Neil Arthur Hotep

It seems there really was an appetite for an army of regular dudes. Narratively, I always felt that it was an element that was missing from the Mortal Realms, but I was not sure if it would translate into sales/people actually picking up the faction. Glad to see that it does, though, I hope it translates to more Freeguild stuff and hopefully also bespoke Cities elves and dwarves.

Hey, welcome back to the hobby. Just a few opinions: Greywater is a solid subfaction. You could do a lot worse as a base line than to get a bunch of free command points in your shooting phase. Going with one of the magic subfactions is not bad, either. Settler's Gain is the boring, but dependable +1 to cast option. I would say it's worth thinking about a Lumineth hero ally if you go with it. Hallowheart is the other option. +1d6 to cast is a massive bonus, but your mages will burn themselves out in this subfaction. About 2/3 chance to take 1d3 mortals on every cast. It makes casting extremely dependable, though, especially if you factor in enemy unbinds. Your is diverse enough that you don't 100% have to get the Alchemite spell off, though, so the choice is really up to you. Whether you have to worry about the current magic meta depends on what everyone around you plays. In a vacuum, I would say don't list build around seasonal rules too much. Chances are, we will be out of the wizard season before you really get all your list together and painted, anyway. I have previously said in this thread that I think a Steam Tank + Commander pair is pretty good. They are definitely very playable in casual games (not sure if they are good enough to make top cut in competitive, but the 2+ save alone is worth seriously considering). I used to run a bunch of Steam Tanks in the old book. The Commander was solid even then, and it only got better in almost every way this book. Just make sure you don't play them only as mobile artilery, they need to get into combat and tank if you want them to be worth their points

Best I can do is a Soulreaper and a Mortek Crawler again.

Also Soulblight the year before that.

It's the post Lumineth Sentinel bias, where shooting castles were (for a while) actually the best lists. I don't think they are in this book, though.

I meant to write that in my big post earlier today, but I think that this is by design to push players into mixed arms lists. A lot of the power pairs in this book rely on spells or heroic actions: Stuff that you can only do once on your turn and can't spam. You can get easily get a unit of Fusiliers at near-peak performance with just the Alchemite buff and All-Out Attack. But if you want to do another Fusilier unit that does the same thing again, the work and resources that go into that are much larger. You need to go Greywater if you want to buff two units in the shooting phase. And you need to fit both Fusilier blocks into the same 12" alchemite bubble, which buries a lot of your list's points in the same 12" circle, probably in your back line. You can't have the two blocks sit on different objectives. Same with Cavaliers: You can do that cool once-per-game charge order, +3 to charge, strikes first combo with just 5 Cavaliers and the Marshall. But you need to use Finest Hour on the Marshal to do it, which means at most one of your Cavalier units is doing it turn one. If you bring more Cavalier units, that's not necessarily bad because they can also do other stuff. But it makes it so that the completely brain dead alpha strike list is not possible. That's why I think mixed arms is so good. You can have several of the really potent combos in the same list no problem. Run that cavalier combo, and the Fusiliers, and 30 Steelhelms plus Marshall, and a Steam Tank plus Tank Commander. They are all still basically at nearly full potential. But if you include a second Fusilier block that either leads to questionable list building (shooting death star) or the second unit strongly underperforms because it doesn't get its most crucial buffs.

I could see myself using him if he had +6" shooting range, but not d6". His Crack Shot ability by itself is just not good enough. I'd rather run a Freeguild Marshall right now for the free command points if I need an extra hero next to a Fusilier block for some reason. I think the old book was dominated by its coalition mechanics and running mostly Cities of Sigmar units was rarely the best choice, which is why I prefer the current book. Also, hard disagree with units being overcosted or unreliable. There are a few duds (Warhulk and Wildercorps are two units that I agree are not really worth it), but the majority of the book is really solid. I don't know. The guy doesn't want to get into melee, so you can just run him every turn, and his bubbles are 12" wholly within. Running him up with a bunch of steam tanks or cavaliers seems doable to me. I think 60 Fusiliers are a total trap. Not even close to the best list. The book reads like 60 shooty bois would be good at first glance, but if you go that route then that's something like a 1200 point investment at least, plus your command trait and subfaction and it all hinges on a 6 wound buff hero getting their spell off. Better hope your opponent is not good at unbinding or taking out small heroes at range. Having 20-30 fusiliers as just one threat among many is way more consistent (and more fun for everyone involved) in my opinion. I used to feel like that, but thinking of the handcannons as actual miniature cannons that the Fusiliers place on their portable battlements has brought me around on them. It's not that the cities can't make matchlock rifles anymore, they have just gone all-in on that slightly ridiculous walking castle idea. Yeah, it doesn't really make sense in reality, but I can excuse unrealistic swords and axes in fantasy contexts, so personally I am willing to do the same with guns.

