Ganigumo

Old world will probably follow some of the heresy model, and heresy released 2 "army books" one for traitors and one for loyalists. We might see the same in old world with 1-3 books of loosely affiliated factions with all their rules and stuff inside rather than just 1 big index. In terms of models they've already stated they're planning to let you play with your existing models, I wouldn't be surprised if most factions just see retired kits returning, possibly on MTO or maybe in a semi-permanent fashion, and flexing some of the aos kits that are still around from WFB. As an example for Orcs and Goblins the savage orcs, moonclan, and spiderfang are pretty much fully in tact, they could just bring back the greenskinz kits and some of the heroes. Depending on how extensive a gitmob release we get we might have a mostly full line there too. Then there's a few factions that are pretty much fully in tact like lizardmen, ogors, beastmen, Warriors of Chaos, and vampire counts. If thats the plan it makes a lot of sense why they seem to be focusing on niche factions that weren't too relevant in wfb, since they won't be resculpting the majority of the wfb line.

Gitz was pretty much bad as soon as it came out. The grot build was decent when you could spam out as many endless spells as you wanted to block off the board. Its not the focus on the sub-forces that made gitz bad either, it was a combination of mostly bad-average scrolls, and the fact that the moon was a terrible allegiance ability. The RNG of the moon, and the fact that you literally didn't get allegiance abilities t1 was a problem, but even worse was just how unimpactful the buffs were. If the mechanic was random, but the buffs were incredibly impactful offering things like reroll hits & wounds and extra attacks it would balance out a bit and might've been an interesting mechanic. Instead you got things like reroll 1's to hit, run and charge, mortals on 5s (which you took a banner for anyways), and slightly better but still often disappointing regeneration. This book even came after IDK who got army wide shooting protection all the time, and army wide always strikes first on t3, even DoKs 1e table offered better bonuses than the moon. Its absolutely wild that the books which had allegiance abilities that worked in a similar way, without the rng, also had the stronger effects.

Its not just dirty tricks thats a problem. Boltboyz are easily one of our best units, but they're absolutely crippled by hasty shot reducing their threat range. Them (and the killbow) are literally the only shooting units that get a worse threat range when they move. Even some stuff with an 18" range outranges the boltboyz. Sure grinnin blades can help here, but the extra 3" on big yellers really helps mitigate some of the drawback from hasty shot, and grinnin blades being useful is entirely matchup and meta dependent with a tax. From a strategy point of view the army wants to be a mixed arms castle force, but it is terrible at it. The army has no anvils to build walls with, and no ability to build to be strong in different phases. Other mixed arms forces have the ability to build to be strong in different phases, i.e Lumineth can bring Teclis for hero phase domination, heavy sentinels for shooting phase, foxes and roos for movement phase, or stoneguard for combat phase. Cities has phoenix guard(combat), Irondrakes(shooting), Hallowheart(magic) etc. Seraphon dominate the hero phase with just a slann, and can easily build to be good in any other phase. Kruleboyz lack any ability to do this, and the tradeoff is being mediocre in every phase. Kruleboyz are terrible at fitting into battalions, because all of the strong units are leaders or troops. The army is nearly devoid of rend, and very reliant on inconsistent damage. The mirebrute is an exception, but this can be a problem when the army needs to rely on counterpunch strategies and when scoring battle tactics. Its a natural side effect of needing to rely on VeW. The entire army is fragile and slow The artefacts are pretty bad, Mork's Eye pebble is fine, but a pretty situational option that grinnin blades is usually a better solution for They've certainly made improvements, like with hobgrot battleline and the shaman change, but those were both things that probably should have been in the first printing anyway. The swampcalla was the only support wizard in the entire game that had to give up spellcasting to get his free buff, and everyone realized just how restrictive the battleline options were in the book. They're certainly trying to make the book better, but what it needs is more sweeping allegiance and warscroll changes that they're probably trying to avoid since it might invalidate a big portion of the book. The way they're buffing the book now will just end in another BoC race to the bottom scenario. I also find it a bit funny they took the time to buff grinnin blades, which theoretically had some anti-meta use before the buff, and just left skulbugz alone, despite being absolutely terrible.

Feels like they really need to nail the gitz tome, given how popular they are and how poor a job they did with the last book, but destruction doesn't have a good track record. If snarlfang riders aren't part of a gitmob launch I've got a feeling they're going to be overcosted fast chaff. I'd like them to be a cool finesse piece, fast movement, light shooting, 6" pile in, and a bonus for fighting wounded units.

Megaboss on foot is looking to be a big winner, Tunnel master + destroyer could be really good. A megaboss could do well with a sworn bodyguard brute or 'ardboy unit too. I'm curious how lists without maw-krushas will fare, you can get a ton of wounds on the table without one. Maybe something like this? You could lean more into pigs or brutes or whatever, or slot in another megaboss, warchanter or shaman, but I wonder if we might see more lists like this show up in the future.

