Lucentia

Well, it's underworlds in the realm of shadows, and Shadowstalkers are about as archetypal an Ulgu unit as you can get, plus they're squaring off against Eshin in the core box, so it's a kind of assassin/ninja mirror match for the theming. I don't think they particularly design the underworlds bands with mainline AoS in mind, it's its own game too! Plus on the off-chance the warband does have cool AoS rules you can just proxy existing shadowstalker models no problem.

It's a bit of a weird one, I almost want to say blood bowl, but I don't think the rumour engine ever covers BB stuff? The cobbled together nature suggests destruction, but it's so cobbled together it doesn't really look like an effective weapon, so maybe for a weak/non-melee unit? The checkered pattern is more a 40k ork thing, I think? Maybe gloomspite, I guess, maybe part of a war machine crew model, or something.

They're not great, quite fast, but very fragile and with fairly low damage output, Slickblade Seekers are probably the strictly 'better' choice for a harassing unit most of the time. That said the models are very cool, and they do provide some interesting utility with their -1 to hit and spell casting debuff. I'm pretty sure I saw a tournament list do quite well recently with 2x3 Fiend units? Honestly with the shape of Slaanesh right now if you like the models there's probably no harm in throwing a unit into a list and seeing if you can make them work.

I'd love to see the 40k Avatar show up in the new book, it'd neatly solve the issue of the only monster keyword being Morathi, but I don't think it's very likely simply cos the model is very specifically an Eldar piece and doesn't really match the DoK model range that closely, plus really we should have an Avatar of Morathi in its place! (Though that said I might pick one up anyway to use as an incarnate/anvil of apotheosis hero/narrative play custom monster, or whatever, it does look cool!) The new Shadowstalkers are kinda funny just because the Warcry squad look so great, and were such a fun surprise, that just having alternate sculpts feels like a bit of a letdown compared to some of the other Underworlds warbands, but they're still very cool and I'm not gonna complain about having an alternate Shroud Queen model available. Khinerai battleline for a subfaction feels like something that could feasibly happen. I do wonder if there's going to be any cleanup on the priest hero warscrolls, abilities like Rune of Khaine and Touch of Death were already rarely used even when they could get access to multiple chanting rolls, seems like the sort of thing they could easily strip out without too much impact, though I'd love to see Rune of Khaine changed to something like +1 damage to the caster's melee weapons if they successfully cast a prayer that turn, or something.

My guess would be that we'll see Malerion's stuff once the focus of the game's setting rolls into Ulgu, the only question in my mind is whether that's part of a new edition change or more of a GHB/Season of War supplement situation, but I'd generally lean towards them saving him to kick a new edition off with a big hitter.

None of the daughters in Morgwaeth's band have capes like the one in the artwork, indeed Shadowstalkers are the only DoK minis with capes at all. That said the underworlds artwork is not always totally consistent with the models. On the topic of combining the DoK faction with a future Malerion force, as a DoK player I'd selfishly be against it! I think the DoK and Morathi are probably the best example of bringing WHFB elements forwards into AoS in an interesting way, and I'd be concerned that that'd be diluted if the book also has to pay dues to a whole other faction of similarly shadowy and suspicious elves. ( See how a lot of the beastclaw raider lore didn't make it into the current ogor book.) The reason I'm not convinced that the Khainite Shadowstalkers are a preview for or related to Malerion's elves is just how much of their design comes straight from the DoK models, things like armour, weapons, and ornamentation are sometimes totally identical, where you'd expect (or perhaps hope!) for a new faction to occupy its own visual unique design space.

Haha, did they just say shadow elves? There is a bit of wriggle room in that phrasing! That's definitely a Daughters of Khaine shadowstalker in the new artwork, and it would be a little strange to have an ulgu themed underworlds season without representation from the one existing faction wholly originating from that realm.

Could be underworlds, for sure, but it's worth noting some factions do get fancy bases on their regular minis (Slaanesh blissbarbs in particular spring to mind here, who also have broken statues/sculptures on a lot of the minis.) The little dangle thing even kinda looks like the slaanesh icon.

