Icarion

Upercase i.

Could you change my username to Icarion?

This is my Hysh themed terrain I used for a game a few weeks back

I'm not sure how a 50% win rate in casual games with a buddy means dead on arrival for casual play, or proves that the armies viability has "collapsed". I thought the point of casual games was to have a chill time with a friend playing a game where both people have fun. 50/50 games with one of the weakest armies, while also being able to pull off wins against different opponents playing top tier factions sounds like LRL have a tremendous range of viability to play against all sorts of factions and players at varying levels. If your qualifier for a fun game is one where you win, sure LRL might act they way you describe, but if your goal is to have close, back and forth games, pretty much everything in the battletome is viable and can be made to work. People who don't focus on winning and instead try to create cool moments and memorable battles find so much more enjoyment in this game. As others on this board have endlessly pointed out LRL can easily be tailored to become obsessively powerful against most lists and armies, so that fact that it can also be toned down to meet parity with one of the weakest armies should be viewed as a great sign that the army has viability in casual play. A 50% win rate with your army should be what everyone outside of the tournament/competative crowd strives for, and yet you dismiss it as a sign of an army collapsing in "casual play." Also describing yourself as "quitegood" at list construction, doesn't really sound like something someone thinking about casual play would say. You seem way too focused on winning at the end of the match to enjoy the army and the game in general, what you describe as "casual play" sounds like playing with netlisting tournament crowds and sounds antithetical to what I feel most would consider casual. Honestly, anyone who thinks a fun list that regularly plays five battleround games with a 50% win rate counts as "army collapsing" isn't someone who sounds particularly fun to play against. In my group, a 50% winrate for an army is the most desirable goal. That doesn't mean an armies viability has fallen apart, but rather that it can find an equilibrium with other players armies in the community and that every game you play can be close with both players standing a reasonable chance to win. I'd always rather lose a close game, than win via steamrolling my opponent.

I don't think you really know what you are talking about mate. "basically impossible to play casual" is pure ******. 80% my games in 3.0 has been against Hedonites with my LRL, which is an army widely panned as being in a bad spot currently. However, all of my games have been close, 5 turn affairs. None of these games have been competitive minded, and they have all been a blast for me any my opponent. The win rate is about 50/50 between us. Maybe you just don't know how to run fun lists that don't hinge on winning to make the game enjoyable? There are a ton of interesting LRL builds out there, but few people bother to try them because they bank their own enjoyment of the game on winning as fast as possible over making the game a dynamic affair for both players. For instance, the last game I played, the mission we rolled was such a bad matchup for our two armies, that we realized no matter what, if my opponent took the first turn in the roll off there would be no realistic way for me win, so opting for a close game over a faceroll, my opponent decided to give me the first turn instead. Find people like that to play with, and try fun lists over optimized ones. Prioritize cool gaming moments as a metric for what makes a good game over winning in the end and you'll find lots of "bad" or "top tier" armies can play casually just fine.

After a cracking game this past weekend I'd love to see people's terrain setups for AOS 3.0, and specifically I'd love to hear how terrain has impacted your games in the new edition. For myself, I have always favored tables with an abundance of terrain, (whether or not it actually impacts the game in a meaningful way) desnse terrain feels like it makes maneuvering, and objective scoring more tactically interesting. Especially in 3.0 with the seismic shift rule, having an opponents army divided up by LOS blocking or impassable terrain and then pulling an objective has been game changing. I wish AOS had more dynamic terrain rules and interactions, but I feel strongly that new edition and the battleplans/focuses within it have really led to a massive boost in the importance of playing on terrain dense boards. I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences, and most importantly, I'd appreciate seeing what your table setups have been looking like in 3.0. Here are a few table examples from my latest games:

