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zamerion wrote:
Did they say anything on twitch about the next preview?

Nova open should be in a couple of weeks, but since it has been canceled I don't know if there will be a preview.

No they did not, and honestly I'd not expect another preview wave until nearer mid-October when they start talking about other 40k Codices, or early 2021 releases.

ERJAK wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:

ERJAK wrote:

 Arbitrator wrote:

tulun wrote:
Any bets tournaments are going to 100% ignore this bring your own terrain nonsense?

By 'bring your own terrain' it probably means official Games Workshop(tm) terrain pieces, not build-your-own with cardboard and plaster. In that respect I imagine most will follow it to the letter, along with making the DLC mission packs a mandatory purchase.

Is your head where it is for the warmth?

If you think he's anything but 100% correct, you're smart enough to be the next US president.

So what you're saying is that hundreds of large events across the country will all switch from whatever store of terrain they have to expensive, not particularly easy to assemble or paint GW kits because of a supplement book very few people will buy?

If you believe that I have a bridge I can let you have for cheap!

If you're talking about the book itself, you're wasting your breath. Of course it'll only be GW standard issue terrain, that's why no one's going to buy it.

fething duh.

Right away? Maybe not, but it's apparent that things like this are GW attempting to wrestle back control of tournament rulesets away from unofficial-but-widespread-additions like the ITC. There's a great many tournaments out there who will very much stick hard to the letter of the law- uhh, rulebook. Terrain didn't have the same very defined rules they do now, but going by the corebook you could still flub it with your own stuff. It's not a stretch that with this new supplement they'll double down on the diameters, line-of-sight, mechanics, etc so that they align very much with the official terrain. Things like the ITC show people are, generally, willing to accept organisational additions, but that's different to homebrew rules at which most people even casually hyperventilate at the prospect of. This is only going to become more prevalent as GW offer official support/coverage and up-and-comers will follow the party line lest they risk being overlooked.

'Bring your own terrain but only official GW stuff' will probably also be supported by newer tournaments because it encourages people to dip into their own pocket and not have 1/2 people having to fork our hundreds - even for third-party laser cut stuff - because anything they can bring has official """balanced""" (as if) rules for it. Eventually this concept just becomes ingrained and normal and eventually everybody is doing it, or at least expected to. "wtf this event doesn't have entire Games Workshop(tm) boards full of their terrain? Wow it looks so cheap and poorly organised, come on bro, everyone can afford at least one/two/three pieces, it's not that much!" they'll cry.

Of course if it does end up like that, we'll likely see a slew of third-party MDF terrain and the like matching the specifics, so there's that.

I sincerely doubt it'll happen, as a general rule people don't mind buying expensive models, but will cheap out on terrain like it's no one's business.

SamusDrake wrote:
Seriously getting tired of seeing Warcry but not Kill Team in these previews. Can't they at least humour us with the long overdue Craftworlds faction set? And its not like they couldn't have done something to coincide with the whole Indomitus thing.

They are really doing a great job with Warcry and are totally missing a trick by not giving Killteam the same treatment with dedicated killteam kits for various factions. Extra bits for conversions as well as more variety of models =win. We could have Eldar outcasts/ranger teams, Ork commando teams..Tyranid Hunter teams and Guard Last Chancer teams..

Maybe Killteam will get something this Christmas mirroring the Warcry box.

They did give Killteam the same treatment though.

It was the Rogue Trader box. Which was criticized for being 'unplayable' in 40k proper for the Gellerpox and Starstriders.

The Khainite Shadowstalkers are the first non-Chaos warband we've seen. The other warbands have just been discount boxes bundled with the card packs.

One thing GW got right with the Warcry warbands that is now spreading to the Underworld ones is that they are giving them very basic group stats for the main game. In the current chaos warcry bands the models have a single profile with one or two outliers. Those outliers have things like +1 wound or +1 attack etc... Small modifications that give them a boon, but which otherwise are not dissimilar to regular infantry units in the game.

The new Daughters of Khaine warband for Underworld works the same; there's one weapon profile for the bodyguards and then a separate single hero leader profile for the queen in the set. Again simple, works well in AoS and isn't bogging it down.


The issue with characterful skirmish teams in a wargame is that they can either end up looking odd with a lot of "characters" operating as troops; or they can end up being really complicated because each model is a character in style so suddenly you've got 10 or so "leader" style units to manage.



