Ganigumo

Those kruleboyz changes are rough. They literally mentioned in an earlier metawatch that you fix external balance by buffing the stuff the army actually takes, and this is like their 4th round of buffing the stuff nobody takes from kruleboyz. Most lists will just save ~20 points on their vulture. The new battle tactic is a big deal, since it gives kruleboyz a second one in a season where they'll struggle with the core ones (again), but I doubt it'll shift things much. Thats the kind of buff that only helps in close games. Dropping points on boltboyz and hobgrots would actually help the army. 20 points off boltboyz and 10 off hobgrots is like 100-120 points off most lists, which is actually impactful, but those units have remained unchanged since the book released. Also bonesplitterz have been performing even worse than kruleboyz lately and don't show up at all. They didn't even get a battle tactic after they finally recognized how only having 1 book tactic is such a big disadvantage and gave them to ironjawz and kruleboyz.

All we know is that book 2 has a focus on destruction and is coming with the big ironjawz pig. I'm expecting a bunch of warclans stuff myself.

Sourbreath Troggoths were what the "regular" Troll became when fantasy shifted over to AoS. Stone trolls became rockguts, and river trolls became fellwaters. The model for the Sourbreath troggoth was the battle for skull pass troll that never got a solo release. As a bit of history there are some metal prototypes, so maybe they intended to release all the BFSP stuff separately, in metal, but the only thing that did were the spider riders, in plastic. I went digging again and found that Sulphurbreath troggoths were mentioned in the October 2020 white dwarf, in the Troggherds of the realms article. Its the one that had the gloggs megamob rules.

Sulphurbreath troggoths were mentioned somewhere, although at this point I can't remember. I have doubts that sourbreath troggoths will return, but maybe. I've got like 6 of them but they're similar enough to rockguts that I doubt anyone would complain about using them as rockguts. A plastic hag sculpt would be great too. They said its a mix of resin, plastic, and metal but didn't elaborate. If HH is anything to go by most of the solo characters will be resin, and some of the bigger kits or units will be in plastic. Since they're bringing back a ton of old kits for TOW those will probably just be whatever they used to be when they went OOP.

I've only gotten one game in of 10th and found it substantially better than 9th, which I hated. Generally my opinion is that they didn't cut nearly enough from the rules and its still full of bad complexity. also narratively space marines should be better than aspect warriors. Space marines are genetically modified super humans, with the best weapons and armor the imperium has access to. They range from being able to smash through concrete walls to ripping tanks in half and winning against thousands of foes. Not saying aspect warriors should be chaff, but pretty much everything that isn't custodes should probably be punching beneath a space marine from a narrative sense. The real problem is the prevalence of space marines and how Eldar are supposed to be elite. They're elite in comparison to stuff like humans and orks, who are the chaff horde infantry but because space marines have such a huge saturation in the playerbase and make up so many of the games armies there is a problem with an army that is supposed to be "elite" but weaker than space marines. Its middle-man syndrome. By rights marine armies should look more like custodes in terms of model count, with custodes being even smaller, but that would shrink the game size considerably. They could nerf marines to be less overpowered narratively as well.

They're probably using underworlds warbands because they're push fit and easy to build and play with, unlike warcry warbands which are the normal multipart plastic ones. The terrain is supposedly all new, so its probably also push fit or all in one piece on the sprue. Less models probably lets them keep the cost down a bit too.

I don't think its a problem, but army identities do end up getting muddled a bit. The biggest example is actually Gitz vs Skaven (Chaotic backstabbing gremlins who abuse substances and have a never ending supply of replacements which makes life cheap, they both even live underground). I think in a game focused on models its the differences in aesthetic that matters more though, and they do a great job of making all the armies very distinct from one another. This is gitmob, which I desperately hope comes back separate from gitz. All the destruction factions just want to smash everything else, its the narrative thread that binds the grand alliance together, they just go about it differently. Grots want to steal, Orruks want to smash, gargants want to crush, and ogors want to e.at. The idea of using the broken stormcast souls is something GW should explore. They've lost too much of themselves to be useful in anything but battle, and are wild and unpredictable berserkers that they send out to the most desperate battles. Maybe they could even start putting the souls inside things like golems or tanks to "automate" them dreadnaught style.

Looks like a kruleboy arm to me

oh how could I forget skaven after I got wrecked by them with my kruleboyz. skitterleap + gnashing jaws with high rolls deleted my boltboyz, then ran away through the gnawhole. You can use the primal dice to roll extra dice to try to get up to a 12. You need to do rerolls before you use any primal dice, and if you reroll you can't use any primal dice on that roll. after rolling you decide whether or not you want to use one, and you can use multiple on a single spellcast, but you decide whether to use another after rolling the previous. So as long as you have primal dice and haven't miscast you can keep rolling until you get the number you need to force a spell out.

