OkayestDM

I agree with the general consensus here. This isn't what I wanted, but it is an improvement. I don't know if they're piling too much incentive on not taking the double turn, but there won't be any way to know for certain without actually playing games. Overall, I can live with this, so long as they stay true to it.

Well, the battle tactics article was better than I thought. The tactics themselves seem to revolve around control, positioning, and combat. Good. These are relevant elements to the game, and do a better job of working with the theme of a battle for control of the field rather than just being a random checklist. The move to grand alliance instead of faction specific BTs is definitely a good one. If we must have battle tactics, this isn't the worst showing they could have made. Still probably going to ignore them in my games, but credit where credit is due, this definitely looks like an improvement.

It came out with this season's Moderator's Handbook, but it really just their normal spell lore reflavored. Thank you! That's more or less what I'm hoping for with out upcoming FF articles, just a smattering of everything so we get a feel for what's to come.

It's been 3 years and my memory is failing me; how much actual information do the faction focuses typically give us? A brief faction overview and one or two rules? Maybe a warscroll, or a select ability or weapon profile? I don't recall much from the previous faction focuses which tells me that there wasn't much to remember.

I can get behind that. Trading off between high rend and MW output on can-opener units can create specialization and continue to support unique roles, but it has to be done with the consideration that high armor should actually mean something. 3.0 managed to make both high armor and high rend largely meaningless with the prevalence of mortal wounds and save stacking. The later is being greatly reduced (though Stormcast and similar tanky armies will likely have some access to it), and so MWs also need to see a decline - or else very judicious distribution - otherwise they will once again become the go to. You are correct though, MWs are an important tool to keep high saves from dominating the game, and all armies should have some degree of access to them in one form or another. 3.0 made respectable progress in curtailing MW spam, I'm hopeful that they will continue to improve in their distribution and implementation.

Replacing mortal wounds with auto-wound or 'becomes 2 hits' abilities would be much better to create impactful shooting that still has counterplay. Mortal Wounds would work best with heroes, monsters, spells, and defensive units like Liberators (a unit that has few attacks and is meant to take it on the chin, but due to mortal wounds still has the potential to do some damage on the return swing.) Offensive units should have more attacks, deal more damage and have access to abilities that improve their offensive ability, but no mortal wounds (the Kroxigor warscroll demonstrates this perfectly.)

They might circle back and show off the Reclusian warscroll. It's the only one we haven't seen for the new model reveals. Edit: Correction, I don't think they showed clan rats either. Showing off both of them might be worth an article.

Probably my most memorable moment of AoS was during a 2.0 PtG campaign. I was playing BoC and fighting my buddy's Legions of Nagash army, back when that was a thing. My army had gotten smoked pretty early, due to some poor decisions and positioning against my buddy's general, a vampire Lord on zombie dragon. Realizing the game was lost, I decided to go out with a bang and charged my Great Bray shaman into the Vampire Lord, managing to deal 1 wound. On the return attack, my buddy wiffed catastrophically, and once the dust had settled, my Shaman still had 2 wounds remaining. I've never felt so accomplished while losing a game.

Battle tactics and Path to Glory are both very strong make-or-break game elements for me. I didn't like 3e battle tactics, and the fact that victory points are weighted heavily in their favor makes me uneasy. I'll be tickled to death if GW finds a way to make them fun and practical while also relevant and tactical, but my confidence is currently low. Path to Glory saw a huge improvement in 3e, but still missed the mark in my book. I'm more confident that they can make appreciable improvements to this again, but my big ask is that they just incorporate a faction-specific Anvil of Apotheosis section into each Battletome, designed to work with Path to Glory. Give me this and I could even overclock them completely fumbling on battle tactics (I only play casually anyway, so it isn't like they'll be hard to ignore.)

Same! I've got a bunch of armies, including Stormcast, and all of these rules reveals have me extremely excited! The weapon rules look clean and neat, the ability sequencing is straightforward and consistent, and the clearly defined unit roles are awesome! The changes to saves and rend will require more info before I'll commit to being excited about them, but I'm leaning towards optimistic. The fact that we'll be getting the indexes before the proper battle tomes is a plus in my book, meaning we'll get a good sense of what our units and armies will be doing, and can get a solid feel for any other factions that we might be interested in picking up or expanding.

I suppose it's more of a lateral move than anything else. For my part, I'm happy about it. People either felt like they were flying in the face of the lore if they used the "wrong" subfactions, felt like they were pigeonholed into a subfactions they didn't like, or else just ignored the fluff entirely and did what they wanted. There were obviously also folks for whom the subfactions and rules lined up perfectly, and any disappointment on their part over the changes is valid. Ultimately, it seems like a more permissive structure, which matches the direction they seem to be going this edition with regards to list building. I'm interested to see whether or not they expand the battle formations in the actual battle tomes, both in rules content and number of formations, and how those might inform list building.

Love the new models! Really looking forward to painting and fielding them! The addition of the priests is an unexpected bonus, and is a cheeky way of making a 3-man unit into a 5-man unit. Might also be a way to increase their wounds slightly. The article said that the Ruination chamber had been opened, so I'm quietly hoping that there's a few more units to be released separate from the starter box.

I'm backtracking a little with this, but I'm a little disappointed with the color choices that GW went with for the rules phases, specifically the Hero/charge and Shooting/end phase colors. I'm a bit color blind, and those color pairings are close enough that I'll almost certainly have some difficulty telling them apart (I know because I thought it was weird that Nagash had so many abilities in the Charge phase until I read the text.) Fortunately, the qualifying text in the color bar is very helpful when present, and the ability text is also seems sufficiently informative that I should be able to figure it out. It's also entirely possible that the actual colors printed on the cards will be more distinct from one another than the reference chevrons, but my aforementioned confusion over Nagash's warscroll leaves me uncertain how often I'll have to ask my fellow player for confirmation as to whether I - or they - are using an ability at the appropriate time.

13 you say? 🐀

That's my assumption; there's no need for redundant greathammer wielding Paladins, and Annihilators are obviously going to be the choice. It's a sensible move for a variety of reasons, and I approve of it, I'm just gonna miss my Retributors (and by miss, I mean proxy as Annihilators ). Same! The javelins always looked better anyway!