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I don't understand how GW is organizing these AoS armies. I have a nice sized WoC army that was Archeon themed in 8th and was excited to see the new Everchosen Battletome as it seemed to fit exactly what I was building. But It doesn't seem that there are many warscrolls associated specifically with the Everchosen 'faction' in Chaos. When I look at the Everchosen in the AoS app I see 3 warscrolls: Arch, Varagards, and a Tzeentch wizard. I would think the Chaos Warriors would be the bread and butter troops of the Everchosen faction, but ?

I have not read the Battletome so maybe I'm inferring the wrong things from the layout of the app. I was hoping to see a more cohesive set of models associated with the Everchosen (similar to the Khorne Bloodbound or the Stormcast) but I'm not seeing it. Can anyone shed a little light on this? Does the Battletome give a little more character to the Everchosen faction then what the AoS app implies?

I haven't read the Battletome, but I had assumed that it was a Chaos faction, like the Khorne Bloodbound, so you would fill your ranks with Chaos Warriors and stuff.

Long story short?
"Everchosen" is only for Archaon, the Varanguard(his personal guard/heralds/champions), and the Gaunt Summoners(his personal Sorcerers). There's formations within for each God, but they're very flexible simply requiring a hero marked for that God and a number of Mortal units marked for that God, tying to the God's sacred number(Slaanesh gets 6 units, Nurgle 7, Khorne 8, and Tzeentch 9) with bonuses for units having those number of models.

You're supposed to pull from Khorne Bloodbound and Warriors of Chaos.

I think the battletomes are going the way 40k cedexes seem to be going with admech and skitari being 2 different books for some reason. I doubt we'll see a 'chaos' battletome, I'd expect one for each god to match the khorne one with everchosen and maybe a demons one on top.

I don't think they'll be any rhyme or reason to when and which battletomes come out, other than they'll match the new releases.

Gone are the days of the codex churn imo, newer battletomes will often perhaps overlap with existing battletomes but we won't see direct replacements for battletomes with newer versions.

The idea of "factions" will slowly dissolve away. Every model gets given a Warscroll upon its release and the battletomes are simply themed groupings of warscrolls.

 Bottle wrote:
I don't think they'll be any rhyme or reason to when and which battletomes come out, other than they'll match the new releases.

Gone are the days of the codex churn imo, newer battletomes will often perhaps overlap with existing battletomes but we won't see direct replacements for battletomes with newer versions.

The idea of "factions" will slowly dissolve away. Every model gets given a Warscroll upon its release and the battletomes are simply themed groupings of warscrolls.

So maybe what your saying is true and they will not have quite the rigorous distinction between armies as they had before. Everchosen is really the first example in AoS of a Battletome without an army per se. (In the same vein as Stormcast, Bloodbound and Saraphon). It makes me think they are phasing out generic chaos warriors and chaos war hounds and chaos knights, etc. in favor of Chaos God specific units as with the Khorne army. Otherwise those units would have gotten a pretty write up in the book and a place in the app with the Everchosen. Right now those units are looking like 8th Ed left overs. (forsaken, chaos spawn, chaos ogres and trolls, dragon ogres, chosen, chaos shrine, chimera, just to name a few more).

Nothing says we can't use them of course but if they don't show up in Everchosen they're not likely to show up at all in an AoS form except in a God specific way. For example Chaos Warriors of Khorne are really now Blood Warriors, etc.

I also don't think factions are going away. AoS is clearly a keyword synergy kind of game. And though you CAN take whatever unit you want the keywords do impose a sort of coherence with groups of units to perform at their best. The Battletomes should represent that coherence otherwise why buy them? If you want the fluff, read the black library books. A couple generic battalion set ups? A few model pics? I don't know. Just doesn't seem worth it to me unless it brings to the table a coherent set of units (an army!) that I want to sink a few hundred bucks building.

GW baffles me.

I think the appeal of the battletomes is most definitely the fluff. I know you state your preference for black library books but that is definitely not the case for all. Personally I wouldn't ever buy a AoS black library book because imo they are terribly written and I would much rather learn the backstory from sourcebook style fluff than from a sub-par novel (YMMV).

So I see the Battletomes role as being a suppliment for players who really want to sink their teeth into the backstory that the book covers with the fluff and battleplans.

I think its not so much about having all laid out in a book with all the army options but rather giving you some ideas and starting points and then you run with it in your own way.

So for example you get the archaon, varanguards and sorcerer for starters and expand the warband with what you prefer, its your call.
I think the solution is on the rumoured new starter boxes and its something that GW will be doing more in the future. For chaos you will have 3 of them... if I was starting a full archaon army from scratch I would get the Slaves of darkness box as the back bone. ( sorcerer, chariot, 12 Chaos warriors and 5 knights).
That starter box and the 3 new releases will cover most traditional options but if you are adventurous you can expand on different directions too nothing stopping you in AoS.

The flexibility is there to be exploit and thats the fun bit about AoS. I dont have the new Archy but I recently found my lost blisters of Archaon on foot and even if there are no rules for it I will do small side project next year with him on foot and some Chosen and Varanguards on foot too just for the kicks. Not all battles take place on a battlefield or are between huge armies so a small skirmish chaos warband with archaon and its bodyguard sounds like a great opportunity to have fun.