Chikout

Do you mean the rules or the book overall? I think the Kroak change is good, the Sylvaneth update is good, the skaven stuff is good, the two endless spell hunters are good. Kragnos is fine except for the points. It's only really the Slaanesh minis and Kragnos's points that are poor. I can understand the disappointment people feel about the gloomspite stuff but putting all those rules in the same place was a sensible move. There are certainly other things that it would be good to have like a Kragnos allegiance and rules for the other destrucion factions but that doesn't make the book itself bad. All that said, I think the series has been pretty great so a merely decent book probably will end up being the worst.

Less than twelve hours to go now!! I'm very curious to see how much stuff they squeeze into the box. I would be willing to pay more if they upped the contents to match. Some Stormcast cavalry and some troggoths would be amazing.

So my question is about the three in the back. They all look new but is it a giant and two troggoth sized things or a troggoth and two normal sized things?

I'm rubbish at art so apologies. I think the face looks like this with two leather flaps hanging down on either side of his helmet. The blue part is a horned metal skull on his chest plate. The horn motif seems to be common. We saw it in the video too. Maybe it is a reference to Kragnos???

Regarding the actual topic, I don't think it's debatable that the battletomes vary in quality and power both internally and externally. The wight kings command ability that literally does nothing is a good example. There's no way around it, it's just a bad rule and unfortunately there's a few of those in almost every battletome. There's no question that gw is capable of producing great rules. Aside from the points cost the DoK battletome is excellent. There's just no consistency. I think a big part of the problem is the increase in the number of books which did not result in a increased number of rules writers. As far as I'm aware there are just 3 rules writers in the AoS team and there have already been 8 books this year. That means each writer is expected to do 2 books a month. It's no surprise the quality control is poor. Gw needs to double the size of the rules writing team and add a couple of developers to do what we all do and kick the book back when they see a problem. Unfortunately gw isn't particularly likely to do that. In a year when no-one could play together, they made more money than ever. As to what the community can do, it always surprises me that we are happy to tear expensive models apart for conversions but wouldn't dare to adjust a few numbers in our own games.

Bin is the British English for trash can. It's essentially saying you should just throw the battletome away, that the writers work has 0 value.

That's another intriguing sillouette. Just a day and a bit to go. The bin guy and sin guy thing us just a meme. There are at least three rules writers.

I'm not saying rules that are lacking in thought don't exist. I'm saying that what I've seen so far for Kragnos doesn't fall into that category. I'd agree that the vampire lore is poor, but Kroaks death rule is interesting.

The actual warscroll hasn't leaked yet. Someone just posted that exact summary on another forum in the dreggs of the internet.

All the talk of lazy and 'bin guy' is really quite frustrating. I'm really not sure what people want from their rules. There are a few things to think about. First is that gw writes rules for narrative flavour first. That means that Kroak is still Kroak when he gets a new model. Alarielle is still Alarielle. I see the similar warscrolls as consistent and not lazy. Kroak needed a nerf and he got one without fundamentally changing the way he plays. His death mechanic introduces a bit of randomness which I think is a good thing. AoS is a dice game. Alarielle got several buffs, a 2d6 heal, a better spell, a better living battering ram and a chance for an instant kill. Whether that's worth the points is another matter. Kragnos is a fun beatstick who can do a lot of damage but isn't unkillable. Again points may be an issue. Putting all the gloomspite rules in one place is a good decision but I can understand the frustration of people wanting more, especially players of the other destrucion armies. It is my opinion that the likes of Lumineth, Tzeentch, Seraphon and DoK are the problematic books. I believe that if every book came in at the level of the Soulblight or Mawtribes, the game would be in a better place.

Am I reading this right? Kragnos is 760 points but an 18 wound Kroak that can totally heal himself is 430. That doesn't seem right. Edit: I'm seeing on Twitter that Alarielle is 760, and Kragnos is 480. That would be a much better number for Kragnos and I really hope Alarielle has got a significant buff for those points.

I like that silhouette a lot. If they can make the faction as characterful as the gobbapalooza, they are onto a winner.

I think there are a lot of factors going into this discussion especially the idea that a soup book means a particular thing. It's worth looking that GW's past behaviour to see what actually happens. First we have the idea that soup means no new models. If we look at the evidence we have a mixed bag. Mawtribes combined a got a new hero and a scenery piece. Warclans combined and got nothing, but later got 2 underworlds warbands. Legions of Nagash got nothing but later got unsouped into three different books with more than 40 new kits. Cities got nothing until now. From this we can assume that the decision to soup a book means there won't be a large number of kits for that faction for a while, but it doesn't mean nothing. Second is the idea that one or more of the subfactions will lose their identity. In warbands both armies are able to play as they did before but with improved rules and the get to combine together. Mawtribes is similar. Cities of Sigmar took a bunch of old kits and gave players a wide variety of interesting ways to play with them. Some legions of Nagash players are unhappy that they no longer get to mix nighthaunt and Soulblight. From a rules perspective almost every army has either stayed the same or improved when souped. From a lore perspective it's true that some things might be lost but all battletomes are not the same length. The sons of Behemat lore section is 33 pages while the Slaanesh section is 51 pages. So there may be some lost lore but not a huge amount. As for the identities of the factions nothing really changes. The Ironjawz didn't suddenly start running around naked when the books combined. Based on all of this the decision to soup a book is likely due to the fact that there aren't any miniature updates coming for those factions for a while, as we know that minis always come first. The sad reality is that gw doesn't do big updates for every faction every edition. In second edition gw put out 11 major waves of minis. So that's less than half of the current factions. Over in 40k we are almost a year into 9th edition and we still have only had major updates for marines and Necrons. On current pacing that's an update for every army every six years. Fyreslayers are currently 5 years old so they won't qualify as an abandoned army until the end of next year. With a new destruction update and more Stormcast that leaves 10 or so battletomes which will get big updates this edition. That means most factions will get a hero or two and maybe a warcry or underworlds warband. It's sad that your favourite faction might go without updates while the stormcast get a lot of attention but it's an unfortunate fact of the way gw (or indeed any company; where's my waverace switch) do business. I personally would love every subfaction to get its own book. I would love a battletome troggoths or a battletome Clan Eshin or a battletome Devoted of Sigmar but it would mean the wait for updates would get even longer. I think soup books can give a lease of life to factions that aren't due for new minis.

