Sception

Rules-wise, Petrifex is my favorite so far. Lore-wise, though, I'm all about the Null Myriad. For color scheme,I'm waffling between multiple thoughts:

Rules-wise, Petrifex is my favorite so far. Lore-wise, though, I'm all about the Null Myriad.

i expect that it will be a summoning rather than healing mechanic, earning points for nearby casualties, and spending points to summon new units from a list. That's just guess work, though.

I'm hopeful, I just don't want to count chickens.

Considering Nagash's bodies are themselves temporary expendible tools that can be manifested anywhere with enough dead matter and death magic, explodey nagash wouldn't even be unfluffy. But yeah, I expect subfaction boosts will only apply to models with an 'ossiarch' keyword separate from whatever allegiance specific keywords that Nagash, Arkhan, and, sadly enough, maybe even morghasts will pick up to be included in the army.

In defense of your group, the way things technically work is extremely counterintuitive, a case of GW prioritizing rules that are short and easy to write over rules that make sense and are easy to understand, which has been a problem since GW started priding themselves on how short the core rules for their games are.

Sounds good and fair and fair and good. Just like old mystic shield. 😛

Personally I love the Ossiarchs, but again there's no accounting for personal tastes, and I admittedly have perhaps an outsized affinity for cartoonish aesthetics. I'm not surprised they went for infantry ogres rather than beastclaws. After all, they're the 'newer' part of the new ogre release, at least in terms of AoS attention. The models themselves, though, are all very old at this point, and don't necessarily hold up all that well. It's going to make it hard to find ogre players to split boxes with, as most established ogre players will already have all the bulls, leadbelchers, and ironblasters they could want, and while they might have purchased a cool new plastic tyrant model on its own, I imagine few will want to split an entire box for *just* a new tyrant model when it's not like they don't have perfectly workable old models for that unit. You'll basically need to find either a brand new ogre player, or a post-AoS beastclaw player looking to expand out into the wider ogre range now that they're getting rolled back into the same faction.

Honestly none of this stuff is meaningfully copyrightable in terms of preventing cheaper substitute model lines. Even something like the stormcast eternals - when you get down to it what are they? Fantasy dudes & dudettes in beefy plate armor. Some have swords & shields, some have staves, some have bows, some ride dragons, etc. None of that is at all copyrightable. Sure, a 3rd party couldn't get away with duplicating their iconography or distinctive helmets or shoulder pads, but you could absolutely put out an entire range of not-stormcasts that are still clearly substitutes for stormcasts that would absolutely hold up to wysiwyg scrutiny in any non-GW tournament that allows 3rd party models. The wacky names & such aren't to stop knockoff models, they're to build a distinctive brand & setting IP, something that could still have licensing value when and if 3d printing takes the floor out of the miniatures market, something that maybe isn't 'right around the corner' but has certainly crested the horizon. Personally, I expect skeletons & zombies will stay a thing in AoS, but will eventually get reworked into maybe a bit more distinctly age-of-sigmary a thing than they currently are.

Pretty much. Complaining about it is heavily contradicted if you still buy it, but not buying it is not at all enough on its own. Again, *if* you think the prices are so high as to be a problem, which I'm not entirely convinced I do.

I like the look of the endless spells, and might try to copy that color scheme for my army in general. I hope we see a how to paint video for one of these on the youtube channe. Particularly for the big claw skeleton - I'd love to see a demonstration of how to do the blending from the ethereal green up into the dark grey head crest.

I'm always leery of the phrase "vote with your wallet". On the one hand, yeah, you shouldn't buy products, especially hobby/luxury products, that you don't think are worth the asking price. But it isn't a system that on its own can be relied upon to produce the best results for the most people, because in that system those with bigger (or looser) wallets get more votes. That's exactly the reason both the mobile and the AAA video game industries are in such a mess right now, as games that are deliberately bad in manipulative ways are able to wring more money out of the small handful of people with too much money or too little impulse control than games trying to be actually good are able to non-coercively earn from a broader base of satisfied customers. But now this post is in danger of veering into discussion of the fundamental contradictions between capitalism and democracy, which is both off topic for the thread and, as a political issue, way off topic for the entire board, so... *shrug*. Anyway, yeah, if you don't think GW products are worth buying, then don't buy them, of course. But if you do think GW is gouging their customers there's no reason your objections should have to start and stop with purchasing decisions. Public complaining about stuff also matters. Complain on social media, signal boost competitors that you think offer similar products for better prices, find and support independent retailers that will let you play on their tables with whatever models you like, etc. For the record, I'm not sure I personally agree that GW *is* gouging. I look at competing model lines and mostly find stuff that is either similarly priced or of significantly lower quality in build materials, sculpts, or both (so long as we're talking about GW plastics, the few remaining finecast models are something else). Granted, competing product prices might also be artificially inflated due to GW's outsized influence on the relatively small minis game market. But even in tangential markets like plastic mecha model kits the comparisons still mostly hold out. Also most other games don't expect you to use as many models on the table at a time, but even GW promotes a lot of smaller scale games right now, and has reworked their main games to better support smaller scales than they have in the relatively recent past. AoS in particular is a lot friendlier to 1000 point games than WHFB was towards the end of its life, particularly with multiple small game variants. Anyway, point is while GW prices are high, I'm not sure I'm convinced they're unreasonably high when compared to other similar products, but if you are then by all means vote with your dollars AND complain about it publicly.

I'll be skipping the dice myself. They do look a bit awkward to tell the numbers - not unworkable but still an unnecessary, if however minor, slowdown on rolls. Plus I'm still happy with my legion of nagash dice. As for the box set... I hope I can find someone to split it with, as I don't expect the hero in it will be available separately any time soon, judging by other recent box set releases. I'm not going to get the whole box just for myself, though.... Definitely getting the book & the terrain.

