[AoS 2 - Hedonites of Slaanesh Discussion]

8 hours ago, Enoby said:

I'd also like to see a complete rethink of our spell list. I remember one spell from the normal daemons list (Hysterical Frenzy) and the healing spell and Slothful Stupor from the greater daemon list. They weren't bad (the greater daemon spells were good if you could cast them), but they were a bit boring. There was very little interesting to buff our own units - no interesting little combos, just mortal wound bombs, healing, and a few debuffs that were hard to cast. I'd like to see more bringing in the pain and pleasure side on our own units; maybe even stuff that makes us take more damage for a bonus. Spells that make us faster, or provide interesting ways to interact with the board. I remember in the Sigvald novel, the sorcerer turned a brass door into curtains so the army could easily get into the keep - having a spell that allowed our army to ignore that bit of terrain would be situational but fun as a low cast. 

Any other ideas for spells?

I'd love the idea of risk/reward spells, seems very slaaneshi. Spells that are dirt easy to cast because they bring a buff and a debuff to the target unit. It'd let you make tradeoffs or gambits to cast on friendly or enemy units to further exploit a strength or weakness or to balance out a unit. Imagine something like "invoke pain: casts on a 4, target unit suffers -1 to hit but gains +1 to damage of melee weapons", "power beyond limits: casts on a 4, units gain +1 to wound but suffer a mortal wound for each missed attack as there body fails to contain their newfound strength" or "blood to quicksilver: casts on a 4, unit can run, retreat and charge but suffers -1 to save if they don't charge this turn"

[AoS Power Creep]

4 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

An easy way to implement this as a house rule would be something like this: At the start of a round, before the priority roll-off, any player can spend a command point to gain priority without rolling. The opponent can then deny this by spending another command point. Players may keep trying to gain priority in this manner until one of them does or they run out of command points. If no player gains priority this way, proceed to roll-off as normal.

This allows a player to force a priority/a double turn by conserving command points. In particular, it almost guarantees the double turn after an alpha strike, which are usually very command point hungry.

Two words: OBR and Seraphon...

One would never be able to do this as they don't use command points and the other generates more than any other army just by existing.

I know these are just 2 of like 20+ armies in the game but they're both popular and tying priority control to a resource that some armies actively manipulate or ignore entirely is poor design. 

[AoS 2 - Hedonites of Slaanesh Discussion]

On 12/28/2020 at 4:19 AM, Klamm said:

On a completely different note, what are thoughts on the vaguely Persian motiff of the new minis?

I think the aesthetic works really well, but there's some unintended orientalism that hampers my full enjoyment.

I'm not just throwing that term around, Edward Said's concept is specifically that of the Asiatic Orient being construed as wilder, sexually deviant, decadent yet savage compared to the civilising influence of the Occident (the colonising west). Like, the cultural pastiche of eastern influences in the Cypher Lords or Scions of the Flame is great, but it's kinda weird how this is mostly limited to chaos. Set against the Germanic aesthetic of the old freeguild range, you're getting this accidental Order = Occident and Chaos = Orient vibe.

Don't jump down my throat, I'm not saying anyone's wrong to like them (and anyway, *I* really like them). 

Probably the thing that would go a long way to fixing that would be mixing up the cultural influences of Freeguild models when they get updated. That's gonna happen anyway since GW has moved away from the old world approach of committing to a single cultural archetype (like Bretonnians or Tomb Kings). 

It's kinda like with Daughters of Khaine, it would be very weird if the only female representation in the game was 'bloodthirsty bikini babes'. But in the last couple years GW has released many women minis which aren't just that. The issue wasn't so much with DoK but the context that surrounded them.

Same thing with the new Slaanesh models. Love the non-European aesthetic, would love it even more if it wasn't reserved just for chaos cultists.

I'm inclined to agree with you in saying only the "bad guy" factions like OBR or chaos get eastern aesthetics. While I like the persian look, I was hoping we'd still get some more greek/hellenic styled units like seen in the DoK art. I'd love to see Order get some non-western styled armies like a cities sub faction that follows the feudal japan aesthetic that the scions of the flame are derived from or a more Celtic styled force like old Albion from WHFB as either an order army or a destruction army that embodies freedom and rebellion outside of sigmar's control. And I'm certain there's a market for Arabian inspired armies even if they have to AoS'ify the aesthetic by making it an army of rakshasa rather than humans or something. 

[AoS 2 - Hedonites of Slaanesh Discussion]

On 12/29/2020 at 7:20 AM, Enoby said:

I know everyone wants to see a depravity points change, but do people want to see any changes in the other allegiance abilities? 

Personally, I like the locus and exploding 6s, but I'd like to see something more interactive with our play style,  for example something that encourages us to charge, something that encourages us to attack first, and something that encourages us to attack last. Things that don't dictate what models we bring, but rather give us tools when we play the game. For example, rerolling failed hits/hits of 1 when attacking a unit that hasn't attacked yet, and getting +1 attack/+1 damage/+1 to wound etc when the unit has suffered one or more wounds in that phase. Things that make us ask important questions during the game, rather than having it figured out in list building. 