Even though they called them monster hunters I could see them messing with commands somehow. Between the two monkeys and the screaming drummer it looks like they make a lot of noise.

There is usually counterplay to blizzard, 12" range that can't be increased or cast through things like spellportals is a pretty firm cap, plus the CV 12 usually requires you to use primal dice on it. Its just liking giving other armies a wurgogg eye lasers (same range requirements, and can't be cheesed since its start of hero phase). Armies with hero phase moves or teleports could get a lot out of it. For me only warclans (Mighty destroyers, fast 'un maniak wierdnob, hand of gork) and Gitz (hand of gork) come to mind. My poor kruleboyz are looking to be just awful in this season, those BTs are really tough for them. Big Waaagh! is looking interesting though, primal dice to force hand of gorks, maniak wierdnob to have 24" range on blizzard, Gobsprakk is good for anti-magic since you can hoard primal dice to force unbinds that do mortal wounds, and 'ardboyz make a great target for hoarfrost. Bonesplitterz get some nice tools too but we'll need to see if it actually has any impact. Overall I like what I see, but the loss of something to fix coherency will be painful. Tzeentch is going to be a menace though, the BTs combined with their book ones will make getting all your battle tactics pretty trivial.

He's certainly better. Taking him and hoarding all the primal dice for unbinds could be a good play. That said I think this set of battle tactics are even worse for us than the last set.

In spite of them teasing a big destruction release the entire campaign, plus it was the only new rules destro got too.

I'm all for bonesplitter brutes!

Ogor maneaters would make a good pick for one of these regiments of renown boxes. Maybe thats how they'll get released.

This post made me desperately want a unit of grumpy longbeard maneaters.

Thank goodness. I was hesitant when AoS did the same but its ultimately a good decision. The amount of granularity you get from running 9 guys to save enough points for a special weapon or something really didn't amount to much in the end. The complexity it added, for the benefit you get, was just at an absurdly bad ratio. Aos got around it by splitting warscrolls in some situations, and still having drastically different options in others. Blowpipe Skinks have been the standard for like 3 editions now. It doesn't really change the reality of 'X' unit being only good with 'Y' loadout either, since that was already the case with the old system, it just makes listbuilding way less painful. Some of the units are combining weapon profiles too, a friend who owns GSC said they combined a couple of the ranged weapons into a single profile. They've also been enforcing the options in the box more, and a lot of units' best loadouts used to be 5x of a weapon that only had 1 in the box or something.

Cutting Air and Primal Blizzard are hugely problematic. Strong shooting is always a pain point, but a spell that buffs them isn't wholly inappropriate. The big problem is the range increase. Cutting air could be a huge buff for kruleboyz if their magic wasn't so terrible. More aoe mortals across d6 units and having their move is just hugely impactful. Bonesplitterz are great, they just need better rules and a small range expansion. The narrative of permanently hyped up hunter orruks constantly seeking the thrill of the hunt and the strongest beasts they can find to release the energy of their god is super cool. Small model range with poor diversity, and boring rules really hold them back. They should be a proper johnny/timmy army, like Gitz or BoC, and the rules should make it feel like hunting. Tireless trackers for a pregame move is cool, but they need more to fulfil the fantasy proper. Stuff like flanking bonuses, forcing charges & retreats, tiring out enemy units, retreat and charge, etc. An army of hunters is a super good concept that you can work a lot of narrative flavor into, they just need to put the effort in. Several new kits could really revitalize the range too, Bonesplitter Brutes who can use big stabbas or greatbows, a proper centerpiece (maybe a shaman channeling a ton of energy into a monstrous skeleton, krondspine style), a gobbapalooza style cohort of characters, and/or an archer/hunter boss would go a long way. This set of spells is less problematic, but this would make 5 spells, which is strange (but not unheard of). Frozen heart is a bit too much imo.

