Unpopular opinion thread

[Noserenda]

Its not like warcry not existing would give us more AoS minis anyway, they are completely different systems with different teams working on them, some of the warbands might have seen release as "proper" AoS kits but they would probably have all languished on various drawing boards or in artists heads leaving nothing in their place.

[Orbei]

2 hours ago, Noserenda said:

Its not like warcry not existing would give us more AoS minis anyway, they are completely different systems with different teams working on them, some of the warbands might have seen release as "proper" AoS kits but they would probably have all languished on various drawing boards or in artists heads leaving nothing in their place.

I don't really understand that. Yes, they're on different teams... Because the specialty games are a thing. But it's one company with finite resources. They could just say "okay warcry team, we're moving you to AoS and you all get to make updated saurus warriors this month."

[OG SCE]

9 hours ago, MitGas said:

New Marauders in the style of the new Darkoath minis would've made waaaaaaaaaaaaaay more sense, agreed. I like Warcry as a Chaos fan but I totally get your point and think adding missing units to the Chaos armies (Skaven, BoC mainly) would've made MUCH more sense.

Whats the problem with using warcry cultists as marauders?  I mean functionally, rather than performance wise. Is it just that they are missing marks of chaos?  

Any functional issue could be resolved with a quick rule change in white dwarf. So why not?

My feeling is GW still want to milk those old models one more time.  Eventually, the marauders can disappear alongside the older chaos warriors and knights. Then all gw need to do is some warscroll changes and release the sc box as individual units.

Again, I wouldnt be surprised to see the sc S2D with a different hero make up half a battle box first though.

[zilberfrid]

6 hours ago, Ratboy genius said:

skaven gnawing their way across the realms feels like such a lazy copy-paste of living underground from WHFB. 

Now if you forget WHFB, ratmen gnawing their way through planar boundaries sounds quite AoS, right? Like walking trees like the forest, anthropomorphised rats gnaw tunnels, but here not even stepping through a realmgate gets you rid of them.

[Ratboy genius]

26 minutes ago, zilberfrid said:

Now if you forget WHFB, ratmen gnawing their way through planar boundaries sounds quite AoS, right? Like walking trees like the forest, anthropomorphised rats gnaw tunnels, but here not even stepping through a realmgate gets you rid of them.

Why would I forget whfb? Well over half of the named characters in the game are from there 

[Phasteon]

5 minutes ago, Ratboy genius said:

Why would I forget whfb? Well over half of the named characters in the game are from there 

At least the relevant ones. 

Unpopular Opinion, GW did a great job introducing new characters. 

I know everytime a new big name was introduced everyone assumed it would be another old WHFB name returning (eg Settra as Mortarch of the Necropolis). 

But from Vandus Hammerhand, Gordrakk, Brokk Grungsson and Volturnos to Katakros, Kragnos and Bastian Carthalos - they are all awesome! 

Some of them may be lacking some proper depth via novels, but they are all still very young! The more background gets introduced the more those characters appear in actual lore. 

I give you ANOTHER unpopular opinion though: 

I actually like that the lore of those new big names is pretty thin at the moment, because it creates an interesting myth around those characters. 

I remember reading the Iron Dragon novel where the name Brokk got dropped as he is the most legendary Arkanaut and that was sufficient for me to go „Oh he is that relevant, even Zilfin-KO talk about him as a living legend!“ 

Sometimes thats enough to create hype for a character, as it leaves details to my imagination.

[yukishiro1]

3 hours ago, OG SCE said:

Whats the problem with using warcry cultists as marauders?  I mean functionally, rather than performance wise. Is it just that they are missing marks of chaos?  

Any functional issue could be resolved with a quick rule change in white dwarf. So why not?

My feeling is GW still want to milk those old models one more time.  Eventually, the marauders can disappear alongside the older chaos warriors and knights. Then all gw need to do is some warscroll changes and release the sc box as individual units.

Again, I wouldnt be surprised to see the sc S2D with a different hero make up half a battle box first though.

Cultists are kind-of a pain to actually use in AOS due to pretty much all the warbands having a variety of base sizes, which really doesn't work very well with AOS coherency rules. It's also why you can't easily just use them as proxies for marauders. 

Ruleswise none of them put out damage that is even remotely close to marauders, either. Generally you only see min-size units of iron golems and untamed beasts in the game, the former because they're quite tanky for their points and the latter because they're a premier screening unit due to the 6" pre-game move and the run and charge built-in. But even those aren't something you can really build lists around, they're just stuff you fit in around the edges. 

Edited October 31, 2021 by yukishiro1

[Phasteon]

12 minutes ago, yukishiro1 said:

Cultists are kind-of a pain to actually use in AOS due to pretty much all the warbands having a variety of base sizes, which really doesn't work very well with AOS coherency rules. It's also why you can't easily just use them as proxies for marauders. 

Ruleswise none of them put out damage that is even remotely close to marauders, either. Generally you only see min-size units of iron golems and untamed beasts in the game, the former because they're quite tanky for their points and the latter because they're a premier screening unit due to the 6" pre-game move and the run and charge built-in. But even those aren't something you can really build lists around, they're just stuff you fit in around the edges. 

They are all pretty solid for their cost. 

Each warband comes with a unique ability you absolutely can build around and with less than 100 pts and battleline in an idolators army they can work competitively no problem. 

 

That being said, its absolutely 100% not necessary for warbands from a niche system to be THE competitive unit. 

 

I‘d absolutely field 3 of them for my cheap battleline, but then again I‘d never play STD in the first place.

[zilberfrid]

1 hour ago, yukishiro1 said:

Cultists are kind-of a pain to actually use in AOS due to pretty much all the warbands having a variety of base sizes, which really doesn't work very well with AOS coherency rules. It's also why you can't easily just use them as proxies for marauders. 

Ruleswise none of them put out damage that is even remotely close to marauders, either. Generally you only see min-size units of iron golems and untamed beasts in the game, the former because they're quite tanky for their points and the latter because they're a premier screening unit due to the 6" pre-game move and the run and charge built-in. But even those aren't something you can really build lists around, they're just stuff you fit in around the edges. 

Can't you just rebase them to work as proxies? I only use 25 mm 50 mm and 75 mm (for 1, 4 or 9 squares on a battlemat) and haven't found issues doing that. My blood Bowl orcs, trolls and Ogres work a lot better on 50mm.

Edited October 31, 2021 by zilberfrid

[Enoby]

1 hour ago, zilberfrid said:

Can't you just rebase them to work as proxies? I only use 25 mm 50 mm and 75 mm (for 1, 4 or 9 squares on a battlemat) and haven't found issues doing that. My blood Bowl orcs, trolls and Ogres work a lot better on 50mm.

Sometimes yes, but from working on Untamed Beasts and Spire Tyrants, a lot of the models have very wide stances and would pour over a 25mm marauder base - not to mention things like the lion really not fitting in as a marauder. In addition, most of them only come in units of 9 so you need to buy multiple boxes to make a full unit of marauders.

[MitGas]

7 hours ago, OG SCE said:

Whats the problem with using warcry cultists as marauders?  I mean functionally, rather than performance wise. Is it just that they are missing marks of chaos?  

Any functional issue could be resolved with a quick rule change in white dwarf. So why not?

My feeling is GW still want to milk those old models one more time.  Eventually, the marauders can disappear alongside the older chaos warriors and knights. Then all gw need to do is some warscroll changes and release the sc box as individual units.

Again, I wouldnt be surprised to see the sc S2D with a different hero make up half a battle box first though.

Well, the warcry figures are a bit too "diverse" (I don't mean mixed genders but mixed figures, where some are clearly stronger special figures (e.g. the ogor)) to make great marauders that should be a unit of "equals". But yes, one could easily make great marauders out of the new figures. I'm pretty sure you could mix the new warband, the Tyrants and Untamed Beasts for a decent marauder unit, then throw in the underworlds faction. Would be very expensive but it could work. Just think it would've been better to simply turn the latest darkoath warband into full-ledged marauders... 

[zilberfrid]

1 hour ago, MitGas said:

Well, the warcry figures are a bit too "diverse" (I don't mean mixed genders but mixed figures, where some are clearly stronger special figures (e.g. the ogor)) to make great marauders that should be a unit of "equals". But yes, one could easily make great marauders out of the new figures. I'm pretty sure you could mix the new warband, the Tyrants and Untamed Beasts for a decent marauder unit, then throw in the underworlds faction. Would be very expensive but it could work. Just think it would've been better to simply turn the latest darkoath warband into full-ledged marauders... 

Don't forget the Wild Hunt Underworld warband! Edit, I have no idea why I didn't read that, maybe I shouldn't look so much at screens when having a migraine.

