Amishprn86 wrote: I play SoC and BoC, but my BoC has almost every unit i play with -1 or -2 and ways to give out -1 or even -2 (or -3).
For my BoC i play with 2 shamans, 2-3 Doombulls, or 1-2 DB and 1 BL, 50+ bestigors, and some Bullgors (I stopped playing EToD unless it is a tournament, then i use them over Bullgors). Then i have 2 ways to give out -1, most the time its always -2 at least. I love Doombulls and i can safety say theya re worth playing multiples now, having 1 with +2D and other other with extra rend helps too.
The Doombulls/Bullgors are is -2/3D, my relic i have to take is an addition -1/-2/-3 rend (addition -1 rend for every 10 models in a unit to a max of 3) so 1 of my Doombulls will be -3/-4 rend for 3D, the other DB is -2/5D, if both gets to swing its over for almost any horded base unit. Bestigors are -1 but i try to get the spell or stone onto something for an additional -1. , i try not to hit to hard until turn 2 and i am a 1 drop so i set it up for double turns, if i get it im golded, if not i still am good b.c i can move 12-15" and still charge.
My other army (that i'm taking to adepticon) is SoC, their rend is only -1, but it doesnt matter as its 15 Scourgerunner chariots, 40 Shadow Warriors, and 2 Hurricanum's. The 2 Hurricanum's are 3D3 MWs on a 2+, the chariots at least 2/3 of them will gain a +1 to hit buff, they all have 1 that also is a +1 to hit, and at least 3 units will be +1 to wound, they are -1 for D3, and 6's are instead D3 MW's. Its normally 10 D3 MW's if you cant kill any of the chariots or wound the 2 Hurricanum's on top of the 6 unsaved wounds vs them (ends up being a hard average 26 wounds to a unit of M Guard after all saves) and that is before the 2nd shooting profile and before the Shadow warriors. To be fair that list will be nerf and chariots will be 80/210 for 3 in the GH2020, the local IDK, OBR, Mawtribes, Orruks, wont play against it without me letting them tailor their lists. But i normally try to kill off important units first, as the chariots move very fast in TE and i can spend CP to move farther and still shoot.
So you don’t have masses of -2 or better rend as you stated?
BoC do have a good amount of rend depending on build.
Your other army, you talk about MW instead.
Tons of armies lack decent rend so saying “it’s easy, just use high rend” doesn’t really apply.
It’s like saying you have to just shoot something and assume every army has massed shooting.
If it were really as easy as spamming high rend units, no one would really have an issue against them.
Petrefex would just be considered good at that point rather than extreme.
The main issue is that rend, MW and shooting are all army dependent.
Some armies literally lack multiple of these, meaning they lose multiple viable ways of dealing with certain things.
This is the main reason that my moulder army is used for rogue trader style friendly tournaments. (That and the conversion potential makes them fun)
My BoC i do...... I normally get -2/-3 turn 2 with my main melee units, a shaman with re-roll anydice on a 6+ to cast you basically need to be Nagash or Knight incantor (or a like) to stop that spell, then if you are near the herdstone its also -1 modifier (normally turn 3), once its turn 3+ you cant get away from it for the most part (at least a couple objectives). 18" can easily get 2 objectives. But -2 on 3 units, and -1 against a unit with massive amounts of -1 on all my other units.
How is that not easily able? I play 2-3 games a week, its more doable than you would think. I also make sure i have a wave 3 turn for melee. Again easy to get -2 on bestigors.
Im always going in with 3+ units with at least -2.
Then you also ignored the massive MW, MW's ignores armor, so what if your 3+ rr, or even 2+ rr1's (some CoS units are 2+ rr1's) a MW ignores all of that, i can easily do 7+ 3D MW a turn before spells.
Automatically Appended Next Post: PS, this is from my experience and knowing BoC isnt as good as many other armies, i have to say, i'm not impressed with OBR MGuard spam just yet.
I'm going to for sure play against it more and maybe its just b.c of what i bring counters it well, but hte Khorne player also has 0 troubles with it too (tho Skarbrand is very good lol. So idk if i should count that).
Amishprn86 wrote: I play SoC and BoC, but my BoC has almost every unit i play with -1 or -2 and ways to give out -1 or even -2 (or -3).
For my BoC i play with 2 shamans, 2-3 Doombulls, or 1-2 DB and 1 BL, 50+ bestigors, and some Bullgors (I stopped playing EToD unless it is a tournament, then i use them over Bullgors). Then i have 2 ways to give out -1, most the time its always -2 at least. I love Doombulls and i can safety say theya re worth playing multiples now, having 1 with +2D and other other with extra rend helps too.
The Doombulls/Bullgors are is -2/3D, my relic i have to take is an addition -1/-2/-3 rend (addition -1 rend for every 10 models in a unit to a max of 3) so 1 of my Doombulls will be -3/-4 rend for 3D, the other DB is -2/5D, if both gets to swing its over for almost any horded base unit. Bestigors are -1 but i try to get the spell or stone onto something for an additional -1. , i try not to hit to hard until turn 2 and i am a 1 drop so i set it up for double turns, if i get it im golded, if not i still am good b.c i can move 12-15" and still charge.
My other army (that i'm taking to adepticon) is SoC, their rend is only -1, but it doesnt matter as its 15 Scourgerunner chariots, 40 Shadow Warriors, and 2 Hurricanum's. The 2 Hurricanum's are 3D3 MWs on a 2+, the chariots at least 2/3 of them will gain a +1 to hit buff, they all have 1 that also is a +1 to hit, and at least 3 units will be +1 to wound, they are -1 for D3, and 6's are instead D3 MW's. Its normally 10 D3 MW's if you cant kill any of the chariots or wound the 2 Hurricanum's on top of the 6 unsaved wounds vs them (ends up being a hard average 26 wounds to a unit of M Guard after all saves) and that is before the 2nd shooting profile and before the Shadow warriors. To be fair that list will be nerf and chariots will be 80/210 for 3 in the GH2020, the local IDK, OBR, Mawtribes, Orruks, wont play against it without me letting them tailor their lists. But i normally try to kill off important units first, as the chariots move very fast in TE and i can spend CP to move farther and still shoot.
So you don’t have masses of -2 or better rend as you stated?
BoC do have a good amount of rend depending on build.
Your other army, you talk about MW instead.
Tons of armies lack decent rend so saying “it’s easy, just use high rend” doesn’t really apply.
It’s like saying you have to just shoot something and assume every army has massed shooting.
If it were really as easy as spamming high rend units, no one would really have an issue against them.
Petrefex would just be considered good at that point rather than extreme.
The main issue is that rend, MW and shooting are all army dependent.
Some armies literally lack multiple of these, meaning they lose multiple viable ways of dealing with certain things.
This is the main reason that my moulder army is used for rogue trader style friendly tournaments. (That and the conversion potential makes them fun)
My BoC i do...... I normally get -2/-3 turn 2 with my main melee units, a shaman with re-roll anydice on a 6+ to cast you basically need to be Nagash or Knight incantor (or a like) to stop that spell, then if you are near the herdstone its also -1 modifier (normally turn 3), once its turn 3+ you cant get away from it for the most part (at least a couple objectives). 18" can easily get 2 objectives. But -2 on 3 units, and -1 against a unit with massive amounts of -1 on all my other units.
How is that not easily able? I play 2-3 games a week, its more doable than you would think. I also make sure i have a wave 3 turn for melee. Again easy to get -2 on bestigors.
Im always going in with 3+ units with at least -2.
Then you also ignored the massive MW, MW's ignores armor, so what if your 3+ rr, or even 2+ rr1's (some CoS units are 2+ rr1's) a MW ignores all of that, i can easily do 7+ 3D MW a turn before spells.
Automatically Appended Next Post: PS, this is from my experience and knowing BoC isnt as good as many other armies, i have to say, i'm not impressed with OBR MGuard spam just yet.
I'm going to for sure play against it more and maybe its just b.c of what i bring counters it well, but hte Khorne player also has 0 troubles with it too (tho Skarbrand is very good lol. So idk if i should count that).
I haven’t missed anything, you simply haven’t read my posts properly.
Your armies do not reflect all armies.
Yes, I know how mortal wounds work, but you were talking about rend, not mortal wounds.
Just because BoC have a good chunk of rend doesn’t mean everyone does.
That’s like saying casting spells is always instantly possible because you have Nagash, so everyone should be able to do the same.
Petrefex OBR are a top tier army for the exact reason that rend isn’t available to everyone in a good amount.
If it were an easy thing for all armies then people wouldn’t have issues with them.
Quite frankly, if the matchup is Mawtribes vs Bonereapers and the ogor player isn't having trouble, then the bonereaper player isn't doing it right. A properly optimized and played bonereaper army will be such that there is nothing in the mawtribe battletome that counters it. I know it sounds harsh, but the tools simply are not there.
As a khorne and mawtribes player, seeing people trying to arguee that petrifex elites are not extremely overpowered and can be "counterplayed" (By Napoleon nonetheless, I assume) is hilarous.
Players stating their over powered filth isn't really that bad and you just need to learn to play has been a staple of gamers since the long ago. It really was funny during 7th ed whfb when the over the top busted demon book (probably the most broken book gw ever produced ever) had its players saying the same thing, all the while winking and high fiving each other.
auticus wrote: Players stating their over powered filth isn't really that bad and you just need to learn to play has been a staple of gamers since the long ago. It really was funny during 7th ed whfb when the over the top busted demon book (probably the most broken book gw ever produced ever) had its players saying the same thing, all the while winking and high fiving each other.
It was even funnier the nonstop whining from those same players over the Banner of the World Dragon or similar items that negated their magical attacks.
auticus wrote: Players stating their over powered filth isn't really that bad and you just need to learn to play has been a staple of gamers since the long ago. It really was funny during 7th ed whfb when the over the top busted demon book (probably the most broken book gw ever produced ever) had its players saying the same thing, all the while winking and high fiving each other.
It was even funnier the nonstop whining from those same players over the Banner of the World Dragon or similar items that negated their magical attacks.
I know I am digressing from the topic, but I cannot help bringing old memories when hearing these tales.
A Daemon of Chaos player whining about the World Dragon Banner while putting 12+ beasts of nurgle on the table, for example.
Anecdotes of World-that-was aside, how are the Ossiarchs doing at the tournaments?
They seem very strong, but a few factions seem to work as counter against them.
Anvils of Heldenhammer Longstrikes for example.
But then again stormcasts are not doing quite well at tournaments as far as I know, so I am not too sure.
"Anvilstrike" are among the favoured Stormcast tournament list.
Nothing that will win 5 out of 5 games unless you are lucky with double turns and the opponent not knowing what the list is doing
but it counter all lists that focus around few models or units for buffs as they can take them out in one turn.
PS: players talking about that their armies are not OP was something different back than as there were still some who played the army before the OP book was out and
now with the new armies being new and their range often is not really outstanding model wise except for one or two kits, it is all about the rules and excuses are needed.
for that alone I really think about converting Mantic Undead into FEC or Bonereaper and show up at the next tournament
auticus wrote: Players stating their over powered filth isn't really that bad and you just need to learn to play has been a staple of gamers since the long ago. It really was funny during 7th ed whfb when the over the top busted demon book (probably the most broken book gw ever produced ever) had its players saying the same thing, all the while winking and high fiving each other.
It was even funnier the nonstop whining from those same players over the Banner of the World Dragon or similar items that negated their magical attacks.
Yeah. Then it was the high elf players winking at each other and high fiving each other for their brilliance and telling them to learn to play. Basically whatever is busted at the moment will always be defended by its player base as being not that bad, even though everyone knows better.
auticus wrote: Players stating their over powered filth isn't really that bad and you just need to learn to play has been a staple of gamers since the long ago. It really was funny during 7th ed whfb when the over the top busted demon book (probably the most broken book gw ever produced ever) had its players saying the same thing, all the while winking and high fiving each other.
It was even funnier the nonstop whining from those same players over the Banner of the World Dragon or similar items that negated their magical attacks.
Yeah. Then it was the high elf players winking at each other and high fiving each other for their brilliance and telling them to learn to play. Basically whatever is busted at the moment will always be defended by its player base as being not that bad, even though everyone knows better.
To be fair, that’s just human nature I’d say.
Why admit you had a huge advantage when you can instead say it’s just down to being played well?
Either way, OP armies will always be a thing.
It only bugs me when I build a small underdog army then out of nowhere they become broken.
Why admit you had a huge advantage when you can instead say it’s just down to being played well?
Honesty
There are guys that will admit that their force is busted as opposed to condescend that you just dont know how to play well (then suddenly when their army gets the regular nerf, they suddenly forget how to play as well lol)
auticus wrote: Players stating their over powered filth isn't really that bad and you just need to learn to play has been a staple of gamers since the long ago. It really was funny during 7th ed whfb when the over the top busted demon book (probably the most broken book gw ever produced ever) had its players saying the same thing, all the while winking and high fiving each other.
It was even funnier the nonstop whining from those same players over the Banner of the World Dragon or similar items that negated their magical attacks.
I know I am digressing from the topic, but I cannot help bringing old memories when hearing these tales.
A Daemon of Chaos player whining about the World Dragon Banner while putting 12+ beasts of nurgle on the table, for example.
Anecdotes of World-that-was aside, how are the Ossiarchs doing at the tournaments?
They seem very strong, but a few factions seem to work as counter against them.
Anvils of Heldenhammer Longstrikes for example.
But then again stormcasts are not doing quite well at tournaments as far as I know, so I am not too sure.
Bonereapers will have to work to go 5-0 but they can do it. To a certain extent things are matchup-dependent to see if they have to deal with something that spams MWs, but more than normal bandwagon armies I feel Bonereapers are going to be dragged down by players messing it up.
Updated with the two new Battletomes and also added in the details about the new "pointy Aelves".
Nice thing to note - AoS now only has one army without a 2.0 battletome - Seraphon. So fingers crossed that between now and "Spring 2020" we will hear about their release.
Overread wrote: Updated with the two new Battletomes and also added in the details about the new "pointy Aelves".
Nice thing to note - AoS now only has one army without a 2.0 battletome - Seraphon. So fingers crossed that between now and "Spring 2020" we will hear about their release.
I adore my night gobbos, but if Seraphon get a new army book that is flavourful I am SO THERE! Update those Saurus Warriors and Kroxigors and you've got a hell of a customer here GW!
Out of curiosity, just how many of the BIG dinos can you fit in 2k Or are they all stuck in the Behemoth role? (How Danktrogg bosses aren't is just beyond me)
Overread wrote: Updated with the two new Battletomes and also added in the details about the new "pointy Aelves".
Nice thing to note - AoS now only has one army without a 2.0 battletome - Seraphon. So fingers crossed that between now and "Spring 2020" we will hear about their release.
I adore my night gobbos, but if Seraphon get a new army book that is flavourful I am SO THERE! Update those Saurus Warriors and Kroxigors and you've got a hell of a customer here GW!
Out of curiosity, just how many of the BIG dinos can you fit in 2k Or are they all stuck in the Behemoth role? (How Danktrogg bosses aren't is just beyond me)
You could definitely get 4. Maybe 5 depending upon what counts as a behemoth. There's also ways to summon units (including the larger dinos) like that portal thing on the back of the stegadon.
Dankhold Troggbosses arent that big. Only a bit bigger than Rockguts really.
Behemoths have to have enough wounds to justify braketing, and Dankholds arent quite there either. If I remember correctly there aren't any Behemoths below 14 wounds.
Stux wrote: Dankhold Troggbosses arent that big. Only a bit bigger than Rockguts really.
Behemoths have to have enough wounds to justify braketing, and Dankholds arent quite there either. If I remember correctly there aren't any Behemoths below 14 wounds.
Aleguzzler Gargants are 12 and bracket, quite horribly. Still wont stop me from running such gorgeous and hilarious units!
Looking at it, Bastiladon are behemoths according to Azyr and they're only 8 wounds! Troglydons also with 12 wounds.
Don't get me wrong, I adore my Troggbosses but they're pretty big models and hit hard enough it just strikes me as strange they lack monster keyword or behemoth typing, even though its probably a buff for them overall!
GW has been relenting on the behemoth rule in some armies in special situations. Eg Flesh Eaters can field one army which is basically all terrorgasts and zombiedragons even though it would exceed the normal monster limitation.
I can well see them giving Seraphon an army subgroup that fields almost nothing but BIG DINOS.
Seraphon are so old they have some truly weird things, like 8-wound behemoths or priests with no prayers (skink priest).
And they do only get the barebone behemoth allowance unlike newer armies which can bring all-behemoth lineups like Beastclaws or steamtank CoS.
And given that the people who asked about it during the open day seminar got (allegedly) answers like "seraphon will get their day under the sun, but not soon"...they will remain an army propped up only by summoning rules for some time.
Stux wrote: Dankhold Troggbosses arent that big. Only a bit bigger than Rockguts really.
Behemoths have to have enough wounds to justify braketing, and Dankholds arent quite there either. If I remember correctly there aren't any Behemoths below 14 wounds.
Aleguzzler Gargants are 12 and bracket, quite horribly. Still wont stop me from running such gorgeous and hilarious units!
Looking at it, Bastiladon are behemoths according to Azyr and they're only 8 wounds! Troglydons also with 12 wounds.
Don't get me wrong, I adore my Troggbosses but they're pretty big models and hit hard enough it just strikes me as strange they lack monster keyword or behemoth typing, even though its probably a buff for them overall!
Fair enough!
Yeah, Troggbosses are definitely better off not braketing.
And removing it from Aleguzzler might actually make them decent.
haha too true! I have a running tally of the two Gargants I run of what they've shoved in their pants. Always funny when a Chaos Knight just disappears and my opponent is looking at me like "... That's.... a rule..."
Gir Spirit Bane wrote: haha too true! I have a running tally of the two Gargants I run of what they've shoved in their pants. Always funny when a Chaos Knight just disappears and my opponent is looking at me like "... That's.... a rule..."
They're decent distraction carnifexes tbf. 12 wounds for 160pts, and the chance of that rule going off.
