Neil Arthur Hotep

The squad on point: The shields were especially fun.

Picked these guys up when they announced the model rotation. I hope they will see some use in Warcry: Had a lot of fun with the shield on these guys:

There is a pretty high chance I will start buying models explicitly for Warcry now. Previously I was always kinda on the fence about dropping big money on a warcry box, but if I get to try out the rules for free and with a potential Cities and Gravelords warband on the horizon, things are looking really tempting right now.

A testament to the power of Skaven engineering that the Doomwheel qualifies for these impressive tags, while a crude Stormcast box on wheels obviously doesn't meet the standard. 😉

When you search for the word "Nightmare" on the AoS app, you only get results for Death armies and Idoneth. Quest makes me think Dawnbringers, so I would also guess Dawnbringers vs Death, but I think SBGL or FEC are more likely, because the map icon for Dreadfang's Tower suggests one of those armies.

Box pairing predicitons? Perhaps something like this: Sundered Fate - Seraphon vs Tzeentch Bloodhunt - Ogors vs ...someone? Nightmare Quest - Soulblight vs Cities

They out-perform buffed up Grave Guard without any buffs of their own, damage wise. That's comically out of the current bounds of the game.

Honestly, I think the war machine keyword is currently pretty confused. The Celestar Ballista is a war machine, but the Starshard Ballista is not. The Screaming Bell is one, other chariots are not. The Plague Claw is one, the Scrap Launcher is not. A bit more consistency would be nice. I could imagine a world where any contraption more complex than a chariot is a war machine. I think that will be hard to write flavourful rules for, but it's fine. But I would prefer a game where only significantly techy units actually get the war machine keyword. That would mean some factions will probably never get any, since their tech level is just too low, but I think it would help making war machines feel more significant for the factions that do get them, because they could come with more extraordinary rules. It would probably be a pretty small list, though: Skaven, Cities, Stormcast, Seraphon, Kharadron Overlords, Ogors and Ossiarchs. Everyone else just doesn't really seem advanced enough.

Would be cool if he was like Sigvald. A mobile unit with the ability to actually take out key pieces would probably have a niche in GLords. But he will probably just be a 6" move dumbdumb with a 3/3/-1/2 attack profile, as is tradition.

The community preorder article talked about it, I believe. They mentioned his collection of magical rings, in particular. I will be interested to see if this guy is any good. I have recently been painting Death stuff again an could go for another vampire. Gravelords are starting to feel a lot like a WHFB army right now with all the unique minor heroes we have.

It's a bit pointy at the bottom, but that pendant could possibly be the symbol of the Vyrkos vampires, a stylized wolf head:

"Karl" refers to a free peasant man who is allowed to bear arms in old norse. You might have encountered the term as part of "huscarl" when in games like Age of Empires, for example.

I still hope at least one Destruction faction gets a big release, though. Preferably Ogors, I think they would be an ideal candidate.

I'm into this design direction. This somewhat confirms the direction I thought they would want to go into, which is to keep the basic aesthetic of the Freeguild but make it more recognizibly AoS. I don't think this is a bad move. I imagine the "generic european" Freeguild will somewhat be the Cadians of AoS. Call it the traditional Azyrean garb or Hammerhal pattern or whatever. I hope my other prediction comes true, as well, which is that we will also see a bunch of one-off units that represent different cities and realms like the cuotists warbands of Warcry have been for Chaos. I also like that they are seemingly leaning into the steam powered war machines with the Cogfort. Easily one of the most fun, unique and under-developed aspects of the current Cities range. I could definitely see the Cogfort as a new centerpiece kit. It could go on a 170mm oval like the Mortek Crawler and would probably look like a suitably impressive step up in scale from the Steam Tank.

For a unit that has never existed on the tabletop, Cogforts sure get a lot of attention in the lore, Soulbound and now even Hammer and Bolter. Makes me optimistic that we will see thrm as part of the Dawnbringer Crusades. They would certainly make a nice Ironclad to the Steam Tank's Gunhauler.

The duality of Khorne: He is super one-note, but that note is perfect and super beloved. Personally, I have made my peace with the fact that nobody will take Khorne in an interesting thematic direction and am now just valuing his over the top ANGERY sillyness for what it is.