Edited October 31, 2021 by zilberfrid

[Noserenda]

12 hours ago, Orbei said:

I don't really understand that. Yes, they're on different teams... Because the specialty games are a thing. But it's one company with finite resources. They could just say "okay warcry team, we're moving you to AoS and you all get to make updated saurus warriors this month."

If they wanted a bigger AoS team they would make the AoS team bigger, they did with 40k recently after all. There is no shortage of people willing to do the work and certainly no shortage of office space! They wanted X number of folks working on AoS and also wanted X number of people working on Boxed games, so they did that.

[yukishiro1]

5 hours ago, Enoby said:

Sometimes yes, but from working on Untamed Beasts and Spire Tyrants, a lot of the models have very wide stances and would pour over a 25mm marauder base - not to mention things like the lion really not fitting in as a marauder. In addition, most of them only come in units of 9 so you need to buy multiple boxes to make a full unit of marauders.

Yeah, they don't really fit one another in terms of scale if they're meant to be equals. Like for Untamed Beasts, there's 3 small ones, 3 medium ones, a lion, and two that are pretty clearly character-sized, or, at a minimum, unit champion sized. So if you wanted to build marauders that looked coherent, at best you're looking at like 3-4 per 9 box you can use to create a coherent unit. Which becomes ridiculously expensive to get even a unit of 20 (over $200), which is really the minimum size you'd want to run marauders. 

It also doesn't help that they're almost all monopose (sometimes 1-2 in the kit have a weapon swap), which means that any large unit is going to have lots of doubles. Unless you go for something really weird and like buy a bunch of different warbands and mix them all together for your marauders, who then end up looking thematically incoherent. Some people maybe like that, but it certainly isn't your typical AOS unit where individual models look "of a part" with the others. 

The new darkoath warband does look like you could probably adapt them for use as marauders pretty easily (if you don't care about WISYWIG and many of them not having shields), though you'd still need to buy 3 boxes for a 20-man unit, so you're looking at probably $150 for something that normally costs $40. 

Edited October 31, 2021 by yukishiro1

[Grimrock]

11 hours ago, Phasteon said:

They are all pretty solid for their cost. 

Each warband comes with a unique ability you absolutely can build around and with less than 100 pts and battleline in an idolators army they can work competitively no problem. 

 

That being said, its absolutely 100% not necessary for warbands from a niche system to be THE competitive unit. 

 

I‘d absolutely field 3 of them for my cheap battleline, but then again I‘d never play STD in the first place.

As a StD player who had the same thought about using cultists for battleline, unfortunately in the end it doesn't work. You take them to fill up your battleline, but then what? What else is there in the army that you want to take now that you've freed up all those points? The main issue is that the majority of our useful units are battleline. Chaos warriors, knights, and marauders are all the units you want to build you army around and they're all battleline. I'm not saying cultists in general are totally useless, a very select few have abilities that are worth taking and having cheap throwaway units to grab objectives and die are always worthwhile in this edition, but the vast majority of them are a total waste of ink. 

My unpopular/popular opinion on the matter: Warcry and Underworlds are all well and good and I'm happy GW has diversified their lines and made a number of interesting small scale alternatives to the main games, but none of those models should exist in AoS. None of the cultists or warbands should have any version of AoS rules. Nearly all of them have been a total disaster and it's taken almost 2 years and 2-3 revisions to make cultists even barely playable. They're a total waste of resources for the AoS team and would have been better left alone so people could freely use them as proxies or alternative sculpts without having their own set rules. 

Edited October 31, 2021 by Grimrock

[yukishiro1]

11 minutes ago, Grimrock said:

As a StD player who had the same thought about using cultists for battleline, unfortunately in the end it doesn't work. You take them to fill up your battleline, but then what? What else is there in the army that you want to take now that you've freed up all those points? The main issue is that the majority of our useful units are battleline. Chaos warriors, knights, and marauders all the units you want to build you army around and they're all battleline. I'm not saying cultists in general are totally useless, a very select few have abilities that are worth taking and having cheap throwaway units to grab objectives and die are always worthwhile in this edition, but the vast majority of them are a total waste of ink. 

Yeah, there's a reason you only really see golems and beasts; I don't think the recent change to make them battleline is going to change that much. And having them be battleline actually arguably nerfs untamed beasts competitively because it means they give up an extremely easy break the ranks, whereas before you could just park them 3" from your opponent's army and move block with no risk of feeding them a no-brainer battle tactic.

