Alternate-by-phase I have and do use for AoS, quite a lot of fun.

Alternate-by-unit would require a complete edition rewrite; just putting it into AoS as things stand would open more exploits than it closed. Not to mention the massive number of warscroll updates it would require. The amount of changes needed makes it difficult for me to imagine what the game would look like, since how those changes are (or aren't) tackled is a determining factor.

Narratively speaking I personally have a strong distaste for the entire battlefield standing around while one squad or character does everything they are going to do. Then that squad freezes and the next does its whole turn. And so on. With Igougo I can visualize the 'tides of battle' pushing one way or another, especially with both sides fighting in the combat phase (though I would still prefer a style where everyone attacks THEN everyone removes casualties, divided into different initiative steps where appropriate).

I'm going to second what Ninth said. Alternating activations leads to unforeseen consequences since the game isn't designed around it. I wouldn't mind it if we had a new edition build around alternating activations, but for now, I don't like using it. I've had a lot of success with alternating phases, though. I'll also say that to me, alternating activations always feels like a very "gamey" mechanic. It feels like both armies are just standing around watching as one unit moves, shoots, attacks, etc.

That is a criticism I have never heard before. But you don't find it gamey that one army sits and waits for the other to do all it's stuff? I feel like the gamey-ness increases without alternating activations. For example, shooting armies just get to wipe out a portion of the opposing force before it gets to do anything.

I mean, fair enough. I have heard that people did not like alternating activations before without reasons, and having heard your reasons I can reflect on them, so thanks for sharing, genuinely. Different strokes for different folks I suppose. I was happy with IGOUGO until I played alternating activation and since then I have little interest in going back to it. Certainly not if it also includes double turns which amplify everything I dislike about IGOUGO.

I never said that. IGOUGO does feel very gamey as well, I can just rationalize it better than alternating activations. When playing a game with alternating activations, I just picture the giant game of Wizards' Chess from Harry Potter. That's why I prefer alternating phases. In fact, I've played around with only removing casualties at the end of the phase, and it works out pretty well, too. It really neuters Alpha Strike. As far as shooting armies having an advantage, well just look at my armies in my signature. Only one of the three armies have any shooting to speak of. I consider it a tradeoff. It was my choice to play an army that risks getting reduced to irrelevance before I get in range, but that's part of the challenge of playing a melee-heavy army. If I really want to take some shooty units to even the playing field, I have the Ally mechanic to help. Auticus likes to talk about the game being decided at the list building phase, and I agree that it is to some degree, but I consider list building to be part of the strategy of a wargame.

 Da Boss wrote:
That is a criticism I have never heard before. But you don't find it gamey that one army sits and waits for the other to do all it's stuff? I feel like the gamey-ness increases without alternating activations. For example, shooting armies just get to wipe out a portion of the opposing force before it gets to do anything.

I mean, fair enough. I have heard that people did not like alternating activations before without reasons, and having heard your reasons I can reflect on them, so thanks for sharing, genuinely. Different strokes for different folks I suppose. I was happy with IGOUGO until I played alternating activation and since then I have little interest in going back to it. Certainly not if it also includes double turns which amplify everything I dislike about IGOUGO.

Igougo is gamey, but I find it less so as I can envision the metaphorical tides of battle shifting one way or another. It also in my eyes better plays out an army working together as a whole with the different units acting together simultaneously. That a shooting army can wipe out a portion of the enemy force without them doing anything makes sense to some degree, because it is the nature of conflict that shooting will take out melee troops as they advance in. What gets weird is in the combat phase where units will just stand there and get butchered without raising a finger because it isn't their turn yet. But amplifying that to every phase via activation-by-unit just makes things worse to me, even if it is more balanced in a mechanical sense.

But to turn towards things that GW might actually do in the foreseeable future, I could see a move towards casualties happening at the end of phase. Afaik Apocalypse works like that (maybe someone more learned on the 40k side of things can elaborate).

Yeah after playing APoc, it is truly a better system for 40k. I have played it even at smaller levels, The fact that its at the end, and also has ant- infantry/heavy damaging rolls.

I love it, i really hope its the way forward (mainly for 40k, i like were AOS is at right now, but if they decide to do it for aos thats fine).

The problem with Apoc tho, it is too streamlined, its for sure a beta game.

Apoc needs to be streamlined though. It's a system designed to put insane numbers of models on the table. It's far better to be streamlined and simple because depth just isn't really part of it. Heck most Apoc tables are two big battlelines that face-off against each other; take a weekend to play and still don't finish.


That said I do agree that it has some neat ideas like equal exchange of damage at the end of a turn not as you go and things like that. Certainly 40K's alternate full turns has resulted in the game getting more and more alpha-strike focused. Esp with how strong shooting is resulting in GW introducing more and more methods to get into combat first turn with large portions of a close combat army.

Dumb question: would people feel that something like “summoning capped to 1/4 value of your army roster be favorable? Like in a 2k game you’re not allowed to summon more than 500pts.

Listbuilding is of course a strategy in a wargame.

It being the PRIMARY strategy in gw games is my problem with it.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Dumb question: would people feel that something like “summoning capped to 1/4 value of your army roster be favorable? Like in a 2k game you’re not allowed to summon more than 500pts.

I'm in favour of caps or at least controls on them.

Eg for Slaanesh I've oft said a good way to balance them is to impose a depravity generation limit per turn and from there re-work the costs to summon. This essentially gives the army a maximum value they can generate and also means that you can balance the summoning costs to be "fairer" much like you suggest. Though for Slaanesh I'd also like to see troops generate depravity too as right now there's only one reason to take or summon troops - for battle-line requirements. A huge shame because it basically pushes out really cool things like fiends.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Dumb question: would people feel that something like “summoning capped to 1/4 value of your army roster be favorable? Like in a 2k game you’re not allowed to summon more than 500pts.

Nah b.c summoning is becoming more and more of an optional to an army and at high cost, its only been 2 armies summoning that is a problem and both are now 100% gutted. Why gut it even more now that it is finally pretty balanced? Slaanesh is almost not a summoning army anymore lol, and Seraphon you either get army traits or you can summon but not both. And DoT summoning isn't a problem at all, its they go first unless you also have a 1 drop and can out damage you fast enough for their glass cannon damaging units to out live you.

Many armies that do summon don't get as many benefits as other armies, look at CoS, FS, IDK for good examples, they have way more rules and higher power level of units in general b.c they don't have summoning.


Summoning at this point in the game is a new player problem with lack of knowledge than an actual problem. Just like a new player don't have the understanding to fight a good Orruk player, they are not summoning but 1 wrong MW spell, or 1 wrong shooting attack and they over run you.

PS: everyone at my local would rather have me play any other army than my CoS, even my HoS BoC version (which is a better HoS army).

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Dumb question: would people feel that something like “summoning capped to 1/4 value of your army roster be favorable? Like in a 2k game you’re not allowed to summon more than 500pts.

I think free extra points should always be very limited.

auticus wrote:Listbuilding is of course a strategy in a wargame.

It being the PRIMARY strategy in gw games is my problem with it.

And this is where you and I differ. If both players are approaching the game the same way (i.e. both players brought a casual list or both players brought a competitive list), list building is only one factor in the outcome.

timetowaste85 wrote:Dumb question: would people feel that something like “summoning capped to 1/4 value of your army roster be favorable? Like in a 2k game you’re not allowed to summon more than 500pts.

I'm going to say no, but only because not all summoning is created equal. The balance of summoning definitely needs to be better, but a points cap is kind of like trying to use a screw driver when you should be looking for a crescent wrench. Each army's method of summoning is so different that they pretty much all need an equally different method of adjusting their power. In the mean time, I think auticus is on the right track with his Sudden Death houserule.

And this is where you and I differ. If both players are approaching the game the same way (i.e. both players brought a casual list or both players brought a competitive list), list building is only one factor in the outcome.

What does and does not count as casual vs competitive is always also going to be subjective.

it is true if BOTH players have equivalent lists that that then negates the list building part. The thing is that people look for points to be a determent of if two lists are equal, and currently and has been the case for quite some time now, the points don't reflect that at all.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Dumb question: would people feel that something like “summoning capped to 1/4 value of your army roster be favorable? Like in a 2k game you’re not allowed to summon more than 500pts.

No thank you.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Dumb question: would people feel that something like “summoning capped to 1/4 value of your army roster be favorable? Like in a 2k game you’re not allowed to summon more than 500pts.

Nah b.c summoning is becoming more and more of an optional to an army and at high cost, its only been 2 armies summoning that is a problem and both are now 100% gutted. Why gut it even more now that it is finally pretty balanced? Slaanesh is almost not a summoning army anymore lol

Stop you right there. The Slaanesh army that won LVO summoning over a thousand points of free stuff suggests otherwise. Syll'Eske Host exists and is legal in matched play. But even without that the argument that Slaanesh is "almost not a summoning army" is objectively untrue.

And LVO was pre faq and pre new DoT/KO books, so you can't really use that as new data.

I have friends going to adepticon that i play against frequently, the summon if for sure cut by a large amount. The army relays on its powerful heroes not its summoning. Take out the heroes or feed them 1 wound models and they don't summon. Look at events after the updates, not before b.c i'm talking about after the update.

PS: Given the new Seraphon ways to summon, HoS nerf, it is clear they are trying to balance it better.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
And LVO was pre faq and pre new DoT/KO books, so you can't really use that as new data.

I have friends going to adepticon that i play against frequently, the summon if for sure cut by a large amount. The army relays on its powerful heroes not its summoning. Take out the heroes or feed them 1 wound models and they don't summon. Look at events after the updates, not before b.c i'm talking about after the update.

PS: Given the new Seraphon ways to summon, HoS nerf, it is clear they are trying to balance it better.

Are you sure about LVO using pre-faq(Dec 2019) rules?
The LVO 2020 AoS Champions Tourney Pack stated that
"Any rules out three weeks before the event are usable at the event. Any FAQ posted 2 days before the event are in effect unless it changes point values, in which case it must be posted 2 days before lists are due."
(https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r9DHQQhwgwn93FQSU6qyvjZU7haFHgj3_rpODjbzc7k/edit)

Dec 2019 faq would belong to an FAQ with changed points values, which in order to be effective in LVO 2020 should be posted 2 days before the lists are due.
Since LVO 2020 AoS lists are due 13th of Jan 2020, I see no reason why Dec 2019 faq were not in effect at LVO 2020, unless I have missed other changes to Tourney Pack.

And regardless of the effectiveness of Dec 2019 faq on LVO 2020, I think the new Seraphon updates only worsens balance issues.
I agree that the new Seraphon summoning seems tame, but they have so many powerful additions that summoning pales in comparison.
The new Coalesced Battle trait, Thunder Lizards sub-faction traits, new rules for Kroak, bastiladons, salamanders, wizards and spells seem plenty enough to make Seraphon "OP".
And that is before taking into account the combination of new command abilities and warscroll battalions.

P.S. I should first admit that the data I have had access to might be limited.
But after seeing Honest Wargamer's compilation of post-faq results, I do not think balance issues were properly addressed .
HoS, DoK are still boasting win rate above 55%. And even FeC, IDK with past points nerfs on key units are doing well with respective win rate of 53% and 51%.
Although I must admit that once powerful Skaven are showing surprisingly low performance(44.7%), the factions which I deem to be the underdogs(SCE, sylvaneth, Nightnhaunt, Beasts of Chaos) seem to be doing even worse as their win rate is 40% or below.

You also have to bear in mind that if you're just going off of tournament results, which the Honest Wargamer is only tournament results, that those results exasperate themselves.

The balance / game issues become blown wide open when you start collecting data down at the FLGS levels.

Sagittarii Orientalis wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
And LVO was pre faq and pre new DoT/KO books, so you can't really use that as new data.

I have friends going to adepticon that i play against frequently, the summon if for sure cut by a large amount. The army relays on its powerful heroes not its summoning. Take out the heroes or feed them 1 wound models and they don't summon. Look at events after the updates, not before b.c i'm talking about after the update.

PS: Given the new Seraphon ways to summon, HoS nerf, it is clear they are trying to balance it better.

Are you sure about LVO using pre-faq(Dec 2019) rules?
The LVO 2020 AoS Champions Tourney Pack stated that
"Any rules out three weeks before the event are usable at the event. Any FAQ posted 2 days before the event are in effect unless it changes point values, in which case it must be posted 2 days before lists are due."
(https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r9DHQQhwgwn93FQSU6qyvjZU7haFHgj3_rpODjbzc7k/edit)

Dec 2019 faq would belong to an FAQ with changed points values, which in order to be effective in LVO 2020 should be posted 2 days before the lists are due.
Since LVO 2020 AoS lists are due 13th of Jan 2020, I see no reason why Dec 2019 faq were not in effect at LVO 2020, unless I have missed other changes to Tourney Pack.

And regardless of the effectiveness of Dec 2019 faq on LVO 2020, I think the new Seraphon updates only worsens balance issues.
I agree that the new Seraphon summoning seems tame, but they have so many powerful additions that summoning pales in comparison.
The new Coalesced Battle trait, Thunder Lizards sub-faction traits, new rules for Kroak, bastiladons, salamanders, wizards and spells seem plenty enough to make Seraphon "OP".
And that is before taking into account the combination of new command abilities and warscroll battalions.

P.S. I should first admit that the data I have had access to might be limited.
But after seeing Honest Wargamer's compilation of post-faq results, I do not think balance issues were properly addressed .
HoS, DoK are still boasting win rate above 55%. And even FeC, IDK with past points nerfs on key units are doing well with respective win rate of 53% and 51%.
Although I must admit that once powerful Skaven are showing surprisingly low performance(44.7%), the factions which I deem to be the underdogs(SCE, sylvaneth, Nightnhaunt, Beasts of Chaos) seem to be doing even worse as their win rate is 40% or below.

I thought, but that might have been another event around the same time. But i know for 100% that Dot/KO wasn't new rules.

"I agree that the new Seraphon summoning seems tame, but they have so many powerful additions that summoning pales in comparison." Isn't that the point tho? If summoning is weaker isn't that good? Honestly Seraphon already wasn't a top player and a lot of their units were bad, their old summoning is what made them even playable, with the large buffs the summoning had to be toned down.

BoC are low (I heavily watch them and are in many BoC communities) b.c most the players are not taking competitive lists, or are taking what they think are comp that just in practice don't work. They still need some point changes for sure, but its the units most don't take like DO, hounds, etc...

 Amishprn86 wrote:
"I agree that the new Seraphon summoning seems tame, but they have so many powerful additions that summoning pales in comparison." Isn't that the point tho? If summoning is weaker isn't that good? Honestly Seraphon already wasn't a top player and a lot of their units were bad, their old summoning is what made them even playable, with the large buffs the summoning had to be toned down.

I think the new Seraphon update is "out of the frying pan into the fire" for the meta.
The sheer power of the rules and the combinations might make me miss the days of celestial lizard summoning.
Meanwhile the worst offender of summoning, the Slaanesh summoning seems to have taken only mild hit to their performance.

Let's see how the new meta settles down within the next few months and hope I am wrong.

Sagittarii Orientalis wrote:

I think the new Seraphon update is "out of the frying pan into the fire" for the meta.
The sheer power of the rules and the combinations might make me miss the days of celestial lizard summoning.
Meanwhile the worst offender of summoning, the Slaanesh summoning seems to have taken only mild hit to their performance.

Let's see how the new meta settles down within the next few months and hope I am wrong.

What is so op about the new seraphon?

Jorim wrote:

Sagittarii Orientalis wrote:

I think the new Seraphon update is "out of the frying pan into the fire" for the meta.
The sheer power of the rules and the combinations might make me miss the days of celestial lizard summoning.
Meanwhile the worst offender of summoning, the Slaanesh summoning seems to have taken only mild hit to their performance.

Let's see how the new meta settles down within the next few months and hope I am wrong.

What is so op about the new seraphon?

Well -1 damage army wide is pretty rough for some matchups... Ogors come to mind.

I'm sure that alone isnt enough, but I think it's just how everything stacks together it's going to be a bid oppressive for mid tier or lower armies.

So working as intended

The -1 damage is only with one of the two Main Seraphon factions. However, from Rerolling 1's Battle report with the new Seraphon, that faction, the Coalesced, seems to be nasty.

They've got another army-wide ability as Coalesced. Choosing between Savage or Swift for the turn. Swift: Army can Run and Charge OR Run and Shoot. Savage: +1 Attacks of all weapons/Bites specifically (Don't exactly remember.)

I didn't end up watching all of the battlereport, because the Skaven opponent turn-1 charged Thanquol in, solo, to the bulk of the Seraphon army and decided it wasn't going to be worth my time at that point.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
And LVO was pre faq and pre new DoT/KO books, so you can't really use that as new data.

I have friends going to adepticon that i play against frequently, the summon if for sure cut by a large amount. The army relays on its powerful heroes not its summoning. Take out the heroes or feed them 1 wound models and they don't summon. Look at events after the updates, not before b.c i'm talking about after the update.

