Grimrock

Listen guys, this keeps going round and round and it's getting ridiculous. We get it, there are people who expected the book to be different and wanted it to be focused on the chaos warriors or monsters or warcry stuff, but it isn't. I understand that's a let down and it pushes you away from the faction, but that doesn't mean you need to come on here and constantly keep complaining about it. Complaining won't make the book work the way you want it to, it won't magically make GW publish a massive sweeping errata that reworks the faction. All it's doing is restricting productive conversation and bumming people out. Please just take a break and let it go. There are competitive ways to play the faction if you want them, and if they're not to your liking then there are other factions that can scratch that itch. Worst case take a step away from the faction until the next book release, GW always rotates what's strong in a faction from book to book so I'm sure warriors and knights will be in vogue whenever that happens.

Khorne had a few kit upgrades in it's last release, although I think it was all moving finecast to plastic. Flesh hounds, skulltaker, Karanak and the herald all got new kits. Edit: although technically the flesh hounds and karanak were a few months before... But close enough

I doubt that'll happen unfortunately. Putting the sorcerer lord buffs and/or shrine buffs on non-s2d units would be all kinds of broken. A unit of 20 blight kings with a 3+ rerollable save and full rerolls to hit and wound is something that doesn't need to exist haha. Yes, the foot summoner has the slaves keyword so it's valid.

We'll each of the mortal chaos armies have some worthwhile allies but it's usually dependent on your mark. Harbinger of decay is great for nurgle. Blue scribes are fantastic if you have a couple tzeentch wizards. A contorted epitome would probably be good in most armies if you have a generic endless spell or two. Greater daemons are tricky since they typically only support only daemons or their specific faction. I have been tinkering with a great unclean one with blade and bell. He speeds up all nurgle nearby and 2 casts/unbinds with a potential +1 is solid. Seems viable but finding room for 340 points is pretty difficult, and you lose access to the harbinger. Oh and I guess a bloodthirster of insensate rage could be... Kinda ok.

I feel like that's the reason they got stronger. No one would ever want to go and buy marauders if they didn't have a compelling reason rulewise. The new warriors and knights can sell themselves just by being cool, the marauders needed something extra. I know that the old guard would have the models kicking around but there are a lot of people playing all of the mortal chaos armies that should be eyeing them right now.

It's cool if you'd rather not use marauders, but just for anyone else reading they're far from useless chaff. Point for point and considering the buffs available they're one of the best battleline in the game with incredible damage output, speed, and number of bodies. Bloodreavers are great chaff that gets in the way and generates blood tithe, but marauders actually do real work on the tabletop. Buffing them with a warshrine for full rerolls on hits and wounds and having a bloodsecrator nearby... They blender everything, even threatening petrifex mortek under a harvester. Seriously the numbers are ridiculous.

No, unless I've missed something that's not how battalions work. They give you a clear, straightforward list of what models you need. One hero with the mark of nurgle and 7 units with the mark of nurgle for a total of 8 units. Don't try to read into it further than that, it's no more than it says on the paper. If they wanted to mix them they like you suggested then they would have said 7 units with the mark of nurgle, one of which must be a hero.

So the way I've always read it was the movement ends on the one side of the portal and then after that the spell gets set up on the other side. That would mean that nothing on the other side of the portal actually takes any damage because the endless spells hurt things they move over or end their movement near. Movement ended on the one side already, it doesn't continue until the spell is set up again on the other side. Could be wrong though.

Give it some time, I think you'll start seeing them pop up. Archaon is incredible in khorne and tzeentch, and someone was discussing some good results in... either the tzeentch or S2D thread. Marauders also work well everywhere and solidly beat out pretty much every god marked battleline, so I expect to see them show up in tournament lists as well.

Hmm, unfortunately I'm mostly limited to the factions I play so khorne, nurgle, slaanesh, tzeentch and slaves. Of those I think khorne has one of the best 'lores' for their priests. It isn't technically magic, but effectively it's the same thing. The vast majority of the prayers are impactful and help the army do its job better, and combining with the terrain piece, warscroll prayers, and judgements, the priests are some of the most potent 'wizards' in the game. Nurgle is ok with one really good spell per lore, (mortals, daemons, rotbringers) but they all cast on a 7 and there arent many easy casting buffs making it unreliable. Slaanesh has some good spells as well but they don't usually help the army and again no casting buffs. Tzeentch rocks the damage of course, but I don't think the lore makes much of an impact on how they play. It's just really good at nuking things. Outside of my armies the primary one I can think of is skaven. Great buffs like death frenzy or plague priest prayers and utility like skitterleap along with easy casting buffs from the gnawholes.

Personally I think the best lores are the ones that have a significant impact on how an army plays. To do that the spells have to be generally strong and either assist the army in doing something it's already good at or open up new avenues of play. It also has to be readily usable by the Wizards in the army, so for example a lore full of spells that need 7s or 8s to cast would only be good for an army that can get casting bonuses. So take the S2D lore for example. Incredibly powerful spells that synergize well with existing units like marauders, or help the resilience of the army by locking down key units and keeping them out of the fight. The biggest weakness is all the spells are short range and high casting cost, making it difficult to use unless you're running the Cabalist sub faction.

Chaos lord with mark of tzeentch can do it, he can struggle a bit keeping up though.

