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So with some chat recently about playtester advantage I wanted to do a bit more analysis. I personally think it's a disadvantage (take LRL, I playtested them a long time ago and not against anything in the current 'meta' and had to get the book back out last week to remember what any of the scrolls/combos are). I also don’t play many practice games in the current ‘meta’ as lots of my theory and actual games are in a meta 6-12 months forward from now. I appreciate that some people think that it’s an advantage though and without breaking NDA’s it’s hard to have a full and open discussion about it. Instead I thought I would have a look at statistics. Personally, the first book I tested was Blades of Khorne and pre that in AoS I had attended 18 events with an average placing of 2.77 (including Masters/6N which isn’t on Bad Dice). Post Blades (March 2019) I have attended 7 events with an average placing of 3 – so technically I have got worse although I am not sure it would be viewed as statistically significant. (I attended one team tournament in March 2019 with a placing of 53rd which would have skewed either stat so hugely I just discounted it) Hopefully from that data you can see that my own performance hasn’t statistically changed with Playtesting. I’ve then pulled a list from Bad Dice Rankings of the last 49 tournaments. Of them the following Playtesters won: Ben Curry – DoK (March 2020) - released Feb 2018 Tom Mawdsley – Cities (Nov 2019) - released Oct 2019 James Tinsdale – Slannesh (Sept 2019) released April 2018 Tom Mawdsley – LoG (Aug 2019) released May 2019 James Tinsdale – Deepkin (Aug 2019) released April 2018 James Tinsdale – Deepkin (June 2019) released April 2018 Les Martin – Deepkin (May 2019) released April 2018 Jack Armstrong – DoK (May 2019) released Feb 2018 Jack Armstrong – DoK (April 2019) released Feb 2018 James Tinsdale – Nighthaunt (April 2019) released June 2018 James Tinsdale – Deepkin (March 2019) released April 2018 James Tinsdale – Deepkin (Feb 2019) released April 2018 If someone wants to go back further you’re more than welcome, I ran out of energy. If we look at what people have won with they are all books that have been out for a long time before the event. The only one that was relatively new was Tom with Cities (released 5th October). Tom was however very new to the playtesting team and hadn’t had anything to do with that book. I'm not trying to discount a statistic that goes counter to my narrative, I'm just trying to add some context that people may not appreciate. The other data we could run is looking at top 3 placings but anecdotally I can’t think of any events where someone who playtested a book has taken it in the first couple of months and rinsed the tournament scene. If anyone else wants to I would be interested to see it. Any reasoned debate / analysis appreciated! Jack

The discussion had moved back to AoS, but good job bringing it back up I guess.

As a petrifex player I thought I'd weigh in a bit on this..... I chose petrifex based on the 3+save and cool colour scheme, I was rewarded further by some cool stuff and the hatred of the internet. My list is deliberately as varied as possible (leige, boneshaper, soulmason, soul reaper, 20 mortek, 10 mortek, 5 deathriders, 4 morghast, 1 catapult, 1 harvester) so that I can bring the cool stuff to the table. Having used them at tournaments (nothing top tier, I'm not that kinda player... but throne of skulls/etc), I find that when people know what they're doing, my army crumbles in short order. Defeating obr in a smash-face fight is quite hard (they are the 2nd toughest army behind certain fyreslayers builds) so you need to pick your targets very carefully (i would suggest dropping any harvesters you can asap for example 😉 ) Out of 6 games at the last ToS event I went to, I won 4 of them. Lost to cities of sigmar (I didn't have enough board coverage to protect all the objectives and they eventually shot down my support stuff), and beastclaw raiders (who just pulverized everything in combat) Please, if you need help taking on the obr, PRACTICE! They are nothing even close to unbeatable. Just remember that if your plan is "hit them until they die" you probably need a better plan.... unless you have bcr level output 😉

I found this color scheme on a french forum (they say its Ymetrica?) And I think it looks really good. Im tempted to go with that for my Lumineth force! Source: https://www.warhammer-forum.com/index.php?/topic/274075-discussion-lumineth-realm-lords/page/70/

off topic to rules but having seen this I plan to replicate it for my Ymetrica force. it should look good with my planned stonemage conversion.

