Joseph Mackay

I wanted to have a serious discussion about fixing the Destiny Points to Matched Play Points conversion rate gw used. I’ve made a few characters now (mostly big monsters) and I feel like the points are way off what they should be and my monsters are overpriced. I’ve also done a few tests of trying to recreate existing heroes to check the costs and they all work out nearly double the actual points for the existing warscrolls. the conversion rate in the Anvil Of Apotheosis is Destiny Points x10. I feel it should probably be x5 or x7, somewhere around there. However, I also think that maybe the conversion rate needs to vary based on weather the hero is mounted or not as some of my previous Seraphon/Bonesplitterz 600pts+ monsters would feel op at ~300pts. Note that I ignore the recommended 40dp limit as I feel you can’t do enough with it. As an example, here is a Tyrant on Mournfang that I made, he comes out to 660pts. This is more than a Frostlord on Stonehorn and is definitely not worth 660pts, nor is he worth more than a Stonehorn. At x5 he costs 330pts which is more reasonable, at x7 or x7.5 he’s about 450-500pts (rounding up) which also feels too high. a few notes about this guy, firstly the model. the model for this guy, I don’t have any pictures at the moment as he’s not finished yet, but it’s a spare Mournfang and rider with a Chaintrap and Pistol, and I plan on giving him a cape. now the rules: -the Chaintrap. I wanted this to be a ranged weapon that also has a melee profile. To accomplish this, the missile weapon is a Bow with the required upgrades to match the Huskards Chaintrap. The melee weapon is a Flail that I upgraded to match the regular Tyrants Thundermace, however I gave it an extra attack to account for the tyrants Beastskewer Glaive that this model doesn’t get. -the Ogor Pistols. Following the Anvil Of Apotheosis rules, this is actually illegal as you can’t give models 3 weapons but anyway. It’s a Handbow upgraded to match the tyrants Ogor Pistols, however to account for the lower range, I increased the to hit by 1 and it has 2 damage as you can’t give it D3. -Punches and Kicks is the Mounted Beast Claws upgraded to match the Frostlord/Huskards Punches and Kicks. -Tusks is the Mounted Beast Maw upgraded to match the Mournfangs Tusks. The D3 damage accounts for the lost of the extra damage Mournfangs are supposed to get when they charge, additionally there’s no way to modify D3 damage into 1 damage. -Decapitating Strike represents the Tyrants Thundermace rule, except that it triggers off wound rolls rather than hit rolls. My group is pretty open, but I’m the only player who’s really interested in using this so they’ve all basically said ‘do what you want, we trust you not to be a ****** about it’ so I’m just looking for some ideas and sort of a consensus on what would be a more accurate conversion rate

My gw manager for 20+ years has always asserted quite strongly that price is (at least partially) dictated by how many an individual person is likely to buy for that army. Ie you would buy less elites than you would Battleline, so the elites are priced higher to make up for less sales

Well they’re $380nz, $248nz for the 2 giants (which by the way is more expensive than buying 2 seperate giants as they were $98nz)

Too many armies have ways to ignore battleshock, and too many units/armies are pointed based on their modifiers to bravery and/or abilities that trigger off battleshock tests or bravery. remove immunity to battleshock. I really don’t care if Death *should* never run away, it ruins the game when stuff is pointed to factor in abilities that are then just ignored by half the armies in the game. There are a lot of things in the game that *should* do this or that but don’t

That’s not really yours or anyone else’s decision to make though. People can and should be able to enjoy the hobby however they want to. When I turn up to a game, do I want to see a fully painted army facing off against me? Yes. Do I care if it’s just an army of grey plastic? Not really no, because they aren’t my models and I have no say in what that person does with them. I have a love-hate relationship with the painting side of the hobby, I’m more interested in playing the game than anything else. I used to paint because I felt like I had to. That’s not to say that sometimes I actually enjoy painting though

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

I’m not justifying their ****** release model early on for Necromunda, but there’s no justifiable excuse for copyright infringement. If everyone used that PDF instead (for whatever reasons they try to justify it), gw would just kill the game like the last time

Or, gw discontinue an army because nobody is buying their models

Which is copyright infringement. im sorry but if you can’t afford/don’t want to buy the rules then you don’t get to play. It’s that simple. necromundas release has been badly managed and they keep changing what they’re doing with it, but let’s be real, you only actually need the Rulebook/Dark Uprising and Gangs Of The Underhive (depending on the gang you want). Everything else is optional

