Neil Arthur Hotep

I can definitely say that I am more positive about Spearhead so far than I ever was about meeting engagements, which even when I was building up my army I had no interest in. The whole set up of splitting your army into three and having them come onto the board on different turns just was not appealing, and I didn't see the point of doing it instead of just playing normal matched play battle plans that were workable with smaller unit numbers and board sizes. Spearhead, on the other hand, seems great. Its design does a lot to mitigate the weaknesses of low-points AoS. In my mind, there are two big factors that make low-point AoS kind of janky. 1: For a smaller board you need bespoke battle plans. You can't just shrink down a 60x44 battle plan with 6 objectives to half or quarter size. The distances make no sense at that point, and you don't have enough units to actually play the scenario. Spearhead addresses this by giving us the necessary scenarios and the core rules change with objectives being 3" capture range helps, too. 2: Low numbers of units with barely diminished damage means that half your army might die turn 1. In regular 2000 point AoS, you frequently have 10 or so units on the board. You have enough points to bring screens after bringing all the hammers you actually want. Your opponent might alpha charge or shoot you and blow up a unit turn 1, but that only loses you 1/10th of your list in points most likely. In low points, if your opponent can build a list that contains one of the combos from the regular game (a cav hero and his squad, a strong shooting combo...), they might point-and-click 1 of your 4-6 units of the board (easier due to smaller board size), which might be too much to ever recover from. Spearhead deals with this through REINFORCEMENT units and fixed lists that (hopefully) don't contain that kind of firepower. I am really into the idea of spearhead. I will definitely be making the factions I already own Spearhead-compatible and would love if the system is fun enough to play as a quick play mode in its own right. But it is definitely a huge boon to new players, who now have a very tangible and actionable way to playing their first game of AoS and a good on ramp to 2000 points proper.

I think they want matched to be for "serious" play. Not necessarily tournament or competitive, but with high skill expression and little "wacky" stuff, if that makes sense. High consistency and predictability (as much as a game with random turn order can have). Which, if they actually pull off Spearhead and Path to Glory as fun alternative modes, I think might not be a bad idea. It would be nice to have different game modes that appeal to different player types, instead of everyone playing Matched and Narrative/Open existing in name only.

Why do you find it easier to believe that there will be two separate launch boxes rather than two separate spearheads when they explicitly state in the article that "the launch box" will have two spearheads, some terrain and a hardcover core book?

Stormcast can have two different spearheads. Yndrasta and Ruination. I would say the warcom article is pretty clear about there being one box:

Especially since this is what Spearhead is supposed to be: The format with preconstructed lists that you can play out of the box. It would be a huge missed opportunity for GW to not make the 4th ed launch box Spearhead compatible. It is one of those loss leader boxes that is aimed at bringing new players into the game, after all, so if that is the main target demographic, of course it should be Spearhead.

We have the back story of why so many Dominion boxes were left on store shelves by now. It was not because of lack of demand: Due to low supply, GW decided to prioritize webstore orders over independent stores during the release period of 3rd, which led to stores being initially unable to fulfill their orders, and later being stuck with excess stock after GW produced more and delivered it to them.

Dominion was revealed May 29th, pre-order June 19th, for reference. So, seems about right?

I'm buying a cannon for CoS so that my army can be Spearhead-compatible. Definitely want to be able to play intro games with new players, and who knows, maybe Spearhead will actually have some staying power for quick games?

The new Stormcast have destroyed masonry from the Dawnbringer buildings on their bases. I feel like "Skaven are attacking one of the settlements, now completed, that was founded in the last edition" would be a pretty good theme for the box. I suspect this is just wishful thinking, though. They probably had bespoke terrain planned for that box 3 years ago.

I would be super happy if they repurposed the completed Dawnbringer buildings for this box, but I expect something with more of a blight city flavour.

I think a preconstructed game mode like Spearhead is valuable for beginners. I hope it is fun and succeed at lowering the barrier to entry for AoS. If it does, then I don't think it needs to have long-term appeal for enfranchised players with large collections.

