madmac

Honestly this. If there was a 40K army I thought I'd be into, it was Eldar with updated models. So far, with a few exceptions (The sniper bikes are silly but look cool) the much anticipated Eldar overhaul people have been waiting 10-15 years for...is just so dull to me. The new plastic models are a bit crisper in their details, the posing is slightly more varied, they have more bare heads, but other than that they seem barely distinguishable from the old ones.

Just to check if it's not my own bias, it looks like the last "Probably AoS" rumor engine was the whip from the end of December. Before that we had the two rumor engines for the now revealed Fyreslayer/Deepkin heroes right before December, and before that...there was the maybe skaven one from early November. So it's been a bit of dry spell in AoS for ye old rumor engines. Last time we got a bunch of AoS REs in a row was September, looks like. Not a big deal, all things considered, but not even getting Rumor Engines when it's looking like no announcements and no AoS news until LVO, there's a bit of salt there.

AoS had a glut of releases in early 2021 primarily because we had virtually no releases in 2020 and that backlog had to be cleared before 3rd edition launched. For sure GW is having to split resources more over the last two years or so, but they consistently prioritize 40K whenever they can. 40k Releases get delayed by weeks with consistent communication from GW, AoS releases get delayed by months, frequently and with no communication at all.

On Underworlds, not really. They've released the Q1 part of the roadmap. next warband is Q2, which is April at the earliest.

I mentioned this earlier in the thread, but no, there are literally no announcements for AoS, or announcements of coming announcements. Even this weeks community preview seems to indicate it will only be talking about 40K this week. Gotta do Tau codex previews 12-14 you understand, no time to confirm when or what the next AoS battletome will be.

You know, thinking about today's Pre-order announcement (Probably Tau) made me realize, there's actually not a single unleased announcement/preview out there for AoS right now... That is to say, they haven't announced a single battletome yet. They haven't fully shown off (I don't count the New Year teaser for this) a single upcoming miniature release. The next underworlds release isn't until Q2. There's no word at all on warcry, not that there ever is. Surely there must be some kind of preview coming soon?

Well, there's different reasons to do Tome Celestial updates for different armies. For SBGL, literally the last army to get a battletome before 3rd edition launched, I wouldn't be terribly surprised if they didn't get a 3rd edition tome. Probably also SoB unless they have new models coming soon, there's just not really anything a new book could cover that their first tome+TC update hasn't. Also agreed with an earlier poster that BoC getting a Tome Celestial is more interesting because they're one of the oldest books in the game. If they're being put off, it really makes me think they might be getting models.

Right. It doesn't mean "no tome" necessarily, but at the same time it almost definitely doesn't mean "tome coming soon". If an army is getting a book in the near future there's no need to update them in White Dwarf, and indeed none of the armies that we are expecting tomes for in at least the first half of this year have gotten Tome Celestial updates.

You have to keep in mind, there's almost never any good news for Fyreslayer fans. Six years of disappointment is not to be underestimated.

literally compare them to Ardboyz, same price for 10 models, slightly less bravery, same wounds, same saves, three times as many attacks.

I never stress points too too much. Points can come down, and probably will if it's clearly out of line. Good Warscrolls are something you'll be waiting years for a second chance on.

Honestly, I've had a bad feeling about Fyreslayers since their BR "update". Changed two hero warscrolls in ways that left them basically the same or worse, just honestly a wasted effort. Made me suspect they were just going to un-nerf throwing axes again and call it a day and somehow managed to do worse than even that minimum of effort.

I guess you're right. Literally every Fyreslayer unit warscroll being worse than ever and showing no understanding of the issues the army actually struggles with is just a sign of great things to come. The new hero being priced at 80 points is also a shining light towards the future, showing that GW was fully aware that he's completely useless but hit print on his warscroll anyway.

If they were nerfed for soup reasons, it just reinforces why soup is terrible. Even in that scenario, Fyreslayers are just going to be the new Bonesplitterz, no one is going to play these warscrolls over other options except for love of a dying army.

I was putting the finishing touches on my Bonesplitterz when the new Warclan came out, sad fist bump.

