Sception

Eh, longer potential charge range is just giving frenzy more rope to hang you with. I played some dark elves back in the day and my singular witch elf unit constantly had me pulling my hair out, even with dark riders and harpies to help focus their attention. More than that, I played a lot of wood elves against various frenzied units, and they always felt like free wins. So long as your army is fairly maneuverable (or at least has access to maneuverable elements) then you can use the opponents own frenzy blinder units to protect your vulnerable targets from the frenzied unit, and as long as your army is fairly shooty (or at least has access to some shooty elements), you can clear those blinders right when you need a frenzied unit to make the worst possible charge. Lizardmen are not my faction (despite my apparent decision to die on the hill of 'saurus warriors don't suck in TOW'), but just from reading their pdf they seem to have access to both maneuverable units and shooty units enough to really punish frenzy hard. If I were a lizardmen player, I don't think Khornate chaos warriors (or witch elves for that matter) would be high on my list of troublesome match ups. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm basing too much of that opinion on experience with a different army (mostly wood elves, admittedly probably the best faction for punishing frenzy in most editions of the game) in different editions (mostly 5th through 7th, 8th is when I switched over to all undead all the time).

I have a scheduled painting session of 2 to 3 hours once a week. Sometimes I can do more than that, but not often.

In terms of default positive attitude about Old World and a reflex to reject criticism, I do have to acknowledge that bias in myself. I think it comes from the fact that I'm an 'any undead all undead' player. If damage is down across the board leading to less rocket tag and more grinding battles of attrition, that absolutely favors undead with our recursion. If base leadership matters more, then that also favors undead with our immunity to psychology, unbreakability, and access to leadership penalties. Even if sphinxes or blood knights or whatever have been knocked down a peg or two (and with the available support spells and healing I'm not sure I'd agree with that in the blood knights' case), 9th edition still seems like a great time to be undead, for both official and legacy factions.

Great weapons would be amazing on them, sure, probably too good given that initiative 1 is a key weakness to the unit balancing out those 2 attacks base on a compulsory core unit. I'd probably happily pay points for great weapon saurus out of special, though I don't think kroxigor are an entirely terrible substitute there. I don't know, haven't run the numbers on them, mostly I just like their silly skink rules. Saurus can take spears at +1 attack per frontage, exactly the same bonus that chaos warriors get out of additional hand weapons, and saurus don't have to give up their shields to get them. Yes, the warriors do slightly out-fight saurus then, 3 attacks instead of 2 isn't as big an advantage as 2 instead of 1, but still not by much AND the chaos warriors are more vulnerable to shooting now, something lizardmen can certainly take advantage of. And yeah, great weapon infantry will out-fight saurus typically, but great weapon infantry are again more vulnerable than shield infantry to shooting AND suffer a strikes last penalty that hurts in many match ups. Not so much in the match up against saurus specifically, but are you suggesting that great weapons are going to be the automatic choice for every unit that can take them? I mean, you might be right if so, I haven't really considered it broadly. EDIT: While Lizardmen aren't getting direct balance updates any time soon, if Great Weapons in general do turn out to be way better than other weapon options, such that non-great weapon units are always worse than great weapon units, then we might see a general nerf to great weapons in the future that could help Saurus out against those opponents. Again, I'm not trying to say saurus are amazing, just that they aren't *bad* when you compare them to other non-limited core melee infantry, and most of the arguments for lizardmen as a faction being bad that I've seen so far leaned a lot on how bad saurus are, and I don't really see it. Especially compared to other compulsory/tax units, the requirement to take one block of saurus just doesn't seem faction-destroying. Anyway, if that was your last post on the subject, thanks for chatting it out with me @Kitsumy. I'm really not trying to be blindly optimistic here or stamp down any nay saying or criticism at all, just the bit about saurus specifically seemed off to me.

