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ERJAK wrote:

 Knight wrote:
The heroes on foot are good, it's mostly when you start tinkering with the weapons and monstrous mounts, armour, speed and so on does the allowance evaporate and the result is a bit underwhelming, but considering that you likely can also assign artefacts to them, maybe you don't need to create an absolute beast from the start.

For instance an elf mage (3 DP) on a 'steed' (8 DP), speed upgrade (2x2DP only 10" movement after the upgrades), archmage perk (+1 to cast and dispel, 3DP), mage's staff (2DP, classical weapon) is going to cost you 200 points.

The gargatuan monster is busted tbh. The upgrades for the mount itself are half the DP price of the upgrades to the character for a better baseline damage profile. You can get a 3+ save Ethereal, run and charge, gargatuan with about a bloodthirster of unfettered fury combat statline and either make it a mage, priest, or +1 attack buffer for 400pts. The other end is also pretty nuts considering you can make a 30pt mage or a 30pt commander that gives you +1 attack or +1 save.

If you kind of hover in the middle, the character is fine. But the greater than 300 point range goes a little wacky and the less than 80pt range is straight busted. Especially if whatever you're doing lets you take more than 1.

To be fair, that still sounds better than having skarbrand run at you and let loose.
Waiting on my book still but it really doesn’t look insanely bad (was expecting a mess)

Also, keep in mind that running them in matched play requires consent, so it likely won’t see the light of day in any competitive environment.
Unless someone tweaks it slightly for balance, I just see it being banned.

I do agree though that the cheap characters can be abused for what they can do.


I’m also interested in this as it could be good to finally get rules again for Kholek.

I've been playing about with the Anvil a bit today. Its pretty cool. More robust than I expected.

I think my one issue really is that the characters you can make are a bit...stock. Sure, you can get some things in combinations that weren't possible before. A stormcast wizard on a monster, a vampire priest, and so on. Ethereal... everything.

But all the individual abilities you can pick feel a bit generic. Stat increases, exploding 6s, a few different but similar ways to dish out a few mortal wounds.

I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting, but I would have liked a bit more creativity in the choices of abilities. A few more spells, a few more prayers, command abilities, and just some more off the wall possibilities.

I had hoped they'd do two or three special ancestry abilities and heirlooms (artefacts), gargantuan beasts being split into two categories (light and heavy) and wizards being able to theme their spells a bit more.

It' works as it is, I'd appreciate more freedom even if it'd come with the risk of not all options being of equal value to all.

 Stux wrote:
I've been playing about with the Anvil a bit today. Its pretty cool. More robust than I expected.

I think my one issue really is that the characters you can make are a bit...stock. Sure, you can get some things in combinations that weren't possible before. A stormcast wizard on a monster, a vampire priest, and so on. Ethereal... everything.

But all the individual abilities you can pick feel a bit generic. Stat increases, exploding 6s, a few different but similar ways to dish out a few mortal wounds.

I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting, but I would have liked a bit more creativity in the choices of abilities. A few more spells, a few more prayers, command abilities, and just some more off the wall possibilities.

To be fair, nothing is holding them back from adding army related traits in other books or downloads.
Would be cool to see army specific stuff being added to the hero maker.

I would rather them start with a more 'bland' base as it is easier/possible to actually balance. Funky stuff can be added later if the system proves popular. I am very glad they did it this way, Bottle has clearly delivered again.

ERJAK wrote:

 Knight wrote:
The heroes on foot are good, it's mostly when you start tinkering with the weapons and monstrous mounts, armour, speed and so on does the allowance evaporate and the result is a bit underwhelming, but considering that you likely can also assign artefacts to them, maybe you don't need to create an absolute beast from the start.

For instance an elf mage (3 DP) on a 'steed' (8 DP), speed upgrade (2x2DP only 10" movement after the upgrades), archmage perk (+1 to cast and dispel, 3DP), mage's staff (2DP, classical weapon) is going to cost you 200 points.

The gargatuan monster is busted tbh. The upgrades for the mount itself are half the DP price of the upgrades to the character for a better baseline damage profile. You can get a 3+ save Ethereal, run and charge, gargatuan with about a bloodthirster of unfettered fury combat statline and either make it a mage, priest, or +1 attack buffer for 400pts. The other end is also pretty nuts considering you can make a 30pt mage or a 30pt commander that gives you +1 attack or +1 save.

