Chikout

During lockdown I made a chess grid for a warcry board and played warcry over the internet with my sister. It worked surprisingly well.

I went back and listened again to the Warhammer weekly episode about battle tactics and read a few Reddit posts about it. The most surprising thing I saw was that it was mostly new players defending the system. As a long term but relatively inexperienced player it's the sequencing that I find problematic as the phases got broken up into more and more pieces. Choosing battle tactics to go for is a minor issue. The real problem are the lack of counterplay and the inequality of the book battle tactics. The easiest mitigating solution is to remove book battle tactics and to ensure that the core battle tactics they have all have some kind of counterplay that lets the opponent have the chance to deny them. There is potential in the system, it's just that the first stab at implementing it was poor. I'm sure they've been bombarded with emails and comments. I'd be very surprised if the design team didn't watch the Warhammer weekly show about battle tactics. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt for now especially as everything else they've previewed so far looks pretty good. Of course it's entirely possible that if they are bad, the community just ignores them. We did that with the old scenery rules after all.

They're worth the same proportion of victory points as they are in every current battleplan. In the new version it looks like there will usually be 10 points up for grabs rather than the current 5. I definitely share your concern about the battle tactics article though. I have a feeling it's going to to be the most debated article of the preview.

It's weird that we've had all this talk but noone has mentioned the ways in which AoS attempts to make heroes unique, namely heroic traits and artefacts. We know that command traits are being changed to heroic traits but we still don't know what they are or how you choose them. Is it still one per army? We also don't know how artefacts are chosen as the battalions are presumably gone. If you take your slaughter priest then give him a heroic traits that grants a 4+ ward and a weapon that adds 3 damage to his attacks, you've suddenly got a pretty decent blender.

I use citadel because I'm colour blind and switching to another brand would mean learning what all the colours are. More tutorials use GW paints than any other. GW paints are easier to get hold of than other brands where I live and apart from the white paints I've been pretty happy with them over the years.

The photograph has been around for a while but we still have paintings. If there's a change it will be that commission painters will struggle but anyone who enjoys creativity will still want to buy unpainted minis.

She announced that she was stepping down back in January. It's not entirely surprising that someone leaving a long term job would sell their stake. The stock price is down for two reasons. The first is that GW announced the reduction of their dividend. GW has been paying a lot of it's profit to share holders in the form of dividends for a while to point that they are in danger of eating into the company's cash flow. They are still giving a dividend which means they still believe they have excess profit to share with stock holders. The second is that the whole sector's growth is slowing. We've seen this slowdown in board and card games which collectively saw their sales fall last year. The video game space has seen mass lay offs over the last year or so. GW'S biggest rival Asmodee who owns Mass atomic games of MCP fame just got spun off by the Embracer group and saddled with a bunch of debt. GW is comparatively in a very safe place. Their performance has been solid but their rate of growth has declined since COVID boom. Most of the people buying and selling GW shares probably wouldn't even know what a space marine is.

It's made GW a decent profit though. Compared to a lot of other streaming services, that's good. It will be interesting to see what the next financial report says.

Yeah, I've noticed this with Warhammer+. The most disappointing thing for me is the vault. They haven't added anything new for over 6 months. The episodes are getting shorter and the frequency of animated episodes is decreasing. I live in Japan and the value of the subscription is much better here. A single hero mini costs more than half the price of the subscription. That said if GW don't announce a major upheaval to the service this year, I won't bother resubscribing. I'm very curious to see what the next financial report says about it. I'd be very surprised if it's still growing.

I've gone back and forth on this but now I'm pretty sure you can't ignore the -1. You can't stop reading a sentence half way. If I say I ignore the rain when it's light, that doesn't mean I ignore the rain all the time. I think this will become clear when we see the declare and effect stages of shooting. We had the same thing for charges and the full rules quickly resolved the issue. I imagine the declare step will just be pick a viable target. At this point the warlock engineer can ignore the guarded hero restrictions. The effect step will be resolve shooting attacks that target the unit, which is how combat does it. The - 1 is applied here and warlock engineers can't ignore it.

