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Hi folks,

Looking for a bit of advice. Some of my gaming group are thinking about starting AoS and I'm quite tempted to join in. I'm just wondering what armies have been updated with rulebooks, and what armies don't have a many Finecast models or online only models (currently working on Eldar for 40k and these things are making building the army a bit of a chore)?

Thanks in advance!

Top Powerful Armies that are modern (new format with items and spells):
Stormcast for days.
Legion of Nagash

The remainder of armies that are modern (new format with items and spells)
Sylvaneth (moderate to strong)
Blades of Khorne (moderate power)
Nurgle (fairly strong)
Disciples of Tzeentch (former busted powerhouse nerfed to moderate power)
Beastmen (moderate power)
Deepkin (jury's out, trending moderate to weak)
Overlords (fairly weak)

Legacy army that is very powerful due to high quality rules, undercosted units, and bloated summoning
Seraphon (lizardmen)

Armies that received a book from when AOS was released but whose book is not the modernn format

Clan Pestilence (never seen them)
Ironjaws (moderate power)
Fyreslayers (moderate power)
Beastclaw Raiders (powerful for casual setting, not powerful enough for tournament setting)

I may be missing one or two. Anything not on that list hasn't been updated yet:

High Elves
Dark Elves
Wood Elves
Chaos Dwarves are forge world only and their rules are horribly weak
Men (empire & bretonnia)
Tomb Kings (merged to legion of nagash and the rest of the line removed)
Dwarves that aren't fyreslayers
Slaanesh warriors or demons
Goblins
Ogre Kingdoms other than beastclaw raiders
skaven other than pestilence

Daughters of Khaine also got a new book very recently and are fully up to date- their Blood Cauldron model is still direct only as is the Doomfire Warlocks; however both are recent enough that there's a fair bit still in 3rd party stores (there's even a fair few of the Blood Coven kits which are a cauldron and 10 witch aelves at some nice discount and well worth getting two or three of them).
Cauldrons are also nice as they give you 3 leaders in the box plus an avatar - with a bit of magnet work you can get quite a lot of very functional versatility of the each kit.

Thanks I knew I was forgetting some Yes Daughters of Khaine are pretty good. At least moderate strength and pretty fun.

 Castiel wrote:
Hi folks,

Looking for a bit of advice. Some of my gaming group are thinking about starting AoS and I'm quite tempted to join in. I'm just wondering what armies have been updated with rulebooks, and what armies don't have a many Finecast models or online only models (currently working on Eldar for 40k and these things are making building the army a bit of a chore)?

Thanks in advance!

I just started Nighthaunt. They have the newest book, a long with stormcast. They also have a fairly large range for AOS, and almost all the models are new and all of it is plastic. I personally picked the army for the look. AoS so far has felt much more casual than 40k. Most of the newer ranges will almost all be fully plastic.

Thanks for the replies, good to see. Did Beastmen get any new models outside the herd stone? Can't see anything new other than that.

Quite interested in skeletons or possibly warriors of chaos, am I right in saying they aren't updated yet then?

Beastmen got both the Herdstone and three endless spells of their own. Otherwise they didn't get any new troops as such no, however by bringing together several different groups they are now quite a versatile army. Plus with a Battletome you know that they are "safe" as much as any non-marine army can be.

Undead are updated in bits so it depends what you mean by Skeletons. If you mean the old vampire counts side then they are not updated; however the more fleshy zombie side has a Battletome (Flesh Eater Courts) and Nighthaunt are certainly backed with a brand new Battltome very recently.

Beastmen got new endless spells and the herd stone. They still have a few finecast models though if you really want to avoid that.

Skeletons are now part of Legions of Nagash, so if a skeleton horde is your thing, go for that book.

Chaos warriors as their own faction are in for an overhaul (many hints pointing towards a release called darkoath). You can include chaos warriors in any of the 4 mono-god lists for chaos (Slaanesh is also ripe for an update near the end of the year). The visuals of chaos warriors might be updated to be more barbarian than the current tin cans.

Slaanesh should be getting a duel boxed set with Khorne which we know includes a new plastic Fiend of Slaanesh (which looks outstanding); likely new plastic heralds for both and plastic hounds of Khorne. New year many are expecting an early year Slaanesh big launch much like hte other 3 chaos gods have had over preceding years.

Thanks guys. What are endless spells?

By skeletons I do mean the bonesy side of what would have been vampire counts.

Apart from slaanesh, do we know what the next expected releases will be for AoS?

Endless spells are a new thing they added to 2.0. They are spells you buy with points.

auticus wrote:
Endless spells are a new thing they added to 2.0. They are spells you buy with points.

How does that work? Is it like a unit that you move around the field? Can it be dispelled?

Castiel wrote:Thanks guys. What are endless spells?

By skeletons I do mean the bonesy side of what would have been vampire counts.

Apart from slaanesh, do we know what the next expected releases will be for AoS?

Not really no. There have been rumours of an ork or Moonclan release for a while over on TGA (The Grand Alliance Forums), but otherwise the only thing we sort of know is Slaanesh. Even that is based partly on known news of the new duel boxed kit (Slaanesh and Khorne) and upon the hope that we'll see a release in the new year (same as the other 3 chaos gods have happened). Otherwise we have no idea what is to come nor any hint as to when.

Castiel wrote:

auticus wrote:
Endless spells are a new thing they added to 2.0. They are spells you buy with points.

How does that work? Is it like a unit that you move around the field? Can it be dispelled?

