Chikout

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.

I'm not sure what there is to be upset about for Tzeentch fans. You've had 12 new kits in AoS and 2 very strong battletomes. You have 4 resin heroes but they are all very nice sculpts. Skaven, Seraphon and cities of Sigmar players are looking at you with very jealous eyes.

So skaven and beasts of chaos are in the book. That just leaves Khorne?

The term lazy gets thrown around a bit too much. Maybe it's just because I'm old but it wasn't that long ago that this week's pre-orders would have been an exceptionally full month for gw releases. They make far more minis every year than they ever did before. Before 2nd edition gw had never put out more than 6 battletomes or army books in a single year. The stated aim of 2nd edition was to get every battletome done within two years and make every miniature they sold playable within a book. This is a task they succeeded in. We have also seen every single army get at least some kind of miniatures in second edition. This was unheard of back in the fantasy days when they had fewer armies to deal with and also few game systems to support. I can definitely agree that some of the battletomes felt rushed. I hope that in third edition they can take a bit more time to produce their books. The one thing that irks me is the apparent lack of plan with the overarching release schedule of minis. We always hear in interviews that the minis come first, but we have never heard from the person who decides which minis to make next. Does Jes Goodwin just wake up each morning and just start randomly start sketching? Does Seb Perbet go "I had fun with those Lumineth. Let's make some more!"? It's all a bit of a mystery. I've kind of learnt to stop worrying and enjoy the ride but I can understand the frustration of fans of particular factions.

I really think it's just about the maths. I found this image which shows how much Amazon pays for its shows So let's say you have 12 announced shows with an average of 5 hours of content each. If 100,000 people watch these shows gw gets $360,000. If those same 100,000 people each sign up to Warhammer+ for $10 and then unsubscribe after just one month having watched all the shows, gw gets $1,000,000.

We will probably see the Kragnos pre-order announced tonight. Presumably we will get another 4 box sets. I'm also really looking forward to seeing what they've done with the Kroak and Alarielle warscrolls. Hopefully their power levels end up much closer to each other.

Again, I think people are looking at this backwards. GW's miniature sales are doing exceptionally well to the point that they can't keep up with demand. They really don't need more people buying minis right now. What they want is new revenue streams. As for why not YouTube or Netflix it's simple maths. The most popular youtuber has over 100 million subscribers and makes 20million dollars a year from YouTube ads. That's 20 cents per subscriber per year. Let's say gw charges $5 a month and gives half of that to the content creators. They could make $20million a year with just 670,000 subscribers. If GW makes half that much each year, they would probably call the service a success.

They definitely look very like lotr orcs.

I like the stormcast from that snippit. Not sure about the headress on that kruel boy. I'm curious to see what Warhammer plus actually contains. If they throw in the audio books I might be tempted.

Those are absurd numbers from gw. Last year's profit was already a record. They are making more profit now than their total revenue from five years ago. I'm glad to see them sharing a bit of that profit around, but it unfortunately shows that their pricing structure isn't going to change any time soon.

And the finger positioning is much better. It's amazing how much difference such a small detail can make.

That's an awesome model. It's a real shame it's event exclusive. I'm pretty sure there's absolutely no way for someone in Japan to get hold of one.

You rather misquoted me there. I very clearly stated that I don't think the imbalance of factions is a good or fair choice. I'm not saying they should do a combined Duardin book, I'm saying there's a good chance they will. In my posts I haven't been trying to say what gw should do, I'm trying to imagine what they will do, hence the reference to past behaviour. Gw makes do many marine kits because they are a safe product to make with guaranteed sales. After six years gw probably has a pretty good idea of which AoS factions sell well and I fear that the Fyreslayers aren't it. I don't think Fyreslayers will join their 40k cousins in oblivion but I don't think expanding the range is a priority for gw. I love the lore and art of the Fyreslayers but in order for me to actually collect the army I think gw would need to redo the core kits with a bit more personality and variety. Unfortunately I don't see them doing that anytime soon.

Slyvaneth have just one Aelf in their ranks. Kurnothi and Umbraneth aren't a thing yet. Unfortunately for Duardin fans, the scales have always been tilted in the favour of the Aelves. In old 8th edition there were three elf books and only one for dwarves. Even in 40k the scales are firmly tipped in the favour of the space Aelves. They have 3 factions and the term squatted exists for a reason. I'm not saying that's a good or fair choice but that's how it is. In any case it's really the poor old humans who are hard done by. They have just one book which they share with the Aelves and the Duardin