Ganigumo

Dawnbringers 5 hasn't even been confirmed yet has it? I would be shocked if AoS just coasted from FeC to 4th though, We'll probably get a big release at some point in that period, either an expansion, update, or new army, we usually get something in mid-late spring too.

What's funny about this is that I suspect this is why Kruleboyz venom encrusted weapons is an allegiance ability instead of a warscroll ability. They wanted to cut down on the number of rules on scrolls at the start of the edition, especially for battleline units, and making VEW an allegiance ability gave them the room to put the skareshields ability on the gutrippa scroll (and other abilities elsewhere). There are some "universal rules" in 40k, like the smoke stratagem that seem very similar to me, by pulling the ability off the scroll and throwing it somewhere else it makes the datasheet "less complex" or lets them fit an extra rule on the sheet because of space/design constraints. Obviously its the exact same amount of complexity, since the units still have the ability though, its just organized differently. You're just moving the complexity to a different part of the rules. With the kruleboyz example it cost them a proper allegiance ability, and with the 40k one it bloated out the universal stratagems and USRs.

They're paid, and were at the bottom of the preview article. You can buy all 12 for the price of 10, or buy them individually. 1 every 2 days.

agreed. MTG makes a point of printing what a lot of them do on the simpler cards, they used to even do it for stuff like first strike and trample in certain sets, so they cover for themselves a bit by doing both. Also there's a spiderfang story in the advent stories, is this a good sign?

Beasts of chaos, cities of sigmar, bonesplitterz, sons of behemat and flesh eater courts also haven't gotten one. Its probably a sales thing though. Outside of just throwing 20 hearthguard in a box I'm not sure you could build a good one? Although they've released some stinkers in the past like the gutbuster one with a giant ally, or the beastclaw raider one that had RESIN MINIS in it.

I'm kind of waiting for us to get AoS' version of dreadnoughts and Wulfen. Maybe a "chamber" or subfaction of stormcast that are only good for fighting after losing so much of themselves, and are only deployed into the thick of desperate battles because they're incapable of managing anything else. Or maybe taking the souls of the most broken stormcasts and putting them into constructs and machines to give them autonomy. They've lost so much of themselves that not being in a "human" like body doesn't affect them.

If hobgrots or BBz were unconditional battleline I'm not sure the lack of battleline would bother me as much, listbuilding is just very constrained for the army so a new option would've been nice.

if the monsta killaz were battleline I'd run them over 10 man gutrippaz literally every time, unfortunately they aren't. I like them but they might be tough to squeeze into lists, KB don't tend to have a lot of wiggle room.

Its not really that much of a specialized unit. sure the abilities only affect monsters, but the base scroll has pretty good output for kruleboyz (handily beating gutrippaz). If these guys were battleline I'd probably always take them over 10 gutrippaz The durability difference starts getting way more noticeable once you reinforce the gutrippaz so 20 rippaz would be doing a different job. Even when not faced against monsters this unit doesn't feel dead like the killbow or murknob, but against monsters this unit can be a big deal. the 3+ fight last means your opponent needs to be very careful about charging in with monsters.

The spear is definitely chaos since it has the 8 pointed star. I thought it might be nighthaunt or something before somebody pointed it out. Chaos is pretty broad though.

This reveal show is probably the least hype I've been for one in a while. Mostly because destruction was such a big part of the last one that I'm not expecting anything for me this time so I'm ready to coast for a while. Hopefully that FEC stuff is cool though

A dark counterpart to Tahlia would be really cool actually, they could build up some kind of rivalry between them.

Yes he does. Its a really nice way to get access to Clammy Hand while still being a troll list. Just bring a fungoid or something with clammy hand to sit by the loonshrine with Trugg in the list.

all the 3rd ed warclans boxes are like that. even the bonesplitterz ones.

AoS

any idea when the warcry warband rules usually drop? I'm pretty interested to see what the kruleboyz warband is like.

I think the only model with ravens at the moment is the mancrusher kit right? not that I think this is gonna be new mancrushers

I've thought the same thing. Gitz only got a single kit though. I could see something like a pestigor release, or maybe a big fighty nurgle hero or monster? Giant plague toads would be pretty cool. Not expecting anything for daemons but none of the daemon heroes are mounted either.

My post got a whitefang certified confused react. Maybe if I didn't ramble so much we could figure out what it meant 😅 Hopefully it doesn't mean spiders get the axe!

Grinnin blades subfaction IS good, but it has also pretty much become the ability the army is known for, which is why I think it makes sense to just make it available to the whole army and give grinnin blades something new. Narratively it fits the entire army as well, grinnin blades aren't the only ones who hide in the mists they're just the best at it. Kruleboyz aren't nearly as stealthy as many players think they are. Sure they do use stealth and traps, but those are just part of their arsenal to commit war crimes. They're masters of psychological warfare, fear tactics, and playing dirty. They do it compulsively, even in situations where brute force would get them an easy win. Stuff like poisoning food and water supplies, being loud to sleep deprive the enemy army, kidnapping and tormenting scouts to use as examples, etc. Unless they're forced to they basically never engage the enemy unless they're thoroughly crippled.

