Battletomes from last 2 years: From "best" to "worst"

[Icegoat]

People must be massively naive these clearly broken and awful kindergarten grade rules are written to sell the latest models. It weren't a coincidence the keeper of secrets was the most overpowered unit in the game for its first year of release. And its hardly surprising five minutes after releazing the ancient plastic demon Prince model for std is overpowered it get the nerf bat. How are people so blind do they think this multi million company is some drooling bunch of imbeciles. The rules are made to sell models. It's your bad luck when you buy old beasts of chaos sculpts. GW don't care about you or your battle tome they care about selling new stuff. Let's wait and see the new teclis warscroll I'm sure he will be a shy retiring type. 

[Beastmaster]

3 minutes ago, Icegoat said:

People must be massively naive these clearly broken and awful kindergarten grade rules are written to sell the latest models. It weren't a coincidence the keeper of secrets was the most overpowered unit in the game for its first year of release. And its hardly surprising five minutes after releazing the ancient plastic demon Prince model for std is overpowered it get the nerf bat. How are people so blind do they think this multi million company is some drooling bunch of imbeciles. The rules are made to sell models. It's your bad luck when you buy old beasts of chaos sculpts. GW don't care about you or your battle tome they care about selling new stuff. Let's wait and see the new teclis warscroll I'm sure he will be a shy retiring type. 

This doesn’t really make sense. Some of the top tier armies didn’t have new models for years (Skaven, FEC). Others with tons of new models never were that powerful (Kharadron, Grots).

If what you describe is the plan, they are even worse at their job 😎

[gjnoronh]

Just now, Beastmaster said:

This doesn’t really make sense. Some of the top tier armies didn’t have new models for years (Skaven, FEC). Others with tons of new models never were that powerful (Kharadron, Grots).

If what you describe is the plan, they are even worse at their job 😎

Agreed for every Keeper of Secret's there's another model (i.e. Beasts of chaos with their endless spells, Troggoths etc) that gets a release and isn't particularly powerful.   

[Qaz]

Background - I own KO and Fyreslayers armies since their respective release. I also have Tzeentch army and due to that have enough Tzaangors for BoC. Had attempted to collect Idoneth Deepkin, Slaneesh and Stormcast but quickly sold those. 

Worst:- I'd say Idoneth  Deepkin had it worst due to poor internal balance and really feels punishing to play other builds (and models), Followed by Beasts of Chaos whose allegiance abilities just doesn't feel that impactful or feel good to take many of their units.

Best: I rate the chaos god allegiances pretty highly, in particularly Tzeentch and Khorne. The chaos god can bring a wide variety of units from other armies all in the name of Change or Skulls for the skull Throne. Khorne whilst have had better competitive days, have a really fun and engaging allegiance and you can have some creative builds with goats, S2D, skullcrushers. Controlling Destiny dice pool or managing blood tithe is fun and engaging. Both with some weaknesses that prevented them from being overly strong. Loving the new Tzeentch book, too early to tell but I feel like almost all the units have a place and competitively strong with a few prominent theory builds.  (Eternal Conflagration Changehost  alpha strike list and Guild of Summoners Fatesworn control list).

I also think KO book is super fun and has a very thematic and cool gameplay.  Incredible mobility to the point of being broken but alas balanced by the fact that there's no one unit to 'delete' the opposing units or combination of powerful turn-by-turn buffs (+1 DMG, +1 Attacks, or even full rerolls). I would rate this book the Best (if it wasn't my favourite army) because ship gameplay is fun and thematic, they have really cool artefact (names), there's no must-take unit, have a broken mechanic but balanced with mediocre damage and is my favourite army.

Edited January 17, 2020 by Qaz

[DarrinTheOccult]

I've only played tzeentch all this time and I have to say that this new battletome gives you the feeling of incredible internal balance as you can use all the units through the different cults. Of course there's always some subfactions better or worse than others, but everything feels right and playable (I'm looking at you OBR, you could learn something man)

I have started buying things for kharadron and I love their battletome. Depending on which skyport you take it changes completely what you should take for synergies. I appreciate that sort of variety.

[Tidings]

3 hours ago, l1censetochill said:

Yeah, it really feels like the divide here is strong between people who gauge "Best" as "whatever wins the most games" and "Best" as "whatever book feels the most fun and varied in the builds it can offer" (I fall into the latter camp, personally).

