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Yeah he is a classic example of what I consider a false-choice, because while of course he's optional, you'll always take him every time.

Every army has the ability to be constructed in a more fun way, it just usually involves not taking the false-choices against armies that GW has gimped by not giving those type of choices.

Problem is in a game riddled with false-choices, if you remove Khorne's false choices then they end up like the KO army. Garbage unless your opponent builds in a more cooperative way to have a fun game as opposed to a competitive game where you are going to get the beat down and be an enhancement talent to make him look good.

Most of the Khorne builds that are doing well revolve around Bloodthirsters. In those lists Bloodsecrators do kinda become optional as you don't need him to protect your chaff. The one who scored high at LVO had bloodthirsters, a few slaughter priests, only 2 x 10 Bloodreavers, and then had 40 x Chaos Marauders with shields and a War Shrine. Was an interesting list, but not far removed from what I am seeing around the block for competitive Khorne.

As a FEC player, I am excited for my army to not be jobbers, although I agree that battleline Dragons/Gheists are a bit much, you are limited to 4 (including any mounted) and they are like 300 points each (I don't think I've seen that they went up).

I do think the "meta" FEC list will be Gristlegore with gheists/dragons Battleline, or the old Deadwatch Flayerspam with Blisterskin. Archregent is 100% a must take, maybe even 2 (but that's 400 points according to current information/reviews).

I am a little sad Horrors didn't change, as now it appears Flayers are simply better in the majority of ways compared to them, and I liked Horrors more. I plan to experiment with the Abattoir or Attendants at Court battalions with Horrors (Hollowmourn Grand Court to make them battleline) just because I have a lot.

I am excited and happy that FEC are no longer a joke faction I will say that. I am always happy when people who love their faction and play them despite being jobbers finally get something that lets them feel like they aren't driving to the store to get owned by virtue of what they enjoy collecting.

auticus wrote:
I am excited and happy that FEC are no longer a joke faction I will say that. I am always happy when people who love their faction and play them despite being jobbers finally get something that lets them feel like they aren't driving to the store to get owned by virtue of what they enjoy collecting.

In a reversal of the classic "the army I buy always gets nerfed" trope, I ordered 5 Start Collecting FEC just a couple of months ago under the assumption they'll be stuck with GHB allegiance forever and possibly squatted in AoS 3.0.

What's a 'jobber' when it's at home?

A jobber is a term used in the pro wrestling word that is an enhancement talent. It is a guy paid to go out and lose every night to make the other guy look good. He's "doing a job".

A jobber in AOS is playing the game with an army that can't spam summoning or spam mortal wounds or any of the other things that make a power list and playing against armies that do. You know you are going to lose ahead of time. Its also the biggest point of conflict that I fiind outside of groups playing tourney AOS who are ok with listbuilding being what it is.

Yeah, pretty much any army that doesn’t spam mortal wounds, blocks mortal wounds or spams summoning is a ‘jobber’ that is destined to lose 90% of the time. KO, Ironjawz, those sort of factions.

Annoyingly I always seem to end up picking them.

That is why in the events I was running I handed out sudden death victory conditions to the other side if an opponent summoned more than 25% of their army (500 pts in a 2000 pt game) or did more than a threshold of mortal wounds in a turn.

It made it more engaging for the other side running a non meta army.

 Eldarsif wrote:
Most of the Khorne builds that are doing well revolve around Bloodthirsters. In those lists Bloodsecrators do kinda become optional as you don't need him to protect your chaff. The one who scored high at LVO had bloodthirsters, a few slaughter priests, only 2 x 10 Bloodreavers, and then had 40 x Chaos Marauders with shields and a War Shrine. Was an interesting list, but not far removed from what I am seeing around the block for competitive Khorne.

That is a good point, Bloodthirsters are undercosted enough to compensate.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Wayniac wrote:
As a FEC player, I am excited for my army to not be jobbers, although I agree that battleline Dragons/Gheists are a bit much, you are limited to 4 (including any mounted) and they are like 300 points each (I don't think I've seen that they went up).

I do think the "meta" FEC list will be Gristlegore with gheists/dragons Battleline, or the old Deadwatch Flayerspam with Blisterskin. Archregent is 100% a must take, maybe even 2 (but that's 400 points according to current information/reviews).

I am a little sad Horrors didn't change, as now it appears Flayers are simply better in the majority of ways compared to them, and I liked Horrors more. I plan to experiment with the Abattoir or Attendants at Court battalions with Horrors (Hollowmourn Grand Court to make them battleline) just because I have a lot.

