Overread

So sorting out a bit of a shopping list for this weekend and the big drop of pre-orders. Right now I'm thinking something along the lines of: 1 Arch-Kavalos Zandtos 2 Kavalos Deathriders 1 Mortek Crawler 1 Gothizzar Harvester 1 Mortisan Boneshaper 1 Mortisan Soulreaper Possibly also adding the Tithe Nexus to the order. This is on top of: 6 morghasts (I've still not decided on weapons) 10 Mortek Guard 3 Stalkers Vokmortian Sadly its looking increasingly like I won't find a trading partner to swap my ogors for reapers and the trading price for ogors is somewhat less than for the reapers so I can't basically double my mortek and stalkers (which is most of what I'd hoped for - the added morghasts would have been a boon). Still that would give me a decent working core plus a nice chunk of variety. Plus with Mortek Guard at 20 for £35 they will feel EVER so cheap compared to Daughters of Khaine witches.

@steffen 3K in a year is a huge amount. Even if you were buying models from FW that would be a huge number (or 3 massive warlords). Sounds like you've had a bit of a burnout chasing the meta.

If GW were retiring the army in 2 years time they'd have just retired it now. Cities and Orruks were a bit of an emigma but lets not forget they came right after Sylvaneth and the trading delay might have messed up things for terrain/spells at that time and thus GW might not have ordered any. It's clear that from Launch to the start of 2.0 AoS was in a mad state of flux with lots of changes being thrown at it both from a massive rebuild of its entire structure through to the management changing at GW itself. 2.0 is a massive fresh sweep and GW has clearly used it to make a final removal of models from the range. It's been darn painful, but at the same time AoS should move forward and preserve the armies its got now. We might see one or two situations like we have with Death where a motley army (Legions of Nagash) gets steadily updated with bits moving into fresh armies (Nighthaunt, Flesheaters, Ossiarchs). We could even see Legions vanish and be replaced with generic Grand Army Death with each niche of the legion getting its own army. Plus I'm sure we'll see models removed from sale as GW updates armies. However moving forward past the 2.0 updates we should see more normal patterns. So fewer removals; and when they do happen they happen alongside additions. Most likely replacing the removed sculpt with a new version. Which is basically what GW normally does most of the time.

What's interesting is that when you consider most of the humans in AoS are within the wild Slaves to Darkness faction, chances are a lot of the warriors there ARE farmers. For those wild peoples who farm rather than live nomadic lives they likely operate a bit like Vikings; a raiding season but also a harvesting season and thus having to head home to get the landworkers back to the land to gather in the harvest. Cities of Sigmar appear to not need that and field more trained dedicated soliders. Which likely gives them the edge in combat ability, but a distinct disadvantage in both the numbers and also the cost of doing battle. Indeed for Cities of Sigmar further behind the lines I could see them arguing that they shouldn't have to pay toward a war that's far removed from their land. That the cost of maintaining a large standing army is too great and that others should shoulder the cost; or have the army disbanded. Especially as Sigmar plucks the bravest and the best to become immortal warriors. Why spend a fortune each year for human soldiers to grow rich and fat in guardposts when Stormcast place no pressure on your resources and yet also carry the war to Chaos and protect the lands. It's what they are made for.

I'm not aware of it, though Legions of Nagash has had several models renamed (new warscroll) with different stats when being put into other Death Armies. Sometimes the changes are minor (key words only) but points and stats and abilities all have the potential to change under such a system. So the same model can appear in two armies and function differently in each. As for Kurnothi don't forget that GW might be doing what they did with Slaves to Darkness and Darkoath. With Kurnothi just ending up being a facet of the Sylvaneth army rather than getting their own battletome and full army. It would actually take things back to how wood-elves used to work; even if its a darn bitter pill for the original players to get their army cut in half and then their elf part cut again with loss of models only to then see new sculpts replace them. But at the same time Kurnothi are very different.

Nothing stops you doing it multiple times. The GW article on themed armies even points it out that you can do this. Provided that you can use another ability to let them charge a second time in the same turn such as the Liege - Kavalos leader ability.

Faction terrain is mostly bringing allegiance abilities into a physical form much like endless spells bring spells into a physical form. Sure you can say its a cash-grab by GW, but honestly EVERY new model is the same, as are resculpts and new rules editions. GW as a business (not at the individual worker level) is clearly in it for the money and has to find new ways to get gamers to part with cash. Both new gamers and those with 20 or 30 year old collections who have most of everything they currently want. I think that some of the terrain would be better if it were more "mobile" in appearance or had some lore to explain how it was built. Since most games at this scale feel more like skirmishes than actual wars over fortified locations (reinforce by most of the terrain being ruins at present). Faction terrain would work fantastically well with a castle and forts system as well as villages and such in 15mm to 6mm games. That aside I think its a neat idea. Some are clearly more powerful than others and some have more impact on the board in terms of their appearance. Some are just static buffs; others like the skaven gnawholes, actually make opponents think about deployment in new ways and how to conduct themselves on the battlefield. The concept of something like a gnawhole is nothing new - skaven had have warpgrinders for decades - but having it as a terrain feature on the table at the start changes how one reacts and works with it. As for which has the most impact its really hard to say. Some are situational, whilst others are powerful buffs. Others can define how an army functions. However all are nice to have and because they pair up with their chosen army they are like a linchpin to each army unto itself

