Non-Monster Heroes

[Arathorn185]

Two caveats:

I don’t ‘really’ play AoS (ie I wanted to do. But didn’t have an army.

Every time I make an army it got memed. (Bretonnia (self explanatory), Free Peoples (using my Bretonnian force until I got enough free people models but then Bretonnia lost Free people keyword). Ordo Draconis (I started them to use Bretonnia and they were somewhat closest things to my Knights. And Dragons are cool. I also looked at Swifthawk). Then Cities got released. I started Shadowblade thened cities. ThermalRider hero. As a stand in for my pegasi. Then realm relics. Then I tried a Settlers Gain. A coalition no generals (also squashed a living city build). Legends however has fixed these problems! But moving on

Then I barely play but everytime I do. See above. I managed yo get two games before ThermalRider was dodo’d.

Now memes aside. Often times I run into an issue where I build my list. This is admittedly coming from 40k. Everything seems innately kinda terrible.*
 

Unless you do big monster or big blob squad and stack ALL THE BUFFS. The lack of aoe auras (command abilities notabky you have Freeguild and Living City). All target one unit to super buff it. This comes to me and well final caveat: my bias with army I am building.

non-Monster heroes feel awful. They don’t do anything. Even the better ones like Azyros are somewhat expensive considering what they are buffing. And then the various relics/traits for non auras are meh are non monsters.

I’d love to hear “your wrong non monster heroes aren’t in a terrible spot your bias/being memed like 5 times is showing” . But real question:

What can be done? I tbink a large point reduction for infantru heroes. Like an infantry hero costs as much as another unit. Heroes costing 50-70 range vs 80-140. Change command abilities on small heroes to range base instead of single target. While big heroes are single target. What everuone else think? And is my history biassing me here?

[GrogTheGrognard]

Personally, I think you may be comparing 40k and AoS too much to each other. While I do agree that foot heroes are mostly terrible when it comes to fighting baring a few exceptions (Gotrek for one), but I think foot heroes are mostly supposed to be support pieces rather than army smashers like in 40k. In 40k you can build a smashy space marine captain, or custodes who could easily crush 1/4 of your opponents list or more by themselves. AoS on the other hand most foot heroes can have a hard time fighting their way past a block of 40 clan rats if they are left on their own. I think that's the point of AoS though. If you just go with foot heroes then mostly it's the army that has to pull the weight and win the battle not the individual leaders. If you want an individual leader to smash the enemy army then they need to be of a more monstrous variety to have the power to crush everything in front of them (or be Gotrek).

 

Now if anything should be done for foot heroes I don't think dropping the cost of the hero would be best. If the model only cost 50-70 points but still had the same rules sure it might be spammed more often because it's cheap but you wouldn't feel like the model is much cooler. They would be doing the exact same thing just for a cheaper points cost. Now giving them more aura abilities might be a good way to go if you wanted to improve them and make them feel better as a support piece, but AoS 3.0 seems to be trying to move away from the buff stacking that happened in AoS 2.0.

[Enoby]

Foot heroes are in a really weird position in AoS and I'm not really sure how I feel about them - on one hand, I think it's neat to have small support characters that lend buffs to the army, making certain units more useful at a smaller points cost. On the other hand, from a narrative perspective, it feels disappointing to have chaos lords and vampire lords sit about hitting with the strength of a feather duster.

I'll use the Chaos Lord as a point of discussion. He has a terrifying average damage of... 3 vs a 4+ save. With 7 wounds and a 4+ save combined with no mortal wound protection, they're a bit of a dud in combat. However, they have a fantastic command ability (one of the best in the game) combined with support from the allegiance ability to other units. They're a really strong and cheap model for buffs, which is great, but I just don't like the divide between the narrative of chaos lords being incredibly skilled combatants that fight and kill monsters, to the real gameplay of being a cheerleader to Archaon or marauders. 

It's tricky because Warhammer in general promotes the fantasy of heroes taking on the impossible, but in gameplay a Chaos Lord (or other important hero) would only ever fight some mighty beast if they had a death wish.

From a gameplay perspective, I think the way AoS does it is likely overall superior, but from a narrative perspective I'd much rather my foot heroes lived up to their lore. 

