in 365 days time, that’s completely based on expectation and assumption. There is literally nothing on the product or within the terms of sale that says that will be the case. You're right that repeat squatting would be ridiculous, but it’s not something GW does. And that’s not what has happened here. The vast majority of elf models still have rules are playable. And even if they do get squatted in say a year’s time, they will have existed as a hangover from a thirty year old game (which many people still play) for more than four years into a completely different one and have been on sale as models for about a decade. It’s hardly a sudden devastating abandonment is it.

As I said-you but the models and the models only. An expectation is not the same as a promise, gurantee, offer or intimation, none of which GW have made. It’s possible to have expectations and for them to be wrong. But as you state *right now* Darkling Coven are a useable army. They’re not the best army competitively speaking. But again they were never sold as such. Someone might have bought them with the expectation they would be competitive but that’s on them. The most basic of research would have told them otherwise. They might have bought them believing a Battletome was coming. Again, that’s their choice but it’s a complete guess. They haven’t been misinformed or duped. It’s a simple consumer equation. Most people buy things with the knowledge that they won’t always operate at the same level of function or efficiency or purpose. Dont know why people think GW products should be any different. If GW want to sell Dark Elves until they’re no longer profitable then they’re completley free to and they might just do that. They’re not publically funded, my taxes aren’t paying for me to play every GW faction that I might want to and forvthem to be evenly matched to all the others. They’re a multi million pound business who operate on the assumption that consumers buy something if they want it now or don’t if they don’t. There’s no moral dimension here.

You’re probably right!

But that raises an interesting question as to why they chose them. If they just chose them on sight then that’s nearly almost certainly because they liked the models. If they decided they liked them sufficiently to buy them there and then without research as to how they play or even without seeing if they could be bought elsewhere, they have decided to buy models because they liked models and agreed with the asking price. GW have never claimed that you buy models with the guarantee that they will always be compatible with rulesets indefinitely or that they will play well etc. You’re paying for the product of toy soldiers, exclusively, not toy soldiers and game pieces. At least these days you can buy models and use a free app and Warscroll to play with them. In the past you bought a box of models and you had to pay if you wanted to have access to rules of the game and rules of the model.

I’ve not played any Deepkin yet so take this advisedly but having ready the discussion this page I think the broad narrative is one that plagues most meta orientated games in that they nearly always assume you will be playing an opponent with a powerful list that they know how to use. The interpretation of what you are asking goes from your intended “what are these guys like” to “how will this list fare against the best opposition in the most intense circumstances.” Which makes the game an utter bore and is why you increasingly just see Gav Bombs against 50 Eels every match. A game of fantasy and drama becomes a monolithic slog that endlessly replays on every other table and tactics give way to hacks, exploits and gimmicks. It sounds to me like you’ve thought through how you want your army to play and why and I bet even if you lose 4 games and win only 1 with *your* army you’ll have more fun than winning 5 games in which you just throw eels and dice in someone’s face. And in my eyes you’ll be far more of a general if you win with what you have than just buying all of the unanimously overpowered units who intrinsically just win more often because of imbalance. I’m not saying I know better than anyone else but if you’re enthused by your plans dont be put off them. Life’s too short to spend hundreds of pounds on plastic eels just to “win” at toy soldiers.

Shame as it is I dont think you’re going to get Old World elves for the same reason GW named them Aelves. They want their own thing. I’m enjoying the reimagined races and the Mortal Realms as a whole. Not because I hated Warhammer, as I love it, but I’d much rather they make a clean break and do something different given the circumstances in which they left the Old World. What the newer races lack in respect to the pedigree the Old World armies enjoyed, they more than make up for in a focussed essence. And if you look at Warhammer from about 1-4th edition I would argue that AOS is closer to that than Warhammer was after 5th edition. The fantasy is less coherent from a lore perspective but it’s far more fantastical. I don’t want to upset anyone clinging to Old World armies but I think there’s little evidence to suggest AOS has any intent in supporting them going forward. It’s not Warhammer, bottom line. If you take it in it’s own terms rather than treat it as a bastardisation of a system that it now manifestly has no interest in emulating or replicating again, it’s really fun.

Aye I alluded to that post myself, it’s just that it necessarily doesn’t mean a full release. 2 minis is more minis strictly speaking.

Slaanesh book and minis not confirmed at all. There’s mention of stirrings for seekers of Slaanesh in the community preview for the year but that doesn’t equate to a release with book and minis. My guess is there will be a new hero released ala Slimux in Blightwar and maybe one new unit of seekers or something. I doubt the release of Slaanesh will be considered a less big event than the Goblins showing up but it got lower billing than them in the preview. I’m pretty sure Slaanesh releases this year will just be a prologue for a big reveal next year.

The Hokey Cokey Battalion I mean that’s most armies though right? I love AOS but most viable factions have about 6 units that aren’t heroes and one is usually by far the best in respect to value and buffability so ends up making up the bulk pretty much always. Eels, witch elves, skeletons, skinks etc. Until (if ever?) AOS introduces more tactical aspects to leverage against getting an easily delivered enormous unit that can throw a billion dice in your face I suspect most competitive lists will go that way. Sad thing is in my experience games with more variety across armies are just way more fun. And they’re not chronically imbalanced or anything either. Sequitors and Evocators are obviously great but against a similarly well constructed but not win at every cost list it’s not like the Stormcast old guard aren’t effective or enjoyable to use. In some ways I find games like that to be far more of a test of your skill actually because you’re not just going through the motions of the meta or relying on an overpowered gimmick.

