Neil Arthur Hotep

I am enjoying the little gargoyle guys. The new design elements are definitely quite distinct from the old Empire kits, but still communicate the idea of sigmar-worshipping humans quite clearly. I also like how the design language is very unlike any other warhammer army. To me, the religious side of the army looks well developed. I think I will enjoy those models. I hope they also have cool new designs in store for the more martial and technological sides of the faction.

If it is an existing army, it is either KO or Cities of Sigmar. A lot of people suspect Cities, because the timing makes sense. They announced they were working on the revamp last May and some people already seem to have fairly detailed inside info on the contents of the Cities book (which they are not sharing). So I think this is the more likely option of the two.

It's difficult for me to tell how plausible a TK vs Bretonnia box would be. It's probably the most obvious wishful thinking fan prediction to make: GW will bring back the two armies that did not make their transition to AoS. But there is a good reason those two factions got discontinued. It's because they didn't sell. But never the less, I could see it happening. There were some rumour recently of old TK kits being put back into production a few months back. So maybe? I'm kinda surprised they are not putting two new factions like Kislev and Norsca in their starter, if this rumour is true. It would be hard to drum up excitement with 10+ year old kits.

Of course, Broken Realms: Kragnos is only the prelude of the Destruction arc, even though it was weirdly also the climax of the Broken Realms narrative. But I agree that we are due for some exciting new developments for the Era of the Beast soon, though. Otherwise, if Kragnos only shows up again at the end of the edition to be defeated, it's really going to feel like a whole lot of nothing. At least Nagash had the gravitas that comes with being an established threat. We believe that he could be a danger to the mortal realms, because he was instrumental in the destruction of Khemri and the Old World as a whole. Kragnos was only introduced into the narrative at the end of 2nd, and we have been told he's super dangerous, but we have not really seen it yet. I'm still hopeful that the whole plot with the Incarnates and Morghur is actually going somewhere. Hopefully soon.

I get the desire. Of course, it would be insane to claim that it is somehow wrong to allow legends warscrolls/armies at a tournament. But I also think it's wrong to accuse tournaments that disallow them to be catering to elitists. But I think there is a difference between being elitist and just wanting to enjoy the game in a certain way that requires some effort not everyone is willing to put in. Competitive players want to really go for rules mastery. That is only really possible with a shared understanding of the rules from which a stable metagame can grow. And the least contentious sharde set of rules to build on is probably "all and only current publications, rules as written". I don't think playing in this way, or even having tournaments only for people who want to play in this way, is an illegitimate desire. Of course, if your store or club only has 5 people who play AoS, and only two of them want to play competitive, maybe think again about what kind of event you should run.

Personally, I can really see both perpectives here. I can see why people with legends armies would want to play them at tournaments. They are definitely not overpowered (although they are ocasionally pretty janky) and for most people they are real labours of love. But on the other hand, it feels like people who really want to take the competitive side of the game seriously should also be entitled to a space of their own. And where can they go if not to tournaments? I have played some games pretty competitively (although not AoS), and I can understand being disappointed when you go to a tournament to be a Serious Competitior Person, but end up having to play what is essentially a janky joke list that never had any real chance of winning. I'm all for making the miniature game hobby more accessible (although let's be real, most people with legends armies are not new players). I think it is good to actively put work into ensuring that there is space in the hobby for new players. Both on a personal and club or store level. I strongly dislike the elitism and in-group mentality that I have personally experienced from tabletop gamers in the past. But at the same time, there have to be some spaces in which people who want certain experiences out of the game can get those experiences without the expectation of having to settle for less. That is why I think it is fair to exclude joke lists from games that are about playing lore-accurate campaigns. Or to exclude unpainted armies from games where the spectacle is the big draw. Or indeed to exclude non-competitive options from competitive games. It is a separate question to what that means in practice, of course. Because fostering both an open community atmosphere and protecting the special interest of certain play groups is definitely a tight rope walk.

I don't really find that very believeable. After having Beasts play a big part in the narrative of Seasons of War: Thondia and just announcing their new tome, they are not going away soon. I also don't think the Old World team and AoS team communicate at all when it comes to deciding which models/faction are to be squatted, saved or prepared for dual use in both games, to be honest. It seesm like AoS is just doing its own thing. Who is fine with Cities going to legends? I think that has been the number 1 fear of most players since the original Cities book came out.

