Kadeton

One trend I'd prefer to see curbed or reversed in a Third Edition is the transition of magic from being powerful but wild to a toolbox of mundane but reliable damage and utility effects that you can build your army's strategy around. Personally, I think it fits the theme and lore for magic in the Mortal Realms to be unreliable, dangerous and barely controllable. I really liked the initial idea for Predatory Endless Spells, that would rampage across the battlefield of their own accord without distinguishing friend from foe. They even had some built-in mitigation for the power of a double turn. Brilliant! Unfortunately, the reality was that you almost never saw them on the table, because their impact wasn't significant enough to justify the fact that they might turn on you, when compared to other spell options. Also, even when you did see them, they would pretty much only last for a turn before being dispelled. Rather than try to adjust the rewards to the point where the risks might be worth it, GW instead went the boring route of making them more dependable - either through making "predatory" spells where player control barely matters (e.g. the Twinstones) to just outright removing the "wild" aspect completely (e.g. all the Seraphon Bound spells). Similarly, we've seen a ratcheting-up of casting bonuses, to the point where a recent game I played had an entire Lumineth army with a baseline +4 to cast. Since they were generally casting Power 6 spells, the casting roll was literally infallible, and a mere formality - since I didn't have any wizards to try to unbind, there was no point even rolling. The mechanical effect was fine in terms of game balance and so on, but it definitely felt wrong. Rather than "magic is an ancient and ineffable force that is impossible to understand and requires great skill and concentration to control," it was more like "push the button and the magic goes, whee!" I'd like to see unbinding and dispelling go away pretty much entirely - the action and drama of a wizard's duel should be in the form of them hurling deadly spells at each other, not just counter-spelling each other while nothing happens. I'd like to see predatory Endless Spells rampage freely, and be far more devastating. And overall, I'd like to see magic have much greater impact, but be far less reliable. So that's my main wish: make magic exciting and dangerous again. I'd also like to see the whole game up-ended by changing the turn structure to unit-based alternating activations... but I won't hold my breath for that.

Yeah, "end of the combat phase" timing makes this ability really lackluster. If Big Drogg dies, you get nothing. If Big Drogg smashes up the enemy unit he's in combat with (as you'd hope!) then the opponent can remove the models closest to him, and the halitosis effect is diminished. And even when you manage to arrange things so that it works at full effect, needing sixes means you shouldn't expect to see more than one or two mortal wounds out of it. Just at face value, it's pretty meh. When you compare it to "all enemy units within 6" of this massive base suffer -1 to hit on all attacks" it's god-awful. Unless there's something else that interacts with it, which we don't know about yet...

Yep, exactly. The Huskard is the slowest and the squishiest thing in the list, so having him hang back a bit is generally what happens anyway. I tended to have him start next to the Mawpot (which goes as close as possible to the enemy, depending on deployment zones) and move up just enough to stay in range of the pot on his first turn. But I would generally empty the pot as soon as I could (if any unit had taken any damage in any amount) and then leave it behind - the Beastclaws don't really need it. That said, in the game against the Sylvaneth I emptied and re-filled it four turns in a row, so if you're in a desperate fight in your own deployment zone it's really handy.

There's nothing restricting you to choose only units that are deployed. The rule only mentions deployment as part of the timing for declaring the ability. You can choose any units in your opponent's army, regardless of whether they're on the battlefield.

