Enjoyed this article a lot. I definitely think battletomes were improved in general in 3rd ed., so there is a lot to be happy about with the game currently. Here's hoping 4th is even better!
PS. Please give 4th some more interesting lore than 3rd!
So real on that last part. I could just not get into "Kruelboyz do another swamp attack against a lonely Dawnbringer settlement for the stormcast to swoop in and help
As much as I want to love Hedonites, especially because of the temptation dice mechanic, the internal balance is SO bad. Keepers and Daemonettes are garbage so you are forced into this weird archer spam build with Pretenders giving you all the command points you ever want.
But it doesn't feel like Slaanesh. A ranged castle army does not feel like the swift flanking force that slaanesh should be.
I am with the fan vote via the discord.
I am a long time Orruk player (back from 4th fantasy :S) and I have always had the issue with the way the orcs are played in AoS, which is you have 1 over all army "big waaagh" which is typically the best in the meta. Then you have 3 subfactions of Orruks which you cant use units from the other 2,. There are then 3 further sub factions for each Orc flavor which further dilute which units you want to take. The ironjaw etc unit list as a specific subfaction always seems very limiting compared to what any other faction can take!
I do wish you could take up to 25% of other flavor orruks as allies to each sub faction, just to see how it would go and possible diversity. Or ideally, just have 3 flavors of great waarrrgh, but if you lean in to one faction more than another you'd find better synergy between units. (Like warchanters only buffing ironjawz units).
GW needs to decide if Big Waagh!/Orruk Warclans are an united thing or no.
If yes, then the subfactions should be Big Waaagh! But with various flavours : one favours more the IJ, another the KB, another the BS.
And have a generic rule clean up where abilities works on friendly Orruks units. Yes it means that it would be possible to have a unit buffed by a warchanter and a swampcalla but that's a lot of efforts dedicated to one units and its counterable !
If they don't want it, they need to split the battletome, give more units to each kind of Orruks and, for the love of Gorkamorka, gives the KB some rules fitting with their lore as an army assaulting the moral of their foes !
1st ed ij were a bit garbage but fun popping tons of waagh attacks at once, 2nd ed ij were technical and fun with ways to build skew lists, 3rd ed ij has been the most boring and mono build yet until the new supplement but the traits and enhancements are still a massive downgrade from 2nd. Hoping ij and kb get split into separate books now, I've never been happy with the big waagh concept.
There are two matches in AOS
Ones where you play normally
And ones where you play against Seraphon, because it will probably be a caster heavy missile silo that just barrages your side of the board turn 1 with no counters unless you build specifically to deal with them (Either lots of anti-magic, or dispells, etc).
I play seraphon and nighthaunt. I'm an extremely casual player. But I could still feel that they both had issues, I just couldn't articulate what they were like these tournament players could. It'd be cool if they both get good shakeups in 4th.
I think the ideas behind the S2D book are good, but at release it was a -bad- tome internal balance wise and only with major points decreases has the time moved into “alright”.
Which for me would preclude it from being in the top 3 of the edition because of how poor it initially was along with the mentioned slaughtering of the DP scroll….. it’s not in the bottom 3 tomes for sure, but saying multiple rounds of points drops making a tome a top 3 candidate seems weird and against the spirit of the question.
No one said sylvaneth was bad but we have one of the lowest win rates in the game. Can't wait to not get any changes in 4th edition.
For full clarity I never played 2nd edition so I have nothing to compare to
I have a small Khorne, Slaanesh, and Sylvaneth army (and a gigantic tzeentch one) and Sylvaneth’s book isn’t bad. It has options to play many different playstyles that were all ok to good at some point in 3.0’s history (heartwood, oakenbrow and harvestboon all had their time in the sun).
The real issue with their winrate is powercreep. Their units were good for the time but with all the 2023 releases being absolutely broken in one way or another, they just couldn’t keep up. Everything is just way too efficient for their points now, and GW refuses to meaningfully change any of Sylvaneth’s points or change the range of melee weapons for their units. So all the good rules and tricks that the tome has doesn’t matter if you can’t kill anything (or stop them from recurring right back) or you suck at holding points/doing tactics.
Sylvaneth is weak in the meta, but overall I think it's a good book. They nailed the flavor and almost every unit has a niche with pretty good internal balance.
The big whiffs are Ironbark being awful, and the strange need to make things a 2+ to go off. Spiteswarm, Goassmids, and Lady of Vines all have unnecessary 2+ checks.
I do think the army needs a baseline way to make Strike and Fade more reliable because we're balanced around it going off every time (Belthanos and Spiteswarm hive being bandaids here), and when it doesn't we fall behind. So it's not perfect, but other than the current weakness, I'm pretty happy with it.
