Grimrock

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.

Yeah, there definitely is a history there but like you said they should be the second most resilient. The current book takes it way too far IMO. A big brick of pinks is way tougher than anything in Nurgle just like the old Nurgle book was generally faster than Slaanesh. If you look at the new 40k daemon book sure tzeentch is pretty resilient at range, but they're extremely vulnerable in melee. Horrors can split and stick on an objective pretty well but it's random and there is counter play by killing the whole unit before they get to roll. If we end up with something closer to that I'd be pretty happy.

Or we could be a glass cannon ranged/magic army. The -1 to hit was new in the current edition of the book and honestly it's kind of a thematic mismatch like the first Nurgle book. Nurgle was the tanky faction that was somehow one of the fastest armies in the game. Tzeentch is the ranged/magic faction that is somehow ridiculously hard to kill with splitting horrors and -1 to hit. Just like Nurgle I wouldn't be surprised if they drop the tankiness in general and get back to the core concept of the faction. Maybe something like -1 rend for all tzeentch daemons wholly within 9" of a locus.

In theory could be worse. For one thing everyone knew that wasn't going to last and, sure enough, it was nerfed in a couple weeks to 5 models. It also happened in the hero phase so it couldn't piggyback off the the movement of a flying summoner on disk. Like I said it kind of depends on the quality of the units in the book, if flamers are super strong then this could be bonkers op. Edit: Just to be clear, what I meant by polarizing is how auto-win/auto-loss this ability can be. To make it worthwhile you'd have to invest a lot of points into it (like 700+ using current points). If you do that and manage to snipe out critical components of your opponents army turn 1 with no real counter play you're probably going to win. If you get 700+ points killed on turn 1 you're definitely going to lose. If you take the summoner and buy units specifically for the teleport but then don't use it because of the risk then you're wasting a bunch of points and are immediately on the backfoot. Honestly the more I think about it the more I kind of hate it. The only way it makes sense is if we have no good shooters that can really take advantage of the ability, but at that point we're nerfing the entire faction just so the gaunt summoner can have some janky tech. I would have preferred it if they left it at summoning 5 pinks.

The deployment ability isn't bad, but I get the feeling that it is going to be a bit polarizing. If your opponent doesn't have a way to take him out and there are good units to teleport it might be something close to an auto win. Taking a summoner on disk, hiding behind LOS blocking terrain in deployment, then jumping out 20" to deploy two units of flamers in perfect range to kill a couple critical heros or monsters on the first turn could be game winning. Certainly would crush Khorne armies pretty hard. On the other hand if they surprise you and snipe him out turn one with a spell portal or something that ignores line of sight then it's pretty much an auto loss the other way. Sure you could just not use the ability in deployment, but I'm guessing it's going to be his main schtick (this probably replaces his current summoning ability) and where most of his points come from. If you don't use it you might be paying 250 points for a squishy 2 spell caster that won't have any other effect on the game. One thing I did notice is the ability isn't keyed to Disciples of Tzeentch, so you could drop in a unit of 30 marauders with mark of tzeentch and get a pretty much guaranteed turn 1 charge. The problem there is marauders are heavily dependent on hero phase buffs to do anything useful. Still, jamming up your opponent with a bunch of chaff for a turn might not be a terrible thing.

I'm not really expecting any massive overhaul of the rules. Typically GW seems to keep the changes relatively small and focused to make things easier to test and not risk breaking things. It's not unheard of to get a big change, Nurgle for example got a huge rework, but those are usually the exception not the rule. With that being said, I'm hoping for/expecting a few changes: 1. Marauders getting nerfed heavily. Their abilities never really made much sense to begin with, and considering they're not getting a resculpt I'd expect them to get de-emphasized. Personally I'd be good with this, have them lose the rend and the charge rule and go down to like 75 points for 10 models. Then they can take their rightful place as cheap chaff. 2. Cultists getting a buff across the board with an associated price hike. The recent rotmire creed are actually a really solid unit, and if GW wants to start selling the cultist boxes to AoS exclusive players then that's going to have to be what they aim for. 3. Chaos warriors, chosen, and knights all get a buff to make them the rightful core of the army, if for no other reason than to sell the new models they're making. 4. Massively nerf/remove Daemonic Power, Oracular Vision, and the undivided prayer on the warshrine. These abilities are far too powerful and warp the faction heavily around them. You can't have good base stats when you have re-roll everything on a stick, but at the same time if those fail to go off or the buffs get sniped you're pretty much hosed in game. Not fun for either player and pretty much impossible to balance around, they gotta go. 5. Finally I don't expect it, but I'm really hoping the Slaughterbrute and Mutalith Vortex Beast get a huge buff. These models are far too cool to have had such absolute garbage rules for so long. I've wanted to pick one or two up for ages but I just couldn't justify it with how bad they were. Hopefully GW wises up and makes them solid centerpiece units. In the end though there's not much point in speculating. We won't see the book for at least a few more months and honestly GW is really hard to predict.

