Mortal Wound

It was my assumption that the boat is magical and weightless and just floats in the air on its own, because you know, elves. And the birb is just dragging it along. So when the birb lands the boat just floats in place and the guys can jump off. Presumably while singing 'fa la la la'. Because you know, elves.

Thank you for posting this. BTW, can you still chceck new release prices on GW's independent retailer website? I haven't been able to find it since a while back and I'm wondering if they moved it somewhere or they changed to only send that info out to stores directly.

Doubtful they are clued into GW's plans this much. It took them almost two years since the boardgame release to do a Cursed City tie-in sourcebook...

I would expect AoS articles moving to a weekly schedule in place of 'Heresy Thursdays'. Having daily or even every-other-day articles between now and 4th ed launch (that is supposedly late June/early July) is simply unsustainable even if they liberally sprinkle lore stuff into it.

There were rumors of the GW LotR license going away in light of the Tolkien Estate being bought by the Embracer Group a couple years ago. Embracer is a 'final boss of capitalism' level holding company that also owns Asmodee amongst other stuff, and through Asmodee, multiple companies already specialized in producing popular IP tabletop games like MCP or Star Wars Legion/Shatterpoint. It stood to reason that the suits at Embracer would not have an interest in extending the license when they could be doing a competing product essentially in-house. This was congruent with the fact that GW released a new LotR starter box/edition to great fanfare and then immedietely went radio silent on the entire game. The supposition being that said starter box and edition were already produced when the Embracer news hit so they didn't want to scrap it, but were already preparing for the license yoink. Renewed releases for GW's LotR miniature line coincide in time with reports of financial troubles at Embracer and business cuts/layoffs at Embracer subsidiaries. It is therefore a plausible scenario that Embracer is not in a position to do stuff with their newly acquired LotR property at this time, changed their mind and either renewed the license or promised to renew the license for GW. This is of course all pure conjecture since no one in the general public is privy to such high-level corporate chicanery and people privy to it would likely be bound by mountains of NDAs, but it seems like a logical way to put all the puzzle pieces together, at least to me.

The Redeploy command has the 'Run' keyword. Too early to tell without more info about the rules, but it could indicate that it is mutually exclusive with charging, as Running traditionally does in Warhammer.

There's Embergard emblems on the walls of the city in the trailer. And if Hollywood can't be bothered with astronomy in Star Wars if it contradicts a cool shot of Starkiller base blowing up planets, I'm sure no one at GW is bothered with imaginary geography if it contradicts a cool camera pan over ocean crags. They demonstrably don't read their own preexisting books when writing new stuff so I can't see them meticulously pouring over maps. Additionally, I'm pretty sure they flat out called it Embergard in initial marketing material but later redacted that since it's technically a spoiler, however few people actually care about the Dawnbringers narrative and didn't see through it yet.

We know one city will fall and the other will prosper. We also know that the city in the trailer for AoS4 is Embergard, shown to be a quite built up metropolis so presumably the trailer is set years after the events of Dawnbringers. I have a suspicion the Dawnbringer books were hit with massive delays and the trailer was supposed to land after Book 6 was already on people's shelves as to not spoil the entire crux of the narrative. Then again, we also had the Aqshy crusade headed by Tahlia Vedra and Pontifex Zenestra, prominent named characters with models, while the Ghyran crusade was led by generic stock characters. From the very start, this wasn't exactly an impenetrable suspenseful mystery.

I think the paradigm has shifted so much that you really can't make predictions like this any more. Two weeks ago Sacrosanct would be firmly SAFE and stuff like Dracoths or Vanguard would be endangered over them. Back up a few months or a year and objectively speaking, Flesh Eater Courts would seem way more endangered than Beasts of Chaos. They could just as well rework the entire Fyreslayers line in a month (I mean, you would only really need to re-do two kits to give them pants and better proportions) and drop half of the units in Hedonites down the Mariana Trench (I mean, they have four different cavalry units on the same exact tongue snakes...) We're in uncharted territory.

Mentions are sprinkled in the second edition battletome. You might have missed it because that battletome is... let's say a bit more nuanced and less direct in its lore section than the 3rd ed one.

