Beer & Pretzels Gamer

eBay

As a HUGE fan of narrative I love this idea. Having run 8k & 10k total point games agree that you need either some staggering of units or alternating activations to keep things flowing. Think it would be a perfect setting for Anvil Heroes too. Hard part is not knowing what factions are likely to show up. When we transition away from Zoom League to live games again, for example, we’re going to run a Destruction Civil War Campaign Kragnos v Gordrakk where the army composition of the big blow off battle will be determined by the outcome of the prior matches. But we have the advantage of saying everybody bring your favorite Destruction list. Prior to COVID & Zoom League we’d been running a Khorne themed Campaign with Mortals and Daemons lists competing against each other for Skulls for the Skull Throne that would’ve been capped off by a siege battle at the end. This one had more flexibility in the other armies. While I didn’t like the actual air combat rules (too much familiarity with the awesomeness that is Wings of War to be taken in by their jumble) since reading it I have absolutely wanted to run a battle where one table is the air battle and the other table is the ground warfare with flying units able to move between the two. I was thinking of it more as a pairs event requiring strategy and tactics between the two players as to the risk/reward of moving a unit from one to the other but could be potentially incorporated, again if you can convince players to bring flying units. (Though it raises all kinds of WS as to whether FLY on its own enough to get into the air battle as not sure, for example Squigs are quite that bouncy…). But I’m digressing. Looking at your specific set up where you can’t control faction lists my suggestion would be to create distinct objectives. For example, if we assume 3 players per team, each have the following objectives: 1) Escort - this army starts at one short edge of the able and must get all the way across to the other edge. 2) King of the Hill - this army must take and holds specific area of the battlefield 3) Assassinate - this army must kill one of the opposing army’s generals The team would be able to choose which player gets each objective. Above and beyond these specific objectives I would add in some alternative objectives that might force tough decisions. For example, if we borrow from Starstrike maybe in R2 a dice roll determines where some new objective appears. If your teams closest units are part of the escort mission to you delay your trip to capture it? Do you maybe split up your forces and hope units from the other players’s armies can help? Maybe in R4 the the eye of Khorne falls over the battlefield and there is a bonus for killing the most models. Do you weaken your “castle” on the hill to try and wrack up a few more kills? Just spitballing, sure with time you can come up with even better. But in my experience the more players involved (I’ve maxed out at 8 ) the more giving each player a unique goal helps as too often players are going to end up on the periphery frustrated if they can’t contribute to the main objective otherwise.

First guess is the Mathhammer is roll # of d6 of unmodified Charge Roll (max 12) against up to 3 enemy units w/in X inches of the model and on X+ do MWs. That would still be potentially devastating but less game breaking than the headline? What I want to know most is still points.

The rules seem pretty specific(see below) that the 1s always fail is specific to an attack sequence. The Dankhold’ crushing grip specifically says do not use the attack sequence. You are not making a Hit, Wound or Save Roll. So unless I am missing something (and I see no FAQ re:this for GG) the 1s always fail does not apply. There are plenty of abilities that ignore the 1s always fail and 6s never succeed. BCR’s grasp of the ever winter is exact opposite as 1s will always succeed (being always equal to or lower than the current round) and 6s always fail (given there are only 5 rounds in a normal battle and thus 6 will always be higher). Seems a case where the read as written is simple and clear and the read as intended seems to clearly offer you a risk/reward choice where you have a guarantee or high chance of killing a 1W or 2W model, which probably doesn’t swing the battle too much, versus a low chance of a high reward kill of a 5W or 6W hero. Again, maybe I’m missing something as well but abilities frequently apply different dice rolling conventions than the attack sequence.

