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 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I'm really waiting for people to realize how OP luminarks summoning balewind vortex's are. Or vortex cheese in general.

Doesn't matter in Matched.

I appreciate this post as a BIG find were those gryph-hounds 40 points of you cant port to my face without getting shot first I think those may be a must add moving forward.

They serve 2 function 1 safety from teleporting crazyness and cheapo point takers

AN'SHI wrote:
I appreciate this post as a BIG find were those gryph-hounds 40 points of you cant port to my face without getting shot first I think those may be a must add moving forward.

They serve 2 function 1 safety from teleporting crazyness and cheapo point takers

Yeap, Gryph Hounds are top notch. Sucks that you can only get them in the Lord-Castellant box, but that's work-aroundable.

You do need good shooting units to take advantage of them, though. They're not that great in Stormcast, where Judicators are good but not overly special, but they make great additions to Dwarves, Free Peoples, and Elves.

Requizen wrote:

AN'SHI wrote:
I appreciate this post as a BIG find were those gryph-hounds 40 points of you cant port to my face without getting shot first I think those may be a must add moving forward.

They serve 2 function 1 safety from teleporting crazyness and cheapo point takers

Yeap, Gryph Hounds are top notch. Sucks that you can only get them in the Lord-Castellant box, but that's work-aroundable.

You do need good shooting units to take advantage of them, though. They're not that great in Stormcast, where Judicators are good but not overly special, but they make great additions to Dwarves, Free Peoples, and Elves.

You can get them with excelsior war priest also he might be a little cheaper

Requizen wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I'm really waiting for people to realize how OP luminarks summoning balewind vortex's are. Or vortex cheese in general.

Doesn't matter in Matched.

As per the FAQ, summoned terrain pieces cost no points. Considering there is no rule in matched play which prevents use of the balewind vortex warscroll, it very much does matter. Unless there was another bit I missed out on.

Any TO in their right mind will ban Balewind vortexes. A free OP terrain piece that is OOP is the lamest thing possible haha

Requizen wrote:

AN'SHI wrote:
I appreciate this post as a BIG find were those gryph-hounds 40 points of you cant port to my face without getting shot first I think those may be a must add moving forward.

They serve 2 function 1 safety from teleporting crazyness and cheapo point takers

Yeap, Gryph Hounds are top notch. Sucks that you can only get them in the Lord-Castellant box, but that's work-aroundable.

You do need good shooting units to take advantage of them, though. They're not that great in Stormcast, where Judicators are good but not overly special, but they make great additions to Dwarves, Free Peoples, and Elves.

some shooting troop in Stromcast is also amazing like Prosecutors wit jevelin.

Also a lot of useful Stormcast units get shooting sub-weapons that is powerful and you might underestimate. Especially for the Drocoth riders, each of them can popup 1~2MW in shooting phase.

 Bottle wrote:
Any TO in their right mind will ban Balewind vortexes. A free OP terrain piece that is OOP is the lamest thing possible haha

IMO any TO in their right mind wouldn't run uncomped GHB!

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

Requizen wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I'm really waiting for people to realize how OP luminarks summoning balewind vortex's are. Or vortex cheese in general.

Doesn't matter in Matched.

As per the FAQ, summoned terrain pieces cost no points. Considering there is no rule in matched play which prevents use of the balewind vortex warscroll, it very much does matter. Unless there was another bit I missed out on.

Hm, so it is. I was working off of the previous statement "if it doesn't have points you can't bring it", but specific > general. Sounds a bit too strong, but we'll see how many people actually use it (especially if people enforce actual model rules).

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
Any TO in their right mind will ban Balewind vortexes. A free OP terrain piece that is OOP is the lamest thing possible haha

IMO any TO in their right mind wouldn't run uncomped GHB!

It's not comped. TGH specifically says to use/not use any rules based on what the people agree on, the part where they mention base-to-base measurement. A TO is within their rights to modify the summoning rule to state that scenery cannot be summoned, because TGH says so.

Requizen wrote:

Aeonotakist wrote:

based on my understanding, the Skaven can deploy 7' within the Warpgrinder team and then still move (which is amazing) and try to hit something 8' away. That means they can cover a huge circle of 42' diameter with one covern crew and they have two. The only problem is the units they sent to kill your MSU can do theri job. But I dont think spread wide really mean anything.

Nope. It says very clearly in the Warp-Grinder rules that the tunneling counts as the movement for that unit in the turn they come up, and the accompanying units have to come up within 3" of the team. So they have to be quite clustered, making it easier to spread out and limit their target selection.

Also for the Skyborn, they can have any units from the formation to obtain objects, but Skaven can still send the first covern to davastating them and hold second covern prepared for you real launch.

Any Skyborne Slayers units put in Celestial Realm all have to come down simultaneously in a bubble. The tactic being discussed is leaving some on the table to score or utilizing the rest of your army (since Slayers is 1160 baseline and you have room for other units) to score while keeping the Celestial Realm units out until it's tactically advantageous.

So you spread out your foot dudes so a single Gautfyre can't kill the board by itself, and then the Skaven:
a) brings in a single Gautfyre to kill the board dudes, at which point the Stormcast stays off the board and uses the rest of their army to play the mission
b) brings in both Gautfyres in one side to kill off that side, at which point the Stormcast moves the rest of his army away and either brings in the Skyborne to fight the Gautfyre or drops them across the board to play objectives
c) brings in both Gautfyres but in different locations, at which point the Stormcast focuses one with the Skyborne, probably winning the fight, and then it's a toss up as to what happens next.

It's by no means a hard counter, but it's also not an easy game for either side. Depending on what the Stormcast player brings for the rest of his points, it can change the play of the match significantly.

I heard there was a Skryre list defeated by a Savage Orcs in Facehammer but the skaven player really misplayed. He launched everything to kill the archer boyz formation and thought that was the end of battle. But then got carnaged by Savage orcs HQs and Boar Riders with hand of Gork and some really lucky rolls.

Could be interesting. Bonesplittaz have lots of cheap bodies and a 6+ against Mortal Wounds, so they're relatively ok against the Gautfyre damage. Much like Fyreslayer blobs having 4+ against MWs as long as they're over 20 dudes, though Fyreslayers are more expensive per model.

Again, probably not a one sided match, but I still think it's enough to say that Gautfyre cheese isn't the end-all-be-all.



Personally, I only have Stormcast at this point and feel ok against such a thing, but if it becomes problematic I might go something like Skyborne Slayers + 2 Bastiladons bubblewrapped in Skinks.

The Skryre great battlion is replacing the normal Warp Grinder meta. it has a new rule that
1. You can set things in a bubble within 8' of Warp Grinder, not 3'.
2. You can move after you deploy like mentioned above
3. You can even deploy within 3' of enemy units at a cost of suufering D6 MW per unit. By far this is the only rule allow you to deploy within 3' of enemy units.

Considering all those above, their fire can cover more than 40' if they like, and can hardly be blocked by anything cause they can setup 3' within enemy. That's the reason why try to spread wide and try to fill the land with cheap units work so bad on them.
Even you landed the SKyborn team in 24' bubble and charge. It will not be a problem for Skryre.

Now what I can only think is in 2500 games actually Stromcast can have two Skyborn Slayers battlion, which will give Stormcast great advantage cause Skryre has nothing worth standing on the ground from the first turn. That might be the reason why Skyborn Slayer is a hard counter for Skryre.

Otherwise I hardly agree with what you said. With one Skyborn Batllion, no matter how wide you setup in the beginning, Skryre will always davastate you with one covern crew in the first turn. Then you have to hault the battlion and they deploy the second covern crew. Considering Stormcast is hard countered by spaming MW, the hope of winning the game is quite dim. (It might be a Hammerstrife Force plus Skborn Slayer in 2000 game that can do differently, but I really doubt)



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Actually I bought a GA: Chaos yesterday just for the fxxking Skryre, so now i want to post it here so nobody got confused anymore.

It has nothing to do with Warp Grinder rule.

The battlio is 200 points by itself, which contains:
1 Arch-warlock
2 Gautfyre Skorch Enginecovens (each of them contains 1 warlock, 1~3 units of Stormfiend, 1~5 Warpfire Thrower, 1~5 Warp-grinder)

The rule is like this
Gautfyre Skorch: Instead of setting up a Gaufyre Skorch Enginecoven on the battlefield, you can place it on onse side and declare that it is construction an elaborate network of tunnels beneath the surface. In any of your hero phase (notice not moving phase), the Enginecoven can surface under the watchful eye of its warlock engineer. Set up one of the Warp-grinder Weapon Teams anywhere (notice anywhere) on the battle field, then set up each other units from the Enginecoven within 8' of it. Any unit that s set up within 3' of the enemy suffers D6 mortal wound.

Requizen wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
Any TO in their right mind will ban Balewind vortexes. A free OP terrain piece that is OOP is the lamest thing possible haha

IMO any TO in their right mind wouldn't run uncomped GHB!

It's not comped. TGH specifically says to use/not use any rules based on what the people agree on, the part where they mention base-to-base measurement. A TO is within their rights to modify the summoning rule to state that scenery cannot be summoned, because TGH says so.

