LeonBox

That's awesome! What's the base model?

I actually do a little bit better with him usually -- indeed, in the next turn and without the benefit of Keeper assistance, I think he put 6 wounds through on a 3+ unrendable save (those Stoneguard are as tough as OG Ironbreakers). Of course, he brings a lot of benefits to the table outside of damage output, and indeed I think he'd be overpowered if he was reliably putting 15 damage a turn through on a 4+ save (for instance). Also his warscroll spell is, judging by how much my opponents hate it, fantastic.

I agree with this assessment. I got super lucky with mine in my battle last night (rolled 2 6s followed by 2 6s and a hit for claws) but more often than not they whiff their 2 most important attacks, the claws. I feel like they need... something. Are they supposed to be horde killers or monster killers? Give them re-rolls or plusses to wound versus either monsters or hordes or something, because those claw attacks are make or break for their damage, and as it stands they fail to do anything so often. 3/3 just isn't cutting it.

Had my first 3.0 match last night, and it was a crushing victory (due more to some poor choices on my opponent's part and great dice rolls on mine). My list, roughly: Lurid Haze Host Leaders Glutos, Battle Rapture, Priestess still making up for like 5 failed ward save rolls Keeper of Secrets, Amulet of Destiny, Slothful Stupor, Claws of Utter Annihilation The Masque, Bodice of Sentinels' Worst Nightmare Infernal Enrapturess, Oil of Exultation, just thrilled to be here sticking it to the pointy-ears' spellcasters really Battleline 2 x Scourgestriders, all the bells and whistles 1 x Blissbarb Archers Endless Spells Dreadful Visage Battalions: Warlord (extra enhancement), Battle Regiment (units in this are one drop). Points: 1975 Drops: 5 My opponent's list: 2 x Pike dudes, healthy fear of Keepers and Sigvald 1 x cow mountain guys, perpetual strike-last effect Weepy sad lady on the terrain piece Sevireth, Lord of Being Annoying and Impossible to Catch 5 x Roo Riders 5 x Auralan Knights 1 x Lakitu Wind Mage, spell of pew pew 2 x 10 Sentinels, dead by dawn 1 x Loreseeker The game We only got in a full two turns (3.0 will take a while to adjust to) but Slaanesh were comfortably ahead by that point. Our scenario had three objectives in the middle and you got points based on wiping out opposing enemy 'predator' units and controlling more objectives than your opponent. Some highlights: The Keeper did really well turn 1, wiping out a whole unit of pike guys with 15 unsaved wounds from the claws and putting like 5 on the cow hammer guys. She was then focused down by basically his whole army in his turn one. She also failed her roll to rubblify the annoying LRL terrain piece, as did her successor. The Masque got a clutch 12" charge off to hit a unit of archers behind the pike guys. She then spent the next two turns leisurely tearing them apart. The d3 heal is amazing on her. Glutos did his job, throwing his -1 aura around and summoning Dreadful Visage to mess with the central hammer guys, but was terribly pillow-fisted for most of the battle. Even with a Keeper double pile-in he did 0 damage in his first turn. Sigvald failed a 9" charge even with a re-roll turn one. He subsequently made up for this by solo'ing a unit of pikemen and killing Sevireth! (My opponent knew he'd lost and decided to try to brute-force wounds through on Sigvald to finish him off.) Hellstriders were pretty solid -- they're bravery 8 with their icon and their save is decent. They didn't do much beyond babysit an objective and tank his Loreseeker's sneaky backline deepstrike, but that's all I needed them to do. The 5++ on the Keeper is absolutely amazing. There's nothing much that was gonna prevent her getting focused by his entire army turn one, but all that shooting focused on her meant that a lot of his other usual priority targets (like the Enrapturess) went untouched. Enrapturess forcing spell re-rolls is always amazing, but very much needed on Zaitrec LRL with their +1 to cast and LRL's endless supply of re-rolls to whatever they like. The Masque is baller af now. Healing d3 wounds every hero phase makes her high-unkillable unless she's focused. She had some great rolls for archer-shredding too, and fulfilled her most important role of keeping MW shooting off my other units like a boss. Blissbarbs killed 5 archers turn 1 which was great, then got wiped out by an Auralan knight charge that I couldn't really stop. They didn't do too much but getting rid of archers ASAP is always important. Their unleash hell took off a couple of knights too. First time facing Sevireth, and he is just pesky. 1d3 mortal wounds with his flyover attack twice a turn, very good shooting profile, and functionally uncatchable. Was extremely satisfying to carve him up with Siggy. Siggy was great. He's usually a priority target for focus fire from Sentinels, but I guess my Keeper was scarier. Total Eclipse is much less oppressive now given the extra command points floating around, but still something you wanna stop if you can. It made life much more difficult but wasn't as overwhelming as it was previously. All in all I'm optimistic about 3.0. The new monster/hero abilities are great additions and I love having something to do in my opponent's turn, as my opponent did in mine.

Wow really? Jervis Johnson is a GW legend and has been there since forever. He's generally well regarded and knows what he's doing, so I'm sorta surprised he was responsible for the last battletome. I wonder how much input he had on the pointing as opposed to the lore?

The Masque is my go-to mobile summoner. She's tiny, she can slip through lines and she's pretty tanky so opponents are hesitant to "waste" shooting on her over other targets. She's also got run & charge on 10" of movement, so you can have her move 16" with a CP if you really need to.

Did you not have the Fane to hand?

