stratigo

GW would love for you to try and chase the endless circle of tailoring to a meta, cause that's a road that never ends, as tourney players can tell you. You successfully tailor to the meta and the meta shifts to tailor to you. You're dropping a lot of money regularly to keep up with the churn of the meta, and GW loves it.

40k is dominated by elite melee infantry, not heroes, at the moment. And since stratagems are hero agnostic, heroes play less a role than they do in AoS where command abilities are hero linked. Both games have some issues with big face kicker heroes.

You shoulda known better! Everything is great to him, guy really values the company. I mean, being fair, he has tried to make BoK a thing himself. The AoS community here has always been ultra competitive I've noticed. And y'all migrated to Huzzah like two years ago, so I stopped getting regular AoS games in for ages. Albeit I dropped the game for a year anyways, and only got interested again cause animosity II. An aside, animiosity III is this summer too, and it's a lot of fun even under covid conditions, which hopefully will have cleared up enough by this summer that I can actually play people face to face and not struggle through TTS.

XD the manager at Springfield?

The cultists are weird to me cause they aren't, like, part of a boxed game. They're their own kits.

I mean, yeah, GW corporate cares not super much about balance except in how is moves product. I bet most of the people on this forum has read this article.

Seraphon as like 80 percent excellent and no one change is going to do a darn thing. No one complains about saurus. Yet. Because skinks are better. Take away the skinks, saurus are still excellent and can be built around for competition. Seraphons are great top to bottom. It is really up to LRL's new command ability disabling spell to shift their place in the meta, since seraphon rely on their command abilities in almost any build you can do.

And how exhaustive is this list? Look, you aren't using datasets very well. I can use this graph to argue "Well seraphon isn't that overpowered really". And that'd be ridiculous. Where are you sourcing your data? Honestly it's not looking like you have done your due diligence in statistics. Maybe to argue against needed nerfs for your faction? Indeed it looks like AoSshorts format, but, I can't find this dataset on their website at all. Their last one ends in September far as I can find. Did you do it yourself? I'd like to see some analysis behind this dataset if it exists. Now, it does annoy me somewhat that THO doesn't regularly leave their stats in writing where I can find it, leaving them mostly in video format, and thus not easily linkable, but they do good stats. Their most recent stats video is promising something big for stat in the future, so here's hoping. Ultimately though, going with their regular analysis, LRL are easily in the top 5 of armies. I place them number 3, after seraphon and IDK.

They gonna nerf him by making him stronger and then upping his point cost hard. Or so I hope >.<

Teclis' arrogance is usually written as justified more often then not, though they did drop the, uh, extra nerd wish fulfilment stuff eventually. XD I hope that they can pierce this, but, again, GW writers like elves a lot.

There are ways to better analyze it. It is an endless frustration for me that AoS lacks, well, its own 40kstatcenter. THO does good work, but they don't go as hard into the numbers as 40kstats does, which makes looking at 40k balance actually really quite easy. The WLV is the one tool KO have to make this match actually a match. Without it, KO are gonna struggle to do damage into all the defenses Lumineth trivially get even going second. And, knowing that, deploy to minimize its impact. I think one of the issues is that deploying into a KO alpha strike is just different and more meticulous than deploying into any other army in the game, and KO will punish any deployment mistakes hard. You can't set up to maxmimize your auras for turn 2 and one, KO will punish you. You can't set up just trying to screen melee alphas, KO will punish you. You need to make the most of 9 inch gaps, and make sure your key pieces are spread and can't get multiples caught in the WLV. Preventing a WLV tic on teclis, then avoiding being grudgebombed, then perhaps even zoning out KO 12 inch firepower (if they went thunderers) or charges (if they went heavy baloons) means teclis should live easily, and you are already in a good position. An alpha drop is super vulnerable to Teclis' nuke (You'll hit like 5/6 units, no joke), and KO units are really vulnerable, especially to mortal wounds. So, if you prevent teclis from being targeted by a good chunk of KO firepower, you can use your defensive quartz spends on other units to keep them alive. Now, you are probably just going to lose the cathallar no matter what you do. But, iunno, turnabout's fair play I guess XD

You're looking at the wrong stats, and the timeline is too extended, there's like 5 months where lumineth literally didn't have the models to play competitive, and in the remaining period they still wracked up 11 tournament wins, while all these other factions were available the entire time. Indeed they had more wins then anyone but seraphon (the king of the meta) and DoT DoT were, earlier, like so brutally overpowered they were essentially unbeatable by anyone, and GW had to emergency nerf them a couple times to leave them merely normally overpowered instead of essentially unbeatable. I'd love to see this corrected to post tzeentch nerf to see where they stand, which I imagine is still pretty good. Also, like, this isn't taking out the outliers like the legion of grief or hedonites there and you are trying to be misleading by pointing only to winrates, which is only part of determining a faction's strength.

