AoS 3 - how does your army fare?

[Enoby]

With AoS 3's rules upon us, we can now look at how our armies are shaping up in the new edition. Instead of keeping everything secluded to faction threads, I thought it would be a good opportunity to create a thread with the purpose of looking at the specific rules interactions with factions, and what you think. 

It's a good opportunity to not just share your thoughts on your faction and air any grievances, but also check on how your opponents are shaping up and perhaps any new contenders for the top tables. 

It could also be a good opportunity to discuss any specific faction interactions that may make no sense, or perhaps you think still need sorting.

I created one on Slaanesh a little while ago, and I've updated it here:

Spoiler

Command points

Command points are now not something that can be stored, but are now much easier to generate. The ways we currently know that are generic to all factions are getting 1 or 2 at the beginning of the round (whether you go first or second), an extra 1 here when the general is on the battlefield, they can also get 1 point from heroic inspiration either on a 4+ or a 2+ (easier when the general is alive). Finally, you can get a command point from the warlord battalion or the command entourage battalion. This means, in a single battle round, any army (going first) can get 6 (1 for the turn, 1 for the general, 2 for getting heroic inspiration off twice, and 2 for taking both battalions and gaining both points on the same turn). If we are realistic, heroic inspiration will only go off one out of two times (with the general alive), and we will only count one battalion because it's unlikely someone would burn both command points at once, if they even take two battalions at all. So realistically, an army is getting between 2 and 4 (based on whether they want to take the battalion and whether they want to spend their hero abilities on trying to get a command point).

On its own, looking outside of hosts, Slaanesh doesn't have much in the way of command point generation. But if we take a look at the invaders host, that all changes. The invaders host opens up three ways to get command points: rod of misrule, glory hog, and a general dying. Not only that, having three generals means we have three chances to not have our general die; in addition, if one general does die then we get the benefit of improved heroic inspiration as well as keeping the command point from having a general. Finally, Dexcessa gives a free command point effectively. The absolute maximum we can get in a battle round when going first is 14+2 free ( for the turn, 1 for the general, 2 for getting heroic inspiration off twice, and 2 for taking both battalions and gaining both points on the same turn, rod of misrule gives 3, glory hog procs both turns for 2, and all three generals die + Dexcessa's free point). We should not aim or expect this at all; this is totally unrealistic and probably means something has gone wrong if it happens. If we look at it realistically, in a turn with Dex where we are looking for command points (and remember, it will be a choice - we have control of how many we want to try to go for), we will probably get 7-8+free (1 for general, 1 for turn, 1 for rod of misrule, 2 for Glory Hog - enemies will be dying left and right, more on this later - 1 for the battalion, 1 for heroic inspiration, possibly one for a general death, and the free one from Dex). If we are not looking for command points (if we just don't seem to need them this turn), we should get 5+2 free.

This means that our turns where we are not going out of our way to get any extra command points, we gain pretty much as many command points as a normal army who is trying their hardest to get as many CP as possible. 

Please note, Glory Hog triggers at the end of combat which means for the last round it can only be spent on inspiring presence or Syll'Esske's ability. Basically, it's some battleshock immunity for free on the last turn of the round. 

Final opinion: Excellent in Invaders, Average in other hosts

New command abilities

Of course, we could get as many points as we want, but that won't matter if we can't use them on anything useful. 

The generic command abilities known/predicted are: All Out Attack, All out Defence, Inspiring Presence, At the Double, Forward to Victory, Unleash Hell, and Redeploy. I'll go through each of these.

It is important to note that, when we're getting 7 command abilities in invaders to use a battle round, we can pick and choose what we'd like here 

All out attack: This one is really nice for our troops, especially Twinsouls. A unit of 10 of them will output the following on average: 9.7 vs 2+, 19.4 vs 3+, 29 vs 4+, 38.8 vs a 5+, 48.5 vs a 6+, and 58 vs a -. Combined with the shardspeaker, we can get +1 to hit and +1 to wound - this means daemonettes having 2 attacks at 3/3/-1/1, and importantly can be summoned in and still benefit from these buffs. Great command ability, especially when concerning the blissbarb archers - a unit of 33 of them with 2 attacks each at 3/3/-1/1 in the shooting phase so it doesn't stop it in the combat phase? Yes please

All out defence: This one isn't quite as good for us, but that doesn't mean bad at all. It means we can get some nice defence against shooting units. With Dexcessa, we can act like they have a 3+ save in the combat phase unless we choose not to (or to give it to someone else). As mentioned in the article, painbringers on a 3+ rerolling save is very nice, and they can actually hit back unlike chaos warriors, but putting chaos warriors on a 3+ rerolling save isn't a bad idea at all. And of course Glutos will be a massive tank as always, with that -1 to hit adding to that annoyingness to budge.

Inspiring presence: In all honestly, this one has the chance to hurt us, but it hurts everyone. However we can't deny that our mortal units struggle with poor bravery values. However, on the other hand, we do have a few ways around bravery: Glutos's third battle round, Syll'Esske, Dexcessa, and Battle Rapture. Battle rapture is really good because it gives you knowledge before arriving at the battleshock phase, so you know what to save for. Syll'Esske can definitely benefit from the smaller board size too as they'll get more in their bubble, and we get a tonne of command points so we can always keep one spare. If we're honest, Dex's ability is a bit useless unless you're running very large blocks of daemonettes and don't want to risk the banner. Glutos takes more time to get going so isn't super reliable. 

At the double: this is fine... we have a few options to run and charge, but not that many to be honest. The one key use I can see it for is for Dex to give it to themselves for a lovely 18" flying move for a big flank

Forward to victory: As good as it ever was, though only being able to use it once does provide a niche use for scarlet cavalcade as it allows the more units to benefit. A nerf if we can only use it once, but not one I'm particularly worried about for reasons we'll go into later, as well as many of our units getting rerolling charge for free anyway

Unleash hell: there are only three units that really benefit from this for us - Synessa, Blissbarb Archers, and Blissbarb Seekers. Other than that, this one could really hurt us depending on the army. Us taking some big damage before we can even get into combat means we're going to have to be really careful about what we charge. On the other hand. if we have faith in Dexcessa, they can charge over a screen and put an end to the shooting unit so they stop doing it. It is very important to consider the Masque here as she keeps that lovely 6" pile in and so can tie up troublesome shooters. 

Redeploy: this is interesting, but I think we need to know a bit more before really giving a full idea on it. It increases a charge by d6" effectively; it hurts us, but we can get so close to most units that it shouldn't bother us too much. It could also be helpful, but besides trying to rescue a hero out of shooting LoS I think this could be pretty niche. 

Important to note is that, from all of our info we have, units can use their own command abilities on themselves so the penalty from invaders may not matter than much if the generals do end up getting too close, but try to avoid this. 

Overall, these command abilities are looking nice for us. They're not quite as good as a double pile in, but we won't always have a keeper and sometimes we need to kill something first pile in so an immediate +1 to hit is better. In addition, the +1 to save not being locked behind Lurid Haze is very nice as it gives us more options. I should note that these command abilities are good for pretty much everyone, except factions that have access to similar things already. However, in Invaders as we've discussed we can cherry pick the best command ability at every phase and use pretty much what we want, allowing us to be very adaptive.

Final opinion: Very good in Invaders, average in other hosts

Endless spells

While we currently cannot comment on the generic endless spells, we can look at our own. First things first, every faction who can use endless spells will benefit from this - more damage and more control is better, after all! However, we have two advantages that others do not: our allegiance ability directly benefits from all endless spells activate in the hero phase. While most other factions just get some extra damage, we now get depravity points from these endless spells where we often didn't before as it was not in a phase that they did damage, and we get double the chance to do damage. In addition to that, so long as it remains unchanged, we have the Wheels of Excruciation. This is major: let's say that an opponent has four units within 12" of each other (very likely to happen for reasons we'll go into later); we run across them, almost certainly do 1 damage at least, get to do this twice, for 8 depravity - also known as a unit of fiends for free. 

