angrycontra

I'm rather disappointed with lack of new fyreslayer models but that endless spell(?) Is probably one of the coolest I've seen (almost a waste if it's a endless spell/prayer, I'd almost wish that it would be summoned unit). Also based on description, some kind of non-hero magmadroth army sounds possible which was my bare minimum request. Really cool cover art too.

Grey seer must be your general to wield him.

Now I don't have major playtest data behind me but purely from observation and analysis I can say that most of them are pretty bad. Virulent procession is ****** but it's not meant for 2k points anyway. Congregation of filth is decent but overpriced (should cost no more than 120). Foulrain is probably only battalion in the book I can call actually good. Plaguesmog on the other hand is the biggest joke ever. Verminus one seems good on paper, but +1 attack on wholly within 13" for 1 command point is bleh, made worse by the outrageous 180 point cost (better off just buying 2 extra command points for 100 and using those for the attack boost). Moulder one is decent but again overpriced. Skyre one is horrible trash. It's so overpriced that it's only viable in 3k+ games. Eshin one would be solid but has one problem: night runners. Night runners along with doom flayer weapon team are the worst units in the battletome. 80 for unit that is basically as good as clanrats but doesn't have universal battleline... and to think plague monks are cheaper than them. It's just too heavy tax imo (gutter runners are actually good). Skyre one from carrion empires box is ok but nothing more. Decent if you really need that extra artifact.

Honestly I think pestilens might be the most broken thing in the book. Speaking competetively, I consider pure pestilens to be easily the strongest form of army in this new skaven battletome. Plague monk deal like 4 times the clanrat damage if not more (and this is not a joke), clanrats are tiny bit tougher to kill but not enough to make difference and all this for tiny 40p difference for max size units. Plague monks have currently easily the highest damage output for their points in game (fully buffed unit does something like 90+ wounds on average against 4+ sv in single combat round). Furnace on the other hand, is the single toughest hero for its cost in the game right now, no contest. 180 for 13w with 4+ and 5++ and look-out sir on top of that (both range and melee). The closest thing to it is horticulous slimux and that one still doesn't hold a candle. Then you add easy mortals, prayers and bshock immunity aura and you have the most underpriced hero in the game. Screaming bell too obviously. Mark my words, pestilens is gonna be nerfed in the future. I was shocked to see their points unchanged after the outrageous buffs they received (and it's quite a joke to look at nightrunner warscroll/points and compare it plague monks, what were they thinking). The straw that broke camel's back imo was giving plague monks that horde bonus (+1 to hit/wound) and no point changes and funnily enough they removed that ability from clanrats warscroll, which means clanrats are exactly same as before while plague monks got nothing but buffs.

I don't know, to me this list just doesn't quite seem to work. Here's couple of problems: 1. Only 2 heroes but you have 3 artifacts. You're losing a lot of value on one of your battalions. Also 2 heroes is just too easy to snipe out and you auto-lose any "only heroes/behemots can hold any objectives"-scenarios. Finally those cannons need dedicated warlock to empower them and when you have only 2 heroes you can't really use them to boost your other guys. 2. You don't need extra command points in skyre list like that. Best command point uses for skyre are bshock immunities (but your units are too small to benefit from that), run 6 for acolytes (but you only have 1 unit for that) and charge rerolls for stormfiends (but again those sf units are too small to make greatest impact). 3. Not every list out there is alpha strike and this list imo doesn't necessarily do good enough job guarding you from such lists. After all, when your opponent charges and locks your units in melee, most of your ranged units are stuck and you lose. 5++ for first turn is decent but not 280 decent. If you really want battalion, just take 1 and put those guys in front line. 4. Warp lightning vortex is great spell but it is massive point sink and very difficult to cast. I've played games where every spell with 7 casting value has failed and this one has 8. You only have warlock engineers who are not reliable casters to pull that off (grey seer as general would do lot better job on that front, plus it can get +1 to cast from trait). 5. Aaand finally this list ultimately fails to cover ground efficiently. Basically any horde armies will simply overwhelm your numbers and control all objectives by default. My recommendations: Drop the 2nd battalion, if you don't want any non-skyre as general drop vortex too, get 1 unit of 6 stormfiends (they can shield rest of your army pretty well with 5++ sv on first turn) and maybe extra hero too.