Lumineth were roughly the third most performing army after seraphon and IDK before their new stuff dropped. If you are losing that often against KO.... You just aren't very good, or you are taking a not competitive list into the big Ko competitive alpha drop one. The math for Ko beating LRL is very even, because KO need to win their first turn or they lose, but you are going to be attempting to either kill a 2 plus save teclis (if teclis isn't getting a two plus save, then things shift a bit), or minus one to hit other units, and if you fail to manage enough of that, KO just lose, Their entire army is exposed to the retaliation, and LRL will wipe the KO hard. One thing to learn playing against KO is don't bunch together. Really, I know LRL have their aura stuff going and like being compact, but until the the alpha drops, the more you bunch together the more the best damaging utility a KO alpha has can do. Eg the WLV. If the WLV can hit 4 or 5 units including a character or two, you gonna have a rough day. If GW ever takes the WLV away, things gonna get rough for KO in this matchup. And use your nine inches (eg you can leave 9 inch gaps tween units and KO can't drop into that) to zone out KO from targeting your better units (like teclis, this is the major wincon, kill teclis or not. So don't make it easy. There's a lot of damage you can zone out, notably all sources of mortals, and KO taking a shot at teclis and FAILING is game over for them). LRL is one of the armies that ranges well enough themselves that KO can't really afford to hug the corners and delay the drop, cause the second sentinels get in range, the battleplan falls apart when your WLV chucker gets arrowed. In either case the game is usually decided by turn two.

Ko became, at that point, mostly a melee alpha strike with one or two big deathstar rigger squads that dropped in, used a hook for mobility, and mulched most things in the game on a charge. So, uh, it literally wasn't any better. KO played pretty damn similar then as to now except their punch was a buffed melee unit supplemented with shooting instead of the other way around.

Right Khemist stacking. That was pretty nuts, though I imagine it ran into diminishing returns eventually. I started KO pretty much immediately after the nerf. They also nerfed drill cannon damage, which was a bit much on top of all the other nerfs. KO tends to get whapped really hard, harder than other armies, when they are nerfed. Struck me as KO not oplaying the way the designers imagined (Less boats, more bodies), as opposed to now where boats are way more central than they were. Though you can still get away with a strong one clad drop list, so that might get a nerf. They still need to give frigates something to make them a good choice though.

The issue is, a lot of the time, I don't feel like teclis' insufferability is actually a flaw to the people writing him much less he is their avatar to get all 'rationalist' community on others. Teclis is here to own you with facts and logic cause he is such a masterful logic man. And that's why he gets the hot elf twins (yes this used to be a thing).

the 24 skyhooks never made a huge impression on the meta. And, playing with them, they weren't as good as you'd think. There's a limit to what you could do with them. It was thunderers that were the most OP thikng, that they nerfed almost immediately cause it was dumb and unintended.

Fly high makes deployment mostly meaningless for KO. They set up anywhere and go anywhere. Rolling for first turn after deployment is actually a bad choice, but AoS took an even worse choice with the attempts to out drop enemies and battalions. They should implement what they did in 40k. Players know who is going first before setup. This is rather more balanced, as has been felt in 40k. It really helps mitigate the first turn alpha strike. Now AoS has the double turn, which just needs to go, for this change to mean anything. Of course you disagree, taking sunmetal weapons away would make it slightly harder to win. Mate, the army is over performing in competition, and like, obviously doesn't pass the smell check, let's not pretend because you play the army, that the army isn't in the top three. And you just got a big option to kick seraphon in the nards (and most other armies too really)

Sun metal weapons also exist in combat. It's annoying on wardens too. Sentinels are annoying because they can dump mortal wounds with no counter at all from almost anywhere on the board, and there's not much even other shooting armies can do about it, what tween their range and shining company. Mortal wounds throw the game off, and slaanesh has the same "precision strike" moved to wounds, where if it really needs to exist, it should be. And also, like, not be on 5s with an increasingly trivial spellcast. It's a bad mechanic, and if Lumineth lost it or had it forced to wounds the army would still be in the top tables, but be ever so slightly less oppressive. Which, ya know, needs to happen because the army is overpowered as is.