There was a true “curiosity” aspect to building this list. I love the Bloodthirster model and as such regularly ran Tyrants but found it a very frustrating experience as they just aren’t robust enough to hang around while still costing enough to mean you had very limited options in the rest of your list. At the same time, as noted in a previous post in other Khorne lists I’d struggled trying to lean into the Khorne Cares Not aspect of list building. Khorne might not care but gosh darn it in most cases I did and I had to because too many units had functions that I couldn’t blithely set aside to generate Tithe. It was always this combination that made Bloodthirster summoning feel like a trap. They cost so much that if you have to “save up” for them you’re in trouble. When I started looking at a crazy Tuskgor list (again, wish I had a 6th…) though I thought I’d found a potentially fun workaround. Tuskgor movement served a real function in early round board control, something I’d struggled with in my Mortals lists, but I only needed that for a round or two and I felt they were fairly priced for that role. Aside from Khorne Beast Brisket then the other name I considered was Hey Big (Tithe) Spender. Ideally I’d be summoning Thirsters in R2 and R3/4 and be able to pick out charges where they’d be most effective. But unit has been exactly that waste element that kills this theory. In first game got the R2 summons but had to waste 2 Tithe. In second game was way short of a Thirster in R2 but then had almost twice as much as I needed in R3. Without the ability to Bank Blood Tithe this concept of preventing my beloved Bloodthirsters from being shot off table before they cab do anything or being one hit wonders that evaporate as soon as my opponent counterpunches, just doesn’t come into practice. Given this I was pretty centered on summoning Rage, who I feel needs the least buffing but who when positioned right can absolutely dole out game changing damage. Ideally the hope had been to combo him with the Bloodsecrator and Wrathmongers but there the theory also struggled as they have been kept pinned to the 6x Bullgors too much. So I think it is fair to say I haven’t solved the Bloodthirster Summons Trap with Khorne Beast Brisket but if BoC still viable in 3.0 and Tithe banks then it is closer.

When the Bonesplitterz player unexpectedly bailed last night ended up running Khorne Beast Briskt list again, this time against Nurgle. Set up was still Force the Hand. It is fair to say I experienced diminishing results against an opponent who just wasn’t making mistakes and with some of the coldest rolling I’ve had in a long-time. Simple example of my cold rolling? Gutrot is a 7W model. Yes, he has a 3+ save but he was outside of the Harbringer’s buff to gain the FNP and while his Saves made it harder the basic problem was I just couldn’t force many save rolls. My Wrathmongers got off 20x attacks. At a 4+ I’m expecting +/- 10 Hits. Got 5… only 3 of which wounded, and 2 of those unsurprisingly saved even with the Rend. So I got 1 Damage. I then sent my Bloodsecrator and 3x Slaughterpriests into Gutrot. At the end, Gutrot still standing. Happens. Just happened a lot. Had Bullgor units completely whiff. Again, happens. Unfortunately my Saves were no better. Had my unit of 6x Bullgors w/Shields, Bronzed Flesh and All Out Defense. Didn’t matter when the PBKs smashed into them. Sometimes you roll cold. Part of the game. Some lists allow you to whether a round or two of this and still leave you in a position to come back in later rounds when the law of averages tends to see things even out. As fun a list as it is though Khorne Beasts Brisket just isn’t one of those lists. The “Mathhammer” for this lists damage potential isn’t great to begin with so any period where you’re doing below expectations is going to be very difficult to make up. Setting aside the poor rolls though I was much happier with how I managed my positioning. The waves worked much better and by sticking a Tuskgor at each end of a strung out group of 10x PBKs kept them pinned down for several turns when he couldn’t pile more than 1 model into either while maintaining coherency as long as got something in the middle as well. Fleshhounds managed a similar trick with the Slime Fleet PBKs that came in behind my lines. Unfortunately with blocks of PBKs in front and behind my opponent again was able to pin my big block of buffed Bullgors on the objective until they chose to engage, further limiting my army’s punch. That and again, swinging from having too little Blood Tithe to do anything in my second turn to having way too much Blood Tithe in my third turn, when VP wise things were already out of hand. Still think this is a fun army with some potential but need to figure out if these issues can be overcome when the dice rolls are a little more average?