Chaos warriors have to pay for shields. And I've spoken of khorne warriors in two other posts already. They have frenzy, which makes them bad. They will charge out of position, waste charges on tar pits and distraction chaff, charge into things that will beat them in combat (causing them to lose the frenzy rule that they paid extra for), charge into forests and be bogged down half the game, block off lines of advance from other units in your battleline, etc. To have any hope of using them in a reasonable fight you have to buy entire separate units just to block off line of sight to units they don't want to charge, which you then have to consider in their points cost. To the extent that warhammer fantasy is a game of maneuver and positioning, and Frenzy is one of if not the worst penalties you can hand yourself in that aspect of the game, essentially handing control of your unit to your opponent. As for comparing to dwarf warriors with additional hand weapons... I'm not seeing 2 hand weapons as an option for dwarf warriors? Am I going blind? Chaos warriors can take additional hand weapons instead of shields, in which case they do beat saurus warriors, though they now have a worse armor save to defend against shooting, meaning more likely to take more casualties on the way into the fight. And saurus warriors can take spears to more or less even that out again (though now they do cost a bit more per unit, unless the warriors are also taking a mark), and the saurus don't have to give up their shields. I'm not trying to say that saurus warriors are amazing or anything. But they are compulsory core troops, and compared to other core heavy infantry, at least those that don't have extra per-x-points limits, I'm just not seeing where they're so bad.

addressed in the other post, but khorne has frenzy, which forces charges even when the only charge option is disasterously stupid. if the warriors have mark of khorne they should never be fighting on their own terms or on equal footing. I guess i could account for that by giving the saurus a free flank charge, but honestly it's just not an apples to apples comparison.

Khorne warriors will outfight saurus, sure. But khorne warriors are frenzied, which means generally speaking you should get to pick what they fight and where. Let them fight jungle swarms all game. Let them charge an msu unit of skink skirmishers and end up far our of position. Frenzy is strong, but even more than how strong it is frenzy is bad. they paid extra points to make themselves super easy to exploit, play around it. Mark of nurgle is a more relevant comparison since it doesn't change how the unit plays fundamentally or come with a huge exploitable weakness attached*. Nurgle adds 2 points per model, so the points are a bit off now, but still. Warriors kill the same 0.22 saurus warriors, only now the warriors had 1.14 models per warrior to start due to the warriors costing more. So 0.92 models attack back, x2 attacks each, 5/12 hit due to mark of nurgle, 1/2 wound, 2/3 get through armor, for 0.256 slain chaos warriors. So yeah, point for point at least saurus warriors still outfight chaos warriors even with the mark of nurgle. "But there's no step up now, models won't all be in the front rank, you can't assume wider frontage for the saurus just because they cost less". Fair enough. But even model for model you're looking at 0.217 slain chaos warriors, which is barely any different from their 0.22 slain saurus. So even ignoring points and looking model for model, saurus warriors come out essentially on par with nurgle chaos warriors even accounting for the fact that the warriors will swing first. And you can't call a core unit that on the odds essentially ties combat with nurgle warriors despite costing 2 points less per model bad. For battleline melee infantry, Saurus are Not Bad. They just aren't. *Nurgle warriors do lose the extra resistance to fear, panic, & terror from undivided. their leadership is decent so i don't call this a huge weakness, but lizardmen do have tools to exploit this.

