overtninja

I think a lot of people are sleeping on the LC battalion's potency - between the banners and the battalion ability, you are looking at tactically inserting 3 groups of elite, monster-mulching infantry and a band of angry bros on deer directly into your opponent's back lines that will make their charges on 7s, which is an average roll. And, you'll have a hero who is no slouch, either, and can issue command abilities to make sure you get in and maximize your offensive power. You could potentially combine this with A big Sylvaneth threat, like Durthu or Drycha, or a bunch of sword Kurnoth, and have a giant pile of nonsense which can threaten their army at pretty much all times, forcing them to be defensive or lose their backline. With a few units of Shadow Warriors, and you basically threaten everything part of the field at all times, which means your opponent has to play to hedge you out at all times - which means they are being defensive already. You could tank up on durable models like EG with SotT support to hold the line, and also get some SotW for strong shooting power - and you'd have room for more Kurnoth - even more Kurnoth, or a big pile of Spite-Revenants, or something else appealing. (30 Spites for 200 and Drycha sounds pretty good to me, personally) There's also the option of a Battlemage on Gryphon for mobile spell support. I think it's possible to make a really scary mobile list that will make it very hard for your opponent to plan for your movement or attack vectors, and force them to withhold a lot of their forces to hold objectives for fear of losing them all in your first or second turn.

I'm going to convert all my Glade Guard into them, and then run like 4 groups of them to pop out of terrain and shell anything on backfield objectives into the floor. I'm willing to bank on that kind of strategy, because it means the rest of my army can commit to combat without having to hold back.

I'm with you on the Living City, but I'm going to augment my Wanderers with some Shadow warriors - they can show up wherever with their savage shooting attacks, so you can use them to threaten any objective on the field or pop up and eradicate a troublesome support hero or two en masse. Definitely going to have to buy a Phoenix, though, they are too good not to snap up at this point.

My current plan is to run all the Wanderer scrolls in CoS, along with GG converted into Shadow Warriors, heavily converted Demigryph knights, battle wizards, and probably a beast wizard on gryphon, and maybe even a Hurricanum, or even a Phoenix of some kind, because they are silly even on their own. I might also run an Assassin for surprise punch. I'll certainly be running my army as Living City, and that will let me run a 1/4 of my army as Sylvaneth units - probably Durthu, some Kurnoth hunters, an Arch-Revenant, the new Kurnothoi, or some Tree-Revenants, who could threaten objectives constantly. The breadth of options available within the list is incredibly robust, and rather better than what Wanderers allegiance offers. The remaining Wanderers units have been buffed, and had their points reduced, to the point where I feel confident building an army out of them, especially augmented by the unique city lore and artifacts. I can easily see myself running 10-man Wild Rider units, more than one SotT unit, and nice big blocks of EG, who are dumb strong now. The SotW can generate MW on 6s, and everyone's to-hit rolls will be on 2s almost all the time. Hell yes. I might even take more than one Nomad Prince, since, you know, more of a good thing can't hurt! I'm keen to run Shadow Warriors, since their shooting from cover is an outrage and they can pop up on objectives that are lightly defended, shoot off the defenders, and capture them without too much of an issue, or gang up and shell a key target. I plan to run as many squads as I can, to pounce on anything I care to. I play rather aggressively anyway, and these guys are right up my alley in terms of how aggro they are. Also, I can finally convert some elves riding giant wolves into counts-as Demigryphs, and run a lot of wizards. The CoS book is entirely a win for me, and while I'm sad to lose all my cool Wanderer Heroes, I'm happy to use them as other things and enjoy the delicious buffs and different playstyle.

that's a good option, he should fit just fine up there!

Doesn't look like it, friendsman. You can see the included models in the CoS battletome a few pages back, and the Demigryph warscroll doesn't have an option for a character in the unit. Would have been cool, though!

I actually really like these, they're going to look really goofy on the table, but they'll be a treat to play against.

Looks like I'll have plenty of options for converting my discontinued Wanderers models and such, and I'll be able to make the giant wolf riders that I've been wanting to for like a decade and field them as counts-as demigryphs! I'm really looking forward to giving my Nomad Prince like 30 ablative wounds with his retinue and dancing in front of my enemies, as well as being literally dripping command points to use with my cheap heroes. I'm excited to have a good reason to convert and model again, with so many options and possibilities!