Final opinion: Very good

Coherency

Let's get this out of the way, fiends are hurt by this unless understrengthing a unit is better than previously. However, on the whole this benefits us in two major ways. Besides daemonettes and marauders, we rarely used any units at a large size, and both of these are on 25mm bases and so are less hurt by coherency because they can reach over ranks. Twinsouls are good because they have that 2" reach, allowing them to get 10 in easily while still remaining in coherency. 

Importantly we often lack in defence besides a few units, so large units not being able to attack before we get to attack them is very important. 

Final opinion: Good

Reinforcement points

Overall, I don't think these hurt us very much. We don't have some unit that we want spam and we can get around these restrictions through summoning. Also, we won't be hit as often by mega buffed large hordes, which always used to hurt us.

More importantly, like coherency, this pushes people towards MSU and we just love that. With endless spells and even chariots, we can share pain around a lot of units to get big depravity every turn. I reckon we can quite easily earn a KoS every turn without really trying for it

Final opinion: Very good

Hero abilities

These benefit everyone, but many armies don't have a good hero/monster option. For example, Tzeentch can heal their Lord of Change but that's pretty minor when they don't really have much of a combat role. A Bloodthirster can have a Their Finest Hour, but they only have a 10" move so can't always determine a charge (more on this later). Like before, we'll go through each hero ability. 

Heroic leadership: as mentioned, good in invaders where we can have a dead general and keep our current general. Mostly to be used if we calculate we need more command points - the filler ability. 

Heroic willpower: we're unlikely to need this, and tbh it's a bit of a nerf as we don't want to lose our endless spells and this makes it easier to do 

Their finest hour: you have to love this on any of hour fast heroes, probably best used on the KoS (who has dumped their artefact for a +1 if we have a spare, or just used a +1 to hit command ability) before it first turn charges the enemy lines, but also great on late game Dex and Sigvald when he gets himself in there. Very very nice for us 

Heroic recovery: we have very good healing already, but one of Glutos's main drawbacks is that you need a daemon to come along with him to give him a hand, which isn't always reliable. Now, if you will Glutos to survive he will do so. Healing 2d3 a battleround with a 3+ (or 2+ save), - 1 to hit him, and a 5+ ward? Yes please. Also helps keep Sigvald alive - with his 4+ ward save, each of his wounds is worth 2 effectively, so this means every healed wound is also worth 2. Also, our heroes all have high bravery so no need to worry there - Glutos is in range of himself

Overall, we can make good use of these and like command abilities they give us more options. Our battletome doesn't have many inbuilt choices, but that's now supplemented by these.

Overall opinion: Good

Monster abilities

Unlike some factions, all of our in book monsters are also heroes, so we gain double the benefit. Of the monsters we have access to, the Keeper and Dex are both reasonably priced and do good damage now we can buff them a lot. Archaon is an absolute tank and murder machine, but what's new. 

Roar: this will hurt us a lot, in all honesty, but we have the speed to try avoid or tie up monsters. We really like command abilities, so being able to be denied them is going to hurt (esp on the double pile in). That said, we can only be hit by this once per turn, so there's not a massive issue, and we can use it on others if we're worried about them using a command ability 

Stomp: Nice and basic. It helps up the damage of some of our monsters, and as has been mentioned before, Synessa can overwatch for D6 MWs and then stomp of D3 which can finish some units off outright. Also nice to drop a stomp on a unit that we won't attack to rack in depravity 

 Titanic Duel: probably hurts more than it helps we we usually have good to hit values compared to most monsters, and we can get +1 to hit through a few other ways. Our monsters also don't do well when slugged in the face, but at least our commonplace -1 to hit can help mitigate this

Smash to rubble: because of our speed, and especially Dexcessa, I think this is a really great utility tool for us as a way to take out a key piece of the opponent's army. Our fane can get got, but our fane is more like a 'decent little extra' rather than our game plan, so losing it isn't the end of the world.

Overall opinion: Above average (maybe good) 

Battleplans

We haven't seen all of them yet, but from the look of it these battleplans are pretty simple. They're hard to read, but I can tell that we are seeing 18" deployment gap which is fantastic for us. We can first turn charge very easily with most of our army, and many armies cannot. Armies with 10" max move still have an unreliable 8" charge, and their troops are often on 5" move. This means that they can't reach us first turn but we can reach them, meaning we have an advantage either way. 

Also, I can't see it on the battleplans I'm reading, but it looks like there are no bonus points for meta tags (battleline etc) so now our summoning units are just as effective as capturing the objectives as before. 

Monsters and heroes will count for more models when taking an objective, which is generally good for us considering how good our heroes are. 

Overall opinion: Very good

Points increases

It is rumoured that all armies are going up about 10 to 20%, besides us and Soulblight. If this is true, this is pretty massive. It could be imagined as a 15% army wide decrease comparatively, which is a massive buff.

Of course, this rumour may be false. 

Overall opinion: Dependant, good or potentially very bad

Hit and wound capping

Probably overall bad. While we're not losing any buffs, we are losing some utility on debuffs - there's little reason to give look our sir to Synessa, or for Dex to care about the overwatch penalty as it's already inbuilt. The one benefit is that we don't have to worry about anyone buffing themselves sky high; also acquiescence gives rerolling 1s to hit, which seems to have become much rarer now  
 

Overall opinion: Bad

New Artefacts

There are three new artefacts which can (in addition to battletome artefacts) be bought for an enhancement. One of these really looks great to me, and that's the 5+ ward save. I think this cements Invaders as a great choice as, while Rod of Misrule is brilliant, the other artefacts are just okay. However, this ward on a keeper gives it some much needed mortal wound protection and some even more needed swingy damage protection; considering it can heal 2d6/3+2d3+1d3 a round, it's hard to keep down without taking it out in one blow. For a small buff, if this artefact becomes popular, Sigvald is one of the best counters to it and he's very easy to slot in a list. 

Overall opinion: Good

New spells

For now, we're unsure if unique casters can select from the spell lore. Regardless of how it pans out in the FAQ, Glutos losing mortal spell lore isn't the end of the world, but it would be disappointing. Other than that though, we have access to more spells which is great as 70% of Slaanesh spells are filler. The Contorted Epitome becomes much more valuable being able to give fly to a Keeper or Slickblades rather than having to rely on the Keeper's own spell that has no bonus to cast and can only be cast on itself. 

It also helps protect us from shooting with Ghost-Mist available. One question would be whether we could select a spell upon being summoned; I'm guessing 'no'.  

Flaming weapon is nice for us as we have two casters with many low quality attacks on a single weapon, which can be turned into high quality attacks easily: 9 on the epitome and 9-10 on the bladebringer. 

Metamorphisis is also nice to cast on the Bladebringer, allowing it to become a monster and stomp for d3 MW as well as do 2d3 (or d6+d3) on a charge. 

One of the key things is we have a double cast rerolling caster that's not unique and is kind of cheap ish. 

Overall opinion: Average to good 

-------------------------------------------

Overall, I think AoS is much better for us compared to other armies when we used the Invaders host, and generally better for us when we use the other hosts. 

So long as people haven't let the turbulent reaction blind everyone to our potential, I think we have  a very high chance to reach high tournament placings, but also have more engaging gameplay with the new hero abilities, monster abilities and very importantly command points and abilities. We will remain as a finesse faction with no instant win button, but now we have options to buff our units considerably and depravity points have received a massive accidental buff that I think will lead to a very tool box faction where we can select a different buff and summon every phase, able to adapt to the enemy with ease. 

