Inquisitorsz

I think it's actually pretty interesting that they appear to have not deviated much from original High Elf designs. I've always been under the impression that GW will want to heavily AOS-ify any new races to make them unique to GW. It's possible that the Teclis weapons are the only call back to the original lore/images and the rest of the range will be quite different, but I think they'll want to keep the aesthetic similar to the art we've seen. Perhaps they'll do a full 180 and make Teclis' elves fancy, noble order vampires.... perhaps they have the same soul problem as the deepkin, but are proud of their heritage and not wanting to seclude / hide themselves away? That could be a cool way to refresh high elves and vampires in one go lol. How big do people think Teclis will be? I think the options are a) Medium Size - Eg Similar to Alarielle on some sort of mount, probably not a monster, maybe some magical construct or swirly energy like the celestant prime or Eidolon of Mathlann size or perhaps similar to Karakros, maybe even with some henchmen? Morathi fits this category too I think. b) Nagash/Archaon size c) Normal elf size I think a) is most likely, though I'd like to see a Morathi type situation where he has 2 aspects, maybe even a twins thing with Tyrion or a light/dark thing with Malerion.

I'm late to this discussion but those are my thoughts exactly. I haven't bought a black library book for probably over a year since I've had an Audible subscription. Admittedly my reading time has been minimal, so that's where audio books while driving have been a great help. The last thing I read in a physical format was ADB's Night Lords trilogy and a half finished Fear to Tread (HH series). Since then, I've listened to about 8 or 9 HH audio books and I'm almost up to date with them. I think I'm about 4-5 away from being current. After that, I'll start jumping into AOS stuff I think. Keen to catch up with Gotrek. But in general, Black Library is expensive. They still price their stuff like every book is a large, hard cover collectors edition. And while that has it's place, it's not the majority of the market. The fact that some of their books only come out in the cheaper soft cover versions months later certainly doesn't help. It's like those dual box limited characters all over again. At the end of the day.... why would I pay $20+ for a physical book, when I can have someone read it to me for $16?

It's just wyldwood thinned down with contrast medium (about 1:1 or 1:2) over a mostly white undercoat. I tried to do some zenithal preshading with the airbrush but anything darker than pure white made the colour greyish and washed out. So then I just undercoated mostly in white and let the contrast paint do most of the work. I will eventually do some highlighting of the wood, but I'll do all the base work on the army first so it's usable then do as many details as I get time for.

It's mostly contrast paint doing some heavy lifting lol

Will do. Right now I'm just desperately trying to finish the army. WIP Photo attached

@Trevelyan Awesome thanks for the feedback

The other units all get rerolls too. I imagine the hunters will roll around with Drycha. She can cast mirrorpool to keep up with any teleports. I couldn't really fit outcasts with the two big girls and enough generic heroes to make use of it. I like the flexibility of having 2 + 1 hunter units. If I had more dryads I'd consider summoning them and that would probably change the list a bit. I don't care much about the Gnarlroot trait.... The winterleaf one is just as average. It's all about the items. Only one of them can have throne right? Or can they both have it but only cast it once? In any case that's what the chalice was supposed to be for while alarielle had the spell. Cheere for the input though. Winterleaf is probably the easier option for someone with so little experience. I like the Gnarlroot version but it's probably harder to play.

OK hive mind. I need some last minute list advice. I think I've narrowed it down to 2 options. Tournament will use full ghyran rules including all the extra spells. Option 1 - extra hero (arch rev) and a command point. Could also be winterleaf with the arch rev carrying the items. Allegiance: Sylvaneth - Glade: Gnarlroot Alarielle the Everqueen (600) - Deepwood Spell: Throne of Vines Drycha Hamadreth (320) - Deepwood Spell: Regrowth Branchwraith (80) - General - Trait: Nurtured by Magic - Artefact: Chalice of Nectar - Deepwood Spell: Verdurous Harmony Arch-Revenant (100) 5 x Spite-Revenants (60) 5 x Spite-Revenants (60) 5 x Tree-Revenants (80) 6 x Kurnoth Hunters (400) - Scythes 3 x Kurnoth Hunters (200) - Greatswords Spiteswarm Hive (50) Extra Command Point (50) Total: 2000 / 2000 Extra Command Points: 1 Allies: 0 / 400 Wounds: 96 or Option 2 - more bodies, extra tree revs for teleports - one less hero Allegiance: Sylvaneth - Glade: Gnarlroot Alarielle the Everqueen (600) - Deepwood Spell: Throne of Vines Drycha Hamadreth (320) - Deepwood Spell: Regrowth Branchwraith (80) - General - Trait: Nurtured by Magic - Artefact: Chalice of Nectar - Deepwood Spell: Verdurous Harmony 15 x Spite-Revenants (180) 5 x Tree-Revenants (80) 5 x Tree-Revenants (80) 6 x Kurnoth Hunters (400) - Scythes 3 x Kurnoth Hunters (200) - Greatswords Spiteswarm Hive (50) Total: 1990 / 2000 Extra Command Points: 0 Allies: 0 / 400 Wounds: 101 I'll have 20 dryads and 3 hunters for summons either way. Option 1 would probably also give me 10 tree revs for a summoning option if I get them finished in time. Thoughts?

