LuminethMage

Couldn’t agree more. The Shrine is so, so good. Both the look and the structure with models being able to go under it. I’m a bit afraid of having to paint it, but I can also see me picking up two of those in the end. Even if I just use them as scenery. My guess for access is that you can put units just up there, but it’s restricted to Wizards with a certain wound threshold. The whole second wave is amazing, with some new interpretations of old favorites like the BSB, Loremaster and Swordmasters, and then really interesting ideas around the new culture of the Lumineth with units like the Hurakan and the Calligrave (I really someone had an outstanding idea with this, even if the model might not be appealing to everyone).

So far we got mostly good rules, so not that worried. Will be likely similar to a lot other units on our range, if you get the necessary buffs up, they’ll be able to fulfill their role, which must be damage dealer. They might even have a better Power of Hysh spell on their warscroll. All their symbolic is about the Teclian side (it’s all moons), so I can see them having some kind of a magical self buff besides their deflection ability that is better than what the other Vanari have. And then we have all those new spells and abilities from the Lore of Hurakan and the new heroes. This army likely will be tons of fun to play afterwards with a lot playstyles. I hope we get a bit more information starting in a week or so.

Yeah that’s a bit of a worry. In the worst case you can still build him like this, but use the Regent Lord Warscroll. If any faction gets changed in the new Battletome, I think it’s will be Ymetrica. The Wind Spirits are likely also from there. Myari from Direchasm is also from there, and now likely also Lyrior. If they keep this as their main faction, but the bonuses only affect Alarith, it would be pretty bad. I think the Calligrave just uses spells like other Wizards because they mentioned during the Shirne explanation that it affects spells of Wizards on it, and in the video the Calligrave was up there.

Summary of the comments in the vid for all of the units: And before that, I’m really happy that they finally made a really good preview video for the Lumineth (not BR series which is outstanding as such). Same great Teclis voice from the BR vid, actually a bit of information about the units, new music, sound effects, just all around well done. 👏 1) Vanari Bladelords Highly elite unit, marshal elite of the aelven forces, similar to 40k aspect warriors. Slice incoming arrows in half. They are “super choppy”. 2) Starshard Ballista Multiple firing bolts, “probably” skewer multiple ranks of infantry or monsters. Part of the specialized tool kit for Lumineth. The lamps on the base are aetherquartz shards and they protect the crew (force fields). 3) Shrine Luminor Focal point of Hyshian magic and natural energy. Wizards are put in the center of the piece and channel the power of the elements (that’s why there is stone, water, wind (and I guess light) represented on the model (also symbolized by the full elemental rune in the middle). 4) Lyrior Uthralle, Warden of Ymetrica Tyrion’s right hand man, most renowned of the Lumineth generals. Completely logical and taciturn, utterly ruthless on the battlefield. His lance is called “Demonbane”, which hints at its abilities. Named steed. Double kit, the other option being the Vanari Regent Lord. 5) Scinari Loreseeker Right in the middle of the Tyrionic and Teclian aspects (sword and staff) of the Lumineth culture. Lone warrior that journeys out into the realms to claim powerful artifacts, pieces of knowledge and magic for the Lumineth (naturally can’t entrust other factions with this stuff). 6) Ellania & Ellathor, Eclipsian Warsages Twins chosen by Tyrion and Teclis. “Rising stars” of the Lumineth faction, in the same way as Tyrion and Teclis in the world that was. Represent the entirety of the Lumineth. Owl is also named. 7) Scinari Calligrave Using the powers of runes to create magics. The lantern is purified aetherquartz, and they are painting the runes using liquified aetherquartz. Can channel the elemental forces of the landscape through parchment and runes they have stored. Specialism is to undo the corruption that Chaos has caused on the land itself (maybe they are in charge of creating these large mile-long runes we have seen in the Battletome). That’s why they have stilt shoes, to separate them from the landscape in order to better control it (so they also can clean up right after the Cathallars??) 8) Hurakan Windmage Harnesses the power of the wind/Hurakan. A lot of synergy with the other wind based Lumineth (same principle as with the Aalrith). Flies around bashing people and casting spells. Very fast, force multiplying, some combat skill, magic. 9) Vanari Bannerblade Army standard bearer. Lorewise most of the banner is made out of light. Only the pole is “real”. Has in-game benefits (duh, at that point they were really running out of time). 10) Hurakan Spirit of the Wind Non-named variety of the Spirit of the Wind. Helmets are done by the Lumineth, the rest is just coalesced, manifested power of the wind as mortals see it. Super fast, super deadly, super killy. 11) Hurakan Windchargers (not shown this time, just added for completion)

Typo, 😅

The 2+, 2+ is not even that important, if they’d get re-rolls to hit for example, and 3+, 3+ that would be make them much more lethal than 2+, 2+. With -1 rend, in the end you are mostly fishing for mortals if the designers don’t change how Sunmetal works. If Bladelords only have 1 wound, then they couldn’t cost much more than 100 per five, and even then probably barely be useful compared to the rest of the army. Of course they could put all kind of powerful abilities on the Bladelords, which make them work. But Wardens have 3 inch range, don’t need to pile in in a lot of cases, and can have 2 attacks, 3+, 3+, 1 (edited from 2) rend. And are probably sturdier than Bladelords if the latter only have 1 wound. For 10 wounds and 120 points. I’d love to see a glass canon, but they are hard to balance.

@Howdyhedberg I checked the Battletome is 28.5cm long and 22 cm wide. So it probably fits into that side back. If not, you could always buy the digital version, and have it on your phone, iPad etc. Battle Foam is expensive. It’s well done and really sturdy, but the price is high, sadly.