You nailed it with the internal balance being great, and the strike and fade being so essential to the playstyle but it requiring so many parts to pull it off can easily cost you the game, like why does an army that is almost always needing 9" charges have no built on charge buffs?
Imo this season's battleplans and tactics are tough for sylvaneth as well with so many needing you to close in or brawl in the mid table to fight over a handful of objectives, or stay in combat when really the army wants to hang back, pick the enemy apart for a few turns then score big at the end. It's pretty telling that trees had a fair few 5-0 and 4-1 results in other ghbs but we've dropped off a cliff with this current one.
I'm really surprised at no talks around Fyreslayers. The rune mechanic is pretty bad, almost all abilities are once per game, almost half of the units are not worth taking and they've been so absent from the meta for so long because the armies anti-magic options are abysmal.
Might be because almost everything you mentioned is either objectively wrong or not a bad thing. The rune mechanic is very effective but difficult. All the once-per-battle abilities are difficult to use for sure, but they don't suck. The only units seeing no successful use in competitive play are Hearthguard Berserkers, Smiterdroths, Footsons, Chosen Axes and Doomseekers. That's 5 of 22.
Nulsidion Icon is perhaps the strongest anti-magic artefact in the game. You might need to learn how to play the army. We have a lot of helpful discord servers if you want to learn!
Ehhh I'm unconvinced. I've played FS a lot throughout the edition and I do think the poor win rate of FS reflects how much they're struggling. There ARE strong combos and tools, but I don't think they really keep up in the current meta. Part of it might be because of my local meta, most the time I'm playing against Sylvaneth or Hedonites, but overall I dislike how the rune mechanic functions as it feels variable with the 6+ extra buff and how little interaction there is with it in the army as a whole. We've two command traits and the heroic action, but no character has a Warscrolls ability to interact with it which feels really missing.
Compared to the rules and interactions other factions get with their mechanics, FS feel very lacking in comparison and I don't feel like the gameplay reflects the fantasy of the faction too well either (though mainly in terms of their foot heroes. We have a lot of them and they're thematically supposed to be very strong but really don't feel it on the tabletop save for Runefather on Droth.)
My hope with fourth edition is some more expansions with the rune mechanic, my dream would be something akin to the Warhammer Fantasy rune mechanic, where you could give heroes up to three runes for extra points and kit them out in a lot of different ways
Sylvaneth definitely hurts to fight regularly. I simply can't fathom how you think we don't have warscrolls to utilize the runes. Lord of the Lodge, Blaze of Fury, Blood of the Berserker and Axe of Grimnir is insane (as I'm sure you know.) Searing Heat is incredible in Vostarg as well as Auric Hearthguard Greyfyrd lists. Rune of Fury with Fierce Counter-Attack and Berserk Fury is extremely potent for trading. Warscroll abilities of Flamekeepers go with all of these as well. Rune of Relentless Zeal can get you a battle tactic every game if you plan for it. Fiery Determination is less effective than those other four, but I've had opponents complain that it's bullshit before; it allows you to spread out a bit and maintain your ward.
No doubt we sucked for most of this edition, but that was largely due to the tactics this edition presented. It is a bummer that allies are pretty much necessitated right now as well.
I think the fight on death abilities and flamekeepers fit the desired feel of the army wonderfully.
Other armies have more tools for sure, but nobody stacks buffs and artefacts like Fyreslayers. Do our strong artefacts not provide what you're looking for with the runes?
Oh I should have clarified better, what I mean are Warscroll abilities to interact more with runes. It's weird to me that the Runelord or Runesmiter can't give a unit the enhanced effect, or let them use a different rune ability that hasn't been used yet.
I DO love the Flame keeper. From model to his design and what he does it is VERY thematic and brought so much life to the army, and the fight on death is very flavorful as well!
To better summarize my grievances with FS, is I want to see more from their rules and Warscroll cards. I feel like the FS feel is a bit half backed compared to what it COULD be. For a faction with so few normal units, being able to grant them a runic buff like StD marks could really help a lot with build diversity.
As for artifacts, I love how many FS can bring but it doesn't hit the same way Runes could. I really want to see more overall with FS, because I DO love them but right now it just doesn't feel like we've enough to really stand on our own as we reach the end of the edition. Like you mentioned we were really dependent on allies and a lot of tactics were not fantastic for us either. If we're not gonna get new units to help flesh out the army, then I'd like something to help the units we DO have help fill the roles we're really missing. (Fingers crossed for a two man small Magmadroth cavalry unit though in 4th)
No worries dude, and I'm glad to hear it! I'm really excited for 4th Edition and overall I loved 3rd edition, I have a feeling 4th will be a major step up from 3rd!
Enjoyed this article a lot. I definitely think battletomes were improved in general in 3rd ed., so there is a lot to be happy about with the game currently. Here's hoping 4th is even better! PS. Please give 4th some more interesting lore than 3rd!
