Neil Arthur Hotep

GW generally seems to make it harder than it needs to be to get into their "real" games from their spin-offs. Warcry is a good example. It should be an easy entry into AoS, but it does not work well for that in practice because all the terrain you need for that game pushes the price of entry up so much. It's a good game in it's own right, but it could work a lot better as a small scale intro to AoS.

I think this is actually OK on melee units. It's ranged where it becomes hard to deal with. Freeguild Greatswords have the better version of that rule, mortal wounds on hit in addition, and they don't even show up in the discussion about broken units with their 5" move.

It's not a solution in any way, but I think it's fair to say that SCE are not a good offensive melee army by current standards. Too low damage, too little rend, too immobile. Compared with actually strong melee armies, they just can't compete right now. It's true that all the really good offensive melee armies should have little problem covering 18" and charging in a turn, which is what was the issue at the start of this comment chain if I am not mistaken. That does not mean SCE is not in need of an overhaul, though. SCE are probably the army with the biggest gap between their top competitive and average lists right now. That goes both in terms of power level and playstyle. They probably should be a good offensive melee army. They definitely look and feel like one. It's weird that shootcast is the best way to play them at the moment.

After doing some math on the subject, I have a rule of thumb about rend: If you have a unit that is good at dealing damage, they can hope to deal with up to 4+ saves with no rend. After that you need rend. A 4+ save effectively doubles the wounds of a unit against rend '-'. With the usual buffs (extra attacks, extra damage, bonuses to hit and wound) a fighty unit should be able to overcome that, regardless of rend. However, to reliably deal with 3+ saves, you need rend because the effective wounds are outpaced by what you can make up for with just volume, damage or quality of attacks. A 3+ save effectively multiplies your wounds by 3, and a 2+ save multiplies them by 6. So, effectively, the higher the target's save the more effective rend gets: If you move from a times 6 multiplier to times 3, from rend -1 against a 2+ save, that's effectively doubling your damage output. Against 6+, it's only an effective damage multiplier of x1.16. Of course there are a lot of moving parts here. Number of attacks, damage, different profiles... But as a rule of thumb it works. I think it also gives us some insight into a dynamic that the rules would support well, but which is not found in game at the moment: High quality, low rend attacks vs. low quality, high rend. In theory, that should be a real choice: Do I want a unit that can deal enough damage to wipe out a horde, or do I want one that has enough rend to take down a high-armoured target? Or do I take the middle ground unit that performs OK against both, but not as good against either? The tools to implement these kinds of units are there, but they are currently not taken advantage of well, because all the really good elite units can deal with both hordes and high armour. And that does not even take mortal wounds into account. From my perspective, the role of mortal wounds is to show up in low volumes and in situations where we don't want saves to come into the equation, like magic. To cast a spell, you already need to win two dice rolls (cast and unbind). Adding saves on top would just be excessive. So a spell doing a small number of mortal wounds (1d3 or 1d6 mortals to single target or even 1 mortal on a 5+ for every model in a unit) seems like a good use for the mechanic. Same for "once per turn/battle" abilites like Gyrocopter bombs. But currently, we have models with the ability to deal high volumes of mortal wounds through magic (Kroak) and mortal wounds as an additional effect on high-volume attacks (Lumineth archers). And I think in that context mortal wounds become overbearing, since they are just straight better than regular wounds with little counter play.

So is this an Underworlds starter set or something completely separate?