I took my Monster Mash list to a tournament on the weekend, and thought I'd give a report on how it went! The first round was The Blade's Edge in Ghyran, and I was matched against Sylvaneth, an interesting Winterleaf list including Alarielle and a big block of 9 Kurnoth Hunters with scythes, boosted by the Chronomantic Cogs and the Spiteswarm Hive. My previous experiences with Sylvaneth had conditioned me to think they were a bit weak, so while I was sure they would be able to charge my line on turn 1, I figured I could counter-punch hard and carry the game. This was a serious under-estimation! The Hunters came in boosted by a Triumph (re-rolling hits), Alarielle (re-rolling 1s to Wound), +1 Attack (from the Arch-Revenant's command ability), and fighting twice (using the Frozen Kernel), and killed two Beast Riders and a Frostlord - fully half my army - on turn 1. My remaining monsters managed to kill almost all the Hunters as well as Alarielle, the Arch-Revenant, a Treelord Ancient, another summoned unit of Hunters and a big unit of Spite-Revenants, but I was eventually tabled. I never managed to fight my way out of my deployment zone, so his teleporting Tree-Revenants ran away with the objectives and the game. All in all, I was really impressed with the Sylvaneth in this game - I think I would have won if I'd been more respectful of their threat range and hitting power and deployed accordingly, so it was a great learning experience. Second round was Knife to the Heart in Ulgu, and I was up against a Slaanesh list with two Keepers, the Masque, a Chaos Lord, forty Marauders and two blocks of twenty Daemonettes. My opponent was themselves a Beastclaw player, so advanced quite cautiously in the first turn - unfortunately, not cautiously enough. They slightly over-extended with one Keeper, which took a charge from two Beast Riders and died before getting to swing, and I managed to get one Frostlord into each unit of Daemonettes and wipe them both out with minimal damage taken (I got quite lucky on saves and shrugs). I then won priority for turn 2, and charged all six monsters into the big unit of Marauders, killing about 25 of them just from impact hits! At the beginning of my opponent's second turn, all he had left was one Keeper of Secrets, and he conceded. Apparently the Beastclaws were far more deadly than he expected, and it's inspired him to get his own Beastclaw list finished. Third round was Forcing the Hand in Ghur. I matched against Lumineth, a Zaitrec list with Teclis and lots of Auralan infantry, which had performed very well in earlier rounds. However, it had almost no answer to my monsters. We shrugged off most of the incoming fire from the Sentinels and healed up the damage with the Mawpot and the Huskard, then hit their front line of Wardens at the bottom of turn 2, wiping them out. When I won priority on turn 3 my opponent immediately conceded - my monsters were barely damaged, he'd lost all his melee troops, and I was about to crash into his Sentinels and take all his objectives, leaving him no way to score. My take-aways from the day: The monster mash list is absolutely brutal. It's incredibly fast, and if it gets a few charges off it will hit the opposing army so hard that it's difficult to recover. If it gets a double turn, it's pretty much immediately game over. However, it's not unbeatable. It's weakest against lists with a similar game plan - hit fast, hit hard - but it can be bogged down and contained if you can throw enough survivable chaff at it. It's also somewhat vulnerable to hostile crippling magic, although you've generally got enough serious threats that your opponent can't deal with them all. I'm not actually sure that the all-monster list is better than the Eurlbad version. The Mournfangs would have been really great for screening against the Sylvaneth charge, for example, and still inflicting some damage with their Ironfists in return. The extra Command Point, artefact and mortal wounds would also have been really nice. On the other hand, the Stonehorns are faster and their charges are just so devastating... Watch out for those trees!

I've been including the Huskard Priest in my lists, and honestly he's still pretty underwhelming at 300 points. Making a list without a Frostlord in it isn't totally crazy, but you are giving up by far the best unit in the book. As long as you're happy with a "softer" list and aren't trying to win any tournaments, you should totally be able to have fun with it. If you put a Huskard on Stonehorn in, you could also take a Eurlbad battalion - it's a significant upgrade for all your Mournfangs.

Sure, of course. But the concept of Core doesn't restructure anything, it's just another means of referring to certain units. It's literally just another keyword, like all the keywords we already have.

Yes! The underpeople need a Gnoblord.

Yeah, not really. Scaly Skin is really rough for Ogors to deal with. The main thing you can do is avoid 2-damage weapons, which lose 50% of their effectiveness (while 3-damage weapons only lose 33%, etc). Also focus on all the ways you can deal mortal wounds instead of traditional damage. That, and take some solace in the fact that at least the Scaly ones can't teleport or summon more lizards! Seraphon are a really strong army in general.

