GW News: SKAVEN VICTORY! #NewAoS

GW has closed a slew of Facebook pages.

 

They were starting to spam websites and Social Media pages unnecessarily, so it's about time they had a little cleanup, but has Tom Kirby actually come back or is that just a meme reflecting the occasion?

 

I believe it's a meme referencing the closing of Facebook accounts as a backwards step similar to the pre-kirby-exit GW communication policy

 

So tactical rocks abound

 

I can kind of give or take the Khorne lady, but I generally like the pose of the Slaanesh warrior (aside from the headdress).

 

Well of course, he screams come at me bro energy and a conversion into an exodite riding a carnosaur.

 

It's very important to have the biggest tactical rock, how else will we know who's the most tactical?

 

Boring and boring. Next!

 

I'm happy for a rad new plastic Salamander, but I have to admit I was disappointed by this reveal on multiple accounts.

The Skink handlers and the LVO revealed Bird rider skinks all have very weird facial features and a reworked crest, which makes me worry GW has re-invented the wheel with Skinks for absolutely no reason. Skinks were probably the most successfully designed models in the Lizardmen range since 6th edition.

After drooling over the Lost Kingdom Salamanders for a few months, this release just felt lackluster. I love the general features and design of the Salamander itself, but the complete lack of lizard-like agility and dynamic movement in the model is disappointing. It's basically a colorful slug, that's how static that thing looks on the base.

I thought all I wanted in life was new Salamanders from GW, and somehow they managed to not deliver. Considering all they had to do in my eyes was make more variants in dynamic poses for the old Salamander design, I don't know how they managed to lower expectations once more.

 

Honestly, a single foot hero is never going to be terribly exciting, no matter how amazing it looks.
So it surprises me that we keep seeing "updates" where this is all we get. At least give them a little squad so they have a little entourage or something

 

Salamanders aren't meant to have agility or dynamic movement though, they're essentially Lizardman artillery pieces that are meant to stand there and incinerate things.

Additionally in lore they are water-dwelling ambush predators - not only are water-dwelling creatures sluggish on land (if they can even climb out onto land at all), but ambush predators spend a lot of their time waiting for their prey to approach, and only need to make use of short bursts of speed to achieve a successful kill.

All in all, I can certainly see why GW gave their Salamander a sluggish design and am certainly not bothered by it.

 

I mean, this is like the one example of a model where a bigger tactical rock could've improved things, by making the model more interesting while not going overboard with dynamic poses.

In that sense @LtNummi has a point. This model/unit doesn't exactly tell an interesting story. Even a hellblaster has a more dynamic look, as its crew looks busy with various tasks. They could've at least made it look like the skinks are actually interacting with the Salamander.

It's fine in a larger diorama, where you can perch it on a rock or something, but on it's own it's definitely a bit on the boring side.

Might have been the older lore (pre-AoS?), but I don't think that's the case anymore;


This doesn't sound very water-dwelling. Or particularly ambush-predator-like.

 

Plastic Tetto'ekko:




An all-round solid update to the Finecast original.

 

Fair enough, I wasn't very concerned with lore justifications for it, just felt like the model lacked any sense of movement or action. It looks uninteresting. Hell, if the reasoning is that they're a sluggish aquatic artillery piece, have one of them spewing fire, while one could be partially submerged!

 

I like that the skink itself is a bit more active, scrying in his little orb. The big circular thing is a bit much though.

The newly teased rule:

On the bright side; finally an actually new rule. Only took them 3 units.
On the down side; not a fan of once-per-game rules, they tend to eat up too much of a unit's power budget and tend to make it feel lackluster outside of that one rule.

Also, it seems oddly weak for a once-per-battle ability. It's only a 5+ ward and it isn't even a guaranteed effect. The astrolith is a 6+ and permanent, this doesn't seem that much better, even if it can buff someone on the other side of the battlefield.

 

Also, in between the new starseer and the astrolith; this means we're going to continue to be rather squishy isn't it?
Our various Saurus units can't have good baseline defenses if this is supposed to be a good once-per-game hero ability.

Well, so much for any hopes in that department I guess.