Scurvydog

Well that requires a chaos caster who gets a chance to cast anything The traits from Ravagers wont give you anything really, they are not that good and only the karkadrak is a hero that really benefits from them anyway that will have an impact in a fight, the artifacts are also poor, so grasping plate and having varanguards also spread mark of chaos seems better to me, but there is a case for both of course. In knights allegiance you can also give them the trait giving friendlies rerolling charges, which can benefit chariots, knights and karkadrak a lot.

With those models going Ravagers will not really give you anything either, empty throne at least give you another hero in the varanguards and the command abilities to bring 3 of them back on a 5+ or reduce the opponent count for objectives might help. This can of course fight and if facing a similar type of friendly list will probably make for a fun game, but if you face anyone running half decent higher tier armies it will hurt quite a bit. I'd say it is good if you just align a bit with your opponent.

With deathguard already out of the bag now, it would be a bit strange if they got a teaser event now at least. Maggotkin is an older tome and something new there might be coming, I could see them making something similar to poxwalkers for AoS. As for decadence it is obviously slaanesh, but maybe, just maybe we will be seeing a AoS/40k big multi kit this time Fulgrim/Child could be interesting. Mortal Slaanesh stuff seems to be in scope at least.

The chosen I will agree are very lackluster and serves no purpose in even a semi optimized list. Warriors, knights and varanguard all got their place though. Chaos warrior units are good anvils, especially with their reroll saves at 10+ models makes for a tanky 15 man unit, 270 pts for 30 wounds with rerolling 4+ saves and 5+ save against mortal wounds is pretty decent. Their base attack profile is not great, but can become decent with buffs and marks. Especially in a plague touched warband these guys will bring good value with their ability to tank and as a result get the chance to reflect more MWs. Marauder often end up with bravery issues, especially keeping a hero in range when they charge 10"+ is very difficult and chaos warriors needs less hero support to stick around. Chaos knights are decent for their points now, they are not stand out army defining units as they once were and like hearthguard, witch aelves etc are for others, but they are a solid battleline choice. Varanguard needs to be built around, but empty throne varanguard are great, being heroes makes it much easier to spread around mark auras and the grasping plate artifact is a game changer entirely, it is just so good. If brough along Archaon in an everchosen host, their damage output can become nuts. Running an empty throne list with Varanguards and knights, with warriors as an anvil can work fine, of course marauders can do the trick as well, but the warriors are far from unplayable at least.

Like a statue of an Olympian god. There is just no contest really

This points to a chariot or something similar. The quiver is too big fit any personally carried by a single stormcast, the shape of the quiver also suggests it is mounted . They are clever with the angles at times, but this one would stick out a lot of this is on the back or belt of some guy for sure.- Different arrows looks interesting as well, just added detail or maybe a shifting profile thing?

The wardens battalion seems like a stretch at 140, I guess it should end up being 2 CP in average + 1 and artifact. I don't like it being så random... The rest is decent, although a shame it is based on being even less mobile. 4" move paladins with no deep strike? Ugh.

All fine and good if the army had anything else going for it than the hero auras... Warshrines not being heroes and extending buffs removed one of the cool possible effects of this allegiance. And no artifacts at all seems like complete lazyness. They even forgot to give StD their own headline in the index of the book. Also undivided being mandatory for the battalion makes it even worse than it already is and horribly overcosted for 140 pts, wauv!

Seems these rules were written by someone who did not read the battletome and forgot that artifacts are based on the damned legions and not a general thing... makes the battalion far worse by having no artifact options... ugh disappointed

The difference is staggering though, with some webshop selling around 25% below GW's own prices, even physical stores using GW prices at least have some kind of membership savings (often 10%) around here, so going to GWs own webshop to order anything seems like throwing money out of the window and does not make much sense. Even regarding stock, I'd rather save 25% and wait for the 3rd party retailer to order it home for me. I ordered a Mega Gargant from a UK 3rd party retailer and got it send for free to my door in a different country and it was still roughly 30% cheaper than just buying at GW. Why anyone at all shops there I don't know and why GW does not align pricing somehow baffles me.

I can see the point of this and boy would my wallet be happy, but it also sounds incredibly boring as well. There has been battletomes yes, but actually very little in terms of new AoS models. In general I'd love to see GW give current factions more attention and update stuff, that should still sell some models without messing too much with rulesets all the times. New units means new rules, which requires expansion books at the very least with the current model. I'd love to see a more elegant way to add to existing books with new rules and models. The Tome Celestial from WD is pretty cool, but I don't think the magazine format is quite right for these things. GW loves releasing all these warbands for the specialist games, as they can just put the rules self contained in a box and ship it. If we could get a similar thing for AoS that would be great. Add a warscroll card or whatever, otherwise it takes so darn long for "your dudes" to get anything new and cool without regular edition updates.

I can't help but look at the recent lore from Broken Realms regarding: "Bokkrog rolled his head from side to side with a series of loud cracks, shook out his arms and gave a few practice swings of his beloved spiky mace." It is probably a tad too big and more a club than mace, I just want new Ironjawz, they really lack models in the lineup... The Clobbering also mentions a "Basher Armour" for this guy, I wonder why they point out that name for his armour.

With nothing but Gryph hounds and Aetherwings, you really need to convert any stormcast into what looks like the random pokemon trainers on the low level roads from any pokemon game

At least the battalion as they say can ambush from the tables edges, which is really useful to do with long range judicators in an army where the only allegiance ability is deep striking anywhere... wait...

