Ganigumo

Yes. Based on the wording it says "...If you do so you can pick 1 friendly spider riders unit wholly within 12" of this unit. This unit and the unit you picked can retreat..." Can means its optional. Of course the scuttleboss needs to survive combat, which he might actually be able to do with the new headdress.

As long as we have a 3 year edition cycle, and army updates that are done through physical media there's a pretty hard barrier to the number of factions that can exist in the game without souping.

In the 8th ed O&G book none of the O&G characters were ever confirmed dead, they were just described as missing (with exceptions for the characters that were active at the time like skarsnik, grimgor & wurrzag). Its basically code for "This character is dead but you can still play with the model & rules". Grom hasn't shown up in AoS lore in any form though.

Stormcast don't have nearly the playerbase saturation that space marines have, and honestly there are a couple AoS factions that could easily give stormcast a run for their money (or outstrip them) if they got pushed a little harder with starter sets and the like. I'm thinking Gitz, Soulblight, Slaves to Darkness, and Dawnbringers for starters, and maybe even Ironjawz. I remember hearing years ago that Orcs and Goblins were one of if not THE most popular faction from fantasy, but I can't remember where I heard it. Plus there's no reason a dawnbringer crusade couldn't be accompanied, assisted or even led by a stormcast. IMO if they break the mold and remove stormcast its gonna be Lumineth vs Umbraneth. I'd be super hype if they did baddies vs baddies though, like Gitz vs Chaos Dwarves, or OBR vs StD

Its often not even power creep with GW. Just bad pointing and bad warscrolls. Brutes are hurt because Pigs are too good, not because they're overcosted. Pigs are only as good as they are because of the errata that gave them rend 2. If brutes were the only rend 2, like how the book originally released they would've seen more play. Then there was a bunch of trash warscrolls that went up in points when aos3 came out, because GW felt the need to hard tax raw wounds, and some of that stuff never came down. Stabbas and shootas were a good example, as are Savage Orruks. Gutrippaz as well but they've been coming down and GW is also scared of mortals being good when destruction does it (see splintered fang, lumineth and FeC Terrorgeists).

Skragrott is horrendously undercosted. as are quite a few things in the book, like how did grots go down when the book is so much better if the old book had those points they might not've been so bad. Skragrott is definitely auto include at 160 points though. As for the skitterstrand its got some great utility in its movement, although the pie plate holds it back, but its got damage issues. it only averages 7.33 damage vs a 4+ save before stomp, so it'll struggle to even clear screens consistently. Spiders in general really needed a proper damage update to their warscrolls but didn't get it. The flinger has good utility now too, long range and halves movement, so you can cripple some key pieces.

I really hope so. Although If its for AoS I hope its not grom, just a reimagining of him. I love grom but we have enough resurrected characters to do us for a while I think.

The starter box could be Order vs Order. We've been expecting malerion to show up eventually and would fit as a bad guy for the box. Dark elves vs lumineth/stormcast/dawnbringers

this is how I've seen it written, but its a wholly within 12" range so outside of the first turn I'm not sure how often you'll have multiple targets as options.

They can buff anything, but you need to not move (same as now) and roll a 3+ (2+ under the moon). the buff is a 5+ ward, and if the roll was a 6 the unit also gets +1 attack.

I wouldn't even take snufflers unless I'm looking for the ward save. But the 6 rockguts are still 40 points cheaper and more durable. I think all the troggs are playable actually, although I currently rank dankholds the lowest mostly because they can't come back from the shrine.

Their production pipeline is an enigma. AoS 3 hasn't really had that many releases compared to older editions. aos2 had stormcast, nighthaunt, Gitz, Khorne/Slaanesh daemons (I think?), OBR, Slaanesh mortals, Lumineth, Sons of Behemat, Lumineth 2 & Soulblight. Thats like 8-10 releases, not counting solo hero releases. We're currently halfway through AoS3 and we've had 3. Stormcast, Kruleboyz, and StD, with 2 more on the way in Seraphon and Dawnbringers. If we're lucky we might get up to 7 releases by aos4.

the +1 to hit is pretty much the same for both, its always a 16.67% increase. Rockguts do get a bigger increase out of a bonus attack than the dankhold does, but because the dankhold's base damage is higher he'll still do more damage until you get up to +3 attacks. Base fellwaters match rockgut damage vs a 3+ save, and are better against anything higher (before factoring in the vomit) but fall a bit short of the dankhold's damage. Rockguts do take to extra attacks better though. If you give both a troggboss buff rockguts beat out fellwaters against anything except a 6+ save, but the vomit penalty would push it down to a 5+. When it comes to fellwaters I think you want to give them the snuffler buff though, 4+/5++/-1 to hit, should be a tough profile to shift. I think its something like 32 effective wounds before save buffs or the -1 to hit for 3 of them. pretty sure its the same, I missed that ruling. When it came to the gargant artefact they gave the gargant the wizard keyword but only to cast endless spells.