Pretty tough to make a unit of 30 of them with cultists unfortunately, Warcry is a sad substitute for a proper re-work for a bunch of reasons. They're massively more expensive, the wargear doesn't match in the slightest, they're incredibly difficult to convert, the base and model sizes are wildly inconsistent, and each individual warband has such a distinct look that mixing/matching different cults would just look weird/jarring. Honestly the fact that the marauders aren't getting re-worked is my biggest and only disappointment with the new StD so far. Personally I think the marauders needed an update far, far more than the chaos warriors or knights ever did.

Well, to be fair, we haven't seen what they do to pinks yet. They could be nerfed into the ground so hard they never see sunlight again. Plus the box isn't necessarily a reflection of what the final rules will be in the book, I'm pretty sure they've gone both directions in the past. It sucks big time right now but maybe things will even out. Like I said before a simple combat buff could turn tzaangors around in a heartbeat. A spell for +1 attack coupled with an improved command ability from a fatemaster and some way to improve rend and they could be an absolute nightmare. No point in speculating really, it just makes everything worse.

It's hard to be sure since Nurgle is the only god marked book so far, but I'm hopeful all the greater daemons will follow the Great Unclean One. It got a big jump in points and a slew of buffs along with it. Vastly better combat profile, more wounds, innate healing, and generally better abilities (bell changes aside). I'd love to see all greater daemons become particularly scary and powerful, and fully viable, but expensive enough so you'll only want one or maybe two at most in your army. What that would mean for the keeper is difficult to say since the summoning tax distorts things so heavily.

I really like that khorne combat patrol. It's basically perfect for fleshing out what I still want on the daemon side of khorne. I'm still going to wait for the khorne book to drop before I make any purchases but if the emphasis moves away from bloodthirsters and the normal daemons are half decent I'll pick one up for sure.

Oof, yeah that looks like a sizeable nerf to the non-daemon side of the book. Which is super weird because it hasn't been a problem since the first book so I don't know why they're so intent on continually grinding it into the mud. I assume that they want to keep tzeentch as the ranged/magic faction with little to no melee, but if that's the case then why in the world did they make the melee models in the first place? Still just part of the picture though, so we'll see how it goes with the book. We could get a cheap and easy spell for +1 hit and +1 attack or something and it'd flip all the math on it's head. As is I'm glad I yet again held off and didn't buy into Arcane Cataclysm. I've wanted those Tzaangors for ages but I focused on the daemons first and by the time I was done with them the birds had already been nerfed into the ground. Now I'm just waiting for them to actually be playable before I pull the trigger.

Tough to say on the height as I removed the back banner for transport. Measuring it out it looks like they should be about 6 1/4". Not sure about tamurkhans rules, but I've wanted to use some plague toads as beasts of Nurgle for a while. Size looks about right and 3 of them would add some nice variety as the stock models are pretty same-y regardless of how you build them. I'm pleasently surprised by the creed, I really wasn't expecting them to have the Maggotkin keyword. I'm sure the feedback loop won't stick around but they're still really strong for their price. I'd almost prefer they were worse as we lack sub 100 pt options, but really I can't complain. Might even consider picking them up when they're released separately.

Definitely the latter. They haven't released command groups in... Man I don't even know how long. Not since you had to buy units one blister pack at a time. The good old days.

