Neil Arthur Hotep

AoS is comparatively under served by Forgeworld, that's for sure. With the recent removal of Legion of Azgorh and all those other kits that have been discontinued over the last year or so, it sure looks like the AoS Forgeworld range is being phased out. Maybe to make room for The Old World eventually? In any case, I agree that anything usable in 40k as well will probably stick around. Not sure about the other stuff, though. I could imagine that only staying available until the molds wear out. That happened with a Legion of Azgorh kit (Skull Cracker?) even before they were fully discontinued.

Personally, I somewhat enjoy the hype cycle. It's fun to speculate about what is coming, try to gather clues and make predictions. I think what is happening with Cursed City right now is super fun, for example, with everyone connecting info from different places, talking about their hopes for the game and what it could mean for AoS and the Mortal Realms. I don't find the slow release of new information in this case manipulative at all. It gets people excited in the same way solving a puzzle in a game or uncovering a mystery in a book does. What I don't enjoy is being treated like a ressource to be managed. The Lumineth and Daughters Battletome situation is a pretty good example of that. On the face of it: Sure, new book and new models, that's cool. That's something to get excited about. But then you start to notice how GW caused the problem that the new Daughters BT is going to solve (the Daughters rules had become fragmented over their original tome, BR: Morathi and Shadow and Pain), and how the release timing of the new Lumineth release in relation to their original release seems to be set up to exploit the sunk cost of Lumineth players to sell more units/books. That kind of stuff sucks, because for me it means I can't just buy GW products and trust them not to heck me over for buying in early. This will definitely be on my mind when I get interested in a new army they are hyping in the future: Will being an early adopter be worse for me than just waiting for another year to see what will happen to this army? Will my trust/loyalty as a customer be rewarded or punished? I don't like the recent developments, because it makes it harder to just stay positive about the game I enjoy. I want to be able to get excited and buy stuff that I like for my hobby. But it feels like the "smart" thing to do is to adopt a cynical attitude and not give GW any more trust, loyalty or indeed money than absolutely necessary.

If GW want to work werewolves into Grand Alliance: Castlevania Death, it probably makes the most sense to frame them as an expansion of the vampires' dominion over lesser creatures of the night. So I could totally see werewolves being vampires or under control of vampires in such a way.

There was that other picture someone linked which also showed a woman Sigamrite mage. She seems to be holding a staff that appeared in a rumour engine previously: There is a also the placeholder silhouette on the hero side, which appears to be this guy/lady with the sword and armour:

Good post. A few points: I also don't think a faction getting new stuff quickly in and of itself is a reason to complain. It can be a reason to complain based on context, such as factions like Stormcast being overly pushed when it comes to models. Or indeed in this case with Lumineth: While of course you could play Lumineth with only the battletome, chances are BR: Teclis will bring lots of new stuff to the table. You could also play Lumineth without a battletome at all. But it's not unfair to say that to get access to the full army, you need the Battletome. And likely, after the second wave, you will need to buy both the Tome and BR: Teclis to get access to the full army. And I think people feeling miffed about probably needing to buy twice as many books to play their army as players of other factions is understandable. If the Lumineth Battletome had just come out at double the price of other books, that would certainly be a reason to complain. It is only obvious that more Lumineth were coming in hindsight. If there were no new Lumineth models coming out for another six years, I am sure people would be saying "What are you complaining about? GW never promised you new models! You can't go off of the fluff for this kind of things!". The point about people who might not have bought into the first wave is about the difference in information available. It's true that some Fyreslayers players might not have bought into the faction if they had known there would be no new releases for a long time. But I find it believable in that case that GW put out Fyreslayers with no future plans for them at that stage. Nobody GW likely knew for sure that there would not be more Fyreslayers releases for five years. We know GW plans their releases a long time in advance, but they probably had no concrete plans for Fyreslayers in the near future. Now, if there are actually plans at GW to have Fyreslayers be a one release army forever, I think Fyreslayers players could also feel justifiably angry that this was not disclosed to them. People have to make these assumptions and predict what GW will do because GW does not disclose the relevant info, even though they have it. What's more, they choose not to disclose this info because it would be worse from a business standpoint. This is not surprising, it's how businesses act according to shareholed interests. But that does not make it automatically right from an ethical standpoint. GW is not a natural force. It's not a situation where we all try to predict what random thing will happen, and some people get it right and win, while others get it wrong and lose. GW is aware of what their customers can reasonably expect to happen based on their previous business decisions. And they can (and it seems, do) take action to deliberately exploit this. Which sucks, because I don't want to have an adversarial relationship with GW, where both they as a company and I as a customer need to perpetually try to ****** each other over. The problem is not with releasing more models and more books. If someone was actually complaining just about that, I think that would not be justified. But complaining about a release where the intent seems to be to get people to buy into an army, then release an update shortly after (which GW definitely was set up to do at the time of the initial release, this was not an after the fact decision) to presumably double dip with players who have already invested in the army is justified. Those players will feel more pressure to buy extra Lumineth stuff due to sunk cost. That is an underhanded tactic, no matter if it actually works out or not. It seeks to undermine the customers ability to make informed choices. And informed consent is the basis of ethics according to some schools of thought. Using a power/information differential in this way is definitely a quesiton of ethics.

