readercolin

Note that you can only have a single artifact on a hero. This is in the Core rules (looking at the free rules pdf, this is on page 17, "Allegience Abilities"), with the except below: ARTEFACTS OF POWER These treasures are borne to war by mighty heroes. If the allegiance abilities for your army include any artefacts of power, you can choose or roll for one to be carried by a Hero from your army. You may choose one additional Hero to have an artefact for each warscroll battalion you include in your army. A Hero cannot have more than one artefact of power, and an army may not include duplicates of the same artefact of power. Artefacts of power have no effect on attacks made by a hero’s mount unless noted otherwise. For other notes, are you looking to run a single unit of 6 scythes? Or 2 units of 3? Similarly, your dryads? Is that 1 unit of 30? or 3 units of 10? Because you already have your battleline requirements met by your spites, so it seems like a good idea to have that as a single unit of 30. Though, this might just be BattleScribe having terrible formatting.

1 in 10 can be that model. If you can't field 10, then you can't field the hornblower/icon bearer.

A few things here: First off, the stormcast don't have any new errata, and their points were included in the general's handbook, so don't show up in the errata. To see their new points, you need the GHB. Second, you need to re-read cycle of the storm. "Once per turn, when a friendly Stormcast Eternal model is slain within 18" of this model, instead of removing the slain model, you can heal 1 wound allocated to it. This model cannot use this ability on itself" This means that if he has 1 wound left, and you roll a 1, then he takes 1 damage, would normally get removed, but instead of doing so he heals and is back at 1 damage. However, if he takes 2 damage, then he would take 1, normally get removed, cycle of the storm kicks in, he is back at 1 wound, but there is still a wound allocated to him which then goes on and he dies. Note, the Lord-Arcanum on Gryph Charger is still a decent idea for a unit to bring. After all, you get units with a 3+ save, a heal that they can cast on themselves/other stormcast units, they still give you access to the Everblaze Comet, and should you ever need to cast Arcane Bolt, they still give you "Prime Electrids". However, before you go all in on your Gryph Charger, you might actually want to take a look at the Taurelion now. 10 wounds, 3+ save, still gives you cycle of the storm, but most importantly it is the 1 unit that you can bring in cities of sigmar that has 2 casts BASE, which means that in hallowheart he can cast 3 spells. In case that wasn't enough though, his points dropped - now he is only 280 points, the exact same as a hurricanum. His built in spell is kind of poor admittedly, but between prime electrids and the hallowheart spells, and the probability of having a realm spell available more frequently now, he isn't going to be suffering all that much.

Honestly, it was probably nerfed because that is the only mage that you would really run multiples of. Think about it. If you bring a sorceress, you get an ok spell and a potential for a +2 bonus to cast. However, bring a second sorceress, and you get... the exact same thing, and the +2 to cast is going to cost you another model again. Meanwhile, if you bring a battlemage, you get a spell, and you can get a +1 from a hurricanum. However, if you bring a second battlemage, you can get another completely different spell, and it isn't costing you anything extra to continue getting your +1 from the hurricanum. This means that if you are running multiple wizards, it really pays off more to run multiple battlemages over multiple sorceress's. On top of all of this, you can say that you can always run a stormcast wizard instead. However, stormcast units come with a tax, you can't just toss another one in. Yes, the first unit is generally a free-roll, but getting the 2nd stormcast unit starts to get a little costly, and a 3rd one gets really expensive with the number of drops that you will have to run. This introduces a tradeoff for them as well. So what you get is a unit that you can benefit from running multiples of going up in points so that they cost a little more to do so. 20 points more for a sorceress generally isn't going to make a significant impact, just because you are going to run 1, maaaaaaybe 2 at most. 20 points more for a battlemage matters though, because you are much more likely to run 2-3 of them.

Ehh, I would rather do this: Khemist - 90 points - spell in a bottle 2x 10 Arkanaughts (in ironclads, and more bodies on objectives) - 180 points 1x 20 Arkanaughts - 180 points 3x Ironclads - 1440 points Endless spell (comet, warp lightning, whatever) This gives you 3 ships, and if you want to you can give 1 of them the endrinworks for extra capacity so it can carry the 20 man squad of arkanaughts. The big thing here is that you get 3 squads of bodies to hold objectives with, but you can still fly in on your 3 boats. Alternatively, you can go super-silly and have the Admiral command his fleet: Admiral - 120 points 3x Ironclads - 1440 points 3x Gunhaulers - 390 points Command point This comes out to exactly 2000 points, though it does require you go with Barak Urbaz to make the gunhaulers battleline.

