Jaskier

Soon, everyone. The new Metawatch article said the next two Battletomes (which, according to the roadmap, are Chaos tomes) are going to be revealed on Saturday. We may well be free of this book in a few weeks!

Yeah the Chaos Gargant is essentially a walking Purple Sun that can't be dispelled but can be (easily) killed. I think any shooting army worth their salt will drop it before it gets close, but heavens help whoever fails to do so.

I'm not sure if Slaanesh are necessarily S tier in the new GHB but the consistent points drops have definitely added up, stuff like Blissbarbs at 140 and Myrmidesh at 110 just look super high value, you can absolutely flood the board with units while relying on precision hammers like Sigvald and Coalitioned Slaves stuff such as Varanguard or Chosen. The army wide 5+ Rally and removal of Bounty Hunters makes our cheap infantry that much better, and we actually have a good selection of Galletian Champions - Enrapturess', Epitomes, some of the Slaves heroes, etc. I still think the book is in dire need of a rewrite but it goes to show that with enough love and consistent points drops even the worst army can be given one hell of a facelift.

Slaangors are getting a warscroll rewrite by the sounds of it, so will be interesting to see how they turn out. It also looks like our new battletome is coming later this year.

I thought the same as you, but unfortunately the strike first artifact is only available to Daemon Princes.

Yeah I think Be'lakor remains one of the stronger allies in the game, his ability really does turn certain matchups on their head if you use it correctly. He's also just an efficient model overall. The only allegiance buffs he really gets in Slaves come from switching marks around in LotFP, so I'd say you're not missing out on too much by allying him.

Chaos Spawn are different in this book from the DoT incarnation, while within 9" of a Daemon Prince with the same mark as them they get to re-roll 1D6 for determining their move and number of attacks.

I'm honestly pretty split between Khorne and Nurgle for Soul Grinders. If you can charge, Khorne super boosts their output - doubling the claw attacks alone is big, and overall they are quite punchy at that point, as in they start comparing favourably to Mega-Gargants. On the flip side, a lot of my personal experience with Grinders is that they are extremely good space blockers because of their enormous base size, and thus will usually be on the receiving end of charges - wherein the Nurgle mark clearly wins out. I guess it really depends on whether you want to try to screen for them or use them as the screens. The other thing in Khorne's favor is that, at least until their next book comes out, many of the Blades of Khorne units buff Khorne stuff regardless of faction, whereas obviously most other cross-book god synergies have disappeared lately. If you run lots of Khorne marked stuff, giving Grinders another bonus attack from say an allied Bloodsecrator aura is pretty good too. Oh, the Slaughterbrute did leak by the by. It gained two wounds, and its crappy two attack profile got rolled into its six attack profile so now it has 8 Rend 1 D3 Damage attacks and 2 Rend - 3 Damage attacks. It has the Khorne keyword (ala the Mutalith having the Tzeentch keyword) and it now has two unique commands that only its bound hero can issue to it; counting as top bracket on the damage chart, and 3D6 charge with 18" max distance. It also deals D3 mortal wounds on a 2+ at the end of the combat phase to one enemy unit within 3" (and 1 mortal wound to itself) if it's more than 12" away from its master.

I dunno, the difference between Rend 1 and Rend 3 (on the charge) is massive, and the built-in +1 to-wound means the unit needs less support investment. I personally would go with Fellspears, especially as when marked Khorne they want to be charging anyway.

The problem Theridons have is they are a glass hammer surrounded by steel hammers, and unless the Myrmidon scroll gives them something good, they lack obvious synergies like the other core units they compete with. Taken on their own merits they are good, they just don't look as good as the units next to them; Chosen, Knights and Varanguard all look excellent in no small part thanks to their 3+ saves.

Well, until the recent Sylvaneth book (and a recent errata prior to it) Alarielle's warscroll stated she knew the entire Lore of the Deepwood - meaning she knew the entire Lore even if taken in a Living City Cities of Sigmar army. It now specifically says she only knows the entire lore if she's taken in a Sylvaneth army. Per the Lord of Change warscroll, it just knows the entire Lore of Fate - no strings attached. By my reading, it and the Blue Scribes should be fine as allies.

