Rors

They're definitely better in a team environment where they have a chance to avoid the hard counters. That said, everyone has equal chance avoid the bad matches. Teams gives the option to increase skew because it can accommodate it better. By no means perfect. It's just the best option that can actually be done outside house rules.

Look, I'm not trying to argue that magic as it stands is perfect. The original question was in a competitive setting, should players abandon magic if not bring a super caster. I don't think they should and in a solo tournament, mega-casters and skew lists in general won't have the reliability needed. There's no solution to this outside teams unless the answer is remove all skew, but part of what makes the game fun is skew, it's dynamic (within reason). We can discuss hypothetical rules change but it's entirely hypothetical. A chaos sorcerer lord with the teleport spell is still viable against magic heavy lists because he's got other support synergies, can remove endless spells and there's still a (sub-optimal) threat he'll block spells or get his own off. The game is full of these dynamics, some combat units will mince others but get trashed/tarpited by another etc. They're still viable with strategy. If you have a Choas sorcerer and they bring Teclis, you don't auto-loose and it'll still be a fun game. I 100% agree it's possible to imagine hypothetical improvements. They don't answer the question at hand though. In a solo tournament, your best off having an all comers build rather than being niched to countet a skew list, so yes, bring a wizard. If you want a viable way to balance list skew, you need to increase match up diversity and create an element tactics in match ups.

OR just play team events as your primary source of competitive play. This has the advantage of solving the problem while also actually being viable as a solution. In casual games, well it's casual, although if you can be bothered I suppose casual team events are possible. Teams makes the 'famine and feast' aspect of the game another element in the tactics, rather than a feel bad. All the hypothetical changes the rules open up the door to other ballance issues AND let's be honest, no one here is friends with the game designer so it won't happen.

On the comment of armies that have a low to mid level wizard who are dependant on getting a particular spell off... That's a poor strategy irrelevant of big casters. Although yes, if you face Teclis or Kroak with that list life just got even worse for you. Armies with small wizards tend not to be dependant on said wizards or a specific spell.. or have started the game with a weak strategy given even against a list with no magic it's not exactly reliable.

Okay, here's my pitch for the simplest and best way to solve the magic issue and make it so a diverse range of lists can be competitive. Team Tournaments. The format is just better for the game. Taking Teclis as an example: he's a hard counter to lists with lots of small support heros if he goes Tecnado. He looses hard to builds like Archaon. In a solo tournament, if you bring him, you success is dependent not just on skill but also match ups. To go 5-0 you need to be very lucky or you need to take a list that has a more all comers approach sans the big T. In a teams tournament though he's an amazing choice. The good and bad match ups become a matter of how good your team is at pairing. This format goes all lists with magic. If you have a small wizard you avoid the big ones in teams and if you have the big one you try to get paired into them. The rock paper scissors nature of it becomes tactical rather than random.

I'm not a fan of Alarielle but I agree that the role of TLA and Durthu are different enough that they fit in the same list. Primarily because as you mentioned the TLA is a support piece that avoids getting stuck in.

I think that if this discussion shows anyway it's that while we often remark on poor ballance in the game, the moment anyone has a suggestion, there's a plathora of ballance issues that come with it. If we do away with unbinds and make God characters even more godly, we're treading even further down the path of hero hammer and I would be concerned. I think the answer to Tecnado isn't to kill him, it is to play the game. If the objective was win on kill points, he'd be great, and if your army has a ton of support heros it's a bad match up. Otherwise, he's still probably not causing enough damage to get your units off objectives and scoring secondaries. A similar point can be made about Kroak however lizards just have more toys so they can afford him more within giving up as much. In a world where there's no unbinds and the damage output of Tecnado increased to be even more godly, he'd probably be broken since he'll simply kill more than he costs every game and tactics won't matter. If he stayed where he is he'd be weak. The ballance point between the two is likely razor thin. To clarify, I don't think Teclis is bad right now, but in LRL you have an expensive faction and he's a third of the army in a single model. I guess rather than saying he's not competitive, I would say he's not optimal if you don't know what you're facing. He gets hard counters too, Archaon will eat him, and Be'lakor messes him up, I'm sure other factions have strong options too. @mmimzie

Weirdly in a world with no unbinds armies with cheap spamable wizards become a powerhouse. It would certainly switch things up. With the enhancement that gives everyone an extra spell selection. Gitz could probably cast every spell they have access to without much effort using units like the Gobapaluza. Which would go from being terrible to insanely valuable. Conversely a unit like Teclis would be terrible. You could get more casts with more wounds across more places just by taking the little ones. I suppose with more spells that are in the 8+ to cast range, there would still be reason for less point efficient big casters.