I didn't play Lumineth for long, but my favourite thing about them was by far the way their aetherquartz ability allowed you to play reactively. 

I'd like to see a mechanic that rewards us for strange or highly specific playstyles. Call it "obsessions" and have it either generate depravity or provide a buff to a unit that fulfills it's obsession in that round. It could be like "obsession of pain: A unit/hero/army with this obsession gain +1 to damage dealt by all melee weapons while they are at or below half of their wounds characteristic" or "obsession of speed: A unit/hero/army with this obsession gains +1 to wound rolls until the end of the turn if they end their movement more than 10" from their starting position" or "obsession of beauty: A unit/hero/army with this obsession gains +1 to save if they do not move or charge until the end of the turn"

[AoS Power Creep]

45 minutes ago, stratigo said:

I stopped playing AoS for a year and a half because they nerfed KO  so hard. It's the GW way.

 

Tau are an army hurt by 40k being a better game. Tau as they are written don't play well to objectives, all they do is try and table opponents. And that just doesn't cut it any more. It's a bummer that GW's concept of Tau was so, well, anti fun, but they couldn't make a better game where the current tau codex is good, it's just not compatible with... uh... fun. I hope GW figure out how to make Tau an engaging army for both players in their next codex.

GW's concept of tau on the table is the opposite of their concept in lore, a lack of viable kroot and auxillaries don't help but tau are pitched in lore as a mobile force that does fighting retreats and ambushes, but in gameplay especially during 8th you castle or die and decide the game on kill points.  Not only was it not fun but mechanics where outright bad, markerlights are a joke, the posterboy unit in the crisis suit was unplayable and might as well cross out any mention of auxillaries in the codex because all their models and rules are garbage that get excluded from any of your synergies. The book was just plain bad as it shoehorned to one playstyle if you wanted even a casual game with marines late into the edition.

I feel for you early KO players, they where almost my first army but i ended up with LoN because I had some kits from vampire counts lying around. KO was playing 40k and that made it hard to balance, now there are more shooting and mobility armies in the game which gives more frame of reference to balance them but man is fly high a rough rule to balance when some armies just don't have easy access or the breathing room points wise to take a dirt cheap screen like is common in 40k.

[AoS Power Creep]

9 hours ago, stratigo said:

40k is only really ever worse in the imaginings of those AoS players who need something to be worse to not feel as bad. The actual balance flipflops between the two depending on releases. Right now, I'd say 40k has managed a place where the game is in a better place than AoS. 

Unless you play Tau or Genestealers... yes I'm a tau player, yes I'm a little salty. 

I also feel AoS now having more armies (unless you count each space marine sub faction as an army) makes it more likely for there to be a wider range in power between armies, where as 40k's relatively smaller number of armies makes the outliers more noticeable especially if your local community has a good representation of different armies for you to compare to. My local community has 3 tau players including myself who all play a different army at the moment because of how laughably bad tau are (I started emperors children around the same time i picked up slaanesh for AoS like 2 years ago) while the others picked up harlies and custodes. Like 40% of our players play some flavour of marines with a few admech and knight players and a handful of people with guard, sisters or the different flavours of chaos as side armies. We've also got some hard core eldar fans who collectively collect all the eldar lines. The only things underrespresented in my local area is tyranids who we only have one player for, orks whose players have fallen out of the hobby and we've never had a genestealer player (new army with a high model count and expensive buy in probably didn't help). 

I almost feel AoS released too many armies too quickly and a lack of depth for many of those armies lead to a lack of flexibility the 40k scene has thanks to even the most undersupported army having decades of releases (aside from genestealers and custodes. When a 40k army is bad it's usually not because they lack a unit or tool for a situation, most have a unit for every job by now, it's more likely because their book is bad as a whole, when an AoS army is bad it's probably because their army lacks the tools to keep up with whatever happens to be doing well at that moment. 

[Petrifex Elite and Nagash, beyond a joke?]

5 hours ago, Sception said:

It was a mistake to let Nagash & Arkhan benefit from legion rules in the first place.  And the petrifex nerf was needed.  There's no way to put a single points value on OBR units with or without the +1 save.  The points units had, and mostly still have, are closer to right for actually /having/ the +1 save, so now without it they're overpriced.  I'm not claiming they're correctly balanced as they currently are or that the overall faction is more balanced with other factions in the game than it was before.  But with petrifex out of the way OBR points can come down further and eventually get to a better place, and whether they do or not is a separate issue.

As for nagash not working well with new petrifex, post nerf the main (and still very real and significant) benefit of petrifex is the command ability, and that still works just fine with Nagash in the army.  And even if it didn't, I don't see "petrifex specifically are a poor legion choice for Nagash armies" to be a worse situation than "petrifex specifically are the only acceptable legion choice for Nagash armies."

Otherwise, undead have been spoiled on Nagash being overgood for overlong.  The reason you've never played against Archaon is that he /isn't/ good with every chaos army.  To the contrary he's hardly good with /any/ chaos army.   In contrast, for a long time in AoS you could hardly go two tables without tripping over a Nagash.  A near 1000 point model probably shouldn't be a clear top competitive choice for 2000 point formats.  That led to a lot of terribly lopsided games and a really rather wonky meta for much of early 2e, and if Nagash is finally taking a bit of a hiatus from the competitive scene, moving instead into more of a big narrative game context, that wouldn't exactly be the worst thing that could happen, imo.

Granted, I would prefer if more than one of his mortarchs had been made into viable competitive alternatives /first/.  Obviously.  But that didn't happen, and, given where we are now, if I had to pick the order in which our named characters get some mechanical love to try to increase their competitive presence, Nagash would be close to the back of the line at this point.  Even within the OBR I think that effort would be better spent on Arkhan and Vokmortian.

I can agree with most of your points but honestly if they want 2000pts to be the standard format then they should balance high cost units to work within that format. I also stated earlier that petrifex being focused around stalkers/immortis with a battleline condition would have been a fine and thematic way to go.

I agree wholeheartedly with updating the other mortarchs first tho. I expect LoN to get "sunsetted" as an army when soulblight and possible a necromancy themed army release so worrying about individual mortarchs working in multiple books will hopefully no longer be an issue. Arkhan can then be balanced to be purely OBR and hopefully be on par with Katakros in terms of perfectly viable but not a must have. Every death army barring flesh eaters follows a trend of 1-2 mortarchs and 1-2 lieutenants for those mortarchs so for soulblight we'll have neferatta plus either mannfred or a new mortarch of shadow or abyss, maybe an updated Vordrai and some new hero like Abhorash. That way Neferatta can be reworked as a buff/debuff piece to support elite vampire units and not need to waste rules space on deathly invocation. Same for Mannfred who can have his gimmick of cast buff/fight buff cycle refined to be something scary enough for your opponent to want to try to stop. Even FEC can get this treatment with new heroes, maybe a dual kit that can build either the carrion king or a new mortarch nagash has brought in to reign in the ghouls showing off the loyalist and absolutely delusional aspects of FEC as the wildcard faction.

Finish the update cycle of with a nagash update in the vein of archaon that gives him every death keyword and self sufficient rules. Any buffs or command abilities would simply use the Death keyword. This would open him up to different playstyles in each army like archaon in the different chaos armies.

[Petrifex Elite and Nagash, beyond a joke?]

2 minutes ago, jeremym said:

Its certainly contributory. You're right, nagash used to have the 4+, 5+ ,6 + after save. I dont know how many people took immortis guard but his extra defense being gone is a major factor. 

I think the shift to shooting was really just people realizing how powerful it is

In some cases yes, armies like stormcast and cities caught on to some nice tools they had for shooting. But newer releases also got powerful shooting, in the case of KO shooting is kinda the point but paired with fly high and suddenly you have no way of protecting your centerpiece units from a first turn boat ambush. Lumineth also are aggregious with super reliable long range shooting that ignores line of sight and does mortal wounds so all nagash would get is a single 4+ for 20+ mortal wounds coming his way. Seraphon got the salamanders (which where so good as to being auto includes) and solar engines which are pretty strong in their own right as well.

[Petrifex Elite and Nagash, beyond a joke?]

3 minutes ago, jeremym said:

Anyone who already knew how to play against OBR didnt think the petrifix elite nerf was necessary, so yes I agree it killed Nagash again for the army, which is a shame because it's the most beautiful model in death (except maybe katakros).

Anyone who complained about PE probably still doesn't know how to win against a katakros MP list. The only difference is now our shooting is even more damming than it was in PE. 

Honestly it was the loss of stacking shrugs that killed nagash, it seems like a nerf that hits death almost exclusively and nagash could stack 3-4 shrugs if you include terrain and immortis guard wound catching. I feel the shift to crawlers was inevitable as it's our only way of effectively dealing with the meta of magic/shooting that was emerging at the time, before that my only strategy against shooting armies (primarily gun line cities lists) was to get an early point lead and die as slow as possible because i couldn't really touch my opponents army.

[Petrifex Elite and Nagash, beyond a joke?]

53 minutes ago, Nullius said:

Petrifex nerf was sorely needed, but it should have just specified that all Petrifex Elite models *of FOUR OR MORE WOUNDS have +1 to their save in close combat. Petrifex is supposed to be a legion of primarily giant monsters, where the big guys are supposed to shine. The problem was that the buff effected the already frustratingly hard-to-kill Mortek Guard (which aren’t really supposed to be a prevalent part of the Petrifex). This would have opened up a fun alternate build for OBR with immortis guard standing in for Mortek Guard and Morghasts flying all over the place. 

