Dogmantra

It's a little unclear but I believe you can't. 8.0 Movement Phase says And then in 8.1 Normal Move which says in full: The reasoning I suspect is based on the wording of 8.0 - because it only restricts you to picking a unit outside of 3" from an enemy to make a normal move in the movement phase, the logic goes that if allowed to make a normal move by means other than just the fact you're in the movement phase, then you don't have to follow that restriction and can pick a unit within 3" of an enemy. That part is perfectly compelling. Where I think it falls down is the final sentence of 8.1 Normal Move, which states "Units cannot move within 3" of enemy units when making a normal move." This boils down to not being allowed to make a normal move at all if any point of the unit's path comes within 3" of an enemy unit. And because you start within 3" of an enemy, even though there is no restriction on picking that unit to move (because it is not the movement phase), there is an inability to actually resolve the move at all because there is no way in which you can move a unit that starts within 3" of an enemy such that it never passes within 3" of an enemy. That is of course just my reading of the situation.

Situational point in favour of the Vigilors' +1 to hit is that it's applied in the shooting phase, so you can deepstrike the vigilors on the turn you want to apply it. Some of the other strong hit bonuses (e.g. LA on Tauralon) are Hero or Move Phase so you can't just deepstrike at the last possible moment. I can see this being useful to ensure that you have a chance to get it off vs say, a monster or battleline unit the turn you take the battle tactic to kill it.

That's true, but I'm a little skeptical of Rally bonuses being good for attrition. Will Vanquishers have enough oomph to finish off what they engage with so that they can rally up again?

Ok, hypothetical trick that I have been mulling over this morning: Lord Relictor with Translocation (and probably the reroll prayers general trait) Lord Arcanum on Gryph Charger (and possibly Scintillating Trail as a mount trait) Damage Endless Spell (optional) Step 1: translocate LA on gryph to 9" away from enemy blob Step 2: drop damaging Endless Spell (or thundershock, or chain lightning) right in enemies' faces Step 3: in movement phase, use Ride the Winds Aetheric to teleport back to safety You can do this early on before you're ready to alpha strike with whatever blob you want to teleport with your translocate, or you can do it the turn after to throw some extra damage out. I'm not sure how effective it will be, but it's also just a nice combo in general, letting your LA on gryph essentially be wherever he needs to be to cast a spell when he needs to cast it, rather than having to predict in advance where he'll need to be for your next hero phase. Just sit him with the Lord Relictor and translocate away. Would also be nice for dropping Mystic Shields or healings onto isolated flanking/forward deployed units without also risking losing the LA. My question is: if you were going to do this, which damage endless spell would you go for? No point doing it on the comet because of the 36" range. The Celestian Vortex seems okay, especially against shooting armies, but it's a bit expensive. I'm thinking Purple Sun because if it goes wild, it's so far onto your opponent's side that it probably won't be able to hurt you much, or maybe Suffocating Gravetide? Maybe Burning Head for ultra budget, but that almost feels like a waste. What are your thoughts?

They are wrong. A roll to move wounds to another unit without the possibility of negating them entirely is not a ward roll. 14.3 defines wards as "abilities [that] allow you to roll a dice to negate a wound before it is allocated to a model". If it doesn't have the possibility of negating the wound then it is not a ward. This is further clarified by the FAQ answers: This answer explicitly calls out rolls that have other effects (moving wounds) in addition to negation. If all move-wounds abilities were wards, then it makes no sense to be this specific. The praetor effect is a ward because one of the possible outcomes is negation of the wound. The hexwraith effect is not because the only possible outcomes are that the wound is assigned to either the original target or the hexwraiths. I believe that people saying you cannot get a ward after rolling to move the wounds are misunderstanding the other ward FAQ answer: This question is long, and the examples add length, allowing a reader to get lost and forget the critical initial clause. But in this case it is clear that you can only not negate wounds sent to another unit if they themselves were triggered by a wound being negated (e.g. Nagash sending MWs back on 6s on his ward roll). I believe that people reading this miss that the question is about specifically rolls to negate a wound that can also inflict new wounds, and instead see it as applying to all rolls that move wounds.