I'm not sure we're on the same page here... What I was saying is that tournaments using matched play should only do so with modifications to the rules being present so as to ensure a better experience.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

Requizen wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
Any TO in their right mind will ban Balewind vortexes. A free OP terrain piece that is OOP is the lamest thing possible haha

IMO any TO in their right mind wouldn't run uncomped GHB!

It's not comped. TGH specifically says to use/not use any rules based on what the people agree on, the part where they mention base-to-base measurement. A TO is within their rights to modify the summoning rule to state that scenery cannot be summoned, because TGH says so.

I'm not sure we're on the same page here... What I was saying is that tournaments using matched play should only do so with modifications to the rules being present so as to ensure a better experience.

Banning free summoning ensures a better experience. Ask 40k players.

Yes, I agree.

I know this is slightly off topic, but I wonder if a Tomb Kings list could use that Vulkite strategy against Skryrefyre as well. In this case, I'm envisioning a ton of chariots circled up around your core of characters in the center.

Something like:

Settra
Tomb King
Necromancer
Liche Priest
27 chariots organized into 3 units

I'm not exactly sure what the best configuration would be. You could make a bubble of 6 chariots around the characters and then a second ring of 21 chariots, or use 3 units of 9 chariots.

The skryre army will need a slightly above average turn to wipe out 9 chariots, so even if they get a double turn you are looking at countercharging with a significant force.

Another option would be:

Tomb King on Chariot
Necromancer
33 Chariots organized into 4 units
Royal Legion of Chariots

You could also take a Herald instead of the Necromancer or 3 chariots.

You'd take the command trait that ups the death ward save to 5+, which makes it even harder for the Skyre forces to wipe you out even given two turns. They'll be dishing an average of around 30-35 mortals per turn, but you have 165 wounds of chariots.

With chariots being what they are I'm pretty sure they could beat skryrefyre doing just what you said, and even if most of the characters were sniped it could be possible to win by attrition (barring a double Skryre turn) since you get a whole chariot back from the banners and they could easily shoot all the weapon teams to death.

Heck, any death army could do a basic lord, a necromancer/liche priest and 220 skeletons. With banners and a 5+ ward save. Would be pretty fantastic against any enemy relying on mortal wounds, I'd think.

Battleshock could be a serious issue.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Battleshock could be a serious issue.

Not a huge deal when you just get d6 back per friendly hero phase, plus if you run in big enough units you're getting bonuses to Bravery. And Inspiring Presence.

Like yeah, the weakness of chaff units is that they can battleshock off and will get whittled down, but a unit of 20+ Skeletons has Bravery 12 and gets units back for free as long as it doesn't go over the starting amount. And a 6++ which can be boosted to 5++. For as cheap as they are, they're probably one of the best units in the game to tie up with.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Battleshock could be a serious issue.

Yeah, you would lose a lot to battleshock. Skyrefyre is likely to deal ~35 mortals after saves. If they focused one unit it would be gone after battleshock for sure. Two units split evenly would lose another ~8-10 models from battleshock each for a total of about 50-60 kills. That said, I'm guessing the stormfiends would charge in as well and deal an average of 14 more wounds (assuming all of them could get into range). So instead we're looking at about 25 casualties per unit against two units before battleshock. It's pretty safe to assume that both of those units would be totally annihilated.

If the Skryrefyre player gets a double turn and everything is still in range, then that's a total of 160 skeletons gone, leaving 60 skeletons remaining to counter-attack. Depending on whether or not the skaven player was able to knock off the characters as well it's a bit tricky to say if the undead would stand a chance at this point. It probably depends on how close the remaining skeletons are. I think that the undead player is probably done for at this point, but they'd have a small chance to get in a position to win with the counter-attack.

If there is no double turn, I think the Skryrefyre player is in serious trouble as they'd be facing 140 skeletons charging in with almost certain character support. While many of the undead won't be able to get into range, the ones that do will be throwing an awful lot of dice. I'd guess that the vast majority of the time the undead player would be able to easily win on attrition from this point as even if they don't wipe out the skaven in one turn, the skaven will be damaged enough to be unable to outkill the banners.

So you are probably looking at a 50/50 matchup, approximately -- maybe slightly in the undead favor for the small % of times they might be able to recover from the double turn.

I think this game will be finding its legs for some time, if not years. They have 61 different factions, not including discontinued armies like Tomb Kings and such, and only 12 of them have battle tomes released. Most factions aren't even complete armies, and may have only 2 units in them. It's going to be a long time before they are fleshed out, and they can even make an attempt at balance. I don't even think they are done releasing factions either. Eventually they will have Tyrion force Slaaanesh to regurgitate all the elves, and they will probably make a come back. I foresee a constant state of flux.