Order Up! The Khorne Beast Brisket is ready for the Mawtribes party on table 1… Got the match in against a Boulderhead list built fully around Eurlbad and Butcher’s Band Battalions in Force the Hand. The theory behind the list was fine but in practice it ran head first into Khorne’s unfortunate habit of wasting Blood Tithe (hope this gets an easy fix in 3.0…). Tuskgor Chariots fine for Board Control & Blood Tithe. Went first. Battleplan forces deep deployment so my first turn was basically running everything in my army onto an objective. Was able to get one of my Tuskgor Chariots onto the open middle objective in my opponent’s territory. Otherwise used them to plug gaps in terrain and screen objectives as best as possible. Should’ve Popped Martial Ferocity First Turn. The hope had been to use it turn 2 but given that I did assume Tuskgors would go down early and the risk of a double turn (which became a reality) meant should’ve just used it when I knew it would have maximum effect. Too Cute Positioning Flesh Hounds in South. I thought I was being sneaky lining up a unit of 5x Flesh Hounds behind one of my chariots such that a charge and pile-in to it would activate them, allowing them all to pile-into the gap as the Tuskgor evaporated. But my opponent rolled a good charge, allowing one Mournfang to get past the Chariot and into the Flesh Hounds. They then rolled hot for Eurlbad MWs and just overall such that one Mournfang wiped the whole 7nit before it got a chance to attack. This was too early to lose the unit and certainly while I’d recognized Tuskgors might not do much I had been counting on them at least going down swinging. Double Turn = Too Much Blood Tithe. One thing I like about this list is I was relatively okay with a go first & get double turned scenario as it would almost guarantee I get a R2 Bloodthirster summons. The problem was that I ended up with 10 Blood Tithe instead of just the 8 I needed when it got back to my turn in R2. Those 2 wasted tithe hurt me in R3 as while I had a pretty successful counterpunch in my second turn and held out against my opponent again winning the priority in R3 I came up 2 Tithe short in R3 of summoning a second Bloodthirster. As I couldn’t afford to wait for R4 had to settle for 10x Flesh Hounds. When they failed their charge and the rest of the survivors didn’t do enough work it was easy to see there was no longer a path to victory for me and I conceded. Conclusions? The list was a lot of fun and really let me lean into the Khorne cares not aspect of the faction with a core of Tuskgors who are really there to be bloody speed bumps. That said, lining up the waves (especially to handle a potential double turn) is a bit tricky (at least in this battleplan). This battleplan also made it too easy for my opponent to ignore my block of 6x super buffed Bullgors. Enough potential here to try it again.

In another similar thread I did the long form satire take on the situation but from the outside looking in this looks like: 1) a classic enterprise resource planning (ERP) blow up exacerbated by COVID & Brexit 2) by a publicly traded company that isn’t going to make any commentary until their accountants have determined whether or not this will require a write-off Fully understand the consumer frustration re:communication but with two decades in the investment community also understand that there are legal and regulatory implications to any communication referencing potentially material economic impacts for publicly traded companies.

Warscroll Builder on Warhammer Commuunity website. Build list. Hit ? Symbol. Hit copy. Switch here. Paste. Hope that helps.

Had been holding out for a 6th Tuskgor Chariot but with all the rumors regarding battalions in 3.0 there was a bit of now or never feel to this list so debuting it tomorrow night in Zoom League against Mawtribes in Force the Hand. Allegiance: Khorne- Slaughterhost: The GoretideLeadersDoombull of Khorne (100)- General- Command Trait: Hew the Foe - Artefact: Thronebreaker's Torc Slaughterpriest (100)- Blood Blessing: Bronzed FleshSlaughterpriest (100)- Blood Blessing: Blood SacrificeSlaughterpriest (100)- Blood Blessing: Killing FrenzyBloodsecrator (120)- Artefact: The Blood-forged Armour Battleline5 x Flesh Hounds (100)5 x Flesh Hounds (100)5 x Flesh Hounds (100)Units6 x Bullgors of Khorne (280)3 x Bullgors of Khorne (140)3 x Bullgors of Khorne (140)1 x Tuskgor Chariots of Khorne (60)1 x Tuskgor Chariots of Khorne (60)1 x Tuskgor Chariots of Khorne (60)1 x Tuskgor Chariots of Khorne (60)1 x Tuskgor Chariots of Khorne (60)5 x Wrathmongers (140)BattalionsBrass Despoilers (180)Total: 2000 / 2000Extra Command Points: 1Allies: 0 / 400Wounds: 154 Ultimately ALL about the Blood Tithe and Board Control. First wave is the Tuskgor Chariots. Don’t expect them to do too much but tie up the mid-field, preventing my opponent from wracking up too many VP, and to better let me pick & choose my fights with the second wave and the two 3x units if Bullgors when they come into play. The second wave, ideally right behind the chariots is the Flesh Hounds. Looking for a little more damage out of these units, especially if I can target my opponent’s weaker units. Simple math of these waves is that even if they all crash and burn they’re enough Blood Tithe to summon a Bloodthirster. Hope us they’ll reap some skulls before self-tithing and with Blood Sacrifice I’ll wrack up enough Blood Tithe for two Bloodthirsters or one and a large unit of Flesh Hounds. These would join the Bullgor Bomb of 6x Bullgors backed by the Wrathmongers and Bloodsecrator (hopefully buffed with Killing Frenzy and Bronzed Flesh) as the third wave clean up crew that I hope will allow me to pull ahead on VP in latter rounds. Not a fully optimized list for sure but leaned into the elite aspects of Bullgors and the crazy of the Tuskgors with Khorne support that can buff them. Will try and post recap later in week.