Daemon Princes of Nurgle are very strong, being able to guarantee turn off ward rolls can be match-winning if going into Nurgle, Phoenix Guard, etc. Very good candidate for a general, and additionally its Trophy Racks granting battleshock immunity will likely prove very relevant with so many abilities introduced recently that switch off Inspiring Presence.

Woops, for some reason I thought this was the Slaves forum 😅 I think in that case they do hit harder at least, assuming All Out Attack for both units, Knights average 7 -2 2 Damage and 3 1 Damage wounds on the charge, whereas Theridons average 6 -2 3 Damage wounds (up to 7-8 if they use their once per game +1 attack rule) so they are quite punchy. I'd probably run them over Fiends for example. They'll do armor busting better than anything in the actual Hedonites book so they've absolutely got a place.

I did some maths and saw some other comparisons, it looks like Khorne marked Chaos Knights and Varanguard are straight up stronger than them (and faster and tougher) which leaves them in a bit of an odd spot. The points squeeze had me looking at them for a two hero Archaon list but that's about it. I think their best attributes are their damage isn't reliant on charging (which depending on the list could be highly relevant) and they have a smaller footprint than the other two aforementioned units.

You know this isn't true, right? If you All Out Defence 20 Wardens, that's 20 Wounds with a 3+ save and -1 to be hit. If you do the same to 10 Stoneguard, that's 20 wounds with a 3+ save ignoring up to -2 Rend. Like just to use a recent example, 3/5 Mega Gargant variants are locked at Rend 2 outside of a non-guaranteed once per game ability. If a Warstomper (which is now mathematically the best damage dealer of the Megas) smacks the Wardens and has +1 to-hit, it's averaging ~13.5 unsaved damage. Against the Stoneguard, it's averaging closer to ~6. Let's not forget the Stoneguard have a 4+ ward against any mortal wounds either - and let's be real, those Stoneguard are likely going to be -1 to be hit too which pushes the numbers further in their favour. As objective control is determined at the end of a turn, a Stoneguard blob plonked on an uncontested objective will get their ward even when a Mega charges them. It's not like this isn't a common case either. There's plenty of units in the game that sport a low volume of high Rend attacks, and outside of Beasts of Chaos and Ironjawz, Rend -3 is extremely rare for most factions. In these situations, the value of ignoring up to -2 Rend (and let's be honest, you will always want to run Stoneguard in Ymetrica) can be a literal game-changer. It obviously will not save them against high volume of attacks, but then outside of 2+ saves most things don't anyway. Let's not pretend like Stoneguard aren't a lot more durable against Rend sources below -3; it's literally their schtick. Lastly, yes, you can save stack the Wardens, the beauty of a Ymetrica Alarith list is you can spread those defensive tools like Aetherquartz, Mystic Shield, etc around because they typically won't need to rely on save stacking to survive, allowing you to protect more elements of your army simultaneously which is a big deal. Also, having experienced the Kastelai 4 wound Blood Knight bomb, giving a unit of 10-15 Stoneguard a perpetual extra wound per model is great (and it also interacts with a lot of auto-kill abilities based off of wound characteristics.) Edit; just on your Fulminator example, again with +1 to-hit 2 Fulminators average ~13 unsaved against Wardens (+ ~2 mortals) versus ~8 unsaved against the Stoneguard (+ ~1 mortal thanks to the 4++.) Again, not factoring in a nearby moontain providing -1 to-hit for the Alarith.

Mancrushers only really lose out if you were taking them in Stomper tribe before, where their 10 Attacks suddenly jumped to Damage 2 into the right targets. I think it's a fine trade-off though as the new Stomper tribe doesn't have a borked general, so it's suddenly much more appealing to run either with or without any Mancrushers - and the 'spreading' commands is a cool new gimmick for them.

I'm honestly more excited for two man-reads-books tonight, Lumineth and Sons both should be very interesting reads.

I really like the idea behind the Archaon list, Shield of Fate working on any Tzeentch unit is tasty. I almost wonder though if you'd skip the Sorcerer Lord to fit in a Magister on disk just so you aren't so worried about the one Magister being the focal point of your summoning? I think between a near guaranteed Mystic Shield and Shield of Fate plus All Out Defence/Finest Hour he should be plenty tanky enough in most cases.

