Neil Arthur Hotep

I appreciate the breakdown. But honestly, you don't need to have inside sources to predict that something Slaanesh related is going to happen in Broken Realms at this point. They already started releasing Slaanesh mortals models in the duel box and Underworlds, after all.

Hopefully Misthavn gets some allegiance abilities that are a little more exciting, but the narcotics might be a pretty nice bonus. If there is one that grants a once-per-game movement bonus, that would probably be pretty consistently useful. I could also imagine on that grants flying for a turn, although that's not super useful given that most big, fast Cities heroes fly already. Giving a hero with a 3+ save the ability to become ethereal for a turn seems decent at least. Nothing to write home about, but I'd take it as a free bonus.

I'm going to place my bet that Har Kuron is what Anvilguard becomes after the fall of the city. For rules, I am going to guess they get the ability to take 1 in 4 Daughters units and some kind of payoff for taking dragons and other monsters (on a recent Warhammer Weekly it was claimed that Har Kuron translates to Home of Monsters from the Dark Elf language). If this is true, it remains to be seen what happens with the original Anvilguard rules. I don't think they will actually be obsoleted. Although if they are, it would probably not be too much of a loss.

If we get a new faction during Broken Realms, my money would be on the Death thing they have been teasing for months now. I don't really think there is room for two substantial things (new faction or big range update) in the timespan. I could see Slaanesh getting one or two units, but not a full battletome update before 3..0.

Those are my impressions as well. I see two problems at the moment with low points games: 1.: Many of the intended and interesting builds in the battletomes that are too point intensive to run in low points games. Lots of battalions are not really playable at that level, for example, and not just because the point cost is too punishing. Often you can't squeeze in the battalion at all, or if you can you will lack a crucial support hero or enough bodies to play the objective game. 2.: Battleplans and some army abilities don't adapt to smaller (or larger) games. There are no guidelines in place to reduce table size and number of objectives, for example. Or guides for managing abilites like LoN gravesites on larger or smaller tables. I think problem two is the more important one to tackle to make smaller games more playable, but doing something about problem one would be nice, too.

I really wish they would follow the DnD model and give you just the rules for free without having to buy books. I appreciate the art and lore the books provide, but I still find something like Broken Realms a hard sell if all I am interested in from that book is like one page of rules from a new battalion.

What exactly are you referring to here? Anyway, I like the idea of using spirit hosts. They are kind of the opposite of what LoN usually gets in terms of dealing damage, since they do very high damage to high saves and low damage to low ones. I think running a unit of 6 could be worth it. Being able to do about 6 mortal wounds and maybe a few regular wounds as a bonus every round is pretty nice and is certainly unique among the summonable units. The only thing I don't love about them is how hard they are to heal. Since they have three wounds they will often waste Invocation or Gravesite healing and it's hard to bring back models to a partially destroyed unit. Makes me wonder if they would be good with Arkhan or Nagash, though, since their Invocations heal a flat 3 wounds. You could top a wounded Spirit Host up with Gravesite healing and then bring back a model guaranteed with their Invocations. Of course, those options either don't exist or are unattractive in Legion of Sacrament. Contrary to what I wrote before, I think in your list a Mortis Engine might make sense. If you have three caster heroes that you already think are worthwhile on their own, and if you think the Mortis Engine brings enough to the table in it's own right, they have good synergy together. Other than that I find it hard to say what this list might want without playtesting. It seems like you have a lot of mobile chaff between the hexwraiths and dire wolves, and enough bodies to hold points with the Skeleton blob. Maybe a second big blob or another offensive threat? The list is relatively low damage output as it stands. As for Shroud vs. Wristbands: I would personally use the low-wound back field heroes like the Necromancer. They are more likely to make full use of it (being shot at from outside of 8") than front line guys. I also feel that giving the Shroud to a small foot hero might make your opponent undercommit or miscalculate when they try to snipe them: A Necromancer has only got a 6+ save, so they look easy to pick off. But they can possibly benefit from "Look out, Sir!", cover, their wound pass-off and Deathless Minions in addition to the Shroud. By contrast, the VLoZD is known to be pretty durable. I don't think most opponents will see him as an attractive target for turn 1 shooting. And he wants to be on the front lines most of the time, so I think the unconditional bonus from Wristbands is better on him. The other option would be the Azyrbane Standard for -1 to wound and to make order wizards reroll casts. I guess it depends on whether you think you can reliably get the Vampire Lord into the enemy. I like that this list has a good mix of bodies and mobility. I see you took Aritocracy of Blood on the VLoZD. I don't think that's a bad choice, but I feel that since you will probably want to project power in multiple places, your Blood Knights might not benefit from it very often. Do you think it could be worth considering Sanguine Blur or Walking Death? I'm with you on the item choices, though. I think you will find good targets for the Orb in most games and the auto-dispell amulet might not do anything for you in some games, but in the ones that it does it could be game winning.

