Requizen

Skaven and FEC not getting point changes has nothing to do with them trying to shift boxes and everything to do with editing/printing timeframes. They won't get changed because by the time the feedback was coming, GHB was already on the way to the printers. Unless they get Errata'd when the book drops, don't expect any changes there. If you notice, DoK was released around a similar time as GHB18, which is likely why there were no changes there either. Honestly I would not be annoyed if they did a "Beta Points" PDF 6 months after each GHB so they could release new points without requiring a new book purchase, but I think that's unlikely.

It's always a possibility, I'm just cynical Word on the street was that when writing Skaven/FEC, they came up with a new algorithm for figuring out point costs based on damage/survivability/buffs/etc, and those two and Battletomes after were balanced around it. It's possible that Gitz and previous (including us) might get revamped with that point algorithm, so maybe the book is a huge shakeup, who knows? Even if that were so, however, I doubt they redo Battleline Ifs, though they really should for variety more than anything else.

No way our whole book gets aggressive cuts like that. The cynical side of me says they'll increase the things people are complaining about (Evocators and Gav highly likely, possibly Ballistas, Sequitors and Longstrikes), and reduce the cost of things that aren't selling well (Vanguard, Lord Exorcist). Though I agree with some of your assessment, I doubt Libs/Judis get touched at all, or Extremis, or Battalions. Maybe they push down the Tauralon cost to shift those boxes, but we'll see. I'd be really happy with a huge shakeup that allows us to compete with S-Tier armies without resorting to gimmicks, but my gut tells me that GW is mostly overall happy with SCE right now.

I agree that hyperbole is damaging to discussion, but there isn't much redeemable about Retributors. Damage per point is a fine number to look at, but practicality is something to take into consideration as well. 20 points extra doesn't seem like that much, but once you jump up to 10 models (which you will), 40 points can really make or break a list in the final stages. 1" reach on the weapons is absolutely brutal to try and make work with 40mm bases. Staff Evos getting 2" reach means you get two ranks of fighting, which is very important for positioning and piling in. Mortal Wound output is potentially the most important part of this calculation. While flat damage output is nice, the MW damage is what often does the real punch of the unit. And (assuming a 10 man unit) 4 Starsoul Maces and some procs doesn't quite make up for Lightning Arc, which is incredibly busted. As with the second point, the strongest part of Lightning Arc isn't the pure numbers, but the numbers + the range. Rets bringing all Maces and Hammers to bear on a target for max MW damage can be difficult depending on what you're trying to fight and how the charge went. Lightning Arc doesn't care. Tag them with one Evo, blast the unit with an average of 10 MWs. Rets get higher average MWs if they all get to attack - but unless you're Gav charging, getting all 10 models to fight a specific target can be extremely difficult, especially if it's a Monster with some Bubble Wrap or in terrain. Not to mention the secondary bonus of the Wizard keyword, such as PoAP scoring, Unbinding, and Dispelling. Sequitors are a solid unit worth consideration in many SCE lists, but Retributors are straight outclassed. Maybe if you could take them in Skyborne Slayers, they'd be noteworthy, but alas, it wasn't meant to be.

Comet vs Ballista is a bit of a toss up. They both have targets they're better against, and both have upsides and downsides. The main downside of the Comet is that we don't have many (any) casting bonuses to get it off reliably, and many armies have strong dispel bonuses to stop it, so it can be very unreliable. Not to mention we're generally not running a lot of Wizards, so if the ones we have go down early, or need to cast other things, those 100 points are dead in the water. That said, it has the huge upside of being able to nuke multiple small heroes in a single go, which can really mess with enemy positioning. It can also potentially bop little Morathi before she can transform, dice depending. Take the risk/reward into account when you build. Pride Leader is basically an autotake if you're running any number of other Dracolines. Otherwise, I think Bounding Leap offers a lot of flexibility.

Was a date given? I only heard "in June", so for GW that can mean "Preorder on June 29th and 2 week preorder".

There are a couple atypical builds that don't focus on those - Skyborne Slayers is still fairly legitimate, Stardrake builds can still hold their weight in a number of matchups, and there's at least one Astral Templars Ballista + Hurricanum gimmick build out there. But with everything changing in a month or two, I wouldn't worry about it too much. Not only will our book change, but hopefully the shape of the meta in general.