Also this guy if we are lucky.

Mix up the parts, slap a skull on it somewhere and call it a conversion. Personally, I think it would be much more reasonable to generally expect something weaker than WYSIWYG. Like, you should be able to tell what's what upon seeing the list and all the models. If you only have one spirit in your list, obviously everyone will be able to tell at a glance what it is, no matter whether the list says it's the unique version while the model is the generic. WYSIWYG seems to mainly benefit GW sales, not the playing experience.

If anyone deserves new units it's Tyranid players, though.

Same here, I think it's because their heads are so similar. I think I prefer the unique version on this one, overall. Because it's weirder. And if we are already going weird with Lumineth, might as well lean into it.

Old man Teclis is already getting ready to ruin everything for everyone once again in Shyish. Just watch, he'll probably end up making all chaos followers immortal or something like that.

So that's what "Zenith" is supposed to be.

GW certainly does not seem to make any attempts to shut down 1d4chan and "man reads book" on youtube. As well as AoS reminders and Warscroll Builder for that matter. Between all of those, you certainly de facto don't need to buy books for rules. I mean, if the intent is that books are luxury/convenience products, but GW is fine with everyone getting the rules elsewhere, that's OK with me.

I think that'a very valid complaint, given that their initial marketing push to appeal to old high elf players. The whole "pointy elves" campaign is pretty ironic in hindsight, with their message of "Look at all those weirdo tree and fish elves. That's cool, but some people just want something more traditional". Although I guess where the new releases leave you with respect to your feelings about the faction as a whole depends on you. I did not get into the initial wave for Lumineth because they did not really work as a high elf callback or a completely new faction for me. I might get into LRL wave two, though, since with the new weird stuff that is coming, they are starting to get me interested in their own right, separate from the high elf connection. If I view the army not as a high elf thing, but as an interesting pseudo-asiatic army with a bunch of interesting animal spirits, it hits a certain spot for me. I think the most valid grievance is that people expected their LRL book to be good for a while (like the usually assumed three or so years). I definitely don't think that it's reasonable to assert that all Lumineth players would have bought BR: Teclis anyway. I did not get BR: Morathi because I didn't think the Cities rules in there were worth it for me, even though I play Cities. If BR: Teclis only had a few battalions or a new subfaction in it, I am sure many Lumineth players would have skipped it. Some might not have bought into Lumineth wave one at all if they had known a year ago that the army would get a second wave and book in the near future. I think we could view the issue as GW using their information advantage (they knew LRL 2 would be coming, players did not) to get players to buy something they would otherwise not have if they had the same information as GW. And it's reasonable to suspect that GW knew this would be the case (that people would not buy into Lumineth at release to the same degree if they knew more was coming a year later) and chose not to provide the pertinent information to players precisely because they thought doing so would reduce initial sales. This is whole situation is definitely not ethically neutral. Feeling cheated (for lack of a better word) is justified. GW don't make false promises, that is true. But they certainly don't provide customers with all the information they might want to make informed purchasing decisions either. They definitely keep their plans for future expansions secret. And those plans might well impact the perceived value of a GW product for customers if they knew about them (as we indeed see with BR: Morathi and the battletome). Never the less, I agree with you on the point that when you buy a GW product, you should not expect anything beyond that product. However, from my point of view, that means that in the future I will buy GW products only if I am happy with the value I get out of them right now, not with the expectation that they will be valid for a certain length of time. That probably means I will buy less GW stuff overall. I don't think that's in the interest of GW. I would like to be able to give them a certain degree of trust when it comes to their games, rule books and kits as far as their long term support.

