GW News: Lizard preview #NewAoS

Interesting to see that Kruleboyz are back to being their own faction again, no sign of the Orc Warclans soup faction anymore. Good news for Fyreslayers and Kharadron, which everyone kept on saying would be dumbly formed into a Dwarf soup faction.

To be frank I was expecting them to get on with the Dwarf release they teased way back and preview the next faction a good few weeks ago, and it's certainly dickish of them to start releasing the 40K stuff previewed only a couple of weeks ago in its place. They easily could have dropped it in among the rest of the recent releases before AoS 4th and saved the next faction until afterwards.

However I can't honestly see why they'd do such a dumb thing given they've seen how popular it is and how much money it'll make them to keep it going. They've even acknowledged its popularity in Warhammer Community articles. The whole reason they developed it in the first place was to recapture the Warhammer Fantasy audience who don't give a toss about AoS 4th apart from the new Skaven models (like myself). It'd be their most idiotic decision to date to lose that customer base again. As @J.Logan says it'll most likely return after 4th has been released, though they could easily have fitted the Dwarf release in beforehand.

 

People where saying that about KO? They have plenty going on to be independent. It's mostly the fyreslayers that are terribly one-note for an entire faction.

Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if GW overestimated the popularity of ToW and is now rethinking it's entire strategy (or well.. what passes for strategy at GW marketing...) .

A large chunk of the hype for ToW came from TW warhammer players.
A good chunk of those TW players are probably dissapointed that ToW doesn't have their favorite TW characters (or even factions..) due to GW taking a different time period, so they immediately lost interest. Another chunk of the TW players asking for more WHF stuff probably was never interested in tabletops, and simply meant "give us more videogames/books/etc. in this cool setting".
On top of that, TW is slowly winding down, as it's finished release the main games, so the demand from that angle is slowly dissappearing. Yet ToW has barely started their releases. GW completly missed the window of oppertunity there.

And that's without going into detail about GW's inability to run a decent marketing campaign and it's stubborn insistance on releasing games piecemeal (seriously, what is with GW's obsession with this? Why do they insist on the constant drip-feed of releases in all of their games)

So the conversion of TW players has probably been abysmall. And without the TW players that demanded more WHF stuff, who is really left to drive demand for ToW? Some leftover greybeards still hoping their old game will be revived?

 

It's because GeeDubs can't seem to comprehend the idea that the players do not in fact buy every model for every faction. They think they're doing our wallets a favour by drip feeding the releases so that the price isn't front-loaded. Meanwhile, all they've accomplished is the ire of players who had to wait years for a rulebook for their faction, only for the next edition of the game to be announced two months later making that rulebook they waited for obsolete.

Yes, I am still a little bitter about that. What was the point of releasing the battletome if the next edition that would that battletome obsolete was moments away from being announced?!

 

Vampires:

Faction:

• Vampires heal D3 if they fought, 2D3 if it destroyed a unit in combat. Healing happens at the end of a turn
• gravewalker or deathrattle units can deepstrike from all terrain
  
• Heal up to 3 gravewalker/deathrattle units near 1 hero (Deathly invocation)
  
• Ressurect dead units at half strength. Original unit needs to be 2+ models. Cost a CP.
  • Can ressurect near a hero, or near terrain

The vampire healing is neat. But a bit weird that it only occurs at the end of the turn. Not sure why it doesn't occur immeadiatly after fighting with that vampire.

Also, the fact that they can use all terrain is a bit weird. You can use enemy faction terrain to deepstrike or ress your models. Thematicly that's stupid. And mechanicly it's obnoxious.

More interesting than most of what we've seen though. Seems like GW is contiuing it's weird love of undead.

Subfaction:

• +1 rend for deathrattle units if they charge and attack a smaller unit

Eh... sort of thematic when it's a horde of skeletons fighting a few humans. Kind of silly when they're fighting a big monster.
Also, depending on the match-up this is effectivly a near permanent buff. Like against SoB. While against horde armies it's terrible.
Weird rule.

Spells:

• Vile transference:
  • Roll 1 dice per model in the target
  • On a 6+ deal a mortal wound
  • If you slay a model, heal the caster
  • 18" range
  • No rule of one

Well... this is the best spell so far by a freaking landslide. It has longer ranged than most, both offensive & defensive value, pretty reliable against the intended targets. Most importantly though; it's actually interesting and thematic. Really the only thing missing is a way to make it relevant against smaller units.