PS: Given the new Seraphon ways to summon, HoS nerf, it is clear they are trying to balance it better.

No, LVO was post FAQ.

LVO, however, WAS previous to new Tzeentch and KO. New Tzeentch also summons a significant amount and is far worse balanced than it previously was.

I get that things move quickly and it can be hard to grasp where the meta is. But still...

 Stux wrote:

Jorim wrote:

Sagittarii Orientalis wrote:

I think the new Seraphon update is "out of the frying pan into the fire" for the meta.
The sheer power of the rules and the combinations might make me miss the days of celestial lizard summoning.
Meanwhile the worst offender of summoning, the Slaanesh summoning seems to have taken only mild hit to their performance.

Let's see how the new meta settles down within the next few months and hope I am wrong.

What is so op about the new seraphon?

Well -1 damage army wide is pretty rough for some matchups... Ogors come to mind.

I'm sure that alone isnt enough, but I think it's just how everything stacks together it's going to be a bid oppressive for mid tier or lower armies.

IMO its better than what the Monster list was for them before... 3 Behemoths with a re-roll 3++ and a after save.

 Thadin wrote:
The -1 damage is only with one of the two Main Seraphon factions. However, from Rerolling 1's Battle report with the new Seraphon, that faction, the Coalesced, seems to be nasty.

They've got another army-wide ability as Coalesced. Choosing between Savage or Swift for the turn. Swift: Army can Run and Charge OR Run and Shoot. Savage: +1 Attacks of all weapons/Bites specifically (Don't exactly remember.)

I didn't end up watching all of the battlereport, because the Skaven opponent turn-1 charged Thanquol in, solo, to the bulk of the Seraphon army and decided it wasn't going to be worth my time at that point.

That Savage or Swift wasn't an army wide ability. That's the Thunderquake Temple host, and only affects the units within it.

Also, Thunderquake is different in Coalesced and Starborne.
C: Run and shoot/charge.
S: Heal 1 wound per hero phase, D3 if near a Slann.

Coalesced do give all Jaw attacks +1 to their numbwr of attacks.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Stux wrote:

Jorim wrote:

Sagittarii Orientalis wrote:

I think the new Seraphon update is "out of the frying pan into the fire" for the meta.
The sheer power of the rules and the combinations might make me miss the days of celestial lizard summoning.
Meanwhile the worst offender of summoning, the Slaanesh summoning seems to have taken only mild hit to their performance.

Let's see how the new meta settles down within the next few months and hope I am wrong.

What is so op about the new seraphon?

Well -1 damage army wide is pretty rough for some matchups... Ogors come to mind.

I'm sure that alone isnt enough, but I think it's just how everything stacks together it's going to be a bid oppressive for mid tier or lower armies.

IMO its better than what the Monster list was for them before... 3 Behemoths with a re-roll 3++ and a after save.

What was the 3++ from and the Aftersave? I can't recall ever having a behemoth witha ward save or FNP other than the Bastilidon, who only got the after save against MWs, and was immune to rend....
Engine and Trog from that old Thunderquake didn't get the Bastilidon rules.

There was a battlaion that (going off memory called Thunderquake Starhost) that you needed 2 Bastilodons and a Engine of the Gods. They had to be within distance of the Engine, if they were they got basically all re-rolls, saves, hits, wounds, runs, charges, but you had to choose each turn i think? You don't get them all there was a way to pick, and everyone always picked Saves b.c the Bastilodons ignore Rend and you put the Ethereal amulet on the Engine of the Gods. All together it was 900pts i think.


EDIT: OH PS, The Slann heals them D3 i believe too.

Found it

Impervious Defence: When you make save
rolls for a Bastiladon, ignore the attacker’s
Rend characteristic. In addition, roll a dice
whenever it suffers a mortal wound. On a
result of 4 or higher, the wound is ignored.

So the Battalion gave them the Re-rolls, their ability gave them ignore rend with a 4+++ against MW's

 Amishprn86 wrote:
There was a battlaion that (going off memory called Thunderquake Starhost) that you needed 2 Bastilodons and a Engine of the Gods. They had to be within distance of the Engine, if they were they got basically all re-rolls, saves, hits, wounds, runs, charges, but you had to choose each turn i think? You don't get them all there was a way to pick, and everyone always picked Saves b.c the Bastilodons ignore Rend and you put the Ethereal amulet on the Engine of the Gods. All together it was 900pts i think.


EDIT: OH PS, The Slann heals them D3 i believe too.

Found it

Impervious Defence: When you make save
rolls for a Bastiladon, ignore the attacker’s
Rend characteristic. In addition, roll a dice
whenever it suffers a mortal wound. On a
result of 4 or higher, the wound is ignored.

So the Battalion gave them the Re-rolls, their ability gave them ignore rend with a 4+++ against MW's

Correct, but the true strength of picking Savage wasn't just the saves, it was rerolling wounds with Bastilidon lazers or Stegadon melee.

It was an Engine or Trog, then a combination of two Behemoths, either Stegadons or Bastilidons, plus the final component being a Hunting Pack (salamander or Razordon with skink handlers) or Kroxigors.
You chose in the Charge phase, changed to be only your charge phase later.

I played it often. Cheapest was around 680. Most expensive was 940, then the coat of the Thunderquake battalion itself. Around 820-1080. It was an effective way of making an anvil in an army without an Anvil.
I miss it now. But it's still alright. Currently cheapest Thunderquake is 780 plus the battalion cost. Now it does only half of what it used to, depending on what Sub faction you choose.

Carnikang, you seem to know the battalion quite well. I am curious as to why did you asked Amish about what it did...?

I feel like I am missing something in this conversation.

...In before "so like normal then?"

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Carnikang, you seem to know the battalion quite well. I am curious as to why did you asked Amish about what it did...?

I feel like I am missing something in this conversation.

...In before "so like normal then?"

I didn't ask him what it did. I was asking him how the whole Battalion was getting it.
It was one behemoth of said battalion, and several rules were misremembered in the interpretation. Much like the other quoted person who assumed the new TQ affected the whole army.

That's half the problem with the 'State of the Age of Sigmar'. Misunderstanding what does what and then talking about it.

Ah, that clicks the puzzle for me. Thank you.

 Carnikang wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Carnikang, you seem to know the battalion quite well. I am curious as to why did you asked Amish about what it did...?

I feel like I am missing something in this conversation.

...In before "so like normal then?"

I didn't ask him what it did. I was asking him how the whole Battalion was getting it.
It was one behemoth of said battalion, and several rules were misremembered in the interpretation. Much like the other quoted person who assumed the new TQ affected the whole army.

That's half the problem with the 'State of the Age of Sigmar'. Misunderstanding what does what and then talking about it.

"so like normal then?"

Yeah.

And as a heads up, there's going to be lots of FAQs with the Seraphon Battletome. Lots of little weird rules interactions that need clarification.

Like the Bastilidons 1+ Armor Save. Lots of argument over it at the moment. Or the Engine treating it's crew as the mount and itself as the hero, meaning it can take weapon relics...

Ignore this, wrong thread

HAHA yes 2 out of 3 got the re-rolls, but its still close :p

 Carnikang wrote:
Yeah.

And as a heads up, there's going to be lots of FAQs with the Seraphon Battletome. Lots of little weird rules interactions that need clarification.

Like the Bastilidons 1+ Armor Save. Lots of argument over it at the moment. Or the Engine treating it's crew as the mount and itself as the hero, meaning it can take weapon relics...

What is unclear about the 1+ armor save? The rules are quite clear that unmodified rolls of 1 always fail. This is far from the first instance of a 1+ statistic, or even a 1+ save.

 Carnikang wrote:
Or the Engine treating it's crew as the mount and itself as the hero, meaning it can take weapon relics...

This has been a problem for a long time, the Deepkin don't say what is or isn't a mount, like the Turtle.. no one knows if it is a mount or not even tho it literally is mounted by a crew. We have asked GW from day one about this and there is still no answer. Most players count is as a mount and no one has said anything against it yet.

Now if all the mounted units had the Mount keyword and the Akhelian Leviadon did not, then sure. But thats not the case.

Here are some examples from the IDK units

DESCRIPTION
A unit of Akhelian Allopexes has 1 or more
models. The crew unleash long-range attacks, using
either volleys of bolts from a Razorshell Harpoon
Launcher or shredding nets  red from a Retarius
Net Launcher. The crew fight in close combat with
Barbed Hooks and Blades, while the Allopexes they
ride rip chunks of flesh from their prey with their
Ferocious Bites and cut them to pieces with their
Scythed Fins.

Or

DESCRIPTION
A unit of Akhelian Ishlaen Guard has 3 or more
models. The riders fight with Helsabres in one
hand and carry shields with the other. They ride
serpentine Fangmora Eels that bite at their enemies
with Fanged Maws and batter them with their
Lashing Tails.

Turtle

DESCRIPTION
An Akhelian Leviadon is a single model. The
ma’harr strikes at enemies with his Twinpronged Spear, while the crew unleash volleys
of long-range attacks from the two Razorshell
Harpoon Launchers mounted on the Leviadon’s
back, and fight in close combat with Razorshell
Harpoons. The Leviadon snaps at its enemies with
its Crushing Jaws and mows them down with its
Massive Scythed Fins

EVERYONE says the Akhelian Allopex aka Shark is Mounted, but the description says it is crewed, the same for the Akhelian Leviadon.

The community on the shark and turtle is weird b.c there are players that say the turtle doesn't get the mount rule, but then why would the shark get it?

For me it seems like its RAI to in all armies and not IDK to be, CREW =/= Mount and RIDE(R) = MOUNT,

But again i know many that argue they all are mounts b.c they are named "Akhelian" and that shows they are mounted as a Leviadon wouldn't normally fight without someone on board telling it too blah blah.

B.c GW didn't add in a word for mount in ANY warscroll for Deepkin, its all RAI and no RAW. How freaking hard is it honestly to add the Mount keyword to something?

I feel the AoS ruleset would very much benefit from bringing (back) in keywords for infantry, beast, cavalry, monstrous infantry, monstrous beast, and monstrous cavalry.

Unrelated note, does anyone else miss the battleshock phase? I remember back in the early days when it really meant something. Now I just see just an exercise in making sure one's list includes a mechanic to effectively skip it.

While I do wish battleshock was more of a concern for some armies, I suppose it can lead to some bad feelies on devastating battleshocks. I would prefer one of two solutions. Everyone has battleshock be a real concern, even my precious Ossiarchs who don't take it at all, or just remove the mechanic wholesale from the game. I could see army morale not meaning much in a high fantasy setting, and while I don't really advocate for more simplification, as it stands its a mechanic that means little unless you 'build wrong'

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I feel the AoS ruleset would very much benefit from bringing (back) in keywords for infantry, beast, cavalry, monstrous infantry, monstrous beast, and monstrous cavalry.

Unrelated note, does anyone else miss the battleshock phase? I remember back in the early days when it really meant something. Now I just see just an exercise in making sure one's list includes a mechanic to effectively skip it.

The battleshock thing is a huge issue for me.

Army wide immunity for Bonereapers is a huge blunder of game design in my opinion. They're a popular army, and there are so many game mechanics rendered utterly worthless by it. Being strong against a particular tactic is one thing, but being completely immune across a whole army is really dumb in my opinion.

It's like an entire army being immune to shooting damage.

IMO, battleshock immunity isn't a big deal, since there's plenty of ways that other armies are functionally immune to battleshock through various means. Ossiarchs just cut out the middleman.

Edit: But, like I said earlier, I'd rather it be an issue for everyone, or just drop battleshock altogether.

 Thadin wrote:
IMO, battleshock immunity isn't a big deal, since there's plenty of ways that other armies are functionally immune to battleshock through various means. Ossiarchs just cut out the middleman.

Battleshock is supposed to be something that keeps big units in check. Yeah, you can stack buffs on your 40 model blob, but there are risks. Except for Mortek Guard, there aren't.

Yeah, there are some abilities that can get there, but having that "middleman", that tradeoff, is super important.

Alternatively, just get rid of the whole mechanic then. Just give everything that had a bravery related ability some alternative instead.

To be honest, Battleshock Immunity is more common amongst the battletomes now. They're giving more tricks to players in that way, from what I have seen.

It was indeed supposed to be the "counterpart" of big units, but it's been toned down bit by bit.

Nowadays, the clear incentive is to push players towards big units, given the clearer advantages for lower disavantages in comparison to before, IMHO.

I can't really think of any army that's particularily prone to battleshock… The units hit the worst by a bad battleshock role is when you don't have immunity on a small, elite unit and have a few die, then the owning player rolls a spicy 6 for battleshock and loses a 50-point or more Model. That's what I meant when earlier I said that battleshock leads to bad feelies, the units that shouldn't be immune are, while small elite units are hurt the most by it.

An idea for a change or house-rule I came up just now was something in relation to Charges. A unit that charges in to melee gains a bonus to Bravery for the turn, while the unit that's a victim of the charge gets a malus to theirs. Sort of like WHFB Battle Resolution actually. This would then be coupled with removal of battleshock immunity mechanics and a rebalancing of Bravery Scores throughout the game. Why hardcap it at 10 (from what ive seen) and for something like Ossiarchs, just make their Bravery especially high, along with other units it makes sense for from a lore/mechanics stand point.

 Stux wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I feel the AoS ruleset would very much benefit from bringing (back) in keywords for infantry, beast, cavalry, monstrous infantry, monstrous beast, and monstrous cavalry.

Unrelated note, does anyone else miss the battleshock phase? I remember back in the early days when it really meant something. Now I just see just an exercise in making sure one's list includes a mechanic to effectively skip it.

The battleshock thing is a huge issue for me.

Army wide immunity for Bonereapers is a huge blunder of game design in my opinion. They're a popular army, and there are so many game mechanics rendered utterly worthless by it. Being strong against a particular tactic is one thing, but being completely immune across a whole army is really dumb in my opinion.

It's like an entire army being immune to shooting damage.

Armies being immune to battleshock in one form or another has been a staple of warhammer and 40k since last decade unfortunately, because it makes people feel bad when their guys run away and thats not fun. I know... in a wargame , a game that plays war, morale should be a huge deal since in war it is a huge deal, but... here we are. On release I actually really liked how they added battleshock compared to their old leadership checks. Then everyone started being immune to it just like in 40k or old whfb with steadfast and it became another notch in the pole of things that I really didn't like them doing.

Oh yeah, that's another slight issue I have with the game. They went to all the trouble creating this (quite good) morale mechanic and yet the meta is geared towards ignoring it as much as possible. It reminds me of 7th ed. 40k...rules stacked upon rules to cancel each other out. I'd look towards reducing ignores battleshock too.

EDIT: Somebody mentioned a new CP system that acts as a unit activation mechanic? I'm really liking this idea. For starters, it might actually help cut down on mini maxing. Oh, you took 4 minimum sized units for shenanigans? Too bad you've only got 2 CP points left...looks like half of them will be standing around scratching themselves this turn.

Ultimately no matter what mechanics are in place, min maxing will still always happen within the confines of whatever the system is.

Changing the system to a CP activation system would interest me greatly, but that wouldn't cut down on min maxing, people would just find a new way to min max within the confines of that system.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
Oh yeah, that's another slight issue I have with the game. They went to all the trouble creating this (quite good) morale mechanic and yet the meta is geared towards ignoring it as much as possible. It reminds me of 7th ed. 40k...rules stacked upon rules to cancel each other out. I'd look towards reducing ignores battleshock too.

EDIT: Somebody mentioned a new CP system that acts as a unit activation mechanic? I'm really liking this idea. For starters, it might actually help cut down on mini maxing. Oh, you took 4 minimum sized units for shenanigans? Too bad you've only got 2 CP points left...looks like half of them will be standing around scratching themselves this turn.

But that just means few units of large size are the problem, and armies that can cram the most points into a single unit have a massive advantage.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Carnikang wrote:
Yeah.

And as a heads up, there's going to be lots of FAQs with the Seraphon Battletome. Lots of little weird rules interactions that need clarification.

Like the Bastilidons 1+ Armor Save. Lots of argument over it at the moment. Or the Engine treating it's crew as the mount and itself as the hero, meaning it can take weapon relics...

What is unclear about the 1+ armor save? The rules are quite clear that unmodified rolls of 1 always fail. This is far from the first instance of a 1+ statistic, or even a 1+ save.

I agree. But as far as I know, it's the only printed 1+ save on a unit Warscroll. Some parties are saying that overrides the Rule of 1, others are saying it means it's basically immune to rend until it goes to a 2+, but still fails on a roll of one, adhereing to the Rule of 1.
It's causing arguments, so it needs to be clarified.
Several interactions just need to be cleared up is all. Same with any other Battletome really.
I guess it just feels different because they should know better by now. But they don't. And probably won't.

Yeah, it will need to be clarified, but in this case not due to GW writing the rule/stat in an unclear manner.

 Carnikang wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Carnikang wrote:
Yeah.

