Neil Arthur Hotep

That's Gorkamorka, though.

Sure, I was just going off of wave 2 because that's the more recent example. But now that you mention it, with the rumours of AoS 3rd edition being in the works possibly for this summer, maybe that could the time to put out some new Start Collecting or equivalent boxes. If so, Soulblight might get one then.

Would be nice to get a bundle of some kind, but I would not count on it. If I recall correctly, neither Lumineth wave two nor Hedonites got any special bundles including their new models.

Looks solid At this point it's probably the best if you just play around with your list against your brother and get your own feel of what works and what does not. That's probably more valuable than any advice people could give you in a vacuum.

Hard to say how good a list is for casual play, because that really depends on your opponent as much as you, but I think you list definitely has the tools that you need to succeed. You will need to retool it, though. As it stands, you don't meet the requirements for the Xintil War-Magi battalion, which needs a Battlemage, a Luminark without mage and a Hurricanum with mage. Basically, you need a battlemage on foot and your Luminark needs to be the "un-crewed" version. If you get the Warmagi box with the two Luminark kits, you will actually have enough parts to build two "crewed" Luminarks/Hurricanums and two Battlemages on foot with a bit of kitbashing. Since you just want to play casually, that might be worth considering. You can easily just count the Luminark as crewed/uncrewed as needed and you get an extra Battlemage out of the deal.

Rumour engine. Some 40k thing. I'd love it was a super-troll and they reveal the model later today.

I think even then it would be a good decision to make models available only as part of an expensive boxed game technically playable, but weak rules-wise. From my point of view, any introduction of scarcity/secondary market forces like games like Magic: The Gathering have would be a bad outcome for AoS as a whole. I would definitely not be looking foreward to complaints that you need to buy Cursed City to field a competitive Deadwalkers army, even if the game had unlimited stock. A big box like Cursed City really is in a different category here compared to stuff like Underworlds or Warcry warbands.Those could definitely receive competitively viable rules no problem. Buying like five models as a bundled deal is not too much to ask. But buying a big 50 model box to get the one hero mini you need for your Cities of Sigmar build would be. For what it's worth, I also don't like when this happens with exclusive heroes in dual boxes (Spite Revenant, Abhorrent Archregent, that Kharadron Balloon dude) or starter sets (Knight of Shrouds on Steed).

Are we confident that it will be easy to source in-scale legs, though? Lauka Vai's torso seems pretty big.

That's definitely true. I mostly called Legions of Nagash a soup army because of how the faction mixes a lot of different, not completely unified aesthetics together. That's not surpising given the origin of the army lies with the Vampire Counts of Warhammer Fantasy, which themselves developed out of just a general Undead army. But in AoS, armies tend to have more unified aesthetics, and the splitting off of ghosts into Nighthaunt and Morghasts into OBR made the army feel somewhat soupy, even though historically the direction is the opposite. I think that the new Soulblight range definitely has a stronger identity than old Vampire Counts ever head, largely because it's been freed of a lot of legacy models. Another thing that makes me want to call Legions of Nagash soupy is this line from the Grand Host rules text: At the time of release, I think the intention of LoN to be "Grand Alliance: Death, but good" was there. The later re-souping in of new Nighthaunt models also supports this perspective. In that sense, LoN was very much a stop gap to make all those Death models playable quickly. For Gravelords, by contrast, I don't think it's possible to argue that they are anything less than a fully fleshed out army with it's own identity.

Sorry for the double post, but I just finished this guy yesterday. He's the battlemage from the Hurricanum box: And man, was that a different experience from painting Glaurio ven Alten. This guy was all weird anglesm fiddly details and soft, swooping fabrics that are hard to highlight properly. By contrast, Ven Alten as a modern model really painted himself, with his good variety of different textures and materials. I also once again realized that I really suck at painting in a traditional layering style. But for some reason, I could not get my usual method of washes and glazes over a value sketch to work with this guy. I think it might have been the blue colour scheme. I find that blue ink comes out shiny and blue paint comes out splotchy when I thin it down to be transparent enough to glaze with. Does anyone have any tips on that?

Big agree. Here's another point I made in the Soulblight thread: I see some people disappointed with the number of resculpts of old units. I get the desire to want something new, but we should really be more appreciative of these updated sculpts. They are about the rarest type of release GW does, and in the case of Legions of Nagash they were about the most needed. LoN went from a range of bad, old plastic kits and lots of finecast to a full, modern plastic range (except maybe Grave Guard). That is an investment into the future of this faction. It means the more grounded skeleton, zombie and bat aesthetic is sticking around. No one can argue about Soulblight that they are a soup faction for old models left on life support, like they did with LoN.

I think we can all agree on that.

I have heard that as a "the guy at my store said" rumour, yes. It would be difficult to release anything except Radukar the Wolf separately. He is on his own sprue, but all the other guys are together on one sprue. I suppose that sprue could be released separately though, as a "Villains of Cursed City" pack.

For good reason. I posted this in the Gravelords thread just now: As for the Cursed City guys: Even though it's sad that they very likely won't see much play, GW made the right decision with them if they are not planning to release the models separately. Imagine if, like, Gorslav or whatever became a competitive staple. You can't have such a unit be locked away behind a €150 box set in a bundle with fifty other models. That goes double if you are not even selling that box anymore.