For me, the best book I've seen in all of AOS so far is Cities of Sigmar. Internally there may be a few units and Cities that are over- or underpowered relative to the others, but the sheer variety the book offers between the different City allegiances and sub-factions is just incredible. Cities armies can, quite literally, do it all - magic heavy, shooting heavy, speedy alpha strike, giant hordes of infantry, mixes of all of the above, you name it.

Just tossing in some more fuel for the fire, but even though this is what makes Gloomspite and Cities so awesome, I DON'T want to see all future books get the same treatment. Gloomspite and Cities as factions makes sense to have such massive unit and build diversity. In fact, especially for Cities, that's one of the strengths of the army they (should) balance around. 

If every army in AoS had the flexibility that Cities has, they would all just feel the same. I love the flexibility of list building in Cities and Gloomspite, but I want a melee-focused army like Ironjaws or Khorne to always be better at that than Cities. That's their identity, just as build diversity is the identity for Cities and Gitz. They should definitely have multiple ways of building their lists, but the jack-of-all-trades aspect should just be reserved for a few armies, as it's part of what sets them apart. Let's not go down the World of Warcraft path where every class got all the tools every other class had.

Edited January 17, 2020 by Tidings

[PensivePanther]

It's cool to see how varied the community's opinions are even when talking about the same battletome. As an old gutbuster player its interesting to see that the Mawtribes battletome is somewhat divisive.

[Frowny]

My rating categories. Note that I didn't prioritize overall strength at all. Just funness, fitting the fantasy and internal balance

Teir 1 - fun varied lists are good, lots of build options,  plays and lives by the fantasy

Khorne , kharadron overlords, Tzeentch, gloomspite gits, orruk warclans

Tier 2- good Internal balance, army plays out as expected given the fantasy

Nurgle, Ogor mawtribes, flesh eaters, legions of nagash, Slaves to darkness, daughters of khaine

Tier 3- good internal balance but gameplay not that engaging when it works or poor internal balance but good gameplay

Sylvaneth, cities of sigmar, fyreslayers, seraphon

Tier 4- obvious strong options, many unplayable trap units, army fantasy gameplay not that engaging when it does work out either stomping enemies or losing to them or not doing much

Nighthaunt, slaanesh, idoneth, ossiarch bonereapers, stormcast, beasts of chaos

 

[Kramer]

11 hours ago, Icegoat said:

Worst by far was cities of sigmar no viable builds without buying two new whole armies to go with your existing dwarfs/empire/elfs delete as a appropriate. A total gutting of all entire ranges within the army. A despicable act and heinous money grab. I'm sure the army will be squatted by next year. We don't want normal humans when we can have more storm cast. 

Best is gloomspite gitz the new stone trolls are the best model kit I've painted and built in an age. And it made old warhammer fantasy units viable and better the entire opposite of cities of sigmar mass squatting and degrading of old units. 

Haha glad to see you’re still beating this drum. It was getting a bit silent  

[Tidings]

4 hours ago, Kramer said:

Haha glad to see you’re still beating this drum. It was getting a bit silent  

I tried to give this a love reaction but I can't "react" anymore today hahaha

[Chikout]

11 hours ago, Icegoat said:

People must be massively naive these clearly broken and awful kindergarten grade rules are written to sell the latest models. It weren't a coincidence the keeper of secrets was the most overpowered unit in the game for its first year of release. And its hardly surprising five minutes after releazing the ancient plastic demon Prince model for std is overpowered it get the nerf bat. How are people so blind do they think this multi million company is some drooling bunch of imbeciles. The rules are made to sell models. It's your bad luck when you buy old beasts of chaos sculpts. GW don't care about you or your battle tome they care about selling new stuff. Let's wait and see the new teclis warscroll I'm sure he will be a shy retiring type. 

Some of your comments really are hilariously awful. Plague monks, screaming bell, marauders, flamers, skinks, and moonclan grots would like to say hello. All at least 10 years old.

Those units are clearly quivering in their boots in the face of the awesome power of the gobbapalooza, the new skulltaker , the new chaos warriors and all the warcry warbands. 

[DatHomieSilverSurfer]

Best: Skaventide

 

 

Worst: All non-Skaven battletomes

[Debello90]

CoS is a nice battletome, a lot of  good artefact and warscoll, but some of these are simply bad and usefull ( steam tank, executioners, freeguild infantry with lance...) and the battalion are bad exept Greywater and Hallowheart.

