Satyrical Sophist

I’m kind of assuming that horde and non elite options are going to have a degrade option like Nagash losing power when he has taken a certain number of wounds. Something like “this unit has 0 control when below half strength” achieves quite a bit.

SCE are a little bit stuck as one of the starter factions. I think they want one of the factions to be an easy beginner option hobbywise. I’d argue that overall SCE are actually pretty medium to paint WELL, but petty easy to get painted acceptable. Back in the day, just basecoating ret gold and doing a wash of flesh shade for all the gold, then some simple block colours makes a playable paint job. I think there is a real risk when starter sets don’t have an easy paint/play option. My understanding is that isle of blood (which I own and am painting now) was a really lovely looking set containing two popular factions that underperformed at least in part due to both of them being hard to paint and not the most beginner friendly. i feel if you don’t have SCE as one of the starter options you might want to have something similar, like slaves to darkness, or iron jaws.

One thing with the double turn that I’d be interested in seeing/testing resolving would everything coming down to one dice roll, and one that isn’t really interacted with. I wonder whether it would make a difference if it was like warcry. Short summary is that in warcry you roll 6 dice, and separate out singles, doubles, triples and quadruples. The doubles, trips and quads can be spent on abilities. The player with the most singles gets to choose priority. You also get a wild dice each turn to either save or modify your roll. So you could add a single to try and get priority, or turn a single into a double to get an ability (but be less likely to go first). I really think something like this would feel better, and it also opens up design space for you to interact with it. For example, a hero could add a wild dice, or count as an additional single for example. If you wanted to have an in game representation you could even have stuff like “unit wiped out, add a single to the next priority roll “ or something like that, to represent losses forcing a general to react to stuff. What bonuses you would give for doubles, trips etc would need to be decided. i don’t know if this would help, but I feel it might? It feels more significant than “well, this single dice had a huge impact”.

I was playing a game last week where my opponent asked me about if I cared about terrain and was surprised when I said yes. I was then surprised when he started rolling for mysterious terrain because I had straight up forgotten it was a thing. I meant terrain placement in general. I was playing nurgle and my grand strat was blessed desecration which cares about whether terrain is fully in enemy deployment.

I’ve played a fair number of games in my life thanks, in warhammer I’ve played warhammer fantasy back in the day, and I’ve played 40K 3rd to 5th, then 8th and 9th (not played any 10th yet) Mordheim, Warcry, Blood Bowl etc. Outside of GW stuff I’ve played a lot of board games over the years, and played a ton of magic the gathering, mainly legacy. I haven’t really played much in the way of historical war games, or warmahordes but I’d say I have a reasonable spread of games. The article said “choose” to take the double, which would imply that you only lose the battle tactic if you win the roll and take the double, not have it given to you. It is WarCom though, and they can be a bit slapdash. I do like the double, and I think the game needs the uncertainty. I think the game would be worse without it. Are there potentially better ways of doing it? Sure, but mostly they would require some fairly substantial rewrites. Honestly I think it would be interesting if they tested some of those ways in variant game modes, maybe that’s something that will be easier to do in the module based system. It’s not my intent to tell people to “git gud” but I can defend liking the way the double turn plays.

I think they mention that they only included results if there were at least some number of them. Bonesplitters just aren’t played in large numbers. https://woehammer.com/2024/03/10/aos-meta-stats-w-ending-3rd-march-2024-battlescroll-nullstone-cache/?amp=1

There absolutely can be some truly atrocious march ups. Unfortunately it’s the price of having a bunch of varied factions, even if they are overall balanced apparently for example Hedonites of Slaanesh somehow have an 11% win rate vs Kharadrons in woehammers latest stats thingie. KO seem to have a fair amount of skewed results.

It feels like something bad happening to you once probably shouldn’t put you off a whole mechanic. I got absolutely smashed by night haunt in a game in 2nd where they got off like 80% double fights (the whole 10+ charge gets a bonus fight) in a game. Didn’t stop me playing night haunt. I do agree that it can be an issue in smaller games. Spearhead having set contents may well be helpful for that, since lists won’t be as focused.

