jjb070707

I'd propose simply giving them a keyword akin to "flyer" such that opposing units can move through them and don't count as engaged with them on their turn unless they stay in engagement range in order to take away the debilitating lockdown of the unit. There is still a potential for a large unit to position itself in such a way to try and prevent a unit moving in a specific direction, kind of like an endless spell, but one would have to choose to do this instead of fighting as effectively. Such that one can fight and engage with the dragon as they wish but aren't required to (since the dragon is flying/doing a flyby as modeled where other dragons such as the zombie dragon appear to have landed. Perhaps other units such as kharadron ships could have a similar keyword since having a flying boat lock down a unit is also somewhat silly) Alternatively, one could go a step further in treating these like a flyer and require them to keep moving and specific turning distances or crash, so someone could stay engaged with them and get to hit back on their turn, and on the following SCE turn they have to move a certain distance taking themselves potentially out of engagement range or something if they are still oppressive. Taking away tactical flexibility could go a long way in keeping them off tournament tables as spammed units while still preserving their hitting power and use as a single unit that is attractive, as well as a themed list that feels strong enough to compete without being oppressive. That or just take away their ability to contest objectives so they can quickly reach untouched objectives but won't both lockdown and out-contest other units.

Even if the ogor riding it doesn't change, I'd love to see a "Stonehorn Prime" or something massive, scary, and utterly over the top to paint. A behemoth sized to punch archaon's smug little face from atop his creepy chaos dragon without having to aim upward would suit me just fine. Maybe I'm just a sucker for these goofy, massive, models, but they are really my favorite aspect of the hobby at this point. I love throwing 50 hours into painting them, even if they never really hit the table. The big kits are really where GW thrives to me.

I'd theorize that since pigs got an extra rend, hunters may be more valuable as roar is more detrimental versus targets with high value attacks as compared to past results. With the ability to issue all out attack to 3 units with clever placement, 2x6 pigs hitting a monster (the two arrows formation can comfortably fit onto most monster bases) or whatever was on the sides of the main block and a krusha hitting the screen/anvil/aggressive piece in the center). I agree with you however, that 1 drop is really tough for ironjawz from a hero and unit perspective. I just am not sure if I would rather double regiment or regiment and hunters yet. As long as I stay under four, like I mentioned, I think that offers the best chance of success. It may be possible to fit in a 1 drop with brutes over ardboyz as well, just from a point sink perspective as well. 3x6 pigs krusha - spell book chanter 10 brutes 5 boyz comes to 1900, but I don't think it is worth running unless one keeps losing to 1 drops. endless spell of choice or 10 brutes, 5 brutes (replacing the boyz) instead of a spell at 1975 Your 2 drop double regiment idea is probably the strongest build. This could be powerful but perhaps "boring" (boaring?) 2 krusha 3 chanter 5 boyz 1x6 pigs 2x3 pigs for 1990 both krushas and the 6 pigs are the initial hit/pin 5 boyz sit at home 2x3 pigs take midfield objectives 2 drops, and can therefore control initiative against the field of 2s 50% of the time. Deployment is pretty standard so shouldn't care too much about having to drop the first half before seeing their deployment, you'll stick a fast krusha in the first half and the other krusha and pigs get to respond to "something" dropping.

Your math inspired me to do some. I think, if we take a step back, 2.0 and 3.0 differed in one fundamental way: rerolls. In an effort to "simplify?" the game those were removed for the most part. Rerolls remain one of the best ways to facilitate dice math for various roles without inflating stats. Consider this ability: "Targets of this units attack must reroll successful saves instead of failed saves." and throw it onto the "elite" unit profile in many armies. Suddenly 3/3/-1/1 is quite punchy but without the asinine raw damage profile of recent hammers or the low interactivity of mortal wounds. If this was common on elite units/hammers: a 3+ "un-re-rolled" save is failed 5/9s of the time (whereas a 3+ rerolled the other way is failed 1/9). Even a 2+ "un-re-rolled" is failed 11/36 or about 30% of the time. This would allow hammers to fight through stacked saves quite nicely. I would also potentially allow anvil/block units access to the converse, rerolling failed saves. The player who's turn (or potnetially who goes first in a battle round chooses to make it more valuable to not shoot for double turns if you know you need the hammer to have its main tool) it was would then determine which rule was used if a hammer hit an anvil. This would be an ebb and flow thing, where anvils are tough, hitting an anvil in with a hammer in the anvils turn is worthless, hammers are strong, and hammers hitting things in their turn is strongest. I think without rerolls we will continue to just statistically inflate units, which has a hard limit on a d6 system with 1s auto failing...

