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 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Very happy with the changes myself. Particularly to heroic recovery, unleash hell, and amulet of destiny.

Agreed. Generally very happy, especially with the Amulet change.

Could have done with more changes, especially for the armies struggling most, but hopefully their books aren't too far away.

I have to be be honest, I'm going to miss the amulet on my Runefather. Though I can recognize that it was too good in some instances. Probably still going to be the item I put on my characters that have survivability issues. Every little bit helps!

Also kind of baffled by the Fyreslayer changes that overlooked Vulkites points cost. They're not a bad unit as far as battleline choices go, but they are outclassed by Hearthguard in every way. Perhaps a new warscroll could be in the works!?

Which leads me to =

I think what I like the most out of this Winter FAQ is the Battlescroll thing. Though this first entry in the regular series is pretty limited, "Gods and Heroes" being the theme, my mind is racing on what could be next. My biggest complaint with all of these FAQs for the last 2 years has been that its been limited to adjusting points, rather then the scrolls themselves(discounting a few targeted unit rewrites), where the problems truly originate. This thing seems like an answer to my grievance. Pretty sweet.

Also, my long planned Tzaangor focused Tzeentch army just got a little closer to moving up in my painting/building backlog.

well, my GSG army dropped by 25pts.

That oughta fix it, I can bring...

...well nothing, it is age of sigmar after all, nothing is 25pts.

I hate the Amulet change, now all the small heroes it is worthless.

It should have been "Wounds of 9 or less it is a 5+ ward save, otherwise it is a 6+ ward save"

But over all I am mostly happy with the changes, I am miffed over a few things.

My BoC has some cheaper units, though it means less viable Brayherd even more so sadly. Which means they are not viable at all, just DO's, Bulls, and Cocks now.

CoS: Many units are still terrible and way over costed like Drakes... should have made 5-6 more units cheaper.

FeC: ZD and TG without a leader needed to go down 25-30pts and then would have been great.

No Changes to DoK (their CP really need to change)

No Changes to SoB

I'd say a 7/10 it was good but still could have changed a few more things.

I hate the Amulet change, now all the small heroes it is worthless.

It should have been "Wounds of 9 or less it is a 5+ ward save, otherwise it is a 6+ ward save"

I was thinking the same thing tbh but I'm also fine with this change, overall.

Rihgu wrote:

I hate the Amulet change, now all the small heroes it is worthless.

It should have been "Wounds of 9 or less it is a 5+ ward save, otherwise it is a 6+ ward save"

I was thinking the same thing tbh but I'm also fine with this change, overall.

Its a lot better than where it was. Being able to functionally add like 2 wounds to a squishy character is not worth letting a Mega Gargant functionally get to over 50 wounds.

But yeah, now it's pretty low utility. It does nothing for most of Death for instance and maybe a middle ground should have been found. But I'm still very happy about it compared to where we were.

Did it overall bring all choices up to parity with each other?

 auticus wrote:
Did it overall bring all choices up to parity with each other?

No, but its much flatter. Arcane Tome is now easily the best neutral relic, but not almost always the best choice for any army. Its utility varies a lot based on army and list.

Trying to understand some of the changes to Chaos (new player here, dabbled in 2nd Ed but only SCE). So if I take Slaves to Darkness units in a Blades of Khorne army, the Slaves to Darkness units are still not Allies but they do not gain any Allegiance abilities (their own or Blades of Khorne)? So the Aura of Khorne from a Slaves to Darkness Chaos Lord would not work for any of the Slaves to Darkness units in a Blades of Khorne list since that is an Allegiance ability?

Going in reverse, if I take a Bloodsecrator in a Khorne Slaves to Darkness list, his ability to add one Attack to all Khorne units within 16" would still work on all units since it is not an Allegiance ability but rather an ability on his warscroll?

Rihgu wrote:

I hate the Amulet change, now all the small heroes it is worthless.

It should have been "Wounds of 9 or less it is a 5+ ward save, otherwise it is a 6+ ward save"

I was thinking the same thing tbh but I'm also fine with this change, overall.

