Neil Arthur Hotep

I have done the math on a full suite of Rocket Batteries before, and while they are not good, they are at still more efficient than Steam Tanks at long range. I was actually moderately impressed with the Greywater battalion during 2.0, which could be used to buff Cities artillery to the point where they could pretty reliably shoot a god model off the table turn 1. But now, without access to shooting twice and without being as buffable as they used to be, they can only manage a 6 wound foot hero most of the time. Which certainly is a huge flavour fail: The best use for our unreliable, inaccurate rocket artillery is not softening up opposing battleline or shelling buildings, but sniping little support characters with pinpoint accuracy. I think there is a good chance that the Ironweld Arsenal subfaction gets expanded upon when Cities gets their battletome update. GW certainly seems to pick out "steam-powered war machines" as one of the things that is cool about Cities in their fluff and their advertising material. Looking at the battletomes released so far, I am fairly positive about the future of the Steam Tank and artillery units. I think the writers are more willing to move away from the roots of how these units worked in Fantasy now. And, let's be honest, the Ironweld units realistically have nowhere to go but up. It would be hard to make them worse.

I saw that too and I have a few thoughts: We can be hopeful that Beasts will get new stuff this edition. They have been set up to be narratively important both in Broken Realms and in Seasons of War: Thondia. The small Dirgehorn seems like it has to be Beasts related. The insect bit that everyone thought could be a Jabberslythe leg is kinda shaky. If I recall, Whitefang implied that it's not related to Beasts. I suspect it will be revealed to be a Sylvaneth thing in a few days. The hoof belonging to a centigor is a bit of a reach, especially given that it has a horseshoe attached. People pointed to Chaos... Knights? Marauder Horsemen? on that one when that Rumour Engine came out. The horned skull is one of the oldest unsolved rumour engines. Given that it is so old, I doubt that it relates to a Beast of Chaos release wave that will happen six months from now at the earlierst. I would rather suspect that it is part of an event model, anniversary model or cursed city expansion that got delayed instead. The little guys belonging to a new Dragon Ogor Shaggoth kit seems like a real possibility. However, them being part of a new Mega-Gargant character kit is also fairly probable, in my opinion. They seem to fit the little creatures described in that one story in the Sons of Behemat battletome pretty well.

Are you mostly trying to match the look of the unit or its role in the game? Regardless, a few ideas: Hippogryph - Tauralon with a head swap: Demon Hunter - Try to get hold of Eltharion the Blind and run him with Galen ven Denst's rules? http://www.coolminiornot.com/pics/pics16/img573b84c2dcc79.jpg

@Geoffreyvt The Fyreslayers FAQ is out and, as expected, the Battlesmith can now only rally FYRESLAYERS keyword units on a 4+.

You find this kind of concept in Descartes' writing, as well (or early modern philosophy in general). Although there, the hierarchy is reversed, with God possessing the higherst degree of reality, and the soul likely a higher degree than the body. The reason being that Descartes thought that nothing could create a thing that was "greater" than itself, and thus for God to create the universe, he would have to "contain" the concepts of all other things implicitly. If you wanted to have this "Great Chain of Being" concept in your AoS head canon, you could start viewing the material part of the mortal realms as a loss of potential over what the non-coalesced winds of magic are capable of.

A somewhat boring, but cost effective proxy option for Freeguild troops exists in Warlord Landsknecht/30 Years War units: https://eu.warlordgames.com/search?type=product&q=landsknecht Much like Bretonnia, the Empire has a very strong historical inspiration in the Landsknechts of the 30 Years War. If you look at a historical game like Pike and Shotte, you should be able to find all the less fancyful staple units that currently exist in AoS: Gun and crossbow troops, spearmen and halberdiers, greatsword fighters and even gun-cavalry. Since the Freeguild troops are some of the oldest and worst-sculped kits in AoS, there is not much of a drop in quality here. There is, however, a significant drop in price: A Landsknecht Missile Troops box from Warlord is only €30 for 30 models, for example, whereas 30 Freeguild Handgunners would set you back nearly €70.

The big 40k leak mentioned that Chaos daemons would be getting stuff, including possessed and mutated guardsmen if I am not mistaken. So my guess would be this is that.

The big 40k leak mentioned that Chaos daemons would be getting stuff, including possessed and mutated guardsmen if I am not mistaken. So my guess would be this is that.

