Could there be a 2 vs 2 match where you're not allowed to pick the same Grand Strategy as your partner? In that case I could see Prized Sorcery + Astromatrix. I know that's pretty much a corner case. I could also see a non-matched game where you get some kind of freebie for using your faction's bespoke strategy instead of a core one.
Maybe the person making the Astromatrix grand strategy was confused, like I was until I just looked it up, and thought prized sorcery required you to pick a wizard at the start of the game. Still a stupid addition.
Some of the new fluff about the era of the beast is interesting, at least. Alarielle’s ritual surging the realms has most directly affected the coalesced in ghur, driving them dangerously primal in places the astromatrix is misaligned, an example being given of a number of saurus bodyguards being driven feral and ripping apart their skink charges, being unstoppable until their Slann personally stepped in to call them. Coatl’s claw has embraced it, however, the new surge of primal power complimenting their new nature and brutal expansionism. The starborne being unaffected has led to big surges of their presence in the realm at the behest of Kroak and other mage priests, helping quell the aatromatrix to assist the coalesced. Starborne are also affected by Belakor’s dark cloud, it’s presence complicating and sometimes preventing the summoning of starborne forces, interfering with their ability to do their thing. On the flip side this has necessitated more direct interaction with the mortal races. The stormcast battletome and the corebook as well as this new tome celestial mention skinks finding more positions within sigmar’s society, skinks using their astral knowledge to help keep the bridges to azyr in stormkeeps better aligned and functioning while stationed there. It’s also mentioned that Seraphon are parties included in the pact signed by the Draconith with Sigmar, a line of communication opened that’s seen the stormcast being deployed directly to aid endangered Temple-Cities that otherwise would have fallen. In return, skinks are integrating into dawnbringer crusades as pathfinders and mystic guides while saurus legions are deployed to defend the fledgling new settlements from ruin. It seems like an interesting shift for us, to be put in a position where we’re still kind of capricious and acting on the whims of fate, but also more reliable with more direct means of communication between constellations, temple cities, and sigmar’s empire. This does seem sort of very intentionally engineered by kroak too, given it was him that claimed the draconith eggs that led to this partnership, and opened the door of cooperation in BR: Belakor and Kragnos. Draconith eggs were also buried in many nexus of layline power after he initially received them, the same places dawnbringer crusades are now sent out to build on top of, and their presence in a location further mandates permanent stormcast settlement to accommodate them- something not all crusades get.
The fact that both of those grand strategies exist is indeed stupid. So I'm going to assume whomever wrote Astromatrix just forgot "prized sorcery" was a thing. Either that, or they forgot to actually add in an advantage for Astromatrix to balance out the disadvantages. Which seems realistic given the kind of mistakes GW regularly makes. It's such a shame though, cuz the the idea behind astromatrix is at least interesting (assuming prized sorcery didn't exist to ruin it ). It's also about the only rule in the update that's actually somewhat fluffy and shows some semblance of originality. And yeah, for basicly all the stuff in our update there's no real choice. Astromatrix, in its current form, is just a worse "Prized sorcery" so why ever take it? Thunderquake is underwhelming at best, so building an army around it is pointless. On the other hand, if you play thunderlizard you probably have the required troops anyway so you might as well get the free battalion. Either way, the choice is kinda made for you as it's an auto include/exclude and not something you build towards. We finally get mount traits, but only 1 per subfaction, so again, there is no actual choice to be made you just take whichever is allowed in your subfaction. It makes it a very lackluster update, even if objectivly it still makes our army better cuz none of it makes for an interesting choice, or even an interesting impactfull new ability.
In B4 nerf that says we can no longer use prized sorcery and have to use astromatrix cause its too easy to get prized sorcery as seraphon and GW hates us.
This. Team tournaments don't let you double up on grand strategies. Besides, there's tons of garbage choices in this game that are identical to other choices just worse. The update is worth it for the scenery change alone. At the end of the day our book is barely 18 months old and we're getting an update that includes 2 things people were clamoring for. I think that's pretty sweet personally. And considering the level of updates/power these white dwarf things have been, this feels very much in line and very much what we should have expected.
It’s a bit of a pain to go through and zoom, but this video has the PtG stuff visible in it. very interesting and fluffy starborne mechanics with some impermanence to nonhero units, and we get the mount upgrade thing from the stormcast PtG, but it’s pretty limited. Star priest can become starseer, Scar vet on cold one can become basically every other saurus hero, either directly or through an intermediary stage.
Just realized isn't prized sorcery part of the GH2021? I guess they could be planning not to add it as part of 2022. Still odd to release astromatrix now, but slightly more sensible.
O god, they did indicate in various places that they wanted to go down a seasonal SaaS-like route. Removing and adding objectives would be in line with that.... It is rather brave though to try and use a SaaS approach to a freaking tabletop game of all things. Brave and stupid.
I can imagine a situation where you would load content into the annual package and leverage that to extend the life of your core platform. I'm not saying that's what they will do, but they could do it that way. So AOS 3 lasts longer than you would expect because you get a new module every year.
The first model if the new Warcry Warband has been revealed: Pirate spiders seems to be the theme... Grrr, Imrahil
The DM in me saw a sahuagin before I noticed the more arachnid touches/details on this. Looks pretty interesting tho!...to bad it'll probably be useless in AoS like most of the other WarCry-specific stuff. Still, glad to see they're keeping WC alive & well!!
https://www.warhammer-community.com...hinks-biting-your-head-off-counts-as-a-block/ So who is buying 3 of these to convert?
My suarus guard are the blood bowl suarus and I love them, the models are padded and helmed and look so much better than the normal guard. The new krox is a great model and the old krox models are so derpy. However it is most likely that there is only one model in one pose so all your new krox will look the same. Not the end of the world but mono pose minis don't always look great on the table