Endless Spells are spells bought with points which, once you pay for a spell once, every wizard in your army knows that spell; thus any wizard can cast it. Casting is the same as regular spells, however you can't boost the range of the spell in any way; furthermore you can only have one Endless Spell of a specific type in play at the same time per side. Of course if both players cast the same Endless spell then there can be two of the same kind on the board at once.
They come in two flavours - regular which affect a single location - and predatory which can move around when cast. The Predatory spells move at the start of a battle round after you work out who has the first turn and are unique in that either player may move any Predatory spell (no matter who cast it). You alternate who moves a spell until they are all moved and whoever has the second turn gets to move a spell first. This is important because it means that you've really got to think about how and where to place them so that you can get the best use out of your spell and to avoid it being twisted and sent back against you.
Note that when you first cast a predatory Endless Spell you can move it around at that very moment, so at the very least you should always get at least one good use out of them.

You can dispell them as well so a wizard can use a spell slot during their turn to, instead of casting a spell, remove an Endless Spell.


They are very interesting and can be quite powerful - from walls that block movement to shackles that slow to those that give aura bonuses or which sap strength and kill when they move near or over units. The other nice thing is that you can get all the universal Endless spells and the rules for them (as well as rules for realm artifacts and equipment and spells) in the Malign Sorcery boxed set which retails at less than the price of a Getting Started set - so they are very affordable (by this hobby standards) to buy into.

Skellies are still good to go despite having no real model update. Have a look on Deathrattle on the GW website. They mix really well with Legions of Nagash and you can field many decent lists using just plastic kits. Off the top of my head, the only non-plastic skelly kits are 2 wight kings but 1 is fully plastic. Have a look at the Blades of the Blood Queen (something like that?) starter or the start collecting box. Both are fantastic value and great ways to get into the boney side of things.

Thanks for the replies guys. Is there a good online list builder? I've got Battlescribe for 40k, is AoS any good on that?

 Castiel wrote:
Thanks for the replies guys. Is there a good online list builder? I've got Battlescribe for 40k, is AoS any good on that?

The GW is pretty good.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/warscroll-builder/

auticus wrote:


Beastclaw Raiders (powerful for casual setting, not powerful enough for tournament setting)

Could somebody elaborate on this point.

I didn't want to start a whole new thread.

I am a 40k player. I've played 2 demo games of wfb and my gaming group has been completely uninterested in setting 40k aside even for a little to explore aos. I bought the beastclaw raiders boxed set plus additional units (upsold by my friendly local GW staff member) when it launched and its sat on my shelf unopened for over a year while my orks and grey knights have struggled on the battlefield for years...so now in the shadow of the orktober I've decided to build my beastclaw raiders and wonder out into the world of public gaming to begin my AOS journey.

How good/bad are beastclaw raiders. I'm going to build and start to play with them anyway but how accurate is the above statement. What does not quite powerful enough in tournament actually mean?

It means that in a casual game, the beastclaw raiders do so many mortal wounds that the casual list is going to be crushed.

In the tournament setting, they are too expensive and not "optimal" even though they are easiily capable of mauling casual lists, the optimized lists at tournaments usually always have answers for the BCR and so going into the tournament as it stands today the BCR player is going to be at a mathematical disadvantage be it from more models that can do more mortal wounds, or the armies that summon 800-1000+ free points of models from summoning.

ok so I don't want to be the guy mauling players at casual settings and while i won't be playing at tournaments I won't rule it out. What should I do with my BCR for casual play? Ally in something else to dilute them or pick a different army.

Thank you for the reply Auticus. You are really helping!

I would say the biggest issue with BCR are their models that just dole out mortal wounds (in a casual setting). So ... not having as many of them would probably sort it out in short order.

Honestly it's going to depend on the guys you play against too. For some people, casual is not far removed from tournament. if they are running fairly optimized lists, you don't really have to do anything to tone down since they will already be playing up.

It'll take some time seeing how games play out for you to adjust to your group if good games are your goal.

Provide some feedback when you get a chance on how games have gone, data is always helpful

More than anything, in my experience, BCR is shocking to fight against in low point games as a new player. We did a slow grow escalation league at my GW and our Beastclaw player dominated the 500 and 750 brackets. They can put out a lot of mortal wounds (the dirty snowball is particularly hated), cross the board to hit you turn one, and are low drop. Being low drop makes them more likely to get the double.

Somewhere between 1,000 and 1,250 is where the shift in power started for us. BCR don't get a lot more, but other armies start fielding effect screens and adding extra dimensions to their own arsenals. The new players start learning how to beta strike properly or even begin fielding batallions (suddenly giving them the edge on finishing deployment first).

My advice? If you are worried I would forgo the Frostlord on Thundertusk. People expect the Stonehorn to be a monster in close combat, but six mortal wounds to an important character in a low level game from the Thundertusk feels bad. Once you hit 1,000 or so I wouldn't worry about it. You're going to want that extra firepower. Another idea is to start running a Butcher with Cauldron allied in early. You're going to want to have some magical capacity as game sizes go up.

More or less the above have it right.

BCR are stronger at lower point games because armies are less likely to have the tools to bring down the big monsters reliably. At higher points it shifts in the other direction.

Against new players (especially those with elite armies like Stormcast), BCR are very surprising and will most certainly be an uphill fight. Veteran players though (especially those with horde armies) will generally know exactly how to trivialize BCR, keeping everything of importance outside threat range and running away with objective points.

And that is the biggest issues BCR have competitively. They are usually the lowest model count army in the game. Objective control is all about number of models. Objective control is king, even if you wipe your opponent off the map.