madmac

I think there's a natural ebb and flow to new books vs soup books. New armies and concepts basically require new books in order to flesh them out properly, or V2 books for factions like Fyreslayers and KO that stumbled out the gate with their first book. But if we look at Orruk Warclans and what little we know about it, Ironjawz and Bonesplittas were both separate army books once. So were Skyre and Pestilence, and arguably better off for it, because that focused development is something they can bring with them into a soup book. Basically, I expect we'll continue to see new books for new armies, and compilation books for linked factions that just need a rules refresh. You could for example do a new Ogor army based on Fire Eaters, and then later an updated Mawtribes that adds them to the book and updates everything to 3rd edition, ect.

While I tire of the focus on Death, there is one obvious hole left to be plugged, and that's doing something with Vampires. Otherwise, I suspect Destruction are going to be the next focus after Soul Wars, and will hopefully be getting some badly needed new/updated models to match. I can't see human Barbarians ever becoming Destruction, as it stands Destruction is a ghetto for Greenskins/Ogors and it would be shocking enough if they ever get a new race added to their roster. I do like the Fishman idea, though.

Nah, gnoblars will stay. Most Ogor models literally come with Gnoblars on the sprue or built into the model, there's no separating the two. The Wolf Riders having a sun as their faction icon fits perfectly with the new Gitmob fluff, but it remains to be seen how they will work. They could get rolled in with Ogors, with Sky Grots, or something else entirely. Since they are one of the two factions that will roll out quickly after Beastgrave we'll have a good idea soon enough. I also think people assuming that the Kurnothi, a faction headlining the core box set vs Beastmen being an experiment or one-off are deeply kidding themselves, but that's another topic.

They always have a warscroll for AoS, it'll be interesting to try and read the tea leaves when they get released. You can usually get something out of it, like Zarbags Gits pretty much confirmed an incoming moonclan release by having a bunch of new keywords attached to their AoS profiles. Likewise, when we got Sylvaneth and KO warbands at the same time, it was easy to guess that Sylvaneth tome was inbound and KO wasn't, the Sylvaneth models had new keywords and reworded rules, whereas the KO guys had nothing new and terrible stats to boot.

I would never do a full goblin army, but I'll be grabbing these gits for sure. Really digging Beastgrave so far.

Huh, that was, after possibly Maneaters, the finecast model I most expected to be cut for Ogors. Bodes well for Beastclaw Finecast I suppose. I just still have my fingers crossed for a new plastic butcher, like anyone else who plays Ogors. It seems likely, almost everything on the mercenary list is suspect in some way.

I appreciate the cynicism, but I honestly don't expect Stormcast for once. For one thing, they were technically already included as part of Dreadfane, which is pretty much the alt starter box for casuals this season. More importantly there just isn't really anything left to cover with Stormcast until they get another chamber. We've got liberators, we've got Vanguard, we've basically every unit in Sacrosanct. The handful of Stormcast models not already included are pretty much just old models no-one likes from 2+ years ago, even GW isn't that low effort with most underworld bands. I wouldn't totally write off CoS either. An actual Freeguild warband is fairly unlikely, but I could see a designer really getting into the idea of creating a mixed race Adventuring Party. Dwarf warrior, Elf Archer, Human Mage, ect. Would be very different than what we usually get. I never said there was a pattern, although most seasons do seem to lean Order heavy. I just don't expect a third Chaos warband this season, especially since Slaanesh mortals aren't really a thing currently.

On Beastgrave speculation, if we assume 8 warbands+dreadfane, and take in the hints from the cards shown yesterday... Confirmed: BoC Kurnothi Card Hints: New Ironjawz (Brute focused?) Nurgle Warband FEC That only leaves three slots, with 2 Chaos Warbands, 1 Order, 1 Destruction, and 1 Death. I'm guessing probably one more order faction, so I'd wager DoK, (previous rumor) Seraphon, or maybe CoS. For Destruction some kind of Ogor faction, since we already have Orruks and Gits dominated Nightvault. If we get anything new for Death I'd expect Bonereapers, but that could be next year instead. I think Chaos is covered with BoC/Nurgle, but we'll see.

Yeah, you have things like one phoenix pictured on rounds and not the other, it's clearly a work in progress. Mind you most of these kits have had rounds included for a long time already, so it's mostly just updating the website and maybe the packaging. Would be interesting to see if some of these start becoming retail available again.

I'd totally forgotten about that leak. Still, the teaser video was a high production quality preview with animation, music, narration, ect not something that was hastily cobbled together. I doubt it was released more than a week earlier than planned, all things considered.

They actually put up the teaser video for all warbands roughly the day the pre-order for Nightvault went up, and the first two warbands went up for pre-order almost immediately, like two weeks after Nightvaults release, IIRC. Given that the release date for Beastgrave is looking to be the same as Nightvault, it's likely we'll see the a similar roll-out.

We're still in a bit of a lull with all the 40k releases, but it seems clear at this point that Beastgrave will be up for pre-order next week, and probably (hopefully) we'll have Cities and Orruks up for pre-order the following week for release in early October. With Bonereapers also confirmed for Pre-order in October that is looking to be AoS's month to shine.

