Grimrock

I'd put a lot more work into the scenery rules to make sure it plays a bigger role in the game. Currently they seem to be more or less content with slapping on some extremely generic rules and hoping that the mysterious terrain table is enough to keep things interesting. GW themselves figured out a way to make terrain more interesting and impactful in 9th edition 40k, so it really boggles the mind that we still have it so bad in AoS. At the very least simple rules like extended vertical engagement range, breachable, and obscuring should absolutely be a thing already.

Looks pretty good. The only suggestion I can make is to put the arcane tome on one of the rot coven members for the extra cast/unbind at plus 3. Definitely a solid choice until it gets nerfed somehow.

Merry Christmas all!

Totally agree and I could definitely see them mixing it up a bit more in the future. There are already two different point costs for tzaangors, one in BoC and one in Tzeentch, so I don't see any reason why they couldn't do the same for us with some more typically khorne models like minotaur or khornegors. They've even worked minotaur into the Khorne roster for total war warhammer 3, so hopefully that's a good sign. Although, they didn't do any mixing on the new Nurgle book so maybe it would be hoping too much. If they had had pestigors and a daemon prince it would have been much more promising. Maybe by the time our book comes out (next Christmas according to the rumors... sigh) they'll have a khorne specific daemon prince sculpt for 40k or something since there's supposed to be a big world eaters release this summer.

Do you really think so? I've used a decent number of priests since 3rd dropped and I have yet to actually cast a universal prayer. The undivided prayer on the warshrine is just so so much better, I don't think I'd every really want to except in some weird edge case scenarios. I was assuming the point hike was kind of a targeted nerf to Archaon since the shrine and sorcerer are so good with him. Definitely worth considering, but cutting the warshrine is a real tough call. Those rerolls are so core to getting any kind of consistent damage out. Maybe you're right though, might be worth a shot. An extra unit of varanguard in the list does sound pretty enticing.

Forgive me for being obtuse, but Archaon isn't a coalition unit (he doesn't have the Mark of Chaos keyword) so none of those rules apply to him. What I'm looking for is a definition of what they mean by 'you can still use the army’s allegiance abilities even though this unit is not from the army’s faction; however, this unit does not benefit from them' from the Warmaster rule. Maybe a definition of 'benefitting' I've missed somewhere in the rules? It's such a general term it could mean almost anything. Also as far as I can see they don't spell out what coalition units can and can't benefit from in the Khorne FAQ, they simply modified some rules to specify the Blades of Khorne keyword and then added it to all of the warscrolls in the book. If that's all they intended for Archaon then they didn't need to change his Warmaster rule specifically saying he can't benefit from the allegiance abilities. He already doesn't have the Blades of Khorne keyword. The tweak to the Warmaster rule must mean more than just the tithe table and slaugherhosts.

The big problem is this isn't the first step. They've been doing winter updates and GHB updates for years now and every time we see them we think 'Well, that's not enough but at least they changed something! Maybe next time will be better!'. Sure they've targeted a few of the over performing units, but they've ignored so so many obvious issues. I don't know if I can take this cycle much longer, it's like the designers are playing a totally different game at this point. It's obvious the problems in the game will never be properly addressed since they either don't care or don't have the resources needed to really find good fixes.

I don't know, overall I think it might be a wash. Slaves units losing access to the tithe table and sub factions hurts. Archaon is effectively removed from the army and the prince is a little bit worse than he was since he can't double fight in reapers of vengeance and can't use the tithe table at all. At least he still gets the crimson crown for now. The point changes are better than nothing I suppose but even if you run a lot of wrathmongers and skullreapers you might save what, 50 points? That really isn't enough to buy you anything. The point changes on the heroes are never going to matter. They still offer too little for the army compared to the prime choices (bloodsecrator, stoker, heck even priests) and will never do enough damage compared to bloodthirsters. They could have cut their points in half instead and they'd still be bad. Blood warriors were at least a decent tweak but they're still nowhere near as good as flesh hounds.

