Yoshiya

Whilst originally attracted to Anvilgard for Kharibdyss, the more I look at Tempest Eye the more I’m falling in love with the idea behind it. As such I’ve been tinkering with a semi-narrative list I want to build at some point whilst still keeping it playable. I’ve come up with the following, which is based around the idea of a small orrery around half way up the mountain being used as bait for an attack that was seen coming, the small defense force of Battlemages, Freeguild and Dispossessed being a seemingly easy fight before fast moving reinforcements come rushing down the mountain and shadow warriors that have already encircled the enemy reveal themselves. 1000pts Freeguild General on Griffon (Sword and Shield(?), General, Swift as the Wind) - 320pts Battlemage (Wildform, Eagle Strike, CP on 4+ artefact) - 90pts Outriders x5 - 100pts Pistolers x5 - 100pts Freeguild Guard (Sword and Shield) x20 - 160pts Shadow Warriors x10 - 110pts Shadow Warriors x10 - 110pts Total - 990pts 2000pts changes Increase size of Outriders and Pistolers to 10, add another unit of 10 Pistolers and battalion (520pts) Battlemage (white or jade, aura of glory) - 90pts Runelord - 90pts Irondrakes x 20 - 300pts Total - 1990pts Currently not sure what to do with the second artefact and which spell to take for try second battlemage. I’ll probably end up giving the Runelord the one that lets you ignore battleshock for my backline if Freeguild and Irondrakes. As for the battlemage, I am torn between a white mage to give direct protection to the General on the charge, or a jade one, to disencourage counter charges when the General gets stuck in turn 1 whilst the enemy army is more healthy (the threat of d3 mortal wounds could keep foot duelists heroes away) and then can be used later on to keep weakened units away from my Freeguild.

Interesting you find Nighthaunt on the weak side. I’ve won a silver and bronze medal with them using two Spirithosts and a bunch of Chainrasps. I’ve found their flying to be super useful and the Spirithosts often throw people off. The ability to raise the dead also means that as long as the leader is alive I find people struggle to kill them. I haven’t played against Untamed with them but I have gone up against them with DoK who I found to be quite strong against them as they basically match a lot of Untamed Beasts strengths whilst also having a very strong leader to take out anything that can actually threaten them.

I don’t think slyvaneth reproduce in the same way that real plants do. They mostly come from soul pods, a loose term that denotes something different depending on the grove (the most typical seemingly being a golden bulb full of a glowing liquid that seems to grow similarly to a fruit). However, they can also grow from the soul amphorae, with the ones on Alarielle allowing her to immediate grow new mature slyvaneth. It seems like they are actually more akin to living life magic that grows a shell of plant matter around it. All the soul pod groves are based in locations where life magic is at its strongest and naturally coalesces, which is why the slyvaneth often don’t get involved if it risks giving up the groves location, preferring to hide. The question that interests me is where their souls come from though. Other beings made of magic don’t have souls even if they are sentient, and even if the same soul pod is grown twice, the lore for the tree revenants implies that what grows isn’t exactly the same as before (even if the have the memories of the previous lives). Though Drycha is the same soul just made more bitter by her surroundings so maybe the strongest souls come back the same? Also, Slyvaneth are the only race that one of the non-chaos gods have created from nothing (an overlooked fact). Every other race requires taking a soul from elsewhere and modifying it, yet the Slyvaneth are always described as being creations of Alarielle with no mention of a prior form. On a separate note, has anyone else noticed the new kurnothi have the same soul pod things on their stomachs as the tree revenants? I wonder if that implies they are a hybrid species rather than mutated aelves.