Running Brass Despoilers in Khorne tomorrow, so not direct to BoC tome, but lose, for example, the Goretide ability to reroll Wound Rolls of one near objectives for them because it is keyword MORTALS. That’s just beginning. Tailored rest of list to make sure Khorne buffs went through and that meant eliminating some juicy options that are Khorne Mortals specific. Think it would unlock a lot of things but guessing it will remain limited to faction specific Gors (c’mon KhorneGors and PestiGors!).

Had a lot of fun with Spiderfang in a narrative we ran when we first started but sold them when it was clear nobody in our group wanted to run them in regular matches… In contrast, the new Trogs I’ve been running have garnered interest with the new WD stuff making them pretty user friendly.

You’re off to a very good start for a Mortals Collection. There are definitely good Boons Bloodtithe can be spent on besides summoning but I’d recommend looking into Flesh Hounds at a minimum as they aren’t terribly expensive Blood Tithe wise and can definitely win you a game by stealing a late game objective. If you like the look of them (personally I’ve found them a blast to paint) you could also consider a Bloodthirster as the threat of summoning one can warp your opponent’s play. That said, as much as I love both sides with a few exceptions (e.g. Bloodsecrator or Wrath Mongers in Daemons since their buffs are just generic Khorne or Karanak or Skarbrand in Mortals since they do their own thing) my experience has been the two sides of our faction too often struggle to play nice, particularly as the sub-factions all clearly lean one way or the other in their buffs and bonuses. So if you’re going to continue building Mortals one thing to look at is some more mobility. Skullcrushers and Chaos Lord on Karkadrak have proven powerful in combination for me. Welcome and we look forward to your future donations of skulls for the skull throne!

In the end I couldn’t overcome two things: 1) Hand of Gork Failed Four Times. Just failed mind you. Not unbound, just couldn’t roll the darn 7+. Not even close. Without this I struggled to get units towards the further NE objective in Places of Arcane Power (I had the NW deployment zone) to challenge the Savage Big Boss my opponent managed to run onto it their first turn. The points they wracked up there put game away by end of 4th round and even had the spell gone off in R5 it was too late. 2) With Glowin Tattooz and Big Rukk Rerolls Too Two Turns and 30+ Damage to Kill Maniak Weirdnob and Claim SE Objective. Had I managed to kill one turn earlier I might have been in position to clawback a victory. All that said, against a Drakkfoot Big Rukk that took away my shrugs while giving them two tries to negate each point of Damage I got through (plenty as my Rend meant regular saves were largely unavailable to the Bonesplitterz units I was attacking) I was pretty happy with the list I used. Allegiance: Gloomspite GitzLeadersDankhold Troggboss (250)- General- Command Trait: Shepard of Idiotic Destruction - Artefact: Aetherquartz-studded Hide Loonboss on Mangler Squigs (280)Fungoid Cave-Shaman (90)- Lore of the Moonclans: The Hand of GorkMadcap Shaman (80)- Artefact: Moonface Mommet - Lore of the Moonclans: Itchy NuisanceBattleline3 x Fellwater Troggoths (150)6 x Rockgut Troggoths (280)3 x Rockgut Troggoths (140)3 x Rockgut Troggoths (140)Units1 x Dankhold Troggoths (190)BehemothsMangler Squigs (240)BattalionsStomping Megamob (160)Total: 2000 / 2000Extra Command Points: 1Allies: 0 / 400Wounds: 114 Dropping Colossal Squig for regular Mangler Squig and the Balewind Vortex + Extra CP from last list let me add in Fellwater Trolls for first time. The Fellwater’s -1 to Hit in Melee handy this match up where a Rockgut shrug unavailable. Felt like the regular Mangler Squig did enough of what Colossal did that FLY upgrade makes up for a lot of the differences that are arguably downgrades. But, as with the Loonboss on Mangler Squig a huge part of appeal is getting back to top profile as you take more & more damage. Loonboss was MVP as, after surviving with only 1 wound an early combat phase on later turns controlling who I charged and activating first had him shredding enemy units. After three matches playing and many more matches where he was part of the Automata for one of our Zoom League tournaments though I just can’t continue to justify the regular Dankhold Troggoth. Think his points are better invested in another 3x Fellwaters + Balewind. With that move think list pretty solid until Kragnos enables or 3.0 forces another adjustment. While I lost on VP the list had enough oomph and resiliency (even absent the shrugs) to still have firepower on table at end of R4 when all my opponent had was the one Savage Big Boss. Again, with my units out of position all they needed but a little better play on my part and a little better casting rolls even this arguably tougher match plays out better. On positive note Loonshrine finally started paying out, bringing back 3x and 2x models.

