Playing Cities of Sigmar: are you really?

[Kramer]

36 minutes ago, willange said:

've only played a couple of casual games (using pitched battle rules) with CoS so far, and I took both of those, so I personally think they're fine.  But my limited experience is just that and I can't speak to a tournament environment, so I won't argue there.  It would be interesting to see what lists are going to those tournaments though, do they mix effectively or just run 1 subfaction

The only source for those statistics is the honest wargamer and he mentions, every single time I might add, that the cos statistics are interesting because there is the main group of lists that have a low win rate but a few lists that keep going 4-1 and 5-0. So there are really competitive builds out there but old players that can finally play their old stuff muddle the water.

so yes low percentage, but like all statistics it’s worth finding out how they come to be. 

Edited December 19, 2019 by Kramer

[CB42]

5 hours ago, SwampHeart said:

No I mean Blood and Glory 2019, one of the largest AoS events in the world. What I'm saying is that CoS is quite clearly a book capable of taking majors because its far better than a mid tier book. It can easily compete with the top of the meta right now. 

The best part about your post about "CoS won a major basically the first time it was playable" is that I thought you were talking about a different tournament - it also 5-0'd DaBoyz in the northeast US and placed 2nd after a FEC list. List was arkanaut / EG / scourgerunner Tempest's Eye and I lost to it with my Syll'Esskan Host and oh man is that TE list hard to play against.

 

Also, that guy about "no competitive player is switching to CoS" is super out of touch.  And I'm saying that as a competitive player who just switched to CoS from hedonites of slaanesh and just placed 3rd at a tournament with CoS. And I'm playing a completely different TE list than the one James was running at DaBoyz - I'm using scourgerunners, griffon, pistoliers, and gyrocopters. Both of which are completely different from the Hallowheart list that won B+G.

Edited December 20, 2019 by CB42

[dekay]

Nice to see a discussion here. 

Of course, I'll need to add things such as 'disposessed lost a way to negate magic, now they have only one' to my initial examples ; ). Because, from where I'm standing, they gained a lot of those. They gained +1 to unbind luminark, auto unbind incantor, 4+ ignore spells hallowheart spell... they didn't have those methods before and now they do!

And, on the same subject, repeated notion that there is no inter faction synergy... Well ok, command abilities on warscrolls don't work between subfactions. That I agree on. But I also see my griffon general using 'run and shoot' on my darkshards. My sorceress giving +1 to wound aura to my pistoliers. Hurricanum giving +1 to hit to all of the above, and said pistoliers getting re-roll charge aura from, say, a sorceress on a dragon. There are a lot of inter faction synergies, they are just mostly on city artifacts, spells and abilities. Hell, I have a gunhauler that's able to retreat and shoot thanks to being bundled with freeguild units and it's not even from CoS book!

Also. If we take one of the more used combos - a sorceress kills a bleaksword, gets +2 to cast. Casts soulscream bridge (at greater range than any other army usually can, given that realm rules often don't show up on tournaments at all!). Bridge transports a hurricanum, runelord and irondrake unit. Irondrakes get double shots with both rend and hit bonus.  There are 3 factions involved in this thing. 4 if there's azyros in the mix to optimise the shooting even further. Plus a generic Cities allegiance ability on top of that. How's that not an inter faction synergy?

As for 'it's the same as playing mixed order and/or firestorm cities'... I don't thing that mixed order and firestorm allegiances had those huge lists of universal support spells, artifacts and command traits. It's almost like they weren't a battletome allegiance armies, like CoS are.

One more thing that kind of fascinates me is 'we didn't get endless spells'. Yeah, we kinda didn't. We also got every single generic endless spell buffed. To a level few faction specific spell can accomplish, really. And if that's not enough, we get stormcast spells as well without resorting to allies. Yeah, we got no new spell models. Which is a shame from a collector's perspective and confirms that CoS is basically a 'tie loose ends' tome, but from a practical standpoint? We have more strong endless spells than any other faction in game.

