swarmofseals

@Noob Vampire if you look back over the last couple of pages you'll see this question discussed quite a lot. Someone else asked a very similar question. Just to summarize a few things: Generally speaking ranged offense is much less efficient per point than melee offense. High efficiency ranged units are typically only doing a half to a third as much damage per point as melee units, and they only get to attack once per battle round (barring Unleash Hell) as opposed to (potentially) twice. On the other hand, they gain the ability to focus fire on priority targets more effectively. That's the trade-off. You can block Unleash Hell by either charging first with a trash unit or, better yet, by not charging in at all and piling in with units that can pile in from >3" (Dire Wolves supported by Belladamma or Zombies). You can eliminate the targeting advantage of ranged units by getting in combat with them. You can reduce the targeting advantage of ranged units by focusing on heroes that are resilient against sniping (more on this later). Also, if your opponent is using Unleash Hell and "Stand and Shoot" in the same turn with their Freeguild Handgunners then they are violating the rules (possibly unintentionally). The recent round of FAQs changed the stand and shoot ability on both Freeguild Guard and Sisters of the Watch to allow them to benefit from Unleash Hell without spending a CP if the charging unit is within 3" of them. They get to shoot without spending a CP, but they can't shoot twice. Generally speaking, there are some Soulblight units that are vulnerable to shooting. Grave Guard are probably the worst offenders, but anything that is slow and defensively less efficient is a culprit. Faster units that are defensively inefficient are also problematic, albeit less so -- most of the monster heroes are like this, and the unridden monsters and Mortis Engine even moreso. The best units against shooting are fast, defensively efficient units like Blood Knights and Dire Wolves. Fell Bats are also an option as a cheap trash unit to absorb Unleash Hell. These units can close quickly and are likely to get into melee before getting shot down, and when they do get into melee most ranged units will fold very quickly. For example, a unit of 20 handgunners with the +1 to hit from Hurricanum shooting once and then using Unleash Hell on a unit of Blood Knights will kill an average of 2 to 3 Blood Knights. After this point the Blood Knights are a strong favorite to wipe out the Handgunners over the next two combat rounds. I think that illustration is pretty telling: the handgunners get the opportunity to shoot first, have a buff, use a CP and still lose to the Blood Knights who have no support at all and use no CP. The other key bit of anti-shooting tech is Belladamma, who can tie up a shooting unit with Lycancurse (ideally through spellportal). Most armies are really vulnerable to getting their heroes sniped by shooting, but Soulblight much less so. The lowly Necromancer, Radukar the Wolf and Belladamma all have the ability to shrug wounds off on minions making them MUCH harder to snipe.

Kroak and Skinks has nowhere near the damage output that it did in 2.0. Skinks are fully 25% more expensive than they used to be, etc. Kroak is a problem but I think people generally overestimate how much damage he does. He no longer has access to Balewind Vortex. Soulblight is well positioned to just tank Kroak's damage -- we have good, steady healing and most of our smaller heroes (Necromancer, lil Radukar, Belladamma) all have very good wound redirection abilities. Skinks also hit at 5+ on base and thus lose half their damage output if they get -1 to hit. Unleash Hell gives a -1 at base, so they will need their +1 to hit CA as well just to balance that out. Any further source of -1 will put them on 6's to hit. Their own fire and flee command ability only lets them escape on a 4+, so that still fails fully half the time. Also, we have many options to pile in from >3". Zombies and Dire Wolves + Belladamma are going to make Fangs of Sotek cry. They can't Unleash Hell or shoot n' scoot if you don't charge. Lumineth are pretty low damage output, especially Teclis lists. No doubt there will be certain Lumineth builds that will be difficult for certain Soulblight builds, but the same is true in reverse. Tzeentch is definitely good, but again the damage output is not that bad. Flamers are way worse now, topping out at +1 to hit. Even in their rend changecoven 9 flamers (525 points worth!) shooting at a unit of 5 Blood Knights using All Out Defense isn't even a favorite to kill two models! Tzeentch also lost access to Changehost which is huge. And really don't be so down on your casting. You can easily get Belladamma to +2 rerollable if not +3 rerollable. You will absolutely be able to get Lycancurse off against Kroak, Kairos, and Teclis at least some of the time. Fish for a high roll if you have to. Anyway, I think that there are some builds that are going to struggle against these opponents of course. Grave Guard are not going to like facing off against the enemies you mentioned. Big skeleton blocks are not great here either. But I think whatever hero configuration you choose (hero heavy, hero lean, or Nagash) if you are supporting it with a significant number of Zombies, Blood Knights, or Dire Wolves in whatever combination you will absolutely have play against these opponents. Some will be hard matchups, but that's how it should be. _____ Some unsolicited advice that you may not want