Heck for Warcry GW even managed to make the lore work in their favour too. The Slaves to Darkness warbands are all character top of their game in Warcry; but when they join the Chaos Legions they suddenly find that they are right at the bottom again. Only rank and file basic troops in comparison to the mighty Chaos Warriors

Ehhh...that's one of the worst things they've done, to be honest. They should seriously have been given their own unit profiles for the different items. It's not like it would be super difficult given that each unit has its own distinctive visual profile.

Here's a good example of what I'm talking about:

See that 13 Wounds?
That's disgustingly bad for what these things are in Underworld. Skaeth's Wild Hunt alone is 15 Wounds, if translated 1:1.
Ylthari's Guardians are 13 Wounds themselves.

They don't need to be 100 wound powerhouses or anything, but having things rejigged into more distinctive units or semi-autonomous models would be far more appropriate. With the WarCry warbands in particular there's less of an excuse for it, since the 'units' all have distinctive names and looks and it's not like keywords can really mess with anything there.

AOs rules for Underworlds models are already mostly a convoluted mess that doesn't add anything to the game, maybe excepting the heroes with a unique spell. Would be better if they just statted up the leader as a full blown new Hero and left the rest to be used as fancy alternate poses for basic troops.

As for Kill Team... I honestly wouldn't hate it if they did a full rewrite to bring it closer to Warcry rules, and a similar level of new model support.

Am I just in a weird area both IRL and on the internet, because I've never once seen War Cry played, the stores trying to arrange events all cancelled them due to lack of popularity and GW stores appeared to be sending them back to corporate for shelf space they were so unpopular. The Warhammer World event they ran barely had any players as I recall when other systems usually sell out. Internet reviewers (outside of the usual hardcore shills) seemed to be indifferent at best or dismissive at worst.

They'll never say, "It flopped, we hope this will revitalise the game" but talking about it's 'surprise popularity' is a bit baffling to me, especially in comparison to Kill-Team.

 Arbitrator wrote:
Am I just in a weird area both IRL and on the internet, because I've never once seen War Cry played, the stores trying to arrange events all cancelled them due to lack of popularity and GW stores appeared to be sending them back to corporate for shelf space they were so unpopular. The Warhammer World event they ran barely had any players as I recall when other systems usually sell out. Internet reviewers (outside of the usual hardcore shills) seemed to be indifferent at best or dismissive at worst.

They'll never say, "It flopped, we hope this will revitalise the game" but talking about it's 'surprise popularity' is a bit baffling to me, especially in comparison to Kill-Team.

Maybe? Is AoS popular in your area? AoS is pretty popular here, and by extension, Warcry ended up being very popular as well. I've seen more WarCry games than Kill team being played since Warcry was released.

 Sasori wrote:

 Arbitrator wrote:
Am I just in a weird area both IRL and on the internet, because I've never once seen War Cry played, the stores trying to arrange events all cancelled them due to lack of popularity and GW stores appeared to be sending them back to corporate for shelf space they were so unpopular. The Warhammer World event they ran barely had any players as I recall when other systems usually sell out. Internet reviewers (outside of the usual hardcore shills) seemed to be indifferent at best or dismissive at worst.

They'll never say, "It flopped, we hope this will revitalise the game" but talking about it's 'surprise popularity' is a bit baffling to me, especially in comparison to Kill-Team.

Maybe? Is AoS popular in your area? AoS is pretty popular here, and by extension, Warcry ended up being very popular as well. I've seen more WarCry games than Kill team being played since Warcry was released.

It is actually and Underworlds has a decent following too, although that may play into it when the two games are so different. I still see plenty of Kill-Team which was extremely popular.

WarCry ended up popular, IMO, because it presented an easy to understand and easy to access way to play.
Kill Team's not super complex, but it isn't anywhere near where WarCry is.


Even more notable though is WarCry lends itself more to home play, given there's a narrative element to it. If you're in an area where players go more 'competitive' even in KT or UW? Yeah, I can't see WarCry getting the same attention.

Locally Underworlds and Warcry both get played a looot more than KT. We really just saw KT as fancy packaging for discounted terrain bundles.

SamusDrake wrote:
Seriously getting tired of seeing Warcry but not Kill Team in these previews. Can't they at least humour us with the long overdue Craftworlds faction set?