Had a spectacularly close game of AOS 3.0 This past weekend 2000 pts Lumineth vs Slaanesh. On the Lumineth Side I ran Zaitrec, with a Lord Regent, Windmage and Loreseeker in an Entourage Battalion for an extra artefact (giving my Lord Regent an arcane tomb for an extra spell cast). Additionally, I ran 1x 20 block of Wardens, 1x 10 and 1x 5 man unit of Bladelords, 2x 10 man units of Sentinels and a 5 man unit of both Dawnriders and Windchargers. Finally, my list incorporated a Spirit of the Wind. Standing opposed to me was my friends Hedonites army including Synessa, a Lord of Pain, a Lord on Karkadrak, and a Contorted Epitome, supported by 2x 5 man units of Slickblade Seekers, 2x 5 man units of Hellstriders, and a 10 man unit of Twinsouls. The mission was Apex Predators. My initial thoughts for the battle were pretty dreary, as Scoring of the three objective points can only be done by heroes, and compared to my opponent, I both had fewer and significantly less fighty/squishier heroes. My predication for the battle was that I could probably out damage my opponents list, but that as soon as he took an objective it would be nearly impossible for me to take it back from him. All that being said, my strategy going into this game was to get my heroes onto objectives as quickly as possible to wrack up early points, and to delay my enemies heroes as well while trying to divide his army. This plan mostly paid off. I was fortunate in that my opponent, winning deployment, choose to give me the first turn, hopping to let me move forward into charge range, and banking on an early double Turn to smash several of my key screens. Going first allowed my Lumineth army to get focus on the early objective game, running my lord regent and windmage onto one objective, screening them with running windchargers as well to hold the far left objective while snagging an early ferocious advance battle tactic. Unfortunately the only units who were eligible to run for that battle tactic were two of my heroes and the windchargers due to the rest of the army starting in shining company. This meant I couldn't get on all three objectives. To mitigate that, I moved my large block of wardens towards the middle of the board near the center objective to make it dangerous for my opponent to try and take it for himself. The last objective was taken by my Loreseeker deploying from his Lone agent special rule. My wind spirit moved up to charge and pin down his unit of Slickblades effectively shutting down movement towards the objective held by my Regent and Windmage, while my dawnraiders sortied out to help protect my exposed loreseeker. The game would progress from this point moving back and forth, while I was able to score an early points lead. Turn 2 ended with me leading 10 to 3 points after holding 2 objectives and scoring my battle tactics, but turn three would see a rapid reversal. The slaanesh player got the double turn heading into turn three, which allowed me to burn the center objective with seismic shift, further denying him that point, and cement a split of the battlefield into two distant halves. Thanks to the sacrifice of my Bladelords, and my Hurakan units pinning down his early game advance, I was able to effectively tie up half his army on one point, but all of that damage allowed him to bring on a summoned keeper of secrets. Eventually he took both points from me, my loreseeker and dawnriders were annihilated by a unit of seekers and my lord Regent died in heroic battle with his Lord on Karkadrak. I decided to sacrifice the Lord Regents half of my army to hold his faster units there while focusing my midfield units on retaking the far objective from his seekers, hellstriders and Synessa, but ended turn 3 failing to score any points. By the end of turn 4 my focus on Synessa paid off as I was able to gain 1 VP from slaying It(a Monster) and pushing my opponent off that objective. However, I was unable to score that point as I failed to defeat Synessa in melee with a hero. This brought us to a close game 11 to 10 favoring Lumineth. Turn 5 saw us both scramble to try and win, and we both had a great shot at it. If I could manage to hold my objective and run two units into his starting zone I could win the game 14 to 13. However, if he managed to slay my windmage with his unit of Seekers and a summoned chariot, He would win. As it happened, the Slaanesh player failed to kill my windmage, but did manage to pin down one of my other units in melee, meaning the only way for me to score my battle tactic was to fly the windmage off of the objective and into his backfield. In this manner, the game ended in a tie 13 to 13. A great showing for both Lumineth and Slaanesh. Highlights for me, have to include both the Loreseeker and Windspirit making an ungodly number of 5+ ward saves keeping them alive and drawing my opponents focus. Further, the mobility of my windmage, and the charge and fall back shenanigans of my Wind Spirit definitely made both of them the MVPs for the game in my book. On the Slaanesh side, I am continually impressed by how great their summoning is, and Synessa's spell casting is seriously scary. Being able to force mortal wounds on heroes rolling dice equal to their move characteristic is painful against lumineth, as 14 dice, make that spell terrifying. All told, it was a fantastically close game, and my favorite game of 3rd edition yet!