In regards to forgeworld dropping everything we never even got an upgraded bonegrinder warscroll. I know we don't expect much out of FW in regards to scrolls but because the bonegrinder doesn't have a mightest makes rightiest chart he only counts as 5 models like a normal monster. If they are getting scrapped I'll just use my bonegrinder as a gatebreaker. Although Its unfortunate for my rogue idol and gitz stuff. I'll need to find something else to fill out the points in my trogg list, and probably change the bonesplitterz army I'm currently painting up.

One book, that specifically uses linear design and synergies to encourage building into one of the separate chambers. They've been moving away from linear design as a rule in aos 3, which is a huge mistake imo. Sure the buff stacking was a bit hard to balance at times but the alternative is that any book with more than like 15 warscrolls will be stuck with useless units that are just worse than their counterparts that do the same thing. They really threw the baby out with the bathwater with that design direction. Modular design has its place for sure, but so does linear design, and by all rights stormcast should heavily lean on linear design, both because of the sheer number of warscrolls and because its easier to listbuild in linear books and stormcast are supposed to be a beginner army.

Who knows. In my opinion they'd be leaving money on the table if they didn't write aos rules for ToW models but they might not see it the same way.

The command requires both that you not pile in, and not charge, which is what kills it for gutrippaz imo, they can't really take a hit unless you're running like 30 of them in a unit, which is a huge points sink. If it could be used on the charge it might've actually been a gamechanger for gutrippaz.

Imo these changes arent going to do much. None of the good stuff got buffed, but a bunch of weak stuff did, but not really in a way that will help. Like the gnashtoof is cheap now, but would you use one of your leader slots on it instead of sonething like a mirebrute? I suspect its intentional though, since they probably want to see how KB do in the new season before making more big changes. I don't think we're a big winner with the new rules though. We lost the ability to snipe heroes without ruining our drops, our champs are very slow, and even without bounty hunters and at 150 points I doubt gutrippaz will make a splash. Their warscroll is basically only good as chaff, which we have better options for.

I'm not against more hobgrots, but as a KB player i'd rather they get fleshed out as a sub force in chaos dwarves than in KB. To me they always felt out of place in KB, who are sort of a reimagining of Greenskinz. Especially since they have a bunch of grot models accompanying the actual KB models, but never any hobgrot companions. They're the odd unit out, and it doesnt help that their aesthetic doesnt match either.

Outside of the shaman those KB units are just bad at any point value. Even 150 is a tough sell for gutrippaz, since they just don't do anything. They kind of just need a new book. Maw-krusha-less ironjawz could be interesting in the new season though. Brutes and 'ardboyz are down and by skipping the cabbage you could already fit a ton of wounds into a list.

Needing to not charge really takes the oomph out of that command trait. You really need to be a tough anvil to use it. Pushing fighting in 2 ranks into a battalion seems like a bad idea, it just encourages players to dodge taking those units whenever possible again to keep drops low.

more gitmob, although to dampen my hopes a bit Its more likely to be a gitmob vs BoC battle box.

You don't always need to add complexity to add sophistication, although you often have to, but HOW and WHERE you add that complexity matters a lot and is where I think AOS 3 really fell flat. Like I said I think it would be better to push all of that into the battleplans for more complex battle scenarios, rather than bloating the core rules with it. There's no reason you couldn't have a handful of GHB scenarios use BTs for the primaries, and specify BTs available in the battleplan rules, have a handful that only use objectives as primaries, etc. You could get a lot of mileage out of organizing the rules like that (a small list of easy or hard BTs, or a set order for them, etc), and more importantly it would put the level of complexity back into the hands of players. I know technically players can already decide not to play with certain rules or whatever, but just building into the battleplans makes it an easy decision. Plus having some more varied battleplan options for tournaments could be really interesting.

It was basically aos2, and from what I've heard around the community and my personal experience (and my own opinion) the game was better then. Grand strategies are the worse offenders imo though. They're not impactful enough to matter in anything but the closest games, but if they were any more impactful they would warp the game too much. It doesn't help that the options for grand strategies are generally really boring and binary, and most armies gravitate to the same 1-2 options. Battle tactics are certainly more interesting and shift the game a lot more, but they account for a lot of the extra mental tax that people complain about in 3e, plus there are still too many that are autocomplete and having any amount of autocomplete BTs in your battletome trivializes getting 5/5, which is where we're at now. So they account for a lot of mental tax, but many armies will still be able to get 5/5 every game, which means the system should be scrapped or revised. My preference would be to just throw away BTs and GS and put that complexity into the battleplans in the GHB instead. Maybe throw a few in that use battle tactics as the primary instead of objectives with a specific list of them for that battleplan. Grand Strategies being tied to the battleplan would also be more interesting imo, and then they could be written in a way that only one player could score it. This was literally aos 2, scoring was pretty much all on primary objectives although some battleplans played around with how the objectives worked, and aos 2 was generally a much more accessible ruleset than aos 3.