If the Bladelords have only their attack profile from Direchasm: 2 attacks, 2+, 2+, -1, 1 damage with range 1, a 4+ save, and then only 1 wound for 5, I think it’ll be really difficult to put them in your army, if they aren’t really cheap. They’d do less damage then Wardens in many cases. Btw. the Stoneguard attack profile is better on the Direchasm profile than that of normal Stoneguards. It has 3 attacks instead of 2. And their save could easily be only 5+. Same Vanari armour, no shield. Even with missile deflection, it’d would be hard to include them. They would need another ability to increase attacks or damage or something, which they likely do, more attacks on the charge, strike first on the charge etc. Of course our rules could also fundamentally change in the new Battletome. And we’ll have more heroes with abilities that can interact with them. We’ll see. But for now, weeeeeeeeee to all the new models. Such an awesome range. And that terrain piece. 🥰

For people who are waiting for Tyrion and dragons/phoenixes, have a look at the banner : )

And we found out that the Bladelords are indeed Vanari. And of course "very choppy". And the Sun Spirit for Tyrion will almost certainly be the Phoenix we now have seen so many times, again on the banner!

Now that was so awesome! So many good stuff, it's just almost impossible to say what's best. My personal favorite is the Calligrapher and the terrain piece. Maybe, so many good things. The new battletome art is also amazing.

They finally showed a Lumineth shadow, 🥳. so 120% hype level for me : )

Oh ok, Perfect then! Thank you, I’ll amend it : )

ooops double post, Sorry!

never mind, no news to be seen here : ) 😅

Hedonites of Slaanesh? : ) And just to add a bit on what @Enoby wrote above which I think is correct. It’s about opportunity costs and risk. I think that comes into play especially for factions that haven’t sold well so far. They could make a big effort into fleshing out let’s say Fyreslayers in the hope of them afterwards, maybe, if everything goes well, selling better, but likely not stellar, or they could focus on factions which already sell well. A company normally does the latter. I have no idea about internals in GW, but those decisions often can also matter on a personal level - if you push a faction seen as risky, and it doesn’t work out, that could be pretty bad, and you likely have to overcome more resistance to get it done in the first place. Most of the time you need a person, or a group which is willing to take that risk and make that effort in the first place. And that group can’t do something else at the same time. So there are always costs involved from a company point of view, which might be better spend on something else. You likely get easier buy-in and throw the responsibility around if you come up with a good idea about Stormcast than Fyreslayers. That doesn’t mean that it’s impossible, AoS designers might be freer to take risks because in the end it doesn’t really matter what they do as long as Space Marines sell well. Or they have come up with Fyreslayer models that are just so amazing everyone thinks they are a good idea. Just generally speaking, it’s often easy from the outside to come up with ideas about something GW should do, because we don’t have to do any real work to make them possible and don’t have to take any responsibility if it doesn’t work out. I only took Fyreslayers as an example because it’s the faction almost everyone agrees doesn’t sell well.

Some additional information from the new WD. if finishes the timeline of the Mortal Realms with short summaries of the main events in the Age of Sigmar and the very last one is about Broken Realms: Just another hint at the next book after BR Teclis being likely BR Alarielle, and from then on its anyone’s guess I think (BR being over, or starting to feature others in the center of the story lime, or really leading up to Malerion, Tyrion (very unlikely in my view)).

Yup, a hippo would make sense too. Sage would fit with an elephant. Btw., if you read the full text, these are huuuuge, so could even be something like a dinosaur. Anyway it would be a mixed creature with elements of several animals very likely.

We might see an elephant-type of creature for the River Temple if the article in new WD is an indication : )

Very nice, very fitting for the Teclian side of the realm!

Should have mentioned it, it’s from the new White Dwarf.

I was all Stoneguard until today, but now I need two Cathaller to cope with my Aetherquartz waste. Blood Knight would be great though! 👍🍾

Our first hint what animal spirit, or animal companion/mount we might see for the River Temple. River Temple isn’t mentioned at all of course, but if the named Wind Spirit we’ll is also from Ymetrica, Daiko River would make sense for the River Temples.

I think you have to be a bit more humble with your interpretations. This table about tournament statistics in Europe is always shown around because it's almost the only data we have about Fantasy. It's still just a snapshot in time. And he didn't say dwarves are last, but that elves are more popular, which that table would verify: 19,100 elf entires via 6,133 dwarf entrees. If the table showed popularity, which it doesn't, it's just tournament entrees in Europe. It's only pretty good data because we do not have much else in terms of data. But it certainly doesn't contradict what he mentioned above. He mentioned that the LRL are one of the most played faction on the TTS right now, which at least from what I know is true. Now, you can speculate on the reasons, and they could very well not be one of the most popular faction a few months down the road, but it's still true right now. And Lumineth don't have a very high win rate at the moment, neither on TTS nor during in-person events. Again, they might have one in a few months with all the new models and people congregating on the sub-faction with the highest win-rate (eg Syar), but right now, they don't. You can't just put them together with Seraphon and IDK because that fits your narrative if the numbers don't show it. Btw. the respect goes both ways. Like what you wrote there - Lumineth could only be popular because of their win rate while also "Noobs playing fotm faction and loosing" : )

Depends probably on how people understood the question in that survey, which was something like “which army (armies for the 2nd one) are you playing”. Stormcast are definitely meant to be a beginners army, that’s true. The survey didn’t ask which army you own, if remember correctly. Could be wrong though, and anyway people or at least a sizable part of the responders could have understood it in that way. Stormcast seem popular though in the own respect, if you judge by posts here on the forums, Instagram images, people who play them in Soulbound etc. Thats why it’s good to get more such surveys with slightly different questions, and also carried out among a different crowd.