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Cities of Sigmar in AoS 3


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20 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Yeah, not a lot of buzz about them right now, but Cities of Sigmar is definitely still a solid book. Probably not tier 1, but they can definitely hang in tier 2, from a competitive perspective.

I think they belong in the conversation for tier 1.

20 hours ago, KydbrookP said:

Out of interest, what do you find is working well for you? Any unexpected standout units?

I'm not sure about unexpected, but I think there are a few shells that work well.

Anvilgard is going to revolve around Vitriolic Spray and units that can really take advantage of it. So either Krondys or a couple of Sorceresses, either Darkshards or Freeguild Crossbowmen and whatever else. The main weakness here is any opponent that can aggressively snipe your casters makes the list pretty weak.

For Tempest Eye I run an Irondrake package backed up Krondys, Drakespawn Knights etc. I think Drakespawn Knights are probably the closest thing to an unexpected standout unit.

I've been experimenting most with Living City and have tried a bunch of different things, but it always involves at least some Fulminators and Freeguild Crossbowmen. Usually I run either 4 or 8 Fulminators, 40-50 crossbows, a phoenix, a freeguild general, a sorceress and a unit of dreadspears.

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8 hours ago, JackStreicher said:

It’s a pity Darkshards have such a low range xD

 

I suppose, but at least it makes them distinct from all the other options. I kinda like that cities has four different ranged units that all manage to function differently. Darkshards have shorter weapon range, but their effective threat range is very good and they are the most mobile choice.

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Warding Brand vs Dagger of Jet:

So I throw warding brand on a hero, that hero then goes in to have a go at Nefirata,  Nef has the dagger of Jet, if she gets a hit, then after damage she rolls a 5+ and my hero is slain. Let's say my hero had 10 wounds left.

In the core rules the definition of slain is when a model has obtained the same amount of wounds as there wounds characteristic.

So.. Would you agree then that by definition when nef slayed my 10 wound hero then he must have taken 10 wounds and therefore gets to role his 10 dice for mortals wounds as per the Warding Brand spell ?

Or does he just get removed and the remaining wounds do not count as being taken, therefore no mortal wounds throw for my hero?

What's the opinion out there for this?

 

Edited by Thugmullet
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2 hours ago, Thugmullet said:

Warding Brand vs Dagger of Jet:

So I throw warding brand on a hero, that hero then goes in to have a go at Nefirata,  Nef has the dagger of Jet, if she gets a hit, then after damage she rolls a 5+ and my hero is slain. Let's say my hero had 10 wounds left.

In the core rules the definition of slain is when a model has obtained the same amount of wounds as there wounds characteristic.

So.. Would you agree then that by definition when nef slayed my 10 wound hero then he must have taken 10 wounds and therefore gets to role his 10 dice for mortals wounds as per the Warding Brand spell ?

Or does he just get removed and the remaining wounds do not count as being taken, therefore no mortal wounds throw for my hero?

What's the opinion out there for this?

A model is slain when taking as many wounds as its wound characteristic, which does not prevent reaching the slain status in other ways.

So he doesn't get to save for that.

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On 10/20/2021 at 6:51 AM, swarmofseals said:

I think they belong in the conversation for tier 1.

I could honestly be convinced. I went with tier 2 because Cities have lots of solid, fair options, but not necessarily anything that is game-warpingly strong, in my opinion. Last time I checked, Cities had a solidly above average tournament performance, on par with other armies that play a fundamentally fair game (a bit below Gravelords in overall win rate, I think), but it's hard to know how reliable that is as an indicator of actual faction strength, since Cities lends itself to "role playing" builds more than perhaps any other army.

I think the biggest strength of Cities is the frankly insane amount of options you get. As if having one of the largest pools of units in your faction was not enough, you also get to play with the best units of most other Order factions and you can pick and choose whatever allegiance abilities are the best for your list.

Currently, I think the biggest obstacle that Cities faces is that, while in AoS 2nd, the often fairly bad stat lines of Cities units were managable through buff stacking, that is no longer an option in AoS 3rd. It's not back breaking, but it means that many native CoS units are a bit on the weak side now.

