Grand Army Challenge II: Kings of War Edition

[boagrius]

Sounds good to me. I have 3 4x6 tables so the table setup is no problem.

[Fritz]

Oh and obviously the Warlords/commander rules would apply to Undead marching (which Tomb Kings get from Undead Legion correct?)

[boagrius]

Yes any unit within 12" of your lord.

[MorGrendel]

Undead Marching!
Next your going to tell me that the Lizardmen just opened a portal and left. Still no flying monster.

[ahrimen]

Vampire counts could always March within 12" of the General. Tomb kings could not for.....reasons Letting tomb kings do it is more like fixing a problem.

[Fritz]

Undead Marching!
Next your going to tell me that the Lizardmen just opened a portal and left. Still no flying monster.

Well...actually they kind of did. I put Archaon and Thanquol on my google drive for you =P. At least lizards survived the End Times. The rest of us just got sucked into a portal of DOOOOOM. And you will not get a flying monster for Lizardmen. Sorry.

Yes any unit within 12" of your lord.

Excellent. So 12" bubble for commanders, 18" bubble for the Warlord sound good?

[MorGrendel]

Fritz, hopefully I'll get to them. I'm still in the first book waiting for something to happen. :). Seriously Mannfred captures all these heroes but how? Bretonia has a civil war and the green knight becomes king -again. Tell me more. Nope, but Arkhan got a cat...WTF.

Speaking of fixing a problem, I feel we have to be careful house ruling to much, especially magic. With all the recasting of spells, perhaps that clunky rule about picking the spell and the finding out how many dice you get is a necessary evil. I think there is totally a broken loophole with night goblins with the extra die per casting, seems like you could create a never ending magic phase. Sure the spells are not super powerful, but I do believe they have a snipe spell.

Man they wrecked lizardman Magic in the nEw book. There is really nothing good/synergy in this book, short of "buy new models". And even those are meh.

[Fritz]

The story of Mannfred capturing all of those heroes is spread across a few army books. Long story short: he schemed for a long time and executed his plan almost flawlessly. The Bretonnian story is elaborated a bit from the Arkhan point of view as well as in the Fall of Altdorf book. The novels are small pieces of the End Times story. Due to their narrative style, they focus in on a tighter portion than the corresponding End Times book. If you just want a quick wrap up, I'm trying to hammer out some summaries. I'm up to three so far:

http://warhammertruthiness.blogspot.com ... t-one.html
http://warhammertruthiness.blogspot.com ... t-two.html
http://warhammertruthiness.blogspot.com ... three.html

You are the only person in the world complaining about lizardmen magic not being good enough. I'm not exaggerating. Slann+Focus of Mystery+High Magic lore attribute=adaptability for any situation. It is the most versatile caster in the game. The rest of the army, yeah have at it. But magic? Come on man, it's the one this the army has going for it.

[MorGrendel]

I call Cult of the New, interwebs.

It's the best combo, because it's the only combo. If I played seriously, then you'd know what was coming every time. Is that fun?

So Focus of Mystery which gave me Loremaster of all lores before, now only gives me Loremaster of High Magic, is better? Perhaps you are partial to High Magic. Rather than change a named rule, again, wouldn't have just been simpler to say LM can know High magic. So between the books all those slann loremasters either forgot their lores, or switched to High Magic. Now that's discipline! 'Rimshot'

The Lord attribute gives a random spell. I have an idea, let's make a long and confusing phase, longer and more confusing. I'm not dumb, I get I can take the signature spell and they are generally good, but man it seems silly that the caster "forgets" a spell he just successfully cast and then remembers two spells and choses one. Maybe wrecked should say convoluted, but this all over the place thinking in endemic throughout the book.(really, skavenpelt banner, that's the banner we keep. Put away the banners to the gods boys, someone might get offended.)

Also lost were the ability to shut down the opponent magic phase, and extra dice in casting or dispelling. Basically, my Good army full of expensive elite troops has morphed into High Elves with scaly skin.

[MorGrendel]

One more point - one of the reasons I miss loremaster is lore of Life is infinitely better. Without loremaster I might pass on Life. But maybe that's just me too. Life plus Lizard man is awesome.

Back to EOT, I think the double books threw me. Do you suggest reading the narrative first, or am I missing things because I didn't read the coffee table book first? If I skip ahead to Thanquol, will I be lost?

[Fritz]

Elves with scaly skin...right. Those are called Dark Elves (don't get me started on how those fuckers can get a 5+ scaly skin for 6 points, but my white lion cloak only gives me an extra 5+ against non-magical shooting for 4 points). Come back to me when your Saurus are toughness 3. You clearly have entirely too much of a grass is greener outlook to Elves. We're swapping armies sometime. Sorry, but when it comes to magic you had to be balanced to what everyone else can do. Being able to completely shut down an enemy wizard for 40 points (or whatever it was), while fluffy for Slann, is not good for a game. It's the same reason they took away irresistible force on any double for Teclis and the Book of Hoeth for High Elves. That shit was not balanced in this edition.

You're upset that you can't take Loremaster of anything you want? Guess what? You're the only army that can get Loremaster of ANYTHING on a generic character. There is not another army out there that has access to loremaster outside of special characters. But you're unhappy that all you get is High Magic? The spells for which you can toss aside and then get another spell from any of the rulebook lores? Really?! Here's the other thing, there is nothing about taking Focus of Mysteries that's predicable. It's adaptable to whatever you need at the moment. Need to kill some characters? Death it is! Need to kill some armor? Metal melts everything! Wanna smite some undead or daemons? Light me up! If you don't want it, my Elves will be happy to take it. I'd eat that shit up in a heartbeat. I'm guaranteed to get Arcane Unforging and Walk Between World and I can toss aside Tempest, Soul Quench, Apothesis, and Fiery Convocation once most things are in combat in favor of things like Wyssan's Wildform.