It’s nuts that Bonereapers get to keep their nutsoid rules, but an already tiny, elite, middle of the road Varanguard army gets nerfed into the ground.
I know you hate me saying that but they consistently do things like this.
It seems that there are two teams. The for fun team and the off the wall nuts team.
The for fun team saw that their book was a little too nuts, so they nerfed it. Slaves to Darkness are pretty middle of the road, up from Chumps of Darkness that they were for years. But we don't want them getting too good, so they nerfed them to remain middle tier. Thats ... overall... good I think for the game.
The off the wall nuts team says "keep everything off the wall and nuts". Thats whats bad overall for the game. That lack of consistency and letting the power trifectas continue to plant their beanbags though cycling the power trifectas.
Intentionally? I think so. Because Bonereapers I feel will remain daddy tier until at least GHB 2020 and then get cycled out and new power trifecta will rise.
And the steam shovel of $$$ will unload its sweet cargo onto GW and the cycle will continue.
However if you aren't playing competitively, don't mind getting face stomped as long as you get to roll dice, or play in a supeer casual group where no one will take advantage of bad rules, things are still going great.
I will stop as soon as there's an alternative. It's either skirmish games, which I already have and don't need more of, or utter trash models like the KoW/Conquest.
If we are honest, I do have serious buyers' remorse in getting back into non-skirmish gaming, but seeing as it's my fault others in the group play it, I'm stuck with it for now.
If your primary drive to play these games is model driven then yeah, the gameplay s houldn't matter as much.
That being said, so many in KoW land use GW models and thats accepted and embraced.
Additionally people use GW models in Conquest as well (and personal opinions being used, one of the things i love about conquest are the models and aesthetics. I've loved painting most of the models I've run over the past 8 months or so).
Fair point! You are right its giving GW their money. I'd say paying GW for their exceptionally good models is fair. I would still do that today even though I have heavy disdain for their game systems.
The problem is, you might proxy say, nighthaunt for any other undead easily, but proxying golden boys is a bit harder, and good luck finding another game that has flying naval boats as an army choice. For better or worse, they have zany fantasy market cornered. Which again, is fine, but I wish there was one team handling every book instead of this mix of concerned parents making conservative books and caffeinated teens making cool books, as you said.
On the yet another hand, it's whatever, it's just toy soldiers in the end.
I have a fairly long list of negatives on the ruleset that will keep me away until they are resolved. One of them is the balance disparities. I really do not like games where I lose because I liked the wrong models.
Consistency and making all books either off the wall crazy or all books tempered and middle of the road would go a long way in bringing my attention back.
The stormcast I have seen used in the paladin army in KOW. Also the flying naval boats may be something Conquest explores as one of their upcoming factions is the City States which are supposed to be centered around a steam punk theme.
I use my chaos collection for the northern alliance in KOW.
I'm genuinely curious why you see some books that are middle of the road (i.e. well-balanced, so "bad" because it has no crazy combos) and then some that are off the wall. I'm not convinced that there are two teams like Auticus thinks, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was that certain people write certain books, since it seems to be that they write books in isolation without collaborating with the rest of the team, and seem to have a pretty tight deadline for books which almost certainly eats into writing and testing times.
So for example, the middle of the road book might be written by Jervis (not sure if he still actually writes books or just heads up the team, but let's assume he does), but the crazy good book is written by Ben Johnson. That might explain why since Jervis is mostly a narrative guy who wants to give you solid options that aren't too nuts, but Ben is a tournament player so wants killer combos. If they never communicate about how rules sound, then it's easy to see why the Jervis battletome is good all around but has no OP combos and the Ben Johnson book has that one or two "this is the competitive option" choices. In an ideal world, it would be a collaborative effort so each book is roughly the same power level.
Of course, since they stopped saying who wrote books (for a valid reason), we don't have a clue. But it's too frequent to be a coincidence, and there has to be something going on as to why almost every other book (with some exceptions) has some nutty combo. If they divided up the workload it would explain that.
Wayniac wrote: Apparently 17 Bonereapers players (probably all Petrifex) for the LVO Champs event...
But isn't LVO the biggest or 2nd biggest AOS event? I know Adepticon had 284 players last year, if LVO had 300 17 out of 300 is is only about 6%, is that really honestly that high for an army that is suppose to be OP at one of the largest events?
Stux wrote: Dankhold Troggbosses arent that big. Only a bit bigger than Rockguts really.
Behemoths have to have enough wounds to justify braketing, and Dankholds arent quite there either. If I remember correctly there aren't any Behemoths below 14 wounds.
You remember wrong. At least as far as Gloomspite stuff goes.
Looks like Changehost (Tzeentch) brought out alot of twitter butthurts. Almost all of it entirely valid as that particular sub-army is a NPE. I think the Heat tourney at WHW had a turn 2 concession on their stream. I hope they(GW) are embarrassed and the Tzeentch FAQ fixes the issues. And TO’s get serious about some sort of comp, at the least disavowing army books that are pre-faq. Both open up their own can of worms, but that might be worth it.
Also, at a glance, it seems like a poor showing by OBR across events. Fully expected Petrifex to run the shows, but I think people underestimate that you still need some finesse and tactical acumen to take them next level.
With that said, great weekend for AoS and the game in general(in my view). At my local, AoS had a good showing and globally there was like 5-6 major events. Still wrapping my head around some of the crazy lists that did decently at all of these events. Alot of noise about Tzeentch(again, valid) but overall a great weekend.
And since we’re at a point where everyone’s book is more or less up to date, my wish for GHB 2020 Is that it should focus less on points this year and give us some rewrites of the battletome subfactions. Tone down the auto-include subfactions and buff the less powerful subfactions to move toward a bit more parity. That seems to be where the game is having the most problems at present. And give battalions a strong looking at as well.
nels1031 wrote: Looks like Changehost (Tzeentch) brought out alot of twitter butthurts. Almost all of it entirely valid as that particular sub-army is a NPE. I think the Heat tourney at WHW had a turn 2 concession on their stream. I hope they(GW) are embarrassed and the Tzeentch FAQ fixes the issues. And TO’s get serious about some sort of comp, at the least disavowing army books that are pre-faq. Both open up their own can of worms, but that might be worth it.
Also, at a glance, it seems like a poor showing by OBR across events. Fully expected Petrifex to run the shows, but I think people underestimate that you still need some finesse and tactical acumen to take them next level.
With that said, great weekend for AoS and the game in general(in my view). At my local, AoS had a good showing and globally there was like 5-6 major events. Still wrapping my head around some of the crazy lists that did decently at all of these events. Alot of noise about Tzeentch(again, valid) but overall a great weekend.
And since we’re at a point where everyone’s book is more or less up to date, my wish for GHB 2020 Is that it should focus less on points this year and give us some rewrites of the battletome subfactions. Tone down the auto-include subfactions and buff the less powerful subfactions to move toward a bit more parity. That seems to be where the game is having the most problems at present.
The problem with them is they can deal a bit to much damage turn 1 and turn 2, as soon as you counter deploy them and make sure they can not hit you hard enough, you instantly win, but if you can not do that they instantly win. So mid tier tables don't know what to do, and many players didn't have a counter for it.
They are very strong, but its a 1 trick pony (well 2 tricks its 2 strong lists) and each list has a very clear way to shut it down and counter it. Its jsut that NO ONE was playing any of those style lists at the big 3 events this past weekend. And Changehost Flamers counters OBR, so its just a lot of OBR and walking horde players that fought against changehost that are QQing (and i agree b.c to many armies cant counter them). Changehost Flamers counters anyone that sets up hordes of dudes tightly. But any army that Outflanks/Deepstrikes their important units onto the board, has Pre-game movements, and just cheap throw away bubbles of low model count guys completely counters them.
Change host still needs to Teleport outside of 9" of you and they need to keep the Exalted near the Flamers (Wholly in 9") so the 6-9 man Flamer and the Exalted unit must teleport together taking up both teleports of the Changehost, and it will kill off any unit it shoots at 100% for sure, maybe 2 units. But if they can only hit 1-2 50-80pt throw away units... who cares. And this is where OBR did so poorly at the events, they had 20+ man blocks with no bubble wrap b.c a 3+ re-roll with an after save is normally good enough for anything, but its not good enough against 50 hits at -1 for D3, even witha 4+ re-roll save (still cant re-roll the 3's remember) 15 wounds at least still go through, thats 15D3 from 1 unit shooting you. That is enough to kill off a 20man unit, its enough to kill a 30man after the Exalted shoots too (he is getting on average 3D3 wounds in first). When a full unit of OBR is wiped turn 1, and then the other is wiped turn 2, very hard to win against that.
As a CoS/BoC player i am not that scared of them, i'm honestly more worried about OBR b.c i now i can kill 40 wounds on a 5+ save after taking all that damage, IDK if i can kill 100 wounds of a 3+ re-roll save with an after save in time to before game ends and take objectives.
EDIT: They don't need a points change to Flamers, and Changehost doesn't need a rules change. Flamers just needs less attacks IMO, 1 less for each model means they are 2 hits less over all, when a unit of 6 is loosing 5-6 hits thats a very strong change. Now Changehost could go up 20-40pts but in the end of the day that isn't changing anything.
Also Darkfire Daemonrift needs to be changed to say that only StD wizards buffs its damage
Petrifax are strong but have difficulty actually topping a tourney because chances are at some point they will run into Skaven/Slaanesh/FEC/Tzeentch and get ripped apart. Tough luck for everyone else though.
New Tzeentch is all sorts of broken but I haven't met anyone who expected otherwise.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Petrifax are strong but have difficulty actually topping a tourney because chances are at some point they will run into Skaven/Slaanesh/FEC/Tzeentch and get ripped apart. Tough luck for everyone else though.
It isn't quite so simple. The people abandoning old fotm armies sell them off, the people buying them are not buying from GW. To some extent GW is simply getting the same amount of sales from different people. Meanwhile anyone who leaves the game because of this system is a 100% loss.
Plus from what I've seen "flavour of the month" customers tend to not only fill the3rd party market, but also buy out of it to get their new short term army cheaper. The only ones that really make out of it are commission painters hired to repaint those armies into a single colour for the tabletop.
So its not even a customerbase that is feeding GW heavy sales, instead its more recyling the 3rd party market.
and agreed that most people don't sell off armies just because they perform poorly for a period of time. They are more likely to hold onto them and perhaps start another, but many might just get burned out on one bad army and move on.
Better balance has always been a weakness of GW even when its been show that casual steps toward a better game level balance actually boosts sales. Just look how 40K sales went insane when GW introduced the index system at the start of a new edition; then reinforced it with about 1.5 years worth of new Codex to update every army. The result was a huge boom in sales that sent GW's demand so high that they had a production shortfall.
Contrast that to the past when you could wait years for better, updated rules.
nels1031 wrote: Looks like Changehost (Tzeentch) brought out alot of twitter butthurts. Almost all of it entirely valid as that particular sub-army is a NPE. I think the Heat tourney at WHW had a turn 2 concession on their stream. I hope they(GW) are embarrassed and the Tzeentch FAQ fixes the issues. And TO’s get serious about some sort of comp, at the least disavowing army books that are pre-faq. Both open up their own can of worms, but that might be worth it.
Also, at a glance, it seems like a poor showing by OBR across events. Fully expected Petrifex to run the shows, but I think people underestimate that you still need some finesse and tactical acumen to take them next level.
With that said, great weekend for AoS and the game in general(in my view). At my local, AoS had a good showing and globally there was like 5-6 major events. Still wrapping my head around some of the crazy lists that did decently at all of these events. Alot of noise about Tzeentch(again, valid) but overall a great weekend.
And since we’re at a point where everyone’s book is more or less up to date, my wish for GHB 2020 Is that it should focus less on points this year and give us some rewrites of the battletome subfactions. Tone down the auto-include subfactions and buff the less powerful subfactions to move toward a bit more parity. That seems to be where the game is having the most problems at present.
The problem with them is they can deal a bit to much damage turn 1 and turn 2, as soon as you counter deploy them and make sure they can not hit you hard enough, you instantly win, but if you can not do that they instantly win. So mid tier tables don't know what to do, and many players didn't have a counter for it.
They are very strong, but its a 1 trick pony (well 2 tricks its 2 strong lists) and each list has a very clear way to shut it down and counter it. Its jsut that NO ONE was playing any of those style lists at the big 3 events this past weekend. And Changehost Flamers counters OBR, so its just a lot of OBR and walking horde players that fought against changehost that are QQing (and i agree b.c to many armies cant counter them). Changehost Flamers counters anyone that sets up hordes of dudes tightly. But any army that Outflanks/Deepstrikes their important units onto the board, has Pre-game movements, and just cheap throw away bubbles of low model count guys completely counters them.
Change host still needs to Teleport outside of 9" of you and they need to keep the Exalted near the Flamers (Wholly in 9") so the 6-9 man Flamer and the Exalted unit must teleport together taking up both teleports of the Changehost, and it will kill off any unit it shoots at 100% for sure, maybe 2 units. But if they can only hit 1-2 50-80pt throw away units... who cares. And this is where OBR did so poorly at the events, they had 20+ man blocks with no bubble wrap b.c a 3+ re-roll with an after save is normally good enough for anything, but its not good enough against 50 hits at -1 for D3, even witha 4+ re-roll save (still cant re-roll the 3's remember) 15 wounds at least still go through, thats 15D3 from 1 unit shooting you. That is enough to kill off a 20man unit, its enough to kill a 30man after the Exalted shoots too (he is getting on average 3D3 wounds in first). When a full unit of OBR is wiped turn 1, and then the other is wiped turn 2, very hard to win against that.
As a CoS/BoC player i am not that scared of them, i'm honestly more worried about OBR b.c i now i can kill 40 wounds on a 5+ save after taking all that damage, IDK if i can kill 100 wounds of a 3+ re-roll save with an after save in time to before game ends and take objectives.
EDIT: They don't need a points change to Flamers, and Changehost doesn't need a rules change. Flamers just needs less attacks IMO, 1 less for each model means they are 2 hits less over all, when a unit of 6 is loosing 5-6 hits thats a very strong change. Now Changehost could go up 20-40pts but in the end of the day that isn't changing anything.
Also Darkfire Daemonrift needs to be changed to say that only StD wizards buffs its damage
I agree with your premise but a couple things. Mortek can Reroll saves that will fail due to rend as it says Reroll save rolls not failed save rolls.
They can't do that at all against shooting though. Further strengthening your OBR does not like facing Changehost argument.
Just because Paper exists doesn't make the Scissors players enjoy games against Rock though.
It makes things interesting in these big events as you have a more varied final podium but I maintain that this kind of disparity is awful for casual environments and especially new player retention.
I know as someone who was trying to get back into the game having Petrifex as my main opposition really soured my return. Though they have their weaknesses my armies aren't well suited to exploiting them and the invalidation of all melee choices that can't crack Mortek (almost all of them) and the spectre of the Crawler invalidating squishy heroes made it feel like the OBR player was more in control of my listbuilding than I was.
What's the general consensus on Tzeentch, anyway? I haven't seen it discussed much since it was released. Is it just Changehost that's OP? I think Guild of Summoners got a lot of attention at first, but it didn't seem to take long for people to see that multiple Lords of Change don't really play well together. I'm working toward a Pyrofane Cult list myself.
Right, and thats a good point about the army building it self. Maybe look at different units and combos, it might have some really good ways to play. I personally was looking at Stalarch Lords? (Run and charge) you can also Retreat and charge, something that i love. I know everyone says it isnt as good, but looking at the results of recent events, maybe it is.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
EnTyme wrote: What's the general consensus on Tzeentch, anyway? I haven't seen it discussed much since it was released. Is it just Changehost that's OP? I think Guild of Summoners got a lot of attention at first, but it didn't seem to take long for people to see that multiple Lords of Change don't really play well together. I'm working toward a Pyrofane Cult list myself.
It has a couple very strong lists that if you can not counter them then you have a very limited chance to win do to the amount of damage it can do. Its not Changehost that is doing it, it helps but really its the Flamers + Exalted that hits on 2+ re-rolling 1's with -1 for D3 (they actually hit on 1+, so they can negate a -1 to hit basically). a unit of 9 with a Exalted teleporting is Bad for sure, but if you bubble wrap, have pre-game movements, or DSing and they can only kill chaff units, then you can counter them very well. Its just many armies or for now lists are not able to do that.
The other list is Horror spam with Endless spells, it can do a lot of damage and tie up objectives for a long time.
Expect Flamers to get nerf a bit, and maybe the Darkfire Daemonrift. Also Gaunt summoner might go up 20pts ish.
Mortek guard don’t have to reroll all saves (failed or passed)
It says they may reroll saves.
Doesn’t specify which ones there so that’s down to the player.
Would be a completely pointless rule that does nothing if that were the case.
EnTyme wrote: What's the general consensus on Tzeentch, anyway? I haven't seen it discussed much since it was released. Is it just Changehost that's OP? I think Guild of Summoners got a lot of attention at first, but it didn't seem to take long for people to see that multiple Lords of Change don't really play well together. I'm working toward a Pyrofane Cult list myself.
Many sorts of overpowered, with many ways to turn battles one-sided against tier 2 or lower, and even against some tier 1 armies. However much of the player base was more or less expecting such a thing to occur; looking at all of AoS' history Tzeentch has been the best army in the game, still having decent tourney performance even at it's worst. There were no hints of the Fate Dice mechanic changing and magic overall is strong, so the two pillars of Tzeentch's strength were known to be intact.
I think this predictability has made things easier to accept for many, and also less likely to be raised as a notable topic of conversation.
I think Tzeentch has the advantage against mostly melee armies who don't have teleport options and will suffer the most vs. other gunlines as everything is fragile. Turn order will also matter as Tzeentch needs to alpha strike to win.
Just looking at it on paper, the adding of loads of new models onto the table from the Tzeentch Horror splitting looks like it might be a touch sanity draining to play with/against. Has this been the actual experience? I haven't played much AoS outside of Hinterlands, so I don't know how it compares to usual summoning shenanigans.
The Horror splits are certainly very strong right now. However, they have one weakness that the usual summoning shenanigans don't have.
