Joseph Mackay

Eels should never have been 4 wounds to begin with. And don’t even get me started on the fact they’re STILL undercosted especially with Volturnos

Because ‘within’ is presumably better than ‘wholly within’ so it’s considered a nerf and nobody likes their toys nerfed (even when it’s needed for the health of the game) not my opinion but why I suspect people are upset

My thoughts are that they’ll use Cursed City as this years big June/July release as I suspect COVID has delayed the rumoured aos3 until 2022

I don’t agree with the argument that at 200pts he was ‘free’ because of the unit he could summon but that’s just me. The cost of summoning seems to be built into the units that can be summoned rather than the unit that does the summoning, in some cases it’s reflected in both (referring to all summoning, not specifically fec here)

Random and possibly controversial question taking everything into consideration (battalions, points, allegiance abilities, warscrolls etc) which battletome do we think was actually the better one for Flesh-Eater Courts? (Including the GHB allegiance abilities in regards to the previous one) my personal opinion is that 2019 added a lot of useful stuff (Mount traits, spells etc), but I kind of think the 2016 (+GHB) rules were better. -the summoning, although it wasn’t great when you had to pay points for it in aos1, in early aos2 I enjoyed it a lot more. Highlight for me was The Royal Family battalion and being able to summon Ghoul Kings who could then summon their unit. -Ghoul Patrol battalion is a sore spot for me. The 2016 version was the usual turn 1 board edge deepstrike, but it also had the ability to heal the units which was at one point able to take units above starting strength (maybe that bit did need toning down...). Now it’s just the deepstrike. My issue with the battalion and why I can’t justify taking it in lists now? It costs the same points (the units within it might be cheaper, depending upon your configuration). I don’t think it’s worth 180pts. on another note, discussion of the Archregent, what do people think of him? Personally I thought he was fine at 200pts, and in my opinion the only reason gw put him up to 240pts was because people were spamming 6 of them and people complained about him being ‘op’ or undercosted. I’m aware he can summon a 200pts unit, but compared to the Ghoul King, I don’t think his warscoll is THAT much better to justify such a difference. I think 160pts for the Ghoul King and 200pts for the Archregent was the right amount. If he had to be nerfed then I’d rather they changed him summon ability to 10 Ghouls instead of 20. On a somewhat related note, I really feel like gw need to start imposing some lore based restrictions on lists other than named characters (eg each Fyreslayer Lodge only has a single Runefather, so if you take multiples you should lose access to the lodge rules, or you just can’t take more than one. Same thing with the Archregent, I’m pretty sure the lore implies there’s only ever one in a particular Court at a time)

The seeds were planted for an Ushoran model in the Carrion Empire lore I believe, or I least I fully expect him to get a model eventually

In my opinion, I don’t think the current To Hit and To Wound rolls really work that well. I truly believe we need to bring back Strength and Toughness to better represent the durability of units, as quite frankly number of wounds + armour save doesn’t give the right feel when you’ve got random goblins running around able to one-hit kill a hero (over exaggerated on my part here but the point stands) if gw are determined to ‘simplify’ stats, then I’d rather we scrap To Hit and To Wound altogether and instead use the Warcry system. I’m aware that doing so removes all the hit/wound modifiers currently in the game but honestly I think that’s a good thing. I partly dislike modifiers as it can make units feel not worth their points (it’s a rare situation but it’s possible to render a unit near useless by debuffing it with multiple -1 to hit/wound effects all game), and these effects create a real feels bad moment when your units can’t do anything. Alternatively, they at least need to cap modifiers like in 40K

How is it a 20% chance? It’s literally pick a hand: dice = die, no dice = safe

The problem for me is that these ‘unrealistic’ lists (the ones you’ll never see in person), is that their results are meaningless because you’ll never see them, but also, any games against those lists are also meaningless because wins over the unrealistic lists don’t necessarily mean anything against a real list and artificially alter a factions ‘Winrate’ if TTS results were kept separate from actual games then fine, but using the data together isn’t giving an accurate representation of the state of the game.

