Neil Arthur Hotep

I suspect that betwee the price tag, making it impossible to take allies, the potential to go wild and the Incarnates' inability to benefit from allegiance abilities, they will probably not replace native monster options for armies that have access to good ones.

I overall like the model and suspect it will look better in person and without the standard 'eavy Metal paint job. But I won't deny that it reminds me of the worst part of the Celestant Prime: the Trash Hurricane Orrery of Celestial Fates. I don't 100% know why GW went for this type of support either. They have done floating models way better before. The Lumineth foxes and a bunch of Nighthaunt models like the new boat guy, for example.

Soulblight Gravelords gained an extra rule that gave all VAMPIRE LORDs the option to make a SUMMONABLE unit fight immediately after they fight in combat. Other than that, there were targeted buffs for Legion of Blood, which was previously probably the worst subfaction. They are playable, perhaps even good, now. Gravelords also gained two forgettable mount traits. The Grand Strategies and Battle Tactics were bad to situational. Cities of Sigmar gained two mount traits, one for griffins and one for black dragons. The griffin trait is actually good. They also got one good battle tactic out of the update. I think that was it? Both this update and the one for Gravelords felt appropriate to me. Neither of these factions were struggling and they just got some minor goodies/quality of life stuff. II think that only leaves Seraphon, who got a scenery-based allegiance ability and two mount traits (one of which is a special monstrous action). I think they got a usable battle tactic or two, as well.

Bell of Lost Souls appears to have a scoop on the rules for the newly revealed Krondspine Incarnate: https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2022/03/age-of-sigmar-the-thunda-in-thondia-how-the-incarnates-work.html In brief: Incarnates are a new type of enhancement. Incarnates cost points. Incarnates can rampage like monsters. Incarnates prevent you from bringing allies, but can exceed your ally point allowance. Incarnates are bound to one of the heroes in your army. If the hero dies, they run wild and are considered hostile to all armies on the field. Incarnates work kinda like monsters with a damage table, but the table contains "states". The article mentions "empowered", "destroyed", and a "normal" state in which they start the game. It is unclear whether being "wild" is a state. Incarnates don't have regular wounds like other models do. They instead move to higher and lower states when they get hurt. They need to take a "special 3d6 Battleshock test" to determine whether they move to a lower state. The Krondspine Incarnate is considered to have a wounds characteristic of 18 for rules purposes, however. Incarnates are relevant to new Grand Strategies from the Thondia book. Krondspine stats: Can deal up to 38 wounds at max, has a special monstrous rampage that allows it to eat Endless Spells, gives +1 to cast to a wizard bound to it if they are close and -1 to cast to enemy wizards, can "broadcast" All-Out Attack to mutliple nearby units. 400 points. --- First impressions? Incarnates seem to be a mix between Endless Spells and generic monsters that all armies have access to. I think the introduction of a generic monster options seems like a pretty good move. It certainly levels the playing field a bit for armies without access to monsters, like Nighthaunt and KO. The Kronspine Incarnate seems to come with a good amount of upsides, too. +1/-1 to cast and an All-Out Attack aura are quite nice by themselves. Since it also functions like a beat stick, it seems very usable if its unknown stats hold up. If you have access to a defensive hero, losing control of the Incarnate does not seem like too much of a worry. It remains an open question whether Incarnates will become a permanent part of the game moving foreward. If so, there is certainly a bit of rules bloat happening right now, since Incarnates seem to work on their own special subsystem. I would have definitely expected them to be closer to Endless Spells. It seems the complexity creep is real: 3rd edition already has more going on rules-wise than 2nd, and this is another separate mechanical system to remember. The state-based system, however, might be a sneak peek at the future of AoS. GW's rules designers really seem to love it since they came up with "empowered" for Underworlds, and I would not be surprised if we saw it on regular units eventually.

Gitz, Mawtribes and FEC seem like especially likely candidates. I could see a paired release of Gitz and FEC, with Gitz getting a tome and hero and FEC getting a bunch of new stuff. Lumineth is also pretty likely because of that one interview where they said they still had loads of Lumineth stuff in the pipeline and that Lumineth warband we know is coming. I would guess that Tzeentch gets a Tome Celestial instead of a new battletome, though.