Yeah, I have no idea why GW side games team has such a big hard-on for AoS. There is now not one, but TWO Sigmar side games with completely new minis, while KT languishes completely abandoned. Especially with Shadespire thing, they could tap into 40K fan base to make the game far more popular by alternating AoS and 40K 'seasons', which would also give them opportunity to revisit finecast minis (three Grey Knights with Draigo? Court of Dark Eldar Prince? Eldar Corsairs? Valhallan IG kill team? Yriel with bodyguards? Inquisitor with retinue? Etc, etc). If they are afraid of losing theme (which is silly, cave of living bones has nothing in common with being trapped in broken mirror lost in the void) they could just make two "separate" game systems, just with wink wink understanding both are compatible and can be played against each other. Blood Bowl already mixes settings, what's one more mixed system?

The thing is that Kill Team is explicitly 40K in skirmish mode which actually puts off some new players because it’s so blatantly also a gateway game.

Now, if there was a 40K Warcry equivalent, it might well do better to focus down to forces that typically operate at a similar scale like inquisition warbands rather than reusing units from the bigger game.

The trouble is finding a place where you can have multiple factions without a clear “good guys vs. bad guys” distinction. Necromunda would be an obvious location but not a lot of Necromunda players would be happy with that…

I'm sure they could make an appropriate setting if they wanted to. They did for Shadow War Armageddon.

Still think that they should do Dark Eldar Arena

Pretty much everyone ends up there and they can take many forms..

In my environment I have not seen a single warcry campaign, much less a tournament. However, KT has been played a lot, especially when news or international tournament packs came out. Today it seems that it has declined, I suppose due to lack of news.

I think that if Kt would have had the same support as warcry has had at the level of new miniatures, the game would have sold very well. Think in arbites, squats, thousands of xeno races commented on the lore, or just miniatures for specific sub-factions of existing races...

They only tried with the rogue trader box( and to me personally, they were not as I imagined them), and they put it together with nurgle, yeah.. more nurgle..
Also his rules in Kill team are rather bad (elucidian is a close list), and unplayable in 40k..

I hope that next year they will return with real news to KT, (now that there is no more blackstone) If the rules change (although I love games with miniature activation mechanics) i hope they don't simplify it as much as warcry.

I'm actually wondering if the Pariah Nexuses are what might end up becoming the setting for the 'next' Kill-Team iteration which might lean more towards WarCry. Might sound goofy, but the one we saw talked about was not the only one if my read of "Pariah" was right.

Precipice(the 'waystation' for Blackstone Fortress) would also be a good choice for something like bringing a WarCry-esque game in.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

zamerion wrote:
In my environment I have not seen a single warcry campaign, much less a tournament. However, KT has been played a lot, especially when news or international tournament packs came out. Today it seems that it has declined, I suppose due to lack of news.

I think that if Kt would have had the same support as warcry has had at the level of new miniatures, the game would have sold very well. Think in arbites, squats, thousands of xeno races commented on the lore, or just miniatures for specific sub-factions of existing races...

They only tried with the rogue trader box( and to me personally, they were not as I imagined them), and they put it together with nurgle, yeah.. more nurgle..
Also his rules in Kill team are rather bad (elucidian is a close list), and unplayable in 40k..

I hope that next year they will return with real news to KT, (now that there is no more blackstone) If the rules change (although I love games with miniature activation mechanics) i hope they don't simplify it as much as warcry.

And this is why, personally, I think Kill Team news is not as happening right now. People act like they want KT to just be an avenue for new models and weird, minor factions. They gave us two new ones and the only comments you ever see about them are how their rules are "unplayable in 40k".

WarCry only gave us Chaos Warbands from the different Realms, some Chaos beasts, and tons of scenery.

One key difference is that Killteam began life as the introduction game to 40K. IT was always designed from the ground up to use regular 40K troop boxes and to build up forces slowly. It's one weakness was that whilst it was aimed at being the light way to get into the game; the mechanics of building a force could mean you'd need two or three boxes to get unit variety.

Warcry however started life as a totally separate game where one-box purchases got you a varied warband. It then got rejiggled a bit and is now also the introduction game. Warbands with their own warband models are one-box purchases that give you a varied force; whilst regular armies can also buy into it, but again need to buy several boxes for model variety. What we are seeing with the new Daughters of Khaine set is the single box varied warband being rolled out for an army other than Slaves to Darkness.

