 Hello everybody, if it's Wednesday, it's Warhammer and that must mean it's time for another episode of Warhammer Weekly Joining me as always is my one and only co-host Tom. What's up, buddy? How you doing? Hello friends? So it is just the two of us tonight. I apologize. We're starting a little late We had some really critical discussions that we had to have with one of Tom's kids Had a parenting crisis had to call Vincent. That's right. Don't worry. I got this My my years of experience had to come in and help Tom out Yeah, I know it was great. He was able to put some things into perspective for my my oldest son and Yeah, so we apologize for the delay. So we we thank you all for your patience Yeah, we were just having fun with trying to cheer up Tom's son. He's a good kid And who I've known for my god his entire life. So anyways Tonight we're going to talk about list building, but of course first we've got some news How about that rumor engine? Yeah, how about that new serif on thing, right? Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's serif on thing But you know like we can be excited about that But like the last serif on thing was a war like a warband right like an underworlds thing Yeah, yeah, yeah, like is that just what we have again? I'm gonna hope for like a I'm gonna hope for a war cry related thing because this feels like it could be either part of a base or a big piece of terrain or something like that So maybe it could be a cool war cry thing where like Here would be a fun thing in war cry that I don't think they've really explored yet But you could totally do it Because it's already part of the the normal aos game Uh, which is putting down little terrain pieces When your warband shows up like they summon in a little thing Like let's just go ahead and break that wide open and start bringing in But this time it'd be like tiny terrain on a base think of it almost like an endless spell Yeah, maybe something you put down there in place of a fig or something. You know what I mean? I'm just that would be fun. Yeah So i'm always excited for more war cry terrain It could also be like terrain by the way the other option for for not necessarily a serif on thing Well, let me put it this way it could easily be The terrain that is the next expansion for the season of war Because the next season of war will be guhr Probably right where we because the previous one was thandia was clearly heavily delayed We've now moved into guhr at the center of the well. No thandia thandia is in guhr No, they're two separate places or sorry guhr's the yeah, right. You're right Guhr is the whole place we moved from thandia to galea. There we go. I apologize. Yeah guhr is the plane Thandia was the previous area landmass we were in now. We're in galea. I apologize. Yeah, sorry too many different weird made up proper names Anyways at the center of the wood where the current season of war cry is happening is a giant awesome crashed serif on spaceship This is a serif on piece of terrain Hence the season of war Galea could be the new box. That's what it would be the new box and this could be some of the scatter train from it Okay, we got there. I had a I was walking there. I promise that took a while to work my way through all those names I do not care about And that feels right Mm-hmm Like that feels and that's what I just wanted to get to like that feels more right than another underworld Yeah, yeah I know how much you love the incarnate of guhr Can't get enough Just can't get enough I wonder if we might finally like to push this a little bit farther. I wonder if we might finally see Some of the random monster bs that we've seen floating around like the since the very beginning Of them exploring Like the planes right guhr has always had that random monster like attacking things like moving Like it's been in the planar rules literally from first edition Yeah, sure Like this would seems like this would be an appropriate place to put something like that maybe a dinosaur Again, I'm just wishlisting over here But um it like something like that would also not surprise me like if they're playing with the incarnate space Maybe they're gonna play with this other thing with like battle packs that have monsters or something like that Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. So yeah, I mean, we know we're gonna get a new Jesus lord I just kicked the crap out of my computer. We know we're gonna get a new We know we're gonna get a new season of war like obviously those keep coming We know we'll it'll probably be gala. We know there's a big serif on spaceship in the middle It doesn't take much to jump and say this could be right terrain from it or or Yes, like related to the new incarnate, whatever it is, you know, like there could be a little control pod You got to go take over like if you use the incarnate You got to place your little control pod on the board and whoever gets near that controls the incarnate Like they could play with the incarnate rules in some way and do different things just all kinds of options. Yep Okay So, uh, what else we got news? As an aside, it could be another war cry box too, right? Because we don't have Well, yeah, it depends on how far that out. That is right. Like all that would be I mean, there will be more war cry boxes So yes, right. That's always Underworlds we have another maze corn Thank look at this boy right here. Finally. We're producing some realistic body types. I this is great Uh, this guy I feel has a similar challenge to myself Uh, you know, he's he's got that he's got a little he's he's strong He's got that midsection. He could use some work, right? He's got it trying to get more salad in your diet You just gotta get it gotta work on the core. Mm-hmm. It's all it's all core strength So, uh, yeah, this guy's fun. Like what a fun corn model Uh continuing the long tradition of corn being completely shirtless for no reason just corn Corn's real and you think corn's enemy is magic. No No Corn's real enemy of shirts. Yes, right So if for any of you that are middle-aged Maybe like us and on any of the apps where they like all this like not the dating apps But like the swipey apps like uh reels and what's the other one? Uh tick tock and stuff like that They there's always these advertisements for these shirts do like these fitted shirts for like the dad bods And like those are the villains of corn, right? Yeah, absolutely dad dad bod shirts and the corn's like no You must display your body and all your glory. Yes Yeah, corn's about body body positivity. Absolutely. So which is good. It's a good message Um Yeah, this is a cool model. I'm excited to see the rest of this dude's underworld warband underworld's warband. Frankly. We got Fire hammer guy who else is coming in here? Yeah, I know I I want to run him next to the the stoker Sure, absolutely Just a bit like a big boy like a big boy squad would be great yeah So I think uh, it's a cool model underworld's models are always great Um little minor stuff like I love the scarification on this guy's arm Uh, you can you can't really super see it in this frame, but you can you can see little hints of it along the outside of his arm And the inside, you know, he's clearly a dude who's been burned and cut and stuff like that many times Uh, so yeah, just just good little details like that is is always nice to see on the mini Uh, so yeah Are those are those scars on his pecs like Like melted flesh or do you think that they're trying to do hair? Scars I well, he has an armor plate across this across this right Not like if yeah, you're right But if you look on the edges of like the flesh like not on the metal Oh, you're talking about the little red that's out there. Yeah, like there's some there's some brownish or some reddish Some tan right that's different than flesh colored along that that spot And so it makes me wonder like is that Is that like melted scarred flesh or are they trying to do chest hair? Or did the painter not have quite enough time as they would have liked to perfect this model? Which is also possible. Sometimes these guys they they're up against it on the deadlines So could be all those things Indeed indeed All right, cool What's next and uh, yeah, absolutely and then uh, so golden demon Again, we're talking about it again again because they put up the second tranche second tranche of tickets And uh, guess what those sold out super fast, too Weird I can't imagine I can't imagine that happening instantly Uh, honestly, I was happy about it because it removes any temptation from me to fly over there in october And it's just like, you know what let him have this one. I'm good. I don't need to be over there I don't need to be losing. I don't need to fly 14 hours to lose. That's super fine for me. I can just drive six hours to lose next year and uh So I'll be very interested to see what goes on. But yeah, I mean obviously I hope The lesson they take from this is that they can't do Full-sized golden demon events at warhammer world. They just it just doesn't have the capacity Uh, there's between people that are just interested in going Because it's a fun weekend. It's like a hobby weekend and people who want to enter. There's just it's more than 650 people or whatever the The limit is we're in world, which I think that's the number so Well, it's a good problem. It's a good problem to have Yeah, sure. Yes, and alessandro. That's nice of you to say, but I would be like one I wouldn't want it too. That would be like I would should be like number five thousand on the free ticket list So like I'm good with it You know, it's There's a lot of people painters who good painters who are obviously Who did manage to get a ticket? I look forward to see what they enter. Um, there's going to be a lot of really strong pieces there um, the and and I think it's just going to be You know Wonderful to see what what people have especially because a lot of the uk and european folks didn't get their entries out in March because they couldn't fly over to the us one So there's still a lot of people there with with a lot of amazing entries. They might have built up over the pandemic. So Um, yeah, it should be a lot of fun Uh, all right I think that's all our news, right? Uh, yeah, it's nice, uh Nice tight news segment. That's how it's done. Tyler. Sure so Let's talk about some pick of the week tom What do you have for everybody? What do you want to share with her? Um I'm going to spruke something that's upcoming even though technically it's not a pick of the week um, there's an number of events that we have upcoming that i'm just going to promote because Uh, we probably ought to do that. Um, one is nash con nash con is it's coming in strong coming in hot Um in a little over a week a week and a half. Um, I know I may or may not have painting to do For myself let alone for other people, which is we're gonna influence one other person switch their list So you don't have to worry about that part anymore. Yeah, exactly. Yeah He's not taking what I was working on because uh, i'm not going to get it done. Um But uh, I still haven't touched my stuff and I still have painting to do for me. Uh, so that's terrifying Um, but uh, nash con is coming up. I don't know if there's still a wait list for that or not I know they sold out at one point in time, but uh, it's it's my it's one of my favorite events. I love the two list format um Vents, uh, obviously you're gonna be going you're gonna be competing in the the the best painted Yeah, correct. I'm not judging this year. Yeah, you're not judging this year, which uh, congratulations ahead of time Um, and that's nonsense in no way No way I've put my best work into it. That's all you can ever say beforehand But so a lot of other people Indeed indeed certainly and then um, we have nova Here in what four weeks or three weeks three weeks. Yeah, three ish weeks. Yep uh, and then uh, we have Just events filling out the calendar in the next couple months. So what links to some of those below? Yep. Yep So big uh, big stuff if you're at one of those events. I hope to see you there. Um As an aside, I will say a couple things here Uh Adam and I will be releasing our new game this month. I'm not gonna say any more than that But it will be this month. Um, I know when it is, but you don't know when it is, but that's how we'll keep it for now Uh, but I do want to make sure we Uh make ourselves available at nova because that'll be after this month. So it's safe to say There so we're gonna try to see if maybe we can do a little talk about it there or something or Um, or whatever, but whether whether we're able to do that or not I don't know. It's going to be a question of whether or not we can get the space Um, but either way we'll try to make ourselves available. So if people are interested or want to talk about the game Since it'll uh, since it'll be, you know, not long after it releases this month Uh, we're we're certainly both Adam and I will be there. Um Tom are you going to nova this year? Uh, I was and then I'm just I'm not going to um because of my new job. I have to travel Chicago. So that's fine that week Yep, no issue. Um, I didn't know if you were going or not. So the issue is I don't think tyler will be there either So when it comes to the live show directly after Uh, the gw reveal, which will be the wednesday show in like three four weeks, whatever that boils down to um The uh, I don't know what's gonna happen there But we'll do is that so it's a wednesday show Yep, um It would be on wednesday night Like august 29th or something like that. Is that when it is? August 31st So it is exactly three weeks from now We I'll be in chicago, but we can talk. I'll actually probably be at steve herner sals, maybe Um, and so maybe maybe all uh, maybe I can dial in for that We'll see. I'll probably do it all live. I may just uh, rub someone else into it. So but that's fine Yeah, but I hope to see everybody there. I don't know if we'll do a whole like Actual live live show like I did with an audience like we did at adept con We're gonna do that from now on Um, unlike the trapped under plastic boys. We didn't break all the rules So I think we're okay to keep keep going forward. Uh, but at any rate Speaking of my pick of the week now, we'll wheel around to that Uh, we my pick of the week is for the trapped under plastic boys who's most recent episode went up I'm going to be going to see them this month as well. My month is going to be a nightmare A complete and total nightmare where I will not be home at all. So expect many road shows this month after next week uh, and uh Yeah, so I'm going to go up and spend some time with them And we're going to get some content together. It's going to be real fun and exciting So looking forward to that check out tub. They talk about that as well as a lot of other Great subjects as well as the importance of lore and whether it is important or not Fun episode also just a