Horrors typically split in the Tzeentch Player's combat phase, or the opponents other phases. It's recycling bodies in to the same unit, as opposed to making new units like other normal Summons. I think the way to deal with Horrors is to have enough damage to inflict deadly Battleshocks on to multiple units.
A unit of 30 Horrors will have 150 models in it potentially, but only 30 at any given time, and if you kill say 30 of them in one turn, the battle-shock will be 17+d6(30 die - 10bravery -3 for unit size) running away. Force them to use their Destiny Dice early, or CP to auto-pass morale so they can't use them for other things.
But yeah, you're correct in seeing Horrors as being very powerful.
Edit: Horror model count was wrong. God that's so many wounds to chew through
The new horrors have to be placed in coherency, too, so another strategy could be to surround the horrors in melee. They could be susceptible to hordes in that way. I'd also caution against relying on Battleshock since a roll of a "1" brings back 1d6 Horrors. There's a reason Tzeentch players don't mind rolling 1s on Destiny Dice.
I wouldn't say that it's really relying on battleshock, since typically the way to trigger brutal battleshocks on hordes is to do a ton of damage to them. How do you remove a unit on an objective? Do a ton of damage to them. The Tzeentch Player may roll one or two 1's on their Destiny Dice in a game and use those for their battleshocks sure, but you have to do the damage anyways.
Also, if playing against Pink Horrors, you need to keep the Tzeentch Player honest. If there are no more Pink Horrors in the unit they lose a lot of abilities. Horrors only get their 6+ FNP when allocating to Pinks. Pinks are the only ones who get the Banner that passes morale and returns d6 models when you roll a 1 on battleshock. Horrors are no longer wizards once they're down to 8 Pink models in the unit.
Not to make it sound like you need to watch for cheating, it's just that Horrors have a TONNE of rules. It's easy for the player to get distracted and think "Horrors are wizards, horrors have 6+ fnp, horrors return d6 lost models on a bs roll of 1" instead of remembering that those are tied to specific models, the Pinks.
Very true. You also have to allocate wounds to Pinks first, so they lose a lot of abilities quickly, then it's just a matter of flooding the unit with damage. Now that I think of it, enveloping a unit of Pink Horrors and flooding them with wounds would be a really effective strategy. If you do it right, they won't be able to place all the Blues, and you've effectively done two free wounds for each one you successfully block from deploying.
That relies on the Tzeentch player positioning to allow it though. A smart player will overlap and string units such that no one unit can be surrounded, and when the pinks are killed the blues will end up behind a different unit to prevent focusing. It also creates options for the Tzeentch player to use respawns to string the unit onto an objective, pull other units into melee, etc. It also means that attacking pinks on an objective could make it even harder to gain control since there will then be twice as many models.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
D6Damager wrote: I think Tzeentch has the advantage against mostly melee armies who don't have teleport options and will suffer the most vs. other gunlines as everything is fragile. Turn order will also matter as Tzeentch needs to alpha strike to win.
At the moment Tzeentch is the best army in the game, we will see if the FAQ knocks them down to 'merely' tier-1.
It looks like GW thought of that. The replacement models have very specific rules to prevent chaining:
"Set up additional models one at a time within 1" of the position that the slain model had occupied. The additional model can only be set up within 3" of an enemy unit if the position that the slain model had occupied or any other models from the slain model's unit are within 3" of that enemy unit. If you cannot set up the additional models in this way, they are removed from play (they do not count as being slain).
You're right, the chaining is WAY limited compared to other factions. But it still allows for a decent distance; 2" from placement (1" away plus 1" from the base) which can be used again if said blue dies*, plus pile-in. However in hindsight my above post is misleading about the potential without the context of that rule so thank you for correcting me.
*Assuming all of the pinks die, as noted by another poster if that doesn't happen there are bigger fish to fry in the form of fate-dice-1 for battleshock.
Quick question on Pink splitting in reference to damage and such.
Does damage against the Pinks spill over into blues after the Pinks have been removed? As all damage is done/allocated after all attacks are done, if there are 20 Pinks, and you do 50 damage, will that extra 30 damage hit the blues too?
I just want to make sure as there are several Tzeentch players in town and I want to know how to try and combat this new build.
Carnikang wrote: Quick question on Pink splitting in reference to damage and such.
Does damage against the Pinks spill over into blues after the Pinks have been removed? As all damage is done/allocated after all attacks are done, if there are 20 Pinks, and you do 50 damage, will that extra 30 damage hit the blues too?
I just want to make sure as there are several Tzeentch players in town and I want to know how to try and combat this new build.
All damage is 1 by 1, you must allocate damage to pinks before blues, then to blues before brims.
So you take 15 damage, you deal 1 damage to 1 pink, removed it and place up to 2 Blues within 1" of that removed pink, you do this 9 more times (until all pinks are gone) then you start over with the blues and do the same thing, deal a wound to a blue, remove it and put down a brim, then go to the next blue and repeat
Carnikang wrote: Quick question on Pink splitting in reference to damage and such.
Does damage against the Pinks spill over into blues after the Pinks have been removed? As all damage is done/allocated after all attacks are done, if there are 20 Pinks, and you do 50 damage, will that extra 30 damage hit the blues too?
I just want to make sure as there are several Tzeentch players in town and I want to know how to try and combat this new build.
Yes the damage spills over into blues and brims as you allocate 1 at a time and always to pinks first.
Regarding placement if you can't place them in coherency for whatever reason then you can still opt to try and deal a mortal wound.
Tzeentch FAQ/Designer Commentary are up, and it looks like using Destiny Dice of 1 to bring back Horrors has been fixed. Using a Destiny Die now counts as a modified die for the purposes of save rolls and battleshock tests. Probably the way it should be. Also, you can no longer replace a single die on a casting or charge roll with a Destiny Die. You have to either use none or two.
Which all is good and what it should have been. Also Blue/Changeling are back to being unique's which is also good, and finally Changehost is only teleport 1 unit.
Well, destiny dice took a big hit then. Yeesh. I’d have been ok being wrong about the 2D6 thing, but killing off the 1’s get you more horrors hurts. I think any of the changes alone would have been good, but all of them together hurts. Basically everything unique that the book did was decidedly “too good” and removed. It was all of those abilities on top of each other that made it too good, not each one on their own.
I think my biggest issue with AoS right now is as soon as Chaos gets something flavorful, they remove it. The Varanguard change stung for no reason, and then they took ALL the fun stuff in the DoT book and kicked it down a flight of stairs. Baby and bath water and all that.
Its still a really good book, they just did what was intended i feel and only really nerfed 1 thing. The rest was just poorly written rules, or forgotten rules (like unique on some characters).
All in all they are fine, but KO needed a lot more faqs that they didn't get.
I still feel like Gaunt Summoners should be unique. They're not all that OP in my opinion, but it seems more lore-friendly. When you only have 9 Gaunt Summoners in the lore, it seems like a bad idea to risk 2+ in a single battle.
timetowaste85 wrote: Well, destiny dice took a big hit then. Yeesh. I’d have been ok being wrong about the 2D6 thing, but killing off the 1’s get you more horrors hurts. I think any of the changes alone would have been good, but all of them together hurts. Basically everything unique that the book did was decidedly “too good” and removed. It was all of those abilities on top of each other that made it too good, not each one on their own.
I think my biggest issue with AoS right now is as soon as Chaos gets something flavorful, they remove it. The Varanguard change stung for no reason, and then they took ALL the fun stuff in the DoT book and kicked it down a flight of stairs. Baby and bath water and all that.
It's still a tier-1 army that kicks the snot out of most others...
EnTyme wrote:Tzeentch FAQ/Designer Commentary are up, and it looks like using Destiny Dice of 1 to bring back Horrors has been fixed. Using a Destiny Die now counts as a modified die for the purposes of save rolls and battleshock tests. Probably the way it should be. Also, you can no longer replace a single die on a casting or charge roll with a Destiny Die. You have to either use none or two.
There is actually some debate on this, the errata is very poorly worded and can be interrupted due to what an unmodified roll is. As it is, replacing a the battleshock roll with a 1 is technically an unmodified dice, because the core rules talk about what a modified dice roll is, I.E. adding +1/-1 modifiers to it. Really, the whole unmodified die rolls and the language in DD is a mess.
NinthMusketeer wrote:
timetowaste85 wrote: Well, destiny dice took a big hit then. Yeesh. I’d have been ok being wrong about the 2D6 thing, but killing off the 1’s get you more horrors hurts. I think any of the changes alone would have been good, but all of them together hurts. Basically everything unique that the book did was decidedly “too good” and removed. It was all of those abilities on top of each other that made it too good, not each one on their own.
I think my biggest issue with AoS right now is as soon as Chaos gets something flavorful, they remove it. The Varanguard change stung for no reason, and then they took ALL the fun stuff in the DoT book and kicked it down a flight of stairs. Baby and bath water and all that.
It's still a tier-1 army that kicks the snot out of most others...
Tzeentch is still really flavorful, and has a ton of unique mechanics behind it. DD got nerfed, but there is really so much going on with the Book. It's still easily a Tier 1 book, it's just no longer Tier 0.
EnTyme wrote:Tzeentch FAQ/Designer Commentary are up, and it looks like using Destiny Dice of 1 to bring back Horrors has been fixed. Using a Destiny Die now counts as a modified die for the purposes of save rolls and battleshock tests. Probably the way it should be. Also, you can no longer replace a single die on a casting or charge roll with a Destiny Die. You have to either use none or two.
There is actually some debate on this, the errata is very poorly worded and can be interrupted due to what an unmodified roll is. As it is, replacing a the battleshock roll with a 1 is technically an unmodified dice, because the core rules talk about what a modified dice roll is, I.E. adding +1/-1 modifiers to it. Really, the whole unmodified die rolls and the language in DD is a mess.
I agree; getting d6 horrors back with a 1 should still work. One is still treated as having rolled a 1, which is what the icon needs to trigger.
Tzeentch is still really flavorful, and has a ton of unique mechanics behind it. DD got nerfed, but there is really so much going on with the Book. It's still easily a Tier 1 book, it's just no longer Tier 0.
The Changehost nerf was expected. The 2d6 for DD was already a thing in the rule, they just clarified it. Feel like the change for Battleshock and Saves was a bit much. Pink Horrors are easy enough to kill as it is and are a huge points sink if you go all in. Book is still solid though.
The last paragraph of the the Destiny Dice rule in the FAQ ("If you spend a Destiny Dice to replace a battleshock test, the result of that Destiny Dice is modified by the number of models slain from that unit as normal.") seems redundant if it doesn't effect Pink Horror regeneration.
I thought they bungled the verbiage initially so destiny dice battleshock tests weren't modified by models lost, and this errata just fixed that. IE - if you lost 10 models but used a 6 from the destiny pool, your battleshock was test was just a 6 and you lost no more models.
EnTyme wrote: The last paragraph of the the Destiny Dice rule in the FAQ ("If you spend a Destiny Dice to replace a battleshock test, the result of that Destiny Dice is modified by the number of models slain from that unit as normal.") seems redundant if it doesn't effect Pink Horror regeneration.
While as it's worded now it doesn't prevent pink regeneration if you use a 1, if you use other dice, like say a 2, you still add the causalities to it so you can cause pink horrors to flee now. Whereas before they didn't flee no matter what die roll you replaced as you never added the causalities to the die roll since it could not be modified further.
I believe this is also the intent as well, It means you can use your 1's in your DD pool for something, but you can't use your other lackluster numbers like 2's to auto-pass while also making it impossible for any models to flee.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
obsidiankatana wrote: I thought they bungled the verbiage initially so destiny dice battleshock tests weren't modified by models lost, and this errata just fixed that. IE - if you lost 10 models but used a 6 from the destiny pool, your battleshock was test was just a 6 and you lost no more models.
That intent was pretty clear. The Destiny Die just determines the die roll, not how it's effected by modifiers. Were people really not playing it that way? That doesn't even make sense.
Question: If I use SummonStarlight, a Seraphon Slann spell, does that force a Tzeentch player to use 2 DD for Battleshock if they intend to use them, since the spell forces Daemons to so battleshock on 2D6, take the highest for Chaos Daemons?
Will likely change with Battletome, but I have a Tournament this weekend where it will likely be an issue and I want to run it by knowledgeable people.
My first instinct is yes, as the Errata says if you have to roll 2D6, you have to use that many DD....
I would say "yes" as well. it seems when using Destiny Dice, you have to replace the entire roll, so if the ability requires you to roll 2d6, you would have to replace both.
EnTyme wrote: That intent was pretty clear. The Destiny Die just determines the die roll, not how it's effected by modifiers. Were people really not playing it that way? That doesn't even make sense.
No, the intent was not clear with how the rules read for DD before the errata. The destiny dice rules said that the roll could not be modified further. Thus, you would not add the battleshock casualties as that is modifying the dice roll.
NinthMusketeer wrote: As EnTyme said, if you use it they must spend two DD to replace the roll. And they will only be able to icon back d6 guys if both of the DD are 1s.
Incorrect. According to the Errata even if you used 2 1s it would not bring back any Pinks via Icon. Pink Horror Icons only work on unmodified rolls or 1 and the Errata now states clearly that Battleshock and Save rolls made with Destiny Dice count as modified rolls.
Still would count as a roll of 1+losses for Battleshock though.
NinthMusketeer wrote: As EnTyme said, if you use it they must spend two DD to replace the roll. And they will only be able to icon back d6 guys if both of the DD are 1s.
Incorrect. According to the Errata even if you used 2 1s it would not bring back any Pinks via Icon. Pink Horror Icons only work on unmodified rolls or 1 and the Errata now states clearly that Battleshock and Save rolls made with Destiny Dice count as modified rolls.
Still would count as a roll of 1+losses for Battleshock though.
Errata:
...In addition, any rolls that have been replaced (with the exception of save rolls and battleshock tests) count as unmodified rolls and cannot be re-rolled or modified further...
Horrors Icon rule:
...If the unmodified roll for a battleshock test for this unit while it includes any Pink Horror Icon Bearers is 1, you can return D6 slain Horrors of Tzeentch models to this unit, and no models from this unit will flee in that battleshock phase...
Battleshock and Save rolls are now exempt and therefore a modified roll and thus no longer works. They even call out in the Designers Note the issue pertains to Pink Horrors. So if you want your Horrors back you need to roll. If you just want to save the unit use low Destiny Dice. If they wanted Rend and Losses/effects to work against Destiny Dice for Saves and Battleshock then they would of only put in the two last bits at the end of the Errata entry.
"If you spend a Destiny Dice to replace a battleshock test,
the result of that Destiny Dice is modified by the number
of models slain from that unit as normal.’"
So before the number is modified by the amount of models slain, what is it? The errata is worded ambiguously, it could mean:
"...any rolls that have been replaced count as unmodified and cannot be re-roll and cannot be modified further, with the exception of save rolls and battleshock checks for which only some of those things are true."
Or it could mean:
"...any rolls that have been replaced count as unmodified and cannot be re-rolled and cannot be modified further, with the exception of save rolls and battleshock checks for which none of those things are true."
Note that the latter (your interpretation) means that DD used on battleshock & saves could be re-rolled, which I feel is not the intent.
I think it's safe to say the FAQ didn't exactly clear the issue up. I'm going to email the rules team when I get a chance. If I happen to get a reply, I'll let everyone know. Maybe we'll at least get an answer in the next Big FAQ.
EnTyme wrote: I think it's safe to say the FAQ didn't exactly clear the issue up. I'm going to email the rules team when I get a chance. If I happen to get a reply, I'll let everyone know. Maybe we'll at least get an answer in the next Big FAQ.
its only unclear to people who are deliberately misreading the FAQ:
Tzeench errata wrote:
p69.... In addition, any rolls that have been replaced
(with the exception of save rolls and battleshock tests)
count as unmodified rolls and cannot be re-rolled or
modified further.
They deliberately say that everything except save rolls and battleshocks are unmodified. meaning Save rolls and Battleshocks are modified; which only really matters for the horror banners that require an unmodified 1.
Cwcriner, I laid out above how it could logically mean that or something else. Though to be clear you are arguing that DD battleshock and save rolls can be re-rolled, correct?
NinthMusketeer wrote: Cwcriner, I laid out above how it could logically mean that or something else. Though to be clear you are arguing that DD battleshock and save rolls can be re-rolled, correct?
yes, so long as they have not been already re-rolled.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Cwcriner, I laid out above how it could logically mean that or something else. Though to be clear you are arguing that DD battleshock and save rolls can be re-rolled, correct?
yes, so long as they have not been already re-rolled.
Based on the way the Errata is written I would agree with cwcriner.
Would like to note I was originally pointing out the interaction with the Horrors Icon. The re-rolls part had not occurred to me at the time.
It seems to me that RAI would be that the only difference between a normal DD and one for battleshocks/saves would be the modifier based on casualties or rend respectively. But the way they worded it is ambiguous so it could mean they want DD to function as differently as you say. That would still strike me as strange, being inconsistent for no good reason, but illogical rules design is hardly unusual from GW. They need to update it to make things clear.
So the correct way to play it is that an actual roll of 1 gives Horros D6 back, but a DD of 1 would mean they still take Battleshock? That's what I'm getting from what is being said.
We don't know, because the wording can be interpreted multiple ways. IMO if you can get your play group to go along with it have things so DD 1's don't bring horrors back, it isn't like the unit or the faction needs it.
Carnikang wrote: So the correct way to play it is that an actual roll of 1 gives Horros D6 back, but a DD of 1 would mean they still take Battleshock? That's what I'm getting from what is being said.
that is the clear reading of the FAQ, as the ablitiy requires an unmodified roll of 1 and DD are explicitly a modified roll when used for Battleshock.
Carnikang wrote: So the correct way to play it is that an actual roll of 1 gives Horros D6 back, but a DD of 1 would mean they still take Battleshock? That's what I'm getting from what is being said.
that is the clear reading of the FAQ, as the ablitiy requires an unmodified roll of 1 and DD are explicitly a modified roll when used for Battleshock.
