Sception

No problem. All that said, to take my commentary with a grain of salt. My competitive experience in AoS is limited, and my tournament experience in 2e is so far non existent. Definitely test out both units a couple times before committing to see how they work for you against your common opponents.

They were kinda baddish, but they're a fair bit better since they got an extra attack in the legions book. Still kind of fragile, but they hit reasonably ok on the charge, especially with a few buffs on. Tack on +1 attack from a vamp lord's or wight king's CA and another +1 for lord of nagashizaar and suddenly they've putting out a rather respectable 8 attacks each. Respectable against hordes of chaff at least - good armor saves still present serious problems for them, and any amount of rend in return cuts them down like they were skeletons. I've heard of people having some tournament success with big units (15+) supported by a mounted wight king in a deathmarch. A fair number of wounds, extra fast with the formation bonus, they have an easy time getting that bravery debuff banner in range if you're running t-gheists or the like to take advantage of it, tolerable offense out of the box, stack buffs pretty well, and the same battalion wight king who buffs their speed can also carry a couple attack buffs. I personally view them as usable but not exactly great. I generally saw them as better than hexwraiths, but that was before the recent hexwraith points drop which may or may not tip the balance between the two units a bit. Hexwraiths don't have the banner or musician, but between rend and frightful touch they have much better attacks, with fly they have better movement, and with a 4+ ethereal they have much better durability as well. No good formations for them, not in the legions, anyway, but if you're not running deathmarch you might be better off with the wraiths these days. I'd reccomend putting just the horses together and play testing a couple rounds for comparison purposes before making a final decision on which unit you want.

It's particularly frustrating for players trying to chase the tournament scene with "optimal" unit selection. When the units all do the same things and the only significant difference is points efficiency, tournament players spam the most efficient choice. Then ghb time rolls around and gw looks at tournament usage stats and says, 'woah, this unit is used constantly to the exclusion of everything else, better hike their points and lower the rest', so now there's a new most efficient choice and tourney players & trend chasers are left ferling like they wasted their money and now need to go out and collect a whole army of the new most efficient unit and the process continues. If the units all did something different, you wouldnt be able to just slot in the obvious most efficient choice. Different players would take different units for different jobs in different builds. People would run a variety of units instead of spamming just one, and relatively shallow points variations like we're seeing here wouldnt hit so hard. I mean, if you ran a varried nihthaunt army with only one unit of grimghasts before then their current price hike would likely have been more than compensated by the discounts to other units. For a contrary example, take dire wolves, a fairly unique unit for the legions. faster than all the other battleline options. operate better in small units. Even in large units don't have the potential hitting power after buffs of 40 skeletons or the screening coverage of 60 zombies. Nothing else that the faction has access to is quite like them, especially in battle line, so even though they're getting hit with a points hike, I havent personally felt inclined to ditch them, nor have i seen too many others complaining that they're trash now as some are with grimghasts. Same with necromancers - no other hero does what they do for you, so while 130 might be (read: definitely is) an unreasobable points cost, they're still going to see use. Their points cost can go up or down a fair bit without rendering them unplayable or causing them to eclipse other options. Even if necros were unreasonably cheap instead of unreasonably expensive, people would still have cause to also run one or more faster, tougher, killier vampires with their reliable cp buff and different soell selection. Because of their uniqueness, there's a wide margin of error on necro pricing, in a way that there wouldnt be if the legions had access to several dedicated casty heroes with similar spells & lore access, the way that nighthaunts have access to several other elite ethereal melee infantry that now threaten to supplant grimghasts entirely. ... Again, though, the kinds of changes needed to fix that situation are outside the scope of a yearly GH points update, and taken for what they are I still see more to like than to hate here. Though my tune may change once i get some actual experience with the new values under my belt.

I dont see why death shouldn't have cannons. Every other grand alluance has sime great magic, some great shooting, some great melee, dome tough guys, sime hiardy guys, sime of everything. Sure its f8ne for some individual subfactions to soecualize un thus or thatm but I fon't see how itvmakes sense to keave an entire grand alliance out of an entire ohase of the game. It would certainly be easier to introduce more units without have them step on each others toes like grimghasts and bladegheists and dreadscythes and glaivewraiths do if one or two of those could have been dedicated ranged units built to harass enemies with screams instead of melee attacks. And I see no reason why deathrattle shouldnt get to pick up the old tomb king skeleton archers and catapults. they certainly didnt break the game back in the old days when everyone was using grand alliance allegiances. Sure, TK stuff was strong back then, but not because of the ranged options. So no, I don't think it's a problem that everyone gets cannons now, especially with all the restrictions on them.

