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DocKeule

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  1. What wording in the rules do you base your interpretation on? 


    Any way: There will be a German TTS League starting soon and this is what I am going with:

    Spoiler

    Allegiance: Idoneth Deepkin
    - Enclave: Ionrach
    - Grand Strategy: Predator's Domain
    Triumphs: Bloodthirsty

    Leaders
    Akhelian King (250)*
    - General
    - Bladed Polearm
    - Command Trait: Unstoppable Fury
    - Artefact: Potion of Hateful Frenzy
    - Mount Trait: Voidchill Darkness
    Lotann, Warden of the Soul Ledgers (115)*

    Battleline
    6 x Akhelian Morrsarr Guard (390)**
    - Reinforced x 1
    3 x Akhelian Ishlaen Guard (195)*
    3 x Akhelian Ishlaen Guard (195)*

    Units
    2 x Akhelian Allopexes (330)**
    - Razorshell Harpoon
    - Reinforced x 1
    2 x Akhelian Allopexes (330)**
    - Razorshell Harpoon
    - Reinforced x 1
    1 x Akhelian Allopexes (165)*
    - Retarius Net Launcher

    Core Battalions
    *Battle Regiment
    **Hunters of the Heartlands

    Total: 1970 / 2000
    Reinforced Units: 3 / 4
    Allies: 0 / 400
    Wounds: 110
    Drops: 4

    This is pretty much a "classic" Akhelian. I thought about leaning more ton the Namatri side but I did not want to commit to that for several weeks just yet. I will try more infantry based at one day events and pick up games coming up though.

  2. Very much not. 

    First there ist rule 12.0

    Quote

    In the combat phase, the players alternate picking a friendly unit to fight, starting with the player whose turn is taking place.


    The exception is that units that have a "fight first" ability can resolve all their attacks before any other unit can fight. But the rules state nowhere that the player who's turn it is automatically gets the first pick once the fight first" attacks are done.

    There are some rules that allow you to immediately activate another unit (like "Smashing and Bashing" from the Ironjaws) but this is not the case here.

  3. 12 minutes ago, Liquidsteel said:

    Sure, but even one unit means you get two activations.

    No it does not. The unit that got "Lord of Tides" fights first and then your opponent gets the next pick. 

    Edit: Even if you had two "fight first" units and your opponent had one you would have to alternate. (Core Rules 12.4)

  4. 16 minutes ago, Liquidsteel said:

    Getting High Tide via the King means 3 rounds of ASF, which is pretty big against combat armies like Giants or Orruks, where you might need 2-3 units to take care of their threats, but would fail if they were allowed to strike back.

    The effect is much smaller than you seem to think.

    It is D3 units and it can only be used once per game in your charge phase. This is important because you would have the first activation of the combat phase any way. So in a third of all games this ability does nothing (apart from maybe give Namarti the ward if that ritual was chosen). On a 3-4 you get one extra activation before your opponent can hit back, on a 5-6 a second. Again: Nice but not at all reliable especially since you need to do it at the end of the charge phase when your units are already engaged. 

  5. Depends on how far we are looking back.

    The "Fury..." box is only a few weeks old and the Thrall overhaul was big. The anti-shooting ritual is good and so is the generic king's ability. But if we are honest that is one extra activation in melee in one turn on average. Still nice to have but in most cases no game changer. (Ironjaws do that every time they kill something and another of their units in 12" has not fought yet.)

    The 5+ ward on the Isharann heroes is nice...kind of... but they haven't been played much so far and apart from the Tidecaster and maybe an occasional Soulscryer won't see much more action now (especially with the rammed up points). And there are some other shenanigans that are kind of nice but more like little gimmicks. 

    On the other hand the most used units got much more expensive while the bottom line on they profiles did change little to none. So there will be less models on the table than before resulating in less output, less bodies on objectives and less board control.

    We cannot buff our missile units and mounts any more. The difference between a fully buffed unit of Reavers then a fully buffed unit of reavers now is about -17 %. For the Akhelians the mounts are at least half of their attacks, in some cases considerably more. Those will drop by more than a third from the status quo to the release of the new book on Saturday. 

    So if this book now is as strong as some want it to be (and a lot of it sound like self-hypnosis to me) and we will the a new rise for the sushi folks we should have been next to unbeatable for the last couple of month. Which we weren't. We were doing OK and we already had an increasingly hard time with the lastest books (while steamrolling some older armies which is also bad balancing for sure).

