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TFG is a lot more than just playing a cheese list/army.


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Wayniac wrote:
Is the main issue with FEC then multiple archregents? Because yeah that's an issue. But his summon ability is only once per game otherwise, you just get to take your pick of what you get.

I think you'll see people abusing multiple Archregents and the throne (one of which needs to be FAQ'd: Either the archregent needs to be treated as a character, or the throne has to be limited to once per turn or something).

Are these lists all using the Gristlegore monster mash? Because that looks ridiculous just by having battleline monsters and then summon in everything else. The rest of it, a an FEC player myself, seems pretty strong but not insane, but I don't play in tournaments.

For me I have two lists, neither of which seem to be that OP but strong due to how the book is: One is Hollowmourne with 2x6 Horrors, 40 Ghouls, King on Dragon (for re-roll wounds since Horrors already re-roll hits), Archregent, some courtiers and the Abattoir battalion. The other (the more competitive one probably) is Blisterskin with Deadwatch and 6/3/3 Flayers, 40 ghouls, King on Gheist, Archregent and some courtiers.

Now I'm a horrible player but neither of those seem like they'll be insane. I certainly wouldn't take like 4 archregents or whatever sort of nonsense you see out there. As someone who loves the army I don't want to be labeled TFG because my army now got mega buffs when I played them from the original version that was super weak.

The main issue is that there are a lot of issues and they are quite severe. LoN has a lot of problems elements but they are individually OK; it is the stacking of so many benefits that renders them OP. FEC has multiple elements that would be between a bit to massively OP just on their own. Archregents is merely the most prominent. To make a list of significant problems (in my eyes):

-Archregent.
-Terrorgheist was made OP by MWs on 6s to hit instead of wounds (and it should have been d6 instead of flat 6 anyways).
-Mounted terry is worse since the above is on a stronger model and the mount trait to re-roll hits on the maw.
-Gristlegore and Blisterskin are both OP for their own reasons which is too bad for someone wanting to run them for theme.
-Feeding frenzy is OP. It would be crazy strong just for letting a unit attack a second time. But it is coupled with an army that does not need CP for anything else after the first round, and the unit gets to attack immediately after rather than enabling it to be picked a second time like all similar abilities.
-Varghulf is a clearly superior option to other courtiers, relegating them to battalion/theme-only status even before the Archregent gets involved.
-The ability to spam free summons is a problem (and was before) when it should probably be just the general that can use it.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
TFG is a lot more than just playing a cheese list/army.

Playing a good list (which is basically what a cheese/op list is anyway) is never a bad thing and never a TFG thing on its own. It's just playing the game well with a good powerful list.


It becomes TFG/bad to do when you do it continually against new players without any remorse; when you use it all the time against people who are clearly outmatched; when you refuse to "tone it down a bit" or vary the game somewhat to give advantage/introduce extra challenge to try and bridge the skill gap between two players etc....

It's also TFG when you "cheat" to achieve the cheese/power list - ergo taking more units of a type than allowed; adding upgrades without paying the points for them etc...

Hard to tone it down in an army that only has 5 boxes/blisters to buy and less than 20 unit options in their battletome when half of that is considered very strong (mostly due to army wide rules that you cannot avoid)

But there is a lot of overreaction and crying now though. I've just asked a match up of my FEC against shooty SCE and my army melted with as much ease as my AGKoTG can melt other units.

GW will need to release more shooting based factions (freeguild asap preferably) to deal with these insane monsters who die in a single shooting phase. It does push the game more and more towards rock-paper-scissors (more so than it was before).

Yeah playing a strong list is definitely 100% fine if you are playing like minded people or people that want to play at the top of the power curve.

People play lists for a lot of reasons. For me, aesthetics and story comes first, but then I try and make a tactically interesting list that can "compete" from whatever aesthetic or story I enjoy.

So it is totally possible for someone to be playing the OP list of the moment just because they genuinely liked the models or the background for them.

 Elmir wrote:
Hard to tone it down in an army that only has 5 boxes/blisters to buy and less than 20 unit options in their battletome when half of that is considered very strong (mostly due to army wide rules that you cannot avoid)

But there is a lot of overreaction and crying now though. I've just asked a match up of my FEC against shooty SCE and my army melted with as much ease as my AGKoTG can melt other units.

