 Decadent, I brought a old vine's infidel tonight. I brought big wave golden ale. OK, well, it's live because that's what happens now. So there you go. Everybody knows that, I think. So hopefully it's working. We'll find out. We'll see. Hello, everybody. If it's Wednesday, it's Warhammer. I apologize for the confusion, but Streamlabs decided to change things. And now when you hit one button, the other button just automatically goes. It's all buttons and I had to reconnect things and change things. Yeah, but this is all work. Anyways, there we go. Yes, it's working. Wonderful. All right. Well, welcome, everybody. I am very excited. I'm Vincent as always. I am excited about Slanesh joining me as always is my co-host Tom. What's up, brother? How you doing? Hello, friends. Also joining us this week, he's back, the most dangerous man in Warhammer it's the magical Mr. Mephisto. How you doing, Meph? Oh, I'm great. I'm great. As I said, when I didn't realize we're live, I'm got a nice, maybe a blue collar slob with a nice glass of Zinfandel here, or perhaps I'm actually a RL, Soul Blight General with a little glass of something else. You'll never know. It's the internet. Sure, indeed. Well, I've got my soapy light and water as always. So, you know, that's my standard thing. Really living high class for me. Anyways, yes, man, Zach, I am fully recovered from VinciCon 21, did not get a lot of sleep over the weekend. It was great. Tonight we're gonna talk about the new Slanesh Battle Tome. Lot to unpack. Tuck in, folks. This is gonna be a big one, a long one. I got a lot to say. It's great. Yeah, so we'll get into it. But first, of course, the news. Tom, what do we got? We got some hoofy rumor engine. We do. It's up on the screen right now. It is a new chaos model of some kind that is going to be coming with the third book, which is Broken Realms and Bellacor. Yup. That's maybe a new Marauder horseman. I mean, maybe a new hero of some kind on a horse, but it's a chaos horse. Yeah. You can really tell by the horseshoes on that. Is that what that is, Vince? Yep. Only chaos horses get scars on there. Chaos horses have that particular horseshoe. Yes. Could it be another chariot model? Could be. Sure. Yeah, yeah. I mean, yes, of course. Like, I could see it being a hero on horse of some kind. It could be a new Marauder horseman. Although I actually think the Marauder horseman held up decently better than the Marauders, that's not actually the exact same guys. Do you know what I think it is? Or it could be a new chariot of some kind. Sure, what's that? I think it's the multi-part cast warrior or cast knight, can't. Yeah, the problem with that is all of the chaos knights have armor on that part of their leg. So, I mean, look, it could be. Like, maybe it's a complete resculpt, but it would have to be a literal resculpt because every chaos knight has armor on the, I don't know what to, I don't know if horses have shins. Okay, like, I don't know if that's how their leg is divided. I don't know horse minds. I think that's an ankle. I think that's an ankle you're looking at. Well, this is the ankle, this is the ankle, this is a shin, right? My point is, is that like, how long do you think a horse's ankle is, man? It's like, your ankle is a pretty small joint. But whatever this bone is on a horse, it's all covered, they're all armored. See, I think you're over committed to the horse. This is a new best of course sculpt. Oh. See, it's prancing. He's prancing, yeah, it's doing a little. Yeah, he's got like the one legs like kicked up. Yeah, yeah. And you can see the little like tough of fur here that looks like a goatee. Yeah, sure. Best of core. Doing a little dressage is what you're telling me there. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. See, now that we know vampires are inevitable, it's no fun saying it's vampires. I got to, I got to change gears. New best of course. Sure. Sure. What else would they nerf be the chaos? Incidentally, the new tome is coming and they're going to be OP. They had to get out ahead of that and nerf the depraved drove ahead of time with this mesh ball. I don't disagree. I don't disagree. So, hey, cool, cool beans. Yeah, I mean, I am very excited about broken realms bellicor and an interesting chaos civil war. It's not the civil war I wanted, but I'll take it, seems really cool. Like I love the idea of bellicor going after Archeon. So that's great. It's been missing from the narrative. Honestly, like Archeon needs consequences at ever. It just has like a narrative, like when you're writing stories, you know, conflict, subversion, how do you get there? Like those are the components of the story. Archeon has just, as far as I can tell, just been winning too hard. And so he got bored of winning so hard. And that's why we really don't know what the heck he's been doing for five years of Age of Sigmar, you know, since he won. Yeah, he's just winning, too busy winning, but working on writing a new battle tome. Yeah, he's writing a new battle tome. He's been like, he's been doing the warrior poet thing, like up on like a mountain top, like watching at the sun bleed and like writing high coups, like whatever you do when you've already succeeded ultimately at your first goal the first time. And now you're just like, I mean, now we're just in bonus rounds, like. Yeah, I mean, the, I do love the story where bellicor is hiring a scaven death master to go kill Archeon. And I'm like, look, homie, have you read these two scrolls? I don't know what you're, I don't know what world you're living in. A death master would be thrilled if he got one, if he got one wound on Archeon, you'd be like, man. That's victory. That is the best death master in the history of death masters. I mean, from a narrative stance, I mean, yes, the greatest, I mean, now snitch is back, right? The greatest death master ever. No, you got to have like show Archeon with his nose bloodied. It'll make it sweeter when he gets revenge later on, right? Like you've got to show him have some resistance. And bellicor is due for a win because he's pretty much been the chaos jobber. They don't want their main chaos guy to lose. They send a bellicor to lose instead just from a writing standpoint, take some risks, quit making him a jobber, have him like succeed, have him get some power, have him use himself. Look, I'm not opposed, I'd love to see it. I love Archeon, obviously. Well, maybe this is why Archeon doesn't just smash everybody. Like when the elves go and mess with Nagash, maybe the reason why Archeon doesn't just win, right? When the elves go and I move out. He's too busy, he's too busy winning elsewhere. He's too busy fighting a hundred points cave and you wrote that he'd kill in like half a swing of the sword. Right, right. He could use the, he could use the butt of the sword and blow him into the, into Adams. To be fair, Catacross only lost because of the mount in singular combat. They might have been evenly matched. Sure. I mean, I've read their board scrolls. Catacross did my least favorite trope in anime or like Warhammer, which is he just has planned Archeon. And I hate that, but it's like, I'm such a Homer. I gotta be like, excellent. My guy did the just as planned for once. Of course, yes. Everybody loves a Xanatos gambit. All right, so yeah, it's a horse. It's a chaos horse and we all are looking forward to Broken Realms Velikor, because that sounds pretty cool. Now if we just only knew when the second book was gonna come out, we're already talking about the third one at any rate. Next month, they said it's coming next month. Yeah, I know. That's not more, I mean, given that's going, that means probably the dead middle of the month since we know the first release of the month is the Kill Team stuff, so that's fine. All right, what else we got? Yeah, so this weekend, there were some, you know, there's a preview show. There was Stuff Drop, some new models for Nighthawn. Model. And new model for Nighthawn. And a new model for Skeletons for Deathrattle for Soul Blight. And they said, importantly, they said Soul Blight Gravelords when they said this. Yeah, they did, yes. They importantly said that. So not like, hey, L.O.N. got a new model. We got to see all of the box for Curse City. Yeah. And got to see some elves. We did. It was a great reveal. If you want to go see our full reaction to it, you can watch the reaction show we did Saturday. We did it during Vinnie Kahn. So, Minniak and N'John and Sam were all here and we had a big fun time talking about them. But, Meph, what'd you think of the reveal show? What you're writing? Okay, so I fell into the trap of expectation, which is something I hazarded everyone who watches my stuff from ever doing. Like, never have expectations. You were expecting to see the whole Soul Blight thing, or at least a good take on it. Two weeks in a row, I was expecting to see something for the Soul Blight Gravelords or two reveals in a row. I'm like, come on, we got Potato Cam, you got it out the way, quit teasing me. And so we saw that silhouette and I'm like, this is a blood knight. Like 100% the most blood knight silhouette I've ever seen. And I remember it goes on the screen. And first, I see the helmet because they're doing the thing where the model's spinning and I see the helmet, I see the horse. I'm like, I'm mid-typing Tom. Yes, it's not a regular ass horse, or like it's not a regular horse. Mid-typing Tom. And then they zoom in on the face and it's a skeleton. And I'm like, dun dun dun. I'm like, okay, okay. And I'm like, like they got me. Like they just, I'm like, and I know, I know whoever's in charge of like, you know, kind of putting together a script for this and you know, releasing the silhouettes. At this point, I know Games Workshop is personally trolling me. Mephisto, like they are like this. We are trolling Mephisto. Like you weren't supposed to know Soul Blight were truly confirmed because like if a war band comes out, you know, we had the Dark Oath War Queen forever before, you know, almost two years before Slaves of Darkness dropped. You know, like when the war, like seeing a war band virtually means nothing for releases, right? So like when that one half was like, you know, that's the war band, you're like, okay. But now we saw like the awesome Hair Lady and you know, I saw the silhouette. I was convinced we're finally giving Soul Blight and I had to really fast regroup kind of in real time watching it live. I usually need to data parse my thoughts and I in real time had to regroup for my disappointment. And if you, you watch my own, my own sort of like a rant cast on it, like you can see me like reasoning my way to be excited again. Because I mean, death rattles like that main component that makes death sweet for me. Like I love skeletons, you know, I've run a hundred skeletons in Nagash. I have three white kings already. Hmm, come on. Okay, enough about death though. The rest of it though, LRL, awesome. I think the traditional high elf players get something that they wanted from the get go. I'm glad they led with the weird. You got a twos and nines people. People would have felt betrayed if you had gotten the normal stuff first. And then the second launch was just the crazy weird stuff. You're like, oh, I'm already bought in. So I think it was smart that they actually led with the weird first. Cool, your sword masters now. Sorry, sword lords or blade lords. Everything is just a synonym. Like they're direct proxies. It's actually kind of funny. So that's cool. I'm trying to remember Night Haunt. I hope they released that hero sculpt with an apology letter to Night Haunt players. Like when you buy it, an apology letter comes with it. We're sorry about your lantern from White Dwarf. We apologize for that. PS, this model is OP as heck. It costs a hundred points and does everything the army needs. And now it's busted S tier. We are sorry for just jobbing you out for two years. So that's that. And then Cursed City is just breathtaking. I mean, it's one of the coolest boxes I think I've ever seen. The, in particular that the Grave Master or whatever who looks like a like right out of a Del Toro flick, like Silent Hill and Del Toro combined to make this one mega beast with a shovel. One of the coolest things I've ever seen and that sort of Vargulf, the new Vargulf. You know, man, new Smash Bat, he's here, he's ready. It proved to me that you can make Ghouls. Ghouls are kind of like a blank canvas. It proved to me that you can make Flesh Intercourts like really awesome. You know, you can, there's a, there is another gear that they haven't even got. Just real quick talk about the Roller Coaster I've been on here. Cause when I originally thought, okay, we're gonna get this big vampire release. I was like, all right, sweet. If it's this whole really vampire focused thing, I like vampires, but actually it's always put me off of death as I honestly could not give less of a hoot about the basic minions of death. Like you mentioned you love skeletons. Hey, great. You know, no problem. Like I understand that. I get the, I get it. I'm not, you know, I'm basting you for your likes, right? I'm just saying like to me, skeletons, zombies, wolves, bats, this kind of nonsense. I was just like, I don't want all this. I want sweet vampires. Like I think vampires are the coolest. Coolest. Right? All Castlevania all the time. Yeah, yeah. That's fine. And this release has clearly like gone, you know, the Roller Coaster I've been on as I've realized, as we've all come to realize, I think, that this really is just the full replacement for LON and what this army's now going to be, right? And probably encapsulate most of that stuff. I'm sure they'll, I'm sure they'll bin some things. I'm sure we'll get like clearly those bat swarms that are in Curse City are just going to end up being the bat swarms for, you know, soul-like grave lords. And yeah, fine. Yeah, I didn't even talk about those in my own show. I'm like, I just skipped over. I don't care about bat swarms and like rap. First of all, those bat swarms are amazing. I do love them. I especially love the tiny bat that's poking around the side of the thing. He's like, put it on over here. Favorite little bat, whoever sculpted that, great work. But the, but as I realized that it's going to be full of all this crap I don't want, okay? I'm like, no, well now I'm probably not getting that army. But then they brought me right back with Smash Bat. And I was like, look, if they don't roll in FEC and it stays its own thing and that tome holds, guess what boys, we're in it to win it. Like I'm Smash Bat in a way. That's a 24 hour army project waiting to happen. I'm going to get me three of those Var Gelks or whatever they're called, whatever nonsense they decided to call this one and work Smash Bat in a way. So yeah, good stuff. The reveal was great. And I really want to see them do more stuff like that where they focus completely on one thing. Like this was all AOS. I would just love them to do the next one. Just do it all 40K, then I don't have to watch, right? Like I don't have to watch a bunch of stuff. I don't care about, no offense. Like some people play both and that's fine. If you do great, no, no issue. But then you get two shows if you get both, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. But like, then I just don't have to care. I, you know, I don't have to worry. There's an hour and 15 minutes of content I'm watching for maybe 15 minutes of something I might care about. Right? So at any rate, I say split them up like that, you know? And just do it that way. I think that's way better. Before we move too far off Cursed City though, one last thing, zombie ogres and ogre vampires, like- Yeah, both sweeties all get out. The only sculpt to let me down was the stupid regular zombies. I think they look junk because they all have gravestones on their back. If it was like three of them and the other ones were zombies with other accoutrements or nonsense going on, I'd be like, fine. But like the fact that it's universal is weird. Well, the Gravelord himself, that's the mini I want to see explored. The way they do Night Haunt where like they took like, you know, here's a wraith. Let's see like where we can take Night Haunt in all the different directions. That's the guy they need to grab and go like, let's do a whole range of this and there's your dead walkers. Yeah. Not these like, not these like these other zombies that look quite frankly cartoonish in the face of everything else going on in that box set. 100% agree. 100% agree. Yep. Marvelous Mr. D said, I'd only approve if they split space brains into their own show. Yes. Just like absolutely like reveal show, space marines. And then like, then all of us can just be like, nah, there's just leave it to the space marines players. Write the letterhead in the logo with a crayon like it deserves like space marines like yeah. Yes. And as Rocco has mentioned, it's up Rocco, hope you're doing well. The ogre vampire who's in charge of the place is in fact a vampire it because he is, he sailed his fleet in to get there. So it is funny that in the end, he is a vampire it. So there you go. All right. There's a lot of vibes in there, it looks cold too. Like you're really getting like, they really populate that city and make it feel like a place in the more realms I think. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. What's next Tom? Very question. What's next? They released to the narrative of the Kerr City. I know the news, don't worry. I've got your cover Tom. Sorry, I look for it. Lost my browser. They released the new, the story of how the Kerr City got that way. Right. And it's actually really cool. Cause it was this like mournhold was the name of the city before it was Ulfankar. And they kind of show this deal that got made. It just, it's like a really cool story and shows how like how screwed up the city got when Nagash flipped the, when the Necroquake happened and Shaish flipped. So the stability, stable parts now the outside and the high magic parts now the inside. I mean, it feels like it's going to be a really cool city to explore. I'm sure that we're going to get plenty of expansions for it. And that's cool. I can't wait to see what other figs they explore in this space, just like what they did with Blackstone Fortress. They'll probably be overpriced boxes. All right. Totally. They're four minis and some cards and stuff. But okay. They're going to sell that initial box at a loss so that they can sell the X-Packs that are like just infinite sideways profit. Totally believe it. I think it'll be lower than we think. Fingers crossed. I mean, I could eat my words on that hard and you know, whatever. But I agree with you. I think they'll want this one to be a bit of a loss leader cause it'll set people on for the new season of buying five expansions over the next year. Right. Right. You know, sacrifice 20 pounds now to make 120 pounds off of everybody later. That's just- It's the video game. It's like what video games are doing with like their paid services. They sell you kind of a shell game and then you buy the- Yeah, yeah. And by the way, yes, Whiskey Tango. I know they're not actually selling at a loss. That's that I'm using loss leader in the standard industry term. Like it just means at a, like in this case, I mean simply at a lower margin. It's at a loss. Yeah. At any rate. Okay. What else? So yeah, that was cool. Good story. There you go. Yeah. Yeah, we're getting closer to me finally seeing my like city's a Sigmar shy-ish city and what that might be, you know, like- Yep. It feels like if they ever redeemed this thing, which could be the end of it. Like I wonder if they won't at the end of this. Like let's say the heroes are successful and the city's redeemed and he's driven out. Do we get a shy-ish city of Sigmar? Like do we get more and hold as a city at the end? That'd be super sweet. Like in early 2022 or something, you know? Yeah. I think it's like that, you know, like why I like Broken Realms as an idea. Like I want to see that stuff playing out in this. So that'd be great. Like you would feel like this new city's here because I played through the thing and killed the bad guy and same- I did it. I did that. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so there you go. Which would be awesome. Okay. What else we got, Tommy? Um, we did see in the inventory today that blood lore or blood knights and vampire lords are out of stock in most locations. Yup. Kind of a big deal. Yeah, not temporarily, like no longer available. Right. So good, like the official Herald that these things are dead. And of course, I mean, we've already seen the new vampire lord on foot. Lady with the bats in her hair. So that's not really that much of a surprise. Yes. Lady, when you're bats in your hair, I'm smiling. So at any rate, the theory that like this wasn't inevitable and we've been saying blood knights, blood knights, blood knights forever, there was no way they were releasing a new book called Soul Blight Gravelords. Like it just, there was no universe where they stick to a $100 fine casket and be like, this is the thing. No, obviously we were getting a new kit. This just confirms it because they came to the old one good. I can't wait to see how amazing these new blood knights are. See the only question I really have and maybe it's, maybe it's more semantical, but is this replacing LON or is this vampire counts 2.0? In essence, LON felt a little bit like vampire counts, but like, is this really like, that was a beta test. This is what the AOSC version of that truly is. 100% yes. Yeah, this is going to drink LON's milkshake. It drinks it up. Okay, like it is, you're done. Like it's done. This will, they will officially say like the LON Battle Tome is retired. This is the new, this is the replacement. Fine, as a Herald of Death, like as one of the main homers for it, you got to do something and if you do it well, then I won't be angry that you took away LON. That book was already felt outdated when it came out. As we've seen from two recent releases, Miff, I guess you get to roll a die. We'll see what happens. Yeah, I guess so, yeah. Yeah, never mind. Immediately recant. Hope for the best, fear the worst. That's right. Okay. Any other news stuff, it was quite weak because we had such a huge news item in the release thing, right? Which is fine. And the fact it's all 40K stuff building up to pariah nexus. Which, cool. What's for a pick? Yeah, it's fine. Good for them. And I'm sure there are people who are excited. I'm happy for them. All right, so let's just get right to it. Let's go into some pick of the week. All right, so a pick of the week. Miff, what would you like to share with everybody this week? Yeah, see, I'm gonna deviate from my last two times. I'm not gonna tell people to watch or listen to more Wisconsin based podcasts like Cubic shenanigans, The Mortal Realms or playing in slain. I'm not gonna do that. I'm actually gonna put something a little bit more, you know, international on blasts. Rocco Yoboy just started up. He's one of those sort of cross-pollinators. He tends to be in most people's chats, most people's streams. He just started up a YouTube channel. He's kind of doing some instructional style stuff to sort of raise that competitive, well, I don't wanna say competitive, but to raise the sort of like informational water level that players have going into our game. Because we tend to, our players aren't like a hundred percent knowledge base going in. And so he's just some basic, you know, raising of the water level type stuff. And if you want the lore side of stuff, especially tied to Slenash, takeover Mars on YouTube. He just started a channel. He's got a really unique twist on how he delivers his lore. I think it's pretty great. I know Doug's been helping him from two plus tough kind of his intro together. So he's one to watch, especially if you're more lore focused. I think he's got like four videos right now. They're all Slenash stuff. Like he'll go through the lore as you just see like a screen of him playing through like Vermintide or something. So pretty cool, pretty cool. Like a really like a harmony between YouTube lore videos and the Twitch streamer side of things. Very nice. I will link both channels below. Both of them are excellent pillars of the community and I'm more than happy to spoof their stuff. Tom, what about you? Pick of the week. What do you got to share with everybody? Yeah, I'm gonna choose a podcast. I don't know if I would consider them new per se. I mean, they're new-ish within the last couple months. It's Kentucky Fried Wargaming. It's a podcast that's kind of local to our Kentucky folks and they have a good 14 or so episodes under their belt. So they started last November and it's just, it is an enjoyable show. And so I just wanted to throw that one out there. Nice, nice. Are they broadcasting from Harlan County? That is all. No, I do not believe so. Darn, that's a shame. Four seasons into justify, that's my main focus. Apparently all of Kentucky happens. Everything interesting happens in Harlan County as near as I can tell. Clearly. Or sometimes in Lexington, which I agree with that. That is, so that's a perfectly fine city. At any rate, my shout out for this week is gonna go to, my pick of the week is going to go to Mr. Honest Wargamer Rob, who did a wonderful review show with Nathan of the Slanesh Battle Tome. It's great, he gets to one of the most fun parts is when he describes the model to Nathan and then has Nathan guess the points. It provides for hours of entertainment, watching Nathan trying to guess the points in the Slanesh Battle Tome. So, at any rate, check that out. In case people didn't already know that I have played Nathan IRL, he is every bit as awesome in reality. And of course, Rob is a darling, so. Yes, brilliant. Rob is such a darling and such a nice guy, he was able to get Tom a best sports trophy. If there are- No, we tied, we tied like a three for a third, I think to be clear. Do you have a best sports trophy because of you being on a team with Rob? No, like no, because we didn't get trophies for a third. But we were in the running and that's the news item here, is that Rob, we were in the running because Rob- Tom has never been in the running for best sports in any tournament ever, ever, ever. I mean, I don't know. Hey, you guys got my favorite opponent vote once. Wow, that's cool. He has gotten, yeah. Probably the same time, if you're talking about the game I think you're talking about, you guys got mine as well, I would say so, there you go. Because that was a legendarily fantastic game. So, all right, cool. Well gentlemen, let's turn to some hobby time blowing through these quickly because I want to get to the meat of the show. Meph, what have you been working on? You've been working on anything, man? Just a assembly right now, it's a little too cold and I do not have a garage so much as a shed. So like really no priming going on there. Maybe it's time I get an airbrush, I don't know. But a lot of building, a lot of building. It is, it was. Should be like a long time ago. You should purchase an airbrush like a month and days starting this hobby, I fully believe that. All right, all right, yeah. But I've been putting together a lot of Blood Bowl. I got the Blood Bowl season two box. I've got some third party minis that finally came out of a Kickstarter that recently shipped to me. So, a lot of Blood Bowl. Blood Bowl's been just a little, everyone did their sort of hobby lockdown army type thing. Mine was get into Blood Bowl, which is that game that I've liked for 20 years but never played. Sure. So here we are. Nice. So just putting together some stuff. Awesome. Tom, what about you? What's been on the hobby desk? You still digging yourself out of magic cards? Are you actually getting back some more, Hammer? No, no, like I don't know if you can tell. Like my magic card queue is empty. And so like I've been putting some paint on dwarves. Nice. So, yeah, it's been fun. Awesome. That's fantastic. Obviously this whole weekend was very hobby focused for me. I worked on the combined diorama project I did with Sam and Scott and John. And it was a lot of fun. Had a great time with that. We all posted it up and let people guess. I will, I'm not sure when we're gonna tell people what's right or maybe they already did. I have no idea. But it's behind me in this shot somewhere. I don't know if you can see it or not, but it's there, which one was mine. And that was super fun. So I did get that model painted over the weekend as well as getting in multiple games of AOS as well as getting in a couple, so much. We played a D&D game. We got AOS games in. It was a jam-packed, con-filled weekend. But now I'm back to Demon Man here. He's still coming along. Still got a lot of work to do on him, but he's progressing. There you go. Is that whip action going on there? Yeah, he's got this big whip. I mean, it's obviously not painted yet other than I did a little fire I was doing on the end. But yeah, this guy is completely over-designed and insane. It's a nightmare. Look at that tail. Look at all these little spines for no reason. But yeah, so I'm working on not bloodthirster here. And his wings are somewhere else. His wings are over behind me. And I should have probably done all the red together with his wings attached, but I didn't. And now I'll live to regret that. So anyways, but he'll be done soon enough. Okay. Oh, I was very happy too, by the way, Matt, you'll be happy to know that my first game I played this weekend was my Giants against my sons, against Ninjohn's OBR. Okay. We ground some bones to make some bread. That's what I'll say. There was no... Was the tithe paid? I mean, he killed two baby Giants before he was tabled. So I guess that's something. Hey, Nagesh cares not from where it went the bones flow. Well, Nagesh got back at an envelope that said, here's all your stupid bones back. You can have them. So at any rate, that was a very fun game. That's a, it's bad beats. You really don't have the table coverage as OBR to deal with what the Sons of Bahamut are trying to do. It might be the only book you have a strong advantage. It's true, like OBR is Giants best matchup. And I was leading into it. I don't play like a weak taker build. I play a lean in all offense build. And he had big hordes of more tech and I was in Stampa. So all the Giants are hitting for like, three damage with their clubs and six damage head butts and everything's on like neg three rend. So it's not a great day to be a more tech guard. Yeah. Yeah. Every battle to him since that book came out just beats it almost like we deserve the nerf, huh? Sorry. Sorry. No, I, I was But it was a good game. It was a lot of fun. John's an awesome player. And it was really fun to play against him. So it was always good. All right. Gentlemen, with hobby time out of the way, obviously my slanesh stuff isn't here by the way. I'll turn to that eventually here. But now let us turn He shelved it. He's gotten rid of all of his slanesh stuff because of this book. Oh, I just ordered more. Like I, like, No, it's just the standard, the shipping delay here in the US because of the ice storm or whatever. Man, I don't have my stuff yet, which is fine. It gives me a chance to finish up that big demon guy, which by the way, that's pretty uniform. I stopped into my local store today and they were ranting at me to rant about GW because none of their slanesh stuff was in. And I told them, don't worry about it. It's not like you want to play with it anyways. Very funny. Solid. No, I mean, look, I'm not going to blame them for having this ridiculous polar vortex. The storm of the century. Yeah, exactly. Like, there were the two of them. And that's what I said. Yeah, I'm not. Come on, serious. That's like, I'll yell at GW for a lot of things, controlling the weather, not one of them. Yeah, that's not, come on now. Really, like we got to be somewhat realistic here. Like there was a serious issue last week. People were, you know, like people were in a bad way, especially in places like Texas and stuff. Let's not getting your war dollies is kind of not a pie on the priority list. Okay. At any rate. So, here we go. Gentlemen, let's start with an overview from each of you. Meph, what do you think of Slanesh 2021? Okay. See, you should start with my take after someone else's take, so I can sound like a contrarian. Oh, okay. That's fine. We'll do that. No, no, no, I think, like with anything, the negative isn't as negative and the positive isn't as positive. The truth of this book lies in between. Holistically, I think the book is actually pretty smart. I'm not gonna say like awesome, best book ever. It's very smart because I think, and perhaps to the detriment of the book, games workshop listened to a lot of the feedback. Slanesh probably had the most cacophonous roars of NPE and outrage and hatred. We started up conversations of comp all over again because of where Slanesh was and for how long it was there. So I think that they went at this book changing a lot of that stuff in pretty intelligent ways. It's gonna be evident really early on in the allegiance abilities and I think that's where kind of the strength of the book lies is in a lot of like where they went with some of these allegiance abilities. Okay, all right. I also think they got gun shy though and there were opportunities to, when Locust of Diversion was first printed and we were in the height of just acceptance phase, of mourning that the activation wars were here, right? We were just in the acceptance phase. I looked at them and I went, hey, that's actually kind of cool. And inverted activates, like it makes flavorful sense that like you just like luxuriate and like you're, you're just enamored with and yada, yada, yada. The end result wasn't awesome for us because now none of my units are activating, your whole army goes twice before I go. That didn't feel good, but narratively fluff wise that felt pretty interesting. And then they take this, so the new Locust is like, okay, you don't get to pilot. So they approach these things, pretty, like I said, I think intelligently just based on the feedback, but the problem is, whilst communities are really good at sounding the alarm that something's wrong, I don't think they're always great at identifying what is wrong. And to listen to wholesale all the criticisms, probably push the, again, I think they got a little gun shy. But holistically, I do think it is a smart book. Okay, all right, fair enough. Tom, what do you think? I think it's fine. Sure. I mean, I say that as one like... Are you like the dog with the coffee in the house on Firefine or are you legitimately fine? Like, I'm like post-traumatic stress of an abuse survivor from the prior book. Sure. Looking at it go, you know what, they can deal with it. Sure. Like, because the reality is, is that like the book's not fine. And we're going to talk about that, I think tonight a little bit, but it reminds me a lot of KO 2.0 before the points adjustments. Like when I sat down to make lists, this book was painful. Yeah, yeah. It was a difficult, like it was a trying experience building lists. But I think that it just like the KO book, I think all of it could go away. And by go away, I mean a lot of the pain with just some points adjustments. Well, okay. I mean... So I say that to say, I think the book's in a good place. Like, in that you can only go up, but I mean, it's not a complete travesty. It's just going to be painful to play, which, Slanesh, you know, they've been in this world for a while. Their army's been painful to play. I think it's probably better than it was for them. Maybe, but I think that the future's more