Lucentia

Weirdbrute Wrekkaz as a name kinda gives me warcry squad vibes, for what it's worth. But the 'wrekkaz' part also makes me think they could wind up being the Ironjawz equivalent of a seige engine, some sort of wizard unit that's so angry about castle walls and fortifications that they can make them explode with their minds? But some sort of self-buffing wizard melee unit is probably the right call.

Don't forget that, whilst FEC are most likely going to be the next big release, the Dawnbringers books will also have attached models for various factions, even if the next Dawnbringers book is 100% orruks/destruction, there's still easily space for one-off Ossiarch heroes or whatever. And, going off of Broken Realms, sometimes they'll stick fairly substantial kits in with these kind of narrative releases (Kroak, Belakor, Synessa, etc.) it's not always just foot heroes.

There were boarding actions in Dreadfleet, basically just functioning as melee attacks if ships got in base contact. The ship captains would also duel one another in a swashbuckling fashion.

I can see a reasonable argument for a smaller sized starter box, smaller board, fewer models, push fit minis and terrain that you only have to clip out and you're ready to go, something you can easily keep in stock on the shelf and point to as the best place to start, or even release out to other stockists like they have occasionally done in the past with the more board-game style boxes. However, that sort of thing would want a much lower price point than this box is going with, to try and draw people in, that's the main error with this release in my eyes.

If Skaven are going to be part of the next edition launch then I think new clanrats are going to be inevitable; they like to have at least some basic, simple troops in the starter boxes, and they're not going to put the old clanrat sprues in there alongside any new stuff. The only way I can see this not being the case is if they focus only on a specific skaven clan and give them some new clan-specific battleline sculpts instead. I could see some of the more peripheral skaven warscrolls being removed as part of range update, things like giant rats which aren't necessarily very exciting or interesting.

The release timeline has the next army book after cities (which I'm assuming is FEC for now) as a winter release, I think. But they normally count winter as December through February, and they don't tend to do big releases through December. So my guess would be that the main FEC release will be early next year, but we might see, like, an army box in early December, like S2D.

The candles make me think Death, but there're probably other ranges with lots of candles too. Could be more FEC I guess, a ghoulish king standing over a statue of how they looked in life, that sort of thing?

The warcry mini-monsters are some of the best sculpts in the range, nice size for a 'big unit' in a skirmish game (where things like the AoS sized monsters I feel be just too big for the recommend board a lot of the time), and just the right sort of detail for some of the tricker painting techniques, I'm surprised we haven't seen more of them really. I guess there was the four armed centaur marshall, but I certainly wouldn't say no to another triple release of interesting monster designs (ideally for non-chaos warbands!) which are free to explore design spaces that don't get hit by the main AoS factions.

Synessa is a kinda fun support piece with some tricks, but still not really very good. Dexcessa remains almost totally useless, unfortunately. The boring answer is more archers, they are comically efficient, but that depends how competitive your games tend to be. I try not to run more than 2 squads in casual games, and even that can sometimes feel a little oppressive. Both Glutos and Sigvald can be pretty fun options, and you'll definitely want a Contorted Epitome. I personally quite like a min squad of Twinsouls as a weird mini-anvil with some damage. The new book buffed a lot of the base stats on the units, so there aren't too many real stinkers necessarily, it's just that the army rules demand that you play in a very specific way which results in the Seekers and archers spam builds.

Yeah, I dunno, this seems like a fairly reasonable change to me, the guaranteed walk-out was prime feel-bad territory a lot of the time, even if it was fun. Just treat it like a mini-Belakor effect, I guess. Also, because the effect is weaker it might well slip under your opponents radar on what to burn their primal dispels into, I imagine we're going to be seeing a lot of key spells not be permitted to cast this season.

I think the bits you're reading as bamboo sticks are actually snapped bones, this looks like FEC to me. Almost a mockery of the new CoS reliquaries, a vampiric heart being used as a unit standard, perhaps? Though it's pretty funny that the heart is so much bigger compared to the ribcage, probably it didn't belong in there to begin with, or it's been swollen with dark magics!

Hah, those are the first new CoS minis that I haven't loved at first glance! Though I think that's probably just the shield wall covering up too much of the model for my tastes, but that's an easily rectified quibble. Also I guess we're doing reroll hits again? I thought we'd moved past that era, but apparently not.

Unless my info is out of date it's basically guaranteed that the FEC book is coming in winter? The next battletome on the road map after cities is a winter release, and unless it's a curveball with an entirely new faction, then it has to be FEC. Though, that said, I'm expecting for it to drop early next year, rather than late this year, as they don't tend to do big releases in December for the most part.

I think it's probably best to use his ability to deny command abilities, rather than focus on the anti casting/chanting effect which, as you say, is unlikely to trigger often vs a high bravery hero. But pinging a lower bravery unit, particularly an anvil or swingy hammer that wants to be using AoD/AoA could be quite punishing. The real issue in my view is the 1" range, as he'll likely be killed in the ensuing combat so it'll be tough to infect multiple units like you'd ideally like to. I suppose if the new book has avenues for significant and effective bravery debuffs he might be more appealing.

