Clan's Cynic

"Due to the abundance of Skryre Acolytes in our warehouses, coupled with the rising cost of metals, we have decided to forestall the planned production of a new, plastic mould for this kit. Instead, we are pressing forward with new, exciting, Lumineth releases."

Necromunda was kept alive by a very dedicated group of committed hobbyists after GW killed Specialist Games, so much like Blood Bowl there's always going to be a strong core of an audience they can sell to. Anything after that when GW 'revived' it was going to be a bonus. Warcry I think suffered because word-of-mouth, even from the less critical influencers, was pretty poor when it released. As the launch of Age of Sigmar itself showed, the audience for a very-casual wargame, even a skirmish one, is much more limited and if you wanted a casual-skirmish-fantasy game you were spoilt for choice anyway. When it comes to their non-core games (40k, AoS, maybe 30k) the pull of being a Games Workshop game loses a lot of it's lustre since it lacks the 'guaranteed playerbase' of the core games, meaning people are happier to try other systems like Frostgrave for a fraction of the price. Warcry 1.0 (and presumably 2.0) also suffers from that weird purgatory where it wants to be a sort of AoS Necromunda - campaign focus, small gangs warbands, terrain heavy, narrative play - but it lacked any of Necromunda's depth, largely because of modern GW's fear of giving new designs weapon/equipment options, whereas half the fun of Necromunda is kitting out and converting your gangers. It's like they can't decide what exactly they want Warcry to be. Is it a super casual narrative game? Okay great, but there's a reason those kinds of systems very heavily push into campaigns, whereas Warcry only seems to be paying them some lipservice, compared to Necromunda which continually pushes out 'fluff releases' of Hangers-On and more expansive campaign books. It also doesn't help that Warcry doesn't really incentivise you to buy anything once you've settled on a warband.

"All the Big Rules Changes in Warcry’s New Edition" Also a How To Play video.

Another Blood Bowl Star-Player this week.

The in-store 'free model scheme' is changing to a model from that month's releases. This month it's Rotmire Creed.

£135, but you got a fair bit more terrain.

Kill-Team: Octarius was £125 and you don't really get anymore than Heart of Ghur, so I don't know where the £140 is entering their heads beyond "because we can lol." The resale value of Octarius was also great, because people were chomping at the bits for the Krieg and Kommandos, whereas you're probably only going to be flipping these warbands on Ebay if their rules are hilariously OP, since AoS stuff doesn't resale nearly as well. The terrain might go for around £50-60 but even that's less than half, even if you buy it from a discounter. What killed my local KT scene was the sheer cost of entry of KT'21. Warcry already struggled to gain any traction here back in first edition, whereas KT '18 was pretty popular, so if a 40k spin-off can't survive at £125ish, I might as well hold a funeral for Warcry at £140 (especially in this economy).

Both of the new warbands are listed in the Slaves to Darkness contents leak, right? (Except Rotmire who're presumably getting a Maggotkin PDF). That leaves us with 5 warbands. Let's assume one of those is Tzeentch based on the terrain Rumour Engine and the map. That's down to 4. This presumably means that even if Hedonites and Blades get a God-aligned warband each, 2 of them won't be 'Chaos Humans'. I think at least one of them will be Freeguild/Dawnbringers, because the timing would align as a sort of 'preview release' ahead of their Battletome arriving next year.

The Compendium? It'll just be the Warbands which had rules in first edition. If it's anything like Kill-Team 2021, any future warbands they release will quickly replace Compendium teams though.

Warcry pre-order next week, which I don't imagine surprises many. Two-week pre-order period as some intelligent, beautiful, amazing people may have predicted. Does sound like there's only going to be a limited run of it though, but if Kill-Team: Octarius was any indication it won't fly off the shelves. Pre-ordering from GW nets you a fancy measuring gauge. Also, Also soft confirmation of previews at GenCon.

Saw this StD lore spoiler on DakkaDakka, don't know the original quote's source.

I think the reason these look so busy is they've got a mix of themes going on. If you stripped out the spikes, horns, etc they'd look like professional soldiers, but they also have the random assortment of mutations, spikes, Chaos armour panels, etc. It all contrasts and looks sort of thrown together. The Chaos Warriors/Chosen by comparison are more cohesive. They're in a big suit of armour with spikes/extras that tie nicely together into it, fitting the theme coherently. Chaos Warrior armour looks like it's all part of the same suit, whereas the Legionnaires look more like they'd raided a fancy dress store and cobbled it together.

They're certainly interesting designs for Chaos models, much more uniform and professional. As was discussed when the StD 'Tome leaked, they look a lot like the Freeguild that appeared on the AoS 2.0 banner. The lore given so far doesn't really suggest they're Traitor Freeguild, but that could change when we get more information of course.

I bet they'll reveal one model from it on Monday.

For those who fancied the Sylvaneth army featured on Warhammer-Community, Cult of Paint put up a tutorial from it's painter.

Oh I definitely think they're coming and sooner than M*lerion's E*ves at that, but I don't think they're on the doorstep. My guess is late 2023/early 2024.

The one thing that gives me pause on Chorfs being soon is Horns being part of the leaked Slaves To Darkness Battletome, but not the Rotmire Creed (who will presumably be taken by Maggotkin). They had no problems keeping World Eaters out of the new Chaos Space Marine book due to them coming in the future and the writing being on the wall, so it seems odd they'd not do the same with Horns and StD.

The interesting tidbits. Nothing new there, but I like that they made it explicitly clear that Harshut is a Dwarf deity first and foremost. This does make me think we'll see the Chorfs sooner rather than later. For all the references to Malekith/Malerion, we've never had any of his goons directly appear on the tabletop the way the Horns are. The references to a campaign in Thondia also make me think we'll see them before the end of 3.0 at the latest.

Another AoS Horror novel. A followup to Gothghul Hollow. Note the prosthetic arm. Witch Hunters continually keep popping up in these AoS books too.

Looks a bit small to be a mace, even one on the end of a weapon. All I can think of is some sort of grenade like on the end of the new Witch Hunter crossbow, though it has a different design. Doesn't look like the Hobgrot Slittaz' ones, so probably not Chorfs.

Slaves To Darkness leaked a couple of months ago and it's not even out until winter. They're probably working over a year in advance.

Article on the Rotmire warband.

CSM seems to be an issue behind the scenes rather than a conscious decision on GW's part to hold them back. They have pretty much never released a new Codex/Battletome and had a model release delay except when something's gone wrong in production/delivery. My guess is they'll end up thrown in 'as soon as they're ready' even if that means double-teaming with another major release like the Lumineth vs Tzeentch box.

Two-week War Cry pre-order.

Kill-Team '21 was... Octarius, Chalnath, Nachmund, Moroch, with Into The Dark kicking off a new season whenever that launches. So we'll probably have six more warbands we've not seen, then this time next year we'll know what 'next season's first warbands are. Presumably they'll have White Dwarf bespoke teams that replace the existing, non-<Cultist> ones from first edition but they won't get new models.