Yeah the larger surface area is more forgiving in some respects but it also means you spend a long time painting anything. Also it means if your layers aren’t smooth it really shows. It’s not been so bad with these guys because I’ve been playing with sort of sketching glazes over their base colours and trying something subtle so experimenting with techniques has kept my interest going . If I was doing the traditional GW Block layers of metal paint approach as advised in the battle tome think I would have fallen out with them by now though. Idoneth are next up for me once these are done and I’m looking forward to something a bit more organic. I’ve enjoyed painting them a lot but It’s quite hard to do an expressive paint job for an army of Monk Robocops.

One LA to make them legal with Azyrite Halo and 3 Incantors with the same. On an 6 to save each unit now doing a MW and also healing one of their own with Castellant buff. 3 auto dispels and 4 dispels a turn. Makes up 3000 points. The Nope Battalion.

Thanks pal! Probably not armed with the corect arrow. Couldn’t begin to be bothered to sort all that jazz out. I hate constructing models (chose a sensible hobby right?) and these guys really tested my patience. There’s probably 7 of them with the Thundershock bow thing. I just tell my opponents that the Prime has the magic one. Love the models but they’re still overburdened with too many finniky details like that for my liking. One of the reasons I decided to try the paint job I did was to avoid having to use 15 extra colours to paint belts and scabbards etc.

Nearly finished my first unit of Judicators and realised the Prime dosent get a cloak like all the others. Poor Guy. He’s pretty much the best of all primes as well. The optimal Prime if you will haaaaaaa Having decided to try a monochromatic scheme for the first time I highly recommend it to people who want to spend hours painting and have it look like they’ve barely done any.

Gav Bomb is just utterly tedious. I play wargames because I like the spectacle and the maneouvering, the ebb and flow and such. Gav Bomb you don’t even get the spectacle because half your army is on the table, It require essentially no skill to pull off, and it finishes the battle one way or the other after about 40 mins max. Literally dozens of hours of painting an army plus giving up your evening for that? What a wonderful experience.

He looks great 👍🏻

Whereas Pretty much every Space Marine ever says that of the taint of Chaos and Heresy in every novel, short story, narrative aside, battle report fluff etc. Stormcast are not above using darker methods to pursue their goal on occasion. Whereas Ethnic cleansing is just what Space Marines do. It’s basically their job. HOWEVER way off track here now so apologies. How bout them rumours.

Interesting political commentary in their respective designs which speak a lot of the context in which they were created as well . Space Marines were envisioned by a very left wing set of individuals openly critical of the 80’s regimes of Neocons. The idea being that the future they foresaw would be so awful that even the good guys would be genocidal fascists fanatical to upholding the political status quo. It’s simultaneously a very tounge in cheek vision which is also nonetheless very angry. Space Marines are by any standard utterly abhorrent in their treatment of everything. Its interesting with the Stormcast because Sigmar is still pretty analogous to the Emperor as an absolutist figure who is far more convinced by value expressed through form and purpose than by respect for choice and free will. But while the Stormcast are portrayed as utterly loyal to Sigmar there’s considerably less dogmatism. They have a purpose which they serve but they seem less interested in interpretating protection as genocide and the like. There are genuine good guys in the ranks of the Stormcast and there is a tragedy and tension in respect to the past lives they have lost. They are recognisably connected to humanity and fighting for a better future for it. Space marines fight only for the Emperor and exterminate everything they believe is an impediment to that which is humanity as much as it is anything else. As a military ideal as you say they’re very recognisably cut from the same cloth. But Stormcast are quite different in their interpretation as to what purity and duty entail. The strongest connection between the two I think is the pre Heresy legions of the original Primarchs. At that level they’re pretty much inseparable.

Perish the thought that people not take toy soldiers seriously enough or that young people be enthused by them

We dont know a Human faction is coming at all. It would make sense from a Lore perspective but there’s a 100 Models that it would make more sense for them to release this year by the same logic. Dosent mean it’s happening soon. Darkoath and the now done Gloomspite releases have been based on solid reasoning from the perspective of there actually being products for them in development. There’s been nothing that suggests an Order Human faction to that degree. There is more in the Gloomspite releases alone (I.e the very vaguest of hints) that point to a Dispossessed release being this year than there has been anything pointing at a non Darkoath human faction.

Someone a few pages back suggested Tempest Lords with a Dracoline list. Has a nice synergy with Dracolines Pack Leader and serves a combat heavy leader well with Command Trait.

What sort of place are Tzeentch in at the moment? Just for the sake of friendly matched play, can they pull their weight sufficiently to avoid routinely losing, are they interesting to play? I can get my hands on the Arcanite Battleforce fairly cheap so wondering about it. Love the models so that’s a big plus.

Feel free to use superior models from other ranges I guess. Or y’know just don’t collect them if you don’t like the models. Or collect the ones you do and make an army of them.