Kadeton

I don't really understand why this is a problem? I can't think when I last saw an army that used more than nine unique warscrolls in the same list. Heck, the current list I'm running only uses three. Small, coherent factions with good internal balance and a strong core concept are much better than sprawling factions with dozens of options, almost all of which are garbage, in my opinion.

As you say, I don't think there are any hard-and-fast rules about it. There's nothing to base a strong argument on either way. The intent seems to be that a "musician" is a distinct model from a "standard bearer" or "champion", with its own rules. This is circumstantially supported by the way the kits are pictured when built, with separate command models. Best to check with your TO (or your opponent) beforehand. Or, just build them the normal way and avoid any arguments.

I played my six-monster list against Seraphon last week - the Beastclaws proved very oppressive for my opponent, locking him into his deployment zone for the whole game and hogging the objectives. Lord Kroak managed to nuke three of the six off the board, but was still overwhelmed by turn 4. I also played against Kharadrons last night, where the Stonehorns managed to tank a double-turn of shooting from an Ironclad, Frigate, Khemist, Gunhaulers, Thunderers, Skywardens, Endrinriggers and an Endrinmaster. They still had enough oomph left to knock all the boats out of the sky and trample everyone. Really enjoying the Monster Mash so far!

I can't really see Bloodgullet being worth it when you're not running any Butchers - you lose out on half their faction abilities! The Splatter-cleaver is unarguably awesome, but don't ignore the Brand of the Svard either, it's a big damage boost for any Stonehorn Hero. Boulderhead is where it's at, IMO.

Do Beastclaw Raiders count? They're all riding stuff, fun to play and decently powerful.

During each turn of the game, you can use the ability to roll once. If your opponent generates more than one command point, you can still only roll once.

I don't think "That Guy" labels are actually very helpful in that situation. It's too black-and-white - either you were that guy and completely in the wrong, or you weren't and you were completely in the right. Neither judgement actually helps. Instead, I'd think about it like this: Did your game plan rely only on the strength of that interaction, or did it also rely on your opponent failing to understand how it worked? If you'd explained the interaction in full at the start, would your opponent have won instead? And even if it meant that the outcome of the game was less certain, would you have enjoyed the game more (and felt less guilty afterwards) if you'd been open and honest? This stuff is all pretty subjective. Personally, I would put 'not feeling guilty' ahead of 'winning a game'. Some people don't mind feeling a little bad if it gets them the win, and others wouldn't even feel guilty in that situation. Nobody's right or wrong, it's more about discovering what works for you, and what's needed to keep your play group healthy.

This is a perspective I find interesting, but hard to understand. It also seems to be the only point of real difference among the opinions people have expressed here - all the other stuff seems to be supported by everyone, which is really nice to see. There are two main things that make the above idea seem strange to me: No "game plan" for any army in this game is sufficiently complex that it can't be immediately deduced, based on your army list, by someone who knows what they're doing. The combos and synergies are obvious. The only reason your opponent wouldn't be aware of them is if they lack the required in-depth knowledge of the details of your army - i.e. they are inexperienced. In that case, I'd rather warn them of what's coming so they aren't surprised and upset when it happens, because that's no fun for anyone. If I beat someone because they never had a chance to disrupt my game plan (because they weren't aware of what I was trying to do, and didn't see it coming) then I haven't learned anything. I already know how the plan is supposed to work when it goes off without a hitch - what I need to learn, through gameplay, is how to keep the plan on track while my opponent is actively resisting it. So that's where the fun and the experience come into the equation for me, and it leads me to reveal my army's game plan in advance. I'm not afraid of "giving the game away" if it leads to a more enjoyable and engaging game for both of us, and in my experience it does. (I wonder if this is partly a function of the armies people normally play? I'm running Beastclaws, and an unprepared opponent will almost always get hit so much harder and faster than they could have anticipated that the game is over on turn 2, especially if I get a double turn. It's also a dead-simple game plan, so there's not that much to reveal, or to disrupt. I can imagine if I were running a more subtle army with crucial but fragile key synergistic elements, then I'd be a lot more reluctant to tell my opponent "Kill this squishy guy here and I'll lose, don't kill him and you're dead." But I hate using 'brittle' strategies that can be so easily foiled, where you have to hope your opponent doesn't stop you.)

Yeah, I almost always force my opponent to take first turn if I can. Either they step up into easy range for a massive Stonehorn charge, or they waste a turn (20% of their entire game!) cowering in their deployment zone. Plus, if you're lucky enough to get the 1-2 double turn as BCR that will often be game over on the spot. It's only really against armies that can do a reliable Turn 1 alpha strike (e.g. Kharadrons) that I prefer to try to rush them first. Either way I'd rather be in control of that choice if possible! Six drops is still more or less middle-of-the-pack - I should still get to choose the initial turn order in plenty of matchups. And there are a few one- and two-drop armies around these days, against whom it wouldn't matter either way. The tournament I'll be playing is also a team tournament, so there's the opportunity to tweak the matchups somewhat and hopefully avoid lists that the monsters will struggle against.

