What is the "best" army book in AoS? (IE the one which should be the baseline)

[Neomaxim]

I have, in recent months, been all consumed with AoS.  I am a former competitive players of games going back to being part of the original Magic Pro-Tour, but have always tempered my competitive drive with fondness for fluff, rpg-light skirmish gaming, etc.  In recent months my wife and I have introduced her parents to AoS, and with that I have been building them fun, approachable armies, and thus also playing just as many casual matches as serious ones, which has only grown my fondness for the game in general.

As a result, I have all but been living in battletomes which has made me seriously consider what I feel the best written book is, gameplay-wise.

My personal conclusion?  I feel like the Gloomspire Gitz is an absolute high water-mark.  It is filled with wildly varied, but viable lists for all different skill-level of player.  It rewards high execution players, but also has valid models for "push 'em up the table" play.  Several units have fun, unique, ecclectic abilities, and among spells, artifacts, etc... very few are outright bad, or immediately feel like awful choices.

In essence it is a broad, but fairly deep pool of options with healthy internal balance.

This of course does NOT mean it is the strongest competitive army book, but my intent with this discussion is to ask what book you think SHOULD ideally represent the game, and thus should be the internal barometer for all GW designers to strive for.

What is your "golden standard" book, and how would you see some the extremes of competitive play look had they been created in that chosen book's image?

[Vasshpit]

There's been a lot of these long question threads...

Pretty sure you're a GW mole (skaven😄)... 🤔

[Eldarain]

Gloomspite. Each subfaction functions nicely. A mixed army also does well. Few trap/awful entries. Nothing meta warping or excessively negative play experience (depravity, crazy mortal spam, activation abuse, Summoning spam)

[Forrix]

28 minutes ago, Eldarain said:

Gloomspite. Each subfaction functions nicely. A mixed army also does well. Few trap/awful entries. Nothing meta warping or excessively negative play experience (depravity, crazy mortal spam, activation abuse, Summoning spam)

My only complaint with Gloomspite is it feels like I'm playing without an Allegiance ability most of the time, otherwise I agree. There's a variety of lists I've been toying with and people have specifically told me they enjoy playing against it.

Its a little early to tell but I really like the internal balance of MawTribes, particularly that it has subfactions but I don't feel like I have to take a particular one or even one in general. I like my Fyreslayers but it just feels like I'm making the wrong choice if I don't go Hermder and the idea of going Lodgeless is just crazy talk, effectively rendering all the non-lodge command traits a waste of ink. Khorne was just load up on Slaughterpriests or go Tyrants of Blood.

[Eldarain]

I can agree with that but if it was the baseline, allegiance abilities would be a bit of flavour the way the moon is and not a giant element of faction/subfaction power.

[Thiagoma]

I got the BTs Sylvaneth, DoK, CoS, Idoneth and Gloomspite and i hqve the same notion that Gloomspite is the coolest one and CoS is right behind.

 

My problem with the GG book is the keyword mess that isnt intuitive.

I think both GG and CoS have a huge variety of combinations and builds to make it fun and versatible and i dont belive they make the game boring for the adversary. 

[sal4m4nd3r]

I think the sylvaneth should be the baseline. VERY balanced and strong rules. There is a double fight mechnic that isnt abusable. The sub factions are all valid. some are stronger, but there is NO clear BEST OMFG STRONG subfaction. Good mobility. Good Defense. Good offensive output. perhaps a bit light on batalions strength, but thats not the worst area to be weak. 

[Landohammer]

9 minutes ago, sal4m4nd3r said:

I think the sylvaneth should be the baseline. VERY balanced and strong rules. There is a double fight mechnic that isnt abusable. The sub factions are all valid. some are stronger, but there is NO clear BEST OMFG STRONG subfaction. Good mobility. Good Defense. Good offensive output. perhaps a bit light on batalions strength, but thats not the worst area to be weak. 

Sylvaneth book external balance was right on the money, but it suffers from an overly character-heavy unit selection. 

Also the internal balance is a bit off with units like Hunters being insanely good while units like Branchwych and Ylthari have no meaningful purpose.

I don't know enough about the other armies to answer this question super honestly, but I will say that Gloomspite, Sylvaneth and Nighthaunt are always fun to play with/against. Cities is looking to be pretty fun too once the meta adjusts.

I also think Tzeentch has some fantastic model variety. Look for it to be contender for "most fun" army once it gets a new codex.

[sal4m4nd3r]

1 minute ago, Landohammer said:

Sylvaneth book external balance was right on the money, but it suffers from an overly character-heavy unit selection. 

Also the internal balance is a bit off with units like Hunters being insanely good while units like Branchwych and Ylthari have no meaningful purpose.

I don't know enough about the other armies to answer this question super honestly, but I will say that Gloomspite, Sylvaneth and Nighthaunt are always fun to play with/against. Cities is looking to be pretty fun too once the meta adjusts.

