bsharitt

I think we'll see Slaanesh within the next 12 months, but I don't think it'll be today.

Some how I had missed that the deepkin were out of Ghur, I thought they were in the shadow realm too. Or are they from the shadow realm and these one are visiting Ghur? Or maybe there's no misdirect and we're getting an underwater troggoth faction too.

Don't really care about cardboard boards, but more terrain is always welcome.

For people familiar with D&D, I think the best analogue for order is the lawful alignment that can range from good to evil. In fact in D&D, one of the biggest conflicts is between the lawful evil devils and the chaotic evil demons. Sure the devils are evil, but at least they want some order and structure in the world, it's just a matter of basic principles compared to the lawful good people. I'd say Order, Chaos, and Destruction in AoS are basically Lawful, Chaotic, and Neutral respectively for the most part with ranges of good to evil found within(but probably far less good if any than evil in Chaos) with Death being it's own Lawful Evil thing.

GW just reboxed zombies on rounds and are one of the core battleline troops for Legions of Nagash. With that baseline, no model is too dated for a battleline unit. If there is going to be a sea elves faction, I think Scourge Privateers have a very good chance of being it with a DoK treatment of new models. Heck, they've already got 4 unique kits to DoK's 3, and perhaps even more since Tenebrael Shard could fit in depending on what the new kits looks like.

All this "just joking" that GW does everything they "jokingly" mention Fishmen is the real diversion. Fishmen are coming. If Fishmen do not comeout this year, I will eat my favorite sandwich while wearing a hat.

Yeah, I wouldn't read too much into the lists. The goblin one had two forgeworld models in it, but I wouldn't take that to mean that we're going to get plastic GW version of the squig gobba or colossal squig(but that would be amazing) or that GW is going to start putting FW models in the GHB or battletomes.

An undead plastic sister of battle. But yeah, that's almost certainly death. Technically I suppose if could be Nurgle, but I'm going to assume they might be done for a while. And just to go into full speculative mode, it looks vaguely nighthauntish, but I'm going to guess it's one of the wraiths in the picture a few posts up and we'll be getting them in a 10 man unit size.

Also, I noticed that the morghasts are listed under preorders, but they were already reboxed for AoS. Any ideas of what's going on there?

There's the Gyrobomber/copter.

The "healing" version of summoning looks like a nice trade off to be able to have nice thematic summoning but not have it being completely worthless in matched play, yet not as potentially OP as unlimited summoning.

While new models are great and always welcome, I think I prefer the way they're doing codex releases for 8th edition 40k as it will get everyone up to speed fairly quickly and shouldn't leave whole factions unviable for a whole edition. Everybody having books just makes the game feel more complete and not quite so two tier. Yes, there are going to be some codexes/battletomes that are better, but the effort is nice you don't feel like you're playing with GW's leftovers as much if you at least have a book, despite the age of the models. At the end if the day, I'd prefer that 2018 is the year of Battletomes more than a year of models(but both are obviously preferred). Just going by what didn't get rules in GHB 2017, I'd like to see a mixed faction battletome similar to what LoN will probably be but for the former high elves. Have an option to run them together(maybe add a generic battleline that GW still sells?) with generic traits and artifacts, but also have some add on for specific factions, but rather than giving them each their own full faction load out, maybe do it like the Kharadron skyports where you use the basic stuff, but maybe have access to a couple of extra special rules or artifacts if you run Phoenix Temple. I wouldn't mind seeing something similar for destruction uniting Greenskinz and Grots into a single battletome bringing back Orcs and Goblin(sorry, Orrucks and Grots) as unified army now missing black orcs and savage orcs. Of course Moonclan, Gitmob and Greenskinz could also do well with their own battle tome each. And of course a non-Beastclaw Ogre Battletome. Gutbusters and also throw away the notion of Firebellies and Maneaters as their own factions unless you're going to do something with them.

While the Gunhauler isn't a great unit in the game(at least not for the point cost), no real surprise to see it included in the start collecting. I don't think they would have included the frigate, unless it wasn't selling well due to price as the Magmadroth for fyreslayers was reported to be be selling poorly. So it's probably at least a good sign that the KOs are selling well that they didn't feel the need to make the SC a Frigate with free stuff. I do find the troop choices a bit more surprising though. I really expected an Arkanaut Company(specifically in the box, I would have guessed a hero, arkanauts, and the gunhauler) since most of the start collecting boxes have contain a core troop choice for the army they're for. Not that two specialty troops are a bad thing, and it does make the box a better dollar for dollar value. If you need thunderers and endrinriggers, it's basically getting a cheaper endrinmaster and the gunhauler for free, which might mitigate it's relative uselessness on the tabletop(but still a nice model). I big part of it may be that they're trying to keep new start collecting boxes at at least 500 points, though I still would have preferred arkanauts and endrinriggers if that were the case. A slightly more business related reason might be that they're trying to discourage just buying multiple start collecting boxes to build and army, and truly only have it as a starting point. On the heroes I figured it would have been a toss up between the Admiral or the Endrinmaster as they're a bit more general in usage compared the the navigator and khemist, though I would have hedged my bet a little closer to the admiral because he's the most straight forward, but the endrinmaster makes sense as he may encourage ship based army construction. On the whole it's not a bad box. I'd definitively recommend it to a new KO player. At some point you'd probably like to have at least one each unit and the endrinmaster and you're getting a discount on even just those free and even the gunhauler isn't that great on the tabletop, you're getting it for free and it's still a great model(of course I have that opinion about the entire KO line). Not sure if I'll buy one to expand my KO force though. I need more endrinriggers, and I want to pick up the endrinmaster eventually, I don't know about the rest of it. I've already got a gunhauler, and if you can't tell from the rest of my post, I'm not a fan, so I probably don't need another. I like the thunderers well enough and even after their GHB2017 changes, they still have a use(especially if you didn't buy a dozen boxes to give everyone the same special weapons), but I think that use can be handled by the one unit I have. It's a good starting box, but it's just that, a starting box. I don't think this will be a box people keep buy to expand their existing armies like some of the SCs(and I suspect that's on purpose).