22.2.4 on random characteristics says that if you need to know the value "at a time other than when it is being used to make an attack" then a d3 or d6 damage counts as 1. If it is being used to make an attack then you roll it and take the result as per usual. Since making a save is part of the attack sequence, it's a bit of a weird one. As I am writing this I can't decide which I think is a more reasonable interpretation, but it comes down to one of two: - A save is part of the random damage roll being used to make an attack, so you roll damage before the saves in this one case and get to reroll against anything that's not a 1 (pros: the artefact actually does something, save roll is part of the attack sequence, so it probably does fall under being used to make an attack) - a save is not part of the random damage characteristic being used to make an attack, so as per 22.2.4 you treat d3 and d6 as 1, no rerolls for you. (Pros: respects the attack sequence, is more conservative which I like to err towards with ambiguous rules, takes less time than the alternative where you could be rolling 6 different saves) As I'm writing this out I think I've convinced myself that you would break the normal attack sequence and roll damage before saves. But I think the best answer is to only bring this to events and make it the TO's problem instead of yours 😛

Kind of unrelated to the topic, but I'm rather liking the idea of a unit of 5 Libs directly in front of a unit of 5 vindictors rather than a block of 10 anything to hold points. This way you are almost certain not to lose the whole blob of 10 on a charge from something big and scary, and the vindictors can still do damage from behind the liberators. It's two units rather than one of course, but I don't think you were really using all out attack on them anyway.

Not sure if I'm misunderstanding, but any leader will do to fill the Commander slot, even a Knight Incantor or something. Only subcommanders have to be below 10 wounds, commanders don't have to be above 10 wounds. Yes. It also worked that way in the FAQ that dropped with 3rd edition. People are speculating it will be changed in the upcoming FAQ, but for now it is pretty clearly intended.

Yknow I'm pretty new to AoS. Got into it via the Mortal Realms magazine. I played 2nd ed on tts a few times, but 3rd is just fantastic compared to 2nd imo. I'd like to list changes that I like, but the 3rd edition rules have now so thoroughly replaced the 2nd ed rules that I don't really remember what has improved. I just remember thinking that it's a much cleaner edition with some really nifty changes. I like Heroic Actions and I like Monstrous Rampages. I even like Unleash Hell Also, minor point, but I think the presentation of the General's Handbook was phenomenal. As someone just starting out playing the game in person and buying books, I really appreciated that buying the General's Handbook was all I needed to get the core rules in a bound official copy, I liked that it came with tokens for the battle plans and for objectives, and I love that it's spiral bound making it easy to leave open flat to the scenario you're playing or the rule you're referencing. It's something that feels so obvious in retrospect that they should have done for all their games years ago because it is just a much nicer experience to use than a traditionally bound rulebook. I almost wish they'd gone that way with the battletomes too, or made cut down "General's Tomes" or something that you could get instead if you were into purely matched play that were just spiral bound collections of the army's rules with no fluff or narrative stuff in it. But yeah, big ups to the spiral binding, and I was glad to see that the new Killteam also seems to be going down that direction too.

Gardus or Hammers of Sigmar are probably your best bets for getting wards, but all priests know Bless, which also gives a 6+ ward. Since the Lord Relictor is a pretty good model regardless, it's always nice to know that you can use him to toughen up a unit when he's not busy translocating stuff. The downside is you need to roll, and it's just on one unit, but the upside is it's not locked to a Stormhost.

Ah curses, your writeup is getting me really excited to play NH now, just as the new Stormcast book came out! I'm interested to hear thoughts on where I should look to expand my collection. I just finished the entire Mortal Realms magazine, so I have a good selection of heroes, but troops are a little lacking. I currently have one of every Nighthaunt Hero (inluding Thorns of the Briar Queen) except the Cruciator. I also have two Executioners, two Dreadblade Harrows, and two Spirit Torments. For troops, I have: 20x Chainrasps 3x Spirit Hosts 9x Grimghast Reapers (yeah I know it's silly, but I was thinking of proxying a Cairn Wraith in there to make it up to a full unit) 5x Hexwraiths 9x Glaivewraith Stalkers (another weird number... maybe I should convert one into a grimghast) 4x Myrmourn Banshees 10x Bladegheist Revenants 10x Dreadscythe Harridans 2x Chainghasts I'm on a budget so I wanna fit in as much stuff I already own into a list rather than say, go all in on hexwraiths for Emerald Procession (I also just don't like the hexwraith models very much). I was thinking to get up to a decent ish list I would add 10 chainrasps for a block of 30 and 3 spirit hosts for a block of 6? I dunno, list ideas welcome, preferably with little purchasing needed.