I've found the trick isn't shooting for 1 drop so much as three. Three is the "magic" number for a few reasons. Armies needing a second artifact and running warlord+1drop hit 4 drops often, Giants hit 4 drops often, and many dual behemoth style lists are wanting a warlord. So if I can justify not taking a second artifact, I'd target 3 drops. Most of the things that scare me drop in 4s, at least so far. I would only go to a one drop against high elves at the moment, as giving them 1 fewer shooting phase is really important for our warchanters, and therefore our overall power. If I knew it was an elf heavy meta, I'd almost certainly play 1 krusha to stay as a 1 drop at the expense of other matchups, but I don't believe we are crippled with 1 krusha lists. In your list I'd comfortably drop that as a 2 (double regiment) to facilitate 2 krushas and 3 chanters if you like and split my pigs how I please or regiment + hunters of the heartlands (for 3 drops) to make two 6 man pigs ignore the monster shout, since they are ideal monster hunters with mortals on the charge and rend 2 on the big sticks. And 2 pig units can comfortably operate a "pincer" style maneuver with simultaneous charges. This is even more effective with ironjawz as the special rule to allow back to back attacks favors this multi charge style even more so than other armies. I simply would avoid 5 , 6, or 10 drop lists as much as possible, since most of the really nasty lists I've seen or built or worked with folks on have all been building around warlord or command entourage for artifact or trait stacking.

Outdropping the opponent is one of the most critical ways a melee skewed list like ironjawz, or specifically bloodtoofs performs well. Controlling initiative forces the opponent to deploy disadvantageously or lose to a full charge/pin which you can then take advantage of. I'd recommend you revisit that game (play it out on TTS or on your own table or in your head) going first vs second, and try things like 4 giants, or Archaon vs the bloodtoofs the same way. You'll find many matchups that you REALLY want to dictate turn order

I feel like this is the complete opposite response to one that should be taken. Son's are the perfect benchmark right now for an army to build to overcome. They do their thing and die on schedule to well made responses. It isn't fair to the sons player that their opponent's refuse to build lists that can deal with a giant per turn. It is completely a misnomer that there is no tactical decision making during list building or in game with or against sons, its just the number of decisions required decreases, but the magnitude of each decision is amplified. A single misplaced screen against the sons could be a loss, just as a missed read on which unit to finest hour, where to move an objective, which unit to put your attacks into from a multicharge, or having gargants end up outside support windows to respond to whatever kills the first gargant will pretty much lose you the match against any skilled opponent that built a list anticipating sons as possible during an event. A strong army that is easy to pilot, damn near builds itself, but consistently falls short of winning the event is the perfect challenge for list builders and pilots and should be celebrated. IE, "Can this beat 4 giants" is the baseline one should ALWAYS be considering when building a list, if not its time to move onto a new list theme. If you are constantly winning with sons, its not sons fault, its your opponents. Son's are basically what we wish stormcast were in my group, an "easy" army in terms of number of units and number of decisions per turn with enough raw stats to always keep their pilot feeling like they have a good shot at winning a match, but never overpowering against a properly tooled army and a confident pilot. If anything, Son's may need a tiny nudge upward to remain relevant as new books come out with high rend tossed onto troops like candy. For example, those new annihilators will point for point shred a mega through AoD with a rerollable 7 inch charge. a double unit of them is the same point value as a mega, and someone ran the maths that I saw, and they put down a mega in a single combat something like 95%+ of their combats with the proper subfaction. Every army right now has ways to deal with a mega, they are susceptible to magic, big hammers, opposing heroes, combined arms, multicharges, and hordes out positioning them on objectives.