This. I completely disregard anything from TTS as people seem to be running lists that you’d never see in person. Seraphon for example, the Salamander spam. In my area, nobody would EVER buy that many of those old ugly and expensive resin salamanders so you’ll never see that type of list in person. i have no firsthand experience with it, but I’ve heard combat, specifically pile in moves, are very ‘clunky’ in tts so people aren’t playing combats right (skipping pile ins) or running lists that avoid combat as much as possible

My Wishlist for Soulblight -keep the Legion Of Blood/Night as ‘sub factions’ with a general ‘Soulblight’ allegiance also. Each Legion would focus on specific units (Night would be Mannfred and all the ‘horror’ elements like ghouls and wolves, Blood would be Neferata and skeletons etc) [im not too familiar with the exact lore of the Legions but that seems to be roughly what they’re about] -plastic Blood Knights, Blood Knights on foot (elite vampire infantry), plastic Fell Bats and Bat Swarms (both with much better rules) -Vlad as a new Mortach (with an additional Legion Of ... sub faction I don’t really have an opinion on rules for them so much, I just want new plastic models

-remove the double turn. -nerf shooting completely. This is a melee focused game, if you want to shoot your opponents to death then go play 40K. No shooting attack should have a statline better than 4+ 4+ - 1. The advantage/positives of shooting is that your opponent can’t hit you back like they can in combat, therefore shooting needs to be balanced by either being weaker or costing a lot more than melee units. -roll off for first turn regardless of drops. -artefacts can be purchased with points. -combined with the artefacts point above, battalions no longer give you extra artefacts and therefore cost less, especially with a roll off for first turn. -mortal wounds almost entirely removed from the game. Make them magic only. The problem with mortal wounds is how oppressive they are to some armies, and originally they used to be quite rare, however back in the era of 2+ rerolling save Liberators, mortal wounds were a necessary evil as it was the only way to deal with them. The above problem was nerfed but the power creep of mortal wounds everywhere continued. -caps of +1/-1 to modifiers. -named characters, where it is lore appropriate, MUST be your general. Ie if you’ve got Morathi you can’t make the Hag Queen general. -lore based restrictions on list building. Each Fyreslayers lodge only has a single Auric Runefather, so if you’re using the Lodge rules then you should be restricted to one Runefather per army, same with things like the Abhorrent Archregent in Flesh-Eaters. In you choose not to take a sub faction then you can take multiples, to represent multiple Lodges/Courts etc coming together. -base size = wounds characteristic. 25mm =1, 32mm =2, 40mm = 3, 50mm =4 etc. +3 for heroes or something. -Look Out Sir. Either you can’t target that hero, or the hero can pass wounds to the unit instead. -Damage Saves. Make it an official game term/rule to remove any confusion and/or rules conflict instead of the current method. -similar to the above, Universal Special Rules probably should return rather than having a million different rules for ‘+1 save’ etc. -standardise wargear across the game. All shields give +1 save etc. this doesn’t stop them from also having special abilities though, just makes things consistent. -moving + terrain. Unless the unit can fly (or has a similar rule), if you can’t physically place a model on the terrain then it can’t end its move there. No more stopping halfway up a tower etc. -remove battleshock immunity. Units that have bravery based abilities are paying for those abilities and quite frankly it’s a very negative play experience when half the armies in the game can ignore your abilities. more faction specific wislisting -Stormcast Eternals. Make them similar to Custodes from 40K, an army of ~20 models. 3+ 3+ baseline for all their weapons, 3+ save if they have shields etc. -Seraphon. 2 wound Saurus while also having good attacks. -Fyreslayers. Armywide 6+ damage save-in the lore, the save comes from the runes they all have but in the game only some units get it. Vulkites Berzerker Fury changed to match the Khorne Blood Warriors ability. -Flesh Eater Courts. Crypt Horrors and Crypt Flayers should have stats similar to Ogres. Minimum 2 damage attacks for a start. -Daughters Of Khaine. All snake units should have a 4+ save.

