AoS 2 - Flesh-eater Courts Discussion

[Kaz]

Hey everyone! New player, also a Khorne player, but my brother is a Skaven player looking to grab Carrion empire to expand his rat bois.  I’ve always loved mordants (was a huge ushoran fan back in fantasy), so I’ve got a few questions:

How nice are the battleplans in the Carrion Empire box itself? 

Is 4 Start collecting boxes a good idea to expand the flesh eaters side?

I’m looking to play 2x6 Horrors a lot (I love them), so if I focus on Horrors, how many Flayers should I bring to complement them? 

Finally, how good are Morgaunt and Blisterskin? I saw some consensus earlier that hollowmourne is surprisingly good (yay), but I would like to refrain from using gristlegore a lot (my group plays relatively casually, plus I’m not a fan of the gristlegore lore, I prefer the other court’s)

thanks in advance guys!! Really hope to join the court! 

[Fluttershy]

@Kaz welcome to the court!

if you wanna pick up a carrion empire box, hurry up. they're getting rare - sold out online (GW) almost everywhere..

i like the box, 3 fun looking battleplans, one extra battalio each and the best $$$/model value i've ever seen in a box - you can't go wrong in pickin' at least one

 

i guess if you won't wanna play girstlegore you probably don't need 4 SC boxes. lists - that aren't gristlegore - you'll probably run 1-2 big guys so 2 SC boxes should work quite well.

atm all fec grand courts (and non courts) are viable options. missed to try morgaunt yet - still mentally damaged by rollin' such much dice over and over again on previous ghoul patrol

imo blisterkin is a beast - maybe even more powerful than gristlegore - flayers combined with roayal mordant batallion and your flayers move 12"+2"(blister)+2"(cogs) in your hero phase + 12"+2"+2" in your movement phase - they'll then charge +2"(cogs) - you move up to 32" in turn 1 combined with that charge range - pretty delicious. make your horrors fly, teleport them 9" of your enemy +2"(cogs) charge - woohoo.. unbelievable mobility & threatening range

 

imo - if FEC wanna play casual, you have to build "brainless/fun/stupid" lists because every concidered list is very (maybe too) powerful at the moment

[Kaz]

51 minutes ago, Fluttershy said:

@Kaz welcome to the court!

if you wanna pick up a carrion empire box, hurry up. they're getting rare - sold out online (GW) almost everywhere..

i like the box, 3 fun looking battleplans, one extra battalio each and the best $$$/model value i've ever seen in a box - you can't go wrong in pickin' at least one

 

i guess if you won't wanna play girstlegore you probably don't need 4 SC boxes. lists - that aren't gristlegore - you'll probably run 1-2 big guys so 2 SC boxes should work quite well.

atm all fec grand courts (and non courts) are viable options. missed to try morgaunt yet - still mentally damaged by rollin' such much dice over and over again on previous ghoul patrol

imo blisterkin is a beast - maybe even more powerful than gristlegore - flayers combined with roayal mordant batallion and your flayers move 12"+2"(blister)+2"(cogs) in your hero phase + 12"+2"+2" in your movement phase - they'll then charge +2"(cogs) - you move up to 32" in turn 1 combined with that charge range - pretty delicious. make your horrors fly, teleport them 9" of your enemy +2"(cogs) charge - woohoo.. unbelievable mobility & threatening range

 

imo - if FEC wanna play casual, you have to build "brainless/fun/stupid" lists because every concidered list is very (maybe too) powerful at the moment

THANKS SO MUCH!! I feel really honored to be here along with my fellow regents! Need to eat something to celebrate (oops... Might have eaten my brother’s foot) 

to be REALLY honest, I don’t mind playing gristlegore occasionally, I’m actually got some fluff for my archregeent, and I want to try a multi-personality archregent, so basically he’s insane in that he suffers from several delusions, so I was considering just randomly picking a Grand Court/Court delusion to represent his constantly changing madness! 

If I do pick Gristlegore, my brother says he doesn’t mind if I do try the Gruesome Bite Terrorgheist combo because he says he’ll just adapt to fight it as best as he can (he’s a veteran from 40K), he just asks me to warn him when I do play hardcore 

of course, I want to play narrative as much as I can:P, and I’m a HUGE fan of the lore for flesh eaters (literally never seen in any other fantasy genre actually) 

So if I do focus on Horrors and Flayers, along with an appetizer (heh) of monsters, that would mean I’d be able to play gristlegore, Hollowmourne and blisterskin right? If I focus on those courts and not morgaunt, how many ghouls should I grab them? I’m a bit uncertain about the optimum unit sizes for ghouls

overall, glory to Ushoran!! 

[rosa]

A lot of Players in my group (30+) reject to Play against FEC right now, because they are to strong...

Note, we are not competitiv and play casual for fun.

Have you experienced something similar?

[Honk]

27 minutes ago, rosa said:

Have you experienced something similar?

A casual nooby Khorne player just got devestated by me yesterday...

feast day, infernal as general, gkotg, Regent, varghulf 2x6flayers, 10ghouls and Chalice... the feeding frenzy for free got me dominating the melee, if it is not dead, I just activate again. Turn 2b with 2CP I went for 3xFF with gkotg, varghulf in dueling and the flayers ripping out his spine...

[Fluttershy]

30 minutes ago, rosa said:

Have you experienced something similar?

sad wise, yes..

I guess the "meta tournament szene"  will normalize. for casual play FEC lists are pretty annoying   - perhaps if you set aside feeding frenzy - dunno

[rosa]

The Problem i see is, that this is really turning away poeple from AOS.

Competitiv players are a different Thing... They will find a way to deal with new armies or changing metas.

However, most Players are casual Players and GW should care more for Playtesting.

I know it has been said 100 times before... I am sorry. But if you experience this in your gaming group it becomes real.

[kenshin620]

But there is a difference between "something is broken" and "people should learn how something works".

Even a casual player can look up basic strategies on counter tactics.

Now if 3-6 months pass and the only real strategy is to pray for RNG dice, then ok there is a problem.

Also I do find the idea of people doing a 180 and not playing against FEC a bit ironic. Man one book and you go from "underdog hero" of death factions to "uberman villain"!

[Paladin of Khorne]

Not sure if this was addressed already (lots of pages) but is there anything against running a Flesh Eater Court army with Bretonnian models converted up to look spectral and undead? The gist being the army would represent how they see themselves, rather than the opponent, only with the undead tinge to get the point across?

other than ensuring each unit is easily and accurately represented, are there rules prohibiting this? Has it been done before? Would love to see some examples! I think this would be a great way to utilize some of the old bretonnian models. 

[Deadkitten]

3 minutes ago, kenshin620 said:

But there is a difference between "something is broken" and "people should learn how something works".

Even a casual player can look up basic strategies on counter tactics.

Now if 3-6 months pass and the only real strategy is to pray for RNG dice, then ok there is a problem.

Also I do find the idea of people doing a 180 and not playing against FEC a bit ironic. Man one book and you go from "underdog hero" of death factions to "uberman villain"!

That's not the problem though.  The gap between the good armies and everything else is just too much.  0 Tier stuff is bad for the meta.  It's the casuals that keep any game system going and if you're turning them off then that's a bad thing.  You don't want event attendance cut in half b/c half the room is playing a Tier 0 army in order to have a shot at the podium.   I was hoping that GW would reign in the power creep a bit and am sad to see it.  You can can only adapt so much but if you have no answers and "adapting" means just switching to the new thing, then that's just bad for the game as a whole.

[Deadkitten]

4 hours ago, Honk said:

A casual nooby Khorne player just got devestated by me yesterday...

feast day, infernal as general, gkotg, Regent, varghulf 2x6flayers, 10ghouls and Chalice... the feeding frenzy for free got me dominating the melee, if it is not dead, I just activate again. Turn 2b with 2CP I went for 3xFF with gkotg, varghulf in dueling and the flayers ripping out his spine...

We need a handicap system.

[kenshin620]

4 minutes ago, Deadkitten said:

That's not the problem though.  The gap between the good armies and everything else is just too much.  0 Tier stuff is bad for the meta.  It's the casuals that keep any game system going and if you're turning them off then that's a bad thing. 

