soak314

Is it possible to ally Miners in to a Dispossessed list or am I going to have to go GA order to use em?

Had a couple of ME games with my new dorfs and hoo that did not go well. I'm used to running squigs and their fairly considerable board coverage, so the 4 inches on the duardin is really doing in my standard mindset. First game was making use of what was in the skull pass x2 + a cannon and a runelord, and woof that was an utter stomp. Fella was using Idoneth and running circles around me, basically. Terrible screening on my part made sure no shooting happened. Second game was doing counts as with Ironbreakers and Irondrakes, and went sorta better for all of two rounds then just fell apart again. It's hard for the dwarves to deal with the deadly Idoneth turn 3, usually with my grots I just reposition and deny him half that turn, but for something with stumpier legs that can't fly, that's a biiit harder to do. At least I got my smash boss Unforged some time in the sun, he gibbed an allopex then ran over and deathblowd' an Akhelian King off the board before finally going down, bloody glorious. Also I forgot the double attacks on a fresh stack of 10 drakes. Learning pains! Anyone else had a swing at ME yet? I can feel that I'm using these guys wrong, that they can do sooo much better.

BATTLE REPORT: Change of Pace Edition Nothing fancy today, just a quick blurb on how effective this format is at showing people how AoS works. Had a teaching game, new person using KO, myself using Skaven Pestilens. No Realm Rules, no terrain or scenery rules, no gnawholes (illegal in the format). They were very new so there was a lot of absolutely not okay deployment choices such as shunting a unit of skywardens in a boat and having them do exactly nothing up until turn 3, but that's fine. The big shiny toy, from the KO player perspective, was the big brass boat and all its guns. I took 2x20 plague rats and some censer bearers for the dorfs to try and gun down, along with two plague claws in the rearguard to spook em into moving into action before they arrived. Also the requisite priest on furnace and on foot. Having a minimum amount of units in the spearhead really sets the scene for a good tutorial round, and the incoming waves work like layers of gradual complexity for them to work with as the game gets messier and messier. They ended up hugging their backline and not sitting on the point, which of course lost em the game, but with 35 rats gunned down by the end, they were quite pleased with themselves. The game took 1 hour 15 mins, which is really impressive for a teaching game with 45 rats involved. I've found what pushes it closer to the two hour mark is when both players know what they're doing. There's a ton of indecision and pauses for critical thought in those games, where this one was just me moving models forward to get shot at. I haven't had enough of a look at KO, both in general and through this particular match, to gauge how much better they'd do in Engagements, but I think their mobility, threat range, and toughness will make em a solid pick for the format. Can't say quite the same for dedicated pestilens, who are a very one trick pony at 1k. A verminlord could shake things up, and plague monks in stacks of 10 can still roll an obscene amount of dice with buffs on a charge, but there's very little unpredictability to them.

Weird how that is. Late last year when I was just starting out I assumed every tourney would run with them on. GHB 2k19 pretty explicity states 'Realm rules on, mate. If your list can't deal with Ulgu, tough.' (p 70 GHB 2k19) for their official tourney guidelines, too. I'd love for merc companies to be an official thing, especially at 2k points where you can actually take em at effective levels. (Honestly I just want *something* to make gargants worth taking.)

Sounds like an interesting matchup! You'll definitely outpace him onto points, consider dropping your free CPs from loonskin onto command runs for some nifty 12 inch moves. Also get rid of any runebearers with vomit where possible, they can make the dorfs real punchy. Oh and if he has the fyreslayer hero shoot him dead. He'll do well against your trogs in particular.

You'll have an easier time getting murderpoints, but sitting on objectives is still what wins you the games. The central objective battleplan will probably be easiest for you: one objective lets you utilize your fat base footprints. Get a trogboss and his crew up on that point and you'll be denying a considerable amount of real estate. Trogs have a decent move stat on em but I wouldn't call em flanking-capable, so you'll have a really rough time denying ground. Be wary of summoning armies or reserves who can drop onto your flanks much easier. If the list you're facing has no way to call in something behind your line of trogs, consider tagging your point, leaving it, and attempting to establish the main clash as deep into their territory as you can. Less distance to cover for any cap attempts. Try to engage with units in efficient unit vs unit engagements, spreading your own units out for maximum efficiency. Trogs pack a hell of a punch, and two stacks of 3 focusing down one 10x stack of 1 wound battleline may be a waste of their damage potential. And finally, maybe consider some squigs? a 6 stack is 12 wounds thick, and only costs 70! They make awesome goalkeepers.

Literally just got back home with 2 skull pass boxes worth of dorfs, for playing meeting engagements with. My group's pretty lenient with counts as, so I can run these little dorks as ironbreakers/drakes, and the miners as longbeards. Would people recommend going for the newer, more expensive models in a full Dispossesed list, or running the older fellas in GA Order with a cannon or two?

