madmac

Yeah, it would be pretty crazy if Fyreslayers managed to keep two things they can do right now (Or could, prior to the new Auric warscroll) and are still a blah army at best.

All power to you, but I can't imagine a Vulkite army working out, they're not cheap, not fast, not dangerous, and not tanky. 160-170 points for 20 wounds is not actually that remarkable. Take a look at the humble Ardboy, who gets 20 wounds at a 4+ save and three attacks even when he doesn't charge, and a built in 6+ ward, and a built in 4+ rally...for 170 points. Or Gutrippas, considered heavily overpriced by KB players at 180 points for 20 wounds with a conditional -1 to hit, 2" reach spears, and MWs on sixes that can be buffed in a variety of ways into much higher damage.

I don't remember Stormcast being a prediction for Underworlds, but there was talk of a human warband, something something Witchunters or something like that.

Yeah, way too much redundancy on an effect that never stacks. Honestly the new Battlesmith only really exists for the Bard thing, his ward is almost never going to be relevant. Doesn't matter for Vulkites or Aurics because no one is ever going to use those units with their new warscrolls, too slow to keep up with Magmadroths, only does anything for HGB on a turn where they are very slightly out of position for their 4+ ward and also none of the other various 6+ ward effects are going, etc. From what I can tell so far, the only play in the new book is either static HGB blob supported by both a Battlesmith and the new guy, good luck charging even once and keeping both guys in range, or Magmadroth spam, assuming that's halfway playable. Neither of them sound particularly strong even, I just don't know what else you can do.

Well, that's fair. Gotta remove all possible ranged buffs so that no one contemplates taking Auric Hearthguard for even a second. In slightly better news: https://www.warhammer-community.com/2022/02/28/the-battlesmith-tells-stories-so-riveting-that-fyreslayers-will-literally-cheat-death-to-hear-them/ We lost the +1 armor save for a 6+ ward which is...yeah thanks so much for removing the 6+ ward and easy +1 save on HGB and giving them back instead a nonstackable 6+ ward in a case where they are wholly within 12" but not 9" of a Battlesmith, huge buff, much thanks. Rally on a 4+ is pretty good though, I'll give him that. Gotta do something to offset all those extra dead HGBs anyway.

You are correct. IIRC, if you tried to actually buy them from the webstore they'd just send you the SC box anyway. If they're being officially reboxed, there's a chance of saving money I guess, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Well, one more week until we have enough leaks to assess the damage, but definitely no happy surprises lurking around the corner at this point. Droth going buyable separately again, makes sense with GW trying to lean hard into promoting the Magmadroth spam build. Honestly, what else would people buy for Fyreslayers at this point? They nerfed Vulkites so hard that no buff could possible salvage them, Auric HG are...nothing, and HGB spam is also probably a thing of the past with the much more restrictive positioning.

At the end of the day, spam lists still only exists if the spam unit is good enough to spam. If they're that good they'd be spammed regardless of battleline status. It's the difference between including 3x (cheapest battleline option) and forgoing 3 MSU Liberators or whatever, if we're being honest. Right now no one spams Turtles (because a lot of their cost is tied up in unit support, not raw melee power) or Magmadroths (Because Magmadroths are weak little baby lizards) so the only reason things would change is if they're just that good in the new battletomes, which seems unlikely, IMO.

I forgot this was a thing, but I agree that's probably how it works. Otherwise, if you take away Leader from mounted Runesons but keep it for Runesons on foot, uhhhh, yeah.

To be fair though, this is just a battletome transition issue. As units with shields granting+1 save get updated with new warscrolls, they've been reliably getting bumped to just having a better base save, as they should. It was a meaningless distinction in 2E because there were no limits on save stacking, now it's something that GW should honestly have already addressed for all armies using errata.

Sounds unfortunately plausible as far as changes go. Everything I've seen from the new Fyreslayers rules has that same tone of "gentle buffs, gently now, not too much! Oh dear oh dear, this unit seems slightly better than it was before I fiddled with it, better add some nerfs to balance everything out, whew!" The whole tome was probably written a long time ago before Fyreslayers crumbled their way into 3rd Edition so it was made under the assumption that everything was pretty much perfectly balanced already.

We already have the damage profile. It's 10 attacks 2+ (degrading) 3+ -1 1damage Arguably a buff over the old fyrestream but not a big one.

That's always been a big problem with Droths, unfortunately. Under their old rules it was all but impossible to do any damage at all with their breath and tail attacks against single models and not much better against elites. Now the breath has a very low chance of doing...one damage, which is not really an improvement.

Magmadroths are a weird monster with a weird legacy warscroll even in their 2nd edition incarnation. They've always had a breath weapon that only works against hordes, and a tail attacks that...only works against hordes alongside other strange rules and an overall blah warscroll. It wasn't battleline status holding Magmadroths back until now, they've just never been very good, even for their quite low pricing for a hero monster.

It's more straightforward than the old rule, for sure. Holding breath is going to rarely come up in practice, no reason to do it unless there's no good target that turn. Damage at the top profile is...ok, obviously falls off pretty quick as damage comes in, like most monsters. Also do Magmadroths have base more than 14 wounds now? Currently they have 14, Lofnir pushes that to 16, but the damage chart goes to 14+?

We've only seen the one lodge, but knowing how weak most 3E subfactions are they're definitely an early contender, especially if Magmadroths end up buffed, unlike literally every other Fyreslayer battleline unit and their pile of nerfs.

Pretty much expected, but still useful, maybe. Depends on how playable Magmadroths are going to be, and the incomplete look at the new Fyrestream rule (why is this rule always stupidly complex!?) isn't really helping with that. I'm guessing this means Runesons on Magmadroth lose the leader keyword, but then how does that work for Runesons on foot? Are they also not heroes/leaders anymore? Janky, just janky all around.

Roaring Fyrestream has always been a weirdly convoluted rule. It used to be "roll this number of dice, if less than the number of models in the unit, do d3/d6 MWs" Now it's an attack, and seemingly hits on a 2+ degrading, but it has rend, so can't just be MWs...they definitely didn't provide the full rule there.

The thing is, 40K can't possibly be that far off schedule. We got that huge 40K leak forever ago, almost a year now, with release dates and those have pretty much all been bang on. The only notable slip was GSC/Custodes slipping from Late Dec to Early Jan. Heck, when I originally read that leak, I assumed that the huge Eldar wave, CSM, Tyranids/Guard and such were much further out, since they didn't have dates, and Tau being a small Jan release left a nice opening for a real AoS release, as is traditional for us. So I thought. Instead, 40K has just been release after release with barely enough time in between to catch it's breath, while every AoS release feels like it's been delayed at least 2-3 months from it's original target. Nurgle slipping from Oct to Dec, Tome of Champions 2021 released two months into 2022, etc. It's not just that AoS releases are coming late, and that WHC has virtually dropped coverage of the system, but there's also apparently no attempt being made at catch up or course correction, AoS releases are all separated by months at this point, no matter how late they are. When 40K gets slightly off track, they get 3 codex releases in a single month. The treatment between the systems just isn't balanced at all, and hasn't been more than half a year now.

So the LRL/Slaanesh pricing scheme for every army, is it? I have to say I'm passing on Eldar for similar reasons. Not entirely on price, I also just don't have room for another army, but knowing they would cost an arm and a leg meant I'm not even tempted to dip in.

Yeah, the actual benefit of shiver is to run something in between solo sharks and a combined unit, which is a little bit interesting, but...I dunno. You could say you're gaining flexibility, but you always had the option to run solo sharks. This is just running solo sharks with the chance at a very small conditional buff.

Yes, obviously you don't care at all, which is why you felt the need to aggressively bulldog your way into a casual discussion about matched play rules while throwing out shade left and right. I have literally, not even once, said that this means anything balance-wise for IDK overall or even Fuethan. The only thing that struck me about this rule to the point that I wanted to comment on it is that it's just remarkably badly designed and ineffectual. I have always objected to rules that are poorly written or balanced regardless of who benefits from it. Call it deserved scorn for a professionally made product, I suppose. For the record, I also think the newest Stormcast and Warclans tomes are very badly done for a variety of reasons. Having a few OP warscrolls or builds doesn't negate that for me, quite the opposite. I can't comment on Nurgle because I don't play Nurgle and haven't seen more than a few snippets of their rules.

No Doom and Gloom, but I'm pretty sure that's it for Fuethan. One rule and maybe some kind of conditional battleline, that's all you get for subfactions in 3E, just going by every other tome so far.

I'm not upset at all, but you must be close to tears to get this defensive about people just pointing out a single rule is so badly designed it objectively does close to nothing. Any discussion at all that isn't praising GW's absolute perfection in all things and how much extra money we should all be spending on GW licensed products isn't worth having, I suppose.

The actual ability is a buff so small it could not exist and it wouldn't matter. You're jumping through hoops to get possible exploding sixes on three 2 dam attacks on one model. It's basically +1 damage under optimal conditions. The default champion +1 to hit ability is actually more effective on average. Still, doesn't mean IDK as a whole are necessarily doomed, most of the changes we've seen so far are good, or at least sideways shifts. It's a little worrying that a rule that bad gets picked for a highlight article, but that's GW for you...