Neil Arthur Hotep

This point kept getting stuck in my mind for some reason. If there is a weakness in the design of the new Cities book, in my opinion it's the Alchemite. It's just kind of absurd that this little 90 point wizard gives out both the best offensive buff and the best defensive buff in the book, for any human unit. It feels very restrictive for competitive list building. How do you justify a Battlemage for 100 points when this guy exists? What reason is there, if you are just going for peak efficiency, not to simply run 2 or even 3 Alchemites. Currently, the +1 to saves buff can be triggered as many times as you have Alchemites because it is not a spell and the +1 stacks because they didn't give it the usual wording ("+1 to saves if you are within 12" of this unit" vs. "...if you are within 12" of a unit with this ability"). I think we can only hope for an early FAQ for this guy, otherwise tournament lists will probably look realy samey for a while. EDIT: The Lord-Castellant is 180 points, also gives out +1 to saves (longer range, but only to one unit) and goes in a lot of lists. Just as a point of reference.

You can? I'll have to take a look at that part of the battletome some time. I have been sticking to the rule of "Path to Glory? More like Path to Ignorey!" up to now. They are cool terrain pieces, though. Anyone interested in them should pick them up, because the kits are leaving the GW webstore little by little without any notice. 3rd party retailers and ebay sellers have not yet completely caught on to that fact, though. I'm still hoping we get kits for the completed Dawnbringer houses from the Battletome, as well. Although I am somewhat afraid that we will have another Ossiarch bone palisade situation on our hands again.

They are usually pretty descriptive in their sunday articles, so I would personally expect one more thing. No idea what it could be, though. Maybe the completed Dawnbringer buildings we are all expecting, or something completely out of left field like that Blacktalon unit a few weeks back.

For the big dragon, I would wait until the base size for Tahlia Vedra is known and maybe use it as a proxy for her. It looks pretty good on that 120mm(?) round base, but seriously tight on the 120mm oval. For the smaller fox-dragon, I would rebase it by rounding off the corners of the rectangular MDF base in order to better blend the shape with the oval. And then just glue it on top. I think you can probably hide the transition with modeling paste/miliput/texture paste.

Also, if you are in mainland europe, their shipping times were kinda sketchy before and Brexit has not helped things.

People like the idea of chaos dwarves more than the actual WHFB faction. Which, in my mind, makes them ideal candidates for an AoS reimagining. The idea of evil dwarves that corrupt the land with their smoke-spewing factories is holds a lot of intuitive appeal for a villain faction. At some point, there was a "leak" that theorized the Chaos Dwarves would build a gigantic mega-cannon to blow open the gates of Azyrheim for the start of 4th edition. That's some super cool high-fantasy stuff that fits great with AoS. The actual old chaos dwarves models are actually pretty bad, and it's good that people have forgotten at this point why they were discontinued after 5th edition. I think the time is right for another go at their concept, though. It would fit very well as another exploration of the dwarf tropes present in AoS: Desire for gold, craftsmenship, tradition vs. modernity, belief/religion.

Same. I am not even sure if GW sent out my order yet, lol. Passing the time by painting Dawnbriger terrain: Speaking of terrain... Personally, I am kinda glad that our faction doesn't use faction terrain. I always just view that as an allegiance ability that you have to pay money for and that can get disabled by enemy monsters. It's not like there is a shortage of themed terrain for Dawnbringers (Aqualith, Nexus Siphon, Guardian Idols...), so that's just the best case in my opinion: You get cool, thematic terrain without having your allegiance abilites tied to it. As for endless spells, I never really warmed up to them. They seem nice for competitive play, but which ones of them are usable/broken seems to change with every GHB, FAQ and even battletomes sometimes. Plus, I always find them hard to justify bringing. Spellcasting is always a gamble (even easy to cast spells are coin flips if the opponent decides to unbind), and I rarely find that the extra point cost for an endless spell (even just 50 points) can be justified as just a "nice to have" thing. You kind of need to build around them to make them worth it, otherwise I find going for a triumph or a cheap unit more attractive. That's a fun bit of tech, even though you som,ewhat have to give the game away by revealing the strike first order at the start of the enemy charge phase. That's not all bad, though: People often get caught up with catching opponents by surpries when using hidden information mechanics, but broadcasting to the opponent that "if you charge me, you eat a strikes-first Black Dragon attack" is valuable on its own. It might dissuade the opponent from charging at all. Also, since counter-charge is end of charge phase, I think you still get to Monstrous Rampage after. Or can the opponent sequence things in such a way that you are locked out from doing it? Like, make it so that all rampages are resolved first, then the counter-charge order after? Looking at the core rules, I think the Cities player gets to order the counter-charge before their rampages: Not 100% on that, though.