I’m actually not so sure how many players buy the specialist games boxes explicitly for the specific specialist game anyway. For most it seems to just be a way to add some variety/conversion material to their own project, whatever it may be. For me it surely is. 😎

@Ben won an event? This feels like fake news

Nice post. I think there are a large amount of factors that run contrary to the popular opinion that playtesters are getting an unfair advantage. For context, I am a reasonably competitive AoS player who has played against England multiple times at the 6N and thus have a vested interest in all of their players being permanently banned from everything. 1) Wrt to singles events - playtesters are already picked because they've already proven themselves to be among the best players. If you're winning/nearly winning all your events - there isn't much room for an unfair advantage anyway. 2) As discussed, new books are not playtested against the current meta - see how OBR's standing changed after Tzeentch was released. 3) The top lists and strategies for new books are very often discovered by the community before the book is even released, I can't think of a single example of a playtester breaking out a new-book-list that I hadn't seen multiple times before in a WhatsApp group. 4) At the last 6N, Slaanesh had just received a new book shortly before list submission. As I'm sure people are aware that Slaanesh book was one of the most powerful books AoS has ever seen. Despite this, the England team did not have a Slaanesh list in their roster, suggesting that despite insider knowledge they had not had sufficient time to prepare a Slaanesh build for the current competitive team meta. 5) Even if we were claiming that a playtester advantage existed, we have to think of a reasonable response. It is good for the scene to have top competitive players playtesting new books, so we have to weigh up whether the advantage these players (who are already winning basically all their games anyway) would be large enough to merit a decrease in the quality of playtesting. An extreme example would be if we banned playtesters from events, we would most likely find that competitive players would give up playtesting - and playtesters would be players who didn't go to events. 6) Any advantage of playtesting a book decreases as time goes on, the longer the book is out the more it gets "solved" by the community. If we really are worried about playtester advantage, we can set up deadlines for list submission so that there aren't any last minute army releases to which only the playtesting team could react. Those are my main thoughts, I think overall the most compelling evidence is from the OP - there just isn't data to support the idea that playtesters are gaining any advantage at actual AoS events. Much love, Jp

I read 'all humans are gone' and immediately glanced to the 45 Chaos Warriors waiting to be painted on my desk. Here I was just assuming thats where all the humans went.

The fact he bans more than 1 Warchanter from Orruk Warclans.... bruh. What even is this. I'd never play in his club. I take 2 and just about need them both just to survive in my club.

You say that we have an advantage because we know things before other people and that side of the equation is indeed true. However what you are maybe not aware of or do not fully appreciate the impact of is the disadvantages that we also incur, which I will list below. 1: Having to have in our heads multiple iterations of books with only a broad idea of release schedules, this means when we playtest we are a period of time in the future but also factoring in the current meta and books we have completed. But when we are playing normal games we have to adjust to a different environment. 2: Having to essentially abandon playing ‘practice’ games for tournaments as certainly for me the vast majority of my non tournament games are playtest ones 3: Not being able to share what we are painting / playing with / thinking about as people infer things from it. Having said all of that we all love being playtesters but it is hugely impactful on our personal hobby and several people have stepped down / taken a break from it for that very reason. GW are not going to reveal the process and nor should they - it is their intellectual property in exactly the same way that Pepsi don’t reveal how they develop and test new products, am not really sure why people think they should - the only thing I will say is that we don’t get paid to do it and do it for the good of the hobby and our love of it.

I need this in my life.

Interesting topic raised @Jack Armstrong. First, i’d love to define “advantage”. At its core, prior knowledge before the market is an advantage, no matter the tournament outcome. There could be an argument that you could have done worse without that knowledge. I imagine your problem statement is more focused on if being a play tester improves your chances of winning a tournament because of prior experience with battletomes before public release. The challenge is that to be a play tester you must have proven yourself to be successful competitive prior to joining as a play tester. I’m not sure if there has been a play tester who joined the team without winning an event or consistent high performer to see such a spike in from play testers “advantage”. I’d say more data is required, especially looking at performances at tournaments within the first few months of a play tested battle tome is released. Through the play tester experience was it quicker to find the optimum build, to gain the tactical knowledge to pilot, to have the models built and ready for an event after release. BTW I actually don’t care. I thank you all for your hard work and dedication to putting out the best product with your limited influence.