I hope this helps sum up the good and bad of the new changes   

 

[Skreech Verminking]

Well, depending on the points and unit min. Size changes, skaven seem to be better them ever, in this new edition.

the long awaited 60unit of clanrats finally arrived, something I’ve been missing for years with my rattys.

with the new core battaillon, we are even able to have some new option, and are finally able to take a second artefact without much trouble, all thx to the new edition.

Sonce the skaven battailons never were great and almost always cost more then they were worth, this is a welcoming change.

the addition of new prayers for all priests, really just makes the plague priest on foot an interesting choice for any skaven army,

It may not be a skink starpriest, but with the liber bubonicus, that plague priest may as well just pray twice per turn, which is great with many of these new generic prayers.

a 6+ wardsave on a unit of 60clanrats, yeah that pretty great, basically another ten wounds to chew through.

Warplightning cannons, just became a very interesting option for us-us.

being able to take that one core battailon, that gives us the option to unleash hell for free, without a command being issued, means that we will be able to use that command once twice in the same phase, which could end in 24mortals being just thrown out.

This’ll make charging the meatshields much, much harder.

 

The only negative that comes in mind, would be the current unit size for stormvermins, giant rats and plague monks, all units who really want to be able to be taken in units of 40, yet, this isn’t possible with the new rule, but it could chance with the upcoming ghb, so I basically don’t have too many complains, at least not yet

[Fred1245]

DoK: Reinforcement Nerfs leave Witch Aelves and SoS in an even worse spot. Not that anyone was taking them anymore.

Monster and hero rules help Morathi be better so, even losing access to Mindrazor, she'll be in 110% of Daughters of Khaine lists.

Priest rules are a massive across the board nerf to all priests. I would expect Cauldrons to be the only Priest Keyword we see(too bad they can't fight until turn 3) Especially with Morgwraeth not having Prayers anymore(the generic prayers are GARBAGE). The invocation is dead and so are Avatars, because again, after the nerfs they can't fight until turn 3.

Blood Stalkers suffer quite a bit from both reinforcement and the terrain buffs so will likely not be as common. Just in time to expose how bad Daughters of Khaine are in melee in the new book.

Blood Sisters will still see 100% preference over aelves while being 100% mediocre.

Positive side: 1 drop deployment is trivial. 

Nothing else will be impacted in any meaningful way.

Net result: Morathi will have to carry the army on her own until 4th edition.

[KrispyXIV]

3 minutes ago, Fred1245 said:

DoK: Reinforcement Nerfs leave Witch Aelves and SoS in an even worse spot. Not that anyone was taking them anymore.

Monster and hero rules help Morathi be better so, even losing access to Mindrazor, she'll be in 110% of Daughters of Khaine lists.

Priest rules are a massive across the board nerf to all priests. I would expect Cauldrons to be the only Priest Keyword we see(too bad they can't fight until turn 3) Especially with Morgwraeth not having Prayers anymore(the generic prayers are GARBAGE). The invocation is dead and so are Avatars, because again, after the nerfs they can't fight until turn 3.

Blood Stalkers suffer quite a bit from both reinforcement and the terrain buffs so will likely not be as common. Just in time to expose how bad Daughters of Khaine are in melee in the new book.

Blood Sisters will still see 100% preference over aelves while being 100% mediocre.

Positive side: 1 drop deployment is trivial. 

Nothing else will be impacted in any meaningful way.

Net result: Morathi will have to carry the army on her own until 4th edition.

You realize of course there's like, a 99.9% chance that unique characters are fully intended to gain access to the appropriate spell lores and prayer lists right?

I've heard several people say they've heard from playtesters running these characters with these abilities.  

I'd not assume that any faction is going to do badly based on that particular rules item until the FAQs are out.  

[Fred1245]

5 minutes ago, KrispyXIV said:

You realize of course there's like, a 99.9% chance that unique characters are fully intended to gain access to the appropriate spell lores and prayer lists right?

I've heard several people say they've heard from playtesters running these characters with these abilities.  

I'd not assume that any faction is going to do badly based on that particular rules item until the FAQs are out.  

It's irrelevant. The only difference it makes to ANYTHING about the army is whether or not you take Morgwraeth. It has 0 impact otherwise.

I even mention that in the post, you, of course, realize?

Edited June 15, 2021 by Fred1245

[Acrozatarim]

Tzeentch seems to have gotten weaker.

• Changehost gone, which somewhat undercuts the main tournament lists I've seen.
• No more stacking buffs and debuffs means flamers are weaker on shooting, the army can't achieve what it used to be able to wrt penalties to hit vs its daemons, and there's some minor stuff like the Fatemaster's and Gaunt-on-Disc's armour save getting very mildly worse in melee.
• Miscasting is a minor debuff on the widespread spellcasting in the army, albeit one I don't see actually affecting decisions in play at all (not like you can do much about it!).
• Current RAW for enhancements indicates that some of the better unique characters like Blue Scribes and Kairos don't get their usual spell from the Tzeentch lore, although it's not a massive problem for either of them, I guess, given their ability to get spells from other casters on the field.
• Depending on what exactly 'maximum' means when referring to unit size, it's possible that the wording re adding models to a unit in the side note by 25.3 means that Horrors have taken a *very* big nerf, albeit at least that makes running Horrors a bit lighter on the wallet.

The mortal side of Tzeentch hasn't really suffered (yet, without knowing points costs at this time), I don't think, but then it wasn't exactly the side of the army that was setting competitive lists alight.

[KrispyXIV]

6 minutes ago, Fred1245 said:

It's irrelevant. The only difference it makes to ANYTHING about the army is whether or not you take Morgwraeth. It has 0 impact otherwise.

I even mention that in the post, you, of course, realize?

I do not, of course, see where you acknowledge that anywhere.  You mention several times that Morathi and Morgwaeth "lost" spells or prayers, which is debatable at best.  

You also mention several times that Cauldrons and Avatars can't fight until turn 3... which is also not factual.  You just have to use the intended mechanics to enable them.  

Even if everything you said was true, as a DoK player I'm happy. The game as a whole is better, and maybe I won't win every single game against less powerful armies regardless of how many mistakes I make on the basis of the entire book being well above baseline power.  

That said, several of the changes you noted are only nerfs to DoK from a very specific lense.  I look at the system wide changes to priests as bringing all priests in line with the "nerfs" that came to them in the new battletome.  Everyone else got brought down to their level - except DoK has a superior selection of priests in general as compared to most other factions.  

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

Here is the Soulblight Gravelords breakdown I wrote yesterday:

Spoiler

Command points and abilities

Gravelords are a faction with lots of juicy command abilities and this change will let us use them more often. A lot of Gravelords lists don't mind going second, and can expect to reliably get ~4 command points per turn that way. Every lineage also has the option of running two or more generals, which makes it easier to secure these extra command points into the late game.

Command abilites now work slightly differently, in that they need to be issued and received, with a unit only being able to issue and receive one command per phase. Gravelords can take advantage of this in some cases. For example, Radukar the Beast can use a command ability to provide a +1 attack aura when he charges. In this case, he is both the source and the target of the command, even though other units benefit from it. This means it can be stacked with other commands, such as All-Out Attack on other units. And it can be even futher stacked with spells such as Vanhel's Danse Macabre if you want to.

Unit champions can now issue command abilities to their own units, which in the case of Gravelords means that (only) Zombies cannot support themselves. Heroes issue commands wholly within 12", while generals do so wholly within 18". Given that every gravelords list can have 2+ generals, this is not too bad.

Verdict: Overall, not good or bad, but a change to keep in mind.

