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Hey people,
from what I have heard the new WoC book isnt worth getting and I would rather not buy it seeing as I bought the old one about a week or so before they announced the new edition.
My question however is are the new units worth fitting into my army list (currently being re-written). I like the look of the dragon ogres and the Slaughterbrute looks cool towering over infantry. Are they worth thinking about or should I disregard them?

Slaughterbrute is a big fighting machine that effectively has your Lord's fighting stats, but in most other ways is outclassed by the Shaggoth - and the Shaggoth doesn't murder your army if your lord dies. The Vortex Beast on the other hand seems to have some potential - it has a nasty bound spell that generally attracts dispel dice, especially when it can make an enemy unit pop out a spawn for you.

Dragon Ogres are much as they always have been - very large mean models that can hit hard and get to the enemy fast, but attract a lot of enemy fire without the benefit of the Skullcrushers' 1+ save.

Skullcrushers are also amazing. Knights on Juggers are amazing. Got nerfed a bit from the WD insert. Needed it badly, but are still amazing.

Chimera is a murder machine - 6+d3 attacks + thunderstomp, can be ugraded with fire breath, regeneration, and poisoned attacks. Pricey but honestly half the cost of the Slaughterbrute for a potentially more survivable, maneuverable, nastier monster.

Daemon Prince is also basically a new model compared to what they did before. MUCH more usable now.

It depends - in a mono God list the Dragon Ogres make a decent replacement for Skullcrushers.

The Slaughterbrute is ok, but it depends on your list as whether you can fit it in.

I really don't see any draw for the Slaughterbrute. Yes, it can have high WS and Ld, but for only four attacks. I can get almost the same amount of killing power out of a single MoK halberd warrior against most targets. When I can get a whole unit for the cost of one Slaughterbrute... yeah. I dunno.

6 attacks with extra claws upgrade.. reduced to 'only' S5.
I find the brute appealing, but I guess monsters aren't supposed to win?

4 S7 attacks and 2 S5 attacks at a high WS. Thunderstomp is also there, to be fair.

But compared to the 20+ S5 attacks at still-pretty-high WS and a lot more wounds to chew through... I dunno.

Dragon Ogres got points shaved off of them which is nice, slaughterbrute is ok but prefer the shaggoth, (possibly because I already own it), New magic is nice with exeption of Lore of Tzeentch, and oh my dark gods do I love Daemon Princes. Mono God is more manageable with new book as well since a marked wizard can still take book lores.

All the monsters are super killy, much cheaper than 7th monsters. But one thing they did was generally give them lousy LD. So if they ever lose combat they can be rundown. But if they're losing combat, you probably messed up.

Also I was in the same situation with the rule book - I picked up the old one only a month or so ago.
However the GW store was ok about me trading it in, since the new one costs more anyway.

As for the book - well, it certainly gives more options on how to run your list than the old one, so if you want to change the way your army works, pick it up.

I think my local meta has a terrain problem. My monsters die in droves to cannons. When I look at the GW terrain in the book I see tons of buildings and barricades. That would make cannons difficult to use, and I wish my local group made our boards less like 7th edition fantasy.

Spellbound wrote:
I think my local meta has a terrain problem. My monsters die in droves to cannons. When I look at the GW terrain in the book I see tons of buildings and barricades. That would make cannons difficult to use, and I wish my local group made our boards less like 7th edition fantasy.

Monsters always just get minced by cannons not a lot you can do. If you take loads of terrain then the board gets cluttered and moving the large units will become impossible. The only effective way ive seen is to take skirishers and scouts to kill the cannon

But that takes two turns at least. I've consistently lost all my monsters turn 1.

Some of that's luck though, as my opponents will not - WILL NOT stop rolling a "6" for how many wounds they do.

Welcome to 8th. It's a major downfall of 8th because war machines became a lot more precise and thus a lot deadlier for monsters of any sort. The only viable counter is to hide monsters behind terrain and hope for your scouts / skirmishers to deal with the war machines first.

Heck, I even shot war machines with my Doom Divers. It works

A great counter to war machines is fast cavalry/vanguard units as well. And Chaos has two good choices with the hounds and the marauder horsemen. They function as chaff or as things to chase down war machines.

Again, turn 2. It's just silly how good they are at killing monsters. And at 250 a pop, they fill up the army list fast. Two rares, two specials and you're at 1000. In a 2250 game now you now can take a general, 650ish of core and you're done.

