[Nico's Thoughts on the General's Handbook 2017]

Nice writeup. I'll vomit out some notes in your comments if you don't mind.

Skryre Allegiance (esp. focused on their heroes) without new spells seems like wasted effort sadly. They have a 4+ Look out Sir! trait that's cute (it even seems to work on Spark backfires) but at the end of the day an Arch-Warlock can only do so much.

Slaves to Darkness... seems pretty meh. But we have god-specific allegiances (all four soon) so StD didn't even need this. Slaves aren't taking anyone's breath away with their warscrolls but I do love the sheer amount of options they have now for allegiances (and I don't think they're picking this one).

Slaanesh is a little sketchy, the initially obvious combos being held together by command ability stacking. The Seekers factions seems slightly unplayable in scenarios based on camping objectives. 6th edition Frenzy (almost) with 360° LoS... yeesh. I love the Fallacious Gift artifact though. It's not actually that great in most situations (and as MtG players well know punisher mechanics are not something to rely on) but it's definitely amusing.

Chaos allegiance sucks even more now... but Dark Avenger (situationally) and Cunning Deceiver are still there. Could've been worse! (read as: Could've been Order!)

Freeps: Indomitable stacks with cover, unlike Staunch Defender. Pretty significant. Writ of Dominion is tasty as well. There's also a serious error in the Free Peoples Command Traits. #3 should obviously read "You receive an extra Triumph to forget about during the battle." Also I'm salty that Valten is gone now that the Allegiance is pretty good.

Darkling Covens look supremely underwhelming. I really wanted them to be at least interesting.

Total Conquest deployment zone: Wtf? It's seemingly inaccurately drawn but objective locations are based on centers of quarters and deployment zones based on horizontal thirds with each player taking half the board +/-  a quarter of the table vertically in each third. You then can't deploy closer to the dividing line than 9". Does that sound confusing to you? It bloody well looks confusing on the diagram. I get that GW don't want to pigeon hole table sizes (hence no guide distances based on 6x4) but I don't think a bit more guidance is asking too much. Remember John Oliver's bit about squiggly lines on the map making for squiggly people? I think this is going to make for some pretty squiggly wargamers.

Can we stop with the "Rules of one" gimmick? It's not that clever and it's not going to sell any more books.

[Nico takes on Heat 3]

Did you see much of the FOTM filth on the tables? Get the impression H3 was a bit more laid back than H1 or SCGT.

Nice reports as usual, cheers.