swarmofseals

@Aliase it really depends on the rest of your army. If you are relying on Witch Aelves to do the majority of your damage then you may want at least one unit with double knives. If you are using them more as an anvil to support other hammers (Blood Sisters, Stalkers, or Morathi) then you're most likely going to want shields. I've bounced back and forth for 10 model squads but mostly have come down to shields for those as I find that even with double knives they rarely do much.

You can definitely make a competitive build with that.

Have any of you tried a Temple Nest build? I'm inclined to focus on stalkers but sisters could work too. There are certainly plenty of armies that don't care about the Temple Nest ability but it should be quite devastating against others, particularly given how long it can take to grind down large, buffed units of snakes.

I have a very different memory of AoS 1.0: Kunnin Rukk and even double Kunnin Rukk builds Thundertusk spam Mixed Order shooting lists Shootcast Tomb Kings (lol) Settra lists with like 12+ Necropolis Knights Sayl + Bloodletter bomb Grimghast Reaper spam Skyfire Spam I'm probably forgetting some bugaboos but all of the lists I mentioned above were capable of tabling opponents in the early turns just as much as current lists are. There were some aspects of the game then that were arguably more powerful than current mechanics. For example, the Settra and letterbomb lists were triggering mortal wounds on like 4+ instead of 6+ because all of the stacking hit bonuses also worked on the mortal wound trigger. The double turn is a polarizing mechanic for sure, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. But the double turn has been there since the beginning, and there have been armies that can take advantage of it just as much as current ones can. I'll readily acknowledge that your experience of the game may be different now than it was in 1.0. Maybe your opponents are more likely to play high powered lists now, but during 1.0 you managed to avoid opponents bringing the kinds of things that I mentioned above. Regardless, if you want to play massed infantry now there are several armies that can pull it off. Daughters of Khaine, Cities if Sigmar, Orruk Warclans, Fyreslayers, OBR, Maggotkin, LRL, and Seraphon all have competitive lists that use large blocks of infantry and that's just off the top of my head. But no matter what you do you are going to have some bad matchups. That's the nature of the game -- if you don't have any opponents who give you problems, then your list is probably the broken one that needs to be fixed.

@Golub87 it's always a trade-off. If you are spending points on one thing then you aren't spending points on something else. I've certainly experienced this recently with DoK, who likewise have gotten access to quality shooting for the first time recently. Adding Blood Stalkers to an army adds another dimension, but comes at a cost. Heavy stalker lists can be very strong, but they play very differently from heavy Witch Aelf/Sister of Slaughter lists. They have different strengths and weaknesses. Certainly if the new archers (or any other new warscroll) is grossly undercosted then Slaanesh could be broken -- but the same risk will apply for any new release. Also, even Seraphon makes trade-offs. There's no build of Seraphon that is just optimal against all opponents (at least not currently, when Salamanders were 80 points it might have been a different story!). I certainly have a couple of lists that I play that I'm very comfortable with against typical Kroak lists. EDIT: Also just want to point out that just because a unit has heavy armor doesn't mean that it's defensively efficient. If anything I'd say that the correlation between heavy armor and "good on defense" in this game is very loose.

I apologize in advance if this backseat moderating, but are we really at a place where we are making balance complaints about units that we don't have any of the rules for yet? Furthermore, I very much empathize with those of you who were hoping to see more today with the reveals. I'd have loved to have seen some of the advent rumor engines solved, or to have seen new Death models or even the full Slaanesh release. But does it really add anything constructive to the discussion to complain about what we did get? Would you rather have the old GW that didn't preview anything until a week before release? Clearly GW is managing a logistical nightmare with the COVID situation, and I very much doubt the logistics folks are the ones writing the WarCom articles, so coordinating between teams is likely another logistical challenge on top. I also find it hard to understand how people are simultaneously complaining that GW isn't previewing enough stuff and complaining that there is too much time passing between previews and releases. As far as the advent rumor engines goes, yes it would have been slick to reveal some or all of the models today. I don't deny that. But what if those models are far enough in the future that it'd be months before they get released? Would you be happy with that? Would you have been happier if all of the rumor engine images were from the Slaanesh models previewed today? Given that we've already seen the Underworlds warband, headshots, and blurry images I doubt they would have generated the same kind of excitement and speculation that most rumor engines do. If a few month gap between previews and releases is too much for you, then you might be better served by checking out from the rumor scene for a while until the COVID situation stabilizes. I don't hold it against you for wanting to make your opinions known, but this thread may not be the most constructive place to do it. And it takes away from the rest of the discussion without adding much back. _________________________ OK, all that being said I think the new Slaanesh models are gorgeous. I especially love the new steeds -- they really knocked those out of the park for me. The overall aesthetic is stunning, but I do have one worry/caveat. I really hope that these units are all very elite as they are so so detailed. Lumineth models can be very time consuming to paint well, and these guys look a step (or two) above even the Lumineth. I could see painting these kits in small numbers being a real joy, but painting large numbers of them could be a very difficult hill to climb.