hopeful. Okay, see, I never want to punish. I don't look at book and balance, and like I don't look at balance as punitive. And I discussed takes like that, that they were great, so they deserve to be bad now. I hate that. And I know, John, obviously, Tom was being sarcastic, but I get it. I know, I know, I know, I know. Yeah, I know, but there are people who legitimately feel that way, and I appreciate you addressing that, yes. But I mean, there's someone in chat, and I'm sorry, the red wizard here, everything in the book needs to be like 20 to 40 points cheaper. Every single War Scroll should just go down. And some of them buy a lot more than 40. Slanecore, oh, sorry. Everything, like, here's the number that I would pitch out, Matt, is that all of the new stuff is 30 to 40% over-costed. Like, okay. Like, I feel really strongly about that number, and I'm gonna come back to that percentage as we evaluate units and their points. Sure. Because I think what we're gonna find is, is if you cut about 30% off, most of those units, 40% off of some of them, you get back to levels where you go, okay, that's just now worth the points. Okay. Yeah, I think those are all good thoughts. I find this book, I want it to open just like I did with The Sons of Behemoth, where I read from the beginning of a tale of two cities. Because I have found this book much the same as I did Sons and much the same as I did KO before it, to be a poorly designed book that's challenging to work with and interpret, that has a deeper foundational set of issues beyond just the power level. I think on the power level, it's probably fine. It's probably in the fat middle, the low fat middle, but whatever it has. It's hanging out with Night Haunt, probably a little bit lower. Yeah, exactly. I mean, so I don't lament that. I think more books should be coming out in that kind of power level. If the game was full of more things that looked like Ogre Glutton's, the game would probably be a much better game overall, right? And to me, Ogre Glutton's ironically, I suppose, given the nature of the model, are almost the definition of a unit sitting squarely in the fat middle, right? The book itself is challenging to read, to write lists. It has very little in the way of design that guides or inspires the player as to exactly what to do. It's frustrating, full of sort of non-bos, and the point situation certainly doesn't help, though it's certainly not the only problem. There are good bones here. The war scrolls are interesting. There are definitely quality scrolls. We're gonna talk about many of them. I think that the foundational elements of the book are not rotten. That is to say, as I talked last week about the difference why I don't count design, I don't count the war scrolls in the design. I see them as two separate elements, right? Because you could play the game with just the war scrolls. The book is an add-on that utilizes the war scrolls to holistically make something more more than the sum of its parts, or that's what it should be doing when done well. So the bones of the scrolls here, I think are good with one highly, highly notable exception we'll discuss that is just probably a trash fire. But the problem is that with these solid bones, we overpriced them and then did fairly uninspiring stuff with them. I agree with your read of Gunsci when I say that the nature of playing this army is that when it felt like they could make interesting choices, they made the sort of mad choice instead. Not necessarily the worst, certainly not the best. It's sort of the rise of Skywalker of books. It's pitching so down the middle as to be and trying to do so many things without any coherent strategy that it feels in the end incoherent. There is a lot of positive, there is a lot of negative and it's hard to disambiguate the design from the competitive, from the points. Like there's so many things pulling in different directions. It's become really, it was very difficult for me to actually formulate my thoughts around this book as someone who's played Slenesh for 15 years, right? Go ahead. I don't wanna interrupt your thoughts here, but I have to wonder the cognitive bias we bring into our game by having experience with it and where Games Workshop's eye is on the new player reading this stuff. Cause clearly we bring bias to this Slenesh book. Everything we're gonna say here has a bias, whether it's the, I'm glad you got nerfed or it's, I love this army, why don't, you know, or something in the middle of the road, you know, what it should be. Like I have to wonder how, if they really wrote this as like a oops, we're sorry, you know, they took risks with that first Slenesh book. I actually like was one of the only people left defending it at the end. You know, like, you know, like they need to nudge some of these, these oppressive abilities in different directions, but like they took, they went in really cool design directions with it. The prairie of these numbers were out of whack, right? Like way out of whack. Sure. The rewarding you for doing the right thing with double rewards was like, you know, I remember seeing the Ciberites Battalion and you know, Slenesh for me is a vacation home, right? This is my beach house. You know, my forever home is death. Like I, you know, I live there, you know, you know. Sure. Nine months of the year. Every now and then I take a trip to the cabin up north, play a piece of chaos. And every now and then I go to the beach house, rock some Slenesh. Like I didn't have that like attach, I don't have that attachment to this, but I still like was defending some of this stuff. And I feel like they could have like what, what is Slenesh, right? Like that's the question you go in when you ask it. And I saw that Ciberites Battalion. I'm like, this is everything I always want. Yeah. I want every, every army to have a battalion like this, zero to three or three to six of your heroes. And they're like, oh, by the way, you already did the thing you already wanted to do. We're going to reward you with it having a good ability and it fits in everything. I'm just like. Yeah. And that's what I say. That's what I mean when I say like, some of the bones here are good. This isn't, you know, the discussion on the internet. Well, they slapped that on the wrist in this book, ironically, one of the things where I'm just like, why is this, this thing is already something I'm going to do. It's already good. And then they reward me for doing it. In this book, they punish you for trying to do it in the place it feels like you want to do it. Well, not like, so can I talk about it? Like, I want to talk about my initial experience. So thank you. I think it's related to this. Sure. Of like picking up the new book and wanting to like, I went into this wanting to build one of these armies. Yeah. Right. You and I talked about what we're doing. Cause the mortals that like, just to get something out of the way, it's not related to the book, but I think we can all three be in agreement here that the new mortal models are like just mind-blowingly good. Yeah. You know, maybe people don't like the twin souls faces or something who cares. That's an easy head swap, right? Like you can have a little minor knits here or there, but on the whole, this new model range, whether we're talking about Sigvald or Glutos or the executioners, the mere bedans, that is to say, whatever, or, or, or, or are fantastic. Okay. Like this is, this is the model release. I always wanted. I have nothing negative about it. I have hated seekers nearly my entire life. I adore these seekers. Yeah. The new exalted seekers are great design. The fact that they have different rules, even better, like justification for them being bigger and different. They're adorable little chocobo monsters that are kind of weird and like, it's great. Like it's, it's, you know, like bliss barb seekers probably like, I hate archers and I hate seekers. And I'm like, this is my favorite sculpt in this range. So I, if someone can do that and make me go back on like, go nearly 30 years of gaming and fantasy and like, like archers are lame and, you know, what the heck is this weird sea lamprey monster? They did something right. The models are stunning. They are. So Tom, I want to go to your, so just, I wanted to get that out of the way because I have nothing to praise for the sculptors and painters and everybody and all of that. As usual, they continue to kill it. And I will be thrilled. I will be ecstatic to paint these models at any rate. Please continue Tom. So I went into this wanting to make this work. And I began digging into the war scrolls and just reading and just searching because I wanted this mortal angle. And the more I read, the more surprised I was at how much all the interesting stuff that used to be in the book was gone. Just hand over fist, like I remember reading Celeste and I was like, oh, I love this guy. And I was like, wait, didn't they have a dual activation ability? Where did that go? And then I got to the epitome and I was like, oh, what about that? Wait, didn't they have re-roll casting? What happened to that? Yeah. And I just realized like the farther I went down the list, the more that all the really interesting design, like what Matt was saying, just disappeared. Yeah. It's all the stuff people were complaining about like that you could re-roll your unbinds with the epitome. Like why does this non-spellcasty army have one of the best unbinders in the game? Like it's a checklist of everything someone complained about just getting scrubbed away. Like this is that sharp edges. I was trying to look, to try to look smarter and look up the name of the person who designed braid. He mentioned this thing when you design a video game or when you design stuff just from a design principles in general, like you wanna leave some sharp edges. You know, something you can make a perfect ball, a perfect sphere, but no one's gonna remember it. Yeah, you can't hold onto it, right? You wanna keep some of those sharp edges so that you can prick your finger on it and then it's memorable. You see that pointing out of it and now this object is interesting. Why is this like this? And I mean, that's, I think that's the greatest offense is when you take it with the sharp edges yourself. I love that Tom turned his camera off and forgot to mute himself, by the way, it's very funny. Fantastic. But I mean, that also coincides with the twos and nines of design where you want that strong emotional response, strong positive, strong negative. You don't want people to be ambivalent. And being boring, one of my literature professors, you like being boring is the worst insult you can give a writer, that their story was boring. And that might be the worst insult you could give a designer of a game to, is that it was boring. Yeah, and ultimately when I read this, Tom, when I think about how I would approach this as a new person, I don't know what they're grabbing onto here. Like if the models grab you, great, fine, good. And that's what does a lot of heavy lifting. Let's not fool ourselves here, right? That models don't do a ton of heavy lifting in our interest in an army. Like a duh, okay. But at the same time, when I think of like trying to be a newer person in this game, there's no universe where I'd recommend Slenesh to a new player. Not as their first, not even as their second army. Like this is maybe like this and LRL or like third armies. The skill floor. Their movements seems to be solved. Yeah, on like trying to put together an army here that doesn't just get like flat lined off the table accidentally in a match. I'm not talking about like some competitive nonsense. You're going up against, you know, tooled up top five lists. I'm just saying like, you face a mid-tier's bone splitter list and they're gonna accidentally table you. Like they didn't even know what happened. They just somehow blew you your 80 wounds off the table. I mean, it's a very finesse, finesse army. Like, and like you said, like, you know, this is a third army, you know, you know, maybe I'm very selfish in my in how I'm looking at the book because I'm like, I know how to make this work. Right? Like I know how to work this. You know, I know how to like do some stuff with this. And I know what I would do with this. But like it is that finesse army, but it's that finesse army that's just like one, one trip from getting just jawed, you know, and going down like it's, you know, you can be Bruce Lee, but, you know, if you just get like grappled by like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, you're probably toast. Sure, very nice. All right, gentlemen, shall we get into it? Shall we get into the meat of this? Shall we really, shall we gorge ourselves gluto style on this, on this army? And it wasn't really a question. It was redundant. Yes, we're doing that. Okay, here we go. Do you have anything special prepared that maybe like some sort of- Why I- So cute. Like some sort of- Why, what is this? But a presentation ready to go. Oh, tuck in folks. I got a lot of slides. Okay. This is why you brought me on to make an already long running episode even longer to really hammer home the point. I'm not going to lie and say I didn't try to get extra sleep last night because I knew I wasn't going to sleep at all tonight because we're going to have a long show. This is what it is. Okay. All right, here we go. He knights us the niche, 2021. Okay. Let's start out with our army overview as the feed catches up to me shifting around between display mode and all of that. All right. So, okay, so army overview. This is how I would summarize this army. I'm keen for your feedback gentlemen. I think this is a complex skirmish army with low defense summoning and mobility. Low defense, summoning, I suppose I should have Oxford Comma that and mobility. Always Oxford Comma. Yeah, I didn't in this case, but I apologize. Like this is putting together a lot of slides. I didn't really have time to go through and, you know, grammar it. Anyways, strengths, medium, fast mobility. Not the fastest army around, which is sad. There are a lot of much more faster armies, but it's fast. It doesn't fly, right? Right, it doesn't fly. You've got a lot of slow parts of the army trying to weigh it down, especially in your characters. You know, you've got a lot of 14 inch movement, which is good, but we're not talking about like, we're not talking about IDK or iron jaws, or even or beasts or even Nurgle. There is no unit in this book as fast as the fastest unit in Nurgle. Something about that feels ethically wrong to me, but it is medium, fast mobility. You do have a decent amount of mobility, certainly. Powerful, but limited summoning. We'll get into that. Pile in tricks. Pile in tricks for days. I'm trying to decide when I want to make this joke, so I'm just gonna say it now, which is that the best way to play this army would make Cardi B jealous by driving a giant Mack truck into the tiny little garage of the rules loophole of the six inch pile in trick. It simply like the amount we're gonna have to talk about this is more than I ever want to talk about a rules loophole. And yet it is one of the truly three major strengths of this army. And two of the three sub factions are decent enough in that they have a lower cost. They're also fairly uninspiring, but at least they don't weigh you down with too much of a cost. So that's something. They punish you in a weird way. Like the way they approach battalions will get into it. It's just such a weird, it's such a weird limiter. Why, I guess. Yeah, weaknesses, high points cost, fragile units that comes with a star, because there is this weird anvil build we'll talk about later that doesn't actually, I think have any gas in the engine, but you can do it. Low synergies, poor battle line, maybe the worst battle line they've ever published in a book so far. And that's saying something. Weak magic, weak to shooting, no high-rend, still an NPE army, though better. To be very clear about my feeling on this, this is a more fun army to play and a more fun army to play against than its old version. But that's like saying that dying by the guillotine is better than dying by VX gas. That is true, probably technically, but in the end you're still dead. So not as bad NPE is still NPE, though it is better and your opponent will not hate you and wanna never play you again. They'll just be somewhat frustrated, which is different. So there you go. Anything I missed, gentlemen, or any thoughts you have to add to the overall strength and weaknesses, the overview? I like the caveat on the summoning. It is good summoning, but this is where you're getting the hot takes on both sides. It's OP, it's not, it's very good summoning. It has one very important limiter on it and that really for me, this is what good summoning looks like, honestly. This is what good summoning looks like. And I guess some people just take issue with that. Sure. No good summoning should exist at all. Yep, that's cool, right on. Yep, I agree. Summoning's really tricky as we'll get into. I think that much like, and Meph, you and I have talked about this a lot, right? Like when they made giants, the first decision they made was like, we're gonna have this ridiculous objective taking rule and then the whole army suffered because of it, right? And I think with Slenesh they said, we're gonna have this pretty decent summoning, right? But now the whole army's gotta pay for that, right? And the summoning actually isn't enough to dig you out of the hole you're already in, but we'll get into it as we get through the discussion, right? Right, that limited part in the PowerPoint is very significant. It's powerful, but it is limited. This is not what OP looks like. We've seen what OP summoning looks like. Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, like. You're not replacing your whole army turn two. That's not happening. No, I mean, exactly. Yeah, we'll get into the summoning, but I mean, what I'll say is it's intimidating when you say, hey, there's the realistic chance that you could get three keepers of secrets in a game. Like if you fiddled for that, you could probably get to something like that, right? But the problem is at that point, it doesn't matter, you're dead. Three units over the turn of a game, over the course of a game, do not dig you out, especially three models like that, right? Are not gonna dig you out of losing when you're already on the back foot. Well, and that's the thing is like, you've got your wind stroke or your path to victory sitting here pointing you left and to go for the big energy summoning strat, it points you right. Yeah. And so it's just not, I don't like the doomsaing going on about the summoning. I'm like, this is fine. No, exactly, it's part of the strat, certainly, but it's not, I think they overvalued it would be my argument when they were looking at the strat. I agree, I agree. I can do that, I agree. All right, cool, cool beans. Let's talk points. Once again, courtesy of our good friend, AOS coach. If you haven't checked him out, go check out the coach. He's great and we love him. And he was nice enough to provide me this wonderful graphic, so I didn't have to make one, which I appreciate. Thank you, coach. So remember last week when we looked at the dock slide and it was like all green arrows of just stuff inexplicably dropping like a rock. Yeah. Well, here we are. I mean, you could just, you could just make this the show and just leave this up for six hours. You could like, we could, like. I mean. We did it, folks. I got him to laugh. Yeah, that's good. It's really good, Meph. I liked that a lot. Yeah, I mean, you're right. We could spend days on this. Now, the thing with points that I want to preface everything with is like if points were the only thing wrong, then like who really cares? Is my honest answer, okay? Because points are like the easiest thing to fix. Like you can, they can fix those anytime. Like twice a year, they fix those. Literally twice a year, they fix them, right? So if points are the only thing that's wrong, then who cares? Like it's not a big problem. Nonetheless, it's fairly insulting to have this come out and just have like these ridiculous points jumps for like no conceivable reason. The couple that all of the Bladebringer chariots going, shooting up in points like 20, 30 points is ridiculous. The Hellstriders, which are like never impressive and are certainly not now and are just like regular chaff-cab, like the equivalent of Marauder Horseman. The fact that those shot up 40 and 50 points respectively, that is bonkers points adjustments. Like in what universe? Seekers and seeker chariots? What? Like these- It's fine. None of these things showed up in lists, none of them. And I have so many of them from like the stuff people are just handing me from the boxes they don't want. Yes, they put out a box set with a bunch of this stuff in it and then just like went, ha-ha, boom. On the bright side, your investment into that dual box set, there was a lot more points you were buying in that box set than you thought you were. So that's nice. Hey, there you go. Yeah, no, there's the- Silver lining. Silver lining, yeah, there we go. The only thing I have to add to this is the mask did nothing wrong. The mask did nothing wrong. She's so great and wonderful and we all love her. And it's Garbo that she went up at all. It's whatever. Now, this is gonna be combined with the fact, by the way, like so all these existing points shot up and spoiler alert, the new units were not pointed aggressively, okay? They were quite in the opposite. So, yeah. Anything else you wanna say on this? Like it's inexplicable. The entire points situation in the book is inexplicable. There is no justification for this. This is not because of the summoning. The summoning does not buy enough to counter this. That is not how this works. Like, plenty of armies have summoning or model restoration or anything like that. And they aren't paying this insane premium. When we get to the slide where it talks about the wounds to point ratio, it is so off kilter compared to every other army. Like we aren't even in the ballpark. I mean, these are OBR points without OBR resilience or murder. Yeah. Like, I mean, Daemonette's being 20 points off of more tech guard is like the most comical comparison ever, right? Right. Yeah. This isn't saying like, oh, Sarah Bone Reapers need to be more expensive. This is saying this stuff is too expensive, you know? Yes. Yeah, I mean, I don't have the up arrow next to Daemonette, but that is a good point that they also did lose their Horde bonus. So, which is fine. I don't generally like Horde bonuses anyways. I would like them to actually be reserved for like Horde-y things. Like things that are truly. Yeah, goblins and, you know, like whatever stuff. Planned rats. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. But whatever. Inexplicable, unjustifiable, fix this immediately. Like, they should fix this in the FAQ they publish for this book a month from now. That they just come out with an entirely new point sheet. It's like, oops, all varies. Sorry. Okay, that's how wrong it is. I mean, it does come to, there was a question asked earlier on something along the lines. Do you think some of the like the strong reaction on the other side, like more towards like your side of the reaction is that they did release a book that wasn't, you know, peak competitive power level, like that they did release something in the middle? I don't want that. I really don't want that. And it's not, my primary complaint, and I will repeat this 50 times, is not the competitiveness of the army. Yes, it's lower than it should be, but it's not that far off. I want middle tier, middle power books. I don't care that there are five bad boys tearing up the entire meta right now, being bad actors. That doesn't mean we should publish more bad actors. My mama taught me that two wrongs don't make a right. Okay, I want more middle books, not that. All right, my problem with the book is when they make choices like this and then have all of this underwhelming design to combine it with, right? That's why I created that, that quadrant map last week. And we'll, we'll get to that at the end of the show. Right, because my disappointment is less with, with, we'll see as we get into it, right? There's so much more to unpack than just like, oh, it's not powerful. Like, I don't care. I don't play a lot of powerful armies. You know what I mean? Like that's not, I... See, I personally always want to be that second tier of power, the one you don't expect. Like I always want to live in that space where like... Yeah. Unfortunately things I love end up being powerful because I love power at any cost. No, like I want to live in that sort of, that second tier, right? Like not S tier, A tier, low A tier. That's where I like to live personally with armies I play. You know, we're looking BC tier here. Yeah, exactly. I'm fine being in the middle. If I've got models I love and rules that make me, that let me feel like I'm expressing the army in a way that is fulfilling to me and what I feel like the army should be, if the army has an identity and I'm able to express that, you know, sort of win or lose, right? Then I'm generally happy, right? Like when I lose with my iron jaws, I still have a heck of a lot of fun because when I get my iron jaws, I'm like, oh, well, the point of this army is to go smash and bash people. And guess what? That's what's going to happen. You know, like regardless, win, I might lose, but I did some smashing. I did some bashing. We checked both the boxes. Game was a success. Okay. So I guess, what is Slenash's identity that has such a dissonance for you? I have no idea. And I don't think the writers of this book really know either. Okay, all right, cool. Because a skirmish finesse army, like that kind of a thing, right? In AOS, you have to either be, like if you're going to play a skirmishy mobile thing, you've got to either be able to stand still and take the hit, because ultimately this is a game about going to a place and standing on a thing or going to a place and killing the people that are currently standing on the thing, right? So like arguably the ways to win are, A, you can be tough enough to take the hit and stand. B, you can hit hard enough to remove the people. C, you can do those slightly less, but also be fast, right? Or D, you can project power in some way that you don't have to move over there, but you can handle the necessary threats and then move over with weak things that can't take a punch, right? Like those are kind of your four venues. This doesn't do any of those, right? It's sort of way that you would build this naturally. Okay, okay. That's a problem. Now, what it does do, now you can get there if you 2.9 people, like left and right. And that's what this game is. This book should be called 2.9 The Battletome. It's all 2.9ing people. We'll talk about that later. Okay. All right. If you don't know what I mean yet, don't worry, you will soon. See, that's a nice tease as they say. Vince loves a jank. That's what I wanna do. I wanna just rules, loophole my way to victories all day long. Yeah, like if they were not intending to design a battle tone that incentivized bad in PE, they fail because what's happened is is the incentive structure, the new incentive structure incentivizes these bad experiences. Yeah. Yep. Well, I mean, just, I'm gonna forget it by the time we get to the, you know the six hours the show deserves. The finesse thing that you just described is retreat and charge. That's what this army needs to just do across the entirety of it, you know? Some sort of play with the retreat and charge. Run and retreat and charge, yes. Like all of those should be doing constantly, right? The army should be like incredibly mobile, like running fast. I don't care about the no-fly thing. We never had Celestia. Yeah, no, don't have fly. Yeah. Yeah, no-fly is fine. I'm not asking for some weird, suddenly Celest units grow wings. Like it's not what I want. You're just this churning blender, this dance, this ballet of murder. And that's what it, right? And like they don't get that. Yeah, so. I'd kill for a Keltner up in here. Anyways, okay. So, let's talk about the basic allegiance ability, shall we guys? Because I mean, I think these are actually, for the most part, better than they were. Not as good as they could be, but that's the story of life, I suppose. Locust of diversion. So obviously, Old Locust was pure toxic trash, period. Yep. Okay. It was one of the worst pieces of design that has ever been introduced into the game. And I'm glad it was uninvented. New Locust, seems milder, seems different. There's so much to unpack here. So first of all, it's now a one inch range. That's so important. If it wasn't, if that had gotten through with like the old sixth entry, even a three inch range, it would be so stupidly NPE, it'd be hard for people to wrap their head around. It would be worse than the Old Locust in some cases. Yes, that's true. Where Locust goes off, importantly, is the end of the charge phase. And this is critical for that one inch. It's saying you have, you know, obviously you've got to end that one inch charge. But if stuff was like arbitrarily just standing outside of, you know, that four inches, right? Like, I'm gonna Locust you. Sure, sure, sure. Even if it was three inches, so you technically had to be in combat. Yeah, sure. Even if it was three, so you technically had to be in combat, I'm telling you it would be the worst. But like a true nightmare. Well, I'll show you a visual later. At any rate, one inch range, it's a four plus, three plus for greater demons you can't pile in. Simple enough to explain, right? Great. This is going to do absolutely nothing apart of the time. Namely, if you're fighting any type of monster or monster hero or single model type of situation, right? Like there it does literally nothing. You don't even roll the die. It's irrelevant, right? I mean, in 95% of the cases you're fighting a single model. If they're trying to like Tokyo drift around you into one of your units, sure. Okay. But like if we're just talking mono, mono, right? Or whatever the appropriate word is for a slanesh demon, mono, a slaneshi. It's, it does nothing. If we're talking about like 40 blocks where you clip them and stop them from piling in. It's huge, you're betting your game plan on a four up or three up roll. And boy is that going to be the opposite of fun for your enemy, okay? Who now literally just has their unit and goes, well, fight with that one guy on the end. Cause of course I'm going to charge you on the corner. Yeah. I'm going to, that's where that finesse comes in. But, but here's the thing. We always think about like counter play starting at the dice roll, counter play starts at deployment. I'm just like with my more tech guard, for instance, you're going to be looking for that corner. Yeah. Yeah. The compensate against that. Yeah, sure. No, I mean, I'm not going to get maximum coverage. Deploy in a circle against slanesh and you stop that nonsense. Yeah. Things that don't care about locusts, shooting units, units that charge you, single heroes, small footprint units that are set up correctly, like three pigs or something that happen to have reach, units with reach, and again, units in sort of circles or bubbles that are able to still largely get some number of models in, chaff units where it doesn't matter, you were going to kill them anyways, you know, so like just, there's a lot of things where the locusts might as well have not been rolled. Like in the, I've gotten three games in and in one of my games, I failed every locusts roll the whole game, just everyone. I never got the four plus. That's how four of the single diet rolls go. Sure. Right. Here's the thing, it didn't matter. Never once did I go, you know, oh darn, it just, it just didn't matter. It was like, okay, I failed the locusts. It's a single allegiance ability and it feels like it's doing what they want to do. It just feels like it's missing another component, like a retreat and charge and stuff like that. Like now you're not getting piled in against when you're fighting that horde. It's helping you against the horde units. Really, that's... Right. Yeah, that's kind of it. And I'll tell you right now, I would have much rather had, as I mentioned, my locusts of swiftness or something that just gave you like a super long charge or whatever. Like I get that there's, this is the meh of all worlds. Limeness would be very disheartened at this. So like this right here disproves his entire philosophical theory. I did it anyway, moving on. Tom, anything else on locusts? Did I miss anything? Nope, it's fine. Yeah, sure. Exactly. It's meh, right? It's like, it's not bad, not good. Sometimes it'll have a big effect and make people very angry. A lot of times it'll do nothing. It's fine. It's one of legion's ability. I'm not building my army around locusts, but like... Totally. I like that I have a finesse option for the mask and SIGVOLT, right? Yeah, sure, sure. I think the greatest crime locusts committed is SIGVOLT doesn't get it, right? Yes, correct. SIGVOLT can't do this. I was just about to... I was basically, yeah, Ellie's self-reducing on that one. The greatest crime locusts commits is SIGVOLT doesn't have the demon keyword. Totally agreed. Euphoric Killers is basically the same as it was with one very major change depending on how you played this army. Euphoric Killers is still sixes to hit, double tap, or triple tap if you're 20 or more models, which is a hilarious joke, since there is basically one unit in this army you would ever take at 20 models. And even that's pretty bad. But now it is Heed Dites only, not Slinesh only. It is only in melee. It is not in range, so it only feeds melee attacks. That is very important to note, because that means all your shooting units don't benefit from it when they are going pew-pew. And now your slaves to darkness that are in here, or your beasts of chaos in the grave, true. Did nothing wrong. Who did nothing wrong, do not get this bonus. Okay. If I can be salty one minute, I'm trying, like I have a more positive outlook on this book than I think you do. Yeah, yeah. But my great saltiness comes from, like my gateway into Slinesh was beast of chaos to pray of drove. Like 420 blaze it the fastest, murderous thing. Bestigores were one of those war scrolls that I love, but like you look at its army and you're like, this doesn't do anything here. And then you bring it over somewhere else and it's awesome. The thing that bothers me about the Heed and Dites keyword switch is I know that they're punishing marauders. Like you know it, that was what they were doing. And when they punish somebody innocent to like hurt the problem, like the problem isn't this, is it this ability? Chaos war is getting double taps were not the problem. Right, like that's not the problem. Like the problem is them, like change them. And they're like, we're just gonna make a whole allegiance ability worse just in case other stuff tries to abuse this. By the way, it also pushes to pray of drove, which I still think has play in Slinesh into the not fun way of playing it, which is as a summoning engine. I wanted to go screaming across the table with bestagore supported by like a keeper of secrets that I've bashed with a Saigor or Gorgon. So I have a good profile for my Gorgon, right? Like instead of a bad one and just goes screaming across the table, say this game is gonna end turn three one way or another. Either you're gonna blow me up or I'm gonna blow you up but we're gonna have fun and then we're gonna like laugh about it at the end. And they said I don't get to do that