The stormcast FAQ has an answer to this based on a different effect, but the command ability that makes a monster fight as if it had taken 0 wounds has the same timing as well: So what happens depends on whose turn it is. On the Stormcast player's turn, Yndrasta first adds ten to the number of wounds the monster has suffered (because the player whose turn it is applies all their effects first), and then their opponent resolves their effects, treating the monster as having suffered 0 wounds - so it would fight at its best on the Stormcast player's turn. On the opponent's turn, first the opponent resolves their effects so the monster is treated as suffering 0 wounds, then Yndrasta's effect happens, so the monster would fight as if it had suffered 10 wounds. It's a strange outcome, but that's how it works according to 1.6.2: Simultaneous Effects.

Thanks for the response! I've been playing Stormcast a lot so NH is quite a different beast. Not managed to get them to the table yet because I'm just severely lacking in battleline, and units in general, so it's nice to get some basic tips that will help me focus on certain units when I have the cash to expand!

If I can ask a followup question, would Chainghasts be preferred over a Spirit Torment for buddying up with some Bladegheist Revenants? If so, why? Cause of the shooting for a little extra damage and the fact they're a bit cheaper? Just interested because my instinct is that the returning models to your Bladegheist unit seems super juicy, but I'm not particularly experienced with Nighthaunt.

They either all count as 1, or you roll the damage before the saves and get to reroll saves for any non-1s. 22.2.4 Random Characteristics says: So the question is, is a save roll "other than when it is being used to make an attack" and I would say... probably? Because it's an odd break from the usual format to roll damage before the save when it explicitly works the other way around in the usual attack sequence. But I think there's an argument to be made that you very much are doing it at a time when it is being used to make an attack.

While your reasoning is mostly good, you can't just cancel the 1d6 on both sides of the equation. It gives you a rough estimate, but is not accurate. 2d6-1d6 works differently from 1d6 alone. The good news is that with a 4" move you actually have a higher than 33% chance to make a charge before rerolls. In these charts, A is the chance of either move + 1d6 > 9 or move +2d6 > 9+1d6. B is the chance of it being lower, and tie is of course the chance of it being exactly equal. Sadly the program I am using doesn't have a simple way of counting ties in favour of A, so I've highlighted the failure chance on each chart. As you can see, with 6" (or better) movement, you actually have a 63% chance of making the charge successfully (without a reroll). With 4" movement, you have a 38% chance of making it before rerolls. I also tested with a move of 5 and there it does come out as a 50/50 for either model. Just for fun, here are the values for failing a charge with a reroll with the accurate 2d6 model: So with a 4" move you have a 56% chance of getting in with a reroll, 5" move gives you a 64% chance and 6" gives you a 72% chance. A fair approximation would be to say that you move up a step, from roughly a third to roughly half your charges succeeding, or from roughly half to roughly two thirds, or from roughly two thirds to roughly three quarters. Not the most elegant approximation but probably a bit easier to remember.

Not sure if I'm understanding you correctly but the Prime does add 1 attack, making it 1d6+1 attacks if you give it the shockbolt bow. That said, it also gets +1 attack to the skybolt bows, and 3 attacks with MWs on 6s seems just a little bit better to me, especially since that's what the rest of the unit is specialised to do.

Ok, everything else in my post was fine but this is a glaring error I made! I very confidently didn't look up the ability because I thought I knew it, and it turns out I was wrong about it being rerolling hit rolls, it's a +1 to hit. Turns out the magic number here is actually 5+ pre-rend where the accuracy becomes stronger than damage. This is a bit of a shame for the unit because it does mean that 200 points of Castigators don't compete quite as well with the Crossbow Judicators as I thought they did. Still they keep up decently well, and of course if you're going against Malignant or Daemon heavy list you get some extra hits there too. Kinda wish it was reroll hit rolls though, that would make these guys pretty sweet and give them a nice niche of being super versatile.

