AoS 4th Edition is nearly here...

The 4. Edition AoS IS here:

Link to WHC

 

Reading through a lot of the order faction packs, i'm kind of hyped, there's a lot of fun looking stuff going on there. For us Terrawings are something i'm thinking are kind of interesting, you're more or less shutting down the ability of infantry to be given commands for the rest of the turn, which is very nice to be applying during the shooting phase with how early in the turn it is.

I think it's just kind of in line with the lower ranges of 4e, but they're also going for less of a 'sniper' fantasy with the warscroll and leaning more into the ambush strike kind of thing that chameleons are known for. You can pop them out 9" from someone and then immediately blast in with 11 3+/3+ attacks that auto-wound on a 6, which isn't a low amount of damage

I think the two variants are both seperated in the type of utility they offer, blowpipes dish out damage and potentially make something worse at hitting when they charge in next phase (possible charging them) while bolas deal less damage to be more survivable and are there to stop something charging at all. They're two different tools for different situations, which i think is fine

 

Sure, making them a properly dangerous ambusher works as well. But being limited to a single ambush is kind of a bummer.

Plus, while their damage is fine for their cost, it isn't exactly amazing, especially since you are stuck with 5 man units. And they don't have the melee stats to follow up with after that initial salvo of blowtypes. So the effect of the ambush is fairly limited

So I'd say it doesn't quite commit to that role either.

 

I think that’s just the nature of an ambush, isn’t it? The big initial alpha strike with the big consequences, rather than striking and running away repeatedly?

I think their seperate uses are pretty clearly defined in that space you’re talking about too, bolas have a better ward and (sort of, comparatively) the stats to follow up if they’re forced to commit to melee, blowpipes have the damage to snipe out a weakened or squishy hero/important target.

They seem like they fit the chameleon skink fantasy pretty well on paper, and look like they can have a meaningful impact on the table, I’m not really sure what else you could want out of them that wouldn’t just dilute them down to skink+

 

As an fyi dartpipes debuff only lasts for that turn.

Bolas also don't have a better save.

 

Both are flavours of ambush tactics. Either one big ambush, or repeated smaller ambushes.
Since HoH are only 90 points; one big ambush is always going to be a bit of a letdown

The bolas are decently well designed; though I wish they came in groups of 10 (or got an extra wound and an extra bola attack to make it an actual 5-man unit.)

The Blowpipes are distinct from bolas, but they don't seem to be quite clear on what they want to be.
Their ranged attack is too short ranged to make it a dedicated ranged unit (sniper or otherwise).
Their -1 to wound utility is too unreliable to make that ability the star of the show.
And as a 90 point unit; they're too weak to achieve much with that one singular ambush.

Pick one of those aspects and double down on it instead of half-assing three different roles.
O, and much like the bolas, making it a unit of 10, or giving it 2 wounds would be appreciated.

And don't get me wrong; I like the idea of both HoH, they just feel half-finished.
Right now their biggest draw is their ability to just plonk them somewhere for map-control. With a little debuff, or some damage, as a small bonus.
And while that's effective, it's also just kind of boring.

Honestly; right now; skink+ is all they really are...

 

I generally like the HoH, I just wish they could re-hide.

 

I'm actually surprised that the Stegadon doesn't have an OC of 10, seeing as how that was one of their special rules from last edition. After briefly skimming over the warscrolls, I have a suspicion that Skinks and the Shadowstrike Starhost will be the dominant formation in more competitive play. As I do not have many skinks in my army, I've put together this list which I'd love to try out:

Allegiance: Seraphon
Battle Formation: Sunclaw Starhost
Spell Lore: Lore of Celestial Manipulation
Manifestation Lore: Primal Energy

Regiment 1
General: Slann Starmaster
5 x Saurus Guard
10 x Saurus Warriors
10 x Saurus Warriors
6 x Aggradon Lancers

Regiment 2
Oracle on Troglodon
- Heroic Trait: Reptilian Cunning
- Artefact of Power: Incandescent Rectrices
5 x Hunters of Huanchi with Dartpipes
6 x Kroxigors

Total Points: 1950

Only two drops which I think is quite nice, plus it hits the 1950 limit to give me that extra command point. The idea is to keep the warriors, guard, and slann in the backline to hold objectives and cast support spells while sending the healing-heavy Troglodon forward with the Aggradons into combat. Using the 6 kroxigors also helps spread the hammer units into anti-monster and anti-infantry. The hunters are there of course for the ability to drop in and cap objectives and be a nuisance.

