 Hello everybody, if it's Wednesday, it's Warhammer and that must mean it's time for another episode of Warhammer Weekly joining me as always He's in the vanari with me, and I always make sure our bases are touching. It's Tom. What's up, buddy? Hello friends don't even know how to react to that one. I gotcha. No, you did Indeed our bases are touching indeed, but of course you can't make a shield ball alone No, no, you've got to have at least two other models touching your bases So today Tom we've brought in we brought in a third and that is mr. Martin Orlando Mr. Good painter previously good painter storm cast man now good painter elf man back to your original love What's up Martin? How you doing buddy? Hello, and thank you for having me on. It's definitely an honor Absolutely. I you've been more jazzed more of a stand for this army for longer than anybody I I know I mean there's other people out there Bryce is another one who's a super big fan of it There are people you you but you are part of an elite cadre of people who from the moment This was first revealed and perhaps even when it was just a whiff of an idea in the floating through the aether We're all about it and knew you were all in on it and have wavered not a bit Yeah, I have been waiting for this since basically the destruction of the old world because I had a feeling it's like They might revisit it and then the clue the clues started to go out there I was like the always sunny in Philadelphia sort of conspiracy board Just like just quietly like putting putting Clues on the wall wait waiting for the time to be right and finally the door to Heish opened and the Lumineth came forth There you go. I mean don't get me wrong. I've been waiting on high all since 8th is as well It's just I've experienced it differently. Sure. Well, that's that and that's the whole point We've got a whole range of opinions here That's what I thought this would be a great show to balance it out because we have two people who are probably gonna Play the army in both you and Martin people who came about their interest in the army very differently and are approaching it very differently And me who is dispassionate and couldn't care less about elves has always hated them Will always hate them and continues to not be very much in their camp and frankly Yeah, think that there's just generally yeah, I consider myself much like What is the the eventual what'll be the bad guy in the next doctor strange movie? I figured out the problem with the world There are too many sorcerers in it or in this case too many wizards as we'll talk about in this army I mean, it's okay. Some people watch Lord of the Rings and when they get to Rivendell and some people are just like What a bunch of pompous buttheads. It's okay. It's not for everybody understand Yeah, but there's no okay, sorry Yes, let's jump right in sure. Yes, and anyway, let's begin with the news. Yes, that's where we start That's where we start this show. Yeah, I Rumorage it it's up on the screen. It's a 40k thing. It's a chaos space marine thing. Yeah, I agree Maybe it might be a nergal II thing Can I can I say a thing because games workshop likes to put its assets throughout like certain ranges? I believe it was shadow claimer on Twitter who pointed out that the the little sort of like the ribbing or cable exposed under the fleshy bits Match the chaos champion that's in the Blackstone Fortress core set So that leads me to to believe that it's it's probably a chaos marine thing sure and there have been a few other rumor engines of Chaos space marine things of late which don't have that haven't correlated to a release yet So it makes sense that if they're doing a new edition of 40k chaos space marines are probably not far like Behind on that sort of design like really schedule Yeah, this is a tubing with the ribbing underneath by the way is also present in in death guard Which are a particular type of chaos space marines You know it again not saying that this is death guard I'm saying that they do tend to use that tubing over ribbing Amongst many different types of chaos space marines. Yep So and the look of stretched flesh and yada yada yada like yep, it's a chaos space marine thing probably I've seen similar things in nergal models both 40k and not sure I will Will just say if this turns out to be an AOS one I would be So surprised like that would truly blow my mind But My money would strongly be on cash space marine, but whoever knows these things it's neat looks like it's gonna be a neat thing Maybe like their new jump-packed troop. That's what it would seem to be like a new chance jump-packed troop. So yeah, that's cool Great alright, what else we got? GHP surprise comes out this weekend. It's been leaks galore all week leaks and leaks and leaks It's like uh, it's like somebody just took a screwdriver rusty pipe Yeah, what's that? New silenut army leaks everywhere. Yes Yeah, yeah So thoughts so far you guys have seen sure I'm I'm just starting to see the scenarios Yeah, um the the the mechanics for building your own hero looks fun, especially for narrative games I'm kind of excited about that Let's be honest should all just be part of match play right now I we're gonna talk about it in we'll probably talk about the anvil in two weeks We are gonna talk the GHB next week, but we're gonna split the GHB over a couple of weeks We're gonna do the you know hard points and match play stuff next week And then we'll do the the narrative stuff the week after so since Technically the anvil is in the narrative section. It'll probably come up in the second week It is the thing I am most excited for in the book. I think it should be part of match play And I think it should be part of tournaments I think it will need to have fixes already. I can see weak spots where it's where it's just clearly not Correct. My guess was there would be three broken things and it just straight up broken I've already seen three which makes me think I might have under shot slightly, but we'll get nice nice I haven't dug too deeply into it I've been paying attention to points leaks A list was floating around with some new KO points I'm trying real because those are PDF points. So who knows right right right? So I'm trying not to believe those But if they are real Then you made out okay in this GHB. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah I have I have very playable armies on the other side of this GHB if that's the case sure So yeah, it'll be really interesting to see where they land. I I Yeah, yeah I'm no matter what I have a game scheduled for Saturday So I'm gonna be testing the GHB the day it lands I'm interested to see how the like I want to see what one of those newer scenarios looks like and how that can play out Especially since I have a brand new army to test it out with so I'm definitely looking forward to how that will change the list I already have like Floating around for the Lumineth I have plans Nice nice. Yeah, I mean for me this but here's here's my short Pre-review before we talk next week This looks like all the best technology that November 2019 could bring us. So I'm excited about it. Sure. Yep Cool, okay But at any rate, that's not what we're here to talk about this week this week. We're here to talk about Damn elves, but before we get there, let's talk about some pick of the week Martin. What would you like to share with everybody? my pick of the week is Naomi from sword and steel won the clickbait game with her YouTube thumbnail she had a chainsaw Just to some just to some wood in her and her workstation. She made this whole frame For just people were like, well, what do I do for 40k because they changed the board size for 2,000 points match play? And so she made this whole frame that fits around on your existing like rolling like game mats To cover all of the empty space except for the 44 by 60 She goes through how she made it all of the plans easy ways to do it with just like some bare bones power tools stuff like that and As it's looking like we could be going that way for for ages Sigma in the next edition of the game whenever that may be whether it's next year or two to three years after that I think it's useful. Just to have those like it's it's a good video funny thumbnail Good job. I really appreciated that nice dig it Tommy what do you got? Yeah, I want to spruke the the animosity to narrative campaign Event thing is launching on on July 22nd they have a website and They're like a full on video trailer and all that stuff So I'm gonna encourage y'all to check it out. As they said, it's the original socially distanced Warhammer campaign And and they have all the details for that And it's launched so I would encourage people to check that out. Maybe try to participate Nice nice For myself, I will cheat again because I have lots of things two things first off. I was a good friend of mine Michael dutcher who Interviewed me for his podcast listening to paint dry and I'll link it down in the description It was a fun discussion about painting and The hobby journey and that kind of stuff so you can go check that out. I'll link that down below It's part of the larger show and they have that to say the interviews part of the larger show and And now and I just wanted to also say that tomorrow. I'll be on Rob on the honest wargamer on Rob show For his stream streak and we're gonna talk about why the removal of realm artifacts In the way that it was executed was a terrible mistake and That and and discussion discuss inter-army parity So we'll be talking about those two things Yeah, what you're saying that that ogres didn't come out real hot in the shakeout here Well, I mean there are many armies that are gonna get double whammy by this. I'm not gonna look We're this is the week to talk about it. I'll talk about slanash next week, but let me just say We're ready to be at the bottom of the barrel again. It's fine. We're ready to be the powerist of power bottoms so The So check that out. It should be a fun discussion. It's always great to hang out with Rob So that'll be tomorrow for a stream streak day 110 111 probably who knows? I don't know how many days he's been doing this forever. I guess just there is no time when Rob hasn't been doing the Stream streak that's it. That's all he ever does. Okay so Let's talk about some hobby time. Yeah, man This is the hobby still happens the hobby is life Martin as if I have to ask what have you been working on? He said no, I got right to work cracking Cracking open my luminous rhomboids box eager to just work on all of the kits But I've been taking my time to try and ensure that the army is as good as I can make it Learning new things like I started even before the the box came out I developed some test models and like I have a paint plan about two and a half pages long front and back And I'm just tweaking it as I work on the spearman. You can check it out on my Twitter Just type my name into Twitter or CV underscore consiglieri and you can see all of the Luminous spearman and coming up next will be I made my own cathol are Scratch built her out of like five different kits and then the dawn riders I will be working on after I finish 10 spearman Nice nice one thing I will say is It's you've you've got to respect the work Martin that you have put into these guys and you're planning and you're processing for them I think they're they're coming along really nicely. So so thank you very much. Good-looking stuff Tommy, what about you buddy? What's on your desk? Not a lot honestly. I've been doing a lot of I I've been doing a lot of Just prep for the D&D marathon we have this weekend. And so I haven't been painting much at all That's okay. As long as you're priming that and the as I can see over your left shoulder The giant boxes of magic cards that you have back there. I'm sure I've been taking up some time other. I don't know That's not mine. I don't really care about Legitally, you legitimately are not mine. That's fine. That's fine We believe you it's okay. All right, so also It's it's good the important thing to focus on right now is the marathon Tom, that's what matters So for myself, I have been working on my display board. That is the simple answer It's it continues to be this endless ridiculous Project that will that is going to swallow my soul. I don't remember a time before it anymore But you know It continues And I'm missing a little bit So there you go. I said I said Tom you've seen a little bit of the display board. Oh, man. It's it's beautiful beautiful, so we'll see Some of it's right there some of it's right there. It's all right off camera, but there we go All right Gentlemen, let's talk luminous. Shall we That's great. Okay. So let's start with the overall high-level opinion take on these guys. Let's get that. Let's get the hot hot Scalding hot takes here we go high-level view What do you think about Martin start us off. I mean, obviously you're a stan. We know that but that's okay. Yeah Um, I mean like and I mean everything like are you happy with how the lore turned out with the rule? Yeah, I I I definitely appreciate the level of of of work love and and addition like it feels like a Great blend of nostalgia reinvention and addition as I said on twitter because you can see where There's the nostalgia for the old Reinventing what was once beloved but felt kind of dated that came with a lot of like the older older like Just some of the stuff that was in high elves up until the end times like some of those kids and some of that art Just did not age well and they wanted to keep some of those elements But they had to just transform how they appeared in the new format that is a just sigmar and just some of the stuff that we will get into later is just It can't just be riven dealt with bigger. It has there has to be new stuff This is age of sigmar age of sigmar expects a certain level of craziness and creativity And I appreciate how all of that was blended together to create this book Yeah, I think that um, it feels like uh fire slayers 2.0 If I want to be honest, okay. Um, it feels like you're gonna unpack that take. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so um It wouldn't be why that is you have a highly elite army That is in general low model count in general, um low mobility Uh, but it feels like a lot of the rough edges have been like sanded off And so any way that is like for fire slayers you have only three three real non-hero units here You have four and you actually have like the fourth unit that you actually need Uh, which is the uh Are the horsies your fourth unit in your mind? Yeah, the thing like that's what the fire slayers don't have right? You've got the three different types of the three different types to sort of foot inventory you'd imagine But then you've also got the horsies to supplement Yep, yep And so that's exactly right. And so it like it does exactly, you know, exactly what's needed basically All right, um And so uh, that's like super helpful I I really appreciate the intricate synergies they've added to make this book feel adaptable despite the smaller amount of kits especially for like a launch faction um That that went in here like I I have yet to see Two lists even in the most competitive of whatsapp groups or they just throw lists at the wall to see what sticks and Who can get in the most tts games right now with what and they all look different they all look creative I really I I am definitely liking the internal balance of this book minus one or two things is brilliant in my opinion Okay, all right Uh, my spicy take on this army at a 40 000 foot view is it's a very nice looking army that I feel Despite all the original cow jokes actually does pretty Uh, interestingly recreate a lot of the high elf range in a fairly functional way the army will often be Centered and built around what would be the truly the makings of a classic high elf army spearmen archers some horse riders on the flank A couple of you know to foot type heroes and and then you know, there will be Then of course you have some weirdness that also is great It's good to have that diversity where you might also have a sort of eumetrica type force That's much more like cow headed dudes swinging in with giant hammers And I appreciate that that actually both of those seem quite viable I agree with martin that I think the internal balance is actually pretty strong Uh, I think a good Stance of that is that most of these sub factions as we'll talk about here in a little while actually feel quite playable Uh, and feel quite, you know, like yeah, okay That's one I could see building an army around and that's when I could see building an army around and that you know You get my point anytime that's happening That tells me that we're on to a pretty good Uh We're on to a pretty good internal balance You know, there's no gristle gore here. There's no hagnar here, which is great That's so that is a absolute positive Uh There is some very very Very high potential for some npe in this army Uh, which I'm sure we'll talk about at at, you know As we go through by the way, I don't mean that's in every army I please don't misunderstand me or mistake me saying that I think playing these elves is immediate npe negative play experience I'll I'll actually unpack that for a second Uh, I am saying that this army does absolutely have the potential for that Uh But it might not manifest as as we'll see we'll see it depends on a lot on what the builds are I think and and what actually becomes viable, uh because some of the npe could get quite short-cutted for example if teclis is Is a trap and never shows up in lists Then you won't see many of the npe elements because they become they themselves become a trap for you as the as the player Uh, whereas if you if teclis is viable The world looks very different. So We'll have some discussion on Mr. Floating, uh Cross dance hanging out in front of his cat sphinx friend Uh, also known as truly the strangest model they've sculpted in a long time Uh, okay So, uh Let's get into some specifics. Where where shall we start here? Martin like do you want to start on any of the Before we get into the rules. Is there any particular lore elements? And by the way, I see two plus tough is in the chat And let's be honest if you want the hottest of hot lore coverage He's doing a luminous realm lord's week. So you should just be over there watching his stuff after this I mean, that's that's where you're going to get the hot lore takes and all the deep info But martin, is there anything that grabs you and tom all of them coming to you with the same question in just a moment? like I mean Since we're here, we might as well talk about how there's a lot of um Go ahead you're fine man. Keep going. He's talking to skin. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um I I really appreciate because it's like the the cow thing hung over us for a while because we didn't have any rules to talk about So like the mean it was memes abound just like an obr You had the thing with skeletons with noses and the joker face Sure, um, but like I think it's as the more we got into the the my new show We had this whole thing with um, I think we're getting a little bit of like that that pan asia avatar last year vendor vibe and avalanor Really feels like sort of this lion turtle esk figure. I really like how um it goes into how Almost like all our aspect warriors where if you go down the path of a particular element um, you you you take on like you become one with the nature and the spirit of of that element and um Like the the special rules the cows have where it's like they they can pass on like this Mystic wisdom to to the sages that worship them and and stuff like that Where um, if you if you take their advice like you don't have to spend command points to use your command abilities and stuff like that And I I definitely got that um that that mystic lion turtle esk vibe out of avalanor and the spirits of the mountain Do you feel like do both of you feel like they set up well for the inevitable expansion? I mean clearly we when you know, you've got these sort of eight great nations and we got four of them here They're pretty much directly telling you hey, you know in the future We'll do part two with tirion at some time. Do you feel like that was properly set up in the in the lore of the book? tom In the lore of the book. Yes um, I think that I mean my challenge is is that I It feels like there are holes okay Like there feels like there are real holes in the army and and I feel that in list building and and everything else Um, and so I really struggle with that aspect of it Gotcha So you feel like because we're effectively getting kind of half of the the great nations here, right? Like we we know there's four other great nations that we talk about them the teclean and the tirani nations, right? Yeah, uh, you feel like you you because and because we're feeling that In the model range as well Like that is actually something that you feel when you're looking at it I do I do Um, and I can even see it in like a lot of the items that are like melee focused and you can only put them on like Meages. Sure. Sure. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's interesting. I and yeah, we will definitely talk about that Uh, all right. Cool. No, it's like I mean, I don't have much of a fresh take on it except to say that um I thought they did a neat job of Expanding this realm we hadn't seen much into and explaining the sort of people that live there and how the The elves are working. Um, I like the history of it. It Does feel like there's echoes to the same Uh cycles that the elves have been in before but the the elves Are a cyclical people like it also If I may add one thing, sorry, please. Um, it feels like a reimagined wolf one Where eight of like the the nations even the ones in this book Like have clear callbacks to one of the 10, uh, nations of wolf one back then Like they're not one. They're not going to be one to one. It's not going to be like, oh, this is clearly this They they they just carry over various tropes and and aesthetic elements or like cultural elements from that so you you feel like in In a way that does make sense from a narrative perspective that teclos would try and remake Like his people in an image that he remembers fondly and has his own nostalgia for And um, I think the the writer is trying to do service to what was for the fans Um, so so I can definitely see like, uh in the future we might we might see elements of calador or or, um, tyrannoc or nagarith Um, or cathique where tyrion is actually born. Um in the future like expansions of this army Yeah, so instead of wrestling lions or surviving fire, you know, this kind of endurance trials, right? Which would have been old wolf one now you're going up a mountain and fasting and surviving the elements and those kinds of things Right and becoming one with the mountain spirit. It's still an endurance trial That's supposed to like hone together your soul and your body and to sort of one, you know sharpened Uh, you know more, uh, complete being type of thing, right? So yeah Yeah, I I agree with you. I think that those thematic Throughlines not the specifics because the details are irrelevant. Those were the nature of when they lived in that place But the thematic elements. I absolutely agree. There is the callbacks very strongly. Yes Yeah, okay, right on. Well gentlemen, shall we get into some crunchy crunchy rules bits then? Sure. All right, great. So let's start at the at the beginning I swear where all things start I suppose, right? Uh, and let's talk about just some basic allegiance abilities Uh, most of these have already been out there. They've been spoiled many times So we won't go super super deep detail, but we'll talk them through so we've got our aether courts reserve We'll also call out the potential FAQs as they go So and I say that because there's an interesting one that tom mentioned right here that so that's absolutely clearly Clearly showing what they're they're intended in the rules, right? But it's like they didn't actually write it So but I mean, I don't think it's actually going to cause confusion. We'll all play it the right way At any rate aether courts reserve So each unit in a realm lords army starts with one aether courts reserve The initial comparison everybody makes is 2 ko and aether gold right because ships and units of 10 or more Uh in that army start with aether gold And in this case, it's everybody. I guess I guess there's more aether courts to go around than there is aether gold. So There you go But the unit can use in a basically at certain trigger points once per phase One unit can use its aether courts reserve to do one of the following The key initial point of the FAQ here and yes, it's being pedantic. Please don't jump down my throat We're just saying what it is. Sorry. I call it. Yeah, it's this is tom's fault But here it is nowhere in this paragraph. Do they use the word spend? Right your aether courts They just say you use it Which seems to imply like obviously that wouldn't make any sense Everybody's treating it like a once a game resource that in other words like you use your aether courts and it's gone You get a benny and then you take a minus one bravery But nowhere in that paragraph does it actually say you spend it in the same way that it talks about aether gold Where it says you spend it and we click clearly the word spend has the implication that it's gone We all understand that when we go spend the money the money's not in our wallet anymore so It's not actually super like it is clear that their intention is to make this once a game effects that they can spend their courts on The wording does not actually that right right, but we can all understand the rules per As as intended unless anybody else is thinking these things are literally infinite And you can just have the same unit bang its aether courts Once per phase For the entire game So there you go Which I don't think so That's only it's still it's still only one unit per phase Can use it unless you're cr. That's right. What that's right one unit Once per phase i'll read the exact text everybody ready. Here we go. We'll remove all down Once per phase you can say that one unit Will use its aether courts reserve to use one of the following aether courts reserve abilities There you go. That is the exact text Okay Uh, and so I clearly it seems to be intended to be once that like otherwise you wouldn't have a number You wouldn't start with a number one of aether courts because it literally would be irrelevant If it if it didn't get exhausted as a resource if it wasn't a potion thing Right Like they would they they clearly intended it to be a once a game resource, but that's not actually how it's worth it Right is anybody martin i'm not i'm not misreading this right you're not you're not coming to the show being like No, no my wardens can use their their aether courts once you know every combat phase every round I sent in four FAQ questions. This was not one of them Sure, sure And so I think we're all on the page everybody's talked about it as a once per game effect It just doesn't actually clearly delineate that I think we all actually understand And yes, you do suffer a negative one bravery unless you've got a cathol cathol are around which we'll talk about in a moment The things you can do with this with the saitha courts. Well, okay, so we've talked about using it. What can you do? Well, uh, there's a couple different things to do You can say that they'll use this ability when picked to be the target of an attack Where they and in in response to that you can get plus one saves You can use that when they're picked to shoot or fight and you can get plus one to hit You can use it after it has attempted after it has attempted to cast a spell But before any unbinding rules are made for that spell if you do so you can add one to the casting rule or re-roll that casting roll And you can use magical insight You can say that a unit will use this ability at the start of your hero phase If you do so that unit can attempt to cast one extra spell that phase So there you go That's uh, that's what the Those are the uses good stuff I mean like those are super good buffs. Yeah Yeah Right, uh, I don't think any of us are going to complain about that Martin you've got some test games in how how how much have you been finding the aether courts is mattering in your games? um, I I do appreciate more of the defensive stuff than than adding plus one to hit because um Most the time I think the the strength of the nara units is in their sun metal weapons And those are unmodified dice rolls. So aether courts is not going to help you fish for those dice rolls Um, so I I I think it's definitely a good balancing measure that way where like I could I could have plus two to hit I'm still only doing mortal wounds on sixes or fives if the spell goes off um, so I I I think I'm I gravitate more towards um The plus ones I plus one save the most Uh, magical boost like if you're in zytrek, I can't imagine you ever using this Um, or rather not having a reason to because of the other Um buffs to your own casting you already have Sure Um, but yeah, I I do appreciate the the the design tech where um a lot of these abilities Won't help you um get the most egregious effects out of Um your units because that can lead to a lot of negative play experience, right? Yeah I mean to to to truncate the the actual like Like red flag items or abilities for later. Um It's like no and no one likes where it's like, oh this unit of of 10 models Uh, just did seven mortal wounds because I just buffed them to crazy stuff and Across the table two of your heroes die um So I I do appreciate it's like Because because you can you can get like stacking, um aether courts Uh With with other things in this book battalions and whatnot It it can get pretty crazy like hitting on twos possibly re-rolling ones But it won't help you get any extra mortal ones, right? Yep. Yep Yeah, okay cool any other thoughts on on our aether courts reserve I think that it is a mechanic that you have to use wisely Sure, um, and I think that it but I think that it will um when used correctly I think it will really turn the tide. Yeah, I think it's a huge lever and and let's be honest the plus one to save I think is is uh When you talk about like just actual effects that are gonna have on the game That's that's the big one, especially for reasons we'll talk about in a little while where these things can start stacking together to just make units Very very very very very very very very very tanky Very tanky. Uh for an army of of seemingly made of paper elves This army can turn on some very hardcore tanking. Yeah, and then hit back super hard. Yep The obr will be jealous when all is said and done. Okay, so, uh, then you've got an ability called absorb despair It's for the cathalar. I'm not going to read the whole text effectively when aether courts So they can absorb the bravery hit and then give it to an enemy unit Okay, we'll talk about because they play with bravery penalties and pass those things around We'll talk about that later with the cathalar itself. It's a fairly minimal ish ability It's not the biggest deal in the world because you can't like stack those negatives you pass on other units You can only give a single unit a neg one one time But okay, it's a thing. I don't like This feels like an extra rule that didn't need to be there. I'm gonna be completely honest I get I get why it's there. I get the whole thing we're playing with It just feels like it should have been part of their that war scroll and not yeah I was about to say that like I I don't understand why this work why why a war scroll ability is in the allegiance abilities right Yeah, yeah so Because even if you put this like oftentimes you move things off of scrolls and into allegiance if you're worried about them as an ally Right, that's when you that's when you do it This would have zero effect If with this person as an ally, right it literally has no So in another army it would do nothing if it was printed on the scroll so Okay, whatever uh, they have lightning reactions, which is which we saw forever and ever ago uh and the And obviously that what that is is when you get to pick to fight you can pick two units to fight So you can't you can't jump the order and fight in the start of the phase or something like that But when it's your turn to fight say you're say it's not your turn The enemy charges you they get to fight with their first unit as normal, but then you get to fight with two back Uh, interestingly the designers note here is what's fascinating to me Clarifying seemingly something that's been kind of floating around for a long time But but at least the way nico thought about it And that was this ability only applies To units that fight during the combat phase therefore it cannot be used for units that fight at the start Or the end of the combat phase or for units that fight in any phase other than the combat phase What's interesting there is that we've we've they've officially put The terms in the clearest way i've ever seen that during is not the start or the end Yeah No, it is actually a really big deal and we talked about this in chat Um, because what it says is that anything that says during Um doesn't like now all the abilities need to be reviewed and confirmed whether they work or not Yeah, I'll give you an easy example like I just so because people might be going I don't know what you're talking about tom that doesn't make any sense. I'll give you a very specific but real example, okay Uh, the lurid haze invaders like Sinesh sub faction Okay out of uh wrath of the ever chosen This is just right off the top of my head since I play this but there are many others like this Has a thing that says during the combat phase You can use this command ability to give plus one to say back in two seconds. Yeah, you're fine That you can give plus one to say okay, uh, what that would mean is that if Your model gets attacked in the start of the phase you cannot activate that ability to get the plus one you have to wait to like The normal phase as it were right? Yeah Yeah, uh, so yeah interesting stuff Um We oh somebody said when do night haunt fight when they roll a 10 plus to charge they fight in the charge phase when they do that Yeah, they could immediately have not completing the charge. So yes I mean like it wouldn't matter there because you don't fight back in the charge phase anyways, but um Notably the good things about that is that obviously you're not in a combat phase at all right however Uh, it should be noted That your aether quartz reserve of heightened reflexes could still be activated Because its trigger is only when you are picked to be the target of an enemy attack So even if night haunt get there 10 plus, you know slot machine charge charge fight Uh, you can still height and reflex that so yeah Uh, dustin e said I swear that the rules f aq once said things that happen at the start in the end phase Are considered to take place during that phase you would not be wrong There was a previous Decision that that discussed that and that is clearly not the case as has been stated here So yes, this does there's I don't want to get deep into this weird f aq Rule minutia because it usually won't matter Right Yeah, do we need another power point? I mean, yes, like this is this is another power point presentation on its own right Because yes, there have been previous discussions that that didn't seem to agree with this designer's no mm-hmm. So Cool, and then of course they have great nations, which we'll talk about as we said it has four so Uh, I don't think it'll matter very much, but it does bring up. It's more like What this designer's note implies has implications to a ton of other stuff that I don't care to have implications to so There we go. All right, cool Uh, I want to I want to go next to the to the great nations I think that's actually the most logical place to to go next to start this conversation because I but I want but before we get into that I want to talk about a fundamental Oddity of this army that I want you both to opine on okay Okay, and that is this The next pages obviously there are two special abilities one for venari one for allerith We'll talk about those as we go or whatever when we get to the things but Uh, the venari being the shield wall thing We've already seen where if they stand really close together and they all touch bases They get neg one to be hit They can only do it during setup and if they break it it's broken And the allerith of tectonic force and enduring as a rock where they turn to rend neg one into rend nothing and tectonic force where they Uh, cause you to immediately get a slow play violation by uh by triggering a really annoying Uh non beneficial effect that allows your your enemy to get two-thirds of a pylon move And uh and and surround you more and take tons and tons of time In a phase that shouldn't have this precise of a level of movement happening a second or third time Uh, I am really anti tectonic force. I don't know how deep we want to get into it We can talk about it later if we want but I think tectonic force is one of the worst rules they've ever written That's straight up. I don't mean like bad like overpowered. Who cares about that? I don't care about anything like that overpowered stuff is just overpowered stuff. Who cares? Yeah I mean, it's just literally a bad rule. It is a badly designed Badly initiated badly executed rule that does not actually do what it sets about to do The the shield push uh from 300 it in fact does the opposite of that for the most part And takes forever There's a better version of it lord of the rings too like these guys know how to right push rules Right. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. That's such a great point. Yes. Yes Uh, I mean what's gonna happen with since we're just talking about I want to get into the great nations But like the trick with tectonic force we talked about this a couple weeks back But the trick with tectonic force is in their mind. What's happening is they're going Huh, and all the all the allureth are pushing you back and you that unit is moving back two inches Right, they have to end at least an inch away from you And and not Titans do this too. It's not just stone guard. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It's all the allureth units Yeah, exactly, which are the the big cow mountains and the the stone guard and You're you're going they're going. Huh like in 300 and pushing it but actually what happens is The unit of 60 grots that you just pushed that you just caused a nightmare for Only has to end an inch away from you So they're going to take all their guys and they're going to move that two inches to surround you as much as they can Like they're going to spill around your unit moving two inches forward Piling in effectively an extra two inches freeing themselves by the buy from being double locked Like this could be a great situation because they might have gotten themselves big units like that Can often get themselves into a situation where they get double locked fighting a smaller unit And they can't actually bring all their forces to bear You understand I'm saying like if you if you've ever played horde armies You know that what will happen when you engage a smaller size unit is the enemy will be smart and double lock you Right. Yep, and they'll have trouble then actually spilling around you because their guys can't pile in to get closer So when you go, huh and knock them all back off the line What's actually going to happen is they're going to flow Two inches around you and bring their entire unit two inches toward you Yeah, okay, everybody with the front line Who's just going to go like this and spread down think of like the paint melting over the top of the Sherwin Williams logo That's what's going to happen over that allureth unit, right? Yeah, so they surround the guys in the back actually come forward And then yeah the allureth can step forward the inch But all that's happened is the bad guy the enemy has been able to now bring more units more models I should say I'm sorry into combat It just does the opposite of what they're wanting So I I really don't like this rule at all And by the way doing all that with the 60 grots and then you having to move all your Allureth, I mean if it was like stone guard or something the one cow it does not take a long time to move But you know, there you go Anyway, tectonic force is junk Okay I have very I have very stern words for it. It is seriously my least favorite rule ever written in a battle tone in the history of All battle tones and that's saying a lot Okay But here we are Here's the well, here's what I want you both to opine on This army is so weird in who's leading it Yeah, okay Like your actual general Is either going to be often not always but often A lady in a veil with some magic rocks in a tin Or a dude A dude sitting cross-legged on a floating stone It's often not going to be the giant named Cow monster nor teclis Nor the light of al-tharian I mean, right Right. Yeah, you only have two non named heroes Right. Yes Okay, and they're both weedy little like five wound Spellcasters. Yeah There it's just it is the weirdest thing And like it's and this goes back to like what I felt said felt so disjunctive Is that it just doesn't Yeah, it feels like they missed the boat there If if I may say I I had always expected like especially since We we figured out pretty early on this. This was the teclis army Like if there were going to be two books or at least in the future It's just going to be one bigger luminous book Where there's going to be a Tyrion army and a teclis army the teclis army Is mostly like the mages. This is sort of the the I think one of the terms is the the lambit mystics And so I had always expected like a weedy little archmage to be like the main character leading most armies and I expected that to be like woven into the game design where like You're always going to struggle to protect that tiny character even regardless of How the meta really bullies tiny characters right now. Yeah, sure And I see the stone mage is sort of just like it's that archmage What's who specialized specializes in the Alarath aspect The cathalar I'm not quite sure what to make of yet It feels that that's definitely one of the newer elements where they add sort of like this Darkness and despair to like the themes of of the high elves specifically like in their models But yeah, there is there is no prince Like even on a horse. There's no bsb sort of like noble guy The dawn writers don't have a support hero you go from mages to big monsters And techless I want to ask something in the comments real quick The two things one somebody said the other cow is not unique so it can carry an artifact The other cow is not a hero so it can most definitely not Now that might get FAQ'd maybe they left a maybe they misprinted in the back of the book and left a keyword off Of the war scroll. Maybe all that's wrong, but uh, I don't think so I think the other cow is just not a hero which is going to lead to another FAQ. We'll talk about later No, they have two guys in this book who can carry artifacts Yeah, both of them tiny wizards both of them tiny wizards Which is fine. Any wizard, okay. Yes, uh So the Here's my second question Uh Do the command traits in this army actually mean anything? Is this just if some lorem text? It's all if some lorem like all of it like especially the names like this would like warmaster Like, okay, I'm gonna look at this miniature because they always design the rules to fit the miniatures I'm looking at the cathlor miniature. Is this cathol are a warmaster? um That that would have required a conversion I think because as stock i'm not i'm not i'm not quite sold on it Yeah, yeah fair enough. I I um Oh, and you can and you can give them combat items you can give the cathlor combat item which adds three attacks to her deathly touch Which you sure you can make the stone mage have three extra wounds But again, are you ever going to not take a great nation is my point? Oh, yeah, I think the great nations are all compelling. Okay, is what i'm saying But between either like let's assume because you've got three Named characters who could potentially lead your army who if you take any of them you're not getting command traits nor giving them artifacts, obviously by the way Okay, so there that's straight out but on a deeper level The command traits themselves are going to get overwritten because the all four of the great nations are compelling the downside to that Or well, I'd say three out of the four are really compelling and one is like still pretty good Uh the downside to that is when would you go not great nationless in this book? I see zero incentive In this book to go great nationless Yeah Like I'm not concerned about the command trait Here there's nothing in this generic list that would make me say. Oh, I've got to have this over the Uh over whatever i'm getting out of my great nation. In fact quite the opposite Most of the great nations are just flat out better as a matter of fact Um Like i'm not i'm not really super excited about my allerith stone mage giving plus one bravery To my units that are wholly within 12 and subtracting one from enemies within 18 like okay and uh And certainly by the by that makes the artifacts Less interesting ish. I guess because you'll have Two pretty often. I think you'll often have battalions in this army. They do have good battalions agree Is that a good is that a fair statement? Yeah Okay, I think you'll often have battalions is often a word we can all agree on Yes Okay, so so in other words you will often have two artifacts and I'm not sure who you're giving these to that it matters. Yeah, like Okay, my calypher and my stone mage both have an artifact Okay, like cool cool beans You know they do some things that's cool Yeah One out of six games you can bring teclis back Sure. Yes. Yeah. I just like it's just so disappointing Like sure Because I just don't like It seems like there's just it's so much wasted space right Right. No, I get it. Well, that's and then the the trick to this is All of this stuff the more we keep investing in sub factions the less all of this actually makes sense to even write anymore Because of where it's actually even valuable But this army has it doubled down like that's true Just kind of an in general this army has it doubled down because of the overwhelming number of unique characters who are potentially it's It's it's sort of you know leadership cohort All right, cool Anyway, just a little discussion. I wanted to have we'll come back to the spells later when we talk about The spellcasters, but let's talk about some great nations. Yo Great nations You metrica You metrica is our our stone our cow nation It's the it's the nation of the teclis longhorns where they call home okay and What do you what do you get out of you metrica? Well Uh, as we all know your allerith term neg rend neg one into rend neg two Yep, or sorry rend neg one into rend nothing. I apologize other way around In your metrica, they turn rend neg two into nothing Quite a powerful effect Especially as many of the potential neg three rend items that the that most armies could take just evaporated With the printing of this ghb. So there's a lot less rend neg three out in the meta with the Like face or whatever. They're called fade dimensional blades or face order Whichever one it was the two neg three swords you could give the Say like your lord on karkatrak or something. Yeah So that's pretty good ignoring neg two rend is It's pretty good. Oh, just just to go back while while we're on your metrica and a lot of stuff One of the faq questions is the mountain stance because it's very weirdly worded Or it's like If you choose to be in mountain stance, and I don't know if there's a penalty written somewhere else in this book that I missed about like Uh, what's it rob wants to put on a shirt? I'm always in mountain stance. Yes, absolutely I mean, there is no other stance. It's a great point. We kind of skimmed over but it's it's absolutely the case There is no other There is no other stance right yet. This thing is a thing you seem to pointlessly have to activate so one would assume that Uh You they did it so they can introduce a new stance in lumeneth realm lords To electric boogaloo, I guess they're just like future proofing. So when they want to introduce a new stance, they can Yeah, but as it stands right now Yes, you are just in this stance like I would I would begin if I was playing lrl I would set my army down and I was playing a lot of allerith. I would be like, okay. Hello You know mr. Mizz opponent. How you doing? This is my army. I'll explain it all in a moment. Here's my list Uh, just so you know I'm in mountain stance all the time if I ever don't say it I'm in mountain stance because there's zero reason not to be it costs me nothing to do it So I am Okay, that's how I would play this army And by the way, if you're playing lrl and somebody forgets to say it and you go Oh, well, you didn't say it. So you're not in mountain stance. You're a terrible person. You're a bad person I want you I'm calling you out right now. You are a bad person Yeah They have no other option. They are always in mountain stance. Congratulations. They have no other option and it has no cost That being the point, right? And it's and it's always activatable. So yes Okay at any rate. So yes makes so their stance ignores rend egg too Your command ability redoubled force You can use this command ability at the end of the combat phase if you do so pick one friendly Yometrica allureth unit that has just forced an enemy to move using tectonic force For the first time that phase and that is holy within 18 inches of the hero And you can use tectonic force for a second time on a different enemy unit. Bam That's right. You you thought this ability was bad before double down This is some neil brine levels of double downing here. Okay Uh, no Hard no. I didn't want to use it the first time. I don't want to use it the second time Get out of here Jesus Pete's Uh, it doesn't matter. This will still be a very popular, uh Popular Yometrica will still be a popular choice because it makes the stone guard battle line Yeah, one of your only real choices to make something flat easy battle line in this army besides the wardens and um And because it has the red neg two thing they could have stopped there. That was a pretty big deal on its own uh Your their command trait is instead of making all their attacks They can make one attack and roll a die on a two plus that an immune suffers d three mortal wounds I would just like to point out that The a these elves need to get up off of my sigmar trick So in the i'm gonna say either fourth or fifth edition empire book. I don't remember which one it was one of the two Uh, sigmar was a character you could take Okay, I think you could take sigmar the barbarian because you could play the empire army from that time period From the time period of sigmar and sigmar couldn't have magic items But one of the things he could do was sacrifice all his attacks to make a single strength ten big mighty wall up attack Because you know, he's sigmar the barbarian And uh, so isn't the ordnator do that? Uh, I think he might do it. I don't know if he does it as well. I'm just saying elves stop stealing sigmar's trick the sigmar's trick But fine enough who cares cool Uh, and then your artifact again like what a hilarious command trait to give to your stone mage because that's what we're talking about here That stone mage is gonna whack somebody real hard with that stick. Well pap got you I got you with that stick Can just see him. He's up on top of his rock and he's just wham. He's got he's got the high ground mortal wounds And we know like that's you know, that's a big deal once you got the high ground mortal wounds are incoming There you go. And then finally you get an artifact Uh, once per phase like this artifact is so crazy the gift of the mount or the mountain's gifts, right? This artifact hilarious. There's three things. This is a busy artifact. Here we go Again, I'm taking my melee weapon on a wizard on a wizard. Yes Like these things would be so good the if if they could be put on say anybody else Uh, but here we go I love I love these crazy artifacts And these are better than what's in the generic or in the general section. Okay, here we go Pick one of your melee weapons once per phase you can add one to the damage inflicted by one attack made by that weapon In addition, wait what? Fine enough, so it's like strength of godhood. This is like a slanesh thing got it. Okay It's all your wizard your your wizard can wap somebody super hard. They've got all sorts of wapping options Yeah, but but can I just can I just question had the question like I just noticed this before with the language Once per phase you can add one to the damage made by one attack with the With your melee weapon, so I guess that just means it's like one of your attacks has an extra damage. Yes Yes, but they don't tell you And it seems like trigger on damage So like if you do damage you can add one damage, right? And so where it would be most useful would be something like Like it's not as good as just a flat plus one damage obviously um Yeah, I don't know it's just a weird weird it can be the one that gets through I mean, it's fine. It's a weaker strength of godhood that the pretenders Keeper secrets has where and there it's actually really well spelled out like In in step four you in step four of the damage assignment You may choose to increase the damage by d3, right? Like they're very clear about it in here here They're just like whatever. I also got a shout out two plus toughs comment. Hey, steve It looks like you copy-pasted all three good artifacts into one by accident Whoops This is truly the this artifact is like the neapolitan ice cream. So here we go There's some chocolate. There's some vanilla. There's some strawberry Next up in addition roll a dice each time the allocator wound or mortal wound to the bearer on a six It's negated. So he's got a six up ward We're officially back to calling them wards again because that's what the Anvil of Apotheosis calls it. So they're yeah, get out of here feel no pain If you no more feel no pain no more after damage rolls. They are called wards It's done. It's back taken five years. We called them wards the beginning of the show We're calling them wards again Okay, here we go And the answer is no you couldn't stack it with the the almighty blow the plus one damage because almighty blow does deals direct mortal wounds not damage Uh, and then finally in addition one more one more in addition Each time the bearer is affected by a spell or in the spell you can roll a die on a five plus Ignore the effects of that spell on the bear. I'm gonna call the six up ward the strawberry ice cream there I'm gonna call the plus one damage to one attack the vanilla and I'm gonna call the spell effect the chocolate That's how I'm explaining this This yeah, this neapolitan ice cream artifact, but yeah, there you go Thoughts on your metrica gentleman. What do you think of this one? I like it It's compelling if you want to do the stone the stone the cow army basically, right? Yeah, I I um I really like when uh The best thing I think that this nation does is not actually on this page It's making stone guard battle line right Yep, and well stone guard battle line and increasing rent to admit to make yes that that that too I I just think it's like it doesn't the fact that that's not mentioned here I think is a little funny. Yeah, it's it's the same in almost all of these books Like it where they that that is the hidden power of it, right? Yeah Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and it is by far the strongest piece of your metrica and like like before when I started I was all c.r. Uh, but now like The lists that I'm looking at that are without deck lists like the metrica is obviously high up there for like a mixed Like a true mixed arms list Yeah Uh, okay. Cool. Cool. Great nation of is it how are you pronouncing this c r? Yes, c r c r cool. All right. Why not syar c r, huh? Syar Syar It's elvish like Consonants galore. I guess uh, all right, so Uh, c r c r units start the battle with two aether quartz reserves instead of one So hence the previous discussion we had would mean that each unit can use two of those effects, which I think is actually Uh, almost as defensive of an of an addition as the turn to render neg two and to render nothing I think these are equally potent defensive abilities Uh, because because of what you can do with wardens, which we'll get to Uh, so yes Uh, so good stuff. Uh, obviously useful if you find aether quartz to be valuable, which I think it highly is Uh, then that's good to have more aether quartz easy enough. Yeah Uh Commandability you can use this commandability when a friendly syar Unit could use an aether quartz reservability Even if any friendly syar units have already done so in that turn if you do so pick one friendly syar Unit that has any aether quartz reserves and is wholly within 18th of a friendly syar hero That unit can use one of its aether quartz reserve to use that aether quartz reservability woof Okay So in other words, you can make two units do their aether quartz thing in the same phase Mm-hmm, right. That's that's what we're saying here. Yes. Yep. Yes, and and this is this is probably Um, the best command ability in the book I would tend to agree with that So you have a reason to have command point if if there was ever a list that needed command points Unless you really just want to double down on buffing a lot of a water units with the cows Um, this is the reason to have extra command points would be in a syar list Yeah Yep, totally great. So, uh, this is great because you can yes, you can have It you can have two activations of aether quartz in the same phase that being the trick, right? But they have to be the same ability. It looks like Uh To use that aether Sure, sure ability. Yeah, absolutely correct Which makes sense because oftentimes you I think are gonna want to you'll you'll put the plus one to hit on multiple units And then lighting reflexes them. I mean, obviously this is meant to pair with lighting reflexes, right? Or or you'll plus one to this unit that's getting attacked also plus one to save to this unit that's getting attacked like Yep, seems great. Uh, Never never bad things is in here. Teclos