Charleston

Seems like some bad news. 5-20% price increase on models and books. https://www.warhammer-community.com/2022/02/09/important-pricing-news/

This list has the same issue as any list I manage to build around Kragnos: You end up with a really really nasty hammer, but beside it there is little to nothing left to be called an army to play the game. 2x2 Frost sabres won't do much beside standing on a free objective and the mournfangs can be shifted quite fast as well.

Our days of Vigilor-Glory will come one day

I couldn't decide on the second enchancement and tought to pick it before the game. Well, guess who forgot about this I got the initiative anyway so little harm here. As my buddy has forgotten to bring some models he had to adjust his list and in the end we both ended up around 2100 points, with me taking a Knight Arcanum instead of a flock of aetherwings The game was fun and tense. Had to fight loads of Deamonettes, 2x5 Slaanesh chosen guys, Dexcessa, KoS, some archers and 5 Slickblades. We had 2 double turns, one in my favor and one in my opponents but neither really toppled the balance. In the end I lost due to some bad target selections and positioning errors. Lessons learned: Knight Vexillor - Won't be picked anytime soon again. I tought he was great to provide Annihilators a charge reroll. Guess what unit already has a built in reroll... Lord Impertant - Guy is solid with an Arcane tome. Casting SCE Spells on 18" was neat. But this also left the Knight Arcanum look even worse then she already looks. Also I overlooked his CP generation until turn 5. So I basically lost 4 CP to this. Longstrikes are lame and carried a lot of my VP. I tought it would be wise to set them up via scions teleport which was a huge mistake. Vigilors...well I gave them another chance and was once again disappointed. Hell, I love the models, I love the Warscrolls but as long as they don't drop to 120-140 pts I see no real use for them, even in my rather casual meta. Vindictors are okay, but I felt like a unit of 5 is not enough to really compete for an objective. Both units disappeared within mere seconds once my opponent hit me. Annihilators are solid. Dropped in 7" they allowed me to take and burn an objective turn 2, putting me in a quite nice position. I really missed a Lord Relictor with Translocate or another highly mobile choice. I think the dream of a "ranger" themed list is dead as I do not want to play Judicators and Vigilors are simply such a roadblock that it is no fun. Maybe I will go more for the Paladin-Heavy-Approach with some Retributors and more Annihilators instead. Dragons are currently not a real option as I do not want to bother with transportation of the models

Trying to compete with a list based on dominion + Longstrikes+ Vigilors + Knight Judicator in my local meta but damn, that is some uphill battle, especially with Vigilors leaving little to no reason to be played at all at current point value. First iteration of the list was not able to keep up against OBR but was at least to shot down Katakross in 1 1/2 turn of Longstrikes. The new one will field the birbs as chaff/longstrike buff and instead of Yndrasta I pack some Annihilators. Todays Game is vs a fast and Mortals-Focused Hedonites list. I would love any sort of feedback or suggestions.

Just Daydreaming, but imagine a perfect World in which GW just releases 4 Battletomes, one for each GA so you have to buy less books.

So IDK/Fyreslayers, NH DOK and then the hinted Skaven vs Sylvaneth. So far it looks like the pattern is 2 tomes with a double-box, including at least 1 new hero. This is a neat release pattern so far. We will be at 5 Order, 2 Chaos, 1 Destruction and 1 Death Battletome at Summertime.

As others stated: Coherency was supposed to tackle that line-blobbs but due to 25mm bases being less then 1" that slipped past GW's rulewriting. This indeed makes units with 25mm bases stronger as they are also allowed to fight in two ranks in addition to lining-sheningans which makes them annoying as screens or objective grabbers. Meanwhile the new Coherency rule punished all bigger models that do not have a higher weapon range of 2-3" with a few exceptions. One could assume that GW desired to make big units of big models less desirable so people need to split them up and therefore also have to split up the buffs. This seems like a solid approach to the deathstar-heavy design of mid 2.0 It is weird and shouldn't be this way, but I assume that while nerfing bigger models was planned, smaller models were "buffed" by accident as they simply were unaffected by the changes which made the whole thing a lot less fair.

