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A simple way to understand and write a competitive list for age of sigmar.


Belathor

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enormous edit: I realized my first post of this was the first draft and not the actual article I’ve submitted. Here’s it fixed. 
 

i’ve been posting a lot of articles to warhammercompetitive as “manqobadad” figured it was time to share them with you guys
 

I post an absolute ton of lists on here and I commonly say “they’re like grandmas cookin. You might have the ingredients but you can’t make her cookies quite like she can.” Well with this we’re going to try and understand grandma’s cooking and not feel lost and confused when we look at an event winning list and possibly make our own cookies.

We’re going to do this by looking at the ultimate grandma’s cooking list, a beast of chaos list. If you just scroll down and read it and try and comprehend whats going on its going to seem like a complete mess. But when you understand these concepts it will all make sense to you. 

Building up the levels

We all had to learn to paint. If you’re like me it probably started with a much too thick layer of primer from a rattle can with some slopped on base coats finished with a big glug of liquid skill nulin oil. Well now I’m a commission painter who specializes in finishing armies quickly. It used to take me hours to even do just that back in the day but now I achieve a much higher level quicker because of the levels of techniques and skill We all have built over the years.

Making an army list is kinda like that. It starts sloppy and basic and grows into this refined process. But just like looking at a golden demon winning painted mini it can be almost impossible to visualize how it got there. Much can be the same for army lists. 

At lots of tournaments I go to I see people on low tables to mid tables running lists I’ve seen win tournaments. These lists in the right hands go 5-0 but with someone who doesn’t fully comprehend it the list goes 2-3. Its all about understanding why the list is great,

Level 0: Your Army 101

The layers to this delicious cake begin. Level 0 would be understanding what your book does. So in the case of Ironjawz you’d understand your army hits things in the face like a wrecking ball made of cabbage when they’re all buffed up. Easy enough. Something like beasts of chaos would be understanding your army is entirely chaff right down to your heroes. And it wouldn’t be playing seraphon and using your weedy little infantry skinks trying to make a hard hitting melee army. 

Level 1: Three Threats Theory

So when you are making your lists you want to make sure you have three big threats someone has to deal with. Unless its archaon if you have only one big threat for someone to deal with, it can be shut down fairly easily by numerous amounts of sources throughout the various books. By simply running three threats you force your opponent to make a decision while you have to do absolutely nothing.

This can be as easy as just a megagargant per threat in sons. Or in cities it can be 30 iron drakes 30 ironbreakers with a cohort of casters and a frost phoenix with tome in hallowheart. My 30 iron drakes buffed up will do big damage, my ironbreakers with 4 casters behind them will do a lot of mortal wounds and be an absolute boulder on an objective being hard to move and my phoenix can threaten the back line and scoring by being a hard to kill monster. I’m forcing my opponent to make a decision on what to deal with. 

It doesn’t always have to be damage or tankiness. It can also look like in khorne a package that really shuts down casters. At nashcon I frequently saw tzeench players wanting to complain to the first person who’d listen about this guy’s khorne list with that cat sized dragon that was giving -6 for them to cast. But we want our three threats to do one thing extremely well.

You can also have minor threats that live rent free in your opponents mind like deep strikers but those aren’t included in our three threats. Those are more level 5.

Level 2: The Missions.

This one is easy most missions in AoS are hold one hold two hold more. You want to design your lists to hold two efficiently and battle over more. Look at your player packs and have a plan for the games you’ll play, what are you going to do if you’re K.O. and you get the vice? What are you going to do on the one with 6 objectives that stack huge points over the game? Sometimes its an easy answer sometimes its not.

Level 3: What battle tactics can I achieve?

Here we have finally reached the secret sauce to winning games in AoS. What is my plan for battle tactics every turn? Are you taking 3 monsters for the savage advance for that extra point? How are you going to score spearhead where you put two units in their deployment? Do you have enough damage to use bring it down and kill the battle line? Do you have ways to slay the warlord? You need to understand what the tactics are and how can you achieve them easily. If you think simply in this way and play every game to score 5 battle tactics you will win more games. 