Yeah, saying it has been or can be modified is different than not being an unmodified. If i roll a natural 1, that an unmod 1, but if i had mods to it say 3, then its a 4, but it still is an unmod of a 1 that i rolled. SO does DD act in the same way?
Can we please not turn the AoS Discussion forum into YMDC? There is enough argument about this issue that we can at least agree that the intent isn't clear. Send the question to GW like I have and hope we get a response. Until then, if the issue comes up in your group, work it out amongst yourselves.
I have friends that have been waiting for this book for a long time, i'm not denying them a chance to play it. Like always i ask how comp of a game they want and build a list around that.
EnTyme wrote: "Please don't bring tournament lists to game night"
Some players bring tournament lists anyway
We don't play against those players. Let them play each other
Tournament players have a good time playing each other. Casual players have a good time playing each other
"The game's balance is rough, but I'm sure glad we have the player agency to make concessions and make it work!"
that works only in place where there is a lot of players of each kind. Often you will have a situation when there is 10-15 people playing at the store, maybe 1/3 will be at the store at any given time, out of those 1-2 opposing armies are going to be in favour of their army or yours, so neither you or them are going to be willing to play each other, then they may already be playing someone, what means you will end up with having 1-2 people to pick from. And if the game is as pricy for you as other people around, very soon the meta shifts to everyone having some sort of tournament list, because it at least limits the number of people you don't want have a chance to win against.
And this is with a lot of people playing a game at a store. Sometimes the game you play is less popular and doesn't have those 10+ people playing. GL then trying to mix 2 casual and 5-6 non casual players playing against each other.
It's unfortunate that you both have unsavory gaming clubs where people don't want to play toy soldiers nice, but it really seems like out of the regular posts or people showing up in these threads, that your experience is way out of the norm, Karol and Auticus. I still remember you talking about how people would sometimes break eachother's models at the club you visit, Karol. Anything like that happen again lately?
It'll be easy to respond, just saying that we don't care about balance and get in to an annoying circular argument again and again on this thread, so let's just avoid that.
Striving for balance is a wonderful goal, but there's more to winning a game of AoS. On paper, OBR are the most broken overpowered faction seen evaaaar!!! but their tournament showings have been trash, and against a C-tier army(Beastclaw Raiders) while playing Petrifex I got dunked on because I couldn't move fast enough to win the game on objective points. I got stuck in my deployment zone by the BCR's speed and tied up for long enough, losing control of just one objective for one turn was enough to make me lose.
Mission and list-building play a part in showings too. Little Timmy's first batch of models he built shouldn't go against John's well-thought out machine of a list, even thought it's not tournament caliber, and have Timmy win on the merits of his list alone.
We don't play against those players. Let them play each other
Sorry but where I'm from that opens up an entire can of drama and hurt feelings and promotes cliques and aggression toward different groups.
We advertise a public event, and then ban people from showing up, there is a gamer-war about to go down.
hat your experience is way out of the norm, Karol and Auticus
Except that I have dozens of people who I talk to that confirm their area is similar, so no I don't think that my experience is out of the norm. If I truly felt it was out of the norm, and that I just lived in some bizarro world where things operated differently from the rest of the world, I'd probably not say much.
I think instead its being treated like dirt swept under the rug to hide it.
Bad rules and bad balance foster bad environments.
And this isn't to go back into circular discussion about balance. I realize the GW ride-or-die folks will be content with anything because balance isn't their #1 concern, so there is no point or reason to continue trying to discuss balance when balance isn't important to you. This was a counter post to what I'm told...
"the game is busted, but so what? just socially engineer your group to not break the game, because thats what reasonable people do".
Which is not an option for a large chunk of people
Congrats, you completely brushed over the entirety of my point and decided to go back in to a circular balance argument.
By the way, my anecdotal evidence of how communities are, are more valid than yours because I say so. We can keep this up for a long time, over whose anecdotes are more powerful than who's.
There is nobody in this thread who is saying that the game's balance is fine, or that GW shouldn't change anything. Stop touting that line around as if nobody here gives a damn about balance, it's the equivalent of covering your ears and shouting 'lalallalala.'
What people are saying is that discussing with other people is the way to handle the balance issues in the mean time.
Just because you're incapable of having a basic human conversation with your opponent doesn't mean the rest of us are.
"Please don't bring those type of lists to the game day"
[Several players bring those type of lists to the game day anyway because rules let them do so]
[Wonders at what point the rules should be held accountable]
Well then. Since they're following rules? You just need to make rules on what can be brought to game day.
You can also train them. It'll take awhile & might cause some offense, but.... If they insist upon bringing those lists, just black list them. Nobody play a game with them.
I want to derail this thread into something positive in regards to Age of Sigmar.
Considering that we are about to get Lumineth Aelves it only leaves one Aelven faction(Malerion). What other factions do you think we might see from the old world expanded into the AoS realms? We know Sons of Behemat is all but given.
Hopefully, no more. Time for new armies, not slapping new makeup on warmed up corpses. Honestly, whenever I read the lore on age of myth, I'm left thinking "I'd rather play THAT"...clockwork golem people from Chamon, firemagic lasers of the Algoraxi, all of it is way more exciting than Old World Empire Cosplayers of Sigmar or naked orcs.
Cronch wrote: Hopefully, no more. Time for new armies, not slapping new makeup on warmed up corpses. Honestly, whenever I read the lore on age of myth, I'm left thinking "I'd rather play THAT"...clockwork golem people from Chamon, firemagic lasers of the Algoraxi, all of it is way more exciting than Old World Empire Cosplayers of Sigmar or naked orcs.
Yeah I pretty much agree with this. I find Sigmar much more compelling when it stands on it's own merits rather than delving into nostalgia.
Personally I find some of the old-new armies are diverse without being too shackled to the old themes. Looks at Daughters of Khaine. Basically all they took from Old World was some modern models and basic themes. All the new models were fresh designs not even part of the Dark Eldar old range.
Luminoth are the same - they will have some hallmarks of the old High Elves; but lets face it most of that is things like spearmen and cavalry -basically your basic troop types. Ossiarch Bonereapers are a unique new force and they've got spearmen and basic cavalry and then a hulking walking bone construct with a corps cradle on its back and a centipede catapult.
As for new forces I'd wager we've got the giants (which we don't actually know anything about save their faction name); we've got the Draconic/demonic influenced Shadow Aelves to come (which considering that the old Dark Elf line is now part of Cities of Sigmar, means a totally new force design there).
After that I'd like to think there's a Soulblight/Vampire based army to come for Death. Doing the same as the others and splitting off a chunk of models from Legions of Nagash and then expanding them with their own themes and unique units.
Depending how GW does that they might put regular undead skeletons into the vampire force; or they might leave them out which leaves the door open for a traditional skeleton army (which would be interesting in so much as seeing Ossiarchs competing for bones with necromancers).
After that I'd welcome Destruction getting another army to their roster.
Then - honestly - I'd like GW to stop for a bit. Even those swell the game to getting closer to 30 factions (There's already just over 20). At some point I think going sideways has to STOP and GW should start to go deeper. A lot of AoS forces are either big but full of old sculpts (eg Skaven or Seraphon) or they are small. Whilst small forces work it would be fantastic to see them get more variety. GW could also start adding mechanical twists to the game. We could see a big focus on artillery units and see every faction get a wave of new cannon, catapults and hotpot throwers etc..
Just because you're incapable of having a basic human conversation with your opponent doesn't mean the rest of us are.
"Please don't bring those type of lists to the game day"
[Several players bring those type of lists to the game day anyway because rules let them do so]
[Wonders at what point the rules should be held accountable]
Well then. Since they're following rules? You just need to make rules on what can be brought to game day.
You can also train them. It'll take awhile & might cause some offense, but.... If they insist upon bringing those lists, just black list them. Nobody play a game with them.
My dude, that doesn't work with everyone. There are a lot of folks that they are fine with the restrictions because they understand what a casual narrative campaign is, and then there are a host of folks who believe if you aren't playing to max power all the time you're playing wrong. Blacklisting is reserved for those that actually assault someone, or use language thats highly offensive or something of that velocity.
Blacklisting someone based off of army choice causes community drama, and community drama repels people. My club's goal which has been its goal for over 20 years now is to promote public events (tournaments or casual campaigns); community drama repelling people... thats the opposite of what you want. As is helping to enforce cliques. You don't want cliques at war with each other. If we were discussing a private group of friends that played up at a store together, then everything that you all have said has merit and is feasible.
This club also runs public events for a number of other games and has done many games over the years, and AOS and 40k are the only ones that have really been this much of an issue.
In this very thread there have been several people that have bristled at being told they can't bring their triple keeper of secrets to a public event, for example. They know that its not really for casual gaming, but they want to do it anyway. (this is why I usually always reply when someone says "no one here is saying the game is balanced or fine", or "you just have to talk to people because people are reasonable and will understand not to do those things" because there are always several people that are saying exactly that or doing exactly that)
Tighter rules tighter balance - less of an issue. If the game enforces these things, you don't have to have these political campaigns.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
What other factions do you think we might see from the old world expanded into the AoS realms? We know Sons of Behemat is all but given.
I'd like to see some original factions now. I'd like them to leave the rest of the old world to the old world game they are developing. (which I am very excited to see how it turns out, if the rules can be a bit less board-gamey than AOS I would probably jump on that)
This club also runs public events for a number of other games and has done many games over the years, and AOS and 40k are the only ones that have really been this much of an issue.
Laughs in triple Dengar/triple Jedi(X-Wing); Warmahordes(is this game still supported by PP?); Marcus(Malifaux); Empire (Legion). -- These examples were/are either top tier or exceptionally bottom tier.
Making a statement like this is probably the most disingenuous thing I've seen on this forum. It could be you club has lower tier gamers who don't understand how to play games or maybe they don't know how to synchronize lists, but to say that your anecdotal experience of AOS or 40k being the only game with balance issues is absolutely inane. Maybe your club only plays Games Workshop games? I would bring up Runewars or some other miniatures games but they've been dropped and are no longer supported.
Yeah we had a HUGE Malifaux group when 1.0 was out, then the game balance went to hell, 2.0 came out, and 20+ players dropped it. Now no one plays it here anymore.
This club also runs public events for a number of other games and has done many games over the years, and AOS and 40k are the only ones that have really been this much of an issue.
Laughs in triple Dengar/triple Jedi(X-Wing); Warmahordes(is this game still supported by PP?); Marcus(Malifaux); Empire (Legion). -- These examples were/are either top tier or exceptionally bottom tier.
Making a statement like this is probably the most disingenuous thing I've seen on this forum. It could be you club has lower tier gamers who don't understand how to play games or maybe they don't know how to synchronize lists, but to say that your anecdotal experience of AOS or 40k being the only game with balance issues is absolutely inane. Maybe your club only plays Games Workshop games? I would bring up Runewars or some other miniatures games but they've been dropped and are no longer supported.
I never said anything of the kind. I said that the other games don't have as much of an issue, more specifically with (bolded for emphasis to clear up any confusion you may have on what I'm talking about) people showing up with adepticon powered lists to casual narrative public events. I never discussed other games not having balance issues at all. Our warmahordes when it ran was 100% all power gaming all the time, so that was never an issue. Battle tech, kings of war, whfb, conquest, xwing, armada, for whatever reason those players never felt compelled to break the game as much as the aos and 40k players like to do it when they aren't supposed to (non tournament events).
Opinion based of course but I also think there is a very large difference between the other games that I play, and showing up on casual night and getting paired against the triple keeper of secrets player. Maybe its that I don't enjoy 4000 point vs 2000 point games very much. Perhaps its the style of imbalance that gets to me.
Eldarsif wrote: I want to derail this thread into something positive in regards to Age of Sigmar.
Considering that we are about to get Lumineth Aelves it only leaves one Aelven faction(Malerion). What other factions do you think we might see from the old world expanded into the AoS realms? We know Sons of Behemat is all but given.
The only other Old World factions I'd like to see are Malerion's Aelves (whom we're sure to see eventually) and a return of the Tomb Kings in some form (and no, the OBR aren't Tomb Kings).
Kanluwen wrote: Malerion's Aelves aren't an 'Old World' faction...and we have the Kurnothi still to go for Aelves.
That assumes everything from the skirmish games will make it into main game as an army.
It's going to happen. I mean, why would they not jump at the chance to make more aelves, and branch off into the "good beastmen" aesthetic for an army? If they made them in CAD, I'm sure they have tonnes of other assets prepared.
As to what Is like to see... Some destruction faction centered on the seas, preferably under the water. Fishmen/merfolk. But with a twist, make them clones that spawn fishmen on the battlefield from giant walking crab incubators.
Vampirates. Would love a revisited vampire coast, but make the ships fly. Give Death a flying fleet of Vampirates with zombie crewmen.
Personal pet want... Mortal Followers of the Seraphon Creed/worshippers of the big scaly Boyz. Make them Amazonian if you want some old world flavor, or make them use a lot of old one tech to solidify the connection.
Kanluwen wrote: Malerion's Aelves aren't an 'Old World' faction...and we have the Kurnothi still to go for Aelves.
That assumes everything from the skirmish games will make it into main game as an army.
I know many want Kurnothi to be an army or a wing of Sylvaneth. GW could also take things in that direction to expand the army beyond adding "more trees". That said I also believe that Underworlds allows GW to make niche-armies for small projects without having to commit to a whole new army of that design. I think the fact that we did not see a Dark Oath warband for Warcry is very telling of this. Plus even when many were saying "Oh Dark Oath are coming", a big stumbling block was the question of "Well how will they be different to Slaves to Darkness?" Because in the end they basically were the same general concepts.
I think its likely a neat outlet for concepts and ideas, but nothing we see in Underworlds is to be expected to translate to a new army nor even new subfaction or units for an army outside of the band itself
I know many want Kurnothi to be an army or a wing of Sylvaneth. GW could also take things in that direction to expand the army beyond adding "more trees".
Bluntly, the issue is that the Kurnothi got their rules in the Sylvaneth book and the Sylvaneth book is questionable as to how it is organized and presents things.
That said I also believe that Underworlds allows GW to make niche-armies for small projects without having to commit to a whole new army of that design. I think the fact that we did not see a Dark Oath warband for Warcry is very telling of this.
Or it's because the Darkoath aren't a warband vying for the favor of Archaon? Cause that's the fluff behind the warbands.
Plus even when many were saying "Oh Dark Oath are coming", a big stumbling block was the question of "Well how will they be different to Slaves to Darkness?" Because in the end they basically were the same general concepts.
No, the question was "how will they be different to Marauders?".
I think its likely a neat outlet for concepts and ideas, but nothing we see in Underworlds is to be expected to translate to a new army nor even new subfaction or units for an army outside of the band itself
You'd have a point if the Kurnothi weren't mentioned as a preview of a faction we'd never seen before. It could be referencing just the lore or it could be more...I'm going with "more" since they've also been pretty consistently teasing out Kurnoth potentially being reborn.
Personal pet want... Mortal Followers of the Seraphon Creed/worshippers of the big scaly Boyz. Make them Amazonian if you want some old world flavor, or make them use a lot of old one tech to solidify the connection.
Neat little factoid:
The book Black Pyramid has a character that worships Sotek. The book doesn't get too deep into it though, its just a passing comment between two characters. It would be awesome to see that expanded upon.
From the book:
Spoiler:
And we’ll be here to meet them,’ Morguin said, flatly. ‘And stop playing with that bloody knife. There’s no hearts to be cut here, you serpent-worshipping bastard.’ She paused and glanced at him. ‘No offence.’ ‘Great Sotek forgives you your blasphemy,’ Chutehk said, idly. ‘And he wouldn’t take their hearts anyway – rotten all the way through.’ He smiled, displaying teeth capped with turquoise. ‘He prefers the hearts of heroes.’
Kanluwen wrote: Malerion's Aelves aren't an 'Old World' faction...and we have the Kurnothi still to go for Aelves.
I'm assuming that Malerion's Aelves will be an expansion of the Darkling Covens the same way DoK was an expansion/adaptation of the Witch Aelves and the upcoming Light Aelves seem to be an expansion/adaptation of the old High Elves. I could be wrong, though. As far as the Kurnothi, I was mostly just stating the thing I am personally hoping for, and Kurnothi just don't appeal to me.
Kanluwen wrote: Malerion's Aelves aren't an 'Old World' faction...and we have the Kurnothi still to go for Aelves.
I'm assuming that Malerion's Aelves will be an expansion of the Darkling Covens the same way DoK was an expansion/adaptation of the Witch Aelves and the upcoming Light Aelves seem to be an expansion/adaptation of the old High Elves. I could be wrong, though. As far as the Kurnothi, I was mostly just stating the thing I am personally hoping for, and Kurnothi just don't appeal to me.
Darkling Covens are all part of CoS. Mayhap there will be a unit or two shared, but in all likelyhood, they'll be quite different if the Ulgu elves from Silver Tower are anything to go off of.
Far as we know the Shadow Aelves might well look like the Mistweaver and the Big Rule Book shows Malarion as some kind of demon dragon looking monster (he looks a bit like the dreadlords from Warcraft - so your standard horns and claws and wings demon style appearance). Until Cities of Sigmar I'd have thought he'd have likely used the Darkling Covens model,s but nope its looking like it will be a totally fresh army.
Kanluwen wrote: Malerion's Aelves aren't an 'Old World' faction...and we have the Kurnothi still to go for Aelves.
That assumes everything from the skirmish games will make it into main game as an army.
I know many want Kurnothi to be an army or a wing of Sylvaneth.
On the other hand, I don't personally know anyone around that likes their looks. It all depends on sales of the kit i bet, but to me the underworlds is the perfect place to stick all the weird and one-off factions in, like what they did with Necromunda and Blackstone Fortress that have squats and zoats now, and neither will ever get a full army in 40k proper.
Eldarsif wrote: I want to derail this thread into something positive in regards to Age of Sigmar.
Considering that we are about to get Lumineth Aelves it only leaves one Aelven faction(Malerion). What other factions do you think we might see from the old world expanded into the AoS realms? We know Sons of Behemat is all but given.