Bear in mind that 40K's Psychic Awakening books (which seem to be the exact same 'targeted faction boosts before the new edition' idea as the Broken Realms will be for AoS) did include new versions of existing warscrolls across a whole range of armies. We'll just have to wait and see.

That's correct - applying Vanhel's Danse Macabre twice to the same unit will have no additional effect. However, Locus of Shyish lets you choose a different target for the duplicated spell effect, so on a 9+ the Death player could choose two units to both receive the buff. Edit: El Syf makes an excellent point. Locus of Shyish only applies to spells cast from the Lore of the Deathmages or the Lore of the Vampires, and cannot affect Vanhel's Danse Macabre.

I always do my best to avoid gotcha moments - I will give my opponent a rundown of my units and how they work before the game, and warn them if they're about to make an obvious mistake (not a poor tactical decision, but an error clearly stemming from ignorance of the circumstances). I expect them to do the same, and will mark them down on sportsmanship if they don't. In general, it's a lot safer to build your strategy around the assumption that your opponent is going to know what to expect from you. If you plan to win by a gotcha, but your opponent sees it coming, then you've only out-played yourself. Given that I'm already assuming that my opponent won't be surprised, it's a small step from there to simply ensuring that they won't be.

Epic 40,000/Armageddon was a game with mechanics way ahead of its time. It covered a vast range of military assets (infantry, light vehicles, tanks, super-heavies, titans, aircraft and even orbital spacecraft) and managed to give them all unique and vital battlefield roles. It had alternating activations, which GW still can't seem to figure out at the 40K/AoS scale. It had a tactically engaging morale mechanic (blast markers, mentioned earlier in the thread) which managed to simultaneously drive interesting gameplay and enhance the look of the battlefield. It still had flaws and could have done with more polishing over a few editions, but the core gameplay was a seriously brilliant piece of design.

Yeah, pretty much. The difference is that the BCR's monster trucks are better.

I've got a local tournament coming up, taking BCR as usual. My normal list has two FLoSHs, a HoSH, SH Riders, 4x Mournfangs, 2x Mournfangs and a Eurlbad. However, with the GHB points changes I've realised I can now go ALL MONSTERS ALL THE TIME: Frostlord on Stonehorn (General, Lord of Beasts, Brand of the Svard, Metalcruncher) Frostlord on Stonehorn (Black Clatterhorn) Huskard on Thundertusk (Alvagr Ancient) Stonehorn Beastriders x3 There's some interesting trade-offs, I think. The monster list has fewer wounds overall. In not taking the Eurlbad, I give up the additional mortal wounds, an artefact, and a command point, and the army is six drops instead of three so I'll have less control over who gets first turn. However, the list is arguably more resilient, given a greater proportion has 5+ shrugs and the HoTT can heal. The monsters hit harder, and the HoTT can give out +1 to wound. I won't miss the artefact much, since I can't use the Malign Portents ones any more. It's pretty efficient on command point usage anyway with Bellowing Voice. Plus, I can soften up my opponents a bit (or clear out some screens) with Frost-Wreathed Ice and Pulverising Hailstorm, as well as sniping out heroes with four Blood Vultures. And the monsters are actually significantly better at holding objectives. Anyway, really looking forward to playing this list. The previous version was already a joy to take to tournaments - easy to transport, super quick to play, hits like a brick to the face - and this new version seems like that, only more so. Thoughts?

I feel like you've answered your own question there. Command traits and artefacts have specific exceptions that prevent them from affecting mounts unless noted in their rules. Battalion abilities have no such exception.

If I'm honest, I'd do away with the Grand Alliances altogether. They were a necessary stopgap when army books were scarce, but they've since gone past irrelevant and into the realm of counter-productive. Trying to cling to unifying themes or roles for arbitrary collections of unique and disparate forces (many of whom can't even ally with each other!) actively hinders the growth of those forces beyond the original scope of their Allegiance.

Yeah, ideologically they've been constructed somewhat differently, but that's mainly by writer fiat. Ogors are a pretty good example of this - they've been given (IMO fairly tenuous) ties to Gorkamorka, but GW could just as easily have decided that they were a Chaos faction instead, and written their fluff appropriately. Similarly, the Beastmen have been granted to Chaos for historical continuity, but it would be easy to re-write them as a Destruction faction without changing any of their game elements. Skaven could similarly be re-fluffed very easily to join Destruction, as they're very much on the fringes of Chaos as it is. Both allegiances are positioned using tropes of rampaging hordes, might-is-right leadership, and wild monsters. They exist to provide existential threats for the forces of Order to oppose - that's more the level I'm thinking of when I say they're too similar. You can layer nuance on top of that to give a sense of specific differences in agenda, but they still play the same role in the overall story.