anymore. And I take personal offense to that. One shall stand, one shall fall. Set your screens good, roll well. On your armor saves, like let's go. Yeah, and then importantly, feast of depravities. Let's get through this real quick here. You gain one depravity point at the end of the battle shock phase for each unit on the board, which contains any models that are wounded or has had a model slain. That's not exactly the text, but it's close enough. It does not grant any depravity if the unit is destroyed. It counts all units, both friend and enemy. You can also gain bonus points from the various hosts. That is to say invaders, pretenders and god seekers. And then you summon at the end of your movement phase. So the values go from six for 10 daemonettes up to 12 for the kipper or 30 daemonettes. Because you are basically, like if you take first turn, if you get forced to take first turn, you will never have depravity on your turn, right? So you're not summoning your first turn. And even if you go at the bottom of one, it's fairly unlikely you're gonna have enough to summon like crazy unless the opponent is just pretty dumb and kind of just throws scatters wounds around your whole army for no apparent reason. They throw a pendulum through your whole army. Yeah, like if they intentionally like do something dumb that just jacks your depravity up, then maybe you could summon one. But effectively you're not summoning turn one. So effectively you're gonna start this engine in turn two. You probably have it for turn two and three. And let's be honest, most games are cited by turn four. Right, and this is that important stipulation at the very beginning. Powerful, but I would say manageable summoning. Yes, you are limited to one summon per turn now. From a hero or a fame. Or the fame, yeah. You used to be able to chain summon with SNESH. If you could pay the price, you could, you know, pop, pop, pop, you could no longer do that. Yeah, yeah, they, they, they, I think this is, this is cool. If an army's to have like just like sweet thematic summoning, they inflict pain, they take pain and they summon stuff because reality warps as like, you know, the veil gets weak from all this pain and excess going on. This is a good way of doing it. And I actually, this is one of those things where like, we were about to disagree and luckily I don't have to. I actually think that the way they handle the end of battle shock phase is interesting design. We don't play a lot. I think it's cool. I don't know. We don't play a lot with like the battle shock phase. This is a really cool like almost shifting the battle shock phase into the cleanup phase. And the way they did it where they said, look at the units on the table. Did anything lose anything this turn and it's still there. Boom, depravity. It's super clean. I actually really like that design. I really do. I think that this- Thematic by the way, Meph, just to real quick, hit you back. You realize that it's literally the exact opposite of corn, right? Yeah, it's cool. Because corns gives you tithe for units that have been completely wiped out. Yeah, this only gives you DP if the unit has been wounded but remains, right? Yeah, right. So that's cool. I actually like quite thematically enjoy that mirror. I don't know if that was intentional. Like I don't know if anybody ever had that thought intentionally or if they were just kind of backed into this rule set. But there you go. I mean, slanesh summoning is just, you're just making sure that the pools have been scraped and buttered, right? Like it's, this is, I think of their alleged abilities. This is the best designed one. It really is. And this is why I take offense to people complaining about the summoning. I'm like, it's literally the only one that's like designed through and through the best. It's, heroes like is where you summon from within nine. So you can still, you can still block people out from summoning, right? You crowd a hero. You crowd summoning. Yeah, we did 12, nine away from the enemies, yeah. Yeah, it's the same stuff. And then the fame so that as a, so you look at this from both angles from, you're playing against me and I'm playing you, right? Even if you KO, snipe every one of my heroes on the whole table, I can still use my toys. I get to play with my toys. So I can still summon from the fame. Yeah. I mean, you don't, if they park a boat next to the fame. Sure. Or they park on top of the fame and now it's shut off and they've completely shut off my army. But theoretically I've forced them to move out of position where I've placed my fame. Yeah. The, I'm okay with the change to Feast of Debravades. It's fine. It's as I said, powerful but limited summoning. I stand behind it. This is definitely much improved over its old version. Like, you know, credit where credits do. It's probably still not the best version of this, but it is certainly a better version of this than it was. Yeah. I agree that it's better. Let me, let me get one more. Let me, like, please, I want your point, Tom. But what I want to say is, quick note to all the Slenesh players out there, get yourself some little tokens or markers, okay? Because after turn one, when like units, when you go from units, not being wounded at all in the game to marking them the first time, it's really easy to, in battle shock, go like, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, right? And count. Turn two on. It actually becomes really hard to remember. Wait, there's what, that unit says it's got three wounds on. How many models did you have at the start? Is that, was that, did we lose a model there? Did that go from two wounds to three wounds? So I just started using little tokens to like, whenever I wounded a unit, I'd be like, they are depraved. And I'd put my little token next to that unit. And it became easy because then at the end of the phase, I just counted all the little tokens and picked them up, so. But also that social gaming's occurring that makes Aegis Sigmar, you're like, you've been depraved. Yeah, exactly. And you put on white gloves to put the token down next to the unit? Of course. Yeah, so just a little gay mate, I use a little work right tokens. I found them very, very helpful and it made it much easier to play. So that's just a note to make your life easier. Okay, please, Tom, go ahead. What I would say is that the, like, what the new depravity system does, it is, it incentivizes you to not kill things. Yes. Oh yeah, we're gonna get into that because 100%, yeah, please, but go run on this. So I don't know, like, I know that you guys have said that it, like, so what it ends up doing is, it feels like it's a trap ultimately. Sure, to focus, I agree, yep. Because the incentive structures are either this, don't kill the enemy and you might get some, you might get some more depravity or you'll get some to maybe summon something to throw a nine to try to charge after a summon. Sure. Or summon or rather, or kill the unit and you don't actually get to use your mechanic. Right. I don't think that's bad though. That's one of those things that you say it, like either excited or not excited. It's a risk reward thing. It's like the advantage of removing your unit off the table is known to me, period. It's good for that thing to be gone. Sure. But it is a negative thing. I don't get to do the thing that everyone automatically uses NPE and OP to just summon crap because I decided that I should kill it rather than like edge it. Like, cool. Like, cool. All I will say is like, buy a flaming skull though, because. Sure, sure. It creates a weird, I think what Tom's putting his finger on and it is interesting because this is one of those things where design has both good and bad mechanics to it, right? Like every, or elements to it. Every piece of design is a double edge blade, right? Yes. And we've talked about this so much on the show. And I agree with you, Tom, because what it creates is cross incentives, right? The first wound you do to any unit is like, yes, they're depraved and you're going to get a point off that. Every unit you do beyond, every wound you do beyond that is like kind of wasted. And if you kill the unit, you're like, oh, my depravity went away, right? So it's this weird cross incentive. And I think it, you know, the thing I've been saying is if you farm depravity, you're losing. You can either farm depravity or win the game, but you can't do both. Yes. And ultimately what it feels like is it's the opposite mechanic of court in the truest sense because they get a consolation prize for losing. Or a plus prize for winning, right? When they kill an enemy model, yeah. Or a plus prize for winning. You're already winning too hard, here's more. Yeah, yeah. Right, like yes, like yes, they get win plus. They get win and also win lose. Sure. First, you get to either win or lose. Right, yeah, psychologically. And yes, I understand a lot of people in the comments said, you know, the difference is blood type dumps when you use it. I'm aware of that. And I've said before, we've talked before about that. I meant only in the way you gain the points. It's a mirror. This may as well dump anyways because you can only use it once per turn. Once per turn, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I'll say it's nice. The carryover doesn't matter because then, because as the unit, as the game goes on, there's just less units on the board. You might just need a screen right now. It's tactical that way. Like I like, I like having a summon board and be like, okay, I can't get the keeper right now, but I'm going to be able to get the keeper next turn. But right now what I need is a screen. So like, psh, like here's 10 day minutes, right? Like, and knowing I'm not reset to zero to play tactically in the moment as opposed to bet the house. Yeah, I've seen a lot of people talking about like, oh, you know, you take all the archers and you pepper wounds around, right? And you can farm to gravity. And I'm like, how are you winning the game? And I'm like, that's not doing anything. Like, great, congratulations. You farmed a bunch of stuff and in turn two and three are in a summoning unit. Unfortunately, your army is getting slapped by their entire force. You killed my... Yeah, you've been spending your time peppering wounds and not killing anything. They've been spending their time destroying you and taking objectives. Yeah, I've been moving around the table. You took care of the ablative wounds that I already buy into my units. And I'm still at max killing potential because you didn't want to kill them. You just want to be like, yeah, I've got all the depravity possible. This is a terrible strategy. By the way, as a death player, I'm just like scoffing and laughing at you doing three wounds. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Playing death is a nightmare. Wow, okay, cool. You did three wounds. Yep, there's three more tech guard or there's 11 skeletons back. Do you feel good about yourself? Yeah. By the way, I just, I put those 11 skeletons on the front of my unit. So you gave me movement too. Great strategy. Great. Yeah, like I just ultimately like it bothers me because what it means is that, yes, it is an alternative prize for if you fail to kill a unit. But it just doesn't feel like you're like, but your allegiance ability is like a, it's like, if you're not utilizing your allegiance ability then you're functionally don't have one. Yeah, it feels like, it feels like when you're with, okay, when I play slaves and I have the general aura, right? Like let's just, let's just take this into another army position, right? Another chaos army. When I have the big general aura and I'm into spoilers and I have like the 18 inch aura around my demon friends, I'm trying to like maximize the number of units that are in that aura, right? Cause I want the re-roll ones to hit and the plus one to wound on everybody possible so I can go get to killing, right? When I'm aura of corn, yeah? Like it is an easy mechanic to lean into. It's there, it's good. You read it and you're like, yes, I want to do this as much as possible, right? And that's how most allegiance abilities work. With this, if you over lean into it, you lose, right? Like you made your army weaker. You did things that are not winning the game and that's weird, right? That's the tension. And like some tension in that kind of space can be interesting, but it's a really careful line to walk, right? So yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%. I get you. But if you're playing the game as it goes, like it's functioning as intended. I mean, it really... Yeah, I think the answer is just never try to farm TP. Like just let it happen, right? Right, let it happen. Like you're gonna gain some bonus stuff from depending on how you pick your... Yeah, maybe you take like an endless spell or something so you can get... Yeah, you can like tap it when you need it, you know, like emergency button. But like this is not the you go depravedro by all the on-gore so that you can run the flaming skull through them and so I'm gonna keep her turned too. Ooh! You know, like... Right, right, right. Or 30 daemonettes because you need some extra board coverage because you just blew up your own troops doing it, like... Yeah, I don't have the list in here, but we'll talk about a funny list later. What happened when we get to the list section? I didn't actually put it in here, or we can talk about it just in the summary after that. All right, so now gentlemen, let's talk about sub-factions, shall we? All right, sub-factions. So, time stamping this. Oh, geez, nope, that time is way wrong. Okay, so... 16 sub-factions. All right, time stamped. There we go. Okay. So, all right, invaders. Three generals, only one command trait. Can't use a command trait or a command ability within 12 inches of any other general. You get one DP for being an enemy territory, D3 if all three generals are in. Your command traits that are of value in my mind are glory hog, which is one CP if any enemy units were destroyed, which is a nonbow with depravity, right? Or it's a consolation prize. Sure, I just feel like calling out that once again. There's a lot of nonbows in this book. This is like nonbow. 2.9 the nonbow, slanesh 2021. It'd be a contingency plan to the other bad combo. Sure, and then also skin taker, heal D3 at the end of combat if you slayed an enemy model. Can also work against your DP by healing you out of damage if you took only minor damage, right? So both of the good command traits in here work against your allegiance ability, which is funny, but whatever, they both are okay. The artifacts, the rod of misrule on a 2 plus, you basically gain a bonus CP. It's a little more complicated than that, but what does nonbow mean? It means it's the opposite of a combo. A combo is something that's good together. A nonbow is something that doesn't work together. It's an old magic term, right? Like for cards that you put them together, they just literally did nothing and cancel each other out. So it is a nonbow, like the opposite of a combo. It's bad, not good. Noncombo, yes, not a combo. And then the icon of infinite access, one of the few good synergy buff things you can do in this whole book, but it's only once a game, so whatever, but that's fine, it's still okay. Once a game, you can get plus one to hit rolls for melee, holy within 12 during the combat phase, which is good, because it doesn't buff enemies anymore. So that's kind of cool, and it's a relatively decent size, but yeah. We'll talk about what invaders is good at in a moment. Did you guys have any of, before we get into a good at, did you guys have any other thoughts on the command traits or artifacts? Slide aside, there are so many command traits and artifacts and things in this book that are so painful to read. I don't even know how somebody wrote them in good conscience, because it's like, once a game, when a hero's within three inches, you can roll 2D6, and then if it's over their bravery, then they get an egg one to hit. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, if you have the same number of demon units within 18 inches as mortal units within 18 inches, you get re-roll ones to hit. Yeah, yeah, I understand what you're saying. Realistic folks. In the command traits and artifacts, there's so many things that are literally caveated like three times, like only against heroes, and you gotta make a bravery check, and it's just, it's really painful. Now your words are very KO-ish. Just when I do like homebrew for Dungeons and Dragons, which we don't talk about, or like when I was developing my own game that got torpedoed in the end, anytime I found myself writing that, anytime I found myself writing that many qualifiers, I threw out the rule. Every single, like I would go back and be like, if you have that many qualifiers to a situation, the rule is bad. Every time you add an if-them to the sequence, and our programmer friends might know this, you risk problems. Like that granularity is unnecessary. It is simply unnecessary. In a game played like ours, it already takes us three hours. Yeah, yeah. You don't. It's insane. It is insane. So many of the artifacts in command traits work like that. They're not even like, they're just not even worth discussing. They're so patently obviously terrible. I don't even know what to, I don't even know what to do with them. The, I think the only other caveat I have for this is, I mean, this is a shout out to my boy, Heywo, who recently heard the term double genies. Invaders is triple genies. So if he was, if he enjoyed double genies. He'll love triple genies. Triple genies. Tripp Genes. Yes, by the way, to answer Red Wizards question, it has always been that you can have up to three, which is an important point. Sometimes you don't actually want to nominate three generals. I've seen lists with where they're only used to for various and sundry purposes. So. And I actually like this thing, CP Gen. Invaders, you take invaders, you're CP hungry army, especially since keepers can't tap themselves anymore for their command ability. Oh yeah, we'll get there. So they need something else to turn on, which is one of those like sort of, I think one of those things that Tom was talking about where like you start to build a list and you're like, I just want this like, this keeper is going to be my like hero hunter. It's even more evident in the next, the next sub allegiance when you're like, this is my, this is my hero. This is my like, my mega, my mega hero slayer general. And you're like, oh, it can't even use its own command ability on it. So it's got to have like, like a unit of derps in tow. Like, come on. All right. So invaders, what does it do well? This is my favorite sub faction always was. I always thought it was better than God seekers. I stand behind that. And I think it is still my favorite. I think it's probably equal with God seekers now. Glory hog is great. I love glory hog. Yeah. So what invaders does well is give me fuel, give me fire, give me that, which I desire, which is all the CP's I want. Okay. I want to, so the reason it's good for keeper heavy armies, is you got to run keepers as twins now. They, they're either zero or two. It should like, they should just be, if you try to add one to your army, a pop-up should happen on war scroll builder that says like, are you sure? Okay. Do you want it? Would you like to add another keeper? You know, like when you order from like DoorDash or something and they're like, here's the popular items that people who ordered, what you ordered also ordered, right? There should be a similar pop-up in war scroll builder when you only add one keeper to your army. That's like, people that built this army usually included another keeper. So like, it's good for keeper heavy armies because you need a tremendous amount of CP to run the offensive army. Like if you want to play this as an offensive army, which is how I want to play it. Yes. Okay. Not as some nimbly, bimbly dance around, do no damage and hope to gain points until I die army. All right. I'm not interested in, in like this death ballet. I didn't buy six keepers of secrets, not to use keepers of secrets. Okay. Do you want flesh-eater courts, like the chaos edition? Look, I want to be able to go smash people. Okay. Like three smash bats, three keepers, let's go. I got into slainesh to smash, quote, Vince 2021. Okay. So if you're going to do that, you have to have all your units fighting twice because units are woefully underpowered. Okay. They, yes, I'll, yes, Atilia, I'll explain why it's zero or two when you get to the Keeper of Secrets School. The, your units are so woefully underpowered on offense and how hard they hit. This is like tickle fight the army, right? That the only way you make up for that is by having the entire army fight twice. Okay. I will also say the fighting twice is a lot less painful now without the old locus. Like by that, I mean painful for your opponent. It feels more fair because it's like you fight and then they get to fight, right? And they're going to attack your other thing that hasn't gone yet and then you're going to fight and then you'll go again, right? And so like, it feels more fair of the back and forth. You just get a lot more activations, right? Yeah. So, but it's still following the rules of we go back and forth, right? That's what makes this all fair. Okay. Locus of smash that. I indeed, absolutely. Lurid Hayes is probably the best sub faction in Wrath of the Everchosen. It sits on top of invaders. It's a very powerful combination, has a command ability for plus one to save, incredible on Archeon, fantastic on Sigvald who can use it to give himself a two up base, decent enough on a keeper because it can push her to three up. Also lets you redeploy up to D3 units off the table and then bring them in from ambush. Perfect for fulfilling the bonus depravity. So you take little, you take little putter heroes make them your generals and you shoot them off to the side to go threaten stuff. You know, like you walk them in from the opponent's board edge on the back and it's just like for you to do gravity. So that's cool. If you play this way in invaders depravity generation is secondary. It's a bonus, not a strategy. CP generation is primary, right? What you want is your army always landing every charge always running six, right? Which you're doing also from Lurid Haze cause it gives you like a re-roll on your runs which is good. And always piling in and fighting twice. Heavy offense build, very vulnerable to armies with high power projection. I mean, that's like, that's the story of Slenesh. Like it's not unique to invaders but invaders is particularly weak cause the more you rely on keepers the more you rely on stuff that's just like you're gonna blow off your keepers which are not tough. I really wish they had included like Lurid Haze in this book like they did with, you know like how they took a pay like DOK included some of it. They should have just put it in this book too. Even when you look at it and you see I only got three sub factions. Just like, you know, like you kind of like jar a little bit like four to six seems to be where most other armies are living. You only have like these three immediate options. This goes back to that. Like who are they printing this book for? The new player or the like five armies or the new player like that. There's a little disconnect there. What I will say about invaders is I get to run SIGVOLD and feel less bad about it cause it's the, I take the two keepers and then SIGVOLD and then SIGVOLD gets to go be fabulous on the table somewhere. Well, and also he's a really potent threat coming in from ambush, right? Behind the enemy army because it was built in charge bonus. So he's like the only use I can see for SIGVOLD is in invaders Lurid Haze which is sad because he should be better than that. He is- He should be an auto-include in every army. 100%. He's majestic. He's gorgeous. Finally, Catacoros has a rival to his codpiece. Like finally, it has been too long. Yes. All right, so that's invaders. Anything I missed with this one guys? I got it in all my quips throughout. We're good. Good, all right, awesome. Fair enough. Pretenders as in this pretends to be a good sub faction when it is in fact not. The general gets two command traits and you can reroll hit rolls of one for units of 10 or more yet another number that is honestly decently hard to hit in this book, especially with how fast you lose things. You get one DP for the general being within three inches of an enemy and D3 if they're within three, if the general's within three inches of two units. Everything that was good in this faction got nerfed. Easiest way I can say it, okay? If you had something in this faction you thought was good, like the plus D3 damage from Strength of Godhood or whatever or Sliver Slash with plus two attacks, all bad, all nerfed. The fact that you get two command traits in this army is hilarious because the two I've written here which are like real underwhelming, okay? Like real underwhelming are the best two in the list. That is rough, okay? So yeah, like Pretenders is just a shell of its former self. I always thought it was the weakest. It is definitely the weakest now. Like I don't, this is just a terrible choice. This is called get nothing from your sub faction to sub faction. This is the part where I asked you before we went live. I'm like, if I disagreed with you during your slideshow am I allowed to interrupt you? Yeah, me man. I disagree with Pretenders. That it is a shell of its former self isn't, I don't take issue with that. Like boo who you only get plus one attack from your artifact. Welcome to the rest of our armies, okay? Like most of us had to deal with that and you're the army that gets to activate twice. Like I'm not, there's some of these things that got nerfed and they just got brought in line with other artifacts. Because quite frankly, one of the greatest offenses Slenesh committed was that thing I was talking about where that first book rewarded you for doing the thing you already wanted to do and then just threw extra money in cocaine at you. They stopped giving you money in cocaine. Like I'm sorry, I feel bad for you. Pretenders, the greatest offense Pretenders commits is you want a superkeeper, right? Like that's what you want. Sure, that seems to be what this is telling you to do, right? Like you don't literally the narrative of this thing is it's led by a superkeeper. Yeah, you don't all the way get there and that is the crime. But like I'm not, I don't feel bad for you that your artifacts got worse. They kind of had it coming. I'm not dying on that hill. Like it doesn't bother me. Sliver slash going down. I don't care. All the artifacts in here are bad, except like plus one attack is the closest thing to anything good. My point was you can't manufacture the superkeeper you're pretending to be. Sure. Sure. And how fast does this thing die? And when your one kipper dies, it takes basically the entire allegiance ability with it. All that is left when your one kipper dies, which will happen, keepers die. There are 14 wounds on a four. Hello, we're on the shooting matter right now that everyone said would fix slanash. It fixes slanash real good when you have only one keeper. Even against melee armies. This thing is going down. Okay, it's not like it's fine. I like keepers. I like them quite a bit as a matter of fact, even post nerf. But like, when that one thing dies, which would, when you explain, like explain to your opponent, everything special that I can do is drawn from this one model. Yeah. Okay, well, I guess I know what I'm gonna kill. Right. What you have left is re-roll hit rolls of one for units of 10 or more. And keepers have the inherent flaw. And by the way, this is actually a sweet design. This is what's cool about keepers. This is why keepers feel like that 300 point or I used to say 360 point. They went, they're like one of the only things that went down with their 320 now. 340. 340. Yeah, like, yeah, whatever. Like, like they're one of those models that feels like actually when I buy a 300 X point model, like monster, this is what I want a Gorgon to be. You know, this is, this is what I want anything in that range to feel like. If I activate first, I get the charge. I outmaneuver you. I played the game of Aegis Sigmar and I got the charge. Never heard. Yeah. If you get the charge, you kill me. The keeper wants to activate first and kill you. What, what pretenders should do is make it to where that keeper can activate twice cheeky and then beat you. Right? Like. It would have been so cool if they had made the pretender general able to activate its own command ability on itself. Or, or what if, what if you had two heroes and one hero you like wrote down at the beginning of the game and that's really your, your keeper of secrets. Sure. Like. And like, and like do some. There's, there's stuff they could have done here and they just didn't do any of it. So it's like, okay. We lost Matt for a second, he'll be back. Let's go to one of the, what does it do well? My answer, not much, sadly. Okay. The artifact that CT is being nerfed combined with less survivability means that banking on a single powerful hero that has 14 wounds and a four up save is generally a bad bet. If you're using faultless blades out of warriors the Everchosen, you can make Siggvault a little less squishy with the command ability to suffer two less wounds. Just kind of a neat trick on Siggvault. But it's just bad because the army either has to win through speed or offense- It's a different model than what you are. And now you, I think I'm back. I am back. You're back. Yeah, you had to catch up for a minute. Okay, you're back. I had to vomit at least once tonight. I see him do it all the time. I'm like, man. It's fine. I'm gonna try potato internet just once. In my estimation, you're winning through either speed or CP generation to fuel the engine of the offense. This one does neither. Yeah, I ran it too hard and broke the internet. Thank you. Absolutely. I see you, Dr. Milonis. Are we still on pretenders? We are, yes. We're just talking about what does it do well. Okay, like single model bets for an army have kind of always been not as great as advertised. Like whether it's just Archeon or just Nagash or like a single stone horn on, or a single frost sword on stone horn. You know, you always need some other juice. You always need some other gas in the tank. They put all their gas in their tank in that single thing. That's scary. But I do like the command trait, strength of Godhood by the way. Like I know you said like all these command traits are garbage and you get two of them. I like seeing the Godhood because being able to... Plus one damage, it's cool. It's not the worst. After they've made their save rolls, you can be like, hey, that's the two damage attack. Or when you're looking at that. Yeah, I understand. You realize that iron jaws have this dude with two sticks who just goes two plus one damage to all of your attacks. I try not to look at other people's armies when my army's being punished. Yeah, I understand. I'm just saying like stick guy, you know stick guy can do that to a mawcrusher, right? Like and make him have a four damage, eight attacking. He doesn't do it to his mortal wounds though is the thing is when you proc the mortal wound attack that those five mortals, you can make that six mortals now. And that's pretty awesome when you're fighting idiot foot heroes, right? I guess. I mean, like even the old D3 one was questionable, but at least it was D3. Yeah, it's not great. Okay, Godseekers. Godseeker. All right, so plus one of charge. See, this was my favorite before and still is. Not fair enough. I think this is, it definitely came into even footing with invaders, which is a positive. When I was playing to pray of droves, Godseekers just felt like the best, like I'm already running 50 best of gores with a shaman trying to help them move six inches, then run six, then Godseekers are right. So I have a bias and it just got stronger. Okay. Yeah, I don't think you're wrong if you're playing Godseekers at all. I think it's actually quite good in this new book, which is again, like that's a testament. So that's good, that's cool. Plus one to charge trolls. Okay, that's cool. It's a good buff. Like I have no issue with that. It's a nice all over army buff. It fits in well with how Slenesh feels like it should be played is a nonbow with the fact that you have to six inch, exploit things and 2.9 people like crazy. I don't need to charge. I just file in from six as an army. It'd be like, if I just gave Yeti's plus one to charge across the board, like, okay, that's a cool thing, but I generally don't care. But it's good for summons and stuff like that. It has the best like depravity generation, which is plus D three depravity for general made a move and then plus one of any other unit charge as well. So it's quite easy to get like D three plus one depravity out of God seekers every round, which is cool. That's great. You know, that that means on average you're getting like three depravity out of this, which is it's a significant chunk when, you know, 12 is what you're aiming at, right? Command traits, they lost the run in charge command trait, which is a shame. But we still got speed chaser, which is retreat and charge, which is cool. Great, great command trait there. Wonderful on like a herald on exalted chariot or blade bringer, sorry on exalted chariot. I dig that. The new one is sweeping slash, which I actually don't hate either, which is two plus for D three mortal wounds, two units within one inch on a charge. So you can like, you can put that on a chariot boss and actually do that twice, which is kind of cool because it's all units within one inch. It's great for, you can put on a keeper or something cool for splashing around to depravity, right? Cause you can, if you hit two units in the corner, then both of them take a few mortals and you know, that's that's depravity world. So that's good. Artifacts, the cameo of the dark prince is still a standout cause it's one CP once per battle. You obviously just burn it and then throw it on the feign and the feign got better. So, you know, perfect artifact for, for comboing with the feign, the girdle, the roam racer. If you want the ability to fly in this army, neg one to wounds, you gain fly, like, okay. It's not wrong. It's not bad. Yeah. I mean, I, I don't know why there's the need for the neg one wounds. I could just be like an artifact to gain fly, but sure, you know, okay. That's fine. This, this is a long line of artifacts in Aegis Sigmar thinking that they need to have a downside. They just don't. Right. Like, I think about like the, some of the city's artifacts and I'm like, this doesn't need a downside. There's entire artifacts out there that just give you something. Why are you giving it downside? Especially in an army that has a spell that can make you fly. Why do I have a thing that has it come on now? Yeah. Yeah. And then the rapturing. I mean, it's, it's like, it's like an allegiance ability that you would burn to give you a benefit and then also penalized. Right. It's weird. If that were to be a thing. I mean, I don't think we'd ever see that, Tom, but sure, I hear you. I mean, if they did it, then in the good version of that army, they'd probably put some other ridiculous hero that could like take the penalty away and then force it onto an enemy unit in a very un-interacted way. Oh, oh, that'd be a possibility. Sure. But I mean, they would never- It's not theoretical. Yeah. Do that. You're right. Okay. Enrapturing circlet. I think this is the best artifact maybe in the whole, all