Level 4: what battle tactics am I giving up?

So I will use an army I’d never recommend anyone to play, beasts of chaos. They have a serious advantage right now because they have cheap bodies and serious mobility with some good control options with a shaggoth casting hailstorm halving movement and a demon prince halving charges. Whilst they can’t kill anything even if they try, they can put up walls of chaff and slow you down. 

But you have to think about this, if you just took 80 ungors and shoved them forward and have a 5 wound hero as your general, you easily just gave your opponent 2 free battle tactics slay the warlord and line breaker. Lets say you take 3 ghorgons and run them next to each other so you can get your free point with ferocious advance? That’s great but you just gave your opponent bring it down, and 3 points if they kill them one at a time. So by simply writing your list this way you have given your opponent 3 easy to achieve battle tactics and 3 points for having easy to kill monsters. Even if your opponent is playing at level 0 he’s going to see the play and beat you. Because the strategy you have to work hard to achieve he just gets for free because of you.

So how do you build against this? Well in a list like beasts your general could be a dragon ogre shaggoth. Now he’s a very hard to kill piece and a monster so he can help score monstrous takeover. Instead of running weak battle line you could run two units of dragon ogors to push foreward and if you wanted to a cheap unit of gors but all they do is sit in the backfield. If this were Ironjawz we could take Brutes over ardboys to make them tougher. Cities running ironbreakers. So now if you want to achieve kill the battle line you have to kill 30 wounds of tough dragon ogors or ironbreakers. We have now without trying made a hard decision on our opponent by taking away two easy options. We can then buy chaff that aren’t battle line like warhounds and ungor raiders to get in the way without giving up any points.


Level 5: What will cause my opponent to make decisions?

 I’ve mentioned it a few times but lets really get into the importance of decision making. The fewer choices you have to make the more clear your head is for planning out future turns.  The more decisions you have to make the more likely you are to make a bad decision. 

To put all of this into one neatly wrapped observation. Say we are beast of chaos and we take two cheap monsters say cockatrices or if we’re living city hydras and we plan to deepstrike them on the back of the board to our opponents deployment zone turn 3 to score spearhead for 3 points. Our opponent now can deal with them with a lot of firepower but then that firepower is not going to the main objectives. So he may score a point for killing them but we deny him two points for not being able to take an objective this turn. Now this is bad because whats a hydra going to do afterwords the answer is nothing they suck but heres how you can do something like that. 

This more commonly is used in deepstrike in general. If they know you have 3 annihilators in the sky or 9 stormfiends that can pop up you force your opponent to spread out and zone them off. So them zoning your army makes the rest of what they do inefficient. If you’re going to play like this it helps to have a plan to exploit that.

Level 6: What do I have to be worried about in the current meta and whats my answer for it?

Be extremely careful with this one. This is the one where you’ll start losing games by outplaying yourself. If you were to look at my meta review and say “lumineth wind spirits are a huge deal how do I deal with this?” And you make this whole package based on catching them and doesn’t do much else then you never play against a lumineth wind spirits player... It can be difficult. You’ll beat 90% of players who aren’t thinking about anything above just by considering them. Here make sure you have answers but things that would also be good against other armies. 

Gotrek is a serious issue. So you play nurgle and take the sloppity bilepiper and when that ginger missile rockets into a group of plaguebearers you remove everything within 2 of him. And now because he can’t pile in close because of the piper he is effectively pinned there til the piper dies or another unit comes and kills the bearers. Its not a big commitment to take that piece and not allowing pile ins is strong just in general but it is also an answer to a deadly character.