Potential build diversity is really good, though, and there are even a few lists that seem like they could have potential but that currently seem to be under-explored competitively, like Hallowheart (which has fallen out of favour since when the book was first released), Settler's Gain (which can bring a lot of powerful Lumineth shennenigans to the table and now in 3rd does not have an artefact problem anymore) or even Excelsis (which has dice cheating). The new Stormcast models are bound to have an impact, too.

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@Neil Arthur Hotep personally I don't put a ton of stock in the Cities overall tournament results given that it's so easy to make a bad list with this faction and there's a huge difference between highly tuned lists and unfocused ones.

I'm not sure that I agree about the buff stacking point. To me the strength of Cities is the ability to pick a set of battle traits that plays well to the metagame and maximizes a coherent line of attack. Buffs are part of that picture, but far from the whole picture.

For me it still comes down pretty heavily toward Anvilgard, Tempest Eye, Living City and Hallowheart. The others certainly do things, but they aren't nearly as interesting.

Anvilgard has a huge trump card to play in a metagame that has tons of armor. That's basically the reason to play it, but it is a huge reason for sure.

Tempest Eye is the best shell for a bridge list because of the added turn 1 durability and mobility. If a bridge alpha is a strong game plan in the meta, then Tempest Eye is a great place to be.

Living City is the trump against fragile alpha strikes, especially shooting alphas. You basically are guaranteed to shoot first.

Hallowheart trumps magic in that it can both cast through substantial bonuses to unbind and do well against opposing magic regardless of opposing casting bonuses.

Each of these cities has a set of abilities that can really push well in a given metagame as long as you design your list carefully.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Ive heard a lot of chatter about “Dawnbringer Crusades” recently and its got me wondering about my largely unpainted dark elf collection (now coven, scourge, serpentis, shadowblades).  I think these are all still awesome models (looking at you Kharibdryss 🔥) but the units take me a long time to paint.  Tbh in my excitement with the new edition and SC tome they have languished at the back of a cupboard.  My thinking was “i’ll get back to them.”

Tonight it hit me though, what if they dont make it into a new tome?  Once they slip into legends, they are unlikely to find table time locally. Then im going to be even less inclined to paint them.  In a panic, i started throwing paint on Corsairs this evening… got to get them painted before they are retired!!!

So, i guess i want to gauge peoples opinions:

Do we think the dawnbringers will include COS entirely, partially, or not at all?  

Do we expect another group of models to move to Legends as happened when the Cities tome was released?

Do you think the cities tome will be allowed to fade into oblivion, rather than being retired or replaced?

 

personally, im fine with fading into oblivion with a suboptimal, but cool looking army.  Worst case scenario for me would be legends.

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Given that now the Stormcast book lets you incorporate CoS into your army and given the amount of extra stuff they've handed CoS since their book dropped I'd be surprised for it to be gone in the short term. Most likely I wouldn't expect GW to release any sort of "dawnbringer" army without an accompanying wave of miniatures to ride the hype. Whether it will be an expansion to CoS, replaces some of its range, or another army entirely I would also be surprised if CoS, Stormcasts and 'dawnbringers' aren't integrated somewhat, because this is consistent with how they've handled it so far and because it sells more kits.

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With what has been said about Dawnbringer Crusades so far, I expect one of 2 things to occur.

Option1: New "Cities of Sigmar" book, possibly re-named to the "Dawnbringer Crusades".  If this occurs, I would expect a straight upgrade from a 2.0 book to a 3.0 book, with updated warscrolls, but I wouldn't expect much in the way of new models.

Option 2: The "Dawnbringer Crusades" as a series of events, similar to the broken realms series.  Here we aren't getting a new book specifically for the cities, but we get rules for new cities, or crusade rules, or something along those lines.  Maybe after that series we get a new cities of sigmar book.

Going from the lore that has been already stated (here: https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/06/09/fancy-a-new-life-bringing-order-to-the-mortal-realms-join-a-dawnbringer-crusade-today/), "Setting out from the established Cities of Sigmar, Dawnbringer Crusades are military expeditions of would-be pioneers", and "The battles fought to defend the town are constant and hard-won, and few survive to see their work completed, but all hope that their settlement will become the next true City of Sigmar."

Basically, we can see that they aren't looking to get rid of the Cities of Sigmar.  They are however looking at ways that you can go out and "build your own city", and expand that narrative.  But I highly doubt that they are going to squat the remaining cities anytime soon.