They are slow, but they are fast in Deathmarch, where you can get them to go 11" on the first turn pretty much guaranteed (with the battalion bonus plus Mastery of Death from Legion of Sacrament). That's one of the reasons I think Deathmarch is one of the few viable battalions in LoN, it helps with one of LoN's biggest weaknesses. You can also fairly reasonably expect to charge your opponent with Black Knights turn one. They do OK damage against 4+ saves, even 3+ honestly, and will definitely tie up the opponent for a turn at least. And you can give them +1 attack and fight twice, of course.

I have recently looked at Reapers, but they are too expensive now to run 90 (420 points for 30). But you can fit 60 and a bunch of dire wolves, which is probably the better list anyway. Reapers have stiff competition from Grave Guard these days, though, which are 30 for 360 points. I think the two units are internally fairly balanced. You can justify either choice, I think. Something perspective about Grave Guard: Offensively, they are sort basically Mortek Guard with +1 to wound, although of course they are much less durable. They can also be cheaper at certain unit compositions (Mortek are cheaper at 40, but Grave Guard are cheaper at 30). So I feel they are pretty legit at the moment.

I'd definitely like to see a better system for playing narrative games than we currently have. I think there is a thing that's currently missing from AoS: A clearly communicated way to start playing at low point values. That really contributes to the barrier of entry right now. New players often feel like they can't even really start playing until they have at least 1000 points, because that's the lowest official supported matched play point value. The official battleplans are also not really designed with less than 1000 points in mind (and are often janky even at that value). Of course you can hack the battleplans to be whatever you want, but what is important on a battleplan really only becomes clear when you have a bit of experience with the game. It would be really nice to have a few scenarios where they clearly state "Play this battleplan at 500 points". Especially if they start making Start Collecting boxes into 500 points armies-in-a-box. I'd love to be able to tell new players to just get a starter box and play a starter scenario. Right now, it's very possible that if two people buy start collecting boxes and try to play the battleplan from the core rules, they will have a completely unbalanced (imagine Malignants vs. BCR) and unfun game that is nothing at all like regular AoS.

I don't know, man. Those skeleton warriors get pretty speedy at times I agree on all the other points, of course.

I think the OBR warscroll update broke that. Warscroll Buider also shows them as no longer being Battleline, ever.

