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I guess the trick is giving them their own identity.

The flesheating side has been taken by the Flesh Eater Courts (although interestingly both the corpse cart and the zombies have not joined them, which is surprising since they'd fit fantastically with the force).

Meanwhile Death already has an abundance of skeleton and ghost forces that are strong in their own right.

Vampires I'd love to see with a more mortal force, serfs up to knights in terms of humans slaved to vampires; with beasties and epic vampire lords then leading the armed forces. A shift from the past when the armies were mostly filled with skeletons, but it would really fit the lore well considering that lore-wise the Vampires were often shown with castles and whole peoples either enthralled or under generations of vampire servitude.

There is potential for a vampire army of multiple types. Note that "soulblight" is not actually a synonym for "vampire" it is a certain type of them; ghoul kings are also vampires, for example.

I listened to Nick Kyme's audio drama "Imprecations of Daemons" over the weekend.

It was basically "The Exorcist" in AoS. It was enjoyable listening to it as I painted/assembled some Azyrite Ruins in anticipation of Warcry. There's alot of repetition in the dialogue, due to the nature of prayer chants against daemons, but it was a neat story.

Subtle things in the story were well done too, and I like the more intimate/ground level approach. For instance, a family still reeling from the loss of the matriarch fell apart after one of their daughters is raised to the ranks of the Stormcast Eternals, and sets up the "hows and whys" of the main story. The one remaining daughter is devastated, and the father starts to hate SCE and resent Sigmar. It makes one think how common that reaction must be throughout the Mortal Realms and how Sigmar is burning the candle on both ends in some way. Taking all the mortal heroes from the population, which then makes those same mortals more vulnerable in fighting the things that the Stormcast were made to fight against.

 Overread wrote:
I guess the trick is giving them their own identity.

The flesheating side has been taken by the Flesh Eater Courts (although interestingly both the corpse cart and the zombies have not joined them, which is surprising since they'd fit fantastically with the force).

Meanwhile Death already has an abundance of skeleton and ghost forces that are strong in their own right.

Vampires I'd love to see with a more mortal force, serfs up to knights in terms of humans slaved to vampires; with beasties and epic vampire lords then leading the armed forces. A shift from the past when the armies were mostly filled with skeletons, but it would really fit the lore well considering that lore-wise the Vampires were often shown with castles and whole peoples either enthralled or under generations of vampire servitude.

Agreed - the living serving or working with the dead is a big part of the lore with "promotion" to a vampire often an incentive.

After all Vampires need the living in a way that the Nighthaunts, skeletons and others don't. Nagash wishes all were truly dead and hence under his sway but even he will allow mortals to worship and follow him. Most of the Mortarchs have mortal followers, servants and agents - some more than others......

 nels1031 wrote:
I listened to Nick Kyme's audio drama "Imprecations of Daemons" over the weekend.

It was basically "The Exorcist" in AoS. It was enjoyable listening to it as I painted/assembled some Azyrite Ruins in anticipation of Warcry. There's alot of repetition in the dialogue, due to the nature of prayer chants against daemons, but it was a neat story.

Subtle things in the story were well done too, and I like the more intimate/ground level approach. For instance, a family still reeling from the loss of the matriarch fell apart after one of their daughters is raised to the ranks of the Stormcast Eternals, and sets up the "hows and whys" of the main story. The one remaining daughter is devastated, and the father starts to hate SCE and resent Sigmar. It makes one think how common that reaction must be throughout the Mortal Realms and how Sigmar is burning the candle on both ends in some way. Taking all the mortal heroes from the population, which then makes those same mortals more vulnerable in fighting the things that the Stormcast were made to fight against.

But doesn't Sigmar takes heroes that are already dead? So... how exactly hes making people more vulnerable?

 Galas wrote:
But doesn't Sigmar takes heroes that are already dead? So... how exactly hes making people more vulnerable?

Not always. One example, Theuderic/Theuderis a king who never knew defeat as a mortal in Gav Thorpe’s “Warbeast” is struck by lightning right after his most recent victory against Chaos. Right in front of his family, army and subjects, he’s blasted off for Reforging.

