Acrozatarim

I think there’s reasonable odds the first three could be Kruleboyz but I’m not sure about the last one with the arrows.

Well I sure as hell hope Kruleboyz are still getting some sort of cav unit and some options when it comes to Battleline.

There is an artefact, yeah, but for me it's not as interesting as seeing the faction-specific manifestations of the ways they practice their magic.

Oooh. Mork Sez No is potentially brutal depending how many unbinds Gobsprakk gets a turn. I'm a little sad the alternate build is a Killaboss, as I'm really hoping for another generic spellcaster alongside the Swampcalla, and going by the existing Killabosses it's unlikely to have very interesting rules beyond being a flying hammer unit. The bit at the end suggests we'll be seeing whatever form the Stormcast dragon takes next week.

These look great! How did you do that colour and effect on the armour?

Sources on any of those bits of terrain? I’m looking to get some more good stuff atm.

That Thousand Sons character’s rod doesn’t match the rather Tzeentch-y staff from a rumour engine a while back. Wonder if there’s more coming for the TS, or if 3.0 Disciples of Tzeentch might be not too far in the future.

Congratulations!

What are peoples' thoughts about Lord of Change load-outs? I initially gravitated towards the Rod of Sorcery since the idea of getting my expensive caster lord into melee felt like too much of a risk, but now I'm wondering if the high Rend on the Baleful Sword might actually be worth wading in to combat with, especially with the new heroic and monster actions.

My experience thus far - with admittedly few games in 3.0 - is that the smaller board size and starting distances mean most ranged units are extremely pressured to get their points-worth out of them before they get mulched in melee, and that without Unleash Hell they'd really struggle. The CP cost has also been pretty relevant, with even the new increased CP generation rate never giving enough to be able to Unleash Hell without feeling like there's a meaningful trade-off going on.

Damn - a well-earned retirement but I am sad to see him go after all these years. A genuine legend in the industry.

Played our first 3rd ed games this weekend. I ran a 1k Tzeentch list vs a 1k OBR list. Last time I played him I'd tried out caster heavy at 1k and he'd gone Null Myriad, the casters didn't really work well at that small game size and Null Myriad blunted them even further, so this time I went for a shooting heavy list - especially given all the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the predicted new shooting meta that's been going on. I took a not-very-optimized Eternal Conflagration list due to what miniatures I had assembled and available: 1 Fatemaster (general) 1 Chaos Lord (just a fun pick - no synergy with the rest of the army, but I just got the lovely old Aekold Helbrass model) 1 Exalted Flamer 6 Flamers 20 Kairic Acolytes My opponent brought a Petrifex Elite list with a liege kavalos, the little support caster, 20 mortek guard, 5 cavalry, and a gothizzar harvester. So, first up, our experience with the new rules (in this game, and in a game the other guys played of OBR vs new Stormcast afterwards) was really good. It definitely felt like there was more decision-making and better balance overall, with battle tactics working better than I had expected as a game element. Grand strategy felt tacked-on and largely pointless, though. We played the tectonic shift battleplan, and we finished up at the end of turn 3 with my opponent conceding to me (we wanted to have some lunch, but he figured that I probably had the victory). There wasn't a lot left on the table by then - the liege kavalos, the mortek caster, my fatemaster, the chaos lord, and the exalted flamer). The Fatemaster was of course an absolute linchpin of the force, as ever, although the necessity of feeding him a command point every turn left me really feeling the pressure on the other CP - I got lucky and never got double-turned but that also meant I was going first each round, so only the base 2 CPs each round. The 4+ extra CP heroic action also didn't look kindly on me. The Flamers backed by Fatemaster were the MVP, unsurprisingly. The sheer amount of damage they can do makes up for the poor Rend, and they were key in blasting the Mortek Guard off the table when my opponent poorly positioned his harvester and couldn't just 4+ the models back again. They also made good use of Unleash Hell when the harvester charged them to bracket it, meaning it took 2 combat rounds to murder them rather than just the 1. The new +1 to Wound Triumph worked very nicely with them for a crucial turn of shooting. By comparison, the Exalted Flamer was just kinda... there. It was the only thing with any effective Rend on shooting due to the Petrifex Elite trait, but I couldn't squeeze much out of it. The Chaos Lord did a lot better than I expected, mainly because this list had no other meaningful Mortal Wounds output. He chopped right through the cavalry with his command ability while they were engaged with the Kairics, and was well positioned to have a go at the liege kavalos too right afterwards. The Kairics, like the Exalted Flamer, were just there. Their shooting did just a few wounds to the mortek guard, and their main achievement was to roadblock the liege and cavalry for two combat rounds. That was useful, but here's the thing - I love the mortal side of Tzeentch, and I figured that given the big points increase on Kairics maybe GW knew something I didn't, but at the end of the day I kept on thinking that 10 Pink Horrors could basically have done everything the Kairics did but better, and for less points. Overall, the shooting worked well, but the sheer lack of anything meaningfully resilient in melee meant I was under pressure by my opponent's advance for much of the game, and it didn't feel like I was dominant - had my opponent gotten the doubleturn I'd have probably ended up in a lot more trouble. Unleash Hell was a useful tactical tool rather than some sort of I-win button for shooting. Having a source of Mortal Wound output is important, and I'd have been better off going Pyrofane Cult than Eternal Conflagration against Petrifex as a result. Conflag would definitely do more vs Null Myriad, though. I should soon have the models to run a 2k list for the first time - probably Eternal Conflagration or Guild of Summoners. Looking forward to the next match!