I strongly believe gw prioritised (and rushed) releasing a battletome for every army so they were all on an ‘equal footing’ rather than models. Gw knows armies with old books don’t sell as well. on that subject of books, I also don’t believe the books were written in the order they were released. There’s no way Seraphon was one of the last books written. The warscrolls are fairly weak with any real power coming from allegiance abilities, they have no prayer list or Mount traits. Bound endless spells was pure laziness so they didn’t have to make any faction ones, and I believe the terrain piece was made during fantasy but not released for whatever reason, it wasn’t made for AoS, it was something leftover from fantasy. I just don’t get it, that release plan. Could gw really not come up with new stuff for Flesh-Eaters, Fyreslayers, Ironjawz etc or update old models for Skaven, Ogors, Seraphon, Slaves To Darkness? The only thing that makes sense is that they rushed out the books rather than focusing on new models (note that I don’t count faction terrain or endless spells as models in this regard, and even so, not everyone got those either). I also believe Legions Of Nagash and Cities Of Sigmar were temporary stopgaps to get everyone updated. Legions will go away once the final faction has gotten its own battletome (Soulblight). Bonereapers will replace Deathrattle, Flesh-Eaters replace Deadwalkers etc. Cities, I believe will eventually have the factions expanded out. Dispossessed will eventually get their own battletome, same with the humans. The elves however will either get rolled into another faction (Order Serpentis as part of the Shadow Aelves for example) or replaced and/or discontinued

A lot of models need to be replaced though (Saurus for example, are an embarrassment compared to what the models could look like - see the Oldblood from the plastic Carnosaur or the Bloodbowl team). Unfortunately that comes with a price increase though. I think part of the problem is that gw don’t actually conduct any sort of market research into what customers actually want. It’s been a long standing myth (coming from gw staff) that one factor in a kits price is how many of that kit a single person is likely to buy. Troops/Battleline are more likely to sell more kits than Elites. Where this myth falls apart is the change from fantasy to AoS. A lot of previously elite units became troops but are still priced as elites (Witch Elves, the 4 Dispossessed kits etc). Battleline If units are also generally priced as elites even though they’re just as likely to sell as much as regular troops. A recent example of this was Howling Banshees and Incubi in 40K, two previously resin/metal kits that people have been crying out for updated plastics for years. Gw released them at modern day elite pricing despite the fact it’s possible to build a whole army out of them. The number of models in the box was also an issue as I believe most people would want them in units of 10 rather than 5. However due to the prices those kits haven’t sold very well, and the message that sends to gw is ‘customers dont want plastic Aspect Warriors’ which is not true at all. But gw don’t care why the kit didn’t sell, just the fact it didn’t sell is enough for them to decide we don’t want the rest of them. as for phasing out armies, that leads back to the whole copyright issues brought about by the chapter house lawsuit. I guess gw couldn’t drop everything all at once so have been phasing stuff out as they get new replacements ready

Yes this is true, however the fact you didn’t previously receive the digital copy free with a physical book was a part of my objection to the price of books. Although they’ve just put up the price of the books to cover the loss of digital sales anyway 😂 I have very mixed opinions on 40K at the moment and how a lot of things seem to be about trying to get as much extra money as they can out of you for no real reason. So I’m watching closely but I’m probably dropping 40K at this point anyway

I don’t know that many actually justify the prices, but due to circumstances maybe they have no choice? example, I play almost exclusively in a gw store and at a store managers house. For me, 3rd party or 3D printed models aren’t really an option, so I either have to accept the prices or leave the hobby. I will complain about the prices anytime that conversation comes up though, but I can’t ‘send gw a message’ through not buying their stuff. I do however buy my books almost exclusively in digital format because they’re usually half the price

Katakros is 1 large sprue for £65 ($215NZ) Archaon is $330nz, Nagash is $201nz, Alarielle is $280nz, Gordrak is $230nz one thing I noticed during the COVID lockdowns when I wanted Seraphon Stegadons, is the pricing on hero/hq models in NZ is higher than the price of a kit that’s the same UK price. That literally has no justification

Also keep in mind that ALL gw plastics, resin and metal kits* are all made in the Uk so all costs involved in the production/manufacturing of models is higher for them than all the other companies who manufacture in China. Though this point is only relevant to the standard UK price of their kits and is unrelated to the international price issues, just thought it was something people might want to remember when comparing prices to other games. *terrain and endless spells are printed in China (or at least they were) as well as books, any card products and dice