Won't really matter all that much since anyone wanting to play Wanderers is going to end up playing a Living City list, where you can take everything decent about a Wanderers army and a bunch of the goodies of a Sylvaneth army without significant drawbacks. That's the way I intend to field my neato elfy boys moving forward - though I'll have to figure out what to do with my 60 Glade Guard... sad times. Anyway, I'm pretty happy Skaeth's and his leggy friends are Sylvaneth, they seem pretty good at 140, especially if you run lots of Kurnoth, and they've got a pretty fantastic signature spell for any application. I'm Keen to try it on the field! Also, fielding the Skaeth Squad with Sylvaneth and Wanderers together will be pretty solid, I think.

Oh, Skaeth's roudy boys are Sylvaneth allies? Time to Kurnoth I guess!

The kurnothi models look pretty decent in the assembly video, especially from other angles. I did notice that they all appear to have lamentiri like Sylvaneth models, but they aren't ghosty like the noble spirits, so it's hard to place them as either elves or Sylvaneth. Still going to ally them with my Wanderers if they are even remotely okay on the table, though!

The Sheok model looks incredibly derpy (the one with the large branch on his base), but I think part of it is the angle he is shown, and the other is how GW paints faces. I like the rest of them, and hopefully their rules won't be disappointing if I want to use them with my Wanderers. I really do hope they eventually expand the Wanderer faction with all kinds of weirdo elves like these, though - given that they are supposed to range far and wide it wouldn't be surprising if a bunch are mutants with goaty legs and horns and such - and the other elf factions are 'angry bloody snake ladies' and 'soul-lacking bald fish elves'. Plenty of room for neato models!

I'm liking these Deathcast Deathturnals and look forward to playing against them, it's a pretty nice-looking range and it's great that Nagash is getting an "I'm so angry at Sigmar I'm literally going to copy his plan but do it EVEN HARDER" army. Also, I'm a fan of the bone construct look - it's a good fantasy army angle that they've not used yet, and visually striking. Looking forward to beating them into the dirt with my angry trees. :3 @Rogue Explorator I'd agree that Nagash is basically a Saturday Morning Cartoon villain, like Skeletor or maybe Cobra Commander. I always kind of imagine him with that kind of voice anyway. He's on-the-table scary, but otherwise his doomsday nonsense gets thwarted by rats and stuff.

having slogged through the cesspits of 4chan, i will make note that in an additional follow-up post, the original poster clarified that dwarf cannons are gone, but they do get to keep their gyrocopters, which are their artillery - and in turn the cogsmith buffs the irondrakes.

@Rahatlin I'd certainly like to hear more about the aelven factions, particularly the Wanderers, but also the others. I'd like to know what new options there are for those factions, as well as what factions use which characters (if any have changed). Thanks in advance!

Whatever happens, I want to be able to model a badass elf lord on a giant wolf as a mounted general. If the option is given I'll happily convert one - but I'm not touching my Wanderers until I learn more about this book coming out. I've got a full Sylvaneth army that I've built over the last year or so, so Living City is pretty much a no-brainer, but I'd rather run a Ghur-themed normal dudes army so we'll see how that pans out. Also, totally looking forward to using wizards with varied spells, I'd love to get Wildform back to use on my Wild Rider missile.

It seems like a 3rd option for woods to me, since you can either ensure it with a TLA or the Acorn. With my limited experience with our 2nd battletome, I can't say for certain we super need woods to function well, and certainly not the way we used to - and with the new terrain rules getting the woods where you want them is no longer a guarantee. They are certainly still useful, and I've not experimented with tree-based strategies yet, but I suppose if you really needed them, this provides a viable option for you.

If your opponent let the caster sit for 3 turns charging their spirit bomb, they deserve the outcome imo. It honestly seems like it would be possible to pull off, given the wording, but you'd gain almost no advantage for doing so, because you'd be passively charging a spell rather than actively affecting the board. On Alerielle it might be cool to keep her back and charge up her casting to throw down woods or hit people with her personal spell, but otherwise this particular strategy seems a waste of time. On a Branchwych, there might be something here, but you'd be using your cast to buff your casting, instead of summoning anything, which means you'd be at the mercy of your opponent's play to see if it paid off - for 10 Dryads a turn. That's... pretty not worth. EDIT - If you decided to give the caster of Throne of Vines an Artefact so they could cast another lore spell, it could actually be pretty cool - but at that point you should just take the Vesperal Gem and auto-succeed the cast at almost no risk - and the caster wouldn't be stuck in place. This strat is of questional utility in my mind.

