Boggler

If it comes down to Gatebreaker vs Incarnate+Hero, I'm going with the Gargant everytime. Let's hope its a more complicated decision than this.

I hadn't played IJ this year and decided to take this list: to a 3 game event this past weekend. I had been playing NH Nagash to mixed success at my previous two events and felt like something else. Also, my Rogue Idol arrived and I was curious to see what it could do. Hold the line and Inspired in the off chance I get a Triumph. One drop to keep people honest during deployment. It was also my first time using MBMK/Arcane Tome/Touched by the Waaaagh. It combos nicely with Fixin Beat and the Idol for +1-4 to cast, usually for Mystic Shield and sometimes for Hand of Gork. Having one dispell also helps but against magic dom or Prized Sorcery its impossible to keep up. You'll really have to know your opponents lore and hope that whatever spell your wish to unbind is realistically possible. The Get'Em follows the herd. I was going to take 5x3 GG's but opted for one unit of 6 in case I matched up against Sons or Seraphon Thunderlizard. I didn't. Deployment was to basically threaten an Alpha. Look for holes to Hand of Gork. Buff up with Violent Fury and go. If there was an opportunity to Smashin'n'Bashin through some screens/weaker units then that is what I'd try and do. Otherwise if my opponent went conservative, I'd give the turn away. All in all I'm happy with the results. My opponents were great and the matches were fun and that's basically what counts in the end. I realized that I don't play enough games anymore so I'm rusty and made mistakes on things. Switching factions doesn't help but I just wasn't feeling the Waaagh for a few months... Here are the games: Feral Foray - DoK - Morathi and the Bowsnakes If you've been playing AoS for the last year then you've played vs this list at some point. You either love it or hate it or you learn to beat it. Personally, I felt it was a good matchup and I felt I could make some good trades on everything except for Morathi who'd trade well vs my whole list. Really, that 3 wounds cap is super strong and I'm very interested to see what's in the new DoK book. Will she keep her warscroll? Keep the hero phase fighting/shooting? Lots of questions DoK players will be concerned about! I deployed in my castle. My opponent deployed her castle. She had screened with the Witch Elves then a layer of Sisters and then the Stalkers behind that. She kept a Khinerai in the sky and had the other unit on the side. Morathis in the middle. The terrain was fairly symmetrical and balanced. Nothing LOS blocking but it didn't matter really. Looking at the situation I felt if I went first I could take out the screens/Khinerai, punch through with the Idol and get my 2 wounds on Morathi without taking much damage in return. I took the chance.. MBMK put Mystic Shield on the Idol and sent him, the 6GG and a 3GG across the board. The 3GG took out some Khinerai, the 6GG took out the Witch Elf, another unit of Khinerai and then put 2 wounds onto Morathi. The impact mortals and the 2" reach allowed me to get some attacks onto the Shadow Queen. The Idol saw that the Witch Elf screen was now gone and piled into the Sisters taking out 5-6 of them. The big guy did take 8-9 damage in return, mostly due to her spiking some mortals and me not making any saves. Still, his work was done. I finished the turn controlling 5/6 objectives and completed Ferocious Advance with my trailing GG/Chanters/MBMK I felt pretty good and took the 5pts. Morathi fought back and killed a few pigs. Her turn she did DoK stuff. She went for Conquer on one of her objectives and had Morathi freed herself up in the hero phase by killing the rest of the unit of 6GG's. She then went on to charge the Idol and killed it but only after the Stalkers shot at my unit of 3GG holding her other obj. She killed 2 and the Champion used Inspiring Presence on himself to stick around! In the end, she held two obj and killed a Monster for 5pts. Tie game! I won priority and took it. Even though I wasn't in a bad spot to give it away. I went for Conquer and knew I could burn at least 1 obj this turn. the 3GG's spread out to zone Morathi out and the MBMK cast Mystic Shield on himself and went all the way in to the Stalkers. (36" move is fast) When the Stalkers redeployed I could still hit the Sisters as an option but in any case I felt the game was over since I was controlling the whole board and the DoK were tightly packed into their starting castle. The MBMK went into the Stalkers and took out 11 of them. I scored 6 pts and was ready for the swingback. DoK chooses Slay the Warlord and I go Finest Hour to get to that hated 1+ save. She puts everything into the MBMK and it survives with plenty of wounds to spare. The MBMK got a 6 on his redeploy and Morathi falied her charge! She also only manages to get her 1 obj for 1pt. its now 11-6 She gets priority and happily takes the double. She chooses Bring it Down and then miscasts for 3 mortals on Morathi leaving her with just 3 wounds left. It just wasn't meant to be. Morathi did manage the charge but the MBMK was still alive after all the blood settled and she only had 2 pts for her 2 objectives. It was funny not having to have the MBMK attack back because Morathi already did her damage to herself. You can't make this stuff up if you tried! My T3 I brought in a unit of 3GG to finish Morathi, burn an objective and hold everything else on the board. 7pts and it was now 18-8 going to T4 We called it there as we were running out of time. Too much chatting AoS I guess! Great game, great opponent. Smashing and Bashing won me that game for sure. Honestly, I was very impressed with how the list went after game 1. I used to have a lot of trouble vs this list with my Big Waaagh list in 2.0. Morathi just trades well. I had a lot of time to chat about it with the folks at lunch and based on what else was being played I felt pretty good. I didn't want to face Zombies because I left the Brutes at home so I was hoping for some SCE or even Kragnos. I'm a bit tired tonight so I'll write the report for my last two games tomorrow. As always, thanks for reading!