Well, if he's winning tournaments he's winning and I stand corrected. I could not find any tournament links in this thread though. Playing with half the army your opponent has to win the magic phase seems like a guarantee to loose the objectives and leaves you with a lot less options for secondaries. I'd be really interested to watch a game with a skilled player take Negash through a competitive scene because they'd have to perfectly optimize everything little thing they do with him. I guess if the opponent is Boulder head Maw Tribes he's in a good place to do some damage.

Has he? I know he can be combo'd to be 'strong' but that makes the list he's in very weak. In general, neither Bonereapers or Gravelords are competitive in general (not that they can't win, they're just not S tier or even A tier). What tournaments have had a Negash list win?

I think ultimately if the question is should COMPETITIVE armies ignore magic due to the magic dominance of some models the answer is definitely no. The four big center peice casting models are Negash, Teclis, Kroak, Morathi. Neither Negash or Teclis are competitive, you give up dominance in every other phase to own magic and that's not enough for what you loose. The better LRL lists usually don't have Teclis and Negash is very rare at the prodium. Kroak is in tournament winning lists, however his new scroll is no where near as good as his old scroll and honestly it's more of an issue with the entire faction being undercoated. Morathi is competitive but not that great at magic by comparison, her strength is that she's also good at combat in an army that's also very well costed. There's other competitive magic dominant lists with stuff like Kiaros but again you don't beat that army through magic you win in other phases. Also, against armies like this, they have small wizards so your little dudes have a target for unbinds. I get that from a game design perspective, the binary nature of magic may not be as fun as it could, but if the question is about competitive play, tournament stats I've seen suggest that it's not really a problem, although there are some competitive magic builds. If part of your list design includes magic, you'd weaken your list in most situations to gain an advantage in an off meta match up by removing them. Doesn't mean all little wizards are great, but there are plenty that are strong options and the existence of mega-casters doesn't invalidate them. It's early in three though, I could end up being very wrong.

That's a fair argument. Personally it doesn't bother me because it's usually a trade off where I get to do more in other phases because I have more points invested in those. I do see what you're saying though and I suspect more people fall in line with your perspective than mine looking through this thread. I'm okay with my sorerer casting less because I generally have more units to move and more to do in other phases. I also run Be'lakor so.. it'd be hypocritical of me to complain about the feel bad of a model doing nothing.

Yep. Which is why I think it's not about splitting buffs. Most of the time the question will be, what do I need to survive 20 Drakes with extra rend and all out attack? It becomes something of a binary calculation where things are either going to be lethal or not depending on what buffs are stacked where. Players will need to chose what units they trade to get the advantage.

But part of what they paying for is the unbind too. The point I'm making is that in my opinion, from a competitive standpoint, a lot of the big casters dominanting the magic phase isn't as powerful as it seems and it's not always as much of a loss for small casters as it seems. Ballance isn't perfect, Kroak is undercoated for example. Morathi refusing to die also makes her spells more efficient which is a problem. However that's solved by bringing his points up not by changing how magic dominance works. If there was a balance factor to really let small wizards play more, id change unbinding so that when someone casts, you can declare how many wizards will attemot to unbind before rolling. They still only have the however many their scroll says though. That way, a handful of small wizards could hang up on shutting down a particular spell.

I don't think the situation is that bad. Mega casters like Teclis and Nagash cost a huge amount of points and should dominante magic. Further to that, your small wizard isn't redundant if you position correctly or kill their big model, at which point you can swing the magic phase in your favor. At the end of the day, models like Teclis and Krosk basically cast spells and really don't add much to other phases while costing a lot. So yes your opponent will have the advantage in magic but you like have the advantage in board coverage. If you look at a model like Teclis, that's a huge amount of points for 4 spells, and he doesn't do much else. So you can kind of look at the points cost per cast, and they're generally not very efficient. For example, Teclis pays 37 points per spell if he casts 4 a turn. A chaos sorcerer lord pays 23 and also offers mark synergies and other synergies. Further to that, if they die early, the point efficiency is even further in favor of the small wizard. If Teclis dies turn 3 he's only cast 12 spells. That's 61 points per spell! The sorcerer has paid 38 points a spell. Teclis will win the magic phase against a sorcerer but your not wasting points on the sorcerer because statistically he'll get a spell/undind off during the game and your opponent isn't only commiting more points to wizards, he's commiting more points per spell. Meanwhile, most small wizards have additional synergies that buff the army where the big casters tend to only be big casters.

