Incarnates Rules Discussion

[OkayestDM]

I'm intrigued by the Incarnate, though I'll reserve judgment until I know more. With the right paint job it will look amazing, so appearance doesn't bother me.

I stated elsewhere that I wondered if this model heralded a forthcoming change to Endless Spells, the majority of which languish in obscurity because their rules just aren't terribly good. 

As others have said, yet another layer of unique rules doesn't do much to help the game, but I'm hoping we see Endless Spells brought in line as lesser versions of the Incarnates. Similarly, Invocations might also receive a similar rules treatment, but instead of the risk of going wild, they automatically drop down a state unless a priest does something to keep them going (spend their prayer to keep it at it's current state.)

This is all pure speculation of course, but it could potentially be a great way of revitalizing the Endless Spells and Invocations if GW chose to move in that direction.

If BoLS is right about how the Incarnate works, I'm curious and a little apprehensive to see it on the tabletop. Max 38 damage seems like an "everything goes improbably perfectly" scenario, but the real question is if that damage comes from attack profiles or Mortal Wounds, which will dramatically change how much of a problem this piece is.

I like the concept of States as a modified monster bracket for the Incarnate, but I want to see how it's implemented and whether or not this remains a unique design or becomes more universal.

Overall, I very much like the potential and opportunities presented by this new design direction, but if it isn't followed through with I suspect that this will just be a flash in the pan like so many Endless Spells before it.

[Iamanbo]

2 hours ago, JackStreicher said:

Points: 400
Money: What you'd think is adequate *2.5 + 20

😄ok thanks

[Skreech Verminking]

Actually I have a feeling that this new spell thingie, might be the perfect addition to any seraphon army.

-everything in their army is undercoated

-a slann or kroak getting another +1 to cast will be undeniably hated by everyone not playing them.

-and slanns can easily be protected by some somewhat cheap- elite infantry unit.

 

[Popisdead]

On 3/30/2022 at 6:39 AM, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

It remains an open question whether Incarnates will become a permanent part of the game moving foreward.

Not a heck of a lot is permanent in this game compared to what people realize.  But we see stuff recycle edition after edition.  A form of Incarnates or Elementals have been around since the mid-1980s.  Spells in their various forms change how we access them, where they are written (Amber-Spear for example), High/dark/wood Elves, dwarves, Greater-daemon models.. etc.  It is a core-recycler style game.  

On 3/30/2022 at 6:52 AM, Kaleb Daark said:

Anything from BOLS just leaves me feeling like I need a shower and a purification ritual.  I find it quite a hateful place.

NO KIDDING.  I was disappointed to see BOLS linked here.  They are the click bait STD of Warhammer sites.

 

I guess it's time to finish my Incarnate of Beasts.  

[yukishiro1]

8 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

I don't know, it feels like attaching the Incarnate to a small foot hero could be worth it if they are resilient enough. Especially if you are OK with parking them behind line-of-sigh blocking terrain for most of the game. If they are a wizard they could probably still contribute in that situation.

 

I would assume the hero has to stay within its domination range (or at least w/in a fixed, relatively short range - if the domination aura changes size based on power status probably that shouldn't result in losing control of it, so maybe it's fixed at the medium size or something), it'd be a bit weird otherwise if the whole point is that it's being controlled and then it goes crazy if the hero isn't around any more. Doesn't mean it's impossible to still keep the hero back safe somewhere behind terrain, but that really restricts how aggressive you can be with a piece that seems like it is designed to be used aggressively if you're having to tether it to a back-boarded hero parked somewhere safe. 

 

[Liquidsteel]

Is the base size at all obvious from the images released?

80mm or 100 mm round?

The fact they've bundled it in with terrain is so annoying, so I may go out of my way to just convert something generic and be done with it.

[SunStorm]

10 minutes ago, Liquidsteel said:

Is the base size at all obvious from the images released?

80mm or 100 mm round?

The fact they've bundled it in with terrain is so annoying, so I may go out of my way to just convert something generic and be done with it.

I don't think it's been confirmed, but from various pictures, I'd guess at least 100mm round.

With the Stormcast on 40mm, it looks like it's at least twice as wide as those.

 

[Edit] quick bit of pixel counting in MSPaint would suggest it's 100mm

Edited April 6, 2022 by SunStorm

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

9 minutes ago, SunStorm said:

I don't think it's been confirmed, but from various pictures, I'd guess at least 100mm round.

With the Stormcast on 40mm, it looks like it's at least twice as wide as those.

 

[Edit] quick bit of pixel counting in MSPaint would suggest it's 100mm

Kinda looks to me like the Incarnate base is two Yndrasta bases wide, which would put it at 130mm.

[Liquidsteel]

13 minutes ago, SunStorm said:

[Edit] quick bit of pixel counting in MSPaint would suggest it's 100mm

Cool.

This looks like a great opportunity to rummage round the bits box. Leftover Zombie Dragon pieces might be perfect.

[Gothmaug]

55 minutes ago, Liquidsteel said:

Cool.

This looks like a great opportunity to rummage round the bits box. Leftover Zombie Dragon pieces might be perfect.

