Scurvydog

I think Total War Warhammer 3 does them justice pretty well, with their 2 legendary lords focusing on different aspects. The butcher with the mad from hunger gorgers, paints them more in this endlessly hungry horror image. At the same time we got Greasus the overtyrant, a rich bloke being carried around in a supersized wheelchair. In a world with FeC being a thing, I think the Greasus approach is more unique, he actually works with diplomacy to unite the ogres under his rule and they also seem like the most "human" in their application of intellect. This also plays into their mercenary mechanics, material value is a big deal for them, they actually like to decorate things and apply some level of "craftmanship" into their gear, unlike Ironjawz who just bashes it into a semi useful shape with their bare hands. Despite their hunger they also seem better at living with other species, they have hunters using sabretusks for hunting, and various beasts they ride, which they seem more connected to than other destruction races, who usually goes for breaking down their warbeasts. Playing them in the total war game, forming gunlines of leadbelchers and ironblasters, with hunters outflanking and Ironguts forming a solid anvil, they feel almost more like a human faction than. In that regard I could see the Underguts tribe being a posterboy for the next wave of Ogors. At least I think that would be interesting to see, but the new primal hunter guy suggests otherwise, even if that seems to step on the toes of the bonesplitterz theme a bit.

Feel like Ogors got somewhat of an identity issue in AoS. They don't really fall into any category of their own, they are sort of like comical violent guys like Orruks, but they are also a little bit horror, but FeC does this aspect far more interesting. We also already got the monster hunters in Bonesplitterz. They do have what appears to be the best "technology" on the destruction side, with their cannons and such, at least it is their most unique aspect from that grand alliance. It clashes a bit with their nomad lore though to carry around all this heavy artellery equipment and they have overall made 0 impact in the lore so far, expect from Excelsis where they at the behest of the loonking got hired as mercs, but betrayed the defenders from within. As we also got an ogor in the cursed city, they sort of balance this grey area between order and destruction, so I think this is the most interesting part of them so far.

Was super suprised to see Owlcat working on a rogue trader game. Those guys know their stuff and improved a lot over kingmaker to path of the righteous most recently, so they seem a perfect fit to make a deep RPG based on rogue trader. Disappointed to not see any AoS, but they might be holding of on that a while yet. Would be sweet if Owlcat works with GW some more and dips into AoS next, that is precisely the type of game that could really bring the mortal realms to life and explore a lot of interesting lore.

Unfortunately it seems GW likes to have people to buy unique models for every single thing they might want to try. The best book that comes close to this flexibility right now would be soulblight, as that book has some really cool sub factions with a lot of meat on them. It is not as flexible on a per model basis, but a SBG army can be many different things, while you know what you are going to get when you see your opponent is bringing Ironjawz, as they play the same way all the time. The 3rd edition tomes are even worse with this, as the sub factions are being completely stripped down to bare bones. This is the opposite direction of fun. Core battalions, battle tactics and grand strategies and all that, none of them really help encourage expenrimentation or variation unfortunately. I think what you are talking about could easily be achieved by the sub faction system, but with GW dumbing this down now to the absolute minimum, it seems to be further away than ever, that we will see fun alternative ways to use the same models.

I do agree to some extent. Playing mostly competitive matched play like I do, the game quickly shows some of these flaws, which some of those mentioned "haves" tomes double down on, as they force a very specific meta, while leaving some list types in the dirt for anyone who wants an ok chance in a take all comers singles tournament at least. To take your night lords example the new nighthaunt sort of got this vibe going. Legions of Nagash previously also had some bravery bombs, with banshees, throne and horroghast. This playstyle can never be balanced though, as GW insists on the silly design of death and demons being bravery 10, everything involving this stat will always end up either pointless against these armies or crazy overwhelming against especially poor destruction with terrible bravery. I do not play HH but my impression is that by all the armies being from a very similar baseline, it is much easier to balance around "flavor". You almost have the same armies copy pasted, with very common baseline values which are then tweaked to interact with each other in interesting ways around the core rules and this baseline template if you will. AoS on the other hand is all over the place with crazy armies and model lines which are in no way comparable to each other. This means there is very little "baseline" to go by and tweak, instead it is just one big blender, which in the end might end up creating odd lopsided fights, like IDK basically keeping the shooting meta in check by itself. It might not then just be a core rules issue, but as some armies and factions are so skewed in some extremes, it creates less options for a well rounded army, as mentioned bravery is not something to play for, as it might work great against orruks but useless when you meet Tzeentch or OBR. Also armies with only ultra fast flying units like dragons or IDK, can simply engage right away whereever they please, which means the basic infantry dude has little influence on the game in regard to movement. There is then basically no point in all these gimmicks and potentially interesting playstyles, when the super hard and super fast method works so well. I have recently picked up on Path to Glory with some friends who were bored of the competitive scene, that has turned out to be more interesting, as we are forced into bringing more well rounded forces. GHB 22 promises to bring more focus on the troops, if that is truly the case it might be more interesting again, instead of the super fast smash armies which aims to see who is dead by a potential turn 2 double turn.

