GW News: SKAVEN VICTORY! #NewAoS

In Warhammer Fantasy, Empire tended to be either the focal point of a lot of lore or at the very least, have a strong presence. Which kind of makes sense being they were one of the main human factions and as such, their POV would be the easiest to grasp or identify with. But it also could get boring or repetitive.

 

O sure, it's one of the more popular WHF factions.
I'm just surprised there's enough people cosplaying WHF to make it worth it at all, since I rarely see anything other than space marines & the occasional sister of battle cosplay.

 

STORMCASTS!

Lord-Vigilant on Gryph-stalker


Lord-Veritant


Lord-Terminos


Knight-Questor

 

SKAVEN!

Clawlord on Gnaw-beast


Grey Seer


Ratling Warpblaster


Rat Ogres


40 Clanrats

 

That one looks cool... we'll still destroy it in the name of the Old Ones, but it looks cool.

 

Not only that!



AND 10 people will win a Skaventide box! To enter, it’s as simple as signing up to the Warhammer newsletter before the 30th of May 2024. Already signed up? You’re already entered. Terms and conditions apply.

(TOC confirms price as GBP £160 / AUD $450 / USD $265 / EU €210 per piece).

 

That Stormcast Lord Vigiland looks like conversion fodder for either a Grand Master on Demigryph or Theodore Bruckner.

 

I like most of the skaven, but I can't say I'm a fan of putting the clawlord on a mount. It kind of removes the cowardly aspect if he's riding a giant monster....

Also, is it just me or do the stormcast look even more 40K-esque than before?
The lord veritant, the lord terminos, the reclusians; they all look like they'd fit in perfectly with inquisitors or as space marine heroes in customized power armour.

The stormcast before this feel smaller. These new models seem to have the same design that power armour has were everything is oversized & heavy. Big weapons, big armour, big weapons. Like why are the reclusians wielding both a shield & a massive 2 handed axe?

The liberators look puny in comparison.

 

The Skaven miniatures are great - the Gnaw-beast works as a fine Great Pox Rat stand-in, it'll be fun coming up with Fantasy rules for the Ratling Warpblaster and the Rat Ogre sculpts look ace (though you'll have to look elsewhere to find Packmasters to join them). I'll look forward to picking up some of those a while after this box drops and these all start making their way to Partwork magazines and the second-hand market individually.

Plus, if the Leviathan release last year is anything to go by, we'll be getting a load more Skaven releases at some point later in the Summer.

 

A new overview before the faction focus

Apparently GW now uses racial and role-based stats. With humans being the average with a 4+/4+ baseline for attacks.
Nothing spectacular really, mostly it just depends on what the trade-offs are going to be. (e.g. elves are better, cuz of course they are, with a 3+/4+ so what's the trade-off for that?)

More interesting is the weapon special rules.

• If you have multiple critical hit effects you have to pick one (Lame...)
• Anti-X adds rend when fighting a specific target. E.g. pikemen with anti-cavalry get bonus rend against cavalry. This does stack (e.g. anti-hero 1 + anti-cavalry 1 = 2 rend) Which is interesting
• Companion indeed indicates mount weapons. It limits the buffs it can recieve. Specificly, you can't give the mount fight first, or +1 attack. You can however give it say +1 rend or +1 to wound. Which seems rather random a distiction to make. I'd expect an errata soon..

Baseline rend has been reduced, with anti-X replacing it. Maybe AoS will finally start seeing some proper dedicated anti-X units. As opposed to simply being effective against basicly everything.

The other rules aren't particularly new or exciting.

 

Faction focus SCE

They get the following:

General abilities:

• Deepstrike, like always
• Ressurect a 1 destroyed unit with 2 or more models once. Themed as reinforcements arriving at the last second. It's thematic, but does SCE really need a ressurection mechanic?
  
• "Their finest hour": Once per turn give +1 to wound and save rolls for a unit. A unit can only use this once per combat

Overall nothing spectacular. Its kind of lame that "their finest hour" can only be used once on a specific unit.

Subfactions:

• Ruination subfaction/battleformation/whatever you wanne call em: once per turn give 1 unit a 5+ ward save

Seems pretty weak for a subfaction ability. Maybe the subfaction makes up for it with other things?

Prayers

• +1 attack to a friendly unit, on a chanting roll of 12+ affect every visible SCE in 12"

The AoE effect is pretty cool. Though given how prayer rolls work I'm not sure if that effect will see much use unless we can get modifiers easily.

