Kadeton

Ah cool, thanks for explaining. I see what you mean - you don't have to be as careful with your heroes, for sure. I guess my perspective is a bit different - from the other side, I see being able to go "The enemy's army revolves around that hero, so I'll just kill him," as the low-skill option that rewards being bad at the game. This edition has changed that to "The enemy's army revolves around that hero, and I can't kill him, so I'll have to work out how I can win some other way," and I honestly think that's a far more interesting and challenging proposition. My experience so far has been that bad players with unkillable heroes are pretty easily beaten by good players with a plan that doesn't involve killing those heroes. Hence, skilled play is rewarded.

I totally agree. That would have been much better. However, I still feel that making some heroes survivable is better than making no heroes survivable. We can talk all day about the wonderful possibilities that might have been, but that's not really a valid point of comparison. All we actually have to compare in real terms is how it worked before versus how it works now. Of those two, I prefer how it works now. Issues with the survivability of individual heroes can always be addressed as new battletomes are released, but at least they now have a supporting framework where it's actually possible to make them hard to kill. I'm a bit confused about your position. You seem to be saying that nothing has really changed: some armies could kill monster heroes before and still can, some armies couldn't kill them before and still can't. If the situation is more or less the same as it was, what's the issue?

Agreed, the mechanic being fun is extremely important, and currently I'd say it does make things a bit grindy. I think a corollary question is also needed, however: In the previous edition, when big centrepiece models died like chumps almost immediately, was that fun? Personally, I find having the heroes on the board is more fun than having them in the dead pile or on the shelf. So in the comparison, I prefer the new level of survivability. But I can certainly see ways the game could be more fun if it wasn't quite so extreme.

I played an updated version of my Vampire list (I have enough Battleline to run Vyrkos now!) against Idoneth the other day. We were playing at 2000 points, using the Marking Territory battleplan from GBH2021. It was really nice to see an Idoneth list that didn't just use eels. The Namarti archers were pretty scary, and used Unleash Hell to great effect on the turn that I forgot it existed and charged them with a Vargskyr. There were still nine eels in the list, but even though they're almost indestructible, they really struggled with damage output - at one point a unit charged into my Blood Knights and inflicted no damage. My opponent fell for what I think is becoming the classic blunder in this edition, as a holdover from old habits. I put my Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon into the middle of his lines, and he threw everything at it - turtle, eidolon, eels, thralls - and between Finest Hour and All-Out Defence, he only managed 11 out of 14 wounds. This left his objectives weakly defended, and a lucky long charge from the Blood Knights on turn 3 gave me all four objectives and the instant win. (Side note to GW: instant-win scenarios are terrible, please stop.) We had an echo of the same conversation that's been going on here since the start of the edition, namely that 3+ save monster heroes are too hard to kill. It's putting him off playing, which is a real shame - as he put it, he enjoyed our game but doesn't like the rules. From my perspective, it reinforced my thoughts on how to approach this edition. Enemy heroes are something you just have to put up with, and it's much better to tie them up using as few resources as possible rather than trying to kill them. Meanwhile, playing for the objectives and the battle tactics is the path to victory, since the heroes and monsters can't be everywhere. It actually makes me happier about this edition in general, since I much prefer a game where it's not just about tabling your opponent. That said, I do think the survivability is a little on the extreme side right now. I'd like to see it reduced a bit at the top end - personally I think they should have gone with allowing save bonuses to stack, but capping all saves at 3+ overall. 2+ saves just aren't much fun, and neither are mortal wounds, but that's what everyone is pressured to play in the game's current state.

I'd go at least one step further back, to the point where GW asserted control over the use of their IP well in excess of what the law entitles them to. Restricting fair use and derivative works goes strictly against the spirit and the letter of IP laws. They can totally get away with doing that, because the legal protections against doing so are (deliberately) weak and the legal system exists primarily to defend capital. But that's nevertheless where I would say this conflict "started".

The warehouse is in a region that's under lockdown, so they've closed down operations for the time being. Australia is taking COVID prevention very seriously.

This really depends on what you mean by "okay". Is this content creator breaking the law? No, not in either case. Not even if they monetise the videos or directly advertise their Patreon or solicit donations. These are "derivative" or "transformative" works, which are protected under most IP laws - you can't copyright a "setting", or a "theme", or anything other than the specific form of a work. Does this "protection" make the content creator safe from a civil suit? No, not remotely. If you can afford to defend that suit, you might win the case after a few years in court... got a few million bucks lying around? Most likely you don't, but GW certainly do. Will "fair dealing" IP protection stop GW from getting the creator's YouTube account demonetised, suspended or banned without recourse? Definitely not. Google responds almost immediately to copyright disputes from large corporations without question, and the creator is then forced to go through a potentially months-long process of appeals to get the strike overturned, during which any money their content makes goes to the corporation. From the creator's perspective, GW can choose to annihilate them at any time regardless of whether the IP laws "protect" them. GW don't need the law on their side - they have money, which is much more powerful and relevant. Creators are gambling their livelihood purely on the hope that GW either doesn't notice them, or doesn't care. So no... it's not really "okay".