Archregent costs 200 points and summons a unit worth between 160-200 points. Even at the high end he effectively costs 40 points; just take your GK(s) on terry/dragon if desired then fill any remaining slots with archregents. Courtiers have gone to being never-take in a list proper (unless you need them for battalions) because they can be summoned in. For that matter, since the Varghulf one is stronger the other three are simply never-take all the time unless you are deliberately playing down. 3-man flayer/horror units are also never take (barring battalions) for as well, since you can spend 160 pts on a 3-man unit or spend 200 pts on a 3-man unit AND an archregent.

Moral of the story; GW thought it was appropriate to make the archregent cost 40 pts. They really need to make his command ability general-only. Then at least only one of them would be stupidly OP, and it would eliminate other death factions from allying him in. Because we all know LoN is going to be allying in 2 of them.

Well, in LoN he costs +50 pts because you don't get the Throne and his spell only works on his summoned unit.

Having done a fair bit of list building in the last few days, I would say you can't realistically cram more than 2, maaaybe 3 of them in a FEC list if you want to have other units at a useful size and a dude on a Terrorghaist or Dragon to do the heavy lifting. The strength of FEC is returning models, getting bonus attacks and fighting multiple times with a deathstar unit, going minimal battleline to spam these dudes and summon MSU is a recipe for failure. What they are are 40 pt upgrades for Varghulfs. You really just replace all your Varghulfs with them and that's it.

I would agree, except they don't just summon; they fight. Their attack profile is decent but more importantly they have 7w, 4+ armor, 6+ fnp and heal 3 wounds a turn on a very small base size. Put a couple in cover next to each other and there's a lot they can beat by attrition. They can unbind so that makes it harder to spell them to death as well. 5 of them plus a mounted gk is 1400/1440 points, enough to take two 10-man units and a 30 man to buff then still have points left over for cogs. Buffing a mounted gk is probably better anyways for that matter. Then they have the tactical flexibility to summon in units they need based on context. If the enemy has good saves bring flayers, high wounds count bring horrors, if you need objectives get ghouls, etc.

With the idea being put them all by the throne and summon for free? Most people I am talking to seem to be all over the monster mash with Gristlegore, and summoning in units on top of like 4 zombie dragons/terrorgheists.

Well the thing with the monster mash is (unless the cost is changed) they have a more or less balanced cost. A terrorgheist is pretty awesome, and it costs 300 points accordingly. So while the shock factor is there I think it will run into the same issue of beastclaws in that monsters have trouble without troops to support them. When you can surround that terry and put wounds on it will degrade and even if it mauls the unit to death it won't do the same to the next one, and it certainty isn't holding objectives well. A terry with 30 ghouls next to it can't be singled out as effectively, and the two combined have more sustained damage than two terries would because the ghouls won't degrade as badly (a bunch were in the back not swinging anyways) and provide consistently. And that combo can hold objectives to boot.

That's why the all-monster thing is fun but not tremendously viable. However being able to freely mix dragons & terries as battleline adds tactical flexibility that I think may push it into issue-causing territoy in addition to kind-of robbing the theme by making it less exclusive. Another issue is, like going against ogres, for less experienced players it is really easy to get your face beaten in since you aren't practiced enough to know the correct counter-tactics.

Ultimately I think the archregent is a far larger problem and will be the bigger showing at broken-cheese-tourney level. But it's just a personal estimation; I've been wrong plenty of times before.

Get ready for Clan Verminus to makes its way into that list! Skaventide is going to one heck of an army to contend with.

Skaven have had reasonably good UNITS for a while, but generic Chaos allegiance was clearly meant for the warriors/daemons side and really did not support Skaven very well. I think this book will catapult them onto the scene in a big way.

Personally I'm leaning toward Flayer spam, with Deadwatch and Royal Feast a deathstar can fight 3 times a turn without CP plus they each get a banshee howl at 2d6+2 if you're engaged and have a Grim Garland on hand.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Personally I'm leaning toward Flayer spam, with Deadwatch and Royal Feast a deathstar can fight 3 times a turn without CP plus they each get a banshee howl at 2d6+2 if you're engaged and have a Grim Garland on hand.

I'm leaning flayers myself, but taking a Grand Court (likely Blisterskin to make Flayers battleline) means you don't get a delusion and your trait/artefact is preselected for you. So you won't be able to have your cake and eat it too.