There's room for more than one range refresh per edition, we'll have had, what, 4 during AoS 3.0, if the FEC rumours hold? I would not be at all surprised to see updated ranges for skaven, ogors, and BoC over the course of the next edition.

Fyreslayers have sheds too, probably! (Well, they probably have runic fyre-sheds, I guess.) I think Whitefang is suggesting that there is a Fyreslayers warband (or at least future Fyreslayer models) on the way, but they won't be showing up in time for this preview.

I'm not sure there's much value in having a USR list when there's already space to just print the rules text on the warscrolls. As someone who played a whole bunch of 40k back when it last had USRs, it's mostly just adding a bunch of extra things to remember mid-game. It seems simpler to just put 'mortals on 6s' on a warscroll instead of 'Deadly Wounds (see page 118 of the core rules)' or whatever. I guess the advantage would be ensuring that rules with similar effects actually share the same text, instead of being different for no real reason, but I don't know how valuable that actually is overall.

Perhaps worth noting that rumour engines don't necessarily signal an imminent release, we've had engines sit around for over a year before a corresponding model rolls down the pipe, so it's possible that we're looking at Ogor sneak peeks which won't even show up till their 4th edition battletome! That said I wouldn't be surprised if they did little something as a part of the Dawnbringers campaign, either as a little herald of a larger release down the line, or just because Ogors do have a tendency of getting skipped over when it comes to holding any narrative weight in the setting! I'd say at this point I'm fairly confident that GW are looking to get their old ranges updated (with rumoured Skaven on the horizon and the recent Seraphon refresh), so I can only assume that the last few ancient WHFB model ranges will be getting some signficant attention over the next few years, Ogors included.

Whilst the cavalry rules for Warcry are mostly perfunctory, and mounted units don't really sit that well with the normal gameplay, I do think that if there was one cavalry unit that could fit well in that game it would be spider riders, it's easy to imagine how they might have abilities which let them play around the normal disadvantages when climbing terrain that warcry cavalry suffer from. A warcry squad of ~5 spider riders (ideally with a different overall design to the current ones, so they can fit into more of a dirty tricks cavalry unit in AoS proper, compared to the current spider riders who are mostly just a cheap screen) and ~8 infantry spider goblins that can be played as a separate sneaky unit in AoS would not be out of the question, I think. They could throw in some spider swarm bases too, to bulk the warband out. Though, of course, the obvious problem is that there is already a spider-themed warband for chaos, so they may not want to double dip like that.

Yeah, the actual book series is called Dawnbringers, not Harbingers, right? Following the story of two large dawnbringer crusades heading in different directions. The first book, Harbingers, would just be setting the stage with what the major factions are doing at the time, presumably told through the perspective/portents of the four new character models. And then I'd imagine the later books will follow the dawnbringers through x/y regions of Aqshy/Ghyran of their journeys, with new models introduced as they come into contact with [insert faction here], I don't imagine the indiviual books will be themed around grand alliances, or anything.

Yeah, it kinda looks like a grenade-y thing on the end of a spear or whip? Probably a xenos 40k thing, I think even with the most wishful thinking it looks too machined for an AoS bit.

To me the inclusion of the old treeman sculpt suggests that they're deliberately aiming heavily towards the nostalgia/oldhammer space, which makes some sense as I can't imagine that they really have the production capacity to revitalise all the old ranges in one swoop (or even at all). Though that theory gets muddled if they're also including things like the flying chariots, which are obviously a lot more recent than the venerable treeman.

What needs addressing about Synessa's weapon, am I missing something? Isn't it just a missile weapon with a non-standard profile, like a terrorgheist scream or bloodwrack medusa stare?

I was worried that would happen, the wording on the Invaders traits was too loose and confusing, so they tightened it up to the point of making it extremely boring. Mostly it just further cements Pretenders as the only competitive subfaction pick, but I will miss the Invaders cheer squad of insult-throwing backup heroes. I guess you can still run a fighty general with Hurler, and a sidekick hero who HAs into Hurler so the general can pick up Best of the Best, -2 to saves is still pretty good. And the Icon remains a solid artefact. But, yes, a disappointing change to an already middling subfaction, whilst rules like Murderlust went wholly untouched. But, hey, I've seen worse Slaanesh faqs in my time!

Saurus Guard (The halberd wielding, bodyguard unit) are still using the old kit in the new Seraphon battletome, Saurus Warriors are the ones that got updated. Though, that said, I wouldn't be surprised if the Saurus Guard got updated via a warcry squad or update sprue for the saurus kit at some point. The basic warcry ghouls are quite similar in design to the current ones, which suggests to me that they're not intending to replace them, but on the other hand that does mean that someone has been working on making modernised ghouls in some capacity, so, yeah, as you say, maybe more of a 50/50 than I'm giving credit to.