Destruction presence in masters

[Fridge_Opener]

With the lists for the masters having  just been posted.    baddice.co.uk/lists/

What do you think needs to be changed for destruction to have a larger presence? Only one player 

[Malakree]

Well we knew that Kunnin Rukk was the only competitive Destruction option at the moment. When you factor in the huge ass nerf which came with GHB2017, loss of the d6 movement in hero phase, it's no real surprise. We did "slightly" better than Death but not noticeably. I think it really comes down to how some armies, Tzeentch, Sylvaneth and Vanguard Wing, really manhandle slow combat orientated armies. Especially ones which are reliant on their heroes.

A full quarter of the armies are Tzeentch and most of those lists ****** mortal wounds all over the place. Are you surprised that the only destruction army represented gets an army wide save vs mortal wounds and doesn't have to pay for a high armour value it can't use? 

Actually wow, looking down that list it summarises the current state of the game. Every single army there falls into one of three categories.

1. Huge Mortal Wound output and vast amounts of unbinding buffs to compete in the spell casting phase.
2. Massive amounts of ranged attacks which allow them to gun down enemy heroes/wizards.
3. Army wide saves against mortal wounds.

Most of them actually satisfy 2 of them. Honestly it says a lot about the state of the game and given that no destruction army is going to compete on that level other than bonesplitterz.

[Fridge_Opener]

Completely agree about the current situation and we (destruction) weren't helped by the nerf to beastclaw, more specifically stonehorns. I personally don't like the savage orks so since I only play destruction its meant that I'm taking a bit of a joke list to the heat in whw next weekend. 

Can't really see a quick fix coming down the line all the same so can only hope when more destruction stuff gets looked at the meta might shift. 

[PlasticCraic]

11 minutes ago, Fridge_Opener said:

Completely agree about the current situation and we (destruction) weren't helped by the nerf to beastclaw, more specifically stonehorns. I personally don't like the savage orks so since I only play destruction its meant that I'm taking a bit of a joke list to the heat in whw next weekend. 

Can't really see a quick fix coming down the line all the same so can only hope when more destruction stuff gets looked at the meta might shift. 

Think we're waiting for a new Battletome (please be Moonclan, please be Moonclan...)

Or failing that GH18. 

It's very hard for an army to come out of leftfield since the GA Destruction abilities were eviscerated - for example the guy who won a Heat with his squigs took Chaos to the Final.  So until then, I think we are where we are unfortunately - would love for someone to prove me wrong though!

[Fridge_Opener]

Moonclan would be incredible and there's some potential of more moonclan with the Malign Portents character.  I think the lists that are more out there have some hope due to people having never expected them or practiced against them. What annoys me is you need to be an appreciably better player with destruction just to be able to compete. You're right though we took a further hit with the change to all the destruction abilities in GHB17. 

Ah sure if I wanted to have it easy I'd have picked a different allegiance ? 

[PlasticCraic]

1 hour ago, Fridge_Opener said:

Moonclan would be incredible and there's some potential of more moonclan with the Malign Portents character.  I think the lists that are more out there have some hope due to people having never expected them or practiced against them. What annoys me is you need to be an appreciably better player with destruction just to be able to compete. You're right though we took a further hit with the change to all the destruction abilities in GHB17. 

Ah sure if I wanted to have it easy I'd have picked a different allegiance ? 

I'm thinking of it as training...playing on Hard Mode, so that if and when we have the tools to compete on a level playing field, we'll be ready to unleash hell!

[heywoah_twitch]

Our entire Grand Alliance was propped up by the (admittedly op) army-wide hero-phase d6 movement, and by battlebrews affecting mounts and on every hero. Overpowered with them, bad without them.

[Fridge_Opener]

I feel that they could have been changed far better, either 4+ across the board to rampaging or d3 units get it cause the randomness suits destruction. 

Battlebrew was stupid good though but now they made it untakeable. 

I do like PlasticCraics idea of us playing on hard mode all the same ?

