hughwyeth

I think everyone needs to move away from the idea that everything on the internet should be free. If this costs Ben money for us using it, we should be helping to pay, or else he's paying for us to enjoy the site and that's not ok. That's part of being a community. If we're happy to spend £500-800 on an army of plastic soldiers, £5 a month shouldn't be too much of a stretch. I'm sure adverts are annoying but I bet Ben would like to go on a holiday to the Caribbean rather than pay hundreds for us to natter about warhammer. yet he's doing it.

Some screenshots of the video of Teclis from other angles. I wonder if it will be a dual kit, like the Magister of Hammerhal also being a lord-arcanum on Tauralon?

She might be! The rotbringers spell isn't that great, so depends what they give her!

The staff on mine snapped off and the idea of pinning it back on is too much to bear. This chonker will be my new sorcerer fo sho. Sorcerer is on 32mm i think so should be easier.

If you're actually into the hobby, buying for models is the only way to do it. Your "power" model may be squashed in the next faq/meta change/battletome update.

Changing meta benefits GW but also makes for an interesting (albeit expensive) hobby!

It's not quite that- Mortek Guard cost 130 with a choice of different additional allegiance abilities, one of which is +1 to save. You point about allies is spot on, but then you make a choice on if those units are worth it without having allegiance abilities- bringing in a wizard in an army without one, or some shooting without one- that makes them worth it. I guess I think this whole thing is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. Points changes can balance things. If petrifex is too powerful, they can increase points for those units that particularly benefit from it.

GW include the points cost for everything - summoning and allegiance traits - in the points cost for models. No point in paying twice. If you split the allegiance costs, it makes things even more complex. AoS is great because of it's simplicity- any increased complexity in points costs should be very carefully considered. This doesn't address the point of "internal balance", but remember these books aren't made exclusively for the 1,000 competitive players in the world. They're made for the 100,000 casual players. Example- I'm building Cities and will be playing Hallowheart for probably all tournaments, but I'm buying a load of models that won't fit in Hallowheart because I want to play all the cities in casual games. Variety in allegiances, including some that aren't as competitive as others, is great for most of the players.

Honestly I think it's a fantastic background. The realms are a nice original idea that make a lot of things possible narrative-wise. Azyr and Mallus are incredible ideas- the descriptions of Mallus in Soul Wars are incredible. I think the issue is concentrating on SCE rather than anything else. In the Old World, the protagonists were elves, dwarfs and humans. They are comfortable tropes that allow us easy access to the fantasy setting.

It's the go to faction because it's the only relatable faction. Immortals aren't relatable. They've definitely improved with some recent SCE books- Soul Wars gives them some character, but ultimately, they live forever and wear God armour. It's hard for us to relate. An Order of Azyr battletome would be amazing. Perhaps not a battletome considering there would be 1-3 models- but maybe a White Dwarf job or something for the new campaign books they're doing?

I think marketing may be a big issue- Spear of Shadows was great but GW have cancelled it. Written by their best (or at least one of their best) authors, with a good variety of characters and an easy set of sequels, but didn't sell so they cancelled them. It was good enough to be a mainstream book, but don't think they do any marketing for it. Really dissapointing really! Tainted heart was also great with a different story to what you normally hear. Glad to hear Dark Harvest and Requiem Infernal are good- both on my bookshelf to read. I think the nearest parralel for BL is the D&D novels- like Drizzt. I've read about 12 of the Drizzt books- they're not incredibly written, but they're great fun. I think some BL is better written than D&D stuff but they're at least as fun. Drizzt books consistently went on the NYT lists (as did some HH books) but I'm pretty sure WOTC advertise those books and promote them.

I think the issue is making whole armies for a smaller game is not the best return on investment. It's now basically there for 30k- but it's all space marines, not 12 distinct different races (or however many there were). It wouldn't surprise me if they did bring back some of the older plastic kits- they have the moulds and many of the kits were quite nice, though not as detailed as current ones. I mean, if they make whole 10-unit ranges for multiple armies in new designs, that would be amazing- but there's a paid cost already for WHFB models that might be too tempting to ignore!

So I'm hoping to make a mortals/tzaangor list with no daemons, save for a Lord of Change using the Queen of Malifica model - https://creaturecaster.store/eu/product/queen-of-malifica/ There's a few battalions in the books for skyfires/enlightened and mixed arcanites/tzaangors- any of them worth running? I know the daemon lists are great, but I love the mortal/gor models. Currently looking at 6x Skyfires, 6x enlightened, 20 Tzaangors, 10 Arcanites, 10 arcanites, lord of change, magister on disc, but those are purely the models i like, rather than building for a decent list!

It's worth it- break down everything into smaller tasks- I have 60 ghouls to paint and have divided those into 20s. Just finished my first set of 20! Much more manageable than 60!

Finish painting everything I have. 😆 No but seriously, I read blog about managing paint projects and they suggested using Trello, which I have done to map everything in my paint queue: I aim to finish off FEC, complete Cities and Ossiarch and maybe get some of Blackstone done.

A mix of handgunners and crossbowmen is useful as you get that extra range.

There's not much point in going on about this- we'll find out whether they're good or not anyway. But orks are popular and both Ironjawz and Bonesplitterz were AoS armies before the new battletome. People had fully painted armies that they could play right away with the new books. Cities is not that at all. Some people had mixed order, but most of those models didn't make it into Cities. Cities requires people to buy old Fantasy models (already that will put off a majority of people) and build a whole army- that takes time. People are now bringing the power lists to tournaments and I think you'll see high win rate with those. There are only a couple of lists that are power lists in the battletome, but those are extremely powerful. Quoting HW stats is the best way to compare armies, but only if you're comparing like for like- different armies gain popularity and ranking differently, and 3 months after Cities release isn't enough time. Ossiarch is 2 months old, but a lot of people got them and they are the second most powerful army (perhaps most powerful post slaanesh faq, havent seen enough games to give an opinion really). From the points change people are asking for it seems like people aren't playing the power lists- either because they don't have those models and are playing with their old dispossessed/dark elf stuff or because they want more interesting mixed lists. It's like someone complaining that Tzeentch isn't powerful because Kairic Acolytes aren't that great.

Looking at win rate 3 months after a battletome launches that only uses old fantasy models isn't a reliable way to determine power level. Edit: 10 of the lists at brotherhood next weekend are cities list- all are Living City or Hallowheart, many taken by top 10 UK players.

They need a 20% point increase across the board to make it balanced imho.

It's more having so many casts that fit into a battalion you'll almost always take with essentially guaranteed casting with empowered endless spells. Sorceress is good (and her spell is good) but the +2 to cast isn't really needed in Hallowheart if you're getting +1/+2+d6 to cast every turn. It's entirely reasonable that 6 hallowheart wizards could shut down almost any army (or at least remove all their 5/6 wound characters) turn 1 with all the spells in the hallowheart allegiance plus endless spells.

Always find these kind of threads interesting because they show how variable the meta must be in different AoS communities. I can't see Cities getting many points reductions really. I imagine battlemages will go up to 100/110 because battlemage spam in Hallowheart is so potent. Dark elf stuff will likely go down a bit because they're so underused everywhere. But I find the scale of points decreases suggested here a bit laughable. Cities is top 3 right now, no way are they going to make it more powerful.

It is good value, save for the repeated poses! It's really a case of getting a lot of models for a small saving- but do you want those models? I think if you find a friend who wants the other force and you build a gaming table between you it's perfect.

I can't find the link or where i saw it, but i believe it's something like 8-10% saving. issue 1 is extremely good value. But when they reach full price they're not so much. I imagine when they get to later issues, something like the Celestant-prime will come over 3-4 issues, rather than 1.

Those hard back sleeved End Times books were lovely and had great narrative and interesting rules- something like that would be great. I imagine they will be 28mm as then people can use them in AoS- though I suppose they'll mostly be limited to Cities of Sigmar/Death armies.

That's good to know haha. I know GW is still overwhelmingly Narrative/Open play focused in their general coverage and discussion, yet online is overwhelmingly competitive play. But I always play people who aren't really competitive in the sense that they play semi-decent lists, but are not involved in online conversations around AoS at all, and we play very relaxed matched play games, probably closer to GW's idea of a regular AoS game than TGA's, so I know there are definitely people who don't play pure matched play/competitive driven stuff. Just from GW sales, it must be the case that 90% of their players aren't super competitive and are actually in it for model building/painting and casual games. The competitive community is very small- most tournament players know most other tournament players by name! That's going to be a small proportion of their sales and player base.