You also can general extra power dice better than anyone in the game (harmonic convergence+channeling staff, try it some time). Plus you can store an unused dispel die, re-roll your first failed dispel attempt, and can adjust a miscast up or down by a point. Other armies might be able to do one or two of those things with magic items. You can not only do all of them, but you can do all of them on ONE CHARACTER.

However, if you really want to be different for the sake of being different, I would take light over life for slann. Stop thinking that you're Elves because you're just not. Life is best for armies with lots of lower toughness. You're already tough with pretty good armor. You don't need help with that from life. What you need help with (or at least saurus need help with) is weapon skill and initiative. Light helps those in abundance with Pha's Protection, Speed of Light, and Timewarp. Even then, Banishment and Light of Battle are nothing to sneeze at. The only spell I consider bad in lore of light is Net of Amyntok. It's not an overtly powerful lore like Shadow and Death, but it's cheap as hell to cast and covers your worst weaknesses. You can also go boosted on all my favorite spells and cover huge portions of your army.

This, however, is also where you can use Focus of Mysteries and Contemplations really well. Early in the game you throw out the painful ranged stuff, which High Magic does in abundance. You then start shifting over to Light. You might not get what you want right away, but eventually you'll either roll a 1,2, or 6, or you'll roll a duplicate and therefore get to choose a spell. I would never drop to the base spell in this particular case. It's not a 'must have' spell and it precludes you from getting a duplicate spell. You can eventually get all 6 spells of the generated spells in lore of light and still have 2 left from High Magic. That's incredible.

I get it, you want to go against the grain of what everyone else is doing in the face of a book that points toward one choice. You know what? That's not a unique problem to Lizardmen. What you're doing is the equivalent to complaining about how underpowered High Elf magic is when I don't take the Book of Hoeth and Shadow. Instead, I take a Loremaster as my only caster, give him a dispel scroll, and make it work for me. There are plenty of things about that Lizardmen book you can complain about. You have a crazy ass rule for Saurus now that needs to be FAQ'd for supporting attacks and essentially forces you to take Skink Chiefs if you want to stop Saurus from running around like maniacs. However, the power and adaptability of Lizardmen magic is not something that is even remotely a problem.

Finally, I will always recommend the novels over the End Times books themselves as far as quality. The End Times books have a bad habit of going "and then hundreds died." The novels, especially Rise of the Horned Rat, are better than their End Times equivalent. The only problem is that it usually only tells part of the story. Rise of the Horned Rat gets you everything that Queek Headtaker is part of: namely the fall of Karak Eight Peaks and the Siege of Karaz-a-Karak. End Times: Thanquol, however, also has the battle of Lustria, the siege of Karak Kadrin, and the siege of Middenheim.

You could skip straight to Thanquol without too much of a problem. The majority of the book, specifically the portions where the Skaven are fighting the dwarfs and Lizardmen, are self contained. It helps that most of the End Times books are concurrent. End Times: Khaine is entirely self-contained with no impact on the other books until End Times: Archaon. End Times: Glottkin and Nagash have some impact on Thanquol. You can probably pick up on the context clues though. The super short version is the Empire is being overrun by just about everything. Altdorf was sacked by a Nurgle force before the Emperor's rebirth scoured the city of daemons and Undead. Everything left standing is besieged. Enter the Skaven.

[MorGrendel]

I think you're right. I probably spend too much time trying to build an army that I would want to play against. I think it comes for my Magic days and being a competitive player. I think I look for OP in everything. I would hate to table someone as I feel it would waste both of our time. I'd rather have a close game. I also agree there is a "stupid trend" in the Lizardman book with Slann forgetting spells, saurus running off, and skinks lossing a point of leadership. All that said I've been playing Skaven so probably have have not given the lizardman a fair shake. And by playing, I really mean I don't think I've played since Jackson's been born. Poor me.

[Fritz]

The slann discarding spells is actually one of the few things I liked in the new book. It was different and reinforced their total mastery of magic by giving them not only access to all the lores, but also made them able to dynamically re-task based on the threat being presented. It's one of the things that makes me kind of want to try lizardmen out as a secondary army (that and big dinosaurs). It's one of those things that can be excellent in the hands of a good player, but not really overpowered. There are parts that are kinda of...WTF... but overall workable. Saurus are still pretty good for 11 points with 2 attacks, S and T 4, and 4+ armor despite their sudden need to chase after squirrels. I don't really get why everyone is so down on them. It might be because the meta in the competitive realm has shifted toward speed and armor. Still, I remain tempted by this list: Slann, 30x Saurus, 4 units of 10x skinks, 20x temple guard, double scar vets on Carnosaurs, double Ancient Stegadons. Sounds like a blast to play with.

As for playing again, mark your calendar for 11 June through 28 June. I'll be around if you have the urge to play.

[lilscutt]

I've tried to get him to play for 6 months no luck there

[ahrimen]

I can get lore master on a goblin shaman, but I have to put him on the back or a Arachnorok spider for around 300 pts. I tried it against Serban, and I'm not sure about it. I wanted to keep him back to cast and not risk the shaman so the spider was never properly used to crush stuff. And when I did get it into combat the shaman died quick. On the other hand a lore master who channels on a 3+ ( channeling staff +shrine) was only 500 pts all together.