Enoby

I do wonder how well Warhammer + is doing. I can't say either way, because it's not as if there's tons of AoS content to talk about on it so it'll seem quiet on our end, but it'd be interesting to know. Personally, I think they could be missing a trick by not allowing the subscription to make all rules available on the app. For many (especially AoS), the animations are nice but not a huge selling point (the Beareater one was good), but I think quite a few would be interested in getting all the rules "for free" because £5 for all of WH+ and every battletome (rules) sounds like a good deal. But most people only play one or two armies, so they'd only buy one or two battletomes anyway. So in the 2 years (or more) it'd take for them to get a new tome, they'd have spent £120 on those rules (+ some other perks). That's not to mention the fact that some people may buy the tome to have the physical book, or for the lore/art afterwards. And that some people may get interested in armies that they'd have otherwise ignored by learning their rules. I'm sure they've thought of this, but I think it's a very high perceived added value that would make a lot of people say "oh, £5 isn't too bad for all of that". The question would be how much of an impact it would have on battletome sales.

++ Mod Hat ++ Please can everyone steer away from JK Rowling? I can only see it turning into an off topic argument

I had a game with this list last night, but looking at it this morning I think it's an illegal list - despite the allowance on the AoS app, I'm assuming the Incarnate isn't allowed to be bound to named heroes. Regardless, I could have swapped out some Painbringers for a Shardspeaker. It was against Orruk Warclans with an alpha strike gore-grunta and Mawkrusha list, and ended up using a battleplan where you couldn't teleport. - Army Faction: Hedonites of Slaanesh - Army Type: Invaders - Subfaction: The Lurid Haze - Grand Strategy: Coveted Riches LEADERS Sigvald (205) - General Glutos Orscollion (470) - Spells: Battle Rapture - Bonding: Krondspine Incarnate of Ghur BATTLELINE Blissbarb Archers (140) Blissbarb Archers (140) Blissbarb Archers (140) BEHEMOTH Krondspine Incarnate of Ghur (400) OTHER Symbaresh Twinsouls (260) Myrmidesh Painbringers (120) Myrmidesh Painbringers (120) TERRAIN 1 x Fane of Slaanesh (0) TOTAL POINTS: 1995/2000 Overall, thanks to some really poor luck from the Mawkrusha, it was a stomp in Slaanesh's favour. The Krondspire was very good and I can definitely see myself taking that again; Glutos was useful enough with his -1 to hit (which made a huge difference) but didn't do loads else. Sigvald destroyed some gore-gruntas after the pigs couldn't break through 5 painbringers. It's hard to say exactly how well it went as it ended up very one sided by the beginning of turn 2, however I was very impressed with the Twinsouls in Bounty Hunters. They split their attacks between a unit of 5 Arboys and 10 Gutripaz, and wiped the 10 out and left the 5 on 1. That said, I'm not a huge fan of Bounty Hunters as a battalion - mattered way too much in that game. The Blissbarbs will be my go-to choice for battleline from now on - they're a very good veteran unit who can support from a point.

I don't want to insult the Soulbound Bestiary - like I said, I only read a small amount into it (the Slaanesh section). In addition, I'm almost certain it would have better rules than the WHFRPG Bestiary because that was a bit messy in that end. In fact, despite running over a year long campaign in WHFRPG (in the AoS setting), I only used the Bestiary for a game aid once or twice. My point wasn't that it's a bad book (I couldn't say, but I'm sure it's not), but rather the fluff of the WHFRPG Bestiary seemed much more in depth and personal than what I read of the Soulbound Bestiary. Every monster (not faction) got its own selection of quotes from different people from around the world, usually with some very funny ones sprinkled in (Old Hob being my favourite person). From what I saw of the Slaanesh bit of Soulbound, there was some general fluff, a quote or two (I think an anecdote on a Shardspeaker but I may be misremembering that part), but the fluff was pretty general and reminded me of things I'd already read in the Slaanesh Battletome. Is that bad? No - in fact, it's totally expected from a Bestiary to introduce those who aren't familiar with the monster to a general overview. In that way, the Soulbound Bestiary was similar to the Pathfinder Bestiaries I enjoy. So I agree with you that C7 likely had the choice of fluff vs crunch and chose crunch to make a more useful gaming book - absolutely nothing wrong with this. My point was more just that the WHFRPG Bestiary was oozing with flavour that I didn't see when looking at my favourite faction in Soulbound. This isn't saying the book is bad because there are reasons (as you mentioned), but rather that the Soulbound book likely didn't add as much to AoS's worldbuilding compared to how much WHFRPG Bestiary added to WHFB's world. TL;DR - the Soulbound Bestiary likely isn't a bad book, and sounds like it really tried hard to add in as many options as possible which is great. As a gaming aid, it could well be better than WHFRPG. However, WHFRPG seemed to add more flavour to the wargaming setting, at least from my limited experience with Soulbound (so again, please correct me if the Slaanesh section was just a bit more bland than the others).

