someone2040
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Blog Comments posted by someone2040
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Sorry it's taken a little while. I was gonna post this in the Free Peoples chat since it might gen some discussion, but our 2.0 thread isn't around yet.
My thoughts on Greatswords is that they might be good enough now due to nerfs in other aspects of the army.
Part of their problem is they can't be the leader of a Great Company, so you need at least a unit of 20 Freeguild Guard. Given most the damage in the army comes from shooting (Since they're the easiest ones to put the buff on), it basically made sense to take Swordsmen and just put forwards a frontal line to tank the damage.
Nowdays it's a bit harder to mega company due to the changes in the Great Company rules. In addition, due to the Mystic Shield nerfs Swordsmen aren't quite as tanky anymore.
So Greatswords can come in now as the hybrid unit which is both tanky (and can benefit from Mystic Shield) and outputs damage. I've been underwhelmed with units of 10 in the past, as they have basically been glorified objective holders (Although they did go in and wreck the celestant prime once). I think a larger unit of 20 or 30 could potentially do quite well as a combat unit in our army.
There's also the fact that I'm a little bit concerned with the static nature of the army currently, and part of that is due to the emphasis my army (and most freeguild armies) have on the static shooting units. Having a combat unit in the army that can go out and put threat on the enemy could be just what the force needs.
They're definitely something I'm going to be looking more into when AoS 2.0 hits.
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I don't think they need to go so far. Most of the warscrolls are fine and interesting enough. The Demigryphs are a little lacklustre, but ultimately they're handicapped by 4+ to hit on all their attacks (and lack of rend on knight weapons). But at the same time, they can't go much better because GW want to push Dracoth Knights. So it's a tough call, at the moment they're that step down. Personally I would like to see either the Knights or Demi'****** on 3's, and the lance gains rend on the charge.
The main problem is the faction just has different options to do the same thing - output low quality attacks. For it to be a better faction, they need things that ultimately do other things like high rend or mortal wounds. That's IMO why the Griffon is one of the best pieces, because it offers mobility but also the high rend damage.
Because the faction does one thing well, you basically spend 1600 points trying to do that one thing as best as possible which leads to static gunline play.
Anyway! I've said my piece on that above. Overall I think the subfaction divide is a good thing for synergies, but a bad thing for army building. It's mean it's quite boring to build armies for some factions. Free Peoples at least have a variety of units in the army, it's just the play style tends to be forced in a single direction.
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1 hour ago, Creezy said:
Interested to know how you know about them in gh18? Just from faction focuses, or leaks I haven’t seen?
There are leaks around, the let's chat free peoples topic has a bit of a summary in the last few pages of certain aspects.
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So after having slept on it, it sure does sound a bit negative doesn't it!
Having thought about it more, I think really the difference is the fact the Empire was split up. In old editions, the 'battle trait' was pretty much the same, you could create detachments (Basically Great Companies). So why do I think that it felt better in old editions?
Ultimately I think that comes down to choice. It wasn't just infantry you purchased, you spiced it up with wizards and artillery and cavalry. You sadly can't fit a lot into 400 points of allies considering the current costs of wizards and artillery pieces, and our cavalry choices aren't super competitive currently (And certainly don't pack much of a punch).
That being said, I think I may be blinded a bit by what I feel tends to be the strongest lists, and what models I have available to me. At the end of the day, I have been tuning my army slowly towards what I feel is best which has tended towards a static gunline army. And of course, my biggest issue with the play style is it's a static gunline army! This has led to units like Greatswords, Demigryphs, Pistoliers and Outriders falling by the wayside which perhaps has meant I haven't given them a fair enough chance (Although I definitely ran the 2 former for a while, but a second griffon won out on that front).
Certainly if I get around to doing more Freeguild models, some of those units are on my list (As I tend to already have enough of everything else) and I'd like to try out different styles to see how they might work.
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Yeah I don't think Undulant Scourge lets you pick which model takes the damage.
It states "The nearest enemy model within 13" of the priest is infected by the Undulant Scourge. The infected model's unit suffers 1 mortal wound, plus 1 mortal wound for each other model from that unit that is within 3" of the infected model".
So the unit takes the damage, not the model. So the enemy gets to decide where the damage is assigned to.
And Kozokus is right in that it has to be the closest model, so it's likely that one side of that model is not actually going to be surrounded by friends (the side closest to you).
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I imagine Stormcast as those who essentially most of the time are in their armour. Like they stroll around the keeps, castles, etc in full armour, always ready in case needing to be called into action.
Hence, the only times they might be outside their armour would be for feasts, sleeping (although during war, might even sleep in their armour) and showering.
I would imagine when they are outside their armour, they wear pretty plain stuff for the most part. Perhaps the more 'noble' ones like Tempest Lords might fancy a bit of a dress up with the latest fashion. Otherwise I see them more like monks, pretty plain, boring clothes, as they have no real need to have wordly desires as their primary purpose is to fight in Sigmar's name.
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Thanks for the comment Davariel, interesting thoughts also. Here are some of my thoughts on your thoughts below!
On 7/29/2017 at 11:48 AM, Davariel said:I think the biggest problem is that there's simply too many to handle. It would take years to try and update even some of the aelf factions. IMO the best way forward would be to pick 2 or 3 of the ones with the most distinct themes - say, Scourge Privateers, Phoenix Temple, Lion Rangers, or Daughters of Khaine - and slot them for updates in the next 12-18 months. Everything else would be merged back into armies more like the old Dark/High elf armies, perhaps as Darkling Covens and Swifthawk Agents respectively.
I've said it before, but the Grand Alliance books IMO were both a blessing and a curse. It gave us all these additional factions, and fluff for Age of Sigmar, but it didn't really do anything to make the game better. If anything, for some players (like High Elves), it made it worse.
In regards to recombining them. I think for the Dark Elves, I do agree, which is why I think Darkling Covens and Order Serpentis make logical sense together. Shadowblades I would merge in as well, as I don't think they'll ever be expanded upon. I think the other Dark Elf factions (Daughters, Privateers) can stand on their own though, with a unique aesthetic and theme behind them.
The High Elves I don't necessarily agree though, because when they transitioned them they purged the 'core' of the High Elven race. That's why the High Elves are in an odd spot, because they don't have a common place to goto to be the 'bridging' faction, as the units that previously did that (Spearmen, Archers) are all legacy Highborn now. So to me preferably, it's the High Elves that actually need a lot of love soon out of any of the factions in the game.
On 7/29/2017 at 11:48 AM, Davariel said:I'm not sure how much promise there is for many of the aelf factions though. What future does Order Draconis have when Stormcast have already gotten a bigger, better dragon and monstrous drake-like cavalry? Likewise for Lion Rangers and Vanguard Stormcast (and you just know we're going to see a Space Wolves equivalent Stormcast chamber at some point
). If there are new Cthulhu aelves coming, Scourge Privateers might find themselves redundant. And so on.
While I hate Stormcast stealing the Aesthetics of the other factions, I think it'd probably resolve alright. Order Draconis could ride on proper proper Dragonlings (With wings), or infantry versions of the Dragonblades I think would look really cool, because the most distinctive thing about the Order Draconis isn't necessarily the Dragons, but their Dragon armour.
No idea what GW were thinking by stealing the Lion Ranger aesthetic for the Vanguard Chamber. Honestly, I'm just not really sure where they can go with the Lion Rangers. I suppose the much desired Lion Cavalry makes sense. I think Lion Rangers struggle a bit because the Lion is also a strong motif in the Stormcast.
I think the Scourge Privateers will come out alright. There's definitely the links with the sea beasts with the Cthulu stuff incoming, but I think the Privateers are one of those forces which are interesting to build a small force around. I don't necessarily think every faction has to be interesting enough to build a 2000 point army for, it's just currently none of the Aelf factions (bar perhaps Wanderers) are interesting enough to build an army for.
But back to that point on building a small force. I think the game needs smaller factions also, the ones that are more interesting to play small games or start a Skirmish force. Where they might have heroes/units appear in fiction. The types of factions that you can use as allies. I love that Scourge Privateers showed up in City of Secrets for example, but I don't necessarily know how to expand the faction to make it a worthwhile '2000 point' army faction.
That being said, I think most factions should be able to built into a proper army if the collector so chooses choose. So not so happy with where Lion Rangers currently are, especially since it could've been remedied by keeping the Korhil model around and just making him a generic Hero for Lion Rangers. So most if not all factions should both have battleline and hero units at minimum apart from factions that are clearly designed to be auxillary factions (Ironweld Arsenal and Collegiate Arcane for example).