This. I think their Specialist Games like Bloodbowl etc are great, but their main games? Almost every other game company writes better rules and/or more balanced. GW being a publicly traded company put too much priority into selling stuff than making a good game. If every other game company had the same sort of presence gw do (their own dedicated stores etc) then I don’t think gw would survive honestly

And who’s fault was that? Theirs by overpricing them compared to everything released before, and releasing only 2 units that look too similar to each other while also making them a horde army. They fixed the prices on future armies (until Bonereapers) but they refuse to lower prices* on existing products except in the case of the Magmadroth where they put it in a Start Collecting box that was cheaper than the Magmadroth on its own. in regards to this new ‘release strategy’ I’m nervous. Slaanesh getting a new battletome so soon (unless it’s a ‘designed for aos3’ situation) rubs me the wrong way because of the whole ‘cash grab’ feeling and invalidating a battletome so soon after release. Lumineth getting new stuff so soon after their main release, while the likes of Fyreslayers, Flesh-Eater Courts, Ironjawz, Daughters Of Khaine etc NEED more models/units, and armies like Skaven and Seraphon need massive updates to replace the really old models is upsetting. I disliked the whole release strategy of aos2 so far as well. The fact most armies only got Endless Spells and/or Faction Terrain felt extremely lazy. In my opinion, a lot of the endless spells should have been units instead (Corpsemare Stampede, Molten Infernoth, the Sylvaneth worm thing and the upcoming dock blood snake etc). Some armies didn’t even get either (Cities Of Sigmar, Orruck Warclans). My thoughts? GW were more focused on rushing out books so everyone was on an ‘even playing field’ (and yes, in my opinion I feel some of the battletomes were rushed) at the expense of releasing models

I feel it’s worth pointing out that gw have separate allocations of stock for their own retail stores, their website and 3rd party retailers. Stock levels of one have nothing to do with stock levels of the other edit: I also think it’s unfair for people to expect them to shift stock around so the 3rd parties have ‘enough’ at the expense of their own stores. If a 3rd party doesn’t have stock? Well they’ve still got all the other games and products they sell. If a gw store doesn’t have stock? They go out of business for failing to meet sales targets. This is a tough pill to sallow for some, but gw should be prioritising their own stores over 3rd parties

Hrothgorn is not a replacement for the Icebrow Hunter unless gw rewrite the Hunters warscroll. The Hunter has a spear/javelin which Hrothgorn does not, and the crossbow in the Hunters warsroll is an optional weapon not included by default (which I also believe the current Hunter model doesn’t actually have)

As long as gw still sell physical books? I have become used to expecting them to do nothing about imbalances, because heavily faq/errata your brand new book is something they refuse to do and they’d rather wait until the next edition to fix it (some minor issues have been fixed, but usually it’s a case of too little too late. The change to Petrifex Elite for example, had that occurred in the 2-week post-release faq/errata then the complaints and backlash would have been huge). In some countries, I imagine a major errata within a few weeks of release could be justification for refunds and/or lawsuits which they obviously don’t want to deal with either. I have two very strong opinions on how to somewhat fix balance issues, neither of which gw will do because shareholders say money is more important. Firstly, all books for an edition should be written at the same time. This stops the ‘accidental’ powercreep created when the writers come up with a new rule mechanic halfway through an edition meaning the earlier books get left behind (eg the first Sylvaneth battletome which introduced Allegiance Abilities, Flesh-Eaters 2019 and Battleline If monsters etc). Second, is moving the rules to digital only. It allows them to fix any issues that come up instantly and not having to worry about invalidating your $83nz battletome. It also removes the print time issues (such as how the GHB is written so far in advance of when it gets released)

The thing is though, that a units rules are at least partially factored into the price gw charge, and so you can’t really just ignore the rules when talking about pricing. example, ‘elite’ units. Gw expects to sell less of them vs a Battleline* unit, and so they charge more for the elite unit so that they effectively make the same profit regardless of how many individual boxes are sold *this doesn’t apply to fantasy units that were elite but are now Battleline in AoS (ie Witch Aelves, Ironbreakers etc) because they don’t adjust prices down (Magmadroth being an extremely rare situation)