And as a heads up, there's going to be lots of FAQs with the Seraphon Battletome. Lots of little weird rules interactions that need clarification.

Like the Bastilidons 1+ Armor Save. Lots of argument over it at the moment. Or the Engine treating it's crew as the mount and itself as the hero, meaning it can take weapon relics...

What is unclear about the 1+ armor save? The rules are quite clear that unmodified rolls of 1 always fail. This is far from the first instance of a 1+ statistic, or even a 1+ save.

I agree. But as far as I know, it's the only printed 1+ save on a unit Warscroll. Some parties are saying that overrides the Rule of 1, others are saying it means it's basically immune to rend until it goes to a 2+, but still fails on a roll of one, adhereing to the Rule of 1.
It's causing arguments, so it needs to be clarified.
Several interactions just need to be cleared up is all. Same with any other Battletome really.
I guess it just feels different because they should know better by now. But they don't. And probably won't.

So? The rules are clear, all rolls of 1's for save fail regardless of the stat, the only way it will work is if the unit has a rule that says it overrides its.

PS can you show the warscroll? Or at least what unit is it?

All available via the GW store site; go to the pre-order section and click Bastiladon, then scroll down to where there's a "rules" tab.

I didn't know it was released up on the website.


https://www.games-workshop.com/resources/PDF/AoS_Warscrolls//Seraphon_warscroll_Bastiladon-en.pdf

Yup, once they hit pre-order.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Yeah, it will need to be clarified, but in this case not due to GW writing the rule/stat in an unclear manner.

Well if the rule were clear it wouldn't need clarifying....

If the rule legit just says they have a 1+ save, nothing in there negates the rule of 1.

Thats just rules lawyers being rules lawyers hoping for a leg up for a few weeks.

I would like more support for TK. Or have Death have generic battalions that they can use.

 auticus wrote:
If the rule legit just says they have a 1+ save, nothing in there negates the rule of 1.

Thats just rules lawyers being rules lawyers hoping for a leg up for a few weeks.

and then the faq gets bloaded because people try to interperted the rules wrong

terry wrote:

 auticus wrote:
If the rule legit just says they have a 1+ save, nothing in there negates the rule of 1.

Thats just rules lawyers being rules lawyers hoping for a leg up for a few weeks.

and then the faq gets bloaded because people try to interperted the rules wrong

That's always an issue though, especially in 40k. The number of things wasted in an FAQ answering what should be obvious so some donkey-cave WAAC gak head doesn't try to claim an unfair advantage in a tournament is astounding, but not at all surprising. My favorite was the Leman Russ tank had a rule saying something like if it didn't move it could fire twice. People legit tried to argue that "moving 0 inches" wasn't the same as not moving and GW had to address it in an FAQ.

Very true. and very lolz.

 auticus wrote:
Very true. and very lolz.

In GW's defense though I totally get why they address those "silly" rules. Because, as I'm sure you're aware, all it takes is one rules-lawyer arguing it at a big event to cause problems. As stupid as it is might as well nip that behavior in the bud since they won't bring back comp/sportsmanship to punish those people for being jackasses.

having a 1+ is no different than having a 7+. If people tries to spin it is just because they want to see more.

Is cristally clear how it works.

And this is why I don't go to tournaments.

My free time away from home is rare and precious and I want to be sure I have a good time. I play to move my little plastic dolls across the table and roll some dice. I don't want to get in an argument with a mouth-breathing git who's intentionally cheesing the rules to try to win a game of make-believe.

Not sure about everyone elses experience with tournaments, but I've been to several for both 40k and AoS, and have only experienced one person being a rude dude. None of this supposed rules lawyering, any disputes got cleared up quickly by reading rules, or calling TO...

Anyways, if someone tries to argue that a 1+ save never fails until you have rend, you tell them to consider actually learning how to play the game and it's rules, then come back to a tournament setting.

This isn't the first instance of a 1+ being printed on a warscroll. CoS Black Dragon has a 1+ to wound on their bite attack.

 joewarhost wrote:
And this is why I don't go to tournaments.

My free time away from home is rare and precious and I want to be sure I have a good time. I play to move my little plastic dolls across the table and roll some dice. I don't want to get in an argument with a mouth-breathing git who's intentionally cheesing the rules to try to win a game of make-believe.

Bloody well put!

I stick to my gaming group and a few outside games these days. Might go to a tournament if only for the travelling...once Nurgle’s latest shenanigans runs its course.

 joewarhost wrote:
And this is why I don't go to tournaments.

My free time away from home is rare and precious and I want to be sure I have a good time. I play to move my little plastic dolls across the table and roll some dice. I don't want to get in an argument with a mouth-breathing git who's intentionally cheesing the rules to try to win a game of make-believe.

At the same time the number of people who are like that is tiny. It just proves to be more interesting to talk about than the overwhelming number of decent normal opponents people get.

Since I restarted playing warhammer 3 years ago I haven't had anything but great games in all the tournaments I have gone, from small FLGS tournaments (I go to 2-3 of those a month) to big tournaments with 40-120 people.


One should remember when discussing this kind of thing that people is more rude and more extreme on the internet than what they have the guts to do in person. Social pressurre is a thing. And i don't know, in general, the community is much healthier now than it was 15 years ago, or thats my impresion. I knew a ton of old gits and just rude people that don't play anymore, those moved to warmahordes, infinity, stopped playing, etc... In general, as being a nerd becomes more popular, is less socially acceptable to be socially inept. People has become more mature, older, etc... and many kinds of personality than 15-20 years ago were "endured", aren't anymore.

 Overread wrote:

 joewarhost wrote:
And this is why I don't go to tournaments.

My free time away from home is rare and precious and I want to be sure I have a good time. I play to move my little plastic dolls across the table and roll some dice. I don't want to get in an argument with a mouth-breathing git who's intentionally cheesing the rules to try to win a game of make-believe.

At the same time the number of people who are like that is tiny. It just proves to be more interesting to talk about than the overwhelming number of decent normal opponents people get.

Yep, after major tournaments all the spicy drama on here (mostly 40k) is about how someone/a group of people cheated and were ejected. It's just not that fun/interesting to talk about the nice guy you played against with the cool army.

I do major tournaments and have never seen anything even close to rules lawyering like on the internet. People in real life don't act like that at major events. At least all the ones i've been to.

40k only have drama literally b.c of the same 4 players.

I mean I think overall the main stigma against tournaments/tournament players comes from the min-maxing "meta" culture that's risen up the past decade or so. I'm having a similar talk about meta and min-maxing being detrimental in WoW Classic (the game as it was back in 2005) where the years of min-maxing, theorycrafting and "meta" has caused this huge divide where you are considered bad if you play something you want for fun because it's "not as good".

Same thing applies here and anywhere the meta/min-maxers come up (so every game basically) because the impressions are:

1) To them the only thing fun is winning, not in how you play (note this is not the same as WAAC)

2) They will ignore 90% of everything to focus on the 10% that is "good", and then state how everything other than that 10% is worthless garbage.

3) They discourage people from playing what they want or enjoy because they will immediately say how "X is bad play Y instead" and if you don't play Y you are a scrub/loser/etc.

This is doubly true in Warhammer where even the rules lend themself to this approach AND you are spending hundreds of dollars if not more buying things, so you can actually waste money buying something from that 90% instead of the 10%, but it takes away half of the game when most of the options you can take simply don't exist. People would gak on Warmahordes for having extremely limited options in unit choices (if you had any) but due to meta it's not like you have a myriad of options in Warhammer either once you look past what GW claims you have.

 Overread wrote:

 joewarhost wrote:
And this is why I don't go to tournaments.

My free time away from home is rare and precious and I want to be sure I have a good time. I play to move my little plastic dolls across the table and roll some dice. I don't want to get in an argument with a mouth-breathing git who's intentionally cheesing the rules to try to win a game of make-believe.

At the same time the number of people who are like that is tiny. It just proves to be more interesting to talk about than the overwhelming number of decent normal opponents people get.

They aren't common but in any major tournament I have ever been to (I used to travel a good chunk of the USA doing grand tournaments regularly for years), 100% of the time - one game in the six always had a variant of this person. So 1:6 is not common, but common enough where it can be exasperating when people try things like this.

Wayniac wrote:

1) To them the only thing fun is winning, not in how you play (note this is not the same as WAAC)

An important note when discussing WAAC, it's a very flexible term from what I've gathered. WAAC can mean something different to different people. To me, it means being a gakhead and doing things outside of the game rules to win a game. To me, it's not just when someone takes a hard tournament list, says Good luck and have fun, beats your face in with it and shakes your hand after doing it. Something just like that happened to me at a warmahordes tournament, I got demolished without killing a single model on the other guy's side, but the player didn't make it an unpleasant experience. Gave me tips and pointers after our very short game between the match rounds. It's rough when a newbie gets matched against a person on the Spanish Pro warmahordes team

 Thadin wrote:

Wayniac wrote:

1) To them the only thing fun is winning, not in how you play (note this is not the same as WAAC)

An important note when discussing WAAC, it's a very flexible term from what I've gathered. WAAC can mean something different to different people. To me, it means being a gakhead and doing things outside of the game rules to win a game. To me, it's not just when someone takes a hard tournament list, says Good luck and have fun, beats your face in with it and shakes your hand after doing it. Something just like that happened to me at a warmahordes tournament, I got demolished without killing a single model on the other guy's side, but the player didn't make it an unpleasant experience. Gave me tips and pointers after our very short game between the match rounds. It's rough when a newbie gets matched against a person on the Spanish Pro warmahordes team

Yeah pretty much, most of the time WAAC is used as an insult but it's original intent (back when it was "beardy") was someone not only unfun to play against and a powergamer to the extreme but a rules-lawyer to boot; someone who would do anything short of outright cheating to win. Like a cheater is a cheater, and can also be WAAC but WAAC more or less implies playing by the rules, but in an unsportsmanlike manner by trying to argue everything or claim RAW/RAI as it fits their agenda, on top of using the most broken combos.

Basically what was called a munchkin in D&D as opposed to a powergamer. The powergamer just built optimal characters (the equivalent to competitive listbuilding) while the munchkin not only did that but also tried to argue the rules constantly to get any advantage they could, mostly in gray areas of the rules where things were unclear. The old "the rules don't say I can't..." or "But according to page 42 paragraph 3 X happens when I Y so according to page 532 that means..." sort of thing.

Somewhere along the lines back in the late 2000s, the term "powergaming" went from a way to describe someone that enjoyed min/max playing to a derogatory that was akin to dropping the "f" bomb in a forum as well.

But thats not fully true either, having been on top tables going against the top players a couple times, most are actually genuinely nice, and yes they want to win, but they are doing so via their list and good tactics not any type of waac personality.

Heck last year at Adepticon, in Doubles me and my partner did fight the top players and lost ofc, it was clear by end of turn 2 (this was when FeC was at its top, they did Fec+DoK and we did Old BAD slaanesh and BoC lol) they completely destroyed us but was very nice and friendly the entire time, they were their with a large group of players. But for how bad out lists were they honestly were impressed with our tactics, our lists worked great together, we just couldn't handle always fight first super Terrorgyst.

Honestly the "bad attitude" players where the ones going and not trying to win anything, the causal players. I'd rather go full points round 1 and fight games i know i will lose than lose round 1 and fight on lower tables (I've been on both ends a few times).

Now it wasn't all of them, some just drink, push models around, and are happy to be there, but i'm saying i've only seen bad spirit of the game from players that don't try to change their playstyle, lists, or learn others armies to even try to win.

EDIT: To add, i'm not talking about pickup games, a pickup game should be as equal as possible, but for events, that should never be the chase, you are trying to be ranked.

Likely when people started using it as a derogatory term. Hell, the whole thing about using WAAC/Powergamer to try and insult people who enjoyed playing at tournaments and minmaxing probably gave rise to the fun CAAC term as a rebuttal. Casual at all Costs. Haven't seen it get uses lately though, there was a time it was prevalent in 40k's 8e release early on.

 auticus wrote:
Somewhere along the lines back in the late 2000s, the term "powergaming" went from a way to describe someone that enjoyed min/max playing to a derogatory that was akin to dropping the "f" bomb in a forum as well.

Yeah. When most people talk about "powergaming" they really mean your munchkin/rules-lawyer, not just a min-maxer. I remember back in the day of the 3.5 character optimization forum on the WOTC forums there was a distinct line between the min-maxers, most of whom did things for theorycrafting purposes (mixing XYZ splatbooks to make a character who could do 500 damage in a turn or whatnot) and the actual munchkins who not only built that but would try to use it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Thadin wrote:
Likely when people started using it as a derogatory term. Hell, the whole thing about using WAAC/Powergamer to try and insult people who enjoyed playing at tournaments and minmaxing probably gave rise to the fun CAAC term as a rebuttal. Casual at all Costs. Haven't seen it get uses lately though, there was a time it was prevalent in 40k's 8e release early on.

Peregrine (whatever happened to them?) coined CAAC as a rebuttal to WAAC I'm pretty sure but used it to mean "anyone who doesn't build a good list or thinks you should play for fun" most of the time given their attitude boiled down to "You are insulting me by not bringing a power list". Never really saw it used outside of Dakka and then only by people who seem to be 110% in competitive tournament mode all the time.

Flexible terms sure are annoying, lol. The way I saw it being used was a rebuttal against people just adamantly demanding people not play the strong lists they built and generally being salty while losing. Hell, I've played against people who were like that, a gakhead who throught that early 40k 8e All Primaris marines (When the only models were the starter set units and their Dreadnought) was a WAAC list.

I've noticed, it usually comes down to the winning player, the player with the stronger list, to be expected to tone down their army. It's assuming that they have a huge collection for the army and can just always do that. The player with the strong army may have just accidentally bought a powerful list, and that's all they have. It happened to me, when Skaven just got their new book and I bought in to the army and hadn't built a collection yet. This can lead to frustrations I'd imagine, when they're always expected to change their list. But, two sides of same coin, I see plenty of comments where the weaker list is told to get better. All about perspective.

Indeed. It comes down to making the game's point values reflect the true power as close as possible.

If we can get to a place where 2000 points is actually 2000 points, (it will never be perfect, not advocating for that) then these disparities in lists lessen, and the at-each-others-throats of waac vs caac garbage can also be lessened.

It is certainly valid to have bought your models and then find out its busted as all hell but unreasonable to have to then go out and buy MORE models just so you can gimp your list, just as its valid that you bought models and come to find out your entire faction is gimp and you have to rebuy a new faction (be it from lack of your own education or an faq /new version rolling through nerfing you) and it be unreasonable to "git gud" or "build a better list" based off of your model selection. If 2000 pts was around 2000 pts, your models would be fine either way.

terry wrote:

 auticus wrote:
If the rule legit just says they have a 1+ save, nothing in there negates the rule of 1.

Thats just rules lawyers being rules lawyers hoping for a leg up for a few weeks.

and then the faq gets bloaded because people try to interperted the rules wrong

Agreed.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Wayniac wrote:

 auticus wrote:
Very true. and very lolz.

In GW's defense though I totally get why they address those "silly" rules. Because, as I'm sure you're aware, all it takes is one rules-lawyer arguing it at a big event to cause problems. As stupid as it is might as well nip that behavior in the bud since they won't bring back comp/sportsmanship to punish those people for being jackasses.

I think judges are entirely too forgiving of this sort of behavior. The level of bs and outright cheating players are allowed to get away with is ridiculous.

Absolutely agree. You should get a strike if you try to argue something blatantly obvious that anyone with sense could understand because it's clear you're trying to rules-lawyer.
Accused of cheating? A judge stays by your next game to monitor. Found out cheating? Disqualified from the event and suspended for X amount of time. Caught multiple times? Lifetime ban.

Instead we have cheating and people try to defend the guy with this "He just had a lapse in judgement, he's a good person and a great player" horsegak.

I'd like to just take a moment to say that the last few pages of this thread have been amazing. There have been disagreements, but everyone has been very civil about it. We've actually been having debates rather than arguments. Can we do this more often?

 EnTyme wrote:
I'd like to just take a moment to say that the last few pages of this thread have been amazing. There have been disagreements, but everyone has been very civil about it. We've actually been having debates rather than arguments. Can we do this more often?

Git gud LMAO

I agree btw this has been enjoyable

Last I'd heard about a cheating event at a tournament was late last year, was a player who was known for cheating in the past, but had recently been allowed back to tournaments, or something along those lines. Our protagonist player knew about this player, and requested that there be a judge posted at the table for the match, and that was obliged. Problems ensued, and the cheater was removed from tournament... But this was the third round of a 5 round tournament IIRC, the player had probably ruined two other peoples games before getting ejected.

TO's, from what I've seen, do take people being gakheads or cheaters very seriously... When they know, or are made aware, that it's happening. And there's many many reasons why a player may not notice the cheating going on (moving an extra inch via the magical hovering tape-measure for one) or the Extra One-in-Ten where you are rolling a gakload of dice and put a few more in than you should, or for some reason feeling too anxious to report cheating or general gakkery that they do actually notice.

