Landohammer

Yea I guess it comes down to their save. Units like this have wildly different saves. Ranging from 3+ all the way to 5+. This unit feels like a 4+ save unit tho. Their are very few instances of units with shields that are 5+. (like skeletons, skinks, and beastman I think) But the teleport also enables them to have another chance at a charge, and another chance at ASF. So if you can charge/teleport/repeat then you could theoretically maintain ASF for every combat and never get hit. Sylvaneth are looking to be extremely powerful in the hands of a good player. Imagine spiteriders doing hit and run every turn, while Gossamids shoot and flee and Durthu putting you at risk of ASL if you try to charge him. There will be armies who could find us tough to engage. Man I am hyped for this book!

Oddly enough I have actually fielded Vanguard Palladors as allies/coalition in Sylvaneth and Living city a few times. They are quite a good tool box unit. They are fast, they fight ok, shoot ok, are fairly resilient and have that teleport. They fit well in both armies. I think they are actually an absolutely competent unit for their points. The issue is that Stormcast is full of a few over-performing units that overshadow them. Why would anyone bring Palladors if Stormdrakes, Fulminators, and Annihilators are available for the same price or cheaper. Anyway, my point is that its ok for Spiteriders to just be an okay unit. I don't need them to break the game. I want new units to fill roles that Sylvaneth lack. Gossamids did this perfectly. And from the previews the Spiteriders look to be on track as well. 👍

I mean 2+ saves aren't really what I would measure them vs. And we still havent seen their full warscroll or allegiance abilities. Also keep in mind they we will have access to a retreat after attacking as well as a fairly reliable ASL mechanic, so I'm ok with a relatively mild damage output. Imagine charging with a squad of these guys and another unit. Activating both, then retreating these guys into woods before you opponent even activates. We will have a forest and a 5+ Rally to use if they get targeted by shooting. The synergy looks quite strong.

Hype!!! I am actually cool that they are more tanky than hitty, since we will likely still have access to Eels for that role anyway. But at 7 attacks per model its not like they are slap fighting. Curious if the lances will get damage 2 on the charge? Also note the rider and bug are range 2" so units of 6 are feasible. Plaguedrones and Eels are 200 and 195pts respectively. So I'm hoping Spiteriders hang around that cost as well. With Kurnoth getting bumped to 255+ its going to be tricky if they are much more than 200.

Yea the spiterider leak couldn't have been farther off. These guys are more like plaguedrones rather than eels and I love it. Its a good thing because we can already take 6 eels as allies. These guys are going to be spicy! Especially when their ASF synergizes with treelords ASL. Let the activation wars begin anew!

Every codex released this year with an eligible monster has been given the option of monster battleline. So its looking good for us. Though keep in mind that groundshaker being a monstrous rampage now removes the ability to spam it, making duplicate treelords less appealing. But the improved Talon profile is huge, and assuming their points remain reasonable they are definitely appealing a. I'm just tired of taking minimum Spites/Treerevs every game as filler TBH. Any new battleline would make me happy.

Hard to say. Competitive 40k is in a rough place at the moment. Nids and two other factions are absolutely destroying the field. We are talking 65%+ win rates sustained over many weeks. (some approached 85%+ prior to nerfs, but remain high) But if you are playing casual thursday nights vs an actual adult, its an absolutely fine list for space marines. It fills your troop tax nicely, and terminators/dreadnoughts are still their best units. Again tho, the appeal isn't for top tier players. Its the fact that a new player can buy a single box and be ready to go at 2000pts for a reasonable cost.

Took an army with 5 Gossamids and new Durthu to a tourney this weekend. I would have fielded Lady of Vines too but my Echoes boxes arrived a week late so I had to paint and assemble the gossamids the night before Managed to go 2-1. I played Stormcast 3 times in a row lol. Beating two lists with 4+ stormdrakes. My loss was to the guy who took second. He brought Judicators with hurricane bows and a ****** ton of annihilators and just shot/mortal wounded me of the board top of 1. I had like 1200 points left going into my first turn :S. Still had a blast tho. Thoughts on new warscrolls. New Durthu is an absolute power house. He single handedly killed 4 stormdrakes and 2 celestant primes over the course of a weekend. He is a model your opponent has to plan their entire strategy around. I naturally gave him the Frozen Kernel in winterleaf, so its likely we will lose that combo in the new book. But as long as you keep him near a woods (and keep a CP for all out attack) he will do his job. Gossamids as expected, did absolutely fine. No more, no less. They are nowwhere near the boogey man people claim them to be. I really enjoyed fielding them because they offer some diversity to slow tough trees. I plan to bring at least 5 in every list. I tried to keep them in awakened wyldwoods to block LOS. Overall I am really optimistic for our new book. I know the price hike on Kurnoth is going to hurt, but potential battleline unlocks and the spite riders are going to make this army very fun.