I think the reason why we come to different conclusions in this case is that I don't think that having more model choices in an army is the primary way of achieving playstyle variation. It's definitely one way to do it, but I think the real driver of varied playstyles are the available army rules. As an example, I have a Legions of Nagash army which is primarily Deathrattle based. I run them as Legion of Sacrament alpha strike Deathmarch, for the most part. But without getting any new models, I can run them as a grindy Grand Host army. Or as Legion of Night Hammer and Anvil with ambushing shennenigans. Or as magic-heavy Legion of Sacrament. Even though Legions of Nagash has a deep unit roster, I don't need to go out and buy bat swarms or whatever to try different playstyles. What does happen, though, is that some playstyles are "locked" behind models. I won't be playing Legion of Blood to it's full effect unless I get a bunch of Blood Knights (let's ignore the fact that realistically, I'd just proxy them in friendly games to start). That would be less likely to happen with a smaller unit roster, since for a small army it's more reasonable to own "one of everything". I think the lowest barrier to entry, both in terms of money and effort, would be with small factions with a variety of battalions or subfactions that enable distinct playstyles. That way, it's people can reasonably play the same army with the same models in it in multiple ways. I get that in theory a wide army deep army roster can also drive playstyle variety. But I don't know that this is happening with all the armies that currently have big model ranges. Khorne, for example, seems to play fairly similar most of the time even though the army has a lot of model choices available. Cities of Sigmar has a lot of variety, but several redundant units (which is fair given that the faction is supposed to enable people to play their old stuff, whatever that may be), and the variety in play style seem to me to be mostly driven by the different allegiance abilites you get from the different cities. So overall I get where you are coming from, but I just don't believe that a small unit roster necessitates buying a new army to try a new play style, and I don't believe a wide army roster necessarily leads to varied play style options.

If nothing else, that seems like a hilarious janky list! I would imagine that the sheer number of mortals would actually be pretty hard to deal with for some armies. Don't tell anyone that morghast are no longer battleline, though.

