Kadeton

A Frostlord on Stonehorn is a strong inclusion in any Ogor list, regardless of what else you run. They love having the support of a wizard, but they don't really need any specific army synergies to do their thing. Just be careful - the more Beastclaw stuff you include, the more you'll realise that Beastclaws are way more fun than Gutbusters, and you'll end up with a full Beastclaw army before you know what's happened.

I mean... Ishlaenn Guard were doing the 2+ unrendable save thing way before everyone else jumped on the bandwagon. They don't need or even benefit from save stacking. That's kind of funny. I'd say from the games I've played so far, save stacking was almost exclusively relevant when used to bring a unit to a 2+ save and ignore some rend, when facing an overwhelming amount of incoming attacks. I've applied single +1 save bonuses to units with 4+ saves, but I can't recall an instance where I've stacked save bonuses on such a unit. There's usually just no point - the value you get from it doesn't justify the opportunity cost of being able to buff a second unit. I would prefer it if we had different defensive mechanics that would allow you to make just about any unit unkillable for a phase if you stacked enough bonuses on it. Unfortunately, the mechanic we have only allows you to do this for units with a base 3+ (or 2+) save, as that's the only time the efficiency boost is large enough to matter.

Yes, but armies being outdated is not supporting evidence for both. One model can tie up your whole army? I do agree that mass save buffs are a bad idea. Defensive tech needs to be strictly limited in order to create meaningful choices. Stuff like the Akhelian Leviadon's aura is just poor design. Yeah, I'm with you on that. Buffing multiple frontline units to un-rendable levels is not good for the game. Anything that creates no-brainer choices is anathema to satisfying tactical gameplay. (I'd still separate the concepts, though. Save stacking is fine. Abilities that provide save bonuses to multiple units are flawed.)

I played Ogor Mawtribes (Beastclaw Raiders in all but name) - definitely not a newer battletome, but one that was lucky enough to wind up very well suited to the new edition. We don't remove support pieces from afar, we prefer to do it up close and personal and with extreme prejudice. And I totally agree: there are a whole bunch of battletomes that are currently not competitively viable. That was the first thing I stated in my first post, and I think it sucks. But if all the previous edition's battletomes were just as viable in the new edition as the old one, I'd personally view that as a huge problem - it would indicate that nothing of significance had changed. Changing mechanics to improve the game will always end up disadvantaging factions that don't yet have the ability to fully engage with the new system. The fact that some of those armies won't receive their 3rd Ed update for some time only supports the argument that GW's release model is bad, not that save stacking is. Most other companies would endeavour to update all their rosters as quickly as possible after an edition change. I suppose I should really put a pile of caveats around my core statement: In a game between armies of roughly equal strength, with players who understand and embrace the tactical considerations, save stacking enhances the game... but plenty of other limited-use defensive mechanics could have done the same job, or better, this just happens to be the one we got.

It's the wrong question, IMO. The real question is: if you have a stack of saves available, why is your opponent's entire KO fleet still shooting at Archaon? How often does it happen that a whole KO fleet continues shooting at Archaon through a stack of save bonuses? Quite often. A lot of players are still stuck in the "focus fire until dead" mentality, which was my entire point. How often do those players then go on to complain that save stacking is broken, rather than recognising that they could have made different choices? Quite often. Because dealing with those lynchpin models is more challenging than just blowing units with poor saves off the board. You need a game plan that doesn't rely on killing them, which requires that people change their long-established wargaming habits. A lot of people are struggling to adapt... which, again, was my point. The problem with the statistics is that they don't tell you anything about tactical play, they just give army composition (or often, only the faction). We don't know how each players' resources were used turn-by-turn. Archaon lists are definitely strong, but it's impossible to say from the stats how much of that 60%+ winrate is strength on paper versus tactical nous. There's no data. I can give anecdotes instead, if that helps? I went to a tournament on the 30th of October, and played against a Slaves to Darkness list with Archaon in Feral Foray. It was easily the most intense, hard-fought games I've ever played - it's a powerful army, and was piloted by a skilled player. Use of defensive resources was extremely important: I had to carefully sacrifice units and spend resources to keep Archaon busy while dealing with the rest of my opponent's army. Only after his support was eroded and his own defensive buffs spent and unavailable did I seize the opportunity to take him out (on turn 4). My opponent made sure to keep defensive buffs available for Archaon as much as possible, but he also wasn't brainlessly buffing him when it wasn't needed and would use those resources elsewhere when he knew it was safe to do so. However, I do think that the emphasis on keeping a "safety net" for Archaon made him more hesitant to buff other units, and that eventually gave me the edge I needed to scrape out the win (it was something like 29 to 27 VP in the final tally). If I'd just charged in against a fully-buffed Archaon I would have lost the game, no question. The list is way too strong for that. But recognising that, and having to work out how to survive and win without just taking Archaon off the table right away, led to the most enjoyable game of AoS I've ever played. Hence my position: save stacking makes the game more interesting.

