AoS 2 - Daughters of Khaine Discussion

[Fred1245]

9 hours ago, stratigo said:

Actually they were trash right before the book dropped and it looked like the handful of good units they did have got nerfed (and they did, neither arkanauts or rigger are near as strong as they used to be), but some people did warn about the terror that is a WLV on turn one from anywhere.

 

Legit a WLV spews out like 15 mortal wounds. Spell in a bottle was a mistake, it's too hard to balance

 

 

eh? Table size never really mattered for shooting or melee in AoS. Everything just teleports or moves 30 inches in a turn these days. What top table army isn't jamming their face in turn 1? Actually what top table army isn't using teleports everywhere? IDK maybe? IDK is really the only strong army that isn't hyper focused on ruining people turn 1 and instead prefers to do it turn 3.

 

 

To add to this, it's not like KO suddenly got figured out and start dominating because players learned all the hidden tricks. They started dominating because all the good armies at the time got significant nerfs and everything they had went down 20-25%.

So yeah, when a unit of 30 witch aelves costs 200pts and Kroak costs 1200 we might see a turnaround.

[Overread]

It doesn't matter if KO went up or other armies came down - the key is trying to meet in the middle between the two so that more armies stand on a level playing field - as much as is humanly possible and accepting that armies will have bad compositions and good ones. Ideally a flatter plane field of balance with armies coming down and focusing on good internal balance (ergo options) means that we end up with more armies able to field more options from their book; not just a few power armies running basically the same list because its the one combo that works.

For their gains and losses the DoK and Slaanesh books seems to be pushing toward having no clear "wins all" type list at present. Ergo that we are seeing more variety potential being displayed. 

[Fred1245]

6 hours ago, Jacek said:

By the way, reading comments seems like many people think that win = killing all enemy units.

There are objectives to be captured for the win.

DoK have many good tools for that:

Mirror Dance spell - I think this is a must now.  Awesome, you can teleport 2 heroes almost wherever you want to keep their "wholly within" bubbles after your other units move in their movement phase.

Khailebron - maybe can't apha strike but this CA is NOT considered mvement. So impact of not moving next movement phase is low. Why? You can teleport them again if needed. If they are in combat - you dont need move in most cases (I understand that you cant make retreat move then? Doesn't matter - you can teleport them OUT of combat now with CA, you should be able to because you can teleport hero in hero phase with Mirror Dance if needed so they are wholly within 12" at the end of movement phase when you use teleport CA)

Khinerai - keeping them in reserve makes enemy to stay back with their stronger units defending their objectives and their army is more splitted. 80 points for that? awesome.

Shadowstalkers - even one alive makes enemy contribute his units to defend objectives as well meaning he will not always be able to utilize all of his buffs etc

Cauldrons - cheaper now and keeping your most important units in wholly within it's range is not that hard with mirror dance spell.

Bloodwrack Shrines - AWESOME now. 160 points for 13 wounds, 2 dispel, 1 spel, impacts on charge, nice anty-horde shooting, dmg aura. Remember that it can benefit from Ironscale CA - as it is still MELUSAI (run 2d6 with that (re-roll 1s for run, shoot and still charge if needed)

Ironscale - viable choice for 110 pts now, more of utility hero giving you more options for quick movement depending on what you want to play. In my opinion 1 is enough as you can't use CA more than once in a phase anyway

Mindrazor - can't build army around only this spell. But there are possibilities to invest more resources (see above) when it kicks in to hit hard enemy with that bonus rend and dmg. Most probably bonus dmg will trigger more often based on charge than higher bravery. If it fails - you have possibility to plan for further rounds and each further round makes your army a bit stronger (blood rites)

I had very close lost game vs OB (very, very good player + very good army) in a game when NONE of my teleports with mirror dance worked (all failed 6+ and he had no unbinds anyway).

That is only my opinion but at least I see many possible options. Now DoK requires more thinking and positioning etc. but if executed correctly they are still deadly and have many possibilities to fight for objectives even in later rounds. And this is only very short time after leaks of new book. Some time later I think people will find more viable builds than before (of course difficulty of the army is raised a bit in general I suppose so don't expect auto-wins withot thinking)

@Edit:

In short - we have many tools to pick our fights when we want and are strong. If enemy is 1 deathball - we can just have a chase contest for objectives making enemy to split his forces and lose buffs. If you want to YOLO 1st turn then it will not work in most cases.

I love how you list a perfect example of why mirror dance is stupid like it proves that it isn't. 'See, I lost this game where I had literally perfect conditions for using the spell because it failed over and over, that proves that it could work!' What that game proved is that mirror dance sucks and is unreliable.

