Nice to have that confirmed! Looks like the typical one new hero per faction is still the norm, although the article says at the end that more news about the Fyreslayers and Deepkin is coming, so perhaps more releases for both of them are being planned. I really hope so! I've been saying repeatedly that I wish GW would stop churning out 2 new armies a year and start updating existing armies. This gives me a bit of hope that the rumored Seraphon+Skaven update in 2023 might be true! Also, new Aqshy rules for battles! Maybe if they're adding new realms in updates like this they won't be forcing you to play in a new realm each year, and you can pick which one you like. As for the characters, they both look pretty cool, although as an Idoneth player as my second army I'm a little disappointed that the eel Thrallmaster has looks so derpy. But both characters appear to be focused around buffing their infantry units. We'll have to see what sort of buffs they give out. It could be game-changing for either faction, it could be nothing. I can't help but think that the Idoneth come out slightly better with this box, given that it has 20 infantry models and a shark, but the Fyreslayers infantry is definitely more powerful so I guess it balances out.
Meh, I'd bet on a battletome update, but nothing major. Tzeentch v.s. KO and the box with the sylvaneth followed that pattern as well. I mean, these army boxes regularly come with like a 200 point difference between the two factions, they're rarely balanced
Eh, you're right. Probably a battletome update. But given the limited model range of each army, I wouldn't be surprised if they did get at least a couple new models.
I for one and sorely disappointed in this box. Obviously the rules for the new fyreslayer guy is going to make him basically be good enough to take. But fyreslayers still are mediocre and half the units are really really bad unless this new rulebook is going to cha ge a lot
Fyreslayers are the one army that manages to beat my ass like a Cherokee drum every single time I play against them. I struggle against these guys far more than I do against 'meta' armies like LRL, Tzeentch, other Seraphon etc. The builds I've played against largely consist of units with a 4+ ward save and insane MW output, not to mention a 4+ spell ignore. They can bulldoze me before I've even made a dent in them. What makes them mediocre? I see this take a lot but I'm unsure if this is true or if they're just a bad matchup for Seraphon.
I’ll second that @Kilvakar - a pity that a single hero was released again for each, but the ‘more news’ passage has potential, in particular given the Battletomes haven’t yet been previewed - in past Battlebox releases for armies that are getting nothing other than a character and essentials each, their tomes have usually been announced alongside the Battlebox in the same article, including Aether War and the recent 40K boxes among others. GW wouldn’t produce this much tension if it was just the Battletomes and pointless extra-expensive Vanguard boxes coming, because they would witness a good amount of negative feedback if so. Additionally, both the boxes @Canas mentioned contained an army that had sizeable rosters and didn’t really need anymore reinforcements at the time (Tzeentch and Gloomspite Gitz), plus they were releasing scenery and Endless Spells for most of the factions at that time too. Both Fyreslayers and Idoneth deserve a couple of units to boost their roster variety and quality, especially given they have already given Slaanesh and Lumineth second releases (and technically Orc Warclans with Kruleboyz being lumped in with them) - as boring as the former two were, at least they prove that Second Waves are going to be a thing, especially given the number of new factions has started to sharply drop. I’d say it does, 20 Fyreslayer Infantry are going to cost a lot more than, and perform better than, 20 Namarti, so the inclusion of the Allopex I think is justified. To be honest I think this Battlebox is one of their better ones, 20 Fyreslayer Infantry from both boxes is a pretty darn good starter army for them, and if you’re going Namarti Heavy the Idoneth force is pretty good value too. I would honestly consider getting it if I didn’t have such a big pile of shame (and also I’m not so keen on Namarti, though the Allopex is great and the only thing I don’t like about Namarti could be remedied with some head swaps). Also Fyreslayers have only started to flag in about the past year with all the BS meta-breaking changes Slaanesh, Lumineth and Vampires have brought, and even recently a Fyreslayer player topped the ranking of the recent US tournament, along with Hearthguard Berzerkers still being ranked as one of the best units in the game, so we are not in a bad position per se, but a 3rd Edition tome, a new character and hopefully some new units will still be most welcome.
Generally the lack of shooting and speed mean that armies with good shooting can shoot Fyreslayers down before they can reach them. While their mortal wound output was crazy good in 2e, there's other armies now with just as good or better MW output with better ways of delivering them, and as an all-melee army Fyreslayers were hurt by the coherency rules quite a bit, and they don't have elite 3 man units like Gore-Gruntas that don't worry about coherency. So they're going to have a hard time dealing with armies like Lumineth, Gargants, KO, Stormcast, and pretty much most of the armies at the top right now.
Gloomspite & Tzeentch were large enough, but their opponents KO and Sylvaneth were (and still are) small and they didn't get more than the one hero either. Yeah, as far as value for money goes this box does seem to contain a reasonable amount of stuff for both armies. And most importantly, it contains stuff that actually works together. Makes for a nice starting core of your collection if you like fyreslayers/lumineth. Unlike say the first SCE v.s. Khorne box where Khorne had 2 support heroes but only a handfull of troops so the "army" was kind of garbage.