Another aspect is that its very hard, especially in a single game environment such as a tournament where a player might only play against a specific person once, to tell cheating from genuine mistakes.

It's why record keeping and match recording are so important for trying to identify people who continually make mistakes of the same self-beneficial nature. Ergo those who are clearly displaying a pattern of behaviour that might suggest an intention of cheating; as opposed to someone who just made the odd honest mistake. Sometimes you can only spot it if you see multiple matches and the same patterns repeating over and over again

I get t's hard but I remember a couple of years go now a few cheating at big tournaments for 40k and the FLG crew was all like oh let's not have a witch hunt, he's a good guy and a great 40k player, basically downplaying it. And that happened quite a few times.

Those people grossly downplay it because:

* they have a financial stake in the big tournament scene

* they know that a couple of low lifes staining a tournament with their cheating will trigger an equally overblown back lash about how tournaments are the den of evil and corruption

new marauders when? the models are about 20 years old and got that bubble muscle aesthetic. they're the best thing going in the new std book. are they just trying to empty their back stock before releasing new mortal models?

 michaelcycle wrote:
new marauders when? the models are about 20 years old and got that bubble muscle aesthetic. they're the best thing going in the new std book. are they just trying to empty their back stock before releasing new mortal models?

Honestly if you want new marauders get the Warcry Warbands. They fit a very similar role in the game formally and heck several of them could easily be used as "counts as" instead of the foot infantry marauders. I'm actually surprised GW kept the old maruaders and didn't outright remove them as an option and simply have the warcry warbands - esp as they've even reboxed them for more affordable 20man units for AoS.

 michaelcycle wrote:
new marauders when? the models are about 20 years old and got that bubble muscle aesthetic. they're the best thing going in the new std book. are they just trying to empty their back stock before releasing new mortal models?

If you don't have to use GW models there are some nice alternatives out there. These Mantic Northern Alliance Clansmen were a bit less than $1.50 CAD per model.

 Overread wrote:

 michaelcycle wrote:
new marauders when? the models are about 20 years old and got that bubble muscle aesthetic. they're the best thing going in the new std book. are they just trying to empty their back stock before releasing new mortal models?

Honestly if you want new marauders get the Warcry Warbands. They fit a very similar role in the game formally and heck several of them could easily be used as "counts as" instead of the foot infantry marauders. I'm actually surprised GW kept the old maruaders and didn't outright remove them as an option and simply have the warcry warbands - esp as they've even reboxed them for more affordable 20man units for AoS.

A big issue is that those warscrolls cannot be marked. Another big issue is that a lot of them are awful. Further, marauders are way better than any of them save Iron Golems and in that case they play different roles. But what really kills it from the get go is that marauders fill battleline, cultists do not.

Its a very simple kit that is easy to produce,a ndits really isn't that old compare to a lot of other units. I don't think its getting remade anytime soon.

I think it's very likely we are going to see the first half of the Lumineth go up for pre order on the 30th, and the other half the week after that.

Those mantic models aren’t bad, better than the current gw ones. I figured gw would put out an updated marauder box years ago, something akin to the marauders from warhammer online, maybe a split box where one unit is normal marauders, one is elite gifted with mutation marauders. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/df/97/3b/df973b700dbb60c6052d76ded895a13c.jpg

 Sasori wrote:
I think it's very likely we are going to see the first half of the Lumineth go up for pre order on the 30th, and the other half the week after that.

I'd expect all the Lumineth to go up in one lump, personally. They were supposed to be April for the army box, with the rest in May.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Sasori wrote:
I think it's very likely we are going to see the first half of the Lumineth go up for pre order on the 30th, and the other half the week after that.

I'd expect all the Lumineth to go up in one lump, personally. They were supposed to be April for the army box, with the rest in May.

I think it will depend when the 2nd wave was going to be released and how far back the closing/work from home hurt them.

 michaelcycle wrote:
Those mantic models aren’t bad, better than the current gw ones. I figured gw would put out an updated marauder box years ago, something akin to the marauders from warhammer online, maybe a split box where one unit is normal marauders, one is elite gifted with mutation marauders. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/df/97/3b/df973b700dbb60c6052d76ded895a13c.jpg

Makes me wonder if a marauder/forsaken kit could work.

Replacing the necron warriors gives some hope that some of the old kits will finally get replaced.

Marauders would be, I think, at the top of somebody's list at GW. They're generically inaccurate viking stereotypes, rather than a kit that leans into GW's IP. I would think that would provide some motivation now that they've caught up with both systems and are looking towards updates and new products.

Voss wrote:
Replacing the necron warriors gives some hope that some of the old kits will finally get replaced...

Eh. GW only replaces kits in 40k when they're doing large overhauls for the army every fifteen years (DE/Necrons in 5e, Craftworlds got a couple of kits in 6e, Battle Sisters in 8e...). They prefer rebooting units with new versions that are better but keeping the original in production and cluttering up the game with unnecessary bloat as a result (Custodian Wardens, Primaris, that kind of thing).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Voss wrote:
...Marauders would be, I think, at the top of somebody's list at GW. They're generically inaccurate viking stereotypes, rather than a kit that leans into GW's IP. I would think that would provide some motivation now that they've caught up with both systems and are looking towards updates and new products.

But they are getting updated. The Bloodbound shirtless goons and the Karic Acolytes are both new Marauders, but the original Marauders are still in production and worse. Just like what they like to do with 40k models. I'd expect a Nurgle Marauder kit and a Slaanesh Marauder kit to come out before they bother to go back and do anything with the generic undivided models. the way their Chaos updates tend to go.

I'd be cool with that.

So does anyone expect the meta to be lagging one year behind because of the world shutting down? Like, because we didn’t see OBR or disciples dominate at a few events, we will have to suffer with them till the next handbook?

 Tiger9gamer wrote:
So does anyone expect the meta to be lagging one year behind because of the world shutting down? Like, because we didn’t see OBR or disciples dominate at a few events, we will have to suffer with them till the next handbook?

Impossible to really say; it also depends on what GW Wants to and can do.

We could see things lag for a year or so because of the big corona mess-up. That would be pretty reasonable. That said the GHB might have been more or less printed in terms of expanded rules content earlier in the year. It's the points that were a latter moment change based on playtesting. GW might simply roll the work on the GHB into a newly titled expansion document. Or they might push ahead even if its not complete just to keep things moving as normal.

I think Seraphon never had their moment in the sun due to Covid, so expect them to make a splash.

 nels1031 wrote:
I think Seraphon never had their moment in the sun due to Covid, so expect them to make a splash.

No Seraphon got in just before the corona lockdowns and all. So they certainly got their books and such out. I think with the 2 month delay chances are any follow up to that imght well be lost in a sea of other releases (including two full armies).

 Overread wrote:

 nels1031 wrote:
I think Seraphon never had their moment in the sun due to Covid, so expect them to make a splash.

No Seraphon got in just before the corona lockdowns and all. So they certainly got their books and such out. I think with the 2 month delay chances are any follow up to that imght well be lost in a sea of other releases (including two full armies).

By "moment in the sun", I meant that they haven't(because of the lockdowns and tourney cancellations) yet exploded onto the tourney scene and gone up against DoT and OBR. I think they'll have a huge effect on the meta, its just that they haven't had a chance to do it yet in a big way.

 nels1031 wrote:

 Overread wrote:

 nels1031 wrote:
I think Seraphon never had their moment in the sun due to Covid, so expect them to make a splash.

No Seraphon got in just before the corona lockdowns and all. So they certainly got their books and such out. I think with the 2 month delay chances are any follow up to that imght well be lost in a sea of other releases (including two full armies).

By "moment in the sun", I meant that they haven't(because of the lockdowns and tourney cancellations) yet exploded onto the tourney scene and gone up against DoT and OBR. I think they'll have a huge effect on the meta, its just that they haven't had a chance to do it yet in a big way.

I haven't really followed the Serapahon update, what kind of tools do they have to beat those armies? More so DoT, since OBR are more of a gatekeeper army than anything.

Big, dumb Dinosaurs. Coalesced armies have a trait for -1 damage taken per attack, to min 1. On top of whatever subfaction trait they may take. Word on the street is that Seraphon Artillery (Bastilodons, Stegadons) is both very strong, and very very tanky, between high armor saves and the damage reduction. Flamers of Tzeentch will be doing much less damage between those two effects, and reaching the Flamers will be not a problem due to their strong ranged options.

Not to mention the Comet's Call spell, that will target D3(or D6) enemies anywhere on the board and deal d3 mortal wounds to them.

Edit: Just remembered, Razordons and Salamanders are also nasty shooting units.

OBR and Tzeentch definitely made themselves known. The cheese available to Seraphon, not so much.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
OBR and Tzeentch definitely made themselves known. The cheese available to Seraphon, not so much.

This. GW even already nerf DoT once b.c of there "splash".

Seraphon seems to be A tier for sure, some people are calling them S tier, but from what i've seen thats only b.c literally 40% of some of the "Big" TTS events were playing them. Hard to know what counters them when almost 1/2 the players are playing them over their normal armies.

I don't know anyone who uses letter-tiers anymore because of the A/S confusion. Some people have A as the highest, some have S... I just use numbers. "Tier 1" is understandable to everyone.

/randomrant


Anyways, Seraphon are tier 1 provided it is Coalesced, Thunder Lizard, and the auto-take Slaan general. That leaves a lot of room for people to build armies that aren't game-breaking. The difference from the previous battletome is that such alternate builds are actually viable.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I don't know anyone who uses letter-tiers anymore because of the A/S confusion. Some people have A as the highest, some have S... I just use numbers. "Tier 1" is understandable to everyone.

/randomrant


Anyways, Seraphon are tier 1 provided it is Coalesced, Thunder Lizard, and the auto-take Slaan general. That leaves a lot of room for people to build armies that aren't game-breaking. The difference from the previous battletome is that such alternate builds are actually viable.

Its b.c ABCD and S tier is the official tiers for many game companies, which first came from Japanese school system, which is basically just the top student or two.

Ones i know uses S are, SMB, Street Fighter, and DOTA, i know there are more, but i can not say for sure first hand.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Its b.c ABCD and S tier is the official tiers for many game companies, which first came from Japanese school system, which is basically just the top student or two.

Ones i know uses S are, SMB, Street Fighter, and DOTA, i know there are more, but i can not say for sure first hand.

First time I ran across it was in a Playstation racing game, Gran Turismo. I've seen it in a lot of other racing games since.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/5lv2Q42hrIDrrqNi.pdf


OBR re-roll 1's to saves now

Friendship ended with Petrifex Elite, Mortis Praetorians and Katakros are my new best friends.

That's a nice big slap to the army, brings it in line with the rest of the subfactions. They're still propped up by their Command Ability, Trait, and Artifact I think, but for the powergamer I think they're going to switch over to Mortis Praetorian and keep their lists largely the same with Katakros. The only thing they lose really is the +1 to Rend Command ability.

Eh Ossiarch lists were pretty much "put what you want on the table" anyway. Whilst they have some clear combos in the setup they are generally all tough units - its less about what you put and more about how you use it with Ossiarchs.

That said the Petrifax nerf makes sense. +1 to saves on an army with already good saves was abusively powerful, I'm glad to see it changed. At least now its given them a level playing field between the different subfactions.

Now if only GW could get bold enough to change Slaanesh Depravity....

Now if only GW could get bold enough to change Slaanesh Depravity....

Ah yes. One of the trifecta of reasons I won't play lol. If only yes. But I'm not holding my breath!

 Overread wrote:
Now if only GW could get bold enough to change Slaanesh Depravity....

Slaanesh is dead in the water with this GHB. They will have a sub .500 win rate going forward.

why's that? what about this ghb makes them lose more than they win? does that include just the powerlisting tournament scene, or are you extending that into the casual scene as well

Slaanesh already lost to shooting list, which KO just got point drops, and they really couldn't crack defensive armies, maybe this is remedied by lost of stacking saves, but mechanics nerfs which was their defense, and losing realm artifacts to help. And since their table got increased, and with syll'esske stuff maybe being out of usability by this ghb, not much is looking good for slaanesh.

Honestly just redesign the entire faction.

It's really a shame that Tzeentch and Slaanesh didn't get the Khorne treatment with their points where you could spend it on summoning or buffs. That would have gone a long way.

Wild Rider Shields are absent from the Cities of Sigmar list...lol.

I don't know who pissed in the designers' cornflakes with Wanderers, but jesus. They really have a hate-on for them these days.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Wild Rider Shields are absent from the Cities of Sigmar list...lol.

I don't know who pissed in the designers' cornflakes with Wanderers, but jesus. They really have a hate-on for them these days.

Yeah...they kind of seem to be in a weird limbo state both lore-wise and models. Like, they clearly wanted to integrate them somewhat with Sylvaneth at some point, but that ship sailed and now they're literally living as their namesake, wandering about in a book as a misfit amongst misfits.

Overall, I would say Ironjawz cost changes seem about right except for the Weirdnob Shaman, I didn't think it was necessary to have points hike given that people only ever took one for the GHoG spell. Hopefully we'll see more Brutes in lists now that they're a little more cost efficient compared to Ardboyz in large numbers, and that Ardboyz can't double dip on FNP with Big WAAAGH!

Well Battlemage went up 20, but the Steam Tank came down 20.

So I broke even overall, Woo!

Wanderers is really sad. Like a good portion of the units are just sit still to get benefits, which sucks hard and doesn't feel good. A lot of things are over costed and could come down like 10-20 points. WWR should be around 100-110 for their paper thin armor and are only good vs a specific target. Eternal guard could come down 10 maaaybe, same with sisters and wild riders. Sisters of the thorn are probably at a good spot for being cav casters, but their spell does suck.

CoS just needs a redo. Make the units feel more integrated like they showed them off, instead of weird power pairs.

Carnith wrote:
Wanderers is really sad. Like a good portion of the units are just sit still to get benefits, which sucks hard and doesn't feel good. A lot of things are over costed and could come down like 10-20 points. WWR should be around 100-110 for their paper thin armor and are only good vs a specific target. Eternal guard could come down 10 maaaybe, same with sisters and wild riders. Sisters of the thorn are probably at a good spot for being cav casters, but their spell does suck.

CoS just needs a redo. Make the units feel more integrated like they showed them off, instead of weird power pairs.

I think part of the problem is that they have a lot of similar units effectively repeated across several units that made sense when they were separate armies but now feel disjointed with how they're all in the same book, even if you have "cities" as a way of incentivizing some over others. This is particularly clear when it comes to the "elite" units like Phoenix Guard, Greatswords, Executioners, Black Guard and Wildwood Rangers. There's some clear winners like Phoenix Guard for survivability and Greatswords for damage, while a lot of the aelf and duardin guys fall behind in terms of synergy and having too much overlapping design space between units.

So, how much has the ghb changed things? anything major?

BoK didnt even get an errata and nothing except FW changed :(

 McMagnus Mindbullets wrote:
So, how much has the ghb changed things? anything major?

BoK didnt even get an errata and nothing except FW changed :(

The main change overall for factions was that you can't double dip on FNP saves now and realm artefacts are now restricted to the ones in the book, not the ones in malign sorcery, and they are a LOT tamer, so you won't see the usual ethereal amulet 3+ save combo or aetherquartz brooch spam anymore.

A bunch of point shifts and such. Big changes were regarding FNP's no longer being stackable, you can only use one of them if you have access to multiple. And the removal/limiting of Realm Artifacts. You can no longer use the Malign Sorcery Artifacts, only the much smaller list with 1 Artifact per Realm.

Those are the big changes I can remember off the top of my head. Could be others.

@Grimskul BoK, not DoK

 Thadin wrote:
A bunch of point shifts and such. Big changes were regarding FNP's no longer being stackable, you can only use one of them if you have access to multiple. And the removal/limiting of Realm Artifacts. You can no longer use the Malign Sorcery Artifacts, only the much smaller list with 1 Artifact per Realm.

Those are the big changes I can remember off the top of my head. Could be others.

@Grimskul BoK, not DoK

WHOOPS. That was my bad there, my friend plays DoK so I got that mixed in my head.

Petrifax got nerfed in the FAQ today.

Now rerolls 1s on saves in melee only. Pretty massive nerf actually, especially considering this is completely moot for Mortek Guard using their full rerolls.

As good as this is, I was hoping they would go further. Oh well, ill take what I can get!

 Grimskul wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Wild Rider Shields are absent from the Cities of Sigmar list...lol.

I don't know who pissed in the designers' cornflakes with Wanderers, but jesus. They really have a hate-on for them these days.

Yeah...they kind of seem to be in a weird limbo state both lore-wise and models. Like, they clearly wanted to integrate them somewhat with Sylvaneth at some point, but that ship sailed and now they're literally living as their namesake, wandering about in a book as a misfit amongst misfits.

Other way around. They wanted to split them off as hard as they could.