What has all that to do with AOS guys? Don't you have a 40k forum somewhere?

Not to derail my own thread, cuz that's really not the point for me today, but yeah. Fun is so often weaponized or, more often and less maliciously, only viewed from one side in a discussion. That's why I think using it to delineate or define experiences is largely pointless. In other words, "fun" is like "common sense." It's far (far far far far far) too individual an experience to expect others to match your view.

@Magnus The Blue I know that Ben Savva has had great success with Bonesplitterz against OBR, in fact he's undefeated in the matchup. Ben runs variations on Bonegrinz with either a Rogue Idol or Big Stabbas as his damage unit. Key factors are: Take Kopp Rukk and Brutal Rukk to stack up the CPs and get your drops right down You can cast your spells from back out of unbind range and do the Wardokk dance, so you have 60 wounds of Savage Orruks on a 3+ 6++ You therefore have two options: go first and pin them in their deployment zone, or fight them If you fight them, don't forget that the Bonegrinz CA is not limited to "once per turn" Ben also takes Aetherquartz Brooch, so along with the Battalion CPs (and maybe one you've bought) you can have one huge turn of combat This still requires experience and judgment in terms of knowing when to hold and when to hit the Waaagh button One final tip: take some Savage Boarboys with a view to flying up inside the Crawler's minimum range, and preventing it from firing at all Hope that helps, and let us know how you get on!

I feel like something new is coming for Idoneth this year. My heart says embailor (hero that controls beasts), my head says a crappy warband for Underworlds or Warcry. Unsolved evidence...

He comes in 4 pieces, he's fairly decent in weight, and he's solid for sure. The body (All of it!) Left Arm Right Arm Chain/bock that attaches to the stick. I'm really hoping for August now ^^' I had really hoped for it to be bundled with lumineth also but alas. If people are in the UK, keep an eye of elementgames, they offer a 3 pack of Aleguzzler Gargants for a total of a 33% discount on them. I got mine the two days after their estimated stock coming in day.

Really interesting comments here. For me it boils down to the following: I'm really glad we have playtesters- the hobby seems (for me at least) getting more enjoyable every year with some great rule sets and armies being released- something for everyone I'd say, whatever style or taste. A big part of that is the time and effort GW have put in as well as the play testers themselves not to mention the community at large. All the playtesters mentioned are all excellent players who spent years playing the hobby- this is what makes them great play testers as well as competitive players. I'd expect all the above names mentioned above to finish in the top standings regardless of whether they've playtestested a new book or not. It's also playtesters hobby/passion and something they've invested a lot of (personal) time in despite working in other jobs/family commitments. I stress the time elements because this relates back to one of the many reasons why they are successful players- they shouldn't be penalised for this in the tournament setting or ostracized for gaining an unfair advantage in the 'meta' - they've given time, thought and energy for the benefit of all. It's an awsome dice game and you can be as experienced as you like, played all the armies under the sun new or old but if the dice fail you on the day then it doesnt matter playtesters or not. There should be some trust from the community that the people play testing are doing it for the benefit of all - again there should be no penalizing in the tournament setting for this or ostrocising through social media outlets. Whilst I'm sure everyone wants to win ( I certainly do in the very few tournaments I enter!) the most important thing is that everyone has fun, meet some new people and have some awesome games with armies they love and not get too hung up on whether someone may/may not have a slight advantage because they've played a bit earlier with an army before its released. I stress that its about trust, trust that they're doing this for the community and we are all the better for it. If they play with an army I havent had chance to experience before then that's a great challenge for any general as well as a great opportunity to pick the brains of an experienced player and hopefully you'll learn something about yourself and your army in the process.