The worst batteltome are

1 Slaanesh and Ossiarch ( ultra OP )

2 Skaven and FEC ( OP )

3 Beast of Chaos and Stormcast ( bad ) 

[Rachmani]

I‘d say Gloomspite & KO are in my opinion how books should look like. 
The former beautifully combines a lot of different models (unlike Orruk Warclans), the latter with the new book rides on a strong vision and pretty unique playstyle without going overboard.

They‘re not perfect, aim for the right values & ideas.

Slaanesh & Bonereapers on the other hand are bonkers. With the latter at least having an interesting theme. Still they are the worst.

The aforementioned Orruks are super lazy.

An honorable mention goes to the CoS, for bringing a bunch of old stuff together & in more than just a super lazy way. I would have prefered new models etc. tough for such a vital part of the lore of AoS

[Lord Krungharr]

Of the ones I owned and played with in 2019, I'd say:

Best (with great fluff and unit variety and varietous competitiveness): Gloomspite, Skaventide, Khorne

Decent (with any fluff, meh unit variety with less varietous competitiveness) Cities of Sigmar, Beasts of Chaos 

Bad (regardless of fluff, regardless of unit variety) Stormcast (seems like you gotta take Sequitors, Evocators, and Ballistas to do anything there)

Needs a Battletome: Legion of Azgorh!  I had a greater win percentage with these guys than anything.

[Kitsumy]

On 1/17/2020 at 1:14 AM, JackStreicher said:

Bad - Idoneth: No unit variance, horrible internal balance (crappy rules), there‘s only two viable ways to play them, Artefacts are utter trash (trash of the oceans...) and the command abilities are also pretty bad, even the subfactions are only „meh“ - this needs a rewrite or a change to „Eeldoneth Derpkins“ - We only have three units: Soulscryers, Kings and Eeeels

Totally this, every relic, traith etc is totally useles. Magic is a joke too.

 

Every mini is bad, sure they are becoming better with every discount, but they are still bad warscrolls that need to be changed, i dont want a 200p turtle, i want a proper usefull 350p one. Even spears eels arent great now, new chaos chavalry does 50% more dmg with hugher rend and only cost 10p more....

 

They only have 1 usefull list, spaming only our usable mini, and still only are around 9-10th place, going lower with every tome. Im guessing will be around 11 after new ko and chaos.

 

So yes idk is in dire need a new tome with a proper balance ( not power jokes like slanesh, skaven,bonereaper etc) but with a sligthy internal balance and fun relics,magics, rituals etc

[Clan's Cynic]

On 1/17/2020 at 7:09 PM, Qaz said:

Background - I own KO and Fyreslayers armies since their respective release.

A true patrician. 

[Skreech Verminking]

On 1/18/2020 at 6:47 AM, DatHomieSilverSurfer said:

Best: Skaventide

 

 

Worst: All non-Skaven battletomes

I think I found myself a replacement for thanqoul. 

Edited January 19, 2020 by Skreech Verminking

[Painbringer]

Background: I will comment mostly the on armies that are used in my gaming group. I have 4 armies: Sylvaneth, Khorne, Beasts of Chaos and Slaves to Darkness. Sylvaneth and Khorne are the ones I ply the most, while BoC and StD are more like cool hobby projects (BoC army has a lot of converted models, while my StD is just Host of the Everchosen ). I play AoS with my 3 friends, who collect Stormcast, Cities of Sigmar, Ossiarch Bonereapers, Slaanesh and Flesh-Eater Courts. I read a few other battletomes as well, so I'm (somewhat) familiar with some other armies as well. We play mostly friendly matched play and narrative games, but we are aware of the meta. I will be mostly ranking battletomes based on number of options and playstyles thy offer and how interesting to play the army seems overall. 

The best: 

• Cities of Sigmar
• Beasts of Chaos

These battletomes offer multiple playstyles, cool rules that perfectly reflect the story behnd the faction, many different artifacts/CMD abilities, large number of miniatures to choose from (especially CoS) and insane potential for conversions.

Very good:

• Sylvaneth
• Khorne
• Idoneth Deepkin

Good:

• Ossiarch Bonereapers
• Stormcast Eternals
• Flesh-Eater Courts
• Slaves to Darkness
• Fyreslayers

Bad:

• Slaanesh (I'm perfectly aware how powerful Slaanesh is in tournament scene, but I find this battletome completely boring and miniatures are ugly as hell)

Edited January 19, 2020 by Painbringer

[Skreech Verminking]

Considering how many people have already given a slight overview and ranked the battletomes from good at winning tournaments to totally unbalanced, I’ll be giving a short review of a few battletomes about there fluff and how the factions represents that fluff on the battlefield.

although it will be just of a few tomes, since I either don’t own  or just haven’t had the time to study them.

