JPjr

"aaaand we might just have a surprise for you at the end of tomorrow’s preview show…" I doubt it's this they're referring to but I know they've talked about finding other ways for people to pick up the various special limited edition models from events, store openings and the like, so hoping one tiny tiny microscopically thin silver lining to all this might be that awesome Catachan guard Vasquez-alike being made generally available in some way...

it's been a terrible, terrible failure. start of last week I thought ok I'm in this for the long haul let's try and keep work coming in & out and leave the toy soldiers for later end of last week as I realised I had next to no work coming in anymore I decided to write a list of all the hobby stuff I wanted to do, paint models, write some stories, read all the new RPGs I've amassed recently, and work on my own one. this week I then spent the first half staring at that list, then at the wall, the laptop, the wall, the contents of the fridge, the wall, the laptop, just unable to do anything then on Wednesday I decided to pile up all the boxes of UNBUILT models I've got here, it ended up being about my height, that didn't exactly inspire me or 'spark joy' so I went back to staring at the wall now I've taken time out from staring at the wall to type this I'm going to try and force myself to paint something later, see if I can get something done and dusted over the weekend but if I'm honest I'll probably just go back to staring at the fridge trying to decide if it's too early to start drinking wine

honestly whether it's Tzeentch, Bonereapers or whatever, whenever there's a big hoohah about something being toxic and super overpowered it's nearly always one specific sub-faction, using one specific very maxed out build, played in one very specific way. it's just that people mistake the tiny tiny % of people going all out to win at tournaments as indicative of the wider game and take the very specific armies they play with as representative of a faction as a whole and the only way to play them. which is reductive nonsense. Tzeentch is cool, the models are super fun, bright and crazy and if you're not going all out to just smash your opponents (and it sounds like you're not) and you're not a ****** (and the fact you're aware this could be a problem suggests you're not) then it should be no problem. Build the army you want, mess around with different sub-factions, collect, build, paint and play all the cool units you want and have fun. play the game that way, be a decent person across the table to your opponent and I'm sure you'll be fine. And the thing is you can always power up that army and play the more competitive builds and sub-factions when you want but you just don't have to. For instance I'm building the Ossiarch models I have as the Crematorium faction, obviously power-players would look oddly at me, but come on, Skeletons that are burning on the inside and explode when they die, how ridiculously dumbly cool is that...

the fact that no one has mentioned the Sepulchral Guard yet blows my mind and makes me think you're all noob poseurs who don't actually play the game but just pretend to so you sound cool when hanging around bus stops. Let's see... a 7 model, 7 wound unit with a 6+ save, so will get blown away probably before you get to do anything with it. which is just as well as those 7 models have 5 different, all fairly rubbish, weapon profiles between them. so should you get to use them they'll take up a load of time to almost certainly achieve the square root of ****** all. of course with their pretty useless keywords it's never been really clear what army you're supposed to field them in anyway. the absolute kicker at the end of all this is that they're actually great models, certainly skull & scapulas above any of the other Deathrattle/Skeleton models available and you wouldn't even need to do too tinkering with the war scroll to make them good but as it is I guess they never will be. aos-warscroll-the-sepulchral-guard-en.pdf

this is why the wise man just wakes up, opens his browser first thing every morning and just screams incoherently into it for five to ten minutes, you can retroactively fills in the exact details of that day's outrage after you've had a coffee.

we're already on the backlash to the initial backlash! and on some corners of the internet almost certainly even on the backlash to the backlash to the backlash of this reveal.

if people are really jonesing for their plastic crack then Goblin Gaming will be taking orders until this Friday... good to support these smaller shops anyway...

I'd love to see a much bigger Aelven version of this bad boy, would be fragile as ****** but still it'd make for a great Lumineth terrain piece

Misery Sauce! All the calories but none of the taste. Had heard reports of similar and was thinking that at least if I did get it and my wife had to do the cooking for once that might be a small silver lining. Anyway fingers crossed you'll be fully back to health soon!

ME. I may have basically lost my job to all this but frankly this was the really the point when this whole ****** crisis got too personal... Tempted to go full Liam Neeson in 'Taken', retrain as a scientist and dedicate the rest of my life to hunting down and eradicating coronavirii wherever they raise their ugly genomes. I mean I'm sure in reality I'll just go back to writing about music most people have no interest in but you have to dream...

IDONETH DEEPKIN NASAL SWAB

Ah well, more important stuff going on now than revealing some Aelves. We’ll all, somehow, survive with what we’ve got to hand, I’m sure. Now more importantly fingers crossed staff at head office, the warehouses and shops will get treated right & still get paid through all this.

you should demand a refund...

🚨🚨🚨AMAZING CONVERSION IDEA ALERT 🚨🚨🚨

Now THIS is what GW should have released as a scenery piece to go with the Feast of Bones boxset... https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/16/world/ice-age-mammoth-house-russia-scn/index.html

Not AoS but there’s all the new AdMech units too which I know a fair few CoS players have been eyeing them up for conversions, guess those will be with the Engine War book.

What, on top of the already existing metric tonne of unbuilt/unpainted models I bet around 99% of us probably have hidden in closets, under beds or just gathering dust on a shelf somewhere?