It works different than I expected. I was guessing it would just be an Endless Spell with the MONSTER keyword or something like that. If that BoLS post is accurate, I think the Krondspine Incarnate seems pretty good. A combat monster that also gives +1 to cast and +1 to hit and can do battle tactics or grand strategies seems like it could be useful for most factions, particularly those without access to monsters. It'd probably be pretty decent in Nighthaunt, for example, and it has an appropriate aesthetic, too.

It's bad for a few reasons. The balancing mechanism of points increases already exists, but GW's publishing structure prevents the rules team from using it when it would be clearly appropriate. The update is "bad" in so far as it reveals structural difficulties GW has when it comes to providing regular balance updates. The inability to provide point or warscroll changes is a problem of GW's own making. They don't deserve praise for "cleverly" working around it. Likely because of the upcoming General's Handbook, the rules team could not touch points or warscrolls and had to resort to a handicap system as a band-aid. A lot of people in this thread have given in-depth arguments as to why they think this system is badly designed. If you want to argue in good faith, you should engage with their points: The update doesn't attempt to fix any of the core mechanical problems. The underlying imbalance is still there and the problem units are still as problematic as ever. It instead tries to infulence the metric we most commonly measure balance by (win %) directly, in a reversal of cause and effect. While the target audience for this fix is tournament/competitive players, it's not clear that they actually want to play with a handicap system. The update doesn't do anything for casual players, because their games will still feel unsatisfyingly imblalanced (see point 1). Since the update doesn't make use of established avenues of balancing the game, it exemplifies or contributes to known design problems: Parasitic design, rules bloat, tech debt and non-scalability.

It's just "wounds allocated", not "wounds allocated that turn". Otherwise, I think it would be extremely hard to ever pull off. But I would still value this ability lower than the usual "Once per battle, 1d3 mortals". Because you are never going to pull this off more than once per battle, and it's probably overall slightly worse than mortal wounds (better when it triggers, but won't always trigger even if you are in range). I like it as a piece of flavour on a buff hero, though.

There is some more nuance to it, too. On the one hand, it works even if the enemy model was wounded by something other than the Gladiatrix, so just moving her within 1" of a wounded model could be enough. But on the other hand, since you have to match or exceed their wounds characteristic on a d3 plus wounds suffered, it is basically just a chance to kill heroes if they are at 1 to 3 wounds. That is much more interesting against small 5 or 6 wound heroes, where that's half or more of their total wounds than against the average 14+ wound monster hero. Overall, I suspect that killing blow will be more of a free value ability which you benefit from occasionally, but which is not worth trying to go out of your way to trigger. That -1 rend for Sisters of Slaughter will probably be the main reason to bring the Gladiatrix.

In my opinion, Nighthaunt are already an army that ignores a lot of the core game mechanics by getting flight and ethereal across the board. Also giving them the ability to have everything ignore the opponent's save to a degree would be a mistake. Not to mention that there are already too many mortal wounds focussed armies out there, to the point that it devalues regular combat damage. But on the other hand, I don't know what kind of army Nighthaunt should be designed to be. A lot of their potential niches like being hard to kill, resurrection and summoning, high magic and deep striking are already covered quite well in other Death armies. It feels like bravery stuff should be a big part of the Nighthaunt identity, but making that not extremely matchup dependent seems really difficult. I think maybe leaning into the whole mobility/teleportation thing instead might be cool. KO boats get the ability to teleport every turn for free on their warscrolls. I wouldn't mind seeing something like that for Nighthaunt in some form and it would definitely make them feel distinct from the rest of GA: Death. I don't think this is the direction the new book will take, though, since they already said that Awlrach will move troops around as one of his functions, so it's probably not also an army-wide ability. I would say the damage problem could be fixed by tweaking a few combat profiles and point costs. Bladegheists are really punchy, they are just also very expensive in their role at 190. Grimghasts could pretty safely be buffed. Glaivewraiths could be good if they did what their fluff says they do. If those regular units were just allowed to do a little more work, there would not be much of a need to rely on mortal wounds.