Also 15 acolytes is not enough to move screaming bell. Once your opponent farts in their general direction, they lose 6+ models and your bell is stuck in place for the rest of the game.

Had a 1500p game fairly recently with primarily skryre army vs khorne. Lost the match and here's some observations: Thanquol is great but he got stuck fighting way too many turns against this big chaos knight blob (doing 30+ wounds with him in single turn is not exactly easy with 4 fists). His inclusion ultimately didn't work out well in my already small unit/model count army as I had lackluster ability to cap objectives. His biggest issue is that spell of his. It's not very impressive spell tbh so having an endless spell or two is highly recommended with him. Stormfiends felt a bit meh. I honestly think best way forward with them is to make one big group of 6, buff them up with full hit/wound rerolls and that +1 hit artifact plus warp spark to do incredibly damage. Besides that I'm planning on having single small harassing stormfiend unit with warpgrinder for deepstriking. Doomwheel didn't get to drive over anything but man that thing can still do some damage. Managed to roll 11 with super charged missile weapon and completely destroyed this unit of 10 chaos warriors in 1 turn. Doomwheel is now genuinely powerful when given chance. Skyre acolytes are great now. Run + shoot is so huge for them and that +1 damage with warpspark as well. The fact that I can quarantee run of 6 is useful, because Skyre rarely needs other command abilities and they're horde(ish) unit too so it all works quite well. I'm definetly going to convert some bloodbowl teams to make more acolytes for myself. Terrain piece were useless with the exception of making slight threat on the board (for early game deepstriking). I think that in larger games with more units to spare, they.ll be more useful but in this game they just didn't work out. Ultimately though my biggest mistake was spreading my forces too thin. I should've focused down on specific units rather than try to deal with everything at once. Also khorne is kinda annoying opponent vs skryre, that automatic unbinding basically means that I'll never get to use super charged warp spells. I'm also gonna leave thanquol out from smaller games. As nice as he is, 400 is too much to spend on a single model in objective based games. I also really hope that gw will errata atleast option to spend ally points to get other skaven units for pure skyre army. Getting even 1 or 2 20 clanrats would solve a lot (I feel a 3rd unit would take too many points of the army) of problems with holding objectives and screening/protecting skryre units.

I'm sorry but what? Didn't buff the bad weapon options? +1 attack and rend on mini mortars plus huge range boost. +1 to wound with ratlings and those things gain most from new warpstone sparks (+1 damage on range). And as far as rest of the changes go, I wouldn't call them nerfs. Doom-flayers didn't change, warpshock gauntlets are now unmodified hit (which is nerf and buff at same time), flamers are terrible against single target and insane against hordes (again, nerf/buff), drills do less damage but have more reliable deepstriking (as you're guaranteed to enter battlefield in turn 3), stormfiends points also went down 30 which is very significant drop. The only true nerfs I'd say they received are weapon options nerf (something I ultimately thought being a good thing) and inability to use packmasters to boost their hit. I have plenty of issues with this new book's battleline systems and all that, but the stormfiends are honestly the last thing that annoys me. Quite the opposite, I like those changes (I even guessed some of those changes correctly in skyre thread before this book). I can however understand and sympathize with the weapon limitation changes forcing players to go back and change original weapons (flamers and shock gauntlets most likely) to something else. But I'd also argue that writing was on the wall and GW was either going to flat out nerf the best options or reduce their numbers (flamers were especially problem with their auto-hit mortals) so these changed do not surprise me one bit.