Did you know that you can now get a Lord-Arcanum on Taurelion for 20 points cheaper than the battlemage on griffon? Yes, technically the griffon does more damage in melee. But the Taurelion has a 3+ save, a profile that doesn't degrade, and most importantly - it can cast 2 spells. Note here that I am not arguing that a Taurelion is worth bringing. He's still kind of questionable, even in hallowheart where he can cast 3 spells. But DAMN does that make the battlemage look terrible.

Evocators on dracolines I find work much better in units of 6, unless you are playing in a meta with a LOT of MSU's. Basically, if you give a unit of 3 the charge, they will do ~16 damage to a save of -, and ~10 damage to a 4+ save without any buffs, and not counting the celestial lightning arc. Frequently, when I was playing with them, they would charge forward, hit something, and then stall because they couldn't quite punch through. Swapping them to a unit of 6 though generally gave them the power to punch through targets. Now, you can of course give them buffs (+1 to hit from pride leader, +1 to wound from spell, re-roll wounds from spells, re-roll 1's to hit from command ability or celestial vindicators ability, +1 attacks from celestial vindicators command ability, etc.), but many of the buffs are spells or command abilities that are somewhat single target focused, which means that they apply much better to a single unit rather than multiple, which benefits the single unit more again. As for the various Dracothian Guard units, it depends a little bit on which one. Concussors? Sure, run them as MSU's because you can hit and prevent piling in. Fulminators? Ehhhh... they are really charge dependent and a pair of them won't really go through whatever they hit, so they really want to be in a 4-6 man squad. Desolators? They get an actual bonus to number of attacks based on the number of models in the unit, so they really want to be a 6-8 man squad to maximize that bonus. Tempestors? Wait, what are those? Yeah... you would probably do better to ignore these guys. Lastly, pallidors. I haven't used them, so I can't comment.

In AoS your paint scheme has no effect whatsoever on the rules that you apply to your models. As long as you are clear as to what each unit is and what effects are on it, you are good.

Agreed, I would have definitely interpreted this as an ON/OFF switch, where if you successfully cast a spell you get -1 to hit, but it doesn't matter how many spells are cast. I would definitely be cautious of trying to interpret this otherwise in most settings, and would clarify with your opponent/judge before trying to interpret it that way at an event.

I would recommend looking at some of the new lists coming out of the Starcast thread. There are a few people in there that are looking into running an Arcanum as their wizard, and also a few people looking at running Concussors as a hammer in addition to their drakes. Anything beyond that and you are looking at a less competitive list. That being said, if you are ok with playing a less competitive list, the following is mine: Lord-Arcanum on Dracoline Knight-Incantor Knight-Heraldor Lord-Ordinator 5x Sequitors 5x Sequitors 5x Sequitors 6 Evocators on Dracoline Celestar Ballista Celestar Ballista Celestar Ballista Celestar Ballista Command Point You could take something like this, and either swap out the dracolines for your Concussors (which also eliminates the need to take the Arcanum on Dracoline, so you can swap in your Gryph Charger). Alternatively, you can swap out the ballista+ordinator package for the Concussors, and between the 580 points there and the points drop from the upcoming changes, you might be able to fit 6 Concussors in there. Otherwise, it might be a good idea to see if you can sneak in an Everblaze Comet. For myself, this list should gain ~60 points if I don't make any modifications, so I'll probably be looking to see if I can slip in an Everblaze Comet.