One strength of the Luminark is that it has a pretty insane range. You can definitely expect to put 1d3 mortals on anything on the board with it turn 1, likely hitting another unit as well incidentally. If you think of the Luminark as a buff piece to support your troops that can also incidentally mortal wound snipe heroes, I think you can justify taking two of them. Cities has a lot of other ranged stuff that can help with such a strategy, such as the Freeguild Handgunner champion with the long rifle. In Settler's Gain, you can also bring Sentinels or Starshard Ballistas, which are better at long-range shooting than anything else in Cities. Maybe if you build a list where the role of the Luminarks is mainly to support your big capturing infantry blocks, but with a side focus on long range damage, that could be pretty cool.

Excuse me, everyone! I clearly specified that this thread is for Not disappointment and grumbling! Anyway, for me, the new Soulblight range is an overall hit. I think the update is a good size, with 12 new kits. Of those, 5 are regular units, 6 are small to medium characters and one is a centerpiece. Which I think is a fair ratio: It's not like we could have got an updated Grave Guard unit if they had left out Kritza or whatever. They do a bunch of small heroes because they are quicker and easier to produce and give a faction a lot of character. I see some people disappointed with the number of resculpts of old units. I get the desire to want something new, but we should really be more appreciative of these updated sculpts. They are about the rarest type of release GW does, and in the case of Legions of Nagash they were about the most needed. LoN went from a range of bad, old plastic kits and lots of finecast to a full, modern plastic range (except maybe Grave Guard). That is an investment into the future of this faction. It means the more grounded skeleton, zombie and bat aesthetic is sticking around. No one can argue about Soulblight that they are a soup faction for old models left on life support, like they did with LoN. As for the Cursed City guys: Even though it's sad that they very likely won't see much play, GW made the right decision with them if they are not planning to release the models separately. Imagine if, like, Gorslav or whatever became a competitive staple. You can't have such a unit be locked away behind a €150 box set in a bundle with fifty other models. That goes double if you are not even selling that box anymore. --- Here are some of my hits and misses for those who care: Hits: Lauka Vai In my opinion, this is the perfect way to do a monstrous vampire centerpiece. The Vyrkos I really, really love all the weirdo vampire characters from the Vyrkos bloodline. If fielding Kritza, Annika and Belladamma Volga together is in any way viable, I am doing it. The new critters Even though I have an LoN army, I previously thought all the different bats and wolves looked bad. Now they are some of my favourite units and I am strongly considering focussing on them for my list. Misses: No support real for Deadwalkers It's great that Zombies got a new sculpt and now don't look embarrassingly bad anymore. But it's sad that the hope we all had when we saw Gorslav of a Zombie specific support hero did not pan out. We will have to see if Zombies become mechanically viable this time around. In LoN, they did not have a niche at all. No endless spells Vampires in Warhammer were always pretty magically adept. So I would have liked to see them get faction-specific endless spells. I really thought a bat swarm endless spell would have been a no-brainer after Bat Swarms are apparently not a unit in the new book anymore. Faction terrain also falls into this category, somewhat, but since I have not seen any real inspired suggestions for what Gravelords faction terrain should be, I am less sad about it. No regular vampire troops I really thought we would get some kind of vampire infantry. Maybe the quick shock troops like the Bloodborn from Cursed City or the winged vampire from the Crimson Court warband. Or maybe heavily armoured elite knights. Instead, it seems like GW went with the established direction that all vampires are super huge mega chad leaders, which is not bad either, but I think some kind of lesser vampire unit would still have been welcome. Vargheists exist I guess. --- Personally, I know I am getting some of the new models. I am still waiting to see the rules to fully commit, but I am entertaining two possible lists: Highly elite knightly vampires with Lauka Vai, Blood Knights and VLoZD, or full creatures of the night with as many Vyrkos as I can fit, Dire Wolves and Fell Bats.

It's even set up that he transforms in the Cursed City box itself, so I'd say that's 100% likely.

After untold aeons, Teclis has finally vanquished Nagash... But wait a minute, what's that? Is that Hashut with a steel chair??

I think if they are, we will probably get confirmation today. It depends on the release date, but if it's this month, how much longer do they want to wait to spring "By the way, FEC are souped in" on us? If we don't see anything to the effect of FEC being part of Gravelords today, I'd assume they are not. As for the reveals today, I think there is a chance of another one or two kits that nobody is expecting, apart from the mother of nightmares. I think endless spells are also pretty likely.

