Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Rihgu wrote:
I think that's kind of the point. It's very rare to run an army of entirely battleline units outside of things like... Sons of Behemat, which are mostly Battleline by technicality. Even factions that shift battleline rarely skew that hard into it besides obvious memes like "Stegageddon".

13 or something Battleline Gunhaulers was an option for KO - would that *not* be a niche skew list?

And even stegagedon usually had several(like 1/3 army) of non-battleline.

All battleline is just another skew over tac army.

All this is just kinda proving my point...

Reavers(the other Namarti unit) were a "Battleline If..." unit, that just happened to be Battleline if you ran a thematically Mor'phann army because Soulrenders had the Isharaan keyword.

But sure. Just keep telling me it was a "skew" army. You're welcome to your opinions and viewpoint. I'm flatout telling you that while yeah, it wasn't trashtier as an army it lacked any of the interesting options that other armies have. I'm flatout telling you that there was no "fun" in "functional" there.

 Kanluwen wrote:
All this is just kinda proving my point...

Reavers(the other Namarti unit) were a "Battleline If..." unit, that just happened to be Battleline if you ran a thematically Mor'phann army because Soulrenders had the Isharaan keyword.

But sure. Just keep telling me it was a "skew" army. You're welcome to your opinions and viewpoint. I'm flatout telling you that while yeah, it wasn't trashtier as an army it lacked any of the interesting options that other armies have. I'm flatout telling you that there was no "fun" in "functional" there.

Yeah, it sounds boring as Hell to build, paint, & play. I mean, don't most people play this army because of the cool looking flying sharks/turtles/eels etc.?

Honestly, I can't say why anyone else got into it.

I got into it because I enjoyed the lore and things like the Aspect of the Storm, which wasn't even really a good thing until BR: Morathi dropped with its update to Idoneth because of how the Aspect of the Sea(the other build) worked.

Eels basically got deemed OP early on and they definitely got a bandwagon going, given that they were an easy "Battleline If" unit. Common list to see was named King+spear eels for the MW nonsense.

Basically? If you saw someone with sharks or an aspect, they were playing the army. If you saw someone with eels, they were playing the meta.

An army where all units (short heroes) are battleline IS a skew army save in niche cases like SoB. Like, focusing a build on namarti is one thing but taking nothing but namarti is going out of the way to make a weak list.

Also, YOU are not a body of data. You are one person. And you don't refute the point.

Yeah, the definition of what is a skew list is a list designed around only a single type of profile, typically in order to allow the entire army to make use of a particular buff aura or power, or operate at the same tempo, or present a unified defensive profile to the enemy.

That's what an all-namarti and namarti accessories army is. The fact theyre battleline is irrelevant, it's as much a skew list as king+eels, you aren't playing the army "More legitimately" than someone bringing nothing but king+eels, you're playing 1/5th of the army.

The only difference is you picked a bad 5th and the guy who picked king+eels picked what was on release the good 5th. That doesn't get you moral superiority or inferiority, but it does mean that it makes both of your opinions a little less relevant when it comes to "how idoneth deepkin play" generally compared to a balanced army build with some infantry, some cavalry, some support characters and maybe 1 leviadon/eiodolon.

If you want to say "Namarti and their support characters are uninteresting and could use a shakeup" i definitely definitely agree with you, they are the least interesting aspect of the army. There are lots of problems with them:

-Thralls have a big old W2-W3 shaped hole in their usefulness and 1" melee weapons on a min 10 squad on 32mms sucks bad. Also theyre fragile and slow and generally all it takes for an opponent to make their points back against them is for them to say "Unleash Hell"

-Reavers are the only dedicated ranged unit in the whole book but have such low effective range its basically meaningless to consider them as such. Guess that's what you get when you give a bow and arrow to a bunch of blind elves...

-Between Soulrenders, Lotann, Soulscryers, and Tidecasters all of them are just kind of "Generically bad at stuff" besides their one signature ability. None of them are even remotely scary in combat including, weirdly, the soulrender who supposedly is like a scary guy with his spooky stuff.

-Soulscryers might as well be "buy deep strike and +3" charge for 100pts" for all they do after you drop them in


A lot of that is because of Old Book Syndrome, like, Soulscryer is a priest but has no prayers, Tidecaster is a wizard with no endless spell options and no buff spells at all, so just kinda has 4 differnet ways to poop out a couple MWs in the hero phase, Soulrender...just, isn't anything, heck the book even predates Commands being particularly widespread so there's all of one command ability on the akhelian king IIRC.

The main reason that I dont rank it as really NEEEEDING a book above every other book out there is just, the army generally works, as a whole. When you put idoneth on the table, you get what they were going for, they play with that 'feeding frenzy' style and Tides still feels like a strong strategic and impactful mechanic.

There are armies out there that are just a MESS right now, like universally, in total, the army does not function in any kind of satisfying way. Idoneth falls more in the 'mediocre' side of things, and outside of being old, is basically functional.

That's nice, tell me exactly how my army feels to play. Not like I played Idoneth from their launch until deciding to backburner them.

Neither of us have commented on how your army feels to play. Your counterpoints keep getting more and more unreasonable in your attempt to justify your personal experience with a skew list as representative of the ENTIRE Idoneth army.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Neither of us have commented on how your army feels to play. Your counterpoints keep getting more and more unreasonable in your attempt to justify your personal experience with a skew list as representative of the ENTIRE Idoneth army.

So that we're clear, my statement was more to you than Scotsman. He at least is making an attempt to note things--and I guess I should clarify that this right here? This is the list I commonly would run:

With the exception of actually featuring the now defunct Namarti Corps WSB.

