Joseph Mackay

February 22, 2022

How does Mightier Makes Rightier work with Apex Predator battleplan? Can Mancrushers deny the opponent from scoring?

February 21, 2022

1 hour ago, Gaz Taylor said:

You need a pinch of salt here though as dates can slip for a variety of reasons and I’m assuming the roadmap is based around books being in peoples hands as released and not just available for preorder.

When it comes to dates, gw seem to classify the preorder date as released (eg Ork-tober a few years ago - the codex wasn’t actually released until November)

February 15, 2022

On 2/14/2022 at 5:03 PM, Lord Krungharr said:

Oh here's a rules question about the Boarboys: they add 1 to hit and wound rolls for stikkas or tusks/hooves after they charge. It say 'or'....does that mean we have to pick one to add the hit and wound rolls to? Or am I mistaken? I'd rather be mistaken.

RAW I think it’s one or the other, RAI I think it’s both

its poorly worded, but I think they combined the Boars Charge and Stikkas ability into one rather than 2 separate abilities, Chompas obviously aren’t supposed to get the +1 which is why it’s worded that way

February 12, 2022

7 hours ago, Rors said:

If we moved to say 1500 as the new standard I'd expect some factions to drop off competitively, that might also cause a backlash as these are generally the popular armies. DoK for example can't really do the Morathhi snakes combo. Pink horros remain really point efficient but it's a big investment in holding one objective when you have less points to threaten others.

My answer to this is that, really, the god characters should have been narrative only from the start, so I wouldn’t have an issue with stuff like the morathi snakes combo going away effectively

February 11, 2022

8 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

Was just reading through the thread on the recently announced GW price increase and had a bit of a random thought. With the overall cost of an army increasing when purchased from scratch, why as gamers do we seem to constantly end up with the scenario that 2000 points is the defacto size to play games at? Specifically thinking of organised events more than anything, but as a wider line of thinking when writing lists etc.

Is now a good time to rethink this almost self-imposed point level and try to encourage slightly smaller games to be played. It would not only lower the monetary cost, but also speed games up (less to move and think about), plus it would certainly shake the "meta" up - you'd not see a 4 mega-gargant army for example.

In my area, the answer is gatekeeping - the same thing (and usually from the same people responsible) that killed fantasy

for others I know personally, it’s because they have limited free time and feel like going out for a ~1 hour game of 1000pts etc isn’t worth their time or effort

for me, I actually prefer smaller games (I generally enjoy the side games more than the main games, like Warcry etc), but I know the people I regularly play with don’t, so I don’t get to play the smaller games very often.

slightly off topic but somewhat relevant: in all my years of playing AoS, I’ve noticed an interesting trend. armies that are generally considered ‘bad’ do quite well at ~1000pts, while the ‘good’ armies don’t seem to do as well as they normally would

February 2, 2022

8 hours ago, novakai said:

I believe combined duradin tome originated from Tom of Warhammer weekly but I believe he was just saying what he thought or wish would happen rather then it being an inside source saying it. And like Vampirates it just take a life of it own and get regurgitate everywhere from 4chan and anon post.

just like how I feel combined Beast and STD book came from Neverchosen

I always thought if Grugni was returning into AoS as a model he would just get Legion of the first prince rules instead of a dedicated tome release

I personally wouldn’t trust any rumours that originated from him. He said Flesh-Eaters endless spells were “not long for this world” and the battletome was “on life support” as in going away. Nobody who hadn’t watched/listened to that episode had heard of this before, and nothing ever came of it (this was during the hype for Cursed City, in the weeks prior to the preorder date)

I personally believed Flesh-Eaters would be rolled into Soulblight, but that was on the basis of it being a vampire only book (aka expanding the Soulblight keyword faction, like Nighthaunt) rather than a replacement for Legions Of Nagash

February 2, 2022

22 hours ago, Beliman said:

I'm still thinking that it's a mistake. Kruleboyz, Ironjawz and Bonnesplitterz are written as their own factions (all of them have their own Allegiance Abilities and stuff) and not as a soup'd army book or subfaction.