It's not! And I think you read my post in a much more critical tone than I intended I picked out the list archetypes I mentioned not because I think they are missing from the current book, but rather because I think they are popular play styles that exist and should be carried over, or because they fit the army from a lore/theme standpoint (or both). I think I should go into detail a bit more on my reasons: Mixed arms: Soulblight has a deep bench and can field and army that actually looks like an army. That is a strength of the book and part of the appeal of the faction. Undead horde: It's a staple trope, and it reinforces the theme of elite vampires ruling over loads of lesser undead. Currently well supported by the existence of cheap, 20 base unit size zombies. Oops! All Bloodknights: This list was really made possible by the 2nd edition Kastelai rules and new plastic Blood Knight kits, but you saw people attempting to make it work even in the Legions of Nagash days with Legion of Blood and Soulblight allegiance. The theme could be further improved with a mounted vampire hero or alternatively elite vampire infantry. Herohammer: I think this list is currently not quite there. At least not to the extent that people want it. Sure, you can run Manfred, Belladamma and a VLoZD in a list. You can possibly even go up to the 6 hero cap. But a lot vampire heroes are more support pieces than dangers in their own right. I think a lot of the lesser vampires (the small Vyrkos dudes, the Crimson Court, the generic Vampite Lord) should probably get an upgraded warscroll and I would not mind a bloodline power unique enhancement for vampire lords, either. In my other post, I called these playstyles only nice-to-have. Personally, I think they fit the faction, but I would not be disappointed if they are not in the book. Monster Mash: Avengorii is currently trying to do this, but doesn't really succeed. And anyway, I personally don't think it's part of the Gravelords theme, at least not obviously so. It feels more like it was put into the book because the Terrorgheist and Zombie dragon already exist and don't have a real role. I think this type of list is more at home in Flesh Eater Courts, who do it better. Deathrattle Kingdom: I think this theme is in a fairly unique position, because it has lore support, model support and is a legacy list that existed in the past (death march). EDIT: Also, the current starter box is literally all Deathrattle. I don't think Deathrattle need their own subfaction (this is the Soulblight book, after all), but I think having a few Deathrattle synergies would go a long way towards having this list be playable. This is my pet list, so I have ~opinions~: Deathrattle Skeletons are now able to heal any damage they took in the battleround, rather than just the combat phase. Black Knights just get their old charge bonus back (+1 damage and +1 to hit on the charge). This gives them a separate role from both Blood Knights and Direwolves, as a fast SUMMONABLE unit that can reliably clear low-save chaff. Grave Guard stay as they are. The Wight King on Steed gets the ability to give a 4" movement bonus to DEATHRATTLE, like the old Death March battalion. The Wight King on foot gets some kind of good buff for DEATHRATTLE units. +1 to save, +1 to rend, free command points, limited battleshock immunity, whatever. There are a lot of valid choices. The Necromancer and Mortis Engine, while not DEATHRATTLE per se, fit the theme well and could be valuable support for SUMMONABLE heavy lists in general. The Necromancer is already OK, the Mortis Engine could probably be made worthwhile by turning it into a hero that shoots out mortal wounds and heals a bit. Think undead Hurricanum in function. Magic-Heavy: In my opinion, this is currently not a valid play style in SBGL. Simply because, while you can get good cast bonuses, reroll casts and even have a magic-related allegiance ability, there is just nothing worth casting. You can get a lot of casts and unbinds in a list, but they don't provide you with a win condition. There is no clear path to victory with magic for Soulblight. I think this could be changed by making the Lore of Vampires more impactful, since Vampires will be where most of your casts and cast bonuses will be outside of Nagash. Speaking of which: Nagash: He's OK. You can run him, but currently he's not super fun in Gravelords. It would be cool if there was a real reason to bring him in this faction rather than any of the other Death factions. Maybe an overhauled Lore of Vampires could be that. I actually disagree with this, there are three fairly significant changes I expect for sure: Hero warscroll overhauls: The power level of foot heroes has risen significantly in 3rd edition. Just compare Deintalos and Cado to the older Vampire Lords, or Velmorn to a Wight King. I fully expect most pure combat heores to get upgrades. Command ability changes: Dedicated command abilities seem to be becoming more rare. Instead, we see heroes that are now able to use the generic command abilities in a special way. I would expect this to be the case in Gravelords as well, specifically with the Rally command, where we will probably be able to use it for free or multiple times per turn on SUMMONABLE units. Some units will probably also get that 4+ rally. Subfaction changes: Current subfactions generally have just a single extra allegiance ability. I think the subfaction specific artefact lists, command traits and multiple allegiance abilities of the current book will be gone in the next one.

