 Okay, here we go. 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, my own personal monster but he needs no fixing. It's Tom, what's up buddy? Hello friends. So this week, as mentioned in the description that you clicked on this, you know what it is. We're fixing monsters this week. It's about time too. They've been back for too long. You know what this is. You know what this is. This has been five years and coming. This is the thing that had to happen. It's built up and it's built up. It's gotten under my skin more and more and now it is finally time that we do another free design chair with GW that they are welcome to steal. All of these ideas we freely and openly say all of ideas presented in this thing are free of any kind of claim by us. Use them freely please. There we go. You all get nice welcoming Tom today and cranky frustrated Vince. Congratulations. Because Vince is ultimately the super Timmy who loves big stompy monsters and wants them to work. Yes. And I'm like, yeah, whatever. Like I'll play whatever is good. No, you, you, it's not just you. You'll play whatever is good. It's that you particularly prefer to have hordes of annoying infantry to move around the board. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. These are just better. Because they're just better. Yes, and that doesn't bother you. Yeah, no. All right, so, but it bothers me because I do not like at all moving around like, I'll move a unit of 30 dudes. That's fine. I mean, it's fine. I have trays. It's fine. A unit of 30 dudes is my maximum. Warhammer is perfect when you have somewhere between like, let's say 25 and 50 models on the table. That's like in your army. That's like a unit and a half. What are you talking about? You can see why I'm excited for giants. This is my perfect army. You say that my army is gonna be somewhere between like, you know, seven and 11 figs. And I'm like, yes, please. I don't know how, how a stormcast never just captured you with your, with your, with your model range window of a perfect army. Well, if one, you're, you're not wrong. Two, I do have a stormcast army. I mean, I know, but you've never, you've never actually owned that. And what I mean by that is like, it's never been like a project that you love or that you play. No, that's true. I'll tell you what will make that happen, Tommy, you ready? If they- Dragons. If they make their dragons not be bad, that would be number one. Cause that's what I wanna play. I wanna play the big dragons. Right. I have a painted one. I'd love to put it on the table. Sure. I would buy a ton of Star Drakes if they were good. Speaking of monsters. And two, if they get a new book where the dragons are good, then I will do skigs. Rackast. Oh yeah. Rackast? No. That would, that would be an army I would, I would dig on to high hacking back. Converting one little holy warrior out of skig fig that I did was actually super fun. I would do a whole army of skaven who've been redeemed and follow Sigmar. Anyways, not what we're here to talk about. Let's start with the not news. So it's the launch week of 9th edition 40K, which means this is not a week for AOS. That's what it means. Yeah. He was like, we don't have any news this week. And I was like, of course, it's the black hole of 9th edition. Like this happened a couple of years ago, four years ago, to be exact. And like this is what happens. We'll get a solid couple of weeks of nothing. And that's okay. It's fine. We'll fill the air. It's fine. There's always more to talk about, like say, figs and monsters. But for now, we got a rumor engine still. And I think it's an AOS rumor engine. It's a bird. A bird with a key. It's a bird with a key. And by AOS, I mean, I think it's like part of a terrain piece. That's my best guess. So the last similar model, right, was the bird in the Garden of Moor that you could position on any terrain piece, like any of the Garden of Moor stuff until like mine is like perched on my gate. And it's strikingly similar to this bird. Now the question is, is that related? I would love to see, you know, the thing we've always talked about. First of all, please don't try to force a new Garden of Moor on us for the fourth time. We've already repackaged and re-released that set three times. No, no. It's an entirely interchangeable graveyard with more than four mausoleums. Sure. And so it's an entire range. Here's the call. It's an entire range of Garden of Moor, like the Chaos Dreadhole. And so just all of the graveyard. And all of the mausoleums. Sure. And all of the gates and interchangeable beauty. I mean, it's not, but sure. I do want to agree with Martin who just said in the comments that bird is on my inquisitor. That's what you use it for. I do agree with Martin. All those little birds and animals, I just have a little part in a bits box that's just like random creatures. And I use them on figs that I want to have pets. Yeah, that's how you use them. But anyways, look, this is one of those super frustrating room runchins because it's exactly clear what it is. Like it's a bird with a key on a rock. Like, no question. It's on ruins. Like I would even go as far as to say, this looks like one of the broken Garden of Moor posts. Yeah, sure. Now, here's what I would love. One of the things we talked about a while back, and this could easily be part of a larger kit. So the answer is this is a new big monster where this is a thing sitting on the base because they like putting this kind of tiny stuff on the base. So either it's a new big monster and this is just something hanging out on the base. Very possible. This was true with Archeon's base, right? He has the ruins with the little ravens and birds and stuff on it. So, fine. Or it's just a new terrain kit and it's a thing sitting on the terrain kit, right? And so, I would... We talked a long time ago about having realm-specific terrain kits and a lot of the stuff we've gotten so far is kind of focused on azerite ruins and azer this and azer that, even though like we don't actually play in azer. So I would love for this to be like some kind of new shattered dominion type of kit, right? Where, not the bases, but where it's like actually a Shai-ishan kit or an Oogoo kit, you know, full of like spooky terrain. Because we have a lot of like holy Sigmurite terrain. I think it would be cool to have some more sinister terrain. Then just by the way, the tiny mausoleums which don't actually work really well on the table as interactive terrain. They really don't. No, they're not. They were, no. They're great for like a part of like a Mordheim or a Warcry board or something. That's fine. You can, you know, run around them and hide behind them when you're just dealing with like human-sized dudes. So I have no problem with that. So they're gonna call a new Warcry Starger set. Oh, sure. Yeah, that'd be cool. I'd be down with that. Yeah. That's Travis, that's a good call there. Yeah. Yeah. But I would love a Shai-ishan thing to be reimagined just like some new spooky terrain kit that's actually meant to be played on like the diocese and the ruins and the things we have now that are actually really friendly to playing a game with them, right? You can move all units around them. You can give people up on top of them. They work by the way in like in Warcry and in AOS which is actually really handy. I would love to see something like that for spooky stuff because we only have a lot of like, behold what was the glory of Sigmar type of terrain pieces. That's the main stuff we've got right now. Right, right, right, right, right. Right. Yeah, I would love something a little bit spookier, a little bit like either Shai-ish or Ulgu-based, so. Wow, we just milked like seven minutes. Out of the news. Yeah, there you go. Out of a rumor of a time guard with a key. The news, people. There it is. Mm, mm. News ever. Fast news ever. 11 minutes. Okay, great, pick of the week. What do you got, homie? I'm gonna spruke the marathon that Mr. Mifesto did for mental health. You were on it. I was not. I had a nephew's birthday that I rescheduled for the weekend and so I was not able to make that unfortunately. I would have loved to have been able to contribute and be a part of this fundraiser. But he raised some major bank for mental health. Seven thousand dollars, yes. That is a testament to the incredible generosity and community spirit that exists within the people who are playing this game. I was absolutely blown away. Everybody who contributed or watched or shared or everything like that was awesome because I mean, this is a really important topic as we talked about on the show. This is a time that strains a lot of people's mental health. Like it needs to be talked about now more than ever. Especially in a time when we are separated and don't have our social networks that we might normally rely on to keep ourselves balanced and centered and stuff like that. And so I thought it was a really important cause. I was glad to take part at Mifesto Freakin' Hero and did an amazing job. You did, you did. So check it out, it's worth your time. Yeah, he broke it up into 14 handy, roughly two hour segments. So there you go. You can watch individual, all the individual things because he would have all of us on for like two hours, just two hour walks. So he basically did 14 shows. Right, right. Is what happened. I would state that during the Rerolling Ones crew, which were on basically shortly after me and I went to lunch right after that and I came back and I was watching and they told a story about getting some Muppets Evolved tokens and made a joke about me writing a Muppets Evolved game as I was listening to it. So I said, okay, and I wrote a Muppets Evolved game. So I sent that over to Meph and shared it in the Discord and now we're gonna do a Muppets Evolved one-shot on some night, for a single night instead of a Solbound. Solbound. Yeah, so there you go. Fantastic. Many, many great moments from that and I'm sure they'll eventually, right now he just uploaded all of it. I know Haywoh already uploaded the Circus Peanuts story, which is- Oh my gosh, it was so amazing. It's fantastic. Oh, like just watching and watching you all's responses as he moved through that story was, it was just- It was great. Delightful. It was great. My pick of the week, I've got two things I wanna share, continuing to break the rules, not this time and every time. And the first thing I wanna share is a great video that Two Plus Tough put up earlier today on what GHB 2021 should have. And he actually, Tom, I wanna tell you about this idea because I think Two Plus cracked the code. Oh. The idea was mainly on the open play section. Okay. Okay. Yup. And his idea, I won't give the whole core of the crux of the video, it's about 17 minute video and he gives a lot of his reasonings and stuff. But the crux of his idea is to put Path to Glory and Path to Glory expansions into the open play section. Amen, done. Does that not make perfect sense? Done. It's pointless, it's an easy natural progression of how to build. Rip it out of the battle tones. And put, well, yeah, whatever. I'm sure people would wanna keep it in the battle tones, but I don't care. It's fine, I would prefer to move it in. I don't mind its presence in the battle tones, it's just in the wrong place. I don't hate it in the battle tones. I hate its location in the battle tones in between the two sections I'm trying to read. The Allegiant Rules in the Battalions. Right, it's like, please. Get out, get out, out, out. Just flip it. Just put it before the Allegiance Abilities. I don't understand. It's like the easiest thing. Anyway. Maybe for third edition iOS, we'll get there. Just, it's like the simplest formatting thing, guys. Like, you have to know how your users are using this book. And I just have whatever. Okay, so to me, I was like, that makes so much sense to have Path to Glory as the open play thing. Because a truly new player doesn't rock up and be like, well, let me just put a bunch of figs on the table. They don't know what that means. They need some kind of structure. Some way in. And Path to Glory is the perfect way in. It is. I don't disagree with that. And then they could do things like, as he mentions, expansions and battle plans and things that are specific to Path to Glory. And it would just be like, they could rebalance it a little bit. They could add a new stuff. It's so good. And like, look, no offense to the sky battle thing, which is neat and fun. But like, let's just take a moment here to really compare these two ideas. Looking at the community, what's gonna get more play? The sky battle thing or a Path to Glory expansion taking up the majority of open play? I mean. I mean, I like the sky thing, but that's just me. I understand. I would use that before the path to glory. I'm saying if you had to examine the whole market, which one do you think is? Yeah, yeah, yeah. By the way, I'm not saying, and as he says, it's not like the sky thing was bad or we want to see that gone. It's just, this is where this should be, right? So what I thought was interesting about that is, I think he's looking at a really cool idea there and it makes me think that there's probably, we should be reexamining kind of all the sections and thinking about how do we better synergize not only each section with each other, because as he points out, then it's a springboard for people to go from open to narrative to matched to build their armies to do these things. But also, so not