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Elephant in the room is that both those armies have turned out to be clearly OP.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Elephant in the room is that both those armies have turned out to be clearly OP.

Skaven have some tough stuff but I don't yet know if they are into OP territory; at least when comparing to other Battletome armies. I think being a bigger range some of the combos will take time to filter into common use and to get spotted.

Flesheaters have two areas where they are predicted to be OP - one with their battleline dragons and the other with their summoning tricks with the new Throne and Regent model. Both of which would be fairly easy to fix through an Errata/FAQ document since they are quite clear and easy to spot areas of power.


Of course I'd wager we've a while before any update document and before we've any real hard data on if they are OP or not in practice and not just in theory .

The goblin book seems to me to be perfect. Very fun, not busted.

The skaven and FEC books I'd agree are definitely for the tournament gamer by the tournament gamer. From a narrative sense if you play either of these forces now you will need to actively tone it down against casuals or narrative guys playing for fun lists.

FEC have three problems IMO; the Archregent is massively OP and the throne combo makes it worse, feeding feenzy is borderline to start with and combined with the above is an issue, and the terrorgheist was made too strong by changing it from wound rolls doing mortals to hit rolls, doubling their MW putput.

The Skaven just have a huge number of units that are too strong and a few that are among the most OP things matched play has seen ever.

Doesn't feeding frenzy only work on a unit once per game though? Getting to attack again is super strong, but it's limited

The wording can be read that way, but I do not believe that is the correct interpretation. Would be quite happy to be wrong though.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Anyways, to put my math where my mouth is...

A 40-man plague monk unit (double blades) charges. With 25mm bases they can fight in two ranks, so it is reasonable to say they get 20 models in melee range. Going with just the benefits the unit has for showing up:

+1 to hit for being 20 or more models
+1 to wound for being 30 or more models
+1 attack for charging (3 attacks per)
Re-roll hits for dual blades
6s to hit* have rend -1 from music
6s to wound* do an extra damage from banner

*Imagine how much fun it will be to keep track of those two abilities.

It works out to 44.44 damage mostly at no rend (a quarter of it is rend -1), so about 31 wounds against a 5+ save or about 24 against a 4+ save. Off a 240-point unit that has 40 wounds to chew through and is probably outnumbering you enough to capture objectives even if you're standing on them. With no buffs.

 Skimask Mohawk wrote:
Doesn't feeding frenzy only work on a unit once per game though? Getting to attack again is super strong, but it's limited

Once per phase, same as most buffs.

I do think that FEC are going to be A tier. Although most of the people you see are doing monster mash.

I am planning to experiment with Flayers (Deadwatch) and Horrors (Abattoir) as I like both of those, with a big blob of ghouls to hold the line.

Waiting for my Archregent, I had to find one on eBay and ended up paying with shipping $40 (so about the same as a normal clampack + taxes) since I already have a sizable FEC army so didn't need to buy the box itself.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Skimask Mohawk wrote:
Doesn't feeding frenzy only work on a unit once per game though? Getting to attack again is super strong, but it's limited

Once per phase, same as most buffs.

Look at the wording:

"you can use this command ability after a friendly flesh eater courts unit has fought in the combat phase for the first time and is wholly within 12"....."

The condition is fighting in the combat phase for the first time; theres no specifying that it's the first time each phase, just the first time. Raw, it means that you can only use it once per unit. Rai is ambiguous because of the strength and wonky wording.

And to be clear, I want to be able to use it every phase, but I can't possibly use it like that in good faith

Since I'd expect it to be as powerful as they can make it, I expect thiis issue to be FAQ'd post-haste to clarify.

I could get SC: Stormcast Vanguard for a good deal, I like all the miniatures in it. I think SCE have the coolest creatures (so far), however after Sequitors and Evocators... is there a point?

I'd likely try to use various models rather than dedicated to a particular chamber, I don't have a competitive meta but I do dislike having redundant models in the backlog.

 Skimask Mohawk wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Skimask Mohawk wrote:
Doesn't feeding frenzy only work on a unit once per game though? Getting to attack again is super strong, but it's limited

Once per phase, same as most buffs.

Look at the wording:

"you can use this command ability after a friendly flesh eater courts unit has fought in the combat phase for the first time and is wholly within 12"....."

The condition is fighting in the combat phase for the first time; theres no specifying that it's the first time each phase, just the first time. Raw, it means that you can only use it once per unit. Rai is ambiguous because of the strength and wonky wording.

And to be clear, I want to be able to use it every phase, but I can't possibly use it like that in good faith

And look at the wording you omitted: "You cannot pick the same unit to benefit from this ability more than once per phase."

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Skimask Mohawk wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Skimask Mohawk wrote:
Doesn't feeding frenzy only work on a unit once per game though? Getting to attack again is super strong, but it's limited

Once per phase, same as most buffs.

Look at the wording:

"you can use this command ability after a friendly flesh eater courts unit has fought in the combat phase for the first time and is wholly within 12"....."

The condition is fighting in the combat phase for the first time; theres no specifying that it's the first time each phase, just the first time. Raw, it means that you can only use it once per unit. Rai is ambiguous because of the strength and wonky wording.

And to be clear, I want to be able to use it every phase, but I can't possibly use it like that in good faith

And look at the wording you omitted: "You cannot pick the same unit to benefit from this ability more than once per phase."