That plate fits the Beastclaw Raider aesthetic exactly - to the point that I had to double-check it wasn't one of the existing Stonehorn/Thundertusk shoulder plates. I'll concede that it's almost certainly a Behemat thing, but in my heart I dare to dream of new Raider models.

Yeah, I'd say Flying High doesn't count as a move, and you can't disembark after it even in an Iron Sky Attack Squadron. The bit that convinced me of this is the difference in wording between the Flying Transport rule (emphasis mine): Units cannot join or leave this model’s garrison if it has made a move or flown high in the same phase (they can join or leave before it does so). And the Bold Privateers rule: ARKANAUT COMPANY units from this battalion can leave an ARKANAUT FRIGATE from the same battalion either before or after it has moved. Flying Transport makes a clear distinction between moving and flying high. Bold Privateers only mentions moving, so we have to assume it does not apply after flying high.

Nah, just a fact. My "claim" was that the thread was an open question on the topic. "Better" is completely subjective too, subject to personal preference. I think tea is better than coffee. You might think coffee is better than tea. Those are both opinions, and neither is right or wrong. If you get upset about people stating their opinions as objective facts then you're just failing to understand context, and how casual conversation works. Making "arguments" is for high school debating. This is the real world, none of that stuff actually matters. People don't have to be consistent, or even coherent, in order for you or I to respect their opinions. We're having a conversation here, not a debate. That's a super cool model. Why not lead with that, rather than going off about semantics? That's a perfect example of the kind of thing that would enhance the game for me.

There is no such "right". Nobody in this discussion has the power or the responsibility to make GW's decisions for them. All they're doing is voicing their opinions. Other people's opinions, even if they're different from your own, are not threats to your wellbeing. They shouldn't scare you, and if they do, you should make the effort to figure out why. You don't need to shout them down, especially in a thread which is for the express purpose of voicing those opinions. If you want to make another thread on the topic of "Cheesecake Khainites are awesome and I want them to wear even fewer clothes", then you're free to do so, and you'd probably find people who agree with you.

Yes, your problems with specific phrasing are well-documented in this thread. What we're trying to get you to do is get over the semantics and engage with the sentiment. All standards are arbitrary. All meaning is subjective. However it's phrased, what people generally on this thread are saying is that they would feel happier if GW added more women to their games. If you choose to see that as a moral judgement, that's on you. I'll try a different phrasing, see if that works for you: Which armies (if any) would you be happy to have women added to, and in what roles? Which armies or roles would you be angry or sad to see women added? I'm not talking about "people", I'm asking about you personally, and your own feelings on representation. That's where the interesting conversations happen, not in semantics.

You seem to be having some kind of allergic reaction to the term "underrepresented". There's no "ratio" of representation that is objectively "correct". You just have to ask yourself whether you're satisfied with the diversity currently represented in the game. Personally, I would like to see more - hence, for me, women feel underrepresented. The yardstick against which it can be measured is whether or not I feel it's enough. You have your own such yardstick, and you seem to have chosen to calibrate it based on your knowledge of military history, but that's simply your subjective choice. Other people are free to make different choices which are no more or less correct, but will cause them to feel differently. Rather than derailing by endlessly and pointlessly arguing the semantics of the statement "Women are underrepresented", perhaps you could engage with the topic of the thread, which is that Games Workshop could do better at representing women in its games. Do you agree with that? If so, where would you particularly like to see those improvements made?

