The Rumour Thread

[Acrozatarim]

Ah yeah, I misread the faction rules and somehow saw d3 as d6.

D3 is much less impressive, albeit still not too shabby as a general rule.

[cyrus]

So Blood vulture is finally dead ? 

[Lucentia]

It seems like they're generally toning down mortal damage output across the board, so I'm not surprised to see the ogor charge adjusted, but in a world with less mortal damage in general, it seems pretty good still.

I am sad to see the everwinter finally slip away completely from the core traits, writing has been on the wall for pure BCR ogors for a long time, of course, but I still liked them as a separate thing.  Also, can someone please change that random attacks, random damage attack for the Stonehorn??  I swear it's been like that since AoS 1 and it feels like such a holdover!

Edited May 30 by Lucentia

[Sarouan]

5 minutes ago, cyrus said:

So Blood vulture is finally dead ?

It will live forever in our hearts...and in narrative games.

[BarakUrbaz]

3 minutes ago, Lucentia said:

It seems like they're generally toning down mortal damage output across the board, so I'm not surprised to see the ogor charge adjusted, but in a world with less mortal damage in general, it seems pretty good still.

I am sad to see the everwinter finally slip away completely from the core traits, writing has been on the wall for pure BCR ogors for a long time, of course, but I still liked them as a separate thing.  Also, can someone please change that random attacks, random damage attack for the Stonehorn??  I swear it's been like that since AoS 1 and it feels like such a holdover!

Always felt that the Stonehorn's Hooves profile should just be 4 attacks; one for each hoof. 

[madmac]

Just now, Sarouan said:

It will live forever in our hearts...and in narrative games.

My Blood Vulture identifies as a chaintrap.

[Grungnisson]

23 minutes ago, Marcvs said:

Yes, same rule he has already

Ah, OK. Ta!

[Chikout]

13 minutes ago, Tonhel said:

That is from dec 22 to nov 23. The data from the Honest Warhammer is  for the month april 2024.

Ofcourse the data that is based on tournament results is not representative for the average hobbyist. But the numbers are what they are.

Exactly. It's a years worth of data rather than a month's. Surely that's a much better representation of popularity? Here's the more recent data from woehammer. I didn't share it before as it covers a shorter time period though still more than the Honest Wargamer. 

The changes from month to month also highlight how much usage swings. There are very few armies that have consistent stats over a year. On the other hand most people's favourite army rarely changes at all.

The other thing that's important to highlight is how tiny a proportion of the player base tournament goers are. AoS has at most 10,000 tournament players and 40k about  triple that. The Warhammer community site has had about 5 million visitors so far. That makes tournament players less than 1% of the customer base. 

The financial results back this up. If every listed tournament player spent £1000 to buy two armies a year, they would still only account for less than 10% of GW's revenue last year. 

Tournament attendees are the bonesplittas of GW's customers, highly vocal but statistically insignificant. 

[Sahrial]

As a die hard Ogors player my main reaction is

”… huh.”

“Whelmed” really is the way to put it.

it doesn’t seem… awful… but like… I feel we just lost a lot of character to the army.
 

This has honestly been the biggest hit to my hype, yet.

[Chikout]

6 minutes ago, Sahrial said:

As a die hard Ogors player my main reaction is

”… huh.”

“Whelmed” really is the way to put it.

it doesn’t seem… awful… but like… I feel we just lost a lot of character to the army.
 

This has honestly been the biggest hit to my hype, yet.

I like the prayer though. Being able to freeze a bunch of terrain and then push through a big prayer to give everyone a ward save is pretty cool. The gluttons ability is also pretty good.  12 gluttons would have a  control score of 36. There isn't much  in the game that can beat that. 

[Sception]

Whelmed was more or less how I felt about the nighthaunt preview, though I think even that one was a bit more exciting than this.  I'm not saying ogors look bad, just not a lot of 'wow' factor in the preview.  Maybe they'll get more of a punch up when the much-hoped-for range refresh comes later this edition, fingers crossed?