The skaven:

Probably my favorite tome.

The lore is great, and will give you guys an extremely good explanation, of what the great clans are, what aspect they worship of their gods and how they scurry-run to war.

With the exception of a few units (like the doomflayer weapon team) the units are well represented on the battlefield.

Clanrats are the meathsield and probably the most commonly seen unit on the battlefield and so on.

The bigger problem with the book are probably the points costs and the restriction in using certain units as battleline.

The points costs for most units were already weird at the beginning.

Units like plague monks Or heroes like the Verminlord warpseer and Grey seers in total, were extremely cheap, considering that other options like Stormvermins, or Doomflayer, had and extrem.  cost that made them literally unplayable.

Although there has been a few changes with this specific cheap, most of this units have been increased in points, and there haven’t been too many changes for other units in the battletome, that could really use a points decrease, which sadly means the battletome is still in a state of fixing.

since the arrival of our book, pur battleline option for mixed skaven have nearly doubled.

from only being able to take clan-rats as battleline, we now have two options, the very expensive Stormvermins and the well kinda okish pricewise clanrats.

wanting to have anything else as a battleline option will often mean that a skavenplayer gas to restrict himself in playing only aa certain factions, which can give you some cool option, If you’re a truly devoted member of that single clan, but it will often result in us unable to play with other interesting and hellish toys.

So in total I guess I would call the battletome ok-ish.

Beasts of chaos:

I think we’ve all heard of the problem the beasts of chaos are suffering right now.

the book gives a huge amount of great lore to read, but when it comes down to the units, the lore seems to break at a certain points,

the big and brutish bullgors are known for slaughtering hundred of men in battle able to kill the biggest monster in their way, but on the battlefield, they won’t do any of those things, and mostly will literally just fail to hit their opponent at all. 

Gors for example have a similar problem, were this brutish and brutal beastmen, are being told to be able to slaughter through ranks of elves and men alike,  they usually just fail to do anything and even get slaughtered by their so called weaker counterpart the ungors.

not something that makes a gor lover happy.

the beastmen are a extremely fast army but unlike in the lore they hit like a wet noodle, which is in dire need of a few small warscrolls updates.

points-wise the army is probably not at a bad spot right now, but considering that bullgors and the doom-bull had be lowered to so few points, really telling a story of how some unit really are in dire need of an update.

So yeah allegiance ability or lore wise this book is extremely great,

the biggest problem it’s facing right now is basically that the units given to us are not even in the slightest bit doing what the battletome tells you they should be doing, so from a rating of 1-10 i would probably give it a 3.

Gloomspite Gitz:

Probably my favorite book (after the skaven) not only does it have some great fluff, that can be literally noticed when playing with your gloomy boys on the table, but also has some great rules.

they might not be the most competitive option, but can be a lote of fun for friend and foe on the battlefield. 

Like the skaven you can never be certain that your plan will be working.

Probably the best work Games workshop has brought out (after the skaven of course).

City of sigmar:

Great lore, great unit roster, and and huge option of variety makes the book probably loved by many players.

the problem we are facing here is basically that some units are unable to do what they are told to.

an example would be the drakespawn knights, who are the elite of the Clan serpentins and have taken the live of many chaos worshippers, which they don’t seem to represent on the battlefield at all, with their lack of attacks.

In any other case the books is probably great even though many units have received a slight nerv, although some of them might be seen as a huge buff.

If I had to rate the book I would probably give it a 7 out of 10.

Ogor mawtribes:

like the Skaven and the gloomspite gitz, this books represents your army  with a great amount of lore.

The unit roster are great and just like in the fluff each ogor is basically a one man army on the battlefield, able to slaughter toms of lesser beings.

In total it could be called an incredible work of art, that can only be overtrumped by the skaven and gitz.

[RuneBrush]

Best to worst 🤔 depends entirely on what you're looking for in an army really (including the type of event you play in) and what you as a general has a flare for playing.

[umpac]

Best: Gloomspite gitz. The book just oozes flavor. Rules are fun, Fluff is great. Fun to play both with and against, which to me should be the by far most important criteria. A little on the weaker side in terms of competitiveness but they're in a decent spot. 

