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It was supposedly confirmed at Warhammer Fest that each Grand Alliance would receive at least one more battletome each this year.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

Quasistellar wrote:
So. . . Are they going to bring back the Excelsior Warpriest? Devoted of Sigmar book incoming?

Battletome confirmed!

We know there's a Freeguild book being worked on, to the point of Nick Kyme(I think it was?) joking about wanting to write a blurb about a farmer who gets pressed into service...and being told publicly to check his DMs by Ben Johnson.


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 Ghaz wrote:
It was supposedly confirmed at Warhammer Fest that each Grand Alliance would receive at least one more battletome each this year.

From the Q&A apparently. They've asked people to stop filming them, but you can take notes.

I'm down for this to be honest. We've had 2 Order books, both of which have been revamps. We've had 3 Chaos books(Hedonites, Blades, and Skaven)--two are new while one is a revamp. We've had one Death book(Flesh-Eaters) and one Destruction(Gloomspite). Both are kinda/sorta revamps but with some new stuff that makes them different to previous iterations--and Gloomspite umbrellaed three subfactions into one effectively.

 Ghaz wrote:
It was supposedly confirmed at Warhammer Fest that each Grand Alliance would receive at least one more battletome each this year.

Aye, the Death Grand Alliance has people wondering because Death is currently the only complete Grand Alliance (going by the webstore listings) in terms of Battletome coverage. That said GW hasn't given one single hint at what another Death faction could be so whilst its curious info there is nothing to get people excited about yet. And that makes sense since right now its all about Forbidden Powers and Warcry.


Personally I'm expecting Warcry to come close to Slaves to Darkness which should complete most of Chaos unless GW wants to do Everchosen (I've also read mixed views on if Tzeentch needs a Battletome update or not). Destruction should hopefully get at least two tomes this year which would hopefully complete them (assuming that the unit both ogor groups and orruk groups into single books like they did with Gloomspite; though of the two orruks could be kept separate which would take it to 3 books). Order is the big questionmark with what they will do in terms of the Aelves, but otherwise things like Free Peoples and Dwarves are pretty safe stable bets to get a Tome and there's a few more in there to update to newer versions (seraphon to name one).


All in all its looking very strong that AoS will be nearly complete on Battletomes come the end of the year.

To be fair, Death is only "complete" because they put a vast majority of the stuff they would need to release into Legions of Nagash.

 Overread wrote:

All in all its looking very strong that AoS will be nearly complete on Battletomes come the end of the year.

In the Q+A, the devs said that 2 years is the goal for all factions to get updates, per Vince Venturella's breakdown:

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/1050/763364.page

The fun question will be will they either switch design paradigms midstream, or change design paradigms after finishing, thus starting the cycle all over of needing updated books.

Depends on what big paradigm they have left to switch around. Hard to say as someone might get a good idea that they want to immediately implement.

The big implementations so far seem rather concrete:
- Summoning is a thing
- Endless Spells
- All abilities are wholly within
- Natural Dice Rolls
- Abilities are more often than not Command Abilities

The mercenary paradigm seems rather universal so it may affect things less than any individual army related paradigm. Depends on how freely mercenaries can apply themselves to grand alliances.


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 Kanluwen wrote:
To be fair, Death is only "complete" because they put a vast majority of the stuff they would need to release into Legions of Nagash.

I personally feel they should apply similar constraints to many existing factions just to make it so that they are not trying to throw out endless amount of factions as they tried in AoS 0.0. I mean, they could make larger factions like the Nagash one but keep them open enough for their own specialty tome later down the line. Otherwise they are going to have a lot of small factions without diversity where they need to make ton of new models which will slow down the faction release in an unrealistic manner.

With design paradigms its hard to say what will happen. They typically involve wholesale changing of directions and can be any of a hundred or more directions.

Typically it will manifest as a rule some book will get that is very powerful and then other books will start picking that rule up too, with no counters to it being present until a year or so down the life cycle.

 auticus wrote:
With design paradigms its hard to say what will happen. They typically involve wholesale changing of directions and can be any of a hundred or more directions.

