Inquisitorsz

Thought you guys might find this interesting. I used @NoMaDhOoK stathammer app (https://aos-statshammer.herokuapp.com/) To compare Winterleaf and Gnarlroot Drycha (in both anger forms) and Winterleaf Durthu. This includes both melee and shooting (so let's call it total damage output per turn) and all at full health. As you can see Winterleaf Drycha pulls ahead all the other forms but the difference is roughly 0.3 wound either way. Seems like Enraged is always better. probably due to the rend and obviously the range meaning you have a bit more flexibility with the attack during the turn. Durthu is better overall but don't forget his damage drops off significantly after suffering 3 wounds, and this graph assumes he's near a Wyldwood. Also impaling talons is high variance which isn't really factored in very well when talking about averages. Drycha maintains her output much better while getting wounds (and don't forget her spells which aren't factored in here). Here's the difference with a Durthu who's been knocked down a damage tier. Pretty significant. EDIT: Forgot winterleaf exploding 6s was melee only. Fixed the graphs

Awesome stuff Love your work Here's some feedback: I see you've already planned defensive abilities (like reroll saves or ethereal) which is awesome. I don't see a way to rename the weapon profiles? But that's very minor Would like a toggle to turn modifiers on and off.... just like the whole weapon profile, but for modifiers, or for each modifier. Might get a bit too cluttered? Would be great to see variance on the graphs.... like for things that do D6 mortal wounds on a 6 to hit with 1 attack.... the average isn't very useful. Perhaps the line graph can have variance bars? Seems there's a limit for 5 units at a time. Makes sense for the graphing, but if you're trying to compare different units and different options, can reach that limit quickly (eg, Drycha and her 2 angry forms and various wargrove bonuses). Would be nice to maybe increase the limit to 8 or something? Finally, this is probably a hard one, but would be cool to put in a monster damage table and see how their output varies vs wounds taken. I guess you could currently just have separate profiles for each damage level Keep up the great work!

Would be cool to have just a really thin laser cut profile from like 0.5mm metal sheet, similar to the design of @JackStreicher above, but only a few tiny connection sections so that most of it is empty space. Thus not covering big patches of the table, and not impeding unit placement, but still marking the area. Seems the most unobtrusive way to do it. But I'd be worried how fragile that marker would be. So maybe some sort of fabric would be a good alternative, thin enough to conform to the battlefield and not cause models to be tilted, thick enough to be durable. I feel like neorpene, and mouse pad stuff is too thick.

Disclaimer: All of the below is completely untested on the tabletop - advice greatly appreciated Ok so I was already planning on running Alarielle at an upcoming tournament. Originally it was her, Dycha, branchwraith, 9 hunters and some battleline. Now with the cheaper treelords and extra points from Alarielle's reduction. It's time to have another look. I'm struggling to find how to fill those spare points other than 5 more spite revs or another endless spell. Though the 260pt TLA is mighty tempting. At the moment I have a core of this: Alarielle 600 branchwraith 80 spite revs 60 spite revs 60 tree revs 80 6 hunters 400 3 Hunters 200 spiteswarm hive 50 The spite/tree revs can vary a bit depending on which heroes/which glade and whether or not I need to slot in the outcasts battalion. but this leaves me with 470pts to spend. And I'm a bit lost. Like I said, initially, it was Drycha since I was going caster heavy, and probably leaning towards Gnarlroot for that one, due to all the casters and the Chalice helping to summon new dryads. Or Dreadwood since I don't have a treelord who can also teleport. I can swap Drycha for Durthu, and then I'll probably be leaning towards Winterleaf or Dreadwood. Can then squeeze in Outcasts as well to give the brachwraith an item (probably spiritsong staff). or just more chaff... perhaps a second unit of tree revs for teleport fun. Swapping Drycha for a TLA frees up enough points to take another 3 hunters. Since I only own 12, that would mean Alarielle would have to summon the dyrads. But I wonder if 3 more hunters is the same level of threat as Drycha or Durthu, because I don't feel like the TLA is a threat, it's more of a support unit. Trying to fit in another hero like and Arch Rev seems like a waste, because then you can't fit outcasts for the extra artifact. Or I can do that, without another behemoth, and go Arch Rev, 3 Hunters, 5 Spites, Outcasts. That feel like a strong option, but then I feel a bit exposed on the hero front with 1 big, 1 little and 1 backline caster. Especially because one of the scenarios will be Places of Arcane Power. I think I'm struggling with a bit of analysis paralysis here. Help me tree friends!