It would be honestly surprising if a company with the resources of WotC (and its juggernaut parent, Hasbro) and an IP like D&D weren't eyeing off Games Workshop's year-on-year successes and strategising how to take a piece of the wargaming market for themselves. A game system where you can take your favourite D&D character and include them at the head of an army? Seems like such an easy home run. I already know people whose collections of D&D minis vastly outnumber my AoS and 40K armies, and I have no idea what they do with them all.

Heartily agree. If the objectives encourage you into a central moshpit, then you don't need objectives - that's what armies do anyway when left to their own devices. Objectives should require difficult choices, and the commitment of resources away from the main fight. Tectonic Interference is also the mission where the Ghur realm ability (the player going second in the third battle round gets to destroy an objective) is negated, right? Definitely lazy design on that one.

I don't like Stormcast, but those are some very nice dragons!

I would definitely like to see more access to higher levels of Rend on elite units, and significantly fewer sources of mortal wounds. Handing out unblockable damage to everyone is definitely not the way to make this work. My main point is that it's a paradigm shift that players will have to get used to - some models will just be beyond your army's ability to kill right now, so how can you work around that instead of bashing your face into that brick wall hoping it will fall down? It shouldn't be, IMO, a case of bringing enough mortal wounds to kill those models anyway. MWs have their place, but spamming them should always be priced to be inefficient overall. Instead, it should be about making tactical decisions other than "That thing needs to die." More Rend of -2 or better in the game wouldn't be about letting you kill the unkillable hero - if you stack every defensive tech you have on someone, they should be damn near unkillable! But it would make it much harder to spread those buffs around to make *multiple* units indestructible. Now that guy is too hard to take down? Cool, that means everything else is super vulnerable - go kill something else.

I remain unconvinced that the ability to stack save modifiers until you have an invulnerable hero is a "bug" and not a "feature". I'd suggest that the designers intended it that way, and it's something that needs to be played around, rather than "fixed". Yes, you are no longer entitled to just pick your opponent's most valuable piece within your army's threat range and automatically delete it from the board. If you throw everything you have at one tough hero, you might not kill them. That can be annoying, for sure... but how often does it actually stop you winning the game if you play smart, target more vulnerable pieces instead, and focus on objectives? One of the more frequent complaints towards the end of last edition was the feeling of "rocket tag". Powerful combat units would either annihilate their targets or get destroyed themselves, depending on who managed to attack first. Now we've got units that can face-tank those rockets and keep going - sounds to me like GW acknowledged the issue and provided counter-play. Save stacking generally requires considerable set-up in advance (e.g. using Finest Hour in your opponent's turn, casting Mystic Shield in the previous hero phase, etc). If you saw your opponent building up an impenetrable shield on their centrepiece model, and you threw all your killing power into it anyway and achieved nothing, then that was a terrible tactical decision and you probably deserved to lose? There are currently big problems with this design intent, for sure - mainly that access to high-save monster heroes and ability to output mortal wounds aren't evenly distributed across the armies. I totally acknowledge that some armies don't have what they need to be competitive under the new rules paradigm. But I strongly feel that the solution to that is to give those armies what they need, not to take it away from everyone else.

Heck yeah, give me a Destruction dragon (Scarface up there looks like he'd fit right in, honestly!) and I'd be all over it.

Beastclaw Raiders (from the Ogor Mawtribes book) are excellent in this edition. You can field a fully-mounted force of Stonehorns and Mournfangs, and it's easy and fun to play. (And still one of the cheapest armies to collect - three Start Collecting boxes gets you to 2000 points!) If you're looking more in the realm of horse-ish cavalry, the Soulblight might be worth a look. Blood Knights are battleline for the Kastelai faction, they're very solid, and you can lead your forces with a Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon (or two).

Who's dealing enough damage to kill Archaon or a Mega-Gargant 2-3 times over?

From my games, I've been a bit disappointed in the strategies and tactics. I like the idea behind both mechanics, but the implementation seems off. The strategies are, for the most part, completely passive: "Keep at least one unit of a specific type alive to the end of the game." That means it's not something that you have to achieve, it's up to your opponent to take it away from you. I like the idea of a grand strategy reflecting what your army is good at, but I really think it should be something that doesn't just happen by default. The battle tactics are better in that regard, but too many of them are almost insultingly easy. "Run three units to the same area," for instance, or "Have the most units near the board centre, on the first turn before the opponent gets a chance to move." I'd really like to see these become less of a sure thing and more of a challenge.