With the (pretty surprising) announcement of the 3.0 Daughters of Khaine battletome coming soon (presumably releasing within the next month or so) I though it might be fun to have a topic where people can post what they'd like to see out of the new book, pure wishlisting, outfield predictions, pre-pre-release doomsaying, and general speculation, let's hear what people are thinking! A few things that jump to my mind include: Changes to subfactions - We know that in the 3.0 tomes that subfactions are generally stripped down to a single bonus rule, but a lot of the fun DoK subfaction features are locked up in command traits or abilities, will any of these survive? Will we see Devoted Disciples moved into the core command traits list so that everyone can ride the Hagg Nar ward save train?? It'd be a shame to lose the Khailebron teleport too, maybe that could become an artifact option now that subfactions won't have locked artifacts, who knows! Lots of subfactions also come with battleline options too, maybe losing the need for a Melusai general, or allowing for Khinerai battleline in certain factions. Priests and Prayers - I'd love to see Slaughter Queens getting a 'High Priestess' rule that lets them pray twice per hero phase, now that they've codified and restricted how priests work it seems weird that you can have a two-cast wizard but not a two-chant priest, and it might help make the infantry Slaughter Queen a more compelling option. Will we see changes on the prayer list? Some of these prayers really if ever see play, and now they're also competing against Curse in the core rules, Martyr's Sacrifice becoming a fight on death trigger could be fun. Avatars - Now that priests are locked into only the one prayer per turn it's even harder to get these bad boys up and running, though other than that I do think they're a fun warscroll, but maybe something where instead of a prayer chant to turn them on they'll just automatically activate if a Priest's within X"? Witchbrew - I can understand why they changed the Witchbrew from the first tome, on paper it's a wildly powerful buff, but in making it so unreliable they did also kinda leave a lot of melee lists dead in the water, and DoK should really be the premier melee Order faction in my eyes, so that's a shame! Will it be changed back, left the same, or made into something more reliable but less potent, perhaps? Cauldrons and Shrines - I'd love to see some mount traits here, they're supposed to be be prized artifacts of the Khainite temples, so its easy to imagine certain shrines and cauldrons having accolades and traditions attached to them over time. Also whilst I guess the Bloodwrack Shrine is just fine as a handful of extra wounds for a Medusa, I'd prefer if it actually, like, did something exciting, even if its just minor look boosting her shooting attack, or giving her an extra spellcasting roll, just anything, it's a big model! Battle Traits - DoK only have the two battle traits, and they're pretty good and appropriate ones, but it's on the low side for a 3.0 book, especially one with no terrain or summoning options, will we see another army wide trait or two? Or changes to the existing traits, 3.0 in general has seen a lot of removing re-rolls across the board, which the blood rites table flies counter to, it's survived in basically the same format for two books, but is it time for a shake up of the formula? Blood Sisters - Purely a personal bugbear, but it just annoys me that Blood Sisters and Blood Stalkers have the same defensive profile even though you literally have to glue extra armour plates onto the Blood Sisters, give them 3W each of a 4+ save or something, come on! Command Abilities - Lots of warscroll specific command abilities (though not all) have been removed in the 3.0 books, some are replaced with no-cost abilities on the warscrolls, some go into generic battle traits, some just vanish entirely. I'm betting that Orgy of Slaughter winds up a generic CA independent of the Slaughter Queen, and that the Ironscale's CA just becomes a free ability to make her warscroll more enticing, but who knows!

If it were up to me to write a unique CA for Morathi it would probably either bump the whole army to the next Blood Rites level for a turn, or be a once per game ability to activate all the Blood Rite bonuses at once for everyone.

I could see Orgy of Slaughter sticking around as a general faction CA, like with the Fyreslayers striking first one, double-fighting has been a part of the DoK faction from the earliest days of AoS, so I suspect it will stick around in some form at least. But yes, I wouldn't expect Morathi to keep her CA as it is now (Though she might still have a unique CA of some kind, some of the big named characters do even in 3.0 books, Glottkin, for example.)

Points costs for old units are all the same I think, but sometimes they change between the dual boxes and the actual book releases, so I wouldn't hold that as gospel.

Weirdly both, depending on the unit: Heartrenders just get a flat 5+ save (but lose the mortal wound reflect entirely) whilst Sisters of Slaughter get +1 to all save rolls and reflect mortals versus melee attacks. Other than bucklers working vs shooting attacks the SoS warscoll is identical. No witch aelf scroll in the box. You'd think after two books of being consistently overlooked they'd have wanted to do something with Doomfire Warlocks, but they're the same as before as well. I guess it's worth noting that the Gladiatrix buff is not +1 to wound, but directly changes the To Wound profile to 3+, so it will stack with any other sources of +1 to wound if any are available.

Now the real April fool's trick would be to have everyone assuming it's squats, but then pivoting some other small, heavily armoured, space faction instead (ideally as a new Xenos range, surely there's a limit to how many Imperium factions they can squeeze into the game, it's not like they're Aelves!)