Honestly yeah, the right way to do petrifex would be to have it incentivize monsters like how stalliarch incentivizes mounted units. Make the trait +1 for monsters and conditional battleline for stalkers and immortis. That way mortek could still benefit from bludgeon but your incentivized to drop them for stalkers

[AoS 2 - Hedonites of Slaanesh Discussion]

3 hours ago, Enoby said:

What would we like to see changes-wise to our allegiance abilities to make sure these new models see play, and just to vary up our lists a bit?

to start I'd like to see depravity change. Ideal solution in my mind would be 1 point for every unit that takes damage and 1 point for the sub faction specific obsession (charges, units around general, units in territory and whatever potential new sub faction obsessions) keeps it more consistent like blood tithe or sorcery.

Secondly I'd like to see some separation in mortals and daemons within the rules, the loci abilities in the other chaos books are exclusive to daemons so we'll probably go the same way now that we have mortals with the hedonites keyword. So for mortal heroes we could see a +5 shrug aura or something different (provided a shrug isn't the myrmadesh's gimmick given vasilac's rules from underworlds). It'd also be neat to seperate the 6s to hit to do different things for mortals and daemons to further separate their roles within the army, 6s hit twice for mortals and 6s get +1 or +2 rend for daemons in a similar vein to 40k daemons (although a flat rend like in 40k may be a bit much for AoS so +1 and then +2 for 20+ models seems more in line)

These rules separations would lean us more towards mixed armies and give a lot of value to units that have both the mortal and daemon keywords (presumably Sigvald and the twinsouls will have both, as a sidenote I also hope Sigvald gets the greater daemon keyword for better locus)

I'd also like to see some warscroll cleanup happen, I like what they've done with hellstriders and makes me wonder what the new blissbarbs will do (the flavour text says they ride exalted seekers which I really hope are snakes) I can see the use for the archers but the sword variant will have to be pretty unique to not overlap with the hellstriders. Fiends could use an overhaul, they try to fill too many roles and suffer for it. They're an anti-magic, debuff anvil, monster hunter? Aside from the scaling damage being useless with the current depravity their rules really kit them for only a niche set of targets aka hero wizards with 8 or more wounds. Daemonettes could also use a touch up or at least some synergy that's better than rr1s to hit, even as a 30 block they need to swing first and get a lot of 6s to average enough damage to kill out a comparable battleline. If myrmadesh are battleline then my daemonettes will be relegated to summoning sideboard anyways but that's more of a personal choice. Our chariots are fine warscroll wise but some sort of support or battalion to get some mileage out of them would help, technically most of our battalions can take chariots but they don't really benefit from any of them. I feel our shoe horning into hero hammer has left us blind to the actual lack of synergy for our cav and chariots.

 

TLDR; give the mortals and daemons different but complimentary rules, touch up some warscrolls to add more synergy to overlooked units and obligatory fix depravity.

[The Rumour Thread]

3 hours ago, sandlemad said:

That wouldn't surprise me. Since before AoS there's been a ceding of the design/aesthetic space for fleshy/rotting undead to Nurgle (which also saw an increase in tentacles and fungus to distinguish them from undead), and an increased focus on bones and ghosts, and ghouls to a lesser degree. 

New Deadwalkers or combined Soulblight and Deadwalkers or whatever is GW's chance to reorient the fleshy undead space away from the cues that have been fleshed out (haha) recently with Nurgle - growth, disease, pustules, bloat, feverish life that should be alive, plants, tattered armour and chainmail - in favour of... well, it's not clear but actual ruin and maybe the construct element, i.e. here are zombies that have to have stuff strapped to them so they can walk straight and fight. Bits of wood combined into stuff like the Necrofex Colossus or the Corpse Cart. A slightly more grounded, mundane, gothic peasant feel than what you get with Nurgle.

I could see LoN getting the Orruck warclans treatment with two distinct factions in soulblight as almost pure vampires and monsters on one side as the elite faction (ironjaws equivalent) and a necromantic undead horde faction focused on zombies, flesh golems scaling from elites up to a necrofex and with necromancer heroes (the bonessplitters equivalent). Then a third faction in grand host of nagash as the big waaaagh stand in that combines both with a theme around synergizing the two (maybe a retooling of current LoN rules for graveyards and resurrections etc.). It'd also be an opportunity to make nagash relevant again, leave him with a more self contained scroll like archaon with the keywords to join and benefit from every death army. An easy fix for example would be to replace his healing with an aura of mortal wounds so he'll be useful regardless of whether he's in flesh eaters or OBR. 

[The weird state of AoS Forgeworld]

I've only been in the hobby for about 5 years and for the first 3 of that could only afford an army if it was mostly second hand so my interactions with forgeworld product is purely through being on the other side of the table from them. AoS is my primary game and being an HoS and OBR player FW literally has nothing of value for me. On the flip side I do play 40k every once in a while and have an emperors children army and always wanted a couple of contemptor dreads and the HH Fulgrim and Eidolon (not because I'd ever get into HH that's like a house downpayment's worth of resin to do so but I just want the Fulgrim and Eidolon would be a great smash lord). Now between death guard and thousand sons losing access to a lot of FW stuff it doesn't instill confidence in me that the dreads would be a worthwhile investment if I ever get a proper codex and follows that trend. 

