swarmofseals

I'm not really sure what to make of these changes. Having the army not be invalidated entirely is obviously nice, of course. The rest though seems like a mixed bag. Fireglaives - Improved Ironsworn - Mixed bag, mostly worse Battle Standard - Improved Castellan - Mixed bag, mostly worse Daemonsmith - Mixed bag Bull Centaur Renders - Mixed bag, mostly worse Bull Centaur Taur'ruk - Sidegrade K'daii Fireborn - Mixed bag, mostly better Iron Daemon - Mixed bag, unsure Skullcracker - Nerfed (probably) Deathshrieker Rocket Launcher - Mostly buffed Dreadquake Mortar - Nerfed Magma Cannon - Nerfed (very slightly, but may actually be better anyway) Drazhoath The Ashen - Nerfed (I know this will be controversial) Shar'Tor The Executioner - Sidegrade Blackshard Warhost - Depends on how you look at it Hashut's Wrath Artillery Train - Sidegrade Execution Herd - New Allegiance Package - New Overall I don't think things have changed drastically at least from a competitive standpoint. The new stuff is definitely great from a "rule of cool" perspective, particularly the Execution Herd. I fear though that competitively the army is getting narrower and narrower. I'm having a hard time imagining anything aside from massed Magma Cannons and Fireglaives being competitive. Something like 9x10 Fireglaives, a BSB, a Daemonsmith, 4 Magma Cannons and 2 Jabberslythes seems like it could do some work, but I'm not really sure that it's even all that good.

Ohh good. I hadn't seen the new commentary yet, but I'm glad they cleared that up.

I've been thinking quite a bit about Morathi and list design recently and I'd love to hear from some of you what your experiences using her has been like. Morathi is just a really weird warscroll (pair). I'm definitely an efficiency hound, and warscrolls that do a bit of everything aren't super appealing to me. Neither form of Morathi is particularly efficient. Shadow Queen's damage is pretty mediocre for a 480 point model, and she doesn't do a whole lot more than that in that form. In her oracle form she's by far the best spellcaster that we have access to (with the extra range being particularly useful with the increase to unbound range. The problem is that it's hard for her to have enough impact on the game as a pure spellcaster to justify the 480 point investment. If you throw her command ability into the mix then you're cooking with gas, but unfortunately the opportunity cost of making her the general is tremendous. Hagg'Narr just adds so much with the command trait, and you lose access to that if Morathi is the general. The difference between giving all your Witch Aelves a 5+ and a 6+ is really game changing due to the re-roll prayer. If the metagame ends up being extremely shooting heavy or if Hagg'Narr gets nerfed to require the units to be wholly within range of the general for the command ability, then Khailebron will become a lot more attractive. In that case Morathi becomes more interesting as the general (although Khailebron's command trait is also powerful enough that you might not want to lose it, particularly with Chronomantic Cogs and the reroll-charge command ability making charges from 9" much more doable. Then you have to factor in that oracle Morathi is a 6 wound model. Her -1 to hit and Look Out Sir will clearly make a difference here, but she's still very vulnerable to anything that deals wounds without a hit roll. She can't be one shot, of course, but 80 points per wound is still ludicrously