Even though endless spells don't cost points anymore, there is still some opportunity cost to them. There is no disadvantage to bringing them, that is true. But I am not convinced yet that not bringing them is a big disadvantage. Take the Quicksilver Blades, for example: Assuming that the banishment value is close to the cast value, is it really that good to use a cast on a CV 6 or 7 endless spell that probably does nothing for a round and does, like, 4-6 rend 1 damage and 2 mortals per activation? You have to set it up outside of 9" and get through the possibility of banishment and getting the spell shot off the table before it can fight a lot of the time, aftwr all. I feel like if I have a 1d3 mortals + some other effect on a regular spell, the two are in pretty tight competition. I am more likely now than I was before to pick up the malign sorcery box after the rules change, but I don't yet think that I need to buy it in order to not handicap myself.

Sure, I get that. It depends on a few factors, I guess. Do GW want to avoid producing in China in the future? Are the endless spell molds close to the end of their lifespan anyway? How much do they want to keep endless spells and faction terrain available for AoS, given the logistical troubles they have been recently having? I can at least see a world where redoing the moulds and manufacturing in the UK makes financial sense.

The new manifestation lores definitely don't match up with the old sprues. I wonder if they would go through the trouble of making new molds. They might if they plan to produce the spells in-house rather than in China. After the trouble they apparently had with the spider incarnate and Dawnbringer buildings, I could see that being a possibility.

Would be an interesting replacement for that one rampage. A lot of terrain pieces already have warscrolls from Dawnbringers... 5? Even though endless spells are now free, I wonder if they will be worth it for the average army. I previously never took them because I always thought that spending points on a spell I might not even cast was worse than going for a triumph or upgrading a unit. That part is no longer an issue, but if I look at what we know of the game so far, I am not sure I would want to cast endless spells, anyway. Every army already gets a spell lore that all wizards know, so that's some competition for endless spells. If you only bring one small wizard, it probably has a warscroll spell you want. Even armies with multiple small wizards probably don't have a lot of free casts. My most recent list had 4 One-Cast Andys, and between warscroll spells and Mystic Shield, I basically never had a cast to waste on a 7 CV endless spell. I think only lists that effortlessly get more casts than they can use will really want an endless spell package. So Lumineth, Tzeentch, Seraphon, maybe Soulblight if Lore of Vampires is still bad. But even then, endless spells now seem very easy to deal with, give you can unbind, dispell and fight them. Seems hard to keep them on the field.

These changes are very difficult to evaluate in a vacuum. I think I will just have to try them out and see how they feel at the table. First impressions, this new way of running endless spells seems more attractive than the old. I previously never used them, but feel like they might be fun to try out now.

How are you enjoying those chaos dwarves, @Nezzhil?

No, the stuff in GW trailers is usually pretty strongly on-model. There is probably an alternate build with masks, if I had to guess.

It allows this ability to interact with opponent's abilities that subtract dice, but it is otherwise more or less the same. I think writing it this way prevents situations where you roll 3d6 and your opponent triggers their "make them roll 1d6" ability and you just get trumped by it. Overall it's nice and makes those abilities more intuitive in their interaction.

I'm really liking the blend of ancient roman/greek and medieval astrological/alchemical art the new stormcast have going on. They look so distinct now, really unlike anything from any other game.

Just a little guy.

I like models that come with base scenery because it generally makes the base look cooler. I dislike it, though, when I have a basing style in mind that the scenery does not fit with, like a sculpted tree stump when I am going for a city base.

I agree, people treat the Death tactic like it is just "kill a unit", but it is not. I imagine it will be fairly hard for a bunch of the grindier Death lists. The tactic primes you to think that you should be trying to kill a multi-model unit full to dead. But actually the prime targets for it are probably non-hero single entities, like artillery, war machines or monsters. You are allowed to weaken those and still pick them for the tactic.

It looks like that at first glance, but the condition is "pick a unit that had no models slain", not "pick a full-health unit", so going up against hero spam makes that tactic easier if anything. It really seems like the designers want to enable very free list building, but are definitely making it most optimal to run fluffy mixed arms lists.

Still feels like the variation in difficulty is within reasonable bounds. That could change in the future if they are not careful and write a "destroy a unit with shooting" tactic or something, but for the ones we have seen it seems fine. IMO, having a faction that is less mobile struggle with mobility-related stuff (be it picking engagements, objective scoring or BTs) is just part of the expression of faction identities.