Lucentia

Reads like 40k to me (is that some kinda ammo magazine on the underside?) but, yeah, could be either system.

Warcry has rules for a lot of mounted models, both heroes and plain cavalry, but (with the exception of the marshal, who I believe plays as a monster?) none of them have been warcry specific sculpts as of yet, though that could change, of course, there are specific 'mounted' rules in the system.

Yeah, his torso is kinda just a giant cube, and his arms are just hanging aimlessly around, like, The Warhammer should maybe be a focal point of the mini, but it's just sort of listlessly off to one side. I do like his wings framing the whole thing, but then all the swirly marshmallow stuff at the bottom draws the eye away from that anyway, I've seen him assembled without the magic swirlies and he looks a lot nicer. Neat concept, pretty uninspiring sculpt in my opinion, I'd love to see a second take on it.

You could have some sort of priestly anvil unit relying on ward saves, potentially, either as a hero that passes out wards or ideally as some sort of dedicated tough unit. But I agree that the DoK book suffers with only having Morathi as a defensive piece, which does put limits on the viable lists (competitively speaking, of course) forcing players into a Morathi-based list, which then leads naturally into running the bow snakes alongside her both for the obvious synergy she brings to them and the fact that you can't really afford to trade units in melee when you're already 700pts in the hole. The melee options are overall pretty slow given how fragile they are, so it's hard to operate as the glass cannon the book is presumably meant to function as. I suppose a unit/hero/subfaction which greatly increased the overal movement of the book could potentially also be a solution for a fragile faction with limited defensive options.

I dunno, Morathi's position within the DoK has always been pretty interesting to me because it is kinda precarious, she doesn't have absolute magical control over the various cults like Nagash, I think all of the DoK books have made a point to mention that not every aspect of the Khainite cults are on board with Morathi as the head. But codifying that aspect with a proper character doesn't hurt either.

Depends how heavily you weigh underworlds warbands, I suppose, the only DoK AoS release in 3.0 is their battletome and obligatory single hero mini. I guess jumpy elves make for fun sculpting opportunities in the side games.

It does kinda look like it could be a unit standard, but it could also be an elaborate hero back/head piece, so it's hard to tell. But an AoR based around non-Morathi aligned DoK, with restricted access to scathborn units and such feels plausible. DoK already have a warcry unit, and three underworlds squads, so I'd be a little surprised if it were part of another one of those.

The diamond cut gem in particular is a common element across DoK kits, and the shaping of the actual icon is kinda close to little Morathi's blade wings. It would be a little disappointing for such a DoK looking design to wind up stuck in 40k! (Like that nice, new avatar...)

I think they're doubling up on 'seasons' these days, so it's more like a starter boxes every six months or so? But either way, yes, they don't tend to release the boxset warbands separately for a very long time after the box is out, though it's not normally that tricky to find the models on ebay or whatever if necessary.

Part of the argument for Clanrats getting an updated sculpt is that the edition starter sets almost always have some of the 'basic battleline' included in them, though with the Skaven clan system they could maybe just include some different (or entirely new) battleline chumps to fill that slot. Personally I think we're quite likely to see new clanrats, it's the more elite/specialised plastic kits like stormvermin or plague monks that might stick around for a bit, but I'm willing to be surprised.

Yeah, I'm assuming it'll mostly be single heroes and the like, with a couple of factions getting larger releases, so 12 factions seems very doable. Though, that said, the final Broken Realms book did bring a few larger, centerpiece models with it, so there's room for some surprises I suppose.

Should be pretty readily available, the previous starter set is still up on the GW webstore. You should be able grab a copy at least up until the point the next starter set is released.

All warcry kits get AoS warscrolls, yeah. Though we probably won't see it for another week or so. Even if the rules aren't incredible, 5 deepstriking bodies are considerably more useful than the single model gorger unit, assuming the points aren't outrageous.

