Neil Arthur Hotep

Lessen is fine, but a fantastical setting does not work without grounded, familiar elements. If GW are smart they will keep the normal humans, elves, dwarves, skeletons and orks around to make the weirdo factions really stand out. Also to give us some normal people to care about.

I'd like for Cities to stay and expand, and I'd love if that involved different mortals of the realms. I think it would be a shame to lose many of the subfactions that are currently part of Cities or to let then stagnate forever, but I also think it's not necessary to limit Cities to currently existing subfactions. There can definitely be new groups that could join the melting pot of the Cities.

I was about to comment the same. How crazy is it that the rapier that made everyone think Sigvald might come back didn't even make an appearance? Another thing I noticed while checking the rumor engines again, thoigh (probably already known): These two include the same style of ruined pillars. Until now I thought that bird would Death and the paw would be something else. No idea what to think now.

100% agree. I like OBR on their own merits, but they have nothing to offer to me as a Tomb Kings fan. It's not like High Elves and Lumineth, where they definitely work as a replacement (and even they are too far removed for a lot of people).

I was under the impression that Gavriels ability way within 9, not wholly within 12. But I have seen lists that take the stormkeep hero battalion which can include the Vexillor as well. Since that gives you the extra command points you want for Gavriel there is synergy here. Put in a Catellant as well and translocate him up for a chance at 30 2+ rerolling Liberators. If that whole build turns out to be too much investment, though, there is still Astral Templars with their 6" pre game move as another option.

Wholly within 9 of Gavriel? Correct me if I am wrong, but his command ability is within, not wholly within.

Give them +9 to charge with Gavriel Sureheart and tag multiple units.

I was not including anything but the Liberators and Lord Veritant in the cost, because the other units don't need to take part in the alpha, so you can have 1400 points running around doing their own thing if you use this strategy. But I see your point for general list building.

I feel like you have not thought through all the implications of this battalion. Depositing 30 two wound 3+ rerolling 1s bodies in front of the opponent turn 0 is definitely a good opener. You can combine this with low drops but you don't have to get the first turn, it's just that if you do you also guarantee you'll charge them turn 1. Yeah, maybe they will delete your Liberator block over two turns. But those are two turns that you gummed up their works and that the other 1500 points of your army can spend playing objectives. If you are playing a deep strinking army just you will still tarpit their non-deep striking units. Or you can just not do this and dump 30 Liberators on a point instead or spread them out to zone out their deep strikes. I want to stress that you can invest a lot of points into your Liberator alpha strike if you want. But you really don't need to. The battalion is cheap enough to include a big liberator tarpit in your list and still do another thing well.

Congratulations on calling it.

I think it's best not to get into this too deeply, because in the end it's going to only get resolved by FAQ anyway. So (with no hard feelings, seriously) this will be the last post I'll make about this. The problem is not that the intention is unclear. It's that the text does not say what GW (probably) wants it to say. You are right: The wording is specific. And by the normal rules of conversation, they would not bother to explicitly allow an option if it was unrestricted anyway. The problem is that just on the level of what this says in the book, there is no restriction of who can take the battalion (even though it seems to be intended). And that's just a problem of bad/inconsistent rules writing. You know that the context is important here. Allegiance abilities and battalions work differently. Allegiance abilities are restricted by default and need to be explicitly allowed to be used, while battalions are open inside a faction by default and need to be explicitly restricted. Don't turn this on me, please, that inconsistent way of doing things is also on GW.

I think you are right that the intention is to restrict the battalion to the new subfaction, so eventually I think they will FAQ it to be like you are interpreting it. But the rules writing does not reflect this at the moment. You (and the GW rules writers, by extension) are making a really common logic mistake here, which is to confuse "if" and "only if". Currently the rules as written say you can take the battalion if you are in the subfaction. It does not say only if you are in the subfaction. Since battalions are open to anyone by default unless restricted on their warscroll, this does not forbid other subfactions from taking it. To illustrate the difference, think about the statements "If it rains the streets get wet." and "Only if it rains the streets get wet." They are different statements. Only the first one is correct: There are a lot of ways that streets can get wet that don't involve rain. But again, I believe what GW intended was to restrict access to the battalion, because otherwise they would probably not have bothered to explicitly mention that you are able to take it. It's just that they... didn't.