 

Prices going up all over the place are, well, all over the place, not just us, Kraggy is 680 for example, and Kroak, while expensive it might still worth it:+4 ward, Dead for Innumerable Ages, 18 Wounds, sorry, HP, 4+ Save, 5 Control, quite a melee ouput +2 to cast while only 3 spells for 460, might just as well try him out.

 

I think stats-wise they are ok. Just can't see why the heck they would go up so much in price, unless the "Right Way" I was talking about earlier that GW wants to play is with less monsters and more infantry. That could be the case given that the Astrolith only buffs infantry now.

Trap cards is exactly what all the reactions feel like. It appears that doing anything in combat allows multiple chances to trigger some sort of reaction by your opponent to either stop what you're doing or set up some big counterplay of their own. Granted, it requires saving up your CP to do it, so maybe it will be a bit more limited than I'm imagining, lol!

As for "wombo-combos," I definitely should have picked a better word, lol! What I'm trying to grasp is again how all the opportunities to do stuff in your opponent's turn is going to play out. To me at least it seems that with so many move/charge/shoot in your opponent's turn abilities out there, it will be hard to actually set up and do what *you* want to do in your turn and vice versa. I guess a better term would be.... chain combos? Or maybe chain reactions?

I really *want* to like it, lol! There are some really interesting concepts being added this edition, it just seems that a lot of the base rules of the game are going to be fun but the army rules, point costs, big nerfs to units, etc. are going to still keep up the unfortunate GW tradition of poor balance. And I'll fully admit a big reason I'm annoyed is because there seems to be some of the usual "nerf whatever was good last edition and try to buff what wasn't used" stuff that GW always does. I should be used to that by now, but I personally don't get much enjoyment out of being forced to rework my army every couple years because GW wants me to buy more stuff (Joke's on them, I already have all the Seraphon stuff I need/want, lol!)

What I actually would like is for them to *finally* make an edition where the armies are actually internally balanced, most of the units in an army are good (I know saying all units being good is too much to wish for, lol!) and you can actually build lists that feel like a fully-fledged army instead of a list that always relies heavily on a specific unit type. I want to be able to have 1-2 casters, some infantry, some ranged/artillery, some cavalry, etc. Things you would expect to actually see on a battlefield rather than an all-Skink, or all-Aggradon, or all-Saurus list, etc.

The other thing I really want is for our dinosaurs to be actually good compared to other factions' monsters, but at this point I guess I should just accept that GW has declared that for whatever reason dinosaurs are supposed to just be inferior to stuff like mammoths, rhinos, bone constructs, dragons and giants. Also, not giving us mount traits *again* at this point just seems spiteful, lol!

I fully intend to. I was just saying that there is a lot of stuff that doesn't look good to me. That didn't stop me from switching to 3e from 2e, and while to be fully honest the changes from 3 to 4e look rather more annoying than the last edition change, I'm still going to try to learn to play and see how it works out. If I dislike it, I'll probably wait until our full rulebook comes out (probably near the end of 4e...) and see how that looks

 

Unfortunately, I'll have to disagree with you there since he's a whopping 180 points more than a normal slann. Sure, he's got a 4+ ward, but Dead For Innumerable Ages was changed to have you roll for his health at the end of the turn, not phase like it used to be. You'll likely end up rolling high and having him die long before his usefulness has made up for nearly 1/4 of your army. Take the normal slann though: much cheaper, still has a +1 to casting and unlimited range unbinds, and they're a 3 cast just like Kroak is! Furthermore, the slann is the only model we have that's able to bring back dead units at half strength, which even Kroak isn't able to do despite his much higher price point.

Not saying people can't take him of course, but it really doesn't seem worth it imo.