I like it! My plan are some zombie dragon bits, combined with nighthaunt cursed sprits/banshees from the Coven throne and Mortarch kits. Figure I can dip into the bits box and come up with a pretty cool swirl of undeath with a dragons head that will fit thematically into my nighthaunt army, ( which is in sore need of monsters and anything with Rend). Sure beats buying an entire box of terrain you may already own to get one Incarnate. 

[Mutton]

Anybody have good 3rd party alternatives for this lad? I don't particularly like the sculpt and sure as hell aren't paying $200 just to pick it up.

[Marcvs]

2 hours ago, Mutton said:

Anybody have good 3rd party alternatives for this lad? I don't particularly like the sculpt and sure as hell aren't paying $200 just to pick it up.

maybe this https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-maneater-skullnaga-maneater-nagarots-epic-beast-195727

printed at the right size ofc

[BigNStinky]

3 hours ago, Marcvs said:

maybe this https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-maneater-skullnaga-maneater-nagarots-epic-beast-195727

printed at the right size ofc

Now this. Is what I had envisioned from the art.

[Baron Klatz]

Anyone really like the detail of the Ghur endless spell in it’s warscroll? 

I appreciate the Realm of Beast theming. (Plus it’s a ghost eating “Pac-Man” )

Here are the full rules leaked, btw:

+++ MOD EDIT +++ No leaked photos please

Edit: Really sorry about that, Runebrush. Didn’t think a warscroll+ would be a big deal. 😣

It seems a lot simpler to use in this context. Gimmicky but understandable levels for what’s essentially a Final Fantasy boss whose arcane health let it whoop a seasoned huntress demigod like Yndraste since she never faced a Elemental like this before.

it causing nearby units to lose retreat options and even negative effect wizards is really cool too and could have some very interesting uses.

People mostly talk about hardy heroes to survive snipers but what about the opposite? Deepstrike kamikaze heroes who make sure this thing gets in the enemy line before they die(bonus strategy for Stormcasts Lightning explode damage) so it rampages in their lines and drives them crazy? Could be a fun surprise strategy.

On top of the feral rules I like the lore focus it transforms the troops into monsters too. I wouldn’t mind kitbashing some Stormcast “Krondspine Kustodians” with Seraphon parts to replicate the scales and claws and make them look like the monstrous golden dragon knights from Dark Souls 2:

 

On 3/30/2022 at 7:30 AM, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

I don't 100% know why GW went for this type of support either. They have done floating models way better before. The Lumineth foxes and a bunch of Nighthaunt models like the new boat guy, for example.

I think it’s to emphasize the raw magic pulling stuff up or conjuring it like the Azyr winds do(Orrery of Celestial fates akin to the Sigmarite hammer tornado in creating stuff that Azyr channels itself through*) more like the Lumineth Endless spells than the Foxes who are pulling up clean winds through their skill at manipulating air currents:

*:

Edited April 7, 2022 by Baron Klatz
Removal of leaked photos

[yukishiro1]

I can't really read the text, but I couldn't see any limitation on bonding it to a character deployed into reserves, which seems like a bad oversight if true? I was honestly expecting the hero to have to stay within a certain radius, but it appears to not only be board-wide but also even if the model is off the table. And the penalty for the hero dying doesn't even seem to be all that bad as long as you've already got it into your opponent's lines. 

400 points for a flying 12" move monster that's on the killy end of the spectrum for those points values and that shuts off retreating in a 10" radius and that can't be killed in a single round (without auto-kill abilities) seems really good to me. 

[yukishiro1]

Thanks for the bigger photos. I honestly dunno how much of an issue the reserve thing is because of the lack of all that big a penalty if it goes wild anyway. Given you still get to move it yourself, it's unlikely it's going to come back to bite you even if the hero does die. It doesn't seem to me like "snipe out the hero" is actually going to be a strategy, you're going to have to just kill the thing or ignore/tarpit it, and if your list can't do either, well, sucks to be you. 

It's going to hard counter SoB for example, who are already pretty countered by the new handicap system. I'm not going to shed any great tears for that army because I think the concept is bad, but I don't think it's great to have a model that hard-counters an entire army, especially when any army can take it. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 7, 2022 by yukishiro1

[Kadeton]

2 minutes ago, yukishiro1 said:

You're going to have to just kill the thing or ignore/tarpit it, and if your list can't do either, well, sucks to be you.

Which is pretty much the case for every big monster/hero/god already.

Where this seems interesting (and possibly overpowered) is in how it can zone out opponents. Normal screening units can get shot off the board, or will do their job by eating a charge and dying. By comparison, you can never shift this thing before the end of the turn (or at all, if it's level 2 or higher), so even if it "dies" to shooting you still can't get past it, and in melee it will get to fight even against ASF hammer units that would kill anything else before they could swing. If it gets into combat with a monster, that monster is locked there until either it dies (and the Incarnate powers up) or the Incarnate dies. You can throw it directly into your opponent's face on turn 1, knowing it will either still be there on your next turn, or even if you get doubled your opponent will have to throw a ton of damage into it that would otherwise go into your other units.

