dekay

Theory about the vampire hunter, and all the assorted flesheater/ ossiarch / zombie / vampire rumour engines and previews: It would make sense that they present the next Warhammer Quest soon. The first one was succeeded by Blackstone Fortress and it's been finished for a while now. It was pretty popular and I'd assume they're working on the next one and that it'll be AoS again. And it's a reasonable way to put all those different undead into a single release without making it two (human / undead) entirely new armies. But still, if I'm right, I'm all for the potential vampire hunter models that will come with this!

Loyal fleetmaster explaining himself with basically 'we know Morathi lies and we're not waiting until she betrays *us* as well" in the short story was a great insight into Anvilgard rebels. It's like they're not in any way good, they just think leaving Sigmar for Morathi is downright dangerous. Plus, 'loyalist rebels in traitor faction' is always a fun theme.

I have no idea how he played it, but if I were to guess, I'd say that vitriolic spray is here mostly to scare the opponent. The list has a lot of high rend attack and even more ways to deal mortal wounds - removing saves doesn't help it that much. But that prospect that it might happen, and that say, those 15 drakespawn mounts now become insanely dangerous to anything they touch, makes people avoid the sorceress and or try to kill her fast (which, with drakescale cloak is not all that easy). In list such as this I'd say she'll get more mileage out of bladewind than the spray - mortal wounds, easy to cast and reasonable range. And will likely one shot a low save wizard for example. Plus, she provides an unbind attempt, which can be crucial. Sadly, the list is 2060 now due to how much the scourgerunners cost was raised. I'm not sure how I'd work around that. Removing a single drakespawn chariot (and exchanging maelstrom for quicksilver swords for even more mortal wound pottential!) might be the simplest option.

This is a list that did fairly good on CanCon 2020. 3 dragons is probably the most you can reasonably fit in a list, but as you can see, 15 drakespawn knights (and what is a drakespawn if not a small, wingless dragon?) and 3 drakespawn chariots (6 more drakespawn! or, hell, make each one pulled by a single, medium sized drake!) Bad news is, scourgerunners got more expensive in the meantime (now instead of 300 pts you'd have to pay 420), but good news is, they are not related to dragons AND knights got cheaper to mitigate it a bit.

Bear in mind: you will find a lot of opinions they are utterly unusable, that were all true at the time of writing because originally, they were 50 points more expensive. A lot of their bad name comes from that time, now they are perfectly usable. However, there's another thing that makes people dislike them: They are being mistaken for a shock cavalry. And (and honestly, that's pretty strange, design wise) despite being knights with lances, riding monstrous mounts, they sure as hell aren't one. In Order Serpentis, being killy on the charge is a job for chariots and dragons. Knights are basically ironbreakers, but twice as fast and with some hitting power on charge. If you treat them like what they are, a surprisingly mobile anvil that can potentially be buffed to remove some chaff from an objective, there are no reasons to complain about them.

I'm not claiming it's a bad thing, it was clear previous hedonites book was missing a mortal part that should have been there. It's just a weird way to update things and a bit unexpected. It's much better than giving them all the new units in the next broken realms, because that leads to situations like with Mechanicus in 40k where they have at this point as many units outside of their book as in it.

Pretty models aside, is the previous Hedonite battletome the shortest lived army book in the entirety of WFB/AoS/40k history, or has there ever been something updated even sooner?

For those suggesting Power Level games instead, as some have mentioned, PL has issues. And the issues go beyond 'you must have similar mindset to your opponent upgrade wise' because of *huge* differences what 'upgrades' really mean for different armies. Let's compare two troop choices (chosen these particular two as possibly most extreme examples, but as I'm not all up to date with 40k, it's entirely likely there's something even worse hidden in various army lists.) Player one plays Necrons. He decides to take a unit of 20 Necron Warriors. Necron Warriors have PL 6 per 10, so it's 12. Point wise, it would cost 260 points. Necron warriors have one option: they can all choose between two guns, both free, so regardless of the choice, they'll still be worth 260 per 20. That player's opponent plays Tyranids. And decides to take some Termagants, also a basic troop choice. Termagants have PL 3 per 10, so for the cost of those 20 Necrons, he's allowed 2 units of 20 Termagants. Termagants cost 50 points per 10, so the horde of 40 will be 200. Compared to Necrons' 260 they're a bit behind. But! It so happens that Termagants have options! So let's give them all we possibly can. Now, armed with devourers and equipped with adrenal glands and toxin sacs, the same 40 termagants cost 440 points. Their power level remains at 12. So, in this particular example... what is the 'similar mindset' the players are supposed to have? If Tyranids don't take upgrades, they're a good chunk of points behind the necrons. If they take all, they're worth almost twice as much. So the reasonable answer would be 'let them take just a little bit, to match the Necrons... point... value... wait, did we just decide to play points instead?' And that's the real problem with Power Level. I've heard many times that as long as you're reasonable with your list building it works. But being reasonable boils down to minding the points despite not using them, and the more you mind them, the closer to balance you will be. Power level feels like AoS points system, only half done. Yeah, in AoS many units have weapon options and upgrades too, but you are *expected* to max out on them and in theory, point value takes it into account. No one will complain that those Arkanauts took all these special weapons, because they're explicitly allowed to and that's just how the game is played. In 40k though, power level sits in a weird limbo between wanting and not wanting people to upgrade things, depending on a unit, opponent and, well, upgrade's point cost. That you're allegedly not using. I don't really think if power level even should be considered as an option because taken as is, in some matchups it simply doesn't work, and any time it does, it basically boils down to 'let's say we're playing power level and use points, only we don't count them 100% precisely. More like, 95%.'