I feel the same, although I am painting more up right now, just to do an underdog challenge really. They have this sort of incomplete feel like LRL before wave 2 (even though nobody uses those models...). They are very "top heavy" with most of their cool things being heroes, and others which hardly fits with the army at all, like the Sloggoth that by all means seems like a gitz model og also only used by Gitz 9/10 times. A GHB can fix them a bit, but does not change they lack some few key unit types. They have basi infantry, xbow dudes and weak chaff, all with poor saves and mobility and only 1 of them default battleline, resulting in almost 600 pts of mandatory battleline with only 1 option for xbow batteline. They do not have cavalry, "heavy" infantry or monstrous infantry to name some stand outs. Ironjwz of course suffer from a lack of variety as well, although they still feel a bit more "complete" in their playstyle and theme. All of them suffer from only 3 sub factions and limited spell lores and artifacts, also no endless spells or terrain pieces makes it so bare bones it almost feels like those additions to GHB we saw for armies going from 1st to 2nd edition. No idea why they decided to do this to orruk players, while even an army like Fyreslayers still get their own book. Ironjawz on their own should be plenty popular according to stats to have their own book.

I sure hope so, got 6 mancrushers collecting dust most of the time, a new book to rebalance the disparity between bringing 1 mega or 3 mancrushers would be nice, I think everyone would prefer seeing SoB armies with a mix of big and small guys instead of just the usual 4 megas. That upgrade sprue could end up being the single most important new sprue of the edition

Nighthaunt just got a small handful of new models and with Sylvaneth getting a significant release soon and then StD, what might the next one be? Seraphon would be an obvious choice and if the latest rumor engine spear turns out to indeed be Seraphon, that might align pretty well with a spring release 2023 for them, as the next big thing a few months after StD. Still hoping for some updated resin Ogors, a SoB named hero or armored mancrushers and OBR archers with a monster hero, that would be the dream

I don't mind if they go for a conquistador like "default" look and possibly provide a lot of bitz in the kits to create units from various realms. They mention "mortals" but I wonder how much will be humans and how they will handle the other races in the cities. Frankly it seems quite redundant to have more aelves in there at this point, while the duardin got a somewhat larger hole in their design space between fyreslayers and KO to fill. More interesting would be if they actually mixed them completely in entirely new units, perhaps with a few specialized elites of each race, but mixed basic infantry, archers and such. War marchines that actually mixed different technology would also create a unique look not really seen anywhere else. It can only be better than the haphazard warcry releases for StD for their mortal followers, oh boy what a mess.

*Cough* Stormcast *cough* Minimal impact from allegiance abilities there 😛 Although it might be more true to a degree for the rest. I'd say orruks are about the same as before in that regard, Maggotkin and what we have seen from nighthaunt for sure got everything baked into allegiance abilities, although IDK and Fyreslayers seem about the same as before, but just more streamlined, if anything they took the deeper sub allegiance and battalion rules and baked some essentials into the overall allegiance or respective warscrolls, while generally purging rerolls all over the place. I think skaven will be the same, and at least with so many warscrolls they should have something decent in there, like Stormcast with 1 S tier warscroll out of every 10 useless ones The new warscrolls we have seen seem cool enough on their own, like the screaming bell having a verminlord summon risk/reward rule seem very skaven like and any warscroll with a built in ward better than 6 up is by default clear of the garbage pile these days (almost always). Sylvaneth looking very hot so far, got a feeling we will be seeing them a lot in the near future kicking tail in events.

