Lord Kroak

Valrak also said there's going to be a huge Cathay release for The Old World, with many of the units from Total War: Warhammer making an appearance. Kinda sounds too good to be true, but he sounded confident! He didn't mention AoS other than to make a joke about it only having 5 players.

That's the date of actual publication, not the date of writing or originally planned publication.

It happens, but it's extremely rare. Hence why there's a greater probability of it not occurring with the seraphon book.

How do you know this?

This was an anomaly, most likely due to the impact of Covid.

I don't think seraphon will be one of the first 4th edition battletomes, since they had one of the last 3rd edition ones. The saurus rumor engine is either for Warcry or Underworlds. Based on this snippet from the seraphon book, I think there might be a Warcry box later this year involving seraphon vs skaven (possibly Cult of Sotek vs Clan Pestilens, as this is an ancient rivalry).

Someone posted this on Reddit and suggested it might herald a new Seraphon release, but they didn't give a source. Does anyone know what this snippet of text is from?

In British slang, "nut" means headbutt.

"Oh wow, I've been permanently transmuted into an immobile crystal statue. Guess that means I strike last this turn." 😕

Absolutely. All of my AoS games take place in the Old World because I deeply dislike the AoS lore.

So the whole "Sigmar lied" thing that was built up, that was just the fact that Stormcast lose a little part of themselves every time they reforge? In other words, the thing that we've known about Stormcast since they were first released a decade ago, because GW's writers saw Game of Thrones season 3 episode 2 and thought Beric Dondarrion's statement about becoming a little less every time he resurrects was pretty cool? Meh, I would've preferred an actual twist of some kind, like Sigmar turning out to be dyslexic and accidentally opening the Urination Chamber, leading to floods of sewage in Azyrheim and a reason for the skaven to feel right at home.

New Orcs & Goblins release for TOW! Including army book, many returning models, and a couple of new ones too.

She is not a real person, so you can modify her backstory however you see fit. If you want her to be related to Lethis, then by Sigmar, she will be related to Lethis!

However arbitrary and complex these decisions may be, they ultimately always boil down to money. At the end of the day, Amazon didn't think a show set in the Mortal Realms would be commercially viable. AoS is not as famous or fleshed out as 40K or WFB, and it's *extremely* high fantasy (gods casually walking around, sea creatures swimming through the air, etc). The embarrassing sales of Realms of Ruin probably also didn't help.

According to yesterday's GW investor report, GW's deal with Amazon includes an option to produce TV/film set in the Warhammer Fantasy universe. There is no option to produce anything set in the Age of Sigmar universe, which isn't surprising when you consider how much work is still needed to turn it into a viable setting. https://investor.games-workshop.com/news-posts/agreementtodevelopfilmsandtelevisionseries181223

Rumor engine is a long-lost Slann who gazed too long into the realm of chaos, fell to Tzeentch, and was twisted into a leering nightmare-toad festooned with feathers and tentacles, who now telepathically taunts the forces of order, promising them eternal madness in an infinite labyrinth of unreality. Source: my dreams.

The presence of god characters is a major reason why the AoS lore doesn't appeal to me. From what I've read, it just feels like the only real characters in the setting are Sigmar, Nagash, etc, and everyone else is just their puppet. For instance, all the Stormcast characters seem to just be vessels of Sigmar's will, who do little more than follow his orders. And all the Ossiarch and Nighthaunt characters are little more than Nagash's puppets, who exist just to enact his plans. Meanwhile, the Soulblight vampires are all terrified of Nagash, so they too just mostly do what he says (but unwillingly). The absolute power of Nagash over all death deprives all the other death characters of their own opportunities to be actual characters. I think GW added god characters to the setting because at the time the Marvel Cinematic Universe was extremely popular, and they figured they could make the Mortal Realms appealing by adding superheroes and supervillains. But these kinds of uber-characters require a certain setting to work. When you shoehorn them into a high fantasy setting like AoS, all they do is steal the thunder from all the other characters and make the universe seem small. I'd love to see the gods taken down a peg, have Nagash lose some of his power over death, and have other death characters rebel against him. There could be a death civil war between pro-Nagash and anti-Nagash factions. That would create some much-needed conflict and depth to the setting, and allow non-god characters to develop their own goals, motivations, and agency, making the setting seem alive.

The 360 degree images of all the seraphon models are now live on the GW site.

You should add a slann and a spell portal. This will allow you to teleport your saurus warriors and cavalry anywhere, including into combat(!):

Y'all are forgetting Cleanse the Realms. If you save your cosmic power points till turn 2, then you can use Kroak to: Spatial Translocation a Trog into center of enemy army. Cosmic Crush = ~5 MWs to a unit of 10 with 4+ saves. Deliverance x4 = 4d3 MWs to 3 units within 18". Cleanse the Realms = D6 MWs to any units within 12". So, assuming all spellcasts are successful, if you have three enemy units within 12" of the trog, you can potentially inflict ~40 MWs on average, and can then shoot with the trog for even more damage. After that there won't be much left to retaliate against the trog, and with its -1 to hit bubble it should survive to finish off what remains. This combo seems like the most powerful thing we can do in the new book, and it'll probably result in a points hike for Kroak at the very least.

Magic is inherently unstable, no matter who wields it. I've been casting spells for far longer than Nagash. I used magic to reshape the world at the dawn of time, and taught magic to the first elves while Nagash's first ancestors were still in diapers, and yet I'm still vulnerable to miscasts.

I'm not sure why Nagash should have immunity to miscasts. In his lore he tends to take big risks and is pretty careless. He may be powerful, but he's also a bit of an idiot.

I just don't get why GW feel the need to give Nagash 8 casts a turn. It makes no sense lorewise (Teclis, the literal God of Magic, has 4 casts), and it makes even less sense gameplay-wise (most of the time Nagash won't even have good targets for 8 spells in a single turn, and if he miscasts, he's screwed). Seems to me Nagash's warscroll could easily have been fixed by reducing his casts to 4 per turn and reducing his cost by 250 points or so.

I don't think that will quite work. Judging from the arm sculpts, TOW human units will be 28mm heroic scale rather than the 32mm true(ish) scale that AoS uses.

It's not a matter of effort or creativity, it's about making claims vague enough that they're more likely to fit whatever units are actually released (the Barnum effect).