There are multiple issues: First of all, clanrats are not cheap as far as battleline are concerned. In order to get minimum battleline requirements, you need 3x20 clanrats, that's 360 points. The only other alternative is stormvermin but that's even more expensive at 420 points. For army that wants to primarily focus on skyre stuff for example but wants to also add thanquol to their list have to spend 300+ points just to get basic battleline out and then add 400p thanquol. That is massive investment and army loses its skyre identity in the process and instead becomes "another generic skaven list". Then there is the matter of pestilence. With Skyre I can almost agree that skyre needs clanrats/stormvermin but pestilence? Pestilence already runs 100+ monks on average and now if they want to add something special, they need to get 30-60 models that don't fit aesthetically in pestilens army just so they can add some rat ogors (say pestilence player wants to convert rat ogors to be like plague rat ogors) or similar. It is restrictive system that shoehorns all lists to use same basic boring structure. The current battleline system even prevents pestilence utilizing their nurgle allies which is the biggest joke of all. Not to mention clanrats are faaaar worse than plague monks in basically everything. Final point is this: over past few years GW established multiple ways to play skaven faction. This book was supposed to be gloomspite gitz-style playground where players have great freedom in list building. Instead every mixed skaven list is forced to have that same basic dull setup. Also not everyone likes clanrats. I collect pestilence and skyre because I enjoy their looks but their ranges are too small so I want to mix them up more. I do like stormvermin but I'd rather wield them in single large unit than multiple min size units so the book doesn't leave me too many options.

After having looked at some of the reviews/warscrolls/other stuff I have to say that my feelings towards this skaven release are probably more mixed than any other release in the history of aos. Let's start with the good stuff: 1. Rules-wise I feel this release is incredibly. They managed to fix/change/improve almost every issue I had with old skaven rules while still maintaining the faction identity with Skavens' self destructive ways. There are tons of useful warscrolls and ways to build this army. 2. Gnaw holes look cool and they help with some of the mobility issues this army used to have. Endless spells are also cool addition. 3. I think it's safe to say that skaven will be very competetive after this release, the amount of new synergies/powerups/etc. Is quite good and with almost no point cost changes. 4. No summoning mechanics (minus screaming bell and such). I don't mind summoning but not every army should have it and I'm glad skaven didn't get it either. 5. It's good to get new expanded lore for skaven. And then the bad stuff... 1. No new models (apart from that 1 warlock). 'nuff said. 2. Special Battlelines limited to their factions was the stupidest thing GW could've ever done. Thanks to that, playing skyre, moulder, eshin or pestilens force have way less options than before. You can't even ally nurgle as pestilens as then your army stops being pure pestilens. Book with 40 warscrolls yet these armies are limited to 4-10 or something like that... brilliant... 3. Speaking of universal battlelines... only clanrats and stormvermin... like couldn't they at least make skyre acolytes battleline if skyre hero is general and giant rats for moulder if master moulder is hero etc. What's even worse is that both of these battleline options are horde centric units, so if you want to maximise their potential, you need to spend a lot of points. 4. Battalions seemed mostly terribly and why on earth did they bring skyre enginecovens back? They could have split those enginecovens to separate much better mini battalions. What on earth went through their heads... 5. Some potentially broken stuff. Just look at plague monks: they get bonus to hit and wound when their unit is big enough. They get +1 attack on all weapons (staffs too) on both charge and prayer. They get full wound rerolls on prayer and corruptor command gives them full hit rerolls. Then you add banner that causes wound rolls of 6 to do 2 damage per hit. And they now have 6+ sv and don't have to worry about bshock (thanks to new furnace aura). Does that sound balanced to you at 70p/240p. They were never bad to begin with, it was the army surrounding them that was meh. Now the surrounding army is better and these guys have basically become new better cheaper witch aelves. So yeah, like I said, mixed feelings. I personally hope that people would make some noise regarding to those battleline options. I so want gw to loosen up those restrictions a bit (it should min. 70% army that is pure skyre, pestilens, whatever to unlock those battlelines.)

Gotta say, I really dislike their use of that "battletomes for every grand-alliance"-picture. Unless they're really planning on releasing SCE, fyreslayers, soulblight, gutbusters/bcr and whatever that chaos mess is supposed to be. Not saying it's impossible to get all those factions but if one of those factions shown doesn't get new btome, it's almost akin to false advertisement. Still, my hope for future fyreslayer tome is still strong.