The practicality trumps the numbers on this one. First, no one is afraid of Prosecutors. They're... fine, for 100 points, but a unit of them is not dissuading anyone. They're just going to charge them and wipe the unit without stopping to think about it. If you charge a unit with them, you might kill a couple models and then get wiped out in return. 6 wounds on a 4+ is basically nothing, and while the Grandweapon is ok, most armies will laugh at the damage output. Skinks take up a lot of space. String ten 25mm bases out with the full 1" between them, and you can make a line nearly 19" long, which is enough to cover a huge amount of board space. The ability to block off drop zones, cover edges for things like Eels outflank or FEC summoning, or just create a wall of space that people can't move through is extremely important. It doesn't matter if the Skinks die - remember that there are only 5 turns in a game, and if they can hold off a unit for one of them by literally just standing there, then you're golden. Additionally, Objectives are held by body count, and 10 throwaway bodies that you can put on an objective and outnumber a small unit is invaluable when the rest of our army is such low model count. Games are won by points, and by preventing your opponent from doing what they want. Skinks cover both of those options. Aetherwings, on the other hand, lock down opponents harder than anything else in the game. You're correct in that the 3d6" charge on the Prosecutors can get you the initiative and charge anything fairly reliably, but as I said, they're just going to charge in and die after doing a small amount of damage. Aetherwings, on the other hand, mess with your opponent's head. Since you can use Watchful Guardians to engage your opponent before their Charge sequence, therefore turning off their ability to charge, they have to either give the birds a wide berth or deal with them in some way. If you can tag an Abhorrent Ghoul King on Terrorgheist, it can't charge at all for a turn, period. That means your units are completely safe (well, aside from some pile-in shenanigans) as long as they get within 3" of the enemy. I think I can count on one hand the number of things that mess with enemy charges like that. Charging is such a huge part of gameplans that just being able to say "no" to the opponent's most powerful tools will win you games just as much or more than any damage you may or may not do. The ability to take away an entire turn's worth of combat can and will break the game for many opponents.

Gav is really only bad against Gristlegore, all other FEC it can deal with pretty well. That said, of course, Gristlegore is quite popular. As has been discussed before, you can get around Gristlegore if the positioning is right, though, so it's not necessarily an autolose.

Can only take 2 Ballistas at 1000 points. I've found Gavriel to be very strong at 1000 points. There's not nearly as much bubble wrapping, especially if for instance FEC wants to take any number of big monsters.

Oh, Soulscream Bridge teleport happens in the Movement Phase, missed that. Would no longer consider as an option. More Birds it is.

I think with a bit of tweaking it can easily be a 4-1 list. I'm curious to try it.

Well, the point isn't so much to remove anything with the Hurricanes, as it is to create a zone where they can't move without overcommitting and messing up their positioning. I'm not worried about the Hurricanes doing damage, I more want them just standing there with Aetherwings to ruin the player's ability to participate in the Movement and Charge Phases. The extra damage is just icing. I might try this out sometime in the near future.

I think the more Aetherwings, the better. They control space like nothing else in the game, with the ability to just turn off charges. Combining the units is a reasonable idea, though it does limit one's ability to spread out (though 18" for Watchful Guardians is still quite good). Additionally, you get a reasonable amount of mileage out of having that extra Prime for damage, though it's not too extremely strong. That change would be worth considering. 12 Drops isn't going to out-deploy anything, but it does let me put all the Aetherwings up, as you say. Edit: it's not inconceivable to drop down to 3 Hurricanes period and get things like Skinks or upgrade the Liberators. I was more worried about 3 just getting punked and losing out on the ability to use Watchful Guardians at all, not to mention that Hurricane shooting is pretty solid point-for-point.

Bonesplitterz don't have any Priests, so Prayers don't make sense. Unless they make Wardokks into Priests, but then would they stop being Wizards? I think that's pretty unlikely. I don't see Kunnin Rukk surviving the change, to be honest. Most of the Battalions in the game with "holy ******" effects have gotten extremely neutered in effectiveness or straight up removed. Since the Bonegrinz superbattalion is based off the Kunnin Rukk, we might see the effect rolled into their Command Ability (much like Anvils of the Heldenhammer can make a unit fight/shoot for a CP).

So the two that basically always go up are the Evocators. Then there's some choices: Gavriel should go up, but can stay on the board if you want to put other things up and there's no chance a chance he gets locked in place or shot off the board. Since his bubble is 12" and he can run, or even be teleported with the Vexillor, you can get cagey with his deployment, but I'd say 8/10 times you want to put him up in the sky to drop and autocharge the Evos. Sequitors want to stay on the table usually. If they're standing in a bubble with the Castellant and Arcanum (who has the Hammers Trait), they're extremely hard to kill, and since you buff with the Castellant in the Hero Phase but Scions happens in the Movement Phase, it gives you a chance to buff them while in the sky they wouldn't be able to get the +1 save. You can leave them off the board, if you think there's something that can kill them early even with their toughness. Hurricanes want to stay off the board since their range is short. Dropping Hurricane Raptors and Aetherwings in front of enemies severely limits where they can move, and especially limits where they can charge because of the Aetherwing's ability. You get a lot of board control against armies with no ranged attacks just by putting Aetherwings in their face. The Vexillor can stay off the board so he can drop in optimal position to give rerolls to charge, and since both Scions and the Pennant happen at the end of the move phase, he can even drop and then Pennant to teleport a unit on the table. Arcanum and Castellant want to stay on the table since their stuff happens in the Hero Phase. Libs might want to go up in the sky, for some extra movement, but mainly they'll be on the table to zone out early game and cap backfield objectives.