only should we think about how we can synergize the three sections better, but also think about what are we actually putting in here that's of value, right? Yep. Yeah, crack the code on that one. So check out the video. Two plus, I'm with you, buddy. Let's get this moving. So I think you've done it. Second thing I want to mention, folks, people, if you have not yet completed the survey, please complete the survey that is linked in the show description. It is on balance. We will be talking about it next week. I was originally going to do it this week, but then I didn't have time to actually synergize all of it. So I said, you know what, forget it. We'll leave it open for a little longer. Let some more people vote. We've had a really good response thus far. You could open up the thing right now while I'm talking. And in the time that I've been talking about it, you could have already completed it because it's that fast. It's like 30 seconds, maybe a minute to do the survey. It's so easy. So fill it out, please. The more data we get, the better representation of the AOS community this has. So I'll probably tweet it out one more time this weekend, but please do fill it out now. That would be awesome. If you've already done your survey, thank you very much for doing the survey. So those are my two picks. Tom, I see a bunch of cards on the table behind you. I don't see many models. What's going on, buddy? What are we working on? What's on the, what's what hobby time we've been doing? Oh, there we go. Have you been working on it? No, it's the first time I've touched it in like two months, but I know I just like, I have some professional stuff going on that I've been focusing on. And so I'm doing work stuff right now. This is the end, yeah. Well, stop that. Yeah, well. Spend a little bit of time, put some pain on something, Tom. You gotta be an exemplar here for the community. I know, I just, man, COVID's getting to me and I don't know when I'm gonna get to a vet again. And so I just, the motivation has waned and I don't even know what army I would want to put pain on. So, yeah. Okay. Well, you gotta find something. Send Tom some mappy feelings. Send Tom some pictures of your cool models on Twitter. That way he gets inspired and wants to paint something. Do something, we gotta help Tom out here. I feel like we gotta clap for you, Tom. You're like Tinkerbell over here. We gotta get you flying again. Thanks, man. Yeah, no problem. I mean, I frequently think of you much like Tinkerbell. So it's really not just this that's prompted it. It's, I mean, I know it's my dress. It's your pixious face. It's a pixious face, the green miniskirt that I love. You normally are wearing a green miniskirt. That's true. People don't see it during the show, but it is actually normally on, yeah. Yeah, I keep it classy in real life, you know. Sure, sure. For myself, I've been working on a, finishing up this space marine dude. He's almost done now. And we're taking a long time with him. Go into all of the effort. This is just like, this is a maximum effort piece. But I really like him. I actually really, I really love painting crimson fists. I like how this guy's coming out. He's only probably got maybe another hour of work, actually, I need to put into him. So he's almost done now. And he's been a lot of fun. I'm thinking what I might do is kind of, I've done like three different crimson fist captains. I might go and touch them all up together, bring them all up to speed now that I've had a little more experience doing this and put them into like a unit or something and go for a, like bring them all up and do a golden demon entry out of them, like the leadership of the fist. Like I said, we focused on the fists here. So, that's, that's what I've been working on. After I finish that up. Oh, I finished that, that girl as well this weekend. I shared her that little Renaissance girl. After I finished that up, I need to figure out what I'm going to work on next. I'm honestly not sure at this point. So we'll see. You're giving me a hard time and you don't even know what you're going to do next. Come on now. I'm still painting something. I haven't painted hours and hours on this thing, man. I got projects. I just don't know what I want to do. I do something chaos-y. Not sure. We'll see. But at any rate, that's what my hobby time's been. I hope all of you out there are painting either right now or when you're listening to this in the future. Hello in the future. And that you've got some, getting your models on the table. I mean, really, Tom, you know what I'm waiting on. I don't want to get into anything too big because you know I'm waiting on them giants. Yeah. That's what's going on. I know for you giants are the big thing. But for most people, giants are the big thing. That's what they are. They're giant. And Andy. Yeah. Yeah. Yep, yep. I did get a game in with my whirlwinds edge this weekend and it was very fun. So that went well. Ironically against another city's army and a gitz army. It's one of the first times I've gotten to play gits in quite a while. So that was cool. Okay. So let's get to our main segment tonight, Tom. Let's talk monsters, buddy. So monsters are bad, right? I mean, a lot of them. Sure. And when we say monsters, like let's ground set. When we say bad and when we say monsters. Yeah. Because we need to qualify both of those things. Agreed. When we say monsters in this segment, what we're primarily talking about are units with the monster keyword but not only the monster keyword. Yeah. Often that's a thing, but there are other examples. That are not ironclads. That don't have the monster keyword that functionally are serving that purpose. And so they are these singular units. You know, like most of the time they are a unit that is a single model. And, and here's the qualification. We're not talking about those with the hero keyword. Yes. Well, we'll mention occasionally a little bit of it. But to me, the, whenever you put a hero on top, it usually just becomes like it's the hero, not the monster that you care about. Right. Because you could put a guy on top or a gal on top with like one attack at sixes and sixes, no rend, one damage, and it would still be infinitely more valuable than the monster without it. Like the, so here's a great example of this. The loon boss on Mangler's Quig. Yeah, sure. Sure. I mean, that dude is bringing almost nothing to the table. Right. But his hero keyword is worth, is waiting goal. Correct. Because instantly what it means is you can use command abilities, like even on yourself, right? So not only do you probably have one on your scroll, but you can use all the basics and you can use them on yourself. Fail a charge, you can re-roll your own charge. Need to get re-roll ones to hit, you can do that to yourself, right? Not to mention whatever's on your scroll, okay? And like you can take items. You can take items. You potentially could take command traits if you're the general, right? Yes. Yeah. Right. Heroes are often more valuable in more battle plans, right? Either because you need a hero outright to take a point or because heroes, leaders can protect you from losing points in things like Scorched Earth. They can give you extra points, right? So like, yes, there is one scenario now that cares about monsters, but I would note that these big monster heroes we're talking about. Still do that well. Still do that well, right? So it's a double dip, right? Yep. Yeah. Yeah, so we're talking about those units that are singular, they're single models. That are also not heroes. Correct. And in general, this game has largely not found the right balance. Now, there are exceptions and there are good versions of these and we're gonna talk about those. Yeah. But we're also gonna talk about the overwhelming mass of not so good. Yeah, and that is truly the destructive bulk of this particular thing. Indeed. All right, let's talk about the Fundaments. Why are they naturally bad? Why is 10 dudes or 20 dudes or 30 dudes, which is often what you're getting, by the by, for the cost of this? I would point out that you can get, at current costs, you can basically, it's not exact, but it's pretty close. You can get 30 long beards for the cost of a hell pit abomination. That's not exactly one-to-one. The hell pit is just slightly cheaper, but I mean just, okay? So 30 long beards or a hell pit. That's what we're talking about here. Yep. Yep. Yep. And the meta concerns here are pretty obvious as people in the comments are already shouting out, right? Right. 30 models are simply better because they are 30 people. They count as 30 people for taking an objective. And ultimately, this is an objective-based game, right? Right. One model counts as one model for taking an objective. Right. So it has to do with model counts. It has to do with wounds. Sure. So that hell pit abomination doesn't have 30 wounds. He certainly does not. The 30 long beards do though. Yep. And on a better save. Yep. The 30 long beards are gonna have a more robust attack profile. Sure. Because at the top end, they're always gonna have more attacks. Yep. And at the bottom end, they're gonna be almost equivalent. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, people think, I think when they originally created the degrading monster profile. Yeah. In their mind, it was- I liked it. Sure. And as do I. I still don't, I still like it. Right. It's just, it's like fire. If you use it wrong, it burns you. And the monsters that suck almost universally have profiles where what goes down is the things that actually would make the monster worth using and they go down way too fast. Yep. Okay. Yep. And mobility and damage. Right. Right, right. And the, you know, I think their concept originally was pretty straightforward. They were like, well, the monster would have like in their, you know, crazy early age of Sigmar brain, you know, back when nobody knew what this game was. They thought, well, a monster is going to naturally be so much more powerful than a unit. Right? Because if we don't, if it doesn't have this table, if it's at max wounds or one wound, it would do the same amount of damage because it can always bring its maximum attacks to bear. Right. Whereas a unit who starts at 30 and then goes to five is obviously going to make less attacks. And like that's a cute argument. Right? Right. But the problem is the, oftentimes with like your unit of 30 long beards or stuff on 25 mil bases, especially, you can get most of those guys in, meaning they generate more attacks. But even when they go down in numbers, you can still get plenty. For big groups like fire slayers on 32s, you almost never get the whole unit in and you don't care. You don't need to be fighting with more than like a dozen of them at a time. And they're still putting out two times the attack power of a monster that, you know, or three times or whatever. Right? Even with only part of the unit fighting. Sure. You know, another piece of this has to do with the, I just told us what I thought. The board control. So like a big piece of why they're bad is not only because of how, like how many models are counting towards objectives. It also has to do with how you can zone off areas from teleporting and movement with large amounts of bodies. Yeah. You just push people out. Sure. Yeah. You can daisy chain, but even if you're not daisy chaining, you can cloud, you can simply cover space. You can block out teleportation. Like it's such a more versatile tool when you have 30 bodies. Forget an objective completely. Assume there's no objective near you. Right. It's vastly better to have that big unit that you can string out, that you can control boards. It's why, it's why KO players, despite how much they hate Arco, always take 10 Arco, instead of three Endrin Riggers for zoning. Right. Always. I mean, the one has much better mobility, but that doesn't matter because it's just the raw amount of space that you're covering for pushing banks out. Yeah. And Anthony stopped trying to defend the dread story and he's bad. And that base is a negative for him. He's like, you could block off a lot with that base. Yes, that 280 by 210 base. Yeah. You can also get him caught in Dead Man's Canyon because he doesn't fly and can't walk over anything. So get out of here with that. Yeah, because he would move like a total of like four inches because he has to move up and then over. Everything. Everything. Yeah, because the base is so large. And that's another negative is the actual like when you have endless spells on the table. Sure. And a singular big base actually becomes hard to navigate. Higher amounts of terrain, higher amounts of, you know, both models and stuff like that get really problematic because you can get your pie plate boss famously, one of the most, one of times. This is like, you're going to tell a story and that's fine. I want you to tell that story. Sure. But I want to preface this by saying, this is the time I've never seen Vince as Matt. Like truly like red faced fury. The angriest I've ever been playing Warhammer. As the story he's about to tell. What to do with, I was using a mall crush out with, which obviously has a mega boss on top. So it's a hero. And I do feel it's a good monster because it is actually worth its weight. Sure. It punches hard enough. It flew in, did its attacks, did whatever and like I flew into the edge of a Sylvaneth Wildwood. Okay. Yep. And you engage, you engage the enemy. Yes. You started