three of them, possibly. It's in a fight with the rod of misrule, which is the enrapturing circlet. The enemy unit cannot retreat if you're in combat with them. And then on a three plus, you can cause one mortal wound to all units within three inches. Fantastic artifact. Stopping people from retreating is incredibly potent when combined with the locusts, right? Because now you're 2.90 someone, they can't pile in and they can't retreat. They are just stuck doing nothing. Wonderful for NPE because if there's anything people love, it's having their units sit there and literally do nothing. But it is very potent. And then the three plus to cause one mortal wound to everybody is actually like pretty darn great for just, you know, splashing around little mortal wounds for free gravity. Yeah. It just says three plus to get it to privacy. Right. Exactly. Yeah. So it's like it's generally a great artifact that actually aligns with how the army wants to play. So a plus, well designed, well done. Yeah. No, like there's a song by the smashing pumpkins called it's a speed, speed kills, but beauty lasts forever. That is the God seekers. Like speed kills, man. Like this army just it, I mean, this had me at hello when I was reading it because of my cognitive bias. I'm like, I just needed an excuse to say that I was right the whole time before and I have it now. Yeah, there you go. Definitely has the best artifact list. I have no pushback on that and as well, actually, some of the better command traits also and good to crowd degeneration. Yeah. But the best thing is like it's, it's different. Oh, maybe you're going to cover this in what it does well. But your depravity is like you go into the territory where you're ignoring it, but you're also getting that that keeper of those 30 demonets in pace. Yeah. And that's why I like this. Sure. Yeah, I think it does a lot well. It's good for an offensive build, especially if you focus on chariots. It can empower summoning by allowing the summons units to land a charge on an eight instead of a nine. Statistically, that's actually very different. Good for the more skirmish and DP farming build as well as it's the easiest DP generation. You know, it's an all around solid choice, but it really doesn't work super well with keepers of secrets because the lack of CP to keep the engine going, right? So it's like this is a good choice if your concept is a lot of like the new exalted seekers, bliss barbs or slick blades and chariots or stuff like that. That's going to work well here where you're kind of spreading around a lot of wounds and trying to charge people sometimes and 2.9 people at the time and so on and so forth. You're trying a pin and win strategy with an army that isn't tanky at all. Correct. Right? And so you're going to need that summon second wave as you deplete yourself is how it theoretically should work if your army weren't over-costed to send. Right? Sure. And that's the thing is like this is, this is for me, this is the most slowness it gets because it feels like, yeah, I'm just going to like, I'm going to like blitz in even with the, we're talking about the pile and tricks. The pile and tricks, remember you roll your charge. You don't decide to go in. You go, did I get enough coverage to get in as far as I want to or do I take the pile and over this way instead? Right? So like you get to where you can pile in on that unit over there and then you're like, well, let's see what this charge dice roll says. Okay, nevermind. I'm just going to like do that and stuff. Like there's some pass in there where it's not like the ballet I talked about earlier. It's just the like that sort of cheeky, like, you know, faint into a follow-through going elsewhere on the table. And then just like, again, you're going for like a sort of a pseudo pin and win strategy when you're about to die as you should, but you should just have more wounds in the army. So you're about to die when you should, boom, the second wave comes in because you've been doing, you've been farming depravity. It really feels like the way the army should play. Yeah, I agree. I think Seekers is like, is going to reasonably work well for a lot of people. If you, this is the closest to sort of how you think the army should probably play. There's some ultimate challenges to it, of course, but like, yeah, Seekers is good, right? And I think that if your concept is this sort of fast skirmishy force, this is going to be the obvious home for you, right? Tokyo drifting chariots into a couple of lines of units. Like, oh, nice chaff screens you have set up there. Turn this thing sideways, plow. Like, you know, like it hit three of them with that chariot. Like there's some, I like this. When you talked about how like the army, this is that one time that it is telling me how to build my army in the whole, in the whole. Well, I mean, I'd still take an argument with that because I had to think through this and really like put this together. That's why I'm sharing this. Because again, this is like, let me break this down, Mef. Let's, okay, think about Doc. We're not talking about power level at all. We're talking about design, okay? Yeah, I'm supposed to have hags. I'm supposed to have witches. I'm supposed to have a cauldron maybe. You start reading the book and you go, I think snakes are cool, right? Like you looked at the model range and you looked at snakes and you went, man, snakes are cool, right? That is a very reasonable reaction because in fact, snakes are cool. You are right. Yeah, my first hot take of the evening, the snakes are cooler than the daughters of Cain. At me, Chuck Moore. You're right, Chuck's wrong. At any rate, so you know, you look at the book, so you start with this preconceived notion of like snakes are cool, great. You open up the book, you read through, you look at the, you look at the sub factions or whatever, right? And you see Zanthar Kai, you see Cobra Kai and you're like, oh, okay. I thought snakes were cool. Oh, look at this thing. Here's this thing that says snakes get plus one attack and snakes do good things. Cool, this must be the thing I'm supposed to take if I like snakes, right? Okay, neat. And then I keep reading and I see that like, oh, neat, Marathi has this ability that if she's near snakes, she gives them a plus one to attack. Oh, that's cool. I'll take that, but I'll take her in there, right? And so on. And like, so there's a linearness to the build. I'm not arguing that all books should be written in a linear fashion. There's a whole different show we could do on linear versus modular design. But my point is that- Oh, I look forward to being back on a year to do that show. Absolutely. My point is like, there is something guiding you through what is supposed to be what, right? Like there's some line you can follow. Nothing about Godseekers says keepers are a bad choice here, use chariots. Well, see like, what if my way of approaching this is I wanna charge fools and summon stuff. Sure. Then you're gonna have the best version of that if you use chariots and not kippers, right? But that's not- Which also feels bad. Which also feels bad. I mean, that goes to that sort of second breath look at design. People look at, I think that's a very, a very ubiquitous way to approach the game where you're like, I look at the cool models. How do I play these cool models, right? Yeah. And I look at things as a theme build. This is that Johnny in me. Where I'm like, I wanna charge fools and summon stuff. And then like, so that's my premise. And then I start looking at reward scroll that helps me charge fools and summon stuff. I don't even look at the models at that point, right? Yeah. So I think, I get what you're saying is what I'm saying. Because where I look at how to approach a book or a build is different from yours. And now I get our personal disagreement. They could have done cool stuff in each one of these related to some kind of unit or to, to whatever. Yes, Lucas, you're right that the basic secret chariot does become battle line and God seekers. So it's, you're right that there's not nothing, but that's not actually that, but regular secret chariots being battle line isn't actually what makes seekers of any value here, right? The problem is there's nothing like anywhere close to the synergy of direction you have in other books like slaves, lizards, daughters, any of these things. Again, I'm not asking for somebody to hold my hand or to be like every book has to be linear. I'm okay with modular design, but like the, there's just nothing like that. And the fact that they kept the stupid battalion adjustments for like the heat night host, which by the way, you can fit in a 2000 point army. It's the worst army in history, but you can do it. You too can spend 600 points on battalions to field the heat night host. So this, this was one of the things I had avoided mentioning this. I mentioned it earlier on. This bothers me with a design direction. Yeah, it's, I don't think there's any reason to bring battalions into your sub-faction. That offends me. I would be okay with it if they did it in an interesting way. This is not. It's a penalty. It's a penalty. It's only a penalty. It only shows up as a penalty. Entice me to do the cool thing. Right. If you said, if you said that a Siborites battalion in, in this faction cost 20 points less. Sure. You're telling me I'm supposed to take Siborites there. Yeah. You're not slapping me on the hand for wanting to do something cool. Don't ever slap people. Siborites in pretenders. Siborites one of the best, second best battalion in the book. You only can put one hero in. One hero in it. I'm gonna pay extra points to roll on a D6A1 for a benefit. And I don't get to reduce my drops. The main reason I'm taking a battalion are you freaking kidding me? That's the most boneheaded. I actually have an all caps in my own handwriting. So you know I was serious. Siborites, why? When we got, when you were on the section for, for the previous, I'm just like- Let me answer a thing in the commentary quicker. How do I feel about Scarlet Cavalcade from Everchosen? It's worse than just taking regular Godseekers. It locks you into things you don't want. Like just take regular Godseekers and choose the good command traits and artifacts. You actually have really good choices and Godseekers on those things. Putting yourself in Scarlet Cavalcade gives you patently worth choices, worse choices for no benefits. I just, GW, cause I know you actually watched Vincent, not me. Please don't do this with Italians anymore. This is bad. Yeah, they could have extracted that and actually wrote real rules there. This is bad. Let's just don't do this, please. Sure. Yeah. We're all in agreement. It makes no sense. I mean, it comes down to incentive structures and what they're incentivizing you is they're not incentivizing you. They're de-incentivizing you. Yeah, they're de-incentivizing you. They're disincentivizing you to do something. Right. Don't do that. And it's the exact same type of rule writing that we see, for example, with Kao Garrison. Sure. They're de-incentivizing certain abilities. These new abilities that you have, they all turn off if you're using this other ability that you're using. Like in a game as synergistic as Age of Sigmar has become, not having an incentive is like a disincentive. Yes. Right? Well, especially in an army that is very low on synergy overall. Yeah. Giving you nothing is basically the same as punishing you. Sure. So like you give, this is a situation of carrot versus stick. There's so much stick in the game already. There's a lot of stick beating you into not taking the cool stuff because points can be a stick. The points are wrong. Yeah. Let me jump in and explain a comment real quick here. Okay. I really need to know, Homs says, I really need to know how exactly do the ever chosen sub factions work exactly? They are more traditional sub factions, i.e. they give your entire army an ability. They give your heroes a command ability they can utilize. They dictate the command trait that your general has to have. And they dictate the first artifact you must take. There is one for each of the existing sub factions that are in here. They lay over the top of it. They combine with it. But then they dictate your choices as per a normal sub faction. You don't lose anything, but you have the opportunity cost, especially with something like mentioned with the scarlet cavalcade and Godseekers where you actually lose access to a very good command trait and a very good set of artifacts because your first one now has to be dictated. So there is an opportunity cost to it even though there's no direct cost. So there you go. That being said, Luridhay is still the best. All right, let's keep going gentlemen. I wanna learn. We got so much more to go. So much more. Oh, it's cool. No, this is all good discussion. I just like, I shut it down. Is this now the like the Mephisto Sode or whatever? I mean, we knew this was gonna be a long show and I'm fine with it. Because I want to get the whole take. I'm talking in and trying to like, let us move forward. It's fine. Look, there's... I appreciate you. We appreciate you. Tom, that's what we appreciate about you. All right, spells. Limited spell utility. This army has weak magic. Like I know no other way to say it. Their spell lures are generally uninspiring and they're not good spellcasters. And you know what? I don't care. I think magic is generally dumb in this game anyways unless you feel like it's either basically nothing or it destroys the world. So whatever. Spells are split between demons who get six spells, greater demons who get three spells and mortals who get three spells. I've outlined here what I feel are some of the more interesting spells. And you know, I actually like magic working like this. I wish everybody's spell lore kind of was like theirs. Maybe bring this one up 10 or 15% and that's how all spell lures should be. I don't like spells ruling the game. I think it's just kind of a wacky thing. So that's fine. Spells are prayers that get interacted with but because the dice are harder, they should be weirder. But not better. And that's... I was having a conversation with Tyler Emerson earlier where like they just, I don't think they have spells figured out. Somehow. No, no. I know. I know. So here's the spells that I think are literally worth the time it takes to read them. Every spell is not pictured on this list. I do not think are literally worth the text they're printed with. The hysterical frenzy, just casting value seven, one enemy unit, holy within 18, real annoying when you're measuring enemy units, holy within 18, because that means people can just tail out on you, stop your spell from being cast, right? So it's such a good idea. Yeah, it's, they've talked before about why they don't generally apply holy within to enemy units because your opponent has complete control over that, especially during your hero phase. So your opponents can just literally tail out three guys and break you from casting this spell, right? But I guess they just forgot that design principle when they wrote this book because there's multiple instances of this. One dive for each model in the unit on each six D3 mortal wounds. That's cool. If you can get it off, it's a good spell. I like to give it to offensive push heroes, people that are gonna be deep in the guts of the enemy army. It's a cool spell. It's a decent enough horde damageer. So I don't hate it. It's fine. Born of damnation, which is CV4, heal a heat knight hero within six inches D3 wounds. Cool. Lot of healing in this army actually. Got a decent amount of healing, which is strange, I guess, but that's fine. I'm not against it. It's an interesting angle. You can kind of push the healing angle. The greater demon spells, which again are gonna be very limited because we're talking only about keepers and keepers are keepers, which you may use them or you may not, depending on the army. Path to the Dark Prince, casting value seven. The caster can fly. No universe where that should be casting value seven. That should be five, but because it's a self buff, it's literally only the caster can fly, and not something else. I mean like the wargog prophet or whatever it is from Bone Splitters is like looking at this spell and laughing his head off at the delta here. Projecting of damnation, casting value five, heal demon heat knight heroes D3 or D6 if the casting was 10 plus. So a second heal, kind of cool. And then slothful stupor, casting value seven. One enemy hero within 12 inches cannot run charge or use command abilities. Very powerful spell, obviously hard to get off because you gotta be fairly close, but it is a powerhouse, like no diggity, no doubt. And then the mortal spells are generally all bad, but whatever, we'll make the best we can of them. Dark delusions, casting value four. One enemy unit, again, holy within 18 inches. And then you roll 2D6, and if it's greater than their bravery, then you can get plus one to hit for attack to target that unit. So if you cast the spell, add an enemy unit, and it's not unbound, and the enemy unit is holy within 18 inches, which they could easily stop. And you roll 2D6, and you beat their bravery, which is hard, very hard because your average roll is a seven and you have to beat their bravery, and the average bravery in the game is probably seven. Not to mention the swath of armies that are all just default bravery 10. Your reward at all of that is plus one to hit for attacks to target that unit, which is a good bonus. But boy, do you gotta jump some hoops. Gotta get in them hoops. Ogre casting makes this look, yeah, like the ogre spells are 10 times better than this. I think Hewo would disagree, but. They have a spell that's just like pick a unit, and they lose a save. Yeah, but the cast values are dumb on there. Their cast values are, again, casting values, massing, it's a spell that can do a thing. That's a seven, that's what I'm talking about, I believe. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's all of them, right? Yeah, sure. I mean, look, I just mentioned a bunch of seven spells on this page, so, you know. But that's the thing is. And they have easier access to plus one to cast than I do. That's the thing is like, I see a lot of like cast value four and five in slanesh, and even like the new trend towards like lower cast value spells is a good thing for Age of Sigmar. You have prayers out there that are going off on two ups that you can't contest. Sure. Like, yes, let's get into the realm where we can start to like think about, spells should at the very least be a 50-50 before we even get to that second tier of contestation. But my thing is that they should do something interesting, not numbers, and so like I'm already. Yeah, I mean, yes, I've included several four and five spells. Keep in mind that's basically the ones I picked and part of the reason why they even made this guest. Right? There's a lot of much higher numbers on this list. Yeah, so like Tyler Emerson and I were just going to do a spell show where we talk about spells. But the thing that I think is actually like pertinent in this spell list is the ability to give fly and healing. Sure, yeah. You have some like triplicate healing stuff that you can do with keepers to where they have some hidden resilience and that's not worth nothing and some replacement to units that's not worth nothing. Because you're going to farm that where the sequencing of depravity happens. Remember, you're always on like a delay essentially in the sequence because you need battle shock and then on the next hero phase, you got to get to that next hero phase with that unit not being wiped out because your opponent went between, right? Yeah. Or whatever. So like it's a little bit that risk reward again that like, you know, you know, live fast, die young, leave a beautiful corpse is going on with Slenesh. That out of, they have healing in a couple of different sequences. And I think that's what's pertinent about the spell casting. No, I don't disagree. The healing's fine. I mean, hero phase healing is, you know, it is what it is, right? It can do stuff and sometimes it doesn't, right? I mean, if you heal and you put three units in front, you've just gained movement too, right? Yeah, sure. Like I, you know, I mean, ask L'Oreal how much healing 2D3 every round matters, right? And see what you answer, you get it. Well, yeah, like overpriced Warstrel, not a spell I'm taking on top of my build that I've already given. I don't disagree. But it's like, Belldom can shut it down too. Yeah, I'm not saying that. That's the problem with spell magic. Yeah. And that's the problem with magic going on right now where there's like a whole other episode devoted to it. But at least their casting values aren't nines for no reason. Yeah, I mean, one, agreed. Two, I'm not anti-healing. When I run this army, I'll tell you right now, I basically take all the heal spells in hysterical frenzy, maybe or slothful super depending on like what the spread is, right? Right. Because I do think there's value to it. Like it's very good to be able to heal your keeper. If you manage to get her where she's got like five wounds on and you push her back up into her first tier, it's a difference, right? It's just don't, what all I'm saying is don't overvalue it. Why is healing pretty garbage for Sylvaneth? But when I play death, people rage at my healing. The difference between restoring a couple wounds to a single model versus restoring models back to a unit. That's the difference and it's huge. Yeah, it's night and day. It's a big deal. Don't we get to restore some models with some of the slash healing? Nope. There was some model restoration in this army. Nope, it's only healing the individual folks. It's all hero focus. All the healing is hero focus. Okay, so at any rate, and then battle rapture casting value five, one mortal slaness unit, holy with an 18 becomes immune to battle shock if the casting rule was 10 plus three units. I would normally never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever put a spell like this on the list, but I did. And that's because most of your mortal slaness units are bravery six and will explode if looked at funny and bravery is a real problem if you're playing the mortal side of the army. It's a real problem. It's like a B.O.C. level of problem. Yeah, they don't get any free, any free bravery immunities. Like every good army gets. I remember when I first got into Aegis Sigma, one of the first things like Hey, what taught me to look at was like, does it get to be immune to battle shock? Yes, no. That was crap. That was like literally the first thing he taught me about the game, which is why I have a completely skewed view of battle shock phase entirely because even in AOS 1.0, there was like ways to be like that thing shock immune prior to inspiring presidents. And there's a severe lack of battle shock immunity in command abilities and traits across this army. And so you have to rely on a spell, which is a sad place to be because spells get interrupted, command abilities do not. Yeah, there's like one command ability you can look to and it is on an interesting character. I'll say that, but we will like, and that's still, right? So Celesk changed a lot. I don't have the scroll for the unit breakdown error because I'm going through the mortal stuff. Huge. But Celesk actually is interesting because it's one of the few scrolls that didn't go up in points. It's still only 200 points, which is still probably over-costed, but they have a weird re-roll one's bonus whereas Tom mentioned earlier, you have to play this game where you have an equal number of demons and mortals in this 18 inch bubble, which is just like really hard to actually manage to a point because, you know, units kind of need to move wherever they move, but it does grant a big old bubble of re-roll ones to hit, which is cool. If you can manage it, like it's not a bad bonus. It's just kind of a weird game to play. And they don't kill out one of your units. Sure. It's just a weird mini-game to play, right Tom? Like that's what we're saying. Like it adds this other thing that's just like, because it used to be on the calendar. Clashbacks with Night Haunt. Yeah. Right? Because like Night Haunt is also playing the bubble game. Yeah. Of like managing the bubble, but then charging, but making sure that you don't charge out of the Holy within 12 inch bubble of all of your heroes, because that's what all the support is. And so I say that to say, like those mini-games that take mental space make armies not fun to play. They just need to be chosen from the game. I don't like the design space of it at all. I don't like it either when it used to just be the commandability for sill was immunity to battle shock and re-roll ones to hit. Why am I doing extra mental? That was fine. It was fine. It didn't need, we didn't need this extra mini-game like for no reason. It's like- It's a mini- They cut the text of the alternating fighting and we're like, oh we don't have enough text on this scroll anymore. Right? So let's write this other new complicated mini-game like it didn't need to be there. The fighting mini-games fun because it means I get to kill stuff. Look at me not swear there. I'm a Warhammer Weekly, not my own show. Thank you. No, I meant you have to pile in multiple times in cool ways and maneuver still around. Yeah, you get to do some stuff. Like it's cool. Not anymore. No, you don't get to have fun anymore. I dislike when rules that were interesting go away. I don't, like the numbers can be fixed by the way of like how OP the thing that's happening is. If something interesting is happening, battle shock is the least interesting thing in the world. Why make it difficult? Yeah. I don't care how big of a coward your unit is. I truly don't get a grant. It was such a loss for me, because like Celesk I wanted to have as the center of my army, right? Sure, sure, sure. Because I love, I just love the model and I love. Yeah, and so I was excited to use Celesk and like hoping that this round would make the mortals viable with all the new models. And I was like, awesome, let's do this. And then I saw it and I'm just like, sure. Yeah, yeah, I get it. Okay, anything else on spells? The casting values are edging towards correct. That's all I'll say. And I like the healing, I think it, you have triple healing on your like 3D3 healing on a keeper. Yeah, which is cool. Or 2D3 healing on one keeper, D3 on another. Like there's some good stuff going on there. Yeah, no, you can get to 3D3, right? If you, because that's the Nestor's hand as a D3 as well. Yeah, so you have 3D3. If they don't kill that, your mega keeper from the bad, from what you've determined is the bad sub faction, like, oh, it's sticking around. I've got 3D3 heals. You know, that's in the place where people are like super mad about the amount of healing you're throwing at the thing. I think that the amount of healing this army can do to your keepers is an understated fact of the book. And I think that that's a strength. I agree with that completely. They could heal a lot before though, couldn't they? Yeah, sure. One of the spells got better. So that's the answer. Okay, right on. Yeah. And their casting value is also dropped, which is good. So like, the spells got better. And the healing thing, I'm never gonna bag on the healing. Like I said, I take it every time. So there you go. Right on. All right. Units, gentlemen, let's talk units. Okay. Now it is... But not the pose units. Now it's time. The challenge. We begin our unit discussion with what I call the challenge. The army within the book has a real problem with points to wound ratio. The exceptions being bliss barbs and slick blades who do stand out as quality units. The Sigbald is just so bad, even with his feel no pain. Battleline Choices... I mean, he's giving Settra a run for his money. Poo boy. The Battleline Choices in this, there's so much to unpack on this one slide. The Battleline Choices in this book are inferior in every way to all potential selections from outside of the book. To pray of drove, cast warriors, marauders, et cetera. Building only inside this book results in very low wounds. Well, you have just daemonettes and just without... Everything over on the chart on the side where you see where it's tagged with BL, that's Battleline under some kind of circumstance. Okay. Okay. Okay. Right. Important distinction. Yes. So like the bliss barb archers are Battleline in a slanish army. The Hellstriders and all the Hellstriders are Battleline in a slanish army. The Mirmadesh and the Twinsouls are Battleline if you have a Lord of Pain general and the Secretariots are Battleline if you're in Godseekers, right? But all of these are inferior choices in every way to broader choices you can make. Outside the book. In every way, they are patently worse. Okay. And I do not like every list I've seen of people trying to build anything competitive. The first thing they jettison, first thing is any Battleline from this book. The Battleline situation in this book is a travesty. I will stand behind that. I should be able to build a functional army out of whatever's in this book. Taking stuff from something else should not be a requirement. But these Battleline choices are so out of whack because of their current points values that there is no world where I don't take these other things instead. Like chaos warriors are not good. Correct. Yes. Like they are not good. Like, I know, I know we want them to be good because they look super sweet and they all remind us of Hero Quest. And they're amazing. But like, they're not good. And you find yourself taking them just to fulfill Battleline and then buy your two keepers and all your candy. Like it should never be that way. Even in Fleshy Decoords, which I think is the sort of like bizarro world version of what this army is, right? The original activation wars. Like even at the time, like the two biggest NPE like pit in my gut armies were Fleshy Decoords at its time and then still not shortly after, right? Like, I don't feel bad about taking ghouls. Yeah. Like, I know they're over-costed, but I don't feel bad about it. Ghouls are okay. They do okay work. They can either be a cheap little fine screen for almost no points that gives, they have a decent like, they have a golden wound to, by the way, the golden ratio for this that we all understand is one wound per 10 points. That's the golden one. That's the golden ratio. Okay. And they're exactly at 100 for 10, right? That's the, for your little cheap screen. And they absorb synergies that turn them offensive surprisingly, right? Like you're just, you're surprised by they like suddenly like now they've activated twice and there's, there were 40 ghouls and you just underestimated the whole time. I do think Daemonets have a little bit of that, but it just costs too much. Why are Daemonets should just be a hundred points. I would put them at 90, but yes, I agree at minimum they should be a hundred. Yes. Cause they're the worst of the basic demons. Like it's not even close. Hey, no, they're the only ones that get to triple tap on the one, the one entire allegiance ability. That's true. I want to answer something back here. Donnie Rongo said, doesn't all of your abilities target heat nights so you can't really even use slaves to darken stuff though? No, because one, there's very few synergies in this book, right? So that's just number one, like flat out. There just aren't a lot of synergies in this book. Okay. It's really just the heat at night's once. Yeah. And so like two, yes, you're right. They don't have the double tap on sixes. Okay. But they still count toward depravity. Like when those other units Everything does, even enemies count toward depravity. When I'm trying to buy a screen, I'm not looking for to do damage. I just want a speed bump. Yeah. I just want board coverage and speed and a speed bump. I just want no battle line requirement. I just want to fulfill my battle line requirement so I can buy interesting cool stuff and to just throw something to stop the deep striking spaceship from coming down and shooting my keeper at leisure. Right? I just want this forward scout. This is why like, like on go Raiders are freaking awesome. But like, I just want that thing that is in between me and my enemy's forces to not tax me too much for trying to play the game of Aegis Sigmar as it's designed. Yeah. You're taxed so heavily for your battle line in this book that it's kind of absurd. It's absurd. And don't worry, Hamza. We'll get into, we'll get into Twin Souls and Miramidans. Okay? And like, yeah. We'll get into them. Sweet looking models. They're great models. Super sweet models. But like, they compare unfavorably to, especially like Miramidans to other units. Again, like Miramidans and Twin Souls could be fixed and be perfectly valid interesting battle line for this army if their points weren't in the stratosphere wrong. It's, Hey, we'll had a great take on this. He said something along the lines of like, they'd be perfectly good liberators and people don't take liberators if they didn't cost 50% more than liberators. Right? Like. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. I mean, when you look at this chart, them, like, like obviously slick blades and Blitzbarb Seekers stand out. They're great. They're efficient. They actually do something in the army. They play to your strengths, right? They're fast. They can skirmish. They have a cool battalion. Great units. Love them. They are standouts in this book as we'll talk about later. No world where you can make them battle line. Imagine that. Imagine that. All of your battle line is very expensive. All of your heroes are very expensive. So by the time you get to actually the good unit, you're like, well, I don't have much room left for these guys. Well, yeah. Yeah. So, okay. Cool beans. There's so much unpack here, but I think we can unpack it. Guys, when we get to the individual units, sound good? Let's bust into the individual units. Sound good? I like we left the chart up. People can see that all that red and orange and yellow. And they just look at, just absorb it. Absorb it, take it in. Take in the horrible, horrible ratios, yes. I could almost, like I could almost excuse Damonettes if they got more dramatic poses. Sure. Vince, what would have been nice is to actually see these ratios for like other armies. Yeah. I mean, I just didn't have time to plug them all in, but I agree, like, I'll see if I can do something. I'll see if I can run a couple of other armies next to it. I can hear it. T, there's a Goldilocks zone. A lot of armies are outside of right now, by the way. Sure. I mean, like, you know, you've got to be careful what army you compare it to, because like, if I just ran it up against a dock, which would be the most obvious thing since they came out at the same time and they're both basically the same army. I mean, like, by basically the same army, I mean like at a thematic 40,000 foot view, they're both like skirmish, fast, offensive, murder armies obsessed with getting in and fighting the enemy that have, they're supposed to be glass cannon with no defense, right? And like thematically, they're the same army, right? And yet they could play more differently. Yeah, it's, they even have like narrative reasons for kind of being similar. Yeah, similar and stuff like that. Attila, I don't want to stop you from using Sigvold. I want you to use Sigvold. I'm going to be doing the same thing because we all need our pets in an army. And I'm sure I'll use him a lot. You're allowed one pet unit. And I already painted it. Sigvold is the one unit I have right now. So, with pants, there you go. With pants, yes, correct. My Sigvold doesn't want shaping, so that's fine. Okay, let's talk updated units. So this is just the existing stuff that got updated. We can blow through this one fairly quickly. Don't worry, we'll get to the BOC comparisons. I mean, the BOC comparison, if you did like a wounds ratio thing would be comical, right? Because they're so far above the cold ratio in most cases, it's like... That's their superpower. That's how you're playing them though, is like abusing their wounds. It's like high numbers of wounds for trash units, yes. Absolutely, so it wouldn't be a fair comparison. Okay, so the Fane, it's as before, but it now grants plus one to hit. And you can summon from the Fane. The Fane gets the most improved player award for the season. The best update made to this book was to our terrain piece. It does two-somethings instead of a bunch of nothing and it only punishes you. Congratulations, like it's the end of Evangelion. Congratulations, congratulations. Yeah, yeah, I love the Fane, it's great. It's a good terrain piece now, like it's super good. Getting plus, like tossing an artifact on that thing, getting plus one to hit for the rest of the game is super cool. Pricking your seer finger for some immortal wound is a free depravity, like it's great, it's great. I have no, I have no feedback. Being able to summon from it, huge, huge. Yeah, yeah, great change, great change. Keeper of secrets. The command ability now only targets other units, so you have to take two to get maximum value, also less value in general because the locus change. All right, keepers still hit as hard as they used to, but now you've got to have them in twins, so keepers are always twins. Can you still play the Celestial Faction, Ben Bricko? No, you cannot, it does not work with the current depravity rules, so it just, it doesn't do anything right now. So no, it would not work with the current rules. They haven't officially said that, I'm sure they'll say something in the FAQ, but unless they fix it, it does not currently work. I just want to add an addendum to Keeper. I don't mind this change. I already wanted to run two of them anyway. I don't care, you know, I like, I don't. Can I explain to you why it's terrible? Fine, you're explaining to the audience, not to me. Yes, of course, I understand. I understand, Meph. Thank you for being this virtual avatar though. Yeah, you're welcome. I don't disagree with your base premise. Here's the problem. Keepers are pointed even now as though they're going to be able to swing twice. Okay. And indeed, if I have the twins out and about, they will both swing twice, right? I mean, assuming I've got the command points to fuel that engine, right? The problem is, so let's call that X. X is equal to the amount of punishment they can inflict. Two Keepers both piling twice, yeah? Now, as I said before, they have to play fair now. They can't just both double piling when you're locked out from a locus and they fight four times and you fight zero. Now it's a back and forth, which is good. I do not dislike that. I like that quite a bit. Here's the problem. Normally, when you've got two identical units, if you lose one of them, how much should X decrease? Well, X will decrease by 50%, right? But that's not actually what happens here. If you lose one Keeper, X being the equivalent to the amount of punishment that they can inflict goes down by 75%. It doesn't though, because they can still double tap a different unit. I'm only talking about the twins and taking their math. Like if you're relying on, you can, but if you're investing 680 points in Keepers, they're your hammer, okay? So like your hammer only has to lose 14 wounds on a four up save before your hammer gets reduced in efficacy by 75%. I do think there's an aggregate to this. Like that's the thing is like, we keep looking at like single parts of a whole and coming in at a point we already want to argue from. Without being like, yeah, but now my like 30 Daemonettes are rolling in or whatever, like the game isn't played in a singularity in math hammer mode. We gotta take a step back from math hammer mode sometimes to realize that the game is played in three dimensions. Like I'm probably not deploying both my Keepers together, even though I know that they have each other. Like in order for them to actually perform worth their points, you have to run them. That's why Vince calls them twins. Like they're not going to do the work. They're only going to be half as effective. A single Keeper activating first is going to fight most stuff at 300 points and below. Especially if it's able to tag a corner and just blow it up. Like I, no. Anything relying on one attack that does almost nothing than four attacks and two attacks is very whipable. Swingy, yeah. I mean, that's the single model problem in the game of Aegis Sigmar. That is a problem that the whole game of Aegis Sigmar has. This is an exclusive to the Keeper of Secrets. It's not. Like congratulations, you bought two dragons in your legions, legions of Nagash army. They don't even combo with each other as well. Like I don't understand that, And they cost 440 points and they hit about, come on. Sure, no, I'd agree. They probably hit about as hard. Yeah, yeah, that's fine. I mean, they're far more resilient, but yes. They're also far more mobile because they have the same speed, but also flying, but. Flying, sure, sure. Yeah, like I pay 100 points for flying and they're both spellcasters, cool. And resiliency, but yes, I'm with you. I look, I'm not saying Vanflord's on zombie dragons or whatever point you correctly, but you know, they're okay. So, look, I think you're mistaking my point, Meph. I think Keepers are good. I'm actually a buyer on Keepers, okay? Okay. I love them. I'm gonna run them all the time. As I said originally, I didn't buy Six Keepers of Secrets, not to run Keepers of Secrets, homie, okay? Like I'm in, I'm in like Flynn, but they did significantly depreciate in value. They are not their old self. On the plainest, the plainest take is they are not as good as, they depreciated or they're not as, their points aren't as worth, worth as much, sure. I, but I don't think it's a huge crux of the army that suddenly you need two Keepers or that your Keepers need to twinzie it up because there's redundancy as part of the game. Like there's already parts of the game of Aegis Sigma that are playing out that congratulations, welcome to everybody else having this problem. Yeah, I mean, I don't know, man. A lot of things can use their own command abilities on themselves and turn into murder machines, but sure, that's fine. It's a weird thing that this is the one model that got slapped with that. And FEC, which is a book that came out at the same time is still double piling in on death and doing 40 mortal wounds. Well, this goes back to the, this goes back to the, they listened to every complaint and changed it. People were mad that Keepers piled in twice. So hence we fix it. And now you just have to take two of them. Like it's a, it's a weird change. Right? Yeah, I mean, like I don't disagree there. I'm my biggest complaint with the whole book is that they listened to every complaint from the internet. Don't do that. The internet's dumb. Sorry internet, you guys are great. You're the smart ones. You're watching. Everybody who's watching this show is exempted. You're all smart, but like, I mean, you've shown that by coming here to this show. So thank you. Right. Yeah, congratulations. Like and subscribe right now by some merch. He's got a new show or he's got a new merch store buy some merch that may I recommend the, it's Vampirates hoodie that I personally own. But like, don't listen to people on the internet when they tell you the thing is a problem. Cause every problem in this whole book can be summarized by that. People said that thing was a problem and they changed it. Keeper secrets were a problem. That was a 360 point model. That's what I wanted a 360 point model to look like. Period. I wanted every model that cost around that amount to look like that. Flows those and thunder tusks and, er, not thunder tusks, thunder tusks, stone horns. I wanted everything to look like that. Gorgons, everything should look like that. The greatest crime they committed was being good for their points as a monster and they had to get slapped down. Go on. Sorry. No, you're fine. All right, let's keep moving. Celeste, we already talked a lot about the new complicated way to gain re-roll ones to hit in a bubble around them and they lost the alternating activations. They do, their commandability is a big bubble of Battleshop community. Like if you're going to play a mortal heavy army, you should have Celeste in the list. Right, but you also need to have demons and they also need to be in equal numbers. Yeah, yeah, I don't disagree. I'm just saying like if part of your stuff is relying on the mortal strat, then get Celeste in there. Well, but that's, but my, my critique is that they need all of, like, let's say you want to lean full mortals. Actually isn't the right answer. I would still take it and just eschew the special ability. It's my honest answer. I think it's completely worth it for the Battleshop community bubble because your units are so, so fragile, susceptible to Battleshop. Right, but again, this is like, this goes back to how design should point and inspire list building. And this doesn't. Yeah, right. Like the most obvious person to be leading this army, like the all mortal army because, because Celeste can actually cover for their main weakness. She has a different ability that says don't play that way. Yeah, don't play mortals. Don't play all mortals. Right, which is weird. Don't disagree. Contorted epitome, no longer re-rolls, unbinding or dispelling. And also I didn't write it, but their, their little aura of fight last went away, obviously. And it's now, you can't fight me until I fight you. It's fine. That's fine. Essentially utility piece. Yeah, I don't mind contorted. If they're going to keep the no unbinding or dispelling, they should go back down to 200. That's, that's the big slap in the face is the reason you were taking it was for like, the kind of guaranteed cast or the guaranteed unbind, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it got patently worse and didn't change points. Didn't go up, thank God. But it just got patently worse and they made no adjustments to it. So it's like, okay, but. Yeah, I don't even know why I take it in an army anymore. Like it, it's just, it had a roll before. It's good if you need to force out endless spells because it's your best chance of doing that in this army probably. Right. So. Yeah, that, that flaming skull to farm depravity turn one. Yeah, sure. The infernal and raptress no longer generates a depravity point each turn, which I mean, makes sense of course. And, but gain the ability to dispel an endless spell with a plus one to dispel. So, kind of cool. I don't think you'll ever see the harvest in an army again. So, yeah, it's unfortunate. But I mean, it's a five wound hero on a five up save for 150 points. So. With a movement of what? Like six. Four. Oh, six. Five, six. I literally don't remember what I was talking about. I want to say it's six, but it might be five. Yeah, I mean, like it's just. She just has no place at her current points value. She's not so. It's a depravity turn. I don't care. She's torturing a cool harp dude. Like she is. She's like one of the sweetest models they've ever made. It's so slanish. Drink it up. So slanish. Okay. But yeah, she's just bad now. So unfortunate, I guess. But she could be your pet. She was cool. Could she at least fit in the like the summoning sideboard before? And now it's like, like the sideboard, the summoning sideboard, this is the health of the, the health of the game and like selling me stuff games workshop. I just want an excuse to buy your model and like a sideboard is a great excuse to buy stuff. So have a use of them in the sideboard or the summon board. Sorry, the summon board, the little extra models I bring to a tournament. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like just give me an excuse to have them there. Like I might run into that one thing once we're like, this is the play. And I just, I want to throw money at you playfully laughing the whole time. Like, stop and I'm just throwing money. Give me an excuse. Cool. The Hellstriders, they've been split apart and actually formally split apart. They were always split apart for a while, but now they've like even their points are different now. So it's not a new change, but it's more relevant now. Their rules are very different now. The Claw Spears, the cheaper version of the thing now have plus one damage on the charge and the Hell Scourge, they gained one attack and they can cause an egg one to hit on the charge, which is a nonbow with their six inch pylon that they get a secret cavalcade. So that's fun. And they lost the bonus attack for slaying a model. I mean, the story with Hellstriders is they went up 40 or 50 points depending on the version you're talking about, which is I, of all the points changes in the book, this is the one that like, I can't even begin to wrap my head around. Well, there's no university, these guys are 150 points. I don't, I can't even. They could be the Black Knights of Slamash, you know, that like sort of like undervalued in the understanding of how the book plays together, but like you look at how much they cost and what they can do on the table in terms of like just screening and tarp hitting and stuff like that. They could do the Slamash version of that, which is essentially like charge and tarp to tarp at a light unit or like stay outside and pile in. And then they're like, no, you don't get to, you don't get to have that fun because these are over-costed. Yeah, I mean, the bright side is if they just dropped Hellstriders back down to 100 points, I'd be fine with them. I'd be fine with the changes. Yeah. Like that's literally what they need to do is drop them 40 or 50 points. So you're saying they're 140 and they need to go down to 100. Yeah, so in three cycles, we'll be good. So 40%, got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. I mean, yeah, yes. Daemonettes, still bad. Worst of the basic demons, you know, it's unfortunate. They could have done something cool with Daemonettes. They could have made them an interesting choice. They're not, that's their damage table, by the way. It's a four up save. They do three and a half damage. Like they just don't compete with anything else in the army. I mean, they're just there to die. And if you're just taking chaff, like if that's their only, like they don't do damage. So if something doesn't do damage and doesn't survive, which these do neither, they have a five up save, then you should just be cheap, right? Like, and the answer is little Angora out of the depraved drover just better or chaos warriors are way more survivable and cover almost the same amount of space and are 20 points cheaper. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's the problem is, like I, Angora, that's the beauty of Angora. Their job is to take up space and die at least on their wound count, slow enough, you know? Like just on the face. Like I know that you have to do 10 damage to them. But you got to do an honest 10, right? Like you got a 10 mortal wound. Gotta do that honest 10. Yep. Daemonettes do not require an honest 10 because bravery six. Daemonettes are bravery 10, but still it's, yeah. Oh, sorry, sorry. Yeah, never mind. My bad. They do have bravery 10. We'll get to the bravery, yeah. That's why they cost more. There it is. Yeah, that's why they cost 50 points more. So, okay. New units. Oh, let's get into the meat of it, boys. You're ready. Here we go. I'm starting on a high note here. Glutose, the Lord of Gluttony. I think this guy's good, by the way. I'm repping this, dude. He's not, he's no catacross. Obviously, Phatacross being the joke name for him. Funny, cause he also has a whole little. No, not body shaming. Eat the food you want, the mental health burrito that just for six precious minutes of that day, you feel better about yourself. Crush it. No judgment here. Yeah, live life. This guy does not have the utility of catacross, not even close, not even like in the general vicinity of catacross, but that being said, I think he's good. Well, he has his own dock frenzy chart. He does, yes, he does. Absolutely does, yeah. He's wearing his allegiance ability to the army. Yeah, it's pretty fun. Doesn't, this is where you get some, like, some cheeky healing, too. 100%. So let me just buzz through this guy. This is way too long for me to read it all, so I'm just gonna hit the high notes. He's 400 points, 18 wounds, three up save. Kind of slow at an inch move, but after round two, he will be able to run in charge, which is cool, or round two and on. He has a good command ability for high damage heroes. He can make Archeon basically immortal, which is cool, so good for keepers and stuff like that. He has a nice Steg-1 to hit bubble, which is good for alternative, like, slow slownish builds with castwares. His battle line, like, put a big old block of castwares around him and it's actually pretty darn tanky. He has a solid spell. His crippling famishment is actually a pretty nice spell, and he has a built-in plus one to cast, which makes him the best caster in the army, basically. You know, in fight with the epitome who can re-roll. And so, you know, this guy's good. I think this guy is gonna show up in other people's armies, maybe as much or more than he shows up in Slenesh armies, as a matter of fact. At 400 points, he's actually a really interesting ally in, like, Nurgle. If you watch Darren Watson's on his Wargamer show today, he was putting this guy into everything. Like, he made a- That's his new Aethercourt sproach. Yeah, exactly. He was just- He's like cranberries. He's just getting in everything. And, like, he did this with a thrice-fold befellement, so it was like four fatties, basically, was the concept. And just stacking neg ones to hit everywhere. Like, there were models in the army getting up to, like, neg three, and, you know, neg two to hit all over the place. And, yeah, it's interesting. It can give itself a five-up save until it suffers five wounds, five up after save, I should say. Until it suffers five wounds. She's the first- The priestess is the first attendant to die. You were actually right. I love the, like, about around one, a paratheef starter, main course, dessert, digestif. Like, what a neat little design element. Whoever thought this up, like, what a wonderful, beautiful little piece of design as he eats the meal. Now, as usual, like, round four and round five basically don't matter, because, you know, games tend to be decided by turn three. But still- You're just- I love the design of this. I think it's a little bit over-costed, but I think it's a little bit over-costed because of the ally ship. Yeah, sure. And so I forgive it. If the rest of the army is more cost-effective and more where it should be, you keep Glutoset 400 points, because it's really, it's got a lot of value. It does a lot of stuff. It does a lot of stuff flavorfully, pun intended. The sculpt is magnificent. You don't feel bad running it. Like, it's, this is a cool 400 point here. I think it could bring a little bit, like, of a better, like, just one extra buff to really bring it home and make it look for the Heedonites keyword because then we're justifying, we're buffering against that using it in as an ally. Right? Yeah, yeah, sure. One buff that says Heedonites and boom. I mean, I already considered a homerun, but it's that kind of homerun that, like, hits the wall and bounces out of bounds, as opposed to, like, you know, it's the, I don't know, that would be a ground ground rule. I understand what you're saying. Yeah, as opposed to going sailing clear into the... Yeah, just, like, clear into the upper deck. This is, it is a homerun, but it just clears the fence. Yeah, it's right on the other side. There was a chance that the outfielder was up with his glove up and it, like, tipped off the edge of the glove or something. Right, right. And then went out. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's perfect. Yeah, this, but it's still, like, a homerun same sculptor I hear did Catacross and quote unquote, Fatacross. I don't like you. That's what I've been told, yeah. There's no shame here. And hell yeah, give that person a raise, put them in charge of centerpieces forever. Yeah, I mean, they're killing it. They're killing it. It's absolutely, like, if they didn't get a five on their yearly review, then there's something wrong. Like, they are killing it. The damage isn't that bad. If the model's unmounted, the damage table you see here is the unmounted damage chart. Yeah, it's not that bad. This is the flip, what is the flip side of Catacross, is you actually want Glutos to get into combat? Catacross, you want to keep out of combat, which is like anathema to putting five room points into your army that's already super expensive with us here at Bone Reapers. You want to keep Catacross out of combat because you want, you need all those, like, really deep tier buffs. You actually, like, at turn two, you're throwing Glutos into combat as hard as you can. Yeah, his command ability on himself actually stands, especially if there's a keeper around making him double pile in, can actually keep him topped up really nice. Like, it's going to be very hard to bring him down. Right, and that's where I think that, like, the 400 points, again, I think it makes sense. It feels a little over-costed, but the fact that this is a 400 points that you're going to throw into combat, it is bringing a bunch of utility. Like, it's a little high, but only because that ally problem. Yeah, yeah. Tom, what do you think about old Glutos here? You love Nurgle, you ready to put this guy, like, Daryl's on a list with him, by the way, in Plague Touch, which I thought was funny, but not like a two-drop with Plague Touch. He's no Roticus in this army. Sure. And we can talk about that later. But, I mean, what I'll say is this, I like that they designed him in such a way that he's viable. I'm somewhat disappointed that he doesn't have the demon keyword. Okay, sure. Given all the demons, like, layering his base. Yep. Like, and so I think that that was, that was a synergistic miss, but that's not surprising giving the lack of synergy that's in this book. I do find myself looking for demon or mortal in this book right now. You know, like, which is, I guess a missed opportunity, but it's also like, there's no key, it's not corn, the keyword bingo, right? You're right. And it's not Nurgle, but, but I mean, he's fine. It's just another thing to track. Yeah, he's fine. He's not bad. Right? Right? I think he's going to be in a lot of armies. Yeah, he should be. You should never feel bad about, this is in that sweet spot where like, the obvious thing should never necessarily be the best thing, but you never feel guilty about playing it, right? Yeah, no, I agree. I think that, I think you nailed it exactly, Meph. Like, to me, this is like, yeah, they actually hit the sweet spot pretty well. Like, there's going to be lists where he's quite good in. There's going to be some lists where he's, you know, kind of underwhelming him. He's in them. Yeah, and that's fine. He's there. Where he's just kind of there and not really probably living up to his full potential, as it were, right? Right, right. But yeah, I dig him. I think he's one of the better pieces of design in this whole book. Like, he's a great scroll. It's a great scroll. Yeah, I love this war scroll. All right. I just love it. It does aperitif. Yeah. Yeah, no, I know. Like, it's, yeah. Like, the design is great. You know what I mean? Like, he really is a, he's a classy dude. Do I get to say lore? Oh, from like the lore and the fluff stance, this idea that excess can go in a different way than like just, you know, cringe sex humor, but also like, just like, this is, this is heated in a spot. It's great. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm with you. Love heated in a spot. Okay. So, fantastic. Let's keep going. Sigvald, the Prince of Slaanesh, the Geld Prince, the Vainglorious One, first amongst Slaanesh's chosen, and yet somehow not a demon, which is unfortunate, but at any rate, that's fine. See, that is the hill I'll die on. Sure. Should have been a demon keyword. That's my hill. Should have been a demon. No reason not to have both demon and mortal like Sigvald should have them both. You gave Sigvald horns for a reason. You rolled out an entire video that I loved. I truly love that video. You were even self aware about the getting peed on thing. Like, of course the Golden Prince would be into Golden Showers, like whatever. Like, but didn't give demon keyword even though brought back because rewarded by Slaanesh to be the demon, like, mm-mm. No, this is unacceptable. The Locus, which you say is like half the time just nothing and half the time like OP or not OP, but unfun for your opponent. Like, the demon keyword with Locus on Sigvald makes Sigvald make sense. That is where I am like charging. I'm doing the most finesseful duelist. I am Raphael from Soul Calibur. Like, I am like, like just fencing at the toe and killing you full to dead. That's the big missed opportunity. It's over-costed by about, I will be generous and say 30 points. I think it's closer to 40. I just wanted to, Sigvald falls into that category if I just want an excuse to run it. And it's the best model in the range. I'm going to run it, but I'm going to feel like an idiot for doing it. And you should never feel like an idiot for running your cool stuff. Never. Yeah. Yeah, he's definitely over-costed. Like, six wounds on a three up, four up. Like, don't get me wrong, the four up has to be cool. But like, it's very easy for you to just doft some rolls and he goes. That's not a lot of shield in there, right? His... In Magic the Gathering, we'd say he doesn't have a fat ass, right? Like, he just... Yeah, correct. Exactly. He just, you know, it's going to be very easy for just like even a bunch of little piddled dudes to be like, oh, roll bad, roll bad. He's dead. Yeah, I throw my like extra judicator or shots over there or whatever. Right. I have extra shots. I'm just going to like, oh yeah, they're just going to go over at that six wound guy. And he's really, really, really dependent in being on the charge. Like, he's not great stuck in because when he's charging, sure, hopefully you're getting like, with his charge character, with his unmodified charge rule setting his attacks, hopefully you're getting like seven on average. You know, so that's by the way that damage table down there for him is set to seven attacks. So that's him on the charge. Doing an average of 4.67 damage to a four up save. Okay. Boy, how do you if I had the locust though and I got stuck in and they couldn't pile in back so I could actually win the fight. But you could just like hold them there for a while. But that's fine. I will make a distraction facts that holds somebody in combat because that's how we're going to use them. For 200 and how many points? She's 60 right now. Yeah. Look, we all agree he's too expensive. Cool beans, right? Like obviously he's too expensive. His most direct comparison is obviously to the light of Eltharian, who by the way was to take him to the cleaners. That's 260 points cheaper in an entire year. I think a light of Eltharian is too expensive right now. And I argued for him being 200, he's too expensive. He's not, he's not played in the army very often. And you know, whatever, just 40 points more than that. And like in the direct matchup, it's not even close. It's not even close. The light of Eltharian literally takes him to pieces. Yes. Light of Eltharian has a command ability too. Well, I'm okay with Sigvall not having, you're right, that makes the comparison worse. But I'm okay with him not having a command ability. Like Sigvall isn't, yeah, he's a singular force. He hates leading other people. So like I'm good with that, thematically and effectively. But like make the points according, right? He just, he needs to be way cheaper. Like he's probably a 200 point scroll at best. So, but the bones of the scroll are good. This is what I was talking about. Like this is one of the areas where his design's good, he does a lot of cool stuff. I like him. If he was like 180 to 200, we'd be actually in the money, right? His problem is only points, which is good. Yes. Yes. So like, the foundation is strong here, right? We just need to, just gotta put our arms back away. Only point to the DMQ work. So 30% of 260 is like 60 points. 30% of 260? No, it's more than that. 90 points, 90. Now you're way too high. One 70. It is 78 points, Tom. Yep. Okay. So 78 points. So that puts them right at like 190 to 200. Yeah. Yeah. Or actually 180 to 190. Yeah, that sounds about right. 200 for style, whatever. Well, that's one thing, 30 to 40%, the new units are 30 to 40% over-costed across the board. I'll pay the sweet model tax. I just want to run Sigvald. Lurid Hayes. Yeah, like again, in Lurid Hayes is where he's at. As my third general in, you know, like. Yep, yep. You make him a general. He can be off-table, so there's no ability for somebody to try to snipe him or anything, to do something silly, right? He can come in and he's real threatening when he shows up nine inches away from your backline. Cause he lands that charge on six. And like against those back pieces and back heroes, he will carve them up. Well, and that's the thing is like, I'm gonna, it's the mental, it's the mental Warhammer, right? He's off the board now. Now you got to like, now you got to protect your neck, as Wu-Tang Clan would say. Like you've got to, like now you're like, oh, now I need to be aware of here, here, and here. And so I got a screen here, here, and here, and he's going to eat up whatever you're going to put here, here, and here. And I'm going to go come in at like, the spot you didn't anticipate. Like, I love Sigbold. This is, this is cool. I want more, like we'll call them pseudo 200 point, like melee assassins that are awesome, that are over efficient in like their murder. I got you. I'm with you 100%. Because no command abilities is not the point. Like put them around, put them in the 150 to 200 range and make them punch above their weight. Yes. Yeah, because they have such an undesirable role but it doesn't matter. Just, just make them little murder machines that are way punch above their weight class because they're just these single things that fight in melee. Fine, cool. Yeah, and by the way, like Death Masters which we mentioned earlier in a joking fashion, perfect in another example of things that should act like that. Yeah. Yeah, just, they punch above their weight class, they do a bunch of murder. Cool. Yep. All right, rock on. The Lord of Pain. I don't know, fair enough. I liked it when he was like 110 points when he launched. I'm not sure what, I'm not sure what data they used in between the launch of the box and now that justified him shooting at 40. They didn't have data. They had no data. They did not have enough data, remember, to change anything. Sigmar is not enough data. Sigval is on a 60 mil round. Somebody asked that question. Ian, Sigval is on a 60 mil round. Okay. Yeah. This guy going up 40 points is just, I don't even know what to do with that. Hey, Queen just sitting over there with the named one. Yeah. Like 80 points, she's got the whole crew with her. Just cackling. You know, for all the crap, the OBR versus Maw Tribes release got, like Maw Tribes put up more top five finishes in the home stretch than OBR did. So like, there was a lot more parity between those two books, even if so, you know, there was some bad feels about the Maw Tribes book. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, the Lord of Pain, he's got a cool five up after save that can help feed to gravity because it kicks little mortal wounds back, which is neat. He has a very difficult commandability. It's hard to keep up with like things like slicks that you would want to use it on because they're shooting off like 20 some inches. And he's like, wait up guys, I fell on my keys. You know, like just get out of here. Holy within 12, blah, blah, on this guy. Get out of here with that. It's easy to do 12 inches. Just make it 12 inches. And I mean, he, he clearly is meant to combo with like the Mirmidons and the Twinsoles, but both of those are non bows because the Mirmidons, I don't care. Like that's my Anvil unit. I don't care about damage, right? And like it's just not worth it for the overpriced I pay for them. And it's a complete non bow with the Twinsoles since they have built-in re-roll to hit either three or two rounds of the game, right? No, yeah. So he just compares very poorly with the Lord of Chaos, right? So like down the two damage tables you see at the bottom are his damage table, right? Where he averages 2.78 and the chaos Lord, which averages 2.72 statistically irrelevant difference there. And you know, the chaos Lord has a Bonsergood command ability. Like by the way, that is not me piling the chaos Lord in twice, which he could make himself do, right? Right. So even if the chaos Lord just uses his literal own command ability on himself, he actually doubles this guy's damage. And so like the advantage is like, I guess he makes your over-costed Twinsoles and Mirmidons battle line. Yes, you buy this over-costed hero and then you get- And then you can further get over-costed troops. Over-cost the battling. But again, that's just a points problem. Like I don't want to beat that up too bad because if these things were brought down in range, right? Then my issue with him would just be, oh, his command ability is kind of a nonbow and very hard to use. But like I'd still take him if he was a hundred points and the Mirmidons were a hundred points and the Twinsoles were like 120 or 130. Well, like this is another thing where like you look at some of those artifacts where you go like, these artifacts are like, On a Lord of Pain is when you're taking like a Sigvald and you're taking some like name stuff that maybe can't necessarily take, you've got a Shalaxi because you want a discount to make some like some juice work in the list, right? In an ideal world where you're just like, I'm just shaving 40 and 40 points here and 40 points there. Like you want to take a Lord of Pain as your general and then you look, oh, that's not so bad if I put this artifact on it. You just don't want to feel, again, you don't want to feel like an idiot for doing it. And yeah, I mean, when this guy was pointed at 110, I was like, okay. Yeah, cool. You know, like that's cool. Like, yep, seems reasonable. Yep. Yeah. So just fix the points. I mean, I don't want to keep banging that drum, but geez, well, Pete's, you know, with these heroes, it really... Like I said, you just have the points thing on for six hours and if there was an entertaining episode but it was still... 30 to 40%. That's the number for all the new units. Yeah, I mean, it's rough. It's a rough time. It's a hot time in the old town tonight. All right, so that's the Lord of Pain. Lop, lop, lop, lop. Okay. Shard Speaker of Slinash, speaking of Overcost and Heroes. 