The new season will start on Monday, November 24th.

Greetings, citizens!

From the cursed resilience of the Death Guard we move to the impenetrable bulwark that is the Astra Militarums armoured tank divisions. Grinding forward, the Emperor’s wrath crushes the pestilent heretic beneath iron-wrought treads.Needless to say this Season’s focus is the armoured wing of the Astra Militarum with a new thematic Warlord to lead your vehicles into battle.

Seasonal Balance Changes:

Talking all things mechanical we have two Necron Warlords getting a glow up this season and Glogthrox slightly late to the Nurgle party last season! Also notable we are having no WL nerf this season. Interestingly enough Lady Malys is the top WL this Season with an 87.8% winrate but with only a 0.2% playrate. So we’re going to give her a bit more time to settle in and reach a higher play rate before making any moves on her rules.

Additionally those of you who know the number of Warlords currently available off the top of your head may notice two are missing from the bottom of the rankings. These are both Canis Rex and Hatred’s Embrace. Given these Warlords are set up to be most effective in a 400pt format we don’t want to adjust them further to a point where they are overly powerful at 200pts and therefore dominant at 400pts. We’re happy to leave them as is for now, and their 400pt win data is very respectable as is.

Position: 68th | Winrate: 70.4% | Playrate: 0.4%

-5 Cost

Ulthakar is a difficult one with his fixed value trait, but as a trade off does offer very high value in the early game. So while he’s struggling in the later more competitive arenas we were assuming he was fine for lower ranked players. He’s still decidedly middling there. The biggest logical reason for this is that while his rule is powerful in the early game, his cost means that he can be a bit awkward to fit by the time the points are available there may be better options. So, we’ve slashed a big chunk of his points off and taken him out of BGH range making him much more flexible and a much easier inclusion in the early decks where he can thrive.

Position: 67th | Winrate: 73.0% | Playrate: 0.6%

Phantom Visions: When defending, if a friendly card does not make an attack, reduce damage dealt to it by [-40 -> -50%]

Manifest Nightmare is a fine defensive Warlord, and this Season actually marks his first appearance in the bottom 5. As a defensive playstyle there are now other Warlords that do it better, and it can be argued with the huge buffs to the Corpse Lord, he’s now in front as the premier defensive Necron pick. Manifest Nightmare is a bit more of a build around rule than the Corpse Lord and so can be less flexible. As a result we’re raising the Psychomancer up so that each of the two defensive options sit at around the same power level and with distinct identities.

Position: 66th | Winrate: 73.0% | Playrate: 1.4%

Stat Increase: +40 Wounds

Nurgle’s Rot: When a friendly card is destroyed, that card that destroyed it is infected by Nurgle’s Rot and has all its attack values reduced by [20 -> 25%].

I think for Gloguthrox, obviously the defensive playstyle is a less popular than all out offence, especially with the all the general Chaos setup to all out aggression. On top of that with more Warlords out there now that buff attacks being much more common there are more opponents that can just power through the debuff more consistently. By raising the power of the debuff it should much more consistently cut down on that power and let Glog do what he does best.

With the Warlord changes done, let’s have a quick look at the bodyguard changes:

And finally, let’s look at the cards added to the general pool:

Cards added to the general pool: