Grailstorm

It’s the definition of game breaking. Some armies literally can’t kill him. No unit should be immune to combat.

Not if you don’t have ASF. Or long pile ins.

How can anyone possibly like this rule on Mannfred. It’s the most game breaking rule I’ve ever seen.

Eh?

You can’t charge after their move. All normal moves made within 3” are retreats.

The ballista has an ability that lets you pick a unit within range of a hero and +1 to hit vs that unit. But the way it’s worded, it explicitly says pick 1 enemy unit and 1 friendly ballista. Do you read this as you can only pick one unit total no matter how many ballista you have? So you can only do this ability once, at the beginning of your shooting phase? Or can all ballista do it?

How are you playing Eltharion’s half damage rule? Does it apply to mortal wounds too? The rules say that these do damage and are applied at the same time as “normal” damage. Contrasting this, we have the Seraphon FAQ that says you can’t -1 damage from mortal wounds.

I know when its your turn, you go first with all of your start of turn stuff, then the opponent does. But how does this translate into abilities on the field? Say you’re fighting in the realm of light, and the command is to strike immediately used at the beginning of the combat phase. Both players want to use it. We enter the combat phase in player A’s turn. Does he: 1 - use the ability, and fight immediately, then player B does the same. 2 - use the ability, then player B uses the ability, then player A fights, then player B fights

I’m trying to figure out if tournaments have been allowing mercenaries? Most packs just say some variation of “use matched play” to make your army. Mercenaries comes before this section in the handbook, but it’s clearly written with matched play and pitched battles in mind. Are they generally allowed?

I frequently see this played wrong, and just want to double check I’m not making a mistake with my interpretation. Here’s the example. Stardrake gets buffed by the Castellant Lantern. So a dice roll of 6 heals a wound allocated to it. The way I always see it played is that wounds are healed in real time. For example, I was just watching a stream where a Stardrake was damaged by the unit champion, who did one wound. Then the attacks from the rest of the unit did nothing, but the Stormcast player healed a wound. My understanding is this can’t happen. Wounds are allocated after all attacks from the unit have been resolved. So a Stormcast player can only heal if a second unit is fighting it, or it was damaged in a previous phase/turn. Right?

Many spells come under allegiance abilities, and the rules state that mercenaries cannot benefit from allegiance abilities. Does this mean that allegiance spells can’t buff them?

The most important thing about Bastiladons is their near invincibility in this battalion. You can just teleport them to a key position and block/hold up units forever.

They get locus, exploding 6s, and then 2 of their choice when they choose their host. So 4 distinct abilities before you factor in summoning. Sylvaneth get 3 abilities, 4 with a wargrove. And no summoning. And that’s the high end. You’re hard pressed to find another army with 4 abilities (although Nagash hosts do). Free Peoples have 2. Daughters have 2, or 3 with a Temple. Ironjawz have 2. Stormcast have 2, or 3 with a Stormhost. So this is my point. Slaanesh have 4. And they’re great. And then they also have summoning. The fact still remains it’s one niche situation. On average, one Keeper will always kill one Thirster (they do more combat damage on average than all three Thirster variants before factoring in abilities). I don’t think there’s really much to address until we see more results. I think it underscores their power, you obviously don’t. Personally, I think any army with an >70% win rate has something overpowered about them. Tzeentch did. Daughters did. FEC did. And now Slaanesh do. Slaanesh were in a solid place before their book and now they’ve exploded.

This is the basis for the whole game. If there is no attempt at balance, there’s no point in playing. I never said anything about summoning not being included in the strength of an army as a whole, though. It plays a huge part in the strength of an army as a whole. Surely there is no need to point out how summoning is an additional layer on top of an army? All armies with an allegiance get abilities, items, and traits. Armies that summon get abilities, items, traits and summoning. Some armies have it, some don’t. It wasn’t originally a thing. Now it is a thing. Points haven’t been adjusted to cater for it. Therefore it is an additional layer on top of the base game. There is no situation in which summoning is disadvantageous. Armies do not lose anything for having summoning. Their other abilities are no lesser (see Slaanesh for one such example). Their units are no more expensive.