I was thinking a 5+ but only against MWs, to give every army access to some counterplay in that department. But agreed; VASTLY prefer the new version.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Stux wrote:

 auticus wrote:
Did it overall bring all choices up to parity with each other?

No, but its much flatter. Arcane Tome is now easily the best neutral relic, but not almost always the best choice for any army. Its utility varies a lot based on army and list.

I feel like having it grant a cast but not a dispel would help bring things in line.

TangoTwoBravo wrote:
Trying to understand some of the changes to Chaos (new player here, dabbled in 2nd Ed but only SCE). So if I take Slaves to Darkness units in a Blades of Khorne army, the Slaves to Darkness units are still not Allies but they do not gain any Allegiance abilities (their own or Blades of Khorne)? So the Aura of Khorne from a Slaves to Darkness Chaos Lord would not work for any of the Slaves to Darkness units in a Blades of Khorne list since that is an Allegiance ability?

Going in reverse, if I take a Bloodsecrator in a Khorne Slaves to Darkness list, his ability to add one Attack to all Khorne units within 16" would still work on all units since it is not an Allegiance ability but rather an ability on his warscroll?

You never would have got an Aura of Khorne (i.e. the STD allegiance ability) on a STD Daemon Prince taken in a Blades of Khorne Army. But in the past, he would have been able to double attack if you were Reapers of Vengeance, and he would have given an aura of reroll 1s to hit for Daemons, and you would have been able to use blood tithe abilities on him. Now you can do none of that. It appears you can still give him artefacts, and buff him with Khorne prayers, and it appears that all the warscroll abilities that specify KHORNE still work on him (e.g. he still gets the +1 attack from the bloodsecrator), but it's a little unclear whether this is intended or just something they overlooked.

Either way it's a terrible change that results in Khorne and Slaanesh being nerfed harder than any of the top armies except Tzeentch, which is just bizarre. I didn't expect that GW thought that the real problem in the meta was Khorne, Slaanesh and OBR, but those are the factions that took it in the face hardest in this update.

I feel it is part of a change in design direction; previously they were pro-mixing with keyword based allegiances but are increasingly shifting towards armies only drawing from their own tome.

I feel like DPs are in a uniquely bad spot. Because while it can be argued that a super-dedicated mono god force will only include marked StD units as auxiliaries, daemon princes for Bloodbound, Arcanites, Rotbringers, and Hedonites are absolutely a thing, as are daemon princes acting as generals of demonic forces in the great game. What we really need are unique warscrolls for DPs coming from the mono-god factions as opposed to StDs.

It's fine if they want to go in that direction I guess, but they should be doing it with each new book release, not nerfing already-terrible armies and giving them nothing in return in what they have marketed as a balance patch designed to bring the lower performing armies up, not nerf them further. Khorne and OBR got nerfed harder than any other factions in this "balance" update. It's just perverse.

yukishiro1 wrote:

TangoTwoBravo wrote:
Trying to understand some of the changes to Chaos (new player here, dabbled in 2nd Ed but only SCE). So if I take Slaves to Darkness units in a Blades of Khorne army, the Slaves to Darkness units are still not Allies but they do not gain any Allegiance abilities (their own or Blades of Khorne)? So the Aura of Khorne from a Slaves to Darkness Chaos Lord would not work for any of the Slaves to Darkness units in a Blades of Khorne list since that is an Allegiance ability?

Going in reverse, if I take a Bloodsecrator in a Khorne Slaves to Darkness list, his ability to add one Attack to all Khorne units within 16" would still work on all units since it is not an Allegiance ability but rather an ability on his warscroll?

You never would have got an Aura of Khorne (i.e. the STD allegiance ability) on a STD Daemon Prince taken in a Blades of Khorne Army. But in the past, he would have been able to double attack if you were Reapers of Vengeance, and he would have given an aura of reroll 1s to hit for Daemons, and you would have been able to use blood tithe abilities on him. Now you can do none of that. It appears you can still give him artefacts, and buff him with Khorne prayers, and it appears that all the warscroll abilities that specify KHORNE still work on him (e.g. he still gets the +1 attack from the bloodsecrator), but it's a little unclear whether this is intended or just something they overlooked.