I mean, I have three Battleline choices in my current army. They are a single model each. If you don't want to play a horde army, there are non-horde options available. I think the distinction should be more focused on generalist vs specialist. "Core" should be your resilient generalists, providing baseline value in any situation (by soaking damage, holding objectives, etc). "Elites" should be your specialists, providing a niche strength weighed up against a consequent weakness. An "elite" choice shouldn't just do the same thing as your "core" units but better in every way, because if they do that they should be your core units. You could build a whole army out of specialist choices if you wanted (a "skew" list), but if you ran up against a more "balanced" army (with more generalists) they should be able to counter-play your specialist units in some way and exploit their weaknesses. You would have to hope that your specialists' strength in their narrow focus was enough to overcome the enemy forces before they were able to use your army's flaws against it. As an example, an army that leaned heavily into shooting might be extremely vulnerable to morale, or too fragile to exert much board control.

I strongly agree with those who've opined that Battleline units should have a reason to be taken beyond simply being Battleline (the "vegetables" or "tax" you pay to field the units you actually want). Your "core" units should be the bulk of your army because they provide solid all-round value, not because they're a mandatory choice. Specialised units should be rare because they're taken to fulfil specific niche purposes with diminishing returns. If you can build an army out of purely "elite" units that is more effective than a similar army which includes "core" choices, then that's an internal balance problem which should be corrected. The concept of Battleline doesn't need to exist.

But we're not talking about what's mandated in tournament rules, as far as I'm aware. We're talking about what information it's reasonable and sensible to give your opponent within the spirit of good sportsmanship. What you have to give your opponent is written down in black and white, but what you seem to be saying is that there is no reason to give your opponent any information that you're not specifically forced to. I guess I'm just coming at the question from completely the opposite direction: There's no reason not to give your opponent any information you have available. If they choose not to use it, or they don't understand it, fine - at least you made an attempt.

Just checking that I'm understanding what you're saying. The options you're offering your opponent are either: No information whatsoever except the names of units and upgrades; or Your entire Battletome, which you won't allow them the time to read. Is that right?

Ah, this must be why the Kharadrons have forsaken hammers almost entirely, in favour of saws and pikes...

Where were the Duardin when Sigmar took the Hammer as his personal symbol? When he blazoned it across the pauldrons and shields of every one of his Eternals? When he so thoroughly incorporated it into his brand that the Orruks refer to him as the Hammer God? Aim your hammer-related ire at Sigmar first, if you are not too cowardly. Or be honest that your grudge against the Aelves is mere racism, with a thin veneer of hammer-indignance to lend it an air of legitimacy. Hammers do not belong to the Duardin in this Age.

I'm a bit baffled by this. Are you saying that the player who wants AoS Reminders-style info on your army should print out their own reminder sheets for every other army at the tournament, on the off-chance they get matched up against them? "Bringing it yourself" doesn't seem at all practical. Just printing off two copies of your own AoS Reminders sheet and handing one to your opponent seems way more reasonable.

We don't know the details of their biology, but that doesn't matter. Gender is a social construct, not a function of sexual organs. Orruks are very strongly male-gendered in their presentation. Goblins somewhat less so, but still don't use female pronouns or titles.

The unit name is Dreadscythe Harridans, no? That's a strongly gendered term.

I don't believe that adding more warscrolls actually helps with choice. Deepkin have more than nine warscrolls to choose from, but every list I've played against is just eels. FEC have more than nine too, but all I've played against is Terrorgheists. Stormcast have nine gazillion warscrolls, but you wouldn't know it to see them on the table. Diversity of choices comes primarily from internal balance. The only way you can have a fair choice is between two equally-valid options - otherwise, you've simply got a good choice and a bad choice, and that's not actually a choice at all. The more choices available to an army, the harder it is to internally balance that book. I'm not saying nine is the magic number by any means, but I actually do think it's reasonable to say that each army should have the minimum number of warscrolls required to make all the playstyles that army is intended to support properly viable and balanced. If you want to add more units to an army, they should unlock a clear and balanced alternate playstyle for that army. They shouldn't replace or supersede the army's existing units within their existing playstyles. Personally, I would prefer to see entirely new armies with limited but meaningful choices than expansion waves for existing armies. Those existing armies should already have a clear design and function - and if they don't, then more units isn't going to fix it! More armies in the game translates to more variety far more effectively than more units in each army.