Acrozatarim

I'm liking a lot of what I'm reading here. Most of all, I'm liking Vindicators actually feeling more like spear-armed troops, and the loss of missile fire in melee. It feels like a return to the more strategy-game feel of old that AoS has often felt a little lacking in some places up to now.

I'm assuming the Memoriams will be a token that you can spend for an effect or bonus, rather than minis with their own stations, if only to avoid the issue of a unit with models in it that have wildly different stat lines.

Human priests as grounding anchors for the Ruination soldiers is very nifty. Having some literally be those stormcasts' descendants is very cool, albeit seems to run thr risk of making things worse when some poor ****** sees his many-greats-grandchild die on the battlefield in front of him 😛

Fantastic couple of models, those. Necromunda continues to knock it out the park with miniatures.

I do hope that, in general, summoning is scaled back a bit this edition. It's a pain playing a monogod Chaos faction and having to accept the inevitability that a bunch of your faction's weighting for its power and playability is going to be in summoning daemons when you're more interested in the mortal side of them.

Yeah, "there are four battle formations to pick from for each army on release of the new indices" is not the same as saying there will always only be four per army. I expect battletomes to roll out plenty. It's certainly better than the 10th ed situation with indices where each faction started with one, and only one, detachment type per army, even if the new AoS formations are less rules-intensive than the 40k ones are.

Anything that cuts down on the amount of 'dice roll to see if you get to make another dice roll' effects in the game is fine by me.

Looks pretty good. Big question, for me, is if these 10 are the sum total of commands that will be in the game, or if there will be faction- or unit-specific ones as well.

At a guess, a tactical rock to give good height to the rumoured Sisters of Battle jump-pack character.

You can tell it's someone's fan fiction because they claim leaks and rumours are carefully-managed PR, which is abject nonsense.

Personally I doubt it - Epidimius is way too chubby for that arm. Could be some sort of plaguebearer assistant, but plaguebearers don't have those very distinctive Skaven-style claws.

Oddly enough, the "poisoner" ones have the right number of fingers for Skaven, but the plague book one has a digit too few (at least, of those visible from the photo angle).

Wow, they do look wonderfully tatty and mangy!

I imagine the loss of Bonesplitta boarboys will open the way for Kruleboyz medium/light cavalry now.

For Wrocław in Poland, the city is Elder Mark.

I think it's inherent in the 3+ save they get. You don't choose dual-hammers or shield-and-hammer, you build them however you want and you get that stat line.

No need for an FAQ, that's correct English. It's not straightforward English, but it is correct.

I suspect the 'power level' Nagash loses when damaged is related to the Wizard (9) keyword he has, which in turn is probably the number of spells he can cast per turn, so at a guess once he's taken 10 damage he can only cast 6 a turn. Interesting article with some more significant info. Not super happy at the implication Liberators have some sort of mortal wounds on 6s ability - I dearly wish the game would feature less mortal wounds, not more! - but maybe 'mortal damage' in the new edition will be less irritating than the proliferation of MWs in 3rd was.

I'm not going to condemn anyone right now who is feeling upset by any of these cuts. I think some of the Stormcast culling was definitely overdue, and some will be replaced with new equivalents, but that's little comfort to someone whose favourite lightning lad has begun the long walk towards the sunset. I will note that I think Bonesplittaz has been a real millstone around GW's neck for some time, and I suspect that they tried to figure out if they could rehabilitate the line in some way before finally having to face the conclusion that they can't. Frankly, I'm amazed GW got away without being raked over the coals much more for the remaining savage orc stuff for so long, and I don't think there was ever going to be a viable route forwards for Bonesplittaz that didn't involve such a heavy reworking that they basically weren't Bonesplittaz anymore anyway, as we're seeing with the Ironjaw and Kruleboy 'inheritance' of their stuff via the Wrekkaz and Monsta Killerz.

Yeah, I assume a lot of the Stormcast getting cut are either getting Thunderstrike replacements soon, or getting an equivalent sort of unit in the Ruination chamber. I expect the latter is what's replacing a lot of Sacrosanct stuff, and you basically be able to use those old models for the new stuff if you want.

Loss of Beasts still baffles me. They're heavily mentioned as a facet of life and danger across the realms in loads of places. They're not all going as we're keeping the god-marked tzaangor and slaangor. So what's the end goal, I wonder? Will we have god-marked gor for Khorne and Nurgle added to, or will they weirdly just be for Tzeentch and Slaanesh? Will we see generic gor added into Slaves as an explanation for where god-marked gor came from in the first place? Beastmen are such an iconic aspect of Chaos that I'm really sad to see them go, and I think AoS Chaos will be lessened as a whole in terms of feel and theme if Beasts just get totally expunged.

If the system does give a strong incentive to keep your drops low, I feel like it'll be the opposite of hero hammer - you may want as few regiments, and therefore as few heroes leading regiments, as possible.

Interesting info. I think I like the sense of 'hero plus retinue' feel, and opening up subfactions to be fighting style rather than actual specific colour scheme guys is good. Very interesting reference to 'manifestation lore' too...

I think the wound on the arcanogeologist is almost certainly from a skaven assassin's blade.

The new GW store here in Wrocław only opened last week, so is going to be starting its Dawnbringer campaign a bit late. I hope to find out the details re the particular city when it kicks off at the end of next week (I think).