awcamawn

I am trying not to get my hopes up, part of me thinks that may not mean anything other than the same ol allegiance abilities. Would love a battalion or two or a spell lore though. Still hoping Sisters of the Thorn come down in points as well. Good thing contrast paints are here to help me paint up all the new models my Wanderer force will need. I think my main list is down 100 points just with the teased changes alone (whereas it went up last year with the increases to Spellweavers and Waywatchers). I should now have enough room for the 10 Wild Riders I've been wanting to play.

This is certainly a major issue that subfaction rules can cause. In theory they are a cool way to tweak and customize your force in a way that speaks to you as a player and they set your army apart from someone who collects the same faction. In practice they really force GW's hand when trying to set a singular points value on a model that can have varying rules. Unless the rules are very well written (or very boring; ie there is very little difference between your subfaction choices) there will almost certainly be a subfaction that players deem to be superior, and the initial points should be based on the strongest subfaction in the first place. Many competitively minded players almost certainly already feel "forced" to play Gristlegore and Hagg Nar or else be making an inferior choice. They can't win here; you say points can't solve the problems Flesh-eaters Courts or Daughters of Khaine are causing - I say they can, points just won't be the very best solution (which is to somehow rewrite the Hagg nar and Gristlegore rules). But rewriting subfactions in a FAQ or even releasing new battletomes just to rewrite those couple of broken rules isn't ideal either. Maybe the solution is different points for different subfactions - just double the points for everything in Gristlegore or Hagg nar and the points can stay the same for everyone else? But that would also be madness. Thus the points will almost certainly come up; it's inelegant but probably the easiest solution available. Flesh-eater Courts and Daughters of Khaine players that don't play Gristlegore or Hagg nar will merely be the latest unfortunate victims of the trail of destruction those subfactions have already left in their wake.

Brayherd was still included in last year's General's Handbook 2018 and then the Beasts of Chaos battletome was released only a couple of months later. Fyreslayers, Flesh-eater Courts, Slaanesh, and Skaven Skryre & Pestilens were also all printed in the GHB 2018 and were updated with a battletome within the year. I think the GHB allegiances are currently our best roadmap for whats to come; Gloomspite was the only surprise this past year as the only other tomes were the customary Stormcast and Khorne updates (and Nighthaunt which was a GHB 2017 allegiance and got their tome one year later). I'd say most likely tomes upcoming would be Seraphon, Ironjawz, a Tzeentch 2.0 update, and of course a very near Slaves to Darkness tome which I think could still come out in a month or two (like Beasts of Chaos did last year).

Awesome battle reports @overtninja; and I love your doodles - very informative! Congrats on the wins, winning with Wanderers vs an army updated for AoS 2.0 requires some smart play and sacrificing the right pieces at the right time and is quite satisfying to pull off. Would love to see more doodle reports in the future! I love my Sisters of the Thorn - right there with ya in hoping the new GHB makes some new army build options plausible/possible.

It doesn't appear that any merge will be happening soon with the new Sylvaneth battletome getting leaked (and nothing for us in there). Really hoping for a dedicated Wanderer battletome myself. Word was that all 'existing factions' will get an update of some kind within 2 years but it's unclear what exactly that means for the Wanderers. No real clue really of what GW wants to do with us, but many of the factions with General's Handbook allegiance abilities have gone on the get their own book. Here's to hoping we're in the pipeline somewhere, along with Seraphon, Free People, Dispossessed, and Ironjawz.

I guess what I meant is that you're lacking three battleline with the 2-handed sword hero as your general as you need the Wayfinder - the hero with the greatbow and hawk - to count Wildwood Rangers as battleline. The Wayfinder is 20 points more than a Waystrider as well. I love the concept of the list, though.

