Chikout

I've said this a few times but unfortunately, based on past and current practices, it is impossible for gw to do proper waves of releases for every faction within one edition. We will get at most 12 full sized waves of minis this edition, with one off heroes or underworlds warbands for the rest.

I was just comparing to 2nd edition. I think we can expect to see multipart kits for all the infantry units, 1 more new hero, 1 cavalry kit and maybe a new centrepiece model, though Yndrasta kind of fills that role. Another thing I noticed is that if you swapped the Kruleboyz for another set of Stormcast and added the two extra kits you would have a 2,000 point army with a few spare hero kits and the rulebook for well under £200. That's really not bad especially by gw standards.

I think it's highly likely that we see the Chaos Dwarves or whatever they end up being called within the first year. I wonder if the hobgrots will end up being useable in that book too. It would be a good way to tempt players into the army.

The Broken Realms Alarielle rumour is something I don't believe. It's possible that when they were first planning the books a couple of years ago, they considered doing 5 books including Alarielle but they eventually settled on 4. That's not cutting though as they would never have written the book. Taking 2 books, rewriting the story to fit in half the number of pages, re-editing everything, redoing the page layouts, cutting a bunch of art etc, etc. This is a lot of work, almost as much as doing a book from scratch. The short story subscriptions are always done in runs of 5 because there are 5 week days. It's as simple as that. Commissioning one extra piece of art is trivial compared to what the conspiracy theorists are suggesting. This is definitely an Occam's razor situation. To get back to actual rumours. With the Sisters book this weekend and the range being a two week release, it seems highly likely that Dominion will go on pre-order on June 19th and release on July 3rd. It's annoying but when gw talks out dates it's always pre-order and not release. I'm hoping for a long run of daily articles running up to launch and was slightly surprised to see nothing yesterday.

To give some context, the Nighthaunt were in a very similar position. They got their own battletome but they could also be used in legions of Nagash. They received 8 kits that were not represented in the core box. I expect the Kruleboyz to receive a similar number of kits. There a pretty high chance we will see some kind of cavalry option.

I'm pretty sure that's a new scenery piece in the background. There's a lot of fine detail there.

Except the wolf riders. I hope we see cavalry for both sides later.

That was a very cool video. It was surprising to end it the way they did.

Box art.

Three hours to go and the wait is starting to get difficult. It's currently 11pm here and I'm starting to feel a little sleepy. I preferred the old time slot.

I just had a quick look back at the 40k unboxing video. They showed the minis and the sprues, interviewed Jes Goodwin and some other people and showed off the easy to build kits at the end. There was no specific rules talk. I expect the AoS show to be similar.

After Indomitus launched there were couple of easy to build kits for each faction. I think the most likely scenario is that we see something like that. I'd love a genuine surprise though.

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.