NauticalSoup

I don't see much bashing GW for it's own sake. I see some GW bashing for reasons that are valid, well-explained, and which are clearly shared by a great many based on which posts are getting the strongest reactions. But if excess negativity alone is moddable then I suspect TGA might have a hard time being the home for constructive discussions involving GW going forward

Oh sorry sce names are so horrendous they don't even register - that's more possible but I still don't see them having that much wasted plastic for a dual kit just to reuse the torsos. It would also be odd not to mention it in the promo. Not literally impossible but it's also very likely there just won't be a multipart kit for the spearbois.

Torsos are different, archers have capes clasped across the breastplate. Different heads arms toros weapons. Kinda running out of components to share.

There aren't any shared parts I could see. The legs are all different. It would've made sense but it doesn't look like it.

I expect to be doing a lot more proxying with my existing casts, which is fine because nobody nobody every knows what any of my stuff is as is and nobody seems to like SCE round here.

It absolutely will NOT result in units looking more like actual regiments, unless players are keen on gimping the performance of their combat units for aesthetic reasons.

In an edition where -1 to hit is of reduced utility because it doesn't stack. Without some kind of big upgrade Gutrippas are basically just much worse Savage Orruks at a higher price. They'll be totally reliant on Allegiance abilities and faction synergies to be worth using as anything other than minimum battleline which means they'll probably be useless in Big Waaagh! Still not as bad as Hobgrots though lol

This is pretty questionable from what I've seen in Canada. Having stuff to sell is nice but the amount of leverage a company like GW can exert on a small store is colossal. They can demand outrageous concessions of floor space while jerking you around on supply and there's nothing you can do about it - if GW products sell in your area it's a core part of your market so you suck it up and do what they want. All the while GW's direct online sales model exists to gut your income by making it the strictly more convenient option and killing a lot of the value proposition of going through your FLGS, especially if said FLGS can't afford to eat some kind of discounted rate on the already narrow margin. At my local store I remember vividly gigantic stacks of Silver Tower and original Stormcast/BoK starter boxes being used as podiums on which to place other product, sellable product - then later just kind of jammed in a corner where they wouldn't take up too much space. I remember the same thing happening with Soul Wars boxes resulting in several being given away as prizes at the same casual tourney. I suspect if stores had the option a lot would probably opt out of selling AoS product entirely. Our store is healthy enough I think to weather a certain amount of this but I can't imagine how terrifying it would be to operate a small one on a delicately balanced margin when GW can throw you under the bus at any time and you can't do anything about it.

I've never once seen 'git good' work to keep someone in the hobby. If somebody is quitting because of negative play experiences you're going to have to do better. And I think you're vastly understating the strength of Unleash Hell, it's not going to be easy to play around and is currently central to competitive discussions of the game. I think PC was joking about it in his Goonhammer article, but I think the ability being stripped out of matched play next GHB is a likely outcome.

Gonna have to disagree with you there, the kit shows its age certainly but black orcs were and always will a great sculpt. I own 40 of the things and would never have touched IJ without them. The problem, if there is one, is just that the rest of the IJ range went with a significantly different aesthetic while trying to grandfather in the black orcs. And squatting Ardboys will hardly make brutes any less trash, although it will make IJ an even more anemic faction than it already is. Nothing stops you from bringing nothing but brutes today after all (except their aforementioned badness). So here's to the 1000 year iron reign of the Ardboys, may it last far, far into the future

Wouldn't hold your breath. Now that GW has a 100% Sigmar range in Warclans there probably won't be any more other Warclans releases besides one-shot stuff like warbands. Besides that the Ardboy entire fluff was written around the Black Orc model - I think they'd be more likely to be squatted than get a new model.

Fair nuff! Hopefully we will again then

Is there some basis for either of these claims or just wild speculation?

Literal robots with baroque space guns would seem mildly anachronistic but to each his own I suppose.

As Malakree has outlined in detail, the problem is that any situation where Ardboys aren't optimal GGs are going to be more useful than Brutes. Between them Ardboys and GG cover the spectrum of needs, Brutes just don't have a useful niche. Exactly like when the book first launched really.

Simpler fix that I genuinely think works and is easy to execute: just introduce a handicap. Bad army gets a few more points to play with to level the field. Doesn't fix the underlying problem but saves you a wackton of work and maybe you can enjoy a game with a severe imbalance between the armies.

