General Chat Thread

[Ragest]

5/6 top factions (actually) are cavalry based, with Tzeentch as the outlier.

5/6 top factions (actually) have buffs to cast to play around endless, with slaves as the outlier.

In the middle pack, we have the deffensive armies that can stop cavalries running rampant putting a good amount of health in the table (Gitz, Cities, fs) or have strong shooting (Slaanesh, Cities).

The only surprises I can see are Tzeentch being too high and Nurgle, Fec and Dok being that low. 

[MitGas]

6 minutes ago, Ragest said:

5/6 top factions (actually) are cavalry based, with Tzeentch as the outlier.

5/6 top factions (actually) have buffs to cast to play around endless, with slaves as the outlier.

In the middle pack, we have the deffensive armies that can stop cavalries running rampant putting a good amount of health in the table (Gitz, Cities, fs) or have strong shooting (Slaanesh, Cities).

The only surprises I can see are Tzeentch being too high and Nurgle, Fec and Dok being that low. 

With enough Enlightened/Skyfires Tzeentch can be pretty cavalry-y. Either way, interesting observations. I don‘t think these first results will be set in stone but they show that power levels seem similar to before at least at the start. 
 

Oh and Tzeentch is never too high. ☝️

[woolf]

yeah probably a bit too early ofc, indication that NH and maybe SBGL are a bit on the spicy side seems quite clear though and aligns with impression ppl seems to have from them as well. KBz obv very surprising to be that low, so wouldn't read too much into it, they migth be a bit too random to easily do well in tournaments though so wouldn't be overly surprised if they end up settling somewhere in the middle..

[Bosskelot]

Outside of Manifestations hopefully some of the strength of the overtuned factions is just points related. Hexwraiths specifically feel very undercosted

[Beliman]

Another thing that I don't understand for this edition, why most Kharadron units have diferent weapons? They clearly made one loadout better than the others.

4th edition introduced universal weapon rules to make a bit clear their role. But there is more, I've seen a lot of armies that GW split some warscrolls to make two units with diferent roles (or just mix all together in the same profile).

For a reason that I cannot comprehend, none of this affects Kharadrons (appart from mixing 2 units in a 6-profile warscroll, hurra!).

Edited July 25 by Beliman

[Grungnisson]

31 minutes ago, Beliman said:

Another thing that I don't understand for this edition, why most Kharadron units have diferent weapons? They clearly made one loadout better than the others.

4th edition introduced universal weapon rules to make a bit clear their role. But there is more, I've seen a lot of armies that GW split some warscrolls to make two units with diferent roles (or just mix all together in the same profile).

For a reason that I cannot comprehend, none of this affects Kharadrons (appart from mixing 2 units in a 6-profile warscroll, hurra!).

Please, GW, have my idea for free, if you must, but make it happen:

Just call it a day and have ONE special weapon per unit (1 in 10 Arkanauts, 1 in 5 Thunderers, 1 in 3 Riggers/Wardens). But make it a good, powerful profile for each one of them. And then just let people chose which of those weapons they'd give to a unit.

Sure, can't have it all at once, but having them all at once hasn't worked since the beginning of the faction, so maybe it's time to make a radical change.

 

[Rachmani]

Played KBs for three games now. I don’t think they will necessarily stay that low. But they definitely have a learning curve & can suffer from a lack of speed/missing cavalry.

Still, it’s an army that has a lot to offer & needs repetition to „git gud“ at.

FEC looks about right. They seem somewhat off. I‘ve seen them crumble quite easily and I think they will get much better once people figured out solutions to that.

P.S. Manifestations are busted. And we have spare points anyway. Make each manifestation lore cost points, some quite a bit of points. Done. You either ignore them, take a cheap lore you have the spare points for, or pay a premium.

Edited July 25 by Rachmani

[Grimrock]

38 minutes ago, Rachmani said:

P.S. Manifestations are busted. And we have spare points anyway. Make each manifestation lore cost points, some quite a bit of points. Done. You either ignore them, take a cheap lore you have the spare points for, or pay a premium.

I don't know if points quite do it, the issue is that they have different values for different factions. For a faction with high bonuses to cast or beneficial rules like lumineth or tzeentch something like morbid conguratuons could be extremely expensive and still worthwhile. Factions with few or no bonuses to cast might already pass on them in favour of a lore with lower casting values. The only way to make the better lores balanced in the game would be to make them so expensive that only one or two factions would even begin to contemplate them, effectively deleting them from the game.

