Rors

I think a better comparison for him is Archaon. He's a cruise missile. Just like Archaon, whether he's competitively viable or not will depend on the support pieces he can access.

Any destruction factions that can do generic boosts like increase pile in, attack twice or teleportation will get the most from him. Even though he doesn't benefit from faction abilities, Winterbite specifically says all friendly models, so he'd be -1 to hit in your own deployment zone. Blood gullet would benefit him a lot too, as someone previously mentioned.

Anyone have any experience/advice on running large blocks of warriors? I picked up a bunch of second hand warriors for cheap and I'm wondering what the most efficient way to run them might be. I'm leaning towards two blocks of 20 undivided with Be'lakor as the general in a Despoilers list. An 18 inch aura should be enough that I can keep both units in range on two objectives. That's 40 wounds on each objective with a 4+ resellable, 5+ mortal shrug, and 6+ after save that's battle shock immune. They're cheaper than Mortek guard and provide a very similar role.

Going in a different direction to most of the conversations here but I'd like to see the barrier to entry drop. It's an expensive game that requires time to build, time to paint and reps of games to learn. I'd like more easy to build stuff but actually designed to give new players functional lists that are relatively cheap and quick to paint.

Who knows when Slaves will get their next book. Looking at the gravelords and stormcast rumours, it looks like AoS3 will be an edition with generally more armour. I suspect this will put us in a really difficult place as the strength at Slaves do have are mostly defensive and the meta will shift to more anti-armor choices. On top of this our book is extremely light on rend. It's a natural part of how the game cycle works but I suspect from here we'll see Slaves slip further and further down the rankings until we get a new book update. Silver lining is it's a very popular faction and we get a lot of mini-updates with other releases so we probably won't have to wait as long as others, like our poor poor chaos bovine friends.

I think betallions will just make strong armies stronger and offer little for most and nerf a few books that use a specific betallion as it's engine. For example, sepharon don't care about betallions and they're S tier. This change can only make them stronger. Tzentch (without Archaon) on the other hand will go from highly competitive to mid or low tier without the betallion builds they use. Making betallions symmetrical for all armies will have an asymmetrical impact due to each army have a different roster of units that interact with them. My main hope is that we don't end up with one obviously better universal betallion that ends up used by every faction. As a faction that isn't very betallion dependant, Nighthaunt have more to gain though, although they're probably in the same camp as a majority of factions.

Yeah it's not a ballanced faction.. to a degree goblins have never been a ballanced faction, they've always been more of a random 'fun' army. This has made them consistently difficult for game designer to ballance as the core of the factions playstyle is gambling risk reward choices. Back in the day you could release fanatics and they might utterly destroy an opposed unit, or just smash through your own lines. They definitely do need updates, I just think they're updates should work to improve the playability of the faction without killing the playstyle of the faction. Low leadership has always been a key feature, so has the ability to stack out ridiculous but often self harming amounts of damage. I'd like more upgrades where say the unit eats shrooms and gets a huge combat buff, but take mortal wounds at the end of turn as they overdose. Or reincarnation of the doom diver where they use their own troops as ammunition.

Gitz SHOULD struggle with leadership. They need to be buffed in other areas rather than making an entire phase of the game largely redundant.

I love the gorebeast model and have one myself. From a purely points efficiency perspective though, I think you get significantly more from regular chariots. The extra movement along with run and charge is critical to a unit that must be the one to charge for effective damage output. The regular chariots also actually put out more MW damage on the charge than gorebeats statistically. On top of this they're 30 points cheaper which isn't a small margin when you're taking multiple. It depends on just how optimized you want to be without compromising your vision for the army you want to play I suppose. Definitely really cool model and the chain used by the gorebeast is significantly less fragile than the bit of rope used by the regular chariots. Thinking about transportation of those models without that rope snapping makes me wince

All they have to do in AoS 3 is change the universal command traits. Without access to battle shock immunity for a single CP across every army, it's actually a relevant phase of the game.

I looked up the 25/1/21 faq and I can't see it. Which faq is it in?

I think Olynder's betallion has some really cool sneaky plays that can be made. While the troops are there are extra wounds, you can let her take the wounds until she's down to 3 or so left, I'm combat this will likely mean you have more attacks from less depleted units. I think Olyder + endless spells could also have some really cool interactions. I'm not sure what the best combo is but I think dispelling your own endless spells could be a fun way to buff the Banshees. I like the idea of chucking palasade up as a charge blocking screen/defensive tool. You can then displell it yourself to counter charge and simultaneously buff the Banshees. If you went all in on a deathstar you could take the soul boat and balewind vortex, and knight, and a guardian of souls pop up from the underworlds. Olynder on the balewind can use her warscroll spell up to 24 inches away, then the knight gives the Banshees +1 attack, soul boat teleports the Banshees forward 12, then they displell it as they hop out. With correct placemeant of the underworlds guardian you can surprise an opponent when a unit 24 inches away is hit by banshess with 3 attacks each, hitting on 3s, wounding on 2s, -2 rend, d3 damage. + You fly right over screens. Quick bit of damage calculation, and that will statistically remove Archaon in a single turn even if he's refilling saves.