150 points. It's a little caster, beautiful model. I mean, my God, this is like... Yeah, this is disapproving Samurai's man's unrequited love. Sure, shard speaker. I'm sure. I'm already writing the head cannon. You can't undo this. I'm with you, man. It's, I love it. Tell me, leave this narrative for me, Maff. I love it. The Twisted Mirror is a nice buff, but it requires the very squishy speaker to be very close and then only happens on a three up. At least it happens in the shooting phase. So you can move first and she can do it even if she runs. So that's good. Could be automatic because you're already sticking your neck out though. Yeah, I mean, it's like, exactly. Like it feels like the three up is just kind of this additional thing that didn't really need to be there since you've got to be so close to the danger zone to use it. And by the way, she is slow. Like, assuming that you're going to just hope for the best on her run, like she's not worth spending a command point to turn her run into a six. So you're just going to roll and hope for the best so she can catch up to the army. And, you know, in later turns, if she's still alive when combats are a little more mixed in the fray, yeah, then like, it's a cool buff. Like it's usually a buff you're not really probably going to get much use out of until turn two or three. And then it's the equivalent to cast like, again, percentage chance of it's harder than a six, but not as hard as a seven is what a three plus is, right? Yep. So it's a, but it's a good buff. Like don't be wrong. There aren't many buffs in this army. And I don't want to sit here and crap on general plus one to women, which is a very good buff, right? Yep. It's just not a lot of it across the game, you know? Yeah. And I mean, like, again, we're talking about hoops. Like every good thing in his army has hoops. You don't get anything for free. It's, it's, well, yeah, that's the inverse of before where like you used to get rewarded for taking the cool stuff and now you're like punished for it. The thing this can't not be compared to is just like a regular chaos lord though, a chaos sorcerer lord for 110 points. Of course. Like it's unaffordable. And why am I taking a 150 point thing in a super points dense army when I could take the 110 point thing? Hell, I'll buy the same sculpt and nobody will be like, that's not a chaos sorcerer. Sure. Like, you know, I'll buy the cooler sculpt that just Oh, I mean, for right now this is my slanash chaos sorcerer lord, you bet. Yeah. Like I'm just going to direct proxy it to being a chaos sorcerer lord slanash version. Right. Like that, that's a, that's a fail. Like when you direct proxy so easily and overtly and I don't know. Yeah. You know, her again, her spell is pretty decent. You know, saying like neg one to one for an enemy unit. Nice little mirror trick there. I like how they wrote that right. Obviously the mirror in the reflection says, you know, your unit's plus one to one and their unit's neg one to one. Cool. I like that kind of thematic stuff. That's actually really nice. But, but again, she has to be quite close to use it. The whole like Miss lurkers thing where she can put herself up to a three plus save basically. And her, she gets a little, I don't care at all about the shadow cloaked claws like get out of here with that nonsense. That's ridiculous. Slightly better wizard bonk, cool. Sure. Like I'm not fighting in melee with this thing. Come on now, what are you doing with your life? The games break down to where it happens but it's not worth pointing it. Does that make sense? Like it's like, yeah, sometimes I'm attacking with my wizard when I don't want to be in melee to control the objective from like the two, like those last two like skinks or whatever. Right. But it's not worth pointing over. Right. Come on. So, you know, at like, again, she could be a really interesting play at like 110 if she was just the same as the KS Oracle or she'd still be worse. But like, Rule of cool. But rule of cool. I think she'd at least be part of the conversation. At 150, this is like nonsense. Right. So, but again, like it is a buff in an army that is starved for buffs. So we're only points away from being her like, say, yeah, okay, that's part of the conversation. Right. So that's not bad. Right. Oh, kiddioke. Anything else on the shark shaker? Why is so much of the new stuff just disappointing? Well, because it feels written in a way that's like as though it's making you, you're like walking across broken glass to get to this stuff. Right. Like, I just gonna buy the new models and play the new models. Right. And have them just like do things. Like skink heroes just like work with each other. Like this is, they're like, that's hilarious. Or you know what? I'm not gonna say skink heroes because any time you make a Seraphon comparison, people are just like, shut up, Seraphon are broken. They shouldn't be like that anyways. And you know what? I agree. You're right. I won't make a Seraphon comparison. You know what I'll say instead? Dwarf runelords are looking at this girl laughing or whatever they're called, right? And that what it is, runelords or whatever. Is that what their friends are called, Tom? The two of them. I just give a whole unit plus one rend prayer. Stackable plus one rend. Yep, runelords. You know, that, that, that hellion, the dwarf runelord. Right. When you compare that unfavorably to a dwarf runelord, oh boy, not great. And they're getting a whole bunch of play right now. Sure, top, top of the meta. As I'm saying, when you compare the like- I think they're doing it. Don't get me wrong. Yeah, yeah, no, it's fine. But when you compare like mid meta stuff so unfavorably it says something. So, bliss barb seekers. This is one of my favorite units in the game. Sure, it's... Point, I mean, I just feel like we can put a bracket around the points are wrong for everything we talk about. Sure. And just like, I wanna take that right now what I'm talking about with the students. What percentage do you think... I think about 40%, 39% if I was... 30 to 40? Yeah, 30. Somewhere in that margin of 30 to 40%. If I were to just like put a, put a number on it that you've been tracking this whole time as your own little side quest. Sure. All right, so let's talk about bliss barb seekers here. It's in the bubble right now. Sure. I put the points cost in a bubble and I've thrown it to the side. What mobile like Calvary archers do that I wish had the option to be battle line if? I will pay two different like unit taxes to be battle line if like I have to be invaders and I have to take this general, right? I would do that to make these battle line if and like 140 points, right? Sure. 140, 120 and just like, oh man, this is, cause the models, I mean, they really the life in them, the way they're like bounding, they're not even in the saddle, like they're in the motion, they're like leaning, like they have these like, what I can only describe as the sweet spot between the derp and the detail. Sure. You know, like where they're like, where like the mangler squig has like a little bit of a derby quality to it, but you're just like, it brings it home. Like there's the double tongue flitting, you know, the, the, the, the, the beady eyes, the like chocobo prance, like where they're almost careening and turning sideways, you can see them Tokyo drifting cause they know I'm going to turn those bases sideways, run them forward and take up as much real estate as possible. And they've sculpted the models to be doing that. It's gorgeous. I love it. Yeah. So let me get into it. You can take over now. You can take over now. We all agree they look amazing. I'm with you man, 100%. I understand your, I understand your, your nature around them with them because it's hard to contain yourself because these are super awesome. I just, I want to run them. I want to run so many of them. I want my all my battle line. I just 30 bliss barb seekers. That's my battle line. These are the most efficient point to wound ratio in the army. So probably overcosted, but they're the best. They're the only unit in the whole army that has higher than the golden ratio. Okay. And so they are four wound models on a five left save. They, they're, they have low range damage, but it's pretty good for DP farming. And they can execute weird pile engine antigans with the Seeker cavalcade. You just have to be careful cause once you get yourself into combat with them, they have no ability to retreat and still shoot. So they're stuck in and they're never going to shoot themselves out of anything. They can't shoot themselves out of a wet paper bag. When you read their profile, you're like, okay, let's see 18 inch range, three attacks, pretty good, fours and fours, neg one, one damage. And if the unmodified wound roll for an attack made by its weapons unit is a six, then they afflicts one mortal wound on the target and the attack sequence ends. And you're like, so by the way, I hate that some of these things do mortals. Some of the things wound on a six and do mortals and then stop the attack sequence. And some of them just are additive. And like, there's no rhyme or reason to what works, what way. They don't benefit from the, any of like your, they don't benefit from your, your sixes double tap ability or most of the melee type buffs, right? That you have in the army. They, their damage is low. Like, I know that looks good. That sounds like a profile that would do damage. It doesn't because fours and fours are straight terrible. Right? Like, I cannot explain how bad fours and fours are mathematically, right? What that means straight out is that 75% of your attacks don't get there. That's the math. It's really simple, right? We don't usually express it like that, but that's the math. Right. So their average damage is 2.67. Right. Or on average, they do 25% of the damage of their like total like potential. Yeah, yeah. So, well, and less once you figure in saves too. Like I'm talking about 75% before we even get to the world of saves. Right, yep, yep, yep, yep. So like, yes, they can spread around some damage, but honestly they're like, I think bliss barbs are okay. I actually think that they're far subpar to like slicks which we're going to talk about in a moment, but they're okay. Their ranged power is okay. They can help get you some depravity. They can play weird pile inch nanogens. They're okay. They're one of the best units in the book. They're okay. And they can run and shoot, which is cool. If they could retreat and shoot, they'd be a hundred times better. There's something to allow them to do that, yeah. Yeah, and there is nothing that allows them to do that. So, yeah, error 404, buff not found. But you know, again, what I really want to drive home is people need to understand that these things aren't damage. Okay, you don't take this unit for damage. You take it to be a very fast mobile gum engine that somewhat farms depravity. Yeah, well, that's the thing. I want to send this out and I want to screen it sideways Tokyo Drift style. I want to, like, blink, blink, like a hero or finish off a thing that got hit with an endless spell or take some depravity off of a unit over there and then screen in front of that unit over there that wishes to charge me. And then they get charged, they barely survive, retreat, blink, blink again. You know? Yep. That's how I want to play them, and I'm not allowed to. Yep. Yep. Ghostbunton said, what exactly is their role when they're not doing damage and you can get the same wounds but better from slick blades? Slight harassment and DP farming. I agree with you. I honestly think slicks are way better. So let's talk slicks, shall we? Let's talk about the best unit in this book. Let's talk about an unabashedly good unit, okay? Okay. Still not as good as they could be, not as good as what a lot of other Arbys have, but in this book, this thing is standing, you know the meme of like the guy standing there, he like bites his Olympic medal and he's spraying champagne everywhere and being a general jerk and the camera pulls back and he's in third place? That's slick blade seekers. Like they're on the podium, okay? No joke, like making it to the podium is good. It's hard, right? But they're still not, you didn't take home the gold. Okay, slickies. 14 inch move, four wounds again. So, you know, a unit has 20 wounds, which is good for 200 points, so golden point to wound ratio. Solid damage, as you can see, like on a four, against a four plus, these guys pound out nine and a half damage, not bad at all. They can execute the pylon shenanigans with Seeker Cavalcade, but it's actually really good, right? Since they rely on melee attacks, they can like, they can run forward 20 inches. This is something I'll spend a CP on to make 20 inches go forward, right? I'll run them out 20 inches and then I'll jump on somebody from six inches away, right? So my... 26 inch threat, there's no charge involved. You're just like, let's go. Just let's go, right? Yet they have built-in re-roll charge rolls, which just tells me that somebody doesn't actually understand how this army would be played because like, if you read this book, you're gonna take Seeker Cavalcade almost every time. It is the good battalion, right? This rule was written by somebody who did not understand actually how incentives in this army work or what is actually good. Because this army does not, this unit does not need re-roll charges. I played this unit in every one of my playtest games so far. I never rolled a charge with them, not once. Never needed to. Like, that is a non-vote combo ability. I mean, yeah, it's a non-vote combo, but this is where you can roll the charges, see if you go that way. If you get to 12, okay, I'm gonna go do the 12 inch thing. Oh, sure. Like, yeah, you can roll it. But I mean, it's like, sure, you're not wrong. I'm just saying, I never actually charged with them. There's like a, there's a, there is an interesting finesse play with that, that though, where you're rolling to see if you get like the good charge so that you can really pile in or so you can really move around the board, right? Cause the one ends here and then you get to move in and then you get the pile and you can do some real juicy stuff. Just remember they don't have run in charge. So if you do the 20 inch movement, then you don't actually charge it. Fair, fair, fair, fair. Like if that said run in charge, instead of re-roll charge, I'd be like, okay. Yeah. Okay, yeah, yeah. Because then I could do what you're talking about. Yeah. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, you're a thousand percent right. I mean, the home run hit on this unit is making that run in charge rather than re-roll charges. Right, right. But thank you for just letting the guys people just get out of banners. What's that? I said, thank you for giving me this thing that most people just get out of banners or musicians. But sure. Yeah. Now, these guys are brutal in secret cavalcade with the fight twice from the keeper of secrets. Oh, I do love it. Because the fact that they can just like travel across the board like 12 inches almost, right? On pylons. It's sexy. And they have the damage to support it. And they're gorgeous models as well. They are gorgeous models. Not quite as gorgeous as the, it's a dual kit, right? Like not quite as gorgeous as the Aero ones, because like the poses are just like so elegant, but like still great. This is what I want. I want this like Persian vibing slanash. I love where they're at. This is the missing piece of the puzzle for slanash in Warhammer Fancy Battle and Aegis Sigmar has been this. This is the thing that like kept me away from slanash for like 15 years. And they're like, hey, you finally get it. And I'm like, yes. I want that human side of the puzzle. And thank you. Thank you. We're there. Yeah, I agreed. If there was any way to take these as battle line in the army, the army would become so much easier to build lists with because these are so obviously good. Tommy, remember, like you remember pre your KO book, pre the balloon boy wizard, when like one of your major complaints was it's so hard to build KO armies, right? Because your battle lines sucked so much, right? It was like you had to always have Arcos and they were just completely underwhelming, right? Or whatever. And it was always this kind of point sync, right? Yeah. This is like that hypercharged. Sure. I can see that. So there you go. Yeah. PSM also Tokyo drifting these sideways. Oh, absolutely. Like these guys are great. This goes back to the pose of the seekers themselves because the seekers, it's a dual build box, right? Like you get the slick beds or the... Yeah, they may be only pulling home the bronze, but in this book, that might as well be a gold, so. But yeah, there's poses. Yeah, they want to smash. From model to execution to role to perform, like having a function in the army to actually combo-ing with other things that are happening, they actually hit on all cylinders, right? Right, right. Those are my two favorites. I mean, they really are like of the new stuff we saw. Like it's the slick blades and the bliss barb seekers. They're just, that's what I want. Like I want that like Tokyo drift 420 blaze it, like play style, whether it's ranged or spears, right? That's what I want. I wish Hellblades had been distinguished a little bit more from like that, just. Sure. Anyway. All right, let's get into the infantry because this is gonna be a less positive discussion. This is the missed opportunity here. Sure. Right, this is what we saw with the warband. We saw the pain bringers and the twin souls. That's what we saw. And never mind, there's a worst missed opportunity. Go on. Mirmaidish pain bringers, six inch move, two wounds, four up save, an elite infantry unit, which are always worse. They are 150 points for their 10 wounds. They are overpriced chaos warriors, continuing a long tradition of other attempts to have God-specific chaos warriors basically being bad. They have no distinct role within the army. And even in the battalion, they underperform, though they do get closer to value, especially if they are babysat by the Lord of Pain. Let's take a look at some compare, like if we're gonna talk about damage, which is normally what I hear people talking about, okay? Then let's do a true comparison. This is 300 points of Mirmaidans, which is two units, right? So that is 20 wounds, okay? And they kick out an average of 10.69 damage. Now these guys are an anvil. And it's cool to have anvils that can deal some damage, but they're an anvil. Their point is to live. That's what they're here for, okay? They are not here to do damage. Damage is secondary, but I'm still gonna talk about it, because they do 10.69 against a four up save. Now, for 30 points cheaper, I can get 15 chaos warriors. Do you have 15 bodies versus the, what? 15 bodies versus 10. I've got a five up against mortal wounds, okay? And I'm kicking out 6.89 damage, okay? Now, again, that's not, like, the difference is notable. It's notable, okay? But I have 10 more wounds in this unit. Right. Right? I have the same- Plus the intrinsic value of coverage that five action bodies give you, right? Correct. I have more battlefield control. I have the same reroll saves. I have 10 more wounds, right? Yep. And I'm getting all of that for 30 points cheaper. There is no defense of these guys. I do like that they do more damage. I feel like at equal cost, and even a little less board presence, that's a valuable decision to make. Now I'm looking at the trade-off I'm making is do I wanna deal more damage with my anvil, right? Am I expecting a grindy fight, right? Versus do I want the extra coverage? That's a trade-off. This is the same thing like I complained about on the offensive side of things when you're looking at things like bulgur's, and I'm only doing this for the Ts later. I'm talking about bulgur's versus bestigur's. Where that breaks down is the damage is better for the 10 models that also have more coverage. Yeah, I mean- I'm comparing them to cast warriors, but if you compare them to other similar units like this, like Alar with Stone Guard, I mean, it just gets comical. Right, and that's the thing is like, we'll just assume that there's like an equivalent, some sort of like value that is, it gets amplified by whatever your allegiance is, and you have certain biases, because theoretically, maybe that army pays less for their wounds because they do less damage or whatever it is, but at least you're looking in faction. You can buy chaos warriors. Sure, yeah. Do you guys have like 100 points, or maybe even 110? I'd be like, okay. I see where the, I see where the competitions come with cast warriors. Am I willing to pay those points to be like harder, to hit harder than cast warriors, right? For my android, maybe. Maybe, I mean, you've got a battle on ifm, which is like kind of like a spitting in the eye, but- Yeah, I mean, you've got to take the Lord of Pain, but yeah. There's still a cost. Still a cost, but again, like we're talking about 80 to 90 or 100 points between these two units that need to go down. That is a big difference between the Lop and these guys. Yep. And I go back to this. This is like a little sad because I wanna run these guys. I saw that like teaser box. You got me to buy in. Are they punishing me because my models are cool? Are they doing that? Are they punishing me because they've released probably the cool, like the most, 10 out of 10 models I've seen in a range ever released? Yeah. Like, hello. I mean, they're amazing. Like every single one of the moral units, I just look at it and I go, okay, head swap, we'll fix that. I clip a thing there, but like, boom. I don't buy anything extra. I don't, you know, like out of the box, 10 out of 10s. Yeah. Cool. They know you're gonna regard it. I'm being punished by my, regardless. Is that what it is? Yeah. Yeah. So again, like happily, I think that if they do really hit the points on these hard, there will be an interesting conversation around them. I really do. If you bring them down to like, then they could have a role, right? Like at their current points, they just have no role because they're too slow to like, to apply their damage to where they need to, right? Yeah. Well, they gotta be that anvil that you're afraid to charge. That's a cool role to have. Sure. That chaos where you're stoned. I don't care about like, it's how hard do I commit to wiping out chaos? Yeah. If I'm gonna bubble wrap gludos, right? And put some, put something in the neg one to hit bubble to have him as an anvil, right? Where I've got like a nice unit, like sitting around being like a compact. A big unit, I might say. Like ready to just sit there on a point and like take them hits, right? Right. There's no world where I take these guys over the chaos warriors. No world. By the way, I'm just buying these and running them as chaos warriors. Sure. These are my slanash gas warriors. Yeah, sure. Yeah, you can't. So, you know, get wrecked. Your cool model tax won't affect me. As I said, imagine if an FAQ comes out and they only increase points. Well, you'll be in for a really fun show that day. Oh, you'll get straight fire vents. We've gotten magma Tom before. We haven't gotten magma Vince yet. That'll be a, that'll be a, you better, you better find a salt mine to go get into because, yeah. Because it'll be less salty there. Exactly, correct. Yes. All right, let's talk about these twin souls. Twin souls are interesting. They have a trick. Because I legitimately think their main problem is only points. I think these guys can have a very valid role in the army. Okay. Like they're interesting, albeit very over-costed. We're going to do a fun comparative on these guys. Okay. I really got into it with these guys because I am fascinated by twin souls. Aida, do you have a question? Lower rise, go. Ask a question, lower rise. Sure. Why don't they have the demon keyword? Because they're bound to demons. I have no answer for you, Tom. I really don't know. Like if anything needs to have the dual keyword, it's these guys. It's in the lower. They've literally bound demons to their soul. Yes. Now these are the two hills all die on. Twin souls should have twin souls and Sigvald. Demon keyword, when? Yeah, like Valkia is out there just like, just like nodding and be like, I know that feel. You sure? Sure, absolutely. All right, so. Welcome to the club. Here's your card. Right. These are one of the few units in Slenesh that has no rend. Slenesh famously doesn't have high rend, but it doesn't have no rend. It's just an army of neg one rend, right? Um, but these guys don't. So there are three attacks, fours and threes, no rend, two damage. And they have this weird stance dance mechanic, which just feels so completely unnecessary. Again, why does everything have a hoop? Okay. I like stance dance mechanics. I don't in this case, because it doesn't need to be there. There's no explanation. Not doing anything. Like a necropolis stalkers with their stance dance where I like, I choose which one of the four stances they're in and they're all sweet, but I'm just taking the one that's rend minus one rend and plus one damage. That's one stance, by the way. Yeah. Let me ask you a question. Because I don't remember this legitimately. You allowed to stay in that stance. Yeah. It goes through until the next time you switch your stance. But you can just select the same thing again, right? Yeah. You pick it again then. And then you just do that. These guys. That's what you can't do. Yeah. Yeah. So here's the problem though, is cause like there are range of you get three of them and then not five. And I guess they decided that that's enough to punish you. Like when you get two. And neither of them are going to be battle lined. You get two stances and you have to alternate between them. Meaning because there's only two. Like bad war dancers. Right. Whatever you pick the first round, right? That decides how these are going to be for the rest of the game. So you better make the right choice. Right? And the, so like if you pick rear roll hits, for example, in turn one, then one, three and five, your rear rolling hits and two and four, you're doing the five up or vice versa. Right. If I could just like choose a stance based on, you know, what I thought the battlefield looked like at that point in time. And like, why? Why? Well, there's that unnecessary hoop. Yeah. Yes, why is that a necessary hoop there? Like it would make the unit so much more viable and interesting if I could just like pick the thing I thought made sense. Yeah. Right? Yeah, like with my necropolis stalkers that I mostly pick the one stance, but sometimes I pick a different one of their four stances. Sure. So let's talk about damage. Okay? Right. Okay. So, twin souls. Their base damage against a four up is 7.11. Not bad. Not bad at all. Okay. And they do have an eight inch move, so a little bit more decent. Now they have no ability to gain run in charge in any universe and they do want to charge. But whatever. Eight's better than six. It's interesting that they're eight because so they're seven and then if they have rear roll hits and wounds, so if they're in a rear roll hits turn or the lop is around and they're in the battalion, because this is one of the few things that as a battalion that like actually has some kind of direct synergy, then they can get up to 13.4 or sorry, 13.04 against a four plus eight. Yeah? Watch out now. Oh, it's not bad. It's not bad. Okay. So the, like that's not terrible. They can do work. They're fragile, right? We're talking about 10 wounds on a four up save for 170 points. Just to nail that home. 40 down. But they're fragile. How about percentage? Yeah, it's 40 down. It's absolutely 40 down. This is like, yeah, I'll call in cloud so it's somebody's Phoenix down here. So the interesting comparative here is against Ogre Glittons, okay? Which also have a rent, right? Importantly, and do two damage. And do two damage and have a move of eight. They have a slightly worse save. Let's, in fact, instead of doing this chart, let's just get into the full comparative. So here's the next slide. So let's just go ahead and deep dive on this, right? Cause everyone's saying like these guys are amazing. Okay. Let's talk that out. And yes, their champion is an ego pump, which is great. Okay. Fantastic game, wins. Ogre Glittons, a basic unit of Ogre Glittons. Can we all agree that this is one of the most middling units in the game? They basic. They basic. They order chai lattes and pumpkin spice all the time. Yep. They were Uggs with like stretchy pants, super basic. Yep. A sweater with the name of their Alma mater on it. Like they basic. Love it. But they're not bad. Like I happen to quite like Ogre Glittons. Again, as I said at the beginning of the show, I think if more things looked like Ogre Glittons, the world would be pretty good. Okay. What's fascinating about Ogre Glittons is, let's just do the straight math. First of all, a unit of them has two more wounds, right? Cause you got three models on four wounds each versus five models on two wounds. So hence a little Ogre Dart has 12 wounds. Those three Ogres count as six models, not the five you do. Like if the three Ogres walk up to your five on an objective, they take it from you directly just by standing there, right? So they have model advantage. That was not shaded Uggs, by the way. That was just an understanding of a uniform of what is basic. Sure. All right. Get your Uggs on. Ogre Glittons have much more buff potential. Like the actual buff potential of Ogre Glittons within the Ogre Army is in sanity. Okay. Now, I'm not saying Ogre Glittons are great competitive unit. I'm saying there are 50 buffs you can put on them. Yes, some of them are spells. Yes, some of them are command abilities. Some of them are you playing a slot machine with a slaughter master, right? Like no doubt, the time then you get all of the buffs, right, when you're jacked, when your slot machine comes up all cherries. Yeah, all cherries, whatever it is, yeah. It's great, right? But that's not normal. So whatever, that's fine. Now Glittons have a one worth save, okay? They do have a horde discount and three Ogre Glittons is 120 points. I'm not counting their horde discount of 12 for 400. Like let's just keep it on the unit to unit. 50 points cheaper, okay? And yes, as has pointed out, like, you know, don't forget Glittons with standards and skulls have a six plus wards save against missiles, free re-rollable charges and plus one bravery, right? All of that kind of stuff, yeah? Yeah, I don't even count the fact that they capture more by the way, because that just, Ma Tribe should get something special and they don't have enough of that, so. But when we're talking about that. They don't summon, they don't summon. They don't, like, this is why like the cross, the cross army comparisons sometimes start to break down because like certain armies, you know, it's like in like Magic the Gathering where you get to do more damage when you're black, which you lose a lot, you lose some life, right? That's your trade-off. Like there's a trade-off across grand alliances, sometimes, mostly, and there should be. Like Casino Ghosts, or like, sorry, Casino Gluttons, that's super destruction. Like, I'm not, this isn't taking away from the point. I just want to point out that this isn't a fair comparison to begin with. Sure, so my point is when you look at the damage potential, it's like, okay, let's compare directly across Twinsoul, 7.11 versus Ogre, 6.22 on the base scroll. Pretty comparative, right? I mean, a little less than one point of damage difference, like 0.9, pretty close. If we give the Twinsouls, if we ramp them up with reroll hits and wounds, so they have to be on the charge and in the battalion and in their dance turn, right? And then you go to, so like, that's quite a series of hoops to jump, but it's doable. It's doable. It's doable hoops, but it's hoops, okay? They go to 13.04. Now, let's take the Gluttons with Rib Cracker and reroll wounds, right? They get reroll wounds from Blood Gulet, right? And then that Rib Cracker is just a spell, yeah? They go to 13.53, so we're already punching higher. And if we throw on Blood Feast as well, it goes higher again, right? If they get the plus one to hit out of the slaughterment, like I stopped calculating because like, it just wasn't worth running it farther. If they get the plus one to hit, it shoots through the roof, okay? Now, as has been pointed out, sure, the Twinsouls can pile in twice. No doubt that's a thing, okay? And like, I don't disagree with that at all, right? But my point is that perfect scenario I described of reroll hits and wounds relies on being on the charge. And on the charge is an easy thing to lose for a foot troop that has an eight-inch move. A lot of things are gonna outmaneuver that, right? So that's not bankable numbers. And your damage is way different when you're not on the charge. Oakhirs is an army, again, this isn't, I don't feel this is a fair comparison. Because like, I feel like even like two corners of an argument, like we're one, I already don't think Glutton's are that great. Sure. Personally. Yeah, that's why I used them as a comparative. Because when you're unfavorable to Glutton's, it says something. But Oakhirs is an army don't have screens. They don't have summoning. Like you can set up a screen for a counter-charge with these. Like, what are you screening your Glutton's? If you're into play and throw, sure. Yeah, like you're setting up your screens with a screen of Glutton's, come on. Like you can at least, you have more maneuverability. You have some other options. I'm not trying to bury the lead on your point because you're right, this war scroll is disjointed and can be better. But it's not a complete picture. I find people when they're, they have, there's an abundance of information in Age of Sigmar to argue your point. There is an abundance of, and it's just where do you start your point from? Starting your point from Glutton's is an interesting narrative choice. And by narrative, I don't mean like storytelling. I mean, the narrative you are trying to spin as a arbiter of history in Age of Sigmar. The reason I picked Ogres is because they are actually mathematically an incredibly close unit in almost all regards, right? When you look at their like hit, wound, move, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the punchline then is that, and they're generally not considered to be good. Right, now, if you told me Twinsouls because of the keeper thing, which relies on you taking that hero, which is, you know, maybe slightly sus, keeper kind of sus, I still love her. Love it, yeah, no, thank you. Love the sus blast. Play more, play more among us. Sure, but like, if you told me they were more than Glutton's because of summoning or double pylon, I'd be like, okay, I'll buy that. So like what, 10 points more? Maybe 20 points more? Sure, yeah. Okay, 50 points more? This is, but again, if these guys dropped to the right points, I actually think these are a viable unit. I think Twinsouls get real interesting at a lower points value. I think they're, I think these are some of the strongest bones outside of like slicks and whatever, because these guys actually can be battle line. Yeah, the two new seekers are great for the right cost. No, I gotta advocate for devil sometimes because you gotta probe deeper to what the problem is, right? Yeah, yeah. Like I think armies in their own context is valuable. You know, like the internal parody versus external parody is a rubber band. It's not a perfect like simulacrum. Well, like we can't ever achieve it. Yeah, yeah. But like you gotta look at internal balance to, and like, are they punishing? Is it really as simple as they're punishing this army because the summoning is quote unquote too good because I just agree with them that the premise. I can't think of any other reason. But I disagree with them at their premise because I don't think their summoning is too good. I think their summoning is what good summoning should look like. Plenty of countermeasures. You can crowd my fame. You can snipe my heroes and you can deny me points on the board if you want to by not going MSU and you're just killing my stuff, stuff gets wiped out. Like I'm not guaranteed my depravity if I'm too good at trying to win the game, right? This is what a good summoning mechanic looks like. Why are you punishing this army that hard? I don't, it doesn't make any sense. It doesn't, because I think their summoning is, this is my premise, this is my golden thread throughout. I think this is what great summoning looks like. You're allowed to be great. You're allowed to be great. Like, you know what, you know what what iron draws are great at? Charging you and messing you up. They're really great at that. You're allowed to do that. Zinch is pretty great at casting magic. Like, you're allowed to be great at the thing your army's designed to be great at. I agree. 