Personally, I'd not be shocked if a big part of the problem is simply there is zero interest in the army from the studio. It's a shame because some of the lore bits for them have been fantastic...but the problem is simply that they were always an 'elite' army intended to hit hard and fast, and the mechanisms for that lend themselves to not feeling great for games.

Kind of like warriors of chaos. Who have been god awful the entire time AOS has been a thing.

I don't know if Ossiarchs will change much. The lists I've seen are to abuse the strength of Katakros, while staying as Petrifex to get the Bludgeon CA. It will hurt Nagash/Arkhan Petrifex lists, but Mortis Praetorian Lists are still going to be Katakros with 3+ Rerolling Mortek Guard blobs. Now they'll just not hit as hard without Bludgeon.

 Thadin wrote:
I don't know if Ossiarchs will change much. The lists I've seen are to abuse the strength of Katakros, while staying as Petrifex to get the Bludgeon CA. It will hurt Nagash/Arkhan Petrifex lists, but Mortis Praetorian Lists are still going to be Katakros with 3+ Rerolling Mortek Guard blobs. Now they'll just not hit as hard without Bludgeon.

Yeah, it looks like Mortis Praetorians are going to be next in the spotlight, as OBR didn't get any points increases (instead they got decreases, though thankfully on units that needed it) and overall book-wise their units are very strong still, so it's just more character oriented rather than legion focused. To really challenge their dominance would have required points bumps on the mortek guard and the gothizzar, since those two are basically the wombo combo that keeps OBR in the top tables.

OBR will switch to Mortis Praetorians and keep their 3+ saves (tourney lists were already running Katakros anyways and he has yet to be nerfed), but still take a nerf overall because they lose access to the supremely powerful Petrifax command ability. Tzeentch got a small nerf, mainly from the gaunt summoner change, but their bigger problem in my eyes will be Lumineth. Lumineth will be running Teclis at tournaments, and Teclis ruins Tzeentch.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 mokoshkana wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Now if only GW could get bold enough to change Slaanesh Depravity....

Slaanesh is dead in the water with this GHB. They will have a sub .500 win rate going forward.

That is quite hyperbolic.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 auticus wrote:
Kind of like warriors of chaos. Who have been god awful the entire time AOS has been a thing.

The StD battletome fixed that, they work fine now.

 McMagnus Mindbullets wrote:
So, how much has the ghb changed things? anything major?

BoK didnt even get an errata and nothing except FW changed :(

My army got only nerfs :( (FEC. Zero point changes, no stacking saves which I learned off in june...)

Well could be worse. Points didn't go up!

Not fan more rules. Terrain pieces have random rules, realm rules...aaargh!

Yeah, OBR are still going to be a royal pain to play against for many armies.

My main Bonereaper opponent plays Praetorians with Katakros anyway, so literally no difference there :(

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
OBR will switch to Mortis Praetorians and keep their 3+ saves (tourney lists were already running Katakros anyways and he has yet to be nerfed), but still take a nerf overall because they lose access to the supremely powerful Petrifax command ability. Tzeentch got a small nerf, mainly from the gaunt summoner change, but their bigger problem in my eyes will be Lumineth. Lumineth will be running Teclis at tournaments, and Teclis ruins Tzeentch.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 mokoshkana wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Now if only GW could get bold enough to change Slaanesh Depravity....

Slaanesh is dead in the water with this GHB. They will have a sub .500 win rate going forward.

That is quite hyperbolic.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 auticus wrote:
Kind of like warriors of chaos. Who have been god awful the entire time AOS has been a thing.

The StD battletome fixed that, they work fine now.

Can you explain how the battle-tome fixed it? I don't play a lot of AOS and when I do it's usually vs Orks with my STD - doesn't seem to matter what mark I take or what faction I play as. The Ardboy is just a chaos warrior that has rend -1 for the same cost. It's just straight up unfair IMO. Warriors do seems to suck for me.

Fellow warriors of chaos player unite. Chaos warriors have been a joke faction for a long while now.

 auticus wrote:
Fellow warriors of chaos player unite. Chaos warriors have been a joke faction for a long while now.

Went back and read what you are responding to. Considering he doesn't seem to know the advantages Chaos Warriors have compared to Ardboyz I imagine they perform quite poorly for him; he is skipping some of their best abilities!

At any rate, StD allegiance has been in the upper third of tourney finishes since their new battletome. Hardly a joke.

There are chaos warrior and chaos knight builds that place in the top third of tournaments?

Pretty big move of the goalposts to go from the whole army to two specific units within it.

i'm talking specifically about warriors of chaos (and the chaos knights)

What specific build of that book are you talking is competitive? The one where you spam a ton of marauders?

I said warriors of chaos were a joke faction for years now. I meant the warriors of chaos builds.

Honestly I don't know what the dominant builds are, but that was always besides the point. Even if it was not, almost any army built around a specific unit is done for theme/fun and does not produce generally-viable lists beyond a very casual setting. Even for top-tier armies building around a single unit is in the minority.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Honestly I don't know what the dominant builds are, but that was always besides the point. Even if it was not, almost any army built around a specific unit is done for theme/fun and does not produce generally-viable lists beyond a very casual setting. Even for top-tier armies building around a single unit is in the minority.

Ok, but....

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Considering he doesn't seem to know the advantages Chaos Warriors have compared to Ardboyz I imagine they perform quite poorly for him; he is skipping some of their best abilities!

So what are the advantages of Chaos Warriors? What are these advantages that Xeno's is skipping? Please list them.

 Stux wrote:
Yeah, OBR are still going to be a royal pain to play against for many armies.

My main Bonereaper opponent plays Praetorians with Katakros anyway, so literally no difference there :(

Your army doesn't care about difference between -1 and -2 rend? I found that too PITA. 40 attacks at -2 rend? YIKES! My poor terrorgheists just vanished and flayers reduced to just their 6+ death save.

Looking at results from CanCon and other larger tournaments, STD aren’t in great shape.
They aren’t bottom tier by any means and require careful building, but they struggle like mad against top tier armies.

Also, nearly every single list I’ve seen for them allies in max points for either a solid hammer unit or an anvil unit.

They do have some solid units, but the internal balance of the book really is wonky as hell.


For me, nighthaunt and gloomspite didn’t really change except a few points drops here and there.

ccs wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Considering he doesn't seem to know the advantages Chaos Warriors have compared to Ardboyz I imagine they perform quite poorly for him; he is skipping some of their best abilities!

So what are the advantages of Chaos Warriors? What are these advantages that Xeno's is skipping? Please list them.

Defensive mostly. Rerolling saves while at 10+ models. 5+ Mortal Wound shrug.

 Eldarain wrote:

ccs wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Considering he doesn't seem to know the advantages Chaos Warriors have compared to Ardboyz I imagine they perform quite poorly for him; he is skipping some of their best abilities!

So what are the advantages of Chaos Warriors? What are these advantages that Xeno's is skipping? Please list them.

Defensive mostly. Rerolling saves while at 10+ models. 5+ Mortal Wound shrug.

Don't do Ninths work for them. They made a claim, I want to know what they think is being skipped.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Honestly I don't know what the dominant builds are, but that was always besides the point. Even if it was not, almost any army built around a specific unit is done for theme/fun and does not produce generally-viable lists beyond a very casual setting. Even for top-tier armies building around a single unit is in the minority.

Right. Except in 5th, 6th, and 7th edition I had a lot of enjoyable games with them. In 8th edition I had to work a little harder but I could still get some good mileage out of them. In AOS they are flat out garbage for the past five years now. There is a stark difference. These are supposed to be the ultimate bad guys to challenge for the throne, not jobbing meat puppets. If GW wants them gone, they should just remove them from the game.

 auticus wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Honestly I don't know what the dominant builds are, but that was always besides the point. Even if it was not, almost any army built around a specific unit is done for theme/fun and does not produce generally-viable lists beyond a very casual setting. Even for top-tier armies building around a single unit is in the minority.

Right. Except in 5th, 6th, and 7th edition I had a lot of enjoyable games with them. In 8th edition I had to work a little harder but I could still get some good mileage out of them. In AOS they are flat out garbage for the past five years now. There is a stark difference. These are supposed to be the ultimate bad guys to challenge for the throne, not jobbing meat puppets. If GW wants them gone, they should just remove them from the game.

And yet, they are still above some other armies.
If GW wanted them gone then they would be, much like brets and tomb kings.
Just because armies get the short end of the stick it doesn’t mean they are on the way out.



The only things that’s beginning to piss me off is skaven.
New kits? Nope.
Just a few spells and some scenery.
Replacing older sculpts? Nah, just move them to legends or remove them.

I was hoping skaven would be factioned properly like daemons.
Instead they seem to look at them and think it’s a lot to update so they just won’t bother.
I think wolf rats are the latest for them to move to legends now too, removing a decent unit that skaven actually had a lot of use for.
Because of this I’ve simply stopped adding to the army.
At the rate they are squatting units it’s just not worth it.
Rather not slowly have my army become unusable.

GW only emoved the globe weapon team from Skaven and at te sae tiebrougt te warpfire trower gack. Wolf rats were a bad loss, but they were fw not gw.

Personally I think skaven are in a great place. They lost almost nothing in the move to aos. Being all one army with theme clan forcs makes more sense esp when some clans are not really armies" like the assasin clan.

Demons becoming 4 armies is ok, but there are now big gaps because some apsects were only in one god force. Eg the skull cannon.

Its nice, but its going to take years for each god to catch up with a full army.
Skaven as all just one is far more pleasing Ithink

 Overread wrote:
GW only emoved the globe weapon team from Skaven and at te sae tiebrougt te warpfire trower gack. Wolf rats were a bad loss, but they were fw not gw.

Personally I think skaven are in a great place. They lost almost nothing in the move to aos. Being all one army with theme clan forcs makes more sense esp when some clans are not really armies" like the assasin clan.

Demons becoming 4 armies is ok, but there are now big gaps because some apsects were only in one god force. Eg the skull cannon.

Its nice, but its going to take years for each god to catch up with a full army.
Skaven as all just one is far more pleasing Ithink

The plague mortar went completely.
Warp fire thrower was always about.

Slaves went.
Brood horror and warlord on brood horror went.
Wolf rats gone.
Several characters also went.

With the exception of skryre and pestilens, no pure clan is even remotely able to do anything.
Even then, those clans are limited in choices and skryre is killed by its models.
Running a mixed clan means being forced to take tons of clan rats.
How is that being in a good place?
Skaven have had clans for just as long as daemons had mixed gods.

Honestly I count slaves going as a good thing.

As for being forced to take lotsof clan rats, well lots of rats is sort of a pretty big thing for skaven. It is like complaining at taking guard troopers for IG or gaunts for tyranids.

ccs wrote:

 Eldarain wrote:

ccs wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Considering he doesn't seem to know the advantages Chaos Warriors have compared to Ardboyz I imagine they perform quite poorly for him; he is skipping some of their best abilities!

So what are the advantages of Chaos Warriors? What are these advantages that Xeno's is skipping? Please list them.

Defensive mostly. Rerolling saves while at 10+ models. 5+ Mortal Wound shrug.

Don't do Ninths work for them. They made a claim, I want to know what they think is being skipped.

Uh, I guess he did the 'work' for me. But I contest the sentiment that just reading a warscroll is "work" these aren't hidden behind some synergy with another unit or allegiance ability, it is right in the open. If Xeno had overlooked something like +1 to run and charge it would be one thing, but 4+ save models re-rolling all saves and getting a 5+ against MWs is an extremely powerful benefit Warriors have over Ardboyz. Those abilities are the features of the unit, not their mediocre offense.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 auticus wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Honestly I don't know what the dominant builds are, but that was always besides the point. Even if it was not, almost any army built around a specific unit is done for theme/fun and does not produce generally-viable lists beyond a very casual setting. Even for top-tier armies building around a single unit is in the minority.

Right. Except in 5th, 6th, and 7th edition I had a lot of enjoyable games with them. In 8th edition I had to work a little harder but I could still get some good mileage out of them. In AOS they are flat out garbage for the past five years now. There is a stark difference. These are supposed to be the ultimate bad guys to challenge for the throne, not jobbing meat puppets. If GW wants them gone, they should just remove them from the game.

But you haven't been playing in the period since the new battletome dropped anyways?

My brother plays Chaos warriors and knights and I play my face-smash Kharadron list and he beats me most of the time.

 Overread wrote:
Honestly I count slaves going as a good thing.

As for being forced to take lotsof clan rats, well lots of rats is sort of a pretty big thing for skaven. It is like complaining at taking guard troopers for IG or gaunts for tyranids.

Losing options is never a good thing.

It really isn’t.
It’s just a way of building them.

Guard can run airborne, chimera rush, tank lists.
Nids can run midzilla and nidzilla.

One of the top tier lists for skaven before the recent book was spamming stormfiends for battle line (before they were forced to mix weapons)
The lists tended to have maybe 40 clanrats if they even bothered to take any.
Moulder don't take any for the most part as giant rats fill battle line effectively.
Eshin and pestilens have no use for them either.


So there really isn’t much validity to your point there.

But you haven't been playing in the period since the new battletome dropped anyways?

No I haven't. My assumption is since I don't ever hear people talk about them, none of our locals touch them (they all run the busted stuff only pretty much), and when I have seen them played the small handful of times before corona shut everything down they were getting tea-bagged by the local power trifecta, that they were still a jobber army.

Its great that they have one power build though. I believe I've been told thats the marauder spam thing. Sounds expensive and time consuming to buy and paint though and woe betide you when those marauders get nerfed and you're out a ton of cash (assuming that that is their only real option against the power trifectas)

And if I'm wrong and they have a power build that can compete against the tournament cheese that involves using chaos warriors, chaos knights, varanguard, etc... I'd love to hear about it since I have buckets of those models already painted that I'd like to use again and the odds of me getting in for fun games that don't involve the latest adepticon builds here are zero and zero so I need an army that can compete against those things.

If you are going to divide the game into top-tier chese and "a joke" with no room in the middle, then I have no basis to carry on a discussion.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Jackal90 wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Honestly I count slaves going as a good thing.

As for being forced to take lotsof clan rats, well lots of rats is sort of a pretty big thing for skaven. It is like complaining at taking guard troopers for IG or gaunts for tyranids.

Losing options is never a good thing.

It really isn’t.
It’s just a way of building them.

Guard can run airborne, chimera rush, tank lists.
Nids can run midzilla and nidzilla.

One of the top tier lists for skaven before the recent book was spamming stormfiends for battle line (before they were forced to mix weapons)
The lists tended to have maybe 40 clanrats if they even bothered to take any.
Moulder don't take any for the most part as giant rats fill battle line effectively.
Eshin and pestilens have no use for them either.


So there really isn’t much validity to your point there.

AoS is the first time Skaven other than Pestilens can be run as mono-clan, bar the 6th edition opponent-permission theme lists. That is not anything new. As a Skaven player I'm always happy to see my rats get more stuff but I still have to say we're in a better spot than many for choice. Though the weird all-must-be-clan thing for battleline unlocks going away would make me happy.

If you are going to divide the game into top-tier chese and "a joke" with no room in the middle, then I have no basis to carry on a discussion.

If I'm playing in an area where everyone is fielding top tier or at least tournament powered level, then everything underneath that IS joke tier.

Playing middle tier against tournament tier is not my idea of fun in GW games. Thats like playing monopoly where your opponent gets to go three times in a row every turn and start with $20,000 in cash because you chose to be the dog pawn.

What you've done is make everything sub-top tier equal, like saying someone who misses the podium at the Olympics is equal to the person who comes in last at a high school track race. I have no basis to frame a discussion with when that is the starting point.

So your meta is super competitive but you want to play models you have and like.
While I agree there is a balance issue there, your local players really do tip it even further.



Ninth- skaven have had a split before that.
Moulder even got a ton of new creatures (added in for a single edition sadly)
This is something they really need to look at and go back to.
I think that the skaven line is too big for them to update as it is now, so breaking it into clans would allow them a lot more room to do so.

I agree on the locks in place though.
I’d honestly like to see something like a master clan hero as your general unlocking all of the conditional battleline options.

Skryre got neutered pretty heavily.
Either take stormfiends that have to mix their weapons, meaning no full shooting or combat units because of how the options were split.
Or buy globadiers that for their cost, I’d assume we’re made from gold. (Pretty sure these are one of the oldest sculpts used still in AoS)

Eshin are just eshin, low options and old models.

Pestilens are actually pretty stable even with barely any options.
Ironically one of the harder hitting cc armies in the game.


They could even go down the lines of the old epic SM game for Orks.
1 can - fine.
2 clans - must take a certain hero option.
And so on.
This would allow you to still build themed clan lists but without removing a ton of your options.

How is skaven too big. If you look at old world armies they were just as big. Heck tyranids are just as big if fsctor in all their multi weapon choices.

Updates can even consolidate some things, eg the weapon teams could easily be one sprue in oplastic with weapon choices.

Stormcast are only in a bit of a bloat fix because it is clear gw shifted from having several stormcat armies into just having one.

 Overread wrote:
How is skaven too big. If you look at old world armies they were just as big. Heck tyranids are just as big if fsctor in all their multi weapon choices.

Updates can even consolidate some things, eg the weapon teams could easily be one sprue in oplastic with weapon choices.

Stormcast are only in a bit of a bloat fix because it is clear gw shifted from having several stormcat armies into just having one.

“Were” just as big.
Now they have been split into smaller factions and received very minor updates past new armies being added.

What have weapon choices got to do with the number of units available?

You’d be updating several characters, 3 weapons teams, Jezzails, plague monks, rat swarms, gutter runners, acolytes and that’s off the top of my head.
The characters aren’t as simple as some armies either due to multiple factions, so you couldn’t just make one clampack that fits all.

I agree they could throw in optional kits to reduce what’s needed, but there is limits on what it can be used for.
Weapons teams would work well as they all have the same generic structure.
Past that? Not much fits.


Tyranids also have the perk of being phased into plastic much quicker than skaven.
So an “update” for tyranid isn’t a huge overhaul.

Most of those small aos armies will likely get expanded over the years. Just look at gloomspite gitz or khorne. It will just take time

 Overread wrote:
Most of those small aos armies will likely get expanded over the years. Just look at gloomspite gitz or khorne. It will just take time

And that’s my point.
The way skaven have been built shows they want a clan divide.
If they want that then it’s easier to break them down into clans as it’s far easier to work with.
As it stands now, some clans have more unit options than some armies do.

Given how they update armies, I’d expect that a skaven update as it stands now would easily be multiple waves to allow for everything.

 auticus wrote:

If you are going to divide the game into top-tier chese and "a joke" with no room in the middle, then I have no basis to carry on a discussion.

If I'm playing in an area where everyone is fielding top tier or at least tournament powered level, then everything underneath that IS joke tier.

Playing middle tier against tournament tier is not my idea of fun in GW games. Thats like playing monopoly where your opponent gets to go three times in a row every turn and start with $20,000 in cash because you chose to be the dog pawn.

My main army is BoC, they are one of the worst armies in the game and i play against meta lists all the time and my army isn't a joke. AoS is one of those few GW games were a weaker army can actually win.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
What you've done is make everything sub-top tier equal, like saying someone who misses the podium at the Olympics is equal to the person who comes in last at a high school track race. I have no basis to frame a discussion with when that is the starting point.

I think it skips over the fact that I don't enjoy one sided games, but the faction I like has no way to have a good game against those armies. For me the only way to play against those armies is ... to go out and buy a new army that can stand toe to toe with those armies.

My main army is BoC, they are one of the worst armies in the game and i play against meta lists all the time and my army isn't a joke. AoS is one of those few GW games were a weaker army can actually win.

Cool then you're one of those rare unicron players that belong in the wargaming hall of fame that can win with anything. I've known two guys in my own experience like that. You could make a ton of money doing youtube videos on how to play suboptimal lists and show battle reports of those suboptimal lists beating on adepticon lists. Seriously the patreon and youtube endorsement cash could be quite substantial since nothing like that exists right now, just a lot of "git gud" statements on the internet that have nothing to really explain or show how those people are gittin gud in an actual game against an actual tournament level player fielding a powerful list vs the other hall of fame level player fielding a sub optimal list and regularly winning.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
So I haven't played since last fall where my for fun slaanesh army with 1 keeper got waxed by my opponent's for fun adepticon triple keeper list (this was when that was one of the trifecta, I realize today that is not the case) because he summoned in 1800 extra points and I had no counter to that.

So I have a lot of things like chaos warriors, chaos knights, some marauders, varanguard, even archaon.

So how does one make a list based around those things and go down to the store where gittin is gud and play whatever it is in AOS land these days that is the trifecta (i still see triple keeper being talked about, the masters of the universe undead are common now so I assume they are a hot busted mess)?

Not sure what the trifecta is since I've mostly unfollowed the aos gittin gud people on twitter and facebook so I don't see their posts anymore. So whatever the trifecta is today (corona has made it so games dont' really get played lately and the games at the store right now have been 100% 40k)

Your issue seems to be your local area above all else and you are trying to apply that as a cover to everything.

Taking stuff you like and own against full on tournament cheese lists will always go 1 way.
You even proved that with your single keeper list against a triple.

My recommendation would be find somewhere that players aren’t hell bent on winning no matter what.



In regards to what you have, the big man and varanguard can actually do very well provided you pick targets accordingly.

Double and triple charges against threats you need gone as you want them wiped in a single turn.

Above all, your army would have solid mobility which is a huge advantage over some slower armies.

Throw in some flying chaff to take care of lone hero’s and machines (or as a quick speed bump if needed)

Then learn to avoid things like Gotrek like the plague.
No matter what army you play, there are things you have to tarpit or avoid.
He is one of those things that you really can’t tarpit so it’s best to avoid him.

Well sure because my local area is where I play my games. If thats what I have to play my games, I don't understand how else it can be approached?

Find somewhere that players aren't hell bent on winning no matter what is legit, but i don't know that making 2-3 hour drives to play a game of AOS is really worth playing AOS but thats neither here nor there.

Yeah Gotrek. I remember when he was released and he was starting to be seen in our campaign games. And yeah he was ... well... he was AOS haha

Thanks for the other comments. Those are constructive.

Sadly some areas are like that.
My local was always current meta to the point the game lost its fun for me.
It was either play top tier or face the same thing every week until the new army landed.

You’d be surprised how many clubs/stores there are about.
I ended up finding one that’s 10 miles away from me and I changed instantly.



He’s insanely strong and near impossible to kill, but at his speed he’s also easy enough to ignore providing you kite him.
Seen way too many people on his release get knocked out of a tournament because they got hung up on trying to kill him.



Varanguard are points heavy for what you get, they could easily do with a drop.
They are however solid enough to work.

You know how to prioritise targets and use threat range.


Not saying you will smash armies apart, but it’s solid enough to pull a win more often than warrior spam will.
The mobility also renders a lot of armies less effective instantly for you.

Having decent movement on your whole army let’s you grab objectives, pick the fights you want to take and generally ignore most death star type builds.


Only issues you’d have is low numbers (can also work at an advantage) and things you cannot ignore.
For the most part, the can’t avoid list is the same for everyone though.
Generally high movement flying beat stick characters or monsters.

There’s also the random avoids like skaven characters.
A brass orb relies a ton on luck, but if it goes off against anything in your army it’s made its points back.
If it hits the big man it’s also good game at that stage.

Jackal90 wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Most of those small aos armies will likely get expanded over the years. Just look at gloomspite gitz or khorne. It will just take time

And that’s my point.
The way skaven have been built shows they want a clan divide.
If they want that then it’s easier to break them down into clans as it’s far easier to work with.
As it stands now, some clans have more unit options than some armies do.

Given how they update armies, I’d expect that a skaven update as it stands now would easily be multiple waves to allow for everything.

I think in early AoS they did want to do a clean divide, but then they changed their mind about it and went back to a combined-arms design. At least for now. In the future, who knows?

I’ve got nothing against a combined army, but the way it’s done just seems poorly designed at best.

I’d settle for something like a master clan hero unlocking all clans, or having to take a clan specific hero to field it’s troops as battle line.
That way it’s just a hero tax for troops, instead of defining your entire army instead.

whoops, responded to a super old post!

Jackal90 wrote:
I’ve got nothing against a combined army, but the way it’s done just seems poorly designed at best.

I’d settle for something like a master clan hero unlocking all clans, or having to take a clan specific hero to field it’s troops as battle line.
That way it’s just a hero tax for troops, instead of defining your entire army instead.

I agree; other armies work off choice of general and I do not see why that could not be done with Skaven as well.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 auticus wrote:

If you are going to divide the game into top-tier chese and "a joke" with no room in the middle, then I have no basis to carry on a discussion.

If I'm playing in an area where everyone is fielding top tier or at least tournament powered level, then everything underneath that IS joke tier.

Playing middle tier against tournament tier is not my idea of fun in GW games. Thats like playing monopoly where your opponent gets to go three times in a row every turn and start with $20,000 in cash because you chose to be the dog pawn.

My main army is BoC, they are one of the worst armies in the game and i play against meta lists all the time and my army isn't a joke. AoS is one of those few GW games were a weaker army can actually win.

The statistics have never bared this out

stratigo wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 auticus wrote:

If you are going to divide the game into top-tier chese and "a joke" with no room in the middle, then I have no basis to carry on a discussion.

If I'm playing in an area where everyone is fielding top tier or at least tournament powered level, then everything underneath that IS joke tier.

Playing middle tier against tournament tier is not my idea of fun in GW games. Thats like playing monopoly where your opponent gets to go three times in a row every turn and start with $20,000 in cash because you chose to be the dog pawn.

My main army is BoC, they are one of the worst armies in the game and i play against meta lists all the time and my army isn't a joke. AoS is one of those few GW games were a weaker army can actually win.

The statistics have never bared this out

B.c for a year BoC players were playing out of the Slaanesh book, inflating those numbers and lessening BoC numbers, then if you actually look at some of the BoC event lists at least 1/3 of them are Warherd which is not a good list, its just a fun list.

You should look at some of the top players for BoC, they constantly go 4-1.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

stratigo wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 auticus wrote:

If you are going to divide the game into top-tier chese and "a joke" with no room in the middle, then I have no basis to carry on a discussion.

If I'm playing in an area where everyone is fielding top tier or at least tournament powered level, then everything underneath that IS joke tier.

Playing middle tier against tournament tier is not my idea of fun in GW games. Thats like playing monopoly where your opponent gets to go three times in a row every turn and start with $20,000 in cash because you chose to be the dog pawn.

My main army is BoC, they are one of the worst armies in the game and i play against meta lists all the time and my army isn't a joke. AoS is one of those few GW games were a weaker army can actually win.

The statistics have never bared this out

B.c for a year BoC players were playing out of the Slaanesh book, inflating those numbers and lessening BoC numbers, then if you actually look at some of the BoC event lists at least 1/3 of them are Warherd which is not a good list, its just a fun list.

You should look at some of the top players for BoC, they constantly go 4-1.

I mean the statistics never bared out the idea that the top armies could be beaten by the weaker armies. The top few armies were, before the covid crisis, all sitting at over 60 percent winrates, and a couple were closer to 70. This is without controlling for mirror matches, which drag the W/L ratio to 50. Against not themselves, slaanesh and OBR were probably 70 plus. This indicates that there were BIG winner armies and BIG looser armies, with less sitting in the middle.

Now with the ghb and the faq, things are standing to be shook up a bit. But I imagine OBR and HoS will remain top table armies, just hopefully without being so top table.

stratigo wrote:


I mean the statistics never bared out the idea that the top armies could be beaten by the weaker armies. The top few armies were, before the covid crisis, all sitting at over 60 percent winrates, and a couple were closer to 70. This is without controlling for mirror matches, which drag the W/L ratio to 50. Against not themselves, slaanesh and OBR were probably 70 plus. This indicates that there were BIG winner armies and BIG looser armies, with less sitting in the middle.

Now with the ghb and the faq, things are standing to be shook up a bit. But I imagine OBR and HoS will remain top table armies, just hopefully without being so top table.

Jan 2020 stats indicate that at CanCon and LVO, OBR were at 67.6% overall wr. (18 players at cc, 19 at lvo). HoS were at 66.7% overall wr (8 at cc, 8 at lvo). DoK and Big W were both at exactly 60% wr. The nine different army allegiances below them hovered between 56.6% and 50.1% wr., with varying sample sizes. Interestingly, tournament results from Jan 2020 through March 2020 indicate that the army with the most 1st place finishes was actually DoT (8 1st placements, 8 2nd placements, 5 3rd placements) who had an overall match wr of 50.1%, placing them in 13th place in terms of overall match wr according to the CanCon/LVO-specific data. In addition to the obvious variables, this clearly illustrates that not only is W/L ratio somewhat misleading (or overall tournament placement is, depending on your perspective) but that "top" armies can be and are beaten by weaker armies at tournaments. StD, with a CanCon/LVO match wr of 12.5% in 2020, have had 1 1st placement, 2 2nd placements, and 1 3rd placement at tournaments since the start of this year (the same placement distribution as HoS!).

LVO didn't allow for the new DoT.

There's a reason I didn't talk about them,despite them appearing to be absolutely ridiculous. Not enough stats in the covid world around them.

I suspect, even with nerfs they got, DoT will be roaring back in a big way post covid. The nerfs seemed a bit tepid. They still do pretty much everything passably to amazingly well.

But again, the stats aren't there yet.

Some battletomes support more diverse builds that can skew averages. For example, Tzeentch army A may have a 70% win rate and win tournaments, while Tzeentch army B has a sub-par 40% win rate. Armies like OBR and Slaanesh have consistently high win rates because their dominance is extremely reliable with few bad matchups. That said, these are just a few of many additional factors. Notable is that Tzeentch (and KO) were still running their old battletomes at LVO, not their newer definitely stronger ones.

Win rates also skew heavily towards 50 at tourneys because winners are matched against winners after the first round. Those with high win rates are progressively more likely to go up against others with high win rates as the tournament goes on.

Ultimately it is important not to read too much into general stats. But they are useful for evaluating trends and backing up theory hammer with hard evidence. You don't see non-OP armies getting over 60% win rates.

Finally got my hands on a copy of General's Handbook.

The Anvil seems unfinished. There's some cool stuff there, but some more keywords or the ability to add an additional keyword via Destiny Points would have been a boon. I wanted to make a Lord-Aquilor on foot or a Wanderer Nomad Prince on Great Stag...none of that can happen unfortunately. Just a Stormcast hero on foot with a longbow and a spear or a Cities of Sigmar Aelf on a mount with spear and shield.

I can however make the Spirit of Alith Anar if I choose to...which might be a project happening soon!

 Kanluwen wrote:
Finally got my hands on a copy of General's Handbook.

The Anvil seems unfinished. There's some cool stuff there, but some more keywords or the ability to add an additional keyword via Destiny Points would have been a boon. I wanted to make a Lord-Aquilor on foot or a Wanderer Nomad Prince on Great Stag...none of that can happen unfortunately. Just a Stormcast hero on foot with a longbow and a spear or a Cities of Sigmar Aelf on a mount with spear and shield.

I can however make the Spirit of Alith Anar if I choose to...which might be a project happening soon!

I honestly think they toned a lot of it back on purpose to try and keep some form of balance to it.
With that they can add to it as needed.
I agree on missing keywords though.
Was kind of bugged to see no troggoth on that list but we got dragon ogors.
Would love to see a troggoth hero we could build.
Would also open up the option for a troggoth force without a dankhold in it.




Edit:
As a side note, I think regular mounts need to be halved in cost.
They really build up points while providing very little.
Even at the same cost as a gargantuan they aren’t even close.

Just seems that for now you either go big with a mount or don’t take one.

Not too bothered by the lack of a Troggoth hero, seeing as how there's a fairly nice one in Gloomspite Gits...in the form of a Dankhold Troggoth.

We really need to see some extraneous stuff in there. Some kind of "Affinity: <Insert Beast Here>" for animal companions would have been good rather than just the Minor bit.

Hm, I disagree about the mounts. I think the benefit in speed and durability is very nice, plus the extra attacks are worth a bit. I would say some of the things around saves need restrictions; ethereal can't have better than a 4+ and the improved save upgrade being non-stackable (meaning that improving a save characteristic by 2 requires a shield) would alleviate many of my balance concerns.

I would like to see more keywords in the future, but I do not fault it for not having them now. I would not want them to be focused on fitting the whole range of options into the first draft and MUCH prefer the more conservative approach here. Because if this initial set got a bad rep for being imbalanced it essentially kills the idea entirely for the foreseeable future (see the 40k version). Also easier to expand from a small base than tone things back after biting off too much.

The problem, simply put, with the keywords is that there's definitely more for some than others.

It's really notable with Aelfs compared to everyone else, simply because of the way their "Battleline If..." works for subfactions.
Same goes for Stormcast if I'm going to be honest.

Eh, thing is with SCE it is a very specific option. It is a Lord Arcanum, not just any Sacrosanct Hero, and so on. People who want to, say, have a custom Lord Aquilor can customize one with command traits, artifacts, or even regiments of renown rules. The subtext is that Aquilors do not come with diversity in their load out and instead have a very specific gear/mount combo.

And really, there's no way to offer full freedom without there being freedom to break the hero builder, then we all lose because no one wants to touch it. The alternative is not us getting a full set of hero options right off the bat, it is is getting something DoA. If the right keyword is that big a deal then just ask your opponent's permission, you were doing that anyways. But I think it is really unfair to make a great system out of be flawed just because it doesn't have every single option explicitly written in.

The problem, bluntly, is that the Vanguard have zero options for characters outside of the lone Lord-Aquilor. It's also been pretty clear that yes, they do go on foot at times.

Lord-Arcanum? 7 different options.