Being in Canada doesn't help, for the price of a contemptor dread I got Katakros instead... a 500pt centrepiece model for the same cost as a 200~pt elite unit. Recasters have always been an option but as a tournament organizer it's always felt like a gross option. I know like 70% of the FW and even some of the bigger kits like baneblades at my flgs are recasts and 3D prints but that's mostly amongst the 40k group. Maybe it's just because I'm on the younger end of the age spectrum for GW customers and never experienced the hay day of FW but I've only ever known them as an overpriced secondary company to GW that only makes a few interesting models compared to modern GW with a resin quality gap quickly being closed by cheaper, less than legal means.

[AoS 2 - Hedonites of Slaanesh Discussion]

1 hour ago, Golub87 said:

Yeah, you COULD play the less competitive list, but I find it that even with ultra-competitive list building, I just get wiped by Kroak and Co. I'll probably take a break from playing HoS till new rules and units show up. Current meta is just far too oppressive for me.

The last tournament I was at I was aginst the kroak goon squad with 60 skinks and 3 bastilodons. It didn't help that I failed my turn 1 charges even with rerolls but still the flat 3 damage on kroak and the solar engines just kinda deleted my army. Niche counter rules wouldn't normally be a problem if it weren't for entire armies being unable to avoid certain keywords, it's why I feel bad taking zandtos in my obr against and chaos player.

[With Soulblight probably in the making... a little poll]

I've posted all over this forum on how i want Soulblight to incorporate living mortals as part of the army but a thought has occurred to me that while unlikely would be incredible. Vampires outside of grand alliance death or at least outside of Nagash's grand plan. 

Think about it, unlike the rest of death Vampires are living on borrowed time. They require the blood of mortals, the mortals that will all be dead would Nagash's plans be fulfilled. so it stands to reason vampires with enough foresight go independent or ally with other forces. Vampires of chaos would be an interesting take as we've already had Isabella as a vampire daemon princess of nurgle. Blood dragons of khorne, necrarchs of tzeentch and lamians of slaanesh aren't too far fetched a concept. Or make them a dark mirror of CoS, Cities of Death ruled by vampires incorporating basic undead units and limited amounts of the CoS roster. Or vampires of destruction, wild barbaric clans more in touch with their inner monster wreaking havoc across the realms as wild hordes of fur and bone adorned Vampires bound into battle with their venerated monstrous brethren like vargheists. 

[The Rumour Thread]

12 minutes ago, JackStreicher said:

Pretty sure it‘s Deadwalkers. This one was hanged or nailed to a tree, which he is still attached to.

Considering all the Rumor Engine images it‘s truly going to be Soulblight + Deadwalkers 😍

I'd sacrifice an Aelf to Nagash for this, wrath of Tyrion be damned.

[The Rumour Thread]

Didn't forbidden power reference a mortarch of thorns? Given the existing rose and vine motifs a lot of death models have I wouldn't be surprised if we get our "AoS-ified" zombie army that's undead controlled and stitched together with cursed plants. Nagash loves his cruel irony and with OBR being a twisted mirror of stormcast, plant-zombies would be a great way to mock Alariel and the sylvaneth.

[The Rumour Thread]

51 minutes ago, Charleston said:

I always asked myself how to physically achive this

I just filed down the base until it was just the top bit, but that takes more patience than it might be worth.

[The Lumienth waste design space]

For the most part I like what GW has done with Lumineth, the everyone being wizards thing can be a little bit of a headache for player and opponent to track but whatever it's a minor gripe. They retained a lot of the old school high elf themes like strong magic, disciplined rank and file and animal themed temples even if bovines are an over used imagery in AoS (legions of azghor, khorne, BoC and even slaanesh to a degree all have bovine/cattle imagery so it feels weird for an order army to start using it but I guess it's a more "noble" mountain animal than say a goat). The temples and vanari being mages makes sense as the elites and Teclis' forces but i don't expect Tyrion's vanari equivalent to be mages. 

Aetherquartz while weirdly implemented is a cool lore addition for the resurrected souls of elves freed from slaanesh. Yeah i'd want to do some realmstone drugs to mellow out too if I spent a millennia inside slaanesh. Although I'd rather it fill the cathalar's role as once per game bravery management and have the cathalar be the buff piece by "stoking their dormant emotions" 

Honestly saying they have too many design themes is a bit of a joke considering they're just old high elves turned up to the AoS standard of 11 and given a drug addiction.

