Gistradagis

Unfortunately, nerfing some units wouldn't help. This problem was always there, but it wasn't so easy to see because we didn't have stuff like KO, Seraphon or LRL to show us how problematic it can be. What is the problem? Well, mostly the free value of shooting and almost non-existing barrier to hero-sniping. You can nerf some key units here and there, but that will have minimal impact when these armies still exist, and heroes have no real protection.

At this point, I'd be rather surprised. With Daughters and Slaanesh, it appears we've seen some lore and such, then a release (BR and now aaaall the Slaanesh products). Nurgle has been mentioned as one of the factions in BR: Teclis, but nothing else, which makes me think it'll be a minor faction and get some useless battalion or such. I mean, Nurgle has sort of been under the radar for quite a while, and with Slaanesh being in the spotlight, I don't see more Chaos stuff coming in numbers anytime soon. So unless the BR is a surprise and GW suddenly goes "fooled ya! Here's an expanded Nurgle release because reasons!" I don't see us getting units or a book until AoS 3. Although, in regards to the book, that might as well be a good thing, perhaps? Imagine yet again being one of the last books from an edition, not being properly prepared for whatever changes in the meta will come.

My 50 cents on a few things, particularly stuff most people are bringing up: First turn choice stays the same. Mostly because it is a layer of strategy that begins at list-building. Making your list as tight as possible in drops should bring an advantage, and knowing you'll choose who goes first and second is a great addition, as it's not a gross advantage due to both players knowing this beforehand and deploying their army with this in mind (it's not like 40k, where a bad deployment can straight up lose the game due to the "who goes first" roll). It doesn't make much sense to me to try and get rid of what little strategy AoS has pre-game. Double turns should be gone. There's just no good reason whatsoever for them to exist, as they add little to no value. I agree that the first change of rounds (from 1st to 2nd) does have some strategy to it. If you have the lowest drops and choose to go first, you have an inherent advantage of taking positions on no man's land or to attempt to sabotage the rival, but risk getting double-turned by your opponent. From that point onward, however, there's no real way to properly plan for the opponent getting a double turn or counter it, and in almost every single game when it happens in rounds 2, 3 or 4, it's a huge "feels bad" moment that ends a game then and there very anticlimactically. Once in a very loooooong while, it creates some interesting tension as the losing player gets a miraculous chance for a comeback, yes, but the vast majority of double-turns simply give one player an unjust advantage with a single die roll, due to the one-sided nature of turns, outside of the Combat Phase. Conversely, if GW is just SO married to the idea of double-turns they want to keep an element that I've so often seen turn away new people from AoS, we'd need radical changes to turn order and activation. As it is right now, double turns are a terrible mechanic that make the game much poorer. Curb shooting (slightly). Some people are bringing really radical changes, but I feel we simply need to make it so it's less "free value" at no cost. Right now the only real limitations is that you're forced to shoot at a unit you're in combat with, and that hero-sniping is slightly difficult with the -1 of Look Out Sir. Both are really flawed, as the first isn't a true limitation (ironically the shooting unit technically becomes stronger, as it now still shoots, and also participates in combat), and the second has become less and less relevant with some much "unmodified 6 = MWs." I would either ramp up the difficulty on hero-sniping, making it -2 for example and/or putting limits in place of how much damage you can do, giving the hero a special cover automatically (so +1 to save for being within 3" of an allied unit, potentially added to an extra +1 for normal cover) or such. The shooting into combat is also easily restrained, by making that shooting still possible (so as to not making shooting units almost useless once touched) but inefficient (-1 to hit, for example, or even better, -1 to wound due to the lack of distance taking away the bite of a good ranged shot). Changes to scoring. Missions in AoS are just too simplistic and straight-forward, which in part adds to the problems we have in the meta. Certain armies just play an objectives-based game extremely well, almost unfairly so, while other armies are practically engineered to fail at this and only know how to fight/skirmish/alpha-strike. Make secondaries play a real role and score more, and lessen the impact of controlling the primary objectives that decides so many games on turn 1/2 with armies that take the board's centre or engage your army in your own deployment zone. Change Monsters (slightly). Put simply, monsters tend to be really inefficient units unless they have good support abilities (or are one-man army heroes). They need a system in place to make them impactful by being more difficult to take them out (inherent reduction to damage, for example, or, if we were to dream bigger, some semblance of what we used to have with Strength and Toughness). Everything else (counting as more models than 1, good damage) already exists in some shape or form already and is merely warscroll-dependant. I'd add a rework to Battleshock, but I don't really have any particular ideas right now, so can't really bring much to the table there. Edit: As a small addendum, Samukai has reminded me of something else. I wish every single army had a faction ability in their book to reward making a named hero your General, much like Skragrott does for Gloomspite, for example.