shout out, uh, the um harder and steinback Airbrush that I talked about in the video this last saturday Which is this bad boy right here There is two versions of this by the way This is the colorful one the pink and purple one that I would certainly want and I use There's also a black and silver one But this wonderful infinity airbrush where the proceeds go to direct relief for a local charity there that hard and steinback works with the three people who run the charity there and uh, and take food medical supplies And and other associated needs directly down to the border to refugees who are fleeing the war in ukraine Help them get set up help them get their basic needs as many of them had to leave their homes without anything But the clothes on their back as it were so if you're interested in picking up an awesome new airbrush and And helping a really worthy cause with no middleman no money going anywhere. You don't know It's all going direct to relief This is a great way to do it So check that out if you want to see more about it the saturday video about leveling up your airbrushing. I talk about it Okay, cool Let's talk about some hobby time tom. You already kind of mentioned it, but what's been on what's been on your plate, man Uh, lots of work. I'm doing like four jobs right now and so Not a lot has been made it onto my hobby desk I've had some stuff some work going into my uh The silvanet that I had doing commissioning But I have a bunch of models that I need to get done for my army for next weekend So I am not looking forward to that so from a hobby hobby standpoint. Uh, it's been fairly light You had quite the busy hobby weekend this last weekend. Is that uh, not true? Yeah, sure. I mean this last week I didn't hobby at all, but yes I was at gen con. I mean, I did I guess I did you work. I taught classes Unfortunately, I can't share my screen easily when we do this kind of stream anymore because otherwise I would show The ridiculous treasure trove that was your take home I was very honored to to win best in show, which is what you're driving at. So that's fine Well, not only that you had like Just I don't know like I took three best in categories. Yes with three golds and two silvers. There you go Yeah, and then you had another you had another three gold things and two silvers and best in And best in show. Yep You uh, you know right here laying down. That's nice. It's on that that thing behind me um, it was some really really nice models there. I was honored as to have it and um, it was great The first prize was an axe Certainly, I'm going to try to win best painted at nash con. I want this to be a weapon collecting month. Uh, that would be an interesting august I'll tell you a funny story about that axe So that axe The slayer sword is not actually sharpened They still make you usually wear the glove or whatever if you're in the uk when you win Because somebody had cut themselves many many years ago and like liability is a concern Yes, and uh The That axe though they handed it to me and I sat it down like I was holding it carefully. It's an axe. I'm not going to just swing it around Right And so I was sitting beside me and I was talking to people and then I went to pick it up and I kind of like My hand also touched the front of it And it's it was a fully sharpened weapon like I could have turned around and just beheaded somebody with that thing It was Ready to go Amazing amazing full on combat ready Yeah, it was very funny. So I I immediately put the like slip cover back over it's because I had to take it out of the place Um So that was very funny. Um, but yes, thank you to to lin who runs everything there and who does an amazing job with that Whole competition and I encourage people if they're going to be a gen con to keep building it and to keep uh growing that event Uh, so yeah, good stuff. Um hobby time for me right now. I'm working on a thing I can't show right, but it will show up in a video and also Uh, I'm finishing up a couple things for my army switcher of no consequence. Basically, it's just like for my army for Nashcom Which is just some bases I need to do and I'm also working on this terrain Look at this. Look at this crazy stuff. Yeah, it's like a satellite dish. So I'm working on all this So just started those guys Amazing about those But yes, many many projects in the works Uh, most of which will become videos. Uh, so there you go Uh, cool. All right. Well enough of this hobby talk Let's get to some list building. All right So today's show Our main topic is all about list building Which seems like maybe a boring topic, but I think it's actually a great topic. I think it's interesting Tom I could talk about list building all night long. Yes. I can do this all day uh The um Uh I want you to talk about your list building philosophy at a high level because you are much more johnny than me And you're like part of your hobby Is list building Right. Yeah, talk about that. Why? Yeah, um, because I mean the reality is is that a lot of games At the end of the day are one Or lost in the list building process and I know that sounds really silly um, but there are just some things some combos some tricks some um Utility that like if you don't build it into your list if you don't tap into that then you're not gonna have and I mean the reality is is there are some games where I've walked up to a table and I don't mean this cocky But I've walked up to a table and I've looked at what I'm what I'm playing against and I went cool I'll take a win Like the and and it's again. It's not a judge against any person necessarily But there are just some there are just some ways because of the math because of how things line up the utility the mobility all those things that um List building is should be a very a really big priority And so there for me There are just some things that I need to have I need to have again And this is part of this also has to go to play style So like what you're going to hear is you're going to hear my list building philosophy as it interfaces with my play style And so different people are going to have different play styles And so I don't want to say that the way that I'm doing it the way that I build lists are the only way to build List that's not what I'm trying to communicate Right, but just simply that the types of lists I like to play the types of warhammer games that I like to play Like there's a certain philosophy like I always want to have at least one anvil unit often two That can like really take a punch, right? For me, I always have to have at least one unit that I can point and click and do some damage and just pick things up um For me, I have to have at least one utility unit and and uh like a utility mobility unit And the funny thing is is that like that came about by playing lots of games with vents And watching that and play and me undervaluing that type of unit initially Which is like a throwaway utility unit has no other purpose Then to basically be able to move and be able to be where you need to be when you need to be there, right? um and I you know, I just learned after losing games That to those units on the table that those are things that I just I have to have on my On my table and I normally need to have at least two of those if not three In some way whether it be like heroes that have a high mobility or You know throwaway chaff units that I can that can double also as a mobility unit or something um And so there are just a bunch of boxes that I have to tick Now another box that's been added to that is can I complete all of my objectives or all of my battle tactics fairly reasonably with my list There are some lists that people buy bill that you just can't complete all your tactics for life And that's and and now in the new in the new world. That's a liability um Yeah, yeah, no, I think that's all good. And I think that So arturias in the comments said is list building like book openings and chess in the sense that there are always correct things to do In certain contexts and executing those correct sequences is the first part of winning the game And I think the answer there is mostly yes Because you can have lists that just fail to get past the post On being and having the necessary components to compete Now if your list building goals Are I want to build a fun list with the toys? I like to use Or or had a narrative or has a particular narrative bent to it Then you don't need any advice on list building because you already know how to do that If you're building like some narrative list meant to replicate some army from the story Then you're just going to put those units in there If you're building a list full of fun toys that you want to use Great, then do that no judgment. There's nothing wrong with that It's just you don't need any advice on that use the things you think are fun, right? So When we're talking about this, we're talking about in the context of like I want to have a list that is Competitive and that's all I mean right not winning. You can't like there's no You can you can build a list that will fail to be competitive You cannot build a list that will easily win and go 5-0 in the current iteration of the game in the current world There's just too many variables too many other things going on too many, you know Sort of rock paper scissors That that you can you can say this gives me a good chance of being competitive in most games and most matchups That's what you can do, right? Yep. And and there are some like There are two different philosophies often to list building You you see people deploy this more often than not either They take a specialized Trick approach Where they see something that's like really neat tech or it's hyper efficient or something like that Oftentimes people talk about this like in a derogatory way of like a one-trick pony, right? And they double down on that and they go all in and that's their strap Okay That's one approach And then another which is all will often call it like a skew build. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah um And then the other build Is what I would say and I think that this is the more Reliable one in general. This is the type of list that wins more events Is a generalist build And so it's it is a build that covers all the bases can do lots of things. It has redundancy You know, like one very common mistake is not having enough units A lot of people build Units that are like extra reinforced and stuff like that and so they and only end up having like six units on the board Right or seven units total and the reality is is that like you just that's not how you win warhammer you win warhammer by holding objectives and and and doing battle attack and You need enough and or removing your opponents ability to do those things and yeah and removing your opponents ability to Do those things and so you need to have enough units to be like playing the like the The exchange swap game with the opponent of like move a unit up. Let them take it then you take that like that exchange You know back and forth While you're doing all of those other things and so it's if you can have enough units to do both of those things You need to um So list building is really important and ever I think a lot of people recognize that the problem is How do you do it? Like especially if you're a newer player This is a very challenging component of the game because the base book gives you like sort of some guidelines and rules For what you have to include in your list like one hero and three battle line And you can you know can't have more of the than x of these certain things right yeah and neat that's Completely unhelpful for what we're talking about right like those are those are the fundamentals of just the construction guidelines But that has nothing to do with building a competitive list. So let's get into it Okay, I As we said, I do think it's one of the most critical steps you undertake when playing a game Especially if that game's competitive. Okay. Can I kind of jump in real quick? Yeah, go Uh remone had made a comment about you know, like he he was took a shot at me because he said well Now you're talking checkers where we were talking chess before Realistically in aos you're playing both games simultaneously Yeah, sure Right where there's the trading game of checkers, but you also but the objective game is the chess game Sure, or not the objective or the objective slash Battle tactics game And you're trying to actually balance both as you're going across the table. Sure And And I think that that's where a lot of people get hung up is that you need to be able to do all the things So that's where we're going to talk about well You don't need to be able to do all the things you need to have a plan This is I'll talk about this in a minute. Sure. Sure. Sure. You need to have a plan that utilizes the tools you have And is aware of the tools you don't Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. That's her. Yep Okay So as I said here your standard is 2000 points and army construction rules are fairly loose like that is to say You can easily fill all of the requirements of a list That it says and have like 1600 points left Right. Yeah, or or more in some armies Now I think the two primary ways you end up seeing points is 1000 and 2000 so 2000 being the standard Solo play or or like sort of etc style team and then 1000 being your doubles lists where you each bring 1000 points Or if you're just playing a smaller game, there's not a lot of there's not a lot of 1000 solo events anymore Yeah, not really now. Yeah, to me Most of the rules here are going to remain the same Regardless of the size you're playing at You just if you only have a thousand point list you have a lot of space to play with so you're going to have less roles But you're still trying to pass a lot of the same Bars right the same milestones will guide you along You just likely have more deficiencies and you need to be aware of those right where your limitations are going to be Okay Yeah, all right And yes, we will talk about that current So you need to theoretically theoretically Fill multiple roles and we will go into these in detail in the coming slides But hammer anvil utility mobility chaff and so on Okay. Yep You are correct. Alessandro. It's it's one leader in two battle line into one k Instead of three But you also need to think about the current battle plans and the associated battle tactics like the eight basic battle tactics Which is all you should ever be running if you're going into a tournament because all tournaments should be banning the book battle tactics Um, I was happy to see rob's team come to that same conclusion in their monday show I was happy to see simon finally flipped over to our side to the side of truth justice and balance and fun um So You need to think about galatian veterans, which are potentially risky by inclusion, right? Like what are you what are you risking by having