by Peter Atkinson
Spooky ghosts are zipping around wherever the hell they like, Teclis is auto-flooding entire tables with Endless Spells and huge blocks of Gluttons are wandering around stuffing their faces. The West is Wild and while there’s a few things that need, um, looked at…at least we’re making memories. I hope you’ve enjoyed the first month of AOS4 – the relearning curve is steep, but I’m loving it so far.
Here on Plastic Craic we publish all AOS, all the time – so welcome to our regular monthly catch-up of recent articles in case you missed a good un, along with a look ahead to what’s coming in August, plus a check-in on what’s happening in the Craicheads community.
Ready? Let’s go.
Indexhammer: July 24
We published 12 articles in July, plus the same number again on our Patreon site.
4th Edition
Calvin kicked the month off with a review of the Manifestation Lores and brilliantly for our street cred, he was clear and emphatic in grading Morbid Conjuration as an Easy A grade. I’m sure everyone is claiming they “always knew” it was the best, but we’ve got it there on the record in black and white, and we called it before the results started rolling in. It’s easy to forget now, but the earliest moral panic was mostly around Krondspine, so hats off to Calvin for sticking out his neck and absolutely nailing it.
Pete updated and finalised his review of 4th Edition Battle Tactics – a rare example of the man following up on a promise to go back and clean something up later, as demonstrated by his shelves full of slap-dash, get-it-ready-for-a-tourney miniatures that are still waiting for that second pass. TLDR: there’s loads of counterplay and denial opportunities.
And rounding out this section, Pat did a hit piece on the worst Monsters in early 4th Edition. Who’d have guessed? It turns out that every single hard-luck story happens to come from a faction that Pat himself plays (Source: Pat).
Faction Coverage
We’re not in the business of rushing out half-arsed regurgitations: we aim to bring you better reviews, from better players. So as we’re rolling out the detailed Faction reviews, we’re taking votes over on the Patreon site (Brute Tier and above) for which ones we’ll do and in what order, but the motto is: others can do it first, and we’ll do it best.
Pete launched into Sons of Behemat with a detailed faction review plus a special feature on his pet unit, the Kraken-eater. Fish Breath is actually pretty playable now under the right circumstances.
Notorious rat-fancier Theo went through every single warscroll (and then some) in the teeming Skaven faction pack, and the OG BOC guy Joel McGrath went balls-deep into the goats with his BOC review.
In Gloomspite it’s all about Troggs currently – they’re tough and easy to push around, so go figure. No judgment – I’m currently riding the Ogor Glutton train myself – but I do think there’s some life in the Moonclan part of that army, and it’s just a bit less obvious than Push Troggs Forward.
Gloomspite in 4th Ed: The Power of MSU Moonclan
Hobby
BAM! The Spearhead Hobby Challenge is up and running. We’ve got two great updates from Seanzor, firstly a kick-off with who’s doing what and then a second update at roughly the halfway stage:
Spearhead Hobby Challenge Update: Let This Crew Cook
Still time to get involved if you can knock out a few units in a month. There’s prizes!
Community
In addition to the Spearhead Hobby Challenge, we crowd-sourced an overview of the early meta. This one was a group project with our Patrons so it’s locked behind a password, which will also save us from public embarrassment in the cases we were collectively miles off:
Protected: [PATREON Article] Predicting the Early Meta: Results and Analysis
Just a bit of fun and a kind of social experiment to track how well we can actually judge these things, without any selective memory. Looking forward to going back and reviewing it at the first Metawatch update.
Craicheads
We’re rapt to welcome our new Patrons since the last update:
Thank you so much to everyone for getting involved.
We’re committed to giving our members good value by publishing an average of 2+ AOS articles every week on the main site, in addition to the Patron-only posts on that platform too. The Discord is members and writers only (No Dickheads Policy) so if you want to join us, you know what to do.
Plastic Craic Community Update
As mentioned above, the Spearhead Hobby Challenge will run through July and August. Still plenty of time to get involved – I’m doing Kruleboyz for mine, and I’m keen on actually getting into Spearhead once I’ve really got AOS4 bedded in.
Our PC Book Club has finished up our first book – we won’t always do Black Library books, but we did this time, and we’ve all been reading Dark Harvest by Josh Reynolds.
We’re giving ourselves a month off in August – everyone is busy relearning the game, working on our Spearhead projects and frantically painting up old units that are suddenly and randomly really good. So we’ll discuss and choose our next book to read in September – if you want to nominate a book (Warhammer or otherwise), just jump into the Book Club channel in the Discord.
We’re also working together on the SkuttleBonez Army of Renown, which will be a supplement to give players of those armies a way to use their minis after they are retired. The project has been put on ice for now – the landscape has changed a lot in 4th, and there’s slightly less urgency since we know the Splitterz have a 12-month run-off. But it’s not looking great for Spiderfang, so we’ll definitely be coming back to it once the dust settles a little. One idea we’re developing is how to use the Rogue Idol – a lot of people love Pebbles, so we want him to be involved in some way. Making him into free faction terrain doesn’t really work because you can’t make an out-of-print model essential (not everyone has one), so we’re kicking around ideas for a warscroll or even making him an option for your Manifestation Lore, like the Krondspine. Watch this space.
What’s Next
The big focus for August will be continuing to work on the Faction reviews, as voted for by our Patrons. That means Kruleboyz and Tzeentch up next, followed by Ogors.
We’ve also got a bunch of GTs coming up: the writing team will be at Border Wars (Pat, Joel and Tom) and Sigmar at the Arena (Pete, Pat and Joel) so look out for their tournament coverage, with list tech, tips for 4th Edition and glorious tales of victory. And if you haven’t heard anything by this time next month, you can probably assume it’s all just been swept quietly under the carpet.
Wishing you all a safe and successful August – and thanks again for all your support, it’s what keeps us going.
If you’d like to help us continue our work, we’d love to have your support. All Patreon Tiers include Discord access, exclusive articles and regular contests. Our Tiers are priced to be within everyone’s reach, so please click here to join us today!
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