grimgold

So I have a random doubles tournament coming up, since it's random who my team mate and opponents will be, I was thinking I'd pick one thing and do it really well. In this case a big blob of chaos warriors with the mark of Tzeentch, in an Idolator list. Random Doubles StD Chaos - Slaves to Darkness - 1,000pts Allegiance: Slaves to Darkness: Idolators Grand Strategy: Hold the Line Core Battalion: Warlord: Extra Enhancement: Artefacts of Power Leader Chaos Lord [120pts]: Reaperblade and Daemonbound Steel, Tzeentch Arcane Tome + Mask of Darkness, Smite, Arcane Shield Detachment: Warlord - 2-4 Sub-Commanders Chaos Warshrine [185pts]: Heal, Tzeentch Detachment: Warlord - 1-2 Commanders Idolator Lord - Gorebeast Chariot [130pts]: 4. Fiery Orator, Amulet of Destiny, Curse, General, Tzeentch . Gorebeast Chariot: Chaos Greatblade Detachment: Warlord - 2-4 Sub-Commanders Battleline Chaos Marauders [90pts]: 10 Chaos Marauders, Barbarian Axes and Darkwood Shields, Drummer, Icon Bearer, Tzeentch, Detachment: Warlord - 1-2 Troops Chaos Warriors [400pts]: 20 Chaos Warriors, Chaos Hand Weapons and Chaos Runeshields, Hornblower, Reinforced, Standard Bearer, Tzeentch, Detachment: Warlord - 1-2 Troops Splintered Fang [75pts]: 10 Splintered Fang, Tzeentch You guys think this will work out?

People win games based on their attributes; the relative skill of the players, their lists, the mission, and a dash of luck. When your looking at the end result it's hard to isolate what factors went into the win, but it's not impossible. Like would you look at Sons of Behemath and assume they are doing so well because the faction is lucky? Of course not, that's because you understand that luck might be lumpy but it's evenly distributed at scale, so each faction is expected to have a typical amount of luck. That's an example of the principle of mediocrity, and we can use that to better understand data sets where we might not know all of the contributing factors. A good example of this is the saying "When you hear hooves, think horse, not zebra" So if we see that a faction like SoB is doing well, and we assume they have a typical distribution of skill, luck, and battle plans, the most likely conclusion is that they are more powerful than the competition. It might be that all of the try-hards are running SoB because of something unrelated to their relative power, like maybe all try-hards are into loin cloths and dad bods. That would not be typical though, and thus the burden of proof would rest on the person making that claim. These kind of meta analysis gives us a few vital pieces of information, it tells us how popular each faction is in a tournament setting, and approximately how powerful they are compared to the mean power level of all armies. This lets us make better list building decisions for competitive environments, For instance if Ogors counter your list, your going to have a bad time because of how common they are.

It's still early in the cycle of 3.0 once we start getting some battle tomes things should get a bit more balanced, but until then I sure hope they don't mega nerf StD.

That's true, but my faction (StD Tzneetch despoilers) can pop off 3 +1 to saves via prayers on 2+ with no counter available. It's why I'm really thinking of giving someone in my list the book and leaving my sorcs on the bench, oracular visions doesn't justify the cost when I have better options.

I spent some time thinking about this, and what if unbind just increased the difficulty of the spell? Spell casting is strongly bell curved because it's on 2d6, so if you increase the difficulty of a spell by even +1 you can greatly affect the chance of it going off. Lords of magic like Nagash and teclis might even add +2 (or +3 at the outside) to the difficulty. So in this scenario, is a wizard tries to get a mystic shield off (casting value 5) teclis could bump it to a 7, taking it from a 83% chance to a a 58% chance. However if you tired to cast Dark fire daemon rift (CV of 7) teclis could take it from a 58% chance to a 27% chance. This would have a few advantages, first would be even if your outmatched in the magic phase you can still get some value from wizards. It's also faster than the current system, since no extra roll is required. You would also have to pick if you countered a spell before it's rolled, which would stop some of the cherry picking that makes extra unbinds so powerful.