Yes, I don't believe that's a good argument either. But it becomes more understandable if you look at their apparent philosophy of only adjusting things once they become problematic, not before. Arguably, spam list for certain units on TTS have not yet become problematic. Again, kind of flimsy reasoning, but somewhat understandable.

I think you understand what I am getting at, but are not convinced it's a good argument. Which is fair. I think we can both acknowledge that there are different pressures shaping IRL and TTS lists. People not putting certain lists on the table due to non-rules related factors is still meta shaping. Like, maybe Gyrocopter spam is super good, but people are just not putting a list of 30 of them on the table on a whim IRL at a price point of 1200€, where they very well might on TTS. There is also the hobby time commitment, although that's less of a barrier since you can paint an army pretty quickly to a three colour tabletop standard if you don't care about quality, regardless of what the list looks like. Never the less, I am sure "I don't want to paint 120 skeletons" has been prevented at least some players of fielding that list in the past. Again, it's fair if you think that this is not a good enough reason not to do points updates given the data the rules team has. But at least it is a reason potentially worth acknowledging, and I could see the rules team coming down on the side of the data not being good enough to base large point changes on at least partially due to it. I think this consideration would help make their decision more understandable, regardless of whether we agree with it.

I sympathize with the rules team a lot on this. I think the argument that the Tabletop Simulator meta is too different from the in-person meta to draw good conclusion on which to base their points adjustments would be solid if they made it. You don't really have to worry about lists with 15 Cockatrices in them for real life games. I even understand how they can't actually acknowledge the existence of TTS on Warhammer Community, so they are not in a position to directly say this. And I could accept that there is too little in-person data to make big points adjustments. But that only goes so far, because large effect sizes become reliably detectable even with small data pools. I don't think anyone really believes that Kroak or Spell-in-a-Bottle would be meaningfully more balanced for in-person tournaments (or even in-person casual games). That's why I think their decision not to adjust these particular things is pretty incomprehensible.

That's basically my stance on it, too. I think the reception would have been much more positive if they had come out and said: "We don't have the kind of data this time around that would make us comfortable with making huge, sweeping points changes. That is why we are only touching the stuff that's most obviously out of line." And that's Kroak, Spell-in-a-Bottle and Tzeentch. The most popularly suggested "fix" for Spell-in-a-Bottle is not even a points thing: It's to errate it to only be able to take non-faction specific endless spells. It would be really good if GW more strongly distinguished matched play from tournament play. I think the vast majority of players does not go to tournaments, but still uses matched play rules. And stuff like Kroak being super underpointed is not a tournament problem. Just taking Kroak and all his synergies from the Battletome is not some kind of in-depth tournament strategy. It's the most obvious strong build once you have decided to include Kroak. Even very casual players will hit on that strategy if they decide to include Kroak just because they like his fluff. Personally I find this situation frustrating because it's just another in a series of recent communication problems from GW. It seems to me that they constantly keep undermining their own hype. We can see that from the preview show: Lumineth getting a big update should make people excited. Objectively, it's good news for Lumineth players. But those players are still frustrated because they feel like GW is abusing their trust when it comes to battletomes. Even though it's not stated outright, it's reasonable to expect that if GW makes you pay for both rules and models that at least the rules will be stable for a while. Sure, GW never outright makes that promise, but it's completely reasonable to be frustrated by a company that signals "Our relationship to our customers is completely one sided, we don't take your satisfaction into account, profit is always the highest priority." with their publishing decisions. Same for BR: Morathi. Some people are saying you should not expect a narrative book's rules to be current forever. But at the same time, the books are very obviously also rules patches. It's completely reasonable to expect them to be current at least for a while, like until the next edition that we are all expecting. Of course you can say "You idiot, you should be expecting GW to try to heck you over! They never promissed that BR books would be rules patches that would last!". But at the same time, they very strongly implied it with their marketing, constantly talking about all the cool new rules in that book. Not providing rules updates/rebalancing is a similar problem. A lot of players these days are not from the 80s/90s/2000s, where not getting rules updates was the norm. These days, most people are familiar with games like Magic, which gets constant attention, or video games, which are patched all the time. The expectation is not to just git gud and deal with out-of-balance, negative play experience rules for a few years. The expectation is that a modern game will receive a reasonable amount of attention even after "launch". To me, the signal GW is sending is "Don't buy our stuff unless you are OK with it being obsoleted out of nowhere in a few months." So that's what I will probably be recommending to people for the time being: Only buy into GW stuff if the price is worth it for you right now, not with the expectation of getting value out of it for several years. On more word on the rules team, because I have seen that pop up in this thread a lot: I don't want to lay any blame for this FAQ at the feet of the rules team, or accuse them of being dishonest. They are probably among the people at GW most passionate about just making AoS a good game (regardless of financial success). Maybe (and here I go shilling again) they are hard at work on AoS 3 right now and that takes up all their attention. But if that is the case, just a little bit of a heads up that the FAQ would not be big and some adjustment of the worst, most obvious imbalances would have been all it takes to make people happy. I am laying the blame for that at the feet of whoever is in charge of PR at Games Workshop.