It won’t happen this way (though it does sound like there will be changes to this in 3.0) but much earlier in this thread I espoused my dislike of the “god funnel” when it comes to shooting as it just completely takes me out of the game to think that somehow 30+ shots are being targeted at one small model surrounded by many other models. There are lots of simple fixes. To offer up another one maybe something like this: Heroes w/in 3” of a unit containing 3+ models cannot be directly targeted. If a unit within 3” of a hero is targeted the player shooting can choose to have unmodified Hit Rolls of 6 go into the hero. Separate wound and save rolls will then be made. If the shooting unit has another ability that is triggered on unmodified Hit Rolls of 6 (e.g. MWs) the player must choose whether they want this ability to apply to the originally targeted unit or to apply the above instead.

NOTE: this obviously is not a real investment memo and I have no insider information on GW. What I do have is 20+ years of experience in the investment community and thus tracking ERP implementations and thus 20+ years observing ERP implantation going wrong short-term. So I thought it would be fun to mock up a memo as if I was explaining to the investment committee what had jus happened. InvesmentCommittee@tga.com RE: Cursed City & GW’s New ERP System Since several members of the committee have forwarded me articles highlighting the poor roll out of GW’s new product Warhammer Quest: Cursed City (hereafter CC) I thought it was worth putting together a quick memo updating you on the status of our investment thesis. As you will recall we believed CC would be a key sales driver in the second half. Good news on that front… it sold out. The bad news? It looks like demand far exceeded supply and thus there was a missed opportunity here. What we do not know yet is whether actual supply was less than intended by GW or whether demand just far exceeded their estimates. Unfortunately we have been unable to contact GW’s investor relations to gain further insight into this. Based on our channel checks and other inquiries though we believe the core culprit was issues related to the implementation of the company’s new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. While we have highlighted the long-term benefits of the ERP for the company as the product lines have dramatically over recent years we also warned that in our experience most ERP implementations have “hiccups”. Everybody knows this but we also know that where these “hiccups” will actually show up is unpredictable. In hindsight, CC looks like it was particularly vulnerable to such problems. As a one off boxed game that incorporates products both from their Nottingham facility AND from China (particularly in the written materials) it required above average coordination across the ERP system. We also know that Brexit has complicated imports making this issue even more difficult to address. We have heard suggestions that orders placed well in advanced were incorrect leading to too much of certain parts of the set and too little of others which were not identified until it was time to bring the box set together, by which time it was too late to address. We have certainly seen such issues arise in past ERP implementations. Alternatively others have pointed to an error in the order system which led retailers to believe that they would receive more box sets than should have been allocatable. Again this is not uncommon with new ERP systems. At least a couple of you have reached out asking me why they either didn’t learn from the Indomitus box set and/or follow the same made to order approach that followed a similar problem last year? As we have highlighted in previous memos COVID 19 has had several major impacts on GW. To the positive it appears to have dramatically increased demand for products. Negatively their factories, warehouses and stores all experienced shut downs. Broadly this has created shortages of “evergreen products” (those supposed to be available for order on a consistent basis) as our checks of availability issues on the website has regularly highlighted. More particular to this issue though is that it has also severely impacted the new release schedule. When Indomitus came out GW had taken steps to slow its release schedule which we believe had created an opportunistic production window for Indomitus made to order. In contrast, this year GW had been attempting to return to a more normal release schedule leading up to CC. Specifically AoS has been working through the Broken Realms series, which has included multiple special box sets and new models, as it leads up to a new edition. In 40k the roll out of 9e continues , for example with the new Drukhari codex and continued releases in the very popular Sisters of Battle line. While the CC problem has been followed by another “pause” in the release schedule simply put we don’t believe that there was any opportunistic window for a made to order follow up. We believe the current pause is to ensure that any ERP issues surfaced by CC do not impact the AoS 3.0 release this Summer. From a business perspective we believe this to be the best decision. While boxed sets are an important part of the business, both in bringing new players into the game and taking more wallet share from existing customers we do not believe the profit margins on one off sets such as CC are as high as start collecting sets which have far less written materials and tend to have fewer models ( or put another way tend to have smaller discounts to the products when sold separately). Given this, if the choice was whether to sell more CC now or risk delaying or worse, selling fewer AoS 3.0 sets this Summer we believe the decision was clear. The outstanding question though is whether this has a long-term impact on customer or 3rd party retailer relations? A consistent complaint has been GW’s lack of communication as orders were cancelled and supporting material was removed from the website. Cynically one could argue that this will only increase customer’s tendency to preorder direct to improve their chances of receiving limited edition orders. Of course the concern is that it turns customers away. Here we do think it being a one off is helpful, again, supporting the decision to focus on the 3.0 roll out. If that goes well even if it is not “forgiven” we believe it will largely be “forgotten”. At least by customers. The 3rd party channel response may be more problematic. We cannot be sure yet how they will respond but we are reaching out to store managers with surveys that we hope to have responses to be next week. We will forward the collated data to the committee. In a conclusion, while we are closely monitoring the ERP situation net-net better for it to have hit CC than 3.0. The latter is key to avoiding a significant sales drop off as we annualized the 9e 40k rollout and the COVID 19 sales boost. Our primary concern then remains the risk of a sales drop off in the 21/22 fiscal year as the benefit of new editions and quarantine demand fade. As always, if investment committee members have follow up Qs please respond to this email. Thanks, B&P