Oh no! I think you've miscalculated your list, because unfortunately it is the Wayfinder-as-general and not the Waystrider that allows Wildwood Rangers as battleline. I really like your list too, really leaning in to what melee strength we have is awesome - all monsters will fear you! Seems like a lot of fun to play. One thing I would mention is potentially considering our other command traits. Whether Waystrider or Wayfinder, your opponent is unlikely to target them as your general (neither is quite the threat of a Spellweaver, Waywatcher, or Nomad Prince) and thus your Mystwalker trait may go unused. Singer of Spells could be a useful alternative for example, depending on how much magic you're likely to face the extra unbind attempt could be very handy. Or, a Wayfinder could benefit from Eagle Eyed or Masterful Hunter to make his Arrow of Doom extra threatening.

I voted 3, but I'm biased as a Wanderers player myself. I own the model as well but it hasn't seen play since before the General's Handbook 2017 (and it's subsequent loss of the Wanderer keyword) for the exact reasons you allude to here. Shame because the model is really cool, and isn't quite worth it's 420 points anymore in today's game - it's not for competitive reasons that I want to run it. I'm extremely familiar with the issues you're grappling with here. I would probably go Grand Alliance Order allegiance myself to run the Sisters of Twilight and some Wardancers in a list that is otherwise pure Wanderers but all my battleline (Eternal Guard/Wildwood Rangers/Sisters of the Watch) are conditional to Wanderers allegiance. I understand them not really wanting to support out of production models though.

The new Wood Aelf Blood Bowl team announced today is really cool looking, glad we get some new models in some form. Will definitely be picking the team up for conversions; and they mentioned customization options for the team - could be cool to have some extra heads and such to use with existing Wanderer kits for extra build variety. I know Blood Bowl is a different universe from AoS but it's nice to know they haven't forgotten the awesome and unique aesthetic Warhammer Wood Aelves have. Would love to see some plastic AoS Wardancers in this same vein.

It wasn't me lamenting earlier, but consider my eyelids thoroughly batted, sir.

I will definitely be doing this! Stick some Ranger Draichs in their hands and boom - Wildwood Rangers. As a pretty one-note Warhammer collector of all things wood aelves (that's the actual aelves, not those trees pretending to be aelves - meh), I'm more excited about these new models than I would be for almost anything else they could possibly announce - short of an actual Wanderers release of any kind or announced rules support for Wanderers in Warcry.

You'll probably want at least one Nomad Prince, one Spellweaver, and one Waywatcher for a solid Wanderer collection, and potentially more than one Waywatcher. Otherwise you already named the Sisters of the Watch and the Wildwood Rangers which are both solid picks, especially if you love the models. 1Don't overlook the efficiently pointed Eternal Guard as an effective chaff screen, though. The battalion isn't awful right now, but it is overcosted for something that hinges so much on a 5 wound model, in this Age of D6 mortal wounds. It's essentially a worse Kunnin Rukk, but it's also our best/only way of lowering our drops right now. It's also makes for a decent thematic roadmap for collecting Wanderers, if not the ideal build. Many see the battalion requirement of two units of either Sisters of the Thorn or Wild Riders as a substantial tax as it stands. All of this stands to change in the coming weeks with the imminent June release of the General's Handbook (GHB) 2019. For now, picking up a couple heroes and some Wildwood Rangers to go with your Glade Guard would make a solid starting force of Wanderers until we know more about what will change in the new GHB. Here's hoping to some substantial point decreases for the battalion and our cavalry! What's on everybody's GHB wishlist? What changes to our battle traits will they make this year? Maybe, with all that new room - with half the 'GHB allegiances' gone - they can give us a new battalion to play with (or two), like Seraphon/Fyreslayers/Ironjawz got in last year's book. Maybe even a Wanderer spell lore table? Although the more we get, the less likely a book of our own is coming real soon, huh?

The core rule for when two abilities contradict each other (Gristlegore makes them fight first, Forest Dragon's Soporific Breath makes them fight last) means that on the FEC player's turn his rule would take precedence and he would fight first and on the Wood Aelf player's turn the forest dragon would make him fight last. Whoever is currently taking their turn has their rule take precedence when dealing with a rules contradiction. So charge him with your forest dragon before he charges you if you want Soporific Breath to work (especially if you can get some Wildwood Rangers in there too)! Although with the Sisters of Twilight, their mount ol' Ceithin Har must attempt to charge if able.

