Clan's Cynic

Who?

We haven't had a single Death Battletome this edition, so I'd be surprised if one isn't previewed there. But knowing how good my guesses have been this year I'm expecting Gloomspite and Death to be in early 2024... I wonder if we'll see a Dawnbringer model in full? Although I doubt it.

A bunch of old Warriors of Chaos models going MTO next week. Notably Archaon and the Mounted Chaos Sorcerer who I don't think has been around in basically forever? Also a Preview event on Friday!

Reminder that WarhammerFest tickets go on sale tomorrow at 3pm GMT. WarCom Twitter said the prices and exact events will be unveiled tomorrow, which is admittedly very last minute but what can you do? Since there's a few thousand tickets you probably don't have to rush for general attendance, but the actual gaming event stuff will probably sell out as lightning quick as usual.

Another Metawatch, this one answering some questions.

Horse barding/armour I think (or at least some kind of mount). I think all of those pieces are will be from the same 'Knight' model.

Dawnbringer preview! Nothing too major, just more renders.

What if next year is... Evil Chaos Dwarf Santa?

Goff Rocker in the house tonight this Christmas.

Valrak's a tricky one, because he does have reliable sources, but he also has plenty of 'sources' who've turned out to be wrong/spouting nonsense. So it's a 50/50 if something he says turns out to be right or not. The pattern I've noticed is if we're really close to a reveal event (like a week or two) he's usually reliable. If it's a 'leak' that's meant to be months away, his reliability plummets.

A lot of, dare I say most, people only stick with GW games - specifically 40k - because it's the most popular game that is easy to find random people to play with. It's not too surprising that as soon as one of the ships seems like it might be wobbly, people start eyeing the lifeboats.

AoS locally is still pretty healthy. Healthier than it was during that weird No Man's Land period between 3.0 launching and there barely being any Battletomes until 2022. Now most armies have theirs, things are going pretty steady. I wouldn't say the local scene is flagging or booming, merely consistent. I think part of the issue might be that in a lot of communities the New Hotness is Horus Heresy. This period in the 9-months before a new 40k edition is usually when people get disenfranchised and dip their toes back into AoS for a while, but this year a lot of that potential new/returning blood is filtering into 30k instead (as well as curious people who play AoS looking into it) which is where some of the momentum might be being lost. It's also difficult to understate how many Cities/former Fantasy players I know have decided to hold off until the CoS/Dawnbringers update comes around. That launch is going to be enormous.

It's all coming up Millhouse Grimnir.

I'm glad to see they brought back the Freeguild General on Horse.

More STDs, including a proper look at the Warriors and Knights. Warriors are a new multi-part kit. Knights are the Start Collecting(!) box versions with a command sprue.

The Army Sets have typically had pretty 'meh' savings, probably because they're all new kits. The League one was a bit of an exception in that respect. Good if you were planning on buying everything anyway, but not a tragic loss if you're just on the fence. I could see a lot of 40k players buying the box for the Daemon Prince and sticking the rest up on Ebay for cheap as well.

Slaves To Darkness £120 Bloodpelt Hunter £27.50 Vanguards are £80 as standard.

Slaves To Darkness AND Ogres next week.

Next week is definitely the Predator Support Tank and probably some of the Leagues of Votann stuff. Apparently some of the influencers let slip they've received the Land Fortress. Maybe Liber Imperium for 30k as well.

You 'can' but GW players are notorious for staunchly refusing to touch anything but what is promoted as the primary way to play.

Gnarlwood influencer reviews are coming out. Sounds like it's a soft reboot to make the game far more accessible (no deckbuilding, Championship relegated to the bin side format). I liked the deck building element, but I see why from a financial perspective they don't want Lil Timmy's brain to melt at having to collect and arrange cards rather than him and Lil Bobby just having set-decks all the time. Very much a "we don't care about the oldblood" situation. It's going to be very interesting to see how this turns out for them. Either it's going to work and swell the popularity with people who find it far more approachable, or Underworld's reputation as a TCG-with-models is already too set in stone and all they'll have done is alienate the people who were most passionate and willing to buy everything to the point it cripples the bottom line far worse than if they'd kept sailing straight.

Soulbound originally had Freeguild Veteran as a class right? Could definitely believe someone at GW swatted their hands away before it went to print because of the upcoming update, given how far in advance GW designers work. Does make me wonder what the deal with Dispossessed is, since they don't have any classes either but all the remaining Dwarf models are what released immediately before (well, a year) Fantasy was squatted.

The more I think about it, the more I'm thinking it might be Scourge Privateers/Black Ark Corsairs. Which would be funny considering we just left the underwater themed seasons.

Chronicles of the Wanderer already sold out. I grabbed a copy just before it flipped to out of stock but sheesh. Bloody scalpers.

No price rise from Nethermaze to Gnarlwood, that's a relief.