How Important are Battalions?

[Uveron]

Greetings

So I have been spending my days recently thinking about what I want my 2018 tournament army to look like for Age of Sigmar.  In all likeyhood the army will be some type of Chaos force (Probably Khorne). But I am becoming stuck; just how useful are Battalions in the current game?

I do suppose it changes from build to build, but it appears that the best preforming lists all use them.

I expect this is a matter of opinion, and depends on the faction of you’re the army? (And the Battalion..)  

[RuneBrush]

Battalions are a real mixed baggage.  Some will allow the units to perform better (e.g. making a combat unit more killy), others help to reduce the poor bits of units (e.g. making a slow unit faster) and other just add extra abilities.  All of them reduce the number of deployments you make (which means you're more likely to be able to choose who takes first turn) and provide an extra artefact.

Since the new handbook, we've seen the number of battalions being fielded reduce due to the points required for them, because they're now competing with models on the table.  Generally for Khorne, Gorepilgrims, Brass Stampede and Murderhost are generally considered to provide a good points to performance ratio

[BunkhouseBuster]

The advantages of Battalions, regardless of army and Battalion, are as follows:

- Extra rules and abilities for the units that are part of the Battalion.  While it costs points in Matched Play, it is a set cost that applies to everything in the Battalion, so you can stretch the costs out by having more than the minimum units in the Battalion so more models are affected.

- Each Battalion unlocks another artifact for Matched Play, which can be handy to have.

- The Battalion can be used as one drop for your army,  with the Battalion counting as a unit when setting up, rather than having to set up each of the units individually.  This  can be used to your advantage.

Anything beyond this is up to you to decide.  Some Battalions are good, some are better.  It really depends on the abilities they provide, the units involved, and the points costs involved when playing Matched Play.

[heywoah_twitch]

Echoing the above good answers, I'd add emphasis to the idea of them reducing the 'number of drops' your army is as a way to get to decide who goes first (a rule I'm on a personal crusade to get rid of as preposterously imbalanced). While you can make fine armies without a battalion, it's the exception in a competitive sense.

I actually start listbuilding by paging through the battalions and seeing which I can build around without being forced into too many sub-par choices as requirements. Some armies have strong battalions with good abilities and soft requirements, and these are typically the armies that also tend to do well. There are exceptions, of course.

[Uveron]

15 minutes ago, heywoah_twitch said:

Echoing the above good answers, I'd add emphasis to the idea of them reducing the 'number of drops' your army is as a way to get to decide who goes first (a rule I'm on a personal crusade to get rid of as preposterously imbalanced). While you can make fine armies without a battalion, it's the exception in a competitive sense.

This is what I am trying to deduce at the momen; to build a list that will stand a chance of geting to the top tables of a major event do you need a battalion for the extra flexibility on number of drops.  

It kinda feels as long as you are not paying more than 200pts for a Battalion and keeping your army so that it can be set up in less than 5 drops (Bonus if you can go to over 10), you are setting yourself up well to be able to control the flow of the game.. which is worth the points. 

[rokapoke]

Alternatively, can you slow-deploy your army to counter the positioning of a single-drop battalion? Sure, some units/battalions/armies can deploy off the board, but if your opponent one-drops their entire army onto the battlefield, they've lost the ability to adjust deployment based on what you're doing. That can be used to your advantage if you're savvy about deployment and exploiting unit-vs-unit matchups and positioning.

[Arkiham]

Some are worth, most not as alot have tax units like blightguard, 200 points and 2 heroes who aren't very good.

 

So that's like 400 points to get -1 to hit on blightkings.  So costly

Edited November 9, 2017 by Arkiham

[Ollie Grimwood]

I find them to be in the right place, very useful depending on how you will be playing your army but not necessarily  a must take.  The extra artifact and reduction in deployment drops makes most battalions very useful even if their base rules are lacklustre  

[HandsomeBlaggard]

Huh...I had no idea you could drop a full Battalion as one unit. That’s interesting. So in a 1k pt game, if your battalion is the whole army with no extras, you can pretty much guarantee that you go first? You don’t have to roll for it? That’s a pretty nice incentive to use them in smaller games. 

[ledha]

On 09/11/2017 at 9:44 PM, Uveron said:

This is what I am trying to deduce at the momen; to build a list that will stand a chance of geting to the top tables of a major event do you need a battalion for the extra flexibility on number of drops.  

It kinda feels as long as you are not paying more than 200pts for a Battalion and keeping your army so that it can be set up in less than 5 drops (Bonus if you can go to over 10), you are setting yourself up well to be able to control the flow of the game.. which is worth the points. 

you totally can. But if you do so, you have to build an army which will be able to be efficient if it start first AND if it start second

[AverageBoss]

17 hours ago, HandsomeBlaggard said:

Huh...I had no idea you could drop a full Battalion as one unit. That’s interesting. So in a 1k pt game, if your battalion is the whole army with no extras, you can pretty much guarantee that you go first? You don’t have to roll for it? That’s a pretty nice incentive to use them in smaller games. 

