RileyArlic

ye olde Canary Trap. It could be, but unlikely.

So... I almost don't even want to post these because they're so far off the track... but someone is refuting the Valrak stuff and posting their own version on Dakkadakka, which, as we know, is obviously the BEST place to get rumors. /sarcasm. Spoilered beneath, some of this is identical to stuff that @Whitefang already refuted, but here it is for your discussing pleasure: This doesn't read or sound like someone who is worried about revealing too much for the safety of their or their friends' jobs, but rather someone who doesn't want to make claims that end up turning out false and getting called out for them. Alas, this tends to happen ahead of a new edition, where you'll have the truth mixed in with safe assumptions and different sources, but whether the rumormonger was actually going off of true information or a good guess is up in the air. It seems that some sources have queued in on the 'Vigil of Blood' box set title, but remember that competing sets of rumors have said this now, despite contradicting themselves, so it's likely that some rumormongers will use the reveal of the Vigil of Blood (if that happens) as a way to legitimize their particular sets. It's all a bit silly, because what we're talking about is not actual leaks but rather people either trying to fool people, or that have weird misplaced egos...

Yeah that's always been the trick with allies and such. You add something in intending to have a neat thematic ally for your main force, then suddenly it becomes an army in and of itself. The greatest 'ally rug pull' was, iirc, when they moved from 6th to 7th edition 40k. They made it so you could ally Tau and Eldar together, as well as a ton of other things, and then suddenly the rules changed and you couldn't do it any more. Thankfully, in AoS, the idea of allies has stuck around in some way since they started it.

This was my feeling too. My confusion is, who is the target audience? People that like and rely on digital products are either pirating or simply relying on battlescribe. People that go to tournaments or prefer physical products already have those. If army-building would be simplified, there's almost no need for a list-building app of any kind.

This is for 40k 10th, but a big pastebin is making the rounds. We could see similar things happen for AoS in terms of future battletomes. Some of it honestly seems too good to be true, but GW have been working on a new website for YEARS from what I understand. https://pastebin.com/WxGw8sDA

Very likely just the Warcry box that's out will continue to be sold. In the future, like maybe one or two Warcry seasons away, they will sell the box without the warcry cards and such, and it'll just be the skinks. We already have the warscrolls for the two loadouts for the cham skinks, either bolas or blowpipes. Bolas are interesting because they stun and have better melee bite, but the blowpipes are much longer range and can do mortal wounds, at the expense of having zero melee prowess.

So, from what I understand, any sort of talk of 'reboxing' or 'grinding up sprues' comes from pure speculation. I COULD VERY WELL BE WRONG, but from what I've heard, here's the issue. 1. Grinding up sprues means taking things from the Memphis warehouse as well as other distribution centers and inventory centers and sending them BACK TO THE UK, which costs the company more in shipping than it would to simply print more plastic. What they're more likely to do is to recycle the entire box and sprue into the garbage if they do decide that it's worthwhile to huck old product, but even this is wasteful and invites the risk of employees or dumpster divers trying to snag 'free stuff', which they do not like to do. GW will even tell their shop employees to tear the pages out of books before recycling them to discourage reselling of novels instead of donating them. That's just corporate logic for you. GW are not the only company to do this, mind. 2. Reboxing models would require warehouse workers (again in places outside of the UK, coordinating with the UK) to take the correct models out of the correct boxes and put them into the correct boxes with the correct instructions and correct bases. There are too many moving parts and they don't have the space or expertise to do this across multiple warehouses. If they did do this, you'd see many, many, many boxes sold to customers that do not have the correct contents, but this is VERY seldom the case. It's not that warehouse workers are lacking in skill, it's simply that coordinating such an effort is unrealistic and things slip through the cracks. Better to have everything packaged in one location and then sent out to be sold elsewhere. What's most likely is that these boxes were prepared well in advance (remember they are often designed ahead of time, printed in china, shipped to the UK, and then boxed in the UK) and the machines pumped out exactly these kits to be boxed into them. Dinojon is right above, it's likely that production of the Tzeentch Endless Spells was directed to filling these boxes instead of backfilling inventory, but could be due to other things. As it stands, it's interesting timing, coming out alongside price hikes to give people a way to get little combo boxes that save a few bucks while helping to expand an army. I'm tempted by the zombie/corpse cart one because I was already going to get some zombies, but now I get a cheaper corpse cart too? Seems decent.

Things have been getting better saves and more damage and rend, the same as has been happening on the 40k side, but less dramatic. Seeing the Astrolith Bearer rules being basically the same does give me a hekkin concern, but if the points are adjusted, or if other things AROUND him are made better, then his bonuses will be quite potent. Especially with the way that damage spills over in AoS, even a 6+ ward can save quite a lot of damage out of a unit. I'd definitely love for Ripperdactyls to become a little better. I'm a bit worried that the Raptadons will just do the job of the Ripper/Terras but better.

