Ganigumo

The kragnos, AoD, unleash hell, and heroic recoveru changes were good. I think the archaon and nagash ones are fine at first glance? The point changes are just disappointing. Gutrippaz unchanged All of bonesplitterz unchanged Despite being the weakest faction gitz didn't get a single meaningful point drop. There just don't seem to be many changes that are actually meaningful. The only two that jumped out at me were dragin ogors down 25, and tzeentch tzaangors down 20 (but thats what they costed in BoC)

Well it is what happened last winter...

Break off gloomspite into "Gloomspite Gitz" and "Grot warclans" featuring gitmob, grotback scuttlers and spiderfang. Also has "Little waaagh" which is the inverse of big waaagh and starts with max points but loses them over the game. The current spider riders were made for the 7th edition battle for skull pass starter box. They still come with their "scenic" bases which even includes the base from the solo troll for that box.

Read the FAQ and your post a little more clearly. In that section the FAQ is referring to Abilities, not commands. FAQ: Megaboss ability: Since the megaboss is using commands its still subject to each unit only being able to receive one. Not sure what the faq was referring to specifically, but a theoretical would be: Most of the examples I can think of tend to say pick <X> different friendly units though.

a bunch of the core commands need a trigger to be used. For example all out attack can be used when a unit is chosen to fight or shoot. The FAQ makes it so the megaboss can issue command like that to multiple units, because without it there would only be one unit eligible (the one chosen to fight). All out defense is worded a similar way (use it when a unit is the target of an attack)

Steady news keeps people engaged really, and it can be hard to prioritize a backlog when you never know whats coming. My hobby train has been at a glacial pace for a bit as I'm waiting for the winter FAQ & points update since I don't know whats going to change, or whats going to be exciting to me once it drops. I know a lot of people would love to have a bunch of model releases, but I just want some dates/schedules for whats coming up.

Poor gitz got hit hard by the broken realms stuff. The best parts of the gitz subfactions were the battalions... I waver on battle tactics, I definitely preferred not having them since I enjoyed the more static battleplans of 2e and how much more taxing the game is to play with them, but on the other hand they do add something to the game even if the ones we have now skew the game towards super powerful hero monsters. Grand strategies are awful and should just get axed. They aren't interesting and in my experience most of the time you just pick one that you get if you aren't tabled.

Would be fine for keepers and bloodthirsters. 500 point LoCs would be tough to balance since they're taken mainly for their casting prowess.

More rules don't translate directly to better or more fun, and too many rules can be overwhelming and hard to keep track of. What really matters is the quality of those rules, and I think Ironjawz illustrates this best. Ironjawz don't have many rules, but they really make you think and plan around stuff like smashin and bashin and ironjawz waaagh!. I'm not a sc player so I can't really comment on if they're too simple or not. Bonesplitterz did lose depth in the new book though, as most of their rules are paper thin.

Inconsistent design constraints is bad design. Period. Breaking your design constraints either means they were bad from the start so you justifiably get rid if it (everything designed with that constraint becomes suspect), or you're breaking a good design principal which will hurt the product. If each battletome is designed in a vacuum they might as well throw balance out the window too. You're not exactly wrong about that being how GW operates though, its just frustrating that its the case, especially when they put out articles on their design goals. They seem to understand good design, but are never disciplined enough to care.

Yeah this is what really gets me, and is why early edition tomes suffer so heavily, they always abandon the design constraints they set at the start. I'm also of the opinion that simple core rules + complex tome rules (like in 2e) was a better design philosophy anyways, since your players have more control over how complex their game is, doubly so because of how gw abandons their design restrictions a few books in. Want complexity? Play lumineth, want beer and pretzels? Play SoB/Ironjawz

Not fond of how the book seems to ignore design constraints set in the first two battletomes. Stormcast and each warclan only got 3 battle traits each. Nurgle has 6, and one of them has an "in addition". This is especially relevant because of how gutted bonesplitterz were, presumably because of those constraints. Furthermore they've gone back to the 3/6 tables for enhancements immediately after breaking out of it (kruleboyz definitely could've used an extra artefact or two, and bonesplitterz would've loved to keep a few more of their 2e spells...) In terms of the rules themselves stacking disease counters doesn't do enough to justify the hassle of bookkeeping (which is kind of what I expected...). The mechanic works but it would've been cleaner if it were binary. I'm a bit sad summoning is still tied to objective control and not disease points. The scrolls and rules are much cleaner, and the power level seems fine, my guess is they slip comfortably into mid tier (which is exactly where we want armies to go). I do worry that their bulk will make them unbeatable for low tier armies though.

Always gitz, they're pretty bad right now, and the new ironjawz book is great, but I don't think anything will ever top gitz for me unless they give us grotbag scuttlers or gitmob...

I don't even know what to say about what they did to bonesplitterz, it feels like they were intentionally shafted because of just how well Ironjawz was written. Its hard to believe how an absolute banger, and a trainwreck could both get released in the same book. The 2.0 version of bonesplitterz was fine though (which is when they were souped).