An example against this would be khorne taking a package to give -6 to cast every turn and contest every roll. This is amazing against tzeench lumineth hallowheart and any list that relies on little buffs from casts, but what happens if you go against a sons player? What about fyreslayers? Dok? Idoneth? It becomes a bit muddy. Now this is fine to take because in the current meta at a tournament you probably are going to run into a lot of tzeench lumineth and hallowheart players so its not necessarily a bad thing but something to consider.


Putting it all together


Ok so thats the five levels of what goes into list building and I want to show you a list by @eat_bray_love that when you first look at it looks completely nonsensical, but when you understand these concepts it makes it so much easier to understand you can actually comprehend what you are reading.

Allegiance: Beasts of Chaos
-    Mortal Realm: Ghur - Grand Strategy:
-    Triumphs:

LEADERS
Grashrak Fellhoof (150)
-    Lore of the Twisted Wilds: Tendrils of Atrophy

Dragon Ogor Shaggoth (185)
-    General
-    Command Trait: Master of Magic - Artefact: Amulet of Destiny
-    Lore of Dark Storms: Hailstorm

Tzaangor Shaman of Beasts of Chaos (135)
-    Lore of the Twisted Wilds: Tendrils of Atrophy

Slaves to Darkness Daemon Prince (210)
-    Axe
-    Mark of Chaos: Khorne - Allies

UNITS


6 x Dragon Ogors (300)

3 x Dragon Ogors (150)

10 x Ungors (70)
-    Mauls & Half-Shields

6 x Tzaangor Enlightened on Disc of Beasts of 
Chaos (360) 

10 x Ungor Raiders (90)

10 x Chaos Warhounds (80)

5 x Centigors (90)

3 x Tzaangor Enlightened on Disc of Beasts of Chaos (180)

2 battle regiments this is a 2 drop list

Level 0: this list understands its a bunch of chaff

Level 1: the three threats are shaggoth demon prince pairing with their cc, 6 dragon ogors and their ability to hold an objective, 6 enlightened for their combat ability and we can deep strike them and force our opponent to play scared

Level 2: this list can easily hold two objectives and battle over the third by blocking you turn one in your deployment with warhounds moving 21”. If that unit is double debuffed by the demon prince and the hailstorm a 3 inch charge becomes a 12 inch charge. If anything moves within 9” of the warhounds you can redeploy 1” and turn it into a 16” charge from 4” away pinning a unit and putting you ahead basic objectives for a turn.

Level 3: through deepstrike this list can achieve spearhead. Monstrous takeover is freely available. Your chaff will die allowing the opening of conquer and you can do it with a monster. You have so many units ferocious advance is easy. Really the only thing you have to do is find 1 battle tactic throughout the game.

Level 4: we made our general and battleline tanky so its hard to give up those, we have enough units on the board to zone deep strikes and make savage spearhead hard to achieve. I went over most of it in the level 4 post.

Level 5: Our opponent if they’re a long time player will be terrified of the enlightened and might play scared vs them. Most players will want to smash the herd stone and may all in a monster to do so you can use that to your advantage by leaving it open. I can go on for quite a while here.

Level 6: The shaggoth with hailstorm and the demon prince can both shut down the move of a unit like gotrek and morathi severely hurting their ability to get into combat. This isn’t hyper specific and is also great vs things like mortek guard and ironbreakers who wont be able to move onto an objective turn one and because theyre up front most of the time getting slowed means the rest of the units in the deathstar don’t have fly so they’re shut down too.

Conclusion

When you’re making your list keep this cake concept in mind and slowly add your layers to what you’re comfortable with and as you grow you’ll see yourself perform much better just by understanding these concepts before you even get to the table.

Here is the podcast of aos coach and eat_bray_love talking about this list and it finally clicked for me to where I can give a perfect example of what I’ve been trying to talk about when it comes to list building. We all are lucky this guy just plays beasts. If he played a real army he’d be going 5-0 almost every tournament. As always if you have any questions feel free to post them below.

https://youtu.be/PU1-7dYWCgw


 

Edited by Belathor
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EDIT: Please not this was a response to an earlier version of the original post.

