Beer & Pretzels Gamer

I love these types of battleplans. How have you approached the idea of balancing them so that the survival of the rearguard and its destruction are reasonably proportional? Personally I’m fine playing a game where the odds are stacked against me. Love a good challenge and at worst usually learn something in my failures. But with so much focus on fairness from many (most?) match play centric players how have you addressed this?

The Maelstrom of War option for AoS sounds very interesting with objectives shifting turn by turn. Obviously they weren’t that dynamic but I was initially very excited by Hidden Agendas. My very first tournament game was against the White Dwarf Slaanesh battalion with the extra summoning points. By the end there were six KoS on the table. Before any units were placed or any dice were rolled I knew I couldn’t win the battleplan. My Hidden Agenda if killing his highest wound model gave me something to play for and I’ll admit a real sense of satisfaction when I took down one of the KoS. But the reality is that Hidden Agendas seem largely to be used to separate out undefeated lists at the top. In addition, your opponent has nothing to lose pts wise if you achieve your Hidden Agenda. In combination this means that Hidden Agendas really don’t offer that true alternative objective I am looking for. They did get me thinking though about potential ways this might be accomplished within the symmetrical battleplans that define match play today. One concept I am playing around with is Faction-specific Objectives. The idea is that based on its key traits and characteristics each faction would have six potential objectives they could be trying to achieve. I’ve been doing a lot with Khorne lately so I’ll give a pretty simple example using them: 1) Skulls for the Skull Throne: collect half the skulls (e.g. half the models, rounded up) of your opponent’s army by the battle’s end 2) Blood for the Blood God: generate wounds equivalent to half (rounded up) your opponent’s starting total by the battle’s end 3) Khorne Cares Not: generate Blood Tithe equivalent time half (rounded up) the total combined starting units of your opponent and your own army 4) Hatred of the Arcane: unbind 8 spells and kill at least one of your opponent’s wizards before the battle’s end 5) Leave None Before You Alive: destroy all of your opponent’s units that are on the table at the beginning of Round 1 (e.g. excludes units in ambush/reserve and any units summoned during game) 6) None Left Standing: your army has displeased Khorne and must sacrifice itself. All units originally on table at beginning of Round 1must be destroyed by end of the battle. I like this one for going up against OP lists and it is something that could be modified for each faction. Again, adapt objectives to each Faction’s specifics. Sylvaneth for example could have an objective where they need at least half their army to survive to protect the seed pods. Tzeentch could have spell based objectives. And so forth. The key is that they have to be big enough objectives that achieving them stands as a true alternative to the battleplan objective. The way I’d have it work in a tournament setting is as follows: - each match would be worth 10 potential points - winning a major victory in the battleplan is worth 4 pts, minor victory 2, and minor loss 1 - achieving your own Faction Objective is worth 3 pts - preventing your opponent from achieving their Faction Objective is worth 3 pts The last one is worth going into a little more detail on my thinking. Like Hidden Agendas you would not tell your opponent what your objective was before or during the game. This reflects the reality that in war the specific objective of the other army isn’t always clear. But certainly you would be trying to figure out what it is during the game. In the above if you were playing Khorne you could be asking yourself if your opponent is just trying to generate some Blood Tithe by charging that unit into a bad situation or are they trying to sacrifice everyone? To me this creates a win the battle, lose the war dynamic to even basic match play battleplans like Knife to the Heart (which seems to be everyone’s favorite intro to match play plan). Let’s say this is a Khorne v Sylvaneth match-up and the Khorne player is going for Skulls for the Skull Throne while the Sylvaneth player has chosen that preservation objective. Due to some very timely teleports and what the Sylvaneth player thought was a good job of dragging the majority of the Khorne player’s units off their objective and into the middle of the battlefield they win the battleplan and score 4 pts. But they lost more than half their models in holding that middle ground which means that they failed their faction objective AND the Khorne player achieved theirs. So Khorne scores 6 pts, making the Sylvaneth victory a Pyrrhic one.