 

Yeah, Kroak is looking *way* overpriced and not strong enough to warrant taking over a regular Slann at this point. The change to his healing ability means he's very likely to die in 1-2 turns just because two phases of damage is going to have a very high chance of taking him out. Not to mention that rules-as-written right now, armies like Tzeentch with their fire ability just shut down his healing altogether since all he can do is remove the status instead of regaining heath.

Very likely to die by the second turn of the game unless your opponent has no ranged capability and then as you said, there's 1/4 of your army gone because of a random roll. I'd be very curious to see if other faction leader models are this gimmicky and vulnerable, lol!

 

I have only gotten a little chance to look things over but I think we are fine. EVERY army has gotten toned down in power which is good. Mortal wounds are also much less common.

Kroak is my favorite model in our range. Sad to see him nerfed but remember he is no longer paying a guard tax. I feel slan still needs guard where kroak can run without them. Also anything that is taking kroak out so easily is also going to just destroy a slann. Slann got a lot more squishy while Kroak got tougher.

I have also been a fan of the skinks and I am really looking forward to the troglodon, crit 3 moral wounds is very nice and he seems very tanky. Rapertdon chargers also look nice in shadow strike starhost. Will have to do the math to see how they fair compared to ripperdactyls.

 

I don't know, Kroak is more expensive now, but other God tier models are also way more expensive now, how many cheap damage is able to break through him now?

Really dislike the homogenous weapons now. They could have gone with something interesting like making spears anti-cavalry and clubs anti-infantry, but no, they're just weapons without any ability.

This goes for every single faction. Missed chance.

Thunderquake is the weakest of the Starhosts, Traits and Artifacts are all interesting. Celestial Manipulation has to be better then Primal Jungles just because Earth Trembles is not good.

 

Yeah and it totally might not be to your liking. It's definitely different than 3. It might not be good different for everyone.

The broad strokes feel better. It has maybe come at the expens of some of the more granular things. I think there's room for it to add a level of that back in. We will see!

 

AoS (Ark of Sotek) has been seriously buffed or is it just me? Or at least is no longer the skip it used to be.

 

Oh yeah it's definitely looking a lot better than it used to. I'd consider running one myself if I had the mini.

The Solar Engine also looks like it got off fairly easily, losing one rend. Though it's 290 points now...

 

From reading in our Faction Pack and skimmnig the other Order factions I like:

• Age of Sigmar? more like Age of Streamlined. Not a bad or good thing until a good few weeks into the edition.
• Lots of "Roll a D3. On a 2+, inflict an amount of mortal damage on the target equal to the roll." maybe not as many mortal wounds as before, but they're still there, quite frequent but also quite weaker.
• Astrolith Bearer is kind of a mandatory pick? specially with a Slann.
• My prediction was right, Warspawned are indeed anti-Monsters.
• I don't know if this Spearhead mode will be successful, they have different rules and almost anyone I meet just want to jump traight to the real deal.

 

Do mount traits still exist?
With the amount of streamlining & just general reduction in fun little choices I would've expected that to be gone completly.

They've finally given it an actual functional profile, so yeah you could call that a buff.

It's honestly weird how much of the more granular choices they've removed.
Obviously; it makes it easier to streamline & standardize things if there's less moving parts; and 4th is very clearly trying to achieve that.
But now we've ended up in a situation where a lot of choices are gone simply because we only have 3-4 options, and most likely at least 1 or 2 of those options are irrelevant (e.g. we basicly only have 2 artifacts for any given hero. Melee heroes can't use the familiar; caster heroes can't use the bloodrage pendant.)

Its a very stark contrast with the previous edition. For example, we went from a total of 14 traits, to 3. And sure; not all of those old traits will neatly carry over into 4th, but dropping to 3 options total seems excessive. For example, where the Saurus traits really that difficult to adapt to 4th? Similarly we went from 20+ spells (plus endless spells) to like 9 (plus endless spells) across the entire battletome. Again; not every spell translates equally well into 4th; but was something like summon starlight really impossible to carry over?

Looking at what's been revealed; it feels like they decided on some general rules (e.g. lores consist of 3 spells) before looking if that actually worked for every faction and unit. For some that was fine; but it's also lead to plenty of odd cases.