whispersofblood

Do we have any clues about these new Marauder Cav?

Just units of 3 at the moment. Cheap enough that if can use them as a screen or trade with them without feeling to bad.

Hitting on 4s is terrible. I have had 5 knights tank 6 scythe hunters so that's probably what they are best at... But it's not really a good use of points. There are a lot of good infantry units that are going to show up as Bodyguards and knights are bad against all of them. I've been testing slaanesh theridons as my skirmishing unit of choice and it's been good.

I wonder if you're actually having an internal conflict between your Johnny and Timmy brain.

Wait what are your issues?

People are funny creatures. We tend to value what the thing does more than how that thing does what it does. Getting into combat is generally more important than being better at combat, but +1 A and -1 to wound just provide more of an emotional impact than +1 to charge rolls.

The reality is -1 to wound rolls, and +1 attack are much easier to understand and think about than +1 to run and charges, cmd abilities, and subfactions, or the synergy available to Tzeentch which is broadly strategic.

I wonder if it's a generational thing, but my first thought upon seeing the photo was Lord Solar, and as Warcom load I considered it might be a freeguild or something new.

As an FYI varanguard can't take banners as they don't have a standard bearer.

Which is weird as every other invitation is based on Battle score, is it not?

@Lord KrungharrKrungharr according to The Honest Wargamer's most recent stats SoB: 57% LRL: 54%

SoB are rated higher than LRL, and your point in LRL doesn't make sense. If they needed the extra VPs to win the game, that means they would have lost otherwise... Why would they need a points hike? Teclis isn't a Primary Target, only Severith and the Spirit of the wind are. Also come the next GHB the bonus VPs for killing Monsters will be gone making this a win for you. This is a super close game unless it's a tournament what's wrong with that as the final result? Lastly you can modify this result by taking mancrushers instead of more megas. They aren't Primary Targets and it probably would result in a more enjoyable game for the people around you.

None of those characters are Mortal...

@Neil Arthur Hotep did a decent job explaining it, but I should probably explain it in my own words. Think about buying a stock, the best time to buy it when you think the value of the stock is more than it is currently being offered for. You are interested in owning the stock so that you can gain the correction. You understand despite the market saying that the stock is worth X, that its fundamentals are that it should be worth Y. There are a couple things that are true of all armies, number one is how much approximately 2000 points costs in models. Under the current point scheme without Start Collecting boxes for ease of matching, BoC armies are running about 600 GPB, while DoK for example are under 400 GPB. Yes, some armies cost more than other like SoB who are still only 480 GPB. Unless you are doing a very specific build 2000 points is under 500 GPB. The next is how the army looks on the board. The game has been trending for while to smaller armies, and this has been doubly true in AoS3, which makes sense the complexity of the rule has increased having fewer units speeds up the game. Because of the low points BoC are a massive army on the board, basically consisting of an attack profile and a save. This also runs afoul of the CMD point mechanics which push players towards having fewer more impactful units. There isn't a thing I can point to directly and say ah ha. But, given the context of AoS I think there is enough information to correct surmise that BoC aren't what GW would want them to be. Meaning they will be hammered into something more closely related to what they aught to be. This is probably the peak of BoC meat strength, and likely units will get more utility abilities to bring them more in-line with the design paradigm. Which means for the most part units that are interesting first, and efficiency second. And, as @Lord Krungharr experience confirms my analysis of the faction on the table, I think reversion to the mean is likely. Their points and recursion make them efficient, not interesting, unique, or GW's version of fun. And, it pushes them outside the established cost framework. There is more, including GW and the secondary market but tbh its a bit shop talky and I probably should do some work.

My point concerning BoC is that the patch didn't suddenly make them well designed and capable. What makes them good at the moment is that they are probably 20% undercosted and have very fast recursion. Meaning they do enough damage but mostly they just have too many wounds to fold them over during the objective game. But also, they seem to still lose on battle tactics because it's easy to deny their heavily projected battle tactics. Maybe I'm wrong but this is just my opinion based on the reports I've had access to. They are still bad, they just aren't pathetic or laughable I guess. I still see them comfortably below the middle factions which seem to have gained the ability to punch up against the best stuff. *I should clarify I mean BoC are still poor, when properly priced. Not as is at the moment*

Honestly? Don't know enough about Skaven to guess. I don't know anyone who plays them anymore and I'm not interested myself. My standing opinion of Skaven is that they are the result of the internet over reacting to anything that has the appearance of being strong, and without your own loud and popular community to defend it, typically resulting in factions getting nuked. See also; KO, HoS.