Except I already have 12 of them... The correct answer would have been Black Coach. Even though I'm not sold on such an expensive model. Time will tell. The girl who is consistently winning with Nighthaunt does take two in her lists, with Lady O and 20+ Hexwraiths. Her army must look amazing! As for the Krondspine... Ugh... A Monster that Nigththaunt can take in an edition designed around taking and scoring with Monsters... Come on, its obvious we'll have to try it out... It again points out how screwed over we got with the way 3.0 works. If you want to call it saltmining then fine. Its just facts. I'm also not going to pay for any GW terrain for a model that is locked in their box so it'll be a long time before I get a Krondspine of my own and by that time I'll have hopefully tried out a bunch of other new book NH lists. Low priority, low focus for me. If you had to have a third version list I'd go along the lines of the Chainrasp, Grimghast, Lady O, ST/Kruciator castle. Try and out live your opponent while the Krondspine heads off on its own. If we get an artefact similar to the old Shroud of Darkness (or even mirror shield!)then it'll be a no brainer combo with whichever hero you choose. Again, we'll know more with the new book.

I wonder where we'd be if the three broken SCE warscrolls didn't come out overtuned? Cities still wouldn't get their results. KO wouldn't get their results. SCE wouldn't get their results... SCE has a lot of warscrolls and there is a ton of work that needs to be done internally balancing things before people can say that that book is good. I'd say that as far as 3.0 goes, the SCE book is the worst thing in the game right now and its internal balance is what is killing the game. Its not fun seeing the same spammed warscrolls over and over. Do you want to ally these broken warscrolls? No problem, you're Order! Orruk Warclans. Same thing. IJ came out ok. Specifically one build type with two warscrolls. (Not that they have many to choose from.) Bonesplitterz is not in a good place. In fact, they got neutered for no reason and didn't gain anything except for Kragnos who I still have no idea why he exists... I'm a Gordrak fan... Kruleboys badly needed a points decrease and didn't get one on the first opportunity GW had at providing them one. As far as I know Kruleboyz haven't won anything. Even Bonesplitterz got a 5-0... Nurgle seems ok. Its fun to play against and for what its worth, the models are very nice and I've seen some super amazing hobby from the players that play this faction. I'm sure there are some that are annoyed that their Blightkings won't be seeing much play anymore. That's hardly a good thing as shelved models aren't fun for anyone. Cough, whole shelved Nighthaunt army...cough... FS. So rarely do I see them played that I honestly won't have any idea about what they did before and even what they do now. Idoneth is a coin toss at this point. All those leftover Namarti (from when Eeels rules everything.) seem to be getting bought up and assembled. It'll be a completely different playstyle for them for sure. I personally don't find the army as threatening as it once was. Maybe its just me. As for the future. Who knows really? I for sure don't want to see any more previews! If something comes out and I don't exactly understand why the models that I have aren't working out then I guess I'll just have to buy more and different models! Seriously, I posted my army a few pages ago and no one replied about what to buy next. I guess we are all just here for the salt!

