But isn't that intended? I mean: I want that the outcome of a game depends on skill and knowing your and your opponent's army. I don't want it to be random and I don't want it to be set from the start. An exceptionally skilled person playing a weak army should be able to win against a bad player playing the newest greatest army. Right now the most skill based abilities are the movement things. I have lost with Legions of Nagash against my buddy playing Ironjawz because I positioned my (far better) army just badly. I was new to LoN, overestimated my movement (because used to Seraphon) and thus isolated my strongest units. He killed them and I could not recover because me heroes and gravesites weren't placed well. We have played the same lists several times after that and I haven't lost a single game because when I don't make grave errors or he rolls incredibly lucky he cannot win, regardless of skill. That's worse IMO. (Seraphon is the same btw. Our army cannot win against some Nighthaunt lists if you just mathhammer it. Skill in positioning is everything there).
I'm fine with small bonuses: the star venom that usually on a 6+ triggers 2 damages, but agains chaos daemons trigger 3, is a very minor bonus. The d3 MW additional damage with Summon Starlight is not game breaking, as the spell is good anyway. but "you cannot save wounds" against us is worthless, while agains fyreslayers is devastating.
Come to think of it: Not requiring skill or luck is what probably bothers me most about some abilities the Stormcast Eternals have. It is just "deal some mortal wounds that cannot be prevented in any way, and no you don't even have to roll because f*** those guys".
Yes and no. What I meant was that the (percieved) skill required to effectivly use something shouldn't be a major factor in how you balance. When it becomes a major factor in balancing it leads to very annoying situation and a completly wonky balance. It results in ridiculously overpowered abilities being left alone because it's difficult to use properly and say only 10% of the playerbase can effectivly use it. Which is fine as long as you don't face those 10%, but if you do face a skilled player who can abuse the overpowered mechanic you get unceremoniously decimated. And a similar issue arises when countering it requires a minimum level of skill, and say the bottom 20% struggles to deal with a specific mechanic. And of course a more skilled player should be able to win against a less skilled player. But even that has it's limits.
Not to worry... I am patient. I always hated rules/items like that in WFB. They don't balance very well. Exceptionally strong against the army in question and a complete waste (which you often pay for points-wise) against everyone else.
Every new book thats come out is strong. This isnt any stronger than fireslayers, fec, slaanesh, or skaven. I wouldn't be overly concerned.
The problem Im worried about is that GW has a bad habit of overcorrecting mistakes made by one book in the next one. So when they look at skaven or slaneesh and go "man we really messed up, lets be more careful with this one" you get sylvaneth and gloomspite gits. Books that are fine and balanced and would be awesome, if every other book was fine and balanced as well. But they aren't all balanced and so you have a bunch of balanced armies that still have to find ways to be competitive against the broken stuff. I feel the new Orruk book will be broken while the free cities will be balanced. The Bonereapers will probably also be balanced, but they could be broken as well. I really worry we will get another luke-warm book where GW goes, "we keep messing up with overpowered undercosted stuff, lets make sure not to do that again this time." Im tired of paying too much for units that are too weak. I want to be strong at everything like other armies.
So end of summer big Seraphon release rumour turned out to be false. TBH, Seraphon might not get a new book this year. Whats coming next is Free Cites/Orrucks, then Ogurs. Then I imagine High Elf will probably be the big Christmas release for AoS. Also with 200 Space Marine releases, identical models, painted different colours, to get through, I don't think the Seraphon will get play this year.
Our entire army is riddled with F'Daemons rules, and that hits way more stuff than Savage Orcs' anti Night Haunt rule. Everchosen got rolled in with Slaves to Darkness in the store updates, I would expect that before or after Ogors. Undivided Chaos is the only thing left in the Chaos alliance not up to date, and they keep releasing new stuff for it. I would expect Seraphon before an Aelves update to be honest. Cities is likely their holdover until Teclis/Tyron or Malerion need to do something for the plot.
Slaves to darkness should become the darkoath any minute now, I mean it was announced like a year and a half ago. Aelves I wouldn't expect any time soon since the last fluff we got of them is literally "teclis & tyrion go sit in a corner to plot cuz it's not the right time yet"
hey all the new books warscrolls are available in the down lode tab of the shop as seen hear have fun and let me know what you think https://www.games-workshop.com/resources/PDF/AoS_Warscrolls//aos_demigryphknights_eng.pdf
the first thing i notes it that only the big staba and savage war boss have rend for bone splitas so less of a worry about them ignoring ethereal
Hmmmm, may need to grab some Freeguild to finally use those third party characters I picked up ages ago. Hoping there are some new models coming out though. My human engineer and witch hunter are currently unusable, and the Rough Rider Mercenary company doesn't have a valid Free Guild general model. We know at the very least there has been a new war priest model floating around for ages.
a lot of free guild got big buffs droping horde requirements making things more consistent just over all better.
Moving older armies away from needing to be hordes is a good thing. Also trying to cram 90 gunners within 18" of a General is probably not an easy task. Skimmed through Orruks, and noticed two big things. The Ironjawz weapon rules got cleaned up so not every set of weapons has a special rule. Also want to see the full rules to the The Big Waagh. Reading through the heroes and everyone with the exception of Gordrakk only buffs their Sub Faction. So not really seeing a big reason to mix the two factions outside of taking a prophet with Ironjawz to be a CP battery. Rules for the Big Waagh, and spell lores may change that. Orcs Cities
iron jaws are going to be reeeally powerful with just a boss and a chanter you can make ard boys weapon profile 2/2/3/-1/2 and if you have max waaagh then its 2/1/2/-1/2 (plus what ever we don't know about) thats crazy no one is ever going to drop waaagh power for an extra attack because that's insanely good
It's clearly going to be Ogres and Bonereapers together first, as Ogres were first confirmed to be in a 'Feast of Bones' thing and then Ossiarch were revealed to be collecting the 'Tithe of Bones', so it's clear that these are going to be both released in a Battlebox that features the new Tyrant and existing Ogre models against a portion of the Ossiarch army, alongside the updated Ogre Battletome and all the other Ossiarch minis. This will most likely take up all of October. Then GW confirmed that they were going to release those ghastly plastic Sisters of Battle in November, and knowing how GW love their Imperium stuff, this will probably take up all 4 weeks in that month, or if not, the remaining weeks will be taken up by Storm-of-Magic-for-40K. Historically December has always been the month where GW just release a bunch of new SC boxes and Battleforce boxes along with other Christmas bundles, so I wouldn't expect anything here. HOWEVER, January has always been an AoS month. This year it was Gloomspite Gitz, last year it was Maggotkin, the year before I think it was Disciples of Tzeentch and the year before that I think it was Seraphon (which was just after AoS came out in July 2015). This means I'm pretty certain the next AoS release will be then, but I'm pretty sure that it won't be Slaves to Darkness or Seraphon 2nd Edition. I'm surprised that none of you have noticed that GW have already teased another new faction - remember the Kurnothi warband in Beastsgrave? GW have provided some physical evidence that an army based around these chaps is going to arrive soon, and the earliest they can arrive is January, for the reasons above. I'm pretty sure that Slaves to Darkness and Seraphon will be later on next year, probably in the spring.
Considering how long we've been getting Darkoath stuff and no book, I'd take Kurnothi getting a full book with a grain of salt. Do more to Chaos Daemons is pretty common on warscrolls.
I wouldn't be surprised if Ogors don't get their full release til January even if the dual box comes out sooner.