It’s because for some people, that xenophobia is reflected in the rules too, with imperium armies generally getting better rules than the xenos armies even when the lore supports it being the other way around. That probably has something to do with it

Not necessarily. The Fyreslayers and Sylvaneth Warbands both have weapons that don’t exist in the books

When I first got into the hobby back in 2001 with Middle-earth, I used to be able to stick to one army, I’d get enough stuff for an army over time that I could play 500pts, 750pts, 1000pts and 1500pts lists. After which I’d then change up and get a new army. This became a little bit blurred in the later years of Middle-earth as I started combining armies together (eg Isengard and Mordor as one), but for the most part I was able to collect enough to play before moving on. This continued when I got into 40K around 2006 as well, however my lists started to stop at 1000pts rather than 1500pts in the early 2010s. Then came AoS. With the fantasy model range, there were tons of individual models I liked but not necessarily the army they belonged to (eg Frost Sabres, Bullgors, Demigryphs etc). When AoS came out with the whole Grand Alliance thing, that issue went away, and so did my self control to stick to one army at a time. Fast forward to now, and it’s not uncommon for me to a buy a box of Stormcast one week but then next week buy a box of orruks. Because of this, I actually have very few ‘complete’ armies these days

Warcry is a great system. It has some flaws with the randomly generated objectives that can result in a non-game or instant victory for one side but in those cases you can just draw a new card. I think the campaign system is a bit light in regards to gaining xp, upgrades, injuries and fighters dying, but they can always add that later. The instructions for building the terrain was botched in the starter box, in that if you followed the instruction book then the terrain cards were useless. Where I think Warcry falls apart, is the AoS Warbands. The game was initially announced as just the chaos Warbands, and people complained. I don’t know what actually went down in gw HQ, but in my opinion, the chaos Warbands were all playtested and balanced against each other, but the AoS Warbands feel like they were rushed out to kill the complaints. The AoS Warbands generally have more choices and a lot of things are at a much higher ‘power level’ for their points vs the original chaos Warbands and it feels unfair. The Stormcast shooting models are the worst offenders. I also feel like they could have used Warcry to buff certain models (while paying appropriate points for it) so they actually matched their lore a bit better than they do in regular AoS, but it is what it is. My regular group didn’t get into it because they watched a few of us playing the game and got put off by the apparent imbalance between the chaos Warbands and the AoS ones. My Stormcast friend has no interest in the game because his Stormcast felt op and he didn’t enjoy the experience. Back on the subject of pricing though, what’s the justification for Warhammer Underworlds Warbands vs regular AoS models. Eg Beastclaw Raiders, Icebrow Hunter (resin) is $73nz whereas the Underworlds warband consisting of an Icebrow Hunter, a Frost Sabre and 3 Gnoblers (all plastic + cards for the game) for $67nz. This kinda proves the whole “price is determined by how many you’d buy” is false because someone might want more than one Icebrow Hunter, but theoretically you’d only want one warband, unless you were buying multiples because they’re better models than the existing resin ones

Certain new releases are even being delayed here. The last 2 or 3 White Dwarfs were almost a month late, the Space Marine Chaplain on bike is m.i.a and the necron Hexmark destroyer isn’t coming until later November. I don’t understand. Are gw shipping crates full of an individual kit or something? I would have thought that all releases would be shipped together

At the time, they explicitly said that Finecast was cheaper than metal and yet every metal kit redone in finecast immediately went up in price by about 20%. in the case of Middle-earth, they tried to hide this by changing the blister packs from 3 models to 4, and bundling the foot and mounted heroes together so at least it looked like a better deal. That didn’t happen with 40K or fantasy though

Gw implemented this rule a few years ago now to stop people from buying directly from the UK, because gw are obviously aware that whatever they’re charging in international markets is more than it should be. now I’ve already mentioned earlier some of the components that go into the New Zealand pricing for gw products. I wasn’t trying to justify their prices as I agree they’re too much, but rather just explaining why comparing UK price against the exchange rate isn’t accurate or a fair representation of gw costs in the international markets