PlasticCraic

@heywoah_twitch excellent post! Thanks for doing that. And agreed on the "bite your tongue" moment, so many things I want to say but won't! It's such a shame they jacked up the Batallions. It's hard not to see it as a way of keeping BCR down. Thing is, pure BCR have never been top tier anyway - it was always in Mixed Destro that they did really well. A bit of leeway on the Batallions could have gone some way to giving BCR a lift, without making individual units obnoxiously strong in Mixed lists. How are you playing at the moment? Are you using everything (Realm artefacts from your home Realm, spells from the Realm you (likely) roll for, Endless Spells? Out of the above, my gut feel is that Endless Spells are here to stay and will be allowed in every tournament pack, your home Realm is very likely to be a thing at most / all tournaments, and the Realm your battle takes place in is still likely to be a thing, but the least likely of the above (I could see some tournaments disallowing it).

Yeah good point, maybe you have too many in that case!

Thanks James, yeah I was quite happy overall, and it was a fully licensed venue so I did enjoy a few Battle Brews along the way! Yep there are two Temples that seem to be quite popular, Khailebron is the -1 to hit in shooting and Hagg Nar is the 5++ save. Both very strong! One Endless Spell I'm looking forward to trying is Geminids. The reason being the deploy range is a very generous 18" which gets straight into the backfield. And then you are doing 2 D3 mortals AND 2 major debuffs. 40 points seems quite the bargain! And agreed on Nurgle, the best I can offer is to wish you good luck!

Happy to help mate! Yeah that's the Hags, they are very annoying! Apart from the (terrible) cannons, you're really relying on magic - Endless Spells might help a little. Another thing we can leverage is our melee range (a very underrated stat in the game imo). The Witch Aelves are 1" so you can bunker up and hit over the top with things like Ironguts (2" range), the Tyrant (3" range with the Gutgouger) and allied Gargants (2" or 3" on most attacks). Let them really, really kill 10 Grots and hit back hard! It's dependent on them charging you...but it's Witch Aelves, they're gonna charge you! It's the only time I've taken them to an event and I did enjoy it - I was "lucky" enough to face some of the top players in Australia with far stronger armies, but even in that context you start getting more manageable games once you've lost a couple. Ended up 2-3 (wins against Tzeentch and Slaanesh, losses against Vanguard Wing, Murderhost and Hagg Nar). Vanguard Wing was the best game, lost an absolute nail biter! The Chaos games were both pretty manageable, they just didn't have the output or durability to run with us. I think we could be a really solid army even with just the GH Allegiance Abilities treatment - it's all the free stuff and bonuses that the likes of DOK and even Khorne have that makes it feel like you're playing a completely different game.

@James S yeah I think DOK are a really hard matchup! I played a few solid armies with my Gutbusters at a GT in Melbourne recently (Murderhost, Vanguard Wing, DOT, DOK) and it was definitely DOK that really shredded me. The big thing for me was the Mind Razor spell. It's a shame Bellowers don't stack! They went right through my Ogors with double damage. So in my limited experience, Bravery modifiers are key in this matchup (or buffed unbinding, which is harder to come by). Inspiring Terrain for your guys, and the Bellower plus Endless Spells to debuff their Bravery, are massive here. I have found Morathi OK to deal with - tbh I feel she is overcosted (makes up for those naughty Hags!). Tarpit and ignore imo. So probably my main take away would be to use the Endless Spells that debuff their bravery to counteract Mind Razor. And on a similar theme, if I won the roll off, the first thing I'm looking for is Sinister and Inspiring terrain.

I'm really not making stuff up. I'm saying that it would be Matched Play legal based on the wording of the Malign Portents FAQ. Nothing you have written gives evidence to the contrary. You have decided that because it uses Allies points, it must be an Ally. Which is not what it says. You can keep saying it does if you want, but unless you have any actual rules to cite I think it's time to move on.

Awesome, I look forward to it!

@TeddyMadeMeDoIt looks like fun, how did it go?

@heywoah_twitch you've played a few games under AOS 2.0 - how are you finding BCR so far?

Well that's where I disagree. Because you are literally just making stuff up. The erratum states that it is using Allied points - it does not state that it is an Allied unit. That is a jump you have made yourself, and is not based on anything in the actual rules. It really doesn't matter - it's just a daft list for a bit of fun. But I think that if you read it with an open mind you will see what we are saying.

So here is the refined version - a bit less "Doing it because we can". But still very "Doing it because we can": Allegiance: Beastclaw Raiders Leaders Huskard on Stonehorn (340) - General - Blood Vulture - Trait: Everwinter's Master - Artefact: The Pelt of Charngar Fungoid Cave-Shaman (80) Fungoid Cave-Shaman (80) Fungoid Cave-Shaman (80) Battleline Stonehorn Beastriders (320) Stonehorn Beastriders (320) Stonehorn Beastriders (320) Units 20 x Grots (100) 20 x Grots (100) Endless Spells Aethervoid Pendulum (40) The Burning Head (40) Chronomantic Cogs (60) Umbral Spellportal (60) Balewind Vortex (40) Quicksilver Swords (20) Total: 2000 / 2000 6 Rerollable spells (+ a 7th from the BWV), cast from the backline out of 30" range!

Check out the Malign Portents FAQ: https://www.warhammer-community.com/faqs/ The Shaman is not an Ally, but behaves like one in every way (can be included in any Destruction army and takes up Allies points).

