madmac

I mean those are both way better than this rule is. I have to agree that this might be the worst subfaction rule so far in 3E. There's a lot of layers of how bad this rule is. First of all, if you just put 2+ sharks into a single unit, you make one of them a Champion, and the Champion is +1 to hit with all attack profiles, which is already more powerful than this rule is, and explicitly not stackable with it. As far as I can tell, the only point to this rule is letting you fulfill battleline with 3 sharks and also kinda sorta play with them like they're a single unit, without being as good as an actual combined unit would be. It's shockingly niche. Especially for IDK, who can make literally any of their other units battleline if necessary, they've got lots of flexibility. Doesn't mean IDK are going to be weak army yadda yadda yadda but man, that's a terrible subfaction rule. It deserves to be pointed out.

Sylvaneth have it much better than Fyreslayers, obviously, but they're still a pretty small range without much visual or playstyle variety. They have three types of light chaff infantry units built out of two kits, while the bigger Kurnouth Hunters have pretty much carried the army since it's inception. The old Treelord kit also does a lot of heavy lifting. Everything except Alarielle is literally plodding treeman also so it's not like you've got a bunch of flyers or cav or skirmishers or whatever, either. Even the only dedicated shooting unit is a Kurnouth weapon option. That said, if it's not time for the Kurnothi to storm in and basically make them Wood Elves 2.0 again, I'm not sure what kind of sizable expansion they could realistically get. They have so many types of trees already, I don't see how things like Treemen Cavalry is supposed to work, and just adding more Revenants with bows or whatever doesn't read like a big update to me, personally.

I mean, we have a roadmap out to (apparently) July and it's looking like another battlebox and books release. What earthshaking reveals for AoS could they possibly be holding unto?

Yeah, I'm not fond of "primary army" polls, because that's such a nebulous term that's murky at best in terms of preferences. It's pretty much "what army are you most excited about this week". Would be slightly more illustrative to have people just multiple choice all the armies they own/play, IMO.

As neat as it is to see Cathay and Kislev in Total War, I'm just now realizing that this is just the initial roster for both. Monkey King and his Monkey Warriors, Baba Yaga replacement and more Ungor stuff for Kislev and who knows what else...they're going to be pretty wild armies in the end.

What? It's not a disaster at all, buy two boxes, get 30 models for the price of 20, more or less. I only wish that box was around when I was buying my LRL army. The full Sentinel and Warden boxes are just the same 5 model sprue repeated, so you lose nothing getting the two halves split into boxes, you have all options regardless.

More or less, yeah. Or just a way to start really clearing out all that Resin without committing to replacing or updating any of it on any sort of realistic timeline. I know they're calling it rotation and totally these can come back at any time for special events yadda yadda but seriously looking at this initial list, I don't think there's any actual pent up hype or demand for, say, two generic 20 year old Space Wolf resin characters and one ancient minor named character, even by the time Space Wolves get their 10th edition codex. Maybe Lukas will get a Primaris Model in 3-5 years and that's good enough. My full expectation is that they'll eventually replace or bring back some very small percentage of these "rotated" models, but I can't imagine that wheel is turning nearly as quickly as the word rotation makes it sound.

Saying something "could" come back, is not the same as saying it "will" come back. Out of just the initial list they've presented, I could see easily some of those models being brought back in a few years for codex whatever hype, some of them being remade as new models..and some of them just quietly disappearing forever.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2022/02/11/range-rotation-is-coming-to-warhammer-40000-this-is-what-it-means-for-you/ It's a 40K announcement, but I think it's not outside possibility that it comes to AoS eventually, so worth noting I think. Basically GW is introducing the concept of range-rotation to 40K for the first time, essentially removing certain (presumably old/poorer selling models, though not all of this batch are resin) from production and only selling them again "at a later date". I don't follow MESB very closely, but my understanding is that things go out of stock for very long periods of time, like several years before being brought back.

Yeah the problem with both of the runes they showed is the same, 6+ ward and mortals on 6s to wound are boring, workmanship like abilities that usually have very little effect turn to turn but add up over the course of an entire game. Which means that making them effects that last a single turn, that you have to consider taking over things that are (hopefully) more impactful reduces their usefulness quite a lot.