Fingers crossed.

Lore is pretty much what I expected, and I love it. Art is nice, too. 'Necrotopia' is a fun word. All in all, I'm pretty hype, though some rule previews would be nice.

Is anyone else surpeised that the soulmason is a generic hero? To me, with the elevated throne, fancy hat, extra arms, confident smirk, and passive pose, the model just feels too special not to be a special character. And imo the hero lineup would have made more sense, as we'd have fighty hero (cavalry), support hero (coffin), offensive mage (scythe), and support mage (boneshaper). Then there'd be three special characters, matching the nighthaunts, with a faction leader, a fighty special character, and a casty special character, one combining offensive and support magic. I love the soulmason, but making it a generic hero really throws off the balance, imo. Plus, while I love the model singularly, I can hardly imagine running multiples of it.

My own reaction could not be more the opposite, and I love this guy in particular possibly more than anything else in the new range that's been previewed so far. Officially anyway, that one casterish looking model from the leak that hasn't been previewed yet, the one sculpted in the process of assembling a new ossiarch body, I maybe like a bit more. But this guy's still right up my alley - caster looking guy, spirit manipulation, big fancy hat, weird bone construct chair, yeah that all works for me. The rear view of the model - with the random teeth & dangling fingers, I don't like as much. but regardless, taste is subjective, so I'm not saying you're wrong to dislike it. Hopefully we'll get some rule previews soon, though. That's what I'm most eager for.

That's been the safe bit since the 'Bone to Pick' preview, which included this line: "Able to order" is odd wording to go with if we were actually going to be able to get our hands on the models in october, so the most likely bet has always been 'pre-orders in the last weekend of october, actual release in either the first weekend of november'. Actual october release is extremely unlikely at this point, but first weekend of november isn't exactly guaranteed either - sometimes GW does two week preorders, so it's still entirely possible that the actual release won't come until november 9th.

No prob. If you are skirting line of sight, remember that some terrain only blocks line of sight to non-fliers. Forests for instance typically block line of sight through them, but only if neither the attacker nor the target can fly.

nope. If you play Grand Host of Nagash you don't get access to grand alliance artifacts and command traits, just those of the grand host itself. If you're playing with the realm of battle rules from malign sorcery, you also have access to the artifacts of whatever realm you choose for your army to be based in. If you're looking for additional durability, the realm of death's ethereal amulet is pretty good on a vampire lord on zombie dragon. For a regular vampire lord the grand host's deathforged chain and balefire lantern are ok, but mostly you want to use your relatively smaller size and flying or mounted movement to skirt line of sight blocking terrain while presenting larger centerpiece threats to distract enemy attention from your infantry heroes, because even with defensive artifacts they're not terribly survivable.

Supposedly they're on smaller bases than stormcasts, which means gw might intend them to be hoardy. Not as hoardy as skeletons, maybe, but still more akin to grave guard than liberators in terms of 'eliteness'. Which could easily see the infantry unit want to run in blocks of 30 to be effective, needing multiple such units to meet battle line requirements, yet still sold in boxes of ten for upwards of £40.

Not any more. It's points cost was removed from the most recent general's handbook. In casual play with opponent's consent you could call it the same cost as the regular guardian of souls, because that's what it used to be, but it won't be legal for most organized & tournament play.

I'll definitely be getting some bonereaper stuff. Apart from the book, I'm not sure what though. Waiting on points & rules before I decide. Hopefully there's a functional Arkhan list to be had out of it.

Link?

I wouldn't say Legions of Nagash perfectly sorted out undead models. It has a number of problems, including too much redundancy (zombies, skeletons, & grave guard are all too similar in their abilities and battlefield role for all three to be viable simultaneously), a number of units that are just kind of bad, etc. A better & more fleshed out set of battalions could have helped there, but we got what we got. It was and is a very cool book, but it already feels very out of date. I for one do not expect bonereapers to be added to existing legions except as an allies. I think the devs are gunshy about that after what happened with Grimghasts, which honestly they maybe should be. Personally, I would have much rather seen grimchasts removed from the legions rather than the wave of points hikes for every unit ever fielded next to Nagash, but it is what it is. We might see a 'legion of the necropolis' with bonereapers and *some* legion stuff in it, similar to the legion of grief, but I'm not holding my breath. Guessing at future releases? Soulblight will likely see a separate release. If bonereapers go over well we might see a future expansion to them. Beyond that, though? They could still release a separate deathrattle book, but at this point I doubt it. Between old skeleton stuff being covered in the Legions book and any new skeleton stuff potentially competing with bonereapers it just doesn't seem likely. There are still some general undead concepts that could make for interesting factions - mortal worshippers of Nagash, non-human undead - maybe an undead elf faction if Nagash manages to sneak into the Slaanesh piñata party, a frankenstein style fleshy necromantic horror faction maybe - but hard to say if any particular idea is likely to be realized. It would be nice to see an actual expansion to FEC with some actual new units and models, but with the 2e non-expansion still quite recent it seems pretty clear we won't be getting that any time soon. In terms of wishlisting, what I'd *like* to see remains largely unchanged. I'd *like* to see the Legions broken up into smaller factions, then those smaller factions expanded, with a separate Deathlords book including Nagash, the Mortarchs, Morghasts, general Death alliance rules, and legion rules combining particular subfactions from other books. In my wishlist version of this the Morghasts themselves would be expanded into a faction of their own with smaller, flightless troop versions and other dread-abyssal style bone constructs, so that's basically just the Ossiarchs. So if I had my way we'd get: And as long as we're talking pie in the sky, not gonna happen pipe dreams, my dearest wish: Death Elves.