TechnoVampire
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Posts posted by TechnoVampire
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I think knowing this is the trajectory of GW we as a community have to pull together to create and share resources that allow us to play the game at a reasonable price. Buying a disposable £37 book every 3 years and paying £5.99/ month (£71.88 each year) just to conveniently access our rules and create lists is not the answer.
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It’s actually insane that a £5.99/ month subscription to the app only unlocks the ability to create new lists and not the entire app.
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Just now, Marcvs said:
the part of needing to know the points (but hey, not the actual rules!) for the opponent's units to ensure faireness is hilarious.
My thoughts exactly.
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17 minutes ago, pnkdth said:
Thankfully there are other sources which work really well. Unfortunately, players who are new to the hobby probably don't know to look for those (unless being onboarded by someone who helped them). Haven't bought a single book in years and since a physical book will often get an errata/FAQ day one (sometimes even before released) it really diminishes their value to begin with.
That said, until we see a meaningful reaction from the community it will be business as usual. The people who make the decisions won't move unless they have to and, as it stands, they don't have to. It is really hard to argue for change within a company when the profits seem to only go in one direction (up), so even if there are voices in there who speak for more accessible rules they are likely silenced by those who simply point at the numbers.
We'll see, perhaps it comes a day when they raise the prices a little too much or they make it just inconvenient enough and people stop buying/engaging with their offer and things change. I don't see it happening any time soon since I've hoping for that for a long time now.
I think part of the problem is that many people are unaware of GW’s practices and spend their money in good faith that they are buying something that they need or is worth their investment.
Thats why it’s important that people like yourself help to inform others if something is overpriced, unfair, or if a free alternative exists, even if it’s just for the financial sake of that individual or to raise awareness, that’s a worthwhile cause.There will always be people who simply don’t care, and buy without much consideration, and that is absolutely their right, but it doesn’t make discussion with your pals, your local playgroup or on forums like this any less valuable.
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3 minutes ago, Grimrock said:
Yeah just screen shots off of man reads book videos which are... sort of a GW source as they keep giving out their books for free to the people that do them.
So as far as GW are concerned new (and even existing) players are supposed to buy a battletome for a faction just to see if they like the rules enough to want to get into them?
Money is the only language GW understands. Spend wisely. Don’t endorse these predatory business practices. The more people spend when they are out of line the worse they become.-
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Am I right in thinking that once the battletome’s are released there will be no free GW source of accessing warscrolls? If so that is mad.
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7 hours ago, El Syf said:
I’m quite excited now alls been revealed, my lists are looking rather different to 3rd Ed too which is refreshing.
Although I’m still trying to work Manfred and Vhordrai in one list with blood knights as well, Neferata may be a better option over Manfred though?I’m gonna try and make a list with Neffy, vhordrai and some blood knights… I think neffy is better than manny in this list as she has a better combat profile, the ability to one shot hero’s and her spell is excellent on blood knights.
Manny is cool, but I don’t think his abilities have as much synergy, unless he’s interacting with the other units more.-
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On 7/9/2024 at 4:30 AM, Leshoyadut said:
My first pass at an army, though I'm not sure how the damage will do with so many Deathrattle Skeletons. Otherwise pretty close to yours, @RocketPropelledGrenade.
Bacchanal of Blood
Reg 1
-Neferata (General) 460
-Blood Knights 230Reg 2
-VLOZD (Reroll charges, orb of enchantments) 400
-20 Skeletons 200
-20 Skeletons 200Reg 3
-Wight King 150
-20 Grave Guard 300Total: 1940/2000, 3 drops.
110 health total, and I like the WK+GG combo. Not sure how I feel about only two wizards (3 spells/unbinds a turn), but I'll give it a go and see how it pans out. Only having three spells to cast (plus manifestations) will probably make it feel easier.
I’d be very tempted to swap wight king for necro paired with GG… especially if you want more casting?
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Most of our stuff has gone up in points or stayed the same while getting worse warscrolls.
For me:neffy + 50
blood knights up 20
necro up 40
dogs and GG down 10
It doesn’t make for an incredibly exciting start to a new edition.
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It would be nice if they released new GG and black knight models, then our range would be complete! GG look likely after the rumour engine showing something that looked very like a great wight blade (perfect for their new 1 damage profile! 😆).
I’ll probably try and run something in the vamp sub faction with some blood knights, vhordrai and neferata. Maybe a necro and some GG if I have the points, dogs if not.
I’m not expecting it to be very competitive but might still allow me to play the way I like with some amount of synergy.-
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Just a quick point that the vamp subfaction is +1 to wound on charge. The translation seems to be wrong.