Fair enough - I mean, here's hoping! But from the Broken Realms story they were featured in (where a skink asked if the draconith would fight alongside the Seraphon and was told "No, these are for the Stormcast") to the article itself: ... I wouldn't be counting on it.

I don't think there's anything to suggest they'll be their own faction or available across all of Order, is there? From everything they've said, these dragons are only available to Stormcast.

And 15.96 (or more accurately 16) is not equal to 18. Decreasing damage by one third is, mathematically, exactly equal to increasing wounds by 50%. This is an example of an "inverse relationship", where there is a fixed ratio (which can also be expressed as a fraction) between the two quantities. To convert one to the other, you literally invert the fraction. This might be clearer with a more extreme example. Let's say you had a 3+ ward save, i.e. you're reducing incoming damage to one third. Our example model needs to suffer 12 wounds to be killed. How much damage do we need? Two thirds more, maybe? Since two out of every three wounds will be warded, it requires 36 damage to kill the 12-wound model. So a model without that ward save would need to have 36 wounds to be equivalently "tough". That's increasing the 12 wounds by 24, which is a 200% increase. Quite a bit more than two thirds! So, a 66.6% decrease in damage results in a 200% increase in effective wounds. Or looking at it another way, reducing damage to one third is the same as having three times the wounds - because the inverse of one third is three. This works for other ratios as well - a 4+ ward (50% reduction) is the equivalent of doubling your wounds (a 100% increase). And as noted, a one third reduction is the same as a 50% increase, because the inverse of two thirds is three over two, 1.5, 150%.

This thread was really depressing to read. There's so much misunderstanding about intellectual property, and it's genuinely sad to see how effectively misinformation and confusion has been propagated and weaponised by corporate interests in the broader IP conversation, as evidenced here in microcosm.

I played a game the other day, more of a casual "learn a new army" type game than a serious competitive one. I wanted to get my Cursed City vampires on the table, so it was a real bitzer army (I couldn't even run them as Vrykos since I didn't have enough Battleline unless I chose another faction for a conditional). That aside, I played against Sons of Behemat (Taker Tribe) and we rolled up Power In Numbers as the battleplan, and boy... I can't really see how the Sons are much short of unbeatable in that mission. Even the mega-gargants count as Battleline (and count as, like, 40 models?) so taking objectives off them is all but impossible, especially since you have to hold them off for two turns to score, and they can kick objectives across the board to continue advancing and killing while still holding them. A mega-gargant with the 5+ ward artefact is just incredibly hard to bring down. I feel like my Beastclaws could probably have beaten them, but that's mainly because they work in a very similar way and also hit hard enough to kill giants. The Vampires... it feels like they're always really going to struggle in that matchup.

My perspective is warped by main-lining Beastclaw Raiders. Frostlords absolutely love using Finest Hour offensively.

Yeah, that does make sense. As I said, it keeps Archaon alive... but an army that can alpha-strike Archaon off the board in turn 1 is just going to turn their attention to wiping the entire non-Archaon portion of your army off the table instead? Or they just hold their attack back, and kill Archaon on turn 2 instead. It seems like you're always going to struggle against that. No, you don't. The bonus lasts until the end of the turn, not the round. Yeah, I'm going to have to start thinking about it differently! I've seen it primarily as an offensive buff that I want to use on the turn my hero charges into combat (I totally disagree that +1 to wound is "rarely significant") which also happens to give them some extra protection (mostly nice because it means you can use All-Out Attack instead of All-Out Defence, capitalising on the bonus to wound). But if you can pick the right time to use it defensively it sounds like it would be very powerful, as a deterrent from attacking that hero at all that turn if nothing else.

It doesn't look like it to me. The GHB is pretty clear that "you must pick 1 battle tactic from the list below," referencing the list on page 15. There's nothing on that page to suggest that you could pick from the list in the Core Rules instead.

Is this (using Finest Hour pre-emptively at the start of the opponent's first turn to mitigate a potential alpha-strike) something people are actually doing in practice? I guess I'd be very surprised if my opponent chose to do this - I'd then quite happily spend the turn attacking any other valuable targets and ignore the buffed hero. They've burned their one-shot Finest Hour on their biggest hero, and got none of the offensive benefits from it. While they've avoided the alpha strike on that specific hero, the Finest Hour buff hasn't actually impacted my overall damage output. Just seems like a waste to me!