It plays the "anvil" role like nothing else in the game right now - really powerful area control and tarpit, which also does significant damage. For 400 points, it seems a bit too strong to me (on paper). On the other hand, it eats Stormdrake Guards for breakfast, lunch and dinner, so perhaps it's not such a bad thing for the game.

[yukishiro1]

27 minutes ago, Kadeton said:

Which is pretty much the case for every big monster/hero/god already.

Right. My point was just that the hero bonding mechanism doesn't seem to actually do much tactically. It doesn't really change how you approach it - targeting the bonding hero isn't a viable strategy unless your opponent is really misplaying it, given how anemic the result is. About the only time I can really think it's relevant is if you can snipe the hero at the top of T1 while the thing is still in their deployment zone on a battle plan where they can't stick it out of range of everything else, causing it to charge its own team and stick the enemy army in its own deployment zone...and top of T1 hero sniping really isn't a strategy the game should be rewarding anyway. So either you effectively win the game on the top of T1, or the mechanic likely does nothing. Doesn't seem like a winner from a design point of view.

The whole unit seems like a very hard rock-paper-scissors type of design, and I instinctively don't like those mechanics because they tend to make for lopsided games. 

 

Edited April 7, 2022 by yukishiro1

[Kadeton]

23 minutes ago, yukishiro1 said:

My point was just that the hero bonding mechanism doesn't seem to actually do much tactically.

Yeah, having the Incarnate go wild isn't much of a setback at all. Since you still get to control its movement (and it's not slow!) it should be trivial to avoid it charging your own forces even if it means messing up your army's movement for a turn. Plus if it goes wild, you can start feeding it your own endless spells and probably keep it alive forever.

The only real reason to kill the bonded hero is that the Incarnate then can't hand out All-Out Attack as an aura. Which is certainly tactically significant, but not a game-winning advantage.

23 minutes ago, yukishiro1 said:

The whole unit seems like a very hard rock-paper-scissors type of design, and I instinctively don't like those mechanics because they tend to make for lopsided games.

Agreed. This thing is the Rock to every elite melee unit's Scissors, it just counters them completely (especially monsters). I'm not sure what its Paper is, though - I guess it doesn't like gunlines very much, but it's not exactly hard-countered by them either.

I do like anvil units though, and I think the current pace of stuff dying is heading towards too fast with all the recent Rend increases... it's just a worry that the Incarnate also contributes to that deadliness-creep with its attack profile. But overall, I prefer this mechanism for guaranteeing that a unit will survive an alpha-strike over the Morathi-style version which caps the wounds that can be suffered.

[yukishiro1]

Yeah, I forgot it actually won't charge in the opponent's turn anyway since it stays your model and it explicitly only has to charge in your charge phase, not your opponent's. So it'd be super hard to actually get into a position where it charges your own units and locks them up. I guess the only way is if it's already within 3" of another unit when it goes wild, as it'd then enter combat and you couldn't retreat it  or the other unit because both are impacted by the aura. But that requires the player using it to mess up pretty fundamentally. I almost wonder whether it was originally written to be something more significant - like becoming like a wild endless spell, so your opponent got to use it in their turn - and then they changed it to this late in the process because they realized that was too much of a drawback, and now they've got something that actually isn't really much of a drawback at all. RAW going wild doesn't even seem to stop it from continuing to cap objectives for you! 

It seems really undercosted for the damage it can do, though, for something that can't die in 1 round and degrades only modestly, and not even until the battleshock phase of the turn it takes damage. It has better combat abilities than most other monsters in its points range on top of the super powerful anvil ability and a situationally very powerful aura. Though I guess it doesn't really have synergy with much of anything. 

The degradation is also weirdly small. Going from rank 2 to rank 1 has almost no real impact on its effectiveness - 10" to 8" aura and 26 down to 20 max damage, it's not nothing, but it's also anything you're really going to care all that much about. The whole thing is a bit of a head-scratcher IMO. 

Edited April 7, 2022 by yukishiro1

[Marcvs]

33 minutes ago, yukishiro1 said:

. Though I guess it doesn't really have synergy with much of anything. 

 

Maybe not ruleswise but I am sure that being able to be in any army will have a lot of potential synergies, like using it for Forgotten Nightmares, or having a Nurgle unit with no pille in from sloppity and no retreat from this guy etc

[yukishiro1]

Yeah, for sure. Forgotten Nightmares seems particularly problematic. 

Edited April 7, 2022 by yukishiro1

[Kramig]

Gw said in an article on warcom that it will be sold separately in future, didn't it? 

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

Now that we know that the Incarnates doesn't need to be in range of the hero it is bound to to be an anti-magic combat monster and that it takes hits better than most models, I don't really see anything that speaks against making it hold one of your flanks on its own. In that case, it can even go wild with little trouble.

I suppose if you want to make more use of its synergies you will have to keep it close to the rest of your army, which might result in your own models getting attacked every once in a while, but it honestly seem like the downsides of this model are very managable. I am going to guess that it will shake up the meta quite a bit.

[RuneBrush]

+++ MOD HAT +++

Just a reminder - no leaked photos please...  Some of you have been here long enough to know this