I think your list highlights the missing element and the single most important one to doing well in competitive Warhammer; running overpowered stuff. As you hint at in your last paragraph, even fantastic players cannot achieve consistent results with bad armies. Worth noting that crappy players with great armies can't either; one needs both.

The entire process you detailed has a lot of thought and good advice, but it completely falls apart in the face of imbalance. Going with just the 'three threats' you have in the list; plenty of top tier-tournament armies will delete all of them with ease, not be threatened by them in the first place, or both. And I want to emphasize: your concepts are not bad. But the very core of succeeding at competitive Warhammer is exploiting imbalances to utilize the very strongest options. Everything else, everything, needs to grow out from that pillar. If it doesn't than the best that can be done is sporadic wins thanks to the whims of fate*.

*Yes, this is a Tzeentch reference. You all know why.

Edited by NinthMusketeer
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Level 13:

Your being considered the biggest-best thread for any only wanting to win the event, no matter the cost, tournament player.

you are truly the master of Chaos!

and you mostly play doomwheels (and other very random determined stuff, considered to be useless for other player.

 

 

Edited by Skreech Verminking
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5 hours ago, NinthMusketeer said:

I think your list highlights the missing element and the single most important one to doing well in competitive Warhammer; running overpowered stuff. As you hint at in your last paragraph, even fantastic players cannot achieve consistent results with bad armies. Worth noting that crappy players with great armies can't either; one needs both.

The entire process you detailed has a lot of thought and good advice, but it completely falls apart in the face of imbalance. Going with just the 'three threats' you have in the list; plenty of top tier-tournament armies will delete all of them with ease, not be threatened by them in the first place, or both. And I want to emphasize: your concepts are not bad. But the very core of succeeding at competitive Warhammer is exploiting imbalances to utilize the very strongest options. Everything else, everything, needs to grow out from that pillar. If it doesn't than the best that can be done is sporadic wins thanks to the whims of fate*.

*Yes, this is a Tzeentch reference. You all know why.

I half agree half disagree let me explain.

 

so when talking about op stuff I think I bring up both in the post. I kinda just assume it in level 1. I was posting this in r/warhammercompetitive and most of them understand if its op like a gotrek or morathi you probably just take it. But I don’t like fully saying always take whats op because while something like the ginger midget and snake lady may be op, your opponent also will have the most practice against it if we assume higher tables.

 

at nashcon my gotrek got completely outplayed by a gargant player who just played keep away. And I was running him in hammerhall with +3 to run and charge I even flipped my cogs trying to get him into combat and he always kept me at arm and clubs length. Until turn three where sure I killed all his baby gargants and half of a big one, but they all charged me at the same time on the vice. Completely decimating my army. Sure gotrek was finally in combat but he couldn’t chew through the other 2 gargants before he’d win on points.

 

but thats just against me nurgle players talk about how 20 marauders buffed up can charge gotrek and one shot him and how a great unclean one can outgrind morathi in combat and typically end the fight taking 0 damage. Also bonesplittaz say “whats the math to do 35 wounds on a 2+ save? 225 wounds? I got that many dice.” Thats a big reason why that guy went 5-0 at nashcon. 

 

lumineth players only took teclis until they realized he was a bait and not very good

archaon tzeench players already have looked for alternatives taking more advantage of their board control.

 

i’m not saying don’t run the op stuff you absolutely should I’m a cities player thats why I bring up irondrakes even though I personally think they’re a bit of a bait because they’re too expensive. They need the drake the runelord the longbeards and the bridge. And after all that they’re fragile. So I don’t love them but that doesn’t mean they aren’t a threat.

 

run the op stuff just understand there’s a lot of guys bringing counters just for you. As the two tzeench players who went up against the khorne dragon player rocking a -6 to cast package in his army learned.