I don't really want to get into a theory hammer debate, but I'll just mention a few things. First, remember that if you target the small unit you lose the +2 to hit on flamers as soon as they lose a single model, and obviously the +1 to hit when they drop below 10. Even assuming you target the large unit your math is waaaay off. 2x3 flamers averages 18 wounds to completely unbuffed marauders. 2 exalted average about 10 with the nurgle aura. So average 28, but with the guaranteed shrine buff 28 becomes about 23. Definitely shy of 60. If the tzeentch player doesn't go first and aims for a double turn then the marauders can have have the warshrine buff, oracular, and the harbinger (none of which can be dispelled) and the 23 wounds drops to about 10. Any number of surviving marauders will trash the flamers as they'll be in charge range on the next turn. I mean I'm not saying it's a guaranteed win or anything, but I don't think auto loss is anywhere near accurate.

I'm curious how this auto loses to a competitive tzeentch build. The aura of nurgle gives a -1 to hit from shooting and the heroes are generally getting look out sir and/or the harbringer buff, so sniping them out will be extremely difficult. After that he neuters the most powerful unit like the 20 pinks or a unit of flamers with be'lakor and puts his block of marauders at a 4+ rerollable save and a 5+ invul from the harbringer which should tank the alpha pretty reliably. If he gets through that alpha the marauders can absolutely shred horrors with full rerolls, as can the sorcerer lord on manticore if he gets the spell off, and the daemon princes can target out the heroes to remove the locus. Actually I think this list stands a better chance than most against tzeentch.

Well I can only speak for myself but the only real reason I haven't tried them is I don't want to pay that much for the resin models. I've seen a couple decent conversions but nothing that grabbed me hard enough to want to put the work in either. Actually I wonder if model bias isn't one of the bigger issues we have. So many good units that just have old or awkward sculpts.

I think one issue is that certain units work better in allegiances other than S2D, which can be a little frustrating. For example big blocks of knights work great in khorne because they have access to extremely consistent buffs and speed boosts to help them maneuver. The limited range on auras in slaves and lack of consistent access to things like casting buffs means they can struggle to make the most out of units that the other allegiances have no issue with. This makes pure S2D feel clunkier to use. However one of the things I've been finding while list building and playing is the army might have been intentionally designed to pull in support from chaos factions. Blue scribes for tzeentch marked armies, harbringer or maybe even a GUO for nurgle. Bloodstoker from khorne. The army always seems to run better when it pulls in an ally or two. For anyone that hasn't done it yet and is struggling to get the most out of their units, try making a 2 drop list from one of the god marked batallions and your favourite buff pice from the relevant army. Seems to be a decent place to start. Edit: Also people generally seem to have a bias against the single best unit in the book, marauders. Refusing to use them is a huge hit to how the army runs.

2x the value and more that 4x the monetary cost, makes perfect sense to me haha. If it's too strong I'm sure they'll nerf it to just be blues, but not until the summer when people have already bought everything needed for pinks. Overall the changes look fine. I won't feel like a bad person for playing tzeentch and I'm nowhere near as worried playing against them. Seems fair to me.

I'm assuming tossing in buffing heroes. Stuff like the harbinger of decay, blue scribes, contorted epitome, etc. There are a good number of synergies you can pull in from other armies. In other news GMG dropped their book review for wrath of the everchosen. Looks like the writers headed off any varanguard hero shenanigans and made it so they can only take traits and artifacts from a specific list for that army. They look... Ok. Not sure if it's worth losing out on the host of the everchosen benefits.

Well, keep in mind they have to die first, the unit still has to be alive, and it's on a 3+. Still decent but with how glass hammer daemons can be I'm not sure how often it'll have value. Even in a perfect situation where 3 have died but the unit is still up, you've still got like a 60 percent chance that you bring back 0 or 1 models which is a tough sell for a command point. I do like the droning guard and the invaders host though. They both seem to be mostly upside and do new things for the army.

The anti synergy with witherstave kinda sucks on munificent, but I think droning guard may be the best one in the book. Not sure if it does enough to make plague drones viable, but one or two units of 6 certainly will be very annoying to deal with. Also we might be getting a glimpse of what our universal locus will be in the next book, so that's kind of cool. Don't really like either of the mortal ones. Not worth losing an artifact and grandfather's gift over IMO.

Well they're not bad but not really exciting either. Makes me happy actually since there's nothing holding me back from swapping bases to use fecula as a standard sorcerer and converting one of the blight kings to a lord of plagues.

I've thought about a lord on foot, but considering the marauders have to make a minimum 9" charge you're going to have a heck of a time keeping them in range of the Lord at the beginning of the combat phase unless he manages the long bomb charge. Still, extra attacks on 6s and maybe acquiescence should tip them in the right direction. If your opponent doesn't have a good way to limit where you can deploy with screening units then it could be pretty strong.

You could also use marauders from S2D. They have like a 95% chance to land a 9 inch charge even without cogs and they do a ton of damage if they land an alpha. The biggest problem is they're off the board in your hero phase so you can't put any buffs on them, which the marauders really need to function well. I guess if you could land an acquiescence it'd help a little.

I'm not sure if the new sub faction will work with our sub factions. Typically you pick one or the other, so this would likely be instead of running ravagers or host of the everchosen. Might be different in this book though. Either way I'm sure it's going to get a page of errata explaining how a multiple model unit of heroes works. If anyone is planning on running that probably best to wait until the FAQ drops before planning combos.

Could be yeah, but then you're losing out on either attacking twice with those bloodthirsters or attacking first with the whole battalion and having one thirster with a constant +4 speed bonus. We'll see what the rest of the rules are I guess. Yeah I was excited about a pusgoyle focused list but then I remembered the other previewed ability works best on blight kings. Plus the command ability is pretty terrible... A point of rend on a 6 to wound is really really bad for a command point. Especially considering the pusgoyles should just have that rend natively to begin with. Munificent looks decent but jamming more than 1 unit of plaguebearers wholly within 12 of the general is going to be tricky. Could be interesting I guess.