gets to use aether quartz twice across the game. Yeah, which is Right, absolutely Yep, your command traits, uh Is at the start of the combat phase you can pick one enemy hero within six inches of the general That enemy hero can only target this general in that phase In addition, you can add one to hit rolls for attacks to target that enemy hero in that phase All right, let's talk about our first instance of hardcore npe All right, i'm gonna lay out the situation for you. This is gonna happen to me and it will be some trolling Yeah, and it will drive me bonkers in the game. It happens and i'm gonna do it to you I'm gonna do this to me. Yes. I'm gonna be the one that does this. Here's what's gonna happen I'm gonna have a maw crusher he's gonna come screaming into some unit of Dumb wardens or something. Okay, or dawn writers or whatever. Yeah, like some chaff unit. I had no choice but to fight Right And my goal is to clear that chaff unit and get into behind the lines But but what I didn't notice is unfortunately. I accidentally landed within six inches of a stupid hero Okay, of this stupid hero this particular stupid hero Who is at the six inch line and is now going to go Hey Hey, you so How you doing and then I'll only be able to attack that thing But of course I can't attack that thing because it's six inches away from me And so I will sit there and do Nothing You know what's super fun with your big monsters? doing Nothing and before you think well vince, why would you ever go fight that unit? Why wouldn't you just not do that? Great question imaginary person on the internet Well, maybe because that general is sitting in the mid on an objective with some wardens around him And I need to take that objective And that six inch line is a real interesting thing when it comes to objectives Okay So, uh Yeah, it's going to be super fun to have your maw crush at generals Your giants like your new war stomp of giants or whatever You can't get to the person in the back. Yeah, your archaeons just literally go. I activate your turn Boy, that'll be fun. Can't wait for that. I love not rolling dice and attacking with my giant toys It's like my favorite thing Uh, so Yes, and then meanwhile by the way, it's not like that the person has to get attacked and reserve because in addition You can add one to hit rolls for attacks that target that enemy hero in that phase Meaning all the wardens that are spiked out around the objective and who are all going to be fighting because they have giant Pokey Pokey spears, right Are all going to get plus one to hit and just stab the the maw crush at a death with mortal wounds Yeah, I can't wait can't wait It's going to be exciting most fun I can't wait till somebody doesn't know that that's what's going to happen and steer and steers into that and that goes off And they lose their they lose their best piece their most favorite model some timmy loses their favorite monster In a combat without fighting with him and he just gets stabbed. Oh, I can see happening in a bunch of tournament games too Like that's that's the thing And people will rage and life will go on Yeah, it's super fun. So great Great ability. I mean, it's very powerful Like I said that the answer is you just bury that that general who has that command rake in the middle of an objective with wardens Yes, yep, like it's it and then say come fight me and by that I mean you won't be able to fight me This is my objective forever Unless you have something else that can come come attack me So you like a unit like yeah, you have to have a non hero unit But a lot of armies use their heroes as their hammers like a lot and you do need a pretty significant hammer To pull off wardens as we'll talk about in a minute And finally your artifact it's the perfect blade. I don't like that elves have a thing called the perfect blade That is a slaneshi artifact. I don't appreciate you stealing it from us But it always hits on threes always wounds on threes And a save roll of three or less always fails Which is a neat weapon. It's actually kind of a cool sword for your For your uh cathalar or stone mage to have so cool stuff If I just made because we're closing out on the last, um, so there are 10 artifacts in this book between the ones on the great nations And the two 30 of the 10 artifacts are swords Yeah, yeah Yeah Okay, let's let's keep moving. Uh, next up. I think is the one we find probably with it I think it's probably the least interesting Right iliatha. Yeah So iliatha Your lore is creepy, but it's fine. Sure. Add two to the bravery characteristic of your your venari and elementary units After your your, uh, and unity of purpose After a friendly ill iliatha venari unit uses a command ability You can pick one other friendly iliatha venari unit within three inches that unit if you do so that other unit Uh can also use that command ability without spending any command points Which I think you can use this ability only once per phase. I think that's actually a pretty decent ability Let's is why I said even even iliatha the least interesting one is still like half interesting Uh Command ability you can use this command ability in your shooting phase or in the combat phase If you so pick one friendly iliatha venari unit with it with two or more models, you can reroll hit rolls of one for that unit Okay, that's cool. Yeah, so as we as we mentioned in the big talk we had before It's kind of the basic command ability, but when one way worse and in three ways better so, okay And the artifact is the uh simulacra The first time the bear is slain before removing them from the battlefield roll a die on a one to three The bear is slain on a four to six. They're not slain all wounds allocated them are healed And any wounds currently remain to be allocated them are negated, which is a cool artifact Yeah, super cool artifact Uh, so again, I rate this one is like it's the least interesting one, but still interesting It still gets like a six out of ten The other ones are like solid eights So pretty good Anything else about iliatha No, um No, no, no cool. All right We're getting to the good one now. And then finally zaitrek my favorite. Yes Zaitrek, uh, that's a good point soren pointed out that their command ability Uh, it doesn't say you actually have to be in range of any hero like you could just kind of do It's so in the rules like this came up a few times like in in the core rules It just says um, if your army has heroes that are on the battlefield You can use command abilities and I think this might have this battle tone has the most non hero Units with command ability access Yeah, I mean well the question here is one do you still need a hero to activate it because of that because we can point to the core rules and say Heroes are the ones that use command abilities, but they'd be able to activate it at any range Like if you've got a hero anywhere on the battlefield, they can do this because there's no range to it clearly It's not like within most of these say This person can do it if they're within 18 inches of a hero or something like that, right? You can blah blah blah blah Whereas this would just be like you could have a stone mage in the left corner of the board Left upper corner and you could have a unit fighting in the lower right and they could technically get this this thing happening, right? Anyway, all right Zaytrek magic one Uh add one to the first casting dispelling or unbinding roll you make for each friendly zaytrek wizard in each hero phase It is important to note that this army is again got a lot of wizards like say many of your units Yep By the way, does anyone else feel we feel we were oversold on the everything as a wizard? Yeah, yeah, it's not everything as a wizard. Yeah, like half the units are there are many non wizard units in this army I mean, there are a lot of wizards don't get me wrong. Yeah. Yeah But like I feel like those the people who wrote the community article Missed missed a trick like somebody was just like like they played a game of telephone to the rules designers And we're like, yeah, we've got a lot of unit wizards. What's that? Everybody's a wizard Everybody's a wizard quick call it in Johnny and then boom the article went up and it was like everybody's a wizard No, not everybody is a wizard. Many people are not wizards We'll get there. All right, but at any rate, it's cool. Plus one to the first casting dispelling or unbinding for everybody is certainly sweet Uh command trait a zaytrek wizard general must have this command trait instead of the ones listed Which is cool because you're only two wizards or the only two people who can get command traits are both wizards. So handy Uh fast learner this general can attempt to unbind one extra spell in the enemy hero phase In addition the second time that this general attempts to unbind a spell in the same enemy hero phase You can re-roll the unbinding roll Yeah, cool enough Uh, notably there is no, uh command ability here in zaytrek Uh, you do have an artifact of power Which is roll a dice each time you allocate a wound or mortal wound to the bearer Add two to the roll if teclis is part of your army and on the battlefield on a six plus that wound The immortal wound is negated. So you've your cathilar or your stone mage can have a four up ward save which is cool Uh a four up ward sorry not save just ward and uh Lore of zaytrek instead of uh instead of a command ability you get a spell So your zaytrek wizards know the following spell in addition to the other spells they know which is overwhelming heat casting value of seven If successfully cast pick one enemy unit wholly within 24 inches of the caster and visible to them Have the move characteristic of that unit until your next hero phase Then roll a die if the roll is equal to or greater than that unit's save characteristic that unit suffers d3 mortal wounds So There you go. Yeah I assume you both like zaytrek. Is that is that what i'm to understand? Yes, uh, I mean It's lost a lot of stock in my mind. Okay Why um because of the the ward save not stacking anymore Oh, I mean because Define like walk walk me through your thoughts there. Okay because like before you would have had like uh the ward save from teclis Like this zaytrek incentivizes Running teclis sure. Yes. Okay teclis grants a ward save okay With the new faq that we've learned about it that like the ward save of Yeah, you can just choose the four up instead of the five up. He would bubble right right instead of the four at five up Which is what it should have been. Yeah, interesting. Okay um And so like to me that lost some value. Yeah Or i'm sorry the artifact not the trait, you know, i'm saying sure. Okay. I thought you meant like side trick overall No, like I was stronger on zaytrek back when I could actually like, you know Fully use it, you know, with you know, when you can stack ridiculous defensive things Let me just address some of the comments you see that that auto lotus said I I don't think this book feels rushed out I really don't I think this book actually works really well There's a lot of things and like this is a mostly consistent good book. It's one of the better books. You've gotten so far It doesn't mean that there's not goofy stuff in it It's we're hitting on a lot of the goofy stuff because that's our job Right, like everybody can just read the normal stuff. I'm trying to call out things that are unusual or might trip people up So we tend to spend more time on them, but I actually think this is a solid book Um, it it like there's a lot going on here There's a lot of different interesting ways to actually build this army with a limited model range So and I do think like again the strength of having three and three quarters compelling Uh, sub factions is actually pretty good by the standards of this. That's amazing That all four of them are almost on equal footing three of them. I really would have struggled to choose between Uh, the fact that like but there's oddities about this army too. Like we talked about with the leadership and stuff like that It's there's it is a strange army. That doesn't mean it's a bad army or un-compelling. It just means it's strange right, yep Um, if I if I may add for zytrek before we close it out This is definitely one I would choose if I'm not taking teclis. I know the artifact gets better with teclis in the army but um, I think you can The way this encourages you to set up your army is for like good stuff Just extra venari the more venari units you have in your army. I think the better zytrek makes your list Um, especially if you add something like chronomatic cogs because I was talking with uh, Darren Watson after a few, um, like in-person play test games and we um, if you So if you just put cogs in the middle of your army any one of your venari units Which now knows an additional an additional spell. So technically your venari units have access to three spells um power of heish and then two from the lore of heish um, you can just Any one of those units can manipulate cogs to slow down time and cast two of their spells Uh, well, yeah true. They could also re-roll saves, which would also be good Um, no only the unit champion can't because technically only the unit champion counts as the wizard I understand he's the wizard. I'm not sure that only his saves would be the one modified given the nature of how armor saves on a unit work but Like it's uh, the model is the wizard. I agree, but that's not how you don't make Armor saves aren't an individual model. All right, right, right? You allocate you allocate wounds to a unit that has an armor save characteristic Okay, it needs an FAQ Like I get what you're saying and and how you're saying it may be that they might just say it doesn't work like that Just forget it. Don't try Okay, and it might be overkill anyways as we'll talk about with the battalion um But like but it's we'll get there. Yeah Let's talk spells. I want to talk spells and then we're going to get into some scrolls. We're gonna get them scrolly scrolls two lores Two lores lore of heish lore of the high peaks Okay, uh You can choose or roll for one blah blah blah Uh spell for each wizard in Illuminat realm lords army Teclis knows all spells in all of the falling tables. So he knows all of them Okay Uh Great. I'm not going to talk about every spell. I want to talk about a couple spells We can all pick some spells we like or something like that I want to talk about the big npe spell I want to talk about the one that I've been I've had I've had to load it up I've been waiting to talk about this spell for weeks. I am talking about it now Here we go. Okay. By the way, I actually like most of their spell lores. I think they're fine. I actually think they're interestingly balanced But this one here's where we go total eclipse It is in fact a total eclipse of my heart. So Casting value by the way, you can't you can't use part of a song title as your spell name And not expect me not to sing that song every time I cast that spell at any rate total eclipse has a casting value of eight eight Eight is great, which is a hard number to roll even though you can often have plus one or plus two Uh, unless you have teclis in which case you don't roll it anymore. It just happens It's really interesting sort of a bifurcated situation there If successfully cast until your next hero phase Your opponent must spend two command points to use a command ability instead of one Holy hell I have never seen a single spell Shut down An entire enemy army More effectively than this spell There are certain armies that have really junky battalions or or bad battalions or access to no battalions Right at all. Yep And don't exactly have easy abilities to get more command points. Right, right Maybe maybe they purchase an extra one. So on turn one they have two Okay Like on their turn one Uh, but nothing like firing this off and then like When they only have one because of their battalion or maybe they bought one like many many many many armies Have only one in the clip Before their turn, right? We can all agree with that. Yes. Yeah. Yes So nothing like firing this spell off and then having teclis drop his big spell bomb Having a bunch of sentinels shoot their arrows and just pepper units Right and making it impossible to use the inspire To use the Like I think of a stupid name the I don't lose any models to battle shock command ability anymore just shuts it off Yep. Yep. That's it. You're not saving anybody. I'm gonna take your big unit. I'm gonna drop mortal wound bombs everywhere I'm gonna weaken all your units I'm gonna pop pepper everybody with sentinels and I'm gonna shove my dawn riders across the board 28 inches And like charge a unit on the side just to just to get some more damage into it And then I'll watch a bunch of your army crumble to battle shock because your one command point cannot make anybody immune to battle shock Yep Yep Not to mention the fact that that many armies just rely on having like I have one command point to turn That's what I get and I need to use this one command ability and it's kind of how my army is playable and uh Sorry about your luck. Yeah. Thank you inspiring president. Okay, so it just would not come to my head I don't know how I've used that ability a billion billion times. I couldn't remember. It's a dumb name anyways, uh Some armies just play like that And You don't get that anymore. You just don't get to use your Your Command abilities Sorry, and this doesn't have a lot of impact in the mirror either like a limited versus limited match. It's like Right, so it's it's even even more like um Just impact on other armies So My bottom line on this one is it's interesting because it's an eight and like realistically your caster is going to be at maybe plus two Okay, or or whatever like assuming no arcane terrain plus one or plus two Assuming you're not near arcane terrain or something weird like that. So that's a that's a that's an ask Right hard aiding needing to roll a six or a seven You will fail that often if you're trying it out of a stone mage Or something like that and it will get dispelled sometimes. Yep If you've got techless, this is just an auto cast anytime you want this. This is on period. This happened This just happened Right Yeah so like That's pretty good And yeah, like the twin so W store and mention the twin stones. Yes, that's that's another common source of the plus one Like often you might have you might have the twin stones or you might be in in um Zatrek or you might be in or you might have, you know, whatever one of the artifacts all those things All those things. Yeah, like there's a couple different ways you could get it So yes, I don't know how much the twin stones will actually build up huge numbers I'm I'm suspect about that, but you could always get at least plus one out of the twin stones So that's another FAQ question. Sure. Sure. All right. That's my spell. That's my rant I again if techless isn't part of the armies if he's not if he's a trap if he's not actually seen very much Then i'm not sure I care about this spell I mean, do you don't think it'll go off even if people are in like Zatrek or whatever and it will go off some But the difference between like Likely getting it just on the eight Or getting it some of the rounds Yeah, and having it automatically for sure every round anytime. I want it I have the spell period shut your face eat this spell because that's what techless could do Yeah, right and if it's going to win you the game which there are armies Which it will do because it will just shut off