Finally got in a game of 3.0 today. I tried out my Nagash build: My opponent was playing Syar Lumineth with a build that looks pretty typical for early season tournament LRL The battleplan was Power Struggle. I won't go into great detail but it was a lot of fun and the luck was pretty spiky in both ways. He snagged the middle objective with his Loreseeker and moved up cautiously, but I was able to shut down his magic with Nagash. I moved up very aggressively and made some positioning blunders that turned an easy Nagash charge into a very difficult one, but I managed to pull it off with a reroll, snapping off the Loreseeker and taking back the mid, but with Nagash in a vulnerable position. I won the roll off for the second battle round but gave him the turn. This probably wasn't the best idea but I wanted to see if Nagash would survive. My opponent had an excellent magic phase and managed to get off Power of Hysh on his archers and Lambent Light on Nagash. He focused everything on Nagash, but this meant that he needed to be very aggressive with Teclis. He charged in with Teclis and his 20 Wardens, shot everything at Nagash and then tried to bring him down in the combat phase, but in the end Nagash survived with something like 4-7 wounds left. I wasn't even able to attack back with Nagash because of his windmage using the artefact that requires a hero within 6" of him to only attack him, but my Zombies and Kosargi Nightguard got to pile in en-masse and started to chip away at Teclis and the Wardens. My poor positioning got the better of me again and I wasn't able to charge in with Radukar on turn 2. I pulled back with Nagash and healed a bit, but his magic was largely inconsequential. My Zombies kept doing work though and I easily held the center. My opponent won the next roll off and took the turn, but Nagash was able to unbind enough of his spells to stay alive. Radukar finally got in at the bottom of 3 and Teclis fell, surrounded by Zombies. At that point my opponent conceded. Overall the army felt very good. Even though Teclis made Nagash very unimpactful on offense, the rest of the list felt extremely well suited to the task. Piling in 6" is just so so good, and zombies are amazing at the objective game. They are excellent against infantry as they already have good numbers and the ability to both regenerate casualties and add new models for every kill makes it hard for anything but super elite offensive infantry to get through them. They are also good against monsters as they can deal pretty good steady damage with the mortals, surround very easily with their pile in and have enough numbers to hold the objective. Their real vulnerability is battleshock, and Nagash takes that off the table. And if you can get Radukar or Vanhels off (or even better both!) they can do some real damage, too. Zombies and Nagash cover each-others' weaknesses very well so I'm pretty optimistic about some version of this build being seriously competitive for those of you that want to try a big man list.

@yukishiro1 Yeah, I can buy that argument against god lists specifically (at least against Archaon, Nagash I think it depends on the build). But against something like double or triple Stonehorn lists, double Mawkrusha, Sons of Behemat, Vhordrai + Dragon or Mannfred + Dragon Soulblight I think they dynamic works against you. Gotrek is also really bad against heavy shooting (and two of the major god lists (Morathi Stalkers or Teclis Sentinels) are both good at shooting. I guess I'm doubtful that the kinds of god lists that Gotrek is good against ever become predominant enough for him to be something like an auto-include particularly given his shortcomings and the fact that Age of Sigmar metagames are basically never as warped in practice as they appear to be on paper (even when a faction is obviously broken it's basically never more than 15% metagame share).

I can't speak to the current iteration of the list but I had a couple of games with Morathi DoK against Tzeentch Archaon in late 2.0. It felt like a good matchup for DoK, but there were definitely some ways that it could go very wrong. Kairos is very good at dramatically reducing the offensive output of Blood Stalkers, and the typical Morathi + Stalkers list doesn't exactly have a ton of room for objective cappers/screens either. Tagging Archaon with Morathi is definitely doable but by no means automatic, and if you fail the reroll ward prayer things can get ugly. Again, it definitely felt like a fine or even good matchup for DoK but hardly an auto-win. Only the third tournament that I added (the least competitive of the three) is finished. I suspect the other two are multi-week tournaments on TTS. The third tournament had 3-0 results from Tzeentch (not archaon) and Slaves to Darkness, 2-1 results from DoK, Soulblight, Khorne, Slaanesh, SCE, and Tzeentch (Archaon) as well as a 2-0 from Nurgle (probably had to drop before the third round). I agree that Gotrek is better now than he was, and he's showing up in some lists for sure. That said his problem has always been that he's slow, usually much slower than the big monster heroes that he excels against. In terms of defensive efficiency Gotrek is definitely strong, especially for a hero. Against 1 damage attacks his weighted defensive efficiency is .092 which is mediocre but OK for a hero. Against damage 2 attacks he's .184 which is good overall and very good for a hero, and against higher than damage 2 he is of course excellent. His weighted offensive efficiency is mediocre (.073) to excellent (.145) depending on if he piles in once or twice. Against regular units it's very easy to prevent him from piling in twice, but against monster heroes he's going to get a second go unless he kills the enemy with the first attack. Gotrek will definitely be a strong piece against heroes+buffs+junk, but he's not fast enough to "dunk all over them" especially if there is a good amount of terrain on the board. He can only be in one place, and unlike an Archaon or Nagash he can't quickly move around the board to smash things wherever he wants.