those things out there? Right. There's a lot most of list building isn't an affirmative exercise It's a it's a Socratic exercise Yeah, and what I mean by that is you're asking yourself questions Okay, I think a lot of people say well, I want to take this. I want to take this I should take this when what they should be asking themselves is what does this thing do Does this thing work with the other things I've already taken is this doing something vital? Is this the right amount of points to spend on this thing? Do I have x to do y? Right, exactly. And if I don't should I throw good money after bad and try to cover the whole Right, or should I lean into where my strengths are? Which, by the way, sometimes can be the right answer Right, or do I need to to you know play and invest more in my strengths? Okay Thanks, Steve. Awesome. I'm glad to hear that, buddy. That's that's really good. It's a fun class to teach Um, all right So we're going to just jump through the way we're going to go from here is we're going to hit the different areas of the list almost in the way they appear on War scroll builder or something like that, right? It kind of this is the way my brain orders these things I don't know if your brains. I'll do the same. Maybe you think differently. That's perfectly fine But that's just the order I'm using here So we're going to start with heroes It's usually the first one of the first things I think about in my list It's the first thing on the top of the page in war scroll builder And it's usually the first in my mind because it often sets a lot of the tone Uh, that I'm going for with the list Yep, and in my mind heroes have to serve a purpose through their inclusion This is the biggest killer right now in the game design Monsters may be often pretty dumb But at least they could like theoretically do damage, I suppose often You know Yeah, so many heroes in this game are just completely worthless Because they're sort of meant to be combat heroes and they do an average of like one and a half damage against a four up Save and have five wounds and a four plus save themselves And it's like Great neat in the bin Right, just no other purpose to this thing Uh, hey dingo, I'm glad to have you along first time washer. All right good stuff Uh, and so you have to with heroes I think it's easy, especially when you're newer to just be like I'm going to put six heroes in my list to fill them up and to just shove your list full of heroes But heroes are by their nature a weaker choice They enable a lot of things in the army Through command abilities and stuff like that, but your unit champions can do that now All right, they may have your unique spells or prayers or Command traits or artifacts may have those things right But fundamentally they are weaker. They have less capture power less wounds less kill potential per point than equal units mostly Yeah, it's not universally true, but it's mostly true You take your average 150 point hero and you go by 150 points worth of a unit You get more capture power more wounds more kill potential You know per point Out of that unit then you do out of that hero Yeah, right so You're Naturally taking a weaker choice That's where we got to start So if that hero is going to enter this list Then they have a lot of questions they have to answer think of this like the bouncer at the hero club You want to at the list club a lot of these things don't be phrased like a bit like the bouncer at the list club, right? Yeah, the bouncer has to have a checklist He's out there checking IDs, but he's looking for more than just age right sure Instead what the here what that what the bouncer is looking for is What's the purpose you're going to serve if I let you in this club into this list? Yeah Yep And is that going to is that a good mix? Bouncers will often like let people in because they think they'd be a good mix in the club like oh, we need more More more women in the club. We need you know more young people in the club Like whatever that they're trying to make a good mix in the club to keep the party jumping Or whatever Right same thing here So here's the questions I have tom. I'm interested if you have any more. Okay. Yeah Is this hero a hammer? That's question number one. I'm often asking myself like can they serve as a standalone Functional hammer more or less without support Right. I don't want to have to invest a ton into them Yeah, how good would it be like? Uh, I think kurt os fits in this category Kurt os is a good example. I have the mega boss on mawcrusher We're going to look at some at some examples of all of these in a moment, but yes. Yeah. Yeah Obviously, I think in in categories of you know in of knight hawn right now, but certainly Is this hero 10 wounds plus Yeah Yeah, it's one of the most important questions because the second you get two of those guys in a list Things change in your list building capabilities. You cannot go one drop anymore Right. Yep. Those heroes are more fragile Naturally because they can't get covered They can't do a lot of things in the game because they're not Because they're 10 wounds. They're just immune to a lot of the things. They're not getting a look out, sir They're not bad. Uh, right. Yep. Yep So is it a 10 plus wound hero? Okay, great. Now it has to work extra hard to justify its existence And and what that also means and we've talked about this before is the worst a hero can be is 10 wounds Yep when a uh Oh, waffles enjoy it does a I didn't stop. Sorry. I didn't see your question Does the core rule look explain how to assemble a legal group of models into an army? Yes Contest of generals army composition pack you would also waffles want to look at the so that's a battle pack Right, that's the basic battle pack that comes the core rules the battle pack defines the army construction requirements Um, so waffles you'll want to check out the generals handbook the most recent one came out It's the 2022 2023 season one and that one has the Really the current matched play battle pack in it Which explains the battle tactics that are available the grand strategies that are available and the list building requirements of what you're allowed to include The general's handbook is really your sort of key Um, waffles you can also just go to like war scroll builder. Um, which is which is part of the gw community site Um, if you just search war scroll builder, it'll come up And that has a lot of the army construction rules baked into it So you can just start assembling models on there and it'll tell you do you have enough leaders enough Battle line too many of this thing too many that thing and so on and so forth It's a great deal Um, and obviously completely free so you just play around uh, yeah And just a heads up just because something isn't Is 10 wounds for example at like that worst wounds marker If they meet some of these other things like they are a real hammer They do provide real utility. They have real survivability Against ranged stuff like then if that if all of those if you can check all those boxes, then they're fine Yeah, sure. Malone some good examples of this might be senesa Who like 10 wound heroes that clear the bar like senesa and slanesh Because she has good casting options and and is an interesting sort of character overall Uh into what she brings to the overall army and her utility um at her mortal wound projection Um another good example might be the lady of vines who even though she's 10 wound has an incredible Spell that can bubble out of five up ward to a lot of the army who can be a pretty solid caster who can you know count as a Beacon out count as a woods or overgrown effectively, right? So, um It's funny because still would have to have two of these in the lady of vines and draka sort of the light in the dark Oh, sorry. Yes, senesa is nine dex s is the 10 wound one. She's terrible. Never mind remove senesa. I apologize Um, so yeah, lady of vines and I forgot that which one was horrible. Yeah, the 10 wound one is horrible in senesh. Sorry Um, so yeah, like the lady of vines and draka are both two that get past the post and find themselves included in lists And I think are valuable Shagoth in uh, uh, visa chaos another one. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yes. Thank you everyone. Yes dex s Um dex s is terrible. Don't include her. She's 10 when she fails the test senesis nine wounds. She's good Thank you everyone. Sorry. Okay Uh, and then yeah, is this hero providing necessary utility? Can this hero survive ranged attacks mortal wounds? Um, especially important for the bigger heroes who can't hide in any way who can't Look out sir who can't get in cover who can't easily who can't often just actually hide Behind physical terrain and block line of sight Um, and how many drops am I aiming for? Right. Yep. Because if you clear the if if you pass the post of two heroes with 10 wounds or more Yep, or more than three heroes you aren't one drop anymore Yep, that's it. That's the max Right. Yep And so The question is so like and which by the way may matter or not Your list might not care if it's one drop like if you're night haunt or scaven You're probably like I don't care what that means I'm on 14. I mean I'm on 14 drops. Have a nice day. Mindy. What are drops? Sure So at the beginning of the game during deployment You and your opponent are each going to go back and forth setting down one of your units Unless some of your units are in a battalion that has the unified keywords such as battle regiment In which case you will place all of those units at once Whoever finishes their deployment first has priority And priority means I get to decide who goes first and who goes second and all future rounds you roll for it But in round one is decided by who finishes dropping first So if you can reduce your drops down to one You usually uh, you well, I actually know this is just this because rob quoted it this week Tom, what would you guess if you're one drop right now in the current meta? What would you guess your chances of having priority and since being able to decide who goes first and who goes second? 60 percent 85 Okay, and and I was thinking from the standpoint of like On top tables. No, it's fine. If you're if you're looking at If you're looking, well, yeah, that's just it It does it does fall when you go up because one drops were kind of performing strongly but at any rate if you Who is still one dropping right now with bounty hunters people who are winning tournaments is the answer to your question Mike That's The look at the top 10 is my answer six of them And then probably six other people scattered throughout the thing. It's not a lot Right, um, but it exists. They're designing lists to optimize dropping first. That's the key Correct And that's what we're going to talk about as we talk about the rest as you construct the list There's not a value in just being one drop because Right Just like there's not necessarily anti value in being 14 drops. It doesn't matter It's not a good or a bad thing. It's about what the rest of the how the rest of the list is constructed and what it's meant to do Uh, so you can be any number of drops. You just have to Understand what's going to be happening and the choices you're going to have to make right? So like yeah, for example If your strategy was some kind of alpha strike It could be an alpha bunker where you're trying to pin them in their deployment zone It could be a lot of like ranged dps where you're trying to shoot real hard remove any potential threats Well, you might want to be a super low drop One to drop right because you want the priority choice so you can choose Right where you know if their army is never going to get to you or do anything to you in the first turn Hey, let them go Knock yourself out at the first turn Right, but if you think they pose you any threat you can just seize that priority go first and Execute the things that are are scary to you Right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay That's those are just some examples, but again, that's it's certainly not only that Let's talk about some of the heroes that in my estimation Clear this bar Okay, so I've got I got a I got a selection of four here tom Yep Yep, but there's obviously a lot more but this these are just to spawn discussions of different types of heroes, right? Yep. Yep Mega boss on malcrussia I mentioned him already He's a beast. He's like the beast of beasts Not only is he a hammer in and of his own, right? Uh, who can usually lift almost anything he touches Uh, especially on the wall But he's also an incredible utility piece Right. He's ticking multiple boxes because he's making the whole army move at lightning speed Right And just become he turns the entire army Into a threat He turns like because hammers are only valuable if you can deliver them if they can get them to the nail They're trying to hit and what he does is that With himself and other units as well Yeah, right. Yeah So incredible piece incredible hero like obviously totally worth it I you rarely Rarely see an iron jaws list without him in there now partially That's because iron jaws only have seven units and you see most of them in every list But I mean he's a big staple for that reason He's more than 10 wounds, but he's a hammer and he provides utility. So he's he's cool. He texts boxes Marathi Okay Um, Marathi's not in every daughter's list certainly She's not an auto include anymore But she's good She does something that nothing else in the game does which is the other thing I wanted to discuss. Yeah, so explain go Yeah, so I mean her her item or her, you know one of her abilities makes it so that She can't take more than three wounds per turn And so She what she does is she forces the enemy to make a decision at the beginning of the game Yep, and the decision that she forces the enemy enemy to make is this Are you killing me this game or not? Okay, because what she does is she says if you don't Proactively put three damage on me every phase I might ruin your day right Okay, because I'm gonna be if you don't put me three wounds on me in every like turn, you know My turn your turn, you know each round then I'm gonna be there till basically the end of the game Yep, okay And so she forces a decision on the opponent Or a play style because like the the the enemy doesn't need to To do that if they can just move away from her if they just ignore her, you know Like that's one option right as you just play around her Because she can't be everywhere on the board, but she forces a decision Yep She brings a lot like marathi is one of those sort of ticks every box She is a hammer in her shadow queen form. She's a caster in her little baby form She brings utility through her command ability She turns bow snakes into utter nightmares, but she can also turn melee snakes into into blenders Yeah And she's a she's a hammer and an anvil. Yes, because she can't die She can't die until