swarmofseals

Tried another game against Zaitrec Teclis. Lists: This time we played Knife's Edge, which seemed like a much more favorable battleplan for me than the last game. His rolls were also much better though, and he won another relatively close game. I definitely liked the mobility of the Darkshards over the Irondrakes. Overall the matchup is still extremely miserable though given their ability to easily kill most or all of your heroes by the end of their second turn. Not sure there is any way around that though as there's no reliable way to kill Teclis early that I can think of.

Got another game in today with the same list against Zaitrec Lumineth. Teclis, cathallar, Light of Eltharion, 20xwardens, 10xwardens, 5x dawnriders, 2x10 sentinels, Aethervoid Pendulum and Geminids. Battleplan was Starstrike. I won't go into all the details, but the matchup felt reasonably miserable. The dice were pretty favorable to me overall except in where the objectives landed (which was bad but not horrible), but beyond that the list struggled. I got up the table quickly and smashed his wardens, hoping to ride my Ironbreakers to keep the VPs flowing. The problem is that once the heroes die (which Teclis is very adept at doing, he had all my heroes dead by the end of the third turn) the large units fall apart pretty quickly even though they are reasonably tough. It may be that the battleplan was the problem for me, though. Starstrike really weights the VPs toward the end of the game, so it's much easier for an opponent who is playing from behind to come back. On a more normal battleplan it might have been easier for me to get an early lead that would have been difficult to overcome. Overall though I can't say that I like only having one competent offensive unit, especially when it's hard to reposition.

@Popisdead yeah, it's certainly an amazing tool and has had a major impact on every game that I've played it in. The reason why I call it a mixed blessing is that it's really easy to make mistakes with it that can cost you games. The more I play it, the more I think that Living City is a very skill intensive army where the best players are going to get far better results than average players. There are some units where the deepstrike is somewhat point and click (like dracothian guard variants or the Dreadlord on Black Dragon), although even in these situations there is a lot of variance between optimal use and making mistakes. For slow units, on the other hand, mistakes when deepstriking can and will cost you games. It's easy to overdo it and end up with too many bodies far away from the objectives.

Just to respond to your specific points: The Longbeards are a big block like this because I wanted three big blocks of infantry and couldn't quite squeeze 3x30 Ironbreakers and 10 Longbeards. I'm not too worried about coverage as I really only care about buffing the drakes. This is definitely a consideration, but the Runelord buffs are a huge part of the power of the army. Having an extra +2 unbind is also really nice. The oathstone and command abilities are both very solid though, although in my experience with this kind of build so far the oathstone is difficult to use in many battleplans. Oathstone doesn't help if your opponent goes first and has an alpha strike, and you often move quite far forward with your infantry blocks on the first turn. Since you have to use the Oathstone in the hero phase and then can't move after it can be quite hard to position despite the larger bubble. I'm definitely against this and wouldn't do it even if I included a Warden King. I wish I could have more mobile battleshock immunity that doesn't cost CP. The ability to protect a couple of units on the first turn when you don't have a CP if going second is huge. This is certainly a consideration. His rr1s to hit is pretty secondary, to be honest. I mainly take him to have a cheap but tough hero that can be highly mobile after the first turn for the battleplans that favor leaders. Having 4-5 leaders already is nice, but the Runelords are very slow after turn 1. see below ________________ Got another game in today, this time I took this list: I was up against the classic Gavriel 20 evocator drop SCE list featuring Kroak on Total Conquest. We ended up playing two different branching paths. I took the first turn in order to set up a full screen and take 3/4 objectives in force. Initially, I made a mistake leaving a small gap in my screen that I could have fixed not realizing quite how far he could charge. He got the double turn into turn 2 and rolled a total of 5 CP from Kroak over 2 turns, giving him 7 CP to exploit that gap. I figured that the game would be unwinnable at that point, so instead I fixed the screen and we played on from there. He was able to easily crash in and delete a unit of Ironbreakers, but the return volley from the Irondrakes killed 13 evocators and he conceded from there. Pretty split on whether I should run the Hurricanum or 20 drakes (along with a minor change or two to the rest of the list to fix the points). The overall damage output is almost identical. The advantage of the Hurricanum is that I can snipe characters much more easily, while the advantage of the 20 drakes is that I can cover more ground with my ranged fire.

My very random predictions for battleforces: OBR, Slaanesh, Fyreslayers, Mawtribes and a dark horse candidate of Cities of Sigmar.

