Yeah he is a classic example of what I consider a false-choice, because while of course he's optional, you'll always take him every time.

Every army has the ability to be constructed in a more fun way, it just usually involves not taking the false-choices against armies that GW has gimped by not giving those type of choices.

Problem is in a game riddled with false-choices, if you remove Khorne's false choices then they end up like the KO army. Garbage unless your opponent builds in a more cooperative way to have a fun game as opposed to a competitive game where you are going to get the beat down and be an enhancement talent to make him look good.

Most of the Khorne builds that are doing well revolve around Bloodthirsters. In those lists Bloodsecrators do kinda become optional as you don't need him to protect your chaff. The one who scored high at LVO had bloodthirsters, a few slaughter priests, only 2 x 10 Bloodreavers, and then had 40 x Chaos Marauders with shields and a War Shrine. Was an interesting list, but not far removed from what I am seeing around the block for competitive Khorne.

As a FEC player, I am excited for my army to not be jobbers, although I agree that battleline Dragons/Gheists are a bit much, you are limited to 4 (including any mounted) and they are like 300 points each (I don't think I've seen that they went up).

I do think the "meta" FEC list will be Gristlegore with gheists/dragons Battleline, or the old Deadwatch Flayerspam with Blisterskin. Archregent is 100% a must take, maybe even 2 (but that's 400 points according to current information/reviews).

I am a little sad Horrors didn't change, as now it appears Flayers are simply better in the majority of ways compared to them, and I liked Horrors more. I plan to experiment with the Abattoir or Attendants at Court battalions with Horrors (Hollowmourn Grand Court to make them battleline) just because I have a lot.

I am excited and happy that FEC are no longer a joke faction I will say that. I am always happy when people who love their faction and play them despite being jobbers finally get something that lets them feel like they aren't driving to the store to get owned by virtue of what they enjoy collecting.

auticus wrote:
I am excited and happy that FEC are no longer a joke faction I will say that. I am always happy when people who love their faction and play them despite being jobbers finally get something that lets them feel like they aren't driving to the store to get owned by virtue of what they enjoy collecting.

In a reversal of the classic "the army I buy always gets nerfed" trope, I ordered 5 Start Collecting FEC just a couple of months ago under the assumption they'll be stuck with GHB allegiance forever and possibly squatted in AoS 3.0.

What's a 'jobber' when it's at home?

A jobber is a term used in the pro wrestling word that is an enhancement talent. It is a guy paid to go out and lose every night to make the other guy look good. He's "doing a job".

A jobber in AOS is playing the game with an army that can't spam summoning or spam mortal wounds or any of the other things that make a power list and playing against armies that do. You know you are going to lose ahead of time. Its also the biggest point of conflict that I fiind outside of groups playing tourney AOS who are ok with listbuilding being what it is.

Yeah, pretty much any army that doesn’t spam mortal wounds, blocks mortal wounds or spams summoning is a ‘jobber’ that is destined to lose 90% of the time. KO, Ironjawz, those sort of factions.

Annoyingly I always seem to end up picking them.

That is why in the events I was running I handed out sudden death victory conditions to the other side if an opponent summoned more than 25% of their army (500 pts in a 2000 pt game) or did more than a threshold of mortal wounds in a turn.

It made it more engaging for the other side running a non meta army.

 Eldarsif wrote:
Most of the Khorne builds that are doing well revolve around Bloodthirsters. In those lists Bloodsecrators do kinda become optional as you don't need him to protect your chaff. The one who scored high at LVO had bloodthirsters, a few slaughter priests, only 2 x 10 Bloodreavers, and then had 40 x Chaos Marauders with shields and a War Shrine. Was an interesting list, but not far removed from what I am seeing around the block for competitive Khorne.

That is a good point, Bloodthirsters are undercosted enough to compensate.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Wayniac wrote:
As a FEC player, I am excited for my army to not be jobbers, although I agree that battleline Dragons/Gheists are a bit much, you are limited to 4 (including any mounted) and they are like 300 points each (I don't think I've seen that they went up).

I do think the "meta" FEC list will be Gristlegore with gheists/dragons Battleline, or the old Deadwatch Flayerspam with Blisterskin. Archregent is 100% a must take, maybe even 2 (but that's 400 points according to current information/reviews).

I am a little sad Horrors didn't change, as now it appears Flayers are simply better in the majority of ways compared to them, and I liked Horrors more. I plan to experiment with the Abattoir or Attendants at Court battalions with Horrors (Hollowmourn Grand Court to make them battleline) just because I have a lot.

Archregent costs 200 points and summons a unit worth between 160-200 points. Even at the high end he effectively costs 40 points; just take your GK(s) on terry/dragon if desired then fill any remaining slots with archregents. Courtiers have gone to being never-take in a list proper (unless you need them for battalions) because they can be summoned in. For that matter, since the Varghulf one is stronger the other three are simply never-take all the time unless you are deliberately playing down. 3-man flayer/horror units are also never take (barring battalions) for as well, since you can spend 160 pts on a 3-man unit or spend 200 pts on a 3-man unit AND an archregent.

Moral of the story; GW thought it was appropriate to make the archregent cost 40 pts. They really need to make his command ability general-only. Then at least only one of them would be stupidly OP, and it would eliminate other death factions from allying him in. Because we all know LoN is going to be allying in 2 of them.

Well, in LoN he costs +50 pts because you don't get the Throne and his spell only works on his summoned unit.

Having done a fair bit of list building in the last few days, I would say you can't realistically cram more than 2, maaaybe 3 of them in a FEC list if you want to have other units at a useful size and a dude on a Terrorghaist or Dragon to do the heavy lifting. The strength of FEC is returning models, getting bonus attacks and fighting multiple times with a deathstar unit, going minimal battleline to spam these dudes and summon MSU is a recipe for failure. What they are are 40 pt upgrades for Varghulfs. You really just replace all your Varghulfs with them and that's it.

I would agree, except they don't just summon; they fight. Their attack profile is decent but more importantly they have 7w, 4+ armor, 6+ fnp and heal 3 wounds a turn on a very small base size. Put a couple in cover next to each other and there's a lot they can beat by attrition. They can unbind so that makes it harder to spell them to death as well. 5 of them plus a mounted gk is 1400/1440 points, enough to take two 10-man units and a 30 man to buff then still have points left over for cogs. Buffing a mounted gk is probably better anyways for that matter. Then they have the tactical flexibility to summon in units they need based on context. If the enemy has good saves bring flayers, high wounds count bring horrors, if you need objectives get ghouls, etc.

With the idea being put them all by the throne and summon for free? Most people I am talking to seem to be all over the monster mash with Gristlegore, and summoning in units on top of like 4 zombie dragons/terrorgheists.

Well the thing with the monster mash is (unless the cost is changed) they have a more or less balanced cost. A terrorgheist is pretty awesome, and it costs 300 points accordingly. So while the shock factor is there I think it will run into the same issue of beastclaws in that monsters have trouble without troops to support them. When you can surround that terry and put wounds on it will degrade and even if it mauls the unit to death it won't do the same to the next one, and it certainty isn't holding objectives well. A terry with 30 ghouls next to it can't be singled out as effectively, and the two combined have more sustained damage than two terries would because the ghouls won't degrade as badly (a bunch were in the back not swinging anyways) and provide consistently. And that combo can hold objectives to boot.

That's why the all-monster thing is fun but not tremendously viable. However being able to freely mix dragons & terries as battleline adds tactical flexibility that I think may push it into issue-causing territoy in addition to kind-of robbing the theme by making it less exclusive. Another issue is, like going against ogres, for less experienced players it is really easy to get your face beaten in since you aren't practiced enough to know the correct counter-tactics.

Ultimately I think the archregent is a far larger problem and will be the bigger showing at broken-cheese-tourney level. But it's just a personal estimation; I've been wrong plenty of times before.

Get ready for Clan Verminus to makes its way into that list! Skaventide is going to one heck of an army to contend with.

Skaven have had reasonably good UNITS for a while, but generic Chaos allegiance was clearly meant for the warriors/daemons side and really did not support Skaven very well. I think this book will catapult them onto the scene in a big way.

Personally I'm leaning toward Flayer spam, with Deadwatch and Royal Feast a deathstar can fight 3 times a turn without CP plus they each get a banshee howl at 2d6+2 if you're engaged and have a Grim Garland on hand.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Personally I'm leaning toward Flayer spam, with Deadwatch and Royal Feast a deathstar can fight 3 times a turn without CP plus they each get a banshee howl at 2d6+2 if you're engaged and have a Grim Garland on hand.

I'm leaning flayers myself, but taking a Grand Court (likely Blisterskin to make Flayers battleline) means you don't get a delusion and your trait/artefact is preselected for you. So you won't be able to have your cake and eat it too.

I do wish horrors were better though, I like them much more than Flayers, but no rend and not being that tanky due to a 5+ save means they often are just bags of wounds that either:

A) Hit something similarly "elite", do a couple of damage as without rend they can't get through the armor these types of units usually have, and get slaughtered in return as elite units typically DO have rend
B) HIt something with low armor that's usually a horde, not deal enough to wipe them out and get wiped out in return just by the volume of attacks because a 5+ save is terrible.

So basically to my eyes Horrors don't perform either role that they should perform well in any capacity at all. They can't get through the usually good armor saves of elites, and don't have quite enough to wipe out low armored hordes (at least not compared to a big blob of ghouls) and have none of the staying power of a big blob of ghouls.

Horrors are overcost for what they do. It seems they remain so, so yes in a competitive sense if you are playing agaiinst people fielding competitive lists, there is no reason to take them.

auticus wrote:
Horrors are overcost for what they do. It seems they remain so, so yes in a competitive sense if you are playing agaiinst people fielding competitive lists, there is no reason to take them.

Which is unfortunate as I have more Horrors ATM than flayers. But I also have like 6 or 9 more to build so.. guess I'm doing Flayers.

Don't need Blisterskin to run Deadwatch since it requires the Flayer Courtier anyway. So I get my pick of delusion, trait and and 2 artefacts.

I think the TG/Dragon Court is the only one whose benefits can outweigh the preset items and lack of Delusion.

See for me I absolutely despise having to make a courtier the general when I have a king, so for me, the courts that give battleline without that silly requirement are well worth losing the delusion.

This is a newbie to AoS question and for that I apologize but where does one get the updated stats for models (warscrolls I think they're called) you guys were mentioning (mostly on page 10)? Do you have to buy the new book? Do you get it from the AoS app? Other? I'm talking about the recent changes to 2019, not the stuff e.g. the 2018 general's book that's already out.

Warscrolls are freely available on the GW site and also free on the Age of Sigmar phone app (however the army builder on the app is cheap, like it's $1.50 USD a month).

They are also in the book itself.

I still have to disagree in the horrors. I have seen first hand them being used by tournament armies at GTs, ones that were doing well. A FEC army even won a GT near me and he was using them. I also play with a guy running FEC as his main army so I have seen them in action a ton. Re-rolling all hits really helps them put out the hurt.

The app will have the most up-to-date rules usually (occasionally a short delay after a new book is released). If all you're looking for is warscrolls, that's why you should start.

Wayniac wrote:
See for me I absolutely despise having to make a courtier the general when I have a king, so for me, the courts that give battleline without that silly requirement are well worth losing the delusion.

'Member in GHB1 when the way to make FEC viable was to have the unit champion in a 9-man flayer unit be the general? I 'member...

GHB1 was like the beta for an MMO where the basic system is there but the structure isn't quite hashed out and there's buggy exploits all over the place.

Wayniac wrote:
See for me I absolutely despise having to make a courtier the general when I have a king, so for me, the courts that give battleline without that silly requirement are well worth losing the delusion.

I totally get you but it is the way of AoS to have some minor character skulking around in the back lines be the general, not your frontline fighter. Courtiers also get one or two really good artefacts and traits that abhorrents don't.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
See for me I absolutely despise having to make a courtier the general when I have a king, so for me, the courts that give battleline without that silly requirement are well worth losing the delusion.

'Member in GHB1 when the way to make FEC viable was to have the unit champion in a 9-man flayer unit be the general? I 'member...

GHB1 was like the beta for an MMO where the basic system is there but the structure isn't quite hashed out and there's buggy exploits all over the place.

A lot of armies benefited greatly from non-hero generals. I ran a 1k ij list that had a ironfist big boss be my general for that unit to always be battleshock immune and +1 to hit from bellowing tyrant. My friend did the same with a kunnin rukk with the arrow boss being general.

I am getting the book today, the throne and maybe the spells (depends if my wife will let me spend that much). And taking inventory I seem to have like:

At least 100 ghouls, 12 flayers and Courtier, 9 Horrors and Courtier, at least 3 Horrors/Flayers I can build any way (likely Horrors so I have 12), all three Ghoul King types (on foot, on Terrorgheist, on Zombie Dragon), 2 Varghulfs, 2 Ghast Courtiers (old metal ghouls), and I'm watching at least 3 eBay auctions for the Archregent.

It might be more than that it's a little hard to tell. I had a lot to begin with and bought two of the Nightfeast Haunters skirmish boxes, and bought a used King Vlagorescu's Ghoulish Host box from someone (I think it had everything except for the zombie dragon kit)

My FEC buddy is splitting two boxes to get Archregents and doesn't know what he'll do with the other stuff since he has so much already. FEC certainly have made out like bandits when it comes to good box sets.

New Skaven are tidy, aye.

Power taken away from the Stormfiends, and with loads of the other stuff getting tweaks, stops said Stormfiends eclipsing almost everything.
Vigourdust got indirectly nerfed with all the Unmodified To Hit roll wordings, but since supercharging's become more consistent, I don't find it matters so much.

Bit of a ballache with Stormfiends having to divvy up weapon options, but clear to see why, especially since Warpstone sparks got proper jacked-up.

Only real gripe I've got with the book is the fact that the Screaming Bell no longer gives you an insta-win on a roll of 13.

Are Skaven mushed back together like Beasts of Chaos? Are clans still separate e.g. can one play clan skrye or pestilens? What happened to the stormvermin? Is Mr. Grey Seer an ally or can any clan use him?

Bojigwe wrote:
Are Skaven mushed back together like Beasts of Chaos? Are clans still separate e.g. can one play clan skrye or pestilens? What happened to the stormvermin? Is Mr. Grey Seer an ally or can any clan use him?

You can play them mixed or as a single clan.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Buddingsquaw wrote:
New Skaven are tidy, aye.

Power taken away from the Stormfiends, and with loads of the other stuff getting tweaks, stops said Stormfiends eclipsing almost everything.
Vigourdust got indirectly nerfed with all the Unmodified To Hit roll wordings, but since supercharging's become more consistent, I don't find it matters so much.

Bit of a ballache with Stormfiends having to divvy up weapon options, but clear to see why, especially since Warpstone sparks got proper jacked-up.

Only real gripe I've got with the book is the fact that the Screaming Bell no longer gives you an insta-win on a roll of 13.

I think they got better. Warpfire cannot snipe now but does more damage on average unless the target has 8 models or less in range. Windlaunchers got considerably better. There are a half dozen ways to give them re-rolls or bonus damage, and they cost less.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
General question; are plague monks now the best swarm unit in the game? They were a bit too strong before and they just got +1 to hit at 20+ and +1 to wound at 30+.

So the interpretation for feeding frenzy is that first means first per combat phase, not first per battle?

Both Idoneth and Maggotkin are getting their Start Collecting boxes next week!

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2019/02/17/pre-order-next-week-start-collecting-sets-boards-and-a-very-special-commissar/

Daughters of Khaine are glaring at both but overall looks like a solid release! Gives both those armies a SC set which they've needed.
Of course it means next week is a bit weaker on models (nothing shiny new) save for the new Black Library character for Imperial Guard - then again next week is Black Library week so there's new short stories every day and a general ramping up of stuff for them; so makes sense that there isn't a big central store release.


AoS wise I think this just leaves the new Khorne Battletome to go from the announced stuff (that wasn't just a name at the last event)

I'm pretty happy seeing that Maggotkin one.

Are the mortal Flyboys any good? Looking at the stats I think the Plaguebearer ones would be better.

They plaguebearer ones are about 20 points too cheap, the pusgoyles are about 20 points too expensive. Added together it is a 40 point swing between two units that perform the same role, so you never see the pusgoyles. However they aren't actually bad, just outperformed.

Yep anyone that spreadsheets will never take the mortal pusgoyles because there is no reason to from a math perspective.

TBF it's not THAT bad as there is context when you could want them; harbinger only affects mortals and LoA only affects rotbringers, throw those buffs in and the pusgoyles get way ahead. Pusgoyles are also more tanky.

its bad enough that they need to come down in points to make them be taken. There are a lot of units that COULD be worth their points based on subjective events happening, but when you have things always worth X and then things that sometimes could be worth X or even X + 1 if an event happened, the sure thing will be what is drawn to mostly.

To date I've never seen pusgoyles run except for when I was trying them in my list and against the more efficient powerlists, there was nothing going for them for me.

Its a combination of them needing to be a bit cheaper and their analogous unit needing to be a bit higher in cost. Just one of the other and they would still be seen here and there, both put together is what makes them seem worse than they are. I like the unit model wise and thematically so have used them a good bit; its the comparison to plague drones that makes them come up notably short.

The real problem is that they have an identical role, so obviously one will always be more efficient. They need to do different things.

I'm ok with identical roles, so long as you pay appropriate cost.

I like the new Maggotkin SC. If I had any complaint about the Pusgoyles it would be that if you want a Lord of Afflictions, you are stuck with 1 Pusgoyle you can't really do anything with since the unit size for Matched Play (and therefore any play) is 2.

I recently bought a box of Pusgoyles because I want to field the unit, so not sure if I'm buying the new SC (for me it might be cheaper to just get a box of Blightkings since I don't need the rest right now).

I don't know enough about Idoneth Deepkin to know if their SC box is any good or not.

Kind of surprised we didn't see a Skaven start collecting box show up (not Pestilens) or a Gloomspite Gitz start collecting

Carrion Empire has sold out totally from the UK store now - not even awaiting stock its fully "GONE"!