(I tried to reply to your comment above @Neil Arthur Hotepbut my phone went haywire 😅)
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48 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:
Personally, I am looking at resurrecting my old Deathrattle list this edition. So some thoughts on that:
I see basically two factions worth considering: Bacchanal of Blood and Deathmarch. If the final list ends up bringing a bunch of vampires, I think +1 to cast/+1 attack are both good. Otherwise, Deathmarch is the obvious flavour choice.
I have heard the point that +1 rend on the charge if you outnumber is too restrictive. I certainly think +1 rend on the charge without any other hoops to jump through would have been fine. But I don't actually think the requirement to outnumber is a huge deal. In this edition, reinforcements are limited and most armies will likely run plenty of units with a size less than 10 (base size 5 or below, heroes, monsters...). I am willing to try running a bunch of reinforced units of Deathrattle and seeing if I can make it work.
Heroic traits, I would say the hero phase move looks the most attractive (would also be a throwback to the Legions of Nagash Deathrattle battalion, which had a similar ability). On slow moving units, even small movement boosts can be pretty nice. +d6 control would be my next choice for synergy, but I think since a Deathmarch list should aim to outnumber anyway, it might turn out to be overkill.
For Artifacts, nothing seems particularly synergistic, but punishing casts with mortal wounds is a nice control effect that I think is valuable.
Warscrolls:
First let's check out units with the DEATHRATTLE keyword.
Wight King - Free +1 to hit buff hero. Might be good, might not be worth adding an extra drop for.
Wight King on Steed - +1 to charge. Does not sound too good unless it can be stacked with enough other movement to help Black Knights get a first turn charge.
Watch Captain Halgrim - Minimum 4" movement on run rolls, which I think includes Redeploy. Sounds like there migth be some fun tech here, but hard to judge.
Black Knights - Good attack profile for once, plus crit(mortals) on the charge. These guys look really threatening, especially with +1 rend.
Grave Guard - Get Crit(mortal) and give out a 5+ ward to foot heroes. Pairing these guys with a Wight King or Necromancer seems like it would make them into real blenders.
Skeletons - Cheap chaff that auto-heals. Might not be worth reinforcing over damage dealers.
Other notable warscrolls:
Radukar the Beast - All around good combat hero with the potential to give +1 to wound to DEATHRATTLE
Mannfred - Similar to the beast with the ability to give out +1 attack instead. Together with Halgrim, it looks like he can make Deathrattle auto-redeploy 4" into combat.
Neferata - Pre-game move with 3 deathrattle units. Potentially seems quite strong for a Black Knight alpha strike
Torgilius - Double invocations seems really good when the majority of our army can benefit from it.
Necromancer - Vanhel's is still Vanhel's. Fight twice is always worth considering. EDIT: There is a combo here: Giving an opponent strike last with Prison of Grief negates the downside of Vanhel making you strike last on your second activation.
Mortis Engine - Extra invocation healing and some mortal wounds shooting. Might be good?
Coven Throne - 5+ ward aura for Deathrattle and some extra redeploy shennenigans. Is the Deathrattle playstyle somehow redeploy based, with so many effects that interact with that? I think the Throne might be good: a 5+ ward makes all the healing Deathrattle can get a lot more valuable.
Overall, it seems to me that a Deathrattle army has a few interesting pieces to build with. I think I will have to experiment at the table to see which options are actually good, but I think the skeleton horde has a bunch of fun tricks to play with this edition. Their serious staying healing and recursion combined with movement shennenigans and the potential to get extra rend makes for an interesting list that seems like it would want to hit hard early and then dig in and grind out the win later.
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After looking over all the rules I’m not particularly excited for 4’th with SBGL as my main.
I was expecting an overall decrease in power, but not to the extent we’re seeing where nearly everything we have got objectively, significantly worse.
It’s also not just about the power, but I think we lost a lot of synergy, tech and overall fun in our rules with many things simplified to the point that they kinda just look boring.
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Translation from the Spanish video.
It may not be entirely accurate.-
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The enhancements, battle formations and spell lores are the most disappointing aspects for me. Going through them there’s an incredible amount of repeat, with seemingly very little relevance to army themes or lores. Healing, teleporting and de-buffing, which used to be quite tied to specific faction are everywhere, and due to the number of times I’ve read once per battle strikes first/ last enhancements and impact hits on charge, I find myself now eye rolling reading them.
2 out of the 3 spells in the SCE lore are debuffs, which thematically makes very little sense to me. It feels a bit like if MTG started giving every ability to every colour in abundance. Beyond the art style why would you favour or enjoy any one of them more than the others?It’s understandable that things feel more minimal and generic for the index, but if this is new standard for AOS going forward I’ll be really put off.
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3 hours ago, Sception said:
I'm sorry, I do not understand the language, and am not going to copy the subtitles into google translate by hand. I'll just have to wait until the pdfs are out next week to comment on the full index rules. I have seen leaks of the zombie warscroll, which I don't hate. They're trash mobs now, but that's kind of what they're supposed to be imo. So long as they're cheap enough per model I'll be ok with them.
Otherwise, loss of flavor from the removal of dynasties is definitely a complaint I can agree with. I get the impulse towards unified structure and formatting across the game, but the result is very much a D&D 4e-ification of Age of Sigmar. More legible maybe, less prone to confusion or conflicts of interpretation, but a lot of flavor is lost in the process, and a lot of design flexibility lost in the insistence that every single bit of rules text fit into the same ability template. Not every faction is served equally well by the same format of 3 spells, 3 prayers, 3 hero abilities, 3 artefacts, one card's worth of faction traits, and exactly 4
subfactionsbattle formations - each consisting of only a single short ability. And I'm not sure there's any real gains in speed of play or game balance.There is an excessive rigidity in form applied to these indexes which I hope the devs get tired of and move away from in battletome design sooner rather than later.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head here.
regardless of individual interpretations of faction rules, I think that standardising everything in the way that GW has decided to for the start of this edition comes at a cost.
For me it feels like too much. Balance and clarity are important in a game, but I don’t feel that those things should supersede flavour, individual expression (both for players and the way factions are expressed in the rules), creativity, or fun.
I feel like being able to be flexible with the number and power of various spells/ sub factions/ abilities etc available is a strong way of expressing the identity of individual factions, so standardising everything the way they have quite drastically narrows that design space.Like you I hope with the individual battletome’s we see the return of some of the strong flavour I think GW actually did a good job of creating in the previous edition.
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Ps most of the rules are now available via the video I posted above. Just use the subtitles with translation.
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On 7/1/2024 at 3:45 PM, Sception said:
For all the vampires are the leaders of the faction, it really isn't and never was a vampire faction. Soulblight Gravelords are not the descendants of the short lived 'Soulblight' 1e general's handbook faction. They are descended directly from the Legions of Nagash, who came from the 1e Grand Alliance: Death, who were in turn the Vampire Counts Compendium by another name, who were designed to reproduce the WHFB Vampire Counts faction's army list and play style in AoS. The old warhammer Vampire Counts in turn were never a 'vampire army' as such, even they were a renamed and reflavored iteration of the old Warhammer Armies: Undead.
Through all the renamings and reflavorings of the faction, the core mechanical identity of Warhammer Armies: Undead has remained consistent. They were always, from the beginning, and in every iteration, primarily intended to be a hoard army playing a game of attrition - big units of slow, fragile, weak chaff, using deployment shenanigans to offset their speed, recursion to offset their fragility, buffs & debuffs to offset their weakness, and a handfull of elite hammers who didn't rely on (and typically didn't even have access to) recursion and buffs to tip the scales. Those elite hammers were generally limited (by list building categories, by lack of internal synergies, or just by costing too many points to make a functional army of just them) so that they couldn't just replace the hoards of lesser undead they existed to support.
Vampires are either the heroes providing the recursion and buffs or the elite hammers tipping the scales in the battles of attrition - sometimes both at the same time - but never the backbone of the army. Or at least never intended to be. If they could function on their own, if that were the optimal of running the army, then about 4/5 of the roster would be rendered redundant and the core identity of the faction as the inheritors of Warhammer Armies: Undead would fall apart.
A viable elite all vampires all the time faction isn't inconceivable, one could certainly be designed and could work in the game just fine, and the Kastelai Dynasty subfaction of SBGL in 3e tried to make this semi viable for those who wanted to run it, but even then it really wasn't meant to be optimal and when people did start trending towards that style of build we saw the points cost of blood knights shoot way up to tamp it back down. As much as GW wants people to be /able/ to run all vampires if they really want to, it just isn't what Soulblight Gravelords or any of its predecessors has ever been designed for, in much the same way that Nighthaunt have access to some shooty units, but something would have to go wrong for it ever to became optimal - even really viable - to run them as a shooty army..
Soublight Gravelords aren't "the vampire" faction. This is the "hoards of lesser undead serving at the vampires' feet" faction. After all, the nobility cannot exist without a peasant class to rule over and define themselves against.
I appreciate your knowledge of the history of vamps in the GW universe, however I think 3.0 did a great job of moving away from a purely horde faction, and allowing appreciators of vamps to build and play them in multiple ways.