It's very difficult to predict what an FEC release might look like, even if we had info like how many kits there would be I think it'd still be tricky to make any sort of concrete guess! I'm curious if they book will be a big enough restructure that they'll change the current design of having courtier heroes cobbled out of the infantry unit boxes, wholesale replacing them with some more bespoke small hero sprues, perhaps.

I will almost always run a KoS, but that is mostly cos I like the model more than it ever being the actual correct choice. It's pretty much only useful for the double activation to try and ramp over a depravity threshold, and it might occasionally work as a distraction if your opponent assumes it's scarier than it is. 6 attacks for 400pts ain't it, chief, the best thing it's doing in combat is roaring for the most part.

It might be worth noting that Morathi and Malerion do not really get along at all, they may work together out of convenience and proximity, but what we've seen relationship in AoS doesn't really suggest combined forces to me. I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but in my mind the easiest way to square the circle is to have Malerion exist in a shadowy form which does not and cannot exist in a truly physical way, have him doing whatever weird, eldritch stuff in the background, so powerful that he no longer needs to care about mortal armies, and then have Morathi repeat her original scam when she took over the DoK cult; claim to be the true mouthpiece of Malerion and manipulate his followers to her ends. This way neither of them comes across is incompetent, and it neatly explains away where Malerion hasn't done anything obvious for, like, eight years.

They talked about this, amongst other design choices, in a bunch of white dwarf articles at the time (no warhammer community then, obviously) but that choice was made cos they decided that using human skintones made them look too much like big humans. Which, to be honest, I quite agree with, and my ogors have grey rhino style skin to this day. The downside, I suppose, is that it also makes them read as kinda undead at a glance, which I assume is part of why they went back to human skintones for later ogre kingdoms releases.

Yeah, the ogre kingdoms resin kits (metal at the time, of course) were mostly awful even on release, and they haven't improved with age! It's lucky their plastic infantry were so nice for the time, I suppose.

The Ironjawz supplement is kinda interesting to me cos, other than obviously meaning folks won't need to pick up a separate book again, what's actually going to be in it? Is it just collecting the new warscrolls for people who don't have/use the AoS app, which would have all the scrolls for free anyway, or are there additional traits/enhancements/etc. that wouldn't normally be unlocked in the app without a code?

The first incarnate also had the issue of trying to be a model that could slot into any faction, (making for a fairly uninspiring design, imo) I've mostly only really seen it in competitive lists, where its strong rules make it valuable in some circumstances, but anecdotally it didn't really seem like a piece that was very inspiring for either more casual play or from a collection standpoint. I might even speculate that very narrative focused players would be more likely to come up with a conversion/proxy piece that matches their collection than use the actual model, though that's just guesswork. I'm not sure any of that, even if true, would necessarily impact GWs approach to incarnates in general, but who knows?

Also, if I recall correctly, the last segment of that roadmap is just 'winter,' which could still cover an early 2024 release window if it is the FEC tome.

I don't think it's likely to be DoK just cos this looks a lot more like natural material than their metal crowns, though you're right that the general shape is quite similar. Though I suppose that doesn't rule out some sort of antlered snake monster that they've designed their crowns to resemble, but that would be quite a swerve!

Mm, if someone told me this was just a special edition brute boss or something I'd probably believe it, he's not really doing much for me as a standalone sculpt. Maybe when they show the rest of his lads I'll change my tune.

Now look what you've done, Slaanesh players, don't you remember what happened last time our book was briefly absurd? Stop spamming archers before they nerf everything else in retaliation, I've only just blown the shelf dust off all my hedonites!

I kind of like the look of the crypt horror kit still, I wouldn't be against them sticking around as the dumb muscle of the faction, but ideally I'd like to see some actual 'knights' released to take over their current role, particularly if we can get some gribbly undead fusion of horse and rider, I know Chaos has kinda taken over the body horror niche for the most part, but there's room for it in Death too!