Perhaps this and the fast codex means that GW is changing how these boxes come out; instead of months and months between box and individual content; a faster delivery system. I know many Stealer fans were quite surprised at waiting many many months for their codex and models.

Plus I'm sure GW knows a lot of the duel boxes just get straight up split on ebay.



PS anyone from the UK want the flesh eaters from the box in exchange for the skaven?!

I just hope that they don't sit on the Archregent and the skaven guy, the archregent especially because he is basically an auto-include. I had to hunt ebay for one and ended up paying $40 (USD) for one, more than I had hoped (I hoped for about $30) but $40 is about what GW clampacks cost.

Wayniac wrote:

I don't know enough about Idoneth Deepkin to know if their SC box is any good or not.

I do know enough about Deepkin to comment!

So, it's a good start(no pun intended--just emphasis here) but it isn't highly repeatable for new or existing players who already have it. Soulrenders are a godsend for anyone playing Mor'phann or just Thrall in general heavy armies, but they don't synergize well with the Eels. Idoneth are in kind of a weird spot as their heroes tend to work best with one or two units and the King is generally going to be the superior(IMO) option since he actually has a Command Ability.

Kind of surprised we didn't see a Skaven start collecting box show up (not Pestilens) or a Gloomspite Gitz start collecting

I'm not. We've just seen the books for both of these factions come out, it'll be a bit yet.

Element has 50+ Carrion Empires still in stock.

I'm all set, got 1 full box and another FEC half. Well, I guess I might want another 4 Archregents at some point

Until they nerf the sweet sweet free points that those archregents can generate with no command points needed at least lol.

Yeah seems like a mistake that you can take say, 4 archregents, huddle them around the throne, and summon 4 more units all on that turn for no cost. The Archregent is supposed to be like an emperor tier I thought, how is he not a unique choice?

I don't think its a mistake. I think thats designed exactly how they and the competitive crowd that do their beta testing intended.

I do agree that from a narrative standpoint that the archregent emperor model will likely always be spammed, because from a narrative standpoint that is pretty vulgar but ... again its GW so while its narratively vulgar, it fits well with the theme of game for the sake of game and mechanics for the sake of mechanics. From that standpoint the archregent is just statistics block #491 whose narrative function has zero impact on his being spammed over and over again.

Carnith wrote:
Yeah seems like a mistake that you can take say, 4 archregents, huddle them around the throne, and summon 4 more units all on that turn for no cost. The Archregent is supposed to be like an emperor tier I thought, how is he not a unique choice?

Because he's not a named character.

"Unique" is pretty much reserved for nameds in AoS.

Pretty much. But yeah I've seen people already talk about taking like a bunch of Archregents with Gristlegore (so monsters as Battleline) and then summon in like several hundred points of models.

Of course, LoN can also do this apparently, and GW considered that to be fine.

I suspect if anything the throne will be errata'd to only allow one guy per turn to use it (representing that you have to sit on it to get its power). Something of note I found though is that the Warscroll for the throne says ABHORRANT ARCHREGENT and ABHORRANT GHOUL KING (in uppercase/bold, so a keyword) while the Azyr app says Abhorrant Archregent and Abhorrant Ghoul King (not bold, so a unit name). So if the scroll is correct it means that the mounted ghoul kings can also cast for free if within 1", while if the app is correct then it has to be the Archregent or the foot Ghoul King (the one that only summons 10 ghouls).

EDIT: Actually this might not be the case, as it specifically says "Summon Men-at-arms" (spelled incorrectly as "Menat-arms" in the app) which is the name of the foot ghoul king's ability only (the King on Terrorgheist has "Summon Royal Guard" and the King on Zombie Dragon has "Summon Courtier") but it is still inconsistent.

What they need is a rule to make command abilities once per turn in the same way spells are.

 Venerable Ironclad wrote:
What they need is a rule to make command abilities once per turn in the same way spells are.

You know, I can't see a problem with that. A lot of the command abilities have different names, so this would just prevent you from casting the same one multiple times in a round i.e. stacking one character for his ability.

Would suck for Idoneth. Really they just need to make the Archregent's command ability only work if he is the general.

As for playtesting I have heard second hand that playtesters very much do report problems and sometimes GW just doesn't listen. I think that would explain things better than competitive players all wanting to start a FEC army.

What's hilarious is Carrion Empire is already sold out in the US on the GW store as of this post. "No Longer available"

It's been out like 3 days and has exclusive models.

Wayniac wrote:
What's hilarious is Carrion Empire is already sold out in the US on the GW store as of this post. "No Longer available"

It's been out like 3 days and has exclusive models.

It's sold out in the UK too - though 3rd parties and ebay still have copies (and some of us still have flesh eaters to trade away for skaven!)

Considering how fast GW has released the boxed set alongside the Battletomes I think that they might have reacted to feedback from the earlier boxed sets and reacted to it - with a lag time because it takes time to change long scale plans. In the past we've seen these boxes come out without a Tome and spend months (almost half a year for genestealer cultists) whilst holding unique models as well.

Carrion Empire has sold out super fast so chances are the Tomes alone at launch makes a huge difference to sales. Furthermore it might be that those unique models will be on sale within weeks rather than many months.

Elephant in the room is that both those armies have turned out to be clearly OP.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Elephant in the room is that both those armies have turned out to be clearly OP.

Skaven have some tough stuff but I don't yet know if they are into OP territory; at least when comparing to other Battletome armies. I think being a bigger range some of the combos will take time to filter into common use and to get spotted.

Flesheaters have two areas where they are predicted to be OP - one with their battleline dragons and the other with their summoning tricks with the new Throne and Regent model. Both of which would be fairly easy to fix through an Errata/FAQ document since they are quite clear and easy to spot areas of power.


Of course I'd wager we've a while before any update document and before we've any real hard data on if they are OP or not in practice and not just in theory .

The goblin book seems to me to be perfect. Very fun, not busted.

The skaven and FEC books I'd agree are definitely for the tournament gamer by the tournament gamer. From a narrative sense if you play either of these forces now you will need to actively tone it down against casuals or narrative guys playing for fun lists.

FEC have three problems IMO; the Archregent is massively OP and the throne combo makes it worse, feeding feenzy is borderline to start with and combined with the above is an issue, and the terrorgheist was made too strong by changing it from wound rolls doing mortals to hit rolls, doubling their MW putput.

The Skaven just have a huge number of units that are too strong and a few that are among the most OP things matched play has seen ever.

Doesn't feeding frenzy only work on a unit once per game though? Getting to attack again is super strong, but it's limited

The wording can be read that way, but I do not believe that is the correct interpretation. Would be quite happy to be wrong though.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Anyways, to put my math where my mouth is...

A 40-man plague monk unit (double blades) charges. With 25mm bases they can fight in two ranks, so it is reasonable to say they get 20 models in melee range. Going with just the benefits the unit has for showing up:

+1 to hit for being 20 or more models
+1 to wound for being 30 or more models
+1 attack for charging (3 attacks per)
Re-roll hits for dual blades
6s to hit* have rend -1 from music
6s to wound* do an extra damage from banner

*Imagine how much fun it will be to keep track of those two abilities.

It works out to 44.44 damage mostly at no rend (a quarter of it is rend -1), so about 31 wounds against a 5+ save or about 24 against a 4+ save. Off a 240-point unit that has 40 wounds to chew through and is probably outnumbering you enough to capture objectives even if you're standing on them. With no buffs.

 Skimask Mohawk wrote:
Doesn't feeding frenzy only work on a unit once per game though? Getting to attack again is super strong, but it's limited

Once per phase, same as most buffs.

I do think that FEC are going to be A tier. Although most of the people you see are doing monster mash.

I am planning to experiment with Flayers (Deadwatch) and Horrors (Abattoir) as I like both of those, with a big blob of ghouls to hold the line.

Waiting for my Archregent, I had to find one on eBay and ended up paying with shipping $40 (so about the same as a normal clampack + taxes) since I already have a sizable FEC army so didn't need to buy the box itself.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Skimask Mohawk wrote:
Doesn't feeding frenzy only work on a unit once per game though? Getting to attack again is super strong, but it's limited

Once per phase, same as most buffs.

Look at the wording:

"you can use this command ability after a friendly flesh eater courts unit has fought in the combat phase for the first time and is wholly within 12"....."

The condition is fighting in the combat phase for the first time; theres no specifying that it's the first time each phase, just the first time. Raw, it means that you can only use it once per unit. Rai is ambiguous because of the strength and wonky wording.

And to be clear, I want to be able to use it every phase, but I can't possibly use it like that in good faith

Since I'd expect it to be as powerful as they can make it, I expect thiis issue to be FAQ'd post-haste to clarify.

I could get SC: Stormcast Vanguard for a good deal, I like all the miniatures in it. I think SCE have the coolest creatures (so far), however after Sequitors and Evocators... is there a point?

I'd likely try to use various models rather than dedicated to a particular chamber, I don't have a competitive meta but I do dislike having redundant models in the backlog.

 Skimask Mohawk wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Skimask Mohawk wrote:
Doesn't feeding frenzy only work on a unit once per game though? Getting to attack again is super strong, but it's limited

Once per phase, same as most buffs.

Look at the wording:

"you can use this command ability after a friendly flesh eater courts unit has fought in the combat phase for the first time and is wholly within 12"....."

The condition is fighting in the combat phase for the first time; theres no specifying that it's the first time each phase, just the first time. Raw, it means that you can only use it once per unit. Rai is ambiguous because of the strength and wonky wording.

And to be clear, I want to be able to use it every phase, but I can't possibly use it like that in good faith

And look at the wording you omitted: "You cannot pick the same unit to benefit from this ability more than once per phase."

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Skimask Mohawk wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Skimask Mohawk wrote:
Doesn't feeding frenzy only work on a unit once per game though? Getting to attack again is super strong, but it's limited

Once per phase, same as most buffs.

Look at the wording:

"you can use this command ability after a friendly flesh eater courts unit has fought in the combat phase for the first time and is wholly within 12"....."

The condition is fighting in the combat phase for the first time; theres no specifying that it's the first time each phase, just the first time. Raw, it means that you can only use it once per unit. Rai is ambiguous because of the strength and wonky wording.

And to be clear, I want to be able to use it every phase, but I can't possibly use it like that in good faith

And look at the wording you omitted: "You cannot pick the same unit to benefit from this ability more than once per phase."

It still doesn't grant permission to refresh having fought in the combat phase. As I said, intent is ambiguous due to the terrible wording, but RaW there's only ever one first time in that sentence

Only if you take "the combat phase" to mean "any combat phase" and not "a given combat phase". RAW can go either way and RAI is extremely clear. But they will FAQ it regardless.

I'll be glad when they do; rehashing dakka arguments doesnt carry over too well with opponents

Nnnnope.

So the other day I stumbled on a funny way of characterizing the way point costs work in AoS; buying a car. Now cars have a nice base price they like to advertise but to get upgrades like rear view cameras, automatic braking, iphone interfacing, hands free links, and whatnot it costs extra. Which is cool, because people can buy the options they want. But not in AoS. In AoS you pay for all those upgrades whether you wanted them or not. Sure they may be nice to have, but if you wanted to have a cheaper car without those fancy extras? You can have that, obviously! Just pay for the upgrades anyways.

In fairness that's mostly how old fantasy worked too for regular units. There was traditionally very few if no upgrades for units beyond perhaps one or two weapon choices (and I think those only started to come in within the last years as GW got more weapons and parts on kits and started doing duel kits and the like - though even then it was more likely alternate weapons made a different unit entirely not just a weapon swap).

The heroes had a lot more choices, indeed quite a wide variety, almost like a small RPG toolkit of choices to make. Spells and items and scrolls and potions and the like.

Not true in 5th edition, 6th edition, or even 7th edition.

I remember when skeleton warriors had loads of options. Light armor, medium armor, heavy armor skeletons, halberds, swords, shields, spears, pikes, the standard command upgrades.

Units with regular weapons or no shields were always cheaper; in AoS there are units which can have (and thus pay for) both great weapons and shields with the benefits of both. They all have monkey grip I guess! And there was never absurdity of paying for a mount you did not have, or a monster paying for a rider it did not have. Remember how phoenixes used to be an option on their own? Luminarks?

auticus wrote:
Not true in 5th edition, 6th edition, or even 7th edition.

I remember when skeleton warriors had loads of options. Light armor, medium armor, heavy armor skeletons, halberds, swords, shields, spears, pikes, the standard command upgrades.

hmm I might be miss remembering - or wait I'm probably thinking of WYSIWYG! Ergo how in 40K many upgrades had parts in the sprue for them (even if the part, once fitted, was often near invisible) whilst Warhammer models were less heavily detailed to their upgrades save for mounts and leaders.


And I hope pheonix become independent takes again; heck they could do with bringing back the eagles in general, I'd love to see the great eagles of today modelled by GW and also the surfing eagle riders from the old WE because they could look really great with the new methods GW uses.

They did go and price Enlightened on foot and on discs separately, which I was/am happy about and hope it will happen for other things too.

I know for sure the old 6th ed tomb kings had very few options compared to what auticus described.

Skellies were hand weapon with shield, spear and light armour options.

Heavy cav (the unit not their actual effect lol) had shield and light armour options.

Tomb guard iirc had no options, or shields at the very most.

They used to sell blisters of heavily armored skeletons that came with sword and shield arms and halberd arms.

I still have them because they are the only halberd armed skeleton models short of tomb guard (the metal ones) that I have run across.

Command options were always option and as they cost points there was reason for not simply taking all.

High elf silver helms could be from semi light cavalry to medium cavalry to heavy cavalry.

Chaos warriors had time they could have 2 different armour + variety of weapons + optionally even shield. If you had 2 handed weapon or halberd it was just for shooting. Well you could also use hw+shield in h2h but then didn't get 2hw or halberd bonus so generally if you had one of the two shield was hardly automatic choice.

Well chaos warriors in combat with hand weapon shield were 2+ back in the day. So if you got charged by a unit that put out a high volume of relatively low sour modifying attacks you'd go with hand weapon shield over a more offensive option.

And auticus, not saying you're wrong about the models or options existing, just that it wasnt post tomb kings and vampire counts

Undead book:
Skeleteons came with swords. Could replace swords with spears or halberds (for points). Could add a shield. Could add light armor or heavy armor.

First Vampire counts book (1999):
Skeletons came with swords and shields. Could replace swords with spears. Could add light armor.

Tomb Kings was 2003 and skeletons came with swords and shields and they could replace swords with spears and add light armor (basically same entry as VC book)

Then over the years they started pairing back options to what we have today.

The ultimate -point- is that units without upgrades were always less than units which had them, because duh. AoS says you pay for the upgrade wether you want it or not, so what used to be options effectively become mandatory and it reduces the variety in the game. This is not variety as in 'invisible' selections like artifacts or battalions but real WYSIWYG stuff that is in kits GW are still selling for armies that are supported. While some units have a more complex situation there are a decent number which could just have two costs for two options and thus have two units/ways to run a unit rather than one. As the most classic example, Judicators have a crossbow option that is never used for being worse than the bow option.

The other alternative would be to adjust equipment so it has a trade off (a shield upgrade, for example, could come at the cost of reduced movement speed). And/or split warscrolls entirely, which may need to be done for some things like the VLoZD.

Many items do have tradeoffs tho? I haven't seen many shields that don't reduce your offense.

Sword&board usually grants 6+ shrug or +1 save, dual wielding grants +1 to hit or re-roll 1s and great weapons have better wound or rend.

It might vary on army. With armies like Skaven the taking of a shield is presented as optional, yet it confers no negative and only a positive to taking it. So there's really no reason not to take the shields (model wise that's a good thing otherwise you've a whole army holding back a punch pose)

I have to say that I find some of the current equipment options a bit twisted. As in there will be all too often an obvious better choice.

 Eldarsif wrote:
I have to say that I find some of the current equipment options a bit twisted. As in there will be all too often an obvious better choice.

Or there are odd no limits - eg Daughters of Khaine can technically take an entire unit of banner holders. Every model can hold banner! And a musical instrument and both blades!

 Overread wrote:

 Eldarsif wrote:
I have to say that I find some of the current equipment options a bit twisted. As in there will be all too often an obvious better choice.

Or there are odd no limits - eg Daughters of Khaine can technically take an entire unit of banner holders. Every model can hold banner! And a musical instrument and both blades!

No benefit to multiples other than dodging the 5 or so abilities in the game that can kill specific models tho.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
The ultimate -point- is that units without upgrades were always less than units which had them, because duh. AoS says you pay for the upgrade wether you want it or not, so what used to be options effectively become mandatory and it reduces the variety in the game. This is not variety as in 'invisible' selections like artifacts or battalions but real WYSIWYG stuff that is in kits GW are still selling for armies that are supported. While some units have a more complex situation there are a decent number which could just have two costs for two options and thus have two units/ways to run a unit rather than one. As the most classic example, Judicators have a crossbow option that is never used for being worse than the bow option.

The other alternative would be to adjust equipment so it has a trade off (a shield upgrade, for example, could come at the cost of reduced movement speed). And/or split warscrolls entirely, which may need to be done for some things like the VLoZD.

I agree, I don't think I've ever in 25 years or so of wargamiing seen units without upgrades when they had an option to take them. THey are false-choices lol.

I do agree with exactly what you mentioned in the end. That equipment needs a downside. With no downside they do nothing but inflate the false-choice count since the majority will gravitate toward the obvious.

Even points by themselves are not enough typically. Give me an option to put heavy armor on my guys and increase their save for a piddly point or two per model with no downside and I'll do that all day long.

 Overread wrote:

 Eldarsif wrote:
I have to say that I find some of the current equipment options a bit twisted. As in there will be all too often an obvious better choice.

Or there are odd no limits - eg Daughters of Khaine can technically take an entire unit of banner holders. Every model can hold banner! And a musical instrument and both blades!

