I know this is an incredibly unpopular opinion, but I actually think the points increase for Hearthguard is almost fair given the new Royal Retinue ability.
The whole strategy with HGB was always having a nearby hero to give them the 4+ ward. This issue before was none of our foot Heroes were all that great. None with great saves, none with a ton of wounds. So you were probably taking AHG to act as their bodyguards to help make them more survivable and keep them from getting shot off the board.
Obviously the HGB combo with a Hermdar general and a Battlesmith getting Warrior Indominate and +1 save made big blocks of HGB insanely hard to kill. But you still ran into issues if your Heroes got sniped. Obviously that's an issue for tons of armies, but the way to defeat HGB was obvious. Snipe the heroes. So you were kinda forced to bring Aurics as protection, even if they didn't fit into your strategy, and even pre-nerf they weren't great.
Now with the Royal Retinue ability you give HGB the ability to be the bodyguards. The Runefather or Runeson still gets to make a save roll, then on the damage that does get through, you transfer it to the HGB on a 3+ which is better than the old ability, and now HGB get to make their ward saves. This makes taking AHG as bodyguards redundant, so you don't need em. It's way harder to snipe the dedicated hero for the HGB, and since it's a melee hero anyway you want them to be charging into battle with the HGB and dishing out crazy damage.
Battlesmith lost the +1 to save, but gained the +4 rally ability which is extremely powerful. The additional save was obviously super useful, but the +4 ward always did more work, especially with how many armies can dish out mortals these days. Losing Warrior Indominate hurts, but the new Runefather ability to give a big block of HGB an additional attack makes them hit WAY harder. Especially if you combo it with a good melee rune, which of course you will.
I think taking Greyfyrd for the extra wounds on foot heroes and extra artifacts can combo extremely well for HGB blocks. I'm not even convinced spamming Greyfyrd HGB is an unplayable list. A Runeson with the Axe of Grimnir is doing massive damage now, and only costs 80 points. Obviously not all of them can have that artifact, but the artifacts are really good now, and you're not trapped into taking a specific one (lets face it Tyrant Slayer wasn't any good). The extra wound goes a long way towards keeping our heroes on the board to buff our troops.
Here's how I see Fyreslayers now:
- Not as tanky as before, but a far cry from a squishy horde army. Still very tough, and much easy to bring back, which is something the army never had before.
- Lots of combos to make them hit much harder than before.
- More viable list building options. (Lofnir, Greyfyrd, Vostarg all seem very playable)
- Require more strategic play than pressing the HGB easy button.
Look, I'm not fooling myself here. I don't expect Fyreslayers to be dominating tournaments. But I also think the naysayers are all focusing on the good stuff we lost and not looking at the new possibilities. This new tome is adding a lot more options to this army that used to have basically one really good unit and basically nothing else. I'm not sure any of the new combos will be as strong as HGB spam used to be, but I don't think it's a realistic view to say this army was just nerfed into oblivion either. I think competitive lists will absolutely emerge as we all have time to try out different things.