100%. And why, and there's all these armies out there that are great at the thing that they get to do without being punished for it. KO is honestly like, I don't have a lot of iron for KO. Many people are mad at the current KO meta. And I'm like, I was born in this. Like you've only adopted the darkness. I was born to this darkness. Like I don't, this doesn't confront me none. They're allowed to be great at that because in my mind, they should be the only oppressive shooting army. Yeah. Like other armies should be good at shooting. They're the only army that's allowed to do that because their eggs should only ever be in the shooting basket. You know what I'm saying? They should always be a double turn away from getting wiped out because they bet on that strategy. Like, cool. Tune the numbers correctly to make them do that. Like it bothers me that I look at this. I come back to the term gun shy. They got gun shy with the war scrolls and the point costs in this army because the summoning. And this is what great summoning looks like. There's a couple armies that have summoning done right. I posited the original LON was great. There's an NPE thing where you're like, I brought back the unit you just killed and everyone was like mad because I erased your progress and people hate that. Like mechanically speaking. You know what I mean? We got right down to it. It's liking that ability. I'll warn you right now, man. What's that? I said you're not gonna make any friends liking that original LON. I know, I know, I know. But it cost me a command point when command point in an army that doesn't have an abundance of command points. LON had no, I had no artifacts to give me extra command points. I had nothing to give me extra command points. And I had bad battalions. The best battalion was Death March, which is locked in at specific units. Not zero to three. We're not talking death, but yes, I get it. I understand. The whole point is that like, like people inherently hate summoning, but they never look into like what summoning costs in terms of the table. Yeah, sure. And like I said, the summoning as we talked about earlier comes in late. It's often hard to capitalize on and you're capped at one unit in turn. Like there's just not that much you can do with one summon in turn three. You're already doing something anti-themed to the game. You're taking bodies off the table. On your side as well as theirs. You're not, you got to take bodies off your side of the table if you're running the pendulum through your own army or the flaming skull. And you got to not kill their unit but remove bodies from them. And if you ever played D&D you focus fire the bad thing. You get rid of it. Sure. We got to keep moving. We got so much more to cover. All right, all right, all right, all right, I'm sorry. Okay, Blissbar barters. Six inch move, six up save, six bravery. Appreciate all the numbers that align with this LaNesh number. 160 points. Nope. Like I could stop there, but I'll keep going. Drastically over-costed fragile unit. Run and shoot is nice but requires battle shock support or they will explode like a neutron star. The battalion that supports them is straight terrible. Straight terrible. Their ability to farm DP is okay but they have low overall damage. So the way you need to read their profile is they have two attacks on fours and threes because that's what their little homunculus does. We all guessed originally it would be some kind of mortal wound thing but nope. The, and then, you know, rend egg one, one damage. Their average damage is 3.5. Yes, people talk about using them to spread depravity around. It's actually very hard to do that because of their fours to hit. Like if you go three, three and four it's incredibly easy to just like whiff because here's the problem with doing that mathematically, okay? Like I can look at an average damage of three five and I can say, okay, here's what I'll do and I do. I'm gonna take three and shoot at this unit and three and shoot at this unit and four and shoot at that unit, right? And if the world just mathematically applied one damage to each, great. And sometimes that'll happen. But the way Dyson math actually works is you whiff with your first three and then you do two damage with your second three, right? And then no damage with your four or something like that. That's completely statistically possible. Like we're way in normal statistical relevance here, right? They're independent statistics too. So like they're not reliant on. Right. And so the two wounds I did to the middle one will keep me close to my overall average. By the way, I do it as twin souls. I apologize, I forgot to change the title. The two wounds overall will keep me close to my average but that second wound I did to that unit meant nothing. It added no additional depravity, right? That's how it'll actually still work. And so like these guys are just such a non-starter. Like the points is crazy. I mean, if you blew them down to like a hundred points, I'd maybe think about it. And even then I'm not sure. I don't want to take damage that's so hard. If you drop them to 120, I'd take them. I mean, there it's a six up save which is with a six bravery is like less than negative. And I don't know, the whole farm depravity thing is it's just a, it feels like a misnomer. Yeah. It does matter. I agree. You missed out battalion. Did I, whoops, sorry. Go on, yeah. I apologize everybody. What have I done? Yeah. Every argument you've made tonight invalid. Invalid. Yes, indeed. So, yeah, there you go. I don't know what else to say about these. I don't think the battalion that takes them is like straight bad because shooting twice is just getting into a design space of the game that is OP or horrible. I think I did do the math slightly wrong by the way someone said the math seems slightly wrong. It's actually 4.4, I apologize. I must have missed something in my initial calculations and I was flying through them all. Sorry about that. Yeah, should be 4.4. You're right, Hamza. I'm sorry, still not good, but yes. I was slightly incorrect, I apologize. It's super over-costed regardless for wounds to damage output, even at a range, especially if you look at like Lumenath, what Lumenath archers are bringing and their ignoring line of sight and they have useful battalions, but I digress. Yep, yeah, I think I... Exploding for mortals, huh. Yeah, exactly. So, yep, okay, cool. I probably missed, I probably left out, I probably calc down at 4s and 4s because I was just quickly going through and reading the scroll and that's where I got the number. That's my bad. I'm sorry, everybody. Yes, that's what I did. I just looked at the other numbers. So, there you go. Okay, cool. The one extra damage or the .9 damage that I missed there does not change the unit. Or the one, I guess, with the leader bonus. So, you've got to say this next unit's name right. You got to channel Gary P. He gave them a very appropriate name. I don't know what he called them, Slandgård fiendbloods, what did he call them? No, no, they're Slandgård binbloods. Binbloods, yeah, indeed. So, my argument is this is the only truly bad unit in the book. They are an eight-inch move with a five-up save and three wounds each for 140 points. Their damage is basically nothing. The fact that only the boss gets the little weapon, the fact that their claws are damage one, that they hit on fours. By the way, this is their damage on the charge that I'm showing down here, which is, again, not always something you can bet on, right? So, like, off the charge, these guys drop like a rock. I mean, what is going on here? No war herd keyword, which would make it at least interesting to put them into, you know, for synergies in BOC. They're objectively worse than Bulgur's and Bulgur's already aren't good. Yeah. And they're more expensive. And they're more competitive. Hey, they're more expensive and objectively worse. They're worse than Bulgur's. And Bulgur's already, like, you want her on them because who doesn't want sweet minotaurs in your army? Like, this is the thing I'm the saddest about. This is the one that I have the most fire, perhaps, for beyond the demon keyword thing. Like, you could have got a whole generation of people to buy into two different armies if these were good. You had people would have lined up to buy either Beast of Chaos if they leaned a little bit into the heavy metal, like, hell yeah, like, you know, death metal, heavy metal, like, Beast of Chaos, or a little bit more like Glamrock, David Bowie, Slenash, like, you could have got two different people. This is a pivot point for people to choose an army and you made them bad. Also, you sold me a box of, like, minis for a different game that could have also been a gateway drug into this army. Sure. And it has a better war scroll than these things. I think this is a straight up misprint. I think they're actually, like, all supposed to have the weapon profiles. I don't. I think this is legit. No, no, it's a misprint. The FAQ is gonna come out with an apology note. It's gonna say they should have four wounds per and they should all have the attack profiles. And then they're like, also, they're 120 points. And then I'm like, cool, that's what they, that costs. When the madness of battle descends upon slangorfine bloods, the carnage left in their wake is truly sickening. I- What did they kill? I- Sickening for their own army. Sickening for their own army. Sickening for their own army. Like they charge in and there's just a red stain where they were and they're like, oh God, why'd we bring these guys? They were terrible. Yeah, I mean, these are just bad. This is where Rob's, what makes a war scroll a good bit, got the best. This is the slangorfine bloods. It's so tragic, because finally I had hope for new BC chaos sculpts. Finally I had hope for like the harmony between my depraved drove, which was like, this was affirming for me. I took a long time to choose my second army in ages to make war, right? Like two years to decide what my other army was going to be. And I'm like, okay, BC chaos. And then like, okay, BC chaos rotated and like it was getting bad. I'm like, no, no, no. I finally got gas in the tank. I run it as depraved drove. I take the cool like, I take the cool like slanesh heroes and like now it's like viable again. And I get it, buying one book and thinking you get to play as five other books, bad look, but then make my book great. Sure. And then you have this like the literal bridge unit. It's supposed to exist in both books and it just gives a middle finger to both. Yeah, we all want to slangore back, but you know, not to meme it, but not like this. Not like this. You don't like this. Yeah. Like way to give a middle finger to two books at once. Congratulations. All right, let's talk battalions. We've got so much more to cover guys. I really want to keep. No, we don't. No, we don't. No, we don't. We do, we have so much. I mean, you might, I'm not saying I do. All right. So this will be kind of quick, by the way, thankfully. All right. So battalions 355. Yes, that's right. This is a long show. I warned you it would be. I don't know why you, why you agreed to have me on that. You should have just been like, oh, it's low natural plus meth gone. No, next week. We're just gonna take forever. It's all right. I appreciate you. I appreciate you, meth. No, you don't. All right. I really do. If I, I knew what I was getting into. You don't think I wanted to hear for these long rants? Of course I did. I knew what I wanted. I knew what an excessive takes on Slinash was what I knew. I knew what I was about. All right. Battalions. So Supreme Sibirates, still one of the best battalions and can include non-heed knight heroes. Good stuff. Epicurean revelers doesn't do anything to help devanettes, which just don't hold up as a unit. Seeker, cavalcade, best battalion in the book. Six inch pylon creates the most powerful strategy of the book that will result in hard NPE when combined with locusts, can hold your battle line in seekers with chariots or over-costed hell striders in any sub faction. Uh, that's just it. So, so see, Mucky, hold on. So what's the consensus book bad? That's the problem with this. I do not, this is a four hour nuanced discussion for a reason, okay? Because it's really hard. Like the internet always seems to break down to like best thing ever, worst thing ever, right? As a weekly plan it all says. It's binary. And like that's just not, that's not this book. There's so much things pulling in different directions. It's really hard to break this down because you've got design challenges. You've got some interesting scrolls. You've got weird pylon tricks that can be powerful but are very NPE. You've got points being way too high. Like it's all over the shop. Well, I'll say this. For me, it was a pass. Sure, it's just fair. But that's different than like just saying bad book, right? I go back to my holistic take. I think it's a, I actually think it's a good book. I look at this versus Sons of a Hammett which is the last book to miss the mark for me like truly. And I'm like, I like this book better than Sons of a Hammett. At least I know I have some variants at all with like takes and directions to go with this. I have some like tech. I have some stuff. Sons of a Hammett has like two builds and the whole thing. And I'm just like sad the rest of the time because it's not playing the way I wanted to to begin with. Yep. Like, and this book, I'm at least I can like four, I have a 420 blaze it build in here. Like my opponent might not like it and I have to spend extra time explaining to them at turn zero what I'm about to do to them. But at least I'm playing it the way as advertised that I want to play my like cocaine driven like rock and roll obsessed, you know, like units. Sure. All right. Let's talk about the new battalions. All right. Cyber rights is a battalion that every army should have by the way. Every army should have a take three to six year old. Yeah, the problem is you always need seeker first but yes, then if you can, Sivrites. Sivrites should be in everything. The depraved carnival, difficult combination of units with no synergies. Boy, if there was ever a nonbow battalion, it is 1,070 points for a men battalion with 48 wounds, 33 of which are on a six plus save with a six bravery. And the abilities of the leaders you take have almost no overlap with the actual units that fill it out. I don't know who wrote this, but you should feel bad. That is my honest answer. This is bad. You're gonna get a call from GW in a couple of weeks into like, yo, I feel bad. Good. Good. You should wake up in the morning and your first thought should be, that was a bad thing I wrote. I don't know what else to say. I want to bring up the best at you, man. Now, like again, the old battalions, there were two good ones in there. So like, fine, lots of battalions are bad. So who cares, right? And it's like it contained a unit that was not real good right now anyways. Nobles of excess is interesting. Good if you're using twin souls as battle line can increase their damage on the charge. I actually think nobles of excess has some play, especially if twin souls points go down where they should be. I think that one's actually kind of an interesting one. Gives them a good ability, covers all your battle lines. You have three units of twin souls in there. Yeah, I think nobles is the one bright spot of the new battalions. I think that's solid. The exalted speed knights. Is the battalion I most wanted to be good when I saw what was in there? Yeah, sure. Like it's the one I'm like, this is all I want to do. Yep. And then I read it, I'm like, only sadness followed. Sure, sure. The exalted speed knights, they come with a nice pregame move, but ultimately it's over-costed for no battling because it's only your slicks. And like, again, I can put slicks and bliss barbs into Seeker Cavalcade, and the difference here of value is comical. D6 pregame, or a six inch, not even D6, six inch pregame move, super powerful, but the cost does not, does not, like it doesn't balance the scales. And the fact that you don't- No, I would love to see the world, what my list looks like, where I can fit in two units of slick blades, two units of bliss barbs, and two units of regular seekers. And this battalion, and still have another army. Like, still have enough to complete, because I've done no battle liner leaders. Right, but that's the thing is like, if we had some option to make the awesome Seeker's battle line, we had some option to do that, we don't. We had some option to make them battle line, and then like, and then they all cost appropriately. And like, I'll sacrifice the Hellblades or whatever in that, or the other, because you have to have three units of two to whatever. Yeah. If you, you switch it to like one to three of each, and it, I want that pregame move, and I want to have all my awesome Calvary count as one drop, instead of six. Sure. Like, cool. Like, this is almost a great battalion. This is the one that I'm like, no! Ah, you were right there. It's the most painful that it's no good, yes, I agree. Let's talk about the real best battalion, which is called the Brave Drove. You'll find it in the, yeah. You'll find it in the hot competitive book, Beasts of Chaos. Yeah, the, oh, and uh. It's still enough that BOC are like a race to like, they're the wooden spoon books right now. So the trick with the Brave Drove is it's 430 points for a Min Battalion, but it gives you a hero and covers all battle line, right, with like good solid chap, the spell, the shaman has a decent spell, solid spell. Get over here. Yep, get over here. Love it, get over here in this army. I mean, in an army that wants to play movement shenanigan tricks and stuff, get over here is actually a really good spell to have. Yep. And it's the most efficient way to get a battalion and it's associated bonuses. Also, your shaman, I don't know, like people are watching this because they're slaneshing enthusiasts, your shaman in Beasts of Chaos just says you get to move this much right now. Does he have a little 3 plus for that and or be within? No, no, no role, no nothing. Like if you're within the range of the shaman when you deploy, which is when you do that, you're like, hey, I have these units that I want to move extra. I just, I put it down and then they're next to it and then they move extra to begin with. So they get to like already go fast. They're already going fast. Even if I don't cast a spell, my hundred point idiot does something which is what hundred point idiots should do. Do something. Go on. No, I'm with you. Tom, any thoughts about battalions? I mean, we blew through those kind of quick but there's not a whole lot to say. I mean, Seeker Cavalcade's amazing and we're gonna cheat like crazy with it in a minute. No, I mean, like, I think you guys have had it. Like at the end of the day, it's just not, they're not doing what I would want to do. This is why they had to Nerf Exploding Sixes though because Deprave drove actually one of the best. They couldn't let Beste Gores actually be good. They wanted to remove the coolest unit from the Deprave drove. Like, they're like, no, no, no, actually, you're gonna only play with the worst stuff out of Beasts of Chaos. You're only gonna be- If I could have Beste Gores on Gores- If I could have Beste Gores on Sixes, maybe we would have taken some Beste Gores, but nope. Yeah, if I could have had Beste Gores, like 50 Beste Gores instead of like, Daemonettes and some of that stuff and like I get to support it with the other units. No, no, no, no. You're only running on Gores and your base heroes just so that you have the wounds and the coverage. Yep. That's all you're doing. You're doing the least interesting part of running Beasts of Chaos in Solanash. I agree. All right, let's talk lists. We're almost, we're getting through, boys. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Didn't hear. Yeah, yeah. All right, first list. Hey, this is my personal army. This is your madness. This is what I call Yolo Solanash, okay? So Yolo Solanash is the old model, offense and CP ramp. It rolls over to shooting, like, but who cares? Like whatever. So does a bunch of stuff. It's no reason to stop. Lots of six ends, pile engine antigans, hits hard, hits fast, the redeploy of the generals for DP and threat. So we're talking about the double keepers, the twins. We've got a cast lord, we've got a lord of pain. We've got the mask. I wanted to be that cat. If you notice the cast lord and the lord of pain. Hey, Tom, do some quick math for me. What's the total of the cast lord plus the lord of pain? How many points is that? I don't know. My brain's not working anymore. It's too late. It's 260, okay? Who else is 260? Segwald. There you go. He's what I wanted to put in here originally, but at his current points, I'm like, nah, I can get these two heroes and it's way better because it turns me, it gives me an extra hero, better chance to get command points out of cyber rights. Like, you know, it was just better. So he had to hit the road. Battle lines, 10 demonettes, five health riders, five health riders. I hate that, but I'm trying to stay in book. Like I'm trying to stay in book. I know I've got a cast lord, shut up. Just the way of the world. But I'd be better off to take, you know, probably two fibers of cast wears and save 100 points for a unit that's just literally meant to stand there and die. We've got our five slickies in here and then wrapped up in a supreme civil rights with a secret cavalcade making this a three drop army, which I think is perfectly viable with an extra CP. So we're starting off strong with three command points with the ability to build a lot more through the rod of misrule. And through the host option of invaders itself where when your generals die, you get extra CP and stuff and supreme civil rights. So like you can keep the gas in the engine. This is strike first, strike hard, no mercy, right? You bring in the keepers and the slicks across their line. Everybody piles in twice, everybody. And we just go to town. There you go, that's my list. It's 95 bloons. Fine. That's amazing. Mm-hmm. Thoughts? No thoughts. Okay, very good. That's fine. Not a lot of wounds. It's not a lot of. Tom, welcome to the world of sladesh. You're gonna see that's a theme unless you like lean way into the slicks and like end the bliss barbs to kind of push it. Or you just take a bunch of marauders. Then you get a ton of wounds. All right, let's talk about Archeon Immortal. The question, every army asks a question. And what this one asks is, can one model win the game? No. We're gonna give it a try. I mean, you can against like the fat middle. Sure. Once you're on, you know, rounds four and five against people out to win it all? It can't. Sure. Sorry, sorry to spoil it, but one model can't win the game. Go on, how great is this? How awesome is it? It's pretty great. I love that. I see very little units from this book that just came out now in it. There is two units from this book in this army. Yes. Oh yeah. Yeah, this is awesome. See, that's what's great about this one is it's two units from this book in it. Correct. And what's hilarious about it is if you lifted and shifted the whole thing over to host Arcanum Zinch and just ditch the vice leader for a Herald of Zinch or whatever, it would be a way better army. Did you do that already? So, you know, whoops. Anyways, who cares? The point is Archeon's immortal here because he's like, he's gonna be, everything just focuses on him. He's gonna be real hits, wounds, armor saves. He can give himself plus one to save and be on a two up from the Lurid Haze command trait. He can be neg one to hit and heals from Glutos and he can double-pile in from the Castler. And the key is the way Glutos's command ability works is everything you overkill heals you. Okay. Yeah. So like the first time he goes, you put him into a big unit, he leaves like three models alive and then you pile in a second time and he hits them for like 25 damage and heals for 23. He'll just, he'll fill his whole life bar every round. Every round. Every time he fights, he fills his life bar. I said some negative stuff here. I wasn't truly negative because if you wanna run the one sweet model that your favorite model in the world, you're like, Archeon is my favorite model in the world. And I just want to run it at peak efficiency, right? Like I am Vin Diesel in that movie where cars go fast and I'm just gonna work on the car the whole time. Like when this book came out, you got some new parts to work on that car. Let's go. Yeah, my honest answer is, I don't think there's anything in the game that if your buff pieces are still alive, I do not think there is anything in the game that can actually kill Archeon in this build. Archeon can get handed, Dustin. Oh, sure. You're right. Beyond instant slain effects, yes. Correct. Through damage. They've been taking them out and had they written the Wrath of the Everchosen or the Slave to Dark. Oh, he'd have that. I can only suffer a D6 model. Yeah, yeah, he would totally. That's just gonna be the way that their God iconics go in the future. They can't be slain outright, but yeah. As it stands. So that's fun. That's kind of cool. You got to kill him in like one phase or he's at full life. Like if you ever wanted Archeon to feel like he feels in the narrative, this is the build. It'll do it. Right. He's just this unkillable machine going around stomping everything into the ground. He's gonna want to come out like a wrecking ball. I mean, it's gonna be fun. You need to walk in with a boombox and just set down the boombox like a 1990s boombox and play Miley Cyrus. This is why we need walk-up music in Aegis Sigma events. Like you walk up, you're rocking the sweat pants, like you're rocking the sweat pants on like a vest and like the torn off and you show up and you put the set, the boombox down, you get the knuckles. They just say Archeon on your knuckles. Yeah. Question in the chat. Can you do this with keepers? Yes, you've got to have two of them so you get the double piling still. It's doable. It's not as efficient because keepers don't tend to overkill as hard. So like Archeon hits like a truck when he's got all these buffs on him. So. Yeah, he's silly. He's fun. He doesn't love me. No, this is actually a fun build because again, you just want to, you want to excuse to run your models. If your favorite model is Archeon, you've got to, this is it. Yeah, here you go. All right. This is what I call skirmish and summon. The question this army asks is, do you actually need hammers or anvils in a game? Let's hope not. Okay. So low drops, lots of potential for impact hits and mortal wounds. If you don't exploit the six inch piling, loads of six inch piling tricks if you want to. Stronger ability to lock units in place with the blade bringer, Harold on exalted chariot and very good DP generation. So this is, this runs in Godseekers. This is maybe a list more that you would like, meth, right? So here you've got the blade bringer, Harold with the, the enrapturing circlet and the speed chaser so she can retreat in charge, but you can't retreat from her. It's got the contorted epitome just to force out some, the wheels of excruciation to DP farm. It's got three secret chariots as your battle line, which is fine. And the key with the three secret chariots is they all fit into the secret cavalcade because it's zero to four secret chariots, which is good. And then you've got 10 slicks, five slicks, five bliss, five bliss, right? Yeah, this is oddly close to one of my first three theory craftless when I got the book on Sunday. So this is what, this is close to one of it. The contorted epitome, why are you bringing a contorted epitome here and not? It's another hero, I tend to like it here. I like to have a caster that's somewhat decent so I can force through like, but because overwhelming acquiescence is actually still an underrated spell like her actual war scroll spell. And she can force out that and the wheels of excruciation pretty effectively still. All right, so just, all right, cool. Yeah. Yeah, that's like one of the only differences from one of my early lists because I have like the mask in there as Vanity and... Sure, sure. I think I didn't take like the third secret chariot, I picked some, you know, damn it, that's or whatever to have some bodies. Yeah, no, this is cool. I like this. I'd play this. It's fun. It's a very like dodgy list. You're literally like fighting around the edges, playing six inch pile in tricks with people, you know, trying to like retreating and jumping on objectives. It's like it is pure finesse. Nothing in here can take a punch. Yeah, super cagey, relying on getting off your summons when your opponent's like, like gotcha. And you're like, you're just like, here's 30 daemonettes or, you know, like, yeah. All right, Rhett, I love it. Tom, thoughts? Fine. Okay. Like that's how I feel about most of the book. Yeah, I understand. I understand. It's fine. I have a strong reaction for obvious reasons. And we'll slanesh question mark. The question this one asks is, does slanesh need to be fast? It's high drops and slower moving, has a solid base and a tough anvil in gludos and the 15 cast warriors. The seekers can six inch the necessary units and then run for objectives in farm DP, has no actual hammers, still weak to shooting. This is gludos, Celesk, the mask, the shard speaker, the cast lord, cast, sorry, cast sorcerer lord. And then 15 cast warriors, five cast warriors, five carriers, cast warriors, and then five slicks, five lists, sitting in a secret cavalcade just so they can pull their little six inch tricks. There's probably, and then the dreadful visage because it's actually, the dreadful visage is actually kind of nice for just general DP farming. Also, it does a good amount of damage if you can put it in the right spot. Like it can like, shh, like it does as advertised. Sure. So yeah, this one's kind of fun because you can just kind of sit there with gludos and the cast warriors and you can hold a strong anvil while your other dudes kind of fan out and go around and you know, that's sort of the idea of the thing. There's probably different takes on this one. I mean, I didn't really, this isn't really in my wheelhouse, to be completely honest. Well, you hate anvils. You specifically hate tanking. Correct. Yeah. It's not, but like, I'm sure there's some version of this that somebody could make, probably that includes the inch units is better. Niko, where are you at? Build this, build the better version, Niko. Yeah. Yeah, or Brie Lunds, I'm not, Nurgle, there's a Nurgle hero I hear that's pretty good in Islamesh right now. Yeah, Rodigus. Yeah, you can bring in Rodigus. Yeah, sure, absolutely. Yep. And just start splashing mortal wounds around all over the place. Although I don't have it. We're about to leave the list section. If you really want the comedy list, it's the epitome and eight spawn all marked Islamesh and then you take the burning head and the grave spawn and you deploy all of them in the corner. And what is this list called? It's called the Islamesh, it's called the Islamesh pile. There's another word in between there, but I will not mention on air. I mean, it is, you know, for him or weekly after midnight. Sure, yeah, absolutely. But you just, you deploy the epitome and the eight spawn in the corner of the map, just like literally the back corner away from everything. And you just roll endless spells over them for like eight free to gravity or whatever, right? And then the rest of the army is like just, it's whatever. It's, that's, whatever, whatever you like. But that's the, you just, that's your pack. That's like your 660 point pack, ironic, 660. That just like sits in the corner and just farms depravity. You just got a little depravity farm going over the corner. It's a side project. It's a depravity party, if you will. Yes. I mean, this, go ahead. How does the book do with casual games? Is it at least fun to play? My answer is it's hard to build lists. Like it's hard for a truly casual person to build lists that are in any way not, it's really difficult to build lists. This is why we're here. This is why we're here. We're here to help the new players in the casuals build lists. Yeah, so like it's easy to accidentally build a list that just gets blown off the table. Now that being said, the army is definitely more fun to play than the old version by like a million miles. But it's, you know, it definitely will feel like a more fair game. And depending on the type of player you are and the type of list you manage to figure out, yeah, it can be fun. Absolutely. I will say I had much more fun playing this when I played my Yolo Slanesh than I used to have because I didn't have all the feel-bads of like locking people out of combat and then just pounding on them four times until they were dead and they never got to go. But it's just not fun. So it's definitely an improvement. All right, we're almost done. Last stuff. Go ahead, Matthew. No, I just think if provided that like the talking heads can do our jobs and help the water level go up a little bit to be like, don't build this trap army or this trap list. Yeah, sure. I think you can get some like, I think you can get some, a lot of fun out of this book. This is about to go into like the summary portion so I don't want to like go too hard on this. But like, there's some like cool stuff in here. One of my great sadnesses is that Deprave Drove got like way worse, but like is still super viable if you're going a depravity farm route. Sure. Or just in a G battle line. You want good battle line. Well, that's what you're doing is Deprave Drove has always been, the weakness of Beast of Chaos is like, we have terrible heroes and terrible monsters, but we have great battle line. They have excellent battle line. Yeah. And there's no synergies. And so like you're like, what if I just pay a tax and bring that into a different thing, like Solanash where they have great heroes. That's what they have. And they used to have good synergies, but those are gone now. And so like Deprave Drove or Beast of Chaos got hit like twice, but it's still like a really viable build. If you, you know that you're about to farm some Depravity, have cheap battle line and some good board presence, that Solanash is not allowed. You're not allowed good board presence because everything is so over-costed. And you're not allowed low drops without a heinous penalty because most of your battalions are attacks. There's like a couple of good battalions. Again, Civil Rights is a battalion that should just be in every book. Like three to six of your heroes cost you this many points, gives