They have been consistently fixing this with warscroll updates starting with Gloomspite, so I think it is something they realized was a bit silly. Also the 2nd ed rulez said they must actually be modelled as such now, which naturally made me want to convert a whole unit where every model had music & banner


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Many items do have tradeoffs tho? I haven't seen many shields that don't reduce your offense.

Sword&board usually grants 6+ shrug or +1 save, dual wielding grants +1 to hit or re-roll 1s and great weapons have better wound or rend.

Shields do a lot of things, 6+ shrug is a minority (only 3 units as I recall) and +1 save is pretty rare too. Also, there is more than one unit where it is not a choice of shield OR great weapon; you can have both and gain the benefits of both. But regardless, shields are only an example.

Bwahahahahaha so apparently in the Hamilcar Bear Eater novel it confirmes Settra is a Stormcast now. It references a "Lord-Celestant Settrus" who commands a group known as "The Imperishables" and has a particular hatred for Nagash and is a highly experienced warlord.

Lame.

Wayniac wrote:
Bwahahahahaha so apparently in the Hamilcar Bear Eater novel it confirmes Settra is a Stormcast now. It references a "Lord-Celestant Settrus" who commands a group known as "The Imperishables" and has a particular hatred for Nagash and is a highly experienced warlord.

I love it, I want more old world stormcast. We already know Gelt is one too.

As for upgrades/weapon choices, I think it's more of a unit size kinda deal. If you're taking a huge unit, you probably want the 2" weapons that don't have any bonuses. If you're taking a small unit you probably want the 1" weapon that can do something special. Then there's units like thralls which only have a 1" weapon but benefit from having more models in the unit so hey, what the feth do I know.

Isn’t Karl Franz the Celestiant Prime?

 Future War Cultist wrote:
Isn’t Karl Franz the Celestiant Prime?

To my knowledge, it's not 100% stated (but it could be in a later novel) but strongly implied that yes, he is.

Wayniac wrote:
Bwahahahahaha so apparently in the Hamilcar Bear Eater novel it confirmes Settra is a Stormcast now. It references a "Lord-Celestant Settrus" who commands a group known as "The Imperishables" and has a particular hatred for Nagash and is a highly experienced warlord.

I can appreciate that I suppose. Give it a 7/10 for it fitting what Anvils of the Heldenhammer are and for trolling Nagash. But 10/10 if he eventually goes renegade because "Settrus does not kneel!"


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Wayniac wrote:

 Future War Cultist wrote:
Isn’t Karl Franz the Celestiant Prime?

To my knowledge, it's not 100% stated (but it could be in a later novel) but strongly implied that yes, he is.

Would be better if it was Felix!

That's not a nod to the TK players, that's a middle finger.

Pffft. If they want their totally different world set in the far future after several entire ages have passed, it is lame as feth to have all these characters from the previous world running around. It makes what should be a gigantic and interesting world feel small and lacking in imagination and ideas. (Which, to be honest, is a pretty fair assessment.)

GW really should have done the Mythic age - I will agree that they sped through two vast ages and honestly don't seem to have a good grasp on their own time nor geographic scales in their own setting. Likely a result of the lore being driven by the marketing department, but also being split through multiple authors.

That said lets face it the grand heroes from previous ages are all around us; they are the rest of the Stormcast. The big ones from the Old World we "notice" because they are characters we know of; whilst all those from the Mythic and other Realm ages are totally unknown to us. Sigmar has rank after rank of highly skilled stormcast - that's legions of heroes of previous ages right there.


The whole Settra thing is only kicking off a bit of a storm because GW killed the faction, yet many were crossing their fingers they'd bring them back. Settra being a stormcast sort of is a nice nod toward them, but at the same time is a not so subtle "we know he's there and here he is as a stormcast; which means he's probably never going to be a TK ever again"

Then again we don't know if SC can fall so far as to escape Sigmar. We don't know if the TK or antoher faction just like them, won't arise etc..

I would not say it is a "nice nod" to TK players really at all. But it is a matter of perspective.

As to the Stormcast being heroes from another age, I dunno. I don't see what the point of blowing up the whole Warhammer Wold was if everyone "survived" anyway. It could have worked just as well without all the convoluted mythic stuff and just been post apocalyptic Warhammer.

This really stood out to me when looking at Morthai's background. Everyone she interacted with was someone from the Old World, few new characters have been introduced at all. And her whole plot revolves around finding the souls of all the Elves from the Old World and making them into "something else".

I just don't really get it. What was the point of the mega hard reset if you want to constantly refer back to the Old World?

I am actually okay with a super high fantasy, heavy metal album inspired "planescape" endless mythic war setting. But all the "nods" back to the Old World make it seem like bad fanfiction to me.

It is just the Anvils of the Heldenhammer (and CPrime) who are reforged heroes from the old world. One Stormhost out of multiple, and not the main protagonist or even the secondary among them. Saying they are "constantly" referring back to the old world is extremely misleading. There are a minority of characters which survived out of a lot which died off. And a half dozen nods to the old world in a battletome filled with fluff on the new one is hardly constant.

Further, I remember when the AoS fluff first came out and one of the biggest complaints was that there were little to no references back to the old world. Fans asked for that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Da Boss wrote:
It makes what should be a gigantic and interesting world feel small and lacking in imagination and ideas. (Which, to be honest, is a pretty fair assessment.)

While it is a subjective topic, I feel saying AoS is lacking in imagination is so inaccurate as to borderline objectively so.

Fair enough. I have been trying to get into it and that has been my impression.

Its a nice nod in that it acknowledges Settra.

It is a middle finger for some in that it is a confirmation that there never will be tomb kings brought into AOS... at least none that include a Settra.

auticus wrote:
Its a nice nod in that it acknowledges Settra.

It is a middle finger for some in that it is a confirmation that there never will be tomb kings brought into AOS... at least none that include a Settra.

If there's one thing ridiculous about AoS it's how obnoxiously copywriteable they make everything. Which is to say you know they'd come back as "Underskull Rattlelords of the Necroquaking Underdeath" so be careful what you wish for...

My main three loves that would get me more into the game (despite how I feel about CCG style board games masquerading as tabletop battles games) would be a competitive viable book for:

* Dark Elves under Malorian
* Slaves to Darkness - viable chaos warrior / chaos knight style list
* Ancient dead ala tomb kings

These are my primary three factions that I have invested a lot of myself in emotionally.

I understand some of the rage at seeing Settra as a stormcast. I personally am not really caring since I don't think GDubs will be creating any ancient dead style list, but then again who knows what they are planning?

True that.

auticus wrote:
Its a nice nod in that it acknowledges Settra.

It is a middle finger for some in that it is a confirmation that there never will be tomb kings brought into AOS... at least none that include a Settra.

I was hanging out at the local GW last night, and there was a guy there (who is looking to join Dakka shortly) who is heavily interested in Tomb Kings because of Total War and he wants them to make a comeback because of Settra. I told him about this thread/story, and pulled a copy of Serra off the shelf to show him. He wasn’t very happy to find out that Settra is a stormcast and not part of the Death faction.

Although...being that Nagash is king of the Dead, and Stormcast are sorta undead in a way, is there really anywhere else Settra COULD go, without actually bringing TKs back?

Now I want to make a Stormcast chariot pulled by four Dracoth with a gloriously helmeted figure on the back that carrying a half hammer, half hammer weapon.

Too bad my modeling skills suck.

 Charistoph wrote:
Now I want to make a Stormcast chariot pulled by four Dracoth with a gloriously helmeted figure on the back that carrying a half hammer, half hammer weapon.

Too bad my modeling skills suck.

Nah. Dracolines would look better than Dracoths...

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
The ultimate -point- is that units without upgrades were always less than units which had them, because duh. AoS says you pay for the upgrade wether you want it or not, so what used to be options effectively become mandatory and it reduces the variety in the game. This is not variety as in 'invisible' selections like artifacts or battalions but real WYSIWYG stuff that is in kits GW are still selling for armies that are supported. While some units have a more complex situation there are a decent number which could just have two costs for two options and thus have two units/ways to run a unit rather than one. As the most classic example, Judicators have a crossbow option that is never used for being worse than the bow option.

The other alternative would be to adjust equipment so it has a trade off (a shield upgrade, for example, could come at the cost of reduced movement speed). And/or split warscrolls entirely, which may need to be done for some things like the VLoZD.

This also causes issues with existing collectors who don't have things maxed for free upgrades. Missing command members, free shields...Myself at 40k side I'm playing disadvantaged vs other ork players because I don't have 1 tank busta bomb per 10 orks(hey I have none...) and not really feeling like buying box of orks for 1 when I have like 10 units so need like 30 of them...

Free upgrades suck. Especially when it's without drawback and it's on model equipment.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

auticus wrote:
Even points by themselves are not enough typically. Give me an option to put heavy armor on my guys and increase their save for a piddly point or two per model with no downside and I'll do that all day long.

Dunno. Depends lot on units. For many units has in previous FB's be better to be cheap rather than more expensive. And command groups weren't automatic options. Units with nothing, just musician, banner and champion...Full group was generally fairly rare. Depends on edition and role of unit which gets discarded.

Personally I think the Settra thing is quite suitable for him. He's actually gotten his golden body and his legion to lead for eternity. And he always served the Nekerharan gods, he just never knelt to any mortals.

Depends on edition and role of unit which gets discarded.

In terms of AOS I'll do it all day long if it was an option provided the point bump is not obscene.

auticus wrote:

Depends on edition and role of unit which gets discarded.

In terms of AOS I'll do it all day long if it was an option provided the point bump is not obscene.

Well if it's automatic choise that tells instantly price is too cheap...

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
Personally I think the Settra thing is quite suitable for him. He's actually gotten his golden body and his legion to lead for eternity. And he always served the Nekerharan gods, he just never knelt to any mortals.

That is a rather good point.

Got to see the new FEC in action today. No surprises; they are as OP as has been generally assessed.

Yep, they did well in Shelfield Slaughter

FEC, Idoneth, and Beasts are doing well. DoK seem to be on their way out with none in the LVO finals and none in the top 10 of Shelfield Slaughter.

1. Beasts of Chaos
2. Flesh-Eater Courts
3. Idoneth Deepkin
4. Flesh-Eater Courts
5. Mixed Order
6. Legions of Nagash
7. Skaven
8. Skaven
9. Legion of Sacrament
10. Flesh-Eater Courts

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Got to see the new FEC in action today. No surprises; they are as OP as has been generally assessed.

And then some. They are the new bottle of jergens to the fap wagon lol. I can't for the life of me understand how the design team can release something like the goblin book whiich is overall quite fun AND fairly balanced for the most part, and then follow that up with a pair of releases that are related to the dark elves and demons of whfb 7th edition. (for those who weren't around back then, the demons from whfb 7th are probably THE most busted army book GW has ever produced for either of its game systems, pretty much ever and dark elves were also right up there (along with vampire counts)

Honestly they could fix FEC quite easily - make the regent a unique character or cap its ability to summon. That seems to be their core broken area in being able to basically swamp the table with models.

That would certainly help a great deal. But how does something like this get out of the design studio in the first place? Most of us knew it was broken when it was leaked to warhammer-community in less than five seconds of reading it? You could hear the sock drawers of thousands of players open in unison and boy if that carrion empire box didn't sell out before it even hit the shelves pretty much everywhere.

It could be really simple such as they balanced the Arch Regent t o be a unique character and then some manifesto from head office required all battlebox characters to be regular not unique. So suddenly that aspect got changed, but it was after the balance pass so they had no time to change anything else about the hero. Heck it might be the interrupt got in when management reviewed the content - made one change to the warscroll and sent to print.

 Eldarsif wrote:
DoK seem to be on their way out with none in the LVO finals and none in the top 10 of Shelfield Slaughter.

Whats the story behind that? Because it seems like its been quietly happening for a few months now.

Did the competitive meta shift? Did people adapt their armies/tactics to better combat the DoK? New armies with more competitive rules now outperform them? TO’s choosing scenarios unfriendly to DoK netlists? Did the competitive scene maybe even self correct, recognize they are broken and move onto something else to change it up? Or is its something as simple as them being a fairly expensive army to collect and there are less players? I personally think its a mixture of all of the above. Had a new GHB neutered them, we’d have a better picture of the hows and whys, but it feels like its been an organic, player-centric response to DoK, rather than just waiting on GW to write new points costs and I love it.

They are still a powerful army for sure, but its fun seeing them have their time in the sun and being displaced(so it seems).

Seems to be a recurring thing with AoS. Some vocal folks will hem and haw about how “X broke the game” “X is auto-win” and such, then once their OP strawman for how AoS is broken starts to lose its shine, radio silence from the doomsayers where no one really talks about how the meta responded. And the cycle continues onto the next “X broke the game” thing.

DoKs powerhouse was always leader support - I wager some have learned to snipe the leaders to slow down the power of DoK. That and shooting them like crazy before they get into close combat. Nice to see them getting displaced without a major balance change though!

Heh. Archregent spam is a trap option for noobs. Going MSU with an army of overcosted models that rely on regrowing units and a fight twice command is a sure way to lose. If FEC do well it will be with Gristlegore monster spam, always fighting first and fighting twice.

Well apparently the FEC new book had 3 top 10 placings at LVO.

auticus wrote:
Well apparently the FEC new book had 3 top 10 placings at LVO.

When the FEC book is so broken it breaks the space time continuum and wins an event while its still on pre-order and places in 3 spots instead of 1(the winner).

I'm just going off what I heard. Hence the word apparently. If thats wrong and it was the old list that suddenly showed up to take 3 of the top 10 then ok.

It had top 3 placements in Shelfield Slaughter. At LVO a FEC player was in first place and that before the tome came out. That player was the only FEC player in top 10.

 Eldarsif wrote:
Yep, they did well in Shelfield Slaughter

FEC, Idoneth, and Beasts are doing well. DoK seem to be on their way out with none in the LVO finals and none in the top 10 of Shelfield Slaughter.

1. Beasts of Chaos
2. Flesh-Eater Courts
3. Idoneth Deepkin
4. Flesh-Eater Courts
5. Mixed Order
6. Legions of Nagash
7. Skaven
8. Skaven
9. Legion of Sacrament
10. Flesh-Eater Courts

Regarding DoK I think a part of it is missions. I know the Shelfield Slaughter missions used missions that allowed you to burn objectives which tends to make games one-sided for certain armies.

DoK also don't have any summoning and rely somewhat on later turn buffs which could be unfavorable in a tournament setting. Haven't competed much with them in higher points(only 1000 points) so I wouldn't know.

Gotcha. Thanks for the correction.

auticus wrote:
That would certainly help a great deal. But how does something like this get out of the design studio in the first place? Most of us knew it was broken when it was leaked to warhammer-community in less than five seconds of reading it? You could hear the sock drawers of thousands of players open in unison and boy if that carrion empire box didn't sell out before it even hit the shelves pretty much everywhere.

Seriously? You don't know "how something like this gets out of the design studio in the first place"?

It's because, like most non-tournament players...GW expects people to self-police their lists and to Not Be A Jerk.

It's because, like most non-tournament players...GW expects people to self-police their lists and to Not Be A Jerk.

But they and the community were dogpiling negative comments about balance stating they were doing everything in their power to make things balanced and fun.

 Kanluwen wrote:

auticus wrote:
That would certainly help a great deal. But how does something like this get out of the design studio in the first place? Most of us knew it was broken when it was leaked to warhammer-community in less than five seconds of reading it? You could hear the sock drawers of thousands of players open in unison and boy if that carrion empire box didn't sell out before it even hit the shelves pretty much everywhere.

Seriously? You don't know "how something like this gets out of the design studio in the first place"?

It's because, like most non-tournament players...GW expects people to self-police their lists and to Not Be A Jerk.

This. I also expect any hero-centric army to eventually fall from the top as soon as people learn to snipe the characters. These guys are still going to be powerful, but I don't expect them to be the be-all-end-all meta breaker. I actually expect the zombie dragon battleline to be their most OP aspect, and that could be curbed by if tournaments focus on objective-based games.

The main problem with the arch regent army list is that they can ping their ability of summoning from their deployment zone. This means they can be pretty safe from most armies and cast their summoning ability and then move forward; by which point sure the regents aren't super-fighters but they are good; and they are backed up by the summoned army that might be far closer.

Armies like Daughters of Khaine on the other hand; have leaders that are moving forward and give an aura bonus so you've got a lot more chance of them moving into range to be taken out; plus once they are gone the buffs are gone with them; with the regent unless the player hasn't, for some reason, summoned; then the regent is only valuable as itself on the board after the first summoning turn.

Armies like Daughters of Khaine on the other hand; have leaders that are moving forward and give an aura bonus so you've got a lot more chance of them moving into range to be taken out; plus once they are gone the buffs are gone with them; with the regent unless the player hasn't, for some reason, summoned; then the regent is only valuable as itself on the board after the first summoning turn.

This is an interesting point. I wonder how this applies to other armies besides DoK or FEC.

 Overread wrote:
The main problem with the arch regent army list is that they can ping their ability of summoning from their deployment zone. This means they can be pretty safe from most armies and cast their summoning ability and then move forward; by which point sure the regents aren't super-fighters but they are good; and they are backed up by the summoned army that might be far closer.

Sure, but it's also important to remember that back in the day those same kinds of things would be parked in a death star doing the same damn thing. This isn't new guys.

Also, "Look Out Sir!" was a mistake to bring back.

Armies like Daughters of Khaine on the other hand; have leaders that are moving forward and give an aura bonus so you've got a lot more chance of them moving into range to be taken out; plus once they are gone the buffs are gone with them; with the regent unless the player hasn't, for some reason, summoned; then the regent is only valuable as itself on the board after the first summoning turn.

You're also just plain ignoring that metashifts are going to happen. There's always a period where X will suddenly dominate after coming out, because people are still figuring out what/how to deal with it.

Hell, when Idoneth first came out? I was waiting for the (no pun intended!) bubble to pop locally of my getting to use Mor'phann effectively. It still hasn't, because people refuse to try to reposition to get at my Soulrenders. They expect to blender their way through the Thralls and kill the Soulrender that way.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Heh. Archregent spam is a trap option for noobs. Going MSU with an army of overcosted models that rely on regrowing units and a fight twice command is a sure way to lose. If FEC do well it will be with Gristlegore monster spam, always fighting first and fighting twice.