Quick question, does anyone know what the technical definition of 'does not benefit from allegiance abilities' is? Like Archaon in a Khorne army for example. I assume he doesn't gain any rules in the allegiance abilities, like the locus that gives reroll 1's to hit, and I assume you can't use the blood tithe table on him, like moving him in the hero phase, but is that all? Prayers are allegiance abilities, can you still cast one of those on Archaon? In plain english gaining a +1 save from bronzed flesh would be benefiting from an allegiance ability. If a bloodthirster takes the command trait that makes all nearby khorne models reroll 1's to hit, does Archaon benefit from it or is that again benefiting from an allegiance ability? I'm sure you can't take a spell from the Tzeentch lore, but can you cast a spell on him in a tzeentch army? Beyond that I'm not a huge fan of the update. There are some good changes to be sure, but overall it was far too light of a touch on the things that are on the bottom end. Slaangors are one of the worst units in the game with glaringly obvious issues, but instead of updating the warscroll they get a 20 point drop. Slaanesh, one of the worst armies in the game, gets a point update for 4 units and that's it. Khorne mortals are in an absolutely terrible place and they get what? Some heroes no one will ever use get cheaper, and a few drops on units that might gain you 50 points in an average list. Maybe 70 if you're leaning into it. Just enough to buy absolutely nothing in the army. Why in the world would they conflate an update like this with the 40k dataslate changes? That at least made deep cuts into the game and fixed issues people have been begging for for years. This was just the usual update with a little better formatting.

Mostly just using what I already owned haha, but I think it has legs at least. Definitely meant to be an all comers list rather than targeting a specific meta/build. Two units of plaguebearers to provide bodies for objective control, two units of kings to provide baseline threat and bully enemy units. Plague drones to provide movement and some ranged threat. GUO for a big hitter that can tank big threats and hit back really hard. I don't really like the Lord of Blights/burning head, but they're there because I had 205 points leftover and wanted another hero.

GUO - witherstave, nurgling infestation - fleshy abundance Lord of Blights 2x5 Blightkings 2x20 Plaguebearers 3 Plague drones Burning Head He was playing with: Keeper Synessa Exalted Chariot Sigvald Shardspeaker 2x11 Blissbarb archers 2x5 hellstriders He summoned a keeper bottom of turn two and got a lucky 12" charge with Sigvald around my screen and onto the GUO while the keeper got a 10" charge into the screen. That one shotted the GUO through mystic shield because the keeper let him fight twice due to the fight first on charge and then picking sigvald again immediately. He did awful with damage on both keepers most of the game though, so the dice weren't all in his favor. The biggest problem was all the healing he could put out (spell from keeper, spell from synessa, heroic action, keepers getting any kills and then using the hand) so if I fell short of getting a kill (which I did on his flaming weapon chariot several times for example) he could heal up and keep in the game. Plus the healing makes disease counters feel extremely bad because they just feed him summoning points like crazy. I certainly made some mistakes and I'd play some things differently, but it felt like a really bad matchup.

Oof, ok got a game in at the FLGS tonight. I played against Hedonites and let me tell you that was a rough matchup. The slow grinding gameplay that Nurgle is really good at? Slaanesh just freaking loves that. We stopped at the bottom of 4, but my opponent had summoned a keeper and an exalted chariot and was easily on track for 2 more keepers by the end of the game. With all the healing they have access to the disease points basically did nothing other than feed him free depravity all game and he just eventually won out on the attrition war. Now granted his dice came through at some clutch moments, but they also absolutely tanked at others. All in all against a competent Slaanesh player with a good number of heroes and Sigvald popping up in Lurid Haze I don't know what we can do to put the fight in our favor. Anyone have any thoughts? Edit: Ha, my 666th post was about having problems fighting slaanesh. Nice.

The battletome takes precedence. The rules in the box are just intended to give people something to play with right away and aren't kept up to date. I'm guessing the rules you have are from AoS 1 before the battletome was released.

To be fair Grand Strategies in general were pretty botched. There are two or three auto takes and the rest are just completely ignored (unless someone gets bored and wants a challenge). It's pretty tough to write a faction specific grand strategy easier than Hold the Line or Prized Sorcery for the right armies. As far as battle tactics go I haven't seen stormcast or kruelboyz, but the maggotkin list has some interesting choices. About half of them are definitely attainable in most games, but what I find most interesting is they're more difficult to counter than the standard tactics. For example when someone picks Break Their Ranks the opponent knows what unit they're going after so they can redeploy/all out defense and do everything to try to protect that unit. In maggotkin there is a tactic to kill more units than you lose. That can be more challenging than killing a single battleline unit, but it doesn't specify a target so a single good redeploy roll or all out defense isn't likely to ruin the whole thing. There are others that are completely dice dependent and unlikely to ever be picked, but there are enough decent ones that I'm happy the list is there.