It's definitely one of the best RPG books ever for how enjoyable it is to read. I think my favourite is the scholar who blames everything on Chaos in the North - every time any other threat is mentioned, he deflects to accusing Chaos throughout the entire book. Only for there to be another paragraph from a witch hunter's perspective about burning the guy at the stake for being a Chaos cultist.

I own the Warhammer Fantasy RPG (WHFRPG) 2e Bestiary, and I've flicked through the Soulbound Bestiary. I can't rate the Soulbound one as it was a very quick look through and not enough to give any sort of well formed opinion. However, one thing it didn't seem to have (and correct me if I'm wrong here) is the very personal touch that the WHFRPG Bestiary had. I don't think the bestiaries of an RPG will make or break a setting, but potentially it may shed light on why people found some of Fantasy's lore to be more engaging - one of the reasons people felt it was more down to earth. So, in the Soulbound Bestiary I (understandably) went straight to the Slaanesh section. Now, it could well just be that section and I may have missed a lot (so for those who have read it in full, please correct me), but the lore consisted of a page or two to explain the faction, and a small bit of lore before each stat block which was relatively plain. It's certainly not bad - it's very standard for the other RPG bestaries I've seen - but the WHFRPG (2e) is probably the best Bestiary I've ever read for worldbuilding. For those who haven't read it, the crux of it is that the book is split into two halves - one for everyone (so players and GM) that's all lore, and one for the GM only (that's stats). The lore section has a small chunk on a wide variety of factions, but more important has three viewpoints. These viewpoints are "The scholars eye", "the common view", and "in their own words". These are in addition to a description of the monster. To give an example, we'll look at the section for Giants: The common view The scholar's eye The "scholar's" eye In their own words (They have more than just one of these each for giants, but I chose my favourites) Each one of these quotes is filled with flavour, giving not just a perspective on the subject of the Bestiary entry but also on the people who commented on them. Even if Amorgbrandion never gets his own model, or even mentioned again, his short paragraph oozes with characterisation. Compared to just saying "a giant is a massive brute with more brawn than brains..." and going on a descriptive paragraph about what a giant is, this gives all of that information and contributes to larger worldbuilding. I think the closest I've seen to this in AoS is the little Bestiary in Thondia, which was a really fun read. But I think AoS would really benefit from something like this the WHFRPG 2e Bestiary - something that gives a personal look into every faction in a way that's both characterised and funny. If instead of saying "A Painbringer is a prideful warrior of great skill and greater cruelty" they told me that combined with quotes from a witch hunter, a survivor of a raid, and one of the Painbringers themselves it would be fantastic. Also, if you haven't, I would really recommend reading the WHFRPG 2e Bestiary - it's a delightful read even if you don't care about Fantasy Battles.

I agree that 40k isn't any more accessible without the loretubers and Co, but it can't be overlooked as to why people may feel AoS's lore is less accessible even if officially it's likely more accessible than 40k. Not saying you are saying to overlook it, but rather it's really hard to untangle this from people feeling AoS is less accessible. While not really the 'fault' of 40k or Fantasy, they did seem to have a much greater fan support in terms of Wikis etc. I've bought minimal (<5) 40k or Fantasy lore supplements and I feel I've somehow got to know their lore quite well despite not trying to learn it (and never playing Fantasy). It's not a criticism of AoS, but unfortunately it seems like lore discussions and hubs are much less common to see than 40k or, to an extent, Fantasy. So unfortunately AoS may seem harder to learn about easily because there are fewer ways to learn about it for free. Thankfully there are some great YouTubers helping with that problem, but it's not quite there yet. Like I said, I've never given 40k much of a try and I don't like the lore much, but I feel I know nearly more 40k lore than AoS lore despite not really wanting to. Again, not the fault of any of the systems, but it's something that I think needs to be considered.

