LuminethMage

So, you think the complete data shows that OBR and Nurgle are dominating the tournament scene? Because they had 3 5:0 wins at one point in large events? Nurgle hasn't won a single event out the last 23. OBR one. Or even something like KO - they haven't had a single tournament win since last October - 15 events ago. They had 4 top 5 entries since then. That's dominating? So those 3 factions should get "nerfed"? There is one clear outlier, Seraphon. And the Seraphon Battletome is in other aspects pretty much what we want for everyone. Various play styles, a lot of feasible units etc. When they make point changes to Seraphon external balance will likely improve, but on the other hand internal balance might suffer. External balance is just one of the important factors. Tzeentch has similar issues, but less so than Seraphon. I think right now it's a bit difficult to judge how good GW is doing. We have seen that they want to improve balance via Broken Realms, and have made some bigger and some smaller changes so far. But because of the delays this is happening very slowly, and might lead up to an immediate release of 3.0 just when all the armies should be relatively balanced after they got attention in Broken Realms. 3.0 then of course will likely throw everything off again for a year or so. How you feel about this also depends on you personal situation. I think with so many factions, and other important factors, the general balance is pretty ok. Most of the factions are within 40% to 60%. They should strive of course to get most into the 45% to 55% bracket. But we also want interesting abilities and that sometimes our army feels powerful, and exceptional in some ways. But then I'm not super concerned about tournaments, and think that locally we have enough ways to balance things out most of the time.

They have done a bit more lately with terrain and objects. So it's not impossible. And we know that the Calligrave lore-wise does something with the land, eg. terrain, so it could be that ours is actually moving! I have my doubts because it's so big, but it would be cool to eventually get terrain that moves. Even it's not ours this time.

That sounds correct. But what do you do then? It's probably still the best data we have, and if you are right, it's fits better for our purpose (eg. we want to know how it's for the average guy not the top 1%). It's still better than personal experience or what you hear in chat groups. In terms of tournament wins - that's one reason why I showed the yearly comparison. The meta changed quite a lot during that time. Some factions went up, some down. Besides for short periods, no single faction seems to dominate everything. Even without a proper Winter FAQ it looks like we see changes already again (new Battletomes, BR, people adapt). For me, it all seems kind of alright-sh? Except for a few factions which seem to have been underpowered for long time, and should see some attention.

To include some of the tournament data (in-person) that were talking about: According to AOShorts: There have been 8 GHB20 events with 5+ rounds and 50+ players. Looking at top 5 spots Seraphon - 8/40 KO - 7 DoT - 6 OBR - 3 Nurgle - 3 DoK - 3 Cities - 2 Big Waaagh! - 2 Slannesh - 1 Khorne - 1 S2D - 1 Fyreslayers - 1 Lumineth - 1 Mawtribes - 1 This does not look like 6 factions dominating everyone. 14 factions at least won one tournament with 5:0. If you just look at any tournament wins you can add: Idoneth, LoN, Stormcast, and FEC (18) to the list. If you go down to the 3rd place also Skaven, Slaanesh and Ironjaws (21). So ca. 20 out of 24 factions with a Battletome made it into the top 3. Looking at the situation right now compared to the start of 2020 it looks like this: End 2020, start 2021: During the last 23 tournaments 12 factions (ca. half of those with a Battletome) have at least won one tournament. 21 factions were at least once in the top 5 (some are subsections of a Battletome). The 3 faction with the most wins are Seraphon, Stormcast and KO, with 3 wins each. If we compare this to the situation roughly a year ago (same amount of tournaments but a shorter period of time) we get this: 11 different factions won a tournament and 21 factions made it into the top 5. The 3 factions with the most wins were OBR 5, DoT with 4 and CoS with 3. Of course these are not 100% comparable (difference of time period, and slightly more Battletomes now), but as such it doesn't look like the situation has changed drastically. If at all, one could say that Seraphon are a big outlier which are overall outperforming everyone else. But in the latest tournaments they seem to be less dominant, and a year ago we had periods with strong factions like Tzeentch and OBR too If we look at win percentage right now, the situations seems to be this (for in-person matches, but TTS is very similar according to The Honest Wargamer data): This is taken from ListBot (http://aoslistbot.herokuapp.com/sotm/), measuring tournaments from March 2020 to March 2021. A similar list is done by DKHM: So how is the balance? If you look at the data, a big bunch is within the 45% to 55% win-rate. If you go to 40% to 60% then it includes almost everyone with an own Battletome. And again the big outlier which probably causes the most problems is Seraphon. They are very strong and are the most played faction in tournaments. There are 2 or 3 other strong factions, but I think it's hard to say that 6 factions totally dominate everything. Most factions are played within the 2% to 5% range, again the outlier being Seraphon. I tried to find older data to compare it to see if the situation is really worse than before, but sadly I couldn't find any. I have my doubts though, that something has fundamentally changed during the last several years (just because of how people talk about Slaanesh. FEC, DoK and so on). But older data would be really interesting to see.

