Running thoughts as I skim through:
* I think I agree with everything Vict said.
* A lot of these abilities/rules are a stack of rules in a trench coat. I'd probably try to streamline a few things.
* Feels like you're stacking a *lot* of reserves/charge buffs. Like, easily making this army the best at charging out of reserves in the game. Which is going to make it hard to balance things because you have to assume people will be using a given unit in a way that leaves them with minimal exposure to shooting before getting into melee.
* Gorelord alpha's special abilities could probably be rewritten to be significantly less wordy. 10th edition also generally steers away from aura abilities.
Man-ripper axes: This weapon has [SUSTAINED HITS 1] and [PRECISION]. Each time
an attack is allocated to a CHARACTER model, improve this weapon’s AP by 1 (to AP -2).
^This rule is fiddly and unlikely to come up much. If attacks are being assigned to a character, he's probably about to die unless it's someone plinking away at him with a precision weapon. And the fact that we're only talking about a max improvement of 1 (from
AP-1 to
AP-2) makes the "each time" wording kind of weird. I'd just drop this rule entirely
tbh. It's low-impact and kind of clunky to track. Make his weapons
AP-1 or
AP-2 and price accordingly.
That said, even with this guy's poor save in mind, fights first, precision, a decent melee weapon, and +1 to-hit/wound are all pretty potent buffs. I'd keep an eye on this guy as possibly needing to cost more points.
* Bloodbull - Juggernaut: His Alpha Charge rule is cute but probably not impactful enough to justify itself. I'd either buff it (and up points accordingly) or just drop it to help streamline. His
3d6 (drop the lowest) charge ability is super strong, especially combined with all the other charge buffs in this army.
I feel like you're kind of double or triple-dipping on the charge buffs. Generally you want to be really conservative with being able to stack lots of buffs onto the same kind of roll. It's easy for things to get out of hand quickly. This guy almost just lets you teleport straight from reserves into combat.
* Warp Vox Auger - Probably fine. Advance + charge is a powerful ability (especially when combined with something like the juggernaught's
3d6 charge), but this guy doesn't really do anything else.
*Tempest Ogryn Psyker - Seems fine at a glance. Looks easy enough to kill. Hits hard enough to be worthwhile. Abilities seem reasonable.
* Warpspawn - Seems fine. Mathematically always better to use the special movement rule than not unless you're already close enough that you'd rather have the safe movement before going for a charge.
FNP 6+ tends to be annoying and not worth the time to resolve in my experience, but
YMMV.
* Rift Hounds - I *think* fine? It feels weird for them to be chonky enough to have W2 but to have such low damage output. 100 points worth of these guys kills something like 2 guardsmen. But if the point of them is to just scout a unit forward and tie an enemy up in melee on turn 1, they probably do that job reasonably well. I might be tempted to change the squad size to 5-10 models both to make them more disposable and to make it so the distraction tarpit unit maxes out at 20 wounds instead of 40.
* Petrifier Drake: The unit as a whoel works as a cheap, mobile action monkey that can bully non-melee
meq units or light vehicles. The petrifying gaze ability seems super niche (most units don't have fights first to lose in the first place), and the timing doesn't work. If you're using the ability in your shooting phase and it lasts until the end of the turn, then the target probably won't be moving, advancing, or charging by the time the effect wears off barring some super niche special rules/strats.I like the concept, but I'd redo this rule to be more generally useful.
* Razorboar - Seems fine. Cheap, useful little package.
*Hoofborn Raiders - These guys feel weird. Maybe they're actually fine in an unconventional way given all the little things they have going for them? At a glance, they're pretty expensive. They have T5 and W2, but
Sv 5+ means they're going to take a lot of casualties relatively easily; especially if your opponent has S5+ guns. It wouldn't take a lot of heavy bolters to mulch these guys. Their S6 D2 attacks are okay on the charge, but not *amazing*. 5 of these guys land 15 hits > 5 wounds > 2.5 failed saves against marines for 2-3 dead marines plus *maybe* 1 or 2 more dead from their shooting and extra attacks. Anti-mounted 4+ is a really weird rule because most mounted units are already being wounded on a 4+ or better by S6 as-is, and also "mounted" is a semi-rare type of unit to be facing in the first place.