Hopefully wood elves & dark elves,whatever GWs calling them these days, so that existing collections (or at least good portions of them) can be used.
EnTyme wrote: It wouldn't be the first time units were shared across codices.
Yeah, but in this case I think GW is trying to not be "Shackled" by the old ranges, even if the new ranges will have a lot of aesthetic similarities. I don't think we'll see any shared models between the Lumineth and the other Aelven ranges. Allies sure, but I don't think they will have a profile in the new book.
IMO, CoS was a good way to consolidate all those models and the primary reason I don't think there will be shared profiles from any models in CoS going forward. Any new army I think is going to be designed this way, unless the shared models were already designed with AoS in mind (I.E. OBR with Arkhan, Nagash and Morghasts)
auticus wrote: The Ancient Dead would also be cool. And I agree the OBR are not tomb kings. At all.
While this is true, they really do trample on a fair bit of Tomb King design space. As such I really can't see Tomb Kings getting any kind of update for several years at a minimum. If ever.
To be honest I want a new revamp of Bretonnia rules. You can field all cavalry armies, but nothing quite scratches the itch of 100% knights in armour charging across with faith and holy magic.
Hell, get some interesting mount variations in there aswell, Would love to see an updated Ulgu shadow chargers, Azyr Pegasus or Chamon metal shelled crabs or something!
I also really hope GW does a full heavy cavalry army with an AOS fantasy twist to it. A knights in shining armour faction is clearly missing even though stormcast sort of try and be that.
Overread wrote: I also really hope GW does a full heavy cavalry army with an AOS fantasy twist to it. A knights in shining armour faction is clearly missing even though stormcast sort of try and be that.
The issue is it's too easy for 3rd parties to get on in the action with generic tropes like that.
Overread wrote: I also really hope GW does a full heavy cavalry army with an AOS fantasy twist to it. A knights in shining armour faction is clearly missing even though stormcast sort of try and be that.
The issue is it's too easy for 3rd parties to get on in the action with generic tropes like that.
So we get Stormcast on Gryph Chargers instead.
Yes like medusa with bows and arrows or harpies with spears.
Also nothing stops 3rd parties making heavily armoured half-giants riding griffins without wings. Nothing in AoS is "that" unique that 3rd parties can't copy the concept. Heck as I just noted several armies are using very well established fantasy concepts.
Honestly I think GW is less afraid of 3rd parties than they once were; right now the only thing they do is give things a unique name that 3rd parties can't use and which lands GW on the first google results.
Overread wrote: I also really hope GW does a full heavy cavalry army with an AOS fantasy twist to it. A knights in shining armour faction is clearly missing even though stormcast sort of try and be that.
The issue is it's too easy for 3rd parties to get on in the action with generic tropes like that.
So we get Stormcast on Gryph Chargers instead.
To be honest, the fyreslayers isn't exactly un-generic itself. I've seen many a company produce berserker slayer esq dwarves before GW took their spin on it. As others have commented there's very few truly unique factions/model concepts that haven't been done before or wont be done again after by 3rd parties.
so I imagine the new Light elves will let you play cav heavy like Silverhelms/ dragon princes of old, I do think we NEED a full on knight army that will let us represent various knightly orders and what weird things they do in their realms to truly make it AOS.
Overread wrote: I also really hope GW does a full heavy cavalry army with an AOS fantasy twist to it. A knights in shining armour faction is clearly missing even though stormcast sort of try and be that.
The issue is it's too easy for 3rd parties to get on in the action with generic tropes like that.
So we get Stormcast on Gryph Chargers instead.
Yes like medusa with bows and arrows or harpies with spears.
Also nothing stops 3rd parties making heavily armoured half-giants riding griffins without wings. Nothing in AoS is "that" unique that 3rd parties can't copy the concept. Heck as I just noted several armies are using very well established fantasy concepts.
Honestly I think GW is less afraid of 3rd parties than they once were; right now the only thing they do is give things a unique name that 3rd parties can't use and which lands GW on the first google results.
Whatever the reason, they dont seem interested in producing standard Tolkien or medieval kits at the moment. Its Stormcast and Bonereapers and sea elves and such.
The Lumineth weve seen so far are mostly a fair bit more restrained I'll grant you, so it's not impossible. But 'normal' human knights simply doesnt feel like something GW would release at the moment.
Amishprn86 wrote: The new Elves has them tho..... literally they showed off armored horse riders. Not in the for of Brets, but still we are getting some.
Stylized, but to me at least the models don't look unreasonably busy or overdesigned. Clean, great looking models. For once in a long time, I'm a fan of an army's cavalry choices, and excited to build and paint these models. Damnit GW just put the army out please
I want to see Brets done full-AoS. As in knights riding horses are the basic troops, with more elite and specialized troops riding different beasts. There's no need to anchor the army with blocks of infantry anymore, they could cut the peasant element entirely and explore the mounted angle. Have them get an ogor-esque allegiance rule where they count as additional models for controlling objectives... But only the turn they charge!
Some more info up on WarCom. A handy picture shows them near Plague Monks. Looking like they're on 32mm bases to me.
Time for... Wild Speculation! GW mentioned that the Vanari fight using their spears, while also having a backup shortsword ready. I think they may get a rule where they can fight using the spear or sword in combat, choosing which weapon the whole unit, or go on a model-by-model basis. The sword would have more attacks, but the spear is mentioned to rend through armor and flesh with ease (-1 rend weapon probably) ? There's also mention where they're the ones meant to take a charge, perhaps some sort of defensive or offensive/damage dealing buff/effect when the unit gets charged?
Stux wrote:As such I really can't see Tomb Kings getting any kind of update for several years at a minimum. If ever.
Gir Spirit Bane wrote:To be honest I want a new revamp of Bretonnia rules.
While these are two of my favorite Fantasy armies, I thought that there was an announced decision that they were basically dropped spear, bow, and lance from the GW line. Their model lines aren't showing up at all for sale on their site, with only a passing nod to them with the occasional update to their Warscrolls and GHB point tallies.
Thadin wrote: Stylized, but to me at least the models don't look unreasonably busy or overdesigned. Clean, great looking models. For once in a long time, I'm a fan of an army's cavalry choices, and excited to build and paint these models. Damnit GW just put the army out please
Stux wrote:As such I really can't see Tomb Kings getting any kind of update for several years at a minimum. If ever.
Gir Spirit Bane wrote:To be honest I want a new revamp of Bretonnia rules.
While these are two of my favorite Fantasy armies, I thought that there was an announced decision that they were basically dropped spear, bow, and lance from the GW line. Their model lines aren't showing up at all for sale on their site, with only a passing nod to them with the occasional update to their Warscrolls and GHB point tallies.
Yes, GW made it quite obvious they have no interest in those two, and Ossiarchs pretty much nailed any chances of TK coming back dead, but it won't stop people from ignoring reality.
Ossiarchs in no way stop a regular undead skeleton army. They are a skeleton construct army and the visual designs are totally different. GW even has regular skeletons on sale right now in both infantry and cavalry forms as part of the Legions of Nagash.
If GW wanted they could easily make a second skeleton themed army. Of course they might not go for an Egyptian theme, but even if they did Ossiarchs don't stop that. They've a more mongolian (if any) base to them.
As for a heavy cavalry based army, that's again totally possible.
The only reason we saw those armies vanish was due to poor sales which was, in part, due to bad management from GW of the Old World game for a prolonged period. In addition to that lets not forget the choice to remove them was made under different management when the focus and structure of AoS was vastly different than it is now.
Of course we've also no hint that GW will ever add such armies either; plus with the Old World game it might be just where they might release such themed armies instead. Anything is possible and nothing is off the cards.
Tomb Kings had new sculpts in 2010 and 2011 before AOS binned them in 2015. They were canned because of poor sales - I can believe that. Because their rules were utterly putrid, on par with Slaves to Lolness up until they finally got their book that took them to meh tier out of the lolz dumpster.
If an army has really really bad rules, it shouldn't surprise anyone that their models don't really sell very well.
auticus wrote: Tomb Kings had new sculpts in 2010 and 2011 before AOS binned them in 2015. They were canned because of poor sales - I can believe that. Because their rules were utterly putrid, on par with Slaves to Lolness up until they finally got their book that took them to meh tier out of the lolz dumpster.
If an army has really really bad rules, it shouldn't surprise anyone that their models don't really sell very well.
They where canned b.c of the Lawsuit not poor sales to themselves. They had something like 15 items in that lawsuit out of the 360 (If my memory is correct, its been a while). They did have less sales over all for GW, but nothing worst than any other WHFB army (same with vampires), in total, old fantasy only made up 4% of sales at the time of end of 7th, end times was there way to spike interest and it didn't work, along with the lawsuit with Chapterhouse, huge changes had to be made,
So in short, low sales with all of fantasy and IP problems.
Where are these sales figures (old fantasy making up 4% of all sales) posted? I have no doubt it was low, we had 25 people registered in our events in 2015, and only a couple of us ever bought anything from GW, the rest bought their stuff 3rd party or off ebay. Very very few people bought anything new for warhammer because the 3rd party market was so saturated with cheap models, not counting the new historical models you could get for cheap too.
I saw like one or two tomb kings players in five years because their rules were so bad though.
Overread wrote:Ossiarchs in no way stop a regular undead skeleton army. They are a skeleton construct army and the visual designs are totally different. GW even has regular skeletons on sale right now in both infantry and cavalry forms as part of the Legions of Nagash.
If GW wanted they could easily make a second skeleton themed army. Of course they might not go for an Egyptian theme, but even if they did Ossiarchs don't stop that. They've a more mongolian (if any) base to them.
Very true. There are 3 things that Tomb Kings did that stand out: archery, chariots, and constructs. The Ossiarchs only do the latter, and on a totally different aesthetic than the Tomb Kings.
The Bretonnians also wouldn't be that hard. Their lack of sales was as much due to the same reason that Dark Eldar and Sisters of Battle had low sales for such a long time, no progressive support at all. If nothing else, having them be the humans from the Realms of Life would make sense and be totally in character. But far too easy to use other model lines in their place unlike the latest releases of the Tomb Kings were.
auticus wrote:Tomb Kings had new sculpts in 2010 and 2011 before AOS binned them in 2015. They were canned because of poor sales - I can believe that. Because their rules were utterly putrid, on par with Slaves to Lolness up until they finally got their book that took them to meh tier out of the lolz dumpster.
Actually they were very well received when they launched, comparing very well against the Vampires left over from 7th Edition. I saw their new models all over the place. The problem is that the Vampires book came out soon after, doing to the Tomb Kings, again, that they did to the Tomb Kings with their 7th Edition book, running cheaper and more powerful in everything but shooting. That is what every Tomb Kings player was saying, both on forum and locally. It was a 6 month difference in releases, and only Ogre Kingdoms separated them in Army Book releases. It was a slap in the face. Are we really surprised that sales would be down for an army that was incredibly behind the time to begin with, and then was over-powered by their cousins almost before their they had a chance to get settled?
auticus wrote: Where are these sales figures (old fantasy making up 4% of all sales) posted? I have no doubt it was low, we had 25 people registered in our events in 2015, and only a couple of us ever bought anything from GW, the rest bought their stuff 3rd party or off ebay. Very very few people bought anything new for warhammer because the 3rd party market was so saturated with cheap models, not counting the new historical models you could get for cheap too.
I saw like one or two tomb kings players in five years because their rules were so bad though.
It was a invested/stock release back then, you should be able to find them still, every major GW news outlet was talking about it. Spiky, BOLS, Faeit, etc..
Another big problem with the sales unlike now, everyone only bought 1 box for a max out block, all major events allowed fillers.
Here are some google pics for those that didn't know about it. At least all the events i went to and forums i talked on. When you removed 10-20 guys at ones or full blocks, why spend an extra $400 on models that don't see play other than turn 1 or even just set up.
I could see Bretonnians living on in an expanded Soulblight/Blood Knights book with a 'Dark Knight' aesthetic more than 'Knight in Shining Armour' but that would be it. Too much scope for people to buy historicals.
I think people who say that "but ossiarchs aren't TK, they don't have chariots" miss something. That something being GW deals more in themes and aesthetics than function. Both factions have the vaguely oriental, ancient-style theme to them as opposed to european gothic skellies of the VC/LoN. GW will not "bring back" TK because they got exploded, like Empire and Bretonnia and everything else. At best they could make new ancient-empire skeletons. Which they did, with Ossiarchs.
As for brets, the last people who cared for them were the Perry brothers from what I understand, and they're no longer with GW. So...no.
Arbitrator wrote: I could see Bretonnians living on in an expanded Soulblight/Blood Knights book with a 'Dark Knight' aesthetic more than 'Knight in Shining Armour' but that would be it. Too much scope for people to buy historicals.
I was hoping that new FEC miniatures would actually have a ghoulish slant on the knight aesthetic to go their deluded noble knights lore (scraps of armour, rusty broken swords, etc) -- seems like that will only extend as far as the fleur-de-lys on that one endless spell.
If GW wanted they could easily make a second skeleton themed army.
No, you're talking about GW doing a THIRD skeleton army. We already have Deathrattle in Legions and Bonereapers. That's plenty of skeletons.
Nope second. Deathrattle isn't a full proper army of its own - its just part of the Legions of Nagash. Now I could well see GW breaking Bonerattle out from that, taking those skeletons as a base and building an army for them. Just like they did with Nighthaunt and Ossiarchs and will likely, at some point, do with the Vampires. The question will be if GW will make them a full army of their own or if they'll move skeletons as we have them now into part of the Vampire army.
As for the whole "we dropped them because of the IP" I'd hasten to remind people that the only thing GW has done to protect their IP is change names. The could easily have changed Tombkings to a series of their own unique names and that would protect them as much as ANYTHING else that GW currently or formerly makes. GW is big enough that even if they made the most super unique looking models in the world that no one had ever thought of; they'd still get 3rd parties copying the ideas. Raging Heroes would make high detail boobie focused versions; Creature Caster would make huge titan versions etc... Heck over the last year or two we've even see GW relent on their details of future products to the point where if 3rd parties wanted to push in they could. I think the attitude and "fear" at GW has reduced since the lawsuit to more sane levels.
Heck we've also seen GW shift away from their old tactics of aggressive litigation. Don't forget at one stage GW was even going after news websites that reported on leaks in their aggression to control their own information leaks. Today GW is more likely to discipline within their own company and then roll with the punches, as it were, and twist a leak into their own marketing.
I can't believe people are still pushing the idea that Tomb Kings were squatted for IP reasons when GW decided to keep Goth Skeletons, Holy Roman Empire, Every Edgelord Dark Elf You've Ever Seen, Ecoterrorist Elves With Bows, Elves Classic, Literally Just Dwarves, and Orcs But We Spelled It With A "K". Tomb Kings were more "original" than all of that because of their constructs! The closest thing to an original thought in WHFB was Skaven, and they were basically every gothcore sci fi trope repackaged together in giant man-rats!
Even Skaven aren't purely unique if you take into account the Rats of Nihm animated film.
I agree people keep jumping at the whole IP thing without even stopping to look at anything else. Especially considering that GW has released multiple common styled models since. Melusai and Khinerai are basically medusa and succubus/harpy models in all but name. Models and concepts that have been around for years and years.
It's like those who keep saying that GW hates horses and pointing at armies like stormcast who, honestly, if they wren't riding magical enhanced horses would crush most horses under sheer weight of armour let alone be impractical for battle.
Thats why I feel the tomb kings going away have little to do with IP and everything to do with they weren't selling very well (if at all) and it was a business choice to squat them.
And I feel they weren't selling very well because their rules were historically some of the worst rules in the history of the warhammer franchise. They were god awful, and only the slaves of lolness (2015-2019) compete with how god awful they were.
Had they had good rules, the new models were pretty awesome and I think they'd have sold just fine. Give them bad rules AND on top of that a competing undead army (vampire counts) that was better than them in every conceivable way ...
Lets not also forget that AoS at launch wasn't a wargame, it was a boutique model line.
So dropping bad selling models was part of the structure of a boutique line. GW wasn't writing rules to make them better, it was purely a "if X isn't selling drop it and release Y". Remember the launch rules were joke rules and points were gone into the realm of "just do whatever you want".
GW was going into AoS at that stage with an attitude that they'd make models and people would buy them because they were cool and would use them how they want. They were basically copy-catting Reaper Miniatures. Shifting from being a game into a model supply company only.
It, of course, backfired on GW and they spent a few years running around changing things and even changing their management system and focus. I suspect if they'd launched AoS with the mindset they have now toward 2.0 we'd have had a vastly different result. We'd have likely had points and rules at launch like the 40K index; we'd not have seen multiple armies fragmented; we'd have likely seen revised rules for most. We might have seen more wild re-imaginings of units. Eg the Wood Elf models might have made a shift toward being more like the Kirnothi rather than just tree aelves etc....
I point these things out because people like to say "whfb just didn't sell. No one played it. No one liked it. AOS sells a ton, thats proof that people wanted to buy fantasy but hated whfb" when there were a lot of factors in why people weren't buying whfb models.
One of which were lines that had awful rules.
Another was the fact that the third party market like ebay was absolutely glutted with cheap models and people were using historicals as well which were tons cheaper. We had a great many people PLAYING whfb... but hardly anyone BUYING retail whfb.
I think you're exactly right about sales being the reason. I honestly think the original plan was to slowly remove all Old World armies from the game, and they started with two that had low stock and low sales figures. After Kirby stepped down (probably due at least in part to the backlash from removing TK and Brets), the plan changed.
Its both for sure tho. There is a reason why a certain 3 armies got canned; Brets, vampire, TK's. BoC are just as non unique as many others, they are just satyrs, or Sylvenath, they are just Ents, but BoC in fantasy was one of the LEAST played armies and they stayed and even got some love.
Vampire Counts was one of the top played factions, they were in top 5 for most played (this was years ago when i was heavy into fantasy, IDK about Endtimes i didn't play during 8th/endtimes, i played 5th-7th). So, no its not just sales, otherwise Vampires would still be a coherent army.
