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The fact that GW updated a warscroll is promising. For any other company, this would be a precedent to start doing it. Sadly with GW this may be the only time they update, or they could update warscrolls more frequently. It really is a crapshoot since their behavior is seemingly totally random and that's the worst thing of all; this update is good but there are a bunch of other things that need adjusting and who knows if they will be adjusted too.

 nels1031 wrote:
The new Plague Monk warscroll is up.

https://www.games-workshop.com/resources/PDF/AoS_Warscrolls//AoS_Skaven_Warscroll_card_Plague_Monks.pdf

With just a quick read over and no benefit of a stats deep dive, they still seem really good, in my opinion. Just not bonkers like they were.

Would like to see more of this kind of adjustment to warscrolls across the board,rather than just points +/-.

I like it, soooo much more user-friendly.


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 Amishprn86 wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Well if dealing 9 damage in a combat phase is the standard by which he is measured then I suppose he isn't so great.

Your missing the point... he cant buff well, he gets outran for the unit he can buff, he isn't consistent damage, and his 1 buff cost CP and is actually bad within BoC b.c they don't need +to wound when you can get re-roll wounds a few ways. He is basically a supporting melee beat stick that isn't good at beating things. A chaos lord does what he does in melee but for 1 CP can make a unit fight twice, thats leaps and bounds better than 1 unit getting +1 to wound....

But perhaps a better question would be, what 100 points of troop option beats a doombull?

Shadow warriors; 2+/3+ if in cover, 18" range 10 shots, -1 for 1 vs 5+ its 4.68 damage, they can also deepstrike, not giving stats for the rest, but some more are, Freeguild Pistoliers, warpfire thrower, Leadbelchers, etc...

There are plenty, many are more niche or even more squishy, but there are lots. If you go with 100pts for blocks as well its even more so (but thats not full fair), there are MANYmore if you go up to CL points, some units can do double the damage for 150pts give or take 10pts as well. Sof or 50% more points to get many times double the wounds and damage? yeah sounds good.

Obviously a fast shooting unit can just kite him until he's dead if we are looking at things in a vacuum and not a battlefield where the doombull is getting look out sir and the ranged troops don't have the same space to maneuver. If that is the only was units could beat a doombull I'd say it's undercosted.

Also the doombull will crush a warpfire thrower easily, don't know who gave you that information.

Wayniac wrote:
The fact that GW updated a warscroll is promising. For any other company, this would be a precedent to start doing it. Sadly with GW this may be the only time they update, or they could update warscrolls more frequently. It really is a crapshoot since their behavior is seemingly totally random and that's the worst thing of all; this update is good but there are a bunch of other things that need adjusting and who knows if they will be adjusted too.

They did it for the Kharadron Gundstrok guys a few years ago, for what its worth.

Well yeah but this update is actually GOOD.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 nels1031 wrote:
The new Plague Monk warscroll is up.

https://www.games-workshop.com/resources/PDF/AoS_Warscrolls//AoS_Skaven_Warscroll_card_Plague_Monks.pdf

With just a quick read over and no benefit of a stats deep dive, they still seem really good, in my opinion. Just not bonkers like they were.

Would like to see more of this kind of adjustment to warscrolls across the board,rather than just points +/-.

I like it, soooo much more user-friendly.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Well if dealing 9 damage in a combat phase is the standard by which he is measured then I suppose he isn't so great.

Your missing the point... he cant buff well, he gets outran for the unit he can buff, he isn't consistent damage, and his 1 buff cost CP and is actually bad within BoC b.c they don't need +to wound when you can get re-roll wounds a few ways. He is basically a supporting melee beat stick that isn't good at beating things. A chaos lord does what he does in melee but for 1 CP can make a unit fight twice, thats leaps and bounds better than 1 unit getting +1 to wound....

But perhaps a better question would be, what 100 points of troop option beats a doombull?

Shadow warriors; 2+/3+ if in cover, 18" range 10 shots, -1 for 1 vs 5+ its 4.68 damage, they can also deepstrike, not giving stats for the rest, but some more are, Freeguild Pistoliers, warpfire thrower, Leadbelchers, etc...