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19 hours ago, OG SCE said:

Do we think the dawnbringers will include COS entirely, partially, or not at all?  

Do we expect another group of models to move to Legends as happened when the Cities tome was released?

Do you think the cities tome will be allowed to fade into oblivion, rather than being retired or replaced?

I expect Dawnbringer Crusades to bring a refresh of the Freeguild model line (at least the worst offenders) and an expansion of the Cities of Sigmar human subfactions. At the very least, I am fairly sure we will see Order of Azyr/Witch Hunter models. I could also see new Ironweld and Collegiate Arcane stuff.

I do not expect any of the current Cities models to go to legends any time soon. But I could see Cities getting more split up over time like Legions of Nagash was: Have an interim period where Legions can run Nighthaunt units, then split off a few units into the Bonereapers book, then redo Legions as a different faction (Gravelords) and make the division final. It is rumoured that Malerion and United Dwarves will come this summer. If so, Dark Elves might become Malerion coallition units, and Dispossessed might go with United Dwarves. At that point, the only distinct subfactions in Cities are Phoenix Temple, Wanderers and the human factions. Wanderers might be reintegrated with Sylvaneth at some point, at which point Dawnbringer Crusades could become human focussed and cleanly split the current Cities faction up. Phoenix Temple can join Dawnbringers.

Alternatively, Cities might be kept around as a sort of Grand Alliance: Order replacement. The current design points towards this direction, with Cities having the possibility of running a lot of soupy lists and the ability to pull in coallition units from most Order factions. That could well be GW's long term plan for Cities of Sigmar: They are not necessarily a super-distinct faction of their own, but rather a way to play all your favourite Order stuff together (with some limitations that make them easier to balance than actual GA: Order).

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17 hours ago, NauticalSoup said:

Unless they do something really crazy with the release I'd expect Dawnbringer Crusades to be to CoS what Stormhosts are to Stormkeeps.

Based on the lore we have from the core book I really don't see how they can be anything other than a Cities version of Stormkeeps/Scions. The cities themselves are too deep in the lore to remove at this point. 

 

My real concern is are they going to purge models again. The fluff keeps mostly being human centric with what feels aelves and duardin being thrown in as a courtesy. It would really suck to lose access to the units that still remain just so they can update the human line (which is what I expect they'll do). 

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42 minutes ago, Pariah7echo said:

My real concern is are they going to purge models again. The fluff keeps mostly being human centric with what feels aelves and duardin being thrown in as a courtesy. It would really suck to lose access to the units that still remain just so they can update the human line (which is what I expect they'll do). 

Although the fluff for Dawnbringers mentions elves and dwarves as well, I'm pretty sure. At least I am positive that it mentions Kharadron overlords being majorly involved.

---

On a different note: Seeing the new Stormcast Knight-Judicator spam list, I have been wondering if there is any gas in Cities of Sigmar mortal wounds spam. Basically, just overloading the opponent with d3 mortal wounds abilites from a lot of sources, instead of just the occasional little sprinkle of mortals you usually get.

I have been looking at Settler's Gain to make that work. Cities can bring quite a few good mortal wound spells, and Settler's Gain gives +1 to cast. You can build a Hurricanum that is two casts, +2 to cast, rerolling. That would allow you to use Storm of Shemtek (up to 3d3 mortals)+Chain Lightning (1d3 mortals)+Comet of Casandora (d3/d6 mortals) fairly reliably and all in the same turn. They all have a range of 18", so that's fairly decent.

You can further lean into a magic build by running extra battlemages. Ghur gets +1 to cast at the moment, and provides a nice +2 to run and charge spell. Include The Burning Head for 20 points, and he can easily cast that most turns on a +3 or +4. Aqshi gets Fireball, which is a horde killer spell. A Luminark with Battlemage can use its laser cannon for d3 mortals in a line and Burning Gaze for another horde killer spell. Settler's Gain has access to both the Arcane Tome and another +1 to cast artefact, so the Luminark can be a 2 cast wizard, as well.

The weakness of mortal wounds spam should in theory be hordes. You can add in a bunch of Gyrocopters to help out in this regard. They have their horde killer steam guns and add another d3 mortals per model into the mix once per game.