@InSaint nice writeup! One quibble though -- Khailebron is extremely competitive for certain lists (Morathi/Stalkers and Shadowhammer Compact). Hagg Nar is still the way to go for most lists like you said. I can agree to that.

Either that or it will be a surprise Nurgle "release"

@Chumphammer what server are you using to find games?

Pretty classic list there. There were also two Shadowhammer Compact builds that did pretty well!

Even at 120 I'd still strongly consider using them. The main problem now is that they are going to inflate the drop count further, and the containment strategy that @Frowny discussed works much, much better if the drop count is lower.

I know it's off topic a bit but I couldn't agree more re: 40k. I dipped my toe in briefly during 3rd edition and even then things were too Space Marine focused for me. Now it's far worse, and despite the pressure I get from friends that play 40k I'm just not even tempted really. There are certain releases that could potentially interest me (Necrons were one), but then I just remember the faction release imbalance and that's that.

All I see is "banhammer"

I love that they can show the damn face of the model and that this is still the correct response XD

forgive my ignorance, but are the warcry boxes typically an ongoing thing like SC sets or limited like battleforces?

In the past warscroll changes that came with these boxed sets were considered official for matched play (for example, there were some Sylvaneth changes in the Looncurse warscrolls that were later confirmed in the Sylvaneth battletome).

Source on this?

The Skaven players will complain bitterly for like six months and then GW will release a headswap kit and declare that the faction was actually Vampire Skaven Sky Pirates all along, but then the faction will be abruptly squatted when a flaw in the headswap sprue design breaks the machinery for production. In three years that sprue will sell for over 100 on the secondary market.

Broken Realms: The Green Suck Goblin Vampire Sky Pirates descend on the mortal realms and completely derail the plot with their zany hijinks.

Are the updated warscrolls online anywhere yet? It doesn't appear that the website has been updated, and the AOS app also seems to still have the old warscrolls.

You read my mind XD _______ On a different note, I had the same initial reaction to the twinsouls heads as everyone else, but having thought it through a bit I kinda like them. They are definitely in that uncanny valley territory where they are close enough to human to make their wrongness genuinely unsettling. That makes them difficult to look at, but isn't that the point? They could have totally beautiful human faces or totally alien and horrific daemon faces and either of those would be pretty easy to look at because they look like we expect them to. These faces are somewhere in between, which fits the lore perfectly. I hate them, but at the same time I kinda think they are exactly as they should be.

This explanation is going to be a little bit arcane, but there are basically two theories to the ways that rules function: Sets of rules that tell you what you can do. In this case the rules need to approve something for it to be within the rules. Sets of rules that tell you what you can't do. In this case anything goes unless the rules prohibit it. The rules to Age of Sigmar are the first type. They tell you what you can do, and if the rules don't say that you can do something then you can't do it. Your argument relies on the rules being interpreted as the second type.

I think the easiest to play option that will be good against DoK is to go with Mortis Praetorians OBR. You won't exactly snipe his heroes, but you sure can out attrition him. I played against a list today that I think would be very strong against DoK: Katakros Arkhan 40 Mortek Guard (swords) 20 Mortek Guard (swords) 5 Deathriders (swords) 3 Immortis Guard Geminids If you truly wanted to tailor the list against a typical DoK list (lots of witch elves and sisters of slaughter supported by heroes) you could drop the Immortis Guard in favor of a Gothizzar Harvester.

You can totally do this now! My custom city uses no human models and has tons of conversions and/or counts-as.

That's absolutely fair, and I apologize for my glibness! My main motivation is to encourage people to keep playing Hallowheart, keep trying new things out etc. as I am confident that there are very strong Hallowheart lists still out there.