Neil Arthur Hotep

As I said, I think the discussion would benefit from a separate thread, since nothing about the strength of melee brawler heroes in 4th ed is currently known.

Do you mean in the eventual battletome or in the index? Because I am not 100% sure they will get their two subfactions in the index. I don't see a huge barrier for them to have one battle trait that basically goes like this, though: "A Seraphon army can be COALESCED or STARBORN. If COALESCED, then melee buffs. If STARBORN, then magic or whatever." Did they tell us yet if they are cutting back on summoning? If so, maybe Starborn will get a new focus, because as I understand it summoning is currently their "thing".

You can find a lot of solid unique melee heroes in AoS. Off the top of my head, I like Sigvald, the Light of Eltharion, Kurdoss and Radukar the Beast. For generics, there are fewer of them. The Ogor Tyrant is pretty good. A Megaboss on foot is certainly pretty fighty. The FEC Royal Decapitator is pretty scary, too. But in general, you will find few generic normal-sized dudes on 32mm bases who are worthy anything in combat. I think there are a few more in Fyreslayers. EDIT: I would appreciate if we opened a separate "griping about how chaos lords are too weak" thread, by the way.

I'm going to say it's all ogre.

Haha, thanks. Personally, I don't always speed paint models (I do like to take my time most of the time), but I think it can be a good exercise when you are practicing composition for your paint jobs. I think the secret to good looking speed painting is to decide which details to focus on, and which to leave sketchy. Honestly, the hardest part about it is letting go of your perfectionism. WIth Dagnai here, I really just wanted to check if the colour scheme works. Since I am planning to paint some Stormcast with the new edition, I wanted to see my idea for drybrush bronze was viable. The metallics here are just bronze paint over brown, and I didn't do a lot to enhance them, because I want to be able to knock out those Stormcast quickly when the time comes. I skipped quite a few details like gauges and trims on here, but I think the effect is still good, overall. If you look at areas like the axe blade, it's pretty obvious that the aim was to go fast. I focused most of my effort into the coat, actually. Traditional layering techniques, but rough so that I can go fast and not worry about blending. Putting some extra work into the face of the miniature also allowed me to be really sloppy in other areas. There are a bunch of tubes on the model which are just painted with a mix of all the inks I had on my palette after shading the coat. Dagnai's gloves and collar are a one-coat contrast paint job. The straps on this chest are not supposed to be metallic, I think, but whatever, I already had bronze paint ready. All of this is just not that noticeable because I put in the work to direct attention to he face instead. I think painting some quick details is pretty valuable for speed painting. Like on this mini, I painted the eye and lens and spent some time on the visible skin. And since I already had whites and skin tones (as well as a small brush) out, I decided to paint his little scroll, as well. Took maybe 5 minutes to do all that but I think it adds a lot. As a side note, just realized that this guy was the last Cursed City hero I still had unpainted, as well. I painted some of them in a classic style and experimented a lot on others, but they are cool collection of weirdos. Very fun set overall.

I did Cursed City Dagnai as a palate cleanser. Quick speed paint, 2-3 hours. I also used him as a test piece for my planned Stormcast scheme.

Gotrek is pretty solid.

I don't think that's true anymore for vampires in AoS. At least not to the extent it was in WHFB. I would like to see vampires be a bit more fighty, but they are already on a 3+ save and heal from combat. I don't really see a need to up their melee pofiles to the point that they need to be 200+ points, personally. They are already really good units.

I'd love something like that for Radukar the Beast, but wouldn't petsonally expect it from the likes of Kritza or a generic Vampire Lord.

As someone without any priming in what a vampire should be from WHFB, that seems about right to me. It seems like this kind of vampire would be a serious threat to a group of normal human vampire hunters, but they would still have a shot at taking it down.

Just about the price I paid on Ebay around 4 years ago.

Thanks for saying it, because I also don't really see the problem with the Slaughterpriest. Seems to me that between his attack profile, prayer and ability he has a chance to take down a Kroxigor. But after all, he is just a Khorne priest. I certainly wouldn't expect any random priest to take down a melee elite. Especially one like Kroxigors, which are slow bruisers that can't pick their engagements and need to absolutely wreck when they get in. I would like to see dedicated melee units be morw viable in 4th. But I don't see a need for every priest or wizard to also have an inflated attack profile. Even in Khorne, you need to leave yourself room for the actual melee heroes.

Zenestra no longer WIP:

I personally suspect Cities will see something like "Spell Lore: Light and Shadow", containing Pha's Protection, Mystifying Miasma and Tenebrael Blades, which will then all still be locked to HUMAN and AELF in the individual spell rules.

Would make sense given how we have been moving away from cross faction models over the course of 3rd.

That quote just says endless spells don't cost points anymore, not really anything about mixing them with regular spells. I would assume that since Spell Lores and Manifestation Lords are different categories, they don't make you choose which type you want. I wonder if the enhancement system is still around, because that would be one way to limit access that they could use.

It does not say this in the article. I would assume you get one each of spell, prayer and manifestation by default.

Also, I would expect KO to get shoot in combat from their small ship guns, but not the big ones. I think the overall design intent this edition is to get shooting to be more of support strategy for melee rather than the main game plan of a list. I think the supposedly reduced shooting range is evidence for that. Also, the new commands help melee units (counter-charge, power through) and encourage players to bring limited shooting (covering fire). I hope that the warscrolls of ranged units are as good at defining unit rolls as the ones for melee units we have seen so far. "Ranged damage" should not be the extent of their niches.

It's an interesting idea, but what would a faction being cross alliance even mean at this point? Just ally choices? It's not like GAs even have mechanics attached right now.

Actually insane that they decided to squeeze another battlescroll in. Even though this one is mostly points changes. I barely played any games with the last one.

I suspect the model refresh might have just been in the pipeline for so long that those Empire models were actually still current when the artwork was made. There is some more evidence for that in the Warhammer+ short where Gunnar and his Darkoath guys come from, which also freatures non-Dawnbringer Freeguild.

I think they just want units to be in base-to-base contact, honestly. Which is fine with me. I don't dislike that at all. With 3" combat range, that sounds super managable.

I have already done a test paint that I am pretty happy with, which is also just a drybrush of my favourite bronze paint over dark brown. I want this Stormcast project to be low-stress. The hard part will be the verdigris. Trying to avoid the trap of "paint this whole thing bronze, then paint the whole thing green" trap. I'll need go out and take a bunch of reference photos of old statues, to get it right, I think.

Personally, I frequently have low-intensity periods of hobbying that last a few months. This is fine, I have other hobbies as well. During 3rd ed, there was an about a year long gap where I didn't really do anything substantial in terms of hobby, for a few reasons. I had just recently moved, I had a young child, but most importantly, there were just no releases for the armies I played. In the case of Cities, it was even worse, because they were telegraphed to get their update way in advance, which made me shelf my existing Cities project for over a year while I was waiting for their new models and rules. In that time, I mostly painted terrain and which ever models I felt like painting. Mostly heroes for role playing games and stuff. There really is not a problem with taking a break from non-stop hobbying if you are just not feeling things for a while.

I am thinking of a bronze colour scheme for those ancient civilization vibes, with Ruination units getting that extra verdigris to show their age.