Forrix

Really like this post and figured I'd add to the last bit. Going into the tournament weekend Petrifix Elite had a 69% winrate (highest in AoS) and were also becoming the most played faction in AoS. If you were hoping to podium you could expect to face PE, probably multiple times. So I'm sure people tailored their list to fight PE primarily by loading up on high rend attacks and mortal wound output. Neither of which are super useful against Tzeentch in general and against Pink Horrors in particular.

Tzeentch destiny dice are modifiable for save rolls and battleshock and Changehost can teleport 1 unit per turn. Definitely nerfs, not the might as well delete the battletome nerfs people were foaming at the mouth for but nerfs none the less.

I'm not a fan of the half-unmodifiable destiny dice mechanic. They felt janky and un-intuitive in their previous state and more so now that they're unmodifiable in some situations but not others. What is the big deal with just making them modifiable? What were these problems they allude to during testing? Its just head-scratching to me. Also, lol at Gaunt Summoner still summoning 10 pink horrors. On the Brightside, hopefully this curtails most of the power level complaints for awhile and Tzeentch still looks competitive to me. I was worried they'd go crazy with the nerfs.

In legion of chaos ascendant you get a free unit of 10 lesser demons are the end of your hero phase (or movement phase?). The goon hammer review kinda skips over it but GMG read it out.

Belakor's legion is gonna be crazy with Pink Horrors. 50 free pink horrors per game d3 slain returned :P.

I'm taking a break from MawTribes until I feel like painting up another Stonehorn but a couple of players in my area have been playing it. They've caught onto the Stonehorn lists and are doing okayish with them. I actually lost a game with my cities vs a eurlbad thanks to a FloSH with ethereal amulet making a lunatic numbers of saves. Tournament wise, things are more meh with them the 2 players going 1-2 and 0-3 in our one tournament so far but I consider our scene to be pretty brutal and I think those players are newer. Probably, the thing that has changed the most for me as time goes on is that I consider Gluttons to be pretty much be a trap unit. They look good on paper but in my experience they're too flimsy to be an anvil, don't hit quite hard enough to be a hammer, and are too expensive for chaff. I think the strength of the book is in Stonehorns, Ironguts, Gnoblars, and Frostsabers. Basically chaff and hammers. I haven't watched Doom and Darknesses Cancon recap but he was practicing with a list that was pretty similar to what I"m thinking of building eventually and was having pretty good results with it in his practice games.

The lack of a new demon prince kit is one of the things holding me back from getting into STD.

Flamers are interesting to me. Their damage seems pretty intense, especially in Eternal Conflagration, but they are incredibly fragile. I can see why the Eternal Conflagration/Changehost combo is tilting people but its hard for me to picture flamers getting nerfed much without becoming too much of a liability in a list, especially if the aforementioned combo gets nerfed too. I'm already hesitant to field them outside of that combo due to stuff like OBR catapults and KO shooting. On that subject, anyone complaining about Tzeentch shooting out heroes should get some games in with the new KO.

I'd just park a GUO with bell/dagger in the middle of a 30 man plaguebearer unit and take geminids and use them as a big bully unit near the middle of the table. Don't expect it to be a top tier thing but if the rest of the subfaction stuff grants bonuses to cast or can ramp up their damage dealing abilities I could see myself taking it to a tournament.

I play all except Slaanesh and I'm excited for Nurgle, if only because its a super low bar considering Maggotkin's current competitiveness and lack of subfactions. The Drowned Men are looking pretty poor due to anti-synergy between its subfaction ability and command ability but hey, Blightkings are probably the best warscroll in the book now and doing a mortal wound when they die on a 2+ makes them better than they were. I'm paranoid the Munificient Wanderer's command trait will get nerfed but if it doesn't then Tallyband might be usable depending on the rest of the subfaction.

Munificent Wanders: Looks really good and depending on the rest of the abilities could make a Tallyband List actually worth taking. It's what I'm most excited for now. Hopefully it doesn't get the DP of Nurgle treatment. Droning Guard: Not bad, I'm actually not sure if this is the Command Trait or subfaction ability though I think its the CT based on the warlord flavor text. Not particularly amazing to me but movement buffs are good, even if its just 4 inches. Blessed Sons: More speed is good and Rotbringers are command point hungry to begin with so I'd rate this pretty high. Still need to see what the rest of the faction brings. Drowned Men: A meh command ability considering Blightlords can't be in a Blight Cyst (this would have been great on Blightkings). Considering their subfaction ability promotes large unit sizes (aka blightkings) the anti-synergy between the two sinks this subfaction for me. Their command trait/artefact is going to have to be mind-blowing to bail them out.

Its was d3 mortals and could stack but this would have been a much more reasonable fix then what they did. The cynical side of me says this will get errata'd too once the game designers realize this is both good and a Nurgle ability.

One Last Gift is great and basically what the Nurgle DP's command ability should have been errata'd to. Though I'm also wondering if One Last Gift is a mistake and they'll errata it to uselessness.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2020/01/30/wrath-of-the-everchosen-14-awesome-armiesgw-homepage-post-4/ Nurgle is looking pretty good and Knights of the Empty throne are quite interesting. Just hope they don't give the Munificent Wanderers command trait the Nurgle demon prince treatment.

Yeah, I was thinking it would be a Varanguard focused STD subfaction.

