GW News: magic and prayers in #NewAoS

I kind of agree about the helm redesign and I also prefer the "Roman" cingulum and tabard look.

 

Granted, being able to choose between Battle Tactics gives the player a measure of agency, but still being pressured to choose a Battle Tactic every turn in the first place and being forced to follow a strategy to achieve that Tactic to chase VPs, rather than being allowed to formulate your own strategy to defeat your opponent's army, still feels as though you're having your strategy mapped out for you. By contrast older games like Fantasy and pre-8th 40K, and even newer ones like TOW, give the player a lot more freedom to work out their own tactics. Very much like AoS and new 40K's obsession with grabbing and holding generic objectives denying players the freedom to design their own scenarios or just have a fight to the death.

To be honest, I can see why they've done it - the new sculpt is bang up to date with the last wave of Stormcast released and proportionally looks a lot better than the originals. Moreover, I think it's a good thing they've done this because it brings one of the old Stormcast units back into relevance after being superseded by new Chambers' worth of units over the three previous Editions, and it means players who have a load of the old Liberators from 1st Edition can benefit just as much from the eventual rules glow-up as those who start playing in 4th and get the new ones.

However there is less iconography on the armour, as @Just A Skink says the Roman-style cingulum and Medieval-style tabard have gone, and because the new design has been redesigned to fit the 3rd Edition Stormcast exactly, the only really defining features they have now are the slightly different helmet and a hammer instead of a spear. I would say, then, that while the overall aesthetic upgrade is clearly visible, perhaps some of the noblebright, rather corny character of the original Sigmarines has been sacrificed to achieve that.

Overall I'm ambivalent though because Stormcast have never interested me.

 

I'm mostly just annoyed they changed there silhoutte so much.
Previously each chamber had their own distinct silhoutte, which gave the various chambers a bit of personality.
Feels like they lost a bit of that personality by making the new liberators so similar to the newer chambers.

 

+1

It's Stormcast, who cares. Move along.

 

I care.

Here, have five more.

 

Latest WarCom: https://www.warhammer-community.com/2024/04/03/how-building-your-army-has-changed-in-newaos/

Gone are the notions of Battleline, Artillery, and Behemoths as requirements and restrictions, and gone are Core Battalions. Instead, now you're incentivised to take up to 5 Regiments comprised of 1 HERO and 0-3 non-HERO units (0-4 if it's your general's Regiment), and each HERO will have their pairings. Regiments are also each deployed as a single drop.

You can also take units outside of the Regiments as Auxiliaries, but having fewer Auxiliary units than your opponent will grant an additional command point at the start of each battle round.

 

Well, that's the first time I've seen something from the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game being implemented in another system, and by the Gods it is the absolute worst part of it. Purely a cash grab to get players to spend more money to buy extra hero models. I've been waiting patiently for GW to realise how horrible such rules are ever since they debuted in Middle Earth in February 2012 but it sounds as if they're doing all they can to stop the penny dropping.

Well, unlike Middle Earth at least there's the option to avoid such dumb rules, but it's unfair to actively penalise players who don't have enough hero models to subscribe to the 'Regiment' format.

I'm becoming more glad I resisted the temptation to get into AoS during the 2nd Edition era all the time. The game is really continuing to go downhill.

 

Eh... At this point, it's really just an old AoS feature that they've merely given a new paint job for this upcoming edition. They were already doing this sort of thing in 3rd Ed via Core Battalions (particularly Battle Regiment), and Warscroll Battalions did this very thing back when AoS was just getting started (albeit something you used to pay points for in addition to the units being taken as part of it).

The only ways I can see that being a problem are if you're taking more units than can be included in the first 1-3 regiments, which at most amounts to 3 heroes and 10 non-hero units between them (I don't know of very many 2000pt armies that include more than that beyond Herohammer crap), or are taking a lot of units that are incompatible with the heroes you've taken in the first place.

With that said, I'm not a fan of WarCom parsing the new features out in this piecemeal fashion as is, much less for a game that won't be out for months at this point.

 

Unless that 1 free command point ends up being stupidly OP the punishment for going against the regiments is ridiculously minor.
And the only real benefit to sticking with regiments is keeping a low drop, which also isn't exactly amazing.
And that's ignoring the fact that the regiments are described as fairly flexible.

Outside of some very specific lists you really should not be having any genuine issues with this.

Also; best I can tell, most armies tend to favour roughly 1 hero per 3 units anyway, which is what the regiments seem to follow. So the "they want to sell more heroes"-angle seems a bit farfetched. What kind of lists are you envisioning that would struggle with this aside from silly memelist (e.g. the 1 hero and 10 doomwheels example they give)?

 

In fairness, there's only been 3 editions.
Edition 1 was far too busy repairing the damage done by throwing out so many rules that significant parts where missing (like not having unit costs at one point....)
And edition 3 is just collapsing under the number of bandaid solutions that they've stacked on top of eachother by now.

It's really no wonder edition 2 was overal the best.

 

A bunch of stuff is getting discontinued.
Beasts of chaos and bonesplitterz are just flat out gone.

Stormcasts & skaven get cleaned up.
Warcry chaos warbands get largely deleted, presumably because of the recent marauder releases.
And we lose the eternity warden.

Also; weirdly enough the liberators count as "discontinued" so it is a bit unclear which units are properly discontinued and which are simply going to get a new model.

It's a bit of a shame, the stormcast lose some of the cooler models.
Skaven seem to largely be losing older models taht are finecast or metal, so presumably a lot of these are going to be replaced with a new sculpt.
The chaos warbands is a bit of a shame, they were fun and flavourfull. Plus, does this means you can no longer get these for warcry either?
BoC seem to be demoted (or promoted if you ask @NIGHTBRINGER I guess ) to ToW

 

GW has to be resculpting and renaming some of these units. They state that for Skaven, at least, and new Liberator sculpts indicate something similar for SCE. But, that is A LOT of SCE models that are getting shelved. Most, if not all, of their ranged units and fast-moving/flying units.

 

They're TOW-compatible. Of course they'd be discontinued for AoS.

 

Not surprised by Beastmen going from the AoS store, GW just weren't interested in doing anything with them in AoS and it was particularly disturbing when they started releasing suspiciously bestial models for Warriors of Chaos in that game (looking at you Ogroids trying to be Minotaurs).

But I'm not bothered because it'll mean I can buy their TOW boxes with lovely square bases in them!

Bonesplitterz I wasn't expecting to go, but of course they will also come back home to the Orcs and Goblins army with square bases.

Of course they plan to get rid of the 7th Edition Clanrat and Stormvermin sculpts even though they're *perfectly* fine . They'd better release new sculpts for both (and even then I expect they'll be £10 more expensive ).

Well it doesn't make sense to keep the old Liberators when they're going to be given new sculpts.

Warriors of Chaos still shoot down the viewpoint that they're trying to keep the two ranges different from one another... they will continue to exist in both games.

 

A "lateral move".

From one lesser game to another lesser game!

 

Agreed, but it still wouldn't surprise me in the least if that was their justification all the same.