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Bear in mind Ninth it may be the only way to play FEC. Not the only way to play period. Most of the hordes don't get enough advantage or were things people were running already (looking at skeletons, tzaangor, and moonclan). Ironjawz, Sylvaneth, Overlords, Bonesplittaz, and quite a few others will do fine without hordes. They just screwed the pooch on the FEC. Bumping out character costs and one of our 3 units cost while only discounting ghouls at 40 and increasing our restore battalion essentially forces you into a horde competitively.

Then again FEC wasn't in the greatest place not playing 90+ ghouls already anyway so it's not a massive shift for them. More I, and I think wayniac, were hoping for a change that made non-horde more viable.

Non-horde FEC was perfectly viable; a guy at my flgs has done quite well spamming horrors for instance. Keep in mind that a balanced AoS army will not be tournament viable. I'll have to take a look at the book and the allegiance abilities before I form an opinion, the artifacts and command traits can (and do) make a huge difference to an army's performance.

What I do think, is that you won't see 40 ghouls. 30 suffices just enough and is cheaper; the discount for max size IMHO only matters when the max size is worth taking.

King on Terrorgiest
Haunter Courtier
Ghast Courtier
6 Horrors
30 Ghouls
30 Ghouls
30 Ghouls
Ghoul Patrol

still fits into a 2k list, and is basically the same army as before with extras. or not take Ghoul Patrol and ally in a necromancer. It doesn't really change the army a lot, and does nothing to fix the main issue with the army which is a handful of easy-to-kill characters that are the lynchpin.

If there aren't command abilities/artifacts to help mitigate that it would be very disappointing.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
If there aren't command abilities/artifacts to help mitigate that it would be very disappointing.

Well we have seen the delusion abilities (just need confirmation what Feeding Frenzy is). So hopefully there will be an artifact or command trait.

All the factions with allegiance get their own lists of command traits and artifacts, FEC will too. Artifacts would be the best place for some survivibility stuff.

From War of Sigmar:

So got a look at most of the points... I'm disappointed. Even from GW, I expected better than this. Grundstock thunderers and all of the Kharadron battalions are now so bad as to be borderline unusable while the most OP thing (khemist) stays the same, stormfiends did not get a points increase, heralds of nurgle are still garbage, and plaguebearers got a buff they didnt need. Just to mention a few things from what I play.

I am still very happy with how the implimented allies though, and that they are bringing in so many new allegiance abilities. Hoping my excitement for the latter wont be dampened by poor trait/artifact balancing.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
So got a look at most of the points... I'm disappointed. Even from GW, I expected better than this. Grundstock thunderers and all of the Kharadron battalions are now so bad as to be borderline unusable while the most OP thing (khemist) stays the same, stormfiends did not get a points increase, heralds of nurgle are still garbage, and plaguebearers got a buff they didnt need. Just to mention a few things from what I play.

This is one of the things that I was worried about with regards to external playtesters.

Sometimes you get good ones who make valuable contributions...sometimes you get stuff that makes no sense at all.

Part of it is that they seem to be listening to the top 1% of competitive tournament players (SCGT people and friends) and making changes based on that for ALL of Matched Play, instead of doing something like dividing Matched Play into a second, stricter set of rules (let's call it "Competitive Matched Play") where that sort of stuff is helpful to reel in the egregious tournament lists without screwing over everyone who uses matched play. They are IMHO listening to the wrong type of people, in part because it seems like they designed matched play specifically for those people and don't seem to get that it affects the majority of the game.

GW seems to think, and this goes for 40k too (substitute "SCGT people and friends" with "ITC people and friends"), that if you're using matched play at all, it's in a competitive tournament-type event, when in fact I'd wager that matched play is the most common playstyle in both games for both casual and competitive games.

So what are you seeing is changes that might be suited for the highest level of tournament play being applied in a large swathe to just affect most of the game. My group is already talking about ignoring GH2017 and playing with the points in the older book.