I would like to add that while playtesters are mostly top players some are not. This is to create balance as the 'fun players will always look at books differently. When the skaven book was being tested I played more games than anyone else on the team but was the lowest placed skaven player at the first tournament I attended. My point is that top players are just that and will continue to be so while they put the effort in that they do.

Just take Gotrek or Even Both! Teclis - 660 ptsGotrek - 520 ptsScinari Cathallar - 140 pts10 Wardens - 120 pts10 Wardens - 120 pts10 Sentinels - 140 pts10 Sentinels - 140 ptsAuralan Legion - 120 pts 1960 pts total 3 Drops, pretty much no bodies but with Gortek and Teclis it could be amusing

We will probably have more info tomorrow or thursday. I know local stores that give the stock out as soon as they get it, so hopefully get an influx before the weekend. Also, maybe our artifacts might be able to be given to unit champions or something? Old High elves champions could often have a magic item

Remove "competitive" and add "by the player" to the end and I'm with you.

Really interesting points thanks JP.

I ran enough stormcast caster heroes into ACTUAL melee heroes to know that profile is not adequate for combat, though. I wonder if the battle cattle should originally have had a hero keyword?

And he's finally done, I hate the connection the flail has to the log broken 4 times already, need to buy some chain link and set it up. 3 more aleguzzlers left to do Now here's to hoping he gets rules :D!

Honestly, the data is probably pretty straightforward but limited. We essentially can't measure the improvement of top players because they have nowhere to go. Playtesters are all averaging above 4 wins per event both before and after playtesting. This means that they're essentially not dropping games at events regardless of the circumstances, so the questions: 1) Do playtesters perform better than other players with new factions compared to their previous results with other factions? No. Non-playtesters hopping onto newly released factions are a place we can see players get a big jump in their winrate (if the new faction is very strong, e.g. Ironjawz players moving to Big Waaagh after Orruk Warclans came out). Playtesters, because there is essentially no measurable way for them to improve, stay the same (4.x win average). 2) Do playtesters perform better AGAINST new factions than other players? No, again, because they can't show measurable improvement. The factions/players they lose to are rare and the games they lose will almost always be to other top players - and player skill is a much better winrate predictor than any faction information. So really what we're asking is if there is a marginal gain to playtesters that is worth less than the 0.5 games they lose on average at an event. If there is, it would be smaller than the variance in game results due to battleplans, priority rolls, etc - so for me I would class that as statistically irrelevant, given that there is no useful way to apply that information.

Just for me, personally, when I used to be a playtester in the old Warhammer days, I found it to be a small disadvantage in two ways. 1. I ended up with six versions of rules in my head (ushabti with varying rules based on their heads in an example). It's bad enough keeping rules from different games and different editions straight. Add in rules that came and went half a dozen times for just one army and it gets crazy for me. 2. A strange variation on Cassandra Complex. Sometimes I would know with absolute certainty how a rule is played, but an opponent (or worse yet, judge) would want to tell me it is otherwise. It's really hard to not pull out the "look, trust me, I playtested that rule and talked to the author" card. 🤪