I think you're underestimating the combat potential of the kings to an extent. Sure they won't usually kill off a deathstar unit or a big monster hero, but anything less is fair game. 25 attacks, 3/3/-1/1 is an excellent profile for battleline and that's before you take into account the pile of mortal wounds they kick out with disease and Relentless Attackers. Plaguebearers are pure anvils, but the combination of offense and defense on the kings makes them something different. From my own games and the ones I've watched it seems like blight kings are excellent bullies. The combination of high resilience and good offense means your opponent is going to want to avoid them the majority of the time, giving them a wide berth on the table to avoid getting charged and only engaging if they have to. That allows the kings to run up and zone off large portions of the table in a way that plaguebearers can't (because no one is afraid of plaguebearers). When they do get to an objective the opponent will be forced to commit resources to taking it back but if they just toss small units out the kings will annihilate them. The 5+ ward forces your opponent to overcommit to guarantee the kings don't survive. Being able to dictate how your opponent plays (zoning off areas of the table, forcing them to over commit) is a powerful tool in the game and I think is worth having one or two units around for.

I like pretty much everything you said, but just as a quick point I don't think you can coalition in warcry cultists right now since they don't have the 'Mark of Chaos' keyword. Too bad really because untamed beasts would be pretty great. I think having a couple units marauder horsemen or maybe just foot marauders would probably help a ton with early objectives but I worry they'd make really obvious targets and just get nuked off the board since they're so squishy. For the plaguebearer discussion: I do think they're worse than they were overall but honestly they were hugely overtuned in order to prop up an old janky book. Their resilience was ridiculous and the damage output with all the buffs was staggering when it lined up. The real question we need to ask is are they good enough now. They provide bodies in an army that can lack them and needs all the help it can get on objectives. That's hugely important. They're resilient enough to last 3-4 rounds against everything but the hardest of hitters, which means that they're going to be tossing out enough disease points to cause 6-8 mortal wounds while they fight. They still get the sloppity and spoilpox buffs and those can be brought in for free much easier due to the reduced summoning costs on those units. They are super slow though and of course their standard damage is terrible so they're pretty much entirely reliant on disease or buffs to do anything. Personally I don't think you can make an army of them anymore, but I do think they're going to be a part of most lists since they're our best objective grabbers.

As far as I can tell yes. The rule says he 'is treated as a general' and befouling host says 'A Befouling Host army that has a DAEMON general'. Since it doesn't say something like 'If the model you picked to be your general is a DAEMON' I think you're in the clear. I got another practice game in. This time I ran a Filthbringers list and put everything in a Battle Regiment: Orghotts Daemonspew - 300 Rot Coven - 360 rotbringer 1 as the general - Overpowering Stench - Arcane Tome - Rancid Visitations rotbringer 2 - Cloying Quagmire rotbringer 3 - Gift of Disease 20 Plaguebearers - 300 20 Plaguebearers - 300 5 Blightkings - 250 3 Plague Drones - 200 2 Pusgoyle Blightlords - 220 Umbral Spellportal - 70 I wanted to try out the arcane tome/umbral portal/rancid visitations combo I saw on Goonhammer, get a feel for another maggoth lord, and see if I liked the blightlords or not. A few thoughts: - Again, disease is solid. Gift of Disease splashed around points really well but it really kicked in once the protracted combats started. One roll at a 4+ doesn't sound like much, but when the opponent starts the turn within 3" of you you're pretty much guaranteed to get 3 disease counters before you even start attacking. 2-3 mortal wounds every turn to most units in the opponent's army starts to add up quickly - I liked Orghotts, and that 3+ native save on him is bonkers, but I think I'm leaning towards Bloab. The big thing is that Orghotts wants to fight big enemy monsters, but against them the additional 4 attacks at rend 1 generally don't do much (because rend 1). The big rend 2 attacks that are common to both Bloab and Orghotts are where the real damage seems to come from. Since Bloab can do more in the turns he's not in combat I'm leaning in that direction - Getting two casts (arcane tome) at a +3 (Rot Coven), putting down a portal and then casting Rancid Visitations through it seems pretty broken. It's the only overly strong thing in the book I've found and I wouldn't be surprised if it gets a nerf somehow. I'm guessing Rancid Visitations gets changed down to a 3+ or 4+ for the mortal wounds, it's mind blowingly good at a 2+ - The pusgoyles didn't really blow me away this game. The chip mortals on the charge are nice, but the ranged attack on the plague drones is just so so good. Either way the speed 8 on both units is super helpful for the army - Blightkings are dumb. I don't know how, but they just seem to take the most ridiculous damage and then shred everything in return. I think the next game I play I'm going to try throwing 20-25 on the table and see how it goes. They don't have the numbers to hold points super well, but they seem to win every fight they get into so far so even if your opponent sneaks up and grabs a point they're going to lose it on the next turn