Typically it will manifest as a rule some book will get that is very powerful and then other books will start picking that rule up too, with no counters to it being present until a year or so down the life cycle.

I would also add that a paradigm change is the first signal to a new edition.

The recent Warhammer Tv video pointed out two foci for Forbidden Power, the first was a run of Endless spells with a Death theme that didn't require Death faction to use. This smacks of a rerun of the everyone is now a necromancer of late End Times.

Second it was implied that cetain powerful beings were released from the stormvaults but no reveal of who they were was given. I can guess though. Likely amongst others a number of od warhammer world chartacters that never made the transition to Age of Sigmar but had a resurge of attention due to total War Warhammer.
just guessing here but unlocked from a prison is a good way to get Kemmler, Sigvald and Crone Hellebron - amongst others - back in the active game

I don't think its an "everyone is a necromancer" but more that we'll likely see them do endless spells themed to faction and now spells themed to realm with the first realm being death after the necroquake.

Death=/=Undeath in Warhammer. Living people with no association with the undead have always had access to spells of death, going back to WHFB. Any faction can summon a purple sun, for example!

Its a nit pick but my problem with all the Forbidden Power endless spells being Death is that Death already has the most endless spell when compared to the other realms.

4 out of the the 13(14 if you count the Bailwind) spells from Malign Sorcery were already from the realm of Death; Purple Sun, Malevolent Maelstorm, Suffocating Gravetide, and Soulsnare Shackles(this last one really should have been Chamon if you ask me).

After Forbidden Power
No realm: 3
Realm of Fire: 1
Realm of Metal: 1
Realm of Light: 2
Realm of Shadow: 2
Realm of Beast: 1
Realm of Life: 1
Realm of Death: 8

The bridge eats up a lot of sprue space. Maybe other realm themed boxes will have more smaller spells to make it even.

Honestly it sounds like they might not even all have the same content. GW has left the door open for the content being "anything".

We might see one that is more terrain than spells or even see models appearing in them in the form of wild magical beasts of no fixed alliance (if they do the latter I hope its GW models not overseas china ones - only because GW's overseas casting is good but not "as good" as their in house in terms of detailing).

 Overread wrote:

We might see one that is more terrain than spells or even see models appearing in them in the form of wild magical beasts of no fixed alliance (if they do the latter I hope its GW models not overseas china ones - only because GW's overseas casting is good but not "as good" as their in house in terms of detailing).

That is true for the terrain and endless spells, but all the recent Underworlds warbands are also cast in China and obviously they are maximum precision models indistinguishable from anything UK made.

I agree GW might experiment more with future kits (and I admit it's a bit of an assumption for now that they'll make one for each realm). With Warcry already including some random critters you could very well be right.

 Venerable Ironclad wrote:
Its a nit pick but my problem with all the Forbidden Power endless spells being Death is that Death already has the most endless spell when compared to the other realms.

I think that's just a side effect of GW's ongoing narrative approach to writing the background. I mean just for comparison, think about how much background focus Ulgu and Hysh got compared to Aqshy, Chamon and Ghyran that have been written about since the Realmgate Wars. GW is doing Soul Wars and Necroquake for now, so it stands to reason the models would tie into that.

Not exactly a fair approach, but then we don't have light elves, shadow elves or actual AoS era Order humans yet either. GW doesn't seem to be in a hurry to establish anything approaching parity.

Ya it was just a nit pick and ultimately, I do commend them for following their setting and narrative. I can put up with some greater focus on death for this set, but I might start to have issue if they are still focusing on death with their next batch of endless spells.

Yeah, as much as I am partial to Death and would like to see more armies (or any new models, really) released, faction overload is a thing that doesn't really help anybody.

I don't think GW will dwell on the Death side of things for much longer, though. I may be reading too much into it, but with Forgotten Power all the pieces are there to move on. Stormvaults are all across the Mortal Realms, with a variety of themes, so GW can take that wherever they like. There are now cracks in the spells holding Slaanesh, so Ulgu and Hysh could come into focus with freeing Slaanesh being the next thing. Conflict between Teclis and Sigmar is foreshadowed by Sigmar tweaking Teclis's knowledge engines and perverting their purpose.