did you typo there? In what world does 320 Spire Revs fit in 2000pts? That's like 3200pts minimum. EDIT: I see now that you're probably referring to the 30pt typo. It's not on the Japanese version of the document and obviously the bulk discount doesn't work if they're 30 lol. Good old GW changing things they didn't even intend to change. Now we need an errata for the errata =P

Battalion is 120 i think. Regardless, the gaunt summoner is 260 so the list you posted only has 40 pts to spare. If you take the battalion with the minimum 3 units, you have 180 spare... So 5 knights or some chaff or a hero on foot. I'd say the battalion must give an extra circle keyword (and it can be a different one on each unit). Otherwise I can't see how it's worth the points. Also never take the lances. I don't have the spreadsheet in front of me but they're heaps worse than ensorcereld weapons.

So In terms of Archaon and his everchosen buddies..... I did some maths on the Varanguard. First of all, you're going to want to take 6th circle for sure. The bonus is huge. With a mark of khorne and archaon choosing his mark of khorne and being on the table.... These guys get to hit on 2+, with rerolls, wound on 2+, rend -1 and 2 damage on the charge with 6 attacks each. So a unit of 3 Varanguard (with 6th circle buff) does 14.58 wounds with rend -1 and damage 2 on the charge. That's 19.4 wounds (after 4+ saves) or 29.16 wounds (after 6+ saves) That's with only the built in free buffs (and archaon still alive and within 18") but otherwise without any extra spells or command abilities. So that's pretty decent. You're likely to roll over almost anything that's not super tough AND immune to battleshock. Here's the problem though. The army doesn't have any real ways to clear chaff and screens... you don't want to waste your varanguard turn killing 5 spite revenants or hounds or something. Secondly Mortek Guard exist. The same maths, against a petrifax elite mortek guard unit with their reroll saves ability.... results in 7.3 wounds. Your varanguard just hit a brick wall. The army also doesn't have any easy ways to get to and/or snipe harvesters. So basically, the whole elite everchosen list completely falls apart against OBR. Objective play was always going to be tough with a 10-11 model army. You really need to be able to kill stuff. And well.... you just can't kill those mortek guard well enough. I'm not sure anything can save some lucky high mortal wound spells, but that's not overly relevant. At least if you're fielding your own chaff and horde units, you can try to contest objectives. Everchosen can't do that. I'm not sure if you'd want to take Arhcaon with 2 units or 3 units or 4 units. 4 units get's you literally nothing else. 3 units means you can fit in some cultist chaff and/or another hero. 2 units gives you 600pts to play with and is probably going to be the most flexible option. I feel like you're going to want at the manticore sorcerer or the gaunt summoner for a bit of magic punch and a decent hoard clearing spell. Something to deal with those mortek guard. That leaves you with 340 left. Keep in mind I'm not sure how battleline works in everchosen..... i assume you can take archaon and 4 units of varanguard, but I can't seem to find the text that makes varanguard battleline. Maybe the review I watched just didn't mention it. So you might still need to fit in some more battleline I guess you'd want a big marauder or chaos warrior unit. Perhaps 2 x 20 marauders or 1 x 15 warriors. Then maybe a warcry warband for a screen/chaff? Can't quite fit a sphiranx in. Maybe you take 10 warriors and the sphiranx? So perhaps something like this? Archaon, 2x varanguard, sorcerer on manticore or gaunt summoner, sphiranx, 20 marauders, warcry warband = 1980pts

That just gives the chaos player another option. More choice and more control. But by that stage you've already played your turn and you've presumably played around with getting priority or not so I don't think that extra option changes much

Yeah photo is probably the best, but then you're doing it every turn so your gallery is gonna fill up with photos of single dice rolls. You're going to need to time stamp them or something? Maybe each dice needs to hold today's newspaper. You might need a token next to it to show which turn it is? I'm being pedantic but it's just a silly requirement that adds a lot of extra annoying steps. People already don't like using phones or carrying around extra unnecessary equipment. It's silly for a game rule to require all this extra bookkeeping outside of the normal game. On a practical level it's probably ok especially if you trust your opponent. On a theoretical and high end competitive level it's a really stupid rule. Really though, the strength of it is the bigger issue here than how to keep a dice roll secret.