I was responding much more to @PJetski than to you, for what it's worth! Your problem with elite units is honestly a pretty broad problem with AOS in general and not just specifically DoK. Points costs have been driven down to the point where you can easily put 100-150 "elite" models on the board if you really want to in many factions. The limiting factor for most players is not points cost but practicality. You don't see the 200-300 model true horde armies (even though those builds might actually be quite good) because you don't want to paint that many, you don't want to lug that many around, it's hard to fit that many in your deployment zone, and it takes way too long to move everything (especially under tournament time constraints). So instead you see most players sticking to 50-100 models with maybe 150 at the very top end. As a result, your 70-90 Witch Aelf builds look like a horde army. But a real Skaven or Goblin horde would probably put 200-300 models on the table... it's just that nobody actually does that (except maybe @Skreech Verminking, you absolute mad lad). To me the problem is less about DoK and more about the overall point scaling in AOS. With respect to your other points: it's not necessarily true that a high agility, short range fighting style would only work in a spread out "warrior" type formation. You can do a lot with precision and agility even in confined spaces. But I'll 100% agree that it doesn't really make sense given the frenzied, berserker slant to the fluff which certainly does match a warrior culture military much more strongly. It's possible that their frenzy blocks their pain receptors without interfering with combat-relevant sensory perception, but I haven't read the fluff closely enough to know if that scans or not. ______________________________ @alghero81 that would be amazing.

There is currently no real evidence that any army is going to be abandoned. Some have stretched the fact that Cities of Sigmar have not gotten the Warcry treatment as evidence that they are going to go, but I find this to be super uncompelling. For one, the two systems are separate. More importantly there are just a stupid number of warscrolls in Cities and it would take a lot of resources for GW to develop the faction for Warcry. Cities also makes relatively little sense in the context of the Warcry setting. TBH if any faction is a bad enough fit to get left out of Warcry it's Cities. It is definitely much harder, although fighting in a disciplined formation also takes training. There is a very good reason why the spear is the core weapon for melee combat for much of history. It's a bit safer to use and requires less training to reach competency. It's ideal for fighting in formation as the formation helps mitigate some of the spear's weaknesses. It's also just a better weapon overall in battlefield situations (and thus even highly trained elites still used spears in many historical militaries). Even when you get down to a weapon like a sword there are major differences in training approach. A good example is the Itto ryu, one of the most famous classical Japanese sword arts. While I must give the caveat that I am not trained in the Itto-ryu, my understanding is that the core philosophy of the school resolves around a very aggressive posture and committing fully to a single decisive attack. This approach is very effective at a relatively low level of training, but perhaps less effective at highly advanced levels. It's no coincidence that the WWII era Japanese military drew heavily from the Itto-ryu when training soldiers in sword use. In comparison there are several styles contemporary to the Itto-ryu which are much more invested in disrupting the opponent's timing and/or using a more neutral stance of attack, defense, and counter-attack (examples include the Niten Ichi-ryu and the various schools that developed from the Kage-ryu)

I decided to cheat on my Living City today and got a game in with Tempest Eye. The latest JustPlay podcast talked up the virtues of Ironbreakers and convinced me to give it a go. I apologies deeply to JustPlay but I still have no idea which voice belongs to which person, but I think it was Ian that proposed a list with a buttload of Ironbreakers, some Longbeards, a unit of Irondrakes, and a bunch of Runelords plus maybe a Warden King. I changed this core into the following: I wanted to get a little more counter-punch and mobility out there as the list as constructed is very slow after the first turn. I played a game against KO on Places of Arcane Power in Aqshy. I don't know his list exactly but it was something like this: I knew I was going to get smashed by the comet if he took the first turn, so I pretty much let that happen, deploying in an arc along my frontline. He took the first turn and hit every single unit with the comet, but the damage wasn't too bad. He took both side objectives, but his shooting failed to do very much damage against my excellent armor. He took the 10 pistoliers off the board but aside from that the damage was minimal. I took the center objective and pushed down toward one flank with 30 Ironbreakers, a Runelord, and the Irondrakes while I pushed most everything else up at the other flank. He couldn't really afford to give me the runaround as he needed to keep his heroes on the objectives in order to hold them. Despite having to move my Irondrakes they took 10 off the Frigate in the first turn. He won the priority roll and wisely chose to take the next turn. He moved as far back as he could and managed to kill 2 Runelords and a bunch of Longbeards with his shooting, but they held strong due to the Patrician's Helm. In my turn I kept pressing, destroying the Frigate with shooting while preparing to charge in. He ran out of time so we had to call it at this point, and it seemed like a very likely victory for me. We checked the priority roll for the next turn, which I won. I would have taken the frigate flank's objective that turn while continuing to hold the center. He figured that the best case scenario for him would be to disgorge a lone hero from the Ironclad, and then fly high, landing in range to kill the hero in the center. That would have led to his Ironclad getting wrecked by Irondrakes, however, and allowed me to all but certainly take the other flank on my turn 4. That would have left him at 9 VP to my likely 15. If he managed to snipe out both my remaining Runelords though he could have possibly forced a tie at 9. Overall though I'd say my dice rolls were pretty strong in comparison to my opponent. Overall the list felt very strong even though my offense was rather blunted.