One thing a friend of mine was noticing in a recent Ironjawz vs Maggotkin game is that it's looking like AoS 3.0 will be setting a trend where subfactions will no longer grant unique artifacts or command abilities. It certainly makes me hope that, when GW gets around to Seraphon again, they do a proper faction overhaul.
As long as they do it right. If they're going to remove the majority of the subfaction abilities, then the base faction abilities need to be buffed to compensate. Thunder Lizards lives and dies from the CA for double Bastiladon firing and EotG rolling. If all they do is remove those, +2 wounds on monsters is not a good reason for playing TL. That said, I do kind of like the idea of removing the subfaction artifact requirements. Most of them aren't any good and it feels like such a tax to take an artifact that sucks because you want to play a specific subfaction. But then again, 3e's style seems to be "when it doubt, throw it out." It's just that they rarely put anything back *in* to make up for what's removed. Personally, I think if they were to do a complete overhaul it would be nice to see them keep the Starborne and Coalesced armies, but make the base allegiance abilities better if they were going to remove or weaken the Constellation abilities, and change the point costs for units between Starborne and Coalesced. That way, Coalesced avoids the "summoning tax," especially since their allegiance abilities don't affect all units. For the Coalesced abilities: Predatory Fighters is great, Cold-Blooded is not. Yeah, it's nice not to be able to get bravery-bombed, but it really should just be ignoring penalties to bravery and not bonuses as well. Scaly Skin is great, but it really should apply to mortal wounds as well, given the amount of stuff that is getting mortal wounds on 5s and 6s to hit, MW on charge, MW from breath attacks, etc. Primeval Domain is actually a nice benefit now, rather than totally useless. If anything I'd like to see it become the ability to choose the mysterious terrain features for terrain wholly or partially within your territory, to show their mastery of terraforming. Then, if they were to get rid of the artifacts and command abilities for the constellations, then they need to add them into the base Coalesced abilities. Stegadons as battleline is great, but if all Thunder Lizard does is make Stegadons battleline and give +2 wounds to monsters, that will be nerf that may make them totally worthless to play. (To clarify, when I say it may make them worthless to play, I'm talking with the assumption that all GW does is remove the subfaction CA and artifact. If they also made it so that all Coalesced units get mortal wounds on 6s to hit, or got +1 rend, or something similar, that would make up for it.) For Starborne, Unfeeling is a just plain better version of Cold-Blooded. I would keep it. Lords of Space and Time is amazing, and I hope they don't kill it. Celestial Conjuration needs a bit of a re-work. Our summoning mechanic just by itself was way to broken in 1e. Our army was so weak that it barely made up for it, though. In 2e they nerfed it down to where it you maybe get one or two units summoned throughout the game. I think they can find a middle ground. Make it a more reliable mechanic. Give us more ways to accumulate CP than not casting spells and having specific units (one of which we never use) on the battlefield. Either make the CP accumulated a flat number again, or add more ways to get CP. But increase the point costs on Starborne units that can be summoned accordingly. One thing I think would be fun is if they added more constellations (subfactions). Orruks have 9 subfactions, DoK has 6, Stormcast has 8, Cities of Sigmar has 13! If they follow the AoS 3e trend of making subfactions only give you one ability, then having more of them while simultaneously having more and better options in the base allegiance abilities would be so much better than them just taking stuff out. But even if they didn't add a lot of new stuff and wanted to keep the book more or less the way it is, I'd still be happy if they removed some of the buff-stacking and just made our units better in return. You know, the same thing people have been asking for now for quite some time, lol! (except maybe @Putzfrau ) They already removed a lot of the buff stacking, and it's very likely that a new book would remove even more. So realistically our units *need* to get better if we're going to stay a good army when our 3e book comes out (which if rumors are to be believed, is in 2023...)
I'd love to see cheaper, "feral" versions of our dinosaurs similar to how they work in Total Warhammer. But that would require new sculpts as the current ones are all made for having the riders. Well, actually the Carnosaur probably would be the one that looks best without a rider, since the chair mounts on the back without built-in support holes like the Stegadon and Bastiladon have. But I would be totally fine with our hero dino versions being more expensive but brought up to the stat power level of other factions' monsters, and having the cheaper, non-mounted versions available if you still wanted to go for a cheap dino-spam playstyle. If they made our units more survivable and better in melee a feral dinosaur army would be pretty awesome!
If they make Saurus meta, particularly in Coalesced, I’d actually consider using my Lizardmen as Seraphon. If they continue on their current trend of Skink meta, I’m not bothering.
I just want more cool ass models, they hit it out of the park with the new Lord Kroak. I JUST WANT COOL MODELS TO PAINT
From what I can remember there haven't been many rumor engines that look very lizardman-y lately/in the last few months, so if we do get new models, it probably won't be till either very late 2022 or early 2023. Would love it if the 2022 Advent Calendar in DEC ends up being just a bunch of Seraphon & Skaven rumors, much like they did for the upcoming Aeldari/Craftworld and the reveal of their new models!
The rumors that have been circulating seem to think that Seraphon + Skaven are getting new models in 2023, so that would indeed be pretty awesome if they were to lead up to it like they have with the Eldar range refresh.