Units:

• Radukar:
  • Absolutly murders a carnosaur....
  • +1 to wound for nearby allies after charging. But doesn't appear to buff himself? Weird
    
  • When not in combat, move D6.
  • Personal spell: -1 to hit selfbuff.
• Lauka Vai:
  • Also beats a carnosaur to a bloody pulp
    
  • -1 to rend for melee weapons when in combat with her
    • again, attacks don't need to actually target her. GW really doesn't seem to want to give people ways to play around certain things do they...
  • Rampage: roll a dice, if it's lower than the targets health deal that many mortal wounds. (so the inverse of a giant stuffing a small model in a bag)
  • Personal spell: give a monster D3 extra attacks to its companion attacks.
    
    • Terrible 12" range. Especially silly when you consider Lauka already fullfills the role of monster herself. Why would you have a 2nd monster that close by?
• Blood knights:
  • Can move through infantry, screw your screens I guess.
    
  • deal D3 damage to a unit it moved through.
  • Counts as a vampire, so it heals itself.
• Vargheist
  • Deepstrike
  • Counts as vampire

Spearhead:

• Vargheist has to deepstrike in turn 3 (... this is what, the 5th spearhead that has such a rule?)
• Vampires heal for the damage that they dealt
• Skeletons:
  • For each slain model, roll a D6 on a 5+ it gets back up.
    
  • It's not clear when you use this. It just says "combat phase" but do you use it each time a model is slain? At the end of combat? Whenever you feel like it but only once per combat?

Anyways; seems to be one of the more inspired and thematic factions. GW's love for vampires seems to continue into 4th.

Our spearhead carnosaur gets more depressing by the minute. Both Radukar & Lauka beat it easily, neither have a damage table despite being monsters. I reaaaally want to know what the proper carno warscroll looks like.

The first faction to get an actually decently designed spell. At the same time, Radukar's personal spell is absurdly lame, and Lauka's spell isn't much better.

Also, probably one of the few factions for whom losing summoning isn't a big deal given how much healing its vampire units are getting in return.

 

People were saying that about both the Dwarf factions because GW just can't seem to be bothered to think of new releases for either apart from unnamed hero models, and because their playstyles complement each other a lot.

Why doesn't that surprise me?

You only need to look at the main non-GW TOW Facebook page to see how wrong you are on that one: https://www.facebook.com/groups/warhammeroldworld

There are more ex-Fantasy players who have ignored AoS (or got into it and then either dropped it when TOW came out or got into TOW alongside it) than you think, the sheer volume of discussion going on in the big TOW communities on Facebook and Reddit are evidence of this. So many people have effectively come out of 'wargaming hibernation' (or at least 'Warhammer hibernation') because of TOW.

TOW does cater for all factions by providing functional rules for each one, meaning there's something for every Warhammer: Total War player. Sure, some armies are not going to be given models or Arcane Journals for a long while but GW changes their mind regularly if there's enough money in it, that's obvious. More to the point there are loads of people out there who are completely fine with the PDF lists and started 'Legacy' armies anyway, the big TOW communities are evidence of this too. What we have is already a complete set of rules, and that was all that was needed to get a lot of people back into the hobby.

As for the Warhammer Total War games winding down with releases, people will still play them so long as they remain available to buy and download (I severely doubt CA will actively discontinue one of their biggest financial successes), and so long as people play them, there will always be a subset of that group who want to play the game in miniature form too, who will congregate to Warhammer Fantasy to play it.

Not to mention how the folk on the TOW groups show that GW have clearly underestimated TOW's popularity, as they continue to run out of stock of so much of the stuff, because so many people and retailers are buying it. TOW's success is (alongside 40K... I don't recall AoS being a cause of it though ) part the reason they're expanding to a new warehouse to be able to store more stock.

As I mentioned in my previous post GW themselves have acknowledged TOW's roaring success in Warhammer Community posts... they really would have to be the dumbest people around not to see that as an incentive to keep the game going.

Indeed to be frank I do wonder why they are insisting on making as much fuss as they are about AoS 4th, AoS has utterly failed to try and make any improvement in getting GW's fantasy model range to match 40K in terms of sales, and overall community discussion about the game across the net seems to have shrunk vastly since the glory days of 2nd. Shops and gaming clubs around my local area really don't seem to give much of a damn about AoS. Hell even in a small niche online community like this much of the AoS discussion has petered out apart from the 4th previews.

