Grimrock

Why is no one guessing a new beast for warcry? Seems loosely consistent with the cat llama, and the rumors were we might see a few more of them as we get closer to the release.

Archaon will be tricky unless they remove his ability to play in god marked armies. For example he's already really strong in a khorne army, so a big power boost would make him insane there. I'm not expecting him to get a lot of warscroll changes or a huge point drop. I assume most of his improvements will come through allegiance abilities, spell lores or the endless spells. For example, there could be a spell that makes the caster fight first and an endless spell that gives plus 1 attack to all models within a range. Or maybe they move the varanguard fight twice ability over to a 'clan' command ability so Archaon can benefit from it too. Lots of possibilities.

Really the cost ratio of OBR is a big selling feature for me. They're remarkably cheap to get into, primarily because of the Mortek and the big characters, and I hope that affordability is something that GW carries on to future elite armies like slaves.

I've wanted an excuse to pick up a unit of varanguard for ages, but they've never justified the massive cost and hobby investment. I'm really hopeful this book gives me a reason to buy them! It's tricky for GW though. Varanguard need to be elite enough to justify a big points cost, thereby justifying the big monetary cost, but when things are that expensive it's super easy to be too strong or too weak. Same goes for Archaon, but the way Nagash is sitting gives me some hope.

From the armies I own, (khorne, nurgle, tzeentch and slaanesh) I think khorne is the best written. I love how there are ways to layer on buffs, sub factions, and battalions so that any unit you really want to use can be made at least viable. Definitely not perfect, there are far too many throwaway heroes, bloodthirsters are a little ahead of the curve, and a few other daemon units lag behind, but overall it's pretty great.

Well specifically for this case they're said to be push fit, which usually does exclude multiple loadouts. I guess I should have been clearer.

Well, one possible negative is loadout. For example, the blood warriors in the old 2 player starter could only be built with axe and gore fist with no banner or blood glaive. Workable for 5 models but heavily incentivized to only get one set and move to the main kit after so you have the free options. So in this case if GW switches things up for chaos warriors and makes, let's say, halberds the blatantly better option and includes those weapons in the multi part kit that comes later, then the SC warriors will likely be of no value to most players other than as a painting project.

Yeah hints for pricing suggest it's in the low end of price for SC boxes, so that's good. As long as they release non push fit units later then I'll be perfectly happy but if they try to pull a chainrasp again I'll be really disappointed. Edit: Actually, thinking about it push fit makes a lot of sense for this SC. Given the typical pricing for heavy infantry, cavalry and a mounted lord model, this would have been a massive savings. The push fit is likely GW trying to give value while also discouraging people from just buying 3 or 4 of them at once.

Well the benefit is that they don't have to run to get that bonus movement, and they can still do things like charge or shoot while moving quickly. They also have access to run and charge through the stalliarch lords if they want to focus on a fast army rather than a purely resilient one. Like I said, I don't know if they're going to be top tier or not, but they definitely have the tools to be a strong army and a number of tricks that can make them a real threat. I'm really curious to see how this all turns out.

I'm not sure if the army is going to be top tier or not, but people thinking it's slow need to consider that any unit can get +3 movement from a 'command' point. It isn't totally free but considering they can get a half dozen or more per turn it lets them speed up any unit that needs it. With their slowest models at speed 7 they're actually one of the fastest armies in the game when it counts. Honestly I think the army looks very skill based rather than the obvious straight-forward strength of armies like Slaanesh of FeC. If a player can keep track of all the potential command abilities, buffs and spells, and use them efficiently, then I think the army is going to be very strong. If a player starts to forget or lose track of things then they're going to struggle. In addition list building is going to be more crucial with this army than a lot of others and there are a ton of combos you can make to really amp up the power. I think it's actually pretty cool that GW has released an army that should reward skill and careful play rather than just another mallet to bludgeon people with.

It's actually been a weird mix for me. The last round of price hikes definitely killed a couple projects, like picking up a an insensate rage bloodthirster, but another killer has been the regular balance changes. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that GW is balancing the game more regularly, but it's making buying any new models a real gamble. Now if I'm looking at buying something I regularly find myself thinking it might be too strong and will just get nerfed into something completely unrecognizable in 6 months. Take Slaanesh for example. I was planning on picking up Slaanesh for years to finish off my 4 armies of chaos, so when they came out I was super excited and bought a basic army. Now I just feel dirty every time I play them, and I'm frozen on purchases because I have no idea what's going to get the nerf hammer in January and what isn't. I'm finding myself in a holding position where I don't really want to buy anything anymore.

@HMB Depends on how crazy you want to get. I've played it in a dozen or so games with 30 pinks and no blues starting on the board, and I think I can get away with 40 blues 85% of the time. Typically blues will die around the same speed they're created, so you shouldn't usually need double your number of pinks. I've ended up with extra blue or brimstone points in the end game but usually when I do I've already won or lost, so the extra summon wouldn't make a difference.

I would expect something you don't see played a ton, but still newish stuff. From the new chamber they could include a couple dracoline cavalry boxes, aventis firestrike for the centerpiece, castigarors, and then some sequitors to add draw and round it out.