Settler's Gain allows you to take Lumineth Units as coallition, so you can help yourself to those as well. Maybe you want Ellania and Ellathor for their teleportation shennenigans and mortals wound beam. Or the Light of Eltharion, who also gets a nice mortal wound shooting ability. Or the Loreseeker to help with objective play and to add another wizard to the army. Or just a bunch of Sentinels.

As for troops, if you are already bringing the Ghur mage, you can add a unit of Greatswords to your list. They deal mortal wounds on 6s to hit in addition and have generally high damage output. They usually struggle to get into combat, but +2 to run and charge help a lot with that.

Running two buff wagons and two Battlemages gives you 6 casts per hero phase at +1 or better (sometimes much better!). I think that is competitive even against mega-casters. Might be a fun core to explore if you bought that Broken Realms Xintil War-Magi box, because you can easily build all those models out of that box.

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How does the 1 in 4 Coalition thing work.

Do I need to have four units and one of them can be from the Coalition or can I not have more than one per four units? Like if I have a list with only 3 units can 1 of those 3 be Coalition or do I need a minimum of 4?

I'm trying to build a 750pt list for an Excalation league and I don't understand.

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22 minutes ago, Yziel said:

How does the 1 in 4 Coalition thing work.

Do I need to have four units and one of them can be from the Coalition or can I not have more than one per four units? Like if I have a list with only 3 units can 1 of those 3 be Coalition or do I need a minimum of 4?

I'm trying to build a 750pt list for an Excalation league and I don't understand.

My understanding is you need a minimum of 4 units for one of them to be coalition.

In Living Cities the SCE and Sylvaneth count separately, so you can have 2 Cities units, 1 SCE and 1 Sylvaneth. Not sure if this works the same for other cities who have non SCE coalitions.

Also, with the 3.0 coalition rules you can no longer have usually have a coalition general, so your general needs to be a cities unit.

Edited by EntMan
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28 minutes ago, Yziel said:

How does the 1 in 4 Coalition thing work.

Do I need to have four units and one of them can be from the Coalition or can I not have more than one per four units? Like if I have a list with only 3 units can 1 of those 3 be Coalition or do I need a minimum of 4?

I'm trying to build a 750pt list for an Excalation league and I don't understand.

1/4 units can be stormcast coalition.  In some cities, 1/4 units can be another coalition.  How does this work in practice?

If you have 3 units, all 3 must be from the cities.  Once you get to 4 units, things change.  Now you can have 1/4 units be stormcast coalition.  If you are say, tempest eye, then 1/4 units can be Kharadron Overlords.  And 1/4 units can be allies.  This means that if we were to ignore battleline requirements, we could have an army that consists of 1 Cities unit, 1 Stormcast unit, 1 KO unit, and 1 Idoneth Deepkin unit (ally).  The allies are restricted by point value, but the coalition units aren't.  Note here that this means that if you want to run Krondy's AND Karazi in your army, you can - as long as you have at least 8 units total, even though those 2 models are 1200 points of your army.

Now, lets say we go to 5 units.  We still have the 1/4 requirements, so the 5th unit has to be a cities unit.  Same for the 6th unit and the 7th unit.  However, once we get to 8 units, once again we get extra coalition space, so now we only have to have 2 cities units, and can have 2 Stormcast, 2 KO, and 2 allied.  Once again, allies are restricted in point value, but the coalition units aren't.

Basically, you can break it down to the following:

0-3 units: no coalition allowed

4-7 units:
0-1 Stormcast Coalition allowed
0-1 "other" coalition allowed (city dependent)
0-1 allies (points capped)

8-11 units:
0-2 Stormcast Coalition allowed
0-2 "other" coalition allowed (city dependent)
0-2 allies (points capped)

12-15 units:
0-3 Stormcast Coalition allowed
0-3 "other" coalition allowed (city dependent)
0-3 allies (points capped)

Now, for some final things about coalition. 

Your general cannot be coalition.  This means that you can never take a Stormcast hero as your general (except for the Explicit exception of Aventus Firestrike in Hammerhall...).  Your coalition hero's CAN take artefacts, spells, and prayers from the cities.  Allied hero's cannot take artefacts, and do not gain benefits from spell lore's or prayers.

Coalition units cannot be battleline.  This means that if you take a squad of Vindictors, they do not count as battleline for your city.  HOWEVER - they do maintain the battleline keyword, which means that you can still reinforce them twice.  So if you wanted to, you can take a block of 15 vindictors in your army, but you still need 3 other battleline units at 2k points.