That's not the kind of overlap I'm talking about. To me, the overlap problem with death us too many units that are too similar in their battlefield roles. Skeletons vs zombies vs graveguard as fragile slow hoardy summonable melee infantry. Morghasts vs vargheists vs blood knights as fast expensive melee hammers. Bladegheists vs grimghasts vs myrmourns vs grimscythes as elite ethereal summonable melee infantry. Since these various units perform so similarly on the battlefield, its hard to balance them with points. Inevitably one in each category will be the most effective or efficient and the rest will be redundant.

I've got 20 each of greatswords and shields, but I put spare shields on the backs of the greatsword models and spare greatswords (carefully removing the hands from the handles) on the backs of the shield models, so if I want to run 30 of just one or the other I can kind of fudge it by sticking 10 of one in the back ranks of the other. Worked better in the rank and file days of oldhammer fantasy, but I haven't had any complaints.

Great weapons are generally better. Too many units going around with rend these days, can't actually count on the shields doing anything. It's not a huge difference, though.

TBH, even just within nighthaunt grimghasts were a problem. Not for external balance, but internal. The only thing chainrasos really have is being battleline. Grimghasts being battle line AND one of the strongest nighthaunt elite options in pure stats... why play any other elite when grimghasts do the same job and fill battleline? Why play any other battle line when grumghasts do the same job and can kill things? And I mean, just looking at the unit, individually they're cool modrls, but they don't look like a hoardy battle line unit. just trying to maneuver 30 of the things in coherency with their swirley robes and scythes all akimbo is a nightmare. Grimghasts should have been a small, non-hoardy, non-battleline unit from the start. Oh, well. Too late for that now.

Only in meeting engagements, a new matched play format for 1000 point games played on smaller tables with some additional restrictions: https://www.warhammer-community.com/2019/06/11/the-generals-handbook-2019-meeting-engagementsgw-homepage-post-2/ it actually sounds like a neat little format.

Hopefully FEC and Skaven will have gotten enough feedback by then to see some meaningful corrections, then. We're not the only faction to have seen price hikes on our dedicated casty guys, and Skaven's casty heroes and monsters slready put most ewuivalent units to shame in efficiency before this round of changes. As for the vamp lord thing, what can I say, bit of a brain ****** there. ... In terms of wider issues, I certainly agree that there's too much overlap in a lot of death units. It's hard to envision any amount of points tweaking that would have zombies and skeletons and grave guard all worth fielding without one just being objectively better than the others. Same for vargheists and blood knights and morghasts, or grimghasts and bladegheists and dreadscythes and glaivewraithes. these units aren't exactly the same, but they overlap too much to meaningfuly separate via points value. FEC don't have this overlap problem apart from archregents just being better kings, since they just don't have enough units for overlap to begin with, so points adjustments could do a lot of good there. But just not having units to choose from in the first place isnt really a great solution, imo. Formations could help with this, but nighthaunt don't have enough good ones, and LoN don't have enough period, and ever since GW pinned extra CP and artifacts on formations, the formations themselves have gotten somewhat prohibitively expensive. The core mistake is defining an entire grand alliance as much by what it isnt (no shooting, no armor) as by what it is. That leaves death too narrow, and leaves death subfactions like nighthaunt WAY too narrow. ... But changes on that level weren't really within the scope of the yearly GH points adjustments anyway. In and of themselves, I see more changes in the right direction than the wrong here, which allows me to be mostly content with these changes despite them not really fixing the underlying problems of the faction, and I look forward to seeing if I can get some better use out of the units that saw points decreases. Then again, I play Grand Host, not Nighthaunt, so I didn't see one of my staple units slapped with a heavy nerf because of the things some other faction was doing with them. I could see being more bitter about this in that case.