The first option I considered was for 1v1 matches, as opposed to a tournament setting where multiple games will be played against multiple players over a day or to. Still, upfront it’s biggest drawback is the time requirement. The first and simpler variant I’ve always been interested in trying is where any battleplan (symmetrical or not) is played through once with each player controlling the army they brought to the table. At the end of the first game the players then switch armies and play through the same battleplan. The appeal of this to me is that it can neutralize some asymmetries in lists (e.g, as was frequently created by older vs newer tomes when I first started playing) and get to who is the better tactician. In other words if I can not only beat you with my own army, but then turn around and under the same conditions beat my original army with yours chances are I am not just a better list builder than you but a better player. Playing an unfamiliar army of course raises the difficulty but both players should be facing the same basic difficulty. (The added appeal for me if this scenario is the ability to experience playing armies I may not otherwise have a chance to. But as noted above this plan works equally well with the symmetrical battleplans in the General’s Handbook as it would in non-symmetrical battle plans. Given my focus on the latter an alternative variant would still involve two run throughs of the battleplan but instead of swapping armies (which I admit may create more issues than I’m addressing here for a variety of reasons) the players swap objectives. In other words if this battleplan calls for one defender and one attacker the players take a turn in each role. Ultimately though this “balance” is external to the individual matches. (It’s probably an excellent way to identify unbalanced battleplans in fact through simply seeing if one objective almost always wins regardless of who is playing each side.) And my interest is far more in identify methods that would provide internal balance to non-symmetrical battleplans....

I know for many the idea of non-symmetrical match play is a bit oxymoronic. But as my handle suggests I primarily come to Age of Sigmar from a perspective of having fun vs being competitive. The reality is though if you want to play frequently and/or play outside of your own small gaming group in order to experience the breadth and depth the game has to offer you’re going to play a lot if match play. And that typically means playing the mainly symmetrical battleplans in the General’s Handbook. Why? Because symmetrical objectives has become pretty synonymous with “fair” for match play. And while I “get it” I also usually quickly get bored with it. In part because it is very repetitive and thus allows the gameplay to fall into some pretty basic patterns. But mainly because as a student of history I know that rarely, if ever, do two armies fighting each other have the exact same objectives. One army is defending a position, for example, while another tries and take the position. Or one army is attempting an orderly retreat while the other is trying to envelope and crush it. Maybe one army is trying to cross a territory and the other is simply trying to harass it and slow it down. Now this is fantasy but that doesn’t mean we have to settle for the abstraction of symmetrical objectives. And in many of the battletomes we have some great examples of non-symmetrical battleplans that better reflect what I discussed above. But with many of them it is reasonable to suggest that they aren’t very well balanced. By that I mean that the probability of achieving your objective and or denying your opponent theirs is not relatively equitable. This is fine for fun or narrative play of course but trying to get a more match play oriented player to agree to these conditions can be tough. Are there good ways to balance non-symmetrical objectives for match play? I have a few ideas but I am really interested in learning what others have to say about the issue.

Blisterkin probably your next best bet, and particularly good if you’re focusing on 1K initially. Makes Flayers battleline so you’ll want to focus there fir initial build out post SC box. Abhorrant Archregent and Varghulf Courtier just as appealing in Blisterkin as Gristelgore.

Side note. Not sure whether you love painting small details (if so feel free to ignore) but when it came to the Crypt Ghouls I found contrast paints to be a lifesaver. If you start with a lighter tone for the body a lot of the details can be easily done using a darker tone. FEC was the first Army I completely painted on my own, and I doubled down on difficulty by having a tournament deadline I had to meet. Wouldn’t have made it without that little trick as it made the first base coat so much less stressful.