The more shooting you have, the higher the chance that you will get to shoot 3 units off the table in one of the later rounds. Both Lumineth and Kharadron allies can help a lot here, in my opinion. I think the cannon and Warhulk will probably go down in points eventually. Right now they are not worth it from a pure efficiency standpoint, I think. The cannon is kinda just worse shooting that the fusiliers, and the warhulk just doesn't bring anything super good to the table. If they both drop a bit, though, then taking them in the Castellite Formation becomes more attractive. The Warhulk can come down quite a bit, in my opinion. I think the GW point algorithm kinda screws him over, because it makes you overpay for that Ogor body and melee profile you never want to use. Also his buff is not that good. His 1d6" attack range increase is just not good enough at 150 points if you could get Zenestra instead.

It's not confirmed, but it is the only established faction without a tome that is left. Of course, there could be a surprise new faction out of nowhere or one of the factions that already have a battletome might get a second one this edition (Warclans update?).

So, I have been thinking about list building in the new book for a while now. This is my current thinking, I am curious what you guys think about it: In my opinion, the new Cities battletome rewards neither goodstuff lists (just putting all the best warscrolls into a list) nor skew lists (going all-in on one type of unit/strategy). But it does reward balanced with a focus on a specific theme. What I would look to here as sign posts are the battle tactics. Just a quick refresher so that everyone is on the same page: Right away, if you build a skew list, you won't be able to do ~3 of these battle tactics. If you go all-in on Fusiliers (60 Fusiliers with support), you likely won't be able to do Mount the Charge, Strike without Warning or Iron Might. But a goodstuff list with just a little bit of shooting, some bodies, some highly moblie units, a few elves and dwarves etc. probably won't be able to do stuff like Blackpowder Bombardment or the AELF/DUARDIN tactics, either. If you bring just three DUARDIN or AELF units, you are just one shooting phase away from having only 2 of those units and being locked out of your battle tactic. If you only bring 20 Fusiliers you won't complete Blackpowder Bombardment ever. In general, I think the book contains a lot of strong power pairs: Fusiliers+Alchemite, Cavaliers+Marshall, Darkling Covens dudes+Sorceress, Runelord+Hammerers... And what is nice is that you can run those power pairs at nearly full strength independently of your list. Fusiliers are already pretty good as just 20 with the Alchemite, same with 5 Cavaliers and the Marshall. You can make them significantly better with command traits and your city allegiance (Fusiliers shoot a good bit harder with Master of Ballistics, the Alchemite casts much more dependably in Hallowheart/Settler's Gain, the Cavaliers are much more likely to get that turn 1 charge in Misthavn...), but even without that extra investment these unit combinations will do work. To me, that pushes me into a certain mindset when building lists: Put in some of the dependable power pairs. In my case, I'd go with Fusiliers and Cavaliers. This enables Bring Full Arms to Bear. Put in the Command Corps for Raise the Banner and that 4+ win the game ability. With screens, that should be about 1000 points. Decide on your list focus and what other 1-2 battle tactics you would like to be able to do. Spend the remaining 1000 points on that. I think given what battle tactics and orders suggest, a Cities list that cannot both shoot and charge is playing at a disadvantage. The counter charge and suppressive fire orders are both very potent. And battle tactics are in no small part tied to shooting and charging. Also, I think Cities wants to naturally go high drops. Orders are important enough that running lots of heroes is more valuable than the one drop. Having two orders at once is especially valuable (+3" move plus a second thing). MSU also helps with the Banners Held High grand strategy, which is probably the most dependable one in the new book if you build your list for it. Extra enhancements can be spent on one of our nice-to-have book artefacts or arcane tome, but if you are running a Battlemage an extra lore spell might actually be quite tempting, too.

As sacrifice fuel for the sorceress, but they do no ranged damage instead of no melee damage. For what it's worth, there is a battle tactic to destroy three units at range, so it's a slight upside to have ranged screens instead of melee screens.

Not really. In the castellite formation warscroll battalion, they call the cannon the "gate", but that's it.

Those would by my next steps as well. The Fusiliers because the design of the army strongly relies on them (suppression fire, battle tactics) and the Cavalier Marshall for the nice, self sufficient power pair with the Cavaliers.

Not super hard to beat 40k gunhaver man, but it really is a very nice Vampire model. Also notably different to all the other VLords again.