What did the lists look like for both sides? And what were the missions?

I feel like 2 of them have to be the Stormcast and Nighthaunt halves of the the Soul Wars sets, since that box is gone, and there is no other way to get some of those models currently. It's what they did with the aos 1 starter set, split into start collecting sets.

If hero's arbitrarily don't count to you, how about psychic awakening for 40k? Eldar and Dark Eldar both got new units and new heroes, all without a new codex. Admech too. If you only accept AOS evidence, how about the new Daugters of khain units (hero, and unit) that got released 4 months before a battletome with the shadow and pain set and Warcry? Maybe Warcry doesnt count to you, so how about the new Slaanesh and Khorne units that got released with Wrath and Rapture (New fleshhounds and KaranaK, and infernal Enrapturess with new fiends) with no new battletome in sight? You could just own up to being wrong instead of making arbitrary distinctions about what does and doesn't count for your "GW doesn't operate like that" argument.

Broken realms would kind of disagree with you though...

Here you go. Others have posted similar date collected by lovely people like AOS Shorts. This is just January to June of this year, but if you look at his full spreadsheet of tournament results, it looks pretty similar. Only 2 lumineth lists placing first, and a handful of top 5 finishes over the course of a year. Hardly looks like an army breaking the meta. But go on @Benkei insult me more, and discredit my anecdotal experience that lumineth are not all powerful, by putting it down to me being bad. That's why I *GASP* called it anecdotal, and not hard data, which is however plentiful if you bother to look for it (see attached image). All you people seem to have is anecdotal evidence that lumineth are game breaking, despite others in this thread providing hard data from tournaments to the contrary, you ignore it and continue on or change your focus to "well they are still NPE." Finally when someone you disagree with provides their own anecdotal experiences to counter your claims, you mock and belittle them, and shout for them to provide data. Honestly a moderator needs to lock this down, or at least retitle it the "Lumineth Bashing Thread"

No data, so personal attacks? Cool. When you use anecdotal information to back up your unsupported claims, it must be taken as gospel. But when I use anecdotal experience to contest your claim, you imply its invalid and choose instead to mock me to discredit it. I don't play competitively, but I like to win as much as the next guy. However as soon as someone like you stars blathering on about broken this, or cheese that, I can no longer win at this game. If I win game, playing an army that you claim is broken, then I dint win, the autopilot-powerhouse-army won for me. And If I happen to lose with that army, I REALLY lose, cause' I lost with an army that was supposed to be unbeatable. You're ruining the game. Please. Stop.

I just had my teeth kicked in with Lumineth using 3rd edition points and rules against a Hedonites army using slaangor, and Fiends. But sure, lumineth are cheese. I disagreed when people were making these arguments against lumineth back in 2nd with no supporting data, and I disagree even more strongly now as we transition into third, where there is pretty much zero play experience from anyone. "Sentinels are soooo scary, because of feelings, not because they average 3 mortal wounds a turn if buffed up for 150 points, SOOO Broken" Maybe Lumineth will end up a true nightmare powerouse in 3rd edition. I could be totally wrong, but unlike many fear mongers on this board, I'm going to wait until there is actual data to back up that assertion. Until that time, anything else is just anecdotal noise.

For those looking for a ray of hope and positivity. I played a 2500 point game yesterday of 3rd edition using the new points. Playing my Lumineth, I just got my ass handed to me by a Hedonites of Slaanesh army using fiends and slaangor. If that's not a ray of hope in these dark times, I don't know what is!