stratigo

That is not how slave societies have ever worked. No slave regime has existed without sexual violence, the spartans literally had an entire social class consisting of the children of spartans and helots, and how much choice does a slave have to refuse sex with their owners? It's something people tend to shy away from, as rape and sexual violence is more disturbing than most other kinds of violence, but it's the reality of slavery. I dunno if this is a kink thing or a jokey thing or just a lack of context, but in the reality of a vast slave system, how much do you think male slaves will eagerly be jumping at the chance to have sex with the people who abuse and exploit them really? If this is really where you think the DoK maintain their population, it would only be accomplished by systematic rape. I doubt GW will weigh in in any case. Sex isn't really something they comment a lot on, and, really, I wouldn't want them to. GW is not equipped for a frank look at slaving societies, best keep it vague to avoid draining a lot of the horror that such societies inevitably create.

I know this is all jokey. But, like, we're talking about rape right here. The DoK going out and raping vast proportions of their male slaves for babies. Which is pretty grim. Especially considering that rape and sexual violence is the reality of real life slave societies, one of the darkest aspects people shy away from is just how much rape was going on in the south, and in other societies with a large proportion of slaves.

Forgeworld prime (as opposed to the specialists under it) still seems to be in a state of chaos to me.

It's something of a continuation of the fantasy dark elf tropes too, where a society that utterly treacherous doesn't really work, you need some form of social bonds beyond "the guy in charge is scary" for the ruling class to function. I know a lot of folks who sort of revised dark elf society into something more functional, but still awful. A highly militarized fascist state constantly undergoing war preparations, or launching military expeditions under Malekith. It created a more cohesive society, but one that remains pretty damn evil. We simply don't know enough about how people in Ulgu live to even try and extrapolate a greater DoK society or how their temple cities function. The descriptions are so bare because GW hasn't fleshed out Ulgu yet.

I mean, again, sparta. The actual historic reality of their annual declaration of war against the helots is under question by scholars of the period, but it is something the primary sources do say about sparta, where young spartan men regularly go out and slaughter helots. I really can't stress how awful the primary sources about sparta make sparta look as a society. A bunch of lazy aristocrats who sometimes fight lording over a vast and truly brutally oppressed slave society. Like, about as bad or worse than antebellum south. Antebellum south also provides illustrative evidence about how slave societies can work of course. Even in places where the slaves vastly outnumbered the slavers, revolts were rare, and never successful. A culture of constant brutality and violence applied arbitrarily and randomly does a lot to disorient people and prevent their ability to organize. The problem with drow is less how ****** they are to their slaves and how ****** they are to, like, literally everyone. Family, other aristocrats, other states. Southern planters could be prickly and prideful and shoot each other over minor provocations, but they were also famously hospitable to guests who maintained the right manners. It's hard to run a society that literally religiously exalts being treacherous to everyone and everything.

There's never gonna be a dwarf thread if the dwarf players don't make it! GW has historically neglected dwarves in narratives.

reminds me of existing textual sources know of the spartans. A bunch of envious upper class athenians pissy about even the limited democracy of athens fantasizing about being spartans describing a horrible society that is a bunch of slavers and their slaves with a largely unearned reputation for military excellence. I think the main issue with DoK is that Ulgu is off limits, and that's where all the temples are. We won't really find out what's going on there until GW gets around to releasing Malerion and his faction and then we'll probably get the floodgates to open like we have the lumineth and Hysh

I did take it as morathi had the entire non elf population massacred

KO aren't an easy win army. If you don't build the list right and play that list well, you're in for a tough time.

There's good and bad. Morathi is bad. Like the overthrow of the city came with actual genocide. That's bad.

I'd love more works for frigates and gunhaulers. And a reason to take frigates since I have 2

Maybe read more than one line.