With the talk of how we'll get at least another battletome for each Grand Alliance and what's been hinted at for the Forbidden Power story I think Death gets a new Mortarch with accompanying army and that will be it for Death for the foreseeable future, with some more elves following afterwards. In the grand scheme of things anyway. A little interlude with something new for Destruction, hardly a faction overflowing with Age of Sigmar era models, wouldn't go amiss.

I will say though that the approach to these narrative/campaign books is exactly what a lot of people wanted out of End Times. Intervals between them being so long that you can actually build an army for it and play it before the next one comes out. I like that.

My Wallet hopes you are right Geifer.... Too many death releases in a single year!

Some concrete info. Mercenaries work like allies so only 400 points in a 2000 army. You can only take one mercenary company in each army. From the two lists so far you can't rake rune fathers, terrorgheists or zombie dragons. If you include mercenaries you don't get a command point on the first turn, so it is effectively a 50 point tax. Both companies get small bonuses and negatives. The flesh eaters can't retreat for example.
It doesn't look like anything particularly earth shattering in terms of balance so far. The ghb will probably introduce some more mercenary companies.
As a side note the new scenery piece costs 100 points and counts as an ally.

If this video's opinion proves accurate then I think its in a really good spot. The Endless Spells pretty much will enter mainstream use in matched play; whilst the Forbidden powers will settle in with being a mostly campaign system with some neat lore bolted on.

Terrain item at 100 points is a steep cost, but good to see it with a price that makes it a choice rather than an auto-must-have. In addition being what it is I'm sure it will see table time as just terrain too on many boards.

It would appear that most of this is mostly campaign use, which i enjoy. The tourney folks seem to be making a hard pass on it as there is nothing busted, which is also good imo.

From what i hear and understand, this is a solid narrative release.

Aye and that's really encouraging, plus there's something for both sides since the spells and terrain will certainly see use in matched play

Chikout wrote:
The ghb will probably introduce some more mercenary companies.

That was confirmed on the Warhammer Fest live feed on Warhammer Community:

For narrative players... New mercenary companies allow you to add a selection of narrative-led, thematic units to your army. Perhaps you’ll employ the Maneaters of the Gutstuffers, or a Gargant from the notorious Grugg Brothers.

 auticus wrote:
It would appear that most of this is mostly campaign use, which i enjoy. The tourney folks seem to be making a hard pass on it as there is nothing busted, which is also good imo.

From what i hear and understand, this is a solid narrative release.

Exactly what I am looking for, very excited.

Found one fairly annoying thing.

The skeletal boat guy spell puts you at 9" of an enemy. In your hero phase. And then you can move, run, and charge.

So ... alpha alpha strikes if you can get that spell off.

And in exchange, you have to kill off a model within that unit. Small potatoes if, say, you're dropping a blob of 1W models.
Totally different thing if dropping a unit of decent W, decent save models.

Also, since it's an Endless Spell? Your opponent can seize control of it.

Yes. It is in essence the ability to teleport any unit you want into combat from anywhere on the table. At the price of one model.

Yep and the 1 model loss is likely less than you'd lose to a turn of being shot at crossing that distance normally. For armies like Skaven able to take 30 and 40 unit blocks easily it will be a powerful model; for armies like Stormcast it might not be as advantageous to take; though even then against some ranged heavy armies it might actually be a boon for any force to have.


And yeah its a predatory Endless Spell, however units have to embark before it moves. So in theory if you move a large enough blob of your own troops with it, your opponent shouldn't easily be able to get their own units close enough to take full advantage. Though they can likely send it far off to useless corners or try and steal it for their own use for a turn.

Considering it does no damage and has no aura I'd treat it as a one-shot transport spell. If you can get more out of it great, but otherwise I thing summon and move then either distract or unbind it (or scar your opponent somehow to unbinding it so you can cast it again). If need be just aim it off-table to unsummon it.