I very much agree 40k and AoS should be judged separately, popularity difference makes lit almost impossible for AoS model to ever win. But for now I voted Triumph of Saint Katherine, both for being a great diorama, a part of the best old model line refresh in recent years, composed of great models individually and a source of material for some of the best AoS converted armies i've ever seen. No contest here. Also: It kinda does, and now I'm concerned that what we thought were new AoS human previews will be some limited commemorative Vermintide hero set with no purpose. That would hurt a lot.

Both this and coming siege of Excelsis, Gordrak's battering ram and so on. I think we'll be seeing more Destruction soon.

It's all good and valid point, but they don't necessarily need the one huge overarching goal. Temporary goal of a single character is good enough to fuel the plot. Gordrakk wants to lay siege to Azyr. He doesn't even need to succeed in this - his path towards this goal can ruin multiple cities and drastically change the balance of power. Azyr being under attack completely shifts the objectives of Sigmar and the Stormcast, and, by extension, with Stormcast temporarily occupied, goals of both Nagash and Archaon who can now work without their main hindrance. Hell, maybe even lend support to Gordrakk in some way because as far as whacking Sigmar with an axe goes, their goals mostly align. And the good thing about Desctruction is that precisely because it lacks one huge plot to follow, it can be given meaningful (both to themselves and others) victories and defeats without changing the setting too much.

If you ask... Took a bit of work but here it is: close ups time! (not everything, but, well , examples of most of the stuff in the group shot ; )) One of the Griffon generals (the other one has sword and shield) here shown on a too small base (he started his career as a Swifthawk High Warden, it has since been remedied ;)) There's also a griffon mage in there, not yet deserving a solo picture. Gunhauler (there are two, both with the same lightning-summoning apparatus standing in for the cannon) Pistoliers on properly Ghur-ish horses. Hurricanum! Or rather, a mage supervising an angry ancestor-stone. Dreadspears (beginning the theme of 'bits from every elf and possibly eldar faction around put together) Darkshards (with bows, repeater crossbows are way too high thech for them). There are full 40 of them. And that was before Har Kuron rules came out! Shadow warriors (there are two units, one standing, one jumping to differentiate them: Knight Azyros, for that re-rolls. Sorceress/Battlemage, depending on the need: Sorceress on black dragon, the newest addition: Runelord (all duardin models are based on LOTR minis. They fit fine with other races but would look off with huge AoS duardin) Irondrakes (again with the low tech build. Scaly hide cloaks, and shields account for the heavy armor, magical exploding arrows for the drakegun firepower.) Longbeards (with ancestral weapons and shields, for shielding and buffing the irondrakes) And finally, Gyrocopters! (look at all the lightning surrounding them if you want to ask where does their AoE attack originate from ;)) Arright. A bit more pictures (including earlier versions of some units, back when they were Swifthawk Agents, availible here: https://www.instagram.com/dekayvision/ Plus, that's where they show up first!

I'm not saying it is done, there's still more to go, but still, it's worthy of being called an army: The Storm Kin, finally in one picture as I've managed to rig a reasonable photo set up!

