soak314

Won a Meeting Engagement tournament with my boyz a couple of weeks back! Clan: None SPEARHEAD: Maniak Weridnob (BoG) w/ Big Wurrgog Mask) / 5x Spear Boarboyz MAIN BODY: Wurrgog Prophet (BBS) w/ Master of the Weird / Wardokk (KBS) / 20x Morboyz REARGUARD: 20x Morboyz Prismatic Palisade Battleplans were Center Ground, The Borderline, Rearguard Action. No realm rules as this was the first ME event we'd done with a bunch of beginners. Won with a Major, Major, then a Minor. Minor was to a in incredibly even match with an FeC Blisterskin player, who only lost because of some very dicey rolls from either of us. Top 3 (Myself, Troggherd, Blisterskin FeC) were separated by 2 points each at the end. *** I feel the Wurrgog's not quite a must-take in ME. He's incredible when you're faced with a blob and manage to roll over 10 to wipe half of em out, but most times you struggle to find a use for the second cast, or fail to get Fist of Gork to do its full work. A second Maniak Weirdnob + a CP or another stack of pigs might give the list more tactical breathing room. I'm heavily considering dropping the second stack of boys in the Rearguard for more pigs. The Morboyz are incredible in ME, but sometimes the battleplan's deployment zones really kneecap the massive blob's deployment. Another consideration is replacing them with Spearboyz for a much sturdier (in melee at least) blob. 2 boxes of boyz = 36-40 feral orks which is very likely going to be your sensible maximum at 1k. Use the third one to make yourself a whole bunch of big stabbas (if you really want em) with all your accumulated big stabba parts. Recast the big stabba bits with oyamaru and resin and you'll potentially have yourself a whole bunch! You'll also likely wanna convert up some heroes using the kits, the BS resin models are pricey and you're gonna have a lot of spare bitz after three boxes. Every on foot ork in BS is on a 32mil base, so you'll have everything you need. 1 box of pigs = 10 pigs, again a really good number to be at for the pointage. You may want to spare one of the pigs + rider for a weirdnob conversion, his resin model is both expensive and not very good looking. The mawkrusha isn't something you can take by default, but you can definitely take it in big waagh. If you do some conversion on it and grab the relevant big sized base you'll be able to run it as a Rogue Idol, which is arguably even better than a mawkrusha in most cases! And lastly, consider Meeting Engagements for 1k. It's a hell of a lot more compelling that standard 1k, and I think you'll find your Sylvaneth pretty damn good in the format too.

Edit stuff down. I can't stomach most AoS youtube content because of length, along with the inherent unwatchability of AoS from a spectator standpoint. Longest I'll usually last watching a battle report is 3 minutes into the game proper. I'd much rather see a series of photographs and a voiceover giving a far more terse overview of the game than a full on recording of the game.

@Moldek The buff tokens should address some issues with hordier factions losing a lot of their bodies early. There's potential for abuse here too, ie the typical squigboss + 19 grots build giving you a spectacularly buffed up squigboss. I'm pretty confident it won't happen though cuz I'm the only gitz player in my local 😆 I'd also have to address LoN players running skelly spam, since they can legally bring models back. I'm still mulling over the monsters bit, I don't want to give the losing players anything too rudimentary as it'll be boring for em, but I also don't want to punish the actual winners too hard. What will probably end up happening is the remaining non-monster warbands will always end up facing each other unless there's an odd person out, in which case the freshest non-monster player gets to fight a monster warband. I'll also make it so the first couple of rounds aren't super killy I think. I'm counting on people either being very defensive with their dudes, or just going totally kamikaze.