Nah, the monster spam is a trap. Monsters don't hold objectives, and an Archregent alone is worth more points than an unridden terrorgheist. The full on 6-archregent is just a fun theory but 3-4 is very ideal. Blisterskin is much more tournament viable between extra command points, a potent anti-shooting artifact, and a nice movement buff. It can alpha strike with flayers & terrys turn 1 with cogs. The FEC guy I know (who has been playing them since the first battletome and has taken them to multiple tournaments) is planning two mounted terrys, three archregents, and deadwatch. If I see gristlegore across the table I am just going to gun down the heroes and beat the monsters in melee while holding objectives to boot. Blisterskin? Probably just concede. Saying the army needs regrowing units and should monster spam in the same paragraph is self-defeating. The icing on the cake is that bringing back models is best done by Varghulf courtiers, meaning the most efficient way to run a list focused on deathstar instead of MSU is... 3-4 Archregents.

Archregents also kick ass even without summoning. They are hard to put down, aren't bad in melee, cast/unbind twice, and have an absolutely awesome warscroll spell.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kanluwen wrote:

auticus wrote:
That would certainly help a great deal. But how does something like this get out of the design studio in the first place? Most of us knew it was broken when it was leaked to warhammer-community in less than five seconds of reading it? You could hear the sock drawers of thousands of players open in unison and boy if that carrion empire box didn't sell out before it even hit the shelves pretty much everywhere.

Seriously? You don't know "how something like this gets out of the design studio in the first place"?

It's because, like most non-tournament players...GW expects people to self-police their lists and to Not Be A Jerk.

It is one thing to have an army with certain exploits or OP units, it is another to have one that is massively OP just from showing up. I need my tourney tier builds in order to compete with a merely average FEC build. LoN is similar but was not totally broken until the new edition came out, and even then is not this bad.

Archregents are one of those things that if they cared about narrative they'd limit to one on the table. They are supposed to be the king daddy emperor.

There isn't a reason for four of them to be running together in every game like that.

IMO.

Now - you *can* make a for fun FEC army. You simply limit yourself to one arch regent and keep the monster stuff limited. Funny enough we have like three guys here doing FEC and they are all building something similar to what you described Ninth.

Lets not try and bring reason into a faction who are basically utterly insane ghouls who are convinced they are all kings and knights and regents caring for their people whilst they nibble on bits of peoples bones

auticus wrote:
Now - you *can* make a for fun FEC army. You simply limit yourself to one arch regent and keep the monster stuff limited. Funny enough we have like three guys here doing FEC and they are all building something similar to what you described Ninth.

Being able to burn a cp to have a unit fight again -immediately- undermines any attempt to make a friendly list, unfortunately. Unridden terry is undercosted, ridden terry is flat-out OP. Blisterskin and Gristlegore are OP. Archregent is probably a 220-240 point hero without summoning due to being a great spellcaster and his warscroll spell. The amount of things one needs to dodge to make a friendly list means one needs to know things pretty well to actually avoid cheesing out.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Overread wrote:
Lets not try and bring reason into a faction who are basically utterly insane ghouls who are convinced they are all kings and knights and regents caring for their people whilst they nibble on bits of peoples bones

They wrote the fluff, and it is pretty clear multiple Archregents working together on the same battlefield is basically unheard of.

Though on a related note, my favorite fluff snippet is when from FEC come across Bloodbound cannibalizing the dead and are like "You would eat the flesh of your own kind!? YOU HEATHENS!!"

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Though on a related note, my favorite fluff snippet is when from FEC come across Bloodbound cannibalizing the dead and are like "You would eat the flesh of your own kind!? YOU HEATHENS!!"

Then they gobble up everything anyway at the end. I love FEC lore.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Nah, the monster spam is a trap. Monsters don't hold objectives, and an Archregent alone is worth more points than an unridden terrorgheist. The full on 6-archregent is just a fun theory but 3-4 is very ideal. Blisterskin is much more tournament viable between extra command points, a potent anti-shooting artifact, and a nice movement buff. It can alpha strike with flayers & terrys turn 1 with cogs. The FEC guy I know (who has been playing them since the first battletome and has taken them to multiple tournaments) is planning two mounted terrys, three archregents, and deadwatch. If I see gristlegore across the table I am just going to gun down the heroes and beat the monsters in melee while holding objectives to boot. Blisterskin? Probably just concede. Saying the army needs regrowing units and should monster spam in the same paragraph is self-defeating. The icing on the cake is that bringing back models is best done by Varghulf courtiers, meaning the most efficient way to run a list focused on deathstar instead of MSU is... 3-4 Archregents.

I think once you decide to go Flayers hard enough to go Deadwatch you don't even need Blisterskin anymore and you're better off doing Feast Day for the free extra fight or Gristlegore for fight first and double hits. The list you mention sounds like 3k points tho. 2 GKoTG, 3 Regents, Deadwatch and the compulsory Courtier leaves you room for 6 Flayers in 2k, not even enough for three minimum battlelines. And once again you're in MSU, which is suicide. My first draft Flayer list had 1 mounted king and 2 Regents, that's the maximum heroes you can stuff in 2k while keeping Flayers at a useful size.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Now here's that 2nd place FEC at Sheffield Slaughter
https://i2.wp.com/aosshorts.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/D0FI7ItX0AIDgE8.jpg

Gristlegore, GKoTG, 3 Monsters, 2 Archregents.

Sorry my bad, he only has two Archregents when he's running two mounted terrys, or one mounted terry and four regents. I should probably walk back my claims and say I was wrong to phrase it as "spam" when really it's 2-4.

But still, you said regrowing units is essential; where is that in the winning list? And you did not address that the best way to run deathstar is with archregents. MSU FEC is hardly suicide and has been doing fine for a while (minus ghouls, where obviously msu is rather bad). I've never seen more than a 6-man unit at tournaments. The big factor is that while one 3-man unit is easy to pick off at range, once there are three to four of those units in melee next to heroes it becomes extremely difficult to do so, and any ability to focus fire is already used on heroes in the first place.

Sidenote; standard caveat of it being one tourney result with a brand new tome and not a trend but I think in this case pre-existing FEC players would already have all/most the models they needed assembled and painted anyways so this particular result is worth paying attention to a bit more than normal.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
So re-reading I realize rushed typing on my phone has resulted in me ineffectively communicating what I mean. That is probably a source of some of this disagreement and I apologise. To clairfy:

-I was wrong when I said Archregent "spam" was ideal because going with just two is very powerful as well and that isn't really spam.

-I think going full-monster battleline is a trap, because it eats up a lot of points for low model count and because ultimately an unridden monster is simply not as points efficient as a mounted one. For example I see two mounted terrys (800) is worth more than three unmounted ones (900). Because those mounted ones have more attacks, self healing, spellcasting, bring in a 160 point unit, and can take the mount trait for re-rolling hits on the maw.

-Gristlegore I still think is OP, just not for monster battleline.

-I think Blisterskin is better because it provides more tactical flexibility. Gristlegore helps the nastiest units in the army punch harder in melee, but they are already really good at that and I have found when playing as/against a skilled player being able to do something you are good at better is often not as useful as tactical flexibility. But I don't thing there is a huge gap between the two in cheese factor, ultimately.

-Blisterskin has an orange paint scheme and is therefore the best anyways.

-IMO any competitive FEC list is going to start with a mounted terry (with mount trait for re-roll hits on the maw) and two archregents, then a choice of Blisterskin or Gristlegore. So basically the first 800 points is fixed as a clearly superior option and 11 of the mount traits, two of the grand courts, all of the delusions, and all of the command traits are just for fluffy lists. Outside of battalions all courtiers other than the varghulf are for fluffy lists, and the varghulf is only for summoning in with an archregent. THAT is the biggest dissapointment about this tome's balance to me; not just some but the overwhelming majority of options are not merely sub par but vastly and obviously inferior. That just isn't fun for anyone involved and it's a dam shame.

I agree with most of that but I definitely think Feast Day is a strong contender for a third top tier "court" that doesn't stymie you on artefacts and command traits.

On the MSU and monsters vs regrowing front, I should clarify that you don't need to bring regrowing units - just that if you do bring them, they should be big enough to survive until they can regrow. 3 Flayers are a terrible battleline and only decent as a summon because you can maybe put them where they're useful without being shot dead on the way in. And if you're sinking 230 pts into Deadwatch (with the Courtier tax) you better bring at least one deathstar to actually use that bonus fight.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
One very important list building consideration will be the Medal of Madness errata. If it allows a free use of Feeding Frenzy, we might actually see some Courtiers in the deployment phase.

The thing is having msu shot to death on the way in is advantageous because they didn't shoot the terrorgheist.

Is the main issue with FEC then multiple archregents? Because yeah that's an issue. But his summon ability is only once per game otherwise, you just get to take your pick of what you get.

I think you'll see people abusing multiple Archregents and the throne (one of which needs to be FAQ'd: Either the archregent needs to be treated as a character, or the throne has to be limited to once per turn or something).

Are these lists all using the Gristlegore monster mash? Because that looks ridiculous just by having battleline monsters and then summon in everything else. The rest of it, a an FEC player myself, seems pretty strong but not insane, but I don't play in tournaments.

For me I have two lists, neither of which seem to be that OP but strong due to how the book is: One is Hollowmourne with 2x6 Horrors, 40 Ghouls, King on Dragon (for re-roll wounds since Horrors already re-roll hits), Archregent, some courtiers and the Abattoir battalion. The other (the more competitive one probably) is Blisterskin with Deadwatch and 6/3/3 Flayers, 40 ghouls, King on Gheist, Archregent and some courtiers.

Now I'm a horrible player but neither of those seem like they'll be insane. I certainly wouldn't take like 4 archregents or whatever sort of nonsense you see out there. As someone who loves the army I don't want to be labeled TFG because my army now got mega buffs when I played them from the original version that was super weak.

The TFG label only happens if you're facing casuals or for fun players with tournament stuff.

If your group are powergamers as well, they shouldn't care. In fact they should embrace it lovingly.

TFG is a lot more than just playing a cheese list/army.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Wayniac wrote:
Is the main issue with FEC then multiple archregents? Because yeah that's an issue. But his summon ability is only once per game otherwise, you just get to take your pick of what you get.

I think you'll see people abusing multiple Archregents and the throne (one of which needs to be FAQ'd: Either the archregent needs to be treated as a character, or the throne has to be limited to once per turn or something).

Are these lists all using the Gristlegore monster mash? Because that looks ridiculous just by having battleline monsters and then summon in everything else. The rest of it, a an FEC player myself, seems pretty strong but not insane, but I don't play in tournaments.

For me I have two lists, neither of which seem to be that OP but strong due to how the book is: One is Hollowmourne with 2x6 Horrors, 40 Ghouls, King on Dragon (for re-roll wounds since Horrors already re-roll hits), Archregent, some courtiers and the Abattoir battalion. The other (the more competitive one probably) is Blisterskin with Deadwatch and 6/3/3 Flayers, 40 ghouls, King on Gheist, Archregent and some courtiers.

Now I'm a horrible player but neither of those seem like they'll be insane. I certainly wouldn't take like 4 archregents or whatever sort of nonsense you see out there. As someone who loves the army I don't want to be labeled TFG because my army now got mega buffs when I played them from the original version that was super weak.

The main issue is that there are a lot of issues and they are quite severe. LoN has a lot of problems elements but they are individually OK; it is the stacking of so many benefits that renders them OP. FEC has multiple elements that would be between a bit to massively OP just on their own. Archregents is merely the most prominent. To make a list of significant problems (in my eyes):

-Archregent.
-Terrorgheist was made OP by MWs on 6s to hit instead of wounds (and it should have been d6 instead of flat 6 anyways).
-Mounted terry is worse since the above is on a stronger model and the mount trait to re-roll hits on the maw.
-Gristlegore and Blisterskin are both OP for their own reasons which is too bad for someone wanting to run them for theme.
-Feeding frenzy is OP. It would be crazy strong just for letting a unit attack a second time. But it is coupled with an army that does not need CP for anything else after the first round, and the unit gets to attack immediately after rather than enabling it to be picked a second time like all similar abilities.
-Varghulf is a clearly superior option to other courtiers, relegating them to battalion/theme-only status even before the Archregent gets involved.
-The ability to spam free summons is a problem (and was before) when it should probably be just the general that can use it.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
TFG is a lot more than just playing a cheese list/army.

Playing a good list (which is basically what a cheese/op list is anyway) is never a bad thing and never a TFG thing on its own. It's just playing the game well with a good powerful list.


It becomes TFG/bad to do when you do it continually against new players without any remorse; when you use it all the time against people who are clearly outmatched; when you refuse to "tone it down a bit" or vary the game somewhat to give advantage/introduce extra challenge to try and bridge the skill gap between two players etc....

It's also TFG when you "cheat" to achieve the cheese/power list - ergo taking more units of a type than allowed; adding upgrades without paying the points for them etc...

Hard to tone it down in an army that only has 5 boxes/blisters to buy and less than 20 unit options in their battletome when half of that is considered very strong (mostly due to army wide rules that you cannot avoid)

But there is a lot of overreaction and crying now though. I've just asked a match up of my FEC against shooty SCE and my army melted with as much ease as my AGKoTG can melt other units.

GW will need to release more shooting based factions (freeguild asap preferably) to deal with these insane monsters who die in a single shooting phase. It does push the game more and more towards rock-paper-scissors (more so than it was before).

Yeah playing a strong list is definitely 100% fine if you are playing like minded people or people that want to play at the top of the power curve.

People play lists for a lot of reasons. For me, aesthetics and story comes first, but then I try and make a tactically interesting list that can "compete" from whatever aesthetic or story I enjoy.

So it is totally possible for someone to be playing the OP list of the moment just because they genuinely liked the models or the background for them.

 Elmir wrote:
Hard to tone it down in an army that only has 5 boxes/blisters to buy and less than 20 unit options in their battletome when half of that is considered very strong (mostly due to army wide rules that you cannot avoid)

But there is a lot of overreaction and crying now though. I've just asked a match up of my FEC against shooty SCE and my army melted with as much ease as my AGKoTG can melt other units.

GW will need to release more shooting based factions (freeguild asap preferably) to deal with these insane monsters who die in a single shooting phase. It does push the game more and more towards rock-paper-scissors (more so than it was before).

TBF, shooty Stormcast is probably the best counter to FEC in the game.

It does. I imagine my FEC would fare quite badly against Skryre based Skaven.

If KO get a fix soon-ish (as there are rapid fire battletomes rumoured), they probably will have to deal with several potent hard counters.

"Counters exist" is little consolation to players getting steamrolled, though.

Skryre is not as well off as shootycast; they cannot specialize into hard shooting as well, their dedicated shooters crumble in melee, and they are very low bravery against terrorgheist & flayer screams. They still have tools for the job but have a much tougher go than shootycast.

Yeah. "Counters exist" is the same as telling someone "sorry you like the models that you like, but you're going to need to git gud and get a different army or else continue to get face rolled every game".

Its good that counters exist. But it still distills the game into the top small handful of builds that you have to collect, assemble, and paint if you want to have a good game.

This has been the case with Warhammer since the dawn of time though; it's nothing new. The AOS designers seem to be more competent than the 40k ones but GW as a company still seem to have this weird approach to designing the game where they don't really think of interactions, almost like they are rushing to get something done so they don't have time to test it properly.

I'm not sure if this is a result of what is seemingly (despite what you see said to the contrary) models still driving rules, or too many projects in too short a time resulting in not enough time to really consider the ramifications of what an otherwise-interesting choice will do, or what. But after all these years it's still mind-boggling that GW's competitors can do this (even if they get it wrong sometimes they hit the mark way more often) and GW being the largest company cannot.

Yeah -but- the design team and the community have both been dogpiling negative commentary stating that thiis is a different situation and that balance was one of their top priorities.

Meanwhile Rick Priestly drops a fantasy warband scale game in January and while it has a couple balance issues iinternally (you'll always take a wizard and make him max level because he's too useful to not) the 10 or so forces all work great against each other. There's none of this "just don't play those factions" that you have in warhammer / aos.

And he's one dude. He doesn't have a team.

I mean the big ding that Warlords gets is there is no fluff or any narrative at all (intentionally), if someone could mix AOS world building with Warlords mechanics and balancing, we'd have a rocking game.

Out of curiosity, what Rick Priestly game would that be?

 Future War Cultist wrote:
Out of curiosity, what Rick Priestly game would that be?

My guess is Warlords of Erehwon. Which to be fair is a considerably smaller scale of a game compared to what we have in AoS model-wise.

Regarding the point about balance I'd say current GW is leagues above the old GW in terms of balance. Problems still exist, but it all tends to be in better shape than older editions(I see this especially in 40k).

However, I state this with the caveat that we will see how the next few tomes will be. Who knows, maybe the team has lost their marbles.

Also usual anti-GW competitor rhetoric: The models look like gak compared to GW, nobody plays that game, GW is a business they need to make money, did I forget any?

Yeah, I don't get it. They seem to double-down on saying balance is a major concern of theirs, but they don't show it. I mean, it looks like they're *TRYING* at least, but trying very poorly regardless.

Personally I think there is a very obvious point where a design approach changed for AoS(somewhere from Nurgle release and up).

The problem comes from the fact that they do this design changes while leaving older(old paradigm) armies languishing.

However, with their approach to 40k last 2 years, and with us already have 3 tomes for AoS this year, I get the feeling they are trying to up the speed of book releases to get things up to speed and/or to fix what is wrong. I at least hope so. Technically releasing a new book without new models should serve as a low-hanging fruit although at the same time they need to be careful not to oversaturate the market with books.

Eventually they'll have to start using a model similiar to X-Wing just so they don't alienate the customerbase with too many book re-releases.

My guess is Warlords of Erehwon. Which to be fair is a considerably smaller scale of a game compared to what we have in AoS model-wise.