If the game was decided by who could buff their big monster the most, then there wouldn't be much to it. Fortunately, big monsters don't win games by themselves. What makes save stacking more tactically interesting? You have multiple decision points on when and where to do it, and you can use these to respond to your opponent to foil their plans for the turn. Without save stacking: You suspect your opponent is going to launch an attack against your centrepiece model this turn. They move into position, and then launch their attack. The only thing you can do is hope for the best, and watch the model die. Your opponent made a single tactical decision (kill that dude) and you had no way to affect the outcome of that choice. With save stacking: You suspect your opponent is going to launch an attack against your centrepiece model this turn. Do you use Finest Hour? You decide it's worth it to protect that model for a turn. Does your opponent change their plan and go for a different target, or do they still think they can kill your model? They move into position to threaten multiple units, so you're not sure what they're going to do. One of their units targets your centrepiece. Do you use All-Out Defence right away, or do you need it to help keep another unit alive? Have you got enough CP spare? You want to keep that model safe, so you go for it. Does your opponent keep going for that target now that it's heavily defended, or do they switch? Oh no, you popped it too early, and you've run out of ways to defend the rest of your army. Both you and your opponent made several decisions on how to allocate the resources available to influence the outcome. None of those resources are infinite, and they all have trade-offs for their use. That decision-making is where the engaging gameplay happens. Stacking saves on one monster hero isn't tactically brilliant. It's so easy to beat people who mindlessly do this. The bit that requires good tactical play is understanding the right time and the right target to apply the available save buffs to. If your opponent puts every attack they can muster into one target and you stack all your save bonuses on it, congratulations - your opponent made several terrible decisions and you successfully punished them for it. If you stack every save bonus you have on one model and your opponent turns around and wipes out your objective holders and support heroes instead, uh oh - you made bad decisions and now you're the one getting punished. This doesn't have to involve save stacking, of course - the important thing is having a selection of limited defensive resources that can be deployed proactively and/or reactively. 3rd Ed's design does this with save stacking, but any other mechanic would be fine as long as the fundamental outcome is preserved: when your opponent says "I'm gonna kill that dude," you can muster enough defensive resources to force them to reconsider.

The more games I play of 3rd Ed, the more I think the implementation of save stacking was a good idea. Let's get this out of the way first: Yes, there are armies which really struggle under the new rules, as there always are during edition changes, and it sucks that their only recourse is to wait for a new battletome. That's GW's release model, and the only real solution is to pressure them to adopt a better one. But! For those armies that are currently viable in the new edition, save stacking really separates players with an adaptable tactical approach from those with a more rigid, inflexible mindset. Classical wargaming wisdom was always to pick the most valuable target and focus fire on it until dead, and this worked because defences were largely fixed. Now we have a bunch of adaptable defences (primarily Finest Hour and All-Out Defence) that can be deployed to alter the tactical situation, and the old staple of focus fire no longer works. That's where I see most of the complaints about save stacking occurring over the board - someone throws everything they have at a hard target with multiple defensive buffs and it doesn't die. They were playing "correctly" - using the well-worn tried-and-true tactic of focusing fire - and it didn't work, therefore the game is broken. The reality is that they're stuck in an outdated mode of thinking and as a result they made a horrible tactical blunder. The fundamental thing that makes these mechanics work, and makes the game more interesting, is that they're limited; good luck getting +2-3 to saves on more than one unit. Every defensive ability that gets stacked on that big monster hero is a defence that's now denied to every other unit in their army. Bait them out, then switch. Attack their weak points, not their strengths! Figure out a game plan that carries you to victory without killing Archaon, or Nagash, or whoever their big centrepiece is. That's the tactical puzzle that makes the game an engaging challenge, not "How many dice do I need to roll to win?"

