dekay

And they're de facto getting a new plastic Varghulf in the Cursed City.

Isn't that arguing in bad faith, though? Mantic made a giant. A giant is a fantasy archetype and you can do a lot with it (as seen with Mantic normal/frost/corrupted giants, based on the same model). Then, GE puts their own spin with mega gargants. Also pretty standard giants, in three distinct flavours. No real conflict with Mantic here (even though I kinda prefer mantics design in that case, even without a price factor i'd probably go with those when putting together a giant army ;)). But then, colossals appear and they're not really another interpretation of 'giant' archetype. They're almost straight (but reposed) copies of the three giant designs made by GW. They're not another take on 'sea giant' and 'siege giant' idea. They're copies of kraken eater and gatebreaker in particular. And this is the part that's not cool. This is not the same situation. For different example, Lost Kingdom line has big turtle-men that are clearly marketed to be a kroxigor proxy, and that's all fine by me: they're a distinct design, look cool enough, and if someone prefers their kroxigors to be turtles, there's a model for that. They're not straight up off brand resculpt of kroxigors. Plus, kroxigor is an ancient model that's hard to love, and it's sorta on GW for not updating it yet. We should really start a separate thread for that discussion, though ; )

Old sprues required a lot more free space than now. It is quite possible that it's the best they could do at the time.

Any time I see model lines like this it feels like a waste of talent in some degree. There's a lot of skill involved in these sculpts and with actually creative designs, those sculptors could have made some great things. And those gargan...colossals are an examples of the worst way of doing this: purely a copy of another, pretty new and widely availible model with main appeal of being cheaper. However, people who sculpt updated copies things such as Bretonnians, Tomp Kings or Chaos Dwarfs are ok. They provide a product for which there are customers that GW delibaretly chose not to capitalise on. If I'm a fan of egyptian skeletons and tomb kings are discontinued, I don't stop being a fan of egyptian skeletons. I seek a new source of egyptian skeletons and I don't care that the models I find wouldn't exist if GW hadn't design Tomb Kings in the first place.

It's probably the most 'your dudes' friendly setting I've ever seen. The factions, realms, variation within the realms and the factions, based on this you can create basically any army concept and it will fit if you write a bit of background for them. Hell, even time in the realms is not strictly linear so 'they're from the FUTURE!' is not a completely ridiculous army concept. There are so many blank spaces on the maps, so many places completely unmapped, whole races and nations mentioned only by name. Compare it to WFB where every bit of empire was mapped and described, including the elector count, heraldry and uniforms of every single province. Generic elector in an empire army while painted in colors of a province that has a named character? Not lore friendly. Your own color scheme for uniforms? Who are these guys, even? Or even 40k, where possibilities are more open but there are still too many things set in stone that cause people to implode if you think outside of them (female marines, reeeeee). So, yeah, the freedom of AoS is incomparable to any other mainstream wargame setting I've ever seen.

Or it will be the 'named' variant (similar to Nemmetar) of the new Wight King, but that would probably require Gravelords to come out at simiar time to BR Teclis.

"Useless" is a strong word, but there's a reason Helstorm doesn't show up in tournament builds. They're not 'griffon mage' bad but they're not in any way strong. Basically, if you want to get any worthwhile results from them, you need two things, both already mentioned. First, fully commit and play Greywater. If you see just how much better Greywater makes them, imagine how bad they are in other cities (ARGUABLY, Tempest's Eye +1 to wound aura helps them too if you really don't want to use 4 of them at once). Extra shot, lower drops, longer range... want Helstorms, go Greywater. The second thing is their range: Comparing their damage output to any of our good shooters (handgunners, irondrakes, anything goes) they perform badly. However, this comparison looks way better on longer range, in which handgunner output is a nice zero. If you want to shoot things up close, you have a lot of better options. If you want to shoot things across the entire table? Much less competition. You need either command points or spellcasting to shoot into enemy deployment zone with other units, and the first one is a limited resource and the second one may just as well fail. If you use helstorms, keep this in mind: if you're shooting something closer than 20'', you'd be better off with other shooter. Seek distant targets because nothing else will reach them. They're also pretty much superior to hellblasters because with their range, they have at least a niche to compete. Hellblasters are basically worse handgunners that can explode.