Haha, that'd better be the biggest white dwarf they've ever published if it wants to paper over the cracks in this tome! Here's hoping for something juicy at least.

The instakill ability is kind of interesting in that, unlike most other abilities of its type that we've seen recently, it works even on higher wound heroes, I'm sure we've all had situations where a tough monster hero has survived on 1 wound at an inopportune moment! Of course, the odds of what I assume is a 5w 5+ save model remaining alive within 1" of an enemy monster hero to actually attempt the coup de grace is not high!

I played in a one-day local tournament yesterday, only very tiny, just 10 players, but there were some strong lists in the mix. I managed to go 2/1, only losing to the first place player, winding up with the second place trophy (and best painted to boot!) I was going in with the aim of winning at least one game, so I'm more than happy with the results! My list was the fairly standard strong core set-up with Glutos, 10 Twinsouls, and Sigvald. Hellstriders for screening and objectives. Blissbarb Archers and Seekers for depravity points and picking off weakened targets, and with a flaming weapon Exalted Chariot rounding things up. Round 1 was First Blood against a beautifully painted Flesh-Eater Courts list, however, this was against a fairly new-ish player and was a fairly by the numbers game, so I won't go into a full account, one of those games were you can summon a Keeper in the late turns just for fun. Game 2 was Feral Foray vs Stormcast Eternals, this was the list which won first place overall, and you can probably guess at much of its construction, not quite the hardest Stormcast list in the world, but still with 6 Longstrikes and 2 dragons pulling most of the work, whilst Bastian and a couple of chariots are already kind of tough targets for Hedonites to deal with! To be totally honest I wasn't trying my best in this match, the amount of effort you've got to put in just to draw even with a list like that makes the game kind of a drag for me, screened off as best I could round 1 but one chariot made a 12" charge to obliterate a Hellstrider unit and tie the Exalted Chariot up, 12 wounds on a 3+ save puts our chariots to shame! Though the Longstrikes failed to do any real damage to Glutos even after using the hero phase shooting CA. Glutos got his spell off on the dragons and I had to risk pushing up heavily to avoid just getting shot off the board, but the Blissbarbs only managed to inflict a single wound on the Longstrikes, which proceeded to Translocate far out of range, and Sigvald chumped his ward saves and died far too quickly. I managed to cling on till round 4 and snag a few extra battle tactics running my remaining units around, but it was a fairly predictable rout against a list where luck has to be very much on my side to stand a chance. Round 3 was Tectonic Activity vs Daughters of Khaine, naturally this was Morathi and her bow snake companions, though not the full 15 Blood Stalkers with scattered chaff that you generally see, this was more of a combined arms approach, but still quite scary! Fortunately I do have a large DoK army myself and have played with them frequently, though not so much with their 2.0 tome, so at least I was ahead in terms of knowing my enemy here! Unlike the last game the LoS blocking terrain on this board was quite good, so I was able to limit the Blood Stalkers sight lines a bit, they actually failed to kill the Exalted Chariot that I had left exposed as bait with a combined hero phase and shooting phase volley! Of course it probably also helped that the first thing Morathi did in the game was miscast Mindrazor and deal 3 unwardable wounds to herself... As well as the bow snakes this DoK list was using 10-model Witch Elf units as melee darts, soaking up all the melee buffs as high-damage throwaway pieces that were hard to ignore but also difficult to prioritise over, say, all those bow snakes and such, which was quite neat to see. The Shadow Queen went in hard on my left flank, which was basically just the chariot and some Hellstriders, but Glutos's -1 to hit aura helped to stymie the output of both her and the witch elves on the right flank. I was debating whether to try and just Crippling Famishment the Shadow Queen and run away from her, but I decided it was probably best to try and pin her in place, I would've preferred to use Glutos for this probably, but he was out of position so Sigvald had to do his best, which is on the one hand is good cos he's basically guaranteed to knock off 3 wounds per turn, but risky cos a few bad saves and he could just die. The Hagg Nar command trait remains quite potent, I expected my Blissbarbs to be much better at killing 6+ save Witch Elves than they actually proved, but the Seekers were at least able to charge an isolated Hag Queen to snag the prime objective. Sigvald managed to squeak on with 1 wound remaining as my opponent won priority, but he opted to try and use the Blood Stalkers to take out Glutos instead of freeing up the Shadow Queen, this allowed me to knock the last 3 wounds off of her in my charge phase with the chariot, allowing Sigvald to make a glorious 12" charge into the Blood Stalkers and wipe out half the unit, with Glutos joining in on the other side to finish off the rest whilst the Twinbloods removed the Slaughter Cauldron. After which it was basically just cleanup. I certainly had luck on my side for this game, and my opponent was ultimately too cavalier with the Shadow Queen, but a win's a win, in the end! I love this image cos it looks like some shining knight squaring off against a monstrous serpent-woman, but in the lore it's kind of the opposite, cute!