I'm going to be honest - I paint my models with white/off white faces, because that means that the eyes don't stand out as much, and its less obvious how badly I screwed them up. I tend to prefer armored helmets though, because it hides my terrible painting skills better. From a GW standpoint though, here is what I would want from them: More tutorials on different skin colors. I mean the ones in the books. Sure, a few of them have tutorials for different colorations, but not all of the battletomes do. Yes, the traditional witch elves are pallid flesh tones, but if someone wants their bronzed flesh, or black skinned witches, I would hope that all future battletomes have a step by step painting instructions for how to pull that off (ok... for the armies that have skin showing). Speaking from battletomes that I have, the Lumineth Realm Lords only have pale flesh, Cities of Sigmar has pale flesh and dark flesh, Slaves to Darkness have grey/dead flesh, pale flesh, another variant of pale flesh, and a bronzed flesh, and the Stormcast battletome has a white flesh and a black flesh. I think that there needs to be a bit more variety in here, and each faction should have a range from white to pale, to bronzed, to black with examples in there for how to pull off that paint job. More female models. More specifically, non-sexualized female models. The newer female stormcast are great examples of this - yes, they are ladies, but they are still wearing their full armor and are ready to go into battle. The witch elves... not so much. But they should get more female models added whenever they re-visit ranges (ex. cities of sigmar), and there should especially be some female dwarf models made - seriously, its getting a little ridiculous now. As far as lore, I'm not going to comment. I don't read 40k at all, and the only AoS lore I read is what I get from skimming through the army books - aka, not much. If they do a good or bad job there, I'm not going to notice, so I can't comment on how they are there.

I'll be honest - I'm actually considering one to run in Hallowheart now, as he makes an excellent target for the command ability, and there he can get 3 spells to cast. Also, at 280 points now he is the same cost as a hurricanum, and costs less than either the Sorceress on Black Dragon or the Battlemage on Griffon. As for running in stormcast... I still don't think that he's worth it. The problem for stormcast is that they don't have magical superiority, and don't get good bonuses to casting (unless you are running multiple stardrakes), and you can get 2 incantors for less than 1 Taurelion which is going to give you the same number of casts, more dispels, and 2 auto-dispels. But since most of his power comes from the fact that he is a 2 cast wizard, without those bonuses to cast I'm not sure you can afford to invest that many points into running him.

The elite infantry does make sense to me. Basically, Phoenix Guard are too good compared to the other units for how many points they cost. So they could either raise the points of phoenix guard, or lower the points of other elite infantry. However, as good as phoenix guard are, they aren't exactly running the tables compared to what other factions can do, so GW probably decided that they were worth it at 160 points. Therefore, other elite infantry needed to drop in points. I agree that I'm not making any plans until the numbers are confirmed. Luckily, we should know within a week (or is it coming out the weekend after?). That being said, I can understand raising the points of the battlemage vs the sorceress. The battlemage gives you a lot more flexibility in the warscroll spells, and lists are more likely to take multiple battlemages rather than multiple sorceresses. Is that really worth it compared to the sorceress? Ehhh... maybe? But I can at least see that as a reasoning to raise their cost. That being said, I'm kind of wondering if whoever made that change caught that the price of incantors was going down, because at 120 points for them, they are looking a LOT more appealing as a first wizard than a 110 point battlemage... Also, I really don't understand both not touching the hurricanums, nor the luminark, griffon battlemage, or sorceress on black dragon. Either the hurricanum needed to go up, or the other 3 needed to drop, because as is the hurricanum outshines the others so badly it isn't even funny. Though maybe we're getting lucky and they decided to do a warscroll change and give the griffon and sorceress a second spell slot to make them worth bringing? Yeah, doubtful.

Well, if you are looking at that, can I interest you in a casting of Chronomatic Cogs? In addition to the +2 to charge rolls that everyone knows them for, they also provide a +2 to movement, which can get that dreadlord its 16" move. Also, +2 to charge means that even if you don't command point move guys, they can get a 7" charge from the board edge (if they are a usual cities unit with a musician, they need a 6" charge).

So points have been leaked that are relevant to the cities (source here: https://war-of-sigmar.herokuapp.com/bloggings/4654) Most stormcast units have gone down by a few points (ex. liberators/sequitors by 10 points, judicators by 20 points, Incantor's by 20, Lord-Arcanum's by 10-20 points, various dracothian guard by a bit, etc). Probably the most commonly used unit is Incantor's going down by 20. Sylvaneth - no leaks yet. Kharadron Overlords - The boats went down by 20-30 points each. Cities: Battlemages up by 20 to 110 Scourge Runner Chariots up by 20 to 80 Steam tanks down by 20 to 180 Steam Tank Commanders down by 20 to 230 Executioners down by 10 to 120/300 Black Guard down by 10 to 130 Greatswords down by 20 to 140/360 Warden King down by 10 to 100 Longbeards down by 10 to 100 Ironbreakers down by 20 to 110 Now, this has not been confirmed, so it is possible that these numbers are off (though at least the stormcast ones seem highly likely, as they are pictures from the book). However, if we assume that these are correct, I think this leads to some interesting things. First off, many armies will go up by a little bit due to battlemages going up. Also, the people spamming Scourge Runner Chariots are probably going to be unhappy. However, Ironbreakers start looking a lot better at 110 points, and getting an extra attack over longbeards giving a re-roll 1's to wound aura make them a bit more appealing. Executioners and black guard going down also seem interesting. Aside from battlemages going up for Hallowheart armies though, most of these units appear to be tweaks to underused units, and I'm not sure that any currently existing armies are going to be significantly affected by these changes.