New command abilities

All Out Attack, All out Defence, Inspiring Presence, At the Double, Forward to Victory, Unleash Hell, and Redeploy. I'll go through each of these.

All-Out Attack giving +1 to hit is a welcome additon for Gravelords, who mostly have bonuses that give +1 to wound.

All-Out Defense is going to be good for our tanky units that sit on a 3+ save naturally. Increasing a high base save is more valuable than increasing low base saves, so this ability does a lot of work on Blood Knights or our big heroes.

Inspiring Presence is now generally weaker, since you only get one per battleshock phase. This is good news for us, since Gravelords troops have high bravery and have access to bravery debuff abilities, so while we suffer a bit from this change, other factions suffer more.

At the Double now happens before you roll for a run, which is not particularly bad or good for us, just different. Not being able to auto-run 6" with more than one unit hurts our slow infantry, though.

Foreward to Victory is the same old reroll charges as it always was. We still have access to auto-charge 6" on some warscrolls, and some of our units like Zombies don't need to charge at all, so we are not as reliant on this as some other armies might be. Several subfactions also have access to reroll charge bubbles.

Unleash Hell is mostly a negative for us. It will make it harder to charge opponents without getting shot at. But, as mentioned, a few of our units don't need to charge (Zombies, Direwolves with Belladamma's command ability). This helps us play around this command ability. We have few good targets that can make use of it ourselves, but the Mortis Engine gets to trigger it's mortal wound explosion off of it at least. A Zombie Dragon could also use it for it's breath attack to deal a few mortals.

Redeploy allows you to move 1d6" if an opponent moves within 9" of you while your are outside of combat. This could variously move our units out of range of a charge or move a screen of Direwolves between our unit and the enemy, but on the flip side it will also make it harder to charge opponents. A wash, really.

Rally is a nice boost to our already solid healing abilities. The ability plugs a gap for us, in that it allows us to heal non-summonable units like Blood Knights. While it will have more consistent payoffs on units with lots of models, the payoffs are better on high-save, multiple wound units (since it returns models on a 6 instead of healing wounds like our other healing abilities). Especially nice in Kastelai, where you "upgrade" your units over the course of the game.

Verdict: Good!

Magic Phase Changes

There are a few changes to magic that are relevant for us: The changes to endless spells, introduction of miscasts and overhauled rules for Mystic Shield and Arcane Bolt

Gravelords don't have any faction specific endless spells, but with endless spells now being more controllable and impactful, they might be a good way to use the casts of our many wizards. The spells from the Lore of Vampires are not that good, but it's easy to end up with 3+ wizards in a list without even trying. Putting in a cheap damage dealing endless spell might be a good way to fill up points in a list.

Miscasts mean that when rolling double 1s to cast, your wizard takes 1d3 mortals and can't cast for the rest of the turn. Most of our casting is distributed over a bunch of 1 cast wizards, so the last part is mitigated a bit. But it's worth noting that this rule hurts Nagash most of all, since he's by far the wizard with the most casts per turn.

Mystic Shield is now another source of +1 to saves, which is great for us. Arcane Bolt is solid, too, giving you a 1d3 mortal wounds effect if you are within 3" of an enemy. You can trigger this once, but whenever you want after casting it. So you could cast this spell with your VLoZD and charge into something, easily dealing 2d3 mortals before combat from Arcane Bolt and Stomp. Or you could do the same for potentially 9d3 mortals with Nagash.

Verdict: Mixed bag, but overall good.

Coherency

This rule hurts us much less than most melee armies. Our horde infantry is all on 25mm bases, which means it is affected the least from this change. It can still string out and has only a little more trouble than before getting all attacks in.

Our cavalry units like Blood Knights and Black Knights already probably wanted to run in squads of 5 anyway, which means the coherency change does not apply to them.

Some of our large base units like Vargheists will have to run in min-size, but it's not a terrible nerf. They are completely capable of doing so, and two units of 3 might actually be better in a lot of cases than one of 6.

The only real loser in our tome are Direwolves. They will now cover a lot less horizontal distance when screening, and really wish that they could still run in packs of 5 like in LoN. Not all is bad, because with the new reinforcement rules, a high base model count can be an asset as we will see shortly.

Verdict: Good relative to other armies.

Reinforcement points

In AoS 3, you can only increase the size of your units a limited amount of times. Battleline get to reinforce twice, everything else once, with a limit of four reinforcements in a 2000 point game. This will overall mean more minimum sized units on the table.

Gravelords are in a great position here. We have a lot of good options for min-size units in Blood Knights, Vargheists and Dire Wolves (who, with 20 wounds on a min-size unit, will now be a very tough screen to deal with for a lot of other armies). Zombies come in packs of 20 at base size, which is great for objective control if we expect other infantry to most commonly come in packs of 5 or 10.

Skeleton warriors previously had to worry a lot about getting wiped out in one combat before getting to heal. A move towards lower unit sizes and more min-size cavalry units means that they will likely get to survive much longer now.

Between all this, Gravelords are poised to become an army that can beat most other armies in body count and absolutely swamp the (now smaller) playing field, while not losing much in terms of offensive power compared to AoS 2.

Verdict: Very good! Gravelords are a clear winner here.

Battalions

Warscroll battalions are now gone from matched play, replaced with core battalions. This is a good change for us because all our warscroll battalions were pretty bad.

However, we are mostly able to fill out core battalions fairly easily. At least one good archetype for Gravelords is to bring lots of power pairs (a hero and a unit of troops for it to support), which is what the new core battalions by and large reward.

Core battalions allow an army to gain command points, free activations of command abilities, enhancements and drop reduction.

Warlord and Command Entourage provide once-per-game extra command points and enhancements. Enhancements are command traits, artefacts, extra spells/prayers and triumphs. This is definitely juicy for Gravelords, who have access to a lot of good command traits and artefacts, many of which you wish you could take, but which are just a tiny bit worse than the stand out best one.

Linebreaker, Vanguard and Grand Battery provide once-per-game free command abilities which don't need anyone to issue them. One use for this is on a Zombie unit, which cannot usually issue itself commands since it lacks a champion, but can potentially get a free 6" run without hero support from Vanguard.

Battle Regiment is the only battalion that reduces drops, which in matched play determine who takes priority turn 1. It's worth noting that you have to drop the units in this battalion all at once and can no longer partially deploy. Overall, Gravelords can use this battalion well. It allows you to bring one big and two small heroes, which Gravelords can make good use of due to having access to many good, small support heroes (Necromancer, Vampire Lord, Belladamma, possibly the Wight King or the small Vyrkos). The disadvantage of having to deploy all at once gets somewhat mitigated by being able to deploy in the grave or off board. Overall, Gravelords have gained the ability to fairly effortlessly go low-drops, which is huge because the army frequently wants to go second to set up for an impactful double turn later. Alpha strike cavalry lists also seem in the cards now.

Verdict: Again, very good.

Hero abilities

One hero per side gets to use a heroic action per hero phase. In general this is good for Gravelords, since we have many impactful heroes who will benefit from this. Gravelords heroes seem especially good at making use of the healing action (which works off of bravery) and Finest Hour which gives another source of +1 to saves. Since we can bring multiple generals, it will also be easier to get the bonus to the roll for gaining extra command points from Heroic Inspiration (which moves to a 2+ from 4+ if your general has died).

Verdict: Fine. We benefit fairly well, but not exactly a lot more than other factions.

Monster abilities

Up to four monsters per side get to use a monstrous rampage at the end of the charge phase. We have some intersting pure monster options in Zombie Dragons and Terrorgheists, but even more importantly we have a few choices that fill all three roles that add extra value in 3rd edition: Hero, monster and wizard. This gives the VLoZD kit, Vengorian Lord kit, Mortarch kit and Nagash a nice power boost. These hero monsters can now easily get +1 to wound and saves and deal 2d3 mortals on the charge, allowing them to really bully the opponent.