I dismissed them because they are poor ideas. Making fly high a move means it is incredibly easy to shut down flying high. Which means it becomes unreliable in most matchups after the first turn, which means you double down on an alpha strike because you no longer have the same flexibility to escape combat as you used to. You make our mobility less reliable and you encourage doubling down on strategies that require less mobile after the first turn. EG, the strategy that is making KO perform so well in the first place, being the zilfin drop, where you seek to cripple the opponent turn one with overwhelming firepower. Your nerf hurts people not taking the most optimal list more than it hurts that list, doing the opposite of what a nerf should do. Removing zilfin and spell in a bottle is better for the health of the army than nerfing fly highs. That said, I don't want KO to just be mid tier because today's mid tier is tomorrow's trash with how battletome bloat plays out. I don't think that KO really need to be nerfed at all honestly. People are gonna start to tech anti shooting more and more and most new battletomes come with power increases and I don't find where KO are to be as abusive as where, say Slaanesh was when it first dropped. But if you have to nerf KO, you want to target that nerf to the lists that are being problematic. Not literally the entire army. I would not be shocked to find them changing the zilfin rule to not allow fly high. I am not sure if they can actually do anything to spell in a bottle that doesn't make it pointless, so either it stays or is functionally removed.

The first nerf makes everyone play the most excessive alpha strike list because you can't risk ever getting into combat. This does the opposite of what you want in balancing KO. It makes the best list on;y slightly worse, and kills all slightly less competitive lists. The second is just a nerf for nerf's sake The third does the same as the first. The army only works at all because fly high. Nerf fly high and you break the army. Think up better nerfs than fly high nerfs. Fly high is the heart of the army and fine as is. If you want to nerf KO, nerf what is making them excessive. Which isn't Fly high. It is out of sequence fly high and throwing WLV. If you deleted zilfin and the bottle, KO would be mid tier. You nerf fly high hard enough and you may as well scoop your models into a trashcan.

Nagash would cease to be nagash if he actually won anything.

There is no victory, surrender your resources and labor to your new capitalist oveerlords. Free monocles and tophats for the first Stormcast to surrender while supplies last. Terms and conditions apply.

Dark riders also make fine standins for pistoliers if you have them.

Except the cow warriors and the mootain (and new teclis), all the new lumineth stuff has old HE analogues. Spearmen, archers, silverhelms and dragon princes still work. As a dwarf player, no I'm not happy with what GW did to my army, and no CoS is not a replacement, it's an attempt to get me to buy more older models because the ones I have do not work as an army. I feel for HE players, and, like, I still feel for them. But boy has GW always seemed to love elves more than dwarves. Their releases are more lavish, and their lore more impactful to the setting.

First and Third world were terms to define strategic alliances in the cold war era. The First being NATO and friends, the Second the WARPAC and friends, the third everyone else. The baggage about economic and social development got injected because here in the west we're arrogant and decided that the people who largely don't look like us are also just inherently less advanced. And that's why it's okay to sponsor coups or invade and demolish their institutions, then do a shocked pikachu face when they are poor and the people don't like us. The Kissinger quote sums up this philosophy perfectly "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves." I caution using the idea of first or third worlds as any sort of metric of who is and is not socially or economically developed. They're terms that weren't coined to mean these things, and aren't used by any experts on the topic of international politics or economics, which prefer the terms developed and developing for descriptors of post industrial and industrializing states. As for grand alliances, I think they're kind of vestigial from the origin of AoS when GW just wanted people to buy models and not really think about playing the games at all. Order has always been in tension with itself as an alliance and frankly I'd prefer to see them just flatly get rid of grand alliances as a whole. They're not needed really, when's the last time someone played a grand alliance army? The alliance matrix and the new 1/4 rule a lot of armies are getting is a better replacement.

I suspect the lore reason why Morathi is setting up in Aqshy and not Ulgu is that Malerion would object

They could, yes. But will they? I... don't think so

morathi is over 600 points now and both her forms start on the battlefield

XD I own the book and there isn't a Har Kuron chapter Also what are you linking to here? I just get a login prompt

I mean, as a KO player and long time dwarf player, I am a tad disgruntled by GW going "Here's your handful of warscrolls dwarf players. They're all you'll ever have" and then go to the high elves and go "here's maybe a quarter of your army, look forward to being more fully fleshed out in the future" And also aethquartz.

I want to note, one of the DoK units you can take in this is, in fact, Morathi herself. I think you can put together a pretty strong shooting combo out of this army really.