The Gaunt being a Daemon means it gets to pick a spell from the Lore of Change, right? If that's the case, it has pretty good utility given it also knows the entire Lore of Fate. I'm not sure on the legality of it as usually models that know entire spell lores don't get access to other spell lores (i.e Morathi knows the entire Lore of Shadows but as a named character she can't use the universal spell lore.) I think if anything it is supposed to have the Daemon keyword (as it historically had both) but it probably is supposed to have the Arcanite keyword too. We'll see within a month I guess.

Enhancements and stacking the +1 alongside Fateweaver. That's pretty much it. It's weird because I think the Lord of Change is better than it was but Fateweaver being changed to be more like it and less unique means it's now got to compete for the spot, and it loses that fight every time to Fatey.

Basically it doesn't matter how many spells you can cast, you only ever get to pick 1 extra spell from a spell lore per wizard unless specified otherwise (main exceptions are things like Nagash, Kairos, etc that know entire spell lores.)

I think Arcanite lists probably still want to go with Guild of Summoners, right? Lords of Change are better summoned than they used to be because they know an entire spell lore and their auras stack together, plus the third and subsequent summons are easier than before as they cap at 18 instead of 27+. They might not do much the turn they come down but it's a big threat opponents have to deal with. Otherwise, I guess a Kairic spam list might go Pyrofane Cult (but that's still questionable) or yeah you'd probably just go Hosts Arcanum as our mortals aren't really designed to be in big units or have the durability suitable for Hosts Duplicitous.

That's the complete opposite of what my experience is. List diversity even for repeat factions is usually quite high given that compared to 40k the factions usually have less units to choose from due to being a much younger game system. Additionally, unit spam is actually not that common; you might see the odd Stormdrake or Cockatrice spam list, but usually AoS lists - GT winning ones, yes - tend to favour more mixed approach thanks to cross-unit synergies and how easy it is to run into bad matchups for the spam style of lists. To your Stormcast example, I'm attending a GT this coming weekend and there are 6 Stormcast lists. These are all the units chosen at least once, and how many lists feature them; Annihilators (hammers) - 3 Annihilators (shields) - 2 Stormdrakes - 2 Concussors - 2 Fulminators - 1 Judicators (bows) - 3 Judicators (crossbows) - 1 Vanguard Raptors - 2 Vindictors - 4 Vigilors - 1 Chariot - 2 Aetherwings - 1 Ballista - 1 Krondspine - 1 (this is the only allied unit in any of the lists) Vexillor - 1 Arcanum (gryph) - 1 Venator - 1 Imperatant - 3 Celestant Prime - 1 Veritant - 1 Relictor - 4 Incantor - 1 Ordinator - 1 Knight Judicator - 1 Considering that units that have proven extremely popular elsewhere this season such as Tempestors, Vanquishers, Liberators and Krondys as well as fairly common picks like Bastian, Gardus, Knight-Draconis, Castellant, Protectors, etc all aren't even present, I'd say that speaks to a pretty high level of diversity in competitive builds. I personally know a couple of these Stormcast players at the GT and can vouch for them as either GT winners or at minimum very strong players, so it's not like they aren't taking serious lists either. The competitive scene in AoS is booming and the stats prove this. We just had tickets to the 220 player Call to Glory (usually the biggest AoS tournament in the world) sell out in under an hour the other day. Interest in AoS at a competitive level remains high. If one wants to say the popularity of AoS is stagnating, I would strongly argue it's not the tournament scene or more competitive-oriented nature of 3.0 that's the issue; as others have pointed out, it's much more likely to be the dearth of model releases - most factions updated this year have received a single hero model and nothing else, which obviously isn't very exciting for those looking to start new armies or add to existing ones. I can attest to being much more excited about Sylvaneth with all their cool new releases this year over any of my other armies like Tzeentch or Daughters of Khaine, even if I'm much more likely to take the latter two to a tournament.

I personally feel that the first half of next year will be quite AoS focused, especially as Imperial Guard (the last 40k codex after World Eaters) are supposedly slated for February at the latest, and the rumored 10th Edition likely won't drop until mid-year. There's a few months there which could easily be filled by some decent AoS releases.

Honestly I can see most of the Lumineth changes in that box sticking, unlike the Tzeentch side which got gutted almost across the board (GW were smart to revert those changes in all honesty) the Lumineth changes at least feel sensible.