Jarminiatures

Did your source hint if there's anything extra coming with the Lumineth? That mysterious model behind the mountain in the warcom article has plenty of us intrigued

I mean I don't think you'd find many people who would say Kruelboyz don't need a boost? Game balance shouldn't be a race to the bottom.

I was playing at a tournament over the weekend so only really catching up, but that is definitely the vibe for Lumineth IMO and it actually feels punitive. Caveating that it's a box and not a battletome, Bladelords and Dawnriders needed to come down in points, not go up! Likewise, the changes to Sentinels are welcome for the benefit of everyone but they are now overcosted. The thing is too, the rumours that talked about 24", no LoS back a few weeks/months also heavily hinted at Lambent Light being nerfed and so I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that there's an extra nerf coming in the near future. I took a quick look at some numbers with 20 Sentinels vs their best benchmark - Reavers (also 20). With the changes from the box they're still similar points (now 165 vs 170 per 10) but now have a similarish effective threat range (30" for Sentinels vs 26" for Reavers) that is now much closer in quality (i.e. Sentinels don't ignore LoS rules anymore). I couldn't factor in the Sentinels' targets potentially not getting a cover save and Sentinels having Aetherquartz, or Reavers getting +1 to hit within 9" - but I don't expect the impact would be material. I've done two scenarios each, where Sentinels have Power of Hysh in both (which isn't guaranteed but is probable) and then with and without Lambent Light as it currently stands (I've presumed the re-work severely nerfs it, I accept this is a presumption for this scenario). I'm unsure how exactly the calculator is figuring out the re-rolls with regards to Lambent Light MW fishing, but also there was no way to take an attack away for Sentinels since the High Sentinel can't shoot so every single Lumineth value below is slightly overstated. All in all - I think as a rudimentary calculation this is okay. In every single scenario, as armour saves improve Reavers fairly quickly catch up and then surpass Sentinels yet they cost nearly the same. NO WARD 6+ WARD 5+ WARD 4+ WARD

You can re-form Shining Companies now too. All in all those Shining Companie changes are a welcome small buff, but not game changing for Bladelords still being too weak.

If it's any use, the top right was Reikland Fleshshade but Juan made an error on the labelling.

Setting aside how unlucky you were in this scenario, and that LRL with Teclis are kind of a hard counter to him for this, but surely the most NPE thing in the game is Hand of Dust? For the 95%+ of models in the game that don't have an ignore or reduce/negate damage from this - it's a straight up 50/50 if you die. At least with Sentinels you have to commit one of the max five chances you get per game with 340/510 points worth of models into one target to maybe kill them. On Teclis' autocasting too, whilst the risk of the miscast is removed with Teclis, I'd rather have 8 casts with a 3+ than 4 autocasts.

My concern is that the discourse, both online and in person, is so overwhelmingly negative about Lumineth that it's creating a kind of feedback loop where people think they need nerfing and tweaking because they're still busted or horrible without realising that the book is so imbalanced that it needs buffing in areas. It's only a personal opinion, I think the grumbling from some players at the level of support Lumineth received feeds into it too - even if they casually forget that a lot of players waited years to be able to play a fully fledged high elf-esque faction in the game. As people have noted, competitively Lumineth haven't been relevant for a while (mainly points hikes and the Unleash Hell tweak). I agree that the most egregious NPE needs tweaking yet go back a page here and someone is moaning about Total Eclipse. At my last tournament, I was facing a gargants player and they moaned massively about me using Darkness of the Soul on a mega. I know this is a bit ranty but it feels difficult to not get the stigma that you're That Guy as a Lumineth player.

So are people willing to accept buffs for some Lumineth units to address the poor internal balance? Otherwise all the expected NPE "fixes" that sound like they're coming down the line will leave the upcoming book in a bad state. I know it'll be a case of world's smallest violin for Lumineth players amongst a lot of the AoS playerbase at the thought of Lumineth struggling but at its core it's a low resilience army, with a few magic tricks and with the ability to easily put out a moderate amount of damage but limited ways to put out a large amount of damage (except for if I run a huge block of Wardens or the overcosted monsters we have).

I'm a LRL player, so biased, but these points would be crazy if they're true. No Cathallar either but based on these she'd probably be going up to 160/170.

Ahh of course ... so probably take some Veterans in the scoring batallion for objectives and battle tactics and then push everything else into the hunter batallion(s) to slice and dice might be a sensible approach?

So effectively, unless I'm actually wanting to take them in the counts as 3 models for scoring purposes batallion or one drop them, then I probably don't actually want to take battleline infantry that are <5 wounds and/or without a mount since they'll be at risk of getting slaughtered in melee? Meaning units like Gore-gruntas (in Bloodtoofs) and Mournfang Packs (in BCR) are stonks?

Looks like I'm taking Namarti Reavers then, given those changes I'd rather extra shots over MWs.

There's definitely a space (and I would argue a need) for a Vanari beatstick (on foot or mounted) who isn't a named character. Call them a Vanari Blademaster or something.

There's so many cool images in the current battletome, just put another of them on the cover at the very least - it's utter laziness.