whispersofblood

Part of the problem is the limited design space surrounding the other builds. I had hoped given the limited number of units in the faction they would have provided a spectrum of playstyle. I'm concerned that the only thing stopping IDK from full hammerstrike 3.0 are sceneries, and that is a tenuous incentive at best.

I would say the Lord of the Deeps is terrible. The Tidecaster's spell is solid however. The frustrating thing about IDK, and magic is that your army as a close combat army will spend almost the whole game in unbind range. The armies you frequently come across just stack too many cast and unbind bonuses. Also, I've never been fantastic at rolling 2d6. Arcane corrosion would be good if the target wasn't the closest. Pressure of the deep is handy, but obvious and a high cast value.

The magic is terrible. If abysall darkness was 12" it would be worth taking. It's not even so much the models, it's the spells they have access to. Tidecaster is a tasty wizard, but without realm spells, Ionrach, and an artifact, his positives on the army as a whole are pretty yawn inducing. Similarly the Aspect of the Sea just can't influence the game enough imo. I'm recently have just been doubling down on the things that IDK do well, ending games asap, and playing into the raider theme of the army.

High Tide is for breaking the enemie's back. But turn 1 and 2 you need to be getting points and strategic positions. Deployment is a big deal for us.

There is definitely something to be said about managing the game state. That means for us not getting sucked in to fights we don't want, and sometimes means letting enemy units do as the wish. DoK is a horrible straight up fight for us imo, but the game can be one while losing every model if necessary. You have to stick closely to the sceneries, practice playing them, and have a clear target priority. Having your army in the majority with high movement and and flying helps significantly. But you can't get to caught up in what the opponent is fielding.

That was my point. I'm considering evocators for the post soulscryer+Volturnos meta. Currently it's still very powerful so no need to really shift to much. I more or less have the build in my head already. Might do it for Adepticon since it's far enough out that a shake up would be needed.

Personally I've only looked at evocators as a way of transitioning away from Volturnos centric list construction.

The problem is getting a Mv6 unit into the back field. He's a good player who played the list a ton. But, 6 drones take up a lot of surface area, and if you get +2" move on the chart, plus bell on Guo, plus midfield tree, +auto 6" run. Doesn't leave a lot of room on the board to avoid getting turn 1 charged by 67 attacks or so. Depending on the mission having that unit on your home objective turn 1 and 3 GUO between you and the other ones is pretty much a death sentence. In retrospect I should have tried to absorb them with my 9 man unit since it's not a lot of rend attacks.

It wasn't anything to ground breaking. 3*10 plague bearers and 6 flies. But, plague bearers are excessively resilient for their points. I put like 600 points into 10 models and killed 5. Too much in the army stacks on top of already good profiles. It's probably the best book available right now.

Honestly unless you are buying endless spells I don't feel IDK magic is really that frightening.

So I played this list on the weekend. Volturnos EoftheSea 9 morrsarr 3*3 ishlean 20 thralls Lost in the final round to Thrice-fold list but that is a story for another day. In the age of 10 man evocator, 20 man sequator and such lists 9+ morrsarr get the business done. Even with Volturnos dead they killed 20 sequator to the man with just their spears. The damage on Ishlean is wildly inconsistent and not to be relied upon. The same unit that suprise killed a lord Arcanum on gryphcarger struggled to kill plague bearers. Volturnos is soft. Extremely soft, you have to be very careful as a few bad save rolls and he'll be gone. His big base is definitely a weakness of the model. Thralls are excellent character assassins. -1 and dmg 2 is plenty to kill 40 mm heroes. When they don't get to apply their battle stances they are pure wastemen however. Eidolon is just a poor choice. His cost is not reflective of his abilities in the slightest. I took ethereal amulet, and Ionrach. He didn't tank, he didn't kill, he didn't cast, he didn't even unbind. I had plans to replace him as soon as I finished the first game of the day. Really poor ruleset, it was particularly offensive after being on the receiving end of Guo who at 80 pts cheaper do all of the above, ultimately move just as fast and pump out mortal wounds in multiple phases. I'll post up my planned list going forward when I get a chance to type it out.

I'm playing EotS next weekend I'll report back. Mostly taking him in place of 6 more Eels, for painting reasons. But, it's a smaller event so as good a time to test him for myself as any.

What is the utility of abyssal darkness? I've found I mostly spend the whole game charging, and thus hit debuffs have been doing more work. Just so you are aware. My 2k NH list has two battalions, more spells per turn, more wounds and consistent mortal wound output. The trade off is some overall raw speed, made up for with deployment and redeployment options.

How optimized are we talking? My nighthaunt prediction is theory since not enough of the range is available. But, optimized nurgle just happens to slam down 20 plaguebearers right after high tide. I play nurgle as well, and the army is effectively as fast, much tougher, with very strong magic. Why don't you share your list maybe I've missed something.

That isn't a very useful comparison. DoK and IDK have one thing in common, the aelf keyword. I've seen your list I know you understand this. IDK are actually a pretty marginal army, and tend to struggle against any army that doesn't have an attachable weakness. Something like low unbinds, or any army that I'd untradionally hardy. Things like redundant saves, healing, respawn. Nighthaunt are possibly the worst faction to roll up against in several sceneries. But nurgle is bad as well.

So here is the thing I cam to realise with especially with the Eidolon. In most cases, I was sitting there wishing he was just 6 more eels. which is like just over half his cost, but still I would have been happier for it. Originally I had planned to take him instead of the King and I would have found a way to make up the difference in point. But, after using Volturno's CA once, I realised no amount of magic could make up for +3 attacks on 3 units during high tide. The terrible battalions have so many run on issues, it distils 3 pages of artifacts down to like 1 or 2 items, even though there are probably like 6 or 7 good ones. It puts a cap on how many cps we can get, which is probably fine considering we only have 1 CA. Our combat units rr charges for the most part, but I'd like the ability to not have to horde the 1 cp I get each turn. The biggest for me in an aelf army, is starting every game on the rhythm my opponent sets because I have 12 drops or something crazy. My ultimate conclusion is that they simply pointed too many support pieces as if they were the army, and now the army basically lives or dies by its ability to end the game turn 3, as it basically can't absorb loses after that if you need to chase a game. Which doesn't seem fun for either player but at a tournament only playing 12-15 rounds does keep you fresh/ Now that being said it is an objective game, so you the truth is you need to get a commanding lead by the bottom of 3. This is where the extra flood tide, and boost in effectiveness in flood tide for Futhaen has been strong. But, I have had a head start on my peers on building for AoS2, I haven't managed to fight a true built for AoS army yet, just a bunch of hybrids. I'm terrified by the prospect of playing Nighthaunt, as I can barely handle the resilience of SCE at this point, and NH push out more mortal wound damage.

All of the battalions are no gos from what I can tell. The more data I find, the more certain that we are KO, and will be an after thought as soon as the next book comes out. Which is ironic considering the IDK were probably the last nail in the coffin for semi-serious KO. Competitively some regions will be lucky to have a "IDK guy" but I doubt the faction has much staying power. I should have been more concerned when the whole army only had one command ability but I was over optimistic. There just isn't enough in those pages to make IDK a strong faction, and the points costs are extremely conservative. I could forgive the Apolex, if the Levidon, and Eidolons were actually decent units competitively. But, as soon as I drop all pretence of taking either my lists and results got significantly better.