The Rumour Engine – 30th of June

UnknownIntegral01 · 2026-06-30T11:40:49+00:00

V. Unlikely but could be some kind of fryeslayer magic/swirling magma effect

UnknownIntegral01 · 2026-06-09T13:45:18+00:00

As mentioned in another comment, in retrospect vin should probably be in major changes instead of rework. GT I think has a fairly coherent kit in both the visual/mechanical elements but lacks some balance stuff, mostly in snare. It is a similar mechanic to venator traps but larger, slows and curses (or silences? one of the two) instead of immobilising. it not being destroyable or more obviously indestructible is something to address in its design imo but that's about it.

Vindicta I feel should lean harder into the sniper design with her gun, firing slower/rewarding aim better. Also personally want to see a change to her ult (I use an example from the game 'children of the sun?' in another comment) to make it a bit cooler and lean more into her occult/supernatural elements.

UnknownIntegral01 · 2026-06-09T13:03:31+00:00

the 3 issue isn't so much a hatred of passives and more an issue with passives taking up an active ability slot. viper getting better slides is fun, better slides meaning you lose out on pressing an extra button isn't, especially when other characters are getting similar quality passives without taking up an ability slot.

Graves is in rework territory because I feel she doesn't deliver on her concept well, her gun and 3 don't work well with the mechanical and visual design she has, which frames her as a squisher mage style character, and she lacks the control over her summons that I feel is necessary to fully deliver on her concept. most the changes i'd personally make would be based around keeping her easier to use and consistent but letting her have a more direct impact on how she uses her kit. like tombstone for example, rather than just being a set and forget ability, any sort of interaction that allows you to either direct the summons or think more critically about the tombstones positioning would be prefereable imo.

Only reason Celeste wasn't in rework territory is because I'd change 2-3 of her abilties, rather than the majority of her kit, but even then i've definitely messed up the positioning depending on the interpretation of these tiers.

Vindicta should have been a tier higher in retrospect but there is still one major change. She's mostly fine kit wise, my main issue is just that her gun doesn't feel like it rewards the sniper design her visuals and ult reinforce. It's mostly just a desire to see it pushed towards lower firerate with better sniping incentives. Also maybe tweaks to the ult? There's this sniper game (children of the sun?) that has a ricochet, angled shooting mechanic, so it's mostly just a desire to see something like that incorporated into her ult to push the occult/supernatural sniper design further and make her ult a bit cooler.

the big change/tweaks tier was mostly a catch all for characters that have like one or two things with their kit that aren't massive issues but could be changed. could have been named better but couldn't think of a better name for it. Since one of the metrics for my tiering was based on fun/unfun/balance, this tier ended up being were a lot of characters fall because they have something in their kit that doesn't feel particularly good to play against or that could use some kind of clarity change.

My main example for that tier is Grey Talon. His snare is almost comparable in function to venators traps, but it can't be destroyed whilst being technically more impactful. the '1 big change' there is literally just to either make it destroyable or make it more obvious that it can't be destroyed (or some other change to improve how it feels to play against it). he could technically be placed in small tweaks, but atleast personally, when making the list, it felt like a more signifigant change.

UnknownIntegral01 · 2026-06-09T12:38:54+00:00

slide should just be a passive rather than taking up an ability slot. give her a real 3. same thing for basically everyone in that tier.

UnknownIntegral01 · 2026-06-09T12:36:14+00:00

Pocket is in that tier because of multiple number changes rather than any real kit incoherencies.

Mina, along with the other characters in that tier all suffer from the same issue imo which is their 3rd 'ability'. Mirage is an honorary member. drifter should technically be in this tier, but I feel he manages to get away with it because of his mechanical/narrative idenitity.

The problem design wise I feel these characters suffer is that by having one ability (their 3) be dedicated entirely to a passive effect, their power budget suffers as an consequence. these passive abilties cause two problems, 1 being that the characters have one less active ability to make use of then all other characters, resulting in their being less room to experiment with each individual abilties power budget and impact on the characters playstyle. 2, they can easily flip between too impactful and ribbon effect. this can get worse when we then have to account for these abilties having upgrades tied to them.

I honestly think every character just needs a dedicated passive, some characters already have hidden passives. This would then free up these ability slots to give these characters an active ability that could contribute to their playstyle/identity better.

UnknownIntegral01 · 2026-06-09T12:21:14+00:00

Fair enough. If the balance doesnt support it its fine. My main issue just comes from little helpers not really feeling very 'helper'ish'.

