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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?