EnTyme wrote: I think you're exactly right about sales being the reason. I honestly think the original plan was to slowly remove all Old World armies from the game, and they started with two that had low stock and low sales figures. After Kirby stepped down (probably due at least in part to the backlash from removing TK and Brets), the plan changed.
I don't think it was to retire old armies. I think the plan was to make "armies" a concept of the past. Instead GW would have only Four Grand Alliances; within which were niche forces. The only "army" might have been Stormcast (trying to copy-cat marines hard); the rest would likely have been mostly small armies. Even Skaven (popular as they are) would have been hived into multiple armies (we saw this just start with the pestilens book). The idea being that GW would be able to retire "armies" and add armies with a single sweep. Pestilens aren't selling as well as Skyre - drop Pestilens and increase Skyre releases. Or even release new skyre sub-army since you'd only need 5 or so kits for an "army". Your new Idoneth isn't selling like hotcakes on release - shelve them you don't need to release any more and put the investments into something else. Keep selling so long as they cover basic costs and drop them once they stop or if you've got multiple other lines selling better that you don't want storage and production taken up with Idoneth any more.
Remember you've done away with points and rules already so it doesn't matter, you're purely using armies as a visual theme to sell models. It's basically the Forgeworld model just with plastic and taken into the extreme with a much faster release cycle and likely faster cycling of models too.
It wasn't a wargame. It wasn't just that it wasn't Old World, it just straight up wasn't a wargame unless you house-ruled it to be so. Even then you'd have to contend with GW dropping and adding models at a whim of sales.
Of course sales and numbers wise it might appear ideal; you add what the market wants and get rid of anything the market doesn't want. A purely by the numbers and profits approach to the product line.
Don't get me wrong, some people did love that there was no unified system. They were more keen to throw down 30 dragons without limits; or they were able to finally release their own rules to the local club and get people playing. They could tweak and balance adn test and puzzle out their own game. Indeed such people loved AoS at launch. However they lacked any kind of real unity; many often made use of old world points to get initial structure and they also were, in the end, quite a minority compared to the market GW wanted to have and which was there and waiting and wanting a wargame.
Suffice to say I don't think AoS would be as big nor as fast growing as it is now if GW had stuck to their original plans. Heck even the fiction is outselling the Old World fiction from the BL.
Amishprn86 wrote: Its both for sure tho. There is a reason why a certain 3 armies got canned; Brets, vampire, TK's. BoC are just as non unique as many others, they are just satyrs, or Sylvenath, they are just Ents, but BoC in fantasy was one of the LEAST played armies and they stayed and even got some love.
Vampire Counts was one of the top played factions, they were in top 5 for most played (this was years ago when i was heavy into fantasy, IDK about Endtimes i didn't play during 8th/endtimes, i played 5th-7th). So, no its not just sales, otherwise Vampires would still be a coherent army.
Vampire Counts weren't removed any more than Empire or High Elves were, which is to say they were just split up into different factions.
Had they had good rules, the new models were pretty awesome and I think they'd have sold just fine.
Alternatively, the people who clamor for their return are a very small but loud group, and they never had that much of an appeal.
That, and apparently an army needs a champion at GW design team that'd push for it. If rumors are to be believed, the only reason we got CoS book is because one of the team pretty much just handed in a ready manuscript to be published, because the management had no interest in expanding on the legacy armies at this point. The same was certainly true of Brets back in WFB times. They were ushered in by the Perrys as their pet project, and when they left, no one felt like picking up the slack.
For comparison, BoC, which had garbage rules most of Fantasy's lifespan survived the culling and apparently sold not terribly for a garbage tier army.
I can count the number of times I encountered a beast of chaos army on one hand during the entirety of 8th edition whfb. I don't know where the sales data is coming from showing what factions did and did not sell, and I will gladly preface that this is just my experience, but Beasts of Chaos were another dud that sat on shelves and didn't go anywhere near me.
They were pretty popular in previous editions, as were tomb kings, at least in the competitive circles and grand tournaments. Just not 8th.
Far as I'm aware outside of comments from former employees (many of which are only red-shirt store level so biased by their local communities) we've never really had solid facts on sales data for armies outside of Space Marines - and only then because they make up a significant percentage of total sales on their own.
I don't think GW has ever published sales data broken down on a per-army level - its always been wrapped up to a per game/franchise/department level of profits and sales and such.
I do think that the "design led" aspect of GW and some internal politics do come into play with what we get and how much of what we get. But how much or how little that affects things is honestly very hard to tell from the outside.
Yeah i absolutely believe that a faction needs a champion inside of the ivory tower or it is doomed to really bad rules and then its removal from the game entirely.
You can keep right on believing that. Wood Elves had a fairly dedicated champion and we didn't get an updated book until the end of 8th, and AoS basically destroyed the faction afterwards.
That may also tie into sales. The same black hole vortex of doom that befell many factions. The cycle of bad rules means no players and no players means no sales so they must be bad and no one wants them so cut them.
Yeah, no. The cut was because half the damn range was in metal/resin and the half in plastic had a big chunk(Glade Guard and Glade Riders) that had the early attempts at cloth which were a big part of why Sisters took so long to actually happen.
There's clearly multiple aspects that come into play and even within GW there might be variation on the impression as to why an army was dropped. Some might think it was sales; some might think it was political; or investment driven or marketing theory or any one of a number of aspects.
Some of them might even be simply a case of "something" had to go and one army got a short straw and others didn't. I know we've some firm facts about some- eg Squats were mostly lost because they didn't have an ally on the design team and as they were making 40K a more "serious" setting they couldn't find a place for them. Then they got renamed and reclassified as Demiurg, but then it seems no one championed them enough and they never found the investment and slots to make them a reality. However, like many things, they have come around again - granted thus far only as a spaceship ally for Tau in the very end of BFG and in the two BFG computer games.
GW TOTALLY works by what the guys on the design team like. I don't mean THATS the only thing that matters, but you can for example look at Horus Heresy. Alan Blight was basically THE horus heresy guy on the studio. After his death, you can see how fast Horus Heresy and forgeworld in general have been cut down and reformed.
The same happens with factions, and armies in both 40k and aos (And old fantasy).
EnTyme wrote: That intent was pretty clear. The Destiny Die just determines the die roll, not how it's effected by modifiers. Were people really not playing it that way? That doesn't even make sense.
No, the intent was not clear with how the rules read for DD before the errata. The destiny dice rules said that the roll could not be modified further. Thus, you would not add the battleshock casualties as that is modifying the dice roll.
FAQ was updated today. DD of 1 count as unmodified and allow the use of the horror banner for battleshock.
So to clarify, the way DD on Battleshock works is;
You replace the dice for battleshock. If you use a 2 to a 6, the roll is modified by casualties and battleshock is taken as normal. If you use a 1, it isn't modified and gets you D6 Pinks back if you have a banner?
I'm fine with this. They've clarified it to the point where it's exactly how I thought it should work in the first place. Now they can focus on the actually important job of reigning in the power of the book... Or just not bother and let Lumineth Realmlords be their counter so they can point at them and say "See, Tzeentch isn't the strongest "
Thadin wrote: I'm fine with this. They've clarified it to the point where it's exactly how I thought it should work in the first place. Now they can focus on the actually important job of reigning in the power of the book... Or just not bother and let Lumineth Realmlords be their counter so they can point at them and say "See, Tzeentch isn't the strongest "
Everyone knows that the counter to Tzeentch Arcanites is the Shadowblades.
After all, nothing deals with the subtlety of wizards like a knife between the shoulderblades.
Isn't the tournament-stomping Tzeentch lists more focused on Shooting damage output, as opposed to offensive magic? I've only heard the hearsay, and how dirty Flamers and Kairic Acolytes are. Shooting is the best way to deal with Ossiarchs
Thadin wrote: Isn't the tournament-stomping Tzeentch lists more focused on Shooting damage output, as opposed to offensive magic? I've only heard the hearsay, and how dirty Flamers and Kairic Acolytes are. Shooting is the best way to deal with Ossiarchs
There are a few different lists floating around, but Kairic Acolytes are a really well balanced unit. I honestly think Flamers are really balanced as well, as they really are a glass cannon unit. It's the other enablers in the book that allow them to be so strong.
1. The Eternal Conflagration Changehost- This list is mostly focused on shooting, with the shooting from Horrors and Flamers improving a lot.
2. Hosts Duplicitous Changehost- This one probably took the biggest nerf from the changehost and horror battleshock. Basically uses a ton of horrors to lockdown the enemy units forever, while taking objectives and grinding them down.
3. Guild of Summoners mass casting- This list doing mass casting to get off a bunch of spells, and summon several LoCs on to the field.
I think it's unrealistic to expect a tuned Tzeentch list to not being doing considerable amounts of both. While it may focus one way or another both shooting and magic will be large components. Shooting is only good against OBR when compared to trying to melee them to death, generally speaking it's mortal wounds that will tear through them. Any Tzeentch list will throw out tons, for which being able to shut them down gives Null Myriad enough survivability to counter-play. It isn't that Tzeentch won't shoot them to death, it's that Tzeentch won't shoot them to death fast enough without being able to back it up with MW spellcasting.
The reason this won't be sweeping the tournament scene is that null myriad will stand up to Tzeentch but turn around and get obliterated by a long list of other tier-1 and -2 armies. It is in essence a 'troll-the-meta' list which takes a very specific mindset for someone to want to run.
NinthMusketeer wrote: I think it's unrealistic to expect a tuned Tzeentch list to not being doing considerable amounts of both. While it may focus one way or another both shooting and magic will be large components. Shooting is only good against OBR when compared to trying to melee them to death, generally speaking it's mortal wounds that will tear through them. Any Tzeentch list will throw out tons, for which being able to shut them down gives Null Myriad enough survivability to counter-play. It isn't that Tzeentch won't shoot them to death, it's that Tzeentch won't shoot them to death fast enough without being able to back it up with MW spellcasting.
The reason this won't be sweeping the tournament scene is that null myriad will stand up to Tzeentch but turn around and get obliterated by a long list of other tier-1 and -2 armies. It is in essence a 'troll-the-meta' list which takes a very specific mindset for someone to want to run.
As both a OBR and Tzeentch player, I think the recent nerfs dropped Tzeentch down enough that you do not need to go Null Myriad to beat them. You are sacrificing too much of your all comers strength for a specific match-up, which isn't as needed anymore.
I have been playing a 2x Crawler + Arkhan list that has been pretty effective. The change host nerf blunts their alphastrike pretty well, and Arkhan can reliably dispel a few of their critical spells. The crawlers are really key for the matchup.
Anyone been having any luck with the Idoneth deepkin? I fell in love with this faction but I can see it’s age when compared to the newest books. I will say that I been having mixed results when using a squad of 3 allopex’s since the book dropped, but sometimes I don’t feel like we hit as hard as we should.
Idoneth can hit pretty hard, but keep in mind they are a scalpel army, not a bat. Which is to say you need to be very precise about what when and where to get the results you want. Once you get atop their learning curve, however, they can be very rewarding to play.
Can you provide more context as to what armies you are up against?
NinthMusketeer wrote: Idoneth can hit pretty hard, but keep in mind they are a scalpel army, not a bat. Which is to say you need to be very precise about what when and where to get the results you want. Once you get atop their learning curve, however, they can be very rewarding to play.
Can you provide more context as to what armies you are up against?
Right now I am on a small winning streak against ogor maw tribes, but these are more pick up games with an akhelian corps battalion. The biggest things I had trouble with so far with is petrifax bone reapers or giant units of meaty things like iron guts or gluttons. Really, if I end up bouncing off a unit like this it’s game over for my morrsarr guard, and the death of my armies strongest hammer.
I used to have problems getting my big unit of eels in combat before they charged, but with the soul scryer this is less and less of an issue.
Ah, those are among the strongest end of what those armies put out so having some trouble is understandable. I would reccomend borrowing an OBR battletome and reading up on how their army and its different components work together. As for big blobs of ogors, especially ironguts, remember they can only be one place and kill one thing at a time. Even if they end up killing everything you have by the end of the game if you can spread out and score more victory points while they are doing it you'll win in the end. Numerous times I have won games despite being tabled.
Overread wrote: Far as I'm aware outside of comments from former employees (many of which are only red-shirt store level so biased by their local communities) we've never really had solid facts on sales data for armies outside of Space Marines - and only then because they make up a significant percentage of total sales on their own.
I don't think GW has ever published sales data broken down on a per-army level - its always been wrapped up to a per game/franchise/department level of profits and sales and such.
You want sales numbers?
value of US Sales
Product 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
Space Marine Assault Squad Plastic box set $59,689 $103,774 $159,460 $166,720 $170,287 $199,076 $245,035 $203,422 $150,010
Choas Space marine squad box $83,246 $79,391 $128,286 $153,565 $171,149 $140,691 $142,346 $114,544 $101,330
Space Marine Devastators box $37,617 $37,193 $53,395 $102,333 $157,763 $190,294 $201,442 $174,588 $156,079
Space Marine Land Raider Box $59,033 $60,665 $68,728 $64,523 $68,987 $90,508 $113,803 $99,573 $76,975
Space Marine tactical squad box $118,841 $191,862 $257,396 $276,615 $248,633 $192,011 $106,278 $84,834 $60,698
Blood Angels Baal Predator $11,672 $14,854 $17,681 $12,723 $20,687 $6,956 $129,369 $107,645 $66,260
Eldar Jet bike $14,744 $12,376 $13,086 $26,773 $22,922 $18,292 $31,346 $23,361 $17,613
Sisters of Battle Exorcist Box $48,747 $8,086 $5,740 $5,992 $14,420 $20,246 $14,047 $4,548
Choas Space Marine Squad Box $82,346 $79,391 $128,286 $153,565 $171,149 $140,691 $142,346 $114,544 $101,330
Tiger9gamer wrote: Anyone been having any luck with the Idoneth deepkin? I fell in love with this faction but I can see it’s age when compared to the newest books. I will say that I been having mixed results when using a squad of 3 allopex’s since the book dropped, but sometimes I don’t feel like we hit as hard as we should.
I've tried running a mostly namarti list, and I have to say, I've been chewed to bits with that. I suspect if it was a eel list, i'd have more luck. Still low survivability, but at least they can pick their fights far easier than 20-strong blobs of infantry.
A namarti focused list can work with more-fan afaik. It will be dismantled by power lists but that is the nature of army tiers; tier 2 will demolish you if you aren't optimizing, and tier 1 will demolish you if you aren't one of them.
NinthMusketeer wrote: A namarti focused list can work with more-fan afaik. It will be dismantled by power lists but that is the nature of army tiers; tier 2 will demolish you if you aren't optimizing, and tier 1 will demolish you if you aren't one of them.
It would help if the Namarti where more powerful to be honest. They are so squishy, and while they have great profiles I think that they need more range on their weapons before they can do anything. I don’t know how Fyreslayers can be a horde army on 32mms and do well, but it seems that the Namarti cannot.
As someone that play IDK for a long time and even won tournaments with them, honestly the Namarti are very squishy, but well costed as they can't be shot at, can run and charge, and fight first even (depending on tides and deployment, etc..). They are a 1 hit wonder and you shouldn't be scared to throw them away or sac them to turn the tables.
If it wasn't for the Tides, can't be shot at, then i would think they are way over costed, especially when comparing to Bestigors (0 man, 2 atks, -1,1D, 4+ save, can hit on 3+, can get rr's, and can get +1 atks without trying, basically fight 10+ units or charge to get buffs, and they are 120pts).
I tell the couple new IDK local players all the time, don't be scared to lose Namarti units. Its better they die than Eels or a King.
NinthMusketeer wrote: A namarti focused list can work with more-fan afaik. It will be dismantled by power lists but that is the nature of army tiers; tier 2 will demolish you if you aren't optimizing, and tier 1 will demolish you if you aren't one of them.
It would help if the Namarti where more powerful to be honest. They are so squishy, and while they have great profiles I think that they need more range on their weapons before they can do anything. I don’t know how Fyreslayers can be a horde army on 32mms and do well, but it seems that the Namarti cannot.
Note that the best fyreslayer lists have no vulkites and run almost exclusively hearthguard 'zerkers. They are 120 points for 5 models that are an effective 4w each; that is a completely different beast from Namarti.
Also remember that while squishy you can protect them with Idoneth shenanigans as Amish mentioned, and that they still hit like trucks. It takes a very durable enemy to be able to disregard them.
Fair points all around! I personally never really gave them a chance, so what I said was just casual observation.
I have a full army of just Dohm-hain akhelians, which have been doing well but could get better. I have started playing with a soul scryer recently and been wondering if a squad of 9 with him would be better than two squads of 3 and 6?
I played it slightly differently, i had 1 Soulscryer, King, Tidecaster, 1x9 Morrsarr, 1x6 morrsarr, 2x3 Ishlaen, 2x10 Thralls, 1x10 Reavers for 1990pts
So almost normal list, but i like Reavers, the ability to have 1 unit sit back and stop DSing and still at least deal damage is important to me, i use Ishlaen eels to tie up units and take important charges off my Morrsarr or to stop turn 1 alpha shooting like DoT, KO, and CoS.
I used to run Royal Council with a Tidecaster general to reverse the tides and turn 1 spent 3CP to give 3 units +9" able to run and charge. This is still possible and still is good, but now with FS and OBR, i'm not sure if its really viable is i stopped playing it.
EDIT: Grammar, spelling. English bad for me.
Automatically Appended Next Post: To add, and yes vs some armies that are made to tank and spank, you will feel that you don't deal enough damage, that is where its hard to play IDK, you need to know when and where to deal you damage. If you missplay you will lose a unit easily. So it does take a bit to learn what you can and cannot handle. That is the highest learning curve for IDK i feel. We have 2 new local IDK players and they both are struggling with that now. When fighting some armies like FS, Ogre/BCR, OBR, etc.. yeah you will make a few mistakes the first few times you play them, but its good that why you know what works and doesn't works.
For me my biggest problem honestly was Skaven, i couldn't get past the clan rats fast enough b.c i have such low amount of units to deal damage, i have a 40/60 win/lost vs them, so i lost more than i won vs skaven. It also doesn't help the only skaven players i know are very good at playing them and i say they are better players than i am.