I think a potential problem that has to be overcome for an AoS game is who the player can actually play as. Unlike 40k, where you can slap a space marine or other Imperial on a game and call it a day, AoS has a much wider range of popular factions. If they make a Stormcast game, which are probably the most popular faction, then quite a few people won't be interested because they don't like the Stormcast aesthetic. And by "quite a few" I mean that, anecdotally, a majority players don't care all that much about Stormcast (not dislike, but just don't care enough to buy a game about them). Same as if they made a Chaos game, or an Orruk game, or a Vampire game, or whatever. No single faction is popular enough to get everyone in AoS interested (tbh, Chaos would probably be the most successful simply because it may get 40k players in). Of course, making an MMO style game where you can play anything and start in your own zone would be amazing, but also hard to do and unlikely. I do think the only faction that could appeal to most is Cities of Sigmar, simply because playing as a normal human is pretty relatable and you'd get the standard option of dwarves and a aelves too (and maybe Stormcast). Alternatively, you could do a Total War style game where you play as an army rather than a character, and they can include a lot of factions (just look at Total Warhammer), but that's a very specific type of game that Total War is already doing, so it may feel second fiddle to them. Personally the best AoS game I can imagine is an expensive first person RPG where you can play as any faction and explore your own zones before going to others, and each faction would react to you differently. But I also accept that's a pipe dream and likely unobtainable (and if it was, the resources would be given to 40k).

For those curious, this was what was said about AoS: Seems fine enough. While I don't think there are any death knells for AoS any time soon, it's a shame that they never seem too excited about it in financial reports. Good to hear that the launch was good though, but as we expected, lack of momentum killed the AoS 3 hype for many. I'm hoping it continues to build and we get to read "AoS has experience a large growth in sales" in one of these reports.

Current Slaanesh list topping Summer Slaughter (102 players): Allegiance: Slaanesh - Host: Lurid Haze Invaders Host (Host of Chaos) - Grand Strategy: Take What's Theirs - Triumphs: Inspired Leaders Sigvald, Prince of Slaanesh (205)* - Host Option: General The Contorted Epitome (245)* - General - Command Trait: Feverish Anticipation - Artefact: Oil of Exultation - Universal Spell Lore: Flaming Weapon Krondspine Bladebringer, Herald on Seeker Chariot (185)* - Lore of Slaanesh: Hysterical Frenzy Battleline 22 x Blissbarb Archers (280)* - Reinforced x 1 22 x Blissbarb Archers (280)* - Reinforced x 1 11 x Blissbarb Archers (140)* Units 5 x Centigors (85)* 10 x Gors (70)* - Gor-Blades & Beastshields Behemoths Krondspine Incarnate of Ghur (400)* Endless Spells & Invocations Geminids of Uhl-Gysh (40) Purple Sun of Shyish (70) Core Battalions *Battle Regiment Total: 2000 / 2000 Reinforced Units: 2 / 4 Allies: 0 / 400 Wounds: 96 Drops: 1 In all honesty, I imagine the Krondspire and Purple Sun are pulling a lot of weight here, but still nice to see.

In all honesty, I'd really like it if Archaon (and Belekor to a lesser extent) took a back seat in Chaos. Character-wise, they're fine, but for an army that is about the selfish desires of the mortals who make up its ranks, it always struck me as a bit narratively weak to have a single big boss (not that everyone follows him, but he's definitely the main chaos character). It's hard to explain, but I like chaos because it allows you to look at a person reduced to their most evil and selfish desires, and the destruction they will cause to get what they want. Whether they started with a heroic goal or were always a psychopath, the end choice is the same - glory or damnation. It allows for unique stories and interesting enemies who posses different goals and methods. While Archaon certainly doesn't stop these stories, it always struck me as a bit milquetoast (for lack of a better word) that there was an Everchosen/leader of Chaos at all. It's hard to articulate why, besides saying that having a big bad guy takes away the focus of the individual Lords with their own tragedies and turns them into pawns in another bloke's plan. Don't get me wrong, I'm fine with them being pawns to the chaos gods, because they're a manifestation of their own human failings, but not to a big armoured man who has conceptually very little to do with them. TL;DR - I think Archaon is a bit lame and I'm glad the focus of Chaos is moving away from him.

