Requizen

Crossbow Judicators and Hurricane Raptors are two of our best damage options for shooting point for point. However, it's the range that really gets them. Judis needing to be within 12" is extremely dangerous, since they'll usually explode in combat. Hurricanes with 18" is better, since they're relatively safe from most counter-charges (especially if they drop with Aetherwings), but it's still quite risky and the dice rolls for that unit can be quite swingy. Both are really solid if you have ways to support them, either with other close drops (Gav or Skyborne) or with super fast units coming up to support them (Stardrake, Dracovators). Castigators... are interesting. They're extremely efficient against Daemons and Nighthaunt, which are both relatively popular in the meta at the moment, but are fairly lacking against everything else. The Rend-2 shooting is pretty interesting to bring for occasional Hero hunting as well, if you can drop near a smaller Hero with 6-12 of them you can usually light it up a fair amount. They're not... bad, but they're definitely not significantly better at any other shooting unit for the points. Basically I think of our shooting units like this: Bow Judis: Good generalists for camping objectives while shooting at longer range, also fill out Battleline slots. XBow Judis: Very solid damage output but suffer from low range. A really good option within Skyborne Slayers, where you can drop them behind a big wall of dudes and shoot away. Hurricane Raptors: Good for damage output, safer than XBow Judis but riskier than Longstrikes. Good for hunting smaller units or annoying melee units. Drop in the middle of the board with Aetherwings for maximum annoyance. Longstrike Raptors: Hero and Monster Hunters. Range and MWs are the main thing - they're not good at clearing units but they will cripple the important units in your opponent's army. Range makes them really frustrating for some opponents to deal with. Much better in Anvils than not. Ballistas: Good if you commit. One or two is meh, three or four with an Ordinator makes your opponent weep. Reliant on getting to close range, but enemies also usually come towards you anyways. Castigators: Don't really do anything better than above units. Not heavy damage dealers like Crossbows or Ballistas, not long ranged threat like Longstrikes or Bows, no debuffing or other shenanigans. Their best use is as an MSU unit, bringing 3 or 4 units of three to scatter about and force your opponent to spread... but that's kind of it.

Well first, Mike in this case is pretty well just a Johnny. I forgot to link it, but this is going off of the Timmy/Johnny/Spike ideology in this old article (really? 17 years old? I'm feeling my age...): https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/timmy-johnny-and-spike-2002-03-08 If you are thinking about the game, approaching it with the intent to win but do it in your own way, you're a Johnny. It's a lot more nuanced than that, like there's Timmy/Johnny players or Johnny/Spike players, but that's the general terminology. And yeah, most people who try to win in their own way will tweak their lists or playstyles. Timmys often won't, and either accept that they're just going to lose sometimes but have fun doing it, or get frustrated and quit. That's also part of the paradigm. Now, "responsibility to try and make the game fun" is a very contentious subject, and something a bit different for each of our three archetypes. Spikes think playing the game by the rules and trying to break the game is fun, so telling them not to do that because other people don't like it is actively removing fun from that player. As you say, it's generally polite to point out blunders or give some advice, but a) some people don't appreciate it and b) for Spikes (and some Johnnys), then you're not really playing the game since you are no longer outplaying your opponent. I'm pretty Johnny/Spike. If it's a learning game, or practice with club members training for events, I'll point out mistakes. But a lot of the time when I play, my opponent's misplays are just as important to winning or losing as my own correct plays. Game knowledge is part of the game in Warhammer, I'd argue. But other people see it differently, so it's completely subjective as to what "making the game fun" means. If I misplay and get stomped because of it, I can still have fun trying to recover, but others might throw their hands up and quit. There's no one approach to making the game enjoyable for opponents, and while you should do your best, it's not really a players job to bend over backwards to make their opponent have a good time.