Actually, it is generally T1 you appear on the board edge (9" distance), then shoot, then command ability move up for a 3-5" charge (5" on a move 4 unit, 3" on a move 6+ unit). Alternatively, turn 1 you appear on the board edge with a solid shooting unit that doesn't like moving (ex. sisters), shoot, and then command point move them into a more secure position.

What he said is a hell of a lot less disingenuous than what you are going for. Yes, Libs cost 100 to Mortek's 130. However, for 100 points you get 5 liberators, while for 130 you get 10 mortek. Same number of wounds. But for 30 points you are doubling the number of attacks, getting better rend (or better range), and getting better allegiance abilities.

Not a huge fan. First off, the general with hawk eye and handgunners. If the general uses his command ability, the handgunners are already at a 2+/2+, which kind of negates the need for hawk eyed. Second, without a wizard or a warden king, you don't have any way of adding extra attacks in melee, which drastically reduces the power of the big blocks of infantry. Third, you are spending 350 points for your KO units, and I'm not sure that they actually provide enough to be worth those points. Fourth, I'm not a huge fan of Gotrek when you aren't bringing anything to help his mobility, and he also doesn't benefit from any of the cities bonuses. If you want a more competitive list, I would look at swapping the general with a warden king, make the runelord the general with hawk eyed, and bring a squad of 20 irondrakes (or 2 squads of 10, though 1 unit of 20 can get the runelord buff better) instead of the 30 handgunners. I would also look to swap the KO units with a hurricanum for the to-hit bonuses. Lastly, if you are determined to bring Gotrek, I would look to bring either a battlemage from Ghur (can give a FRIENDLY unit - meaning it can affect Gotrek) +2 to run and charge, and/or I would look to bring Chronomatic Cogs for +2 move and +2 charge. More realistically, I would look to drop Gotrek because irondrakes and hammerers are already going to be killy enough that you don't need to bring another killy unit, instead you need to bring something to help you hold objectives.

The Realm Reavers battalion is not a Cities of Sigmar battalion. This means that you can take it, but all units in the battalion are no longer counted as Cities of Sigmar, because they take the allegience of the battalion, which is grand alliance order. This means that the battalion and all units inside of it have to fit into your allies allotment (basically, not happening). For a more thorough discussion on this, I recommend this thread:

So having 6 kitties myself, there are 3 ways that I would use them. Option 1: Hallowheart The benefit with hallowheart is ignite weapons for a 2+ to wound. Bounce around with a hurricanum, and you can also be rocking a 2+ to hit. Here they are more used as a heavy missile that can go out and blow things up, while operating independently from the rest of the hallowheart deathstar. Option 2: Tempest Eye Here, I would pair them with a lord-arcanum or hurricanum. A heraldor is also nice, but trying to fit lord-arcanum, heraldor and kitties in one list is going to stretch your non-stormcast units (maybe a bunch of individual model gyrocopters?). Here you want the lord-arcanum or hurricanum to run alongside the kitties with aura of glory, and they can charge on turn 1 with a 3+ save and extra attacks. For bonus, bring a lord-arcanum on dracoline and use his command ability to give the mounts extra attacks too. Option 3: Hammerhall This use is to abuse the lord-arcanum on dracoline's command ability. Hammerhall gives you the most command points, and you can give the lord-arcanum the twinstones for a +1 to hit bubble. Nothing about the command ability says once per turn, so you can use this to spam out a LOT of extra r1 d3 damage attacks. I like this plan with MSU handgunners and freeguild guard to maximize your banners. Oh, and since you will probably be charging into your opponents territory, you might be able to pile in and attack twice too. Overall, I think that one of these 3 cities is going to be the best use for them, but which city you choose depends heavily on what the rest of your army is going to be. They can also work fine in the rest of the cities, but none of the remaining cities really gives them anything that truly stands out.