And to me it just doesn't make any sense with previously established background. We already had Stormcast that had too many reforgings, we even had a specific name for them: the transfigured. We even already had entire armies of them, going on Relictor-led crusades Death Company style, like the Ebon Circle. Finally, we even already had a 'transfigured disposal system' in the form of Star Bridges, where Stormcast that were reforged too many times would heroically sacrifice themselves to have their soul-stuff power conduits to Azyr that sped up the reforging of their brethren. There was no need for the Ruination Chamber to be a 'too many reforgings' retirement home, that story beat was already covered and that coverage is now being tread upon and soft-retconned, like many other aspects of Stormcast background recently. If they wanted to explore that concept, fine, I'm alright with that. Say the situation is so dire there's more transfigured around than even and the need was so great they are pushing more transfigured to the front line. Do a new Thunderstrike Lord Relictor and transfigured versions of existing units. But there is thematically no need to open another chamber that's presumably always been there all along for this sort of thing but Sigmar just forgot about it until now, and mechanically there was no need to bloat the model range with completely new elite troops and foot heroes and lords on gryph-chargers when they literally just now cut a bunch of those exact things supposedly because of range bloat. Between this Ruination Chamber thing, the Blacktalon cartoon and 'ooooh big deal guys, Sigmar Lied', it's really uncanny how much of their background they managed to contradict or flat out retcon in just nine years. In 40k, this sort of thing takes decades of incremental changes. It's like the writers don't read their own stuff. Or worse, like they did, but the people that wrote the old stuff are no longer at the company so the new guys purposefully kick their sandcastles over out of spite.

This really would be the least of the established lore incongruities they have done recently regarding Stormcast...

While I would like to know a bit more about them in terms of narrative (even if it's in that cringey Warcom lore-talk where everything is a remarkably clever joke on the level of a local station radio host), we know quite well how those look like from the trailer, they were featured quite prominently and there's only so much posing you can do on a model with an axe and shield. I'd prefer a look at Prosecutors, which are only shown in glimpses and gonna have spectral wing 'particle effects' and flying poses that both may or may not look convincing on a physical model. A confirmation whether they come in units of 3 or 5 would be nice as well, since the trailer shows five of them in a camera shot that feels quite deliberate. Failing that, the gryph-stalker hero (because while we have quite detailed artwork, you can do a lot with posing on a large cav model like that) or, in a perfect fantasy land of rainbows and unicorns that will never come to pass, one of the foot heroes that's absolutely gotta also be in the box that they haven't shown at all.

It's not an error. It's a means to reduce the amount of dice rolls by consolidating the ability activation check and the random effect into one roll. For that ability, you roll one d3. On a 1 nothing happens, on a 2 you do 2 Mortals, on a 3 you do 3 Mortals. It will take a bit of getting used to but it's a great example of smart streamlining. Genuinely quite impressive bit of game design.

No, I'm going to put Raptoryx, Furies, Spawn, Darkoath Horsemen or whatever else is cheapest/fastest moving in front of my Knights, and then charge through them if moving through friendlies is allowed like in 10th 40k. If it's not, I'll just have the screening unit end its move at an appropriate angle so that it can be cleared while staying the closest target for Covering Fire.

It's not, it is way easier to screen against because it now goes against the nearest unit, after movement is done but before charges. As a Slaves to Darkness player living in an environment oversaturated with CoS players that all love their fusiliers, this new command made me breathe a huge sigh of relief. Just put a chaff unit in front of my spiky lads and bam, no more getting shot off the table (or rather, no more getting shot off the table an additional time). Takes me back to Warhammer Fantasy days when the no1 rule of playing Chaos was 'you always put Warhounds in front of the Chaos Knights' 😄 I mostly agree with your other assessments, but felt I needed to point this out because I love this change.

Presumably because charging is moving, and moving out of phase allows for objective control shenanigans. Or think of it this way: if getting an extra move (Redeploy) is worth 1CP and getting an extra attack (Covering Fire) is worth 1CP, it stands to reason that getting an extra move AND an extra attack (Counter Charge) would be worth 2CP. Not to mention that with the right unit, you can then Power Through and charge something else on your turn... Sounds nasty with chariots or heavy cav, though CP-intensive.