I'd be curious to know whose copyright GW could possibly infringing upon, as far as the contents of the Cursed City box are concerned. As far as I am aware, you cannot copyright general ideas (like "game where you kill a vampire") or information/game mechanics (which is how 1d4chan can get away with summarizing the rules to every battletome). What you do get to copyright is the exact text and artwork in your games. But who could possibly hold a copyright on any of the text and artwork in Cursed City besides GW? The most plausible thing I could come up with is that one of the designers or artists of a previous Warhammer Quest somehow retains some of the rights (copyright or trade mark) to something that is relevant to Cursed City. But even that I find flimsy. Surely, those rights all reside with Games Workshop. Plus, the designer of the Silver Tower was on Warhammer Weekly recently and seemed quite excited for Cursed City. All this is why I would personally also guess that it's not a rights issue, but a logistics issue. Somehow, GW can't supply extra copies of Cursed City right now, either because it's not profitable, or because it's not possible (no factory space/time, no access to printed materials...). As far as I know, this kind of stuff needs to be coordinated months in advance, so a last-minute collapse of their supply chain would probably need half a year or so to be rectified. In which case removing the box from the store, the promotional materials from the website and issuing a statement that "we have no current plans to produce more" would make sense. And they would have to be non-communicative about it, since they are a publicly traded company and admitting that they suffered some catastrophic breakdown somewhere would definitely hurt their stock prices.

I think this is one of those cases where you don't really benefit that much from taking multiples of a unit. The Luminark is already kind of a worse version of the Hurricanum in my opinion, because it has the more situational buffs (6+ FNP and +1 to unbind vs. +1 to hit and cast) and harder to use attack (1d3 mortals in a line vs. up to 3d3 mortals on one target). That said, I think taking one or two Luminarks, while probably not optimal, does not break your list. I think there is not a lot of payoff for it in Settler's Gain, but in Living City you could ambush with them, which makes it easier to set up good shots with their lasers. If your opponent sets up everything in a line, you could potentially tag those 3+ enemy units with it that would you would need to match the damage of the Hurricanum.

Depens on what you consider "substantial", but recently the channel "Age of Sigmar List Lab" on youtube has been posting videos about mechanical changes for AoS 3 that many consider to be likely true. While the videos don't cover all changes (just some personal highlights), it seems like the double turn is still in there. However, there is supposedly a new mechanics where on most (all?) scenarios, the player going second turn 3 gets to remove an objective. Other changes mentioned are the introduction of generic battalions for matched play (with current battalions likely being narrative only in the future), changes to command point (you get more and they refill quicker), limitations on buff stacking (max +/-1 to saves, hit and wound) and the introduction of charge reactions.

Good read! I always enjoy your blogs. To me personally, the biggest insight from looking at balancing a game inside the Wicked Problem frame work is from the first criterion: "The solution depends on how the problem is framed and visa versa." I think we see this a lot in discussions online. As an example, I think I have seen all of these as definitions of "balance" for AoS: Armies should fall within a 45%-55% win rate interval in tournaments. There should not be a handful of armies taking the majority of podiums in tournaments. All armies should have a chance to at least meaningfully compete in tournaments/causally. All units should be viable choices in tournament/casual lists. All kinds of lists (specialized and mixed) should be viable in tournaments/casually. New players should not have to worry about stomping/being stomped by their friends in casual games just because of army choice. All of those have a claim to be definitions of what it means for the game to be balanced, but achieving 45%-55% tournament win rates will look very different from enabling a large variety of list and unit choices in casual games. I actually think there is a stronger case to be made for game balance being a Wicked Problem than you try to claim in this post. Leaving aside the points that Rittel & Webber make about Wicked Problems being high-stakes (because that does not really have to do a lot with why these problems are hard to solve, it just means that failed attempts will be more costly), you seem most hesitant to claim that characteristic #2 (no stopping rule) obtains for AoS. I think that's just because of a misunderstanding, though. The stopping rule point is not about whether Age of Sigmar will eventually stop. It's about whether there is a definitive point at which we can say that we are done balancing AoS. And to that, I think, the answer is fairly clearly "no". Even if we go with the most hard and fast definition of balance (45%-55% tournament win rates), we could argue that since new models and armies are continually being added to the game, the problem of balancing does not stop there. Or we could ask ourselves, once we achieve a 45%-55% interval, if it would be worthwhile trying to bring up those armies sitting around the 45% mark. I also think that characteristic #6 (no finite set of solutions) applies: Even if we think points values are enumerable, we are not limited changes to points and numerical characteristics on warscrolls when trying to balance the game. We are always able to just invent more rules that were previously not in the game at all. The recent rumours about charge reactions are an example of this. Those are not a thing at all in current games, but are now treated as another tool in the toolbox of AoS balance. In that way, balancing AoS is very unlike, for example, putting together a puzzle or solving a math problem. If you can't figure out how a puzzle goes together, really can't just invent a new way to make the pieces fit.

I think that 4chan post was talking about extra attacks. I personally welcome that change, extra attacks on skeletons just meant rolling 200 dice to deal no damage at the end. Plus, it made it so that nothing in LoN could give bonus rend or damage because that would quickly become absurd with 5 attacks per skeleton.

Yeah, I use them as Greatsword or Phoenix Guard proxies in casual games. But mostly I use them as guards in DnD or other RPGs. I just happened to have a bunch of old metal high elves in a box in my closet when I came back to the game a few years back. What I personally like about this fairly simple red and silver/gold scheme is how much it makes the high elves just look like normal dudes. It's also really relaxing to do if I want to just quickly paint a model as a palate cleanser.