DocKeule

It is a link to the international IDK Group on Facebook. Aspect of the Sea: Movement range up from10" to 12" Missile range is reduced from 15" to 12" Trident rend goes up to -3 Sceptre goes down from three attacks to two and now wounds on 4+ instead of 3+ Aspect of the Storm stays the same as far as I can see.

The Eidolons got some minor changes on their profile.

That would be a carbon copy of the Kruleboyz rule. That would surprise me especially if it would come on top of an unchanged forgotten nightmares.

The thing I would deem the most important is the "forgotten nightmares" ability. That is the one thing I hope they don't touch.

So far second and fourth tide stayed the same. The rituals sound nice also. We will see if it is worth bringing the Tidecaster for a second ritual if you don't want to also reverse the tides.

High tide is mentioned in one of the battle tactics. Other than that not much.

Finally... For better or worse.

Back from the game and it went better than expected. We played scenario No. 11 (I don't have the English name) Deployment: Round 1: 2-2 Round 2: 7 - 4 Beginning of round 2: End of round 2: Round 3: The Reavers did a lot of damage in this game. The +1 to hit in the void drum and the re-rolls from Lotann were huge. Not sure how well this list would have done against a list with more damage spells (I avoided a lot of damage by staying away from tarrain most of the time) or with deep striking abilities. I had to keep the core of the army pretty compact to get the buffs on the Reavers. But I will try similar lists in the future if the points allow that.

While we are still waiting on the new book I will have my first game in our regional league tomorrow. I was postponing it in hope the battletome would be out by the end of the month but well... Only the faction is set for this league and the lists can be altered for every game so I will mainly use this to try new stuff and concepts that I haven't played much if at all. I am going to play Seraphon tomorrow and I decided to go as shooty as I can with my collection: My list: If either sharks or turtles would habe been battleline by now I would probably had run the Reavers in one unit of 30 to really have an effect with allout attack. Now I am hoping to have the target within the Leviadon's bubble to get the +1 any way. I am not sure which subfaction I will face tomorrow but I am expecting the "-1 damage" because that is most common around here. That's why I went with a secdond turtle instead of another pair of sharks. I am not sure if I have ever played my Reavers. I owned 20 since 2018 and now I am up to 30 with the new box. I am curious to see how they will do.

How many of you go for the one drop? My instinct now is that being able to use command abilities is too important so I go with the Hunters battalion most of the time and then put the rest in a Battle Regiment.

Agreed. That is the thing I like the most so far that is looks like there are going to be very different list-concepts viable at the same time. And with sharks or turtles becoming battleline in some circumstances we won't be forced to take units that don't fit the theme of the army that often. Although frankly I see a lot of Fuethan shark spam lists coming up.

Yes sure the formation won't be mandatory to use but if we want to use it the way In read the article it has to be three single sharks. And with four bites at best there is a chance to roll a six but it is far from guaranteed.

At least I would interpret it that way.

Mandatory for using this formation as the WarCom article implies. Not impossible but there is nothing to base that hope on yet. That would have been something to mention in a hype article.

The main advantage of bigger shark units is that they can all fight at the same time before the opponent can fight back. If it is really mandatory to take three single models I probably won't use that rule too often.

Indeed. But I would hold any purchases at this point. Again this is interesting because there would be no need to reserve points for additional battleline. So far that looks like the biggest plus to me that the new book will allow very different lists. The Fuethan shark ability is probably a lot weaker that in looks at first glance though. If the article is right that the formation has to consist of three single sharks only one model could benefit from the exploding sixes. Still nice but no game changer. But I am getting increasingly optimistic for the new battletome.

I think 2x10 Thralls is too little to give you a good return on the Thrallmaster. You would run a 110 point hero to support only 260 points. With only 20 point more you could have a third block of Thralls.

Hanging with Lotann.

That I could live with. Maybe even a little more if they change the void drum to a 6+ ward (or even better have a mount-trait to do that). THEN I could see the 500 points even.