I get that some people don’t like the double turn, but others do. It might be annoying to get told why something you don’t like isn’t bad, but you know what else is annoying? Being told that you don’t exist, because how could someone like something that you don’t like? Given a number of players (myself included) on the forum have clearly said why we like the double turn it feels pretty rude. The double turn is contentious, but I feel a fair chunk of the “haters” are people who DO NOT PLAY AoS, and just dislike it for not being a feature of other games. Another group I feel are playing like it doesn’t exist, then being brutally punished for it. If you play like a rule isn’t there then get hit hard due to that, it’s kind of on you. I played against foot ogor once, and positioned myself so that their charge would be out of range of most charges. I didn’t realise that their musicians gave +1 to charge, and they very much spiked their charge rolls that turn. That was unlucky, but a mistake I made. If you are going first in a turn, then you need to be more careful and respect the double turn, keep the ironclad further away, don’t expose Allarielle to too much incoming damage. If you are going second in a turn you can be bolder. Some games you may indeed have to risk stuff more than you’d like and may be stuck in that situation, but it’s well worth thinking on if you could do more to not get into those dire straits. I too would like less of a dip feed of information, but we are still quite a way away from release, with another dawn bringer book to come, along with what feels like quite a few other releases for other systems. If they are reworking war scrolls substantially then I can see them wanting to not show specific ones for awhile. Imagine they show off a unit and it seems like a big nerf because people are comparing it to current units, which is irrelevant because the new unit will never play against old units. People are bad at doing comparisons. In 40K plague marines had a 5++ ward and only one wound for a long time. When marines got their second wound people were super excited for plague marines with 2 wounds and 5++ and got disappointed that the new rule was 2 wounds and minus 1 damage. They were unhappy that it was worse than the hypothetical thing that it could have been if two different rule sets combine.

What did Whitefang back me up do to get confirmation? I lost track.

I don’t read that as pile in getting removed, just not having to spend ages arranging your models to get as many within 1 as possible. Without pile in then the unit that doesn’t charge would just get messed up really bad. You could have all your stuff in range and leave the opponent with only a few Sahrial, if people have the forum on dark mode then the background colour is set to a dark grey and the text to white by default. If you manually change the text colour from the default it keeps it on the colour you choose, but still flips the background colour, so if you switch text to black then dark mode people get black text on super dark grey.

That box is really solid I have to say. I'd definitely have picked it up if I didn't have at least one of everything but the cannon. Rules wise, currently, the cannon isn't amazing, but its pretty alright and the model is great. Who knows next edition? I'd like to get the spear head ready myself, just need to decide whether it makes more sense to grab a cannon separately or if any lists I'm looking at would want two marshals.

About the only thing I’d add to this is to think of a sort of high level army play style. Rules can change a lot edition to edition, or even just battle scroll to battle scroll, but the top view often remains the same. If you like super aggressive brawler lists, but also the look of say Tzeentch, then you might want to be careful. You can always play atypical builds, but there is much more likely to be a pain point if you are going against the grain.

I have had the option to take the double turn and not taken it fairly regularly. Why would you do this? There are a couple of fairly regular reasons. You look at the board state and your opponent cannot capitalise on the double turn easily. This one can happen early on a fair bit, and feels more common when you are up against a slow army, or a fast army. The slow army can’t reach you reliably, the fast army already has and is as engaged as they are likely to be anyway. It can also be that YOU cannot properly benefit from the double right now, you’d need to move closer, but couldn’t guarantee making the charge etc. passing it to the opponent means that you get to go immediately after them, rather than risking taking an ineffective turn, giving them an effective turn and potentially getting doubled back and hit hard. The enemy is fully buffed up, potentially with once per game buffs, potentially just hard to cast spells and the like. Taking the double would mean engaging the enemy with their “until the next hero phase” buffs intact. You’d rather they had to recast ****** frost and give you another chance to dispel it. Alternatively, YOU are all fully buffed up and are perfectly happy to have enough turn like that. Some of the battle plans really care about who goes second, letting them choose where the geomantic pulse starts. You shouldn’t rely on it, but its a benefit. These scenarios do not always apply, but they are very real reasons to give up the double. Sometimes there is going to be an obvious choice, and you can crush them with a double. It feels like it happens less if you are playing defensively, and aware of the double potential. Conversely, if you are playing very aggressively and hoping desperately not to be doubled then I think the double is more likely to be a crushing one. One exception to this is that I very rarely want to give up the double vs a ranged army, since they can almost always capitalise on it, and often are vulnerable to it in turn. If they can add more stuff to incentivise not taking the double? Sounds interesting to me. All games have issues establishing who goes first, it’s a recurring problem through so many types of games. I think the double is an interesting way of doing it. Stable turn orders can lead to their own problems. I don’t have a citation on this, but apparently one of the reasons world eaters got adjusted despite a 50% win rate was that they won 65%+ of their games where they went first and won less than 35% of the time they went second. A final rambling point is that I am often surprised by how close games can be. Ice sworn that I was going to lose games and gone on to win, and been surprised by the enemies comeback in turn. Deciding you have lost (due to double, bad luck Etc) very much is self fulfilling.