Got into tabletop Warhammer a month or two after the release of the Wood Elf DLC for Warhammer Total War - it was love at first battle. It's been all Wanderers for me since day one, and I've never really been tempted to take any allies either. I have almost 3000 points of Wanderers and about 4000 points total of Wanderers plus Wood Aelves that were collected from when they had the Wanderer keyword in AoS 1.0.

Yes, the battalion deployment allows you to set up the units along any of the edges of the battlefield, deciding which edge to deploy to individually for each unit set up in this manner.

You can deploy all, some, or none of the units off the battlefield - your choice. When you select the battalion or any of it's individual units to be deployed you declare at that point whether it will be placed on or off the battlefield.

I disagree myself. I've had quite a lot of success in smaller games. 20 Sisters of the Watch teleporting around in an 1000 point game can be devastating for your opponent. And Eternal Guard and the Nomad Prince are very well costed and make up for the more expensive units somewhat.

@martinwolf What kind of list are you using? What factions do you see play against most often locally? What battleplans have you played? Are your opponents using highly optimized tournament lists? I always forget to take pictures mid game myself, keep meaning to make some sort of battle report.

Hmm, I had never really considered Revenants much like Wardancers myself. They're both light infantry with a decent punch, but Revenants aren't as quick as Wardancers. Model-wise the Revenants always struck me as pretty stiffly posed, both feet firmly placed on the ground, and quite unlike the fluid motion of a Wardancer. I imagine new plastic Wardancers could be more like Witch Aelves but 6 years newer and in even more dynamic and crazy poses a la Harlequins (or a bit like the fluid motion in the recent Namarti Reavers). For me it's: Wanderers Battletome>Combined w/Sylvaneth Battletome>Aelf Battletome>Free Cities Battletome, but I do agree. I am hopeful we will get a book of some sort within 18 months though. Fingers crossed. I think it largely depends on the context of how you play. I think @overtninja and @The Red King did a good job going over the army's strengths and weaknesses. For myself, I would not describe them as pretty weak as far as playing in fairly casual play at both my local GW and FLGS. I would say that I win at least half of the time, but I don't play against tournament lists very often. I see a lot of play against KO and Slaves to Darkness, where I tend to do quite well, and looking through my AoS journal that I recently picked up I'm 3-3 against more recent battletome armies since I started tracking. One of those losses was a team game of Wanderers & KO vs Sacrosanct SCE & Gloomspite, and we only barely lost off some cheeky deepstriking goblins just barely edging us out for numbers on an objective. Just the other week I faced off against Idoneth Deepkin for the first time and was able to take down an eel-heavy list with the turtle and King Volturnos. Wanderers do have a bit of a learning curve, with all our units being quite fragile mistakes are easily punished and a good deal of finesse is required; positioning is everything. We do have some key things though that keep us within a modicum of competitiveness imho: decent mobility with Realm Wanderers, and quite efficiently priced chaff in the Eternal Guard. Mobility and good use of chaff will keep you in games. Ouch! I think most people understand that bringing a cutting -edge smash-face FEC list to casual AoS is a bit of an eye roll at the very least. I'd say it was your opponent that was wasting both of y'all's time, if anyone was. Also, I'm not sure that match up is much of an indication of Wanderers' competitiveness as my understanding is that FEC list has been absolutely crushing pretty much everything recently. A local tournament player has just sworn them off as 'boring' as he's won the past several tournaments with them, and is moving on to other armies as a matter of being a good sport because it's just that broken.

All of the old Wood Elf stuff had the Wanderers keyword in first edition of Age of Sigmar, but that was removed after the release of the 2nd General's Handbook when the compendium PDFs were updated (Wanderers were given their allegiance abilities at the same time). I sorely miss my Wardancers but it is unlikely they will be given the Wanderer keyword again after they've already very intentionally removed it.