I have the feeling that some of this is definitely blown out of proportions. I'm playing Lumineth obviously, and last time another player (COS, Tempest Eye) specifically asked to play against Teclis because he knows I have the model painted and he wanted to play against Teclis to see how it is. So, I had a list with Teclis and 3 x 10 Sentinels. On purpose I didn't go full tournament meta-elite list (no spell portal, and Zaitrec instead of Syar), but otherwise didn't really hold back. He had two Sorceresses who didn't get a spell off between him rolling bad and the auto-unbind from Teclis. I also used Total Eclipse (double CP spell) and Searing White Light. It was still a fun game, and he was leading when we had to finish end of R3 because of time limit. Yes, the Sentinels killed two of his heroes, but his firing squat had finished 80% of my Wardens in R2 and done some other damage in return. It was a pretty good back and forth. He had no complaints at all, no NPE. I think though, I'd tabled him if we continued the game, but he probably would have still won by points. Now I'm not saying that under no circumstances anyone ever could have a bad experiences playing against Lumineth, but locally you should be able to work things out most of the time. If someone doesn't like me to play Teclis, I don't (I wouldn't want to bring him every time in the first place, that's boring anyway). Same with Sentinels (which aren't a huge problem if you don't bring a ton anyway). Lumineth can definitely dish out a lot of MW if you roll well, and that's probably not everyone's cup of tea. I haven't had much experience besides against CoS yet with my LRL (because of Covid restrictions), but the local club has many different armies. CoS seems to be one of the most played.

I don't think these are Lumineth, and new Dragon Princes likely also would be more on the Tyrionic side - so sporting sun symbols. It does look like some kind of cavalry though. The Lumineth reveals are done, I doubt we see anything new related to them anymore. They might show more of BR Teclis if there are other, yet unrevealed models (like OBR) which come along with it. But I think in terms of marketing they are already beyond BR Teclis and the LRL until pre-order announcement week when they want people to prepare parting with their money.

I think an own is great, especially if you continue to update. We don’t have much competitive discussions on our forum here. So might be good to have it all in one place? Like “Competitive Data & List Building” or something like that.

If you friends want to do that, they already can. Play Ymetrica with a lot of Alarith for example, or almost any non-Teclis list with few archers. Then you aren’t competing anywhere much besides the combat phase. Almost no magic, few shooting, no charge or speed shenanigans, no teleports, no summoning, no fliers, no chaf. Look at the win rates. Right now, all in all Lumineth are around 50% win-rates in in-person games and on TTS. They are good, but not super powerful. If you friends don’t play Syar and Teclis, they don’t really have a successful tournament list in most cases. The win rates are in the 30s for most these. That’s likely why your friends are playing Syar, and then not by accident. The problem is right now - from a competitive perspective only a few builds are really viable. A second problem is - which likely won’t get solved, 2 Aetherquartz are really fun to play with because of the flexibility that provides. If they don’t change that, I guess Syar will always be at least somewhat popular. If everything goes well the new options will make lists besides these more viable without making the top lists stronger. But yeah, with so many new models there is sadly a chance that we’ll get some really OP builds. And of course some people will feel that the army is incomplete. If you want a fast, hard hitting army, you can’t do that right now (and that was a pretty common HE playstyle - so naturally many people expected to be able to do that). Lumineth have basically no fliers right now, another element which was really common for HE. You don’t even have a normal “my guy” melee hero, like almost any other army out there. People have all kind of expectations, and you don’t have to be misguided to feel something is lacking.

@martinwolf Very nice, that conversion is a great idea. And beautifully painted. 🥰

Let's hope one of those two announcements at least happens next week: either Cursed City or BR Teclis. I just hope they finally can move forward, otherwise all the other BR books might come in very short order one after another which would be a bit sad. If they go on like this, this Saturday they'll reveal BR Gordrakk : ) If they start with Cursed City, that's also fine.

Not necessarily, we don’t know what and how you and your friends play. So, for example what I wrote about magic might not apply. You can play Lumineth in a way where magic is just self buffs 90% of the time. And I think everyone here is very excited about the new wave. I didn’t miss anything specifically, but now that I know what we can get, I’m looking forward to get everything : ). Especially the Bladelords, Loreseeker and Calligrave.