@Jazzbeaux 90 points for that would be crazy. You've basically created a unit that's just as resilient as plaguebearers with the addition of ranged attacks and mortal wounds. If the rules you suggested were accurate then I'd expect 160 minimum. You have to keep in mind that 95% of cultist units are total trash tier rules, so unless gw does a total change of course with this edition you should temper your expectations. Typically they're cheap bodies with no offensive power whatsoever that have one small gimmick. They'll almost certainly have one wound each and 1 attack at 4+/4+. Their gimmick could be the Maggotkin keyword for disgustingly resilient and disease, but then absolutely no mortals and probably a premium cost like 120. It could be mortals from the blowpipes, but the they definitely wouldn't have the Maggotkin keyword. Edit: thinking about it my guess is their gimmick will be wounding on 3s due to poison. I think they'll be 1 wound, 5+ save, speed 6 1 attack at 4+/3+ and one blowpipe attack each at 4+/3+. One mortal on a 6 to wound for the leader in melee. No Maggotkin keyword, just Nurgle. Probably... 75 points. Still possibly useful in the army as cheap backfield chaff, but that's about it.

There are a few reasons. The first is the vast majority of the kits come in the form of warcry models. While they're technically in the slaves to darkness book, they weren't designed for AoS, they're for warcry. For the most part the rules in AoS are more of a bolt on afterthought. That and the fact that the vast majority never actually see the table makes it difficult to count them as true new kits. If you ignore the warcry models then StD got precious little since Archaon. A few stopgap monopose kits in a start collecting, an overpriced hero, and then of course be'lakor although he also kind of has his own faction which dilutes it as a StD release. Not much to write home about. This particular book is really the first time they're getting proper attention. Full proper resculpts of kits that have been in use for what, around 20 years? Actual new units that are designed for AoS from the ground up. A proper advancement of their narrative (hopefully) instead of just more of the status quo.

Overall not a huge fan of the legionnaires, bug a few look pretty good. Also that Decuriarch looks fantastic. Big, ornate, agressive, imposing. It's a shame that so many of the models are so weedy in comparison. The basic troops in particular kind of look like the kids drafted to fight in Helm's deep, everything is a few sizes too big for them. I can appreciate the desire to have well... more chaos in chaos, but I do think Archaon is important. Without a big driving figure chaos isn't really too much of a threat on a grand scale. Since everyone is so selfish chaos is kind of bound to self-destruct. Sure they might wipe out a few regions here or there, but eventually the lord leading an army will ascend and leave the group leaderless and vulnerable to massive infighting or an external threat. Without a single leader that can command the respect of legions and is absolutely unwilling to ascend, chaos can't really do anything of consequence. If the lore starts to move away from Archaon and Be'Lakor I think it'll be because they want to diminish chaos and have the threats come from other grand alliances.

There's still a tiny hope as they might have dropped or consolidated some data sheets. For example they could have made all 3 bloodthirsters a single sheet with different weapon options like the other greater daemons, or make the various tzeentch heralds a single sheet. Don't know how likely it is, but there's a chance. Also possible they work the twins into the narrative for the inevitable Emperor's Children release next edition. I am really interested to see how this book shapes up. If it encourages mixed daemon lists instead of mono god then I'll already have a whole army ready to go. Could be fun to mess around with.

I like how the list looks overall. My biggest concern is the Lord on karkadrak since he really struggles to put out damage, but he is awful tanky and you've already got him anyways so not a big deal. The only other major tweak I'd suggest would be to try the wrath of khorne bloodthirster instead of the insensate. He loses out on a little potential damage, but he's much much less swingy than the insensate and synergizes with the command trait better. He also has a potentially devastating unleash hell if you're willing to gamble. The tactics sound good overall as well. The Knights should be good hammers and are pretty quick if you use the stoker on them. I like lances over ensorcelled weapons in khorne because of the stoker and killing frenzy, but be extra careful to make sure they never get charged because they just become totally useless. I would be a little worried about running out of gas early and struggling to handle really tanky armies like Nurgle or Sons of Behemat, but honestly there's not much you can do about that with khorne so you'll just have to focus on objectives and hope for the best. Good luck and if you're enjoying it make sure to let us know!