BoC are only good fundamentally because they still have the bottom basement pricing, they are significantly undercosted at the moment which is artificially boosting their perceived power. Expect point increases in the GHB. NH have good fundamentals, but lack a dedicated top tier player base and marginal warscroll issues. They are still a far way away from BoK and GSG from a competitive perspective. They don't need a redesign they need to be further honed which you should expect given its their first ever battletomes. Even HoS despite the meme level shithousery aren't fundamentally bad, and I've seen them compete first hand. They just have a lot of cringe warscrolls and recursion in a meta that is about sprinting rather than a marathon. They also don't struggle into the middle tier as much as people feel they do . But, even there they are getting some benefit from these new rules as they have decent shooting and decent combat units at their disposal.

Well a) you can't patch GSG, Khorne et all into relavancy. b) This patch is clearly more about the bring the top factions closer to the middle factions without too heavily impacting the games between the top factions. Which it does. Anecdotally between the games I've seen post patch and reports from friends abroad it's actually having a positive effect. To the point that I have Seraphon and SCE players making changes after playing 4-5 games under the new package. So despite my initial reaction, I have to give GW a round of applause.

I actually think points are the worst methodology of balancing. Things are either worth their points in a tight band or not. Ignoring obviously severely undercoated. 5,10,15 or even 20 points won't be the difference between a unit that does its job reliably and one that sometimes does its job being selected. Similarly the community hates units that don't do their jobs. So we have to accept that to some degree we want units we can count on. The room between does its job and can be managed is so narrow that I think looking for innovative ways to increase global risk to taking the units we want to take is wise. Lastly the community is strongly biased towards the game being a variety of units that do things rather than including units that stop things happening. That has its own balance pressure. And is ultimately responsible for the power projection meta we currently occupy. My initial reaction to the battlepack was "this is silly", but after some thought I think this is a more correct move than the community is giving it credit for.

Which is why stormcast have a pretty significant per box discount. Kruelboyz also have a pretty good collection of units. They only are missing cavalry but they instead have a good selection of monsters which I think makes a pretty complete faction with room for creative growth

DoK are relatively cheap to build an army out of, which is more important than a per box price. They also have a pretty good diversity of models, textures and sizes. They are a great faction and poster child for what GW is probably forcefully trending towards which are customers with larger singular or coherent collections of models. Rather than the Buy a whole new faction all the time model of yesterday. Personally I think it's a significantly more responsible and moral model of consumption.

There is a distinction between a game where a double turn doesn't appear and a game without a double turn. In this fun and balanced game with largely no ranged damage, the possibility of a double turn still existed. And so you likely made decision with that in mind which led to by your own admission a fun and balanced game. What you have to ask yourself is if even the possibility didn't exist would the player who went first have just won because they got to choose the first engagements.

I don't necessarily agree with this tbh. I think there are a lot of hypothetical units that change the way we currently play the game. And, the ability for a warscroll to do that I think is really positive. For example I've seen players in the face of Sentinels create interesting decentralized buff systems with units they never would have used before. Which they never would have done when given the option to just take a easy buff hero. So I think there is value to meta destroying warscrolls. The question should be does this thing increase or decrease the way in which the game is played. Or, create a new interesting thing. I would say SDG do not, because they mostly destroy the movement phase. Which is the most fundamental phase of the game, and the one which can leave people feeling the most powerless.

That isn't a very good metric of problematic, most units that do even those specific things aren't problematic at all. Sentinels aren't even problematic at high levels... SDG Spam is getting a lot of pushback because it hits both player archetypes. The typical combat experience types like VV, who probably would love the idea of piloting it, but then would hate it because of the play experience. And, the people who see a game of AoS as a problem solving exercise, because the solution is relatively obvious but hidden behind very specific factions. Which means its a bad experience for those types as well. SDG could do 100% more damage and I wouldn't care about them. The answer is boring, it doesn't produce a new way to play or see the game, and that is what makes them problematic for me personally.

I'm not sure this is necessarily true. I wouldn't state at this point that the terminal level of SDG is 10 + KD. Even without being battleline you can comfortable field KD+7 and tbh it might be better at playing the breadth of GHB2021 battleplans.