In the recent meta watch article on Warhammer Community, the tournament breakdown featured three top 5 finishes of LoN, one even getting a first place. The first place was Legion of Grief, while the other two were Legion of Sacrament. I'm not really that familiar with Legion of Grief, but Legion of Sacrament has a few nice traits that might help it in the current magic+shooting meta. Anti-Shooting While LoN has no shooting of their own, the faction is somewhat more resilient against shooting than most. Your basic summonable troops are unlikely to break from shooting. They have high bravery, so spreading around damage and getting battleshock kills is not that effective. They passively heal from gravesites and heroes, so you can't really grind them down. And if they are wiped out completely by focus fire, they can just be resurrected. Not to mention deploying them in the grave from the start. What's weak to shooting in LoN is your support heroes, with their bad saves and 5 wounds per model. And keeping the general alive is more important in LoN than other factions, since only they can resurrect your summonable units. This is where Legion of Sacrament offers some interesting tools. Sacrament has two anti-shooting artefacts: The Shroud of Darkness and the Wristbands of Black Gold. The Shroud gives -2 to hit against shooting for units outside of 8", and -1 inside of 8". The Wristbands are just a 4+ aftersave against shooting. The two bonuses are about the same, cutting the damage from shooting in half. However, the Shroud can stack with Deathless Minions, while the Wristbands overwrite your usual 6+ save. The Shroud gives a model a -3 to be hit coupled with "Look out, Sir!" Even a Necromancer will stick around for a while, between that, Deathless Minions and their wound pass off ability. It's notable that in Legion of Sacrament, you might actually have two artefacts available, since you could run Deathmarch to full effect (since the Mastery of Death command trait that enables this strategy is also in LoS) . In that case, your other arefact could be the Azyrbane Standard, which gives -1 to wound and -1 to cast for Order wizards in a bubble, and put it on a hero able to be into your opponent's face quickly. Or, if you want to go more generalist, you can get an extra artefact by allying in the Dolorous Guard. This also has the upside of protecting your general further (2+ wound pass off for your general to the Hexwraiths). A VLoZD with Dolorous Guard protection and the Wristbands or Azyrbane Standard is fairly immune to shooting, and you get the advantage of making protecting one of your back field support casters with the Shroud, as well. Casting Bonuses Even without a mega-caster, LoS can participate in the magic phase. It's likely that a lot of your heroes will be casters without you even trying, and LoS offers a +1 to cast as part of your allegiance abilites. You can buff this casting further by bringing a corpse cart or mortis engine for +1 to cast each. It's worth mentioning the Lords of Sacrament battalion at this point. It consists of Arkhan, two Necromancers and a Mortis Engine for a total of 960 points. It's benefit is giving you +1 spell for all battalion members in a radius around the Mortis Engine, as well as a +1 to saves in the shooting phase. I personally think this build is a trap option. First of all, it locks you into a death star formation, which is not great since LoN struggles to project power in several places at once already. Since you are in LoS, Arkhan will have to be the general as well, which is a shame since LoS has several good command traits. Yes, you will cast 8 spells at a +2 minimum, but what are you actually going to cast? Likely it's going to be Vanhel's with a Necromancer, three lore of the Deathmages spells (if you are in range, although Arkhan can help here), possibly a realm spell, and then you are down to mystic shield/arcane bolt. Just to put this into perspective, you are just about the same points as it would cost to have Nagash+Spell Portal. I personally think you get a lot more out of just bringing Nagash (three lore spells, hand of dust, arcane bolt machine gun, command ability...). However, the unconditional +1 to cast is nice. It gives you a much better chance of actually getting your support spells through. I think if you are already incidentally running several wizards (a necromancer, VLoZD, vampire lord and possibly even a Wight King if you give it the Dark Acolyte command trait) a corpse cart or mortis engine might be a justifyable investment. LoN-internal advantages Legion of Sacrament has a few nice things that help patch up weaknesses of LoN in general. The command trait Mastery of Death allows you to move units around your general 3" in the hero phase, which can help with the general low mobility of LoN and is the stand out command trait of this Legion along with Dark Acolyte in my opinion. The other allegiance ability of the Legion, the Master's Teachings, is also quite fun: It allows you to resurrect a destroyed unit for free if: You completely destroy an enemy unit. The last model removed was within 6" of a grave site. You roll a 4+. This might sound like a lot of hoops to jump through, but you can increase the likelyhood of it happening by placing your grave sites aggressively. Don't worry so much about you opponent trying to block your resurrection: If you place a gravesite close to an objective, and they have to position themselves awkwardly to both block your summoning and avoid the possibility of Master's Teachings, the ability is already doing work for you. What this ability encourages in my mind is aggressive play with your grave sites and some of your units. You will have to have some fast units that can engage the opponent early and likely die so that you can make use of this ability. So packing a unit of Black Knights or at least Dire Wolves is probably a good idea. Those are some of the benefits I see for Legion of Sacrament. I would love to hear other opinions on this. I don't get to play as much as I would like, so I might well be over or undervaluing some things here.

I think you might be underestimating how overwhelmed people get by large numbers of choices when they try to get into the game. Some people love getting deep into rules and figuring out their builds (I'm one of them!) but a lot of people just want a clear starting point. Not to mention all those people who just buy a bunch of models and then feel bad because they don't have a working army after six months of painting and building. Look at the thread about collecting several armies: A lot of people just buy one of everything when they build an army and honestly, for how many armies with big model ranges is that actually a good approach gameplay-wise? I have to admit, I don't really see how you can reuse more models if you want to try a new playstyle in a larger range compared to a smaller one. If an army only has one unconditional battleline choice, that will surely be usable in any build. It's not like recent small armies are so specialized that there is only one possible playstyle for them and you have to buy a completely new army if you want to switch it up. At least for both OBR and Lumineth that's not the case. I also believe that a lot of playstyle variety can be achieved with rules, regardless of model options. If you are bored of grinding down your opponent in Mortis Pretorians you can just switch to Stalliarch Lords and go fast for a change. I think if battalions and subfactions are implemented well they give a lot of playstyle variety without having to change models. To reiterate, I see the barrier to entry for large factions in two places, mainly: Figuring out what's good/what you want to buy and eventual feel bads when you make bad choices. In a smaller range, it's easier to communicate what you need to get started and to make sure that most/all choices are workable.