Currently, GW officially recognizes three ways of playing AoS: Matched, Narrative and Open play. I believe that this is generally a positive thing. This recognition ideally means product support for players who enjoy those different play styles, and at the very least gives us language to talk about the kinds of games we want to play in AoS. While nobody needs the permission of Games Workshop to ignore or invent any rules they like, it's still good to be able to say "I'm not really up for a matched play game with all the trimmings today, let's take things less seriously and just mess around in open play". And it's valuable that that this is recognized as a valid play style, just to pre-empt accusations of "playing the game wrong". But it seems like in many ways we don't yet have enough language to efficiently talk about all the common play styles out there. For example, we don't currently distinguish between matched play and competitive or tournament play very cleanly. And I think that there is a major distinction here. I believe that most AoS players want to play matched games. However, I think only a small minority wants to play competitively, with all that potentially entails. I believe most players want to make use of the points mechanic and balancing rules associated with matched play, without necessarily wanting to play very high powered games. I think this is a crucial distinction to make, since I believe that the nature of AoS lends itself to a more casual approach. There is a huge focus on hobbying and painting for most people, and the time to build and paint a full 2000 point list is likely more than a year for most people. True competitive play, where your top priority is to win games, encourages you to cut corners when hobbying and painting as much as possible, and not to get too attached to any given list. This tension is why I believe most players would be happiest not trying to play truly competitively, but to play a sort of causal-competitive hybrid game: You try to build your lists to be strong and do interesting things, but don't try to meta chase. Maybe you start by committing to some non-optimal decisions ("No matter what, this army will run three Steam Tanks.") and then start optimizing from that point. Once the game starts, you play to win, but not to the exclusion of your opponent's fun. On a related note, I frequently see people who complain about certain fluffy armies not being very good being told to "just play narrative". But I don't think that's very good advice. If narrative play is supposed to be a legitimate separate play style, "narrative" should not be code for "with house rules" or "unbalanced". Just from the name, the play style should be about including story elements into your games. This is of fully compatible with using matched play points to balance your lists. A similar bias also exists in the opposite direction, where very "gamey" play modes are perceived as "narrative" for little reason. An example would be adding a territory control element that links individual games together. Just because the campaign lasts longer than a single battle and there is a map involved, that does not necessarily make it a "narrative" game any more than a game of Risk is played "narratively". So I guess my point is this: I think the terms "matched" and "narrative" are useful, above all from the perspective of GW as content producers. But we should be careful not to fall into the trap of perceiving them as clean, distinct categories that together make up the whole space of AoS play styles. If we want to effectively communicate about the games we want to play, we should be aware that there are a lot of things still up for discussion, even after we have already agreed to play "2000 points matched play" games.

You can still have the threat of a loss of autonomy without Nagash having absolute power over all Death factions and characters at the moment. Let's say during the events of BR: Teclis, something weakens the hold Nagash has over Death to the point that other powerful Death characters can defy his will. Maybe Nagash finally fractures for real, not just mentally. There are a bunch of avatars of Nagash around, and each of them is powerful, but not powerful enough to bend all of Death to his will. Yet it is inevitable that given enough time, Nagash will find a way to put himself back together, and when that day comes, you just know that he will take back dominion of everything Death. This kind of narrative preserves all of the tragedy of being Death aligned. If you are a powerful undead, you are free for now, but you know it's only a matter of time before you completely lose your autonomy. Maybe if you worked together with all the other undead, you could prevent this fate, but they are all duplicitous backstabbers with their own agendas, so that seems doomed to fail. At the same time, you know Nagash loves his ironic punishments, so the more you struggle against this fate, the worse your comeuppance will be once he regains his strength. Not to mention that Nagash will likely have at least a few loyalists supporting him (like Katakros and Arkhan), so it's not like your current situation is all that cozy. I think this would be a nice narrative compromise. The threat of eternal servitude to Nagash is still there, we are just in a brief period of freedom that will make the inevitable return to that state all the more tragic.

I also want this because it makes things more narratively interesting. And totally not because it opens the door for Tomb Kings to come back as their own, autonomous faction a few years down the line.

If this is dwarves like everyone is saying, that would be interesting. I thought it was just one of the unrevealed Lumineth models.

I'd like to see this change, too. If only because it would remove the concern of modeling for advantage, and the related concern about modeling in spite of disadvantage (putting your hero on an elevated piece of scenery on your base). In fact, there are already two abstract rules for cover in the game. The obstacles rule from the core rules: And the sight blocking rule from stuff like Prismatic Palisade:

In my opinion, you can't really go wrong putting one Necromancer into your list. Legions of Nagash has good spell lores, and the Necromancer's warscroll spell (Vanhel's Danse Macabre) is very good. The only problem is that Necromancers don't get any bonuses to cast spells on their warscroll, but there are many other ways to get such bonuses in LoN (Legion of Sacrament, Mortis Engine, Corpse Kart...). I personally don't think taking multiple Necromancers is very good, though. Just because you will likely want a Vampire Lord and a Necromancer before you want two Necromancers. As for subfactions/battalions: Legion of Scrament is always a solid choice. +1 to cast is good, because LoN lists often end up with several casters without even trying. Master's Teachings is unreliable, but great if you pull it off. Legion of Sacrament also has many solid command traits and artefacts. As for battalions: Most LoN battalions are not very good. In Legion of Sacrament, you have access to the Lords of Sacrament and Deathmarch battalions. Lords of Sacrament is playable, but not especially good. The big problem is that it sort of just gives you the casting ability of Nagash, but without all the other upsides that Nagash has (like his command ability) and for more points than Nagash would cost you. Deathmarch, on the other hand, is quite good. If you want to go with a mostly skeleton based list, it's worth looking into. Most LoN lists don't run a battalion, however.

