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The great big Generals Handbook 2019 Discussion Topic


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5 minutes ago, kenshin620 said:

I've learn to never be too optimistic whenever gw mentions big changes outside of an actual codex/BT.

Anyone here remember 40k 5th edition? When they were making "the big faq that was suppose to fix everything" especially in regards to no one having access to Skyfire+Interceptor? That was a funny time.

6th edition. But yeah, that one was so shortlived you could call it an alpha for 7th edition.

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1 hour ago, Kramer said:

I also don’t think points are the fix for KO ships but isn’t this kind of opposites? 

You want what you consider a narrative (fluffy) army list to be Competitive. It does happen that a army  combines the two but mostly competitive lists focus on one strengths and the few units that play to that strength. 

But  the narrative approach is to look what fits your narrative. So if your vision is max ship that’s cool, but even if they buff them to the roof... it’s not going to be my fluffy lists that is suddenly competitive*, can’t have the cake and eat it I suspect ;) 

curious to hear if you see this differently  

* for me it’s the pirate aspect of the army which is the fluffy aspect. One big ship that drops raiders in a city while they tear everything down in close range fire fights. 

No I'm simply saying in an ideal world the KO's competitive lists would feature 2-3 ships and I hope to see them address this in a big update to make them worth actually taking. Right now though it would certainly be a casual list. Also my meta is hyper competitive and almost never does casual AoS stuff so I have a lot riding on them fixing my army. 

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My wife just bought Ironjawz so she'll be pretty stoked on their point drops and spell lore. Plus their movement boost is a cp now and doubles as a fight in the hero phase for some extra punch! :D

Most of my armies recently got battletomes so not much for me. xD Except for Seraphon, new spell lore seems ok. Some nice point drops. Kinda wish they'd nerf summoning some because it feels a tad ridicolous. 

My Nighthaunt list (mostly hexwraiths) saw some nice points drops too, might give them another go now :D

 

Edited by Mikeymajq
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Only real disappointment for me is the flamespyre Phoenix. At least it’s a bit closer in points to the frost one now (although only because the frostheart went up so much) but there still seems little point in taking one over a frostheart except for thematic reasons. 

Aside from that most of my armies dropped down in points, so I can’t complain! 

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2 hours ago, Ben said:

lots of interest in Deepkin changes.  I didn't realise they were so heavily followed. 

Because every idoneth player want be able to play with a mixed list with sharks. Turtles. Avatars etc. Not be forced to play only morsar spam if we want to have a chance of winning.

 

Aand sadly this ghb didnt change that. Points reducttions were on rigth direcctions but they are ridiculous since are soooo tiny. Big units neded massive reductions like 60+ points only to start to be playable on friendly games etc. Those changes despite being on lots of units changed nothing. Since mixed lists will have only around 40-80 more freepoints. And we cant do anything with that. Maybe 1 cp? Or a endless spell. And the only competitive build will remain the same. Maybe sitting out the scryer since 130p for a useless hero only to arrive from a border isnt really neded on units that can move 20 and charge.

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I have watched the gmg video and seen all the points changes. Either GW intends to go to 3 month updates, or they are wildly out of touch with how the game is played. New books aside (FEC, Skaven, Gitz, Khorne) they are changing things to adapt to a game over 6 months old. Nagash 100% did not need to go up, nor the necromancer. Longstrikes went down?!?!? Who thought that needed to happen? All the old army drops are basically meaningless considering no small units exist to fill in the gap.

This game is quickly becoming the Standard format of MTG. You must buy a new deck (army) every year or be left in the dust. (DoK being the exclusion to that)

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4 hours ago, Azamar said:

Only real disappointment for me is the flamespyre Phoenix. At least it’s a bit closer in points to the frost one now (although only because the frostheart went up so much) but there still seems little point in taking one over a frostheart except for thematic reasons. 

Aside from that most of my armies dropped down in points, so I can’t complain! 

The Phoenix points changed?

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9 hours ago, Aden said:

"This year’s General’s Handbook also contains allegiance abilities for several factions, with expanded rules for Ironjawz, Seraphon, Wanderers, Darkling Covens, Free Peoples, Slaves to Darkness and Dispossessed"
- First Teaser

I thought this meant new stuff but by and large it seems like reprinting stuff that's written elsewhere, Only 3/7 of those factions seem to have gotten significant changes. Ugh.