I think the best fix would be a balance pass to make each lore (including faction lores) more tightly balanced with eachother by changing abilities or stats from the warscrolls. Get rid of the armor debuff and the reduced banishing rule from the purple sun, add some more damage to the quicksilver swords and some better movement rules to the pendulum, that sort of thing. That being said I doubt GW is going to be willing to put in the work for that. 

[Mutton]

Not surprised by the top win% spots. NH's units are way too cheap and they have amazing traits/abilities. Lumineth's near global -1 to hit is massive and their mixed arms, hugely efficient troop-to-point ratio propel it. Gravelords were great in 3rd and barely changed for 4th, no surprise there. Tzeentch is likely taking full advantage of manifestation control. S2D's units are crazy cheap for their unbelievable statlines + marks.

As for the losers...

DoK and Blades of Khorne are absurdly pointed and heavily restricted in list building (210 for Blood Warriors who are way worse than Chaos Warriors? Are the rules writers high?). You can barely fit anything into them and aside from the giant centerpiece models, their troops are just meh. Nurgle does surprise me a bit--although some of their stuff is too costly as well, alongside a boatload of support heroes you can't take because of regiment restrictions and drops.

[Rachmani]

I think nurgle is just slow and not *that* great at magic. Manifestation block them to your hearts content.

[MitGas]

25 minutes ago, Mutton said:

Not surprised by the top win% spots. NH's units are way too cheap and they have amazing traits/abilities. Lumineth's near global -1 to hit is massive and their mixed arms, hugely efficient troop-to-point ratio propel it. Gravelords were great in 3rd and barely changed for 4th, no surprise there. Tzeentch is likely taking full advantage of manifestation control. S2D's units are crazy cheap for their unbelievable statlines + marks.

As for the losers...

DoK and Blades of Khorne are absurdly pointed and heavily restricted in list building (210 for Blood Warriors who are way worse than Chaos Warriors? Are the rules writers high?). You can barely fit anything into them and aside from the giant centerpiece models, their troops are just meh. Nurgle does surprise me a bit--although some of their stuff is too costly as well, alongside a boatload of support heroes you can't take because of regiment restrictions and drops.

I‘d say Tzeentch biggest strength are fate dice and manifestations, those two together can really mess up stuff. There are some decent units too (many really suck now) but wyrdflame sucks in general IMO. I dunno, they could’ve just kep it at fare dice IMO. Having looked again and again at my rules, I think the lore of change is actually better. Chaos spawn to hold a unit in place and nuke them with pretty much guaranteed OP manifestations plus an unlimited(!) spell for d3 MW is kinda nice. Enlightened are IMO not as good as they were but still okay, Skyfires seem like the better pick now though. Tzaangors are pretty good. Bad compared to CWs with a MoN who are quite amazing and put pretty much anything to shame IMO but if you play well, Tzaangors are similar except that you got no resilience. Gotta stack - to hit I guess. Actually not sure if you are allowed to stack that tho. 
 

Lumineth are just disgusting.
 

And I didn‘t even read their rules!
 

But this whole „Teclis is the god of magic“ thing sickens me. He‘s not even a proper God just some mortal who got upgraded. We got a real god of magic in Tzeentch. I hope the other casters in Lumineth are not better at magic than Tzeentch‘s heroes cause I take it personally.

 

DoK, Slaanesh and BoK are definitely in need of some adjustments. Gitz seem good thanks to trolls (hooray, that‘s one scenario where wyrdflame could be good for something) but without them they could use a slight upgrade too. Haven‘t read through Death rules yet and most of Order yet. I think it‘s strange that some armies have really obvious flaws though and others don‘t. When I can see some problems - and I‘m not a tournament-winning pro player, then I think game testers should see those problems even better. 🤔

I still hate no allies though. Hurts even more now that CWs are pretty imba. 🤭

 

[MitGas]

Oh and aren‘t Kharadron really hurt by the no magic, no prayer, no manifestation thing? Gotta check out their stiff but it seems that they‘d need a TON of other shenanigans to balance that out. 

[Beliman]

1 hour ago, MitGas said:

Oh and aren‘t Kharadron really hurt by the no magic, no prayer, no manifestation thing? Gotta check out their stiff but it seems that they‘d need a TON of other shenanigans to balance that out. 

Yes, and Terrain Features and not-shoot in combat too!

[MitGas]

20 minutes ago, Beliman said:

Yes, and Terrain Features and not-shoot in combat too!

Will read their rules but the more I think about it, the more difficult their spot seems to be. 