Does it matter? It's 8 years out of date. Just a snapshot of history at this point.
it just proofs that sales are directly related to advertising, shiny new models and "meta"
a faction that is out of date, has no shiny new models and is not relevant for the meta is doing 0$ (see Blood Angels Codex)
also, new boxes sell better while as soon as they are outdated, by design and/or rules they are going down
while a Box that can be used for conversions and/or has the better layout sells better than the similar box (CSM squad vs SM squad sales, 90% of the Marine range is interchangeable and can be used for more than one faction while Empire Knights can only be used for one)
the Fantasy Battalions have always been a bad box regarding price and content and therefore sold worse than the individual boxes of the same faction
Overall conclusion from this table is that if Warhammer Fantasy would have had the treatment that AoS has now (regular realses, FAQ/Errata, shiny new models without needing outdated bad models for the core) it would done much better.
Yep and 7th 40k is a perfect example of that.When Kevin Rountree started to take over from Tom Kirby.
Kevin Rountree is the reason for new 7th formations, star collecting boxes, etc.. and some of the newer models that SOLD LIKE CRAP with no good rules was Tom Kirby's doing (aka the new Tyranid models in 7th, Tyrannocyte, Scorecysts, Harusepx, Malicepter) where Tau and Eldar had 0 new releases but had a book with a new rule, Tau had almost 0 players at the time, then instantly everyone wanted to play Tau and became the most popular army at events for a year.
But IDK if saying fantasy would benefit from it isn't really correct as you are forgetting 1 really important thing. Did GW actually want WHFB to continue? The market is already filled with games kin to, GW had a chance to either fix fantasy or make something new and different. I honestly think GW just didn't want to continue with fantasy how it was.
GW didn't wanted to continue with Fantasy at all from mid 7th Edition onwards
they just wanted to get as much money out of it and turn it into something different
Why 40k worked better for GW:
- smaller amount of models needed to start
- model design more constant inside the factions
- one model range for different factions (more profit)
- Players were less tolerant regarding rules from the Community (Fantasy always had a comp, from 4th onwards even in pick up games in stores, while a 40k comp was hardly accepted by players for tournaments in 7th)
- strict WYSIWYG needed to play (no unit fillers or count as)
So they wanted to be all their games similar and they never really tried to make Fantasy work, but wanted a 40k with fantasy theme (and just sell models only but this did not worked well)
kodos wrote: And also the statement that GW is a company selling models, not games
Which yeah... it's what they do. They sell models, not games.
Go to a GW store and ask for Halo or Assassins Creed, see the answer. That statement was outright followed by "We are not Gamestop" and two paragraphs afterwards said: the game is important for our success.
Also remember that while squishy you can protect them with Idoneth shenanigans as Amish mentioned, and that they still hit like trucks. It takes a very durable enemy to be able to disregard them.
My biggest issue is those annoying 32mm bases, meaning I can get exactly one row of them to fight. And yes, they do have decent attack value for battleline, but they also have 5+ in melee with 1W, so they have all the lasting power of an origami swan
Also remember that while squishy you can protect them with Idoneth shenanigans as Amish mentioned, and that they still hit like trucks. It takes a very durable enemy to be able to disregard them.
My biggest issue is those annoying 32mm bases, meaning I can get exactly one row of them to fight. And yes, they do have decent attack value for battleline, but they also have 5+ in melee with 1W, so they have all the lasting power of an origami swan
You can get 2 rows of 32's if you are able to be spaced out first row about a 1mm each guy. So its not as bad as you might think. I also play BoC and use 50 Bestigors (basically just thralls) they too are on 32's and i never had any problems. Now if i had good ways to take a few 30 mans then it might be a problem but i take them in 5x10.
32s definitely aren't 25s, but one can reasonably get 1.5 ranks in by staggering them.
Amish is extremely correct about learning IDK; they have one of the steepest learning curves. Their continued performance as tier 2 at tourneys does show that once one figures it out there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Unless there's Skaven in the tunnel. Then you aren't getting out.
It's from a certain infamous lawsuit, and represents, so far as I know, the only breakdown of this type we've ever seen.
I agree with the conclusions below, and it's also helpful to get some insight into the relative strength of 40K and WFB sales, even if it is old.
Does it matter? It's 8 years out of date. Just a snapshot of history at this point.
it just proofs that sales are directly related to advertising, shiny new models and "meta"
a faction that is out of date, has no shiny new models and is not relevant for the meta is doing 0$ (see Blood Angels Codex)
also, new boxes sell better while as soon as they are outdated, by design and/or rules they are going down
while a Box that can be used for conversions and/or has the better layout sells better than the similar box (CSM squad vs SM squad sales, 90% of the Marine range is interchangeable and can be used for more than one faction while Empire Knights can only be used for one)
the Fantasy Battalions have always been a bad box regarding price and content and therefore sold worse than the individual boxes of the same faction
Overall conclusion from this table is that if Warhammer Fantasy would have had the treatment that AoS has now (regular realses, FAQ/Errata, shiny new models without needing outdated bad models for the core) it would done much better.
Amishprn86 wrote: I played it slightly differently, i had 1 Soulscryer, King, Tidecaster, 1x9 Morrsarr, 1x6 morrsarr, 2x3 Ishlaen, 2x10 Thralls, 1x10 Reavers for 1990pts
So almost normal list, but i like Reavers, the ability to have 1 unit sit back and stop DSing and still at least deal damage is important to me, i use Ishlaen eels to tie up units and take important charges off my Morrsarr or to stop turn 1 alpha shooting like DoT, KO, and CoS.
I used to run Royal Council with a Tidecaster general to reverse the tides and turn 1 spent 3CP to give 3 units +9" able to run and charge. This is still possible and still is good, but now with FS and OBR, i'm not sure if its really viable is i stopped playing it.
EDIT: Grammar, spelling. English bad for me.
Automatically Appended Next Post: To add, and yes vs some armies that are made to tank and spank, you will feel that you don't deal enough damage, that is where its hard to play IDK, you need to know when and where to deal you damage. If you missplay you will lose a unit easily. So it does take a bit to learn what you can and cannot handle. That is the highest learning curve for IDK i feel. We have 2 new local IDK players and they both are struggling with that now. When fighting some armies like FS, Ogre/BCR, OBR, etc.. yeah you will make a few mistakes the first few times you play them, but its good that why you know what works and doesn't works.
For me my biggest problem honestly was Skaven, i couldn't get past the clan rats fast enough b.c i have such low amount of units to deal damage, i have a 40/60 win/lost vs them, so i lost more than i won vs skaven. It also doesn't help the only skaven players i know are very good at playing them and i say they are better players than i am.
That is the general tactics for my shield eels as well. They are there to tie units up, get in the way for shooting and be annoying. My Ogor opponent hates them utterly, and even though I only have two units I think he hates them the most.
My army list is as follows
Spoiler:
Allegiance: Idoneth Deepkin
- Mortal Realm: Shyish
- Enclave: Dhom-Hain
LEADERS
Akhelian King (240)
- General
- Command Trait : Born From Agony
- Bladed Polearm
- Artefact : Ethereal Amulet
Isharann Soulscryer (130)
Isharann Tidecaster (100)
UNITS
3 x Akhelian Allopexes (300)
- Razorshell Harpoon
9 x Akhelian Morrsarr Guard (510)
3 x Akhelian Ishlaen Guard (140)
3 x Akhelian Ishlaen Guard (140)
BEHEMOTHS
Akhelian Leviadon (310)
BATTALIONS
Akhelian Corps (100)
TOTAL: 1970/2000 EXTRA COMMAND POINTS: 1 WOUNDS: 117
LEADERS: 3/6 BATTLELINES: 3 (3+) BEHEMOTHS: 1/4 ARTILLERY: 0/4
ARTEFACTS: 1/2 ALLIES: 0/400
I actually prefer to have the Akhelian corps to base my army around, as it provides me with an all at once drop style army and gives me an extra relic to play with. I am switched my unit of x6 and x3 into one big unit of 9 to save on activations during combat, but I do worry about the objective game. I think I just gotta practice more games with my llist and hope to get better.
Looks like GW is full on powercreep mode with the new Seraphon preview. They get Changehost ability for free and sole control of predatory spells is straight up busted..../smh
It depends on the teams that write the books and they seem to alternate or come close.
Slaves of lolness got their new book and brought up from trash fire level to meh level along with the gitz, khorne, etc...
Which meant the book after should be triple keeper masters of the universe undead level of stupid.
They don't disappoint
But as we're told often that balance and such aren't the primary drivers for playing AOS and that these things are ok, we should cheer for the seraphon players who now get to be OP busted for a while too.
D6Damager wrote: Looks like GW is full on powercreep mode with the new Seraphon preview. They get Changehost ability for free and sole control of predatory spells is straight up busted..../smh
Changehost: Seraphon already had this rule, but better in their old codex. Now, it's limited to one of two main types of Seraphon, not all Seraphon.
Sole Control of Predatory spells: Only the spells they pay points for and cast. This is how it should be for every army, IMO. However, Seraphon are supposed to be masters of every sort of magic under the sun. The rule makes sense.
Honestly I've not really heard anyone complaining that the Ossiarch Endless Spells are broken. I think the thing is when you can't control predatory spells every turn you just tend to use them in very "safe" situations where your opponent can mostly just move them to an annoying position if they gain control.
I can see a point where perhaps in 3.0 predatory spells become totally controlled by the caster rather than with the potential random opponent control coming into play.
Overread wrote: Honestly I've not really heard anyone complaining that the Ossiarch Endless Spells are broken. I think the thing is when you can't control predatory spells every turn you just tend to use them in very "safe" situations where your opponent can mostly just move them to an annoying position if they gain control.
I can see a point where perhaps in 3.0 predatory spells become totally controlled by the caster rather than with the potential random opponent control coming into play.
I would much prefer this method as well. You pay the points, you should control it. If this means that all Endless spells raise in price, then so be it.
I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen predatory spells hurt the side that cast them. Because if there is a not-insignificant risk of them doing that then the player just casts something else.
As for the changehost teleport, Seraphon currently do that twice per turn already via allegiance + great rememberer command trait. What they need is power creep on things that aren't teleporting or summoning; those serve as a crutch for the army right now and it isn't really viable outside of that.
I seem to agree more and more with auticus that the AOS team has a "for fun" group and a "competitive" group and they alternate writing books. The "fun" group will make decent rules that are solid but have nothing too crazy in them (i.e. the way everything should be), while the "competitive" group will always have something that's busted which the comp players will immediately gravitate to, whether that's an entire faction rule or something like Petrifex where anyone can look at it and immediately see it's the only option that will ever be taken since it's so much better than the rest.
I'm not denying that certain armies have been given significantly better rules than others (Whether it's because of different rules design teams or not, I can't say. I don't know how GW structures their company). I'm saying I don't consider the rules mentioned to be too extreme. They already had a version of the Changehost rule, and the predatory spell rule doesn't seem as strong to me as some seem to think. I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen an army hurt by their own predatory spell, and it was usually due to a major misplay.
If you watch AoS shorts they have said many times they try to have 3 ways all armies can play, and focus on theme, style, and feel of the army first, then they balance it. So really its most likely they are not testing the army enough before hand. They even went over how the meetings work a couple times.
They don't balance it. I don't know what they do, maybe they think they are balancing it, but the results speak otherwise. Matched play is essentially a game mode in permanent beta.
Wayniac wrote: I seem to agree more and more with auticus that the AOS team has a "for fun" group and a "competitive" group and they alternate writing books. The "fun" group will make decent rules that are solid but have nothing too crazy in them (i.e. the way everything should be), while the "competitive" group will always have something that's busted which the comp players will immediately gravitate to, whether that's an entire faction rule or something like Petrifex where anyone can look at it and immediately see it's the only option that will ever be taken since it's so much better than the rest.
Absolutely. You can actually tell which ones are which too. The former group likely made the likes of the Gloomspite Gitz and the Kharadron Overlord books, and the former made the Flesh Eaters.
Now's probably a good time to stop the 'balance bad' circlejerk that's popped up for the however-many-th time this thread, and move on to better topics to be had.
WarCom put out an article advertising an 8 Stegadon + 1 Bastilidon list. Under Coalesced giving it -1 damage taken to min 1. Now, unless the Stegadon get's a bump in damage output I don't see this list being effective, especially since it won't hold objectives well. I'm still hopeful that Seraphon will be made a stronger army, that isn't wholly reliant on summoning as the current version is.
TBF, when the topic is "The Current State of AoS" then talking about how the balance is bad is rather on topic. Though I think for some of us it is more 'venting' to feel better
At any rate, ditto on your hopes for Seraphon not needing double teleport and mass summons as a crutch anymore. I don't expect to see monster-mash dominating the meta either; despite a handful of armies able to run behemoth battleline only Gristlegore has ever proven viable and even then only because the monsters are summoning in regular units to hold objectives.
I agree that it's pertinent to the thread, but it was just devolving to 'Balance is bad" again, and being thoroughly unconstructive.
A friend of mine who's keeping a keen eye on the Seraphon release noticed that the GW Web Store changed over-night, Stegadons got pushed to the very first listing. Methinks they're trying to sell a lot of them quickly to maybe release a new kit soon? Whether or not a Steggagedeon list will actually be effective.
I don't think they'll be doing a new steggy kit soon; the current one has aged really well and GW is pretty good about not pushing sales of kits right before updating them. I think there is just a strong market for people who want to run a dinosaur army, and some on the GW staff are excited about being able to offer it. I like seeing that excitement; theme and 'crazy stuff' is where Warhammer shines.
Karol wrote: Do older armies, that are cheaper to buy, like stormcasts are still being played or are they too far away from the power curve?
Stormcast aren't old and they aren't any much cheaper really - unless you're getting them through the Mortal Realms Magazine or the excess from that secondhand.
As for power curve they've never been at the top through 2.0. They are doing well, in fact most of the 2.0 Tomes appear in one form or another at events (its there that AoS is doing a LOT better than 40K in terms of army variety turning up); but they aren't at the head of the pack.
I ment the old stormcasts models. I really like how the shield guys and paladins looked like. Also the mounted dragon lancers and hammer guys. the new stormcasts look strange to me, too wierd and strange. And not very knightly either.
But there aren't any old stormcast - the army is only about 5 years old ish. It's very new in general. Also the dragon lancers are some of the newer ones.
Old or new they've not really devalued and they are still on sale and all part of the same core army.
Like I said the only major discounts out there are starter sets and the Mortal Realms Magazine in the UK market which is having some effect on secondhand products "like new" on ebay and the like from the UK and other countries that get the magazine.
For me I started warhammer in the 90s and its been over twenty years of GWlol.
I think most armies are fine against each other. There is just always a subset of roughly three armies that have gross OP builds that ruin it for everything else.
I think the older stormcast initial release models and their builds can have fun games against armies like Gitz, or Khorne, or Slaves of Lol///er... darkness. They can even have fun against flesh eater courts of slaanesh provided the player for flesh eater courts or slaanesh isn't bringing his baby seal clubbing list.
Against the baby-seal clubbing lists, no I don't think those armies are fun to watch get ground up. But if you don't care about balance and are just there to throw dice and drink beer (or root beer if you are only 15 years old) then it shouldn't matter.
And to continue on, the higher power-curve for Stormcast is their Sacrosanct models like Sequitors, Evocators, Celistar Ballista(maybe, it got nerfed recently), plus Vanguard dudes with Longstrike Crossbows.
Liberators with a Staunch Defenders General and Castellant buff are still a tanky brick of a unit. However, the same combo done on Sequitors is just better.
Sequitors make out like bandits with their special weapon allocation; two per five and the champion's doesn't count. Liberators just get one per five. A majority of the unit's damage comes from those weapons, and the sequitors' ability to take more of them really shows.
I don't think they'll be doing a new steggy kit soon; the current one has aged really well and GW is pretty good about not pushing sales of kits right before updating them. I think there is just a strong market for people who want to run a dinosaur army, and some on the GW staff are excited about being able to offer it. I like seeing that excitement; theme and 'crazy stuff' is where Warhammer shines.
Then again, we just got a new version of the Chaos Knights even if it's just for the SC box
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Karol wrote: to me 5 years is extremly old. It is 1/3ed of my life.
I don't mean any offense, but this explains a lot.
Chaos knights and warriors are weird, afaik there aren't any other units that got SC-exclusive updates while their preexisting kit was also continued. I'm happy GW did continue those kits because I like them, though.
Overread wrote: But there aren't any old stormcast - the army is only about 5 years old ish. It's very new in general. Also the dragon lancers are some of the newer ones.
There is a marked quality difference in model looks between 1st ed "space marine" stormcast and Sacrosanct, enough to mark them as "new". There is also visible power gap between the oldest units (paladins, liberators etc.) and the Sacrosanct, to the point there is no real reason to ever take the older models in your army. Sacrosanct may as well be all the Stormcast have rn, aside from a handful units like vanguard raptors.
Generally speaking, if you were to start SCE, only buy the sacrosanct, even if you don't play competitively they're just overall better.
Updated the first post now that Seraphon are on the cards.
Whole game is now running 2.0. Also it seems that Seraphon didn't lose any models from the range, which is a great thing to see! And with two getting started sets, both with very good value, its a great time to start the lizards!
Plus with the whole game now running 2.0 its a brilliant time to locally encourage more people into the game. With new players safe to chose any of the armies and have up to date rules and also not have to worry about potential mass removals of models or whole armies (barring Forgeworld options)
In fact moving forward I'd expect AoS to now adopt a more normal GW release pattern. Seeing new models released to add to armies and replace older sculpts; with removals now being a rarity and typical done at the same time as adding new models to the army.
Brings me to another thought, the mention of AoS 2.0.