I like the concept actually. The ability to invest finite resources into producing the equivalent of an "invuln" save on one specific unit to protect it or at least force a ton of resources into dealing with it is good tactically for the game. The idea of operating on multiple fronts, baiting out defenses, using mortal wounds to deal with the well defended unit while using conventional attacks on the otherwise neglected other fractions of the opposing force are all good things and would be unnecessary if you could just point and delete anything. I do think however, there needs to be more immediate access to universal tools for those that do not have a battletome yet. I rather like the idea of universal spells allowing "mortal on six, +1 damage, additional rend, ward save +6, ect" to better allow those besides the GW chosen few broad tools for interacting with opposing forces. A much expanded universal spell and perhaps command ability list would accomplish this rather nicely. I especially liked the new ork book modifying a universal monstrous rampage as opposed to using what used to be a unique ability, and think this concept has potential across the board. One could release a whole host of options in the universal list, and then have unique units of factions "enhance spell X or command X or rampage X" to do something more potent as opposed to just getting additional tools as compared to others. If the orks just had a new rampage based on the maw krusha ability, stacking maw krushas would be even more potent, allowing 1 to do their new ability and the second to stomp, instead the ork player can condense this down to a more powerful stomp with the same soul as the old ability, but doesn't get free additional costless resources by having more rampages inherently compared to the beastclaw or khorne or something. This would also allow one to condense the skewed special rules down, and have to choose what unit to put it on, if for example the Power of Hysh spell modified a universal spell that everyone had for 6+ mortal wounds, to allow for mortals on a 5+ it could be more potent, but less spammable (in matched play with the rule of 1 for spells and commands and such). This could alleviate the discrepancies and open up a ton of new units to competitive play, where they would be great "if they just had 1 more rend, 1 more damage, some mortals, ect". One could even set up a system in which these battletome specific versions "replace" the generic version so that doubling up on that type of bonus isn't possible, or potentially only possible once and doing so shuts off the special version for the rest of the game (an overload of power once if necessary at the cost of sustained power). "If a unit is affected by the Power of Hysh spell, they cannot be affected by the POWER OF MORTALS ON 6 spell" or alternatively Power of Hysh cannot be cast if POWER OF MORTALS ON 6 has been cast this game.

I am often in the same situation, with timing and such I play against my wife in games more often than anyone else. I got a printer to continually have new units to use and play different armies with at a fraction of the cost. If you aren't beholden to playing at a GW store (which would imply you have many opponents to choose from) you aren't truly beholden to GW products for playing Age of Sigmar's ruleset. For the price of a single army in ABS plastic you could have 5-6 in acrylate resin to introduce variety.

I'd differ to language specificity here. Each time you carry out the "Stomp monstrous rampage" another Destructive Bulk (DB) condition check occurs. So like any do until loop, you would repeatedly carry out the sequence of: Stomp, Destructive Bulk, Stomp, Destructive Bulk, Stomp.... until the Destructive Bulk's clause of checking for model's within 3 inches can no longer be satisfied. So in essence, you will stomp until the condition check on DB does not bring you back to the stomp part of the loop, and then you continue on with the phase. One could technically imagine a situation where this loop continued until the entire enemy force was gone, but such a situation is far fetched. If the loop was intended to last at most two iterations, the clause would have to be written as such... "Then you can carry out another Stomp unless you have performed two stomps since the start of this phase" or something of that nature.

Perhaps it is simply a language/translation issue. The whole post you quoted seems worded in such a way to suggest colloquial British or American English may not be the language the thought behind the post was conceived in. I "think" what was trying to be conveyed is that warscrolls on a database on an app are still more accessible than warscrolls printed in army books, and that if we disregard the past 6 years of accessibility this situation is still favorable to early 1990s distribution of army rules. Either way I strongly disagree with the sentiment that anything about this change is good for either the game or the user, and agree with you completely Yukishiro. It seems like a tenuous position to be defending that this change is for the better.

