Neil Arthur Hotep

Belated hot takes: Skaven The new deathmaster is a cool model (for me, a definite improvement over the old one), it's just a pity that he has to exist in the same army as the ancient Gutter Runners. That will be a clash of art styles if ever there was one. Skaven got robbed, they really needed new troop kits. Sylvaneth I have never been a huge fan of Slyvaneth up to now. I always thought they were a bit samey as a faction, with the majority of their troops being some variation of tree person. There are a few stand out kits, of course, like Drycha and Alarielle, but not enough for me personally to really get excited about the army. I think this expansion of their insect subtheme is a really good choice. The new archers and cav units unquestionably read as Sylvaneth at a glance while still being quite different from anything found in the army before. Now I just hope their new battletome does them justice. Cities of Sigmar I won't go into it at length here (I will save that overly long rant for the dedicated discussion thread) but I think the news that GW is finally dedicated to giving AoS a proper human faction is phenomenal. I have personally though that this was a very conspicuous void in the AoS line up for a while. In the lore, the humans of the Cities of Sigmar are consistenly important, driving forces of the narrative, but on the table they don't even have a faction to clearly call their own. I found it a bit comical at time: If you look at the Soulbound books, for example, there are player character archetypes for all the different factions that are thoroughly anchored in the lore. DoK witch elves, KO aether chemists, Fyreslayer Battlesmiths... But humans get the choice of being Battlemages, Excelsior Warpriests (which are not even in the game anymore) and Trade Pioneers (which have never been in the game). A huge mismatch between what the lore tells me about humans and what the game actually cashes out. I am very optimistic about the Dawnbringer project: There seems to be a commitment to re-do most of the human kits currently in the game. I would say, worst case, that means we get new Freeguild kits with a more clear AoS identity. But best case, the sky really is the limit. Just imagine, distinct models for humans from all the different cultures of the realms. Aqshian rough riders. Ghyran jungle scouts. Hyshian warrior-poets. Chamonite mega-engineers. There is just so much potential here and I can't wait to see how it turns out. GHB The points are out of the GHB, which is great. Finally we won't have to deal with balance adjustments made, like, a year in advance. Kind of makes the latest battlescroll a bit puzzling to me, though. I really thought the reason why they didn't touch points in it was because we would get new points in the GHB. Black Library guys They cool. Ogroid Theridons The ogroids are a cool sub race for chaos and I am glad they are being expanded upon. I know a lot of people really love the Myrmidon and Thaumaturge. Overall I feel like I said this before, but: Everything that was actually shown off was cool, but you can't help feeling like there should have been more. At least I got Dawnbringers to pour all my hopes and dreams into for a year before getting disappointed that they don't live up to my ridiculous imaginary standards.

I could see Ogors getting a maneater kit announced today or on boxed games day.

Absolutely! Let's hope the same happens in AoS. It would go a long way towards giving the rules team the ability to actually balance the game.

If it works like in most other books, then you would still be able to bring Kurdoss in Scarlet Doom. He just would not benefit from any allegiance abilities granted by that subfaction.

In other battletomes with subfactions, it is common to lock all or most named characters into a single subfaction which they may or may not benefit from. It seems GW's standard mode of operation is to have on "main" subfaction per book which gets to be the one the majority of named character belong to. Usually it's the subfaction with the most generic/least impactful allegiance ability. Mechanically, locking characters in like this prevents them from making use of other subfaction allegiance abilities. Sometimes, GW also does it for lore reasons: For example, all the Cursed City Gravelords units are Vyrkos subfaction locked, even though there is not really much of a gameplay reason for this. The Cities of Sigmar units from Cursed City had an even more extreme versions of this, where they all got a subfaction keyword that doesn't even exist in the Cities book at all. I have not seen the page in question, but if they are warscroll battalions and not core battalions, they are not matched play legal by default.

I mean, by all means buy the books. They are really fantastic. But nothing in them readily translates to DnD.

Kinda sucks that the AoS kits didn't even go on "last chance to buy", though (unless I missed it). I would probably have picked up a Penumbral Engine or Sigmarite Mausoleum with the Sepulchral Guard I ordered two weeks ago if I had known.

I honestly find it surprising. When I look at the list of terrain kits for AoS on Lexicanum, there are a bunch of cool kits there that I would love to buy if they were still available. It's weird to me that scenery has a much quicker turn around time than a lot of unit model kits. It's not like a castle or house becomes obsolete within a few years.

