Neil Arthur Hotep

I got some value out of it once or twice, but I feel it fails a lot more than it succeeds. The timing is just kinda tricky: Since you only roll to consecrate an objective in your own movement phase, it does nothing for you if you get alpha'd. And when I don't get alpha'd, I usually have the Zenestra ward up instead. I wish the rule was just "6+ ward on objectives you control while Steelhelm warpriests contest them".

As an aside, I suspect internally GW thinks of end times units as AoS units. None of them being in TOW is what makes me believe this. They could have put Blightkings or the CoS buff wagons in there, but they chose not to. At the same time, those units are strongly ingrained into AoS world building (Luminarks defeating Nagash, for example).

Just waiting for a Cogfort mini so that we can really recreate that episode on the tabletop!

I currently have Zenestra and a bunch of Fusiliers half painted. I hope to get at least one of those finished by the end of the month. Last month had a bunch of important deadlines for me, so I did not paint a lot. Finished a few fences, though: These really are the product of one layer of paint or washes or drybrushing per day before bed for, like, a week. I just like the feeling of making at least some progress even when I have no real time and energy to paint.

All Khorne except for the 10 Knights which were Nurgle marked and had the Eroding Icon. Luckily, most of my damage against them came from shooting and mortals, so it did not matter that much.

It has historically not been that clear cut. Lumineth, Slaanesh and Nighthaunt are good examples of queue jumping. Personally, I think CoS has a good chance of getting another fairly large release next edition. They are kind of a special case that from the perspective of GW might warrant extra attention, because of their narrative importance and the unsatisfying arrangement with Dispossessed and Dark Elves. I don't see it for FEC, though. They feel like a pretty complete faction right now.

So, as promised, my experience from a recent game against an alpha strike list. My list: Hallowheart. 2x Steam Tank Commander, Battlemage on Hurricanum, Zenestra, Warforger, Battlemage, 3x10 Steelhelms, 20 Fusiliers My opponent: Knights of the Empty Throne. Be'Lakor, Chaos Sorcerer Lord, 6 Varanguard, 3 Varanguard, 10 Chaos Knights, 5 Chaos Knights Pre-Battlescroll rules. Battleplan is The Frigid Zephyr (no flying and no visibility outside of 12"). TL;DR: Deploying far back, using the terrain to my advantage and screening far back allowed me to win this game 16-12 in the final rounds. Deployment: Knights of the Empty Throne Varanguard and Chaos Knights have a huge threat range. They all have 10" movement, get run and charge, have a 3d6 charge spell and the Chaos Knights get charge bonuses on top of that. Average threat ranges around 22" or so. Massively more dangerous on the charge, too, since they all run lances. I went into this game with the overall mentality that this was my opponent's game to lose: If he just pulls off his normal game plan, he will win, while if I tried to play my normal game plan I would lose. No visibility outside of 12" meant that my shooting and spells would not be able to target from afar like normal, so I realized that I would have to get even my shooting units in close early in order to allow them to at least do some amount of work. With that in mind, I decided that I needed to back-board my deployment somewhat. Fully deploying out of charge range seemed bad to me, since it would leave all my units clumped up. That is very dangerous, since Varanguard get to fight twice once per battle if there are units left within 3" of them after combat. After a charge/with buffs, this could definitely wreck some of my high-value units. So I decided that it would be best to deploy in such a way that my screens are outside of 3" of my high-value units, and far enough from my opponent's deployment zone to allow a chance of at least some of his charges to fail. I won the die roll and chose to go second. This had two advantages for me. It allowed me to react to my opponent's deployment, and it allowed me to set up terrain. I chose to place the terrain in such a way that going across the diagonal and into the different table quarters would be difficult. Limiting my opponent from moving his high-mobility units freely onto points and creating choke points was very valuable this game. I made the decision to focus on the central and top-right objectives for this game. Top-right because the objectives are actually not the same: It is closer to my deployment zone than to that of my opponent, meaning I can sneak on the point with a Steam Tank and still be reasonably safe from a turn 1 charge. That's why the Steam Tanks and Hurricanum are packed into the corner like that. For orders, since my opponent had no shooting I put down mostly counter-charge and movement, but also one engage the foe just to try it out. It actually worked out really nicely and allowed me to put in 31 Steelhelm attacks with Blazing Weapons up, which did a sizable amount of mortal wounds. Here is the game state immediately after turn 1. My opponent took first turn and charged me (correct play, I think, but he had to consider it). Be'Lakor is out of frame contesting the top point. As you can see, only the two Varanguard made it in. They charged the top unit of Steelhelms and the Battlemage in the bottom left. I actually put that guy there as a gambit: I expected him not to be especially useful this game and though my opponent might waste the once-per-game fight twice on him. Which he did. Overall, this charge only killed 300 points: Two Steelhelm units and the battlemage. On my turn, I got all my buffs up. Shot the small Varanguard unit off the field with the Fusiliers. Charged the Varanguard on top in the back with a Tank Commander and Steelhelms (to lock them in combat and deny their charge bonus) and basically ground them down over the following combat, shooting and magic phases. I got the double turn after that. Took a chunk out of the 10 Chaos Knights with another round of Fusilier shooting and positioned in anticipation of a charge the turn after (made sure to have Blazing Weapons covering them for Unleash Hell). The Tanks and Hurricanum got to work on Be'Lakor and the remaining Varanguard. I lost the Fusiliers after that to a charge from the Chaos Knights, but took a few of them with me from Unleash Hell. Very little else happened that turn because I had nothing chargeable due to terrain. Maybe the 5 Knights charged a Steam Tank? I don't remember exactly. Around turn 3, Be'Lakor and the Varanguard were all dead, and the big Knight unit was pretty beat up. I still had the two Tanks, Hurricanum, Zenestra, Alchemite and Command Corps left. At that point, I pretty much started dominating and took over the game and even though I scored 0 points the first two turns it was enough to grind out the win. This was a good game that I could definitely have lost during deployment. I think holding back my high-value pieces and taking favourable engagements was the key to victory. Extra pictures: Some random things that stood out to me: The Command Corps will definitely stay in my list even if it is 200 points now. Stopping commands and healing is enough to make it worth that, plus it also came in clutch late game by doing its battle tactic and killing some stuff. Steam Tank Commanders are just so much more fun to play than regular Steam Tanks. The access to that extra +1 to saves from Finest Hour is just so good on a 2+ save base. Really feels powerful and worth the points. I also continue to be impressed by the Hurricanum. +1 to hit on everything in range, every phase, without using commands is just so good. Way better than it looks on paper. And the Storm of Shemtek is such a threat late game. Even Chain Lighting is kind of a neat spell. I really want to continue running the double Tank Commander + Hurricanum setup. It feels very strong and fun. Fusiliers did well this game, but without the ability to do mortals at range they would not have. I will continue to run the same list for at least a few games, because I am locked into it for league matches. But I suspect that in the future, the 20 Fusiliers will not make the cut until they drop back down to 150 or even 140 points. Something that helped me a lot this game is how many incidental mortal wounds everything did. d3 from impact hits with the Steam Tank. 2d3 from Zenestra being in combat. d3 on a bunch of units from chain lightning. d3 from Storm of Shemtek round 1. 5 wounds from Transmutation of Lead because I got an extra cast. A few wounds from Steelhelms, Steam Tanks or the Command Corps being in range of Blazing Weapons. This stuff adds up over the course of a game.