I do have one complaint of bad design for the lumineth but it's from a gameplay perspective and it's sunmetal weapons. The fact that all vanari get it, plus a spell to boost it to a 1 in 3 chance per hit to deal mortals, that can be cast infinite times per turn and paired with a spell to reroll hits is super abusive and unfun. Lumineth players in my local tournament scene have all defaulted to pure vanari lists with a cathalar and maybe teclis. The cathalar is it's own problem but her effectiveness is more of a matchup dependent issue than the vanari's consistent issue. Most armies can do mortal wounds in some way, many have a unit that does mortal wounds on a 6 to hit, but these are usually elite units and rarely get to pair that with a full reroll or better chances at mortals never mind both at once. So now we have an army that can actively fish for mortals with a 1 in 3 chance with every unit. There's no reliable way of shutting this down without a bunch of dispels handy, sentinels don't even need line of sight and have one of the better weapon ranges in the game. Vanari armies are literally designed to win by not letting your opponent make save rolls and when you basically remove your opponents ability to make one of the most important dice rolls in the game, for the entire game, all the time... you've designed an unfun army.

[AoS 2 - Ossiarch Bonereapers Discussion]

50 minutes ago, Sooper88 said:

Agreed on the fast units. I really want to like Deathriders but they're very awkward cavalry units. They're fast and quite resilient for cavalry but they don't hit very hard for their cost, unless maybe you use the wedge formation on a big block of them and an endless duty, and even then it's nothing to write home about for how much it costs. Morghasts are even worse. They don't hit very hard either, are less tanky, slower, have a smaller footprint for objectices and cost more. The only notably benefit is they marginally better at cracking higher armor enemies and have the bravery debuff but that doesn't seem all that useful for 190 points.

 

It seems like you either need to have a very mobile army, a very shooty army, or both, and OBR don't really have much in the way of either of those things currently.

The thought has now occured to me that deathriders are literally just worse bloodknights. Same stats and points but no charge bonus (outside of a command ability that averages 1 wound per 5 riders) no self healing and no save buff. Demigryphs are less models but also have a charge buff option, more wounds per model, better mount profile and better in-faction support. Deathriders may be the best elite cav model-wise (until soulblight releases... i hope) but as far as rules go their near the back of the pack for a 180pt unit.

[AoS 2 - Ossiarch Bonereapers Discussion]

1 hour ago, Sooper88 said:

The Katakros, Guard and Catapults is really the only competitive build and even then it has a lot of weaknesses  that can be easily exploited by the top tier armies, mainly lack of maneuverability and shooting/magic.

Having big blocks of hard to remove Mortek Guard backed by Katakros is really good in scenarios where objectives are close together and you can park the guard on top, but otherwise you're destined to get out maneuvered and/or out shot by KO, Seraphon, IDK and Tzeentch.

IMO almost everything in the OBR book right now besides Katakros, Mortek Guard and Crawlers range from bad/overcosted to mediocre. And besides MP with Katakros, the factions all seem pretty weak, with PE still probably being the best all around (mainly due to Bludgeon being a necessity for extra rend when your army has very little mortal wound output) despite being neutered. 

Null Myriad doesn't seem even all that great even against an army like Seraphon, which is probably the best use of it, as you're more or less only partially shutting down Kroak and even then FOS is still crapping out MW and shots elsewhere with skinks and salamanders while dancing circles around you.

Stalliach Lords seems potentially good on paper but other than the run and charge, the benefits are all pretty meh and your only fast unit (Deathriders) don't hit hard enough to provide a threatening alpha strike for how expensive they are.

Crematorians is meme tier basically but can be good in mirror matches maybe or other tanky melee armies.

Ivory Host is just absolutely terrible.

I find Seraphon aren't too bad to face, been bouncing between myriad and stalliarch lately and 40 mortek guard getting the run and charge can be scary. My next list is more or less gonna be derivative of the praetorians list sad to say but my local meta is dominated by idoneth and lumineth. The local idoneth players are really good at playing eel spam and high tide can make even knife to the heart a tough match to play. As for lumineth the lack of stacking saves ruined our protection from mortals and while I've only had a couple of games against alarith stuff (that where actually pretty fun) the vanari spam lists with teclis hard counter by ignoring our one good mechanic in reliable saves. Tbh lumineth are just a bad play experience in general since the spells and abilities people are taking to deal with salamanders and KO are wasted points by ignoring LoS 5+ mortal wounds... 

My rants about lumineth aside I did pull a win against them at a recent tournament but I basically had to play crouching-idiot-hidden-badass with my deathriders to snag objectives late in the game to force a 1 point lead. unfortunately that game and a close game against fyreslayers where the only games out of 5 when the deathriders put in any work. So my next list will look something like this:

MP because I need something to survive morsaar charges and rending shots

Katakros - general

Zandtos for the wound reroll to increase efficiency

1x6 stalkers for semi fast heavy hitters with charge reliability

1 catapult for range threat (honestly just gonna turn one endless duty + still their breath and snipe support pieces)

1x40 and 2x10 mortek 

 

I'm basically forced to try to push two fronts at once with the 40 stack and the stalkers and use the 2x10s to screen backline and sit objectives. only viable gameplan is snipe out support pieces and ranged threats early and pressure but this still loses out to idoneth with some allied aetherwings, their just not a matchup we're currently built to handle.