If you kind of hover in the middle, the character is fine. But the greater than 300 point range goes a little wacky and the less than 80pt range is straight busted. Especially if whatever you're doing lets you take more than 1.

Its not busted, just to have a Garg mount, 3+, ethereal, and run and charge with a 4DP hero on them is 35DP out of your 40DP. That 350pts for something just to have a 3++ run and charge with fly. To make him even able to really be worth it in combat you'll need to buy 50pts more into Upgrades. Then its 400pts for something that might not kill a 30man unit of Ungors.

The real broken thing is buying more CP and a +1 to hit command trait. You can have 80pts hero give you 1CP,s ome armies rather have CP than heroes. Heck for BoC i can go Gavespawn with 4 Heroes to get 4 more CP then have 4 heroes able to give out +1 to hit. My Bestigors can now get +4 attacks turn 1 or turn 2 and still have 2-3 CP left over.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I would rather them start with a more 'bland' base as it is easier/possible to actually balance. Funky stuff can be added later if the system proves popular. I am very glad they did it this way, Bottle has clearly delivered again.

If the plan is to expand on it, then great. It certainly had crossed my mind, and if it is the case then I look forward to it!

Erring on the side of caution was indeed necessary. Otherwise they risk a situation like with 40k, where most people have forgotten they had rules in Chapter Approved because they were so janky.

All I'm really saying is that I just don't find it very exciting currently. I totally appreciate the line between exciting and broken is a fine one to walk, but knowing that doesn't make it exciting.

I'd love to see things more expanded. I started working with a friend on some more theme'd stuff. Khorne priests should have dispells and unbinds, and a way to grant them to them should happen.

Well as a cities dwarf player this is pure win for me, longbeards were already cheap, but now with their drop and the KO drops I'm going to have more flexibility with builds.

That sounds good. Overlords/oldschool dwarfs are exactly what I'm interested in.

I mostly like the hero builder. Yeah, it's wonky around the edges, and I'd like to see expansions with faction specific upgrades - as an OBR player I'd especially like to have an official option for the 'Liege' keyword. But it's mostly nice, and is very specifically an optional, opponents consent required ruleset, so the problematic edge cases won't be hassling the competitive scene.

On the other hand, I find the new realm rules to be extremely disappointing, and they're not an easily ignored optional change. Yeah, the realm lores had some problematic spells in need of removal or nerfing, and the implementation of them was entirely wrong - you should have chosen them like faction spells, one per wizard, based on your realm of origin, with maybe a +1 to cast, or -1 casting DC, on the matching realm, instead of having the whole lore dumped on each and every wizard based on whatever realm you happen to end up with. So yeah, changes were needed, but the core idea, adding some extra spell variety to the core game, and giving factions without tomes or with underwhelming faction lores something to do with their wizards? That was a good, important idea, and I'm super sad to see it abandoned. Same with the magic items. Yes, there were too many, and some were problematic, but that would have been easy enough to fix, and at least there the implementation was correct - replacing items you might otherwise choose, with the effect of giving factions with few or bad item choices some actual options to play with. Instead they've been cut back to one per realm, and those one per realm are so underwhelming that few if any of them will ever see play.

And yeah, the realmscape effects and tables were wonky, too hasslesome and random for matched play, but the replacement effects, just adding a generic terrain effect to scenery on the table, are dull to the point of hardly being worth bothering with, and in some cases are actively bad and unfluffy. Like, Null terrain for Shyish? Because if the epicenter of the necroquake that has dominated the AoS lore in 2e should be known for anything, it should be for how weak and easily suppressed the magic is there, and for how endless spells are hardly ever seen there because they fizzle the moment they come within an inch of any of the realms natural terrain. When you look at the effect instead of the name, Null terrain is literally the least appropriate rule for Shyish out of the entire table. Deadly, Sinister, or Damned would have been dramatically better choices, as would Arcane - thematically the literal opposite of Null. Other realms aren't all that much better, though Shyish is probably the worst, not helped by the new Shyish realm spell being a bonus to casting endless spells, which the scenery rules will subsequently eat, or the realm CA being a shrug which undead factions can't use due to the new rules against layered shrugs, putting them at a mechanical disadvantage on their home field, which is dumb.

It's not a huge problem given how minimal the rules left over are, but it's still kind of depressing. The previous realm rules weren't great, they needed adjustment, but there were good important ideas at the core of them, and the new realm rules abandon those ideas and their potential entirely, and what little is left over is still somehow actively bad. IMO, leaving the realm rules unchanged and simply removing them from matched play altogether would have been better than this.



