Satyrical Sophist

I commented this on the video, but he rated drakespawn chariots in the bad tier without actually reading what it did. I'm curious to see where he'd put it if he did. 90 points for an average 3 mortal wounds unbuffed and 4.67 buffed(with drake knights that he put in A tier) seems like a worthwhile thing to grab.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around orders, but heroes have a use just for existing near a unit. Any additional heroes can hold niche orders incase they are needed, since each unit can have a whole bunch of orders over a round, just not two in the same turn. So your additional characters can do that as well. I quite like the look of the Van Densts, both have good fighting profiles that get pretty brutal against daemons or wizards, and at 80 points each they are the cheapest heroes while also being among the toughest. Plus I'm kind of just obsessed with Lethis giving you a load of priests. I think I'm understanding it right that Lethis even makes uniques priests, and everyone gets a universal spell lore.

I was giving Ironbreakers (a very high save unit that can easily get a ward of 4+) as one of the reasons a lot of the human stuff only works on human stuff, same as corsairs having a silly high number of individual attacks (it would be two command abilities but between shooting and combat it would be 5 attack each in a turn) not being eligible for the blazing attacks from the gold mage forge guy. EDIT: Original sounded annoyed, which wasn't my intent.

I think people are seeing all the cool buffs that you can layer on top of humans and thinking "Dang, wish I could put all those sweet buffs on my elves/dwarfs, they can't get them so they'll be worse" and missing that it seems like the book is designed with that in mind. Ironbreakers being able to either get an unrendable save (with Pha's protection) would end up with a 3+/4++. Or arguably better could end up with forge mage, mystic shield and all out defense have a 0+/4++ which is pretty dang tough. Or just flaming weapons corsairs (on melee or melee and shooting). The non humans have their own buffs, but seem a lot more self contained, more pairs of units. Its a different feel, and completely separate from power level I like that there is another way to build the army outside of buff layering. It does feel a little bit like Duardin are lagging behind Aelves though. I want to look at some of the numbers, but it feels a bit more like making a thematic choice rather than the optimal. I might be missing something though, kind of feels like iron drakes are paying for the sins of last edition. It might also be a product of the edition, where the Ironbreakers high saves might be stripped off with a hoarfrost, and their ward is combat only, unlike the black guard. If I was high drop I'd be very tempted to try some gyrocopters. 12 inch flying move and small base size can be useful for scoring. Looking at all this stuff, the book feels dense. Working out when buffs apply, and how they work is a big one. The Aelf fights first is actually start of the charge phase so you can very much keep your heroes safe for it. I'm curious as to how damaging/tough various units are. Might have a go doing some math hammer and do some tiers for it. Going to be hard to work out which buffs to apply, since some can be city dependant. I'm not sure I'm reading this right but I think in Lethis all human heroes can pick from universal prayer lore as well as the Morrda prayer? That lets you get Curse very easily, as well as access to the anti ward prayer. Interestingly I can't see anything stopping unique units gaining the prayers, meaning the Van Denst's become the cheapest option.

I realise that this is a dumb point, but units hitting on 4s, wounding on 4s with no rend actually do as much damage to themselves attacking Corsairs as they do to the Corsairs (Each attack has one in six chance of getting through armour, and each one to hit is a mortal to the attacking unit). I don't know why that point amuses me so much, but corsairs themselves are 4+/4+/-/1 without buffs, so a unit of corsairs fighting another corsair unit does as much damage to themselves as the enemy. On that note, got to say I think dark elves have some fantastic options this book. I know a lot of stuff is human focused, but there are some benefits in that. If you want to layer all the buffs then humans are the thing to go for, but that needs the buffing pieces. You cannot have your pontifex everywhere for the 5++, and other buffs are limited as well. I'd be interest in trying a human front line with all the buffs and castilling and looking at non human strike forces for taking other locations. A unit of Drakespawn Knights and 3 Drakespawn Chariots is only 410 points. Those chariots do a minimum of 6 MW when charging with the knights, and an expected 14 Mortal wounds. That seems really strong to me. It also is only one Aelf unit short of the three making a charge needed for the battle tactic. Both units are also mounted for Misthaven giving an additional 2d6 movement and move 10. I've been meaning to run the numbers on some other stuff, but I'm interested in the new phoenix guard with the sorceress (who can have frankly absurd casting, hallowheart letting he have 3d6+2 to cast with a 4++ shrug next to her guard) and hordes of scourge privateers. Speaking of, I'm surprised how shooty the cross bow units can be, with the fleet masters AoA buff not specifying melee only. 20 Black guard and a sorceress are 370, 30 corsairs and a fleetmaster are 360.