It used to be hidden behind a 220pt battalion (most expensive non-mega battalion in AOS?) with a minimum army cost of 1320... it wasn't a problem before, presumably because it never saw the tabletop at a competitive event. But, yeah it seems super strong. You're basically eliminating any disadvantage of the priority roll for the chaos player. You know your double turn is coming, and can be appropriately aggressive or you know your opponent is getting it, so you can pull back or be defensive. It does cost a command point so that's something I guess..... The opponent doesn't even get to chose to pass priority to you. You can't either but that's hardly a downside with the foreknowledge. finally... what happens in a mirror match if both players use this ability? does the later one simply overwrite the first one? The practicality of it also bothers me. , how do you roll it, keep it secret and make sure no one cheats? maybe a dice cup and leave it covered? But I feel that has to be properly policed/mandated coz it's such a critical roll and has such a significant impact on the game. It's a lot of extra bookkeeping or equipment required to try and do something secret fairly.

Each to their own but I'm the exact opposite. The hobby, building and high quality of the miniatures is far more important to me than the game. The miniatures need personality. If I just wanted identical game pieces on a board or tabletop then I'd just use cardboard tokens or something like boardgames do. Side note: I don't believe the game is anywhere near good enough to carry itself regardless of the quality of the miniatures.

It can be. One could argue that mono-pose / easy-to-build miniatures are easier to design with simpler molds. Certainly not always they case, but even just nesting things on a sprue is easier when you have 3-4 bits per miniature instead of 15 + spare weapons and heads. Those kits are marketed towards new players as well, so having them priced more competitively makes sense. The pricing model for those kits is very different to say something like Archaon or Alarielle or FW products. Also, they know full well they can sell dual box kits and kits with lots of spare bits for more because the perceived value is higher. People will buy those kits more often to use for conversions and to kit bash with other products. Depending on your point of view, that either makes those kits cheaper because they sell higher quantities, or more expensive because your paying for more bits/value. Which one is true depends on which Chaos god is currently walking through Bugmans Bar.

I think it's just some of the nighthaunt stuff is oddly priced actually. The dreadblade harrows and myrmourn banshees are very cheap compared to similar units. The easy to build Reikenor and his stormcast counterpart are a fair bit cheaper than other similar size characters. You're right that chainrasps are stupid expensive, but they're almost the same cost as other elite units like bladegheists and reapers (which while not easy to build are mono-pose). It's hard to compare units of different size, but a lot of the full kit stormcast units are around $98-105 AUD, while the nighthaunt units are $70-77 ish.... Pricing is tricky because it also takes into account expected sales.... most chainrasps will come from the soul wars boxes (or from lots of online sellers splitting the boxes out). So the solo box is likely to sell very few units, thus the higher price. It's a bit of a catch 22 but that's probably the only way they can justify having it on the shelf. Kharadron are also units of ten and cost the same as nighthaunt, but deepkin narmati thralls cost more.... both are relatively new multi part kits with some options, so it's all a bit weird. Fyrelesayers kits a heaps more expensive per model, with 5 man units costing the same as other 10 man units.... perhaps it has to do with expected faction sales? I dunno. Anyway, the new OBR Mortek Guard box is a breath of fresh air. While on the expensive end of the scale, you get 20 models instead of 10 like most other boxes these days.

Heard from a friend who has some contacts but certainly nothing concrete. I'm no rumormonger. Maybe @Whitefang knows more?

Seraphon don't do well against the top armies at the moment (Skaven, Slaanesh, FEC etc...) that's why they have poor tournament win rates. That being said, they do OK. They have more top 10 finishes than a lot of the other low win rate factions. They aren't far off Fyreslayers and Tzeentch in terms of Top 10, despite having far less podiums. They are basically a solid Tier 2 / middle of the pack army. Just struggle at lot against the top dogs. Now specifically vs Khorne demons... well they get lots of free benefits directly against demons. So that's always going to be an up hill battle. The way I've seen Khorne demons work well is multiple bloodthirsters and lots of small units of flesh hounds. You can spread them out a lot to block teleporting and use them as throw away units to hold up his big stuff and generate blood tithe when they die. I think the khorne herald also has some way to make bloodletters attack first? Or attack twice? something like that... so try use that. I don't know enough about demons to provide more specific info. But they are a weaker army and unfortunately AOS isn't great in terms of balance between factions. Remember that AOS is all about those tricks and combos. Try to find all the ones that your demons get and use them. Ultimately you might need more objective grabbing bloodletters or more flesh hounds for area control. Seraphon don't hit overly hard apart from a few main units. You're going to want some sort of screening unit/chaff to tie those things up (while generating blood tithe) If you're looking to inject some more fun into your gaming group, perhaps try a more narrative approach. Play a 2v1 with your ironjaw friend or give the Seraphon player some sort of handicap.