 Galas wrote:

 nels1031 wrote:
I listened to Nick Kyme's audio drama "Imprecations of Daemons" over the weekend.

It was basically "The Exorcist" in AoS. It was enjoyable listening to it as I painted/assembled some Azyrite Ruins in anticipation of Warcry. There's alot of repetition in the dialogue, due to the nature of prayer chants against daemons, but it was a neat story.

Subtle things in the story were well done too, and I like the more intimate/ground level approach. For instance, a family still reeling from the loss of the matriarch fell apart after one of their daughters is raised to the ranks of the Stormcast Eternals, and sets up the "hows and whys" of the main story. The one remaining daughter is devastated, and the father starts to hate SCE and resent Sigmar. It makes one think how common that reaction must be throughout the Mortal Realms and how Sigmar is burning the candle on both ends in some way. Taking all the mortal heroes from the population, which then makes those same mortals more vulnerable in fighting the things that the Stormcast were made to fight against.

But doesn't Sigmar takes heroes that are already dead? So... how exactly hes making people more vulnerable?

Nels is right, he doesn't only take those who are dying or are about to die. He literally can scoop up anyone if he wants to.

Oh, I didn't knew that.

From my reading the fluff indicates that most are taken before death and it happening after death is actually a rarity. What is common is being snatched up just before they would die. Anvils of the Heldenhammer might be all people who died though, at the very least a lot of them are.

I think he snatches them right before they die(or sooner) which is why Nagash has such a beef with Sigmar. Sigmar is basically interrupting the process Nagash relies on to bolster his forces.

 nels1031 wrote:
I listened to Nick Kyme's audio drama "Imprecations of Daemons" over the weekend.

It was basically "The Exorcist" in AoS. It was enjoyable listening to it as I painted/assembled some Azyrite Ruins in anticipation of Warcry. There's alot of repetition in the dialogue, due to the nature of prayer chants against daemons, but it was a neat story.

Subtle things in the story were well done too, and I like the more intimate/ground level approach. For instance, a family still reeling from the loss of the matriarch fell apart after one of their daughters is raised to the ranks of the Stormcast Eternals, and sets up the "hows and whys" of the main story. The one remaining daughter is devastated, and the father starts to hate SCE and resent Sigmar. It makes one think how common that reaction must be throughout the Mortal Realms and how Sigmar is burning the candle on both ends in some way. Taking all the mortal heroes from the population, which then makes those same mortals more vulnerable in fighting the things that the Stormcast were made to fight against.

This is addressed in "Blacktalon; First Mark" too. Good read by the way. When the titular hero meets with a survivor of a human tribe, the survivor despises the Stormcast initially as they hold them responsible for being wiped out. After the Stormcast kick the hell out of some Nurgle forces and leave, the survivors take it out on the mortal tribes, something Neave never considered before that.

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:

 nels1031 wrote:
I listened to Nick Kyme's audio drama "Imprecations of Daemons" over the weekend.

It was basically "The Exorcist" in AoS. It was enjoyable listening to it as I painted/assembled some Azyrite Ruins in anticipation of Warcry. There's alot of repetition in the dialogue, due to the nature of prayer chants against daemons, but it was a neat story.

Subtle things in the story were well done too, and I like the more intimate/ground level approach. For instance, a family still reeling from the loss of the matriarch fell apart after one of their daughters is raised to the ranks of the Stormcast Eternals, and sets up the "hows and whys" of the main story. The one remaining daughter is devastated, and the father starts to hate SCE and resent Sigmar. It makes one think how common that reaction must be throughout the Mortal Realms and how Sigmar is burning the candle on both ends in some way. Taking all the mortal heroes from the population, which then makes those same mortals more vulnerable in fighting the things that the Stormcast were made to fight against.

This is addressed in "Blacktalon; First Mark" too. Good read by the way. When the titular hero meets with a survivor of a human tribe, the survivor despises the Stormcast initially as they hold them responsible for being wiped out. After the Stormcast kick the hell out of some Nurgle forces and leave, the survivors take it out on the mortal tribes, something Neave never considered before that.

