I picked up my new White Dwarf today (followed immediately by the usual buyer's remorse), looking forward to reading about the new Ogre Kingdoms ins and outs.
Something struck me straight-away:
Where are the gnoblars?
Other folks around the intertubes have noted that the battalion dropped the gnoblars from the boxed set. It seems like gnoblars have been removed a lot more deeply than that.
Looking through the magazine at all the army shots, I see no gnoblars beyond the occasional bugger manning a war machine. Also, the army list from the battle report has no gnoblar units.
In Jervis Johnson's "interview" about designing the army book, the word "gnoblar" is used, I think, once.
Doesn't that seem odd?
It's true that the ogre/gnoblar relationship was awfully reminiscent of the orc/goblin relationship, and even more-similar to the ork/gretchin pairing in 40K, but I always thought the ogre/gnoblar dynamic did a fine job of making the point the ogres aren't evil, per se, just really hungry (a point that IS made in the "interview").
I haven't heard anything about the gnoblars getting dropped from the army book, and their boxed sets are still available to buy (trappers are even FineCasted), but with White Dwarf being an advertisement for all wares GW, shouldn't the ankle-biters appear somewhere?
I am hoping I am a being an overly-sensitive greenskin slappy.
Also of note in the Ogre Kingdom "interview" is this line attributed to Jarvis that made me laugh harder than any of those Maw-awful "comics" they post on BoLS:
There's no point in having this grand image of the army if no one can afford to recreate that vision on the tabletop. And so ogres are cheaper now, which will encourage you to have larger units and still give you points for the more exotic parts of the army. (26)
I am sure points costs are all about my "vision."