True, true. While I'm not convinced these poont changes were enough to make grave guard or morghasts grest on their own, they are enough that I'm personally looking forward to trying them out.

I could see trying to run grave guard as battle line at the new points. Especially in meeting engagements. Skittles lose a lot when you can only take them in units of 20 max, making grave guard look a bit better by comparison. Probably not something I'd bother with outside of grand host, and still doesn't compare well if you look outside of the faction. Yeah, grave guard can be stacked up quite a bit offensively, but so can most anything, and the guard still crumble at even the slightest breeze. Eh. Otherwise, I'm... ~mostly~ content with these changes. I would have greatly preferred wight kings coming down in points instead of necromancers going up. +20 for necromancers and +20 for shackles together hit my current lists pretty hard.

So the online reviews are coming in for the generals handbook, 2019, including in depth summaries of points changes. EG: https://youtu.be/ndUWz85b-yo Chat about the points changes has been going on in the various subfaction threads, but I thought it might be a good idea to have a central thread to look at them more generally. Quick summary of Death changes only Obviously these changes will need to be taken in the context of point changes throughout the game, of which there are too many to list individually here. FEC are clearly still too recently released to have any changes based on feedback (before you might ask, the same is true for skaven as well, so I expect rough match ups for the forces of Nagash against their ancient spoilers for at least the next year or so). Of the changes we did see, they mostly seem to be a mix of the expected expected (increases to dire wolves and grimghasts), and the hoped for (significant decreases to mannfred, neferata, grave guard, blood knights, small decreases to many nighthaunt units and characters). The increase to Nagash wasn't a huge surprise, but is still somewhat painful. The increases to Arkhan and the necromancer, I'll admit, caught me as an unpleasant surprise. A few months ago I might have expected increases to them, but after the FEC and SKAVEN book, I though GW was just making casters stronger and cheaper in general, so yeah that kind of hurts. I mean, I've long said that necromancers shouldn't cost less than wight kings, but that's because white kings are, and have been since the first handbook, pretty painfully overpriced and should have been decreased 20 points or more. At least, imo. So it's sad to see wight kings staying the same and necros going up instead. I'm still not sure how you can justify a wight king for 120 when a vamp lord is only 40 points more (EDIT: whoops, 20 points more), tougher, faster, killier, better mount options, better invocation, is a spellcaster, and has the same command ability - only it works on all death units, not just deathrattle. And even vamp lords feel a bit pricey to me at an unchanged 160 points (EDIT: 140 points, bit of a brain ****** there). I was also kind of hoping to see zombies go to 20 model minimum, with a slight discount compared to 2x10 at the current price. 60 for 10 just feels a bit high to me for how trash they are, and a 20 model minimum size would give them a unique role in meeting engagements beyond 'cheapest throw away minimum battleline'. Sadly, until GW is ready to put out some new models for them, I don't think we're going to see any serious look at the rules or pricing of zombies in AoS. As such, I didn't actually expect this change, so I'm not disappointed the way I am for wight kings not getting discounted. Another year of wishlisting, I suppose. In the mean time, there's more good than bad here. Grave guard still look maybe a little bit pricey compared to regular skeletons, they're MUCH more tempting to me now that they've basically switched prices with grimghasts. I could see them being particularly worthwhile as battle line in Grand Host of Nagash, especially in meeting engagements where skeletons can't be brought at full strength. Morghasts get another modest points decrease, this one bringing them within the legal ally allotment in 1000 point games, which may have interesting ramifications for Nighthaunt armies in meeting engagements. And speaking of Nighthaunts, grimghasts did see a slight increase - something somewhat expected, though frankly they were mostly only abusive in LoN armies and imo a better solution would have been to rescind the errata that allowed LoN to take them as native units instead of allies, but to make up for it many of their non-poachable units saw modest point decreases, including all three of the named heroes, so that's cool. In terms of endless spells, the shackles doubling in price hurts. It's not entirely unexpected, imo that spell was way too useful for something that could be so easily dropped in with a few spare points. On the other hand, I've always loved the purple son conceptually, and as a model. Even at half the previous price it's still probably overpowered for something that requires you to roll a bunch of sixes to have any effect at all, and can so easily be used against you - from a pure optimization standpoint I can't imagine the purple sun being a better use of 50 points than just taking an extra command point. But in terms of just-for-fun games I could at least see myself considering it now. Overall, I'm relatively content with these changes, at least in and of themselves. Still need to absorb the changes for other factions to get a sense of context - though for my personal games the most important context is the *lack* of changes to skaven, which I expect will lead to a year of uphill battles for my personal army. Your thoughts?

