Grimrock

Unfortunately the way the Marks of Chaos rule is written currently in the upcoming slaves to darkness book units only get marks when taken in a slaves to darkness army. It says: ... When you pick a Slaves to Darkness unit that has the Mark of Chaos keyword to be a part of a Slaves to Darkness army, you must give it one of the following keywords: Khorne, Tzeentch, Nurgle, Slaanesh or Undivided and write it down on your roster. Not impossible that they FAQ it and change the wording later, but as it stands now slaves units brought into Tzeentch (or any other got marked army for that matter) will get precisely nothing. Might still be worth it as chaos warriors, chosen, and knights are all significantly better than they were before, but it'll be a tough call for sure.

I think the reason I'm a little cold on them is the comparison to Chosen. They fill similar roles as a high damage hammer unit, and their damage is similar (chosen are a little better on average if my math is right) but Ogroids are significantly more fragile and miss out on potential buffs like the Ensorcelled Banners or Daemonic Power. That being said I could see a list where you take a bunch of cultists and Ogroids and just swarm the board, but I don't really love spamming so I don't usually go that route. We also haven't seen all the scrolls, so if they get something good off of the Myrmidon then they could definitely be more attractive.

So grab a unit from anywhere on the board you can see and set it up within 9 of the caster, then it can move and charge? Yeah that's definitely going to get an FAQ. Worst case that's like a 15" free move when teleporting warriors or knights. Guaranteed turn 1 alpha strike easy. Even better late game for repositioning for objectives.

I'd agree. The Slaanesh and Nurgle prayers are decent and the Tzeentch one is pretty amazing, but having it locked to only using the prayer for its mark and only being able to target the matching mark is really limiting. I think if you're going heavy on anything that isn't Khorne or Undivided then you could consider bringing one along, but if you're running a mixed list then I don't think you'll want one. I found one thing for the FAQ, currently the spell from the Mark of Tzeentch doesn't have any limitation on moving after setting the unit up. It's possible that it was intended as the Mark of Tzeentch is pretty useless otherwise, but that spell is bonkers as is.

That's current FAQ though and only works with the current book. I'm expecting either it will have to change with the new release or they'll have to FAQ the new book to change how marks are assigned. It says right in there that you only assign marks if you are picking the models for a Slaves to Darkness army, very clearly. Again not a big deal because having the Slaanesh/Tzeentch/Nurgle keywords mean almost nothing outside the S2D book, but it's definitely a little weird. I'm still considering if I want to get the new box or not. I think the daemon prince is solid and I won't mind getting it, but I'm still on the fence with chosen and the ogroids. Both fill a similar role with one being a discount version of the other. Chosen should hit like an absolute truck but they're pretty slow and extremely expensive points wise. I'd love to think I'd take 10 in a list but that's 480 points which is a huge chunk of an army to throw into a speed 5 unit. Ogroids are cheaper, but they're really squishy and still suffer from the speed issue. I guess the thing is knights also fulfill a similar role to both, but they're faster and can get run and charge with knights of the empty throne. What do you guys think?

Booooo, that kills running and charging Empty Throne Archaon and Cabalist Be'lakor too. Good catch though, didn't even think to check for the new keywords since they didn't have them in the current book.

Can't unfortunately, blood tithe has gone to Blades of Khorne only. Also since they no longer get to pick marks when they're taken in other armies they don't get to benefit from any of the Khorne specific buffs in the BoK army (or any other armies for that matter). You could bring a unit over and include a chaos sorcerer as well for buffs, but I don't think that'll really be worth the cost.

I'm sure you mean that knights with allies will do some crazy stuff, but that reminds me of something interesting I noticed. S2D units will no longer have marks when taken in other armies. Not a big mechanical deal in general as most of the mono-god stuff is being changed over to work off the book keyword (ex. Disciples of Tzeentch instead of just Tzeentch) but it still feels weird. Also thinking of some more options for princes, I noticed that Despoilers buffs Monsters with no caveat, so Archaon and Be'lakor both get the buff. 27 wounds on Archaon with a 5+ ward means he has effectively 41 wounds. Not only that, but they can both be healed by 'Radiance of Dark Glory' which is just silly. I was thinking Archaon in despoilers backed up by a couple support princes could be pretty fun but I'm waiting on the cultist and marauder warscrolls before I dive too deep into list building. Those cheap battleline options are going to be a pretty big deal when everything else in the book is so elite.