Realistically, this is going to depend upon what you mean by a gunline army. Are you looking for an army that does its primary damage from ranged weapons? Are you looking for an army that is 100% guns? If you are looking for primary ranged damage, you can look to do the standard tempest eye (hawk eyed)/hallowheart list, which has at its core a Hurricanum, 20 irondrakes, 2 runelords, and 10 longbeards. This is 870 points, and gives you irondrakes that can hit on a 2+, re-rolling 1's with a command point, wound on a 2+, re-rolling 1's because of the longbeards, potentially have -3 rend, and deal ~40 damage before saves. Normally I would recommend a soulscream bridge, but you might not need that at smaller point levels - but it is still something to consider. You also have another 630 points to invest on additional screening and objective capturing. The idea with this force is to basically sit the irondrakes near the center of the field and proceed to shoot off huge chunks of your opponents army each turn. Taking a look at a 1500 point ironjaws list, it looks like a force like that is going to be running at ~100ish wounds with a 4+ save. If you can screen your drakes for a 2 turns, you should be able to shoot most of his army off the field. Note, fyreslayers are going to be similar. The advantage of this force is that you can output a lot of damage, and it is all concentrated, so it takes buffs a little better. While arguments can be made to run Sisters of the watch, the biggest benefit of irondrakes is the ability to give them -3 rend, which will consistently go through even ossiarch bonereapers armor. Additionally, with good screening it will be hard to get in melee with the irondrakes, and they have a 3+ save vs shooting, so they are pretty resilient in the shooting war. If you are looking for a pure gunline army though, you are going to want to look at either Handgunners of Sisters of the Watch. Both of these have an ability that you are interested in - stand and shoot. This means that they will get a shot off even if they get charged. Without buffs, 20 sisters will outshoot 30 handgunners (320 points vs 300) by a fairly significant margin. However, once you start buffing, the handgunners get to be a bit better, and they also lose less when it comes time for them to stand and shoot. Here, if you want a pure gunline, I would go with the handgunners, and I would look to run them as MSU in Hammerhall. In Hammerhall, you can run 12 units of handgunners, 2 generals, and a wizard (or 13 units of handgunners and 2 generals). These can all be buffed (3 at a time - 4 CP's needed to buff everything) by the generals to have a 2+/2+ profile, and you have 12 chances to get an extra CP on a 6 from the banners, as well as another 50% chance from the Adjutant. This also gets you 12 long rifles with a 30" range, which is enough to snipe important support characters off the board (note, long rifles don't suffer from "look out sir"). But running them as MSU, you also get the ability to position them in screening layers, forcing your opponents to spend all their attacks on a single screen before they can get to the next unit. An individual unit that has been buffed by a general will deal an average of 7.6 damage before saves, or ~5 damage to a 4+ save while at range, and then another 6.1 damage before saves, or ~4 damage to a 4+ save when they stand and shoot. Is a pure gunline army good? Ehhh... probably not. But this is the best that I can come up with to give you a chance against all the melee heavy armies out there.

Correct. However, that does mean that at deployment you have to declare that he is hiding using the living city rules or his warscroll rules, and then he can only come out according to the rules you selected at the start of the game. This means that if you use his warscroll rules, he cant be deployed at the board edge, and you can't use him to re-roll charges. Nothing too difficult, but it can get a little finicky.

First, on the assassin. Take a look at when he is able to pop out. If you deepstrike him with the living city rules, then yeah, you can use him to give your unit re-roll charges. However, he isn't going to be on the battlefield in the charge phase if you do it using his warscroll ability. As for the wildriders, the problem with them is that they are so swingy - especially in units of 5. In units of 10, they are a bit more consistent (provided that you can get all of them into contact). Keep in mind that their spears have a 1/3 chance to successfully wound, and with 11 attacks that is a good bit less consistent than with 21 attacks. So I would say - go ahead and run them, but make sure you keep track of how they actually do for you, because you can expect that for some engagements they are going to spike hard, while others they are going to fluff badly.

