Enoby

I think this is an interesting point to bring up - at the moment I don't use the painting guides on the back of the box, so I would have probably answered with "no, I don't find them useful". However, when starting the hobby, I did use them a lot - it might just be that newer players who do find the back painting instructions useful weren't into the game enough to know about the poll.

Interestingly, it looks like ethereal has stayed the same - not that this is necessarily bad, just not interactive with All Out Defence and Moment of Glory. But they may have their own command abilities and heroic actions to compensate.

I wonder if the 'matched play' part might be referring to updates to some armies like Broken Realms - even though those updates can be for every style of play, they do involve matched.

I think, lore wise, he's just not a daemon - he's like an exhalted mortal, more like Archaon.

While not everyone likes using the app, the warscrolls are still free on there (including for the new books); I think this is the same model as Malifaux (I don't think their cards are on their website). Of course, this may change, though I hope it doesn't. I have a feeling the backlash from last time may have made them too nervous to fully pull the trigger yet.

I'm really looking forward to the narrative book, especially as I'm playing a Path to Glory game in Ghur. One of my big hopes is that they blend Anvil of Apotheosis and P2G together so that you can use renown to upgrade Anvil heroes (with more Anvil points - even something as simple as "each 5 renown is worth 1 Anvil Point").

I actually really like the rule that lets the ghosts shoot through walls - I've always preferred flurry rules, rather than mortal wounds/pluses to hit/pluses to wound/rerolling etc and these seem to be a good compromise, giving a useful benefit without it being samey.

Unfortunately so - it's a shame that they focused so much on summoning to the detriment of other parts of the army, leaving it feeling quite bland and very hard to balance for. There are good points of the army, but the summoning caused a good chunk of issues for the designers: - If units are cheap and decent, and the more decent units you have the more you summon, then summoning can get out of hand quickly. Thus, they need to artificially inflate the points, which doesn't feel good for anyone. - They may feel restricted on the power of the summoned warscrolls, not wanting anyone to get something amazing for free. - Every mechanic in the army has to account for summoning, ensuring it doesn't break it, and thus often leading to over-balance and lack of synergy. For players, summoning causes other issues: - You have to buy more than other armies, and things like a KoS are expensive. - A lot of people only like the mortals, but daemons are manditory to play with. Imagine if Iron Jawz allegiance ability was focused around summoning Bonesplittaz - they're both orks in the same book, but they look so different that fans of one may not like the other. - It's hard to transport the army - not only do you need to bring 2000 points, you probably need another 1000 at least for summoning if you want to take full advantage of it. - Playstyles often have to play to maximise summoning, which isn't always a bad thing, but it can lead to samey games. The more I think about it, the more I'd like summoning to be a small or optional add on and for the army to just function on its own without being pigeonholed to bringing certain models. Especially as summoning isn't particularly tied to Slaanesh's lore moreso than any other Chaos God. I spoke a while ago about why summoning became so prevalent, but I hope they choose to build passed it next time.

I don't think he'd spite GW or anything like that, but rather, if he feels like GW will ignore AoS, he'll say as such.

Shalaxi could really take a thing or two from the Beast Skewer Killabow where it does damage based on the enemy's wounds. Not necessarily the exact same rule, but something that means that one attack is always a brutal one.

Nothing against Rob, but while he can be very helpful and an active member of the community, he does come across as overly cynical in some cases. Not that it doesn't make sense sometimes, but when he comes out with a rumour that AoS is getting nothing for a year, I do wonder if this is just him trying to stir controversy because he's dissatisfied with the game. Perhaps "stir controversy" is too harsh, but in conversations I've had with him, he does prefer to keep pessimistic.

That'd be very disappointing if true. It would definitely feel as if AoS was truly on the backburner.

I'd like that as well - I think that it potentially could be a bonus given from the hosts. Currently, hosts give you extra ways to get depravity, which is fine but not super exciting. I'd like it if it was something like (imagine it's worded better): Invaders: Units wholly within your opponent's table half and wholly within 12" of one of your generals treat hit rolls of 6 in melee as 3 hits rather than 2". Pretenders: Units wholly within 12" of your general treat hit rolls of 6 in melee as 3 hits rather than 2. In addition, before you allocate a wound or mortal wound to your general, if a friendly Slaanesh Pretenders unit is within 3" of your general, you can roll a dice. On a 1-2, the wound or mortal wound is allocated to your general as normal. On a 3+, you can allocate the wound or mortal wound to the friendly Slaanesh Pretenders unit within 3" instead. Godseekers: Units that made a charge move this turn may treat hit rolls of 6 in melee as 3 hits rather than 2. Pretenders gets the biggest buff here, but to be honest, I think it needs it. The other two give benefits to the rest of your army, but Pretenders just means you rely on, at best, a Keeper of Secrets surviving with some middling command traits and artifacts.

