Hello everyone! At Killer Angel's suggestion, I'm posting this thread for everyone to discuss the new Anvil of Apotheosis rules from the new GHB 2020. So please feel free to share your own custom hero builds, ask and answer questions about the new system, and of course theorycraft how to make the most awesome champions of the Old Ones possible!
over all i like them they need a few hard limits(like min 100 points) and standard mounts need to be waaay cheaper but over all i think they work well
Anvil of Apotheosis is excellent for foot heroes, as they can be pumped up really well. I would say avoid mounts as they are overcosted and we have better damage dealing options then what they currently offer us.
So I had an idea of taking named characters from the Old World lore and posing a "build challenge" of sorts asking people how they'd build that particular character using the Anvil rules. Unfortunately we're limited to Saurus and Skinks, but there's quite a few to pick from those two categories. Anyone interested in something like that?
not sure if the system is brod enough for that most of them would end up being minmaxed guy with old world label. i can make a 3+ ethereal saurus but he wouldn't be Gor-Rok(gor rock is a lot tougher then that). i can make a missile carnasuar but kro-gar is both stronger then i can make and more versatile. i like anvil but it's not point efficient
What is Seraphon currently lacking? Any idea on a hero build that could fill that role? Maybe a saurus totem hero that will inspire bravery 11 to units around it in a coalesed army. Or something, probably not point efficient though
If I'm reading the rules correctly, that should be totally possible given that the Skink and Saurus heroes don't apply their buffs to just units with those keywords.
meh, the anvil has the following issues: Most things are overcosted when compared to official heroes, especially if you want to make a beatstick. See the examples in this post The internal balance of the anvil is all over the place. The templates don't follow any rules and aren't consistent with their own upgrade costs resulting in things like a grot being just as expensive as an aelf yet and aelf is just flat out better. Or a dragon oger being "only" 7 points more expensive than a grot, but upgrading the grot to the same level would cost 13 points. The various mounts are more cost efficient if you have terrible base-movement, because for some reason it just sets your movement to x" instead of adding a certain amount. wizards get some interesting spells. But the available command abilities & prayers for the other two archetypes are rather terrible. There's no upgrades for a 2nd spellcast, and in general there's a lack of utility upgrades. You either make a wizard or a beatstick. I'd say the anvil is only really interesting for the following: Getting access to one of the interesting spells. Especially if your army normally lacks such a spell. E.g. the ressurection spell would be very interesting for us. Creating a minor hero that isn't as easy to snipe as the official variant to carry a good spell from your spell-lore or an artifact or prayer or other allegiance ability (e.g. create a "starpriest" with 10 wounds instead of the usual 4). Creating a hero with stats you usually can't have (e.g. a tzeenth hero with a decent melee profile and save). Especially interesting if your allegiance abilities are particularly powerfull and provide a lot of power in addition to whatever is on your warscroll. imho it's all a bit dissapointing, especially the lack of internal consistency & the lack of choices in terms of utility. -
you can actually make some solid punchy foot heroes, but in all honesty thats not why you take foot heroes. Hopefully GHB 2021 will correct some of the mistakes in the AoA
It's a brilliant tool for players, encourages kitbashing which would improve sales, and would be increadibly usefull for internal use as well (just imagine how much easier it is to bring a new designer up to speed if you had this sort of reference-tool). So obviously it'l be abandoned, it's GW after all On that note, whatever happenend to mercenaries? Those things were a brilliant excuse to convince someone to buy some models from a different faction than their main army. Have they given up on those as well after releasing a whopping 4 or 5 mercenary groups?
they released several bad mercenary teams and 1 good one that was immediately made invalid as less then a month latter the models in it went out of print. as such no one used them and since no one used them GW stopped doing it
you'd think they'd release a couple more of those. Easy filler for a white dwarf & easy marketing for unpopular armies. GW moves in mysterious ways.
I think this is pretty much on spot. Many people are distracted by "save 3+ immune to rend" and build a sort of melee hero, but imo you should only watch for utilities that the army lacks, or to preserve a key hero
Also, to put into perspective how horribly overpriced the anvil is: it's impossible to make a tzeentch hero that's better in melee than the official tzeentch heroes for roughly equal cost. So despite tzeentch having some of the worst melee heroes, and sacrificing any abilities they might have, its still not possible to match them in raw stats for roughly the same pointcost. Which is fairly ridiculous.