Increasing a save is provides more benefits the higher your base save is, so +1 to save for a save '-' is not a big bonus, but for a save 3+ unit is insanely good. Going from a 4+ save to 3+ like Liberators do is huge. It increases your effective wounds by a third against no rend. You go from a 2x effective wound multiplier to 3x. Also, rerolling 1s to save gets better if your save is better, because the reroll will be more likely to be successful. Thirty Liberators at 3+ rerolling have 270 effective wounds against no rend. They are point for point more tanky than Mortek Guard, except they are also in your face turn 0. Way too many wounds to just mortal wound your way through. And you can buff their save even more if I'm not mistaken. This is an insane battalion. The +1 to hit is just adding insult to injury at this point.

I don't have a lot of nostalgia for many of the old Warhammer Fantasy characters. I feel like the two mortarchs we got that are new to AoS (Katakros and Lady Olynder) have been super cool additions, much more exciting that Kemmler or Krell (at least if they don't get reimagined). Besides, Arkhan is already the Necromancer Mortarch. I would not say no to a Deathrattle Mortarch, though.

I was just going to post something similar. The hand is in a really unnatural position if it belongs to the warrior.

Since we know that Broken Realms contains warscroll updates, what do you think are the chances of LoN getting some of those in the short term? I think if we don't get any Death-related news in the next preview, it's not out of the question. Especially since the clearest teaser we got about what will likely be the next Death faction/update (Johann running away from a scarecrow looking thing) does not look obviously vampire or skeleton related. A lot about LoN could definitely be fixed by warscroll rewrites. A lot of the basic tricks the faction has are still pretty good. My personal wishlist would include skeletons getting a new mechanic so you don't have to roll 200 dice when they attack and Black Knights getting rend -1 on their lances.

The word Decay and the green colour of the letters definitely suggest Nurgle, but there's some reason to think we might get something Death related instead or additionally. If you look through the rumour engine pictures, there are a lot of teases for stuff that could be Slaanesh. There's the chalice, the punch dagger, the crab claw maybe and the rapier. There's also a lot of Death looking stuff the crow with the key, the halberd, the pitted sword, the bone flute, the hand holding the skull and the hook. Plus the teaser image with Johann runnning from some kind of zombie or scarecrow or something. But there are comparatively few images that could be Nurgle stuff. If we are getting a big Nurgle release soon, it's at least strange that the rumour engines don't reflect this.

That's a meta shift nobody could have predicted. RIP in peace, skeletons.