I'd like to share the list I have come up with for an upcoming 1000 point campaign. It is not quite in the same style as my other lists, as this list focuses on doing everything it can to allow the main hero of the list, a carnosaur scar vet named Atzi The Swift, the best chance of glory through killing of heroes and monsters. This small band represents a hero hunting Scar Vet and his supporting cast, and the way this narrative is to be structured awards points to this list when Atzi successfully engages and slays the strongest hero in the opposing army, he embodies a tracker/hunter trope in the story I was putting together. Coalesced Thunder Lizards Warlord Battalion for artifact Saurus Scar-Vet on Carnosaur: General- Prime Warbeast, Mount Trait-Beastmaster, Artifact- Blade of Realities (On Jaws- which one can do, only the skink chief stipulates artifacts can only affect the skink in stead of the mount) 215 Skink Starseer 145 Slann Starmaster 265 - obligatory fusil of conflagration Saurus Guard 115 Saurus Knights 110 Kroxigors 150 1000/1000 Points This represents a force that can hold an objective with the slann/guard while providing some spell based mortal wound output to soften targets and give fly and +1 save to Atzi, Kroxigors to deal with screens that may otherwise bog him down, Knights to move up rapidly with him to protect him from massive countercharges, and a starseer to give an extra rend to his attacks on the chosen target and 3d6 charge. He should get to choose his engagements with his mobility, the movement and charge buffs, and the mount trait if necessary to get him to the hero he is hunting. When he gets there he can pop his own command trait for exploding 6s, beastmaster's extra attack (if he didn't need to to get in), use prime warbeast, the great drake asterism, the additional jaw attack from coalesced, and either titanic duel for an extra +1 to hit, or roar to turn off all out defense if the target has 7 wounds or less (which gives a carnosaur an innate +1 to hit). This results in 7 attacks hitting on 3s exploding on 6s, wounding on 3s with rend -3, 6 damage against a hero with full buffs/spells/conditions. It is far from the most competitive way to set up an army, but in this story, Atzi is only counting his kills, with even the objectives and mission secondary to this goal. I think this list showcases the stacked buffs mentality seraphon must embody to succeed, and allows an interesting character a chance for a spotlight that is normally second fiddle to the skink chief in lists. Give it a try if you want to see the carnosaur that often whiffs and does nothing have a moment of glory.

Nagash can be played in SBGL as well as OBR just because of his inclusion in both lists of points. It is Arkhan the Black that we "lost" to OBR exclusive. I think Nagash is likely stronger with the OBR rules (ignore rend 1, heal himself and any other units not just the summonable ones, stronger support spell lore) but He is pretty viable in SBGL. It feels bad to suggest the only answer to a 150 point magician is a 1000 point god however.... Afaik there is no way to get a Mortek crawler into our lists. Our only ranged option to deal with the prophet is dragon breath/ bravery screeches (which aren't very reliable with his Bravery of 8 and short ranges). We really need some vampiric archers or something to cover instances like this where opposing forces want to onion screen support heroes and nukes, otherwise we have a dearth of reliable answers for situations like this helping the general who needed help. Thankfully in this case their magic/ability hammer is short ranged, but I have concerns about our ability to answer units like this in the future when designers slip up and give something like the prophet a little more range/reach.

Several pieces of advice: This is a start of the hero phase ability: semantically is cannot be used after this that happen "during" the hero phase, so carefully understanding triggers (plug their army into AOS reminders, as soon as they do a during the hero phase ability the time to use the mask is over). This may help catch any abilities that modify this interaction (I am not super familiar with the timing of their buffs, I don't play Orruks). More usefully however, being within 12" at the start of the hero phase is somewhat difficult to do without you having proper warning or those units being precariously overextended. Additionally it is 1 single unit that can be affected by this ability, so with screening you can dictate what can even be targeted. A build centered around this tactic lacks in other areas which we can exploit, and things like blood knights can potentially strike the prophet with a charge around its screens if the prophet has to move up to get within 12 for the "next" hero phase. Focus your army around dictating turn order and mitigate the ability to double turn prophets into useful positions. The bonesplittaz look fairly weak overall right now in terms of steady state damage output, making objective based approaches useful as well. In general, this list feels more like a got em!/gimmick as opposed to a strong strategy for continual play, and could probably be adjusted for in game as opposed to in list building for the most part. I'd focus on careful positioning, and a double turn of your own with bloodknights running over a screen or crushing through an unprotected flank to kill the prophet if outmaneuvering them isn't an option. The prophet is only going to be running a strong ward during it's turn in the case you described, so trading a blocking unit or a cheap hammer for their best ward and only source of damage isn't a bad call perhaps. If you bait out the play to lose a 10 man grave guard or 5 man blood knight you can respond by wiping their entire blocks with a coordinated charge of your own. We are always going to be at the advantage "trading" pieces back and forth of similar value since many of ours return, and our objective control often exceeds theirs. I'd actively look to bait out that trade by slamming 5 blood knights into their boars nearby to bait out the prophet and its waagh before sweeping my main assault in for the kill.

