Zanzou

As I kind of mentioned, I hadn't personally been into playing them really since the book changes (even though I own the physical book and have thought about the new strategies), so my perspective on their balance isn't from my own games or W/L, but as a spectator, cross-comparing different faction rulesets, and verifying suspicions with the aggregate tournament stats (so take my opinion for what you will). Even if I was playing I wouldn't use my personal W/L as evidence of anything, because that's 1 person relative to the skill of your local gaming group. To clarify, my position was never that sylv should be able to sit there and just tank everything, or even be dominant at anything. It's that for example, TLA should have two spells to facilitate play making in top-tier tournaments, since plays are what their whole role appears to be. To be clear, Sylvaneth would still get completely wrecked against all top-tier magic like seraphon in the magic vs magic department, so I'm not asking for Sylvaneth to "completely dominate with a single gimmick". Sylvaneth would still be a toolkit army, not the "I win button" army. The tree-revenant teleport change was one big step for their bag of tricks, it just seemed to me that they could use 1 small push further in tricking because there are certain factions out there that sylv did not seem to have an answer for. Trees can hard-counter(ish) some armies and yet sylv appears to be wide open against a lot of the top. You could say "that just means broken armies needed to receive the nerf hammer" and if that's what's happening then that's fine, otherwise I'm advocating for a fun option...

This was good before power creep. Sylvaneth healing looks strong but then you remember the game was patched so that even monsters get bodied in one attack, which a heal does nothing for. In a climate like this, the armies with high defense would survive attacks that sylv wouldn't have a chance to survive to heal. Manoeuvring and summoning are great but there are factions that can do these things on top of going toe-to-toe. If sylvaneth are supposed to be tricksy, give TLA dual cast for a start. I've mentioned before, the lack of dual-cast options in the new sylv gnarlroot, combined with the locked-in artefacts and such of glades had turned me off playing very much, as strategy-wise I felt forced into GW's cookie-cutter guides. Having a dual caster that could be customized with an artefact would make at least something stimulating to work with, and TLA would instantly be 100% competitive with that one change.

I wonder how investors would view a company that doesn't need handouts and keeps going strong despite a pandemic, vs a company struggling to get by...

I get that repeatedly beating a dead horse can be negative by just saying "warhammer is too expensive" repeatedly, but GW is the one that just increased prices in their announcement again- they made this their news. As this is significant news to some people- how would this not be the place to discuss reactions to brand new information and guesses as to what the upcoming price changes will be, and how that may affect someone? Whether it is pleasant or negative, it is new information and new prices are a major part of the game for a lot of people. If changes happen that people don't like, isn't it normal for some negativity to come in the news thread until that naturally blows over? I personally am not surprised that they did it again already. Look at the sky-high price of the greater daemons price hike from last time. It doesn't make sense why Alarielle or even Verminlords would remain at the same price tier if they hiked greater daemons to be that high. The price gap had left half of their lineup way more affordable than their recently hiked ones. Sadly GW is well aware. I have seen people go but there's also people who just switch to much more affordable methods to obtain the models. I don't think those of us who have dropped out has made enough of a difference for them to notice, for whatever reason. I think that it's because even if they turn off a significant percentage of their fanbase, ALL board games interest in general for the population at large is at an all-time high, so new people just keep coming.

@Bayul @LuminethMage I think the artists did an incredible job with the actual battletome art - it’s really just that the helmet exists period that it looks like a joke to some of us. Similarly Teclis looks incredible in the artwork as well yet the model itself is divisive. I feel like the above has already been hammered home enough, but just wanted to explain since it was baffling to you why despite art that is so skillfully done it still may look like a joke to some of us.

@Thiagoma @Khaedhras I doubt it would be too difficult to whittle to a point with a hobby knife? Especially because these are seemingly elite so you won’t be doing 80 of them.

Looks like they included an accidental reveal today on warhammer community this time...

I made a poll about this here before, and a lot of the community was unhappy with the sub-faction rules and restrictions. There are other ways to balance subfactions without them taking customization away from you. Personally I have found building lists in this edition to be less inspiring, between the locked subfaction traits/artefacts and the general culling of unit options and customization. Basically I feel like GW is doing the micro customization FOR us these days, which is anti-hype for a player like me. I don’t just want to play out one of their pre-designed lists for THEM on the table. As far as “just don’t take a subfaction” goes, the books generally punish you for not doing so, with some exceptions.

No no not at all. Which is why I enjoy seeing everyone else's, but do not want to look at my own 😜 True

This is true - it is from that reveal and obviously makes more sense. But other than the earrings, the faces have never looked alike to me. But that's art for ya.