 

Also, this popped up on the official Old World Facebook page today:


Hopefully this means the Dawi will be announced this Sunday (and the next faction previewed at some point during the week) before AoS 4th Edition is announced the following week.

 

Because Sig-Marines! How else can they shove big burly armoured warriors in our faces? What's the closest Old World variant? Bretonnians? Bah, those lady-botherers aren't part of the Empire, so they are disqualified. As they should be. *Turns nose up at the Bretonnians in a snooty manner*

I actually like AoS. I like the Old World. I like them both for differing reasons (I'm referring to lore and setting, not the game rules).

I like that the Old World has its clearly defined map, its nations with their borders very clearly established and the complex diplomatic shenanigans and mis-fires that come of it. I also like that it is a fantasy world that is primarily set in a post-Renaissance, shotte and pike era, as I am so utterly sick of Tolkien inspired generic fantasy that pretends that gunpowder doesn't exist or is so rare as to be borderline magic the few times it shows up.

I like the openness of AoS. I like that I have a sandbox to create my own stories without thinking to myself 'this is so borking the continuity'. We have smaller established maps for big canonical events, such as the recent Dawnbringers Crusades and the Skaven emergence. But by and large, we have the realms, we have the basic rules of the realms, now create your own little pocket where your armies can have their epic battles.

I can't even say which one I prefer because of that difference in styles. Because I like them for two very different reasons, I can't put one over the other.

Not to say I don't have issues with both as well: Because of the Old World's very defined map and borders, it's harder to feel like your custom armies truly belong in the world. It can be done, in my work my own legion of lizards aren't a static nation but a roaming force, and their point of origin is an isle that isn't on any maps because angry sea dinosaurs don't let any ships near.

And AoS, it feels hard to feel any stakes during canonical events when we don't know and can't work out the full depth of the repercussions on the geo-political scale. A city has fallen, oh no! How far are their nearest neighbours? Do those neighbours now have to worry about Chaos using the fallen city as a staging ground against them? Or are they far enough that it made no strategic difference? It's the same issue with 40K, outside of very long and storied planets, what do we care narratively if they fall or are exterminatus'd? Cadia falling was a big deal only because we had known of Cadia and its place in the setting for decades of real time.

A distant shout echoes through the air: SHORT!?!

 

Look, that's great and all. But we already established that the old WHF playerbase wasn't enough. It doesn't really matter if 90% of ex-fantasy players or 9% of ex-fantasy players that are interested; it's the new blood GW wants. And that surge in new blood largely came from TW.

Again; great for ex-fantasy players, horrible for new recruits.
What is a new player supposed to do if he doesn't like one of the 3 factions that currently has models?
And importantly; this is also not great for GW. If you download the pdf and play with your dusty old models they don't get any money. Even if millions of fans dusted of their old models, it wouldn't really make it a success for GW.

My point is not that TW will dissappear from the face of the earth. My point is that since it's "done" it won't be driving hype up anymore. Sure, every so often someone will buy a copy during a steam sale or something and a few of those might look at the miniatures; but there's not going to be any more large influxes that way as there are no TW warhammer IV coming.

Honestly, I think ToW is in kind of a weird spot.
It seems to be decently popular with ex-fantasy players for obvious reasons.
But there seems to be relativly little new blood that's jumped onto it; the conversion from TW especially seems pretty abysmall.

As for stuff constantly being sold out. GW doesn't exactly have a great history of stocking enough product. It's not uncommon for local stores to only get 2-3 boxes of say a battleforce. If they want more it needs to be a extra order (assuming extra orders are even allowed for that particular box...). Of course that kind of approach is going to lead to sold out product. And if ToW is what finally convinces them to actually stock enough stuff; great I guess.

Did they ever actually release any actual numbers?
Because of course they'll claim it's a success while they're trying to keep the hype alive.

Honestly, the entire concept of creating a fuss for the release of a new ruleset for a tabletop is kind of weird given how absurdly niche and nerdy of a hobby it is .