[PlasticCraic]

3 hours ago, Fridge_Opener said:

Completely agree about the current situation and we (destruction) weren't helped by the nerf to beastclaw, more specifically stonehorns. I personally don't like the savage orks so since I only play destruction its meant that I'm taking a bit of a joke list to the heat in whw next weekend. 

Can't really see a quick fix coming down the line all the same so can only hope when more destruction stuff gets looked at the meta might shift. 

Out of interest what army are you taking?

[heywoah_twitch]

Please tell me it's vince and tom's mixed GA: Dest triple smaug counts-as dragon list 

[svnvaldez]

Agree with all of the above.

Nicky M. not taking Bonesplitterz to masters is saddening... We should ask him on FB but I would guess he probably didn't feel like he could take the top armies and I ran his list at a USA GT and its soul crushing to roll all the dice. Is the Bonesplitterz that is going a friend of his and using his army since he is rolling with wanderers?

I'll be taking Nicky's Facehammer list to LVO at the end of the month. USA players are about 6-9 month behind the meta of UK players so expecting a strong result with it, Tony Moore is coming over so I expect Tzeentch to clean up here as well.

 

[Thomas Lyons]

57 minutes ago, heywoah_twitch said:

Please tell me it's vince and tom's mixed GA: Dest triple smaug counts-as dragon list 

Unfortunately not, although it would certainly be humorous.

[Fridge_Opener]

5 hours ago, PlasticCraic said:

Out of interest what army are you taking?

Tyrant 

Butcher 

Huskard on thundertusk 

6 leadbelchers 

6 leadbelchers 

3 leadbelchers 

Scraplauncher 

Scraplauncher 

40 grots 

20 grots 

Gorger 

[PlasticCraic]

21 minutes ago, Fridge_Opener said:

Tyrant 

Butcher 

Huskard on thundertusk 

6 leadbelchers 

6 leadbelchers 

3 leadbelchers 

Scraplauncher 

Scraplauncher 

40 grots 

20 grots 

Gorger 

Cool, it's very different from the list that I'm drawing up but it should be fun.  Were we talking about using bad Gustbusters armies on Twitter earlier by any chance?

[Fridge_Opener]

3 minutes ago, PlasticCraic said:

Cool, it's very different from the list that I'm drawing up but it should be fun.  Were we talking about using bad Gustbusters armies on Twitter earlier by any chance?

Indeed, helps you've got the same handle ha

[Fridge_Opener]

1 hour ago, PlasticCraic said:

Cool, it's very different from the list that I'm drawing up but it should be fun.  Were we talking about using bad Gustbusters armies on Twitter earlier by any chance?

What were you thinking of doing? Cannons? 

[Sheriff]

 I'm not too fussed about winning, more about having fun whilst performing as well as my destruction dudes can. 

Still a shame the whole grand alliance sucks at the moment though. But i guess that will shift over time, albeit only for whatever the new armies are. 

Let the WAACers have their fun and I'm happy enjoying my occasional underdog victories

[Fridge_Opener]

49 minutes ago, Sheriff said:

 I'm not too fussed about winning, more about having fun whilst performing as well as my destruction dudes can. 

Still a shame the whole grand alliance sucks at the moment though. But i guess that will shift over time, albeit only for whatever the new armies are. 

Let the WAACers have their fun and I'm happy enjoying my occasional underdog victories

It is a sweet victory pulling one out against a top tier army but I get the complaint that we're working with far scarcer resources 

[Infeston]

I reacted very badly to all the Destruction nerfs right after the GHB2017 came out and some people told me I shouldn't be so negative about Age of Sigmar (Even though my argument wasn't about Age of Sigmar being bad, but about that I found the Destruction nerfs unfair and not well-thought-through). But for me it becomes clearer that the nerfs indeed were a bit too much and that too much was listened to the complaints of some people who found Stonehorn-Kunning Rukk lists unfair.