In my relatively limited experience with Kragnos so far, I'd say the double Frostlord list is tougher and more reliable, better at capturing objectives, and generally more competitive. Kragnos is pretty fun when he goes off, though!

Objectivity is not relevant or useful here, since we're talking about the human experience of playing the game. What you should be looking for is broad trends and consensus. This could be indicated by sales figures in the primary and secondary markets, army composition statistics at events, and direct player feedback. In the broadest possible sense, a unit that is popular is "good" and one that is unpopular is "bad", because the relative usage of any given unit is the natural expression of its perceived value among the player community. Find the over-used and under-used outliers, and you've got your set of warscrolls that need attention and adjustment.

I took my Beastclaws to a three-round team tournament on Saturday. Unfortunately we only managed 6th (out of 8 teams) overall, but I went 3-0 in my games so I figured I should talk a bit about the experience. The list was a little different from my usual: Allegiance: Ogor Mawtribes - Mawtribe: Bloodgullet - Mortal Realm: Ghur - Grand Strategy: Beast Master - Triumphs: Inspired Leaders Frostlord on Stonehorn (430)* - General - Command Trait: Nice Drop of the Red Stuff! Frostlord on Stonehorn (430) - Artefact: Splatter-cleaver - Mount Trait: Metalcruncher Huskard on Thundertusk (335) - Blood Vulture - Artefact: Amulet of Destiny (Universal Artefact) - Universal Prayer Scripture: Curse Butcher (135)* - Cleaver - Bloodgullet 2nd Spell: Ribcracker - Lore of Gutmagic: Molten Entrails Hrothgorn (170)* Battleline 2 x Mournfang Pack (160)** - Gargant Hackers 2 x Mournfang Pack (160)** - Gargant Hackers 2 x Mournfang Pack (160)** - Culling Clubs or Prey Hackers with Iron Fists Units 3 x Hrothgorn's Mantrappers (0)* Core Battalions *Warlord **Hunters of the Heartlands Total: 1980 / 2000 Bloodgullet instead of Boulderhead was a big change, and I missed having the additional mount traits (especially Alvagr Ancient on the Thundertusk). I was also pretty disappointed by the Splatter-cleaver! It had worked out well in testing but it just seemed to roll poorly all day and somehow never provided any meaningful healing. On the other hand, the Butcher made an excellent contribution just by putting Arcane Shield on a Frostlord every turn (sometimes Molten Entrails as well), occasionally shutting down an enemy spell, and babysitting the Mawpot so it could be used at the right time. I also wasn't expecting how useful the Nice Drop of the Red Stuff command trait would be for sneaky pile-in shenanigans. Having the little heroes to fill out the Warlord battalion was also really valuable - I hope that we eventually get a battalion we can fill out with mounted Beastclaw heroes that grants Magnificent. The first game was First Blood against Idoneth Deepkin, a classic eel-spam list that the player freely admitted hadn't really been updated for 3rd Ed: Volturnos, a Soulscryer, 2x3 Ishlaen Guard, 3x3 Morrsarr Guard, 2 Allopexes and a Leviadon. He pushed his tough eels out to take objectives and box in my army, with everything else following up as a second wave. The Beastclaws recaptured all three objectives, killed the first wave of eels mainly just with mortal wounds (snowballs and charge damage), and Nice Drop gave them the mobility to crash through into part of the second wave, which the opponent hadn't expected. He declared Bring It Down on a Frostlord and then didn't manage to kill him with all three units of Morrsarr, and from there the whole momentum of the Idoneth attack stalled and the Raiders chowed down. This felt close to an unwinnable matchup for my opponent, and the 29-6 result was a nice boost to the team's scores. Second game was Survival of the Fittest against Kharadron Overlords. He brought a Khemist and Navigator, an Ironclad, three Gunhaulers, 3x10 Arkanauts, and Gotrek. I felt confident going in - I've played similar match-ups against KO before, and they don't have the damage to deal with Beastclaws. Except... the Ironclad dropped down behind my General and he just absolutely flubbed his 3+ save rolls and died like a chump, it didn't even take all the Ironclad's firepower. I've seen him tank the shooting of an entire KO army and then heal back up to full, but he was clearly having an off day. Then the Gunhauler drill cannons spiked their mortal wound rolls and killed my Butcher out of nowhere, and suddenly everything was going very badly for me. Fortunately, it was now my opponent's turn to get overconfident - he dropped the Ironclad near my other Frostlord hoping for a repeat performance, but this time the normal thing happened instead: all the guns barely tickled the Stonehorn, the Frostlord smashed the ship out of the sky and stomped everybody on board into paste, and we scored a bunch of VP in the process. Gotrek was far too slow to catch anybody important with Hrothgorn and the Mantrappers running interference. A 30-25 win at the end, and I was very happy to have pulled it back. Third game was Feral Foray against Slaves to Darkness running Archaon, Be'lakor, a Chaos Lord, one unit of Varanguard, a Warshrine, two units of Iron Golems and the Untamed Beasts. This was one of the longest and most fun games I've played with Beastclaws, with tons of dramatic swings and cunning tactical maneuvers, unexpected heroism (the Huskard tanked Archaon by himself for two full turns like an absolute champ) and a great sideline of comedy as Hrothgorn's gnoblars and the Untamed Beasts had a sideline slap-fight over an objective that dragged out for several turns with no losses on either side. Archaon slew one Frostlord early, then got beaten down by the other. Be'lakor made a clutch play for one of my objectives, but then was hunted down as my surviving Frostlord's second course. It was incredibly close in the end - I pulled 2 VP ahead in the final reckoning because I could score my Grand Strategy and my opponent couldn't after Be'lakor died. Fantastic end to the day.