That is incorrect. A 1000 point game of Erehwon can see upwards of 50 or 60 models on the table. Our group's average is around 50 models. I played a more "elite" dwarf army last weekend that was 41 models. A 2000 point game of AOS sees similar barring horde armies. For reference, the stormcast opponent I last faced had 50 or so models in his force at 2000 points. These are similar force sizes.

The erehwon tournament standard forming is 1250 points which will take you to 60 and 70 models which in many cases iis more models than a lot of AOS builds.

I also don't see how current GW is leagues ahead of old GW.

WHFB 8th you had 3 "viable" armies, and then a handful of scrappers that could hang. WHFB 7th you had 3 armies that were dominant and the rest were pretty much trash.

The only time GW was ever really balanced was 2000 and Ravening Hordes, where everything was viable.

AOS is similar.

Look at the goblin book compared to the FEC lolz that they released. These are two books released within a month of each other. One book is fun, has some OP elements but nothing over the top, and makes for great games. The other one you have to actively police yourself heaviily to have fun games with barring being a competitive tournament player that doesn't care about making fun games where everyone present is trying to break the game as best as they can.

There *could* be a precedent if FEC came out as a new wave of tomes, but we're liiterally talking about a book that came out a month after another book that is a solid 25% more powerful by virtue of just playing that book.

I mean there's some heinous stuff running around that is to be expected (I don't like it but its gw and is what it is) but I liken the FEC release as very very simiilar to the 7th edition whfb demon release. That army is considered the king daddy of broken armies pretty much in the history of wargaming. The FEC book is pretty close to achieving what Mat Ward and the 7th edition demon army book did, at least as it stands today and compared to their recent releases. The skaven book iis also pretty strong and has some sweet OP make your casual for fun opponents quiit the game out of frustration builds too but the FEC book is in a class all of its own right now.

That is incorrect. A 1000 point game of Erehwon can see upwards of 50 or 60 models on the table. Our group's average is around 50 models. I played a more "elite" dwarf army last weekend that was 41 models. A 2000 point game of AOS sees similar barring horde armies. For reference, the stormcast opponent I last faced had 50 or so models in his force at 2000 points. These are similar force sizes.

Perhaps I was not explicit enough in my statement, but when I was referring to model-wise I was talking about the number of model types/selection. Unless I am missing a secret cache of model types for Erehwon I would say that just the Blades of Khorne faction has about 3-4 times the model selection of the entire Erehwon game. GW has in fact a dozen factions or more that are this much larger than the Erehwon selection.

That is my point: GW is balancing a game with several hundred models available compared to a newcomer that is balancing a much fewer selection of units.

I am going to watch the meta and see how things unfold. I do feel FEC is breaking the mold, but everything else seems to be slowly balancing out barring a few models that break the game. Hell, the Daughters a lot of people feared have slowly fallen out of grace.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

The FEC book is pretty close to achieving what Mat Ward

Who knows, maybe Matt Ward has returned and wrote the tome.

I do think the major issue is they will have a cool idea and put it into a tome/codex... and then not update the other stuff to fit that new design paradigm. They continually do this. They did it in AOS first after Sylvaneth, then with BoK and Nurgle (alternate summoning), then with 2.0 moving forward.

That's a big issue with the lack of balance I think. You have some armies that are stuck with their original releases from the original AOS design philosophy, and some that are new, and some that are going off with some completely new design goal. It's all over the place. There doesn't seem to be a solid design goal for the game that they stick to. It can change from book to book.

Thanks for the clarification.

The knight list in erehwon is 16 unit entries. The dwarf list is 17 unit entries. I know those off top of my head because I have the lists with me right here, but all of the armies are similar in unit counts.

Khorne has 42 entries with a lot of those being multiple variants of the same hero (also combines the warriors list with the demons list so it can be argued is two lists)

Flesh Eaters is listed as having 13 unit entries (from the app anyway)

So there is a bouncing around of number of units with AOS, however Flesh Eaters with a lower unit entry count than erehwon has a severe balance problem.

I know that AOS can be balanced because we had fan comps that made it a lot more balanced.

Who knows, maybe Matt Ward has returned and wrote the tome.

Now this would not surprise me in the least bit! lol

I do think the major issue is they will have a cool idea and put it into a tome/codex... and then not update the other stuff to fit that new design paradigm. They continually do this. They did it in AOS first after Sylvaneth, then with BoK and Nurgle (alternate summoning), then with 2.0 moving forward.

This is quite common in more or less everything. When you are doing something you are bound to find new and interesting ideas, approaches, and methods that then become the new paradigm for you. Without it the game would be stuck in First Edition and limited to that. The problem is that they are not fast or responsive enough to fix/adjust other factions in relations to the new paradigm which is why we have distinct paradigms competing.

Looking at code made today is quite different from the code written a year ago because paradigms change, development changes, and new SDKs are provided. Same goes for AoS or any game really.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

The knight list in erehwon is 16 unit entries. The dwarf list is 17 unit entries. I know those off top of my head because I have the lists with me right here, but all of the armies are similar in unit counts.

So my guess is that these entries are all based off the same model with different weapons? I couldn't for the life of me find a large selection of Erehwon models on Warlords' website. Only see that in each box you have a selection of what to equip them with same as many WHFB models.

Erehwon you can use whatever models you want, there is no official model line.

Dwarfs for example:
Dwarf lord with a bunch of equipment options
Runesmith with a bunch of equipment options
Dwarf Hero with equipment options
Dwarf guard (elite dwarf warriors)
Dwarf Warriors
Dwarf archers
Dwarf gunners
Dwarf pony riders
Dwarf rangers
Dwarf maniacs
Dwarf stone thrower
Dwarf cannon
Dwarf mortar
Dwarf fire cannon
Dwarf bolt thrower
Dwarf flyiing machine
Dwarf juggernaut

These are all fairly different, much like an old WHFB list would be (same root stat with different special rules and gear)

Erehwon you can use whatever models you want, there is no official model line.

Gotcha, that explains things.

I am just extremely dissapointed with the FEC (and Skaven) battletomes because they had a good trend going. Stormcast and Nighthaunt have problem areas but in the realm of standard GW imbalance, Beasts had less of that and is pretty balanced overall, Gloomspite is potentially the best balanced we have... Then we have Skaven which is all over the place (most of it falling on the OP side) and FEC which is matching Tzeentch for most broken battletome (on release).

And I'm sure they will sell well for it. The problem? GW doesn't see the non-sales of players who don't want to bother with AoS at all as a result of crap like this.

GW doesn't see the non-sales of players who don't want to bother with AoS at all as a result of crap like this.

They are drowned out by the people that love the OP nature of these books gloating and celebrating on their facebook or twitter accounts. I can pull my twitter up right now and there's a dozen adepticon guys posting pics of skaven and flesh eater courts rushing to get them done for the adepticon tournament and gushing over how awesome gw is for this release.

Sell well is an understatement.

And I remember diggiing back into the way back machine when 7th ed demons were teabagging pretty much everyone there was still a chorus of celebration and people saying git gud on the forums, that they were not "that" bad, etc.

That led to a mass exodus of players. The question is, will these releases today produce similar results? Or is the target audience going to be cemented as those that love OP and bent factions?

I have my suspicions.

The people who love the OP stuff would be playing anyways. It is not like they have someplace else to go. If GW really wants to push Warhammer to the next level they need to do better than this.

I think we should caveat that people would be getting Skaven regardless because they are popular as an army (a natural side effect of being awesome) and they really just needed a decent allegiance to be viable.

Unrelated, apparently Carrion Empire is NOT coming back; friend of mine asked his GW rep and he said the GW facebook statement it would be restocked was a mistake. So this boxed set with 2 unique models sold out in 3 days and is gone, period. No longer available. Not coming back.

And people will praise this. So GW once again learns nothing and in fact gets rewarded for their horrible business practices.

It sold out largely because people saw how OP the factions were and at least where I am feared they'd never get enough arch regents in time to dominate the play scene.

We had guys order 3 and 4 boxes just to get 3 and 4 arch regents.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I'm at a loss with what to do for campaign. The sudden death rules I was using worked great but that only addresses excessive mortal wounds and excessive summoning.

FEC kind of breaks everything. What do you think would be good to add against FEC to give most lists a fun chance in a narrative/casual environment? (outside of changing the book)

I liked the sudden death conditions because they were a part of the core rules (that no one uses since they aren't part of matched play) that triggered when certain conditions were met (doing excessive mortal wounds in a turn or summoning more than 500 pts in a 2000 pt game).

FeC are definitely interesting.
My friend jumped at the new book as he had around 8k already.
Right away he pointed out how insanely strong they were and just how easy to abuse they could become.
Me being me, thought he was exaggerating about it so we had a few games.

Gloomspite seriously dislike FeC armies.
Anything bravery related is bad news anyway, but with double turns of attack and growing an army T1, even horde armies struggle badly.

The games were 3k, so decent sized.

If squigs didn't count as flying then I'd have serious issues.
I basically spent early game sending bounderz after his characters or simply teleporting a dankhold troggoth infront of him.
The monsters minus riders aren't bad atall, but the second they have a character on them it's an entirely different matter.

Squig heavy seems to be the way to go against FeC.
Horde just gets shredded to ribbons in short order with little damage being caused.

Only for those models to receive a points increase in the next GHB19 and the cycle can continue... Sounds like GW made out like bandits on that box in your area. That's really stupid customer behaviour for a model that will be available separately soon enough. But hey, this short term "pay to win" strategy isn't something I like either, but just like MtG and other "nerd culture games", some people really are just about winning in this hobby and are willing to shell out massively for epeen.

I'm still surprised many people think this is a GW games thing...

At least in current AoS, the shift in powerlevel is almost that fast, that most average players don't have to worry too hard about the carrot on a stick. Let's not forget: this time last year, everybody was constantly moaning about Tzeentch armies and now they are just fine.

 Elmir wrote:
Only for those models to receive a points increase in the next GHB19 and the cycle can continue... Sounds like GW made out like bandits on that box in your area. That's really stupid customer behaviour for a model that will be available separately soon enough.

No, it is an intelligent move. The resale value of the rest of the kit well exceeds the difference in price from buying it verses buying the individual archregent (likely $30), and they get to have the model now as opposed to later, and we do not know how long it will be until the model is released individually, and that is assuming they do not use any of the other models or split the kit at all.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Wayniac wrote:
Unrelated, apparently Carrion Empire is NOT coming back; friend of mine asked his GW rep and he said the GW facebook statement it would be restocked was a mistake. So this boxed set with 2 unique models sold out in 3 days and is gone, period. No longer available. Not coming back.

And people will praise this. So GW once again learns nothing and in fact gets rewarded for their horrible business practices.

Have people praised such behavior? I rarely see it, if at all. The amount of complaint vastly exceeds the amount of praise, even compensating for the usual human bias towards the former. Also we all know those unique models will be available separately, we just do not know when.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

auticus wrote:
It sold out largely because people saw how OP the factions were and at least where I am feared they'd never get enough arch regents in time to dominate the play scene.

We had guys order 3 and 4 boxes just to get 3 and 4 arch regents.

While I completely agree that is a significant factor, TBF it is a great box set for anyone wanting to start either force. The two put together is what made it sell out so quickly IMO. I split two just because it was a good deal on Skaven models I want to use non-competitively.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

auticus wrote:
I'm at a loss with what to do for campaign. The sudden death rules I was using worked great but that only addresses excessive mortal wounds and excessive summoning.

FEC kind of breaks everything. What do you think would be good to add against FEC to give most lists a fun chance in a narrative/casual environment? (outside of changing the book)

I liked the sudden death conditions because they were a part of the core rules (that no one uses since they aren't part of matched play) that triggered when certain conditions were met (doing excessive mortal wounds in a turn or summoning more than 500 pts in a 2000 pt game).

I base my PtG campaigns around free-for-all battles being a major thing (alternate by phase instead of by turn, two combat phases). Players have 6 weeks to hit a 12 glory threshold for the final battle, which is a FFA where the winner wins the league. Even players that do not hit that threshold get to play and can theoretically win, though when it is a king-of-the-hill scenario and they have to deploy on the hill...

While my meta is thankfully very reasonable with people not cheesing out (and the league reserves the right of the organizer to require a player to tone down their list), there is still a huge variety in relative strength of warbands. The FFA is the compensating factor; by the final battle everyone is well aware of the power players and they become priority threats that are ganged up on, creating a self-balancing effect. Sometimes there is some exasperation on the part of a player being ganged up on, but that is always countered by the comment "well you should have brought something less threatening."

Dunno how relevant that is for you, maybe you can find something there that helps.

More specifically, FEC are going to be both summoning a decent chunk and doing a good amount of mortal wounds, though either one may not exceed your thresholds. Maybe introduce a third where a player who, say, summons 300 extra points AND does more than 20 MWs in a turn gets sudden death'd.

Carrion Empire I think sold out because they released the BAttletomes alongside. No guesswork, no waiting for months it was a BAM new Battletomes and new kits.

This meant it got everyone really excited from experienced people with huge armies who only wanted the exclusives through to new people getting started as both sets offered a fantastic saving on the contents for each army. Plus everyone in the middle!

I think its GW reacting to feedback from the other duel sets where there have been months or even half a year waiting for a Battletome/Codex; only it took a while for the feedback to filter through and reach a stage where they could change the listings and schedual to work it.

We can hopefully expect a few months before both unique models go on sale on their own. Perhaps even less time.


I think the whole "overpowered" aspect is there, but its not as big as many would like to think it could be. I tihnk they sold out because they were new 2.0 tomes for factions for AoS and they made both armies work. Heck lets not forget Flesh Eaters were running on an old Tome whilst Skaven had been shattered into half a dozen smaller armies; so for skaven alone its a huge release and update





As for balance I think GW's hurdle has been the same for a long while. A combination of internal rules writers who are so in-tune with each other that many "rules" are unspoken between them and just common sense to them as they play. Coupled to the fact that, at their core, they are more casual players by heart rather than extreme competitive ones. You can see this in how GW hasn't chased the competitive game scene at all despite the potential lucrative offerings. If anything whilst everyone else in the whole geek market (video and model) has tried chasing once they were at a good size; GW walked away quite firmly from it.

I don't agree with that. I follow the developers on twitter. They are all competitive tournament players. They know how that scene works. Every singe one of them does. They all, every one, celebrate the tournaments that they go to on the regular.

Their primary supporters such as the tga crew are pretty much all about breaking warhammer into the professional tsports gaming realm. They have those guys on their podcasts and webcasts constantly. They drink beers with each other at the pub on the regular and post about it on their twitters.

That they let things like their regular offerings be as imbalanced as they do for the duration of the lifetime of their game is either intentional or gross incompetence.

If the fan based comps can get closer to balance, and the fans are just fans, there is no reason why people who are paid to write rules can't get as close if not closer.

Unless thats really not the goal at all. Which is what I believe. The imbalance is known before release and intentional.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Let's not forget: this time last year, everybody was constantly moaning about Tzeentch armies and now they are just fine.

Thats true, but thats not because people needed to just figure out how to get better to beat them; GW nerfed them hard.

And before that it was beastclaw raiders and kunnin rukk builds. And certain stormcast builds. Same cycle.

There's always something gross and then GW will nerf it later.

When free summoning returned this past summer they SWORE up and down that we shouldn't worry, that balance was their top priority and that free summoning wouldn't be oppressive at any level.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

I base my PtG campaigns around free-for-all battles being a major thing (alternate by phase instead of by turn, two combat phases). Players have 6 weeks to hit a 12 glory threshold for the final battle, which is a FFA where the winner wins the league. Even players that do not hit that threshold get to play and can theoretically win, though when it is a king-of-the-hill scenario and they have to deploy on the hill...

I've done similar. The problem comes in when your final games are between four or five people and three are running hard nose power LVO/Adepticon style lists. At that point the two that arne't are the first targets to harvest sweet sweet victory points.

Thats why I switched to the sudden death model which has up until now worked great. (it may still work great, I will need to get playtest games in involving skaven and FEC filth builds to see how well the sudden death model holds out against them vs casual or for fun builds)


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The other alternative is to break out azyr comp again and re-streamline all the points to a more accurate representation of their power level.

There is the little matter of my group gave the green light for alternate activation which may also solve some issues since we wont' have double turn teabagging so I'm optimistic about that.

I do remember that the sky was totally falling when BoC came out with their free turn 3 Chimera and now apparently they're fine, so let's give it a few months.

I wouldn't say they are fine. The line was always "there are some problem elements but overall they are pretty good, and even those elements don't put them on the level of standard tourney cheese" and that remains true. Hell I said exactly that just above. Turn 3 Chimera (turn 2 is not difficult, even) is one of those problem elements.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Anyways, when I say they need to do better if they want to push Warhammer to the next level, the tsports is what I mean. The "balance" of 40k/AoS would be considered a joke for any other game electronic or otherwise. It isn't going to get mainstream appeal like this. Sure it can build something out of the community that is there, but history shows us that popularity suffers when balance does.

The reason fan comps are always more balanced than official products is exactly because those fans don't have to care about anything more than to balance the game.

And is very clear when GW old rule writers wrote their own rulesets for other companies, those are much more balanced (Rick Prestley, Cavatore) than anything they wrote for Games Workshop.

People should stop calling them incompetentes and just realize that is GW the one that doesn't want tightly balanced rulesets.

Yeah, I stopped saying they were incompetent because it was quite clear that the effort simply was not being made.

Thats why I say its either intentional OR gross incompetence... and that I feel its the former (intentional) because I read the designer's twitter accounts and some have interacted on forums in the past and none struck me as being incompetent.

The imbalance is most definitely intentionally injected into the game for whatever reason (i suspect rolling sales but gw has never admitted to intentionally imbalancing their games and have lately as I mentioned above have been vocally protesting complaints about imbalance stating that balance is their #1 priority) so we will never know why this is done as fact.

FWIW the "praise" I meant was the whole "Oh GW is really nailing it with these new models!" and rushing to buy the box, resulting in increased profits for GW so they see that these sort of limited boxes with exclusive models get them money.