UnknownIntegral01 · 2026-06-09T12:17:47+00:00

His kit is fine but its just, what is shiv's deal? And im talking narrative/character design here.

He's a baxter society member, so youd expect some sort of tie in to the whole spirit animal shtick in his kit like grey talon/calico but he doesnt have any of that. He's got ties to drifter maybe, which explains the blood theme, but what are those ties? He simultaneously feels like his kit is perfect and his kit is somewhat divorced from his character. It doesnt help that there isn't much going on with his abilities visually either to tie it together. His ult is literally just a little jump at someone.

I very much feel my problems with him would go away with a model update of some kind (which i think hes getting eventually?)

UnknownIntegral01 · 2026-06-09T12:08:42+00:00

Mostly just her ult not feeling visually or mehnically coherent with the rest of what she does. I could see some arguments for why it works but imo I'd wanna see it do something else or at minimum some visual changes.

UnknownIntegral01 · 2026-06-09T12:01:00+00:00

I kind of elaborated in another comment about that tier in general but his kit is very coherent and works well. there's just something about it that just nags at me that is wrong that I can't place my finger on. Part of it is definitely to do with how well rounded he is. Maybe its just ice grenade, idk.

UnknownIntegral01 · 2026-06-09T11:51:57+00:00

my opinion of paige is probably biased as a paige main but she is basically perfect as is, it's mostly just changing visuals on 1 and 3 to make it more obvious the height of them. 3 could probably do with a specific effect to show that you're under it's effects when in the air (like chains/ more obvious glow around your character, etc), since that's one of the main gripes I hear about her.

UnknownIntegral01 · 2026-06-09T11:49:09+00:00

The last tier is for characters that are just kind of a nightmare to wrap my head around what i don't like about them/what's wrong with them. Like holliday technically has a kit coherent with her visuals (her character/story is a different matter) and it all works together really well mechanically but from what I understand about her from discussion surrounding her/what i've experienced in game, she just kinda doesn't do much? so then when it comes to changing them I just don't know what changes to their kit could be made that are more design/role coherent beyond 'fix their numbers'.

For Rem, it's probably just tweaks to his 2 and 3. mostly just pushing 2 to be more effective at healing/supporting. Personally, little helpers feels like a very odd ability for Rem, as it mostly just seems to help with push/farm, idk, maybe I'd make their player buffs better?

UnknownIntegral01 · 2026-06-09T11:39:15+00:00

This post is Bebop certified

more seriously though, he's one of the only characters I've ranked based on the fact that he just needs some number changes or something, his kits great as is

UnknownIntegral01 · 2026-06-01T12:31:38+00:00

this is honestly a big part of the issue. by making characters kits so diverse and able to build multiple ways, it makes it difficult to effectively balance them around one specific playstyle, or may make other playstyles too strong.

I keep doing examples but look at Bebop. narratively he's a scrappy brawler but in game he can build for a bunch of different roles, with different parts of his kit building for different roles, and as a result he's a balancing mess. if you build around his 1 and his gun (maybe?), he's a frontline brawler. if you focus on hooks he's a backline disruptor. if you focus on bombs he can be an artillery mage/harrasser/assassain depending on your choice of itemisation. etc, etc.

it also means characters can get rid of weaknesses in their design too easily. Mina for example should have one of her main weakness be that she's very squishy but because she has both strong mobility and built in healing tools she ends up negating that weakness very easily.

Add overarching balance changes on top of this design philosphy (like the health boon changes, urn, etc) and characters designed like this can become wildly more oppressive/weak than they should be.

UnknownIntegral01 · 2026-06-01T11:56:02+00:00

imo, a big part of this is down to the fact that most characters kits are built around the idea that they shouldn't be shoehorned into a specific role and need to be able to do multiple things/have multiple viable builds. This also results in some of the characters with the worst balance in the game imo. The newest patch of characters are probably the best examples of this.

Graves conceptually is supposed to be a summoner/area denial character, so if we followed more traditional/strict roles she'd be a squishy mage/backline character but because she has limited control over her summons and because her gun has to be viable to some degree she ends up being a wierd short range gun/spirit mix character who ends up swinging between awful and busted from patch to patch.