This is continuing the trend of pretending like these weren't all things we could do before the book dropped, only better.  We're as much worse at taking objectives as we are at fighting. Relying on mirror dance to bail us out of how bad our rules are all over the place just means that a single knight incantor will be able to shut down these strategies  itself, yunno, if your dice don't.

People aren't going to find 'more viable builds' because nothing changed. There were no significant updates outside of limitations a restrictions being added.

This is more philosophical here but, every single one of these optimistic takes includes a sentence like: 'DoK requires more thinking and positioning' and 'if you play perfectly you might still be able to do stuff' like those aren't tacit admissions that the book is worse.

 

[Fred1245]

30 minutes ago, Overread said:

It doesn't matter if KO went up or other armies came down - the key is trying to meet in the middle between the two so that more armies stand on a level playing field - as much as is humanly possible and accepting that armies will have bad compositions and good ones. Ideally a flatter plane field of balance with armies coming down and focusing on good internal balance (ergo options) means that we end up with more armies able to field more options from their book; not just a few power armies running basically the same list because its the one combo that works.

For their gains and losses the DoK and Slaanesh books seems to be pushing toward having no clear "wins all" type list at present. Ergo that we are seeing more variety potential being displayed. 

No, both armies got pigeonholed into relying on whatever got nerfed the least, in this case their good shooting units. Making a book weaker doesn't increase variety, it forces you to ditch all but the absolutely most efficient options.

Strong books can afford variety, weak books are required to spam whatever thing is the least weak,

[Fred1245]

2 hours ago, Frowny said:

I'm really liking the looks of this. Lots of options, and all the temples were really improved so well see a lot more choices, i think. Not just endless hag gnar.

Fallback+charge is very strong, especially across the board.

Witches are slightly worse bit a lot cheaper. I think a big unit will still do plenty of blending, although I think sisters of slaughter will now consistently edge them out.

Shadow stalkers are bananas good. Having played with tree revenants before that warscroll alone is mind-blowingly powerful.

Fighting twice on a 5+ is worlds more reliable and goes great with the 6inch pile in and activate. The first 6inch pile in let's you basically fight First and nearly kill your first target. Then if you get lucky, you can do it again! And if not, you at least mostly killed the first unit, so are still in a good position anyway.

Witchbrew did take a nerf but it doesn't seem insurmountable. More like a nice thing when it works rather than to be relied upon but still fine to have.

Khinari life takers as a 10x also seem interesting as a super fast high damage missile.

I think we'll see a lot more diversity.

Did people even play the old book? Witches are exactly the same price. We already had shadowstalkers, we already had the 5+ fight again ability, no one one used it because it sucks. We already had access to retreat and charge, it saw very little use. The witchbrew nerf is completely insurmountable because they took a buff that was mandatory to have and got rid of it without compensating the rest of the army in any way. Khinerai at rend -1 are still not 'super high damage' AND they took a points hike.

 

[Milano]

After few days and playing around with some lists..I really start to love the new book 😻 no autoplay with witchbrew anymore, no must have unit choices. Everything is possible and viable now! Even on competitive level. Great times to be around in Age of Sigmar and with DoK! 

[Jacek]

1 hour ago, Fred1245 said:

I love how you list a perfect example of why mirror dance is stupid like it proves that it isn't. 'See, I lost this game where I had literally perfect conditions for using the spell because it failed over and over, that proves that it could work!' What that game proved is that mirror dance sucks and is unreliable.

This is continuing the trend of pretending like these weren't all things we could do before the book dropped, only better.  We're as much worse at taking objectives as we are at fighting. Relying on mirror dance to bail us out of how bad our rules are all over the place just means that a single knight incantor will be able to shut down these strategies  itself, yunno, if your dice don't.

People aren't going to find 'more viable builds' because nothing changed. There were no significant updates outside of limitations a restrictions being added.

This is more philosophical here but, every single one of these optimistic takes includes a sentence like: 'DoK requires more thinking and positioning' and 'if you play perfectly you might still be able to do stuff' like those aren't tacit admissions that the book is worse.

Nah, on 6+ it SHOULD work theoretically more than 50% of the time. I made some stupid decisions that game as well as I am learning all the time and I don't know all details of enemy armies etc. (my hero died 2nd round, 2nd turn of my opponent so I casted that spell twice only, could have keep her back and then she could try 3rd time etc. It's not ARMY - it was MY fault. I wanted to shoot some morteks  ). But even though I made few serious mistakes and was unlucky for teleport in the beginning - the game was close. What does it mean? It means that army is not so bad as one might think.

