Hesa_First

I'm afraid I have to agree. The first four warbands where a blast to play. Some hard matchups for sure, but not at all ridiculously imbalanced. The game overall was extremely focused on good positioning and planning. From that point on there was a huge shift towards high HP straight forward warbands. Earthquake made objective play and therefore a great deal of warbands almost unplayable. Orruks and SCE where top Tier, with only Skaven on par, who took the Speed of Reavers, the rez of the Guard and made both even better. Even the Leader is a more powerful combination of the Warden and Garrek! Skaven simply replaced those two warbands at a competative level. Fyreslayers were flawed from the getgo. Add to that the inflation of reactions. Less and less planning required, indirectly punished low HP fighters and rewarded offensive positioning with models who could just tank one or two blows. The new expansions seem to put another nail in the coffin for low HP fighters (flat damage ploys that affect all fighters, a LOT of ranged attacks, etc). Additionally the new Khorne band appears to be insanely strong and even negate a tactical element from the game: drive backs. Ohh yes, an even harder to counter Earthquake-equivalent on top of that.

Why is everyone ignoring Seak when talking about cleave? He has it inbuilt, once inspired. Throw Great Strength on him and/or use Trap to kill every fighter in the game with ease. Timetrap and Ready for Action combined with the amazing hit boosts Khorne has, generate enough attacks to make him a huge threat. Karsus is insanely strong, too. Whirlwind of Death and/or Greate Strenght is so deadly on him, as he is the most precise fighters Khorn has to offer. A SCE matchup still sucks though.

But I like the farstrider condition! Farstriders cannot camp on objectives in their own territory, defending with their ranged attacks. They seem extremely strong though, among the fastest warband in the game and every fighter has a ranged attack. The stats of the other two fighters and their inspired stats will tell if they are indeed such monsters. Margores fiends inspire trigger seems a little lackluster. Easy indeed and something the warband wants to do anyway.

This sums it up perfectly. It is extremely important how You place objective tokens. Against defensive warbands You might find yourself in a bad spot when doing it wrongly. When You spend turn one securing objectives and need a whole turn two to approach Your opponent, the third turn might just not include enough fighting to score precious glory. On the other hand, when placing tokens aggressively, turn one charges might take Your (still weak) fighters out of action. And this can snowball hard. This of course comes in addition to general positioning, deckbuilding, card knowledge and whatnot. So expect al lot of losses against Your friends in the beginning, as You will need more practice and a rougher trial and error approach than them. When You are fine with this, go for drawfs!

I can't stop thinking about the farstriders and their crossbows. What stats do You expect? I suppose it is represented by an attack action rather than an upgrade, and it will be the same on every farstrider. Range 3, two Attack dice with the sword characteristic and one damage is my guess. Maybe inspire giving it an extra die and a crit effect.

Throwing Stars for Skaven and the Shadeglass Axe both have range 3, too. I am really curious, how strong the crossbow will be... a full Warband with ranged attacks could be extremely powerfull.

You said that in another thread and initially agreed. But I gave the timing of an attack some thought and now understand Trap differently (I might be horrily wrong though). The attack action is not over until the drive back is resolved. Trap happens during an attack. So I don't really see a reason anymore, why damage from Trap should not be considered for attack actions that score objectives. The damage characteristic doesn't change for sure, but the damage is dealt in the said attack action. Objectives not regarding damage like Victorious Duel should also be scored from my understanding. We might need a FAQ wich states wether the ploydamage from being driven back is considered to be caused by the attack or not.

Yeah, Skritch is still a monster. I think crit cleave, albeit being very very situational, is a rather good way of giving fighters some advantage in combat, without breaking them completely. Flat Cleave on Skritch would be ridiculous, no special perk would be boring. Plus I like Cleave in general. It weakens shield warbands a little and those are currently the most represented warbands in tounament play.

Regading this I want to make sure I understand Trap correctly when scoring objectives: Lets say Steelheart charges Garrek. He hits, drives back and Trap is being played. Garrek is dead. Precise Use of Force can be scored, as the Attack in total deals exacly the right amount of damage (4). Lighning Strikes and Victorious Duel can be scored aswell. Now lets say Steelheart charges a Petitioner, who has 1 HP left. They tie on successes and the Petitioner is driven back, therefore the SCE player plays Trap. No Remorse can be scored, as the damage characteristic of the attack is still 3. Precise Use of Force can be scored aswell, as the damage dealt is 1 (exacly as much as needed). Now Steelheart charges a full HP Petitioner. He hits the Petitioner and wants to drive him back and play Trap, to score Crushing Force. Even though the damage dealt would be 4, twice as much as needed, this is not possible due to the attack sequence. The damage dealt by the initial attack is more than the Petitioner can sustain, so he is taken out of action before he can be driven back. Did I get anything wrong?

I agree that Skritch is the only true fighter the Skaven have. But he is extremely strong. A threatrange of 7 hexes is huge. Inbuild crit Cleave helps, too. Getting him inspired is really easy, bringing him to dmg 3 with no need to be adjacent to enemy fighters. Plus he is more tanky than it seems. Acrobatic and Musk of Fear makes him almost unkillable for the rest of the round. Arms Lenght, Skritch is the Greatest and maby Victorious Duel are all relatively easy to score and are scored immediately!

I would like to have that clarified, too. In addition, when equipped with"Sneaky Stab-stab", does the fighter have to be in range for an attack when declaring the attack? Or can Skritch declare an attack from 3 hexes away, push, attack, push, when equipped with both upgrades? From the FAQ regarding Swift Strike, I would say yes. But the push from Swift Strike is a reaction, so the ruling might be different.

Sad because its true.

Keep in mind they have the two strongest fighters in the game, once inspired and maybe easiest inspire trigger (with ALOT of ploys to help them). Now that we have their cards, they seem to have top tier objectives and maybe the best plays in the game. A lot of pushing, damage mitigation, rerolls.... I think they will be extremely strong.

Stormcast can reliably oneshot Reavers. 2 models can oneshot 80% of the poor Reavers and Miss Brightshield can still kill Arnulf and Targor with one blow (plus upgrades and ploys can boost her to dmg 3 with ease). Their stats and ploys make them extremely precise. And loosing Seak and/or Karsus early against stormcasts is very painful. Orruks only have one model with dmg 3, thus being able to kill Seak and Karsus in one blow. Bonecutter has only dmg 2 and he is even far less reliable than Brightshield with only two dice. Hakka and Basha only have dmg 1 and two attack dice with the sword characteristic. That means for a great deal of the game you are basically facing only two potent fighters, that are not nearly as scary as stormcasts. And while the Orruks have some cards letting them move, stormcasts are experts at pushing. Peal of thunder, Heroic stride etc. do almost the same thing regarding threatrange/positioning but can additionaly destroy the Reavers objective hold game. Maybe the ones playing Orruks in Your area are just better players than the ones playing Stormcasts. But generally speaking I would say Stormcasts are a much much harder matchup for Reavers.

Maybe I didn't put it right. Earthquake might become a top tier card, who knows. But thats not my point. It is a card that punishes good plays. It requires a lot of planning an thinking to get hold of key objectives to score Supremacy, Tactical Supremacys and what not and its extremely hard to pull of. Earthquake is designed to destroy such a turn with minimal to no efford. Sure there are some niche uses, but that seems to be the intention behind Earthquake. And thats a very lacklustre design imo. I hope that sums up my point a little better, as a non native speaker it is hard to phrase such concepts.