Lucentia

If I were to be a little cynical about it I would guess that these are probably an effort to shift older stock, unsold season 1/2 underworlds teams and terrain, old space marine kits to make way for primaris stuff, that kind of thing. Personally I think the hobby is probably a little too pricey for me to get excited about the idea of discounted, random kits. Would I buy a blind hero for a tenner? Maybe, sure. But a potential £120 worth of products I might have no interest in is not that appealing.

I'll be honest I had completely forgotten about Mannfred... But yes, I'd imagine he would stay too if that's the route they went with.

With OBR we saw them roll in the Morghasts and Arkhan, and the OBR were (in part) visually similar to those older sculpts. If I had to guess I would imagine a Soulblight release would be similar, I would suspect at the very least Neferata and the Coven Throne/Palanquin would be brought into the new book and the aesthetic would be styled to at least match in part. The older finecast stuff would probably not make the jump.

As someone with 4k points of DoK I'd obviously be pretty into Morathi being/becoming the main deific figure in Ulgu, I could see a scenario where Malerion is out of the picture (maybe dead, more likely become something more shadow than elf, surpassed care for mortal concerns etc etc) and she is pulling a similar con with Malerion's followers as she does already with the Khainites. But I do not think that is very likely and, indeed, would be kinda rude to Malerion fans. I only bring it up because looking at the aelf books right now there's a bit if a (coincidental) pattern. Most obviously the Lumineth tome is almost half a book, with scope to expand the range with a Tyrion themed release down the line, similarly a Malerion faction could be slotted alongside DoK, and a Kurnothi release rolled in with Sylvaneth, potentially a format similar to the space marine supplements seen in 40k? Not really a rumour, granted, just idle speculation.

The Silent People sit in the same place in Underworlds season 3 as the Katophranes did in the first two seasons (mostly as thematic art pieces and background) so I would not really expect them to show up in any more concrete way than as lore snippets. Not that they wouldn't make for a potentially cool army, I just don't think it's all that likely!

For what it's worth I think that the hero-centric nature of HoS is a deliberate design choice to represent that these forces are often operated by powerful, charismatic leaders and their sycophantic devotees, rather than, say, well-drilled line troops or hordes of marauding warriors, etc. Now whether that's necessarily good or strong design, or whatever, is perhaps a discussion for another thread, personally I quite like it and post-FAQ have played with a variety different lists which are just fine for casual and tournament play, but there's always going to be subjectivity in these things.

Morathi does, yes, all units with the DoK keyword in your army get the temple benefits. The DoK book was the first one to include the sub-factions as a concept, so it's a little archaic in that regard, in a modern DoK book Morathi would probably have a Hagg Nar keyword baked into her warscroll, but for now she's free to go in any temple and use their rules.

The beasthandlers are a guy and a gal, as it happens, but they're definitely more styled like corsairs than DoK. I guess part of it was they'd already split the kits out into smaller keyworded factions? I don't mind DoK not having a big monster piece, they're a religious cult, not animal handlers, but the hydra certainly wouldn't look out of place.

I maintain that this image is something related to DoK, the diamond cut gem and slanted attachment to the shaft are identical to the Blood Sister spears, and the coiled/twisting decoration is similar to the ornamental serpents on the Bloodwrack Medusa spear. The chain/rosary bead looking element is not something seen before in DoK designs, however. For me the only question is whether it's something for the Warcry release or if it heralds further DoK stuff beyond that.

Sinistrous hand is the only really good option, the other three are not nearly as valuable. Shield is probably second best. It's a bit of a shame cos I think the knife and the whip both look the coolest!

Ignoring rend on a unit of elite, melee infantry (presumably with only 1 wound each, maybe 2) does not seem particularly unreasonable, I'd imagine they're not going to have many or any abilities that return slain models like, say, OBR. And if you're having to take a tactical trade-off of, say, using mountain stance to buff defence over some other stance which makes them above average on offense, or whatever, that doesn't seem out of line. Not to say that there's no possible way the balancing could ever be off with a new faction (or old faction, for that matter!) but this example seems fine to me.