I'm not convinced that lizards are in that bad a state. Certainly not Saurus Warriors specifically. Most damage is lower across the board, T4 4+ is tough enough for a bastic battleline block that you should be getting attacks back in most cases, and 2 attacks a model at S4 and AP-1 is nothing to sneaze at. By comparison chaos warriors have only one attack each. Like again, battleline heavy infantry vs. battleline heavy infantry, same points per model, chaos warriors striking first with hand weapons kill 0.22 saurus warriors per chaos warrior (1 attack, *2/3 to hit, *1/2 to wound, *2/3 get past the saurus' 4+ armor after ap1 for chaos weapons). the saurus warriors fighting back kill 0.26 chaos warriors even accounting for casualties (0.78 still alive *2 attacks *1/2 to hit *1/2 to wound *2/3 get past the warriors' 4+ armor save after ap1 for obsidian weapons). So even allowing for the fact that they'll be fightig last, saurus warriors still out-fight the equivalent heavy core/battleline infantry from arguably the most melee-centric of the official supported factions even after getting attacked first. If a core infantry unit (not special or rare) outfights chaos warriors both model for model and point for point (same points per model makes for easy comparison) even after the warriors hit you first, then I don't think you can reasonably call them bad. You may need something extra to deal with special or rare melee threats, or core threats with hero support, but you have your own heroes and your own special and rare threats to draw on for that, plus a really fantastic tar pit in jungle swarms to delay anything you just don't want to deal with directly.

I've mostly been pretty bullish, "things aren't as bad as they first look compared to 8e," "try the game out," kind of sentiment, but admittedly witch elves do look pretty iffy. Very vulnerable to shooting, very reliant on their cauldron buffs which can be shut down, and frenzy is more of a vulnerability than a strength - though that's always been the case. There is counter play - dark elves have their own shooty units and forward ranging units to hunt archers and war machines, and the first turn, when shooting is the biggest threat, your cauldron could be out of dispel range, especially if the opponent puts their wizard behind the front line. If they put the wizard in a front line unit, then dark elves do have tools to try to assassinate them. IF we end up in a 1999 point meta you might not always see a mage lord, since most factions would have to choose between a mage lord and a fighty lord. .... So there are probably ways to play around their weaknesses, and maybe formats where their weaknesses don't hurt as much... but yeah, at first glance I'd agree witch elves don't look super competitive. They're at least not too pricey, so you probably aren't shooting yourself in the foot by taking one or two small units of them, but witch heavy armies built around multiple large units with the cauldrons seem more a fun narrative choice than a tough competitive one. That said, you can always run them as DoK in AoS, and a non-witch based dark elf army does seem like it has some other options that look a fair bit better.

I think it's more to depower dwarf & empire lists that jump from 3 great cannons max to 6 at 2k points, rather than any of the 0-1 per 1k options. 6 great cannons isn't necessarily game breaking, but it does powerfully discourage otherwise cool & fun big centerpiece monsters. The 1999 talk is mostly just buzz & discussion I've been hearing from some youtube folks, nothing concrete. I wouldn't be surprised if we see some 1999 point events just to test it, though I currently expect 2k to win out. Personally I kind of prefer the harsher trade offs. Having to choose between fighty and magic lords just sounds more interesting for more factions than an easy default choice of one of each. A world where not every army has a level 4 wizard is also one where level 2 and 3 wizards can shine a bit more. But that's just me.

As mentioned by others, this isn't the first edition where vampires have been forced to choose between armor and spellcasting. with their high initiative and 5+ regeneration a vampire might bank on not needing armor, especially if they invest in a ward save. On the other hand, a vampire who really wants to grind it out in combat might want better armor than the hauberk allows, and so choose to give up casting entirely. I like the variety of builds this implies, and how it plays into old bloodline archetypes, with combat king blood dragon types who eschew magic, von carstein esque balanced builds using the hauberk, lahmian builds that try to avoid the need for armor by relying on wards, beguile, and initiative, and necrarch builds that just buy up casting & support items & powers and mostly aim to avoid melee. Granted it would help if there were more powers available, for instance i don't think there are enough non combat options to make a necrarch style support vamp really worth running over a master necromancer*, but still the outline is there and i appreciate that. If vampires could cast in armor by default then you'd just get a singular do-everything build without these interesting trade offs. It's also worth pointing out that you might not want your fighty vampire lord to be a caster to begin with, so that you can pawn off the load bearing roll of army general to a back line necromancer. This will be especially relevant if 1999 ends up being the conpetitive standard instead of 2000 points, as it might be to avoid potential cannon spam, in which case you won't be able to field both a vampire lord and a necromancer lord at the same time. Then again, unless event organizers step in to make a direct exception, iirc 1999 would prevent lizardmen players from running a slaan, so maybe 2k will be more common after all. *frankly, If I had Necrarch vampires, I'd run them as necromancers. While we're referencing older editions, there's something very 'Warhammer Armies: Undead' about not letting vampires be level 4 wizards, creating a trade off where necros aren't just the inferior option to shave points, that I kind of like. It harkens back to a time when Arch Necromancers like Kemmler and Hellsnicht were every bit as feared in universe and faction defining on the table as big name vampires like Vlad or Mannfred.