Needing to reference multiple pages, is bad enough, but needing to reference multiple pages across multiple books is a nightmare to anyone who hasn't memorized 2-3 of them. Already we need to reference: Warscroll, Allegiance abilities, subfaction abilities, enhancements, heroic actions, monstrous rampages & seasonal rules. Most of these generally come from your battletome, with a couple coming from the core rules (tbh I'm not a fan of rampages or heroic actions either but they're simple enough if you even remember, forgetting rampages or heroic actions is pretty common in my experience), and the seasonal rules on top. Adding USRs means yet another point of reference, since it rips useful information out of the warscroll and puts it somewhere else. Ultimately its a feature that ONLY has value for entrenched players, when playing against other entrenched players, when neither needs to reference the part of the rules where the USRs are written. Flipping pages and putting the pieces together takes time, and if you can remove as much page flipping as possible thats a good thing. With regards to complex warscrolls like nagash I don't see a problem with it. They put the flavor text in italics, so theres a clear distinction between rules and flavor, and sometimes (not always!) complex warscrolls are warranted and appropriate. An 800+ point god model is certainly one of those cases, but if it were a 100 point foot hero we would have a problem. I'm against the standardization of rules in this manner for a few reasons. USRs need to be created, codified, and handed out at the start of an edition It may require invalidating all books if you do a heavy FAQ or "Indexes" If you don't add them to existing books only the updated books use them, so they're playing with two different rulesets and don't add value for months to years It requires unrealistic foresight into all the rules you want to use commonly over the course of an edition It limits creativity and innovation in rules writing, since abandoning them or changing them can have huge effects on the meta. Finding a better way to do say, impact hits, is irrelevant because changing the USR, or printing the new version verbatim invalidates the USR. Having different types of the same effect can be good, since it creates better distinctions between units and armies. We have multiple ways of doing impact hits, (rolling dice equal to the charge, per model, per unit, hitting multiple units etc). By creating a standard you force everything into that standard and can limit design space. As an example look at Deadly Demise in 40k 10th. It does the specified number of mortals wounds to nearby things on a 6+. Limiting the rule to a 6+ makes the entire thing unimpactful, and if you wanted to do a unit that uses it as a gimmick, like maybe a new unit of bomb squigs, by the time you get done writing the rules for the unit you've used more words than just writing the whole thing down USRs obscure bad unit design, complexity creep, and balance. Less words on a scroll doesn't make the scroll or unit any more or less complex, you're just moving the rules to a different place. We have a perfect example of this in AOS. Kruleboyz should have Venom encrusted weapons on their warscrolls, but they don't, its an allegiance ability thats a core part of how every scroll works which makes them near useless without it. Every mounted scroll still needs a blurb explaining which of the mount weapons are poisoned (most of them are). The writers also mistook moving a rule that should be on the scroll into the allegiance abilities for an actual allegiance ability, hence why they don't get any. Spiderfang in contrast kept the rule on the scrolls, and still manage to interact with it and reference it in the same ways. Its easy to slap a few USRs on a warscroll and call it a day, because the rules still look simple, but you may have inadvertently created some really complex interactions. Not all USRs are created equally, but its easy to not think too hard about that, both as designers and as newer players. Liberators with "Deadly Demise 1" would be far worse than Liberators with "Lethal Weapons", but that's not immediately obvious. Incestuous USRs are just bad design. (i.e "Flaming" turns off "Regeneration", or "Phalanx" is immune to "Impact Hits") These always run the risk of being far too niche a use case. units with these rules are only good if units with the other rule are good, unless they're good anyway, in which case running up against it with the other rule is definitely NPE. They're Paper, to something else's Rock, but your paper is only good against the rock, and their rock is good against everything that isn't paper. With the example of "Phalanx", "This unit cannot have mortal wounds inflicted to it during the charge phase" covers the use case, while being simple, and not incestuous. It has a side effect of blocking a few other rules, like stomp, but generally the majority of charge phase mortals are impact hits Actually writing out the rules gives a better view on how complex things are, makes editing easier, and forces the player and writer to actually think about if the rule is even worth putting to paper, or if its enough to make the unit worth taking' We can use terms like "deep strike", "ambush", and "impact hits" without them being fully standardized. Honestly they're better as general use terms for common types of rules in my opinion. Now certainly there are a few things that could be standardized, Wards were a good example, and "bodyguard saves" are another, but the standardization of those is mostly to cover sloppy rules writing by the developers, which isn't a good excuse in my opinion. Wards are a case where standardization was actually necessary though, because limiting a unit to 1 ward save is a nightmare without a proper term to call it.

I'm very against USR from a readability standpoint. If someone picks up a battletome to read what a unit does they shouldn't need to also flip to a page in another book for it to make sense. It also allows complexity to creep in because its super easy to slap USRs on a unit, since the scroll will still look plain, but in reality you've added a ton of complexity. If they used USR but ALSO explained what the rule does everywhere its printed I might not mind, but at that point it loses the point of printing less words. Its not an issue for players who've got experience, since you'll eventually learn them, but its a huge pain for new players, and unless a large number of armies are using that rule it doesn't really justify being a USR. Heroes joining units is an interesting angle, and 40k 10th did it in a way that isn't painful, but aos would have growing pains if we added it. Most armies don't have any form of "sniper" units, so throwing something like a slann into a 30 block of something, or skragrott into 60 grots would make them nearly unkillable. We'd need new battletomes to accomodate the change, and I don't want an index situation. WH weekly proposed it as a Stormcast army rule during their 3e tome retrospective show, which I like far better. Give specific heroes an ability on their warscroll (or in their allegiance abilities) to join units, and give the unit a buff. Would give a bunch of those otherwise useless heroes something interesting to do, and maybe they don't even have the leader role anymore, plus since you're limiting the heroes that can join units like that you won't run into any painful edge cases like with the slann.