60 point skinks would be so wildly out of whack with just...everything. In the seraphon thread I went into a lot of this in detail but the points you want for things do not match up with anything in the game. Very few units are anywhere near that cheap and skinks are fast moving and very useful units.

Hi all! I was talking to another poster about maths in age of sigmar, specifically on the point of math hammer and comparisons between units. I personally don't find the comparisons too helpful in many regards and its easy to miss out that each army has different strengths and weaknesses and a unit that might be awesome in one army might be deeply mediocre in a different army. Basically any of the Soulblight horde tarpit units would be amazing in a gun line army for example. One thing where comparisons are useful though? In actual head to head matchups that might happen on the table top. So, your prize hammer unit, what does it expect to do when it charges into a unit of chaos warriors or knights with the mark of nurgle and the eroding icon? Equally, your tanky unit, how well does it take being slammed into by a reinforced unit of boingrots? Woehammer had these armies as the armies you might want to have a plan for encountering in a GT, which units or combinations do people think would be interesting to look at? Slaves to Darkness Stormcast Eternals Hedonites of Slaanesh Blades of Khorne Gloomspite Gitz Kharadron Overlords One thing I see all the time is people cursing their luck for rolling low, when they needed extreme luck to get the output they wanted. Beyond the specific, are there any useful general profiles that we can use? On the offense it seems like the standard hero profile these days is 5 attacks at 3+/3+/-1/2 shared by a lot of profiles. Defensively there is the 2 wound, 3+ save that in 40k would be called an MEQ (Marine Equivalent). What do you think belongs in the gauntlet your army needs to run through regularly?

I'm very curious as to how you are "mathing" things out, not intending to be rude genuinely curious. On a more potentially rude note, do you play age of sigmar often, and if so, what's your personal win rate like? I play varying amounts and do pretty well locally, but don't travel too much. Some of the comparisons you are making feel a bit like you have some unusual views of the game. Being disappointed in Saurus not having the damage output of Greatblade Graveguard is a ... very odd take, since Saurus are so dramatically better defensively, even leaving aside starborne or coalesced, 14 grave guard would be the same points as 10 Saurus, for 6 less wounds, and a 5+ with 6+ ward Vs a usual 3+ (home territory or contesting objective is not a strenuous challenge for Saurus). It's just not a useful comparison. Counting skinks as a "tarpit" is a really odd choice as well. There are two main roles I see for skinks, both very good. One is as a skirmisher unit, fast movement and boosted redeploy along with minor shooting is a very worthwhile unit, able to threaten objectives and steal any unguarded ones is very powerful. I feel people often undervalue redeploy, mathematically it makes charging them very difficult. The other main role I see for them is the screen, which does have some over lap with the previous role. Screens exist to basically buy time. You ideally want them as cheap as possible which skinks dang near are. So I looked though all the point values and unit options for all the armies in sigmar, and there is very little suitable for a screen below 80 points. Giant rats for skaven are about the cheapest (60 points for 6, which is probably too small a unit for it), but the most common is definitely 80. You can get cheaper on a point per model basis sure, but that locks you into bigger units. The job of a screen is to take the hit so a more important unit doesn't. Interestingly redeploy can be useful for a screen as well, since redeploy doesn't specify that you need to end further away, you can move to block better. I'm not saying that tarpits are not useful! They are very useful units, but screens are not always tarpits! I think I might have rambled on a bit too much on this topic, but I really am interested. I'm going to make a post in the general forum about benchmarks, which I think is an interesting way to look at things. How reliably does a unit do damage to different targets, or even take damage. Like, do you expect to be able to clear a unit of liberators off a point in one phase? What about a unit of 20 zombies? I was playing a game today where approximately 1500 points of Kharadrons failed to kill a Lord of Afflictions with finest hour and all out defense that tagged their ironclad. You absolutely have a point about mobility not mattering if your enemy has the points and can't be forced off them, but I feel you zero in too hard on that being the game state already and on worst case scenarios, often in a game you won't be able to take a particular point, but it doesn't matter because there are multiple, and you only need hold one, hold two, hold more.