+ Mod hat + While it's been fine so far, I think it's best to steer away from the politics of 40k on the Rumour Thread.

Not sure how many people played it, but Age of Sigmar: Realm War will be closing down this September. Bit of a shame that one of the few AoS games is closing (sever issues apparently) - if anything, the animations were really nice.

I do totally understand this part, and I agree, it's very good for impulse buyers to know not to buy - I suppose for myself, I don't tend to impulse buy and have a very limited range of armies, so I'm not too badly affected by the pile of shame, but it's good for those who are. A nice mix in the middle would be text list roadmaps - e.g. "World Eaters coming soon", so people know not to buy Bezerkers, but the hype of the model isn't spoiled either.

I agree. To be honest, the more I think about leaks, the less I like them. The benefit of them is that you get to know something's coming out earlier, and the downside is that the release is usually not built up at all and shown in a way that's just a blurry picture. I imagine there was a video to go alongside Angron and he'd be shown at an event with the audience getting very excited until the big moment, and there'd be a wave of hype on reveal. Instead we have a photo reveal which looks great, but it's a flash in the pan sort of excitement - a "oh that's cool", with no build up. It also likely means that we'll be waiting a while until release and by then most of the excitement will have gone away. The benefit of just knowing something is coming earlier, to me, just doesn't seem worth the 'extended' wait time and loss of excitement.

Looks like an easy bloodthirster conversion - very nice model, mind.

As mentioned, our TC wasn't bad (and certainly better than most), but rather than a straight up 'buff' it was instead an alternate way to play the faction - allowing depravity to be used for something other than summoning. I personally like it - it certainly won't make us much stronger on its own, but for casual games it's nice to not have to bring daemons, and for the future it's good to know that they've thought about reducing the reliance on summoning. The points drops are definitely the biggest change, and we've yet to really see the impact from that.

I wonder why this is the case. I would assume it's to try as best as they can to not invalidate print - it's one thing to tweak points, and another to totally change the rules of a model. Perhaps they're worried it may confused some players who are less involved with online AoS. Personally, I'd much prefer if they just ripped the bandage off and admitted that most of the time when there's an issue, it's the warscroll and not the points that need the core change. For a ridiculous example, if there was a unit that did 10 MWs to every unit in the opponent's army, there would be no points cost that would make that unit work. Either it would be so expensive it would be unplayable, or it would be unbearable to play against. There'd be no happy middle ground. There's no unit like this that exists at the moment, but the idea stands - there are some units that are too bad or good that points would never work for them. I also think warscroll changes are great for players with good looking units that are too bad to see play (such as Slaangors). By that I mean, they make people feel good about the game.

They kind of do in Slaves when a hero is nearby, but from experience, that can feel pretty finicky and disincentives mixed armies (because then the opponent only needs to kill one hero to stop a mark working). The thing S2D has thematically over monogod armies is that they can mix together to create a more versatile faction, but it doesn't really work in practice with the mark rules. It would be nice if a mark on its own provided at least some small buff. Unfortunately the 40k and AoS rules teams are totally seperate and don't talk, so one choice won't change the design of the other. I am hoping that Slaves get a rethink; marks and Eye of the Gods are cool, but they both feel relatively low impact due to their reliance on heroes (and Eye of the Gods being more of a narrative rule). Most of the rules are cool, but something to make the army feel more imposing would be nice. I am still sore about the Slaangor-level Daemon Prince warscroll

