Lucentia

Yeah, it's exactly the same Look Out Sir rule that's been in AoS for, like, a year and change? Personally I feel not being able to target out support pieces is a kinda bad ruling, so I was hoping they'd change it, but I guess they figured there's no need to fix it if it ain't broke.

I guess I'm in the minority on this, perhaps, but for me 'my dudes' is something that has always mostly been something you do in your head, rather on the table. Like, even in WHFB, a game with a reasonable amount of extra options for your heroes, the leader of my ogre army was Frigga Blackfoot, a bruiser BSB who'd chewed off her own frozen leg so that she could use it to club a poisonous drake/monster to death whilst trapped beneath a treacherous glacier (amongst other bits of back story she'd pick up along the way) but none of that was represented for her mechanically, there was no 'sky-iron peg leg (10pts)' weapon option you could take, or whatever. And the same has kinda continued to be true for my through AoS, I don't feel like I need to points buy extra wizard levels or a smiting sword of +1 attack to make my guys feel unique (Maybe partly because they still wouldn't be, if everyone's playing with the same set of options) that sort of personal narrative is something that exists better off table in my mind, like choice of paint scheme, or how you want to theme your bases, or what pet units you always like to bring, that kind of thing.

Right, but you can kinda say that for everything, 'Oh, a slaughter queen is a chosen martial leader of the arisen blood goddess, she should be able to solo a slaughterpriest no problem,' 'An Abhorrent Archregent is a bloodthirsty monster swollen with unholy power, he should be able to kill 20 clanrats per combat!' Marrying the rules to fit the lore as much as possible is all well and good, but at some point you're just playing playground rules with whatever your pet factions happen to be. Do I think melee foot heroes have historically been a weak spot in AoS? Yes, certainly, I think that's a fair assessment. Do I think the solution to that is to make every random priest or wizard with 'Blood' in its name into Conan the Barbarian? Probably not. Let's see what vampire lords actually look like before jumping to conclusions.

I guess I don't agree with that, even as a khornate warrior-priest, it's a shirtless buff guy trying to fight a dinosaur, that doesn't seem like a battle he should be winning under most circumstances. If various wizards and priests get good melee profiles, it means actual combat heroes will either look lackluster in comparison or have to have heavily inflated melee profiles themselves to compensate. (Which, granted, maybe that would be fine, we haven't seen any frontline hero scrolls yet.) But I'm fine with priests and support heroes being fairly pillowfisted, they've got better things to be doing. The slaughterpriest still hits considerably harder than the average human, which seems about right to me.

I was also never a huge fan of the Diaz daemonettes, though I also don't love the current ones all that much (except I do think there are some quite nice, subtle face sculpts in that kit, just the bodies lack any sort of dynamism.) I would not be surprised to see some sort of daemon kit refresh get wheeled out over the next few years, a lot of those models are just about starting to show their age, particularly when put alongside the newer mortal chaos kits in AoS.

The ridges and ball joint thingy on the haft, and the dangly bits, kinda look like some of the mortal Hedonites stuff, but the top segment seals it as GSC I think, yeah.

They were starting to do that with some of the d6 damage rolls already in 3.0 (Lady Olynder's stare attack and Valkia's spear spring to mind) so I'm not surprised to see it being iterated on here.

New rat leak could be another engineer from the starter set, rather than a weapon team? Though it doesn't look totally like a hero model, it is on its own separate sprue, which is kinda interesting. If we do see any sort of roadmap I'd expect it to be very light, aside from whatever production issues are ongoing, the back half of a new edition year is typically not very heavy on additional releases.

Probably because if the choice is between extra damage or extra defense on a unit which is designed to mostly sit on objectives, you're taking the defensive option every time, if you care about trying to maximise your list. And if you're not that bothered about optimising your list, then being able to build your models however you like is maybe more appealing anyway.

Oh, I do not like the ward save being buried down in the keyword tags like that, at least put it near the save stat or something! I was also hoping that we'd avoid weapon-based special rules, I tend to find them pretty flavourless, sure, both Vanari Sentinels and Blood Sisters are just doing mortals on 6s, but they're doing it through different methods narratively, flattening it all into a detached 'Critical hits (mortal)' or whatever doesn't hit the spot for me. Other than that nothing too crazy, just neatening things up.

When it comes to cross-over stuff from the side games, I can kinda feel the pinch point from GWs perspective, it is neat and cool that you can also use those models in AoS, but it's also unsustainable in a way that (most of the time) their other ranges aren't, keeping every one-off board game model in circulation just cos it has an AoS scroll is going to be impossible sooner or later. If they had a more robust 'legends' system that would probably be perfect for this type of thing, give the side game stuff bonus warscrolls but clearly label them as something intended for limited use.

Also, 3 drops is not that outrageous in a system where 1 drops don't exist unless you can make a functioning army from literally five units, I'd imagine most lists will be looking at 2-3 drops, and that's if they're willing to run light on heroes.

I think they just mean that your command trait is no longer locked to your general, you can slap it on any of your heroes, but you still only get the one. (Though there might still be some way to unlock more as with the current battalions.)

Overall that sounds like quite a clever adjustment to list building, removing the ubiquitous of the one-drop battalions and theoretically making mid-tier hero choices more enticing if they come with interesting units attached. I'm not sure how I feel about losing battleline restrictions entirely, feels like it could lead to new player traps where you load up on shiny elite units with no incentive to grab the basic screens and speedbumps that you really need. Buuut then again most factions in the current system have tonnes of workarounds to avoid boring battleline choices anyway, so I suppose it's not that different really!

I can't see them reintroducing skaven slaves, it always felt a little silly to me to have two super-cheap, bad stats horde units in one faction, only differentiated by one being super-cheapier and bad statsier than the other. But I also find it unlikely they'll put 40 clanrats in there, that's an intimidating amount of basic infantry for new players. Normally they want playable armies for both sides of the starter box, but we also don't know if army composition is changing under the new rules, I suppose.