Good call! I'm not super knowledgeable about mortal realms history, but Nurgle has been been waiting for an opportunity to bring life back to Shyish, hasn't he? Maybe Horticulous Slimux will come back from Ghyran and start planting Gnarlmaws while Nagash is playing in Hysh.

We also know it's recent because it literally just says so in the warcom article: As for this: While I think the article is a fairly large spoiler, I don't think we can comfortably say that Nagash will not be significantly weakened over the course of BR: Teclis. Others have said that if what we saw in the article is all that happens in BR: Teclis, that would be disappointing: Teclis goes to Shyish, Lumineth fight some Bonereapers, more or less win, retreat back to Hysh, and Bonereapers start rebuilding with elf bones. Because that would kind of just be nothing, I would guess that this is only about the first half of the plot. Nurgle and Cities not being involved, even though we know they are in the book, lends credence to this. So, what will likely happen in the second half? I think we have a hint in the warcom article: To me, that reads like at least two more things will happen in BR: Teclis. Nagash's counter attack on Hysh (with the aid of Flesh Eater Courts, it looks like) and an uprising of the citizens of Shyish (probably where Cities of Sigmar comes in). Something major going wrong during these events might well weaken the grip Nagash has on Shyish.

Thank you for saying so, that's a nice perspective. Although the base rim is much more matte in real life. It's only in that overly well-lit photo that it looks so shiny.

I would be very surprised, because that would mean that they successfully kept three planned factions/expansions completely under wraps for months: Hedonites, Lumineth and now OBR. There were nearly no rumour engines for any of these factions. Plus, presumably Gravelords in the near future. Would make 2021 a very crowded year. I think OBR getting an extra kit is possible, though. Even if FEC needs more models a lot more urgently.

GW is really hard to understand sometimes. They keep minor reveals on a slow burn for months, but then put out a spoiler for what seems like a large part of the BR: Teclis plot like it is nothing. Maybe their release schedule is more hecked up than we realized? Regardless, I'm interested what the Flesh Eater Courts have to do with OBR and Arkhan, though. I wonder if we will see rules that allow us to mix the two factions in some way.

I think the three most contentuous issues in the game are the double turn, battleshock and shooting. I believe those three should definitely be adressed somehow in the next editions, simply due to the amount of discussion they provoke. Double turn: The double turn is pretty devisive, but it serves a function: Mitigating first turn advantage. So I would not just want to see it removed without replacement, since in my opinion that would lead to an even more alpha strike heavy meta. I think what people most dislike about the mechanic is the randomness of it and the long period of non-interactivity it forces for the player getting double turned. I think the solution to the randomness would be to make the double turn more interactive. Maybe change the rules so that you are able to spend ressources to get bonuses on the roll/take control of priority. Or tie the priority mechanic to secondary objectives somehow, so that players can try to take control of priority through in-game decisions/tactics. The non-interactivity is hard to deal with without major rules restructuring (alternating phases, for example), but something could be done about it by giving players the opportunity to do things on the opponent's turn more often. Reworking how battalions work also relates to this space. Currently, they provide a very large advantage, but I believe much of their strength would be mitigated if double turns were more controllable by the player going second. Still, I like the suggestion of forcing battalions to deploy as one drop. That would still make them strong, but attach a bit of a tactical downside to them. Battleshock: I think the comlaint here is how much of a non-mechanic battleshock effectively is, since every army can use inspiring presence, and many have battleshock immunity in some form. The immunity issue is not something that can be fixed in the core rules, but it's a design principle worth revisiting when new battletomes roll around. Inspiring Presence could be weakened in a number of ways (or just removed entirely). It could just be a bonus to bravery (setting bravery to 10?) instead of immunity. Or there could be more ways to spend command points, which would make using them for Inspiring Presence less attractive. I have also seen the complaint that battleshock hits elite units harder, but after doing some preliminary math, this does not seem to be true. In elite (multi-wound) units, battleshock is harder to trigger and loses you overall fewer wounds/points when it does (given equal bravery). While losing an expensive 4 wound model to battleshock sucks, elite players are not at a mechanical disadvantage. Finally, since losing troops to battleshock is not the most positive play experience in the world, the mechanic could be redone entirely. Maybe failing battleshock could force a unit to retreat in the next round, with all that entails. Shooting: Probably the hardest to fix, since the core rules for ranged combat are not the root of the problem. It seems like some armies just have an overtuned long range damage output, especially those that can deal lots of mortal wounds at range. Buffing Look Out, Sir! is probably one thing that makes sense, as that would at least make the 5 wound foot heroes many armies rely on more playable again. But it's a bit of a double edged sword, since those heroes are frequently the source of battleshock immunity bubbles, and ranged/magic damage is one of the few ways to remove them in a targeted way. Rules clarity: I think my biggest thing, though, would be to publish an in-depth rules document, separate from the core rules. In that document, I would like the rules to be set out more clearly and more detailed. MtG does this well, where there is a document that details how exactly their individual steps and phases work. AoS could use the same kind of thing, so that people who care about this kind of stuff are actually able to answer in-depth questions and don't have to piece together the principles at work behind particular instances of the rules themselves to do so. I fully recognize that one of the strengths of AoS for the average player is that the rules are short and fairly simple. I would not want to change that and go back to the days of 100+ pages of core rules. But it would be good if a more detailed explanation was available for those who want to understand the game at a deeper level. Here's an example of what I am talking about: As of GHB 2020, a unit can't attempt to negate a wound more than once. Except that's not actually true. You can't attempt to negate an assigned wound more than once. You are still allowed to attempt to negate unassigned wounds as much as you like. There are abilities that let you do this, like the OBR Aegis Immortal battalion ability. I am sure that 99% of players don't even know that the distinction assigned/unassigned wounds even exists. It would be nice to have a document that tells you this mechanic is even a thing. Or take something like the question of what happens if you revive a defeated unit (like LoN or Hammers of Sigmar). Is that treated as a new unit, or is it the same one from before? This matters for battlefield role and "until the end of the game" buffs and debuffs. You can kind of piece together an answer to this from existing information, but it's case-by-case. We don't really know how resurrection mechanics are supposed to work in principle.