I think this cuts right to the heart of the Destruction faction's identity problems. Tribes of human barbarians already have a strong presence in the game - where are they? Chaos. And that's the fundamental issue with Destruction, in my opinion. They're the collection of leftover armies that thematically would fit right in to the Chaos allegiance except for the fact that fluff-wise, they don't worship the right gods. That and the strong tendency towards green skin are the only meaningful distinctions, and it leaves the faction as a kind of afterthought in the ongoing narrative. If all the Destruction armies simply became "unaligned" and kept their current ally options, would there be any appreciable difference?

Yeah, totally. The objectives in the game are really neither of these things. "Holding" a bridge is something that only matters in potential until somebody else tries to cross it. Our objectives aren't about access, because they contribute to a strategic victory whether or not anyone is actually using that access (and the areas where your forces can and can't move freely are clearly delineated in other ways, such as engagement range). That doesn't make sense in the real world. They're also not like a Book of Doom, because you could just pick that up and run off with it. Really, they're a big circle on the ground with a sign that says "Stand here to win", which aren't a common thing in real battles. AoS objectives are very much about game, and not so much narrative. I think there's enough of a distinction that it still matters. Monsters degrade, but they don't degrade nearly as much as units. Some monsters barely reduce in effectiveness when they take damage, and many have access to command abilities that let them fight at full effectiveness regardless of their current wounds. Degrading profiles is much more about making the opponent feel like their attacks are having some impact, which can otherwise be demoralising and not fun. Monsters can (and in my opinion should) still be wrecking balls, even if their profiles degrade. But most of them are too cheap, and therefore too weak. A Ghorgon only costs what, 160 points? Of course it sucks! Make it 300+ points and give it a profile to match, and it will rip infantry apart like it's supposed to. A Frostlord on Stonehorn (at 400 points) will annihilate pretty much any unit you put them into, as well they should - it doesn't matter that they get weaker when they take damage, they feel like a proper monster on the table because they have so much impact. That's what I'd like to see for other monsters too.

This depends on what is meant by "controlling the room", which is where the objective abstraction becomes a bit tricky to translate into real life. But, for example, if your purpose for being in the lounge room was to turn on the TV, one of you could distract the tiger while the other one grabbed the remote - mission accomplished. That's one way of thinking about what control means in real terms, and it's where numbers are more helpful than individual power. The tiger doesn't take control of the room off you just by walking in. It takes control by killing both of you. That's how monsters should be taking objectives off hordes. The problem is that most monsters in the game have pretty anaemic stats and can't actually rip through a horde like they should. Making them better at holding objectives doesn't address that problem.

I'd really prefer to see them moving away from points updates in the GHB entirely. The Errata updates are honestly way more convenient. Then the GHB could focus entirely on updates to the Three Ways to Play, giving new narrative stuff like the sky battles, and defining the rules and missions for competitive play for that year.

You've got the sequencing a bit off, I believe. Scaly Skin reduces the number of wounds allocated to the unit from each wounding hit by 1, to a minimum of 1. This happens after saves, during wound allocation. So in your first two examples, Scaly Skin does nothing. Your opponent rolls their attack and wound rolls as normal, you roll your saves as normal, and each failed save means 1 wound is allocated to the unit. Since the attacks only deal 1 damage, Scaly Skin doesn't help. In your last example, Scaly Skin is awesome. Your opponent rolls their attack and wound rolls as normal, you roll your saves as normal. Normally, each failed save would mean 3 wounds were allocated to the unit, but because of Scaly Skin, that's reduced by one - each failed save means only 2 wounds are allocated. Effectively, think of it as reducing the damage characteristic of every attacking weapon by 1, to a minimum of 1. Then just do everything (hits, wounds, saves) as you normally would.

I genuinely can't imagine why anyone would buy the Bonegrinder from this point on, Forgeworld or Citadel. It's an awkward, gangly, monkey-faced trash fire that looks like it was sculpted by a child when it's standing next to that amazing mega-gargant kit. I've no doubt it's someone's aesthetic, but I just can't imagine putting them on the same table.

The "SLAANESH GREATER DAEMONS only" restriction shouldn't affect the Lord of Change's ability to cast the spell, simply because that restriction is on the spell lore (Forbidden Sorceries of Slaanesh). It's used to restrict which wizards in a Slaanesh army can choose spells from that lore, not whether or not they can be cast - that would need to be specified in the spell description. (Note that whenever an army has access to multiple spell lores, those will generally have similar list-based restrictions, e.g. the Lore of Pain and Pleasure is "MORTAL SLAANESH WIZARDS only", the Lore of Gutmagic is "BUTCHER only", the Lore of Dark Storms is "THUNDERSCORN WIZARD only", and so on. A Lord of Change doesn't match any of those, but they should still be able to cast those spells if they manage to steal them.) However, Progeny of Damnation is perhaps a poor choice of example, since its effect can only apply to a friendly DAEMON HEDONITE HERO. So unless you had both a Lord of Change and a Slaaneshi daemon hero in the same army, you'd have nobody to target with it.