Will GW stop releasing new Editions of games? Introduce more sweeping changes to rulesets? I'm looking at it from a 40k perspective, where we're currently in 8th Edition, and Space Marines got two Codexes, a 1.0 and a 2.0 codex... And every army is getting new books that add more rules and things on to their existing books. There's also the change to frequent (compared to previous editions) FAQ's, rules balancing (as much good as it does, there's at least something close to an attempt being made)
Just a thought I had, looking at what seems to be a trend in 40k. The way the game plays now, compared to the initial release feels vastly different. And, with Wrath of the Everchosen having new faction rules in it as a campaign book, it looks like they may try something similar to their current wave of 40k Campaign/event books with loads of new rules in them (Psychic awakening)
Thadin wrote: Brings me to another thought, the mention of AoS 2.0.
Will GW stop releasing new Editions of games? Introduce more sweeping changes to rulesets? I'm looking at it from a 40k perspective, where we're currently in 8th Edition, and Space Marines got two Codexes, a 1.0 and a 2.0 codex... And every army is getting new books that add more rules and things on to their existing books. There's also the change to frequent (compared to previous editions) FAQ's, rules balancing (as much good as it does, there's at least something close to an attempt being made)
Just a thought I had, looking at what seems to be a trend in 40k. The way the game plays now, compared to the initial release feels vastly different. And, with Wrath of the Everchosen having new faction rules in it as a campaign book, it looks like they may try something similar to their current wave of 40k Campaign/event books with loads of new rules in them (Psychic awakening)
Nope.
Give it time & AoS 3.0 & 40k 9th will both come along. The question isn't IF, just WHEN.
Even if GW tells you this won't happen, swears to it on a stack of Bibles - all it will take to invalidate that talk is a dip in sales, a change in management, enough rules bloat, or some one coming up with the next brilliant idea that's incompatible with the current foundation. Or some combo of those. Wnen that happens? Bam. New edition time.
I like that new editions come along, it keeps things fresh. Yeah, there is an element of milking money from customers but if I didn't feel the product was worth it I wouldn't be buying.
I can see 3.0 being more of a clean up of the current rules system rather than a full re-write that we are more used to with new rules editions. I think if they also use it to add one or two new mechanics that will change enough. Add that to the FAQ/Errata over a few years and there's more htan enough ground to update with new Battletomes - esp with new models alongside etc....
Basically I'd see new editions cleaning things up rather than wholesale changing the game.
NinthMusketeer wrote: I like that new editions come along, it keeps things fresh. Yeah, there is an element of milking money from customers but if I didn't feel the product was worth it I wouldn't be buying.
I'd be less opposed to new editions if:
a) GW actually learned anything from previous editions.
b) They didn't result in more models/options being removed from my army.
I don't think we will see a full blown new edition, probably just like the 1.0 - 2.0 transition. However GW being GW this probably means they'll continue the trend of changing army direction after releasing a few books, leaving those armies woefully underpowered compared to the ones that come out after their change in design philosophy. And the seemingly alternating whether the "for fun" group or the "powergamer" group writes books leading to random power gaps.
NinthMusketeer wrote: I like that new editions come along, it keeps things fresh. Yeah, there is an element of milking money from customers but if I didn't feel the product was worth it I wouldn't be buying.
I'd be less opposed to new editions if:
a) GW actually learned anything from previous editions.
b) They didn't result in more models/options being removed from my army.
Wayniac wrote: I don't think we will see a full blown new edition, probably just like the 1.0 - 2.0 transition. However GW being GW this probably means they'll continue the trend of changing army direction after releasing a few books, leaving those armies woefully underpowered compared to the ones that come out after their change in design philosophy. And the seemingly alternating whether the "for fun" group or the "powergamer" group writes books leading to random power gaps.
I agree. I think at this point Games Workshop can only generate a new edition if they hard reset everything again. The problem with 4-6 pages of core rules is few people want to pay $60 dollars for them. Even now, I only use all of two pages from the 40kBRB (the deployment areas). My Age of Sigmar book sees a little more use only in that it is the gamer version so the 2019 Battleplans are in there. Beyond that, I occasionally have to refer to the Wizard rules. I only picked up these books since I wasn't sure how much my opponent would be bothered by me not having them and I wasn't sure exactly how much was or wasn't contained within.
If either 40k or AoS create a new edition with the same single-digit number of pages for rules, I am most certainly not buying them even if they the greatest miniatures war gaming rules ever (which they most certainly won't be). Games Workshop has painted themselves into a corner unless they want to redo everything. Even that comes with a risk in that it has to both be meatier, more balanced and generally funner for me to want to drop cash on it. I am not not the kinda of player to just start playing the latest version of a game because it is the latest version of a game. Heck, I still play a modified version of Bolt Action 1st edition since I don't really care for templates and pretty much any of the changes I heard about with 2nd edition dropped.
I could see me maybe picking up a gamer version of the BRB as I said, the battleplans in the AoS one isn't too bad. I don't see me dropping good money for book half full of mostly recycled lore though only to get less than a dozen actual rules though.
But more seriously, there are a good number of people who like or don't mind it. While I really hate it myself I value compromise. Take it out of matched play, replace with 'deploy first, go first' and leave it in for open & narrative.
But more seriously, there are a good number of people who like or don't mind it
I don't think the number of people who genuinely love it is high enough to protest if it'd be removed from Matched Play. It can happily live it's days in Open....
Double turn is hit or miss, either you love it or hate it (usually love it when it helps you and hate when it hurts you xD). It's an interesting rule, I'll give them that.
I've resorted to designing my lists around being few enough drops to win turn choice, choosing second, then never taking the double. I have more fun losing without than I do winning with.
Wayniac wrote: Double turn is hit or miss, either you love it or hate it (usually love it when it helps you and hate when it hurts you xD). It's an interesting rule, I'll give them that.
And in-between - I.E. when I'm not playing a game - I don't care about it either way.
Down at the shop we use it/don't use it depending upon who's playing.
Some hate it - when two players who hate it play, game reverts to IGOUGO.
Some like it - if both players are in this category then the rule stands.
When people with differing opinions on it play they roll off to see if it'll be used.
I hate double turn even when I have it, just because You can just slaughter people if they been rolling bad. I say 40k and AOS should adobt Kill team. You move, enemy move, You shoot, enemy shoot, and so on each phase. It be more fun to because then you move around to who moved. and what not. You roll to get who moves what unit first. It be more fun battles too I think
Xfrawg wrote: I hate double turn even when I have it, just because You can just slaughter people if they been rolling bad. I say 40k and AOS should adobt Kill team. You move, enemy move, You shoot, enemy shoot, and so on each phase. It be more fun to because then you move around to who moved. and what not. You roll to get who moves what unit first. It be more fun battles too I think
That's how Lord of the Rings has worked for 20 years
Thats how a lot of games work these days. Either alternating phases or fullsale alternate activation of units.
It makes the game tons more interactive and you don't stand there for an hour taking a turn (or in aos' case sometimes two whole turns) standing there doing nothing but removing models.
It lessens the alpha strike shenanigans since your opponent can respond immediately to you launching units into his face turn 1.
It makes list building lesser because you can't pile on to your opponent in one (or in AOS' case, two) go's while they stand there doing nothing.
I used in 40k and AOS for years (we did both alternating phases and wholesale alternating units), and it was the only house rule that had overwhelmingly positive comments in an area where house rules are generally seen as evil and nefarious. Try it for yourself and see.
When 8th 40k was first being talked about they hyped up the command point system.... well many other games has a pseudo alternating actions phase using CP's (example for those that don't know, you basically have a list of things you can do per turn, somethings happen before others some happens in any order, but each action takes 1 CP, so you get X actions a turn, maybe its move 10 units, maybe its move some and shoot some, etc..)
I was very hyped until i saw it was just a stupid way to use rules we always used before but now i need a counter to say how many times i can use them and they are no longer on their warscroll/datasheets.
But going to the current topic, i always like that way of play the most out of all the systems i have played, you still get your full turn, but it is very limited and not all units may even get to do something, it forces hard choices, normally you got around 10 actions, but had the possibility to take 100+ actions. There were also a couple actions if you saved them you could use during your opponents turn (like there version of overwatch), or some can be used in both turns like going to ground (aka, duck and cover, normally makes you harder to hit like snap shots against you)
Some of the actions were: (using wrong terms to help understand more)
-Move/Run/March
-Shoot/Aim/Overwatch
-Fallback
-Stand up/Regroup
-Go to cover/ground
-Supporting fire
-Suppressive fire
-Leaders abilities (normally let a unit regroup+another action, or just 2 actions)
So for 40k/AoS say you get 5 actions per 500pts and we are playing 500pt game, each with 2 heroes 2 battalion and 1 unit. I might use 2 in the hero phase to buff a unit, then move 2 units, and finally shoot with the last unit. Then my opponent goes, he spends 3 to move 3 units, 2 of those units gets into melee range then he spends 2 to have them fight, and thats it. Each had to sacrifice a unit or more actions to make other units more viable at the time.
This normally works better with games that has a larger rules system, the less rules for options (like fire suppression shots to force units to spend multi CP to get an action, or having true going to ground for cover to limited damage).
Cronch wrote: I'm definitely in favor of alternate activations, AoS already does it with melee, there's nothing that would prevent it from applying to other phases.
You and me both. I think alternative actions would completely revolutionise the game for the better.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Spoiler:
Amishprn86 wrote: When 8th 40k was first being talked about they hyped up the command point system.... well many other games has a pseudo alternating actions phase using CP's (example for those that don't know, you basically have a list of things you can do per turn, somethings happen before others some happens in any order, but each action takes 1 CP, so you get X actions a turn, maybe its move 10 units, maybe its move some and shoot some, etc..)
I was very hyped until i saw it was just a stupid way to use rules we always used before but now i need a counter to say how many times i can use them and they are no longer on their warscroll/datasheets.
But going to the current topic, i always like that way of play the most out of all the systems i have played, you still get your full turn, but it is very limited and not all units may even get to do something, it forces hard choices, normally you got around 10 actions, but had the possibility to take 100+ actions. There were also a couple actions if you saved them you could use during your opponents turn (like there version of overwatch), or some can be used in both turns like going to ground (aka, duck and cover, normally makes you harder to hit like snap shots against you)
Some of the actions were: (using wrong terms to help understand more)
-Move/Run/March
-Shoot/Aim/Overwatch
-Fallback
-Stand up/Regroup
-Go to cover/ground
-Supporting fire
-Suppressive fire
-Leaders abilities (normally let a unit regroup+another action, or just 2 actions)
So for 40k/AoS say you get 5 actions per 500pts and we are playing 500pt game, each with 2 heroes 2 battalion and 1 unit. I might use 2 in the hero phase to buff a unit, then move 2 units, and finally shoot with the last unit. Then my opponent goes, he spends 3 to move 3 units, 2 of those units gets into melee range then he spends 2 to have them fight, and thats it. Each had to sacrifice a unit or more actions to make other units more viable at the time.
This normally works better with games that has a larger rules system, the less rules for options (like fire suppression shots to force units to spend multi CP to get an action, or having true going to ground for cover to limited damage).
This idea sounds fantastic too. Real tactical decisions to be made.
If they got rid of double turn and put an alternating phase or full actions in, I'd definitely reconsider playing again as that is one of the things that I really have no fun with.
After that it would just be restraining free summoning and I think that the gross imbalance being the last of my issues would be more tolerable.
I think the double turn was meant to provide a sort of random element to the game, which I mean it does. Just I think it's TOO devastating to get an entire turn given how Warhammer plays. It's not so much the double turn itself but how getting an entire turn where your opponent can't do much of anything but sit and take your attacks is too much with the power of armies.
I don't see it going anywhere though. The design team and enough competitive players seem to enjoy it for what it adds that I can't see them dropping it, although I wouldn't mind seeing it made an optional rule so people/TOs can decide themselves if it gets used or not. Sort of like the realm rules which everyone craps on despite GW outright saying they are built into the balance of the game.
Its part of the philosophy that game mastery should not be heavy as that runs off most of your players, and that the game should be light enough for even beginner players to feel like they are doing well.
Extreme random elements and things like double turn allow for anyone to beat anyone (in theory), and mastery turns from tabletop tactics to listbuilding around the randomness and in AOS trying to get as few drops as possible to control who gets the double turn first since its so heavy handed and influential.
I definitely think the deployment steps need to be changed. Maybe have them change per battleplan similar to how some 40k missions are. Right now it's too much trying to game "few drops" if you can.
At a bare minimum, it should have the +1 to the roll instead of picking.
Wargames take too much time to set up and organise for my game to be decided by lolrandom rules.
Alternating activation solves so many problems. First turn advantage is solved. Game rounds are more interactive. It adds an extra layer of choice into what you actually do on the battlefield, rather than choice at a list building level.
It helps to even out swingyness due to luck by limiting the amount of damage that can be done in one action step.
And it really is not that complicated. For beginners, it is actually a bit easier, as they do not have to think about their entire army at once, just pick a unit, use it and learn what it does, then watch my opponent do the same, move to the next unit. It is a lot less to take in than "Now, remember all these different rules and statistics for your entire army and GO!"
I genuinely do not understand why GW have not moved to alternating activations already. Especially given how easy it would be in the current version of the rules.
Wayniac wrote: I definitely think the deployment steps need to be changed. Maybe have them change per battleplan similar to how some 40k missions are. Right now it's too much trying to game "few drops" if you can.
At a bare minimum, it should have the +1 to the roll instead of picking.
My CoS list is 15 drops and i don't care if i go first or 2nd. Also how i play (and how many others are starting to play) my BoC army, sure its a 1 drop, but i don't care if i go first or second, i 'll choose 1st or second only dependent on the missions and not a double turn.
The problem is most armies/list don't have that luxury, armies like DoK, BoK and IDK are god at taking double turns but also can withstand them and even benefit from them at times, but then you get some like Goblins, NH, Sylvaneth, that just are devastated for getting double turned on.
Nostalgia? The fact they like being able to do stuff without repercussion? I'm not sure. I think the best way I've seen to do that is how Bolt Action works (I'm not sure if their fantasy game does it. Auticus I know you play it, how does it work there?) with the command dice thing you draw, so you might get lucky and get to activate multiple units, but then you can't react to your opponent or it might go alternating.
Warlords of Ehrewon (the fantasy version by Warlord Games) uses the same structure, its dice out of a bag and you give the order to a unit and then draw the next dice blindly out of the bag.
Middle Earth is alt activation of phases.
Conquest: The Last Argument of Kings is pure alt activation, where you go through your unit deck and set the order you wish to activate and then when the turn starts, whoever has initiative activates the first unit all the way, then the opposing player activates their next unit.
There is a supremacy ability of the spires (one time use only) that lets them activate three units at once if you take the right warlord.
I've got two battle reports in my youtube channel now that show how that works (in the sig).
Age of Fantasy is just alternating activation with no spice added and it is very simple to play and teach to new players. People are used to the idea of taking turns and taking turns per unit rather than per army is not that confusing.
I don't think its confusing at all. It does lessen list building's importance though and I think if GW went full blown alt activation they would take a lot of flak for that.
I have heard the counter argument many times that it is more confusing, but I agree with you. I wonder if you are right about them not wanting to reduce the impact of list building.
Da Boss wrote: Age of Fantasy is just alternating activation with no spice added and it is very simple to play and teach to new players. People are used to the idea of taking turns and taking turns per unit rather than per army is not that confusing.
To be fair, Age of Fantasy and Grimdark future are light-years better than AoS and 40k. Their designer better understands how to juggle theme and balance than anyone GW in the last ten years. I legitimately would pay $50 per book to see those rules become the next official GW ones. To think they are free, and yet so wildly underappreciated is mind boggling.
the funny thing is, that for those people who come from other games, the alternating activation is the classic IGoUGo system were GW's alternating phases is fancy new system
And GW does not want to have those fast games with a lot of player interaction
They want their main games to be slow with a lot of talking and one player acting at once
Da Boss wrote: Age of Fantasy is just alternating activation with no spice added and it is very simple to play and teach to new players. People are used to the idea of taking turns and taking turns per unit rather than per army is not that confusing.
To be fair, Age of Fantasy and Grimdark future are light-years better than AoS and 40k. Their designer better understands how to juggle theme and balance than anyone GW in the last ten years. I legitimately would pay $50 per book to see those rules become the next official GW ones. To think they are free, and yet so wildly underappreciated is mind boggling.
People flock towards systems that everyone else plays.
If you could wave a wand and say "AOS doesn't exist, only Age of Fantasy does and the AOS players play Age of Fantasy instead" you'd see its praises sung, because people gravitate towards games where everyone else is playing to maximize their investment into the hobby (which is sizable... several hundred dollars and hours of time hobbying is not light and people want to make sure they always have opponents).
Da Boss wrote: Age of Fantasy is just alternating activation with no spice added and it is very simple to play and teach to new players. People are used to the idea of taking turns and taking turns per unit rather than per army is not that confusing.
To be fair, Age of Fantasy and Grimdark future are light-years better than AoS and 40k. Their designer better understands how to juggle theme and balance than anyone GW in the last ten years. I legitimately would pay $50 per book to see those rules become the next official GW ones. To think they are free, and yet so wildly underappreciated is mind boggling.
People flock towards systems that everyone else plays.
If you could wave a wand and say "AOS doesn't exist, only Age of Fantasy does and the AOS players play Age of Fantasy instead" you'd see its praises sung, because people gravitate towards games where everyone else is playing to maximize their investment into the hobby (which is sizable... several hundred dollars and hours of time hobbying is not light and people want to make sure they always have opponents).
What becomes funny though is when local clubs/groups don't use the better rules, third party or not. I could see the traveling competitive players wanting "official" but a group at a store really isn't beholden to using official anything as long as you remain self-contained, and if the rules are free it's even easier to just tell anyone who wants to play AOS that we use the models but not the rules, we use these free rules (or even keep copies in the store!) because they are better written. So it really would not be hard to take say Age of Fantasy and use it as the AOS rules while everyone is using AOS models. It's just inertia or the desire to not "deviate" that keeps it.
The thing is even in a local store, the extended group is not tight nit. Theres usually a core who become fairly close and could use an agreed upon set of house rules. But theres always a flux of irregular or one off players coming and going too. And if your house rules are too extensive that can be a huge turnoff for new blood, which is likely detrimental to the shop.
Or are they all stuck in the Behemoth role? (How Danktrogg bosses aren't is just beyond me)