Ghyran would surprise me, with Nurgle being in BR Teclis. So perhaps it could be related to Alarielle/Sylvaneth saying "****** you all" to Order and going back to their more "we hate everyone" roots, with Kurnothi and such.

Because he emasculates others, obviously!

I'd argue that yes, you can. The funny thing is, reading the wording for Retreat, it doesn't state a real requirement, just a categorization (i.e. if you make a normal move and were in melee range, then that move is considered a retreat). So since Parting Shot simply states "you must retreat," the only requirement to comply with the rules is "If a unit retreats, it can move within 3" of an enemy, but must end the move more than 3" from all enemy units."

I'd argue that it can still move, as the ruling simply says they must retreat, which is a type of move that's only really restricted by the standard "can't end within 3" of enemy units." Even if it's no longer a retreat per se, as there are no enemy units within 3", the Parting Shot ability nevertheless says you must make the movement, so it'll happen even if the normal condition for it (if it was the Movement Phase) wouldn't apply.

I do plan to get 5 terminators as a unit of BKs, since they have the same base and look quite similar.

Definitely not. Especially in markets like China and Asia in general, SCE are HUGE. There's a gigantic market of people who buy purely for the fun of it or just to collect, and they really drive the SCE sales. I don't see a time any soon where AoS / 40k isn't led by SCE / SM.

The point being... What? I'm just theorizing stuff for which Malerion could be outside Order. An antagonistic Malerion, affected or not by Slaanesh, can be argued into Chaos. I'm not sure why you're telling me about GA.

Malerion on Chaos, after he remembers the ****** Morathi did to him and decides he's had enough of the other elves bs. But as an outlying/independent faction.

Well, in regards to announcing it, do have in mind that GW announced 40k's 9th basically weeks before it came out, so I definitely wouldn't expect to hear anything at all about AoS 3 until, at the very least, next June. Although one of the major reasons for me believing this is what I said about PA. 40k got this series of lore/rules update for all factions from November to almost summer, then 9th was announced and they said PA had been done with the new ed in mind, introducing rules to ease the armies into it. Now, with AoS, we're getting Broken Realms from this October on. So it feels really on the nose to me. On the second point, I don't have much of a strong argument. I really don't know to what degree GW splits work, or how much does it affect their decision making that introducing new models would usually make them more money. I wouldn't be surprised if we even see some new faction before next summer (Malerion? Vampire Coast?). At least we do know that some stuff will show up, as we've seen the DoK - Slaanesh box (which, btw, also seems to imitate 40k's PA with how their first book was about the Aeldari -elves, and they got a box too). As a final opinion, I think many people aren't sure we need AoS 3 cuz we're used to AoS 2 and don't feel like there's anything big to introduce rules-wise, but I feel like it'll always be like this until the edition itself comes, and we see what changes GW would like to introduce (on a personal level, I'd like a revamped Look Out Sir rule, as the current one no longer works).