Three of them(Lynus, Firestrike, Solbright) are named characters and they're spread across two Chambers(Anvils of the Heldenhammers for Lynus via WD and Hammers of Sigmar for Firestrike and Solbright from the Battletome)...but even with that in mind, a Lord Aquilor is 170 pts and basically just unlocks things.

Vanguard would do well with an option for a Lord-Aquilor on foot.

Sylvaneth could have used a Kurnoth Hunter option while we're at it, and the Cities Aelf and Duardin stuff should have let you pick a subfaction ala Skaven and Mortals did.

Those and hundreds of other gap-filling models would be nice to have. Every army and sub-faction does not have every option.

Jackal90 wrote:

Edit:
As a side note, I think regular mounts need to be halved in cost.
They really build up points while providing very little.
Even at the same cost as a gargantuan they aren’t even close.

Just seems that for now you either go big with a mount or don’t take one.

Oh no, I'm definitely building my Empire General on warhorse.

ccs wrote:

Jackal90 wrote:

Edit:
As a side note, I think regular mounts need to be halved in cost.
They really build up points while providing very little.
Even at the same cost as a gargantuan they aren’t even close.

Just seems that for now you either go big with a mount or don’t take one.

Oh no, I'm definitely building my Empire General on warhorse.

Oh don’t get me wrong, it really isn’t a terrible thing, I just think the pricing of it is a bit off.
I think they need some skills/upgrades that function only to normal mounts and pets.
As it stands a regular mount is an instant 8 points and doesn’t provide a great deal for that.
The pet is even worse.
The jump from a mount to the gargantuan one is a huge leap with not a big cost change.

I’d like to see something like +2 movement for 2 DP on regular mounts, to show elven steeds and the like.
Just small things to help flesh them out a bit.

Warscrolls for the two new warbands went up today for Underworlds.

It's made me realize that the biggest issue I keep having with things like this is the 'combined' profile of the unit. These things(and the WarCry Chaos stuff) need to be split out rather than just glommed together.

I rather like that unit profile for the DoK warband. It's basically a Leader Hero with a small honour guard unit. It's neat and simple and covers two warscroll cards. It's the kind of thing that works in an AoS game rather than each one having their own unique profile. It's very similar to the warbands from warcry and how they have functioned thus far.

I think its a sensible move for having a more characterful unit within a band. Also the leader is basically a Queen in function, just slightly different and I'd wager most were going to run her as a queen either on her own stats or as a "counts as" any way.


Overall without considering balance or power I'm pleased with them.

Still maintain each of them should be low-grade heroes.

I also like them getting a single combined profile, it is far more practical from a gameplay perspective and does not open nearly as many avenues for imbalance.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Still maintain each of them should be low-grade heroes.

I think there's a few roles that would work for them as concepts

1) Attachment buff units. Basically bought individually and added to regular units of their type to buff them up.

2) What we have now - leader hero and troop profile for the rest.

3) Each one is a leader/minileader - but are bought individually in points.

I think the more powerful each one is and the more complex; the more it works better having them as single units with their own scroll and point cost. Having them all in one unit and all as a single cost makes for a complicated system that in effect doubles the number of individual "leader" type units an army might have in one go. Plus when they are individual leaders with one cost GW tends to keep the cost very low to make them attractive (practical) to take; which results in them being quite weak to "so so" power levels to avoid them breaking the game.

That's your opinion and you're welcome to it.

I just don't see the 'avenues for imbalance' by letting these things effectively be a 'mini-warscroll battalion' of heroes taken as one Leader and a few Unit choices that are effectively heroes.

Same goes for WarCry. Some of those things in the warbands really need to be split out.

I did agree that splitting them out could work, but only if they come as individual units to buy in points rather than as a block. Otherwise its all to easy for them to end up being 500 points or more as a warband, which limits their use and also makes them somewhat of a cornerstone of the army, but without the same epic impression on the table that something like Morathi's model might have.

My comment was posted in response to NinthMusketeer, you posted in between.

I'm inclined to disagree with you on them being a "cornerstone of an army" though. As long as they aren't able to be put into a Warscroll Battalion, their usefulness would probably be debated upon heavily.

It is a particularly subjective niche subtopic and I like reading different people's takes on it.

 Kanluwen wrote:
My comment was posted in response to NinthMusketeer, you posted in between.

I'm inclined to disagree with you on them being a "cornerstone of an army" though.

Aye but if you make them more powerful individually then their combined point cost has to go up. For a handful of models that can very quickly end up easily being 100 points a model and suddenly you're at 500 points. That's 1/4 of a 2K army so a pretty significant chunk of points and a significant part of the strategy.

Truthfully, even bumping each named one up to 5W(minimum for a pseudo-character)? I'd still feel the points are more or less about right for them.

I just wish that each of these units, whatever the factions, were available in Path to Glory lists.

Afterall, my Gitz have Zarbag & Co. But they release these other cool packs & ..... nothing.

Maybe when the current path wraps up it'll be time to push for a house rule.

Well the purpose of PtG is to write your own story with a custom champion, so not having named characters is a central pillar.

(shrugs) I don't recall anything stopping me from rolling on the charts & customizing Zarbag. So I don't see a reason to not use the DoK, the Sylvanth, etc. as the squads they are.

Well judging by 9th it looks like AoS is about to see an influx if nothing else.

ccs wrote:
(shrugs) I don't recall anything stopping me from rolling on the charts & customizing Zarbag. So I don't see a reason to not use the DoK, the Sylvanth, etc. as the squads they are.

There's nothing stopping you from house ruling whatever you want, I am just explaining a design element behind the official releases.

Sooo...who's thinking Shadowkin and Lumineth previews incoming?

Shadowkin would be great, but we might just be getting an expansion on the rest of the shadowy DoK Warcry Warband. Then again I'd honestly be expecting them and the Scions of Flame to be out too soon for being worth to include as a main feature of the preview.

I'm genuinely shocked Scions aren't out yet...but Khainite Shadowstalkers were supposed to be the 'first look' of something new.

I'm thinking "Broken Realms" will apply to WarCry and "Shadow" to Malerion and his gits.

I doubt the there will be any Lumineth previews coming up. I think what has been revealed is what Lumineth are going to be for a while. Which is fine, once the models are released, I have a lot of painting ahead of me. I also would be mildly surprised if GW revealed a new AoS faction next week. Doubly surprised if it was any kind of aelf as it seems that risk killing excitement for the Lumineth weeks before their models are available.

You never know, don't forget in theory we'd have had Luminoth for a few months by now if things were "normal".

They seem to be all over the place with patterns and releases currently.

The OBR release kind of caught people off guard as they were a lot cheaper than expected.
They also didn’t have some giant critter like every army had got previously.
Katakros was the closest to that but they tend to make big expensive kits dual/tri use to force more sales.

Was honestly expecting a big bone giant/dragon by now for them.

They got a giant trebuchet

That said I'm also hoping for bone dragon!

I think the surprised with Bonereapers is that with all the factions GW has teased and clearly has plans for, Reapers weren't on that list at all until they were released. Soulblight (vampires), something for Destruction, Skeletons, Shadow Aelves and Light Aelves (Luminoth weren't released back when Reapers appeared). There's a good chunk of things that people were expecting then suddenly REAPERS. I'm not going to complain though, I love the reapers.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

ccs wrote:
(shrugs) I don't recall anything stopping me from rolling on the charts & customizing Zarbag. So I don't see a reason to not use the DoK, the Sylvanth, etc. as the squads they are.

There's nothing stopping you from house ruling whatever you want, I am just explaining a design element behind the official releases.

No doubt you can link to gw explaining the design elements of how they decide wich of these units to include/exclude.

 Overread wrote:
They got a giant trebuchet

That said I'm also hoping for bone dragon!

I think the surprised with Bonereapers is that with all the factions GW has teased and clearly has plans for, Reapers weren't on that list at all until they were released. Soulblight (vampires), something for Destruction, Skeletons, Shadow Aelves and Light Aelves (Luminoth weren't released back when Reapers appeared). There's a good chunk of things that people were expecting then suddenly REAPERS. I'm not going to complain though, I love the reapers.

I honestly don’t know how I missed that.
I blame being awake since 5am lol.

I’d hope for a bone dragon but I think the zombie dragon is already pretty close.
I don’t see them tweaking it to look similar.

That and we’ve lost a ton of dragon kits in the last year or so.
I’m guessing GW wants to move away from typical fantasy and create (and CW) their own beasts.

Did expect a giant of some sorts though.
They are heavily combat focused so a giant construct like a stalker could have worked well.

Zombie dragon is totally different. It's got bits of untidy flesh hanging off it and its rotting! Now a proper bone construct dragon would be neat and clean and perfectly built. It would be powerful and full of skulls and a majestic work of Ossiarch creation.

So it would look like the mortarch mounts we already have?
I just think it’s a bit too close to either for them to do it.

I’d love to see it, don’t get me wrong.

But they’d essentially just be making one of those mounts bigger and giving them wings.
Not sure how OBR would have useable wings though since they wouldn’t have a membrane like substance.

Jackal90 wrote:

Not sure how OBR would have useable wings though since they wouldn’t have a membrane like substance.

Morghasts manage

I'd say it would be a large monster without rider. It could be a straight dragon or they could go wild with something like a hydra creation (very ossiarch to take the idea of a dragon and then stick more heads on it).
There's dragon constructs in the Gotrek novel Ghoulslayer and whilst they aren't ossiarchs it sets the idea that at least someone in GW still likes dragons and has entertained the idea of a dragon construct mount/creature.

Morghasts are a hybrid though.
They share barely any aesthetics with OBR other than being skeletal.

The armour is completely different.
Weapon styles are different.
They use spirit like designs, like soulblight/NH.
So they are more carried by spirits than winged flyers.


There are some amazing designs and ideas they can work with.
Honestly do hope it becomes a reality.
Just very sceptical as it’s very much between the lines.


However, if the sons of behemat are indeed allies with all like we have been led to believe, there’s a good stand in lol.

There's a spirits on most of the leader units for Ossiarchs. The cavalry leader has a spirit host unit; the one with the walking chair another and the reaper is pulling a spirit off its blade into a vile.

So Morghasts do generally fit. Their chest plated armour is also very similar to that worn by Mortek Guard. They even feature the gemstones with multiple faced sides.

I'd say Morghasts fit perfectly into the army; some diversity sure, but they fit into the general themes of the force in being melded and formed of bone instead of being born. They are built; so within building there will be some variations.

ccs wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

ccs wrote:
(shrugs) I don't recall anything stopping me from rolling on the charts & customizing Zarbag. So I don't see a reason to not use the DoK, the Sylvanth, etc. as the squads they are.

There's nothing stopping you from house ruling whatever you want, I am just explaining a design element behind the official releases.

No doubt you can link to gw explaining the design elements of how they decide wich of these units to include/exclude.

I that would be a bit overkill for something which amounts to detailing what lies between points A and C.


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 Overread wrote:
There's a spirits on most of the leader units for Ossiarchs. The cavalry leader has a spirit host unit; the one with the walking chair another and the reaper is pulling a spirit off its blade into a vile.

So Morghasts do generally fit. Their chest plated armour is also very similar to that worn by Mortek Guard. They even feature the gemstones with multiple faced sides.

I'd say Morghasts fit perfectly into the army; some diversity sure, but they fit into the general themes of the force in being melded and formed of bone instead of being born. They are built; so within building there will be some variations.

I like how the Morghasts do double-duty in multiple armies, I feel it was executed well in fluff and aesthetic. I imagine a bone dragon could do similar. Imagine one with options for an OBR rider or Soulblight rider!

I feel like a Bone Dragon is at odds with the more... 'military machine' vibe the Ossiarchs have. That's not to say a giant flying monster isn't practical, but the larger Ossiarch kits feel like they each have a defined battlefield role than 'fantasy monster that rains death' - Harvesters pick up bones, Crawlers are artillery, etc. I don't think a Bone Dragon would be out of place, but at the same time something like a giant, unliving siege engine feels more fitting to them.

In a setting with dragons, eagles, airships, zombie dragons, giant terror bats, floating turtles, demons, etc... A flying unit of your own that's a huge bone construct dragon with the general view of gaining air superiority is a very sensible investment of bone and souls.

Especially when your ground forces (as they currently are) lack any kind of ground to air weapons. The only ranged options are magic, one gun on the harvester (which is more of a bone-shot-gun) and the catapult - which isn't really suited for targeting air units.

 Arbitrator wrote:
I feel like a Bone Dragon is at odds with the more... 'military machine' vibe the Ossiarchs have. That's not to say a giant flying monster isn't practical, but the larger Ossiarch kits feel like they each have a defined battlefield role than 'fantasy monster that rains death' - Harvesters pick up bones, Crawlers are artillery, etc. I don't think a Bone Dragon would be out of place, but at the same time something like a giant, unliving siege engine feels more fitting to them.

In a world where dragons exist, patterning a siege engine after a dragon isn't that far afield. A lot depends on what you're seeking to have the siege engine do.

A flying heavy construct would be good for clearing ramparts or even getting behind walls to the crunchy goodness behind it.

However, a tank-like construct to bash down doors and walls wouldn't really fit the dragons of Warhammer. The dragons tend to be more worm-like than the standard western dragon is. If that's what you were thinking, I agree.

GW dragons like the Star Drake a bit less worm/serpent like. Most of the original serpentine dragon designs were mostly due to the fact that everything was metal and making a thick chunky dragon would have been prohibitively expensive. Forgeworld had a few resin dragons and chunkier ones (sadly most of them are gone now); but otherwise your GW dragon was very much a serpent

Hm, I think Arbitrator has a pretty wise observation there. But I also think Overread has a point about OBR lacking in anti-air. I suppose there is also the matter where there is not as much in the way of bones to harvest in the skies, relatively speaking. Sky creatures would also be likely to have less dense bones (see the hollow bones of birds) which would simply work out to less material.

NinthMusketeer wrote:Hm, I think Arbitrator has a pretty wise observation there. But I also think Overread has a point about OBR lacking in anti-air. I suppose there is also the matter where there is not as much in the way of bones to harvest in the skies, relatively speaking. Sky creatures would also be likely to have less dense bones (see the hollow bones of birds) which would simply work out to less material.

Indeed. Anti-air can take on several different aspects.

One is direct counter, aka "fighter/pursuit/interceptor" types, which would include types like Harpies, Carrion, and actual Dragons.

The other is ground-based, such as flack, or in the case of the setting, arrows and ballistas.

For some reason GW has been loath to give the Undead anything ranged that doesn't involve an arc or magic since they more or less dropped the Kings of Khemri. I think having archers would be the more in character for a militant group, but also having bony "valkyrie" type (winged small infantry) and "dragon" type units would also be fitting instead of relying solely on the Morghast. Otherwise they'd be relying on the bats of the Vampires or zombie dragons of the Flesh-eaters to fill those roles.

I feel like if we ever get a return to form for the Skeleton Hordes and the like, we'd see archers there.

I have wondered why GW is so against undead having conventional ranged weapons. The last miniature release with 'normal' ranged was... ushabti with bows I think. Before that it was basic skeleton archers & chariots afaik. I would count the catapult(s) except they don't fire normal ammo. IMO missed opportunity with the OBR one to do multiple warscrolls based on what ammunition it brought; a cheap version firing normal ammo and higher point elite versions with the magic stuff.

There were Skeleton Archers, Skeleton Horse Archers, and Chariots.

There were also the Storm of Chaos Sylvania list which got you undead/Sylvanian peasant levies that could take crossbows IIRC.

As for why...who knows. If I had to guess, it's because it wasn't really considered an 'undead-y' thing?

In general if you look at a lot of the newer AoS armies they are quite short on ranged options. Even where they are present they are "elite" rather than battleline style archery units. Luminoth buck the trend a bit by having some actual regular archers!

I kind of get the feeling that its easier for them to balance the game around close combat and then tease in archery and more ranged options. I think the team behind AoS is cautious that now the rank and file is gone; they have to ease ranged in carefully otherwise we can end up with a situation where either ranged overpowers (like 40K suffers from) or where close combat ends up overcompensating.

I think GW is wary of doing ranged stuff in general that isn't Order based to be honest. Destruction and Chaos also don't have many viable ranged options to begin with, since outside of some outliers, ranged armies seem to be largely monopolized by Order. I guess part of it has to do with how LoS works differently in AoS and they don't want to port too much of the 40k dakka-oriented environment into the high fantasy aspect of the game.

That theory would hold weight if they didn't gut two of the most iconic ranged armies(Wood Elves and Dwarfs).

Overread has a point in that it seems to want to be more 'look! elite!' for ranged by and large. Look at Stormcast. The Judicators(archers) are 'elite', the Vanguard Hunters and Raptors are 'elite', and the Castigators are 'elite'.

But Vanguard Hunters are kinda trash, with a handbow instead of an actual huntsman styled weapon. They feel like they were intended to be some kind of skirmisher rather than a hunter/ranged unit.

Lumineth and Idoneth both have a 'regular' Archer unit(Sentinels for Lumineth and Reavers for Idoneth). The Sentinels are still considered a bit 'elite' and so are the Reavers.

