Captain Marius

Its a purple dragon, like a mini Malerion. Shadow Aelf faction for sure! That'll be five Realms with Order factions covered, Heavens Stormcasts, Fire Fyreslayers, Life Sylvaneth, Metal Kharadrons, Shadow Shadowkin (?)... now thats an alliance!

Maybe Ardboyz should be battleline when a keyword MEGABOSS is your general? Maybe Chaos monsters should be able to be marked, OR should be like auxiliaries that dont break allegiance (see also gargants, troggoths, ironweld, thunderscorn, collegiate arcane, etc). It was a bit of a blow in the Tzeentch book for them to refer to monsters as walking tzaangor libraries only for you not to be able to take them without breaking allegiance. I dont expect to see a fix in the khorne book, but i do expect sweeping changes in GH2!

I'm chuffed with the new Khorne book, I'm glad theyve just got on with it got the two core factions sorted before they plough on with all the crazy new stuff! I wouldnt bet on Nurgle until the end of the year and Slaanesh end of next year though. GW have no reason to rush through the Big Four when there is plenty of other sfuff to explore. I do like having no idea what theyll come out with next, who would have guessed that April would have a brand new faction range with NO old models in it, AND an update for a book less than 20 months old with no accompanying minis!

I dont think percentages are needed - if you want to max out on heroes/behemoths you should be able to. Its a theme. Same with shooting - if shooting is too strong it should be repointed. Kairic Acolytes and Pink Horrors are well expensive for what you get - maybe other shooty stuff should be increased in points cost to match? The scenarios themselves are also good balancing mechanisms as they ensure that a balanced army should have a good mix of troops and heroes. A scenario where only BL score could be useful as it would increase the value of the basic stuff. Similarly more deployment zone shenanigans like in Escalation would prevent players using their optimal setup all the time and add further considerations to list-building. None of this is very revolutionary, i think we can expect point tweaks and new scenarios as a given! The only sticking point for me is a simple way to get a Gargant etc into an Ironjaws army (or Mutalith into Tzeentch army etc) without losing allegiance... I think maybe factions should be classified as Core and Auxiliary, so if you took models from two Core factions youd default to your basic Alliance abilities, but you could add models from one (or more) Aux factions without losing it. Aleguzzlers, Thunderscorn, Masterclan, Deathlords, Soulblight(?), Chaos Monsters, Ironweld, Eldritch Council etc i think could all fit in this category (and more besides). Some could be Core AND Aux (Eldritch Council, Deathlords etc). Hmm i might try this out! Need more allegiance abilities for races, united daemons, united free peoples etc first tho to make it more worthwhile!

Ive not seen any rumours that Necromunda is on its way at all let alone next month. Adeptus Titanicus is the next specialist game out from what I understand reading War of Sigmar. I would expect to see this just after the duardin release, altho GW have been very good at surprises already this year (Hammerhal and new Stormcasts. Heres one I havent seen discussed much, Stormkeeps are popping up in the fluff more and more, can we expect an Order fortress to rival the Dreadhold?

A tiny bit more flyer fun evidence: theres a hint of a 'vertical' battle report next month in the letters page of marchs wd.

In the Shadows over Hammerhal book it shows the 'river' that splits the city is actually a massive canyon with a magma river at the bottom. The docks are at the top of the cliffs and are reached by airships and skycutters. The illustration of Cinderfall shows a bunch of these airships - they are massive. It also seems that the Scourge Privateers also use air travel although it is not explicitly stated. From this I infer that we might be seeing a lot more flying stuff for many factions!

Looks like Custodes codex is tiny. No mention of Sisters of Silence so im gonna guess theyll be on preorder the week after with their own mini dex, pushing duardin back even further! With a bit of luck all the Talons stuff will be one week tho.

Player Swindon UK Captain Marius PM on TGA or SWAT club forum