You don't ever roll to see who goes first on the first turn of the game. The player who finishes deploying first gets to choose turn order for that turn. 90% of the time it is better to choose to go second to give yourself the first double turn (if one happens), and put your opponent on the back foot waiting for it to happen.

You can throw down your battalions in one drop (even if it is your whole army), or you can piecemeal them out. Once you do so however, you can only deploy remaining battalion units one at a time. So an eight unit battalion could be deployed all eight units at once, or four units -> one -> one -> one -> one, as an example.

Because of that, you also don't get many opportunities to actually counter deploy large battalions. Your opponent will simply count up your number of drops, and deploy in a manner where they have one less drop than you. It is an extremely potent advantage.

[Uveron]

17 minutes ago, AverageBoss said:

You can throw down your battalions in one drop (even if it is your whole army), or you can piecemeal them out. Once you do so however, you can only deploy remaining battalion units one at a time. So an eight unit battalion could be deployed all eight units at once, or four units -> one -> one -> one -> one, as an example.

You can do that? I thought it was all or one at a time? Do you have a page reference? 

[HandsomeBlaggard]

1 hour ago, AverageBoss said:

You don't ever roll to see who goes first on the first turn of the game. The player who finishes deploying first gets to choose turn order for that turn. 90% of the time it is better to choose to go second to give yourself the first double turn (if one happens), and put your opponent on the back foot waiting for it to happen.

You can throw down your battalions in one drop (even if it is your whole army), or you can piecemeal them out. Once you do so however, you can only deploy remaining battalion units one at a time. So an eight unit battalion could be deployed all eight units at once, or four units -> one -> one -> one -> one, as an example.

Because of that, you also don't get many opportunities to actually counter deploy large battalions. Your opponent will simply count up your number of drops, and deploy in a manner where they have one less drop than you. It is an extremely potent advantage.

So you basically base it on Do I want First Go at Turn 1, or Do I want to counter each of my opponents drops. Of course, the chance to go twice in a row also makes going second a nice incentive to not drop them all at once too. I guess you just base your decision on your opponents army, size, and what scenario you’re playing.  Plopping everything down in one go might mess up grabbing objectives later on, etc. 

Edited November 12, 2017 by HandsomeBlaggard

[AverageBoss]

34 minutes ago, HandsomeBlaggard said:

So you basically base it on Do I want First Go at Turn 1, or Do I want to counter each of my opponents drops. Of course, the chance to go twice in a row also makes going second a nice incentive to not drop them all at once too. I guess you just base your decision on your opponents army, size, and what scenario you’re playing.  Plopping everything down in one go might mess up grabbing objectives later on, etc. 

Well again, you just deploy your army in a way where you finish one unit before your opponent. You minimize your opponents ability to react to your drops, and you get to decide turn order.

 

1 hour ago, Uveron said:

You can do that? I thought it was all or one at a time? Do you have a page reference? 

It varies from book to book. It will be in the battalion rules in any given battletome that has them, before the battalion descriptions.

Edited November 12, 2017 by AverageBoss

[Soulslip]

Do battalions units count toward army composition? I.E. battleline units ect ect? 

[michu]

1 hour ago, Soulslip said:

Do battalions units count toward army composition? I.E. battleline units ect ect? 

Sure, a unit of Liberators in some SCE Battalion is still a battleline unit.

[Soulslip]

Just now, michu said:

Sure, a unit of Liberators in some SCE Battalion is still a battleline unit.

Thank you sir!

[EMMachine]

1 hour ago, Soulslip said:

Do battalions units count toward army composition? I.E. battleline units ect ect? 

 

32 minutes ago, michu said:

ure, a unit of Liberators in some SCE Battalion is still a battleline unit.

As an additional information.

They only count towards battleline when using them in a SCE or Order Allegiance. There is for example no ruling that a Stormcast Battalion would count towards the new Army of Lethis Allegiance so at the moment they would could as Allies if used in a battalion in the Lethis Allegiance at the moment.

[InSaint]

I do believe a battalion also gives you an additional Command Point (CP).

[EMMachine]

@InSaint

I don't think that this was the question here. One thing we shouldn't forget is that everything before this post

On 5/26/2019 at 4:24 PM, Soulslip said:

Do battalions units count toward army composition? I.E. battleline units ect ect? 

was from November 2017 or older. So it was before the Rules 2.0 came out (June 2018) and CP became a thing.

[RuneBrush]

+++ MOD HAT +++

Locking this thread folks, we try to avoid threadomancy and hadn't spotted this one had been brought back to life!