Worst: OBR. Bad internal balance with most competitive lists looking fairly similar (this might be because the book is new though, and everyone is just net decking before they figure ****** out) and everyone playing petrifex and a bunch of morteks. Pretty stale to play with, and atrocious to play against if you don't have the right tools to deal with characters and harvesters and if you don't have the tools to get through their crazy defense. Might be too new to call, but from what I've seen so far its pretty bad.

 

Warclans and CoS were great books as well, but lacked coherency (WC def feels like 2 separate books).

[Scurvydog]

9 minutes ago, umpac said:

Best: Gloomspite gitz. The book just oozes flavor. Rules are fun, Fluff is great. Fun to play both with and against, which to me should be the by far most important criteria. A little on the weaker side in terms of competitiveness but they're in a decent spot. 

Worst: OBR. Bad internal balance with most competitive lists looking fairly similar (this might be because the book is new though, and everyone is just net decking before they figure ****** out) and everyone playing petrifex and a bunch of morteks. Pretty stale to play with, and atrocious to play against if you don't have the right tools to deal with characters and harvesters and if you don't have the tools to get through their crazy defense. Might be too new to call, but from what I've seen so far its pretty bad.

 

Warclans and CoS were great books as well, but lacked coherency (WC def feels like 2 separate books).

I agree on Gitz but will have to disagree on OBR and Warclans on some points.

OBR has plenty of options and playstyles, they also have nothing that prevents the opponent for doing any tactics or strategies unlike many other tomes. So this perception must really come from too much echo chambering in communities.

People say they are boring to play against, why? Only because of high saves? Many other books have standout units being a pain, in this case 1 legion and 1 unit (Mortek Guard) seems to grind the gears of people. But unlike Slaanesh they do not rob you of your turn to fight, in fact you can plan for all their moves as they have no shenanigans other than just being really good at the base rules.

Yes 1 legion is poorly balanced as all heck, but that does not just make it the worst book of all time as this thread seems to indicate, just a lot of salt it seems from people refusing to learn to fight the new thing, and be in old man yells at cloud mode instead.

I'd love for petrifex to be nerfed/removed though to get rid of this perception, as it really is a good book, with very cool fluff and also plenty of options, you can make a movement and cavalry foced list, you can bring some big monsters and named heroes, you can bring exploding battlelines, you can focus on artellery fire, tanky elites or fast elites, all are options! 

Then look at Warclans, for some reason mentioned a lot here as good, why? As an Ironjawz player I got 3 clans, instead of 6 options most others get. No terrain, no endless spells to stand out, not even a new hero from a box or something. There are only 3 non hero units, 2 of which basically does the same thing, the third also doing the same thing but a bit faster. Do you want a shooting IJ lisT? nope, want a heavy caster focus? nope bad idea. Want to use the new brute models? nope nothing supports them well, so even with only 3 units, internal balance is still poor, wow, and the narrative is not moving anywhere there really.

Anyway overall I have few tomes I find without any issues, but I find some really great elements of some and would like to point out the best and worst specific parts (despite otherp roblems there might be):

 

Best parts:

Fyreslayer lodges, while they do have standouts, they are still all cool and thematic and creates diversity of playstyles in a limited unit roster, which as mentioned somethink like Ironjawz allegiance completely fails at. Examples like a Magmadroth focused lodge with mount traits for all or the one where your small heroes can fight at the same time as nearby heroes and get more artifacts, so you can really doube down on having a small thematic elite force. 

Gitz and Ogors are both great and is indeed as some mention where the game would be in a healthy spot, Ogors did a much better job at giving the option to focus on specific parts of gutbusters or beastriders but also organic ways to mix them, which Warclans failed at. Gitz does this without using a clan/tribe mecahnic at all, for good and bad, I do prefer the Ogor way here I think with a happy middle ground.

Khorne, this book has it all with a lot of options and interesting units, building a list takes some planning and you need to use a lot of synergies, but if you do and execute well,  then the army can steamroll in a thematic way without being bonkers (expect when you get hit with 24+ mortal wounds from Skarbrand in 1 swing maybe).

 

Worst parts: 

Slaanesh just to beat a dead horse, even with the new FAQ it simply doubles down on the worst offenders and punishes the non meta lists, it brought down the external balance issue a little bit, while exaggerating the internal balance issue, which was a poor fix to an obviously broken primary mechanic of the tome. Except the new heroes which are great, the book lacks compelling and diverse battelines and elite units, with everything doing almost the same thing.