Yeah 1 out of 6 sub factions is literally a waste of paper and 2 more are waaay to matchup dependent but our real issue is lack of efficient fast units (as deathriders hit like noodles and morghasts equally flounder) and the loss of our mortal wound protection (no longer stacking low save chance rolls and just getting a 6+ or 5+ at the cost of a spell that's easily unbound) Yeah another shooting unit would be nice, i still wishlist for mid size constructs like immortis/stalkers with ballistae built into their bodies, and a nagash rework would benefit multiple armies but our core problem is lack of maneuverability/body count to make up for it and no protection from the most aggressive mortal wound lists as we on average have lower total wound counts to our opponents.

[Is Death the WORST faction in AoS?]

At this point I feel LoN is a write off. It was a bandaid to hold a lot of death together until a more diverse idemtity for deaths armies could be made. We'll probably have a Soulblight book for the vampires and some sort of deadwalkers or necromantic horde book for the regular skeletons and zombies maybe with some new flesh golems thrown in.

As for nighthaunt I can't say much about them as i don't play them and only run into them at tournaments where most of what i see are spirit host blobs, bladegheists, reapers and reiknor with harrows and chainwrasp filler. Fight on the charge is good but it's pretty hard to get off and some of their other mechanics are definitely hampered by the amount of bravery 10 in the game. They probably mainly need warscroll rewrites and maybe throw in the mortis engine as a buff piece as I don't see them taking their other behemoths very often and don't seem to have many casting buffs outside of reiknor.

FEC are in a good spot IMO. My only complaint is their limited roster. They have really solid sub factions and locally I see a good variety between monster mash and flayer swarms to ghoul and ghast hordes. My one request for them would be a named character to give them more story presence and more variety in abhorrent choices.

As for OBR I have a lot of love and criticism for them after playing them for about a year now. As already stated list building is extremely limited with 1000-1400pts taken up by auto includes if you want to be competitive. To solve this issue they need another option for a ranged threat, mortek bowmen or a smaller unit of elite living artillery like walking ballista constructs or a stalker/immortis variant that threw baleflame. On the topic of immortis/stalkers they could be made more viable by making them conditional battleline with Katakros or the soulmason. Immortis themselves just need their fight twice ability to affect both of their weapons and not just their shields and they'll be a decent bodyguard and deterrent. Stalkers should also be tankier but inmproving their base save would make them invincible in a praetorians list with rerolls so maybe a hit penalty for targetting them would work as they're the ambush hunters of the army. Katakros is honestly perfect as is not being an auto include but still a solid choice which is more than can be said for vokmortian and zandtos. It's not that Zandtos is bad it's that deathrider lists are better in stalliarch where zandtos is less effective. Volkmortian is hot trash and even if he was 120 points he'd still struggle to find a place in my lists.

The legion choices deserve their own section here as there's a lot to be said about them. Praetorians is the popular vote as everyone is still living in the glory days of OP petrifex and I can't blame them as it's a well rounded sub faction. Petrifex needed the fix but they missed the mark by making the reroll 1s melee only, we already have enough melee rerolls in the army what we lacked was any help against shooting so making that reroll universal would be perfect. Stalliarch is a real sleeper hit as they solve all our mobility issues and some great movement tech with retreat and charge. Ivory host is trash as we have easy access to +1 to hit auras and no one wants a sub faction that makes our "elite" 4+ saves worse. Replacing it with +1 to wound and no penalty, maybe make the command ability reroll 1s to wound and you now have a sub faction that addresses the mediocre wound rolls of our battleline. Null myriad is good IMO, ignoring spells is hit or miss but not every legion trait needs to be always useful as long as theirs good command trait and artefact to make up for it and null myriad does with a weapon artefact that ignores saves. Only downside is the lack of good heroes to put it on but still 4 unsaveable attacks from a liege is nice. Crematorians definitely encourage mono guard builds with harvesters and shapers and honestly that's the only way it could have gone. It's alright if not a little boring and tedious to play.

Lastly we should address how nagash feels out of place in his own grand alliance. He's the god of death and one of the big 4 wizards of AoS but dies quicker than any other hero that's 450+ pts. Losing petrifex and the ability to stack after saves hurt him hard considering deaths universal 6+ and his built in 4+ no longer stack plus any other defensive spells are conditionally a waste. There's too much rending and/or mortal shooting in the meta and while he can face kroak or kairos in a magic battle, Teclis rigging his dice is a hard matchup. Honestly best way to fix him is take away his healing ability and make him 20 wounds minimum, then let him join any death army and give him the spell list and a thematic rule for being in that army. For LoN or it's equivalent replacement make him use his current healing ability but for 5 units. For OBR give him a better heal that can revive our 4 wound elites but with less units total say 3. For flesh eaters make hime give a hit bonus or save bonus aura as his overwhelming presence brings the courts delusions in line with his will. For nighhaunt make it a bravery debuff aura that treats all units near him as bravery 6 to circumvent all the bravery 10 going around. If soulblight ever happens let him refill blood chalices once per game as a "reward" for their loyalty or give a +1 attacks buff to make up for the model count issue of soulblight likely being an elite army. 

