soak314

I purposefully brought an infantry only list to take on the BcR Stonehorn and FeC Terrorgheist to get a feel for the behemoth issue. In the case of the tgheist, I feel he would have cleanly won that match if he had not fudged the initial charge on turn 2, but I also had some clumsy positioning in play with my stacks of squigs in the main body. It was the same with the BcR match as I brought the fanatics and grots up to try and get more of them on the point, instead of parking the bare minimum of what I needed within the radius to force a more difficult charge. Basically, the behemoths are nasty. You're likely not taking one down if you field a hordey list. But they're just one model, simple to screen given the cramped battlefield, and they only have so many moves to make. I've yet to run a battleplan that has a behemoth strutting out turn 1, which WILL be the case for a fair bit of them, but I'm looking to remedy that in the coming weeks. As for the summoning: FeC In most cases get an easy flank as summons aren't limited by the deep strike rule stopping reserves from deploying near opponent edges. Would an archregent using his turn 1 to call in 20 ghouls on my flank have made a difference? Likely, yep. Two archregents calling in two stacks of 20 ghouls would be even more problematic. Your list being two archregents, a bat, and a bunch of ghouls will be a pretty strong way to approach this mode. I'd have to see it in action, of course, as the opposing player could easily predict this strategy and set their screens up appropriately. All my talk about flanking is really interesting now that I think about it. In regular AoS it didn't really feel like something you'd think about, but here, with the tiny unit sizes, having a ten stack conga line pincered on either end likely means they won't do much anything in the combat phase. And believe me you'll have a lot of those given the 3 inch deployment zone paired with the mad dash to get onto points.

I've gotten a couple games in! Running gloompsite. first game vs FeC, second game vs BcR. Both games using the first central point battleplan, which follows standard deployment order (Spearhead, Main Body, Rearguard). Worth noting that the gitz *cannot* legally deploy their loonshrine in this battleplan. Vs FeC: We ran this to see how big of an impact the summoning would have. Not much in this game's case because he didn't have an archregent, and could only call in horrors with his bat. The horrors were heavily limited in their deployment, and ended up getting screened by fanatics up until turn 4. Consider that to have the free summon the FeC boss has to hang back a good ways to sit on his murderchair. That's a luxury you will likely will not be able to afford given how the faction synergises around your abhorrent. Speaking of the terrorgheist itself, it was run as Blisterskin so it had pretty terrifying board coverage. He botched a lot of rolls and couldn't get the turn 2 charge. Turn 3 onwards the terrorgheist deleted a full unit a turn, instagibbing my bounders before they could even move and eating up my loonboss and fungoid in a single attack roll. He was still very limited in what he could and could not charge into, because I was running a ton of bodies and easily zoning out where he could land. This game ended in a dead draw, with my grots taking big points early on via objectives, but losing steam in the end as the big bat ran roughshod through my flanks. Vs BcR: Started off strong with my fanatics on a point supported by 20 grots and a madcap. He tried to charge either side of the fanatic line, but rolled really badly and ended up with a pair of ogors surrounded by the sporesplattas. With help from the madcap's moonface mommet, the fanatics easily took out the one unit of mournfang and I took a juicy 5 points right there. Turn 2 starts and in comes the stonehorn sent right into my grot blob, which he promptly wipes off the board despite the -1 to hit from the netters. He brings out a cheeky 2 unit squad of frostsabres, and successfully splits the fanatic attacks with a two pronged charge with his remaining mournfang. They weather the Fights First and lose all of one frostsaber, and proceed to wipe the fanatics. Turn 2 sees five points to him, because my main body has fudged their charge rolls and have failed to get onto the point. His Rearguard Yhetees are very cool because they come in, sprint up onto the point, and can pile in 6 inches into the fray while contributing their 6 bodies to the pointgrab. From there it's pretty much his big boss stomping on my army, though I do manage to get some bodies on the point. I also whittle down his frostlord on stonehorn with a good cast of the pendulum (2d6 guaranteed! though in this case the would-be 11 wounds was cut in half, owch). I score enough to force him into a minor victory. Loss for me here, but I was more happy to see the BCR be legitimately, strategically threatening. *** I've yet to try the alternate deployment order battleplans, but in a tourney setting in particular those will really shake things up. I had a good gut feeling about this ruleset, and it may just be the novelty or the snappiness of the rules but this is the most cerebral AoS I've played. Almost like I'm playing Total War!

Cannot be understated in this context I think: if it's a first time event you can save the tryharding for when people actually have experience to tryhard. Inclusive action is deadly important to take for establishing a scene. If people are loud enough to actually make a stink about squares being a thing, then the TO can look at it for future stuff.

I don't think there's anything weird about resenting the increasingly competitive nature of the AoS scene at all. Matched is but one of the three ways to play, after all. It's a definition GW felt a need to formalize precisely to help keep the different playerbases out of each other's noses. Some people just don't like tryharding, and feel a need to voice their concerns about where they feel the scene they love is headed, and that's totally fine. Consider this other fella's point: This is how a good competitive focused wargame *should* work. This *isn't* how AoS works. At least not yet. We're seeing some interesting changes in GW at large that seem to be setting down the foundations of a more robust competitive scene (Nightvault, KT Arena, Apocalypse), and I think they're doing that with AoS as well especially with what I've seen of the new GHB. Meeting Engagements in particular seems to me like its taking everything I don't like about the system and jostling it around. Will it work? Who knows! At least they're actively going for it in the first place.

Various stages. My gloomspite army is currently sitting at about 80% of 2000 points done. I started playing early this year with exactly two grots painted. Back when I started around 2011 it was pretty commonplace to tease or reprimand people who hadn't done up their armies yet. As time passed I increasingly found this behavior to be unpleasant and gatekeepy. These days you could field 2000 points of empty bases with the units names written on top of em and I wouldn't mind. Heck, I personally think that's the most ergonomic way to play AoS.

Clarify use (or nonuse) Realm Rules in particular. Last thing you want is people getting into an argument right before anything happens because one refuses to run realm rules. If doing realm rules, consider doing preset and pre-themed tables, and possibly cherry picking what realm effects are in play. It may be vastly entertaining to suddenly roll Ghur and have Monstrous Beasts in play, but a lot of hardcore tourneyheads will get an aneurysm from it. I personally play with realm rules on as much as possible because it adds a lot of randomness to an otherwise entirely too predictable meta. But some people will not appreciate rolling Ulgu and having their entire list kneecapped because everything now works at 8" tops.

I would have been confident in a best case scenario, Gloomspite-But-Its-Ogors tome + model line, since the ogre lore and aesthetic is fairly unique and something I think GW would try and push to further diversify Destruction. But then the skaven book dropped to practically no new models. Skaven are easily AoS's and GW's most unique and iconic fantasy race, and I was surprised we didn't get even just a new rat ogre kit. Now they might have something up their sleeve for the year of the rat, but that remains to be seen. I think the Firebelly and Maneaters getting shunted into a mercenary role pretty much confirms we're not seeing them redone in plastic anytime in the future. These days I think the most we'll see for Ogors is a skaven style consolidation of the footsloggers and the cavalry monsters, with maybe one new plastic tyrant to help push sales and definitely some endless spells and terrain.

Gloomspite: Don't let yourself get stuck in with battleline blobs (grots or squigs) as 98% of the time that's exactly what the gloomspite player wants you to do. If our horde battleline units (grots, squigs, spiders) aren't covered by battleshock immunity, they're likely to run away in droves after a solid nuke. Tied to the battleshock bit, target our heroes. They may force you to roll sixes to hit or have a 4+ FnP, but they don't have a lot of wounds total. Once they're gone, you've either removed a massive buff vector, a source of a key spell, a source of free CP, AND a source of battleshock immunity. A list sporting Skragrott in particular is likely to have tied most of their synergies to the Loonking's spellcasting and moon control. Same goes for a loonboss on mangler squig, which can make squig units in a massive bubble all wound on 2+'s. The Loonshrine has a 50/50 chance of bringing back grot blobs, it can do so wholly within 12" of it, and can spawn the grots just 3" out of enemy units. Don't be afraid of this ability, as in don't try and swamp the shrine to try and deny it. You're likely wasting precious turns doing so, and half the time it won't even go off. If you're at the point where you have to worry about a big blob of grots coming back, you've likely whupped the gloomspite player enough for it to not be an issue. If the loonshrine is parked near an objective, don't bother with it unless you utterly table the gloomspite player. It's likely to be buried in grots for most of the battle. And if all else fails, run Tzeentch or ally in a gaunt summoner and do the spell that wipes out half a grot blob from an entire map away.

As someone who painted blacks with multiple coats of nuln oil, Black Templar is a godsend. Minimum 1.5 hours drying time for 3 coats of nuln oil on my grots' robes, down to one pass of black templar for a near identical and smoother finish. Snakebite Leather is also invaluable for saving time picking out tiny pouches and belts when batchpainting. It's both a very powerful pigment and quite transparent, it can go over pure black or pure white and still end up making the finish a shade of brown. If it goes on white, it's almost exactly the same shade as my old crystal pot of acrylic Snakebite Leather. Blood Angels Red is great for dotting out red grot eyes in one clean go. Flesh Tearer red imo makes for better blood/gore than blood for the blood god. Apothecary White is interesting, the finish isn't the smoothest in the world but I quite like the resulting shaded white it gives. With a bit of cleanup it could really help with a predominantly white paint scheme, even on a model with lots of flat panels.