Thanks for the heads up on that one @Still-young and @michu! From that lastest Stormcast podcast - Jes Bickham said the following on what the new dedicated Age of Sigmar studio is working on going forward: "...battletomes for every faction..." and specifically "...we will get around to all the existing factions." !!!!Excellent!!!! Go Team Handbook! *group hug/high five/chest bump of Wanderers, Dispossessed, Darkling Covens, Slaves to Darkness, Freepeoples, and Gutbusters* For all of us who haven't received any battletome at all, there is hope! Fight on, my tome-less brothers and sisters!

@Alexispolux There isn't a whole lot of established canon for Wanderers, like most of the armies that currently don't have their own book. They're definitely affiliated with Ghyran and life magic. The Firestorm supplement indicates there are significant numbers of Wanderers in and around Hammerhal, the Living City, and Greywater Fastness (all cities in Ghyran). They are almost certainly spread around the realms like most every other faction, but like the Sylvaneth seem to have a significant portion of the their numbers in Ghyran. The old Grand Alliance: Order book had a paragraph or two of good info, including a mention in that book's Sylvaneth section indicating that the Sylvaneth see the Wanderers as "estranged cousins." So Wanderers and Sylvaneth still see each other as part of the same extended family in a sense, but there's been some family drama to say the least. Some of the more twisted Sylvaneth probably want to kill the Wanderers, but they also probably want to kill humans too. For their part, one of the Wanderers' main goals seem to be earning back the trust of the Sylvaneth, but that process takes time. Part of that process is fighting and dying on the battlefield alongside the Sylvaneth, hence the 'allies for list building' bit. To best set the scene for yourself, I recommend checking out the AoS 2 Core Rules Book. Within is a very nice write up of the full history of the realm of Ghyran and later the War of Life, detailing the events that led to many of the "dissident Wanderers" giving up the fight and traveling along the Cascading Paths to escape to Azyr. It details the aftermath of that fateful decision, and later in the book also has a short blurb on Wanderers specifically in the faction lore overviews. Hopefully we'll learn more if we get a Battletome, and/or perhaps we'll be mentioned in a potential second edition Sylvaneth book (coming soon-ish?). Another thing to check out is the Black Library stories concerning Prince Maesa, an exiled Wanderer Prince on a quest to save his beloved. These include "The Autumn Prince," "Hungerfiend," and "The Sands of Grief." We don't learn a whole lot of new stuff about Wanderers as an army/society/culture here, but there are some hints.

Hey! ...thanks for mentioning us.

Awesome conversion @Thiagoma! Very interested to see what you come up with for the other heroes. Also, I made sure to let GW know in their survey that I want more Wanderers. Give us a battletome!

Sure thing! Always good to see someone looking to join up with the Wanderer kindreds. I would say that Wanderers play just fine at less than 2000 points, and they possibly play better at lower points relative to some other factions. We don't have any big centerpieces or a large number of support heroes to try to squeeze in, so we can scale reasonably well at any size of game. The Waystone Pathfinder battalion is far from required; although it is currently part of my 2000 point list I'm looking to expand my options with more Wildwood Rangers and some Wild Riders so that I can field a full 2000 points of pure models. For a whopping 200 points you do get a potential one drop army (or at least a very reduced number of deployment 'drops'), an extra command point, an extra artifact, a new deployment option, and some hero phase shooting that can be very powerful in the right circumstances. The downsides are the aforementioned high point cost, the fact that the special battalion deployment isn't always very useful, and that it forces your hand in both list building and in battlefield tactics. You generally have to have your army somewhat tightly grouped to benefit from Protective Volley and this can either leave your force open to AoE damage or leave you too focused in one area such that you are out of position and cannot effectively cover the multiple objectives that are present in many battleplans. It also makes your Nomad Prince essentially a 280 point model with 5 wounds that needs to get into charge range with big threats to activate the hero phase shooting, and while we do have some tools to protect him with some of our Command Traits and Artifacts it's still a lot of eggs in one basket. In short, the battalion is strong but can be difficult to use to full effectiveness, particularly against opponents who have faced the battalion before and have the AoE damage or the mobility to deal with it or avoid it.