Edited July 25 by MitGas
Spelling

[Rachmani]

7 hours ago, Grimrock said:

I don't know if points quite do it, the issue is that they have different values for different factions. For a faction with high bonuses to cast or beneficial rules like lumineth or tzeentch something like morbid conguratuons could be extremely expensive and still worthwhile. Factions with few or no bonuses to cast might already pass on them in favour of a lore with lower casting values. The only way to make the better lores balanced in the game would be to make them so expensive that only one or two factions would even begin to contemplate them, effectively deleting them from the game.

I think the best fix would be a balance pass to make each lore (including faction lores) more tightly balanced with eachother by changing abilities or stats from the warscrolls. Get rid of the armor debuff and the reduced banishing rule from the purple sun, add some more damage to the quicksilver swords and some better movement rules to the pendulum, that sort of thing. That being said I doubt GW is going to be willing to put in the work for that. 

I totally forgot, that I would get rid of the possibility to summon manifestations in your opponents turn. It happens after possible banishments and should not be possible.

And also want to be clear, that I don't think manifestations should go unchecked. Something like the shackles ofc need to be changed.

Edited July 25 by Rachmani

[Mutton]

Manifestations should only be summonable once per game.

[Big Kim Woof-Woof]

9 hours ago, MitGas said:

But this whole „Teclis is the god of magic“ thing sickens me. He‘s not even a proper God just some mortal who got upgraded. We got a real god of magic in Tzeentch. I hope the other casters in Lumineth are not better at magic than Tzeentch‘s heroes cause I take it personally.

And it seems that every Lumineth player feels the need to field him in every game. I'm tired of seeing him and his big flying badger all the time. His schedule must be chockers, turning up for every minor skirmish that the Lumies participate in! 

[Beliman]

Is anyone tired to see that there are tables with more "Once-per-battle" artifacts than passive or basic abilities?

I'm totally ok for potions or stuff like that have a powerful effect once-per-battle, but it's not as exciting (from a hobby/lore/customization perspective) as a named sword, ancient book or a magic banner.

[Rachmani]

i think it depends.

One one hand, passive items evoke the thought of magic swords or enchanted armor.

On the other, once per game items need timing and more thoughts on when to use them. They do add another layer to your game.

If that layer is needed… I don’t know. I think it kinda is fuel to the tabletop game vs boardgame debate.

[Flippy]

4 hours ago, Mutton said:

Manifestations should only be summonable once per game.

Maybe they should start with one manifestation per wizard per phase limitation. This way they are still powerful, but you need more wizards to summon multiple manifestations, which somewhat limits the uber-casters. 

[Acrozatarim]

My preference on manifestations would be:

 - Balancing pass across all manifestations to equal them out properly.

 - You can only attempt one manifestation summon per round.

 - You can only summon each manifestation once. Once it's destroyed or banished, that's it for that manifestation for the game.

 - A general clean-up pass around the rules for when they count as units and when they don't.

This might all go too far pushing manifestations the other way, but they're free, and I think they should probably remain free, so they need to be more limited than they are now.

[MitGas]

5 hours ago, Big Kim Woof-Woof said:

And it seems that every Lumineth player feels the need to field him in every game. I'm tired of seeing him and his big flying badger all the time. His schedule must be chockers, turning up for every minor skirmish that the Lumies participate in! 

I‘m just glad we got no Lumineth player in our group, I‘d probably get an aneurysm. 😆 

I‘d be the first person to go see a shrink because of a Warhammer faction. 

[Acrozatarim]

Something I'd be quite interested to see would be no-named-character tournaments or leagues. Just lists of Your Guys, no Teclis or Zenestra or Nagash or whatnot. I appreciate people want to use the cool centrepiece models they've bought, but I'd personally also be keen to explore the playspace and experience when they're not featured. It'd open up lots of options that currently suck because the named character steals all the metaphorical oxygen in list design as it is.

[woolf]

46 minutes ago, MitGas said:

I‘m just glad we got no Lumineth player in our group, I‘d probably get an aneurysm. 😆 

I‘d be the first person to go see a shrink because of a Warhammer faction. 

You should pop over to Season of War on Youtube and watch LRL vs NH game they put up about a week ago, migth be some good therapy rigth there!

[PraetorDragoon]

58 minutes ago, MitGas said:

I‘m just glad we got no Lumineth player in our group, I‘d probably get an aneurysm. 😆 

I‘d be the first person to go see a shrink because of a Warhammer faction. 

Be the change you want to see.