This is a good point. I personally don't really know where I stand on this matter. Being able to have one army that you collect of indefinitely seems nice for enfranchised players who already own a lot of stuff. But at the same time, having more armies with narrower ranges lowers the barrier of entry. I also personally think that it's nice to be able to reach a point where you are just done with an army for the time being, but obviously that's not universal. I think overall, the game would benefit more from lowering the barrier of entry (which is still quite high right now) as much as possible, even if it comes at the cost of "punishing" enfranchised players. For what it's worth, even though we are probably in the final year of AoS 2.0, I think the game has just recently got to a state of full working order, where every army that is supported has rules. Up until the release of the new Seraphon battletome, I think a lot was still up in the air regarding what factions would eventually be made permanent. So I believe release practices from the time of 2.0 are not necessarily going to be reflective of what will happen in the future. Case in point: Daughters of Khaine is getting a lot of attention right now and is receiving a bunch of new models all at once, as well as probably a rules add-on with Broken Realms. So we will have to see how things develop from here on out.

I think the Sons of Behemat are a textbook example of a situation where game designers are being efficient with their resources and people see it as them being "lazy" or "not caring" or something. Making models is costly, time consuming and difficult. Writing rules is comparatively cheap, quick and easy. Imagine you are part of GW and it was just decided that a new Mega-Gargant kit will be made. There is no gargant faction currently, so they are going to be a mercenary model. But you could spin them out into a minimally functional faction by just writing a battletome and incorporating the existing giant kit into it alongside the new kit. I'm fairly confident that's the actual choice that was on the table: Do we make a faction for the Mega Gargants or are they just going to be mercenaries? Not: Do we make one new kit for our planned Sons of Behemat faction or more? People hate this kind of thing for some reason, and I personally find it puzzling. We saw the same kind of reaction to Cities of Sigmar, where people were angry that there were no new models. I don't believe new models were ever on the table. The choice was probably: Do we write rules to support these old model ranges or let them fade into obscurity over the next few editions? It's the same principle as people complaining about "clone" characters in fighting games. You could make a new character for the game and it would take three months. Or you could make a clone character (a character based on another existing character with minimal variations) in one month. So if a clone character is made, that does not take a way a "slot" from a new character. There is a lot to criticize about Sons of Behemat. But the fact that the army came out with the minimum amount of models that could possibly sustain it is not one of those things. At least if there is a faction, there is the possibility of expansion. If there were just the new Mega Gargants and no faction rules, I would not place very high odds on more giant kits being made to expand a faction that would not even exist.

If it makes you feel better, the LoN first place was apparently Legion of Grief.

I don't think you can really ignore the added value from rules, community and store spaces provided by GW. Sure, the model itself is a big draw, but there are lots of model companies out there that make good models I don't buy because they lack the added value of a the game that comes with them. And I say that as someone who has definitely bought several models in the past just to paint them. Even if it's true that there is inherent value in a model that can be divorced from any instrumental use (which I don't think there is, because if you buy a model "to paint" or even "to collect", that makes it still instrumentally valuable), instrumental use for the model (mainly playing GW games in the case of GW) adds a completely different dimension. GW would never sell nearly as many models if there were no games attached to them, that's just a fact. And they would sell a lot fewer models if the games were not fun, widely played and well supported (through updates, store spaces...). I'd never even think about buying a box of Freeguild Handgunners if there was no game of AoS or if they were not good in that game, that's for sure. If anything, the game makes me want to buy them in spite of their sculpt. The context in which the models are placed definitely increases their value to me. And I don't even think it should be controversial that such context can add or detract from the value of a thing, regardless of the thing's more intrinsic attributes.