high. So overall Morathi strikes me as a model that isn't really worth her points cost in either form currently. Add in the fact that she might transform against your will (and her transformed version is a LOT worse if wounds are getting doubled) and the picture looks bleak. All that being said, there is an important lesson that I learned long ago from playing competitive Magic: in a context where you are facing a variety of unknown opponents, flexibility adds a lot of value. In Magic, a card that can do a couple of different relevant things can be overcosted for each of those modes and still be a tournament-caliber card. I think it's worth considering if this is the case with Morathi, particularly given that Witch Aelves and Sisters of Slaughter are so efficient that the army can afford to give up some efficiency elsewhere. I can see High Oracle being very useful for matchups where you really need to resolve an early spell like cogs or where Mindrazor will have a huge impact and being able to cast it outside of unbind range will be critical. I think that these situations will be fairly rare but they do exist. On the other hand, I can imagine Shadow Queen being extremely powerful in any matchup where objectives are preferentially held by heroes or behemoths. Her ability to stay alive for a couple of turns guaranteed is amazing in these matchups, particularly combined with her speed. She'll also do a lot of work against opponents who bring very tough units (2+ rerollable saves) that Witch Aelves really can't handle. Her gaze ability is also nice in that the mere threat of it will force opponents to maintain tighter unit coherency. In the end though this is all theory and I'd really love to supplement it with impressions from folks who have more substantial game experience with her. ____________________________ Side note: there is a quirk in the wording of her rules that I haven't really seen anyone comment on yet, so I feel that I should bring it up. The Iron Heart of Khaine: "...cannot be healed, but no more than 3 wounds can be allocated to her in any one turn. Any additional wounds and/or mortal wounds allocated to her in the same turn are negated" Fanatical Faith: "Roll a dice each time a wound or mortal wound is allocated to a friendly Daughters of Khaine model. On a 6+ the wound is ignored." I might be wrong about this, but my impression is that most people read the first rule as basically "Morathi can't suffer more than 3 wounds in a turn." The way the rule is actually worded, however, is that any wounds that are allocated to Morathi beyond the first three are automatically negated. Fanatical Faith kicks in after the wound is allocated. Based on a strict rules-as-written interpretation, then Morathi should only ever be allocated 3 wounds in a single turn regardless of whether those wounds end up being negated by Fanatical Faith (or any other method that occurs after the wound is allocated. If GW does in fact intend to have the rule work in the way that most people think, then either Iron Heart of Khaine should be reworded to say "can suffer no more than 3 wounds" or something similar OR Fanatical Faith should be reworded to say "Roll a dice each time a wound or mortal wound would be allocated ... On a 6+ the wound is negated rather than allocated." If GW actually intends the strict rules-as-written interpretation, then that is a bit of a game changer and makes Morathi (particularly Shadow Queen) MUCH more powerful.

