I was at my local
GW today and I helped the manager and a couple of other regulars assemble the new Malign Sorcery box set.
In case you don't know what that is here is a link, it explains better than I.
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/06/15/14th-june-preview-malign-sorcerygw-homepage-post-4/
Some feedback.
The Purple Sun, screaming peasant not included.
Oh how I wish they had made this earlier, I have been wanting
GW to make spell effects for a long time. Its now the Purple Sun of Shysh but it can function as an upgraded Purple Sun of Zereus for retro warhammer layers out there. Thing is, this kit is BIG, larger than a tennis ball. You will find the assembly taxing, by far the hardest part of the box to build. The shell of the purple sun is built around an armature made of what can be best described as a geodesic ball made of sprue. Take your time with this or you will have unsightly gaps, and as the completed model is hollow good luck filling the gaps with putty. The end result does look like a puffer fish with skullz, but is impressive nonetheless.
The contents image below does
not show the armature the Purple Sun is built around.
The Suffocating Gravetide.
This is a grave earth/spirit tsunami, it has slabs with
AOS iconogrpahy on it, to fit the common basing theme. The iconography could be filed away and replaced with Imperium iconography, or just left as plain slabs. The skulls cresting the wave are angular and look very necron. Once
AOS imagery is gone this would be an excellent scenic base for a Necron vehicle or C'tan.
Assembly feedback - errors in the instruction manual.
The instruction manual is clear and well labelled as we have ome to expect with
GW models kits. However there are errors, so a heads up is warranted. The bases are given a letter code, this has also changed. You will see nine 40mm round bases and two 50mm round bases on the base sprue. One of the models the Burning Head is listed as using part E2 one of the 40mm bases, it actually uses part E6 one of the 50mm bases. The sizing is inconsistent between the images so evidently the artwork for the assembly was chopped and changed with production. So a heads up for you. If you build the Burning Head last you cant go wrong.
Usage.
There is a lot of nice stuff here. I can see functionality not only for
AOS but also for older editions of Warhammer, though it might require rebasing, or accepting the current bases for the old rules. Purple Sun will definitely need rebasing, and gluing to a 5" round artillery blast will be simple enough anyway. You could cover most of the Remains in Play spells from old warhammer with this kit, and those missing will be out in race specific expansions. I already anticipate my Foot of Gork.
There is also a lot of usage for D&D. Common nasty residual spells like Blade Barrier and Flaming Sphere can be nicely modelled with this kit.
Conclusion.
I rate this kit highly and am very impressed. If I have any negative thoughts about this kit it is that some of the details are chunky, the Quicksilver Swords are overscaled, I would have prefered more more normal sized swords. However its not too big as to be unforgivable let alone unusable. Furthermore
GW has gone light on skullz, there are skullz, some prominent ones but overall they are fairly sparingly applied, overall skull usage has been fairly restrained.
The boxset contains full rules and a painting guide, which I did not think to ask to see (not being interested in
AOS). The manager did not confirm the price but believed it will be £45 from
GW retail, expensive of course but a good deal by
GW standards as the kit is good quality, nicely sculpted, well executed and well presented.