"Just Play Better"

[Malakree]

I really think the grot screen is a terrible idea for bcr. They end up hindering you as much as your enemy and they are only 40 points shy of your second butcher.

When you compare it to the gitmob I run I have 16" bows on them and the potential for sneaky stabbing if I have the spare spell.

Plus the role I use them for isnt to block, its to claim objectives or deny someone deepstriking behind me.

Srsly tho, sounds like u need 2 butchers.

[Kessler]

I don't get what's so terrible about that 18" mortal wounds. There are plenty of units for less points that can make more than 6 wounds from longer range. 

I mean it's still just 6 wounds, who cares that there is "mortal" in the name. 

For 360 points one can get lots of handgunners, savage Arrowboys or war machines and whatever your saves are they can push through 6 wounds. 

Plus it's really easy to get the Thundertusk down to d6 mw-s. 

I think Thundertusk sounds more terrible than it really is. 

PS. I know mw-s have certain benefits and it's great ability, it's just that saying its OP is a bit too much I think. 

[Turragor]

I've gotta add that sylvaneth and duality of death is the dumbest thing ever always! 

[tolstedt]

Is the Adepticon pack out? 

Wish I was able to attend this mini tournament, although I'm not sure if they would be keen on my 75 unpainted metal plague monks army at the GW.

I think the Grots are better to stay at home objectives and bubble wrap them.  You will force opponent to send some thing that can at least do 11-13 wounds to them to shock them off.

When I read the Sylvaneth list  I was like "Game over for you".  

I think Sylvaneth players would have a hard time with the amount of terrain that we usually play with however @heywoah_twitch I think people simply don't play with enough terrain sometimes which means Wyldwoods become stronger.

[kozokus]

6 hours ago, heywoah_twitch said:

Sidenote: In both rounds now, people watching my games were commenting about how OP beastclaw raiders were all during the games which I found frustrating. "Man that 6mw snowball is such bull****." "I hate playing against beastclaw they're just so overpowered."

Pretty much. Yeah.

There is some double-stardard running with BCR. People watch your board and says "Ooooch your opponent is gonna get crushed". Then you loose because you faced a Changehost then people look at you with surprise and think you are bad to loose with such a powerful army against tree-things and those pesky golden-guys with crossbows.

Anyway, back to MTG

You remind me the guy bringing Zoo/Spallpox/Belcher to a 300 player legacy tournament. sure it is a good deck, a good player can use it to get to the top. But you will always be beaten by an equally skilled player (let's say yourself) playing a blue deck with draw3 spells, tarmos and forces. You waste your skill :p.

[tolstedt]

1 hour ago, kozokus said:

you will always be beaten by an equally skilled player (let's say yourself) playing a blue deck with draw3 spells, tarmos and forces. You waste your skill :p.

I've played many games against @heywoah_twitch and I find this to be true and our best and most fulfilling games involve me bringing a weaker list.  Most of the time you can outlast BCR on body count and win on turn four, even with an army like Ironjawz.

I run about 45 models with Ironjawz and it's more than enough to throw ardboyz in and grind it out.  You have time to patiently wait for a charge and win on turn four and five.

I am inclined to think that an ability which makes beastclaw count as more models in match play would make them competitive.  It's just too easy to outnumber them on objectives!

[heywoah_twitch]

1 hour ago, kozokus said:

Anyway, back to MTG

You remind me the guy bringing Zoo/Spallpox/Belcher to a 300 player legacy tournament. sure it is a good deck, a good player can use it to get to the top. But you will always be beaten by an equally skilled player (let's say yourself) playing a blue deck with draw3 spells, tarmos and forces. You waste your skill :p.

It's funny you should mention that, @kozokus, in the old days of competitive legacy I was on classic kird ape, goyf, grim lavamancer, sylvan library Zoo for maybe three or four years while our team was just getting started. Had some real metagamed lists of it too and consistently won locals to fund my dual land collection, but was mr. x-3 in big tourneys. Came to a head the gp ohio that caleb durward broke in half with vengevine survival when I finally gave in and retired it to play blue, which led to my first scg top 8. Good times.

[kozokus]

On 24/12/2017 at 4:28 PM, heywoah_twitch said:

I finally gave in and retired it to play blue, which led to my first scg top 8.