Honestly this brings an interesting perspective because with space marines they are taken as young adults/children, so they have no previous history. Yet stormcast are made up of heroes or those who took up arms, so when your awesome leader/hero is taken from you I can see why that would build resentment and then chaos would swoop in whispering new promises or outright decimates the tribe/people.

It's why Sigmar's dream for the realms will only remain a dream since there are certain nuances he is missing and chaos is exploiting that.

Yeah, that really changes my perception of all the process.

I always tought Sigmar was using souls of dead heroes, or saving people that wast JUST about to die, so basically the same, and giving them a second chance to fight agaisnt chaos.

But this is basically kidnapping.

From Sigmar's perspective what he's doing does not have the perceived drawback--he sees that tribe X is going to be overcome by Chaos whether he takes the hero or not so he is not denying them a chance to survive, he is rescuing their greatest before the inevitable. As gods do, he does not spare much thought for how mortals might perceive this and does not lift a finger to actually explain the matter.

There is also the potential for him to simply be wrong and that the presence of their hero would have saved tribe X. He almost certainly has been wrong at times, but going off how the Age of Chaos went I feel it is safe to say he was generally correct in his assumption, enough that it would be reasonable judgement to say the benefit is well worth the comparatively minor chance of being wrong. Which loops back to no effort being made to actually explain that to mortals.

It has a certain real-world parallel in politicians/leaders doing things to help their constituents but saying 'trust me, this works' instead of actually explaining, garnering resentment when the help is not particularly clear in its effect.

Another aspect is that Sigmar also retreated for 500 years. That's a huge span of time for your patron god to go hiding whilst everything around falls to madness and bloodshed of Chaos (and worse).

I think his Stormcast charging in and saving the day has somewhat smoothed over memories of that, but I think that long lived gods and creatures as well as the steady march of time and generations coupled to Stormcast doing rather extreme things (like slaughtering people madly to prevent infection of chaos spreading etc...) might start to break his hold.

Sigmar didn't draw any lines in the sand when he retreated, he pulled back to his own realm and hid there and that is going to likely breed a lot of contention as the peoples get their heads up; as the front line moves further away and as Stormcast stop being godly heroes and start becoming as scary as the Spanish Inquisition.

Only Kairos expects the Spanish Inquisition!

There are quite a few leaked images of the Sylvaneth battletome floating around. Spruesandbrews.com has them up at the moment for any interested party.

Full Sylvaneth leak here: https://imgur.com/a/UcWbh6E

 Sasori wrote:
Full Sylvaneth leak here: https://imgur.com/a/UcWbh6E

Spoiler!

It's uninspired, lazy, copy-paste trash. Rather than continuing the much more interesting path they took with Martial Memories for Ylthari's Guardians, it's the same wordvomit of "reroll 1 dice" garbage as before.

APPARENTLY they also forgot that they even did a new character with "Free Spirits" as a keyword, given that the warscroll battalion called "Free Spirits" where she would fit in perfectly doesn't even allow for her, instead requiring a frigging Spirit of Durthu.

Not sure who did this book, but I don't want them touching my Wanderers book. Leave them as a frigging app/GA book.

 Sasori wrote:
Full Sylvaneth leak here: https://imgur.com/a/UcWbh6E

Looks like tons of support for theme builds, which is great. Definitely plentiful ways to cheese out but at least you have to optimize for it rather than just showing up, and it is not the sort of OP stuff AoS players aren't used to already. Disappointing to me is that they did not tone back wyldwood reliance. Regardless the many different theme options and the specific clans being pretty well balanced gives me a positive outlook overall.

Great theme options. A lot of fun builds. I can see the power builds as well.

Wildwoods got toned down a bit as they are tree models now so wont be *as* big as before.

Overall not bad. Nothing jumping out of the book as bent like the trio of op garbage books we all know and love anyway. There might be mega bent build but at least its not screaming off the page as obvious.