Another mistake I made was charging SQ into 3 mortek crawlers, I had there also 10 blood sisters but due to lack of space (Shadow Queen is a big model) I did not capture that obj (If I did I think the game would be draw or even my win). That was my mistake for bad movement / pile in / decision making. Could do same with ANY army. It does not mean DoK suxx now.

Going with your arguments that "it did not work that game = it suxx" -> DoK are designed around their buffs (auras, spells, prayers etc).

So if someone had bad rolls for prayers and mindrazor and could not do alpha strike 1st round -> you say army is unplayable?

I see I had many options and made bad decisions. That is all. But it was fun and I see I can improve.

Armies with 1-2 playable builds with few decision making are boring for me and that is why I like DoK with new rules.

Also - please note that it was learning game with test army build to see "how it plays now". It was SINGLE game of inexperienced DoK player vs EXPERIENCED OBR player. And still - it was close and I was NOT wholly wiped out even after round 5

 

EDIT:

Also - please note that even HAVING mirror dance spell (even failing it few times in a row) makes your opponent wary of what you can do with it as long as your hero is alive. Something like having khinerai in reserve. 

EDIT2:

You know what also went wrong? Failing my charge of blood sisters 6" from enemy TWICE (with CP reroll -> 2, 2 and 2,3 I think) which resulted in me getting to those mortek crawlers 1 round later. Not to mention they had mindrazor + catehism of murder on them.. Now you could say DoK suxx because they re-roll only 1s on charge? And we can't be happy we have this rule because it suxx if it did not work in one game?

Also forgot to mention I forgot about my 5x khinerai summon from general and she died before using it. So many mistakes and still game was fun

Edited February 15, 2021 by Jacek

[Eternalis]

1 hour ago, Fred1245 said:

What that game proved is that mirror dance sucks and is unreliable.

Even with our current Book (v1.5) Teclis prevents me to use my Mindrazor. MR sucks and is unreliable. And it's even harder to use than Mirror Dance, it's a really bad spell!

1 hour ago, Fred1245 said:

knight incantor will be able to shut down these strategies

Like all our strategy including Mind Razors. When will GW nerf SCE???

49 minutes ago, Fred1245 said:

we already had the 5+ fight again ability,

You mean 6+? Yeah right, this new 5+ is worse than the current 6+! How dare they? And now it comes with a +1 to wound CA, did I need to mention how bad it is compared to the current book where we have no CA at all, on almost ALL our characters? 

49 minutes ago, Fred1245 said:

We already had access to retreat and charge

In a Battalion. Now you have access to this "bonus" but for all your units if you're going Khelt Nar... That's worse for sure. It's so bad, they even kept the battalion just in case!

49 minutes ago, Fred1245 said:

Khinerai at rend -1 are still not 'super high damage' AND they took a points hike

The melee ones? Yeah it's so bad they gain some rend and damage when they charge. They were way better before that.
And you know what? They were 80pts and now they are 80pts, what a freaking points hike. Unbelievable.

Edited February 15, 2021 by Eternalis

[Jacek]

2 minutes ago, Eternalis said:

The melee ones? Yeah it's so bad they gain some rend and damage when they charge. They were way better before that.
And you know what? They were 80pts and now they are 80pts, what a freaking points hike. Unbelievable.

I think he meant 20 Khinerai Lifetakers unit points reduction to 280 ?

That was gamechanger and meta abused - everyone played that

[Eternalis]

2 minutes ago, Jacek said:

That was gamechanger and meta abused - everyone played that

Remember that day when someone played 4x20 Lifetakers and won? Obviously GW had to do something 

Edited February 15, 2021 by Eternalis

[Jacek]

Just now, Eternalis said:

Remember that day when someone played 4x20 Lifetakers and won? Obviously GW had to do something

And in new book they are not even battleline.. Oh.. wait..

[Jacek]

24 minutes ago, Eternalis said:

1 hour ago, Fred1245 said:

knight incantor will be able to shut down these strategies

Like all our strategy including Mind Razors. When will GW nerf SCE???

I think we can still play around that. Auto unbind is once per battle and it works in 30" ?(when he tries to unbind, unless SCE got whole map unbinds and Im unaware because I don't know that army too well). So we can try to use teleport spell outside of that 30" or, for example, feed him with new snake endless spell before trying teleport? maybe that can even bait out auto unbind and if not there is a chance he will get eaten (3 dice, one 5+ and bye bye)? More depending if he is within ~17" so snake can catch up to him

What I mean is - there are possibilities. It never is hopeless

[Eternalis]

14 minutes ago, Jacek said:

Auto unbind is once per battle and it works in 30" ?