Would be pretty bad on the tabletop though. No board control and too few bodies on the objectives. I cannot see the turtle going up that high in points. There would have to be a huge boost in stats and/or abilities to justify another 1+/- 120 points.

"Problem" with two sharks is that it is sometimes not enough to take out the really big targets in one turn. But we will see. The wording is a little suspicious I agree. A hefty point increase could kill the whole thing dead on arrival. A second turtle is already a grey area as far as point efficiency goes. Raising the points by almost a third would make it a no go at least competitively.

I am pretty certain that will be the case. The wording on the new Allopex warscroll only makes sense if a shark unit can have more than two models. For that they would have to be battleline to be reinforced twice. (Or they do something stupid to counter their own new rule like they did with the dragons for SCE). Well this could be interesting. I have tried double turtle before and was pretty happy. Here you would only have to run one eel unit and had your battleline requirements fulfilled. Them talking about "more teasers in the upcoming weeks" dampens my hopes for a quick release though. Not sure about the second part. I have completely deleted units of Gore Gruntas in one swoop last sunday. So with that alone the Thralls have paid for their points. If you have the enemy in the Void Drum bubble and have an Eidolon of the Storm it is 20 Attacks, 2+ (re-rollable) 2+and in that case two damage each. That's nothing to sneeze at. But I get your point though. I had a lot of fights in that tournament where I faced a 2+ save even with rend. And that is why cadence is probaply better that few high rend attacks right now.

Deepstriking Thralls could also be an interesting concept to get them to the targets you want them to hit. But then you also want the supporting heroes to go with them plus you need to find the points for the Soulscryer(s) as well. Only thing I am pretty sure of now is that charging multiple units of Thralls into the opponent's line head on at the same time does not work.

Got my feet wet a little with a more Namarti focused build at a tournament today. Can't say that it went too well though. My list: First match was against SCE and it went OK. But I had a hard time killing anything (between cover, mystic shield and allout defense he had a 2+ save most of the time). And I took a lot of mortal wounds. In The end I lost 25:18 because auf missing one tactic, my strategy, having to monster to kill. Thralls did next to nothing. Second Match was against Gravelords with Nagash and Manfred. I threw the towel by the end of round 3. Again Thralls did very little. I tried to go to Nagash but the war to little space for the sharks, Eidolon and turtle so Stormy did not go in at first and Nagash healed as much as I was doing damage. Third match against Orruks with two Mawcrushers and pigriders. Here the Thralls did a good job killing a lot of pigs. I made a huge mistake charging the Eidolon into one of the Mawcrushers where he did like three wounds and was whiped out. Buteven if I would have still had him I don't think the outcome would have been that much different. I was tabled at the end of the fourt MWs just on the montrous rampage. And their speed even beats us. Oh well... Thralls can do something but you desperately need them to strike first (apart from getting into the right engagement). If they don't they are pretty much doomed. So unless it is high tide you don't really want more than one Thrall unit in melee. Eidolon of the Storm once again war a great support hero but other than that in my experience he just sucks and I had that happen to me again and again. His stats look good on paper but again an HQ unit be barely does a few wounds. I do consider swapping him for another unit of two sharks (especially with the new shooting profile). At least running Dhom Hain Lotann was pretty redundant. I could re-roll 1s to hit on the charge any way and (again) if the Thralls didn't charge and attack first there was not much left to hit with. Also keeping several units in his 12" bubble isn't easy especially if a unit charges). You could try to build a Namarti glass-deathstar but that would be very stationary and I guess you would burn through those Namarti in few turns. So meh. With a mixed list like that ideally I would want to stall the opponent with the Ishlaen and pin them down, have the Thralls charge in and delete the target and then repeat. Problem is the Thralls often won't reach the units they would want to fight. Well no announcements for the battletome to go into pre-order on saturday. Next event I am going to attend will be in six weeks. Maybe until then we will know more. My instinct right now is to go back to mainly unsing Akhelians again.

Fyreslayers got their first peek into the new battletome today. So the books will probably be announced for pre-order this sunday or next sunday.