Destruction and Chaos aren't really "lacking for ranged" options, by the by. It just tends to be incidental to something else. Things like Troll Vomit or Gargants throwing rocks have long been the bread and butter of Chaos and Destruction factions.

 Kanluwen wrote:
There were Skeleton Archers, Skeleton Horse Archers, and Chariots.

There were also the Storm of Chaos Sylvania list which got you undead/Sylvanian peasant levies that could take crossbows IIRC.

As for why...who knows. If I had to guess, it's because it wasn't really considered an 'undead-y' thing?

Skeleton Catapults are old school as well

Skaven tend to be the shooty Chaos army

Chaos has few ranged units only because one army was made into four - the Demons. The result being that armies like Slaanesh wound up without any ranged options because originally the army was designed to work with other components.

That said Skaven has a huge wealth of ranged options being as they basically survived the End times pretty much fully intact.


Also Stormcast are sort of poor to use as an example because the whole army is mostly built around elite styles. Not quite as elite as, say, Ossiarchs, but you can certainly get that feeling form the Stormcast.

Vanguard Hunters are secondary battleline skirmishers, they aren't a dedicated ranged unit like the others you mentioned. I would also say that by SCE standards both they and Castrators are not elite. Even Judicators are middle ground (but within the context of a more elite army). Compare per-model point cost to paladins, Raptors, etc.

That is just semantics though, the broader point of ranged being more elite holds true. I would say this has at least some correlation to reality though. Still, I don't think I am alone in wanting some more 'basic dudes with basic weapons' in the game, particularly of the ranged variety.

 Kanluwen wrote:
That theory would hold weight if they didn't gut two of the most iconic ranged armies(Wood Elves and Dwarfs).

Overread has a point in that it seems to want to be more 'look! elite!' for ranged by and large. Look at Stormcast. The Judicators(archers) are 'elite', the Vanguard Hunters and Raptors are 'elite', and the Castigators are 'elite'.

But Vanguard Hunters are kinda trash, with a handbow instead of an actual huntsman styled weapon. They feel like they were intended to be some kind of skirmisher rather than a hunter/ranged unit.

Lumineth and Idoneth both have a 'regular' Archer unit(Sentinels for Lumineth and Reavers for Idoneth). The Sentinels are still considered a bit 'elite' and so are the Reavers.

Destruction and Chaos aren't really "lacking for ranged" options, by the by. It just tends to be incidental to something else. Things like Troll Vomit or Gargants throwing rocks have long been the bread and butter of Chaos and Destruction factions.

I mean if you count troll vomit as an example of ranged options in Destruction, I think you're kind of proving my point. That's the equivalent of saying Nurgle Chaos Daemons in 40k are a viable "ranged" mono-faction because the Plague Drones have their 12" 2 shot S4 weapon. If you break down Destruction, Orruk Warclans have no range to speak of beyond SO Arrer Boyz (who have been significantly nerfed since their original incarnation in terms of the Kunnin Rukk from the previous edition and gain no ranged buffs with Big WAAAGH! or baseline Bonesplitter Rules) and (since you're being very nitpicky) the "yell" attack of the Maw Krusha. Gloomspite Gitz really only have Night Goblins with bows, which generally don't synergize as well as their Stabba brethren since most GG rules buff CC. Troll vomit is 6" range and one shot per guy, so if you think that's something people take Trolls for, you sir are being the "troll" .The most Destruction has is with Ogor Mawtribes with their Leadbelchers, and other shooting options, that lets you actually have an army built around their ability to shoot. But that's basically one army list for a subfaction within one army within the entirety of the Destruction faction. I'm not saying that every Destruction army needs a viable ranged list, but it's very clear that the design team wants to avoid having the breadth of ranged options that Orcs and Goblins used to have with all their goblin artillery.

In contrast, Cities of Sigmar alone shows the disparity between Order and the other factions when it comes to having both multiple and consistent ranged options, between handgunners/crossbowmen for Freeguild, Darkshards for Darkling Coven, Sisters of the Watch, Irondrakes, etc. They're also one of the few factions with multiple artillery options still available, between the Steam Tank and the other former Empire big guns. I know that part of this is a legacy of having all the former Old World factions mushed into one book, but the fact that they let them still keep them definitely speaks volumes.

The newer Order army ranged units are definitely more on the elite scale of things, that I don't argue. But the majority actually seem to have a place in their armies as backfield fire support or being able to actually have army lists built around them versus the very token ranged units given to Destruction and Chaos that usually lack the synergy with the army rules and other units to be worth considering over just going all in CC than a combined arms approach.

What I was getting at is that if you look at Cities of Sigmar?

Huge chunks of the 'elite' shooting was cut out. Waywatchers, Deepwood Scouts, Glade Guard, Glade Riders from Wood Elves.
Thunderers, Crossbowmen, and Rangers from Dwarfs.
Empire lost their Huntsmen/Archers.
Dark Elves fared okay in that they kept their Crossbowmen but lost their Shades(their 'elite' shooters).
High Elves basically ceased to exist or their stuff was shifted elsewhere.

Yes, Destruction isn't touting a lot of shooting options...but they never really have. Which is why I said what I did: that their ranged options tend to be incidental to the units in question. Troll vomit isn't really a new concept, and while it's not something that people take them for...it's a thing that is added on to the profile and an option.

See, you're coming off as disingenous again when you say "huge chunks of elite shooting was cut out" yet you bring up Huntsmen and Archers (skirmishers at best, they were never an elite unit even back in 8th ed in Fantasy). Similarly, Thunderers and Crossbowmen for Dwarves (firepower is inferior or near identical to the same handgunners/crossbowmen for Freeguild, while you conveniently seem to forget their elite shooting unit is ACTUALLY Firedrakes, which still exists). This repeats again for Wood Elves, where the majority of your units besides Waywatchers are the bog standard archer units with a a 4+ to hit and wound bow profile (hardly elite IMO) with Glade Guard just getting a once per game gimmick. Even if we were to count them as elite, then you have Sisters of the Watch as your elite archer unit that still exists.

The majority of what they did was streamlining units that didn't need repetition in Cities of Sigmar, hence why stuff like the organ gun got sent to legends, since the HBVG basically does the same thing. Hell, even with the cuts they did there's still have a lot of stuff that overlaps (all the elite 4+ race equivalents, with greatswords, hammerers, black guard and wildwood rangers). Could you imagine how much more bloated the cities book would be if they kept all the stuff you mentioned?

The fact that they were able to cut all this stuff out and still have all the shooting, not only for all the baseline races in the book, but have options for mobile shooting with gyrocopters and steam tanks, and then actual artillery pieces? I mean if you still can't see the disparity there I don't know what to say.

Also, I question you when it comes to destruction not having shooting options. Up until the grand alliances got quashed, destruction at the very least had dedicated long-range shooting units in the form of spear chukkas, rokk lobbas, and doom divers. On the non-warmachine side, Grot Wolf Riders were actually a decent mobile shooting choice that were one of the few decently armoured gobbo units that didn't have to worry about the bow's typical short range. Even basic Gitmob Grot units were actually surprisingly decent at shooting compared to their Gloomspite compatriots since they combo'ed well with the Gitmob Grot Shaman's spell to give them -1 Rend, whose bows also hit on 3's.

At the end of the day, GW has to make a stronger decision regarding what they want to do with Destruction in terms of both the narrative and their concept as a whole. I feel like they're missing an opportunity to do something that embraces more with the primal aspect of what "destruction" is, like elementals of some sort.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I have wondered why GW is so against undead having conventional ranged weapons. The last miniature release with 'normal' ranged was... ushabti with bows I think. Before that it was basic skeleton archers & chariots afaik. I would count the catapult(s) except they don't fire normal ammo. IMO missed opportunity with the OBR one to do multiple warscrolls based on what ammunition it brought; a cheap version firing normal ammo and higher point elite versions with the magic stuff.

What you class as normal ammo? They shoot ones with no special rules. Nasty ones too if you have bad armour save as lack of rend is only weakness.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Yes, Destruction isn't touting a lot of shooting options...but they never really have. Which is why I said what I did: that their ranged options tend to be incidental to the units in question. Troll vomit isn't really a new concept, and while it's not something that people take them for...it's a thing that is added on to the profile and an option.

Not really true that they never really have. Goblin Archers, Arrer Boys, Wolf Chariots, Spear Chukka, Doom Diver Catapult (the only "guided" ranged weapon in the game), and Leadbelchers all were brought over from the Old World, and that doesn't include units that could upgrade to being ranged like the Wolf Riders and Spider Riders or their artillery.

That's a pretty extensive collection when you look at how much each group in there had. A lot of other armies had jack squat in such departments, especially the Vampires and Chaos Mortals.

tneva82 wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I have wondered why GW is so against undead having conventional ranged weapons. The last miniature release with 'normal' ranged was... ushabti with bows I think. Before that it was basic skeleton archers & chariots afaik. I would count the catapult(s) except they don't fire normal ammo. IMO missed opportunity with the OBR one to do multiple warscrolls based on what ammunition it brought; a cheap version firing normal ammo and higher point elite versions with the magic stuff.

What you class as normal ammo? They shoot ones with no special rules. Nasty ones too if you have bad armour save as lack of rend is only weakness.

'Normal' is a rather vague term in this case, you got me there. As a rule of thumb I would call 'normal ammo' as being something that would work even without any magic. The necrotic skulls are both visually and fluff-wise quite magical. I would have liked to see a cheaper mundane catapult throwing junk bone or even just rocks (seriously, nothing wrong with lobbing a bunch of rocks at the enemy). As for its actual rules... I see that warscroll as a major failure in design; it is extremely unfun.

How are Idoneth doing now? I bought a couple boxes a year ago because I love those miniatures and (because of life stuff) never got the opportunity of building and playing with them.
Are they still just ¡¡¡EELS!!! or can you play with other stuff and still win sometimes?
I've got the big battleforce, the start collecting and Volturnos.

 Denegaar wrote:
How are Idoneth doing now? I bought a couple boxes a year ago because I love those miniatures and (because of life stuff) never got the opportunity of building and playing with them.
Are they still just ¡¡¡EELS!!! or can you play with other stuff and still win sometimes?
I've got the big battleforce, the start collecting and Volturnos.

Idoneth suffer from having a very old book by AoS standards. I think it's now the oldest 'designed with 2.0 in mind' Battletome? Regardless, they appear to be featuring in the Morathi book coming up, so it's a reasonable assumption they're either due a new book soon, or they'll receive their update in there.

IDK are just fine still a very strong army and now with point changes a couple more models are playable. But it is still mostly Eels. I have won small (20man) events with a Leviadon, but I was still using 15 Eels. At least you can play with Allopex's now and not feel bad, a unit or 2 of Thralls is still fine as well as they did get a little cheaper and are still heavy hitters.

Are there any weak underperforming factions at the moment? The KO seemed to have gotten out of that sump with their book.

I believe that Nighthaunt are somewhat underpowered compared to many others.

In general the extreme underpowered issues that we had are pretty much all gone because now every faction does have a 2.0 Battletome. There are some, like Idoneth, which are reliant on somewhat limited options to get power; whilst some like Slaanesh still break things with multiple keepers.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
Are there any weak underperforming factions at the moment? The KO seemed to have gotten out of that sump with their book.

Nighthaunt, Beastmen, Sylvaneth, Maggotkin (WotE helped) are probably in the worst shape. Idoneth has terrible internal balance and Legions of Nagash is starting to show it's age.

NH, Gobs, and Sylvaneth are the worst. Many think Maggotkin and BoC are bad but they honestly are not. MoN actually is alawys doing "well" though never top 5 but alwayspunching in the upper part of events and mid tables. Many top BoC players are going 4-1 at majors (I have before too) and any one able to go 4-1 shows the book is capable. Also MoN has the most units in the game to work with, its more about finding the right combo which many players don't want to do with that army b.c its not the normal point and click army.

BH and Sylvaneth really needs a change though, I would like BoC to get updated even though they are working its only 1/3 of their book that works. But Sylvaneth needs help right now.

 Arbitrator wrote:

 Denegaar wrote:
How are Idoneth doing now? I bought a couple boxes a year ago because I love those miniatures and (because of life stuff) never got the opportunity of building and playing with them.
Are they still just ¡¡¡EELS!!! or can you play with other stuff and still win sometimes?
I've got the big battleforce, the start collecting and Volturnos.

Idoneth suffer from having a very old book by AoS standards. I think it's now the oldest 'designed with 2.0 in mind' Battletome? Regardless, they appear to be featuring in the Morathi book coming up, so it's a reasonable assumption they're either due a new book soon, or they'll receive their update in there.

Oldest would be Nurgle, but GW gave us a boost in Wrath of the Everchosen via 'sub-factions' that are basically a flat buff to the faction. Anyways, I would say that while Idoneth have a relatively old book it was designed extremely well and its problems have been noticeably reduced via subsequent points adjustments. Eels remain the only tournament-viable option but the rest of the book (save perhaps Allopex) is perfectly playable in all but the most cutthroat of metas.


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 Arbitrator wrote:

 Future War Cultist wrote:
Are there any weak underperforming factions at the moment? The KO seemed to have gotten out of that sump with their book.

Nighthaunt, Beastmen, Sylvaneth, Maggotkin (WotE helped) are probably in the worst shape. Idoneth has terrible internal balance and Legions of Nagash is starting to show it's age.

As always, it is difficult to summarize/generalize the situation into a short form; to really communicate the picture would require some detail on what is good within each faction as internal balance can be anywhere from solid to just terrible. However Aritrator does a good job summing it up about as well as it can be. Though I disagree that Idoneth have terrible internal balance; I feel that points adjustments have pushed them to above average in that respect. Which as I type I realize is not mutually exclusive with "terrible" in AoS' case because having plainly awful internal balance is pretty much the norm. So I refine my statement to '"Idoneth do not struggle particularly more than most factions when it comes to internal balance."

Worth noting that the Luminoth boxed set (with the models, tokens and battletome) is going to be removed from sale at the end of this week. So if you want to start them I'd grab that box now!

I always felt that Stormcast Eternals was one of the factions that desperately need rework.
This became even more pronounced after the release of ossiarchs, tzeentch, seraphon and lumineth overlords.

Large number of warscrolls are from AoS "1.0" when points system did not even exist.
Most of the battlelines choices, paladins, dracothian guards, for example.
And despite the constant price drop via GHB, many of these units are still considered to be subpar.
Allegiance ability also pales in comparison to post-2019 battletomes.
And even the new GHB missions(Total Commitment, Better Part of Valour, Focal Points, Shifting Objectives) put Stormcasts at disadvantage mostly.

Nowadays it seems remotely-competitive stormcasts rely heavily on Seraphon Kroak.
The rest of the lists is more or less relegated to supporting tools for Kroak to survive and blast enemies with his own magic.
Even then Stormcasts seem to barely go 3-2 on tournaments, let alone 4-1 or 5-0.

I think they need to ditch the name "age of sigmar" and call it what it really is: "Age of occasionally kind of good elves fighting bad, bad humans while a couple of others watch"

We get one stretch of a story arc centered around Elves and all of a sudden it's now the Age of Elves?

Huh. So when was it Age of Chaos?

 Kanluwen wrote:
We get one stretch of a story arc centered around Elves and all of a sudden it's now the Age of Elves?

Huh. So when was it Age of Chaos?

Age of Mythology - the setup for the whole Mortal Realms that had most factions of Order, Death and Destruction allied together at one time or another and generally saw the growth of every nation across the Realms. Godbeasts walk the lands; Gods walk the lands.

Age of Chaos - Chaos invades en-mass and sparks a massive war. Gods are defeated and driven into hiding; Sigmar closes the Realmgates; Chaos destroys most nations and shatters them over 500 years of steady corruption.

Age of Sigmar - Sigmar returns and smashes into the Chaos invasion forces with his Stormcast. Rallying the remains of the other races and gods; pulling all together; restoring order and generally kicking chaos back. Then Nagash unleashes his Necroquake. Basically the current age of the setting; Far as anyone can tell its a ffew hundred years along already (thus allowing for the establishment of restored cities and generations of shorter lived creatures like humans to have grown up behind the enemy lines so that the Age of Chaos is a dark story - even though the lands are stil mostly owned by barbarian and wild tribes and nations who worship chaos.

Aelves have several active gods - each with their own Realm and one wannabee Goddess.
Duardin have at least one and sorta a couple of others.

Humans have just the one.

Morathi is working her schemes everywhere - even Gotrek is running around with a hot Aelf gal - who alos happens to worship Khaine.

Sarcasm gets missed sometimes, I think.

I know we actually had an Age of Chaos--but if someone's going to snarkily refer to the game as "Age of Elves" when we've gotten a whopping three Elf armies(Lumineth, Idoneth, Daughters of Khaine) and one Elf adjacent army(Sylvaneth)?

I'll dang well call the game Age of Chaos, because we've had just as much there if not more!