I will mark my calendar and be sure to congratulate you on your foresight/clown on you as appropriate.

I really want the 4th ed. antogonist to be Chaos Dwarves. Only, you know, cool-looking this time.

"Nagash wuz here Sigmar is a loser 💀"

This might also be interesting: From the 2005 complete catalogue and hobby reference.

The lore in the new battletome even sets this up perfectly. In the diary pages scattered through the book, there is one that mentions the Dawnbringer Crusade from Hammerhal exchanging two cannons for a unit of infantry from Lethis, which later helps them survive an encounter with some Nighthaunt. Made it seem like the Crusades constantly exchange troops amongst themselves. I think having a mixed city army makes a lot of sense.

I was kinda dimly aware that Ogors were a pretty new full army at the time, but I still could not help but feel even then that some of their models like the Yhetees and Butchers, were among the worst-looking ones in the GW line up.

This kind of thing always looks super cool and you should definitely do it.

Graphic design is my passion 😎

The old Gorger was a model that I clearly remember looking at in 2008 or so and thinking "Wow, this guy sure looks old and ugly." It only took them 15 years to replace him, but at least it was worth it.

Is that possible? I thought they had an FAQ about that which went the other way on it. Or was that about command abilities? I have seen people talk about Tree Revenants for the movement shennenigans. They even count for Banners Held High. They don't benefit a lot from the Living City allegiance, though.

The trend in 3rd has definitely been to move away from soup armies. I would personally not count on big waaagh sticking around.

Do we know what being an "army of renown" actually means? Do they work like a subfaction? Or a warscroll battalion that gives you extra rules in exchange for running a certain army list?

One thing that makes me wonder if Bonesplittaz might actually be in it for the long haul is how prominently they featured in the lore during Broken Realms and the existence of the Underworlds warband: As far as I know, no (sub-)faction that has received new models post AoS launch has ever been completely removed.

If Kruleboyz also get new models in Dawnbringers, I think it is possible that those two will get separate battletomes next edition and be the two remaining AoS Orruk factions. Although things could go completely differently, as well, if we get new Bonesplittaz instead. They are like, what? Two unit kits and three heroes? That's within the realm of possibility for a complete refresh.

They might look nice, but now that the Gorgers are no longer ballin', what are the Mawtribes going to do when Sigmar proclaims the start of the Space Jam in the next edition? I just don't thnk these new Gorgers can really bring it on the court against a Stormcast Lord-Slammer or even a Soulblight Blocklord, tbh.

Short opinion: Finally, it feels like the Era of the Beast. This Ironjawz wave in particular. I hope they set the pattern for how the remaining micro-factions are handled in the future. But the new giant Troggoth and Gorgers are also amazing additions to the Destruction GA. Also, how nice is it that after the Cities release, normal humans are finally allowed to participate in the setting?

A unit of Fusiliers and a few Steam Tanks are a good use for Greywater. I think it's a very justifiable route to go. But I find it important to keep in mind that there are other ways to get +1 to hit. Most obviously, the Hurricanum is an extra wizard hero that gives out a +1 attack aura (and not just in the shooting phase) and also dumps out mortal wounds in both hero phases (FAQ pending) which are not affected by "Look Out, Sir!". The Stormcast Lord-Ordinator is another option. 110 points for a +1 to hit aura for all ORDER WARMACHINES. And in my opinion that needs to be weighed against other city abilites that are not as easily repicated, like cast bonuses or the Misthavn movement buff.