Not all the builds were super competitive, but GW did (in my opinion) a good job of providing rules, lore and models that had distinct look and playstyle. Horde builds were strong, but you could easily make a monster mash lists, hero hammer lists, cavalry lists and many more, with rules and lore that supported these.
With the new rules in 4.0 I feel like we could have lost a lot of the flavour and richness that was created through the dynasties, as well as the numerous options for play styles and list writing.
I get that vamps were traditionally masters of hordes of chaf, and they still can be, but 3.0 proved that that’s far from all they need to be, and that it’s not unreasonable to want or expect more from the faction. -
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Brief overview of all the factions having seen the complete set of rules:
Personally I’m not wowed by the sub factions, as they seem to encourage spamming units, and only having 1 vampire focussed sub faction in a vampire army is disappointing, particularly as I dislike horde lists and the playstyle.
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On 6/18/2024 at 5:29 PM, El Syf said:
Thoughts on the two? Extra health and marks and the rend on the charge not being exclusive to infantry Chaos knights win hands down?
With the info we currently have available (and ignoring points) I think CK with mark of khorn are hands down better. The healing on blood knights I find negligible most of the time, and I’d take an extra wound and an extra attack over 2” movement any day of the week. I think what remains to be seen is if there is any support for blood knights and other non-hero vamps in the battle formations or on warscrolls. I really hope there is, as otherwise vampires could turn out to be somewhat unappealing, which in a vampire focussed faction I’d find pretty sad.
From the description in the FF article it sounds like we’re getting almost unchanged LOB, a Skelton focused, zombie focused and invocation focussed battle formations, which leaves me wondering where (if any) this support could come from other than Vhordai?
Thats a lot of expectation on one warscroll for less horde, more vampire focussed SBGL players and doesn’t fill me with a massive amount of hope.
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4 hours ago, Beliman said:
Disagree. In 3.0, you had one subfaction that buffed your Alarith, and that's why you took as many as Alarith units as you could in your list (appart from powerful auto-take units).
4.0 lets you have the basic Alarith buff, but you have the option to take whatever you want and still buff them.
With "less" abilities, you have a lot more. Do you want Vannari units? You will have two Facet of War, go for it. Maybe mix Hurikan kangaroos and Cow people? Nice. A mix of everything? Requires a bit of finess but don't feel bad, you still have the buffs on your disposal.
Like I said, I not familiar with lumineth, so may well be incorrect regarding them specifically and I’m glad to hear that the new system is offering more ways to build lists. I still feel like the general trend seems to be stripped back overall. The 3.0 Legion of blood sub faction offers me two abilities on top of two heroic actions, and SBGL have 5 battle traits. I’ll be very surprised if under the new system that level of unique and thematic abilities remains, but I guess we’ll see.
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8 hours ago, Chikout said:
Did you watch the masterclass livestream? It didn't feel stripped back there. The armies seemed to play like you'd expect them to from third edition expect the Skaven had more movement tricks than before. Even there they only showed one artefact, one heroic traits, one spell lore and one battle formation. We know from yesterday's article that there's definitely going to be more than that even in the indexes.
Another thing is that while warscrolls do have fewer abilities than before it's not as different as it looks. Before you would get a written out rule explaining what happens when you roll a six, now it just says crit mortal or there's a keyword that says wizard 2 or ward 5+ or whatever. The warscrolls looks sparse but it's all the same rules as before.
I watched the breakdowns on HWG and a couple of other sources. I’m a fan of the key wording of weapon abilities and the general paring down of wording, but it seems in general that warscrolls have less abilities than before? Factions also seem to have quite stripped back rules. Skaven get deep strike (split into 3 abilities) no mortal damage on retreat and a 1/enemy hero phase move. Lumineth get to pick 2 units to fight at the start of combat and then 1 use of a choice of other abilities. Those abilities aren’t bad, but it feels quite minimal. On top of that it seems like each faction has a choice of 4 subfactions with 1 ability. Individually these changes might not amount to much but together it’s starting to feel quite stripped back. … tbf I don’t play either of those armies so I don’t know how it holds up in comparison to before. I play SBGL and am used to having a lot of abilities to manage. I’ll be interested to see how it pans out.
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Having seen most of the faction rules and warscrolls made available from the preview games I am starting to get a bit concerned that individual army rules are going to feel overly stripped back and somewhat lack the sense of strong individual themes created in 3.0. So far the core rules look great, but I’m not as excited about the pattern that seems to be emerging regarding individual warscrolls and faction rules based on what we’ve seen. I’m hoping that once all is revealed it will make more sense, but I’m feeling slightly less enthusiastic and a bit more apprehensive than I was a few weeks ago.
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The Rumour Thread
in Age of Sigmar Discussions
Posted
(And that’s just for one faction!)