There are plenty, many are more niche or even more squishy, but there are lots. If you go with 100pts for blocks as well its even more so (but thats not full fair), there are MANYmore if you go up to CL points, some units can do double the damage for 150pts give or take 10pts as well. Sof or 50% more points to get many times double the wounds and damage? yeah sounds good.

Obviously a fast shooting unit can just kite him until he's dead if we are looking at things in a vacuum and not a battlefield where the doombull is getting look out sir and the ranged troops don't have the same space to maneuver. If that is the only was units could beat a doombull I'd say it's undercosted.

Also the doombull will crush a warpfire thrower easily, don't know who gave you that information.

Im not pitting them vs each other, you asked me "What other 100pt units can deal the same damage" I gave you a few units as an example and then showed a few points more i can double the damage. Shadow warriors dont need to kite, they have equal damage and are always in range where the Bull has to run at them.

Unless you mean toe to toe in combat vs each other, but thats not my point, might be yours but then you are again missing my point, my point was he isn;t worth his points and thats why he went down. There is a very good reason BoC are one of the worst armies in the game and you don't see Doombulls being scary on the table. Heck double Beastlords with Volcanic Axe and Gavespawn Axe are much scarier, heroes run away from them (6 attacsk 3+/3+ rr hits 1's, rr all wounds, -1 for either 2D or 3D for 90pts), they also get the +3" movement buff for a 9" flat movement, and their CP is better, all breyherd within 18" gets re-rolls to hits if he killed any models and wounds if he killed a hero.

Ok then, what melee unit will exceed his damage output for 100 points, and has similar speed & durability. I am just trying to set up a comparison to establish relative effectiveness. Also, BoC are not among the worst armies in the game on the lower end, sure, but there are a number of armies worse off than them*

*A case could be made by going strictly off tourney win %, however due to the data points being non-randomized it is not reliable. I would note that Phoenix Temple had/has one of the highest win % ratings of AoS history., despite clearly not being at the power level of Slaanesh. If we look at tourney wins, where an army must be above a certain threshold to reach, BoC are sitting in the bottom third. Sub-par, but not the worst.**

**This is of course we are assuming 'armies' and not '2nd-edition battletomes' which is obviously a different case.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Ok then, what melee unit will exceed his damage output for 100 points, and has similar speed & durability. I am just trying to set up a comparison to establish relative effectiveness. Also, BoC are not among the worst armies in the game.

Edit: found a more recent version of the table. Beasts of Chaos are further down now, with only a 39% winrate.

 cole1114 wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Ok then, what melee unit will exceed his damage output for 100 points, and has similar speed & durability. I am just trying to set up a comparison to establish relative effectiveness. Also, BoC are not among the worst armies in the game.

Edit: found a more recent version of the table. Beasts of Chaos are further down now, with only a 39% winrate.

I realized my statement needed clarification, so I went back and edited it. I will concede that if one wants to measure army performance strictly by win % then they are among the worst. However, one them must also accept that phoenix temple were among the best.

Also, do you have any examples of Doombull-equivalent units performing similarly for 100 points?

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 cole1114 wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Ok then, what melee unit will exceed his damage output for 100 points, and has similar speed & durability. I am just trying to set up a comparison to establish relative effectiveness. Also, BoC are not among the worst armies in the game.

Edit: found a more recent version of the table. Beasts of Chaos are further down now, with only a 39% winrate.

I realized my statement needed clarification, so I went back and edited it. I will concede that if one wants to measure army performance strictly by win % then they are among the worst. However, one them must also accept that phoenix temple were among the best.

Also, do you have any examples of Doombull-equivalent units performing similarly for 100 points?

To clarify that guide isn't sorted by win%, it's sorta by wins in tournaments. So the more 5 win tournaments they have the higher ranked they are, then 4 win, etc.

As for the doombull, there's a bunch. Darkoath warqueen for example is better against heroes/monsters.

edit: there's also the skullgrinder after it becomes blood-blessed. The grimwrath berzerker. So on.