Because the stormcast reforging process explicitly includes burning away - or at least burying - any memories or aspects of the subjects personality or identity that would prevent them from serving Sigmar unquestioningly.

It's an auto-include because it costs no points and there's no reason not to take one, so you really might as well. Even if you have no archregents or infantry kings, it's still a bravery buff for nearby FEC units. That said, archregents are /so/ good that there's really no reason an FEC army wouldn't be running /at least/ one, if not more, and for every regent you run the throne is handing out essentially a free CP, which is a pretty big deal with feeding frenzy, to say nothing of GKoT summons, re-rolled charges, and inspiring presence - which will be pretty crucial if you like running big units of serfs & knights instead of going in for the new monster mash business. So yeah, the throne is an auto-include. Not as impressive or potentially game-changing as some of the other free faction terrain, certainly nothing as faction defining as gravesites are for the legions, maybe not the topest of top priorities for brand new FEC players to get on the table, but not something that any established FEC player should ever leave at home.

Looks tough. With only one extra CP, though, I worry it would have trouble consistently getting hunger off on both monsters, let alone using their summons. And I'm not as convinced that 40 ghouls is enough chaff to keep everything safe from alpha rush lists. Definitely scary though.

Again, though, can you really? The summoned ghouls cost a CP that could have been used on endless legions, and yeah, you can outflank them, but then they're likely out of range of the regents buff spell, and what else is the regent even going to try to cast, without access to faction spells? And neither get or grant death saves, the summoned ghouls can't benefit from endless legions, gravesites, or invocations, or vanhels, the regent doesnt get traits or items, loses the ravenous hunger CA, etc. I'm not saying they're bad or anything, but I really don't see legions being able to make even close to as good use of these guys as the native faction. Not like they do with grimghasts or chainrasps, and even then that's only because they can run them native, not as allies.

Do people really see the archregent as a good ally choice for Legions? No items on him, no lore spells, no chair to make his summon free, neither his own death save nor the ability to project one? He has his own signature spell, but who's he gonna cast it on? Himself? A summoned unit of 20 ghouls? And those ghouls cost a command point that could have been used to revive a unit of 30 grims or 40 skittles. I mean, don't get me wrong, regent looks *stupidly* good in FEC, maybe good enough to prop up the whole faction, but outside of it I'm not so sure.

If the main problems with what's there are points costs, that ghouls & hortors cost too much and archregents too little, then at least that's something that might see correction in future general's handbooks rather than having to wait for a 3rd edition update.

Corpse cart casting bonus doesn't stack with itself.

Oh, certainly there's decent potential for some casty business here. Arkhan plus a corpse cart fit in the ally restrictions for a 2k list, throw in an archregent, maybe a ghoul king or two, etc. Not sure what court or delusion would fit best w that. Still, would have liked the explicitly pro-nagash fluff that I had imagined might come with a casty court. I'll have to take a longer look at the fluff of the courts when the book comes out to see how they relate to the great necromancer.

Yeah, the foundation of the courts is less their narrative character, which is what I had expected, and more the core units they're supposed to favor as their battleline - horrors, flayers, monsters, or ghouls - with any narrative concepting built around that battleline preference after the fact. Since ghouls are already battleline that last one doesn't unlock alternative battleline options. I say "supposed to" because there are arguements to be made that some units are better served by other units' courts. Blisterskin is the flayer court, emphasizing the flayers' speed with a faction-wide +2 to move. But since flayers are alreadu pretty fast, an argument could be made that that move speed bonus better serves slower units like ghouls and horrors. In the end none of the courts were reall6 designed around the heroes, so my preficted magic/nahash-worshipping court didn't pan out. Which leaves me 0 for 3 on predictions for FEC 2.0, after wrongly predicting we would see new courtier models and a new plastic varghulf.

Thanks!

In text form? Cannot lisyen to video atm.

Can someone summarize the courts?