For me personally, I wasn’t really missing anything much. The main reason is because, I’m happy with a magic heavy castle-style army, reliant on squishy mage heroes, and generally think some limitations are good. The only thing I personally miss a bit is a glass cannon hammer. The Swordmasters were my favorite unit in Fantasy, and hopefully the Bladelords will fill that role. That said, the new models, if they work out correctly make the LRL a much more complete army, and will open up play styles. The Lord Regent, a generic melee hero on a mount, is probably what most people missed the most, and felt a bit strange not being included in the first wave. A hero which can use most of the artifacts and hopefully has some synergy with the Dawnriders and other Vanari. Although I didn’t personally miss it, that is the unit I’m most happy to see, because I think that will make the Lumineth feel more complete and attractive for more people. As you mention, the Wind Temple is great, because speed and board presence is something the army is generally missing, although we have a few options. Especially if the Lord Regent also makes Dawnriders stronger. I hope will get a few more funny tricks in our bags (manipulating terrain for example) but become less reliant on MW, as many people don’t enjoy going up against that.

Not super likely because they announced that Dark Eldar and the DE + Sisters box can be pre-ordered on the 20th. But maybe the preorder announcement on the 20th? If they go back to weekly releases. Otherwise maybe on the 27th. I hope at least he announcement will be still within March. It’s really hard to say right now, their Instagram channel behaves as if BR Teclis already has dropped, and we get painting guides, but otherwise zero info since two weeks now. And they have done a lot of marketing for Cursed City. 🤷‍♂️

I see you are still focusing on the less fortunate parts of the aelf community ..... well done! 😀 I especially like the colours on your Idol! The snakes are also really cool models, looking goooood with the greens and blues.

This is a pretty strong core. Eltharion can be a real beast in smaller matches, might be even someone you have to watch out a bit that it doesn’t get frustrating for your opponent, depending on what they have. All the other units are a also good. You have 750 points, and if you want to add something right now, probably another box of Warden would be good. Right now, they are our only battleline choice if you don’t play the Ymetrica subfaction (which makes the Stoneguard BL). And they are generally good. I’d probably go up to 30 Warden and 20 Sentinels next. And then see what you like or need. It also depends what you like, if the Alarith units are appealing to you, you instead could start leaning into them. In that case you can buy 2 Stoneguard, a Stonemage and a Spirit of the Mountain. Which would bring you already over 1,250. Right now though, besides a box of Warden if you really need more to start, I’d wait. The release of the new models should be announced within a month and they’ll double the size of the range. You might feel bad if you buy too much right now.

Bladelords (incl. the Champion without helmet) and other Lumineth in glorious Zaitreci colours: https://www.instagram.com/p/CMUIcGMLf-T/?igshid=199tha5sk2lzk Apparently still no one told the Warhammer Instagram team that the 2nd wave hasn’t been released yet. 😆

Welcome fellow mage : ) . Exciting times for you as both OBR and LRL are featured in Broken Realms Teclis.

I think they’ll not feel that out of line in the full range. A lot of the second wave of models have the same “pants + knee pads” style that the Bladelords have. If you only compare them to the current ones, then yes, they are a bit off. I personally probably prefer robes, but it’s also good that the units have some variety. I have the Direchasm Bladelord, she doesn’t look small, the back banner and great sword with runes convey that they are supposed to be an elite.

Just to give you unnecessary hope, the Cursed City article yesterday said that we’ll hear more about Cursed City as we are closer to the release date, which can ONLY mean from now on we get new information about the Lumineth every day (eye twitch).

I think you are right, the dual wielded also has a slightly more elaborate helmet, which is also something they do with the champions. Probably the different swords are connected to the champion’s special ability like the flask and the hawk.

For those who haven’t seen it, from the official Warhammer Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/p/CMMuoulMZ-E/?igshid=14cjsz3ayxc9f Picture with Bladelords and Windchargers invading Shyish.

We probably see a BR Teclis site for like 2 weeks, or they don't bother at all and just jump right to BR Belakor : ). It's pretty similar to the Hedonites situation where they showed them, and then went into promoting Cursed City and the Lumineth until the preview week for some reason. Looks like Broken Realms will experience the same kind of joy ride the 40k community had with their campaign last year - with a new book every months once they start trying to catch up.

@Tiberius501 I can only echo Wylie, I think they'll look striking on the battlefield. I really like how the gold looks once you have them in units. And can't go wrong with blue and white. That might only be due to (the one and only) small mistake on your iPad artistry, but maybe also paint the scale mail on the shield in silver?

Let's see, with all the new heroes, and one being specifically for cavalry, the Dawnriders might become a bit more overall useful. I just started building my second 5 (after being scarred of them for 6 months 😅). I also think are one of the most beautiful models in the range. @NemesisScar Welcome to TGA : )

About the Windchargers, I guess it’s very likely that they are meant to function as a fast castle, taking them plus the Wind Mage plus the Spirit forward together, and they’ll all buff each other. So they’ll be a bit more robust on any object they sit on, but still quite low number, and a lot of points tied up. But likely being able to harass the opponent from there, and not just fold up against 5 Khinerai. Alone, they might not be more than a situational alternative for the Dawnriders. I really hope they get the Bladelords right. It’s probably a unit I’ll try to make work no matter what the rules are, but it would be nice if they were actually useful.