Ya. I don't know why I typed Elarr... I don't find the people here negative. I find them to be smart enough to tell the difference between something that'll work and something that won't. We all know the new book won't do much to refresh the state of the game or alter the meta. To do this GW will have to swing the nerf bat pretty hard in the direction of a few offending warscrolls. We all know which ones are the problem. We all know which existing interactions need to be changed. And, we all know how much change Nighthaunt need from the bottom up to be playable. Sure. Maybe all the 3.0 books are done OK. They took some already OK tomes and updated them. Yay? But, none of them had as bad a starting place as Nighthaunt. None of them.

It's a tough one. If you have an old book and an underperforming faction. Do you release a new book for that faction or do you take away all the OP stuff everyone else has and or rewrite the OP books? DoK is getting a new book too. It'll probably go unchanged. Keep their cool stuff and even add more.

I enjoyed 2nd Ed more. My 9 year old son was starting to understand the way things work. 3.0 has too many extra unnecessary things like Command Abilities. This makes the game too hard for him from a competitive standpoint. He loves the ghosts. Nighthaunt should have been able to take Nagash from the beginning. Not having his old warscroll really sucked since other factions could take their OP God model and this was the way... I'm not saying if you can't beat em, join em but it really is a years long problem for Nighthaunt. I remember a few years ago now buying Arkhan to ally in for some magic and healing. I worked hard to get that model done for a tourney and he got shot off the table by longstrikes T1 of my first game. Lol! After that I switched to LoN Sacrament and had fun but mixed results. 3.0 seemed to be about ally'ing in a gargant. Now Nagash. I already got my Blood Knights ready to ally for later as well. Anyways. The thing that was most worth quoting was a few pages ago. Elarr mentioned owing it to ourselves to write to GW if this book turns out to be a dud. That's the truth right there. 3.0 came out and Seraphon get 5-6 CP Per turn. How can they not know this would be a problem? They had the data didn't they?

That sounds really fun. I wish my local had more interest in stuff like this! For those same reasons my NH army includes and or has added 20 Dire Wolves, Arkhan now Mortarch of Proxies, Necromancer. I played Legion of Sacrament quite a bit...

I think the stuff that THW is doing for AoS is very bad. Having a platform that points out the magnitude of imbalance in a game system is also very bad. It drives negativity when people should just be playing whatever they want/thinks it looks cool. This game is a hobby. Tournament players are in the minority. It's so easy to netlist a top tier army to 5-0 and it takes a highly skilled player to do the same with the bottom factions. Having access to stats makes the top competitive players all jump on the new hotness wagon whenever it comes. Highly skilled players are rare. Order can basically take any ally from whoever they want. Will Death get a similar treatment? Edit: The problem with the reveals so far is that I don't think that the Scriptor or Crossbows will be playable even in a casual game.

Same. But they won't ever be better. They are dumb and every department works in its own secret silo. We're all hopeful that something in the book makes all this trash that was revealed playable... That is horrible marketing... They won't sell product on quality models alone and they'll have to change their ways if they want to please the shareholders. I still haven't opened my copy of Dominion (that I pre-ordered, and have since seen on sale several times for 70% off). I hope at least something in the Arena of Shades box turns out to be playable because pre-ordering before book release seems to be a gamble these days.

My bad! I'm not sure why I kept thinking this was the case. Maybe my opponent was playing hybrid new/old rules.

This bugs me since it's not true. Lothan just got his aura and he's 75pts. I fear for the Reapers!

Its a sad reality. Everything Nighthaunt already sells. Its a beautiful army and doesn't need good rules to please the stock holders.

I still ordered the Arena of Shades box. The models are cool and I'll have fun painting them up. That is what this hobby is all about! Having 30 Bladegheists might be a bit much now but I'm sure I'll use them all in at least one game this year! Scriptor Mortis. 150pts, hahaha! Craventhrone 95pts is ok.

Maybe. But so what. It's rock paper scissors. Someone always has to be on the losing end. We're terrifying right? Gloomspite got majorly screwed over with the introduction of Mortek Crawlers. That is still a problem. Who cares though right? We want to be a balanced fair fight? Right? A terrifyingly fair army that has tools to deal with: Ranged Mortals. Alpha T1 mega damage. Hordes of wounds. We'll see I guess. If we're not steamrolling one of those categories we won't be doing much. Personally I don't want to go back to 60+ Chainrasps but if I have to to compete then so be it. If we are hybrid Horde/Alpha then it'll be ever better.

