[The Rumour Thread]

1 hour ago, Sleboda said:

And yet, they still are a bad army.

Be careful what you wish for.

Why are khorne bad? They have lots of units, multiple list builds, good synergy and powerful units. They hit like a train and spread MW like a crop sprayer. The last update got rid of some obviously ridiculous things but buffed others.  

[AoS 2 - Skaventide Discussion]

1 hour ago, SleeperAgent said:

The Eshin artefact is just ******. You can make anything a Gnawhole for one turn, but your general has to be there, and you are still limited to one teleport per turn. 

Stormfiends are indeed "meh" for their point cost. Acolytes are even worse. The problem I have is that I want to play Skryre but the battlelines are either a cheap piece of tissue paper, or 720 points of "meh". Not to mention the costs of Skryre models. 3 jezzails is $52, 1 model of Acolytes is $10 (need minimum of 5) and they both look like dogshit.

I want the army to have some differences. But lumping them all into one book and not expanding on some of the weaker clans just homogenized all the lists into 60-120 clanrats and some things after that.  I really think they should remove the battleline restrictions on all the battleline units that have them. Its such a ridiculous restriction on your army that EVERY unit has to be the same clan  and almost forces you to just take clanrats. 

And why didn't Skryre get the Verminlord Warpseer? Corruptor is Pestilens, Deceiver is Eshin, Warbringer is Verminus....

Question @SleeperAgent. What do you want to be able to do? I assume if you want to go skryre you will have at least one unit of stormfiends. 3 dont do much so it would have to be 6-9. Thatbleaves you with 2 battleline to find. Could you not convert 2xunits of 5 acolytes? (I agree with @mmimzie and @Skreech Verminking that they are amazing in decent numbers). 120 points for both of them and then you can do anything you want with the rest of the army. 

Or is it that you want 1 clanrat/giant rats unit as a screen but not 3? 

Personally i think the battleline restrictions are ok. They make things interesting and list building is always a feast of options. 

[The Rumour Thread]

On 4/17/2019 at 9:22 AM, Toddy said:

There seems to be an awful lot of speculation that GW will merge factions who already have battletomes...

Seems extremely unlikely to me, the only previous 'battletomed' faction to be merged is Pestilens. and I think the only did that is because it would have being too much effort in the short-term to bring it up-to-date as a full faction. While their model lines are a little small, bonesplitterz and ironjawz only need (and will likely receive) a bit of terrain and an endless spell.

I fully believe that once all the current model lines have battletomes or are retired, GW will actually break up some of these soup-tomes (like legions of nagash and skaven) into full sub factions. They're only here to make the model lines playable in the meantime.

They literally just put Skaven back together again to make them playable. It would be counter productive to split a 40 unit range into 4 or 5 new subfactions of 10 or less units each. Its a waste of design time to then create 4 sets of new units it can be spent on genuinely new factions or creating 2 new units and making every skaven player happy. LON is a slightly different story as it seems more unwieldy and has things that could easily be expanded and differentiated properly into well selling factions (soulblight).  

[AoS 2 - Skaventide Discussion]

I played 1500pts today v khorne and scored a win. Stars of the show were clan rats. 1 unit of 40 with spears buffed with death frenzy and inferno blades (from ashqy, cast on a 6, +1 damage to melee attacks) were on the receiving end of a bloodthirster charge. He killed 11 rats and they ate him alive in return. On a subsequent turn my second unit of 40 armed with blades charged 6 skullcrushers. Inferno blades was again key and the skullcrushers (+3 save and 5 wounds each) went the way of the bloodthirster (although it took 2 rounds of combat).

3 stormfiends i included did very little for the second time of asking but the screaming bell and warplightning cannon are as good as everyone knows they are.

Skaven have a real feeling of synergy and power. They are also lots of fun. We both waited nervously to see if my cannon or the doomwheel would explode themselves and there was  laughter when a vigourdust injector caused max mw to my unit. 

 

 

 

 

 

[The Rumour Thread]

5 hours ago, robinlvalentine said:

Interesting - extremely reminiscent of the Stormcast Sequitor/Exorcist ghost traps. Suggests it's some kind of soul-sucking device in a similar vein.  

Soul sucking? Could be another deepkin model.

[AoS 2 - Skaventide Discussion]

10 hours ago, Balloon Dwarf said:

I'm steering clear of clanrats just because I struggle to paint as is and the thought of painting 60 models, however simple, makes me feel ill.

 

They are really easy and quite fun to paint. I followed this and managed to paint 40 (2x batches of 20) in under 4 hours for the lot. It could have been faster but I faffed around with some details and added another colour. I have another 40 to do but it should go quickly too.  

[The Rumour Thread]

13 hours ago, Aryann said:

Nobody wants new Stormcasts yet they get new chamber opened every year! 