I would hope that Ethereal gets changed to allow positive modifiers at this point. I don't think it would be too powerful, given the state of the game at large. "Ignore negative save modifiers" is already in the game as a non-keyworded ability. 3+ saves ignoring rend already exist and are widespread. And I can't think of anything outside of Nighthaunt that even has Ethereal apart from Anvil of Apotheosis heroes. Or just make Ethereal "ignore all rend" and let positive and negative save modifiers affect it. That's another option that would make things more easy. Maybe add "Ethereal units can't benefit from cover or garrison bonuses" if that's a point of concern.

I really wouldn't worry too much. I think all the 3rd edition battletomes have been quite good so far, and the recent Battlescroll shows that GW is aware that Nighthaunt are one of the weaker armies. A lot of the juice is definitely being moved from warscrolls to allegiance abilities right now. We saw that with Nurgle, Fyreslayers and Deepkin. And all three books came out well: More diverse, more thematic and mechanically stronger.

If ethereal gets changed I would expect it to be in the book, not the box set. Because it's an army wide thing, changing the effect on only a few warscrolls would be confusing. Since he already has the normal ward and a bodyguard ability, maybe it's some kind of minor buff aura? Reroll charges or something like that. Finally, the Nighthaunt get their own book of grudges!

Soulblight is doing pretty well, and they are just all-around solid value without any particularly abusive stuff. They are probably not tier 1 though, but top of tier 2. There is no reason Nighthaunt couldn't be a second Soulblight when they finally get subfactions. They are more primed to be a horde version of Stormcast without the most abusive stuff, though.

I deliberately didn't include the line-of-sight stuff in my initial post because I don't want to keep bringingup the "Sentinels are broken" meme all the time, but this is of course what Sentinels already do at a 30" range and dealing mortal wounds: As for the Craventhrone Guard being good assassins, I will believe it when I see it. Not trying to be negative here, but in a world where the average foot hero can be on a 3+ or even 2+ fairly easily, I just don't think their current shooting profile has the juice to pull it off, even taking known buffs into account.

I liked the upgraded generic units from Broken Realms, like Kaiser ven Brecht and Arcobalde Lazerne. Too bad they settled on warscroll battalions as the way to give those guys rules over their generic counterparts. Although maybe non-matched play is where these guys should live. I think it would be nice to see more named examples of generic heroes and units. But I don't really know how they should be implemented mechanically. If they get good matched play rules, you will end up seeing lists composed of mostly named characters in some cases. That can't really be avoided. And as fun as named characters are, I personally would like the game to favour "your dudes" lists.

Here's the thing: Ignoring cover is not even a strong ability. It is worse than dealing most of your damage in mortal wounds, which all the other good shooting units do. Because those mortals usually trigger on unmodified 6s to hit, they ignore the -1 to hit from cover (and Look Out, Sir!). And because they ignore saves, they ignore the +1 to saves from cover. But they also ignore saves period, so they are just better. Make no mistake: A two attacks, 4+/4+/-1/1 shooting profile is dismal on a unit of 5 that may not even be able to reinforce beyond 10. 2.5 wounds worth of rend -1 damage per shooting phase doesn't even scare chaff units like skeletons. It's chip damage. The question is: What could in theory make these guys worth using? I don't think these guys will be tanky. They look like they will probably be 1 wound, 8" move, 4+ ethereal, bravery 10. They also don't look like they will have a good melee profile. But even if they are both tanky and fighty: There exists a unit that is almost exactly like this in the game right now, Stormcast Vanguard-Hunters. Same shooting profile, but fighty and tanky. They even have the ability to deepstrike and ambush every turn. 125 points for 5 and nobody takes them. If they get serious offensive buffs somehow, their damage might become good. But it would probably require access to +1 damage (so literally doubling their damage output) because even +1 to hit and wound only brings them up to parity with 100 point chaff like Freeguild Crossbows and Handgunners. But then again those units also have a lot of buff potential and higher range, so it would be playing a game of catch up with units that are not even that good. The best case scenario I see is that Craventhrone Guard are cheap (sub 90 points) and get the ability to bodyguard for any nearby heroes. That would help protect all those small foot heroes Nighthaunt are forced to rely on. It would be a sad use for these models, because then you are basically taking them to just be a bag of wounds. But unless there is some kind of completely out of left field allegiance ability, it's how I see this one probably playing out.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I have been waiting for a sale or bundle like this! After skimming some of the books, I can confidently say that they are worth getting. Really gave me a newfound appreciation of the setting. I always liked the mythical feel AoS had, but never really appreciated that it is also a post-apocalyptic, western-like frontier setting before. The Soulbound books have made it a lot clearer to me how to tell stories in this setting. The books themselves are also very well made as far as role-playing rulebooks go. The core book alone probably gives you more help in GMing a game than any DnD book ever has. Soulbound is looking like a great candidate for that city building game I have been planning to run for a while now. The system does a lot of smart things, in my opinion. I particularly like how being Soulbound makes concrete the concept of being an adventuring party both narratively and mechanically. I also like how the system handles the risk of injury and death. Particularly the option to cheat death by spending the party's Soulfire resource and the option to have a last stand. It gives the players a lot of agency over when and how they want their characters to die, but does not completely remove the threat of death from the game. This is definitely some smart, innovative stuff that a lot of other RPGs would do well to copy.