One thing I notice (and keeping in mind the main 40K forum I'm on is Dakka which tends to be a bit more negative) is that right now most AoS 2.0 armies are popular and good enough that when new people come and show interest in them they are encouraged to take up the army. Nighthaunt might be a bit of the exception, but in general we don't have loads of people lamenting "failing" 2.0 battletomes. Granted we do have the issue with no 2.0 battletome forces (eg Slaves to Darkness); but that's understandable and a pattern that has remained solid through the 2.0 update. Plus each time a new Tome comes out that removes one army from that list. There's a general positive swing in army uptake and potential and provided the next 4 Tomes are in-line with what GW has produced thus far AoS is going to be in a pretty nice position. Sure armies like Idoneth could do with one or two more competitive build choices; Slaanesh needs Depravity looking at and Nighthaunt need a bit of a nudge up. But on the whole we are looking at fairly easy to spot issues and steady adjustments. Rather than whole armies being basically invalid from the core up.

Yep the harvester is a close combat monster that also has a healing aura. It's very much designed to be right in the thick of combat collecting body parts and dealing out death whilst repairing those around it. Pretty much only 3 models in the range are back-seat. The trebuchet, with the supporting chair wizard and Nagash. Everything else wants to move forward and be in close combat itself or in direct range of close combat supporting others. It's a very "in your face" army with powerful, but limited ranged options. It's actually surprising that archers don't form part of the force in any shape, plus they don't even have spears to throw. So its fully mashing up in combat.

I have really enjoyed the white paint from contrast! Looks like a very neat result!

Yep the GW article even shows it with the fire reapers - so not only do they do damage when they do die (in close combat since if they die at range they wont' hit anything) but they can come back to life too!

It varies and your budget also comes into it plus your style of play. At present spears to swords is quite a fine line to draw so many are half and half what they will take. Also you can vary it up. 20 guard with one weapon 20 with the other weapon and experiment and see what suits you and what works. Over time steadily growing your collection. A box here a box there it quickly adds up

They are small. It would be possible, I've seen people magnetise really tiny stuff; but there is a cost benefit thing going on. The smaller the contact area the weaker the magnet hold. Furthermore the smaller often the more fiddly it is to achieve, esp if you want to "hide" the magnets from view once the parts are attached. In my view anything smaller than a Tyranid Warrior is often not worth it with magnets. So Stalkers are likely practical and they've a nice chunky core body and arms to work with; Gothizzar harvester is also likely easy to magnetize for the ball or scythe arms. But honestly for morteks I'd wager its easier and more time efficient just to buy more than to break out magnets.

Moderator notice - thread locked. This is more the kind of post that should be in your blog/twitter or such. It's not really got any direction to go on the open forums as it doesn't sound like you're after a conversation about the topic and with such a provocative viewpoint put forward I'm not sure that it would garner much of a positive reaction.

Sometimes its wise to ready every post with the view of "its that persons opinion" even if they don't openly state it as such. Lets not get caught up in a "who's opinion is more correct" argument.

Honestly Cities doesn't appear in any Battletomes so it would likely be something that needs an errata update from GW to work for the rest of Order. It stands to reason too - when those Tomes were written cities wasn't a thing.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2019/10/28/from-the-mind-of-mengel-mortek-guardgw-homepage-post-2/ Reaper article on how to paint them! First of hopefully a few articles/videos

Also I would wager GW has the sprue all on the same mould. So whilst they might have their own segment, I'd expect them to be on the same chunk of metal. So really no hope of splitting them up. Really we've four options: 1) It's a price rise 2) It's a content increase and GW doubles the miniature count and increases the price a bit 3) It's a content increase and GW is putting something else inside each pack - unique model/upgrade cards or something. 4) It's wrong or a trade type price Option 1 is really odd since these are very new models and their current prices are normal for GW's pricing structure. Plus the Bonereapers are not appearing to be pushing prices up either for basic infantry and such. Plus Warcry has, far as we know, been selling really well so I can't see justification to hamper its growth this early with a price rise. Heck the Chimera didn't even get a price rise (outside of a few more £ for the cards in the box). Option 4 could be possible. The Red painting handle and the paint pot holder are listed on the sheet at insane prices for what they are and could be reflecting trade prices buying multiples; rather than customer prices. Or they are simply utterly wrong.

Lol yes many of the early Tomes were more a panic reaction by GW and from what I gather are mostly just warscrolls and not much else. But at least you did get one . Besides KO are at least one of the safest armies and exceptionally unlikely to lose anything. Though waiting a lot of years is painful the pain should soon be ending!

