Neil Arthur Hotep

Fun lore! Is this supposed to be a Cathay/China homebrew faction?

I have to be honest with you: If battletomes were only lore and hobby reference books, I probably would not buy them. Not that I buy a lot of battletomes as things currently stand, but I would probably buy even fewer. That said, if battletomes expanded to include more narrative gaming content, such as faction-specific battleplans and rules to make custom characters, I probably would keep buying them even if they dropped the match play rules. I would also sign up to a subscription service that guarantees you digital access to all faction rules, both current and future. This would be extra money in GW's pocket since I am definitely not buying every battletome just to look at all faction rules, but I will pay, like, 10 dollarydoos per month for it.

I was considering that, but my reasoning is that they might have done the made-to-order run even though a full rerelease is planned for later so that they can start pushing out the explansions earlier. You know, pre-empt "You can't even buy the game but there are already expansions out" types of comments.

Limiting myself to models here, but I am going to guess: Underworlds zombie warband First Cursed City expansion Something out of left field for main-line AoS? I don't know what AoS proper could get, to be honest. We know the contents of the DoK vs. Nighthaunt box already. It is possible that there are more new Nighthaunt and DoK models coming though. In the case of Nighthaunt we have a bunch of rumour engines that could be pointing that way, and in the case of DoK it would help justify their new book a bit more.

Judicators definitely seem poised to take the place of Longstrikes at a moment's notice, so we will see how that plays out. They fill close to exactly the same role.

I do have bunch of leftover Helstorm rockets lying around right now that could work as a spear tip. Gyrobomber bombs, as well, actually. I think I might have to give this some serious consideration, it would fit right into my homebrew city.

I'm a big proponent of more awareness of the social contract of the game for people's private play groups and clubs. More communication about what you want out of the game can only make for a better experience. There is no reason you can't play all the units that are usually too bad to field if the people you play with are on board with it. That said, the fact that you can house rule or soft ban stuff in your own play group does not absolve the people of GW from their responsibility of making a more or less balanced product. Anyone can always ignore any rules of any game they play. That does not make a game having bad rules not a problem, however. In particular, the "canon" rules are important because they serve as a starting point for set, unspoken expectations between people. They are the base line rules of the game that people will expect you to follow unless otherwise discussed. The designers of AoS should have an ambition to make these rules as good as they can. After all, GW insists on selling us both the models and the rules. And we as players should also expect excellence in rules design from GW. They are the biggest tabletop gaming company, as well as one of the oldest and one of the most expensive. They should definitely be able to deliver a quality product. Now, for your personal enjoyment of the game, it is probably best to not just get angry at GW and wait for them to fix everything. The company GW is setting themself up for failure on that front with their rolling battletome release model, three year edition cycle and insistence on printing rules updates mostly in physical form. For individual players, it is probably best to find a way of playing the game that they enjoy and having at it. But that doesn't mean GW gets to be immune to criticism.

Strongly considering a Demigryph Knight conversion of grenade-lance knights on AdMech mechanical horses right now.

I personally genuinely don't think laziness is the issue here. At least on the part of the rules guys. I'm sure they would be happy to do more if they could. In fact, I would be willing to bet the decision to publish battlescrolls in the first place didn't originate from management or marketing or whatever. Obviously I don't have any inside info, but it really feels like the kind of thing that someone on the rules team probably lobbied for. Rather, I think it's highly probable that the rules guys would want to just do warscroll rewrites or points adjustments if they could, but have their hands tied because the GHB is already at the printers. And the responsibility for that lies with the corporate entity of GW as a whole because of the business model they chose for their game books. But even that is not laziness. I can agree to this being a "lazy update" in so far as it doesn't adress the core problems of the game, though. But even then, I am sure the motivation is there. The corporate entity GW just makes it impossible for themselves to do in a timely manner.

There is even somewhat of a historical basis for the concept of a grenade-lance. It's called a lunge mine and is a WWII era anti-tank weapon. They didn't catch on because they were basically suicide weapons, though.

In all fairness, the arbitrary limits on stuff like behemoths and artillery are another piece of AoS design that I find unfortunate, haha. Much like with the new battlescroll, I think having to arbitrarily limiting the number of artillery is a minor design failure, because ideally artillery spam being bad should be an emergent property of the core mechanics. However, I can recognize that there can be merit to the decision of having certain rules just for the sake of gameplay even if they don't mesh well with the narrative. But I also feel like having these kinds of rules be related to the list building stage of the game, where the fiction is not "alive" for lack of a better term, is less bad than having them come up when the game is in the process of being played. Because that part of the game at least to some degree simulates the epic battles the lore tells us about. I am more invested in that than whatever the list building stage represents. The reason I brought up the narrative/fiction of the game in the first place is because this update really is a tripple whammy of unpleasant design for me. Mechanically, I think it aims at the wrong problem. Narratively, it doesn't work well with the fiction of the game for me. And from a user experience perspective, it is inelegant to have to look up non-rule governed stuff in a table.

GW thinking outside the box is a lot less impressive when they stuck are inside the box of their own volition because being in the box is more profitable. GW makes all the rules. Both the game rules and the rules about what can and cannot be changed outside of a printed book. Tackling problems of their own making in a creative new way is really not something that will make me cheer for them when they could easily change their business model for the sake of making the game better. Also, I am unconvinced that Stormdrake Guard won't go up in points and/or get a warscroll rewrite in the GHB.