I mean, if you are looking at damage output for the points, all of Cities shooting is undercosted compared to other books. Lets take sisters of the watch as a point of comparison. They have an 18" range, cost 160 points, and do an average of 6.11 damage before saves if they move, or 11.67 if they stand and shoot. So what is their competition? In stormcast, we have judicators with bows. For the exact same points, they add 6" to their range, can deepstrike if they are in stormcast, and will do an average of (drumroll please)... 3.72 damage before saves, with 1.92 of that solely on the judicator prime with a stormbolt bow. Like, seriously, sisters outshoot judicators by ~65% if they move, and do slightly over 3x the damage if they stand still. And some people complain that judicators are overpowered too... Next, lets look at the heart of shootcast - Vanguard Raptors. A unit of 3 vanguard raptors with Longstrikes come in at 170 points and clock in at... 3.67 damage on average before saves? Wait, really? Even less than judicators? I mean, against a 4+ save, things get a bit better for them, as they are still doing 3.22 damage on average vs judicators 2.48, but sisters are still dumping out 3.67 damage if they move, or 7 if they don't to a 4+ save. Admittedly, longstrikes do have a bit more range, but this still isn't looking favorable for them at all. Lets see then, who else is well known for shooting? How about Kharadron Overlords? Keeping things in the same general ballpark, lets go ahead and look at a unit of grundstock thunderers. A unit of 5 of these guys will push out an average of 4 damage before saves. Considering sisters cost 160 to the thunderers 120, lets just add 1/3 to their damage to get the equivalent point cost. And this leaves us with... 5.33 damage before saves. Wow, this really isn't looking good for the competition, is it? Ok, clearly cities have no equal amongst the order armies, so where else might there be competition? How about the other big shooting force - Tzeentch. Take a squad of flamers. If they are attacking something with less than 10 models and no other buffs, they are going to put out an average of 6.67 damage before saves. 10-19 models? Bump that up to 8.9. 20+? We're up to 11.11 damage before saves. And this on a unit that costs 120 points. There we have it, the one unit that can compete with cities on a cost basis. And they even have a way to teleport a squad of these guys without needing to cast a spell to blow stuff up too. As for the only other significant shooting force, there is the skaven. And let me be honest - I really don't know how the skaven work, or what their best shooting units are, so I'm going to skip on making any comparisons there (also, the few battle reports I've seen with them tend to include lots of effects that lead to lots of exploding). Realistically though, what I've found by doing this comparison is that there really isn't much shooting available amongst the armies. I was really expecting more. But since the armies that I have are Stormcast, Cities, Slaves to Darkness, Kharadron Overlords, and a few sylvaneth... I guess my view has been a bit skewed.

Umm... you appear to have missed some rather important things in the comparison between ironbreakers and liberators. You are indeed correct that 5 liberators will do about the same amount of damage as 5 ironbreakers. However, ironbreakers come in units of 10, not 5... meaning that they actually do about double the damage. Additionally, Ironbreakers are rocking a 3+ save vs the liberators 4+. As if that wasn't enough, Ironbreakers are also on 25mm bases, meaning that they can fight in 2 ranks compared to liberators on their 40mm bases with 1" reach. Kind of blows a hole in your argument though, doesn't it. Agreed that hammerers are in a rough spot. It is possible to use them, and they do have one of the highest damage outputs in the game with all the buffs on them. However, getting them on target and surviving in a world of "always strike first"/"always strike last" is the problem. That being said, this could be an argument to use them in a Phoenicium list so you can let them pile in and attack when they die... and your opponent will ALWAYS target them first. You do realize that sisters also only get 2 shots if they don't move as well, right? Same with crossbows. And handgunners only get their +1 to hit if they don't move. Literally the only shooting infantry blob that can shoot and move without penalty is darkshards. The cavalry can actually move and shoot without issue, but their damage output is low enough comparatively that they aren't often considered. As for sisters getting double the actual range... they have 2" more range. An 18" range vs a 16" range. Yes, if you move and shoot, that is an effective threat range of 24" vs 20", but still nowhere close to the double you are claiming. -------------------------------- I'm going to skip the rest of your arguments because they are doing fire alarm testing where I am right now, and it is straining me too much to remain polite while trying to think over the incessant screeching.