Bringing back the dark pegasi would be a good shout, make them the more elite version of Khinerai and you're good to go basically. If they wanted to go the monster route potentially something along the lines of a larger Avatar/War Machine would be the route to go? As it stands the Cauldrons and Avatars are referenced as these weird things made mobile by prayer, partly cos they're just reusing old models, but they could lean into that angle more heavily if they wanted another big kit in the range.

Yeah, Daughters of Khaine parts (and most elf parts in general) are a good fit for Slaanesh conversions without to much modification, my Hellstriders are just made from the Sisters of the Thorn kit with some DoK components:

This is a bit of an unfortunate side-product of the DoK book being a bit on the old side, army construction that is naturally constrained by the number of available units becomes even more tightly restricted by the way the book is set up, a new book would probably fix up some of that even if no new units were added.

A lot of the elven cavalry would probably work so long as their fancy pants fit in the seeker saddles. Personally I've been using some converted centaur style hellstriders using the sisters of the thorn kit which fit the bill if you're looking for a more sleek/less spiky aesthetic.

If DoK and Slaanesh are both to receive new models in the coming year that seems like a prime candidate for a dual-army box to me, could be just a new hero for each, or something more like Feast of Bones where we get new Slaanesh mortals for one half, or whatever.

And a Sister of Slaughter. Other than being a pot of gore none of the other design elements really match up with any of the current DoK range, as much as I would love for some new models in that regard! The support brackets being so similar to Syll'Eske's back vanes swing it towards Slaanesh for me, but I wonder if it might be a 40k thing? Fulgrim is presumably a pretty likely candidate for a model release, perhaps alongside some other themed emperor's children kits, I could see a gory incense burner like that as some sort of basing detail on a large model.

From the card art (which is not always accurate, granted) we have seen a Blood Stalker, Blood Sister, Sister of Slaughter, and two Witch Aelves on one card, another card shows a Witch Aelf with a goblet of blood, so I'd guess the hero will be a Hag Queen rather than a medusa.

They've said they're showing something for Underworlds at Adepticon, which basically has to be the DoK warband at this point, unless it's a curveball of some kind.

It's been a while, painted warbands thread, I wasn't sure if I was going to jump into Beastgrave or not, as I haven't had that much time to play in the other two seasons, but then someone got me the core box for my birthday last year so the decision was made for me! Here's some warbands:

I would note that a slaughter master conversion doesn't necessarily have to have a cauldron, anything suitably gory and magical would do the trick, I've seen people use elements of the corpse cart kit, for instance.

I haven't played against them yet, but I agree with your napkin assessment, we're probably also one of the few armies that can reliably grind through Horror tarpits with hero phase activation and combat buffs. The main concern would be just how much ranged offense they can kick out with Flamers, even though Hagg Nar defense I don't think it would be that tricky for them to just remove any units which don't have Blessing of Khaine up.

If I remember correctly the Knights didn't get a codex of their own until the other kits were released though, right? They were just available to imperial factions as a stand-alone piece before that?

Whilst I don't have specific rules in mind it would be neat if the Daughters of Khaine versions could be cast as either prayers or spells, with the spell effects being basically empowered versions of the prayers (that can be dispelled/unbound as normal) to fit the army theme of a religious cult controlled through shadowy magic.

Depends on the wording of the rule, by default a model can only make a pile-in move when it is within 3" of an enemy model (or if it made a charge move in the same turn) no matter how long it's pile-in movement distance might be. However a lot (almost all) of the units/rules which allow for a longer pile-in move will also say something like, 'This unit may be selected to make a pile-in move when within 6" of an enemy unit, and may move up to 6" when it does so,' or similar, which would overrule the default 3" rule. So it does depend on the specific unit in question strictly speaking, but almost all of them have an exception of this kind allowing them to pile in at 6".