Petroos

Ok so what I'm hearing is that you don't enjoy a core mechanic of the book (the buff auras) and you feel that it hampers the play style that you want to play, which is totally understandable. That being said, I don't think that it makes the army itself bad - it makes them bad at what YOU want them to do. GW has obviously gone a different direction with the fluff to emphasize the "Undivided" side of chaos here. They want you to think of and play these guys as small bands led by an aspiring champion that sometimes group together for a larger battle, thus the emphasis on leaders babysitting units and the interchangeable auras and associated buffs. If you want to play an army of mortals that are devoted to a specific god, I think that's possible with this book but definitely not optimal and I agree with your assessment that you'd be better off porting the units into the book of whatever god you like instead. But here's the thing, with the Mark of Chaos rule GW has made that extremely easy to do! So I guess in summary, I am pushing back on your assessment a bit because I think that you are basing too much of your opinion on how the book measures up to your idea of what their play-style should be rather than a more objective assessment of what GW provided. The book is not a failure. The book can be competitive and fun. But for those statements to be true you need to approach it with a new lens and build around the mechanics that GW decided to emphasize. Some players are ok with that and some aren't, but those that aren't should recognize that bias rather than saying the book as a product is a failure.

I think that the hate on this army has gotten a little out of control. They are not S tier but they are much more functional than they were before and the book introduces some neat concepts that can make for a fun play experience. Like most tomes, there are some good abilities and there are some duds. There are a lot of redundant options but it's not like you are forced to take all of those options in your list. I can see being salty if you already had an army and the new rules don't allow your models to synergize in a way you like, but that's always going to be the case when new rules come about. Let's not forget that the point of these refreshes is to keep us buying models and chasing the meta. At the end of the day, if you are someone who only plays AoS for tourney play then I think it's safe to say that this isn't going to be the army for you. That doesn't automatically mean the book is a failure or that the other 90% of AoS players won't have fun with it.

Yeah this has been my take on it too. In the absolute most perfect circumstances it could do a boatload of mortal wounds to multiple targets, but in reality I think it's going to be about the same as if the warscroll just said d6 mortal wounds. Which is definitely not bad, but not game breaking.

Apologies if this has been discussed earlier in the thread, but how, if at all, does the errata change to the aura of chaos allegiance ability affect Archaon? He doesn't have the Mark of Chaos keyword, which apparently you must have to choose an aura, but he also has all of the chaos god keywords which is the purpose of the Mark of Chaos rule. Same thing for the Gaunt Summoner...does this mean that he cannot project an aura at all, or is it like I was reading it before that the only aura he can project is a Tzeentch one?