As far as building one of each type in most cases you will need/want to have the base unit size. For both Crypt Horrors and Crypt Flayers that will be 3 models each. That said if you’re just talking about your first Start Collecting Box it may be possible to build the two Courtiers (been awhile since I built mine so can’t remember if their parts overlap, sorry, but should be evident from instructions) and that’s more fun for you go ahead and have fun. If the Courtier parts do overlap than I would recommend starting with the Crypt Infernal Courtier and two Crypt Flayers. Then look on eBay where a cheap 3rd Crypt Flayers can often be picked up to fill out the unit. In general I’ve found Flayers more useful than Horrors, though opinions may vary. That said I feel confident in saying Flayers are more fun to paint which seems to be something you’re into. And yes, the tome does give different color patterns for different Grand Courts but no need to feel beholden to them. My FEC army is themed after Robinhood so forest greens and autumnal reds dominate my color palette despite running a Gristelgore list, which the tome suggests should be a bluish-grey I just wasn’t into. Oh yeah, wholly agree that next piece after SC box is Abhorrant Archregent. Resin annoying but also think worth considering a Varghulf Courtier as they are both another fun model to paint and a good potential Courtier to summon. Finally, at least one of your Royal Zombie Dragons or Royal Terrorgheists should probably be able to have an Abhorrant Ghoul King Mounted on them.

Agree that @Frowny breaks it down well. And yeah, the Abhorrant Archregent gets right to the point about bang for your buck casters. At 240 pts and two spells you’re paying 120 pts per. But that of course ignores the summoning (worth up to 200 pts on its own) and a great spell (d3 extra attacks for a Terrirgheist can be huge). And oh yeah, he’s got a decent save (4+), potential to negate wounds on a 6+, and heals himself. So he’ll probably stick around. Not to mention I’ve done very well with him when he’s gotten stuck in combat. Would have to look deeper into it but that sounds like as good or better a deal than the Gaunt Summoner... Regular Ghoul King no slouch either. As far as the actual non-war scroll spell lore agree not great but never had a problem finding enough options to fill all my Heroes’ options.

Before it got squatted have to say the Fungoid Cave Shaman was frequently a “Star” in my Braggoth’s Beasthammer list. Won a friendly small tournament with that list and couldn’t believe how much I was getting out of those 90 pts (especially given how few low cost options there were in old BCR). When I had the points to spare it was worth getting him up on a Balewind Vortex which made him even more resilient and effective.

This is a great point. We’ve seen this exact issue with Mawtribes where your cheapest casting option is an ally (and thus doesn’t have access to lore). Love the Voracious Maw spell though from a lore perspective (fits the Gutbuster’s perfectly) and from how much opponents have come to hate having it really go off on them. We’re often playing two tables simultaneously but after someone has had a unit chewed through (on admittedly some lucky rolls) they’ll often stop their game when someone on the other table gets the spell off to see how much damage it does. The sense of relief opponents have when it is satiated after first gulp is palpable. That said if I understand correctly Arkhan has an even better version of it? (One of the Death characters at least...) I guess though the other factor is are you getting anything else with the caster? I’ve been amazed at the variation, even at similar price points between Heroes that are only good for casting and ones that offer you so much more bang for your buck. Some to the point where the cast can almost feel like a bonus.

Fortunately we’re lucky there. Two of our key players came over from historical war games where 2v2 is the norm. But the first time we did I think the key was using the narrative to determine deployment. In the narrative the Grots were holed up in an old Duardin stronghold in one corner while the Ogors were in a valley on the other side. Similarly the Sylvaneth were deploying from an Awakened Wyldwood in the middle of a forest on one side of the board (coming down out of the same mountains as the Duardin Stronghold) while the KO were in the more open plain on the other side where their ships had easier flying. The middle of each side was occupied by some fun pieces the players had requested (Rogue Idol and Colossal Squig on Destruction side which the lead grot character had respectively activated and mastered in the narrative, and a Flamespyre Phoenix and Magmadroth, both more favors called in by the General). For rounds 1 & 2 then it basically played out as almost two separate games with the advantage that both players on which ever side whose turn it was doing their actions (movement, shooting, combat, etc.) at the same time. By ro7nd 3 of course everything was mixed up but by then the numbers were down to much more reasonable amounts. Game was won on the last combat of the last turn when the Sylvaneth finally secured their objective giving Order a 2-1 advantage on that front. Thinking about that though made me realize how important controlling deployment has been to the success of all our narrative games. Fortunate to have a gaming group where as long as their is a narrative logic to how the units are initially deployed (or come onto the field in later rounds) there are no complaints. This seems to do a very good job of preventing some of the issues related to “over powered” units wrecking the dynamic, and we’ve incorporated plenty of them over the last year.