their ability to do their trick, right? You will power it through Yep, it's true. Yeah I I have played all of my games so far in the Zatrek without techless And I have not been able to cast the spell yet. Eight is a hard ass given with plus one Like I mean sure I mean sure that's just that's just how dice work Like I think in one of my one of my games the first turn like technically I have seven casts all at plus one And I ended up casting two spells like and my opponent wasn't able to unbind anything. I was just like If you're rolling threes You're rolling threes. You're rolling threes. Yeah, it's a dice game. Sure. Absolutely. Yeah So but I I do I I do think that um It is a problem when you factor in techless But I I think the high casting value like If you're not using techless It it it has its own balancing factor. I think in how hard it is to cast Yep, I I agree. I the by the way, there was a different version of this spell That could have been written. I'm not saying it was I'm saying that could have sure they cast on like a six or a seven That was like pick a single hero within 18 inches that hero Uh must spend two points instead of one For to use any command abilities printed on their war scroll or something like that Right, or or the first command ability they use or whatever, you know, I mean like there was there was other versions of this that wouldn't be back breaking Right, so yeah Uh, all right, that's my spell. What else do you guys want to talk about? It's just that's that's a bad spell I started on a sour note. I wanted to end on the positive note because there's cool spells in here, too I think they're actually pretty fun Speed of speed of high ish is my is my money like I just love that thing Double movement in an army that's already super slow It gives a lot of options and and it like it really gives money to the writers the dawn writers because they can shoot across the board with it Yeah I think it's like the money spell of the lore Because as you mentioned a lot of your foot dudes don't have a lot of speed Doubling your move cast on a five You know it's got it's got a decent range, you know, holy within 18 inches. It's a nice spell Yeah, I dig it and it's it's good old fashioned double move is a good thing I like it. I dig it. It's a reasonable cast A plus and fun, by the way, it's neat to see like suddenly those those little elves march themselves Uh across the board real fast. That's kind of cool What if fixes I had said like this was a bad like talking about a bad Or not a bad talking about like an evolved fire slayers like it solves the fire slayer problem Yeah, like one of like like this is fire slayers with the tools to actually shore up all your weaknesses. No magic and uh speed Having both a speed unit and a speed spell I don't know. I'm just I'm a really big fan. Yeah, sure Martin, what what have you been casting? What have you been finding your money on? So yeah, so like in my games like I use cogs and then it's either power of heish or ethereal power heish or and then double move Um protection attack list as much as I have been putting it on certain units That that eight like as soon as you see as soon as you see eight plus It it's it's a it's a tall ask even for like because you have to roll average on two dice Just to get the plus one to meet just the bare minimum of that eight Yeah, you have a 56 chance of success assuming you have plus one to count. Yes. Yeah, um, I do like, um I I haven't I haven't really used spell portal yet, but uh Lamb and light works like a tau marker light from 40k If you put that through the spell portal because is one of the things to to note is that some of these spells like even even though they're holy within um They're shorter range than people think unless you're buffing like specifically a venari unit is casting it on themselves Right like you really struggle to get those holy within ranges lamb it light in particular If you if you send it through the spell portal it it becomes much easier to bypass that short range so I haven't used that yet, but that seems like a cool idea just to ensure that um because one of the things you talk about with aether quartz is You cannot use aether quartz to boost any of the abilities to help you fish for more mortal wounds But this doesn't let you just re-rolling it's when you're shooting right so this is this is a key Like when you when you see re-rolls, it's like I can fish for more mortal wounds Yeah, and I think I think that there there's definitely a trick there. Agreed. Yep. I like it. I think overall the The lore of heish is just Better than the lore of the high peaks. That's not to say the lore of the high peaks is bad because I don't think it is But it's better, right? I mean, that's that's not a controversial statement. I don't think No, I think I would agree with that. Yeah Like lore of the high peaks plays a lot more in the bravery space Like your first three spells all kind of play in some way with bravery And it's not in any way that you really needed in a huge way in this army. So okay um That's fine. Yeah. All right. Cool. Anything else we want to mention? I mean the their their spells, they're fine. Oh, you mentioned ethereal. We should unpack that ethereal blessing because it's a very relevant spell cast on six Uh, you can pick a friendly lumineath realm lords unit and give them ethereal effectively, right? So they ignore positive and negative modifiers to their safe, which is cool Very cool. Yet another way that by the way that wardens could become Uh, very tanky incredibly tanky. Yeah, right, right On top of stacking debuffs Yeah, and you've got choices here Remember every wizard gets to take one of these spells including your units that being the key Your your wizard units are all taking one of these spells as well so Because they are all venari wizards Yep, so uh And there's a big question right now because it also says the light of al-tharion gets to take one of these And he is not actually a wizard Is he supposed to be a wizard? Is it supposed to be that he can use it with the aether quartz ability? The answer who knows Right, we'll find out. We'll find out wait for the FAQ. That's a definite FAQ. Why like can he just spin up to aether quartz it? Maybe That could be but he doesn't have the wizard keyword, but yet he's mentioned by name Who knows Who knows? uh Battalions let's cover them real quick Here this is so easy ready here. I'm going to cover the battalions like this There are three battalions in this book. There's a super battalion that you're obviously never going to take Okay, there's three battalions in this book Ready? Yeah, one if you're going to do the uh, if you're going to make the center of your army All the stone people like if you're going you metrica if you're all techless longhorns, right? Yep Okay, one if you're going heavy venari and you want the more classic high elf Uh thing where you've got your wardens and and your cathilar in there and one That you're going to take in a very unusual situation I probably as a second battalion that is just a bunch of dawn writers sure The and like but that's that's the sort of odd man out. It's a cool battalion. It's not that I don't like it I actually kind of it's perfectly fine um But it is the weird one because the other two so clearly are this the Literally the foundation of your army like is the foundation of your army stone people or venari people allerith or venari And then there's also some ponies It feels like and also ponies is the name of the third battalion Well, and like let me just say that I think that that points to just how disjunctive this feels Because it feels like that dull rider lance should be led by a mountain hero. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah We all lack of the make him on the anvil of apotheosis. Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Absolutely Go match play for anvil. We all want it We all need it Do it. Yeah, I just like it just I struggle Because like I just wish I don't know. Yeah Yeah, sure. Yeah, so what do they do just very quickly? I'll I'll mention these things because I think they are actually quite good I'm not going to mention the exact composition. It's the the allerith one is the stone stuff It's what you think it is At the start of the combat phase any friendly stone guard units from this battalion that are wholly within 12 inches of A friendly hero from the same battalion can turn their skin to stone You can reroll save rolls for attacks that target that unit But they can only pile in one inch Make sure stone dudes who could be again and like if you're geometrical, you're taking this battalion You might as well just write off the points right now because of course you want to ignore rend too and reroll all your saves and then if you're also ethereal Uh, I guess you could be because why not why not worry about why not ignore all rend or something or whatever Uh, or if you don't want to be ethereal Why not get your plus one to save from your your aether quartz and just be like truly immortal stuff? So nobody in that unit dies ever Because they'll be on three up ignoring rend one and two reroll all saves, which is yeah, you know Pretty good It's pretty. Yep Pretty good pretty good Uh, the url url url url url url url url and legion sure let's go with that You can reroll save rolls of one for attacks that target a friendly unit from this battalion While it's within three inches of any other friendly units from the same battalion I see a theme They let the battalions are about rerolling saves again. Uh, this is why I said like for the dawn. I don't sure The I mean, this is why I feel the wardens can also be quite quite tanky I mean bodies wise obviously you're not you're you're getting more bodies for less points than the stone guards Although not wounds talk about whatever that means later Uh, but you know they can also push themselves uh the wardens Can also push themselves to a three up if you're in this if you're in this battalion you can also be rerolling ones Yes, you're not ignoring the rend But you know you can be on three up rerolling which is still pretty darn good You can get the rule that all shields have across basically the rest of units in this game Which is rerolling ones to save Yes All right So cool, uh, you know battalions they're fun Anything else we want to say about them? Are we ready to talk units? We can talk units. Yeah Right on Well, we got to start with the man the myth the legend the big boy himself The guy who failed at the last moment Who couldn't handle all the winds of magic? He's back again though His his his stupid plans may have set stupid things in motion in the end times But he still fails up He failed up all the way into godhood. It's techless. That's right Uh and his and his weird friend selenar the spirit of heish Uh, I feel like techless. I feel like selenar is that weird friend Yeah, do you have anybody who you kind of put up with and they're like, okay But then they have a really weird friend they bring around and you're like, oh gosh I can barely tolerate this guy and he always brings around that weird that weird friend That's selenar I don't disagree with that sure Anyway Archmage techless. What's relevant about him? Well, he's 660 points. That's a pretty relevant thing. Yeah 16 wounds four up save he can fly 12 inch move And uh, we're gonna skip all the rest of this stuff because most of it doesn't matter Okay Sure, because like I don't care about the attacks or anything like that. None of that matters. All right What we're gonna talk about is techless and magic because that is what's relevant So Uh, he is the archmage the ultimate archmage Uh, start of your hero phase. You must say if this model will cast one spell two spells or four spells That's the thing you have to say up top If you cast one spell it's done automatically and it cannot be unbound Right, it just happens If you cast two spells Each is automatically cast on a roll of 12 People may attempt to unbind them which is a comical statement. Hope you've got a bonus to unbind All you've got to do with your plus one to unbind Somebody lucky enough to have plus one to unbind is roll them boxies Easy So he can choose to cast two spells that if the opponent has a plus one to dispel has a one in 36 chance to be dispelled good Or he can cast four spells If he does that Then they're all cast on a 10 and people can attempt to unbind them as normal I would point out that if people don't have bonuses to unbind Uh The chance like rolling an 11 is not a high percentage outcome Okay, you have to basically start at being a lord of change to have So even his four spell setting is nearly impossible to dispel Like statistically if he spent all five rounds of the game Like let's say he lives which is questionable. We can talk about that But which is questionable if he spent all four rounds of the game firing off Or sorry, all five rounds of the game firing off four spells. So he'd cast 20 spells in the game, right? Statistically one of those gets unbound With no bonuses to dispel Yep Okay It's it's slightly below two He's pretty good Uh, so that's that's that but we're not done yet We're not done yet. No. No, you might have thought we're done, but we're not aura of selenar Add one to casting dispelling and unbinding roles for friendly lumineath realm lords units within range of this model's aura of selenar Billy Which is like start to 60 inches and get smaller if he's wounded meaning all your other wizards get better So if you are in Zatric with this guy you're plus two then for everybody else So like all your venari units are plus two to cast and stuff like that right Discs of the elementary In your hero phase in addition in addition To casting one two or up to four spells. This model can automatically dispel one endless spell Do not roll 2d6 In the enemy hero phase this model can automatically unbind one enemy spell Do not roll 2d6 Yeah, another dispel scroll. Mm-hmm. You can just do that He's uh, he can just decembe mutombo that stuff right off the board. No No, just get that out of here This is what we like to call Stop sign like he is the he is the new heart of what we call a spellbomb. Yes. So we have a new term for these negash croak Do you believe the lord the lord of change, but that's he's at the lower end of it Uh, but and this guy the spell doms Doms doms. They are spell doms. They dominate They dominate the magic phase Yeah, so uh, and then finally each each time a friendly unit within range of this model's aura of selenar So the aforementioned 16 and going down aura is affected by an endless spell or a spell cast by an enemy wizard You can roll a die on a 4 plus ignore the effects of that spell or end the spell on that unit then Pick one enemy unit within 18 inches of that unit That enemy unit suffers d3 mortal wounds the range of the aura of calenar ability for this model is shown on the damage table above uh Of course the uh argument here being The FAQ being can you cheat with this tom? Do you want to talk about do you want to talk about the FAQ able cheating with this? How yeah, so So like this goes one of two ways basically um, this either is um So depending on how you read so it's affected by an endless spell or a spell cast by an enemy wizard The question is is that cast by an enemy wizard? Is that clause affecting the spell or the spell or is it only affecting just spell right? Okay, because if it's not Which which as the second structure that clause wouldn't be affecting the endless spell but continue right and in that light If it's any endless spell what this means is that you can be in your area Uh cast an endless spell that affects your whole army like conks for say and then make a bunch of four plus saves And every four plus to negate the cogs effect You suddenly do um D three mortals D three mortals. So like let's say you have 10 units in the area within the aura You'd refrow 10 dice. You'd get five four pluses. You'd do five d three to an enemy unit within um within 18 18 uh With a friendly endless spell right now There is clearly no way. That's what was intended like there's no zero way are zero ways. That was what was intended But as it is written right now It is very interpretable that that is what how it could be read Okay, right, right Definitely needs an FAQ Right because yes, your point is when you turn on cogs it affects all of your units giving them plus two But it but it says an enemy wizard, right? Well, no, that's the point by an endless spell or Oh, okay Yeah, a spell cast by an enemy wizard now again Let's let's be very clear here. This is stupid Okay, what tom and i are describing is so Straight up busted and done. It's no jank and not what was intended right because yeah I mean your units are 50 percent of the time shrugging off the bonus or something like cogs Even if you wanted them to get faster you just can't Right and yet this is how it's written. So on one hand there's either that or if it's any endless spell cast by an enemy wizard There's another like backhand to this Um in that the way that it's written then is that they they don't actually get this aura on the endless spells that come out of the bottle The ko spell bottle because they're not being cast by a wizard Also true. I would point out by the way. Yeah, that's absolutely true I would also point because it wasn't cast So if you if you just if you say the ed cast by an enemy wizard applies to the first part of the sentence then Okay, suddenly ko get a free pass on there up and you know Rat trap the hero demon rift the heck out of your army and you're gonna have nothing to say about it And the tech listed just like what is this technological wizardry? I can do nothing You In the mirror if el therian casts a spell and doesn't have the wizard keyword it would also get a pass I would point out by the way that also as well tom if the enemy wizard clause applies to endless spell as well Like let's say that's true. Okay. Yep. So let's take the hard reading of this. Yeah, right? Yeah Your opponent casts cogs And sets it to speed up time Yep, it still it still works You're still you're gonna go And like melt five d three mortal wounds onto them even on the hard reading of this Okay, or they drop a prismatic wall or something. I'm gonna melt one of your units now. Yes, like Shouldn't cast that cogs Yeah, that was your first mistake So like this toll ability needs massively FAQed and reworked because it's just Like no reading of it. No matter how generous actually works right now Well, it works. It just doesn't work on you like it what it it works But it creates a bunch of loopholes that you don't want to see on the table. Let me say that one. Yes, right? Because it's not it's just not what they want and we're not done No, we're not No, uh, I should and I found that by the way within the first like like 14 minutes of reading this book Yes, you did this was this was like yes in the first 20 minutes if you get in the book you you said what the hell Uh, no, it's absolutely true Uh So we're not done with sackless yet Because uh, we mentioned how he casts the number of spells he casts He can also unbind any number of spells in the enemy hero phase. He's up there He's going toe to toe with negash. He's like what what what what what what what what I got You got eight spells. I got eight unbinds. You got 10 spells. I got 10 unbinds Got all the unbinds in this bag. What do I got in this bag unbinds? All of them and a dispel scroll and a dispel scroll Like if there was ever universal magic items like again, this is for