you can actually pin two different units with her on both sides Yeah, because both of them can go in and hold enemy units She's also quite fast Uh with with a like massive fly speed so she ticks mobility. She's mobility utility hammer anvil Yeah, she does all of it. Yep, but you have but she's like a The best way I describe is she's like a like a surgeon scalpel Right in the wrong hands. She's just going to be clumsy Right because they won't know what they're doing there. They won't deploy her correctly They won't put her in the right fights. They won't put her at the right range You know, if you put her at the wrong range the decision of do I remove her or not becomes really obvious Um, like you need to set her up if you're using her you need to put her in a place where they have to overextend in order to engage her turn one Right My next example here is the knight knight and cantor this humble little storm cast hero Yeah, beautiful sculptor. There's two different sculpts for it. They're both gorgeous Um, this piece of artwork by the way from soulbound is so this is the one I had to kick like Of course god, of course Um, this is a little 125 point storm cast hero. He went down. He used to be 140. Yeah But it's rare. I build storm cast lists without one in it And the reason being the knight and cantor shows up with a dispel scroll Once the game right she can go no Yeah, and just say no to a spell as long as that spell isn't un unbindable Or whatever Which that stuff does exist sometimes Um, so there's like there there are there are things who can generate unbindable un unbindable spell casts Yep, teclas can do it for example. Sure. Thank well if you hold on is like 13. Yes Yep, thank thank will can um knight haunt and have the ability to push out an endless spell You know that's unmindable. Yep so But other than that That in cantor can just swing a game because you don't usually need to shut down everybody every spell they cast There's usually one spell you need to shut down they cast and if you stop that one spell It can usually swing the game in your favor It's that one teleport that they needed. It's that one nefratas What is it nefratas missed form on blood knights that are mystic shielded on a two-up unrendable Or it's that one very purple sun that's about to come careening into your castle Yeah, yeah, right like I was like purple sun creaning in your castle at the strategic moment that it needs to go in Yep Yeah Yeah, and and what makes her worth it to me is I mean she's still a normal caster She can still you know do magic stuff. She still has all the standard utility of a caster I would point out like most storm cast heroes. She's also relatively tough Because they have high arms And so but that utility of that scroll is what makes her Worth it is what like that's what puts her over the line. So when I'm thinking of my storm cast lists, I go All right, how am I gonna fit one of these girls in right do I because most time I care about the enemy's magic and this stops it uh a good example of a Uh, and then finally sig vault is another example So sig vault is there because in something like lurid haze So this is about connecting up to the broader list in your broader strategy And something like lurid haze invaders where he can go off table and then ambush on and he has a built-in plus three to charge Suddenly he's lighting that nine inch charge on a six and he is an extremely reliable hammer Um because he makes a lot of attacks his attacks ignore after saves, you know word saves basically and uh, he has a high rend right like he's he's a he is more or less just a very tough Uh, hammer like he's tough enough to be good Uh, like he's he's on a a good save profile with a word save But his hammerness means that he becomes this horrible distraction piece Running around your enemy's back lines that they have to deal with Right, you know the knight of cantor if you took it off board and had it ambush on even at like three inches away Your opponent would not care They do not need to change their battle tactics because this little spellcaster is running around popping people with her staff Right, right is the three attacks on threes and threes neg one rend uh two damage right But sig vault you have to care about right And right it's going to change their entire battle plan When they have to suddenly deal with this this lunatic running around their back lines Well, not only like so that's the funny thing is is it so much of list building and deployment is actually like the play counterplay So it's not just that they suddenly have to deal with that in the backfield If they know your lord haze They know that you're going to be able to deploy them off table and bring him in anywhere Which then is going to change how they deploy Yep, so you're so you Like the secondary consequence of you having him in your list and deploying them off table Is that it is going to force them to change their strategy? They are going to have to play more conservative. They are going to have to screen They're going to have to do these things otherwise. They're gonna have to eat him And they and like and a lot of lists just can't take hits like that great yep, yep so all of these Heroes that I've mentioned when you look at the sort of to zoom out to the the the rca They either ask a question your opponent must answer. I deal a lot of damage I'm hard to remove and deal damage and gas bells Um, I show up in your back line and start going ham Those are all questions your opponent has to answer right? They've each found some reason to justify in the strategy or They answer the question your opponent is asking That's the other thing heroes can do the encanto is a good example of that, but there are more Okay um, I would argue that the little uh wazidaka shaman or whatever in bone splitters who can just like Melt his own head off doing mortal wounds Yeah Is an answer to a question because yes, maybe you can get him like deep in there They're up in their lines and hit one of their choice pieces. That's a great day when that happens, you know Yeah, but what he often is is an answer to whatever they're going to try to bring into you to kill Your boys. He just goes nope died. Yeah, yep, right uh in In knight haunt it would be your cruciator Yeah, the cruciator is an answer Because it's a question of like can you take this much damage? You know, like that's what you're the mega boss or crag nos roll Can you take a bucket full of dais of damage and the cruciator's like yep right Right because the cruciator is reducing all incoming damage within a 12 inch bubble by one. He's an unbelievably defensive piece, right? He's answering the question of can you survive? If you have two of them They're reducing damage by two. Yes They should make those not stack, but that is true. Um They stack right now. Yeah, they do they they shouldn't but they do um so Either it's asking a question of your opponent. How are you going to deal with all this damage? What you're going to do with all that junk all that junk up in that trunk or It's answering that question Okay about said junk so That's heroes to me They they don't just show up in the list because there's you got to have one leader Great That's nothing. That's not a requirement, right? You could have up to six And Not all armies have great answers to these questions Is what this is where this is where what I want to leave before we leave heroes behind tom Is I want to talk about some of the armies that had that that sort of lack great answers to these questions Okay. Yeah. Yeah um and so like in my mind This is one of the challenges of lumineath Is that really really fascinating? Because they do have a big hero that can tick a lot of boxes in techos Now he's relatively fragile until protection goes up. So like if if If he's in the list, he's also a big hero, right? So if he goes in the list, it's like, okay, maybe it's him and like the cathalar And I I don't know a regent or something. I don't I don't know whatever, you know pick your third your third hero Yep And you know, maybe you can get those drops down But but teclas is real sensitive to the alpha, especially the ranged alpha because he's just 14 If he hasn't if you could if you could body garden They would be cooking with butter. Like if you could just straight prevent wounds doing sure so like a A lot of their heroes have sort of questionable utility or a very complicated utility to mobilize that doesn't always work Right. Yep. And and teclas himself is such a dominating piece when you take him because he's he's so expensive That he just makes a bunch of other decisions for you by virtue of the fact. He costs, you know 700 plus points Yep, right. Yep So I think it is like to me when I look at their heroes a lot of their heroes Don't cross that bar. I look at him and I'm like, I don't know why you're not justifying your place in the list Yeah, okay. Yeah Gitz has a bit of this challenge right now Yeah, where a lot of their heroes are very small very fragile the utility can be questionable um, and You oftentimes feel like you need a lot of them because they're like so cheap But then they with gitz you have to accept that you're going to like go up to a million drops or something You know and just kind of be have a lot of bodies You know there and they have a lot of heroes like the dank hole. That's a complete Complete loss like the dank hole trog boss hero. He's just completely I hear that I don't necessarily agree with you, but that's fine Um, well, I haven't seen him in a lot of great lists that win stuff. So I mean, I'll I'll point to history Sure, sure. Yeah So, yeah, I mean I think that uh, I think that At the end of the day The big question is is what what? Yeah, can can your heroes answer those questions and some lists just can do that better than others Like that's what that's what makes the item for battle smiths good Like the bubble of like four plus spell ignore Sure, right because that becomes an answer to things like purple sun and other stuff like that, right? Sure of like Do they have an answer they do. Okay, well then great. Um, and so I But it's but like heroes can truly make or break your list before it starts. Yep, absolutely and and The important part when you're asking this is not just do they do this Thing do they do they do damage to there? Are they hammer? Are they providing utility? It's are they doing that in the list you're putting them in? I will give you an easy example We we mentioned this on the show previously, but I think it's really valid to say A lot of people are very excited about guard of steel soul When he first came out because he has this big five up Ward aura around him, right? Yeah But you never see him and the reason is because Yes, that five up ward is incredible utility The problem is he then pins your entire army in place because he's so slow And you want to be moving with your stormcast units very often as like independent operators They need all the kind of around doing whatever they need to do at various parts of the board They don't rely on a huge amount of synergy to really hit their maximum efficacy, right? Right whereas he wants you to shrink up And and play tight and that's not how stormcasts want to play How many lists want to operate they want to be out you got a unit over here You got a unit over here You're kind of hitting these things doing these things, you know Challenging at a lot of different points on the board stormcasts are the best when they're sort of mobile and using all of their abilities And so that's the problem with guardus is he just runs even though his ability seems great His strat runs counter to how stormcast tends to win the game Yeah, right So is that like This is great to anchor. He's great to anchor a point, right? But that also makes you like that anchor is also a drag Yep, right And and that's the problem if you start just you you have to ask this question every time is the next hero also providing enough utility Because you can get in a place where you're just stacking utility utility utility on buff on buff on buff And if those buffs aren't easily usable deployable Mobile then you're just putting a hat on a hat on a hat And you're building a death star that's going to get bellicord and you're done And now all you're doing is have nothing to do like a great example of this is um A great example of this like this is one of the weaknesses of my when I was running night haunt as a like a hero hammer night haunt Is that the hero hammer night haunt structure that I was running in Was incentivizing a tight play a tight bubble play and it kept everything super tight And so the challenge of that is that like it doesn't play like six objective You know scenarios well sure or like scenarios that have objectives that are dropping like midway through the game Yeah, sure No, your your love is like a realm stone cash where it's one point in the middle that everybody wants to race to for the first Two rounds where you can just multi charge the heck out of everything and i'm like oh, we're all going to the center Yeah, let's go to the center. Let's do this right Yeah, okay Let's talk troops Troops should have a role Now you must have three battle line of course in a 2000 point game or two battle line in a 1000 point game But roles let's define what this is. Let's actually get into this for folks hammer That a unit for a unit to find a place in your competitive list They must have one and ideally they should have multiple Okay, but they got to have at least one Uh So here we go hammer. It's your damage dealer. It removes enemy units and problems Goal is to trade up All right, the hammer always wants to be killing more points than it's worth Yes, okay By the way that removes enemy threats could mean at range or in melee Yep, but that has to be weighted accordingly a slow Like go trek is naturally just not as good as a lot of other hammers in the game who do less damage Because he has to march around the board quite slowly Right Yep Anvil Damage absorption survives enemy units. The goal is to survive to allow for a favorable trade So they come into you thinking they're going to win. They don't win You stick With your unit and then you're a hammer can then counter charge them and remove them Yeah Now they've lost a unit you haven't you still have some amount of a some percentage of a functional unit left Right that you could rally or do other things with or move to take a point or or whatever Right or become chaff for the next round right Yep, and You've now favorably traded up Yep, okay Uh utility Uh allows for a useful buffer trick that creates a positive externality The goal here is to be synergistic There are plenty of units. This is often the realm of heroes, but not always There are plenty of units that do this Um long beards out of cities is a classic example where they sit there and grumble and give you, uh, you know wound bonuses um Let's do