I get a feeling they'll try to curb this with the battleplans meant to go with the mode. It'll probably be very objective holding heavy, based more on positioning and holding ground with a very limited amount of units, as opposed to the efficiency in murder approach we see in most meta lists. I'm also hoping they do a static turn limit of 4, as opposed to the standard 5 for matched play. Give any of the faction wrecking balls 2 turns and they'll easily mop up most of what can be brought in at 1k, especially if they come in fresh at the start of turn 3. There was a comparison to Kill Team in the very first post in the thread, and I'd like to make that as well. But I'm making mine to Kill Team Arena specifically, especially in terms of the rigid design. KT Arena (not counting the elites option) is IMO GW's most balanced system. It has a heavy focus on positioning, holding ground, stalling your opponent, and squeezing every last drop of utility from each and every model you bring onto those 22x30'' boards. It's like 40k chess, which I absolutely adore. Don't get me wrong, I still very much like the current meta and how AoS behaves at 2k, but man I'd love to see something as tactically robust as KT Arena, but with my Gitz and at a more impressive scale.

Great points, this in particular. First thing that came to mind after I mulled over the article was how nasty certain options could become as a turn 1 choice. Troggoths for example could spend turn 1 moving into position relatively unthreatened, with a trogboss (not a behemoth!) and 3x2 of the rockguts/felwaters. There's a very select group of min size units that can confidently deal with that many trogs. Summoning might be curbed by tying it to the mode's set rules. For example, if you summon some ghouls with your archregent you'll only get 10 of them, and you won't be able to call them in if you already have two units of ghouls elsewhere on the list. The archregent could hold off and summon them turn 2, therefore getting the full 20 stack. Alarielle could come in as a behemoth choice in turn 2, but she wouldn't be able to call in a free treelord on that turn. If she comes in turn 3, she wouldn't be able to summon a treelord at all.

Hey all! I'm looking for good alternative models for the vhargulf and other courtiers in particular, for obvious reasons. I'd rather not convert, and I'm just having a really rough time finding things that fit into the bipedal, hunched over, bat monster aesthetic. Thanks!

Thanks for all the feedback, guys. At least 1k for painting goals, maybe 1.5k for playing with actual options. I've considered big blobs of plaguebearers, and at least 30 or so of em is looking pretty achievable after gunning for 100+ grots for my gloomspite army. I do feel the AoS side of nurgle could have benefitted a bit from nurglings as battleline, as in 40k. Gotcha. Horticulous is definitely high on the list to get, I dig the model and on paper he seems super useful and tanky. Menagerie is honestly hilarious on paper, and if I had a lot more disposable funds I'd probably build an army around it for fun. ... that's actually perfect! I tend to glaze over a bit for the warscroll battalions bit when I go over new books, but Tallyband is super achievable and the rules are quite nice, thanks!

Hey all! I'm currently scoping out Maggotkin as my second army. Here's the caveat: I want to do pure daemons, and I want to be able to field the list in 40k. Would 2 of the start collecting boxes + a GUO do me right? I don't need the army to be particularly competitive, and from what I've seen of maggotkin in action I'd be perfectly alright with being good at just staying on the board and playing objectives. Also what's a good amount of gnarlmaws to own? Cheers.

I haven't! But I'm sure in my meta people would argue against it. Unit isn't allowed to move, so now at the start of the movement phase it can't 'sacrifice' its move to do the ability. I'd love to be wrong about this tho! If someone did let me do it, I'd be unlikely to sacrifice a cast of hand of gork onto the snufflers, since hand of gork is a red hot spell nobody likes to see go off and people will ALWAYS save a dispel for it! I've found I'm more likely to NOT get HoG off, so I'm probably gonna cast it on a considerable flanking move instead of onto reposition on a support unit.

Hey all. Got into AoS (and wargaming in general) via the gloomspite release this year and have been having a blast so far. This thread's been a huge help wrapping my head around the army so far, Looncurse has pushed me to work on a hordey squig list as an alternative to my grotspam. This has got me back to eyeballing the Sneaky Snufflers as a support unit choice. I adore the models , but just can't can't seem to work with them. Needing to freeze in the movement phase to get their buff off makes it very difficult to plan ahead for them. It feels like they can only really get one good buff in before they're either bursted off the board or are left behind by the rest of the army. All this makes it really hard to bring them when I could just grab 5 more squigs. Has anyone had success using the Snufflers as more than just a once a game buff/ rear objective goalkeep?