Ghoooouls

Our house rule is shield costs 1, and they're still useless. One handed weapons are too bad and require too much upgrading. We are gonna do more testing, but shields costing 1 or free and one handed weapons starting at 3s to hit and wound minimum with -1 rend might work.

You do step 2 (picking weapons and shield) before step 6 where you can choose armour. So if you have a shield, then buy armour, the armour upgrade still says to a max of 3+. So it is impossible to have a 2+ save. But yeah I commented the +1 save when I hadn't seen the book and was going off what others said.

Here is one of mine, I get annoyed that the only vampires we have are crappy casters, I miss the days of the different bloodlines. Me and my group have other house rules which is why he may seem like he has an ability or two that are not on the AoA. He also does not have rend on his shooting attack, forgot to take it off, but he has 2x casts which I forgot to put in haha. I also made a mounted version, and a von carstein too.

Change of topic but I'm loving my blood knights lol. Very early WIP, but so much cooler than my old chaos knight conversions.. highly recommend them.

Yeah for sure. If you dont take a mount you're paying a lot more. I was hoping to create some cool vamps on foot, and you definitely can, but for around 300 points for a 7 wound hero on foot with like 5 attacks? After looking through it all I think 10x DP for a hero on a gargantuan is fine. But i think 8x is more suited for the rest.

Yeah for sure. If you dont take a mount you're paying a lot more. I was hoping to create some cool vamps on foot, and you definitely can, but for around 300 points for a 7 wound hero on foot with like 5 attacks? After looking through it all I think 10x DP for a hero on a gargantuan is fine. But i think 8x is more suited for the rest.

Good point!

Ah after checking all the leaks I'm not too excited for this anymore My plans for a duel wield vampire lord are over, there seems to be very little point in having 1 handed weapons at all. 3 attacks 4s 3s no rend damage 1 is pathetic. In fact it's worse than a grave guard. The 2 handed axe is 3 attacks 4s 2s rend 2 damage 2 for only a point extra. can easily spend 2 points to add 1 to hit on the axe and its deadly already. To get a sword anywhere near that its 2 points to add to hit, 2 more to add rend and 2 more to add damage. This means even if i left them at damage 1 I would be spending 10 points just on swords to get 6 attacks total, 3s 3s rend 1 damage 1. still worse than the great axe in most situations. yeah you can add a shield but honestly who cares when you can pay for armour anyway? Why waste points upgrading an utter garbage weapon just so you can have a shield? May as well just go with the great axe and upgrade the armour 3 times. Way cheaper. seems like this is geared towards two extremes. Massive monster riding guys and little rubbish buffing heroes with no inbetween unless you want to seriously gimp yourself.

How do you get this to work? I've tried multiple times to use the rune brush warscroll builder and it looks nothing like yours. When I do the description, it will have the title 'description' where yours is, but then the actual description of the unit goes to where your abilities and command ability are?? Same goes for when typing abilities etc. As well. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I was calculating without buffs just scroll vs scroll so maybe that's it.

The tool on druuchi.net is what I use, input to hit, to wound, save etc. The only thing you can't do is input random damage, so I use the average of the random damage. Either way, I've learned that too much mathhammer isn't a good thing as you kinda lose track of variables so they can obviously perform better and worse. Sword of judgement king is a beast!

It doesnt take into account decimals so I'm assuming theres some rounding up and down in the finer details. Either way I think you have a strong list in some match ups, you'll have to report back. I've played vs lumineth a couple of times on PC and whilst theyve got nothing on pre nerf slaanesh, they're very strong. All units casting to improve mortal wound output on themselves etc. The cav are insane against foot units, teclis is an outright beast if he can survive, even just for giving an 18" bubble of 5+ FNP to the army and hes worth it. Portal coupled with his nuke is ridiculous and he can do it all automatically. So portal 18" range then his nuke spell through it to hit all units within 18" and do mortals to them all.

Theres a hell of a lot in the game that'll kill a 5 wound hero from range these days. New lumineth archers for instance 5+ mortal wounds at 30 inch range, pretty much any wizard in the game, sisters etc. It's cool, I use the damage calculator that shows you the percentage chance of wounds after you enter the hit, wound and save characteristics with rerolls etc. 4 cannons have a 3% chance to do 0, 14% chance to do 3, 26% chance to do 9, 18% chance to do 12, 8% chance to do 15 and 2% to do 18. Of course this is all averages and doesn't include rerolling damage, but to me sinking 800 points into artillery that, on average, will do 9 wounds per turn may not be worth it considering it's the main damage output of the army. 4 auto hitting trebs have a 2% chance to do 3 wounds, a 7% chance to do 6 wounds, 17% to do 9, 26% to do 12, 26% to do 15, 16% to do 18, 6% to so 21 and 1% to do 24. Again all averages and not including the cannons reroll damage which can be better or worse than the original roll unless you only reroll 1s. So on average 4 trebs auto hitting will do 12-15 wounds and a higher chance to do more than that. Kinda pointless discussion now though as you say 4x trebs is way too expensive for what they are. Personally I'd go with some wizards, handgunners or other decent shooting units and bring the soul scream bridge to teleport them turn 1 and nuke anything for a fraction of the cost. The bonus here is the units you teleport are cheap, dangerous and also act as a screen for counter attacking enemy charges with their stand and shoot ability annoying anyone that has to charge them. Not trying to change your list or anything just offering some other ideas as I said before my main worry would be cannons/heroes dying and then your damage output is gone. I think you may be underestimating nagash here too... with immortis in petrifex he currently can easily have 2+ rerollable armour followed by 2+ shrug onto the immortis who then themselves can have a 5+ FNP save and then another 6+ FNP save. If nagash rolls a 1 and takes the wound himself, he has 5++ 6++ and teleports anywhere on the board, he also heals 3 to himself and guard per turn not including spells. Yeah portal is 1x cast per turn but he can just hand of dust all your heroes whilst bolting the rest of your army. Teclis on the other hand I agree with, his big weakness is lists like yours. Intriguing that you feel that way about magic though, it's a must in any game I've ever played to have at least one caster just for random mortal wound output, defense etc. The enchantress coupled with a block of grails for instance would destroy nagash far quicker than 4 cannons, but I guess the downside here is they need to reach him first. This is all pre GHB 2020 ofcourse. I really hope brets arent removed entirely with this edition.