Oh, and monsters capture for 5 by default now. Nice.

Verdict: Good! Free value for a lot of stuff you were taking anyway.

Battleplans

Not 100% confirmed this will be universal, but a smaller deployment gap now seems to be common in battleplans. This makes it possible for some of our units to get turn 1 charges. Again, the ability to deploy in the grave makes it so that we, in turn, can avoid being alpha striked of the table ourselves. It might even be worth considering Black Knights again if they can reliably charge turn 1 with their 12" move, 6" auto charge.

Verdict: Need more info, but it does not look bad.

Points increases

While points are supposedly going up most factions, our points are already set to the standard of AoS 3. And they were not exactly unreasonably high before. This will probably mean that our point costs will be low in the new edition, relative to those of other armies.

Verdict: Great! Another are where Gravelords potentially win big.

Hit, wound and save capping

Gravelords do well out of these changes. Our faction did not rely on buff stacking before and our new battletome incentivizes a swarm play style, as opposed to a death star like LoN did. Our offensive units don't generally need more than one offensive buff to do well, and our high base saves mean that we can potentially have several units on a 2+ save most of the time (All-Out Defense, Finest Hour, Mystic Shield, Coven Throne CA, Soulbound Garments arefact...).

We also have access to several good offensive buffs that do not work through bonuses to hit and wound: Double taps, pile in and attack twice and extra attacks, which all stack with the +1 to hit or wound we can now get from various sources.

Verdict: Not a problem offensively, straight up good defensively.

----

So where do the AoS 3 changes leave Gravelords? Overall, I think we can now clearly say that our book is an AoS 3 book, not an AoS 2 book. A lot of the little details that did not quite make sense before are now coming together. I believe Gravelords benefit from the majority of rules changes in AoS 3. And the general consensus was that they were not even that weak before!

The big thing that remains to be seen is how well Gravelords handle shooting in the new edition. This was our weakness before (even in the old Vampire Counts days), and the new tome has very little anti-shooting tech in it. The new smaller playing field means we are potentially in range of shooting earlier and the new Unleash Hell command will definitely be a problem to overcome, rather than a tool to be exploited for us.

But as far as melee horde armies go, Gravelords are probably looking as good as they could reasonably hope in AoS 3. The army still has some challenges to overcome: Generally low damage, low mobility on a lot of units and the weakness to shooting mentioned above. But probably no other army is as good as swamping the battlefield and grinding out a victory late game as Gravelords at the moment. I think the future looks good for our vampire overlords!

tl;dr: Gravelords are looking good in the new edition. They are definitely AoS 3 ready.

[JackStreicher]

Gravelords remain largely unaffected while Blood Knights have their trample rule clarified.

CoS needs a little more consideration when building the army

[novakai]

Gloomspite: probably got weaker with some changes and miss out on some changes by unfortunate things like keywords and wound counts, a lot of the stuff they got from WD where warscroll battalion that can't be use in match play anymore. i am not entirely fuss though since they generally had good enough warscroll on some units to keep trucking along, competitive play whatever everything get shaken up it doesn't really matter at the moment. i don't even expect FAQ or GHB to do anything worthwhile to any army, just wait for a new battletome

 

SON  of BEHEMAT: straight upgrades everywhere, mainly because Sons didn't have much of anything to begin with but every new rule gives them more options and some of the new restriction don't affect or cause problem for the Gargants when playing them. new artifacts, monster abilities, heroic abilities, new CP abilities, Battalions all gives them improvements.

Bonereaper: i believe you can't stack CA on a single unit anymore which kind of sucks for OBR, their offensive power kind of fell a lot because of that, usually my go to combo was using the Leige CA ability with the Pertrifix elite Bludgeon ability with maybe a lucky soul guide and Empowered Naderite weapon to boost my offense enough to clear through enemies as well as a Shield wall to survive the oncoming attack. Mortek Crawler are probably going to be the way to Play OBR for a while 

[Fred1245]

8 minutes ago, KrispyXIV said:

I do not, of course, see where you acknowledge that anywhere.  You mention several times that Morathi and Morgwaeth "lost" spells or prayers, which is debatable at best.  

You also mention several times that Cauldrons and Avatars can't fight until turn 3... which is also not factual.  You just have to use the intended mechanics to enable them.  

Even if everything you said was true, as a DoK player I'm happy. The game as a whole is better, and maybe I won't win every single game against less powerful armies regardless of how many mistakes I make on the basis of the entire book being well above baseline power.  

That said, several of the changes you noted are only nerfs to DoK from a very specific lense.  I look at the system wide changes to priests as bringing all priests in line with the "nerfs" that came to them in the new battletome.  Everyone else got brought down to their level - except DoK has a superior selection of priests in general as compared to most other factions.  

Their intended mechanics is a prayer unless you're Hagg Narr. You'll likely only have 1 prayer to use and it's doubtful you'll spend it on an Avatar or a Cauldron(and if you do, you're already in trouble).

The summation was that it didn't impact the decision to take Morathi and DID impact the decision to take Morgwraeth. No cascading effect was mentioned for the rest of the army, the implication is painfully obvious. Unique models getting spells or prayers is irrelevant outside of Morgwraeth. 

That last bit is pretty generous. Slaughter queen on foot has never been good, Slaughter Cauldron's CA was always situational(Daughters tend to die before the start of your hero phase) and is now competing for a LOT of other abilities for CP, Hag Queens are of Dubious value outside of Hagg Narr(and Morgwraeth) thanks to the hammer Witchbrew took, and Hagg Cauldrons are +Save aura bots for the most part.

It's a fair point that everyone else's priest suck as bad as ours at praying now, but we also relied on our priests more than other armies.

[AlmGandix3]

For the most part I like the new changes looking at my CoS army, except my Greywater list. Rockets hitting on a 4+ at best and no double tap battalion makes it even worse. I definetly see them fixing it with two profiles one for one and one for more targets. Points is also an option but just making it comparebly cheaper (everthing seems to get a points hike) wont really justifiy them now.

As for my Bonesplitterz I dont really know how this will work out. The reinforcment points are annoying. I ran atleast two 30 squads, sometimes 3 and atleast two 10er boar squads. Also there are a lot of buffs regarding unit size.

Since the Kruelboyz are a warclan faction this will probaply be adressed in the new tome or with diffrent minimum sizes in the ghb.

Edited June 15, 2021 by AlmGandix3
forgot to add unit size buffs and possible new tome

[Ganigumo]

I collect a bunch of armies:

1. Spiderfang is hard nerfed, they were already weak, but coherency changes, extra taxes on artifacts that they can't go without (3 heroes for every 1 artifact), and being unable to run low drops all hurt. Arachnaroks are slightly better but not nearly enough to make up for it as they weren't even that good beforehand. Also hurt by the change to All out Attack as the rerolls were WAY more useful on spiders than +1 to hit.
2. Gitz in general is much weaker being unable to stack -1 to hit, squigs are probably hurt the least, followed by Troggs then moonclan
3. SoB gets big buffs everyone, less drops, more good artifact options, monster and hero abilities, new command abilities to buff defense, and new coherency rules.
4. Tzeentch probably doesn't get hurt too bad, Flamers can't stack to-hit and changehost is gone, but horrors are still insanely strong and the best chaff in the game. plus they can still keep drops low. The version I usually played (phantasmogoria of fate) is completely dead until further notice
5. Ironjawz are hurt by the lack of ironfist, but the extra CP you get should make up for it somewhat. Probably a wash overall.
6. Mawtribes: Gutbusters get hurt bad except for Ironguts, BCR have access to 1-drop lists now and +1 to save on stonehorns. Plus extra CP all around because they were pretty starved before
7. Bonesplitterz: nerfed. They can't stack exploding 6s anymore and their base sizes suck. They get basically nothing that boosts them either.
8. Beasts of Chaos: lol. I hope gors get bumped up to 20's in a massive race to being the worst unit possible. BoC shields are +1 to save, which is less useful now, terrible attack ranges and base sizes all over, one of the few armies actually hurt by reinforcement limits, lost their good battalions and ability to low drop, their best subfaction (gavespawn) got nerfed bad because the CA can't be stacked anymore. I heard a rumor some unit sizes were going up for BoC in the ghb, probably ungors which will make them worse.

So I'm like 2-3/8 in terms of armies that didn't get nerfed comparably to the rest of the meta.

[AlmGandix3]

3 minutes ago, Ganigumo said:

 

Bonesplitterz: nerfed. They can't stack exploding 6s anymore and their base sizes suck. They get basically nothing that boosts them either.

Why cant they stack them anymore? Sure the command ability wont stack but the spell with it will

[Ganigumo]

Just now, AlmGandix3 said:

Why cant they stack them anymore? Sure the command ability wont stack but the spell with it will

Per the new rules on triggered abilities if multiple trigger the person rolling the die picks one of them. So if you have two instances of exploding 6s you can only pick one instance of it to trigger.

[AlmGandix3]

Just now, Ganigumo said:

Per the new rules on triggered abilities if multiple trigger the person rolling the die picks one of them. So if you have two instances of exploding 6s you can only pick one instance of it to trigger.

but there was a designer comment for that in the book but yeah your right with the current wording. I hope they clarify it to stack

[peasant]

3 minutes ago, Ganigumo said:

Per the new rules on triggered abilities if multiple trigger the person rolling the die picks one of them. So if you have two instances of exploding 6s you can only pick one instance of it to trigger.

I run nurgle's munificient wanderers any 6 to hit my units causes 1 MW, so units that do something at 6 to hit are inmune to my subfaction trait?

Edited June 15, 2021 by peasant

[Ganigumo]

Just now, peasant said:

I run nurgle's munificient wanderers any 6 to hit causes 1 MW, so units that do something at 6 to hit are inmune to my subfaction trait?

yes

[dirkdragonslayer]

Gloomspite, especially Gloomspite focused on Moonclan infantry got hit pretty hard. The loonboss is now even squishier and his ability Dead Tricksy is mostly pointless. Other varieties didn't depend on stacking modifiers as much. Spiderfang are hurt the second-least of the 4 subfactions I think. Squig-focused can get a mounted "shaman" now by giving a Loonboss on GSC the generic magic relic, which may be niche but good. Mobile squig lure caster seems neat.. The nerf to Loonshrine really hurts mixed builds.

Troggherd came out of this the best. Reinforcements changes didn't really affect them that much and there are some good generic relics to make the Troggboss actually kinda punchy. Sadly the objective bonus is only for units with 5 wounds and most Troggs have 4 so they are still bad at objectives. It's not really that they went up in power, it's that the other 3 subfactions went down.

Edit: Also Dankholds don't count as monsters. This wasn't a big deal in 2nd when MONSTER usually just meant Bonesplitterz killed you harder and you had a degrading statline. Now every other medium size monster can do cool rampage stuff and Dankholds are left with nothing.

Edited June 15, 2021 by dirkdragonslayer

[NauticalSoup]

11 minutes ago, Ganigumo said:

Bonesplitterz: nerfed. They can't stack exploding 6s anymore and their base sizes suck. They get basically nothing that boosts them either.

Base size sucking isn't going to be that bad when your main blobs are using either bows or 2" spears to begin with. Many other armies are hurt far worse by the change. Additionally, you can actually still bring your 60 wound blobs whereas a lot of armies lost this completely for their 2W+ models due to them coming in blocks of 5. Also, if the ratio of monsters in lists increases, BS will have more opportunities to utilize Monster Hunters which really churns out a ton of damage... but only when your opponent actually puts a monster on the table. As for exploding sixes, I haven't included a maniak weirdnob in a list since that random points nerf killed the unit way back, so no big loss at this point.

Finally the buffs to arcane bolt and mystic shield are very relevant on an army that is likely to bring 3+ wizards. And wardokks are priests, incidentally. So they didn't gain -nothing-.

And of course there's likely a new book in the near future so hopefully that treats IJ and BS well.

[novakai]

11 minutes ago, dirkdragonslayer said:

 

Edit: Also Dankholds don't count as monsters. This wasn't a big deal in 2nd when MONSTER usually just meant Bonesplitterz killed you harder and you had a degrading statline. Now every other medium size monster can do cool rampage stuff and Dankholds are left with nothing.

unless you cast metamorph on them but they probably should have the monster keyword now since they lost Look out sir

[Ganigumo]

6 minutes ago, dirkdragonslayer said:

Gloomspite, especially Gloomspite focused on Moonclan infantry got hit pretty hard. The loonboss is now even squishier and his ability Dead Tricksy is mostly pointless. Other varieties didn't depend on stacking modifiers as much. Spiderfang are hurt the second-least of the 4 subfactions I think. Squig-focused can get a mounted "shaman" now by giving a Loonboss on GSC the generic magic relic, which may be niche but good. The nerf to Loonshrine really hurts mixed builds.

Troggherd came out of this the best. Reinforcements changes didn't really affect them that much and there are some good generic relics to make the Troggboss actually kinda punchy. Sadly the objective bonus is only for units with 5 wounds and most Troggs have 4 so they are still bad at objectives. It's not really that they went up in power, it's that the other 3 subfactions went down.

Spiderfang are hit bad by coherency since you needed 10 to put out any kind of damage and the spider fangs only have 1" reach on cav bases. They desperately need the banner artifact too which forces their drops up considerably from before. Plus the all out attack change is actually a nerf on spiders.

 

 

1 minute ago, NauticalSoup said:

Base size sucking isn't going to be that bad when your main blobs are using either bows or 2" spears to begin with. Many other armies are hurt far worse by the change. Additionally, you can actually still bring your 60 wound blobs whereas a lot of armies lost this completely for their 2W+ models due to them coming in blocks of 5. Also, if the ratio of monsters in lists increases, BS will have more opportunities to utilize Monster Hunters which really churns out a ton of damage... but only when your opponent actually puts a monster on the table. As for exploding sixes, I haven't included a maniak weirdnob in a list since that random points nerf killed the unit way back, so no big loss at this point.

Finally the buffs to arcane bolt and mystic shield are very relevant on an army that is likely to bring 3+ wizards. And wardokks are priests, incidentally. So they didn't gain -nothing-.

And of course there's likely a new book in the near future so hopefully that treats IJ and BS well.

Mystic shield is pretty redundant in bonesplitterz now, they have a +1 to save lore spell, the shields give +1 to save, and the wardokk dance is +1 to save. Plus bonesplitterz did have some good battalions, the loss of kunnin rukk is going to hurt particularly badly for archers.

[Enoby]

If anyone wants a full review of each Slaanesh unit, I've written one
 

Spoiler

Winners and losers in Hedonites of Slaanesh

With the core rules released and, for now, it seeming like we will get no points increases, it's a good chance to look at each individual unit and how they fare. I'm just going to go in the order that the units appear on the app.

The Contorted Epitome: 

Big winner, in my opinion. With our endless spells likely becoming more potent (assuming no massive rewrite) and the (likely) ability to give a KoS fly, this relatively cheap double rerolling caster who is all but immune to MWs is a great utility piece, as well as not being terrible in combat. 

In a likely unintentional reaction, if Kruelboyz ever become an issue, the Epitome can tank their 5+ MWs very well. Being under 10 wounds they also benefit from look out sir.