There were definitely a few, although it wasn't super common.

Added more data from a third event.

I wouldn't call Morathi a hard counter to Archaon as she will go down in 4 turns (1.5 to 2 battle rounds of melee depending on if they put any mortals on her with spells), but she is very effective that's for sure. It'll be interesting to see how the Archaon lists do in the meta. I wonder about Nagash + zombie horde, as that list can both counter big hero monsters and flood the board with bodies.

I can't quite speak to how it will perform in 3.0, but I can strongly attest to the fact that in 2.0 it was a very good list. I played a bunch of games against it (piloted by high level international quality tournament players) using very competitive lists myself, and those same players went on to place the list consistently X-0 and X-1 at very competitive TTS tournaments during the pandemic. My initial impression of the list was like yours, but it definitely functions better than you would think. Granted, the versions I played against are a little different from the lists that are showing up here. Typically what I played against was something like Archaon, Kairos, Sorc Lord, Great Bray Shaman, 2x3 Screamers, 10 Pinks, Geminids + Daemonrift + Spellportal. Hosts Arcanum then gives another 6 screamers for free. The list gets auto unbinds on turns 1, 3, and 5 and d3 units get a 6" pregame move, which effectively gives Archaon something like a 28-32" reliable threat range on turn 1 and also potentially allows the endless spells DEEP penetration on turn 1. Kairos can use spellportal to zap you with his very powerful warscroll spell and slow a key unit down with a chaos spawn or potentially use Devolve through spellportal to pull a screen out of place. Archaon is typically getting +1 to hit, +1 to wound, and reroll everything. In addition, he can reliably get a permanent +1 attack on the first turn. His average output is something like 24 rend 2, 13 rend 1 and 6 rend 0 damage -- enough to destroy most targets.

Personally I think that's probably a bit of an exaggeration. Archaon and Nagash will definitely influence the meta to a significant degree, but they are going to be preying upon lists that are heavy on monster heroes and don't really flood the board. Kairos-Archaon in particular can get overwhelmed by an opponent who floods the board effectively. So if lists like that start to predominate, then Kairos-Archaon could get a lot less attractive.

@Doko You are reading the rules incorrectly. Well, you are correct for Kragnos but incorrect for Archaon.

You are way too confident in your take here. What you say is clearly true for Kragnos because he doesn't have the proper keywords, but that isn't so for Archaon, who has the relevant keywords. For example, Destiny Dice stipulates that you can replace a die roll for a TZEENTCH model. Archaon is a TZEENTCH model.

As far as I know it doesn't. The battle traits in DoT don't refer to a "tzeentch army" and in fact many if not all of the warscrolls in the DoT tome don't actually have a "disciples of tzeentch" keyword, just TZEENTCH. Destiny dice specify that they can be used for a TZEENTCH unit, of which Archaon is one. The FAQ doesn't say to replace all references to the TZEENTCH keyword with "DISCIPLES OF TZEENTCH" -- it says to replace references to "TZEENTCH army" with "Disciples of Tzeentch army."

Yeah, BR + CE is certainly fine and a good way to go to 4 drop if that is the target you are shooting for. Totally agree re: your other points. I think a mix of battleplans that emphasize and de-emphasize secondaries is ideal to promote dynamic lists.

I've spent a bit of time today going over the list submissions for two three tournaments on tabletop.to that have lists posted and are using 3.0 rules. Although these tournaments are a bit random (and we should never read overmuch into such a small sample size), I do at least recognize a fair number of the players names. While not everyone seems to be going full on competitive, my impression is that most players are bringing highly competitive lists (or at least lists that they think are highly competitive). The third tournament that I added was more of a solid mix of seriously competitive and softer lists. Overall, the faction breakdown looks like this: A pretty diverse metagame. The overall drop breakdown is as follows (note: it's possible that I made an error here and there. The percentage is a given drop counts chance of having the turn choice given the meta): Discussion of drop counts (from first two events) Discussion of meta themes EDIT: added in information from a third event SECOND EDIT: added in information from a very competitive 74 person event

I ordered two copies, one third party and one from GW direct shipped to my home. I wanted both the swag bag that came from the in-store purchase and the objective markers from the direct order option XD My third party order arrived earlier in the week while my GW order is scheduled for delivery tomorrow. I very much agree that GW should be able to do better.