I've been cooking up a Warcry narrative event for a bit: it'd be a short form (4 week) campaign with a one day event at the very end to cap it off. Everyone starts off with a fresh sheet to start off with, and will play as many games as they can within the 4 weeks, accruing as much bodies, beasties and quest rewards as they can. The event proper is a terminal point for all these warbands: it's meant to cap the campaign off totally. It does this by making every death in that particular day permanent, meaning whatever models die, are crossed off your sheet for good. No dice saving roll, no free recruitment. Permadeath would apply to the leaders too. The matchups would be standard GW style matched robin, going for five rounds each player, with some tweaks to the matchmaking under certain conditions. For each model you lose in this manner, you'll be given a token, which can be assigned to any other model at the start of each game, giving them either +1 wound, +1 attack dice to all their attacks, or +1 movement. If you lose a model with token upgrades, you get none of them back. When a player is unable to fulfill dagger/shield/ spear requirements, they may then choose to completely ignore the rules for staggered deployment, and may stack their remaining units up in any of the three sections however they want. The event scenarios will all be pre-determined so they'll always involve explicit murder as victory conditions. I'll also try and provide as many wandering beasts as possible, and will have em feature a LOT in the rigged twists If a player is knocked out before they're able to fill their five matches, they get to choose to run one of the following custom warbands for the rest of the event: A Nameless Varanguard with his Retinue Mollog the Mighty and his Mob Spiteclaw's Swarm A Really Pissed Off Treelord Ancient (+ Dryads) Badstuf's Boyz (Greenskinz + a Gargant) The White Knight (AGK + a Terrorgheist) (... I actually have a tonne more ideas for custom guys than is realistically usable lol) These warbands are going to be overpowered by design: at this point they're just catharsis for the players who lose, and a chance to mess up the stronger bands who they'll suddenly be facing. By narrative event standards this is designed to be a bit more stressful than usual: it sets the stakes pretty high with the weeks of progression leading to a permadeath event. But I feel it leans into the overall atmosphere of Warcry, with its hideously swingy rolling and oppressive chaos setting. I want there to be a sense of definite dread going into the final event, actual risk of suddenly losing Your Guys to a random stack of crits from a couple of goblins. *** Watcha guys think? I'm personally a sucker for the concept of permadeath and making high risk, unretractable choices where the odds could violently swing in either direction. Something Warcry can mechanically provide but chooses not to. I do recognize that it's potentially not everyone's cup of tea though.

End of round scoring is already the case for Meeting Engagements. For the end of round scoring to work, the format also adds: a hard 4 round limit to all battleplans Major and Minor victories for all battleplans based on the amount of points you beat your opponent by (not just tiebreakers) 2-3 stage staggered deployment where the new units come out immediately at the end of player turns In ME scoring at the end empowers whoever takes second turn, as it lets them call the shots for the layout of the table for the turn incoming, or for the very end scoring phase. Going second also lets you immediately react to any additional units that have come in, as well as buff a unit up for the receiving end of combat if you end up going second again next turn. You see a similar meta in Infinity, where having the second, reactionary turn is much more sought after in missions where there are objectives to sit on and buttons to push. I personally think end of round scoring works phenomenally well with the dynamic of the double turn, especially in Meeting Engagement's smaller format. For standard 2k though? You'd have to give the system a rehaul before flipping scoring to end of round. It could totally work on specific battleplans, and I would love if they made a set of matched play battleplans for 2k that follows Meeting Engagement's design lead.

This. Going as far internally as stabbas vs spears, Ggitz gives you some genuinely difficult choices when you listbuild, regardless of your subfaction. There's also barely any stinkers in the warscrolls (probably just palooza, loonsmashas, and dankholds. But even then they're just too expensive). The extreme tryhard lists within the faction all come with some nifty caveats too: grotspam folds hard to antihorde. Squig based lists tend to be fragile, and will always have to deal with random movement. The book's lore is also phenomenal, which is always a bonus. I'd also put up FeC for some very similar reasons. People tend to focus on the nasty meta tgheist lists, but beyond that one trick the book is really well done. FeC have a tiny model range, and the rules manage to squeeze out so much listbuilding diversity out of barely any models. The fact that they weren't consolidated into another death faction tells me the internal teams were really enthusiastic about FeC, and it shows through in the excellent lore, and just the general awesome feel of the army. And then of course there's CoS for very obvious reasons.

Yea I'd say it's in a pretty stellar spot. The models are consistently fantastic, and the lore is engaging without being as dire as it was in the past. It's quite popular in my local, too. There's at least one AoS game at my club per week, and I have a big pool of people to draw from whenever I want to get a game. I have some farily deep issues with them using powercreep as a purchase-pusher for a system that clearly was not designed for competitive play. But they've also put out a honest to god, low cost, competitive alternative in Underworlds. It'd be remiss for me to complain about a company's balance in one system when they're actively giving full support to a perfectly robust tournament-focused system on the side. AoS in general is a reflection of how GW's grown as a company. I remember hopping out of the hobby in the early 2010's because of how isolated and elitist it felt to get into wargaming. These days its as easy as picking up one of the nightvault boxes. Add to that more people in my age range having stable jobs and actually being able to afford the hobby, and the overall experience is pretty darn alright.