... :P

I think the only reason you’re not seeing more massive piles being posted in this thread by some of us is just because of the dissonance between having a giant pile of “shame” and wanting to confront the pile, picture it and post it on the internet. Props to everyone that does though!

Is this edit different?

Confused that you didn't see them specifically market these in a way that lead everyone to consider them the "new HE". All of the reporting websites across the internet referred to them as the new high aelves, from their very first announcement video. The announcement video was of Teclis first of all, and it said the aelves he was bringing back were specifically the classic pointy aelves, and they showed old pictures of exactly what we could expect by the classic "pointy aelves" look. If you still don't think the internet was lead to believe this by GW's delivery, I doubt there is anything I could say to change your mind.

While we're all having a good laugh:

The sad thing is, I would much rather field a unit converted to even look like this than field the original “helmets”. 100% no joke. Of course, neither would be the promised pointy aelf or my style but... just saying.

I thought having these new aelves as the elemental masters was a good way to tie them into the zanier AoS world, while maintaining the pointy appearance that traditionalists loved. As such, I think bringing in elemental spirit manifestations is a reasonable addition. But. Why. On. Earth.... When this faction is already known for their overly large, nonsensically pointy helmets, would you literally copy and paste the entire head of the elemental spirit, onto every single model of your aelf unit, and paste it BALANCED ON TOP OF THEIR ALREADY MASSIVE POINTY HELMETS. Right, the point is that their helmets are ALREADY iconically too massive and tall. To paste the entire head of their cow elemental, balanced on top of their pointy heads just looks like an intern's joke that was accidentally passed through QA. Reminds me of the summer intern who got blamed by KTVU when they accidentally aired highly inappropriate joke names instead of the actual names of the deceased pilots (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jtxds204ZMI) Agreed. This helmet is the first real issue I've had with any of the actual aelf units revealed so far. I think you could get away with leaving it on maybe a banner carrier, but balancing on top of every helmet like that is too much.

Interesting, genuine question though: do you have a quote about how corporate GW treated him - that the company treated him well? There is a difference between loving GW’s works, the models and his love of the time he got to spend painting them for us vs being treated well by GW the corporation. The “total hearsay” that corporate GW was not treating him and others well, appeared to be given by the same people who correctly reported when he would be quitting before he confirmed their rumour to be true. However, again, I 100% agree to the sentiment we should let him speak for himself above all. If you have a quote that the GW corporation treated him well I would be interested in hearing that. This is one thing where I would be relieved to be proven wrong.

True. I suppose it's only fair we let him speak for himself, I'll edit a disclaimer into my original post. Regardless, it is weird seeing Duncan already doing tutorials for non-GW minis though, at least to my brain 😨.

I will tell you all that I am aware of (I'm not sure if anything has changed since then), but feel free to make up your own mind: Very shortly before he announced he was leaving, it was stated by others that Duncan was quitting shortly due to negative issues with GW the company. Duncan then went on twitter to confirm the rumor that he was leaving, and specifically did not say anything positive regarding GW or deny any of the hostility. He only had positive things to say about loving what he did and the community. In addition, consider that he is straight back to painting minis on youtube representing himself - it's safe enough to say that he did not lose interest in the job... Considering he's doing the exact same thing that he already was doing, if GW had treated him and the company well enough.....

Duncan left Games Workshop due to GW being a poor workplace (disclaimer: That's just what evidence appears to suggest to many of us)... after Ossiarch launched. My guess is that Duncan was originally going to be the one responsible for painting Ossiarch, but got delayed during the transition of him leaving.

So I see that the last few updates from honest wargamer have sylvaneth at a tournament win rate of 38.5 - 40 percent. A) do you think this is a problem with our faction or is it just the constant power creep? Even skaven is now at 44%... B) What would you change about our faction to see them reaching 50% win rates at tournaments?

Missed that Dread Saurian was updated randomly a few days before the battletome released... jaws do 6 flat damage at -2 rend consistently for the first 12 wounds he takes. Carno jaws do 5 at -1 rend for the first 2 wounds they take. I don't think that's bad at all considering how he is already a tank and all his other abilities.

Someone tell me if I've missed it, but I just noticed that one of our biggest best bois got a stealthy update to be one of the beefiest units in AoS... EDIT: I see it was noticed here on Thursday. Weighing in at 35 wounds, ignoring enemy spells and endless spells on a 4+ while near slann, at 50 celestial conjuration points... Dread Saurian?! 510 points is higher, but his jaws do a consistent flat 6 damage for his first 12 wounds taken at -2 rend.... Carno jaws in comparison do 5 damage for only the first 2 wounds at -1 rend...

Most likely because by launch the people who weren’t feeling it just passed on it and moved on.