They put way too much importance on crits and yet dont seem to understand it. With spreads like 1/4 damage, a single crit is doing as much damage as four hits. This means regardless of whether your hitting on 3+ or 5+, that one crit is going to be the large majority of your damage. Everything is just chip damage to ensure that your crits don’t fall short by one or two damage. Personally I’d like to see crit damage reduced or bad damage increased to 2 on more models. Without crits most high wound models in the game are practically unbeatable but in turn this makes their toughness values practically pointless. As to the primary topic, I’ve played a mixture of games with Cypher Lords, DoK, and Nighthaunt. Cypher Lords seemed pretty decent at killing what I needed them too but folded as soon as someone looked at them the wrong way. Their movement abilities allow them to catch opponents off guard and assassinate key targets, putting your opponent in a tough spot for missions like Bloodmarked. DoK might be one of the swingyest warbands in the game, throwing lots of dice but basically doing nothing outside of crits. Good luck will leave you feeling like a god, bad luck will leave you feeling like you did nothing all game. The Gorgai is mandatory for a serious list and everything outside of one heartrender and witch aelf variants can be safely ignored making them somewhat predictable. If you can pull off the leader’s triple you can do some serious damage. Nighthaunt seemed more consistent, doing little damage outside of the spirit hosts but being somewhat tough despite their low wound count. Flying makes them very good in maps with lots of terrain and being able to revive makes them very good in missions where you need to keep parts of your warband alive. In contrast, they do a bad job when they are required to kill things and are reliant on triples for their best stuff. As to the warbands I’ve fought, unmade proved the strongest with their damage abilities and leader putting out crazy burst that was hard to run away from (since they can move twice and then use them) and ironjawz seemed the weakest (too easy to kite and don’t have the bodies to hold objectives) though a good waaaagh can change things things in their favour.

Order: Slyvaneth, KO Death: Vampires, Bonereapers (i guess since zombies would just be like skeletons again) Destruction: Ogors, Troggoths Personally, I’d prefer mini-expansions to the existing chaos warbands eventually rather than for them to keep releasing new ones. Just one or two models per to flesh them out a bit more, maybe a faction specific mercenary or something that gives them a themed hero unit. Alternatively, more mini monsters would be cool. Maybe they could introduce some for other grand alliances so everyone can take thralls (change name to be appropriate). I see no reason goblins or Orruks wouldn’t be able to find and force some creatures into their service for example. Games Workshop is going to have to tread carefully with future model releases and expansions as I think adding many more fighters to the warbands will just turn it into AoS-lite (a common complaint in my area for Killteam that eventually lead to its death here as people were no longer sure what the standard people expected for a pick up game was). Rule expansions might be safer but would lead to an issue of people not picking up the newest book and thus those that did can’t use it every game, feeling like it’s a waste of money potentially and thus not getting the next book until they know others have (who are waiting for the same thing in turn).

I own this box and have used it a lot so I can answer. The large raised areas are around two inches high, and due to the steepness of the steps they too require around a two inch climb. The cover works in an interesting way as the raised areas block line of sight surprisingly well, leaving people with the question of if they want to walk up them (around 2”, and being stairs you can end your movement half way up though modes won’t be able to balance there) or stay below on the objective (assuming you place them down low). Apart from that, the gryphon statues are the main source of line of sight blocking with the fires being more of something to block straight lines of movement than anything else. In my games I’ve found the terrain tends towards one side of the board being dominated by the raised areas and the other areas being either empty or sparsely covered with the smaller terrain pieces making for an interesting dynamic when picking deployment positions (especially in cases where models come in from the opposite edge to the majority of the warband). The placement that seems to lead to the best games are those where the large areas are close but not touching, effectively creating a narrow corridor with steps on either side. Place an objective in there and you create a scenario where people have to think very carefully about their movements and use their range to the best of their abilities or else block their own guys in. Overall I’m pretty happy with the purchase and haven’t found it to favour any warband too much (though I can see setups where lots of ranged units deploy up top against a slow moving warband that is forced to take a lot of shots on the way in). Hope that helps *Edit: My main complaint is that the pictures on the cards and the actual sizes of the pieces are different, meaning you find that the terrain covers less space on the board that it seems like it should do. I’ve heard this is a problem with the other sets too but in this case it’s pretty obvious due to effectively having a grid to measure distances with on the board.

Whilst I agree that the convergences are poorly thought out (and I hate the “buy the scenario cards to actually use the rules on the book” they went with), it sounds like the problem is partly that people are treating narrative fun missions as serious games they HAVE to win. All the convergences have short narrative flavor which gives a general idea of how the battle is expected to go. if the battle is an ambush for example, you could ask your opponent to act as though his units are experiencing an ambush, unaware of enemy positions etc. I get that it can make it harder to play at times than just doing your normal thing but I feel every player involved will have more fun if they embraced the narrative when playing a narrative game rather than trying to work out how they can break the scenario.

But giving you more points than you have abilities to use them on just defeats the whole point of the system. If you’re gonna do that just make all CAs free to use and remove the bookkeeping that comes with them. CAs should be tactical choices that force you to think carefully, this adding an extra layer of strategy (and thus fun) to the game. Allowing them to be used liberally to ignore other parts of the game just raises the question of why bother including that part of the game at all.

I actually think the negative feeling associated with battleshock is entirely down to Inspiring Presence. People have become too use to battleshock being something they ignore that when they are forced to suffer from it it feels like they’re being unfairly punished. Battleshock should really work in the manner of a randomized damage modifier that rewards people for focusing priority targets, or placing key support units where they are. This allows for a balance between armies with few wounds that are relatively immune to battleshock, and high wound armies that are weak to it, by letting the high wound army punch about its normal damage. At the same time, it provides a natural balance when two high wound armies fight each other as the damage modifier is no longer necessary. At the moment, the sheer amount of battleshock immunity has instead turned it into a damage modifier only some armies have to worry about. If all these effects where taken out/reworked, and IP reworked to something like auto-roll a 1 without proccing abilities (ie. adjust the random modifier to its lowest setting) then people would learn to deal with it more and I think it would be seen as more of a positive reward for dealing a lot of damage than a negative experience because you spent your last CP and can’t auto pass it.

Hysh because I like the logical nature behind it that gives rise to landscapes very different to our own. Ghyran would be my second because I like nature themes and enjoy the ideas they’ve managed to invent in it so far.

Ideally I’d like to get the following; - Ungor vs ghoul - Great Bray Shaman vs Necromancer - Bestigors vs Aberrants but ghouls and Ungors is the main one as I’m more worried about making things too small than too large.

Thanks for the advice. However, I don’t want my Ungors to be the typical sleek slaangors but rather wretched looking things that are clearly broken. My backstory is that they are the twisted remains of kidnapped Aelves and humans from the nearby villages, taken to be toys for a trio of sisters that dedicated themselves to slaanesh a long time ago. Broken and discarded, they now do anything to get back the attention of the ones that gave them such pleasure and pain, hoping to be invited to join in one of the feasts, where the overflowing energies of chaos transfer them into hulking Bestigors. as such, I wanted to make a very ragtag, broken looking unit, with the bodies of ghouls with green stuff patches of fur, the heads of Ungors, and broken spears and shields taken from a variety of ranges. The Bestigors would then be based on the genestealer abherants to keep the bent over and broken image. My great bray shaman will then probably be based on a necromancer with a head swap. my main concern was with sizing though as I wanna make a lot of them and don’t want to commit to buying the bitz if the idea won’t work.

Hey all, not sure if this is the right place to ask but I reckoned if anyone can help it would be you guys. Im looking to make a converted mixed-beast/daemon army for Slaanesh and I have what I hope will be a cool idea for some Slaanesh themed Ungors. i need to check the size of the models to make sure they won’t be too different though so I was wondering if anyone had a size comparison picture? if possible, a comparison picture between Ungors and ghouls would be best but otherwise it would be great to compare them to a liberator.

Dude literally changes his story half way through and people are taking this as potentially true? He starts off saying that his friends were play testers and were talking about it but then half way through he says he saw a unit roster in enough detail to realise that cavalry wasnt in the game? As for magic not being in the base game, even he says it's chaos focused and who is one of the chaos gods? Oh yea, the god of MAGIC. Who knows, maybe I'll be surprised and this will pan out to be true but when the guy can't even keep his story straight in a single post then I think I'm justified in ignoring him for now.

Ah sorry, I wasn't clear enough. I mean because daemons are a cross system faction, and there seems to be a focus on then in the new csm release, I can see that spilling over into AoS as it allows them to double down on one release. As such, they may create a daemon army, even if it only allows undivided daemons and just expand that range etc

I'm a bit concerned that it's set in the Allpoints as thats very much chaos territory and the gates that go there arent exactly easy to pass through. Hopefully if it is the new skirmish game then it will be generic enough that not having chaos involved doesn't feel like going against the narrative.

Given that the new chaos space marine war machine makes it easier to summon daemons, and the new wizard is focused on possession, I think there is a very real chance for a daemon focus at some point this year.

The new Slyvaneth are gorgeous and really make me hope for an update for them with more revenant like models. It's says magic is a focus for them but only one of them (not even the leader) looks like a wizard so I wonder if they are moving in the direction of unit based wizards for Slyvaneth? The rest is... disappointing. Whilst the new khorne will help in my meta given the sheer number of khorne players, I don't really feel like they were a priority to update and shows GWs overfocus on certain factions. That said, I'm hoping it's a case of 'the other factions were updating are getting models too so this is just a release to get you by'. As others have said, I hate the "here's the name of a new game" thing they do. A name like warcry is so horribly generic and all they have shown so far is that it looks to be chaos focused which makes it hard to get excited as an order player. As for the Stormvaults I'm really, really hoping it's a case of something breaking out of the vaults or, given the focus on clockwork in the trailer, the release of a cogwork army that sigmar was holding back on. The latter has been hinted at already and given that the main focus now is on souls, what better to bring to a fight than a souless army that can die without powering up your foe.