So they're in this weird place where they're expensive enough that you have to kill something somewhat expensive for them to be worth it. So you really need your opponent to have an exposed unit that is both expensive but also relatively vulnerable to these guys' attacks. And then the once per battle rule is very nice to have, but makes it hard to wrap your head around their defense. Like, sure, you'll charge your target of choice and take relatively few casualties in your own fight phase, but then your opponent will presumably just wreck you on their own turn regardless of whether or not you wiped out the thing you charged.
Basically, they're set up like they want to be a suicide missile, but they're too expensive and too niche in their preferred targets for them to really fill that role. I'd either drop some stuff and make them cheaper, or rework their offense to be a bit better against a wider variety of targets. They kind of remind me of Shining Spears who have similar issues but are better at tackling infantry with more than 2 wounds and can also tackle vehicles.
* Tempest Ogryn - Calling these guys monsters feels a little iffy given that T7 W4 is also a custodes statline, but it could go either way. These guys kind of nerf the ogryn psyker because they make the squad's majority Toughness lower than his until enough of the squad is dead. In general, you want to avoid mixed Toughness situations like this because it tends to screw over the model that pays for higher toughness.
Counter-Assault Reflexes seems like a feelsbad rule and doesn't make much fluff sense to me unless there's something I'm missing. The game is full of big beefy boys, and they generally aren't able to out-fights-first my howling banshees or daemonettes or what have you. And it's going to feel bad when you're counting on that rule to save them and you fail the 4+ roll. Overall, I think the basic bones of the unit are fine though. Their offense and durability seem reasonable for the price.
*Iron horn Reavers - The -1` to-wound rule is interesting. Seems like these guys are probably fine. And if not, they're probably balanceable with points adjustments.
* Bullhorn Brutes - You can probably take off the mortal wound cap If you manage to roll 5 or more 5+ on a 6 model squad, the dice gods clearly wanted you to have those mortal wounds. Also, this ability existing makes the Bloodbull Juggernaut's mortal wound ability seem redundant.
New Rider ability doesn't work; those weapons are already
AP-3.
Overall, the offense of this unit feels pretty high compared to other units, but I'm not sure if it's broken. If it proves to be too much in testing, just up the points cost or delete some of the buffs to the melee weapons.
* Marauders: Just delete Pack Overrun. It's basically an anti-fights-first ability. Which is both pretty niche and pretty annoying if it works. You also probably don't have to specify "once per battle round" unless there's a way for these guys to charge multiple times per round.
* Runt Stalkers: Edge Skulkers is fun. I like the *idea* of Hidden Volley, but it simultaneously feels like too much and too little. 12" means it's very hard to *not* be in range of this ability. Only doing mortals on 6s with up to 6 dice per unit means that the ability usually won't do much at all making it feel not worth the time it takes to roll. Maybe shrink the range and make the ability more consistent? Like 6" range and then roll a
d6. On a 2+ inflict d3 mortals, on a 6 inflict 3. Something like that. Gives it more counterplay and lets it do *something* more reliably.
Agree that giving
AP to bows and arrows feels weird. I'd remove the
AP. My approach to bows with my exodite rules is to give them a weak indirect fire profile to represent them shooting volleys over terrain. Anti-infantry 4+ to represent poison could also work, but this unit's main strength is just being a cheap action monkey, I think.
Runt Thralls - Seem fine. Is a little weird that your'e discouraged from taking multiple horde style units because only one of them per turn gets to use the special ability. Could consider dropping sustained hits purely to speed up resolving the unit's attacks. These guys aren't really meant to be dealing much damage anyway, right?
* Fellhoof's Despoilers: I'm failing to see the point of these guys. They seem to bring less bodies and less offense to the table than other units. Marauders cost fewer points and hit harder and harder to remove. The only gimmick I see here is that you can gamble on battleshocking an enemy that specifically has a stratagem it wants to use in your shooting/charge/fight phase. (Because after that, they become unbattleshocked in the enemy turn).
* Warp Colossus: It's going to feel bad rolling a 1 on the damage for Desecrated rubble after getting in range, hitting on a 5+, and getting past enemy armor. Just make it D3 or at least D2.
Catastrophic Collapse feels like it should just be Deadly Demise. Maybe Deadly Demise that's more likely to go off. Also, guaranteed mortal wounds are kind of a no-no in 10th. Should probably have a die roll of some kind on this. If you just make it Deadly Demise that goes off on a 2+ or 3+ or whatever, they you're covered.
Also, starting to feel like you may have gone to the mortal wound well a little too often. You've got quite a few sources of them in here.
* Tri-Maw Chimera: Personally, I don't think Torrent weapons necessarily *need* a randomized number of attacks, but they usually have them.Did you mean A6 or Ad6?
I don't like the thricefold savagery rule. This army already has a lot of effects that require you check and recalculate things at the start of the fight phase, and randomly having 0-3 extra attacks isn't really cinematic enough to warrant the extra busy work. Just give the maw Sustained Hits or something if you must. I'd rather see something more interesting in the special rule slot.
Null-Gorge Behemoth: Feels janky. First, I'm not sure if the wording plays nicely with all psychic abilities in the game. I feel like at least a few are just always passively doing their thing rather than something that you "activate." Second, it's going to create some weird interactions. Preventing something like a warlock conclave from using psychic attacks in the fight phase means that they don't get to fight at all because their only melee weapons are psychic weapons. Third, the obnus
AP vs psykers is probably fine but will sometimes do nothing. Any aeldari or daemon psyker is probably using an invuln rather than an armor save. Also, why is this guy so much better at throwing rocks than the colossus? Overall, nothing wrong with the basic idea of an anti-psychic monster, but you're making a lot of assumptions about the psychic powers/units your opponent will have.
Also, this is another unit that does mortal wounds.
Maw-Titan: Swallow Whole is super feelsbad character sniping. Titan Eater seems unnecessary; just up the stats of its weapons. Kind of seems like you wanted a Sweep and Strike profile here? Rampaging Colossus is another mortal wounds rule...
Babblefiend: Damage values of d3 are usually just annoying unless your goal is to make him sometimes fail to kill a marine after hitting, wounding, and getting through the marine's save.
Aura of Madness seems wonky to me. It's basically a guaranteed flat 3 mortal wounds vs a lot of units. It's also yet another form of mortal wound generation.
*Gore Cart: More mortal wounds.
Feels redundant with other options. Maybe ditch the mortal wounds and give it a special rule that helps it find a niche?
* Rift Pylons: Capping the
AP buff at -3 feels weird because going from
AP-3 to
AP-4 is generally a lot less useful than going from like, -1 to -2. If you're already at -3, you're ignoring the armor of a lot of units, and marines saving on a 6+ probably isn't that big a deal.
The whole "pick two if you're close to the middle, but not on turn 1" thing feels like it's a couple of layers too complicated. I'd just drop that part for simplicity's sake.
Granting cover is cool. Ignoring Ignores Cover is kind of feelsbad. If your opponent invest in Ignores Cover, then just turning off their strat or character special ability or whatever feels kind of lame.
OVERALL TAKEAWAYS:
* You kind of went crazy with all the charge bonuses, mortal wound rules, and mele profiles that contextually change in the fight phase. I'd go through and remove/replace a bunch of these.
* A lot of your melee profiles started to feel kind of same-y. Which is potentially a problem if it means that you'll never take certain units because other units do their jobs but better.
* I feel like you have about twice as many rules as you should in a lot of places. Detachment rules, number of special abilities on a datasheet, etc.
While there are exceptions, this army seems to be extremely reliant on just moving straight at the enemy and charging, and that's a hard playstyle to balance and make fun. A lot of your games are basically going to boil down to statchecks and whether or not your opponent has cheap speed bumps to feed you.