Well, a warqueen attacking a hero or monster deals an average of 3.55 against a 4+ save. Against a normal unit she deals 1.77 average. She also strikes at the start of the combat phase, and has a 6+ fnp that bounces mortals (which statistically will only trigger once before she dies).

The doombull deals 4.08 against a 4+ save regardless of unit type. He is also faster, has more wounds, and has a better armor save. So it is pretty clear the doombull fights better than the marauder warqueen.


The grimwrath berserker deals 2.96 average damage verses a 4+ but also gets another attack 5/6 times, bringing the average up to 5.43 (albeit with almost half of that coming at the end of the combat phase). He has 4+ armor and a 6+ fnp which goes to 5+ in melee, meaning his 6 wounds are realistically worth 8-9. So compared to the doombull he does more damage and is similar levels of durability, but is only movement 4", a significant downgrade from 7". Overall I would say he fights as well as the doombull, extra damage making up for slower speed.


The Skullgrinder doesn't do the blood blessed thing anymore, and has not for some time now. He is dealing out an average of 3.33 against a 4+ save, with added mortal wounds putting him at 5.0 against heores or monsters. So he beats out the doombull in damage only against heroes/monsters, otherwise he falls short. Same save as the doombull, but three less wounds and slower. The Doombuill fights better than this guy as well.

Based on that the Doombull is even with one and better than two others, which makes me think 120 was more appropriate. It also shows how the perception of a units performance can differ from the reality, and why it can be so important to run the numbers. Regardless, your assertion that these heroes fight similarly or better definitely falls flat.

On the matter of being among the worst armies, there is broad room for interpretation, and I should not have phrased it in as certain terms as I did. While I do not regard BoC position on that chart as one of the worst (I personally see the bottom 20% as 'the worst') but as a subjective term I do not think it unreasonable if someone said the bottom quarter or even the bottom third are considered 'the worst'.


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At the end of the day I want the doombull (and bullgors) to get something akin to WHFB minotaur rules where they gain stacking bonus attacks as long as they keep killing models. I want a doombull to be a 160-200 point beefcake of a combat unit.

Um... your math is wrong tho. He does an average of 3.58 damage to a 4+ save. How did you get over 4 damage? And that 3.58 is with the horns and chance of a MW.


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To add, a cool unit that is never talked about is a Master Moulder, he does 3.45 to all units with a 4+ save. His aura is good if you take those units and his other ability is good too if you take that unit (Heal D3 to a unit) for 100pts, his range is AMAZING 3" and 2". so you can fight from behind other units in safe zones against 1" units. Tho i wouldn't take Rat swarms, clan rats are just better.

https://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Packmaster

It's 3.58 without the MW. Average of 3 wound rolls means an average of 0.5 MWs, thus 4.08.

Skaven have so many OP options that conversation could go for days


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So on a positive note, and for giving credit where it is due, I want to say the nee plague monk scroll is really well done. First we have double weapons with one profile and weapon+stave with another. The re-rolls for hitting have been cut out for doubles while for stave armed units there is only one weapon profile to roll. Either way it is a lot of saved time, and the functionality of staves being the 'spear' option for larger units remains. The music & standard have been slimmed down to one bonus on each, neither of which involve keeping track of hits/wounds of 6 which is another improvement on ease of use. And a small thing, but the champion now has the same weapons as the unit so he never needs to be rolled separately. So props to GW on this one.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Um... your math is wrong tho. He does an average of 3.58 damage to a 4+ save. How did you get over 4 damage? And that 3.58 is with the horns and chance of a MW.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
To add, a cool unit that is never talked about is a Master Moulder, he does 3.45 to all units with a 4+ save. His aura is good if you take those units and his other ability is good too if you take that unit (Heal D3 to a unit) for 100pts, his range is AMAZING 3" and 2". so you can fight from behind other units in safe zones against 1" units. Tho i wouldn't take Rat swarms, clan rats are just better.

https://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Packmaster

The other key point is that he has a chance to bring back packs on a 5+
So rat ogres, giant rats, rat swarms, wolf rats etc.
Even if he brings back a min pack of rat ogres once he’s earned his points back without having to do a thing.