I'll excuse a lot of stuff given the current issues everyone is facing, but still: Getting rid of a bundle that was the only way to get a certain kit but being unable to put that kit in a different box and sell it seems kinda weak for the biggest miniature company in the world.

That actually seems like a pretty big deal. I totally missed that you can't even get your hands on most of the heroes for a faction that just recently got a battletome update. Seems like big ******-up.

I'm in the same boat, decided to grab the Sepulchral Guard that I have had my eye on for a while. Not sure I'd call this FOMO marketing, though. It's unclear right now when, if or how the Underworlds warbands will return. I think giving a heads-up that these warbands will be unavailable for a while is pro-customer, even if it results in some extra sales for GW. More generally, I don't know what to make of the announcement that the older Underworlds warbands are no longer being sold. It definitely sucks for Warcry players, where the warbands just got stats in the Tome of Champions and are actually considered to be pretty good. For Age of Sigmar, its not as much of a concern because I think very few warbands are widely played. But once again, this whole thing highlights my dissatisfaction with the Battletome release model, many of which will now have rules for models you can no longer buy. Underworlds is such a strange game. In theory it's a game that I should be excited about, since I like card/deck building games and miniatures, and would like to get into a skirmish game. But I have always found the choice not to have an "eternal" Underworlds format where you can just play any warbands against each other kind of baffling. Also, the choice to not even sell base decks for old warbands. And now, with the models being removed from the store as well, that doesn't really fill me with a lot of confidence regarding the game.

Nothing on the same level as a Mawkrusha. I think the best native Cities monsters are the Phoenixes, particularly the frost phoenix, but that's a defensive piece. The Freeguild General on Griffon can be souped up to be quite fighty and recently got that nice "teleport out of combat instead of dying" mount trait in White Dwarf.I It might be worth looking at the Stormcast roster, though, because Cities still has the good coalition rules where they gain all the Cities allegiance abilities. The big dragons might be fun to run. I know people also like the Celestant Prime in Hammerhal where he gets to fight twice.

I was surprised normal to see the Crimson Court (the vampire warband) on the list, but it seems to already be gone. I suspect it was just very popular and went out of stock.

#SigmarWarpgrindset

I think you have the wrong numbers somehow. Maybe you have a ward turned on in statshammer or didn't make their mortals on hit in addition? I get the following: Save Greatswords 2+ 7.39 3+ 9.33 4+ 11.28 5+ 13.22 6+ 15.17 - 15.17 They certainly wipe other 10 wound units on average with +1 to hit and their damage stays quite good even against high saves.

I'm pretty sure the official lore does not go into detail here, but given that we have actual confirmation that souls both objectively exist in the AoS world and that they are able to affect material bodies, you can just take your pick from established real life philosophical positions that try to explain mind/body duality using these premises. You could go with the broadly Aristotelian framework according to which souls are the things that give bodies the ability to move. Since that is their essence, they must be constituted such that they can actually affect matter. That is actually their defining characteristic: The category of "souls" is fundamentally characterized by granting bodies the capacity of self-movement. As a side not, it is actually in the AoS lore that just like in Aristotelian natural philosophy, the heavenly bodies also have souls. For example, Lunaghast, the moon of Shyish, is actually the ghost of Morrslieb, the moon of the old world. For the questions what souls are made of, there are broadly two options open to us: Either they are material things, or they are some kind of other things. Them being material makes some sense in the AoS context, since they interact with the material world all the time and manifest themselves as ghosts occasionally. If so, you can maybe think of them like a "rarefied gas", like Descartes did. That is, as a material substance very finely spread throughout the body. Maybe the fact that the Mortal Realms seem to not be fundamentally made of material atoms like the real world, but are instead composed out of the different winds of magic makes this option more palatable. If, on the other hand, you want to say that souls are of a different kind than the material alltogether, then you have the option of taking Chisholm's position on how the soul interacts with the body: By supernatural means. The idea being that every time an object exercises its capacity for self-motion, this is the start of a new causal chain. Since normally all causes need to be caused themself in some way, every uncaused instance of self-motion is a miracle that stands outside of the natural order of things and does not follow natural law. In this case, the demand that the interaction between souls and bodies be explained following the usual assumptions is no longer justified.

