whispersofblood

Warchanter makes an enemy unit +1 to hit against. The combo is on the upper end of the buff track.

Bonespitters, Big Waagh and Ossiarch Bonereapers. They all are counter to the reason why HoS use a Keeper. Reliable damage through rend and high dmg numbers, speed and depravity point generation via wound count and kills. Hallowheart is obvious they just nuke keepers and have limited to no multiwound models on the board. Bonespitters are interesting because on paper they look like they would be a good match up via HoS. But board control, anti-hero and anti-monster rules make the reverse true. I expect by December once BS and Big Waagh start hitting the tables in sufficient numbers that HoS armies will look significantly different or consistently be dropping games to these factions. Also HoS don't have a clear answer to the Rogue Idol as a defensive piece and it can quite effectively zone out one or two keepers on its own. People seem to not have caught on that BS and Big Waagh can put out 180 3+/4+/-1 rend shots out for less than 800 pts. These factions also naturally play a much longer game and aren't dependant on early game oppression and destruction to secure victory. A HoS player wants their opponent to go for it and play the game at a high pace so that depravity generation is condensed early game generating late game superiority.

If you kill the unit champ they can't even use their abilities. Yes I understand they can return models. Y'all need to chill. This is the same fight I had when HoS were released. Everyone wants books updated but refuse to update how they play the game themselves. For example the KoS problem is basically resolved by Hallowheart, BS, BW and BR.

Got to be honest. Meh. Infantry heroes are getting huge application bonuses, like stronger prayers, aura affects, Bonuses to cast, etc. Hags aren't even that impressive globally. There is basically nothing these characters really fear and they are cheap. If you want to play in the world of all possible factions then there should be considerations like the crawler. Outside of organized play if your friend is playing 4 crawlers well he's got deep pockets, he's a ****** and while the game might not be fun if you stick with it you'll probably win most battleplan anyway.

Link doesn't seem to work.

Rogue Idol gives another +1, Wardokk, CMD trait, Waagh magic. Is up to +5.

The problem you are going to run into is that there are several factions which can stack cast, and unbind bonuses to 2,3,4 levels, with fearsome spell lores. It's almost not worth investing in magic at all. By the time LVO comes around CoS, OW, BR will be in full swing and our only competitive builds will probably revolve around bodies and Hagg Narr again.

The weaknesses identified early on with HoS are starting to tell as armies gain the tools to bypass our defences. While we have many unbinds almost every faction released since have significant bonuses to cast totally bypassing the Epitome. Debuffs are back and since our faction mostly relies on doing expected dmg debuffs are very nasty. Factions have the numbers and the models with sufficient durability to control space on the board. I'm curious to see what GW decides to change but I'm not certain it's necessary as at this point there is going to need to be large changes to list structure to keep HoS as a top tier faction anyway.

I never made a comment on the nature of balance... My point was whole contained in describing GWs bias towards 'feel' as opposed to a more contextual balance. Then I said I don't blame them, and point to IDK being a deeply unsatisfying army to play that points can't resolve because the feel is wrong. In a world of many options some will just be bad. From a math perspective, from a utility perspective or both. A warscroll that is poorly costed can always have it's points adjusted. But warscrolls get updated much less frequently so hitting the right feel is not a bad target to have. It's not like these tasks are mutual exclusive.

Chill the rules aren't that bad. GW just prioritizes feel over the height of possible balance. And, tbh I don't really blame them a very small sliver of the community plays AoS because they want to engage in the manipulation of advanced mechanics. A powerful model that doesn't feel powerful, no matter if it's costed correctly is going to flop. See IDK for several examples, the Land raider for many many years, etc, etc.

I'm so excited to play the first faction I ever had a fully painted force for in WHFB in AoS. I just hope they come up a creative and semi-restrictive method to marks.

I believe there are going to be about 2 great highly competitive builds, and a shed load of garbage. If you are an obsessive planner this is probably the faction for you.

No it has nothing to do with non-competitive players. Meta % in competitive gaming is driven by factors like cost, and time. There are many competitive builds and factions that are prohibitively expensive or time consuming to build, or extremely boring to play, or interst a tiny portion of gamers. Removing the contribution of those armies to the meta moves the meta in specific ways outside the mechanics of the game. This shapes the meta long before anything else happens mechanically to determine the value of good/bad. While you have identified some of the things that makes those factions' builds strong you are still missing the why. Lots of factions that have potentially abusive mechanics, HoS is just one of many. What makes the summoning truely powerful is the ease at which it can be applied and how easy it is to protect the engine that produces it. HoS armies are essentially immune to alpha strike builds which at the launch of AoS 2.0 dominated the meta. So the question to determining if HoS are overpowered you must first answer if we even want alpha armies, if those factions which choose alpha approaches have other effective methods of playing the game and then decide if HoS would be to powerful if the meta doesn't depend on alpha combat builds. IF you have other options and insist on the one with a clear and defined hard counter that is a player error, not a game error. The key to defeating HoS is actually controlling the tempo of the game, and deciding when the HoS player is going to be getting depravity and controlling where they can summon. I don't have the answers to those questions objectively but I suspect that it is likely the case that it is not mechanically that overpowering to match the outrage. Similarly DoK their core power came from their undisputed control of the board, this is what kept them strong when new armies were released. Morathi, and the true effective range of the Cauldron made DoK probably the best board control faction, probably ever released in AoS. They still are, and I don't actually think they are as weak to fight last as you are making out. But, the best DoK players have migrated and BS probably give them a very strong run for their money in that space, so we may never know in AoS 2.5 exactly. I think they have an exploitable weakness to magic that BS don't have but I think people are going to have serious issues with BS by convention season. Of course I'm describing AoS at the top of the mountain, since that is what these stats are collected on.