With the loonsmashas on the point out on turn 1, heck yeah I think I would have. I made soooo many dumb decisions in that fight, and from turn 1 just let him have full control of the map. Idoneth have insane coverage and threat range, and with a good mix of thralls and reavers and possibly allopexes all of their units will be contributing *something* to the fight right out the gate, regardless of deployment order.

BATTLE REPORT! Gitz vs Idoneth Deepkin My list: Spearhead: 20x Shootas w/ 5x Loonsmashas, Madcap Shaman w/ Vindictive Glare + Moonface Mommet Main Body: 12x Squig Herd, 12x Squig Herd, Loonboss On Giant Cave Squig w/ Fight Another Day, Fungoid w/ Squig Lure Rearguard: 5x Boingrotz Spells: Pendulum Battleplan: Central Objective (these are learning games with various people, so I'm running the basic battleplan for all of em.) His List Spearhead: 3x Tanky Eels, Tidecaster w/ the d3 Mortal Wounds spell, 10x Thralls Main Body: Volturnos w/ uh stuff, 3x Tanky Eels, 10x Thralls Rearguard: Allopex Hoo boy. Okay, so spoilers I lose this game on my first decision: I take first turn. I run up excitedly and get exactly 4 grots on the point, not releasing my fanatics because of ??reasons??. My madcap tails em, keepin close. His turn comes around. The eels are suddenly dead center on the point, the thralls moving up right behind em, giving him 5 bodies on the point. The tidecaster lops 3 wounds off my grots. He takes 5 points for turn 1. Turn 2! Moon comes out, yay, and my squigs are positioned to take advantage of it. Half of them run up on the right, half on the left, trying for an encirclement on the point. The boss supports the right wing, the fungoid joins the madcap. The shootas loose on his approaching thralls, nailing exactly one. My madcap and fungoid do 2 mortals total to the eels. I deploy the fanatics! .... only to realize he's used the high movement on the eels to deny me deploying them on the point, in front of my shootas. , forcing me to put them out to the side where they *cannot charge* because of this tiny chokepoint he's generated with his shipwrecks. I also *don't* charge the shootas in, possibly because I was very high on the tramadol + voltaren cocktail I took in the morning for my herniated disc. (I have no idea why i didn't charge the shootas in). I deploy my boingrotz out on the right wing. His turn, turn 2 starts and his army springs into action. The eels on the point *s w e r v e* clean off it, shooting off to the side and into my left wing of squigs. The empty point is then filled with the 10 thralls, who both contest it and charge into my shootas. Volturnos and the second batch of eels charge my right flank of squigs. They've stopped my attempt at encirclement. 10 more thralls come in right behind the first batch. I'm thankful they're not reavers, and he's kicking himself because they're not reavers (this already utter loss would be an even more embarassing defeat if they were reavers). That's way more than 10 bodies on the point for me to chew through. The first big melee exchange happens, I wipe out half of the thralls with a lone fanatic who cheekily piles in through a gap, but he lops off more wounds than I could keep up with on every front. The eels stand firm on both wings, putting big dents in my squigs. 5 points to him, we're at 0-10. Turn 3 happens and boy oh boy do you idoneth fans know what that means. He gets first turn, takes it with aplomb, and attacks first with *everything*, wiping out most of my grots, forcing a nasty battleshock test on both my squig wings that takes them down to exactly no squigs left. Also he does a ritual which takes away my boingrotz' ability to fly and I'm just stood there like the john travolta gif. My turn turn 3 rolls around and I flail like a greenhorn sumo wrestler in the middle of a vicious takedown, sending my boingrots into the eels, a tabletop reenactment of driving five bouncy motorbikes full speed into a brick wall. 5 more points to him, 0 -15. Turn 4, he completes the counter-encirclement, murders every last one of my units, and reaches a final score of 0-20.

I haven't felt summoning to be too overpowering in my games yet. See: the battle report up there where his alarielle summoned in a free behemoth, breaking the behemoth cap and giving him three of them at 1k points. I still beat that list handily with some simple screening. My list was nothing but grots, fanatics and squigs, zero behemoths taken. If he had used the summon to call in some bow kurnoths, or a stack of dryads, maybe the game woulda gone much better for him. FeC *need* their summoning at 1k ME. They are a melee encirclement horde and the trick they have up their sleeve in this format is super flexible flanking. Need an objective capped? Buncha ghouls. Need a key synergy caster taken care of? Get some knights out. If you take away their summoning (which is heavily kneecapped by a CP requirement or a key hero sat all the way in the back) you'll find their latent high unit costs + reliance on expensive courtiers to be quite restrictive at 1k. I've yet to see how seraphon and the chaos factions behave, but they aren't nearly as offensive on paper compared to FeC and Sylvaneth. Nah I think they're fine, same reason as behemoths. Heaps of eggs in a basket that can't efficiently contest points or screen. You're rolling fewer dice and feeling the failure far more when they don't do well. Gristlegore are relatively alright. A big bat coming in first round (absolute worst case) is unlikey to be able to make a charge if you deploy correctly (Rearguard/Main Body turn 1 battleplans always have a long gap to clear). If they make you take first turn, simply feed a screen into em and sit with the bare number of units on the point, staying 3 inches out so he cant pile into you. Accept that a behemoth is likely going to delete a unit per turn, is likely NOT going to be killable unless you commit to a behemoth of your own or have access to a ton of anti-monster stuff, and build your list with that in mind. I'd be WAY more worried about Blisterskin. They get a flat bonus to their move on everything, the ability to deepstrike their bats, knights, and even ghouls and horrors if taken with a specific spell, and a 50/50 chance at an additional CP per turn. All of this make em tremendous for Meeting Engagements. And no, taking allegiance abilities away isn't the answer. That'll just make people NOT want to play the mode at all.