Depends on an army. The more unit choices a faction has, the better mirror matches are. You can do, say Skaven v. Skaven with no units duplicated between the sides, while with Fyreslayers the entire armies will be almost identical. One of those can be fun, other less so.

To risk derailing the thread even futher, while I agree CoS would be *much* more fun to play if the synergies were less rigid (I mean, seriously, how hard would it be to give us some more universal command abilities?), most successful lists are in some way mixed. Hammerhal lancers are a bit of an exception here. TE aetherguard too, to a lesser degree, being mostly freeguild, but with collegiate and kharadon elements and both of those are important for the list to function. But, for example, typical Hallowheart list was usually collegiate/coven/freeguild/phoenix temple mix and the elements supported each other. Mostly with spells (which, thank the lord, are not keyword locked) and complimenting battlefield functions, but still, a mixed lists with some synergies. Phoenix guard brought to life by a lifeswarm cast by a sorceress boosted by a hurricanum using arcane channeling is, after all, a multi-subfaction synergy. Another popular list was TE with irondrakes blob covered by like 4 separate buffs and teleported by soulscream bridge. ~4 subfactions are needed to make that happen, and that's not counting cavalry/gyrocopters/aetherwings/ shadow warriors or something to grab objectives. Yeah, CoS armies often work in self reliant blocks with little synergies between themselves, but the army as a whole tends to be pretty mixed. But yes, would it hurt them to give us a less keyword reliant list? Would it?

I'm with Doko here, IDK, as a whole, is not fine. They used to have 4 playable warscrolls in the entire book, now they have 6 and one of those boosts the others even further. Terrible internal balance, with eels stronger than ever while namarti and most of the heroes are still pretty bad. Can they be won against? Sure. But if you take the strong stuff only they're extremely easy to use, while taking other units is actively choosing a handicap.

A miscommunication then ; ) At no point I said CoS are a top tier army. At no point you argued they aren't. The discussion is about behemoths, and I will still claim many of them don't compare badly with other factions' behemoths, the problems lie elsewhere. Deepkin were a bad book with terrible internal balance, and the turtle upgrade made their one strong build even stronger. That's a problem because now the eels are wrecking face more than any time in the past. But comparative strength of behemoths is just one of factors in play here. And the damage they do, which you focused on, is not all that important, all things considered. Illustration of the problem: The turtle boosts thralls. It has a skill that does literally nothing if you don't take thralls (a skill you mentioned, hence my comparison of CoS against thralls). And still, it shows up in lists featuring zero thralls, because its other skill makes the eels, already strong unit, even stronger. It's literally worth to waste half of its buff aura because the other half breaks eels even more. Also, another point that has been discussed several times already: CoS tournament win ratio is pretty much worthless data when judging army strength, because a lot of CoS players don't play CoS. Sheer number of posts like 'Here is my <dispossessed/wanderers/dark elves/empire/dwarfs/some other faction that doesn't exist> army list' highlights the issue. Those who know they're playing a faction called Cities of Sigmar, in Age of Sigmar setting, and seek best lists using said factions tend to fare well on tournaments. But if we look beyond win ratio, to the individual lists, it quite often looked like this: one CoS player in top 3, with actual CoS list, and three more at the rock bottom, with something looking like a WFB dwarf army shoehorned into AoS rules. And they're dragging the winrate down, mostly because they're trying to play a different game with a faction that used to exist ages ago but no longer does. Hell, I've seen so many situations where someone asked 'i keep losing objective game, here's my list, what can I do?' 'remove one of your infantry blocks and replace with cavalry.' 'oh, no, i play dwarfs only' to lose any faith in statistics concerning CoS. No other faction does this. You don't see people saying 'here is my 100% melusai no exceptions army' or 'i collect vanguard chamber'. All other factions are treated as factions. CoS comes with baggage. Individually, for a long time, back when tournament scenes still existed, things like Hallowheart with phoenix guard blocks, or TE scourgerunner horde, or two-drop Aetherguard actually placed pretty high, but they were quite rare and shared their statistical slot with some 'pure wood elf' fluff lists. It's a wonder CoS gets as high as 45% winrate given a large chunk of the playerbase tries to play with 1/3 of the faction EDIT: And the table you linked shows it as well: no faction below CoS winrate wise has as much top3 and top10 positions. Several factions above them don't do as well in that regard! Look at Soulblight, Ironjaws, Stormcast, Ossiatch, Mix Destruction, Ogors even - better win rates, fewer high placements. Because some CoS players go quite well, but are being dragged down in winrate.