Building hype around the reveals along the lines of "look, now you need to roll a 6 to do damage" is just kind of silly
At most you want to show off a superduper fancy model; or a fancy new improvement; like the QoL improvements. Maybe make a battlereport, do something halfway fun with it. Or just release a nice collector's box; maybe do a midnight event at your gamestores, and let the nerds argue on their forums afterwards. Hell, even just regular advertisement would be better. Put up some posters with some new fancy models; or even just of a SCE looking suitable heroic while fighting some skaven.

But this slow dripfeed of "exciting" rule reveals is just all sorts of absurd. Regardless of it being 40K, AoS, or otherwise.

Anyways; I guess that the shareholders demand fancy marketing campaigns for GW's "big" releases. So we get stuck with nonsense like this.

How does the model range not match 40K?
Most of the models are of comparable quality, and nearly all the old stuff has been removed by now.

Meh, depends a lot on the corner of the internet you're looking at.
Let's take instagram as an example. With the following hashtags we get:

• Warhammer: 5.104.712
• Warhammer40K: 4.879.529
• Warhammer40000: 1.197.752
• ageofsigmar: 1.419.542
  
• Warhammerfantasy: 801.795
• Warhammerageofsigmar: 488,726
• warhammer30k: 372.691
• killteam: 309.368
• necromunda: 258.680
  
• Warhammeraos: 192.633
• warcry: 188,321
• warhammerunderworlds: 114.750
• warhammerfantasybattle: 90,152
• mesbg: 81,610
  
• warhammertheoldworld: 41.920
• theoldworld: 49.594
• middleearthstrategybattlegame: 48,065
• middleearthsbg: 45,015
  
• warhammertow: 846 (this is one of the tags GW uses themselves... so you'd expect this one to be one of the larger ones..)

This is using the more general hashtags. There are also more specialized hashtags like necromundaterrain which has 30,265 posts, or adeptusastartes with 324,510.
This puts us at the following from most popular to least:

• 40K: 5.987.281
• Warhammer generic: 5.104.712
• AoS: 2.060.901
• WHF: 891.947
• killteam: 309.368
• necromunda: 258.680
• warcry: 188,321
• Middle earth: 174.690
• underworld: 114.750
• ToW: 92.360

40K is the undisputed king, even outnumbering the generic tag. ToW is deadlast. There are individual 40K factions that comfortably have more posts than the entirety of ToW. Subsystems like warcry & killteam do better. O, and it should be noted that the ToW (and WHF) count is inflated as a lot of their posts are just AoS posts that use all of the fantasy-tags at once. And I don't even mean someone posting a new kroxigor which they'll use in WHF or something. They're just using every tag they can think of on a random AoS model, like a random lumineth....

And sure; it's a very rough estimate; and could be massivly improved by appropriatly filtering relevant posts. But the fact that even one of the "official" tags is below a 1000 posts, compared to 40K's and AoS's millions, speaks volumes.

 

Meh, it brings the advantage that at least they can blow things up without needing to care about upsetting anyone.
The imperium can lose a billion battles and continue to just as powerfull.
The Tyranids can be exterminated a million times over; and a new tendril will just show up.
Same with AoS; the realms essentially turn every faction into the imperium, a formless space with an endless supply of strongholds to sack and burn.

 

Seraphon:

faction:

• Pick an asterism at the start of the game
  • 4 buffs:
    • companion weapons have crit (2)
    • -1 to rend for attacks that target Seraphon in our own territory
    • +2" to move
    • +1 to casting
• From the 3th turn onward; pick a 2nd asterism if you fullfill requirements. Fluffed as fullfilling the great plan.
  • In the same order as previously listed:
    • Destroy 3 units
    • No enemies in your territory
    • Enemy general has been killed
    • Have a slann and no slann in combat or killed

One of the better faction abilities shown. Getting the 2nd asterism is a nice touch; but I fear you'll see certain asterisms being strongly favoured.
Maybe they should've made individually weaker asterisms but make it possible to get all of them?

Subfaction:

• Select 3 saurus or kroxigor, make a pile-in move, then do some mortal wounds to an enemy.

It's more interesting than most subfactions, not that that's a high bar to pass.

Spells:

• -1 to rend for a target
• 12" range....
• At least it's not subject to the rule of one

Kind of what's to be expected given what we've seen so far. Boring & annoyingly short ranged. Magic has never been terribly interesting in AoS; but 4th seems determined to be the most boring based on these "exciting" reveals.

Units:

• Slann:
  • 6/3+/3+/1/1 crit(mortal). So a vaguely functional melee profile.
  • 5+ save, but a 6++ ward.
  • Arcane vassal
  • Unlimited range unbinds, +1 to casting rolls
  • Personal spell: +1 to casting rolls for seraphon.
  • Celestial reinforcements: ressurect a seraphon unit at halfstrengt if it started with 3+ models.
• Carno:
  • Clawed forearms where indeed missing from the spearhead warscroll.
  • Spear gets charge +1 damage.
  • If the carno charged +1 to charge rolls for nearby saurus.
  • Control score nonsense, obviously
  • rampage: get strike first when fighting damaged monsters
• Terradons:
  • Javins & bolas are merged into 1 profile: 10"/3/4+/5+/-/1 crit(auto-wound)
  • -1 to shooting attacks targeting it
  • Deadly cargo:
    • roll a dice per terradon
    • add +2 if a terradon chief is in combat range (that seems awefully close?)
    • On a 5+ do a mortal wound
    • If the target doesn't have fly, and is wounded, it can't run
    • No longer limited to once per game
• EoTG:
  • Melee profile: 6/4+/2+/1/2 charge (+1 damage) companion
  • Meteoric javalins: 12"/6/4+/4+/-/1 shoot into combat
  • Rampage: after being charged roll a dice. Do some mortal damage and get +1 to saves for attacks fomr the enemy that charged
  • EoTG effect:
    • Use power, or save for next turn. If you save power, your next roll gets +1 (or +2 if you save 2 turns etc.)
    • When using the power pick one of the following:
      
    • 3+ heal D3 wounds on everything within 12"
    • 5+ ressurect a model for 3 units
    • 6+ give 3 models strike first

Spearhead:

• Carno can eat a model (same rule as giants stuffing someone in a bag)
• Warriors warscroll was already leaked.

Anyways;
Our faction ability is pretty decent and actually vaguely thematic.
Our spell is as boring as you'd expect.
The slann's personal spell is hilariously lame. "Here is the best caster in your army. His job is to make your other casters better." Seriously, what is the point of the higher level wizards when this is the type spells GW gives them?
The replacement of summoning is boring. Not that our summoning mechanic was ever terribly interesting. At least it's functional.
The carnosaur benefits a lot from actually getting to use his claws in his full warscroll.
The terradons feel rather weak. Deadly cargo needs multiple bombing runs to achieve much, but they're rather squishy and are unlikely to actually achieve that. Also, needing to hug the chieftan feels a bit awkward. They also lack a special rule to allow them to avoid combat and do multiple runs.
They feel halfbaked.

EoTG: ranged attack is improved (longer range, more attacks, better stats). It's still not good, but at least those javalins might now actually hit something. Melee profile is massivly nerfed. For a monster it has a terrible profile. Worse than our spearhead carno even. Paying a lot for that Engine ability. Feels a bit harsh. Also; not a fan of the "use now, or save a charge" effect for the engine. It's the sole reason you bring that model; having it stand around waiting for a turn is lame. The effect itself is fine.

 

Slann looks good to about the same. GW has gone back to unlimited Vassal casts, but with an 18" range. I anticipate an FAQ on that.

Carno looks somewhat improved. All monsters/companions are relatively swingy. It's rampage only works vs. a wounded monster. So possibly not on your first turn of combat with that monster.

I still think the EotG is just so-so. Engine is still use or bank. So MAYBE 2-3 heals per game or 1 other thing.

 

Honestly, the biggest change for the slann is:
- Baseline ward
- No longer needing to sacrifice his spells for summons.

Unforunatly the personal spell is boring; and GW is refusing to show anything interesting from the lore. So who knows if it gets to be more than a summoning battery.

I think the carno is supposed to rely on its shoot ability. With D6/3+/3+/-1/1 and shoot in combat.
Main issue is that D6 makes it pretty unreliable...

Honestly, the EoTG just needs a secondary effect that is always active so it has something to do in turns where it doesn't use its engine.
Or to just be a functional monster. Its melee is hilariously weak. For example, the oldblood riding the carnosaur has 1 fewer attacks, but an otherwise comparable melee profile WITHOUT COUNTING THE FREAKING CARNO.

