swarmofseals

Neither set of images works for me

It's always useful to have access to one more easy battle tactic, so that's far from useless. And I think you are underestimating the gryphon mount trait. You get to teleport it in addition to healing d3 and negating further damage. This will allow you to get it into a safe position most of the time, and you can start healing it up with at least 1 if not 2 heroic recoveries plus any other extra healing (heal prayer, hallowheart or living city heal spells, twinstone heal etc. So you're probably looking at somewhere between 2d3 heal and 4d3+1+d6 heal.

Should be able to, yes. AFAIK only things explicitly called mount traits are considered mount traits, and the curses can also be taken on monsters that aren't mounts.

I think that Hallowheart is still the best way to field a list like this. You get a massive casting bonus, every wizard as a double caster, and a couple of very good lore spells. The main problem with a build like this is range. The vast majority of spells have 18" range or less which means that you won't be able to start dealing damage in earnest until turn 2. It'd work fine casually, but competitively not so much. Too many lists in the meta are either extremely good at dealing damage from range >18" (eg: Lumineth, any shooting bridge list, SCE Thunderbolt Volley or Judicator spam lists, Big Yellerz, Seraphon, DoK) or are very strong against chip damage (Sons of Behemat, Soulblight, Ironjawz, Horror Spam, Legion of the First Prince, Archaon, Slaanesh etc.). It's a powerful concept, but it's really soft to almost everything that is popular at the top of the metagame now.

@Rahatlin it all depends on how competitive you are trying to be. If you're going for absolute maximum competitiveness then I don't think those are particularly good choices. If you want something that will play fine on a club level though I think all of those are potentially good enough. I'd probably go with the Knight-Judicator -- it even has that once per game ability that is a bit like the classic Hail of Doom Arrow. Another option is to use your old Waywatcher models as counts-as. They'd be perfect as Shadow Warriors or Sisters of the Watch.

So far I've played against the new Archaon Slaves to Darkness list which is quite gross. Archaon + chaos lord + sorcerer + warshrine +2x varanguard + 2x iron golems. The double pile-ins from the chaos lord (on anything) and Varanguard (built in) make screening difficult. I badly misplayed that game and probably could have made it interesting though. I also played against a Sylvaneth list where I probably could have done a bit better but it still seemed very uphill. I'm also thinking through how games would go against typical Teclis 40-60 sentinels lists, Helon 3-4 fox lists, irondrakes lists, big yellers 18+ boltboyz, KO, 12 stormdrake guard, judicator spam, morathi + bowsnakes, bloodtoofs gore grunta spam, etc.

I've played a few games with Bill's list and I have no idea how he went 5-0 with it. Clearly I'm missing something important (and obviously he is a lot better player than I am), because so far every game that I've played was a complete blowout. The list has next to no damage output, gets utterly annihilated by shooting, and doesn't have long enough range to avoid giving your opponents plenty of chances to get longball charges into your units. Double pile-ins make screening very difficult. The depravity generation is OK, but not enough to summon before turn 3 with any kind of regularity. The cockatrices are good for scoring extra VP but they also hand extra VP to your opponent easily and their damage is super unreliable. Just seems like in a meta where melee armies have 20"+ threat ranges on a regular basis and shooting armies typically have 24-40" threat ranges there isn't much room for an army like this.

The chaos spawn has to be the number one target, right? Also curious as to why hurt the seekers instead of the hellstriders as losing one of those is basically negligible.

I've been thinking of playing around a bit with Hedonites and trying to learn Bill Souza's list as it seems quite strong. One question though -- how far do you guys typically go in using Burning Head to damage your own stuff? To get the most of it on turn 1 you really need to deploy with it in mind, so how many units do you typically try to hit with it?

@Neil Arthur Hotep personally I don't put a ton of stock in the Cities overall tournament results given that it's so easy to make a bad list with this faction and there's a huge difference between highly tuned lists and unfocused ones. I'm not sure that I agree about the buff stacking point. To me the strength of Cities is the ability to pick a set of battle traits that plays well to the metagame and maximizes a coherent line of attack. Buffs are part of that picture, but far from the whole picture. For me it still comes down pretty heavily toward Anvilgard, Tempest Eye, Living City and Hallowheart. The others certainly do things, but they aren't nearly as interesting. Anvilgard has a huge trump card to play in a metagame that has tons of armor. That's basically the reason to play it, but it is a huge reason for sure. Tempest Eye is the best shell for a bridge list because of the added turn 1 durability and mobility. If a bridge alpha is a strong game plan in the meta, then Tempest Eye is a great place to be. Living City is the trump against fragile alpha strikes, especially shooting alphas. You basically are guaranteed to shoot first. Hallowheart trumps magic in that it can both cast through substantial bonuses to unbind and do well against opposing magic regardless of opposing casting bonuses. Each of these cities has a set of abilities that can really push well in a given metagame as long as you design your list carefully.

There's a discussion of this upthread quite a bit. You can arrange them like this: / | \ / | \ basically get two 25mm bases and cluster the tips of three gruntas around the edge of each of the bases, and then keep the base of the leftmost model in one cluster within 1" of the rightmost model in the other cluster and you have a line of 6 gruntas. Can be a bit awkward to move around the table depending on terrain but getting them all into combat shouldn't be too difficult most of the time unless you are hitting a very small target. The main reason to do this is activation efficiency. If you're attacking a big monster or large enemy unit it's much better to kill it all at once rather than merely damage it and then allow it to attack back.