If those impact hits cause whole models to flee in the same way as Battleshock then we're on the same page. There would have to be some way to give Nighthaunt a bonus to the roll. I won't care if my opponent loses a Gore Grunta, Dragon, Annihilator... We're terrifying yes or no? Are people terrified by the pool noodles we seem to attack with?

Wave of Terror When a unit charges. If that unit ends its charge within 1" of any enemy unit. Those enemy unit make a morale test. SUbtract 1 from the roll for each model in the unit that charged. If failed, D3 models flee. If solo, that unit suffers D3 mortal wounds.

I remember. Its because the designers have no balls. They say something and then have no data to back it up. Would NH have been amazing if the Mourghul kept its 3+ save? Maybe for a few months? Kragnos has a 2+ save, a 6++, 18 wounds, and a spell ignore, He still dies. If all NH got a 3+ save and they kept Ethereal the way it is I'm sure we'd be fine. We'd also keep the built-in overcost of this obviously and this is where it becomes tricky. Most units that get charged use AAD anyways so their save is almost always +1. I don't know. If we go glass hammer style I'd be ok. I just want our profiles to actually kill something and we need mega damage to do that nowadays. And no, profiles with 10-15 -1 rend D1 attacks just isn't going to cut it. Even with bonus mortals on 6's Anyways, I'm interested in the new book. Not really wishing for anything. If Ethereal ignores Mortals, then great. If we get a mediocre book then also great.

Well, what can I say? At least we have a new Battletome coming!

I'm wondering if Awlrach the Drowner will have a more powerful unnamed twin that you can give Command Traits and Artefacts to. Also, Idoneth's Forgotten Nightmares seems like it should have been saved and given to Nighthaunt as an army Battle Trait. I'm not down on the whole Bodyguarding thing. I just wanted Nighthaunt to move away from their unique, keep everything everywhere in range of the multitudes of auras and effects that you have everywhere. It would've be cool if Nighthaunt just got something and didn't have to jump through any hoops to get it. Armies that just get to do stuff tend to do better.

It's strong, fast, hard to screen against. Can probably give a really bad NPE to some other lists. I am going to run the exact same list at a GT in April. I'll be shocked if I don't go at least 4-1 Terrain and winning the deployment rolloff is going to be huge vs the other 1 drop lists. I honestly was lazy to do my 13-15th GG's as I went hard into Brutes at the start of 3.0 GG are just better for this list type and the Rogue Idol built-in 5++ ward gives him the survivability to push up into most anything. 20" move doesn't hurt either. One unit of 6 GG's incase you match-up vs Sons or Kragnos. Or a Bastilidon. The only real question is Armour of Gork vs Arcane Tome. It's a coin flip and personal preference.

It's looking at the facts and calling them what they are. The reveals are mediocre. Lackluster at best. If these reveals require some kind of unknown synergy to unlock their awesomeness then great. I'm not getting my hopes up until I see more facts. If I was in marketing then I'd want to showcase something badass OP cool. GW in this case doesn't seem to share this philosophy...

There is a difference between being negative and calling things out for being what they are. The Craventhrone are going to come down to wounds and points. Bonus points for being battleline. (Reinforced 3 times) I'd be OK at 120pts for five 2 wound models. Even with the previewed stats. We have access to reroll 1's to hit aura. (Lothan) and hopefully get a +1 to hit aura from something when the warscrolls get streamlined to remove the command abilities. That gives decent Unleash Hell damage in our castle and possibly has other rules to compliment that playstyle. The Craventhrobe aren't an alpha unit for me. Also, I used to think they were a unit of 4 and the banner guy was a separate low wound hero. Who knows?

It could be like the Stormcast where you decide to be either Scions of the Storm or Stormkeep. We'd hopefully get benefits for both styles of play. Reserves/Deploy. The Spectral Summons would be reworked to be like Seraphon Lords of Space and Time. Again, who knows?

I have another tournament next weekend. I'm still all in on Nagash and I'm determined to have a good time! Here is the list I'll run: Nagash, Portal, Emerald Host, Prized Sorcery, It was becoming clear that Lady Olynder wasn't pulling her weight. Maybe it was bad luck with her output, maybe it's her short range. I'm not sure. In any case, she doesn't make the cut this time around. This list is a mismash of Nate Trentanelli and @dmorley21 Maybe the new battletome will give us something spammable to go along with Nagash?