Yeah but I bet at least some of those factions have a good chance of gaining books. Flesh eaters,Beast of chaos and Slaneesh were in last generals hand book. Also Slaves to Darkness is the last harbingers race so they have the best chance of getting one.

 

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Well, I'm more or less happy with what I've seen. I've been playing GW games for 15 years. This update certainly isn't perfect, but it's about the closest to balanced GW has ever been. 😃

And I prefer an error on the side of caution in terms of changes rather than wild swings.

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I agree. There is a lot of doom and gloom here but basically everything seems on point. At least the right direction. I too would rather small changes rather than giant swings.

My only concern is that a consistent trend of decreasing points means gradual army size inflation over time. But basically everything here seems like a good idea. I think there will be more diversity in several rosters with this. 

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I admit there's much more good than bad. Mercs and Meeting Engagements I can definitely see myself using. I suppose I'm not used to these kind of results after a week full of hype. Here's to hoping the next updates go from good to great.

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8 hours ago, Kitsumy said:

Because every idoneth player want be able to play with a mixed list with sharks. Turtles. Avatars etc. Not be forced to play only morsar spam if we want to have a chance of winning.

 

Aand sadly this ghb didnt change that. Points reducttions were on rigth direcctions but they are ridiculous since are soooo tiny. Big units neded massive reductions like 60+ points only to start to be playable on friendly games etc. Those changes despite being on lots of units changed nothing. Since mixed lists will have only around 40-80 more freepoints. And we cant do anything with that. Maybe 1 cp? Or a endless spell. And the only competitive build will remain the same. Maybe sitting out the scryer since 130p for a useless hero only to arrive from a border isnt really neded on units that can move 20 and charge.

Could you maybe expand this post to take into account the changes across other armies as well? 10 point drop seems little but if the competition increase by 20 the actual impact is 30 points not 10. 

I mean dwarf warriors went up, everything is more balanced now ;) 

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The problem with the idoneth point changes is there are many of their units that were overcosted day one.

So after a year they are...still badly overcosted.

Neither aspect sea or storm are as useful or effective as other units in other armies (vermin lords keeper of secrets). They should be more like 325-350 not 400-420. Turtle should be down to 300-320 and the sharks like 100 at most. Its not just eels are better, its that these units are not worth their points costs. 

So it is another year of badly overcosted units till GHB 2020. But after seeing some of the price changes in other armies i have little faith in real balance changes (most significant points changes appear to be harsh nerfs).

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1 minute ago, Stormy1486 said:

The problem with the idoneth point changes is there are many of their units that were overcosted day one.

So after a year they are...still badly overcosted.

Neither aspect sea or storm are as useful or effective as other units in other armies (vermin lords keeper of secrets). They should be more like 325-350 not 400-420. Turtle should be down to 300-320 and the sharks like 100 at most. Its not just eels are better, its that these units are not worth their points costs. 

So it is another year of badly overcosted units till GHB 2020. But after seeing some of the price changes in other armies i have little faith in real balance changes (most significant points changes appear to be harsh nerfs).

I‘ll just switch to open play (random armies) and meeting Engagements, the matched play side forces my playstyle too much into eels.

 

apart from that: Dispossessed with merc fyreslayers? 🙂

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10 hours ago, Kitsumy said:

Because every idoneth player want be able to play with a mixed list with sharks. Turtles. Avatars etc. Not be forced to play only morsar spam if we want to have a chance of winning.

 

Aand sadly this ghb didnt change that. Points reducttions were on rigth direcctions but they are ridiculous since are soooo tiny. Big units neded massive reductions like 60+ points only to start to be playable on friendly games etc. Those changes despite being on lots of units changed nothing. Since mixed lists will have only around 40-80 more freepoints. And we cant do anything with that. Maybe 1 cp? Or a endless spell. And the only competitive build will remain the same. Maybe sitting out the scryer since 130p for a useless hero only to arrive from a border isnt really neded on units that can move 20 and charge.

GW have made their bed with Idoneth and now they're forced to lay in it.

The pricing and warscroll of eels was insane from the get-go, they haven't bothered addressing it properly and Idoneth remain in AA tier.

I'd be happy to see sweeping reductions across all Idoneth units if eels were nerfed into the ground.