Nurgle would make sense, Underworlds warbands mostly lag army releases by at least a year or so, except for the ones that are released early. Season 1 was almost all early AoS armies. SC Liberators, Khorne Bloodbound, Fyreslayers, Ironjawz, and Vanguard Hunters, plus Skellies given rules for a Deathrattle, which isn't even really a thing anymore, and some random Skaven. Season 2 opened with the obvious Soul Wars tie in Factions with the Cursebreakers/Nighthaunt and again in Dreadfane. You had KO, TZ, and Sylvaneth, which were all in the era of battletomes starting to have actual allegiance abilities, but also 2 Gits warbands a few months ahead of the battletome release, and Dark Oath, which nobody knows yet what the deal with Darkoath is. Season 3 Leads off with Kurnothi, which are brand new, and BoC, which got a battletome last year. I imagine we'll see a sprinkling of warbands from mostly 2018 armies and maybe some stragglers that never got representation from earlier seasons, like Bonesplitters, Beastclaw Raiders, FEC, or Seraphon. It'll be interesting if we get any brand new warbands like Kurnothi, something from the BoneReapers doesn't appear unlikely, or something from Mawtribes instead of Beastclaw for Ogors.

It's this, the full roster is in the book. You get a varanguard model as the leader, costs more than any of the monsters, IIRC. The rest of the list is mostly chaos warriors.

Ogors have the opposite problem of Sylvaneth, their entire list of Heroes (Barring the BCR Mounted Behemoths) are Finecast, and some of them are very dated or made the transition to Finecast very poorly. The Butcher for example is a vital cornerstone HQ choice for Gutbusters but the model is so bad and expensive that basically no one uses it in favor of cobbling together their own from leftover plastic bits. Same for the Tyrant, to a lesser extent. If GW wants to capitalize on the release of Mawtribes with actual model sales, they'd be foolish to miss the opportunity of adding 1-2 more hero models alongside the Tyrant.

Definitely Destruction, though I'd be amazed if Grot Pirates were close enough to release to be getting a rumor engine.

I don't really have high expectations for CoS, so this isn't me whining about it particularly, but it just really feels that GW has no faith in this book and doesn't want to talk about it.

At this point it's looking like: Beastgrave-pre-order on the 21st Cities/Orruks: Pre-order on the 28th, maaaaybe? I think I've forgotten the actual last AoS tome release at this point, was it Sylvaneth? The one that got delayed and leaked months in advance so they just dumped it on on a random week with a lot of other stuff prior to Warcry? It's alright though, they did say at Nova that Cities was coming so soon there was no point in talking about it, so once every single thing announced at Nova is out it's probably in the clear.

So GW confirms what several people theorized with Underworlds, that the common cards are being rotated every two years, but the warbands and their unique cards remain valid.

I think it's more than just Untamed Beasts=Dark Oath. Most of the Warcry Warbands fit the initial fluff for DarkOath. Having listened to a lot of Stormcast podcasts, they always describe them the same way-That Darkoath are barbarians who are tempted by Chaos without really understanding it, as opposed to the Warcry bands, who are Barbarians tempted by Chaos without really understanding the Chaos Gods. It really is all the same concept, I guess the only question is if DarkOath were always meant to be a teaser for Warcry, or if they started out as an army/marauder replacement and developed into Warcry instead. Mind, since the STD tome hasn't arrived yet, it's too early to say how the whole thing will shake out.

I'm at a point where I have the armies I want, and my painting backlog is almost cleared, I'm more inclined to drop an army than add a new one at this stage. That said, I am keeping a slot open for a new Elf army. I have deepkin and I love them, but it doesn't really scratch the itch for a more classical elf army. I picked up a handful of Wanderer/High Aelf models over the last few months to see what I preferred and I was honestly leaning Wanderer, so I'm very keen on Beastgrave, I think Kurnothi could be exactly what I'm looking for. Otherwise, out of the armies I have, three of them (Ogors, Seraphon, KO) haven't gotten their 2nd edition update yet, so after a long, long year of not getting anything I was waiting for except Fyreslayers hopefully 2020 will be my year.

True, but what you don't normally see is brand new models for one army vs mostly models from 2005 for the other. If the Bonereapers get a vs box I'd expect them to be facing off with an army that is also new or mostly new, and Gutbusters are one of the worst options for that, unless they are also getting a bunch of new models. (Which I think would be fantastic, but there's little indication of that so far.) It's just a hard thing to judge without more information than we currently have.

I do wonder how many people specifically buy underworld models to use in underworlds though. Me personally I get them with the cards and all but I don't actively play underworlds, deck building is just not for me. I get them because they're cool models that (lately) tend to be semi-viable in AoS as unique units, otherwise they're good looking proxies, with the added bonus of being playable in underworlds should it happen to come up.

Yeah, I remember seeing a random rumor in the last few weeks that GW was getting ready to axe the first season warbands. It makes a certain amount of sense, not just because of bloat but also option/power creep and the constraints of trying to continually refresh and innovate the game while also trying to keep first iteration warbands competitive. At a certain point the oldest warbands either need a complete refresh (which would require new cards at minimum) or retirement. I don't think it was a huge problem in season 2, but Beastgrave may be another big jump in mechanics.

Not to mention the Battle Mages suddenly disappearing this week. A new surge of worry is not what anyone needed this week in the face of continual silence about CoS. Weirdly, the only foot Wizard left for COS is the Dark Elf Sorceress, and the only other Wizards are the Freeguild Griffon/cart mounted ones, and the Sorceress on Dragon.