How do people use branchwraiths? I imagine they would just sit in or behind the first free wyldwood and pump out dryads? Wouldn't she be pretty protected being essentially out of sight to most things. So as long as you screen her from alpha charges, she should be pretty safe shouldn't she?

Lol that's actually pretty funny. Would this still get the the DoT allegiance abilities? I guess so, although there's no DoT battleline. I assume the warriors still count as Tzeentch Battleline even though they're allies? Would this be a DoT army or a S2D army? Coz then you're losing the tzeentch spells and the -1 to hit demons and the fate point summoning right? That being said the S2D spell lore has some nice stuff too lol. I guess you could swap the warriors for acolytes anyway. As for "doing much", the army is all about tar-pitting objectives (or the whole table) and throwing spells around. It doesn't really need to do much more than that.

Good point, never really thought about that.

I don't think the list depends on it though. Like I said, you're really only playing 40pts for a 2 spell caster... who cares if a few of those spell casts are wasted? It's not like you're being "inefficient" with the points lol. Anyway this was more of an exercise in how absurd the rules can be. I doubt anyone is really going to go out and buy/paint 300 horrors, 6 gaunt summoners and 2-3 Lords of Change (plus whatever battleline you want to fit in).

entirely depends on the event. The biggest one in the world (Cancon this month) will use all the Ghyran spells. This has come up in various TGA and FB threads before. Seems like the majority of tournaments use realm spells and/or realmscape features to some extent though they're often TO curated and somewhat limited. EDIT: Seems like LVO later this month also uses the full realm spells, different realm each round.

see my post earlier. You don't even need realm spells. There's 6 lore spells you can cast without needing enemy targets, and mystic shield. That's before endless spells. Then next turn you can use use the warscroll spell and arcane bolt if you're in range. So arguably you'd be potentially wasting 4 spell casts if you don't buy endless spells. But between all the horrors, acolytes, and a LOC that you may have already summoned, you're still going to be casting like 15+ spells that turn. having realm spells just makes it easier. like I said earlier though 6 Gaunts is silly, but even taking 2-4 is very strong and then you're not wasting any spells. In any case, it's a 40pt 2 spell caster that comes with a 200pt unit.

uhhh... I hate so many of these rules =( I only played a little bit of arcanite/tzaangors in the past. Mainly stuff I had form some cheap Silver Tower spare parts. I think I'll stick to that and just play less competitive stuff. Coz these horrors and gaunt summoners are really quite NPE (negative play experience). Hopefully Tzaangor Coven is somewhat good, though that battalion is like 1300pts alone.

Yeah I missed that... but also Fold Reality can bring the icon bearer back, so probably worth the risk for that.

@Sinfullyvannila Actually first turn they only get 1 spell each because the summoning reduces their spell casting for that turn. There's 6 lore spells that target friendly units, plus mystic shield . So that's easy. Following turns you could do the same thing, or start using the other 5 lore spells which are 18" range that hit enemy units, the warscroll one and arcane bolt. That's not taking into account any endless spells you might want to buy as well. The Arcanite keyword doesn't matter much I don't think. The Gaunts have both Demon and Mortal which means they have access to most of the books' goodies. Oh and here's another stupid thing I just realized. I think the pink horror units can just keep growing. a 1 on the battleshock test restores D6 models, and the fold reality spell does the same thing on a 2+.... So say you've lost all your pink horrors and you now have 20 blue horrors, you can then use a 1 on the destiny dice for battleshock and cast a spell to get essentially 2D6 pink horrors back into the unit. lets say you get 7 back... the unit is now 7 pinks and 20 blues. Those 7 pinks will then split into 14 blues again. so you could end up with 34 blues now. So unless you get surrounded and can't physically place more models, the unit could get infinitely big. Models permitting of course. It has to be "slain models" so you can't go back over the initial 10 pink horrors, but seems like you can keep bringing pinks back after they split into blues. not much of a problem in practice, but makes them that much harder to eliminate (as long as you don't roll a 1 for fold reality I guess) to me it's just dumb rules writing.

