Ganigumo

Trying to sell people stuff like metal treelords, and resin chaos chosen, when they themselves produce models that are higher quality versions of them, is ridiculous. I know people have a generally low opinion of GW, but suggesting that's what they are going to do is basically accusing them of self-sabotage.

IMO they're not trying to limit crossplay, but are probably trying to split the armies into TOW armies and AoS armies so they can track sales. Core Factions in ToW: Empire, Dwarves, Brettonians, Wood Elves, High elves, Orcs & Goblins, Warriors of Chaos, Beastmen, and Tomb kings. "Other" ToW factions with rules: Dark Elves, Skaven, Vampire Counts, Daemons of Chaos, Ogre Kingdoms, Lizardmen, Chaos Dwarves. All of the "Other" factions have basically their entire model range in-tact in aos, with plenty of AoS model revamps. Chaos Dwarves are the only exception, and we're expecting them to show up in AoS at some point in time. So none of those factions need support. All of the Core factions need support to work in the old world, as they were either squatted, or had key parts of the model range squatted (dwarves & greenskinz). Beastmen and Warriors of chaos are the exception here though, as they have their entire lines in-tact pretty much, but are also core factions. I think WoC and BoC were made exceptions because the narrative demands it, and will probably only get some named character support from old world, because they're both in the exact same situation in regards to both systems. We know at this point that dark elves, dispossed, and gitz will be doing double duty for sure, so to me the only really questionable pieces are bonesplitterz, 'ardboyz, and gitmob. We know Greenskinz need to come back, and the plains goblins coming back might make sense, but they've chosen to add new wolf riders to gitz, so maybe we'll see a gitmob revamp before ToW releases.

The heavy focus on only god-tier characters doing things of importance is just a bad direction for the narrative in general. Tons of writers, settings, series, etc. Struggle immensely with power and stakes escalation, and fail to understand that its not a treadmill you even need to get on in the first place. For the most part the game itself is about small armies battling it out, so it feels like there should be a bigger narrative focus on the battles between things like tribes and cities, rather than entire factions. going back to the escalation problem, you don't always need to find a bigger & badder dad to fight, you just need to create a conflict that matters to the readers/players/watchers. Putting things like characters, tribes, and cities in danger, and actually following through on removing them sometimes can create stakes people care about. Plus you can always just pull a WFB Orcs and Goblins, and let the players play with characters that are long dead. One of my favorite examples of what I'm talking about comes from One Piece. After a few story arcs where the villains are threats to entire countries, you go to an arc where the only thing at risk are the crew themselves, and its widely regarded as one of the best arcs in the entire series. Objectively there was a de-escalation in the scale of the stakes, but the stakes still felt incredibly important, because the readers cared about these characters.

BCR were the more viable half of the army for sure, its a bit baffling why they felt the need to nerf the stonehorn beastriders in the last balance pass. Not sure if Kragnos is worth it in a BCR army, but you'll have some savage impact mortals for sure. I've seen some lists playing with the meme meatfist list of Kragnos + a bunch of brawlerguts tyrants, but not too much of kragnos in bcr, although I might have just missed the lists.

The hobgrots will always baffle me. Seems like they were put in the army more as a nod/hint to chaos dwarves than as a proper unit for kruleboyz, because there are normal grots all over the range, but their chaff unit is hobgrots. By rights that unit would make more sense as just swamp grots, like what you see on gobsprakk, killbow, marshcrawla, pot-grot, and stab-grot. I think a hobgrot expansion would find a home as a sub-force of chaos dwarves, instead of a sub-force of kruleboyz. There's definitely a missing part for kruleboyz on the monstrous side though, we've got a snatcha boss and a breaka boss, who seem like heroes for different parts of the army that aren't here yet.

It does look very similar to the rock on the gnashtoof base.

Seraphon should absolutely have mayan themed "not sci-fi" weapons. I guess its more of a skink thing than a saurus thing, but it would've been a cool way to AoSify the range. Tyranids kind of bother me. I've always found the bio weapons just looking like guns made of chitin to be a bit, wierd? Like why would a species evolve a rifle they carry around instead of something like propulsive spines. The hard commitment to the bug-style appearance across the range is also strange to me. Evolution tends to favor diversity and crabs, and being able to manipulate the evolution directly feels like there should be way less uniformity in appearance than there is. The narrative is way too absurd for me too, even by 40k standards nids stand out, in large part because of the scale of the problem I kind of wish they'd rewrite the narrative to something more grounded. Like get rid of the hive fleets for the most part and push them as a sort of sneaky out of control bio weapon that infiltrates planets, builds its strength quietly, devours the rest, then spreads to another planet. On the other hand though I love GSC.

I disagree about the too many big releases thing. We've had a ton of battletome releases, but not really that many model releases this edition. Its been what, kruleboyz, stormcast, STD, seraphon and now cities? Maybe its an issue if you want to play all those armies, but that seems more like a prioritization issue. I absolutely agree that the models are getting more busy though, and its something the design team should be a bit more careful about. I painted a bonesplitterz army in january, and those models don't have too much going on, and it was pretty nice to paint. I even experimented with a bunch of freehand. Then I painted a unit of 10 kairics last week or something and it felt like that took ages. Kruleboyz get a lot of flak for being tough to paint, but IMO the only models that were a pain were the monsters if you're using contasts.

IMO Moss troggoths are probably the most likely? We've got river, mountain, and cave trolls, forest trolls feel like a good extension. Frost trogg almost feels more like a paint scheme to me, and feels more region locked than the others. Armored Troggs would be cool, but I feel like they'd be more likely to be a kruleboyz unit? Something for the breaka-boss to push around. They could do double duty if its just troggs with armor though. We also had sulphurbreath troggoths which were mentioned in the trogg white dwarf.

To me its about matching narrative to models and gameplay. An army won't feel complete if there's something missing from it that should be there to match their narrative or in game playstyle. It doesn't really have much to do with diversity of unit types or anything like that. For example I think Ironjawz already feel like a complete army, despite only having like 7 kits, because they cover all the things ironjawz would want to do, honestly I think Ironjawz might be the most complete feeling army in the game. On the other hand kruleboyz don't feel complete, despite having more kits, as their models are all rank and file infantry or heroes, with nothing to lean into stuff like what the breaka-boss does or the snatcha boss does. There's clear holes there where we have leaders with no-one following them. On top of that they have army composition issues, because they want to play as a mixed arms force, but don't really have the proper diversity of units to enable that playstyle. They also don't have anything that feels like it leans into their focus on fighting dirty and laying traps. The rules tried to bridge the gap but didn't do a good job imo.

the problem with tzaangors now is the lack of fighting in 2 ranks again. Maybe they're still good, but they've definitely lost some efficiency.

The armies TOW is going to focus on: Empire, Dwarves, Brettonians, Wood Elves, High Elves, Orcs & Goblins, Warriors of Chaos, Beastmen, Tomb Kings The armies they aren't: Dark Elves, Skaven, Vampire Counts, Daemons, Ogres, Lizardmen, Chaos Dwarves Every army they aren't focusing on except Chaos Dwarves (for the time being) has, or is expected to get a proper AOS refresh, and currently has AoS model support. All of the armies they are going to focus on, with the exceptions of beastmen and warriors of chaos, had large swathes squatted that need to be replaced. This isn't a coincidence. They chose the armies they are going to support in the old world based on necessity and popularity. They are going to make rules for the armies they aren't supporting, they've already said that, but aren't supporting them with releases or narrative, because they don't really need to. They are absolutely double dipping here by letting the AoS team handle the model updates for the armies they aren't focusing on, while the TOW team make models for the ones they aren't.

its shocking they phoenicium stayed around given all the other high elf stuff was squatted and GW clearly knew lumineth was coming at that point.

Its still shocking to me that wanderers are going, but the flagellants and battle wizards are staying (without resculpts). IMO wanderers were the best looking models in the entire cities of sigmar range before this release. Years of abysmal rules probably have a big impact on sales though. Edit: Griffon staying, with the new manticore, while demigryphs leaving is also a wierd choice.

WFB dark elves are pretty much copy-pasted melniboneans from michael moorcock's Elric of Menibone, the first story of which was published in 1961, and was a pretty revolutionary take on fantasy at the time. The 8 pointed star of chaos also originates from there. Of course things have changed over the years and many people have taken inspiration from elric (most notoriously the Witcher, which is nearly beat-for-beat the same story, written by the man who first translated the elric stories into polish...) to the point where the concept starts to feel tired.

coherency moving to 6 is a pretty big buff for disc tzaangor, since the discs are stuck with 1" reach, so maybe they'll see more play. They're a pretty good target for hoarfrost too.

There's no way all of those things are leaving CoS and they still have 54 warscrolls. Freeguild are clearly getting updated, and I imagine ironweld arsenal are as well. Maybe wanderers or Phoenix temple could disappear but I doubt both would. We're already at like 7 kits revealed? With at least 3 more by my estimation, but probably closer to 5, which takes the release to 10-12 kits, which is a very large release by AoS standards isn't it? cutting out more would need to push it to like 15+ kits

The lionesses of Edassa would be phenomenal, or maybe something inspired by them but less settled in a specific realm.