you this ability. That should be every book should have that battalion. Everyone, it's great. It's awesome. Yeah, Ethan said everything I've bought so far has been blasted by also starting to feel bad. Don't don't at all. Because remember, a lot of things what we're saying is like they're bad. The bones of the army as far as I've said many times, I'll say it again just so we really drive it home. The, here as I'm on my summary scroll, the, the bones of the army, like the scrolls, most of them aren't bad, right? Like it's super playable. Yeah. Like, but it's, it's, you don't have enough meat on the actual battlefield until like right now. Until they drop the points. Until they drop the points are simply too high right now. So the answer is Ethan, get your stuff, put it together, build your army. By the time you're ready to play, you'll be fine. They'll drop the points. I, one of the, the, the, the great paradoxes of Age of Sigmar. It's not the worst lie Games Workshop has ever told and it's not the, the, the greatest lie, talking heads who are shills have ever told you. Play What You Love. Play What You Love has a asterisk and the hugest caveat. I don't know how Hewo played freaking Beast Claw Raiders for three years, jobbing. I have no idea. I can't job three years with the army I love. I cannot do it. I love many armies. If I've jobbed for two years in a row, jobbing is a wrestling term. You lose pretty much outright. I can't do that. I'm going to go play something else until my thing gets good again. I can't endure that. I don't know how Hewo had the like tenacity to stick through it. I don't know how you, dear Vince, did that with Skaven and Slamash. You have the like the most blind. I don't know how. I can't. I guess maybe you had orc reprieve in there. There you go. Yeah, okay. I want to get into this. I agree with all that I want to get into this. All right, so a mixed bag. That's the summary. Like, is it good? Is it bad? No, that's not true. Again, that's too reductive, right? It's a mixed bag. Sub-binary. Exactly. Like, I think the book is the good. It's the good. It's decidedly low fat middle. I want everybody to really lock that into their freaking heads that I put that under the good. Because in the end, books being less powerful when they come out is not a bad thing. It's a good thing. A slightly bad book is just unfortunate for you, the player. But you can play around it. You can learn it. It can be in there. It'll be fun and competitive without being overwhelming. A overpowered book like Saraphan busts the whole meta and gives everybody bad games. Okay. It is definitely more fun to play against. The new Seekers are great. Great looking and valuable units. Decent healing potential. Good summoning. Great. Okay. Fine. The Men. Some interesting War Scroll spells but hard casts, CV and short ranges. The sub factions are underwhelming. They don't force many choices but they don't inspire or benefit new play styles either. The army often hits like a feather if not built very carefully or with exactly the right things happening or the right hoops jump through. The bad points are way too high across the board. The battle line in the book is universally worse. Like I just, I cannot hammer this point home enough. Like I just, it's a problem. The army is weak to shooting, high magic, very high armor, high melee damage and large bodies or wounds. That's quite a list of weaknesses. So do be aware of that. The army has a very high skill floor. There is still the potential for NPE and it requires exploiting rules, loopholes to truly perform at its highest level. So you will see people do well with this and they will do it by parking that big Mack truck right in this little garage of a six inch pylon. Before I go to you guys for your thoughts I wanna keep going for just a minute because we're gonna do a fun visual. I already held my tongue, keep going. Everybody was asking earlier about what does 2.9ing mean? Welcome to the power of 2.9ing. Let's talk about NPE. So, here's an enemy unit. Lots of units look like this. This is often how 20 guys are spread out on the battlefield, right? That's often how they look. Kind of in a little horizontal cloud like that, okay? So let's talk about the first example. The keeper charges a unit and locuses them to stop piling. So three up, okay? Now, one model is gonna be able to fight the keeper back if you're in this kind of a setup. Maybe two depends on exactly how they set your unit but often it's gonna be like one or two. Opposes no real threat to the keeper. The slick blades are then gonna pile in from six inches away and they have a two inch for each weapon. And they're gonna hit twice from two inches away, okay? So they're just gonna sit there and whack them without any kind of reprisal possible. Assuming the enemy unit has one inch weapons as the vast majority of enemy units in the game do. And so the slicks just sit there and beat this unit to death while it can't pile in. One model out of this 20 gets to fight and they got hit three times. So it's basically the equivalent of the old locusts in this scenario. Like the slicks ability to whack it two away and come in from six and not need to charge. So crazy strong. But let's get worse. Let's talk about 2.9ing, okay? Let's put two units up against this like this. No locusts, okay? I just come up and pile in on you at 2.9 inches away like this. I've basically locked your unit into place. There's not much you can do to really pile in. You're in combat, you're in combat. You're in combat because everybody has to pile into the closest model, I can string you all out, right? And basically you're gonna at most get like maybe one or two guys fighting each unit. And these are units with 20 weapons, right? Cause I'm gonna do this with slick lights or bliss barbs or something. And so your unit is left with a choice. You can either do nothing, right? Because at most after all you're piling in you're just gonna hit a stretch point where you can't go any farther. And maybe you've got two guys fighting each unit or you can choose to retreat and waste your turn. And when you retreat and waste your turn you know what I'm gonna do? This again. Like you can't stop me from doing it. The second you string out and try to get to me I'm gonna retreat and do this again to you. I'm gonna retreat out of combat and then six inch back in on you and be 2.9 away again. In whatever the most advantageous partition for me is. And I've got 20 inches of movement to reorient myself to reset up this 2.9 inch lock. And if you have a locus, no, I guess you'd have to be within one edge. I'd say you could stop them from piling in completely. Well he already shows the first scenario, right? Yeah, that was the first example. What's fascinating about this to me is you're like, this is bad. And I'm like, this is genius. I love this. This is what I was thinking about doing to beat somebody. I'm like, this is literally how I was gonna like abuse the game and win. This is why I think the book has like a fun, when I say finesse, this is what I'm talking about. Yeah, this is a rules loophole. That's all. But yes, nobody's gonna enjoy that. Nobody's gonna enjoy being on the receiving end of that because they're gonna feel like this is. People used to complain about like the pile in rule from before, by the way. Like when they, we had the good pile in rule for like one sweet month. You remember that? We had it for one sweet month. And they were like, and then like people were like, what if you like do the like the one, it was like a one inch on either side or whatever. And they're like, what if you like lock them on all this? And I'm like, you can never get that to work in real play because you can always, like someone's always gonna be closer. You're like, well, I'll just make templates. And I'm like, all right, go ahead and do that. It's never gonna work. The thing is, is with like, I saw that like thing and I'm like, that's not a real thing because someone's always gonna like, fuck it up. There's always gonna be a model closer on the table in practical play. Yeah, let me talk about, let me make this worse real quick for you, Maff. You ready? Yeah. I'm gonna put an endless spell that doesn't move in between my unit and their unit. Yeah, of course. Now I'm locking you in combat and you can't even get to me. I don't know what the problem is, dog. Like, and I see people and so coach said, you might wanna explain how you get within combat with being in within a half an inch but still tagging 2.9. So it's the six inch pilot of the seeker Cavalcade, right? I mean, that's all I'm waiting for. Yeah, it's like three versus half an inch versus. Yeah. Cause I can just, I can keep running away 20 inches and then coming back into 2.9. I'm gonna desix retreat but I still have my six inch pylon. I'm just gonna do that. And I'm not gonna take the full, I just need to end outside of three inches. And so I'm outside of three, I'm gonna pile back in. Because I, because seeker Cavalcade adds the ability to pile into combat from six inches away and spend piling six inches when you do so, there's no requirement on that. That's a current rules loophole. You don't need to have charged and you can end at any distance you wanna weigh. Hell, I could end at 3.1 away and not lock that. Like I could put another unit off your backside. If I'm engaging on the front side, I could string all of them out, like four inches away or something and make you pull your whole unit backwards so nobody can pile forward. Mr. Vence, Mr. Vence, Dr. Alliance. Go back to the way they fixed pilot for that one sweet month. I understand your point. It isn't like that right now. You can choose one of the, but we have a 3.0 coming out. Go back to that good piling. Piling should always be clean. I should be able to show up with my billiards cue and just like, ugh. I don't disagree with your point. And yes, Tune, it does say you are eligible to piling from six inches away. It has the full good list of texts. The good language. It's the good language. That's the important part. And you can just exploit the living crap out of this. Yeah, and then, but like I'm now I'm that guy who's gonna be granular and be like, oh, you're gonna be 2.9 inches. Oh, I want you to, and you're gonna show up with like your little like cookie cutter thing. I'm like, no, this is 2.9 inches. So I clipped it. You can measure it. And I don't ever want Aegis Sigmore to be played at that granular lever level. I get it. I hate this, but I'm telling you this is what people are gonna do. Left and right. Yeah, I'm gonna do that to you. Well, this is how you're gonna win. Yes. I'm gonna do it to you. This is one of the many strengths of the army I identified on slide two. Yeah, it's absurd. Like, this is the power strat of the army. This is it. It's gonna go away though. I don't see it sticking. Here's what I'll say. I hope it does, which is great. Nerf the army again. Like that better come along with a significant point. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Nerf the game. The pile in as it exists now shouldn't have existed for the last two years. It's garbage. Most armies can't exploit this hard. By the way, Dot can also now do this to some degree. They've been able to do it for a while now with their sisters. They've had the six inch exploit for a while. They've got some even better tricks now. This is like, just let me pile in in add direction if I can't pile in one way. Just be like, at least then, okay, if you can't pile into the close one then just pile in to one and then. Every competitive player who's looking at this is like, oh, this sounds great. I'm gonna exploit the heck out of this. Like every spiky spike, right? And everybody else who's not that is gonna be like, this is disgusting and I hate it and it's vile trash. It's funny. It's hilarious when an underpowered army can beat you this way. This is why Beast of Chaos where we're super fun for me because I'm gonna beat you in the way you hate the most which is just flood the board and speed bump you with four inch tech, essentially. Like, yeah, you can do infinite damage to like 10 uncore, but you only have one turn and the next unit's outside of four inches and you either charge or go around and I'm just gonna keep doing this. Yeah, the six inch pylon thing. So Jordan said, don't plenty of units pile in six inches. How is this different to them? Not all of them can go on. It's very rare. It's pretty rare, honestly. It's a pretty rarefied ability in the game, okay? Like Yeti's, Sisters of Slaughter, everything seeker in this army, basically. Like it's not a very common ability, right? And so the key is that by exploiting this trick, right? And Dan says, I mean, at the end of the day, this is over a 400 point investment to lock down one unit. I think it's okay, but I don't think it's broken. It will counter death stars. Dan, you're thinking too small, buddy. What do you mean one unit? These guys are on big basis, homie. I'm gonna do this to multiple units with one unit. Yeah. I got you a string between your army doing this. Yeah, I'm just like, you make the wobbly way. No, I'm going to lock down your line like this. The amount of space that these 75 mil cav bases can cover is insane. And I only need one guy to float at 2.9. This is why we talk about the Tokyo Drift and the Pin and Win. Yeah, like here, I only have one unit in my example. I'll do this to everything you move forward. And the only thing that I can't do it to is your heroes. Great, I'll just send keepers after them. Well, the rest of your army is neutered. Unable to literally fight in any way. To be fair, the shooting arm is almost nearly right. You know, the reason this is so scary, just let me drill it home farther. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The reason this is scarier even than when like sisters of slaughter do it or Yeti's or something like that is because this army is, because this unit that's doing it is way faster, right? The fact that I can scream across the board and hit you with this from 26 inches away is what does that? Like, good luck. Your deployment, by the way, your deployment boxes are about 24 inches away right now. Yeah, exactly. And so like, you know, the point being is that, no, I'm gonna lock them in some position that's disadvantageous to them. I'll fight what I need to fight to take the objectives and the rest of their units will go nowhere, right? Because if the objective's down here in the bottom of the map and I wanna block them from that, then I'm just gonna string this around like that. So when they retreat, they have to go backwards. Well, I mean, the flip side is like, it depends on what battle plan you're playing still. Sure, my point is like, it's so easy to manipulate their movement like this, right? Like they're just, yeah, it's ridiculous. This should be fixed and it'll be a major hit to the army when it does and I won't be sad about it. So there you go. Well, I think 2.9ing is an, is a apt description of where we're at in the game of Aegis Sigma because if we're getting a 3.0, this is the kind of stuff that should be scrubbed. Like it just, it shouldn't exist. We have the perfect pile in rules before they ruin them. Sure, all right, almost done. Here we go. Last slide. Last slide. We're gonna zoom this in super hard for me. We looked at it last week and now I have placed the Heat Knights of Slenesh on here. So if we all remember, the concept here is to show the difference that normally when we talk about books, we talk about them on this unidimensional spectrum of lower power versus higher power. And I really feel like that's doing a disservice to the nature of these books because to me it is a quadrant breakdown between power and design. It's not binary. It's not binary. It's a four quadrant. Yes. And by the way, this is just one of many four quadrants you could do. You could do this kind of layover on lots of different things. And the relevant part here is that the higher we go up on the middle spectrum, the better quality of the design. You can have books that have good design. I argue Beasts of Chaos is actually a well-designed book but a low power book. Design and power are not intrinsically linked. You can have a very powerful book that's very poorly designed, like Coradron Overlords, okay? And so on and so forth because design, good design is the book is easy to read, inspires, lists and armies and creates a natural flow, both linear and modular, right? And to me, and again, like every time I show this slide, which I will tweet this out now that it has Slanesh on it. I actually saved the picture so I can tweet it out tomorrow. And so, you know, we can have endless arguments about exactly where I put the individual book. Like everybody's gonna have their own feelings on like, oh wait, so, you know, Gloomspite should be like slightly more this direction by, you know, a half an inch or whatever, you know. We can argue absolutely not. I disagree where you placed IJ as a sweet spot. That's funny. Oh, it is for us? Yeah, the most obvious thing to do with them is also the best thing to do with them. Come on. Oh, they're definitely great quality design. Like they just have an aggressively oppressive strategy where like you're rewarded for doing the basic thing you're ever taught and it's also the best thing. Like come on, you should never, Ryu should never be the best character in Age of Sigmar. Or sorry, Ryu should never be the best Street Fighter character like Orcs and Stormcast Eternals should never just like reward you for playing it straightforward. Sorry. Anyway, continue. Hard to disagree. At any rate, that's fine. So, you know, we all have arguments, but ultimately I think here's worse than Asheville's. It is worse design than most anything. It's probably I think the third worst design to tome in current AOS, ranking just beneath KO and legions and this one's about to go away. So, you know, we got another month filled this position. It's me and Ian. Me and Ian from just saying to just play podcast were the only two people at the time that said the legions and the gosh book were bad. Yeah, sure. The only two who said it was bad. And like, by the way, competitively the fat middle probably looks somewhere like here, right? Like this is probably the lines for it. So, I mean like that's not part of the discussion. Who cares? Like these things are all in the fat middle. Like that's great. It's a relevant thing to have a discussion about. It's not the only thing to have a discussion about. Like moving down the points on SlaNesh, let's say we just, let's rock at the points down, okay? Just into overdrive, okay? Well, that's gonna move the book right. Yeah? Like the book will go, we'll get more powerful. You know, if you dropped every unit in the book, 50 points, hey, guess what's gonna happen? It's gonna get more powerful, right? Why did you place it where you did to begin with though? Low quality of design. Like why, what made it a low quality of design to begin with? It's not gonna, but the points don't move it up vertically. Why do I rate it as low quality design? Yeah, but that's the thing is like, okay, the points are gonna move it up vertically. Why did you place it so low? No, no, no, it's gonna move it horizontally, not vertically. The points are gonna move horizontally. Why did you place it that low to begin with? Sure, because by the definition I'm utilizing of good design, which by the way, I count this separate from the scrolls. The scrolls are not part of the design of the book, okay? Scrolls exist out in the world independently. Okay, they are their own thing. Like you can play the game without the book, right? I can just get the scrolls together and play a game. Right, scrolls are scrolls. The book is about using all of those scrolls in a way that should be greater than the sum of its parts to create a holistic, somewhat synergistic experience that opens up new and interesting playstyles, reveals things about the army, and rewards certain psychographic profiles that align with the book's general goals. It should take the identity of the book and express it in new and interesting ways like the facets on a gem, okay? So to me, what good design is, what that means to make that very real is, as I said, is the book easy to read? No, does it inspire lists and armies? No, because I don't read through anything and know what the heck I'm supposed to build here, and it's easy to have pitfalls. Does it create a natural flow, right? Of like, I see how I would want to maybe put these pieces together. That could be linear, that could be modular, right? Like lightning bolts are very modular card, but I can easily imagine decks I'm gonna slot it into, okay? It doesn't do any of those things. The sub factions are directionless. The battalions are hard to read, and often, you know, flavorless or anything like that, probably the one exception is maybe the, honestly, the twin souls battalion. The synergies are nearly non-existent. Like synergies is a real problem, yeah. And like, everything just feels like the nonbows are high, way too high, right? Okay. Do you have the correct labels on your axis? Yes, I do. This is lower competitive power. This is higher competitive power. So like this stuff, it's like, Seraphon is a high quality designed book. It's just way out of the bounds on power, okay? Again, they're separate. That's the key. You can move in both directions, right? So that's the, oh, is it not showing? Oh, okay, I'm sorry. On the screen, for some reason, it cut off the text. I see now, dude, I had to look over the screen. At the bottom here, it says lower quality design. That's what's getting cut off. I'm sorry, everybody. I don't know why that, I didn't know it was happening. I'm sorry. On my screen, it looks normal. So I'm sorry. So that's my argument. Like, you can move it to the right with points. We could move it well to the right. Like, drop everything by 70 points. Power is the x-axis. Design is the y-axis, dude. Like- But where you set it to begin with is the thing that like, it feels more subjective. I mean, certainly, all of this is my opinion right now, right? Sure, sure. Yeah, this is your thing and everybody can point their thing in here and you, it sounds great and so on and so forth. Like, Seraphon is a well-designed book, apart from those Star Lords, Star Lording it up. Blah. That's the great shake fist moment. I don't think Xenius is a well-designed book at all. Like, Destiny and Dice are a horrible mechanic. That's a third rail. They're a legally cheating book. That doesn't feel like good design to me. I mean, again, I think completely the opposite. I think Destiny and Dice is actually, it uses the mechanic an interesting way. Xenius is about cheating fate, good design reads to that, without being overtly powerful. Yeah, I don't know. Teleporting outside of your shit and then guaranteeing my charge feels pretty powerful. Feels like you're almost like negating the risk reward of everything the game's about. The rest of us have to risk and reward that stuff. And you pretend that it's a finite amount of stuff, but you have summoning to back it up and you can manipulate how many extra fate dice you get the whole time. Right, which means that the book is just like, that, again, you're thinking about it. I don't think it's a good design to look. You're making a power point, Matt. Okay. You just said a bunch of things that were power, not design. Yeah, that's not the mechanics and how everything interfaced is in dovetails and how the structure of the battalions and the allegiance abilities and the sub-factions all pulled. I'd say a core mechanic and a design point that they started at was a trash premise. Their core principles of design started on the wrong side of the y-axis. Yeah, I mean, they automatically started at the wrong. They could go up and down on all day, right? Because I don't think so. I think that like they just didn't point stuff correctly. That's why the book's overpowered. Yeah, in zing. No, the problem with zinge will always be that if they point stuff correctly and they have their core mechanics, it's going to go out of whack if stuff is pointed correctly because their core mechanics are not correct. You have their aggressively-costed units. The instant that happens, that book goes out of bounds. In fact, it goes so out of bounds that another book beats the chaos, gets nerfed into oblivion. The instant chaos enlightened on disk, or sorry, Zangor enlightened on disk are costed correctly when played in zinge, they go out of bounds because the core mechanics of their book is out of bounds to begin with. They started on the wrong side of the axis. Well, we could have a deep dive on that. Sorry, Zangor enlightened on disk aren't a problem in and of themselves until they get the force molded flyers. Are they a bad thing when pieces of chaos play them? Nope, let's look at the modifier. It's just an argument for pointing them differently in different books. But again, we can, I don't want to get your zinge. You can indeed move the goalpost in such a way. It's true that you can be like, oh yeah, points in different books mean different values occur, you're right. But that means the book is the modifier and therefore the problem. Again, I don't want to, I'm not trying to get into a zinge argument here. I'm trying to say that you've put stuff on your thing, on your own feelings which you've admitted to, but the air of objectivity is coming out. There's no objectivity when it comes to this. No one has it. Okay, so you're saying that this chart means nothing. It's a Ben Shapiro, like here's a line that I have an arrow pointing up. No, of course not, of course not. That's nonsense. Because I feel Skaven is a good high quality, like it's a good sweet spot right now. Why do you feel it's a good sweet spot? Because half that book is garbage. The, because again, you're making a power discussion. The scrolls aren't part of the design discussion. The Skaven book is well designed in that exact metric that I have up there. So if you exactly remove certain stuff you want to remove to prove your premise, you can. No, I've set, that's not at all how it's working. I've, design is not a function of the scrolls because scrolls are independent. Okay, I mean. Design is a function of what's written in this book. His point is that you can take any scroll and play it in Grand Alliance chaos. Or even without a book. Or even without a book. I don't need allegiance abilities to play this game. Scrolls are just scrolls. And you can compare the design of, like you could compare scrolls across factions. So that's not the, like, that's not the function. Right. Design is exactly what I've done. And I've used my experience, okay. Like, yes, it's subjective. Lots of things in the world are subjective. Okay. But I've used my experience of 20 X years as a player as somebody who plays regularly, as somebody who plays a crap ton of armies, as somebody who's written plenty of books, right? Like, to give my best estimate of what I consider according to this definition that I admittedly have created. The definition that you made up has served your own purposes. Yeah, go on. I think it's a quite reasonable definition of what good design is. All definitions are made up. That's what definitions are. Okay. Everything's semantic in the points. It's all made up of the points, don't matter. Go on. And so... Yeah, like, yeah, whose line is it anyway? And we're just... I think that when you look at it in this design versus power axis, and again, I don't care if you wanna take this, it's just like a tier listing. If you wanna take this and place things around and defend your own version of it, that's fine. I can defend every choice I made here. I'm not saying mine are objective truth. That is not what I'm alleging. Okay. Mm-hmm. I am saying that... that I think this is a more interesting way to talk about the game and frame things. Rather than just a tier, S, A, B, C, D, E, F. Correct. I don't care if you don't like my list at all. I don't care if you... No, I don't care about your list. I'm just... Everything I have. I'm trying to help you clarify your list to me. Sure. A skeptic. Because my placement of these things isn't the point of the slide. To the why place them at all. Because I have to actually show you an example of what I think. All right, cool. But I think that the quadrants itself, the concept is valuable. Right? Because this is the way we should be thinking about and holding books to regard. Right? When I highlighted, when I did the Coradron Overlord review and the Sons of Badmout review, when I did the KO review, one of the biggest things that people came back with was, but they're competitive. They're fine. And maybe they were, maybe they weren't. Maybe the point drops are amped into a million stratosphere miles. I don't care. Okay? Like, none of that mattered to me because the design was so clearly flawed. And you can play with power through moving things like points and stuff like that. You can change war scrolls and play with power, but you can't fix the design of the book until you print a new book. Mm-hmm. Right? Unless you're gonna go in and do some major surgery that they generally have been unwilling to do. Right. And I mean, we thought that like war scroll, new war scrolls like what we got was with the broken realms helped fix stuff and so on and so forth. And like, is that all like a tree falling in the wilderness when no one's there to hear it? Is that like all meaningless, the changing of war scrolls and these other subliminal books? Is it just the battle tone is the end all be all? Like the final say is- Yeah, it's interesting. No, I mean, you raise a good, you raise a really good point there, Meph. Your point being like, okay, so let's take broken realms, what they did with IDK, right? And- Whereas for this book where it lands now on your thing, you've got to be accounting for that, right? Yeah, it's an interesting discussion. I went back and forth on that quite a bit, right? Of like, do I place the book as per its original design? I didn't take into account that. Like that's where I'm placing it power wise before it got its broken realm super charge. It's probably off the freaking chart right now, but that's fine. The point is that like, it's interesting because yes, you can kind of back into using the design of the book better by changing the war scrolls. You're making a good point. This could be a whole show. Anyways, we've been going now for almost five hours. So let's not beat this up. I'll tweet it out and I welcome discussion. I'm interested in it. All right, guys. I want you to know I'm just probing where you got to this. I'm just being the- Hey, you know- I'm not taking offense. I'm good with it. I like you probing. I'm just trying to like- Because no, you hit upon exactly the thing that gave you a lot of consternation, the IDK thing, right? Of like, how does that fit in there? Like, how much can you back and improve the design through stuff like that, right? Right, if war scrolls are separate and separate books continue. Yeah, yeah. You're dead on, right? It's tough. Okay. Well, guys, there we go. Anything else you want to say? Meph, anything else you want to say before we go? Hashtag, GaryPee, hashtag, slamgore, binbluts. Piece of chaos did nothing wrong. Did literally nothing wrong. I don't know why you're nerfing us. Marauders are the problem. Not my best agores getting actually exploding, the tri-dip in the exploding sixes. They were never the problem. Everything else is wrong. Why you gotta hurt me, G-Dub? Why? Tom? I mean, I would say that like, it's fine. The books are here. The book needs, the book just needs a points adjustment. Which it'll get. Sure. And 30 to 40%. And I think- If you had a number of points percentage-wise that should be adjusted across the whole book, like some sort of margin, some sort of- It's over about 30 to 40%. Yeah, all right, yeah. And if you did that for the new units, not necessarily all of them, but primarily the new units, but- No, I think literally all of them could go down like 20 to 40 points. And the reality is, is when you run that math, it'll compare, like it will move back towards the middle competitive, like the middle fat tier from the bottom where it's at. My challenge is gonna be like, where does summoning fit in? And I think what happened is, is they probably just played it cautious from a design standpoint. Gun strike. They were gun strike? Yeah, and so I think that, but once they kind of, once they make those adjustments, I think that it'll be a perfectly playable book and it'll be a nice redemption of, a previously toxic book. I don't know how they're gonna fix the 2.9 inching. Yeah, I mean, the only way you fix that is 3.0 and then it gets weird. Yeah, because I just, because as it is, it's gonna be ugly. It's a gross mechanic that'll catch people out in all the wrong ways. Am I saying it's like your single power to win every game? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. What I'm saying is it's a bad experience. It will be used to exploit it and it will, there will be times that it'll just make people feel bad. I was gonna walk up to the table and tell people it's what I was about to do to them with my army. I'm like, I'm about to lock down this part of your board where you just deployed. I like, I want you to know that's what I'm about to do. And like, and they're gonna like call a judge and question me because like, I'm a Johnny. Like I, I look, you know, how to make it work. I'm like, that's how I'm gonna beat you and they're gonna be upset. But don't worry, Sigbold's over here to distract you. So if you want to fight him, go ahead. No, I mean, but that's just how you get back sports. Yeah, I've won sports. Well, what I'm saying is that, but those types of experiences will generate bad. Yeah, fair, I agree. It is a feels bad. It is a feels bad. It is a feels bad. It's the way Pylon works right now. It's just wrong. It's been wrong for so long. Like, please fix it. There we go. All right, folks. Well, look, overall, like I said, good bones. I hope to see some points adjustments. Like the scrolls are good. I think you're like, if the points go down, you will at least be able to build things that I consider fun. It'll still be a miss somewhat on design, but you know, that's, that's solvable, right? It's solvable at any rate. I look forward to that. I will be doing a lot more play testing with it, playing a bunch of different armies. I mean, this is my army. I am playing pretty hard now. And I look forward to it. Super hard. Oh yeah. Super hot, super hot. At any rate, for all of you out there, hit the like button. This was like a five hour show. We really went into it here. I hope this was all interesting. I tried to prepare a lot of data to back up everything, like, you know, to run the math on everything and really do comparatives. And I have more than just an opinion that I ripped out of the bottom of my tuchus. So hit like if you liked it. Subscribe if you haven't already. Meph, thanks so much, man. I knew I wanted to hear for this show because I knew if I wanted somebody for a five hour show I had to get, I had to get the man himself. Yeah, yeah, the most dangerous man in Warhammer. That's me. With my wily takes and my long form content. That's all right. But all of you out there, thank you so much for sticking with us. I know this was a long one. I hope you now feel like we gave, I wanted this to be sort of the ultimate treatise on the book and give all sides and show the nuance. So I hope we did that at any rate. Thank you so much for watching. You're all rock stars. We really appreciate it. And as always, we'll see you next Wednesday. Peace.