Neil Arthur Hotep

People dislike the Tome Celestials because they are a pretty bad delivery mechanism for rules updates, but they are really succeeding at at least bringing some of the older books up to speed. That's really a lot better than having to wait several years for every army to get a new battletome, in my opinion. If GW absolutely needs to sell us rules updates in physical form, I prefer it this way, because at least it means most armies will be 3rd edition compliant in a little over a year.

That would depend on how it is implemented: If you allow all shooting units to shoot in both your and your opponent's shooting phase, then yes. If you are only allowed to return fire to opposing units that have already shot, then not necessarily.

An excerpt of the Methodus Alchemiae by Magister Atersolus of the College of Schwarzerden: The first step is ULGU, the impure state of the substance. It is the task of the alchemist to divide the impure, flawed parts from the pure, perfect parts with which they are intermixed. The second step is AQSHI, the calcination of the substance. Heat and motion are applied to the base substance, disrupting its structure and dissolving its bonds. The third step is SHYISH, the putrefaction of the substance. The substance is in an unstable state and will dissolve into its constitutent parts as is intended by nature if left undisturbed. The fourth step is CHAMON, the transmutation of the subtance. The individual parts are to be separated, casting to the ground the impure materials and taking care to save the left over subtances which have taken a novel, purified shape. The fifth step is GHUR, the cibation of the substance. The substances thus obtained, although pure, exist in a weak and basic form. They to be tempered, shaped and nurtured. The sixth step is GHYRAN, the potentiation of the substance. Given the right treatment,the base substances are enriched, increasing their potency and revealing their refined character. The seventh step is HYSH, the exaltation of the subtance. The refined substances are now to be re-introduced to each other, combining their noble natures into one. The eigth and finals step is AZYR, the perfection of the substance. With the impurities removed and the constituent substances refined, only perfection remains. This is the ultimate end of alchemy. The Alchemist should do well to remember that all of the world is drafted after the same pattern. The metals and minerals found across the realms alike to the realms themselves, as the method of Alchemy clearly shows. The same is true of the body, the mind, and ultimately even the soul. Thus the alchemist cannot be content with just the perfection of matter. Many have said of Alchemy that it is for the production of gold and silver. For me, such is not the aim, but only to consider what power and virtue may be drawn from the perfection of the soul.

In my opinion, this has always been the best justification for keeping the double turn around. Alpha strikes are a naturally dominant strategy in games where they are possible. Not because any particular piece of game design, but due to a general mathematical regularity know as Lanchester's Law. In essence, Lanchester's Law tells us about what happens if two military units fight each other, under the assumption that their offensive power diminshes as members of the unit die (so, just like it works in AoS). The big take away from it is that just a small difference in the offensive strength of units has a big difference on the outcome of battles. If two groups of 10 guys fighting is an equal engagement, it might turn into a one-sided fight even with a small difference in unit sizes, such as 10 vs. 13. The reason being that the 13 guys get to bring more offensive power to bear, which leads to the smaller unit losing guys faster, which leads to that unit losing offensive power faster, which further increases the power disparity between the two. This makes alpha strikes a naturally dominant strategy because of how much the mathematics reward attacking first*. Even if you don't completely shoot the opponent off the table turn 1, a successful alpha strike will have a snowball effect: You destroy a quarter off their guys. This means they don't have the offensive output to completely wipe out your units when they attack. This means you have more units left to bring their offensive power to bear. This means higher losses for the opponent... A successful alpha strike, especially a successful ranged alpha strike that the opponent cannot counterattack against, is just the easiest and most consistent way to place yourself in a winning position. I definitely believe that strategy games are better if the strength of alpha strikes is mitigated in some way. In AoS, the double turn serves that function. However, I think there are other designs could do it better, particularly because of what some people in this thread have mentioned: It's a real turn-off for new players. Since the double turn seems to be a design element GW is unwilling to do away with, I think the way foreward is to make it more controllable and less random. People have already mentioned initiative cards that other games use, and that sounds neat. A fixed double turn on turn 3 would probably also work. Or you could let people bid on turn priority by spending a resource like command points. *It also explains why summoning 1000 points of units over the course of the game is not as good as having 3000 points from the start. Sorry, Hedonites players, the math was rigged against you all along.

