Orsino

The statistics demonstrate a far higher proportion of female leaders in AoS than pretty much any real army in history I can hear people now getting ready to tell me "IT'S FANTASY" and yes it is but all fantasy has reference points in the real world. That's what gives fantasy a feeling of reality. All of our real world reference points for combat are male because almost all real world combat has been done by males. Which is not to say that you can't have female combatants in a fantasy game, you can have as many as you like, it's only the idea that you must have more women that I take objection to, given that female combatants are actually grossly overrepesented in AoS rather than underrepresented. The other argument that's made here for increasing the over-representation of women is that some people need their gaming pieces to be the same sex as them or they won't want to play with them. As a male playing a nearly all-female CoS army I can't say I've ever felt alienated and excluded by my gaming pieces not having enough penises and it's hard not to see this need as little more than chauvinism. So yeah, more female models would be nice, more models are always nice, but the idea that it is some sort of fault or deficit of a game not to have parity doesn't make sense and the idea that people are being cruelly excluded by the gender of their gaming pieces holds no weight for me.

You said you hadn't played the current edition of BA, which is the one that was being referred to. No one in this thread has suggested any game has perfect balance, but rather games can be better or worse balanced relative to other games and balance in AoS is relatively poor. This is just a bizarre argument. When you claim no game is well balanced of course people are going to bring up counter-examples of games that are well balanced. For you to then say that people shouldn't mention those better balanced games on the forum because it's a "personal slight" against GW is really quite strange and unreasonable. You end by saying "play or don't", apparently forgetting this is a discussion forum. If you're not interested in the discussion then don't take part in it, but don't turn up to tell other people not to talk about it.

This is what I do, AoS reminders makes it nice and clear and games flow better if you share info at the start rather than having to explain your army mid-game. However I don't consider not volunteering information to be deception/cheating and I'd have no issue playing with someone who didn't give me a rundown, although refusing to answer questions seems a little silly.

Game balance is actually fairly quantifiable and (as I've pointed out a few times) when we talk about a game being well-balanced this is relative to other games. You can make that argument about chess if you like but chess will still be well-balanced relative to AoS because you're comparing a game with a single point of imbalance to a game with more and greater points of imbalance. Games are relatively more or less balanced when compared to other games, this isn't a point that can be sensibly disputed and you can't make game balance disapear as a design dimension by repeating that no game is perfect or appealing to subjectivity.

You suggest that no games are well balanced and then dismiss examples of well balanced games because you haven't played them and...they're not AoS. That's really not an argument. And again, balance is a continuum and repeating "no game is perfectly balanced" doesn't mean balance can't be improved.

The fact that games workshop is motivated by profit is a bit of a non-sequitur, so are lots of companies that manage to make balanced games. The frequent introduction of new factions does make it more difficult to maintain balance, but there are ways that could be mitigated to a greater or lesser extent, more play-testing, updating warscrolls more frequently, etc.

I don't really get this. Yes, you can argue that no game is truly perfectly balanced, but some games are a hell of a lot more balanced than others. Chess is extremely balanced, something like Bolt Action is pretty balanced whilst still having distinctive factions that play differently, and AoS is very unbalanced. Why would the difficulty of achieving perfect balance make a better level of balance an unreasonable expectation or something people shouldn't care about?

Probably, but I don't like to have to ask if it's okay to use a non-legal army everytime I play a new person. For my own knights I think I'm gonna be running them as dracothians, Cities of Sigmar has plenty of mounted units but few of them are really elite and intimidating in the way I feel knights should be.

I'm seeing a few people suggesting Bloodknight mercenaries, didn't GHB 2020 scrap mercenaries? I don't see them in the points list or on the warscoll builder.

Making some changes to my list, wondering if I'd be better off running it as Tempest's Eye: Allegiance: Cities of Sigmar - City: Living City LEADERS Nomad Prince (120) - General - Command Trait : Druid of the Everspring - Lifesurge - Artefact : Spear of the Hunt Celestial Hurricanum With Celestial Battlemage (280) Dreadlord on Black Dragon (300) UNITS 20 x Sisters of the Watch (320) 10 x Sisters of the Watch (160) 30 x Eternal Guard (330) 3 x Akhelian Ishlaen Guard (140) - Allies 3 x Akhelian Ishlaen Guard (140) - Allies 3 x Aetherwings (40) BEHEMOTHS War Hydra (170) I actually find the war hydra works well for me but I am concious that if I got rid of the hydra and atherwings I'd have enough points to take a unit of shadow warriors and some outriders or something.

Making some changes to my list... Allegiance: Cities of Sigmar - City: Living City LEADERS Nomad Prince (120) - General - Command Trait : Druid of the Everspring - Lifesurge - Artefact : Spear of the Hunt Celestial Hurricanum With Celestial Battlemage (280) Dreadlord on Black Dragon (300) UNITS 20 x Sisters of the Watch (320) 10 x Sisters of the Watch (160) 30 x Eternal Guard (330) 3 x Akhelian Ishlaen Guard (140) - Allies 3 x Akhelian Ishlaen Guard (140) - Allies 3 x Aetherwings (40) BEHEMOTHS War Hydra (170) Would appreciate any thoughts/advice. I've found a big block of EG and SotW buffed by the celestial hurricanum works well for me but perhaps I need more mobility. I know people don't rate war hydras but I have to say mine has always done good work, it's an intimidating-looking conversion that draws attacks and with the hydras own wounds regeneration + Living City it tends to last until the end of the game. However, I am concious that if I got rid of the hydra and atherwings I'd have enough points to take a unit of shadow warriors and some outriders or something. Nomad prince is pretty useless, but unfortunately necessary for the batteline and with Druid of the Everspring at least it serves as a second caster. Is there a better way to go? I was previously taking 5 Sisters of the Thorn but for their points cost I always found them pretty disapointing.

