Nos

Yeah I’m much more on board with something like Skarbrand doing this amount of damage than 40 skeletons. The horde dynamic has gotten out of hand.

Can’t be sure but I genuinely think that of all the the number of people who regularly play Warhammer or 40k etc, it will be a minority who play with a fully painted one. It’s a big achievement, congrats!

Azyros works really well when dropped in because whatever you’re charging/shooting at is probably going to be 9” away. But even then it’s only him who needs to be 10” away so you can drop him in and anything that shoots or charges anything within 10” re-rolls one’s to hit, and the buff is not phase dependent so it dosent matter that he drops after the hero phase. If you have a big infantry unit or a battery of Ballistae attacking that unit it tends to be pretty emphatic. If you’re going with Sureheart the charge bonus is to everyone within 12” of him so the Azyros will get in if you want him to. The Light is good against big clumps of units. Very good if they’re chaos. But it’s a bonus is all.

There’s nothing in any rules for any faction in AOS that specify how they have to be painted in order to use them. They’re your models, you can paint them however you like without being penalised as to how you can play with them!

It’s outright silly on Evocators seeing as their Celestial attack isn’t limited to being only in combat phase

Other thought is why the 3 Dracolines? 6 with a LA on a Dracoline with the CA is a real blender, but 3 is frequently underwhelming. You also have to consider that a big part of Evocators is the MW output and they only produce 6. Also with two separate units of Evocators you’re going to have to survive a WE round of combat against one of them meaning you’re likely to lose some before they attack and electrocute. With all that in mind: I’d go 10 Evocators for the 500 points you currently have allotted. With Sureheart to get the charge in you’ve got however many attacks you can get from pile-ins plus a guaranteed 20 MW rolls before any of them get attacked. That’s probably going to finish most of the Aelves off if not all of them. They’re going to be -1 to hit in the turn they drop so even if you don’t finish them all off you shouldn’t lose many, With the 100 points saved you could take an Azyros to drop alongside for re-rolling ones, and then get some free MW’s in the next hero phase with his light. Or if you *really* want to roll the dice on the cauldron, take a Venator, and use the Star Fated Arrow on it. No room for a luck stone if you’re taking Hanmers so it’s a total gamble but it could really cripple the cauldron and if not you can plink away at stuff otherwise.

I would be surprised if the Judicators do anything more than plink the cauldron. If you’re lucky with your Shockbolt and Arcane Bolts you theoretically could do kill it in two turns but it’s dependent on a lot of things repeatedly going well. If you’re identifying it as a priority to be removed I would spend the 300 points you've set aside for it on something that will be more reliable in that role. In general I think you need to think about how you’re going to divide their army as if you let them roll in in a big blob of buffs you’ll just get Annihilated. I would suggest Incantor with Scroll of Condemnation 140 Vexillor 120 2x5 Liberators 200 10 Sequitors 240 3 Dracoline 300 Liberators for Objectives/speed bumps, Sequitors for where the fight is thickest as they can both defend and attack well, aided by Vexillor to deploy them safely, Dracolines to Scion in with their automatic charge re-roll. Scroll of Condemnation gives you a good chance of maiming the Cauldron or important hero in one round. Or Staff of Focus wil mean that you’re casting Spirit Storm on a 6 and doing 2MW’s to every unit within 18” for a round. Staunch Defender will keep Evocators and Sequitors alive longer. As it stands I don’t think your Gav charge is going to do enough damage and they’ll probably just get killed next turn. Leaving you with 1 Incantor, 5 Judicators and 5 Liberators to stand against a death blob of Witch Aelves as they run across the table at you.

I imagine like most things it will come down to distance and positioning. I doubt a Bloodpriest is going to be able to drop it on a wizard 20” away

I never said Idoneth Endless Spells were Baseless speculation actually. Someone inferred that from the observation I made that I was referring to the ES and I actually wasn’t but eh. Again we don’t know. You’re guessing. You’re predicting. That’s not knowledge. You’re assuming every army is getting a 2.0 tome, whereas as many have pointed out Maggotkin on “feels” very 2.0. The only way we will know whether everyone is getting a Battletome and ES post Soul Wars is when GW say that. The only people who actually know the future of AOS and who are in a position to dictate whether they get them or not. Until then everyone’s guessing one way or the other no matter how hard you try to circumvent what “know” means. Im done at this point. I’ve made it very clear where I stand and why, nothing to be gained from me repeating it. If people feel the need to pretend they know stuff when they don’t I won’t say anything anymore, and just watch the confusion and nonsense that follows I guess.

Do we? Why? How? When did GW announce that? Because they’re the only people who will be making them and they haven’t announced they intend to yet have they? You *dont know.* You don’t. You’re guessing. Informed guesses, absolutely. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there were Idoneth spells at some point. But you don’t know if every race is getting Endless a Spells, you don’t know if every Battletome is getting a redux. You think they are, you’ve given your reasons, there’s certain patterns etc. That’s not the same as knowing something. You are not an authority. You’re a pleb guessing like the rest of us. If you say you know something and you don’t prople will listen to you, because they wouldn’t assume you would repeatedly say you knew something if you didn’t. How many rumour engines have featured an explicit reference to the race in question and turned out to be for that race rather than a red herring? Lots of people guess on here about stuff. It’s kind of the point. You’ll notice that at no point have I taken issue with anyone else for guessing literally anything regardless of how crazy it is. But people *repeatedly* saying they know things when they don’t and doubling down on it when I point out that they’re making informed guesses and they say no, you’re wrong, I know better than you, it’s definitely this, it’s 100% this, and they pop in and out of the thread to enforce this schtick, well I don’t see the harm in noting that their certainty is actually just total speculation like the rest of everything on here. Because it completely is.

This sounds like an awful group to play with honestly 😟

You haven’t discussed it. You've said you 100% know that it is Idoneth, which you don’t. Then people have taken these assertions as a platform to ask why it is that a thing that is complete speculation - Idoneth ES- means there would also be another entirely speculative thing which you have yourself asserted might well be the case-a Battletome- to accompany the thing you have completely speculated will be released with 100% certainty. Please note I’ve at no point told anyone what they can or can’t say. I will continue to demonstrate how utterly speculative it is though when people do state with utter conviction something founded entirely on speculation , to try and provide some balance in reality for people trying to determine between rumours and stuff people are either saying they know with certainty they know will happen without evidence for it, or just hope might happen on the basis of utter speculation. Unless of course I’m not entitled to my opinion for some reason

Rumour rumour thread is more akin to a Wishing Well at this point. Say it, regardless of how utterly basesless speculation it is, maybe it will come true

I’ve found that the relationship of who you’re playing with is the key thing. I have good friends I used to play Boardgames with, not AOS but similar in that they were quite thematic and designed with a strong narrative element. That for me was their point at any rate. But my pals just wanted to win and they routinley just railroaded the most characterful and exciting bits of the game’s design so that they or even we (in co-op) would just steamroll the thing. They weren’t wrong and neither was I in how we wanted to play but we were both looking for enjoyment in directly oppositional places so what made it fun for them made it boring for me and vice versa. So I stopped playing with them in most things. Not in a big acrimonious way or anything, but our free time is too important to spend doing something we don’t want to do. From the stuff you’ve said specifically, in respect to establishing the experience you’re looking for it sounds as though you either need to establish beforehand with your opponent that they give you an indication as to what stuff foreign to you actually does, which is decorum that most opponents are happy with in my experience, or just let go and recognise that the challenge against mystery stuff is a completely different challenge to taking on an army that you understand. This is key to me, the bit you say about your opponent telling you the stuff he has up has sleeves, I find that garbage. AOS is already imbalanced but at the top level people aren’t trying to win by ambushing people with secret stuff but by using their army better than the opponent uses theirs. That’s when it tends to be the most fun. If you know that my Lord Ordinator is armed with the Sword of Judgement and with 6 attacks does D6 MW’s to a hero or Monster on a 6+, it dosent make him any less dangerous but it will encourage you to think more about where you put your heroes etc and the rest of your troops accordingly, leading to a greater engagement with the actual strategic aspect of the game. If you don’t and put an important but fragile hero at the back where he would otherwise be fine then I drop in and beat the snot out of them it’s more akin to a mugging really as far as I’m concerned. It’s easy to beat someone when they’re blind. You simply would not have done what you did if information had not been kept for you. Good players win by using the mechanics of the game, not through relying on handicaps. If your opponent doesn’t want to tell you beforehand they should do you the courtesy of borrowing their army book for a short while so you can make notes or whatever. AOS dosent have a readily accessible source for all the rules relating to all factions so I think people should be willing to share resources so that everyone knows about their respective opponents. If you’re happy for your opponent to keep stuff from you and just decide to roll with it, then really just lean into that. If you let stuff go, things have a way you of coming round full circle. Everyone remembers that one dice roll that didn’t go their way. They never remember the literal hundreds that did. It’s a state of mind thing. Engage with your plans, focus on the things which you *can* definitely control-deployment, reserve use, movement, formations, use of Command points, keeping things within distance of buffs, spells ahead of the appropriate phases. You’ll hear it in most competitive circles, whatever the game or sport is: don’t worry about the opponent. Be good at what you do and you’ll make them worry about you. Even if you lose, it’s satisfying to make your army “work”. Most times if you really master that you’ll win. But it’s a game with heavy dice interaction. You can make all the perfect moves but you can throw as many dice as you want and statistically fail then all. Three questions-are you having fun, and if not, do you feel like you’re learning enough to actually get to a point where you can, and do you feel you’re playing with people who are enhancing your experience of the game? I can usually say yes to 2/3 of those every game I play with my club. If I was struggling to say yes to one of them with any frequency I would look to play with other people or take a break for a while. Hobbies should be a cause of consistent satisfaction above anything else.

No ETA but I think it’s after all the other battletomes are released where they make the lore revision that for some reason every one in the Mortal Realms can be tricked by some pots and a pile of Gold in spite of the Community post stating that gold has no value to the majority of them. Not 100% sure though

GW can do what it likes. People need to tailor their expectations to reality. Hype dosent exist without people believing in it.

Bear Markets with actual Bears

Currency and Stock Exchange rules supplement ala Malign Portents

Agreed that Boob Plate isn’t necessary. But the entire silhouette is different. Shoulders much smaller, waist is tapered, greaves are more accentuated and the feet are semi stilettos. Helmet is also completely different. It’s very classic comic book Hero/Heroine contrast. Men are square and heavy, women lithe and taut. Compare the size of the chest musculature on the Liberators below on my Steelheart troupe. The pectorals on the Liberators are nearly as big as the entire torso of Angarhad. That’s not simply an issue of greenstuff, the anatomy is entirely different. If you want to keep that monolithic warrior bloc aesthetic that is more or less what defines the SC then there isn’t a simple way to make an all female host of any size without significant cost or major conversion work unfortunately. I wanted to make just one unit of all female Sequitors but stopped when I realised it cost literally 3x as much to buy. I paid £15 for Steelheart’s trio so I could have just one female Liberator in my unit of 10 and bought another box of Sequitors I didnt need to bump up the number of ladies but even then it’s only half of one unit. £45 quid basically for 6 female SC I didn’t need. It’s not a cheap way to go. With the Forgeworld heads included you’re looking at about £80 for a unit of £10 Sequitors.