Haha exactly...a little coven of the dudes, hunched around a portal and flinging spells through. A heap of rerollable casts turn 1, and one of the wee men is up on a BWV pushing his AOE spell through the Portal. The 4x Stonehorns smash into the enemy's lines, while magic decimates the good stuff in behind. Would have a LOT of obvious drawbacks, but once you start to compromise, you quickly lose the sheer WTF factor ? For fun - what would you spend the 220 points on? I'm thinking: - Spell Portal (core requirement) - BWV (wizard up there puts his own spell through - giving it Oprahs in a 6+D6" bubble) - Pendulum (push through the Portal and whack D6 mortals straight onto a key unit - set up sideways to it can only ever scythe across their lines) - Geminids (18" setup range so you don't actually need this one to end its move near the Portals if it's crowded back there) - Burning Head (D3 mortals and you might even be able to charge into the reroll hits range) Will we be making Turn 1 charges without the Cogs though? If Realm spells become a thing, then they are going through the Portal too - but really you could achieve all this with 3 Shaman so you could use the remaining 160 - 200 points for something more sensible. Like 2x 20 Grots for a screen / running onto objectives.

Why choose, when you can have both? ? Allegiance: Beastclaw RaidersLeadersMoonclan Grot Shaman (80)Moonclan Grot Shaman (80)Moonclan Grot Shaman (80)Moonclan Grot Shaman (80)Moonclan Grot Shaman (80)Frostlord on Stonehorn (420)BattlelineStonehorn Beastriders (320)Stonehorn Beastriders (320)Stonehorn Beastriders (320)Total: 1780 / 2000 OK so technically it's not 4x Frostlords, but it is 4x Stonehorns! And they do most of the damage anyway.

Battle Brew: Even though the A-Rok itself is the "main course", it is clearly a mount - stuff is mounted on it. Unless and until it gets a rewrite like the Gobba, no dice unfortunately. Hammerblade: use it as a weapon to replace the Howdah's spears. They are not the mount. I totally suggest bombarding the FAQ inbox with polite queries about the former by the way!

So the bad news: GH Matched Play confirms that the points apply as well as other restrictions (so 1 in 4 is a thing). But then the good news: Fungoid Cave Shaman is not an Ally. Or at least, nobody has been able to demonstrate to me why he is an Ally. I posted about this in the main AOS 2.0 thread too: So RAW you can include multiples of him, without breaching the 1 in 4 rule.

*for a full phase ? Remember you can shoot off whatever is tagging you in the Hero Phase with Kunnin Rukk, then go about your business. You'd still rather be choosing your targets, but it doesn't totally shut you down - and a lot of the time you will be able to engineer it so that they can only tag one unit, and you then just buff up the other. I think KR is still viable. In some ways it got even better: access to free summoning (albeit very dicey), and inbuilt Command Points that you can use to multi pop the Savage Big Boss Command Ability / keep your Boyz on the table reactively. You could easily be generating 3 or 4 extra attacks per 5+ hit roll in a key early turn, at which point you can safely split your attacks. One of the few advantages we have over the newer books is that we can go One-drop, and this leverages that. Over a 5 game tournament you could expect to get about 3 big blocks back, which is obviously huge in those games where it happens. Only getting units back on a 6+ sounds useless but to put it in context, Bonegrinz was already worthwhile BEFORE it gave you access to summoning. KR + BG combined have only gone up 10 points, and now give you 2 Command Points and the chance of free units. I have drafted up the following. Whether it will see the table is another thing (I want to have fun with the Rogue Idol and Drakkfoot), but I definitely don't think the Kunnin Rukk is dead! Disclaimer: I'm not really across the Realm stuff yet, that could obviously help further.

Absolutely! 1 attack, 4+4+, no rend damage 1 is real bottom-feeder stuff. At 100 points under GH1 they were already hot garbage. Their stats are so bad that they are completely irredeemable. The only reason I can see for them being 120 points is that GW does not want Mixed Destruction to have good Battleline options.

You are right, I've just been missing out on that pistol the whole time! Dayum.

A couple of little buffs for the Fat Lads in the warscroll updates: - Tyrant now has a couple of cheeky Pistol attacks. Pew Pew! - Ironblaster range has gone from 6”-22” to a straight 22”. With a points drop and removal of that daft range impediment, do they start to become viable?

Yeah and they've also got the Allies box as an inbetween. I'm surprised they didn't do a backdoor price drop via a reboxing to 20 though. The price for 10 is really extreme compared to most armies.

@Kanamorf great job!

So Grots get better in bigger blocks (more attacks per model) as well as getting cheaper. They are 100 points per 20, or 270 for 60. I would personally either take 1x 20 or 1x 60, depending on the rest of your list and how much you are willing to invest. A word of warning, a lot of people who've played more BCR than me don't like them! But I think that's partially because they want a super elite monster army, not a table full of cheap junk. Which I get. Also the Butcher is a popular ally, because he synergises with keyword Ogors. So he is worth considering.

Yeah the Battleshock is always a problem for them. If you took say 60 plus a Fungoid as allies (350 points all up), that 60 block could be in peril turn one against an Alpha Strike, because you wouldn't have accrued any Command Points (unless you have a Batallion). But then again, it means your opponent is pumping their output into a few hundred points of Grots instead of your big lads. Don't forget that when the first Grot falls, they are on Bravery 9 (4 + 5 extra for 50+ models), so your opponent would have to kill quite a few before it really became an issue. And as terrible as their attacks are, 180 shooting attacks can be vital against armies like Khorne where you really want output from other phases (and they have average to bad armour saves). I think they are a really solid tool in a Stonehorn-based army in particular. Not auto include, but viable.

If you're going Mixed (which you'd have to, to bring Moonclan into the conversation) then I'd say that Gitmob archers backed up by a Gitmob Shaman are the best. 350 for the package and it's a really solid Battleline unit. If you're looking for Beastclaw allies then I do think Gnoblars are a really useful tool. Most games I think you'll want to start them at the back so they don't get under your feet, and they can run onto objectives later on once there isn't much of either army on the table. In some games of course they will be a useful screen against the Alpha strike.