Ganigumo

Painting hack, just some black contrast makes for a good looking black metal on those little metal bits. If you want to spice it up after just drybrush a little silver on them. Obviously there's a lot more you can do if you want to push it to a higher level though.

I see a lot of folks say kruleboyz were hard to paint, but with contrasts I found them pretty easy to paint. At least the stuff in the starter box. There were a few things like the structure on the back of the sludgeraker that were a bit of a pain but I found them pretty painless overall. Nighthaunt aren't too tough either from my understanding. You can really push yourself on them with stuff like wetblending and whatever, so if you're trying to match the box art you're gonna struggle, but you're basically painting bedsheets so a beginner paintjob with only a few colors probably works on them. Khorne has a ton of little doodads which look like a pain though. If they wanted easy armies to paint Ogors should make it into a starter box, if they can restrain themselves from putting a million trinkets on them at least.

My initial thought was something FEC, but after looking closer it looks like a birds foot, like an eagle or something since there are 3 talons on the front that are all separated, and they throw skulls onto everything. Which armies use birds though? Kruleboyz & Tzeentch? A lot of Tzeentch heroes have bird-like feet. If its kruleboyz maybe some sort of swamp strider flightless bird like an ostrich or Emu?

There's a non-zero chance the OBR book is unsalvageable without significant rewrites, sort of like a reverse kruleboyz where the rules are just too strong, and trying to point things better just makes the army unplayable. We'll see over time I guess though. Null myriad isn't that much of a problem IMO. Its just an anti-meta pick at the moment, but the new look out sir rules make it worse since you can't shoot the hero that turns the spell negate on.

Zombies weren't only problematic in 60's, 120 points for 2 screens that splash back mortals is absolutely crazy value, even if you're only getting the 20 bodies. They make even stuff like clanrats & horrors look inefficient. Grots are close at 120 points, since they also come back, but are way more limited in where and when they come back, and you only get one attempt at it each battle round unless you take a specific command trait. The 6-7 mortals to come out of a unit of zombies outdo what the grots would put out, and don't even require them to fight. A bunch of people said 150 was probably in the right point range as soon as the book came out too, and I think I agree. Ultimately the summonable stuff just wasn't pointed anywhere near correct. Some of it felt like it was pointed like the stuff couldn't come back at all. There's still some weirdness around the points but maybe that can get fixed once the army is reined in a bit. Like dire wolves being the same points a zombies seems pretty silly, zombies are still going to be the go-to option, but I guess wolves were more expensive than zombies before now. It kind of sucks to see armies get hit so hard though, Gitz largely went through it too, though not as bad. Books that cooked just shouldn't get into the players hands, and a ton of the stuff that was out of line was immediately apparent it was broken, its not like some weird edge case or skew lists that were broken, it was the fundamentals that were largely overcooked. People hate seraphon because kroaknado/starborn/aoe mortal wound spam stuff dominated the meta for like 2-3 years, and now that seraphon have a new book they're back to the same top tier playstyles. Its not really a fun list to play against. Coalesced is a much fairer army build, but yeah it seems pretty undertuned. -1 damage armywide is just a really questionable rule, since it gives you super polarizing matchups. VS something like gutbusters or Ironjawz you negate half their damage for free, but against something that does a lot of damage 1 like lumineth or nighthaunt it does nothing, so its impossible to point that ability appropriately. Its fine if its used sparingly and in a limited manner, like the nighthaunt hero that does it, since the value is built into his points, but its basically impossible to balance as an army rule.

The bonereapers buffs were to units they weren't using in the best lists, basically nobody played those units anymore but I agree it might have been too light on stuff like immortis and stalkers. Vampire nerfs are entirely justified. Bonesplitterz look like they're going to get squatted soon, which is why they're being ignored I think. Kruleboyz are gonna be in a rough spot again soon I think Ironjawz are getting a big release which is why they didn't get any changes, it'll shake their meta up a lot. I think we're due for a fyreslayers release in one of the two next dawnbringers books, but its just my speculation, I think the heralds were hints to who was getting stuff. I agree this balance update didn't touch enough armies though.