I also think Tzeentch has some fantastic model variety. Look for it to be contender for "most fun" army once it gets a new codex.

Tzeentch demons need to be more then skyfire/enlightened and pink horrors. In the new book, screamers, flamers, the chariots need to be viable.  Khorne is also another book that is like perfectly written. It has interrupt abilities, balanced summoning, buffing character, fighty characters, monster mash builds, horde builds, cavalry builds... It came out right after Fec and skaven so it felt lack luster but its a great book. I hope whenever Nurgle book gets re-written it is on par with these two (sylvaneth and khorne) 

[Grimrock]

From the armies I own, (khorne, nurgle, tzeentch and slaanesh) I think khorne is the best written. I love how there are ways to layer on buffs, sub factions, and battalions so that any unit you really want to use can be made at least viable. Definitely not perfect, there are far too many throwaway heroes, bloodthirsters are a little ahead of the curve, and a few other daemon units lag behind, but overall it's pretty great.

[Neomaxim]

As with a few of the posts here, I feel like CoS is another winner all around. 

Maybe it is just the books that have become combined tomes from several earlier armies, but something feels good, and calls to mind Ravening Hordes era WHFB when I have a book of options, and list building is more about catering to my personal play-style than cherry-picking optimal units (or anything else really).

I also really appreciate when a book has units spanning enough archetypes that I could build in loads of ways.  I don't want all factions equally good at everything, but even the notion that I can tilt casting heavy one game, but go shooty or melee heavy another, appeals to me as both player and collector.  I bought my mom-in-law a couple Gob Spittas, and it was weirdly revelatory to let her build her own list, and see her take those and spam Shootas.  Was it optimal?  Hell no, but it suited what she wanted to try, and still made for a surprisingly legit game.

[Landohammer]

1 hour ago, sal4m4nd3r said:

Tzeentch demons need to be more then skyfire/enlightened and pink horrors. In the new book, screamers, flamers, the chariots need to be viable.  Khorne is also another book that is like perfectly written. It has interrupt abilities, balanced summoning, buffing character, fighty characters, monster mash builds, horde builds, cavalry builds... It came out right after Fec and skaven so it felt lack luster but its a great book. I hope whenever Nurgle book gets re-written it is on par with these two (sylvaneth and khorne) 

Agreed. Tzeentch has some incredible models including Kairic Acolytes, Lord of Change, and Ogroid Thaumaturge but most of the competitive lists are just horror and enlightened spam. 

Its similar to the Idoneth Deepkin book. Externally it performs fine because of a single list (or more specifically, 1-2 units). But internally its a quite a mess. 

 

[soak314]

11 hours ago, Eldarain said:

Gloomspite. Each subfaction functions nicely. A mixed army also does well. Few trap/awful entries. Nothing meta warping or excessively negative play experience (depravity, crazy mortal spam, activation abuse, Summoning spam)

This. Going as far internally as stabbas vs spears, Ggitz gives you some genuinely difficult choices when you listbuild, regardless of your subfaction. There's also barely any stinkers in the warscrolls (probably just palooza, loonsmashas, and dankholds. But even then they're just too expensive). The extreme tryhard lists within the faction all come with some nifty caveats too: grotspam folds hard to antihorde. Squig based lists tend to be fragile, and will always have to deal with random movement.

The book's lore is also phenomenal, which is always a bonus.

I'd also put up FeC for some very similar reasons. People tend to focus on the nasty meta tgheist lists, but beyond that one trick the book is really well done. FeC have a tiny model range, and the rules manage to squeeze out so much listbuilding diversity out of barely any models. The fact that they weren't consolidated into another death faction tells me the internal teams were really enthusiastic about FeC, and it shows through in the excellent lore, and just the general awesome feel of the army.

And then of course there's CoS for very obvious reasons.

[Kyriakin]

Sylvaneth is pretty solid, but has a few issues:

(1) A few of the glades are trash (i.e. Oakenbrow and Ironbark)

(2) They should have made Spite Revs multi-wound and around 20-points-per-model, due to their financial cost.

(3) Woods still a pain - albeit less so than before.

Edited November 6, 2019 by Kyriakin

[Silchas_Ruin]

Blades of Khorne is great. Almost everything in the book can be made usefull and you give most people a good fight. Can at least compete with most top armies and playing against weaker armies they almost always still feel like they had a good game.

[Scurvydog]

I agree with those pointing at the Gitz, I do not play them myself but have a friend who does and they provide for interesting games and entertainment just about every time. They can be strong have and have a LOT of options and very importantly a wide range of cool interesting models, with at least a semi decent internal balance in the book. Compare that to the Orruk warclans book and Ironjawz, who got 3 non hero units and they could not even balance and diversify those 3...

I do not really like the minimum effort for a faction approach, but it does seem GW is trying to correct this a bit, like consolidating the Ogors in one book and Skaven, instead of all those mini factions we had just about a year ago.