Sorry for the double post, but just to get back to the Daemon Prince. His points went down and he's decently priced for his stats. As far as I can tell there's nothing stopping him from taking the standard artefacts, the wording only prevents mortals from taking the daemon prince specific ones, so he can take the Conquerors Crown which is bonkers good. The command traits aren't bad and being able to take multiple traits in despoilers makes a few interesting combos. The best one I can think of now is a 14 wound prince with monstrous actions by giving it 'Bolstered by Chaos'. Give him mark of Khorne to heal for every model he kills and keep a buddy prince nearby with Radiance of Dark Glory to heal him for 3 wounds in your hero phases. Pretty much unkillable at that point and does halfway decent damage with the axe. One other option would be a wizard prince in cabalist that has flaming weapon. If you give him 'Not to be denied' and perform the 'Draw on Power' chain correctly you can also trigger a second action on the prince at the end. I think he could be pretty viable honestly. Not super OP, but decent and you could definitely build an army around it. I'm interested to see if any of the other monsters are any good. If there are a few standouts then I think we could definitely see Despoilers making the rounds.

Pfft, forget rallying on a 4+. Until they update the Khorne book all the buff heroes still just key off the Khorne keyword. Try taking them in legion of the first prince for run and charge, a bloodsecrator for +3 to runs and charges and reroll wounds, a bloodsecrator giving them +1 attacks, and if you can somehow manage wrathmongers that far up the board you'll get another extra attack. Average charge range of about 26", 60 attacks at 3+/2+/-2/2 damage with reroll wounds, and attack first if triggering off a chaos lord on mount. It won't work once they fix everything in Khorne to work off 'Blades of Khorne', but until then mark of Khorne units are going to absolutely slap with the buffing allies. Honestly, I'm soooo happy with the way this book is looking. All the major complaints of the last book seem to have been addressed and things just feel right you know? Chaos warriors/knights look like real terrors. Marks are elegantly implemented in a way that makes them simple, impactful, and easy to mix and match while still encouraging you to keep the core of your army in one mark. Sub factions are mostly excellent and help encourage a variety of different playstyles without restricting list building excessively. Excessive reliance on buffs is mostly gone with base stats being excellent across the board, but there are still some good ones in there with the chaos sorcerer in particular still shining. Eye of the Gods is thematic and cool, gets supported in multiple places with extra rolls and the Undivided mark, and will actually come up in every game. There are so many different possibilities and builds with just the stuff we've seen so far and that doesn't even include the cultists. In the current book I looked at so many things and just shook my head, everything seemed to be intentionally built to discourage synergy or fun lists while railroading you into a specific way to play. This is like the complete opposite. Everything is cool and exciting and interacts in new ways. Every new section opens up new possibilities rather than shutting them out. Seriously this is pretty much everything I could ever want out of this book.

Really happy with the rules on S2D so far. Warriors and Knights look like a real menace and are rock solid, and the different layers offer some true customization. Want to run a cavalry army? Well Knights of The Empty Throne gives everything with a mount run and charge, go nuts with speedy S2D. Want to run magic heavy? Cabalist has you covered with everyone being an amazing wizard, also 3d6 casting, also excellent Tzeentch combos. Want some daemon allies to actually be useful? Be'lakor can let them use marks in legion of the first prince and also choose what mark he gets every turn. Marks are useful and simple and it's super viable to mix and match however you see fit. Eye of The Gods is useful and easy to trigger and supported in multiple places in the book. Strategies/Tactics are decent without being too braindead. Honestly this is really everything I was hoping for in a book. There are some bad things too, warshrine is nerfed into obscurity but at least one of the prayers might still be worth it. Losing weapon options on the warriors and knights sucks, especially when one was the stand out superior option in the previous book, but I don't know anyone that would care if I still use the old weapons and just say they're lances. There's still a lot we haven't seen yet but so far pretty much everything is looking really exciting. It looks like they actually listened to feedback about the previous book and fixed all the major complaints.