@Warbossironteef It'll be interesting to see if there is a tipping point between having a 5+ and a 6+ ward for the VLoZD in terms of survivability. At first glance it seems not worth it to give up the d3 extra lance attacks to move the ward from 6+ to 5+, but depending on the precise amount of incoming damage you could easily be correct.

Your LGS has Blood Knights! nice.

Gravesites are a point on the battlefield, so they have no diameter in themselves (or maybe point is defined as 1mm? I don't recall). You can use a 40mm base with tombstones to represent it, but you should be measuring the 12" range from the center of the base not the edge. You absolutely can take Kastelai stuff in a non-Kastelai list. The only restriction is that characters who already have a subfaction keyword on their warscroll can't get a new subfaction keyword. So if you take Belladamma in a Kastelai list she won't benefit from Kastelai only abilities (for example, she won't get bonuses for killing enemy units). Similarly, if you take Vhordrai in a Vyrkos list he won't rerolls to cast because he doesn't get the Vyrkos keyword.

@Obeisance I think it depends a little on the specific type of shooting -- Lumineth is a very different animal than KO even though both can be very shooty. In general though being fast and having a lot of defensively efficient units helps a lot. Piling in from outside of 3 is also good. As others have mentioned Belladamma is pretty anti-shooty. Blood Knights, Dire Wolves, Zombies, and maybe some Fell Bats are all going to be strong against shooting. The very heavy hero focused lists are more likely to be soft to shooting I think.

@Warbossironteef I definitely think a list like the one you suggested could be a thing. I've been working on similar concepts recently but have been agonizing about the details. I'll put up some drafts later and add some more substantive comments on yours. But yeah -- Zombies are definitely a sleeper, and I think lists like this could be really good depending on the meta. @Obeisance you definitely don't need Grave Guard. I don't think there is any warscroll that is absolutely needed for a competitive Soulblight build. I think this army has a lot of different ways to approach listbuilding and which ones perform the best is going to depend a lot on the metagame. Grave Guard will be great in a melee heavy meta but pretty bad in a shooting heavy meta.

@Warbossironteef if you mean what I think you mean you aren't correct. Units benefit from the buff when they are wholly within 12 of manny. If they are ww 12 during the hero phase but are not ww 12 during the combat phase they get no buff. Similarly, if they are not ww 12 in the hero phase but are ww 12 during the combat phase they do. Basically, when the unit fights it gets the benefit if ww 12 of manny regardless of where they were when the ability was used. This is explicitly clarified in the core rules FAQ.

I have found that it's more often than not better to play around unkillable monsters. They can only engage/kill a limited portion of your army at a time, so work around them and focus on deleting the rest of their army. As for shooting, I've played with and against a lot of very shooting heavy armies. Shooting works great against synergy based opponents where picking off soft support heroes ruin the opponent's plan. Shooting doesn't work so well against large numbers of efficient wounds. Shooting units have way lower offensive efficiency than good melee units, but they make up for that by being able to select defensively inefficient targets. If a player goes too heavy on shooting they will get run over when the melee units actually make contact. Shooting is powerful in the new edition, but there are still plenty of factors that make going full gunline a questionable strategy. One thing I'll absolutely agree with are the coherency rules though. I think overall they are fine, but I'd like to see more units with coherency exemptions as skirmishers and I'd like to see the threshold changed from >5 to >6 as that would allow single reinforced units of larger based monstrous infantry and the like to still function nicely. 32mm bases with 1" reach as bad as all that. You'd often end up honeycombing them before to maximize models in range, and doing that conveniently keeps you in coherency now as well. Reinforced units are at risk of having some idlers, but that was true in the last edition as well.

Ahh, I somehow completely missed that second question in the FAQ! I was aware of the first answer and know that zombies can go over starting size, I'm just recalling discussion of how they can go over starting size but not over "max size" and I'm not finding any reference to that second part in the rules, nor am I finding any definitions of what constitutes "max size" in the new ruleset. But given that I missed that FAQ question I wouldn't be surprised at all if I missed something else!

I could have sworn there was some discussion about rules in the new edition stipulating that units can't go above their maximum size, but I can't find any mention of this in the core rules, FAQs, or pitched battle pack 2021. I could have sworn it was in there but can't find it. I also can't really find many references to maximum unit size anymore in general, and there is certainly no "maximum" size stipulated for zombies except insofar as you can only double reinforce them (but the term "maximum size" is never used). Anyone know where I can find this? Also, just curious as to how people are reading the Newly Dead rule, which calls for a roll for models slain by "wounds inflicted". I'm surprised that I haven't seen any arguments about whether this triggers for slain models in general or if it doesn't work for models slain by mortal wounds from the 6's to hit. How are people interpreting this rule generally?