In my opinion (I'm frequently wrong, not trying to come off as an expert in this game), most armies have those extra save access, although my main army is StD which has saves for days and might bias me. Anyway anyway, I suspect saves are going to be used to stack more often than spread. You need +2 to keep +1 to your save against rend 1, +3 save against rend two and so forth. Due to how dice statistics work a the benefit of staying at a 2+ save is way better than a 3+ and 3+ is a stat jump over 4+. I'm not sure if that made sense but what I mean is like, a 1 in 6 fail is a large stat jump over 1 in 3 and again 1 in 3 in way better than 1 in 2. The meta will also probably shift to favor rend because everyone has more acces to armour. Even Aoe will need to be positioned to cover key units unless the whole army is castled. In terms of healing, I again suspect that with chip damage being less effective and buffs also being focused rather than spread, that a lot of combat/shooting will be decisive. All of which makes me think that spamming units that rely on buffs will be less effective than stacking buffs on key units. I can't envision how a competitive list could throw in a tree Lord on a list that already has a spirit of Durthu for example, or a list run multiple Durthu. The multiplication of these unit rolls seems to become a liability to the functionality of the unit.

I think the other issue is everyone talks about the ability to get +1 save and heal and all of that, which is true, but there's only 1 command a phase. Multiple monsters means only one can be at top bracket, only one hero can heal themselves, and only one unit is all out attacking/defending and so forth. In previous editions, you find the best units and spam them. This edition, the return on investment drops off really quickly with multiplication. I think as the meta refined itself the strongest lists will have msu units that offer utility and don't require support, and a few strong units that are the focus buffs onto. A hero monster is great, a second hero monster is significantly less great. The best lists will have optimized command usage where I think a lot of early lists at the moment have an overly optimistic vision where every unit is evaluated with buffs considered.

So debates about terrain aside.. I'm going to start a force and I was wondering if anyone has tried Spirit of Durthu in AoS. Specifically, I'm thinking I'll put him in Gnarlroot and give him the arcane tome. Now that he's a wizard he'll get innate re-roll 1s to hit. He can always fight at top bracket for a command point and for a spell I was thinking flaming weapon. 5 attacks at damage 7 seems pretty scary.

Giving Be'lakor a 5+ Ward and additional healing is a big boon to his survivability. I find the pitch black ability is very situational, I think it can be very impactful in the right situation though, if you remember it. The healing on monsters and demon princes doesn't add much but it's something. I suspect our non-hero monsters are somewhat of a trap that gives away points when they die but mindstealers are cheap and strikes last is good ability. Since demon princes strike first, Despoilers can make an army that's fairly resilient and plays well into the activations. I'm still experimenting with this. I'm hoping to run a list with Be'lakor, princes and and mindstealers back by cav a Chariots some time next week. I'll post how it goes.

Where do people feel Myrmour Banshees are at this edition? I'm hoping they're decent (I have 42 of them haha) as chaff in small units to flood the board and in units of 8 they can help shut down magic and do some damage with the right support. In a meta with way more armour the access to -2 rend also seems good.

This is really disappointing. Warriors were looking like such an amazing anvil. Loss of reroll is a really big loss to their survival. Getting +1 save is so easy to achieve for them anyway that having it native isn't offering much. I was planning a block of 30 undivided. Rerollable 3+, with a 6+ Ward and 5+ and mortal wound shrug that's also immune to battleschock was going to be so much fun. I'll still give it a go but it's going to present significantly less of a problem for the opponent.

That's a good point about heroic actions. A d3 heal each turn for free is quite nice for them.

Both Chariots got big points drops!!! I'm going to get over excited now and say I think these bad boys will be competitive this edition. Regular chariots will be great for chip damage. 120 for gorebeasts is a great counter charge option. Last edition their damage was underwhelming but this edition since everyone is less likely and they're the same they're much better relatively speaking. Since everything else went up roughly 10% and they both went down roughly that they had a 20% swing in their favor in an edition that is only buffs for them.

Where are people accessing the new points costs?

Where are people finding the new points cost?