Saxon

My local meta rarely play 2k games and mostly play 1k so we can fit 2 games into our Saturday afternoon. We just re-scale rules and play a few house rules i.e. not having to hold objectives to keep generating points etc.

I've built about a 1500pt Nighthaunt army just from purchases on buy-sell-swap groups and ebay. In Australia our prices are much higher (even allowing for exchange rates). A branchwyche is 15 pounds which is 28 AUD. We pay 39 AUD or almost 21 pounds for the same thing. Another example is kurnoth hunters. They're 35 pounds in the UK and $100AUD (65 pounds). I think i've said it on here before but the GW cost rises push players to alternative markets and threaten the local stores which are becominng smaller and smaller.

Played a small game today against nighthaunt using the following: General (100) 10 Greatswords (160) 10 guard (80) 10 guard (80) 20 handgunners (200) 5 pistoliers (100) The greatswords are the stars with their boosted abilities. Keeping them in the centre with a free guild general gives them 2+ to hit. The command ability righteous purpose also gets them to fight first. Ignoring battleshock in your own territory is also hugely useful. Didn't manage to get too many extra CPs with 4 banners. Very hit and miss.

I have three of these I believe. Dipped my toe into dark elves a long time ago and never really got going with them.

They were so powerful for so long they've been nerfed hard to keep the salty people happy. The problem i see is power lists get developed and people only play those lists so it gets a bit same same and others learn how to counter it. Once that happens interest goes. The other part is how super powerful other factions have become. LoN and NH have been hit hard by points changes and power creep. The worst part is NH models going up in points mainly because they are so incredibly useful in LoN armies.

The newer releases have killed the Nagash release. Look at Fyreslayers, GLoomspite, FEC..... they're all way more powerful than a horde of bones.

Black knights hit like a wet fish. +1 to wound on the charge is meh. They're good for tying up objectives but crypt shields are pointless as nearly everything has rend these days. I have 10 of them painted but just cant fit them into my army.

I recently built and painted a Hurricanum and it is indeed painful. What i've found useful in using it, is to have a 10 man guard unit surround it to spot 1" range models charging it. 4+ save and only 11 wounds is not great. You also need it close to the front as the portents ability has a maximum range of 10". I play death a lot these days until we have a tome but played Ironjawz recently with the following 1300pt list: Freeguild General on a Griffin (280) Battlemage - Bright (110) Crossbowmen x 30 (300) Handgunner x 20 (200) Guard x 20 (160) Guard x 20 (160) Guard x 10 (80) Total: 1290pts I played against 2 big blocks of brutes, a warchanter, warboss on foot, 3 gore gruntaz and the cabbage. I managed to table to IJ but couldn't get on objectives because he basically over ran them and did enough to get the points to hold them for 3/5 turns. My opponent was smart and kept his brutes in big units so as he got through the guards shielding the handgunners he was able to pile them around and stop my shooty boys pot shotting his cabbage. What i have learnt is to kill the warchanter ASAP and stop it buffing the brutes as it makes the guard far more resilient. The extra turn of shooting with the gunners before they got minced would have won me the game.

The issue is that people have these expectations based on nothing but what they feel they want to see and then get shirty when they don't get what they want. My first thought was AOS Necrons.

I think super-powered command point generation/abilities that ignore battleshock that aren't 'wholly within' has ruined it a bit. I love the challenge of having to save command points for either battleshock or command traits, these decisions can make or break a game and add a layer of intrigue. Playing armies like gloomspite/trolls and their ridiculous CP generation mocks it to some extent because they cant spend CP's fast enough. I also dislike the DoK ability to basically turn off battleshock as an allegiance ability (unquenchable fervor).

This. CP generation is insane in the new armies (gloomspite) which has completely countered their old weakness of horrible bravery. I can also see battleshock resistance around heroes coming into play.

I always run at least 2 10 man skelly units in a 2k point game because they're annoying. They seem to be forgotten a lot and are good for objectives, screening and board control.

Well s*** now im really going to be poor those models look fantastic.

If you make them too close to sigmarines then they haven't got their own identity. Im cool with new weapons and what not i just think its a dangerous game if they go to the effort of new models basing them off SCE. Some will like it, some wont.

Agreed. Just not like stormcast.

I think they need their own identity. The stormcast sigmarine look is just awful. I love the old empire models.