I agree Archaon + Be'lakors likely doesn't have the body count to be effective. I strongly disagree that is Be'lakor is worse this iteration. Although I do agree his personal subfaction is a trap and his real place is in Despoilers. His previous version was purely there for Dark Master, which isn't in keeping with the character fluff wise. Competitively speaking, he's dramatically changed role. Dark Master is still amazing but Slaves have defensive tools for days. What Slaves lack is units with decent rend and damage. The new Be'lakor brings output that can chew through armour, which is something Slaves need more than most factions.

I've been thinking about how well Archaon's ability to know who gets priority next turn ahead of the opponent and Be'lakors ability to paralyze a unit until your next hero phase work together. It's also over 1000 points in 2 models that are respectable combat monster. What else do you put in such a list though?

I think the Be'lakor is actually way better now in despoilers. I know he gets his own subfaction but keeping that many troops in 18 seems more thematic than mechanically strong along with the rest of the buffs. He may not pass off wounds but in despoilers he gets a 5+ ward save and extra heals. Both of these are a lot better on a model with additional wounds. Slaves also generally lack a unit with good rend and damage which is exactly what he now brings to the table.

The Mongol look has always been somewhat of a theme with ogors. I wouldn't mode if they went further down that path. Burtog will probably get his own AoS warscroll, I'll be interested to see what it looks like.

At 1k 3 huge monsters is going to be more than a lot of lists can handle, you'll win some games by showing up. In other games you will auto lose because you can't be more than 3 places. The meeting engagement rules were designed for 1k games and I'd recommend have a look at them and talking to the group, it's simply more ballanced rules for that game size. If you do go meeting engagement, you'll need to change your list a bit to fit the format. I'd recommend mournfang. The can go in betallions later, you can build legal meeting engagement list, and having more than 3 units means your game outcomes will be more dependant on tactics than what mission you roll/what army you face.

I guess maybe the difference is thundertusks put out less MWs from range but also have considerably more wounds than the characters they want to assassinate, so possibly win attrition in a shoot out? In melee the list has a frostlord on stonehorn and 4 mournfang as obviously strong options. A thundertusk huskard isn't anywhere near as killy, but with the right mount traists and artifact will ignore rend -1 and -2 (remember how good etherial amulet was?) And is -1 to hit in melee. That's solid defense. A thundertusk is still 10 models even when it's on one wound for objectives. Doesn't need to win the fight, it needs to get there first (which it can having cav tier speed) then not die. It's good at thinning stuff that would outnumber it with it's snowball. I dunno, I'm speculating to make sense of it. It's probably just a really good player who had lucky match ups. A part of me wants thundertusks to be viable just to create some diversity for the lists. Stonehorns are amazing but it's so very very cookie cutter at this point.

I think the list was something a frostlord on stone, torbad with 3 thundertusks, and 4 mournfang in boulderhead. If I can find who it played into I'll post that. The only way I can imagine it working is like a ranged assassination army. Neither the vultures, snowballs, or blizzard prayer care about look out sir, so maybe the list just removes support characters early and sits on objectives?

Apparently a torbad list went 4-1 at a larger Australian tournament. Freak occurrence or have thundertusks been underrate by the community?

I agree. While I'm pumped for the new model and rules, it's also a change to the best unit in the book and one of the best warscrolls in the game. Odds are the new version will be bigger and better, but less value.

I really like all of those. I really hope he keeps the trap a unit rule he has too. It would be great to see ld based tactics become valid. Combine that with his heals from models fleeing and maybe something like "for every unit from which an enemy model flees within 12 of Belakor, add 1 to casting rolls until end of next hero phase" would be sweet.

Belakor will definitely get a new warscroll and points with his new model. What would people like to see?

I have a hoard of milita on square bases with the old bretonian peasants bits used to convert up models and add more diversity. They were always trash but I love the concept of basic humans in high fantasy settings. Literally humanizing your expendable troops adds a sense of pathos to the game. Anywho, the concept for my night haunt Amy will be that they came from a religion that had a more typical 'heaven' in which they lived in the clouds. Because of this they didn't actually go to the death realm but a place between the realm of death and light. They believed themselves beyond the reach of Nagash, however, eventually he was able to trap them when their realm was closest, sunset. He froze them in time so that his legions could march through the horizon and into their realm to concour them (it's high fantasy and magic). Thus I'm painting them all in sunset colors, reds, pinks, oranges etc. I was wondering if anyone has anything like that they could share? I saw some 'vapor wave' night haunt that kind of come close to what I'm imagining. Maybe this should be in the hobby section rather than here though.

Yeah 48 is more for the sake of meme. Kight or a vampire seem like good options. Nighthaunt do seem comand point hungery though off first impression. I think the lauchon endless spell could be interesting too. Buff with a night, teleport then 12 inches forward, then use them to dispell it. You loose d3+1 models but if positioned right you can probably get those back. That gets then to 3 attacks a model and a threat range of 27 inches on average. Could always chuck cogs in the list too and surprise long bomb a unit turn one. Flying makes them harder to screen off too.