We just need to decide which is which. I'd say: Chaos Dwarves: evil (chaos) Daemons: evil (chaos) skaven: evil (chaos) lizardmen: evil (scary, eat peope) Ogres: good (friends/allies to all, festive appetite for life) Dark Elves: good (followers of the rightful king wrongly usurped according to canon) Vampire Counts: good (enemies of the evil Tomb Kings, plus Abhorash was pals with Gilles le Breton, I can only imagin the pdf listing tomb kings as allies instead of brettonia was a misprint that will be corrected soon)

There was another thing I forgot. Saurus and temple guard are on 30mm squares now, and there is no 60x60 square base, so there's no base they could give the slaan that would neatly fit into the temple guard unit, forcing it out to the flank even if it /could/ join. Of course, there *should* be a 60 x 60 square, the slaan isn't the only model that wants one (eg, tomb scorpions would much rather be on a 60x60 than a sideways 50x75), but gw didn't want to make any actual new base sizes, so watcha gonna do.

I don't know about that. IME faction discussion tends to collect in individual threads, and you don't need over a dozen subforums with only one really active thread each. Maybe a subforum each for forces of fantasy, ravening hordes, and legacy armies?

I *did* miss something. Flying units can't join non-flying units, and Slaan are Fly 8. Obnoxious. Personally would have not given them flying - even if their chairs can float, I never pictured them zooming around at high speeds. So yeah, I definitely share this complaint. I don't think it makes them bad or unworkable, they're still going to float around behind their units casting spells, and the temple guard are written to protect slann that are merely nearby, but yeah, from an aesthetic and narrative perspective this new way of running them doesn't feel right. Definitely something I'd take the opportunity to rewrite if I were working on a homebrew Lizardmen Arcane Journal.

Yes, though they do have one magic item, the flayed hauberk, which is heavy armor that a wizard can still wear. And they can ride a nightmare, for another pip of armor from its barding. And since strength no longer reduces armor automatically, a 4+ save still kind of means something. Spells or armor is a pretty tough decision for vampire lords. Lots of power and utility in magic, but lack of armor makes you pretty vulnerable. Then again, if you're not a wizard you can't be the general, which lets you take a big expensive killy vampire lord, maybe on a monster, and throw him into combat secure in the knowledge that your load bearing general is a hero wizard safely buried in a second line infantry block.

Looking at saurus warriors, lets compare them to a similar unit in an 'official' faction - basic Chaos Warriors. Both close order heavy infantry, both 14 points a model with heavy armor, hand weapon, and shield. Both get -1 ap with their hand weapons, but chaos warriors also get magical attacks. Chaos warriors have more weapon options, but their model kit also had more weapon options, so that is what it is. Both have a special rule that helps them with fear, terror, and panic tests. Both Move 4, Strength 4, Tough 4, Wound 1, and Leadership 8. Chaos Warriors get +1 weapon skill (4 vs. 3), and +3 initiative (4 vs. 1), which admittedly is pretty huge. Even with maximum charge bonus, saurus can only hope to tie initiative with Chaos Warriors. On the other hand, Saurus have +1 attacks, which is a big deal. Nearly double the attacks per frontage (slightly less than double since comparing champions is 3 vs. 2 attacks). Chaos Warriors can pay extra points to trade the undivided mark for another, which may or may not be a benefit. a limited number of saurus units can take shield wall, which isn't as good, but also isn't nothing. All in all, yeah, I'd call the chaos warriors better. Saurus are certainly better at chewing through big bulky chaff units like zombies and skeletons which will have trouble causing damage through the more elite infantry's Ws4, T4, and 4+ save, leaving most of the front rank alive to take advantage of those extra attacks, but have trouble dealing with stuff that hits hard enough to drop several saurus before their abysmal initiative 1, since every lost saurus is a significant reduction in their damage output. That said, I don't think chaos warriors are better by a huge margine, and their faction does pay some significant costs for their elite melee infantry, including having little to no shooting and relatively limited access to skirmishers & ambushers & the like, while lizardmen are a much broader 'some of everything' kind of faction.

