OkayestDM

Personally, I prefer having the room to fill in the blanks and make the army lore my own. Granted, you can do that even if the lore is more fleshed out, but there's often a lot more push-back from others who think its wrong to change the official lore. When they leave things a bit vague, you can discard or change whatever you like, and the reaction is frequently a lot more positive.

I've found that 40%-65% is a pretty decent range. I've sprayed in both and never had any issues.

I definitely enjoy the convenience of digital rules and support apps when done right - and I have several of them for the sake of convenience - but I've always preferred hard copies myself. Yes, they can go out of date quickly, but if I read the erratas once or twice, I'm usually good to remember them. I don't like relying on tech for my hobbies and games for several reasons, though the primary one is that a computer issue or dropping/loosing my phone could deprive me of my gaming tools. If I drop a book, I just pick it up again. Maybe dust it off.

For my part I think that a series of Stormhost supplements would be impractical. I'd rather they just fine-tune the Stormhosts in the book so they were more useful and added real flavor. That said, I wouldn't mind if GW gave us ways to customize our own Stormhost. Just, preferably all in one book. Still, we've got big red buttons for 3 more named chambers just waiting for a Sigmar "The hell I can't!" We didn't get anything last year, so who knows, maybe there's an update in the near(ish) future? If they do pop a new chamber, I hope it's more like Extremis. Just a few models. We don't really need much else, we just need what we already have to be good.

I'm guessing mid to late April. That gives them time for 6-8 "Lumineth Week" articles in total, which seems to make sense to me. They might run longer, but if we're assuming a release roughly the same size as the Ossiarchs, they'd likely be struggling to fill a proper article with anything relevant at that point. Plus, much longer than that and they risk hype-fatigue.

Man, I hope not. That would be such a disappointing waste of potential.

Honestly, I'm all for that. To be clear, I agree that tighter, thematic factions are absolutely the cleanest and best way to go, but creating systems that support mixing and matching within the grand alliances is an option I would be very happy to have, should I ever have a yen to try something unusual. Options are always a good thing.

Katakros has the more disciplined troops who require remarkably little resupply. They don't eat, sleep, or tire, after all. He's studied the art of war since before death, and doubtless put some of those hours in to learning what he could about Archaon, with direct data available from Nagash once he got a refund on death. This makes an invasion of the Allpoints theoretically feasible for Katakros, as he can replenish his forces with the enemy fallen and keep pressing relentlessly forward. All that said, my money is still on Archaon. It's unclear just how much information about the current state of the Allpoints is readily available, but from what I understand, Archaon has that place locked down pretty tight. Control of information and familiarity with territory are essential to any successful campaign, and there's no question as to who has the advantage there. My money is on this campaign being less about conquering the Allpoints, and more about establishing a foothold. If Nagash can get a few key strategic locations in Archaon's seat of power and hold onto them, he can change the terms of the war in the realms. Right now, Archaon is the one determining when and how his forces engage with the enemy, and can do so at his leisure because he's turtled up in the most strategically advantageous location in all the realms. The campaign itself is likely a "shock-and-awe" approach to making that happen. Present Archaon with a problem he can't ignore (Katakros rampaging across the Allpoints, conquering left and right) and use the distraction to enact the real plan. Any other gains made by Katakros are just gravy.

SCE was the army I first collected. I like them, but they've never been what I hoped they would. Ironjawz ended up being that😛 Honestly, Ironjawz are much more new/starter player friendly than Stormcast are. You're gonna have a lot of fun!

I've owned Ironjawz since before their update. I've never actually played them myself, but I used them to teach some friends how to play the game, so I'm still very familiar with them. If you want to go aggressive, they're one of the best options to pick. The sheer number of attacks they get is stunning, and all of their abilities and synergies either help you close in on the enemy faster, or make you stronger when in combat with them. If what you want most from the game is to have your little plastic guys punch their little plastic guys REALLY hard, these are the guys for you. Their only real weakness is Mortal Wounds. They don't deal that many, and they have very little defense against them, but their high wounds help mitigate that. (One of the secret benefits of Brutes, at 3 wounds apiece they're surprisingly tanky. Definitely worth investing in at least 1 unit of them.)

Huh, interesting. Thanks!

Random query: According to the core rules, an unmodified 1 to hit, wound, or save auto-fails. If that's true, why does the LoC initially have a 1+ to wound characteristic on his Staff of Tzeentch? Just to protect against a debuff?

That's something I'd really like them to address. I'm frustrated that making the named character your general feels like you're getting less bang for your buck, even though both the fluff and common sense make them the obvious choice. I wish they'd let you take an extra command point or two for loosing out on the trait you would have gotten otherwise. That would work both as a trade-off and thematically, because the named character would probably be considered a superior commander anyway.

I voted mixed, because there's a lot of factors involved. Subfactions across the board are a toss-up. Some aren't well thought-out or implemented, whereas others are amazing (or atrocious, depending on which side of the table you're on.) The better the subfaction's inherent rules, the less painful it is to be locked into a specific artifact and command trait. My preferred option would be that picking a subfaction "unlocked" a unique command trait and artifact, which you could use or pass over as you chose. However, given that you get bonuses otherwise unavailable to your main faction, I can understand why they made it non-optional.

Oh shoot, I didn't realize it was a unique character. That would have been very thematic for the model. Probably just as well though.

Fun thought concerning the Changeling. Give him the Artifact that eats an enemy artifact on an unmodified 6 to hit and drop him more than 3 inches from an enemy hero toting something scary/cheesy (looking at you Ethereal Amulet.) Make a 3 inch charge and Destiny Die a 6 to hit. Not necessarily a sporting choice, and there's a few things that would have to pan out for it to work, but certainly a good tool to have in the box. The downside of course is that you're almost certain to loose him without ever getting to benefit from his spells or abilities.

They made a big deal about how much strain the Order Alliance was under when they first released Soul Wars. Doesn't necessarily mean anything will come of it, but there's certainly potential there.

Didn't have one in 2019, but did came up with what I think is an easily attainable one for 2020: Have at least 1000 points of units for each of my (several) factions fully painted up. Simple enough, but with a few criteria. 1) Monsters and behemoths don't count towards the goal. 2) Each faction must have at least 2 minimum sized Battleline units. 3) Each faction must have 2 heroes painted, one if whom must be a wizard (if applicable.) So basically, have a completed bare minimum army for each of my factions, and then expand from there.

None taken! I figured it was similar to unmodified hits of 6 becoming 2 hits. I didn't do the math myself, but the fact that it would do significantly better against lots of attacks was part of the idea, making the Stormcast smaller elite units more resilient against hordes, and also mitigating high rend attacks against the buffed unit. Still, a flat +1 to save is definitely easier and more straightforward to manage.

A thought concerning the Lord-Castellant. It would be a break from the normal AoS game conventions, but what if his lantern caused unmodified saves of 6 to count as 2 successful saves instead of 1?