Grimrock

I think the best bet will be 5 man units of marauder horsemen turned sideways unfortunately. They cover significantly larger areas and are going to be more useful for grabbing objectives. Only area they're significantly weaker than the chariots is damage potential. Well, that and the fact that they look absolutely ridiculous like that, but if that's the way GW wants to write the rules then we're kind of stuck making the most of it. I'm interested in hearing what people think about our units in general with the new coherency. It seems like knights might be a little more interesting when we're expecting a significant drop in melee damage output across the board. Chosen might be a little more interesting too since they work well in 5 man units. Of course marauders won't really be affected due to their smaller base sizes though, so the discussion might be moot.

Yeah I can't imagine GW would go through every single model in the game and do some sort of intelligent consideration of their points. I have trouble believing they'd even go through and modify their points due to base size (especially considering they don't always know what their base sizes are, remember when the official base size guide came out and all the mistakes it had?). If anything we'll get a few random smatterings of inconsequential changes (see the latest Chapter Approved) and maybe a general percentage increase after that.

Yeah the drip feed is atrocious at this point, it's killing any and all excitement I had for the new edition and making me start contemplating what other games I could be playing instead. At this point GW should just release (or at the very least 'leak') a rules pdf and give people a couple weeks to dig through full rules before the new edition comes out.

Gotcha, for some reason i thought you were being sarcastic on the gore grunta comment haha. Communicating in text can be such a pain sometimes. Yeah like you said, it'd almost be better to pay for 6 and not put the 6th model on the table, which is just... so bad from a game perspective. And I agree on the big units too, the thought of trying to use a 30 man bloodletter unit when they were already extremely marginal at best is just depressing. Well I'm going to try to hold out hope that some missing rule will come up in another preview or when the book drops.

Really good call actually. Maybe a new command ability for units that will allow them to reform after combat? Something simple like a 3" movement would make a massive difference.

Can you show me what formation you used to get 80-90% in combat with the Ardboys? I'm assuming you mean a unit of 10, but I can't work a frontage of bigger than 6 without making it vulnerable to coherency loss. I think you can stagger them in mini triangles, bu that only gets them into combat if the opponent is somehow a perfectly straight line or they've obliged you and organized themselves in a similar formation that you can just slot into. Edit: Also, the issue with your gore gruntas is they're stuck in that exact position until they've lost a model unless you want to just give up a model for free. They can't pile in after a charge, and if the opponent hasn't lined up perfectly for you (ie. they're in a circle or curved line) you're more likely to get 2 models in combat than 4. That's a much bigger loss than one model.

Yeah the more I think about that coherency rule and the more examples I see the more I think there has to be something we're missing. Nobody in their right mind could look at that rule and think it's a truly good idea, any amount of consideration can show why it's just an absolutely horrible change for the game. There must be a mistake right? So many units have just become awful. Like unusable awful. Half the attacks, half the frontage for screening, and significantly reduced control over how you remove casualties because the slightest misstep means you're breaking coherency. What in the world is going on here?

That coherency is... Weird. It works well in 40k but that's because the range is 2" not 1". Plus the way they do combat ranges is way way better in 40k and doesn't use weapon ranges. If they don't tweak combat ranges somehow this is going to have an absolutely massive impact on the way the game is played and the viability of some units. Maybe even entire factions. At the very least it'd have to be something like you're in range of the enemy if you're within 1" of a friendly that is also in range of the enemy. That'd at least get us close what we have now.

Well remember that part of the rumor was that the battalions were only going away in Matched Play, they'll still be fully usable in Narrative and Open Play. I think that might be the part of the rumor that convinces the cynic in me the most. GW can use the excuse that the battalions are still technically there while people who just want matched play are forced to re-tool their army and buy all sorts of new models to fit the core battalions. On the positive side it might push people to try out Narrative more and get some variety in gaming. It'd also couple well with the new Path to Glory system they're implementing and maybe give people some incentive to dive in.

Actually looking through some warscrolls, currently the vast majority of units don't have 'champions'. I mean they do, but they're not actually called champions. They usually have a flavorful name like Chieftan, Skullseeker, Wrathmaster, etc. Going through the soulblight warscrolls it looks like they've all got champions specifically called out, so I'm assuming we're going to get a massive swathe of warscroll updates to go along with the new release. I'm curious if they'll actually translate all of the current unit leaders to be champions, or if some might get left out intentionally to give you variety in what can use a command and what can't. For example, maybe the Blissbringer in a unit of Fiends isn't specifically called a Champion because they can't talk/issue commands.

