New Book Power Poll

[Lord Veshnakar]

So I realize it’s a bit early for some of these since 4 of these books are very fresh, but what armies do you think have the most potential for 5-0 in tournaments or being top performers. This is largely theoretical based on the books at their cover value and based on their toolboxes. Try to limit yourself to 1-3 choices.

Edited April 10, 2023 by Lord Veshnakar

[Vasshpit]

I think Ossiarch are going to be heavy hitters going forward. Perhaps even too much. Initial thoughts from the review vids I've seen have shown some crazy powerful stuff. 

It'll be fun to run a tomb Kings OBR proxy army once those new minis drop. 😉

Edited April 10, 2023 by Vasshpit

[RocketPropelledGrenade]

Extremely early and hard to judge. I also have had limited play experience with all of those except Slaves to Darkness. So, with that in mind, my very tenuous guess is Hedonites, at least until the next Battlescroll or GHB. They're fast, hit hard, have great buffs with overlap for multiple sources to make them hard to remove, and project power reasonably well. They can lose a lot of their glass-cannon nature as the game goes on, even though most opponents who know what they are doing are going to fight tooth and nail to prevent this from happening.

I think S2D, BoK, SBGL, and OBR are all hurt by their limited power projection. They all have options for sure, and they aren't powerless by a long stretch, but being able to put damage out without risking melee is just a good tool that makes any army stronger if it can get it at a reasonable cost and efficacy. This leaves Gitz and KO as the competitors, and my gut says the recent Battlescroll put Gitz below "most powerful" of the newer tomes, although I don't think it ruined them by a long shot. KO is harder for me to judge, as they've always been a weird square peg in AoS' round holes, doing their own thing. They are a little more conventional now than they used to be, but not so much that I can easily read them. However, I do know that if a good melee army can hit them in the jaw, they'll just shatter. I played against a friend with the new tome, and even the better profiles for Frigates and Ironclads didn't prevent my S2D from cracking one of each open in the same turn.

Now, all this said, I don't really like this exercise on numerous levels. I already mentioned the difficulty in making a call, but I also think it has the potentially to create misinformation. If an angel came down from Azyr and said "X army is the most powerful, this is the objective truth," that would be missing a lot of details and context still. The second-most powerful in this meta is still going to be fairly close, and some of the less powerful stuff could be fairly good counters to some of the more powerful stuff. For example, I think S2D and OBR both have lists that Hedonites struggle more than usual with, because they can soak and even heal the chip mortals from Temptation while having good saves that make scoring depravity with Euphoric Killers much harder. So I would generally rather focus on context and detail over a single data point.

[JerekKruger]

A lot of people voting for OBR, and I can see why. You read the Battletome and everything clicks into place: you've got buffs on top of buffs and a lot of them are hard (if not impossible) for your opponent to block.

That said, if you actually look at the Warscrolls that have to do the fighting, they are not very impressive. Sure, once you've given them all the buffs they can absorb they start to look pretty nasty, but your paying a lot to have access to those buffs. My fear is that, at the moment, you'll be left with too little meat (or bone) to do the actual work once you've paid for all the buffs you need.

Now Stalkers can do with without buffs, and in Petrifex they have an absolutely great survivability enhancement, so perhaps they'll be enough. But I can't help comparing them to something like Chaos Chosen.

To be fair, perhaps Morghasts will be good. I find it hard to tell because I hate the sculpts so my brain just goes "nope".

None of this is to say I think OBR will be bad, I'm just not convinced they'll be top tier either.

I don't feel like I am a good enough player to really comment on the others.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

I have been deep-diving the OBR and Soulblight books (not so much the other recent battletomes).

OBR is undeniably a powerful book, but you need to constantly make choices both in list building and during play. The Petrifex list looks strong. Morghasts, Stalkers and Immortis are all strong warscrolls. But you run the risk of having both low bodies and low unit count in that list. 6 Immortis guard sitting on a point on a 2+ save, -1 damage and with a 5+ ward will be hard to remove, but they only capture for 12 models. And once you start to include units that bring bodies to the table, you quickly start losing synergies. Plus, 10 Mortek are still 150 points in an army where points are at a premium.

The other obviously good OBR list is probably mixed arms. But that list has no obvious subfaction choice that is as strong as Petrifex. The best one is probably Mortis Praetorians for that counter charge ability, but for perspective that ability is the same as Legion of Night gets in the new Soulblight book, and there it is seen as one of the weaker subfaction bonuses.

OBR is an army that comes with a high cognitive load during play, because you have a billion command points and abilities. I think it will be a high skill floor, high skill ceiling faction that top players will find tournament success with, but lower skill players will have trouble to get to work. I think the faction is like early Lumineth in that way, where for a while the tournament results did not live up to their theoretical power level.

As for Soulblight, the book is harder to judge than OBR. While OBR was for the most part an obvious upgrade compared to their 2nd edition tome, I think new Soulblight is still an upgrade, but less obviously so. In my opinion the power level of most warscrolls and allegiance abilities went up, but the roles of a lot of units have changed in the process. If you are the kind of player who loves combos, the new book will probably appear worse to you at first glance. But if you are the kind of player who loves value, then the changes to The Hunger and how healing and resurrection work are pretty great. I think this book is a bit like Nurgle, where people will have to play with the army a bit to really appreciate the power of the faction's allegiance abilities. I still see the book as mid-field for tournaments, though, but definitely capable of getting a first place.