Warhammer Fantasy: Will there be changes to mounstrous mounts?

So the End of Times is upon us as has been for the past few months. There has been a multitude of awesome models, rules changes and influences that will really shake up how you play a game of Warhammer Fantasy in the near future.

One thing in particular that comes to attention are the rules for the new ridden monsters, such as Glottkin and Karl Franz Ascendent - while both of these models feature a ridden monster, they no longer have a split profile. For example, the new Karl Franz Ascendent model has a 3+/4++ and 9 wounds, with the strength/toughness/movement characteristics of your typical ridden griffon all under the same statline. This makes Karl particularly frightening as you can't just snipe his mount out from underneath him with a few well placed cannons.

So will this be the direction of the future? Has GW realised that cannons are just a little bit TOO good at taking out monsters, and wants to let the big boys come out again?

If so, I will be thrilled. A shared profile of wounds and wardsave amongst rider and mount means factions will be able to finally bring out a few hundred points of awesome and not be worried about having it thrashed in their opponents first shooting phase - you might finally even see some monsters in the competitive scene! To put it into perspective, a cannonball that hits and wounds does 3 - 4 to an enemy monster. Karl Franz with his shared profile Griffon would take roughly 6, accurately placed cannonballs to bring down as opposed to one or two - you would be better trying to counter such a character with static combat resolution or your own combat machine. A few things that become immensely scary are elf dragons and the Stone Horn from the Ogre Kingdoms (yeah... the monster that, with a combined wounds profile, would have 11 in the bank and only take 1/2 the wounds from artillery pieces - yikes!).

So what would these proposed changes mean to you guys? Would you all immediately bring out your biggest, baddest monster? Let us know!

Keep shaking things up GW - it's going great!

Alles gute,
TommyH