Somebody wants them as they sell bucketloads and if they didnt sell  bucketloads they wouldnt make them. At the end of the day they are a business. 

[AoS 2 - Skaventide Discussion]

1 hour ago, Gwendar said:

I would pretty much echo what everyone else has said; they aren't comparable. I've played with Bestigors and you get a fast, hard-hitting unit when ran as a unit of 10, which most people do.

Stormvermin are only considered decent once you invest 500 points into them to run them in a block of 40. Of course when you Death Frenzy and buff them by other means.. sure, they're deadly, but that's a huge investment for a Death Star in my opinion.

Should you not have to invest a big chunk of points for an army focusing deathstar unit?  

[AoS 2 - Skaventide Discussion]

Today I played my first two 1,000pt games with Skaven. (Having changed from my first AOS army which was stormcast) 

I used slightly different lists in each game as I'm trying out things to see how they might perform on a table rather than on paper. My opponent running Khorne was doing the same thing although he is a long time Khorne player and was focusing on the new rules. Both games were "battle for the pass". Apologies for the scrappy batrep. I didn't keep proper notes turn by turn. 

Game 1 

Warlock engineer with vigordust injector and deranged inventor

Grey Seer with death fenzy

Clawlord with brutal fury

40xclanrats

20xclanrats

3 stormfiends (ratling cannon, warpfire,doomflayers)

2x Rat ogres

 

V

Mighty lord of khorne on juggernaught

2x Slaughterpriest

Bloodsecrator

6x mighty skull crushers

20 Blood reavers

My opponent let me go first so I buffed the 20 clanrats with death frenzy and gnash, gnaw then sent them through a gnawhole to claim the left hand objective. His skullcrushers were stuck going single file through two buildings and i had a 9" charge which would have locked them up for a big chunk of the game. I failed it and on his turn he stomped the clan rats flat.

Things went much better on the right where the block of 40 tied up the objective nicely. I had expected great things from the stormfiends but I placed them badly to start and they took time to get in the game. Once they did, the ratling cannon did 90% of the work buffed with a warpspark and the injector.

Things went back and forth and the clawlord got involved to kill the bloodsecrator who had come up far too close to me. At this point i was happily ahead on points. Ultimately however 2 things turned the game. First I had nothing that could live with the skull crushers. Their mw on the charge was brutal even when only 2 or 3 got in and 6 of them with +3 saves and buckets of attacks was to much to manage. They trampled the rat ogres and took my home objective.

The second thing was summoning. 10 bloodletters appeared and wrecked 2 out of 3 stormfiends (who had just been bloodboiled for 5mw) and 5 flesh hounds arriving stopped a super sneaky move where my engineer hopped though a gnawhole and took his undefended home objective. 

It was a close game until the end when the summoning happened but I lost 13 -18. 

Game 2 was a disaster. I swapped out the stormfiends and engineer for a master Moulder and hellpit abomination. My opponent switched out his priests, bloodsecreator and half the reavers to take  a combo of 2 skullcannons buffed by wrathmongers for extra shots.

They decimated my clan rats helped by rolling double 6s for damage twice. The skull crushers crushed more skulls until they made the mistake of charging the hellpit abomination. They did 9mw on the charge and finished it off in combat but it came back to life with 2 wounds and killed half of them fighting at its worst profile!

I had little left on the table by then other than a lone master Molder and 2 rat ogres and we called it not long after

Conclusions

Clan rats are actually really good. Lovely little tar pits.

Stormfiends were ok but not amazing and certainly not 260pts worth. One game doesnt decide it and i love the models so i'll play them again. The temptation though is to take weapon teams instead. 

A master moulder is only worth the points if i am going to get a proper sized pack of rat ogres.

Gnawholes give interesting table options but also tempt towards high risk strategies (not a bad thing with Skaven?)

Skaven were super fun to play, more so than stormcast which I found too point and click. I am going to buy a HPA and the thanquol kit in the cupboard is next up for building. 

On to a proper army list and the next battles! 

[The Rumour Thread]

On 3/8/2019 at 8:19 PM, Overread said:

I wonder how the dwarves are going to take the news that gold isn't important? At least one - Gotrek - might well not be too happy with the news!

 

Also it concerns me because it suggests that dragons might wind up without gold! If Gold has no value then it won't be minted into coins = what on the realms will dragons sleep on, hoard, fight for and steal if they don't have gold coins? This is a serious consideration - please people - think of the dragons! 

Maybe we are all looking in the wrong direction and its going to be a new Smaug model for the Lord of the Rings game.

[AoS 2 - Skaventide Discussion]

4 hours ago, GeneralZero said:

I'm loving this topic. We're discovering more and more viable list. I'm happy to be a new skaven lover/user/general.

Where is my carrot?

Warp-cheese not silly carrots!

[AoS 2 - Skaventide Discussion]

2 hours ago, RocketSquig said:

I'm kinda sad this topic is no longer 13 pages....