Setting the ‘entry point’ to the game as a 2000pts army is one big reason why fantasy died. the ‘old guard’ who never bought anything new in years anyway would constantly complain that they couldn’t get new people to play, but whenever a new guy came into the store, those same people refused to play anything less than +2000pts. The Old Guard are why the barrier to entry was so high (this is what my store manager witnessed over the years, and I too experienced it when I tried to get into fantasy around 2007)

People don’t like the ‘reasonable’ answer to why foreign prices are out of whack with the exchange rates, but here it is (note that this is specifically for New Zealand so unsure if it’s the same for the US/Canada) the NZ price consists of the following components: default cost + exchange rate, UK taxes, shipping to Australia, Australian import taxes, Australia export taxes, shipping to New Zealand, New Zealand import taxes, New Zealand sales taxes (GST) everyone always turns around and says “oh but I can order x and it doesn’t cost me anywhere near the gw price” and there’s a few reasons for that: you aren’t paying the business related import/export taxes, different shipping methods. The cost for you to ship one or two kits here from the UK is VERY different to GWs cost to ship full containers of product to Australia and then to New Zealand. the base exchange rate they use is also not the actual exchange rate, but rather an advantageous exchange rate to protect them against any changes in currency values as a New Zealand customer, I hate the excessive amounts we have to pay for everything, and the pricing of Realmlords and Mega Gargants is getting to a point where I’m close to quitting. As it is, the Ogor Mawtribes army I’ve started will probably be my last, and I’ll only be buying ‘Specialist Games’ like Bloodbowl and Necromunda going forward, sure they might up the cost of those too but at least I only have to buy one or two kits to make a Bloodbowl/Necromunda team rather than $1000+ every time I want to do a new army

I played the following list vs Legion Of Blood in Escalation last night. Victory for the Ogor. Allegiance: Ogor Mawtribes- Mawtribe: BloodgulletMortal Realm: GhurLeadersButcher (140)- Cleaver- Lore of Gutmagic: Blood Feast- Bloodgullet 2nd Spell: RibcrackerIcebrow Hunter (120)Tyrant (160)- General- Command Trait: Nice Drop of the Red Stuff! - Artefact: Splatter-cleaver - Big Name: FateseekerBattleline8 x Ironguts (440)6 x Ogor Gluttons (240)- Pairs of Clubs or Blades3 x Ogor Gluttons (120)- Clubs or Blades with Iron FistsUnits8 x Frost Sabres (160)3 x Maneaters (180)6 x Mournfang Pack (420)- Culling Clubs or Prey Hackers with Iron FistsTotal: 1980 / 2000Extra Command Points: 0Allies: 0 / 400Wounds: 154 Key notes, Neferata neutered the Ironguts with -2 to hit from spells and abilities, they eventually still killed her though. I messed up the Frost Sabres charge by not checking the range of the hunters command ability, so when they successfully charged but the hunter failed, the cats weren’t getting the extra attacks I’d saved my command points for. With the Butcher, I made the same mistake as I did with the Firebelly in my first game and had him babysit the Mawpot, due to arcane terrain he was able to get +2 to cast later in the game though. Hunter died because he got hit by a “can’t attack” ability and a Coven Throne ate him. what’s the general opinion on Maneaters? They get 4 -1 rend 2 damage attacks and their shooting is better than the Tyrants pistol (which really bugs me actually). Being only 3 models, they don’t look like a threat and my opponent ignored them until they started eating his skeletons

I think it’s worth pointing out too that Tomb Kings and Bretonia won’t return. They were discontinued for reasons (presumably bad sales according to some people, but mostly because GW can’t stop people from copying them as they are too generic for gw to claim they own the ip/copyrights etc.) the Chapter House lawsuit proved this to be the case with a lot of things. Hell, gw even lost the ownership of some of their ip (characters) because Chapter House were able to release their version of the model first, even though Chapter House didn’t own the ip for them. note: I may be interchangeably getting IP, Copyright and Trademarks mixed up, but the intent of my comments should be clear regardless if this game doesn’t include Dwarfs, Dark/High/Wood Elves, Lizardmen, Vampire Counts etc then my interest is basically non existent. I don’t like Horus Heresy because it’s (mostly) marines vs marines. If The Old World was only Empire vs Empire (or whatever Humans are called) then I’m not interested at all. i also think, as others have said, it’s important for the models to be compatible with AoS