Warscrolls:

• Krondys:
  • Fun personal spell. It's like summon starlight, but you get to choose which stat to debuff.
  • Other than that; pretty good combat stats. Has "anti infantry" but it's not like it needs that or like it specializes him in any meaningfull way...
• Yndrasta:
  • Anti-monster, which again is really not necesary, nor does it do much to actually specialize her.
    
  • Only vaguely interesting rule is dazzling radiance, but using her to support an objective seems kinda lame... Aside from that it's just a beatstick.
• Knight-arcanum:
  • Decent combat profile for a wizard. As usual SCE are some of the few who get support heroes that can actually fight minor opposition.
  • No personal spell
  • Dedicated anti endless spell caster, with multiple effects.
    
  • Overal interesting, but very niche
• Annihilators:
  • Strike last effect on an enemy that charged them. More reliable against larger units. Neat.
    
  • Do mortal damage when using deep strike.
    
    • Someone is going try to use this to deal significant damage to their opponent and spam a billion annihilators... I doubt it's going to be very effective, but rules like this just beg players to try and abuse them...

Spearhead:

• Prosecuters:
  • Their damage output seems pretty high for a skirmishing unit.
• Special rules for the spearhead:
  • Once per battle, get a 5+ wardsave on 1 unit
    
  • Once per battle, 1 unit can run & charge

Pretty boring, but at least it seems our "weak" special rules for spearhead aren't that terrible.

The knight-arcanum is interesting.
The annihilator's strike last effect is interesting. Their deep strike damage is going to be annoying.
It's a shame that the anti-X rules are not used effectivly at all on Krondys & Yndrasta, their baseline stats are good enough to not really care about that bonus.

Also, a high amount of the effects can only be used on 1 unit. I assume it's for balance reason, but this kind of balancing approach just encourages doomstars. Plus, it creates swingy games where the difference between a fully buffed unit & one that is not is going to be rather big. Would rather they encourage spreading out buffs.

 

Skaven faction focus:

Faction abilities:

• Deepstrike via gnawholes
• Once per game setup 1 gnawhole if you have fewer than 3. Presumably to make up for the fact that stuff can be destroyed in 4th
• Does not suffer damage when retreating on skaven infantry and cavalry
• Once per turn perform a free move on a unit that isn't in combat and didn't just deepstrike

Seems like they want to focus on their mobility I suppose.

Subfactions/battle formation

• Fleshmeld menagerie:
  • Once per turn 3 non-hero moulder units can be buffed using a D6
    
    • 1-2 damage them
    • 3-4 +1 attack
    • 5-6 +1 attack & 5+ ward save

Considerably more interesting than what the SCE got as their subfaction ability, both in terms of fluff as in terms of raw power.

Spells:

• Warplightning vortex
  • Do D3 damage to enemies within 6" during each hero phase except on the turn it was summoned.
  • -2 to run & charge rolls for enemies within 6"
  • Do D3 mortal wounds to enemies who run over the vortex

On the one hand, it can deal a lot of damage in one turn since it can trigger twice per turn (once in each hero phase) and then an additional time whenever you run over it. On the other hand, you could just smash it apart before moving and never really suffer any damage.
Interesting though how much more powerfull it is than the generic endless spell we saw earlier...

Units:

• Skreech Verminking
  • 7/3+/2+/2/3/crits (2 hits) seems like a rather impressive melee profile given his special abilities.
  • Personal spell: roll 13 dice, each 5+ deals a mortal wound OR ressurects 1 clanrat. Neat.
    
  • Terrifying monstrosity: prevent target from using CA, also lower their control score. This is like the 4th or 5th model that has rules like that. GW seems to really like their control scores and CA...
  • Thirtheen headed one: once per turn buff one of the clans (e.g. +1 to cast for masterclan wizards, heal moulder units, etc.). Neat
• Rat ogors:
  • 1 in 3 can now have a warpfire gun. 10"/2D6/2+/4+/2/1/shoot in combat.
    • Neat? But also, whatever happened to "we're reducing the power of ranged?"
  • Basic melee attack: 5/4+/3+/1/2
  • Inflict D3 damage to themselves for +1 melee attack
  • Fairly squishy
• Warplighting cannon:
  • 20"/2D6/4+/do a mortal wound on hit
  • Skyre heroes can add +6 attacks, but a roll of 1 deals D3 damage to the cannon
• Gnawhole:
  • D3 damage to enemies moving over it
  • respawn a unit of skaven infantry once per turn. This is a CA
    
  • Teleport skaven

Some neat effects, but ranged attacks do not seem to be meaningfully weaker....
Also, earlier they claimed that rend would be reduced and instead they'd focus on "anti-X" rules. But so far there is a lot of rend on the units shown here as well as earlier...

