AoS NEW *rumor*

Is there precedent for these sort of boxes being sold separately at a later date?

 

Yes they all get released on their own later, for example the Horns of Hashut and Rotmire Creed from the Warcry set before Sundered Fate got released at the same time as Sundered Fate. So I would expect a solo release for the Hunters of Huanchi whenever the next Warcry set gets released.
Since they are on a 3 month cycle that should be sometime in February

 

Individual box sets of them are likely to become available with the release of our battletome.

If the new mounted skink is in fact GW bringing in the old Raiders of Huanchi models, we might see them together in a replacement bundle box for one of the existing ones, but heavy salt with that stray thought of mine.

 

I don't think we have too many to be able to balance it, but I do think we are at the upper limit of what the AoS game designers are able to/willing to functionally balance right now. That is no excuse for how far the disparity is from our best warscrolls to our worst. Chamo Skinks got a new warscroll with the new edition pre-battletome 3.0, slight adjustments could have been done to existing saurus leaders that have had irrelevant abilities in the current edition that would bump them from redundant to meh at worst. But that is an argument that has been retread 100 million times already, and we all probably agree on it.

There is still something to be said about more warscrolls leading to more imbalance between warscrolls over time. GW balance generally seems to stay focused on the most competitive units. If an army is too strong, nerf the standout units. If it is weak, buff the models people play the most in the army to build it up quicker. AoS dev/balance team has been doing better and better on giving love to underplayed units, especially of late, but they seem to avoid rewriting warscrolls between battle tomes. This seems to mean to me that the more warscrolls you have, the more chances you have of models becoming irrelevant with core/season rule changes, and left to the wayside until the next battletome.

 

New GHB has been leaked. Honest Wargamer did a decent breakdown here of the full book, including the GHB core battlions, artifacts, command abilities, etc.

Bonds of battle stayed in a battalion ability! Letsgo Saurus Warriors and Kroxigors for 3-6 more months!

 

Oh absolutely, and you have to make a choice to keep it in at the detriment of other battalion options, but having that option still in place and available is good to me, compared to what I expected, which is that it is gone entirely.

I can see one drop leaning lists still take a single Galletian Veterans batallion if the player really values having those units. I don't really see us using the main champion battalion, but there is enough value in a salamander packed sharpshooter battalion flitting around, that I can see players not relying solely on one drop, and lean hard in the opposite direction.

I usually leave salamanders at home (too strong for much of my local meta), but I am tossing together a starborn list with aaaall the drops. Fishing for enhancements and bonuses with the current mission pack. Gotta print me some Kroxigors finally to clear the chaff.

 

Do you guys think that battalions might be GW's direction in the future to help provide more "versatility/customization" to AoS? Basically battalions for battleline hordes (like Bonds of Battle), battalions for objective grabbers (like Expert Conquerors), battalions for monsters, battalions for mounted units, etc.

Or do you think these newest battalions will only last for their respective seasons and then just go away?

 

I'm personally of the belief that it's little more than an experiment in progress, since they've practically axed warscroll battalions across the board in favour of core battalions.

 

I was over 10 drops normally anyways. Bring on Bonds of Battle Battalions.

 

There are some army lists that need to go first, but Seraphon never felt like one to me. I rather have all the artifacts and command points.

 

(Patiently waiting for new kroxigors so I can run an absurd amount of them.)

 

In DT you need the low drop

 

I wonder if that will still be true this season. The ability for heroes to not be shot is very interesting. Might allow for more drops.

 

It looked to me as if GW are finally planning to get rid of Battalions, given that there were far more Battalions for 1st and 2nd Editions with each race having their own bespoke battalions, whereas in 3rd the only Battalions are generic ones from the rulebook. I've never liked formations of any kind personally, they force players to use specific units in order to remain 'meta', rather than letting them choose their own forces to achieve a good synergy. I certainly hope they ultimately ditch them when 4th inevitably shows up next year, because choosing an AoS army list is getting more and more bureaucratic as it is, with all these pointless 'Triumphs' and 'Grand Strategies' flying around.

2nd Edition got the balance right between complexity and speed of set up and play, while very late 2nd/3rd has bulked the game out in a lot of wrong ways. I hope they roll back on this in 4th.

 

Yeah, I started playing with some friends a little under a year ago, and tbh we still never looked into what the Grand Strategies, Tactics, etc do lol

 

It's worth looking into. Grand Strategies are all dependent on what you are confident your army is able to accomplish by the end of the game, and net you additional victory points for doing so. Tactics are similar but in micro, based on what you think your army can accomplish by the end of each of your turns.

Playing into this is a big reason why I've been enjoying playing Daughters of Khaine as of late over Seraphon.