I figure they avoid doing that because it would create a trend that disincentives purchases. If old models consistently get worse and new models are always amazing on release then people would just abandon buying models all together when a release was around the corner. No reason to buy something if it's just going to be useless in 6 months or a year. As it is now when there's an upcoming release there's always hope that x unit will still be good. Maybe even get a buff. There's always a reason to keep the money flowing at a regular rate up until the release. Then if your old models are actually good after release you're happy and more willing to buy the new models since the investment seems more secure. Maybe you'll even break the budget a bit just to get that one extra exciting kit. Personally, if my collection became more or less useless after a given release and only the new models were worth anything I think I'd be far far more likely to just give up and abandon the army all together than go through all the effort of essentially starting over.

Of course it doesn't guarantee anything, it's merely an indication of correlation. With the terminators being sold out for 6 months straight it begins to suggest that the quality of the rules has an effect on sales. The same can be said for a model like the catacomb command barge in Necrons which has only come back in stock now after about 8 months since the book was released. A number of kits do tend to fluctuate in availability, but the really strong models in 40k seem to be consistently sold out for very long periods. As for the Lumineth or Soulblight, like I said the correlation is less obvious on the AoS side. I don't know if that's because there's more stock available for AoS, less demand, or maybe people are just taking a break from buying until 3rd edition is released and we actually know what works and what doesn't. I know I've been on total hiatus with AoS since we saw the rumors of battalions being removed.

I think the most important concept they need to introduce from 40k is the idea of breachable terrain. Breachable terrain is for things like ruins where there are often holes or blown out chunks of wall, and lets units pass through it as if it weren't there. Having used it, it's absolutely critical in allowing a table to be covered in beautiful big terrain that provides line of sight blocking while also allowing melee armies to move around without being totally bogged down.

As far as the rules driving sales, we might not be able to see all hobbyists everywhere but thanks to GW's recent stock issues we can at least get a glimpse of what's selling well. I've been tracking a few new armies from 40k on GW's webstore and I'm definitely seeing a correlation between what's considered good/OP and what's regularly sold out. For example with Death Guard, they got a fantastic looking new terrain piece in their new book but it has generally been considered as sub par rules-wise (as is most terrain in 40k for some reason). Unsurprisingly I can't remember ever seeing it out of stock. Conversely, the Blightlord Terminators and Deathshroud Terminators were existing kits, but they got massive improvements in their rules. They've basically been sold out on the web store since the previews dropped the week before the codex release. The correlation was also pretty obvious in Necrons for quite a while after their release, but they're losing popularity now and most of their models are back in stock. Unfortunately it isn't always as clear in AoS factions, possibly because they're getting better stock from GW or possibly because there's more demand for 40k.

Definitely seemed to linger more on the Khornate symbols and artwork... Well we didn't get anything in the broken realms book, I'd like to imagine that means that we'll be one of the first ones to get an updated book in the new edition. Don't know if that should make us happy or not, but I'm looking forward to see how this all goes.

Potentially true, but you have the advantage that if they kill one half they're not hurting the other half. If Archaon gets caught out and attacked you lose everything, but if the melee twin gets caught out and killed then the support twin can still be perfectly safe in the back field. Honestly it'll come down to the warscrolls and what they can do for the army. Also before this book Alarielle was 600, Gotrek is 520 (not quite god tier but an avatar similar to the twins), and Gordrak is 540 (again, a kind of avatar). Of course you have Archaon and Nagash on the higher end, but there is definitely a spread. Personally I'm OK with being on the lower end as it means you still have room to build an army instead of having to dedicate everything to the big baddie. Especially important with how expensive the slaanesh army is in points these days.

It would make sense though, they're probably priced to try to get people to buy two kits and run both at the same time. If you think of them like a packaged deal then 540 points for a god tier model sounds about right. Plus you have the flexibility to only take one or the other instead of always sinking a quarter of your army into them. Could still be pretty interesting.

Yeah it's really hard to tell the size at this point. They look like they're on an oval base, but it could be the contorted oval, the chariot oval, or even a knight oval for all we know. I'm hoping they'll be the same size as the void dragon in 40k since they're the same price, but that might be too much to ask. Also I agree GW never admits overpricing or lower prices on a given box, but if their sales are bad enough they might retreat and make subsequent boxes more reasonable. Just compare chain rasps and skeleton hordes for an example. Both are monopose undead hordes but the skeletons are 30% cheaper even though they released 3 years later. Maybe they've noticed a huge drop in greater daemon sales after they hiked the prices up and need to compensate.