After doing some theoretical listbuilding it does seem like listbuilding skill will be a big factor in how well they perform. Points run out real quickly and there are some simple things that can improve any list which people may miss. Some things I noticed:

-Artifact & command trait choice matters a lot. Very few that are simply bad (good job GW) but several that strong and some that are ridiculously so, especially when combo'd properly. For example; a command trait that heals d3 wounds at the end of the hero phase if the general successfully cast any spells combined with an artifact that lets you auto-cast a spell every turn (cannot be unbound). This is one battletome where I could see myself taking battalions I did not care about to get extra artifacts. On the upside this means taking a specialized wargrove (and thus being forced to take their special artifact first) is more of a cost.

-One branchwraith is auto-take for every list. An 80-point hero with a spell that summons a 100-point unit on a 7+. Give her throne of vines as a lore spell and once that goes off she is +2 to cast as long as she doesn't move. So round one cast throne of vines (needs a 5) then spit out 10-man dryad units every round after needing only a 5+ on 2d6.

-10-man dryad units are more or less never-take, because of the above and because revenants fill the minimum battleline role better. Fortunately the horde discount is structured such that both 20 and 30-man are with taking.

-Spite-revs are worth taking now! And fill minimum battleline really well at 60 points.

-Tree-revenants are still best taken at minimum size and nothing else, fortunately with their ability to teleport every round wherever they want (9" minimum as normal) they are great to fill battleline slots with anyways.

-Treelords have come a long way since GHB1 when they were criminally overcosted. Now they seem to have swung the other way, not so much that Sylvaneth will be auto-maxxing on behemoth slots but enough that for an optimizer there needs to a reason not to (which, to be fair, there are a good number of).

-The heartwood artifact to re-roll all hits for kurnoth hunters wholly within 12" seems really cheesy, especially with bow hunters.

-Alarielle & Drycha are still undercosted in my eyes, but I don't know if I would call them full-on OP.

-The battalion selection is pretty solid. Nothing particularly game-breaking (though I would argue lords of the clan is undercosted) and they provide some fun/theme options without anything being 'take me to do better'.

-There are a ton of sub-factions (7!) and there are all really nifty. Seriously this selection makes me want to run a Sylvaneth army. None of them are flat-out bad and none of them are 'the normal army but better' like some of those in other battletomes. GW did an exceedingly good job here and I love it.

Am not sure where this can be asked, so I will ask it here. How open to counts as is AoS. In one of the w40k threads some people show models of khorn AoS models with back packs used as berzerkes. Is the reverse possible, and ok? And if yes which armies are the best to counts as, when using marine models ?

Karol wrote:
Am not sure where this can be asked, so I will ask it here. How open to counts as is AoS. In one of the w40k threads some people show models of khorn AoS models with back packs used as berzerkes. Is the reverse possible, and ok? And if yes which armies are the best to counts as, when using marine models ?

I would say it is a bit harder due to the technological additions in 40k. It is usually easier to upgrade rather than downgrade.

However, I think Tyranids could be potentially modified to be some AoS faction

Edit: Also Kroot.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
After doing some theoretical listbuilding it does seem like listbuilding skill will be a big factor in how well they perform. Points run out real quickly and there are some simple things that can improve any list which people may miss. Some things I noticed:

-Artifact & command trait choice matters a lot. Very few that are simply bad (good job GW) but several that strong and some that are ridiculously so, especially when combo'd properly. For example; a command trait that heals d3 wounds at the end of the hero phase if the general successfully cast any spells combined with an artifact that lets you auto-cast a spell every turn (cannot be unbound). This is one battletome where I could see myself taking battalions I did not care about to get extra artifacts. On the upside this means taking a specialized wargrove (and thus being forced to take their special artifact first) is more of a cost.

-One branchwraith is auto-take for every list. An 80-point hero with a spell that summons a 100-point unit on a 7+. Give her throne of vines as a lore spell and once that goes off she is +2 to cast as long as she doesn't move. So round one cast throne of vines (needs a 5) then spit out 10-man dryad units every round after needing only a 5+ on 2d6.

-10-man dryad units are more or less never-take, because of the above and because revenants fill the minimum battleline role better. Fortunately the horde discount is structured such that both 20 and 30-man are with taking.

-Spite-revs are worth taking now! And fill minimum battleline really well at 60 points.

-Tree-revenants are still best taken at minimum size and nothing else, fortunately with their ability to teleport every round wherever they want (9" minimum as normal) they are great to fill battleline slots with anyways.