The advantage of randomized elements is that you could play the game with the same terrain layout and same models and expect different outcomes each time, both on a turn-by-turn basis and over the course of the game. The disadvantage is that sometimes the game feels out of your control - you can make intelligent plays, all the right moves, and still lose. However, I think that is preferable to the converse, where there are very few randomized elements, so you can pretty quickly math out the expected outcomes of any confrontation and determine the victor before dice are even rolled. For me, WHFB 8th edition got very close to this, especially because it was popular to play with little terrain and generally minimize the amount of random elements in the game, and the community in general strongly disliked anything that was random that they couldn't minimize. It made for a very stale, binary experience, where you basically looked across the table at what your opponents had, or read their lists beforehand, and knew who the victor would be with an 80%+ certainty. This is ultimately unsatisfying for the player, as it basically dissuades actually playing the game if victory or defeat is a foregone conclusion. I think one of the reasons that Warcry has so many unpredictable elements is that it is a very fast game to play, and also a small game. In this kind of situation it's better to make sure each game is dynamic and unexpected outcomes are abundant, or the game would become boring with lots of repeated plays. Since each contest takes 20 or so minutes to play, this is an important and intentional design decision, so that each match feels unique and outcomes are not foregone conclusions, even if one player is clearly losing at any given point. It adds to the excitement, even if it allows one player to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, to the other's displeasure. When this happens, you can simply play the match again and see what happens then. If the game was longer, as in a matched play AoS game, this is not always an option, so the number of random elements in the game should overall be less, so that the players feel more control over the outcome of the game based on their decisions rather than the luck of the dice. In a Warcry game, I think the spectacle and play to play action of the game is more important than the grand strategic moves and long-game play choices that AoS rewards - because your strategy is 'get close and then beat them until they die' with pretty much every force in Warcry.

It wouldn't be outside the realm of possibility, though what keyword would they get? Just Aelf and Order? They certainly wouldn't give them cities keywords by default, anyway. Also, keep in mind that Warhammer Weekly is largely opinion (from high-level tournament players), so it might not be the case. It would be almost unbelievable for them to remove the keywords from all the remaining units so they can't be used in their current allegiance armies (duardin, aelfs and humans alike), especially since they've officially announced that those are still supported at least up until the next GHB.

The dice are really nice! I have been using the ol' big square of tiny dice from WHFB, but I bought the Sylvaneth dice set, since even if you have roll 60 dice in AoS it's easier to read bigger dice anyway - and they look good.

In the case of Skaven, they probably have a sizable backlog of Finecast models still, because AoS 1.0 factionalized them so much that they were a literally unfieldable army for most players, even if they had sizable collections. It's a shame about the Rat Ogres though, they are hideous sculpts and among the first multi-pose plastics produced, and they need greenstuff just to even look decent, especially around the joints.

The miner models are some of my favorite, you should definitely use them as Longbeards, as @Skreech Verminking said. Be sure to put the wheelbarrow in there, too! The cannon could be repurposed for the armament of of some mobile artillery, a la Gyrocopter or even allied Kharadrons (which is going to be a thing, I'm very certain, since their mobile gunships are way better than a stationary war machine anyway). Depending on your whimsy, I'd model it to be some kind of clockwork aparatus on legs, or a dirigible floating gun platform with double cannons (since you have two boxes) or whatever suits you! Just take a look at what you want it to represent before you start putting it together.

Wyldwood = normal wood, so model sans special rules Awakened Wyldwood = our cool bully trees Who is using the Vesperal Gem to put up trees? That's for irresistibly bringing back one Kurnoth Hunter from a 6-man unit every turn and mulching your opponent into the loam

For the ones you list above, outside the Skycutter, which is indeed a strange thing to cut, the rest have very significant overlap rules-wise and in general armament to other units within their own ranges and across the Elf/Dwarf/Human ranges, which is why I suspect they are being cut. Also, The War Altar is festooned with so much Old-World imagery, and features a long-dead Old-World hero, that discontinuing it is entirely justified. The Skycutter's removal is a bit of a mystery, though. I'd guess they want to keep the things with wings and birds as a Stormcast aesthetic, and the mechanical flying things as a Dwarf aesthetic. If they are planning on entirely integrated forces, the role overlap makes cutting it pretty simple. On top of that, it is a ranged shooting chariot, so it's a bit confused on what it wants to do - Ben-Hur things, or shoot them? Kind of like the Ballista Shark for the Idoneth - rather confused about what it wants to do (though more obvious in the shark's case).