I thought you were making a joke at first because the 40k anniversary model is from Leagues of Votann and got a bit disappointed before seeing the actual KO hero. What an emotional roller coaster! That Mini-Ironclad is great, though. Might pick up this guy if I get a chance.

I mean, the paint job does not help, because whoever painted this guy didn't attempt to make the flames cast light in any way. Neither on the model/environment, nor from the inside of the flames themselves. But even so, the flames as they are scuplted massively break up the visual flow of the model. They make it really difficult to tell where the skeleton begins and ends and what the small details on the sculpt are supposed to be.

It's surprising, I though they had nailed this kind of effect in models as old as Nagash and the Mortis Engine.

Oh wow, they kind of didn't succeed with this model, didn't they? It's been a while since I last saw a modern GW model that I thought looked bad, but this is just a skeleton covered in green chewing gum, right?

Off the top of my head, I think the following are all thematic Gravelords archetypes that I would want to see be viable in the next book: Mixed arms (actually looks like an army) Skeleton/Zombie horde Oops! All Bloodknights Herohammer (particularly, good vampire heroes) And maybe the following as more distant considerations: Monster mash Deathrattle kingdom Magic-heavy Nagash list I think this should be possible to do. All the main archetypes (mixed arms, horde, cavalry, hero heavy) already exist in other armies, and I think they can all be made to work for Gravelords without stretching the mechanics too thin. The other archetypes are more nice-to-have, I feel. Yeah, it would be cool if Avengorii was actually viable next book, or if we could do a list that heavily makes use of magic. But I don't think those things are as central to the theme of Gravelords as the other ones.

Nobody will ever accuse me of being fun 😤 I put the money towards an old Fortified Manor kit from Warhammer Fantasy instead. I will need to pick up Karl Franz before he goes out of production, too.

That Underworlds one looks pretty tempting, but I think actually saving up for stuff I really want might be the responsible hobbying choice.

Warcry and Underworlds was the most exciting stuff this year, too. There were some real bangers in those boxes. Ah well, at least it was a good year to work on my backlog. Let's hope some of our hopes and dreams for 3rd edition come true in 2023.

Good observation, maybe the timeline does fit after all. The real mystery is how they bungled the communication related to Cursed City so badly after delaying it for so long, though. That still makes absolutely no sense: Hype the game up for months, sell out in one day, then pretend it never existed. If they had enough foresight to put the Vyrkos expansion models into the Soulblight battletome because they realized in October there would be trouble with Cursed City, it's baffling they were so short sighted with everything else at the same time.

But spring is 3/4 months away. The chaos stuff and Seraphon are for spring.

I always thought that theory was kind of iffy because of how the release timeline was: Cursed City in April and then SBGL in May. Seems too late to make changes to the book after something went wrong with the release of Cursed City. It seems like in order to have Kritza, Annika and big Radukar in the book, GW would have to plan for their inclusion at least 6 months in advance, because that seems to be the turn around time to go from the finished text to a printed book for Battletomes. We saw how long in advance GW plans this kind of stuff with the Slaves to Darkness leak.

Can you provide a link? Does the video have inside info or anything like that?

Generally the answer to that question is Reddit, eventually.

Cities has to be this year, right? That will be at least one big model drop. Maybe we can even be hopeful for something we are not expecting. Like OBR wave two or a new destruction faction or something.

I kinda feel like the most obvious explanation is that the models shown in the video match up exactly to the upcoming battletomes, and in the order they were shown, too. No Warcry, no Underworlds. The video goes: Slaves, Gitz, Beasts, mystery models. That matches the roadmap we have. So I think the mystery models are a bunch of Seraphon, a Khorne hero and a Slaanesh hero. Which kind of feels like the least exciting things could be, but at least I happy for all the Seraphon players who might finally be getting decent saurus models.

I think so. And that means that Cities won't be the spring tome, which means that detailed Cities rumour from a while ago was probably made up.