No but you’re making an army of divine Amazon beings, not women. Severina Raine would look like a Dwarf next to them as would pretty much all other female models without heavy conversion. Sisters of Silence from 30k are pretty close to Sigmarite plate and scale but I’m not sure if they’re even available now.. As I said it’s a great idea, I’m not saying this stuff to dump on it, but just to warn you that unless you have acccess to about 15+ Female bodies already it *will* be expensive. It’s great that GW are finally making real strides with gender representation but unfortunately the model availability is still out of ratio by a massive amount and there’s no real way of easily getting a dozen plus SC sized females without having to buy several expensive kits

It’s a great theme but would recommend working out exactly what your budget is because it will be expensive to do all females. Off the top of my head the only kits with/which are women: Astreia Solbright Knight Zephyros Angar Brightshield (Shadespire) only female Liberator option Sequitors have I think 4 women in the 10 box and there’s a prime in the ETB set One female Prime Castigator in Soul Wars One Castigator in the ETB set Evocator set has 2 women out of 5 Shadespire Evocators gang have one woman One Knight Incantor in Soul Wars One female Evocator on Dracoline One Female Ballista crew in ETB set Think that’s it. Its nearly all Sacrosanct stuff and at a ratio of at most 2:5. So you’re going to have to buy a lot of kits. If you’re converting that might make it easier but even then there’s an absence of readily available female SC bodies to work from.

How does it circumvent Iron Heart, I don’t think I understand. Not doubting you, just a bit dim to work it out.

The unbind dosrn’t need to be an issue as it’s one of the few (only?) Spells you can cast outwith 30”. Very situational. It’s the bane of small tightly packed cabals of buffers and casters, like a gore pilgrims commitee, but having said that it’s still unreliable as it’s cast dependent and there isn’t a shortage of options to deal with those kind of lists anyway. 5 Liberators can cap an objective for the same cost, or you can bring along pretty much any other hero on foot who can do multiple things for multiple units all game. When it works it’s spectacular but some people like myself would rather take a solid option than a hit or miss one which comet definitely is.

2 units are more of an offensive threat because they can hold twice as many objectives. One big unit is pretty much immovable in defence with a Castellant and with Empower will murder most stuff but you need to ensure they’re not going to be circumvented. A lot of opponents will see 20 Sequitors and just ignore them as far as is possible, so you need to work out how to make them unavoidable. If you take the former you need to ensure you have means of keeping them from getting isolated, if you take the latter you need to ensure you have other means of threatening objectives while they hold the line. In my experience the ability to threaten two objectives is broadly more valuable though. Two units of Sequitors holding objectives for two turns then dying is considerably more valuable than a massive block holding one. Also you have the option of holding a unit in reserve if you have two. If you drop or deploy your one unit in one place, said place which will often be dictated by the absence of space for such a massive unit, and it’s not optimal, you’re playing catch up from the get-go.

The problem though is that you’re working backwards, seeing something that might be an Idoneth ES (don’t think it is) then working out how that “works”. The Idoneth being able to warp peoples minds etc with magic, absolutely. But reasoning that they’re specifically using gold to do it when the gold itself dosent matter at all is my issue. The designers of both the rules and models are not going to use something as specific as that for no reason. Some other form of locus to represent that power I can see, like a weird pillar or gem or something, something totemic that speaks to their creepy otherworldlyness. But pirate booty carries way too many specific visual meanings and GW are not top of the class for visual design for no reason. They are excellent at providing a consistent visual language that maps onto the character of a faction, and random gold piles to communicate Idoneth mind control is not that. As for your other examples, they’re easily explained away “because magic” because the magic is all there is. It’s easy to interpret a spell causing fear on Stormcast to not be about Battlefield panic but rather the sort of thing that would cloud their very purpose as fighting machines, something which muddled their thoughts and causes them to lose focus and fall back to their memories of their past selves for long enough that their coherency falters . There’s no contrivance there. Or with Undead the magic could be about playing in the allegiance of Souls to Nagash and the Mortarchs and creating the illusion that their own servitude to their own chosen death champion is misplaced. That sort of thing. Again, it’s easy to riff on. With the Idoneth thing you have to get round the treasure issue. And if it’s not actually about the treasure in question, if it’s “oh the Stormcast see it as something else”why have something as specific as gold in the first place if it’s meaningless when you could instead have something more iconic and representative of Deepkin culture and magic anyway?