NinthMusketeer

People forget that at launch 1st edition KO actually had some hideously overpowered options. But TBF to people, they were quite rapidly nerfed into oblivion. I do think there is a general lack of knowledge for some of the absolutely insane stuff 1st edition armies could pull; many players joined in second, many more did not encounter such things because there was less discussion around AoS at the same, less games were being played, etc. But rest assured even the likes of pre-nerf Slaanesh would have struggled against 1st edition Tzeentch, Kunnin Rukk, or Tomb Kings in their prime.

I think there is a threshold where breaking the rules goes from a fun, unique army mechanic or standard design feature to... just too much. So while I may not agree with all the details of your position I definitely agree with the concept behind them. Edit: Also for you or anyone else wondering; OBR have two ways to remove CP. One is an artifact that tbh is barely worth mentioning because there are multiple others that are better and even those are only after the mandatory one from sub-faction. The one you are probably thinking of is Katakros, who once per turn when an opponent gets a CP can negate it on a 4+ (provided Katakros is above 60% wounds) but doesn't affect starting CP. Katakros is generally agreed upon to be in need of a points increase, because of the sheer amount of stuff he brings to the table.

I think you are underestimating how tremendously unfun it would be for the OBR player to have their core allegiance ability cut in half by a spell. OBR eat the downsides of relentless discipline not being command points, on a very basic level it is only fair that they get the upsides too. If that was not the design intent they would have left it as CP. (Also, I don't get what you are referring to in terms of immunity.) I know there is a lot of anti-OBR resentment because of the old Petrifax, and Katakros/Pratorians now, but letting one army easily cripple another's allegiance mechanics is not good game design.

If they actually had to cast it on an 8 that would be one thing, but Lumineth have the tools to ensure it will go off every round without much trouble. It would be essentially writing a rule saying 'OBR auto-lose vs Lumineth'.

Don't know if it has been mentioned, but Nurgle. Blightkings are extremely self-sufficient, and tbh the most effective way to run Nurgle right now is spam them and/or marauders. A couple characters to allow for the Blight Cyst battalion and you are free to swamp the board with 1500+ points of blightkings. Throw a GUO in if you like, who does a support character thing with his bell but that only matters for movement up front rather than long-term babysitting. And the GUO himself is certainly quite happy to tar pit enemy units on his own.

Be it humorous sarcasm or horridly biased misinterpretation, I was very entertained in reading the line "bonereapers just hard counter everything" because the Slaanesh battletome just hit, of course the bonereapers are hard.

It objectively does. So, Morathi has higher moral ground than Teclis? Morathi?

So it is cheaper to build counts-as normal unit options with the WH underworlds kit, and because of that the special warscrolls (which in this theoretical are not even being used) need to be underpowered to make sure people buy the regular option? That makes no sense. People will just buy whichever version they like better and use it for the game(s) they play. No one has a problem with people using underworlds models as generic characters.

To some extent it already is; skeletons and zombies are getting new boxes with the upcoming Soulblight Gravelord battletome. Bat swarms and fell bats also already have warscrolls and the new models are updates. And the evil characters bar zombie shovel are named versions of generic warscrolls; Vampire Lord, Necromancer, and Wight King. Using them as such is unlikely to get any pushback even at a tournament.

One could equally say that making the warscrolls in the boxes game OP is a way to get regular AoS players to buy products they would not normally be interested in. Even getting them second-hand on ebay someone bought the box. I am having a difficult time seeing a marketing plan behind this as being plausible.

I get the impression they are extra careful to make sure warscrolls like those are not too strong, because they have seen the amount of bad sentiment it quickly generates. That said, these warscrolls also tend to not be getting the same level of allegiance ability support due to being sub-faction locked or in the case of cultists non-markable (bar Idolators). If cultists were fully markable then the bloodwind spoil would be rounding up bullgors to keep up with all the cheese production.

Given that the position so frequently being replied to is 'Nagash/Death never wins' and/or 'Teclis undid all of Nagash's achievements by himself, easy and with no cost' pointing out that hey, that is objectively untrue seems a reasonable response.

It is good you didn't put 'yes but there are too many of them' as an option because it would take all the votes 🤣

Um, trying to get what one wants, failing, and trying again is just persistence not a lack of originality. What, are people supposed to come up with a new original goal every time they fail? 😆

Okay that makes me feel a lot better. Thank you for posting it.

I really agree with all of this. Particularly your point about the rules for other factions feel tacked on. And (I think me and someone else were discussing a few pages ago?) it feels like that regarding the Nurgle/FEC narratives too. @stratigo; I actually like that they repeated Nagash's take-over-the-world narrative again with a few twists. It reads like a poetic 'history repeats itself' development and it makes sense for the character. I would be frustrated if that REMAINED his goal, though. In that I can understand someone disliking that narrative being repeated in the first place.