What I don't understand is why they had to go the "complete nerf"- way instead of just changing some things a little bit. I also think the overall problem is that AoS at the moment supports shooting-heavy army armies. The thing is this are all problems which exist since the beginning of AoS and the fans and players often requested changes to shooting etc.  It doesn't have to be a complete shooting nerf, like the complete nerfs to Destruction. But why not reduce the hit rolls if a shooty unit is in combat? Or only those guys can shoot which aren't in contact with other models?

But it hasn't changed at the moment. I really thought GHB2017 would fix some of the problems. I still found the Destruction nerfs unnecessary and not well executed. I could understand some nerfs but then the nerfs got more and more  and more and I think GW nerfed a bit too much. 

[Dave Fraser]

10 Nerf's in 3 paragraphs, I get the feeling you have an issue with the changes!

 

Yeah they probably went too far. Yeah it was stupidly good before they changed it.  Will it get reversed, almost definitely not.

 

I think the thing is GW wants to sell the new hotness, the new hotness is currently Order & Chaos.  So until new Destruction & Death models come out I don't expect them to get any love.

Ironjaws got given the new Abilities & Formations to try and balance out the negatives.  It probably would have worked only the change of points on the formations (which looks like a late on blanket change) then immediately stripped most of that benefit out because they cost so much it costs too much out the army to pay for those buffs.

[PlasticCraic]

7 hours ago, Dave Fraser said:

I think the thing is GW wants to sell the new hotness, the new hotness is currently Order & Chaos.  So until new Destruction & Death models come out I don't expect them to get any love.

What you are saying is true, but there is no law that says Order & Chaos has to be the new hotness.  The fact that there have been no new Battletomes for a surreal length of time has been a hot topic recently.  What's also worth pointing out is that of the last 5 Battletomes that have been released, every one of them has been Order 'n' Chaos (DoT, BoK, SE, KO, Nurgle).  So although it's true to say they are the current hotness (relatively speaking), it's also our duty as fans and customers to bang the drum and point out that we'd quite like to be the hotness (or at least tepidness).

The other thing that's worth mentioning is the love for the old coldness.  GH17 brought Allegiance Abilities to faction after faction, by definition none of which are new, and only a wafer thin sliver at the back for Destruction.  Some of them (Fyreslayers, Seraphon, Wanderers, Skryre) were very good, and not all of those factions necessarily needed to get stronger.  There were plenty of Destruction armies that could have used the same (Moonclan, Gutbusters, Greenskinz for example).  

They really went to town on GA Destruction - GA armies got slower, softer hitting and easier to kill.  They even nerfed the stuff nobody uses (Nothing Left Standing) just to make sure.  That on its own would have been more palatable if GA abilities weren't essential for most of the factions, but due to a severe lack of love in GH17 they still are.  Being told that we are not the new hotness explains the lack of love, but doesn't excuse it - the fact we are getting no releases is another bad thing, not a soothing comfort.

GW are a business, I embrace that.  And we are its customers.  Their job is to make money by selling us great products, ours is to buy those products when they give us what we want.  This isn't a moan, it's a request.  We are saying this because we love GW, love AOS and love Destruction.  Please give our armies the attention they deserve.  We want to buy more of them.

[Fridge_Opener]

Lads don't worry about it, I'll win heat 1 with gutbusters and then we'll get a further nerf because of how overpowered we are. 

I fully agree with the sentiment about chaos/shiny chaos getting all the love but we have to be realistic in noting how much further scope for growth those two alliances have compared to us. Order can literally be any civilization of any race, chaos have full artistic licence with five insane gods whereas we like to break things. The only interesting direction I've seen destruction going in is goblin sky pirates mentioned in the KO book but have heard nothing substantial. There's really only so much they can do without rehashing the classic destruction theme 

[Malakree]

10 minutes ago, Fridge_Opener said:

Lads don't worry about it, I'll win heat 1 with gutbusters and then we'll get a further nerf because of how overpowered we are. 