Considering how difficult and restrictive it can be sometimes to put down a Sylvaneth wyldwood , it's annoying that the Nexus get's free reign with pretty much no restrictions. And it really didn't have to have such a massive footprint. If it was like a 60mm or 100mm base that would be fine. Otherwise I think it should be limited to the OBR's deployment zone. That way it's a bit more defensive, doesn't get to automatically cover the whole table and might even force them to think about their deployment a bit. I mean it's free, so even if you don't get use out of it for a turn or 2, then it's not like you're losing anything. That, or it needs it massive range reduced a fair bit. Wyldwoods are huge but their effects are very short range, same for most other faction terrain, especially the ones that affect enemy models.

My understanding is that there will be multipart releases of the SC set around March. I have no issues with easy to build start collecting sets. Obviously it's a shift in direction from the current SC sets.... Ideally the easy to build ones would be a bit cheaper. Some of the easy to build nighthaunt stuff is significantly cheaper than similar multipart kits, which makes sense. This is good from a barrier to entry point of view. I know right now we all look at SC sets and good bundle deals with a discount, but that's not really their intention is it. I'd be very, very happy if we got new SC kits for other factions that were new sculpts but cheaper boxes. Even if they're mono-pose. It's nice the new warriors come with different head options. It's also not going to be hard to swap their weapons around with some khorne warrior ones or tzeentch/nurgle themed ones. You can make some of the mono-pose minis stretch quite far imo. It does't take much to add a splash of uniqueness. I personally hate having two identical models so I convert almost everything. That being said, I don't think the old warriors and knights were that bad. They weren't amazing but they are by far not the worst or oldest models around. Skaven and Seraphon have heaps of stuff that desperately needs more of an update. Skaven got shafted with no new models and we're yet to see what they do for Seraphon but I doubt it will be more than a 2.0 battletome and maybe endless spells/terrain. It's interesting they chose these warriors and knights for a refresh despite lots of other kits needing it much more. They could have defacto refreshed warriors via the warcry warband, but instead we got mostly naked barbarians with a helmet and shoulder pads.

I'm not just saying they're broken. I'm saying they're a negative play experience. Mortek Guard are cheap enough that you can still have a good core of an army and be able to spam catapults (See edit above regarding KRIGSLUNTAN GT). 4 Stormcast Ballista is also an annoying list right? Even if it's not winning tournaments, it's super annoying to play against and no one likes having their heroes or cool big units shot off the board before you can even roll a single dice. Much the same as 12+ Skaven Jezzails or something like that. Objectives only matter when you don't get shot or magic'd off the board by turn 2.... or when the opponent doesn't have 40-80 battleshock immune troops to swarm objectives as well as the ability to do all of the above. Time will tell. I'm not here to argue. If it's a problem it will get a tweak eventually or some other power creep will happen and the cycle continues. We're just talking about what is and isn't fun and balanced. It's not hard to look at some of these OBR units, compare them to other things with similar roles and points values and see that they are above the curve for the most part. you're focusing on the wrong parts of my comments. 1 crawler is fine, 3+ crawlers is NPE. Mortek Guard and Harvesters are a far bigger problem in terms of overall balance than crawlers are.

Show you what list? One that does what? Spams good units? Or one that has a 20-40 man Mortek Guard unit that bubble wraps a Harvester and sits on an objective? For the former, there's plenty of armies that can spam strong units, like: 15 bow kurnoth hunters. Or 15 skyfires. Or some equivalent number of Eels? Or 3 Keepers of secrets? or 4 Mortek Crawlers? The latter is a nothing overly special and probably in almost every OBR list. I never mentioned any specific boogie man list. I'm talking about spamming specific units in general and how some armies can find it very difficult to deal with bubble wrapped single models. Especially if that model is a 10 wound 4+ save thing that can be healed. That's different to sniping a 5 wound wizard with a 5+ save. As for OBR in general... it's too early to tell since they're only just starting to pop up in tournaments now. But KRIGSLUNTAN GT this past weekend had 92 players and one OBR player finished 2nd being one of only 3 undefeated lists. The others being Slaanesh (winner) and Khorne. The OBR player won against 4th, 9th and 11th (which was DoK, Skaven, DoT) so it's not like he had an easy run either. All 3 of those were 4-1 players. BTW his list was Petrifax Elite (+1 save) Katakros Soulmason 40 Mortek Guard 20 Mortek Guard 20 Mortek Guard 2 x Mortek Crawlers So.... yay, he didn't have harvesters... but still had 80 infantry with 3+ saves and 2 catapults. I wouldn't say it's the most interesting list.