First off I will say that competitively apt players are needed as playtesters to help sort out bad play experiences that can arise from abusive rules. As an aside I also think some casual players should be involved in playtesting, in fact I would say a whole spectrum of players should be testing to help balance the narrative and meta balance of any book but thats on the company GW itself to think about. So its not an argument for this post. Concerning whether or not you get an advantage, I see above Mr Charisma talking about prior knowledge of how an army plays being an advantage. As you pointed out its only valid if you can act on it and regarding the recent podcast, the playtesters were talking about aetherquartz giving you re rolls when now we know its just a +1 modifier. I do not if it was a mistake by them but I am guessing that the playtesters version of the rules could be an evolving rule set as balance and rules interactions is sorted out. So I also agree that playing the army early can be a very confusing and challenging thing when then entering the "meta" that the rest off us have. So it is debateable if thats a real advantage. As for the results, you shouldnt look at 1st places as a metric, especially in this enviroment. Top 8 scores should be considered and the lists used to get those scores and also the timing off those events. You might win an even with an older book, but lets say FEC was just released and you know how to beat it. So as I will explain below thats the real advantage(if any) here. Looking at Bad Dice rankings and from the playtesters we know and the lists used at events then you can get real empirical data to support or debunk this whole thing. I had a quick look and I dont know when books were released so I cant make any real judgement. Its also unfair because playtesters are good players so will probably do well anyway so really this whole thing is objective. But lets roll back the clocks, we have had several tournaments where a player(doesnt even matter if it was a tester) bring a hard as nails list and smash everyone out of the water. Happens all the time and nobody can deny that, now this is what I call a meta busting list and its real power comes from your opponent not knowing what the list can do/ not knowing how to deal with it/also lists arent equipped for it. Gavriel surcharge was a dominating list but when people figured it out and learned what it does and practiced against it and brought screens. That list fell back into mediocry. So my point to this is the advantage of knowledge prior to everyone else. I do alright at tournaments, playing with the NI and Ireland 6 nations guys. I played the 2018 Facehammer Champion as a practice partner for tonnes of games prior to going. This was the 90 witch elves Hagg Nar list, first off its kind and still today is a pretty strong list. That army tabled plenty of people because like I said above, they did not know what the list did and how it functioned with buffs etc. So in turn you do not know how to take it apart and dismantle it and most importantly peoples lists were not equipped to deal with it. I played a DoK list while at facehammer and I won confidently against another good DoK player, I won because I knew his army and what to do with it, adding to this I brought a list nobody had seen before and many people spend 10 mins at the start of the game listening to me explain the rules interactions. This is a personal experience but I am only using it to show an advantaged gained by bringing not only a new list but also the knowledge of knowing said army. Of course we have all had similiar experiences where you dont know what something really does and make a mistake, or you win because of said mistake. It happens, but when you are playtesting an army. You know the top lists coming out off it and you know how to play, what they can achieve, their shortcomings, what you need in your list to deal with these. And the most important part as you guys mentioned is just having the models painted and ready. Which is a situational advantage but majority of people dont have time to paint a new tech choice for their list in the 2 weeks after a book drops and lists are figured out. Its a bit of rant and by no means a perfect argument but I feel the dust lies somewhere in the middle. Should playtesters be allowed to play in events? Of course. Should everyone be allowed to play an army so close to a book dropping at an event? Well thats where we find this balance I think. Make it 2-3 weeks after a full army is release and then everyone has had fair game to design lists and counter play them. So I think its on the TO's to mitigate this whole thing, whether you get an advantage or not becomes irrelevant when we all have time to build our lists and get some practice. As an aside I have played Team England twice at 6 nations and played plenty of the old and current English players at events. From the guys I have played and meeting some, you can tell they are good at the game and even looking at my batshit crazy lists they can piece together a plan in their heads so the top players do invalidate my arguments. Like I said though there is a bit of meeting in the middle here, most of the guys I met I got on pretty well with. Playtesters are good for the game and we can get rid of any advantage real or not by adding one or 2 weeks to the cut off points on new books or the fully released new armies.

A Duardin Dispossed Ranger Warband would be incredible. Just like the Kurnothi it would be a fantastic tease for what may be to come for AOS Duardin. I'd also love Skaven to get either a Clan Eshin or Clan Moulder Warband. A perfect way to upgrade some of the older Night Runner and Gutter Runner models or alternatively give us actual good Rat Ogor models. The current ones are horrible in my opinion.

Even if playtesting gave some advantages (you're most likely to positively review things that are your playstyle (which may shape the final version), you have more experience than others with the new faction), I don't see this as an issue. In essence, you're doing work for every player out there, and it's not cheating in any way, shape or form, just knowledge. Especially if you speak about possible counters when the faction is out. Not to mention the final shape of the army may be different from the intermediate one. Now if you spot a major loophole during testing which greatly upsets balance and decide not to report it, that's a different matter. If you spot the loophole, report it and it doesn't get changed, you can use it in a tournament environment, of course. Thanks for testing for us!