Hopefully that 'wow' factor picks back up again with FEC tomorrow.  They only just got their big expansion and cool new 3e book, I didn't even get a single game in with it yet.  You'd think with so late a book that their 3e rules would have been written with 4e mostly done, and thus there'd be a close correlation between their 3e and 4e faction rules - which would be a good thing, because their 3e battletome is pretty amazing.  Yet all signs point to the FEC release having been originally intended for much, much earlier in 3e's lifespan, and only arrived so late due to various factors (covid, difficulties with the new factory) defrailing GW's production line for years, in which case there might be no more resemblance between FEC's battletome and their 4e rules than for anybody else.

And unless we get a big, unexpected swerve from Katakros, Olynder, Mannfred, or Neferata, then the whole king's blood plotline with Ushoran is the most interesting and active thing the undead have going, at least until Arkhan & Nagash are let out of the penalty box, so I really hope the FEC rules are impactful enough to help carry that narrative to the local gaming table.

So yeah, baited breath for this one.

[ScionOfOssia]

I’m curious as to how they’re going to do the OBR now that I think about it- Deathless Warriors is baked in as a native 6+ Ward, Relentless Discipline needs to be reworked (again), Ranks Unbroken By Dissent means nothing without Battleshock, which leaves Nadirite Weapons which could be baked into the scrolls, and Ossiarch Commands which would eat up most of a page. 

[Sception]

2 minutes ago, Chikout said:

I like the prayer though. Being able to freeze a bunch of terrain and then push through a big prayer to give everyone a ward save is pretty cool. The gluttons ability is also pretty good.  12 gluttons would have a  control score of 36. There isn't much  in the game that can beat that. 

the "+1 control score per model" is a particularly nice if subtle bit of rules phrasing.  At first it's like 'isn't this just a more awkward way of saying +1 control characteristic?', but it lets a big unit contribute a lot of weight to objective control even if you can't fit all those big bases in control range.  That little rule is probably the part I like best about the preview in that it just feels like a really smart bit of design.  But again, isn't not exactly a rule to make you sit up and say 'wow!'.

[ScionOfOssia]

3 minutes ago, Sception said:

Whelmed was more or less how I felt about the nighthaunt preview, though I think even that one was a bit more exciting than this.  I'm not saying ogors look bad, just not a lot of 'wow' factor in the preview.  Maybe they'll get more of a punch up when the much-hoped-for range refresh comes later this edition, fingers crossed?

Hopefully that 'wow' factor picks back up again with FEC tomorrow.  They only just got their big expansion and cool new 3e book, I didn't even get a single game in with it yet.  You'd think with so late a book that their 3e rules would have been written with 4e mostly done, and thus there'd be a close correlation between their 3e and 4e faction rules - which would be a good thing, because their 3e battletome is pretty amazing.  Yet all signs point to the FEC release having been originally intended for much, much earlier in 3e's lifespan, and only arrived so late due to various factors (covid, difficulties with the new factory) defrailing GW's production line for years, in which case there might be no more resemblance between FEC's battletome and their 4e rules than for anybody else.

And unless we get a big, unexpected swerve from Katakros, Olynder, Mannfred, or Neferata, then the whole king's blood plotline with Ushoran is the most interesting and active thing the undead have going, at least until Arkhan & Nagash are let out of the penalty box, so I really hope the FEC rules are impactful enough to help carry that narrative to the local gaming table.

So yeah, baited breath for this one.

Arkhan has already been leaving the Penalty Box. He just lacks a permanent physical body. He has been doing this since the 3rd Edition battletome and was mentioned in Dawnbringers 4. 

[Sception]

Just now, ScionOfOssia said:

Arkhan has already been leaving the Penalty Box. He just lacks a permanent physical body. He has been doing this since the 3rd Edition battletome and was mentioned in Dawnbringers 4. 

Was he?  I remember Mannfred pushing into one of Arkhan's old relic storehouses and being repelled, but what he ran into there was definitely Skaven, not the Liche King.

Anyway, subtle spirit influence is more 'yelling from the penalty box' than escaping from it outright.  😛

[Sahrial]

Condensing Ogors preview with my feelings:

Impact charges are now 2+ roll for d3

Bonus movement is now bonus to run??

No Everwinter or gulping bites, pseudo replaced with with 1/game heal or deal d3

Beast handlers formation gives monsters +1 to the d3 impact. Cool? I guess?

Call of the blizzard does seem really cool but like… not sure in practice I need to reread priest rules

Kragnos is whatever. Ogors only uses him for the charge bonus die.

Blood vultures are now a peck attack instead of a MW.