I buried my Eva Green deck the same way and began to play moongooses and lightning bolts  then i won my first big tournament (how could have i known what brainstormin feels?)

 Anyway. You should give a try to how to Tzeentch/SCE   .

[heywoah_twitch]

20 hours ago, kozokus said:

I buried my Eva Green deck the same way and began to play moongooses and lightning bolts  then i won my first big tournament (how could have i known what brainstormin feels?)

 Anyway. You should give a try to how to Tzeentch/SCE   .

Oh man eva green was fun. goyf, hymn, pulse/deed, nantuko shade, tombdaddy. it's a shame that team america/bug tempo was kinda just a direct upgrade at the time.

out of the way AoS, old guys reminiscing about their legacy mtg cards comin' through .

That being said tzeentch is certainly the blue deck equivalent, but I'm completely not down with almost any of their models aesthetically (a few exceptions like ogroid thaumaturge notwithstanding), and sigmar is definitely a hobby first - game second sort of thing. They're probably 9/10 game 3/10 looks for me, where BCR is flipped at 9/10 looks 3/10 game. Ideally either bcr gets rebalanced to a 6 game or I find an army with 7s across the board and I have a pretty shelf for a year or two.

[Turragor]

1 hour ago, heywoah_twitch said:

BCR is flipped at 9/10 looks 3/10 game. Ideally either bcr gets rebalanced to a 6 game or I find an army with 7s across the board and I have a pretty shelf for a year or two.

BCR will probably get some tweaks of some kind in the summer. Or a tweak to scenarios. I am just patiently building and painting bits and pieces.

[Ao_Death]

On 12/24/2017 at 1:09 AM, heywoah_twitch said:

2x huskard on thundertusk, 1x ally butcher

20x ally grots, 2x frost sabers

4x4x4 mournfang

If you could do it over would you run the same list?

If not what changes would you make?

Do you feel like the  the Jorlbad could be worth a second look (given you previous success with it) and just lean into the variance?

[heywoah_twitch]

15 hours ago, Ao_Death said:

If you could do it over would you run the same list?

If not what changes would you make?

Do you feel like the  the Jorlbad could be worth a second look (given you previous success with it) and just lean into the variance?

This is probably going to be controversial, but I was thinking a lot about what I would run if I did it over. It's a very useful question after a tournament; if I ran it back this morning, what list do I play in retrospect? Great question.

I would probably play without thundertusks. There are many ways to consider a unit, and it's certainly not the end-all be-all, but a really useful way of thinking of things is as exchanges of points. Ignoring this idea is the mistake new players make when they think a thundertusk is totally overpowered and why they are wrong. "You can just snipe my bloodsecrator and now my guys suck, it's way too good." Mfer, that dude is one hundred and twenty points. They're essentially saying "Your 380 point hyper-specialized ranged sniper monster shouldn't be able to kill my 120 point force-multiplying aoe buff hero." Yes, he should. That's his job. And truthfully, when you are not sniping sub-7 wound lynchpin buff heroes, a thundertusk struggles mightily to be worth his points. Due to his lame melee prowess and lightning-fast charting to 1d6 (at 3) and even faster 1d3 (two later!), he's just a blob of weakness mid and late game. Throwing 6 mortal wounds at 40 plague monks or 30 vulkite berserkers and then getting engulfed isn't exactly amazing. I think design-wise, instead of giving BCR the buff synergies we desperately need, they gave us this "If I can't have aether-khemists, no one can" kind of unit. Problem is when he's out-ranged he's neutralized almost entirely, plus you can run 2 castellants, a lord-celestant, and a relictor for the same points, and if you can take all of them out with one tusk in a game (aka breaking even) I don't know what your opponent is doing. It is worth noting that 760 points worth of them are one of the few good foils to a stardrake (or other protect the queen-style centerpiece lists, though nurgle, death, and sylvaneth have many ways around this).

I would not want to play with stonehorns due to stuff I've talked about before, as they're poor choices and mostly inferior to 60-fewer points worth of mournfang. However, I don't think the army is strong enough to just play no-battalion goodstuff (the stuff isn't good enough tbh), and at least they're good in duality (a battleplan that playing with just tusks punishes you for).

The grots can't screen because they're too slow and hamper tusk movement, and they're worse at holding an objective than cats since they're more expensive and explode into dust when their own points worth of enemy unit breathes near them.