Wrathmongers can shine if no mortals are needed to get past your opponents save roll. Skullreapers meanwhile suffered from their point costs. Glad to hear you had some good first impressions so far

Well, to add a serious opinion on the Doubleturn: It is a swingy mechanic that can either turn the game in favor of the player who is already winning, or it can allow the underdog to get a fair chance of returning to the game. Fun part: Games that seem like balance toppled already may get some tension back Unfun Part: Sometimes you can do everything "right" and then a doubleturn will ruin the game outcome nevertheless It increases the stakes of playing more risky strategies. You can try to position in a way that expects to get the doubleturn to crash your opponent, but sometimes when you fail the initiative you are in a damn bad position for a counterstrike. High Risk, high Reward which makes the game more tense.

Ah, the Doubleturn-Stages Shock and denial. - "Wait, we roll for what? But that seems weird...okay, can you show it in the rules?" Pain and guilt. - "I lost/won 3 games due to weird double turns." Anger and bargaining. - "I hate that mechanic. It is stupid! Can we please houserule it out? Or make a petition?" Depression. - "...leave me alone" The upward turn. - "Well, at least I get to play with my friends some AoS. Should give it a try, maybe it won't be that bad with the Double Turn this time" Reconstruction and working through. - "Hej, it is actually possible to play around the double turn! Never belived that guy who told me this but it really works" Acceptance and hope. - "It is a part of the game. I hope they finally remove it" May I invite you for a introduction round of Warhammer 40.000? It is a quite cool system some folks play around here. Considering your post I think you really might like it!

I played Khorne Grinders with some buffs in 2.0. The main issue with it was the 4+ to hit on many profiles, which is just awfull for todays standards. While I have not tried it in 3.0 yet, I think that AllOutAttack is a great tool to stabilise the Damage output on the Grinder, especially with Khorne General Aura providing you a solid 3+ RR1 /2+ Profile. A Bloodsecrator and Wrathmongers are quite expensive buff pieces but when you take them in your army anyway you have nothing to loose here. Especially the chance to trigger the claw more than once seems like a good bonus.

Prices: Are high. It is a luxury hobby. I can afford it, I can argue with myself how much I spend for it, but as many others stated, I tend to step back from buying too much new nowadays. Book bloat: Is annoying, has driven me to reduce the amount of armies I play, and also pushed most people I know for using websites that have listed them for free, despite copyright beeing an issue here. Rules beeing messy: Well, as someone who plays casually I find it ok. It's annoing to have games in which your army feels inferior and like you never stood a chance, yes, but many times this doesn't have to stop you from having a good time with friends. FOMO: Well, self control is a key. Just accept that you do not have to buy each single new release. And that the world keeps turning when you miss that ultra limited game with that limited sculpts. In general I like the overall package of the hobby although I have to agree that GW's business tactics leave more and more of a sour taste. When it continues that way less players will play and so I will also look for different past time activities. As for the topic of powercreep, I have to say that from other games I followed that did focus more on balance, new releases often were skipped by customers and the games became quite fast stale and boring with a dying community. While I find that all factions should have a chance for the win, the powercreep/boost of certain releases still is something that keeps many players invested. In general GW simply lacks competition from another big player who would push the prices while providing a similar product. They really have a monopol stance here. Smaller fish won't gather enough of the community and won't grow big enough to compete with GW's quality. But imagine Bandai enter the Tabletop Wargame market with some cool new game.

Has anyone any pure-dragon-list batreps at hand? I've so far only found the GMG one with 4 Dragons + Stardrake vs S2D which was...well a nice game but really felt like the S2D list getting stomped fast.