I think saying the soul wars are over is like saying that factions stopped fighting over realmgates when the RGW campaign books finished up. Hell, the core narrative is Teclis inspiring mortalkind to continue that fight, and against Nighthaunt specifically. I don't know where people are getting the idea and it is just reinforcing my perception that there is a strong current of trying to dislike the narrative by coming up with reasons or blowing things out of proportion. Which is made even further strange because disliking the narrative does not need justification to be a valid position! It's like if I tried a food and said I disliked it for having too much pepper, when the food had no pepper in it. I could have just said 'I don't like it' and that would be valid. By adding a reason that does not apply, I have taken an inherently legitimate position and compromised it.

I totally agree with the bit about Lumineth finding means to resource-deny OBR. But TBF to Teclis here, it was his superior planning and understanding of his foe that won him the battle more than friendship. He new Nagash's pride, so he knew Nagash could be tricked into believing Celennar banished when he'd actually gone to get reinforcements. Teclis previously ensured Settler's Gain had those Hysh-lasers in the first place, so he knew the specific aid he needed would be there. I will admit Alarielle did lend him aid a bit in his personal duel with Nagash so there some 'power of friendship' going on. I personally found it to be a light enough touch to add a bit of depth without being lame but I can respect others having a different impression.

Well the entire premise of the book is 'Death loses the momentum it's had for the whole edition' so I think it is a bit unfair of a criticism. After all, Nagash failing his strategic goals here comes after a very long string of him massively succeeding. The Realmgate wars were a big boon for Order in that they closed two arcways to Eightpoints. Death actually recaptured theirs and continues to hold it. Death is the dominant force in Shyish for the first time since the Age of Myth, and that hold was not disrupted. Vokmortian even mocks Teclis, telling him the one hold he did destroy has fallen before and they will just rebuild them again. We don't know how much of an impact there will be from that. As for competent military leaders? Go read Neferata's books, where she is actually doing that; this is one snapshot where she was attempting a stealth mission and happened to be discovered, barely. Mannfred had his campaign reach his desired result in exactly the way he planned it--the only character in the book who has his strategy unfold without any issue. You are correct that Nagash is not a military mastermind--he is a magical one. He uses necromancy to solve problems that others would rely on tactics to deal with, and I view it as rather unfair to disregard the 'I throw a spell and it dies' tactic when we are talking about a guy who can literally chuck a half dozen purple suns at once. It feels like people are not only willing, but actively trying to ignore an entire edition of success because Nagash failed once.

Fincast is completely different than it used to be, literally. I don't know what resin they use now but it is definitely not the spongey soft stuff finecast originally used. Problem is there is still stock of that old stuff floating around.

I particularly like the idea of Arkhan getting a new miniature, because it means the current one could become a generic 'Liche Lord on Abyssal Steed' to give Deathrattle an equivalent to the VLoZD.

Entirely agreed, and said better than I would have.

By that measure, aelves are just supporting the Realms vs Nagash narrative which is still equivalent to the duardin support of the Realms vs Archaon narrative. And it isn't like aelves have even been playing a part for most of it, where as duardin were there the whole time. So they have a bit of catching up to do. Look, I get it, you have been victim to pro-aelven dialogue. It happens to all of us at some point, because aelves are just so willing to deceive their ostensible allies whereas duardin would not stoop to such dishonor. It happens.

Which just further highlights how bad the aelves are to have around. We all know what gets the most attention in the world; bad stuff happening. But not just the normal bad stuff, it needs to be NEW bad news to get the real attention. So which subset of gods is most commonly ****** things up in new interesting ways? I'm not saying aelves are totally the reason the age of myth came apart or anything. Just that gods doing their thing well and not cluttering the realms with utter nonsense do not get so much attention, so it should be no surprise Grungni gets so little focus.

I can see that--there was more character and non-combat development in BR Morathi and I agree that is something it did better than BR Teclis. As for Nagash not really being dead, that was a given. GW can't perma-kill Nagash any more than they could kill a Chaos god, that's just not how the setting or the character works. But the last time we was physically defeated it was Archaon and it took Nagash a solid 300-400 years to manifest again, and without him Death got their bony butts handed to them by Chaos. Speaking of Archaon, that is my guess as to who Tyrion is fighting though Be-Lakor would be another. More intriguing (and entertaining) to me is that there is a traitor in Teclis' ranks and he didn't know about it. Speaking of anti-elf narrative, my favorite bit of fluff from BR Teclis: "It was not only the bodily remains of the aelves that were harnessed by the Mortisans, of course, but also the very souls of those whom they had slain. Taken from the corpses of the dying before they could depart, the aelf-souls were sequestered into flasks and blended with those of choice human prey, forming animating essences that were quick of thought yet bellicose and aggressive in a way the contemplative aelves of Hysh could never be. It was an exquisite form of torture for the aelf-souls so treated; revering purity above all, they considered the blending of human essence with their superior aelven animus to be a ghastly dilution that would trap them in purgatory..." SUX DOESN'T IT!