Important FAQ question: When determining visibility, do we have to take Krethusa's hair style into account? Not sure she has true line of sight to anything with that fringe of hers, to be honest.

I don't think they rotate rumour engines anymore. I think they just crop and grayscale their webstore promo shots.

With WarCom only calling out fantasy stuff for this one, watch it be some weird 40k thing in the end.

Current Deathrattle come with sword and spear options, don't they? Anyway, if number of models is what you're after, just get those Wargames Atlantic skeleton at 35€ for 32 models. The Tomb Kings skeletons are definitely not worth that price with their low fidelity and awful building experience. Speaking as someone who has built and painted, like, 30 of those dudes.

The game would probably be a lot cleaner rules-wise without them. Faction terrain has long been criticized as allegiance abilities you need to pay money for, and it can just become normal terrain for people who already own it. For endless spells, the generic ones have kind of failed, IMO. They have been seeing rules rewrites every GHB and are still nowhere near balanced. But that runs into the possibility of feel-bads for people who recently bought into these models. I think the DoK endless spells are the most recent set? They are still from this edition. I was kind of thinking that GW might want to keep at least endless spells as part of the game, because in 3rd there are still a lot of rules that interact with them, and I don't know how much GW base their rules writing decisions on manufacturing/logistics concerns (even when a new edition gives them the opportunity to remove problematic elements).

I was not under that impression. I am speaking of the bottleneck of manufacturing and shipping wares from China (economically) that they are dealing with at the moment.

Just speculating there, but if it involves making new molds for use in their UK factories, I would imagine it is cost prohibitive. I think GW are committed to those rules for now, but I also wonder when we will see them resolve their manufacturing bottleneck for these items. It's not like it can't be done, but who knows how long it will take.

That kind of kills all hope I have for the spider incarnate, then. I can't see them committing to the expense of producing it in the UK in that case.

That is true. In any case, I hope the difficulties GW is having with terrain are resolved soon. Although I can't really pretend to know what a possible solution would look like. Was the Krondspine Incarnate manufactured in China, by the way? Does anyone know? I know the endless spells were.

That's what I thought it was. Still, it will be interesting to see if they find a way to release the spider incarnate and whatever else was potentially planned for a Season of War: Gallet box. Tunnel terrain?

Live @Whitefangreaction:

I'm waiting until availability is a bit better to pick up some Old World stuff (don't want to take models away from people who are actively building armies to play, still busy with Cities of Sigmar right now), but the price point on the bone dragon seems OK. Will probably get one at some point. I hope the prices on the returning metal models are good. I kind of want a Green Knight.

For 20 new foot knights it's whatever. I can justify paying GW prices for models that are actually at the cutting edge of quality and offer a unique aesthetic. I can't justify it for generic, blobby 20 year old skeletons.

Bone dragon for 80€ seems cool. Might have to do that Corpse Rippa/Bone Dragon mashup some time in the future. 60€ skeleton warriors: lol, lmao

I'm sure we will get there eventually. I am actually very happy with the new direction of the Freeguild, and I hope if and when we eventually see a Cogfort or new steam vehicles, they keep using the same design cues. They have so many cool and interesting direct references to medieval art in the new design. "Medieval, but high tech" would be an absolute banger of an aesthetic for new Ironweld stuff.

So weird that the Cities of Sigmar have stuff like this in the lore and then on the tabletop we only get guys with hand-cannons.

The best gargoyle in Cities is obviously the butt gargoyle from Zenestra's palanquin:

You are right, I had it in my head that it only prevents negative modifiers for some reason. Might be better off stacking bonuses to saves in that case.