I very much doubt it as GW is notoriously sloppy with translations. Ironjawz is also mostly original AOS sculpts. ______ On another topic, notch me down as another person who really does not care about DOK durability. They are an almost entirely foot based army (the cav and fliers are very niche and not capable as a main attack/defense unit). It would be very difficult for the army to be balanced in a world where they don't have the durability buffs. Turn 2-3 units with paper defense are just not good in AOS as it's too easy to cripple them with shooting, charges, or any unit that messes up turn priority. Even if we stick entirely to real world reasoning and ignore supernatural tropes like magic tattoos and shields of faith it's entirely plausible for lightly armored units to be very tough. The classical sarissa phalanx is an excellent example. They used relatively small shields and modest armor. Greek hoplites also used little armor and somewhat larger shields. Granted their spears were a large part of their defensive prowess (which DoK don't have), but the point that gigantic shields and thick metal plates are the only way to survival on the battlefield is incorrect. If any of you have trained in classical martial arts (either HEMA or a Japanese koryu style for example) you'll know how defensively capable swords, daggers and small shields are. If you're just sitting there and taking square blows head on you're doing it wrong. A major part of defense is getting into a distance where your weapons are maximally effective and your opponent's weapons are ineffective (see also: legionary vs. phalanx). A gigantic sword or maul is much less scary super close in because even if they hit you you are likely to suffer far less damage because the weapon is moving much more slowly closer to the wielder's hands and the weighting is also disadvantageous to the wielder at that range. If you are trying to intercept an attack with your weapon or shield (or even armor), you much prefer to cause a glance than to just absorb the blow. You can parry a much larger weapon with a smaller one this way, and bucklers/daggers are great as they are very light and can be placed at the correct angle very quickly. Perhaps DoK are extremely adept at these techniques -- using their speed and agility to maintain ideal distancing, disrupt the timing of enemy attacks and achieve very precise parries and deflections.

@Nart@Boltecillo I'm sad that nobody answered this! There is an AOS TTS Discord. I've been using this one: https://disboard.org/server/252942749827989505 I just started with TTS AOS last week and it's really quite excellent. It would be awesome if we could get more people from the community up and running! For $20 it's really a great investment and has allowed me to experiment with some ideas that I've been itching to try since lockdown started. I found the program intimidating at first but it's really quite simple. There are downloadable tables that have everything you need from terrain, terrain ability randomizers, randomizable realm of battle, dice, counters, all the new battleplans (and the ability to select them randomly with the objectives automatically placed) etc. etc. If you want to do super super precise movement it's more awkward than in person but aside from that I think it's actually quicker and easier. EDIT: I'm told that https://discord.gg/6QBGTF is also popular.

It's wild that, assuming the DOK underworlds set has a $25 models only version it would actually be cheaper to spam buy that set than buy the regular kits. 10x that set for $250 = 20 witch aelves, 10 sisters of slaughter and 10 blood stalkers, so $280 in "value" plus an extra 10 Hag Queens XD Of course you'd never actually want to do that, but it does go to show how overpriced those kits are.