[Getting Priced Out]

53 minutes ago, Joseph Mackay said:

Heroscape was doing fine, until Wizards Of The Coast got their hands on it and forced Dungeons And Dragons down everyone’s throat. Everything released after that point was something from D&D rather than the Heroscape universe. It lasted 2 or 3 waves after that and then they canceled it because they wanted to focus on D&D instead. Heroscape had about 10 waves of releases plus expansion boxes (like a castle building set) and exclusives before the D&D takeover, for comparison 

Huh the more you know, I just remembered a friend of mine had the starter set as a kid and just never saw any other instance of it afterwards. Guess it just didn't catch on in my local area growing up. Bit of a shame to hear WotC killed, then again I doubt they cared much over their cash cow money from magic.

[The Rumour Thread]

15 hours ago, Chikout said:

There are a few things to think about when considering gw's release strategy. 

1- they have looong term goals.

Gw wants aos to be a going concern for the next 50 plus years. In order to maintain interest over time they have a slower release rate of new armies than we would like. Currently they tend to do one all new army and 3 or 4 updated armies each year. This year the Lumineth are all new and the gargants are an update. We may yet see updated Slaanesh and daughters this year, but that is still rather slow. With 24 books currently out that's a new update every 6 or so years. 

2- gw relies on known big sellers. 

Gw has survived as long as it has largely thanks to the popularity of the space marines. There was a time when the tactical squad was selling better than the whole fantasy range. This means that gw returns to the well of space marines more than any other army. This has carried over to aos to a limited extent. We can reasonably expect a new range of stormcast minis every two to three years. Unfortunately this knocks back  everything else in the queue. 

3- gw's production and storage capacity is a major bottleneck.

Every kit that gw adds to the kit is something that needs to be manufactured, stored in warehouses and manufactured again when stock runs out. This is why battleboxes have such limited runs and don't usually get reprinted. What gw wants is a limited number of kits that can be produced sold and cleared off warehouse shelves quickly to make way for the next product while giving a guaranteed return on gw's investment. 

There was an interview with Adam Troke when he was in charge of lotr where he said he had to negotiate for warehouse space so that gw would let them rerelease some old minis. 

All this is going to say that gw is physically incapable of producing new minis at the rate that many fans would want. 

Books avoid a lot of these problems. They are printed in China and are available digitally which reduces the amount of physical copies that need to be produced.  (This does make gw's decision to abandon digital codexes in 40k rather strange)

This has led to gw producing a huge number of books in recent years but a relatively small number of minis in comparison. Unfortunately the lack of writing staff, just 8 or so rules writers compared to over 30 miniature designers in the main studio, has led to books feeling rushed.

4- the future

Gw has been working on addressing some of these problems. They have been building new factory facilities and new warehouses in both the UK and America. Potentially this could result in an increased rate of miniature releases. 

Unfortunately what with one thing or another we probably wont see those improvements for a while. 

 

We also tend to overlook the fact that GW as a singular company produce rules and models for 3 large scale games (40k, AoS, LotR) and several smaller games (kill team, necromunda, warcry, bloodbowl, underworlds) That while being separate dev teams all eat from the same plate of available production capacity. 

[Getting Priced Out]

1 hour ago, novakai said:

The problem is that they would only feel pressure if their was a competent competitor in their market and for the most part there isn’t a company that is big enough to do so.

privateer press, mantic, covus belli, all lack the marketing reach too do so. Third party can produce models but not rules, paints, or other accessory that GW can produce

Hasbros is probably the biggest powerhouse company around and surpasses GW in market worth but they don’t compete in the miniature War game market

This is definitely a huge factor. Through cult following and sheer luck GW became the big name in wargaming and just kinda overshadow the market to a degree. I know a lot of people in some of my nerd circles for D&D and video games that know what warhammer is but don't know any other wargame aside from maybe warmahordes. A lot of this is due to warhammer as a brand being present in so many mediums these days where other companies either don't have the internal interest to branch out or don't have the capital to justify the risk. It feels like GW is reaching the "too big to fail" point in some peoples minds. 

As much as a corporate nightmare as it would be I do think it would shake up the market if Hasbro was to partner or buy up one of GW's competitors and put their resources behind them to pump out and market plastic kits. I think they tried some sort of wargame/boardgame hybrid toy line before that involved building a board with hexes and using different skirmish style armies but it didn't sell well. 

As a side note Corvus Belli has to be my second favourite miniatures company behind GW but would easily take first if they switched from metal to plastic because they've got great sculpts at way more reasonable prices.