I guess ultimately, even doing that with 3-4 gaunt summoners still seems dumb. That's 600-800pts of free summoning, on top of all the fate points. As for gaunt casting, you're actually not losing much because you'll be able to cast 6 lore spells, 1 warscroll spell, 1 bolt, 1 shield. I guess I'm simplifying things and saying everything is in range. @Sinfullyvannila the alpha strike is a problem, but that's always an issue for a wizard heavy army. the 30 acolytes can bubble wrap pretty well though. Good points about hordes tar pitting horrors, but you can just keep the unit spread out a bit (perhaps in a ring) and leave space for splits. Also don't forget we have quite a few solid horde clearing spells. Ultimately I think needing to buy 3 boxes and 1 hero for every gaunt summoner, and needing to build and paint 300 horrors is going to be enough to stop this army ever seeing the table. The 6 gaunt summoners + the required horrors = $1230 AUD lol But then again, people paint hundreds of clanrats already. and 3 keepers of secrets clock in at $690 AUD so it's not too crazy for power gaming meta players. It would be a pretty boring army to play, but the Horrors can do decent damage, the LOC isn't bad either so I'm not sure that the lack of a "hammer" unit is going to hurt too much in such a horde favoring, objective heavy game. It is true that while the horrors unit has 50 wounds, it only ever counts as 20 max for objective control. So unless you can zone the opponent out, you might still lose objectives to larger hordes. That being said, you're likely having 2x10 pink horrors for every horde unit they have (I think most horde armies have 2-4 horde units?)

Yeah this is something I've been pondering too.... Not that I'd ever want to buy/build/paint this many horrors.... But why not take 6 Gaunt summoners (at a cost of 240-260 each). So between 1440 - 1560 pts Drop 60 Pink Horrors turn 1 That's 300 wounds you've just gotten, essentially for free. Take host duplicitous (for casting rerolls, no retreating and chance to bring a whole units back) or probably the better option is the summoner's guild since you're going to be casting 6 spells from the gaunts on the first turn (and 9 in later turns) + 6 from horrors + whatever else you take in your army + the LOC when he comes on, possibly on turn 1. You're going to easily get 2 LOC in the first 2 turns. Or if not taking summoners guild, you're likely getting about 25 fate points by turn 2. And then after all that, you've still got 500pts left to spend.... and you still need 3 battleline so probably 3x10 acolytes which gives you 3 more spell casts and some bubble wrapping for the gaunts, then about 200pts left for... i dunno maybe some Sphiranx allies or 6 enlightened on foot? I guess the one weakness is that you're going to have a lot of drops so you're never getting to pick who goes first. And I guess against some lists your Gaunts could get shot first turn... But still. The whole army is also -1 to hit in melee, and those destiny dice with 1s can be used to bring back D6 horrors during battleshock tests. I assume you can put back pink horrors as the warscroll doesn't say otherwise. Seems like a pretty disgusting army. Am I missing something?

Awesome stuff mate. Looks fantastic. I tried putting in the stats for Durthu and a wounded version. The damage curve seems to make sense but the variability is like 4x higher for the unwounded version which doesn't make sense. D6 damage should be much more variable than 6 damage right? I think it's got something to do with that the unwounded version has a much higher maximum.... Although you can still roll a 6 for D6 damage, so the maximums should be the same right? Even if incredibly unlikely. Maybe it's a rounding thing? Also when I put in add a second weapon profile, his impaling talons, things get weird. Finally, impaling talons seems to Max out at a bit over 2 damage (graph gets cut off) but the ability is D6 mortal wounds on a 6 to hit, so the Max should be 6 (or actually 7 with the winterleaf exploding 6s). Also, you should add a donate link somewhere. Keep up the good work!

Yeah Slaanesh with Warshrine Favor of Chaos pulls ahead a little bit, Nurgle and Khorne are pretty event. But having archaon and a warshrine and 1 unit of varangaurd in the same list is already 1270pts. I might have to redo the stats for when they're not around archaon, but I suspect losing the +1 to hit and the sixth circle buff is going to hurt them too much. Perhaps the other marks pull end up being better than khorne, but without the extra damage on the charge, I think they start to loose too much value for 300pts Here's the stats with no Archaon and thus no 6th circle buff, but with the warshrine flavor of chaos. At least now they don't need to be charging.... Also let's not forget that the warshrine buff is a 3+ where as Archaon gives everything automatically. And this table still includes the genera's aura for each mark (otherwise it does nothing).... so you still need the general nearby, and the range is possibly reduced to 12" if you don't take the trait. I guess you can take Host of the Everchosen, and give Varanguard 6th circle without actually taking Archaon. That frees up a lot of points and you can just use another Generals' Aura and the Warshrine to get almost the exact same output as with the big boy. But then you're missing out on a fair few allegiance abilities so I'm not sure it's worth it. Though having multiple wizards and demon princes instead of Archaon could make up for it. It's just hard to justify Varanguard without all the buffs.... but used as intended they are a unit of freight trains.