I don't really see that as such an issue. Constant play testing and refinement can easily bring things well into line with just a few months. PPC is more or less balanced and that's just a fan comp. Hell if they brought in Auticus for a week and had him rewrite all of the points values matched play would become very balanced compared to what it is now.

That's heresy sir. Heresy.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I don't really see that as such an issue. Constant play testing and refinement can easily bring things well into line with just a few months. PPC is more or less balanced and that's just a fan comp. Hell if they brought in Auticus for a week and had him rewrite all of the points values matched play would become very balanced compared to what it is now.

That's not a biased opinion at all.

I don't doubt that it is, but bias doesn't make my argument less valid. If you have reasons for why balance can't be achieved as I said then by all means elaborate.

Of course balance can be achieved. At least, a semblance that will still require tweaks over time, as perfect balance in an asymmetrical game is impossible.

"Send one dude to GW for a week and it'll be better" is laughable. "The fan-made system in my signature is much more balanced" is also amusing.

Anyone who thinks that game balance is as easy as just playing the game for a few months, especially when the game is as large and expansive as AoS, is just being an armchair game designer. Not defending GW, especially with the state that 40k is in and the silliness of the builds discussed in this thread, but the balance in AoS is a far sight better than it could be. And it's nowhere even close to bad enough to require a fan-made rewrite.

I think you misunderstood, I wasn't suggesting those as solutions but saying "if even these options would be better then surely it isn't that hard to improve things" which I find far from laughable. For a company with as extensive resources as GW they could easily have a few dozen designers and community activists play test various models and combinations over the course of several months and produce a set of points much better than what we have. 'Perfect' balance is just a strawman that no one is suggesting.

Besides, the fan made system in my sig is much more balanced so that remains a legitimate example. The 'send a guy there for a week' was mainly a jest on my part, so laughable is exactly the intent

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Besides, the fan made system in my sig is much more balanced so that remains a legitimate example.

Hence why I said biased. I've gone through PPC for a handful of armies and just bumping up points on currently strong units doesn't mean it's any more or less balanced. It just means the things that are powerful in the meta are less so, but it makes other builds strong in their absence. It's not a better balanced game, just a differently balanced one. I'm sure a few days of actually building lists would come up with some unfun garbage that would require changes.

Balance is so fething difficult to achieve, it is really hard, but I see it alot in wargames (at least the wargames I play)

But Balance isn't 'everything isn't equally viable', balance is 'x better than y, but you won't lose if you don't bring x and you won't auto lost if you bring y'

That balance is laughably non-existant in 40k, but it exists a bit more in AoS.

But the sad truth of the matter is that it falls on the community until GW fixes the issues in AoS. Whether that means writing a fan comp or just playing with a '2/1/1' set up on both sides.

The thing is that usually the community has a better sense of the meta, which matters a lot in TTWG, and most importantly, they are the ones playtesting. GW rules writers gets paid to sit in a chair and literally armchair write, and the community are the ones playtesting because they would be playing anyways.

Obviously I haven't ever made a significant or substantial ruleset, but it seems that just from the way it works out, the community has a natural ability to balance because they understand how to break the game. That is why houserules exist, and why 40k and AoS have these dumb freakin builds that ruin aspects of the game.

Oh and PPC is actually a pretty great system, I haven't gotten to play with it yet but honestly it seems like it works well. and you gotta give Ninth credit simply because he did all of that unpaid in his free time!

Happy wargaming!
~Mikey

PPC isn't mine; I just do the battalion and terrain costs. Attilla is the main person who runs it and he collects feedback from anyone willing to give it. A year's worth of that is why its more balanced, not because it looked at the meta (which came well after PPC) and just increased certain costs. In fact, looking at the differences were between PPC costs and GHB ones when it launched provided strong indicators of what the meta was going to be. It's far from perfect but I feel like it does the job gummy stated in his second paragraph above while the GHB does not.

As a game designer myself, balance is indeed quite painful and difficult to achieve.

However as a course of refinement you can accomplish a much better system than what we have now or have had for years.

Regular updated points and restrictions for one would be huge.

As it stands now, most people know the most disgusting builds today that could be hammered into a more balanced presence by simply raising too-cheap costs.

Would that fix the game? No - we would get new broken builds. But spend a good deal of time constantly adjusting things and you'll have a tighter system.

The way it is now, and for a very great many years, once something busted came out of GW's ivory tower, you were stuck dealing with that for years.