You don't lose models to coherency until end of battleshock phase, but you are also not allowed to move units out of coherency intentionally at any time. Two separate rules. The only way a unit can go out of coherency is through losing models.

I suppose, but at least it makes them distinct from all the other options. I kinda like that cities has four different ranged units that all manage to function differently. Darkshards have shorter weapon range, but their effective threat range is very good and they are the most mobile choice.

I think they belong in the conversation for tier 1. I'm not sure about unexpected, but I think there are a few shells that work well. Anvilgard is going to revolve around Vitriolic Spray and units that can really take advantage of it. So either Krondys or a couple of Sorceresses, either Darkshards or Freeguild Crossbowmen and whatever else. The main weakness here is any opponent that can aggressively snipe your casters makes the list pretty weak. For Tempest Eye I run an Irondrake package backed up Krondys, Drakespawn Knights etc. I think Drakespawn Knights are probably the closest thing to an unexpected standout unit. I've been experimenting most with Living City and have tried a bunch of different things, but it always involves at least some Fulminators and Freeguild Crossbowmen. Usually I run either 4 or 8 Fulminators, 40-50 crossbows, a phoenix, a freeguild general, a sorceress and a unit of dreadspears.

I know nobody is talking about it now, but I've been playing a lot of cities and doing quite well. Tempest Eye, Living City, and Anvilgard are all very strong and I'm sure Hallowheart can be quite nice as well.

I definitely think that Vitriolic Spray->Bladewind is a case of getting fancier than is necessary, at least for competitive purposes. If you resolve Vitriolic Spray there are a million ways to finish the unit off. The main question should be what is the most efficient way of getting the job done with bonus points to it still being useful when you fail spray.

You absolutely need spellportal in this list. Are you fully against using Darkshards?

Yeah, any high bonus spellcaster, a runelord, 30 irondrakes, 10 longbeards and soulscream bridge is an extremely powerful package and probably the single best thing that most cities can do right now. I don't think Settler's Gain is the best shell for that package, but the package itself is better than anything city-specific that you can do with a few possible exceptions.

No problem! Also worth noting that if you did have to choose it would literally never make sense to choose the spears. Would be quite the waste of rules text.

I'm aware of what the warscroll says. What I mean is that when the devs want you to choose something, they describe it explicitly using the language "Choose X or Y". If the ability were intended to be a choice it would most likely read: "When you choose a unit of Savage Boarboys to fight, if it made a charge move in the same turn choose either Savage Stikka or Tusks and Hooves. Add 1 to hit rolls and wound rolls for attacks made with the chosen weapon."

Yes, when GW makes you choose between options they are explicit about that. If it was one or the other it would read "choose Savage Stikkas or Tusks and Hooves".

Got a couple of pure Bonesplitterz games in today and had one very decisive victory against deepkin and one very decisive loss against an 18 boltboyz list where I got double turned on the first priority roll. Made some bad mistakes in that game too. Wurrgog staredown ability is so good. Stripped an eidolon from full wounds against deepkin and fully cleared a screen against Kruleboyz on turn 1. That second bit won't come up in many battleplans, but in the 18" ones a pregame move with Great Hunter can get you in range. Another nifty staredown trick is to resolve it before heroic actions so that you can immediately use Heroic Recovery.

And now I'm curious what it was XD

OK, this is probably not optimized but here's a draft of a full @dnusha meme list that is perhaps not actually that bad (albeit it'll get slaughtered by anything with a heavy ranged component): Big Waaagh! Weirdnob Shaman A - General: Touched by the Waaagh!, Arcane Tome, Spell: Foot of Gork Weirdnob Shaman B - Spell: Da Great Big Green Hand of Gork Warchanter A - Fixin' Beat Warchanter B - Get 'Em Beat Orruk Megaboss Wurrgog Prophet - Glowin' Tattooz, Spell: Gorkamorka's Warcry 15 Orruk 'Ardboyz 15 Orruk 'Ardboyz 5 Orruk Brutes (Choppas) 3 Orruk Gore-Gruntas (Choppas) Rogue Idol Endless Spell: Chronomantic Cogs Command Entourage: Megaboss, Shaman B, Warchanter B Battle Regiment: everything else Option: swap brutes for ardboyz and lifeswarm Basically you can spike a ton of mortal wounds off the general or the wurrgog and can potentially get some insane casting bonuses, and still have a pretty tough line that can do a lot of conventional damage. Another option is to swap shaman B for a Wardokk (spirit of the were-boar, probably) and swap out the battle regiment for warlord to take an extra spell on everything in order to get the GBGHoG on the general. Could also swap for a Swampcalla Shaman and swap the troops around to fit a 6 block of boltboyz.

Yeah, I think if you're going to go for this you're basically running a meme list and should just go for Foot of Gork. It'll lead to some great stories. Why not go Big Waaagh and throw in a Rogue Idol for another +1 to cast, and a Wurrgog Prophet or two for more shenanigans?