I'd never considered this as an option. It never sit well with me that the Daughters were an Order faction, but I couldn't figure out where I wanted them to be instead. Turns out, it's Death! I love this idea. Idoneth have the exact same motivation to war as Ogors, except that they need souls instead of food. Change my mind.

More unpopular opinions: Development of The Old World is a waste of time and resources. Age of Sigmar is far better suited to the kind of rules that GW produces - sloppy and incoherent, but packed with individual flavour and focused on producing an unpredictable, cinematic experience. Rank-and-file fantasy warfare is already much better served by Kings of War than anything GW will ever produce. The AoS game designers actually do a great job, given the pressures and constraints placed on them by the needs of the marketing machine. Yes, that frequently includes egregious errors and oversights, a lack of internal consistency, poor internal and external balance, terrible proofing and editing, and many questionable design decisions. It's still remarkable that, given the way GW operates, things aren't much worse. All of those problems could be easily solved by adequate resourcing, and it's not the designers' fault that GW refuses to do so.

Sentinel spam by itself is fine, you can tank the damage. It's the Wind Spirits that really mess up the Beastclaws. Anything that blocks our movement but won't let us charge is really difficult to deal with.

All characters from the Warhammer Fantasy days should have been dropped entirely, leaving room for new characters to be created. Coming up with endless half-baked reasons why various people survived the death of the Old World and then just mucked about for tens of thousands of years totally undermines any effort to make the lore stand on its own merits. This is especially true for Ultimate Boomer god characters like Teclis and Nagash, and especially especially true for Sigmar becoming a proxy for the Emperor of Mankind. It's like they somehow utilised negative creativity. Kill them all and start again, and take Gotrek with you.

Controversial counter-opinion: Age of Sigmar has always been a skirmish game, just one where many of the people doing the skirmishing happen to be gods and monsters. The lore often describes actual armies - hundreds of thousands of troops waging war over vast battlefields. The actual games are like fifty dudes having a punch-up in a parking lot.