The point isn’t that because real battles weren’t balanced AoS doesn’t need to be. The point was that an adjacent game category in historical war gaming has had to deal with unbalanced armies if they want to be able to play out actual battles (not just examine historical theory) and as a result evolved a way to allow friends to throw dice and have fun in those situations. The way they accomplished that was to make it so both parties have different win conditions. There may or may not be something to learn from this. Given that balance in armies has proven difficult to achieve symmetric battle plans in many cases may not actual improve fairness but skew the balance even more. Arguably GW has acknowledged that with Sons (and to a lesser extent Mawtribes) with their counts as for objective rules and even the ability to throw out a battleplan’s special conditions for objectives. Again, 9e 40k seems to have taken further steps in acknowledging this by giving armies unique secondaries tailored to their skill sets. BoC is regularly highlighted as a weaker tome. What if they could wrack up VP for having units in every quadrant though? All of a sudden their ambush ability gives them a lot of options and forces their opponents to make different choices. This would be a not unreasonable translation of the lessons of historical gaming to AoS that makes it even more fun to throw dice with friends.

Destruction my favorite faction so excited to have this new option. My first take (obviously need to see full war scroll and points) for my Destruction lists: - Troggoths a hammer for the Rockgut anvil? Would replace the Mangler Squigs/Colossal Squig I’m currently using for more mobility. - Gutbusters replacement for the awkward Frostlord on Stonehorn I so often default back to when trying to put non-BCR lists over the top - Bonesplitterz replacement for Rogue Idol - Sons swap out 3rd Mega to swap Kragnos in Harder to see swapping out the Frostlord in an actual BCR list or the Mawkrusha in an Ironjawz, at least until I see more details. But when you start talking the price he’s going to be, four slots not a bad start…

In the original thread I made a similar point having come to AoS from historical war games. There, to your point, the scenarios are often unbalanced from a “points perspective”. Balance, if we choose to use that term, in such games is not achieved through equalizing the armies but rather through giving each side different victory conditions. I am intrigued by the introduction of secondaries in 9e 40k and how that could translate into AoS 3.0.