 

The base ward is nice, but I wonder if 5+/6++ is really that good. Basically, I still don't think you want this guy in combat. Slann haven't had to sacrifice spells for summons for any of 3rd edition. In fact you wanted to cast to build up summoning points. Yes, the slann's personal spell is definitely support, but now limited to 12" bubble. So, stay close if you want to maximize casting.

The carno looks good. The extra claw attacks (and averaging out the damage profiles) is nice, so we'll see. The carno combat is still 4+/2+, which feels a bit swingy. I guess the average is 3 to 4 of the claw/bite attacks hit, and you shouldn't miss too many wound rolls. So, let's assume 9-12 average damage from the carno, if no saves are made. Which isn't small amount. Then you add in 2-3 more attacks from the oldblood for 4-6 more damage if unsaved.

EotG still just feels so-so to me. It might be usable as a heal-bot. Possibly 3 heals per game or 1 other thing. If you want to roll and just hope you could get lucky with more uses. Attack profile has me worried about the Stegadon. They were very good in 3rd.

 

Hasn't that only been the tail end of 3th when we got our new tome? Or am I mixing some stuff up.

It looks fine, but nothing special. It looks more or less average; though that's assuming units like Radukar benefit from being named units and that generic units won't end up more powerfull than some of these already pretty good named characters.

Imho, the main dissapointment is that of course it has one of those stupid control score abilities & that its supportive ability is limited to a +1 to charge, after it already charged itself. Both of those could've been replaced with something more interesting.

Honestly, I'd expect it to end up becoming quite popular simply because 1 crucial heal, or 1 crucial time slow can win a game.
But I don't really like it when 99% of a unit's power comes from 1 ability. Especially when it's a bigger, more important unit. Leads to very swingy designs.

 

My thoughts:

Battle Traits
First off, GW revealed that everything across the board is going to be weaker to one degree or another. So I'm really glad that we have (in my opinion) a rather interesting and highly adaptable set of battle traits that we choose at deployment. I think it'll be really interesting having an extra sort of "mini-game" to play to achieve our set conditions for that second asterism. For example, taking the +2 movement at deployment to crash into the enemy general earlier would be great to pair with Crit (2 hits) at the start of the third battle round to clean up. I personally quite liked the split between Coalesced and Starborne, but this feels like a solid merge to then diversify with the Battle Formations later.

Vengeance of Azyr
Rest in peace Bite attacks. With the increase in combat range to 3", there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell we'd be keeping those bite attacks for a whole unit of 20 warriors to deal mortals. This is definitely a nerf, but we have the added bonus of *all* saurus and krox units getting it (ie, aggradons and carnos) who didn't have access to it before. Additionally, remember that objectives are MUCH smaller than they used to be, and the pile-in move/bite attacks are made at the end of any turn. This gives us the unique ability to pile-in our models onto an objective that has been cleared out of some models already and potentially score the objective. Very nice tactical move.

Spell Lores
Obviously, we won't know how good these really are until we see them, but I'm personally glad for the ability to use either without being locked out of one or the other (Coalesced vs Starborne). As for the spell we have seen, the key here is the Unlimited keyword. I'm unsure whether we can keep stacking this spell, but there's a very good chance we can absolutely neuter a target's ability to rend, therefore increasing our unit tankiness. Also casts on a 6 which is great.

Starmaster
As a Coalesced player, I haven't even bought one of these yet since they weren't really great for my subfaction in AoS3. However, now these guys are clearly a must-have. Now, obviously the slann DID lose several of its previous abilities and now has a 5+ instead of a 4+. I'm personally very happy with seeing the 6++ though, and if any other bodyguard units are any indication, we'll be able to give him a 5++ with Saurus Guard. And don't forget that rumour mill photo, which I've got my fingers crossed is a revamped Guard unit.
Looks like we lost the unlimited range on casting through an Oracle, but there wasn't any way we were keeping that anyway. Only get a +1 to casting now, not unbinding/dispelling which is a bit of a bummer. Still unlimited range.
Celestial Equilibrium...yeah it's not great of the two old warscroll specific spells to keep. Nice that we got some recursion, but on a 4+ that'll be twice per game on average. At least he's still a 3 cast wizard and will hopefully be a bit cheaper than he was in AoS3 due to several lost abilities. Despite this, I'd say the slann is now definitely worth taking even for a more "coalesced" style of play for AoS4.

