Barteh

I was real excited to see the return of the Fatesworn warband, but it seems to let you make one unit with >9 models in it a wizard that can cast 1 unbind 1 and knows a unique spell that worsens an enemy unit's rend by 1 and.... that's it. For requiring 1 hero + 9 mortal tzeentch units, that's real disappointing.

I've been struggling to come up with a 1250 list for a tournament coming up. I was wondering what people thought about the following; LEADERS Gaunt Summoner and Chaos Familiars (180) - General - Command Trait : Arcane Sacrifice - Artefact : Paradoxical Shield - Lore of Fate : Bolt of Tzeentch Tzaangor Shaman (180) - Lore of Change : Fold Reality UNITS 10 x Tzaangors (180) 10 x Tzaangors (180) 10 x Pink Horrors of Tzeentch (200) 6 x Tzaangor Enlightened on Disc (280) ENDLESS SPELLS Balewind Vortex (40) Gameplan is fairly basic, sit back with the Gaunt summoner on balewind & pink horrors, sacrificing them each turn to build up points to summon blue horrors. Tzaangors can move up in a nice big blob if there's a reason to, or sit back for a counter-charge. It just feels like everything we can field is so squishy for how expensive it is. What do people think about 2x10 Tzaangors vs 1x20? I feel like you lose flexibility and some minor MW output from the banners in favor of potentially keeping the +1 attacks slightly longer, but I also think that Tzaangors are essentially meant to get the charge and destroy, not get stuck in prolonged combat. I dunno, can't seem to find something that just seems solid.

First of all, your math is ignoring a couple of important factors, such as unit composition (one sword+shield, 4 greatblades one of which is twistbray, 5 paired of which 2 are mutants), oversimplifying the paired blades vs greatblades, ignoring ping, forgetting to apply the to wound bonus on beaks, etc. You're also conflating disk and non-disk Enlightened. Tzaangors Single blade 0.4995 Greatblades 3.847962 Paired blades 3.7738 Beaks 2.583333 Total wounds 10.7046 Wounds per point 0.05947 Disk Enlightened Spear 5.919941 Beak 0.33333 Teeth and horns 2.64 Total wounds 8.893271 Wounds per point 0.063523 Foot Enlightened Spear 5.919994 Beak 0.3333 Total wounds 6.253294 Wounds per point 0.062533 I've included buffs across the board- the only one not included is Guided by the Past. Tzaangor damage is raised slightly, mostly as a function of beaks being better than assumed (BoC vs DoT). They lose a slight amount of damage to include the single blade with shield. Ping is also not included because it's hard to tell how much value you're getting out of it. Adding 0.5 wounds wouldn't be unfair, considering arcanite hero presence is assumed. This puts them at least squarely above "average shooting unit" as imagined by you. However- this comparison is a non-starter to begin with. Why are you comparing battleline units to recently overbuffed elite units? I believe it's being shouted all over the interwebs that Enlightened are ridiculously powerful, especially for their cost. Foot enlightened have a tiny footprint but are slow, Disk enlightened are bigger but faster and get fly. Don't sleep on the regular Tzaangor's ability to run and charge, aiding their role.

I don't think Tzaangors should be viewed as tanky at all. The two wounds each they have is decent, but in no way is a unit of Tzaangors durable. The role of Tzaangors is to charge something and hit it very hard while at full unit size, because the moment they drop under 9 models they lose half-ish of their hitting power. With enough wizards units of 10 add a decent amount of pinging power (0.5 mortal wounds per wizard).

The ruling that we can in fact use the BoC batallions got me fired up enough to send an e-mail off to the rules team about their ruling on the Everchosen batallions. Fingers crossed, would be great if they were usable again in matched play.

Not too long ago I wanted to do something similar but in a 1250 point format, basically just switching out the Ogroid for a Lord of Change. I played against Khorne Gorepilgrims which I reckon is one of the worst things to come up against with it, but still. I felt some issues with the 20-man acolyte squads; the 3 Enlightened don't work as enough of a counter-striking force. The moment he slammed into them, albeit slightly weakened from the double missile attacks, they crumbled, doubly so from Bravery. The way I think you solve this is lowering them to 2 10 man squads and adding in a 10 man group of Tzaangors. As far as summoning goes- I feel Flamers are almost always the way to go for Tzeentch. Their damage output far outpaces anything else, and it's easy to apply this damage effectively (because it's ranged). If you can't make it to the fate points for a full squad, just put in an Exalted Flamer. I think 20 man acolyte squads are only for games big enough to let you run a Pyrofane cult (which is a great expansion point to work to for your army!).

Hey Bottle, could you give us an idea of what you've been playing with and against in your playtesting/own campaign? I understand that putting together some sample warbands was an idea for later, but I think it'd provide some perspective. As for knee-swift-movement changes, I think they're not necessarily a bad thing while a project is still relatively young. This phase is the chance to explore alternatives. I strongly believe that (ranged) mortal wounds, even capped at 3, will be a huge issue. While in "normal" AoS, they do serve to prevent abuse of models with a very good save characteristic, but how common are those in the Hinterlands skirmish setting? From what I understand, they mostly spring forth from units combining, which you'd have to try real hard to do in the Hinterlands setting.

This is something I was considering too. Might try to playtest this.

I strongly believe that this is actually not enough (!). 3 mortal wounds per turn in the starting games will still remove (almost) every single hero in the game, no question asked. There are some exceptions, the one that springs to mind is what seems like the ultimate filth to me, the Ogroid Thaumaturge. 4 wounds, regenerating one per turn, instantly killing whatever he's charging (d3 mortal wounds), being a wizard.. and he's only 160 points normally, so 80 gold. Slightly more than most more balanced heroes. I'd like to actually hear from some more people about this one. Is the exp penalty really that significant? Should wounds on non-hero characters be reduced somehow? Picking up something like a gore-grunta currently gives you a character that'll be way stronger than some of the heroes, having 5 wounds and all. That doesn't seem right to me, but I'm not sure if there's an easy decision like halving the wounds of all models with more wounds than 3? At that point, their cost would have to be reduced to make up for it. Personally I believe that releasing frequent updates, especially on a electronic platform, is the way to go.

On the topic of the no heroes idea; there's definitely some merit to it. The main issue I've noticed in the local playgroup stems from heroes. In this specific case, it's the Stormcast Eternal Knight-Heraldor. I think a designated "leader" slot for warbands that lowers the cost for the warscroll in that slot by 100 (80?), while still maintaining the half wounds system, could be an interesting idea. Ban heroes outside of this slot, and you'll still have that one really cool hero model to play with, but severely limit the amount of "cheese". Any idea what the cheapest heroes in the game are? First thing that comes to mind is the Cairn Wraith at 80 points. By not making the leader slot 100% free you prevent people from taking the strongest, most expensive model they can get. The main issue I can find with this idea is the limitation for Death. To make some of their units worthwhile (e.g. Grave guard) you need to have the ability to reanimate them, which requires you to have a wizard currently. Maybe make it possible to take the ability on non-wizards, giving them the ability to "cast" just this spell, and not granting unbind opportunities? The other issue they're running into is the relative sturdiness of certain models that isn't reflected in their costs. There's an empire and a beastmen player, who both have immense trouble dealing with the (relatively) good save and multiple wounds on even the basic (cheap) liberators. Comparing things like Empire Greatswords to Liberators on a point-by-point basis. While you'd be right to say you can take models from the entire Grand Alliance, and so there's nothing stopping the Empire player from also using these models, it has to be factored in that very likely they don't WANT to do that.