The hero has to be three inches from the friendly unit. In your second picture the hero is too far away so it can be shot. Also I think three inches is supposed to represent diving in front of the bullet range. So even in 'real' life this would work. If someone is behind a building and their boss is in the open and they hear a shot, they could jump out and push their boss out of the way.

@SG Warhound suggested we're getting three new warlocks; this one, the leaked one and a new arch warlock. I think that's why he looks relatively plain. He's the most junior of what will be 4 warlock options.

This is from the Custodes core book. Of course as we know all GW lore is flexible but I think that if GW wants to do a combined Duardin faction in the future it will be through Grungi with Grombindal relegated to black library and his own magazine. That said while I'm pretty confident that is what GW would do, it isn't what I would do. The Grombindal novel is my favourite AoS book so far. I love the way the character has been written in AoS and I wouldn't complain at all if GW decided to put him in a battletome.

A lot of the disappointment on here seems to come from unrealistic expectations. As far as I'm aware Grombindal has never had rules as part of the core game for AoS or Warhammer fantasy. It's always been semi unofficial white dwarf magazine rules. He's also not really been involved in the main narrative of either game. It was Grungi that was the mysterious old character in the broken realms book and not Grombindal. Him getting a dedicated novel as the most he's ever had unless I'm forgetting something from fantasy. There's still potential for an official unified Duardin faction but it will be because of Grungi and not Grombindal It's also a bit frustrating to see the community as a whole just ignoring sections of the rules. If a designer sat down to write a warscroll and battle plans it worth at least taking a look rather than dismissing it out of hand. Wouldn't it be great if one of things to come out of some of these changes is the community actually embracing legends.

Because he's a limited edition model. I kind of hope this is the way they do all limited edition models going forward. Love the model. Will definitely be getting it when it's available.

If I was GW I'd write these rules for 4th edition first then adjust them for third. That way they will still play the way you expect in 4th. It would be a real bummer if the oath rules and the wilderfiend replacing dead heroes doesn't make it into 4th. GW have also promised that there will 4th edition rules for the regiments of renown. Again you'd hope that the playstyle of each regiment remains basically the same. They'd still be invalidating rules but at least players would be able to have broadly similar play experiences with the minis they bought. As for Dawnbringers 6, I suspect most people will be buying it for the lore. That's certainly why I'll be buying it. I'm actually more excited for it than any other book in the series.

There are literally rules in AoS to build your dudes. GW haven’t talked about path to glory yet apart from one line that says it focuses on hero progression. It’s a little frustrating to see people complain about the fact that matched fans have made to game less characterful while ignoring this other side of the game that’s specifically designed for players who want something different. I’m not saying that the new path to glory is going to be amazing but it’s weird to ignore it completely when talking about the potential issues with the new edition.

The interesting thing is that the memorians and the cover star confirm that there are models in the box which weren't in the video. We're definitely getting some more heroes for each side. The big question is whether we're getting another unit for Skaven. I'm pretty confident there won't be 40 clan rats. Recent boxes have aimed for variety. It wouldn't surprise me if we see a unit of stormvermin or acolytes. The other option is a larger rat ogre unit with pack masters similar to the reclusians.

What I see here is a fundamentally different approach to the game. I'm thinking about the army as a whole, you're thinking about individual characters. By forcing you to choose one lore for your army in AoS it encourages you to play in a certain way that takes advantage of those spells. It's very similar to choosing a sub faction. If the lores are written well it can help the player to lean into the play style of a particular faction or subfaction. The old world way lets you lean into creating interesting individual characters. It's true that you can make interestingly unique heroes, but how does that play into the theme of the army overall army? The other important thing to point out is that they haven't really talked about path to glory at all yet. The only thing I've heard mentioned is that it will focus on hero progression. Maybe that's the way you get unique heroes who are supremely powerful in combat.

I think you're misunderstanding the nature of the indexes. This is the fourth time (that I remember) that GW has done a set of rules for every faction at the launch of the edition. They have always been a reduced limited selection of rules designed to ride players over until their army book comes out. GW want you buying those books. Being disappointed that this system is used rather than the old world system is a valid criticism but as soon as GW said the word battletome, it was pretty obvious that the battle packs were going to be limited. Since GW have chosen to give each faction 4 battle formations in a bid to be fair, it's certainly the case that the armies that had the most subfactions will suffer the most in this change. There will absolutely be fewer command traits, artefacts etc than there are in the current books. I'd expect at most two spell lores for each faction but I wouldn't be surprised if each battle pack only gets one. The good news is that the wait will be temporary. GW has a book they want to sell you. It will have more artefacts, more heroic traits, more spell lores, more battle formations etc. The bad news again is that the wait for some factions is going to be pretty long. As for the specific changes to how spells and prayers are chosen, I see reasons to be optimistic especially for cities players. Currently the human and Self lores only work on units from those races. If the whole army will be choosing one lore will we finally be able to use an Aelf hero to buff a human unit. Will a Duardin priest be able to buff fusiliers now? That would be cool. The other option is that some of these spells end up on warscrolls. It's not difficult to imagine a world where the tenebrael blades spell ends up on the sorceress' warscroll. I hope it's the former. As for the reason for the change, I think it changes the tactical equation. Currently if you have one wizard who knows one spell. You look at their lore and you choose the best one. Your wizard would then spend the battle trying to cast that spell or mystic shield. Not much in the way of interesting choices. With the choice of a lore there's potential for more interesting choices. With the removal of battleline restrictions it's good that players still have to make meaningful choices in the list building stage. It also lets GW write more powerful but situational spells that would never get taken before. With sub faction/ battle formations rules potentially being less interesting than before, I like the idea of a suite of 3-6 prayers or spells that you can use to lean into a particular theme or playing style. The old world style of lore per wizard gives you plenty of options but doesn't push you in a direction. Which style you prefer is a bit apples or oranges but I think the new system has the potential to be much more interesting than the old 3rd edition one.

One thing to bear in mind is that AoS is built around exceptions. For example UNLIMITED spells can’t be repeatedly cast by the same wizard in the same turn except Nagash who can cast Invocation of Nagash more than once per phase. It wouldn't surprise me if there's a Lumineth battle trait that lets them chose more than one spell lore.

The problem is that as has been pointed out there are presumably people who have bought painted and played exclusively with Big Waagh. Suddenly their army is gone and they're left with two half armies. One possible bright side is that Nagash has different warscrolls for different factions. One way of fixing the balance issue is having an ironjawz version of a scroll and a big waagh version of a scroll which can be pointed differently.

I imagine they'll be getting their own indexes. Balancing big waagh against the other factions was a bit a nightmare in third so maybe it's gone or changed!??!

I think manifestation lores are a distinct thing rather than a type of spell lore so you can probably take both.

I'm not sure what all the kerfuffle about coherency is. I had a look through the AoS minis and there's only a small selection of units that might really struggle with half inch coherency. Harridans and Bladegheists from Nighthaunt, squig hoppers and fanatics from Gloomspite and maybe thralls from idk. Anything old world that could rank up before will be fine with the extra half inch of space. GW have already said that some units will have different coherence ranges written on their warscrolls. Do that with the warscrolls listed above and there's no problem. Why make the change? I think there are two reasons. Aesthetics and board space. The more important aspect is the fact that tighter grouped units will make more space on the board and make movement more important. Combined with the lack of double reinforcing, this will make a huge difference. Before with a unit of 60 zombies you could make a line about 60 inches across. Now the maximum you will be able to do is 30 inches. Swamping the board is going to be much harder than before. Why not just switch to squares? I really don't want to go back to wheeling around bushes. I like to feel like I have 50 game pieces instead of 5 or 6. The suggested options in the other thread are all more complicated especially as AoS unit sizes are so variable. What about piling in? With the 3 inch combat range and the reduction of pinning possibilities, I think there's going to be a lot less piling in than before. Obviously the litmus test is actually playing the game, but I've experimented with my own armies and I don't have to much trouble getting them in coherency.