FWIW I do agree with auticus. Most of the AOS designers (unlike the 40k ones, not counting the ITC playtesters) are competitive guys. Ben Johnson, in particular, was a known tournament player before he joined the studio. So they seem to want a solid tournament game, but then they do things like this and it's just weird but maybe not since as auticus says a tournament player thinks that having kewl whizzbang armies with broken mechanics is part of the competitive scene. I don't necessarily disagree but it's rather hypocritical to say how you want a solid competitive game, that has a ton of game-breaking mechanics built in as designed. That's the MTG approach which is the opposite of what a solid competitive game should be.

I don't go to TGA that much anymore (and auticus was banned for being too negative about the direction AOS was going) but yeah, the guys who run TGA are buddies with the designers (I think Ben Curry, the guy who created it, was already friends with Ben Johnson before the latter joined GW, Ben Johnson was in his gaming club) and with guys like Dan and Wayne (Heelanhammer, guys who made SCGT which became the GHB). So it's basically a clique of Brits who all love GW, love Warhammer and love competitive gaming with Warhammer and think that everything GW is doing is the best it's ever been. And each new release is better than the last despite all of it's flaws and potential brokenness.

However, in their defense, this also boils down to players. Auticus' crowd are all tournament guys, who will bandwagon jump on whatever is the most broken. GW has and always will expect you to police yourselves, and I have seen from their interviews and talks that the GW design team do this too; Ben Johnson, for example, knows when to bring his A-game tournament cheese and when to play a relaxed game with his mates. But that's not indicative of many players.

Ultimately what is missing is some Designer Commentary to understand what they were thinking in the creation of the Battletome. Basically we are missing the developer diaries like they do with Overwatch(with Jeff Kaplan). It gives you an insight into what the developers are intending with certain changes/modifications.

Ben Johnson, for example, knows when to bring his A-game tournament cheese and when to play a relaxed game with his mates. But that's not indicative of many players.

For a lot of people in my anecdotal environment, its a matter of money. They go out, they research what will give them strong tournament placings and strong pick up game results, buy and paint that. They don't have the models to tone down or play more casually and have no desire to buy more models to be able to do that.

Ask an FEC player to maybe take more ghouls instead of yet another terrorgheist and what they see is having to assemble and paint 30-40 ghouls or whatever to "tone down" and they are going to be violently against having to do that. (as an example)

We all know how much a GW army costs so I can sympathize with this. Its a big reason why I jump up and down about their crap balance, because I can't honestly expect most people to shell for extra models just to play casually when casual for fun play is abhorrent in events.

Ben Johnson and the GW staff have whatever they want at their disposal so can play like that.

Ultimately what is missing is some Designer Commentary to understand what they were thinking in the creation of the Battletome. Basically we are missing the developer diaries like they do with Overwatch(with Jeff Kaplan). It gives you an insight into what the developers are intending with certain changes/modifications.

This would be awesome.

That's the MTG approach which is the opposite of what a solid competitive game should be.

If world championships like how Ben Curry wants is to be a thing then the MTG approach would be good to emulate, siince Magic has ESPN content. However cards are different from models. One is playable out of the pack. The other requires painting and assembling time.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
I think a more constructive and positive direction to spin this is how to have casual and for fun games work with these new army lists.

We already know its busted. Maybe in the tournament sense its not "that bad" but the question is how to approach running skaven and FEC in casual for fun campaign style games without running everyone off to another game system.

FEC and Skaven FAQs are up.

Feeding Frenzy reworded so there's no doubt you can use it every turn.

Medal of Madness fixed conservatively to only work with the 3 basic Core Rules command abilities.

Savage Strike (Gristlegore trait) reworded so there's no doubt the mount also gets to fight.

Chalice very randomly nerfed so that in the enemy turn, the enemy chooses which FEC units get healed.

Throne confirmed to work as many times per turn as you havedudes to sit on it.

I do absolutely think that GW needs to have design commentary. Part of the issue with a lot is we don't get to see WHY they do something; they don't explain "We gave this ability because XYZ" so it's just "Ivory Tower" design still despite them being more open. I've long felt they need to be more transparent about what they are doing and why.

however, the last time they did anything like this that I recall was during the then-weekly White Dwarf when the Knights came out, and it basically boiled down to "It sounded cool to be able to do this" No real design talk, just a lot of how kewlzors awesomesauce it sounded:

This quote was from our old friend Jervis Johnson:

So, though it may surprise some people, my first concern with rules is always that they are a fair reflection of the background behind the model. Once we get that nailed down, and we're happy with the character of the rules, we then turn our minds to other practicalities: how long will it take people to figure out the best ways to use them? Will people be able to develop counter-tactics once they have played a few games?

Note what's missing? There's nothing about how it interacts with the rest of the game or how it impacts other armies. No talk whatsoever about balancing it out, just does it fit the background.

Granted that was the 40k team (the current crop of which seem to be way less competent than the AOS guys although they have issues too) and this was a few years ago now (before GW's "turnaround") but I suspect that's why they don't provide design commentary; it would show unequivocally that they aren't taking actual balance or game design concepts into consideration.

ALSO here's something hilarious:

When BCR came out, GW said that if you had a Behemoth count as Battleline, it had both keywords so you were still limited to 4 in a 2k point game. The FEC FAQ released today says the OPPOSITE for FEC only. If you have Gristlegore, Royal Zombie Dragons and Royal Terrorigheis do NOT count as Behemoths. So you can take more than 4. You can take an actual entire army of monsters with no restrictions according to their FAQ for some inexplicable reason, despite the other army that has Behemoths as Battleline can't

Why they rule one way for one army and a different way for another army is simply mind-boggling.

So now, you'll see dragon spam with Archregents summoning the rest of the army. No limiting Archregent. No limiting throne to 1 model per turn. Nope. They just let you ignore behemoth restrictions.

Why have Matched Play, again?

Its because they change their mind after going to the pub and their buddiies tell them how cool it would be if they could do something.

But instead of making things consistent, they just leave it a mess.

They operate like most software developers do. Where your code bases are a mixture of N different architectures and debugging and maintaining the code is a nightmare.

The funny part is I play FEC. So I should be excited about this change and plan to use my tax return to buy like 5 dragons

Honestly at this point I'd be all for just removing the concept of battleline and leader caps and monster caps anyway since GW has basically also done the same.

Wow, gristlgore monsters lose behemoth.

Fec are clearly op, which is ironic because I sold off my DoK because they just weren't fun to play. The good news is that while I did cwt carrion throne to start my collection, I don't have any of the monsters. Just ghouls, lots of them. And it's looking like another DoK situation where the monster kits are getting snapped up completely.

I still say the monster battleline isn't that good, but it ultimately means little in the grand scheme of how busted FEC are. They are the dark mirror to Kharadron; the core functionality is broken.

 Skimask Mohawk wrote:
Wow, gristlgore monsters lose behemoth.

Fec are clearly op, which is ironic because I sold off my DoK because they just weren't fun to play. The good news is that while I did cwt carrion throne to start my collection, I don't have any of the monsters. Just ghouls, lots of them. And it's looking like another DoK situation where the monster kits are getting snapped up completely.

Yeah, it's ridiculous and FEC are my primary army. What I find more ridiculous is that they explicitly said the opposite for Beastclaw; they got both Keywords. For some strange reason, they ruled opposite on FEC. This tells me that they aren't even bothering to look at previous rules they've already written. There's no consistency. An army can have the same thing, and they will function in two completely different ways because the team won't remember that they ruled a certain way for the first army in an FAQ/GHB/etc. and rule it a completely different way for the second.

It's like the old joke when GW had the "Roolz Boyz" hotline you could call: Call three different times, get three different answers. Only the designers themselves are doing it.

Wayniac wrote:
FWIW the "praise" I meant was the whole "Oh GW is really nailing it with these new models!" and rushing to buy the box, resulting in increased profits for GW so they see that these sort of limited boxes with exclusive models get them money.

Thing is those models were going to be released individually anyways. And while them being exclusive to the box until that happens no doubt increases sales somewhat, I think if they released alongside it the overwhelming majority of people who bought the box would still buy the box, because it is a great deal on a ton of miniatures. People love start collecting boxes, these sets are just two of those put together with a (further) discount and some extra accessories tossed in to boot.

The alternative is not getting the exclusive models available at the same time, the alternative is getting them launched in individual boxes for $30 straight off the bat and not getting a box set at all. That is simply the realty of how the business works.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Wayniac wrote:

 Skimask Mohawk wrote:
Wow, gristlgore monsters lose behemoth.

Fec are clearly op, which is ironic because I sold off my DoK because they just weren't fun to play. The good news is that while I did cwt carrion throne to start my collection, I don't have any of the monsters. Just ghouls, lots of them. And it's looking like another DoK situation where the monster kits are getting snapped up completely.

Yeah, it's ridiculous and FEC are my primary army. What I find more ridiculous is that they explicitly said the opposite for Beastclaw; they got both Keywords. For some strange reason, they ruled opposite on FEC. This tells me that they aren't even bothering to look at previous rules they've already written. There's no consistency. An army can have the same thing, and they will function in two completely different ways because the team won't remember that they ruled a certain way for the first army in an FAQ/GHB/etc. and rule it a completely different way for the second.

It's like the old joke when GW had the "Roolz Boyz" hotline you could call: Call three different times, get three different answers. Only the designers themselves are doing it.

It honestly makes me sad a bit. I do not like to see a game I really enjoy made worse just because the developers' apathy towards problems.

The FAQ for behemoths was the most ridiculous call in there. The rest is seemingly ok... Although a limitation to archregent summoning was probably needed too.


I guess that call was just them protecting royal menagerie lists, but it's still pretty *ss backwards reasoning. You could make a 6 monster 2k list now and nobody really wants to be sat across that in a battle.

 Elmir wrote:
The FAQ for behemoths was the most ridiculous call in there. The rest is seemingly ok... Although a limitation to archregent summoning was probably needed too.


I guess that call was just them protecting royal menagerie lists, but it's still pretty *ss backwards reasoning. You could make a 6 monster 2k list now and nobody really wants to be sat across that in a battle.

"It's a legal list bruh maybe you should just git gud" - some random guy, probably in auticus' meta

But yeah. This means one of two things:

1) When BCR inevitably get their re-release (maybe combined with the other Ogre Kingdoms stuff) they will also get this so can spam Thundertusks unless they get changed
2) BCR will *not* have it changed, leaving FEC inexplicably able to do it and BCR not.

It doesn't sit well with me that there are different rules with different precedents for them. A rule should remain common across armies, not be changed for this army but not that one.

i tried to make a bcr list spamming as much of them as I could, could only manage 5. They are more expensive that terrorgeists for the 2 dudes who can't do much damage on top.

I have a feeling BCR has a tome in the chute and is ready to deploy and that they won't have to adhere to monster limits either.

Which again causes me to say lets stop bothering with battleline requirements and monster limits.

Why take three unmounted terrorgheists when you could take two mounted ones, though? Cheaper and a heck of a lot more effective. If I was running Gristlegore it would be 3x mounted terry, min ghoul battleline, 2x archregent.

But regardless, one already broken army also breaking behemoth limits hardly means we should get rid of them all together. Maybe there will be enough outcry for them to reverse it, it has happened before.

Light at the end of the tunnel is that FEC will inevitably be nerfed next GHB and potentially hard. Sucks now but at least we won't be dealing with it a whole year like Tzeentch.

Yeah, but by then there will be something else that will be on top of the teabag mound.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Why take three unmounted terrorgheists when you could take two mounted ones, though? Cheaper and a heck of a lot more effective. If I was running Gristlegore it would be 3x mounted terry, min ghoul battleline, 2x archregent.

But regardless, one already broken army also breaking behemoth limits hardly means we should get rid of them all together. Maybe there will be enough outcry for them to reverse it, it has happened before.

Light at the end of the tunnel is that FEC will inevitably be nerfed next GHB and potentially hard. Sucks now but at least we won't be dealing with it a whole year like Tzeentch.

I agree... The breaking limitations on behemoths is only really a thing for royal menagerie builds. And I doubt this are going to break up the current horde meta that much.

Also, I do not think FEC are THAT broken yet that they are just going to be 50% of top 10 tables like Tzeentch was. But time could prove me wrong there.

But the army will be broken in a more casual setting... A AGKoTG hits like a truck without many combos to begin with. It's powerful on its own. So just including one mounted AGK will be enough to make the list feel "non-casual"

If I can make a prediction: I think it'll be like BCR 6 MWs snowballs... Feels terribly unbalanced in casual play, but might not be enough to overcome the sheer effectiveness of mass bodies in the highest echelons. Not much of a counter argument if you only play casual games though. And seeing how both FEC start collecting and BCR start collecting boxes include these types of models, I'm sure it'll cause a lot of "feel bads" with newer players where one model feels unstoppable if you don't play in a 2k matched play format.

That is why I personally feel Blisterskin will be the better tourney build, the ability to counter play is stronger.

Though speaking of, thematically the grand courts are really cool and I like that GW added them. The expanded FEC fluff is also very nice. I would also compliment the wealth of options in artifacts/traits but really something like 5% of those are so vastly superior I don't thing the battletome deserves that compliment atm, which is a dam shame.

Not much of a counter argument if you only play casual games though.

That is the keystone piece right there. If you're a tourney power guy, it likely won't be that bad since you will also be fielding the filth.

If you are a casual player or narrative player, its game breaking.

auticus wrote:

Not much of a counter argument if you only play casual games though.

That is the keystone piece right there. If you're a tourney power guy, it likely won't be that bad since you will also be fielding the filth.

If you are a casual player or narrative player, its game breaking.

Its pretty much impossible to balance the game for all powerlevels. There will always be stuff that will not win top tables at tournaments, but will totally wreck stuff on a local lvl. Which armies that is also depends on your local meta. Apart from the clear top tournament armies different clubs in my area have different armies that do really well.

Right now it seems they are trying to balance for tournament play. There is clearly some stuff that could be better, but seems to me they are doing pretty good at this. Not everyone can compete, but more than I ever remember seeing before. Also I could be wrong, but 3 books already this year gives me hope that they are trying to give most armies up to date rules, which could help. Or just speed up powercreep, both possible.

It is impossible to balance the game for all powerlevels.

Yet there are a bunch of games that do very well at it in terms of making an experience that isn't about fielding the top 10% of the game all the time.

And the fan comps did a hell of a good job doing it as well before "official points".

So no free pass to the developers for continuously releasing this stuff in the state it is.

My question for years is why is this ok and why are people ok with this? Or is there really just a huge dearth of casual or narrative players and everyone is powergaming so doesn't mind it as much?

Uhm... If you balance the game you balance it for all power levels. The fan comps did it so I don't see why GW could not. They choose not to, but that is a separate issue.

As the saying goes; a rising tide sinks all cheese. Or something like that.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Yeah, I stopped saying they were incompetent because it was quite clear that the effort simply was not being made.

Apathy is a measure of incompetence as much as ignorance. A cop who doesn't care to follow procedure is just as incompetent as one who didn't know the procedure. Heck, I would say that it is more damning of a person to be in a job and do it apathetically than one who took on a job outside their wheelhouse. If you know how to do a job, but do it poorly because you simply don't care to in almost any other market, you get fired.

But then again, Games Workshop is not in the business to sell games, they are in it to sell models, and power creep does sell models until the purchaser gets sick of it or can no longer keep up.

 Charistoph wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Yeah, I stopped saying they were incompetent because it was quite clear that the effort simply was not being made.

Apathy is a measure of incompetence as much as ignorance. A cop who doesn't care to follow procedure is just as incompetent as one who didn't know the procedure. Heck, I would say that it is more damning of a person to be in a job and do it apathetically than one who took on a job outside their wheelhouse. If you know how to do a job, but do it poorly because you simply don't care to in almost any other market, you get fired.

But then again, Games Workshop is not in the business to sell games, they are in it to sell models, and power creep does sell models until the purchaser gets sick of it or can no longer keep up.

I would agree, but in that analogy the cop does not create the procedure, whereas GW does. Whatever they do is the procedure, thus the distinction.

Well, GW did attempt to show people there's more than 1 way to play the game with their three modes of play... And lots of "self-policing" is involved as a community to actually make that work. I'm not sure every local gaming group succeeds that well in this task though.

Around here, lots of people do not enjoy the cutthroat competitive play where entire units get deleted in a single phase, so Path to Glory is now being tried... and it's surprisingly balanced so far. (no big monsters, no insane hero overlapping abilities, no mega deathstar units).

Path to Glory is fun but does suffer from gw balance issues. For instance the vamp on zombie dragon starting out.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Self policing is very hard because you buy the army and assemble and paint it. Normally after seeing what is strong. Toning down often involves buying and assembling more models which people dont want to do.

If the rules were just balanced to begin with there would be no need to self police.

I play in a kings of war, warlords of erehwon, middle earth, and battletech group and none of those require self policing.

Path to Glory has some spots that need rounding out but overall it's pretty awesome. I play more PtG than matched play these days.

Wayniac wrote:

 Skimask Mohawk wrote:
Wow, gristlgore monsters lose behemoth.

Fec are clearly op, which is ironic because I sold off my DoK because they just weren't fun to play. The good news is that while I did cwt carrion throne to start my collection, I don't have any of the monsters. Just ghouls, lots of them. And it's looking like another DoK situation where the monster kits are getting snapped up completely.

Yeah, it's ridiculous and FEC are my primary army. What I find more ridiculous is that they explicitly said the opposite for Beastclaw; they got both Keywords. For some strange reason, they ruled opposite on FEC. This tells me that they aren't even bothering to look at previous rules they've already written. There's no consistency. An army can have the same thing, and they will function in two completely different ways because the team won't remember that they ruled a certain way for the first army in an FAQ/GHB/etc. and rule it a completely different way for the second.

It's like the old joke when GW had the "Roolz Boyz" hotline you could call: Call three different times, get three different answers. Only the designers themselves are doing it.

Well. It's not like this is new for GW. Remember when other space marines had 3++ stormshields and smoke launchers that gave 5+ cover save and dark angels had 4++ and penetrations are glances?