If you play Living City, Dreadlord can be great (either 2+ save variant or infiltrating-guaranteed charge-crossbow one). There have been successful tournament list using the sorceress as well, she's a bit underpowered but she has some unique uses no other character in the roster can replace - so she works only as an element of some particular combo builds. The griffon mage, on the other hand, is just patethically useless. If anyone ever considers him, the sorceress will be straight up better even outside of the builds that make her useful, that's how bad he is. He might be an only CoS unit to *never* feature in any tournament list with any degree of success. If sorceress got cheaper or gained a 2nd cast she'd be quite good without any weird tactics required. Griffon mage would be useless even then. It's actually quite an incredible feat of game design to make something so bad.

I think the genocide thing is a bit of a memetic mutation. It doesn't seem to be explicitly mentioned anywhere, folks have just took the killing of the Anvilgard's human army and the lack of any humans in the army lists, plus general dark elf style of doing things, and extrapolated from this. But as far as we know, Har Kuron still has non-aelf population, it's just that Morathi doesn't trust them enough to recruit them. We'll know more when Har Kuron add-on to the Soulbound Anvilgard supplement comes out (I don't think it has, yet.)

Nah, this one no longer functions, one of the most surprising thing we ever got from AoS was actually *getting* a fishmen army (but given how overdue the Idoneth update is, maybe the clock functions again just for that ;))

Newborn/Fulgrim dual kit is actually a solid idea, design wise. I'm sure sales departament is not happy that Magnus and Mortarion are 40k only, sole exceptions in the entire daemon range. I wouldn't be all that surprised if they actually did this.

I wouldn't treat it as evidence, personally. They've used that term for various powerful heroes through the ages, and the newborn is described as serpentine and winged. Plus there's this mirror subplot that seems to relate to Sigvald, too.

Then I'm sure you realise you shouldn't complain about your disposessed, they got entire Fyreslayer and Kharadon lines added to their lineup! Dwarf is a dwarf after all. Slaanesh spent so long without *any* updates people were legitimately worried the entire faction is getting deleted. And then in the last update (which was pretty recently) they got models for just a half of their line (which they needeed to share with 40k, too!) and what they're getting now is basically a second wave of this update. So yeah, you've sure chosen a right target to complain about too many releases.

Warpfire route gives me another idea: Greywater Fastness army, basically just a horde of gyrocopters. Unit of 3 basicaly removes a witch elf/sister unit in one go. A bomb run from the unit of 3 takes out a hag queen. Cauldrons and such wil be tougher to kill, but what use of a support structure if you leave them with nothing left to support? Bonus point for using a subfaction commonly considered bad (but just so happens to be good against this particular target) for this, adds insult to injury.

While I agree that choosing a faction based on hard countering your only opponent will just make a game unfun (for him instantly, for you after 2-3 effortless wins, this is not MtG where you're expected to change your deck every month to chase the meta and games take too much effort to prepare and set up to be fun with no uncertainty involved), if you are decided to do this, this: is actually a solid idea. Drakkfoot aren't usually played because their abilities are considered too specialised to make them a viable faction, but against DoK? You make them twice as easy to kill with no particular downside. And after that you easily out-swarm them, you have shooting while they don't and they just die to attrition. Just feed Morathi some meatshields in the meantime. You'll have nearly 300 wounds on the table, you can afford it. There are of course, armies that will just roll you, but if we're talking DoK only, you could certainly do worse.

` And Flesheater courts, Ogors and skaven got new heroes. Daughters of Khaine got 2 new unit boxes and now a hero, Sylvaneth were built on a core of old models, and it's not counting things like nighthaunt and bonereapers, where models from WFB times have been included in a mostly new faction. It's almost like most of AoS is built out of the old armies receiving new units! (Given that Bonesplitterz are not a separate army anymore and beastmen got terrain, spells and actually useful underworlds hero, aren't CoS the ONLY army that hasn't got new units? But yeah, not once :D)

With re-roll 1's and Withering added, that's around 75 saves on the target. Or, if spray goes through, straight up 75 wounds, which might be a bit of an overkill.

Aren't all 'dark' city aelves notionally serving Sigmar, though? But, true, shadowblades are a gift from Malerion to Sigmar. However, I think it's safe to assume that, as they were given a choice 'serve Morathi or die' many would choose to serve. Loyalist elements likely got killed off or ran and now work in oldschool Anvilgard lists ; ) EDIT: Wait. do I see correctly that Incitement to Murder is not melee only? Because if so, think of the possibilities!

True, missed that part. Well, no horde discount then, but still sounds viable. Usually, they're outcompeted by outriders and or pistoliers, because to be more effective they need to both shoot and charge, but here they're given a way to reliably do both. Also, with their range they can avoid the thing where you shoot and your opponent removes the first rank, making your charge harder. If you roll badly for the extra move you can always shoot something else before charging into the primary target.