I know it's kinda hard to accept, but there's really no such thing as "balanced" in a casual setting. If you're talking about FLGS games with your bros, everyone is going to have different ideas of what "casual" means. To borrow some MTG terminology: Timmy is going to buy the models he thinks are cool and try to make them work. He just bought three Treelords and a bunch of Tree Revenants and is ready to roll some dice. But Timmy's buddy Timmy2 also bought models he thought were cool and ended up buying Nagash, because who doesn't love a giant Lich God? And then of course a couple hundred Skeletons to go with him, because lore! Johnny understands win conditions and picked an army he thinks looks great, but has tried to make it work competitively by writing clever lists and messing with different units. He grabbed Gloomspite Gitz because they're cool, but he's tweaked a solid list through a couple days worth of list building and some test dice rolls. Johnny's buddy Johnny2 has the same mindset, but he grabbed Dispossessed and is sure he can make it work with lots of list tweaking and Allies and what not. Then there's Spike. He grabbed a Stormcast Netlist and showed up with 40 Sequitors, 10 Evos, and Gavriel. He doesn't particularly care about being clever, he knows that games are meant to be won, and getting good lists is the way to do that. He's not a bad guy, but his approach to winning is to take the conclusive lists from good players, no need to have his own ideas involved. When asked to tone down his list, he kept everything the same but traded 10 Sequitors for some Judicators, because they're less dice efficient and therefore the list is overall weaker. None of these players is playing the game wrong. But they all think one of the others is doing it wrong. Johnny2 is going to complain about Timmy2 because Nagash is impossible to stop for Dispossessed. No one wants to play Spike's list, because it's really crazy and obviously isn't even "his" army. Meanwhile, Timmy is going to have a bad time playing against basically everyone else, even though he's approaching the game the way GW would have you believe is the "correct way". Johnny is winning most of his games, and can stand up to Spike's list sometimes, but the others are complaining that his book is just too good, because he's actually using the rules in a clever way. I would wager most people here are Johnnys or Spikes, but there's plenty of Timmys. There's also a lot of Johnny players who think Spikes come at the game wrong, and a lot of Spike players who think Johnny just needs to get good, despite them both coming at the game with the mindset of "I want to win the game, and this is how I'm going to do it".

Hm, I think they only look like Plasma because of the lighting effect in the preview picture. I could easily see that being painted as stone or metal for a more Fantasy feel. But I guess it is more "industrial" than most Chaos things.

I wonder if that'll have anything to do with the upcoming Slaves to Darkness/Darkoath/Everchosen mixed Battletome. There's nothing about the terrain piece that screams "40k only" to me, so maybe as an altar for Chaos Mortals armies to summon in support from the Realm of Chaos or something. Would be an easy win for GW to get double sales off one box.

Hm, for some reason it looked a little more fleur-de-lis than the Ad Mech stuff. Either way, still SoB.

I think losing only feels worse when you go in expecting to win. I try not to approach games with the assumption that I'll win because of some reason, I go in expecting to be evenly matched and then focus on playing my best. Losing never feels good, of course, but when I lose I try to see where I could have won and take it into experience and apply those ideas next time. Trying to improve is not just thinking hard outside the game and then showing up to an event and going undefeated, it means that every game (whether at home, at an FLGS, or at a tournament) is a learning experience and should be approached as such. Dice losses feel the worst, but that's just part of the game. Sometimes your dice are cold and your opponent's are hot, but you can always play the positioning game and make them work for the win.

Nah, I built enough Tempestus Tauroxes to know that looks very similar, but the flair on the hinge just screams Sisters of Battle to me. I'm like 98% this is a new Repressor/Exorcist for Sisters that we'll see at ACon.

Expanding this army is mostly going to be in bulking out the units. Minimum units of anything is pretty meh overall for us, unless it's only taken for Battleline requirements. 5 Evos are probably the most ok min unit, but even then, 10 is better. 10-20 Sequitors is much better, as well. Castigators can be taken minimum sized, but you'll want more than 3, maybe a few units of 3.

It has the same format as Underworlds. It has specific models that look similar to current ones and takes place in an area tangential to the game but not part of core AoS.

Does it? All we know is that there are factions and it's skirmish based. That's the same format as Skirmish, Kill Team, and to an extent Underworlds. Nothing so far has told us what type of player it will be for nor anything about the game itself.

Phew lads, lots of baseless speculation in here.