Orruks are not soup'd. Let's be honest here, any other army with any Coalition units has more interactions and synergies with them than Ironjawz in a Kruleboyz army (mainly because you can't take them!).

All orruks should be coalition between them (appart from Big Waaagh).

When I put my hand up for Duardin soup if they weren’t going to add models to Fyreslayers, Orruks Warclans is exactly the type of book I meant - all 3 retain their own separate allegiances, with an additional combined one

now, the issue with Warclans as a book, is that taking Big Waaagh to gain access to the other Orruk units loses you too much (contrary to the previous book). My plan for my Bonesplitterz was to add the Kruleboyz monsters and run them as Big Waaagh….until I read the rules. Now I’m not buying any Kruleboyz because I can’t use them (Bonesplitterz lose too much of the little they have to run them as Big Waaagh)

I believe it is intentional that you can’t take other orruks as allies, Big Waaagh is what you’re meant to do if you want to mix the Warclans, unfortunately

January 25, 2022

On 1/23/2022 at 6:26 PM, Lord Krungharr said:

Well at least Vulkites w shields can cause some MW on the charge; a unit of 20 just has to get 1 model with 1" of a unit and you get to roll 20 dice shooting for 6s. Nice big tarpit I guess. Still meh but something?

At least I got my Fyreslayers at a nice juicy discount, but still disappointing the way things are looking for them. HOWEVER I don't think we'll be sad when their (or a united Duardin) tome comes out. Stats will probably stay the same but I bet the auras/hero support and new units will be good.

Unless they’ve reworded the ability, only the models within 8” get to throw their shields. This was changed in AoS2 specifically to stop the daisy chain nonsense of 1 model getting within 0.5” and having 30 Duardin throw their shields

January 19, 2022

18 hours ago, Still-young said:

Which in my opinion, is exactly what Eldar needed. Jes Goodwin hit absolute gold when he designed the Eldar like 30 years ago. The designs are excellent. 15-25 year old finecast models are not excellent. They didn’t need a drastic redesign, they needed up to date plastic models.

Agreed. I would also say that the armies we most want updated fall into this category of needing up to date models rather than redesigns

Beasts, Skaven?, Flesh Eaters, Ogors, Seraphon*, Slaves To Darkness.

*personal opinion, Skinks are fine but could maybe use updated models. All Saurus however need a massive overhaul, should be almost twice as big and bulky than they are now - the plastic Bloodbowl Saurus, and the Oldblood from the Starblood Stalkers underworlds Warband are great examples of what Saurus SHOULD look like

January 19, 2022

22 hours ago, Greybeard86 said:

Much like others have said, dragons are the symptom of a bigger problem in AoS.

There simply isn't enough diversity in roles across AoS units. Whether this is because of the suppression of S/T, spill over damage, or other reasons is still up for debate.

Given this, whenever a unit stands out in efficiency, it gets spammed without consequence. Rule of 3 approaches would only be a bandaid. The game would be more fun if there was a reason to bring armies with more variety.

My impression is that at some point some GW decision makers said: "wouldn't it be awesome to have an all slayers / dragons / giants / whatever army?". Probably inspired by strongly thematic armies that were put together by enthusiastic players. Then they forgot that those armies where cool because they were a deviation from a more varied norm, and that oftentimes they weren't very competitive. As a result, now we have, for AoS, contant releases of new armies with narrow ranges and strong rule support for spammy compositions. That is not my cup of tea and I have mostly abandoned AoS as a gaming system (I just paint the miniatures). I wonder how many people are put off my all dragons or all eels and similar things. That doesn't make for a good wargame, IMO.

I mostly agree with you here, but, and it’s a pretty big but, Rule Of 3 simply can’t work in AoS unless all armies get fleshed out to Lumineth/Stormcast/Slaves level of unit options.

armies like Fyreslayers would end up as a static army list because they would have no options. The only difference between fyreslayer lists would be which of the 20~ hero options are taken.

