TheWilddog

I am really interested in running them in the Eurlbad battalion for the juicy exploding 6s additional mortal wounds. A pack of 6 and a pack of 4, with the Butcher to buff them with the +1 attack for more juicy 6s.

It really hasn't really impacted me too much at all. This is my chosen hobby and the aesthetics of the models and my collection preferences drive my purchases much more than price variations. I picked up the new Beastgrave Ghoul box because ghouls are one of my first loves. I will pass on the new bone boys not because of the price but because the models do not appeal to me. On the 40k side I have had an Eldar army for 10 years so the new box Craftworld stuff has been a long time coming for me. I have held off on the Primaris stuff merely because I am waiting for the inevitable Blood Angels release. When they drop I will cross the Primaris Rubicon. So for me, the driving force is still just my taste and collections.

I would say the Prey Hacker and Ironfists are the way to go. The traditional problem with MF was that they whiffed a lot of the time. So the Hackes with 3 attacks 3 up, 3 up no rend 2 damage seems much better that 2 attacks 4 up 3 up -1 rend 3 damage. Especially in with the Eurlbad battalion that gives additional mortals on 6s, I think the move will be to throw out as many attacks as possible.

Looking over the stuff as mostly a BCR player and a couple thing look good: Mournfang, looking legit now with the upgrades and the buffs we can get on them. Eurlbad battalion: Additional mortal wounds on 6s from melee attacks for the whole battalion, for 140. Yes please. This thing seems like a no brainer. All my initial thoughts have started there.

Man I am loving some of those alternate paint jobs. Especially, the ivory bone with amber looking blades. Makes these models pop a lot more for me.

I disagree. Not just power gamers are attracted to power creep. How much buzz has there been with the release of each of the newer, overpowered books? The casual players are drawn to "good" rules too. I know several local FEC players who have never got anywhere close to a tournament that went out and bought AGKoTG like they were going out of style. Magic is the the exact same. Casual players want cool cards, that do cool things, Wizards keeps making cooler more powerful cards to appease the casuals as well as the competitive. It's less about competitive play and more about constantly having cool stuff to sell, it just happens that the easiest way to do that is to ramp up the power. I agree with all you guys that power creep and rules to sell models are not the most positive thing but I also contend that almost all big tabletop war gaming companies and collectible trading card games do it. In the case of Wizards Of The Coast and GW they have been very successful and have a lot of data on who their customers are and what they are willing to buy. That is what leads to the constant product churn and the accompanying rules push to sell the new coolness.

I agree and that is part of the issue. For GW the emphasis is on what looks great and what rules will get people to buy it. The way the balance plays is at best a distant second that comes well after the first. As a long term magic player I would argue that Magic is the same. Wizards of the Coast has repeatedly stated that casual players are 90 percent or more of their sales. In recent years they have dumped more and more resources in casual formats like Commander, and put emphasis on the "cool" and "unique" features of each new set to appeal to the casual crowd. GW and Wizards know where their bread is buttered, they want to give us enough balance to make us happy while delivering the power creep and new hotness to drive sells. Again, nothing against it but to expect something outside this industry standard seems unrealistic.

MTG designers and pretty up front about the fact that they are constantly trying to balance introducing cool new toys to generate interest and promote sales verses the concerns of internal game balance. GW and most of the industry has borrowed heavily from this approach. In my opinion GW has a conscious plan to weight sales and appeal over balance as a marketing philosophy. That is the reason the release schedule is fueled by the new. Every week new stuff is pushed for us to buy. Primaris replace old marines, ect. Their focus is on the rules pushing the new models. Yes they want a modicum of balance, but their main focus is pushing out the next product. They will now react to obvious overly powerful rules, but they still value pushing the rules power for sales over balance. Again this is not inherently bad, in fact it is the industry standard and a proven winning technique. I just don't see any other companies taking a drastically different approach in our niche.

Again my basic position is that GW has made a business decision, that to my mind all other successful large scale tabletop war games and collectible card games have made, get a vague modicum of balance where the new stuff is pushed to increase sales. I play War Machine and this is true, especially true with the new Grykim and Infernal releases, I have played Kings Of War and the general modicum of balance seems about the same, Magic, particularly in the Standard format is the same. You can argue that smaller skirmish games like Mailifuax and similar games have better balance but that is almost a different genre than large scale battles. Also you can argue that fan projects without the sales incentive, like the 9th Age have better balance because they are not constantly using rules to push models. However, what other model are people asking GW to adopt? Most other games of AOS's size I have played suffer from the same commercial driven unbalance and I would argue that it is intentional and mostly the industry standard.