XD Maybe GW realized sunmetal weapons were a mistake, but the other units are too new for them to remove without a lot of player rage. I mean, I can only hope, sunmetal weapons are really dumb and GW needs to stop handing out mortal wounds like candy.

Again, you are getting distracted by flashy descriptive that don't ultimately matter. The elves achieved literally every strategic goal they had going into the campaign. Nagash achieved none. "Ah but the battles though" is a poor way to look at war, and indeed is has literally cost states wars in real life. The germans in ww1 thought they could win a war on tactical successes alone, and lacked a strong strategic goal other than "win battles" and it didn't turn out. Nagash didn't seem to succeed once ever though. Because, of course, his success ends the setting. All his wins were very qualified and always fell short of his full goals because GW can't stopn giving nagash the objective of "Wipe out the entire setting". I mean, like, this was his plan in the old world, twice before the end times. Then again at the end time. And now in AoS. It's a bit rote now. If GW gave him some restraint, that's be great, because as it stands, he just looks incompetent. I really want them to do something with Nagash that isn't literally "and today I will do what I do every day. TRY AND TAKE OVER THE WORLD!" Every time you do that, Nagash has to lose. I mean his great rituals also all take ridiculous prep and are easily disrupted too, so, his magical abilities might be great, but he doesn't really apply them well. This is a thing every time too. Also they keep giving him the most petulant personality, and I can't take it seriously as a threat either.

I got around to it and it’s Kay. The fights are a bit one sided ultimately in that teclis pretty much achieves all his strategic goals and Nagash achieved none. There’s a bit of damage and devastation and the mysterious lingering injury, but those weren’t strategic aims for nagash, he categorically failed to achieve any on his strategic goals and if you know anything about military history, then you’d know that tactical considerations are far far less important than operational and strategic ones. People can get distracted by the flash and glitz of a flashy tactical victory, but if that victory fails to achieve the strategic goal, then it is entirely worthless. That’s the ultimate feel I get from reading the narrative. Gw, not being experts, tried to give nagash a bit of bite through making the elves pay a high tactical cost, but utterly failed to make his threat actually, well, meaningful because he never achieves anything meaningful towards his plans or goals. it is pretty clear though that nagash has always been an utterly inept military leader. And indeed I think he on some level recognizes this. The problem is... non of his underlings except one are any good at it either, or at least any good at achieving his goals. Without katakros, death is a lot more toothless since he seems to be the only one with both the skill and the inclination to pursue nagash’s agenda militarily. Mannfred deliberately tries to find loopholes, neffy probably does too, and she also has no meaningful experience in warfare, though she is an ample delegator. Olyander doesn’t seem to really have a lot of autonomy of self. And Arkhan doesn’t really have the head for war either, though he is a better diplomat and administrator than nagash is this is likely why nagash’s default strategy is always “cast the big flashy spell that will make me super god plus!”

I'd like to add my voice to the masses clamoring for a darker scheme

It does make that combo noticeably stronger though. the wind spells alone are amazing on teclis, though two of the better ones are less strong against ko since we don’t run hordes and our command abilities are kinda trash. But just a teleport is a gigantic boon to LRL that is game changing for every matchup that they have

Honestly.... I think it takes a good competitive player to be able to actually do this. If it's two people hard core into the beer and pretzels, but one is playing LRL and the other is playing sylvaneth, that LRL player is going to cream the sylvaneth player hardcore almost every time despite neither trying to take competitive armies. It is why it frustrates me when people go "Oh competitive shouldn't count, most people don't play that way" as if balance is only skewed for people trying to 5-0 tournaments and if you're just super caj, well it's no problem. It's even worse for casual players, because pure casual often don't know what they're getting in to, and darn the seraphon player has just beaten the pants off everyone in the group for the twentieth time. It takes some pretty good understanding of your army to know how to tone it down as well as how to turn it up, and it takes an understanding of the opponent's army to know where to tone your army down to. And I can't tell you how many stories I have been hearing about people's starts in a warhammer game being, pretty much "Me and my brother (Friend, what have you) used to play, and he won 90 percent of games cause he took overpowered faction X, while I had underpowered faction Y". This isn't people trying to bend the rules into a pretzel to top the ITC (Or whatever circuit), it's siblings where one just bought a better army than the other.