Thanks! He was a lot of fun to work on and I'm really happy with how he turned out. I was so happy when the changes to 3rd edition fixed all my in game issues with him and I could justify picking him up beyond just being a painting project.

Ok, got a test game and decided to try out a more balanced list with models I mostly own so I got a better feel for the different components. I ran a befouling host with: Great Unclean One - 495 - blade and bell - witherstave - -1 to hit trait - stream of corruption Bloab Rotspawned - 300 - rancid visitations 20 plaguebearers - 300 5 Blight Kings - 250 5 Blight Kings- 250 3 Nurglings - 105 3 Plague Drones - 200 Lifeswarm - 65 Burning Head - 20 I was up against a S2D army running as desploilers with a khorne prince, Be'lakor, tzeentch sorcerer, chaos warriors, marauders, knights, untamed beasts, and a warshrine. My thoughts on the new book so far: - Diseases are pretty fantastic, and running the witherstave made them amazing. It seems uninspiring on paper, but the chip damage made my opponent use pretty much every heroic action after the first turn on healing important models. When the witherstave made it near units with 7 disease counters it was brutal. Tracking was definitely a bit of a pain, but it's not too terrible if you put a token on units for the first point and then use a dice for any additional. That way after you roll for the mortal wounds you just take away the dice and leave the token - Blightkings are legitimately scary. So hilariously tanky and when they hit back with 25 attacks, rend 1 and disease counters it can be pretty gross. They don't need any support now and can happily waddle along and take objectives all on their own. 250 is a lot but I do think they're worth it, at least for 1 or two units - A unit of plague drones was pretty impressive overall. 21 attacks in shooting is nothing to sniff at and 25 in combat is nice, they can really lay out disease counters like no one else. The reduced range on their death heads does suck and it was pretty tricky to maneuver, but I think they definitely have a place - I don't think the army really needs the lifeswarm anymore. Having 2 wound plaguebearers meant it wasn't resurrecting very well and the d3 healing everywhere with locus of fecundity meant it wasn't really needed for anything else - Bloab was so great. -1 to cast for enemies and +1 to cast came in handy every turn and he just does so much work in combat. Solo'd Be'lakor like a champ and just healed his way back up to full afterwards. All the maggoth lords are going to be so much fun - The GUO was fantastic. It sucked losing the +1 to cast with the blade and I think he got off like... one spell all game but he's just so tanky and can do soo much damage now. The bell/blade combo can do amazing work and when he went all out attack/finest hour it was brutal. Tosses out disease counters really well with the nurglings and that fat base with the witherstave does real work. I'm super happy that they didn't just nerf the bell/blade combo into the ground like I thought they would - Speed 4 definitely sucks. It worked out for me because I ended up playing survival of the fittest, but in a standard long edge deployment it would have been much tougher. Going to need some more testing to see if it becomes a serious problem - Summoning was... fine. I stuck both trees on the back edge which kept them running but that meant I lost out on the chance for the battle tactic. I didn't actually need to summon anything but I could have gotten drones on turn 3 or a beast/sloppity/spoilpox on turn 2.