Are you building towards a Steelhelm Horde list? In that case, maybe. I personally think Hammerhal Ghyra horde with Tahlia Vedra is a viable list archetype, but people are not currently thinking about it because nobody wants to paint a hundred Steelhelms and Flagellants. Personally, I would only get one box and try to not fall into the trap of buying stuff I don't actually want or need just because it is at a discount.

Be the change you want to see in the world.

Spinning off from the discussion in the rumour thread: Could Cities of Sigmar replace Stormcast as a starter faction? Are they too hard to paint or do they maybe just not have the right type of appeal? How hard is it actually for new players to enter the hobby?

I have personally been working on my dudes for a while now. The idea is that they are from a city that is de facto ruled by their local Collegiate Arcane university. They are from Chamon and strongly believe in using superior technology and magic to win their battles. In one of the recent designer interviews, they said that the new Cities lore is supposed to show that the faction is still kinda internally dysfunctional, and that is also something that I wanted to express with my guys: They have all this knowledge that allows them to produce amazing feats of magic and technology, but they barely understand how their own stuff works because all the different scholar are jealously guarding their research secrets and permanently trying to mislead their academic rivals. They also insist on using their machines, which were developed for a temperate region in Chamon, in order to found a new Dawnbringer settlement in a desert in Shyish (with predictable results). The city is supposed to be at once very progressive (with their pursuit of knowledge) but also very traditional (very invested in rituals and status, doing things one way because it was always done that way without questioning the reasons for this). For the colour scheme, I went with orange and off-white for cloth (with an occasional blue accent), and blue and brass for metallics. The blue metallics are supposed to illustrate the city's skill at alchemy: It's supposed to be a magically enhanced type of steel that is lighter and more durable. The brass was kinda supposed to be immitation gold before I learned that transmuting base metals into gold is actually barely an inconvenience in the Mortal Realms. My Cities project has been on hold since the update was announced and I am pumped to finally get started on the infantry portion of the army now that the new Fusiliers are out. For heraldry, I am thinking of treating their whole shield as the excutcheon, kinda like this, with the blue being metallic: Rules wise, I am currently thinking of going with Hallowheart, because I will definitely run the Hurricanum and an Alchemite (and getting the Alchemite spell off reliably seems pretty important to me). I think there could be worse ideas than slapping an Arcane Tome on the Tank Commander and adding another Battlemage for one of the lore spells (all of Pha's Protection, Pall of Doom, Mystifying Miasma and Wildform seem very good).

One of the biggest difficulties for Warhammer is also getting new, young players into the community. Maybe I'm stereotyping teens a bit, but I think most of them would be more interested in fielding the elite super-knights of the god-king rather than Greg and his mates.

I believe it is mentioned that the City belongs to Morathi now but some resistance groups still fight using its old colours. Not much beyond that, IIRC.

I was planning to open a new one when the miniatures are actually out in people's hands, but why not now?

With the advent of our new battletome, let's have a new thread for kitbashes, painting and lore! What does your city colour scheme look like? What is the meaning of its heraldry? Who is this Karl Franz guy and why is his name on all the Hurricanums?

I used to really struggle painting yellow, now it's one of the easiest colours for me: The only thing you need to do is pre-shade in browns and whites. Basically, just establish your shadows in brown, highlights in (off-)white. Such as with a brown wash over white. Then, just a thin coat of yellow paint should do it, and be appropriately shaded, too. Trying to paint yellow over black is hard, because yellow is so transparent. Plus, black primer tends to not actually be black, but rather a very dark blue. This interacts with the transparent yellow and results in green-tinted shadows. That's the reasoning behind using dark brown as a shadow colour for yellow: It is a warm pigment that helps achieve a good effect when painted over in yellow and does not result in any weird colour changes.

I don't think you need to feel bad for using a "hidden information" mechanic as intended. The first few games, I would definitely remind people, but once everyone is used to the way Cities plays it is on them. All the info is on the board. In my mind, falling for a counter-fire order is no different from positioning yourself badly and catching a charge.

That's why I am kinda lukewarm about Executioners (and to a lesser extent Hammerers, which can at least take a punch and grind out an engagement). Executioners read like Grave Guard at first glance, but Grave Guard get to deep strike for free and are way easier to buff. Corsairs are in a similar boat, too. Their damage potential is sky high, but delivery is pretty hard. That's why I still prefer the mounted Dark Elf units. Their rules and battle tactic tell me that Dark Elves want to be mobile and cycle charge a lot. The Sorceress, however, encourages building a fairly slow, squishy melee death star. I don't personally think that is super good. You can't currently snipe the Sorceress, but you can just shoot or charge the buff receiving unit off the board fairly easily.