Yes. The SCE player either choose between rolling the dice or the auto unbinding.

There are possibilities, and all these changes requires more planning from us. Was it nerfs or buffs? I don't know. But now I'm much more interested in list building than before because everything looks on the same power level. I've been playing a lot with statshammer since the leaks and I've yet to understand how we could be as bad as some people here are saying.

[Jacek]

1 minute ago, Eternalis said:

Yes. The SCE player either choose between rolling the dice or the auto unbinding.

There are possibilities, and all these changes requires more planning from us. Was it nerfs or buffs? I don't know. But now I'm much more interested in list building than before because everything looks on the same power level. I've been playing a lot with statshammer since the leaks and I've yet to understand how we could be as bad as some people here are saying.

Same here I suppose. List building is much fun now. Especially if built in a way that you can decide on the go which unit should be buffed in specific moment and not put all eggs in one basket

[Frowny]

New mindrazor actually seems more reliable than old. The cast is slightly harder but being on the charge is way way easier than the bravery thing-it was basically dead vs certain ld10armies. Picking a unit that will charge is pretty easy to guarantee.

It's not like you'd get it off against kroak or tecils was any more doable before. 

Also, stop with the negativity. Most of the nerfs were super expected. Everyone knew that it would get the wholly within treatment, and that the sub allegiances would get mandatory artifacts etc. That was a known. 

On the other hand, most of the buffs were interesting. Almost everything feels quite playable in some contexts, rather than just witch elves/sisters in hag gnar with a cauldron.

Fall back and charge army wide is amazing. Teleport for a cp is also amazing. A spell to double damage, even unreliably, is stronger singlehandedly than some armies entire spell lore. Even hag gnar is excellent-even if you just look at it as army wide +1 to prayers, which is a major understatement, it would still be a solid ability.

I'm optimistic. I don't think it will be a change host/kolseraphon broken army but I think it will have good gameplay even against the strongest opponents and will definitely be taking tourneys. Just not in exactly the configuration people are used to

[Eternalis]

Here is some stats I made to know if new Witches are worse than the current ones. They're in Hagg Narr for this test (and I included some Draichi Ganeth just to try). edit : BR is for bravery... :

Spoiler

 

 

 

How are they even worse? Ok you won't be dealing 150 wounds to a low bravery with 6+ saves, but on the other hand, they're more reliable. And damn, these Draichi Ganeth witches will tear Ossiarchs or other high saves armies  apart...

Edited February 15, 2021 by Eternalis

[Jeremierty]

Hi guys, I'm really interested by the lore of the new dok battletome but can't afford to buy it right now ( I have to save for the next lumineth release) anyone would be kind enough to summarize the new lore ? (Or point me toward an article that does ?) 

I heard there was a battle between stormcast and idoneth, what happened !!

[Feii]

Competitively speaking with all these point cuts and lumineth being a popular faction I think Morathi is not worth it.

 

You can just bring more stuff for her cost and she got a slight nerf too.

[Fred1245]

9 hours ago, Eternalis said:

Here is some stats I made to know if new Witches are worse than the current ones. They're in Hagg Narr for this test (and I included some Draichi Ganeth just to try). edit : BR is for bravery... :

  Hide contents

 

 

 

How are they even worse? Ok you won't be dealing 150 wounds to a low bravery with 6+ saves, but on the other hand, they're more reliable. And damn, these Draichi Ganeth witches will tear Ossiarchs or other high saves armies  apart...

The big issue is 1. Without hagg nar shield or witchbrew's battleshock protection it takes about 4 mortek guard to wipe a squad of 30 witches(hyperbole, but not by much) and any situation where the unit is required to run and charge something is likely going to take at least 1 model more than 12" away from a hero, at which point they lose between 25 and 50% of their damage output. That high save ossiarch better be sitting on top of your Cauldrons or it's gonna be a short fight.

[Fred1245]

11 hours ago, Jacek said:

I think he meant 20 Khinerai Lifetakers unit points reduction to 280 ?

That was gamechanger and meta abused - everyone played that

Which makes it even weirded that they took it away, doesn't it bud?😉

[Blitzd]

5 minutes ago, Fred1245 said:

The big issue is 1. Without hagg nar shield or witchbrew's battleshock protection it takes about 4 mortek guard to wipe a squad of 30 witches(hyperbole, but not by much) and any situation where the unit is required to run and charge something is likely going to take at least 1 model more than 12" away from a hero, at which point they lose between 25 and 50% of their damage output. That high save ossiarch better be sitting on top of your Cauldrons or it's gonna be a short fight.