Karkadrak Khorne General lifts Knights with the CA and Genral Aura to 3+(Reroll 1)/2+ -2 2 profile in Charge while also beeing a blender on it's own. Yes, it is still less than other factions have, but it can be a decent blow anyway. Sorcerer Lord on Manticore may fit you maybe a bit better then the footslogger. It's faster, more durable and has a higher output. The Footslogger is mainly good for making your backline of Warrioirs more durable and to catapult the Marauders with Mask of Darkness As for Arch, I belive that just because Batreps and competetive lists use him heavily you do not really have to. Yes, it is a good blender, but mostly because he was broken with other factions CA abilities. Issue is that competetive players, who mostly find the good stuff, have quite fast settled on Arch+Varanguard Spam and then dropped the faction. Casual player brew their own strategies and share them less often. As for the Warscrolls, yes, compared to other factions they really do look underwhelming and overprices. Period. Yet, S2D draw quite a punch from the Alligience Abilities and have some tools to get some games. But it leaves you almost always with some sort of uphill-battle-feeling. While I can tell you that for a casual meta S2D offer quite a lot of depth and as a faction also a lot of space to explore, I can understand frustration about the state of Warscrolls and the general messy kind of writing it has. If you really want to play a killy faction, the current iteration of the Tome is propably not what you are looking for. Especially when you have to deal against opponents with more "auto-win" factions or just updated current battletomes like Nurgle or SCE. Trust me, when you browse through this thread you will find a lot of people waiting for S2D having finally some update that let them have a punch comparable to what they could do in WHFB times.

You hit the Nail: S2D has quite a low Damage Output. Varanguard and Marauders are beside Archaon out best bet. Knights can have their 5 minutes of Glory but need some buffs and a successfull charge for that. What S2D is good at is upper mid tier durability and top tier control, paired with an okaish mid tier movement. Belakor, many of our Spells and Artifacts, Mindstealer Sphiranxes, all give us the chance to fight on our terms by making opponents fight last/denying them movement or similar sheningans. With that setup I wouldn't go for killing/tabling, especially not against durable armies like Nurgle. Instead distracting/controlling our opponent and going for the objectives seemed so far the best bet. Ravagers can harass with summoned Cultists, Cabalists try to spam some Endless Spells so your opponent looses interest in competing for certain objectives, Despoilers try to chump through your opponents hammer units before they can land their blow, LotFP and Empty Throne do stuff I never got into as I didn't bother buying Varanguards or Big Daddy A. In general your units look like a solid core for casual games. I would suggest you to plan ahead how you want to maximise your VP during the game. Depending on the mission you play consider how you can lure your opponent in a way in which you can maximise the primary objective. Keep and eye on units that synergize and try to not split them until you have a solid reason for that. Lord on Karkadrak and Knights for example can together get a huge damage output. A Tzeentch General can make your Tzeentch Varanguards a really tough Anvil that will pack also a solid punch in Combat due to the save reroll. If you have a Wizzard you still can teleport the 30 Marauders in your opponents backfield, forcing him to split his focus or keep some part of his army back to prevent you from teleporting. Sorcerer Lords are great utility heroes for their oracular vision alone: You get a free unbannable Mystic Shield cast for free atop of a great buff spell from his warscroll. The Arcane Tome can be great on other heroes as well: Lord of Karkadrak with Flaming Blade Spell or Call to Glory to take down Monsters/Heroes f.e.. As for the Warshrine I may not be it's biggest fan but I know that many other players won't leave home without one. You can use it's variety of buff prayers or even try to combine it with Curse and Marauders to fish for enough Mortals to take down serious tanky targets. Then, also, do not expect a lot of damage from your Warriors. They are great for holding some objectives but damage isn't really their job. Park them on some backfield or off side objective and support them if you need to.

I feel like internal balance has currently lot of room for improvement and I am afraid that GW will only nerf the good stuff und leave the units that need point drops untouched. Vigilors f.e. feel just awfull. Despite the Warscroll beeing nice I don't get why they cost almost 200pts

I mean, all Cultist Units feel a little like a mess anyway. Warcry has heavy vibes of being planed as an independent game like Necromunda at first, with all Warscrolls feeling like an aftertought to add to AoS. The S2D Tome feels similarly scattered all around different releases like the Chaos Space Marines Codex. We now even have core alligience changes that are not available to most players as it was published only in a single white dwarf. I really hope for an update in near future, but I fear that it might take up a serious amount of time until we see S2D ported to AoS.

