Chikout

It unfortunately seems to be rather easy to pick and loser. It's much harder to pick a winner. A lot of the top armies got pretty big points hikes. Some armies like Nurgle and FEC got quite a light touch. Interesting times.

So If we just park Sentinels and Slaanesh to one side for the moment, are the changes really that bad? KO lost all their best triumphs which is a sizeable nerf. Tzeentch lost changehost. Seraphon's Kroaknado got worse and the skinks went up quite a bit. The marauders are max 30 now and went up a lot. Hearthguard can only go to 15 and lost their discount. The most competitive DoK build went up quite a bit. LRL had a lot of increases. SoB got battleline mega gargants. Kragnos got 50 points cheaper. There's an endless spell that can turn off unleash hell. The bridge got worse so irondrakes and Handgunners lost some of their bonuses. The eels went up and Reaver's went down. It feels like a lot of the top armies(and Slaanesh for some reason) got hit fairly hard. I tweeted at Ben Johnson encouraging an agressive faq and got a like in return so he definitely read it. It's going to be very interesting to see who comes out on top after the shuffle.

I agree. There's been lots of complaining about various points changes most of which I don't think is justified (complaints that Teclis isn't useable now or that skinks aren't worth it any more, or that eels got needed) but Slaanesh stands out as a straight out bad change. There are two things the community can agree on right now. Sentinels are still too good (a problem points won't fix) and Slaanesh have been hit with nerf after nerf to the point where they are probably the worst faction in the game.

You don't need to buy the ghb yet. Watch the facehammer video or the honest wargamer video, try out the points and battleplans they talk about. If it turns out to be good, then buy the ghb. The thing to think about is that any issues raised by the community in the last 6 months. won't be in the core book or the ghb. The faq is the key. This is the chance for gw to listen to what players have been worrying about for the last few weeks regrading the new edition and for the last few months regarding shooting. If the faq also turns out to be poor, then I will be at the front of the queue in sharing my displeasure, but there is still time for it to be great and fix a bunch of problems.

@AngryPanda I think you are misdirecting your anger here. Books are worked on about a year ahead of time and something like points is done about 6 months ahead of time. The ghb was probably already printed before they received your info. It's not that they aren't listening necessarily, it's that the draconian product method makes it almost impossible to listen. We saw the same thing with 40k recently. Lacklustre book, great faq.

I genuinely think they just put everything into their points calculator with whatever changes they thought 3rd edition would change and went from there. I don't think it's a reactive change at all. Again since they were writing the book months ago, this is probably the only choice they had. The place were gw has a chance to be reactive is in the FAQ. Now I don't personally don't hold out much hope, but they have the chance to listen to what the community has been saying since the reveal. If they change the sentinels ability and increase a bunch of melee weapon ranges, there's still time to massively swing the early reactions in a more positive direction.

The eternal problem with points is simply that they are in a book. The book was definitely written at least six months ago, before the Lumineth and Slaanesh books came out. Given how long in advance new editions are written, these points may even have been done before the first Lumineth book came out. Until this changes there are always going to be problems.

Ko and Fyreslayers each have their own section on the new homepage. The various Orruk warclans do not. If we're getting soup Duardin, it isn't happening soon.

You've just answered your own question. Over time points have gone down and army sizes have grown. By increasing the points overall it makes collecting an army easier for new players.

It would have the opposite effect on me though. Right now I'm not sold on the Kruleboyz and the Stormcast lack a centrepiece that I love. If I see some cool new units for both sides, I'm much more likely to buy Dominion as a starter for those armies. On the 40k side the photo of the upcoming Necron range leaked early and it absolutely increased everyone's hype for Indomitus.

The core book has more than 200 pages of lore and a bunch of path to glory stuff. If you don't care about either of those, just buy the ghb.

You only have to look at the sales numbers. GW's sales increased by 30% this year. If you are projecting production based on sales which were stablish for the last 2 years then you are going to be 30% short. On top of that Cursed City had a massive amount of hype behind it leading up to launch with almost universal praise for the minis. Then you have the fact that a soloable quest game is ideal for these isolated times and you have a recipe for surprising success.

Someone sitting on a throne?

It's worth pointing out that some of the soul wars points changed when the battletome came out. Also we might see price changes on all 25mil units. It also will just take a small change to make them playable. They could well be a Hobgrotz hero that buffs them or a subfaction they're good in, or an expanded selection of allegiance abilities.