Well yeah, Pennant of the Stormbringer. I think it's almost a must take with Gav, since it lets you buff up your Sequitors on the ground and then drop them wherever you feel like on the board to work with Gavriel. And he also gives those rerolls, so you can all but guarantee a charge even by using 2 CP on the drop, a 3" rerollable is very hard to prevent. Translocation can be used multiple times - but the wholly within 9" restriction is very hard to use once you've charged off. If you save the Vex banner and use it later in the game for a relocate, you can get Evos or Sequitors (who are quite slow) into prime charge position, which can swing the game. Translocation is great for shooting units that you just want to shuffle around and stick near in your backfield (aka Longstrikes), but once you spread out it loses its edge.

I had a thought about Gavriel. I have no idea how this would perform, but here's a thought: Hammers of Sigmar Gavriel Sureheart Lord-Castellant (artifact) Knight-Vexillor Lord-Arcanum (General) Sequitors x20 Liberators x5 Liberators x5 Evocators x10 Vanguard-Raptors with Hurricanes x3 Vanguard-Raptors with Hurricanes x3 Aetherwings x3 Aetherwings x3 Aetherwings x3 Soulsnare Shackles 1950/2000 I'm not sure what I put this together last night. It was some sort of pre-sleep delirium, but hear me out: you use the birds, Hurricanes, and Libs as MSU stuff to contest and control the midfield early (and/or a buffed brick of Sequitors, depending), forcing them to come out and contest objectives. 3 units of birds shut down all charges, basically no matter what unless they have a solid amount of shooting in the list. Then once they're moved out and split up to deal with the MSU, you hit them with the Gav countercharge. The main downside of Gav lists atm is that there's a lot of bubblewrap. But with reasonably good anti-chaff shooting from the Hurricanes and charge-shutdown from the Aetherwings, you can mitigate a lot of the bubble wrap problem and create much better charge situations for Gav and Evos/Seqs. I think this can be refined (number of bird/Hurricane units, maybe don't need a full 20 on the Seqs, etc), but I'm kind of digging this idea. Basically using Gav as a Beta Strike rather than Alpha and forcing the opponent into a position where the Beta will have full effect.

People tend to find Shooting gimmicks more boring than melee ones, since there's much less interaction or counterplay. With combat, you can zone out, use pile in tricks, now there's activation wars, etc. Not to mention just a lot more ability to measure spaces and create/deny charge avenues. With shooting lists, the only counterplay is basically just stack defenses or try to hide behind LOS terrain. And shooting gimmicks getting a double turn is extra feel bad since you don't even get to swing. That said, I think most of the feel bad from Kunnin Rukk is that your opponent just kinda just watches you buff up and roll dice, and your shooting takes a lot of time, so if the Rukk player doesn't know what they're doing, they can monopolize game time quite a bit. Unrelated, I'm a few more games in with my Bonesplitterz, and I'm starting to see just how medicre the Boar units are. Big Stabbas are carrying my games super hard, to the point where I'm considering Teef Rukk over Kunnin Rukk just to get more mileage out of them. And honestly I'm starting to look at a Rogue Idol just to boost my Wizard spells because enemy armies have so many boosts to casting and unbinding, and it sucks not seeing those important spells go off. Hopefully we get some sort of buff that way in the new book - assuming all our Warclans become "subfactions", maybe Drakkfoot will bring our Wizards up to par.

Good reasonings, thanks for the insight. I think I'd rather have Skinks for the points, but I might try this out and see how it goes. Need some good practice before my next big event.

I'm thinking of pushing more towards your style as well. The extra 5 man Evo unit has been so hit or miss. When it hits, and it actually gets to fight, they punch way above their weight class, but when I'm forced to use them as chaff/spacing (which is more often than I'd like), they're just expensive Liberators. Why Swords over Shackles? Swords can come back to bite you, Shackles are great space creators and charge deniers imo.

Yeah I re-read and edited my post. I thought it read "heal a wound when the last would be taken" not "instead of removing", which is a big difference.

I believe you can't fit a full 20 man unit around Lauchon on 40mm bases, iirc it maxes out at 19 if you do it micrometer-perfect, though I'll double check when I get home. However, as you say, that's a very large distance. Gav requires more building around but is more reliable, Lauchon is (relatively) cheaper though is basically a one-off that is not as reliable (has to be cast, can be shut down by enemy casting Lauchon) and has a kickback. Also that's not how Cycle of the Storm works. Lauchon immediately slays a model, so while you can heal it for 1 wound, it is still removed from play. There's a difference between being removed from play from losing wounds and just being removed from play. Edit: reread the warscroll, that's quite interesting. What are you currently running? I think including at least one Evo unit with Gav is almost necessary still, since sometimes you need that smash punch with him to just instagib something.

I'm thinking of popping in the Soulscream Bridge in my Anvilstrike list. Can either use as a backup teleport to Translocation, or as large blocking "terrain" to keep them safe by zoning off charges. Otherwise I've been fiddling with Gav bombs again. There's a lot of bubble wrapping in the game, but I think with the right setup and variable layer charges (rather than Alphaing in everything at once), you could end up doing well. I'm feeling that heavier on Sequitors than Evos is the better way to go.

A guy who knows a guy who is nebulously working for GW has never been a reliable source. Nerfing Longstrikes would be stupid. They're literally only viable in Anvils and even then nowhere near as outrageous as other things in the game.