I think a lot of people would view this as a problem, because it should probably not be ambiguous whether or not the Imperium is a) fascist and b) that this is bad. The Imperium, especially Space Marines, are frequently cast as heroic or aspirational by GW. They are decidedly not the villains of 40k. And because they are not the villain faction, I think it's extra important that their fascist elements are clearly presented as bad. Especially at the moment where fascism is gaining ground again around the world. It's not that people can't accept having factions that do bad things in GW games. Nobody complains about having chaos or Nagash around. Not even really Deepkin or Daughters of Khaine, who are nominally the good guys. It's more about not being careful enough about not presenting these bad things as aspirational. I have seen enough people honestly defending the fascist and xenophobic aspects of the Imperium as good online that I believe it is necessary to more clearly denounce them.

Sure, that's why I am interested in the lists. But still: You see LoN in this break down, but you don't see Beasts of Chaos or Nighthaunt that people usually mention in the same breath as LoN when it comes to weak armies. If it was one top 5 finish I'd say it's a fluke, but three with a first place is at least remarkable. I think frequently people say this kind of thing when looking at games from a casual or semi-competitive perspective (and frankly, not to hurt people's feelings). It's rare in any game that the rules of a faction will be so bungled that they can't even paricipate in basic play. However, in most games there are options that stand out as objectively better than others. The fact that certain armies float to the top in tournaments consistently should be enough evidence to conclude that those armies just have better tools overall, independently of player skill.

I'm sorry, but how is setting up the Imperium as a satire of fascism not already political? Not to mention stuff like the original characterization of ork stormboyz, where they are portrayed as idiots for acting like militaristic skinhead punks. That's not even getting into the matter of stuff that I suspect you would view as political I would want to argue should not be viewed as such, like female representation in the model range.

I just checked the math for bravery 7 and 1, 2, 3, and 4 wounds. You are absolutely right: A higher wound count strictly means fewer models and fewer wounds lost to battleshock. So if battleshock is especially bad for elite armies, it's not because of the basic mechanics. There are still a few ways it might end up hitting elite units harder. If elite units have a lower bravery on average that could make a difference. I don't think that's the case, but I think that horde armies generally have access to better battleshock mitigation, battleshock immunity and sometimes high bravery (Death, Demons). Another thing to look at could be average points lost to battleshock. I looked at Darkshards, Vulkite Berserkers, Orruk Brutes and Ogor Ironguts as a sample of representative units, and Darkshards were clearly the worst for points lost to battleshock. All others were about equal, but Ogors looked the worst. I believe the impression that battleshock disproportionally hurts elites has to come from the fact that hordes get better mitigation rules. The more basic mechanics don't support the idea at all. So maybe the fix to make it feel as intended would be to make the battleshock mitigation of horde armies more interactable. Close range mitigation (+bravery or battleshock immunity) auras from heroes seem like the best implementation, because it's simulationistically satisfying: You take out the heroes and the troops rout more easily. It also gives you a clear path to breaking hordes. I think the occasional battleshock immunity can still stay. For undead, it makes sense that it's one of the distinguishing features of their mindless horde. But other armies like skaven should probably not have easy access to it. I also believe that inspiring presence can stay. People always complain that battleshock has no impact on games, but that's not entirely true. It has the impact of draining command points for basically all armies that rely on inspring presence, which is big. Although I can also see why people just want it to play out more often.

Slightly off topic, but does anyone know anything specific about that LoN list that got first place? I was under the impression that LoN was generally considered among the weaker allegiances at the moment. I find it interesting they show up at all on this list and even with one first place finish. Back on topic: I think a big question is what type of play you want the game to be balanced for. Do you want a game where every faction has multiple tournament viable list types that all have a chance to go 5-0 or get first place? Or do you want a game where every faction has access to lists that sit on a 7 to 8 out of 10 on the optimization scale and will win about 50% of matches against similarly optimized lists? For what it's worth, I don't know a single game that is both played competitively and is about list building/deck building/similar mechanics that achieves the first goal. But I think the second goal is achievable and actually pretty well realized in AoS. I see AoS as a casual play first game, with competitive (tournament) play coming as a secondary priority. The balancing makes sense from that perspective.