What about specific factions Tzeentch might struggle with? With Tzeentch coming soon to my local gaming group we’ve been talking which armies we have that might present harder match ups for them. One we’ve been discussing a lot has been Khorne (posted a list we discussed on that thread). Basic thinking was: 1) lots of cheap unbinds, including ones that get bonuses to the roll or deal back damage 2) no spell casting to feed into Tzeentch summoning - but plenty of prayers that can hit them back and/or buff Khorne units 3) cheap chaff for screening lack of shooting to snipe their Heroes and thus breakdown their buffs an obvious drawback. We also have KO, Mawtribes, and FEC that we’re debating what an anti-Tzeentch list for would look like...

One reason first narrative cycle worked so well was everyone was still learning the game and thus more willing to play smaller sized armies and partner with another player. These days those most players want there own roughly 2K sized list and want to control their own destinies. We did have a successful 4-way dance with Swifthawk protecting a field hospital where Nurgle had detected a new infection it wanted to claim as its own. In approaching the field hospital though the GUO had to go by an Awakened Wyldwood where he was recognized as someone Drycha wanted revenge on. Meanwhile an Execution Herd’s migration had brought it into the valley this was all taking place in. The contrasting objectives of each army made for a compelling game but with that many armies there was often a little too much downtime. So since then we’ve mainly focused on 1v1 plans that tie together. For our next narrative cycle we are looking at a territory-based game that would give us a chance to try out a lot of the new battletomes. The basics would be a Khorne Daemon army and a Khorne Mortal army competing to see who could collect the most skulls for the skull throne. They’d face off against KO, Gutbusters, BCR, and probably Sylvaneth across a series of matches. Sets up nice enough for another big 8K blowoff battle.

Our gaming group started with a narrative campaign. In the first game three drunken Ogors (a Butcher, a Firebelly, and a Tyrant) had gone on a rampage over who was the better killer, eventually attracting a larger horde (1k points basically) of other Ogors. The rampage had gotten so bad the Swifthawk Agents were dispatched to stop the mob. Unbeknownst to them a Gitmob has started following the Ogors, taking advantage of the mayhem they were creating. Worked for four players, each of whom had specific narrative objectives. In the second game, following the pyrrhic Swifthawk Agents victory (only the general and a few other units had survived), the Swifthawk Agents had sent out Skycutters to find the remnants. One ended up crashing in a hidden Sylvaneth Grove that was otherwise surrounded by a forest full of Spiderfang Grots. As the Grots rushed to destroy the Skycutter the small force of Sylvaneth tried to protect them. Each turn more units would come onto to battlefield depending on a random roll. The final game saw the Swifthawk General form an alliance with the Sylvaneth and call in favors he was owed by the Kharadron Overlords to fully eradicate the grot and Ogor presence in the region. While the other two were roughly 2k pts on each side this one was a big blow off at roughly 8k total points. Took a bit of work readjusting each scenario to accommodate the outcome of the previous game but small tweaks (like giving a unit of Swordmasters that kept surviving a ‘veteran’ bonus) really got people engaged. When the Swifthawk General finally died in the big battle he actually got a spontaneous moment of silence the players had gotten so attached...