 

I'm NOT the person to 100% believe this philosophy, but theres always the philosophy of "you dont buy warhammer for the rules, you buy it for the models and backstory". People tend to bring that up in other topics.

 

And plus AoS has survived many casual unfriendly strategies. Bloodletter bombs, Nagash, DoK. Whats one more to the pile!

[kenshin620]

7 minutes ago, Deadkitten said:

We need a handicap system.

The summoning system! Wait thats for this army...☠️

[Deadkitten]

8 minutes ago, kenshin620 said:

 

I'm NOT the person to 100% believe this philosophy, but theres always the philosophy of "you dont buy warhammer for the rules, you buy it for the models and backstory". People tend to bring that up in other topics.

 

And plus AoS has survived many casual unfriendly strategies. Bloodletter bombs, Nagash, DoK. Whats one more to the pile!

I think it comes down to matchup win percentages.  There will always be Tiers and that's not inherently a bad thing.  I'm not sure you even want a system that is 50/50% all the time.  What would we gripe about then?  When AoS2 dropped and some of the armies were released shortly thereafter we had something in the neighborhood of 65/35.  Iron Jaws could still go off and sneak in that win against DoK.  And all the new stuff seemed to sort of be dropping into that range of the armies with books vs those without.  There was a good build but everything else was fine.  Now with FEC, it's not the build that's good, it's one of the fundamental army traits.  FEC itself is good with win percentages like 90/10.  That's not fun.  

I'll say that "I don't have facts to back this up" and I see there is a Powercreep thread here:

https://www.tga.community/forums/topic/21862-powercreep-fact-or-fiction/

maybe that's a better place to have that discussion rather than taking up any more space here.

 

Oh and  Brets as FEC would be fine in just about any scene I expect.  You just might need to tell your opponent the inside joke if they don't get it.

[kenshin620]

2 hours ago, Deadkitten said:

Oh and  Brets as FEC would be fine in just about any scene I expect.  You just might need to tell your opponent the inside joke if they don't get it.

It's not even an inside joke, it is literally their fluff! But GW doesn't feel like giving clothed ghouls! Everyone too busy going commando to show off their (lack of) pecs!

Edited March 17, 2019 by kenshin620

[Honk]

Competitive play vs. Casual fun, 

the classic drama.

I personally think an open and truthful discussion between the opponents is in order. Maybe even, during list building, that’s how you find new friends... 

And maybe refrain from using feeding frenzy three times in one turn 🤪 

post game discussions can also smooth out some kinks, maybe casuals opponents (victims) are not aware of some weak spots where one has to do some exploiting

[Deadkitten]

49 minutes ago, Honk said:

Competitive play vs. Casual fun, 

the classic drama.

 

I'm not even sure it's that.   You can have a competitive scene with even power level.  Chess is a good example here.  And it's not just the casual crowd sounding the alarm here.  The Just Playing podcast had a nice critique I think.

It's easy to have a conversation and self-police for casual games.  There's some work involved when it comes to Events.  I agree that it is well worth it though.

Would a Feeding Frenzy once per turn be enough?  Once per hero?  The Gristlegore GKoZD ability should at least be a CP to activate I think.

[Honk]

2 hours ago, Deadkitten said:

Chess is a good example here. 

Yes, the only difference between two armies being color scheme and starting turn... 

also, neither caruana nor carlson seem to play fair?! Nor is playing against them fun for I guess 95+% of AoS gamers... I‘ve seen Ben Finegold aiming for 8 queens on his stream, that must feel pretty devastating for his opponent.

So I guess everybody should try to dress for the occasion. What type of occasions that might be should be discussed pretty openly.