I played against nagash soulblight a few weeks back at an event with Big Waaagh! Spirit Gale ended up causing so much damage over the course of the game, and between spirit gale, Maelstrom, & A teleporting vampire lord with blizzard my whole army was basically tabled by t3. I'm not really exaggerating either, I had a gnashtoof and like 1 ardboy left and I had positioned and zoned out his units so he couldn't really use any of his other units effectively. Maybe its just the price I play for being destruction though, I'm sure theres a really strong balance argument for why destruction needs to have a crippling weakness to aoe damage in the form of losing extra casualties to battleshock but I'm too bone-headed to understand it.

Not sure they hit OBR hard enough TBH, but zombies at 150 finally feels somewhere near right. Nurgle changes seem really nice, blightkings have been overcosted since that book came out, and lowering blightlords without changing blightkings was a questionable decision. Destruction is completely untouched, seems like another nail in the coffin for bonesplitterz, and kruleboyz have been trending back down slowly over this season, so I imagine they'll be in a rough spot pretty soon. The lack of internal balance adjustments is very disappointing overall though, plenty of stuff really would've appreciated it, like gutbusters.

If anything I think the "heralds" are going to herald new releases for those armies. I expect to see something more for fyreslayers, FEC, and Nurgle from the dawnbringers books, and maybe even more gitz. We still have that spider head rumor engine from AGES ago.

There was mention of a grunta RoR in the articles. If there is a box to go with it its probably like 3-6 gore gruntas and a hero.

BW isn't the reason the other orruk factions suck. Ironjawz were really good, and just got powercrept, and have always had a playstyle thats easy to counter with good positioning and screens. The IJ units that are good in IJ (Pigs, MK) see play in BW, but aren't taken in the numbers they are in IJ. Kruleboyz were just terribly written rules and weak warscrolls they basically don't have allegiance abilities (most armies have around 3, if you ignore math fixer ones, but KB have 3, one of which is a math fixer, one of which only really works on the first turn and is random, and one that is a once per game triple fight). Only a handful see play in BW, and the only one that might be considered a staple is gobsprakk because of how he interacts with the seasonal rules. Bonesplitterz have boring warscrolls except the wurgogg, and the only good list was overnerfed. They also missed out on the Extra BT the other two factions got. They also lose all their best rules when you bring them into BW, and the only battleline you can bring is savage orruks, who are pretty awful. If they cared at all about BW balance they wouldn't have given them access to both the new BTs, and would focus buffs on the units BW doesn't take or are better in their respective factions. edit: The real problem is GW isn't knowledgeable enough to understand the armies on the level needed to understand the army nuances, which is why so many of their balance updates feel like just throwing stuff at the wall, and not targeting what needs to be targeted.

3e hasn't really moved away from soup armies has it? None of the 2e soup tomes got unsouped, and they definitely focused more on modular design in the early parts of the edition, and shied away from linear design a lot. Depending on your definition of soup there's an argument that this edition is soupier than the last because of how much linear incentives got reduced. Inter-book mixing was definitely reduced, but intra-book faction mixing increased. There's a lot bigger incentive to do mixed chamber stormcast lists, mixed tribe gitz lists, mixed mortals/daemons in chaos books, mixed gutbusters/BCR, etc.

Great night for destruction players! No idea what I'm gonna paint first. The real biggest win is every ardboy in the unit having a shield, so we no longer need to pick out individual models to assign wounds to and roll 6+ ward saves on, or need to position all the shield ones where they can be removed first while not breaking coherency. Also our first codex supplement, and its free, so Ironjawz are getting some rules love. If only kruleboyz could get one to fix their rules too.

incarnate of ghur looks pretty good with bonesplitterz I think? Although it probably looks fine with heavily ghur themed armies.

I bet warcry will be the boxed set. There's 4 warbands coming in fall, and two are supposed to be from a box set right?

There's rumors of a troll regiment of renown right? Maybe its a troll thumping on its head. Could be 40k too.

At this point I'm actually leaning a bit towards warclans, with FEC being featured in a different dawnbringers book and/or getting one of these launch boxes. Feels like the bonesplitterz squatting might be sooner than later, even if I don't want it to happen. Could be an Ironjawz book specifically too.