I was just joking about this with my buddy. Without whatever new rules they get, kruleboys are looking a little anemic. Pay 50 points to get a worse savage orruk lol

Ardboys have a job no matter what as the cheapest battleline choice. In small units they'll continue to outperform brutes. Coherency definitely hurts Gruntas, but so too does it hurt Brutes, even with hackas. Slow as they are they'll have a hell of a time moving around the table and getting into position to inflict pain. Even with 2" I don't relish fighting brutes into position, 40s are just awful especially in big numbers. The damage output of brutes and gruntas is super duper close if I remember correctly, almost identical (maybe even the same median?) when they can all fight and are warchanted up. Brutes are more vulnerable to battleshock and much slower, but have smaller bases (although more of them). Overall even if one grunta is stuck at the back drifting, and even with a marginal increase in points, I think gruntas are still the clear winner here either at 3 or at 6.

I'm pretty surprised they would widen the points gap between brutes and ardboys even worse than when the book first came out, when they previously changed the points on both to bring them closer to parity. If the points had been closer brutes could have done something Ardboys can't with new coherency, at that points spread... yikes.

The reason it seems like GW releases new stuff to be overpowered is purely spotlight fallacy. You see the powerful stuff constantly and so it sticks in your mind, and you forget just how many kits are released with trash rules and rarely if ever show up on a table in front of you.

Just gonna cherry pick this because it's oft-claimed and utterly wrong. Primaris, for most of their history, have been among the worst garbage unit ranges in 40k. They started out massively overpriced and had few options (both in terms of loadout and range), and most of those options were outright bad. It took a long time before Primaris units became competitive staples, and even then we're talking the same select few are usually on top and many are relegated to the display shelf. Today they're much better balanced with lil marines but still largely fail to substitute oldmarines in armies. Of all the new models that arrived in the latest wave the only ones that see consistent use are Bladeguard, with a few others seeing occasional use and most seeing little to none. If you go back and read comp results form tournaments through all of 9th you will see that Space Marines in general have not been S tier since other factions got books, and in particular that the best units show no favoritism to either breed of marine. Case in point, the multi-melta attack bike has been the best space marine unit for almost a year and only just recently got a love-tap nerf and still appears in most podium SM lists, especially Dark Angels (who make up the vast majority of podium SM lists)

I mean without a Warclans book on the immediate horizon Kruleboys aren't gonna sell a lot of models. Their warscrolls are expensive and largely mediocre and their one allegiance ability isn't gonna cut it. It would be very strange for them not to update the other warscrolls in the book at the same time.

Brutes have been playable competitively since they went down in price and Ardboys went up. With the changes to unit sizes and coherency I think it'll be difficult for GW to ****** them up badly enough that they don't fit into an army, and despite the big bases access to reach weapons will make them better off than Ardboys when reinforced. Also worth nothing their true main competition, Goregruntas, are hobbled at 6 models by the coherency rules so internally that's also a win for Brutes since they'll be the most efficient hammer blob in IJ.

This logic doesn't get you very far with GW games, which are riddled with the kind of oversights that create these problems. And it remains to be scene if GW's intent is to use the term 'ward' on every such save they want covered by this restriction going forward - they could reserve it exclusively for standard ones that have no extra mechanics while also expecting you to intuit that the restriction applies to any such roll, regardless of name. My reading is that the ward rule is written as it is to grandfather in saves of that variety so you still only get one, which would also shut off the ability to take both the Praetor bodyguard roll and a ward because it's such a massive umbrella. You got a hundred different abilities that negate wounds? Nice - pick one. I'm also pretty mistrustful of anyone who sees a clearly borked rule like this and claims that it's clear when it's obviously not and in desperate need of an FAQ.

Kunnin Rukk was pretty decent but I'd already stopped using that as well (too large a points investment for the benefit), and given that it's very optional many other armies are hurt much worse. The save rolls thing is definitely a problem but I'll be surprised if the wording for the bone shields doesn't change - it wasn't written with a maximum bonus in mind, and it should really change their save characteristic to 5+ instead of adding one to the roll putting it in direct conflict with buffs. In the meantime you can throw +1 on more stuff instead, or hedge against the -1 rend every army has on every unit these days 😛