 

Now, let's talk about statistics. Yes, CoS are way below average. Like, Kharadron level. But, as @Kramer said, they are pretty unique in that respect that despite this, they're still placing high in tournaments. Show me a large tournament won by, say, KO. Which kind of leads me to believe that 'many people are playing it wrong' theory may have some merit.  No one says that phoenix guard heavy hallowheart is weak. Really. I've done some research after reading responses in this trend, and it really places generally in upper half of tournament rankings.

I mean, OBR would have worse tournament record too if for some reason there was a large group of people drastically opposed to playing Petrifex due to thematic reasons. And claimed that including any Crawlers ruins their army fluff.  DoK would be much worse, statistically, if parts of player base refused to use anything but Melusai and Avatars of Khaine.

Hell, Idoneth place above average despite most of their book being terrible, they have like three good units everyone uses.

Cities are unique in that respect. It's a book that brought together people used to vastly different playstyles, not all of whom take to the change kindly.

Yeah, dwarves and high elves players, along with many others, wanted their 'real' books. And honestly, this is not it. They have a right to be disappointed but in my opinion not because their book is bad, but because their book still doesn't exist at all and who knows if it ever will. Instead, they got a book that lets them use their units together with variety of new ones, designed to work as one faction.

 

[SwampHeart]

13 hours ago, prochuvi said:

Sure and then that is the same than old general mixed order lists with old firestorm alegiances.

Win rates dont lie,every new tome have around 55-60% win rate and then cos have a great 46% win rate worse than 1.0 armys that have tomes incoming.

 

Cos is 100% the same than a general order mixed list using old firestorm alegiances,this tome only have added MANY nerfs to every warscroll and some relik and so.

 

One dude won one tournament? Sure that is called stathistic, if the tome have 46% win rate means that can have one dude winning ome tournament but then we have other 100 players that lost.

 

The truth is that cos is a mid tier at best army and dont matter if it is played as full mixed list or as only dwarfs or elfs,nothing gonna changue that

It's 5-0'd two GTs. The book is great, most people are just bad at using it. It's a very high ceiling book and if you bothered to actually watch the stats show you'd know Rob specifically talks about the CoS win rate. There's an elite pocket going 5-0/4-1 with the book and then a big swath of bads going 2-3. It's not the books fault people don't play it well. But obviously watching the stats show or trying to get any context that challenges your view is outside your purview - you need CoS to be bad. 

Edited December 20, 2019 by SwampHeart

[SwampHeart]

14 hours ago, The Red King said:

I was wondering if it was down. I tried it earlier.  VODs aren't really my thing. I'll just wait.

https://thehonestwargamer.com/aos-list-rundowns/blood-and-glory-2109-1st-place/
https://thehonestwargamer.com/aos-list-rundowns/blood-and-glory-2019-2nd-place/
https://thehonestwargamer.com/aos-list-rundowns/blood-and-glory-2019-3rd-place/

BnG Top 3 lists. Also look up Da Boyz GT (held in the US) where a TE list when 5-0 and took 2nd overall as well. I'd also consider just taking a look at what some major competitive players are looking at right now (Jake Lecuyer in the US for example) to see if competitive players are swapping to CoS. 

[The Red King]

Interesting. I'm still skeptical that they're over a high mid tier army but I'll look over all of this thank you. 

[Forrix]

I think that books with deep benches are going to have lower winrates due to more room for people to take sub-optimal lists for whatever reason (playstyle, favorite models, "being bad", ect.). I've shelved my Gloomspite army for now due to being terrible but there is a Gloomspite army build that does well at tournaments (Tons of Grots and spells) but I'm not interested in playing it. I suspect we'll see something similar with Slaves to Darkness. I think there's some powerful builds in that battletome but a lot of not very effective options too. Cities is probably particularly hard hit by this though for aforementioned reasons of people trying to play just one subfaction due to being returning players and only having their old fantasy battles army.   