On the other hand if they put some thought into the book and didn't just do another copy/paste then a leak like this could be great for sales. Two months should give people enough time to budget for a big ticket box and guarantee that they all get sold.

Some of the new stuff yeah, but unless I missed something huge we know pretty much nothing about existing units other than the Daemon Prince. I'd love to see what the Warriors and Knights look like in particular.

I know my great unclean one would absolutely hate to get slammed. Considering base sizes the mega gargant could undo like two turns of movement on a single 3+. Seems like a pretty strong ability to me especially considering you can use it to get an enemy monster engaged with another gargant. Also keep in mind that if it's the SoB turn then in a 1 on 1 combat 'Beast Grapple' effectively gives the gargant always fight first as the active player gets to pick the first 'fights last' unit. Also pretty strong honestly.

Honestly this is one of my least favorite parts of the book. Having brain-dead battle tactics and grand strategies just feels like the worst way to win a game ever. If we were back in the last GHB when everything was stupidly simple then that would be one thing, but in the current GHB it feels like a built in way to cheat. I really hope this doesn't become a common balancing method in the future.

Not much. They showed a few warscrolls and a table of contents and that's about it. If I remember it was the Daemon Prince (purely warscroll wise he's had a pretty big nerf), the new ogroids (they look like glass cannons with good damage output) and the new be'lakor varanguard hero (nothing too exciting). All pretty useless until we get more info like points and allegiance abilities.

I'd imagine it's something similar to how Privateer Press ran their public playtesting system. Release a set of rules, get them played, get feed back, iterate with a new set, proceed for a set amount of time, developers combine feedback over the process for a final rule set that probably gets a quick internal pass before releasing. In GW I then assume an extra step of management looking it over and tweaking rules for the big kits they really want to sell or the ones that marketing has identified as less popular based on initial feedback. I'm not sure what you mean about their release schedule not allowing for playtesting. If they do work on a release for 2-3 years they allow plenty of time to work on things internally and then externally as well. If you mean the sheer number of releases, it's possible they alternate groups for different books. Like for example maybe group A got Tyranids and tested against previous releases, then Group B got Daemons and tested against previous releases (but not Tyranids), then group A got Votann and tested them against previous (but not Daemons). It wouldn't be perfect, but missing a single army for playtesting wouldn't be terrible. There are a number of people that have identified themselves as playtesters for GW, so I absolutely believe they do take an honest shake at it. There have been reports in the past, like with Iron Hands, where playtesters have said that GW blatantly ignored their feedback and overpowered the release in order to bump up sales. I'd absolutely expect that happened with Votann again. Also it sounds like GW dropped all external playtesters recently so I'm guessing 10th edition should be... interesting. Then I'd never buy anything haha. I do love painting but unfortunately the primary motivator for me is the game, not the hobby. If the primary motivation was painting I'd be buying some much much cheaper models, but I like the game and I like being able to go to a LGS and get a pickup game (which isn't really viable for the other less popular games).

I absolutely believe it. The thing they aren't mentioning is management, as they have in the past, probably ignored their playtesters and ratcheted up the power level in order to make sure the army made more of a splash. At least they're doing this before the full release. It's a good reminder to never buy anything early based on the rules and wait for at least the first round of nerfs before you make a decision.

The Facehammer review on youtube shows everything pretty clearly, you should check it out. For the Ornate Totems: While this unit includes any Icon Bearers, at the start of your hero phase, you can pick 1 enemy unit within 18" of this unit that is visible to it and roll 1 dice for each wizard that is within 9" of this unit. For each 4+, the unit you picked suffers 1 mortal wound. Guild of Summoners does seem like the obvious choice for mortals, but I'm not sure you're going to see much more than 1 summon off it anyway. I'm wondering what Pyrofane Cult would look like with heavy Kairic spam since it isn't tied to a single unit anymore. Something like Kairos, the Changeling (our cheapest 2 cast wizard), 11 units of Kairics, and some endless spells. Or maybe Kairos, a Loc, 9 Kairics, and some endless spells. You're spamming out 90-110 shots at 3+/3+/-1/1, which isn't a bad profile, and generating something like 10-16 summoning points a turn. Sure when you get hit you're gonna fold like paper, but you're still looking at 100+ wounds and a 5+ save with a 6+ ward on the Kairics isn't totally terrible. There's no chance I'd pick up that many Kairics, but if you're looking for a competitive list it might have legs.