Its $300 for a 2000 point army, core rule book, and templates. It also a legal 2000pt army in traditional 40k. I WISH more AOS boxes were of this value/convenience to get started. Its the best value box since Dominion or Indomitus.

I like it. Some of my favorite media ever has major character deaths. Game of thrones, MCU, and even LOTR to a lesser extent. Sorry dumb question: Are those the names of specific novels. Are they any good? Most of my experience dabbling in AOS novels is stormcast protagonists. The human perspectives were only for temporary redshirts about to die horribly lol. Yes and thats fine. But like Nagash/alarielle/belakor/morathi/Teclis etc doing X gigantic magic event to further the plot/win a battle isn't interesting to me. Maybe i just have unrealistic expectations, but big events in 40k reverberate among the fandom. Like people still quote events like Horus vs the Emperor, Abaddon vs Sigismund, the fall of Cadia, Helsreach, etc. Those events had major character deaths, impacted the timeline, and people build armies around them. Does anyone care/remember the Necroquake, broken realms, etc? Something I liked about Fantasy (and 40k/HH does this too) is that you often get game rules for characters that are dead. Like many of the bretonnians/empire and even some of the other races like Dwarfs had characters who would clearly be dead in the current timeline. So it doesn't really matter if the hero ultimately dies, as long as he has plenty of timeline where he COULD have been fielded, or experience adventures. So for example, if Gotrek died in an epic finale, you could still use him similar to how Anvilguard still has rules even tho its destroyed.

Summarizing my opinion and followup comments from the rumour thread: AOS lore is bad. At least compared to 40k and HH. Here is why; -Only 7 years to build the lore -Most meaningful advances in the story gets retconned or ignored later (IE Anvil Guard, etc) -Characters never actually die -Too much magic flying around these days... -No "regular human" perspective. All protagonists are supernatural/magical/immortal

Agreed. Broken Realms was their big chance to shake up the lore and move the story forward. But then nothing happens and everything is fine. The two characters that die can come back from the dead at-will. Per the financial report that was distributed a while back, the black library novels only net around $25K each after expenses. That hurts my feelings a little bit, bc many of their books are just outright great. But it make sense given their extremely niche audience.

The 40k fluff that really took the franchise to the next level, (and is what most 40k nerds talk about) was written in the last 16 years or so. So the comparison is more like 16 vs 7 but you have a point. My core issue is no one freaking dies in the AOS universe. There is no sense of dread or peril. The main "protagonist" have built in resurrection mechanics. And the main antagonists do the same. Makes the conflict feel pointless. Compare to series like the Night Lord, Black Legion, Spears of the Emperor, Heilsreich and any of the HH books. Where the body count is quite large and main characters stay dead lol. Deaths have impact and meaning. AOS needs to introduce the concept of writing stories/rules for heroes that are long dead. What if the Gotrek or Archaon died in a massive duel. Imagine how much people would talk about that.

You touched on the main reason for me. The 40k universe (and the old world) are/were dripping with character and feel lived in. The heroes/anti-heroes are interesting, flawed and nuanced. And there are plenty of human point of views to provide perspective and empathy. Stormcast/Sigmar/AOS lore is mostly just about supernatural entities using magic vs other supernatural entities.

Agreed. The profile seems to fit the gossamid theme of extremely high burst damage and speed coupled with low survivability and high point cost. Reminds me of the old wildriders in 8th ed fantasy. Fragile and hard to manuever safely, but for god sakes you must prevent them charging stuff at all costs lol.