This pretty much sums up my relationship with the system at the moment, lmao. As per the balance issues and AoS being approached as a competitive system: GW sends out tournament packs to their stores and affiliated retailers, correct? AFAIK AoS and 40k don't really get big fancy packs. All the tourneys I've heard about and been to are all independently organised. Compare this to Kill Team's and Warcry's event packs which all come with some *very* fancy metal medals. Compare it further to Underworlds' trophy, what I believe to be GW's only truly good tournament game: The focus on these small-system tournament packs may also be a function of smaller Warhammer store sizes + an already established, purchase-happy buyerbase for their wargames. But I feel the marketing message is already pretty clear.

Can anyone clarify that multiple sources of wound shrug stack? I've just been told by a regular tourney player that they do. In our case, it'd apply to the rogue idol's 5+, then warpaint 6+ shrug.

Rogue Idol's got the keywords now! Not sure when they uploaded the warscroll on forgeworld, but it's now legal in any OW list. Everything else about the warscroll is the same, I think.

My first game with DBW had me at 20 points turn 2 easy, and it wasn't even at 2k.

Have you considered retrogaming with em? I know its a tired response to the culling at this point, but it's a fairly robust option. And not just retrogaming as far back as WHFB. You could also use the rules from AoS 1.0 when everything was in compendiums and at a relatively even power level. I'd love to play a few games with the older factions exclusively while using the tighter 2.0 core rules, battleplans, realm stuff, and even endless spells. I've also heard great things about 9th age and SAGA (Age of Magic specifically), if you're feeling burnt out on GW systems in general. The most similar thing I've felt like this recently is the axing of the greenskinz and basic duardin. I've got a bunch of em kicking around, since I'm just really fond of the models. I'm keeping my dwarfs on their squares for retrogaming, and maybe running them as counts as freeguild for AoS friendlies. My greenskinz are getting adapted to be both aos bonesplitterz and snakebitez for 40k. It lets me keep the generic ork aesthetic/flavour I like so much while also being able to dabble in multiple systems. Both sets of models are also eventually getting shunted into my frostgrave games at points, and for sure into SAGA whenever I get around to playing that again.

I saw it mentioned in one of those news compilation articles, not sure if it was actually verbally dropped in the stream preview itself.

Yep, unless they change his warscroll, it looks like he's illegal to field in matched play for any sort of orruk warclans list!

One more game in, 1600 again (its a local meta thing). Ran Da Big Waaagh with a tweaked list to last time, and managed to get to 20 points by the end of my turn 2. Went to a draw vs a troggherd, but we only played til turn 2 and I was likely to table him if it went on. He utterly wrecked my boarboyz, but my morboyz were relatively pristine, and fully buffed, while he was on his last 5 troggs. Waaagh pts Breakdown after spoilers: Was a lot more conservative with alpha striking this time, and my teef rukk managed to take out a troggoth hag in turn two's combat phase. From that point, all ~20 of my morboyz were hitting on 2+/2+. For an example of how this performs, I made a ten inch charge into a troggboss that only got 6 of 16 morboyz into base contact for 24 attack rolls. I did a Big Waaagh and got 6 more attacks, which made the trog take 22 saves, which it did not survive. The Wurrgogg is a beast of a caster. His artefact and command trait choices are a genuinely difficult decision. As we know Morks boney bitz + master of the weird gives him extremely reliable casting (I halved a 40 blob of grots in one cast with him in that game), but he isn't particularly tough, so Glowin' Tatooz might be a very good relic take if you're in a skaven/casting/shooting heavy meta (which you probably will be as soon as people dust off their CoS models.) *** From these two games I'm having a really hard time choosing what I'd run for a tryhard event. Pure bonesplitterz Da Big Waaagh + possibly one of the clans seems like a really strong pick, but the free 5-8" move and the monster hunting passives can really help you out too.