The game my dude. Killing warhammer fantasy the game. Square bases, ranks & flanks, unit trays, USRs. The Old World, as a rule set, is /very much/ warhammer fantasy, a game they swore up and down was never coming back, and they absolutely meant it when they said it. The Old World only exists because corporations like GW can and do go back on stupid decisions all the time, no matter how firmly carved in stone.

Before old world was announced, would you have thought they'd ever go back on killing warhammer fantasy at all? dumb corporate decisions change over time as the people in charge change and old hangups are traded for new ones.

Not sure I see it as an undead player. Vamp Counts look more or less on par with Tomb Kings. less experimental (no eg skeleton skirmishers), but still. "per example lizardmens, havent any sacred spawns ( like most of real books has, the 6th mechanic to pay points and upgrade some things)." most 'supported' factions don't have this sort of variant thing either, least not in the main 2 books. "scaly skin seems count as normal armor now? so our saurus hero save at 4 at best, being slower, atacking last, hitting worse, being hit easier and costing more than every real faction hero saving at 2+" You've got the same mundane armor as a Tomb King can get, better mounted since cold ones have +1 armor. also better if you're comparing heroes instead of lords, since princes only get light armor. As with tomb kings, you compensate w/ magic items if you think you need it, and console yourself with toughness 5, which is significant. "cold ones always were the same as dark elfs since they are the same mount. but now dark elf one has +1t while having same stats and point cost." This is odd & should be fixed. "cold blood not working in break tests, making it totally useless, we went from being the stone army that wont ever move ( like dwarfs) to go away running in every lost fight." break tests work different now. Everyone is effectively stubborn. it's understandable that devs might have thought that + cold blood was too much. fear & terror matters more now, so the new version is still a real ability. "the worst offense for every lizardmen player im sure, after decades of having our god frog going into battle being carried and huged by his temple guard he cant do it now!!! and must go alone to battle." What prevents him from joining the unit? did I miss something? "bastiladons having only 4w when steam tanks have 10!!!! is a total joke." War Sphinx only has 5 Wounds. 4 doesn't seem that odd for a smaller monster, & 3+ save still makes it tougher than most. "carno is a joke, worse than worst dragon, and even sligthy worse than griffons!!! and saving at 5s when should have been a tank killing machine." you'll put a hero on it and give the hero better/magic armor. "and could go on.... but i think everyone get the idea." It's a new game. maybe some of the points & balance is off, but I'd wan't to see how things actually play out on the table before casting such harsh judgement. cold one situation is weird though. I could see devs not wanting a saurus hero on a cold one to be Tough 6, but they should work the same between dark elves & lizardmen regardless.