Customer uncertainty is a significant concern and I wonder how much it will come back to bite them in the behind sales-wise. Because this fundamental paradigm shift in brand confidence isn't just limited to AoS. There's a lot of cross-pollenation between AoS and 40k and even 40k-exclusive people are watching this debacle keenly. If 6-year old models for a mainline faction that constitute a full sub-army with a unique playstyle isn't safe from culls, what is? People are gonna consider their purchases more carefully. Eldar Harlequins, are those a safe purchase in this 'new normal'? What about Dark Eldar Wracks and Pain Engines? Death Watch Veterans? Thousand Sons Mutalith Vortex Beast? I was gonna get a couple Predator tanks for my Black Legion Chaos Space Marines. I am not so sure now that I should make that purchase. Heck, I'm assembling Venomcrawlers right now in preparation for the new codex. I was gonna get another one because they'd be cool to play as a formation of three. But should I? Those don't even have a separate kit but share an old starter set-style sprue with another unit... The erosion of customer trust is a big deal and they opened a Pandora's Box full of it.

My sentiments exactly. Warcry would have been an even more stellar game if it stayed narratively focused on Eightpoints and Chaos Weirdos as a self-contained ecosystem. That's the game pitch I initially fell in love with and wanted to see expanded. What I didn't want to see is the current 'anything goes', Smash Bros style melting pot where you have three skinks, a Lord Relictor, an Idoneth wizard and a Kharadron Overlord fighting against Callis and Toll's crew and Jelsen Darrock in a meat tree forest. I think there was simply a lack of faith that this original concept would have sustained the game and they immediately shoehorned AoS models into it without giving it time to breathe.

They soft abandoned the idea of Warcry being self-contained to warbands of Chaos weirdos fighting in the Eightpoints fairly early on in the game's lifecycle and categorically abandoned it with the Ghur redesign. I can't see them doing that just to then immediately zoom it in again thematically and make it a Mordheim/Necromunda style game. A Kill Team model, where the setting is wide open and warbands are clearly corresponding to specific AoS factions to the point that the game as a whole could be viewed as a backdoor for small splash releases for a parent game, is much more likely and something they already seem to be transitioning towards, going by the makeup of the last two boxes and the revealed new one.

Listen, there seems to be a bit of a miscommunication here. I'm personally not offended in the slightest by anything I have pointed out. Trust me, I'm the last person you know that would pearl clutch about this sort of thing. Only thing I am doing is observing that if anyone really wants to dig in and look for this sort of stuff to be offended by, it's already there. So it's not the sort of thing what would give geedub pause with Chaos Dwarfs. They demonstrably aren't walking on eggshells with this kind of thing. I know this sort of nuance is getting increasingly hard to parse on the internet but someone mentioning a thing doesn't necessarily mean said person is looking for a fight and ready to die on a hill for said thing. Sometimes it's just people having a conversation and making observations. I hope this clears it up for you and others because I really don't appreciate the tone of being told to 'chill out' with my 'delusions'. Heck, that wouldn't be an acceptable way to address another person even if we _were_ having a genuine argument here.

And third, they already redesigned them aesthetically away from hats, beards and big noses with Legion of Azgorh. And fourth, GW is demonstrably not that culturally sensitive. They have an entire faction of devil-worshipping hedonists that's near-East oriental coded. They released evil Asian mysticism vampires last year. They have an entire civilization of sadistic slavers and body horror serial killers in 40k that are always given thick Eastern European accents in audiobooks. I could go on, but bottom line is a bunch of short guys with beards ain't giving anyone pause. For crying out loud, they already have an entire civilization of bearded misers in AoS. This is the roleplayer sprinking in some culture war bullcrap for good measure because they know their target audience of 4chaners will eat that up.

This is for a paperback edition. BL novels no longer 'just come out'. They get either a hardback release or a hardback special edition, and only some of them get paperback releases much later down the line. One of the reasons I no longer buy physical BL books and stick with Audible.

They're 'clanrat weapons'. All under a single unified profile on the warscroll. Equipment variants don't exist in 4ed outside '1 model in 5' or '1 model in 10' special weapons.

I was wondering about that myself. I'm guessing it's just another bit of graphic design that they think is extremely clever and helpful, but undecipherable and completely superfluous to most regular people, like the phase colors and ability type icons. Maybe green is for stuff you do in your opponent's turn? Rolling saves would technically qualify.