I hope that, if Slaangors get a rewrite, they give them -2 rend and 2 damage. That on its own would make me consider taking them - maybe a few units for tin opening properties. Now I've thought about Slaangors, the question of "why was the warscroll written to be this poor" comes back...

Oh yeah, that would make sense! I think I've just defaulted to 10 because I never use five - oops! Edit: With this in mind, I don't think the rend would be too bad - like I said, I mind-blanked when doing the stats and just included 10 as if that were normal numbers, so it's not quite as bad as I thought it was. I'm hoping we see a White Dwarf soon. I'd almost like to wait on a book, if only because I'd like the maximum amount of feedback and testing to go into the next book.

Yeah, coming down in point would help them a lot. I'm assuming in your calculation you didn't including the reroll and/or the exploding 6s? I always include the reroll just as it's built in (though not every turn) and the exploding 6s as it's the allegiance ability. Edit: Not that you'd be incorrect to look at them without buffs - I was just wondering why our numbers were so different! I personally prefer with the basic built in buffs as I see it as a more 'realistic' performance, but I understand that some buffs aren't guaranteed so including them can give false power. Extra rend would do this to their damage (when rerolling): As you can see, it does massively boost them - I'm not sure if it'd be too much even, considering they'd end up with twice the damage of Greatswords vs a 2+, 3+, 4+ save. I'd like them to get rend, but if they went down to around 140 points and got rend, maybe they'd end up too good? Or at least too damaging.

Twinsouls are a really weird one. If you look at their raw damage output, point-for-point, it's very high: This is a unit of 10 rerolling hits, but with no further buffs. The problem is that, without rend, against a 2+ or 3+ save, they're very swingy. Now those good saves are more common, they've lost some of their value. On one hand, they could just be considered elite chaff clearers, but on the other, they're priced like elites that can fight everything. I agree that, in general, Slaanesh warscrolls are fine (for example, in Painbringers vs Chaos Warriors, I think Painbringers are a better example of what a Chaos Warrior should be), but they lack external buffs to make them more than fine but are priced very highly. Fittingly, Khorne has the opposite problem where they have very poor warscrolls but many external buffs. I think a reletively quick fix for Slaanesh would be a command ability that could give rend. It would be pretty thematic too as Slaanesh has been known for its rend.

Yeah, I think this is the big issue. We probably have the strongest internal balance in the game, but it felt like a lot of effort was put into balancing the book (probably because of 2019), but most other books don't get this scrutiny. I think it's left us with very few (if any) "wow" units - everything feels as if it's had someone take a look over it to double check nothing can be broken. In one hand, that's good and should be standard. On the other hand, it's bad because it feels like we're one of the few books that has been overbalanced so nearly every book ends up stronger.

Yeah, I do agree with this. I think Slaanesh mortals actually have some of the best internal balance of any book; there's a good chunk I like about the army, and this is a big one. I'd like to see depravity be taken down a peg if it allowed the army to work on its own - a lot of people have gone off Slaanesh when they realised they needed daemons to play (and Slaanesh daemons aren't everyone's cup of tea). At the moment, I think it's pretty evident that Depravity Points aren't strong enough to make up for the points handicap, so they don't absolutely need to reduce the power of Depravity if they reduce points. However, in the future, I'd like to see Slaanesh step away from being "the summoning army".

Just saw updated stats for AoS tournaments; I would share the image but the one I have is super blurry and would be illegible if compressed further. We're currenty at the bottom, sitting on a 34% win rate. While it's not the lowest ever seen (I remember pre-book Slaves to Darkness at 11%), it's still pretty bad. We at least know that GW looks at win rates. Whether they make the correct moves to balance is another question, but we can be confident that they know we're the bottom of the pack. We can only hope that means it's more likely we get a Beasts of Chaos style White Dwarf update (their win rate is now 45%). I do wonder what the AoS rules writers think of our battletome. The one who wrote it has already left (not because of the battletome, mind), but I wonder if the others think it's sub par or if they think it's fine and people are just whining. Let's hope for a very significant drop in the GHB. Maybe, if we're very lucky, a Slaangor rewrite.