It seems like we are actually roughly in agreement on the timeframe. I personally just believe that AoS 3 will not come out/is not planned to come out in July. Following the pattern that Broken Realms: Morathi has set, it takes two months for an announced BR book to come out. Then, it takes another two months for a new book to be announced. That would mean: BR: Teclis release - March BR: Alarielle (or whatever) announcement - May BR: Alarielle release - July And then we would be seeing a potential AoS 3 announcement after that (and that is working from the theory that there will only be three BR books). We know for Hedonites, they were aiming for a January release (from the coin they wanted to give away in GW stores). So that's two months after the November release of BR: Morathi. Applying that to a potential Soulblight release: After BR: Teclis comes out in late March, we might expect Soulblight in late May, early June. Possibly a month or two later to make room for Ulfenkarn in between. That would put us in the vincinity of a July-August release. That would also be about three months after the Underworlds warband, which would again be the same timeframe as Hedonites. Of course, this is working under the assumption that GW will stick to the pace they have set with BR: Morathi. If an AoS 3 launch is planned for July, they might well decide to pick up the pace for Broken Realms. Psychic Awakening used to release on a schedule of one book every two months. That would make a July release of AoS 3 possible if there are only going to be three books.

I don't know, it seems to me that AoS has been booming since they started treating it as a proper game and caring for customer satisfaction. It just seems really boneheaded to risk going back to the Kirby era with stuff like this.

AoS 3 is at the end of this year at the earliest. And "They just care more about money than customer satisfaction" is also not really an excuse.

Disagree here: It makes sense from a marketing perspective to hype up one army at a time. This is currently Lumineth. GW has an interest in keeping customers in the dark as to the release of upcoming factions, because they believe they can get people to spend more that way. Plus, the existence of a future Vampire faction in itself would be a minor spoiler for BR: Teclis if we knew it's coming out after that book.

I am glad that just when I start feeling like a GW shill, they come out and do something totally incomprehensible.

I think these all seem pretty rock solid. I wonder who that round shield will end up belonging to and if they will be important. They are the placeholder image on the Overlords of Ulfenkarn section, but we know they are not one of the four important guys. Images missing form this are: Less certain, but still potentially Death: I agree with this. I think the Vampire Lord being vindicated by GW, but no mention of the Gravelords faction both in the articel and reveal show indicates that we got to see this before they were ready. I would think the smart money should be on a release after BR: Teclis. The narrative opportunities to set up the Gravelords faction as a result of whatever will happen in that book just seem too good. 100% a real, actual leak in my book. Revealing the Gravelords faction name and then refusing to mention it again would make no sense as intentional marketing.

It's back up for me. "Once he hunted witches, aethergheists, and cultists of the Dark Gods, but after he was expelled from the Order of Azyr, he decided on a massive career change and started hunting vampires instead." I feel vindicated for all those times I have been telling people that called him a witch hunter that stakes means vampires.

I don't disagree. Although releasing rules without models is unfortunate in it's own way. However, this is also where I wish I knew more about the logistics involved. If someone told me that that Vampire Lord might be all done and packaged, but to get everything else in Soulblight Gravelords done and shipped will take another six months, I would not be surprised.