Thank you. Thought you’d also hit on a key definition issue earlier in the thread with your “No True Scotsman” and “perfect being the enemy of good” comments. Even when people put forward a clear definition initially it often proves slippery once the discussion really gets going. Not hitting it perfectly here but the second definition of balance you give seems particularly vulnerable to the former as people will argue that ONLY factions X, Y & Z win tournaments. This is inevitably followed by someone pointing out wins by other factions. There is then always some argument why those wins should be viewed exceptionally and thus do not disprove the original argument. The first definition seems to be particularly vulnerable to the latter. If the “ideal” is 45-55 and we got to 40-60 how much should we be focused on changing things? Should the focus be on raising the 40% winners or lowering the 60% winners? Certainly with the number of factions and sub-factions there are methods that could raise the bottom at the expense of the middle as opposed to the top so would we feel better if we moved from 40-60 to 45-60? These definitional issues to deeper discussion seem to abound.

I’ve gotten a lot of utility out of both Goremand and Butcher’s Band so if you have a preference for either the Slaughtermaster or Butcher I think you’re fine going with you’re own rule of cool. With Underguts shouldn’t be an issue but make sure to account for the 4x unit of Leadbelchers to make them battleline. That should still leave plenty of room for other fun stuff. Skal I’ve found useful in maxing out BCR lists or as a cheap 2nd Battalion if I’m really loading up on the artefacts in a Gutbusters list but personally just not sure it really helps here.

I found his Grand Ritual of Awakening to be very useful in a few games the question for me was always the Magmadroth. With two attacks tied into the size of the opposing unit often found it hard to get the most out of my mount. Tended to get some value out of the extra movement either ensuring a buff bubble after say a run & charge in Vorstarg or in stealing an objective in later rounds. But when in our group the comparison is things like Stonehorns or Mawkrushas even at the much lower cost has been hard to be as excited about how the model plays as I am about how it looks…

I’d be thrilled if this were broadly true. I’m just going by the common commentary that the vast majority of players, including tournament players, are reluctant to play matches where the points aren’t even. If the top players talked about the value of doing this and it flowed into the broader game the way their lists inevitably do can only think it would be a good thing and reduce the frequent commentary that players are tired of either people not be willing to play against their tournament list or players sick of always losing to tournament lists. Simply for clarification though are the scenarios you are discussing equivalent to chess end games set ups where they are removing pieces and positioning pieces on board in way they couldn’t be R0? Think that’s great and admittedly probably closest to the sports practice examples I gave. I’m just looking for a broader application that doesn’t require the opponent to completely subsume their own play style or agenda to the tournament list player’s. Again, looking for a win-win.

One thing I’ve found interesting is that when people are prepping for tournaments they still insist on even 2K games. When I played sports “overload” drills were a key to success. In (American) Football could the offensive line pass block when there was an extra rusher or two or on defense could we get to the QB if there were extra blockers? In basketball could we prevent a game winning shot with only 4 defenders or could we make one against 6? When I later coached soccer I would regularly send 4-5 attackers against 2 defenders and a keeper to force communication. In all cases these overload drills greatly helped player development. Yet the idea of an overload drill in AoS for tournament practice seems anathema for reasons I don’t fully understand. Which is a shame because it seems like such an obvious solution to a common complaint on both sides (both the “no one wants to play my tournament list” and the “I’m sick and tired of playing tournament lists I lose to in 2 turns...”). Especially since almost everyone has that cool piece they don’t get to play. So if you're rocking up to the table with your fine tuned Seraphon and really want to see how good it is why not tell your SCE to throw that Stardrake into the match? Or if your one drop Changehost is about to go for a practice run why not tell your Sylvaneth opponent to bring out Alarielle? If you can still compete on those terms aren’t you that much better prepared for a straight 2K? And if you lose you still learned something about your army that likely makes it better when you do take it to a tourney. To me that’s a win-win we as a community are just ignoring too often.

Wasn’t exactly that but in Zoom League we played a tourney where four players submitted four lists. They did a normal round robin with their own list and then the lists flipped and they played against their own list with each of the other three lists. As far as asymmetric tournament play it’s tough but I don’t think impossible but I tend to think it might work better in team play. For simplicity let’s start with three players per team. Each player brings a 2k version of their list and a 1K list. For each Round there are two 2K vs 1K scenarios and one 2K vs 2K battle. Each team chooses their 2K list for one of the 2K vs 1K matches. These could be defending a territory where there are some defensive bonuses or maybe an escort mission where you need to get a model across the board, or you start in center and have to make a successful retreat, etc. The other team chooses the 1K list they want to use for that scenario from their two remaining. The remaining two lists meet in the 2K vs 2K match. But outside of tournament play I think asymmetric can be easy to negotiate, especially if you’re willing to modify some of the scenarios from the battle tomes.