Perhaps unsurprisingly their attempt at a quick easy sale is having the opposite effect on me at least. I have a decently big Tzeentch collection, about 4500 points, but I have absolutely no plans to pick the book up or buy any new models even though I have very little on the mortal side of the book. Not only that, but a big Khorne daemon expansion I've been planning has now been put on hold indefinitely because I've just lost faith that I'm actually going to want to play it in 6 months. So not only has this low effort copy paste book lost me as a customer for Tzeentch for the next 3 years or so, it's also destroyed my desire to buy any other products from them.

I'm not so sure it will. Considering Kairos lost his unique spell and now has Infernal Gateway it actually gives you a reason to have a Lord of Change in your army. Without the stacking there's no way anyone would take one outside getting it free in Guild, and honestly it's a pretty tough ask even with bonus stacking.

I don't think they've been top tier since 3rd edition dropped. If I remember correctly last time someone threw up the win rates they were something like bottom third? The prevalence of save stacking in particular rendered them mostly incapable of doing damage and the repeated nerfs eventually made them pretty awful. They were propped up by Archaon for a while but when he lost access to allegiance abilities they were pretty much done for. The new book does have some options to deal with saves through spell debuffs, but a lot of stuff also got worse and the agendas were completely removed. The biggest saving grace is the tactics/grand strategies are pretty easy so they'll still win games, but that's a pretty lame way to make an army competitive. I think they have a couple solid lists but they're not going to be fun for anyone to play with or against.

More or less. Generally speaking the units got worse for the same points value and the removal of agendas, but the spells are better and there is an opportunity to chain a bunch of buffs/debuffs together to cause a lot of damage. Kind of a net neutral honestly as spells can be unbound, but it does put more emphasis on the wizards which feels a Tzeentchy at least. Battle tactics and strategies are pretty easy to work with though so it should be a bit easier to win, it's just winning in the least fun way you can imagine. Overall I'm super meh on the book. Coming from Maggotkin where everything got re-worked so well and the book had such an amazing theme, this feels like a massive letdown. Basically an errata of the previous book with nothing that really draws you in. Lists aren't going to change massively, you'll see a changecaster in there for sure but not much else is going to shake things up. I do think blue scribes are still fantastic because they know the (much improved) mortal lore and can still auto cast spells on a 2+ every turn. I think the book is going to be able to write some competitive lists, but I don't think those games are going to be fun for anyone. What I'm seeing is a sigil to pin your opponent in their deployment zone with free spawn, yoloing an incarnate attached to a cheap magister into the lines turn one in the hopes of getting the magister killed, and a bunch of horrors to sit on the points. Basically doing everything you can to prevent the enemy army from playing the game while you sit on objectives and wrack up the points. A couple powerful casters sniping off heroes or support pieces at will and ranged damage to kill whatever escapes the hell of the deployment zone. It sounds... awful really.

Sounds like an interesting opportunity to introduce a new alien faction into the game at some point. I'm not expecting tyranids or anything, but what about an void born eldritch horror-esque faction? Cthulu might be a bit overdone, but it is incredibly popular and might be a good way to pull in new players with a semi familiar aesthetic. The journeys of the Seraphon have awoken something in the void. They battled and the Seraphon dealt a terrible blow but ultimately had to flee, and now it has finally tracked them to the mortal realms seeking revenge and destruction. Seraphon get a range update and we get a totally new faction completely separate from anything that ever existed in the old world.

Well if you think about it there aren't really a lot of options in tzeentch. Since the themes of tzeentch generally focus around magic and fire you probably won't see melee units as top tier (it has happened in previous books, tzaangors in first edition for example, but gw seemed to realize the mistake they made giving a ranged army incredibly solid melee infantry and those units were nerfed into oblivion). Kairic acolytes could have been an option but they kind of wrote themselves into a corner making them cheap useless chaff, so you're pretty much left with making either horrors or flamers. We've all seen the trainwreck that happens when horrors are good, so then you're left with just flamers.