Either way it's a terrible change that results in Khorne and Slaanesh being nerfed harder than any of the top armies except Tzeentch, which is just bizarre. I didn't expect that GW thought that the real problem in the meta was Khorne, Slaanesh and OBR, but those are the factions that took it in the face hardest in this update.

Thanks! Does seem to be slamming tdown on the concept of Chaos coalitions. Oh well.

yukishiro1 wrote:
It's fine if they want to go in that direction I guess, but they should be doing it with each new book release, not nerfing already-terrible armies and giving them nothing in return in what they have marketed as a balance patch designed to bring the lower performing armies up, not nerf them further. Khorne and OBR got nerfed harder than any other factions in this "balance" update. It's just perverse.

Chaos in general has been eating the boot for most of AOS' existence. Perverse is a good word to use for their "balance" haha.

 auticus wrote:

Chaos in general has been eating the boot for most of AOS' existence. Perverse is a good word to use for their "balance" haha.

Not sure if that's really true, at least any more so than any other grand alliance.

Sure, BoC have been consistently poor and StD not far behind. But the god specific armies have generally been good to great. It's a long time since Tzeentch wasn't top tier and Slaanesh has flirted with the top too.

Overall that's no worse than Death or Destruction have had it really.

You're right in the grand alliance scheme of things.

Khorne was pretty bad for most of AOS (not sure of its status now). Nurgle has been off & on.

Slaves to Darkness have been the boot leather poster boys almost the entire time.

Beasts - well - I can't remember a time even in warhammer days when they weren't bad.

Tzeentch has been top dog since I can remember and Slaanesh was what finally got me to drop AOS when I had to deal with nothing but triple keeper of secrets and their ungodly summoning at the time.

 Stux wrote:

 auticus wrote:

Chaos in general has been eating the boot for most of AOS' existence. Perverse is a good word to use for their "balance" haha.

Not sure if that's really true, at least any more so than any other grand alliance.

Sure, BoC have been consistently poor and StD not far behind. But the god specific armies have generally been good to great. It's a long time since Tzeentch wasn't top tier and Slaanesh has flirted with the top too.

Overall that's no worse than Death or Destruction have had it really.

Or good chunks of Order. Really there's no grand alliance that has had it particularly good or bad. A decent argument could have been made for Destruction up until 3rd and the SoB stampede.


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yukishiro1 wrote:
It's fine if they want to go in that direction I guess, but they should be doing it with each new book release, not nerfing already-terrible armies and giving them nothing in return in what they have marketed as a balance patch designed to bring the lower performing armies up, not nerf them further. Khorne and OBR got nerfed harder than any other factions in this "balance" update. It's just perverse.

I don't like the direction either but that's blowing things way out of proportion. Khorne gained more from the point cuts than it lost in the DP losing reroll 1s to hit. The command ability was the reason he was being taken and that still works just fine.

OBR have just suffered from a start as a completely brainless army to play. Once they got pushed back to the high-skill-curve the army is designed around mechanically they have seemed 'bad' by comparison. They still have plenty of tools to win.

It absolutely isn't blowing things out of proportion. The nerf isn't to the daemon prince, the nerf is to all the STD units that you used to see used to make Khorne playable since the Khorne scrolls themselves are absolute garbage. Chaos knights, marauders, varanguard, etc. You would take these in Khorne to give you hammers and anvils the Khorne book itself lacks, and they used to be fully integrated into the army. Now you can't use Blood Tithe on them, which is a big blow to their effectiveness - a huge part of making the army work was being able to move/charge/fight those units in the hero phase, put on army-wide fight on death on a key turn, etc etc. And of course that's putting to one side the Archaon nerfs too; Archaon Khorne wasn't as strong as Tzeentch but it was another common way Khorne players attempted something close to a viable army.