So are knight questors becoming the primaris lieutenants of AoS? I mean the model looks cool but even the stormcast have heroes from the lore that would be cooler than another generic hero, not to mention the nearly limitless number of excellent heroes from other armies that could use a resculpt or even a first plastic model.

@Overread it's interesting because I feel pretty much the complete opposite of you. To me the warcry warbands fit into AoS incredibly awkwardly. Having big unique models like the rocktusk prowler with mostly the same stats as the plains runners doesn't feel seamless, it feels shoehorned in to keep things simple. Something that lets them say there are AoS warscrolls without putting in a bunch of effort. The idea that they will form the core of an eventual chaos release is just truly bizarre to me because they just don't seem to be designed to take 20-30 at a time. Too many mono pose models with tons of detail and character. My impression was that Warcry was originally meant to be like necromunda. A stand alone, chaos only, game with all new models. Sure the models could be used in AoS, but it'd be more like the rogue trader release for killteam. Then when the details got out and people started complaining about it being chaos only they quickly jumped in and put the other factions in the book. There's such a significant difference in overall feel and flexibility between the base chaos warbands and the non chaos stuff... it seems like the non chaos stuff couldn't have been intentional from the start. Plus we had that bizarre dead zone for like 6 months between the initial info and the actual release that could've given them time to scramble and make the extra campaigns before sending the book to print. Who knows, maybe that's why we saw the monsters and mercenaries book so quickly. That stuff could've been intended for the core book but got shuffled out to fit the extra warband campaigns. Of course that doesn't mean that we won't see AoS factions rolled in now. That Pandora's box has been opened for better or for worse, and Iknow I'd love to see daemons.

Well a keeper-less slaanesh box would be pretty handy for fleshing out models to summon. Maybe three chariot kits, 20 daemonettes, 5 seekers, 3 fiends? Actually, nah. That'd be too good of a deal. Forchaos I'd lean towards beasts of chaos since they've been out for a while and would be pretty easy to put together.

But the aspiring deathbringer affects all friendlies within 8, potentially way more devastating than a single model's attacks.

I'm a little confused on something, so just to be sure. You aren't limited on taking mercenaries from within your warband, just based off the grid in the book right? So an ironjawz warband could take a member of the gobbapalooza or the FeC could take a lone necromancer?

I think so... Didn't watch the whole video but there are some strong models in there. For example the khorne aspiring deathbringer will crank up the damage for nearby friendlies like crazy.

GMG review is up covering the whole book. Seems like the balance concern with heroes was covered by just making them much weaker than expected. Still powerful, but definitely not a direct port from AoS. Pretty cool overall, I'll be picking it up if I can get some consistent narrative gaming in.

Decent looking list, some surprises for sure. Definitely hoping for cards now considering it looks like they're adding new chaos beasts with the warhounds.

I'm not solid on all the buffs out there, but if you don't have rend it'll take about 48 succesful ranged attacks to kill him. So for hurricane crossbows (4+/4+) you would need 192 shots, or 9 models firing all shots at him for two rounds. That doesn't account for 'look out sir'. Shootas would need 288 shots from large units. Not saying he can't be killed, but the investment for most armies are far from trivial. He could also run the palisade to block LoS, have some healing magic, run with the deepkin to prevent being targeted... Lots of options to keep him safe until he wrecks face.

Not sure exactly what you mean, but yeah screening is going to have to be to go to strategy for most armies. Keep in mind though, with cogs he can still get around small screens and he'll have a whole army behind him too. If he's allied with a shootcast army or free people they can just nuke the screen from range and let him go free. Plus he can kill most screens in one round so you won't be tying him up for long, especially if he gets a double turn.

Yeah I think free people probably have the best shot against him with the high volume of low damage attacks, but that could change in the new battletome too. Most armies can't put down that much fire though. Even tzeentch would have an extremely difficult time bring him down before he started cleaving his way through important units. Plus any army that's willing to dump the resources required to kill him will be giving the rest of his army a free pass for multiple turns.

Yeaaah, ok then. Anyone saying this guy isn't competitive is off their rocker. I appreciate he's expensive, but his only weakness is speed and if you can drop cogs he has a threat range around 17.5" with the reroll charge command ability. Or you can use a command point to run him on an objective and just own that point for the rest of the game. He'll walk through any magic heavy army because it takes 24 successful spells (because each spell can only do 1 damage to him) to kill him on average. He'll walk through any combat focused army. A ranged heavy army miiiight just kill him before he fights, but it'll take 48 successful wounds at rend 0 to kill him. Oh, and he can be healed so those numbers could be even worse . He does an average of 30 wounds to a 4+ save opponent per combat phase. You can play around half the damage by removing the models close to him, preventing the double pile in, but that doesn't help if he's gotten to one of your heroes or monsters. It also ensures he's free to move and charge whatever he wants to in the next turn. I'd expect some serious nerfs for him next year, but for now I think we've entered the Age of Gotrek. Start filling your lists with cheap chaff to stall him as long as possible, you're going to need them.