GW will need to release more shooting based factions (freeguild asap preferably) to deal with these insane monsters who die in a single shooting phase. It does push the game more and more towards rock-paper-scissors (more so than it was before).

TBF, shooty Stormcast is probably the best counter to FEC in the game.

It does. I imagine my FEC would fare quite badly against Skryre based Skaven.

If KO get a fix soon-ish (as there are rapid fire battletomes rumoured), they probably will have to deal with several potent hard counters.

"Counters exist" is little consolation to players getting steamrolled, though.

Skryre is not as well off as shootycast; they cannot specialize into hard shooting as well, their dedicated shooters crumble in melee, and they are very low bravery against terrorgheist & flayer screams. They still have tools for the job but have a much tougher go than shootycast.

Yeah. "Counters exist" is the same as telling someone "sorry you like the models that you like, but you're going to need to git gud and get a different army or else continue to get face rolled every game".

Its good that counters exist. But it still distills the game into the top small handful of builds that you have to collect, assemble, and paint if you want to have a good game.

This has been the case with Warhammer since the dawn of time though; it's nothing new. The AOS designers seem to be more competent than the 40k ones but GW as a company still seem to have this weird approach to designing the game where they don't really think of interactions, almost like they are rushing to get something done so they don't have time to test it properly.

I'm not sure if this is a result of what is seemingly (despite what you see said to the contrary) models still driving rules, or too many projects in too short a time resulting in not enough time to really consider the ramifications of what an otherwise-interesting choice will do, or what. But after all these years it's still mind-boggling that GW's competitors can do this (even if they get it wrong sometimes they hit the mark way more often) and GW being the largest company cannot.

Yeah -but- the design team and the community have both been dogpiling negative commentary stating that thiis is a different situation and that balance was one of their top priorities.

Meanwhile Rick Priestly drops a fantasy warband scale game in January and while it has a couple balance issues iinternally (you'll always take a wizard and make him max level because he's too useful to not) the 10 or so forces all work great against each other. There's none of this "just don't play those factions" that you have in warhammer / aos.

And he's one dude. He doesn't have a team.

I mean the big ding that Warlords gets is there is no fluff or any narrative at all (intentionally), if someone could mix AOS world building with Warlords mechanics and balancing, we'd have a rocking game.

Out of curiosity, what Rick Priestly game would that be?

 Future War Cultist wrote:
Out of curiosity, what Rick Priestly game would that be?

My guess is Warlords of Erehwon. Which to be fair is a considerably smaller scale of a game compared to what we have in AoS model-wise.

Regarding the point about balance I'd say current GW is leagues above the old GW in terms of balance. Problems still exist, but it all tends to be in better shape than older editions(I see this especially in 40k).

However, I state this with the caveat that we will see how the next few tomes will be. Who knows, maybe the team has lost their marbles.

Also usual anti-GW competitor rhetoric: The models look like gak compared to GW, nobody plays that game, GW is a business they need to make money, did I forget any?

Yeah, I don't get it. They seem to double-down on saying balance is a major concern of theirs, but they don't show it. I mean, it looks like they're *TRYING* at least, but trying very poorly regardless.

Personally I think there is a very obvious point where a design approach changed for AoS(somewhere from Nurgle release and up).

The problem comes from the fact that they do this design changes while leaving older(old paradigm) armies languishing.

However, with their approach to 40k last 2 years, and with us already have 3 tomes for AoS this year, I get the feeling they are trying to up the speed of book releases to get things up to speed and/or to fix what is wrong. I at least hope so. Technically releasing a new book without new models should serve as a low-hanging fruit although at the same time they need to be careful not to oversaturate the market with books.

Eventually they'll have to start using a model similiar to X-Wing just so they don't alienate the customerbase with too many book re-releases.

My guess is Warlords of Erehwon. Which to be fair is a considerably smaller scale of a game compared to what we have in AoS model-wise.

That is incorrect. A 1000 point game of Erehwon can see upwards of 50 or 60 models on the table. Our group's average is around 50 models. I played a more "elite" dwarf army last weekend that was 41 models. A 2000 point game of AOS sees similar barring horde armies. For reference, the stormcast opponent I last faced had 50 or so models in his force at 2000 points. These are similar force sizes.