That is a niche situation in a 3-Thirster list fully geared around combat. It will be interesting to check back in here in a couple of months when we have some more tournament results in.

A naked Insensate Thirster does not average 9 wounds. Even if you give it the benefit of the doubt and say the D6 averages at 4, it only does 8 damage on average vs a 4+ save. A naked Keeper can and will always attack twice, so even if the Thirster did average 9 wounds, the Keeper would always do more. How is it not? It used to be something you had to pay for, now it’s not. Therefore it’s something extra on top of everything else an army brings to the table.

I disagree to an extent. The power outside the warscroll is tremendous, yes. But so too is the warscroll itself. It is the only model of such power in the game that can innately pile in and attack twice, or let other units do so regardless of allegiance. This command ability and its cousins are the single most devastating command ability in the game, 6-8x the value of the next best combat command ability (+1 attack). The average damage output of a completely naked KoS is higher than the average damage output of any naked Bloodthirster. It also casts 2x, makes enemies strike last 5/6 of the time, and becomes exorbitantly more powerful when allegiance is factored in. I don’t believe I equated the two. But it is a hugely, hugely powerful ability and in many situations is better and less limiting than ASF. Why is this not a desirable outcome, out of interest? All summoning should be approximately at the same pace. It is a completely free ability, an additional layer on top of a game that is supposed to be balanced. Just because Nurgle can tank damage doesn’t mean it should summon slower than Slaanesh. One army fights better, one army saves better. But when you fight better and summon 3x better, then there is no need to save better too, because you have infinitely more wounds anyway. As an example, Bloodletters and Daemonettes are very well balanced. They have the same save, and a unit of 30 bloodletters does the same damage on average vs a 4+ save as 30 daemonettes, with their exploding 6s. However, with Slaanesh, you can very easily summon 30 daemonettes after one round of combat. All it takes is 15 wounds of damage and a dead hero. With Khorne, not only can you never summon 30 bloodletters in one go – it takes 7 dead units to be able to bring on 20. And if they’re summoning, they’re not using their allegiance abilities. Slaanesh can use their allegiance abilities while summoning. It would be a different story if it cost depravity points to explode 6s or make units fight last. I only mentioned mortal armies to highlight how powerful Slaanesh summoning is. You can make an identical army with all four of the gods, and Slaanesh summoning will kick in with far more devastating fashion than any other. Heck, you could just line up two keepers against two GuO, or two Thirsters, or two LoC, and not only would the Keepers kill the others, they would also summon more. Because at the very least, two dead keepers all but guarantees a third. I don’t mean for this to descend into an argument, so I won’t keep going on about Slaanesh in general because I meant for this to be about their summoning. But just out of interest, if their summoning is not overpowered, and their abilities are not overpowered either, or the combination of them both is not overpowered, what are your thoughts on Slaanesh placing 6 times in the top 11 at Blackout this past weekend? Or no Slaanesh appearing below 40?

While this is true against a lot of armies, in the current meta that is filling up with monsters that can always strike first, or make you always strike last, and pile in and attack 2x, the Judgement King gets no chance to fight against these targets. They just melt him before he swings. Of course it stands to reason that all of the Malign Sorcery items that kick in with cool effects on 6s to hit are good with him. He’s fantastic with Blade of Carving (auto wound on 6s) and Blade of Endings (+2 damage on 6s) as well, as these activate against all enemies and not just heroes and monsters, like the Sword of Judgement does. But at 400 points, we do tend to rely on him to be our monster hunter, and there are now monsters running around that he can’t hunt with any of the above setups. An alternative is the Quicksilver Potion. As it stands, the “fights immediately” wording nullifies always strike first on your own turn, and always nullifies always strikes last, even on their go. So this allows you to fight before a Keeper of Secrets or a Ghoul King on Terrorgheist, or an ASF Bloodthirster. And because it’s before you pick any unit, if it’s your turn you can then choose a second unit to fight with immediately after the King, before the enemy hits at all.