Controversial ones, huh? The impact of ranged weapons in AoS should be significantly reduced. If 40K has taught us anything, it's that two armies shooting at each other is incredibly dull. Close combat is where the drama and excitement of the game happens, and should always be the main focus. Army selection should be severely limited, with each force having ~10 unit choices or less. This would keep them thematic, focused, and visually and mechanically coherent. Instead of having a few armies each with a massive selection of units (most of which are terrible), it would be better to have a massive selection of thematic armies. As a starting point, take every subfaction from an existing battletome and split it into its own thematic list which doesn't share any units with any other subfaction. Allow them to ally or coalition with each other if you must. Edit: I had a third opinion here, but it was a bit too controversial.

Very impressed with that new Vampire Lord! I'm not too fond of the bald-headed vampire look in general, but she's making it work.

Fascinating topic, and an interesting discussion. For me, there needs to be a strong alignment between the amount of detail on the model and the amount of time and effort I feel justified putting into it. The Cursed City heroes are some of the most visually dense models I've worked on, but it felt exactly right because I'd already decided to put 10-15 hours into each one and really lavish attention on them. Out of the same box, the Ulfenwatch skeletons were models that I was going to batch paint and spend less than an hour on each, and their level of detail was similarly just right for that. While the amount of fine detail on the model is important, I think the individual painter's attitude towards the task has a lot more to do with whether it's "too much". For me, the secret when sitting down to paint something has been to try to pick a model that suits the mood I'm in at that moment - something simple if I'm painting to relax, or something more intricate if I feel like really getting stuck into a painting challenge. When I don't get that right, it's really noticeable; I'll get frustrated if the model is too much, and bored if it's not enough. It's been a real journey to get to the point where I can recognise that and say "This isn't what I need right now," put that model aside for the time being, and pick up something more suited to my mood. It helps (in a sense) that I've still got quite a variety of unpainted models to work with...

You know what I want to see in the next book? It's really petty, but I want the Beastclaw units to gain Gulping Bites, like all the Gutbusters units have. Currently it's like the Beastclaw culture has some formal code of conduct where it's considered impolite to bite people in combat. Giving equal-opportunity bites to all the Ogors would help to tie them together thematically.

I'm enjoying the way that this edition has made me re-think my tactics and my tournament list. I've rebuilt my army to focus more on survival and securing objectives, and my play focuses more on positioning rather than running headlong at the enemy and smashing them to pieces - or at least smashing at the right time against carefully chosen targets, rather than as soon as possible against whatever's in the way. The ability to actually keep tough models alive under intense and focused damage has really improved the game for me.

Material is probably the biggest consideration for me (obviously price is a factor too). HIPS plastic is just so far beyond resin and metal in terms of how nice it is to work with. Wyrd Miniatures (Malifaux) have been making better plastic models than GW for some years now.

What, the tactic where you have to get two units into your opponent's territory - you're spending 320 points for that? Sir, let me introduce you to my good friend Hrothgorn...

I guess it's sort of counter-intuitive, but clubs are one of the best ways to overcome heavy armour. Armour is effective against blades and arrows because it distributes the (relatively small) force that would normally exert tremendous pressure via an edge or point over a larger area - a bludgeoning weapon already delivers its (relatively large) force over a large area, and armour does very little to mitigate the damage it does.

Based on those books, what kind of changes are you expecting? It will be interesting to see whether GW continues down the path of simplified/streamlined warscrolls with minimal special rules, or whether that's mainly a Stormcast thing as the "starter" army. Ogor warscrolls already aren't especially complex, for the most part. I'm really happy with where the Beastclaws are in the meta at the moment, so there's not much I'd like to see changed. But I certainly wouldn't be surprised by Mournfangs going to a minimum unit size of 4 (since that's what comes in the box, which seems to be the trend). I'd prefer if they also counted as more than two models for objectives, and got +1 when rolling for impact hits, but that's just wishlisting. It would also be nice if the Huskard on Stonehorn got something to make him a more worthwhile choice, but I also wouldn't be shocked if Frostlords got knocked down to a 4+ save.

... Huh. Yeah, interesting wording on that ability. You can apply the bonus attack in any combat phase, and it lasts until your next hero phase. So if you applied it to a unit in your own turn, your opponent's turn, and your opponent's double turn, by the end of that the unit would have +3 attacks to its melee weapons. (All three bonuses would then end in your hero phase.) I can't see any other way to read that rule, honestly. It doesn't feel like an intended effect, but it's not at all unclear.