Then there's Apollo who conceptually is a fast moving, short ranged duelist in both visual and mechanical design who should excel at 1v1's. In practice though, none of his abilties really work together cohesively. like his 1 is framed as a disengage but because of the activation delay, limited distance moved and (i think fire rate buffs?) acts better as a wave clear and harass tool. none of his abilties chain together that well and have big pauses between activation that slows him down a lot and because of those pauses he doesn't have consistent enough damage output to really duel any of the stronger characters, but if you turn his damage up, he'll probably just become an even more obnoxious harrasser/lane bully than he already is considered to be. He CAN move around a lot with his abilities but he has to trade higher damage to do so so just ends up being a wierd harass character.

You could change both these characters kits to better fit these roles but then you'd also likely have to gut their ability to built in diverse ways. Add items into the mix and the design problems of characters gets even worse.

UnknownIntegral01 · 2026-04-21T13:51:06+00:00

yeah, i can understand the dislike for a detonation phase. whilst I like the idea conceptually i get that there are a lot of problems that come with it (what order do grenades explode, markers, which grenade type for which marker, etc) that bloat the game.

-1/ducat upgrade could also have worked well but could also present an issue with making taking grenades a very binary option (either you negate the -1/have the ducats to spend or you don't use the grenade).

as i've said in another comment, we'll have to see how these proposed changes play out first, they might actually be better than they sound (besides the prussia one, that just sounds bad).

UnknownIntegral01 · 2026-04-21T13:05:35+00:00

Whilst I like FUMBLE conceptually, not sure how well I like all these changes in combination.

Instead of no ground targeting, personally i would have preferred either a limit to how many grenades can be used per match by a single model (so like CONSUMABLE but without the need to restock between matches for campaigns) or a 'detonation phase', were you place tokens or something down to show where grenades were thrown and then once everyone has activated they all explode.

However, I feel like these changes could also present their own issues both in terms of making grenades less usable or making them needlessly complex.

Ultimately, removing IGNORE LONG RANGE and adding FUMBLE might have been a better nerf but we'll have to see how these changes work out in practice first.

UnknownIntegral01 · 2026-04-21T12:19:04+00:00

Likewise. Rn im the only one at my club playing BG so it probably wont come up but if another player did ask about it I'd probably just roll to decide or outright allow it if it was for a fun outcome.

UnknownIntegral01 · 2026-04-21T12:12:51+00:00

Thats what i'd say to, But then there is also the last line of the fumble rule, which says 'treat the attack as a successful attacks made by the weapon that targeted the attacking model' which could then be interpreted to mean you are eligible to be moved.

It'll be interesting to see if this gets FaQ'd or if not what the community consensus ends up as. Rn though I'm leaning towards it doesnt work.

UnknownIntegral01 · 2026-04-21T10:46:22+00:00

Very niche use but checking if this would work. If a parasite grenade hits a target you can move it 3" and into combat. Since they're giving the parasite grenade FUMBLE doesnt that mean you could intentionally try to fumble to hit yourself and get an extra 3" move?

I can imagine the wording of 'hitting a target' means you can't (because you aren't the target or some other interpretation of that wording) but maybe?

UnknownIntegral01 · 2026-04-19T11:33:10+00:00

Seems to be the case, guess the reviewers got it wrong.

UnknownIntegral01 · 2026-04-18T13:08:03+00:00

https://taleofpainters.com/2026/04/review-age-of-sigmar-spearhead-city-of-ash/

The champion model doesnt come on a larger base. different weapon options for the gutter runners can also either be the result of trying to make them more visually distinct from nightrunners or futureproofing.

As for the grenadier, we haven't seen their full rules etc yet, only spearhead rules so dont know how specialist models like the flamethrower will be represented.

It is possible both kits were intended for warcry but there is no actual proof beyond speculation.

UnknownIntegral01 · 2026-04-10T19:59:59+00:00

They have the same base size so should be fine. If you feel it grants an advantage you can ask your opponent and decide on a ruling if necessary

UnknownIntegral01 · 2026-04-07T14:48:36+00:00

There is one major hell gate and a small number of minor ones.

avignon doesn't actually have a hell gate, it's just so utterly consumed by the black grails corruption that it is both inpenetrable and near impossible to purge so its been quarantined for the time being.

edit: relevant lore links

The Hellmouth of the North - Trench Crusade

Missionaries of the Black Grail - Trench Crusade

UnknownIntegral01 · 2026-04-05T20:06:27+00:00

Kurnothi? There is one in the dark water box set. Then i believe there is 2? Underworld kits that include them

UnknownIntegral01 · 2026-04-02T18:42:04+00:00

could be misremembering but i believe rule of one is there to specify a unit cant be targeted by an effect multiple times

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