GW News: SKAVEN VICTORY! #NewAoS

Hopefully gw will give xenos some love one day. One day i hope they also will treat the xenos special characters with some dignity. The Swarmlord, the perfect leader and the will of the hivemind made flesh and blood, is little more than a bump in the road for most SM characters. Avatars of Khaine are pretty much something any character must defeat before they become named.
I also just wish GW would update their special characters, i don't even want to collect necrons but i really want Trazyn, Orikan and Imotekh without having to deal with finecast.

Actually no, deathwatch and harlequins will not get a book, they will have a special issue of White Dwarf where their psychic awakening rules will be.

 

Meanwhile we get an army trait and a terrain piece that are potentially detrimental to us (I'm looking at you Cold-Blooded and Realmshaper), nerfed summoning, and we've become perhaps the most hero/command point-dependent army in AoS (but we do generate them as well).

There's a part of me that wonders what the three main legacy armies, which I consider to be Cities (obviously composed of several armies), Skaven, and Seraphon, would look like had they just been blown up with the Old World and re-imagined like most of the others.

All of that aside, I do like the basic Lumineth troops and the suit of ghost armor. Some of the latest Lumineth models look more... unique, but I'm not sure that I'm blown away by them.

 

I have a feeling that I'm going to really hate the new Elves just because I have a feeling that they're going to be very overpowered when they're released. Like people have said, older armies get updated to be just ok while new armies tend to be OP as heck to spur more sales.

Also, what the heck is that tree model? lol!

*edit* Ok, I looked it up and it's for Blood Bowl.

 

looks better than the entire lumineth line, probably more balanced too.

 

Apart from the halflings I haven't liked any of the blood bowl stuff. Way too much armour on everything. However this I like very much. That's a great treeman for BB. Not too big and lots of character

 

Yeah, that is just BS, but then that’s how the 8th Edition 40K team have been working since its inception. All they think about is Imperium vs Chaos for the most part *yawn*

To be fair, they have made the new Ghazghkull powerful enough to take down anything short of Magnus (including Guilliman), but I’d be sceptical if they ever did that for the Swarmlord, because they largely don’t care about the proper Xenos races (Necrons, Orks, Tyranids, Genestealer Cults), only the more human xenos races like Eldar and Tau.

Just be grateful they were actually preserved in AoS at all and not airlocked like Bretonnia and Tomb Kings. Would rather have had Bretonnia survive than the Empire at any rate.

 

It honestly kinda surprises me we don't have a replacement for bretonnia yet. There's no proper knights in AoS. And even if it's a bit cliche, it feels weird without em.

 

The biggest of Boys have arrived.








They are described to be able to stare Archaon in his face, so they are really big.

 

They also mention that you can play them in ALL OTHER AoS armies as mercenaries. But i still think they look great.

 

A trio of new plastic Giants incoming! I like this chap with the beard best:

These chaps would be great Bonegrinder Giant proxies if you’re playing a Storm of Magic game in Fantasy, and can be taken as allies by any faction in Age of Sigmar as well as being part of Sons of Behemat. I think they’re really well-done models too, and certainly are faithful to the original Giant model.

We also have the Elf heroine with the veil that one of @Imrahil’s rumour engine pics teased for Lumineth:


A Snotling Blood Bowl team with a new Pump Wagon sculpt:

Would rather have had a Bretonnian or Khemri team, but these would be great for making Snotling Bases and Pump Wagons for Warhammer Fantasy Greenskin armies.

And bigger versions of the Spindle Drones for Blackstone Fortress:

Those look to be about the size of Necropolis Stalkers and other similar Monstrous Infantry. What a shame these guys weren’t made into a full new Xenos faction with loads of other different models for them, they look fantastic. They’d certainly be great as Martians for a War of the Worlds wargame. Shame on you 40K team with your Imperium vs Chaos-promoting agenda!

 

Any guesses how many people are going to botch the painting of the face behind the fabric? That looks like a very difficult technique to pull off to even an adequate standard.

 

Tell that to Beastclaw Raiders players (yes, more units and now combined into one Ogor BT, but yet again you only really need 2 kits to play with them competitively).

There is also a new warband: Khainite Shadowstalkers.



Just like World of Warcraft, they just keep adding flavours of elves...

I am happy with those new Gargants; they all look like absolute units. Lots of bits to use, maybe hard to magnetize. Does anyone know how tall a FW Bonegrinder Giant is? Wonder if this guys will be still shorter than him.

 

Competitive play is always a weird beast and nearly always requires a small specific subset of models. At least the beastclaw raiders form an actual faction lore & model-wise (especially if you count regular mawtribe ogers as well)

3 models total seems increadibly little. Especially as they don't really combine into a functional society/faction/army

I mean beastclaw you got:

- Lord on Stonehorn/frosthorn as the leaders
- Stonehorn/frosthorns as the big fancy elite bodyguards of their leaders
- mournfangs as the general rank & file
- hunters as a specialist
- Sabres as hunter pets
- Yhetii's as sort of camp followers that happen to stick around for some scraps.

There's social hierarchy & a natural command structure, and if you'd want you can add the mawtribes to further flesh it out.

The giants so far have:
- giant that presumably likes the sea
- Giant that likes cities
- regular giant

Like how does that even interact with eachother? Imho the biggest struggle for this army is giving it halfway compelling fluff.

I'm kinda happy with these. Given that warcry warbands also function as units in the main-game it opens up possibilities for the occasional introduction of a new unit without needing to wait for the next faction overhaul.

 

These giants solve several Rumor Engines. I tried to find most of the images.

The first one has shields on his arms.


This is part of the hooded one's club


These ship parts look likely to be on the last giant's back