Neil Arthur Hotep

Kinda sad, but the Birb Mage even got two pretty substantial buffs from his previous warscroll: An unconditional +1 to saves and +1 damage against monsters. It's just that the previous base line was so bad that he's still one of the worst units in the book right now.

It might if you only care about stuff you already know from Fantasy.

I agree that monster hunting is a dubious niche. Here are the calcs for the Battlemage vs. a monster (with all-out attack): Save dumb birb wizard 2+ 8.37 3+ 11.67 4+ 14.96 5+ 18.26 6+ 19.78 - 19.78 It's not the highest damage you will ever see, but for 250 points on a 14" flying, 3d6 (counter-)charging body, it's not bad in a vacuum. However, I think overall there is better stuff to spend 250 points on in this battletome. But at least, if you decide to include this guy in your casual lists, he has one job he can do.

You only get that one lore spell, but of course the Battlemage on Griffon can still take universal and seasonal spells. Still, though, I don't think the guy is really worth it. Definitely not as a caster, at any rate: 1 cast with no bonus is just bad. His only real role seems to be as a monster hunting monster. I guess self buffing with that 3d6 charge from Wildform is kinda neat in that context. You can also countercharge 3d6 with the buff if you set it up ahead of time. I guess the damage of the wizard is at least respectable if you are fighting monsters with him. The only question is whether that is worth 250 points.

The WHFB End Times were definitely an exceptional event that happened because of exceptional circumstances. Like extremely low sales over a long periode of time and no obvious way to get new players into the game without drastic changes. We should definitely stop pretending that GW has a habit of just discontinuing their systems left and right as soon as sales start to stall. An AoS or 40k End Times scenario is not realistic when they are still the most popular and second most popular tabletop games in the world. Even if ToW proves to be a hit, I don't see it. Nobody thinks that 40k is in danger of getting squatted in favour of Horus Heresy, after all.

It really is an interesting question. Beastmen seem like the one outlier of the current TOW core factions in so far as all the other core factions are armies that have had their ranges substantially changed from their WHFB counterparts and have the potential to put "classic" kits back into production (with Chaos Warriors being the other potential exception). The willingness of GW to update non-hero plastic kits for WHFB seems low right now, as far as we know (Bretonnian knights are still the old kits). So it seems unlikely that Beastsmen would get new bespoke kits for ToW. I don't personally believe that the development plans for TOW affect the plans/models/designs for AoS, but I think the other way around is somewhat plausible. I hope that points towards Beasts of Chaos getting a range refresh sometime in the near future, with TOW keeping the old kits in production. They definitely set up some kind of plot thread for Beasts of Chaos and Morghur in Seasons of War: Thondia, but that has not gone anywhere so far.

He really doesn't seem to have any weapons. It could be an error, though, might be worth alerting the FAQ team to it. For bases, it's really hard to tell. I would not build permanent bases for proxies yet: There is always a chance that something you though would be a 25mm turns to be a 28 or 32. Guessing for temporary bases: Everyone on 32s except soul shepard on 40.

If the rumours about the two new Bretonnia and Tomb Kings boxes full of old models are true, I don't see that as a realistic scenario, to be honest. I hope that ToW does well and we get cool new models of old WHFB factions over time, but given the level of support GW is showing the game right now (barely any new models, only putting old stuff back into production) I don't really see how a game that got discontinued due to lack of interest is going to realistically overtake the current second most popular war game worldwide. It seems to me that very little has fundamentally changed (as far as we currently know) between old WHFB and ToW, so I really struggle to see how that game will be more than a specialist side game and a way to keep old kits in production for longer.

I started OBR last year with the previous battleforce and have not been able to get my hands on Katakros and the other models I would like to finish my list since the new book dropped. So if this box has Katakros and not too much overlap with the last one, I might be a buyer.

Cities is basically the only place in AoS right now for "normal" humans. GW knows this and I think that is why they made such a big deal of the Cities update. I don't think that has to mean that dwarves and elves have no future in Cities, though. Because having them be part of the faction definitely tells us something important about how the Cities of Sigmar are different from, for example, the Empire and the Imperium of Man. I hope GW recognizes that having Cities be a coalition of humans, dwarves and elves was part of the appeal. And I hope it translates to "real" Cities elves and dwarves over time. Even though that will probably mean that a lot of warscrolls get lost once the models are updated.

They are cool models and I would not hesitate to recommend getting at least a Tank Commander. That guy can play a role in a lot of lists. I hope the kit stays popular enough for GW to consider expanding the steam technology theme in the future. I was actually kind of surprised to see a Steam Tank make an appearance in the recent Dawnbringers story with King Brodd, considering that it is a legacy Warhammer Fantasy model.