[feraxil]

1 hour ago, The Red King said:

Interesting. I'm still skeptical that they're over a high mid tier army but I'll look over all of this thank you. 

We need more people with open minds like yours in this discussion!

[Galas]

Whats up with TGA and people here telling others they are playing the game wrong because they don't play it like oneselves? One or two years ago this community was much more civil and humble. Now everything is drawing lines on the sand. True AoS fans vs False AoS Fans or worse... WHFB fans that play AoS.

Edited December 20, 2019 by Galas

[SwampHeart]

50 minutes ago, Galas said:

Whats up with TGA and people here telling others they are playing the game wrong because they don't play it like oneselves? One or two years ago this community was much more civil and humble. Now everything is drawing lines on the sand. True AoS fans vs False AoS Fans or worse... WHFB fans that play AoS.

No one is telling anyone they're playing it wrong - the OP is discussing specifically the competitive nature of Cities which requires making use of multiple factions. You can play Cities however you like but you have to understand that the results you get when choosing to play a mono subfaction aren't going to be indicative of the potential of the book. 

[Icegoat]

The people playing cities of sigmar are not your twelve year old two base coats and wash I just bought three thousand points of ossiarch bone reapers fools. These are people who have owned their models for decades. And GW decided to give these people the worst army book in age of sigmar. 

 

Walk into an actual warhammer shop you would not even be aware cities of sigmar is an army. They might as well release a Brettonian battle tome for people with olf Brettonian armies. They would probably put as much thought into as they have cities of sigmar

It truly would have been better to mass squat cities at this point. It just leaves a sour and bitter taste when every other new tome overpowers yours by a country mile. 

All so GW can stagnate the human dwarf and dark elf line into nothingness. It will all be gone in a year. 

[dekay]

1 hour ago, Galas said:

Whats up with TGA and people here telling others they are playing the game wrong because they don't play it like oneselves? One or two years ago this community was much more civil and humble. Now everything is drawing lines on the sand. True AoS fans vs False AoS Fans or worse... WHFB fans that play AoS.

Sorry if I didn't make my point clear enough. It's not about playing the game wrong, it's about people struggling to win in competitive context because they treat CoS as a set of separate (and bad) army lists of various races, instead of one army authours wanted it to be. Nothing against theming your force, really. On the contrary, CoS offers great p[ossibilities here.

It's only about those who complain they can't win, specifically, while not using the competitive options.

3 minutes ago, Icegoat said:

It truly would have been better to mass squat cities at this point. It just leaves a sour and bitter taste when every other new tome overpowers yours by a country mile. 

All so GW can stagnate the human dwarf and dark elf line into nothingness. It will all be gone in a year

Then we'll go back to this conversation in a year and we'll all say you were right. But for now, some of us actually enjoy CoS.

[zilberfrid]

12 minutes ago, Icegoat said:

The people playing cities of sigmar are not your twelve year old two base coats and wash I just bought three thousand points of ossiarch bone reapers fools. These are people who have owned their models for decades. And GW decided to give these people the worst army book in age of sigmar. 

Walk into an actual warhammer shop you would not even be aware cities of sigmar is an army. They might as well release a Brettonian battle tome for people with olf Brettonian armies. They would probably put as much thought into as they have cities of sigmar

It truly would have been better to mass squat cities at this point. It just leaves a sour and bitter taste when every other new tome overpowers yours by a country mile. 

All so GW can stagnate the human dwarf and dark elf line into nothingness. It will all be gone in a year. 

I disagree on much of this. I don't see CoS squatted within a year, and I think the book is very good. Good does not mean oppressively overpowered, it means just about where the balance needs to be, and with a large percentage of choices being relevant.

If you want a bad book, look at Slaanesh, it is badly balanced internally and externally.

[Mcthew]

Gotta say, that I love the CoS battletome. Sure it lacks any summoning (a StD Ravagers mechanic would've been nice) and the allegiance abilities aren't what you call over-powered, but just cant empathize with the vitriol being levelled at it. 