Since it's the Realm of Beasts, in Ghur, the continents act like predators and constantly try to eat each other. Thondia is one of the largest and most dangerous continents, which makes it an "alpha". That's where that term comes from.

I think it makes sense that the terrain for this edition is Dawnbringer stuff, though. The Destruction factions are narratively set up to be the ones on the offensive, so it makes more sense that battles would take place at the strongholds of Order that those armies would be attacking. If you mean that you would have rather seen new Destruction models instead of more short-lived terrain stuff, however, I can understand that perspective. There really has not been that much Destruction yet in the Era of the Beast. But I guess fleshing out the setting for this edition is worthwhile, too.

I find it hard to predict what Awlrach will do on the table, actually. The most natural rules for a boat would be enabling ambush deployment like Gutrot Spume does in Nurgle or acting as a transport like the Kharadron boats. But none of these are particularly valuable for Nighthaunt. I think if this guy was just a mobile, hard-hitting bruiser, that would actually be pretty welcome. So watch him be some kind of weird buff wagon with his lantern instead.

This is actually one of the more positive developments for me recently: Broken Realms has shown that armies can get the occasional new or refreshed kit outside of getting a new battletome, and the Nighthaunt release has shown that battletome updates are not exclusively either one hero or a dozen new kits with no in-between. Full disclosure: I am most interested in the warband for use in role playing games, where I think the escalation from fights against Deadwalker zombies to Arcwalker zombies as you get closer to the mad scientist behind it all seems pretty nice and thematic. And in that context, I can always supplement the warband with a 3rd or kitbashed party big boy Frankenstein. Plus I figure it will be a cool point of entry for Underworlds for me, and maybe their AoS rules will actually be good. But yeah, I think this warband could have been a lot cooler than it is.

Throw in a weapon team kit that can be built into a Warp Grinder, Warpfire Thrower or Ratling Gun Team, as well. They all have the same structure of one rat holding a big generator or fuel tank and another operating the weapon. I was honestly surprised that they are not a multi-build kit, but three separate metal models.

I think doing a Skaven update justice would require it to be about the size of the Soulblight Gravelords release. GW would probably want to take the opportunity to remove all metal and resin from the range, which would mean redoing a lot of characters, the weapons teams and the Skryre Acolytes. Then, they would probably want to refresh the Night Runners sculpt at a minimum, maybe Clan Rats or Plague Monks as well. It sounds like a lot, but Soulblight had five unit refreshes, four small characters, two medium characters and a monster. I think it's within the realm of possibility that the Skaven range could be completel refreshed with enough room for a few new Eshin kits. If the Skaven update is on budget mode, I would expect something like Nighthaunt is getting: A few heroes and a new unit. So Eshin skirmishing infantry, an assassin hero and one more thing. It's not what Skaven need, but it is possible. For Sylvaneth, their model range is not too bad. I would much rather see them get the smaller update rather than Skaven. It would definitely be possible to establish an insect or Kurnothi subfaction within Sylvaneth with just a few kits. But I fear it will be the other way around: Skaven get the minimum and Sylvaneth get the equivalent of Lumineth wave 2. Just a hunch, though.

I still like it for what it is, but I agree that one medieval looking Zombie is pretty out of place. He is kinda dressed like the new skeletons and appears to be the personal zombie of the Necromancer's apprentice (who is not part of the warband?). It's confusing.