I'd definitely play with a second butcher. Like I think it might as well print "120 points of allies along with your two butchers" in the GHB.

"Lean into the variance" is a good way of thinking about it, though it applies more to an army like Ironjawz that's really designed around momentum and counterplay set-ups (and often hits on 2s). We don't have a safe option. We don't have an 'out-range them and wait for them to make a mistake, then pounce' option. We don't even have an 'if he doesn't interrupt my plans he's dead' option. Our damage is unreliable (4s) and charge-dependent (rr1s to w), with an unreliable single-target buff (3-4 on a d6). Our defense is unreliable (1-2 on a d6 winter), and our healing is unreliable (4+). Stonehorn resiliency is unreliable (damage 1 ignores). 

If I ran it back (and had to choose BCR) and could just choose a list out of thin air, I'd do what everyone else does: Spam your best **** and drop the expensive, corner-case, risky stuff in the trash.

1 Huskard on Stonehorn with pelt, everwinter

2x butcher w/ cauldron

4x4x4x4 mournfang

2x frost sabers

1980pts

Just run everyone up, fish for everwinter rr saves of 1 every turn, try to abuse Line-Breakers as much as humanly possible, and count on rolling The Nut on gargant hackers, horn attacks, butcher hit buffs, voracious maws, save rolls, and long charges. If it had to be stuff I owned, I'd run jorlbad hoping for the same luck as mentioned, except with less models, running and charging, an awkward extra stonehorn, wasting an artefact, and sometimes maybe getting to choose who goes first.

**Note that this is getting real unbalanced as an army list and I'd be cautious going so all-in on mournfang when (hopefully) ghb18 will reshuffle points and (less likely but more hopefully) warscrolls.

[Turragor]

Have you thought about the gutbusters artillery? Scraplauncher or the ironblaster. They might have interesting uses. It still feels like fishing for the right allies.

I think the mixed destruction lists really did us a disservice as the BCR are criminally overestimated. Changes I might like to see in 2018 include:

1. Adjustment to horde meta (there are a few other armies doing very well/very poorly based on this alone) with new scenarios or with wounds counting instead of models (but this might have strange knock on effects).

2. Revert stone skeleton nerf (then you can play to your monster mash strengths and take oh say 3 stonehorns - variance remains but oh what terrifying and flavourful variance) or just set their wounds to 18 (no stone skeleton buff) or something.

3. Rewrite of thundertusk rules - this unit doesn't fit in for me. Not so much. The hero snipe use is what caused BCR to get the rep they did. It was OP in mixed destruction lists with 3 thundertusks, cunning ruck and 60+ grot. It's not fun to play against. It is the least beastclawsy. I'm not good at writing rules changes, I often feel they just end up too 'made up' but here's a go:

• I'd take away blasts of frost wreathed ice.
• Change numbing chill to -1 to hit for enemy units within 6 inches and +1 to hit for BCR units within, say, 6 inches.
• Set their wounds to 14.
• Leave their melee stat line Thundertusk's Crushing blows as Thundertusk's Crushing  Hooves
• Add another line Thundertusk's Ridiculously long impaling tusks - 2 attacks / * to hit (being 2+ down to 4+ on the damage chart) / 3 + to wound and 6 damage.

Basically make them a kind of buffing centrepiece.

[heywoah_twitch]

48 minutes ago, Turragor said:

• Thundertusk's Ridiculously Long Impaling Tusks

 Only if they kept that name on the weapon profile! I'm fine with getting rid of the all-or-nothing super expensive lowmid-range snipe laser tbh. Look, the model doesn't even look like it has a ranged attack, it looks like it scoops people up in his tusks and gores their whole body in melee. A mounted totem with the shaman on the 'tusks being an actual shaman with prayers would be great, but now we're just literally wishing on a star.

My suspicion is that stonehorn spam was only actually really good because they were hitting on 2s from battlebrew. If it's just 'bring back old stone skeleton', I mean it's not like they can fly. Tar-pit and watch in wonder as each attack has a 70% chance for zero damage /shrug. Probably balanced for their points, though. If the warscroll with faq stays how it is, the right cost would have to be somewhere in the 4-mournfang area. They are very comparable at 320 (same save, same damage, but run and charge plus stone skeleton vs double the wounds and capturing modelcount). MF would still probably edge them out, but only in matched play for objectives. 300 is aggressive but not problematic (shouldn't the behemoths of the behemoth-themed army be clearly better than their points worth of battleline?).