So as far as I can tell Orruk Arrowboyz are unit size of 30max now.... 2 wounds 6+ save. So Varanguard kill 18 on the charge.... or 36 of them with the double pile in. Even if it's only 18, you'll lose the remaining 12 to battleshock if you don't make them immune. 30 reapers are a bit tougher, but Varanguard still kill an average of about 15 on the charge (after death saves), so a double pile in should do the trick, and again, battleshock will likely wipe them out if you don't double attack. Ethereal isn't as big of a deal because varanguard only have Rend -1. The rend, makes about 20% difference, so about 4 wounds. Also, don't forget that 30 Arrowboyz is 360pts and 30 Reapers is 420pts with a horde discount. Admittedly we are talking about fully buffed Varanguard with Archaon nearby (or at least a Khorne Marked general) Though I did include the 6+ death save for being near a hero for the Reapers.

The only thing that significantly stops Varanguard is high save stuff because they only have rend -1 and things immune to battleshock. On the charge, 3 sixth circle knights do an average of 38 wounds (against no save). That's 23.82 against a 4+ save. So their biggest enemy is mortek guard. With their defensive reroll and a 3+ save, Varanguard only kill 9, and then they're immune to battleshock. So for an identical 300pts, 20 Mortek Guard come out on top most of the time. Luckily Varanguard can attack twice, so you could in theory kill 18 or be a bit lucky and kill the unit. The big caveat is that you really need that charging bonus. If you don't charge, you're stuck there all game. Other than OBR, Varanguard should be able to roll through most other units in the game. Making a horde immune to battleshock can slow them down, but with a double pile in, they should be able to kill almost anything that doesn't have an amazing defensive ability. Here's the data. That's fully buffed too. So within range of Archaon, with mark of Khorne. Even if you don't double attack, and tied up in combat for a turn due to battleshock immunity... You'll still do like 35 wounds across 2 rounds of combat against 5+ save hordes. So with a bit of luck you could clear a horde before it's your turn again. People need to be careful not to underestimate Varanguard. But there are things that shut them down. *cough* Mortek Guard *cough*

So, this has been discussed a few times recently. The wording for unit weapons on all the new Slaves to Darkness stuff seems to heavily imply that all those units can select mixed weapons.... Which means you get this extra bookkeeping problem. I fully expect the updated Tzaangor (and Kairic Acolyte) warscrolls to be updated with the same wording. Or perhaps they get condensed like the Orruks did. Jury is still out on the interpretation, but hopefully we'll get a S2D FAQ soon. As far as I can tell, those 2 warscrolls are the only ones with mixed weapons right now, and the plague monks effectively had the same problem due to the multiple banner/musician effects modifying attack rolls. As for the Plague Monks. I like the change. They lost all the super annoying abilities that made rolling 40+ dice an absolute chore. The baseline stats got buffed (including woe staves). Overall, my maths shows it's a slight nerf to Foetid Blades (probably around 15-20% wound output), but they probably needed it anyway as they were by far the best battleline unit in the game (till Mortek Guard), and pretty much a must take in any skaven army. On the other hand, Staves got a significant buff, picking up an extra attack and better "to wound". They're still weaker than blades, but that's expected due to the reach. I think staves are the way to go now.

Cheers for the responses. I think you're spot on in your thinking here. In terms of variance I guess there's 2 main aspects. What is practically useful information, and what is mathematically correct information? It's pretty interesting to see the full maths behind all these stats/probability, but ultimately that's not what the average viewer needs to see. Knowing the mean/median/mode, SD, normal/non-normal distribution, variance and variability etc.... doesn't tell most gamers anything. We need some way to easily compare different weapon options or units. I wonder if doing something like displaying the min/max of any D6 attacks or D6 damage stat would be enough. For example. If I have 4 attacks, 3+,3+,-1,D6... you could work out the average as normal, up until the damage calculation.... and then display the results for both damage 1 and damage 6. That kind of gives you an "averaged min/max" right? And either display that as two separate lines, or as a single average line with min/max variance bars. Of course that might get too complicated if you have multiple variable stats like D6 attacks that cause D6 damage. But I guess that's kind of like the event tree that you mentioned. Simulating 10,000 outcomes is probably the easier way to do it though, but I'm not sure how that would work on the back end of the app/website. Perhaps have an "advanced stats" menu like you said, and have that run a calculation rather than a live updating table. ultimately I think it would be useful to see how reliable/consistent some of these monsters are (coz it's usually monsters that have these kind of random stats). it's going to be a fine balance between being too mathematically heavy (both in computation and explanation) and how the data is displayed. I'm sure you're aware that interpretation and correct display of data is just as important as actually calculating it in the first place.