Orbei

Well, eel spam hasn't been viable since 2nd edition. The notion that IDK players are still spamming eels is outdated and those players probably just haven't played IDK in a while. But reaver spam isn't exactly the default best choice. IDK are in a pretty good place as far as internal parity with a few exceptions. Good lists can incorporate reavers, sharks, ishlaen guard, turtles, and other bits and pieces to taste. Morrsarr are pretty outclassed by other choices though, I'd rather take sharks.

Hard to say without a full warscroll. Even if he's halfway decent on his own he could be appealing. Reavers are already very good and can have surprising output in melee. While this guy isn't going to justify thrall spam, he lends support to an already good unit in reavers and may very well be an interesting choice.

The idea itself that dragons need a fluffy spam list option seems dumb to me in the first place. Why do these ultra rare dragons, a species only recently returned to the realms, get an option to be spammed as battleline in the first place? If dragons of all things can be battleline what is the point of battleline restrictions. Just let people play whatever they want because there's no reason 11 dragons is more fluffy than 13 doomwheels or 7 GUOs.

It's not loads of fun to play against. That's the point. The notion that something can be broken and if you don't enjoy playing against it hey that's your problem is sad to hear. Maybe the problem is with the broken units, not the players. Maybe people want the game to be better than it is. News flash: Fulminators are broken. Pointing at fulminators and saying they are adds nothing to the conversation. Fulminators are stupid and need a nerf but it's apples to oranges because it is impossible for fulminators to do the specific thing a SDG spam list can do. SDG are a very poorly designed unit. How the designers of the Stormcast book thought that giving one warscroll 7 different abilities and powerful synergies would be okay is baffling. This unit cannot be fixed with points. You can nerf it to the ground (500 points for 2?) so it becomes unplayable, but at any reasonable point value the unit will be a problem because of spamming them and the unique problems they cause. They need a warscroll rewrite.

Points listed per model as well as per unit. You can add or drop models as long as the unit is within a certain range, with reinforcement points needed if it is over a certain amount. If I write a list and it's 2005 points let me remove one 10 point model, or add a guy if my list is a little short. This would make list writing so much more flexible again. Everything in the game gets 2" reach. A form of limited alternating actions. You get 3 activation points a turn and things cost between 1-3 points to activate. So you can either use one big monster or 3 basic units, etc. Units get a cool down token and can't be activated again for a certain length of time. I go you go has always been the worst part of WH. The game would be more engaging with pretty much anything else and lead to fewer blow outs. Way too many games are decided by mid turn 2. No more grand alliances. You can ally in whatever the heck you want with 25% of your points. The mortal realms are a vast enough setting to let people get creative with the lore of their army. Come up with a cool story and have fun. 25% of a Chaos list are Stormcast descending into corruption? Gloomspite from Shyish who have formed an uneasy alliance with Death? Sounds cool to me. I'd love to see what people come up with.

Yeah. I play IDK which only has one default battleline as well. They should probably give factions like those more kits.

I think reinforcements has been more of a net negative to han a positive. I'd love for battleline units to be exempt, and I'd also love for all of the "becomes battleline under X condition" rules to be done away with. Limit the specialty units and let people take as many of the basic grunts as they want.

The battlebox is extremely disappointing. What's worse is the way their feedback loop seems to work. Players are fed up with a dull box and skip it? GW likely interprets this as IDK and FS being poor sellers and focuses on other factions. Players gobble up the box to support these factions? GW interprets this as the single foot hero battlebox model being a success and keeps doing this. I think the IDK hero looks pretty sweet and absolutely want the model, but will just wait for the solo release as I don't need the rest of this box. And while the hero looks cool it's the last thing I would have picked for a new kit release.

Although the army specific options are strictly worse, simply having them as options gives you an edge over factions without them yet. You may have already completed some of the easy generic tactics and late game are scrambling for points, when perhaps the faction specific tactic is your best option left. Alternatively, complete a battletome specific one early if you are able. Then you have the generic one still available. The battletome specific ones offer you flexibility which can have great value. They should be kept out of tournaments because of the uneven playing field they create.

The best big dragon model we've ever had. So glad they can be built without any Stormcast accessories.

Gotta say that as an IDK player this doesn't excite me either. What worries me is that she has an eel looming behind her. It makes me think that she might be a foot hero with a trained eel, similar to SCE heroes and their individual griffhounds. I don't want this. There are so many amazing sea monsters they can use and I already have plenty of eels. Foot hero with eel sidekick feels pretty bland and uninspired. Especially considering the many obvious gaps in the range which could be filled.

Yep. I found it silly how people were looking at the SE and OW books and trying to interpret design direction for future tomes from them. We should understand by now that each battletome exists in a vacuum with complete disregard to the design of old, recent, or planned new books. It's simply whatever they feel inspired to write when looking at the models in front of them. This also applies to points.

Its an interesting rule in theory. While I don't like the prevalence of mortal wounds in the game and this let's everything in Nurgle deal mortal wounds, the cap of 7 means you can't rely on those mortals alone to burst things down. If you load up a unit with 7 tokens it will still likely only take 3-4 mortal wounds that turn, which can then potentially be countered with heroic recovery/rally/etc. It also means if you're relying on those mortals things will get a chance to swing back in combat before they die. Pretty cool actually from a mechanic standpoint and very thematic. But from a bookkeeping standpoint yes it sounds like it will be a bit of a nightmare to track and remember. It just has to be 7, one more than could be tracked on a D6!