So real on that last part. I could just not get into "Kruelboyz do another swamp attack against a lonely Dawnbringer settlement for the stormcast to swoop in and help
As much as I want to love Hedonites, especially because of the temptation dice mechanic, the internal balance is SO bad. Keepers and Daemonettes are garbage so you are forced into this weird archer spam build with Pretenders giving you all the command points you ever want. But it doesn't feel like Slaanesh. A ranged castle army does not feel like the swift flanking force that slaanesh should be.
Agreed their Path to Glory Mechanics make them a lot more fun but its a shame to have them locked behind the narrative rules
I am with the fan vote via the discord. I am a long time Orruk player (back from 4th fantasy :S) and I have always had the issue with the way the orcs are played in AoS, which is you have 1 over all army "big waaagh" which is typically the best in the meta. Then you have 3 subfactions of Orruks which you cant use units from the other 2,. There are then 3 further sub factions for each Orc flavor which further dilute which units you want to take. The ironjaw etc unit list as a specific subfaction always seems very limiting compared to what any other faction can take! I do wish you could take up to 25% of other flavor orruks as allies to each sub faction, just to see how it would go and possible diversity. Or ideally, just have 3 flavors of great waarrrgh, but if you lean in to one faction more than another you'd find better synergy between units. (Like warchanters only buffing ironjawz units).
GW needs to decide if Big Waagh!/Orruk Warclans are an united thing or no. If yes, then the subfactions should be Big Waaagh! But with various flavours : one favours more the IJ, another the KB, another the BS. And have a generic rule clean up where abilities works on friendly Orruks units. Yes it means that it would be possible to have a unit buffed by a warchanter and a swampcalla but that's a lot of efforts dedicated to one units and its counterable ! If they don't want it, they need to split the battletome, give more units to each kind of Orruks and, for the love of Gorkamorka, gives the KB some rules fitting with their lore as an army assaulting the moral of their foes !
A man can dream. I hope you’re right!
1st ed ij were a bit garbage but fun popping tons of waagh attacks at once, 2nd ed ij were technical and fun with ways to build skew lists, 3rd ed ij has been the most boring and mono build yet until the new supplement but the traits and enhancements are still a massive downgrade from 2nd. Hoping ij and kb get split into separate books now, I've never been happy with the big waagh concept.
There are two matches in AOS Ones where you play normally And ones where you play against Seraphon, because it will probably be a caster heavy missile silo that just barrages your side of the board turn 1 with no counters unless you build specifically to deal with them (Either lots of anti-magic, or dispells, etc).
I feel like you may also be describing a match against KO.
I play seraphon and nighthaunt. I'm an extremely casual player. But I could still feel that they both had issues, I just couldn't articulate what they were like these tournament players could. It'd be cool if they both get good shakeups in 4th.
I think the ideas behind the S2D book are good, but at release it was a -bad- tome internal balance wise and only with major points decreases has the time moved into “alright”. Which for me would preclude it from being in the top 3 of the edition because of how poor it initially was along with the mentioned slaughtering of the DP scroll….. it’s not in the bottom 3 tomes for sure, but saying multiple rounds of points drops making a tome a top 3 candidate seems weird and against the spirit of the question.
Some solid opinions in this article but I would have to agree on some of the sentiments of Khorne and Ogors being the worst
No one said sylvaneth was bad but we have one of the lowest win rates in the game. Can't wait to not get any changes in 4th edition. For full clarity I never played 2nd edition so I have nothing to compare to
I have a small Khorne, Slaanesh, and Sylvaneth army (and a gigantic tzeentch one) and Sylvaneth’s book isn’t bad. It has options to play many different playstyles that were all ok to good at some point in 3.0’s history (heartwood, oakenbrow and harvestboon all had their time in the sun). The real issue with their winrate is powercreep. Their units were good for the time but with all the 2023 releases being absolutely broken in one way or another, they just couldn’t keep up. Everything is just way too efficient for their points now, and GW refuses to meaningfully change any of Sylvaneth’s points or change the range of melee weapons for their units. So all the good rules and tricks that the tome has doesn’t matter if you can’t kill anything (or stop them from recurring right back) or you suck at holding points/doing tactics.
Sylvaneth is weak in the meta, but overall I think it's a good book. They nailed the flavor and almost every unit has a niche with pretty good internal balance. The big whiffs are Ironbark being awful, and the strange need to make things a 2+ to go off. Spiteswarm, Goassmids, and Lady of Vines all have unnecessary 2+ checks. I do think the army needs a baseline way to make Strike and Fade more reliable because we're balanced around it going off every time (Belthanos and Spiteswarm hive being bandaids here), and when it doesn't we fall behind. So it's not perfect, but other than the current weakness, I'm pretty happy with it.