Good stuff! This is very similar to what I'm going for in a 2k point list, most armies simply cannot deal with a grot wall. But have you considered what'd happen if you faced something with some dedicated antihorde? For reference, any min-maxxed tzeentch lists will have a gaunt summoner on a balewind able to wipe off 30 of your 60 blob with a single cast, from across the map, which they can easily rig to constantly go off. Slaanesh is likely to run up a seeker into a blob and go for the spell that rolls em one dice per model, doing d3 mortal wounds per 6. Skaven Pestilens will be shunting -2 rend 2d6 damage plagueclaw shots at you every turn, while their verminlords will do another potential half-blob wiping spell once they get into range (which they will do very quickly with gnawholes). Also Warplightning Vortex, and Skyre bull**** in general.

Book only restricts reserves to NOT deploying 'before the arrival time of the contingent those units belong to', and otherwise says to follow normal setup rules (p 75 ghb 2k19) I'd say you're gold on deploying them as normal. since this particular instance has them coming out *after* their contingent, following their rules as normal on the turn they arrive. I'm not entirely sure what these special reserves rules for ME are meant to cover, tbh, as I haven't run into any deepstrikers that specify 'on the first turn of battle' or similar in their conditions.

I started 40k, and I started with orks, done up in Bad Moonz colors. I like yellow! None of the other factions ever really clicked, and I just assumed that meant I liked orks the best. That whole illusion shattered when I painted my first grot. I didn't like orks, I liked gretchin. The concept of using an in-lore and in-rules underdog to best someone in a game of strategic combat was intoxicating, and grots exemplified that playstyle and mindset. When the Bad Moon Rising trailer dropped late last year, that was curtains for my 40k army. At that point I was already AoS-curious, and immediately went full Gloomspite.

Meeting Engagement Battle report! Gitz vs Sylvaneth My list: S: 2x Sporesplattas, 1 Madcap Shaman w/ Moonface Mommet + Vindictive Glare MB: Squig Herd x12, Squig Herd x12, GENERAL Loonboss on Giant Cave Squig w/Fight Another Day, Fungoid w/ Itchy Nuisance R: Boingrots x5 His List, using the leaked tree people battletome. S: Tree lady what summons the tree people MB: Alarielle, 5x tree revenants(?) R: Treelord, not sure if ancient Battleplan: The One With A Central Point On The Longways Board No Realm Rules, Scenery rules on. *** He does a one drop spearhead, puts his caster on the far corner to start with, and takes first turn. He fails to call in dryads and simply walks up behind some of his wyldwoods (the old ones are still relatively easy to get in given the terrain setup). I move my fanatics up and squat on the point, getting me the objective for turn 1. The moon doesn't come out, which makes me want to cry every time, and I get first turn which I take. I send my squigs and fanatics into position to try and eat the incoming ball of beetle death. My boingrots come out in the rear, where I hope and bloody pray the moon goes next turn. Before the beetle lady even charges she knocks out one stack of fanatics with a spell, and chucks a spear that almost instagibs my loonboss. Then she summons a treelord, totally for free, as you do. She charges in, goes once, then goes twice cuz that's a thing she can do now. That deletes the second line of fanatics, who fail to wound her entirely, but manage to take out the spite revenants that also charged in to pincer them. She almost wipes out one stack of squigs, too, but they hold on and get their attacks off before wounding her a couple of times as they all run away. At this point I am filled with immense pride in my squigs. The summoned treelord fails his 9 inch charge, which probably makes my opponent want to cry every time. His turn ends, and the second tree lord struts into the battle. At this point I'm staring down the barrel of three un-degraded behemoths in a 1k point game. Turn 3 starts, the moon finally comes out, I get first turn again, and things are comin up Gloomspite. My squig boss hollers at the boingrots, burning the CP and sending the lot of em bounding across the board into the horrible beetle lady, lopping off a few more wounds in the process. My madcap (I've actually taken a madcap! This format is *nuts*) is left unmolested this entire time, and waggles his mommet at alarielle, giving her -1 to save. My fungoid then scratches his ass, giving her an Itchy Nuisance and making her fight last. What's left of my army is then poured into her and alarielle is taken off the board, and I honestly cannot believe it. Pictured above: environmental storytelling. Turn 3 rolls around, moon goes into the center, and he fails a 9" charge with his treelord after he ports it through the woods. The other one gets in, kills my loonboss, makes a dent in the remaining squigs, but fails to do the 17 wounds necessary to get 2 points in his favor. Round ends 12-4, and he concedes. Seriously folks, go play some Meeting Engagements.

