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It was great for customers, and good for GW overall, but for some retailers Dominion was a complete disaster. My local shop is sitting on several that he can’t move even at 50% off. This is dead inventory that he paid GW for (because they required minimum quantity orders), and the leftovers that he can’t sell have basically wiped out any profits he made from the ones that sold. I’ve visited several other shops that have piles in the corner, or are using Dominion as display stands for other products. The lesson has been learned, and I think some shops will think twice about ordering any more than exactly what they need to meet guaranteed sales with preorders this time around.

The Gorger Mawpack is already a step in that direction, as the Cave Howler is a lady.

This model is a better fit for all the examples of larger “centerpiece” units in launch boxes that don’t ever see a separate multipart release. Khorgorath, Vandus, Lord Arcanum on Gryph, Killaboss on Gnashtoof, Yndrasta… Most of those are leaders but it would be thematic for Skaven’s big thing in the box to be a war machine.

I forget exactly when, but there was a lore article in WD a year or two back, and Phil Kelly clarified that the Kurnothi are a religion, not a race. This explains why we see such variety in creatures called "Kurnothi". If we ever get a range, you can bet that it will contain the full variety of elves, satyrs, centaurs, and other forest creatures. Possibly, it would be part of a greatly expanded Sylvaneth range, and Sylvaneth armies are split into two themes like Starborn and Coalesced are for Seraphon.

They've realigned FW as the arm of the company that supports specialist and boxed games. I believe this was mentioned in a community article a few years ago, but it may have also been through interviews.

Showing any of those would spoil the accompanying Battletome, and they usually reserve that kind of thing for preview events.

From the article: "Both grots (well, all three if you count Nobbla…) will be available in the New Year – as will the new Battletome: Gloomspite Gitz, in which you’ll find the rules for the Squigboss." So he's a new unit at least. Whether this is a limited sculpt for a new hero, we don't know, but it seems unlikely that they would reveal a limited model first.

To be fair, the GBP is currently near a historical low. GW hedges their prices because there is a real cost to raising them. Customers don't like high prices, but they dislike raising prices even more. Pegging their prices close the the current exchange rate would risk losing money when exchange markets fluctuate in the wrong direction. Added to that is the cost of shipping and distributing goods from the UK into other markets. Markets like the US and AUS see a markup because they incur these additional costs. However, if you can find an independent retailer that ships from the UK to international customers, you can reap the benefits of the weak pound. I've been using Troll Trader, and have recently picked up a load of stuff new on sprue for an effective 60% discount compared to US retail prices.

Better than rumors: in the corner of one of the leaked pics there was a chaos warrior that matched the new sculpts, but was holding a banner. I’m betting we will get multipart warriors, but I didn’t see the same for knights. It’s still possible, but no evidence yet.

So many changes. Lost 1 spellcast, but gained a casting bonus. No more Battleshock immunity. Verminlord summoning is actually likely (if wounded enough), but at the cost of the bell. Range of the bell effect doesn't shrink, but it's much shorter by default. Cracks Call range reduced by 5". Bell table on a 1D6 instead of 2D6 means it will be more swingy. Magical backlash only affects the bell now, but the likelihood has gone from 2.8% to 16.7% per turn. There will be a lot of magical backlashing going on. At least you can choose not to ring the bell at all, now. Option to switch to Priest means we might get a proper prayer table, although it would specifically need to allow Grey Seers to take a prayer, because they are a Wizard by default. Rusty Spikes are a side grade. Flat 6 instead of D6, but no charge bonus, flat 3+ to hit. No change to the Rat Ogor attacks, which might be a preview of the Rat Ogor warscroll. I like the casting bonus. I'm not sure I like the changes to the bell.

Spirit Torment does 2 damage with his Shacklegheist Chains. Their continuing reluctance to give 2” reach to weapons that clearly deserve it is baffling, though.

The charge bonus meant that the added an almost guaranteed trigger for Wave of Terror to one of my fights. I still think they are too expensive, but the scroll isn’t bad.

Got my first game in tonight with the new tome, vs. an "optimized casual" Stormcast list. My list was just what I have painted, which is basically the Soul Wars box plus a few additions. Both of us were incredibly impressed with Nighthaunt performance. I haven't seen much discussion about the new Spirit Torment warscroll. At 115 points, he's one of our cheapest heroes, yet he easily had the largest impact on the game. He carried the entire center. I suspect that many people didn't notice that they changed his warscroll between Arena of Shades and the battletome. He no longer as the "enemy model must die" trigger. He just puts 3 wounds of models back every combat phase. I had a single unit of 10 Bladegheists in my center, and he put 15 models back in that unit over the course of 3 turns--easily paying for himself twice over. He was also carrying an Arcane Tome and casting Seal of Shyish, so he was creating utility beyond just the healing. Some other observations: As others have said, we hit incredibly hard in our turns. The warscroll stats are deceptive. In practice, everything in the army has at least Rend -1 or -2. We generate a lot of advantage by lining up against an exposed unit or weak flank, and then hitting as hard as we can with every available unit. Even rolling low on charges didn't feel that bad, as it was completely shutting down All-out Attack and similar abilities. I was reliably stacking -3 or -4 to hit. Knight of Shrouds on Steed is a surprising beatstick. I put him in support of the Bladegheists, and he did that job exceedingly well. The Sword of Stolen hours ability is great. Lord Executioner is a decent little fighty hero now. I made him general with Hatred of the Living, and he was reliably cutting through 2+ and 3+ saves. Nothing felt bad. Everything had a use, even the 4 Glaivewraith Stalkers. I was running 2x 20 Chainrasps, and I think it would have been much better and more flexible to split them into 4x 10. Going into the new tome, I was worried about limited Reinforcement Points, but now I find myself uninterested in using them at all.

This is also the way that I see it. I'm sensitive to the apprehension felt by players who are genuinely fans of the "confederation of survivors" theme of the current CoS, but the result on the tabletop is an army that isn't visually or thematically coherent. The other problem is that if you are into the human story and human themes, there aren't many offerings in AoS. There are 4 different Elf factions, and some day a 5th. There are 2 Dwarf factions, and I would be surprised if we don't get more (especially if CoS focuses only on humans). If you want an army of humans, you have Stormcast Eternals, a host of different chaos armies, and Cities of Sigmar. But even then, in CoS it's only a handful of units with shallow themes. Guys with swords, guys with guns, guys with even bigger swords. I think this is why they are focusing on humans. The entire range needs to be replaced, even though most of them are plastic kits, and some of them are "modern" designs.

Disease counters are added at the end of every movement phase and every combat phase to each enemy unit that is within 3" of a Maggotkin of Nurgle unit. The Diseased Weapons ability (shared by all Maggotkin units) also adds one Disease counter for each unmodified 6 to hit. A unit can have a maximum of 7 Disease counters. At the start of the Battleshock phase, you roll a die for each Disease counter on a unit, and each 4+ is a mortal wound. This target number can be modified to as low as a 2+ with a combination of a few specific abilities. At the end of the Battleshock phase, the number of Disease counters on each unit that has them is reduced to 1. Unless you heal them, they will remain Diseased with at least 1 counter for the entire game. The way to remove them is pretty simple: whenever you would restore a lost wound to a unit with one or more Disease counters, you may choose to remove one of those Disease counters instead. So you must make a choice: "healing" or "treating". I think I caught everything.