I recently finished what I consider to be my best model yet: I really tried to push myself on this one. I didn't skip any details. All that black lining was killing me near the end. I also experimented with pre-shading metallics, to some success. The method is overall faster and looks pretty good. My only regret is that ugly base rim, but I had to patch up the base a few times because I used a bad clay to build it and it shrank and cracked a lot.

Thanks for saying so. I remember when I finished painting my first models, I finally looked at them at table distance and they just looked muddy and dark. I have been consciously trying to paint brighter and higher contrast since then, so I'm happy that you noticed that in my painting. For that shield, the sculpt is doing some of the work. All those scratches and tears are sculpted in. So I am mostly just trying to bring out the structure that's already there. My current thinking is that since shields are large and flat, it's OK to put a somewhat flat paint job on them. So I try to get a very even base coat to start and only do one step of drybrush-highlighting around the edges. No washes, since there are not enough recesses for them to do anything but make the shield look like someone spilled coffee on it. I spend most of my time on carefully black lining everything. Since the shadow areas are small, I keep them pretty dark, so that they are visible at a distance. In particular, I make sure to black line all the rivets, which otherwise get lost easily.

Didn't know we are doing pictures. Here's my latest guys (skeleton for scale): I feel pretty good about my painting these days. My models are finally turning out like I imagine them.

Assuming at least one month between releases to let them have some room to breathe: February is Hedonites. BR: Teclis is in late March at the earliest. BR installments seem to come out around two months after their announcement. That could put Cursed City in March or May, depending on when BR: Teclis comes out. I think May is more likely.

I totally get why you made this thread. Having a lot of interactions about your hobby be about how it sucks and why you shouldn't enjoy it is just exhausting. It's good to keep in mind that criticism often comes from a place of caring. At least I know that when I talk about stuff that could be better, it's because I already love what's there. I am pretty excited about the near future after the recent previews. Since I realized Lumineth are their own, new, weird thing and not just High Elves again I find them a lot more attractive. The Soulblight Underworlds is a great example of how good the sculpting quality has become recently. Every single model in that is a hit for me. And Cursed City is probably the most excited I have been recently about a release. A self-contained game with a cool theme that will probably lead into an army I want to build (Soulblight) just seems perfect for me. Until then, I am working on a Kharadron Gunhauler for Tempest's Eye which I am converting to be more Freeguild flavoured. Compared to the Steam Tank, that kit goes together super simply. There really have been a lot of advancements made in kit design. After that, I have around 20 plastic Tomb Kings Tomb Guard waiting to be painted. Probably my favourite Skeleton kit by looks, but I have kind of been putting them off because of all the jangly bits on them. That's actually what has stopped me from getting into Lumineth as well: They look phantastic, but I can't be dealing with all those jewels and baubles.

I agree, the only place I can see this actually being useful is for very cheap infantry units. But even there, 5 points more or less won't make or break them.

On the one hand, I agree that Underworlds and Warcry warbands are not primarily for AoS and that they are playable at all is just a bonus, but on the other hand GW is a multi-million, international company who should really be able to cross-integrate them in a more exciting way.