Stonehorns are slower.

Bracketing is at least better.

Ward changed to ignore point of damage per phase?

The goad ability is… interesting? I want to see if mournfang have the monster keyword now.

Gluttons are basically the same

New Ogor base attack profile seems to be 4+/2+/-1/d from 3+/3+/-1

I guess that evens out? Kind of?

Gorgers seem to be good, yay for them.

im sure I missed some stuff

I can’t help but feel we lost a lot of flavor in this. It’s not awful but it’s all just… less.

[HCMistborn]

1 minute ago, Sception said:

the "+1 control score per model" is a particularly nice if subtle bit of rules phrasing.  At first it's like 'isn't this just a more awkward way of saying +1 control characteristic?', but it lets a big unit contribute a lot of weight to objective control even if you can't fit all those big bases in control range.  That little rule is probably the part I like best about the preview in that it just feels like a really smart bit of design.  But again, isn't not exactly a rule to make you sit up and say 'wow!'.

I feel the opposite, I think it is really cool. While it isn't as exciting as a combat mechanic, it is showing an effort to change the rules around something other than killing your opponents army turn one then being smug while they pack it up. I know that is more of a 40k problem, but it makes me happy to see them doing something to encourage play outside of smashing each other. 

[ScionOfOssia]

Just now, Sception said:

Was he?  I remember Mannfred pushing into one of Arkhan's old relic storehouses and being repelled, but what he ran into there was definitely Skaven, not the Liche King.

Anyway, subtle spirit influence is more 'yelling from the penalty box' than escaping from it outright.  😛

I mean literally manifesting and attacking people, he’s not “Guiding subtly from beyond the grave”, he’s out there stabbing people and using Razarak to drop backbreakers on lesser wizards. So unless there’s another “Mysterious liche who shows up, speaks Nagash’s will, and then vanishes”, that’s Arkhan. 

[Ejecutor]

1 hour ago, Chikout said:

This isn't true if you're trying to guage faction popularity. The woehammer stats are more comprehensive. If you look at this you can see that DoT used to be 6% of the meta and then it dropped off a cliff. That's has nothing to do with popularity and everything to do with competitive viability. 

There are a few trends you can learn. If an army has bad results but consistently high representation it's a sure sign that's it's a popular faction. The opposite is also true. 

What's this saying? Results or representation? I am surprised by that 0% on Nov 23 from CoS.

[Sception]

5 minutes ago, ScionOfOssia said:

I mean literally manifesting and attacking people, he’s not “Guiding subtly from beyond the grave”, he’s out there stabbing people and using Razarak to drop backbreakers on lesser wizards. So unless there’s another “Mysterious liche who shows up, speaks Nagash’s will, and then vanishes”, that’s Arkhan. 

Really?  I'm surprised I missed that bit, but I have been a bit checked out this edition.  Where did that happen again?

[Ejecutor]

1 hour ago, Ragest said:

Jesus, Kragnos is terrible.

LOL. Poor Ogors, they got Kragnos in their FF...

[madmac]

10 minutes ago, Sahrial said:

New Ogor base attack profile seems to be 4+/2+/-1/d from 3+/3+/-1

I guess that evens out? Kind of?

Mostly it evens out, but the edge cases are rough. Anything that debuffs to hit is going to be brutal against Ogres, same as it was for them in 1st/2nd edition before Mawtribes. As an elite army that rolls a small number of dice overall aiming for 4s or 5s can skew them pretty hard.

[Grunbag]

Anyone noticed that gorger mawpack lost the gutbuster keyword ? 

[Ejecutor]

1 hour ago, Vasshpit said:

You mean the character, model, or stats? 😄

Yes

[Enoby]

Bit late to the party, but happy they're doing away with true summoning. Despite playing a lot of Slaanesh - which was a very summon heavy army - I didn't like having to bring a large selection of additional models that may never see the table, or being forced to balance around getting more models which often meant your core rules and units were less interesting (see Slaanesh 2.0).

I'm also excited to see more things get toned down. I know it sucks to be on the receiving end of a nerf, but the more mellow the rules get, the better it'll be for the game as a whole. It's all well and good being excited for the wombo combo that does 50 damage to each of your opponent's units turn 1, but it quickly becomes boring an ensures that no one will have fun.