From that article I have 1 major concern that could honestly partially destroy almost all of my excitement for this book if it comes true (despite all the great looking abilities). Near the end it states that "if you want to focus more on one of the clans, you'll be rewarded with special battleline", I pray to god that doesn't mean that in order for me to have stormfiends for battleline, I need to wield exclusively skyre army, 'cause that would be the most boring thing ever. One of my greater desires from this book was that I could play skyre army with some stormvermins thrown in (without ally system) or pestilens with maybe something heavy like thanquol added to it. If there is some non-clanrat small model count cheap unit as universal battleline (similar to dire wolves) I might forgive this kind of boring thing but I doubt that very much. And before anyone says, no I have no interest in buying clanrats. I have a horde army already, it's called clan pestilens and I have no intention of getting another horde on top of that.

Although I'm really happy about skaven btome release (and double release with fec really caught me off-guard) I'm still kinda disappointed. Both Skaven and Fec really needed more new units (or in skaven's case, updated versions of their ancient kits). Take FeC for example, many of their heroes are just lazy "build this guy with different head" style conversions, which was fine for early aos (where undersized units were not an issue) but it's kinda ****** now when you basically will end up with 9 useless ghouls or 2 useless horrors, etc. For matched play. Still I won't rant too much. I'm definetly buying skaven tome day 1, probably with scenery and spells with it. Those skaven dice also look nice, gw dice that are actually easy to read gasp! I do hope that the clan specific allegiances allow you to freely pick units from whole btome even if the allegiance powers/artifacts/synergies and battleline options themselves favor that specific clan.

I actually want them to nerf warpfire weapons (especially for stormfiends) but not because I want to ruin stormfiends. On the contrary I think warpfire stuff is the reason they are so bloody expensive. If they nerf warpfire (even something like giving it a hit value or making rule like "roll dice, if it is equal or under enemy unit size do 2d3 mw" would suffice) and give shock gauntlets unmodified 6 (this will happen extremely likely, whether you like it or not, as they have done so with so many of the recent btomes) and change warpgrinder to d3 damage (because I know some would spam mass warpgrinders with multiple hit boosts) with more reliable deepstrike (2+ instead of 3+), they could easily slash like 40p off stormfiends point cost. And I personally would love slightly worse stormfiends for significantly lower price which would mean that it is more of a buff than nerf almost. The gas weapon should still be buffed though (like +1 to wound rolls). Second thing people need to consider with the impending new battletome: You know it, I know it, gautfyre skorch is either gonna be deleted or nerfed to the point that it no longer works as well as it used to. Some of the other engine covens might survive as their own battalions but gautfyre is gonna more or less die. My evidence? Literally every battalion gw has released since these modern battletomes started releasing. The time of these super impactful kill-everything battalions is basically over. Also anything that allows deepstriking closer than 9" needs to have a really good reason for it, and I don't see gw thinking that mass mortals on face is any good reason as it is anti-fun mechanic (even with my proposed warpfire nerfs).

It is placed in your territory, more than 12" of enemy territory and that bshock immunity aura is wholly within 12" so it ain't that great for pure trogg, spider or squig armies.

I have to say, I'm bit worried about loonshrine. Its unit resurrection only affects moonclan grot stabbas and shootas. Why is this problem? Well let's assume this thing is free terrain piece all gloomspite armies get by default. What happens when I want to play pure trogg or spiderfang or squig force? Am I effectively punished for not taking standard moonclan units because that ability is just too good to pass? Bshock immunity it also gives is nice but only if you can place it in the middle.

While I'm very happy for that box (no stormcast, big plus) I will say that it doesn't interest me that much. For one, I got plenty of storm fiends to begin with. Two, I have a doomwheel and I never want to paint another one (seriously one of the worst paint projects I've ever had). And finally no need for cannon either. I do want the hero, will probably have to buy one from ebay.

My take on possible skaven tome is this: I don't want any skaven tome this year, if it means that there'll be no new models in (not counting scenery and endless spells). I do want gw to give them beta rules in next ghb to ease the wait though (kinda like they did with sisters in 40k). In fact, I hope gw uses next ghb to really boost allegiance abilities for ghb factions and bring them closer to newer factions in power level (still can't understand what insanity led them to nerf skyre and wanderers).

