Ganigumo

Obviously cultists are weak outside of Idolators. In terms of wound efficiency golems are 7 points per wound, marauders are 8 points per wound, and warriors are 9 points per wound. The problem with warriors is that they serve literally no purpose in the army. They don't hit hard enough, take objectives well enough, aren't fast enough, aren't durable enough for the cost, and don't have access to any unique buffs. We can all play what we like, Warriors are really cool, but they lose to marauders in pretty much every meaningful aspect. In a competitive setting it's very hard to justify their inclusion. Idolators cultists (some of them) actually provide some decent pushback to the benefits of taking marauders, in a way Warriors don't, because they have that same broken charge rule. Iron golems in particular are strong because they actually do something marauders don't since they focus on being an anvil. Idolator cultists aren't a Warrior alternative, they're a marauder alternative.

6 skyfires shooting should do around 2-6 damage, or 3-7 with a shaman nearby. If the skyfires shoot their target first, and get rerolls you can expect slightly higher total damage than enlightened with similar buffs.

So I was reading through the bonesplitterz part of warclans when I realized something. The Icebone Command ability Triggers at the end of the combat phase and lets a boarboys unit retreat. Gorkamorka's war cry forces a unit to fight last. Because of how these abilities activate, if it is the bonesplitterz's player's turn he will resolve his "end of the combat phase" abilities before the other player does, meaning he can activate the command ability before the enemy unit has a chance to fight. From what I can see the only sources of fights last we have access to are Gorkamorka's war cry and the gloomspite spell itchy nuisance (if we ally in a gloomspite wizard AND bring the arachnocauldron)

From the core Rules Designer's Commentary So yes, and you can point them towards this part of the designer's commentary if they don't believe you.

I actually do think this could be fixed with points to some extent, at least tzeentch. Personally I don't have any experience with lumineth. these shooting armies basically need to be pointed out of being 1-3 drops. With Tzeentch it would be easy just by nerfing changehost more, at this point it basically needs to be nerfed into unplayability. Changehost was definitely a mistake. With KO reverting their point drops would help, I don't think they're overly out of line? Certainly they cause a lot of NPE though. Armies exist that can counter heavy shooting, and part of our issue is that things have been locked down, and the meta not evolving as a result. In particular armies that are fast and durable, but not necessarily particularly hard hitting, as many shooting armies have low defense. Although maybe we should add a penalty (like -1 to hit) for shooting into melee to bring them in line a bit.

Yes the double turn is divisive, but something isn't divisive because half the community hates it, and half the community doesn't care. The issue about magic and shooting heavy armies tabling people on the double isn't a flaw with the double turn, it was a failure of the book writers to balance things properly. The double turn predates the worst offenders, and it seems the writers at GW didn't see the issue of giving shooting focused armies low drops. The double makes AoS more insteresting by reducing the number of right answers. I don't know if depth is the right term, but by adding unpredictability in the order things unfold the priority roll adds weight to both sides of the risk/reward dichotomy of decision making. Heres an example: A unit of knights wants to fight a unit of orcs 20" away, the knights can move 8", and charge 2d6", the orcs move 4" and charge 2d6" With a static turn order the knights have a 1/36 chance of making that charge. and the orcs have a 40% chance to be able to counter-charge on their turn, with a 0% chance of making the charge if I don't approach. With a priority roll those knights have a 1/36 chance of making that charge, if I have the potential of a double I have a 13/36 chance, since the chance of getting a double is 12/36 (I think). If my opponent has the potential of a double he can threaten the knights even if they don't move (only a 1/36 chance in this scenario but its very simplistic). A full game is much more complex, but even this simplistic scenario shows how much it changes the weights of the decisions in a good way. In short I'll compare it to 40k, which I have some experience in. 40K gives the player a "best" answer, and obscures it by making it out of 100 options. AOS gives the player 5 options, but each has its own Risk/reward. So 40k tends to play more like a puzzle, with an answer, and aos tends to play like roulette, bet big and win/lose big, or bet safe and win/lose small.