They have a really good looking damage output, and given that they can ambush and are quite fast as well, I think they are about the scariest assassins that exist in AoS: Save Rat boss Rat babies 2+ 4.89 5.22 3+ 5.78 5.83 4+ 6.67 6.44 5+ 7.56 7.06 6+ 8.44 7.67 - 8.67 8

The rules for the new Deadwalker warband are out: https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/XWozE21bHDP7KUmM.pdf The main guy Deintalos: 6" move, 6 wounds, 4+ save, 5+ ward, 10 bravery Basic vampire (sadly, not VAMPIRE LORD keyword) wizard, but gets +1 to cast when near the warband champion. Has a little shooting attack and Vampire Lord level attack profile. Weirdly, a new The Hunger ability: He heals up to the number of wounds he inflicts, not just 1. Resurrects one guy from his warband per battleshock phase if they are close to him. Warscroll spell: CV 3 run and charge, sadly for his warband only. The warband: 4" move, 2 wound, - save, 5+ ward near their boss (only the electric zombies), 10 bravery. The champion gets 3 wounds and him and his pet zombie get a different attack profile. DEADWALKER, but not SUMMONABLE, so no Endless Legions, Danse Macabre or Crimson Feast for them. Mortals on 6s to hit, with better attack profiles than normal Zombies. Not subfaction locked. Damage calculations: Save Deintalos The Exiled Dead 2+ 2.08 2.69 3+ 2.78 3.37 4+ 3.47 4.06 5+ 4.17 4.74 6+ 4.17 5.43 - 4.17 6.11 Deintalos and the Exiled Dead are 220 points --- In my opinion, you can probably field this guy if you really want to, but him and his warband are noticably held back by missing out on the good Gravelords keywords like DEATHMAGE, VAMPIRE LORD and SUMMONABLE.

Good points, @readercolin. I think I'd like to respond to a few select ones: I personally rate the Freeguild General low because, while his ability an affect several units and provides a good bonus, it doesn't synergize with what most of them want to be doing. The Freeguild has no infantry anvil that can receive a charge and then hit back hard, which I think would be the main use case for the Freeguild General's ability on a melee unit. The following units I don't think make good targets for Hold the Line: Freeguild Guard don't want to be in super large units and don't deal good damage either way. Greatswords want to charge if possible. Outriders and Pistoliers want to make use of their mobility. That leaves Handgunners, Demigryph Knights and Crossbows. The buff is inefficient on Handgunners. Bringing 10 extra Handgunners is better until you go over 40 in total. On Demigryph Knights, it's debatably good. If you run them with halberds and use them as a mobile anvil rather than trying to get the charge, I think the buff may be worth it. Buffing Crossbows is probably the best use case, since they don't get a free +1 to hit on their warscroll like a lot of the other Freeguild units do. For them, bringing a General becomes efficient if you have 20 or more (compared to spending to point on just bringing more crossbows). Overall I rate the guy low because I generally find the guaranteed utility of just 10 more bodies outweigh the benefits he brings to the table. Although, fair enough: There is probably a Crossbow and Demigryph list where he's really worth it. I really stand by this guy even with all the random garbage on his warscroll. He offers something that I think is valuable: He's a survivable hero that you can use as a platform for whatever cool aura command trait your city of choice has access to. In that role, he really performs fine. 12 wounds on a 3+ that can easily be a 2+ in most situations, plus a d3 heal in the hero phase on his warscroll will stick around for a while. A lot of other stuff on his warscroll is OK too in the right circumstances. He gets the 30" range cannon and Long Rifle to help take out low-health support heroes. He gets a +1 to hit command to self-buff with that is not All-Out Attack. He gets impact hits for a few incidental mortals if he gets a charge. He can use More Pressure early to help him get into position. If you give him an Arcane Tome, he makes good use of Mystic Shield and Metamorphosis. All in all, I think that makes him mid tier. You can put him into a list and not feel bad about it. Still, I hope in the next revision they remove most of the randomness that is still on the warscroll. That stuff is a hold-over from Fantasy, anyway. None of the other war machines have to deal with this garbage (Skaven excluded). There is something weird about that 5+ to hit. Having a bad to hit value makes it so that a unit benefits more from +1 to hit. It's easy to understand if you look at what going 6+ to hit to 5+ would do: It would double your damage output, since you now hit twice as many shots than before. If a unit has a 5+ to hit, but their damage output is already OK, that doesn't have to strictly be a drawback. I think Outriders really have a niche as skirmishers in a Freeguild force. They have the tools to always be out of range of the opponent and bring with them some much needed mobility. Since they shoot comparably well to Handgunners, I think you can justify including a unit or two of these guys in a list sometimes. --- I might be overvaluing Greatswords, but I definitely feel that a unit that basically kills anything it touches will always have a place in a list. Greateswords definitely get there even with minimal buffs. I don't think they are quite as good as Grave Guard, which have a lot of other stuff going for them as well (most importantly the ability to deep strike and resurrect), but they are still very dangerous if you manage to get them into the opponent. I have had a Luminark sitting on my desk since I got that Broken Realms double buff wagon pack when it came out. I really want to try making it work some time. Maybe in this case the uncrewed version is actually the way to go. Paying 55 points for the ability to cast another spell is cheap, but I personally don't value single-cast wizards without casting bonuses very highly. All their magic is at best a coin flip if you have to get through an unbind. I said something similar about Outriders above, but if the overall damage output of a unit is already good, you don't really have to worry about the values that make up the attack profile. In the case of Crossbows, I really think they deliver a good performance even without rend. They are one of the few ranged units that actually performs well shooting at regular troops and not just sniping out characters. It's kind of sad that they are probably the best shooting unit for humans right now, since they are definitely the least cool looking one.