I don't think they've ever said they were going to make updates more frequent? But I believe there's an update twice per year. Next one is supposed to be Dec/Jan but we don't know exactly when. I hope it drops early Jan at the latest so it's usable in time for the biggest AOS tournament in the world. I'm not sure if they're planning on releasing a new points booklet or just a digital FAQ list. I feel like the printing timelines and cost wouldn't be worth it for a few points changes.

Yep the thing I don't like the most about OBR is the harvester. Most armies won't have the means to snipe it thorough a Mortek Guard bubble. On one hand every army should have some way to snipe heroes because of how important they are in AoS. And you could use that to kill the harvester.... but a lot of armies don't have that. MW spells can often be short range, and endless spells don't help much because they can't move close enough to bubble wrapped models. Quite a few armies don't have any significant shooting at all. The other thing is the +1 save. While that's not terrible on it's own, I fear that it's going to lead to even more MW spam in the future (as people adjust lists and as the next power creep battletome comes out). I don't think that's going to be good for the game long term. Mortek Guard, especially with a harvester backup and the +1 save simply seem too efficient. But making them 150 or 180 pts might not be enough and you risk making them too expensive. The final problem is unit spam. This is prevalent in quite a few armies. On one hand it's cool to make a whole army out of stalkers or kurnoth hunters or some other elite unit. On the other hand, making a whole army out of the strongest and most point efficient killing machines in your battletome is just boring min/maxing. Spamming casters in hallowheart or catapults in OBR just leads to negative play experiences in my opinion. There's no easy fix for that though. Only thing I can think of is a composition based point system. Eg, first catapult is 200, second one is 220, third one is 260 etc... So you pay a tax if you want to spam something. Often in this game 1 single unit is never completely broken. But it becomes a problem when you can fill 1600pts of your army with that one strong unit, without any downsides.

Don't forget Alarielle's beetle gets +1 to hit units with 5 or more models, and with Gnarlroot you can reroll 1s. So in some situations it can be brutal. Yep... for full flexibility you need 3-4 boxes of wildwoods, which is like 1/3 - 1/2 the cost of some armies. Then if you want to have most of the options for Alarielle's summon, you're looking at an extra 600+ pts that need to be purchased, built and painted. Same goes for the 20-40 extra dryads you can expect to summon with the branchwraith. That's another 2 boxes of dryads you're going to need. You basically need 2-2.5 armies worth to run an Alarielle list. Other factions do have summoning but often not to this extent. Even Slannesh, it's more about replacing Keepers that were killed, or dropping some extra fiends. They probably don't need as many different options on top of the base list.

I think GW needs to very quickly address what's going to happen with these square bases. Moving everything to round and blowing up the old world was a HUGE deal. They risk going through all that anxiety and community backlash again. I don't really see the business benefit of having two competing games systems with incompatible miniatures and incompatible bases. If it's a different scale and we get a warmaster remake or some sort of fantasy adeptus titanicus then that's fine, the bases and compatibility doesn't matter. But a huge part of what makes 30k OK is that you can use a great deal of it in 40k. I think it would be a massive misstep to make people choose between the two systems.

People need to stop comparing to 30k and saying that didn't cannibalise 40k. This is completely different. 30k starter from scratch with nothing but some lore/background. It's always been an expensive, mostly resin niche. AND a fair bit of it is cross compatible with 40k. 30k also wasnt around for 30 years then killed off 5 years ago. This announcement will absolutely affect AOS especially if the models are on different bases and not cross compatible. I feel that would be an enormous mistake. This is anecdotal, but with this announcement being so far out, I don't know what I'll do over the next few year after I finish my current army. It's impossible to know what will happen to the local community so there's no point buying and building armies now with an uncertain future. I'll probably go play underworlds and star wars legion instead, and continue using existing armies but not buying new stuff. No matter how cool hysh elves are, no point investing if 80% of local players go back to WFB. It's also a weird business decision. You're announcing a new product that's actually an old product to bring back old players who already have all the old product and just like 10 years ago they probably won't buy whole new armies since they already have them... So what's the point? Obviously that's a huge generalisation but that's part of why WFB died in the first place. That still hasn't changed. People went to Total War because it offered a better WFB experience without the cost. You still need new blood or to convert AOS players for this to work. New blood in WFB was always tricky and cannibalising AOS seems counter productive.

I really hope that FAQ drops early Jan so that we can use it for the world's largest AOS tournament on the 25th.