The buff to mystic shield is also very nice too. 

Overall: Stronger and good

Hellflayer (herald)

They are improved, including by retaining look out sir and having a wider selection of spells and benefitting from heroic actions, but they are still not worth taking over an exalted chariot

Overall: Stronger but poor

Shalaxi Hellbane

They're now easier to get on 2s and 2s and can charge but easier (including being given the ability to fly from two spells). In addition, their role is now more important as heroes are becoming much stronger. However, no matter how good they may be against heroes, their lack of command ability to buff other units and their weaker damage against troops means the Keeper is the better choice all of the time. 

That said, they can get themselves on a 3+ rerolling saves and hits against heroes. Depending on how the meta shapes up, they could see their niche become necissary if any heroes get out of hand. 

Their generic command abilities and hero/monster abilities also give them a hand.  

Overall: Stronger and questionable - worth testing further

Syll'Esske

While the hero abilities do give them a bit of a hand, where they really shine isn't their damage but their command ability. With inspiring presence being limited and the board shrinking, they have a very strong way to prevent bravery. In mortal heavy list, effective battleshock immunity may well be worth 200 points (they're not too bad at combat either).

Their one weakness is that, besides battleshock immunity, they don't bring much else. Their damage is okay (especially when buffed) and their spell is nice (but less useful now that units can use command abilities), but they won't wow you outside of that. 

Overall: Stronger and very good with mortals

Hellstriders

The range on their whips does mean that coherency doesn't matter much to them, and they do have a use of charging into a shooting unit to tie them up. However, their damage and cost is still pretty poor - they act like super fast chaff/suicide units, but they're just so pricey it's hard to justify taking them over a better unit. 

Overall: Kind of stronger (as they have more reasons to charge into shooting units) but still a bit meh

Keeper of Secrets

Probably the unit that benefits most from these changes. The big things that stick out are how good the Keeper's healing is, the 5+ ward artefact, the ability to charge first turn, the ease of getting +1 save, +1 to wound, and +1 to hit, the ability to turn off command abilities or do mortal wounds, and all of this available without a command ability. 

Their one nerf is in their command ability, being that it can't be used on a unit already under the effect of a command ability. This isn't exactly a nerf because it wasn't as if we were stacking loads of command abilities together before, but it does reduce the potential effectiveness. 

With the greater ease of getting fly, they can go over screens with their superior speed. 

To put their healing in perspective, they have 10 bravery so heroic recovery is easy to get, their healing spell casts on a 4, and they just need to kill something to heal. That's a likely 2d3+2d3/6+1d3 a turn if necessary (average 10 healed). 

They're not the ridiculous monsters they were before in 2019, but they are very good as smash monsters. Not only that, they're actually kind of cheap for what they bring and very easy to summon. 

Overall: Stronger and very good

The Masque

For those missing Seeker Cavalcade, this 130 points hero may answer your plight. Their 6" pile in and 4+ ward, as well as available hero abilities means they are a great counter to any nasty shooting we don't want messing up the rest of our army. I'd recommend taking her with any extra points you may have. 

Their damage is nothing to write home about, but if they're just chasing shooters this doesn't matter loads, esp as they still have locus so can keep themselves safe. 

Overall: Stronger and very good

Viceleader

Despite getting access to more spells and hero abilities, I don't think either of them bring enough to make the herald on foot useful. Their old use used to be healing Glutos, but this is no longer necessary with his own hero abilities. Without spell casting buffs and with a meh spell lore (with the new flying spell being too difficult to reliably cast) they're not really great. If you have the spare points, take the Masque

Overall: Weaker relatively and poor

Herald on Seeker Chariot

Same as the Hellflayer, but probably worse. If you have the points, there's likely something better to take, or if you want a chariot hero, then save the points for an exalted one. The hero abilities do help, but again, better things to spend them on. 

Overall: Not significantly stronger and not good

Hellflayer

Besides counting as 2 models for an objective, this hasn't been buffed in any meaningful way. With everything else getting stronger, there's not much going for this chariot unfortunately. 

Overall: Relatively weaker and poor

Herald on Exalted Seeker Chariot

While I still prefer the KoS, if you can't afford one, this herald mixed with Metamorphosis and/or Flaming Weapon, it can really put out some damage. With the ease of getting a once per game +1 to wound, and a very easy +1 to hit CA, they can put out some damage. If you want, you can give them the monster keyword with the Metamorphosis spell so they can put out another source of d3 MWs on the end of a charge. 

The ability to heal is also pretty nice. 

That said, their damage isn't fantastic without these buffs and they're still pretty squishy even with a +1 save. It's difficult to find the space for one, if I'm being honest. If only they had some sort of charge phase ability... 

Overall: Stronger and pretty nice

Fiends

Overall, while I like fiends and the +1 to hit on their attacks will help them be less swingy on their tails and claws, the caps on negatives to hit and wound mean they have less synergy with the rest of the army. In addition, coherency hurts them quite a bit as a unit of 6 won't be able to all get in, but you need to take them in a 6 to take advantage of their musk ability. 

The ability to summon them against monsters is nice though 

Overall: Weaker and niche

Daemonettes

These haven't suffered anywhere near as much from coherency as most armies, and the ability to get +1 to hit (and rerolling 1s if needed form the spell) means they can pump out some damage. With reinforcements not being too important for our army, we can spend those points on a big block of daemonettes. 

They are also able to get a first turn charge, one of the few troops who can, if you decide to give them a 6 to run, their inbuilt reroll charge means they can get a 6" charge rerolling first turn

Overall: Relatively stronger and good

Seekers

While one of the best Slaanesh players in the world really rates these, they are very tricky to use. Being one of the fastest units in the game, they can have the fly spell used on them to seek and destroy any small casters hiding away at the back, or artillery pieces who will cause a hassle. 

The fly spell may well shoot them into relevance. 

Overall: Stronger for a specific task, and in need of testing - likely an anti meta pick

Seeker chariots:

They have counting as 2 for objectives going for them, but other than that I think they're too fragile. They can first turn charge, but they're so squishy that I don't know if it will matter. The one thing you can do is take a single unit and charge it into a big clump to but a load of MWs out for depravity, but I think blissbarbs are the safer choice here. 

Overall: A little bit stronger, but still poor

Infernal enrapturess

They now have the niche of doubling the chance of an enemy miscasting, and they do have a good niche against Lumineth. I wouldn't take one in a starting list, but I would summon one if the opportunity arose. 

Overall: A little bit stronger, but niche and more for summoning 

Lord of Pain

While I don't see them bowling anyone over, they have the benefit of making Twinsouls and Painbringers battleline, and I think this is a good enough reason to take one. Apart from that, they can hold an artefact and have glory hog on them. 

Overall: Stronger by proxy

Glutos Orscollion

He's lost and gained from this new edition, and I think he just about edges out stronger, however there are some key points to watch out for. He may well lose out on the mortal spell lore, which was very nice for battleshock immunity (though I don't think this is intentional, we have to accept the possibility). Also, he no longer benefits from look out sir (though let's be honest, his -1 to hit will usually give him the effect of this anyway). The final nerf is just that debuffs no longer stack, which means he's not as useful with fiends or any other debuffs. 

On the up though, he is even tankier. Now that mystic shield is improved, he can comfortably sit on a 2+ 5++ save. More importantly, he can heal himself. With his +1 bravery, he's sitting on a 10 so he can do this very consistently. This is very nice for keeping him topped up because this used to require a supporting unit.

Depending on what happens with the lifeswarm, we may find another easy way to heal him, making him close to immortal. 