Just because they share a book doesn't mean they're "souped". Just look at warclans. Each of the clans kept their unique identities when they combined the tome in 2e and they're still separate factions. Combining them into a single tome lets them sell the new models to dok players, add a combined allegiance option, and helps out logistically since they have one less book to update each addition. Its a slam dunk for pretty much everyone involved as long as the quality of the rules doesn't drop.

pre-faq times are the worst. I lose all inspiration to work on hobby projects although I've also been slacking on painting any 40k stuff too (but thats mostly because I don't have much desire to play 40k at all... the rules just don't do it for me). A good FAQ will usually inspire me to build/paint/buy new stuff too. I usually get more games in around the holidays, I work a lot and its tough for me to organize stuff with my groups busy schedules but around the holidays everyone tends to have time off. We have our own table which helps (although the space is a bit cramped with it out). Obvious to us doesn't mean obvious to GW... last year we didn't even get basic changes to things that were obviously skewed because of "no data", and spider riders have been untouched since the book released.

Hopefully those rumors aren't true 🥶. We need to get the battletome machine rolling, there's a bunch of factions in desperate need of an update.

With the rumor engine, normally trying to guess what its from is a lot of the fun, but its not very interesting when we already know its an eldar thing from the get-go. Its good their getting new models, but it makes for a less interesting rumor engine. Agreed. Skareshields would be completely different if kruleboyz had an out of sequence retreat (like in the battleshock phase or something) or even retreat + charge. Since it would have the complexity of only working in the charge phase at range, but pulling off the hit and run combo to reapply it would be satisfying and justify the restriction. (the needing to roll over bravery thing will always be silly). Out of sequence retreat would also let you reapply the shaman's poisons though, which would feel pretty narrative. "The gutrippaz fade out of combat to reapply the poisons and spook the enemy only to come crashing back in."

You can have good flavor with simple mechanics too, but its important if you have complexity for that complexity to actually matter and contribute something to the army. Gutrippaz Skareshields, and the Swampcalla shaman's poisons and elixirs are perfect examples of bad complexity. My issue with the nurgle one is that it seems excessively wordy for how impactful it is. I imagine the number of disease counters will tie into their summoning somehow too, at which point maybe there's enough justification for it? IMO I'd have rather seen the mechanic just keep track of if something is diseased or not.

Slaanesh generates depravity at the end of the battleshock phase, would make sense for nurgle to generate summon points then too, plus it would make sense to have the disease tokens feed their summoning.

I really hope they don't do this. The ork buggy and flier fixes were bandaids because they didn't want to try to actually balance the units, so they just strapped a limit on the amount of "broken" units you can take. 40k also has "the rule of 3" since at least last edition where you can't take more than 3 of a non troop datasheet in your army. I absolutely hate rules like this on principal, skewed spam lists only exist because the units themselves are broken, so just fix the broken units.

Just a hunch but they probably generate summon points in the battleshock phase, possibly at the end like slaanesh does, and the army probably uses the plague tokens to generate their summon points (either 1 for 1 or maybe 1 point for a diseased unit and 2 if its maxed out or something like that). That way the points aren't counted if the unit is destroyed or runs away as its not infected anymore.

After some thinking their third allegiance ability is probably just summoning, getting points for diseased units instead of territory control. true but this could still be a big sticking point for the army, especially with the amount of powerful output in the game, needing to get through a round of combat to get your ability is no small feat sometimes. I know nurgle's thing IS durability, but its still a concern. Presumably they'll have a spell to disease something at range (which they alluded to), but their casting has never been great so mileage will probably vary wildly based on matchup. With how tough it seems to have abilities that scale with the number of disease tokens on a unit because of the phasing it feels like any abilities that get better with the number of tokens will be pretty tough to use. I think a binary system would've been better design as well. Would've been fitting for the mortals to be a horde buster ability to (roll for each model and on a 5/6+ they take a mortal), less impactful on elite stuff sure, but killing 10-20 grots with your allegiance ability would feel pretty good. The delivery system is completely different. Stormcast dragons can hit pretty much any unit they want with it, nurgle is probably going to struggle to hit anything on the backline with the full effect.

Afflicting units with diseases is a very nurgle mechanic, but even at the maximum number of points you're looking at 3-4 mortals on average. Whats really telling that the mechanic (and possibly the entire book) has issues is the phases they activate. Movement (which requires you to be in combat the previous round), and end of combat. This means any abilities which key off of enemy units being diseased, or how diseased they are might be a challenge to activate. Disease and Plague weapons are also 2 of the allegiance abilities, and if we use warclans as an indication they'll only get 3 allegiance abilities. Bookkeeping is an issue too, for wanting to focus on simplified rules in aos3 they created another rule thats seemingly low impact AND annoying to track. My initial impression has me lump it in with kruleboyz in terms of design, which seems middling from a power perspective (which isn't an issue, we want books to be mid-tier) but has a bunch of weirdly complex and annoying rules that can be frustrating at times.

It makes gargants weaker yeah, but you're even less incentivized against fighting because of the risk of losing objective control.