Lucentia

When we first saw the model for Kragnos I was kinda interested in the idea of this mythical figure from ancient times returning to find the world changed and he's mad about it, it's a classic storytelling vein but it puts a different spin on the motivation for the Destruction faction, and introducing him as the capstone to the broken realms series was a clever way of immediately tying him to the likes of Morathi and Teclis in terms of power and narrative importance. Buuut then his actual backstory has him as more or less just the same dumb brute smash guy as the majority of destruction characters. I think it would be sensible to try and diversify the general personality of Destruction a bit, just cos they don't build cities doesn't mean they can't have a splash of culture beyond might makes right. The original Beastclaw Raiders book was a step in the right direction for me, they're still a brutal, dangerous people with ideals and customs at odds with the nations of Order, but they felt more like an actual people at the same time. I dunno, I guess I just think Destruction can get a bit samey between the factions and there's only so many times you can go to the well of big brutal guy, or occasionally sneaky cunnin' chap.

Under the new coherency rules Hellstriders might be our most efficient screens in terms of board coverage if you string them out sideways, so perhaps there's some merit to them. And in an MSU world their damage output might be a little more impactful.

I noticed that too, quite strange, whilst I think the models are sweet their weapons aren't very exciting. I might try and get the KoS whip in their hands instead.

Putting rules aside for a moment I am now quite interested in the size of the models, my assumption was that we were seeing a large oval or the imperial knight skateboard base, but with the wound count and price tag being less than the keeper's I wonder if they might be of a smaller scale, it would be quite rare for GW to charge less for a larger kit (though I recognise a lot of the sillhouette is the wings/drapes in this case) and wounds do often correlate with size. Wouldn't be the first time scale in an army photo has been misleading, I saw folks speculating the Vengorian Lord was Nagash-sized from the promo shots.

It's hard to tell, but I think this might be a Great Unclean One skull, with an antler coming up past the Sylvaneth's skirts there. But it could be something new too, certainly.

The new models are stunning, though I can't help but be mildly disappointed that the chosen form of the Newborn is kinda similar to the look of the KoS, I was hoping for something a little more, I don't know, protean, maybe? I love the look of the peacock wings, and the head sculpts are great. Feels like the combat one could do with some more weapons in all those hands, but they still both look sweet.

I could see it being Eldar too, but certainly 40k in any case.

Lurid Haze is in addition to the normal Invaders stuff, just with a forced Command Trait and Artefact.

A single plastic hero release screams 'new battletome' to me, probably accompanied with one of those dual army sets. Could be Nighthaunt vs Stormcast to cover both new heroes and bookend the Soul Wars i guess, but I feel like Gardus is more of a Black Library thing like the damonifuge figures last year? Either way I'd put good money on us seeing a new Nighthaunt tome sooner rather than later, I don't think that has to be tied to a Broken Realms boom at all.

Yes, it's very strange, I hadn't really thought about it in the old book but it's the same there too. The Khainite prayers section has instructions on how to roll for prayers, as do the hag/slaughter queen warscrolls, but nothing for the avatar. You have the theoretical situation where you could take a hag queen and avatar as allies in a non-DoK list and following the rules as written would have you activate the avatar without a roll cos there's nothing to suggest otherwise.

Hah, good point, I know I for sure queried both in my FAQ email. They also didn't touch on Shadow Patrol, which I thought was weird.

Overwatch is one of those things that sort of makes logical sense 'why wouldn't they just shoot at whoever charges then?' but generally winds up being pretty terrible as a game mechanic (in massed army games anyway, I don't generally mind it so much on a skirmish level.) In 40k it basically boiled down to get a second shooting phase in your opponent's turn or roll a bunch of dice to no effect depending on what your army was. Its slowed the game down considerably and was generally just kind of annoying, which I assume is why they moved it to a more limited tactic in the new edition. I feel like shooting's already on a bit of a knife edge in AoS and just throwing in stuff like overwatch and free retreats seems like dicey ground, but trying to pick over scraps of spurious rumour only goes so far I suppose.

I was looking through the book to see if I could find anything further on the subject of prayers and found a couple of interesting points: In a Harr Kuron army you can pick one DoK Priest per hero phase to chant a special prayer as part of the city allegiance abilities. But the text of this ability is '...in addition to the 1 other prayer that priest can attempt on that phase.' Which kind of matches the FAQ response of priests only getting the 1 prayer, even though you could take an Avatar and priest in a Harry Kuron army, which would theoretically get her another prayer, the wording here is clearly assuming she only gets the 1 per turn. Also less relevant but still kind of interesting is the lack of consistency in explaining how to roll for prayers, both DoK priest warscrolls and the DoK allegiance prayers mention a 3+ roll is required, but there's no mention of a dice roll at all for the Har Kuron prayer or awakening an avatar. My take away is they really should standardise priests and prayers as they have with wizards and spells.