As someone who runs a pure moulder army, I tend to take 2-3 of him.
He’s literally the key point of the army, even if it is a low tier one.

Finishing painting my Charnel Throne is making me want to dust off my Flesh-Eater Courts again. At least I would have one army that's pretty top tier.

So I was thinking about Slaanesh summoning, and how I would redesign it if I could. I feel like the key points needed are it being based off torment but not killing, not being specifically tied to heroes/multi-wound models, and (if possible) having a trade off such that the summoning is not a free upgrade for the army.

The best I could come up with is something along the lines of:

"If an enemy model would be slain by the attacks of a friendly Slaanesh unit in the combat phase, you may choose for that model to be tormented instead. A tormented model is left with one wound remaining and any further damage yet to be allocated to that model's unit is negated (note this does not prevent the unit from taking damage later in the phase, should it be attacked again). A unit can only be tormented once per turn, even if the tormented model is subsequently slain. Generate 1 depravity point each time a model is tormented, generate d3 depravity points instead if the tormented model was a Hero or Monster.

Additionally, at the end of each turn roll a dice for each friendly Slaanesh unit on the battlefield that had damage allocated to it that turn (and not negated), on a 4+ generate 1 depravity point"

Obviously the numbers can be changed around to fit with whatever the depravity requirements to summon are, they are basically just placeholders to show the concept.

I'd still just incorporate a sudden death rule if you summon in more than 25% of free extra points to the game and your opponent does not. That way you can have whatever rules you want for summoning, but if you go nuts with it there is a downside that you are handing your opponent and easier victory condition to achieve.

Which brings choices back to the game.

Even that does not solve the core functionality of Slaanesh summoning. A low-summon army could suddenly be generating 600+ extra points of models just because they happened to go up against a multi-wound army. Not to mention all summoning being tied to characters.

I'd simply make depravity generation on a per-hit basis rather than per damage/wound.

IE - A single hit that deals 5 damage vs a 5 wound model generates 0 depravity.

Community Faction Focus wrote:Skyvessels have been tweaked considerably. Now, units embarked upon them count as a garrison.

Gentlemen.

Kharadron are coming.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Community Faction Focus wrote:Skyvessels have been tweaked considerably. Now, units embarked upon them count as a garrison.

Gentlemen.

Kharadron are coming.

And "Fly High" is back from 3-4 editions of WHFB ago.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Community Faction Focus wrote:Skyvessels have been tweaked considerably. Now, units embarked upon them count as a garrison.

Gentlemen.

Kharadron are coming.

I am happy they made this change. However, they should have done it when 2nd edition hit via errata. KO players have gone through a lot of needless crap on the tabletop because of GW's stubborn refusal to fix rules. They could have just done a straight replacement, keeping the bit about bailing out should the vessel be destroyed. It wouldn't have broken anything, it would have made the army entirely functional, and it would have taken all of 5 minutes to do.

Eh you can argue that for almost all factions at some point during the 2.0 lifespan. I think that honestly its been easier to wait for the 2.0 Battletome once the ball got rolling it was clear to see that the new tome was on the horizon. Though yes a painful wait for KO players who didn't know a year and a half ago that they'd be near the end.

Still just a steady 2 weeks to go and KO and Tzeentch will hit the shelves and game tables!

So having read the full article, the aether-share mechanic seems like it could be really fun while also being difficult to abuse since it is only once per game. This and the fly high mechanic I really like. The fly high in particular is a free teleport ability (something I generally do not like) but has some big drawbacks in being only the skyvessels and not being usable if it is too badly damaged. The latter part in particular adds a lot to tactical play for both sides.


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 Overread wrote:
Eh you can argue that for almost all factions at some point during the 2.0 lifespan. I think that honestly its been easier to wait for the 2.0 Battletome once the ball got rolling it was clear to see that the new tome was on the horizon. Though yes a painful wait for KO players who didn't know a year and a half ago that they'd be near the end.