On the topic of shooting I did some simulations. Each test was run 100 000 times using the wonderful program McDie. I compared a few different SCE shooting options to see which had the best damage output, and to be more fair than comparing unit for unit, I compared by getting the points to be roughly equal. I compared 3 Longstrikes, 2 Ballistae, 6 Castigators, and 5 Judicators with Bows. Each of these is somewhere between 200 and 280 points. which is close enough for me. The Ballistae are the most expensive here, but I was primarily trying to judge its worth and I did want to give it as fair a shake as possible, so rather than go over with e.g. another 100 pts of Castigators, I erred on the side of caution. Here are my results, in reverse order because it only occurred to me to check the Ballista profiles against each other after testing a bunch of other stuff. The graphs you will see track the damage output of 100 000 tests against a 4+ save and a 1+ save (i.e. a 2+ save with a +1 bonus from somewhere). These were chosen to show the spread of the effect of Rend -- a 4+ means that the Long Range Ballista with -3 Rend is just enough to remove the save entirely while -2 rend weapons will still allow a save, and an effective 1+ is enough that -2 and -3 Rend still have value above -1. Basically, I wanted higher rend to always equal higher damage in these tests as I was primarily trying to be as kind as possible to the Ballista. This does mean that the Judicators with their -1 Rend do look a little worse on paper here because sometimes -1 Rend will be enough to remove a save entirely, and then you're paying points for -2 which isn't doing anything. But they're not the focus of these tests. The graphs show the % of the time that each given damage value will be scored. Ballista Comparison: Of course it is always worth remembering that damage output is not the whole picture. What is not represented here is that the Ballistae are a bit easier to buff (with a Lord Ordinator, although that is again another points investment - further testing could reveal if that is worth it), and that the Ballistae do not lose effectiveness as they take damage, whereas it takes only 2 damage to lower the effectiveness of any other shooting unit. Then there is the matter of range to consider. I don't think the extra 6" on the Ballista's longrange shot justifies the significantly lower output vs Longstrikes, but it's certainly a bigger deal compared to Judicators and Castigators which it outranges by much more. Anyway, I thought this was quite interesting and I think I may go ahead and play a bit more with the maths. I'm interested to see how Castigators fare against Judicators in more situations now. EDIT: okay, I did a bit more testing of Castigators vs Judicators, and comparisons between their profiles. For Castigators, rerolls deal more damage to anything with worse than a 3+ save pre-rend, it's a tie for 3+, and anything better the extra rend deals more. As soon as you introduce a +1 to hit, the rend is almost always better. For Judicators, the magic number is also a 3+ save pre-rend, with bows beating out crossbows for damage on anything with a 3+ or better pre-rend, while crossbows take over once you hit 4+ and worse. This isn't including either special weapon option. And the comparisons across units basically hold. Essentially, the Crossbow Judicators are specialised for poor save enemies (4+ and worse), the Bow Judicators for strong save enemies (3+ and better), and Castigators straddle the line. They lag just a little within either specialisation when compared to Judicators, so you really are paying for the ability to switch to whichever suits your situation more. I think Judicators win out overall because of how popular save stacking is at the moment, as well as the range and the fact that Judicators are battleline so you can take a big block of 15 and shoot once in the hero phase with that unit, whereas if you want to shoot in the hero phase with your Castigators, you're shooting with a weedy little group of 6 at best, the equivalent of 5 Judicators.