While I play plenty of matched play as someone who got into the game for the narrative aspects I would add in that I like a spell lore that really matches with the faction’s back story. After that I would concur that the keys are buffs that either make something the faction already focuses on an even greater strength or helps offset a weakness and debuffs that make your opponent’s job harder. As in the above if you include prayers I agree that Khorne meets both criteria. Another one that I have been very happy with, particularly if you include the spells on the war scrolls, has been Flesh-eater Courts. Being able to stack attacks on an Abhorrant Ghoul King on Royal Terrorgheist and thus increasing the odds of a Gaping Maw (6 MWs on an unmodified 6) can really ruin your opponent’s day. If you’re running a lot of degrading war scrolls in Gristelgore than being able to use top of the table key. On the same note adding extra movement can really help you get some of your non-monster units in position.

Can’t speak to Skulltake battalion. I have run Murderhost with Skulltaker and while the Bloodletters (I could only run minimum size units admittedly) Skulltaker did well for me. Only issue is be aware as a named character he can’t take an artefact.

I’ve been trying a Blood Hunt + Gore Pilgrims list as an anti-Wizard army with Tzeentch entering my local gaming group. So far the question of Karanak has been whether he summons the extra unit of Flesh Hounds? When he has it has been hard to complain about a net 40 points for an unbind that can deal back some damage. That said you’re right once he gets into it he hasn’t tended to hold up all that well or do much damage so I’ve had to screen him until I can get him into his quarry.

Relatively new to a Khorne myself but believe you’re still short on one of your battalion requirements: Blood Hunt (120 pts) Wrath of Khorne Bloodthirster (300 pts) Karanak (140 pts) Minimum 3 Units of Flesh Hounds (@100 pts each) Blood Mad Warband (160 pts) Aspiring Deathbringer (80 pts) Bloodsecrator (120 pts) 3 Units of Blood Warriors (@100 pts each) Minimum 1 Unit of Bloodreavers (70 pts) 1 Unit of Skullreapers (180 pts) which I believe takes you to 1770 pts total. You’ve clearly met your battleline requirements but you’re going to need to make some choices with the rest of the list as far as the Slaughterpriests and Judgements. If this is really the way you want to go I’d go for the two Slaughterpriests and drop the Judgements (reminder you’ll need to take at least one Slaughterpriest if you’re going to take any Judgements). And agree you’d probably want to go Reapers instead of Skullfiend with this list. Personally, not sure I’d go with Blood Mad Warband for a mixed list given the number of units it requires and that the bonus only comes on the charge. There are a lot easier ways to add an attack than this with Khorne.

Thanks for the follow up. If I’m thinking about this right I lose two unbinds from dropping priest and mighty lord but gain one (that deals damage back) from taking Reapers as well as the second pile in command ability. Had run Tyrants battalion the other weekend against an army with a lot of Rend and MWs from Shooting and had a tough time keeping them on table. Long enough to do real damage. Tzeentch has less Rend (absent a sub-faction choice admittedly) and if between loathsome to sorcery, unbinds and Hexgorger I an cut down on casting based MWs maybe I’ll have better luck getting full use of my Bloodthirsters. Thanks again.

New to thread and new to Khorne so apologies if I missed a similar discussion earlier. With a Tzeentch list soon to join our local gaming group was exploring Khorne’s myriad ways to make Wizards miserable and came up with following: Slaughterhost: Bloodlords (know Reapers more anti-Wizard but felt I may need the first activation and extra 4” movement for WoK) Wrath of Khorne Bloodthirster (General) - Halo of Blood - Slaughter’s Thirst Bloodsecrator - Blood-forged Armor Slaughterpriest - Killing Frenzy Slaughterpriest - Bronzed Flesh Slaughterpriest -Resaguination Mighty Lord of Khorne -Mark of the Destroyer 5x Flesh Hounds 5x Flesh Hounds 5x Flesh Hounds 40x Bloodreavers 5x Blood Warriors Karanak Gore Pilgrims Battalion Blood Hunt Battalion Hexgorger Skulls Wrath-Axe Gives me a ridiculous number of unbinds, at least a couple of which have bonuses. Khorne already limits the amount of Summoning Points Tzeentch will get. Just not sure how well this list will hold up. Second question goes to whether the Blood Tithe unbind can be used after the Tzeentch player has spent Destiny Dice?