Yeah the million dollar question is how all the various buffs play out. I feel like a lot of players have been hoping for units that are strong on their own without needing to count on a spell that could fail or a hero that can be sniped out. I'd love to see better stats on the warriors and knights (like a base 3+ save, add a rend or two depending on the weapons) and have the buffs disappear entirely. Maybe a small bonus for their marks like in 40k at the most but no more auras or buffing spells. Let the sorcerer's and warhrines be selfish and only cast offensive spells/prayers like any glory seeking, power mad psychopath would.

#1 chaos marauders I'd like to see them stay as a box of 20 with an assortment of different weapons. I'd be super happy if their warscroll was simplified to a single weapon but they kept a bunch of options just to make the unit look varied and interesting. #2 bloodletters They're not terrible overall, but the heads are a little weird and there's a miserable gap on most of the unit that needs some green stuff work to not stick out like a sore thumb. I'd love to see the hellblades go back to being axes like the previous generation. #3 bloodthirster Ok to be clear this is an absolutely gorgeous kit and I love it, but if you line it up beside the other greater daemons while ignoring the wings he's just... Tiny. Like a 4'11 linebacker. Honestly keep it exactly the same but scale up the body 50% or so and you'd be golden.

You're right, didn't consider you can only take one per priest. Man that makes the skull altar 'buff' even worse. You have to take the priests to get the judgement in the first place, why would you chant it with another hero? I guess maybe on the off chance one of them dies but still. Lame. Ok yeah in that case drop the axe and I don't know... Maybe plug in a unit of bloodreavers that sits on the back line to hold objectives? Feels bad but might help in some scenarios. More likely to just give up battle tactics though. Also I noticed that wording for the skulls when I was looking at my book earlier so I don't think it has changed. Super handy though, I didn't realize it but it also gets around Teclis and his can't be unbound rule. Possibly the spell in a bottle as well.

It is nice to see they're finally adding something on that should have been there from the start back in first edition. Don't know if it'll much of an impact, but it should certainly feel nicer. I'm imagining simple stuff like you might grab a command point if you don't have anything better to do at the start of a turn or maybe it'll be more likely you end up the big summons. One potentially interesting point though, based on the wording I think most of the table is limited to a single use at the start of the hero phase but as far as I can tell there's no limit to the number of times you can use the spelleater curse. Might be worth banking as many points as you can and just totally shutting down some of the more obnoxious spellcasters on a clutch turn. Edit: Decided to try writing up a list. It feels awkward due to needing to take the lord of khorne on juggernaut as the general to avoid taking too many gelato veterans, but I think this is where I'd start: Allegiance: Khorne- Slaughterhost: Reapers of Vengeance- Grand Strategy: None Chosen- Triumphs:Leaders Lord of Khorne on Juggernaut (140)*- General- Command Trait: Mage Eater- Artefact: Skullshard MantleBloodsecrator (125)***Bloodstoker (85)***Slaughterpriest (110)* - Bronzed FleshWrath of Khorne Bloodthirster (310)*- Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact)- Universal Spell Lore: Flaming WeaponBattleline3 x Mighty Skullcrushers (170)*- Bloodglaives3 x Mighty Skullcrushers (170)***- Bloodglaives3 x Mighty Skullcrushers (170)***- Bloodglaives30 x Bloodletters (345)**- Reinforced x 2Units5 x Wrathmongers (145)**5 x Wrathmongers (145)**Endless Spells & InvocationsHexgorger Skulls (60)Wrath-Axe (85)Core Battalions*Warlord**Bounty Hunters ***Battle RegimentTotal: 2060 / 2000Reinforced Units: 2 / 4Allies: 0 / 400Wounds: 143Drops: 8 Points come out to 1990 after all the reductions, which is decent but as usual the drops weren't significant enough to actually do anything useful even though the vast majority of units in this list got cheaper. Amounted to adding in a wrath axe that can only be cast if someone is garrisoning the altar. I'd lean hardest to remove the bloodthirster but I'm not sure what else would work for those points. Being able to re-roll hits on the bloodletters helps ensure you're getting optimal damage and he can do some good work himself.