sandlemad

Looking at that 'leak'... should we be concerned about how it mentions the 'Oldheim Ogres' blood bowl team when we now know that they're called the Fire Mountain Gut Busters? There's also the re-release of the Warcry warbands, which seems odd. Could be putting them in regular AoS packaging though without the Warcry gubbins.

It feels so good to see that gnoblars are still a Thing, both with these new BB sculpts and in the battletome.

Was hoping for more Beastgrave stuff but oh my goodness those gnoblars are precious. I love them. They're the perfect urchins, my horrible little children. These ogres are brilliant too, they have a great look and, more than most, really are suitable for AoS. That shouldn't be the main thing with their design of course but it's nice to see. You could scatter them in with the bulls with minimal work. The spire tyrants are really cool! Far more interesting than I expected, definitely classic chaos but not in a completely Frank Frazetta style. Bizarre that the dude they showed off previously is easily the least interesting one. I like that they're all clearly individuals with their own gladiatorial style. The spiky maces are striking and that bestigor might be the coolest beastman model I've seen.

Probably just to make sure that the Scraplauncher gets the ability. It just has the Gnoblar or Grot keyword otherwise.

Good for ogre players, it'll keep the cost down on ebay. I'm actually seeing a fair bit of buzz elsewhere online about the ogres, especially BCR. Partially it seems to be existing players but they always have that inbuilt attaction of being the lowest model count force, which is pretty attractive to a lot of new players.

It really is very similar to the stock of a skitarii galvanic rifle though. It would be weird to just reuse something that appears on their basic infantry on an AoS model. I suspect this is something AdMech.

Really great podcast. I like how there's clearly been an effort to make the Ossiarchs both supremely cold and logical and orderly thinking beings, but also fallible, petty and malicious while telling themselves that they are none of those things. Like how they might give a tithed nation a way out if they can follow some rules but then make those rules almost impossible to follow, so the ossiarchs can tell themselves, well, we were being fair! It's the kind of petty letter-of-the-law and ultimately narcissistic feel that they clearly get from Nagash. Honestly, the characterisation of Nagash and Death more generally might just be the best AoS background. I also like the ambiguity they introduced with these Crematorians, the Ossiarch 'fire and forget' suicide troops, some of whom are beginning to worriedly realise that they're not quite the honoured and valued soldier caste they thought they were, and maybe they should be trying to find a way out from Nagash's gaze... The idea that it's the lower ranking ossiarchs that are made of mashed together souls is interesting too. On one level I would have thought that more souls mean more power but I can see the rationale here. It's a bit like Dark Magic in WHFB, which was all eight winds of magic crushed together, left to stagnate and lose vitality as they became homogenous, if powerful. Or a blended whiskey vs an aged single malt. You can even see it with the multi-faced Necropolis Stalkers and the higher-ranked, single-faced Immortis Guard. Multiple souls whirred together for their value, still experienced and thinking, but ultimately more artificial and less tolerant of individual genius or creativity.

Looking at that army shot, it makes the Necropolis Stalkers' size very clear. They don't really have that much bulk or height over the stormcast.

Looks like... maybe 4 or 5 of every 10 mortek guard have noses. Hmm.

It does tend to be games besides 40k and AoS. Last year we saw a preview of a Nightvault warband, a Blood Bowl team and a licensed board game. Fingers crossed for a look at the Beatgrave hunter, though odds are we'll see him in the background of an army shot when previews of the Mawtribes battletome come out this week, or next week with youtube reviews. (also the idea that GW is dropping part of a plastic line for a brand new AoS faction only two years in is ludicrous. KO might be getting a battletome refresh, gods know they need it more than most, but there is absolutely no way on earth they're getting rid of part of the model line)

Yup. The question is when though. The next Beastgrave warband to be released is probably the gobbo wolf riders so he could be after that. Odds are we'll see what the hunter and cats look like in the battletome though.

Oh nice, I was thinking ravens as heralds or harbingers of war but the carrion bird aspect is very fitting.

The dude on the left is a little whatever, just a big ghostly bonereaper, but overall these are pretty cool. I want to know more about this repeated raven motif they have, it seems to crop up a lot.

Might depend on the gutbusters allegiance abilities too.

Maybe think of them as something like a German doppelsöldner veteran, ready with their two-handed swords to step out from a pike block and wreck some face/protect the officer?

Oh, so they do! I see they also spell Leadbelchers as two words rather than one, so perhaps this was a hastily put-together video. They also show three leadbelchers when there's only two in the box...

So "explaining just what happened to the Everwinter" could be a few things and a Necroquake-based explanation seems pretty plausible considering it's been a catalyst for new stuff in most other recent battletomes. I don't think it means the Everwinter is simply being dropped or the theme of the BCR is being removed, there's too much there already. Rather I suspect we'll see something about how the BCR can temporarily hold it at bay. Really, what is the Everwinter if not a massive race-wide endless spell anyway? Exactly the kind of thing that the Necroquake kicked off and disrupted. Mechanically, this is probably necessary to explain why if you have a joint BCR/regular ogres force ("Big Waaagh" style) that the BCR-specific allegiance abilities don't apply. Maybe the Huskard Torrs or the Butchers can tap into all this wild magic floating around to make the Everwinter dissipate for a while before it starts pursuing them again? Or offer it sacrifices of red meat and hot blood? The BCR battletome did have a line about some captives being tied to standing stones and left to the oncoming blizzard as a sort of offering, maybe they're learned how to utilise that.