I think I've settled on a 1k starter list for tomb kings, sticking to the generic ravening hordes list for now, and focusing on classic, iconic, faction-defining units. Goal is a TK army that you look at & say 'yup classic tomb kings', even if they're rising up out of the snows instead of the sands. ... Tomb Prince, Great Weapon, Armor of Silvered Steel (i prefer flail to great weapon, but that's the model I have) Tomb Herald, Shield, BSB Mortuary Priest, Level 2, Necromancy 32 Skeleton Warriors with Spears, Shields, light armor, Nehekharan Phalanx, full command. All characters go here making a big 7x5 block to anchor the army. 15 Skeleton Skirmishers with bows and Ambush. Gotta have some archers, & the ability to skirmish them is cool. Probably won't ambush them often, but the option is neat. Casket of Souls, cus you gotta Screaming Smull Catapult. No skulls of the foe, sadly. too many points in rare with the casket at 1k. - Either - 3 Skeleton Chariots with full command - Or - 3 Ushabti with either warscythes or greatbows, but no command ... Total comes to exactly 1,000 points regardless of chariots vs. Ushabti. I'm not really committed to one or the other there, as both units are pretty iconic. The chariots maybe more so, but the ushabti are better models. I can replace the chariot drivers with 7e VC skittles, but am kind of stuck on the horses, since GW store legality is a concern. I don't really need to choose between chariots & ushabti (or between bowshabti & bladeshabti). I'll assemble & paint all 3 options & try them each out. After all, 1k is just a target on the way to 2k+. Now I just need my 3rd party bases & unit trays to arrive so I can start rebasing & assembly.

Watch DB4 come out 3 to 4 weeks after DB5.

What do you use for that? Last time I tried, I found the converters I used couldn't handle GW epubs, always ended up with messed up formatting. Haven't tried in a long while, though.

A word on the epubs, for anyone else who got those. GW uses some pretty wonky formatting on the already wonky epub3 file type and a lot of readers don't handle it well. Apple users shouldn't have any issues, as the default books app works fine. On windows PC, GW recommends Azardi, and that's the only reader that's been able to work for GW epubs for me on windows since the old redium extension for chrome went chrome-os exclusive. Azardi itself is a bit of a pain to find these days as most of the default distributions for it seem to be defunct. I was able to get it here: https://www.softpedia.com/get/Others/E-Book/Azardi-eReader.shtml Scratch that. For both Windows and Linux PC, use Thorium. For Android Users, Google Play Books works, except it has a file size maximum of 100mb, which isn't enough for the big rulebook, and most other android ereaders can't handle GW's epubs at all. The one I know that does work is Colibrio Reader, so use that.

Despite weather related shipping delays, my preorder haul arrived in time for release day. Snakes, Bowshabti, Tomb Guard, and reference cards. No physical books, I opted for the epubs, and after an hour or so trying different ereaders I finally found one that displays them properly, so am happy there. Sadly can't start assembly yet, as I'm still waiting for third party bases & unit trays to arrive. Speaking of bases, I can finally answer one of the questions I've been asking for a while: do the official bases actually match the official base sizes? This is a relevant question because the old bases did not always match their official sizes, particularly the cavalry and chariot bases. Well, at least for the models I ordered, these are indeed the old bases. That means the 25mm squares and 40mm squares are close enough to accurate, ever so slightly small but within 1mm of the correct dimensions, but the charriot is ~significantly~ off. About the right length at within 1mm of 100mm long, but only about 47.5mm wide. That's enough narrower than it should be that you can look at it and just see that it's not 1x2 proportions. if you run a unit of 8 tomb kings chariots 4x2 - a large unit to be sure but not unreasonably so for the chariot-heavy nobles variant list - then that unit will be a full centimeter narrower than their official width if you put them on the official bases. It's not a huge deal either way, the difference isn't so much that I think official events would care, but it matters a lot for movement trays, especially ordering 3rd party trays. If you're making your own trays you can just measure the width of the actual bases and cut your tray to custom size, but when ordering trays you'll need to account for the discrepancy if you want everything to sit flush. Alternatively, if you use third party or scratch built bases that are made to the official base size, they'll be too wide to fit a unit tray that is made to fit flush to the first party chariot bases. ... I don't have anything on the 25 x 50mm cavalry bases, but those were also narrower than stated in the past, closer to 23.5, so there will likely be the same issues with unit trays there.