I'll agree on these ones: Steam tank (both variants) is bad. Griffon mage might be one of the worst units in the game. It gets a bit hazier here: Hydra is, well, meh. A passable distraction carnifex at best. Kharybdiss can be okay-ish in some builds and match up, but in general, similar to hydra. And finally: Dreadlord has two viable builds in living city, both proven to work quite well, and has been proven to work in niche serpentis based lists. Not great, but usable and maybe even good. Yeah it's a weaker statline than some monsters but can any of those monsters pull of a guaranteed, always-strike-first charge from a table edge? Dragon sorceress is a crucial element of darkling-hammer builds, a bit niche and not strong on her own, but a necessary element of a strong combo. All 4 phoenix variants are good, for varying reasons. Anointed are usually better, but sometimes you want them cheap. Luminark is great. Hurricanum is awesome to the point like, 80% lists have it. Griffon general is a necessary piece of CoS only two good low drop builds. He could be utterly useless on his own, but those builds (Hammerhall lancers, and TE Aetherguard) work, and they require him to be taken, thus making him useful. In Hammerhal he can fight twice, in TE he's fast enough to keep up with pistoliers, boost their charges and make them wound on 2+. Units need to be compared in context of their armies. Let's just use your own example: "idoneths turtle 340 for 21 damage and a aura of +1 save and 1 hit for thalls" well, yes. So let's take a turtle with 30 thralls. 660 points total. Turtle does 21 damage. I'll be generous and assume we're fighting a 1 wound enemy here, so thralls get their bonus, because otherwise it will get sad. Thralls will do 41 damage with the turtle buff. They have threat range of 6+2d6. 18. 24 if we're on turn 2 and only then. Cool, assuming you roll 12 for that charge, because it might as well be a total of 8. Compare: A sorceress on dragon and 30 executioners. 600 pts, so we're already cheaper by a large enough margin to buy another scoring unit. Sorceress does 8 damage. Executioners do 25. Gasp! It's but a half of what deepkin do! If we assume the enemy has save of 6+. That the sorceress fails to cast aura of glory (with +2 to cast of course). That all the thralls on their large bases and 1' range will get to attack and imagining such occurrence is funny on its own. That the enemy doesn't have 2-3 wounds on their profile, and that happens to be *a lot* of units. Because then? Then executioners start to out-damage the thralls. And, guess what, they can make a charge from 30+ inches losing nothing of their effectiveness. 'But oh no, the thralls have +1 save! Their 5+ is buffed to 4+, what shall we do?' cry out the executioners with their 4+ buffed to 3+ in the first turn in which, make no mistake, they WILL be able to charge. But, hell, let's assume they ARE both fighting a 6+, 1 wound enemy spaced so the all thralls can go into base contact. It might seem like the deepkin do 62 wounds then, while CoS only do 33. Yeah. But a fun thing is, in all standard battleplans they start the game 24+in from that enemy. So when we compare, say, potential 1st turn damage... then, we compare 33 from CoS to... how much does the harpoon do on its own? like, 5? Solid. Solid alpha strike damage on the deepkin part, it may kill half of a chaff unit, a round of applause here! And guess what? That terrible dragon sorceress was essential to make all this happen. Yeah, she will do 8 damage on her own. And still the thralls and their turtle will lose that matchup. Damage is not all. The sorceress offers mobility, two great command skills and a good bonus for casting a spell that, given some of our spell lores, can utterly change a course of combat. And, remember, the sorceress is one of the *bad* behemoths. I'm not saying they're all great, yeah, most of them are underpowered to some degree and require either some skill or a very particular combos to use, so it may take some figuring out, but i agree that crying is much easier to do, so, well, you be you.

