Grimrock

Actually they fixed that in the FAQ for the Wrath of the Everchosen. Knights of the Empty Throne are treated as a Damned Legion for Slaves to Darkness and maintain that allegiance. That means they have access to all the standard battalions.

Exactly my problem with the way prices are going. I've got the money to buy the models, and I have a budget set up to keep everything financially in check and managed. The issue is that one mega gargant is 2 months of hobby budget for a model that, if I were to really work on doing a good job, would probably take me 2 weeks of hobby time to finish. The value just isn't there. For the same cost I can easily get a box of troops, a different big monster, and maybe an elite unit to top it off. I'll get far more hobby enjoyment and time out of those models than I could ever get out of the mega gargant. I'm not really too fussed right now, it's not like I was planning on starting up a Lumineth or Sons army anyway. However if we see all the future armies and resculpts getting priced in these ranges then... well the game doesn't really have much of a future for me. I can still make the rounds and expand my current collections for a while but I'll be off to try something different before too long.

I hate to jump on the bandwagon but I think those prices will cut the model off for me. I was planning on using one in my latest project and figured they'd cost the same as Archaon/Teclis, but at this price I just can't justify it. Don't even want to try honestly. Ah well, what can you do. Edit: as for pricing speculation I'm guessing that GW is pricing them for army creation rather than model complexity. I can't remember the points but I'm guessing if you price out a standard sons army and a standard lumineth army they'll come out just about the same.

Found a vulture that matches the style of the rumor pic pretty much exactly. It's a bit on the old gargant kit: Maybe the rumor engine is just an unseen bit from the mega gargant kit? Wouldn't be the first time the model popped up for a rumor that quickly.

The biggest problem you'll run into is the tails for the screamers are actually integrated into the magical effects on the bottom of the chariot. You can see them on the sprue pictures for the kit on GWs site. In theory you could cut them out and clean them to use them separately, but it'd take quite a bit of work. Other than that the screamers are pretty much the same as the normal ones, they even have the ball joint on the underside for the flying bases. Also one thing you missed, each chariot kit comes with 3 blue horrors for the burning chariot as well as 3 bases if you wanted to use them separately on foot. If you're not planning on making a chariot you could use the spare disk to make one of those heralds a fluxmaster, or use the blue horrors to make a custom blue scribes.

Well it's not like they'd lose the benefit of fighting in two ranks, it's more that units who are thrown by the wayside due to their larger bases (blood reavers for example, or namarti thralls) would get a new lease on life. Small bases with 2+ inch reach would be trickier, but I think @Frowny has the right idea. I know you'd lose a bit of finesse and skill in placement, but I think the trade-off in helping less interesting units would be worth it. I guess instead you could make the default weapon reach 1.5" instead of 1", that might accomplish the same goal.

This, and I'm actually really interested in the way they handle combat range in 40k. No more ranges for melee weapons, you just need to have models in range of friendlies that are in range of the enemies. It would fix the inherent balance issues with small bases and make combats a lot quicker.

Well, that's not too surprising really. Tzaangors of all types were the big thing in the previous edition of the book and acolytes were generally trash. It's typical GW to nerf/ignore the old hotness and give a disproportionate amount of attention to stuff that people don't already own.

I do think that the Lumineth are a price test on the market. They made an army theme that a lot of people could get behind, hyped it up like crazy, and then released with a premium box set to cash in on the hype. Then they released with extremely high prices that match daughters of khaine for the most expensive price per plastic kits in the range. I'm guessing GW is gauging if they can start increasing the prices for all future releases. Unfortunately for that reason I hope they flop. I don't think I can keep going with the game if it becomes standard to pay 70 dollars CAD for 10 small based models. As far as models go I agree they feel like they're being intentionally set up for future releases. It's really bizarre that they don't have even a single non character combat hero in what is supposed to be an extremely capable military. Again maybe they're doing their best to help mitigate all other negative factors to test and see if the price is tolerated by the market.

Sounds obvious but I've just been using the normal kits for the units, ie. the ones sold separately from the start collecting set. Not quite as nice but they still look really great, and the warrior kits blend really well with the ETB ones. Honestly the only issues with the older knights is they don't have capes while the new ones do so it ends up looking a touch jarring when they're sitting beside eachother.

