GW News: SKAVEN VICTORY! #NewAoS

well okay, but at least tick off some Rumour Engines with the reveals.... the last one solved was waaay back.

Grrr, Imrahil

 

Yeah, Soulblights was in need of some help.
(Sour grapes complaint) THREE core battalions for Soulblights and ONE for Seraphon. Criminal. (Sour grapes complaint over... for now).

Still cool looking stuff for a Soulblights player.

 

meh, battalions in AoS 3 aren't particularly exciting anyway so at least we're not missing out on much

Does make me wonder though why certain factions get more than others though, especially with how minor they are. Was it really impossible to give seraphon 3 battalions? Does Soulblight really need 3? Are they just rolling dice to determine what they will publish in the next update? Who knows.

 

I agree that all the battalions give you is just free standard commands, so we really aren't missing out of much. But it might send some love to Saurus if we had gotten Firelance for Knights, with one free Run/Charge, and/or Sunclaw for Warriors, with one free All out Attack/All out Defense? Of course, being that Carnosaurs have traditionally gone with each of those battalions maybe that's one reason why GW didn't do it? That, and we're pretty strong in the meta already.

 

I mean sure, a small buff is still a buff. But something as insignificant as a single free generic command ability over the course of an entire game isn't going to change a bad unit into a good one. It's minor enough that you might not even really notice it's effects, especially when it's only used a minor secondary battalion and not as your primary force.

I really wish they hadn't completly abandonded the old battalions. Those were vastly more interesting than what we are left with now.

 

True, I know it's wouldn't make Saurus "better" per se, but I was just trying to look at something that wasn't Skink boosting.

I know it's an attempt at balance to have core battalions, but I kind of miss using our old battalions, too.

 

The old battalions were so unbalanced though, I'm glad they are gone. Some armies had incredible ones, while others didn't have any really worth taking.

 

tottaly agree. lets not fix anything or balance our own game properly, that would be hard.
lets just burn it to the ground and replace it with a system that is equally unbalanced(only 2 worth considering 3 with this years battle pack) but this time we sucked all the flavor and strategy out of it so that no one is worse off then any one else.

 

Personally I think that giving core battalions abilities that worked once per turn or phase would be better than the once per battle effects they have now. While they are more balanced it's true they have basically no flavor and you're still only going to take Command Entourage, Warlord or Hunters of the Heartlands most of the time.

If the other battalions had abilities that worked through the entire battle instead of just once they'd be more worth taking.

 

Permanent mechanics are generally more interesting, than 1-use abilities. If you want a 1-use ability to be fun they'll need to be quite impactfull, like a terradon's rocks (and even then it can be iffy unless you optimize around it)

But especially with all the abilities now being very generic "add +1 to this one roll"-type bonusses having them only be useable once per turn is just really boring.

 

Well, the upcoming Battlebox is Craftworld Eldar VS Chaos Marines, as pretty much everyone expected. To be honest I would have rather seen this crop up a few months later given we’ve just had the Genestealer Cult vs Custodes Battlebox, but the faction choice is OK (it could have been a lot worse - yet more Sisters of Battle ) even if there historically hasn’t been much in the way of enmity between these two in the past.

Craftworld Eldar get a new Autarch, Rangers and a new Jetbike unit that seems to follow the Ork method of having two riders:

I’m surprised they released a second plastic Autarch when the first one is perfectly decent, but it does mean you don’t have to buy one with Swooping Hawk wings if you’re not into Swooping Hawks, and the compatibility between the two means you can try some kitbashes if you wish.

A much-needed upgrade to models for a quality Craftworld Eldar unit, though they’ll probably cost the same as the overpriced Howling Banshees kit so the entry cost for a Craftworld Eldar army likely won’t be changing much.

I’d rather have seen them release updated Shining Spears right now rather than yet another new Jetbike unit, but these models are still decent and given GW say that’s just the tip of the iceberg for both Craftworld Eldar and Chaos maybe plastic Shining Spears will arrive in the future.