I appreciate the mechanical difficulties that Skaven face (no doubt they are not exactly thriving as an army in 3rd ed), but I thought you were specifically saying that Skaven have no points left over for screens. And my understanding of a screen is a small unit that gets into the line of fire to absorb an attack and die. Without in-depth Skaven knowledge, it seems like 10 Plague Monks would do quite well in that role. Not being battleline actually seems like an upside in this scenario, because it means they can't be exploited by the opponent to score battle tactics. Are Skaven points really so tight that you can't slap in a few units of 10 to safe guard more important pieces?

Long ago, during the age of myth called 2nd Edition, I started a Cities of Sigmar army. The Cities had just got their battletome not too long ago, I had just got my Legions of Nagash/Tomb Kings army to a pretty solid state and I wanted a bit of a change of pace. I had a list of a number of requirements for whatever new army I would start, and Cities of Sigmar met them all: A different play style and aesthetic from Legions of Nagash. Something that I could build and paint "as intended" without constantly having to think about proxying or hunting down out of production models. Something elite, because I was burnt out on skeleton hordes. A chance to actually paint people with the skin still on. These considerations eventually made me settle on a concept that I believe was mentioned on Warhammer Weekly at some point: A modern day combined arms force in the mortal realms. That means tanks and infantry supported by aircraft and artillery. Cities of Sigmar has access to all the units necessary to serve that theme: Steam Tanks, Gyrocopters, Handgunners, Helstorm Rockets... Pictured: The Mortal Realms, probably. (Source) Of course, when you translate your initial theme into an actual list that, ideally, wins games sometimes, you have to be willing to make some concessions. Right of the bat, even in 2nd edition, Steam Tanks were always going to be a bit of a pet choice. Not exactly bad bad, but definitely not good either. Since I knew I wanted a bunch of tanks, though, I decided that the rest of the army would be where I compromize the theme for viability. Handgunners would still be my backbone unit, but I would also take a unit of Greatswords along eventually to have an actual hammer. A Hurricanum would be added for that sweet +1 to hit aura, even though it does not really fit the war machine theme. Even though the Cities of Sigmar artillery looks cool, it was mechanically just not worth it, so Helstorms and Helblasters are out. A Knight-Azyros is a cheap, fast support hero that should probably go in the list, even though it's really too mystical to fit the theme. I decided to first get a bunch of Steam Tanks ready for the tabletop, since those are what I was most excited about in the army, followed by a Gyrocopter and Knight-Azyros conversion. At some point, the Broken Realms campaign started and brought with it a box with two Hurricanums and the ven Densts. It may not look like much, but it's an honest 1300 or so points. --- Then 3rd edition rolled around and brought with it a bunch of changes. Suddenly, a lot of the units I had previously planned to include as a compromise for the sake of viability were actually not at all good anymore. With buff stacking removed, the Hurricanum had limited value in combination with Steam Tanks (who have two sources of +1 to hit on their warscroll). The Knight-Azyros basically stopped working with Cities armies alltogether. What's worse, some of the units were part of the core theme of the army also started to become pretty unviable: Handgunners lost much of their damage potential and were suddenly no longer the only unit with the ability to shoot in the charge phase. Gyrocopters lost a lot of their horde killing potential and could no longer be taken in squads of three. Steam Tanks got worse, while other, smilar units (monsters) got a lot better. So I decided that if my Cities army was going to be bad anyway, I would at least include all and only the models that I am excited about. However, for me that meant finding a new theme, as well. In concrete terms, it would mean that artillery is back on the menu in terms of Helstorm rockets. And it would mean that Handgunners are probably out for now, because while I love these little weirdos and their puffy sleeves, their current models are just not up to par. At the same time, I want to include more magical stuff, like the Luminark, since I found that I liked those weird baroque buff wagons a lot more than I originally thought, as well as more witch hunters, which also seem to be on the horizon. However, where my previous plan had a clear theme, this new collection of units was kind of lacking unity. What do wizards, tanks, helicopters, rocket artillery and witch hunters have in common, after all? The old "modern combined arms" list could get by without any real fluff, because the theme was (at least for me) strong and evident enough. But I felt like the new army would need to have a bit more thought put into it. It would need a theme that would make you go "Ah, I get it now" after hearing about it and seeing the models. Finally, after a bunch of deliberation, I have decided that the overarching theme of this army will be "alchemy". How exactly that works as a unifying theme for this army might not be 100% clear to you at this point, but making it clear is going to be the purpose of this blog! In the future, I hope to post a collection of lore posts, "behind the scenes" stuff on the real-life inspiration for the lore and modelling/painting content about my newly-named City of Sigmar of Schwarzerden on here. I hope it will be of interest for some of you!

Is it really so bad? I just checked the points for Skaven and you get 10 Plague Monks for 85. That seems like a pretty good screen, right there.

It makes sense. Weird undead king sitting on a throne while his little rodent servants scamper all around the place. If it is one model, though, it's almost certainly for Cursed City since these rumour engines are from just before that game released. Being part of a planned CC expansion would explain why they have been unsolved for so long,

I was going to say, probably a weird Cursed City thing. It seems to be a weird rodent, so maybe it's connected to Kritza, the Rat Prince?

I have not commented in this thread until now because, while I feel that the game is deficient in some ways right now, I also feel that there is more negativity than is appropriate in some places. And I can't really put my finger on why that would be. One reason might be that we transitioned to a new edition, but it does not feel like there has been an all-around improvement of the state of the game, or even overall progress towards a better gameplay experience. The edition change broke as many rules as it fixed. Some army books started deteriorating, having to play in an environment for which they were not written. A lot of the new rules that were introduced were good and adressed existing problems (like not having anything to do on your opponent's turn), but there are one or two new rules that really do more harm than good (the amulet and unleash hell before the battlescroll, coherency still). Another thing I am observing is that the community seems to have a hard time dealing with their new battletomes, at least at first. I think there is more doom and gloom around them than is warranted, especially in the lead up to the tome. I followed the Stormcast, Idoneth and Fyreslayer releases somewhat closely. In each case, there have been people who were absolutely sure that the new book would have no play and every unit and allegiance ability would be nerfed. From my perspective, all those books look fine from a mechanical perspective. Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary in terms of mechanical power compared with 2.0 battletomes. I suspect it is because Ago of Sigmar is only now entering a periode where a new battletome means that some of the rules you are familiar will change, leading to anchoring biases (not being able to appreciate new things because the loss of something you had before occupies your mind too much) coming out in full force. "This new book is worse because it no longer does what the old book did.", but nevermind that the new book can do other things that are good in their own right. During 2.0, a lot of the battletomes that came out were the first time that the faction in question actually got an AoS tome at all. I think that made them easier to get excited about. However, overall, I find it hard to point to anything in the overall play environment and confidently say "This is worse than anything we had in 2.0". I still enjoy the game a lot. Most problems that I experience are on the level of "I don't prefer things being this way, but I'll live with it." Most criticisms I have are still from a place of wanting the game that I like to be even better. I have to say that the, in my opinion, sometimes overwhelming negativity towards the 3rd edition battletomes is really putting a damper on my enjoyment of participating in this community at times. I really dislike the feeling of going online to share my enthusiasm about something and being made to feel like I am stupid for enjoying that thing as a consequence. However, since the feeling of discontent with the game seems to be so pervasive right now, I don't want to invalidate other people's opinion. I really just hope that the new edition finds its stride sooner rather than later.