The price for the twins is very interesting, much lower than I expected. I wonder if they realized they overshot the mark with the new greater daemons and are reeling it back a bit? Or maybe they're just hoping most people will buy two kits and this is the best price for that. Either way I'm much more interested in them now, hopefully we get their full scroll soon like kragnos.

This is the most interesting thing for me at the moment. I'm unlikely to pick up stormcast or the new faction, but I would be very interested if they dropped a reasonably priced box of terrain like they did with 40k. Never enough good terrain in my collection.

Given all the positive reaction to it over the reveal I wouldn't be even remotely surprised if a designer is now furiously working away at the concept art. Might take a while but I'd be very surprised if GW doesn't at least try to cash in on that at some point.

Not sure about cities of sigmar, but if GW released a similar pack for chaos marauders I think I'd be.... sorta happy. When I built mine I swapped in heads/weapons from the marauder horsemen kit and it was a vast improvement over the standard bits. I think a fresh set of weapons, heads, and a few bits here and there would make a pretty big difference. Nowhere near as good as a new kit of course, but it would be something at least.

I'd agree, by the looks of it those particular changes seem like a significant buff to shooting units. Big units of archers could easily put down charging monsters or heroes, and the ability to fall back could easily mean key melee units are regularly denied the ability to charge and then shot to death point blank on the next turn. It's the biggest reason that I'm hesitant on the status of the rumors right now, if they're all accurate then there have to be some more extremely significant changes coming to balance this all out. I did have one thought on the battalions though. It might signal a stronger push from GW to encourage the Narrative style. If they drop battalions from Matched Play but keep them alive in Narrative they've baked in a massive incentive for players to shift over to Narrative style gaming. They can then hyper tune matched play for events and tournaments more freely (ex. introducing the secondary/tertiary objectives mentioned in the video). I don't... hate the idea, but I am worried about the polarization it could cause. There are significant consequences of basically forcing pick up games to become Narrative and/or having whole groups bound to a generic hyper tournament focused rule set for their regular gaming.

After trying it out I'd tend to agree. Only got one turn with a significant number of deaths near the sigil but it went to a double and all the bonus attacks were lost immediately. On the Be'Lakor front it unfortunately turned out how I worried it would, his offensive capabilities are still pretty mediocre and his resilience is only so so. Basically the only thing he did was cripple a deathstar unit for one turn and encourage the opponent to skip a double turn to get the debuff off faster. Incredibly potent to be sure, but I'm not sure if it's worth 380 points.

I've been wracking my brain trying to come up with something I like for Be'lakor and settled around this: Allegiance: Slaves to Darkness- Damned Legion: CabalistsLeadersChaos Lord (110)- Reaperblade & Daemonbound Steel- Mark of Chaos: NurgleChaos Sorcerer Lord (110)- General- Command Trait: Mighty Ritualist- Artefact: Scroll of Dark Unravelling- Mark of Chaos: Nurgle- Spell: Spite-tongue CurseChaos Sorcerer Lord (110)- Artefact: Black Athame- Mark of Chaos: Nurgle- Spell: Mask of DarknessBe'Lakor (240)- Spell: Whispers of ChaosBattleline15 x Chaos Warriors (270)- Hand Weapon & Shield- Mark of Chaos: Nurgle5 x Chaos Knights (160)- Ensorcelled Weapons- Mark of Chaos: Nurgle40 x Chaos Marauders (320)- Axes & Shields- Mark of Chaos: NurgleUnits5 x Chaos Chosen (140)- Mark of Chaos: NurgleBehemothsChaos Warshrine (170)- Mark of Chaos: NurgleBattalionsPlaguetouched Warband (180)Endless Spells / Terrain / CPsEightfold Doom-sigil (40)Total: 1850 / 2000Extra Command Points: 1Allies: 0 / 400Wounds: 132 I've always wanted to make cabalists work and I think this stands some chance at least. It could port over to ravagers with very little effort if cabalists is a dud, and I could drop the doom sigil to change the chosen to a different unit. Not like it's going to be competitive or anything, but could be fun to try out. At the very least it's got some resilience against shooting with mark of nurgle and a couple fun tricks to mess with the opponent.