 

 

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8 hours ago, NinthMusketeer said:

Going with just the 'three threats' you have in the list; plenty of top tier-tournament armies will delete all of them with ease, not be threatened by them in the first place, or both.

It seems kind of self-evident that if the units you're taking as threats are just getting deleted or aren't actually threatening to the enemy, then they don't qualify as threats. In order to fulfil the list requirement of a threat, they need to be a threat. If the threats you chose aren't actual threats in your meta, then you chose wrong.

So while there is a kind of basic requirement to pick competitive (aka "OP") units, I agree with Belathor: as a list-building consideration, that happens around "Level 0" as part of an understanding of which units available to you are universally good value, situationally good value, or poor value. Everything after that is sound advice, and shows why a lot of people who know enough to pick the strong units can still struggle to convert that strength into a reliable winning strategy.

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3 hours ago, Belathor said:

I half agree half disagree let me explain.

 

so when talking about op stuff I think I bring up both in the post. I kinda just assume it in level 1. I was posting this in r/warhammercompetitive and most of them understand if its op like a gotrek or morathi you probably just take it. But I don’t like fully saying always take whats op because while something like the ginger midget and snake lady may be op, your opponent also will have the most practice against it if we assume higher tables.

 

at nashcon my gotrek got completely outplayed by a gargant player who just played keep away. And I was running him in hammerhall with +3 to run and charge I even flipped my cogs trying to get him into combat and he always kept me at arm and clubs length. Until turn three where sure I killed all his baby gargants and half of a big one, but they all charged me at the same time on the vice. Completely decimating my army. Sure gotrek was finally in combat but he couldn’t chew through the other 2 gargants before he’d win on points.

 

but thats just against me nurgle players talk about how 20 marauders buffed up can charge gotrek and one shot him and how a great unclean one can outgrind morathi in combat and typically end the fight taking 0 damage. Also bonesplittaz say “whats the math to do 35 wounds on a 2+ save? 225 wounds? I got that many dice.” Thats a big reason why that guy went 5-0 at nashcon. 

 

lumineth players only took teclis until they realized he was a bait and not very good

archaon tzeench players already have looked for alternatives taking more advantage of their board control.

 

i’m not saying don’t run the op stuff you absolutely should I’m a cities player thats why I bring up irondrakes even though I personally think they’re a bit of a bait because they’re too expensive. They need the drake the runelord the longbeards and the bridge. And after all that they’re fragile. So I don’t love them but that doesn’t mean they aren’t a threat.

 

run the op stuff just understand there’s a lot of guys bringing counters just for you. As the two tzeench players who went up against the khorne dragon player rocking a -6 to cast package in his army learned.

It isn't about naming what is OP at the time of writing the article--that changes from year to year if not faster! It is about giving people general advice on determining what is strong, what isn't, and especially how to see if an option is more hype than actual effectiveness. 

As a sidenote I do feel your Gotrek example shows a gap in the guide; taking choice away from the opponent. It sounds like you were treating Gotrek as a means to kill the Gargants, which was a mistake. In that game Gotrek was a bubble of 'if you enter this zone you die' and your opponent didn't have a choice but to avoid him. That kind of a tool for control over the opponent's tactics is powerful.

As a side-sidenote there's a reason I mentioned how bad players with good lists don't win, getting Gotrek killed by 20 marauders or Morathi tanked by a GUO is something that really needs mistakes to be made by the controlling player.

But to reiterate (more for other readers than you specifically) you have good advice above and my criticisms are not intended to undermine that.

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18 minutes ago, Kadeton said:

It seems kind of self-evident that if the units you're taking as threats are just getting deleted or aren't actually threatening to the enemy, then they don't qualify as threats. In order to fulfil the list requirement of a threat, they need to be a threat. If the threats you chose aren't actual threats in your meta, then you chose wrong.

