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Hi everyone, I'm looking to get into AOS and am looking for some help picking an army and am hoping you all can help me.

Things I like:
Fast skirmishers (skinks, thunderers, Griff hounds)
Dictating the flow of the game
Mobility
able to hold home objectives

Things I don't like
Hordes
The idea of painting stormcast eternals
Giant anvils that waddle up the board

I've been contemplating maybe skink heavy seraphon or the new nighthaunt. I've even considered stormcast as they do a lot of these things... I just hate their models so probably can't do that...

Thoughts?

Gryph-Hounds aren't really skirmishers--nor are Thunderers(assuming you're referring to the Dwarf unit?).

Gryph-Hounds are more of an ablative shield unit or an early warning system if you've gone ranged heavy.

There aren't really many armies that have both mobility and the ability to "dictate the flow of the game".

Aren't they kinda the same? Ability to cap objectives or pressure war machines certainly seems like it would require response? Or maybe I'm fundamentally misunderstanding how AOS works. Maybe I want an army that can be reactive?

Well if you want gryph hounds (and who wouldn't!) then one bonus is that you can ally them in under pretty much any order faction - alliance wise Stormcast can join into pretty much any other force in Order, whilst most others are limited in who they can and cannot ally with.


If you like speed then you could consider Daughters of Khaine - though the Witch Aelves and Sisters of Slaughter tend to work better in larger groups so might be a bit too much of a hoard for you; but you could consider a Melusai force. If you take a bloodwrack as your general (on her own or on a shrine) then you can take the Melusai units as battleline - and the Blood sisters are decently tough and fast enough to do considerable damage. So it would be a medium sized swarm of snakes

Frowny wrote:
Aren't they kinda the same? Ability to cap objectives or pressure war machines certainly seems like it would require response? Or maybe I'm fundamentally misunderstanding how AOS works. Maybe I want an army that can be reactive?

There's not much in the way of "static" warmachines right now. You have the Ironweld Arsenal and the new Ballistas for Stormcast.

The big thing with regards to Gryph-Hounds is that they have a save of "-". That's meaning no save unless they've got a bonus to their save via Cover or something of that nature.

Wanderers might be the ticket for you if you're looking for a "reactive" army? They have one of the few units in the game with an Overwatch styled ability--and you can remove units from the board and redeploy them as well.

Both DoK and Deepkin have a passive bonus dictated by what round the game is in, DoK's is cumulative while Deepkin have the ability to reverse the order in which the bonuses come, in both cases I'd say they're more dependent on predicting the floe of the battle as opposed to being able to dictate it.

Actually I think Sylvaneth might be worth considering. Dryads are fast, they work best in large blobs but the other two battleline units work better in MSU, the army has a lot of repositioning shenanigans and can put up potentially hazardous terrain.

 Captain Joystick wrote:
Both DoK and Deepkin have a passive bonus dictated by what round the game is in, DoK's is cumulative while Deepkin have the ability to reverse the order in which the bonuses come, in both cases I'd say they're more dependent on predicting the floe of the battle as opposed to being able to dictate it.

Deepkin's ability to reverse the order is predicated upon taking a specific model as your general...and she isn't very good for that role outside of reversing the Tides of Death table.

How does tzeentch seem like it would work out? It would seem some combination of maurauders horesmen and various tzeentch chariots could be pretty shooty and quite mobile. A few units of cavalry to dig them all out if they get assulted seems quite solid and interesting to me to play.

Does that alliance even work? Would it have to be slaves to darkness with a small tzeetnch alliance? Or Tzeentch with a small slaves to darkness component?

Frowny wrote:
How does tzeentch seem like it would work out? It would seem some combination of maurauders horesmen and various tzeentch chariots could be pretty shooty and quite mobile. A few units of cavalry to dig them all out if they get assulted seems quite solid and interesting to me to play.

Does that alliance even work? Would it have to be slaves to darkness with a small tzeetnch alliance? Or Tzeentch with a small slaves to darkness component?

No alliance necessary, all those Slaves mortal units can be given the Tzeentch keyword and are fully a part of the same army as models in the "Disciples of Tzeentch" tome.

Stormcast for sure.

You might want to pay attention to the Beasts of Chaos news.

A related question: I'm currently eyeing the fatesworn warband from the everchosen book. It seems like it would be fun to have MSU maurader horsemen and knights and chariots flying around shooting off arcane bolts, and the -1 rend seems like it would go great on all the horse attacks. Plus plenty of mobility.

A few follow-up questions therefore: Could I use this with disciples of tzeentch to gain all the fate dice? That seems much more useful than the pretty whimpy slaves to darkness bonuses.

Additionally, how does the arcane bolt stipulation work with the new rules about only 1 of each spell? It seems clear that they intended every unit to cast 1 version of it. It even explicitly stipulates that wizards could theoretically cast arcane bolt twice. Does this override the usual rule of 1?

May be I'm bias but reading what you like Idoneth Deepkin is the right one. Assuming you like the models and the general concept of the army.
The tides mechanic is all about controlling the game.