I'd move Hellstriders up into the simply good category, relatively cheap, ideal 5-model cavalry screens, fast, 4+ base save can be a big deal sometimes. (They have a 4+ cos of their shields, fyi, it's, like, a 5+ base plus 1 for the shields, I guess.) Shardspeaker I don't rate that high, her ability is too flakey to rely on, and she only has access to the mostly worthless mortal spell lore. Blissbarbs are okay, sometimes you need something a 3rd battleline that can sit around and plink at stuff for depravity. I'd be scared to reinforce them cos of their awful bravery. Lord of Pain has kind of decent damage for a melee hero, and is moderately tough, I don't think you're throwing immediately just by putting him in a list, but yeah, he doesn't make the 'good' list for me. Seeker Chariots can be kinda cute, but like most of the demon stuff their stats are bad for their points so you'd want to summon them, but then there are normally better options to summon!

Haha, thank you! I will pick up some Slaangor when they do not have the worst stats in the game and not a moment before! I'm not a very competitive player, but even I have my limits!

Summoning, not just for Slaanesh but as a general rule, should be designed around getting to summon one extra unit during a game, maybe two to three if you can build a 'Summoning list by sacrificing other elements of list composition. There should not be a situation where you can bring on 50% of your lists points (or more!) onto the board mid-game, it's either going to be overtuned and horrible to play against, or undertuned and horrible to play with.

Amusingly I had the exact opposite reaction, I was very interested to see what a modern, AoS vampire/classic horror faction might look like, so when it wound up being Vampire Counts but again I was a little disappointed! I love the Vengorian Lord/Lauka Vai sculpt, but that's the only kit in the whole range which really speaks to me, I guess I like at least a smidge more off the wall than zombies and skeletons. In any case, the new rumour engine kinda looks Dark Elf-y to me? Those pants with the buckles show up occasionally in the old range, I think the Hydra beast wrangler has some? They're not totally dissimilar from DoK shadowstalkers, the Silver Tower assassin guy, or Drukarii Wyches with the cut-outs either, but those all generally have knee-pads. I'd expect blood bowl models to generally have football pads as well, so I suppose I'm putting my guess on the perpetual favourite of Malerion's stuff, it's gotta be right one of these days!

Sure, something like that works fine too, there's 100 ways you could write more exciting rules, just very few of them are in the battletome! Also I agree that the Keeper should stay in the 400+ points range but with the rules to match its price tag, I know they're probably afraid of rehashing the 2019 Keeper spam of yore, but it's a very different game these days! Also, also, Shalaxi has got to be the least cost effective model in the game, all the other other named greater demons are at least interesting, we can do better than the current scroll, I'm sure!

I do think that bumping up summoning costs and dropping actual points costs would be an okay bandaid patch to make the book function in the interim would be okay, but it would be a bandaid and I think the book has fundamental design flaws beyond that which are going to be tricky to address without a total overhaul. Ultimately the summoning mechanic skews the design of the book too heavily, and it's a mechanic which wants you to play intrinsically opposite to how games of AoS are won. Whilst we're wishlisting I'd love to see better access to the triple tap 6s from the battle trait, right now only daemonettes can realistically use then, and on their weak profile it only really pushes them up to 'okay.' Give me a spell, or CA, or locus effect to turn it on, or something. Speaking of spells I'd honestly love to see a smaller list of better options, the new IDK spell lore only has four options but they're all useful, no point printing twelve spells if, like, eight of them don't do anything.

I'm aware, I meant the next god-aligned chaos faction to get a book, I'm thinking futher in the future here, it's not like the WD articles are the last updates these factions will ever receive.

It kinda reads in part like you're only supposed to be able to hit any one hero with the mortals once per battle, and then you've got to write a new name in the book, but then there's no phrase which actually says that's the case? But the rules do sometimes get chopped around a bit for these community articles, so who knows! If he can bonk someone for 2d6 multiple times per game I think he could be pretty decent, otherwise more of a fun novelty. A bespoke Warcry box would be a good place for Maneaters in AoS, I think.