I don't even see it as androgynous, I just can't get the image of a hockey player out of my mind. The upper mouth looks really pronounced, like they have a mouth guard in, the helmet blocks the view of the cheeks, and if you consider if she fills out the helmet it makes it seem like she a has a very large and strong jaw, and it almost looks like she's missing a couple teeth.

Model is great imo, except the face. This is one of the worst female faces we've seen in a while I think. They don't even read as non conventionally attractive women to me, like the chaos lord we had a while back, both of the faces just look really manly to me. The helmetted one looks like a hockey player, who may have taken a few hits to the face over the years, and the unhelmetted one looks like an old man. The hair being the same shape as the helmet is pretty silly though.

Maybe casual players and 40k players don't like it. But a ton of aos players actually do like it, myself included. Also if it actually did decide games the general winrates would be much closer to 50%, as winning or losing the game would be a coin flip. Its statistically evident that it isn't the deciding factor in every game, or even most games. Thats even ignoring the fact that some of the best players in the world can still go 5-0 piloting ham sandwiches. Anecdotally I can't remember the last time I won or lost because of a double, usually what happens is I'm already winning or losing pretty badly and the double turn seals it. If you look at the TSN player stats, some players have scores of 30 wins, 0 losses over the last ghb, over 6 GTs. If that isn't a sign that player skill is THE deciding factor I'm not sure what is. The priority roll exists in large part to negate the first turn advantage, an issue that is prevalent in most turn based games. They provide a bunch of incentives for going second as well, so if anything they've buffed going second, instead of nerfing the double turn, to the point where many players will pass on a double turn to keep the benefits. 40k tends to favor the player going first 60-40, and even Chess favors white somewhere between 52-56%. A lot of the issues with the priority roll really come down to experience and how you interact with it. You can't ignore it, it warps the entire game around it, and that's the point. You need to play around it or you're going to have a bad time. You can't just ignore a major mechanic in the game and expect everything to work out fine. priority rolls shift the game away from a t1 advantage in a big way and create way more possible game permutations (32 vs 2). Its also coupled with a way to control it, which is important, since just having one of those things would be disastrous. Imagine 40k if you had a way to always go first (other than toilet dice). Its definitely a hard hit for casuals who don't think about the rule though, but more important than just the listbuilding part is how you think about it. Just stopping and thinking about holding some of your force back, and not walking into a slaughter is important. I highly recommend heywoahs video on this. If two people of the same skill level, play at the same skill level, with similarly strong armies, literally the only other possible deciding factor is luck, outside of luck it would just end up as a draw. Also as I mentioned above some players actually do have winrates of 100% last season, and 12 players with winrates of 90% or above mostly over 6 GTs. Also because of the way tournament do pairings, these top players will end up playing against each other in the final rounds of a tournament.

