Freejack02

Good to see 15x Judicators win - I know they looked great on paper but hadn't heard many real reports on using them. That second list; anyone know the main purpose behind doubling up on the Tempestors instead of Fulminators?

I think a unit can be unbalanced without completely sweeping the tournament meta - 1st place at multiple tournaments should not be the metric overtuned units are judged by. I think just last week SDG spam-lists placed 2nd in a couple of bigger tournaments (results were posted a few pages back).

That I agree with - I think there are many, many people that just collect/build/paint and don't have a large interest in playing the game. Buddy of mine does exactly that; he's been collecting/playing for 6 years now and has maybe 15 games total?

I know that some people like and play Narrative, maybe even a whole lot of people. What I am refuting is the "vast majority" are running narrative battles/campaigns - that's a giant assumption that just can't be backed up by anything more than hyperbole.

I think B and C are warranted honestly, with a points reduction. They should NOT be conditional battleline (sorry to those that bought 10 of them), and the warscroll really is super bloated. Trim up some of their features, take away KD giving battleline, and drop them down to 275 or so.

Would love to see some actual proof to back up these claims. What we do know is that the original AoS was not intended to be played "competitively", that is true... and it was so poorly received, so universally looked down on by the majority of their playerbase, that they changed the vision of what the game would be moving forward and wrote Matched Play into the system. They made a complete 180, because they saw that if they didn't, someone else was going to scoop up those competitive fantasy players - and I don't think they would have done that if matched players were really the minority.

100% agree - they are the reason I started SCE back in 2015. It was between the coolness of Prosecutors vs Gore Gruntas... armored fly-boys brought home the gold!

After the warscrolls got updated... I agree with @AdamR that hammers are just superior in every way but shooting range. If they let the Prime get an extra attack with the Trident/Greatweapon it would be closer, but paired hammers just do it better in this edition (I think to everyone's surprise). The real question is - what do they really excel at? Finding squishy support heroes and taking them out is about the only real use I can see on paper.

Agreed, but I think raptors and fulminators are definitely considered "above the curve" in terms of power - therefore dragons can't really be said to be sub-optimal.

A 10 Stormdrake list just took 2nd (4-1) at Clash of Swords in the UK, and another 9 drake list took 2nd in the Polish Team Championships over the weekend. They are being played, they are placing well.

HAHA I was brainstorming a list and came up with this EXACT setup! Let me know if you ever play it (with someone who is cool with 9 proxies obviously). Edit: Also wow, this was not a new idea at all - I should have read the previous discussions! I'm used to the SCE thread where there's a hundred pages to catch up on...

Yeah, probably keep a couple of them to at least semi-screen. It definitely gets out-dropped, so you'll never be deciding who goes first. Also for models that can survive being a target, Kragnos is pretty high up there. It just seems like if each Gorger could do 2-3 mortals on the charge it could be a surprising amount of damage (and that's whithout Kragnos even getting involved). Might be one of those things that looks like it would work only on paper though.

It's a very simple case of "which is more likely to get changed". Giving a named character a Ward is far, far more likely to happen than the entire damage mechanic of mortal wounds being revamped. Not to mention, you can have both conversations - they go hand in hand. Are mortals too prevalent in the current game? Absolutely. Does that mean important models need a Ward to survive effectively? Absolutely.

Trying to help a friend brainstorm an army - has anyone thought to try lots of Gorgers with Kragnos? Basically just relying on Ambush deployment and the 3D6 charges (natively rerolled) to crash in for as many mortals as possible? MSU Ogors sounds odd to me, but for only 80 points they seem good enough to mass and crash. Good chance there's not enough available points to make it worthwhile though. Also I'm not 100% on how the mortal-wounds-on-charge allegiance ability works, they are locked into the 6+ roll without a way to improve it right? Thoughts?

I can agree with both perspectives I think, I just see it as a more expected approach for GW to do exactly what they did - nerf what a lot of players saw as the outlier in artefact choice. I think the "haves vs have-nots" will always be a problem in a game with such long release windows, and I can agree that your argument is a perfectly good one.

This is not a "slippery slope fallacy", what I stated was simply fact. Unique battalions existed, then were removed, causing varietal list-building to be decreased. I'm aware the playing field can't be perfectly balanced; it's impossible without making all factions identical. The problem is the amount of effort GW has to put into these changes - I think most people here know they're going to do the minimum amount of work when it comes to rules. Yes, they should be strong, not stronger than everything else. Competitive choices, not superior. IF future tomes were tuned to the levels of 5+ amulet than the have-nots get left further and further behind. Some tomes not having strong choices is a separate problem that GW should address, but I don't think making over-bearing items in the Core Rules is a good solution to that. It makes more sense to prune the longest branch than to try and make the rest of the tree grow to match it.

As long as faction variety exists, you're sacrificing the competitive "level playing field" in some way. True, amulet being too strong does create a more even field for every faction, but it also waters down what makes armies unique. We already lost interesting battalions for the sake of competitive fair play (and because GW can't balance them very well), I'd rather not homogenize everyone's artefact choice while we're at it. It's not a perfect solution, but if we're talking in terms of expected GW effort - it's much more likely that they would just nerf amulet instead of changing faction items to be on par with it.

So would you rather have Amulet dominating the choice meta (and all tome artefacts having little to no relevance), or would you rather the single dominant item be changed and open up interesting possibilities?

Possibly, but that's much more difficult without retooling the entire item - it's simple to make a 5+ into 6+, much harder to nerf tome without completely changing the identity of the item.

It was 100% warranted; it was THE best choice for nearly everything that doesn't take Arcane Tome - and that's including the initial 3.0 tomes released. When the artefacts list that has been tailored to your faction can't compete with the general Core options, something needs to change (imo).

So in a list where the purpose is to utilize Paladins, you stick in a 6-block of Annhilators and a 6-block of Raptors... which will do 90% of the heavy lifting for the entire force. I think it's possible you unintentionally stumbled upon what SCE players aren't too crazy about.

1. They seem VERY overcosted to me (and a lot of others), I personally wouldn't run them except in pretty casual games. 2. Seems very good, haven't had the chance to use him yet. Have seen tournament lists use him successfully. 3. Seem a good hammer as 6, personally haven't used them yet (and I think they're just overshadowed by Fulminators and Drakes).

They didn't want to embarrass the dragon necks any further.

The dragons were costed poorly; we know this. That doesn't mean other new factions should suffer the same fate - hopefully they get a reduction soon (in the winter faq would be nice).

I can see your point, but I think Tzeentch is a bad example - they rely so heavy on spells (both faction and universal) that it almost doesn't matter what their warscroll situation is... as long as it's a wizard, they can make use of it. Yes, horrors have always been a bit cancerous to deal with and Archaon + Destiny Dice has reared its head; but that backbone of that entire faction is a universal mechanic that everyone has access to - which lets them deal plenty of damage and summon more casters. Stormcast don't have that - we rely on independently strong warscrolls to keep us competitive; doubly so now that a lot of battalions and group synergies have been dismantled. TV is the real outlier there; but for the rest pretty much all the synergy we have is "Translocate them here" and "Stay close to Gardus". We aren't well-equipped to seeing our S tier get chopped down, there's not much to fall back on.