In my opinion the perfect book would combine the elements of various books sort of like this:

Allegiance abilities: Ironjawz - at least this part the new book got right, the allegiance abilities are both flavorful and impactful regardless of army composition. With situational elements (smashin and bashin) and command abilities that really gives you strategic options and differentiates how the army act on the table compared to others. I could throw in the Sylvaneth as well here, they have a very unique mechanic, although all those woods are a logistical nightmare

Sub factions: Fyreslayers - The Gitz book completely lack these which is a shame, but the Fyreslayers are a good example of the direction sub factions should be heading I think. If we ignore some of the other internal balance issues in the book (Vostarg + lords of the lodge), the fyreslayer lodges by themselves are very interesting, bringing character and flavor, while also having significant gameplay impact, to help diversify an otherwise small model range. My favourite might be Greyfyrd putting the heroes on foot at the fore, and allowing multiple of them to fight at once as a unit, which is very cool and unique. The new bonereapers also has some interesting factions, although internal balance is again here poor, with 1 being above all in sheer power, same for DoK and Hagg Narr.

Warscrolls: Gitz easily takes the cake here, such a fun model range and many many choices. You can build a list of focused and as diverse as you wish. Internal balance is relatively good. Running some thematic armies iwll usually lead to the best results though. On the flipside of this you can find the Stormcasts who also has a huge and new model range, but horrible internal balance, with IDK being in the same... boat.

 

[Eevika]

I would not want Gitz to be the base line. Having like 6k Glomspite and having played it the most out of any armies the army is pretty depressing to play when you are trying to win. I love it for fluff and models but gameplay with out "lodges/clans" or what ever is sad and playing practically with out an allegiance ability as its so weak is kinda dumb. I think Mawtribes seem like the best baseline right now. Just looking at the book it seems like there are reliable but simple abilities, tribes and battallions that allow you to play multiple very varied lists. 

[Thenord]

Khorne deffinetly. Great internal and external balance.

[angrycontra]

Yeah I'm gonna say gloomspite gitz too. The poorly designed allegiance ability aside, everything just works in that book, the battalions, battleline options, inner balance, (almost) nothing is too broken or too weak, solid selection of artifacts etc. It's just fun to design armies with that book. Flesh eaters are also great, minus the gristlegore imbalance.

If I had to pick worst, I'd pick skaven. Battalions carbage, unnecessarily complicated allegiance ability, doesn't play well to skaven lore (for some reason cowardly skaven have access to easy armywide bshock immunity), really bad inner balance (plague monks >>>>> everything else), very few obvious weaknesses, army building options massively limited due to terrible battleline system, some warscrolls are well written but whoever wrote plague monk warscroll should be shelved this instant (seriously, can have easy 7 attacks, with seperate weapons, seperate unmod. Hit 6 / wound 6 effects, they are the slowest unit to play in the entire game). Add to all this terrible clunky terrain. No book has made me as angry as skaven book, by far my biggest disappointment with aos.

[Eevika]

17 minutes ago, angrycontra said:

Yeah I'm gonna say gloomspite gitz too. The poorly designed allegiance ability aside, everything just works in that book, the battalions, battleline options, inner balance, (almost) nothing is too broken or too weak, solid selection of artifacts etc. It's just fun to design armies with that book. Flesh eaters are also great, minus the gristlegore imbalance.

Troggherd is probably the most overcosted battallion in the game and the Troggboss is one of the worst models in the game looking at damage per points. Also the terrain gitz have pretty much force you to play regular gitz if you want to benefit well from the terrain. 

[SwampHeart]

I'm 100% on board with Cities of Sigmar - I think the book is very well written with the capacity to play in several styles. The units in the book are generally close enough in power scope that even 'sub optimal' units can perform well enough to have fun. The book also lets you shift gears with your play style too, you can play super competitive with the book or take time to play far more fluffy and fun lists. 

[TheCovenLord]

Blades of Khorne is probably the best all around book in my opinion.

Gitz is not well balanced when it comes to troggoths whatsoever. 

 Cities is not bad except for the Hallowheart wizard flamethrower disaster. 

 

[Horseburner]

I only own the SCE and Nighthaunt BT so take what I'm about to say with a pinch of salt. According most post here we all seem to like new BT's. Each new BT builds on the current game no? It seems to me that CoS/OBR/Mawtribes and the Warclan BT are new, hence "great".

Make of it what you will, it's just an observation. 😁

[Slayerofmen]

The mawtribes book should definitely not be the benchmark it is actually below par imo

[Horseburner]

 

7 minutes ago, Slayerofmen said:

The mawtribes book should definitely not be the benchmark it is actually below par imo

I'm not saying it is but looking at most post on the forum people are either very similar or something else is at play. 😁

Edited November 8, 2019 by Horseburner
Wording.