Still just a steady 2 weeks to go and KO and Tzeentch will hit the shelves and game tables!

I disagree; there are no other factions where a single extremely simple change would have restored broken army functionality.

Given how salty people were over the errata'd Grundstock Thunderers, it's a safe bet to say that they didn't want to do something as big without a book again.

That and I suspect they didn't want legions of other army fans screaming for similar attention before their Battletome; or even making the battletome appear devalued if "many of the most important changes were free ones".

Another possibility is they didn't want to make it seem like they just lifted the idea from the various forums, reddits, etc and threw it into GHB.

It was a very popular suggestion.

As answers to the question of "Why do we want to let a faction be non-viable for over a year?" Those aren't convincing to me. It's sucked for people who want to play KO, it's lost sales GW could have been making. And not all of the players who left because the army they wanted to play didn't work will come back.

Same can be said for Slaves to Darkness, Cities of Sigmar, Orruks and most other armies. There is no denying that AoS was a total disaster of messy launch concepts that then went through two or three major product direction revisions and management revisions before landing on the 2.0 formula.

That isn't saying 2.0 is perfect, but its vastly superior, rules wise, than anything that came before since AoS started.



So basically yeah there was waiting, heck Auctus never let us forget that Slaves to Darkness were brokenly bad over the last year and a half or more .

KO are getting a new Tome, new rules, new model and should join the ranks of 2.0 factions in less than two weeks time.



I think we can muse on what might have been and on the better choices GW could have made, but in the end KO Are losing no models and are gaining functionality at last. Now if you want a rant then I'd say high elf players or such have got far more reason to rant. Or we can rage at the swathes of FW models being stripped from sale (after years of them adding very little to fantasy and GW hardly marketing anything that was up for sale from FW anyway).

Sorry, but Wanderers are the ones that get to rant the most.

Three iterations of GHB Allegiance abilities, etc--and they completely screwed us by just shoving us into Cities of Yawnmar.

It's frankly sad that they chose to go that route with Wanderers, seeing as how they have exceedingly little to do with the Cities. More's the pity that the flavorful units(Waywatchers and Glade Guard, notably) got dumped with no ceremony.

 Overread wrote:
Same can be said for Slaves to Darkness, Cities of Sigmar, Orruks and most other armies. There is no denying that AoS was a total disaster of messy launch concepts that then went through two or three major product direction revisions and management revisions before landing on the 2.0 formula.

That isn't saying 2.0 is perfect, but its vastly superior, rules wise, than anything that came before since AoS started.



So basically yeah there was waiting, heck Auctus never let us forget that Slaves to Darkness were brokenly bad over the last year and a half or more .

KO are getting a new Tome, new rules, new model and should join the ranks of 2.0 factions in less than two weeks time.



I think we can muse on what might have been and on the better choices GW could have made, but in the end KO Are losing no models and are gaining functionality at last. Now if you want a rant then I'd say high elf players or such have got far more reason to rant. Or we can rage at the swathes of FW models being stripped from sale (after years of them adding very little to fantasy and GW hardly marketing anything that was up for sale from FW anyway).

Well no, the same can't be said, because those were not completely new armies with the entire line being new. Even more importantly mixed order, ironjawz, and bonesplittaz were all viable for a long period leading into the corresponding battletome releases. Slaves to Darkness were not, but are again a completely different situation since all of those models could be used in the mono-god allegiances.

And, again, there is no one rule change that could have fixed any of those factions. With KO it is literally replacing a couple paragraphs with a single sentence changing them to use the garrsion rules. Bam, one sentence, army fixed.


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 Kanluwen wrote:
Sorry, but Wanderers are the ones that get to rant the most.

Three iterations of GHB Allegiance abilities, etc--and they completely screwed us by just shoving us into Cities of Yawnmar.

It's frankly sad that they chose to go that route with Wanderers, seeing as how they have exceedingly little to do with the Cities. More's the pity that the flavorful units(Waywatchers and Glade Guard, notably) got dumped with no ceremony.

The gutting of factions is its own issue, similar but not what I'm addressing.