Mutton

As someone who played Fantasy in the old days, Ballistic Skill is a terrible game design concept. It's an arbitrary number that forces you to remember/reference the ACTUAL number you need to roll to hit. It's the epitome of complexity for complexity's sake. It should just be (n)+ to hit. We learned this long ago. Obviously, it's not a huge deal, but to me it just screams of leaning harder on the nostalgia bait rather than trying to reinvent a better game out of a ragged, mediocre one. Don't even get me started on the "rerolling higher BS" ******.

Willing to bet that at least half of the population clamoring for Old World are people who never played WHFB but are deeply invested in Total War.

Because these narrative stories rarely portray them as anything more than endlessly raging mooks. It's similar to how humans/Cities are almost defined by their role as cannon fodder. Technically they both have intricate societies and motivations, but you'd never know it most of the time.

I'm a die-hard Destruction player, and I actually like Kragnos. He needs better lore than just "argh, me angry, me smash," but at least he's an attempt at something more creative for the Destro alliance. Even I'm sick of seeing the exact same orcs/gobbos/giants/etc. we've been inundated with for decades. Kragnos 9/10, Lore 3/10.

Big Waagh is the opposite. It's the high life for Orruks. They get to cherry pick all of the best units from the others and use them with great allegiance abilities. Big Waagh drags down the other subfactions by making it difficult to balance them without lifting BW into the stratosphere.

The most egregious slap in the face was them releasing an awesome new Avatar of Khaine with Eldar, but not giving it any rules for DoK...despite them also having the Avatar of Khaine. But no, we're stuck with the tiny T-posing idiot.

Reminds me of the classic Gloomspite tease we had around Christmas to bring in the army refresh.

If by good you mean playable and fun in a narrative context, yeah. It's horrible if you're looking for something more competitive. But like you said, the Armies of Renown really shouldn't be too good.

With the rumors circling around the idea of 5 Dawnbringer books instead of 4, I'm curious to see which the next will be. There's been such a constant teasing for The Summer King, it's hard to imagine him being anything other than the finale. But we also have mentions of widespread Khornate mobilization. I'm wondering if the next book will be the Summer King, but the final, semi-secret 5th book will be Khorgas Khul's ascendance, bringing him back into the lore in a major way. This would pave a path for the alleged Vandus remaster--the two being rivals. OR... ...I know everyone has basically decided that the 4th edition box will be SC vs Skaven...but what if it's a revamp of the 1st edition box? Resculpted Vandus, prosecutors, liberators, etc., vs. Ascended Khul? Just some interesting thought experiments.

DoK could really use a proper anvil unit. Something tough that can take a hit and isn't a 700 point Morathi. They don't need a 47th Hag Queen.

Beetle tree man is way too cheap for how insanely good he is. He's basically an auto-include in any Sylvaneth army, that's for sure. I mean, Bloodthirsters are reasonably decent in the game right now, and they're only like 20-40 points cheaper than this dude; and Belthanos is waaaaay better than any of the greater daemons.

I'm sure the battleforce prices will go up yet again to further narrow any actual value you might get out of them. It's the Games Workshop way.

Has anyone tried a Trugg Army of Renown list yet? I'm curious if it's worth it to buy a few more trolls to fill it out.

You roll 2D6 and pick equal to or lower than the value. That's random. You're always going to pick the higher valued item. But just to be clear, you're only rolling 5 times a game, at the start of each round. Even if you somehow rolled a 12+ on every round, it would still be a bad ability because the opponent can pretty easily avoid it with the units that matter and a 50/50 shot at D3 mortals isn't anything to write home about. I'm not trying to be doom & gloom here. I'm just stating facts. It's a poorly thought-out ability that will waste game time every round trying to calculate your roll, figuring out who's "vulnerable," and then rolling another die to maybe do 1 or D3 mortals. This is a replacement for your subfaction by the way...so you're sacrificing extra impact mortals with the Meat Boys, extra rend on your Gun Lads, or double spell boogaloo with your Butcher Dudes. But hey, maybe the army's enhancements section is god tier and they've left out a crucial, earth-shattering addendum to the rule that turns everything on its head. It's happened before. Hell, if Gorgers end up being one of the best units in the game, giving them run+charge could be reason enough to take the army.

The idea of this army sounds fun. But bad rules are almost never fun. This could have had fun rules, but instead it's 5+ to do 1 mortal wound every so often. Is giving a unit -1 Bravery fun? What part about doing almost nothing every so often is the fun part?

I like how the Fyrelsayers army of renown gets 2+ ignore ward rampages and strike last on monsters, and the Ogre army gets a giant random chart where every entry is f***ing horrible. If there was ever a perfect indicator for the disparity between Order rules and Destruction rules, this it it.

Third box of Warcry? Or are you talking about the 3rd wave of Dawnbringer boxes?

They made an Ogre army of renown that focuses on a unit that can't even be bought on its own and is trapped in a $100+ box. So basically unplayable. AND STILL NO PLASTIC BUTCHER

My risky prediction is that they will reveal models that I want but don't collect the faction for.

I guess Whitefang has confirmed it's a new S2D hero. With my hopes for Valkia dashed, now we can switch to rumormongering about Scyla.

My bet is that we see Dawnbringers 3 and associated models, and Old World gets announced proper (with books, boxes, etc.). I don't think we'll see any FEC. Those are going to be part of the Dawnbringer finale.

My assumption is that this Warcry pack will be the new Gorger warscroll and the old one will be phased out. For the love of all I never want to see that hideous ancient Gorger model ever again.

I feel like they could have just released a box with a thin metal metallic sheet on the bottom and it would have been 10x better than this high-falutin iron maiden.

Such is the consequence of running their narrative book series at the end of an edition cycle. We tread water until the final year.

Three things from 40k that I hope get ported over: 1) Engagement range of fighting in two ranks. GET RID OF WEAPON RANGES. 2) Battleshock causing units to be unable to capture objectives rather than removing models. 3) Normalize a better curve for Bravery stats. Having a range of 4-7 is much easier to balance than what we have now (4-10+)