I do wish horrors were better though, I like them much more than Flayers, but no rend and not being that tanky due to a 5+ save means they often are just bags of wounds that either:

A) Hit something similarly "elite", do a couple of damage as without rend they can't get through the armor these types of units usually have, and get slaughtered in return as elite units typically DO have rend
B) HIt something with low armor that's usually a horde, not deal enough to wipe them out and get wiped out in return just by the volume of attacks because a 5+ save is terrible.

So basically to my eyes Horrors don't perform either role that they should perform well in any capacity at all. They can't get through the usually good armor saves of elites, and don't have quite enough to wipe out low armored hordes (at least not compared to a big blob of ghouls) and have none of the staying power of a big blob of ghouls.

Horrors are overcost for what they do. It seems they remain so, so yes in a competitive sense if you are playing agaiinst people fielding competitive lists, there is no reason to take them.

auticus wrote:
Horrors are overcost for what they do. It seems they remain so, so yes in a competitive sense if you are playing agaiinst people fielding competitive lists, there is no reason to take them.

Which is unfortunate as I have more Horrors ATM than flayers. But I also have like 6 or 9 more to build so.. guess I'm doing Flayers.

Don't need Blisterskin to run Deadwatch since it requires the Flayer Courtier anyway. So I get my pick of delusion, trait and and 2 artefacts.

I think the TG/Dragon Court is the only one whose benefits can outweigh the preset items and lack of Delusion.

See for me I absolutely despise having to make a courtier the general when I have a king, so for me, the courts that give battleline without that silly requirement are well worth losing the delusion.

This is a newbie to AoS question and for that I apologize but where does one get the updated stats for models (warscrolls I think they're called) you guys were mentioning (mostly on page 10)? Do you have to buy the new book? Do you get it from the AoS app? Other? I'm talking about the recent changes to 2019, not the stuff e.g. the 2018 general's book that's already out.

Warscrolls are freely available on the GW site and also free on the Age of Sigmar phone app (however the army builder on the app is cheap, like it's $1.50 USD a month).

They are also in the book itself.

I still have to disagree in the horrors. I have seen first hand them being used by tournament armies at GTs, ones that were doing well. A FEC army even won a GT near me and he was using them. I also play with a guy running FEC as his main army so I have seen them in action a ton. Re-rolling all hits really helps them put out the hurt.

The app will have the most up-to-date rules usually (occasionally a short delay after a new book is released). If all you're looking for is warscrolls, that's why you should start.

Wayniac wrote:
See for me I absolutely despise having to make a courtier the general when I have a king, so for me, the courts that give battleline without that silly requirement are well worth losing the delusion.

'Member in GHB1 when the way to make FEC viable was to have the unit champion in a 9-man flayer unit be the general? I 'member...

GHB1 was like the beta for an MMO where the basic system is there but the structure isn't quite hashed out and there's buggy exploits all over the place.

Wayniac wrote:
See for me I absolutely despise having to make a courtier the general when I have a king, so for me, the courts that give battleline without that silly requirement are well worth losing the delusion.

I totally get you but it is the way of AoS to have some minor character skulking around in the back lines be the general, not your frontline fighter. Courtiers also get one or two really good artefacts and traits that abhorrents don't.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
See for me I absolutely despise having to make a courtier the general when I have a king, so for me, the courts that give battleline without that silly requirement are well worth losing the delusion.

'Member in GHB1 when the way to make FEC viable was to have the unit champion in a 9-man flayer unit be the general? I 'member...

GHB1 was like the beta for an MMO where the basic system is there but the structure isn't quite hashed out and there's buggy exploits all over the place.

A lot of armies benefited greatly from non-hero generals. I ran a 1k ij list that had a ironfist big boss be my general for that unit to always be battleshock immune and +1 to hit from bellowing tyrant. My friend did the same with a kunnin rukk with the arrow boss being general.

I am getting the book today, the throne and maybe the spells (depends if my wife will let me spend that much). And taking inventory I seem to have like:

At least 100 ghouls, 12 flayers and Courtier, 9 Horrors and Courtier, at least 3 Horrors/Flayers I can build any way (likely Horrors so I have 12), all three Ghoul King types (on foot, on Terrorgheist, on Zombie Dragon), 2 Varghulfs, 2 Ghast Courtiers (old metal ghouls), and I'm watching at least 3 eBay auctions for the Archregent.

It might be more than that it's a little hard to tell. I had a lot to begin with and bought two of the Nightfeast Haunters skirmish boxes, and bought a used King Vlagorescu's Ghoulish Host box from someone (I think it had everything except for the zombie dragon kit)