Same number of reinforcements so 1 vs 3, 2 vs 6

I did some math on the Slapspinner shaman (moon + spell/banner + double mortals + flaming weapon). You can make it into a hammer. average damage is good but hilariously uncompetitive because pretty much all the damage is in rolling 5s and 6s on the 4 bite attacks. could be a fun piece to bring in a casual game.

The troggboss will control the spell if its predatory. Per the core rules: "A predatory endless spell within 30" of the model that summoned it is controlled by that model" No mention of wizards here except to limit the number of spells that can be controlled by a single wizard, but the troggboss can only cast one of those anyways. I imagine arcane tome won't stack to give you 2 casts. Its similar to the cabalists ruling, and also says "you can cast the spell". If you make the troggboss a wizard he still can cast the spell. Could go either way though. The trogg artefacts are all pretty solid so its not a big loss imo.

Yes, since you measure visibility from the portal.

damage per point for rockguts vs 4+: 6.67/160=0.041 damage per point Damage per point for danks vs 4+: 9.26/180=0.051 damage per point. At 2 extra attacks rockguts become more efficient damagewise per point, but they don't outdamage a comparably sized unit of dankholds until you get 3 bonus attacks. Each extra attack gives rockguts a 50% increase in damage (50% more attacks) and dankholds a 25% increase (25% more attacks), but the damage difference is big enough that its better to buff a comparably sized dankhold unit if you have it around. I think moon is almost auto include? Just to turn the moon on more consistently, especially if you're troggs since you get it for free with loonskin

The worst part of those models is actually the stances, I know there are 5 different sculpts, but it only looks like 3 at a glance. The weapons look like ork weapons, and orks are awesome. This looks awesome, my preference is still for the sulphurbreath troggoths. Fire breathing troggs sounds awesome.

Honestly all of the trogg artefacts are winners in my opinion. Pet Gribbly is a little questionable, but if you take it with the monster command trait its +3 wounds. Getting the free endless spell is probably the best command trait though. Malevolent moon is probably going to be in most lists.

With the Gitz book I think they missed the mark on the moon, again. Its still random (fine) with pretty weak buffs for such a random mechanic (outside of 4+ rally). They still had to put in redundancy to get those effects too, which is a symptom of the problem. That said the book looks very good overall, The warscrolls really were beefed up to 11, and with the great subfactions, CTs and artefacts there's a lot to love. A particular build has the potential to be really toxic I think though, Clammy hand + Kings Gitz + blobs of bounderz/grots/hoppers. Everything rallies on a 4+, you can rally everything, and you have a 75% chance to bring back a thing twice every turn. Spiders really got shafted though, I thought they'd figured this out after KB failed and splintered fang were great but no. Spider riders still remain unchanged, the buffs to your mortal wounds are weaker and arguably harder to apply (thanks to generally weaker casting), and the only damage buff they got was changing arachnarok bites from d3 to 3 damage. As a reference unbuffed skitterstrands will struggle to kill 10 wound screens (average 7.33 damage vs 4+ save so you better pick stomp and pray). Spiders got some great utility tools, so I think they may start showing up in a few more lists, but an all spider force just doesn't have any output. The BoC book is pure hype for me though, the only downer is the points of a couple units. Wolf riders could be more akin to hobgrots too, like maybe they'll get their own book down the road. Gitmob and grotbag could share a book, and spiders could do double duty because everyone thinks they're wierd.

this is roughly right, had to do 4+2d3 for the mirebrute attacks though. in kruleboyz the mirebrute would beat the dankhold vs low saves too thanks to VEW.

I ran the math and the dankhold does outdamage rockguts now, the gap shrinks with the troggboss command but still favors the dankhold (roughly 2-2.5 more damage). Note: 1 dankhold vs 3 rockguts They certainly aren't trash like they used to be, I just wonder if they justify the extra points as rockguts hit plenty hard. Feels like they could be the same points as the other two. 5+ ward and -1 to hit are generally better defensively than a spell shrug and they all have the same save now. Plus you can't bring dankholds back through the shrine. They might get extra mileage in gloggs megamob though, where the extra wounds mean less will die.

Yeah Splintered fang are nuts for a bunch of reasons. 32 attacks translates to just over 5 mortals unbuffed, spider riders have 10 attacks, which is like 1.67, 3.33 with one buff, or 5 mortals with both (~1 mortal per spider in combat, the same as gutrippaz who have reach, more bodies and are still awful). SF are also criminally pointed, & are on 4s and 2s for some reason, so they have decent output against low armor units too. Even pointed correctly (somewhere around 160?) They're still way better, since they can be reinforced and have a bunch of 25mm bases. The real kicker is most of the SF buffs are reliable and relatively free, mark of khorne for +1 attack & ravagers for resurrection, archaon is good with them, but not a necessity unlike the buffs spider riders need. Its a real shame too, maybe a scuttleboss can be built to be a proper hammer though. If you take the mortal doubling CT and buff him you'll only need 2-3 triggers to cripple a lot of high save units.

I feel like you'll get more mileage by doing all the same buffs on a big unit of rockguts, although the snufflers won't really do much there. Fellwaters with a 5+ ward could be tough to shift though.