Tolstedt and I often talk about rules and tactics, and one thing we came up with that would help how bcr is hurt by the 'battleplan objective scoring for armies with good model-count options chauvinism' would be to make our behemoth units have their current wounds count as the number of models with respect to capturing objectives. An elegant solution if rolled into our allegiance abilities to keep grand alliance stuff at bay.

[Turragor]

14 minutes ago, heywoah_twitch said:

My suspicion is that stonehorn spam was only actually really good because they were hitting on 2s from battlebrew.

This is so very true and it only ever reached 2 I think in most lists (huskard and frostlord) with a battalion - the rest would be beastriders. That's also fixed due to a limit of 1 of each artefact.

15 minutes ago, heywoah_twitch said:

behemoth units have their current wounds count as the number of models with respect to capturing objectives.

I was going to suggest this minus the 'behemoth' bit and the more I thought of it the more it seemed wrong with the knock on effects with high wound cheap units (Ogor bulls become new best objective holding unit ever), but the behemoth addition makes this make much more sense.

[Malakree]

It feels like most destruction units are overcosted against the other factions atm? Or maybe it's more appropriate that chaos/order are undercosted.

I also hope they reduce the amount of mortal wound output across the board, things like foot of gork, which are hard to get off and random even if you do, or arcane bolt I don't mind so much. On the other hand stuff like drycha, fist of gork, the sigmarite shield, lord of change or thundertusk really irritate me.

Most of the stuff which deals Mortal Wounds at the moment is either undercosted or needs to deal automatic wounds (which can then be saved) rather than mortal wounds. So thundertusk could be 2d6, 2d6, d6, d6, 3 attacks hitting on 4+, wounding automatically with -1 rend. It's just less ****** than random mortal wounds. Skyfires and Raptors are two units which DESPERATELY need to not do mortal wounds.

Have you thought about running units of 6 mournfang, so 6x6x4 rather than the extra unit of 4 @heywoah_twitch

[heywoah_twitch]

Well there are a lot of broken up order factions with army-wide point bloat, but at least many of their abilities help keyword Order. Destruction as a whole is a motley disorganized bag of crappy warscroll, going-out-of-their-way-not-to-synergize puke-men, so your point has merit. On one hand it makes sense that destruction wouldn't be orderly about cooperation, but a massive horde of doom washing over the land still needs some teamwork and guys in charge (unless it's vince and tom's hilarious and scholarly Triple Smaug counts-as magma dragons list, which I literally want to play). My guess is that just about all of GA: destruction was pointed for getting an extra d6 move in the hero phase, and without it most of the warscrolls are lacking.

I was considering more 2x2x4x4x4 than units of 6. That many mournfang's footprint starts to get very unwieldy on set-up, and is just totally unplayable against sylvaneth and most terrain gives it heartburn. Even besides that, getting the full 6 into combat on the charge would require finesse, luck, and very high charge rolls. I'll probably try it out, but certainly not more than one, as it's the 'inspiring presence or bust' unit if there ever was one.

The problem with it being too easy to access mortal wounds in AoS (and I think it is probably too easy to, or at least to spam it maybe), is that it's also too easy to make something totally invulnerable except for mortal wounds (the easiest example is stardrake, but there are many). To be honest, when I hear someone say that their army is weak to mortal wounds, it tells me they're playing a list that's so amazing, that their main weakness is the kryptonite put into the game to make sure you can't be superman. 

It's basically not worth mentioning. Everyone's weak to mortal wounds. That's why there are mortal wounds, so things die and games end. What's worth mentioning is if you aren't weak to mws, since that's by far the exception to the rule. Like horde armies or nurgle.

[Turragor]

Destruction was running completely amok when the GHB 2017 put a stop to all those mixed lists.

Correct me if I'm wrong but destruction has yet to get a rework in the more modern battletome format? They'd be a very interesting faction if they got a single tome based on, well, utter destruction (Gork and Mork) -  like chaos is based on specific ruinous powers. However I think that'd be far too huge a job so it will be more like Order - with faction specific tomes elevating factions to higher levels (or just competitive). 