banshees Banshees that now eat spells and basically provide an extra unbind to all units nearby of your own stuff Yep, okay Uh mobility moves to where you need when you need the goal is to threaten objectives period Right like a pure mobility unit just can be explosive in movement Now sometimes that can come through other tricks like mobility might be generated through other things in the army teleports and things like that But sometimes it's just generated through having a lot of really fast units Yeah, yeah Like this is an idk play right here who can often have just a ton of very fast units They can just be around the board where they want them to be And then finally chaff the unit is there to die Or to threaten objectives early like go out and hold things So that your opponent has to react to them and move because otherwise if they don't you just win the game by default And the goal is to die an interrupt enemy movement and allow for counter play while they're doing it So it's another trading idea You're gonna make them take their 300 point hammer Put it into your 70 point chaff and then you lift their 300 point hammer with your 300 point hammer. That's a win You're down 70 points. They're down 300. That's the perfect example of it, right? Yep um Chaff has a subset that I didn't put here but called deck chair sitters Who might just be their their job might be like chaff in round one But then if they don't die, they just fall to the back of the party and sit there on your home objective while the rest of you're on They'll sit on a home objective. They'll zone out So they'll push out any enemy droppers in the back field. They're just there like board control effectively. Yes. Yes Okay, uh Josh a said can you guys talk about minimum damage for a hammer? I don't know that I could give you an exact number But let's talk about things we think Tom that that's not specific units because that's on the next slide But things that we think clear this post sort of conceptually so for hammer I it would be an x amount of reliable points But reliable reliable damage So what that means is one of two things either super high rent Or mortal wounds Yeah, I mean I would also just accept crap tons of dice Yes, or weight of dice, but Sometimes weight of dice just can't get there Sometimes all of those things can't you run into your high rend ain't doing a lot against knight haunt, right? I mean there's always exceptions But um Like the to me when I look it's hammers are one of those things that I don't know that I could give you the math, but I know them when I see them Yeah, uh So like I will tell you that my number is does this unit do 15 to 20 damage against a four up save Okay, then it's reliably a hammer Um, that's that's the kind of numbers I'm looking for Uh, but that can vary a lot. I mean storm vermin do like Properly buffed with sort of their standard utility like just not putting a lot into them I mean just like the standard stuff you assume you have an escape an army Can easily do 35 to 40 damage against a four up save It's wild the damage these things kick out right, but but They are fragile idiots walking around on a six inch move Right who if if an enemy hammer gets into them they evaporate Yeah, so you've got to balance the risk of what is this thing? What's the delivery mechanism? Hammers aren't just the damage they do. It's the delivery mechanism for them Yep Anvils, uh, you've got to have like some kind of um Quite reasonable damage negation trick Whatever that may be That could be something like having a built-in word save Preferably like a five up or a four up. It could be having Some kind of word save plus high amounts of regeneration So I think of things like, um Like chainrass seeing a good example of both of these where they have a six up base ward can easily go to five up pretty straightforwardly and can refill their unit really fast And they're five up unrundable. Yep. So they're five up five up with a very high model refill That's a good sort of anvil your classic hearth guard berserkers who are you know often going to be like I don't know four up four up or something like that is pretty reasonable for them to be in a position of not unrundable But it's based on a situation, right and they can have four up spelled in order to sure sure uh Like the and then you know utility is there's no benchmark for that. It's just um Utility is is it doing something strategically that you value? Right like that is to say is is the utility it creates For your army like you mentioned to the banshees Be in in the current world where there's a lot of endless spells floating around being able to consume endless spells very easily Okay Is probably an extremely high utility If tomorrow there were no endless spells like there were pre this ghb Their utility falls like a rock Yep Okay. Yep Mobility to me means I this one I can actually put a put a number on Either a built-in teleport Or a 14 inch move preferably with fly That's mobility And it is shocking how many units actually pass that that that that bar. Yes. Yes And then chaff is just most of time chaff does come in slightly two varieties Most of the time chaff is there to just die. So you want it to be as cheap as possible Like as absolutely bargain basement bodies For cheap so like the benchmark there is Uh less than 10 points per wound Okay, like if you're paying more Then 10 points per wound for your chaff then it needs to then it's either bad Chaff or it needs to fall into the other category of chaff which is like Pseudo anvil chaff where it can withstand anything in the enemy army except their hammers Yeah, uh, good example that is like chain rats chain rats are 11 points per model And like 11 points per wound. So they they are higher than that number, right? But because of that five up five up Like those 10 wounds can get stretched out pretty far Yeah, um the I'm thinking of like, um Uh, what do they call it drake spawn nights? Yeah, that's right. Like there are 120 points for for five dudes Uh, that's only 10 wounds, but they're on a three up save And they're on a cavalry base, which is a high value base because they come in units of five So they can stretch out real far mobility eight or 10, maybe they're 10 Yeah, yeah, so they're fairly mobile not a high mobility piece But mobile enough that they can write there that they're good That they can get out of the way after they've chaff right Uh, and then yes, so Mike said like prosecutors. Yeah prosecutors are another one I would put in there as like an inch like chaff that even though you're paying way more than 10 points per wound Um, they still are completely valid as a choice Because again, they have a three up save base. They're flying they can Space themselves three inches apart, which creates an utter nightmare for your enemy to move around them Though they can charge through them. So be careful on that regard But it will stop their movement out a lot pretty easily. All right Uh, so yeah, either you have like they're sorry the two categories. I would call it just like complete meant to die chaff which needs to be as just bargain basement cheapest chips as you can get it Yeah, or Pseudo anvil chaff. Yeah, I like I bramone called them pinning chaff I the trick is if they get touched by a hammer, they still evaporate Like as good as your 10 chain rasps are or your your drake spawn nights on a three up If a real hammer hits them, they're still just as dead. Yeah, right when that When that cabbage comes in Yeah, like the barring mathematical flu They're gone Right, right, and so you don't want to over invest in these things. You still need to understand their limitations They're there to stop other units who aren't the enemy hammers from piercing your lines Yep Need to determine your galatian veteran risk. We're gonna have a whole slide on this coming up We're gonna we're gonna deep dive on that one Again when you're thinking about your troops five units is the max for one drop unless you're using one of the book Specific unified battalions in which case you're not actually one drop because none of the book specific ones let you put your whole army in there with the exception of Bosses of the stomp in Sons of Batman who can do all their mega gardens in one um Though that's sort of an unusual build for them now But once you cross the five unit threshold plus a monster or artillery so you can have like 60 units total but five troops Um, you're just not one drop anymore because something has got to go in something else Yep now not all armies have Uh Does a cabbage really lift a unit of chain rasps that easily? Oh god. Yes. It's not even close If if there's a crusader out there back no Even with a crusader it's still mathematically favorable for him to lift a unit of 10 Certainly certainly. Yeah, I would agree with that. I would agree with that now Now a unit of 20 or 30. No, he probably won't Well, no, you're 20. I've I had a unit 20 laugh at like cragnos. Like yeah, sure all that is a joke Um, but I've also had a unit of 10 grave guard lift 20 chain rasps too So that happens too because math swings the other direction. Yeah, um, but if you have a crusader or two At a 10 chain rasps back like they will like that cabbage will bounce against 10 Sure, again, it depends on like A kitted cabbage with like Flaming weapon on because he happened to take the book because he's a true suicide machine And he has the plus one damage buff Uh You know that guy is a screaming nightmare even at minus one damage He's still coming in hot for like right three damage on all his main attacks after The neg one to hit right and so right, yeah, that's you can ignore all that rend you want It's just like a couple of those attacks will get through and if three of them or four of them go through the unit's gone That's it. Yep Because he's also going to do mortal wounds when he comes in and stuff like that. So, yeah Okay, you don't need every role, but your strategy needs to account for what you do and don't have So there are there are armies in this game that just don't have chaff. We mentioned lumenet earlier Um, son's a badmout. It's not a thing. You only have four units in son's a badmout There's no extra units. You have it's just chaff isn't a thing Um, so you need to have a deployment a strategy that says I'm going to be okay not picking my fights every time Or here's my sacrificial piece Okay, like I took this one Mega gargant and he's actually going to be the bait I expect him to get charged. He's going to go out front be on the front of my line And act as quote unquote like super heavy chaff Right. Yeah, his point is to be an anvil that just gets charged and gets And gets jumped on so that the other giants can come in from behind and counter strike Yeah, yeah, see you've accounted for that fact like I'm not going to get a pick my fights But I'll I'll sort of force them and incentivize them to come attack the guy I want them to Yeah, um So, uh Frost lord on stone horn with flaming weapon molten entrails does six damage On the charge with the horns at six attacks hit four. Yeah, sure Uh, yeah frost lord on stone is a perfectly great hammer Good luck ever getting all of that stuff to happen in an ogre army Like I can't believe you're casting two spells in an ogre army. So already we're in like imaginary land here But yes, you are right that I mean even without those spells frost lord on stone horn is a classically great hammer hero Yes, um Especially and obviously boulder head Okay Ramon says any model could be chaff if you don't care about it enough exactly We talked about the idk play of using your your idol on As baked yeah as chaff. Yeah, right or or If you don't have any chaff any in your idk army your boat Has to stand in as chaff just use your boat to physically block them I've used my gnaw holes before as chaff because that's just impassable space That people can't land on or get at right? um So so like you you you sometimes need might need to stretch a little bit um If you don't have mobility that's one of the toughest things to lack in this game Um, but if you don't have it then you need to think about very carefully about your movement And like where you move every turn because you don't have the get out of jail free card Right like somebody with a super high mobility can just accidentally move their army and go go off make a bad decision chasing something in the corner of the board And then be like oops. Okay. I actually want to be over here. No problem. I'm over here now Yep, right. Yep But if you're playing like a nergal army that's all foot slogging dudes at four inches and not like the nergal air force You don't have mobility So every movement decision you make you need to be thinking not just what am I moving? Where am I moving this turn? Where do I need to move next turn and the turn after that? Yeah right Okay Uh, all right Boo boo, sorry So here I've kind of given some examples of some fun different things Uh, so hammers anvils some of these guys can play both roles a little into both spaces Um, like blight kings they are hurt by being galatian veterans. We'll talk about that on the next one But a unit of like 10 of these guys can be still a great anvil a unit of five of these guys If used properly and protected can still do quite a lot of damage, especially if your opponents are playing lower wound models Yeah, yep and uh fulminators Super tough hammers They can sit around they easily be on a three up six wounds a piece Unit of four has 24 wounds They can have a six up board if you're in hammers with their battle line and they're they're not galatian veterans Nobody's getting bounty hunters against them you know Yeah, again great stuff Uh rat ogres rat ogres in a unit of four 24 wounds on these lunatics. Um, they count as two each for objective capture because there's six wounds apiece You know base four up save, but they also heal a d3 wounds every round if the Yeah, uh, if the master molders near them or a pack master and if the whole they're not beauty They're not gv so they can't get hit by high damage the the bounty hunter damage and If you've got the master molder, uh on a three up they just come back the whole unit That's a high that's a high value hammer. Like yeah, that's a great unit. I've Rat ogres are so amazing in this addition. I really hope that they're giving them six wounds is important for some awesome new sculpt That's coming where they're just these monsters Be great Uh, but there are many other examples of these kinds of things. These are just some fun ones that I picked Tom any others that you can think of then like hammers can often dub so can sometimes double as anvils unless they're like true glass hammers Um, witch elves are a good example like super buff witch elves can get up and be glass hammers, but it's only touches them um You know, I would count uh and I would count, uh Uh grim grass reapers in this in this category and we'll talk about