the ghp talk It's like I always think that like a dispel scroll a dispel scroll should be something that every army has access to Sure, sure. I don't discreet that Uh, and he also so he knows all the spells like he knows both lures all the spells All the basic stuff and these two spells as well spell number one protection of teclis cast on a 10 normally that'd be insane for him slam dunk right, okay Basically, uh He bubbles out an aura that until your next hero phase will die each time you allocate a wound or mortal wound to a friendly unit Holy within 18 inches of the caster on a five plus that mortal wound is negate other wound or mortal wound is negate So he can just bubble out a big 18 inch Or a five up ward Cool. Okay. That's actually pretty good. I don't I don't hate that at all. Um, cool spell. It's fine Uh storm a searing white light casting value of 10 If successfully cast roll a die for each enemy unit within 18 inches of the caster and visible to them On a one nothing happens on a two through four that unit suffers d3 mortal wounds on a five plus that unit suffers D6 mortal wounds the nightmare scenario here is of course that he goes uh spell portal I'm gonna make me a spell portal And uh, then I'm gonna put this Storm a searing white light through that spell portal And uh, and then I'm gonna power bomb your whole army Yep And just like okay because then this the placement of that second spell portal becomes the origination for the 18 inch aura, which is going to be most of your army Realistically, which means Your entire army suffers something like two or three mortal wounds Doesn't sound like a lot, but one spell doing 20 to 30 mortal wounds. The average army has about 10 units So the average so a single spell being cast doing 20 to 30 mortal wounds Especially if your army doesn't have healing of any kind Is a pretty big deal most armies have let's call the average army right now having somewhere between 100 and 120 wounds total in the army Uh, you just lost a fifth to a sixth of your army Yep on that one cast and by the way, he's gonna keep doing that every round Like on a long enough time frame You know, he's going to get there Yep, okay Uh, yes, that's a guy like ghost funs comment nuclear launch detected. Yeah, that's right No, I um when this was first translated like it wasn't like searing storm a searing white light wasn't translated yet I I think that the scroll Would be a lot better like received if it was just if a signature spell was just protection of teclis I like that spell a lot, especially with the casting value being so high It's like specifically like he is it has meant only for him to cast it And it changes how your army is set up and functions It is also like one of the main ways to get around like teclis because he's very fragile until you turn the spell on and um, that's what makes him I think like 660 points a lot it's a lot like And you're the main value is in his spells forget it when he does in combat shooting Yeah, and and he's on a cabbage base. He's he's it's The the it is almost so hard to screen him as a look to screen him Sorry as a limited player you almost don't want to try but you have to or he's just gonna get hit and um this spell like um Your choices are one automatically two at twelve or four And you have so many things that I feel like are priorities for him to cast in an army built around him That you're probably going to go for four and this is always going to be one of them possibly total eclipse Maybe strong strong of searing white light I don't know if you're going to cast that every turn because there's other things you want your units to do instead yeah So I definitely like protection of techless storm of searing white light I can see how that gets egregious like tech nato is I don't want to say appropriate Uh, because I still think what croak does is a little more egregious Uh, I don't just agree that it's more wounds Yeah, yeah Uh, it is Yeah, and and the other the other thing is it's like what with with with 18 inches it's Like 18 18 inches even around his base is not going to hit as many units as Like your opponent eventually like the more techless gets played people are just going to plan for that Or it's like do I have to just stay away or only send in units when I know I can get techless down? Um, will they have their own? Huh? Well, the really terrifying terrifying thing is if he has mirror Hey a spell portal. Yes. Yes. If he has Like suddenly like word a different universe if that's if that happens, right, right? And that's also another investment small portals. What 70 points 80 now, right? I don't remember what is post. I don't remember changing. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I 70 80 points doesn't doesn't matter It's it's it's an even more of an investment. You are losing the opportunity to put more models on the table Yeah, and um, there is no healing unless you take a life swarm So someone if someone has the opportunity Especially if they have the opportunity to hit before techless can turn on his buffs like protecting a techless If they get say they don't kill him not everybody's ko. I understand ko is the gatekeeper Not you you're not always going to fight against sake. Um, whatever can alpha to do damage eels ko um the city's a sigmar or or Something else. I'm storm cast because shoot cast is going to come back in some regard. I'm sure um If but otherwise it's like it's going to be a handful of wounds and he's just going to keep those for the rest of the game like uh Yeah, so I I think protection of techless is that there are certain things which will keep him from Being extra egregious. I think like you're not you're not often going to see the I'm just going to do the one spell. You can't stop or I'm going to do the two spells at 12 I think it's most of the time going to be the the for attack Yeah, I I mean the This guy's interesting. So let's let's break this down real quick. Right Okay, yeah, if techless is viable And shows up in a lot of armies, yeah then necessarily he And the other spell doms that are out there have put us And including ko Just the capabilities of zinch and seraphon in general Have put us into a world where five wound heroes are just dead those those don't count anymore If you have a five wound foot hero and he survives until round two, you've done a great job Right. That's the meta work we're entering Now If techless isn't viable, that's a little bit of that pressure taken off There's still a lot of other things putting pressure on that But it's a little bit of that pressure taken off and it certainly means that lumineuth can't do that It's easy. They have a second way. They can do it. We'll talk about it later where they're gonna that they're going to use to remove your heroes but If he is viable This is a he becomes a major threat If it's not That kind of threat goes away against the myth your your sort of five wound hero type of armies Become a more potent, you know kind of things like doc that rely on that synergy strategy of five wound heroes Become more realistic. So here is my question Techless is 16 wounds on a four up save. Yep And that's it, buddy Yeah, possibly three up with eight reports. Sure. He did a third court. You're absolutely right. Totally fair He does have eighth reports. So he could three up himself one way in response to something during a phase But like that's more or less what a laurel is without any kind of even she has some kind of weak healing And we talk about how easy she dies and how she's not worth it right, okay So my question to you gentlemen is this is Techless worth it Is he viable? Yes, if you build around him, I think he is best in cr where you can get more aether courts Okay And that's not just for you. That's for for all of your units like getting extra aether courts But particularly him. I don't I think I I think zytrek doesn't give him enough because he can't take advantage of the casting and unbinding I know he can't take advantage of the casting bonuses um I think I think there's more mileage for him to be in cr You have to put him in an army that's low drop, especially if you're going to a tournament Like just just not talking about like just club club games or or something like that And realistically you could get him into some kind of pretty low drop army somewhere in the two to four Yeah, I I believe you can get him into a two drop army him being the second drop if you uh because um Our land legion is equal amounts of um spearmen and archers. There is no cap It is as long as you have pairs of them plus the cathalar You can keep going with that battalion. So you can make you can make a two drop with him with the uh Um with the lr a temple as well Yeah, yeah, you can't tell yeah either of those battalions will allow you to drop them But you might I'm saying he could possibly still be in like a two to four drop because there might be other units You might want a skirmish unit of dawn writers or something to also get in the way like there are a couple different options They're out there Yeah The the question is and and by the way crazy horse said, you know, he'd be able to three up one round heel So it's the five of board. Well, that's true if you don't have to turn it on which is why we're talking about low drops Yeah, exactly like if you don't get the turn if somebody out drops you like if you get out dropped by I mean, this is if you if you are high drop in teclis and you get out dropped by ko or something I don't know how they just don't blow him right right the heck off the board. Oh no, he's done Like all guns go weapons free into him immediately. Yes. If ko is is in that mix. He's done Yeah And and or eels I think corn can do it. I mean, I don't know how um, I this was just talking about like This list is corn doing to do it getting like Step one all my bloodthirsters run across the board and somehow ignore the massive walls of wardens I've certainly put in the way a round teclis step two a miracle happens step three Like what's the What's the step two here? I'll have to get back to you on that one. I was just yeah Roll a ton of sixes and just go nuts with mortal women's explosions. Yeah Uh, yeah, I mean like certainly ko can do it serif on threaten it. Obviously, you know, eels Eels I know I know that's that's our safe word is eels Eels is the safe word if you can eels are always the answer because they'll get across the board if they can jump the lines and stuff Yes, if he's not like truly truly bubble wrapped in a in a heck of a bubble wrap the eels are gonna get there, right? That being said you could just literally surround him with inches of spears Yep So yeah, sure But then you have to castle hard and that's the other thing that I wonder about his viability The more you include him the more castling you have to do and ultimately this game is about movement out to things Yep, not about sitting still in a castle right One thing to note is that negash is still the only god wizard who can do in Cain bolts I was surprised that they were like they tried that with him And then they stopped like you know in bone reaper seven arc can can cast arcane bolt mystic shield infinite times Which is why which is why like negat like that's one of the things that the gash can do It's like he turns into a machine gun And with all of his pluses to cast and texas can't do that It was interesting to see that that he doesn't he also does not have that ability sure that he isn't also a living machine gun Yes, that's because he put all his arcane bolts into an arcane bomb that he throws over their line you know Uh, yeah, sure Any other thoughts on on texas? I mean, I think he's good. I think that I don't think that for me like I started with him as the go-to And then the farther I kind of went down that road of exploration and consideration The more I realized yeah, I guess I don't really need him Right Yeah, I mean this guy's definitely afraid of as fading just mentioned this guy is afraid of obr catapults Yeah, yeah Yep Like they're a very scary thing to him. Otherwise, I think if I think of obr don't have the catapults I think this army matches extremely favorably against obr If this army does have cat if the obr army did bring like two catapults, I think the the the match flips on its head Yeah, it's my honest answer Yeah Okay, cool, uh light of el-tharion. He's real good in melee. I'm not gonna go through anything else Like mini go trek mini go trek is the best way I can sum him up hits like a tank fights like a tank Better than a steam tank cheaper than the steam tank character Insulting this guy is insulting to me Uh hits harder and is tougher than a steam tank by far um And uh is the best hero that nobody is gonna play But Well, I mean I that that's what you want out of your hero characters, right? Especially like those those really hard to balance Sort of just like melee monsters Like not only is it not only is he like basic melee only but he's also a named character So you can't really change his stats or like With with like customization So and and he's a character that has been carried over from the old world So he has that nostalgia value and so I can understand the struggle with um like We we have this character that we want to do justice to How do we write his rules in a way that Like allow someone to put him on the table And not have him feel like a lame duck Yeah, I mean The the reason I say he's the best hero no one's going to take and I mean I'm being facetious obviously He'll show up in armies But the the reason I say it's not because he's bad. I actually think he's freaking amazing I just think he doesn't actually have much of a role Right, you just there's nowhere where he clearly fits, right? Because I if I want melee power I'll just take like units of wardens and melee stab people down with their with their with their mortal wound pikes Uh And then I also get bodies Right, uh He's he's like for his cost He's just not filling a role in the army He's relatively slow too by the way at six He is but with the double move moving 12 is not bad Like that's one thing you're gonna ask me on air track. He could do sure that's that's the one point is that's a spell you can cast once He's gonna be your target for that not your brick of 30 wardens Not your unit of 10 dawn writers. You tell me this guy this guy gets the double move. There's no That's an option like sure Sure In round four whenever thing else is dead, I suppose if he's still around Yeah, okay, like if I need if I need to get him into something, right? Yeah, like or to pin something like I don't hate him at a 12 inch move with a charge Sure. Yes. He is unique. Somebody else in the comments is unique. Yes. He is Um, and like I I also don't hate him in the mirror Like because he's actually like because he can bump everybody's uh bravery attempt Sure So sure, okay Again, like all right, I think he's like the coolest hero that actually doesn't have a functional role He's the odd man out Yep in the here now. It's would have changed if you could have given him an item This would have changed if he had a better command ability. Sure This would have changed if he fit into a battalion All of those things would have made him playable like more playable than he is Yeah, it's so weird that he's he's so well constructed. We've they finally figured out how to make a great melee hero And and he's not going to be part of I suspect almost any competitive list right Yep, it's true irony Define irony. Okay cathol are This is the this is the lady with the the the tin the little the little bin of smoke rocks She got some rocks. That's still virgin statue. Yes So what is what is miss tin of smoke rocks do? So at the start of the battle shock, I mean, this is this is this is it. This is what she does. Here we go. Get ready At the start of the battle shock phase, you can pick one friendly lumeneth realm lords unit Holy within 18 inch of this model and roll a die on a 2 plus. You don't take a battle shock test for that unit Okay, if that was it, I'd be like, all right, that's cool. She saps away their fear and negative emotions meet In addition this book the most common phrase in this book is in addition. Yeah If any models from that unit were slain during that turn You can pick one enemy unit within 18 inch of this model that has to take a battle shock test in that phase If you do so add the number of models from that friendly unit that were slain during that turn To the modified battle shock roll for that enemy unit. This is such a potent crazy powerful ability Somebody gets into your sentinels sentinels are generally made of paper your archers by the way And just like murders 14 sentinels Okay And your sentinels strike back or whatever and you bring one dude down you get one guy Right out of the enemy unit And total eclipses up Okay Yep, uh Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna add my 14 On to your one. Yep You can no longer inspiring presence because you don't have the command points for it anymore. Yep Uh, and go ahead and roll that die Roll that die roll that bones. What's your bravery there? Oh, you got a good bravery seven Oh, okay, so roll a d6 plus 15 And subtract seven and that's how many dudes just died to my archer unit It's pretty good. Yeah. Oh, yeah like she um It's going to catch some people out like talk like it's army is an army of gotchas And and that sacks with um her sapping the aether quartz and she can hand uh hand out the bravery debuff to somebody else Yes. Yeah. Yeah, of course. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yep the war scroll. It's not under war scroll Yep Uh, I would also point out that she She is also Weird mini bellicor, so we just came off of mini go track and she is weird mini bellicor Yep her spell darkness of the soul She is a wizard because all these as we mentioned she is one of the two non unique wizards that will probably end up being your general Uh, so darkness of the soul is casting value of seven if successfully cast pick an enemy unit within 18 inches The cast are invisible to them until your next hero phase Roll 2d6 each time that unit makes a normal move a charge move shoots or fights So not quite everything bellicor can do because she can't shut off spell casting, but she gets most of it And uh make the roll before the action is carried out if the roll is greater than that unit's bravery characteristic That unit cannot perform that action in that phase uh pretty Awful and worthless against your standard bravery 10 armies against It's like a 9 chance or something that she actually shuts off an ability or she shuts off one of those actions Uh against low bravery armies because she's going against your bravery characteristic So Skaven and gets and yeah most anybody who's like bravery five six sort of common numbers that you see on a lot of the other armies Uh, actually incredibly frightening Yeah, because it means you have about a 50 chance that when you go to fight you just don't fight. Yeah Oof Yeah, yeah, it's like a mini bellicor mini bellicor, but she can do it every round Yeah She just keep Keep the cast in Yeah Uh, yeah, so good stuff there Uh dawnriders they're cavalry people they make Attacks they make a lot of attacks with lances that can do mortal wounds and stuff. I mean What else we're gonna say they charge their fast. They're your skirmish unit. What do you want to talk about? And they they get better versus smaller models, which I really appreciate Because that's what cavalry Technically if you want if you want to talk about adding verisimilitude here and there Deftly furrows is a good ability to do that Yes, although I hate that they had to split this out. So I will read this at you Yeah, the word the wording on it is is is poor, but it functions well sure Okay, uh, yeah, I also want to talk about power of heist here That's a worthwhile thing to talk about because that that'll introduce this which will carry out for the rest of these So the dawnriders are wizards, right as long as the champion is alive and the way this is facilitated is The the steed master champion basically of this unit is a wizard Well, the unit has three or more models interesting because armies that can point and click and kill specific models. So stormcast star drakes and Marathi and stuff like that Are gonna are gonna be killing your champions too sweet like that is Step number one is kill the champion because then that that unit is no longer a wizard but at any rate At the start of deathly furrows and start of the combat phase you can say this unit will use It's deathly furrows ability if you do so in that phase you can either either Add one to the attacks characteristic of this unit's melee weapons But it can only target units that have a wound's characteristic of one or two and do not have a mount Okay Or you can add two to the attacks characteristic of this unit's melee weapons They can only target a unit that has a wound's characteristic of one and do not have a mount Okay, so clearly they're cavalry meant to go fight infantry. Yes got it check understood All right, so you get a bunch more attacks and by the way with their with their lances They're normally one attack base so that'll push them to two or three attacks This well, this also buffs the horses It does. Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely true. Yes But it's really the lance that you're concerned about here because the lance is like all sun metal weapons So when we've got all the venari dawn riders the archers and the wardens I'll have sun metal weapons which say if the unmodified hit roll for an attack made with a sun metal lance is six That attack inflicts one more to wound on the target and the attack sequence ends do not make a wound or save roll So it replaces it And power of heish the spell that they can cast that all the other venari units can cast to their wizards Says power of heish is casting value of six if successfully cast until your next hero phase Your sun metal weapons trigger off on an unmodified five instead of six And any number of wizards can attempt to cast power of heish every round. So every unit can try to power of heish And and probably that would be one of their first things they would do if you think they're going to be in combat Yeah Cool cool beans Tom you're a big fan of the cap you want to defend the cap here you want to talk about why you think This is actually the best unit in here Yeah, like so the reason why I love this unit is because it actually does something that a lot of the Other units just don't in the book don't do right And it's that it moves it moves really well and Up like a block of 10 of these guys Is really going to get in and if they can get into the right target and with that mobility They will be able to uh, they're going to throw a lot of attacks like A lot of attacks. Yeah um And I so I think that at the end of the day um I think that that's it's a big win Uh, I I think that they they really bring something unique and I would be hard-pressed to not at least take one unit of these guys But that's me sure. I mean their mobility is really impressive right like they can they can maneuver where they want to be And yes, they only want to fight certain targets. Yep. And yes, there might be certain armies that Uh, that like just don't have that many of those targets, right like piggies sure iron jaws Uh ogres, right? Are you certainly like sons of betamat? You're not going to find anybody who fits that bill, right? Yeah But against a lot of armies. I think they're they're They're a pretty valuable piece Yeah, I would agree that Yeah, and and somebody asked how like um How the the conan thing on gourd rack would interact with this unit? I don't know Who knows I don't know is the answer Because I I would think it's pretty certain Like the steed master is a wizard while this unit has three or more models So it's an interesting thing like so the the unit champion like this is this is like I don't want to compare too much to like 40k But like it's gray nights brother heard of psychers the unit champion Doesn't like the unit doesn't gain a keyword right of wizard the unit the unit champion counts as a wizard Right and gains these benefits so long as this qualification is met for the purposes of targeting There was one model in this unit that has a wizard that is a wizard like for dark fire demon raft Like it is you're you're not getting the bonus of targeting like 20 wardens It is one high warden or the seed master Yeah, the problem is conan. Just like I said on the on the re-roll saves thing Yeah conan isn't attacking a wizard Right, it's attacking a unit that does not have the wizard keyword. So my my guess is it doesn't do anything special right? Yeah I don't think it matters. I my suspicion is gourd rack would make paste out of most unit of dawn writers These guys are not very defensive and yeah, so Yes, but like they again they are carriers of the Of the stones, right? They got magic rocks. Yes. And so they can go to three ups. They can um Uh, they can get ward saves just like everybody else. So I mean like they can pin Right Yes, although I would say that their natural role says they don't want to be within that bubble there quite often Okay, no, I don't I don't disagree with that. Yeah Yeah Yep, so if they get charged they are not doing damage No, I mean that's certainly true. Yeah. Yeah Uh, yeah, they're not but like that's not their role, right? This is uh, this is a this is a flanking unit and that's what it will do, right? It'll do what it says on the tent I agree. It's meant to be a fast flanking unit. Yep Okay, we should talk about the wardens and the sentinels next the wardens. I think are your your sort of straight baseline That like truly the straight baseline of them of the whole book. This is what everything's balanced around, right? And your wardens are 10 for 120 and get a max of 30 in a unit. There are no horde discounts in this in this army. So Cool beans and for every one of these guys you have you can treat a unit of sentinels or the dawn riders also as battle line Which means that ironically you're going to have if you're not in Uh, Eometrica, you're gonna have at least two units of warden still because Because it's one to one and the second you get the third warden you're done with battle line So like that's the end of that. So there you go. All it's actually doing is meaning that Only two out of your three battle line slots need to be taken up by wardens not all three right outside of Eometrica Okay, so warden is again their magic or said their wizards their dudes alive again. They have the uh The sun metal weapons When people charge them they get better right So like if the people they're attacking they have big pikes and if the people charge them They're better at fighting them because they get to add one to wound rolls uh For their pikes and they also improve their rend by one which is Pretty good puts them on threes threes neg one one like actually when set to receive a charge They actually turn into elite into an elite unit Yeah, right because they become two attacks three threes neg one one, which is the standard elite unit profile if they're not charged They're very much not elite because they're threes fours. No rend one damage Right one like it should be noted for the wardens like they are not Like the way that shining company is worded everybody's talking about being in shining company The way the shining company is worded if you are in shining company Uh, you will um If you are in shining company, uh You cannot charge period you can't charge out of shining company the way that that it's worded Right, you gotta you can move to break it that turn and then charge lead to that turn Sorry, i'm sorry. You guys got quite on me. What was that? Martin say your thing again Can you hello? Yeah, I can hear me. Yep. You're fine. Yeah, okay Anyway, as I was saying, it's like you can you can break shining company in that movement phase And then charge Yes You can't run in that turn Because you started that turn in shining company, right? But you can charge Right, there's probably going to be a late game thing where you you finally have to stop tanking and get on to a point And you can just buff that warden unit with a double move the five up board or whatever and just say I'm done doing the shield wall stuff I'm gonna break shining company And now i'm gonna charge Yep Yep, no, that's true. Yeah But it's uh, I think that people are going to be surprised by um Oh, oh, oh, yeah, like you do you do have to be careful with how you move your stuff And and if you end that movement phase in formation You're still in shining company. You can't charge Right, right Yep So Can I just add one thing where it's like I don't understand why certain rules are written Um, there's a handful of things especially in in in this maybe just the the books that I've I've played through over the years But they add this stuff where it's like, why is this here? There's a hand grenade the unit champion has once per game thing. Why yeah Because nobody's sitting around going stop that Okay, no, it's like the the vanguard paladors have it. Um uh, I The all of the I I think it's intentional like there's actual tech for all of the storm cast sacrosanct heroes to have Those hand grenade because they can actually do well much more damage on on bigger units But stuff like this it's like why is this here? Yeah, it just bugs me or it's like I especially since it's a once per game thing Yeah Anyway, I get it. Yeah So sentence. Yeah. Well, so the other thing I just want to say about wardens is um These guys actually can be I want to talk about their tankiness because you mentioned okay, okay So let's talk about the cogs thing here. Okay Yeah, if they can slow down time Like they're a wizard and if they can manipulate cogs that they if they can manipulate cogs And then get their re-roll saves, right? No, then you're talking about the unit being uh You know basically one to hit if shining company Yep, four plus re-rolling possibly three plus re-rolling right or four plus ethereal re-rolling. Yes correct Yep, and then oh and re-rolling ones of the battalion Sure, and even even without the and without cogs they could just be on the threes re-rolling ones, right? Sure Yeah, or four is ethereal re-rolling ones. Yes And then they can have a five up ward obviously from the from techless if he's around right because he can use his spell Or casting the spell of themselves. Yeah, because the um We get remember because they always have power of heich which is already useful spell Yes, and they get to pick a spell from the lore of heich if you're in xitrek You just get to pick another spell right and the more venari units you have in your army The more like you can add redundancy with taking the spell multiple times or just spreading it around with everybody, right? So I actually I rate wardens quite a lot, and I'll tell you why Because I think that They are slow, right? I mean, there's just a flat six inch movement. It's not super slow They're not like running around four inches or whatever But they're slow, but they're really effective and they don't care and I love two units of wardens running relatively close to each other especially in the battalion Uh as just sort of this mobile hit squad Right in shining company Because they're going to be able to get hit absorb Most attack most units attacks in the game with relatively few casualties And then actually strike back quite hard and if power of heich is on I mean quite hard Because each of these dudes has two attacks Yeah, right and They with because they've got a three inch reach Most of them are going to be fighting even in a unit of 30 Okay, yep So like let's say in a unit of 30 20 25 of them get a fight in most cases even retaining shining company because of their reach Right, so that's 60 to 75 attacks If power of heich is up That's 20 mortal wounds coming out of that unit Okay And then you have the rest of your your attacks all hitting on threes threes like the remaining The other remaining 33 that aren't mortal wounds the threes and fours, right? Are also Wounding on three and neg one rending so they're still converting decently. Yep, right? They're can it's converting over to about another 12 damage on top against a four up save ish Okay, a little little less than but somewhere in that range Uh That's pretty good. Yeah, it is Yeah So like I think these guys are actually The absolute standout to me of the book because oh and by the way because I have lightning reflexes I'll absorb that charge and then both my warden units are going to smack you Yeah I mean, it's really good. Like they are really good. They have a high high potential Uh, they're solid Yeah, they can be their their tankiness is not as Uh, attritiony as the the stone guard, right? Who can sit there and kind of do it for a long period of time But it doesn't really matter if they just murder you Because most units in the game can't turn around and on the kickback just absorb 20 mortal wounds without being significantly You know depleted by that. Yeah, and and the damage they're going to do can't really be debuffed unless you stop their spell But because like there's there's like the unmodified stuff you're just fishing for those numbers Right. I don't care if I'm minus you to hit. Yeah, absolutely Like the difference between hitting on fives and hitting on threes Actually, isn't that big to the damage output of this unit? right So like go ahead and net me. I don't care I'm going to kill 20 goblins when I swing back or something like that, right? Uh, probably more than that, but you get the idea Sentinels, sentinels, uh Are the guys with the big art with the big bows. They're your classic archers also wizards also have uh power of heish They have a 30 inch range with their bows if they want that puts them on fours and fours No rend one damage, but they can do it and who cares because again, you're fishing for mortals They don't need line of sight if they choose this lofted attack They can just shoot at whatever the heck they want. So you will not be hiding your characters Take that There is a spell that can make them re-roll all hits as was mentioned earlier, which means they can fish hard for mortals Um, so again, they don't care about your neg one to hit for targeting your character Right like right and that's what these are looking for. They're looking for fives and sixes Right. They're looking to crack power of heishoff Right and then just say I pick that five wound character click click boom. He's dead now Yeah, so it's interesting. So, um, I think we're we may we could run into a world where something very unique happens here Um, that we haven't like had I don't know that it's been answered in a thank you I'd have to go back and check but there's a real world where they may need sixes to hit But they may trigger mortals on fives Oh, like what happens when those two things right because like with the spell up it would say, um On an unmodified hit roll of an attack with a foreign attack roll made for an oral umbo with five or six That attack inflicts one mortal wound on the target and this attack sequence ends Like they could miss and still trigger a mortal potentially I believe they did answer that in f a q somewhere that you still have to actually hit if your number falls below that Because I think it got answered Yeah, I would have to see I don't know but it's really probably did just be updated and addressed again in the ghp3 I think yeah, I mean it needs or whatever number this is Yeah, five Yeah, five it is 16 17 18 19 20. There we go crazy, right? Yeah Yeah Uh, yeah, so these guys are little little assassins little crazy arrow assassins. They will Work, they will do some work They will shoot you dead They don't need line of sight so they can avoid all the those abilities that like normally let you ignore or like Like the um, they're gonna fire over palisades. They're gonna fire over your wall with The fire slayer wall. Yep. Yep all of those things. Yeah, so, um Yeah, it'll be really interesting to see where it ends I just um, I think this unit is a good example of the internal balance In that like I see people like I I heard one Lester It's like how many sentinels can I put in an army and it's like I think there are immediate diminishing returns In just spamming sentinels because of that dynamic of the wardens having Two attacks versus the sentinels one and you're always um for every unit of sentinels you you're you're you're losing one Because the office all of the officers in each of these units do not have The main uh, some metal weapon, right? So it's it's like and you're not and you don't have the bows. It's like it's technically it's not 10 shots It's nine shots and if you extrapolate that out to however many sentinels you would want to bring it. It is just um, excuse me the the like So say it's four units is like that's only 36 shots versus the 40 um, and I I I can't imagine building a list with more than 30 I I think these guys are are better as sniper rifles rather than like your your Volley the classic volley fire archers like in blood the rings or even old-school high house I tend to agree. I could see 40 in a list, but that's pushing it. Yeah, I mean No, I agree for this list, but I agree if that is pushing it. Yeah, these guys are made of paper I mean if they get touched they will evaporate They're a bunch of dumb dumps on a five up save like with one wound each they will just They will blow away if things get into them and yes, they could burn their quartz for for you know A plus one save, but that's not going to save them. It's not gonna be well Okay Cool. Let's talk about the allureth stuff. Uh, we talked about the stone mage a little earlier He's a five wound dude with a five up save. He's your he's the guy who will probably often be your general Uh, he's he's a little caster Okay Yep, he has a spell. He is a wizard. He will whap people often sometimes iniometrica with his little power stick Uh He also has a half move spell. He has to turn on his own fly ability. Yes. Yes, he does But you know, there you go. He's he's allureth Technically he can tectonic force people. So there you go. He's got that and he is Immune to rend egg one or rend egg two if he's iniometrica. So there you go But let's talk about the real action here. It's not the stone mage It's not it's not mr. Zen garden It's the stone garden to cow mountains. That's what we need to be on about Stone guard five four hundred points two wins four up save These are the dudes that can be immune to rend two in a unit Uh, they have their little picks or hammers, which are going to be on two attacks Three threes neg one one damage to your standard elite unit profile. We've got multi wound elves right And uh, yeah, you can pick to either have the diamond pick hammers Which can deal mortal wounds Or they can have the Stone mallet the stone mallet, which is yep, which is if you roll a six you add one to the damage inflicted an attack Beneath the attack is successful I am I would be picking the diamond pick every time Only because