A few comments up I list a few things I think would go terribly wrong without the double turn. I’m curious as to your thoughts on them.

Getting double turned twice has relatively few ways to happen. Most possible double turns would be each player getting two double turns. It’s possible for one player to get two double turns and another only one, but I don’t think it’s possible for one player to get 2 double turns and another to get no double turns. I’ve also typed double so many times it no longer looks like a word. The big problem with removing the double turn for me is that I don’t think the game functions without it. Without the double turn it’s much easier to work out threat ranges. That hammer unit that can’t run and charge? If your unit is more than M+12 away you know that they cannot get into combat with you before you get another chance to move and shoot yourself. The screen you have in front of you will definitely give you enough time to reposition or move another screening unit into its place before the enemy can do anything about it. Picture something like seraphon throwing skink screens, or KO knowing that they can safely drop a bus load of shooting down having carefully measured that you will not be able to reach them, and they get a turn to move afterwards, no matter what. Any of the death armies would be guaranteed to have a hero phase to heal up loses before being hit again. Now, I know 40K doesn’t have the double turn, but what it does have is a lot more shooting, which means a lot more ranged interaction to counter some of this stuff.

Yeah, never really thought about it but there must be at least 10 about an hour away from me. You tend to get used to the status quo for you and not really think about it. I only tend to go into one when it’s for something like battleforces, or when all the OW books were sold out

They look interesting. I think you have the wound count wrong on the companions. There are 4 of them (thief, stormcast, Bond villain and bird hound) and the stormcast has 5 wounds. I think they have 14 wounds. I’m doubting myself now though. I don’t know how I’d look at splitting them up points wise, but attack profile wise Callis and Toll are the same as Galen Van D, which means if we are assuming a similar points then I’d assume C + T are about 160 points and the companions about 190. Which looks like it kind of works out. These seem somewhat like a command corps, but more about their own synergies than buffing others. Having easy access to a 3++ save with 14 wounds at 190 points seems interesting, particularly if you get to deploy them mid board. One thing to note is that they are Hammerhal Firey one, which means no Misthäven or Lethis buff. Also same one as Thalia, and 4+ rally in combat on a 3++ unit is perhaps a warcrime Side note, the black ark fleetmaster is weirdly fighty. I was checking to see what the normal CoS hero profile was and I keep forgetting the black ark fleetmaster is noticeably more fighty than other heroes alongside the warden king. I do really like the fleetmaster though, but I think I might like pirates too much.

Oh its absolutely a foul up by GW on that front. Looking again at the ranged options for CoS you REALLY need to be working the command trait into Fusiliers to be worth it. I'm going to be normalising points for comparison here, so when I compare Fusiliers to Iron Drakes I'm assuming a theoretical 100 points of each. Fusiliers shooting without moving and no buffs is fractionally worse than MOVING Irondrakes. They are also outperformed by grape shooting Cannons at all points, Scourge Runner Chariots at all points. Outperformed by overloading steam tank commanders and about the same as overloading steam tanks (Better against high armour saves, worse against lower). Letting them have the command trait boosts output by 78% though. In contrast without the command trait AoA is boosting them by 33%. Scourge Runners are the only thing that gets an equivalent boost, getting an average of 75% or so boost from an all out attack from a fleet master. With the command trait (assuming all out attack command on both) then Fusiliers outperform moving Irondrakes (still significantly behind stationary iron drakes), ahead of the cannon (though only slightly if the cannon gets the command trait on its grapeshot), a little bit ahead of non fleet master boosted chariots and a bit ahead of both steam tanks. On a side note, for the cannon. With no buffs, you are best shooting the armour piercing shell at anything with a 3+ or better. At 4+ if grapeshot is in range, that becomes the best option if its in range, otherwise still the shell. For anything 5+ or worse you are best firing grapeshot or cannon if not in range for grapeshot. For all out attack, Shell until armour 5+ then grapeshot /cannon (grapeshot for preference). If you happen to have the command trait, grapeshot is better against 4+ as well. I think you currently need some pretty significant reasons to build into fusiliers. I own 20, and I'll get them painted but I do really think they need help. At the moment I feel like another shooting option is often going to be better. For human synergies I feel like steam tank commanders are still very tempting. The wording on overload is actually until your next hero phase, so returning fire with them is still boosted, and though its not super efficient, they should have a reasonable chance of forcing suppression if you need it for a battle tactic, or multi charge. For just ranged shenanigans I'd be more tempted by iron drakes and chariots. If you can work around the issues both have really good points. If you can get Iron Drakes in position they are pretty no fuss. Scourge runner chariots definitely have a cost issue, as well as a base size issue. Weirdly both options just randomly hit monsters harder as well.

You kind of need to be super careful any time a shooting option is the “best”. There is just much less counter play to it, so GW is much more likely to err on the side of nerfs. I do really understand your frustration, but I’m not super surprised that they changed flaming weapons. It’s just such a massive buff that still requires a cast to go off, so correctly balanced it’s either gonna be way too strong when it resolves or really disappointing when it doesn’t. They definitely should have reverted the points nerf though.

Cultists base sizes are a bit weird, but I don't think its too bad? I run Rotmire in Nurgle and you just need to put the little dudes in front rank. Corvus Cabal are a good choice as a utility unit, not good at fighting but have the deepstrike and are invisible in terrain. If you want to fight with them then 5 are on 25mm and the other 4 are above that means they can easily fight in 2 ranks with everyone fighting. Cypher lords have awkward base sizes, since they only have 3 25mm ones and the other 5 are 28m and above . Should still be able to get most in. 70 points is pretty dang low. Dark Oath Salvagers do indeed have awkward base sizes, with 7 out of 10 on 28mm and the rest 32. I'm going to be honest, I was going through the cultist units one by one and forgot how many of them there are. A fair few of them have enough 25mm bases to easily fight in 2 ranks anyway. (Splintered fang being a big one).

Looking at Woehammer, the lists I see were changed a bit, but not much. One was 1990 and jumps to 2030, another goes from 1970 to 2030, another 1990 to 2050. A few get hit a bit more, 2000 on the nose to 2100, Most of them look like running the list is just dropping a unit of arkanauts or a character. In return they get what looks like a relatively easy to score battle tactic. I thought KO battle tactics and GS were already very solid? Rule the skies seems very good.

There are two different keywords that apply. One is leader, and the other hero. Both Ven Densts are heroes, but only one is a leader. When it comes to orders, HERO is the relevant keyword. Since Dorelia has that keyword, she can issue an order. That means that yes, you can have 7 heroes to issue orders. Leader is a keyword that is I think entirely for army creation. It’s similar to how Behemoth has army building restrictions but Monster doesn’t. While many monsters are Behemoths not all are, and while many Behemoths are monsters not all are.

I don't think steelhelms get a huge amount of stuff from any of the cities really? I'd probably go for whatever fits the rest of your force. If you are massively spamming big steel helms units it might be one of the few times I'd be tempted by Hammerhal Ghyra. Jumping to bravery 11 from 6 when you have 10 or more is pretty big. That said I feel even with the points jump for command corps then having only half your models run means you probably don't need to worry about morale that much. Its pretty hard to get away from Hallowheart and Misthaven though. I still kind of want to try Lethis properly, particularly in a list with Ionus Cryptborn. Is there any reason he can't force the Lethis prayer through if needed?

Wildercorps have 29 attacks for 130. Flagellants have 21 attacks for 100, steel helms the same. Correcting for points doggy boys have 22.3 attacks per 100 points. Cavaliers have 26 attacks including horses, working out as 14.4 per 100 points. Much better attack profile on 16 of them though. I suspect best plan is creating a truly dreadful to charge brick. A warforger with flaming weapons and a screen of steel helms or doggos with cavaliers lurking with a potential counter charge order is not going to be something your opponent wants to deal with. The screening unit being able to drop an expected 3-4 mortal wounds is pretty nasty anyway.