It still doesn't grant permission to refresh having fought in the combat phase. As I said, intent is ambiguous due to the terrible wording, but RaW there's only ever one first time in that sentence

Only if you take "the combat phase" to mean "any combat phase" and not "a given combat phase". RAW can go either way and RAI is extremely clear. But they will FAQ it regardless.

I'll be glad when they do; rehashing dakka arguments doesnt carry over too well with opponents

Nnnnope.

So the other day I stumbled on a funny way of characterizing the way point costs work in AoS; buying a car. Now cars have a nice base price they like to advertise but to get upgrades like rear view cameras, automatic braking, iphone interfacing, hands free links, and whatnot it costs extra. Which is cool, because people can buy the options they want. But not in AoS. In AoS you pay for all those upgrades whether you wanted them or not. Sure they may be nice to have, but if you wanted to have a cheaper car without those fancy extras? You can have that, obviously! Just pay for the upgrades anyways.

In fairness that's mostly how old fantasy worked too for regular units. There was traditionally very few if no upgrades for units beyond perhaps one or two weapon choices (and I think those only started to come in within the last years as GW got more weapons and parts on kits and started doing duel kits and the like - though even then it was more likely alternate weapons made a different unit entirely not just a weapon swap).

The heroes had a lot more choices, indeed quite a wide variety, almost like a small RPG toolkit of choices to make. Spells and items and scrolls and potions and the like.

Not true in 5th edition, 6th edition, or even 7th edition.

I remember when skeleton warriors had loads of options. Light armor, medium armor, heavy armor skeletons, halberds, swords, shields, spears, pikes, the standard command upgrades.

Units with regular weapons or no shields were always cheaper; in AoS there are units which can have (and thus pay for) both great weapons and shields with the benefits of both. They all have monkey grip I guess! And there was never absurdity of paying for a mount you did not have, or a monster paying for a rider it did not have. Remember how phoenixes used to be an option on their own? Luminarks?

auticus wrote:
Not true in 5th edition, 6th edition, or even 7th edition.

I remember when skeleton warriors had loads of options. Light armor, medium armor, heavy armor skeletons, halberds, swords, shields, spears, pikes, the standard command upgrades.

hmm I might be miss remembering - or wait I'm probably thinking of WYSIWYG! Ergo how in 40K many upgrades had parts in the sprue for them (even if the part, once fitted, was often near invisible) whilst Warhammer models were less heavily detailed to their upgrades save for mounts and leaders.


And I hope pheonix become independent takes again; heck they could do with bringing back the eagles in general, I'd love to see the great eagles of today modelled by GW and also the surfing eagle riders from the old WE because they could look really great with the new methods GW uses.

They did go and price Enlightened on foot and on discs separately, which I was/am happy about and hope it will happen for other things too.

I know for sure the old 6th ed tomb kings had very few options compared to what auticus described.

Skellies were hand weapon with shield, spear and light armour options.

Heavy cav (the unit not their actual effect lol) had shield and light armour options.

Tomb guard iirc had no options, or shields at the very most.

They used to sell blisters of heavily armored skeletons that came with sword and shield arms and halberd arms.

I still have them because they are the only halberd armed skeleton models short of tomb guard (the metal ones) that I have run across.

Command options were always option and as they cost points there was reason for not simply taking all.

High elf silver helms could be from semi light cavalry to medium cavalry to heavy cavalry.

Chaos warriors had time they could have 2 different armour + variety of weapons + optionally even shield. If you had 2 handed weapon or halberd it was just for shooting. Well you could also use hw+shield in h2h but then didn't get 2hw or halberd bonus so generally if you had one of the two shield was hardly automatic choice.

Well chaos warriors in combat with hand weapon shield were 2+ back in the day. So if you got charged by a unit that put out a high volume of relatively low sour modifying attacks you'd go with hand weapon shield over a more offensive option.

And auticus, not saying you're wrong about the models or options existing, just that it wasnt post tomb kings and vampire counts

Undead book:
Skeleteons came with swords. Could replace swords with spears or halberds (for points). Could add a shield. Could add light armor or heavy armor.

First Vampire counts book (1999):
Skeletons came with swords and shields. Could replace swords with spears. Could add light armor.

Tomb Kings was 2003 and skeletons came with swords and shields and they could replace swords with spears and add light armor (basically same entry as VC book)

Then over the years they started pairing back options to what we have today.

The ultimate -point- is that units without upgrades were always less than units which had them, because duh. AoS says you pay for the upgrade wether you want it or not, so what used to be options effectively become mandatory and it reduces the variety in the game. This is not variety as in 'invisible' selections like artifacts or battalions but real WYSIWYG stuff that is in kits GW are still selling for armies that are supported. While some units have a more complex situation there are a decent number which could just have two costs for two options and thus have two units/ways to run a unit rather than one. As the most classic example, Judicators have a crossbow option that is never used for being worse than the bow option.

The other alternative would be to adjust equipment so it has a trade off (a shield upgrade, for example, could come at the cost of reduced movement speed). And/or split warscrolls entirely, which may need to be done for some things like the VLoZD.

Many items do have tradeoffs tho? I haven't seen many shields that don't reduce your offense.

Sword&board usually grants 6+ shrug or +1 save, dual wielding grants +1 to hit or re-roll 1s and great weapons have better wound or rend.

It might vary on army. With armies like Skaven the taking of a shield is presented as optional, yet it confers no negative and only a positive to taking it. So there's really no reason not to take the shields (model wise that's a good thing otherwise you've a whole army holding back a punch pose)