At this point I'd be tempted to start thinking Scions of the Flame will be coming in a new Warcry starter set it's taken so long (that's assuming a new starter set will be out in the next few months, personally I think so), but then in that case I doubt they would have teased them from the very start and featured them a few times in things like the Tome of Champions. Very odd. New rumour Engine def looks like some kind of Ork Painboy business to me.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2020/03/09/exemplars-of-the-luminethgw-homepage-post-2/ a few more little teasers in the new Lumineth update, no full (new) models, but a few little reveals to tide us over plus a repeated emphasis on the 'Rune of the Mountain' to launch a 1000 false rumours.

yeah, whilst I fully expect to be proven wrong here (cue 3.0 being announced in an email in 5 minutes) I generally agree here. I don't see a complete overhaul coming anytime soon, more of a continual update & refinement process, for all the complaints about balance or this army being ****** or whatever the basic core rules underpinning the system are pretty solid, plus with Warcry & Underworlds too it feels like there's more room for them to try out new things without having to make wholesale changes just yet. of course those refinements and updates could eventually be seen as grotesque bloat (if they're not already by some people) and at some point a complete reset might be required, even if just to boost sales, but for the moment I think we'll just see tinkering around the edges. what I do expect is, alongside the odd completely new army here & there, for them to finally do a proper set of Soul Wars campaign books, essentially like the Psychic Awakening ones, doling out minor updates & buffs to factions that way with a couple of new units introduced alongside each book. Obviously we already have the Wrath of the Everchosen, but I reckon we'll get a load more of these probably once PA has run its course. That will keep most armies fresh in one way or another for a while longer and I wouldn't be surprised if those campaign books did ultimately lead to the release of a new big starter set though, possibly even as early as summer 2021, as the Soul Wars give way to the next big story, Slaanesh's escape being the obvious big hook if they haven't already broken free before that. And whilst the basic rules would, essentially, remain the same I could see a big flashy new core book to go with that, incorporating the key changes of the past few years and updating the story, call it 3.0 call it 2.5, just call it the latest core rules, doesn't really matter. Then cue the next round of updated battletomes starting to appear either just before or after that. Anyway as I said I fully expect this to all be hilariously wrong and proven demonstrably so in no time at all but there you go...

The Sinuous, graceful flowing forms, offset by cruel barbs, the delicate flowing tracery on the chalice like bowl, the bubbling broth of broken bones and blood... Looks Khainite to me. Definitely not any Destruction faction, or indeed Order (barring Daughters of Khaine), of Chaos I could only really see Slaanesh suiting the design but whilst the overall structure would certainly fi the Hedonites, in my mind the pot of gore makes it a bit of a stretch. If it's Death then it doesn't suit Ossiarch, Nighthaunt or the Flesh Eater Courts, I could be persuaded it's something to do with Soulblight.

let's be generous and say too much Googling 'Slaves to Darkness'... still you might want to clear your browser's cache and history... 🤔

Personally I can see how they came to the decision of what goes into this box reasonably easily. Let's imagine we're assembling a GSG Start Collecting Box. OK, first things first let's say we want it to just include models that were part of the new release last year, after all those are what we're most proud of and show off the range to best effect. Right that done let's remove from consideration any 'Unique' models, so if people buy more than 1 box they can still use everything in it. Sensible right? Ok so that get's rid off... Skragrott The Loonking Mollog's Mob Zarbag's Gitz Ok, I'll take a liberty here as they're not unique as such but pretty close and so we can bin the... Gobbapalooza Next up models that are new but probably too big/expensive for a SC box (sure you get similar sized models in some sets but I'd argue they're mainly old models not ones from the past year or so), so that gets rid off... Mangler Squigs w or w/o Loonboss Dankhold Troggoth/Troggbos Right, so we will need a Hero model in this set, but we've already got rid of most of them leaving us just three options, the Loonboss, the Fungoid Cave Shaman or the Loonboss on Giant Cave Squig. The guy on the squig literally only got released last week as a standalone miniature so let's rule him out straight away. I guess you could make a good case for either of the other two but the Loonboss both feels more generic (useful for multiple box buying) and of course his big banana head is on the cover of the battletome. He's literally the poster grot for the faction so he just gets the nod here... Loonboss on Giant Cave Squig Fungoid Cave Shaman Loonboss Right we need some battleline in this box, Squig Hoppers are conditional battleline whereas Squig Herd are always battleline, so it makes sense to include them, also you get lots of hoppers/bounders in the Battleforce set, which is still available, in the new Warcry set, and in the Looncurse set so Squig Herd seems to be the obvious choice. Squig Hoppers / Boingrot Bounders Squig Herd Finally we need one remaining unit to fill up the box, I'd argue that Fanatics and Sneaky Snufflers could be considered too niche, as it were, wouldn't make for a particularly eye catching addition and they respectively feature in the Battleforce and Warcry sets. That would also make it a solely Grot box which doesn't really represent the diversity of the faction. So that just leaves Rockgut Trogoths, which have the advantage of being conditional battleline, showcasing the full (new) range and they're also nice big sized models so you feel like you're getting something chunky for your money to throw down on the table... Fanatics Sneaky Snufflers Rockgut Trogoths So there you have it, thanks to me having an article that I need to have written by this afternoon that I really can't face doing until the last minute I have scientifically proven why the contents of this box is as it is. As for a lack of synergy, personally I think outside of people that like to fetishise spreadsheets that doesn't hugely matter to most people and almost certainly not Gloomspite Gitz players/collectors!

I guess it’s unprecedented but I really, really hope the vast amount of noise I’m seeing urging GW to make that Catachan model more widely available pays off. It’s just so good, far too good to be almost impossible to get for most people. Dumb exclusives! Anyway super tempted by the Gloomspite SC. not that I need more Squigs, I think this box would bring me up to about 70 of the buggers which means I could have 7 units of 10 each in a different 🌈 colour... plus I fancied getting some rock boys at some point and don’t have that loonboss, ah sod it, I’m sold might as well add it to the unbuilt pile of shame...