AoS NEW *rumor*

I think it does pretty clearly lay out Kroak out-planning Bel'akor, Kroak succeeds in destroying Eater of Tomes and shutting down Archaon's Varanite + anti-stormcast shrines (plus brings the old skink chief that was killed launching the thunder lizards assault back to life, in the old remade-from-memories thing, because he still needs him for something) and then shifts the pieces around so Bel'akor's plans are cut short at the last moment.

Gardus is given a crisis of faith by having the seraphon ignore him in defense of the genesis gate, and his later prayer for guidence is intercepted by Kroak, where he's shown a huge swath of future events (the fall of excelsis, the destruction of Chamon by Bel'akor) and told where he has to go to divert their course, or where he needs to be to mitigate them at the very least. Gardus' then presence in Vindicarum prevents the city from immediately falling to Bel'akor and the Nighthaunt's assault, and though it isn't enough to win it's enough to draw the whole thing out long enough for the White Dwarf to unify the entire Kharadron skyfleet, and come to their aid. With the airfleet's help it's enough to win out and humiliate Bel'akor in front of the dark gods, ruining whatever followup he had.

The black clouds preventing reforging, the devestated vindicarum (though it will rebuild, the kharadron are counting on it to recoup the losses they took with fresh trade agreements) and the destroyed realmgates in chamon (just key ones, necessary for the clouds, not all of them like the first review claimed) are bad for Order, but it's a bruising compared to the knife to the stomach Bel'akor would've inflicted with his plan going off without a hitch. Chamon is bruised, two stormhosts are mauled while one is entirely destroyed, the Thunder Lizards have taken some solid blows, but in return one domino has shifted to avert the visions Gardus was granted, the unification of the duardin is one step closer, Bel'akor's plan is cut short at the end, and Chamon can start the struggle to rebuild

 

These "unfinished" story events could be what's driving us towards AoS 3.0. Maybe they are establishing the narrative for the new version of the game? I do hope it doesn't end up being the traditional 40K story of "we all fight, but all stay the same" kind of scenario.

Plus, my local shop manager thinks that, with the update to Kroak, there is a chance that GW will update the Seraphon range. Not that he has any more info than the rest of us do, but I wanted to mention it.

 

I definitely think there's a chance of a range refresh, but it's by no means a sure thing. At the very least, GW has to have seen how popular our army is after the new battletome was released and how quickly the Celestial Stampede box sold out.

As for the narrative, they're clearly building towards more and more chaotic happenings which will most likely end up with a "Boom! This is how things work now!" for any possible 3rd Edition rule changes.

As for the Seraphon specifically in the narrative, I'm currently disappointed but I'm holding out hope that whenever Kroak features again it will be revealed that he had a plan all along and he will set things in motion to shore up the currently "broken" Realms, pun intended Makes me wonder if the art of a Slann at the center of the Realms all connected and seemingly warding off Chaos means that we will see Kroak and/or the Slann somehow ward off the cloud of corruption that's currently spreading throughout the Realms.

I know this is just personal commentary on the video creator's part, but in the 2+ Tough video series on this book, he basically says "This is what you expect from the Seraphon. They think they know everything, but they don't, lol!" That's basically how it's looking at the moment. Sure, we stopped one Chaos demon that was trying to figure out a way to break into Azyr and screw over the Stormcast, but as a result of our actions the Stormcast are screwed over even harder as the anti-reforging cloud is spreading to other Realms, not just Chamon. So while they could certainly reveal at a later date that this was indeed all part of a plan, as it stands now we majorly screwed up and are essentially a joke and a scapegoat in the Broken Realms storyline. Again, I fully understand that could change in later releases. But given GW's past treatment of us in the lore, I wouldn't be surprised at all if we just remained a "useful idiot" faction to help move other more "important" characters' plans along.

 

You can still drop a few lines at the end of your chapter to indicate why Kroak would consider this a victory. It doesn't need to be much.

See this is a far better summary showing a bit more why Kroak could potentially deem this a "victory" though even this doesn't exactly anwser why this was worth it. At least it doesn't make Chamon look as utterly lost anymore.