I like it for hydra, combined with the hydra's own regeneration it makes for an effective, attention-drawing roadblock that can tie up enemy units. I don't know if it's worth building you army around though. Any particular reason you wouldn't use both a hurricanum and a nomad prince or are you just saying that only one is necessary for the buff?

Absolutely this. SotW can be really good when you use them well but their fragility makes them unforgiving. I recently played two games in the same evening, in the first the SotW deleted unit after unit my opponent sent in to take an objective. In the second game a good charge let my opponent get around my EG screen, I rolled badly on the Fire Until The Last attack, and the SotW were pretty much immediately wiped out without doing ****** all.

Double post.

I'm working on a Nomad "Prince(ss)" myself at the moment. I think there are a lot of options for kitbashing female heroes, I've gone with the Isharann Tidecaster for the body/cloak, Khinerai for the hair and weapon/hands, and a wild rider helmet. I would recommend the Isharann Tidecaster generally as a proxy for lady-heroes, her armour has that Idoneth scallop design but it's quite subtle and there's nothing particularly fishy about the body so can work in other armies. Edit: Obviously the Nomad Prince also has a hawk, but you can probably proxy in any small flying animal, I'm making a baby dragon for my Nomad Princess.

This is one of the benefits of not using a handle on your blade. Most of the time I just hold the blunt end of scalpel blades, I find it gives me better control than using a handle and if I drop the blade it's not gonna go through my foot.

So, I've seen a few people in this thread post lists featuring Alarielle, and I'm really curious, how's that working out? It's a great model, but such a big chunk of points, do you use the full 1/4 Sylvaneth to make her worth it? Here's my own Living City list I'm putting together: Nomad prince 120 Dreadlord on Dragon 300 Sorceress on Dragon 300 10 Dark Riders 220 (Riding drakespawn of course) 5 Sisters of the Thorn 130 20 Sisters of the Watch 320 20 Eternal Guard 260 3 Ishlaen Eels 140 (Allies, have converted eels into juvenile forest dragons) 5 Blood Knights 200 (Mercenaries using Dragonblades models, I may like dragons too much) You can probably tell from this list that I lean more fluff than competitive, but I'd ideally prefer to be in with a chance. I'm conscious I've got some very small units there that are at risk of getting wiped out before they do anything. I feel like I could probably make a more competitive list by swapping out the Sorceress for a Celestial Hurricanum and losing the allies and mercenaries to take full advantage of the Dark Rider horde discount...

Magnets all the way, I've found it so much better than any other method I've tried. If you don't have a lot of really tall models you can even stick them in a cantilever toolbox which is an incredibly handy and space-efficient way to transport an army. With a strong glue and a strong magnet (or multiple magnets) you don't need to use greenstuff or worry about heavy models moving around. Weak contact points could be a concern but if your model doesn't fall apart when you touch it the vibrations of being transported in a car (or on foot, or on a train) probably aren't going to do it any harm.

One thing I think we can say with certainty is that they're not going to bin AoS when this comes out, AoS is doing well for GW, this is expansion rather than replacement. And hopefully we won't be arguing for the next three years, there's a lot of people getting a little bit overexcited because the announcement has just dropped and it was a surprise. Things will settle down as people run out of stuff to say about a logo. At some point in the future we will get more information about this, and people will over-react to that too, but once we know what this actually is the speculation will become less wild and people's fears will hopefully be put to rest.

There's a pretty crucial difference there, 40k never replaced 30k, they didn't need to spend several years delineating the difference and getting people to buy into the new system, scrapping old units and shifting people to a new aesthetic and lore only to then undo it. There is a need for differentiation here, and probably a few ways to achieve that, but scale seems like an obvious one.

I can't really see how two concurrent fantasy battle games set in very similiar worlds with similiar characters can work for GW if the models are the same scale. They're not gonna bring all the models they've just scrapped back into production. They're not gonna want to confuse the branding by having the same models represent different units. They're not gonna let players use the models they already have if they can get them to buy more. A different scale would seem to solve all these problems.

My knee-****** reaction was that this is bizarre given they're still in the long proccess of squatting old world stuff, a load was removed with CoS and it seems strange to be planning to restore stuff at this stage. But logically, this probably isn't gonna be a restoration in the sense of letting people use their old models or having dual warscrolls for models. That wouldn't take years to introduce and it wouldn't make GW much money. More likely this is gonna be very much it's own thing with it's own models. A different scale seems very possible as that would prevent people using models they already own.

So giant elves?

You could combine the angelic thing with the weird geometric thing by drawing on the original depictions of angels in the abrahamic religions. Weird, multi-winged, multi-faced things incorporating wheels and shapes: I'm not saying do these exactly, they might be a bit too Tzeentchy, but there are elements you could draw on. Or you could similarly combine the themes of angels and geometry by evoking stained glass either through borrowing some of the stylistic features or even having their bodies be made up of "blocks" lik the segments in a window: