Chikout

We will almost certainly see the first Skaven next Monday.

As expected, the helmet looks much better on the real miniature, at least it does to me. I also like that it's still a bit bulkier than the Vindictors.

Integrated doesn't necessarily mean dropping clans. It just means that you can have a list which mixes the clans together without suffering. A major complaint about the cities book is how little interaction between the humans, Daurdin and Aelves. People don't want them to disappear but do want to be able to play them together. I think the same is true about the Skaven clans. Moulder, Eshin and Pestilens are icon elements of the Skaven lore and I'm quite sure they're here to stay.

The confusing thing is it seemed like the scope of the project did change but in a negative way. Kislev and Cathay were originally said to be coming to the game but then weren't but now maybe are again?? With a project like this it definitely does make a certain amount of sense to start small, guage demand and then go from there but it doesn't seem to have been a very smooth process. I am very curious what 'the scope of the project has changed' actually means. It would be great if it meant adding support for the other legacy factions in the future or doing 3 plastic kits pet faction instead of one.

I agree. They should have made that announcement as soon as they announced 4th edition but if they have to do it the announcement should be: 'We are sorry to announce that Beasts of Chaos will not be recieving a 4th edition battletome and the range will be moving to the Old World. If you wish to continue playing your army with your friends in 4th edition we will be releasing a battle pack for the faction but it will not be recieving balance updates in the future and as such will not be a legal army in official tournaments. We are excited to bring the army to the old world later this year complete with several new models." Any way they phrase it the news is awful but if they'd shared the news in March it would have given people time to rebase their army, choose a different army or go and play Conquest so by the time the new edition launches there isn't a shadow hanging over it. The longer they wait, especially with rumours floating around, the worse it will be.

Given the continuing confused reactions from @Whitefang the future of BoC doesn't look that bright. If they are dropping BoC I really hope they give them an index even if it's similar in style to the old world factions. GW could even say they won't be allowed in official tournaments as most other events just ignore that. People were still playing Brettonians and Tomb Kings for years after AoS launched. At the very least, I'd like to see them get the chance to take part in AoS4.

Aren’t able to is a curious way to phrase it. Is there some kind of legal issue with Creative Assembly or have they just been given a limited production budget? Given that the game seems to be doing well, a second edition launch box with those two factions would be pretty amazing.

Will this be the look of the new model?

This makes sense. After the Warcry stuff will probably be Orks then Dawnbringers 6. There's been some speculation about June 22nd being either the preorder date or the launch date for AoS 4. As it stands there isn't enough stuff to get us to a June 22nd pre-order. We get warcry etc on April 6, Orks on the 13th, Dawnbringers 6 on the 20th, then probably Tau on the 27th and Dwarfs on May 4th. Then we have 4 weeks to fit more warcry, more Kill team, and Chaos. So even if agents of the imperium gets announced that still only takes us up to a June 8th pre-order.

I think the thing people like is the priority roll, rather than the double turn specifically. The thing people like is the variability of the turn order, the three moves ahead planning and the risk reward mechanism. Making the double turn less effective doesn't really affect these things, unless it's nerfed to the point of not being effective at all which hasn't happened yet. I don't want to make grand assumptions but if someone was to make a ven diagram of "does losing really upset you?" and "do you like the priority roll?", I wonder how close the overlap would be. There are people who really hate randomness, and those who love it. Again I wonder what the overlap would be with this discussion. As for the appeal to newcomers, I'd much rather have game be fantastic for a small audience than be fine for a large audience. There are so many games now even if you don't go outside GW's catalogue, that I think it's actually a positive to have a game that's a bit marmite. GW makes IGOUGO games, fully alternating activating games and AoS. There are also dozens of other games that use a variety of mechanics and many of them are perfectly happy for you to use GW models of that's what you want to do.

It's April 1st on Monday. That will probably have an affect on this things. I could see them doing something Skaveny with April fools but they might decide to skip new miniature Monday especially as it's also Easter weekend.

Yeah. In a way Warcry is kind of the anti Mordheim. It's easy to learn, it plays fast and has great replayability due to the way missions are generated. There is a narrative side to the game but it's not massively in-depth. Mordheim on the other hand is difficult to learn with a lot of rules to remember. It can be pretty clunky to play, but the narrative side is very in-depth and can be incredibly engaging with the right group of people.

They done Warcry and Kill team together before. I wouldn’t be surprised if that happened again.

Have you read them recently? They are a lot less grim than I remember them being as a teenager.

Yeah. There were a couple of homebrew fixes that improved things quite a bit, but it's definitely true that the gameplay was decent rather amazing. Here are some homebrew rules which enhance the experience considerably. https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2642992/first-impressions-fixes-and-additional-content

There's still another year of this edition of warcry to go. They could do another year based on the interior of the eye of Chotec. We also don't know what the narrative of the last two sets will be. I'm very curious about the future of Warcry. It is comfortably my favourite GW game ever and I've played almost all of them. I really don't want them to change the core rules at all but there's plenty they could do on the narrative side. A year of the game set in a ruined city of Sigmar could be very cool. As for Warhammer Quest, Cursed City upset quite a few people, but the reason it did so was because it was a massive hit. GW would be foolish not to try again. Skaven are the perfect antagonists for a Warhammer Quest game. It could be an inverse of Silver Tower with small elite units from other Chaos factions joining a mostly Skaven force.

Unfortunately it says you only give up the battle tactic if you "choose" to take the double. No Skaven shenanigans here.

Isn't this the first time they've said that outright?

I'm exasperated by how much everyone is getting exasperated! Firstly I think there's a misunderstanding of what modular means. Imagine a 3x4 piece modular gaming board. It's not infinitely flexible. The corner pieces still need to go in the corner. The pieces still need to line with each other. You can leave the centre pieces out and build a 2x2 board, but you can't leave off one of the corner pieces. So in the AoS example you can play with just the core rules but that model is essential for every other version of the game and every subsequent module has to refer back to the core. You can play with just the core rules and commands, presumably coming from your general or something but you can't add the command models module unless you already have the comnand module. There's a weird problem in Warhammer. People largely treat the rules as sacronscant, but will happily carve expensive models into pieces. I've always found this weird. There have been lots of complaints about blizzard in the most recent ghb but few events leave the spell out. Comp is a dirty word in the community. GW have tried numerous times to tell players to do what they want with their rules but there's still a blind insistence to follow the full rules of a new GHB. I think gw is emphasising modularity in order to try and break that habit. Why does everyone just use the new GHB in every event? It would be a bit like the Halo team having just one playlist that everyone has to play for the next year. Creating a system that encourages player choice is a good thing even if most people just end up playing the most popular mode. The idea is that a new GHB isn't just an update to how the game plays but includes optional methods of play that can be added to the game or substituted for existing parts of the game. A GHB could introduce a new magic module that can be used instead of the previous one but doesn't replace it. How is this good for us? We'll have to see how it turns out in practice but in theory it lets them be more experimental with seasonal rules. They can add new modules that experiment with ways to play without forcing players to use them. I really hope TOs don't just blindly use everything in the next edition.

The fact that path to glory stops at 5 suddenly makes it much more appealing. I really hope battle tactics have had a complete rethink. They need to be much harder to achieve and require more interaction with the opponents army.

If AoS to lose one thing in 4th edition, I'd be most comfortable with saying goodbye to endless spells. They can be cool thematically but I wouldn't call any of the models amazing.

I don't mean 1:1 necessarily. I'd be perfectly happy to see beasts of chaos get a Lumineth or cities style update. I just don't want to see something dropped with no replacement at all.

My philosophy about the old models is simple. All models should stay until there is an update or refresh available. Soup is ok but cutting elements from a range or a whole faction is not acceptable at this stage. Spiderfang should stay, bonesplittas should stay etc.

Thank you for sharing but this is meaningless without context. Maybe all endless spells are rubbish now, or wizards points will go up to reflect their ability to cast endless spells, or each army will only be able to choose one, or one of the modular rules packs will add points later. As for weapon choices it makes sense with no weapon ranges in melee. (Incidentally what about long range weapons?) There is sometimes minimal differences between weapons. This is one hits on threes and wounds on fours but the other one does the opposite. Combining them both doesn’t make a massive difference to the result of combatbut would save a lot of time in the game. When there is a bigger difference will we be having more warscrolls like the Kurnoth hunters?

It's a much more logical name. If I had 20 wounds, I'd be in pretty bad shape. Think of a sentence like this. 'If this unit has two wounds, half it's move' is that wounds remaining or wounds caused? This is a perfect example of something that will help to makes rules easier to understand and simpler to write.