Keeping the priority roll. This is what makes AoS unique. Don't remove it just because a handful of bent armies abuse it, fix the offending armies and leave it as it is. It adds much needed dynamism to the game and you need to strategize around it, of course it will lose you games sometimes, but it will also win you games sometimes. Deciding whether or not to risk something on the potential of a big reward if you get a double, or holding it back so you don't overextend yourself if you don't presents meaningful decisions with no "right" answer, this is good. I've found playing with a static turn order to be much less interesting lately, because it changes every scenario into one with a "right" or "best" answer instead of creating scenarios with different risks and rewards which you need to weigh against each other. That isn't to say you don't need to weigh your options with a static turn order, but the added dynamism of the priority roll reduces the number of scenarios where one option is actually the "best" one. Keep the first turn in the control of the players, sure some battletomes have better options for controlling it, but that should be part of the balance of the game, and any failures are due to poor book writing. Increase monster movement. I know some monsters are fast, but alot are slow (looking at you arachnarok). Let them run 2d6" instead of 1d6" (maybe putting in a rule about them not being able to charge even if they get run & charge after) Changing the Core command abilities. We've seen a lot of reroll charge command abilities that are just worse than the core rule one which leads me to believe these may be changing. Buff look out sir, maybe to the 40k version, or just letting things block line of sight more effectively, like if you're behind a unit of the same or a larger base you can't be seen, regardless of the "model". no more shooting characters through the legs of trolls! Shooting into combat has a penalty (maybe just -1 to hit) no penalty if you're shooting at something you're in melee with A list of Generic artefacts available to everyone. Return of Gitmob!

No, spiders are nowhere close to being competitive, even with the new rules. That said I did a show with AosCoach going over the new stuff and some lists. The new rules are definitely a buff to spiders overall though, and what we need is either significant point drops (to the point where spider riders are cheap wounds) or some new warscrolls. I'll try to summarize my thoughts on the WD stuff though Battalions: Grimscuttle nest: Avoid this, a free teleport every turn would be good on a unit that can reasonably take points, but on a monster with a 160mm base and no charge bonuses that can already deploy anywhere once per game its not worth it. If you want to run skitterstrands stick with the skitterstrand nest from the battletome (which we still keep access to in the subfaction) Grimscuttle Spider Cluster: Great unit composition, allowing us to take multiple webspinners on arachnaroks in a single battalion, sadly arachnaroks don't get a huge benefit from +1 to hit, it adds up to about ~1.2 damage on the top bracket. The fangs naturally hit on 2s at the top bracket too which doesn't help. Grimscuttle Skitterswarm: Amazing, this battalion has great unit composition, and a great effect. The only downside is that you need to roll for the number of units to redeploy, You could fit 2 of these in an army. Remember that you can ignore sub-titles for units in battalions, so you can bring the webspinner on arachnarok in this. Abilities: 5+ spell negate: not at all what we needed, but a good effect. Just don't forget about it. Skitterstrands reroll hits against wizards and priests: very situational, skitterstrands should normally tear through foot wizards but it will help them against monster wizards Command Ability: Powerful effect but we're made of paper anyways, most of the time when we're in a position to use this our unit has already been clobbered beyond being useful. Still stay on the lookout for good opportunities. Command Trait: Amazing, this is the main reason to run this subfaction (and the reason why I think you should always have a webspinner general now). Turning on the moon effect once per game just adds a bit more consistency to our buffs. Important to note its Webspinner shaman general only, which means if you did take a scuttleboss general you could still pick from the battletome command traits (although none of those come to this one in utility) Artefact: meh, basically a tax, give it to your webspinner general to turn his +2 bravery aura into a +3 one, and get some bravery 9 spider riders. Luckily spiderfang battalions are great, so its easy to make lists with more artefacts than we know what to do with. Loonshrine Update: While technically available to all subfactions if they have a spiderfang general this is really good for us. Spider riders are made of paper, and will die so getting some back makes it hurt less. Overall amazing abilities from the white dwarf for us spiderfang players, but it didn't address our problems of doing no damage, low bulk, and being hyper reliant on inconsistent buffs.

20 points cheaper, but they have more bodies, 8 iron golems per 5 chaos warriors. Its a big deal for controlling objectives and space, and 20 points is a lot when you're running bigger units. 24 iron golems is 30 wounds for 210 points, 15 chaos warriors are 270 points for 30 wounds. The price difference is significant when you're running a lot of them, and chaos warriors don't exactly have high damage anyways. Plus it's much more difficult to maintain the rerolls on chaos warriors who need 10+ models, where iron golems keep it to the last model. also as @Sinfullyvannila said they only lose rerolls if they made a normal move. which means charges and pile-ins don't break it, you also have it if you just moved up/ran and didn't charge, since it will be active again when your opponent gets to charge. The point of these guys is durability, and they do it better than chaos warriors for cheaper, leaving points leftover to fill in the loss in offense.