fighting, but then. They hold the casualties. Here's what happened. Yeah. So the mall crusher on his 160 mil, 6.2 inch pie plate goes in, kills some of the enemy. The enemy then pulls the casualties, right? Out of range. Yeah. Great move by Sean Clark. Kudos. Absolutely. He's a great player. By the way, no part of this was me, Matt, Sean or Jake. This is United, right? They're great. They're great dudes and I love playing them. I play them any day and twice on Sunday. No, it was absolutely the right move. 100%. I was angry at the nature of the game. Like I was gnashing my teeth at the heavens. Okay. Yes, continue. And so then he pulled the monsters away and he did a few wounds to my mall crusher. So my speed dropped just enough to where I could no longer fly out of the woods nor up because the train piece I was next to was like, no, you can't balance your base on that so I can't hold you. So I couldn't go right. I couldn't go left. I couldn't retreat. There was literally nowhere I could go. I was still in combat. Okay. Because there was enemies within three inches who weren't attacking me. And he couldn't reach anybody. Right. And he couldn't reach anybody. He couldn't apply a pilot or reach anybody with his reach. Correct. It was beautiful. So the mega boss sat there for four fighting turns, two battle rounds, just going like, and she's being so angry that he couldn't, I had this big piece that I wanted to use. Like when I'm playing War Amber, all I want to do is play with my big toy. That's all I want to do. I am a child. I just want to play with my big toy. Like you can kill me. I'll lose the game. I don't care, but let me play with my big toy. And I couldn't play with my big toy. And then finally, what happened is like they tried to swing around on us and they made the mistake of giving me somebody I could charge within range, which let me move farther than my move. That was it, right? So I had to land this long charge out of the woods and did and then jail broke him out of the woods on like a 10 inch charge or 11 inch charge or something, 11 with the modifier from Iron Jaws. And then got into those sky fires or whatever it was that we're trying to sneak around behind us and just plastered them against a wall. And I was just like, oh God, I've never felt the urge to walk more in my entire life than that moment, like the release of frustration. But the point being that like big bases are actually a problem. Yes, as a long story to support that, yes. Yes, but and especially when you had like armies that were like light on the wizards, like I remember ogres were a pretty example of this where you could actually place the endless shackles around like the like Huskards, right? Yeah, sure. Like the Thunder Dusks. And it would lock them in place because of the bases locking them in place. Not because of like the effect of the endless spell. It's just simply they couldn't move around where the endless spell bases are and they couldn't get rid of the endless spell. So like large bases are a very real problem, especially when you have like IDK pushing, putting terrain on the board that you can't move around or not move easily without traveling another 20 inches. Right, yeah. So when you're talking about the size of the base, and by the way, a lot of monsters get killed by this base size thing because there's some legacy monsters on some stupidly big bases for just like. Right, right. No reason. And so the base, the board control, the objective grabbing, the actual just raw offensive capability, right? The wound charts like in every way, they start off worse than the equivalent anything else unit in the game or hero, right? Just utility, damage, control, mobility. In every way, they're naturally worse. Right, right. So right away, they just have to be like, we've got to accept this. I don't think from a design perspective, this has really been internalized. Maybe it has and they just don't feel like it's the right time to correct it. I don't know. Because this is still very much a challenge and we've seen plenty of books come out over the past six, eight, nine, 10 months, whatever you want to say, where this is still a problem. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Where these things still persist. Now, I will say we've also seen some corrections of it in recent times. So maybe they're getting the idea and they're just like slowly trying out different stuff. Yeah. I don't know. But when we talk about our winners and our losers in this category and as you said, there's a lot more losers than winners. Right. It gets to the point of like, why don't they all work this way or have this basic stuff? Right. Yep. So, okay. The other thing we should say about monsters, about just like monster monsters, non, because again, we're talking about big single model units that like most of them do have the monster keyword, but sometimes they're made of technology so they don't have the monster keyword. The other thing I would say about these guys is they're almost exclusively melee, almost exclusively melee. There are some notable exceptions, but for the most part. And so they're always relying on walking over to you to project your power. Always. Project their power. Always. Yep. Yep. They also don't tend to have like as many synergies, as many, they don't have a banner. Like think of how many units have just banners built in that let them- Free abilities. Re-roll charges or get plus one to charge. Yeah. Or musicians, whatever. Banners or musicians that do that. Yeah. Re-roll dice on a charge, or on a run six, or, or, or, or- Right. These are just natural abilities that lots of units have that again, monsters don't have. Right. It's just not there. Yep. So there are so many examples of those kinds of challenges. All right. So Tom, where shall we talk about some, some ones first that we feel are successful and why they're successful? Building off of this. Sure. And then talk about some losers and how we'd fix them. Sure. Okay. So I've got a list of things I consider successful. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts. So I'm gonna pick one here that I think is emblematic of what I'll call the utility monster. Okay. Okay. Yep. And that is the goth is our harvester. Sure. Yep. Reasonably pointed. So he's like, you know, about 200 points as everything in that army basically is, right? And he has an incredible amount of utility. He's damaging enough, right? Like it's not, he's not like a super scary melee threat. He's fine. He's fine. He's damaging enough. He can fight his way out of a wet paper bag, but he might have some trouble with a dry one. But that's all right, you know? Sure. Like he can do the damage. He's not just gonna get taken out by some random skirmish unit or something like that. He'll pace them, right? Right. And he has an incredible amount of utility to whatever's around him, right? He makes your more tech amazing by regenning them out. Yep. You know, all this kind of stuff. It's to me, one way you solve the monster problem. So way one you solve the quote unquote monster problem is by adding utility. Right, right. Making them do something. That is that other units can't do. Correct. Or an oftentimes it involves buffing. Yes, buffing usually the units around them or enabling the units around them or being a force multiplier to the units around them in some way, right? Yep. That's, and I think the goth as R is an excellent example of that. I would agree with that. I would agree with that. Yeah, I mean, I think that is a good example. A bad example of this, of the attempt at this, but the failure would be the turtle from IDK. Absolutely. He's the darkest timeline version of the goth as R harvester, right? Where, you know, sure he can fly. So that's cool. But, so thank God given his base, his big base. But he's not good enough on utility. He's not tough enough. And he's not offensive enough for his much higher points cost, right? And what you've seen is him like slowly, slowly and just wait down since he launched. And it's still not enough. Because just his broadcasting of just cover isn't doing enough. Right. And so the examples like other examples that would fall into this category of utility they should be bringing utility or they've attempted to do this and failed. Would be as somebody pointed out in Ghost Mutton that the avatar of Kane Yup, sure. Sits in this place. By the way, we mean the standalone avatar of Kane not the one on the back of the shrine. Yes, very different models. Middle of the road trending bad would be the skittershrand arachnorock because it brings deep strike. Sure. Yeah, that's a form of utility, right? Yeah, that's a form. Yeah, like that's a mobility utility that the rest of the army doesn't have natively. Yeah, sure. And so like when I feel those it's because I want to be able to deep strike a unit. Yup. That's your thread. Like that's the only reason why I would bring those. And so it's actual utility in the monster and what it's doing. But again, I wouldn't also consider that good. No, even with his repeated points decreases. Right. It's still problematic. Right. As somebody had noted also another great example of this would be the Dan Caravan mentioned that rogue idle who gives plus a bonus to cast just a random bonus to cast to your shamans which that's pretty good. Yeah, sure. Like he's walking our Kane. He is also pretty offensive. Like he can do damage and notably he is punchy and notably he also has the appropriate keywords to synergize. One of the things I mentioned is that a lot of these monsters are often lacking the right keywords to actually synergize with the best synergies in the army. Right. Right. But the rogue idle does not. Yeah, honorable mention here of terrible keywords is like the mortis engine. Yeah, sure. Sure. Like such a great utility beast, so much promise. So sad. Right. Yeah. So to me, this is one of the ways you can go where we have seen success. You might count the hero list versions of the Huracanum and the Lumenarch in this category. Again, I know they're not actually monsters, but to me they fill the same category. You know, they're around 200 points. They're a single model. They've got like 11 wounds and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Yep, yep. And I'm talking about the version without the wizard on top, right? That still is something that you can see in armies because they, you know, doing things like broadcasting out a massive bubble of plus one to hit. And a bonus to cast or whatever, you know, is or can be useful. So what I would say is that, so another example of this done well is I think the ironclad. Yeah. Because ironclad, like you don't field ironclads for damage. They have good damage, right? They do. I mean, like... But they're expensive. They don't have 480 points of damage. Like they're not... Yeah. Without the damage of like a mawcrusher. Without buffs, they don't have 480 points of damage. And what synergies or buffs are available is suspect and depends on which army you're talking about them showing up in. So I will agree with you, as a singular war scroll, they do put out good damage. Yeah, it's good damage. But not, you know, right, they're not shooting out a mawcrusher's attacks. Right, right. You add them to your army because you want mobility, okay? Because you want to be able to deep strike around the table, right? You want to jump around the table. Oh, sure. And you want to be able to move troops. Absolutely. That's why you run ironclads. Because you can pull a big giant garrison of thunders inside. You can have like 20 thunders inside and still be jumping around with the great endring work so it's not overloaded. You connect multiple heroes where you can't run multiple heroes in a frigate unless you don't have a full unit in there. Right. You can be, still in addition to that, you can be pulling around seven balloon boys, right? And then dropping down and putting out range hurt, right? So like, to me, I agree. The ironclad's probably the top end of this. It's probably one of the most expensive things you can get like this, right? And even now it's reduced cost at 480 points. It is one of the most expensive hero-less monsters. Yep. And because of that, it's amazing to me that I think it actually earns it, right? Like ironclad? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because of what it's doing, I agree with that. Yes. If it was, here's what I'll say. If it was just a boat, that's all it was, right? If it was like a steam tank. Yep. You can't garrison people because it doesn't pull anybody else with it, right? It's just, that's all it is. If it was just that. Yep. Okay? It would no way it'd be worth its points. No, you'd have to knock 100 points off of it. Sure, absolutely. At least. Absolutely. So to me, what you see here is that's version one, right? When monsters can be, bring a large amount of utility. Yes. That's where they, and there's a nice spectrum here. Yes, right. And we've talked about the like really good to the, thanks for trying. Sure. Okay. So the other thing that a monster could and should theoretically do, right? Is be a bully. Right? Right, yeah. It would seem to make sense that the other purpose of a big monster. Is punch you in the face. Is to punch people in the face real hard, to be scary, right? To do damage in some way. Can I open with what I think a good example of this is? Yeah, sure, absolutely. I think that the Terrogais, the unmounted Royal Terrogais fits in this category. Sure. Sure. And particularly I'm talking about in Gristlecore, where this is a bully that has synergy within the army and that is counting his battle line. And so by adding it, it's doing it, it's serving a function, it's high mobility, high punch, that mouth, that bite can be really scary. But it's not like, it's not the end of the world scary, right? Yeah, sure. It's not the Gull King on the Terrogais, where it doesn't. Right, yeah, it's not that with the mount, the mount traits and all that. But the guy can put out some damage, right? He can do some work if you need him to. And he gets synergized. He walks in around 300 points, right? Feels about right for what he puts out. A nice mobility on it, yeah. I think he is a good punch monster for what he does. I could maybe take him for a little bit cheaper. But yeah, he would be in that category for me. Yeah, I agree. I think the regular Terrogais is a pretty successful version. I didn't run the average damage on him. I should have, but I didn't. Yeah. By the way, if anybody ever, if you ever want to calc out what the average damage is for a monster, drucci.net, if you just search for that, just search up drucci, AOS calculator. You'll find it, it's a really fantastic tool for quickly calculating out the percentage spread of damage. At any rate, I did run that for some of these monsters beforehand. My other example of success, to build on what you just said, and a smaller version of that is the Bastillodon. Sure. Okay. Very tough, right? Starting at the one plus, it basically a vulnerable save, right? Has to get mortal wounded to get his shell cracked because of an oddity of math that got fixed in like five minutes in 40K, but it's been around for four months and in five months in AOS, which is, you know, I guess that's just the way the world works. Yep. But also has a pretty good shot, like his laser beam is nothing to turn up your nose at. And there's no other real long range in Seraphon. Long range, like shooting damage. Yeah, like there's range of magic damage and not shooting. Yeah, like Salamanders have a 12 inch shot, right? Yeah, yeah, sure. But like the Bastillodon laser beams are their only option. So it's bringing actual real damage, utility damage. And has a sub faction that can make it fire twice, right? Right, which is actually then turns that actually into a really good tool that makes it do some significant damage. Yep. And so the, to me, it's, again, that's a cheaper version of it. It's not 300 points, you know, in the low 200s. And the Bastillodon, I think, fills, one, he's filling a great role in the army. I think you'll see him a little more now that Sally's have went up. If they would have fixed stroke as well, which they didn't, and I will never not say this in a show where I get a chance to mention it. Not moving the points up on a croak was a darn near war crime. Okay, so like, we might need to call it an egg. The warp seers over there laughing. Really? Really? Every hero that's more than 320 points need to look themselves in the mirror and say, how much worse than you were a croak for how many more points? That's the answer, right? Two. Two. Portal Ariel. You get two croaks for her. At any rate, but yeah, I think the Bastille is like, if it wasn't so lopsided to where, you know, croak and the Sally's was such an overwhelmingly right choice for the first couple months of that book, I think Bastillodon is and will over time continue to get, you know, more expensive. And shut up, Anthony. I don't wanna hear your explanations of stacking other stuff on top being more expensive. I have no patience for that argument. It is wrong. Yeah, you know, you just said, yeah and iron clouds are 1,000 points. Right, sure. Everything has synergy. Stop it. Okay. So anyway, at any rate, I think the Bastillodon's a good example of that, right? Where you've got offensive power. I think this is the part where they've checked their swing. There's so many more failures here. Yeah. Of monsters that are clearly meant to be bullies, right? They're not meant to be utility pieces. They're not meant to be buffing things. They're meant to be big, scary, you know, dangerous to the enemy monsters that go rampaging. They're meant to be, you know when you see the total war cutscenes that come up on like, Oh yeah. You know, that you see in their trailers and stuff where a monster comes in and just like starts wrecking stuff. I remember what their Ragnarok looked like in that. Sure. Monsters in total war looks super cool in those, you know, those cutscenes. That is not how they play. It's true, you know, I, so like, so we've talked about a couple of good ones that have been successful. One of the middle of the road ones that I like, I'm gonna, again, I'm staying positive, that I like in this space is I really like the colossal squig. Sure. I definitely would place him firmly in the not bad, but not as good as he could be category. Right, right. Like he could be more punchy. Like all those little stomps could all just be flat to damage. That'd be great. Hold on. I wanna put a pin on what you just said there real quick. I'm gonna drill in on this. I wanna drill in on this real fast, okay? Yep, yep, yep, good. Number one thing that should be changed on all monsters. Monsters. Monsters should never have a one damage attack, period. Ever. Ever. Get rid of one, I mean, unless it's like, okay. Unless it's the goblin hanging on the back of the Ragnarok. Exactly what I was just saying. You are allowed to be one damage, but here's the deal. If it's the monster, one damage should just be stricken from every single war scroll. Absolutely. It is insulting that any monster at all has a one damage attack. And by the way, the number of monsters that have one damage attacks is way too high. The same damage that a, that a monster does should not be equivalent to, with one of their like swings or melee attacks. Should not be the equivalent of a, to a common, to a human, to a tired malnourished human dude with a spear, right? With a wooden stick. Not even with a sharpened wooden stick. Yes. Yes. To a lowly grot with a wooden stick. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I could see some examples, like if it was an outrageously high number of attacks, like somebody mentioned Drika. Sure. Like Drika making 20 attacks with one damage each. Right, because those are bees. Those are not Drika. It's not Drika making the attacks, it's bees. Yes. Right. Yeah. So one damage attacks on monsters drive me up a wall and back down the other side. Like it's that, that is instant versimilitude breaking to me right there. Yeah. Yeah. And so like the colossal squake, if it was two damage, like little stompy attacks, I'm in. Yeah. Yeah. Then he would be a wonderful bully with tons of damage output. But, you know, a lot closer to the warm ameth. But that's not what he is. Yeah. I just, I don't love seeing things like that where you have profiles on monsters that you're like, well, here's my good profile that can do something, roll that. And then it's like, it does whatever it does. And you get to the next profile and you're like, now I get to roll the three profiles that don't matter, you know, or whatever. Right. Right. It's just so insulting. Like rolling a monster should always feel like you're doing something. Yep. Yep. They shouldn't have these like weeder attacks. If they do, just get rid of them, strike them off the profile and make the other ones good. Yeah. It's deleterious to even have it occur. It's mentally defeating when you're just like, okay, here's my eight, fours and threes, no rend, one damage attacks. Can I give my pet pee here? Yeah, sure. In any attack sequence, there should never be more than three profiles. Wow. Okay. That's an interesting demarcation line. There are certainly things that break that. And in your favorite, the KO often sometimes I really love doing that. Oh yeah. Yeah. Have you seen like the Thunderer? No, I just, I know my armies really well. Yeah, sure. But I have to run off KO cards because I have units with like four different profiles. Yeah, sure. I would say that where possible, I like that as a guideline. I don't know if I did that as a rule, but I think that's a strong line. And that's fine, but like I just, I can't stand all the like multitude of profile attacks. Yeah, sure. Yeah, I get it. And especially when they're like, this is my goblin who hits on a four plus four plus four attacks, no rend, one damage versus the other goblins hanging on, which are five plus four plus no rend, one damage. Sure, sure. Sure. Yeah, I get it. So my, yes. Monsters should in general be doing, should be always having rend and always doing multi damage, right? That's a good rule of thumb to be living by. Yes. Because in general, you shouldn't be having this giant monster Yep. Hitting like a wet noodle. It's so insulting to me when I get the same damage, when an attack profile on a monster is the equivalent of like four goblins. That's what we're talking about often, right? Or whatever, four clan rats, four, whatever. Pick your bad cheap infantry, blood reavers, whatever you like, okay? That will grew on average a third of a point of damage. Yeah, exactly. That when you calculate out, you're lucky if you actually get one damage being the actual thing that line is adding. You're lucky if it actually has one real damage being the modal outcome. Yeah, exactly. Well, somebody said why three ease of comprehension? Yeah, I think just in general, people remember three, like you can remember a set of three things better than you can remember larger sets. Like human beings are real good at remembering sort of three things. Just kind of a thing. And so I do think it's a good guideline to design to just as a principle. It doesn't mean you could never break it. Again, there are certain monsters where if you're talking about like our key on the ever chosen, maybe there's a reason to have more than that, or you know, some very special big thing. Sure, sure. But sure. And so yeah, I'm with that. In the medium category, I think you're right. I think the colossal squig is in the medium territory. Let's talk about some losers here, can we? Sounds great. Oh boy, are there losers. I want to, I'm going to, Tom, this is where we're going to, we're going to bring up some, some visible examples. I just don't want to talk through these. This is going to be painful. It is, but here we go. Boom. Number one. Let's get it. So everybody should be seeing the Mutalith Vortex Beast. All this stuff, by the way, is free. I'm sharing open source stuff, by the way. This is all stuff I downloaded completely free from the GW website. You can go get these scrolls too. Scrolls are, you know, free to download. Just a, so nobody's worried that I'm like sharing something inappropriate. The Mutalith Vortex Beast, and we could do the same thing for the, for the slaughter group, by the way, right? One, this guy's a bad utility monster because his aura of mutation, which is supposed to be his, the reason you take him, right? That's the reason you put him on the table. I remember you were so excited to roll on that. I am, and I always am when I roll this guy because I want it to be fun because he can do a D6 Mortal Wounds. It's so neat, right? That's so neat. Yeah, and he doesn't. But he doesn't. Most of the time, like, you'll roll him and what you get is like, oh, okay, you get negative one to run rolls for the rest of the battle. Now you have to track that, congratulations. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Right, like, this is one of the coolest models. I love the vortex beast. I think he's amazing. Yeah. And one, he does like no damage. Let's just start there. So that giant maul, by the way, that he's making like 3D6 attacks with, again, a one damage, no rend attack. So you read that and you're like, oh, 3D6 attacks. Whoa, that's a lot of attacks on something, right? Well, first of all, on average, that's obviously nine and a half attacks. So let's just run this calculation real quick. Let's just, let's go round it up and say 10. Sure. 10 attacks on fours and fours, no rend one damage. Sure, okay, 10 on fours. That means half hit, okay, five hit. Fours to wound, two and a half. Let's, let's go, let's round up again. We'll always be more favorable. So three wound against a four up save. So one and a half, two damage. In the best case scenario, he gets two damage through with that attack. Well, who do you know? That is not the modal outcome because of all that rounding up I did, right? Yeah. And his claws are just a joke. Like this guy's a joke. What is the purpose of this monster? Yeah. And again, it's just an absolute, it's an absolute crime because he's super cool. And this dude's 170 points. 170 points. I would rather have five cold one riders. Or whatever they call the Drake spawn knights. Oh, sure, sure, sure. Yeah, at 130? Yeah, sure, absolutely. I mean, put this guy, let's talk in the same army, okay? Let's put this guy against a medium choice. Yeah. Chaos knights, 10 points cheaper. 