Good to see I'm not crazy, how I was thinking of dealing with magic was running an idolator tzneetch list with zero casters, but three prayers on 2+'s. It counters magic by virtue of the tzneetch aura, Being near my warlord gives a 1 in 3 to make any cast on my units fail, or a 1 in 2 for units blessed by my war shrine, which is way better odds than having sorcs could give me. If I need to get rid of an endless spell there is always a heroic action that can give me the same odds I'd have with a sorc. I'll miss mask of darkness, but with a smaller board and chaos knights being less awful in 3rd, and untamed beasts having chaos marauder charges on top of advance and charge, hopefully I won't be too slow.

So I've been watching a lot of bat reps involving LRL and seraphon. It occurred to me that if you don't bring a top level mage like Lord Croak or Teclis, you stand very little chance of getting anything useful from your wizards, because you'll just get countered and be a waste of points. In a competitive scene both of those guys are pretty common, so is the correct answer just to skip wizards? All of the top mages pay alot for the ability to shut down opponents magic, and if you don't have any those points are wasted. They will of course have free reign with their magic, but lets face it, unless you have an S rank caster they were going to have free reign anyway. Am I off base here or are the top casters so oppressively good at magic that you might as well not bother unless you have one yourself?

That does seem like an issue, mostly because of the healing though. If there was little to no healing you'd just chip it with mortal wounds, but 2d3 heals per round is hard to overcome with MW unless you play a faction with pointy ears. The other consideration is that staying at a 2+ requires more buffs than characters can usually provide themselves, two buffs for 1 point of rend, and three buffs for 2 points of rend. The requirement for supporting units gives a way to address the problem that doesn't involve trying to get a 1 in 6. Also those two or three buffs are not helping you win fights, and instead are just helping you survive. There are certainly cases where surviving is a goal unto itself, but most of the time buffs that make you hit harder end up being worth more (because dead enemies don't hit back). It's like fighting Archaeon, if you take him on head to head with his supports in place your gonna have a bad time, the easier solution is to hit his supports and then tarpit him. Then again maybe this will end up being the early sticking point of AoS 3.0, it's hard to predict the future.

Seems like there could be an entire thread about rend and armor in AoS 3, but the long and the short is that the current implementation is not less lethal or more lethal, it's both. As an example zero rend got a lot more dangerous with the removal of rerolls for armor saves, nobody is rocking 3+ with a reroll anymore, which takes weapons with no rend against a 3+ from 1 in 9 to 1 in 3. The new system also gives us methods for dealing with rend, so high rend doesn't have to trivialize armor. Like rend -1 is alot less valuable because of all of the ways you can stack bonuses to saves. With that said you can't use stacking mods to make invincible units because it's capped at +1 net and most units will have a 4+ base, so a third of wounds is still making it past armor and go to secondary saves. I actually think it's quite clever, it reduces the gap between the rend haves and the rend have nots, and adds a lot of play and counter play to the game. With the new system focus fire isn't always the best decision because you can stack defenses as a counter, so there will be situations where forcing an opponent to spread out their defenses will lead to better results. That means interesting choices, and changes to the meta I don't think we've quite anticipated yet.

I'd be interested in a discord link. I'm getting ready for a path to glory campaign, and would love some ideas. On related questions, I noticed most of the lists are using chaos lord on demonic mount, but I feel like the karkadrak chaos lord is a stronger option. Am I missing something, or is it for more flexibility in list building? Also with the point increases are our endless spells worth using? I was really a fan of EFDS, but it seems like DFDR is the chosen one if people are taking them at all. With the new coherency rules seems like flails are the way to go with marauders since it's hard to get a lot of them into combat while staying within coherency. Flails allow them to fight while ranked, which will probably end up being more attacks than the 1 extra they get for sword and board. With the death of the plague touched battalion seems like there isn't a stand out god. I'm leaning towards Tzeentch because he (it/they/its unknowable majesty) is super defensive, with reroll 1s on saves and a 5+ ignore for spells and endless spells. It also makes the warshrine pretty handy, since it gives +1 to save and ignore spells/endless spells on a 4+. The offensive abilities of the gods seem a bit underwhelming, nurgle is probably the best with +1 to damage on sixes, but you'd probably take him for the -1 to be hit with ranged weapons. Which leads to another question, is the tzeentch ability to ignore spells and endless spells a ward save? It seems like RAW it can't be because you roll for it after being targeted rather than after receiving damage. If it isn't a ward save, it would stack with things like rune shields which are ward saves, and with things like protection of the dark gods. You could make some warriors into a really hard to shift unit with a warshrine, 3+ save with rerolling ones while ignoring the first point of rend, 4+ to ignore spells, a 6+ ward vs normal damage and a 5+ ward vs mortal wounds. That seems pretty beefy for AoS 3,