    So what would be the new thing(s) that make anyone so exited about this book? Believing we are going to be stronger the more deluded our forces get it like believing in homeopathy.

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  6. 4 hours ago, JackStreicher said:

    The real letdown to me is that our heroes are locked to their mount or their feet. If they‘re not going to add new units, they could at least open up some modelling/conversion options.
    It'd been no issue to simply make a Leviadon with a Tidecaster or a King on top. You can almost kitbash it from the box itself.
    The same goes for eels and Allopexes.
    They could even simply make a generic „Prince“ profile to ne used on any mount.


    Just give us options for our heroes. An Artefact and maybe a Command Trait are no real options.

    Kings 110 pts:
    - Eel + 80 points
    - Allopex + 140 points
    - Leviadon + 400 points

    Same for Tidecasters and the book gets way more interesting
    ^^

    I like the idea but I guess that is too WHF for GW in 2022. 

     

    2 hours ago, vinnyt said:

    But they didn't and they won't give us monster mounts. It's insane to me that we didn't even get a new non-hero unit but thems the breaks when you're not stormcast. 

    No surprise there. This has been their standard procedure for a while now. And frankly I don't think the roster is the main issue.
     

    2 hours ago, vinnyt said:

    This is gonna be like nurgle where everyone freaks out about points increases and then we start winning tournaments. 

    New Deepkin is a POWER book with multiple super interesting archetypes. I think it's gonna become apparent fairly quickly how strong this book can be. 

    Here is where you lose me. Why would IDK start winning now with pretty much everything being nerfed? Then we should have dominated tournaments before with all the buffs we used to have. 

    It's not that we got anything new in return like nurgle did with the disease-mechanic. Most profiles have been barely changed just the points went up. We already had most of these tools at our disposal. The only thing new is the improved Namarti, especially the Thralls. 

     

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  7. 22 minutes ago, Rachmani said:

    I‘m with you on that one, but SCE are their own little matter. Maybe they sort themselves out and the options end up way less good in the future.

    I would guess so once they have skimmed the dragon money.

    It is just silly now. You can't even charge them because even two dragons have a decent chance to take out 8 Thralls, two eels or a shark before you can even swing. That will have to change at some point.

  8. That's where I would tap out. I can accept the whole allies thing when it is grounded in lore but as a tool of list optimizing I hate it.

    Also that aspect has been changed that often in the last couple of years. I won't throw money at GW for units I otherwise cannot and would not want to play.

    • Like 5
  9. 6 hours ago, Rachmani said:

    Do you guys really see no place for eels? Tank eels look like a pretty perfect first charge to me. Unmodified 3+ save, solid weapons. They surely get their turn 2 charge.

    I think this is a tough one. Especially in the early game it might be more cost efficient to feed the opponent a unit of Thralls in the Void Drum bubble with allout defense and in the ward-bubble from a boat. (Maybe even garrison them in the boat and throw a mystic shield on). 

     

    5 hours ago, Nerdkingdan said:

    People often think any nerf means unplayable, too early to say in my opinion.

    I think that is very much a question of the environment. For causal games there will be a couple of different approaches that will still work and could even be more fun because IDK might snowball less often. For competetive surroundings I don't see much hope frankly.
     

    3 hours ago, That Guy said:

    The article is surprisingly bad in my opinion. Like some other reviews (Honest Wargamer for example) they pretty much just ignore most nerfs. 
     

    8 hours ago, HollowHills said:

    The only thing I can't get my head around is the turtle at 500 points. 

    The save buff was nice, but so we actually need it?

    The save buff was nice, but so we actually need it? We're already super shooting resistant and that has gotten better. All out defense is a thing, finest hour, cover. Plus we have more than one way to fight first now.

    I would say yes especially with a Namarti-heavy list. The +1 to hit is important for your output and the +1 to save as important to keep your units alive. You can only give allout defense to one unit and is costs you one command point per phase. So one Leviadon is probaly still needed to make the rest work.

  10. 1 minute ago, Frowny said:

    Something like a king, a turtle, lotaan and the little wizard + 30x2 thralls,10 thralls and 10 x 2 reavers would be quite good i think. Or you could do 2x20.  And that's quite a lot of build diversity with several different units. Possibly in Dom Hein for the out of phase charge+attack again, which is a very very strong ability. 

    I agree that eels don't seem great, but i think there is probably also play to a multil shark list as well, since they carry buffs so well.

