Richelieu

Yes, you can absolutely go exclusively Blood Sisters if your general is a Medusa/Bloodwrack. Many people have reported good results with Bloodwrack. 13 wounds is very hefty for a wizard, it makes it more likely she'll make the most of her shooting attack and she's adequate in melee. As far as command traits go, I think if you're using a big block of Blood Sisters that Hagg Nar temple is best, so your trait is chosen for you. Artifact is a tough choice. I don't think there's really one that stands above the rest in that list.

They do have the same points cost. The LAoGC has a pretty spectacular spell if paired with a Stardrake. D3 heal on 4+ or d6 on 7+

Blood Stalkers are quite poor performers competitively. You are also short of your battle line requirements. Hag Queens are a must for DoK as well. I'd consider this list: Morathi Hag queen on cauldron Blood wrack shrine general Hag queen on foot Blood sisters x 20 Witches x10 Witches x 30 Heartrenders x 5 1990 points So many threats in the list your opponent will have a hell of a time with target selection.

And the generic Lord Arcanum on Dracoline is actually 20 points more expensive than Solbright.

That's actually exactly how it's written. Wounds are allocated one at a time, so if I have 1 wound remaining on a model and 2 must be allocated I would: 1) allocate the first wound. 2) the model is slain 3) cycle of storm is triggered, returning 1 wound to the slain model and preventing it from being removed. 4) allocate the second wound. 5) the model is slain. 6) the model is removed

Yep, there are listings for generic versions of both in the GHB.

Evocators are great in a vacuum, but so are retributors. Adding one inch to their movement doesn't solve their fundamental mobility problem. An offensive specialist unit is only good insofar as it can deliver its force where it matters.

I agree that ballistas as singletons for objective sitting could be good, especially in listed that have a number of other shooting options, and I'm hoping there is a way to effectively use evocators. I think you're being kind by saying castigators are "fine." I did preorder the ETB castigators though because those sculpts are phenomenal. I've got no real complaints with Incantor other than I think she could be 120. I am holding out hope that the seemingly high point costs are because Stormhosts will give us some strong free rules. The battalions also look aggressively pointed.

The ability is problematic. If it works how it should (I.e. how Ben Johnson described it) then it is underwhelming. If it works any other way, it is unbelievably OP.

The new battletome had better be good, because solbright and firestrike are pretty bad. They just threw the whole kitchen sink of crappy abilities at them. So far the only thing that looks strong to me out of everything that's been revealed is... Sequitors. I'm really leaning towards a core of two blocks of 20 sequitors with a bunch of Lords Arcanum to keep them alive and buff them. Sure sounds boring but I'll be damned if it won't be hard to kill.

I haven't seen anyone say that he's going to be particularly strong competitively, more that he's really cool and can hit hard and be hilariously frustrating to your opponent by stealing their CP. Olynder on the other hand is an auto-include in my opinion. Other than being slightly fragile she just has an immense battlefield presence. Damage, support, spells, she has it all. You'll be able to use her fragility to your advantage. Your opponent's moves will be predictable as they do everything they can to take her out. And when she is finally taken down? You only lost 1/8th of your army.

I don't want to run afoul of the mods so I won't post here points, but I assure you, she is quite strong for her points. Edit: looks like someone posted the points so you can make the call yourself on whether she's worth it!

I think it would be a net positive for spirit hosts. Sure you lose some synergy, but a single minus to hit debuff can completely neuter their offensive capability currently.

I love everything about Kurdoss. There's something uniquely appealing about a melee beatstick on a floating throne. Everything about him is on point from a flavor perspective. It's questionable whether he worth his points though. Definitely worth play testing but not sure there will be room for him when MoG is so spectacular.

Apparently you've never seen any of the countless children's shows where violence is moderated for the audience. Even in the grimdark the violence is severely tempered. Just last night I was listening to a panel interview with a bunch of film directors who made popular war films and one of them said, and I'm paraphrasing "you can't make a war film that is true to life because only psychopaths could watch it" There is just no basis for the argument that you can't filter conflict for a younger age group.

It's pretty vague. I think it could go either way. I don't really have a horse in the race other than that I don't want to face a Slaaneshi army at a tournament six months down the road if it turns out to be easily exploitable. ?