I wouldn't dislike this approach nearly as much if the extra VP were integrated more strongly with the actual game rules. Besides the fact that this new system really does not tackle the game play problems that lead to imbalance, the new rules are just completely detached from the rest of the game. Mechanically, there is nothing in the rules that allows you to figure out for yourself which units are prime targets and which factions are prime hunters. It does not flow from anything related to the core gameplay system. These units and factions produce extra VP only because they were declared to do so, not because of any unifying characteristic of those units in game play terms. It's not a case of "all WARMASTERS give up extra VP when killed". Prime targets are prime targets exactly because they are on the table of prime targets. Having to look up information like this, which you could never figure out for yourself no matter how good your understanding of the system is, from a table is just an awful player experience. Peak exception based design. Narratively, these rules are a miss, as well. VP are a really abstract resource. They work fine as a representation of what is supposedly happening on the battlefield in a game of AoS, where two armies are trying to each take control of the territory. But suddenly an eclectic list of units is also worth extra VP. What do those VP represent? Why do you get them for killing Vanguard Hunters with Longstrike Crossbows, but not Vanguard Hunters with Hurricane Crossbows? Why do Nighthaunt get more VP for doing so? It's just completely detached from the fiction.

It is absolutely right that GW themselves are at fault for not being able to use their existing avenues of balancing the game (warscrolls and points) because of how they cling to their book sales. And we should absolutely be clear that the strategy of putting out these kinds of updates in the GHB is not for the benefit of the game or the players. It is purely so that they have an easy annual book to sell. They could remove points from the GHB entirely if they wanted to and do them as a digital supplement. They could do warscroll updates whenver they want. They choose not to because these things drive book sales. I think the new battlescroll is not a case of incompetence. I think it is the rules designers working within the bounds of corporate mandates. You can tell that the rules people know what they are doing because they more or less correctly identified all the over- and underperformers. But there is no world in which the handicap system they introduced is the first choice to adress the existing imbalances. I very much feel like this update is aimed at competitive players with a laser focus. Because those kinds of players are the ones that will actually feel an impact from it in a way they care about. As someone who does not play in tournaments, the update is really immaterial to me. If my Nighthaunt army previously felt bad to play against Sons of Behemat, this does nothing to adress that.

This is why I do not like it, as well. This new battlescroll will likely have an effect of pushing tournament win percentages closer together, towards the 50% mark we would see in an imaginary ideal version of AoS. But why do we care about win percentage? Because it is a statistic that serves as a measure of how well the core mechanics work and how good armies are compared to one another. But these new rules don't actually make the core game play better. If anything, they make it play worse because you now need to memorize another semi-arbitrary list of units. These rules are an example of working backwards from a desired result. GW wants better looking tournament stats. They get there by implementing a rule that affects VP for the current over- and underperformers directly. But it doesn't just matter that the end results look good. How we get there also matters. Otherwise, we might as well flip a coin to determine the winner. Perfect 50% win rate achieved in one easy step.

Best case scenario this rule leads to more list variety because people explore tier 2 units instead of just bringing the best of the best. Worst case competitive players just feel bad about having to play with a GW imposed handicap system.

The competitive results will probably even out a bit, but it will be an illusory improvement. The imbalance people experience at the table will be as bad as before. The game won't play any better, but the factions will look more balanced if you only look at competitive data.

I don't know if I love this rule. It's very exception based, rewarding and penalizing players for taking certain units not because of any properties emerging from the core game mechanics, but rather because it has been declared by word of god that some units just give up extra victory points. And this is not even supported by the fiction either, victory points being an entirely abstract resource after all. This update is aimed squarely at competitive players, because it matters very little for casuals who don't care primarily about VP/winning. But I somehow doubt that competitive players will love this kind of "artificial" rebalancing.

I thought that was a new Cities of Sigmar model at first glance and now I feel sad. At least it could be a fun base for a Hurricanum in a Cathay homebrew city.

They're more machine now than man dwarf.

Khorne hates magic! But he loves it when you bring magic for the express purpose of resisting it. Khorne, God of Tax Loopholes.

It gets more likely the more time passes since the first Tome Celestial. I still don't think it's super likely that an army will get a Tome Celestial, and then a Battletome within six month of that, but after a year or more I don't see a reason that it should be impossible. By that point, the Tome Celestial has done its work as a stop gap. However, the first Tomes Celestial we got were Sons, Slaves to Darkness, Seraphon and Soulblight, none of which strike me as particularly likely candidates for a new Battletome. But then again, neither did Daughters of Khaine.

If we believe that the summer tomes will be Skaven and Sylvaneth, that leaves the following armies without a 3.0 update: Gitz, Ogors, FEC, Tzeentch, Slaanesh, Lumineth

Same attack profile as a skeleton (with an extra attack, but still). Yeah, thinks are looking a bit dire for Khorne right now. They really need a new book, since it's the only way to get large scale warscroll updates. I am sure they will be good once their new book comes out, but it could be a while. And the old Khorne book is probably one of the books from 2nd edition that aged the worst, as well.

Khorne could just be Ironjawz with summoning, and that would probably be all right. Even as someone who doesn't play or even like Khorne that much, slapping a 6+ spell shrug on the army when Hallowheart and Null Myriad get the same on a 5+ (and are not even the go-to subfactions in their respective books) is just disappointing.