In general, quite a lot of damage output.

Spearhead:

• Special rules
  • Deep strike
• Grey seer:
  • No personal spell..
  • Improve control score of a unit
  • Wither: Not a spell, so can't be unbound. But also roll 2D6 and on a 6+ do D3 wounds. Only 13" range.

Special rules are quite poor for spearhead given the small board.
The lack of a personal spell on the grey seer is dissapointing, and the focus on control scores abilities is getting annoying. Especially while we haven't had the chance to play with it.
Wither is... interesting... By not making it a spell they give him something to do outside of the 1 spellcast per turn. It also removes the conflict between personal spells & the faction lores. It also helps to provide support characters with the ability to actually defend themselves against a minor opponent. On the other hand, 13" range is pretty terrible for a squishy support unit who desperatly wants to stay out of harm's way...

 

Grots

Faction ability:

• The bad moon continues to exist.

Subfaction ability:

• Squigs get a +1 to their bite on the charge.

Fine, but again, very limited if that's all the subfaction does.

Magic:

• An AoE summon starlight. Neat. But the 12" range is short for a support hero...

Units:

• Skagrot
  • Control the bad moon
  • Personal spell is a basic damage dealer. Roll dice equal to the casting roll, each 3+ does 1 mortal wound. Fine I suppose.
  • If a nearby unit redeploys you can always count on a minimum roll of 4.
  • Has a 4+ ward save
• Gobbapalooza
  • Ward save that becomes worse over time
  • No personal spell
  • Basic buff during the hero phase for a nearby unit. Or prevent an enemy from using command abilities (GW really seems to like that this edition..)
• Squig herd
  • Herders can respawn squiqs during the hero phase. On a 1+ the herder gets eaten instead
  • Sucks at holding objectives
  • Pretty decent attacks
• Loonshrine
  • Bad moon effect on nearby grots
  • Command ability to respawn half a unit

Overal, kinda boring? The squigs are neat I suppose.

Spearhead:

• Different bad moon effect from usual
• Rockgut Troggoths
  • Minor ranged attack
  • Some regen
  • Yet more attacks with -2 rend.

Overal, pretty boring compared to the skaven and SCE.
Continues the trend of no personal spells for casters.
Also, continues the trend of everything seemingly having rend.

 

Nighthaunt focus:

Faction ability:

• ethereal. This also explicitly affects Nagash. (Having factions affect Nagash seems like a great way to completly screw up his balance...)
• Give friendly nighthaunt a 5+ ward as a CA when they get attacked
• Several different auras. Each can be used once per turn, and a unit can only use 1 aura per turn, because balancing stacking effects is hard
  
  • -1 to hit for an enemy (all nighthaunts)
    
  • All nighthaunt that are in combat can charge.If you roll less than a 3 on the charge it doesn't count as having charged. (this one can be stacked with other auras depending on the order)
  • -1 to save for an enemy (only for cavalry and war machines nighthaunt)
  • Strike last effect for an enemy (only for hero nighthaunt)

The ward save stands out for not having a rule of 1 limitation, but I guess with the new limited command points that simply wasn't needed.
The auras are... odd. Difficult to tell if that's going to be fun without playing it.

Subfaction:

• Run & charge for nighthaunt
• No mortal wounds when retreating (o look.. the 2nd faction that ignores the retreating mechanic... what a usefull mechanic...)

Magic:

• Summon starlight but a -1 to wound instead of hit. Also it's a buff for friendlies, can't be used on an enemy.
• Again, frustratingly short ranged for support heroes.

Units:

• Lady Olyander:
  • All her attacks autowind on a 6. Seems like frightfull touch is no longer a faction ability, but is now stuck on each individual warscroll.
    
  • Once per battle return D3+3 health worth of models to every nighthaunt unit
  • Substract 3 from control scores for nearby enemies.
  • Personal spell: remove bonusses to hit and wound from an enemy.
  • The ward save has also moved from the faction ability to the warscroll

Why does GW keep sticking "subctract X control score" on everything? And more importantly, why do they keep sticking it on heroes that should be busy doing things other than grabbing objectives?

The personal spell is neat I guess.