On 7/29/2017 at 11:48 AM, Davariel said:One final unit you didn't cover but is probably worth mentioning is the Sisters of the Watch. I'm still baffled that GW moved them to Wanderers when literally every high elf faction is desperately starved for units. The aesthetics of the models are very much high elven, too. They even have a fire motif for crying out loud - which doesn't exactly fit with the green leafy forest look of the Wanderers.
I did write something about the Sisters initially. I don't particularly mind that they're in the Wanderers, but I do think they'd fit better elsewhere. My preference is actually in the Swifthawk Agents or Eldritch Council. In Swifthawk, they would be the guardians of sacred places (While the Shadow Warriors wage the undercover wars). My favourite is actually putting them in the Eldritch Council. Obviously their arrows are magical, and I think they could present the Eldritch Council as a gathering of those who use the Elements in various ways to fight against Chaos. The Swordmasters being non-magical warrior monks. The Sisters being matriarchical fire wielding archers. It would give an interesting way to evolve that faction in future, with other elemental themed units.
I don't necessarily like Phoenix Temple like you suggest, only because other than fire, there's not really anything to link them. No phoenix motifs or iconography, which I find to be a strong part of the Phoenix Temple Aesthetic (and hence, wouldn't want to dilute it). For a similar reason, I wouldn't put them in Order Draconis (dilutes the aesthetic). Eldritch Council and Swifthawks on the other hand don't have a hugely unique Aesthetic to dilute in the first place.
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8 hours ago, stato said:
The problem is, thats what they WERE trying to do. You are judging a decision made probably 3 years ago in a place where they either didnt have a plan or have certainly diverted from it. Path to Glory handbook has grouped Aelfs back together, we need to see what GHB2 does to these legacy units. I dont see any new models or tomes for any of these factions though, seems like their current approach is to just create a new well rounded faction that just happens to be a Orc/Human/Dwarf/Elf.
So all I'll say is, perhaps my points wasn't clear enough. I like what they are trying to do, but the execution has been lacking. Maybe the direction has changed, but certainly they haven't communicated that with us.
I also don't think Path to Glory proves anything in terms of what GW is going to do with older factions. Any faction that doesn't have a battletome was rolled into a larger grouping. Skaven clans were lumped under Skaven apart from Pestilens which has a battletome. All of Death was lumped under Death apart from Flesh-Eater Courts which, again, has a battletome. The only faction that wasn't lumped into another was Slaves to Darkness, as I guess, they can represent any of the Chaos Gods.
We already know that Nighthaunts are getting their own allegiance abilities in GHB2, a faction that in Path to Glory was lumped under Death. So yeah, I don't think we should be jumping up and shouting at GW just yet.
It's also important to recall, that Games Workshop have actually migrated some of the legacy factions into the Age of Sigmar. They've done so with Seraphon, Flesh-Eater Courts, Sylvaneth, Beastclaw Raiders and Bonesplitterz. 3 of those (4 if you count Flesh Eaters) were done after the Grand Alliance books came out.
Many of those were no-model releases, which is disappointing in some respects, but Games Workshop have been transitioning legacy armies. We just tend to forget.
I suspect that we're both a bit right. Games Workshop probably are never going to give some of the factions in the Grand Alliance books any love. I think they'll pick and choose the things they are interested in working on. They obviously want to do a lot of new stuff, but I think they'll also choose some older stuff as well.
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10 hours ago, Moonlightwolf said:
Pretty interesting ideas especially that last one, would to see them re-imagine some of the tomb kings units as Deathrattle. I'm currently in the process of building a themed deathrattle army that makes use of tomb kings warscrolls with the deathrattle keyword alongside more regular warscrolls to build a fully mounted skeleton army, with knights, chariots and horse archers led by a mounted wight lord and tomb herald (pretty much all converted) Really wish they'd kept the tomb kings models around and positioned them as "deathrattle kingdoms" or something along those lines and re-envisioned the liche priests as a deathrattle summoner.
Personally, if it were up to me, I would've split the Tomb Kings into two factions.
Desert Princes : Tomb King, Liche Priest, Tomb Herald, Royal Warsphinx, Casket of Souls, Tomb Guard, Skeleton Chariots, Necropolis Knights, War Sphinx
Architects of Death: Necrotect, Ushabti, Sepulchral Stalkers, Necrosphinx
Kill the Skeleton Warriors, Skeletal Horsemen, Carrion, Bone Giant, Tomb Swarm, Tomb Scorpion kits.