A lot has changed in the last year both in terms of the meta and in terms of my own experience. The more games I play, the more I realize that deepstriking using the LC ability is a mixed blessing. Usually I can completely annihilate part of the opponent's army with my shooting, but doing so leaves a large part of my army way out of position (especially if you deploy on one of the side edges of the board). Often times you are then forced to move (or even run) your shooters just to get them in range of another target. With SotW, if you are moving you also are losing half of your offense. The Anointed on Frostheart is legitimately tanky, but the other two behemoths will die quickly to any real offense. A charge from something like eels, hearthguard, Witch Aelves, Brutes/Ardboys, stonehorns, greatswords, Mortek Guard, etc. etc. will easily kill your tanky behemoths (except possibly the phoenix). For example, against hearthguard even if your opponent doesn't have a CP to make the hearthguard fight first and the tree stomp goes off and the hearthguard have no buffs aside from the ones on their own warscroll: Treelord activates and deals a total of 4.25 unsaved wounds to the hearthguard, killing two guys (this includes the Treelord shooting attack btw). The hearthguard activate pile in, say, 10 guys. They deal a total of 9.33 unsaved wounds to the Treelord with broadaxes or 10.11 unsaved wounds with poleaxes. If closer to the entire unit piles in or they have any buffs at all the Treelord is a dead duck in one go. Even if the hearthguard just sat there taking it and never got to activate it would take the treelord 10 activations to wipe the unit out, or just over 7 activations to reduce the unit below 6 models such that the Treelord AND a unit of Sisters of the Thorn could gain control of the objective. There are a lot of units in the game right now that put loads of defensively efficient wounds on the board, and in my experience lists like this just won't work in that context.

@Zeblasky I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I don't think any of those versions is going to work very well assuming you are playing pitched battles. The key problem is that you're going to struggle mightily to score points when you have so few bodies on the board, and the bodies that you do have are going to be coming in at the table edge and have to stay put in order to deal good damage.

Unfortunately there's no sound way to resolve this one as there's nothing in the rules that I'm aware of that defines the term publication or distinguishes between rules from different sources. Hopefully GW will weigh in and fast. If WotE is invalid, then Legion of Grief and Defenders of Lethis should also be out.

Ohh right, completely forgot about that! Problem solved.

Yet another LC list for your perusal, this one quite melee heavy: One takeaway from my previous game that I forgot to mention is that the extra CP feels much less necessary if you don't plan to drop in a melee unit.

Although I vastly prefer the lore of the old world and generally prefer the aesthetics of the late WFHB models (with some notable exceptions), I think that AOS is a really solid gaming system. The more I play competitive AOS, the more I like it. Is it the crunchiest, most skill intensive and most balanced game out there? No, but I do think it's getting better steadily over time in this respect. I do think that it is substantially more skill intensive than many critics suggest. Definitely enough to keep me interested. I also think that many of the common criticisms of the gameplay are a bit reductive. For example, the claim that games are mostly decided by the double turn has definitely not been my experience. Often times the double turn ends games quicker than they otherwise would have ended, but I think the percentage of the time that the double turn actually changes the outcome of the game is a lot lower than many people think. It's also often the most dramatic swing in the game, so when people look back on a lost game it's the easiest thing to point to and say "this is why I lost the game". To me it seems a lot like Magic, where there are plenty of players that claim that luck of the draw decides the game rather than skill and often point to mana ****** or flood to explain a loss. Mana flood and ****** do influence a lot of games, but the number of games that are actually decided by ****** or flood is way lower than the complainers let on. Beyond that, although I don't play open or narrative at the moment, I love that these play modes exist. When I first got into AOS right around when the first GHB came out, my wife and I were expecting our first child. I've loved the WHFB setting for ages, but I would never dream of getting a young child to actually play WHFB. A kid can play AOS though, and the system is flexible enough to support either a competitive mode, a sandbox mode, and an RPG style mode. That flexibility gave me hope that in maybe five years or so I'll be putting models on the tabletop with my kid and be able to shape the game to suit his interests.

Got another game in today, this time vs. a Hallowheart list: His list (approximate) My list Game Description Impressions and lessons