15 wounds, more wounds, same save. Better, you know, better stats down the line, right? Yeah. Resistant to mortal wounds on a five up, right? Longer move, like longer range. They both have a 10 inch move, but they're more mobile because of various things that allow them to run and charge and stuff like that, right? Definitely hit unbelievably harder, way more synergies with the rest of the army. Yeah. Right? Just like it's not even close. It's not even close. Yeah. Like in what universe would you look at this guy and then look at five cast knights and go, I'm gonna take this guy? And that's just, I want to take this guy. I have taken this guy. I've made the wrong choice because I love him so much. And it's just, it hurts me. Why isn't this guy good? Okay. Because he's bad. Because he is bad. War Hydra, good light. What is going on here? I don't even know where to go with this scroll, okay? So again, 12 wounds on a four up save. He has a like, who cares ranged attack. But you don't like his pyro breath? It's fine. He has like a very, very weak ability to heal, okay? Sure. Like slaying the Hydra was the Hydra was one of the 12 great tasks of Hercules, right? Hercules would kill this guy in between sips of his cup of coffee, okay? This wouldn't be one of the 12 great tasks. This would be something on his honey-do list for the afternoon, right? Sure. Check that. His actual melee attacks are a joke. He's slow. He doesn't fly eight inch move, right? Like this guy has multiple attacks that are on basically that garbage profile I talked about and do one damage, right? And even his like primary attack is six attacks on fours and threes at neg one for D3 damage. And they updated him this year. Yeah, this guy came out, yeah. This guy came out within, you know, the last eight months or whatever, whenever cities came out. Yeah. This is nonsensical. Yes, I agree. Autumn Lotus said Gotrek is essentially Hercules, which I agree with. That's a great comparison. Gotrek wouldn't need to finish half of his attack profile to absolutely face this guy against the wall. No. It's true. Okay. And the War Hydra is again, 170 points. Now, sure. He can be battle-line in, you know, in Amble Guard. Why? Like, okay, cool. Oh, yeah. That is literally the only potential possible saving grace of this thing. I didn't even bring up the Charybdis because it wasn't even worth discussing. No. It's even worse if that's possible to have happen. Let's talk about mini monsters, man. Sure. Poor mini monsters. Poor mini monsters. The Cockatrice, one of my favorite old little weird monster scrolls. Eight wounds. He is still a monster. He actually has the monster keyword. Six up save. He does fly for 12 inches. His melee attacks are completely irrelevant. They do nothing. They do like an average of two damage. So that's cool. And the reason you take this guy is he's 100 point non-hero blood boil. Yep. Right? That's what he is. Right, right. Okay. Yep. He is a non-synergizing blood boil. Yeah. You know, like, again, Cockatrice is supposed to be really scary. They're supposed to turn people to stone. They're supposed to be a very frightening monster. And this is such a cool sculpt. Like, even though he's fine-cast, he actually holds up. I've put together a couple of these dudes in fine-cast. I actually don't think they came out okay because they're mostly rough textures. So this kind of thing is actually okay with fine-cast. What this, like, should... Here's my question for you, Tom. Should these... Can you ever fix one of these mini monsters? Right? Cause he's not that big. They have to change the war scroll. That's the only... This guy's already like 100 points. He's already super cheap. Yeah. Right? And again, there's no universe where 10 of anything at 100 points or whatever is not better than this guy. Sure. Sure. Right? Yep. So what is the... My point is, from a meta perspective, can you ever have a mini monster like this at this kind of a low points value that's actually gonna carry his weight just because of all the negatives working against them? You see what I mean? You understand what I'm saying, Tom? Yeah, yeah. Because you can't... Does a monster effectively need to be somewhere up in the, like, 200s to 300 point range and hit really hard to actually be worth taking as a monster and feel like a monster? Right? Yeah, I don't know. I wonder if these kinds of... There aren't that many of these weird oddities in the game. Yeah. These kind of like mini monsters, but I just wonder if they're even doable. I think maybe there's a version of it, right? Like if his gaze hit automatically or something, like if he could just do that, if he could just make something suffer D6 mortal wounds, if he was maybe even faster, like if he had a 16 inch fly or something, like if he was exorbitantly fast and had that mortal wound gaze, then maybe he'd be like a good little sort of suicide piece, right? Sure, sure, yeah. If the ranged attack was farther, you know, more than like 10 inches, if it was maybe 16, so if he was fast or it was farther or both, right? Then, because if anything even looks at this guy funny, he's dead, means eight wounds on a six up save. Like he's just gonna evaporate, right? So I have to wonder if there's, you know, like the answer here with all of these is like you gotta turn it up, right? Right. Okay, I wanna jump to some other scrolls here. Yeah, please do. Let's talk about this bad boy right here. The scroll we all wanna be good, the Gorgon. Sweet sculpt, right? This guy's an awesome sculpt, still holds up. Many, many years old, still holds up. Okay. Five up save, 14 wounds, eight inch move. I hate seeing an eight inch move on monsters. I hate that. I hate it. I hate a guy this big and this tall. Like this thing is the size of a walking building, right? It's the size of a light mech. Yeah. And it's walking around at the same speed as any regular ogre on foot, right? Yeah. That's its speed. It's slower than any dude on a horse. And he just rando on a horse, right? Yep. That's just insulting. Okay. Pretty bad. The Gorgon does an average of six damage with his attacks. Six. Calculated out before the show. Aw, poor guy. Six. That's your most common outcome. By the way, this guy's a really interesting damage spread because of his maw. Because the maw is so unreliable, right? Being one attack on a four up that he has this weird spiky damage profile based on whether or not it hits, right? Yep, yep. But at any rate, this guy's terrible. Straight terrible. Like it looks like the butcher has arrived to the battlefield. And like this guy at, what is he at? 160 right now. Is that right? Sounds right. Maybe you went down a little bit. Is that still true? I didn't double check to see if you went down. I didn't remember. I'll be openly and honest that I didn't double check all of these with a new book. I was relying on the app and then very quick before the show, I remembered. Oh yeah, that's right. The app's not updated yet. Gorgon is, yes, 160. There we go. Okay, that's right. Give me a break. Like again, compared to, again, choices in this army. Would you ever not take 10 best of Gorgon over this guy? No, of course not. Of course 10 best of Gorgon better than this guy. It's not even close. Right. Like that's an insane comparison, right? So let's perform some surgery here, Tom. Let's fix the Gorgon specifically, okay? Okay. So right now, as I said, he's 14 wounds with an eight inch move, a five up save, a five up save. Wow. He's got his little blades that he makes. Either he goes five, four, three, two, one, both of his. So this is what I was talking about with putting the attack profile. If you look at stuff like the ironclad, when it gets damaged, the things it's like offensive power basically doesn't go down very much, right? It retains its shooting capability. What goes away is some of its utility, right? Its ability to fly high, lift off, stuff like that. But they've gotten really a lot better with newer monster profiles at not hitting literally the only thing that needs to make it good. This was always the Chimera problem, right? If like the Chimera is at full health, he's actually okay, okay. The second he took like three wounds, he was completely worthless. You might as well just move him off the board because he just not hit anything. Right. And the fact that like, the fact that both of these things are hitting relevant profiles and hitting them fast, like his attacks drop like a rock, his move drops like a rock, his maw, that's actually okay, I guess, two, three, four, whatever, that's fine. That's actually kind of slow to increase. That profile, kid, I don't mind. That actually feels more right. It feels like what the blade should be doing is like five, five, four, four, four, right? That should be what the blades look like or something like that. Okay, what's your fix for this guy, Tom? We need to make this guy into the offensive powerhouse that the beasts have always deserved. What does this guy need to look like? What's he doing? Why are you changing this? I don't know. It's a great question. I have no idea. Okay. More damage. Sure. Let me pitch an idea at you, right? By the way, I'll flip down to the second part of the scroll just again. Remember that if he has an unmodified wound roll of a six, right? He also inflicts D3 mortal wounds and he does have his like each China's model attacks. You can choose to eat a dude, right? He can go Golpe Golpe on a specific model. Yep. So that's cool, which is nice. But at any rate, those are nice little, you know, sprinkles on top of the tank ability here. All right, let me pitch you something, Tom, you ready? Okay, hit me. Okay, here we go. Number one, the Gorgon, we're gonna just move them up to a little four plus save. I'm not going crazy, just a four plus. Okay. Sure. Just something that represents the fact that he's a massive wall of muscle and meat. Yep. Okay, how about we just start there? Okay. Next up, we're gonna make his move 12 inches and the most it ever degrades to is eight. Yep. Okay. So it goes 12, 11, 10, nine, eight, which is exactly five spots, right? With five, these wound tables have five spaces. Okay. Next up, with his butchering blades, all right? That just sort of his, I have a lot of these attacks. Yep. All right, we're gonna turn that up to 10 attack space. Sure. Why not? Okay. Yep. And they're gonna go, the chart is gonna go 10, 10, nine, eight, seven. Sure. Sure. Okay. Yep. The profile other than that can actually remain the same, three, three, neg, one, three damage. Yep. Okay, that's the rend one attack. Sure, sure. The huge maw, okay? Needs to actually be a huge maw. Needs to actually be a huge maw. This game classically overvalues what D6 damage means, right? Sure. Just like, so the first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna up his profile to two attacks with that. Yep. Okay. Yep. He's gonna go, he's gonna be to hit on a two and then he's gonna keep his wound chart. Can I? Unwounded, he's gonna go two, two. Yep. Neg two rend. Yep. D6 damage. I agree with that. Can I, can I hit a picadillo that like, that this is the first time that like we've touched on this? Yeah, man. Monsters should never, ever, ever have a base four plus to hit. Yeah. Sure, sure. By their very definition, a monster is more elite. Okay. But whether it's their bulk, their size, their training, their just, their reach, their ability to sweep aside a wall of guys. They are. I was watching some berserk before this and I watched guts fight that massive demon monster whose name I can't remember in the basement and there's like 30 spear dudes that charge that guy that charges big demon. He just goes like this and moves his hand and it's just like whoosh. Now there's no more dudes. They're not four plus to hit. Yeah. Because the problem is, is that it's not just the four plus. It's the fact that in the world that we play in, the real world, there are always negatives floating. And when they move from like a four to a five, you can just chuck the profile out the window. And I, like this is why by the way, you don't see Magma Dross on the table at all. Because they're four plus to hit down the line. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they don't do anything. They're heroes and they don't do anything. Hence why they're not on the table. Although I will say some people do play them some. They don't get zero play. Like I understand what you're saying. They don't show up in the most competitive list which I agree with. I mean, I would love to pull the data from my large event and see how many Magma Dross were at the event. Let me say it that way. Yeah, sure. You'd find some. You would, because I've seen them in lists. But again, you're right that they're not as common of a choice compared to your other options in the army. Right? Right. So the mall is now two attacks on twos base two still have the same degrading profile. I love that profile can stay. That's actually the only thing on this table I don't need to charge. Neg two rents. This is like the two row, right? If I unwound it, it's just twos almost down the line. So two, two, two, neg two, D six. Now, here's where we're going next. Ready? We're gonna borrow from the dawn. We're gonna borrow a trick from the dawn writers. Okay. Okay. Yep. When resolving attacks with the huge slavering mall. Okay. Yep. If the attack is successful against a, when the attacks are made against models that have only one wound. Yeah. The damage is six, not D six. Yep. Cause he just eats a bunch of dudes. Cause he has a huge slavering mall and he just bends down and goes up and like eats up six dudes. Like chomp a chomp, but chewy chomp chomp. Okay. Agree completely. All right. And that's how, there we go. So, you know, he's still a, he's still very, you know, glass cannon-y, right? Because he's still just a guy on a four up save. And that's fine. I don't need, all these guys don't need to get super defensive. Right? Sure. Like the right answer isn't always just make them super defensive. That's kind of the wrong way to go. Sure. Sometimes that could be the answer. Right. Right. But it should be, but there should be some that are just big giant monsters. And the answer is everybody in the enemy army has to go bring that thing down and they have to like spend effort. They would have to pay attention to this thing now. Right. Because his damage profile would jump way up. Right. Yeah. Now the question becomes, how much would I point this guy? Cause that's, that's a question I've seen some people ask in the comments. So currently he's at 160. For that profile, I just said, okay. In this army, in beasts of chaos. All right. Yep. I would put him at like 200 points. Yeah. I was going to say 220. Yeah. Sure. But yeah. 220. Because he has like, people are going to go, but wait, that's so much damage on that profile. And then you're thinking just like the original designers did. Remember all of the meta weaknesses this guy has. One model, not 10, poor board control, still poor movement, even a 12-inch walking speed is still walking. And let's compare his damage to 20 best of work. Yeah. Sure. Sure. Absolutely. Right. Like that's what you're talking about. And you're saying he still has too much damage. Yeah. So yeah. Somewhere like, yeah, sure. 220, somewhere in that range. And by the way, beasts of chaos would get this dude on the cheap because that's what beasts does. Right. It needs things. It's low defense, high offense. Right. It is an army of like things that run in, hit, and explode. Yep. Yep. And it is mainly a melee focused swarm of the board army. Yep. How much things cost is reflective of like the army that they find themselves in. And the fact is if you pointed him higher, even on a damage profile like that, he's still just not going to be worth it. Right. Because he becomes too many points on, you know, where you should just be choosing bodies. Right. Because how beasts have to win right now is body swarming. Right. And like, so you need to have the option of going higher damage. Yep. And lower bodies. And the problem is, they don't do that. Absolutely. And what, what Curran just said in the comments is I completely agree with it. If the Gorgon had that attack profile, people would target it because it would be scary. I agree. That's what it's supposed to be doing as a bully. Right. It should be drawing attacks. Exactly. Right now, no one is throwing attacks at this thing. They are going to let the mage, D3 like staff attack this guy. Sure. Right. Because he's not scaring anyone with his five plus save and 14 wounds. Yeah, exactly. You'll just erently kill this guy with just like whatever you happen to have that gets near him. Right. It's not even worth changing your battle plan around. Right. Right. You do not have to play around this guy or notice him in any way. Yeah. Yeah. So, but if you turn him up to that profile, right, his average damage would shoot up to about 18. Can't, depending. Now you have my attention. Yeah. And now that's actually something that's pretty scary. Right. Again, there are limitations to that. Depends on exactly what it would be. It would be different if he was wounded on profile and yadda, yadda, yadda, yadda, yadda. So, there you go. Yeah. Okay. So, you know, to me, that's okay. It's okay to have somebody really tilted toward offense, but that has this big weakness. It's just 14 wounds on a four up. That's it. That's all it is. Right. And like, okay. Five up. He's a 14 wounds on a five up. No, I'm saying in my version of him, he'd be eight wounds on a four up. Right. Right. And that'd be fine. That's a, yes, he's not hard to bring down. I agree. That's why he's pointed rather cheaply. If he was like 14 wounds on a three up with a five up after save, I'd be able to. Now he's in the three hundreds. Yeah. I'd be jacking those points way up, right? Yeah. But he's not. Cause it doesn't fit the army. The army's just like, raw, crazy meat charging forward from the woods at you. Right. Right. Okay. Next scroll. Oh, that's right. One of my favorites and yours, it's the hell pit abomination. Yeah. I truly hate this model. I think it's like just, just got awful, but I love the hell pit as a concept. I just never have never liked the model. Yep. So let's talk about the hell pit. Move 2D six inches. I want to talk about a really interesting thing I've noticed with, with move and randomness. And this goes back to your, this goes back to your, to your mangler squigs and that those kinds of talks earlier. Yep, yep, yep, yep. 12 wounds on a five up. Okay. Yeah. He's got, he's got these different attacks. So he's got his gnashing teeth, six tacks, three threes, neg three rend if he's unwounded, which is fantastic. Two damage each, six tacks of his fists on threes, threes, neg one, three damage. And then he has his little avalanche flesh attack where he gets to basically roll a die for every model within, in a single unit within three inches of him. You can re-roll it if you made a charge move and they suffer one mortal wound for each roll that's equal to or greater than the avalanche flesh value, which again, if you're unwounded is a two up, right? So that's cool. Sure. He regenerates, which is cool. He can ignore spells on a four up, right? He does, he has this thing that, who cares about the neg one to bravery, nobody cares. And he has a 33% chance to come back to life with the six wounds if he's killed, which is not very, which doesn't matter much at all because the most that can push him to is this level of the profile, which is still not very impressive because he has to actually be up here to actually be good. But it can keep him around, which is kind of neat, right? All right. On this guy is 220 points now post the change. And he did like back down to where he should have been. Sure. And he does an average of eight to 12 damage when he hits, not counting the avalanche flesh, right? Because that's an extremely variable number. So eight to 12 plus avalanche is his damage number. Pretty decent. Pretty decent. Okay. Why is this guy bad, Tom? Because he's gonna just get picked up and removed at the slightest, like anybody looking at him. Yeah. Because he's on a five up. That's, I mean, yep. He's on a five up with 12 wounds. And I don't care if he hypothetically comes back sometimes he's not coming back. You're like, that's not gonna matter when I throw just a little bit of damage is why I make you pick them up. Sure. And of course we can't forget that as a fighting beast if you have a master molder, he could start with like, you know, some actually with like a D three extra wounds or two extra wounds or whatever, depending on how you do it. I get it. Okay. This guy's like in my mind, the best of the bad, but still bad. Okay. And that's because I would place this firmly on, yes, I agree with you, the poor defense to wound ratio, right? And that random move. So I watched a random move of 2D6 is so bad. Like you don't think about how bad that actually is. It's so bad. On a big monster. It's the worst. I watched my, I watched the player who was piloting the mangler squig. Okay. Roll his 2D6 random move or whatever. And three turns in a row, he got a five or less. One journey, roll a three. And I was like, So I get the pilot, I get the pilot within this turn. For my movement. Yeah. And he's like started back in the corner. For my movement. You know, just going nowhere. And I was just laughing at that thing. Yeah. I mean, but like, but here's the flip side of that. With that mangler, by the way, he can solve that problem. Sure. He can take him up and throw him across the board. Like Gloomspite. No, but Gloomspite actually has like, they can run their loon boss on Gigantix. We can give him plus three to move. They can run things that give him re-rollable dice on a normal. He could be under the bad moon, which actually he was, because he had Sprite brought, and he can run in charge. Yes. But that's the point. Like, so let me point this out. This abomination doesn't have those options. No, he doesn't. Those are on the table. The best he can do is like. Yeah. The best he can do is like get whipped, and that only works once, and it's not adding that much. Yes. Correct. Right. Yep. And the, the, those dice to me, I think we are way undervaluing how much of a crazy negative that random move is. It's so bad. Right? Yeah. When you compare to other big monsters that more or less like most big monsters, I would say move probably like 10 inches, 12 inches. That's if you feel like a fair average. Maybe just to kind of hold the monsters in the game. Maybe. I think they're probably closer to 10, 8 to 10, honestly. But, again, I'm throwing an estimate out. I'm thinking about all the foot monsters, like all of the bad giants and all of those guys. Sure, sure. That's fair. At the same time, there's a lot of big like flying monsters that, you know, do whatever. Sure. But yes. Sure. Doesn't fly. Hopps is dumb ass across the board, you know, two to six inches, right? Just slowly going on a five up save. This guy, I want to love this guy. This is like one of the sweetest concepts in Skaven, right? We all agree. This is like amazing. A giant thing of stitched together of just parts that a Molder, a master Molder has worked into this grotesque abomination. That is the coolest thing, right? And the fact that it's just, it's just not gonna work. So, okay, how do we fix this guy? Let's do some additional Molder surgery, okay? Yep, yep. How do we fix this guy? You know how I would fix him? I'm ready, man, tell me. I, for his movement, just add plus eight. Oh, just two to six plus eight? Yeah. Sure. Yeah. And, I would increase his wounds to 20. Just make him like literally, I keep him on a five up save, but just make him a giant pile of meat. Massive meat, yes. Yep, leave the damage. He's scary. He has threat. He can do some work with his like waves of flesh or whatever, but then actually make those hit points like meaty. What you're gonna do with all that meat. Yes, indeed. Okay, so I love the move idea. I love two to six plus eight. This thing should be fun. It reminds me of like the horror, like various monsters in video games or whatever. They're just like giant piles of flesh. They come ripping after you and they're like hands are reaching out and shooting out overall walls. And dragging it. Pulling them forward. Yes. Yeah, yeah. And so like this thing should be like fast-ish. Yeah. Yes. As Autumn Lotus was said, a great unclean one is usually faster than this. Yeah, that hurts. Yeah. That hurts. 20 wounds I think is too many. Let me pitch an alternate idea at you. Okay. Only because like you look at Archeon at 20 wounds and you're like 20 wounds. That's what 20 wounds are. Okay, so here's the alternative. You give him like a feel no pain. Okay. Let me pitch it. Not bad. Let me give you, I think this guy has a different concept behind him. Maybe. Maybe. Okay. I'm not opposed to a feel no pain. Maybe that could be in there. I just, I'm trying to, like the unrelenting monstrosity of like Franken-science monster that won't relent. Yep, I gotcha. I'm with that too. So that's the design space my head is in. Hence why I'm giving him either just a bucketload of wounds or giving him some damage prevention. Okay, go with your bitch. I like some of it. I'm gonna build on it. Here we go. Let me, let me, yes, and you here. Okay, to a point. Okay. So let's take this guy to 16 wounds. I still feel like that's okay. 16 feels like you could put that on a 120 chariot base with the size of that model and not feel like you're in crazy town. Okay, cause he has just a giant pile of meat. Yep. I'd even accept 14, somewhere in that range. That's fine, 14 or 16. We'll keep him at the five up safe cause it's easy to wound him. He's just a big pile of skin and stitched together. All right? Yep. However, at the end of the battle shock phase. Yeah. He heals the D six wounds. Okay? Not a D three in the hero phase or whatever. None of this sort of nonsense that you see on other monsters, right? Cause right now he has in your hero phase, you can heal up to D three wounds. Yeah. No way. That is slow, ridiculous, inefficient healing. Okay? So we move him up to a D six in, not just in your. Every battle shock phase. At the end of battle shock phase. Yeah. So it's happening every turn. After combat, he shoots back up a D six. Yep. I mean, it's gonna be the same thing that I've, of what I'm proposing. So sure. Yeah. Exactly. And then final change. Okay. Cause I actually think offensively this guy's about in the right place. Right. I agree with that. Yep. That's why I didn't touch his offense at all. Yeah. The final thing I want to change is this, this table. Okay. Right here. We're gonna get rid of dead. This result right here. Hey, I know. Let's just get rid of the unfun thing that is a real feel bad to roll. Okay. Yeah. I got my cool toy. How about we just get rid of that? And instead this becomes a 50, 50 table where one, two, three, the rats emerge. So he does a bunch of mortal wounds around him when he dies. That's cool. Yep. I dig that. Still used to get something out of him dying. Yep. And then four through six, it's alive and he comes back with two D six wounds. Sure. Yep. There we go. Yep. And then I'll, and then I'll heal another D six in the battle shock phase. Exactly. Which would mean that he could shoot back up to full with good roll. Yep. Absolutely. And now you've got like this, this abomination that won't stay down, right? And again, as just like now, right? This only triggers the first time it's slain. That would still be the case. I'm no issue with that. The second you put him down, he gets back up. You put him down again, stays down, right? Like super fine. Okay. Now I feel like honestly, and here's the funny thing. I don't, maybe this guy had put him up to 240 with that kind of a profile. No, no, I think I'd keep it. Yeah. I mean, like, that's what I'm saying. Like I, he's either at 220, maybe 240. I only say maybe up because Skaven do have a wide there. They're a, they're a fight in every phase army. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So like you should, if you're a fight in every phase army, if you're cities, if you're Skaven, if you're Seraphon, you should be paying retail for everything. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, and honestly, like this guy, he should be a bully and bullies need to be in the two, like true bullies that are not, that are, that have no other function, but to bully, which is what this guy is. They should be in the two to 240 range. Sure. Two plus stuff said also it'd be cool if you could take these guys as a unit, a unit of three of these dudes. Oh, I think that'd be sweet. I'd be all about that. Or even two, I'd say two, unit of two. Sure. Like we have two, we have units that are like that. Sure. They're that expensive, why not? I mean, I don't like it, but sure. That's fine. It's okay. Two in a unit. So you get one for two 20 or two for four 40 or one for two 40 and two for four 80, depending on where we feel like they land. Sure. But yeah, now you've got something that actually lives up to the health hit abomination. Hits plenty hard. Again, I don't think the offense is wrong. I think it hits about right. Like I said, it's doing about eight to 12 damage against the four of safe, plus the avalanche of flesh and all mortal wounds. That's pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I do that. And so, you know, it's going to clock in depending on what it's fighting. If it's getting into a bunch of infantry, which is what it wants to fight, you know, it's going to get in there and do 15, 16, 17 wounds, some, you know, significant portion of that being mortals. That's great. Yeah. Right? That's that's gonna do its job. Yeah. And now he can actually get there because we fixed the move and he can like survive the errant fire. Again, with these bullies, the key is you got to find a way to make it interesting for them to both get there and participate. Right. And it doesn't need to always be the same thing. Like you can do random movement, but, and so what that eight plus two D six means is that he's going to move about 12 to 13. So he's a little bit faster than a lot of standard monsters, you know, in your estimate of 12. Sometimes he's going to be, you know, on average or slower. Sometimes he's going to shoot across the table. And so, and that's where it gets interesting. So he, his, his, his midline is a movement like standard monsters, but occasionally he's going to jump across the table. Yeah. Absolutely. And like the key is, and the payoff for the other players or for the Skaven player to experience that is huge. Yes. And we have to like, to make these monsters ever quote unquote, a compelling choice. Yes. Right? Yeah. They have to overcome those meta weaknesses that they naturally have. Right. Right. And those are only going to be overcome either if the utility is so high or the damage is so high that they become a strat, right? That they themselves fill a natural role of sitting in the middle of your units, goff is our harvester style and being this great buff engine, right? Or, you know, going around the outer being or punching above their weight way above their weight where the opponent is forced to deal with them. Right? Yes. Yes. Yup. Yup. The emperor and the land strat in all eyes will turn towards Arrakis and they will be forced to deal with us. Yes. Exactly. I watched Dune this weekend again. I love that movie. Anyway, neither here nor there. Sandworms. That's big monster. Where's my sandworm scroll? Hmm. Fort Dreadmull. Yeah. Well, he was weak anyways. He was a minor specimen, only 125 meters long. Anyways, so there's only one guy, Tom, we can finish on here, okay? We can talk about some other errant scrolls, but I've got one more. Like there's a few I don't want to touch on lately. But there's one guy we need to touch on just for Rob, the honest war gamer, okay? The tree lord. Womp, womp, womp. Outclassed, outclassed by his other tree brethren, right? And they're not even that good. So. What is he doing? Right. This guy, okay. This guy. This guy over here. Let's talk about this guy. Six-edge move. I'm loving it already. Now he does have a little teleport through the woods. So that's fine. 12 wounds on a three up save. Better than most of the saves we've seen thus far, which I do like. Like I like that this dude is a big, thick tree. So that's cool, okay? He has a dumb impaling talents attack that's dumb. Yup. And he has his little sweeping blows, which are okay. They're okay. Four attacks on threes and threes, neg one, d6 damage, but they're okay. They don't, it doesn't actually amount to much. Right? It sounds good because again, anytime GW writes that d6, in their minds that just must say six. It does not. It most definitely does not. There is the d there. Yes, that's right. Yeah, yeah, there is. There is indeed. And he has a completely pointless strangler who's attacked it, who cares? I guess you kind of care if you're in Living City, but that'd be the only time. Right, right, that's exactly right. Okay. I would fix this guy so fast. Okay, hold on. I just want to cover his other interesting ability, just to cover it real quick. Yup. On the spirit path, so even though he is catastrophically slow, right, he can teleport through Wild Woods. So that's cool. Yup. And he does have old school locus effectively. Sure, sure. Where he can pick an enemy unit and stomp and on a four up, he locuses them. So he has like old school regular locus. Sure. Not keeper of secrets locus, but normal slanesh hero locus. Yup. The difference being he does it of course at the start of the combat phase, not the end of the charge phase, meaning that if somebody else fights at the start of the combat phase and it's their turn, they'll go before he gets to do this. I understand. I wrote the infographic on doing start of combat stuff. Please don't um, actually me. It's close enough for our purposes. Okay. All right. So, tree lord. Fix this guy, Tom. Fix him. I'm ready. I can fix him in two words. Oh, I'm ready. Okay. I'm excited. How much is this points? Oh, yes. I'm sorry. The tree lord, the tree lord is 100 and that can't be right. Did he go down? Oh, I think he did. In the app, he's 180, but I think he's 160 now. Let me make sure. I'm pretty sure he went down. Regardless at 160 to 180, I fixed him. You ready? Yeah, I'm ready. And we did this, by the way, back when we did the Sylvaneth bug. Sure. I love that I read him and I was like, there's no way that can be true. Nope, it is somehow true. Yep. He has 180 points. Okay. That just, that feels wrong. Uh. So, you ready? There you go. Add two words to his keywords. I'm ready. You ready? Yeah. Sylvaneth wildwood. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Bam. Done. Yep. Like, you'd actually need to explain that somewhere. But I agree. That's the shortest road to a fix on this guy. Yeah. Right. Okay. So, in what I'm alluding to here, folks, is that the tree lord himself would count as a wildwood, okay? And so, he would trigger all the allegiance ability. And so, what that would actually do is, interestingly, is that like, in faction, it would give him a lot more utility because now, like, other units can teleport to him. He becomes a beacon of, like, teleportation. And like, when your dryads are near or not dryads, the branch rates, no. Yeah. Yeah, every, like, most people in the army who get bonuses for being near wildwoods would get bonuses for being near him. Like, dryads have a bonus off that. Spirit of Durthu has a bonus off that, right? So, like, yes. Absolutely. And you could, like, awaken the wildwood and, like, shake him. Right. And do AoE damage off of him? Like, it just fixes itself. Yeah. Like, that's all you have to do. You add that key word and you give him that ability and now he has a real utility and function in the army. I don't care if he's not doing anything on his profile. He's actually doing something then. Yeah. He is a buff piece. This guy is begging to be a utility piece, a utility hero, because we already have the bull... You're not a hero, but a utility monster. Sorry, a utility monster. I thank you. I said the wrong word, a utility monster. Because he, we already have the bully in this army. It's called the Spirit of Durthu, right? Like, that's what that dude is, right? And, like, that dude's meant to be a big giant bully running around with that stupid sword. Yeah. Yep. This guy is clearly... Like, the clear role he should be occupying is the utility hero. He would buff almost every unit. He exactly what you said. He'd be a teleport beacon. You could awaken off of him. He would grant so many cool bonuses. Like, it would just be great. Like, it's so easy. Just add those two words. And a blurb of explanation of how it works in the book. And you are done so. And, like, go to his abilities page. Like, you could add another ability that just says... He counts as Sylvanuth Wildwood and... Yes, like, something about, like, something fluffy about carrying the, like, the Spirit of Giron with him or something. And he is, and he awakens the landscape around him. Yep. He is so... Like, the verdant life is so dripping from him that he awakens the world around him or something, whatever. And there you go. He's Sylvanuth Wildwood. He counts as, for all purposes, done. Right. If you need to add an exception, because as was just asked, Ghostbutton said, would that keyword mean Sylvanuth could summon free tree lords every turn? One, I'm not sure I cared if they did. Yeah. Right? Right? Like, given what this guy breaks the table, I'm honestly not sure if I care. I, if you told me... So let me answer Ghostbutton's question like this. If you told me, Vince, instead of summoning woods that are super annoying and you have to spend, you have to call the game to a halt so that your opponent can now spend 10 minutes playing the tip touching game to see how many tips they can get to touch and then carefully measuring from every space, all with the great benefit at the end of this tip touching game being that there's now a super annoying thing. Terrain piece. Terrain piece on the board that's gonna stick in my craw and be just so annoying for the rest of the game. Yup. Okay. Instead, what they get to do is just put this little monster on the table. I would read this profile and go, yes, 100%. That's fine. I accept. Put that guy in his average of four damage on the table, please. Please, please do this instead of putting down a regular Wildwood. Like, yes, that would be my best case scenario. You can have him. That's fine. Yeah. Mind one bit. So at any rate, that's the fix for this dude. If that really got in people's craw, of course you could just say, you know, you can't summon this guy. Anything that summons Sylvaneth Wildwood may not summon him. Right. Or you would just say something like, rather than hit like, you don't have to add the keyword. You could just say in the ability he counts as a Sylvaneth Wildwood for effects that trigger off of, or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you wouldn't even have to summon him. That said, I would rather Sylvaneth players be putting these guys on the table. A thousand times, yes. I would rather put these on the table. It's not even close. It's not even close. All right, I'm gonna put this back down so we can see you again, Tom. Done. Okay. Any other monsters you wanna touch on? We haven't touched on yet. I mean, like, I think that a lot of the critiques we've made, yeah, so can I talk about some fundamentals? Yeah, sure. Absolutely. So I wanna talk about the wide-sweeping ways to fix monsters just in general. Yep. Okay. Okay. Would be damage one, get rid of it. Yeah, rend none, get rid of it. Again, unless it's little dude hanging on. Yes, yes. Rend none, get rid of it. The... I wanna see a lot more rend two and rend three period, by the way, on monsters as well. If anything should be the home of rend three, it should be people, it should be beings walking around the size of your house. Yep, yep. Okay. Yep. That's pretty good at punching through armor. Yep. That captures it. And so one is the damage, you know, another piece of this that I think could deserve like just from, like as a general thing would be, I would love to see, well, that's what I tried to thought again. It's unfortunate. I would love to see the... It's all right, Tom. You think on it, I'll answer our question because there's the one I was gonna talk about. So think in your head about it, okay, and I'll go. Yep, yep. Okay, I got it. I got it. So we talked about mobility being a big issue. Yeah, yeah, sure. Okay, here's what I'm gonna say. I don't know if this needs to be a keyword. I don't know if this needs to be a whatever. Okay, but I don't know if this ability, I don't know if it's a trade of all