Overall: Mixed but still incredibly strong

Sigvald

I think Sigvald is one of the biggest winners in HoS, mainly because of moment of glory and the seeming increase in ward saves. With always strikes first, access to the KoS CA, access to healing, and access to +1 to wound, he can tear through an opponent no problem. Stick him into something like Teclic or Kroak and take an important chunk of their army. 

Because of his ward save, healing is stronger on him as he effectively heals double wounds. 

It should be noted that Lurid Haze and moment of glory don't combo.

Overall: Stronger and use as a seeker missile

Shardspeaker

Overall, it's kind of a buff as they can counteract moment of glory and in general wounds are harder to add to, but also she can her +1 to wound ability in first turn - with a 6" move and 9" range of the mirror, she can get in range on a run roll of a 3 (but be safe with a 4). This can be very useful if you need to wipe out a unit. Beforehand, she couldn't get her mirror in range first turn. 

Only nerf is her cloak of shadows, but were we really getting her into much comabat to make use of this?

Blissbarb seekers

While unleash hell is a buff for them, I don't think they're strong enough at shooting to be worth the command point unless you're swimming in spare ones. Other than that, a +1 to hit in the shooting phase doesn't stop the same ability in the combat phase, which is good. 

Lack of Seeker Cavalcade, of course, hurts.

Overall: about the same, maybe a little weaker but if you used them before you can continue it 

Slickblade seekers

These have gone through a heavy hit with the loss of seeker cavalcade, but they have benefits too - now they can use their own inspiring presence so they're slightly less damaged by battleshock, and they don't really rely on buffs in the combat phase so they don't take away from our other units. In addition, they do non-spell MWs at a good rate, so will help us against the increased number of high save units. Finally, they can first turn charge easily (free rerolls), and benefit from fly to get to the squishies hiding away. 

Overall: a significant nerf with the loss of a battalion, but still a strong place within the army 

Myrmidesh Painbringers

I think these have received a big buff now that a 3+ rerolling save is easily achieved. Their damage isn't awful but their saves are great, meaning they can be a good target for keeping a battleline unit alive. Importantly, unlike chaos warriors they work well in a unit of 5, so they don't need to worry about coherency and they can cover most of the board. Again, they are also a source of mortal wounds so they can help chip away at high save enemies. With the rumoured points increase of everything else, these may well become more reasonable; going on the high end of an expected 20% points increase, it would be like Painbringers cost 120 AoS2 points, which sounds far more reasonable. 

Importantly, coherency and smaller units means Painbringers won't be assaulted by as many attacks at once, and so can tank for even longer. 

Overall: A buff for them overall and I'm looking forward to using them more 

Symbaresh Twinsouls

With a +1 to hit and no other CAs needed, the twinsouls absolutely murder any units with a 4+ save or worse, and put a dent in 3+ save units. They're no silver bullet to all units as a 2+ save will stop them in their tracks, but they have a strong ability to tank and then spank with their alternating abilities.

With an increase in bonuses to save, they have lost some of their use, but it's not as if units with a poor saves have ceased to exist and if they want to spend a CP to try and save a unit from twinsouls, that's another unit not protected from something else. 

Better yet, unlike other 32mm base units, they can attack in two ranks easily. 

I'd bring no more than a unit of 10, but I'd understand that that unit of 10 will evaporate any normally armoured troop it touches.

Finally, they can first turn charge on a 10, but I wouldn't count on it. 

Overall: Stronger but not a cure all

Blissbarb Archers

I think these have a big buff, not being affected by coherency and not spending CP in the combat phase means they can pump out some really impressive damage. Even going into a hero, 30 of them can put out about 17 damage against a 4+ save, which means goodbye to most monstrous heroes. 

Unleash hell can help them a bit, but I wouldn't count on it. I'd like to experiment with a unit of 20-30.

Overall: Stronger but still pricey

Slaangor fiendbloods

So the phrase "you can't polish a ******" springs to mind here, but it is true that they have been improved. With a +1 to hit they can do some okay damage, and with 2" reach they aren't hurt by coherency, but I'd just rather spend more points on Twinsouls or Painbringers to be honest. 

Maybe if they knocked 40 or 50 off their points, they'd see some sort of use, but I'm hoping for a rewrite. 

Overall: Stronger but... well... it's a Slaangor

Dexcessa

Being a monster and a hero, Dexcessa is a speeding bullet who can take the enemy apart from the back. They don't do a tonne of damage initially, but their goal shouldn't be to rocket into the biggest meanest unit, but instead go hero or flank hunting and pick apart the enemy where they can't really fight back (esp at a -1 to hit) before swooping in to the real fight. Their free command point is really nice to have, mostly just to spend on themselves as a free changable buff, or to spend on a KoS when it uses its CA to make sure it can have that +1 save or +1 to hit. 

The monster and hero abilities mean they can keep going and dish out some pretty nice damage, and they're very cheap for how annoying they can be and how, unlike Sigvald, you can't ignore them by moving away or screening 

Overall: Stronger, very nice to slip in most lists

Synessa

Synessa is a lot harder to parse than their sibling; I wouldn't want to brush them off as bad, but it feels like they're a bit under-designed, or rather they have some really cool concept that don't quite mesh. For example, being able to use a CA anywhere is great, if unit leaders didn't have this anyway. Or having access to the entire spell lore, if they had more than one spell to cast. Or having infinite range on spells, if those spells were worth casting. 

On the other hand, their shooting is good and they're a monster. With Arcane bolt, they can blizt a unit doing 1d3/d6+1d3+1d3 MWs (average 6MWs to average 8MWs) before it gets to attack. 

The one thing they do have going for them is Slothful Stupor on demand, which is a pretty niche spell but can be very useful when the opportunity arises. Possibly worth it with the new cogs, depending on their cost.

Overall: Weaker and difficult to find a place for unfortunately

Hope this all helps  

 

[Dankboss]

While Troggoths came out the best out of the Gitz, I'm likely going to wait to see if we're getting a 3.0 book in the not too distant future, which I suspect we will. The loss of Megamob makes be reconsider taking the subfaction. A lot of 3.0 changes interfere with how Gitz as a whole plays, so I'm just going to wait and see before committing to them again. Rockguts hitting on 2s is great though, but I'm not sure if that's enough to carry the game.

My Freeguild of Hammerhal army is absolutely loving 3.0. I'm losing Hammerhalian Lancers, but any potential points increases should get absorbed by the loss of the battalion. Easy access to +1 save should let my Demigryphs do the same damage over their lifespan as they do now. I regularly generate so many CPs I can't spend them all, which means most likely every single unit I have will be using them at every opportunity and maximizing their potential. The Griffon's CA also activates in the charge phase, so I can use other CAs in the combat phase too.

Smaller board size will also help my infantry elements, and assuming nothing is stopping it, Handgunners can shoot twice in the charge phase. My army is also not affected by the new coherency nor reinforcement limits (aside from 25mm infantry being closer together) since my main list consists of 30 greatswords, 20 gunners and the rest MSU knights and guard.

[Neverchosen]

S2D, the monster and hero rules are a major plus. I am not overly concerned about how well my army will play as when we get an update it will likely fix any outstanding concerns that I have. However, I am personally worried about the unit sizes and reinforcements as I have a feeling a lot of my units will need to be changed sadly... I have 2x5 model Chaos Warrior units and 1x20 Chaos Warrior unit. Also I feel like Warcry units will likely also increase as they are sold in such boxes sizes... I think I will just combine the Iron Golems and Untamed Beasts into a single unit if that is the case. 😭

BCR, again no clue how they will fair on the table top but they are going to get a lot more fun with the new hero and monster rules.


Overall I am a big fan of many of the new rules and just excited to see the game evolve. I do think some factions will need an updated sooner than others although not due to competitiveness but rules redundancies such as Ossiarch Bonereapers. 

Edited June 15, 2021 by Neverchosen