So while there is a kind of basic requirement to pick competitive (aka "OP") units, I agree with Belathor: as a list-building consideration, that happens around "Level 0" as part of an understanding of which units available to you are universally good value, situationally good value, or poor value. Everything after that is sound advice, and shows why a lot of people who know enough to pick the strong units can still struggle to convert that strength into a reliable winning strategy.

It is self evident to us. The point of the guide is to advise people to whom it may very well not be. Sure if they are coming over from 40k they will definitely understand that. But while a lot of us have been dealing with GW so long that understanding how imbalance fits into the picture is second nature, it is unfair to assume everyone reading the guide will get that. A new player could very much read the above post, follow all the advice, show up with a list resembling the example and get absolutely destroyed because there is a gap in the information.

If I can stop that from happening to even one person then posting here will have been worth it.

Edited by NinthMusketeer
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11 hours ago, NinthMusketeer said:

It is self evident to us. The point of the guide is to advise people to whom it may very well not be. Sure if they are coming over from 40k they will definitely understand that. But while a lot of us have been dealing with GW so long that understanding how imbalance fits into the picture is second nature, it is unfair to assume everyone reading the guide will get that. A new player could very much read the above post, follow all the advice, show up with a list resembling the example and get absolutely destroyed because there is a gap in the information.

If I can stop that from happening to even one person then posting here will have been worth it.

So I actually have written an entire guide that echos this sentiment. I actually think its my best work i’ll talk about it at the end of this.
 

reading these responses I was very confused. I thought I had covered all of this. Then I realized. I copy and pasted the first draft and not the real article I wrote. Which means This is just raw info and all my context I edited in got taken out. Woops lol.  
 

So this is how it’s supposed to open

”I post an absolute ton of lists on here and I commonly say “they’re like grandmas cookin. You might have the ingredients but you can’t make her cookies quite like she can.” Well with this we’re going to try and understand grandma’s cooking and not feel lost and confused when we look at an event winning list and possibly make our own cookies.

We’re going to do this by looking at the ultimate grandma’s cooking list, a beast of chaos list. If you just scroll down and read it and try and comprehend whats going on its going to seem like a complete mess. But when you understand these concepts it will all make sense to you.”

so the intent of this post is really to comprehend army lists that win tournaments and maybe write your own. So when a new player reads this my intent is they’re already looking up army lists. 
 

So I actually have cultivated a community at my local area. I’ve been playing aos since its release with another friend. We dropped those 40 pound backpacks of fantasy books we lugged to tournaments in a heartbeat.  slowly and steadily with a massive explosion at the launch of 2 we grew a massive community that eclipsed our 40k community in my area. New players nowadays are coming from video games like league of legends, and world of warcraft or magic. The first thing you do in those games is google a guide. So when they play aos the first thing they do is google a guide. It’s quite hilarious because I constantly saw new plays turn up with stuff like eels and 6 terrorgheists etc etc and just have 0 idea what they’re doing.  So most of what I have done for the past 3 years has been teaching these guys how to run the army they picked up. The worst was always those who picked up sylvaneth and did not realize it wasn’t basically a run forward and smash face army.

 

thats actually why I wrote a “how to choose an army to start competing” guide on r/warhammercompetitive. If you want to read it u/manqobadad I’d post it here but Tga posts full text on reddit links and its quite lengthy. I’m a bit worried posting it here as I’m quite critical of armies and I know people on this forum are a bit split on competitive and just enjoy the way their army looks. You can let me know what you think

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4 hours ago, Fuchur said:

Thank you very much for that topic, a lot a very interesting thoughts!

But can anyone tell me how this "-6 to cast" Khorne list looks like?  😄

I don’t know if it was -6 to cast exactly but those tzeench players wanted to rip their hair out. I got an earful every time I walked past his table.

46C18DFE-5AC7-4816-B794-554DA9FA37BC.png

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On 9/5/2021 at 3:48 AM, Belathor said:

I don’t know if it was -6 to cast exactly but those tzeench players wanted to rip their hair out. I got an earful every time I walked past his table.