Thing is though, while I agree that Skaven have gotten some terrific models and BoC has been left in the corner, BoC overall have actually more complete range as far as plastic models are concerned (and many of them still good looking). Skaven on the other hand... Clan moulder's entire range needs update with the exception of abomination (there is good looking rat ogors in that spire of dawn set but nobody wants to build army based on 2 models that are repeated), clan eshin night runners are so old that they still require glueing tails on the models while gutter runners are metallic, great majority of skyre models are metallic (stormfiends, doomwheel and warp cannon are the only skyre plastic models, plus 2 of the weapon teams). On top of that most hero models are metallic. In BoC only some heroes, some chariot, some of the monsters (plus centigors) are metallic/resin and the rest are decent looking plastic models. And like mentioned above, Skaven are generally more popular as a faction. They haven't even got proper battletome and they still show up on tournaments frequently while hardly anyone brought beastmen even as a mixed chaos list when it was possible before the battletome. With that said, I don't think GW will abandon beastmen, but I don't think they're getting any new stuff for good couple of years.

For magmadroth, technically all options are decent, however, runesmiter one is usually the best option. Problem is though that taking runesmiter on foot is better than taking one on magma. Runefather magma is good as general if you want hg berzerkers as battleline (or you want to wield lords of lodge battalion), while runeson magma is best if you're planning to take warrior kinband battalion. For weapon options for runeson magma, it really doesn't matter, axe is better melee while javelin is decent at range (if it ever hit/wound the target...). For vulkites as mentioned above, any options are good. Axes are actually better these days than they used to be, thanks to the existence of nighthaunt. One mention though (if it wasn't obvious): Vulkites are only really good at units of 30. At units of 20 they're ok but don't just have the same staying power, at msu (10) they are bad and die like flies. This is of course thanks to their ability which gives them better bonus feel-no-pain-save the more you have (something I actually wish were to change in future battletome, so annoying to waste 300+p for every battleline in this army).

I personally think that the best way to nerf graveyards is to change them to work only for one unit per graveyard per turn, so no stacking multiple graveyard effects on single unit. With that said, I do think that Grimghasts need to go up, even if it does hurt nighthaunt, they're just that good unit.

In all honesty I still think GW did never intend for the whole "25mm get to attack from 2 ranks" to happen. I mean just compare bloodreavers to plague monks. Plague monks have better base for attacks than reavers but they also get 2 ranks worth of attacks, their damage potential is more than double of reavers' potential, yet they cost same amount. Now I'm not here to dispute the ruling but to me it feels like GW is too afraid to touch it in anyway. I'm pretty sure they've never officially addressed that rule in any way. The argument I sometimes see is something along lines of "the units are balanced around that they can attack from 2 ranks with 1" attacks" which in all honesty is a bit of bulldung if you ask me. I don't think I've seen a single example of warscroll where it costs more points (as it should) for having same stats with smaller 25mm base as some other unit with 32mm bases. Just look at Gors vs ungors and you'll just know gw didn't care about base size whatsoever when they decided on points, stats etc. With that said, like I said, I don't dispute it or ask people to play it any other way. I just personally hate the whole inch based attack range system and feel like it should've been addressed in some way when they made aos 2nd edition.

While that artwork doesn't really confirm any factions, I do find it interesting how frequently scourge privateers show up both in lore/books and various boxes (shadows over hammerhal, anvilgard box, this new game) . Would love to see them becoming actual faction one day. Their current models (as few as there are) are good looking so base for a proper faction is there. Only thing going kinda against them is the existence of Idoneth deepkin, after all both factions are seafaring people and both are employing/hunting various sea monsters.

You either roll his attacks seperately (doesn't matter whether you throw them before or after everyone else) or like I said, use different color dice to show his attacks. Like if you got 10 vulkites in range and one is karl, you roll 18 attacks with red dice for example and 2 with black, representing Karl, or something like that. But yeah, you must roll Karl seperately in some way because his attacks have basically different profile than rest of your vulkites. The damage Karl does is simply added to the total damage you do once all vulkites have attacked.

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