Oldblood on Carnosaur
Ooof...not super happy with the changes. I've seen some people crunch the numbers, and it's nice to see the damage output is about the same, slightly higher than it used to be. I was holding on to hope that they'd make the carnosaur actually scary (not just the Terror ability) in combat, but it doesn't look like that'll be the case. In my opinion, the reason the Oldblood on carno was worth taking before was primarily for the double-command ability, which we've now unfortunately lost. I guess we'll have to see whether the +1 to charge for saurus units within 18" will actually be worth it, but I'm not holding my breath. Might have to stick to the Scar-vet on aggradon for the army style I'm looking for. Maybe the Crit 2 hits asterism will make the carno a bit more tempting?

Terradon Riders
Really glad to see they can drop their rocks more than once a game now. With the Sotek +2 movement asterism, 16" of movement is crazy fast, plus we haven't yet seen what the skink-themed Battle Formation will bring. I'm assuming these guys will be best used for whipping across the board and hitting some shooting units that would rather stay out of combat. Glad they kept their -1 to hit from shooting attacks, especially now that we have the ability to shoot in an enemy turn. We'll have to see whether they'll be worth it, points wise.

Engine of the Gods
Thoroughly unimpressed with their current state in AoS3, and I'm pretty unimpressed with this version as well. I guess we'll see what they're pointed at, but I really can't see myself taking one of these. If anything, I think this is a good indication of what the Stegadon profile is going to look like for the future.

Overall, I'm optimistic! I'm happy with the base Battle Tactics and the overall direction of the faction. Especially seeing people's reactions to the Ogor Mawtribes and the Slaanesh faction focuses, we could have had it a lot worse if GW was less merciful. Can't wait to see the rest of the warscrolls in a month.

 

Apparently TOW sales have been almost non existent. Same problem as always.

This "small niche online community" has been more or less non existent for a while now and it has nothing to do with the popularity of AoS.

/shrug Without more specific, public sales data we just have random hearsay to go off of. I can easily say how ToW has literally no community around me and extremely limited chatter in the numerous online communities i'm a part of.

Largely, it means nothing.

TLDR: TOW sales are extremely low based on everyone i've talked to on the hobby sales side of things... but that seems to be fine. Mostly people playing with 20 year old armies, probably very minimal true support moving forward. In terms of AoS popularity in terms of both event participation and product sales, all signs show it continuing to grow.


edit: fwiw, i hope TOW sticks around. More games for more people is never a bad thing.

 

I wanted to hold on until we reached the very end, but we are pretty close to it and we got our faction so:

I feel like this game still got mortal damage bloat.

So far every faction has some sort of easy access to mortal damage and I think this will make it feel like it changed nothig bar nerfs left and right.

 

AOS needs to die like the POS it is

 

I have to disagree that there's just as much mortal damage bloat as there was previously. A perfect example is the loss of the bites from our Saurus and Kroxigors. Now, we only have access to that from our Battle Formation, and even then it's at most two or three mortal wounds from three units. Compare that to our AoS3 rules, 3 units of Coalesced Saurus Warriors under even the most optimal conditions in range of a Realmshaper would do vastly more damage than what we can do at our maximum in AoS4. I've seen a lot of discourse about people being upset with the loss of impact mortals from the Stegadon charging, as seen on the Engine yesterday. Ogor Mawtribes players also lost most of their impact mortal damage. Most sources of mortals are now this "roll a d2, on a 2+ deal that many mortals", aside from the units that now have Crit Mortals like kruleboyz.

However, we still have only seen a sneak peek at all the factions so far. One of the biggest source of mortal wounds from Seraphon were from Comet's Call, Celestial Deliverance, and the Cleanse the Realms abilities with Cosmic Power points — none of which we have seen as of yet. Starborne traits and summoning are completely gone now, so no more mortals from Cleanse the Realms, and we have yet to see what Comet's Call and/or Celestial Deliverance will do, if Kroak even keeps his own warscroll spell. We've seen one, maybe two spells for each faction so far, so honestly we can't really say with absolute certainty whether AoS4 will have mortal wound bloat or not, but my prediction is that it's definitely less than it used to be.

The one thing we're definitely seeing a *lot* more of is strike first and strike last. Take a look at the Oldblood on Carno for example.