I definitely think that having Grand Alliances helps structure the game. Even if GA: Order and GA: Destruction kinda feel a bit blurry around the edges sometimes. Order is generally OK: They are city builders, they are opposed to Chaos and they are generally governed by the Order pantheon. It's just ironic that the alliance with Order as its name is probably the most internally fractured one. Destruction has the problem of kind of feeling like GA: Other a lot of the time. Plus the fact that you can't set them up in opposition to Death like you can Order and Chaos is a bit of a pity. I would personally like more cross-GA support. There are a few natural opportunities for this. We already have the mercenary Gargants that will fight for anyone. But something like an alliance between a City of Sigmar and Deathrattle kingdom don't seem impossible. Neither does a group of Chaos-aligned Orruks. But if we get the option to play mixed armies like this, I would want them to have long time support. Nothing is worse than starting your fluffy mixed force passion project and being told that your list is illegal a few year down the line, possibly before you fully finish it. Because chances are, you will end up with two separate, unplayable armies in that case which would both need a significant commitment to become usable.

This guy made me about 1000% more interested in Khorne. Amazing what a small tweak to a concept like a change in body type can do.

Definitely do. I will be finishing a three adventure mini-campaign this month, and so far it has been great! It's a good system which manages to both be mechanically interesting and fairly managable and fast to use. Plus, the art and writing will really satisfy your desire for cool lore.

I agree that this time line seems plausible, but it would really be pretty bad, right? Their big opening thing for 3rd ed (besides Age of the Beast) was Dawnbringer Crusades. Hodl the SigmarCoin straight to the moon and all that. If the whole edition comes and goes without Dawnbringer Crusades paying off, I think I would consider that a failure of some kind (scheduling? marketing? just plain realization of their plans?).

In addition to the problems that have already been mentioned, a lot of legends warscrolls are also just kinda bad. The power level of warscrolls and faction-internal synergy has definitely risen since those warscrolls were first written. I have looked at them a few times, but I don't really think there are any hidden gems there. At least not for Cities.

I would not be against it. There are at least two things in AoS that would probably require a reset of every faction all at once to effectively change: Bravery/battleshock and mortal wounds/wards. Bravery has been becoming more impactful with recent battletomes, but I think the whole system still does not feel quite right yet. A rework that touches the basic mechanics and updates all the bravery values all at once (possibly to a completely different system) might be worth it. Wards/mortals are a different problem, in so far as they are arguably too common to the point that they devalue saves, rend and regular damage. But updating individual factions to have less access to these mechanics while keeping them at the same power level is tough. More likely than not it will just feel like a nerf. In this case, a do-over game wide would really help. Other than that, the AoS stats blocks are already pretty streamlined. I personally would not want to remove anything from them, or add anything. I know some people would like to see a return to a strength/toughness system, though. I personally believe that is unnecessary, I think the current mechanics are complex enough to get all the nuance you would want if they were utilized properly.

From Sprues and Brews: "The central cache known as Talaxis (named after the Azyrite explorer that first discovered it) is home to treasure and technological wonders that have incredible power such as the ability to return life to the dead, alter time or even change reality itself." So Ven Talax is probably the name of that explorer, and Ven Talax path is probably named after them.

The people vs. Drekki Flynt

The Soulbound Bestiary is a very good book, though. Extremely usable from the perspective of someone running an RPG. In that respect, it is likely a better book than the Old World Bestiary, in my opinion. I especially appreciate the subsections included in the faction overviews about how to use them in your game/in combat. They contain advice about what kinds of stories specific factions are especially suited to tell and how to convey what they are about through the tactics they use on the battlefield. This is super helpful GM support you don't usually see. There is still a good amount of lore in there, and the book still has a "rumours" section for every faction that is written from an in-universe perspective. I imagine the people at Cubicle 7 had a choice to make between including more fluff in the book and getting stats for all the units of AoS in there without splitting the book into two parts. From a quick count, the Soulbound Bestiary seems to contain about double the amount of stat blocks compared to the Old World Bestiary. I can't really fault them for choosing to put out a single book that focusses on playability rather than lore delivery.