The bonus is okay but not the strongest (neither is the cavalry battalion bonus). I think a lot of it will depend on which artefacts we can take, if there are multiple useful artefacts the battalions become more interesting. What I really like about all of them is how easy they are to achieve though, you are basically taking the components of at least one of the battalions in your list anyway, so no jumping through hoops just to get them.

It would be rather terrible if the game was balanced according to the lowest denominator. If Bob who plays once a month at best with only liberators and judicators needs to have an equal win chance with all other armies we will see a problem. I see building a list as any TCG, making a deck is just as important as how you play it, if you build a poor deck and you don't know how it plays and also don't know what your opponent is doing, you should by all rights lose. I hear lots of complaints about things being OP, it is so easy to blame that. For fun I have been collecting some "low power" armies, like dracothian guard stormcasts focused lists, or chaos warrior heavy StD and won and how complaints about those being OP... Mostly this is because if game experience and that I read all other battletomes and know what to prioritize and how to counter, yet most players do not put in the effort or thought, yet expect to win with pushing forward their favorite minis. The only way to deal with this is to set expectations, I don't think the core issues is related to specific books or rules but 90% of it is down to player mentality and both players enjoying the game in a similar way. Although I for sure would not be able to buy the new lumineth even if I wanted to for a year or so before everyone calms down, the rules shown right now has everyone in a frenzy, even though some older tomes will most likely do very well against them.

Personally I think there's a difference between power creep and something being overpowered. Power creep does happen and is the ultimate driving force for us revisiting an army following a new release. New magic focused army just come out? What anti-magic options do I have available. New battletome for my army out? What new options do I have available to me. I don't look at power creep is necessarily a bad thing because of this. Where power creep veers into a less positive light is when it comes to an army that hasn't been revisited for some time and they don't have any tools to deal with any new mechanics/armies (often compounded when an army wasn't particularly strong to begin with). The Psychic Awakening books for 40k I feel are a good way to revisit armies and help balance things out a bit. Overpowered is something that's a bit more subjective because it's generally based upon your own interpretation on if something is too powerful. This can factor in lots and lots of different things, including your own army and the enjoyment you get out of a game. Generally the things that are viewed as being overpowered are units/combinations that your army has little to no way of combating. In the case of petrifex I think many people had issues when facing this army - changehost is another. Ultimately some of the cries of something being overpowered fizzle out as people are fickle and swap armies fairly frequently, reducing the "pool" of those trickier armies.

I’ve built 5 lists now, 1 being all Vanari units, 1 being all Alarith units, 2 being 1k versions of those, and 1 that’s a mix. Gotta say, I’m really enjoying focusing on the different themes with these guys. They may have a small amount of units but it all seems pretty well realised and internally balanced.

Until I started just bringing catapults and Mortek, I lost most of my games as Petrifix. Our 'competitive' meta is veeeeery first-turn kill heavy; Slaanesh, FEC, and KO pretty much dominate. I only saw a few weeks of Tzeench before the shut down but it seemed to be in the same tier. In those cases, playing Petrifix without catapults felt like I basically showed up to make a neat little display of my army and then put it back in the case. 🙃 We have very few Death players at my LGS (besides that one FEC netlist), and only two Ossiarch players counting myself. The fact that none of the people that usually jump on the new hotness (until it gets an errata) went for Petrifix made me feel like it wasn't as powerful as people thought. It's a shame the best way to play them is with hordes of Mortek, because the lore of Petrifix makes it seem like tons of Stalkers and Guard would be really cool thematically. tl:dr if Petrifix is really overpowered then I'm doing it wrong

Cities!

All of them?! I mean I'd likely just plug for armies I play myself - DoK, Slaanesh, Ossiarchs. I think so long as GW balances them into the core game in a sensible manner it will be fine. They might experiment - right now the Chaos Warbands are all the same kind of affair - a basic unit profile with a few light specialists (extra hit, extra life etc...). I could see some of them branch out further; eg they could put a support leader into the set for example so that it was perhaps 8 infantry and 1 support leader (so you might buy several boxes to make a full unit, but might not use all the support leaders at the same time etc...). I'd not like to see most armies get multiple warbands; the highly individual designs to many of them are ok for a one unit wonder and it blends well into Slaves to Darkness; but it would be overkill for most other armies. That said I'm sure that armies like DoK will get "second wave" and additional models over time. Heck DoK could do with a cheap leader (right now you have to get a getting started set or a cauldron set to get any leader - that's a lot if GW is looking to lower barriers to entry). OF course that cauldron set gives you 3 leaders - each one of which can be mounted on the cauldron/shrine and the option of an avatar unit as well.