Because GW likes being cyclic/stable, and for now everything points out at new editions every 3 years. Broken Realms is further confirmations as we might see some general updates and added rules for all factions as they get ready for AoS 3, where those new rules would mean factions remain playable with the changes. I don't see which year you're speaking of though. When did GW focus on updating all BTs. The other stuff is simply another matter entirely. A new edition will happen independently of more or less new models being introduced. It's not a "we either get AoS 3 or GW concentrates on newer models."

No, it got 2 decent subfactions (emphasis on decent, although wandering is more on the good side), and 2 terrible subfactions, neither of which solved the main problem (really outdated warscrolls for most units, falling off in power unless you rely on stuff like Marauders from StD, among others). So, yes, I very much read Wrath. Everything that has happened up until now confirms the cyclic 3 years between editions. 40k, AoS, then other games, and start anew. It'd be very shocking if AoS 3 didn't show up next summer. Also, PA started around October last year iirc, then culminated with 9th this summer. Bit of a coincidence there.

My guess, like others have said, is that Broken Realms will be our Psychic Awakening... but somewhat smaller. Considering it'll begin towards the end of the year, and AoS 3 will come out almost for sure next summer, it might add some rules and stuff to the factions that need it the most, purely to get the ground ready for the new edition. Just like how PA was (apparently) made with 9th in mind, Broken Realms will be done with AoS 3 in mind. This would confirm a suspicion I had commented on already, which is that factions which kinda needed an update won't get it, and we'll probably just get extra, additive material until next summer and AoS 3. Does break my heart a little bit as a Maggotkin player who has been waiting for an update for for over a year now, but I kind of get it (and perhaps I should be happy we won't get more .9 factions getting rules at the end of an edition). Edit: I do wonder if we'll get Malerion/Shadow Elves before AoS 3 though. Would love to get my hands on them.

People here discussing where to draw the line with the publications FAQ question as if there was any real confusion unless you go out of your way to create it lol. They refer to "older rules" because the question is regarding things such as Mercenaries or the realm artefacts, which were introduced in the GHB 19 but not maintained in the GHB 20, which made people wonder if GW just straight up made them illegal or not, to which GW answers through that FAQ with a "well yes, but actually no," very characteristic of them. Wrath of the Everchosen isn't affected by this because it doesn't precede or substitute any material, simply adds more official stuff. There's no conflict of rules or validity, you people are going nuts over interpreting smth that was never said, implicitly or explicitly.

At this point I wonder how much will the Covid-related delays mess up the entire AoS schedule. If AoS 3 was planned for next year as we theorize, that means it should already be being worked on, if not finished (taking 40k's 9th as an example, which we know was done and playtested for many months before being announced). The GHB 20 was released more or less on schedule, but Lumineth (part of them) and SoB have been delayed, so I wonder if GW will rush certain things, or straight up skip content they had planned in order to sort of get back into schedule. As a Maggotkin player, I kept hoping we'd see an announcement for an update, considering we're still playing with an AoS 1 battletome. But with the delays and a possible AoS 3 on the horizon, I'm not even sure if that would be good or bad.

No, because the status is from the scenery, not the DP. A "cursed" scenery blocks LoS, then each model makes a check to see if they are affected. A DP trying to see through the terrain is unaffected by it, and so can see through. Another unit trying to see through is not unaffected, so they have no LoS through the terrain.

Yes.

Some is metal, others it's leather. You can check the starter box on GW's web to see it.

I believe that you have to decide before rolling, as Running is a type of movement you do instead of a normal move.

I lowkey (highkey) wish Malerion comes out with his dark elves and they happen to be Chaos, rather than the "we were bad but now we're good" meme-style of Morathi and daughters. You don't even need to make them allies per se to the Chaos God armies, just like how Skaven really isn't allied with them. A darker mirror to the Lumineth, and perhaps a more interesting take than "more elves for Order, but this time edgier."

Yes.

Blades of Putrefaction is super wasted on plaguebearers unless you have no units on BKs in range.

Nothing's changed. StD only had some points changes, meaning the style and units are the exact same.