Not the worst thing in the world. At least that means Nighthaunt players don't need to buy a terrain kit to unlock one of their allegiance abilities. On a related note, make sure to grab the Sigmarite Mausoleum if you want some spooky terrain. It seems to have just recently disappeared from the webstore and 3rd party retailers still have it in stock.

Did a bunch of terrain kits recently disappear from the store? I could have sworn the "Sigmarite Mausoleum" and "Walls and Fences" were still on there last month.

The Soulbound system uses completely different mechanics to DnD 5e (or any edition of DnD for that matter). Translating monster or character stats would be very difficult to the point where you would be doing most of the design work yourself. Without exaggeration, translating the actual AoS warscrolls to DnD seems like about the same amount of work.

Let's make this thread into a bit of a hobby thread, as well. I want to see some cool Freeguild armies! I have been working on this mostly mechanized army for a while: It's been fun. I wanted to have a more elite force after painting a skeleton horde for Gravelords previously. I picked up an old Watchtower kit from ebay recently: It still looks very good. I kind of like them better than the current Ghurish Expanse kits. They look a little too much like Stormcast terrain, rather than Cities terrain for my taste. Although it makes sense, Dawnbringer settlements are supposed to start from a Stormkeep, after all. I have also been working on a bunch if Rocket Battery crew: I really love those weirdo Freeguild models. For me, they are kind of like Beasts of Chaos are for other people: I can admit that their models are objectively not the best, but I just love them. Finally, a secret hobby pro tip: If you have leftover parts from building a Gyrocopter, use on of the bombs from the Gyrobomber assembly to give your outrider a cooler-looking grenade-launching blunderbuss. One that doesn't look like he's carrying a vase.

I think he looks like a 90s Spawn villain, which somehow seems entirely appropriate.

I got sidetracked by painting a bunch of terrain last month, like this watchtower I got from ebay and repainted: This month my goal is to finish a few rocket batteries for realsies.

A Freeguild refresh should have three main goals: Fix the wonky proportions Make the facial hair more ridiculous Increase codpiece size and detail

Keep that in mind when the general's handbook comes out in summer and we are all scratching our heads at the point changes again.

If a hypothetical Cities update was human focussed as many believe, they could in theory just update the worst Freeguild kits and call it a day. In my opinion, that would only be the Guard and Handgunner/Crossbow kit. Then they could put out a new steam vehicle or a hero and call it a day. That would be an update the size of Nighthaunt, so maybe there's a chance.

Cities has that Witch Hunter warband coming and I'd love to see the Dawnbringer Crusades finally to manifest into something real, but a Seraphon tome would be pretty neat, too. Weirdly, though, I feel much less confident that those two factions would be getting significant numbers of models compared to Lumineth. Even though they both need them more.

The Order battletome release schedule since the first Lumineth tome will look pretty wonky if they really do it: Lumineth Daughters Lumineth Stormcast Idoneth Daughters Sylvaneth Lumineth Welcome to Grand Alliance: Order Elves and Stormcast EDIT: Forgot that Fyreslayers exist (as is tradition)

Watch the Horns of Hashut turn out to be Chaos-twisted Alarith Stoneguard EDIT: On second thought, I apologize. I should not have spoken this evil into the world.

What a cool guy. I really wish Warsphinx bits were easier to come by.

There has been so much Skaven evidence over the months that I will honestly be surprised if it doesn't pan out. The mischive hint in the WarCom roadmap. The Whitefang tease. The new Underworlds warband. The repackaged Clanrats. It's not impossible that we will see Slaves this summer instead, but I for one would still find it surprising.

They won't fill a whole day of AoS next week only discussing the fact that the Slyvaneth battletome will come out in summer. There are almost certainly models we have not seen yet, even with this leak.

That's the craziest part about this leak for me: I still fully expect Skaven to be the summer army, which would mean that none of this content might have even been planned to feature in the reveals next week.

The text is a little hard to make out, but I think this is what it says: "The forces of chaos have taken the realms for themselves, and it is no idle claim. The lands have become hellscapes, their masters the worst of all tyrants. They claim to rule, to be grand kings of war, but in truth they are servants - little more than slaves to the Dark Gods they have embraced."