Re: Cycle of the Storm & Blaze of Glory. The phrase "does not count as having been slain" is retroactive because it is written in the past tense*. You cannot both not be slain and do something that requires you to be slain, so the rules are contradictory. 1.6.3 says that the last applied effect takes precedence when there are two contradictory effects, so either: - you choose cycle of the storm first, count as not having been slain and therefore you can't explode afterwards or - you choose blaze of glory first, roll all those dice, then apply cycle of the storm which retroactively makes it so you weren't slain, which takes precedence due to being the last applied effect, so you have to go back and take back all those wounds you did because you weren't allowed to do them. *(example: you miss a day of work due to illness, but your boss tells you "you don't count as having been sick", it retroactively removes your sickness from the record, the expectation would be that everyone acts as if you had never been sick that day)

Thank you for your replies and your patience. Can you explain to me what you would be specifically use the long range ballista shot for that makes them worth taking en masse over something like your Judicators or Longstrikes. I think we're at a consensus that there isn't really a place for the 18" shooting of that level of damage, so my question is really what is the niche of the ballista at long range? It doesn't do much damage (even factoring in the -3 rend, you're looking at an average of about 2.5 damage against weak saves, 1.6 against a 2+ save with no buffs), it's not particularly reliable, and investing in e.g. 2 or 3 and an Ordinator is a huge investment that you rightly point out you could take 10-15 Judicators with.

Castigators and Ballistae are the closest in terms of cost, and the most disparate in terms of how people seem to feel about them which is why I am comparing them. I am not going to disagree that Judicators and Raptors are almost certainly better value for shooting because of everything you said (even at double the points), I'm just confused as to what the role of the Ballista is supposed to be? If I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying that the niche for the Ballista is that it has a high rend shot but can occasionally switch profiles to something better and more consistent against enemies with worse saves. That's very similar to Castigators who can either have -2 rend or +1 to hit (i.e. high-ish rend or something more consistent against enemies for whom, -2 is unnecessary), who also mathematically do more damage on average than the Ballista with either profile. From what I can see, the Ballista has two things going for it over Castigators - firstly the 36" range, and secondly that it's a bit more swingy than Castigators, d6 damage or 2d6 shots will hit the high end more often than 3d3+1 shots, but then equally you're going to hit the low end more often too so it's a gamble. The range is the major advantage, hence my original question - what is the use case you're seeing for the Ballista at that range? If Castigators are hot garbage, then what makes the Ballista which only has an advantage in range, so much better? I can understand saying it's a bit better because of the range (much much easier to keep something safe from 36" away, no disagreements there!) but rating it so much better has me baffled. Surely you're better off just taking Longstrikes or Judicators if output at long range is the important part? Yeah you could. I suppose you could infer that because you're saying they're channeling power into their shields that they are supposed to still have shields to channel into, but that's definitely stretching it. RAW seems pretty clear that you can just get the ward without needing to actually have shields.

Okay... here's a take that I'm not sure about so I am interested to hear thoughts. The general consensus on the ballista that I have seen is that it's pretty decent, and that castigators are still hot garbage. Is this solely down to the extended range of the long range ballista shot? A unit of castigators using the improved power for -2 rend are dealing on average more damage in almost every situation than either ballista profile. The only times I've found that the long range profile beats out the castigators' average is when you roll a 5 or 6 for damage, or have a +1 to hit and roll a 4 or more for damage, and even then only against the strong saves, against weaker/no save units, the castigator average still beats out the ballista's best. I am aware that Castigators have literally half the range, and 2/3 the wounds of a ballista and I can only imagine this is it - but when people are making statements like ballistae being excellent and castigators being garbage, what use cases are yall seeing for the ballista? In the old tome the best way to use them was definitely drop within 18 and pump out hits from there. I'm imagining the new use case is more like a sniper? But do they really have enough output to justify a couple of them and support to take out a single 5 or 6 wound hero? Especially when Longstrikes exist. My #1 hope for this book was that Castigators would be good, and I am definitely biased in their favour. Please point out things I have missed.

FAQ (bolding mine): Page 122 – Lore of Invigoration Add the following under the title: ‘Evocators units only. Each Evocators unit in your army can know and attempt to cast 1 spell from the Lore of Invigoration. This is an exception to the rule that they cannot attempt to cast spells other than Empower. If a unit of Evocators attempts to cast a spell from the Lore of Invigoration, it cannot attempt to cast any other spells in that hero phase.’

I hate to "um actually" without really having any valuable advice, but unless I have missed something, you unfortunately can't take celestial blades on the lord exorcist. Lore of Invigoration is evocator-only, so Azyrite Halo is really your only choice for a buff spell if you want to stick with the exorcist.