First of all, thanks for bringing the topic up. I think we need to talk more about terrain within AoS since 3.0. In my opinion most AoS games are played on tables with way too less terrain. Things are seen as normal because in many Batreps or Tournament Tables terrain is often spare as well, or placed in a purely decorative manner. With current Meta beeing strong in Shooting and Magic I think that we need really more terrain. I see the following patterns for Terrain: LOS blocking "breachable" Terrain is important to give melee units some protection against shooting. In earlier invocations of the game shooting had the advantage of ranged damage but usually did way less damage to balance it out. Powercreep in ranged profiles (Sentinels, Longstrikes) means that Shooting often has an Edge, dealing similar Damage but having the range advantage. Movement blocking Terrain that does not affect LOS could be seen like a counterpart: Ponds, Lava Lakes, Sinkholes could give Melee units the disadvantage of having an open flank. Together with LOS blocking Terrain this could be used to build up some hotspots, ideally somewhere around the objectives. Flying units break this "Rock paper scissors"-Game a bit. They are usually fast and ignore most terrain which can cause some real trouble. I'd see room for a Mystical Terrain rule which negates Fly. Impassible Terrain which blocks LOS and disallows movement is ideal: While it is Protection for melee units, it also hinders the meele units from moving too fast close to the opponent. But it also gets boring really fast. Dense Small Scatter Terrain is the worst nightmare in my opinion. While it doesn't provide cover, it is often a nightmare to move units through such terrain. When not ignoring the terrain during movement, you often have to measure for single models quite often. This can cost several inches of movement while not beeing fun to play at all. It destroys pile-in-movements for units that have to fight within the terrain. Meanwhile if mostly doesn't affect LOS so it doesn't protect meeele units. It's just a trap. Using some sort of pond as mentioned above protects you from this terrible gameplay experience. Garnisons are rarely used but I could imagine them to be usefull close to objectives. They could add some weight to objectives by making them easier to defend. 1.) Does this mix work for you? Is there other things you as a tournament (or general Matched Play) player would want to see? Mixed Terrain works fine as long as there are two types: "Breachable" LOS blockers that infantry can pass through and Big Rocks/Buildings that Infantry has to move around. 2.) How much space should terrain take on the table? 25%? 50%? More? Less? 30-40% sounds right. Yet for me it's less about the space rather than the placement. 3.) Is 8 pieces (being the actual minimum) too few? If so is that because of the average size? Would 8 be fine if they took up a certain amount of the table? Do you instead prefer 10? 12? If you place 8 pieces right it may be enough, yet I feel like official GW AoS Terrain Kits are way smaller and less LOS blocking, so in this case more is more. 4.) Is LoS blocking important to you? Would you rather have all terrain be "see through"? LoS is a key feature to protect units from ranged damage/effects. To create a balanced game experience each army should be able to protect against all mechanics by some way. Providing LOS blocking terrain allows melee units to get easier close to enemy ranged units, which is really important considering how devastating shooting became with recent warscrolls. But if terrain is too much in favor of melee unis the balance just topples over again. 5.) Does the "Impassible" rule (see above) bother you? It is used to make the game cleaner in our experience, but is a house rule It is important. Impassible Terrain does affect all types of units: Melee, Ranged and Fliers. For this reason we often played in my group the underground-scenarios with impassible stone walls because all factions had to play around the terrain somehow. 6.) Are Garrisons important to you? If so what size? I see unused potential here. Having them, especially nearby objectives, could add up to the depth of the game. But I have little to no experience on my own, just some random toughts. Beyond that there also a few terrain rules I often see totally ignored or changed for events. On a more in-depth look, especially for tournament goers I am curious about things such as 7.) Do you want the "Defender" to roll Mysterious Terrain? Do you want Mysterious Terrain at all? Would you rather Mysterious Terrain be pre-rolled and applied already for everyone to see at the table? Mysterious Terrain is basically an 1.0 Artifact which the Dev's used to make terrain rules easy enough to fit in a two page leaflet among the other rules as well as making terrain at least somehow interesting. There is something to the concept of having buffs bound to terrain. Allowing one player to pick is tricky as some buffs like Arcane can really impact the game when available easy to a single player. For TO I wish they just assigned the rules to the board prior to the game 8.) Do you prefer terrain preset for the table? If so do you prefer it set for the entire event, or reset for each Battleplan? Yes. Having to play the Terrain-Placement-Minigame before the Battle is just taking up time at events and may lead to a weird shift in balance. Having Terrain assigned to a table and make players switch around seems like the best way to go. Only issue here is faction Terrain 9.) If not preset, is the "Attacker" placing terrain ideal for you (per the rules)? Would you prefer if the "Attacker" got to set the terrain, but only in preset locations? Such as being able to place the 8 pieces, but the pieces had to go in one of eight pre-marked locations on a map for the table/Battleplan? When you have to put the pieces in pre-marked spots, what is the point of placing them on your own anyway? 10.) Are there any terrain style/rules/options you love for event tables to have? Any you utterly despise? Hard to say: You can use ****** rules in a good way when creative enough. 11.) Does the quality/amount of terrain actually matter to you at an event? It is "less" important than in 40K, and some of the tables I have seen for AoS events have been bare IMO, but is that acceptable, or even preferable, to you? I think that we can improve the game balance by using more terrain.