With the changes, really Myrmidesh should have gained a 5++ to melee saves only. This distinguishes them from both Twinsouls and Chaos Warriors, whose wards only apply to mortal wounds.

Seekers have never steered me wrong really. Their speed means they can be into backline archers or support units by turn 2 at the latest (probably turn one in 3.0) and they're deceptively tough despite their 5+ save -- their bravery means that even if your opponent kills 4 of them in a turn they still won't break because of their bravery 10. They could even get D3 models back if you keep the icon bearer on and roll a 1.

I'd tried to be optimistic in the face of all the points hikes and nerfs but this FAQ really is another kick in the teeth after so many in a row. Summoning was deservedly nerfed, I don't think anyone could dispute that, but there have been so many other incremental nerfs -- Keepers losing their CA on themselves, the Fane getting nerfed, all points going up across the board (including Shalaxi getting what I think was the single biggest one-model increase in the game for no good reason), and now Myrmidesh, Shardspeakers and Shalaxi all take extra nerfs. If I need an anvil and I am still allowed to take Chaos Warriors (unclear on the coalition rules as they pertain to battleline), why on earth would I spend so much more on Painbringers when Chaos Warriors tank better than they do? Sure, I get mortal wounds and rend, but if I want damage-dealers I'll take Twinsouls (who are infinitely better than Myrmidesh now). It's the Shalaxi one that winds me up the most. Never has a unit been so repeatedly dunked on for no good reason. They're supposed to be the scariest hero-hunter in Age of Sigmar, and instead they're just a wasted model with an overcosted, confused mess of a warscroll that is patently worse than their generic counterpart's.

Am I missing something? I didn't see anything about the Epitome being altered with the FAQ.

Also also regarding Shalaxi: her spell has even less utility than I realised. It gives +1 to hit and +1 to saves against heroes only. Her Cloak of Constriction gives +1 to saves versus heroes only. Since ne'er the twain shall stack, her spell basically gives +1 to hit (only useful on her claws, as her 1 spear attack already hits on 2s). Talk about kicking them when they're down.

It is really baffling. I remember there being all this talk of our units being costed in preparation for 3.0 (given that our new models only got released, what, 4 months ago?) but if the additional points hikes didn't put that one to bed, then the Myrmidesh change did. It wouldn't be so bad if we could put them on 2+ with mystic shield/a CP, but that's pointless now with the cap on save rolls. What was the point of releasing new models and changing their warscroll abilities a mere 4 months later? And in the meantime the execrable Slaangors remain untouched?

Also I guess Shalaxi was getting way too powerful because their spell also lost re-rolls to hit and saves in favour of a flat +1.

But in some good news, Glutos, Synessa and Shalaxi will be able to take a spell or spells:

This is a good question. A Herald on Exalted Chariot with 9-10 damage 3 attacks would be broken beyond all belief.

I feel that the opportunity to address how much of a non-issue battleshock is was definitely missed in 3.0. The immunity to battleshock CA should really be "set bravery to 10 until the end of the battleshock phase". Still, I guess they limited it to being usable only once per battleshock phase, which might hurt some armies.

The core rules say you can only cast one endless spell per wizard, but doesn't say anything about endless spells being limited. Maybe the battle packs limit them though, as I also recall hearing that you could only take one per wizard.

We had to call it as it was like 2am, so it was still in the balance. I had killed a lot of elves though, so that was nice.

I fielded my Shardspeaker for the first time a few days ago and she was pretty great -- but not as a caster. 1 cast with no bonuses is super unreliable (I was against Syar LRL too, which made things worse), but her +1 to wound is really helpful, particularly when ensuring things like Keepers do the damage they're capable of (I can't tell you how often I whiff with their 3/3 claw attacks). I was fairly lucky she didn't draw the ire of my opponent's sentinels, but I guess he had bigger fish to fry.

No worries. I posted my comment like a day ago but for some reason it didn't get posted until today, must have been a browser brainfart. A little disappointing but it's not the end of the world; Blissbarbs are still pretty good (I put 7 wounds on Teclis last week with some superlative rolling, which is great because I hate Teclis more than any other model in the game).

I also didn't know this and it's amazing. Re-rolls on Blissbarbs makes them so much deadlier; trying this out in my next game for sure.

Having finally finished my first unit of Blissbarb Archers (so much detail. Seriously, SO much detail) I'm going to move onto Twinsouls and then Painbringers, rather than build the Slickblade Seekers I'd had in mind as my next project. They're looking like our battleline of choice as @Enoby pointed out, so I might as well get cracking on them. I think worries about Slaanesh being squatted as a result of this year's poor rollout is premature and most likely not going to happen. Slaanesh is one of the Big 4 and has been around for a very long time, not only in Fantasy but 40k too. They're an integral part of Games Workshop's proprietary lore and I don't see GW jettisoning them anytime soon.

Why on earth did he think Enrapturesses were going up 90 points, let alone the host of other mistakes he made?

The fall and fall of the Keeper is truly saddening to me. Maybe I've just had awful luck with them recently but since losing the Fane's re-rolls to hit I find them so unreliable, and now they're extremely expensive. I threw one against a Terrorgheist the other day with the Godseeker trait that lets them re-roll 1s to hit and wound on a charge, and I only did 9 wounds before dying to the Terrorgheist's return attacks (my opponent, who I swear has the luck of the devil, rolled like 3/5 sixes on his maw attacks to put 18 MWs on my Keeper).