What does this all boil down to?

At 1k points, you are required to take a Cities hero and 2 cities battleline units.  At 2k points, you are required to take a cities hero and 3 cities battleline units.  After all of that, you can consider bringing additional cities units, or you can bring coalition units, as long as you follow the requirements listed above.

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Thank you so much both of you. Super clear now.

I'm kind of in a "make a list quick with what you have available" kind of situation so I think what I've come up with is legal.

Living City 750pt

*Battle Regiment* - Vendetta Grand Strategy
Runelord (Genera)
Arcane Tome, Master of Magic, Curse, Lifebloom

10 Irondrakes (Honoured Retinue)
Torpedo, Banner, Hornblower

10 Irondrakes
Torpedo, Banner, Hornblower

Drycha Hamadreth (Coalition)
Ironoak Skin

 From what I can understand this is legal?

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2 hours ago, Yziel said:

Thank you so much both of you. Super clear now.

I'm kind of in a "make a list quick with what you have available" kind of situation so I think what I've come up with is legal.

Living City 750pt

*Battle Regiment* - Vendetta Grand Strategy
Runelord (Genera)
Arcane Tome, Master of Magic, Curse, Lifebloom

10 Irondrakes (Honoured Retinue)
Torpedo, Banner, Hornblower

10 Irondrakes
Torpedo, Banner, Hornblower

Drycha Hamadreth (Coalition)
Ironoak Skin

 From what I can understand this is legal?

Ish.  The only problem with your list is something that you need to run past your organizer.

If you are following the rules for Narrative Play (path to glory) or using the Matched Play battlepack out of the core rulebook, there is a rule that says a single unit in your army cannot exceed 50% of the points for your army.  Note here that this rule doesn't exist for matched play out of the generals handbook.  But with Drycha coming in at 330 points, that exceeds the 325 points for the 50% of the army.

It is likely that your organizer will go "yeah, that's not a problem", especially as drycha is literally 5 points over that limit.  However, it is probably something that you want to run past your group organizer just to make sure that there are no complaints.

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26 minutes ago, readercolin said:

Ish.  The only problem with your list is something that you need to run past your organizer.

If you are following the rules for Narrative Play (path to glory) or using the Matched Play battlepack out of the core rulebook, there is a rule that says a single unit in your army cannot exceed 50% of the points for your army.  Note here that this rule doesn't exist for matched play out of the generals handbook.  But with Drycha coming in at 330 points, that exceeds the 325 points for the 50% of the army.

It is likely that your organizer will go "yeah, that's not a problem", especially as drycha is literally 5 points over that limit.  However, it is probably something that you want to run past your group organizer just to make sure that there are no complaints.

We are using the Contest of Generals Battlepack so I guess I'll have to check.

 

EDIT: Actually you typoed the math I think 50% of 750 is 375 and Drycha is less than that.

Edited by Yziel
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1 hour ago, Yziel said:

We are using the Contest of Generals Battlepack so I guess I'll have to check.

 

EDIT: Actually you typoed the math I think 50% of 750 is 375 and Drycha is less than that.

Hey now, I can totally math... I swear... ::whistles innocently::

That being said, Contest of Generals does have that rule of units must be less than 50% of the cost.  Basically this means that if you reinforce those irondrakes, you can't reinforce them twice until you get to 1k points.  Additionally, you can't bring a stardrake until you get to 1k points, or the new stormcast dragons till you get to 1200, or alarielle until you get to 1500.  Everything else is going to be open game.

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With dawnbringers I could see the return of priests of Sigmar & the war alter in some form.

I would like to see the ability to create your own city: pick a realm, select an artifact from a table, select a coalition (not counting SCE), select 2 wide rules/ abilities. Of course there would be caveats.

I strongly believe that the way cities currently unlocks “special” troops needs to be redone. Heroes should unlock special troops, not general. This would allow for a more eclectic army should the player decide.    
also let’s face it, the current coalition rules are stifling 

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Going off the 1/4 discussion above, is there anything saying Har Kuron can't ally with Daughters of Khaine to essentially game the 1/4 rules, i.e if I have 4 units, can I have 2 Cities units, 1 DoK coalition unit and 1 DoK ally unit? 

Edited by Jaskier
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