this, uh because Again, it's been it's because the army, right? They are gv, but we'll talk about this But they're a you know, they're dishing out three attacks a model normally You're gonna get all 20 of them in so you're gonna throw 60 attacks They're gonna normally be at least rend two possibly rend three because the army and the other mechanics going in So they're gonna dish out a lot of attacks at good rend But they're also 20 wounds on a four up unrendable and that can get to a five up ward You know and depending on your your support they can also be at minus one damage You know to really kind of wash that you know bounty hunter bonus damage Uh out and so like they can be Like because of the other the the unique constellation of things around them They can actually serve this like dual purpose of hammering an animal. Yep And what's interesting here is most of these things exist on a spectrum Okay, like hammer and that's the reason I look I clumped this together Yeah, because the spectrum is like units can play into both areas It's a question of like oftentimes where a lot of these units end up is the good ones that like the good units end up being like hammer Anvil but lean hammer or anvil But like lean a little hammer phoenix guard is an example this well like they can win in attrition fight But they're very tough Right if you back them up with like a life form or something they're they're quite good at just sticking around for a long time But they can also do Decent enough damage. They're not I mean, but they can chop Yeah, you get into them and if they have models you're in trouble like because they're like they They have the attacks and the reach and the numbers on threes and threes to actually like put out real damage. Yep Six like I Falls into this example, right where they're not Galatian veterans. They can't be bounty hunter They can be damaged buffed so easily they make an metric crap ton of attacks And six of them is 30 wounds on a four up save like it's just a it's just a pile of meat Right, we go Uh, somebody mentioned. Yeah steward hearth guard berserkers. Absolutely. Great example Yep So that's spectrum one The other spectrum in my mind here is utility mobility Right oftentimes things exist on this spectrum of like are they utility lean mobility or mobility lean utility? Because this often ends up play often end up playing into both things chaff often is just chaff by the by Just it's some cheap unit you have But utility mobility to me is often a spectrum. And so here what I'm thinking of is something like tree revenants Is a great example Where maybe the best Galatian veterans in the game probably the best Galatian veterans in the game Uh Yeah, that's probably true. Um with their their built-in teleport. They're relatively small footprint. They're great, um Hacks rates Where, you know, they can fight some they're okay. They're okay at fighting But they carry a lot of utility because they have this explosive movement capability Where they can just shoot across the board a million million miles and they have a lot of sticking power So like if you don't lift them like you can put models back in that unit and they're like it's just a sticky Again, it's a four up save Unrendable, you know six upward possibly five like when you need it It's just a good Like it's a hard it's a hard unit to lift Like unless you actually put put meat into it You gotta put some real heat into it in order to lift one of those units Finally and it can shoot across the table. Great. Great. Right. Exactly Finally, maybe my all-time favorite in the utility mobility category Our Hubble friend the gyrocopter Uh, this little guy This little adorable fellow Come clocking in it basically like what is he 70 75 points? I think I'll stop my head. He does so much work I'd never had a Our a force that like that had one that where it just didn't do real work Yep, he can just sit around and chill in your back line. He's very fast You can just go zip out to where he needs to be with his little fly speed Uh, this 60 inch fly speed He can drop a little bomb when he makes the normal move over somebody to deal some mortal wounds in a clutch Take out a key hero that's wounded He has a little little spray gun a little steam gun If you happen to get a bunch of like a bunch of their dumb chaff In in range your steam gun, you can actually do some nice little damage He can go cap an objective out of nowhere or or you know add a little another little body on an objective He's just a fun little doofus that's not many points and he can stand in his chaff too in the worst case like I've I've done board control many times by just having him to block out like ambushes and and drops and stuff like that And nobody wants to trade with him. Yeah, like they don't want to send any unit to kill him Knowing that they're going to expose that unit to a counter charge and lose whatever they attack Right, right exactly. Nobody wants to actually put in any effort to kill the little dumb dumb Yeah Yep These guys were you know, obviously last year at Nash con I had him on the top of my head because I was looking at my army I ran last year You know, I had two gyrocopters on my list and every game every game those guys were amazing They were just always doing the work for me. So Okay, let's talk Galician veterans galatian veterans, whatever Galatian veterans as we've said before should generally be either really tough Or really mobile and if you aren't one of these two things You're probably just dead Yep, you've made a mistake There are still plenty whether whether people will keep taking bounty hunters forever. I don't know But right now there are plenty of people taking bounty hunters as a Uh as a battalion And because of that Most like normal troops in stasis sigmar are just sitting around waiting to die They're just bad They just became instant bad choices Because it doesn't matter that they can contest the proving ground when they all explode The second any enemy bounty hunter or hammer touches them Yep, right so the the Uh martin says or cheap enough not to care about getting one shot. I would accept that one Yeah, like if they're if they're out there and they're just chaff the problem that you got to worry about with that Is they can offer your opponents some easy additional battle tactics So that's the only downside concern there martin now It's not the biggest deal your opponent's usually going to be able to find the battle tactics anyways But like if you have gallation veterans that can be so cheap they can be picked up that easy Then you really encourage your opponent To use the like my gallation veteran skills your gallation veterans thing And that's just for you battle tactics for them Yeah, so you got to be a little careful with that, but I wouldn't call it a huge downside Um in my mind, I'm thinking like the two pen ultimate current gallation veterans of the game right now Are chainrass ports and tree revenants They're just the best of the best in this meta Chainrass for all the reasons we mentioned before Uh, they can withstand and tree revs because they are always the last two units alive in any 7th army Because they just leave They just leave Um So, you know, yeah, there you go But like powerful mobile gvs in this edition are extremely powerful All right, uh, so an easy example of this Is I'll just continue on the on the tree revenant run. Let's talk about having two units of tree revs If you've got two units of tree revs and your opponent's deployment zone isn't something super tiny In some round that isn't probably the first round You can just teleport them both to be in their enemy deployment zone Score an instant battle tactic with a kicker point So you get three points your battle tactic in a tight game that kicker point could make all the difference Yep, right So having gvs that can like teleport or just move a million miles and end up in your opponent's deployment zone Is an easy battle tactic with a bonus and in the base battle tactics. That's the only bonus point in all eight So it can matter in these tight games Um And then yeah gv that aren't fast nor very tough nor regenerative are just dangerous They're walking corpses waiting to offer your opponent good trades and and points That's it. Yep Like I I wish they hadn't made bounty hunters as good as they did But they did and it's the reality we have to live with now for some amount of time Yep So anything I miss their tom on galician veterans. I mean When you're building your list I think very long and hard about what I'm putting in my list that is a galician veteran And if I can take fill my battle line with things that aren't I often do Yeah, like I like in my fire slayer stuff like I rotated out her guard out of battle line Like I changed my general so that they wouldn't be battle line Um, so it would give me something to like take charges on You know and not and and and and change the incentive structure for the end yep Absolutely Yeah 100 i've like in scaven where you have a lot now you have a lot of fine control over your battle line Often end up putting units intentionally in that could be battle line, but not make them battle line because they've already satisfied it Right. I don't want them to be I want them. I want to make sure nobody gets the bonus damage against me Right and meanwhile my battle line is filled with like rat ogres Or something like that, right? Where where they're just not they're they again because they have their wound count. They're not galician veterans Yeah, you're doing damage mitigation in list built. Yes Yes, exactly Cui says if your gvs are weak in regards to this criteria, do you just lean into bounty hunters more could it be worth it to avoid gvs entirely? Yes Yeah Absolutely like the the things we just talked about like you you cut them or minimize them It's often still worth it to have as we said in the sort of three strats of this edition Right. Yeah, which is hammer hammer bounty hunter heavy Expert conquer a gv heavy or shooting ranged projection power low drop. That's kind of the three That's the triangle around with which this current season is is orienting and if you're You know if you're going to go bounty hunter heavy You usually still want like one unit maybe of of if you can like mobile Gvs in your army Just so you've got something to to mess around with proving grounds or something like that Because you don't want it to bite you in the butt. You can often negate the power of proving ground, but not always So, you know building a list that's okay with going second A lot and like giving the turn away if you get the double Is a pretty powerful strat in the current edition Yeah, so yeah Okay monsters the monsters tom the monsters Okay I don't remember the last time I had a monster in one of my lists Well, let's talk about that Monsters are much lower risk this season. We just came off a long season. No, it's true. It's true Like it's them being weak It's fully dependent though upon the army you're applying. Yep And I am by the way talking about monsters like just monsters not monster heroes Who would fall under the earlier thing we talked about with heroes? Right, right. I am talking about monsters all right So They're much lower risk now. They're not giving up free victory points You know, they bring a real utility because people can't be immune to their stomps and their roar. Yep Yeah, there's no more. There's no more of that crap going on Right no more hunters the heartlands outside of stormcast who can still do it through the if they take the really weird Subfaction, but sure That's very uncommon. I wouldn't worry about it Um So so we think okay, maybe we're back in the mix here a little right? That's kind of where we're like, okay Now monsters as always Have the hero problem but worse Here's the easiest way to think about it. And this is what I think gw still hasn't wrapped their head around Monsters are all bad heroes Yep Okay Most heroes get into the list by bringing utility and then Or being an overwhelming hammer But there are customizable hammer because you can throw artifacts on them and stuff like that or command traits or or Uh Abilities that you get from your sub faction or whatever like there are things that are happening That are using to synergize the heck out of those bad boys. Yes. Yep monsters are Single people that have bad objective capture wounds damage per point ratios. Like I don't care that they count as five That's cool. It's still worse than a unit of 10 Yep Okay Yep They gotta earn their keep and most monsters do not have any utility Now we're gonna talk about exceptions and who who clears the bar here But most monsters are there just to be bad heroes non utility Crappy heroes that can't issue their own commands Okay They're like, yeah, they've got a rampage, but I can get that out of a monster's hero Right, right Yep Again, so Haley's this is just pure monster not monster heroes like the mega boss on mall crush is fine because he's a hero on top He's good. He can do a bunch. He brings a bunch of other utility to the table just by existing right Yep, uh, most monsters don't do that Most monsters are like are are effectively just damage on a degrading profile that often falls off like a rock Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So they have bad fundamentals No utility and often don't hit their damage ratio Like they often do less damage easily less damage than an equivalent sized unit Yep so Monsters are starting off. No, you're fine. Haley's no problem Um, so most of the time you're just starting off bad They're just a bad choice like in the void all else being equal monsters suck in Hager-Sigmar Yep Yep It shouldn't be the case. I appreciate they gave us monsters rampage and tried but again, my monster heroes can do that Yep, and do it better Because i'm benefiting more from that like titanic duel or something or whatever If you are a pure monster I'm gonna say this If you're a pure monster No, he wrote you word And you are over 200 points You're probably not ending up in a list Yeah, because then the question becomes what's the delivery mechanism because that's the next question Right. Yeah, are you fast enough? Are you mobile enough to get out there and actually deliver that damage? Are you tough enough to withstand the journey and most monsters they've just decided aren't Yeah, and and here's the deal even if you're under 200 there are a lot of monsters under 200 Who never see tables? Because they're like five up saves with a six or eight inch move. Who cares? That's garbage worthless. I can stop reading the profile right there Yeah, unless they're 120 You know 130 points. Nah, it's not where you're not worth the risk at that point Yep, so now there are exceptions though. It's not all bad news folks. Don't worry There are as a point of fact some good monsters Let's talk about those good monsters. Yeah Who who overcomes? Such hurdles Right Yep to still