Wouldn't call myself hyper-competitive but my CoS army holds it's own just fine, and the combinations means a more interesting build than setting down large blobs of attrition/fodder ala WFB. It's been a refreshing addition to the AoS pantheon, and a more sensible approach than umpteen tomes covering the same factions (with unending and banal/repeated allegiance abilities - if the recent tomes have taught us anything it's that allegiance abilities tend to get a bit samey, or you risk rewriting AoS mechanics as in Bonereapers just to make them appear new and interesting).

[CB42]

48 minutes ago, Icegoat said:

It just leaves a sour and bitter taste when every other new tome overpowers yours by a country mile. 

Lol. When Cities is one of the only armies that can beat bonereapers. And when Cities just absolutely curb stomps Mawtribes.

Until the release of Bonereapers, I was expecting Cities to become the new meta - I think it's S tier. It shoots Slaanesh and Khorne off the board. It outranges Skaven shooting and can gyrocopter plague monks off the board. It kills the Harvester and then can whittle down bonereaper mortek bricks. It can pop the general in a Daughters of Khaine hagg narr army.

Hyperefficient shooting like Cities has breaks Age of Sigmar just as bad as stuff like reroll 3+ saves, and the fact that people like you think that Cities is so bad that it's a country mile behind new releases like Mawtribes.... man, I don't even know what to say, Icegoat. I don't even know what to say.

[Kramer]

2 hours ago, Icegoat said:

 

The people playing cities of sigmar are not your twelve year old two base coats and wash I just bought three thousand points of ossiarch bone reapers fools

 

Why kick off a comment like this? Curious. Because it gains nothing. But you try to diss everyone that jumped into OBR. But then also ****** CoS isn’t good enough  for your taste so destroy it all because I don’t like it enough. 

whats the point of the post? If you have an argument, make it.

 

Also how rich are twelve year olds in your area. 3K in models within a month of release. Wish I had that kind of hobby money lying around 😂

[readercolin]

2 hours ago, Icegoat said:

The people playing cities of sigmar are not your twelve year old two base coats and wash I just bought three thousand points of ossiarch bone reapers fools. These are people who have owned their models for decades. And GW decided to give these people the worst army book in age of sigmar. 

 

Walk into an actual warhammer shop you would not even be aware cities of sigmar is an army. They might as well release a Brettonian battle tome for people with olf Brettonian armies. They would probably put as much thought into as they have cities of sigmar

It truly would have been better to mass squat cities at this point. It just leaves a sour and bitter taste when every other new tome overpowers yours by a country mile. 

All so GW can stagnate the human dwarf and dark elf line into nothingness. It will all be gone in a year. 

Bitter much?  I have owned a high elf and a wood elf force for about 14 years now, when I was playing back in 6th edition, and I also have some empire models as well from the starter set of that time.  Of the models that I owned, the only that haven't been squatted are Phoenix Guard and Dryads.  Luckily, it is extremely simple to take most of the rest of my forces and do some small conversions (or no conversions) and tada, there is a unit in Cities that they can be (with some exceptions, like my hawk riders).

Would I love if they had released a high elf tome?  Sure.  I would love it if most of my models were still usable as what I bought them as.  But at the same time, I am more than happy to play cities of sigmar and buy into it more.  Not only do I have tons of freedom for conversions, and making my army look how I want, but I have tons of variety as well.  And while my army might not be as broken as skaven or slaneesh was on release, if I build it right I can easily be competitive.  Yes, I can't use all my models to compete (drakespawn knights suck soooo much), but there are several different lists that people are running to competitive results, and if I am playing more casually, I can have different models for any opponent.  No other battletome allows you that much freedom, and easily puts this tome as one of the best that GW has released to date.