We won't get an update, we already have an AoS 2 book with Endless Spells. We may get random unit additions, but I would be really flabbergasted to see a terrain piece or Sigmar forbid, Battletome.

Sure, but Thunderblast only extends out 3" and they get the buff within 8". Still, with so many armies getting terrain, Heraldors go up in stock quite a bit.

Dave Sanders is the guy on their team that directs Underworlds and Kill Team Arena. Dude has good eyes for skirmish level games, so I'm looking forward to this new creation from him.

True, but that's if traditional shooting becomes commonplace. A lot of the ranged damage output were're seeing from armies is MW based (or debuffs comboed with melee). It'll depend heavily on how good things like Free Peoples, Bonesplitterz, and Kharadron Overlords are with their new Battletomes. In the meantime, look at those new Khorne Judgements, especially the Axe. You know what kills Slaughterpriests behind a wall of Reavers/Bloodletters dead? Longstrikes, Ballistas, and Judicators. I've also started fiddling with Ordinator + 4 Ballista + Celestial Hurricanum lists again. It's... silly.

I can imagine the Axe being 100 points fairly easy. It compares quite well to Comet, Mushroom, or Warp Lightning Vortex (and way better than Purple Sun), and those see play fairly regularly.

Curious to see if this is more Narrative focused like Necromunda (mainly campaign focused) or Matched focused like Underworlds (very easy pick up and play with randos). Kill Team splits the line between the two by having rules for both, but imo with Arena shifted more towards Matched focused. I like Narrative games, but don't really have an area interested in ongoing narrative campaigns, so we'll see what it turns out to be.

Also, looking at the Khorne changes, it just solidifies the future of Stormcast as a shooting heavy army imo. Between Gristlegore, Bloodthirsters, and VLoZDs, ranged is going to be our ticket in the coming days.

This. Ballista are extremely efficient at shooting all types of units. Longstrikes blow them out of the water when it comes to dropping Heroes. The main power of the Anvilstrike list is just headshotting every important Hero off the table on Turn 1 or 2 and then mopping up. You're never tabling the opponent from a range - Longstrikes are fairly terrible at clearing out units, but once you kill the Heroes it doesn't really matter because most armies fall apart. It's armies with multiple units that function well independent of Heroes that Longstrikes worries about.

Man, played against a Kunning Rukk this weekend. Won the game, but it's pretty disheartening to watch 10 Evocators just evaporate under a billion Arrerz. It was really close until I got the turn that let me drop the Rukk Boss and the Wizard with Brutal Beast Spirits via Longstrikes, but honestly if he had deployed/positioned differently I might not have been able to reach them even with 30", at least not without sacrificing my Longstrikes in the process. It seems like a pretty interesting matchup for Anvils. We don't have the oomph to drop 30 Boyz easily, and the Arrerboyz are basically like the unit of Longstrikes, especially if you get Hand off and they get a threat range of 33".

This. Her rule states she can only take 3 wounds per turn, but the start of a Battle Round is not either player's turn. So you can drop the Comet on 1, and when the turn rolls over, she takes damage from the pulse. Anything left over can be quickly cleaned up by the rest of your army.

One of the upsides is that the Comet is one of the only ways to instagib Morathi, since she can take damage in the time between turns, so depending on how much of a problem she is it's a consideration. It's also a great way to kill small Death Heroes like Vamp Lords or Necromancers. I think there's a lot of limitations with it due to our medicore casting and the cost of the spell, but if you build with it in mind it can be a very solid tool.

Depends on the rest of your army. 2x10 are efficient fighting units that can activate relatively independently, even without Hero babysitting. 20 Sequitors are really strong with Hero support - hitting them with a Castellant Lantern, Heraldor Horn, and a spell or two can turn those 20 dudes into an absolute nightmare for your opponent.

Ballistas are a really inefficient use of the Command Point, and can be quite difficult to utilize in actual gameplay if you want to get extra 18" shooting against important targets. Try it out, but I'd recommend more bodies over the Ballista/Ordinator suite. The thing with the 20 man Sequitor unit is that you don't care about all of them. The only ones that really need to get into combat are the Greatmaces, anything else is just gravy. Especially with a Heraldor, they're far from slow overall.