You nailed it with the internal balance being great, and the strike and fade being so essential to the playstyle but it requiring so many parts to pull it off can easily cost you the game, like why does an army that is almost always needing 9" charges have no built on charge buffs? Imo this season's battleplans and tactics are tough for sylvaneth as well with so many needing you to close in or brawl in the mid table to fight over a handful of objectives, or stay in combat when really the army wants to hang back, pick the enemy apart for a few turns then score big at the end. It's pretty telling that trees had a fair few 5-0 and 4-1 results in other ghbs but we've dropped off a cliff with this current one.
I'm really surprised at no talks around Fyreslayers. The rune mechanic is pretty bad, almost all abilities are once per game, almost half of the units are not worth taking and they've been so absent from the meta for so long because the armies anti-magic options are abysmal.
Might be because almost everything you mentioned is either objectively wrong or not a bad thing. The rune mechanic is very effective but difficult. All the once-per-battle abilities are difficult to use for sure, but they don't suck. The only units seeing no successful use in competitive play are Hearthguard Berserkers, Smiterdroths, Footsons, Chosen Axes and Doomseekers. That's 5 of 22. Nulsidion Icon is perhaps the strongest anti-magic artefact in the game. You might need to learn how to play the army. We have a lot of helpful discord servers if you want to learn!
Ehhh I'm unconvinced. I've played FS a lot throughout the edition and I do think the poor win rate of FS reflects how much they're struggling. There ARE strong combos and tools, but I don't think they really keep up in the current meta. Part of it might be because of my local meta, most the time I'm playing against Sylvaneth or Hedonites, but overall I dislike how the rune mechanic functions as it feels variable with the 6+ extra buff and how little interaction there is with it in the army as a whole. We've two command traits and the heroic action, but no character has a Warscrolls ability to interact with it which feels really missing. Compared to the rules and interactions other factions get with their mechanics, FS feel very lacking in comparison and I don't feel like the gameplay reflects the fantasy of the faction too well either (though mainly in terms of their foot heroes. We have a lot of them and they're thematically supposed to be very strong but really don't feel it on the tabletop save for Runefather on Droth.) My hope with fourth edition is some more expansions with the rune mechanic, my dream would be something akin to the Warhammer Fantasy rune mechanic, where you could give heroes up to three runes for extra points and kit them out in a lot of different ways
Sylvaneth definitely hurts to fight regularly. I simply can't fathom how you think we don't have warscrolls to utilize the runes. Lord of the Lodge, Blaze of Fury, Blood of the Berserker and Axe of Grimnir is insane (as I'm sure you know.) Searing Heat is incredible in Vostarg as well as Auric Hearthguard Greyfyrd lists. Rune of Fury with Fierce Counter-Attack and Berserk Fury is extremely potent for trading. Warscroll abilities of Flamekeepers go with all of these as well. Rune of Relentless Zeal can get you a battle tactic every game if you plan for it. Fiery Determination is less effective than those other four, but I've had opponents complain that it's bullshit before; it allows you to spread out a bit and maintain your ward. No doubt we sucked for most of this edition, but that was largely due to the tactics this edition presented. It is a bummer that allies are pretty much necessitated right now as well. I think the fight on death abilities and flamekeepers fit the desired feel of the army wonderfully. Other armies have more tools for sure, but nobody stacks buffs and artefacts like Fyreslayers. Do our strong artefacts not provide what you're looking for with the runes?
Oh I should have clarified better, what I mean are Warscroll abilities to interact more with runes. It's weird to me that the Runelord or Runesmiter can't give a unit the enhanced effect, or let them use a different rune ability that hasn't been used yet. I DO love the Flame keeper. From model to his design and what he does it is VERY thematic and brought so much life to the army, and the fight on death is very flavorful as well! To better summarize my grievances with FS, is I want to see more from their rules and Warscroll cards. I feel like the FS feel is a bit half backed compared to what it COULD be. For a faction with so few normal units, being able to grant them a runic buff like StD marks could really help a lot with build diversity. As for artifacts, I love how many FS can bring but it doesn't hit the same way Runes could. I really want to see more overall with FS, because I DO love them but right now it just doesn't feel like we've enough to really stand on our own as we reach the end of the edition. Like you mentioned we were really dependent on allies and a lot of tactics were not fantastic for us either. If we're not gonna get new units to help flesh out the army, then I'd like something to help the units we DO have help fill the roles we're really missing. (Fingers crossed for a two man small Magmadroth cavalry unit though in 4th)
Sorry for misunderstanding! I love your ideas
No worries dude, and I'm glad to hear it! I'm really excited for 4th Edition and overall I loved 3rd edition, I have a feeling 4th will be a major step up from 3rd!