[SwampHeart]

5 hours ago, Icegoat said:

The people playing cities of sigmar are not your twelve year old two base coats and wash I just bought three thousand points of ossiarch bone reapers fools. These are people who have owned their models for decades. And GW decided to give these people the worst army book in age of sigmar. 

 

Walk into an actual warhammer shop you would not even be aware cities of sigmar is an army. They might as well release a Brettonian battle tome for people with olf Brettonian armies. They would probably put as much thought into as they have cities of sigmar

It truly would have been better to mass squat cities at this point. It just leaves a sour and bitter taste when every other new tome overpowers yours by a country mile. 

All so GW can stagnate the human dwarf and dark elf line into nothingness. It will all be gone in a year. 

You're confusing your inability to play the game well with CoS being bad. Understandable but very wrong as is evidenced by CoS performance in the hands of less arrogant and more skilled players.

[Myrdin]

15 hours ago, Icegoat said:

The people playing cities of sigmar are not your twelve year old two base coats and wash I just bought three thousand points of ossiarch bone reapers fools. These are people who have owned their models for decades. And GW decided to give these people the worst army book in age of sigmar. 

 

Walk into an actual warhammer shop you would not even be aware cities of sigmar is an army. They might as well release a Brettonian battle tome for people with olf Brettonian armies. They would probably put as much thought into as they have cities of sigmar

It truly would have been better to mass squat cities at this point. It just leaves a sour and bitter taste when every other new tome overpowers yours by a country mile. 

All so GW can stagnate the human dwarf and dark elf line into nothingness. It will all be gone in a year. 

I will abstain of using swear words. But this is one of the instances where I would usually use them plenty.

THIS outlook is beyond spiteful, and just throws unnecessary hate on the army, and spits into the face of anyone who actually likes it for what it is.

How did you even arrive at the conclusion that the book is the worst of all others ? Have you even played any other faction, that are not the top 3 Tournament contenders ? you so vehemently declaring something like this bids the to question whether you did because there is stuff MUCH worse than this army.

CoS is a Swiss knife army that can tackle pretty much anything due to the deep pool of units it can draw from.  Should one choose to NOT use the tools presented to them, then they by themselves are responsible for their loss. Especially in situations where one or two units of the right choice would do all the difference in such a game.

Srsly, I dont care if you dislike the army to the degree that you present it as, but if thats how you wanna go around doing things then be of such courtesy as to not spew this nihilistic toxicity in a CoS sub-forum where people gather to constructively discuss and enjoy the army and what it brings to bear, rather than lament, spit poison and shake their fist in the air with"oh just how horrible" the battletome and all the units, and all the models and everything about it is.

You hate this army that much ? Well good for you because guess what, nobody is forcing you to play this "horrible piece of xxxx army". Feel free to pick a different one more to your liking and let people like what their like without throwing shade on it.

Wow...just wow....

Edited December 21, 2019 by Myrdin

[Tidings]

The negativity is so palpable I couldn’t help but just stop reading at a certain point. Several people are complaining that our book isn’t competitive and that building lists sucks because synergies are locked to the sub-races. 
 

I’ve played several tournaments and done very well in all of them. We absolutely have very strong options and WAY more list diversity than any other army in AoS. True, we did not get flat out broken rules and interactions like OBR and Slaanesh did. But I would say that makes our book better. Those two examples are horribly written in terms of balance and are a problem for the competitive scene as a whole - Cities is well written and viable, even GOOD if you are willing to be flexible. 

[Icegoat]

If someone can show me a competitive list using my old ironbreakers my empire only units and no dam storm cast or tree people I'll concede that we have the best army book ever but that army doesn't exist. Because GW warped the freeguild army into the dark elf buddy force with their wood elf and dwarf friends. Who need a lot of help from their space marine saviours to win. 

Long live the old world. 

[readercolin]

40 minutes ago, Icegoat said:

If someone can show me a competitive list using my old ironbreakers my empire only units and no dam storm cast or tree people I'll concede that we have the best army book ever but that army doesn't exist. Because GW warped the freeguild army into the dark elf buddy force with their wood elf and dwarf friends. Who need a lot of help from their space marine saviours to win. 