I think "right" is pretty subjective considering the typical scale of a warhammer game. It's not like a 2000 point battle represents a full scale war, so having an army comprised of all terrorgheists or steam tanks or whatever never really bothered me from a narrative perspective. Call it a small clash between specialists groups or maybe that the game represents a small section of the wider battle raging around them. I don't see any reason to promote one view of what an army should be over another outside of considerations towards balancing the game. That being said, I do like the idea of a few keywords being used to focus different buffs. Having a commander that specializes in leading infantry have his command ability key off 'Core' while a mounted leader keys off 'Cavalry' could be a really elegant solution and allow for more/better tools on the board. A blanket +1 to hit might be way too strong, but a +1 to hit for only 'Core' models could be a really interesting command ability for a lot of armies. Could really breathe some life into the slew of basic unexciting heroes that some armies have (Blades of Khorne for example).

I agree with a lot of the models mentioned here, particularly the maggoth lords and the chaos knights/warriors, but I think I'm most disappointed by any of the bloodletter based models other than the skulltaker. In particular I'm really truly disappointed in the heralds of khorne. These are supposed to be the heralds of the blood god, the master of warfare and martial talent, and the most powerful of the chaos gods. What do we get for that? One of the worst combat statlines for a hero in the whole game, no command ability, and a highly circumstantial and short ranged ability. A poxbringer (Herald of Nurgle) significantly outfights them, is massively more resilient, heals itself, and is a wizard to boot with a half decent built in spell. There are so many interesting things they could have done, but instead it's been the least useful model in the khorne book for all of AoS. They even resculpted it with the last book but for some reason they had no interest in making it usable.

I guess it depends on what you mean by 'heavy'. One big unit of warriors and two small units of knights can slot into most armies, but any more than that and you're going to have trouble fitting in the things that are needed to make those units work. Chaos armies generally use a lot of support models and the Warriors are still quite expensive, especially since you want to run warriors at a minimum of 15 models per unit to take advantage of the reroll saves. I would say that taking two units of 15 warriors and two units of 5 knights is probably at the upper limits. Maybe a minimum unit of chosen as well. Khorne can pretty much make anything amazing, but generally it can only do it to one or two units at a time and buff ranges can be tricky. They're a really good option but they pay a lot for support and you might have trouble getting enough hitting power in the list if you're spending a lot on the warriors. I've found a unit of 10 knights with lances works well enough in khorne, so that's something to consider. Slaanesh doesnt actually do a ton for the units but they can make them a touch faster and hit a touch harder. Unfortunately the strength of warriors is usually resilience and they aren't going to be great fighters regardless. They do offer something the army doesn't usually have though, a solid tarpit to hold up units until the keeper of secrets can do its job. Nurgle abilities are usually easier to use since they work off auras rather than direct buffs. They can make the units significantly faster and more resilient. The only issue is nurgle already struggles to fit things in the army due to point costs and has a lot of issues doing damage; warriors and knights don't help with that at all. If you go this route I'd say you need at least one unit of maxed out marauders to pick up the slack. The glottkin would be a good idea too if you can fit them. Tzeentch... They can offer some improvements but honestly they want to be spending a lot of points on wizards and ranged attacks so they can focus down the enemy army. A unit of warriors would give some good screening for the back line, but if you start taking multiple I think you'll end up too short on points to be effective with the rest of the army. Plus pink horrors are just better at screening anyway.

Just a reminder for everyone on this line, GW is in total control of the narrative of every faction. They aren't bound by some external or historical force that tells them that there can't be female fireslayers or ogors or a group of orcs that present more feminine than masculine. They can and do write the lore however they want and can add new pieces whenever it's convenient. They could release three black library novels over the next few months that mention the inclusion of female warriors in the cities of sigmar and then bam, it's entrenched in the lore and when the models come out it's perfectly natural for the faction. They could encourage the next couple video games to have a female chaos villain and then make her a special character model and the focus of the next chaos narrative arc. The entire game can be shaped and molded however they see fit. Personally, I'm all for more female representation if it means more people playing the game.

Yeah I never understood where the apparent aversion to making most of the bloodletter models actually viable in combat. Heralds in particular are incredibly disappointing considering they should be some of the best fighters out there, and bloodcrushers are close behind. I get that we have buffs, but would it kill them to give us some models that are actually good fighters before buffs get applied? Why is a poxbringer a far better fighter than a herald of khorne?

Sorta kinda. They're big and expensive and you can bring a single one into every army so they're similar, but a lot of the things that made knights oppressive in 40k (from what I hear) aren't likely to exist on the sons. There's little chance of overwhelming ranged attacks on them, and from their looks I also doubt they'll have much in the way of traditional saves. Plus allegiance abilities are so important in AoS at this point that it's really unlikely that allying a mega gargant into an army will be the optimal choice unless their base stats and abilities are really off the charts.