That doesn't even fit though, because plenty of the changes make even less sense in a competitive environment. The massive unit rule as a whole isn't too bad for casual play where the impracticality of abusing it will put people off, verses the tournament scene where it can be heavily abused. The Kharadron changes don't make sense in the tournament scene either, since khemists are far more abused than thunderers. And so on. I get the distinct sense that, like Kan said, the playtesters simply did not do a very good job at all.

Also fwiw... If you are looking to house rule better points PPC is still being kept current.

Edit: Ran the numbers and Skryrefyre 2017 is a go! Less three warpfire teams and plus a warp lightning cannon, but still a fair ways into the 'broken cheese' category.

That reminds me. I am going to be knee deep in spreadsheets updating my azyr point scores for the next couple of weeks.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
So got a look at most of the points... I'm disappointed. Even from GW, I expected better than this. Grundstock thunderers and all of the Kharadron battalions are now so bad as to be borderline unusable while the most OP thing (khemist) stays the same, stormfiends did not get a points increase, heralds of nurgle are still garbage, and plaguebearers got a buff they didnt need. Just to mention a few things from what I play.

I am still very happy with how the implimented allies though, and that they are bringing in so many new allegiance abilities. Hoping my excitement for the latter wont be dampened by poor trait/artifact balancing.

But as 80%-90% of all units got cheaper isn't staying at the same pts the same as point increase in that case? Not that we will have a balanced game now with these pts,..

80-90% of the units got cheaper? I don't know who told you that but they made it up, that's not even remotely true.

Overall I actually have a lot more faith in the aos playtesting vs. The 40k US testing. At least they actually the play the game. Only one play test group in the US had a playtesting that was actually actively engaged at a high level for competition 40k and so we got daemons, guard, storm ravens, and others....

I also feel like the more I'm running numbers the more I'm liking my ironjawz /bonesplitter list post changes. My sylvaneth lose just 3 hunters and are still one drop. My prospective KO list feels solid but it wasn't using battalions anyway. I find my new lists splitting between horde and non horde. Lizards & Gor are horde. Ironjawz and sylvaneth are middle road unit size wise.

I'm excited to see the how things develop

I think you have a good point that the units of ironjawz and sylvaneth saw good changes, particularly the latter is in a better place now. Bonesplittaz already had the best set of point costs (balance-wise) in the game IMO, kunnin rukk was the only problem they ever had and even then just arrow boyz shooting within it. So I'm glad they didn't do anything significant to the units (afaik, I haven't taken a close look yet).

KO aren't really hurt by the new points beyond thunderers, because all KO cheese revolves around the khemist and he stayed where he was. That said, from a balance perspective the changes are simply incompetent. The battalions that only saw limited use more or less doubled in cost, thunderers got a warscroll change to bring them down to 100 points in effectiveness but then had their points increased to what it should have been with the previous mortar-spam loadout. So all battalions and one of the army's two infantry options are now unusable at anything resembling serious play. On top of all this the clear problem model (that can easily be fixed by an errata to 'this ability doesn't stack') sees no changes at all. It's very poorly done and makes me think the playtesters didn't even test KO for whatever reason. I do have hopes that the khemist will be errata'd to not stack, at least.

Ultimately I too am excited to see how things develop, even knowing for some of that I'll be rolling my eyes.

Stormfiends don't need a points increase if Sayl is nerfed into oblivion. So it's up to FW on that one.

edit: wait they can tunnel can't they? -_- jesus christ

They are a bit strong for 300 points. While expensive they don't really have a weak spot; they shoot, they fight, they have decent saves, and have good wounds count. But more importantly, the warpfire projector version is just strong. Pick a target within 8" to take 2d3 mortal wounds to the face, for each stormfiend. It's a very consistent, reliable output of ~12 mortals every shooting phase that require no hit roll or analogous roll... they just do it. Since all equipment options cost the same, GW should assume that the best one will be taken when assigning costs.