I really hope it rolls out well in both AoS and Warcry because that means theres' a good chance it will be a pattern other armies will get as well. Even if every army only has one warband style force it would be something.

I really, really, really cannot stress enough how badly designed the WarCry Warbands and Underworlds are for actual AoS play though.

Everything's just thrown in there. One of the biggest downsides of AoS is that we only have four 'categories' for things to fall under: hero, unit, artillery, and behemoth. And it's not like there is no room for having one-off character units or the like in AoS.

Going back to my Skaeth's Wild Hunt example?

It wouldn't be difficult to do the units as a mini-Warscroll Battalion.

Skaeth's Wild Hunt:
Skaeth(4W Hero slot with 12"/4+ Sv, Javelin of the Hunt stays the same)
Karthaen, Sheoch, and Althaen all get 3W/5+ Sv with their unique weapons and are taken as units of their own.
Lighaen(the battlecat) 2W/5+ Sv and a Fight+Fade ability--also an individual unit, but gets bonuses to its attack characteristics when fighting with one of the Wild Hunt within 3" or the like.

With the WarCry warbands we saw, things could be split out. Corvus Cabal, for example, could be:
-Shadow Piercer as its own thing.
-Shrike Talon as its own thing.
-Spire Stalkers as their own thing.
-Cabalists as the basic 'unit'.

I don't know why they insisted on just making lump units.

Except that is what makes them work well in AoS. Having them as a single functional unit means that they are easy to use without bogging the game down tracking 5 or more different units with one purchase on the points chart.

The other option would be to divide them into heroes and troops etc..., but at that point it gets messy to buy. You might want 20 troopers, but not 3 or 4 leaders and each box might only have 4 troopers and 1 leader so suddenly you're getting loads of wasted leaders etc....



That said I do agree that AoS could do with more unit roster types. I figure its ok right now because a lot of factions only have a handful of models, but in time I hope we do see things expand a bit; giving the game new niches and such.

 Mr_Rose wrote:
The thing is that Kill Team is explicitly 40K in skirmish mode which actually puts off some new players because it’s so blatantly also a gateway game.

Now, if there was a 40K Warcry equivalent, it might well do better to focus down to forces that typically operate at a similar scale like inquisition warbands rather than reusing units from the bigger game.

The trouble is finding a place where you can have multiple factions without a clear “good guys vs. bad guys” distinction. Necromunda would be an obvious location but not a lot of Necromunda players would be happy with that…

The sad thing is, they already hit the jackpot in terms of gateway game - one of plastic HH boxes had excellent skirmish system that worked very well with 40K miniatures. Sadly, very few people had given it a chance. If they used this one, instead of 'more complicated 40K' Kill Team had, I bet the game would be far more popular.

As for setting, multiple good suggestions above, but by far the best one would be on Terra - we know Custodes capture things from all over the Galaxy and make them fight each other (with Custodes sometimes joining in) to observe how they think and fight - why not use this relatively new lore bit?

Overread wrote:
Except that is what makes them work well in AoS. Having them as a single functional unit means that they are easy to use without bogging the game down tracking 5 or more different units with one purchase on the points chart.

The other option would be to divide them into heroes and troops etc..., but at that point it gets messy to buy. You might want 20 troopers, but not 3 or 4 leaders and each box might only have 4 troopers and 1 leader so suddenly you're getting loads of wasted leaders etc

You're aware, by the by, that you already do buy several of the Underworld units as two different things?
Ylthari's Guardians, Godsworn Hunt, Magore's Fiends(Riptooth is bought separately!), Eyes of the Nine, Grashrak's Despoilers, Wurmspat, The Chosen Axes, Thundrik's Profiteers, Stormsire's Cursebreakers, Zarbag's Gits, Hrothgorn's Maneaters, The Grymwatch, Thorns of the Briar Queen, and Morgwaeth's Blade-Coven.

Out of all of those listed, only Eyes of the Nine and Thorns of the Briar Queen have 'generic' models present. There is zero reason that we can't get away with the idea of these warbands being mini-heroes present in the army. Especially when, as shown in Morgwaeth's Blade-Coven, they outright say:

Unique. These units must be taken as a set for a total of 140 points. Although taken as a set, each is a separate unit.