Ironjawz are the nearest to a very good destruction army at the moment with their original tome then the GHB 2017 additions.  I'm not sure Beastclaw have the honour of being the worst army to pick in destruction (let alone all possible factions) at the moment even.

However of those factions that have gotten a battletome or extra rules via GHB17 they're in  pretty bad shape. I would be surprised if a rework of the BCR tome is anywhere near anyone's to do pile.

The good news is I'm not sure it needs to be - I think some small changes would give some fighting chance back. Balance will keep going on and new releases will come out and, as these things go, there will always be winners and losers.

Re: mortal wounds - I've always found it is ranged mws specifically get people's goat. It's the hand of god reaching out to touch you and it is very hard to stop. How many people complain about Concussors or retributors these days for instance?  Ahahhh there's a simple change - No ranged attack can do mortal wounds. How does that pan out? I've no idea.
 

[Malakree]

48 minutes ago, heywoah_twitch said:

It's basically not worth mentioning. Everyone's weak to mortal wounds. That's why there are mortal wounds, so things die and games end. What's worth mentioning is if you aren't weak to mws, since that's by far the exception to the rule. Like horde armies or nurgle.

Ok so I guess then my complaint is that because mortal wounds exist in the capacity and quantity that they do it then leads to a situation where they feel fine introducing stuff which is basically immune to everything else because mortal wounds are a thing.

1+ save stardrake rerolling 1s isn't ever allowed to exist if there isn't an expectation every army can pump out mortal wounds. Equally the fact that they are balancing around such edge cases means armies which aren't pumping mortal wounds are god awful. Equally the armour save of a unit then becomes largely irrelevant yet some (ironjawz wine here) are obviously balanced around having that armour save.

48 minutes ago, heywoah_twitch said:

My guess is that just about all of GA: destruction was pointed for getting an extra d6 move in the hero phase, and without it most of the warscrolls are lacking.

Exactly. The single best example I can think of for that is out of the article on the new nurgle battletome.

Quote

The Doomsday Bell is particularly potent new option, lending an additional 3” of movement to nearby Nurgle units and compensating for their generally poor mobility.

IE. a buff to Nurgles mobility because it looks like a destruction armies movement speed rather than a chaos movement speed. Difference ofcourse being that the nurgle units all get a 5+ feel no pain and ridonculous bravery to make up for that "generally poor mobility". The comparison of brutes vs putrid blightkings is a good example. Brutes win it on damage (just because of the rend) but in exchange lose the heal, +1 on run/charge and 3 bravery. 

Not to mention that Blightkings are actually getting a points cost reduction with the book.

The Bravery issue really annoys me about destruction, Brutes at bravery 6, Mournfang at bravery 6, Ardboys bravery 6 base. I get that they are obviously making battleshock destructions weakness but there's weakness and crippling. I hate the way it really stops you taking big units of things like brutes or mournfang. The Raiding Banner should just say "roll 2 dice and pick the lowest when you take a battleshock test" you're still testing a lot but suddenly it's not crippling.

Sorry I've gone off on a bit of a tangent here....

22 minutes ago, Turragor said:

Ahahhh there's a simple change - No ranged attack can do mortal wounds

Or make them pay for that privilege. Up the cost of Vanguard Raptors with Longstrike to 240 for 3, push skyfires to 260 for 3. It means they can still field them but now it's clearly a choice rather than just a part of the list.

Ironically EXACTLY what they have done with the Thundertusk it's expensive enough that it's not auto-include and if you do take one it has to be protected/used properly. On the other hand 6 skyfires take care of themselves and don't have to risk that super short range.

[heywoah_twitch]

Well I'd hate to price a unit out of viability, though. You want to incentivize diversity, but if your best thing is also the only remotely good thing you can do and then it's nerfed hard, sometimes that's still your only choice except now you suck. Or worse, you take a unit that is good and overshoot the mark, making it completely useless (rip thunderers).