I have no problem with the stats, the methodology or even what is being measured. My fundamental issue has always been benchmarking, and the analysis of the stats. Its my belief that the bias and prefernces contained in the hobby aspect drive much of the fundamental balance issues found in the win percentage. And, that we take win percentage as some sort of per se argument about power, rather than a more nuanced meta+win percantage position which would lead us to a more nuanced likily outcome approach. X army might win disproportionatly for non-mechanical reasons. I suspect most people still don't understand what made DoK so powerful in AoS1.5 and AoS 2.0. I won't argue that HoS dominate our current meta stat, but the question should be why are armies in the meta state so weak to HoS strengths. Then can factions build to address that weakness, only after answering those problems can we begin to discuss what is to be done or if anything should be done to HoS.

This is just what happens until someone innovates and does well at an event. Nothing to worry about.

Only one Sorcerer lord generates DP from range, so maybe 3 is excessive. However this might be a good place for Archaon.

I pretty specifically didn't say it was bad. Just outlined what you are trading. Also that list isn't significantly different from what is already being played. Invaders has superior CP generation anyway. So really the substantive difference is the depravity generation which probably buffs the factions weakness to shooting. Which explains the lack of Sybarites. To summarize it doesn't seem drastically out of proportion.

I don't think it's that strong. You can't take any of the wsb in the book, no mortal heroes have locus, you can't excess to violence anything in battalions. To get d6 CMD points you have to be what at least 7 drops? No traits, no Artefacts, this has all the makings of a flop. If the host ability wasn't strong it would be basically pointless.

It totally depends on your definition of balance. If your definition of balance includes instantaneous balance, then I doubt any game can really achieve that. The biggest hurdles model games face in that regard is not rules but the economics of model games. And, artistic expression. As a system I would fiercely argue AoS trends towards balance. New factions are introduce changing the relative value of every model in the game in the universe of possible outcomes. I feel strongly that if you remove the skins(physical representations of rules) and economic hurdles, the rules themselves are actually the best arguably the best of any game I've ever played. Every package of rules (army list) has an a package which forces some form of moderation to that list bringing it back to a realm where even bad match ups are manageable affairs. If you want a universe of factions with strong stylistic themes bad match ups will exist. What you want is the universe to present enough theoretical hurdles that you can't maximize the desparity without compromising your position in the universe. There are some practical limitations here such as release schedule for instance. But here is the biggest problem, some rules packages are just more popular and more affordable than others. There isn't a mechanics way to solve for this problem that I can see. So we end up with metas that don't actually represent the mechanical universe. Which I'm not sure GW can solve for.

It doesn't look like this new host has any artefacts, or command traits, thats a pretty big hit. I would argue double depravity makes taking mortal heroes worthwhile since you struggle to gain depravity with them as it is. I'm curious to play around with these battalions, and to see how many daemon units I can get to maximize the CP generation. That being said without a significant role for Excess of Violence maybe I don't need as many CPs anyway. Also IF the warshrine doesn't have to be marked Slaanesh, that could be very good. If it does... well then is a horrible tax for the time being.

Apologies, you are correct but not for what my question was. I mistakenly believed you needed to have the HERO keyword to use CMD abilities in general. But, no sure general rule exists.

How would you be a "daemon w/ this CMD ability" without also being a hero?

It's a mess. I think rule designer at GW is general excellent, and they have interesting ideas. The problem is writing these ideas down in a way that people outside GW can understand. I'm curious what the process is, but I'm surprised they don't have a third-party to the design team do the actual writing. Or would that impede the creative process?

He does not fit in the battalion as the battalion refers to the Great Brayshaman warscroll not keyword. Also him and his unit are taken together as per the downloadable Matchplay points. It's unclear however if they are therefore one drop but that is how these units are typically being played.

Ok But the comment was that one KoS is a point of failure, and I've not seen a 5-0 list without 2+ KoS since launch. I don't have access to Blackout 2nd place list, but 3rd also 5-0 had 4 KoS.