Almost certainly one box with 5 vindictors, 10 Hobgrotz or gutrippas and one hero for each faction for £32.50. A bigger box with 10 Hobgrotz and 10 gutrippas, 5 vindictors, 3 preators and whichever heroes aren't in the other box for £65. A third box with exactly the same contents plus some scenery for £105 The Stormcast big sprue has Yndrasta, 3 annihilators and the vexillor. The Kruleboyz big sprue has the big monster the murknob and the boltboyz. These will be sold individually at a very high price. This is pretty easy to guess by looking at the sprue breakdowns and comparing to the 40k starter boxes.

That's still a big if. They haven't mentioned the app at all which is actually somewhat encouraging. On the rumour front I really hope we get a hint of the next releases for Stormcast and Kruleboyz before pre-orders go up. It would help me decide whether I'm going to fully commit to one of these factions.

I live in Japan. It's virtually impossible to find space for a 6 by 4 table in most houses. Most people don't have garages or even gardens. You could probably say the same for anyone who lives in a big city and isn't extremely rich. A game that is designed to be playable on a dining table is a change that may cause short term pain for some people but is far better in the long term. As for the points changes I think as AoS has gone along there has been a definite decrease in points and increase in army size. If the points do all go up it will be a much needed reset which will make the game more affordable, less time consuming to paint, and hopefully faster to play.

I'm pretty firmly in favour of all the changes except coherency. Numbered rules with side bars- good change as it's easier to learn the game. Smaller unit sizes. Good change which should make the combat phase more interesting. A variety of sometimes powerful abilities that can be used at various stages of the game. Adds more strategic decisions. A general that makes the most of these will do well and we may see more games won on skill rather than list (of course a good list will still be very important) Predatory endless spells that move twice. A good change that should bring them into the game. Core battalions. A good change that should (hopefully) improve balance and will give almost every army a chance for one or two drops if they want. This means more roll offs for first turn. 8 pieces of terrain for 2000 points baked right into the core rules. Good but I hope that they can all block line of sight. Priest changes. A good change that offers some counter play. Coherency. Doesn't seem to prevent long chains and limits the effectiveness of a lot of units. I really hope there's more to come on this one.

The commander is the commander of the battalion. It can be any kind of battlefield leader. The sub commander can be a leader with a wounds characteristic of 10 or less. You can have Mannfred as commander and Belladama in the battle regiment, but if you chose Belladama as the battle regiment commander you now can't also include Mannfred. Regarding old battalions. Ben Johnson said in an earlier video that they would be part of the new path to glory. I would be surprised if they were also in match play though they have not yet confirmed they are not.

There is counterplay though. Anything with 6 inch pile in can ignore it. Flying chaff is great. Fly some chainrasps, or fellbats, or 5 squig hoppers over the screen. The shooting player has to decide if they want to waste a command point on clearing the chaff. If they dont spend it, they can't use it against another unit as the chaffe unit will be too close. It's certainly going to have an impact sometimes but its not unbeatable. Also we are getting L-shaped scenery and we still haven't seen the new scenery rules yet.

For me a big problem with the old battalions is that many of them aren't interesting. If you make six different things with six different abilities, competitive players will always choose the most powerful one. So you always saw Fyreslayer players using lords of the lodge which meant that every army would have the exact same 4 units at its core. The new battalions aren't super exciting but they are flexible. In a Soulblight army there are something like 50 ways of creating the command battalion. Presumably they will also be pointed.

In a way FEC are the perfect army. They have small things, medium sized things and big things. You can build a fairly decent army around each or mix them up. The army is one of the cheapest to buy and one of the easiest to paint.

If we think about what armies need updates, there's two ways of thinking about. Some armies lack options, some armies have outdated or resin sculpts. No army falls into both camps. In terms of lacking options the Fyreslayers clearly win that one. I don't think any other army is really in dire straits in that regard. There's an argument for Ironjawz and Bonesplittas but unfortunately I'm not sure Gw sees it that way. Idk just need a rebalance to make Namarti and Lotann worthwhile. In terms of old sculpts Seraphon, Skaven, Mawtribes and Fec are top of the pile. They are all popular armies. It wouldn't surprise me if they all got attention. As for new stuff, Malerion and Tyrion are clearly still missing and need to be brought into the fiction at least. A human faction is missing. Devoted of Sigmar/ Dawnbreakers would absolutely fit the bill. Throw in the new chaos dwarves band you have almost three years of releases.

I think it will probably just be about the Great Gnashtoof.

It should encourage more list variety. It will decrease the power of some of these command abilities. Imagine the three units of 20 skaven example. With multiple units the unleash hell will deal with 20 skaven but that frees the other two units to charge without risk. With more smaller units the combat phase should be more dynamic with the back and forth between players happening more often. Smaller units will be easier to manoeuvre if we get more terrain in 3rd edition.