I frequently play games around the 1000 point mark. In one word, I would characterize the experience as janky. What I mean by that is that everything kinda works, but not really and you need a lot of good will on all sides for things not to be come absurd. Just a few points: It is often hard to hit 1000 points exactly. At a smaller game size, one unit more or less can make a big difference. But you hit situations where you are at 900 or so points and can't reasonably fit anything else in your list pretty often. In 2000 points, I would say just rejigger your list a bit, take an endless spell or go for a triumph. At 1000, there is often not enough room to adapt your list, however, and wasting the points on non-units is a notable disadvantage. Likewise, there are plenty of units in the game that only have a functional real role reinforced and with support. Otherwise they just don't perform. Example: Soulblight Skeletons. They have a defensive role in blocks of 30 with a necromancer supporting them. At a lower size and without a necromancer, the only role they have is chaff. In 2000 point lists, the average army can have about 3 synergystic threats. At 1000 points, you probably only get 1 and a bunch of less impactful stuff. At the same time, depending on how you handle battle plans, some units turn into extreme overperformers. Due to the smaller table size. some slow units can suddenly first turn charge if you don't keep the deployment distances from 2000 fixed. Like Black Knights: One of the worst units in the Soulblight book, but at an 18" deployment distance, they threaten to charge turn 1 guaranteed, which gives them a completely different role. Same for shooting: 18" range units might be able to fire on the opponent turn 1 when they usually can't at 2000. Big monsters usually get considerably better, since they are frequently self-reliant and don't scale with points at all. How to adapt battle plans is a fairly difficult question in general. At 1000, most armies don't have the amount of units needed to be in three places on the board at the same time. But a lot of battleplans assume that armies are capable of doing that. Since the capture area on objectives does not scale with points, more of the game area will be objective area. The distance between objectives will probably be significantly decreased, too. My personal way of dealing with these problems is to lean into the jank. 1000 points is not the game size where I expect balance. Rather, it is the size where I and my friends can play those weird battle plans from the battletomes and other asymmetric scenarios. It is the place where you don't expect to be able to play a game rules-as-written, but rather the one where you have to tinker around with mechanics so that everyone can have fun. Balance, here, is not "everyone can feel like they have an equal chance to win every game". It's more "over time, people will win and lose about the same number of games". You just have to be comfortable with the idea that some games will be ridiculous blowouts and have fun with seeing how wild everything gets. And then when the game is over, you have to be able to say "That was absurd, let's not do that again" without anyone getting their feelings hurt. There are a bunch of aspects of the game that just don't scale with points. And the way these aspects interact is what makes me believe that the game is balanced around 2000 points. Not that the game is perfectly balanced at that level and unplayable anywhere else. Rather, movement and shooting ranges, unit sizes, unit interactions, damage vs. defensive power and a bunch of other aspects of the game seem to be directly informed by the idea that the battlefield is a certain size and that armies can fit in about 3 full-power threats into their lists.

It's fine to have a few units in your list that don't benefit directly from your sub-allegiance. It will probably make your lists better, in fact. So I'd say go for those wolves if you want them.

I struggle to understand who these bundles are supposed to be for. You need to be pretty plugged in to the AoS sphere to even hear about them, but if you are, you are probably knowledgable enough to know that they are not good deals. Bundles without a discount are a worse than buying models individually, not better. The art print you get with them is not worth committing to such a big miniature purchase unless you were already going to buy all the minis individually, anyway. And that seems like a really unlikely situation most of the time, in my opinion.

I personally also don't think that a nerf to the Living City allegiance is warranted at this point. Living City was not even clearly one of the top three cities in the book for most of its life span. That tells me that if there is a problem, it's not due to inherent power level, but due to meta shifts. In this case, we are in a shooting meta, where ambushing (starting off board) and shooting-related abilities are both more potent. Also, Living City healing got better because of higher saves all around. However, the real source of the problem is how over-tuned some Stromcast units are. I think it's plainly obvious that Stormcast just has bunch of units that are too efficient as a self-contained package. This is a problem with the design of the new Stormcast book. Stormcast are an army of efficient warscrolls and comparatively weaker allegiance abilities, which is easier for beginners. But they gain access to much more potent and complex allegiance abilities in Cities. There is always going to be a high chance that Stormcast will excel in Cities because of this. I don't think the possibility of certain Stormcast units being better outside of their own allegiance can be 100% avoided unless GW turn off allegiance abilities for coallition units alltogether. Which would be a shame, because that's part of what makes them fun to use in Cities in the first place.

I would not worry about units getting dropped at this point. There is just not much reason for GW to do it. Every kit in Cities is in plastic. They have now all been part of a real battletome, which makes the barrier to remove them higher (older armies that were removed never had a tome). High Elves were only removed because Lumineth were planned, so unless new dwarves are in the works, all Dispossessed kits are safe. And if there are new dwarves in the works, you can probably get a nice proxy army going. As far as Hammerers: Their warscroll is perfectly servicable. In a mechanically optimal list, you would probably use Freeguild Greatswords instead, but there is not much of a difference. Both are completely fine.

Frankly, I would be suspicious of anyone who doesn't want to build this army. So definitely go for it! I was already looking at whip bits for a conversion, haha. No idea what is getting converted, but something definitely is. I have been meaning to make a blog post about using classic video game sprites as a guide for mini painting. Because they are so similar: Both game sprites and miniatures are small objects that have to be readable and impactful from far away. Seems like a perfect opportunity to do this with some Castlevania sprites.