And giving tips and advices for starting or even just overwhelmed by cheesy power opponents keeps them enjoying their hobby

[TheadTheOgorSlayer]

Perhaps a limit on feeding frenzy is in order, maybe limit it to your turn only and once a battle round. Feast day in my opinion would still be the best delusion even with that ruling... also I think the chalice needs to be upped in cost To be honest (it’s not inherently over powered I just think it should be 50 or 60 points to what it does sometimes)

[Pavnik]

Here is the biggest Problem for balancing: what is a casual game? For some its like a beginner game. Not all rules will apply, cuz the players will forget them, not playing to the strenghs of the models and abilitys and so on. For others it's bringing an armylist wich isn't top tier, but will perform okayish and has some coherrence.

There is no fixed form for the term casual, so u can't balance something for a "casual" playerbase. The game is balanced around the top tier and it should be. The only balance problem the game has so far, is that it isn't fully balanced in the top tier. In friendly newb games Ironjawz will shred almost everything (besides nighthaunt), but when u get to a competetiv standard, the orks are the ones which get shreded. Are they now overpowered or underpowerd?

 

When the game is designed for tournaments, it should be balanced on a high tournament level.

You can weaken your army at every time, by just making a ****** list. So when you play a friendly newb game, just build a friendly newb list. When you are competent and bring a top tier list to an newb game, u will shred... at all times... with all armys.

[Kaz]

Hmm. This wounds quite worrying. How are FEC that op? I see lots of complaints about gristlegore, but it still hinges on 2 mounted kings who can deal a lot of damage, but they don’t seem able to take it very well. On the other hand, Legions of Nagash and DoK still seem to dominate the top tables

And I found it a little strange that people cried that feeding frenzy was op yadda yadda when  most FEC units aren’t that broken in the first place...

im a little salty that fellwater Troggoths have a ridiculous damage output compared to horrrors while being same points cost... I’ve seen fellwaters  completely destroy whatever they touch... 

i’m probably Not gonna handicap myself when I play with my brother, he always likes to challenge himself against difficult lists

[XReN]

21 hours ago, rosa said:

A lot of Players in my group (30+) reject to Play against FEC right now, because they are to strong...

Note, we are not competitiv and play casual for fun.

Have you experienced something similar?

Well, then don't take what makes FEC that strong, they have not changed statwise from previous book and summoning even got worse if you are not spamming Regents, convince people to play with weakened and handicaped list so you can have fun and they can at least learn FEC

[XReN]

10 minutes ago, Kaz said:

im a little salty that fellwater Troggoths have a ridiculous damage output compared to horrrors while being same points cost...

Yep, the amount of points that we pay for such things as summoning and ressurecting models rubs me wrong too. All our non leader units are somewhat overpriced even if compared with other undead, and it become sligtly better for monsters without GK on top because the chalice can potentially give them good heal

[Kaz]

19 minutes ago, XReN said:

Yep, the amount of points that we pay for such things as summoning and ressurecting models rubs me wrong too. All our non leader units are somewhat overpriced even if compared with other undead, and it become sligtly better for monsters without GK on top because the chalice can potentially give them good heal

And being a khorne player, I noticed that the mounted kings and the monsters w/o riders seem incredibly overpriced. 400pts for a mounted TG or ZD, and that’s equal to skarbrand.

Granted, the mounted kings can summon, but what about the monsters without a rider? They are literally 300pts each, and can’t be summoned and can’t be mustered, which is equal to Bloodthirster of Insensate Rage, more ex than an Unfettered Fury, both of whom are heroes with command abilities, access to traits AND artifacts

and then there are dankhold Troggoths that aren’t even monsters, and that trick with Fight Another Day Loonboss, who are both still cheaper than terrorghesist and zombie dragons w/o riders who honestly don’t seem op at all, in fact they seem REALLY overcosted

[Honk]

30 minutes ago, Kaz said:

How are FEC that op?

They are not, but they got a nice buff in power. The army you were used to rolfstomp into the ground suddenly pushes back!!! Shocking to even thinking of it. That’s not allowed, all cheese, all op...

34 minutes ago, Kaz said:

cried that feeding frenzy was op 

Well, my feast day ended in triple ff turn 2, that felt pretty crazy. Maybe I‘m not used to 6 flayers doing things or the gkotg actually killing things in one go...

 

people will get used to us, like the stupid wheel and King’s with rend or the tide system, leaving you watching the third melee round what has happened.