Im not as doom and gloom as Fred, but I do agree, the age of the witch elf is at an end. Melee is dying in aos, DoK has the potential to have some of the best shooting and MW out put in the game, but it also means half the army abilities will be useless. 

[Fred1245]

11 hours ago, Eternalis said:

Even with our current Book (v1.5) Teclis prevents me to use my Mindrazor. MR sucks and is unreliable. And it's even harder to use than Mirror Dance, it's a really bad spell!

Like all our strategy including Mind Razors. When will GW nerf SCE???

You mean 6+? Yeah right, this new 5+ is worse than the current 6+! How dare they? And now it comes with a +1 to wound CA, did I need to mention how bad it is compared to the current book where we have no CA at all, on almost ALL our characters? 

In a Battalion. Now you have access to this "bonus" but for all your units if you're going Khelt Nar... That's worse for sure. It's so bad, they even kept the battalion just in case!

The melee ones? Yeah it's so bad they gain some rend and damage when they charge. They were way better before that.
And you know what? They were 80pts and now they are 80pts, what a freaking points hike. Unbelievable.

 

Could still fight without Mindrazor, Can't TP without TP spell. Or was your plan just to move your models and hope your opponent didn't notice, lol? Also, look at this guy, bragging 'cause they did absolutely nothing to fix ****** our casting has been in the current meta

Splitting hairs about abilities that suck. 5+ or 6+ they're both bad. And when are you gonna use a CA other than inspiring presence now that witch brews gone? Oh I forgot, you're just a fan of your models running off the board

Ooh, nice bonus at the expense of most of your offense and ALL of your defense. I'm sure a mediocre repositioning ability is worth all of that. And a battalion that gives an ability that's completely useless for 1/6ths of the factions in the book is obvious just super great game design. I TOTALLY see how wasting space on lazily repeating army abilities is just so inspired.

They always got extra damage on the charge. Did you even read the last book there chief? The rend is nice...or it would be if they hadn't gone up 40pts for a usable unit size. Because yunno, 320-280 is 40. Cause that's how math works? Course maybe you think 10 is plenty, what with all those big tourney lists running nothing but units of 10 witch aelves? Oh wait...lol.

 

Edited February 16, 2021 by Fred1245

[JackStreicher]

I really hope 3.0 will introduce 40K‘‘s battleshock 

[Jaskier]

The discussion in here has really turned toxic, hasn't it? That's disappointing to see, especially given how excited so many here - me included - are for the new tome. For a change of pace, here's what I'm thinking of taking to an event in a few weeks; 

Hagg Narr
Slaughter Queen on Cauldron of Blood - General, Devoted Disciple, The Ulfuri, Crimson Rejuvenation - 270
Bloodwrack Medusa - Shadow Stone, Mindrazor - 100
Hag Queen - Blessing of Khaine - 90
Morgwaeth - Catechism of  Murder - 80
30 Witch Aelves - 300
30 Witch Aelves - 300
10 Sisters of Slaughter - 120
10 Blood Stalkers - 280
9 Shadowstalkers - 100
10 Khinerai Lifetakers - 160
5 Khinerai Lifetakers - 80
Cauldron Guard - 120

2000/2000

It's a whole bunch of stuff I've owned for a while but not had a chance to use since the pandemic hit, so I'm hoping to get a feel of how everything works and go from there. Compared to my old Hagg Narr lists, it's got a lot of extra bodies and flexibility - those points drops really helped me fit all those new toys like Shadowstalkers in! I'm taking the Shadow Stone instead of the Iron Circlet for the first time in years as I'm really excited to see how the new Mindrazor works in practice. I'll probably run a different prayer on the Slaughter Queen on the day, the heal is nifty but not really my ideal choice, however I'm not sure what to replace it with. 

Edited February 16, 2021 by Jaskier

[Xil]

What I think looking through the book is, that we will have some big changes in AoS3.0. 

I think the Magic will happen after movement, thus the reduction of the Doomfire Spell Range. So basically as it is in 40k.

Command Phase >Movement > Magic > Shooting > Charges > Combat > Bravery 

Doubleturn will disappear. 

Cover and terrain rules will change. 

Characters will have another protection mechanic akin to 40k.

 

If I am right with my assumptions, then we can't really judge the Tome yet. 

Edited February 16, 2021 by Xil