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As far as SCE is concerned, whilst Sacrosanct have gone up, points decreases elsewhere are not enough to legitimise other options. Evocators still point for point way better than other Paladins. At least Libs/Seqs is more of a choice now. A lot of other stuff still far too expensive. As with IDK, though less pronounced, internal points balance is off. With the exception of Sacrosanct, Liberators and Prosecutors, most other units are still 10-20pts too expensive, Tauralon and Prime still too expensive, as is Stardrake.

Ultimately the days of printed points update should be gone, no excuse really for having points changes 6 months out of date, especially with the rate Battletomes have been dropping

On the plus side updated Ironjawz Allegiance Abilities appear to have given them a much needed boost, do looking forward to trying them out.

Edited by stuntymike
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8 hours ago, Thiagoma said:

The Phoenix points changed?

It was in the review video earlier in this thread- Frost Phoenix went up to 320 iirc, and the flamespyre down to 360. 

The frost Phoenix is still ok at that amount I think, although I only have one, so anyone with 2-3 might feel differently. But I still feel the flamespyre needs to be cheaper. 

At least at the new points I can take my flamespyre and feel less like a chump for doing so (as for the last year it meant paying a full 100 points more for a unit that’s worse offensively and defensively) but imo it could do with being around or just under 300 points to be a good alternative to the frostheart. 

A minor quibble overall, as I would generally try and cram both into a list given the chance, and that’s only an extra 20 points to do now. 

There’s riderless points for both phoenixes as well. At 80 points cheaper for each which might be useful for the battalion.

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6 hours ago, Frowny said:

My only concern is that a consistent trend of decreasing points means gradual army size inflation over time

I'm not worried about bigger armies (oh no! I have to do more of what I love - painting models), but I do wonder if having so many things drop in points means that nothing got relatively better.

In other words, if something needed to come down and this lets you add more stuff to your army so that your army as a whole can do better against other armies, and then those other armies get to add more stuff too, then have you really gained any ground?

Edited by Sleboda
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I personally feel they could have given Bonesplitterz and Gutbusters an alliance ability to hold them over on the one side, and use it as a playtest on the other side.

This probably means both books are already set in stone. But setting in stone could mean within a month or within a year. Either way the way they phrased their reasoning for not giving ANYTHING was grating and unfortunate.

I know that have to be careful about what they communicate. Because one letter of announcement and people go crazy. But some sort of roadmap would be nice.

Edited by Pitloze
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2 hours ago, Hagbean said:

GW have made their bed with Idoneth and now they're forced to lay in it.

The pricing and warscroll of eels was insane from the get-go, they haven't bothered addressing it properly and Idoneth remain in AA tier.

I'd be happy to see sweeping reductions across all Idoneth units if eels were nerfed into the ground.

I really don't get the hate on the eels.  They're a pretty good MELEE unit (so auto worse)...once per game....if you take volturnos?  Wow.  There are so many other armies out there that have way more devastating and way more universally useful models.  They don't need nerfed into the ground.  They need the point increase they got and enormous discounts everywhere else.  

With the new reroll hits of 1 command point, the KO battletome has officially been deemed useless.  No artifacts, no command traits, no command abilities and house abilities that can be replicated in other places in order?  Welcome back celestial hurricannum.  You're now a permanent member of a mixed KO order force.

I can't believe there's been no talk about seraphon!  They are going to be nasty this year.  Their spells are pretty awesome and mostly meh point increases I'm feeling a very good year for the scalies!!

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2 hours ago, Azamar said:

It was in the review video earlier in this thread- Frost Phoenix went up to 320 iirc, and the flamespyre down to 360. 

The frost Phoenix is still ok at that amount I think, although I only have one, so anyone with 2-3 might feel differently. But I still feel the flamespyre needs to be cheaper. 

At least at the new points I can take my flamespyre and feel less like a chump for doing so (as for the last year it meant paying a full 100 points more for a unit that’s worse offensively and defensively) but imo it could do with being around or just under 300 points to be a good alternative to the frostheart. 

A minor quibble overall, as I would generally try and cram both into a list given the chance, and that’s only an extra 20 points to do now. 

There’s riderless points for both phoenixes as well. At 80 points cheaper for each which might be useful for the battalion.

Gw increases Phoenix Points every single GHB, is a sort of fetish of theirs.

Imo the riderless options are useless. Without the anointed save, the -1 to save is useless on the frosty for example. Sending a huge base 5 save behemoth into combat is suicide.

Also the 40 pts increase on the Dragonlord is bonkers. Eighter gw is nerfing stuff because she will merge the factions, or they really really dont want people using elf units. 

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