• Reikenor
  • Coprse candles: deal 1 damage to a target. If you picked an enemy reikenor gets +1 to cast, if you picked reikenor he also gets +1 to his power level.
    
    • Seems like you can use this twice per turn, once in your hero phase, once in your opponents.
    • Its not entirely clear how beneficial an extra random power level is going to be, so difficult to judge if this is worthwhile.
    • Annoyingly shortranged. At least reikenor is a melee unit I suppose.
  • Personal spell: Deal D3 damage, if it kills an model deal another D3. Again, annoyingly short ranged.
  • +1 to hit and wound for his sword if he attacks a priest or wizard.
• dreadblade harrows
  • +3 to control score for nearby nighthaunt if this unit charged.
    • This seems a bit silly since it can stack. It also affects itself RAW. Should probably be limited to a max of +6 or something for any given objective.
  • can teleport
• Myrmourn Banshees
  • Can unbind spells that target nearby nighthaunt. Deal D3 damage to the wizard when succesfully unbinding.

Overal, nothing amazing, but GW is really loving their control score shenanigans...
The short range on a lot of support heroes is a bit weird, and starting to become a trend. Feels more like the nerfed the range on support units than the range on ranged units like the promised..

O, and I didn't mention it yet; but of course every single unit shown has rend on at least 1 attack.

Spearhead:

• slightly altered version of the strike last aura. Requires a charge of 10+. Seems a bit difficult to pull off.
  
• Ethereal
• Knight of shrouds:
  • Give a friendly target a 5+ ward.

 

Actually, "Ethereal" explicitly doesn't affect Nagash. No 3+ unmodified save for you, Mr. Nagash.

 

blegh, I blame misreading it on being tired

 

CoS:

Battle traits:

• Units can get orders. Each hero can give 1 order. Each unit can recieve 1 order. But 2 heroes can give the same order to different units..
  • Move 3"
  • +1 attack on the charge
  • Apply strike last after shooting
  • give a target strike last & a 5+ ward
  • Bonus effects depending on the race of the unit

These are reasonably fun. Though I'm not sure if the racial bonusses will see much play. Not unless they get a wave of new models to flesh out the other racial subfactions. Also, bit of a shame that again the rule of one is dumped on everything. Limiting it to once per hero should've been enough.

Subfactions

• Start in "fortified" on your first turn and -1 to wound for enemies on your first turn

Again; this is weirdly limited for a subfaction ability. Are subfactions literally just going to boil down to 1 minor rule this edition?

Spells

• give a unit 3 dice while charging

Again, only a 12" range. Other than that not particularly novel or anything.

Units

• Tahlia Vedra:
  • "anti monster" on an attack with 2 rend.
    
  • Can affect 2 units with 1 order.
  • Once per game, ressurect a few models.
    
  • Apply strike last to a monster that charged and is in combat with Tahlia once per turn. Why are the requirements that strict?
    
  • Pretty good combat.
• Fusil Major
  • 24" gun, auto-wound, anti-hero
  • +1 to hit rolls for ranged attack that target what he targeted.
  • Can fortify (-1 to rend for attacks targeting him
• Freeguild cavaliers
  • +1 damage on charge
  • deal mortal wounds on the charge
  • Has a standard, but no standard special rule?
• Steelhelms
  • Has a musician & standard, but no special rule?
  • Can consecrate an uncontested objective, giving you a 5+ ward on nearby units until you lose control.

So couple of things.

1) Is GW sure that they nerfed the range on ranged attacks & not the range on spells & support abilities?
2) That consecration rule is very cool, and very powerfull for what is your most basic troop
3) the anti-X rules are really pointless given the way they've been implemented...

Spearhead:

• altered version of orders that interacts with battlecards in spearhead. Honestly, far too much text for a spearhead mechanic...
• Cavalier-marshal:
  • Can ressurect models for units that are out of combat.
  • More control-score nonsense

Ressurection is funny, themed as him telling the soldiers to get back up.
The control score nonsense is getting old. GW should show of something else already...

 

They're gonna have to sort something out for the Steelhelms because that kit doesn't come with a single musician.

Either that or Larry the Unpaid Intern got it wrong again.

 

The guy carrying the banner also has a horn/trumpet. He counts as both the musician and the standard bearer.

 

Lord vigilant on chicken

- Can resist abilities.
- Allow a unit to use 2 fight abilities, but it now has strike last. Once per battle.

I think this means it can make a unit fight twice? This is very confusingly phrased.