Original Warbands Vs. Existing AoS Armies

[Saxon]

My group hasn't played much warcry yet but we have had a bit of a go at it and really enjoyed the game using the starter set models which seem fairly balanced. Im curious, what are peoples thoughts on the specific warcry warbands vs. The ones adapted from existing AoS armies? 

We have only played a couple of games with models from AoS armies and probably need far more to form an opinion but they seem very strong. What are others experiences with this? 

 

[Mirbeau]

5 hours ago, Saxon said:

My group hasn't played much warcry yet but we have had a bit of a go at it and really enjoyed the game using the starter set models which seem fairly balanced. Im curious, what are peoples thoughts on the specific warcry warbands vs. The ones adapted from existing AoS armies? 

We have only played a couple of games with models from AoS armies and probably need far more to form an opinion but they seem very strong. What are others experiences with this? 

 

Basically that, some of the AOS armies with cards are just better (on paper) than the warcry-specific cults in some scenarios. The new grand alliance books/abilities in the catacombs book might rebalance that for some scenarios at least, I haven't looked at the stats./abilities yet but they have been leaked so others may know if there have been changes made.

[Saxon]

8 hours ago, Mirbeau said:

Basically that, some of the AOS armies with cards are just better (on paper) than the warcry-specific cults in some scenarios. The new grand alliance books/abilities in the catacombs book might rebalance that for some scenarios at least, I haven't looked at the stats./abilities yet but they have been leaked so others may know if there have been changes made.

Interesting. I played just the one game against an idoneth list and there was just no chance of me dealing enough wounds to kill anything. 

Im disappointed GW has failed in this respect because the original warbands seem relatively balanced. 

Once again though, if they nerf or boost anything it's another set of cards that have to be purchased because they either intentionally or not write rules poorly. 

[someone2040]

I think games against the non-Warcry warbands are far more lop-sided than against the Warcry warbands.

They're a bit more planned and for lack of a better word 'samey'. The Warcry warbands tend to follow similar patterns of having the leader, grunts, slightly more elite grunts and a couple of specialist models. They're also all human based and tend for the most part to have similar statlines .

With the Sigmar warbands you can be facing anything from flying eels, low count Stormcast with toughness and wounds out the wazoo, flying crypt flayers with a ton of wounds with a bunch of big and little guys. They're just not really planned as warbands, so they can cause lop-sided games in particular with random scenarios.

 

I don't think they're going to be re-balanced either in the new grand alliance books. Could be wrong, but the few leaks I saw from them didn't seem like they changed anything on the existing cards. It looked more like incorporating more unit and leader types - which if anything likely pushes some of the Warcry warbands down a little further as they won't benefit from that.

 

That being said, our group plays Warcry pretty casually. I think the deployment and scenario dictate a lot more as to the strongness of a particular warband during a game than the warband itself. So I personally don't care about what I face, I think I just enjoy the Warcry warbands a bit more because they tend to be more interesting and have the more plainer statlines. 

Similar reason why I enjoy Mordheim, everyone is basically a human (or a skaven). You don't have Ogre or Chaos Warrior warbands rolling in and ruining the game by being so different (and when that stuff did start making it's way in the game becomes unbalanced! Funny that!)

[gabbi]

Besides the fact that AoS warbands may be unbalanced to start with, there's another factor that adds up in making Warcry warband against AoS warband a quite one sided game: the fact that most people usually don't have multiple boxes of any Warcry warband and so tend to play with the warband as 'out of the box' while the AoS ones are cherrypicked from a larger collection.

Not saying that AoS aren't more diverse and so prone to unbalance, just that the fact that they're often custom lists, while most of the times Warcry warbands are made of what's in the box adds up in making the comparison unfair.

[Dressedspring1]

My initial impression was that the AoS armies were WAY stronger than the warcry warbands because I was using the warcry bands out of the box, but when I built an untamed beasts band using one of the double boxes and adding in a mercenary I found that the warcry bands become significantly better to the point I’d say they’re comparable to most of the AoS armies. The problem with the out of the box warcry bands are that a significant amount of points are usually put into units that are really inefficient and bad points values and once you can drop those the strength of your warband goes way up. 
 

 

I still believe that shooting stormcast are way overpowered because of their damage projection though, but in general the AoS bands are in line with what you could get building a warcry band from scratch and using a mercenary 

[Kramer]

1 hour ago, Dressedspring1 said:

 

I still believe that shooting stormcast are way overpowered because of their damage projection though, but in general the AoS bands are in line with what you could get building a warcry band from scratch and using a mercenary 

Havent played it. But wouldn’t the catacombs rules with the walls mitigate that a bit more? 

[Dressedspring1]

On 10/26/2020 at 10:32 AM, Kramer said:

Havent played it. But wouldn’t the catacombs rules with the walls mitigate that a bit more? 

Couldn’t say for sure as I also haven’t played it, but one would think so

[Lhurgoyf]

On 10/26/2020 at 7:44 AM, gabbi said:

Besides the fact that AoS warbands may be unbalanced to start with, there's another factor that adds up in making Warcry warband against AoS warband a quite one sided game: the fact that most people usually don't have multiple boxes of any Warcry warband and so tend to play with the warband as 'out of the box' while the AoS ones are cherrypicked from a larger collection.

Not saying that AoS aren't more diverse and so prone to unbalance, just that the fact that they're often custom lists, while most of the times Warcry warbands are made of what's in the box adds up in making the comparison unfair.

Yup. Most of the Warcry warbands are really good if you buy 2 boxes and ditch the weakest units, but I don't think many people do that. It's hard to justify when they don't expand to a larger army. (At least Untamed Beasts are solid in AOS)

I think some people's perceptions are also colored by the starter box having Iron Golems in it. Out of the box IG is just tough to win with against any specialized force. A second box lets you run 2 Drillmasters and a few more legionairres which totally changes things. Even then its still the weakest of the original 6 and its the poster child warband so I think the most people have it. 

Edited October 29, 2020 by Lhurgoyf

[Orkmann]

We have played quite a lot Warcry in our gaming group last fall. We enjoy the competitive aspect of wargaming, so our initial approach was the same for Warcry as well: we tried to optimize our lists, trying all type of warbands, a few with extra boxes etc.

In my experince, even if you have the extra box, only the Untamed Beasts and Corvus Cabal are the ones which are competitive vs an average AoS warband.  But if you look at the strongest ones like Ogors, Skaven or Vanguard, they are still pretty weak.

The lack of balance was a main factor for us to lose interest in the game. The comeback point for us was when we decided to let the compatitive aspect go, at least from list building perspective - so we dont put 2 rocktusk to UB, for instance. We have switched back to playing one-box chaos warbands and I think the game is the most fun this way.

I have preordered the catacombs as well, at first look both new bands fit to the same power level, so I am looking to have some new games 🙂 we might even test some of the powerful builds as well, because the new setting will limit shooting quite a lot, which is a much needed change imo

 

edit:typo

Edited October 31, 2020 by Orkmann