Kasper

Ultimately I dont think GW intended Warhammer to be this super competitive thing. People twist and turn every little rule sentence in an attempt to squeeze out a slight edge at any given time. Armies are finetuned to the extreme. I think it is clear by their responses that Warhammer was meant to be a reasonable game with reasonable rules to be had between two dudes that had collected an army and wanted something more once their miniatures were painted.

You might want to consider glasses in that case. There are hardly any battle reports of Sons of Behemat atm., so I dont understand why you feel the need to take a dump on a competitive content creator that took his time to film, clip and upload their battle report for our entertainment.

I agree with you to a certain degree, but as an example Petrifex giving a blanket +1 save isnt inherently broken imo (it is an incredible buff no doubt). It is the combination of insane save characteristic, with full rerolls for little to no resource cost and with extremely high damage output that made an additional +1 problematic. Ontop of this you have regeneration abilities that further compounds the issue and creates a really terrible player experience. S2D is a pretty good example of a book with a few tricks and strong abilities, like the Khorne DP, but it doesnt cause issues because they arent murdering you (apart from Marauders, ****** those guys) with brutal damage or near impenetrable units. So even if they print powerful abilities, they are not inherently broken.

The FAQ/errata for GHB20 explains exactly what stuff is still matched play legal. The only mecenaries are Fyreslayers and FEC from Forbidden Power. The Fungoid isnt included in the Forbidden Power stuff so he isnt matched play legal.

Nah Im good. I like AoS a lot and dont enjoy Warcry or other similar games. I just dont think having tons of ability bloat creates a good game. AoS is won in the movement phase anyways. SoB is awesome and a good break from playing Seraphon/Tzeentch.

I think there are 2 different discussions to be had here. One is if GW can predict what impact a new army will have on the meta/competitive scene (I dont think they fully know how strong an army is before we get our hands on it), another is when/if they should intervene when it is obvious that something is stupidly broken. I do think some immediate issues fix themselves as people get experience with said issue and learn to play around/counter it, others are too absurd and need to be reeled back in. Bad/stupid rules doesnt always equal to an army being crazy broken. It often is, but not always. Again, their internal/external playtesting team might not turn the army to an 11, but the community spitballing ideas and finetuning the army sure will.

You telling me Azyr might be wrong??

When GW print rules for a new army I dont think they can predict or really know how well it will fare in the hands of thousands of players across the globe. They might have an inhouse playtesting team or external playtesters, but thats a limited amount of people. Things are different when you release it to the masses that can get much more creative when spitballing ideas in WhatsApp groups etc. Sure, you can print absurd rules such as prenerf Slaanesh and predict it will do well, but I dont think they had any idea when they printed the rules for KO or Seraphon. KO was accompanied by a massive point drop, so it obviously compounds. Basically I dont think what they do is deliberate in any way. The rule designers print cool and fun ******, playtesters reel some of the things in, but other than that it is likely happy accidents at times.

Having played almost 10 games already with my SoB army, it is awesome not having to spend 30 mins in your hero phase alone (hello Seraphon/Tzeentch). Honestly a lot of armies have meaningless ability bloat/abilities that in the grand scheme of things dont impact the game much imo which doesnt necessarily equal to the army requiring "more skill" to pilot. We had a 1 dayer at my club the other day where we were 10 mates playing all kinds of different armies. My games had usually reached turn 5 by the time the other games had gone to turn 2. It was refreshing not playing 3-3½ hours for a game of AoS.

Why? The whole purpose of the 25 min quick battle report is to showcase strats/how the army plays. It is not to show off how well you painted your figs. The damage output of the Krakenskin is pretty much the same as getting a +1 to hit from being Breaker Tribe. The difference is that this bonus is applied to all your Mega-Gargants AND Mancrushers in Breaker. Honestly the sole reason to go Taker is for the 3D6 kick, but you give up a significant/more reliable damage output. It really depends on how well you utilise the kick in your games.

I dont know if this is something new or if they have done it in the past - Im curious if it is a sign of them going to focus more on balance and stats than they have previously. Unfortunately not everything can be solved by adding 10 pts increases to a range of models, they have to adress tons of things like certain armies having a "free" one drop army. It is absolutely beyond me how Changehost could be printed in the first place. It costs almost nothing, it gives an utterly insane bonus (2 teleports pre nerf???), there is no "unit tax" to fulfill the requirement of the batallion and there is no real limit to it either. It is a no-brainer to pick and frankly to have a teleport PLUS a one drop army means the batallion should easily cost a lot more or have a serious unit tax like forcing you to pick some ****** unit to fulfill requirements. KO getting a 10-15% pts increase across the board is not gonna stop them from giving you the first turn and removing your entire army if they win the double turn.

I kinda get what you mean. Once you have bought 9 Mancrushers, 3 Mega-Gargants (and magnetized them) and maybe a Bonegrinder, there is little incentive to buy additional models since there is never a situation where you could use more. I dont think the kits are "disastrous" though, both kits offer lots of bits and a little greenstuffing on the Mancrushers goes a long way to make a very unique force with different poses/models. Even for an army like Ironjawz with only 3 battleline units and 4 hero units, you can dwell deep into Gore-Gruntas and go all out with like 21 in a force, or go double Maw-Krusha, or go a lot of Brutes, or tons of Ardboyz etc etc. You can pretty much always branch out and buy loads more models for your army. I dont think this means it is a "fire and forget" army from GWs POV. They have an interest in keeping the army supported because some people will buy into it down the line once they got tired of their 200 model horde army and want to just move around with a few big models instead. Im pretty sure there were multiple reasons why they dialed back the whole "oh white dwarf article is no longer legal" - It now gives them a way to re-introduce/update exsisting armies. I wouldnt be surprised if they added a different Tribe or batallion etc. down the line for the army.

Aye but maybe thats not how AoS is meant to be played? It just seems weird that Stomper is so insanely strong vs horde armies, but kinda ****** if you play against Ironjawz (pigs/MK), Stonehorns etc. Makes me wonder if they intend for you to switch it up depending on what you are gonna fight. Stomper looks insane, unless you are unlucky and face an army that doesnt give you any extra output. Big hit or miss. I dont see Taker being that great. In my 8 games there havent been a time where I thought “damn if only this mega counted for 30 instead of 20”. Model count 20 is more than enough on the big boys and the little guys being 10 is also just fine. The only reason to ever go Taker is the 3D6 kick imo. I have played like 3 games with the Kraken-Eater and the impact on the game hasnt been big. Kicking the objective sounds great on paper, but getting a stinky 4” kick or whatever is just worthless. I dont see KE being worth it outside of Taker tbh. Breaker is where the gas is at imo. Running 2 GBs means you have significant damage output and it boosts your Mancrushers. The boulders with -3 and 4 damage is no joke when you throw 2 at a time. The flail is also serious damage output. The +1 vs heroes/Wizards (makes it more viable to throw rocks at support heroes) is great if you want to challenge heroes, or the +1 vs command squads/+1 vs 1-4 save is great if you want to focus on removing units.

Stomper Tribe looks pretty solid against alot of armies - Gonna give it a spin next time with WS + 2x3 MC + 3x1 MC. I just fear it will do little against none horde armies, where as Breaker is pretty much always great. I wonder if this is a result of me and my mates playing AoS “wrong”. We typically make an all-comer list and dont modify it depending on what we face, but rather make a list as if we were going to an event. If I could switch up the Tribe depending on what I faced, I would probably give Stomper more credit.

We never really got a clarification on what exactly the keyword "Scenery, Rubble" means, right? Seems weird they introduce a keyword on the Gatebreakers warscroll, but no mention of what exactly it means anywhere in the book. Does it buff our Mancrushers' shooting attack? Does it mean we can freely walk over it with Longshanks regardless of how tall it was? Etc. I do believe the faction terrain rules are replaced by the Deadly scenery rule as per the Gatebreakers warscroll, but never hurts to ask.

Submitted my questions! I urge you other guys to send in your questions so we can hopefully get some of the a little vague rules clarified. aosfaq@gwplc.com

This is another one I didnt understand at all. Despite there being a Designer's note, it doesnt seem very clear what the intention is (at least to me). My initial thought was also that you can ignore requirements for capturing objectives such as only battleline etc. If this is true, it would make Better Part of Valor significantly better for us. Worth writing a question about tbh.

What I've encountered: Warstomper's Hurled Body ability says "during the combat phase" and as such isnt limited to when he piles in and can be used after everyone have fought. Seems unintentional considering how the other abilities function (upon piling in). The ability Longshanks says you can only move over a terrain feature if it is less than 4" tall. What if other parts of the terrain feature is 2" tall (like a fence) but theres a building which is 4,5" tall - Is it possible to move over the 2" fence without a movement penalty from "climbing"? Stomper Tribes "Getting Stuck In" says it adds 1-2 damage depending on enemy unit size. It doesnt mention melee attacks, is it intended for it to affect the Chuck Rocks shooting attack on the Mancrushers? I mean it is worth sending in questions, but I think some of those are very easily explained. 2) - Longshanks is essentially just a "nerfed" version of fly. Fly doesnt allow you to move out of combat except if you retreat. Longshanks should be no different as a result. 3) The warscroll ability specifically says when "a model" charges, hence it works for each model that charges. Gore-Gruntas in Ironjawz have a similar ability and it works that way. 5) Just above the artefacts for each tribe it says they are exclusive. For Taker Tribes it says "Kraken-Eater Mega-Gargant only", hence a Warstomper cant gain these artefacts in any way. 6) It specially says "they cannot use any other command abilities". There are no other command abiltiies except the general ones like "On the double" so it seems like a hard no tbh. Else I think the question should include realm command abilities.