Beasts took some nerfs this balance dataslate. Cockatrice rules got nerfed, bestigor ability arguably got nerfed (the old one is a headache rules wise) with a small point cut, and both bullgor and the doombull took a point increase. They didn't look at seraphon because they have a new book coming. Feels like a very bad time to look at buffing them. I was wondering on what your thought on the fyreslayers was going to be. I remember you being very negative on them, and they seem to have been doing pretty well. Current meta watch has them as the top performing army that isn't over the threshold, which honestly seems awesome. I know that vulkite builds have been popping up and there were a number of magmadroth or hearthguard based lists doing well as well. Honestly seems like a really good book.

Maggotkin book was released mid Denecember 2021. Heart of Ghur was released end of July 2022 and had been previewed a few weeks earlier. That's a bit of time between them but not that much. Boxed game stuff and mainline game stuff also sometimes interacts weirdly. The new underworlds team isn't in the gloomspite book despite being released first. Sliding schedules can make stuff line up oddly.

Trying to make a list for a relatively casual 1500 game, and jeez is it hard to fit stuff in. I'm hampered by a shortage of quite a few things (really need to get painting, gors were terrible when I last played). Tzaangors having no way to become battleline surprised me. Looking at. Bray Shaman with arcane tome and the +casting for turn number trait. Tzaangor Shaman Beast lord. Battle.line ungor and centigor. 2 units of tzaangor. 2 units of tzaangor enlightened on disc. 1 unit of chaos warhounds. Units that I'm not running are. Gorgon, bullgor, 20 bestigor, gargant, dragon ogor, shaggoth. It feels like I'm light on basically everything really. I suspect I would feel better with more gors, ungor and raiders available.

I think Hedonites is almost guaranteed in spring if it helps. There are two chaos, two death and an order book to come out before seraphon in summer. Currently the factions without 3rd ed books are. Chaos - Khorne Chaos - Slaanesh. Death - Bonereapers Death - Flesh Eater Courts. Death - Soul Blight Order - Cities of Sigmar Order - Kharadrons. Soulblight are more or less 3rd ed already, and Cities is getting a faceswap for Dawnbringers. Unless they are adding a new faction in, everything else is getting a book before summer. As for BoC, I did have an eye watering response to the points changes, but there does seem to be some really very powerful things you can do, to the point where I'm a little bit concerned it might be unfun. Stopping a pile in with an easy to cast spell where you can get + to cast for the turn order is sort of nuts! Tag a unit with a just grazing unit and you can look it down for potentially two turns in a row with one spell. Focus a redonkulous amout of debuffs on another threat and slam into it with your fast moving threat. Vs some slow moving lists you can keep whole units from ever doing anything significant by having a shaman force them to go 2d6 towards the battlefield edge with the off board ritual of ruin. If you only take one mortal wound off it, you can do it for a second turn in a row without risking dying, if you take more than one then ambush on the shaman and a unit of ungor and pull that unit back again. Losing summoning hurts in one sense, but the shear number of units that it was optimal to bring was insane! I know I lost games because I didn't have another unit of ungor to summon, or centigor or whatever. It may well be that points are too high, but I do understand why they seem to have been cautious.

They are such a pain to play though. A 10 man unit attacking and armed in what is probably optimal loadout (shields and all special options) gets 2 leader beak attacks 3+/5+/-/1 18 regular beak attacks 4+/5+/-/1 2 leader great blade attacks 3+/4+/-1/2. 6 regular great blade attacks 4+/4+/-1/2 12 regular savage blade attacks at 4+/4+/-/1 8 mutant paired savage blade attacks at 3+/4+/-/1. A unit shouldn't have 6 different attack profiles, some of which benefit from +1 to hit so can't get it again. Also weirdly the beaks seem to reliably outperform. You've not seen saltiness until you've seen a stormcast players dragon pecked to death.

I assume they announced the box because GHB spoiled a new Lumineth unit, and points changes potentially pointed to new Lumineth. After that it's more about what builds most buzz, showing just the model, or showing that it's gonna be in the Vs box.

Thank you kindly for the reply. My main concern was doing something too sharky. I've got two sets of Nurglings (I have two SC Nurgle daemons boxes, just assembled and painted most of one of them), so will take a look. Unfortunately real life got in the way, so not sure I'll be able to finish painting stuff by the deadline, might end up having to take my Beasts of Chaos instead. Definitely aiming to take Nurgle to a few game nights if I do end up missing the deadline though.