Rule Of 3 works in 40K because of the different roles (HQ, Elite, Troops, Fast, Heavy) in combination with the Detachments, and number of units within each faction. Troops are excluded from the Rule Of 3 in 40K, and in AoS you would have to exclude Battleline from this rule, including conditional Battleline (if they met the requirements for Battleline) otherwise armies like Fyreslayers/Flesh Eaters etc end up as above, which would completely ignore the point of the Rule Of 3 (pretty much every unit that has ever been complained about if spammed was Battleline/conditional Battleline anyway). Under the above specifics, dragon spam avoids this rule and there’s no other way to make this sort of thing work without A) expanding all the small armies asap B) applying the rule on a case by case basis to different factions

January 17, 2022

5 hours ago, yukishiro1 said:

Oh for sure. The point he was just making is that until the FAQs/app are updated, those rules in the box aren't active. They're rules that will become active at some point, but they don't apply to the game until they're memorialized somewhere besides in the box. If the app gets updated on release Saturday, they'll become the new rules at that time.

I mean, maybe that's wrong. But I don't think boxes are official sources of rules that update the rules of the game on their own until they're incorporated in some sort of printed document. It doesn't seem right that a box would overwrite existing rules with the only way to get the new rules being buying the box - that should occur when the new warscrolls make it into the app or a FAQ.

This actually just happened with the 40k box for GSC and Custodes, which came out a week before the new Codexes. I can't find any info online about how people treated it. Presumably on Saturday they'll update the app and/or do a FAQ and it won't be an issue, but if they don't, it's a bit of a strange place to leave those warscrolls at.

Genestealer Cult/Custodes was somewhat unique, in that gw outright stated the books were due at the same time as the box but were delayed outside of their control. Beyond that, the AoS app has always updated to the newest rules. Also prior to AoS3 the warscrolls were free downloads off the webstore as soon as preorders went live

January 17, 2022

2 hours ago, Gailon said:

I’d be on board with this as long as these rules are also released with the box in the faq or similar document. And maybe they do that.

I agree these are official rules, but I suspect they are meant to go with the battletome. Considering the timeline of how these are written. If the Tome is delayed then I would absolutely be in agreement with GW not pushing these warscrolls in the FAQ right away.

my point is just that if they don’t do that then in order to play these rules we’d be playing them off internet leaks (unless we bought the box). That seems bonkers to me. Why would official rules for models people currently own only be found from YouTube screenshots?

I guess this all changes pretty quickly if GW just replaces the warscrolls in the app as soon as the box releases.

With the exception of Dominion (for obvious reasons), the old app updated with the battle box warscrolls after release, so there’s no reason to think they won’t do the same here

January 16, 2022

7 hours ago, Gailon said:

Have a FS player in an ongoing PtG game and will definitely use old rules.

im not even convinced these count as ‘new rules.’ They are warscroll cards that come in a battle box right? Not an faq not an errata. Are they officially released by GW anywhere other than in this one box? Since when are we reliant on leaks online for ‘official’ rules.

Maybe I’m missing something. But the cards in the box seem like rules for the box. Until these scrolls and points are out in the faq/errata documents.

This take makes no sense as there’s no president for it. Battle box rules are 100% offical, and replace any previous rules, at the time of release date. Warscroll cards in the boxes before have never been ‘watered down’ or ‘specially for this box/campaign only’ (warscroll battalions, sure). Closest thing to that is the 40K boxes where you still need the codex, because rules shared by multiple units, or that trigger off a keyword are found in the army rules section rather than the datasheets for units

January 16, 2022

9 hours ago, yukishiro1 said:

It is extremely stupid of GW to release new points for units without releasing the new books those new points values are obviously based on. But this is GW, something being extremely stupid has never stopped them from doing it in the past, and it won't stop them from doing it in the future. It's just another example that GW's release schedule is based around money, not around creating a good game.

In the past, it wasn't unusual for AOS events to prohibit the use of a new book until the first FAQ had been released, because quality control was so poor. That seems to have faded away recently, however - which I am not convinced is a positive change. If that were still true, however, it would seem analogous to the situation here - if you can't use a new book until the first FAQ, it would follow that you shouldn't be using rules from a new boxed set at least until a FAQ is released, and presumably not until the book the boxed set is based upon is released as well.