-Treelords have come a long way since GHB1 when they were criminally overcosted. Now they seem to have swung the other way, not so much that Sylvaneth will be auto-maxxing on behemoth slots but enough that for an optimizer there needs to a reason not to (which, to be fair, there are a good number of).

-The heartwood artifact to re-roll all hits for kurnoth hunters wholly within 12" seems really cheesy, especially with bow hunters.

-Alarielle & Drycha are still undercosted in my eyes, but I don't know if I would call them full-on OP.

-The battalion selection is pretty solid. Nothing particularly game-breaking (though I would argue lords of the clan is undercosted) and they provide some fun/theme options without anything being 'take me to do better'.

-There are a ton of sub-factions (7!) and there are all really nifty. Seriously this selection makes me want to run a Sylvaneth army. None of them are flat-out bad and none of them are 'the normal army but better' like some of those in other battletomes. GW did an exceedingly good job here and I love it.

I agree with some of this, but some major standouts for me

-I heavily disagree that Alarielle is still undercosted. She got hit with several nerfs and went up sixty points. She is borderline playable at this point. We will see if the glade benefits and some of the combos people are coming up are worth it, but I honestly think she'll end up staying on the shelf more. At the very least she is borderline, and will require some playtesting.
-Drycha got a bit of a buff and a nerf, but a heavy point increase, so I am borderline on her. I think she is probably a tad too expensive, but in better shape than Alarielle. Jury is still out.
-The Groves open up more playstyles without having the restrictions of battalions, which is great.
-very disappointing about T. Revs. They really missed the mark here in my opinion.
-Very happy about Spite Revs. I know what most of my Looncurse models are going to be!


Overall, I am excited to get the army going, and don't feel my 3 looncurse halves were wasted.

 Eldarsif wrote:

Karol wrote:
Am not sure where this can be asked, so I will ask it here. How open to counts as is AoS. In one of the w40k threads some people show models of khorn AoS models with back packs used as berzerkes. Is the reverse possible, and ok? And if yes which armies are the best to counts as, when using marine models ?

I would say it is a bit harder due to the technological additions in 40k. It is usually easier to upgrade rather than downgrade.

However, I think Tyranids could be potentially modified to be some AoS faction

Edit: Also Kroot.

That is sad. Thank you very much .

I only say Alarielle is a bit undercosted because she summons in a 200 point unit of choice. So she's effectively 460 and gives you the benefit of being able to summon exactly what you need. I would hesitate to say she's OP, just a stronger option than average. Drycha I would agree but she gets both weapons now instead of one, a big buff. Either way I kind of feel like equal points of treelord would outperform them.

Karol wrote:

 Eldarsif wrote:

Karol wrote:
Am not sure where this can be asked, so I will ask it here. How open to counts as is AoS. In one of the w40k threads some people show models of khorn AoS models with back packs used as berzerkes. Is the reverse possible, and ok? And if yes which armies are the best to counts as, when using marine models ?

I would say it is a bit harder due to the technological additions in 40k. It is usually easier to upgrade rather than downgrade.

However, I think Tyranids could be potentially modified to be some AoS faction

Edit: Also Kroot.

That is sad. Thank you very much .

I did some of my Kurnoth Hunters based on Wraithguard bodies with dryad bits and kurnoth weapons plus some green stuff, as my Sylvaneth army has an heavy Chamon/Egyptian theme going on. There should be an example of it in my gallery. Also used a couple Lhamaens as repeater ballista servants back in the early days of AOS. Had a tought of using a wraithlord as a treeman, or vostroyans as free people allies to Kharadrons too.

Thank you for the examples. Very nice models. I was thinking about maybe trying to do something with my army, but the conversion level need for it to be acceptated is hard to achive for mostly metal models.

Well I guess I can always hope that GW adds not space marines to AoS in the future Seems like the conversion from AoS to w40k is much easier. A guy just slaped backpacks on his guys and they looked okey. My dudes don't have back packs to begin with, being termintors, but I guess there are no units in AoS that look like them.

Get your input in, goons!

Maybe have a shuffling of the AoS forums in the works:

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/775939.page#10460698