I say this from the perspective of someone who LOVES AoS, and plays it weekly and attends every event I can: The lore of AOS does not have much appeal because its bad. It pains me to say that. But its a hard truth :(

Thats a pretty good example of when deepstriking is the lesser evil, but vs SC you would also have the potential of them deepstriking or charging into your woods and just shutting down your deepstrike altogether. At least if they are shooting you have a chance to survive. Actually if you pop finest hour and AOD she should live even with the double tap. At least for 1 turn 😭 I have come to recognize 2.5 Alarielle as maybe-not-quite-as-terrible-as-I-originally-thought but she is easily still the worst god-tier character. I am REALLY looking forward to her new warscroll. Its definitely solid. Hopefully the points are reasonable.

Nighthaunt had their deepstrike reworked significantly but its still there. I don't see us losing ours, but i have always seen ours as a bit of a liability due to opponents being able to potentially deny the deepstrike with proper movement. I would be REALLY hesitant to put Alarielle in reserve, especially if the 3" rule also applies to deepstrike. I never see it used in competitive play. No real loss if it goes IMHO. My understanding is that active player determines the order of things that happen simultaneously. But under the current rules, the teleport is "instead of moving" and our summoned units usually say "can't move again that phase". Not sure how it will work in new book but I think we have all the pieces to figure that out now.

While win rates on seraphon and LRL aren't as strong as they use to be, (Seraphon are still doing pretty well tho actually) their core issues are they have lack internal balance. They have too many "auto-include" units and sub factions and thats just as bad from a player/opponent experience point of view. However I do agree that they are definitely behind on the meta assessment. Nurgle, SC and LoFP are toping tourneys, and it doesn't look like the new codex slowed DoK down any.

I think the weird caveate about 3" could become relevant if they let wyldwoods become 3-6 terrain pieces like they originally could. A forest thats 12" wide could be teleported to even if an opponent was with 3". I love all these changes but any idea of the source? Sounds a bit wish-listy to me but hugely helpful if true.

The melee guys will definitely get a price hike to match the bows. But they are also likely to get the 3+ save. That being said, 255 is still very expensive for that profile. But if they revamp our core allegiance abilities then it could justify the price hike and make it less painful. Consider that outside of Winterleaf, our core allegiance abilities don't do much of anything for them. I hope so. I know the Alarielle summoning table has historically been terrible at providing balanced options, but I find it notable that a 255pt Kurnoth unit, 215 Gossamid unit (and assumable a much more expensive treelord) is listed next to 10 spites and 10 Tree Revs. I sincerely hope they do SOMETHING to make our small infantry guys worthwhile outside of cheap battleline filler. And an extra wound could go a long way towards that. Since we are likely to get some pretty strong battleline unlocks (and with reinforcement points not going away), i fear leaving revenants as-is could make them obsolete.

Having spent the last few years charging my spite revenants into sentinels, snakes, megas, fulminators, and unpainted 2+/5++ dragons, and enjoying a faction win rate hovering around 30%, I am fully prepared to water my trees with everyone's tears.

Anywhere from 6 months (Arch Revenant) to 3 years (Nighthaunt soul wars guys). The price of Echoes is very reasonable even just for the Sylvaneth half. (somewhere approaching $240 USD in sylvaneth value alone). If you want to field LoV competitively I would def get it. Otherwise you will be paying ebay scalper prices or waiting a loooooong time. I do the same, but if she is truly a 2 caster, then Thrones is no longer worth it. Because you would be burning a cast to just buff a single cast. (she is always going to be moving, since she can retreat and charge) This is the age-old question. Short answer: No. A lot of us still use the old Citadel wood model, though I'm not sure that is technically legal anymore. Keep in mind that in the current book, you only have to place a single piece of the Awakened Wyldwood kit. Meaning a single kit would give you 3 placements. It just wouldn't be ideal bc they would be small and wouldn't block LOS.

The potential drop from 3 to 2 casts and loss of knowing all lore spells could justify a point drop, or at least mitigate a price hike bc of her vastly improved melee output and much larger (and more valuable) summoning table. Regardless, knowing all the spells isnt as big of a deal to me. She is always going to cast Mystic shield and Metapmorphisis.

If Branchwraith auto summons on 2+ and stays a wizard (and also maintains her reasonable point cost) then she will be really strong. I would be surprised if the model doesn't get dropped enitrely tho. Its positively ancient and the branchwych is too similar.