Otherwise... multiplayer stuff seems interesting, and I'd like to give the new Meeting Engagement scenarios a try. Again, I quite like the custom character rules and hope to see an expansion on them in the future. Points changes... don't seem great, really, but I'm not too judgmental about that given how COVID has chocked off feedback from the competitive scene.

pm713 wrote:
That sounds good. Overlords/oldschool dwarfs are exactly what I'm interested in.

Tempest keeps got some interesting tricks, extra 3 inches on the first turn can get you quite far toward an objective, -1 to hit helps against first turn shooting.

Using the seerstone and taking a hero to act as an advisor can get you a nice amount of command points.

And as KO units are part of the army you could use ally allocation to include some slayers if you like.

Sorry if it was discussed here already but..
What was the reasoning behind the change to saving throws in matched play in GH 2020 aka the 'special rule' added.

I mainly play StD or Nurgle and it makes a lot of stuff now redundant/nerfed, despite only recently being printed. I thought the armies were already middle tier at best.
I had a game last week and we house ruled not to use it due to the book just coming out, but going forward we will follow the rules.

I'm not into the tournament scene are the top lists stacking lots of extra saves? Wondering who the nerf was directed at.

I don't believe it's anything specific or tournament breaking, its just removing annoying FNP stacking which could get to abusive levels depending on the army.

Ossiarchs with their 3+ rerolling mortek guard could get a 5+ FNP against mortal wounds on top of their 6+ Death Save against all wounds.

Phoenix guard could stack FNP saves, IIRC.

Skaven Verminlord Warpseer has a 4+ Armor Save, a 5+ FNP built in to the model, and a built-in reroll on all save rolls. Then he could take a 5+ FNP relic, and every wound dealt to the Warpseer needed to go through a 4+, a 4+, a 5+ then a 5+ save to do any damage. Mortal wounds would skip the first two 4+ saves, but still.

It's could also be a game speed thing. You could stack various bonuses and penalties on armor saves and they're still just one roll of the dice, maybe two with rerolls. Stack three negates on the same unit and that was three extra rolls every time.

I do think it's a rather unnecessary nerf to many units, one that was not compensated for in the points, and one that dramatically devalues a lot of shrug rules and leads to some thematically counter-intuitive results. The Shyish command ability, for instance, is now worthless for death armies, which puts them at a comparative disadvantage on their own home field terrain.

So while I'm not opposed to the rule in principle, a lot of existing shrug rules, and points values of units with shrugs, should maybe be rethought once GW gets some feedback from people playing with these rules.

At the worst it could get, before Erratas you could make an armor save on an Ossiarch lord, make a FNP save, then roll to pass the damage off to a unit of Immortis Guard. Then, the Immortis Guard could roll a 5+ FNP if it's a mortal wound, then roll their own Death Save. Thankfully, all of those things have been errata'd out.

I think it is more about cleaning things up and streamlining play in the middle/casual areas. It isn't really going to impact the top-tier tourney stuff anyways.

 Thadin wrote:
At the worst it could get, before Erratas you could make an armor save on an Ossiarch lord, make a FNP save, then roll to pass the damage off to a unit of Immortis Guard. Then, the Immortis Guard could roll a 5+ FNP if it's a mortal wound, then roll their own Death Save. Thankfully, all of those things have been errata'd out.

This is not accurate. The immortis bodyguard roll comes "before" you allocate the wound or mortal wound, and thus before the character they're protecting would be able to apply any shrugs/wards/fnp saves.

The old legions of nagash necromancer ability to bounce wounds away and battalion ability to shift wounds from nagash to morghasts (though the latter was too expensive to really see pitched battle play) used to work like you describe, but iirc both have been erratad to work like the ossiarch bodyguard rule, where redirecting wounds to other units comes before any ward saves.

The General's Handbook Errata and Designers' Commentary have been posted on Warhammer Community.

Thanks for the heads up Ghaz!

Edit: Summoned units do not have a battlefield role, good to know.

What do you mean they don't have a role?

They won't count as battleline, leader, behemoth, etc for any effects/rules that may require it. So, if a mission says only Battleline units can hold a point, you can't summon plaguebearers and hold that point even though they are Battleline when written onto your list.

Cool thanks for the heads up.