The lesson here is that "fun" is so subjective as to be a fairly useless measure of what should or should not be on the table.

Honestly, we we may be better off going first against armies that rely on rushing and in your face tactics. I don't know about teclis, but I feel with out magic we can set up for their turn and a potential double turn fairly well. I will show what I mean below. I dunno about playing outside of tournaments myself. We have pretty much all tournament players around here (in my area), so lists gotta be tough where I am to survive unless you really talk things over about having fun games. As for lists without teclis, yea we don't need him for every list. There is some fun things we can do that arguably may be stronger, and things that are powerful without it. Here is one of my latest lists using Iliatha, but it can easily be changed to a list with the other two non mountain countries. I could change one of the sentinels in the above list for another squad of Dawn Riders and consolidate the hanging squad of wardens to one of the bigger ones. to satisfy the battalion limitation. So! Plan I can see for turn 1 in my list if I go first (and everything works according to plan): First thing I would do is spend one aetherquartz onto an archer squad so that they can cast twin stones, and set that down in the middle of everyone. Next, I would start casting Power of Hysh on the sentinels until I get to like a +3/+4. one warden squad drains the stones to get an easy cast of Protection of Hysh, needing at least a 4 on 2d6 if it's at a +4. Then, other warden squad casts Heavenly blessings, the dawn riders cast power of Hysh, and the General casts Unrelenting Calm on one warden squad. with another +4, Cathallar casts Total eclipse, which makes my opponent use 2 CP instead of one. Everyone moves forward, and assuming I maintain formations and spacing, present the opponent with a staunch line of spears while allowing my sentinels to rain arrows on the opponent and having the mountain spirit provide his -1 to hit bubble over the front lines. I try to shoot the enemy's squishier units as range allows to soften them up while my lines move towards the objectives. based purely on this without considering the objectives, I have: 1 squad of 20 wardens with a 4+ ethereal save, -2 to hit (avalorn and shining company) and re-rolling 1's for armor save. I have a second squad of 20 wardens with a 5++ ward save, -2 to hit (shining company, Avalorn if I position right) and re-rolling 1's for armor saves, both having battle shock immunity through Cathallar and Stonemage. I have 3 squads of sentinels with a 30" threat range, and 1 angry cow ready to support the most afflicted side. Granted, this does not help too much against things like plague claws and mortek crawlers, but I believe against most normal armies this is a line of defense that would take some considerable thought to overcome, or at least some maneuvering. If I play my cards right, then this can last even during a double turn. or not. This is all theory hammer after all, and I need to put brain power somewhere.

Not definitely, they said at Open Day the two studios won't be in communication with eachother so that means they can't plan out that stuff as they go in different directions with designs. Especially with Freeguild coming much sooner than a game that may not appear until 3-4 years away Possibly Forge World's world-that-was game will just be looked at for conversions but otherwise the mortals of the mortal realms will go in the direction the art and lore have been showing rather than the older designs which are being phased out for much more epic fantasy designs(Lumineth are a good example, leaked tome stuff shows they can't even ally with Phoenix Temple but only Deepkin which gives a bigger sense of new directions only)

I'm not so sure on this point. It's certainly the easiest way to play S2D and probably a little more fleixble (one hero covering multiple units and viceversa) but I think multi-god is ultimately where the power of the faction lies. You basically get to choose your buffs depending on a units role. Big block of unshiftable warriors to grind people down? Shields with Mark of Nurgle! Really make those Chariots hit home? Khorne! Want to make a unit faster and double down on extra hits? Slaanesh! Playing the endless spell game and don't want to be hit by them backfiring? Tzeench! It takes a little more planning, but the Warshrine also feeds into this by having a very flexible buffing structure too, being able to target any of the marks with any other blessing. Basically, if you play mono-god, yeah... Just go play that Battletome and miss out on Cultists and Monsters - but multi-god has some great flex.