I actually have been working on narrative campaigns using the AoS (and Age of Fantasy by opr) sets for my wife and best friend and I to play through. They are heavily into dungeons and dragons and play together several times a week, so the girls highly appreciate weird scenarios and campaigns that tell a story. For that I think the path to glory rules do a pretty good job actually of allowing one to become attached to their general or specific units as they carve out their place in the realm of the story. I would want to see these styles of play become the focus of GW involvement in rules and gameplay, as a way to put their narrative writers, illustrators, and model designers into a role they excel at without often subjecting the community to poorly considered and unproofed rules with long life cycles and slow and inefficient methods of FAQ/errata/correction. The competitive rules and points are often a mess especially when first released, I think narrative play is actually what GW does best. I have been a fairly vocal advocate of focus on rules and balance, and in designing armies that play well, but where I actually see GW fitting into wargaming (as opposed to just being a modeling company) in the future is in the wacky campaign setting kind of publication. Imagine if you will, a tabletop RPG crossed with a narrative wargame, to accompany their detailed and well crafted model lines they produce full color campaign settings and interesting stories of what the four factions are doing to inspire players to fit their lovingly created little warbands into the story of that book. For example, a campaign book that tells the story of the battles over Ghur to mimic what is going on now, and numerous sets of scenarios that might be applicable between the different types of factions and their activities in Ghur so gaming groups could help tell the story. Perhaps even in an interactive manner of some sort, where user submissions as to the successes and failures of different "real" warbands shapes future story development. People would eat that kind of experience up, and these wacky scenarios would help cover for GW's utter incapability in writing tight rulesets for tournaments, if the imbalance of their proposed interactions leads to skewed results, it simply drives the story onward. (Chaos was MEANT to win in Ghur this season, its not that we didn't understand the implication of save stacking and rerolling saves on Archaon...) This kind of regular release blend of narrative and strong brands/intellectual property justifies their desire to output paper books at a high rate (they see this as core to their business) while focusing on what they excel at, and giving their modeling studio continual source material. (As we fight through Ghur, we encounter these new Kruel Orks, and our studio has put them together the first wave for you guys to try out; how will your fledgling regiment fare against this new and interesting threat?) Which is more more compelling than "Here buy these three books in rapid succession because we screwed up the rules too badly the first time, and then our production pipeline caused us to not be able to deliver half the product so we had to split this release in two..." Instead, a campaign book tells of the encounters of the first half of these orks, and as battles are fought we discover more and more Kruel ork lairs deeper in the swamp. The same real world implications (no bolt boyz boxes still due to pipeline issues?) all of a sudden don't impact the ability to play the game, or feel bad to the player base, and story justification for any issues becomes more seamless. It may be in their best interest to pursue this kind of path and ship strategic balance and rulesets/points to real strategic game gurus/studios. Where the competitive scene is run by an outside source that better understands asymmetric strategy games and can focus their efforts on balance and user experience, which GW seems far too stretched to do effectively. And without the burden of writing rules for models, the narrative writers who appear to have been shoehorned into a game designer role can go back to writing compelling and interesting stories. And things like the new seraphon grand strategy which is simply a current strategy with extra steps (instead of just have a wizard alive, have it alive, in a certain place, and prevent all opposing wizards from also being in certain places) which while narratively cool, is poor game design when the simpler option exists, never get pushed through to the competitive game, but remains in fun narrative battles where that strategy as the victory condition are both compelling and interesting in both gameplay and story implications. The new grand strategies as a whole seem to feel like excellent scenarios, and terrible standard competitive play staples, and offer credibility to the idea of GW being shifted to a narrative focused campaign producer as opposed to the lead designer for a strategy wargame.