 

 

 

 

Edited October 31, 2021 by yukishiro1

[Orbei]

31 minutes ago, yukishiro1 said:

Unless you go for something really weird and like buy a bunch of different warbands and mix them all together for your marauders, who then end up looking thematically incoherent. Some people maybe like that, but it certainly isn't your typical AOS unit where individual models look "of a part" with the others. 

This is the coolest option for the warbands by far. A mish mash of various lunatics whipped into a crazed frenzy. Finally some actual chaos. Would love to see someone do this. 

[Enoby]

1 hour ago, yukishiro1 said:

And having them be battleline actually arguably nerfs untamed beasts competitively because it means they give up an extremely easy break the ranks, whereas before you could just park them 3" from your opponent's army and move block with no risk of feeding them a no-brainer battle tactic.

Just as a tidbit, they're only battleline if they share the same mark as the General so you can avoid this

[yukishiro1]

Oh, cool, I'm glad they kept it that way. 

[CommissarRotke]

On 10/28/2021 at 5:07 PM, Orbei said:

Kind  of with you here. I am glad CoS exists so people can play those old armies, but I really don't like those armies on the field. Cool old models but they don't make any sense at all in AoS. So we are to believe that the races mix together in these cities living side by side, yet when it's time for war they segregate themselves by race, grab their ceremonial armor from the old world, and fight in units from a bygone age? They should be all mixed together with new fancy units. 

I've had the idea of mixing in the old units together (all spears, all handweapons, all bows, etc) but the stat disparity would make picking what the unit represents harder, as well as opponents possibly not vibing with it I do think if you painted all the Empire, high elf, and dwarf units similarly they could fit together as a mixed unit.

[MitGas]

12 hours ago, zilberfrid said:

Don't forget the Wild Hunt Underworld warband! Edit, I have no idea why I didn't read that, maybe I shouldn't look so much at screens when having a migraine.

Well, you probably just didn't register it cause I worded it like a clown (of course I forgot what they were called, the name should've stuck with me after having played the witcher 3 tho). 😅

[feadair]

12 hours ago, Grimrock said:

My unpopular/popular opinion on the matter: Warcry and Underworlds are all well and good and I'm happy GW has diversified their lines and made a number of interesting small scale alternatives to the main games, but none of those models should exist in AoS. None of the cultists or warbands should have any version of AoS rules. Nearly all of them have been a total disaster and it's taken almost 2 years and 2-3 revisions to make cultists even barely playable. They're a total waste of resources for the AoS team and would have been better left alone so people could freely use them as proxies or alternative sculpts without having their own set rules. 

Also, having to paint a large number of pretty detailed minis to create cheap battleline units sucks. If you need to paint more than 20 of something, it should be straightforward.

[yukishiro1]

Yeah, I have to say, just painting two sets of untamed beasts has been about my limit. The first set was fun to paint, the second set was pure tedium because they're basically exactly the same as the last set (I think two of the models have marginally different weapon swaps) and having done all that detail and flesh once already, I have zero desire to do it again. I'm very glad there's no reason I'd ever want more than that. 

[zilberfrid]

2 hours ago, yukishiro1 said:

Yeah, I have to say, just painting two sets of untamed beasts has been about my limit. The first set was fun to paint, the second set was pure tedium because they're basically exactly the same as the last set (I think two of the models have marginally different weapon swaps) and having done all that detail and flesh once already, I have zero desire to do it again. I'm very glad there's no reason I'd ever want more than that. 

If you're not playing in shops or tournaments, Frostgrave cultists might prove much nicer to paint and I feel they fit the role they have in the faction better.

7 hours ago, MitGas said:

Well, you probably just didn't register it cause I worded it like a clown (of course I forgot what they were called, the name should've stuck with me after having played the witcher 3 tho). 😅

Well, my brain wasn't better when I wrote that, Skaeths Wild Hunt is another warband. Theddra's is the Godsworn Hunt.

[MitGas]

2 hours ago, zilberfrid said:

If you're not playing in shops or tournaments, Frostgrave cultists might prove much nicer to paint and I feel they fit the role they have in the faction better.

Well, my brain wasn't better when I wrote that, Skaeths Wild Hunt is another warband. Theddra's is the Godsworn Hunt.

Apparently that warband is our kryptonite then! 😄