one it's always good to have another source of mortals and two Because then I don't have to actually go. Okay. I have five two damage hits and seven one damage hits And if you want to be grave guarded you want to do mortal wounds Yeah, like I just I hate any unit that adds to damage out of six because then I have to split up my save Like then I make my enemies split up their saves and wait how how many hold on how many did I have where you had two damage? What was it? Okay, I got it. I can just yep. Cool. Slow the game down more. Got it. No, thank you It's also better to have diamond pick hammers if you're going Yometrica and you have mostly stone guard because then you'll be without those venari some metal weapons So it's like then you're starting at zero and trying to add back in those mortal wound weapons. Yep Yep Uh So yeah, I mean, I like these guys. They're tough. They can be very grindy and they can hit pretty pretty hard Yeah, yep Pretty good. I think they're they're again I feel all of the units in here are well balanced actually like Yeah, I think all four of the main units. I look at them and go. Yes, those have value those have a role I can see using those Uh, and none of them really jumps out to me over the others besides besides the the battle line unit Which I go. Yeah, I punt that in every army that I I think but yep That's probably not that weird. I suppose that your main core unit is actually appealing It's actually a nice change of pace Uh, yeah, all right. So two big mountain boys Then the mountain boys better start learn to fly or start flapping their arms real hard. All right, so walking these end gardens Yes, so the spear to the mountain is the non-named one 12 wounds three up save six inch move he has allureth so he can do tectonic force and he reduces rend and all that kind of stuff If he's near a stone mage He always treats his damage on the on his damage table as being at zero wounds, which is cool Uh, which means he does five damage with his big world hammer This guy is a big hammer. This is how monsters should be dealing damage by the buy We finally figured this part out Uh, because he makes for a base. He makes four attacks threes twos neg two rend five damage now. That's a profile I can get behind Uh, you know, this is the kind of thing that big monsters should be doing. Yeah Uh, yeah, because I mean that's actually scary, right? He has a cool ability called ponderous advice that I'm not sure what actually it actually has much value But it's still neat Because not actually a lot of command abilities in this army. It's actually very dock in that way It it lets you do more re-roll once to head right. Yes, exactly At the end of your hero phase, you can pick one friendly lumeneth realm lords elf hero within three inches of this model If that lumeneth realm lords elf hero is within three inches of this model at the start of your next hero phase like so The whole turn the whole time Then that lumeneth realm lords elf hero can use a command ability in that turn without spending any command points Yep, kind of a neat ability, but yes, I agree. It's just going to be more re-roll ones to hit in certain phases Uh He can do a little shock wave Uh, that basically can give people neg one to hit Which is pretty cool Because obviously what's nice about that is if he's near I actually like this dude hanging out with venari You know wardens in a shining company And doing his stompy stomp because then those wardens are neg two to be hit Yep, when they're in shining company and whole lordy lordy. Oh, yes Now they're getting real defensive And if you're cooking with geminates Sure. Sure. Why not why not slap on the whole neg three the whole neg three thing Uh, then the wardens are going to stick around forever. Yes. I mean it just that or ever ever Uh, so that's cool. And this guy has a command ability. I don't know. Yeah, he's not I just don't understand Yeah, I guess we just decided that core rule doesn't matter So no no no, that's not a thing like What as it's written what this means is that like this command ability can be used if you have a hero on the battlefield at all Like because that's the way that it's worded in the in the In the core a command ability to be used if there's a hero on the battlefield. Yes uh well So this is meant if you have both this and avalanor you're you're making stone guard Plus two attacks. Oh, no, you can't because you can't stack it. No, you can't stack them Yeah, this is this is called faith of the mountains and it can give plus one attack. Yeah, right So you can just spread out that right that plus one to hit. Yeah, yeah Yeah, I just I I this raises a lot of questions. What this makes me to me Is that like changes were made last minute that weren't like fully integrated into the rest of the The book sure that's what this says to me He's a weird thing that the non-hero has maybe the most useful command ability We've never had a We've never had a non-hero Um have a I don't want to say this. We've never had a non-hero Have a demand. Yeah Yeah, right But um avalanors is just better Sure, but I mean he's the named character, right? So he actually is a hero So yes, the other version of this guy is obviously avalanor, which is the named cow king mountain zen garden And uh, so that's avalanor stone heart king same thing six inch move, but he's got 14 runes three up save His hammers are different. He has more attacks six attacks He's three up three up only neg one rend, but he does still do uh five damage So, you know still hits a neg one rend kind of a big deal It is a big shift, but you know, he does have two more attacks at the same time But he's one worse to wound he still puts out damage Like anytime you get damage five Yeah, and they both add plus one to their attacks if this is not a turn of charge Yeah Yep, yep So like and he he has a better one. He does mortal wounds in addition Yes, he has a better version of the command ability where he can pick d three Allerith elf units Holy within 24 inches as opposed to the other guy Like the base version just picks one within 18 So not only is he does he pick potentially more units in d three over one But he also But he also bubbles out farther and and I honestly don't think he's a misprint. I think he's just not a hero and He just Has this command ability and he can only use it if there's another hero around But yeah, it's like a phoenix. It's like they they they needed a generic monster That's also with has good synergies for units. I think is what it's supposed to be Yeah, I don't know. I just I wish that he had Like if he was a hero, he could actually carry an item, you know, like one of those melee items Yeah, yeah, but then this but then this model would be leading an army And I don't see no issues with that whatsoever. Yeah, like okay. It's leading an army Rather than the random wizard in the backfield. Sure I I think that's exactly the intention. They didn't want this model leading an army They wanted the wizards to be the gen like to be the generals I would love I would love love love a like behind-the-scenes story of the making of this book and to know if that guy was ever a hero Right, we'd have to go to an open day for that. I think sure. Yeah. Just say next next time we have an open day I know what question i'm asking I'm asking the designers you're getting a line. All right Tell me what happened. Well, martin, maybe you and I will be over in the uk at the same time next year Once all this is over. Yes But uh, but you know tell me what happened With those with the cow mountains Was the generic whenever a hero walk me through the development process. I want to know what happened with this guy I need like a dvd commentary Yeah Yeah Uh, yeah, so cool Uh, and that's pretty much the army I mean they have some endless spells to the twin stones the one you're gonna see the most often because it's always It more or less can just always sit around and add plus one to cast with potential It would be interesting if they changed that because like the way the battery like the way it works right now is that it's a battery Yes, and that you can all you without changing the dice Like the the little dice token. Can I can I just keep manipulating the twin stones to get plus one? Would be interesting if they said no the minimum you can get is plus two with a ceiling of six Sure, sure. Yeah. Yeah, because as it stands right now, it doesn't really matter if it actually does its thing You're literally just jumping it out there to get a perma plus one. Yes, and I mean, it's not that expensive We're talking about 30 points for that endless spell Yeah, so I would say that's the only thing in this book. I think which is undercosted Yeah, which is hard to say with the army that's already like expensive and like really struggling to fit as much bodies as it is But I think you should be paying more than 30 points for this Yeah, I mean I regularly had 70 points to put a friendless spells in my bill Like and so the question is is all was always what and this is always a top contender when you have an army of wizards Yeah So soar and ask can the unit champion of the wardens and sandals cast the sands at sanctum of Am I mean in the talk and the smell and be in shining company? um Like technically, yes, they can cast the on the spell I mean they are wizards and can cast it the issue is going to be all the tips have to touch On the sanctum and how large of a unit can you actually get in there? Yeah, not not very because it's not it's not actually a huge amount of space. It's literally like that And you know, you're not really going to get a unit in there. I don't even think you could get a unit of 10 Forward. Oh, I think I think you can probably get a 10 tenor. I don't think you're I don't think you will get more than 10 Not having it in front of me right now It'd be hard to tell but you can like the base of twin stones. We saw it next to models It's not very big. It's it's on the page the I believe the base size of the twin stone is 50 mil And like the sanctum is right next to it. I think you can maybe get like Maybe the five dawn writers can fit all their bases in there Maybe So that's not like I don't think that's a unit of 10 experiment can fit in that Well, then then like I don't know who who can cast it then right Ethel are stone mage. Yeah Yeah, I don't know Because they're the they're gonna set up and be in their sanctum. I mean clearly teclis can't because he can't fit in Right. The tips ain't touching around teclis Right. He clearly can't there's no question about that. No teclis doesn't touch tips. There's just no way So, uh, he's too big Uh Yeah, I mean I There you go. Anything else we want to say about this force. I mean overall, I think it's cool Like I said, I actually think that it's a well designed book. There is some areas of npe. There is some FAQs We need I repeat the same thing I've repeated and every time I've talked about design for for ever and ever and ever Which is just please institute a formal development team that'll catch this kind of stuff So we don't have these questions and these these issues come up. It's really easy There's a process Follow it hire a person you're doing very well as a company Hire tom or down find somebody who's like tom. Yeah find somebody who's like you guys don't you don't want me Also the the principle of them hiring tom would be the funniest thing in the universe to me, but anyways Uh, but that being said, I think this is absolutely a successful book. It's versatile. The units seem competitive with each other It's weird Like the heroes are weird and I agree with you tom that it does feel like there's holes Right like in the nature of the leadership in the nature of kind of the the overall army, but but I I wonder if I wonder if it was Like it was designed as a hole and then split I do not believe so I don't know if it worked that way. I know they don't I know they don't um, but it just it makes me wonder Let's that's what I'm gonna say. I I would call that future proofing Because that's what we want, right? I think they just had a conception Yeah, like there's there's clearly thematic like threads that they intend to pull on like For future releases 2023 2024 Whatever, you know, we'll see we'll see the lumeneth part two Um, I do have one question for you vince and I apologize if it if it requires more unpacking than we have it for the conclusion But um, when you were going over, um Some stuff with rob in the a in his a OSHA the first one When you just talked about lumeneth and passing it's like so What what design elements would you point to just like in summary that um For lumeneth artificially or unnecessarily raise the skill requirement to pilot The use of the aethercourt's more of these these these resources that you've got that you've got to burn and track Right. Um, because that stuff people will forget or use incorrectly like it does raise the skill floor period Um, and I'm not sure we need these I know people I know I know some people have been like Man, I love these extra resources and I'm like, I really don't we've got plenty of crap. I I I I think it's it's Especially since uh more factions getting their own. Well, and here's what I'm saying watching tom with aethergold tom is a great player and has a very sharp memory And multiple times over the weekend when tom and I played a bunch of games He was like did I spend my aethergold on this unit? So like number one get yourself game aids get yourself some tokens and put them next to the unit Right because you will forget You'll use that you'll use your quartz in round one and round three will come around and you've made Hundreds of decisions since then and you will literally just forget so have a little token Put it next to the unit. Okay number one that kind of stuff. I think raises it Uh, uh makes it more complex. Okay the nature that the of uh Of the way the army interacts it can fall apart like a house of cards if you don't use your stuff correctly Right like a lot of stuff in this army is actually quite squishy And if like we've talked about how tough it can be that's in the hands of sort of a pilot That's going to understand exactly how to mobilize and use these pieces correctly Right. Yep. You get your dawnriders caught flatfooted You expose your sentinels and they just get charged. You don't protect techless properly, right? Whatever You know what I'm saying like you could pick a hundred scenarios that somebody who doesn't pilot this at sort of the again I'm not saying it's an impossible army to play. You asked what raises the skill floor that kind of thing raises the skill floor Right when it rides on sort of a knife edge of like you make a wrong move. You'll lose a unit for nothing Yep, that's a higher skill floor Yeah Not a bad thing just a thing. There's no way I would say I would recommend somebody just starting out in aos to use this army Tectonic force madness shining company madness Okay, yeah movement trays are back for this army only Sure. Well only some movement trays like element games specific. Yeah, it has to be done Sure, I I'm just saying like in general like the idea of of this army of all armies Having some extra real old school Like I don't want to I don't want to just use a blanket term like nostalgia mechanics But it's like it there are there are clear intentions At the the the the top end of this book like the allegiance abilities to make it feel like Old school war hammer. Sure. Yeah. Oh also another thing by the way, martin The fact that you might have like 11 or 12 casts in a turn I mean if you might have like 16 or 20 I have I have access to 17 spells in my current zytrec list including endless spells Yeah, that's a high skill floor right there instantly because you've got to navigate like a whole lot of garbage It'd be like wait, which which went out of this like it's like you're literally a wizard flipping through a spell book trying to figure out Which spelled a rip off. Yes, right And I only get and you only get uh six casts. So it's like you have to choose wisely. Right, right, right Yeah, so yes, I think that kind of stuff absolutely raises the skill floor 100 Right Yeah, I would not recommend this to a new player No way know how this is not you're a good first army is a bad first army very bad Okay, don't start here unless you look at this and you've fallen in love with it Like the as always aesthetic wins over everything, right? So if somebody just like asked me in the raw and said, I don't really I'm not attracted to anything All else being equal. This is a bad starter army uh You know if but if they if they came to me and was like, I love this army I love its aesthetic. It's exactly what I want. I'm deeply in love with old high elves I'd be like, okay, go ahead just understand you're gonna have to like You know learn Like really you have to put some time into this one. It's not a low bar Right, otherwise, you're gonna have some bad time. This army is the army of piecing when you should have french fried So I mean just know that Yeah, that does not make it a bad army Just let's let's just Really really hammer that home. Yeah, it does not at all Okay, cool. All right, John. So all in all I say positive, right great stuff. Good. Absolutely Yeah, and and we can't wait to see LRL to Tyrion boogaloo the yeah the Sunflowers Yep, Tyrion first blood part two. He's back and this time he's got an even bigger sort of gain or something Yes, and blind. Sure, uh, man, I hope when they make his model. He's like actually Big like like these the size of like tech listen all the gods are all the elvish gods are larger. Yeah, they're 54 mil Yeah, I want him to be the same size and like just a blind dude and kind of the Just like some robes. It looks so sweet the giant sword. Amazing Yeah, but he'll probably have a big companion too with like a porcelain mask that is like Um, this is our nameless students thanks creature. They cannot both have weird friends No, like he you seems to have a horse Sure, I'll take I'll take a horse, but it has to be a six legged Don't die. I think I'm gonna say I like a six or eight legged horse No, six legged horses are classic mythology a horse. How about just a horse? It'll be a six legged horse. It'll be a horse in a 160 millimeter base. There you go Okay, I'm okay with that. No, it'll be it'll be big enough to comfortably fit on a 160 millimeter base No, I just put him on like a 120 like a chariot base him on a giant horse or 105. I'd take it. All right. Anyway At any rate gentlemen, let's shut this down for all of you out there. Thank you very much for watching Hope you enjoyed the review and the discussion As always though one of the but if you did enjoy it, hey, you know what just move that move that mouse over Just that much just go here to here Click give it a like it's just that easy clicking like it's so simple and so fun You'll be happy you did and it really helps other people find the show find the and and find the channel and things like that And I very much appreciate that Martin, thank you very much brother. Great to have you on. Thank you very much Absolute pleasure. Well, of course have martin back and it will be sometime before teclis comes out. Don't worry But beyond that all of you out there. Thank you so much for watching next week is going to be the ghb So come back for that. We've got a mega show planned for the ghb. It's going to be a good time But as always, I thank you very much for watching this time and we'll see you next wednesday My mouse broke No, no, it's fine. It's working. Ah, bye