You might be on to something there. For all those who (like me) don't 100% know what the Imperial Navy Breachers look like: I think there is some real potential there for a Freeguild conversion. Their coats and chest armour even kind of look like the Fusilier designs. They are generally not too techy. A lot of 40k models are hard to convert imo because of all the wires and cyber-gubbins they have all over the place, but for these guys none of those seem too hard to just cut off. The big question is what unit they could be a base for. Maybe Fusiliers in a city heavily themed around KO allies? Still seems like a lot of work, though. I think maybe they work better as the base for a Freeguild Marshall in a tech-focussed city. If there was such a thing as a Freeguild engineer, they would be a really good start.

There are at least a few female heads in the Steelhelm kit already, so that's good news, and a few more androgynous ones. The bigger barrier to a full female unit is probably that there are one or two fairly clearly male coded bodies in the kit that will be hard to sell as women with just a head swap.

Thanks for taking the time to do this. I am always super interested in perspective on older editions, because GW actually does frequently go to their history when designing new stuff. It will be interesting to see if this really is where they are going with the old world, kind of relaxing the themes and aesthetics of the army, because it would definitely be different from their strategy in AoS, where they seem to be pushing for stronger faction identities for the most part.

The old rumour engine looks very FEC to me, but I think the new one might be an OBR thing instead, maybe. We saw that Morghast wing before, but neither of these two feet like like Morghast feet.

The limbs are actually pretty different looking. I think the new one might be for 40k.

And once more.

Original dwarf and elf units would be my preference, but even that would be a huge release that would be guaranteed to make a lot of people unhappy. You can somewhat deal with Dispossessed without losing too many units. Two heroes, a dual build melee unit and new Irondrakes would do it, and there might even be room for a cool new kit or two. But for the old Dark Elf stuff, I think we would be almost guaranteed to lose a significant amount of units. There are just too many models there to realistically update all at once and at the same time with the dwarves. The game 100% doesn't need three different Dark Elf factions. I hope they focus on the whole pirate and monster hunter thing the Scourge Privateers have going on for Cities in the future. I think the Order Serpentis and Darkling stuff is thematically too close to DoK/Malerion in the long term, it it really strains believablitity that they are part of Cities at all. Especially now that they are the only elves left in the faction after Wanderers and Phoenix Temple are out.

They are "single", meaning non-reinforceable. But they are a regular unit, otherwise.

Still pretty OK as far as survivablilty is concerned, though. 18 wounds at 4+ is not nothing. You can lose the Arch Knight, Gargoylian realistically the priest dude as well before the unit really loses any of the rules you care about. And it can self-heal with the medic, too. Seems fine in my book, especially if you get the Zenestra 5+ ward on them, as well. For the Fusil-Major and Cannon, I think they will slowly start dropping in points. I can see them making the cut at ~120. Currently, the fact that the Fusil-Major is more expensive than the Alchemite is absurd, though.

I have mentioned this before somewhere, but it is really tricky to envision a path foreward for Cities as an army of elves, dwarves and humans that is both satisfying and realistic. I think the commitment needed to actually update the models (basically two more big waves of releases for both dwarves and elves) just seems too high. Especially if they actually have a second wave of human designs already mostly completed. I don't know how Cities will develop going foreward. I think GW recognizes that people responded well to the idea of the Cities of Sigmar being a melting pot. And it is definitely still part of the lore in the newest tome, as well. So I wonder where they plan to go with it. Here's one thing I believe, though: The old dwarf and dark elf kits are not leaving cities to go into another faction (Grungni dwarves/Malerion elves). They either stay in cities and eventually get replaced with new sculpts or they are cut from the game. Let's hope it's the former, somehow.

I was initially not sure about it, because in my opinion having a unit that comes with a collection of a bunch of odd rules is not usually super good because it tends to not advance any particular game plan. But the Command Corps just does so much stuff that is good in basically every list. 3d3 healing at a good distance +1 to run and charge and the chance to score a battle tactic and d3" move buff board-wide command denial can score a battle tactic Plus a few other things that are situationally useful. It really is a steal at 170 points. Just compare all that to what a cannon or Fusil-Major can do at 150.

There would be no problem with the next Cities wave coming late 4th or even 5th edition. The range feels reasonably complete already. But the way that the designers talked about all the important concepts the wanted to include "but didn't have room for in this wave" makes me think we will see it sooner rather than later. We already know they wanted to put in more religious units, but there is definitely also room for new steam tech stuff and a few new takes on old units that got cut without replacement like Greatswords.

There are few interesting points in that article, thank you for sharing. Most intersting from my perspective are the ambiguity on Tahlia Vedra's rally ability (I had read it as "4+ rally, for humans also into combat" but it is not clear from the wording) and the fact that the Command Crops medic can heal the same unit three times. The latter is actually super welcome, because I was looking for a good way to heal Steam Tanks (even considering the Flask of Lethisian Gamer-Girl Bathwater, even though it's a dumb once-per-battle d6 heal) and will be taking the Command Corps anyway. Also, lol:

All I can say is, a dragon seems kind of out of place for an army with an egyptian aesthetic. Unless... 🤔