I know this isn't a gargant, but this is a kairic acolyte with wraithbone spray, then flayed one flesh, then gore-grunta fur thinned with some contrast medium

Skyfires aren't a ranged unit. They're a melee unit with ranged utility. Their shooting attacks do work, but not 67 points per model work, so you need to take advantage of their melee strength, which is deceptively good. They reroll all hit and wound rolls if they fight first, and with their speed it isn't hard to get charges off with them. 6 skyfires fighting first will put out 9-18 damage most of the time in melee, although it can be pretty swingy with the d3 damage and attacks. 6 enlightened put out 9-19 without buffs, or 12-22 with a nearby shaman. (Their damage skyrockets to 25-37 if they get their rerolls but it triggers on fighting after something else nearby has already fought, and enlightened aren't exactly durable). Hopefully this puts it into perspective (although I agree that they could probably afford to come down a little)

Agreed. Nurgle Iron golems are insane. Warshrine for +1 to save, base rerolls (or a nearby chaos sorcerer if you want to move them). These guys get to a 3+ rerollable/6++ (or 5++ if you bring a harbinger of decay...) Thats as tough as petrifex was and they're dirt cheap at 7 points a wound. If you wanted to get really spicy you could bring in Glottkin for his +1 wound spell, and +1 attack CA...

Ok I've come up with a first draft of a list for Idolators. Khorne Marked, bringing in a Bloodsecrator and having Be'Lakor for magic support. I'm using Corvus cabal at the moment, but would probably be better served if I was using untamed beasts for the min sized units, and splintered fang for the big one. I've got a unit of 10 knights here, not sure if thats standard or if I should drop it down to 5 and bring a few more bodies. Allegiance: Slaves to Darkness- Damned Legion: IdolatorsMortal Realm: AqshyLeadersIdolator Lord on Chaos Chariot (120)- General- Command Trait: Fiery Orator- Mark of Chaos: Khorne- Prayer: Blessings of KhorneChaos Lord (110)- Reaperblade & Daemonbound Steel- Artefact: Incandescent Rageblade- Mark of Chaos: KhorneChaos Lord (110)- Reaperblade & Daemonbound Steel- Mark of Chaos: KhorneBe'Lakor (240)- Spell: Mask of DarknessBloodsecrator (120)- AlliesBattleline27 x Corvus Cabal (210)9 x Corvus Cabal (70)9 x Corvus Cabal (70)10 x Chaos Knights (320)- Cursed Lance- Mark of Chaos: KhorneUnits10 x Chaos Chosen (280)- Mark of Chaos: KhorneBehemothsChaos Warshrine (170)- Mark of Chaos: KhorneBattalionsBloodmarked Warband (180)Total: 2000 / 2000Extra Command Points: 1Allies: 120 / 400Wounds: 141

So I'm processing the Idolators changes, and am probably gonna try to make them work now, last time I tried listbuilding them it was suffering but I've still got a few things I'm not 100% on but I think might work. They still don't have artefacts yet but maybe they'll get it next time? Idolators command traits specify "Idolator Priest general only" which means our warshrines can be our general and take command traits, but arent Heroes so they can't take artefacts or use command abilities despite having a leader role. Unfortunately this means the warshrine can't turn on marks (unless you become a hero when you have the leader role but I haven't seen that anywhere, so probably don't take a warshrine general so you don't miss out on the improved aura). Does anyone know if the command trait to pray two prayers a turn works on the warshrine? Does the Rules around prayers are a bit strange at times Cultists now have the mark of your Idolator lord. While they are still less killy than marauders, they've got some gas now, as they each have an upside that marauders don't. Note: Some of the cultist models are on 25mm bases, so in a bigger unit you can put all the 25mm ones in the front. Tzeentch or Undivided Iron golems have some good bulk for their cost, or even Nurgle if you ally in a Harbinger of Decay Splintered Fang gets mortals on 6s to hit, so a khorne or Slaanesh mark could up their damage significantly and you have easy access to rerolls through the warshrine or a khone idolator lord. Corvus Cabal rerolls charges by default, and can pass over terrain features when they move (not just normal move, so pile-ins and charges are fine) Untamed beasts get a super useful pregame move. We could put them into the battalion to get tons of cheap chaff with low drops to control the battlefield Spire Tyrants have some interesting bonuses, +1 to hit on the charge, and they get 12 damage 1 attacks and 1 damage 2 attack, still adds up to less than normal marauders in most circumstances at a glance, but they're cheaper. Unfortunately I don't see a big advantage to taking Unmade or Cypher lords yet, but I'm not very experienced with the army yet Cultists having marks means they qualify for the 4 god specific battalions now. We can't use that extra artefact, but they'll help us with CP and keeping drops low. There may be some gas to running the nurgle battalion with a bunch of MSU untamed beasts, so the screens can bounce some mortals back while they die. I'm going through my listbuilding process at the moment and I'll post the list when I'm finished for review. Haven't quite decided what I'm taking but I really like corvus cabal so I'll be bringing some amount of them.