Not much unfortunately. Most of the rules in the new book are locked to Maggotkin of Nurgle as opposed to the current book which was primarily anything with Nurgle. You can still bring in slaves units with the mark of nurgle into a maggotkin army, but they don't really get a lot of synergy. It isn't nothing, there's random stuff like Festus can heal a friendly model d3, but that's about it. Also going the other way, Nurgle models will likely make shockingly bad allies. Their points all take them having permanent healing and a ward save into account, but you only get those when you're in allegiance. There's really nothing in this book worth allying over into other factions. They are different yeah, the daemon lore spell can only target maggotkin daemons and the glottkin spell can only target maggotkin mortals. One interesting point though, I was thinking the glottkin spell was pretty useless since you can't target marauders with it anymore. However if you put it on blightkings it'll set them to 5 wounds and (I think anyway) make them count as 2 models on an objective. Not too shabby for a 6 to cast.

For those worried about it I'd definitely say try a few games out. I agree a lot of models seem a little lackluster at the moment, but there are some absolute gems and there are waaay too many rules to wrap your head around just at face value. The new wheel, disease counters, new artifacts, traits, constant healing, etc. etc... it's just bonkers. Try your best to just take a fresh look at the army from the top down rather than trying to think of what's changed. For example you could get hung up on how the combat potential of plague drones has basically disappeared (no bonus for being near heros, don't benefit from the scrivener, no more GUO command ability), but then miss the fact that 3 models can put out 21 shots at a 3+/3+ doing a ton of damage and setting up a bunch of disease counters that then combo with the witherstave on a GUO. Not to mention the fact that 8" is absolutely clutch for the army since everything is so darn slow now. I'm really looking forward to playing it and seeing how it all comes together. One thing that's sticking in my brain is summoning armies might have a pretty solid chance now. A GUO with bell, befouling host for an extra tree, horticulus for an extra tree, nurglings dropping in for more points, and I think there were artifacts and traits to buff it a bit more if needed. Take some beasts for 'cheap' battleline and buffs with horticulous... honestly it sounds pretty neat. Not having any good way to lean into summoning was one of my big complaints in the last book so it's nice to see that change. My only real sadness is I don't think the glottkin are worth the 700 points. They're good, but 700 points is a real steep price point for their current use. I'll try them out but i'm not holding out a lot of hope. Edit: Here's a list I'm thinking of to push into summoning. Should generate 8 points in the first round and hopefully around 10 in each round after that, so you're getting a spoilpox/sloppity on turns 1/2 and then some extra bearers or drones or whatever on later turns. Running in befouling host of course: GUO - blade and bell - witherstave, trait for -1 to hit, stream of corruption for the spell Horticulous 4x individual Beasts of Nurgle 20 Plaguebearers 20 Plaguebearers 3 Plague drones

I think both for me would have to be Be'lakor. Just such a great kit. Absolutely gorgeous to look at with such a great presence that really seems to capture the character. Building was a breeze as it went together really well with the chains in particular being an inspired bit of model design and execution. A lot of fun to paint as well without being so busy that it was overwhelming.

Not sure, there were shots of the stats you get along with the assembly instructions in the rumor thread. If it's the full warscrolls then it'd probably safer to just write up a quick summary instead of full pictures.

Strange, sad, frustrating, and concerning. This book should be a big deal. First non release book of 3rd, first book in about 4 months. Not only that but as far as the rumors go it sounds like a pretty monumental shift from the last book with a ton of new rules to go over. My mind is absolutely blown that GW wasn't all over this release. I know tomorrow isn't far away but I just don't get it.

I'm really curious how they go with the points actually. My thought is it's a whole new edition, so what we might have expected in the previous one may have no grounds on how models are pointed now. So far this edition we've seen the damage output go up pretty significantly in stormcast and with the warclans, and some decent increases in resilience in stormcast (moving to a base 3+ save for units with shields, and a 2+ save for annihilators). Not to mention the core rules bringing increased resilience to most factions. Sure 2 wounds at a 6+/5++ sounds pretty great, but it won't make good use of armor stacking. Assuming the trend of increased damage from the first two books continues their newfound toughness may quickly become rather unimpressive in the same way their old -2 to hit did when factions started getting more mortal wounds and re-rolls. I definitely expect a points increase, but I'm not really sure how much. 160 sounds fair, but much beyond that and I'd be pretty worried about their long term viability. There's only so many points you can pay for a unit that's essentially just a blob of wounds, especially one that only moves 4" (assuming we lose the bell along with the rest of our movement tricks, or the sword gets a massive buff).