Even if we made them all 5W Heroes, I legitimately wouldn't see an issue with making them individual 'mini-heroes' that are a unit rather than a leader/hero choice making it go from 9W total to 20W total and points remaining roughly the same. They're Unique.

And heck, the Gloomspite have a unit which is organized exactly like I'm suggesting in the form of the Gobbapalooza! 18W and coming out at 180pts.

A lot of GW decisions about how to include box game models into the Big Two are bizarre. Besides everything Kan mentioned there is also a general stance of allowing the contents of one box only (Warcry warbands excepted). The most blatantly obvious being the Gellerpox and the BSF chaos stuff. Why does GW even actively discourage people from buying multiple boxes to make a thematic 40k/AoS force?

 Irbis wrote:

SamusDrake wrote:
Seriously getting tired of seeing Warcry but not Kill Team in these previews. Can't they at least humour us with the long overdue Craftworlds faction set?

Yeah, I have no idea why GW side games team has such a big hard-on for AoS. There is now not one, but TWO Sigmar side games with completely new minis, while KT languishes completely abandoned.

I think it might be that 40k doesn't really need much help getting newcomers involved. There's less need for a gateway game when it already has an absurd percentage of the market share. It might also have something to do with them seeing Combat Patrol 500pts as going back to being said gateway - and it's arguably easier to keep people spending when you're literally playing the same game already, whilst Kill-Team arguably has a cut off point.

By comparison, AoS is doing healthily but nowhere near the numbers of 40k. That's a mixture of disenfranchised WHFB players, 40k players who don't want to start a whole new system and just generally being a new IP. By presenting multiple smaller games within the same universe - and not necessarily 'gateway games' as I don't really consider Underworlds such, it's far too different - they're lowering the proverbial barrier to entry a bit, because people who pick them up already know of the models, the lore, the IP itself and might dip into that.

 Sasori wrote:

 Arbitrator wrote:
Am I just in a weird area both IRL and on the internet, because I've never once seen War Cry played, the stores trying to arrange events all cancelled them due to lack of popularity and GW stores appeared to be sending them back to corporate for shelf space they were so unpopular. The Warhammer World event they ran barely had any players as I recall when other systems usually sell out. Internet reviewers (outside of the usual hardcore shills) seemed to be indifferent at best or dismissive at worst.

They'll never say, "It flopped, we hope this will revitalise the game" but talking about it's 'surprise popularity' is a bit baffling to me, especially in comparison to Kill-Team.

Maybe? Is AoS popular in your area? AoS is pretty popular here, and by extension, Warcry ended up being very popular as well. I've seen more WarCry games than Kill team being played since Warcry was released.

Yeah, I think you are in a weird area. The metro I lived in when KT came out had a ton of people pick it up and it was played heavily for about 6 weeks, and then a lot of players realized they didn't really enjoy it or something and all the tournaments stopped. The local store I frequented had the original starter box on their shelves when the new one came out. I couldn't find games anywhere after a couple months, and the group that played it briefly at the LGS I most frequented moved over to Infinity.

The new metro I live in has tons of Warcry tournaments (at least before Covid), but conversely I haven't seen a KT tournament (nor even anyone playing KT) in almost a year (though Covid makes the last few months not really applicable). Partially I think this is because KT has an awkward ruleset, but I another part is that at the couple LGS I go to most often AoS is way more popular than 40k. When you go on 40k/AoS night there is usually one game of 40k (sometimes) going on and 8-10 of AoS.

I'm also imagining Warcry gets more play at home as it's a game that's friendlier to boardgamers who dabble in minis.

I would love to have a proper 40K skirmish game, but Kill Team isn't what I want. It is just 40K in small scale, there is nothing unique to it. I want something between Kill Team and Necromunda, I want official Inquisimunda! I want a game where you can use some some 40K stuff, but there is a lot of customisability and ability to wield all sorts of weirdoes.

 Crimson wrote:
I would love to have a proper 40K skirmish game, but Kill Team isn't what I want. It is just 40K in small scale, there is nothing unique to it. I want something between Kill Team and Necromunda, I want official Inquisimunda! I want a game where you can use some some 40K stuff, but there is a lot of customisability and ability to wield all sorts of weirdoes.

Yeah, this is how I feel as well.

I wouldn’t say not to that at all.

WarCry is particularly cool because it’s a way for the design team to explore whatever, without really needing to expand it beyond what, a dozen models, tops?