Tried out a fun 2k Knights of the Empty Throne list this weekend, with a 6 man unit varanguard as the general, mark of khorne, grasping plate artifact. I will just have to say that the grasping plate adds soooo much utility and makes it super dangerous, as you can engage within 6" you can really manipulate the combat phase, you can even just move and run to be within 6" and you can simply pile in and attack when you wish, saving a CP to change a run roll to 6 could be important, as you simply have to be within 22" to fight something. You can then attack with something else first and then pile in the Varangards later for devastating effect. I will say it again if you are just within 22" you can at least with a CP for the run roll guarantee to get into combat AND not get hit before you decide to activate first, that is huge! Also we are getting a box with 3 chariots, a box I would never have guessed to see. They tease that the battalion makes one of them into Rokar Gresh, so it sounds like a Chariot hero. Also with 4 new allegiances mentioned (sounds like a lot). I am interested in seeing where this is going, could open up some new interesting list maybe. Heroes in chariots are badass though, I think anyone can agree on that, the questions is, what on earth does that battalion needs to do to make anyone take 3 chariots...

If you really really dislike someone you can give them the set with 3 StD chariots

Only 1 hero will create serious issues in several battleplans, even though on paper, 1 stomper and 9 mancrushers could seem ideal for pure output. I would probably bring a Kraken Eater, Stomper 1 unit of 3 gargants and then 1-1-1 or 2-1, to increase board presence a bit. Stomper tribes does 2 things well and 1 is horde clearing and the second is improving mancrushers through commands. They also have the best artifact by far in the cestus, I would always take that, it provides so much staying power. For trait, I'd say shouty is in general the best one and always good to take, it allows more rock throwing or getting those auto 6s to run or reroll 1s to hit, which can make a huge difference at the right time more than anything else. The Kraken Eater gets no benefit for being in a stomper tribe, but it gives you 1 extra hero and opens up some play options with the kick objective ability. Without him, the list will have huge problems in plans like 3 places of power for example.

They might surprise somehow, but updates to anvils and shooting lists was not really what SC needed. Also outflanking sounds like a poor battalion for a shooting force which already has deep striking as the only allegiance ability... I really don't care for that set at all. How about a battalion that makes sense with sort of sensible choice of units improving paladins or general stormcast melee capabilities? Nah that would make too much sense. Deepkin getting new warscrolls for their lesser used beasties, mount traits and new battalions sounds way better.

Like 90% of all releases for the AoS setting these days it is most likely from a Warband

Tough question and probably not with a clear winner. Some pros and cons of Nurgle battalion instead of khorne battalion: Nurgle Pros: Less drops and less units needed, so can combine warriors to 15 man unit (benefitting from 10+ models reroll saves). Battalion is arguably more useful all around and makes all units annoying to deal with and attack. Varanguards of Nurgle will be more survivable vs shooting due to -1 to hit. Sorceror can share the mark with the rest of the army. Nurgle Warshrine prayer for +1 save is really powerful, especially when put on the 6 man varanguards, quite easily giving them a 2+ rerollable save, -1 to be hit with shooting 4+ ignore spells and 6+ ignore wounds from warshrine. Nurgle Cons: A great deal less raw output, losing reroll 1s to hit and especially +1 to wound aura reduces damage quite a bit and the +1 dmg on 6 to wound from nurgle does not make up for this anywhere close. The lack of damage is felt bad in a StD army with not so great output, the khorne mark and battalion allows them to actually punch a hole in an enemy army, and a nurgle army might lack the ability to get rid of key targets fast enough.

After the Meta watch article, expect the grand reveal of a KO, Tzeentch and Fyreslayers christmax boxes this year, what a coincidence!

GW has been really terrible at balancing especially sub factions for some armies, causing huge issues. Also sometimes an artifact or battalion combos it out of control, despite the core allegiance rules and warscroll rules working quite alright. KO domination is very much helped by the Ziflin + spell in a bottle combo on top of the other solid rules, without those 2 insanely oppressive mechanics, the army would simply be great and not an oppressive nightmare to face, if they include those things. Khorne they gave a sub faction with fight twice command. When you do that you break a melee centric book, anyone should know this... That instantly makes demon heroes the only viable coice, which makes bloodthirsters the only viable choice for damage in the book. Then they add a battalion to improve this. In Wrath of the Everchosen what did they do there? Make a sub faction allowing more blood thirsters???? what GW... what are you thinking!? OBR has terrible sub factions, either take the 1 all the special characters are from or take the other one with all the best buffs, artifact and trait, while the rest are niche or trolling choices. Even the Stalliarch lords niche can be covered quite effectively by a battalion instead. This OBR problem also extends to Stormcast who has terrible sub faction rules and only 1 being used, and this 1 sub faction (Anvils) results in the entire book favoring ranged combat, terrible terrible design. All the named characters are then put in the most boring faction like the OBR which feels extremely limiting. I hope GW will review this and make it all more consistent. It is very annoying that some books get a healthy mix of ok factions, some get trash and 1 faction the entire book hinges on, some get mount traits, some do not, some do not even have sub factions... it is a mess and should be streamlined between books in a better way.

Got my Warstomper mercenary done. The very strange substitute when Archaon is out of town.

Oh no not the twirly toes dance

It will break the bank, but I could see either 40k chaos renegade knight parts or parts from a Lord of skulls making a crazy evil steampunk gargant