Landohammer

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.

Agreed on all points. They fixed her biggest issues: Lack of melee output, and the talon. Now spear can contribute in melee finally. Also of note, is that the Branchwraith is not present on her summoning table and its still only 10 spite revenants. Hopefully this indicates Spites start out as units of 10 so they don't burn reinforcement points. I don't really care about the loss of her CA. It was cool in theory but she was almost always using AOA or AOD in combat.

Yea if you were gonna built and paint 480pts of Sylvaneth and a wild wood, you might as well go sylvaneth. It will probably be better than just shoe-horning them into a Living City army. I use to play LC a lot (they are honestly flat out better than Sylvan) but dropped it in disgust when they became the fulminator meta. I didn't want to have to explain to everyone after a tournament: "yes i brought living city, no I didn't bring fulminators"

Lady of Vines is an auto take for me. She adds so much to the army while also hitting like a truck. 10 wounds, -1 to hit, and potential 5+ ward is spicy too! Means you will be on a 2+ when needed. I am digging Durthu. Keep in mind that Hunters will probably go away since the new GHB is gonna hit soon. I am REALLY curious at what a vanilla tree lord will look like now with the new stomp and talon attacks. And finally the TLA will have at least SOME combat punch. Looks like they are really pushing the tree models into survivability. I'm betting the bug cavalry will be squishy just like the gossamids.

That is a good question. The summoned dryads are a friendly unit, and if they are setup within 6" of her, they would immediately be treated as if they are wholly within 6" of a wildwood. Not sure if that is the intent, but RAW it looks like she can summon around herself.

I like to paint dryads too. But unless you were bringing a TLA (or maybe alarielle) in your Living City army then the Branchwraith wouldn't have had a forest to summon into. (they don't inherently know verdant blessing, that is an app error)

Not like the dryad factory ever did anything anyway. Cool in concept, but too many hoops to jump through. (7+ cast, near a wildwood, can't move until next turn, etc) and its not like you were getting 10 plaguebearers. 10 dryads are just a screen at best.

Lady of Vines has the Branchwraith keyword, and "Roused to Wrath" is the name of her current summon spell. So either the new Branchwraith will have this same identical ability, or (more likely) the normal branchwraith model is being dropped from the codex. It is the last finecast model in the army afterall.

Agreed. Will need to see how Dryad warscrolls look to really get a sense of her value, but as it stands she seems pretty much good at everything lol. Fast, hitty, shooty, casty, buffy and VERY resilient. The reference to "Overgrown" terrain characteristic is tripping me up though bc my local group doesn't use those rules. Looks like i'm gonna be starting a campaign to start enforcing them at tournaments 🤣