I agree with Salyx. First of all DP's offer more than just Command Abilities. They are capable heroes that are fast, have a variety of usefull abilities and can provide quite a punch. While quite pricey on their own, despoilers lifts them to a solid tier. Due to their Speed and "Always fights first" they are able to pick their fight and can always land a blow to weaken the foe before he can swing back at full power. So they provide even more control over the opponent in a faction that is good at this. The damage profiles are okay, especially as their to hit bonus allows to save that AOA on another unit. As mentioned Khorne is great. Leaving your opponent in front of you so you can charge whatever way you like it is a key ability. Tzeentch is really durable as mentioned and is therefore a great pick for the general. Also the CA is good as we have some really solid spells available. Belakor likes this buff, being a T2 Wizard. Also Despoiler Legion is just sweet: Heal your Monsters and DP's each turn Solid General Traits: Radiance of Dark Glory provides you an CA for even more heal Paragon allows you to move D3 units 5" before the game Lightning Reflexes to help your Warlord from being sniped Good Artifacts: Helm of Many Eyes makes your Manticore- or Karkadrak-Lord punch with the deamons Doombringer Blade is a great way to mark a God or Big Model for doom. Crown and Armour provide even more durability Mantle was great in 2.0 but didn't age well into the new Edition Twistrune protects your own units from your Terrain Sheningans Making Terrain Pitchblack messes up the LOS for many shooty and spellheavy armies assuming that you play on a board that has enough terrain. 18" Aura of Chaos allows you far easier positioning with your general. This is especially sweet with a Tzeentch General who provides you with that nasty save reroll 5+ for your genral, just because Tzeentch DP's were not hard enough to kill I love to play Despoilers this with Khorne + Tzeentch DP, Belakor, Manticore (Sorcerer) Lord (because I have no Karkadrak) and some Knights/Marauder Horseman. I often take the Helm of Many Eyes on the Manticore and an Emerald Lifeswarm. Also, against Gods and such, the Doombringer Blade gives you a nice output. I do rarely use other monsters, from time to time a Soul Grinder as I like the model. Edit: I forgot to mention the Spell Lore/Sorcerers: Call to Glory/Ruinous Vigour come nicely on Belakor. If you take a Sorcerer along you do not need to cast Mystic Shield but get it for free instead. Also the Sorcerer on Manticore brings a good Spell for Mortal Wounds.

I agree with the others. Especially the Faction identity is important and something GW manages to do sometimes quite well (IDK, Maggotkin) and sometime quite awfull (Khorne with their "Whatever you do, do not charge recklessly and stay inside the Bubble! Good Boy!"). It would be quite fun to sort the current Battletomes in a 3 Axis Chart for this

How about a Bloodthirster?

Btw the new Avatar of Khaine for Craftworlds seems damn cool, I am daydreaming about it beeing an AoS/40k Multikit for CWE and DoK, like Deamon Princes are

First of all: I love the irony behind the fact that all thoose close ups feature layer lines from 3D printers~ Second: Friendship with Warclans ended! 40k Chaos Knights are now best budds with weird Vulture birbs!

I wonder what the next tome may be. Fyreslayers/IDK Update seems reasonable early 2022, althrough I could imagine GW doing a Death Tome before.