I agree, but I also think @rokapoke is just saying that, in the event the summoning rules leave something to be desired, there is a failsafe in the form of tournament packs.

I'm guessing they will gain them at the end of the turn, so if you one-shot their heroes (not terribly difficult against Slaanesh) they won't gain any. As far as being able to farm the points off big heroes...I find it doubtful that any Slaanesh hero, other than an Exalted Greater Daemon, could stand toe to toe with many of the big guns for very long.

The last game I played against change host I was playing skyborne slayers. I put everything in the sky except the three non battalion units which I put way way back in my deployment zone. I had to go first and I did nothing. Change host player couldn't figure out a way to advance very far while protecting his whole back line against a sky drop, so just kind of shuffled forward and spread out. I won priority roll and gave it back to him. He had no idea what to do. Move forward onto the central objectives and expose himself? Shuffle forward a bit more? (what he ended up doing). I came down from the sky and wrecked his day. It was fun watching him try to make decisions that do not present themselves under normal circumstances.

Lists would just devolve into a bunch of high mobility monsters who charge at the same time and wipe out half the opponent's army in one go. Sounds terrible. Example: Vhordrai + 2 VLoZD. Use command points to use all of their command abilities. Fly across the board. Kill everything in sight. There are countless other examples of combinations which, without the fear of losing a big point investment will just wipe out the majority of the opponent's force. Unless of course we move from #hordemeta to #msuscreenmeta. Gordrakk+mega boss on maw krusha + a bunch of pigs is another example that can get across the board and end a game immediately. I truly hope this rumor proves to be false. There is one reason that I believe this rumor to be false, however. It would render the Idoneth High Tide battle trait that they just wrote nearly valueless.

@Karol all of the things that @syph0n, @The Golem, @Gecktron and others have suggested are based on the assumption shared by nearly everyone in this forum that we all play Warhammer because we love Warhammer! Once the models are on the table, of course I'm going to play to win, but unless it's at a tournament the primary reason we play is fun. I'll give you an example of a game I played a few months ago. I met a guy who is part of my friend's brother's 40k crew. He just got into AoS and had a new set of Sylvaneth models he'd never played with. He happened to be taking his kid to a Pokemon tournament and so he called me up and asked if I wanted to play a game of AoS at the FLGS the Pokemon tournament was at. Now, since I love AoS, I didn't care if it was tournament prep, teaching a new guy to play, using open war cards (which we ended up doing), or playing a narrative game. It's about enjoying rolling loads of dice and pushing beautiful models around the table. Do I have a preference? Of course, everyone does and mine happens to be competitive games, but part of being a friendly, mature, responsible gamer is not letting that get in the way of both players having a good time.

Nice write up. It's always tough to resist getting spooked by enemy artillery or snipers. I think you're correct in your assessment that a buffed up, battering ram Archaeon would have produced a better result. Even if all your summoners had done was get off a couple spells and then soak up some fire from the lobbers I think it would have been a fairly even use of points.

I played a game yesterday where my opponent used spirit hosts to great effect. She tired up Marathi on one of the central objectives in battle for the pass. All of Morathi's rend was for naught. Took me two turns off morathi plus shooting support to take out the unit of 6, losing points in the mean time. I'm always more afraid of spirit hosts than just about any other death unit. There are really only two good ways to take them down. Lots of low quality attacks (which either aren't always available, or if they are, have to be positioned to take on the hosts), or neutering them with a -1 to hit debuff as @themortalgod mentioned.

E3 is incredible, I attended once, wow 15 years ago now . I think one of the reasons conventions in the US are so big is that we're so geographically separated that an event really has to be worth the travel to attend. E3 and PAX for example are both 4 hours by airplane from where I live. Adepticon is a 7 hour drive.

"After a few more hours of hanging out, and making fun of the fact that ESPN was treating Corn Hole as a professional sport, I said my goodbyes and headed to bed as I had another nine-hour drive the following day." I chuckled at this bit. A few weeks ago I was in Louisville, KY on business and I was watching TV in my hotel room around midnight, when I flipped to ESPN and saw...Cornhole championships.