To be fair all of the "Galletian Heroes" were already either playable support heroes or terrible, so they can't really make it any worse. they're copying what they did with the last one too, buff up the seasonal unit type then create a battalion to counter it. Its a bit silly in this case, where you take a battalion to specifically ignore a new rule in the season, but at least it isn't game warping overkill like bounty hunters was, and it puts a bit of a dampening effect on shooting, where you'll need to choose between low drops or sniping heroes.

Based on what I've seen so far kruleboyz won't get much out of this new season other than BH going away. You can Waagh! and trigger some multi-fighting with the battalion, but shamans and killabosses don't really hit that hard, and gutrippaz are the only option to chain fight with and unless something changes I don't see them being much better than they already are. Plus they already have a very strong anti-shooting option in grinnin blades. That command for an extra attack instead of piling in could be interesting on them. I think Khorne might make out like bandits with these changes though, their support heroes are known to be weak against shooting, they have a few heroes that actually hit hard I think, and the herald can already trigger chain fighting with bloodletter units. They might not be dominant or anything, but I think the changes really help them out.

The rules about only picking 1 ability off a trigger only apply to die rolls, so you should be able to combo units that already have these kinds of fight triggers to chain a bunch of combats in a row. I think the wording prevents you from triggering the battalion again off of one of those abilities though. Also they mention "The infantry unit in this battalion". Infantry is a new keyword, so hopefully bonds of battle is sticking around.

When I read that leak/rumor my immediate thought was that it was bunk because of the part about the khorne playtesting, since it doesn't match up with release schedules and when we know knorne is likely coming. its around 6 months from a book getting finalized to it being on shelves, and since its a spring release september is probably the absolute latest the playtest could run, but more realistically it was probably being playtested during the summer.

Arks of Omen are mostly narrative books no? I wouldn't be shocked if its warcry or Gitz. We could get a 2 player gitz/BoC box shown off, or maybe something to go with all these Votann rumour engines.

We don't quite know what the new book will look like, but they could squat both the madcap and loonboss with great cave squig and they wouldn't really be big losses. The fungoid is basically an updated madcap anyways, and the loonboss with squig is just a holdover because of skragrott. just the loonboss on cave squig, & loonboss on foot is probably enough. Would be a shame to not get an updated scuttleboss, although I think it would be better in a kit like the pusgoyle blightlords or dracothian guard where you can also build a unit out of it. Spiderfang could use the extra unit. I'm all on the wolf train though, I'm really hoping there's a hero and another 1-3 kits to build a full force out of them.

Its a niche with too high an entry cost to be competitive. If they drop to 9 wounds theyre much better. One of the things on my shortlist of fixes i'd like was that this guy and the footboss get chain fighting, both because its becoming standard, but also so this guy could serve as a pseudo heavy cav option as 2-3 could fight in succession. Him being 10 wounds is still his biggest problem though.

I haven't gotten any games in with my rogue idol, its sitting on my desk waiting to be painted, but it actually fits into battalions so thats a definite plus. As for the vulture while the multi-command ability is very useful, it mostly just brings something the rest of the army is terrible at, mobility. The gnashtoof isn't slow with move 10, but the extra move, plus fly, plus being a sneaky miasma target let you get him nearly anywhere you want him to be. He just enables things you can't do with anything else in the army, and is a good general choice since its easy to position him to use the waaagh! Damagewise he's not great, averages out at like 10ish I think, but it tends to spike very hard in either direction. I rate the movement very high for kruleboyz, as most of the army is just flat move 5, with no mobility tricks at all. Gobsprakk does a lot of the same things for more points, but is a wizard and can't take enhancements (like fast 'un). Now that the shamans can cast and give out poisons I rate him lower since he's on the same casting bonus as they are, but there's probably some play with him anyway, and he opens up more casts for stuff like endless spells if you want to bring some.

I think the vulture-boss is very good, I liked it at the old points. The gnashtoof one is just awful. We have so many better units fighting for those leader slots that he's not even in the conversation. If you're abandoning low drops you're better off spamming sludgerakers, vultures and mirebrutes. I could see bringing the foot one if you're running big units of gutrippaz, but big units of gutrippaz aren't much of a competitive pick at the moment, especially in the world of bounty hunters. Sloggoth is a solid pick in a monster heavy list I think, you often want all out attack on mirebrutes and our monsters, if you're running lots of gutrippaz I wouldn't bother. IMO our melee builds are crippled by gutrippaz and our army compostion. The army really needs to be low drop to be competitive, we're short on CP, very weak when doubled and easy to be caught out of position, having the choice for the turn order lets you manage these issues somewhat, but all of our best melee threats are leaders, which making a low drop melee list tough.