I'm not sure where that other place would be for Fyreslayers, but I sincerely hope it's not stashed away in the handful of mediocre once per battle abilities that has always been the rune activation allegiance ability.

Yeah, my mourning over Fyreslayers aside, the BoC changes are fantastic. Really simple but effective changes that totally change how the army plays.

It's simple math. Throwing Axes hit on 4s, so on average half of them miss. Then you're rolling 20 dice to wound, and 1/6th of that is about 3-4 MWs on average. Effects that trigger on 6s to wound are a lot worse than effects that trigger on 6s to hit.

I might sound eternally negative, but not good, IMO. IF they mega-buff Magmadroths, than Fiery Determination+Blaze of Glory is sort of a thing, for one turn, that you burned an otherwise blah rune on. Keep in mind you're doing this instead of Finest Hour or whatever, too. Searing Heat is slightly better than the old searing heat, but not nearly as good as it sounds on paper. Pop this rune and throw 40 axes, for example-Half of those miss, 1/3rd of the remaining do MWs, which is like 3-4, and again, you're burning your one turn allegiance ability for this. It's slightly better in melee, but not enough to make Vulkites viable with their coherency problems, especially not Shields and Picks and their...one attack for 170 points problem.

Fyreslayers don't have good enough ranged attacks for it to really matter. Pop this rune and throw 40 handaxes, you'll get about 3 MWs, yay.

Yeah, that's uh. that's...not gonna help much after seeing what they did to the new warscrolls. Pretty much the only hope for Fyreslayers at this point is if they buffed the heck out of Magmadroths.

Exactly this. My back isn't breaking because of one year of price raises, my back has already been on the verge of collapsing from the last several years of massive price raises with little to no justification. I may be loose with money but I don't have the memory of a goldfish where I can't remember many things costing half as much four years ago. I already bowed out of Harrowdeep this year, despite buying into every previous Underworlds and that was before this latest set of price increases. $100 for a box with ~8 small figures and some cards and you want to sell me another $100 in a couple months? Yeah, no thanks. Warcry, likewise. The original Warcry Starter was a great deal. Catacombs was an absolute joke, raising the price by 30% for substantially less content, and Red Harvest was even worse. Not to worry though, those last two boxes were obviously far too cheap and will get hefty price hikes. Battletomes for $50 and no digital alternative already had me weighing whether or not it was worth buying new tomes at all anymore, just an insane price for a slim hardback with that's 50% copy-pasted content and these days might be replaced in less than a year. Upping that already outrageous price to $55-$60? At that point I have to assert some level of self-respect, no matter how much I like Age of Sigmar.

Here I am, a guy where apparently half of my armies (at least) are getting a hero and a book for an edition I'm not really a huge fan of, and they're raising the prices on books 10% to boot. I already bowed out of the last season of Underworlds, and I'll never buy another Warcry Starter. If GW has me at the point of considering how much I really need a new battletome when just about the only thing they're still selling me is books, they may have miscalculated a smidge.

This. I've seen in a price list floating around for Example that Red Harvest is somehow going up, even though it's more expensive than Catacombs, which was itself something like a 35% price increase over the first Warcry starter just a year before with significantly more content. Prices are already unrecognizable from where they were when I jumped into this hobby, and that was less than four years ago.

No particular reason to think so. We know already they are extensively repackaging old boxes to fit the new design as new battletomes are released, and Dryads aren't a kit that is especially in need of an update, knowing how loathe GW is to replace anything plastic in most circumstances.

I haven't seen anyone arguing that this will destroy the company, just that GW's prices on most things are already absurd and always climbing no matter what is happening in the world, which is accurate.

I don't remember the timing, but they definitely did a Tomb Kings MTO a while back. There was a Dark Elf one too at some point.

The sprue comes in multiples of 4, so if they repacked to an even number they'd have to add a fifth sprue, not impossible but seems unlikely IMO.

Wow, that's later summer than I was expecting. I'll just cross big summer release for AoS off my hopium list now I guess. It's going to be a long year if this is the pacing...

Reminder that there was no new rumor engine last week either. They're also still padding out their WHC content by talking about a single Codex every day for like a month probably like they did with Tau. There might be bigger issues behind the scenes then we are aware of...