    King, turtle, little wizard, 3x2 sharks and then a unit of thralls also seems good. Nice targets for all out defence and attack if needed and a ton of shooting.

    That would be 16 shots and on average 7 wounding hits. Not exactly what I would call "a ton of shooting"


    I am just now trying some list building for a tournament on the 26th and it is just painfull how little I can put on the table for 2000 points even using thralls. Also I am always either some points over or way to many points under that i can't do anything with.

  11. The turtle was already included. The target has to be withing the bubble for the +1 to hit. That would be doable.

    On the other hand the more sensible approach would probably be just to give "allout attack" to the Reavers.

  12. 1 minute ago, JackStreicher said:

    Ionrach and Dhom Hain are my favorites. The weakest seems to be Briombar (if the scryer truly lost his bonus to charges)

    That could still be interesting to jam some shooting into the opponen's flank. Just think about 20-30 Reaveres a turtle and one unit of Ishlaen Guard to screen them. 

    Problem with that of course is we are talking 1255 points.

  13. 1 hour ago, vinnyt said:

    It's a totem that can issue commands in an 18" radius and can get -3 rend on jaws and fins for a monstrous action while being conditional battleline. It's a bit pricey (should be about 450 imo), but is still a super good synergy piece that's also reallllly good into the mirror match against someone who went all namarti crazy. 

    I think everything above 400 is ridiculous. Manfred von Carstein who's shooting and melee profile is astonishingly close to the Leviadon (we are talking about the new D3 shooting) but who has magic, command abilities and several other shenanigans on top is at 380. That to me is halfway comparable (with Manfred still being stronger). 500 points is just a joke.

    And the totem thing is worth next to nothing since all our units but a single shark can give themselves commands any way. The only thing that this gives us is that the turtle could wander off on it's own and give itself order. But that will barely ever happen since you want your Leviadon in the center to support other units.

  14. 2 hours ago, vinnyt said:

    And yes, keeping them in the bubble can be tough. You will have to think about that and plan for it. Thankfully a bunch of your synergy pieces (turtle, king, storm) move much faster than the thralls and you'll just have to plan to make sure the auras work out.

    Again: More than anything keeping a bunch of them in the bubble is the problem. Building redundancies to cover a bigger area is certainly too expensive now.

    So a core of Thralls will be almost mandatory now for a while. That will be a new concept for a lot of IDK players having a less mobile part of the army to work around. I played with 4 x 10 Thralls yesterday but 2 x 20 are probably easier to keep in the bubble. A turtle, Lotann and one or two Thrallmasters and we are already at 1.245 to 1.355 (ouch). 

    Then you need something to threaten the rest of the board. Four Allopexes (660) would only fit with one Thrallmaster. And you still have nothing to take the shooting so your Thralls even make it into combat. 

    Deepstriking some Reavers with a Souscryer ist also an Idea that could work. They don't get many buffs any way so we might use them away from the supporters and give our opponent something to think about in another corner of the table. But with 30 Reavers and a Soulscryer we are at 660 points again. And they desperatly need a screen to keep them going for more than one round. 

    Also one would probably like to find the points for a Tidecaster or generic king...


    Well I would guess in casual games we will still do OK even there the point increases will take their toll. On the bright side we will have more different lists as viable options than before.

    In the competitive circuit I don't really see much chance of taking on the top armies right now. I am nowhere near a top player but I saw other guys that used to place much better struggle against newer books lately. With most buffs reduced I don't see that improving.

    Other than that I just hope for some point reductions with the FAQ in a few weeks.

     

    • Like 1
  15. 11 minutes ago, vinnyt said:

    he doesn't really help out reavers all that much. Super good with Thralls though.

    I hadn't watched the video at that point and still thought the Eidolons +1 wound still apply to shooting. 

    Well since Lotann gives the exact same buff at a third of the points...
     

    14 minutes ago, vinnyt said:

    And hey, everyone complaining about sharks being 10 wounds should be overjoyed that they're back to 8 wounds! 

    Overjoyed would be a stretch but with a lot of attacks doing more than one damage I think +1 to saves should mitigate more harm.
     

    16 minutes ago, vinnyt said:

    Thralls are absurdly tanky now

    How? The ward only applies in the third battle round. 

    The improved save profile is certainly nice and with allout defence and maybe a mystic shild we will be able to have one tanky unit of Thralls but you probably still don't want more than one in melee. 

    (I see some interesting combination with summoning a second boat and all. But I don't see a basis for this enthusiasm)
     

    26 minutes ago, vinnyt said:

    Eels aren't great but they're not unplayable trash. The other great thing is that any balance update for deepkin can easily just be a simple points adjustment as opposed to a big rules rewrite. 

    Ishlaen got considerably less tanky and for me they where the main tool for stalling my opponents. In addition to a 45 points increase that sucks.

     

     

    27 minutes ago, vinnyt said:

    ?? 

    The buffs: 

    Thralls need to be fighting an enemy ww 12" of a turtle for +1 to hit

    Thralls need to be either ww 12" of a super fast eidolon or lotan for +1 to wound

    We need priority for cascading charges in dhom hain

    Thralls need to be ww 12" of an insanely fast king for the free high tide

    Thralls need to be ww 12" of the thrallmaster at the start of combat.

    Problem with keeping the Thralls in the bubbles they need to be in is the charge especially if you want to buff more than one unit. (Which I think is important to justify the points for the supports.)
     

    35 minutes ago, Beliman said:

    IDK had 41% winrate vs top 6 armies and increasing to 50-71% to all others (top7). 71% vs the low tier armies means that IDK were destroying them even more than the top 6...

    That's the opposite of being in the middle of table.

    That summs up the problem. So in tournaments where you are bound to face mainly top tier armies you will still struggle while in B&B games you will go from balanced to steamrolling.

  16. Sound like the "honest" wargamer drank a lot of GW's Kool-Aid lately. He straight out contradicts a lot of stuff he himself said not too long ago. 

    Now all of a sudden the sharks a "well pointed". When the "Fury..." box came out he said it was silly that a shark had alsmost the same points as a dragon.

    Eidolon of the Storm got nerved to ****** and up in points and he talks about how great the unit is. Ass kiss much has he been chewed out after the couple of rants in the lasts weeks?

    Sorry to say but 90 % of the changes just suck. This is new-Slaanesh-book bad. 

    The current state was that we were still doing OK against mid tier factions with mostly older books. We had an increasingly hard time against the flood of mortal wounds while we could dish out very few and our units had more and more problems with the 2+ or 3+ save plus ward orgies that were more and more common.

    Now most buff gets reduced in strength or range and mounts and shooting (which are the main sources of damage for us) can't be buffed at all. We still get almost no wards and won't be dishing out more mortals. 

    So out new state will be: We will still do OK against older mid tier books. But what will happen if those get updated eventually? We have a new book and are already behind the curve. I see very little so far that makes us better than the status quo.


    The very few silver linings:

    - Lotann: He does what the Eidolon of the Storm does at a third of the points

    - The once per battle ability of the generic king could be strong as long as you roll high on the D3 and have enough (and the right) units wholly within 12". 


     

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  17. 9 hours ago, vinnyt said:

    poor eidolon. Maybe good with Morrsarr?

    Nope, maybe with Namarti. That is pretty much the only use I see for Stormy now. Put him in the center of a huge Deathstar of Reavers and Thralls with Lotann and the Thrallmasters. Other than that I see no way he could redeem 335 points right now.

     

    7 hours ago, vinnyt said:

    Thralls are insanely good. This book is very good. 

    Maybe but it will be a completely different army. Thralls have to be stationary to get all the buffs you want.

    I am leaning more to the disappointed side right now to be honest. Playing the mobility and unit placement was half of the fun. 

    Also I am frankly annoyed on forcefed meta changes like that. 
     

    5 hours ago, Rhetoric said:

    Don’t forget AoA still applies to mounts, and there doesn’t seem to be too many command abilities on the scrolls eating up CP.  So the King and Volty giving out +1 to hit excluding mounts is kind of a freebie.  


    Well but the mounts do most of the work especially with sharks and turtles. The riders don't do jack.

     

    • Like 3
  18. Had a fun though a little silly game today. We originally wanted to play 2000 points but my opponent’s son wanted to join in so I brought 4000 points and played against 2000 points of Ogres and 2000 of Gloomspite Gits.

    On the one hand is was fun to bring a good chunk of my IDK models on the other hand there was too much plastic on the table to play a normal game.

    We started 3 pm and had to stop in round three at 6:30 because the shop closed.