This is a big part of the problem. There's no real choice or tactical thinking involved - you point at the strongest thing, buff it, and now it doesn't die. Resources that are incredibly easy to access (5+ cast mystic shield, were they drunk?), All out defense every turn, finest hour which is 100% guaranteed and unstoppable. There's no counter play on the other side. No dispelling mystic shield since it's cast from the other side of the table. All out attack is pathetic compared to all out defense. In all cases the defensive buffs are just better than offensive buffs. You either have a skew list which pumps out mortal wounds or you don't kill the target. It's way too high of a return on investment when you apply these buffs to high armor save hero monsters. No one cares if you stack a bunch of save buffs on an average hero to achieve a 4+ unrendable. But save stacking gives obscene value when applied to 3+ save hero monsters, beyond the investment in either initial points or in game resources.

It's important that the start of every syllable is included in the acronym. To avoid confusion. Hence, SBGL. Other favorites are HDNOSN, OSABR, LMNRL, and KRDOVL.

I agree with most of this, especially regarding auras. I don't see auras as a bad design choice at all and work just fine in those factions. I think there are more problems than just Archaon, though. The arms race of higher rend and mortal wounds in new battletomes worries me, though. If you give out enough rend to crack the save stacking problem, armies that can't achieve high saves just melt even faster. This is the problem I see... Units are either killy enough that they can blow most anything off the board or tanky enough that they are almost impossible to remove. Anything in the middle is irrelevant. I like the proposed cap at 3+. It's not a perfect solution, as it devalues units with a native 3+ and makes 4+ the new sweet spot. Still a much healthier place to be than where we currently are.

Yes, on the charge only. A single all out defense gets them there. Take away the leviadon and nothing is really going to change here. I don't see them as relevant to this entire discussion. We're on the same page here, saying the same thing. It's a haves and haves not situation because of this. I don't see new tomes as fixing the issue because I don't expect Gitz, BoC, Nighthaunt, etc to suddenly find 3+ armor saves, which is what this mechanic demands to be worth it. And even if they did, I am not happy with the mechanic in games. Completely skews the value you get from certain pieces.

Its interesting that you use the leviadon as an example. I think the leviadon's aura is fine in the context of the army it is in. If it was in StD, Stormcast, Ironjawz, etc yes it would be problematic. But Idoneth don't really have things it can push to the all important 2+ or other ways to stacks saves beyond the normal. They don't even have a strong magic game for mystic shield. Upping the save on thralls from 5+ to 4+ or eels from 4+ to 3+ really isn't the issue that people have with save stacking, is it? For the same reason, if Gloomspite or BoC got access to a similar aura I wouldn't find it offensive. The problem people have are the things that become ridiculously resilient regardless of how much offense is shoved towards them. Save stacking is specifically a problem when 3+ becomes 2+, often ignoring a good bit of rend. The value you get from it becomes completely disproportionate to the cost. Also, I don't think save stacking is some amazing tactical gameplay. It's generally blatantly obvious what is going to get buffed. Oh wow, Archaon/mawcrusha/Nagash got all the buffs this round. Such tactics wow.

Can't both be bad?

Save stacking is a decent mechanic as a concept but its implementation is very problematic. Capping it at +1 to your base save might sound reasonable at first, as people don't want to see 2+ saving skeletons or something. Unfortunately what this does is favor high native save units too much. Anything with a native 3+ can hit the magic number 2+ and double it's survivability. For the same effort something on a 6+ can reach a 5+, which is only a 25% increase to survivability. Armies with good base saves can take advantage of this much easier than those with poor saves. I think the situation would be improved with either no cap, letting you go crazy on any unit, or (preferably) no improving at all above the base save. There also desperately needs to be an equivalent way to stack rend if we can stack saves. There's little counterplay beyond mortal wounds at present, which is also a haves and have-nots situation.

This is the coolest option for the warbands by far. A mish mash of various lunatics whipped into a crazed frenzy. Finally some actual chaos. Would love to see someone do this.

I don't really understand that. Yes, they're on different teams... Because the specialty games are a thing. But it's one company with finite resources. They could just say "okay warcry team, we're moving you to AoS and you all get to make updated saurus warriors this month."

Warcry shouldn't exist. The new warband models look really cool. At the same time, Nurgle gets 1 new model with their update. GW can't handle adequately supporting their mainline games (AoS and 40k) and it's sad to see so many cool models released for a niche game which appeals to a small subsect of the player base. It's a waste of resources.

This is still the case. GW has been very cagey about what will be free after the beta. We know that the army book codes will unlock allegiance abilities. We also know that the app will have a subscription component, which will be included with Warhammer +. It's a pretty reasonable guess that this means warscrolls will be locked behind the paywall, otherwise what would you be paying for? This is the existing 40k model so not a reach to think they intend to push AoS in this direction.

Youtube is about building hype, sure. The fact that people end up learning the rules through it is a side effect. I don't buy into the notion that this has anything to do with IP protection, though. This isn't going to deter wahapedia or piracy at all. In fact this will almost certainly create more demand for piracy, resulting in more IP infringement. The simplest explanation is that they are trying to drive as much traffic as possible to the app, which will then be placed behind a Warhammer + paywall.