It does suggest something dwarven, but I'm not convinced it's chaos duardin.

One thing to note is that if BoC and StD don't get souped, then it could be 2 years between when one gets a battletome and the other does. Souping has the big advantage of getting more factions covered faster in the edition cycle.

I hope it's Slaves to Darkness, possibly the rumoured StD/BoC soup, because that'll give a baseline of units that the monogod armies can coalition or ally in going forward and let each of the following monogod tomes be balanced appropriately with that in mind.

I'm hoping we'll see a second generic hero spellcaster so that it doesn't feel so important to go double Swampcalla in order to get the most out of their abilities. I figure the Mouth of Mork is probably going to be a shaman, but don't want to be reliant on special characters to get that kind of functionality into a list.

Yeah, but in those cases the new kits actually have the full unit command group, which the Dominion versions lack. I'll be buying the new Boltboy and Gutrippa boxes early on, then using the Dominion minis as reinforcements for them, but I can't see wanting to run a Gutrippa unit without the banner and musician, even if they're just minor benefits.

Picked up a second Swampcalla Shaman; it's the only thing I figure is worth doubling up on from the Dominion Kruleboy units with what we know thus far.

New Geminids prevent affected units from using command abilities, so they can't Unleash Hell.

What's the helm on that conversion from?

User friendliness and accessibility are aspects of product design that GW absolutely should have their layout and style folks focusing on and tackling long before issues reach customers.

Obviously Kruleboyz are getting the focus with this new release, but I do wonder about (and hope for!) new releases for the Ironjawz and Bonesplittaz to go along with them.

They do seem to lean very monster heavy, yeah. But since the only battle line this far is gutrippaz and they’re both expensive points-wise and large units, currently the default Kruleboy army is gonna always have a big infantry pile and I’m not sure how many of the cool monsters we’ll even be able to fit in.

I think it's more likely we'll get a dual kit Mouth of Mork/generic hero on corpse-rippa, rather than seeing a whole unit of wyvern-vulture riders. I mean, it's not impossible, I just don't think it's very probable that we're gonna get full flying cav units.

Yeah, sounds like we'll be seeing a dual-kit Mouth of Mork with a generic corpse-rippa rider. Gives me hope for more units to come for Kruleboyz like cav etc. If I were to wishlist what else I'd still like to see for Kruleboyz, going all in on making them a real army rather than a niche faction, it'd be: Cavalry unit (ideally dual-kit for melee and ranged) Additional foot unit of some sort of punchier or special forces, whether vicious melee types or sneaky tricks rangers. I'd prefer more sneaky tricks here to really go with the Mork feel. Another generic spellcaster hero. Those three would make me really happy with the Kruleboy line-up. Anything else - more hobgrotz, more warmachines, even more monsters would be fantastic but just the cherry on top.