To be honest, if I were part of Blades of Khorne I'd probably remove myself from the store too (I hope he gets a remake, he's a neat model even if a little weedy at the moment - same as Exhalted Hero of Chaos to Chaos Lord, I like models that are directly under another one narratively and build themselves up)

I actually wonder if this is the consensus in the general community. Not that it necessarily matters for this discussion, but the general community is the one who buys so their opinion holds the most weight. Personally I think AoS feels like it's on the backburner and that the rules writers don't/can't put that much passion into the rules of some armies, but when looking at some 40k groups, there were a good number of people saying "40k is an absolute mess at the moment, I'm moving to AoS" and others agreeing, saying that AoS was a much better game. Now, that could just mean than 40k is especially bad currently, but I'd waged it's more that being a new or casual/less invested player lets you overlook most of the flaws of a game. That "blissful ignorance" (for lack of a better word) isn't always going to last, but from talking to new or casual players, their complaints are limited to "I don't like the double turn" and "I don't like how spread around the rules are". I've never seen any casual (e.g. not involved in the online community at all) player give some of the complaints that people (including myself) have shared here. That's not to say that AoS isn't or is in a bad state, but I think that it's in a 'fine' state from a casual perspective. However, personally, I think it can feel frustratingly shallow at the moment when you try to get more deeply involved in the game.

I think it's pretty recent (like this year), but I don't think it means he's coming back to BL. I think he just gets money when his books sell, and they're still on sale.

Yeah, in all honesty, I think this would be the general perception. I really liked Broken Realms as a series (besides the disappointing ending), but I only bought the book my army had rules in. The reason was because the lore was available online very easily, I didn't want four books sat around my house that I'd read once, and the narrative game content in the form of battleplans were very restrictive. I think Battletomes potentially could sell if they were narrative only, providing they had a lot of strong narrative content including stories, expanded PTG, thought out Anvil of Apotheosis, and very high quality painting guides. However, that would take a lot of effort for likely less payoff. I really like narrative games, no question, but they're harder to set up than matched play and quickly fall apart if the group doesn't gel (or if there isn't a group to begin with). In my experience, they only succeed when you have a group of friends who are all invested in telling a story, all are willing to play semi-regularly, and none of them want to try powergame (or just pick a faction likes Sons of Behemat innocently). Matched Play (not competitive), on the other hand, is much easier to pick up and play. You can approach a stranger in a GW and have a matched play game with minimal difficulty, without worrying how to set up a narrative or trying to think of a good baseline. I think most people play the 'casual matched play' format and so the battletomes are primarily to appeal to them. I'd love it if army rules could be officially free and battletomes were for narrative. However, I think GW would lose money compared to how it is now - not that I'd be shedding tears over loss of profit, but rather I'd be worried they'd stop doing them full stop. Games like Malifaux, which have all the rules free, sell lore books (they do have rules too, but these are also free). They continue to produce them so I imagine they must be successful enough, however a big difference between Malifaux and Warhammer is that WH is much more popular and so the lore is much easier to find freely discussed (e.g. wikis). If you're curious about the lore of a particular Malifaux model, you're probably out of luck unless you buy the book or listen to hours of podcast. That said, I would love a Path to Glory book to come out. Not a series of campaigns, but rather a book full of army specific narrative rules, example campaigns that were malleable, anvil of apotheosis for each army, and more battleplans - and whatever Outposts are.

On the bright side, they've at least acknowledged that we're in a bad spot with the new update, which they didn't do for Khorne - if we get a bit dangerously optimistic, it may be that GW don't see a problem with Khorne (for some reason) and so didn't see a need to give them much help in the White Dwarf. If we're lucky, we're viewed by the designers in the same way Beasts of Chaos are and they give us just as much of a helping hand. While I don't think the most recent victory points update did much for us at all, what it did do is give acknowledgement from GW that we're in a bad spot. Like I said, Khorne don't seem to flash on GW's radar as an issue so we'll hopefully get better treatment than them.