Here's the list I am currently working with. Not very original, credit should go to @ianob, who to my knowledge pioneered this list. Allegiance: Legion of Sacrament LEADERS Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon (440) General Command Trait: Mastery of Death Vampiric Sword & Shield & Chalice Artefact: Wristbands of Black Gold Lore of the Vampires: Vile Transference Wight King with Baleful Tomb Blade (120) Steed Artefact: Azyrbane Standard Necromancer (130) Lore of the Deathmages: Overwhelming Dread UNITS 40 x Skeleton Warriors (280) Ancient Spears 10 x Skeleton Warriors (80) Ancient Blades 10 x Skeleton Warriors (80) Ancient Blades 30 x Grave Guard (360) Great Wight Blades 15 x Black Knights (360) BATTALIONS Deathmarch (150) TOTAL: 2000/2000 WOUNDS: 144 Three drops minimum. --- Explanation: Gotta go fast! This is a pretty standard Deathmarch list. The general gameplan is to charge your opponent turn 1 with your Black Knights and tarpit (or even kill) a good portion of their army, while you move your skeletons onto enough points to hopefully win the game. The Deathmarch battalion gives you a 4" move in the hero phase for units wholly within 12" of the Wight King (and some incidental healing). The command trait Mastery of Death from LoS gives you a further 3" move in the hero phase within 6" of your general. Putting it on a VLoZD gives you a pretty wide area for this effect. The combination of both abilites gives you unexpected mobility on your Deathrattle units: 11" for Warriors and Grave Guard, 19" on Black Knights. Combined with the guaranteed 6" charge that's enough to alpha strike with your Black Knights on all battleplans unless the opponent backboards ( in which case you just give them turn 1). VLoZD general gives you good range on Mastery of Death, as already mentioned, and provides you with a durable General for resurrection purposes. Wristbands make him more likely to survive shooting alpha strikes. The Wight King will usually go with the Black Knights to support them. You should expect him to die early. Azybane Standard increases the Black Knights ability to tarpit. The Necromancer is there as an extra hero and for a chance to cast Vanhel's Danse Macabre or one of the Deathmages lore spells. I go with one big block of skeletons and two small. I feel that a big block of skeletons is enought of a threat to demand some attention by your opponent and if they sit on a point it will take some effort to take away from you. Min-size skeletons are just chaff. The Grave Guard are a serious offensive threat, especially when buffed. They do very good damage in melee and are definitely worth it for their price at 30. Another big threat. The Black Knights are the star players of this list. They look pretty awful on paper, but they are good on the charge and you can potentially buff them with an extra attack, reroll failed hits and fight twice on the first turn for their big, guaranteed charge. Bringing 15 might look like a waste since they are hard to all fit into combat, but if you charge several units at once that's not a problem. Also, since part of their job is to tarpit, the extra bodies are good even if they don't get to fight. They lack rend, but in my experience can overwhelm anything not on a 2+ save by sheer number of wounds if buffed up completely. Options: VLoZD: You could give the VLoZD the Shroud of Darkness instead of the Wristbands, but since you ideally want to move him up into the opponent's face turn 1 and the Shroud loses effectiveness when you are close to the enemy, I think the Wristbands are better. Vile Transference is there to keep you topped up, and I think it's better than Pinions, because you already move 17" with Mastery of Death. Wight King and Necromancer: You could give the Shroud to one of them, but they are honestly not important enough overall. The Azyrbane Standard actively helps your gameplan instead of passively hindering the opponent, so I prefer it. The Necromancer has Overwhelming Dread because it's the easiest to cast. Pick whichever spell you like. You'll mostly cast Vanhel's anyway. Skeletons: Everyone has opinions about swords vs. spears. I just went with the conventional wisdom. Honestly, it hardly matters. Grave Guard: Great Blades do significantly better damage and the +1 save from Crypt Shields is too unreliable. There's just too much rend out there to make it worthwhile. Overall list composition: You could run three min size units of skeletons. That allows you to take 5 more Black Knights and a command point, which is honestly arguably better. You could also try to fit some other units in there, but any non-deathmarch unit you add will take you to 4 drops, which is not a trade off that I think is worth it. --- This list is kind of unexciting because I feel it's "solved". There is very little variation since Deathmarch is so restrictive and you really want to keep your drops low. You can't add a Mortarch since you need the command trait for everything to work.

I agree for the chalice, but disagree for the punch dagger. That still looks very Idoneth to me, although I don't know how they would release a new model for them, given they just had their chance in BR: Morathi and didn't take it.

I feel that sword is probably part of the new Death army, because the weird hand looks like it could belong to one of whatever Johann has been running away from recently.

If any model range has an excuse to stay kind of grounded in it's look it's the Freeguild. I think a new Guard and Handgunner kit made to modern standards and with female build options would be good. That would give GW the opportunity to add in some new Mortal Realms specific imagery into their aesthetic and go a bit more phantastical with it.

I actually think the Landsknecht look of the Freeguild is pretty distinctive for a fantasy game. I always felt it made them stand out among other fantasy humans. I'd be in favour of keeping it and going a bit more wild with it.

Getting rid of Cities now, by which I mean retiring the models, would definitely be a huge blunder and I can't see them doing it. The "worst" I can realisically see is cities getting unsouped again, which might leave people with illegal armies. I don't see models being retired without replacements after the battletome. I find it more likely that GW will do more cross faction unit mixing after the 1 in 4 model. As per their own statements, GW has the course of AoS planned out for several years in advance. While I don't think this plan is set in stone, I would be pretty surprised if it contained the splitting up of Dark Elves into several distinct factions with their own battletomes only to re-soup them again later as some people are predicting.