Also I wonder about a world with no ranged mortal wounds, or nerfed shooting like many people are advocating for. Chaff bubble wrap becomes way more powerful, and maybe you almost don't even see elite units not surrounded by tiny little screens of throwaway guys, and that to me sounds distasteful. Or the big nerf to sniping heroes that all the facebook people want. Can't snipe heroes? Now they're completely immortal at all times, sitting untargetable surrounded by five concentric circles of dudes or sylvaneth wildwoods. If the problem is fragile heroes, the 40k 'fix' swings it all the way too far in the other direction, and now 6-stacks of buffing heroes are oppressive, and games grind to a crawl where two deathstars need to slowly chew through each other's 1300 points of bulk protecting their hero clusters. Obviously I'm painting with a wide brush, but people are going to play the way the rules tend to push them.

5 hours ago, Turragor said:

Correct me if I'm wrong but destruction has yet to get a rework in the more modern battletome format?

Considering the much improved way battletomes are being written and released, Ironjawz,  bonesplitters, and bcr could certainly use (I say need!) a facelift release (similar to khorne and stormcast v.2) turning dials on some warscrolls and allegiance abilities/traits/artefacts, though ironjawz would be the easiest since they can mostly just fold in those ghb17 stuffs (and finally clean up the awkward way waagh is resolved and a clarification on Strength From Victory among others). Honestly not just destruction, for instance FEC is in dire need of this as well.

[bonzai]

18 hours ago, Turragor said:

Destruction was running completely amok when the GHB 2017 put a stop to all those mixed lists. 

Good point. BCRs were not that popular on their own. It was only in a mixed destruction list where units were cherry picked, were some felt they were over powered. Sure Stonehorns were tanky as he'll, but it was the Kunning Rukks that were dealing the consistent damage.

Correct me if I'm wrong but destruction has yet to get a rework in the more modern battletome format?

Bonesplitterz have one.

Ironjawz are the nearest to a very good destruction army at the moment with their original tome then the GHB 2017 additions.  I'm not sure Beastclaw have the honour of being the worst army to pick in destruction (let alone all possible factions) at the moment even. 

Bonesplitterz still place the best in tournaments, but it is a mono build. They are considered a spoiler army, crushing certain army's, but also losing big to their hard counters. As such they rarely win GTs, but place in the mid to upper rankings.

 

 

[Malakree]

With regards to the ranged mortal wounds I feel they need to be shorter range and expensively priced.

So the thundertusk is a really good example of you can get it but it costs you. Skyfires and tzeench in general are good examples of far to easy and reliable access to mortal wounds. The fate dice for example need further restricting to run, hit, charge, wound and save rolls. Not spell casting.

The longstrikes should only deal mortal wounds at sub half range.

On the otherside of the coin abilities, like frenzy of violence or the stormcast lantern, need to not stack.  Save rolls should go addition then subtraction to a maximum of 1+ so if you have rend -2 then the highest possible save is 3+ while rend -3 is 4+.

Sure there are methods to ignore rend but as long as they don't become super common while in factions that can hit the 1+ with rerolls (Mr stardrake) it shouldn't become a massive issue. 

The whole situation is a definite slippery slope power creep. Everyone has 2+ rerollable saves so mortal wounds turn up everywhere, next everyone gets mortal wound protection. The step we're on at the moment is where the quantity of mortal wounds scale out of control.

See tzeench mortal wound output or the incoming 6+ mw for blightkings.

[Kessler]

I had an idea, maybe worth trying: any BCR list, but change Stonehorn for Troggoth Hag ally, she might be sufficiently tanky: 16 wounds, -1 to hit, 4+ save, additionally -1 to hit from spell, regeneration d6. Move 8 means she won't stay behind, very good missile attack, not so good melee and 360 points. 

Edit: would have to lose the butchers, though... probably a deal breaker. 

[heywoah_twitch]

Yeah I really like her, on paper she seems great, but I haven't tested her myself, plus I hate the model (for a bcr army anyway, just totally off theme and it'd be a tragedy if the behemoth army had to ally in someone else's behemoth cuz it's better). It's entirely possible that she's great in a bcr list over butchers, worth testing if someone will let me run a proxy of her with like a GUO or something.

[bonzai]

14 hours ago, heywoah_twitch said:

Yeah I really like her, on paper she seems great, but I haven't tested her myself, plus I hate the model (for a bcr army anyway, just totally off theme and it'd be a tragedy if the behemoth army had to ally in someone else's behemoth cuz it's better). It's entirely possible that she's great in a bcr list over butchers, worth testing if someone will let me run a proxy of her with like a GUO or something.

Maybe convert one to be more icy and wintery?