Inconsistenty is name of GW. And new GW is just old GW with better PR.

Everyone talks about the Terrorgiest, hows the Dragon compare?

 AduroT wrote:
Everyone talks about the Terrorgiest, hows the Dragon compare?

Poorly. It has a few more secondary attacks and a more reliable ranged attack, but lacks the oomph of 6 mortal wonds on a natural 6 to hit with the jaw. The ridden version also costs 40 pts more and is now a very poor platform to summon a Vargulf from compared to an Archregent. The unridden version also lacks built-in healing.

Dragon is fine, terry is OP. So the dragon doesn't stack up by comparison but is not actually bad. The ridden one does have a fantastic warscroll spell and that is really the reason to take him (but still not as good as terry).

The dragon is mainly used for the pretty insane aura spell it has.

It can't explode on 6s, but it's pretty solid still. Especially with rending claws. Getting -2 and -3 rends is often just as good. It's great if you run a battalion so you can get a GKoZD and GKoTG together.

NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Yeah, I stopped saying they were incompetent because it was quite clear that the effort simply was not being made.

Apathy is a measure of incompetence as much as ignorance. A cop who doesn't care to follow procedure is just as incompetent as one who didn't know the procedure. Heck, I would say that it is more damning of a person to be in a job and do it apathetically than one who took on a job outside their wheelhouse. If you know how to do a job, but do it poorly because you simply don't care to in almost any other market, you get fired.

But then again, Games Workshop is not in the business to sell games, they are in it to sell models, and power creep does sell models until the purchaser gets sick of it or can no longer keep up.

I would agree, but in that analogy the cop does not create the procedure, whereas GW does. Whatever they do is the procedure, thus the distinction.

The procedure we're talking about is not the base rules of their game, but how to create a balanced game, and there are standards for that which are being ignored.

Hm, that does make sense.

The uk tourney guys are saying that the fec book is not that bad and that in a month it will be no big deal.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The non tournament scene being broken is always just hand waived.

FEC were showing up at tournaments and doing alright before (also won some but that guy is very skilled) so yeeeahhh... They'll still be dominating in a month. They will take DoK's spot in the top three trio with SCE and LoN.

If I'm reading between the lines, I think they mean that it'll get nerfed and something else will be busted so in the end its a wash.

But it basically supports the churn and burn of tournament play as being acceptable to the rest of the game and its denizens.

I see GW nerfing them in a month or 2.
They will keep them for now for sales purposes, but by April they will likely get grounded a bit.


I'd say we see the Archregent become unique and behemoths retain that status even as battle line.
Even with those 2 tweaks they will be a solid army, but I feel those 2 really tip the scales on it.

Considering the work they did on the last two battletomes I am becoming more and more curious what we'll see when the Blade of Khorne tome comes out.

Jackal90 wrote:
I see GW nerfing them in a month or 2.
They will keep them for now for sales purposes, but by April they will likely get grounded a bit.


I'd say we see the Archregent become unique and behemoths retain that status even as battle line.
Even with those 2 tweaks they will be a solid army, but I feel those 2 really tip the scales on it.

What sales purposes?

Seriously, Carrion Empire was the big ticket item and it sold out day of.

 Eldarsif wrote:
Considering the work they did on the last two battletomes I am becoming more and more curious what we'll see when the Blade of Khorne tome comes out.

They've been bouncing around. Goblin book was pretty cool and mostly balanced. Skaven book was moderately OP with some fun stuff in it but a powergamer magnet. FEC book is on par with 7th ed demons of whfb broken. So I expect blades of khorne to be what they've always been in AOS... probably goblin level or a bit weaker.

I'm pretty sure FEC isn't WHFB 7th demons style broken...

I'm not a betting man, but I'm willing to put money on Skaven becoming the long term more successful battletome. Simply because they are more versatile, have more tools at their disposal AND are way less reliant on one or 2 models doing all the heavy lifting.

I'm pretty sure FEC isn't WHFB 7th demons style broken...

At the very least its "oh i showed up with 2000 pts of FEC with 3 or 4 arch regents and a bunch of terrorgheists... and you showed up with... a casual fun list. Do you want to do something else instead?"

I actually saw that very discussion happen yesterday only it was 40k.

I want to do the all Terries army, not because it’s broken but because it would amuse me. I’m worried of them retracting that “not behemoths” ruling after I buy and paint all of them.

Do you really need more than 4 terries?

auticus wrote:

 Eldarsif wrote:
Considering the work they did on the last two battletomes I am becoming more and more curious what we'll see when the Blade of Khorne tome comes out.

They've been bouncing around. Goblin book was pretty cool and mostly balanced. Skaven book was moderately OP with some fun stuff in it but a powergamer magnet. FEC book is on par with 7th ed demons of whfb broken. So I expect blades of khorne to be what they've always been in AOS... probably goblin level or a bit weaker.

Skaven I am more forgiving of because there are so many units it was pretty much inevitable that some would be overpowered and some would be underpowered. They also fell into the trap of looking at a warscroll that was underperforming, buffing said warscroll, AND giving it allegiance abilities that buff it further.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Jackal90 wrote:
I see GW nerfing them in a month or 2.
They will keep them for now for sales purposes, but by April they will likely get grounded a bit.


I'd say we see the Archregent become unique and behemoths retain that status even as battle line.
Even with those 2 tweaks they will be a solid army, but I feel those 2 really tip the scales on it.

What sales purposes?

Seriously, Carrion Empire was the big ticket item and it sold out day of.

I don't get this whole sold out thing online.
Local GW has been getting them in stock just fine.

 Elmir wrote:
I'm pretty sure FEC isn't WHFB 7th demons style broken...

I'm not a betting man, but I'm willing to put money on Skaven becoming the long term more successful battletome. Simply because they are more versatile, have more tools at their disposal AND are way less reliant on one or 2 models doing all the heavy lifting.

Well saying it isn't as bad as 7th daemons is kind of like saying a world leader isn't as bad as Hitler*. I do think Skaven will be more successful in the long term because their overpowered lies more in the 'undercosted' territory where there are a good number of warscrolls that should really cost more but do not trump actual skill in-game. It means both that it takes more skill to exploit, has more diversity in said exploits, and is more difficult to target for obviously needing nerfs.

*lol Godwin's law

auticus wrote:

I'm pretty sure FEC isn't WHFB 7th demons style broken...

At the very least its "oh i showed up with 2000 pts of FEC with 3 or 4 arch regents and a bunch of terrorgheists... and you showed up with... a casual fun list. Do you want to do something else instead?"

I actually saw that very discussion happen yesterday only it was 40k.

I know you like harping on about that point (tbh it's starting to be beating a dead horse at this point), but if somebody comes with a casual list against a highly competitive "spammy netlist", they will indeed not have a lot of fun. This isn't a pure FEC thing by any stretch of the imagination... If I take a cutthroat DoK, LoN, SCE, IDK, GSG,BoC,.... list against somebody casually strolling into a shop with whatever he has painted up recently, it'll be a terrible, unenjoyable game. It's been like that in WHFB 4-5th edition, WH40k 2nd to 8th edition, warmachine mk1/2, confrontation, bushido and pretty much any "open wargame" I've played since I was a 12 year old boy.

In fact, FEC are only really "worse" in this regard because they only have 13 unit warscrolls to select from to begin with, and 3 of them are very good for their points cost (which can be changed in less than a year).... But that doesn't make them WHFB 7th style broken, not even close to that insanity in fact.

The entirety of the demon list wasn't broken either in 7th edition. It was only a few of the things that were, but those were beyond the stratosphere broken.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Well saying it isn't as bad as 7th daemons is kind of like saying a world leader isn't as bad as Hitler*. I do think Skaven will be more successful in the long term because their overpowered lies more in the 'undercosted' territory where there are a good number of warscrolls that should really cost more but do not trump actual skill in-game. It means both that it takes more skill to exploit, has more diversity in said exploits, and is more difficult to target for obviously needing nerfs.

*lol Godwin's law

Hehe, that law does hold up anywhere...

I'm not sure I agree with Skaven's power being it's low points cost however. I'm tipping them as overall winners long term for several reasons:

1) Very difficult to remove heroes that provide very solid buffs.

2) Insane tanking units like warpseer verminlords.

3) Unconventional shooting weapons that can deal with essential opposing infantry heroes along with insanely good firepower to take out large monsters with jezzails and gattlings (especially with skryre warpstone tokens)

4) Dirt cheap bodies

5)Teleportation shennanigans

6) very strong potential magic output, boosted by free arcane terrain pieces.

7) lots of combo abilities through stacking different command traits.

That's my reasoning why I think Skaven will stand the test of time a lot better than FEC, who's only real tool is "hit things very hard and fast". And like I said a few pages ago: as soon as this game starts taking a turn towards more shooty armies being released (or made better like KO), those fragile monsters aren't going to be nearly as scary, especially for a force that'll be very vulnerable to a GHB price hike on it's prize ponies.

Don't forget FEC also can summon a crap load of free points onto the table as well as recycle dead units for even more free points.

Heavy shooty or not, its hard to overcome a 3000-2000 point handicap game.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Do you really need more than 4 terries?

Yes. Yes I do. I might go all Draogns though. Paint them up as the DnD Chromatics.

 Elmir wrote:

auticus wrote:

I'm pretty sure FEC isn't WHFB 7th demons style broken...

At the very least its "oh i showed up with 2000 pts of FEC with 3 or 4 arch regents and a bunch of terrorgheists... and you showed up with... a casual fun list. Do you want to do something else instead?"

I actually saw that very discussion happen yesterday only it was 40k.

I know you like harping on about that point (tbh it's starting to be beating a dead horse at this point), but if somebody comes with a casual list against a highly competitive "spammy netlist", they will indeed not have a lot of fun. This isn't a pure FEC thing by any stretch of the imagination... If I take a cutthroat DoK, LoN, SCE, IDK, GSG,BoC,.... list against somebody casually strolling into a shop with whatever he has painted up recently, it'll be a terrible, unenjoyable game. It's been like that in WHFB 4-5th edition, WH40k 2nd to 8th edition, warmachine mk1/2, confrontation, bushido and pretty much any "open wargame" I've played since I was a 12 year old boy.

In fact, FEC are only really "worse" in this regard because they only have 13 unit warscrolls to select from to begin with, and 3 of them are very good for their points cost (which can be changed in less than a year).... But that doesn't make them WHFB 7th style broken, not even close to that insanity in fact.

What separates FEC is that a non-optimized FEC list beats the snot out of the same from almost any other army. It doesn't need to be a cheese list vs casual at all. Aside from the Archregent the units are not even that bad, plenty out there that are worse from other armies. But the set of allegiance abilities they have...

auticus wrote:
Don't forget FEC also can summon a crap load of free points onto the table as well as recycle dead units for even more free points.

Heavy shooty or not, its hard to overcome a 3000-2000 point handicap game.

That would only be true if FEC units were worth their points on raw stats alone, which they are not, not in a million years. Outside the Archregent, their summons are baked into the cost of the summoners and are overcosted in the first place. Ghouls cost more than Chainrasps, consider that for a moment.

Yeah I agree that is a factor to consider. Really the problem units are ones that do not have said cost baked in; Terry (with the buff), Varghulf, Archregent.

I would need to see that laid out.

I can't really reconcile that the extra 1000+ points being recycled and freely summoned is fully baked into the cost of the archregents and monsters and the ghouls themselves really.

The math just doesn't support that at all.

I hear that as a counter argument nearly every day, that summoning is ok because they bake the cost into all of the units, but really that is not even the case half the time. There are some units where they did that... like horrors. And then there are a lot of units where that is simply not the case at all.

If you take an army that recycles / summons and put them up against an army of say Slaves to Darkness or High elves, that summoning is going to make the game much more than a 2000 v 2000 game. Its going to be a serious handicap for the slaves to darkness or high elf player. Hell take a summons army against a non summons army in general and that is a serious buff period. If the cost were baked into the points values of the other units then it would be the same as when you had reserve points. Which no one wanted to use because the cost wasn't free. The same reason why you don't see people really play tzeentch summoning horrors much ... because its not worth it because they baked the cost in for real into the models.

But you'll see plenty of other spam summons. For a reason... their costs are not factored in or if they are, laughably so.

To my understanding he means that is a factor, not that it at all compensates. Certainly that is what I mean; were all the summoning and allegiance taken out of the picture the basic FEC units (ghouls, horrors, flayers) would be notably sub-par. Similarly their corresponding courtiers would be; they don't fight very well. The Ghast courtier is somewhat of an exception but is one of those heroes that has a point reduction to compensate for a weeny hero occupying a leader slot (IMO he should just be 100 and not have the leader classification, but it works). Even the mounted dragon is not that great on stats alone; compare to VLoZD.

The problem on the unit end lies with the minority of units costed such that it does not compensate. The varghulf fights like 160 points for showing up, the mounted terry could probably have used a 20 point bump upwards before they buffed the maw and made it considerably stronger. The archregent is obviously ludicrous.

This is one thing on its own, the allegiance abilities being overpowered is layered on top.

I think from a casual standpoint that an FEC army that doesn't summon at all is still quite capable.

I know that that was a war I had to fight in my last campaign because two of the legion of nagash players said that if their army had summon death mechanics put on them after recycling 500 points that that made their army "unplayable". (sudden death mechanics being that after you summon 500 or more points in a 2000 pt game that your opponent has a sudden death objective to achieve since they are now outclassed)

That somehow their 2000 point army was really worth like 1000 points and that the summoning and recycling was what made it worth 2000 points.

I find that, in that case at least, and in the FEC example, both against casual lists, to be a load of bollocks.

Now against other armies spamming summoning or cranking out the mortal wound carousel, that would be something to consider.

And I'm defining casual list as a list that is not taking advantage of undercost OP units. Which is still a wide variety of lists. For example, my blood warrior list is blood warriors, reavers, some blood crusher cav, a mighty lord of khorne and a couple priests and a bloodsecrator. Gets totally smashed against a tourney list but in the casual sense, is not only narratively accurate, armies that spam summons do just fine against it if they arent' spamming summoning.

I'm saying put 200 points of ghoul vs 200 points of most other units and the ghouls are going to lose. Ditto for horrors/flayers and courtiers (by themselves, of course). In raw combat capability they are poor; the resurrection of dead models is baked into the point cost. Also note those units are not what people are bringing up when overpowered things are discussed.

Now could an army of just those still kick the snot out of a casual list? With the new book they dam well could, but with the GHB they certainly wouldn't. That is the allegiance talking.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
What separates FEC is that a non-optimized FEC list beats the snot out of the same from almost any other army. It doesn't need to be a cheese list vs casual at all. Aside from the Archregent the units are not even that bad, plenty out there that are worse from other armies. But the set of allegiance abilities they have...

I'm not sure that really applies. I've been testing my FEC quite a bit now in our PtG campaign (where taking the big monsters isn't an option) and they by no means just roflstomp all other lists like there is no tomorrow. In fact, their glass cannon nature was really starting to show in that format (and I was taking an archregent to lead my forces). I've only played a few normal games, but when you leave the dragons home, it's not a wrecking ball army at all. In fact, in my 1k abattoir build, I was still let down by how embarrassingly bad the crypt horrors are if they face any armor.

I'm happy somebody brought up just how ridiculously weak ghouls are compared to most other basic troops in this game. Summoning them does generate 200p, but that unit would only cost 160p in most other armies to begin with, so that points advantage you can get, hasn't been a miracle cure... especially since you do NOT want to spend those few precious CP you get on feeding frenzying those types of minimum summoned units.

The KNIGHT keyword units are all 160+ points for 12W 5+ save models and tend to get wiped out before any mustering can even happen, so those units are not breaking the game right now either.

The real problem units, are the big mounted monsters when they strike first (default mode for a gristtlegore general) and the undercosted archregent... Then it's absolute carnage. So what you are seeing is a bunch of people spamming those big gribblies while avoiding large SERF/KNIGHT units altogether (except for their troop requirements), but guess what... That's exactly what a honed hardcore FEC list looks like. Try going up against a 2k list with only a single monster and no archregent spam. The other reports of "non dragon/archregent spam" builds that are effective, is blisterkin/deadwatch apparently, but I don't have any first hand experience with that all, it's just what the FEC FB group is reporting.

However (and this goes back to my original self-policing point), I did see lists passing in that group along the lines of:

1k Grisstlegore grand court
AGKoTG
Archregent
rTG
10 ghouls

I could include the screenshot of me politely implying he's a massive enjoyment killing c*nt if he takes that to a casual game.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Jackal90 wrote:
I see GW nerfing them in a month or 2.
They will keep them for now for sales purposes, but by April they will likely get grounded a bit.


I'd say we see the Archregent become unique and behemoths retain that status even as battle line.
Even with those 2 tweaks they will be a solid army, but I feel those 2 really tip the scales on it.

What sales purposes?

Seriously, Carrion Empire was the big ticket item and it sold out day of.

Ah yes Carrion Empire is only source of FEC models in the world. Yes that must be it ;-)

And before you say archregent is unique for that not forever.

GW then moves to sell stuff at full price rather than discount.

 Elmir wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
What separates FEC is that a non-optimized FEC list beats the snot out of the same from almost any other army. It doesn't need to be a cheese list vs casual at all. Aside from the Archregent the units are not even that bad, plenty out there that are worse from other armies. But the set of allegiance abilities they have...

I'm not sure that really applies. I've been testing my FEC quite a bit now in our PtG campaign (where taking the big monsters isn't an option) and they by no means just roflstomp all other lists like there is no tomorrow. In fact, their glass cannon nature was really starting to show in that format (and I was taking an archregent to lead my forces). I've only played a few normal games, but when you leave the dragons home, it's not a wrecking ball army at all. In fact, in my 1k abattoir build, I was still let down by how embarrassingly bad the crypt horrors are if they face any armor.