I feel like Archaeon and Belakor in the same list is too many toys and not enough boyz. I kind of feel like Archaeon in general is too many toys, he dominates the space he is in, but can only be in one place at a time. He also requires a ton of support to be used at his most effective (CL, warshrine, SL) so anything that doesn't directly support him or capture objectives is a bad fit in a list with him. I feel like belakor kind of got the shaft, the buffs he got have nothing to do with why you would take him, so the points increase while fair just diminishes his appeal. He is now expensive enough that if you bring him you should be building a list around him, but his legion was definitely a swing and a miss. He is actually much better in a despoilers list than his own legion, which feels kind of bad. Then again building a chaos monster mash list with belakor might be fun.

@kore5022 That's very similar to the list I was thinking of, because I also wanted a block of warriors to hold objectives, and because they look awesome. I also wanted to add a 10 man of knights, but they are hard to justify since marauder horsemen are much more efficient points wise.

Yeah seems a safe bet that Be'lakor will be a center piece for a new style of list, even if it's still STD he'll require an army built around his rules, much like Archaon.

Yeah it's weird that the darkoath couple can't have marks. It feels like it was done to keep people from spamming them in ravagers lists, but since ravagers are kind of so-so it seems unnecessary. I wonder what kind of lists Be'lakor will enable? The legion of chaos ascendant from WotEC would seem to hint that Be'lakor will be demon focused instead of mortal focused, which will require alot of rules to make it work.

Did you do the full list with Belakor and the untamed beasts? Because that would be pretty tempting if there wasn't a roided out belakor around the corner.

Hey all trying to put together a 2k STD list, since it's my first stab at STD I decided to keep it pretty standard/safe. So I made it at a low drop (2 in this case), used faction staples (belakor and a chaos warshrine), and am sticking to a simple game plan (hammer and anvil). Game plan goes like, start with the CL on foot as the general, so I can have an 18" bubble of -1 to be hit with ranged weapons, that way if I go second it's a little harder to get an alpha off on my army. Get some first turn charges in by masking Marauders and/or summoning them, while the warriors advance to take an objective, and the knights and CL on Karkadrak go to flank. After that it's just hold with warriors/marauders supported by the warshrine and harass with knights and marauders. I start with 3 cp, so I should be able to get all of my summons off even while spending CP on incidentals, and Belakor starts as a pain to deal with and can reach some absurd levels with a spell and a buff. So is there anything you guys would change with this list? Allegiance: Slaves to Darkness - Mortal Realm: Aqshy - Damned Legion: Ravagers LEADERS Chaos Lord on Karkadrak (230) - Artefact: Incandescent Rageblade - Mark of Chaos: Nurgle - Ravagers Command Trait: Eternal Vendetta Chaos Sorcerer Lord (110) - Mark of Chaos: Nurgle - Spell: Mask of Darkness - Ravagers Command Trait: Bolstered by Hate Chaos Lord (110) - General - Reaperblade & Daemonbound Steel - Artefact: Mark of the High-favoured - Mark of Chaos: Nurgle - Ravagers Command Trait: Master of Deception Be'Lakor (240) - Spell: Call to Glory UNITS 15 x Chaos Warriors (270) - Hand Weapon & Shield - Mark of Chaos: Nurgle 20 x Chaos Marauders (160) - Flails - Mark of Chaos: Nurgle 20 x Chaos Marauders (160) - Flails - Mark of Chaos: Nurgle 10 x Chaos Knights (320) - Ensorcelled Weapons - Mark of Chaos: Nurgle BEHEMOTHS Chaos Warshrine (170) - Mark of Chaos: Nurgle BATTALIONS Plaguetouched Warband (180) ENDLESS SPELLS / TERRAIN / COMMAND POINTS Extra Command Point (50)

would it be worth running a sorc on chim? The spell seems really cool if you ever get it off.