What makes you say the KoS isn’t worth 360 points? Genuinely interested in this as I’ve seen it mentioned twice now. On its own, it’s fantastic. In a Slaanesh army it is exceptional value even without strike last and depravity. What makes Slaanesh summoning overpowered is a number of things. - It is easy and automatic summoning point generation without any form of sacrifice. You fight, you get points. You die, you get points. - It rewards bad and careless play. Any other army in the game can be severely punished for YOLO-ing their best models into the enemy army. The very fact that, on average, a Bladebringer can charge, fight, die, and be summoned again all from one combat, is laughable. - The cost of summoned units is too cheap. I’ve never had a game against Slaanesh that hasn’t resulted in at least 500 points of free units. Many games I’ve seen have had much more than this. - You get way too many points too quickly compared to all other forms of summoning. Two of my regular opponents are Khorne and Slaanesh. The speed of Slaanesh summoning compared to Khorne is mind blowing, and Khorne has to give up Tithe abilities in order to summon in the first place... all while losing all of their points for one summon. Slaanesh gets all of their abilities for free – one of which costs 8 Tithe points, mind you – while tripling summoning speed. It takes 8 entire units dying to summon a Bloodthirster. The very least a Keeper has to do is 17 wounds before it dies – which it does on average vs a 4+ save in one turn before factoring in items, traits, exploding 6s, or mortal wounds. - This ties into the fact that free summoning as a basic rule is unfair in any objective based game. Units capture objectives. Summoned units help you to capture more objectives. There is no disadvantage to summoning whatsoever, because summoned units don’t even give up kill points, even though they themselves can score kill points and capture objectives. So taking an unfair mechanic and sky-rocketing its power to be better than all other armies in the game at that mechanic is overpowered. - The only way to stop it is to kill the heroes, which is tough to do because they have some of the best heroes in the game, and some of the hardest-to-kill heroes in the game thanks to strike last and fight twice shenanigans. Then, after considerable effort, if you do kill the heroes, they just come back. It takes two units to even stand a chance against a Keeper in combat, because 5/6 of the time one of them will strike last. Unless those units are very big (unlikely) or very damaging, they will both die anyway. Then you’ve lost two key units in exchange for nothing, because the Keeper comes back. - They get their very good summoning on top of exceptional allegiance abilities. Exploding 6s across an army is massive. Striking last is massive. Fighting twice is the most powerful single ability in the game. The combination of the three abilities is unmatched and unparalleled. Every summoned unit gets to benefit from these abilities. I mentioned above that exploding 6s costs 8 Tithe points. A Thirster costs 8 Tithe points. Compared to Khorne, in every battle where you get a Keeper on turn 2/3, it is the equivalent of 16 entire units dying by turn 2/3. - You can take a near identical Slaanesh, Khorne, Tzeentch and Nurgle army made up of mortal units, greater daemons and other heroes. Assuming they all fight each other, who will summon the most the fastest and to the most devastating effect? Slaanesh. By definition, that is overpowered.

Because I created it to discuss Slaanesh summoning in comparison to all other forms of summoning, which doesn’t necessarily mean Chaos. Still, it has evolved into a “Slaanesh is OP” debate, it seems.

I wouldn’t pay too much attention. They obviously don’t themselves. An Orion/revenant themed Prime is obviously not human, but is fair game. Same with a Flamespyre Phoenix ridden by a Fyreslayer. I’m sure as long as you put thought and effort into the conversion and it resembles what it is supposed to be, it’s ok.

You cannot FAQ conversions, regardless of what any document says. You could easily make a cannon model using an Empire cannon and use it as an Ironweld cannon. It’s no different to someone making an entire Skaven army where everything has a Kharadron theme. This got featured on the GW website and was played at GW tournaments.

Nice! I notice you’ve got the round base on the King, which I guess is the official size since his temporary re-release a while back. I based mine on the oval base recommended in the spreadsheet on here. What’s the size of the round, is it 60mm?

Glorious. What do you use the dragon as? A Dragonlord? I’ve been tempted to run my “King” on a Stardrake.