I think there is a misunderstanding here. Nobody is saying GW should get rid of the ally system, or the current allies for the existing factions, we just think the actual grand alliance mechanics should be removed. You don't need the grand alliances to have allies. No faction gets any positive benefit of extra allies from their alliance because the alliances don't really exist in the lore and it wouldn't make sense. All they get are restrictions and lose access to something that might actually be logical and fun like ogor mercenaries working for a chaos army. The alliances were originally introduced when there were no factions as quick and easy groupings, but at this point sorting factions into 4 arbitrary categories is just awkward and unnecessary. They don't accomplish anything positive in the lore or the game and really only lead to bitterness (ex. one alliance is getting more attention than another) and confusion. Having a group or sadistic murder elves hell bent on killing as many people as possible in a misguided attempt to revive a dead god of murder being called 'order' just because they build temples to said murder god makes absolutely no sense. Edit: actually now with some more thought, maybe allies should be reworked too. I really like the idea but with the game being so heavily skewed by allegiance abilities it's so rare to actually take allies. Maybe a universal system that would let allies benefit from their original allegiance abilities? Similar to battalions in 40k. Obviously you'd have to find a way to seperate out major things like summoning, but I'd be a lot more tempted to ally in tzeentch daemons in my slaves to darkness army if they kept their spell lore and locus ability. It'd definitely shake up the meta but I don't think it would actually break the game.

1) You can only use realm artefacts. There was some discussion on if you could even take those for a while but there was never an official FAQ on the matter so it kind of settled on the most likely case that you're allowed. 2) Yes, as long as you mark them appropriately you can put them in whatever allegiance you want and choose to use that allegiance instead of Slaves to Darkness. Obvious limitations are Slaves units that can't take a mark (like cultists) would count as allies but could still be included up to the usual limits. One of the best parts of the faction in my opinion and a number of the units are absolutely stellar in the different allegiances.

I guess this is the issue with the FAQ, we don't really know where to draw the line. White Dwarf makes sense, older GHB rules make sense (since they mentioned mercenaries) and obviously army books don't make any sense at all. Supplements like Wrath of the Everchosen, Malign Sorcery, or Forbidden Power are in a bit of a grey area. Certainly they're older publications and there isn't a significant difference between them and, for example, the Syll Eskian host from White Dwarf, but they're also full books rather than one offs so it would make sense if they stuck around for longer. Hopefully this gets cleared up officially by GW.

Actually I didn't realize it, but this is a really good point. As per the Generals Handbook FAQ, the Wrath of the Everchosen sub factions and rules are no longer legal for pitched battle games without opponent permission or house rule. When I saw it I was thinking it was just referring to old battalions but it just has a blanket 'rules from older publications'. So as it stands they've set a precedent that no publication lasts past the annual Generals Handbook, meaning the life expectancy of any publication is at most 1 year. I was already iffy on the supplements because they always include a portion of rules for armies I don't play, but this really puts the nail in the coffin for now. The FAQ I'm referring to: Q: Can I use rules from older publications in Pitched Battle (2020) games, such as Mercenary Companies from the General’s Handbook 2019? A: Yes, but only if your opponent agrees or a house rule permits it.

I think that's answered in the same way with the question above battalions: Q: Can I use rules from older publications in Pitched Battle (2020) games, such as Mercenary Companies from the General’s Handbook 2019? A: Yes, but only if your opponent agrees or a house rule permits it Basically the host would be a rule from an older publication, just like mercenaries. I mean you could still argue about it, but it seems pretty clear to me currently. Either way I think I'll just totally ignore anything in white dwarf from now on. I'm glad I avoided picking up anything for syll'esk.

Designers commentary and FAQ dropped for the GHB. Looks like it's official, the old white dwarf battalions are no longer legal unless you have opponent permission or house rules.

The preview also said that the new space marine and necron codexes will be coming out in October. That puts the AoS schedule at a bit of risk. If September is for the rest of the lumineth and October is 40k, then either sons get a sneaky release in September or we might not see them until November. That'd be really lame.

Looks good! I especially like the spawn you posted earlier. I've been planning on buying some lately and you've given me some good ideas for them.

In my experience there isn't a lot of argument against the knights in khorne, they fit really well and love all the buffs we can give them. The biggest problem I've found is maneuvering the unit and the blootstoker helps with that immensely. I'm a bit on the fence between lances and ensorcelled weapons though. On the one hand lances are great on the charge but getting the charge isn't guaranteed even with the stoker. Ensorcelled weapons are much more consistent but I never seem to get anything done with them, 3+/3+ seems to be the bane of my existence haha.