Fyreslayers again, which shows how a tome can be both good and bad we can just take a look at the battalions on offer, with many battalions in 2nd edition becoming increasingly mediocre, we see a standout which is 100% a pick and anything without is intentionally nerfing your army potential, you will have to knowlingly give yourself a handicap to play anything more diverse, which brings me to.

Bonereapers. As mentioned before there are good parts of this tome, calling it all bad is a mistake and saying no diversity is plain false with a big new range of units with most of them being completely viable on the table. However the subfactions are horribly balanced in such a degree it has created such a hate train you can hardly play the army in some communities without being treated like some kind of leper.

Sylvaneth as an dishonorable mention here, even though I do not play them myself, I play against them a lot and the army is just strangely disjointed and more annoying than anything. The Sylvaneth player has to carry all these terrain pieces around, any narrative table setup mission turns into arguing about room for those stupid trees and the entire book seems like a scheme to sell cheap china plastic woods. The main face of the former book and in part the new ones are the tree revenants, but you have no option to make them the main fighting force in any functional capacity and the new revenant hero buffs kurnoth hunters and not revenants, wow, completely puzzled here.

[Kasper]

18 minutes ago, Scurvydog said:

Then look at Warclans, for some reason mentioned a lot here as good, why? As an Ironjawz player I got 3 clans, instead of 6 options most others get. No terrain, no endless spells to stand out, not even a new hero from a box or something. There are only 3 non hero units, 2 of which basically does the same thing, the third also doing the same thing but a bit faster. Do you want a shooting IJ lisT? nope, want a heavy caster focus? nope bad idea. Want to use the new brute models? nope nothing supports them well, so even with only 3 units, internal balance is still poor, wow, and the narrative is not moving anywhere there really.

So because I can't make a magic heavy KO list the new tome is bad? Orruk Warclans changed Ironjawz big time (I don't play Bonesplitterz so can't really comment here) and made it a very viable and real army without having to rely on a single round where everyone had 10+ attacks due to Waagh stacking. 

I'll agree the different clans aren't super interesting, but that is largely due to how good Ethereal Amulet is. For me this ruins anything that locks me into picking a certain artefact or trait for my general. This isn't related to Ironjawz, but rather how GW decides to design their chambers/hosts/clans in every tome. I realize there must be a price to pay for getting additional bonuses, but I really wish they would redo Malign Socery artefacts, because a couple of them are simply way too strong and makes for some really poor matchups. I don't think many enjoy fighting a monster with a 3+ unrendable save when you can just spend a CP and reroll 1s. Some monters even get full reroll saves.

If the clan didn't lock my general, it would be very real - Deciding between -1 hit in first round plus a super interesting CA that lets me charge in the enemys charge phase vs. getting a free, non interruptable Hand of Gork spell off vs. being able to reroll charges and have Warchanters buff the entire army rather than a couple of select units.

The book gave Ironjawz so many new tools to play around with. Even with a limited amount of warscrolls, the army plays very differently depending on what units you field. This is much different than most other armies, that largely play the same even if you switch almost all the warscrolls for something else. There is no shooting in Ironjawz, but that doesn't mean it's bad. I think it's OK the different factions are actually different and not just reskinned. You can certainly go magic heavy with Wrath of Gork and tons of MSU Ardboyz units etc., or play Big Waagh and get access to their casters and build them for magic. You can make a Wurrgog Prophet +4 casting wizard with 2+ spells a turn, which includes his rather awesome warscroll spell plus a fight-last spell from the BS spell lore.

Could the Orruk Warclans tome be better? Sure, but couldn't every single tome? I had personally hoped Big Waagh would incentivize mixing Ironjawz and Bonesplitterz units more, but due to keywords IMO it is a matter of picking largely an Ironjawz army (from an IJ perspective) with a couple of Bonesplitterz support heroes sprinkled in.

 

Not related to above, but I find it rather amusing to look through the different replies in this thread and see how differently people look at the armies/tomes.  It is pretty interesting to read the people's different take on things. 

[chosen_of_khaine]

I don't know what people are talking about when they say the OBR tome has bad internal balance. Besides two useless heroes (Soulreaper and Vokmortian), you can bring literally anything in the book and not feel like you're intentionally handicapping yourself. I understand this is a function of having the generic battleline (and the faction as a whole) be powerful, but literally every unit has a role that it can play, with only some minor mismatches (Morgast vs Stalkers).

I should note, however, that my other primary AoS army is Idoneth, so basically any semblance of internal balance looks good to me...