Scaremonger makes for a convincing loonboss given his height and native attack output, great if you don't like your grots armored and tall. brewgit is another easy madcap, maybe even fungoid in a pinch. The kit seems expensive at first but when you realize its five of your baseline leaders in a box it suddenly becomes way more attractive a purchase! Hopefully people not bothering ever taking these fellas makes it so GW considers letting us take em piecemeal, that'd make the boggleye in particular an autotake in a lot of my lists.

You're likely someone who'll get more out of the game's Narrative play style! Think of it this way: Matched Play is MMA. Narrative is Pro Wrestling. MMA is two people doing similarly structured, hyper optimised things with a focus on extreme efficiency and making life as not nice for the other person as humanly possible. Pro Wrestling is two dudes putting on a show. It is a social contract to get in a fake fight with someone you've maybe only just met, and to make it as entertaining as you possibly can. Does this mean Narrative play is fake? Heck yeah it does, Narrative Play is putting on a show, telling a story, just for the two of you, and for a show to truly become a Spectacle, it usually has to be worked. Being good at this kind of game is a skill unto itself. It entails pulling each other's punches, giving the other guy breathing room so you don't pull the AoS equivalent of stiffing him in the nose and having him bleed all over everything for the rest of the match. It involves an inherent degree of trust in your 'opponent' to do the same thing. It might also involve not being too obvious about doing these things lest you start making your opponent feel bad because it's obvious you're going easy! It's certainly not for everyone: most competitive minded people simply cannot comprehend the narrative approach when you try and sell it to em. But there's a pretty damn big subsection of the playerbase that can enjoy it, I suggest you go find em.

Loss of the standard orruk boyz kit from circulation killed my momentum for starting up 40k, strangely enough. I was mixing and matching my boyz for some visual pop. I made this comparison image when I first opened up a box of AoS boyz last year.

Yess, that one line encapsulates what I've loved most about ME theorycraft so far. Everything in my book feels like it can slot into somewhere and contribute. Thanks much for the storytime, these are really fun to hear about!

This is true! I have found myself constantly tweaking my lists for ME, even moreso than usual, because there's a lot more to account for and also a lot more options to use. Would you mind sharing some war stories? I'm pretty obsessed with this mode's tactica at the moment, and want to see what's made it too rough or too easy for folks, especially for factions like Fyreslayers with big, chunky MSU's and a predictable playstyle.

If you play the event as they recommend, and run the one list through five of the battleplans with full realm and scenery rules on, I think it'll actually make for a better competitive experience than you give it credit for. The mixed up deployments will make it so a list that's excellent on one battleplan will behave completely differently on one of the others. And that's totally fine, because you're playing five games with a considerable point gap to close to get those major victories. I think the design goal here is to disempower the first turn and the list building stages, to give the first turns of movement, and the way you move and line up your ranks to engage with the enemy some actual impact. It's less about who can bring the more drop-efficient list with the best mortal wound output, more about which list (and player) can better adapt to a wildly changing battlefield. But yeah I do also think high movement armies will have a pretty big leg up just because they can sit on the point turn one unmolested. Overall I'd need a dozen more games in with people actively tryharding the system to get a real good feel of it. But as of now, the fact that it evens out the playing field and lets a book as old as BCR be threatening is massive.

If the reserve unit is said to be set up 'on the first turn of battle', then it can only be setup to deep strike if its contingent comes out on the first turn. Reading through the SCE rules you posted, I'd say your guys can be reserves at the start of their end-turn setup (no specified 'on the first turn of battle'). However, they're now subject to the new Deadly Territory rule stopping them from deploying within 9" of an opponent's board edge.

Oh no summoning is explicitly exempt from the standard contingent rules. "Any new unit you add to your army during the battle - e.g. units that can be summoned - are not considered to be part of any contingent. Follow the normal setup rules for that unit (they do not have to be setup within 3" of any arrival edge)." This goes for ghosts or grots getting brought back, too. This is a very pointed ruling with its own segment in the book, so I can only assume it's been playtested to be kosher. I'll definitely hit some chaos, seraphon and FeC players up to see just how overwhelming it can get.