AoS Realmshaper Engine - Let's Crack It!

The garrison rules are what make it controversial in my opinion, since it not only gives the enemy a potential bonus but 100% denies any additional benefits.

Even if it had 2 tiers of bonuses (+2 to bravery if wholly within 12” for coalesced, add 1 to all D3 conjugation rolls for applicable heroes within 18” for starborne) plus the MW if garrisoned. Then fine, place it anywhere and have any old jerk be able to walk in.

Although from a lore perspective I feel that enemy units should not be able to garrison - I picture some weird hieroglyphs on the side that only respond to Seraphon lifesource, and when touched, the stone turns into a portal which opens for your dudes. Like a Dracothion fingerprint reader. Why should Slaanesh be able to enter it? They can deface it, destroy it, etc. But to walk in and out their feet up on the furniture? That’s the epitome of lore butchery in my poor eyes.

 

Well it should be possible to place it so it gives a degree of cover from LOS to a hero near the objective.

I dont know why I cant link pictures directly into my post. It just shows some odd sign.
https://imgur.com/R6Fco6s

This is obviously a super rough draft, but it effectively removes the option of putting long range units in about half of their deployment zone.

 

thats one of the tactics i’ll be using. Or I get it, or my opponnent wil put some support heroes in it within 22” of my kroak. -1 to hit an +1 save is cool and all. But MW do right through it. You can either set it up in a way that your terradons can reach it T1 if you lose the roll. It has a massive footprint and very big line of sight.

I think the key will be to set it up in a way you will benefit from it if you win the diceroll. But make i very unappeiling for your enemy to garrison it. Or if they do, so they will regret it...

 

True. Unfortunately I think you are right that your have to position it far back into a deployment zone. If you place it at the borders edge, then your opponent can’t really use it for LOS blocking (though neither can you).

I think it has utility for starborne more than anything. Place it in a deployment zone, a few inches away from the border. If your opponent gets it and garrisons support heroes, destroy them with spells/poisoned skinks/salamanders. If they use it to block LoS and hide their support, teleport salamanders or poison skinks and kill them with mortals anyway.

Still not a great faction specific terrain. And if you play coalesced, you have less tools at your disposal if your opponent also plays a tanky backfield army as well

 

Honestly I have been thinking about even if you win the roll-off, how great is it to throw a support piece inside? The engine has a massive footprint, which makes screening against deepstrike super difficult if not flat out impossible. The defensive bonuses are great, but not great enough to have any of our Skink guys survive anything.

Kroak with 5 Guards seems alright. Makes him 3+ save and -2 to be hit vs. ranged (look out sir), then pass off wounds on a 2+ and his own 4+ FNP. You wont get a Balewind on him, but at least an Astrolith aura is within 12", not wholly within, so you can easily clip the corner of the engine with the Astrolith to give him extra range and +1 to casts.

Depending on how you place the engine, you probably get a longer range to measure spells from than if Kroak was sat on a Balewind. The sad part is that he isn't getting an extra spell cast, which is really valuable. If you play Starborne he's likely only 3 casts, which means you need to decide between 3x CD, an endless spell and his Comet's Call - Unless you got a Slann. In which case you are still sacrificing 1 CD cast or an endless spell.

 

I think that it would potentially make more sense to have Kroak in the temple and the guard behind it hidden. That way they have to attack him first and deal with his -2 to hit, 4++, and then whatever doesn’t make it goes backwards to the guard. Otherwise, they can pick the guard off fairly easily first.

just a thought

 

Keep in mind you do save rolls on Kroak, then you have to pass off wounds on a 2+, then you can use the 4++. You can't use his 4++ and then pass off to Guards on a 2+.

But yeah, it makes more sense to have the Guards sit in the back of the pyramide, effectively doing a screen from deepstrike behind. Meanwhile they are within 3" of the corner of the pyramide to grant both Look-out sir and their Selfless Protectors.

 

Im trying to return mine unopened to GW. I have never felt so angry at buying something from them before this. included in my return will be a harshly worded letter.

 

It’s not, but I suspect very few people want to pay 70 bucks (Canadian here) for a terrain piece that is “not that horrible.”

I think my friends will allow me to house rule it to prevent garrisoning, at the least. They all think it’s trash as well.

 

From our further discussion, the placement is very dependant on your list, as well as your opponents. To help the communication and planning of strategies I have mapped out all of the matched play battle plans, with an accompanying scaled terrain block. Use your photo editor of choice to help plot our terrain pieces placement.

I mostly play on a half board due to size limitations, so I included an appropriately scaled version for that as well.



Above is the standard 4by6 board, blue/red indicates deployment zones, white indicates middle ground lines and the distances you have to place away from your opponent's deployment zone (and therefore would affect auto-garrisoning), green is objectives range of capture (with a 1" sq representing a potential marker), and finally pink is our terrain feature footprint.

Below is the same image, but the terrain feature has been scaled accordingly (~1.5 times sense a half board is not actually perfect scale half in terms of deployment zones). If lots of people are interested in the half table size I can spend the time to make the scale perfect, but for now, it's good enough for me.



Note for the fellow hardcore nerds (like me) I made this in AutoCAD, using some smarts you can get a student version and should be able to view and manipulate the file in there. Let me know if you are interested in the .dwg format file.

Reposted on page 1 from page 6.

 

Actually, you can. Even in core book it was 3". Completely forgot about this FAQ. Not that it help us in any way, unfortunately.

EDIT: I'm in Skryre now! Yes-yes!

 

Why would it not need to be 6" from objectives and the edge of the board as stated in the Seraphon Battletome?

 

Nice work man. Are the white lines indicating the territories? Garrison rules is kind of new to me - I have never really played around with it before, but the core rules say:

"A unit can be set up as a garrison at the start of a battle if the terrain feature is wholly within the unit’s territory."

Territory, not deployment zone. Those are two different things. Quite a few battleplans have half the table as your territory, and then 12" from that your deployment zone, but surely you cant place the Realmshaper Engine in your territory but outside the deployment zone, yet deploy a unit directly into the Realmshaper Engine as per the rule above?

I cant find any FAQ/errata to the above. But even if it isnt possible, what if the Realmshaper Engine clips your deployment zone, but is largely in the territory. Can you then deploy directly inside of it when deploying your unit at the start of the game?

@LizardWizard

 

Ah, didn't notice. Looks like GW didn't want to sell it to players.

 

I believe with RAW as you point out, it cannot go over that territory line at all, if you want to auto-garrison it.

In some cases, the white lines do represent territory borders (can also represent board border but I think those cases are pretty clear), I'll try and edit the post to help make the color key more clear.

 

they did, that's why they didn't tell us how bad it was before we bought it.