I'm not expecting 100% replacements, but there are just as many warscroll cards in the new book as there were for the old one (54). So from a warscroll perspective we should get about just as many as we lose, although the ven densts and the underworlds warbander were added after. Doesn't mean they'll be 1-to-1 replacements, like maybe greatswords are succeeded by maneaters or something, but most if not all the empire stuff is getting scrapped and there needs to be something to fill for those warscrolls.

There are 13-14 old human kits in the current range, across 20 warscrolls, and the new cities book has exactly the same number of warscrolls. Battlemage - Replaced with Alchemite Warforger Griffon - Replaced by Tahlia? who might have a generic version to cover the other warscroll Battlemage on Griffon General on Griffon Celestial Hurricanum - might dodge a replacement, but there might be a dual replacement that can build as a "new" huricanum or a shrine of some sort? So holy or Magic? With battlemage Luminark with battlemage Without battlemage Luminark of Hysh Freeguild General - Replaced with Freeguild Marshal Steam Tank - might dodge a replacement With commander without commander Freeguild Handgunners - replaced by Fusiliers, who don't look like a dual kit, so the warhulk fills in for the crossbowmen Crossbowmen - Squatted for warhulk Handgunners - replaced by Fusiliers Freeguild Guard - Replaced by Steelhelms Helblaster Volley Gun - Needs a replacement Helstorm Rocket battery Helbaster Volley Gun Demigryph Knights - will probably get replaced Flagellants - Will probably get replaced, but this kit is pretty cool IMO Freeguild Greatswords - Needs a replacement Freeguild Outriders - Replaced by Freeguild Cavaliers? but its a dual kit so there's a hole Outriders -Replaced by Cavaliers Pistoliers - need something to fill the hole So based on my Estimation, we NEED 4 more scrolls to replace pistoliers, greatswords, and the empire artillery, which is definitely 3 more kits at least. There's a good chance demigryphs and flagellants are out too, which is another 2 scrolls. So there's probably 4-6 more model kits we haven't seen yet, with a possibility of up to 8 if luminark and steam tank also get updates. Looks death, but I could see it in destruction, maybe bonesplitterz?

Its a tough sell in Gitz, but you can teleport it with hand of gork to have more control over where you can run & charge to. The issue is which units of ours care about it? Kragnos or a mega-gargant ally maybe, spiders are pretty bad, maybe a cheeky aleguzzler? Manglers already get run & charge.

The Maw-Grunta is a multi-kit, I think they mentioned 3 build options at one point. Probably a named character, a generic leader, and one thats just a behemoth. Looks like the handgunner replacement, but doesn't look like a multi-kit? So the freeguild crossbowmen are probably gone. Also not a fan of the reroll hits ability, I know its pretty limited since its third or later battle round, but they've kind of made a point of not doing rerolls this edition so its wierd to go back on that here. Honestly I'm not a fan of many of the cities rules we've seen so far, the ogor rider also had rules that I felt were overly verbose and complex. It reminds me of 40k rules writing, in a bad way.

Yeah but we can buff the riders instead i guess.

This new season is looking really good for big waaagh! 2 new battle tactics, both of which are easier to complete in BW than in their respective factions The less kruleboyz units you have the easier the KB one is Ironjawz favor fast units which will blow past the center of the board but BW tends to run things like 'ardboyz This gives us like 3-4 super easy tactics Seasonal rules favor weak-average casters over magic doms, and will let us force out important spells like hand of gork Gobsprakk is down points, and primal dice can be used to trigger his d6 mortals on unbinds of 10+, He'll be fantastic in BW Maniak Wierdnob + Fast 'un + Merciless Blizzard is like a mobile version of the wurgogg death stare for less points. We can even teleport him then use fast 'un, so pretty much nowhere is safe from him Coherency change is great for pigs We have plenty of units which love hoarfrost, anything bonesplitterz, as well as 'ardboyz Master of Magic doesn't work with primal dice, but touched by the Waaagh! does Return of anti-shooting from last season for our warchanters and wizards

While bonesplitterz didn't get any direct love I think theres a lot the season has to offer us, and some buffs that might sneak under the radar. Maniak Wierdnob with Fast 'un is probably the best possible range available on merciless blizzard. 24", or 32" with great hunter and tireless trackers on t1. Our units love hoarfrost, plenty of stuff hitting on 4s with no rend We can actually do the new kruleboyz battle tactic by bringing the regiment of renown Wurgogg prophet dodged his enhanced spell being changed to unmodified rolls of 10+ so we can use primal dice to get the better version