The erehwon tournament standard forming is 1250 points which will take you to 60 and 70 models which in many cases iis more models than a lot of AOS builds.

I also don't see how current GW is leagues ahead of old GW.

WHFB 8th you had 3 "viable" armies, and then a handful of scrappers that could hang. WHFB 7th you had 3 armies that were dominant and the rest were pretty much trash.

The only time GW was ever really balanced was 2000 and Ravening Hordes, where everything was viable.

AOS is similar.

Look at the goblin book compared to the FEC lolz that they released. These are two books released within a month of each other. One book is fun, has some OP elements but nothing over the top, and makes for great games. The other one you have to actively police yourself heaviily to have fun games with barring being a competitive tournament player that doesn't care about making fun games where everyone present is trying to break the game as best as they can.

There *could* be a precedent if FEC came out as a new wave of tomes, but we're liiterally talking about a book that came out a month after another book that is a solid 25% more powerful by virtue of just playing that book.

I mean there's some heinous stuff running around that is to be expected (I don't like it but its gw and is what it is) but I liken the FEC release as very very simiilar to the 7th edition whfb demon release. That army is considered the king daddy of broken armies pretty much in the history of wargaming. The FEC book is pretty close to achieving what Mat Ward and the 7th edition demon army book did, at least as it stands today and compared to their recent releases. The skaven book iis also pretty strong and has some sweet OP make your casual for fun opponents quiit the game out of frustration builds too but the FEC book is in a class all of its own right now.

That is incorrect. A 1000 point game of Erehwon can see upwards of 50 or 60 models on the table. Our group's average is around 50 models. I played a more "elite" dwarf army last weekend that was 41 models. A 2000 point game of AOS sees similar barring horde armies. For reference, the stormcast opponent I last faced had 50 or so models in his force at 2000 points. These are similar force sizes.

Perhaps I was not explicit enough in my statement, but when I was referring to model-wise I was talking about the number of model types/selection. Unless I am missing a secret cache of model types for Erehwon I would say that just the Blades of Khorne faction has about 3-4 times the model selection of the entire Erehwon game. GW has in fact a dozen factions or more that are this much larger than the Erehwon selection.

That is my point: GW is balancing a game with several hundred models available compared to a newcomer that is balancing a much fewer selection of units.

I am going to watch the meta and see how things unfold. I do feel FEC is breaking the mold, but everything else seems to be slowly balancing out barring a few models that break the game. Hell, the Daughters a lot of people feared have slowly fallen out of grace.


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The FEC book is pretty close to achieving what Mat Ward

Who knows, maybe Matt Ward has returned and wrote the tome.

I do think the major issue is they will have a cool idea and put it into a tome/codex... and then not update the other stuff to fit that new design paradigm. They continually do this. They did it in AOS first after Sylvaneth, then with BoK and Nurgle (alternate summoning), then with 2.0 moving forward.

That's a big issue with the lack of balance I think. You have some armies that are stuck with their original releases from the original AOS design philosophy, and some that are new, and some that are going off with some completely new design goal. It's all over the place. There doesn't seem to be a solid design goal for the game that they stick to. It can change from book to book.

Thanks for the clarification.

The knight list in erehwon is 16 unit entries. The dwarf list is 17 unit entries. I know those off top of my head because I have the lists with me right here, but all of the armies are similar in unit counts.

Khorne has 42 entries with a lot of those being multiple variants of the same hero (also combines the warriors list with the demons list so it can be argued is two lists)

Flesh Eaters is listed as having 13 unit entries (from the app anyway)

So there is a bouncing around of number of units with AOS, however Flesh Eaters with a lower unit entry count than erehwon has a severe balance problem.

I know that AOS can be balanced because we had fan comps that made it a lot more balanced.

Who knows, maybe Matt Ward has returned and wrote the tome.

Now this would not surprise me in the least bit! lol

I do think the major issue is they will have a cool idea and put it into a tome/codex... and then not update the other stuff to fit that new design paradigm. They continually do this. They did it in AOS first after Sylvaneth, then with BoK and Nurgle (alternate summoning), then with 2.0 moving forward.

This is quite common in more or less everything. When you are doing something you are bound to find new and interesting ideas, approaches, and methods that then become the new paradigm for you. Without it the game would be stuck in First Edition and limited to that. The problem is that they are not fast or responsive enough to fix/adjust other factions in relations to the new paradigm which is why we have distinct paradigms competing.