Ah sorry I misunderstood what you meant then! Yeah I think my group will make a house rule that as long as it makes sense, we can add the relevant keyword. So I can make a ghoul king and give him the abhorrant one or whatever. That's the best thing about AoS in my opinion, making a nice blend of tournament and fun!

Armour characteristic enhancement caps out at 3+ save so 3+ ethereal is the best, if you want to get a better save you'll need to equip a shield on your hero and that adds 1 to save rolls, so as it is a modifier therefore the ethereal rule ignores it, meaning your save would still be 3+ ethereal even with the shield. I really like what I see though, other than my other comment about not having certain keywords, and I really hope it catches on for future tomes.

Anyone else notice they seem to have forgotten, or intentionally missed out some faction keywords? Lumineth aelf wont be able to cast any lumineth spells or choose any faction traits or artefacts. Flesh eater courts mordant hero cannot choose any traits or artefacts from the FEC battletome. Cannot be given abhorrant or courtier keyword so will not benefit from any buffs like being near serf units in morgaunt grand court, casting a spell wont buff varghulf as they cant be abhorrant etc. Etc. Theres a lot like this.

Anyone else notice they seem to have forgotten, or intentionally missed out some faction keywords? Lumineth aelf wont be able to cast any lumineth spells or choose any faction traits or artefacts. Flesh eater courts mordant hero cannot choose any traits or artefacts from the FEC battletome. Cannot be given abhorrant or courtier keyword so will not benefit from any buffs like being near serf units in morgaunt grand court, casting a spell wont buff varghulf as they cant be abhorrant etc. Etc. Theres a lot like this.

I wouldn't go as far as saying 'so much worse'. They're different for sure and both have their pros and cons, I've seen them used to great success many times, although usually only 1 or 2 in an army. They have much longer range than cannons, and the auto hitting larger units means they have a 100% hit rate compared to 50% chance for normal shots (like the cannons before buffs). For instance, scroll vs scroll trebuchets on average do more damage than cannons against units they auto-hit. Cannons have a 43% chance do to 0 wounds to a unit with a 4+ save whereas trebs only have a 20% chance to do 0 and a higher chance to do more than that, meaning you're dishing out damage way more consecutively. Obviously with buffs, rerolls and the likes this all changes and it looks like you've planned that well, but against certain armies I would 100% prefer a treb with their 12 inch extra range and auto hitting units as well as being much more thematic, but for 4x artillery like you say trebs way too expensive. You've clearly based your army around cannons which sound like they would be great which is why I would like to hear how they do, just not sure how well brets will do focussing on lots of artillery, with not much to defend other than mediocre men at arms. Like I say, entirely situational and all in the list building, but against horde armies I would go with a treb all day, theres a lot of very fast ambushing armies out there with massive ranged potential too, and if they kill your relatively easy to kill cogsmith and lord ord, your 4 cannons are suddenly much less effective, in fact hitting on average the same as just 2 trebuchets vs larger units and you've sunk close to 1000 points into 4 shooting units that will hit 50% of the time and still have very random damage output. The lower range also means enemy ranged things are more likely to connect and your threat bubble is smaller. Come up against nagash like you mention and he can portal + bolt your cannons down in one turn, or at least make them next to useless with no crew. Once the cannons are wounded or dead its game over, nothing else in your army poses any threat to something like nagash, if he has immortis guard and gets his spells up you will end up doing very little. Putting all your eggs in one basket works when it's something incredibly versatile like Nagash, but 4 artillery units I'm not so sure. Whereas for similar points you bring more variety, a single treb for the threat at massive range coupled with some hard hitting units like grails and enchantress. With all that said it comes back to list building and your list works great for cannons, my worry would be how easy it is for certain armies to kill your main heroes and then all you're left with is a but ton of men at arms and some cannons. You have no mortal wound protection and no protection against magic to boot (bar the king).

I'll definitely post some when I've got the book. Very different approach to ghoul king (on foot) coming for me, and blood dragon vampire dual wielding swords.... cannot wait!

Will be interesting to know how the cannons perform. The bonus of trebs is they can shoot without line of sight and automatically hit units with more than 6 models, I think the cannons definitely will be good too but maybe fit a different role like you say with character shooting.

Loremaster has an incredible spell for grails. I'm not sure the loremaster exists anymore though..? Teclis and a lot of the new lumineth have abilities that work on friendly units so you could check them out.

You're exactly right, and gotrek actually had a 3+ FNP save not 4+ so its even harder to kill him. One thing I've overlooked in that past that makes gotrek even better is the damage reduction affects each attack, so abilities like 6s to hit splitting into 2 hits doesn't matter, as they stem from the same attack so even if you rolled 4 6s to hit and 8 wound rolls that all wounded, those 4 original attacks are what hit 8 times and so can only do 4 damage max

Nice if this is true, for a super old tome we arent in such a bad position already, point reductions will be very welcome until an update!

Any chance you could show?

I just want to see LoN points leaked dammit! Looks like I'll be using my black knights as hexwraiths now.