Then with your 4 monsters you still have to hope that his 300 points of cannons or stone throwers are unlucky.

Well, I fully agree with you and it's sad that GW decided to drastically nerf monsters in such a way - they always were something cool to have on the field, be it only for the visual aspect.

That's how 8th works, however :/

War machine hunting might be a use for some hellstriders too. They're fast enough they can basically fly, so they are easily charge any war machine turn 1 or 2, kill it, then get some bonuses. Not too expensive either.

Without war machines, monsters would be far too powerful. People have to think about putting them in their armies now.

It's not that they do incredible dmg, they often don't, but they are usually T6 and W6 with some armor (at least 8th monsters), terror, etc. So rank-and-file troops have almost no chance of hurting them. If they get stuck in, they can grind down pretty decent troops with not a lot of fear. The monsters that are killy, like arachnarok spider, the VC screamy dragon, chimera, can put out a gigantic amount of wounds.

250 pts is like 40 swordsman. If they get hit by the AE war machines like stone throwers or warp cannons, fire breath etc, they're going to lose a tremendous amount of points too.

The thing is that 8th changed war machine to be fully luck-based. They used to miss more often in 7th since you had to guess ranges, but GW could not trust their 12-year old customers to use any "skill" in a game and thus made it purely luck-based, thus granting war machines a lot more precision.

Well I hear the empire players complain about needing 6shots to kill a monster, because they always roll 1's to wound. I think they should do d3+1 wounds - never need more than 3 shots for most monsters, ever, even if unlucky, but you'll not 1-shot most of them, making them more survivable.

And I do agree though, about how deadly they can be. My group got into the discussion the other day about why they're pointed the way they are. A 230 point monster does easily to a cannon and crossbows, but then you put that monster against a combat army like chaos and they just run rampant, crushing warriors and chosen and not caring much about the return attacks. Those attacks are strong enough to bring them down, but not before considerable damage being sustained.

So it's hard to point them accurately.

 Sigvatr wrote:
The thing is that 8th changed war machine to be fully luck-based. They used to miss more often in 7th since you had to guess ranges, but GW could not trust their 12-year old customers to use any "skill" in a game and thus made it purely luck-based, thus granting war machines a lot more precision.

Not really, if you put any effort at all into learning how to guess distances accuratly you could achieve an almost 80%+ accuracy with your warmachines in 7th.

If you take loads of terrain then the board gets cluttered

I guess that's why the BRB has d6+4 i.e. 5 to 10 terrain pieces on the board - you may want to scale that if you are smaller than 8' X 4', but that really is a lot of terrain - surely this will give you something to advance behind. Yeah I know it is hard. Maybe that is the value of anything fast moving (if only it didn't run agroud against giant infantry units.

Edited by Mannahnin

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
The thing is that 8th changed war machine to be fully luck-based. They used to miss more often in 7th since you had to guess ranges, but GW could not trust their 12-year old customers to use any "skill" in a game and thus made it purely luck-based, thus granting war machines a lot more precision.

Not really, if you put any effort at all into learning how to guess distances accuratly you could achieve an almost 80%+ accuracy with your warmachines in 7th.

And that took skill compared to rolling dice - which hopefully does not take skill ;D

Rolling dice doesn't take skill, but knowing about probability and all that stuff does. Its actually more skill IMO than learning to guess ranges.

Learning probabilities does take skill.

But not being told them.

"Put your shot 8" away from the center of your target, that way your odds are you'll hit it."

Done. Now I will hit almost every time, especially with all the rerolling options there are.

I love warriors with mark of tzeentch Took down a stegadon with a group of 18, only lost 2 thnx to those ward saves

As for this topic, Dragon ogres with great weapons. Sweet, but weak against numbers.

Mutalith fielded it once, got shot down at first turn xD didnt expect to meet dwarves that day

Charriots - i love them! and the gorebeast charriot *drool*

 Sigvatr wrote:
The thing is that 8th changed war machine to be fully luck-based. They used to miss more often in 7th since you had to guess ranges, but GW could not trust their 12-year old customers to use any "skill" in a game and thus made it purely luck-based, thus granting war machines a lot more precision.

That's nonsense. Basically everyone cheated. Because past the age of 5 you get a pretty good understanding of distances. My shoe is about 12 inches. I've seen my shoes at least ten thousand times in my life. I know what half my shoe looks like. So it basically became a directive to not be human. Pretend you don't know what distances are and make a game out of it. It's silly.