In fairness that "beta" section only included points changes that GW had officially announced that they were testing between GHB2016 and GHB2017. I don't think it was ever updated to reflect rumored or leaked points changes. With respect to the larger question of rumors vs. announcements, I think that perhaps it would be helpful if the mods would weigh in about what this thread is really intended to be. In practice it's a mix of discussion of recent announcements and insinuation about leaked information with some very occasional actual rumors. Given the site's policy about leaked info, does it even make sense to have a "Rumor Thread"? If we're only to be discussing officially announced information, would it be better to have a "Lets Chat: Recently Announced Stuff" thread instead? I honestly don't have an opinion on this, nor is it my place to. But I do have an opinion that there appears to be a lot of confusion about what this thread is supposed to be and it would be great to get some understanding.

Just because she's better than Vandus Hammerhand (who is horribly overcosted) doesn't mean she's undercosted. She does a lot of cool stuff, yes, but she is also 40 points per wound with unremarkable defense. 40 points per wound is awful.

While I generally think that GW is moving in the right direction by putting up a lot of teasers for new content and building hype rather than the old silence-until-preorder plan, I can't help but feel that it's the wrong strategy for something as major as a new edition. The problem I have with this trickle of information is that each morsel is really impossible to digest without the context around it, and it has predictably led to no end of pointless flailing by the fanbase. For every new thing that I see which strikes me as interesting, there are more that might have a seriously disruptive effect on the game, but it's impossible to tell because we lack the full context. My initial reaction to the new spell lores and artefacts was "wow, cool! That will be really interesting to build around." Now that we know that they are specific to the realm that the individual battle takes place in, I am left wondering how that system will work. Is it intended for just open and narrative play? The rules make sense in that context -- you just work it out with your opponent beforehand as to what realm the battle will be on. How will it work for matched play and tournaments though? Do you determine the realm randomly at the start of the game? Will tournaments need to specify the realm along with the battleplan for each round? If so, are players going to need to pick their spells and artefacts during the setup of each game? That could lead to some serious headaches with players needing to pause for a substantial amount of time to make choices before the battle starts, and for tournaments it could lead to some really painful overhead where players have to bring a different list (well, different spell and artefact choices) for each round rather than just one list. It'll be a pain for players to remember all the differences from round to round. Is GW expecting that tournaments will generally be set on a specific realm for all their rounds? If so that would eliminate the overhead discussed previously but it would add an additional layer of balancing problems where a given army will perform dramatically differently depending on the realm of battle. Banishment is such a cool spell, but it's powerful enough to be really broken. A tournament where banishment is available is going to be dramatically different from one where it isn't. I'm sure there are other spells that are similarly impactful. I feel so weird reading these previews. On the one hand I'm stoked for cool new stuff to use, but on the other hand I'm so stumped by the lack of explanation as to how these rules will function in practice that it really kills my hype. My suggestion to GW: Next time you do this, don't be so scattershot as to how you preview things. The first few previews should cover the key core mechanics that are necessary to understand the implications of the other changes. It's clear that the realm a battle takes place in will now be a very important factor that influences the way a lot of these secondary rules work. It'd have been a good idea to make the very first article a basic explanation of how the realms will work in the three main ways to play. If we had that information, then the other teasers would make so much more sense. Another example might be command points. Wouldn't it have been better to get an in depth article explaining how CP works in the new edition at the very start of the previews?

I'm doubtful that it's a gravesite marker. Usually it's months between rumor engine pics and the actual model release!

Ohh, I'm definitely withholding judgment until I have all the info!

As you've probably seen a lot of Death players are upset at what they see as significant nerfs to the already weakest grand alliance. I'm not so sure this is accurate given that we don't have even close to the whole picture. If you have enough info to posit that these scroll leaks are real, I don't suppose you could add anything that might calm down the shambling masses do you?

I suspect that they won't be. This is speculation to some degree, but up until now GW has generally kept special characters as relatively niche. Even the ones that see a good deal of competitive play (like Kairos) are far from mandatory and typically get taken in addition to a generic warscroll of the same type (IE: Kairos + LoC) as opposed to instead.

Yeah, I sure hope so. In the past they have only changed warscrolls when a new kit was released (if I recall correctly) with the one exception of the Grundstok Thunderers "fix" in the GHB. This would be the first time (I think) that they might change warscrolls without a new kit accompanying the change.

I just want to say that I am incredibly stoked for this book. I was afraid that the next Death release would be a new standalone death faction that didn't really work with the old models and that the old models would remain relatively unplayable. Even if this book features no new models, it's a huge boon to those of us who are already invested in Death. I'm really hoping that they will go back and change some warscrolls and not just tweak points. It would set a nice precedent if they were to do this. New spell lores will be nice but I think warscroll changes are likely needed to actually make death competitive.

It's funny -- I hate Stormcasts and have been longing for some sort of Death release for a long time and yet I'm not bothered by the "Deathcast" idea as long as they aren't just Stormcasts with skulls on them (as others have said). If they look more like Stormcast sized morghasts I'll be pretty stoked.

2 real EDIT: My hope for this release: New Death releases get integrated with existing stuff like with Tzeentch and Khorne before them. Battletome covers all the death stuff to a degree, even if the new models form their own subfactions. New stuff and old stuff play well together. My fear for this release: New Death stuff is completely standalone and doesn't synergize at all with the existing Death line (like with Kharadrons with respect to Dispossessed).

It's clearly the loincloth for a Nighthaunt Zombie Cthulhu Aelf Vampire!

