Underworld40k

As one of the people who will have 90 witch elves and 40 something sisters of slaughter what's the general consensus on bucklers v 2x blades on witch elves? The bucklers keeping (for the moment) the 6+ mortal makes them very tempting given the change of save to a 5+ which with bloodshield and all out defence can keep them at a respectable 4+ v rend 1 so seem the obvious pick for bigger units of the ladies but the extra attack seems like it will really benefit the rend from gladiatrix and the sub faction pick. Is it leaning to smaller units with 2x daggers and big units with shields or is one just objectively better than the other?

Fully agree on all of the above. I think a lot of people are getting overly excited by the, admittedly wired, unneeded and silly, change in the later wording of the rule. Front and centre is any wounds allocated to morathi are then allocated to the Shadow Queen and cant be negated. First thing these says Shadow Queen can only be allocated 3 per turn. They are not negated - it just cant have more than 3 (which i fully understand negates them from a language semantics point of view). Likewise if this is actually intended she is going on a lot of shelves immediately.

Will see, the battle tactics seem to heavily incentivise witch elves and sisters. I can see them having legs in Draich ganeth where you can be looking at rend 2 elves (3 with mind razor) and Zealous orator will love rallying 30 lady blobs - with shields and a cauldron they are getting +1 save and +1 wound. Not saying they will usurp bows or choppy snakes but it seems early to call them DOA.

Lots of reference to overgrown as a scenery trait (leaked allarielle has it) which used to be blocks LOS in 2nd ed so i guess its coming in some form. Hopefully they will just recycle symbols or it will be a separate effect as i dont want to have to carry another set of tokens/Dice for another scenery table!

As Malakree says above each Warchanter you take can use Violent Fury and in Da' Choppas each one can target 1-3 ard boyz/brutes. Its a very stong ability but Da Choppas dont see overwhelming play as Gruntas and Mawkrushas are often considered a better pick for VF targets and Bloodtooths and Ironsunz are seemingly preferred for army composition. Also warchanters are rather squishy at 6w and 4+ with no ward so they can be sniped easily enough in a lot of cases.

In theory Godrakk has decent mortal wound output and a slightly more flexible command ability. In reality the command ability is pointless outside of big waaagh and his mortal wound output is hot trash as the things it might kill reliably are going to be turned into paste by the mawkrusha anyway. I struggle to find a niche use for him in any list where i don't just think a regular cheaper krusha is a better option. I like the idea of the new VP system but its gone about it a bit backwards - the weak armies aren't likely to kill the big/good things to start with and i dont think they are losing by 1-2 vps. That said it is an innovation and i think they should be applauded for trying something new. We all know that points are a great balancing tool but we also know that for people to really take/ stop taking particular units they have to get pointed to the extreme whether that is up or down (definitely true for the units that are considered very strong)

Personally i think doomfire warlocks just don't do enough of 1 thing well. They are to expensive to be cheap cappers/screens, they dont have enough offensive output to really play the harassing role and the magic i unreliable and limited, especially given that it wants you to run them in blocks of 10 to maximise MW output. Its interesting because i have always found the Heartpiercers to be the more reliable option - they can drop down and actually chuck spears and then maybe even move after doing so. Life takers are on 40m bases and just never have the attacks or numbers i want to have (and if they deep strike you are looking for that 9" charge of course...) a 3/4/-/1 profile needs witchbrew and mindrazor to really make me think it would achieve anything given that there are only 2 attacks per model. Mayne the new subfaction rules will open up list building though given how its been done for Warclans and stormcast- Khelt Narr getting Khinari as battleline would be cool.

Not to start with the sky is falling that sometimes happens with new books but i am a little flummoxed with the new battle tome announcement as this 1 is barley a year old. Cant imagine what they are going to change to justify it in terms of rules/abilties and it has killed my (largely already low) painting drive (i am not keen on paiting a load of WE/SoS/Khinari, especially the khinari, if they turn out to be lame ducks in the new book). It feels like its either going to be very minor beyond the 3rd edition trappings (path to glory/battle tactic/battalions/subfactions) or going to be a substantial rework. I am optimistic we will get a good rework and remain strong like ironjawz (hopefully not getting the bonespliterz business) Genuinely hope Morathi gets a command ability change so its not bonkers and then Blood sisters can be priced back down to something not so high and be taken as the excellent skirmishing unit and objective cappers i have always felt they are without being a 15 strong block of shooting death in an obstinately melee army. Would like to see Khinari get a getter role than being just cheapish throw away deep strikes/cappers and the WE/SoS to be given more distinct roles with a bit more individual oomph, maybe our new hero will help with this. Dont feel we need a change to the Blood sisters. Expecting a reduction in our spells and prayers but maybe the SQ can find a decent blade of khaine and get get dance of doom on the cauldron for her own weapons? Maybe doomfire warlocks will be useful? Owning 10 i have always found that i would rather have khinari or more recently the shadow stalkers, for objective capping/deep strike threats and any thing else if wanted chopping ability.

