Lucentia

It is kinda funny to see Shalaxi in the roster, a warscroll ostensibly designed for hunting and killing other characters, I'd say they're likely to wind up dead last without some fudging of the rolls!

The shadow and pain box released at the same time as BR: Morathi, but they weren't really linked much beyond the timing, BR didn't even have the rules for the Ironscale in it, as I recall, nor the updated DoK scrolls from that box.

I feel like a nurgle insect hive would look more gross and drippy than that, probably? So I guess I'm on team sylvaneth for this one.

They're much smaller than gore-gruntas, and they're fewer models than the likes of cavaliers, makes sense that they'd be cheaper.

Ushoran can't take hoarfrost cos he doesn't qualify for being an Andtorian Locus in basically every way, he's stuck with the FEC spells I'm afraid.

I don't think it's quite as clear cut as 'skew lists = win at all costs mindset = bad.' In the previous Cities book you could also run a steam tank spam list, but it was not especially competitive on tournament rankings, so it was more of a novelty that some players enjoyed rolling around with. Granted, perhaps this is crossing wires between skew lists and spam lists, which are not necessarily the same thing. I'm not against experimenting with alternative methods of list construction, certainly, but I do not think that will actually remove skew lists from play, it would just change what a skew list is under the new format, it's not as if WHFB didn't have cheesy lists aplenty! For what it's worth I personally think a rules based approach to disincentivising spam lists is the best option, if Blissbarbs are supposed to be ranged battleline chumps, lower their damage output, if steamtanks are going to be allowed as the core of a list, they probably shouldn't have a 2+ base save, or they will need to cost more, etc.

It looks like Krethusa is on a 50-60mm base to my eye, so, yeah, she's not an enormous centerpiece monster, more of a Sigvald or Warsong Rev, and I'd expect her to be priced similarly.

That's an oft quoted rumour/suspicion, but there's never been any actual evidence in support of it, I don't think. It's one of those things that feels plausible, but I don't know if the actual timeline works out with how far ahead the books have to be printed and such.

I suspect, as this warcry squad is exactly 10 models on identically sized bases as opposed to an odd number at a mixture of sizes, that they will be the main river unit for LRL and will be released separately down the line. So they just need to kick out a wizard and spirit with the next tome to complete the river temple.

They generally only do the index thing when moving to a ruleset that doesn't support the old unit stats, 40k 7th into 8th where they removed armour values (and universal special rules, maybe?), WHFB 8th into AoS where they changed basically everything, etc. I can't speak for the 40k 9th into 10th indexing cos I've not played 40k in a long time, but historically it's not something they've done without reasonable cause. For what it's worth I think the AoS core rules are strong enough that they don't need such a huge change as to invalidate how warscrolls work. (Unless maybe they do something like remove melee weapon ranges, perhaps?)

Mm, I didn't read coral at first, more like floaty magic goop, I feel like you'd be able to see more colour variation on something supposed to be coral, even in greyscale. But something like sea foam is a good shout.

They can just slap some temple-style rules on the warscroll if they really need to, I don't think that will be a huge barrier.

I think tail is the right call, and the tail of a pretty small creature, but its hard to say anything beyond that with so many magical animal sidekicks available. But an IDK accessory fish feels like a decent bet.

Yeah, I could see LRL with a diamond collared cat companion (though probably it would be some sort of more magical-looking creature!) but the rest of the teaser image doesn't look like lumineth at all. Could be the rumoured grave robbers, perhaps, with a cat to watch out for vengeful spirits!

Depends on the mini, mostly the UW models match the scale of their AoS counterparts, though the Discord are kind of a squad of unique characters, so they're a bit bigger.

Mm, I'm not anticipating a surprise faction launch at this point, if there are still (probably) at least 2 dawnbringers books to release, potentially more, they'll want to space those releases out, plus the FEC stuff. And then they'll likely want to commit 2-3 months towards the pre-release build up for AoS 4th, slow rules snippets and faction focus articles and etc.

I like endless spells in principle, and particularly the faction ones are a fun way to add some flavour to a range, bit they are an extremely mixed bag in terms of actual design and rules, yes. I was under the impression that not all of the scenery moulds were outsourced, just the faction ones, whilst stuff like the warcry terrain was still produced in-house? But perhaps I am mistaken.

Figured if I'm going to be starting this army up I should probably at least do some test models, wound up doing the whole warcry squad. Pretty basic scheme for the most part, but I'm hoping the basing will draw the eye, I have some bigger swampy effects planned for the larger bases. Might add some tattoos or something later too, depending how things look when I've got massed units to toy with.

Anything more specific than 'something related to Morai-Heg' is still up in the air, I believe. To me the RE engine looks kinda like the top of a standard/icon, so I'm hoping it's attached to a unit rather than a character. But giving DoK a non-Morathi unique character is probably no bad thing either.

They like to keep the new edition starter stuff under wraps for the most part, so they can build up to the edition launch with the animated trailers and wow factor surprises, etc. So I wouldn't expect to see very much at all in the way of 4th Ed launch previews until they're gearing into that specific hype window.

There is also a more mechanical issue with cross-faction minis when it comes to game design/general balance. (Granted, this is a bit if a personal bugbear of mine so do take my grumbling with a pinch of salt, if it were up to me even stuff like cross-faction allies would be heavily or restricted for matched play purposes!) But having cross-faction centerpieces makes it a lot harder to hit a good internal balance point within a single battletome, cos now you have to write around this other suite of rules which also have to interact cleanly with X other tomes. Eg. Every time you write a lore spell in a Death battletome, you have to be careful that it isn't going to interact weirdly when Nagash gets his hands on it. Or you have to find the right points cost for Kragnos when he could be taken to give an Ogor monsters list 3d6 mortal wound charges or just as a solo combat bruiser in a shooty Kruleboyz list, etc. It's a tricky thing to get right, and it needs to be gotten right every time a relevant book, scroll, or spell is released or updated. For what it's worth, my ideal solution would just be to write different, bespoke god scrolls for each book as required, so an OBR Nagash would be a little different to a SBGL Nagash, and could even then be modified for balance separately, but I recognise that's not as satisfying in terms of the narrative.

Yeah, I dunno, d3 healing in your home hero phase only is, like, a joke rule they put on scrolls to trick you into thinking they have survivability! (Granted, it's more useful on non-monster heroes, who are more likely to be taking chip damage/miscast wounds, and aren't trying to be stuck in combat for multiple rounds.) I was kinda hoping that they abhorrents, or at least Ushoran, would get the soulblight style healing, given that they're vampires and all, but there's an argument to be made that that rule is way too efficient, so perhaps it's for the best!

Not to mention the core faction gimmick of unit regen/recursion doesn't do anything for monsters outside of a novelty command trait.

I'd say the TG is a better solo operative if you just want a monster to fly up a flank and hit things (though it is reliant on the spell going off to get any sort of decent damage output.) Whereas the ZD might be more viable as bit of a support hammer, turning off battleshock and roaring in support of other units. I'm not sure I'm burning an artefact on Garland in most circumstances, certainly not for a couple of extra MW on a TG shriek. I'm not sure either monster is going to show up often in very competitive builds, mostly hitting on 4s with low attack numbers is a tough sell, but it's hard to say without getting a few games in first!

My reading of the rule is that you need to have two eligible units in range for the effect to trigger (ie. The Gorewarden and 1 other unit) but I've always found this style of multi-target spell to have pretty clunky wording (like Mirrordance in the DoK book) so I'm not 100 percent certain.