Looking at code made today is quite different from the code written a year ago because paradigms change, development changes, and new SDKs are provided. Same goes for AoS or any game really.


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The knight list in erehwon is 16 unit entries. The dwarf list is 17 unit entries. I know those off top of my head because I have the lists with me right here, but all of the armies are similar in unit counts.

So my guess is that these entries are all based off the same model with different weapons? I couldn't for the life of me find a large selection of Erehwon models on Warlords' website. Only see that in each box you have a selection of what to equip them with same as many WHFB models.

Erehwon you can use whatever models you want, there is no official model line.

Dwarfs for example:
Dwarf lord with a bunch of equipment options
Runesmith with a bunch of equipment options
Dwarf Hero with equipment options
Dwarf guard (elite dwarf warriors)
Dwarf Warriors
Dwarf archers
Dwarf gunners
Dwarf pony riders
Dwarf rangers
Dwarf maniacs
Dwarf stone thrower
Dwarf cannon
Dwarf mortar
Dwarf fire cannon
Dwarf bolt thrower
Dwarf flyiing machine
Dwarf juggernaut

These are all fairly different, much like an old WHFB list would be (same root stat with different special rules and gear)

Erehwon you can use whatever models you want, there is no official model line.

Gotcha, that explains things.

I am just extremely dissapointed with the FEC (and Skaven) battletomes because they had a good trend going. Stormcast and Nighthaunt have problem areas but in the realm of standard GW imbalance, Beasts had less of that and is pretty balanced overall, Gloomspite is potentially the best balanced we have... Then we have Skaven which is all over the place (most of it falling on the OP side) and FEC which is matching Tzeentch for most broken battletome (on release).

And I'm sure they will sell well for it. The problem? GW doesn't see the non-sales of players who don't want to bother with AoS at all as a result of crap like this.

GW doesn't see the non-sales of players who don't want to bother with AoS at all as a result of crap like this.

They are drowned out by the people that love the OP nature of these books gloating and celebrating on their facebook or twitter accounts. I can pull my twitter up right now and there's a dozen adepticon guys posting pics of skaven and flesh eater courts rushing to get them done for the adepticon tournament and gushing over how awesome gw is for this release.

Sell well is an understatement.

And I remember diggiing back into the way back machine when 7th ed demons were teabagging pretty much everyone there was still a chorus of celebration and people saying git gud on the forums, that they were not "that" bad, etc.

That led to a mass exodus of players. The question is, will these releases today produce similar results? Or is the target audience going to be cemented as those that love OP and bent factions?

I have my suspicions.

The people who love the OP stuff would be playing anyways. It is not like they have someplace else to go. If GW really wants to push Warhammer to the next level they need to do better than this.

I think we should caveat that people would be getting Skaven regardless because they are popular as an army (a natural side effect of being awesome) and they really just needed a decent allegiance to be viable.

Unrelated, apparently Carrion Empire is NOT coming back; friend of mine asked his GW rep and he said the GW facebook statement it would be restocked was a mistake. So this boxed set with 2 unique models sold out in 3 days and is gone, period. No longer available. Not coming back.

And people will praise this. So GW once again learns nothing and in fact gets rewarded for their horrible business practices.

It sold out largely because people saw how OP the factions were and at least where I am feared they'd never get enough arch regents in time to dominate the play scene.

We had guys order 3 and 4 boxes just to get 3 and 4 arch regents.


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I'm at a loss with what to do for campaign. The sudden death rules I was using worked great but that only addresses excessive mortal wounds and excessive summoning.

FEC kind of breaks everything. What do you think would be good to add against FEC to give most lists a fun chance in a narrative/casual environment? (outside of changing the book)

I liked the sudden death conditions because they were a part of the core rules (that no one uses since they aren't part of matched play) that triggered when certain conditions were met (doing excessive mortal wounds in a turn or summoning more than 500 pts in a 2000 pt game).

FeC are definitely interesting.
My friend jumped at the new book as he had around 8k already.
Right away he pointed out how insanely strong they were and just how easy to abuse they could become.
Me being me, thought he was exaggerating about it so we had a few games.