 

I'm afraid it is going to be to a certain extent due to the nature of the game. Nobody wants to see their army Squared.

I'm hoping maybe we see a real change in the nature of the Realms themselves, and how they work in the game.

 

Isn't Celestial Stampede worth the extra Prime Warbeast and named character for 140 points?

 

The named character isn't really worth much, but having 2 Prime Warbeasts seems really good. That's really the only good thing about the battalion, though, because the special damage ability is once per battle, requires that you have all three units within 24in of the target, and requires the Stegadon to be an Engine of the Gods (not a bad thing, but sometimes it's hard to fit into a list), and the max you can get is 3d3 mortal wounds. More than likely, you'll roll a 1 on at least one of those dice and not get the mortal wounds at all. Even if you get them all off you're still looking at a maximum of 3-9 damage, which is pretty comparable to what you'd get from double-firing the Bastiladon and rolling MW's from the Engine in the first place...

I guess it could be useful if you had a resilient enemy that was either a support hero or something already low on wounds that you really needed to kill. Main reason to take it is going to be the extra Prime Warbeast, lowering your drops, and the extra CP and artifact. I think it could be very useful for people wanting a Thunder Lizard battalion but don't want to bring Kroxigors or Salamanders.

 

I still like celestial stampede. Everyone is upset over the abilities, but to me its only 140 pts for fewer drops, extra prime warbeast trait, extra cp and extra artifact and includes the things I would take in thunder lizard anyway.

 

In regards to the Lore, remember what the Slann are playing. They're playing a game of total Annihilation. Sacrifices will be made, even if they aren't 'our stuff' to sacrifice.
They've been on the backfoot for a long time, the entirety of the Old World timeline. Now, that's not as clear when you look at it from the bigger picture. But now, being aggressive and taking some loses is the means towards victory.
Two silver towers out of commission, one completely destroyed along side it's master. That's massive. The unity of the Sky Fleets is also huge. Be'lakor getting a win, but one that's soured by his not total destruction of the realm of Chamon, is fine. This is all happening at the same time as the events of Morathi and Teclis too, so the other gods are busy squabbling.
Once they realize they've been duped, we may see Sigmar take a more active role, along side perhaps Allarielle, Teclis and Tyrion. Already we know there's a huge cast of big characters set for Kragnos, including that sylvaneth looking model we saw the outline of.
3.0 will be a big change, much in the same as 2.0 with the necroquake and the coming of the Nighthaunt tidal wave.

 

wait a second @Jason839, Is that my carnosaur as your profile picture? But none of the pictures I took of it had wires in the background. Really confused

 

lol Its a close up of my carno. I posted some pics years back here. https://lustria-online.com/threads/jason839s-lizardmen-and-friends-wips.19288/

Sounds like we used similar schemes?

 

Oh lol. Yeah we basically used the exact same colors for almost everything. Here's my carno https://www.lustria-online.com/threads/the-great-white-lizards-painting-log.25718/. Sorry for the mix up.

 

Upset is a bit of an assumption. The majority of the feedback I've seen on it is squarely in the 'disappointed' to 'meh' quadrants.

It suffers the same fate as the OBR broken realms battalion. There's already one in the battletome that does it's job better. And TQ is more flexible, which is another mark against the CS.
Being locked to Thunderlizards is highly unfortunate. It would definitely have more use if it wasn't.

 

New sylvaneth model:



Great sculpt

Grrr, Imrahil

 

That is quite amazing.

 

It's interesting that Sylvaneth of all things are "the other ghost faction." Beautiful model, though

 

I would see more like tree/forest spirits or sprites

Grrr, Imrahil

 

Some folks over at SpaceBattles couldn't help but imagine that, instead of a flute, he's holding an ornate pipe.

 

What are you doing step-elf?

 

The thing is the flavour of battalions kind of resolves around their abilities. Celestial stampede might still be worthwhile, but it isn't exactly exciting. Simply put, it's fine from a gameplay perspective thanks to the extra CP and such, but very dissapointing from a more fluffy perspective as the fluffy bit just isn't very impressive. Though it's not the only battalion that does that.

neat... though is this another big model? AoS has a lot of big models as "small" updates for some reason.