Too bad his command ability to fire twice requires him to be your general, so I can't just run him as an ally to my KOs to get his full benefit.

I'm really liking the new Grot shaman. I had started my destruction army build out with Moonclan grots and was the fence about seeing that through as all Moonclan or mixed destruction. Honestly when this guy was first announced, my first reaction was "oh great, now I guess I have to do all Moonclan", but fortunately that seems not to be the case and I think I'm back on team mixed destruction, which I like better thematically. So far in the MP videos he's been mentioned in, the shaman is spoken of as leading "green skins" that encompases goblins and orcs. I know it's probably just that he's leading forces of destruction into battle and I'm probably reading too much into it, but I wonder if we could see a destruction battle tome that gets the orc and goblins back together so to speak(minus savage orc and black orcs who of course have their own battletomes and factions now) and combine the Greenskinz and all the various grots into one faction. Overall he seems pretty solid and will be an instabuy for me. The Knight of Shrouds is a little more underwhelming. It's nice to have something that buffs Nighthaunt, and just a new Nighthaunt models is nice to have too. So I'm not too disappointed myself, being that Nighthaunt is my main Death army, but I can definitively see why other death players would be disappointed by him. His ethereal rule is different(and since it's the same name, I wouldn't be surprised to see the rest of Nighthaunt get it too) and somewhat interesting. On one hand it now protects against any ability that lowers save, not just rend, but the trade off is that their save can't be buffed, so now Nighthaunt can't benefit from cover. (the sould blight warscrolls I've seen are blurry, so if I get something wrong, that's probably why) I love that Neferata now has the soulblight keyword. The ability to return models when there's nothing to heal is neat, though it looks like Blood Knights lose their innate ability to do so and would rely on her, so that's going to make some sad soulblight players sad, especially if they're heavily invested in blood knigts, but hopefully they get a point reduction. It'll be interesting to see the battletome and all the warscroll updates to see what Soulblight looks like as a total faction.

Nice, I'm still not sure if I'll be getting Shadespire, but I wouldn't mind some extra fyreslayers in some new poses to break up the saminess of the faction. As much as I like dwarfs, the Fyreslayer models over all are probably some of my least favorite models released in the AoS era, but I'm liking what I see even with the small blurry picture here and hoping the rest are as good(and given the rest of the Shadespire warbands, that's a good bet).

I wouldn't be surprised to see a full Darkoath faction broken out from StD, but I wouldn't expect to see a separate fungoid faction. Mushrooms are already a part of the Moonclan theme, and this new guy just turns it up to 11. So while I wouldn't expect him to be the harbinger of a new fungoid faction, he could mean that mushrooms are going to be even more at the forefront of any future Moonclan in the same way that tentacles have become a much more prominent Nurgle feature in recent years.

Obviously they're getting ready to release a line of Bloodbowl coaches and this is one holding a playbookscroll.

I would love a new Black Coach. I currently have a Nighthaunt army but not Black Coach, not because of the unit's rules, but because I can't make myself pay actual money for that awful model. I've got my Nighthaunt army halted at 1600 with 400 points of Soulblight allies making up the rest because I've got plenty of hexwraiths and I never want to see an unassembled Spirithost again, but I've got plenty of room for the Knight of Shrouds and a Black Coach with a better model.

Cthulhu Elves.... Blood Bowl team!

I don't get what the tease would be here. We already knew he was Nighthaunt. On another note, I can't help but notice that the box is Malign Portents specific. This is of course not the first time GW has released models for a specific even of originally only in a particular set and I know there's probably no reason to worry, but have there been event in the past where GW released new specific models for the event, and after it was over they never went into general circulation?

Just curious, where'd that impression come from? Books or battetomes?

I doubt they'll be compulsory in every list, just that each allegiance will be themed around one and they'll probably synergize well with their underlings.

I think we're in for some changes to warscrolls, at least some tweaks. There've been some for Nurgle, so I'd assume death would get some, especially to work with new allegiances and abilities.

They announced it along side two 40k codexs and those thing have been going out back to back pretty quickly, so I'm guessing the first one of t hose could go up for preorder this month, so it's not out outside the realm of possibility that the new battle tome will happen equally as soon. The only other date we have on the AoS side right now is the Feb 17th that went out in the email after the count down. Not sure if we know what's happening then(maybe another date and it's a russian nesting doll of countdowns?) so it could be the battletome date, but it would seem odd to give a date, then announce the tome, then have it come out on that date without linking them together from the get go(but then maybe GW's marketing and releases teams are exactly the sharpest bulbs in the drawer). My guess it that the 17th is going to be the bit of information, but probably nothing big despite teasing the date, probaby just another incremental trickle like the Jan 4th "reveal" was. But given that timeline, I think the new Battletome will go on sale or preorder by the 17th.