I would agree with you in general, but the wording as it stands in the FAQ and battletome is '...friendly daughters of khaine priests that know any prayers can chant 1 prayer that they know.' And '...this model can chant 1 of the following prayers.' No distinction is made between warscroll and allegiance prayers, I don't see any wriggle room in the text as presented, regardless of precedent. Edit: Actually on consideration I can see you point, what qualifies as a 'known' prayer, any prayer the priest has access to, or just the ones they know from the lore? I still think the wording as it stands reduces DoK priests to 1 prayer period, but it could be unintentional from the language they've chosen as you say.

Dropping to 1 prayer is a little annoying, but you're really only forgoing Rune of Khaine (situational) or awakening an Avatar (list dependent, and redundant after round 3), or Dance of Death I guess, but that's even less likely to show up in lists. It's not like Khorne where you really want to be hitting those Blood Boils along with your allegiance prayers. By that same notion it probably would have been fine to let them pray off the warscroll and the Khaine list, but whatever, I don't think it will be a huge deal most of the time. Morathi back to rend 2, Witchbrew on a single roll and Khailebron teleport working as normal is good to see, being able to stick artifacts on the cauldron avatars was very funny, but not surprising or unexpected to see that nixed. Hagg Nar clarification is interesting, as said up the page it probably does mean there's even greater parity between the temple options, which is neat! And I like it thematically as the first temple's empowered faith allows them to more easily shrug off traditional wounds but not more esoteric attacks, but it is a little awkward and not something you see very often in AoS in general.

The new DoK book is one of the rare instances where you really can just play with whatever units you like, all of the options are basically good, or at least workable. If you don't like Witches you can lean towards snakes and it's perfectly fine, for example. The Anvilguard stuff is a little more complicated, you can ally in whatever units you want from Cities of Sigmar, but the DoK book is so well-rounded you probably don't really need to, but there's nothing stopping you doing so by any means and it won't hurt fun lists too much.

It's kind of an interesting one, to my eye the pointy but doesn't really fit to any faction at a glance, it's also a little odd that the blade part is quite neat and clean, whilst the collar bit is rough and chipped. If it's for AoS I'd guess Skaven, though I could also see a new warcry band perhaps? They tend to have unique weapon styles.

I don't think anyone would even be able to tell you the colour schemes of all six temples without looking it up first, no one is going to cause a scene if you use your own name/backstory.

Personally I love a SQ on Cauldron, even if it's just 3 extra attacks over the Hag Queen version she still becomes one of the top damage pieces in the book with a few buffs, which can really throw opponents off if they're viewing her more as a support piece. That said it's pretty easy to just magnetise the hero for the top of the cauldron so you can have the choice of both.

Nice! I got my endless spells done last weekend too, naturally I'm a little biased but I think these might be the nicest faction spells GW has put out? I think all these models look pretty sweet, maybe the swords are a little uninspired but I like the swoopy blood trails for them.

I think it's very plausible that the DoK book was planned for a much earlier release, though putting it closer to BR:Morathi would be odd given how much copy-paste material is shared between those books. (Though it seems like BR:Teclis and Lumineth 2 are similarly conjoined, so maybe they just want people to double dip on books, idk.) But whether that's true or not I'm not sure if it can be tied to Hedonites following newer design principles for the speculated next edition, I suppose we'll see what the points look like for whatever the next time is, but I don't know that Lumineth 2 is going to bring matching point rises for the older Lumineth stuff, for example.

Yeah, I built a regular Seeker Chariot from my shadow and pain box, it's the exact same kit as the Hellstrider (though you may want to look up the instructions online rather than just wing it like I did, they're pretty fiddly as I'm sure you're aware!) As noted above the Exalted Chariot would need another chariot kit mixed in.

I'd prefer plastic Yhetees before plastic Gorgers (and really I'd rather see new AoS rooted ogor kits instead of either) but hey, I'll take whatever. But stuff drops in and out of stock pretty frequently, I wouldn't read much into it, I doubt it heralds the arrival of Broken Realms: Greasus or anything.

Well, I I know anything about Castlevania I'd wager the last expansion for Cursed City will feature a reincarnated Radukar with a transformed, monstrous form. Dracula rarely has just the one health bar...

It's a little ambiguous unfortunately, for what it's worth the previous version of the Shadow Patrol has a similar rule but specifics that only one unit can be removed and set up, as this wording does not have the specific stipulation of a single unit I'd say all of the units in the battalion are allowed to be removed and set up. Hopefully the FAQ will clear up the ambiguity.