Isn't that the point of the pronunciation though? That 'orruk' and 'ogor' are close enough to the older terms that you can just slur it a little and it'll be fine? "Oh-ger" vs "Oh-gor". I know I'll be in the grave before I go to the trouble of adjusting my terminology for that.

That's some improvement to the Ironguts. Now hitting on 3+ and getting an extra bite attack. Also looks like a warband of ogres is now called a Warglutt. Huh, guess they took half the sprues? Might account for the Irongut card noting that it could be any number of models, we might be seeing a lower minimum unit size for ogres in general.

THE OL' SWITCHEROO (aaaaahh there's a lot here.) Two battletomes in one week! Mawtribes in 2019! That's the current butcher and firebelly anyway. Shame for the former. Basic ogres are called Gluttons now, fine, ok Coffin dude is a special character, ok Gnoblars qua gnoblars are staying! Both sets of dice are lovely The mawpot looks fantastic This though, "explaining just what happened to the Everwinter" is a little concerning... The BCR's background is great, I'd hate to see it go

That's the thing isn't it, they're thinking beings. There's a lot that can be read into that image where two ossiarchs (officers? attendants? nobles?) turn to talk to each other. You wouldn't get that with most undead. They have no real direct connection to any culture of the mortal realms, living or ancient, because they have no concrete memories and they're not resurrected entombed warriors but they have their own society. It's just that it's one built from the ground up by Nagash. He's picked particular martial trappings and they owe everything they are to him, more than most undead, but they're not automata. They are going to quarrel with other factions (I can so easily see a mistrust between the soulblight "aristocracy of the night" and the ossiarch professional soldier class) and have their own identity of sorts. I'd also note that though it's only a small mention, this bit about the Ivory Host and their beast bones shows more emphasis on Ghur. It follows on from what we got with Beastgrave, including its bones and infectiously predatory energies, as well as in the Warclans battletome. I suspect we'll get a lot more in the Mawtribes book.

Really liking this background. That they’re a completely new form of unlife completely sterile and cut off from the natural order, with no connection to anyone other than Nagash. That they’re part of a colossal megalomaniacal plan at the resource management end. That they come again and again like historical events, appearing in chronologies over millennia. That they can think and feel enough to make deliberate bad faith deals out of spite, they’re fallible and very human. That the bone source matters and only makes them seem more prehistoric. That all these subfaction names are bangers, far more so than ‘Bonereapers’. It’ll be the ogres for me but I can’t wait to read about these guys.

Status, a symbol of authority, the look of having a throne, maybe it's some sort of magical focus (see the stone and gem), being able to peer over ranks of constructs while still sitting in the reclined position their high rank deserves, being able to get out of their chair to go to court or work in the lab and then get back in for other reasons. All the cultural and emotional reasons someone might want that kind of thing. There's no reason everything has to revert to exactly the same form.

This guy rules. Pleasantly surprised he's not a special character. I love the callbacks to both Arkhan and Nagash. The hat, that particular gem, the broad shape of the staff, the casual use and abuse of spirit hosts, there's the real feel of a structured hierarchy of undead sorceror-priests, hundreds of them shuffling through shadowy fanes and temples in Gothizzar, Nagashizzar and across Shyish, politicking with and against each other for Nagash's favour. The hat is very pope-y but the pose is that of a brahmin or Buddhist sage, nice combination of influences with a clear feel being aimed for. It's also cool to see that there will be more than one character for the Mortisian priesthood, this Soulmason and then that (less senior? different discipline?) hovering dude from the first Ossiarch preview.

It hasn't been debunked but it's difficult to see where it might fit in easily in 2019. If it exists - and all that stuff about the 'Pact of Bones' seems like a fairly big hint - I'd expect it to come out a bit after the Bonereaper release, so as not cannibalise sales of the full price individual kits, and a while before the Mawtribes. In that I would expect it to be closer to Looncurse rather than some of the other kits. In other news, the Grymswatch cards seen on Can You Roll a Crit give us a few more hints about the future Beastgrave warbands. there's a quote by a Morgwaeth the Blooded, invoking Khaine. Probably going to be the Daughters of Khaine champion (this was spotted already from WHC previews) we have a better view of the Ironjawz, with this card showing at least two distinct brutes, one with swords and a topknot, the other with clubs. They're also shown with what may be another shadowy figure here, and an armoured guy with a two-handed flail-club swinging at a ghoul here. Three brutes then? we have a clearer view of what the Rotbringers look like: this card and this card seem to show a Blightking who looks like that one gladiator-looking dude you can build from the main kit but seemingly with a spear, and this card shows a chunky fellow with a similar helm to the Lord of Blights. I'm suspecting two blightkings and this witch we've already seen. there's a few quotes by a character called Hrothgorn, almost certainly the ogre hunter. He's got character! Notably we have a glimpse of the big fellow on this card ("You're all just meat to me" is a good line) and a few glimpses of the sabretusk, which in this card is interestingly closer to the original design, i.e. bristly mane and lower jaw canines, suggesting that the other card in the main set might have just been an art mixup by a freelance artist. Goblins! There was some discussion previously about which warband these gobbos on foot fit into, possibly Ironjawz or Ogres. This card shows a berzerk goblin trying to kill one of the brutes, suggesting to me that they're not on the same side. In addition this card features a quote from the likely ogre hunter Hrothgorn addressing someone he's calling "runtling". This could just be generic adventurer party banter to an unrepresented ally but it could also easily be the hunter telling a grot assistant what to do. I think it's looking like the foot gobbo(s) are with the ogre hunter, which could suggest a warband consisting of a hunter, a sabretusk and two-three goblin helpers/trackers/lackeys/impromptu bait.