Gloomspite seriously dislike FeC armies.
Anything bravery related is bad news anyway, but with double turns of attack and growing an army T1, even horde armies struggle badly.

The games were 3k, so decent sized.

If squigs didn't count as flying then I'd have serious issues.
I basically spent early game sending bounderz after his characters or simply teleporting a dankhold troggoth infront of him.
The monsters minus riders aren't bad atall, but the second they have a character on them it's an entirely different matter.

Squig heavy seems to be the way to go against FeC.
Horde just gets shredded to ribbons in short order with little damage being caused.

Only for those models to receive a points increase in the next GHB19 and the cycle can continue... Sounds like GW made out like bandits on that box in your area. That's really stupid customer behaviour for a model that will be available separately soon enough. But hey, this short term "pay to win" strategy isn't something I like either, but just like MtG and other "nerd culture games", some people really are just about winning in this hobby and are willing to shell out massively for epeen.

I'm still surprised many people think this is a GW games thing...

At least in current AoS, the shift in powerlevel is almost that fast, that most average players don't have to worry too hard about the carrot on a stick. Let's not forget: this time last year, everybody was constantly moaning about Tzeentch armies and now they are just fine.

 Elmir wrote:
Only for those models to receive a points increase in the next GHB19 and the cycle can continue... Sounds like GW made out like bandits on that box in your area. That's really stupid customer behaviour for a model that will be available separately soon enough.

No, it is an intelligent move. The resale value of the rest of the kit well exceeds the difference in price from buying it verses buying the individual archregent (likely $30), and they get to have the model now as opposed to later, and we do not know how long it will be until the model is released individually, and that is assuming they do not use any of the other models or split the kit at all.


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Wayniac wrote:
Unrelated, apparently Carrion Empire is NOT coming back; friend of mine asked his GW rep and he said the GW facebook statement it would be restocked was a mistake. So this boxed set with 2 unique models sold out in 3 days and is gone, period. No longer available. Not coming back.

And people will praise this. So GW once again learns nothing and in fact gets rewarded for their horrible business practices.

Have people praised such behavior? I rarely see it, if at all. The amount of complaint vastly exceeds the amount of praise, even compensating for the usual human bias towards the former. Also we all know those unique models will be available separately, we just do not know when.


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auticus wrote:
It sold out largely because people saw how OP the factions were and at least where I am feared they'd never get enough arch regents in time to dominate the play scene.

We had guys order 3 and 4 boxes just to get 3 and 4 arch regents.

While I completely agree that is a significant factor, TBF it is a great box set for anyone wanting to start either force. The two put together is what made it sell out so quickly IMO. I split two just because it was a good deal on Skaven models I want to use non-competitively.


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auticus wrote:
I'm at a loss with what to do for campaign. The sudden death rules I was using worked great but that only addresses excessive mortal wounds and excessive summoning.

FEC kind of breaks everything. What do you think would be good to add against FEC to give most lists a fun chance in a narrative/casual environment? (outside of changing the book)

I liked the sudden death conditions because they were a part of the core rules (that no one uses since they aren't part of matched play) that triggered when certain conditions were met (doing excessive mortal wounds in a turn or summoning more than 500 pts in a 2000 pt game).

I base my PtG campaigns around free-for-all battles being a major thing (alternate by phase instead of by turn, two combat phases). Players have 6 weeks to hit a 12 glory threshold for the final battle, which is a FFA where the winner wins the league. Even players that do not hit that threshold get to play and can theoretically win, though when it is a king-of-the-hill scenario and they have to deploy on the hill...

While my meta is thankfully very reasonable with people not cheesing out (and the league reserves the right of the organizer to require a player to tone down their list), there is still a huge variety in relative strength of warbands. The FFA is the compensating factor; by the final battle everyone is well aware of the power players and they become priority threats that are ganged up on, creating a self-balancing effect. Sometimes there is some exasperation on the part of a player being ganged up on, but that is always countered by the comment "well you should have brought something less threatening."

Dunno how relevant that is for you, maybe you can find something there that helps.

More specifically, FEC are going to be both summoning a decent chunk and doing a good amount of mortal wounds, though either one may not exceed your thresholds. Maybe introduce a third where a player who, say, summons 300 extra points AND does more than 20 MWs in a turn gets sudden death'd.