I fully agree with the sentiment about chaos/shiny chaos getting all the love but we have to be realistic in noting how much further scope for growth those two alliances have compared to us. Order can literally be any civilization of any race, chaos have full artistic licence with five insane gods whereas we like to break things. The only interesting direction I've seen destruction going in is goblin sky pirates mentioned in the KO book but have heard nothing substantial. There's really only so much they can do without rehashing the classic destruction theme 

Destruction isn't primarily about breaking things. It's about the rule of the strong.

• Order is about enforcing a rigid structure, ensuring that everything goes in it's proper place.
• Chaos is about tearing everything down, bringing about the end and subjugating everything.
• Death is about mental illness, it's an entire grand alliance devoted to Nagash, his megalomania and all the different ways a person can go wrong in the head.
• Destruction is about strength, embracing the most brutal aspects of the natural order, taking what you want because you can.

When you look at the motivations behind all the different destruction armies none of them are actually doing it to destroy things. Ironjawz for example aren't after breaking things, what they want is to fight. They are constantly seeking a bigger and arder foe to smack and brawl with, the reason things get broken is because order/chaos build giant walls to hide behind. Every fort is a challenged issued directly to every WAAAGH! and no true Orruk backs down from a challenge, oh no the gates get broken, well if you didn't want it broken you wouldn't have closed them would you.

In closing, there is so much you can do with destruction. They still haven't explored fimir society, troggoths are woefully underdeveloped, grot skypirates are a thing, spiderfang are barely even a faction. Hell why isn't there a Gargant faction? You aren't telling me that GW couldn't write rules for fielding a tribe of Giants that, as their allegiance, ignores the behemoth restriction while treating aleguzzlars as battleline.

Not to mention the slightly more extreme options which just spring to mind, split gut busters in two. One is the traditional man eating ogors with ogors, ironguts, gorgers and a development of that line of flesh hungering savagery. Then the other has Leadbelchers as battleline, the Ironblaster, grots carrying tiny little boomsticks which, on the roll of a 1, hit them instead of their target.

It's not that there aren't options or ideas, it's that GW aren't bothering with them. Hell just look at the new Moonclan shaman, ask any moonclan player what new hero could be introduced and 2 years ago they would have said "how about a grot, who has had so many magic shrooms, he's now completely bat ****** crazy but sees visions and ******". There is a ton of space to expand destruction!

[Fridge_Opener]

I like your optimism I just don't agree with it sadly, even the examples you gave such as fimir (won't be sufficiently expanded due to being forgeworld and not having the span of chaos dwarfs), there's no where to go with spiderfang due to then riding spiders, splitting gutbusters up further I don't think is a good idea as we already have factions not deserving of the term (aleguzzler gargants, firebellies etc). A new more intelligent troggoth grouping could be interesting but I doubt it

[PlasticCraic]

6 minutes ago, Fridge_Opener said:

I like your optimism I just don't agree with it sadly, even the examples you gave such as fimir (won't be sufficiently expanded due to being forgeworld and not having the span of chaos dwarfs), there's no where to go with spiderfang due to then riding spiders, splitting gutbusters up further I don't think is a good idea as we already have factions not deserving of the term (aleguzzler gargants, firebellies etc). A new more intelligent troggoth grouping could be interesting but I doubt it

Not sure I agree with that mate, I think there is heaps that they can do.  Some of it obvious (Moonclan going nuts for Shrooms gives both a motivation, and a hook for game mechanics that feel instantly thematic), some of it less so (the Beastclaw and Bonesplitterz lore was awesome, and not something I could have come up with myself).  And look at the old Giants lore, a tale of tragic loss. 

Moonclan and Sky Pirates are low-hanging fruit.  Things like Gutbusters would need a rabbit pulling out of a hat, which I believe GW creative staff are more than capable of.

Re: Spiderfang specifically, I think a good way to go would be a battletome supplement for Bonesplitterz.  Give them relevant keywords and reinvigorate two factions at once.  You'd get a good Start Collecting out of it too.

One thing I totally agree with is please don't split up Gutbusters further!  Maneaters and Firebellies are already their own factions, it's already a bit daft.  It's not a crime to have a shooting unit and some combat units in the same army.