I don't use rally that much, but that's down to my Cities list which does not have any good targets for it. Also, the regular 6+ rally and the 4+ rally the Battlesmith gets are really different beasts. The latter is pretty reliable even on small units and widely applicable. It's a particularly strong option to use on anvils like Phoenix Guard or expensive stuff like Stormdrakes, but basically any big infantry block will appreciate it. Wait until the Fyreslayers FAQ is out, though. I think the chance that this ability will continue to work on non-Fyreslayers the way it does right now is slim.

Cities of Sigmar is the closest thing Age of Sigmar has to a "regular humans" faction, so let's have a thread dedicated to running human-centric armies in 3rd edition! Humans are split among several subfactions in CoS: Freeguild, Collegiate Arcane and Ironweld Arsenal are the biggest ones, but there are also the Devoted to Sigmar and Witch Hunters. Here's a rough tier list of human units as I see it right now: Top Hurricanum Freeguild General on Griffon Ghur Battlemage Doralia ven Denst Demigryph Knights Freeguild Greatswords Freeguild Crossbows Mid Luminark Steam Tank Commander Non-Ghur Battlemage Galen ven Denst Freeguild Guard Freeguild Handgunners Freeguild Outriders Flagellants Bottom Battlemage on Griffon Freeguild General Helstorm Rocket Battery Helblaster Volley Gun Steam Tank Freeguild Pistoliers Non-Canon Cursed City heroes Here's my reasoning: Some points of discussion to start us off: What are your experiences with humans in 3rd edition? Are Endless Spells still worth it? Humans are about the best at casting them, easily getting a +3 bonus. What could a future update like Dawnbringer Crusades bring to the table for CoS humans?

Hard to say. I don't really know what the regular Fyreslayer units bring to the table in Cities. It seems to me a lot of their strength comes from allegiance abilities. The good thing about the 4+ rally guy right now is that his ability doesn't just benefit Fyreslayers, which I think makes him good in Cities. But I don't really know what other Fyreslayer units would go well with him if you want to make the most of your 400 ally points.

I suppose if a new Skaven battletome was guaranteed before, it's now double-plus guaranteed.

What's the name of the guy that allows you to rally back troops on a 4+? The Battlesmith? He's still an option at the moment. His buffed rally still works on any unit, not just FYRESLAYERS. I think there is a high chance that this interaction will be FAQ'd in some way (maybe limited FYRESLAYERS, maybe limited DUARDIN), but I figure it's worth mentioning that the possibility exists.

I would be super stoked if the Era of the Beast turned out to not just be about the Destruction factions, but heavily involve all the other bestial factions such as Beasts of Chaos, Skaven, Flesh Eater Courts and Kurnothi/Sylvaneth as well. That would be really nice. I think especially Beasts of Chaos are so under explored. They already have their long-time fans, but I think they could really get into their own if they got some developent in the plot. They might have more mass appeal than people generally give them credit for.