find a place worthy in a list Damage damage damage and utility if you got those two We can talk Yep, so the first two are the cheater monsters that end up actually being more or less just troops, but they sort of sneak monster in All right, and that's something like your storm drake guard who are their dragons or monsters So they're just kind of getting monster for free, but really they're troops Or your man crusher gargants Right Uh, who are better now because they actually can fit in something like bounty hunters Because they are just troops when they get taken his battle line So these are the guys that aren't like traditional behemoths. They're not taking up a behemoth slot Right, but they still get the monster keyword. They're fine Okay So that's kind of the first category of monsters that clear this this level like they have Some other definition that makes them valuable and they are valid hammers and so on and so forth And they have to be a good part of your list building The cockatrice is a great example of a monster that's worth it. This dumb dumb Flying around at 95 points not taking up a behemoth slot, but still counting as a monster Okay Who has a mortal wound shot basically does blood boil for all intents and purposes, right? Yep, can a can of all mortal wound shot. Yep. Yep Is great. He's always like a tiny base for no reason Uh, he is he is pulling his weight at what was he 95 for a way 95 points. Yeah 95. Yeah, you know what? I'm a buyer at 95. Sure. All absolutely all these monster all similar monsters should be priced that way right Like if you're on a five up save Done. Yeah, like he's fragile is all get out, but who cares you can take 10 of them Right, and it's like that's a reasonable list because that's only 950 points Like you still have quite a lot to play with it's something like piece of chaos um the bacillodon Where you have uh Double shoot potential You have long range damage. You have particular bone, you know potential bonus damage against chaos He's the laser beam version is what i'm talking about here. So the one pictured, right? Uh And and like and just super duper tough Obviously this dude's running. He doesn't have the toughness problem. Now. He's slow as but who cares. He's a range threat with a one plus safe Right. Yeah, great. Yep. This is a monster that clears the bar. He's easily and he sees his dude in lists all the time He's doing something. He's doing something Llama cat. He's a kitty cat Well, okay Yeah Uh, the sphere angst is amazing. This dude has a huge aura of minus to bravery He can play a mini game with your opponent Uh, that makes them Go last like fight last which is incredible He has like a very high percentage chance to pull that off like an 84 chance to make a a um Uh, an enemy unit go last Which is fantastic um And You know, yeah, it's good. Like it's a good kitty cat hero and again super cheap by the way This the kitty cat is like dirt cheap for what he gets. Yep Yep, he's doing his job. Yes. He's clocking it like 10 points of wound effectively Okay. Yep Now I've seen I've seen the tree lord love. I agree with you. I'm okay with tree lord I do think tree lord crosses the post if you're in oak and brow Yeah, because of the stomp to make them fight last because their damage got buffed up and up. It's real Just gets over Yes, because of his other utility things that he has I do think the tree lord crosses the post and in oak and brow is where I think that happens where he effectively Never loses profile Like unless he's at one wound remaining He's always fighting at max profile Yep, yep So, yes, I do think the tree lord's absolutely in in oak and brow Yep, but a hundred percent Um, I I think tree lords are super duper good as a matter of fact Uh, and then lastly the thing I wish I didn't have to put on this list, but here he is Uh, this moron that needs to go up in points Uh, he just does the incarnate I don't know what the right number is You just bait him with endless spells just throw an endless spell his way And watch purple suns at him until he fits so he hopefully he fails to eat it. Yeah Well, I mean he will like on the numbers. He's not gonna regularly eat a purple sun 2d6 plus 2 he stands a slightly positive chance of unbinding it if he's at level 2 But if he doesn't he dies he now he's at level 1 now Yeah, yeah, and then and then he gets he's one like That's what happened to my round one opponent. They had one and he failed my terminexus and Got lifted at the top of one We're at the bottom of one. Yeah Sure. Yes. Yes, but the incarnate is Strong, I mean he shows up in a lot of lists. He can be taken by anybody We we came down kind of, uh Aggressively costed He's he's just too cheap And and mike I understand your sentiment you but you can be like 90 percent of the people who are playing incarnates Who are not using the actual model? Seeing the actual incarnate on the table is a rarity Seeing some kit bashed or 3d printed nonsense that somebody puts down and says this is my incarnate Because incarnates have this wonderful magical quality of being highly desirable Locked away in an expensive kit and a basically nothing model Uh, it's just it's just skulls on some energy wisps Anything could be an incarnate apparently and I hate it. I hate it. It was the stupidest release strategy for this thing Um, I said it originally. I'll say it again. I agree It's dumb to have to buy a whole terrain box to get this highly desirable model the He should have been a like narrative or non match play thing. This shouldn't be a thing that's in the game It just shouldn't Because it's just too hard to balance. Let's just accept that up that a model the entire game can take Is is It's too hard to balance now at the same time Armies that are pretty bad right now are benefiting from him highly You know slanesh and and gets and armies like that that don't have this kind of big monster hammer are benefiting highly from having him So I kind of and he brings utility. He brings a anvil ish like yeah, like it sucks So I want to keep him around Because he is helping those other armies, but he just does need to be more points Like if you look at the armies that are running incarnates right now And and finding success it is more of the lower tier armies than the higher tier armies Because the higher tier armies are good enough. They don't need him right That's not universally the case But it's often the case None of that though makes the release strategy any better. This guy should just if if if they wanted people to buy him put him in a box Put him in a box and put him out for sale Okay, like And I Yeah, okay If we I think we beat that drum enough Uh at any rate the incarnate should be like 500 points. There we go But for now, he's a good monster. He clears all the bars. He does everything as you said He's a hammer. He's he's an anvil. He's utility. He can survive all of that crap yep I uh I saw when I was I watched rob show And I don't remember who it was. I can't I mean, I don't remember his dan who said it But he talked about using his incarnate like he has the He has the incarnate bound to his dark elf sorceress or whatever Yeah, okay, and then round one he sacrifices the sorceress to herself to get the bonus to cast So it goes immediately wild Yep Which is funny I do enjoy her just showing up and just be like Uh, it's a funny combo one Because I mean it doesn't it doesn't say other unit. It just says sacrifices at like, you know, whatever dark elf You know, whatever the wording is. Yeah Yep, and I mean it works and uh It just makes that incarnate like 80 points more or whatever, but you know what? That can be worth it. Sure. Sure Uh Okay Endless spells. Let's talk about endless spells I like endless spells. I know you don't I don't I don't like them. I know a lot of people do I'm willing to be the outlier here Tom but like philosophically so philosophically we've covered all the units now, right? You notice I didn't mention artillery because it doesn't matter arrow 404. There's no artillery. It's not found It's just like if you have artillery, it's never a list building concern. You're taking it as an effective troop You know, that just happens to have some weird extra keyword on it for no reason Like right nobody hits five or four artillery or whatever. Okay, so they're not materially different anymore Yeah, that's not a thing. We just need to kill this dumb distinction or make more valid artillery. I'll accept either Sure But how do you think of endless spells because this isn't like the classic part of your list, right? This is this some extra weird thing you've got to have casters to bring on to the table How do you think about these things you frequently use endless spells? You've been a fan. I do I do um I I like using endless spells when They allow me to play differently um, and so oftentimes I look at them as a I use them to bring utility into my list Very rarely have I traditionally used them as pure damage The irony being that that's not what I've been doing recently um But in general like historically I would use them to like add mobility Or I would use them to add these other con elements to my list that I need Um, and they were good for that. Um now, uh, it's hard not to run a purple sun Especially if you have a way to deliver it to make it reliable You know because I've been playing night haunt like Literally, it's just all turtles for me. Like it's just literally like there's no Penalty for me running a purple sun in that army um, and so It's it's a right power right out with plus three well Sure Or I have uh, I have a my one caster Who can power it out and have it unmindable from him? So I have two options to push it out. Um, and I ignore the the penalty to save and I'm often running a bunch of bodies and so most of the time like I can body block it out Such that it's not going to be if it does go wild. It's not relevant for me. Right um, and so the reality is is that like uh I can't not run that endless spell Okay um I've been a huge fan of terminus just because the just the raw pressure that it puts on the army the enemy army Um, just be the area. So those are so that's another exception of like a just a raw damage spell um Uh, other I I've seen the burning head show up in a lot of lists just because it's an aoe d3 mortals for 2020 Point damage spell. Yeah Yeah, that that it puts damage out on the table Other than that, obviously like there's amazing utility stuff like horgast Or uh bridge used to serve that cogs obviously is is bonkers now um And so there are just a lot of like for me endless spells can take a tactic that you were That was an option A possibility and turned into a major strap For like, you know an investment of 100 points or whatever Yep So the question I ask myself is do I want this spell more than I want a potential triumph? And is this part of my distinct plan? Okay, now some endless spells are so strong right now cough sun cough That you almost can just like throw the bad boy in and go ham Right. Yeah Um, but it can but it's best when it's part of some aligned strat So an easy example here is the sylvaneth long bomb strat Where they tree sing it out from outside of a unbind range from anybody but the frog anybody but the the the Table-wide who has a table-wide unbind They just shoot it out from the woods that they set up From the other side of the table it rolls up. They don't care if they roll ones. That's not the point They're just trying to like they're just trying to to put a negative on your armor save and then Out comes the six. They're trying to apply pressure. Right outcomes the six bow hunters on twos and twos Right Who just then shoot into that area and then the mortal wound from the grim captain toots Goes off, right? So it's just like all this concentrated damage hitting you at once from a million miles away Right. Yep That's part of a distinct plan like that's when those spells even bent things like the sun get used the best You know portal if you're trying to get the tech nato going Or portal if you're running kairos and you want to use your six mortal wound Uh spell to burn down an enemy model and turn it into a spawn that then that's then immediately in combat with like an enemy shooting unit Right. Yep Uh Cogs if you have a bunch of wizards Right Yeah, we want to reroll some casts Um horror gas you mentioned yeah high utility like we're obviously Emma's rock coven list right you mentioned with nerdy using using because there's a lot of spread Damage happening to a lot of units horror gas being able to shut off Um that that that inspiring presence is so strong, right? Yeah, um Caleb says you have to try host arcaneum with their free six inch move turn one and then cast swords jaws Horror gas and watch people cry very nice. Yeah, I've seen some people saying that host arcaneum is on the way back up I'm I'm interested in that not that it'll matter because your new book will be out and like You know a month or something who knows like whenever it'll be soon ish and That'll change everything so whatever i'm sure zinch will just go back into spell casting dominance I can't wait for the new lumeneth and new zinch books that bring us two new spell doms into a spell dom meta Like let's just take this this is just like dumping kerosene on a fire once those two books show up um so They can all be all of those can be interesting and powerful solo, but again they work best when they're part of your overall strat Yeah, so great example of this is um, I was running uh emerald host Right emerald host divvies out a d3 plus one Curses that's beginning of the game Which that lets me put mortal wound pressure on a handful of units Yep, and then I pair that with a other a bunch of other splash area mortal wound damage Absolutely like the terminexus and the uh and like burning head could be a great combo there Right because then you've got like Bunch of people take d3 mortals then a bunch of people take d3 mortals then a bunch of people take d3 mortals Now all of a sudden all those utility heroes in the back line are just dropping dead The uh like lots of units are being weakened and shrunk down You know, so like those things are highly valuable. That's part of a a synergistic strat that you have right? right, right Um The other important question I think that is easy to forget about here Is what are the other spells you are wanting slash needing to cast each round the number of times? I've seen people include endless spells in a list because they just like had some points left Right, but they but they already had every spell cast they have Yeah, determined determined every round, right I'm gonna cast mystic shield and this buff spell and this buff spell And that's what I need to be doing every round and I have three spell casts Okay, well, then when were you planning to cast that endless spell? right, right, right You got to have a little bit of flex In your in your required spells to power out