I'm happy somebody brought up just how ridiculously weak ghouls are compared to most other basic troops in this game. Summoning them does generate 200p, but that unit would only cost 160p in most other armies to begin with, so that points advantage you can get, hasn't been a miracle cure... especially since you do NOT want to spend those few precious CP you get on feeding frenzying those types of minimum summoned units.

The KNIGHT keyword units are all 160+ points for 12W 5+ save models and tend to get wiped out before any mustering can even happen, so those units are not breaking the game right now either.

The real problem units, are the big mounted monsters when they strike first (default mode for a gristtlegore general) and the undercosted archregent... Then it's absolute carnage. So what you are seeing is a bunch of people spamming those big gribblies while avoiding large SERF/KNIGHT units altogether (except for their troop requirements), but guess what... That's exactly what a honed hardcore FEC list looks like. Try going up against a 2k list with only a single monster and no archregent spam. The other reports of "non dragon/archregent spam" builds that are effective, is blisterkin/deadwatch apparently, but I don't have any first hand experience with that all, it's just what the FEC FB group is reporting.

However (and this goes back to my original self-policing point), I did see lists passing in that group along the lines of:

1k Grisstlegore grand court
AGKoTG
Archregent
rTG
10 ghouls

I could include the screenshot of me politely implying he's a massive enjoyment killing c*nt if he takes that to a casual game.

This seems accurate. The only problem I see for FEC in relation to casual games compared to any other tournament level army is that they have basically 3 kits... and the three of them come in the start collecting! set, so a TON of casual players will end up with busted lists that stomp other noobies. And thats a problem.

So turns out the local AOS crowd at my shop is of a competitive nature but not TFGs about it. So it looks like a good thing my two armies are FEC and Maggotkin if/when I decide to swing back around to AOS.

I think the main complaints about FEC result from being able to summon (which is the main part of the army as everything really sucks by itself) or the wonky BS like 3 archregents and 5 terrorgheists now that the FAQ said you ignore behemoth restrictions.

 Elmir wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
What separates FEC is that a non-optimized FEC list beats the snot out of the same from almost any other army. It doesn't need to be a cheese list vs casual at all. Aside from the Archregent the units are not even that bad, plenty out there that are worse from other armies. But the set of allegiance abilities they have...

I'm not sure that really applies. I've been testing my FEC quite a bit now in our PtG campaign (where taking the big monsters isn't an option) and they by no means just roflstomp all other lists like there is no tomorrow. In fact, their glass cannon nature was really starting to show in that format (and I was taking an archregent to lead my forces). I've only played a few normal games, but when you leave the dragons home, it's not a wrecking ball army at all. In fact, in my 1k abattoir build, I was still let down by how embarrassingly bad the crypt horrors are if they face any armor.

I'm happy somebody brought up just how ridiculously weak ghouls are compared to most other basic troops in this game. Summoning them does generate 200p, but that unit would only cost 160p in most other armies to begin with, so that points advantage you can get, hasn't been a miracle cure... especially since you do NOT want to spend those few precious CP you get on feeding frenzying those types of minimum summoned units.

The KNIGHT keyword units are all 160+ points for 12W 5+ save models and tend to get wiped out before any mustering can even happen, so those units are not breaking the game right now either.

The real problem units, are the big mounted monsters when they strike first (default mode for a gristtlegore general) and the undercosted archregent... Then it's absolute carnage. So what you are seeing is a bunch of people spamming those big gribblies while avoiding large SERF/KNIGHT units altogether (except for their troop requirements), but guess what... That's exactly what a honed hardcore FEC list looks like. Try going up against a 2k list with only a single monster and no archregent spam. The other reports of "non dragon/archregent spam" builds that are effective, is blisterkin/deadwatch apparently, but I don't have any first hand experience with that all, it's just what the FEC FB group is reporting.

However (and this goes back to my original self-policing point), I did see lists passing in that group along the lines of:

1k Grisstlegore grand court
AGKoTG
Archregent
rTG
10 ghouls

I could include the screenshot of me politely implying he's a massive enjoyment killing c*nt if he takes that to a casual game.

This lines up with what I am seeing locally as well. And honestly, the Zombie Dragon or unmounted terrorgheist hasn't been that bad, it's really been the AGkoTG that has been the problem. This is mainly due to the mount trait and Gristlegore benefits combined with an already under-costed unit. Then when you add 3 more Terrorgheists as battleline, it gets real dicey. The meta is starting to shift enough that I may consider an Anvils SCE list here real soon.

We also just had a local tourney , and FEC showed up, but didn't dominate. Still had IDK come in first, followed by Skaven and then FEC. Honestly, I think everyone is focusing on FEC while Skaven is flying a bit under the radar right now. They've been putting up a lot of results locally and at major tournaments.

tneva82 wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

Jackal90 wrote:
I see GW nerfing them in a month or 2.
They will keep them for now for sales purposes, but by April they will likely get grounded a bit.


I'd say we see the Archregent become unique and behemoths retain that status even as battle line.
Even with those 2 tweaks they will be a solid army, but I feel those 2 really tip the scales on it.

What sales purposes?

Seriously, Carrion Empire was the big ticket item and it sold out day of.

Ah yes Carrion Empire is only source of FEC models in the world. Yes that must be it ;-)

And before you say archregent is unique for that not forever.

GW then moves to sell stuff at full price rather than discount.

Archregent not being around to drive sales is kind of a big deal when it is the "new hotness" that everyone's complaining about. Everything else in that box for FEC can be had from a SC set--which also gets you a Terrorgheist/Zombie Dragon to boot.

So yeah that's kind of a big deal when people are claiming they won't nerf the Archregent because of sales.

I don't think that nerfing the arch regent is happening. At least anytime soon. Based on the conversations I'm reading, the tournament crowd feels AOS2 is in the best place its ever been ever.

auticus wrote:
I don't think that nerfing the arch regent is happening. At least anytime soon. Based on the conversations I'm reading, the tournament crowd feels AOS2 is in the best place its ever been ever.

I would say overall they aren't wrong. It's not *balanced* but it's overall a good game I think. You have the usual tournament balance you rail against a lot, but the game itself is in a better place than 40k right now in my opinion.

auticus wrote:
I don't think that nerfing the arch regent is happening. At least anytime soon. Based on the conversations I'm reading, the tournament crowd feels AOS2 is in the best place its ever been ever.

I think alot of this is because the game has been improving over time, but its still far from perfect.
There are alot of inconsistencies and issues that need ironing out still.
As a whole, I'd agree that it's currently better than it was.
I still say that FeC are above the rest at current though.

Creating internal balance is one thing, we often see a new book where a few units are basically an auto take while others are a handicap, but this levels out in its self.
The FeC book though is simply solid, there are no "bad" options.
Just about everything they have is average - great.
Then you add in the tactics, abilities etc and it's strength ramps up even more.


I'd be confident in saying a newer player using FeC could keep place with an average player and army.
Obviously ability comes into this, but it just amplifies it even more.
Take a top player and give them a top army, it's going to roll over most things with relative ease.

Most armies have a weak point or they lack somewhere, FeC just simply don't.


I'd say the only downside to them is a massively limited unit pool.






I think skaven have also flown under the radar aswell.
While alot of changes have irritated players (mortars, fiends etc) I feel they are currently in a good place.
Some of the units like jezzails have been improved alot.
Even special characters have a use, rather than being over costed centre pieces.
Thanquol for example (4x warpfire) can delete hordes and 2-3 wound model units with ease while being a stable casting platform.
It's nice to be able to actually use him for once.

Only real bug to me is the allies issues and mixed clans, but that can be worked around.

To be fair though, FEC has like 3 units anyways so it's kind of hard to have a bad choice when you're so limited.

What constantly bugs me, although I'm sure auticus is right, is why tournament players aren't focused on balanced design. You always see people say how a good tournament game is well balanced, but here we see tournament players being largely in control of the rules (how much control we don't know) and still making things wildly imbalanced despite the fact that being tournament players you would think they'd want something more balanced.

I saw someone saying the reason FEC is so imbalanced compared to say Gloomspite is because Gloomspite had new models, FEC didn't (other than the Archregent) so they had to make the book OP to sell more of them(aka the old "It's not balanced because their a business" saw that people seem to trot out as an excuse).

I Just find it funny how you see people here, for instance, always say how the goal of competitive play is to be as balanced as possible and yet in the same case we have tournament players deliberately making the game unbalanced.

Wayniac wrote:
To be fair though, FEC has like 3 units anyways so it's kind of hard to have a bad choice when you're so limited.

What constantly bugs me, although I'm sure auticus is right, is why tournament players aren't focused on balanced design. You always see people say how a good tournament game is well balanced, but here we see tournament players being largely in control of the rules (how much control we don't know) and still making things wildly imbalanced despite the fact that being tournament players you would think they'd want something more balanced.

I saw someone saying the reason FEC is so imbalanced compared to say Gloomspite is because Gloomspite had new models, FEC didn't (other than the Archregent) so they had to make the book OP to sell more of them(aka the old "It's not balanced because their a business" saw that people seem to trot out as an excuse).

I Just find it funny how you see people here, for instance, always say how the goal of competitive play is to be as balanced as possible and yet in the same case we have tournament players deliberately making the game unbalanced.

The thing is, most of the tome really isn't that unbalanced. The statline of nearly every unit is pretty poor, and expensive. They have their summoning rules to help fix this, and it's been discussed a bit There are only a few items that are really imbalanced, such as the AGKoTK and the Gristlecore court. Nearly every other unit is fine, with perhaps the Arch-regent being debatable.

Not to mention, I don't think it's fair to say that tournament players are deliberately making the game unbalanced.

 Sasori wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
To be fair though, FEC has like 3 units anyways so it's kind of hard to have a bad choice when you're so limited.

What constantly bugs me, although I'm sure auticus is right, is why tournament players aren't focused on balanced design. You always see people say how a good tournament game is well balanced, but here we see tournament players being largely in control of the rules (how much control we don't know) and still making things wildly imbalanced despite the fact that being tournament players you would think they'd want something more balanced.

I saw someone saying the reason FEC is so imbalanced compared to say Gloomspite is because Gloomspite had new models, FEC didn't (other than the Archregent) so they had to make the book OP to sell more of them(aka the old "It's not balanced because their a business" saw that people seem to trot out as an excuse).

I Just find it funny how you see people here, for instance, always say how the goal of competitive play is to be as balanced as possible and yet in the same case we have tournament players deliberately making the game unbalanced.

The thing is, most of the tome really isn't that unbalanced. The statline of nearly every unit is pretty poor, and expensive. They have their summoning rules to help fix this, and it's been discussed a bit There are only a few items that are really imbalanced, such as the AGKoTK and the Gristlecore court. Nearly every other unit is fine, with perhaps the Arch-regent being debatable.

Not to mention, I don't think it's fair to say that tournament players are deliberately making the game unbalanced.

It sure seems to be that way with how you'll have like two codexes that are alright, then one that's OMGWTFBBQ, then another that's strong but not broken, then OMGWTFBBQ, etc. Their design is all over the place. There has to be a reason why they are so inconsistent with their design and internal/external balance. Before it was that the designers seemed to be just schmucks who played for funsies (like the 40k team) but most of the AOS team is all UK tournament guys.

Wayniac wrote:
To be fair though, FEC has like 3 units anyways so it's kind of hard to have a bad choice when you're so limited.

What constantly bugs me, although I'm sure auticus is right, is why tournament players aren't focused on balanced design. You always see people say how a good tournament game is well balanced, but here we see tournament players being largely in control of the rules (how much control we don't know) and still making things wildly imbalanced despite the fact that being tournament players you would think they'd want something more balanced.

I saw someone saying the reason FEC is so imbalanced compared to say Gloomspite is because Gloomspite had new models, FEC didn't (other than the Archregent) so they had to make the book OP to sell more of them(aka the old "It's not balanced because their a business" saw that people seem to trot out as an excuse).

I Just find it funny how you see people here, for instance, always say how the goal of competitive play is to be as balanced as possible and yet in the same case we have tournament players deliberately making the game unbalanced.

Look at blood crushes ages ago.
£18 metal model and every tournament army took 9+ of them.
A while later, plastic kit of 3 for £33.
After the hype died, they got nerfed into the ground.
That seemed sales based to me sadly.




In terms of tournament players and balance, there is a simple answer to that.
People are different.
Everyone has thwir own vision of what balance is or what it should be.
The chance of finding several people that would agree on that are slim.
This isn't exclusive to GW either.
Any competitive game has this.
Some people call for nerfs, others call for buffs, no one ever agrees on a middle ground.

You then have to take personal experience and bias into this too.
No one wants their own army to get hit by the nerf bat, infact, they want it competing with top armies.
Some units will seem over the top against the army you play, yet in general, your army may just struggle against said unit.
As a result of that, you would want your army buffed to tackle this, which in turn, beefs up your army as a whole.

With the exception of games like chess, I really don't think any game will achieve a perfect balance, it's physically impossible.

Nobody wants perfect balance, but it's repeatedly funny to me how virtually every other wargames company except GW can at least make things *roughly* balanced to where there isn't glaring inconsistencies or cases where X just completely replaces Y in all ways, but the "biggest wargames company in the world" finds this task Herculean to do. If their competitors can do it while being way smaller, you would think the juggernaut could do it too.

Wayniac wrote:
Nobody wants perfect balance, but it's repeatedly funny to me how virtually every other wargames company except GW can at least make things *roughly* balanced to where there isn't glaring inconsistencies or cases where X just completely replaces Y in all ways, but the "biggest wargames company in the world" finds this task Herculean to do.

I'd stab a guess that it's because GW really is no slouch with content.
They pump out models and rules for several different game types and then various armies for each.
While they have a much bigger development team, they also put out far more than any other miniature company.

Jackal90 wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
To be fair though, FEC has like 3 units anyways so it's kind of hard to have a bad choice when you're so limited.

What constantly bugs me, although I'm sure auticus is right, is why tournament players aren't focused on balanced design. You always see people say how a good tournament game is well balanced, but here we see tournament players being largely in control of the rules (how much control we don't know) and still making things wildly imbalanced despite the fact that being tournament players you would think they'd want something more balanced.

I saw someone saying the reason FEC is so imbalanced compared to say Gloomspite is because Gloomspite had new models, FEC didn't (other than the Archregent) so they had to make the book OP to sell more of them(aka the old "It's not balanced because their a business" saw that people seem to trot out as an excuse).

I Just find it funny how you see people here, for instance, always say how the goal of competitive play is to be as balanced as possible and yet in the same case we have tournament players deliberately making the game unbalanced.

Look at blood crushes ages ago.
£18 metal model and every tournament army took 9+ of them.
A while later, plastic kit of 3 for £33.
After the hype died, they got nerfed into the ground.
That seemed sales based to me sadly.




In terms of tournament players and balance, there is a simple answer to that.
People are different.
Everyone has thwir own vision of what balance is or what it should be.
The chance of finding several people that would agree on that are slim.
This isn't exclusive to GW either.
Any competitive game has this.
Some people call for nerfs, others call for buffs, no one ever agrees on a middle ground.

You then have to take personal experience and bias into this too.
No one wants their own army to get hit by the nerf bat, infact, they want it competing with top armies.
Some units will seem over the top against the army you play, yet in general, your army may just struggle against said unit.
As a result of that, you would want your army buffed to tackle this, which in turn, beefs up your army as a whole.

With the exception of games like chess, I really don't think any game will achieve a perfect balance, it's physically impossible.

You can cherry pick examples of both sides of the spectrum pretty easy though, your bloodcrusher example does not prove anything. For every "New unit is OP" you can pick out 1-2 units that were not OP or a release that was not OP or quite weak. It's really the fact that GW rules team is just not that great at balancing things.

 Sasori wrote:

Jackal90 wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
To be fair though, FEC has like 3 units anyways so it's kind of hard to have a bad choice when you're so limited.

What constantly bugs me, although I'm sure auticus is right, is why tournament players aren't focused on balanced design. You always see people say how a good tournament game is well balanced, but here we see tournament players being largely in control of the rules (how much control we don't know) and still making things wildly imbalanced despite the fact that being tournament players you would think they'd want something more balanced.

I saw someone saying the reason FEC is so imbalanced compared to say Gloomspite is because Gloomspite had new models, FEC didn't (other than the Archregent) so they had to make the book OP to sell more of them(aka the old "It's not balanced because their a business" saw that people seem to trot out as an excuse).

I Just find it funny how you see people here, for instance, always say how the goal of competitive play is to be as balanced as possible and yet in the same case we have tournament players deliberately making the game unbalanced.

Look at blood crushes ages ago.
£18 metal model and every tournament army took 9+ of them.
A while later, plastic kit of 3 for £33.
After the hype died, they got nerfed into the ground.
That seemed sales based to me sadly.




In terms of tournament players and balance, there is a simple answer to that.
People are different.
Everyone has thwir own vision of what balance is or what it should be.
The chance of finding several people that would agree on that are slim.
This isn't exclusive to GW either.
Any competitive game has this.
Some people call for nerfs, others call for buffs, no one ever agrees on a middle ground.

You then have to take personal experience and bias into this too.
No one wants their own army to get hit by the nerf bat, infact, they want it competing with top armies.
Some units will seem over the top against the army you play, yet in general, your army may just struggle against said unit.
As a result of that, you would want your army buffed to tackle this, which in turn, beefs up your army as a whole.

With the exception of games like chess, I really don't think any game will achieve a perfect balance, it's physically impossible.

You can cherry pick examples of both sides of the spectrum pretty easy though, your bloodcrusher example does not prove anything. For every "New unit is OP" you can pick out 1-2 units that were not OP or a release that was not OP or quite weak. It's really the fact that GW rules team is just not that great at balancing things.

That's true, but pricing has become more erratic too these days.
Back then there was almost a tax based on unit slot aswell.
Troops you need in mass? Cheap price.
Elite unit you'll like take maybe one to 2 of? Hike up the cost (I'm looking at you, goldswords)
Character you'll only need 1 of? Price hike again.


Currently though, pricing is all over the place.
I honestly wouldn't like to try and guess new pricing before releases.
Before you could essentially work out the price by knowing it's unit size, role and composition.