@Skelebags In fairness my list is more "what do I like the look of that fits into 2K points". So I've not looked too closely at the interactions specific within the force. Though yes I do see your point that the harvester is a hard hitter but not as good with resurrection for the cavalry. @Scurvydog interesting points regarding the named lead lord. In one way its odd that GW is underpowering the named options, in another its perhaps a good thing that they are not making them so powerful that they become auto includes (or so powerful and high in points that they become very niche like Nagash).

@Barkanaut don't forget that KO are likely to get a new Tome early next year. Considering that we now know that Slaves to Darkness are dropping in December that means only 4 battletomes need an update in 2020. Seraphon, KO and Tzeentch. Which if GW keeps its current pace up means that we could see all three arrive before the end of March. Plus at least KO have a tome, Slaves are about to get their first in 5 or so years of AoS.

I'm thinking the reason they don't have allies is because of how they function and by shutting down allies it helps stop you taking a load of cheap zombies or ghouls to give the army a viable 400 block faster moving chaff block. Mercenaries already come with a "tax" to taking them and are more limited in what is on offer so they tend to be a bit more "elite" than general chaff units. I think its a means toward making reapers work internally whilst costing them allies. IT can work well for a varied self-contained army.

The youtube videos have shown the last page, Ossiarchs have no allies at all. However provided you don't take Nagash and/or The Mortatch of Sacrament you can take mercenaries (if you take either of those heroes though you cannot take mercenaries - though honestly if you take Nagash anyway you've already tied up half of most armies into a single model).

Right now for Mortek Guard I'm thinking that: Unit of 10 - Swords Unit of 20 - Swords/Spears 50/50 on either option Unit of 30 - Spears Unit of 40 - Spears In general the bigger the unit the more important getting more models into combat range becomes, esp when you're considering aura buffs and the limited area you've got to work with as well as terrain and wrap around or blocking pathways etc.... Meanwhile with smaller units the added range becomes less of an issue and the bonus to rending far more attractive. The 20 unit split is mostly because its where I'd consider the gain/loss of each option to be about equal. Of course one has to remember that in a real battlefield, even with the high defence and resurrection mechanics, the army is still going to take losses getting to the opponent. So a unit that starts with 20 would not be expected to make it to combat with all 20. At that point I think we get into specific opponent variety. If you're going against skaven and you know its mostly clan and plague rats the spears become more attractive in general, more range, more attacks and the rending isn't as much of an issue because their saves are already pretty poor. However if you're going against stormcast or even other reapers then the swords, even in large blocks of infantry, become more important because now you're dealing with an army with generally good saves across the board so the rending becomes that much more important. The bonus is that I don't think either option is a bad choice, both are very viable. Plus with 20 to a box and a high points cost it actually becomes more practical to build both options into a collection for variety of choice. Now for the Deathriders it might be a big different as spears get additional bonuses in combat for them. I've not really looked at the zoomd in youtube videos of their stats much yet, so I'll probably leave that choice to battletome arrival day.

I think the reason we don't have "AoS apoc" right now is for a few factors 1) Apoc works on the grand scale; which means lots of models. Whilst AoS has had a lot of Old World fans come back, there was a big dead period. So a lot of AoS armies are still smaller. As a result GW already prices things somewhat higher in points in comparison to 40K. You can sort of see this if you compare Demon armies from the two games, with 40K armies typically able to put far more models onto the table for the same points value. So GW is artificially keeping the model count, whilst still high, at a lower value than their other game. This also works easily with AoS because, unlike 40K, it hasn't got as many unit divisions and specific counters. You have troops, leaders, artillery and behemoths with none of them really "countering" the other. Meanwhile 40K has heavy support, fliers, fast attack, troops, leaders, artillery etc... with some having specific hard counters that you have to factor in. This has reduced a bit in the recent edition (in earlier editions dedicated flying units and super heavies had very specific counters that if you didn't have you couldn't deal with, or were in a very uphill struggle to deal with). So I think part of the reason is that GW doesn't feel that AoS community at large is ready for Apoc. 2) AoS is still not all on 2.0. Yep until it is releasing a major expansion like an Apoc scale system wouldn't make as much sense. Better to have the whole game up and running properly and then give people the option to take things to the bigger scale of battle. 3) As for the comment on the lack of "super heavies" this isn't really true. AoS has multiple options, however the balance is such that they are not in the same league. Nagash is powerful but he's 800 or 900 points and he's not untouchable. An Apoc system for AoS could actually adjust the rules (like they did for 40K) to make the God units and such more powerful in battle relative to the game. About the only real lacking is that AoS has very little super-heavy support from Forgeworld. There's a few models (Ancient for Seraphon and chaos dragon etc...) but by and large many armies don't have super-big monster models. However that's really a lesser issue that might simply stem some of the pressure on GW to support an Apco but doesn't stop it. Many gamers play Apoc without titans (they have knights of course) and warlord titans and phantom knights for eldar etc... But they do have the option to buy them and add them to the game and the Apoc system feeds into supporting that niche.