It does bother me a little that these chaos lords are said to have beaten countless battles and had many gifts bestowed upon them, but if you use them in combat against any 'worthy' opponent, it becomes a pillow fight, or they die very quickly (which seems pretty silly considering how many previous battles they'd have needed to be in to get to their position) 

[yukishiro1]

There are a lot of very bad foot heroes. There are a few good ones. But the good ones are almost all good because they're cheap buff pieces, not for what they actually do themselves. And GW has put themselves into a bit of a corner with the way that there is no significant character baseline protection in AOS, so any effective hero can easily be sniped out with either ranged attacks or spells. This creates a situation where it's really only the cheap ones that are worth taking. But that means you can't make foot heroes that are actually good in combat, because they'd be too expensive, and they'd just get deleted before they can do anything. 

It all goes back to that fateful and disastrous decision not to include character protection in the game (no, a -1 to hit doesn't count). 

[Arathorn185]

2 hours ago, GrogTheGrognard said:

Personally, I think you may be comparing 40k and AoS too much to each other. While I do agree that foot heroes are mostly terrible when it comes to fighting baring a few exceptions (Gotrek for one), but I think foot heroes are mostly supposed to be support pieces rather than army smashers like in 40k. In 40k you can build a smashy space marine captain, or custodes who could easily crush 1/4 of your opponents list or more by themselves. AoS on the other hand most foot heroes can have a hard time fighting their way past a block of 40 clan rats if they are left on their own. I think that's the point of AoS though. If you just go with foot heroes then mostly it's the army that has to pull the weight and win the battle not the individual leaders. If you want an individual leader to smash the enemy army then they need to be of a more monstrous variety to have the power to crush everything in front of them (or be Gotrek).

 

Now if anything should be done for foot heroes I don't think dropping the cost of the hero would be best. If the model only cost 50-70 points but still had the same rules sure it might be spammed more often because it's cheap but you wouldn't feel like the model is much cooler. They would be doing the exact same thing just for a cheaper points cost. Now giving them more aura abilities might be a good way to go if you wanted to improve them and make them feel better as a support piece, but AoS 3.0 seems to be trying to move away from the buff stacking that happened in AoS 2.0.

As a note that isn’t really true. A smash captain henerally eats half your cp. And its just a tad more complicated than you make it out to be here. Part of the problem. I am making a Shadowblade themed lists. And Assassins functionally do nothing. They don’t assassinate very well. Their pitiful saves make them ‘easy’ish to kill. And if they are my general Because how they deploy I lose a turn of any abilities*. I mean if a character does nothing why should he cost the same as a unit?
 

*Albeit I admit there a bias here

[whispersofblood]

Tbf mate your list of factions doesn't really include any real AoS factions. 

There will always be functionally bad warscrolls. And because heroes can only do or be a limited assortment of things their utility will be inherently low. 

AoS3 has done a lot for ordinary command and control heroes by increasing CP, and the available abilities. 

In the other hand it would be incredibly difficult to build a world where both utility and combat power exist together in similar platforms. Increasing character protection just makes the utility guys more reliable and therefore valuable. Combat is also mostly about taking or defending objectives where Bing a single model worth maybe 2 models on an objective just isn't very high value. Which is why we are seeing more and more heroes get unique abilities and synergies beyound their combat profile. Vanari Lord Regents hits like they wield a legendary Wiffle bat. But they have a lot of command and control elements which means they are always worth considering.

Narrative wise I think the game distinguishes Legendary heroes from HEROes pretty well. Heroes compared to almost any individual in their army are obviously superior combatants. But they don't hit like a whole unit, that would be inconsistent with the world imo. 

[Arathorn185]

Whispers to be clear that is why I posted this thread because of my bias. Which is why I wanted, to post this because despite “feeling” this way. I wanted to make sure this was due to oddly/weirdly specific situation I am in NOT because it is an actual problem.

Through I’ll fight and say free people/freeguild is a real faction was original faction I working off of. (To be fair Assassins frankly don’t seem bad. If they had a two damage weapon they feel fine to me atleast)

[Popisdead]

It sounds like you are also weighing in VERY heavily stressing the point "bretonnia is gone and i'm triple mad about it."   I feel for ya, I've lost a lot of my Wood Elves but I've found units to proxy/counts-as them.  So far there isn't anything in my collection I cannot or have not used as something themed.  

 

If I owned a Bretonnian army I would buy Flesh Eaters Court, find out which models were close and convert them up with some ghoul heads and arms.  

 

If you don't want to do that buy Cities of Sigmar and figure out what works there.  

 

There are lots of people who've played Warhammer Fantasy for years/decades and have been through the ups and downs and made it work.  

[Neverchosen]

As others have said often times heroes function more as leaders contributing to the fight but are more suited for giving out commands and fighting alongside troops... But honestly sometimes style points simply matter more than victory points 😎

Edited September 6, 2021 by Neverchosen

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

It's not exactly that non-monster heroes are not good. Being a MONSTER has only very recently become a mechanically desirable trait. And certainly, adding the MONSTER keyword to underperforming heroes will not in general suddenly make them good.

Instead, what is actually desirable are the traits that being on a big monster incidentally confers: High armour, high wounds and mobility. Heroes that have these traits but are not MONSTERS are still quite good. They get to perform the same role: Go where they are needed, tank stuff and probably buff little guys.

However, I personally think that a lot of foot heroes are not bad, either, if you don't view them as damage dealers or tanks. They are, by the nature of the game, mostly utility pieces. They can't (in general) be super tanky, because that's the niche of bigger models and they can't be super fast becaues that's mostly limited to guys on horses or similar rides. So you need to accept that they play a role where just kinda walk along with foot troops and buff them, because they are usually not worth their points if they do anything else.

I tend to view foot heroes as a way of upgrading a unit that has already reached max size. You have your once or double reinforced unit already, but you want it to do more. So the next step is to add a hero to tag along. Frequently, a +1 to hit or similar hero command ability/aura on a large unit is actually as good as adding 10 more models in terms of damage output (or better, given how frequently not all models of a unit get into combat). And even if the return is worse than adding another 10 models to the unit, it can sometimes be enough to reach important benchmarks, such as destroying a unit of equal size of 4+ save models. To me, that's often worth considering, not even taking other goodies like unlocking extra battleline choices into acount. If you don't view foot heroes as a focus of the army in themself, but rather as just another upgrade for a regular unit, they start feeling like better choices in my opinion.

As for melee foot heroes: This is just kind of a design space that GW has not figured out yet. There are like two and a half good ones in the whole game right now. It's just that GW seems to be unwilling to give them the kind of movement they would need to actually deliver their damage. Plus, heroes are generally overcosted for the damage they are able to put out. So overall, a beatstick foot hero will just be worse than a squad of 10 regular guys, which can also capture and hold points on top of dealing damage. But then again, most beatstick foot heroes are not so bad that they will wreck the viability of your list if you pay 100 points or so for them. The Assassin is one such case, for example: Sure, he will not do much most games, but I would still take him if that means all my battleline is taken care of. 80 points really don't make or break a list.

[Kadeton]

The 4+ ward saves on models like Basteon and Yndrasta seems to me to be GW's admission that foot heroes have a survivability problem, and (as is often their style) "solving" it in the bluntest way possible. Can't give them 10+ wounds because a bunch of stuff keys off going over that threshold? Just virtually double their wounds instead. Give them bodyguards too. Let them resurrect their bodyguards, why not. Yndrasta is tougher than a mega-gargant.

[Arathorn185]

19 hours ago, Popisdead said:

It sounds like you are also weighing in VERY heavily stressing the point "bretonnia is gone and i'm triple mad about it."   I feel for ya, I've lost a lot of my Wood Elves but I've found units to proxy/counts-as them.  So far there isn't anything in my collection I cannot or have not used as something themed.  

 

If I owned a Bretonnian army I would buy Flesh Eaters Court, find out which models were close and convert them up with some ghoul heads and arms.  

 

If you don't want to do that buy Cities of Sigmar and figure out what works there.  

 

There are lots of people who've played Warhammer Fantasy for years/decades and have been through the ups and downs and made it work.  

I’ve kinda tried to NOT be doing Bretonnia. Its why my list is Shadowblade themed. And Bretonnia being here or there is not something matters to me. Like ultimately if I wanted Bretonnia, I’d play Bretonnia. What I want is bejng able to play my heroes and not feel awful*.
 

And it seems verdict here is that non-monster heroes are terrible**. But are themselves not bad units. Because they provide strong support elements. And add abilities to the game that is lacking otherwise.