That was fine when faqs were exactly 2 weeks after release, but now that it’s just whenever gw feels like it/remembers about it, that doesn’t work anymore, sadly

January 16, 2022

31 minutes ago, ledha said:

People thought the same for dominion and it was the full warscrolls.

The only thing that could compensate such lousy profiles would be that fyreslayer runes mechanic affect them for the whole duration of the battle and are cumulative, basically making the game a rush against the clock for the ennemy where he have to beat the dwarves before they end up overpowered and hack everyone

Yeah, there is no basis to the ‘watered down’ warscrolls thing as they’ve never done that in these battle boxes before. In 40K, sure, they don’t give you the full rules, but that’s because of how 40K put a lot of keywords on the scroll that you need the codex for the actual rule. Additionally, the watered down warscrolls are only in the instruction booklet

January 16, 2022

So, what changes do people hope Bonesplitterz get in the next balance update/what changes in general do you think Bonesplitterz need?

-Spirit Of Gorkamorka applies to all Bonesplitterz units and heroes regardless of the number of models in their unit (maybe not the Rouge Idol?).
-20-30pts drop on all infantry (except Big Stabbas).
-Wardokk gains the Priest keyword again (why did he lose it in the first place? Daughters have Wizard-Priest units so that can’t be it).
-and here’s one just for fun (I don’t think it’ll happen and I’m not sure it actually should): Savage Big Boss loses the Leader pitched battle role (like Grimwrath Berzerkers and Doomseekers)

January 16, 2022

1 hour ago, Doko said:

And who cares if a unit is elite or not? Due to that one unit are 10 models and other 5, but the balance is for the unit and both must be good so you can choose one or other.

Also i said as in mathammer hearthguard wasnt undercosted(maybe even overcosted) if we compare it to others infantry as namartis or grave guard and also data tournament spamming the "undercosted" unit never won any tournament in entire 3.0 and they are around 15th in ranking of tournament data so it seems weird call undercosted a unit that being spammed cant win any tournament?

They were overcosted at least compared to Vulkites. Ignoring the AoS3 core rules (coherency) for a moment, Hearthguard were so much better and cheaper at minimum size (yes it’s 5 models vs 10, but those 5 are so much better), they also have 2” range, so units bigger than 5 don’t have issues Vulkites do.

enter AoS3 coherency rules. There was already little reason to take Vulkites from a competitive point of view (if you care about the lore then you should have been taking Vulkites as well). Now with AoS3, the difference between those two units is so much greater, and the points never reflected that in my opinion (maybe the issue was actually Vulkites costing too much rather than Hearthguard being too cheap though). These new warscrolls just reinforce Hearthguard spam as the only way to play the army, and that makes me sad because it strongly goes against the lore of the Fyreslayers

Now in regards to trying to compare to other units, Thralls don’t have a 4+ ward (let’s be honest, everyone always had a hero close enough to get a 4+), Gravegrave only have a 6+ if babysat by a hero (with a much smaller leash - pre Fury In The Deep warscrolls). In regards to within 10” becoming wholly within 9” so a unit of 15 can’t get it? Good. The coherency rules were intended to stop oppressive hordes running a muck (sadly, the majority of those were on 25mm bases so the changes didn’t affect them anyway).

Hearthguard should NOT be spammed, they also SHOULDNT be Battleline, the only reason they are is because the faction is too small to restrict them to Vulkites only. Hearthguard are a bodyguard/elite unit (in the lore), not the main fighting force of the fyreslayers. Additionally, as per the lore, Auric Runemasters and Auric Runefathers should be limited to one per army

January 16, 2022

2 hours ago, Doko said:

Hearthguard didnt need a nerf(8'8 damage for 135 points when namarti for 130 have 17 damage or grave guard for 140 have 15 damage), they had worse damage than similar units as tradeoff for the extra tankiness.

The change to wholy wiithin 9" have killed them because it is almost imposible get 15 models with base 30 and after charge and pile in in range of a hero that hadnt chargued.