So maybe I should have said "predominantly Namarti", but the point still remains that what was an interesting and interactive list early on became something fast outpaced because of a core mechanic change that didn't get carried over to their book, despite an update.


And bluntly? I have Eels and a King. I've ran them alongside the Namarti. I have a full 5k or so of Idoneth that I'm just kinda sitting on right now since the army is far, far, far too swingy and reliant too much upon piecemeal. There is VERY little synergy between the different components of the army and people like yourself keep insisting that the book is "fine" or "functional" because there's a single list type that works.

That's great. That's not what I signed up for. I signed up for an army where everything is supposed to be part of a functional whole. I didn't start collecting to play Eels & Friends.

But hey. I have Lumineth. An army where the "functional" part is also "fun" at this point.

Yes; when you mean one thing it would be wise to say that thing, instead of saying something different. Expecting others to assume you mean something other than what you say is a bad idea in-person, let alone in text form.

 Kanluwen wrote:
*stares sadly out to the seas*

The one downside to being an Idoneth player is the constantly being told that the army "is fine" because of how eels work.

So that we're all on the same page, this was my completely unedited comment that started the whole thing.

Yeah, maybe I should have been more clear initially, but you and Scotsman immediately chose to (no pun intended) dive into attack mode. I don't tell you that your army is fine because of X/Y/Z, or imply that you need to shut up and just play it different to the way you want to play it.

 Kanluwen wrote:
All this is just kinda proving my point...

Reavers(the other Namarti unit) were a "Battleline If..." unit, that just happened to be Battleline if you ran a thematically Mor'phann army because Soulrenders had the Isharaan keyword.

But sure. Just keep telling me it was a "skew" army. You're welcome to your opinions and viewpoint. I'm flatout telling you that while yeah, it wasn't trashtier as an army it lacked any of the interesting options that other armies have. I'm flatout telling you that there was no "fun" in "functional" there.

Okay: How many units you are fielding with your army?

If it's basically everything one unit it's a skew unit.

All thrall is just as skew army as all eel army. Both skew on one unit. Whether or not it has battleline IS 100% IRRELEVANT ON WHETHER IT'S SKEW ARMY!

Allegiance: Gloomspite Gitz
- Grand Strategy:
- Triumphs:
Fungoid Cave-Shaman (95)
Fungoid Cave-Shaman (95)
20 x Stabbas (150)
- Pokin Spears & Moon Shields
20 x Stabbas (150)
- Pokin Spears & Moon Shields
20 x Stabbas (150)
- Pokin Spears & Moon Shields
20 x Stabbas (150)
- Pokin Spears & Moon Shields
20 x Stabbas (150)
- Pokin Spears & Moon Shields
20 x Stabbas (150)
- Pokin Spears & Moon Shields
20 x Stabbas (150)
- Pokin Spears & Moon Shields
20 x Stabbas (150)
- Pokin Spears & Moon Shields
20 x Stabbas (150)
- Pokin Spears & Moon Shields
20 x Stabbas (150)
- Pokin Spears & Moon Shields
20 x Stabbas (150)
- Pokin Spears & Moon Shields
20 x Stabbas (150)
- Pokin Spears & Moon Shields

Total: 1990 / 2000
Reinforced Units: 0 / 4
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 248
Drops: 14

100% battleline beyond 2 heroes. Nobody in their right mind would claim this isn't skew list though.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 the_scotsman wrote:

-Thralls have a big old W2-W3 shaped hole in their usefulness and 1" melee weapons on a min 10 squad on 32mms sucks bad. Also theyre fragile and slow and generally all it takes for an opponent to make their points back against them is for them to say "Unleash Hell"

Mind you those 10 can all get into combat at once.

Does require bit of careful positioning...but then again you are then being more efficient than aos2 single line was. If you wanted to optimize in aos2 you would use same formation as well.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
*stares sadly out to the seas*

The one downside to being an Idoneth player is the constantly being told that the army "is fine" because of how eels work.

So that we're all on the same page, this was my completely unedited comment that started the whole thing.

Yeah, maybe I should have been more clear initially, but you and Scotsman immediately chose to (no pun intended) dive into attack mode. I don't tell you that your army is fine because of X/Y/Z, or imply that you need to shut up and just play it different to the way you want to play it.

I'm not telling you that your personal army is fine, or that you need to change your personal army from the way you want to play it. We're in a thread titled "Next Battletome?" where we're discussing which armies will/should get new battletomes. My entire and only disagreement with you is on whether Idoneth are a top priority for an update with me personally - for me, they're not, and I'd rather see armies like Maggotkin, Gloomspite, Beasts of Chaos and Skaven go first because although Idoneth is out of date they dont have whole core mechanics that simply dont play nice with AOS 3.0 at all, like Gloomspite's heavy overreliance on stacking up modifiers that just dont stack anymore, or Skaven's core army trait based on a thing you're now only allowed to have 2-3 of in your entire army (big units)

Based on need, Gitz and BoC are definitely top of the list. Both of those books are just hopelessly out of date at this point and need total rewrites.

Nurgle is actually fine as a tome IMO, certainly better than say Khorne, where the lists that "work" are basically just using the Khorne allegiance to run STD units instead, with a few foot heroes and maybe a boomthirster.

Battletome: Blades of Khorne could be changed to Battletome: Bloodthirsters.

Battletome: Awakened Wyldwoods (we’ve fixed them proper this time…at least until the first FAQ)

My personal top new codex would be "Cities of Sigmar"...but I'll admit that's largely because I JUST started putting together an army for them.

Another top pick would be Kharadon Overlords, specifically with some new model support to really flesh them out as a faction (I'd love a steam-punk dreadnought!)