On the one hand I get it, on the other its mostly because players don't play around the possibility or think of it at all. From their perspective they're playing a game and the double turn just "falls out of the sky" and hands them a loss. HeyWoah's video on this is really good. Sometimes, if you're behind you need to gamble on that 50% to turn the game around, but if you're just blindly throwing yourself into a position where a dice roll will lose you the game thats a skill issue. If it looks like its going to rain, and you go for a run you might get rained on. I'm not trying to be dismissive here, but we should really do a better job of explaining it to new players. For tons of outsiders double turns fall from the sky, and the nuance of controlling drops, or even stopping to consider that if you go second you can't get doubled, is lost. Its also a massive problem that the core rules say you roll for priority on t1, it actively makes the game worse. At the very least they could've let you roll before you deploy. The core rules even have unified battalions, that do literally nothing unless you're using drops to determine priority. There's also plenty of situations where you actually want to give away double turns, either passing up on them, or choosing to get doubles. At least twice in the past couple weeks I've forced my opponent to double me. Also people thinking shooting will be less impactful without the priority roll is just flat out wrong. Without threat of a double you can hide safely behind your screen without the risk of a double smashing open your castle. Alpha shooting, like 40k will be far more common. Shooting armies take second more to protect their shooting units than to auto-win on a double turn. Shooting just becomes so much more reliable when the board state becomes more predictable, since you don't need to worry about things like making charge rolls, or how you're going to get over the screen. Also I'll list the things I want to see: Entire secondary system gutted, no BTs, or GS. Instead build a secondary scoring system into each battleplan. Removal of Monstrous rampages and heroic actions. Just make the scrolls good. Turn the army specific ones into abilities they can still use though. Rework of battalions. Current ones suck. More unique effects, like bodyguards, as the extra cp ones are clearly bad. Unified battalions should only have 3 units in them tops. Removal of miscast. Its narrative but also dumb. Autofail on snake-eyes is fine, but it shouldn't prevent you from casting more spells, even after I got blasted by nagash over the weekend Removal of Rally. I get it, but the narrative is dumb, and its supposed to be anti-shooting, but it only feels worth it if you get it on a 5+ or 4+, and that was so problematic it had to be capped to 10W of models. Lets just get rid of it. Remove Triumphs, or incorporate them into the game in a better way. They might be interesting if you could take them as an enhancement and use them regardless of the points difference. Sort of like special 1/game commands Do Not Change Battleshock. Battleshock sucks, its just a terrible set of rules, but if it was impactful at all it would be worse, losing like 1/3rd of your army because a spell splashed d3 mortals around isn't fun. There just isn't a way to make battleshock impactful that doesn't make the game less fun. Its also not at all fairly balanced across armies. you'd think its a way to help kill hordes, making a bunch of them run away, but death and chaos are just nearly immune to it because bravery 10 narrative reasons, tons of armies are effectively immune, because they have like bravery 8 and small unit sizes, and so it ends up only being strong vs destruction, BoC, and Skaven. Anecdotally I had 3 super buffed gore gruntas run from 2 longstrikes and 2 dracolines over the weekend, because I decided all out defense would be better than inspiring presence, then I rolled a 6. Rewrite the enhancements section, maybe just remove it and write good artefacts and command traits for the actual armies, or use it to set a proper baseline for the power of artefacts across the edition. There's no excuse for something like kruleboyz where all of their artefacts are worse than the generic ones. Keep priority roll Removal of reinforcement points entirely. It hurts like 2 armies in the game that aren't broken, and nobody else cares. The rule just does nothing. They wrote the 3e book intentionally to nerf horde armies, because they wrote the rules during the 5 minutes in aos2 when hordes were good. Removal of behemoth, and artillery limits. We can keep the roles, if we want to interact with it, but really we don't have a problem with spamming these things. Most artillery in the game is just bad, and even if we had good artillery it would only be a problem if those scrolls were problematic in the first place. So many behemoths become battleline now to dodge the limit, and we have armies of entirely behemoths too. I think the leader limit should stay, but I'd be fine getting rid of it. There might be some cheese with running like 20 individual webspinner shamans or something. bring old coherency back. Current coherency sucks. They had already fixed conga-line buffs when they released the 2e books and changes buff ranges to wholly within instead of just within. Sure there's still a little cheese to be had with that, but its better than the current wierdness.

best part of slap chop is that its a good base to do some advanced stuff on top of. Mostly its a rebranding of a technique that has been used by painters for ages in a way that's more accessible for less experienced hobbyists. Namely "transparent ink over zenithal highlight". Before THWG's video I'd never even seen a tutorial for doing a zenithal with a dry brush before. Pretty much all the guides were using airbrushes. I get comments on how well my models look even with just a slap chop and maybe a little bit of extra highlighting/drybrushing over the top. Painting armies is a lot about time management too, slap chop the 120 grots, then if you want to take something really far go wild on the heroes and monsters.

Hobs are perfect as they are. I'd happily take a point drop to 60 or 70 though, or a change to be unconditional battleline. Them going to 120 for 20 is probably worse for us overall? Most KB lists have the same 1600 points, so upping them to 120 for 20 eats into our already slim flex spots.

even throwing ghouls on the back of the knights could work, since it would at least be visibly cavalry then.

The stabbas cover more space than 10 hobgrots too, and are cheaper than the 20 hobgrots you'd need to cover the same space. Sometimes the stabbas fit into battalions better too so you aren't wasting as many points.