They were probably just going on RAW though I've never been to an official GW tournament. In practice, I feel like making judge calls based on RAI is a bad idea in a tournament.

My big issue with destiny dice being unmodifiable is that it feels very counter-intuitive and lame in practice. Its a design feature that gives you control over your dice rolls but instead lets you ignore rend or battleshock. It feels natural to use a DD to get a 1 on a unit of Pink Horrors to pass a battleshock and get some guys back. It feels weird to go "Okay so even if I roll a 6 the rest of the unit will flee. So instead of rolling I'm going to use a destiny dice to automatically get a 6 and thus pass my battleshock". Or "Okay, so you just hit and wounded my GS summoner with a -2 rend cannon ball. He has a 5+ save so I can't possibly pass a save roll. Cool, I'll just use a DD of 5 instead of rolling so he's fine". I can definitely see that irritating some players and wouldn't surprise me if that's were some of the NPE claims are coming from. On the flipside, it feels stupid to use a LOC's command ability to get +1 to cast and then not be able to use two 3 DD to cast a spell that requires a 7. But you can use a 3 and a 4 because Mastery of Magic isn't technically a modifier. That's getting into an aside but it always feels janky explaining to someone that changing a dice roll isn't the same as modifying a dice roll.

The spread isn't that bad but I'm truly amazed by how many Infinity factions are sitting within a point or two 50%. On the OBR/Petririx side of things, I felt they really impact builds. As in they are so incredibly resistant to conventional melee phase attacks that if that's all your bringing you're pretty much SOL. However, if you can bring a substantial amount of mortal wound generation/shooting then you can have an actual game and they aren't that crazy (those catapults are still scary to any low save faction though). Combined with their high meta % they serve as a gatekeeper for list building. In practice, for me, this means that even though Nurgle Rotbringers have received some major buffs in the Winter FAQ and are getting subfactions in the upcoming expansion unless they get some serious spell casting buffs (or ranged damage somehow) they're still dead to me as a competitive option. OBR (PE with Arkhan) makes up a very high percent of my local meta so unless an army has a substantial shooting component or the ability to spell cast through Arkhan's unbindings there's no way I'm going to bother taking them to a tourney. So basically Nurgle stays on the shelf and I'm working on Cities and Tzeentch (though holding off on the demon side incase GW knee-jerks and nerfs them into oblivion).

The Cycle of Corruption is fine, the warscrolls are good enough barring outdated language. These are almost certainly not battalions but sub-factions as they have already confirmed that the Drowned Men are. An extra layer of allegiance abilities, new command abilities, artefacts, and traits could do wonders for the faction. Especially if any of them wind up boosting spell casting. Rotbringers just got buffed in the Winter FAQ with unmodified 6s and Blight Cyst at 140 points, they are close to being competitive again.

So based off of today's preview it looks like we're getting 4 subfactions: The Munificent Wanderers: Yay Nurgle Daemons! The Droning Guard: Nurgle Daemons and probably plague drones in particular. I have high hopes since I think drones could be competitive with relatively low buffs. I'm hoping they get +1 to hit somewhere. The Blessed Sons: Rotbringers. Maybe focused on durability based on the current battalion. Could be nice, hopefully more impactful than Drowned Men. The Drowned Men: We saw them yesterday. They might blightkings better than they were before

Looks like Nurgle is getting 4 subfactions based off of names. This is looking like Maggotkin 2.0 for them.

I really don't think their warscroll needs to be changed much. There's enough similar stuff in other armies like the often quoted clanrats that if 50 wounds per 200 points was fundamentally broken then these units would be far more common on the competitive scene. Hell, Squigs are 48 wounds for 280 with 2 attacks at 3/4/-1/1 and they're generally considered bad. That said, I think they are hyper efficient with resurrection abilities so I'd reduce their Icon to from d6 returned to d3. Fold reality might also need to be looked at. People tie it to Horrors but if Horrors are nerfed into uselessness I predict we'll hear people cry about resurrecting 6 flamers or screamers next. Maybe have it return d3 models and slay a model instead if you roll a 1 or a 2. I feel like a broken record at this point but I think the balance issues are a combination of some strong warscrolls/sub-factions/changehost. If you nerf all of them simultaneously you wind up with a bottom tier unit. Unfortunately, the YouTuber crowd in particular seems to have such a strong hate ****** for this battletome I don't think they'll be content until Horrors and Flamers are gone from the competitive scene altogether. Someone on Twitter pointed out that just this year FEC and Slaanesh had higher win rates at their initial tournaments. Hell, Daughters of Khaine had a 71% going back to June 2019 (I remember them having 77% months after their release but Honest Wargamer stats don't go back that for on their site). I get that this battletome is over the top and it sucks to see stuff like this released but its hardly unique. To single out DOT as a unique failing on GW's part is disingenuous to the extreme.

They're just a myth dude, get with the program.

Yeah, as a subfaction ability I think its pretty meh in practice but its something at least. And who knows, maybe it will come with a command trait/ability/artifact that improves spell casting. With all the OBR in my meta I don't think Maggotkin will go anywhere competitive unless they put out ranged damage somehow.

Yeah, Flamers are already so fragile for their points and all the pitchfork waving about how 50 wounds for 200 points is game breaking just by itself has me worried that GW will knee-****** and nerf them into oblivion.