Same as MtG cards with Walking Dead characters I guess. Just cards from a different universe with no other explanation given.

I'd say we can put the Ogor thing to rest. We're several character descriptions deep and nothing apart from a single mention in the stream (that had other mistakes on the presenter's part) seems to confirm it. It seems like he's human-ish, just with some Ogor guards.

I've done a quick research: He first appeared in 1986, in Terror of the Lichemaster set: http://solegends.com/citscenarios/lichemasterterror-01.htm - you can see his original model here. Then he got resculpted circa 1995 to his current form. http://solegends.org/citcat1998us/c1998usp213-01.htm Both models side by side:

I think the resin one is exactly the same as 90s metal model, only the material changed. I remember his pictures from 5th ed Magic supplement, I'm positive it's the same Kemmler as the current one. There *was* an earlier sculpt before that, but it might've been from the late 80s.

Another thing that can break 1000 pts games is summoning. It's very clear that for many armies it's balanced for larger battles. Take Abhorrant Archregent for instance. In 2000 pts game he gives can increase your army size up to 10% for free. In 1000 pts game its 20% while his cost stays the same. One can easily fit two of them in 1000 pt army list. In smaller game getting extra 40 wounds to chew through might be impossible for some armies. Additionally, take faction terrain into account: it's free and has a fixed effect. Said effect is likely balanced around larger point values, making the faction with better terrain more powerful in smaller games. Sometimes it's easily quantifiable. Say, bone tithe nexus can generate a free mortal wound every turn (it's a minor effect but the easiest one to calculate). in larger game, opponent's army may have for example 200 wounds in total. In a smaller game, it will be 100. Comparative worth of reducing enemy army by 1 wound per turn doubles in a smaller game. Things like these mean that yes, there are competitive lists for 1000 pts. Problem is, they're often very different to 'standard' competitive lists ,because they take different factors int account. We have large amount of data on which you can base a 2000 point list, because of tournaments and such while no such database exists for smaller games - a lot of most competitive army compositions might be still undiscovered, or at the very least, poorly tested. So "there is no competitive 1000 pt" is an oversimplification, but "there's no defined meta for creating 1000 pt lists and data from 2000 pt games may on occasion be worthless if you try to make one" is closer to reality.

Interesting. He's bigger than regular humans but seems pretty small compared to his bodyguards. About time we get some non human vampires, though.

Where does the 'vampire ogor' thing come from? Was it somewhere in the reveal, because I can't find it, and everything seems pretty man-sized (apart from the varghulf and two ogor zombies that is)

I think the issue wasn't about the intention but about the fact that currently half the answers are duplicated: "Yes I currently buy from Third parties but I would start buying from Games Workshop directly" "No I currently buy from Third parties but I would start buying from Games Workshop directly" While the other half, that should logically exist (for instance i buy from third pary and would still be buying from third party) seems to be missing. Until you amend it, you'll be getting some real skewed results.

He has critters. He holds keys. He is said to control the critters. It's safe to assume that assorted Critters And Keys we've seen are his thing ; )

Funny thing about double turn is that it worked actually good in LOTR. But LOTR had alternating phases, not turns, and there was the Might points mechanic where units around heroes were allowed to ignore the random priority if you spent them. I would n't mind if AoS had those.

Would be nice, but it's unlikely - they've only promised new battalions, nothing about new cities.

I assumed its her own antlers, but really, it is a move away from the Beastgrave crew. She seems right in the middle, aesthetics wise, in between the Underworld Kurnothi and Wanderer range, hence the comment about possible merger.

New take: It would seem that the main distinction between Wanderers and Kurnothi, at this point, depends of if they returned to live with the Sylvaneth after Alarielle has forgiven them their betrayal. The new lady is mentioned to have lived in the place known only to sylvaneth, which would be impossible before Alarielle changed her mind.