Things I like from 40k 10th that could come to AoS: -OC stat on warscrolls -battleshock not being losing models, although I'm not certain I love these rules either. -[Psychic] Keyword on abilities, I don't want to lose spellcasting, but it would be neat to throw a [magic] keyword on some abilities to let it interact with things like spell ignores. -unit coherency, 40k coherency is a bit much, but ours sucks so whatever. For the record while I do think the 10th edition rules are a huge step up from the 9th ones, they're still bad. As in very badly written. They REALLY need a rules editor or something, and an actual editor. Everything from the page format, to the way rules are written, to the ordering of the rules is such a huge step down from AoS. Like who's idea was it to break up the sequence of the phases in the rules to insert pages of weapon special rules in between the shooting and charge phases, or to still keep 2 very unique unit types with their own rules (aircraft and transports) and have those rules split up, or to put super important rules in margins/text boxes to the sides of the core rules. Then there's the actual mess of pointless text and rules. For charging you need to declare a charge target, which honestly doesn't add much value in the first place, but you need to declare the charge against EVERYTHING you want to end up within engagement range of, so it creates a headache if units are close together, but it gets worse of course, pile-in range is 3", and engagement range is 1", so you can just declare and charge the closest thing and then pile in to everything else anyway. WHY? I could go on and on about this, but the rules are filled with this kind of stupid stuff, pistols, extra attack [x] existing solely to cover for sloppy datasheet writing, imperium focused stratagems like smoke getting into the core list, etcetc. I was a bit annoyed about how aos3 bloated the rules more than I liked, but every time I look at 40k I'm reminded of how it could be. My biggest pet peeve though is the constant need for them to have transports be the ones to shoot for everyone inside of them. Its just weird and unintuitive that when my dudes get in a car their rules stop working, and they get more or less accurate depending on the car and its condition. Immediately after reading it I wished they had just lifted the KO rules wholesale.

Something that I think will be key in this new season is that arcane tome lets you opt in to some of the bonuses (if you're not khorne). I really like that part, and kind of wish there had been a command trait or artefact in the last season that let someone opt into counting as a GC, even if it was just for scoring. arcane tome is locked out of the Wizard, Priest and Khorne keywords., slayers and KO have non-priest heroes so they can opt-in if they want to. allied wizards should count too. Now that doesn't mean its a good option for them, we'll need to wait and see, but at worst it will give them an option to score some of the season's battle tactics. KO could probably do with the nerf too, as long as they don't get hit too hard by other changes as well. Not sure how Fyreslayers will end up though, they've kind of sat in the same spot in the middle of the pack metawise for the entire edition even despite things like bounty hunters. Maybe they'll get a few point drops to compensate (like how they nerfed savage big boss for the infantry hero season...)

Also on the topic of Hoarfrost how does it interact exactly? If you change a hit roll from say a 5+ to a 3+, you can still add 1 from stuff like all out attack right? Replacement then modifier Does that work the same for rend? Like if you changed your rend to -3, and were under the effects of a buff that increases rend by 1, you would go to rend 4 right?

My spiderfang are all ice themed, and my kruleboyz have tundra bases so I'm pretty excited to explore this area. Wizard season is good, all armies except khorne can play in it (thanks arcane tome change) but khorne is very anti-magic anyways. Arcane tome lets you spec into the season at a pretty low cost if your wizards are weak, and it seems like they went out of their way to not leave armies high and dry. With Optimal focus both sides are tempting, and even armies that have wizards might want the CP instead (Like my kruleboyz). Also Hoarfrost is one of the strongest spells in the game I think, and it sound like there might be an entire spell lore. Not sure how good it'll be on my frost themed armies, but I'm sure I can find something to take advantage of it. Bonesplitterz could be super nasty with the extra rend actually. The one thing I'm not sure I like is the primal magic extra dice part. Its good to make bad wizards more consistent and valuable, but making it available for unbinding might have a dampening effect on the "magic meta".

Just something orky alluded to, but I would be shocked if its just the big pig. I imagine it will at least be something for each of the armies if not a bit more, although I suspect the maw-grunta will be the only centerpiece. I don't expect much else from ironjawz unless they're refreshing 'ardboyz, but bonesplitterz has a ton of heroes they could refresh or add some new units to, and kruleboyz could do with a new unit or two. Maybe a cav/monstrous cav, an elite infantry unit, or some kind of beast/trogg for the breaka-boss to boss around.