In the the first game, I found the Gargant pretty fun. He smashed up a couple Evocators, Sequitors and damaged a Knight Incanter before he got killed by the return attacks (and then fell on those units finishing them off), but he did die basically straight away so I took 2 of them in the second game. I was playing around with Gargants mostly as a sort of “preview” for the Sons Of Behemat. as for the Tyrants, that was down to 2 main reasons. The first was that I like the model whereas I’m not a big fan of the current Butcher or Slaughtmaster, so I was playing around with models I’m most likely to buy first. The second, was that I wanted to basically just run across the table and smash stuff. Not having to worry about being within x range for y buff etc I felt would be more useful for me to ‘figure out’ the army. Of all the (non Beastclaw) heroes, the Tyrant seemed the most designed to purely smash stuff. The Firebelly was included for mostly the same reasons (I like the model), but I didn’t use him correctly and as such found him not that great so he was the first thing I dropped for the second list (the problems I had with him was I held him back babysitting the Mawpot so that he’d get the +1 to cast and being able to use its ability. Unfortunately all his spells were close range damage dealers so he really wanted to be charging up the board with the rest of the army)

I’ve recently been thinking about what my playstyle is, what sort of lists I have the most fun with, and that sort of thing. After a bit of thinking about that and looking over the whole AoS model range, I thought I’d try out Ogor Mawtribes (luckily I have a friend with a rather large collection that I’ve been able to try some things out. here are the two lists I’ve played so far. I’m interested what people think. I played the first list vs Stormcast in The Blades Edge. Was a loss but scared my opponent into thinking they’re almost a top tier army 😂 I played the second list vs Ironjawz in Total Commitment. Was a victory, but very much luck based. A lot of the combats didn’t go how either of us expected them to, I rolled really well while my opponent rolled really bad. Allegiance: Ogor MawtribesLeadersTyrant (160)- General- Command Trait: Killer Reputation: Deathcheater - Artefact: Sky-Titan Scatter Pistols - Big Name: FateseekerTyrant (160)- Big Name: FateseekerTyrant (160)- Big Name: FateseekerFirebelly (120)- Lore of the Sun-Eater: Tongues of FlameBattleline12 x Ogor Gluttons (400)- Clubs or Blades with Iron Fists6 x Ogor Gluttons (240)- Clubs or Blades with Iron Fists6 x Ogor Gluttons (240)- Clubs or Blades with Iron Fists4 x Leadbelchers (160)4 x Leadbelchers (160)BehemothsAleguzzler Gargant (160)Total: 1960 / 2000Extra Command Points: 0Allies: 0 / 400Wounds: 171 Allegiance: Ogor MawtribesLeadersTyrant (160)- General- Command Trait: Killer Reputation: Deathcheater - Artefact: Sky-Titan Scatter Pistols - Big Name: FateseekerTyrant (160)- Big Name: FateseekerTyrant (160)- Big Name: FateseekerBattleline12 x Ogor Gluttons (400)- Clubs or Blades with Iron Fists4 x Leadbelchers (160)4 x Leadbelchers (160)4 x Ironguts (220)4 x Ironguts (220)BehemothsAleguzzler Gargant (160)Aleguzzler Gargant (160)Total: 1960 / 2000Extra Command Points: 0Allies: 0 / 400Wounds: 160 edit: in both lists, the Gargants are allies but I forgot to tick them as such in warscroll builder

Saurus Warriors, Saurus Knights, (Saurus Guard are alright but if the others get an update then might as well do them too), Chameleon Skinks, Salamanders, Razordons, Skink Handlers, Saurus Sunblood, Saurus Astrolith Bearer, Slann, Lord Kroak, Kroxigor

Exactly this

Considering the Ogor Mawtribes dice they did, I wouldn’t be surprised actually

Most AoS factions are too small (unit/model selections) which creates a lot of these balance issues around Battleline If units. for example, Fyreslayers. Auric Runefathers and Auric Runemasters, based on the lore, should both be limited to one per army as the lore very clearly points out that there is only ever one Runefather and one Runemaster within the lodge (or, if you want to represent multiple lodges teaming together then you can, but you should lose access to the lodge rules). The other issue is Hearthguard as Battleline If units. The lore doesn’t support those units being they bulk of your army. Both types are more of a ‘bodyguard’ type unit within the lore. however, the faction has a very small unit selection, so gw can’t apply those lore based restrictions or literally every list becomes the same as there’s no options. I don’t agree with it, but until gw flesh out more of these armies, then this is just the way they have to do it. in general, I hate Battleline units, but that’s because I’m more of a visual person. I pick the units I like the models of before any other considerations, and in a lot of cases, Battleline forces me to take models I don’t like and/or clash with whatever weird theme I’m trying to do