OK, I don't have a favorite GA. So I'll make a case for all three. Death: You get to live forever, pay minimal attention to personal hygiene, and save hours every day skipping stupid biological necessities like sleeping, eating, etc. You never have to worry about romantic relationships ever again because your bae Nagash will never give you up, never let you down. Do you suck at fighting? No problem! There are plenty of jobs available for you. In fact, you can pretty much count on GA: Death being 100% employment without interruption. Destruction: Are you great at fighting and breaking things? Do you ever wish you could just take a dump wherever you want and not have to worry about finding the nearest bathroom? Have you ever wished that every possible steed has giant teeth/tusks? Are you a fan of magic mushrooms? Then do I have a gig for you! Chaos: Do you have a ton of self confidence? Well in GA Chaos everything is performance based! If you exceed expectations we have nearly limitless compensation* available. And if you ****** up? You get extra limbs to help you do better next time! Got anger management problems? We've got a god for that! Always the smartest guy in the room playing three moves ahead of the next guy? We've got a god for that! Are you the kind of person that orders dubious "male enhancement pills"? We've got a god for that! Do you want to have a lot of children**? We've got a god for that! Order: OK, I'm going to be honest. There isn't much that's flashy about GA: Order. We've got the culture and the big cities, and we've got the most diverse population by far. But maybe that's not your bag. Let me level with you about the other GAs. Unless you're a really hardcore submissive you're going to want to avoid GA: Death. In GA: Destruction there is always going to be a bigger guy ready to smash your skull in because it would be fun. And ohh, God, the smell. You can't imagine the smell. GA: Chaos may sound like fun and freedom but they don't call it Slaves to Darkness for nothing. Also you're way more likely to end up with more sphincters than you can count than you are to end up as a Warrior of Chaos let alone a Daemon Prince. So that basically leaves us. *nature of compensation at sole discretion of your chosen diety **children not guaranteed to be of the same biological kingdom

I finally got a game in on TTS with my 6 drop living city list! I played against Heimdarr Fyreslayers list featuring 40 HGB, 20 Vulkites, Runefather, Runmaster, Runesmiter, Battlesmith, and 2 Grimwrath Berserkers with the Lords of the Lodge battalion. He won the roll to decide the realm and chose Aqshy, while I won the roll off to drop first. As we were both 6 drops I chose to drop first and ended up giving him the first turn. We were playing Total Conquest. We didn't get a chance to finish as the server went down for maintenance on us, but it was a very solid game. We each had some good and some less good rolls, nothing too swingy. He ended up getting off a very long charge on turn 1 with his tunneled HGB and wiped out my Handgunners, but this may have been a mistake as it left him open to a counter-charge from the Phoenix and Phoenix Guard which in turn killed 15 of them (they were out of range of a hero so only had a 6+ shrug). My deepstrike package wiped out his Vulkites and one of his heroes and had 2 grimwraths to deal with when the game crashed. Meanwhile, his second block of HGB had just rolled boxcars to get stuck in with my melee line (although a fair few would not be in range for the first swing). In the end I think he was likely a favorite to win, but it was far from decided. Overall I came away with the following impressions: In this particular matchup and battleplan combo I might have been better served to just deploy on the table instead of deepstriking The melee threat was pretty solid. It may not have been as efficient as ranged units can be at dealing damage, but it was able to punish him for overextending in a way that ranged units would have more difficulty doing I definitely would have preferred to have the high drop version of the list and not have the turn choice in this matchup. Having small units to block charges would have been very, very strong. EDIT: Also I think taking an extra CP is pretty close to mandatory

Here's where you lose me a bit. 54 4+/4+/- shots is really not much of an "alpha strike'. You're killing 3-4 Ardboys with that shooting, which is not very good for a 280 point unit (especially when it also requires taking an otherwise mediocre hero and spending a CP). They also aren't more survivable. You're spending 280 points on 12 wounds with a 4+ save. I'd much rather have ~30 wounds with a 5+ or 6+ save. 6 Vanguard Raptors w/ Hurricane Crossbows: 13.5 rend 0 damage 30 Darkshards: 20.17 rend 0 damage 30 Freeguild Crossbows w/ general buff: 33.61 rend 0 damage

Vanguard-Raptors are kinda OK ranged units, but they enable Aetherwings to move during the enemy charge phase which is absolutely huge. Aetherwings are still great either way, but they are much better when they can actively intercept enemy charges.

Also keep in mind that eel spam lists are really low model count. If you can put a lot of bodies on the board you can put enough pressure on him VP wise that he has to commit earlier than he'd like or risk falling too far behind on VP (at least in certain missions). This may not help much for Stormcast, but for many other factions it can work well.

I bet almost nobody would complain if you do some pretty heavy counts-as as long as it's logical. For example, a unit of quarrelers or thunderers should absolutely be fine as freeguild crossbows/handgunners respectively. Empire archers/huntsmen would make great Shadow Warriors.

I posted this in the LC thread as well, but I'm curious if any of you have tried out allied Morsarr Guard in a serious list. They are more efficient than any of our fast melee units even without the benefit of any allegiance abilities and we don't really have any other flying combat units (at least aside from heroes)