Yeah, this is bad beyond comprehension. Every unit hard nerfed without exception, wtf? Even the new hero is...let me put it this way-He's 85 points with decent combat stats. That means even GW knew he was basically useless when pointing him, which means the feedback from testers must have been absolutely terrible, but they proceeded anyway without bothering to rework such an obviously flawed warscroll. I was looking forward to dusting off my Fyreslayers, maybe painting up a few more models etc, but somehow I don't think that's going to happen now. I can honestly only think of two explanations for every unit in the army being treated this bad, either: 1. Bonesplittered, deliberately nerfed down to irrelevance as part of a soup army they don't actually want anyone to play, or 2. Actually getting new units, so they needed to make the old stuff look bad. I don't believe that at this point, so I'm sticking with theory#1 until otherwise proven.

It's one of their big problems, but it's only made worse by the rules they get. Looking at these new warscrolls, Auric HG and twin-axe Vulkites are actually useless and will never see play. HGB is still the only good option, but worse than before which is not good for the army. Shield Vulkites are in a weird place where they might have a role now but 170 points is still a steep asking price for basically wounds and a 4+ save and no damage output. Arguably their unit balance is worse than ever, leaning even harder on their nerfed HGB to have a gasp of a fighting chance.

I play both Fyreslayers and KO, (and Deepkin!) so I know very well how KO play, thank you very much. Better than Fyreslayers, for all sorts of reasons, if I'm being brief. Not to say KO have no issues, rend-1 and no mortal wounds is tough in the new save stacking meta, and Skywardens are worse than ever but they are much better than Fyreslayers already in 3rd, and if they had an update like what we're seeing for Fyreslayers I wouldn't be happy with that either.

Looks to me they did what I was afraid of, undoing the nerfs to throwing axes and then nerfing everything to compensate for the ranged damage being mostly incidental instead of completely meaningless. It definitely reads as changes by someone with no understanding of the army either way. Twin Axes were already the worse option, losing re-roll all hits for a conditional +1 attack is a massive nerf for them on a unit that was already basically useless. Auric HG have no role at all now. No bodyguard, no anti-monster, bad shooting. Why bring them at all? The new hero is worse than anyone could have guessed, sure he's 80 points but he's 80 points because he does nothing. Shield Vulkites may be playable now as meatshields, but that's not exactly an exciting change, especially when everything else is looking worse than ever.

It's sarcasm. I'm just pointing out that if we're doing cross-faction comparisons at all, Fyreslayers have less going on than almost any other army, so their warscrolls being strong enough to ride out that massive disadvantage is actually hugely important to them. IDK is one of my other armies, compared to Fyreslayers for example they have, basically everything-powerful heroes, behemoths, super-fast elite flying melee units, incredibly powerful allegiance abilities, both wizards and priests, etc.

Fair enough. After all other armies have access to a wide range of supporting troops of all kinds, magic, powerful buffs, etc. Fyreslayers have the incredible power of their tiny roster and virtually no troop options backing up their vulkites, so they should definitely be less powerful baseline than basically every other army. For sure.

All the Fyreslayer priests have Magmadroth cloaks, actually. I expect this guy will have a 4+ save instead of a 5+ and a decent melee attack, which will make him quite the badass compared to other Fyreslayer priests but still nothing to write home about.

It's just really not that good in practice. Lets say you've got him bubble wrapped with a max-sized unit of HGBs at all times, no matter what. That's 15 models. In order for him to use this buff even once, you have to have already lost five so at absolute minimum, the unit you're buffing is down at least 30% of their strength before you can buff them, quite possibly more, and that buff only lasts for one phase. It's an ability you might be able to use on a single under-strength unit once per battle, in reality. It's not as if after those HGB are wiped, your mighty foot hero is going to escape unscathed with his 5-6 wounds and 4" move, to join a different unit of berserkers and start buffing them instead. And yes, he can bank deaths from one unit and apply them to a different unit but realistically given his own mobility and the ranges involved it will rarely ever happen.

The range restrictions absolutely kill it in practice. Your buff aura is restricted to a 5 wound hero with 4" move on a 32mm base, which is to say, it's not that big and he's not able to reposition much at all. You have to lose a lot of units by Fyreslayer standards, not just in general, but within high-five range of the hero, AND the unit he buffs has to be even closer. In Theory this favors Vulkites because they die easier, but Vulkites with their current stats are just not a big enough threat to matter, even with these buffs applied.

He's probably a Priest on top, but yeah this ability is nearly useless in practice. Like seriously a dark, incompetent mirror of the Thrallmaster who gets to hand out big buffs for doing nothing. And I play both armies, so I don't have a bias here.