The good solution for someome that know how do his job was buff vulkites so they are at the level of hearthguard. But we have seem that this team that did the fyreslayer tome dont know how do his job and nerfed a balanced unit as hearthguard and destroyed a bad unit as vulkites

You’re comparing an elite unit (that under the lore shouldn’t even be conditional Battleline but is because there’s no other options, and was undercosted) to a basic Battleline unit.

January 16, 2022

13 minutes ago, Indecisive said:

the rumour windmill gulf is just amazing, crickets on the aos front while 40k has had a dripfeed of eldar leaks since december for a codex that hasn't even been announced yet

I feel like this just adds fuel to the fire/theory that gw are priorising 40K over AoS due the effects of covid messing up shipping/schedules that someone’s just gone “****** it, let’s just focus on the higher selling items until this is under control, and we’ll chuck something out to AoS if the stars align”

January 15, 2022

Hearthguard Berzerker nerfs we’re needed and I’m happy with them, however I’m not happy with the nerfs to everything else that just makes Hearthguard spam still the most ‘competitive’ list Hearthguard spam needs to go away, not become the only option

January 15, 2022

2 hours ago, Feorag said:

I'd say 11+ personally as you'll end up with really long clan rat conga lines of 20 as that's their base size!

25mm bases don’t care about the coherency rules anyway, which is why the coherency rules are such a massive problem

January 15, 2022

2 hours ago, novakai said:

Or just change the coherency rule from 6 to 10 so at least a min size of ten infantry model with 1 inch reach can all attack without breaking coherency

Even better, make the within 1” of 2 models only apply to Reinforced units

January 15, 2022

1 hour ago, Doko said:

I hope vulkites have rangue 2" also or then gonna be as the hero where idoneths get the big stick and dwarfs the short.

Also namartis now have the stats of 150 points units but cost only 120.......

I hope they don’t get 2” range. It makes sense on thralls due to the size of the weapons, but not for vulkites.

the solution to 32mm base models with 1” range isn’t to bump them all up to 2” as that devalues the units who already have 2”+ range. The solution is 40K style combat rules

January 14, 2022

39 minutes ago, Ogregut said:

I don't think this is true. 2021 was a awesome year for AoS even with delays, big releases and army refreshes.

40k has had a lot of releases recently due to delays so makes it seem 40k heavy.

And as others have pointed out there always seems to be a gap between a new edition and the next big narrative release in both 40k and AoS.

I would also agure with there being a lack of enthusiasm for AoS. It might seem so due to a loud vocal online presence.

I'll argue for one person saying AoS is dying there are 20 hobbiests who are just painting and playing happily.

AoS in 2021 had Slaanesh (delayed from 2020), Daughters (delayed from 2020), Soulblight Gravelords (don’t know if the book was delayed but Cursed City definitely was, which I believe would have also delayed the book), Lumineth (pretty sure these were delayed from 2020 as well as I don’t believe gw intended to release 2 books so close together-my thoughts are the wave 2 models were delayed for some reason and gw decided to release a smaller book as the backlash from delaying Lumineth considering all the hype was something they didn’t want to deal with), Stormcast, Nurgle, Orruks. Of these, all but 3 were meant to be in 2020, and of those 3, only 2 got a reasonable amount of models

yes I’m ignoring the single model releases that came with the Broken Realms books

January 14, 2022

3 hours ago, Chikout said:

He's wrong though. (He said AoS is being ignored in favour of 40k) It's been less than a year since AoS was dominating the release schedule. Last year AoS had 5 big ranges of minis released, 40k had just 3. (Orks, sisters and black Templars) Eldar and Chaos will give them a similar 12 months to AoS.

Delays have dampened the hype for AoS somewhat but that's largely out of GW's control. I'm pretty sure that the Fyreslayers idk box was originally intended to be a winter 2021 release, and maybe the battletomes too.

Even so it's only been six months since AoS 3 launched. 2nd edition didn't get a narrative advancement until May 2019 with Forbidden Power, almost a year after the launch. I'd expect something similar for AoS 3.

Disagree. Ever since covid, gw have been prioritising 40K releases over AoS. That’s not to say 40K haven’t seen delays too, but AoS seems to be hit much harder by them

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