Stormfiends in Azyr (my Azyr) rate as top of the game in both damage output and defense, but yes their points are expensive. Their offensive capabilities are a bit much for their points but their defensive rating is a bit lower for their points, so to me its fairly even, though a minor raise in points I think would be good ... particularly as GW in their infinite wisdom decided to make them battleline.

How are the dispossesed and Fyreslayers looking, did any of their battleline units drop in points?

 Madmatt wrote:
How are the dispossesed and Fyreslayers looking, did any of their battleline units drop in points?

Yes, thank goodness. And hammerers are battleline with dispossessed allegiance.

I just got my digital copy. Looking through it now, and I see grunstok thunderers got a few big changes.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I think you have a good point that the units of ironjawz and sylvaneth saw good changes, particularly the latter is in a better place now. Bonesplittaz already had the best set of point costs (balance-wise) in the game IMO, kunnin rukk was the only problem they ever had and even then just arrow boyz shooting within it. So I'm glad they didn't do anything significant to the units (afaik, I haven't taken a close look yet).

KO aren't really hurt by the new points beyond thunderers, because all KO cheese revolves around the khemist and he stayed where he was. That said, from a balance perspective the changes are simply incompetent. The battalions that only saw limited use more or less doubled in cost, thunderers got a warscroll change to bring them down to 100 points in effectiveness but then had their points increased to what it should have been with the previous mortar-spam loadout. So all battalions and one of the army's two infantry options are now unusable at anything resembling serious play. On top of all this the clear problem model (that can easily be fixed by an errata to 'this ability doesn't stack') sees no changes at all. It's very poorly done and makes me think the playtesters didn't even test KO for whatever reason. I do have hopes that the khemist will be errata'd to not stack, at least.

Ultimately I too am excited to see how things develop, even knowing for some of that I'll be rolling my eyes.

Well, they did errata it so that it didn't stack, so there's that?

https://17890-presscdn-0-51-pagely.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/AoS_FAQ_Order_v1.2.pdf

They really only needed to make 2 of the changes they did to thunderers and khemists instead of everything at once. A single mortar at 36 inches would be fine. 5 mortars at 12 inches would have been fine. Single mortar at 12 with 100 point thunderers is cheap enough to still be worth it to use them. Etc etc. Making them 140 points, nerfing the mortar range, making them single weapons only, and then nerfing khemists which were mainly used to buff mortar thunderers..all of that is ridiculous overkill. And now the FAQ has also taken away the solid 3 damage from drill cannons which are hard enough to hit with as is.

Well, I sat down with this today.

Loving my Wanderers changes. Hopefully my Wild Riders get shields though.

So like where are the old dwarf units? Like grudge thrower and Ungrim? They not part of the new book?

 Rezyn wrote:
So like where are the old dwarf units? Like grudge thrower and Ungrim? They not part of the new book?

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/08/25/new-and-updated-faqs-forge-world-warscrolls-and-compendium-pdfsgw-homepage-post-1/

The Grudge Thrower is right here. Ungrim is now "Unforged or Warden King"

So they removed the dispossessed keyword. Wow. So does this break my allegiance since "dwarfs" aren't listed as an ally? Seems ridiculous.

It brings you back to grand alliance order. All the "legacy" things had their keywords removed and can't be taken as allies any longer.

So the leaked points there were going around were not the final versions. I have looked through the book and some things are different. For starters, the Khemist went up to 140 instead of Thunderers (whew!).

I looked at FEC and their allegiance, I would definitely say any freaking out was premature since they are in a stronger place now than they were before. They still get deathless minions (though it's been nerfed to 6") AND get their delusions and unique tables (which are pretty good) on top of that. Only Horrors, GK on foot and and GK on Dragon got small increases, and even their battalion increases are more mild than other armies. Meanwhile unridden terrorgheists and dragons went down by a small amount, as did max size ghoul units.

My favorite delusion is the one that gives all non-general heroes re roll hits of 1. Great for having a courtier general unlocking extra battleline while a mounted GK tears up stuff in the front.