With GW releasing FAQs 4 weeks after a book release, have anyone made a compilation of questions we can send in to ensure as many odd interactions get answered?

Straight up making a game impossible to win is incredible stupid, but kicking an objective out of your deployment zone in Battle for the Pass to deny your opponent the possiblity of earning 4 pts and instead 2 pts seems reasonable to me. Afterall it is quite clear we arent super tanky but not super killy either, so the gameplay is meant to revolve around objectives and outscoring VPs. Thats likely why many new battleplans (that were released at the same time as SoB was meant to be released - hence points in the GHB2020) include additional points if you have a hero, behemoth etc.

Keep in mind its done in the hero phase, so really only useful to do that if you get the double turn. Certainly strong to kick it backwards and way out of reach of your opponent. I do like the triumph tbh. Reroll hits and wounds is meaty with all those high damage attacks. Reroll saves is also alright.

The Warstomper guy making people -1 to hit if he has attacked is kinda cool. I considered trying it out with a KE in Takers and then put Extremely Intimidating ontop. Could be fun to run those guys together and make the enemy -2 to hit.

I feel like a Kraken Eater is too good to pass up on. I have only played (3 games this weekend) as Takers with 2x GB + 2x3 MC and had multiple situations where kicking the objective would have been great. I won all 3 but none of them were against hyper competitive lists (40 Blightkings + Glotkin, SCE with Gotrek + Prime + Stardrake and mirror against Takers with 2 KE + 1 GB). I think Im gonna focus on Takers in the future. Against armies that cant deepstrike, you can kick it backwards and likely buy you another turn getting points while you move the KE forward and engage stuff, assuming your kick went far enough for the opponent to not just retreat onto it in their turn, or maybe you have placed your KE in such a manner that the opponent cant really retreat far enough since he has to go around your huge base and still be outside of 3". You are still holding the objective on a majority of battleplans, even if you kicked it into a far corner while you sprint towards the middle. I wonder if they are gonna FAQ stuff like Battle of the Pass. You can also punt the objectives closer together so your force is standing ontop of each other etc. Quite a few options here. Even in Stompers I think going for 9 MC is a trap and that you would want WS + KE + 6 MC. I think alot of people in general are really focused on damage output when it comes to playing AoS. Almost any faction thread is largely about what unit deals the most damage etc. which is just not how you generally win, hence why I would prefer a KE in Stompers over 3 MC. 3 MC is gonna deal way more damage, but they also die/bracket way, way faster. Tabling your opponent by turn 2 is obviously a valid strat, but it is few armies that can do this. I do worry about stuff like IJ, Fyreslayers, Tzeentch and maybe retreating skinks in Fangs of Sotek. Many of the current top armies have a disgustingly high damage output, but some of them are also MW sprinkling which we kind of ignore, where as it eats support heroes in other armies. There are generally very few armies that have a great time against anything they face (if you talk about "hyper" competitive lists) so I dont think this is anything new or a major drawback for SoB. Im gonna try to get some games in vs my friend with both IJ, OBR and FoS Seraphon soon!

Sure but effectively denying your opponent his command squad is often quite big. Multiple armies get quite good rules like Ardboyz +2 Bravery, Pink Horror banner etc etc. The fact you make your opponent remove these is a win on its own imo. I do like the Shiny ‘Uns too since many units have 4+ save. I have thought about doing the +1 hit to Wizards/heroes to improve the shooting. It basically cancels out Look-out Sir. It might be worth losing out on some melee grinding power in favor of being able to snipe low wound heroes. I threw 2 rocks (2 breakers) at a Stardrake earlier today. He failed with -3 rend and took 8 damage to the face!

Megas are not “just a 35 man unit”. The fact you can kiss an objective and instantly steal it with a count of 20 (or 30) is massive. I have played 3 games during the weekend and the ability to retreat over models with a 13-18” retreat (played 2x gatebreaker + 2x3 crushers) and land just inside a tiny bit of an objective is crazy. All in all Gargants play very similar to Stonehorns, just with a couple more tricks.