46C18DFE-5AC7-4816-B794-554DA9FA37BC.png

Love the energy of the list but is it not technically illegal? No single model can be above 50% of the army points now. 

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2 hours ago, Liquidsteel said:

Love the energy of the list but is it not technically illegal? No single model can be above 50% of the army points now. 

I mean the dragons not important you can run archaon for similar energy. I wouldn’t recommend people dropping 600 on that resin hunk the size of a cat. But you can make similar lists. 
 

also a lot of T.o.s if you bought the dragon just let you run it because they know you spent so much on it. I’d say its not competitive but this guy came 14th or so so he did pretty good

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20 hours ago, Liquidsteel said:

Love the energy of the list but is it not technically illegal? No single model can be above 50% of the army points now. 

That rule is written into Path To Glory and for the matched play rules in the Core Rulebook.  It is however not a rule listed in the GHB 2021 rules.  For a 2k game, this one model is basically the only time that the rule is relevant, but if you are playing a smaller game (ex. 1k list), this does mean that you can for instance run a list that looks like:

Allarielle (740pts)
Branchwraith (95pts)
2x 5 Tree-Revenants (80pts/unit)

Something to keep in mind as future battlepacks are released is that each battlepack is self contained.  The points limit is not written into the core rules anywhere, it is all battlepack specific.  So you need to carefully read each battlepack to find what the special rules for that battlepack are.  Come next year with GHB2022, we are going to get a whole new battlepack, and all the rules are going to change.  We might be fighting in Shysh, and the rules might have extra points to encourage the usage of battleline, or horde units, and we will have an entire new set of battle tactics and grand strategies.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Somewhat to ask, in AoS. Given unlike 40k combat is always alternating. 5 man units like say tree revavent(spelling). I’ve seen several lists take them MSU. My instinctual reaction is “this sounds like a terrible idea”. Because theh wre melee only and even if they charge. They are likely dead. Before they even get to swing. Is that a reasonable fear?

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1 hour ago, Arathorn185 said:

Somewhat to ask, in AoS. Given unlike 40k combat is always alternating. 5 man units like say tree revavent(spelling). I’ve seen several lists take them MSU. My instinctual reaction is “this sounds like a terrible idea”. Because theh wre melee only and even if they charge. They are likely dead. Before they even get to swing. Is that a reasonable fear?

A unit like that is generally not being brought for its combat ability, it is being brought because it is cheap battleline/screening/objective capturing.

For example, lets take the Tree Revenants.  These only cost 80 points, but are specifically being brought because they come with a built in teleport.  They are being used then to either stand in front of your actually good units and prevent your opponent from being able to charge them or teleport near them or whatever.  Or they are standing around on an objective that you don't really care about to be able to capture it, but not have to worry if your opponent comes over to take the objective.  Or they are just standing around the back of the board and forcing your opponent to keep forces back at their objectives so that they don't lose it to a teleport.

For other units, they lose the teleport ability, but the other notes are as valid.  For example, a 5 man squad of liberators for 115 points is... not going to accomplish much.  They are tanky enough that you can't really just attack them with chaff and wipe them out, but any semi-serious damage unit is going to go through them like a hot knife through butter.  However, they are still brought because they can still hold an objective, or they can still screen your more important units.  And they are brought because they are literally the cheapest battleline you can bring, leaving the most points for the units that are going to do something.

All this being said, these chaff units can still be useful in melee, provided that you are providing your opponent multiple combats.  For instance, if you have 2 units in combat, is your opponent going to swing at your chaff unit first, or are they going to swing at that big hammer unit that is worth 300+ points?  But then after they swing against that, you still have that chaff unit, and any damage that they get in is effectively a bonus.  And if you get lucky with your swings, you can do enough damage to cripple your opponents unit and take that objective/eliminate that damaged unit, etc.

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