those endless spells like especially or something like burning head Where you're going to be doing it potentially over and over and over again every round right, right um So yeah like really think about what is your game plan as far as your spell casts And are you going to easily have the free spell cast every turn? Because you might need it in any turn if your opponent unbinds it on their turn or something Right to continually try to power that thing out so Okay, anything else on endless spells tom No, um, you know and like there is some utility and just them filling up the board Like you can move through them now can't use them to like block But you still have to have the movement to get past them And so if you like drop an endless big a base to endless spell and then have a unit behind it Like actually getting that they get enemy unit into combat with your stuff can be actually a really big problem And so there's some there's some utility In endless spells and limiting mobility. Yep. I mean, I'll be honest with you other than something that's like Distinctly aligned with my strapped Right where I'm trying to use it to the best of its ability. I'll take the triumph every time Because if I even though the triumphs only once a game like if I'm it, you know If I'm going to end at 1960 65 70 where I'm pretty sure in most games. I'll get the triumph Yeah, once I've got it. I've got it and and I always take the re-roll charge But you because then you can double stack re-roll charges and and if your unit doesn't connect It doesn't matter but like plus one to wound and re-roll charge are generally your two that people lock into Um, those are so highly valuable and you can just punch them. No hero needed. No nothing needed No chance for your opponent to counter it. They just happened Right. Yeah. Yep. So yep Okay Last up tom battalions Yeah, battalions. All right, let's talk a little battalions Um How are you thinking about your battalions right now tom? How do you think about it when you come to a list? I I mean the first thing I ask is is one drop possible. Mm-hmm. Yep And do I need to be it given my game and do I need to be it? Yeah, and then I mean more often than not Because one drops aren't possible for the armies that I'm running Um, I will then default into who are my Conquerors and who are my veterans? Okay, right And then fill those up and like my goal recently has been okay now I can do that kind of go double warlord Sure, like that's the other question up Can I fill those up while also going double or like run those like if I'm going to be all the drops? Right Um, can I get into those and then also be double warlord because actually double warlord is really really good for Um Those command points being able to be like I need two extra command points this turn You punch that button and you and you are yep Yeah, I go through a series of steps I think when I think about my battalions based on the army that I'm running Do I need to be one drop here and is it possible? Do I have a strat that takes advantage of that kind of a build? Yeah, if the answer is yes, then I then then that then I know I'm going battle reg decision done And then all of the decisions flow from that. I'm now capped at three heroes five units Plus a monster artillery so on and so forth right and I okay now I'm going to build within those constraints If the answer is no Then do I want to stay within like the three to four drop range? So I'm kind of like playing or rolling against a lot of people Right where now I can add in a few more another hero for flavor a couple I can take a bounty hunters like I got options open up Right, it gets a little more loose And then if the answer to that is no, then it's all the drops, baby And it's it's jam packed that list with every battalion I can and so skaven my all my skaven lists look like this most of my skaven lists have six Heroes because their heroes are often cheap as chips. They're highly utilitous. They do a lot for you They open up your battle line Like they're just valuable and I don't have to dedicate actually a large part of my army to getting six heroes Right and that then opens up something like warlord and command entourage. So now I'm double artifacts gave me a bunch of good artifacts too, by the way right and so um So now I'm now I'm got three artifacts in the list or whatever right, whatever I want to take two bonus enhancements And then then I'm also stacking a bounty hunters and an expert conquers on top of that too Right and I'm saying okay my rat ogres are going in bounty hunters my Nightrunners or gutter runners or whatever are going in expert conquerors, right or something? Yep Or my clan rats just because why not why not have 20 clan rats count as 60 on an objective Just so like you're just so your opponent has to go answer that Yeah, yep. Yep. And and then you're just all the drops and to me those are the milestones in the current Uh in the current edition the milestones are one drop Three or four Like three is safer four is riskier, but you're going to run into lots of three and four at least that's the sort of big middle where many lists fall The sort of plurality I would imagine And then just all the drops just whatever who cares run it to the moon, right? Yep, 12 13 14 drops like go ham I am in for 13 14 drops. Yeah, sure. I mean I've I've uh Is four drop worth it or at that point should I just be lots of drops? I think four drops the top of worth it like I would stop I wouldn't take battle wretch if I'm going to end up over four drops Right, right. I would take things that are giving me something Um And allowing me to be responsive to my opponent at four drops you'll meet plenty of four drop lists And four drops means you go you get priority over all the all the drops people And it's a roll-off against the other four drop people which you know in a five game tournament you you might meet two of those Yeah, that's yeah, not statistically unlikely and a roll-off is a roll-off right, so It's something So that's my answer from frog arm I wouldn't like if if my battle wretch is going to take me down to five drops screw it all the drops Yeah, yeah, right um And and you know the question you have to answer here at the base of this Is arm is my army benefiting from bonus enhancements in some way that's perted to my strat Okay, yep Like for scaven the answer there is often a giant yes Because they have these these enablement artifacts that allow you to just act in ways you wouldn't otherwise with your units if they're present Yep, okay Night haunt has a very similar type of the situation going on Yeah, I mean like you're incentivized to go five six heroes on every night haunt And so at that point like and you have some utility units You're gonna have sprinkled in and out and so like you just you end up with a lot of drops So most of my recent ones have been lower, but they're not as high as the 14. That's truly 14's a lot It's like that's almost hard to get you have to take so many small units But yeah, most of my scaven let's end up at 11 and 12 just because that's just sort of the number of units that I have And that's what it boils down to um And then how important is priority to you in the first turn Right like what are your chaff options? What is your are you trying to alpha? Yeah, well if you're trying to alpha and you have a billion billion drops, you don't have a valid strat right Okay, because somebody's gonna see that and make you go second or whatever. Yes. Yes Now if you If you are up at a million drops, then what is your Response to the alpha if you don't have priority, right? If you get out, how are you responding? The key is the key is If you are running 14 drops You actually have to have two strategies. You can execute at the top of one Correct. What happens when you go first? What happens when you go second? That's exactly right And so like if you have 14 drops you need to be you need it to be so punishing If they first forced you to go first That they regret it Uh because you really want to go second like in general you really want to go second So if they force you to go first you just have to have that thing whatever that is That suddenly they have to deal with For me and knight haunt inevitably it's my terminal access Because I can sling that 26 inches across the table on a six inch bubble And if they're they're castled up, you know between that and then potentially like being able to deep strike Like pull units off and redeploy like that suddenly changes the math on them making me want to go first Yeah Yep, you know and that's why I say your mobility options What is your out like if your castle gets raided by somebody coming in hard against you Do you have either the chaff to withstand it and counter punch and remove the threats? Or the The escape hatch to just be like, okay fine. You can have this area. Bye And everybody I'm going to another part of the board. Enjoy. Right. Yeah, right And so like what are your options when when you don't have the choice? How are you going to respond? Right. Yeah, that is the critical question you're answering when you're playing the battalion game Right and considering your drops um, and and like you you When you're thinking about your list, you want to be thinking at the same time of like, how am I deploying this? right uh How am I going to be set up to to to zone people out? To guard myself against ambushes to etc. Right all these things And I will say that the current crop like I would have agreed with you tom on the you go second thing But I will say in the current crop of battle plans Uh There is actually quite a lot of Uh scenarios that have a pretty big first mover advantage Right So this is where like the rubber meets the road on your strat versus the battle plans in your list So like yeah, I'll give you a very easy example Of two two battle plans. You're going to see in a lot of tournaments Prize of galae and realm stone cash Okay, sure both of which for all intents and purposes have one active objective in round one Yeah, right And so both of them have a huge first mover advantage Because if you go first and you can relocate your entire castle onto the active objective Yeah Then suddenly they have to come in they have to come in and like there's only one objective to hold if you hold it You hold one and hold more Yeah, right so you can very easily if they can't penetrate your castle If all they can do is run up and thrash against your walls Right or get caught up in your chaff or whatever then that first round is scored four to two end of story Yeah, that's it and you've set yourself up to win the game Yeah, now you just have to hold the lead. Yeah, great Okay So I I do think In the current world there is that's why oftentimes I think that's why we're seeing an increase At the same time like the the I shouldn't say increase. That's not right We're not seeing a huge number of influx of one drop lists, but we're seeing the one drop lists perform very high because They then have the priority to it's not as though if you you your one drop you don't want to have two plans It's the same story is still true. Just everybody should what are your two plans? Right, right because in some of these battle plans You will want to go first and risk the double Because it is so highly advantageous to you to do so Yeah, yeah Like my storm cast army is one drop But if I'm on realm stone cash I'm not sure I'm not taking the first turn and just Dropping everything around that one point and then resetting up my castle Right around it and just saying come get me like I'll give you like if you get the double good on you But it's going to be hard for you to penetrate my walls Right. Yeah. Yeah, there's your buffed up. You have all your right Everything's exactly where I want it. All my buffs have landed right. I'm where I need to be okay And if if I if you get the double and fail to penetrate my castle on the second turn And like in something and still only get two points. I just won the game right there. Yeah, that's it games over right Yep, that's it So um to me The the answer is think about like what are your drops? How often will you have the decision against those benchmarks? And then what is your plan given your list? If you have to take first or you want to take first or you have to take second or you want to take second Right. What's what's your play there? Okay Cool, and that's how I think about list. Tom. Is there anything else that I I didn't cover that you wanted to touch on For less. No, I think that I think that that's all Um important. I think that deployment is also really important because It's not just what you put in your list, right? But you can have a great list, but if you flub deployment, then you're back to square Square one. Yeah, which which I think is probably a whole show in itself sometime Um, because like we need to talk about when to spread when to castle when to like having pre-game move components You know, which by the way, it's like a great utility mobility combination that we didn't talk about but like Pre-game moves are a great utility mobility chaff combo, right when uh Untamed beasts being like the classic example of this cheapest chips Great chaff with awesome utility on a pre-game move that can just walk forward and threaten objectives, right? incredible Yeah, so Uh, all right, great. If there's anything we missed with list building and you've got questions Hey drop those down in the comments below I didn't say at this entire time and I have been remiss Because I'm bad at youtube Eight years into this nine years into this hour long. I've been doing this my whole life. It seems Uh, I still am bad at youtube, but hey, don't forget to hit like we really appreciate it Uh, subscribe if you haven't already click buttons. It's cool all the cool kids Click buttons and you want to be like the cool kids Uh, you know share this and stuff with your friends Uh, don't forget if you want to support the channel There is a patreon down below focused on hobby and taking your next step on your hobby journey and on hobby review and feedback You can join an awesome discord community full of enthusiastic and awesome people Uh, as well as get personal lies to review and feedback of your miniatures Uh, there's also a merch store down there so you can make your vote of team tom versus team tyler Uh, there's socks and hoodies and shirts and all that kind of fun stuff down there. So go check that out Uh, but if there's anything you need just drop it down in the comments as always tom. Thank you so much, buddy I appreciate it. Of course Okay, look if we do a deployment show, we are absolutely going to have to do real examples. Yes 100% Yeah, yeah Like you can't do a deployment show without like a at minimum an old school 90s white dwarf map So yes, absolutely. All right. Thank you everyone really appreciate it as always Uh, thank you so much for watching And we'll see you next wednesday