In all honesty, I think this less cynical outlook is the most likely. GW definitely likes money, but if they wrote and pointed Slaanesh in regards to money, they've done a very poor job of it. Despite the new release costing them a lot to create, the rules writers seemed to hardly have the time to do much of anything with the new book - and we're the second lowest win rate at the moment, well under older armies that GW probably care about less profits-wise. But even ignoring that, if these decreases were all in it for the money, I think they'd have also included Slaangors, Glutos, and especially the twins in these decreases/rewrites. I doubt they would have bothered with Sigvald as he's our best selling model already. If this was to make money, they've not done a good job about it (it would have been easy to give Slaangors -2 rend and 2 damage to sell more boxes, and yet they didn't). If 90% of HoS players already have Sigvald then this points drop won't boost his sales, if 75% have Painbringers/Twinsouls and Blissbarbs then the drop may have resulted in a few more boxes (as people may already own a good number), but a Slaangor rewrite (or mega-drop) would likely boost theirs by a significant amount as a smaller proportion will have bought them (especially in large quantities). I think this is an earnest attempt at targeted balancing, where they're seeing what buffing the core units does so they can make better changes to the rest of the army. If we continue to perform poorly then I think most other units will see a similar buff in the future.

Regardless of what people think of a new Lumineth tome, I think the worst thing about it is that the tome itself won't bring a lot of new stuff for Lumineth players because the designers won't have had the time for any proper re-thinks of the faction. Warscrolls and allegiance abilities are likely to be very similar to before and just neatened up. I think one of the worst omen for a new book is that it had a previous book come out only a year before - it means the writer of the new book wouldn't have known the likes and dislikes of the players when writing the book, and some 'obvious' changes won't have been made. While waiting longer is a pain, I'd rather have a Sylvaneth 2 to Sylvaneth 3 glow up, than a Slaanesh 1 to Slaanesh 2 mish-mash book. I'm hoping this Lumineth book isn't just a plain copy and paste deal.

I do think that lethality needed to come down in AoS from AoS 2 - in that, it felt like units just disintegrated to whoever attacked first which also sucked. However the problem with save stacking is that the most lethal models are also the tankiest - the mawkrusha wouldn't be seen anywhere as much if it was just 15 wounds on a 3+ save with bad attacks. It's the fact that its very tanky and can destroy pretty much anything that makes it so strong - you can't safely countercharge it. I personally like weaker models (4+ save and worse) being able to up their saves and make themselves immune to rend to give them staying power. I don't like 3+ save cabbages of death with the ability to heal only being vulnerable to mortal wounds and rolling 1s. I think it may have been a good idea if they tried to balance tankyness and damage together more - if something does super high damage, don't make it impossible to kill by making 4+ saves more common (or at least make it unique and cost half your army).

It does feel like AoS has a more cohesive vision than before - perhaps the new lead designers has had the chance to make their impact.

I may write a longer post about the topic itself a bit later, but I can attest to mortal wounds feeling like an uninteractive mechanic even when it comes from a poor model. I was playing against Bonesplittaz and their shaman did 15(+) mortals wounds on one of my units - they rolled well, but a 4+ MW save meant they weren't in any real danger. The entire "encounter" was basically, "you take one mortal wound... you take two mortal wounds... I take three mortal wounds and save two of them... you take 2 mortal wounds..." until the unit was dead. The mechanics sound fun on paper, like playing Russian Roulette, but in this version your opponent shoots you two thirds of the time and has a bullet proof head. Definitely a rule that's cooler in concept over execution. I still won handily and the shaman died next turn, but it was a very boring experience to basically just take my models off the board. It was just against a random unit in range, but if it had been a big model like Skarbrand then it would have really sucked. The point being here that I don't so much care of the 'meta' power of the mechanic, but rather how interactive it is when it sees play. I think it's less on strength (bonesplittaz aren't exactly tearing up the meta and I won that game no problem) and more how much interaction you have around the mechanic. I think a mechanic is often deemed unfun when it can remove a unit without that unit having the chance to do anything (including saves). I don't think mortal wounds are a terrible idea, but I'd prefer for them to be way toned down (and for saves/rend to be rethought to compensate). A mechanic whose sole purpose is to stop your opponent negating an offensive it is going to be, at least in some way, not interactive. It's dissapointing from both a narrative and a gameplay standpoint when your Lord gets deleted off the board without getting a say in anything. I'd like if they utilised more spells in being attacks (as in "if you cast arcane bolt, you get this attack profile you can use once at the beginning of any phase") rather than it always being the same "take d3 models off the table".

Just to elaborate, the GHB was printed quite a few months ago and so is a few months "out of date" when it's first released. The new digital points are the most in-date versions - I'm assuming they did more testing/listened to more feedback and changed Slaanesh even further than the printed GHB in the new Battlescroll