Just came back from a small (18 player) local tournament with a 4-1 and ran something that probably looks similar Bloodtoofs sub alligence 1x MBoMK - Destroyer & Mighty Waaagh 3x Warchanters 1x Shaman - Hand of gork 3x 5 Ard Boyz 10 Brutes w/ hakkas 3x 3 Gruntas Ran in 2 battle regiments. Handled really well and has a lot of bodies and wounds. Brutes did sterling work largely in the back field (screened by 1 of the ard boyz) as a deterrent to anything that wanted to come at me early game and then as a significant 2nd wave threat as the game went on. Gruntas and MBoMK put pressure on early game as needed and shaman hand emergency hand of gork option for either reactions brutes or a warchanter but this was taken largely with the belief the spell would never actually succeed. The amount of rend 2 meant that i never felt the waaagh was the must have tipping point (although it has huge value). That said i didnt play against morathi bow snakes or lumineth although the loss did come form the new flying circus that is stormcasts on dragons.

It is interesting to me that Gutrippaz are so swingy in so many peoples evaluation. For me half the problem for me is the knee ****** reaction that the warscroll is very underwhelming and the points are very high for it. 9 points a wound is fairly average but when you have to cough up 180 points in 1 chunk seems steep especially when ard boyz cost 170 for the same number of wounds. But VEW is actually so strong and the in faction combos really up them to pretty strong. I wouldn't mind seeing a 5/10 point drop on them to encourage them, especially in the bigger blocks though.

Some units don't have champions to issue orders, or some abilities may allow your opponent to snipe a champion out of the unit. Limited admittedly. There may also be scenarios or other things that give a character a command ability that then could be projected further. Edit. Also worth mentioning that with things like the heroic actio that can grant a CP, the gained cp is locked to that character, so if you want to use it to do something like at the double without dipping into your generic everyone can use command points the extra range could be helpful.

I think i know what you mean but overall i am pretty happy with him. 300 points for 2 cast unbind on a mobile platform that can do a bit of combat work is pretty solid and he has some decent threat with the unbind against other regular casters and a lot of flexibility with knowing the whole spell lore. Sadly we are just not going to complete against the big magic powerhouses but i always feel that will matter more in tourney games then regular ones.

Some are pointing out RAW this is indeed the case but is likely an error. Some are saying its a deliberate decision and is playable only in Big Waaagh by design. Picture below Taken from the AOS Facebook post today - it has Kruelboyz drums - so even if it doesn't have Orruck keyword i am reasonably confident in my belief it will be getting the faq treatment. Of course this carries as much weight as a load of hot air (because WARCOM have never made a mistake in their comments) and now that said I am now tempting the fates and will happily eat humble pie if this is clarified as being very much a deliberate design decision.

Respectfully i have to disagree and say that this is clearly a mistake. The app is in beta and by a a lot of accounts as buggy as anything so i wouldn't lean to hard on that. I would be amazed if it doesn't get the keyword in the first FAQ in a month or so. That said in a game setting RAW it is only eligable for Big Waaagh!

Obviously no real games played out yet but what's the general forming consensus on Blotboyz v Killbows in terms of numbers to take? My meta usually involves games against Skaven, Soulblight Gravelords, Slaves to Darkness, Ogers (but footslogging), Sylvaneth and soon to be storm cast. (So pretty varied!) For refrence im not a tournament player but play a lot of the vague 'friendly competitive' games. The Killbow obviously loses value the less high wound targets you come up against but with the glow up to monsters this edition there are usually a couple of high value targets floating around in every list. My gut feeling is 3 probably has immense diminishing returns over the course of most games but 1 may prove to 130 points of not contributing to this game. Is 2 the sweet spot or is 1 backed by 2x6 boltboyz what a lot of people are considering?