We need to push to get to 26!

[AoS 2 - Skaventide Discussion]

2 hours ago, mmimzie said:

Some one of the last page had it pretty spot on. 40s run spears, 20s run shields. If you ask me the only option is a block of 40 with spear, they are so cheap, why not chase that discount :P.

Thanks for the advice. I think I am suffering from an embarrassment of riches and trying to cram too much cool stuff into a list which will end up leaving me with lots of minimum size units (which I already know is not great for Skaven). I will rethink!

[AoS 2 - Skaventide Discussion]

Question from a new Skaven player. What is the best way to build clan rats? Spears for units of 40 but blades for units of 20? 

[The Rumour Thread]

17 hours ago, Overread said:

Something honestly went wrong with Island of blood and you can tell Fantasy was really suffering with sales and support when GW releases a slew of new sculpts for 2 major factions and fails to ever release them after the combined boxed set. My betting is that Island of Blood sold really badly - or at least not enough to recoup the investment and make it viable to produces more moulds for the separate sprues. IT might also have been a huge mistake that they wound up on the same sprues as that totally broke the chance for GW to release separate boxed sets for each army. 

I think in the transition into AoS and all the madness that followed its just something that hasn't yet got back on the table. Thankfully Skaven are still in a strong position - High Elves though are in a really precarious position right now - actually the only Aelves we've got are Daughters of Khaine. That kind of hits home at how ina mess Aelves are right now. I figure we might well see them re-unite them or at least some; but its near impossible to tell what they will do and the current store page lists them all under one umbrella (that's bold if they try to do a single Aelf Battletome considering that high and dark aelves are vastly different in designs. 

What about idoneth deepkin and wanderers? They are elves.

[The Rumour Thread]

1 hour ago, KillagoreFaceslasha said:

You mean the theory thoroughly debunked by Kelly in one of the twitch streams?

I missed that. What did Kelly say? 

[The Rumour Thread]

6 hours ago, Shankelton said:

Hopefully not. New white dwarf supplements with cool ways to use your models will be sweet, but stormcast is already drowning in options as it is.  Hope they focus on some other factions, and pepper in a few hero's for stormcast instead. Maybe some that buff the less desirable units, spread the list diversity around well allowing for some cool narrative mixed with solid rules.

There are at least 3 more chambers to release going by the battletome and the persistent theory of rogue (gone mad ones) 

[The Rumour Thread]

2 hours ago, Skreech Verminking said:

Well it definitely sounds interesting but, weren’t the faction in the old world, also very unic in their own way.

sure some factions still had a similar concept (like knights) but still they were different.

dwarfs where known to be very sturdy slow and good fighters with a high strength.

the empire was a armie that combined everything together, but lacked the skill and strength the dwarf and Elves  had.

Bretonnians, which where a highly elite cavalry armie, combining brute strength, and nobility, which not many factions could.

etc.

 

Interestingly enough these isnt currently a real cavalry army in the setting. Might be a nice space for a new race to fill at some point. 

[The Rumour Thread]

50 minutes ago, Overread said:

I don't know about those who have gone off and will never return as customers, but it certainly acts as barrier to some looking to get into the game. Both those who have old collections waiting to see if they are valid once more and those who are new, but who like the look/theme of some armies. Heck take the tried and tested staple of a dragon in fantasy. Currently the only Order army with a Battletome that has a dragon is Stormcast - none of the Aelven dragons have a battletome!

That said it is being solved and each time a new tome comes out I certainly see people look up and pay attention to the game! GW's plan is working its just slow, made slower by the fact that unlike a new game, AoS already has many models out there. I'd bet it would be different if AoS was a totally new game with no legacy models and the rate of releases would then seem like an insane speed (which it is of course and it feels like that now, but many are still "waiting" for the speedy release to get to their army(ies)

I think its likely that many of the older factions without a battletome will stay that way for a number of reasons. 1. Tightening up intellectual property (anyone can sell knights, only GW can sell stormcast, orks and elves changed to Orruks and aelves). 2. It makes no business sense to put huge amounts of work into a battletome and maybe 1 or 2 new models so that guy with 3,500pts of brettonians can play them again when you are in the business of selling models. Far better to launch a new faction or update something already supported (i.e. dark elves must largely disappear when malerion's shadow aelves arrive. Ironjawz and KO who need life support)

What I can see happening is certain key factions like skaven, making a big comeback as they have wide appeal, great lore, a presence in the story thread of AOS and a ton of models that are either hard to collect or resin/metal. They, like grots have the potential to sell huge amounts of new and updated models.  

At some point there is also prob going to be an anti nagash death faction and that could mark tomb kings return, perhaps half flesh, half bones.

 

 We also have to remember that 2018 was battletome rapid fire for 40k and they could easily be planning the same for supported AOS factions this year.