I'm very keen to get this new book and see what our boys can do. I love my freeguild but they're very hard to play against tome armies. I note the warhammer blog mentions some ranges will be dropped. I wonder what they will drop from the empire range.

Played a 1500pt game against Blades of Khorne on the weekend and it was a tight loss (16-14) with the 5th round dice roll deciding the game as the major objective was the one held by skarbrand. We both went 30pts over (friendly game). I ran the following. Played the following: Arkhan the Black (340) VLOZD - Sword, Ethereal Amulet, Amaranthine Orb (440) Nercomancer (Vile Transference) (130) Wight King with Baleful Tomb Blade (120) 40 Skeletons (Spears and Shields) (280) 10 Skeletons (Spears and Sheilds) (80) 5 Direwolves (70) 5 Direwolves (70) The Khorne army was bloodletter spam (3 x 20), mighty lord of khorne on juggernaught with Skar, Skarbrand and a Bloodsecrator. Played 3 objectives, 2 minor and one major chosen with a dice roll at the start of each turn. Managed to hold the major objective for 3 turns but couldn't get my slow boys to the other ones. Curse of years sucked again and did nothing and i couldn't get arkhan away from skarbrand (forgot to move him once which was game changing). The VLOZD is the real hammer in these games, he wiped 2 units of 20 bloodletters and killed he mighty lord on juggernaught. I feel like i should drop Arkhan against magic weak armies as he's an expensive piece that's only good for casting. On average, i get about 6 wounds off him a game with spells and spend the rest of the game trying to hide him with his average save and wound count. I think trying to run the VLOZD with morghasts to murder everything would work much better for me.

The shields only work against weapons with no rend so they're practically useless in 2019

I assume you mean something like indomitable which improves saves? This only affects units wholly within 12 so the risk of it affecting too much is very low when it's your great company you need buffed to keep your meat shields alive.....

I have played a few games with them mainly because i need to fill out 2k points as my painting has been slow. With great wight blades they're pointless as shields do nothing. Everything has rend these days so no point. What i have found is opponents tend to fear grave guard and will target them because of the rend and potential for double damage. Its not a bad thing when you want to get your big block of skellies into combat with 4 attacks each! Also once you get skellies in, people tend to forget about GG so they can be good for knocking units off objectives. That being said Grimghast are better in every way.

Patience is a rather bitter pill to swallow though. So you've got a non-tome army against tome armies. Do you a) keep playing and get stomped regularly b) find other players with non-tome armies (difficult as we're all sick of getting stomped) c) make mix-matched grand alliance armies that have no soul (no) or d) give it up (my free people have been shelved for 6 months collecting dust)? I tried the whole humies + sigmarines combo but it's not fun to play at all. I too wait for a free peoples book, i always wanted tanks and artillery as a teenager but all my mates played 40k so i did too. When i could finally afford it as an adult with a group of friends, i jumped in and bought models for free people not knowing that they were barely supported until i'd made a reasonable investment. A lack of research on my part but i did expect a game that had been re-launched to be somewhat balanced. Making artillery and magic allies is just nonsense and serves absolutely no purpose as both the collegiate arcane and ironwood arsenal can't properly function as stand alone factions. I've never seen a proper reasoning for this decision other than the typical "GW is always right suck it up" you get on this forum. I have moved on from free people to a new army but my investment in the game has been significantly reduced to the point where i only buy recasts/second hand from buy-swap/sell groups until the playing field is levelled. I get you'll never make everyone happy and staggering releases builds hype but when you're at the bottom of the update list it's very frustrating when you've made a significant investment. The OP also makes good points about cheapening point costs for non-tome armies. If you do that and then update people will be annoyed with excess models. In the interim though, uncompetitive armies doesn't help anyone.

I always take crossbowmen in blocks of 30 or not at all. 1 casualty and the double shot ability is lost. Most armies have magic and some (Nurgle, Seraphon) have unlimited range and can pick your boys off and take away buffs.

I agree with this so much. Telling people to get over it is a horrendously arrogant and insensitive thing to say and is a rather average business model from GW. You don't want to be hacking off rusted on collectors. There are a few times on this forum where i've seen some usual suspects tell people to get over their large investment (army) being unsupported.

I've used small units of Grave Guard simply because my opponents will typically ignore my skellies and focus on grave guard. If they do get to attack cool, they're killy but if not, usually my opponent then has to face fully buffed skellies.