madmac

That RE was for the new Sylvaneth hero they got with Broken Realms.

So what you're saying is, the next new army is Halflings? Checks out...

I find it easier to think of the short term. What are they putting out next week? Probably not the Eldar codex already. And the Necromunda thing feels far off, and the Kill Team release hasn't been covered past a single model yet. Nothing going on with Warcry or Underworlds for a while, obviously. Good chance we'll see at least one AoS battletome next week, IMO.

Oh I dunno. I'm not expecting anything for Fyreslayers, but if I wanted to play devils advocate I'd point out that if GW just wanted the buff to work on any Fyreslayers non-hero model, they wouldn't need to list out every unit individually. There might be reasons they don't want Fyreslayers to be able to drop +1 damage on, say, Calvary or artillery. Or a unit of female fyreslayers who according to the lore tend to wear armor instead of hammering runes into their skin. Also, as far as rumor engines go, there is this...You can't tell me that's not a dwarf face, and it looks more like Fyreslayer work than KO. The Bird (Or is it a dragon head?) is also a weird Rumor Engine. It's not specifically a dwarf thing in terms of iconography, but it's got that angular dwarven aesthetic to it, IMO.

DoK was the last army to receive endless spells, came out of nowhere too, no one expected it. Slaanesh has both, from their first release, LRL had endless spells with the first release and terrain with their second.

I'm not feeling optimistic yeah, too many disappointing Fyreslayer rewrites recently. Starting with Broken Realm, we had two truly pointless warscroll changes, to the extent that they might as well not have bothered. Then the new hero is terribly designed with one of the clunkiest list of buff requirements I've ever seen in my life. New unit warscrolls downgraded across the board, with signs of just poor insight into Fyreslayers, like thinking changing axes from 5+ to 4+ means anything, or that giving Shield Vulkites the same stat buff as every other updated shield unit in 3E deserves +10 points and half damage output. Now take away Warscroll Battalions, and add Simplified subfactions, in a new book that all signs point to being written by someone not getting Fyreslayers as an army, yeah...

BoC are getting a Tome Celestial literally in Feb this year, I don't think they're getting a book until next year, unfortunately. OTOH, if they were just getting a book, less reason to delay updating them, right? Right?

Sounds crazy, but actually something like that seems not impossible on second thought. Purely because I don't think any of these six tomes will get a big model wave, so that leaves things open this year for the usual two big releases. Also, if I filter the list of armies that are covered now either by new tomes or Tome Celestials and also not LRL/Slaanesh because I don't think those are happening this year, I end up with, like...KO, Gits, Mawtribes, FEC, Khorne, Tzeentch. I'd be shocked if any of those were major updates, so two new armies kinda possible?

No, because the elf covers are brand new, the dwarf/ghost covers are old.

Happy to see a Roadmap, and feel like I dodged a bullet with Fyreslayers not being souped, that said... 1. Reused Battletome covers, WTH GW? 2. This pretty much confirms a very veeeeery lean schedule. We'll get the first two books in Feb to go with their battlebox and probably no models, then 2-3 months for a battlebox and two tomes with probably no other new models, then 2-3 months for I'm going to put my stakes down now, battlebox and two tomes with probably no other models. 3. Skaven vs Sylvaneth for Summer, I'm sure of it now.

Eh, I've seen it posted around. Monday is price confirmation day, no reason to doubt.

Well if nothing else there was no mention of "Path to the Preview" this time, so they might actually be done with Eldar reveals for a bit. Could be another Kill Team mini tomorrow though, or something for the new Necromunda...

There being actually no news is why they're pitching this week on community having a lot of news and announcements, supposedly. There kind of has to be, at this point they haven't even properly announced the Kill Team box or Eldar Codex, much less anything at all for AoS except that one box. They've got max 1.5 weeks worth of stuff without additional news.

I didn't count the Eldar codex/model release because I fully expect it will be separated from the box for at least a month, that's how it usually goes. Hasn't been announced yet, either. So really that just leaves the Eldar/Chaos box, the AoS box, and a couple of combat patrols. Not exactly a packed schedule.

Oh I dunno, I think we'll see it quite quickly. As of right now, the only announced, unreleased items off the top of my head are this box, the Eldar/Chaos box, (which is already marked for Feb) and, uh....that HH model they just showed? We've got a 50/50 chance of this being either this Sundays Pre-Order Preview or the next one, IMO.