Not officially, but as good as. I'd need to go back and check to find the post but a gw person said on Twitter that gw had announced she was in the box when they actually hadn't yet.

I'm pretty sure that's the guy from the video. So that's at least 4 Stormcast heroes then. The 3 silhouettes and Yndrasta who was confirmed to be in the launch box.

I'm genuinely excited to see what new beasties the stormcast get. Everyone says they're just like space marines and they are except instead of square blocky bikes and tanks, they get Gryph chargers, dracoths, dracolines, tauralons and stardrakes and the heroes have Gryph hounds as pets. The idea of sleeker dragon cavalry is enticing.

This is obviously a topic that gets people upset. I want to make my own position absolutely clear. I hope the Duardin get a third battletome that give the opportunity to do a soup army but the KO and Fyreslayers keep their own books. I'm just not sure how realistic that is. I do find some of these reactions a bit strange though. The Duardin used to be one army with slayers and steam Copters fighting together. The KO aren't atheists, they just don't trust the gods. Aether gold is known as Grungi's breath after all, so they must respect him at least a little. As for Aelf soup, it wouldn't surprise me if DoK and Malerion joined together. They could even add the IDK after the Broken Realms alliance. I personally hope that the Kurnothi are part of a new Sylvaneth army when they come. I would love to be able to play a version of that army that doesn't rely on trees. The danger with all this souping is that AoS starts to look like Warhammer fantasy again which I don't want.

I think you may have to prepare yourself. With every additional hint I'm starting to think that a mixed Duardin book is on the cards. I'm still not convinced it's a terrible idea though. The warclans battletome is a pretty good one which gives interesting ways to play both factions individually or combined. There is potential to produce something that gives all Duardin armies a new lease of life. It's also possible that there will be a Slaves to Darkness style book that is its own thing but can pull in units from the other books.

Dominion box contents prediction time. Stormcast: Yndrasta, the two silhouetted heroes, 10 vindictors, 3 annihilators, 5 archers, 3 cavalry. Kruel Boyz, 1 mounted boss, 1 wizard with cauldron, 2 more heroes 20 regular Boyz, 5 wolf riders, 3 troggoths, 6 skirmishers. Rule book, mini battletome books, no dice. Same price as Indomitus for same number of minis.

The article they just put up on the community site has a bit Broken Realms Kragnos info in it so be careful. Yes. They did say spoilers but I assumed it would be for the books that are already out.

I'm optimistic. If you cast your mind back to the launch of AoS2, there were several changes that created haves and have nots out of the gate: free summoning, endless spells, horde discounts command point stacking etc. The changes we've heard about so far for AoS 3 have been faction agnostic; generic battalions, charge reactions, command point changes. These are all changes that either redress imbalances between factions or effect all factions equally. Also the fact that the listlab guy (Smorgan?) seems happy with the new edition is encouraging. As an Honest Warhammer regular you expect him to lean negative if anything. If they can do a version of the 40k scenery rules they can nerf many of the most troublesome warscrolls in one go. There's always a lot of talk about how imbalanced the game is but I can only count about 10 warscrolls that are genuinely problematic: Eels, Morathi, sentinels, Teclis, Kroak, marauders, hearthguard beserkers, horrors, flamers, salamanders, bow snakes. Changes to battalions and better line of sight blocking scenery would help with 8 of those.

I've been thinking about gw's sales results. They increased sales by 30% this year. Even allowing for a 10% increase in prices that's still an awful lot more stock that gw has shifted this year. It's reasonable to assume that gw based their production numbers for Cursed City on how well Blackstone Fortress sold. This was a decision that was probably made at least a year ago. Now Gw suddenly has 20-30% more customers clamouring for a product that generated a lot of prerealease buzz. With the hindsight of those surprisingly high sales numbers it's not surprising that Cursed City sold out much faster than GW planned for. It's also not surprising that Gw might struggle to allocate a slot for a reprint especially with AoS 3 and a new Ork box set on the way. It doesn't excuse the terrible communication but it does explain a lot.

With 2.0. The core box launched alongside Malign Sorcery; the endless spell box. The two battletomes arrived together a few weeks later.

I think forgeworld just morphed into specialist games. Forgeworld first started making 40k and fantasy kits when the main studio was much smaller and wasn't capable of making really big kits. Now the main studio can make practically anything except titans. Many forgeworld kits have been made into plastic kits. When they were made the chaos dwarves they were the 16th army. Now they are the 25th. There simply isn't the need for forgeworld to do 40k or AoS kits anymore. Meanwhile the specialist games studio is running more and more games. They are up to 6 now, with a massive Warhammer fantasy range on the way. This is where all the forgeworld resources are going and while it's sad to lose some of the cool monsters, I think it's the correct decision.

He's a big scary monster that actually does a lot of damage. That's good to see. He really does have the potential to blow up monsters when he charges in.