So what's the usual hero set up for ravagers? Seems like CL on foot, CL on Karkadrak, Chaos Sorc, and an Exalted hero of chaos. I was thinking about darkoath since they are fairly cheap and have good stat lines, but they can't have a mark, so having them in ravagers seems like an anti-synergy. 4 Heroes seems like the sweet spot, since there are two kinnda iffy command traits (Favored of the pantheon seems so so, and unquestioned resolve is a kinnda-sorta command point with a lot of strings attached). Also to see if I have my arms around how the faction works, I bounce warlord around to whomever is nearest the action, and summon units onto the board whenever I switch to someone who hasn't summoned units yet. Is that about the highlight?

I saw a GMG batrep with them, and they did next to nothing. Even without a bad roll on the trap, the best they could have hoped for was to get a sacrificial squig, because Owen is not dumb.

You can only take two iron blasters in a gut guard, so if you took three you'd lose out on that sweet two drop army action. I also don't know if your getting much mileage out of the gut guard, if your running a eurlbad and a gutguard you won't have a frostlord to drop the ethereal amulet on, and we already start with an extra command point. For just about that 120 you could add a butcher, which gives you two people who can use the underguts command trait, and people will have to choose between targeting ribcracker or a gruesome trophy rack. If you put the maw pot by the tyrant and the butcher, they'll be bait to lure enemies close enough to the maw pot to refill it.

Here is what I was thinking: The gruesome trophy rack Buffs the Iron blaster and leadbelchers, and the command trait helps out the iron blasters. It's 6.5 to 7 points of damage per shooting phase just from the iron blasters assuming a 4+ save, and the leadbelchers are icing on the cake. Could you get more mileage out of 560 additional points of BCR? Which would equate to a frostlord on stonehorn, and two four "man" units of frost sabers.

So what do you guys think of mixing a eurlbad and with an under guts gunline? They seem like the two best Ogor builds, shooting can help soften fight first armies, and you can screen or counter charge with the BCR. I've been trying to make a list work, but it seems like a peas and potatoes thing, your not making your peas better by mixing them, your just making your potatoes worse.

I'm dusting off my splintered fang for a campaign, and I was wondering how are the original warbands holding up in warcry? I got the impression that the OG warbands are not great in comparison to the new warbands.

So getting back into AoS after selling off my nighthaunt, I have two SC: BCR boxes and the Ogor half of feast of bones, and probably an extra box (I was thinking leadbelchers to give me some options). So I was thinking something along the lines of the attached list, do you guys think there is a better way to configure the models, like should I grab a box of iron guts instead of leadbelchers? Allegiance: Ogor Mawtribes - Mawtribe: Thunderbellies LEADERS Huskard on Stonehorn (320) - General - Command Trait : Storm Chaser - Blood Vulture - Artefact : Shatterstone - Mount Trait : Black Clatterhorn Tyrant (160) - Artefact : Sky-Titan Scatter Pistols - Big Name : Fateseeker UNITS 4 x Mournfang Pack (280) - Culling Clubs or Prey Hackers with Iron Fists 4 x Mournfang Pack (280) - Culling Clubs or Prey Hackers with Iron Fists 1 x Ironblaster (120) 4 x Leadbelchers (160) 6 x Ogor Gluttons (240) - Pairs of Clubs or Blades BEHEMOTHS Stonehorn Beastriders (300) - Ogor Mawtribes Battleline (Beastclaw Raiders General) BATTALIONS Eurlbad (140) OMTonthecheap

The only thing that will make it approach useful is onslaught and a double attack, in which case it's a little worse than a single attack of his 2" weapon. That could keep him safe and contributing when you don't want to get close (or are standing on an objective). The other consideration is that he will be running with a base or two of snakes, who are faster than him. So if they have a long way to go, he'll fall behind and his ranged attack gives him someway to contribute, along with his triple. I don't think it will ever be clutch, but it can get some chip in occasionally.