    List:

    Spoiler

    Allegiance: Idoneth Deepkin
    - Enclave: Dhom-Hain
    - Grand Strategy: Hold the Line
    - Triumphs:

    LEADERS
    Volturnos, High King of the Deep (260)*
    - General
    Lotann, Warden of the Soul Ledgers (75)*
    Eidolon of Mathlann, Aspect of the Storm (330)*
    Akhelian Thrallmaster (110)**
    Akhelian Thrallmaster (110)**
    Isharann Soulscryer (140)**
    - Artefact: Arcane Tome
    - Lore of the Deeps: Tide of Fear
    - Universal Prayer Scripture: Curse

    UNITS
    10 x Namarti Thralls (130)*
    10 x Namarti Thralls (130)*
    10 x Namarti Thralls (130)*
    10 x Namarti Thralls (130)*
    10 x Namarti Reavers (170)*
    10 x Namarti Reavers (170)**
    10 x Namarti Reavers (170)**
    2 x Akhelian Allopexes (330)***
    - Razorshell Harpoon
    2 x Akhelian Allopexes (330)***
    - Razorshell Harpoon
    3 x Akhelian Ishlaen Guard (155)**
    3 x Akhelian Ishlaen Guard (155)**
    3 x Akhelian Ishlaen Guard (155)**

    BEHEMOTHS
    Akhelian Leviadon (380)*
    - Mount Trait: Ancient
    Akhelian Leviadon (380)**

    CORE BATTALIONS
    *Battle Regiment
    **Battle Regiment
    ***Hunters of the Heartlands

    TOTAL:
    3940/2000 WOUNDS: 218
    LEADERS: 6/6
    BATTLELINES: 10 (3+)
    BEHEMOTHS: 2/4
    ARTILLERY: 0/4
    ARTEFACTS: 1/1
    ENDLESS SPELLS & INVOCATIONS: 0/3
    ALLIES: 0/400
    REINFORCED UNITS: 2/4
    DROPS: 4


    Some pictures:
     

    Spoiler

    signal-2022-03-04-194222_010.jpg.7654461f2aae1255304b8a2565ec0c3d.jpgsignal-2022-03-04-194222_011.jpg.107189a6dbb13b5c91c199993fff8948.jpgsignal-2022-03-04-194222_008.jpg.991337bb71fd8f2da06327ec91fe1e8e.jpg


    I won’t go through the game turn by turn but here are some observartions:

    This was the first time I brought Thrallmasters and I am not sold in them yet. I had about half of my army geared fort he Namarti part and it is tough to keep  more than two or three units in a 12“ bubble. After the first movement phase there was never a point where I could have used more that one oft he buffs on more than one unit.

    I went with the expliding sixes and if you can hit a couple of units with that – nice. But on one unit it doesn’t pay for the 110 points. Also there is still the issue of not wanting more than one unit of Thralls in melee at the same time (apart from round 3).
     

    10 Thralls were whiped out by five fanatics, 10 thralls got killed by „unleash hell“, another ten put a handful of wounds on a Stonehorn before eight oft hem got slaughtered. Mixed bag I’d say.

    My MVPs as far as damage goes where once more the Reavers even when some of my rolls were ridiculously bad. But the Lotann-turtle-Eidolon combination did the trick. (Also they are easier to keep inside the bubbles).

    Speaking oft he Eidolon – again he almost failed taking the last two or three wounds oft he Stonehorn. His „good“ attacks did nothing and only a bad save roll saw some oft he fish-attacks got through. Take his melee attacks and make him a durable support hero for 200 points.

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  19. What is the source of that information?

    Edit: Most of those points are somewhat believable but the point increases alone would have me bring two or three units less in an Akhelian heavy list.

    The profile changes on the Ishalen would probably be a wash apart from the save-issue. (Yet unclear of course if that means that the save-improvement after the charge in cancelled or they can't be affected by a mystic shield or allout defense...or both. Butto increase the point by a third?

    Eidolon of the Storm only working on the riders is a thing I also don't see. Especially since the mounts do most of the work with the IDK.

    Akhelian King: +1 to hit instead of re-rolls I can believe. It is sad but losing the re-rolls was to be expected. Apparently that is not a thing anymore in 3rd edition. The smaller babble would suck but honestly I have moved away from the king/Volturnos lately any way. 


    If those rumors are legit that would be a tough blow at least without knowing any new buffs from the allegiance or other heroes. 

    I am a little suspicious that GW wants to make us play IDK now the way that they were intended from the first release. That would mean a Namarti backbone with only few Akhelians sprinkled in. That is just my personal conspiracy theory but I am pretty sure the eel spam was never intended when you read the descriptions in the first battletome.



     

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