My "competitive" Khorne list went up 30 points and lost the ability to use its key mechanic on two of its three key units. That's a bigger nerf than any other army saw except Tzeentch Archaon and maybe Salamander spam.

Competitive Khorne is about bloodthirster spam or Archaeon. The latter needed the nerf, the former is untouched. The mortal units aren't there to spend blood tithe on; they are there to support the 'thirsters who hit harder, more reliably, and can use the commands for fighting twice or piling from 6". Which they can still do. And even then much of Khorne turning to StDs was because the bloodbound options were so bad, many of which just got a reduction.

The strongest Khorne lists (bar Archaeon) lose more from the amulet of destiny nerf than the coalition one. Where that change really hurts is casual play; individuals with StD heavy armies despite them being suboptimal. And don't get me wrong, this is a dam shame. It is the change out of all of this that I do not like.

I'm still hoping for changes to that awful coherency change. Gutbusters have not been fun thanks to it.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
I'm still hoping for changes to that awful coherency change. Gutbusters have not been fun thanks to it.

You won't see that any time soon. They used it in 40k, thought it fantastic, & intentionally ported it over.

ccs wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
I'm still hoping for changes to that awful coherency change. Gutbusters have not been fun thanks to it.

You won't see that any time soon. They used it in 40k, thought it fantastic, & intentionally ported it over.

Given the rate of codex releases currently for AoS it's still got a better possible time then a new Mawtribes book to fix everything.

ccs wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
I'm still hoping for changes to that awful coherency change. Gutbusters have not been fun thanks to it.

You won't see that any time soon. They used it in 40k, thought it fantastic, & intentionally ported it over.

Except they didn't. The 40k rule uses 2" coherency, which is why it works in 40k. 40k also has more forgiving rules for being within engagement range.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 auticus wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
It's fine if they want to go in that direction I guess, but they should be doing it with each new book release, not nerfing already-terrible armies and giving them nothing in return in what they have marketed as a balance patch designed to bring the lower performing armies up, not nerf them further. Khorne and OBR got nerfed harder than any other factions in this "balance" update. It's just perverse.

Chaos in general has been eating the boot for most of AOS' existence. Perverse is a good word to use for their "balance" haha.

Chaos, especially Tzeentch and Chaos soup have consistently been top tier performers for the majority of the game. There was a period of like 2.5 years where the progression of uncontested #1 was Chaos Soup->Tzeentch->Tzeentch still after nerfs->Flesh Eater courts->Tzeentch->Slaanesh->Tzeentch again.

So having time to digest some of the changes I have a few no brainer thoughts/hot takes:

Newly, and rightfully, buffed Kragnos is going to carry a good portion of Destruction armies. His “The End of Empires” ability will be brutal with Mawtribes builds, for instance. And of course, Ironjawz will also benefit immensely. Bit weird that they took away his thematic, though extremely situational anti-draconith ability of his original warscroll. Thought it was a nice touch given his lore.

Nagash in a Nighthaunt army will raise their stock. Not make them worldbeaters overnight, but definitely gives them a potent new weapon. His ward save boost ability will be a welcome addition to Nighthaunt. Not so sure with FEC, but it gives them more possibilities, at least. Both armies have pretty decent spell lores and now he has access to them. Still think he is overpriced, pointswise.

Ambivalent about the STD coalition changes. The writing was on the wall, given how Hedonites and Maggotkin abilities were worded, but it seems like a step back creatively. Balance-wise, probably the right move. Probably could’ve just adjusted Marauders and the issue would’ve been fixed, mostly. Wouldn’t be shocked if the next iteration of the Cities of Sigmar sees something similiar come knocking on their door.

Lastly, this was a quote from the original article, when the points changes to dragons were announced :

The Warhammer Studio has also been working on a Balance Update much like the recent Warhammer 40,000 Balance Dataslate. This is expected to land in December, with a focus on boosting units that currently aren’t seeing quite so much play on the tabletop.

I feel like they missed the mark if this was the intended focus.