That way you have two very clear factions, the Tomb Kings and their servants as well as the ones who make the statues of war. I actually think both factions are kind've interesting, where the Desert Princes are basically done and dusted while the Architects of Death can be added onto later on.
But if I had to say, I think Games Workshop didn't want another faction primarily based on Skeleton Warriors. Even if those Warriors are quite different (Elite Warriors, Chariots, Snake Riders, Sphinxes) to the Deathrattle ones (Warriors, Horsemen, Elite Warriors). And perhaps the idea of Skeleton Legions being led by Tomb Kings just isn't that much different than Skeleton Warriors being led by Barrow Kings.
I do think it's such a shame, I'd be pretty tempted by a Tomb Kings list like that I reckon. Don't need to collect the old drudgy Skeleton models, you just get to make a list out of the best models in the range.
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3 hours ago, Aelford said:
Interested in picking this up. Does your Hero/Units get upgrades as they progress through a campaign?
I like that idea in the Hinterlands ruleset.
So not really.
Generally, the progression that occurs is your warband gets larger. After each battle, you roll on an end of game chart (Where the victor gets a bonus to this chart which we forgot :(). These generally range from abilities that help you during your next battle, to getting more renown which you can use to purchase units.
There are some permanent things though, such as your General being able to learn new Command Abilities or your Wizard learning spells.
But overall, the progression seems more like something that suits tournament play in that you get bonuses towards your next game, but nothing really permanent.
For real progression or a more in depth system (death and experience). @bottle has indicated that this might be the kind've content that makes it into future Hinterlands versions.
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10 hours ago, Thundercake said:
This is great. It would be awesome to see a named character in the future that gives more effective orders or has a new orders.
Thanks for the feedback! One of the battalions I have penciled down at the moment increases the range of orders.
I'll see what I can do in terms of named characters. In terms of more effective orders, I think the command traits cover reliability and the ability to give more orders. I'm not sure I'd want to create a character who can give strictly better versions of existing orders, which makes it tough (As there is an order for most things you commonly want to do).
Will have a bit of a think. I could definitely see some kind of named character, who's a bit outlandish with his tactics having a special order he can give.
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There is more information in the Grand Alliance books on each mini faction. Not a huge amount, but they do put the faction into a place in the world.
However, it is the kind've fluff that should be on each sub-factions landing page for each sub-faction on the website. The problem is, the current website is really just a webstore and everything is just filters on what products the user should see. So while you can select Order Serpentis on the store, you could also click Order Draconis as well and then what info should it be showing.
Personally I think GW should invest in an actual 'Age of Sigmar' website in a similar fashion to what they're doing with some of their boxed games. This website can give a brief history up until now, details on the goals and agendas of ALL of factions in the game, and of course, links to where to buy the models from the online store.
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In some ways, I really wish AoS was a bit more like 40k. Those lists don't sound so bad at 1000 points. It's enough of the same to still be interesting. But as soon as you start looking at 2000 points, none of those sub-factions look particularly enticing without drafting in some reinforcements from somewhere else.
But as soon as you do, you lose your allegiance battleline (So those reinforcements now have to be standard grand alliance battleline).
If you could build little mini-armies within the points limit, it'd be a lot nicer on building thematic grand alliance or allied forces style lists. That being said, 40k is riddled with abuse from what I've heard. So maybe a softer touch is you can claim an allegiance to a particular faction if more than 50% of the army share the keyword.
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Phoenix Temple wouldn't happen because the Annointed model is a finecast, and all the start collecting boxes only have plastic models.
For the same reason, the Wanderers box would include the Nomad Prince rather than a Spellweaver (or others) due to the fact that model is plastic while the others are finecast.
The infantry heavy factions are a consequence of splitting the factions I suppose, and not much to be done there. I don't know if this will stop them from getting Start Collecting boxes in the future (As I think GW is unlikely to expand Dispossessed or Darkling Covens in the near future). I'd like to see start collectings for them anyway, but it starts falling into the same issue with the Fyreslayers. There are so few different boxes that you'd be better off buying the Start Collecting sets rather than the individual boxes.
). If there are new Cthulhu aelves coming, Scourge Privateers might find themselves redundant. And so on.
FEC fully finished
in Hobby Down Under
A blog by someone2040 in General
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I've been very remiss about replying to comments in this thread, so if you're still around...
Basically the Ghast Courtiers are essentially Daemonette models with Ghoul arms and a bunch of green stuff. So underneath the dresses, there's basically a daemonette there. I just green stuffed the feet and dress.