After having done a series of tournaments with very good results with more meta armies, it has kind of gotten stale so wanted to restart my Kruleboyz project and try to see how well I can do with an underdog faction. Having a bit of everything right now, this is a list that I think is sort of all around ok: Allegiance: Kruleboyz- Warclan: Big Yellers- Grand Strategy: Hold the Line- Triumphs: InspiredLeadersSnatchaboss on Sludgeraker Beast (315)*- General- Command Trait: Egomaniak- Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact)- Mount Trait: Smelly 'Un- Lore of the Swamp: Sneaky MiasmaBreaka-Boss on Mirebrute Troggoth (180)Killaboss on Great Gnashtoof (170)- Artefact: Mork's Eye PebbleSwampcalla Shaman with Pot-grot (105)*- Lore of the Swamp: Nasty HexSwampcalla Shaman with Pot-grot (105)*- Lore of the Swamp: Choking MistBattleline10 x Gutrippaz (180)**10 x Gutrippaz (180)**10 x Gutrippaz (180)**9 x Man-skewer Boltboyz (360)*- Reinforced x 2Units10 x Hobgrot Slittaz (80)ArtilleryBeast-skewer Killbow (130)Core Battalions*Warlord**Hunters of the HeartlandsAdditional EnhancementsArtefactTotal: 1985 / 2000Reinforced Units: 2 / 4Allies: 0 / 400Wounds: 141Drops: 11 I wont be able to dictate 1st turn order reliably anyway with Kruleboyz, so might as well get some value instead. With the low bravery all around, I sort of wanted a killboss around, which is also one of the few faster units. 5 pts prevents me from trading the boss and killbow with a vulcha boss and hobgrot unit. The killbow is not popular, but people are scared of it anyway, so it is sort of a distrction piece and with grinning blades it can just be easily removed turn 1. In the current meta of stormcast bow lists, snakes spam and so on, I think grinning blades adds a lot of value, even though big yellers is nice for the +3" range and would allow some gutrippaz to reinforce, I think it brings more value if I face any heavy shooting army, to be relatively safe round 1. Of course both faction and the eye pebble will be utterly useless against some factions, like ironjawz or fyreslayers, but I think they help out so much against our otherwise worst matchups. Any thoughts and ideas on the list? Will join a 3 match 1 day event in June, so I got some time to make adjustments. Getting a big bird in there somehow would be fun, but not sure any of them brings enough value for the points.

It is probably going to be FS and IDK in Feb, and then we might see DoK and NH in April. The 2 mystery tomes probably for June and then that might be followed up by a GHB and balance update. Then perhaps another DoK book, then a chaos book and perhaps then another DoK book or campaign update

The Big Bird is a pretty handy unit for Kruleboyz exactly as it is both a fast and flying monster, point are tight though, but I think he has a place, could switch with Gobsprakk for this purpose as well. The army is not all that competitive though no matter what, it ironically is pretty well balanced and has pros and cons and need to sacrifice stuff to gain other stuff, problem is some other armies, who also happen to do MWs on 6s a lot, can do everything without compromise

Basically this. Kragnos can be fun, but the list loses a bunch of wounds. Kragnos is very matchup dependant and can wreck some armies while getting 1 shot against others with enough MW output, the 18 wounds for 720 pts and only 6+ ward can drop fast. The charge range is a big deal to create mind games, as it makes a big difference in many battle plans on where the opponent feels "safe". I'd say the 4 big guys with either 2 artifacts or as a 1 drop is the safe choice. Kragnos will be more lopsided in some matches and will probably give a less consistent performance, however it might also be more fun.

So from what I gave seen of the new rules, it looks pretty cool actually, even though it might not boost OBR to Tier 1 levels. Heroic Actions: Relentless Leadership: Free OBR command without using a RDP, no roll needed. Necromantic Mastery: Mortisan only. If first spell cast by mortisan hero is a success, it can not be unbound New commands: Unstoppable advance: Same as before basically Reknit Constructs: _Basically heroic recovery for any OBR unit. Used in the end of movement phase and unit must have been stationary and outside of 3" engagement. Can heal or resurrect d3 wounds. Unflinching coordination: Used in combat phase by a hero, a nearby unit that has not yet fought can fight right after the hero. Basically like the new ability SGB vamps on foot got, just costs 1 RDP here, but can be used by any hero. Grand strategy Does not matter, requires that deathriders or mortek guard are full size unit at end of combat, pointless next to hold the line (why do GW make these?). New tactics Seem good though, all 3 will be doable in many lists: Make a charge with a deathrider unit Use reknit command on 2 units and bring back at least 1 model in each (automatic for 2 mortek guard units). Kill hero or monster. If destroyed by a harvester it gives +1 point. No earth shattering changes that will really bring them up. The continued lack of access to the generic commands will hurt them too much still, no reposition, unleash hell, reroll charges etc is just too much to miss out on. Still no stacking of multiple commands, no bludgeon + shield wall for example.