All battalions have the allegiance of their grand alliance too is the major distinction. I can't remember where this was written and I'm at work so I can't search at the moment but it came up when people weren't sure about whether or not the Everchosen battalions can be used at all anymore since the units inside weren't Everchosen units. The BoC battalions were different because the battalions themselves belonged to BoC but gave the units inside keywords for other factions leading to confusion. The errata for them thus cleared this up allowing them to be taken in their respective factions (it may be the same errata they confirmed the grand alliance thing? Either that or the Everchosen one?)

Not sure I get how reusing assets is a bad thing as long as the end creation is new. In fact, I kind of like them doing it as it helps tie everything together. A dead horse is a dead horse after all, we don't need them to redesign them from stratch everytime otherwise you'll end up with things that are supposed to be the same looking completely different. If a lot of time has passed sure but otherwise I like the idea that skeletons don't suddenly change in appearance because the ghouls got to them instead of Nagash. That said, I'm not a huge fan of most of the new stuff. The horses are kind of cool, as is the chalice. The fence looks more like a piece of terrain than a spell though and the throne just looks a bit off. The skaven spells are either goofy or underwhelming (the rats need coo background to look like anything more than a gathering of rats in my opinion. Compared to the spider swarm they don't even seem to be particularly numerous) and whilst the pools are alright I'm not a huge fan. That said, the idea that GW is willing to put out two battletomes at once as well as update old ones excites me a lot. I'm very much looking forward to seeing what comes out the rest of this year. Also, it shows they are willing to share major/semi-major releases from both systems on the same day which means 40k releases don't rule out AoS ones.

How about the Slaves to Darkness approach for Clan Verminus? Keep the big clans separate (buy able to ally between each other) to keep overall flavour but then let Clan Verminus take the keywords for the other clans and be included in their army. Would allow them to make more specific allegiance abilities (Skyre getting a better version of warpstone sparks, moulder getting something about rampaging monsters etc) whilst still allowing 400pts of other clans plus Clan rats, storm rats, warlords etc to pad the numbers. That said, eshin may need to be folded into Verminus since I think they aren't really the grand army type.

Pretty much finished my Cursebreakers. Entered my first tournament with them a week ago and whilst I didn't win the tournament itself I did win the painting contest! Still have a few highlights to do (especially Stormsires hair) but pretty happy with them overall.

As per the FAQ, if an army allegiance has no allegiance abilities of its own, it effectively 'counts' as an Order army and uses their stuff. Since the only condition for free cities is that you are using the order allegiance stuff and have models only from within the limited factions (although allies are now allowed), these armies are allowed to take the additional free city bonus. It sounds pretty confusing (and it is) but basically it breaks down into the following; - Allegiance with own allegiance abilities - must use own allegiance to qualify for battleline etc - Order allegiance - can take free city - Allegiance without own allegiance abilities - can take own battleline and free city I really hope that GW either releases a battletome for free cities or an updated firestorm to clarify. The rules add a lot of flavour whilst not being OP yet tons of people don't even realise they qualify for using them.

By that logic if I came in and said they're squatting the vanguard chamber due to poor sales everyone would have no choice but to take it at face value. I think it's more than valid to discuss the reliability of a source so long as you're not rude, and whilst I think some people have been rude I don't think caladancid has been. Indeed NDA himself has acknowledged his logic in doubting him. I too am somewhat sceptical though I admit that is due in part to the content of the rumours. I indeed think it would be hard to merge the duardin factions in a satisfying manner, and GW has shown time and time again that they take the lore into account for their faction design. It also contradicts with previous rumours for a solo-update to Fyreslayers (by your logic we have to assume both are correct which just isn't possible). I must say that all the various rumours we have are nothing but exciting, and the simple fact that are so unfocused shows how much potential there is for GW to develop this game.

Honestly why the assumption either of those are due anything in the next few months? As you mentioned Slaanesh has been waiting longer and I'm pretty sure Maggotkin too do after their box (though they were delayed I remember). They've announced one box with one new model for each army and it's seems like you're taking it as hard confirmation that both are getting updates ASAP.