In terms of lumineth it seems the tome was future proofed no? We get free warscrolls in the app and they might release a new set of warscroll cards. Broken realms will probably have a few new subfactions if you want to focus on the new units and maybe some artifacts? It feels like the only thing you'll need broken realms for is if you want to make an army with the new units as the core of the army. AOS is actually in a pretty good spot for releasing models without a new book since the warscrolls are so accessible. The DoK book release is a bit unfortunate in terms of timing, but the release schedule is still all messed up anyways so maybe that played a part in it.

I've been hyped for new gitmob since we saw the warcry warband, definitely feels like they're teasing it to some extent. Not sure if they belong in gloomspite but I'll be happy as long as we get them in some form.

Personally I think LoN is going to be replaced by Soulblight Gravelords. The gravelords part seems to indicate there's more going on in there than just vampires and it wouldn't be a stretch to roll the remaining LoN stuff into gravelords. In particular I suspect they're going to remove all the stuff that nighthaunt and bonereapers are using, and that leaves vampires, zombies, and skeletons. I don't think it makes any sense to keep legions around if the only things it has exclusively are zombies and skeletons, especially when we have another skeleton-like army in bonereapers. Rolling them together and making a book thats' more like classic vampire counts makes sense, with vampires and their minions. Nagash will hopefully get a warscroll that just has all the death faction keywords this time, just like archaon does for chaos. I suspect this will be a pretty hefty release overall though. somewhere between 5-8 kits. My current guesses for kits are : Vampire on foot (confirmed), Blood Knights (probably dual kit with another variant), Vampire infantry, new zombies, and there will be another 1-3 kits that are very unexpected and novel, like a zombie giant and/or a new named character. I'd also speculate that an inevitable battle box would have a mounted vampire hero to go alongside the blood knights.

My suggestion (and what helped me the most) was to build an army list I was excited for (doesn't need to be "good" I tend to focus lists around models I like regardless of their strength because they're cool/I want to paint them) then I go at it like a checklist. Its about breaking the work down into a manageable size.

Madcaps can also cast a second spell once per game, although there is a chance they will take some wounds back, plus their spell is a useful defensive one, giving a unit -1 to be hit from shooting.

I mean what other purpose would there be to keep the kits around at all? Forgeworld makes a ton of wierd decisions, but squatting half a line, and keeping the other half makes no sense at all unless you are planning on doing something with it. They would just squat the whole line.

I bet the remaining kits are gonna get rolled into existing factions. Bull Centaurs will go BoC, Infernal Guard and the Iron Daemon War engine will get rolled into STD, and K'dai fireborn already fit into legion of chaos ascendent, but might get another keyword too.

Yeah I understand their position, but adding a few warscrolls to the app should be a simple job, probably just uploading them into the database, while the 40k app has a ton of issues that need work from my understanding. Its about prioritizing value, but the fact that what should be very simple changes on the AOS app are getting delayed by months in favor of working on the 40k app either means their software is poorly engineered (and its actually a significant effort to add warscrolls) or the small amount of labor required to keep the AOS app up to date isn't worth their time.

I mean it certainly can't take that long to update the app either, but look at how that's been dragging, we still don't have the new warcry warbands or the updated bonegrinder profile.

I've been feeling the burn of the way GW has been handling the lockdowns as well, but they're a business with shareholders to please. Its pretty obvious at this point that the AOS schedule was pushed back ~6 months by the lockdowns, while the 40k one was kept as close to schedule as they could (leading up to indomitus at least). SoB and Lumineth were both supposed to predate the GHB which normally releases in June, but were pushed way back so they could get indomitus out at the start of their fiscal year. Slaanesh was absolutely supposed to be out already, probably around september initially, and I imagine GW had originally intended to release or officially reveal the new death release around Halloween so they probably should've released in 2020 or very early 2021. Basically AOS has been 6 months behind schedule for like half a year now, and it doesn't look like we're in line to catch up anytime soon. We could end up waiting a while, if we're ~6 months behind schedule, and they made the FAQ with some of those releases in mind they might not want to re-edit everything to clean it up and instead just wait until we're closer to the releases and everything has been shown off.

I definitely want screamer surfers, discs are cool, but having a unit of kairics/warriors surfing on screamers would be cool. If there's another battletome coming as well I'd love to see each of our subfactions get a spell that only they know.