Reading through all of your post here, isn't what you do really arbitrary? What's fun and what's not? So, you banned Petrifex which isn't fun for many people to play against, which is true. How about KO one-drop alpha strikes? Slann Endless Spell/magic shenanigans, Coalesced -1 to all attacks? Tzeentch flammer mayhem? FEC? Orruk destroying half your army in turn one because you didn't know they can do that? Is that all banned? Because all of those can be really not fun for average players who don't build lists specifically to counter these things. Or just the stuff which is detrimental to play styles you and a core group of your friends enjoy, and hence is "cheesy"? (I don't mean that as accusational as it sounds, it's really just a genuine question - how do you bring in new players into the group? For example someone like myself who is excited about the Lumineth, is already labeled as "cheesy" before they are even out, and everyone talking about how bad it will be, it's easy to drive yourself into a corner there, I'm just unwelcome, or how does that go?) Seems easier to just try to talk to that guy who brings his Nagash/Pretrifex every time against average armies who aren't build to beat that, taking all the fun away, or? But if you just ban everything people don't like, you'll have nearly the same games in 5 years that you have now. And for many people it's also fun to find out how to beat such an army or get around new problems (like playing more for objectives for example, or how to counter that one spell which doubles CP). Of course some things just have to be addressed because they are either too powerful or weren't intended to work in that way. And of course your gaming group can ban whatever they want, but seems they'll miss out on fun in the long run. And the more armies GW will release, the more some of the match-ups will be imbalanced. Otherwise they couldn't make the various armies distinctive, or introduce different play styles appealing to different players. I think you'll run into more of these problems, because they'll have to introduce new mechanics to keep things interesting for most people. And some of them will suck for some of the other armies.

What wasn't helping me here, was that when you do the mathhammer, the average number of wounding rend 0 attacks is about the same for both Herd and Boingrots... but I hadn't taken into account rend, and that's where Herd get better there too. So, yeah, I'm starting to get it now. (for reference average number of wounds needed to kill a unit: Boingrots max size: 60 wounds no rend, or 40 wounds at rend 1 or 36 wounds at rend 2. Herd max size: 57.6 wounds no rend, 48 wounds at rend 1 or 2 or more) I was trying to find out reasons to use them, if that makes sense Plus my herd aren't exactly vanilla.....These are my Squig Dice Herd and Fanatics (sadly the photo is a little on the yellow side).

.... You can have a balanced list and you will still lose against OBR and the likes, the true issue is that you need a specialized list. Which forces you to partake in the „meta chase“ and THAT is what most people have zero interest in.

you Are missing the Point. Players want to have fun without having to have a Bachelor‘s degree in AoS. Also most players play rather rarely to a variety of reasons which limits their opportunities to gain experience.

Both my main armies i'll play against OBR anytime anywhere, i have zero problems with them, they are just bulky, limited on the table, and slow. You can easily body block them and hold objectives. You really only need to kill 1-3 units to have the upper hand all game. It's sad to hear that they are banned, doesn't let players grow in experience at all and creates a stigma for something that isn't any stronger than 10 other traits/lists. Yes he is strong, but he is also 1/2 an army and should be able to do 1/2 an armies work. Kill everything else, ignore him and play the objectives. I play BoC and CoS and have no problem player OBR+Nagash or even Archaon. You just don't want to head strong them unless you know you can. They both are huge point investments which leads the a smaller force. Play the objectives.

I'd absolutely love all of the armies to get new models, especially armies such as FEC, Fyreslayers, Seraphon and Skaven. Who knows even Sons of Behemat may get a model with a new Aleguzzler variant or simply a mid range Gargant kit!!

I agree, selfishly after the Sons are released. Maybe for 3.0 we wont have any new armies and that all the 2.0 armies are simply updated with more models. Fyreslayers and FEC are in need of new units and hell maybe 3.0 will bring about one of the other Aspects of the Lumineth.