Issue I posted this thread is the Monster Heroes, not Foot Heroes, but monsters like X character on X Monster Mount or literal monsters who are heroes. Just seems better than non monster hero equivalents. To point I was “why not just take this big character monster?” Like the small/non monsters characters felt like they do nothing. They have paltry and weak number of attacks. Their command abilities often are just weaker than the big monsters. And like yeah an 80 point Assassin might not be actively terrible. But that 80 point Assassin could be a Scourge Chariot which actively does something. 
 

I do feel this thread proved to me its not the system its me being bias/oddlt specific circumstances which is the issue here.

*I do want to stress this I am not angry Bretonnia was gone. I have my models, I have legend rukes and okd world is comjng and my larger issue always been the lack of cavalry/knight models to make more bretonnins and cavalry heroes. Both within last year AoS has provided (Luminith Cavalry and Legends). Both models and rulewise for conversions wnd for cavalry character in cities. 
 

**As a unit they do actively nothing. A Freeguild footwalking general does nothing. He makes other units do great/better things. So terrible is there to unit own capabibility to do things

[Popisdead]

On 9/6/2021 at 2:44 PM, Arathorn185 said:

I’ve kinda tried to NOT be doing Bretonnia. Its why my list is Shadowblade themed. And Bretonnia being here or there is not something matters to me. Like ultimately if I wanted Bretonnia, I’d play Bretonnia. What I want is bejng able to play my heroes and not feel awful*.
 

And it seems verdict here is that non-monster heroes are terrible**. But are themselves not bad units. Because they provide strong support elements. And add abilities to the game that is lacking otherwise.

Issue I posted this thread is the Monster Heroes, not Foot Heroes, but monsters like X character on X Monster Mount or literal monsters who are heroes. Just seems better than non monster hero equivalents. To point I was “why not just take this big character monster?” Like the small/non monsters characters felt like they do nothing. They have paltry and weak number of attacks. Their command abilities often are just weaker than the big monsters. And like yeah an 80 point Assassin might not be actively terrible. But that 80 point Assassin could be a Scourge Chariot which actively does something. 
 

I do feel this thread proved to me its not the system its me being bias/oddlt specific circumstances which is the issue here.

*I do want to stress this I am not angry Bretonnia was gone. I have my models, I have legend rukes and okd world is comjng and my larger issue always been the lack of cavalry/knight models to make more bretonnins and cavalry heroes. Both within last year AoS has provided (Luminith Cavalry and Legends). Both models and rulewise for conversions wnd for cavalry character in cities. 
 

**As a unit they do actively nothing. A Freeguild footwalking general does nothing. He makes other units do great/better things. So terrible is there to unit own capabibility to do things

All good, i guess I read it differently than you asked.  

A couple points about AoS 3 now has been holding mid-tier and grinding is crucial more than damage dealers (granted there are drastic exceptions).  If you have access to 30 infantry on 25 mm (a la duardin) that can get a couple pips saved stacked that's pretty powerful.  

So does a non-hero monster have that role?  The Treelord is okay at it actually.  3+ save and good wound count and the ability to be healed.  Can a Ghorgon also do that?  no.  Cities of Sigmar heightens the non-hero monster isn't a good cause the Phoenix is SO much better with an Annointed.  

Regarding non-hero monsters, Battlemages are quite good again, the Sorceress is, as is the Warsong Revenant and Nomad Prince.  I think there are lots of non-monster heroes that also help. However yeah the Shaggoth is the better choice in the Beasts of Chaos list, granted a Bray-Shaman is also mandatory as it brings some good benefits for chaff.  

Generally sweeping blankets statements fail because of the lack of absolution.  An Assassin popping up to be a distraction is better than a single chariot.  Especially if it can hide and achieve 1-2 battle tactics.  A freeguild footwalking general, can have +2 to his save (all out defense, that hero +1 save) and mystic shield.  If you want him to get on an objective for that one misssion and hold it, he sounds okay.  An Annointed on foot will take 20 wounds to take him out.  

I would say if you're coming from a 40k background, and want to get into this game, be prepared for a significant shift in army building as well as game-play.  So significant the change from AoS 2 to AoS 3 has drastically changed the meta, field, army building and tournament scene for months.