That's exactly what I mean! Chances are good you will actually see it quite soon, too: I have most of the mummies, vampires and werewolves (in the form of the Vargskyr and other Vyrkos models) already done. I'll see if I can cook up a list where everything is about equally well represented, though.

This will probably be the first Underworlds warband I pick up. Between all the mummies, vampires and now Frankenstein monsters, I might be able to manage a full Castlevania army! Or at least a DnD campaign.

"You don't get runes. Runes are for closers.

I believe Misthavn still has no spell lore, so you will be stuck with just the generic spells if you use them. If you have a bunch of Freeguild Crossbows and Darkshards in your list, as well as all those wizards, going Anvilgard for that Vitriolic Spray combo might be a better fit.

In general I think the Idoneth 1st ed. book aged fairly well. While initially eel spam was the one dominant strategy, over time with FAQs and the update from Broken Realms, other lists became possible as well. All the while the power level seems to have been high enough that Idoneth could compete in tournaments. If GW is smart they will not change too much about the Idoneth tome. Cleaning up the 1st ed. jank and updating everything to 3rd ed. standards will hopefully be the priority. Idoneth have a small range but, at this point, very few of their kits are competitive duds, apart from some of the small heroes. Fyreslayers will be much more of an uphill battle. The only good list they ever had, to my knowledge, was Hearthguard spam when you could still stack wards to make them unkillable. That was a frustrating list to play against and likely not where GW sees the future of the faction. We have not seen much of the new book, but I welcome the decision to makes Runesons on Magmadroth a conditional battleline choice. I think with a faction as small as Fyreslayers, in the absence of new kits, their units need as much flexibility as possible.

I also like the idea of having artillery interact with objectives more. I had the though before that certain artillery units could get the ability to fire at scenery and objectives directly (not just at units occupying those places) for some kind of effect, but I struggle to come up with something that is both thematic and worthwhile.

Progress is kinda slow on my Rocket Battery detachment because I am still trying to figure out how to make a big display base with recessess for my miniatures. The scenes are coming together nicely, though. I want to model four Rocket Batteries in different states of their firing sequence. Here they are so far! Reloading: By the book, each Rocket Battery needs three guys to crew it. For my purposes, that looks too crowded, however, so I am replacing one crew member per battery with a scenery piece, like the rocket storage in for this one. The guy in the back is a stock build, but for the guy reloading the rocket battery in the front I modified the arms that usually hold a tamping stick for the Helblaster Volleygun to hold a rocket and swapped his head for one from the Imperial Nobility Bloodbowl team. Ready to fire: For this one I kitbashed the engineer body that comes with the kit to with parts from the Steam Tank Commander and Hurricanum crew. The guy with the torch is also built with Hurricanum parts. He still needs a hand (or at least a hook). The idea is that in this scene torch guy is waiting for the signal of the engineer to light the fuse of the rocket battery. Firing: The engineer in thr back is checking the distance to the target. His arms are from the Hurricanum kit, as well. The guy withe the rifle in the front is my Cogsmith. He is kitbashed from a Steam Tank Commander body, Bloodbowl head and Hurricanum crew arms. His rifle is also made out of spare tank and Hurricanum parts. Ideally I still want to modify the Rocket Battery to be in the process of launching rockets, but I will have to learn to sculpt smoke first. After firing: These guys are in the unfortunate position of having to deal with a misfired rocket. Removing all the rockets from this model was probably the most work I have ever put into making something look less cool.

If I remember right, this question was discussed when the book came out, but I don't think there was a consensus. For casual purposes, I think it's fie to just pick one way to play it and stick to it, since both have upsides and downsides. If a model broadcasts a buff aura, that aura would go away if the model dies. If it's a pulse instead, it would not move with the model. Personally, I prefer it as an aura. I think that makes more intuitive sense.

I hope GW is reading these posts because I have three Steam Tanks in my Cities list and am champing at the bit to add more or convert stuff. I would love for Dawnbringers to lean into the steam vehicles angle if they ever come out. In any case, Steam Tank stonks have nowhere to go but up, because they are currently at an all-time low.