Over on the Chaos side there’s an updated Warpsmith, dedicated Chosen models and a Maulerfiend/Forgefiend (an existing decent plastic model, so that won’t have a picture shown here):

This was on the cards given that a Chaos-style mechatendril was one of the Advent Engine Rumour pics, and makes sense given the current model I believe is Finecast.


Pretty decent Chosen models, shame there’s only 5 in the box, but given I already have a unit that would count as Chosen in a Chaos Marine army (as they have more than 2 Heavy weapons in the squad), I don’t need to buy these. However, Chosen haven’t been seen as actual miniatures since six of them appeared in the dull Dark Vengeance boxed game that lasted from 6th to 7th Edition, so if you’ve got some of those or simply hadn’t got round to converting Chaos Space Marine Chosen yet, you’ll probably be grabbing a couple of boxes of these.

However, the most interesting news is a passage that appeared right at the end of the article:

Looks like an AoS Battlebox is also on the horizon, I’d like to think between the recent 40K Battlebox just gone and the one previewed yesterday, and I love a good army speculation. ‘A battle of the elements’ is particularly intriguing, as there are 4 main Order factions that would classify as being rooted in one of the 4 base elements:

Kharadron - Air
Sylvaneth - Earth
Fyreslayers - Fire
Idoneth Deepkin - Water

I can certainly see Idoneth being in this box, as after the recent Maggotkin release they are the only faction now still languishing in First Edition, and are struggling in the meta even with the recent Broken Realms update for them. And you know what the counterpart to water is?

Fire.

Fyreslayers vs Idoneth would make a fantastic Battlebox, as neither have appeared in one before and, in particular if, like the Craftworld Eldar vs Chaos Marine Box, they gave both factions one or even two new units to play with, as both need some additional units to bulk out their rosters (Fyreslayers in particular given their variety problem). Though I certainly hope GW don’t just give each faction a solitary new character and be on their way, because if there’s one thing Fyreslayers do have, it’s plenty of unnamed character models!

 

you forgot SCE - lightning

 

Amusing, but lightning isn’t a base element and Stormcast have already had their 3rd Edition release.

Still, this is GW we’re talking about here, so the possibility still exists

 

um lightning is most definitely part of the base elements. lighting elementals are a thing in DnD, elder scrolls, most mmos. it's one of the 8 in the extended western octas, is a core element in most magic systems, and is the main damage type of the wind of azyr's lore of heavens.

 

AHKTUALLY..... it really depends on which cultural background you're using to define "elements" I suppose. The Chinese elements are wood, fire, earth, metal, and water.

 

As far as I can see, the idea of lightning as a base element was only invented for things like D&D and the Elder Scrolls - the base elements in the form we know and love, as the Ancient Greeks believed, are the four I have mentioned above.

Even in other cultures lightning is not a base element, Hindus and the Japanese believe in Void as a fifth element, and as @PlasmaDavid says the Chinese interpretation is slightly different, but nowhere in the real world describes lightning being a base element, unless there’s some obscure paper by an obscure academic that I don’t know about that tells of the West having four more base elements in its mythology.

I know Wikipedia is not a reliable source according to universities and academics, but it’s unlikely something so relatively simple as mythological base elements would be fiddled around with for any reason, and these pages nevertheless prove my point:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_element
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_elements_in_popular_culture

 

Lightning generally tends to be rolled into air as far as elements are concerned (or with fire in the case of avatar for some reason).

If it's properly seperate it's usually cuz you're working with types that aren't necesarly presented as elements (e.g. pokemon).
You might still have lighting elementals as creatures, but then they're usually a subclass of the larger air-elemental class.

If it's just elements it tends to either be the classical greek four, the chinese five, or occasionally a weird hybrid of those two.

 

unless you are talking eastern when it's under wood... or fire and so on and so on I've even seen it attributed to water at least once.

yeah modern games. you know like AoS the thing we are talking about

except almost ever fantasy game or book or comic with a magic system. you can appeal to historical precedence but that wasn't my point. lots of established elements in fantasy do not adhere to Greek or eastern models.

except you know science what with electricity binging a natural element of our world and one of the basic forces.