Looking to play in a casual 1500 point tournament. I've got a lot to paint up before hand, figured I could use some advice for what to go for. I have a unit of blight kings, plague bearers and some plague drones mostly done. As for what is available, I have access to most plastic stuff, but not many duplicates, with the exception of waaay too many plaguebearers. I think it's something like, GUO, Maggoth Lord, Glottkin, Nurglings, Rotbringer, foot lord that isn't in SC, Beast of Nurgle, SC daemons, SC maggotkin, all non special character heralds, lots of plaguebearers. I'm looking to make a list that's gonna be fun for both players, and not too one dimensional. I keep looking at potential lists and it feels like the non big heroes aren't as worth it, but keep feeling like I'm low on units. What would people recommend? Was thinking about something like this Leaders Great Unclean One (495) - Plague Flail & Massive Bilesword Sloppity Bilepiper, Herald of Nurgle (130) Battleline 10 x Plaguebearers (150) 5 x Putrid Blightkings (250) 10 x Plaguebearers (150) Units 3 x Plague Drones (200) 3 x Nurglings (105) Total: 1480 / 1500 Or perhaps something like this Leaders Bloab Rotspawned (300) Lord of Afflictions (210) Battleline 10 x Plaguebearers (150) 10 x Putrid Blightkings (500) - Reinforced x 1 Units 3 x Plague Drones (200) 1 x Pusgoyle Blightlords - Single (110) Total: 1470 / 1500 They both seem pretty low on model count though. Any thoughts?

The gloomspite change seems rather nice. Rally on a 4+ under the bad moon for moon clan (and not just moon clan grots, effects squigs as well) seems really nice. Units WW 12 of the loonshrine always counting as under the bad moon is a really solid change as well. Deploy it at the front of your deployment zone and have a pretty nasty bulkhead forward.

Cities of Sigmar is on the ally list isn't it? That includes Wanderers

It's next to Guttrippas, which is confusing.

Rumour I saw was min 2 troops and max 3 for bounty hunters. Not sure how confirmed it is. Nurgle flies of both types really like bounty hunter. Pusgoyles are 11 damage 1 attacks each for 22 total, and Plague drones are 8 attacks each for 25 with the champion.

I don't know if this is their intent, but it also has a lot of duplication with GHB21?(the current one that is being replaced soon) meaning that if you want to play the monster focused Ghur style again, you can play a Thondia game or campaign. It's a bit of an easier thing to persuade someone to do than "want to play last GHB rather than current". I wouldn't be surprised if there was a Gallet (or whatever the area we are in now) book released in awhile that will cover a lot of GHB stuff from this one, and be available longer than the new GHB. If we move to a different realm in the new year, that means they have two Ghur settings still available.

So what do people arm Thunderers with this days? I've been trying to work out the numbers and there are just so many available buffs these days (+1 to hit, +1 to wound, reroll ones for hit and wound, now rend from the admiral). What are people going for?

This book sounds like it answers a question I had been wondering about. It's been interesting having the tournament pack set in Ghur, but once they move on to another realm it means that people who want to play in Ghur would have to use the previous pack. This looks like a way to continue playing Ghur games without having to use an outdated handbook, which seems like a win.

Tournament was a lot of fun. Round 1 Vs Thunderlizard, 18-21. Started off with a loss. Massively underestimated how much the double tapping Solar Bastilodon could do. Even being wiped out turn 3 I had a good hold of points and got a respectable score. Round 2 Vs Stormcast. List had a Stormdrake General and a lot of infantry. Think this one was 25-11. Wiped them out, being able to spread wide across the board meant that after the dragon died anything that commited to holding a point got stuck there, and could be sequentially taken out. Round 3 Vs Stormcast. List was heavy on fulminators. This one was 26-15. Wiped them out, with them pushing too far forward and giving me the double, which lead to about half their army being down before getting a chance to do much. I can really see why they lowered the rates of reroll ones. All out attack and grudge making a unit 2+ to hit rerolling ones felt plain unfair. Another note is that good god do Thunderers take a while to roll all their attacks. The shooting riggers worked well, plinking off wounds where they were left and being a scoring body when needed. I'm now realising that I never remembered to add one to the unit champions attacks.

Contest of Generals Battlepack, I think the core rulebook one. Submission has already passed before I heard back, so I took a bit of a wild guess! Ended up going Thryng, mainly for the RR1 Vs 3 units and a turn of nasty shooting. Balloon Boss got mandatory fight on death on 2+ and a +1 to hit and mortals on 6 to wound relic. I picked the travel capacity for the gunhauler. Grand Strat was keeping a battleline alive, which is my Arkanauts and Riggers. How did your tournament go? My 750 (unfortunately 690, would have changed things up if I had the models) looks pretty small.