monsters, but like when you have these melee monsters, they should simply be able to walk out of combat. Yeah, to just leave. Sort of the Imperial Knight trick, right? Where you can just like, no, I'm not in combat, but you're in combat with me. I'm not in combat with you. Right, that's exactly right. Yeah, they should just walk away. Like if they want to just step over, they should be able to do that and not be counted as retreating. Right, absolutely. To you, the day that I came to your village was the most important day of your life. To me, it was Tuesday, right? Like that's, yes, like these monsters should just be like, oh, look, hey, neat, there's these little guys fighting me. That's cool. I'm gonna go over there now because it's just not a thing. In the same way that like if I'm walking around and there's like 10 gerbils swarming around my feet, I can just walk away from those anytime I want. I'm not like, curse these tiny furry beings. They've held me in place. I need to retreat carefully. Right. I mean, I would because I don't wanna step on little gerbils or hamsters or whatever, though they're very cute little things. I wouldn't wanna squish one. So I would, Vince would step away carefully, but like a angry giant in war would not care about accidentally squishing people as they're leaving. So yes, they should actually be able to just disengage, right, in much the same way, by the way. And this is, this is trod territory. It's not like we're saying something. It's complete nonsense. Not only did it do Imperial Knights do it in 40K, but the boats do it, right? Like the boats can just leave combat and shoot because again, it's a boat, right. Flying high, baby. Yeah. Even if they don't, they can just literally back out and shoot, they don't even have to fly high. They can just go fly away. Yeah. They should just be able to walk out of combat. All this big stuff. Yeah, yep. I'll, as well with that, I think more monsters should have something like destructive bulk. If that monster gets the charge. Yeah, sure. Like that should mean something when they come in. Absolutely. Like if, when a monster hits on impact, they should be doing some kind of damage. Right. We've handed out this like roll a two plus, you take D three mortal wounds thing. Yeah. To like, to everybody. Blood crushers and skull crushers and everybody who's riding any kind of like pseudo chariot gets it. Except the 20 foot tall monsters. Right. And you know, this is one place where this sort of was captured because in old Warhammer fantasy, because you remember big monsters. Impact was, right. Had either impacted and or stomp. Right. Where they could just stomp at the end of combat. And so I just, I would love if, if that was re-implemented almost system wide for these big, you know, bashy. Again, a lot for these, more for the bowling monsters than for the other stuff. But that like that type of design direction I think would be valuable. Yeah. Yeah. I want to address a couple of things that were asked in the comments. So the one thing was what about giving them the ogre type of ability where they count as multiple models. I don't want to do that. And I'll, I have a very simple answer why. That's not actually what these guys are for, right? Right. Right. Because then there's- You're confusing battle, battle builds. Right. The role of the monster is not to go stand still and sit on a point. No. Okay. It's a punch things in the face. It's to go, it's either be utility and buff things. I'll log off as R and other things you said. Or it's to go punch things in the face. I'm trying to imagine the world where the commanders like Gorgon, beast of utter chaos and monster of destruction, you know, just stand there. No, don't, don't guard, guard this tombstone. Yeah. Just stand right there. Don't move. Don't go kill everything. Stand. Stay, stay. Tredos. You know, like that's just not what they should be doing. Like you want things to have defined roles. And my argument is monsters fall into one of two roles very naturally, buffing the things around them or killing everything and they're like non hero monsters. Fall into one of two roles very naturally. Utility pieces, buff pieces, and bully units. And bullies are all about going there and kicking things in the face, right? Yep. And again, hero monsters are a totally different, you know, back up. Right. Because they're doing different things. They're functioning different and different ways on the battlefield. Right. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about that the segment is about non hero monsters. Exactly. And you know, to me, that's why I don't want them to have the rule. I like rules being, just because one army got a good idea doesn't mean we should just start passing it out like candy. You know, like the on sixes you get two hits thing has been now, is now in like every army in the universe. No, poor doc. It was so special. Sure, sure. And then, and then every army got it all the time. Just everybody does that now. Yeah. No, it's like train. Right. Like I like that that's a thing that ogres have, right? Right. I don't want these big monsters to be playing in the objective holding space. One, it's misaligned to the versimilitude of what I would expect them to be doing in world. Two, I think it's actually the, it then distracts from their utility, which should be going to the enemy and killing them. Right? Right. Not standing still. Right. And so like you have other things in your army meant to sit on points. You know, those are animals, right? That's what you generally want. Right. And I think to me, that's the right answer why you don't want to go that direction. Somebody also asked a question earlier about the regular steam tank. And yes, I think the regular steam tank is horrendously underwhelming. I think the, again, the commander version is like, whatever, he's okay. He's acceptable. He's acceptable, but he's a hero on top. They ruined him once they took away his thermal rider cloak, whatever. Not this episode. But the regular steam tank, I mean, it just, it is horrendously underwhelming. Yeah. It is a random movement. The best you can do is get plus two to it. So it can be, I mean, like outside of, there's other things you can do to buff it, like Tempest Eye and stuff like that. But like on base roll, it's 2d6 plus two when it's unwounded, right? And it has one shot with its cannon that hits on a four. Now again, there are ways to buff that in army and synergize it. Sure. No disagreement. But when you have a shooting attack hitting on a four, whomp, whomp, whomp. Right. So you're getting one attack, hitting on a four, wounding on a two, neg two, rend D6 damage. And you know, look, sometimes it's crazy what'll happen. In that game, by the way, I played this weekend where I was playing my whirlwinds edge army. My opponent did have a regular steam tank and did have a steam tank commander. And round one, without any bonuses, hitting on a five, he shot my knight venator who I was in Tempest Eye. So I was, my venator was in cover, but no, in cover. What up? In round one, I was one up and I had a unit nearby me, so I'm neg one to hit because of lookouts, sir. So the cannon's hitting on a five. So that dude should be immune to damage. Wounding on a two with a one up save and a six up after safe because there was a lumen arc near him as well. Yeah. Okay. He got shot off the table, didn't he? One shot, whammo, took a cannon ball in the face. It was like, need a five to hit, roll the five, wounds, because I mean, you only need two to wounds. That's not that surprising. I need a three to save him with the neg two, rolled a two, he rolls damage, five damage. All right, I'm like, I just need one six, zero sixes. Okay, he's dead, just caught the cannon ball hard. And I was like, well, that was not the expected outcome of that one. So you know, sure, that can sometimes happen. What will more likely happen is basically every other shot he took with that regular steam tank, that game, which was just like I missed and I did my damage. And I was like, it never did anything of value the rest of the game. Sure, right. But, but it traded for that hundred points at Night Manager. It certainly did. It certainly did. And, and you know, so like it's just, it is a horrendously underwhelming piece because it doesn't have the long rifle when the hero's not there. It has a very short range machine gun that again has no rend and it has some pretty underwhelming melee attacks. Like that, I love that the concept of a steam tank is like the coolest thing. By the way, how I would fix that is I would make it the defensive monster. Yeah, sure. Because it is a giant steel tank. Its literal point is to be a tank. I would increase its, I would fix its cannon a little bit. I would extend the range of its machine gun a little bit. I'd make it slightly more offensive, but I would make it like the only unit in the game with a two up save. And I would give it a five up after save. Sure, and I would give it like, I would give it some short range flamethrower. You know, like some type of crowd control. So to make it feel, to make it truly anti-infantry. Sure. Like we know you can make tanks work. You have a whole game where tanks are a major part of the games where you just can't be like, space Marines got like three more tanks this last weekend. So I know that you can make tanks work GW. You know, how about we just make this one tank work? You've got 57 tanks. If you look in the, in 40K. I'm sure you can find a couple. A couple that have really interesting functions and bring that over. Absolutely. Thanks. Thanks. So yes, that's what I'm gonna say there. So the steam tank definitely needs some love. All right, did we miss anything, Tom? I think monsters are fixed. I think we fixed them. So that's the key. If you have other ideas for any of the monsters we've talked about or your own personal favorites, things you'd want to see improved, you know, hey, by all means, please throw that down in the comments or chat about that or share that with us. To me, I know I'm super biased because I am such a Timmy, but when I look at the kits that I want to buy, that I want to put on the table that I think are super fun, it's almost always the monsters, right? It's almost always those things that motivate me because they look so cool. They're so impressive. They feel just age of Sigmar to me. It's so funny because when I look across my armies, I don't have a lot of monsters. Yeah, I mean, I had like, let's do it, Tom. You ready? Here we go. Here we go. I had nine Sphinxes back when I had Tomb Kings. Nine. Okay. What do we got? I've got five Gorgons. I've got an army of giants already. I have 10 giants in an army, right? I mean, I have two Archaons. I should say something right there. I have five Chimera. Chimera. I have three Cockatrices, you know? I've got, what do we have? Four or five Tree Lords, something like that. Three Stegodons in my Seraphon army plus the big guy. Like I love monsters, okay? I think monsters are sweet. So non-hero monsters, are you ready? Yeah. Oh, I also have two Slaughter Brutes and a Mutolith Vortex Beast. Ironclad? Yeah, sure. Frigate? Sure. The fact that you've stalled out now speaks volumes. Wait, wait for Warshrine? Oh, okay. The Chaos Warshrine, which is not a hero? Nope, that counts. I'm with you. Blackoach. Okay, nice. There you go. I'll take it. There you go. That's the totality from my seven or eight armies. Sure. Of those because they just aren't doing it. They're not doing the work. They're not worth feeling. Now, I have things like in boxes, but I haven't built them because why? What monster do you have in a box, like looking over there? What do you got in a box? The Colossus Blink. You know what you should do, Tom? Now that you're kind of stuck around it. Actually, you know what? Sorry, I don't have a Colossus Blink anymore. I don't. Yeah, nothing left. I don't think I have any monsters. Like, nope, because I sold my mangler. Nope, I have two Skycutters out there. That doesn't count. That's not even a thing. All right. I was going to tell you, you could have got out a monster and that'd be a fun project for you to just work on. Cause you can work on those very like sit down, do 30 minutes and just get a little bit of work on a monster. Yeah, I don't have any monsters because monsters are bad. Well, I have some. I have some, I have some, I have like six magma droths, but those don't count either. Sure, sure, sure. Well, here we go. All right, folks. Like I said, don't forget, send Tom the hobby inspiration. Let's see it. That brings us to the end. Like I said, if you've got thoughts on monsters, drop in the comments. Don't forget about the survey. It's in the description. If you haven't already taken the balance survey, please take the balance survey. Link is down there. It takes less than a minute. It would be deeply appreciated. Please give this video a like if you liked it. If you enjoyed this discussion, just remember it's as easy as like moving your mouse over like this, just here. Oop, clicky. And then that really helps to help other people find this discussion. And the more people who find this discussion and complain about monsters, the more likely we are to see change. Let's begin a movement right here. Let's, much like the Gorgon himself, start the wave of monsters need to be fixed. With that, I will say thank you very much everybody. We very much appreciate it. As always, we'll see you next Wednesday.