The positive: at first I disliked the new model, but after I gave it some thought I warmed to it considerably. My initial reaction was more of the "ugh, plate bikini" variety. Then I considered that the model has a bunch of positive qualities. She's strong and neither her body or her pose is overly sexualized. There's no gratuitous cleavage or hip cocking etc. She has the build of a seriously athletic lady. Given the overall look of marauders she fits right in. The negative: the lack of content is ridiculous. Dating back to the Spring it seems like basically every time some new info has been hyped it's completely disappointed. We don't have even a sniff of the new Aelves that were supposed to have been teased months ago. Those rumors then gave way to new Death and Nurgle which have also failed to materialize. We've got some *very* minor teasing there but nothing real. This is getting really frustrating, and eventually it's going to start damaging the reputations of the people that have been hyping up these nothingburger press releases. The speculation: I'm starting to wonder if GW was actually planning to give out more information on several of these occasions but has had to pull back because of production problems. A few pages back wasn't there that letter discussing how production is pushed to the limit right now and therefore large kits are not getting restocked? If GW is having problems stocking their current line then it would be understandable that they would be having real problems launching new releases. Is it possible that GW tends to announce new products VERY close to actual release time simply because they aren't able to accurately predict when stock will be ready? Might they be delaying teasing new stuff for AOS because they simply aren't confident that they can hit a target more than a week or two out?

Off topic, I know, but for those struggling with bases I can't recommend AliExpress enough. The quality is reasonable and massively cheaper than GW. Shipping times weren't even that bad.

Aww c'mon, we're just roleplaying . And I'm pretty sure you meant tireLESS moaning. Newwwwww plaaaasstiiiiiic

Sure, that's certainly fair. I wholeheartedly agree that the lack of a fully fleshed out allegiance kit is a big problem.

Skaven are the Nurgle mortals. Khorne and Tzeentch may have bloodbound and arcanites, but neither has a skaven subfaction. You can't even argue that the mortals faction has to be human either as arcanites are mostly beastmen with one human warscroll. Nurgle mortals are mostly skaven with one human (non character) warscroll. I mean, you may not like Pestilens, but I'm sure not every aspiring Khorne player likes the StD-esque bloodbound and not every Tzeentch player likes tzaangors. It's hardly an imbalance or injustice.

There is some more info in the comments thread of the linked article that is relevant to this: SYLVANETH CHANGES: WANDERERS STUFF: ON MASSIVE REGIMENTS: KHARADON ALLIES: SKYFIRES: SOME SKAVEN POINT CHANGES: STARDRAKE COST DARKLING COVENS: SWIFTHAWK ALLIES: STORMCAST CHANGES:

I thought the bloodlines were the command traits? If they are an allegiance ability then I stand corrected, maybe it will happen after all!

Super stoked by the Chaos GHB preview for a couple of reasons. For one, all of the abilities previewed seem relatively fun and flavorful. I particularly like the Slaanesh ones -- very flavorful and should lead to some really interesting designs. I also really like the way the Skaven abilities were designed, with each getting the basic Strength in Numbers ability and then a second ability that fits with the clan. Honestly this would be a great design to use with Death and Destruction, too. Give each faction a toned down version of Rampaging Destroyers/Deathless Minions along with a secondary faction specific ability. I think what we saw with Soulblight probably rules this out, though. I also love that the StD ability includes wording about reinforcement points in the text, and it makes me hopeful that we will see more abilities like this. Transformation abilities (like the StD ones or the ability on the Coven Throne) are so flavorful and they have interesting gameplay implications, so seeing them given at least a small place in matched play is really nice.

I suppose that'll be one way to get a celestial hurricanum! I have such a feeling that Death is going to be even worse in GHB2017 ><

This is pretty much why I'm sour on Death at the moment. Basically either they keep their GA abilities and all the new sub-allegiance stuff will just be window dressing, or they take a nerf bat with the loss of their GA package. That said, this could be offset somewhat with point reductions and if other armies are getting some point increases in the problematic stuff it could wash out. That said, it's also very possible that Death will just continue to suck or suck even worse until they get a real battletome.