Long live the old world. 

https://thehonestwargamer.com/aos-list-rundowns/blood-and-glory-2109-1st-place/

Tada, there you go.  It contains a single Knight-Incantor in order to cast the Everblaze Comet.  Still suffused by your rabid hatred of stormcast preventing you from taking even a single model?  That's ok - you can replace that one and the comet with 240 points of other models.  Competitive?  It took 1st place.

Does it use your old ironbreakers?  No, but that can be easily shifted around (especially without the Knight-Incantor/everblaze).  Want irondrakes instead?  You can probably swap either ranged unit for them and have about the same effectiveness.

[Kramer]

1 hour ago, Icegoat said:

If someone can show me a competitive list using my old ironbreakers my empire only units and no dam storm cast or tree people I'll concede that we have the best army book ever but that army doesn't exist. Because GW warped the freeguild army into the dark elf buddy force with their wood elf and dwarf friends. Who need a lot of help from their space marine saviours to win. 

Long live the old world. 

And only on square bases! Or it doesn’t count! And any other restriction I need to put on there to be less wrong! 
 

great tagline though nice and troll’y   Very old world 

Edited December 21, 2019 by Kramer

[dekay]

1 hour ago, Icegoat said:

If someone can show me a competitive list using my old ironbreakers my empire only units and no dam storm cast or tree people I'll concede that we have the best army book ever but that army doesn't exist. Because GW warped the freeguild army into the dark elf buddy force with their wood elf and dwarf friends. Who need a lot of help from their space marine saviours to win. 

Long live the old world. 

Spoiler

Allegiance: Cities of Sigmar
- City: Hallowheart
Celestial Hurricanum With Celestial Battlemage (280)
- Artefact: Agloraxi Prism
- Spell: Lore of Whitefire - Sear Wounds (Hallowheart Wizard)
- Hallowheart 2nd Spell: Crystal Aegis
Luminark of Hysh With White Battlemage (270)
- Spell: Lore of Whitefire - Elemental Cyclone (Hallowheart Wizard)
- Hallowheart 2nd Spell: Ignite Weapons
Battlemage (90)
- Spell: Lore of Whitefire - Warding Brand (Hallowheart Wizard)
- Hallowheart 2nd Spell: Roaming Wildfire
- City Role: General's Adjutant (Must be 6 wounds or less)
Battlemage (90)
- Spell: Lore of Whitefire - Elemental Cyclone (Hallowheart Wizard)
- Hallowheart 2nd Spell: Roaming Wildfire
Freeguild General (100)
- General
- Trait: Veteran of the Blazing Crusade
- Artefact: Whitefire Tome - Ignite Weapons
30 x Freeguild Handgunners (300)
30 x Freeguild Crossbowmen (300)
10 x Ironbreakers (130)
- City Role: Honoured Retinue (Must be 5-20 models)
10 x Freeguild Guard (80)
- Swords and Shields
Whitefire Retinue (140)
Umbral Spellportal (70)
Soulscream Bridge (80)
Geminids of Uhl-Gysh (60)
Malevolent Maelstrom (10)

Total: 2000 / 2000
Extra Command Points: 1
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 117

Here you go. Test it out, tell us how it went. Keep your general and adjutant close to ironbreakers, use the bridge to get to the enemy, drop general's command on both shooters, keep them in hurricanum range. Drop ignite weapons on the shooting unit. Use ironbreakers and guard to shield the shooters for a moment. I'm not sure why am I writing this, as we all know you won't try this, given the fact that you'd lose your reason to complain.

[Kugane]

I think COS  may have too many options and variables that it makes it hard to playtest and build a decent list on the spot. There are few units that are clear auto-take. On top of that most models didnt age well, so its mostly people that used to own 1 or the factions and playing it now.