Summoning has some issues, but I think the only place it is currently breaking things is in the context of Slaanesh. The Depravity Mechanic will take a hit to get it back in line. Nurgle, Khorne, Serephon LoN and I would argue FEC summoning are mostly fine and don't break the game system. As for Magic, R and D has consistently pushed new mechanics that broke the game and frustrated players for the purpose of introducing new "cool stuff" and driving sales. Affinity, Storm, Phyrexian Mana, Energy, they do it over and over. I just don't really see a difference.

I agree. I think that almost all of the truly new (conceptually) AOS releases have been divisive at first. The Stormcast in the very beginning were divisive in the extreme. The KO had those that loved them and those that thought they were too high tech for the setting. The Idoneth people either loved the aesthetic and went all in or hated it and passed. I think it is just the nature of truly new armies (as opposed to those based on the expansion of existing aesthetics, like DOK or Gloomspite).

I have played and still play a variety of table top war games and other competitive games like MTG (many at relatively high levels of competitive play), and honestly most every other system I have played exhibit the same imbalance that we currently see in AOS. I have played dozens of Standard MTG formats over the years and in almost everyone there were 3-5 best decks that were truly competitive tier 1 and everything else would be dominated by, in fact the current standard format is dominated fairly heavily by 1 deck with most people playing it if they really want to win. The same goes for War Machine. For most of the game's life each faction has had certain casters that dominated and 80 percent of the rest of the range was just left on the shelf. The CID structure has rotated what is good based on the set themes and the meta chases the top builds, while most other lists are relegated to non-competitive. These other games spend way more time and resources than GW on game balance and rules writing and end up in similar spaces. It is honestly the model of the modern competitive/collectible game, a constantly shifting unbalanced meta where new things are promoted to induce sales. This reality is only more frustrating for us as war gamers because unlike magic players we can not just move on to a new deck and recycle the old ones very easily, due to the hobby investment in painting and building the models.

He still does a quick recap of events from the past week on his weekly AOS Twitch show, with some discussion of the lists that did well at the events and cool lists that showed up but like SwampHeart said above LLV was the stats compiler and he has taken a break for a bit for some reason.

The Plague Monk kit is just the worst. They are a much older kit and unfortunately show their age quite a bit.

Been slogging through some glow rats. First batch done.

I agree it would have been too big a hit but what do you think it means for the future? Are they going to go in a new directions with Skaven conceptually or will they still stick to the clan model? Should we expect our next big model influx to be Eshin or Moulder or something in a totally new direction?

Quick question for you guys. Since the tread with some of the new books seems to be to cut out a lot of the old metal and finecast models when the army gets updated to AOS 2.0 (Free cities being the big one of course and the rumors of the trimming of the Ogres line) why do you think Skaven kept so much of its older stuff? We lost a few bits here and there, the Isle Of Blood stuff and a couple of characters, but keep a lot of the really old models. Just wondering what it means for us going forward and the future of the range.

Am really digging these Unmade. At the very least I am going to pick some up to convert for my FEC. These look like perfect ghouls and even though I have over 120 there is always room for more.

Also big shout out to Louise Sugden for inspiration and a kickass color scheme!

Thx for the feedback all. After a bit more painting I am leaning on the blue and doing my squigs in the orange/yellow.

Trying to decide between these two color schemes for my grots. I like the contrast of the yellow skin tone with the blue robes but I also love the brightness of the orange. What do you all think.

Thx. I was just mocking up the flesh to see how it would go with the orange. I love a little flesh tone in my orc and goblin faces, but the skin is far from done. Just trying to settle on a scheme for the cloaks as it will be the dominate color of the army. I am a little afraid the orange will not play well with my red squigs. I will probably mock up a test squig rider and see how it looks.

Been testing paint schemes for my squig heavy army. Am thinking sunset orange/yellow cloaks with traditional red squigs. What are opinions on this cloak? I am going for a bright army but can’t decide if this works or not.

It is almost the exact wording of the other Legions in the LoN Book. So just like in Legion of Sacrament if you take Arkan the Black he must be the general.

Nope, all the fancy FEC abilities are Allegiance Abilities. The only things that work are abilities on the warscroll like summoning. It seems to work just like allies but with some minor tweaks.