Getting souped doesn't preclude getting terrible rules and no models, if anything it makes it more likely to happen. If I wanted to not play Fyreslayers, I can already do that without a soup tome, it's that simple really. Also, this whole "At least you're not squatted!" angle I super don't get in general. First of all, it's not a given that the only option was souping or death, that's a false choice. Secondly, souping does not take future squatting off the table, not at all. Ask any Bonesplitta player how secure they feel about their armies future right now, or any random Cities subfaction about their chances for dedicated long term support. If anything souping is the easy first step to squatting an army. In the same way soup allows your "army" to get supported with "new models" that are actually totally walled off subfactions you'll never play, it also makes Squatting so much easier. After all, GW isn't "squatting" an army at that point. They're just, you know, "consolidating options and trimming a few poorer selling skues" You can still absolutely play your Orruk Warclans army without Bonesplittas, yay!

Mysteriously, all these paper and shipping issues don't seem to be impacting 40K much. A few small delays here and there, but they're still getting a steady stream of Codexes.

My expectations were rock bottom, but I was hoping they'd confirm at least one battletome, you know? We're 6 months into 3rd edition and we've gotten three, with no idea of when we'll finally get another book.

I wouldn't be surprised if this is the Pre-order preview for this Sunday. I mean, what else is coming out? The only other announced thing is that Eldar/Chaos box, really.

Doesn't look like a Revenant to me honestly. That arm is definitely sleeved and Revenants don't wear shirts for obvious reasons. I wouldn't expect a tree spirit to need a Falconers leash either, but it would fit a regular elf, or a Kurnothi possibly. Could also be a Kill Team Corsair I suppose, I know nothing about those guys but still a space elf with a regular bird and a falconer leash seems a bit...odd.

Actually that's a good call out. I was baffled by the idea of a random (not-IDK) elf model, but if we are getting a Sylvaneth vs Skaven battlebox than a new Wanderer hero reveal makes perfect sense. Sadly, none of the shadows are dwarves...

I agree that souping armies is a fantastic way for GW to neglect multiple factions with one book, that's kind of the reason they're unpopular? Of course, they have their release schedule, and of course not every army gets updated every edition cycle, but I don't see any realistic chance of an army ever coming back from being souped. Once a soup tome, always a soup tome. And once you're permanently designated as the least popular segment of a broader alliance, the squat button is right there, you know? Like, if BoC actually were souped with STD, I would honestly expect them to never get a new model again going forward. Already, they've never gotten anything out of AoS except the Herdstone and Endless spells, but just psychologically speaking, that's the exact moment I would lose all hope for the army. Now, notice I don't say the same thing about STD, because STD is just automatically assumed to be the dominant ingredient in that soup. They'll be fiiiiiine, and that I think is the important difference. It's easy to be blase about getting souped when you're not playing the underdog in that book. The perspective from underneath is much bleaker, IMO.

Warclans style soup just means my preferred soup element is bad individually, and also has a harder time than ever mixing in other soup elements, because my bad subfaction is entirely reliant on their subfaction rules to function and I can't even take allies without using the bland "mix army" allegiance instead. You also get to look forward to years and years of the parts of the soup you don't own and play getting all the updates, literally gaining nothing from all the awesome "support" you are getting through additions to other subfactions you can't even take as allies. It is the worst of all worlds. Now, in theory, sure, it's possible for GW to suddenly make a good soup tome, and it's possible to still support an older subfaction with new models, etc. But there's no reason to expect that they will, it's not as if they made a soup tome because they were just so excited and invested in supporting all these former stand-alone armies. As others have said, it also means you get a third the page count devoted to your army, whether that be lore, art, or even rules.

They already nerfed the heck out of every new Fyreslayer warscroll we've seen, which nice aligns with what I expect to happen. Yes, yes, they'll make up for it with "allegiance abilities" which just means Fyreslayers will be unplayably bad outside of their own sub-allegiance, which will still almost certainly be worse than what they used to have. I'm still not feeling optimistic in the slightest.

I have other AoS armies, but yeah if this turns out how I'm expecting, my Fyreslayers are probably just going to be gathering dust until they're inevitably squatted, they were already on life-support as a faction. For anyone saying to be positive, I'll just point out that I haven't heard about a single playtester starting up a Fyreslayer army in the last six months, so...