Balewind Vortex - Bad for the game?

[Matt_Tullock]

39 minutes ago, Stevewren said:

Gary, all you do with KO is prove that the list can be played extremely well and deal with a lot of options. When you have a very detailed knowledge of an army you will always do well, and this has proved true in all iterations of GW games. Less experienced players won't see the same things you do until they have played the army loads. 

I went to heat 1 with them and that was my first games with them. I went 4-1 and then yesterday I went to a 1 dayer and won it. The army is good and very strong and the learning curve isn't massive you just need to learn target priorty.  Maybe the reason people don't play it is because  a lot of games end very quickly and some people don't like that. 

[Lucio]

To be honest, reading this thread it sounds more like particular spells are too potent rather than the Vortex per se being the issue at hand.

[stratigo]

13 hours ago, Nico said:

While it’s important not to dwell on statistics from events, Tzeentch were the second most popular army at Heat One (after Stormcast) and did terribly (highest placing 5th and most of them well below that - sadly including me). Gary didn’t attend Heat One and there were very few KO armies there.

The GHB 2017 was a big nerf to DoT (many small nerfs in aggregate and some big ones plus other factions rising - like Fyreslayers and Seraphon which can give Tzeentch problems) - it took a little while for these changes to manifest themselves (most people didn’t have a Fyreslayer army on the shelf like I did).

I would advise arranging a game against a Clown Car list with any army of your choosing and then continuing this conversation.

I use a clown car, though now only when I’m pulling out the stops. I don’t doubt it’s a good army, but I don’t think it’s anywhere near the best army. Tzeentch remains, in my eyes, the best overall army that you have to craft to specifically counter in any tourney you go to. And the Balewind is part of that very often

 

13 hours ago, wanderingrogue said:

actually if you look at the averages ko are by far the best performing faction on average. sure no ****** plays them but then they always do pretty well. tzeentch...as an example will have some near the top . some in the middle. some near the bottom.

yea no ko were in the top ten at heat 1. but I know all 3 players and 2 were at thier 1st tournament.  and they all came between 17th and 23rd.....tzeentch was 5th to 86th with 6 army's in the bottom 20.......

ko  are top tier. they do consistently well and are capable of beating all the other top tier lists. the fact is no ones cottoned on to it yet is a mystery to me and a conversation for somewhere else

I still have my doubts, I like my statistics, though they aren’t always particularly easy to find. Where did you aggregate their averages from? I’ll be emberassed if I missed something obvious

 

 

 

[Nico]

The Bad Dice Rankings are a great resource.

Tzeentch you can manage (or even trivialise) by outdropping them with 1 or 2 drop armies (like KO). Even Ironjawz can 1 drop and flood the objectives and give themselves a fighting chance in what is obviously a tough match up.

KO and Vanguard Wing are the armies that requires more list rewriting than any other to deal with.

[PJetski]

Let's not get too far away from the topic at hand...

[Keldaur]

It's completely tied up with the topic at hand. You don't look at units/heroes/scenery in a vacuum, but the interactions it has with the current field. To put a stupid quote, balewind vortex might not be the scenery some armies want, but it is the one that some armies need. If you don't come up with an alternative to it, then you are asking to sway the balance in a completely different direction and some people prefer the current balance than a (even) more horde centric meta (and I just bought 50 more bloodletters for my army...).

The discussion started with "it is or is not overpowered", continued with "it isn't good for gameplay" and then turned back to "it is or is not overpowered". This only should be a hint that there is a conflict of opinions between different kind of players, and each other's perspective on the matter. I understand you are the OP, so take no offense in this, let the thread organically reach its own venues.

[PJetski]

This discussion should be about the Balewind Vortex and not about the tournament viability of the Kharadron Overlords. There is a lot more to discuss than just a small sample size of matched play tournament results.

[Richelieu]

30 minutes ago, PJetski said:

This discussion should be about the Balewind Vortex and not about the tournament viability of the Kharadron Overlords. There is a lot more to discuss than just a small sample size of matched play tournament results.

Let's talk matchups who have hordes or exclusively melee armies then.

Fyreslayers - 120+ models, frequently 60 of them starting off the board, 90 of them having a 4+ mortal save and an auto-unbind artifact.  Assuming you get the balewind cast off, you will kill a whopping 7.5 of the 120 models. 

Khorne - OK, this one hurts, not much to say, sometimes you have a bad matchup.

Seraphon - global unbind at bonus to cast.  No worries.

Freeguild - Will lose some models, but then can easily shoot the wizard.

Death - Hard to judge since it is a generally underdeveloped GA.

Sylvaneth - Will outdrop anyone using a balewind and has ranged options.

Nurgle Maggotkin - Ward save, generally durable, lots of casting and good speed can easily get in range for unbind attempts.

Skaven - Not terribly familiar with skaven, having never played them, but they do have plenty of affordable ranged options.

Ironjaws - Does not use hordes, generally low model count means it can ignore the small amount of mortals it gets plinked with each turn considering your opponent spent 220 points on it (assuming gaunt summoner).

Feel free to add matchups to this post, or dispute any of my claims, but from my brief analysis I see nothing indicating balewind is toxic.

[Mayple]

@Richelieu   I got you covered!

Skaven - Plenty plenty plenty of options to deal with a balewind wizard. They're incredibly flexible as an all-around army, and even the more focused ones like Skryre and Pestilens can still do -something- in response to one of those popping up. Pestilens probably comes up as the most-vulnerable-to-balewind clan, since they've only got plagueclaws to throw back at it, and they're not great at single targets. 

Not to mention the fact that Skaven can just dodge the balewind wizard alltogether by deploying in tunnels. Although that requires some serious foresight.

[Hawkeye]

I run ironjawz with bonesplitters shooting and balewind for foot of gork. Think outside the box ? 

[Redmanphill]

On 22/1/2018 at 12:14 AM, Lucio said:

To be honest, reading this thread it sounds more like particular spells are too potent rather than the Vortex per se being the issue at hand.

That’s a good point I hadn’t considered

[Aelfric]

On 21/01/2018 at 11:14 PM, Lucio said:

To be honest, reading this thread it sounds more like particular spells are too potent rather than the Vortex per se being the issue at hand.

I think that the greater range and easier casting from a balewind makes certain spells more powerful than was first envisioned and has led to unintended consequences.  Also, not every faction has a spell that is worth paying the extra points for.

I doubt the balewind will go away, but it may become more expensive.  I can only presume that as more factions are released or developed then eventually all factions will have a spell that would be worth a balewind, should they so choose, and the imbalance will begin to even out.

[PJetski]

With the rumoured revamp (or supplement) for spell casting it would be interesting to see what happens with the Balewind Vortex