Here's the math for 6 boltboyz, no buffs vs fully buffed using hasty shot its fine, the hasty shot is where the money is at but its easy to play around it. If you go more into the probabilities things start looking far worse though. The average damage of the fully buffed hasty shot vs a 3+ save is 13.72, but your chance of being 13 damage or less is 48.88%, and the chance of being under 14 is 57%. The math is worse for the buffless version, who have a 48% chance of being 7 or less, but a whopping 71% chance of being 8 or less damage. Basically the average damage of the army is skewed so heavily by the potential for it to spike. All of your most likely damage outcomes are noticeably below the average. To make them more competitive they should try to make the damage more consistent and less wholly reliant on rolling 6's. Its not their damage potential thats bad, its the probabilities. Also they can fall pretty flat as soon as ward saves start showing up because their damage is balanced around not being resisted. That said I absolutely agree, debuffs should be the army's bread and butter based on their narrative and they're not great at it. Spiderfang are a very different army, I played them at a GT a few weeks back and came away feeling like they were better kruleboyz. Sure spider venom has less buff potential than VEW and applies to less attacks, but they actually have good allegiance abilities, and are mobile. I was playing Kings Gitz with a clammy hand arachnarok. Doing things like throwing 15 spider riders up the board with the snuffler ward felt good, as did stacking attacks with snufflers and sporesplattas, plus the army has a lot of recursion and movement. With kruleboyz you're weak at taking objectives, are very reliant on your damage, and you lose tempo quickly since you lack any kind of healing/recursion. Spiderfang is more of an army you focus on board control with, since you can get lots of cheap, fast, recycling bodies, teleporting pie plates, and strong defensive buffs and debuffs. They've also got above average magic, and can do some dirty stuff with endless spells if primal dice weren't around this season like planting an arachnarok behind scuttletide to be effectively unchargeable. What most of this means is that the lottery mortals mechanic just works better for spiderfang, who aren't relying on their damage as much to win the game, but it can turn things in their favor if it happens at the right time. Many are speculating bonesplitterz will be cut. They were left out of the recent orruk release stuff, have missed any kind of balance changes for 2 or 3 balance passes including missing out on getting a pity battle tactic, despite both ironjawz and kruleboyz getting one, they were nerfed a few times in a row when they were performing pretty well, mostly due to the meta, and have since fallen into the dumps and aren't even being shown on the metawatch stats anymore. They just kept taking weird nerfs too and never got internal balance attention for some of the terrible stuff. Seems like they might get squatted because GW seems to be going out of their way to keep them in the gutters and ignore them.

I was brainstorming how I'd write some new rules for kruleboyz, and one of the ideas I came up with was special command abilities that you issue to your opponents units that apply debuffs or other effects. The narrative being playing tricks, sowing confusion, and mimicking enemy soldiers in the chaos of the battlefield. They would do stuff like reducing hit/wound, negating inspiring presence and forcing the opponent to retreat. The other allegiance abilities I jotted down were the grinnin blades ability army-wide and keeping the kruleboyz waaagh! Then changes to the subfactions, with grinnin blades getting a free outside of 12" teleport every turn (obscured by the mist), big yellerz getting bonuses for not moving(they're canonically lazy), and skulbugz blocking commands on a roll within 3"

I think spiderfang are probably safe, its just bonesplitterz that are on the chopping block imo Kruleboyz are AoS-ified Greenskinz. They are to Greenskinz what lumineth are to high elves. They're even pretty close to greenskinz in army composition, despite what their narrative might suggest they fight like. They could definitely work some more grots into the line though, they're all over the place as helpers and companions but hobgrots kind of took their place as a unit option.

I hope spiderfang don't get squatted, with some extra rules love and like 2 kits (updated spider riders and a boss/monstrous cav box) you'd have the whole army in a good spot. I actually could see a new orruk book. Not the first time a book has gotten two shots in an edition, and that book sorely needs it.- Could be kruleboyz specifically too. It looks like they've been winding down bonesplitterz for a bit too, and if they get a 4e book the earliest would be like next october. I think FEC is going to get an expansion as part of harbingers before the book comes out, but thats just a hunch. I could see a new army in spring though, spring and fall tend to be when we get big AoS releases.

GW's fiscal year ends at the end of may, and starts in june. There's a zero percent chance of AoS 4 coming during this fiscal year since we already had 40k 10th edition this year. There's a bunch of business reasons for it, but releasing both new editions during the same year would create a big spike in revenue and profit that would crater next year and hurt their stock prices by a lot. Its the reason they space the edition releases out like this in the first place and why we're on a 3 year cycle.