Hmm, lots of interesting takes. I think it's just one of those things that some people will be unhappy no matter what GW does. Anyway, one of the issues I foresee is a simple one of mathematics. We have 3 editions of AoS about under our belts now. Some factions are hold-overs from WHFB, like Orruks, Daughters of Khaine, Cities of Sigmar. Some factions are brand new to AoS, like Idoneth Deepkin, Kharadron Overlords, and Lumineth Realmlords. Some factions haven't gotten a single update in 3rd ed, aside from heroes and maybe spells, like Skaven and Beasts of Chaos. And some factions have been nearly totally revamped, like Slaves to Darkness and upcoming Seraphon. The main issue I see is that there are 24 factions in AoS that GW is trying to support with unique battletomes. In the course of an edition, GW seem set to update every single Battletome every edition, and the pattern is that at least 1 hero model comes out with a battletome to introduce new function and character within the faction. On the one hand, some factions could certainly use more heroes, like Hedonites of Slaanesh and mortal hero options, and depending on how big an update Seraphon get, they could need some more hero support in the years to come as well, so that's all fine and dandy. Other factions have a GLUT of heroes. Stormcast Eternals have so many heroes they're tripping over themselves. Fyreslayers and Kharadron don't need heroes, they need more units, along with Daughters of Khaine and Idoneth Deepkin. Soulblight Gravelords and Flesh Eater Courts need old kits to get updated, not new heroes... But if the pattern continues, more factions will have more heroes than they know what to do with and I could see some faction fans becoming really disenfranchised. Imagine if we get through 4th edition and factions like Skaven and Beasts of Chaos get another 'one hero and nothing else' release...

Don't get too excited, often times things will go 'no longer available' as part of the inventory system's processes. It flags an item it can't find any more of, then someone comes in and removes the flag manually, or something like that.

It definitely feels like it. The whole Endless Spell and Faction Terrain thing reminds me of way back when GW started giving out Flyers to 40k armies. Everyone wanted one but not every faction has one. It's nice that they at least had the generic Endless Spells but even those can be hard to find. Even as I check the website, only the Stormcast and Bonereaper endless spells are available, and every other kind, including the generic, are all 'temporarily out of stock'. It could be an issue of distribution, it could be that they weren't as profitable as they wanted them to be, or any number of other factors. At the end of the day, it just kind of bites for it to be a 'some factions get this' thing.

I'd say there's room for a smaller ship, a one-dwarf vessel (sky-bike?). Would also be cool to see them get a flying piece of terrain, a skyport that can heal their ships or re-load them for a +1 to hit or something as long as they don't move from that terrain feature, maybe? I'd definitely say there's way more room for new models in the Fyreslayers. They need medium-size and small-size salamanders or other fire beasts, maybe an avatar of their fire-god (ala avatar of khaine, but dwarf), more fyreslayers wielding lava weapons, kind of like the votann berzerkers.

The one thing I'll say about Warcry is that if they do some sort of 'ruin interior' or 'dungeon crawl' sort of terrain set... I'd be ALL FOR THAT. A warband creeping through dungeons and avoiding traps and all the other DnD tropes you could expect in a space-lizard ship interior or something would be epic.

Come to think of it, with Warcry... Wasn't the whole idea that a lot of these warbands for the Gnarlwood season supposed to be going into the big crashed Seraphon ship? We've gotten more of the bamboo and muscle-tree terrain but we haven't seen them delve deeper into that ship or talk about anything that's inside of it, just the Chameleon skinks that are guarding it.

I personally find it a liiiiiiittle frustrating that GW tend to get a bit hyperfocused on one specific part of a humongous map for such a long period of time. I'd personally prefer snippets of places all over, but I get that the point of this is to show a particular conflict, much like they've done with Vigilus in 40k. It's also quite a departure from WHFB where there'd be well-defined countries and borders and cities. This feels more like a bunch of random encampments, maybe a temple or a tower or something, but basically little dug-outs that these factions have established to hide/rest in when not fighting.

The big thing for 40k is that model releases are going to be relatively light over the next few months. There's the second wave of guard Farisight Snikrot and that new Space Marine box set along with the next 2 (3?) Arks of Omens books and separate releases for the DA character and Vashtorr. All told, that's not actually a lot of stuff between now, February, and late June. Filling that space with AoS seems to be the strategy. Brace yourself for 40k player whinging about lack of releases once we hit March.

In other news, SBGL and Bonereapers box art is making the rounds, so it looks like the rest of the tomes this year have been determined. RIP FEC that have a long while to wait for theirs...

Anyone who says that AoS has had a 'forgotten' year hasn't been paying attention... both to what AoS has gotten, and to the global issues that GW has faced as a physical product retailer. Covid, global shipping issues, brexit... Remember when that ship was stuck in the Suez canal, forcing other ships to go the long way around whole continents just to get stuff off-loaded? And we still got Slaves to Darkness, are about to get Seraphon, and may even get Dawnbringer Crusades before this edition is done. As for TOW... eh, I get that people are hyped for it. I think it's going to be like No Man's Sky, overhyped and underdelivered, and when 90% of the product line is resin and therefore twice as expensive outside of whatever starter set they get... Yeah. Either way, 10th is coming. All the codexes are out and Arks of Omen is the wrap-up. The pattern is written on the walls. Maybe 10th edition will last longer than 9th did, but that's to be seen in the years ahead.

I do honestly think that 4th edition will return to Order vs Chaos... But... What if it's Order vs. Order? Stormcast of the Ruination Chamber vs Malerion's Shadow Elves? We already know that Malerion witnessed Morathi's betrayal of Sigmar but said nothing about it. What else could he be planning and will those plans finally come to light in another realm?

Setting aside Underworlds, Warcry, Cursed City, the various Vyrkos characters, and any limited run models, we end up with... Deathrattle Skeletons Deadwalker Zombies Dire Wolves Blood Knights Vampire Lord Wight King on Steed Fel Bats Vengorian Lord

They do give their employees raises, bonuses, and other things, yes.

some in other forums have lined up the releases and actually it's about as much as Necrons got.

That's all I'd say about the topic. Any further argument or debate feels pointless at this point. There's no point or logic to make unless I acquiesce to "Ah, yes, you're totally right all the time, about everything." GW will reveal something in a week or two that will have people forget all about it and we can move on.

Only thing I'll say about the 6% price increase is...

Also, on the 40k side some info apparently from Bolter and Chainsword: