 And there we go. Hello everybody! If it's Wednesday, it's Warhammer and that must mean it's time for another episode of Warhammer Weekly. Joining us, as always, is my co-host Tom. He is my sub-faction, certainly. There's a lot of hidden tacks with Tom. I'm Vince's best sub-faction. Yeah, yeah, indeed. You're like the artifact that I have to take to get into another wise good ability. That's what you are, Tom. But also joining us, coming back to the show, it's Chuck, Strength Hammer. What's up, buddy? How you doing? Hey, how's everyone doing tonight? I hope everyone is doing well. You're looking well. Your room is looking fantastic. All set up behind you with all of your various dock art. The picture over here. Maybe the one over here. Sorry. Low-hanging fruit. Indeed. What do you have to live with? Do you see? People said there's an echo. Is there still an echo? I don't think so. I don't hear anything. I don't see anything. It shouldn't be coming through on mine. Okay. I don't think there's an echo. But that's fine. I'll watch. Also joining us for the first time, it's Matt. What's up, Matt? How you doing? Good. How you guys doing? Well, great, man. It's good to have you on the show. Matt is Chuck's partner in crime, co-judge of the NOVA AOS tournament. He takes good care of us and all sorts of things. Matt, it's great to have you on the show, buddy. You and I have known each other for several years now. But yeah, it's great to finally have you here. Oh, it's great to finally be here. Matt takes good care of us and keeps Chuck sane during the NOVA Open AOS tournament, which is at a very important role, I would add. Okay, good. Everybody's saying no echo. So that's good. And Matt is also part of our secret NOVA crew, our secret NOVA dinner crew. There's an elite club that the three of us are part of. Tom is not in it, but that's fine. I haven't been to NOVA. It doesn't mean you're invited. Yeah, we would just leave and not tell you to be like, where'd everybody go? That would be the first time. So tonight we're going to be discussing subfactions and what the best subfactions are in AOS. What makes a good subfaction? Why do some armies have them and some armies not? What's the deal? But of course first, the news. Tommy, what do we got? A rumor engine. It's a tyrannid. Hey, hey, don't be so negative. I'm not. It's a tyrannid. It could be a vampire scorpion. It's a tyrannid. It could be a vampire scorpion. I like where your head's at. But it's a tyrannid. A tyrannid, yeah. It is like an exact duplicate of the lichter tail. Oh, I guess there is the chit in there, yeah. Yeah, fine. Yeah, and the lichter is like a really old terrible sculpt that has needed a re-sculpt for years and years and years. And we've seen other buggy things that clearly look like a tyrannid, so it's a tyrannid. Sorry. Sometimes they're not for us, guys. There's more than one game there. They all should be for us. I don't believe it. I thought 40K was just like animations and cartoons now. It is, yes. It's all just, yeah. Exactly. Just animations, yeah. That's right. That's exactly right. Okay, Tom, what else we got? Bellacor. Oh, now we're talking about it. Boom, there's the big boy himself. Big, bad Bellacor. Yeah, so I'm going to shut up for a minute. Matt, you're the newest guest, so you have rights here. What's your opinion on Bellacor? What do you think of this guy? I was completely shocked at how much bigger they decided to make him. Thankfully shocked. I think it's perfect. I think they hit the nail on the head. I love the ability to switch between AOS and 40K seamlessly. I think it's going to be a perfect addition. I hope that it is signs of maybe an updated Demon Prince as well. I mean, I said this last week and I'll say it again. If it's not, okay, if there's no, I don't think there's an alternate building here for regular Demon Prince. I just don't. But if it's not, you're looking at every Demon Prince. They're all just going to be this, right? As I said, it's going to be 50% this 40% creature caster models and 10% random other kitmasters and things. That will be what every table looks like. As I also said, I anticipated they would upscale it. Just a tad. Yeah, he's like, he's bloodthirstercised. Right, which is what I said. Go back and watch the video. I called it bloodthirstercise. Yep. Yeah, I love him. He's good. Love him. Yep. Chuck, your take? I feel bad that Scar brand is so tiny now. But Bellacor is absolutely amazing. GW just keeps making better and better models. They're the best model company. They keep proving it with things like this that come out that, you know, I have a slave's darkness army. I didn't really want to do Archeon, but oh, I'm buying Bellacor. Sure. He'll chew corn right in. I've chosen my side and it's his side on this little Civil War they're doing, which I actually kind of like that whole, like, you know, like there's a dead chaos warrior to speak, not another stormcast, you know. Can we just for a moment talk about the fact, like, here's the narrative that seems to be evolving. This is going to be a slight tangent, but it's really relevant to what you said. Here's the narrative that seems to be evolving. Order undergoing an active Civil War, right? Marathi rebelling with the IDK and clearly, you know, taking over a city. There's a clear like distinction here, right? Where there's there's an order Civil War one. Okay. Chaos. They're clearly setting up a Civil War there between Bellacor and Archeon. Right. Okay. So death, they're setting up all of these vampires and all these new things to probably want to be out from under the thumb of Nagash in some way, right? Probably with the results of Broken Realms Techless where, you know, there's there's reason for them to be out maybe at each other's throats. The only faction that the current narrative seems to be completely unifying, right? It says like it's all one big happy family. They're all together. They're not fighting is destruction. It's long time. They're the ones who've got it together as they're marching straight for Excelsis. Yeah, a family that was together. Indeed. Like Gordrack keeps it. He keeps his game tight. He keeps his hands strong, right? Absolutely. Everybody else is ready to fight amongst themselves, but the destruction faction is like, nah, we got this very ordered march to the sea. Like, let's go. They're still going to fight amongst themselves, but for the betterment of their order and organization. Right. They're just meeting out the week. It's not, I want this land. I want this city. It's like, no, I just want to fight and then we're better. Yeah. So, yeah. I just, I realized that was, that sort of occurred to me earlier today. And I was like, that's really hilarious that the only faction that seems to have it together and isn't at each other's throats is destruction. Anyways, back to Bellicor. Yeah. I mean, he's good. This paint job is, I mean, like, it's a technically very skilled paint job. It's just compositionally like the most boring option they could have picked. I don't have the 40 K image here, but the 40 K image is so much better where they painted his chest. It's like, you know, he's a good model. It's just, this paint job is devoid of interest. It's, there's like two things on this guy that isn't gray. Right. You shut your mouth. I like gray Bellicor just because, you know, this is how mine's painted because this is how he's painted. Yeah. I fell asleep looking at him. I don't give a crap if that's the official paint job. Boring. Boring. Like, and again, that's not a judgment on the painters. I understand that's probably the way that they've drawn him to look. You can do that in art because in art, he can be this gray monolithic shadow being because behind him there can be bright colors and other things going on in the scene and stuff like that. There are things that work in art that don't work on models because the model is just a model. It doesn't have a background and other figures in the scene and magical effects exploding and moonlight and every other nonsense thing you can put into 2D art. Right. So like, no, he's, we got, we got to pop this up. I'm going to be, I'm going to be buying this guy and we're going to be popping him up. No. I mean, what, what they, right? Is that what you're talking about? Just, just popping all over the place. Yeah. Certainly he's going to be taller. Yeah. You bet. That's going to be way up. Like we're bringing him way taller. That's number one. So, I mean, what I'll say is this, what he's missing is he's missing. Like, if you put a green flat, like mine is my green, my pop color is like a neon green. You could do anything. But like where the smoky mist meets the blade. Right. Yeah. If that went from like white touching the blade through green. To black on the tendrils at the top. So it's like super brilliant right along the blade. If the, if the chaos symbol in his chest was similarly glowing, maybe his eyes and a couple other spots on the base, I think it would look completely different. I think if the armor had color to it, that wasn't just more gray. Right. If the, and yes, if you actually did, like his face, I think it would look completely different. If the armor was more gray. Right. And if the, and yes, if you actually did, like his face, the general rule of this is absolutely some people are saying pink and teal. That's, you got the right answer now. I mean, that's all, that is always your answer by the way. Much like early nineties Pepsi commercially, you got the right one baby. So the, but like one of the general simple rules of miniature painting is the face should be the area that draws the most attention. You can barely pick his face out of the model like at this, at this scale. The only thing that draws attention is the sword and the little bit of blue wispy stuff because it's the only even like close to saturated color on here. So anyways, again, I'm not judging the painters. The Evie metal team as usual did a fantastic job on this. It is technically painted extremely well. They translated the art, which works in 2d, but doesn't work in a 3d model. That's all I'm saying. And like the, by the way, the 40k when still feels mostly gray, right? It's not like they went nuts and made him pink and teal like I'm talking about. You know what I'm saying? It's just like he has this bright chest and then a face that's more dark and as like it stands out. Yeah. So any who, I'm excited to paint him. I'm excited to get him. Yeah. When, when Ken has have. I don't know. We'll probably know 12 more releases with the way that now we know broken realms three, but we don't know the release date of broken realms two. It's like, okay. Yeah. Yeah. They need to reveal broken realms three before that comes out. So you got a while. We'll get, we'll get on to like next. I'll reveal broken realms five. We'll just skip four entirely. One, two, three, five. That's what all what chaos. Yeah. Exactly. Who knows? It's all chaos. Hey, side note, by the by, I like revealing broken realms three as quick as they did. Thank you. But like, and I know release dates are hard right now. I know that. I really know that because as we'll talk about in hobby time, I know how hard getting stuff is, right? But the reality is, man, can we just get, we're almost, we're so close. You've almost got a roadmap. Like we're almost there. Just put the next six months up and be like, here it is. You've done it already for underworlds. You've told us the next two books in this series. Like guys, you're so close. Just take the last step and put it up there and be like, this is the order of releases. When exactly they'll happen. That's sort of TBD, but this is the general order for the next six months. How amazing would that be? It'd be completely amazing because AOS three would be on that list. And then we'd all like, just, we could stop being like, no, they would list it and then just put question mark at the end and leave it because they're not going to tell you when AOS three drops this summer. It comes out this summer. I don't, I don't know that, but you know, I do know it comes out this summer. Like, I don't know it for a fact, but I know it to be true. You, you're starting to sound like me. Let me just say that. I was the one beating that drum. And I still believe it's true, obviously, but yeah, yeah. So, yeah, like, oh, and then obviously this is the book. Can we talk about the fact that we have like a new model that's been developed for a splat book, like a narrative book, a new model? Yeah, sure. I mean, this is what we expected. Like that's that that is the psychic awakening model. That's what we talked about. So, yeah, right. Like the new heroes, by the way, I would just like to draw everybody's attention to this cover image of Bellacor. Hey guys, let's look over here. Notice this Bellacor. Look at the cover image of Bellacor. See how he's like purple and there's like blue lights and magenta hues in his horns and his wings are clearly red by the by. Okay. Yeah. When they're backlit, they're red. They're not backlit in the model. Oh, okay. Yeah, sure. But see how the cover artist used color to like, you know, make it compositionally interesting. I'm just saying, these are just things I'm pointing out. Take whatever you want from that. I mean, or just more contrast. Like if the if the wing membranes would have went to white on the edges or like white in the, you know, like, instead of just gray, all of it being gray and black. Sure. No, I agree. I agree. And so an IT said people aren't likely to yell at GW if the underworlds roadmap has changed, which it did. Like it did change since they first tried it out. You know, 40k on the other hand. Sure. I mean, they were, they're pretty, they've been more open about 40k than they have about AOS, by the way. But my answer is, okay. Like, Someone's always going to get mad. Exactly. Like somebody's always going to get mad. Don't listen to the three idiots yelling on the internet. Listen to the 99% of your audience. You just made very happy. Right. So there you go. Anyway, yeah, bellicor broken realms, bellicor. I'm excited about it. He's clearly going to get some new rules. So we're going to play a game right now. Everybody ready? Okay. Game time. What time is it? It's game time. Okay. Here's the game. We're going to play. Everybody is going to guess how many points new bellicor is going to be. All right. We're going to go around the chat and we're going to guess how many points because bellicor is going to be newer, bigger, better, awesome. Like he won't have his current scroll. He'll be way bigger, way more awesome because they sized him up. That's how things work in AOS. The bigger they get, the better they get. Right. So Matt, starting with you. Standard price is right. Rules apply. How many points is bellicor? 380 on the button. 380 on the button. Yes. For reference, he's currently 240. Okay. So Tom. 420. 420, a popular choice. Okay. Chuck, do you have a guess? I'm going to abstain because I know. Okay. I'm not allowed to talk. That's fair. I did not contemplate that as a reality, but that is a fair answer, Chuck. I apologize. It's all good. Yeah. That's very funny. Fair. I am going to say 500. I'm going hard 500. Okay. Big. He's going to be unalliable and a big boy. He's going to be in the Gordrack. I'm almost a God, but I'm not quite a God. You know, that kind of level. Okay. That's my particular feeling. So anyways, all right, cool. I did spring that on you. So sorry, Chuck. Anyways. No problem. It was fun. Uh, I think that, uh, like, I just feel like he's going to be that kind of a place in the world, but yeah, I'm excited for broke realms, bellicor. I'm very excited to see the narrative of what happens between he and Archeon. I think that's what we're all like really these books, the thing that's killed me the most about techless being so long to come out is like, I want to know what happens next, man. I've never been more excited for the AOS narrative. And we're stuck here like in this holding pattern after this amazing broken realms, Marathi, just waiting on the next evolution of the story. Actually, there's a little, little bit, um, kind of caught me off guard. I was reading the daughter's cane book when it finally came in not long ago. They actually already resolved her taking anvil guard in the daughter's a cane book in like a short little vignette. Yeah, that happened. That happened. I was gone for that. I was like, what's going to happen? I'm like, okay, we're done. Next. Yeah. I'm not upset. I'm just like, okay. Yeah. They just literally like, we're going to try to take it back. And then, nah, like it's just no call it off. She is her favorite. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so, you know, I mean, look, you got to know when to hold them, know when to fold them. So there you go. Um, I mean, the end of this road is certainly like a lot of different civil wars and reasons why everybody can be fighting all the time. Alliance is breaking out, ruining. It's just, you know, it's going to be Game of Thrones, right? That's what we're going to get into. And that's, and it's why destruction can actually make the progress that they're making, right? Like whatever ground that they gain, they can do that because everybody's in fighting. Right. Yeah. Like there's no unified front anywhere. Yep. Yep. Exactly. Hey, it's a great day to be an orc. Right. So there you go. Uh, okay. What other new stuff did we have? Well, tiles for Cursed City. Yeah, we saw the tiles. I thought they looked cool. Yeah. Great. Yeah. Box win. I'll play it. When Ken has box. I'll play game on the styles. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Like they're pretty good art. Okay. And then finally list bot, list compare. Oh yeah, man. List bot. So JP, uh, who, you know, had made a list bot a while back and has now made a new list bot app where you can post in your list from directly from war scroll builder and it reads your list and then gives you grade scores for like offense and defense and casting and shooting and mobility and so on, then gives your list and overall scoring and letter grade, uh, talks about how it's compares to other lists, similar lists. And then, and then like, if you scroll it, actually you'll find lots of interesting information. It'll find sort of percentage matches of lists and unit comparisons of what's in sort of other tournament lists and stuff. It's really, really smart stuff. I want to have JP on at some point in time to, uh, to talk about like his work in, in with AI and, and that kind of thing. And, and list bot. Uh, and it's very fun. I posted my slanish list that I like in there and it was a C plus. It's, I know I put, I put in my list from a weekend event and it's like, ah, here's an A plus, like pushing S. I'm like, oh neat. I put in a crate and it's like a minus. I'm like, okay. Like, it's very hard to build a bad doc list on like list bot has gotten to doc. It's got your number. It's like, all right, we're good. List bot's like, no, no, no. Uh, yeah, I mean, it's a cool tool. Like obviously list bot only knows certain things. Like the AI doesn't really understand rules at a deep level. It's not using like NLP to read the rules and stuff at that level or to understand the interactions. Um, but it's using like, it's, it's using its understanding based on the performance of past lists and things like that. From what I understand, JP, if you watch this and I got anything wrong, please do just come on the show and correct me. I want to talk about AI with you for two hours and we'll bore everybody in the world, including Tom, but I am really fascinated because this is basically the kind of stuff I do in my daily job, like for a professional career. So I'm very interested in these applications and I had a big conversation over WhatsApp with JP about like how list bot could evolve and he had some good ideas and I was talking about the kinds of things I'd like to see. Anyways, it's cool. Check your list out. It's fun. Check it out on the description so you can play with it. Yeah. Um, it should be taken as a directional indicator only because it will miss tricks. Right. Like it won't understand if your list relies on complex interactions. Like combos it won't get. Yeah. Like certain combos are like the power of slanesh to exploit a six inch pylon. It really doesn't know, like it doesn't know how that powerful that might be. It only knows if lots of people in the past exploited six inch pylons and won tournaments with lists doing that, then it will know that that's a good trick. You understand what I'm saying? Yep. And when I put my slanesh list and it was really fun to watch it be like, here are the past tournament lists that did really well with slanesh because it'll show like here are similar past tournament lists. And as I scrolled through, it was all like 2019, 2019, 2019, and I'm like, oh yeah. I remember those days, the days when we were when we were broken. Yes. So there you go. Yeah. Khalil says it under, he said on Twitter it understands stat lines and tax, but not special abilities. Yeah. Exactly. Like it understands that a special ability is present. Like it knows there's some rules there. It just doesn't know how to rate the value of them effectively. And I love, I love tools like that because it's a tool that's going to give you some information that you can also say, eh, but I'm going to ignore it. Sure. Like it's valuable, but it's, it's like baseball, like humans will make an error. So it's not going to ever take an effect for that really. But that's what makes our game fun also looking at this type of data. Yeah. It's a neat tool that you should take if what it is, something that's directionally interesting, right? And gives you lots of, the cool parts about its feedback isn't actually like the letter grade and that kind of stuff. It's, you say you can see like other units you might want to put in your list that like lists that look like yours often have or choices lists like yours often make or other tournament lists that have done well that might look slightly different than yours but are close, right? That's actually really potent, powerful information that JP's providing there. That's the kind of stuff you should look at, right? Because that's where you can actually like, especially if you're, if you're not sure or you're new with an army or whatever, where you can, you know, you can gain a lot of info. So yeah, check it out. It's in the description. Have fun. Just paste it in from scroll builder and have a good time. I appreciate that. I think Gary P. made or maybe it was Darren. I remember who did it. One of the two of them made a list that actually scored, I think a two. By the way, that's, so to put this into reference, my Slenesh list that was a C plus had an 821 rating. I don't know what Chuck's had, but it was much higher, I'm sure. So they got a two. Like 821. Two. Two. Two. And it was, it was like a, it was like a Slenesh list using all beasts of chaos, mostly Saigors, and then regular goers. Oh, that's good. It was incredible. Wow. It was just like, you at least thought it was just like not, not a dog. What are you even doing? No, no, no. There's nothing here, man. You need to stop. But yeah, it was great. Anyways, poor Gore and Saigor as we discussed last week, they need some help. All right. Any other new stuff we've got this week, Tom? Nope. That's it. Okay. All right. Cool. So. Let me bring this back up. All right. So then marking our time as we turn to some pick of the week. Absolutely. Matt, what would you like to share to everybody? I definitely got to share a friend of the show. AOS coach. Yes. Just put out a video about iron jaws. It is great because I was just, I was just talking to Chuck the other day. I'm like, I'm looking at the book, but I can't figure out how the book works. Like I see that you, you know, every time like someone puts it, like a tier list together, such as yourself, he's looked at kindly. And I'm like, I don't get it. Every time I build a list, I'm sitting there and like, okay, now I have 1890. What do I do with that? Sure. Yeah. It was very helpful. Nice. Awesome. Yeah, that's good. Chuck, what about yourself? I want to point everybody to a Twitter. Dan C. The Tyromancer on Twitter. He just did a wonderful thing. He was doing a custom avatar of Cain for himself. And he decided to just reach out to me and say, Hey, let me make you one. And he took my Tarrathian called Rune, put that on the chest instead of the normal daughter's Cain Rune and even went spliced in a 3d sculpt of Taylor Swift's face. Or it's, it's had printed it for free, sent it to me. And I was just like, let me at least pay for the shipping. But he does great stuff. It was really kind of like, humbling to get something so cool like that. I can't wait to paint it up. So yeah, go check out Dan, the Tyromancer on Twitter. Yeah, definitely jaw dropping. Very nice. I will, I will get the Twitter account and from you, Chuck. And I will post it up in the description. Tom, what about yourself? What do you want to share with everybody this week? Nothing. Okay. That's all right. For sure we have three other people. You, Tom is consumed to no content. Nothing. He sat in a small dark room. I'm, I'm helping out. I'm helping streamline the show. I appreciate it. Thank you. Yes. You sound like me with my, what I, what I've decided to say now when I get my locus off in slanesh, I'm going to roll three plus to save you time in combat. Successful. Your game is now faster. You're welcome. It's amazing how fast you can make the game when you stop all the enemy from piling in at all. It really gets rid of the worst part of the game. Okay. So my pick of the week, I've got to direct everybody to the one and only trapped under plastic. So this is the podcast of John and Scots or Ninjon and Minniac, but or turped under pristic, but trapped under plastic, their newest episode, which was has the most insane thumbnail in the history of the world. And I, which I love very much is a recount of Vinci con, which happened here two weekends ago or begin a week and a half ago, whatever myself and Scott and John and Sam all hanging out. Obviously when we did the reaction show and all of that, they're recounting their tails with it. And it's it, I'll tell you, it was great to just relive it through them was honestly very fun. So if you, you know, want to experience what just hanging out here, I guess for a weekend would be like, that's the way to do it. It's not that exciting, but there you go. But they, they make it fun and it's a great podcast. Slash YouTube show. And I will link it down below. And I miss those guys already. And why is there not like a bullet train in between Minnesota and Ohio? So I could go visit all the time. All right. So with that, let's turn to some hobby time, hobby time. Matt, you working on anything? What's on your table, buddy? Well, it's not on my table yet, but I've ordered a bunch of slaves, darkness a couple of weeks ago. I'm sure it'll ship eventually, but this is not uncommon. But until then I've been working on Luminette slowly, but surely I know, I buy no stretch of the means a fast painter. So far I've completed five spearmen and that has taken me about 20 hours. So it's progress. It's all right. Don't don't get weighed down. Just, you know, keep slow and steady wins the race. All right. That tortoise still crosses the finish line. The problem is, I also have the box of the other 35 that have yet to be painted along with the rest of the army. I should put that away. Don't worry about it. Just let it, I say, I say, let it go. Like it'll, you'll, you'll get there. Don't worry. Okay. I'll tell you a quick inspirational story. A friend of mine who I normally play with came to my house for a game this weekend. He plays Luminette. Now my friend has played high elves back in the day. The last time I've played Warhammer with this guy regularly for more than 20 years. He has never painted a fig in the entire time that I played Warhammer. Not once. All of his figs he played with were stuff he painted in the 90s. Okay. He came to my house this last weekend and he opened a box, like a box that he had brought over with him and he took out painted Luminette realm lords. Like he had 10 wardens painted. He had his cow mountain painted. He had five dawn writers painted. Holy shit. Yes. You know what I'm talking about. Yes. Absolutely. Yes. He had like, he had, and then he had more stuff that was assembled and not painted, right? Hammer bros and all of that. That's so amazing. First time in no joke, probably 24 years he's painted a Warhammer figure and he's already plowing through it. So my point is you can do it. If he can do it. Follow your story. You can do it. Trust me. Quick note on the, quick note on the Luminette. Isn't it great that they finally got rid of all those phoenixes and dragons? I completely agree. It's their tired tropes and I say goodbye. Like now we've got great aesthetics. Is beat out. Exactly. We've all, we've all been there, done that, seen it before. You're right, Matt. And thank you. Thank you, Matt, for having the courage to say it. I appreciate it and support you 100%. Tom's going to need another drink much faster than he anticipated. Yeah. Okay. So Chuck, what about you, buddy? What's your hobby time? What have you been up to? Well, I just finished the daughter's cane endless, last endless spell slash prayer today. Um, and I do have technically two avatars of cane to paint up the one from Tiremancer and a wonderful one that Matt picked up for me. Um, and I'm getting 10 snakes, five canary and the Melissa iron scale Friday. So I'm kind of in between docs. So my immediate hobby is one focusing on the CrossFit open, which starts this Friday. So I've been kind of preparing physically for that, but you talk about that on our podcast, but I'm currently selling as over Christmas. Um, good friend, Omri. He's from Israel. Got patches made for me of like logo and like tarrathi and all this stuff. Um, one to put on like my CrossFit equipment, but he sent me a bunch of them. So I'm going to also put them, I'm selling them to my Warhammer bags right now. So selling is my current hobby. Nice. You need to get a bomber jacket. That's true. There we go. That's true. You'd wear it well. I'm sure. All right. Tom, what about you? You got anything on the table? You've been working on any hobby? You can't see it. Okay. But my area is really clean. Oh wow. Okay. Um, I mean, did you clean up your hobby space in a sort of Zen like anticipation of a new project? Is that what happened? I mean, so I'm going to make everybody sick, but don't don't move your camera. I'm going to, you know, like I have an open area. Oh, there you go. Like that. Like that doesn't happen. Like that has been piles of models and paints and cards and stuff like that. And so like, I have space here and that's just a small area. Actually the whole basement, like I've been on a, like a cleaning kit because I've been selling lots of like my childhood. Sure. Lots of toys. And so, um, yeah, I've been, uh, I've been doing a lot of that. So it's been fun. Good. Good. Good. I mean, you know my habits. I work a project. Then I, everything goes away. Everything gets clean. Basement gets cleaned. Uh, all the paints go back on their appropriate spot. All brushes get cleaned down. Desk gets wiped down. Palate gets changed. And then we go to the next project. So very, it's an important, it's an important habit. Right. Uh, for myself, uh, my hobby time, I've been working on a really big video, uh, on something that I can't really talk about. So, but that'll come for the future. Uh, but most importantly today, uh, I got a, I finally got all my slanesh stuff. Literally just open the box, not a couple hours before this show. Haven't got to crack into anything yet, but I am very excited about that. Uh, so my, my order came in. Uh, I think I'm going to, you know what, I'm going to start, because yes, I ordered one box of them. Look, I can't help myself. I'm going to start with the slang morphine bloods. That's what I'm painting first. Like, we're going to get them out of the way right away. Just get them done. And then, and then we get into good stuff. Cause I think if I get them, because otherwise, if I don't do them first, I'll just be like, I don't want to paint these guys. They're so bad. But if I paint them first, then I can, I can get through it. So I'll do them. And then I'm real excited to get into them slick blades. That's what I want. Cause I want to get those bad boys on the table more. Uh, stop using chaos nights to proxy them in my games. So there you go. Um, all right. Uh, so yeah, a lot of hobby time. And I'm excited about a couple of, a couple of the videos and the stuff I've been working on recording. It's actually been a lot more of that kind of stuff this week than I would have liked, but that's okay. We got some good stuff. Uh, well, are you ready? Are we ready to go to the main topic? Are we ready to talk sub factions? I'm ready. All right. Then gentlemen, let's talk the best sub factions in the game. There you go. Got it. Handled. Uh, he's got it. Don't worry. Good show. It's over. Wrap it up. Wrap it up. Uh, so, okay, we're going to start at a high level of you. So, because I want to talk about just your, your 40,000 foot view. What do you think makes a good or compelling sub faction? Right. What does that even mean? So Chuck, as you have some, like you literally rep a sub faction. It's one of the reasons I wanted to talk about this with you on the show. I know of few people who rep a sub faction as hard as you do. Okay. So, what attracted you to Craith? Like, what was it? Why? It's a very much a blending of the narrative behind that sub faction and how its rules interpret how it comes to life on the table. The, the army books are a great way to say, here's what everything this army is like. You know, it's like very broad brush. This is what this army's about. And you get to the temples and that's more of the concrete, you know, getting granular on, but what are they? What do they do in the mortal realms? Who do they interact with? What do they do on the battlefield? Which, I mean, ultimately that's what we care about. What, how do they fight? But, and I do it with Craith because Donner's Canes is my favorite, but like, I'm pretty hard set with every army I play. I usually pick one sub faction that I fall in love with, whether it's Iliatha and Lumaith Realm Lords or Brumadar in Ida and the Deep Ken or Godseeker and Slenesh because I fall in love with the story and how that story's brought to life through the rules. So it has to be a really nice blend of those two, I think to really hit home, hit be a homerun. Okay. All right. I like that. I'm trying to figure out, they said, they're saying there's an echo. I'm just trying to figure out where it's coming from. I don't know. It's a mystery. I'll try to track it down. Tom, you go. I think it's only when I speak. I don't know though, maybe. So for me, I also often fall in love with a single sub faction when I started to play an army, but most of the time, because it's the best one. No, I, for me, it's, I have to look at all, like all of the abilities. And I have to like three of them. Okay. That's the bar. If there are three that I really like, and they can't be like, they can't be super circumstantial. Like they have to be things that are going to apply to 80% of my game. Something you'll do every time, at least a few times. Right. Right. If then it's not going to, if it's not going to apply to four out of my five turns, then it may just be Ipsum lore and text. Now, do you, I'm curious, do you have something like me with craith where it's literally one ability that I'm like, I want to do this over and over and over again. You know, but granted, maybe those wouldn't for you because that's never usually the best sub factions in the book. Yeah, it's a great question. I, like I used to say for Doc, for Hagnar, it was the rerollable save. Or like it was to having the five plus casted. But the reality is, is there were a lot of things that attracted me to it when I was a big Hagnar fan. Right. It was the fact that it, it's coordinated with my battalion and it, and it didn't have terrible item options. Like it wasn't good, but it wasn't terrible. And more than importantly, like I got to reroll all hits, which was a really big deal. And so I think that normally it's no, let me just say this. I think there are sometimes that like single abilities will sell an entire sub faction for me. So, I think about like Hermdar. Sure. The always strikes first is why I'm there. It's it because of how, how dominant, if we don't want to be positive or oppressive, if you want to be negative, that ability is it just, it will swing games. You know, people have joked around about how strong not heart renders, how strong lifetakers are. And it's funny. It makes me laugh. But the reality is that like, you know, people are like, well, what is the counter to lifetakers? Hearthguard berserkers. Sure. Sure. Volkites. In any, any of those units in Fire Slayer, because they're going to hit first, it doesn't matter if they're charged or not. And so, like I say that flippantly, but like that is an ability that is so strong and so determinative of how I'm going to play the game that like the bubble of minus one to wound, which is really, really good is an afterthought to me. Sure. Okay. So, Matt, how about yourself? What makes a good sub faction for you? Well, I personally, whenever I go into a looking at a new book, I always see, you know, you kind of look at the war scrolls overall and you kind of see, okay, the army kind of wants me to play this way or kind of play this way. That's where I want to then turn my attention to the sub factions and go, okay, this one aspect, we're going to crank that up to like eight to 10. And now you can play the army on that way and not focus on the others. And, you know, I think some of the newer books like Luminev do that really well. Some of the older books, like say storm cast where it's like, here's a whole new ability. Just run with it. And I definitely like something where it actually takes a little bit more of the rules and effect as opposed to kind of like toe stubborn. Well, it's like transformative is what you're saying. Yeah. It's actually like it's transforming and changing the actual way that you play that thing. Yeah, almost heightened. I would say more heightened than transform. Yeah. I, I showed Lee, I love, I love all of this. Hopefully I've solved the echo issue. I don't hear anything. So hopefully we're good. I turned my game down a little fix some sound stuff. Hopefully that solved it at any rate. Um, I, what's fascinating is you all gave me three different answers and I agree with all three of them. Okay. Because this is why I think sub factions have become such a, again, to say it negatively, like I'll use Tom's parlance here. Can you say it negatively crutch? Right. To say it positively, uh, enjoyable aspect of each battle toe. Right. Because they define the army in a very real way. Like Chuck, your statement about the flavor of the thing, uh, and being able to say this is a unit you like. This is where it belongs. This is a home for it. This expresses, you know, an element of it and makes you feel like you really understand where they sit in the mortal realms, what they're doing. Right. Like craith and the sisters of slaughter and that temple and its dedication. Okay. Uh, so just looking at something like that, that's fantastic. You look at what Tom said, the rules, right? Sometimes the, the, the rules are absolutely something that attracts us in. Right. Uh, because it's a cool ability or something powerful or something we wanted to do, or it makes some element of the army we really like, really strong. Right. Um, Trachy, and Doc, I'm going to, we're going to talk doc a fair amount here because it's just a pretty er example of like compelling sub factions. Right. It is. Yep. And when you look at, at that it's like, Oh, uh, I love the, I love this aspect of the thing. Right. Uh, I love witches and sisters and I want them to go blender people while giving them all an extra pip of rend is certainly going to go a long way toward accomplishing that. Right. Or what Matt said, which is the one that I think resonates most strongly with me is I think of armies, like a big cartoon diamond, you know, like picture a giant cartoon diamond that people would try to steal. Right. And it's always like this oversized gem with like the perfectly cut facets. You know, imagine if you had that, that big giant gem in real life as you turn it and the light like hits different surfaces and it expresses different facets in different ways. That seems to be Matt, what you're hitting on. I think the same thing like, I really like the monster aspect of this army or something. That's usually the one I'm saying. And then here's the sub faction that lets me express the monsters. Right. And turn them up to 11 to, as you said, heighten those or whatever. Right. I don't want to get bogged down in the terminology, but yes, it lets you take that and just like ramp it up. Right. We're all about the monsters. That's what we're here for, man. I got here to play my big stompy things or I'm all about the spell casting. I want to dominate the magic phase. Right. Like, so all that kind of stuff. And I think that sub factions do all three of those things. Right. And the best ones do all three of those well. Like it combines good narrative with rules that are compelling, but not broken. Like that's where hermdar fails for me. It's just, it's too much. It's handing away too much. It's too oppressive. Right. Right. Especially when combined with the other stuff that they do, right? It takes command points. Sure. Yeah. I mean, I mean against Luminath, like that, that's, that is meaningful. I'm going to kick you out of the stream. All right. So at any rate, but it is like, because they had like they doubled your cost for all that stuff. I understand. Yes. If they're playing checklist and get total eclipse off. Yes. Yes. It's on an eight anyways. Oh no, the smallest violin in the world plays for your hermdar against one army, not being the most broken thing in combat. Um, so like the, but the point is, is that it a great sub faction to me has a compelling narrative that uses units in an interesting way. It heightens the, a facet of the army that otherwise might be unexplored. Right. Does what a battle tome should do. It brings out, because we can all, we can all just play warhammer. We play iOS without the books. Right. We don't actually need these books. Like, we can use the scrolls and the points without any of these books. And it would work. Games playable. Right. Completely functional game. Right. So, okay, if we're going to lay a book on top, it better do something besides just be a collection of the war scrolls. Right. And I think sub factions do that really well. Right. Right. They, they express everything that you guys have covered there. So I'm, I'm glad you all just picked exactly the three points I wanted to hit. Well done. Okay. So I want to start with, with a little chart here. We're going to bring up a little chart. This is actually prepared by Mr. Adam Mumford. Who, thank you, Adam, I stole this from Adam by way of Rob. So, full credit to him. Uh, Rob actually did a show earlier in this week using this little piece of data, but I wanted to bring it back up because I thought it was really useful. So what's on the screen here that you guys can see is, uh, all of the different armies broken down by faction and then how many units they have, how many sub factions they have, and how many battalions they have. Okay. Mm hmm. Uh, I love this. I love this data. This is fantastic. Right. Um, one of the things that's fairly obvious about this is that in most cases, there is an inverse correlation between the number of scrolls you have and the overall power of the army. In other words, the more scrolls you get, the sort of like more you plateau or start to go down on power. It's not completely true, but it's not completely wrong either. Um, the, and, uh, whereas like the armies that seem to perform really well are like the ones that have a middling number of units, like are right in the sweet spot where they've got just enough that they don't have a lot of fat, but they don't, but they can fill all the roles, you know, kind of hitting that sweet spot there. But anyways, in the sub faction list here, I found it fascinating because there are zeros on this list. Right. Yeah. Night Hawn. Night Hawn have zero. Absolutely. Uh, the scaven have zero. Right. Um, Gits have three, but only by way of white dwarf articles. Right. So like those three should be like parenthetical. Right. It's like three, but we need like the asterisk. Right. Okay. If people need me to zoom in more, I don't know if you can see it. I was trying to make sure that the whole thing could fit on page, but I'll zoom in for you. Maybe that's, maybe that reads better than you lose. We lose, uh, the edge here. So it's kind of a thing of like, I only have so much space to show it. Um, but I'll, I'll zoom in. Uh, so units, sub factions, battalions, there are zeros on this list. There are like threes, fives, cities of sigmar, technically has nine at this point. Right. Mm hmm. Yeah. Okay. So I want to set a couple of thoughts up here that where I want us to discuss right now. Here is thought one. Okay. Does every book need sub factions or should we be still designing books without sub factions? Okay. So question the first question, the second or discussion point, the second. Okay. Is there are three models of sub faction design in, in some way that we're going to call that. Okay. Model the first is the standard, uh, the completely standard sub faction, a generic ability, a, uh, command ability, uh, command trait, and an artifact. Right. Mm hmm. That's completely standard model. Okay. Model the second is, uh, the, what I would call the cities of Sigmar, uh, Slanesh, slaves to darkness model. Right. Where yes, there's a sub faction and it dictates some rules, but it doesn't dictate everything. Right. It's more open. So this would be like living city or cabalists or to spoilers. Right. Where they, yes, it's a thing. It's clearly a thing. It's granting abilities. It's saying you're in this city. You must pick one of these things. Right. In cities and in slaves, you must pick one of those things because from them, you can still get to your choice on command traits and artifacts, but you don't, but they sit under the sub faction. Not over. Mm hmm. You with me? On model that's on the second type. Okay. The third type is the Skaven slash gets model. Okay. Okay. Where you don't have any traditional sub factions, but you have, uh, instead you just have like discreet rules for all your different types of things. Right. Like clan Eshin does this and clan Mulder, if you have a clan Eshin hero, they act like this. If you have a clan Mulder hero, they act like this and they grant you this Benny and so on and so forth. Right. Not sub factions in the same way because I can mix and match that freely. I could have all five of those clan rules or six of those clan rules or whatever master verminus six. Okay. I could have the whole group in one army. I could express all of those at once. Right. Mm hmm. Okay. Same with gets like I can have goblins and trolls and be under the bad moon and all those things can be popping. Right. All right. So, uh, my question is, so now that I've laid this groundwork, Tom, I want to start with you. Okay. Is there a model that we should be using? Should we be relying on the tried and true standard model? Right. Of ability, blah, blah, blah, blah. Should they all just look like that in the future? Should we keep varying the design? What do you think? Dude, should we still have stuff with basically none? I think that the design should still be, I think that all of them should have sub factions because sub factions tell you something about the army. Um, it directs decision making. Um, and it helps shape identity. So yes, we should have sub factions universally. How that gets trotted out though. I think there should be a lot of flexibility in that. Um, what I hate is what has been standardized, which is generic ability, command ability, command trait item. Okay. That is boring. Like yawn. Like it's completely uninteresting to me because it's just, it's, we've done it so many times. And so I look like back at the end of the last edition when they were still like kind of exploring the sub faction thing. And I felt like they got so many things right there. And so examples of this were, um, the doc 1.0 book where like your sub faction actually manipulated your battalions. Mm hmm. Or, uh, your IDK book where it manipulated battalion. Sometimes it shaped a bonus spell. It's like, sometimes that was something that happened instead of one of those other abilities. So maybe instead of a command, uh, a generic command ability that everybody in that allegiance gets, it was a bonus spell or whatever. Like I wish we would be exploring those other spaces. Um, I wish I, and I like the space that we've explored with like cities of Sigmar with like battalion specific to sub factions. Totally okay with that. What I don't like is when that's the only option. I'm going to talk for a second here. I don't, do I sound different to you guys? Do I sound weird? No, it's somebody's speaker. Okay. I'm just trying to make sure that I'm getting rid of the echo. I don't know how this sounds to everybody else because I was so I'm talking right now folks. Tell me if this sounds like horrendously worse. It seems to still be capturing it. The audio, I switched the audio input. We'll see if that makes a difference for now. Unless I sound absolutely terrible because I'm using a microphone. I wouldn't normally use to do this anyways. Okay. Fair enough. So feedback in the chat please if this sounds absolutely terrible. Anyways, Chuck, what about you? Like what's your, what's your preference on this? Do you want to see the variants? Do you want to see the standardization? Do you think sub factions as a whole aren't good? Which we're going to get to that. There's been some people expressing that comment. So we'll talk that through in a minute. I'll start with the fact our sub factions need it. And I'm going to use a very probably really unpopular analogy here with myself. So take Cthulhu that whole mythios. When you look at it, just when I look at it as it is, it's just Cthulhu, all those things is the most boring, useless thing I have ever been through. I'm like, this is dumb. This is dull. Oh, there's a color that you can't comprehensive. No, that's stupid. All right. Like it doesn't hit for me. But when you put it through lens like Warhammer or the Warcraft and pick a bunch of other ones, it suddenly becomes much more interesting. And that's what sub factions do to army books to me that maybe army books that I wouldn't care to look at. Like I have the fire slayers battle tome and the KO battle tome and the sub factions are really interesting to me. And that's what kind of grabs me towards those armies that I'm probably still not going to play, but there's more of a chance because of them being there. As far as standardization versus variance, I mean, I would always kind of lean towards variance. I don't mind having a few. Maybe they're like, okay, here's one that's, you know, Hagnar, sorry, here's your taxes because this is going to be the one that's going to be maybe obviously good in the competitive scene. Not so much now, but then have other ones that might be a little bit looser. I think you can have that within the same book. And I have to agree with Tom with doc 1.0 when we had the ability to change battalions based upon which faction you chose. That was so much fun. You know, sad to see it gone for whatever reason, but yeah, like let's have fun with it. But like, you know, there is a limit. There is a threshold that if you cross too far, it's like, okay, well then this, you know, it becomes that oppressive thing accidentally, maybe through some really crazy shenanigans. So yes, I want sub factions to be around. I want a little bit of variance, but not too far. Okay, fair enough. I switched my audio back, everybody. So hopefully this sounds like not insane again. I apologize. I had to test. It could have been, could have been better. So, you know, this is, this is, this is what we get for doing a live show. Things change. I've, Tom, I blame your kid, I blame your son's headphones. Um, anyways, Matt, what about you? Where are you sitting on all this? What do you think? Well, I feel like, um, sub factions, like to go without sub factions would be like going to red Robin and go just give me the regular burger. You know, don't even give me the bun. Just throw the plate, give me a plate, throw a patty on it. Do you have chopsticks? Like that's, um, now with that being said, can you make a burger good enough that you don't need condiments? Yeah. Do I want that? I'd probably at least like some cheese. I mean, um, but like, so with that being said, it's like, I agree with Tom and a lot of aspects where it's, I like the idea of not conforming to a template. Yeah, sure. Uh, having something different. Again, I, I, if I had to choose between where we are now or just going, no, no sub factions, I'd prefer where we are right now. Uh, but like I said, in the, in the illusionary world of tomorrow, uh, where anything is possible, I would love to see them spice it up a little bit. Yeah. To me, I think the answer is, and by the way, I hear no echo right now. So it was. So you were right. It was definitely Tom. So there we go. It was, I wanted to test. Yeah, it was definitely, it's definitely you. Okay. Well, let's see what I can do about that. That's all good. It's fine. Uh, okay. So the, um, like, I was, I thought a lot about this beforehand because honestly, I play a lot of books that use a lot of different, you know, kind of conceptions of this because of the armies that I favor. And I don't play a lot of books that have the normal sub-factions. Okay. Um, like my two favorite armies, Skaven, no sub-factions to speak of, right? Kind of build your own adventure. And Slaanesh with like the, the weak sub-faction idea or what I'll call it, the inverted sub-factions, right? Where the command rates and artifacts are derived from the sub-faction choice as opposed to flipping the other way around, right? And I really do like that, uh, that option. I like the way that, I like that there's a variance to it. I think it has value. I think it makes the books have their own personality. What I think has to be taken into account, however, that they haven't really, I haven't seen this be fully expressed, is that flat out the ones with the sub-factions are just better. Right? When it comes to like power, they just end up handing more abilities because yes, they're often on rails, more on rails. But when it's like a bullet train on those rails, it's pretty strong, right? And that's kind of the challenge, right? When you, the hermdar was that Tom mentioned was a perfect example, right? There's like, what am I going to get in these generic stuff in Skaven that's going to equal that, right? So if they're going to write a Skaven or Git style kind of generic all-in based on your leaders you take or the units you have, or something like that, then they have to understand that like every other army just gets to add some unique special rule to most or all of their troops. And on top of that, like taking a look at Daughters of Cain, the temples also shift how you can play that army. So if you check Calibron, also you can teleport and you can be more of a hit and run. If you take Xanathar Kai, you're going to go more snakes. So your MSU as opposed to hordes, if you chose Drachik and Neth or Grace. So it's not that you have to. You can still do a little different and force a different play style in it. But like it's kind of like a, it's just another switch. Like I want to play this style in this army. Yeah, that's such a good point. So cities and slanesh both use the same quote unquote mid sub faction, what we'll call option two, right? And they are very, very different experiences. Like the cities lists and the abilities they grant really define how that army plays, right? The difference between what you're getting out of something like Tempest Eye, yeah, and what you're getting out of something like Living City is a totally different force you want to put on it. You could potentially put on the table or way you could play. It might use some of the same troops, right? But you're going to use those troops in a completely different fashion, right? Whereas you look at like the slanesh ones and there's nothing they're really expressing, right? Like, okay, this one, the only one that comes closest like Godseekers where it's like, well, you get plus one to charge, I guess. Right, so, okay, cool. I guess I should charge a lot, right? But they don't do the same lifting that the cities one does. And maybe the direct comparison there, if you don't feel that's fair out there audience, then compare it to Slaves of Darkness. Same situation again, right? They're also using the type two of sub factions. And to me, it very heavily impacts how I build my list and how I play, right? If I play Cabalists, I'm running a very different list than if I play like Dispoilers or Host of the Everchosen, right? Or Ravagers or something, right? Like, these are very different lists, very different play styles, right? Okay, I'm back. Welcome back. Well, I don't hear any echoes, so it must be working, whatever you did. Yeah, we're gonna have the Slaves of Darkness battle tone. It kind of goes back to whenever I was talking about what I like about having the heightened. The kind of the potential issues with that style is, I mean, in that book, you have what? You have the Marauder build, the Wizard build. Yep, Demon Prince. Yes, Velcaster, Demon Prince and Varengard. Yeah, well, Archeon and Varengard, yes. Right, right. It leaves that little bit of that gap of like, well, I wanted like my knights and horsies, you know, and I wanted like warriors. Whenever you miss that section, it feels like there's a chunk missing almost. I think that's one of the drawbacks of doing the style that I prefer. It's a good point. Like, and we lamented that on the Slaves of Darkness show. I have two complaints about the Slaves of Darkness book. I think it's one of the better design books released in the history of Age of Sigmar. But it had two issues with me. One, Marauders are still bent and out of, they're out of bounds. Like, stop it. Stop it with the Marauders already, okay? Like for all that is holy in the world, please stop. And two, there's no build that expresses the Iron Wall, right? Like, the most classic Chaos troops are Chaos Warriors and Chaos Knights, I would argue, right? They are literally the emblematic troops of Chaos. And there's nothing that expresses that makes me want to play with those things, right? That you go like, that's definitely the thing for this, right? Yeah, let me ask you this, Vince. Since you're one of your favorite armies, Escaven, and they're one of the ones that doesn't have sub-factions. Yeah. What would you like to see with sub-factions? I wouldn't. I wouldn't want to see sub-factions. You guys is? I would want to keep it as is, but I would rewrite the generic abilities that you get for the different clans. And I would change the way you get, you purchase your battle line. Because the fact that, like, once you don't... Like, the fact that when you can't mix other battle lines under any circumstance through even like alternative generals, right? That the only way I can take Brad Ogre's as battle line, which by the way, would not break the world. Just let me really be clear here, okay, is by being 100% Molder except for a master clan general. Right. Like, that's way too restrictive, right? And then so I have to like spend a decent amount of points and like models and presence on painting, what, at minimum 60 clan rats or 40 clan rats and 10 storm bourbon or something like that, right? And it just feels like, okay, all of a sudden this isn't the list that I wanted because I'm spending like 400 to 500 points on something that isn't the army I was trying to build, right? What I wanted is like a bit of a mixed arms, right? So what it should actually be is... And Manzac, no, it's not like Warhammer Fantasy style books. It's really not. Like, nope. That was definitely didn't express it. Now if you mean like sixth edition back of the book Warhammer Fantasy where like you could play their artillery train of gnome and that kind of crap, then yes, I agree with that. But certainly it wasn't the case in eighth edition. But at any rate, like the problem with building a scaven army is that you oftentimes have this like frustrating thing where the verminous ability is fine. It's like cool enough in its own right. The master clan ability is really good. And generally it's going to do everything you want. Your skryer ability is like tops for a skryer hero. And then Eschen and Mulder basically do nothing. Okay. And the pestilence one is kind of in the middle. It's whatever, the whole great planks thing. The but like I would like I wouldn't I don't think it needs to be sub factions. I think you just need to understand that you've got to boost the playstyles through that text. Right. Like that's where we've got to express it. The thing you were talking about right the heightened thing, letting me take a Mulder hero and giving like one, you know, one fighting beast, a couple extra wounds and re-roll ones to hit or whatever. That's not dynamically changing the way I play the army. Right. It's not like Thunder Lizards where you know you go Thunder Lizards in Seraphon and you're like, oh, it is monster time. You know what I mean? Or you go Boulderhead in Ogre Montripes. Right. Like that is a transfer like yeah. Okay. I see what this is about. Let's let's do this. I've got extra wounds on my monsters. I've got extra abilities on my monsters. Right. Like I am ready to rock. Okay. Do you think, do you think maybe this is the ideal world in the form of standardization where you have standard sub factions that kind of force you to choose, you know, here's your item, here's your ability, here's your trait, et cetera, et cetera. But also at the same time create enough interest in the other items that you can't take if you take a sub faction, the other abilities and traits. So you can still craft your own personal style of sub faction with the genericness of it and it be possible to compete and still be unique and fun. Like is that the dream we're looking for or is that still too bland? Look, it's so hard. Here's a general question. How many books have the balance where you feel like taking the, so of the standard type, so the type one sub factions, right, which is ability, command ability, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right. Literally the thing that we know and love that most books have. So you're type one, right. How many books that contain those? Do you think legitimately the basic non sub faction is still a perfectly valid option that equally weighs against the, against taking a sub faction? How many books? In fact, let's just do this. Name one book where that's the case. Stormcast Turtles. Okay, why? And you're telling me that generic is, is literally balanced against anvil's the helden hammer because that's what we've got to put it up against. Yeah, there are some instances and some builds, especially if I'm doing storm keep, where I want, where I want Saunch Defender. Gotcha. So because there is a command trait that's good enough, it balances out. Okay. All right. Because I can name one. Okay. I would pick a different one. Nighthawk doesn't have any sub factions. I mean, Nighthawk just has nothing. They don't even have like any of the types of rules I'm talking about. They are the odd, the odd ghost out here. They have neither type one, two or three. They just got nothing. Whenever they inevitably get sub factions, there better be a three sheets of the wind reference. Oh, they're getting nothing. Ever. Just hold on to hope. Absolutely. So I'll name one more. Iron Jaws. The Iron Jaws portion of Oroc War Clans. Okay. Yeah. And again, why? Because of the command trait. Right? Because mighty destroyers sitting on, like being able to use mighty destroyers for free once around without a command point is so good that I'm like, look, I know in Ironsons, I get an egg one to be hit in the first round and that's real good. And you know, the counter charging command ability is cool. But have you seen this free mighty destroyers every turn? Yeah, exactly. Have you seen me doing two mighty destroyers for free every turn, getting two command points for free every round, and putting my entire army wherever I want them on the board. And by the way, it's not just for alphas. Like that's just every round I get to literally move my entire army wherever the heck I want basically. Okay. By the way, on that fleshy report to have a similar thing. Yeah, feast day. Yeah. Yeah. That's in all three. No, this is fine. I was I was thinking somebody would pick stormcast. I just wanted to make you defend it so that people wouldn't be like, but anvils, you know, like, I agree with you. I think those are the three cases, right? And in all three cases, the reason it works is because there is a singular command trait that's so good. It it itself enables a different play style. Yes. Yeah. Right. Like because of what it's doing, it's empowering your force in the same way a sub faction normally would. Yep. Right. Right. It's turning on your army in that way. So to me, the answer isn't can we make sub factions weak enough? Right. That they actually don't balance against the opportunity cost or whatever, you know, like, okay, you got to take this crappy artifact, which by the way, like, I get it. We've all come down on just that's they've solved the problem. They just saddle you with a with a sub par artifact because they figured out that if they give you a sub par generic ability, there's no way you're taking it. It's dead in the water. Right. If they give you a sub par command ability, it's probably dead in the water. Right. Like the command trait, they're like, oh, but we want your general to be cool because that's that because you had to sacrifice taking that. But the artifact, if we make that bad, you can get a second artifact. So if we give you one bad one, it's just like, eh, that's fine. It didn't hurt that much. Right. Okay. Maybe stop that. We see what you're doing. Yeah, we're on to your shenanigans. Okay. And yeah, like the answer to me should be after like should be after you design all the sub factions for the book and you're happy with them. One of the last steps in the writing of the book should be to go back and look at your sort of generic command traits and artifacts and say, have we made like at least two command traits and two artifacts that are powerful, interesting and expressive enough that they open new doors to play styles on their own that people would go. Yeah. That whole package is cool. Right. Yeah. But also I just kind of want to do my my own thing here and this is letting me do the way I want to play the army out here in generic land. Right. Right. And so to me that that seems to be the secret because I agree. I think those are the three battle tones that can do it. Right. And it's for the exact reasons you said in all three cases there is a command trait that is so good. You're like, yeah, whatever. You know, and this is comparing an FEC that's comparing against stuff like Gristle Gore and hollow morn and blister skin blister. Right. Whatever. It's doing work. It's like, yeah, that's those are three real strong sub factions. Right. Yeah. Okay. I did a little bit of experimenting with that with the previous doc book when I played without a sub faction. Just see what it was like. I kind of just called that Kelton R at the time because that was the only temple that existed without anything. Sure. And in that book, too, it was it was fun. Now, obviously it wasn't the most competitive, but it was great for some fun one off game. So like even still, I don't think even that like the ability to do that in a way that's like still unique and not going to hurt you for not taking a faction. It doesn't exist much anywhere else. To me, it just reminds me of that that top gear meme where they have the the super car where he's like, this is beautiful. But this I like. Yeah, absolutely. Right. I think that's that's in the end what you what you want. Right. You want to be drawn in both directions. You want even the base stuff like forget the sub factions exist for a moment. The base stuff should still be doing work to be expressing the army and what it's there again. I buy the book because I want to see what you're going to lay on top of the war scrolls. I didn't need the book for the war scrolls. In fact, if I had my way, I'd almost jettison the war scrolls from the from the books. They could never do it, but it would just be like a QR code on the last page. It says scan here to be taken to the AOS, you know, like app. That's where your war scrolls are. Right. Um, but like, OK, so where I want to go next is I want to get into a little bit of a different discussion. But I want to wrap this up. I think what we're saying, let me summarize. There's a lot of comments going on. This is fostering a lot of good discussion in the comments. I like to see that. I think the answer is you want to make sure that the sub factions are compelling and interesting because they have. Because they have either rules or narrative or express elements of the army, ideally all three. Right. That's what makes them compelling. But at the same time, the basic command traits and artifacts that you can take to build your own army, your own flavor, your own story should also be competing and be expressing those same things. Is that a fair point I think we can all get on board with? Yeah. OK, cool. All right. So next question. I think one of the great strengths of sub factions is that they do help people experience the book, the faction, the play. All right. Like you read the Seraphon Tome and you're like, OK, this is the skinky one. I take this if I want to do skinky things. This is the Sorus one. Right. If I want to do Sorus stuff, I go to this one. Right. And I think that is helpful because not everybody is like Mr. Johnny Listwriter. Right. That's a good side of it. It helps direct people in ways. It's a linear tool. Right. We've talked before about the difference between linear and modular design. Right. And sub factions like that are like a very strong linear design element. They are putting you on a railroad track that's like choo choo. This is where they, you know, we know what station we're going to Sorus station. So everybody get on board. If you didn't want to go to Sorus station, get off this train now. Right. Okay. But there is a dark side to that. And so here's my question. Is the dark side of the type one sub factions, in other words, the strong hand sub factions, that if they're not calibrated exactly right in their incentive structure, right, that they end up reducing choices because they become the de facto default way to play. Right. If they're not balanced well internally against each other, against the generic, anything like that. Right. Then they just become, or if they're just too good in general, like if you've got a book, I mean, Seraphon arguably three of the four are really good. Right. Three of the four sub factions are really good. All three of them express a different bent part of the army. Okay. So is there a dark side to this and how significant is it? Because if these are miscalibrated, I think one, they put people on hard rails and two, those rails get real strong to where you're like, you're a dummy. When OBR launched, if you weren't playing Petrifex, right, you just felt like you were the biggest idiot, you know, because it was so clearly the choice. Right. So how much is there a negative? Am I missing anything here? Like Matt, what are what are the, are there negatives to sub factions for you? Like, do you feel sometimes like they put too much on rails? How do we walk this line? Well, I think we're talking a little bit. What are we touch base with the slaves of darkness? You know, I think the biggest negative is, well, I wanted this aspect focused on and I didn't get that. And I do think there is a point where it could be too railroaded. But at the end of the day, if you got rid of sub factions, there's still going to be a meta that arises and it's still going to be, you know, these are the guys you take. These are the heroes you take. These are the command abilities you go for. Right. You know, whether that's there or not. Yeah. That's fair. That's fair. Tom, what about you? Say that again. Like, is there a dark side here to the sub factions? Right. Like how negative is the negative? Okay. Is it worth it? Are there other dark sites? I'm not thinking of our people getting put too much on rails. Is it sneakily reducing choice? Not, not if designed correctly. Okay. What's the. Okay. Okay. Right. But let's take your previous example of Stormcast. Right. What are the two things, if you were trying to be competitive with Stormcast, which again, might not be everybody's goal, but let's just assume that's the goal you're aiming for. Right. Right. What are the two things you would take in Stormcast? Something prime. No, not not units. I mean, sure. Yeah. Are you saying sub factions? Yeah. In that book, you're making a sub faction like choice, right? Yeah. I'll answer my own question. You're either going to take staunch defender. Yep. Right. And go that build or you're taking animals. I mean, that's not true. No, no, no. Like, I, I like, I actually like the competitive turning results seem to disagree with you, but okay. That's fine. I actually like more than just those two. There are four that I like, but I think that, I think that those two are probably the strongest. Yeah. Sure. So that's what I'll say. Okay. Yeah. I mean, so, so let's go back to my original question. You said, no, it's not a negative if they're designed correctly. What's designed correctly? Like point at something in the world for me that is within the bounds of what you're talking about. Like that they are all mutually like, like playing off one of one another, right? Okay. Like it's like, you are being invited into those you like into the different things to actually compare where there's not just like it doesn't skew power one way or the other. Okay. Is doc the best example of like doc 1.0? No, doc current doc. Oh, the best example of this working? Yes. Yes. Maybe. Maybe. I think so. Okay. Because there are, what are there now six sub factions in doc? Yeah. I suppose I could just look over here at this Excel spreadsheet I happen to have on the right side of the screen. That would be, that would be smart of me where it clearly says six, right? And we could say, and we're going to go back to our picture now, by the way, we're going to switch back to picture. We all got some stuff out of that. So that's fun. We'll go back to that if we need to discuss it. There are six of them and what arguably probably five of them are at least worth a look compelling, interesting, can do some fun stuff with them. Right. Kind of, you know, or you could picture some kind of competitive list with them or would give you, make you feel like you're expressing a part of the army in a broadly construed competitive way. Right. Like you feel like you're not making a dumb choice. Yeah. Right. And that's really where I draw the line. Like, I don't need everything to be the best, the best people, people oftentimes the pushback to this will be like, well, there's always some best competitive. And I'm like, okay, sure. Like, yeah, but if the difference is 1%. Yes. Will the on the margins, will the most competitive players probably lean that direction? Sure. But if you make the difference small enough, right, then people don't feel stupid for taking the other things. And that's what you want. You want people to be able to play the thing they want and still feel like they're giving a good game. Not that they like left turn and made a choice so wrong that they're going to be horribly punished for it. Right. Right. And you put where you said like, what you want them to have is like, well, you can take this, you know, this thing of value or this thing of near equal, but maybe slightly less value. Not the choice between, here's I'll give you $100 bill or I'll give you a $1 bill. Well, cheese will piece. Right. You know. Easy choice. Right. Okay. Chuck, what about you? Is there any dark side here to this? There, there is. And I will say actually dollars cane is probably the best example right now because even if you say decide to play Zaynthar Kai, you could throw in 30 witch elves in a hag and still be fine with having a malusai themed like heavy theme army. Like you're not hurting yourself. Kind of maybe an unintentional dark side. So it is everything's known. I love craith. I've always loved craith. And then you put it, you hit it perfectly that. I like that drug hit that interaction at the end of every unit's combat from doc 1.0, where I get to pick up a dice and my opponent goes, Oh, no. Right. You know, for a one in six chance that is, you know, I think out of 100 games, 2.3 dice roll gave me craith and that might have been on a unit of buffed up witch elves that might have been on the last hag queen I've had on the table and that's the only model left. So it's like, how do you tell how useful it was? But is craith still my favorite faction? Yes. I still love it because I'm so ingrained myself into the lore and that hit that drug hit. Yeah, sure. It's it's a faction as far as like the it is dopamine distilled. Yes. Sub faction form craith is. Yeah. Yes. But within doc, it is the worst one right now. My dream for what craith, I guess, can be, you know, maybe 3.0 whenever that comes out for doc, which I'm sure it's years away before we're gonna battle tone, but hey, whatever. I still love that. I mean, I don't know. Luminath gives us hope. No, it's fine. I'm looking forward to sons of Batman 2.0 already. So there you go. There you go. Being so in love with craith and having 250 witch elves. There is a little part of me that goes, oof, my 40 sisters of slaughter, which are the now the key component to craith. Isn't enough. Like I just went to an event this past weekend and I could have taken craith and when I get more sisters of slaughter, like I have to build up to take a list that I want to take, which is at least probably four units of 20 sisters of slaughters, what I'm thinking. Somewhere around there so I can get as many of those die rolls as possible so they can have an impact on the game and give me that drug hit. But as of right now, I look at it and go, um, okay, well, if I want to have a good time, I'm going to take something else right now. If I want to, like as far as like competing, as far as playing for fun, I'll still take craith. I'll still always be my favorite. I'm still going to wave that banner harder than anyone else ever will. And I'm going to go by, you know, 80 sisters of slaughter over the next year. Sure. It's just what I'll do. But like there's a negative downside that is kind of unintentional, I guess, whereas if you get so involved in love with the faction and then that faction changes to something maybe you weren't expecting like craith became more limited. I would love if craith was sisters of slaughter five up because we want to make sure this is the sisters of slaughter one, but the rest of the army can still get that six up. That's the ideal of and then if that was the case in this book, then I would argue point there is six factions people will look at out of six. For actual competing on the table. Right. No, it's a good point. I think that there has to be some kind of line here. This is, this is where we get into a challenge, right? Where you want the faction to kind of point in a direction to lean slightly into a direction, right? Without being so definitively that thing, right? Like where if you don't, this is the Sorus faction. If you don't take every single unit you can as Sorus, if they're not back to the rafters. If those lizards aren't falling off the edge of the table because you can't even fit all those 32 mil bases onto the table anymore. Right. Then, then you've made the wrong choice. Right. Yeah. And there's got to be, you've got to, it's got to be a softer touch than that point. Don't push. Yeah. That's, oh, that's a really, wow, Matt. You nailed it. I love this point. Don't push. That's why Chuck keeps me around. There you go. You nailed it. That is beautiful. What a wonderful summation. I love that. Okay. So yeah, I think I agree with all of that. And I think that sounds, that sounds right. Let me hit a couple of points here I saw in the chat. So chaos spawn says seems like the best most used sub factions have the biggest NPE ranking, according to the data on the 2321 show. Yep. Yep. I think that's right. I think that when you look at like what a lot of the most used sub factions end up doing is they end up bending the rules so hard, right? That they that, you know, one of the things that came out of the NPE show was a singular instance of one of those things of one of those NPE things isn't as bad as lots of those things put together. Right. And since sub factions are almost completely additive rules. Yeah. Right. They're very likely to take an already NPE bent ability and stack them on something else. Right. Hermdar is the perfect example of what you were talking about, Tom, right? Because it's adding this like fighting first on top of a unit that already was like not dying, right? That had like this ridiculous durability that can punch out a pretty decent amount of mortal wounds that you can stack to get double piling in. Yeah. You can stack to get buffs to get to up save. Yeah. That you can initiate runes to get bonus attacks on a, you know, good role or re-rolls. Yep. Yep. So because they're, and this is, I think, the danger of sub factions, honestly, I think the way to keep this properly balanced is for them to probably make sure sub factions always end up weaker, like despite what I said earlier, right? I do think weak sub factions are going to be the stronger choice, right? Because design wise, not stronger choice for like you to take in your army because they're always purely additive. They're sitting on top of scrolls and battalions and spells and prayers and command abilities and just general synergy buffs and other artifacts that get chosen, right? Like there's and, and, and, and, right? And so because they're so purely additive right now, I'm not sure we really nailed the opportunity cost of the thing, right? So I think in general we'd be a lot better off if the type one sub factions that are, that are literally purely additive rules, right? We're just weaker. We're just doing weaker stuff. Still expressing in some way the army. You can do that without it going busted. Okay. Let me give you what I consider the best example of this. You ready? Mm-hmm. Blood gullet. Just like ogre gluttons are the best, like what I consider the best main like just baseline troop in the game. They're the game should all look like ogre gluttons, right? Like that should be the baseline. Not all. I'm not saying every troop should actually be ogre gluttons. I'm saying like that's what the world should be balanced around, right? Mm-hmm. Blood gullet in ogre maw tribes lets you do neat stuff. In some factions it would actually be busted, right? Because it takes all your casters and makes them like double casters and stuff like that. Like it's doing things. Mm-hmm. Right? Yep. And yet because of what it's interacting with, the element of the army, it's just fine. Right? Like it's fine. It's fine. With what it's working with. Like it's mainly buffing gluttons. It's or it's buffing your thoroughly average casters. Right? Mm-hmm. So it's not taking something that's already supercharged. Your best units, right? And making them way, way, way better. Sayre in Lumineth is a great example of this, right? Where it's like Sayre's ability of just like everybody gets two pennies now and you can double penny. Mm-hmm. It's like that is so indiscriminate. That is the carpet bombing of special abilities. Yeah. Right? Because yeah, there'll be sometimes in some units in some situations in LRL where it's like who cares? Like that just didn't mean thing, you have two pennies. And then there'll be sometimes where it's like, oh three up two up save and vulnerable to everything you're doing. Right? Yeah. You know, I was fighting, I got in a couple games this weekend with my slanash. And like I had in two separate games with my slanash and one of the games I played like the heavy twin souls army. Spoiler, they are bad right now. I know a lot of people are really repping the twin souls real hard. Nope, I was right, but they are bad. And like they're just overcosted. If they were like 40 points cheaper, I'd be fine with them. Anyways, you know, and I got into a situation where the twin souls were charging like I had to get that stupid rock mountain monster off of his off of a place like he was in my way. I needed to get rid of him. He was a problem. Okay, I couldn't just get around him. So I had to go through him. This is what happens in the game. Sometimes I didn't want to fight him, but there was no other choice. It was that or I get charged by the rock monster next turn. Okay, which is going to be just as bad. So I took like 10 twin souls into it. And, and the result of that was nothing. I didn't do a window. Okay, because he went like penny, penny, reroll wants to save. So my guys were on fives and threes because he's also broadcasting an aura of neg one to hit. Right. And I mean, I was rerolling hits nonetheless. Right. Like I was in my reroll hits turn. Didn't matter. Came in with rerolling fives and threes and just like we're scratching at this mountain and accomplished nothing because one in 36 wounds got through. And guess what? He didn't roll any double ones. That was it. Now, if he didn't like because he was able to apply this very powerful ability to exactly the thing he needed exactly the moment he needed, right? Because Sayers buff is so indiscriminate. It's like the opposite of blood dollar. Right. Like, so there we go. So how do you really feel about events? That's fine. The next day I played a four keeper list and that was way more brutal. Dunk. That was a four keeper command point juicing list and I was like piling in with double piling in with four keepers, you know, multiple rounds in a row. That'll, that'll do work. That'll do, babe. That'll do. That'll do. Keepers may not be as good as they used to be, but eight attacks out of keepers still ain't bad. Okay. So anyways, I agree, Stephen Chan. How do twin souls have no rend? Is it rend slownessious thing? Yeah. It's a great question. I don't have an answer. And yes, my dog is back in her chair here. You can't see her, but yes, my, my girl is here. Anyways. Okay. Cool. So I want to finish this out, guys. We're going to, we're going to close out the show here. We're going to talk about the best sub factions of the game. We're going to actually do what we, what we said on the tin here. Right. And we're going to say, uh, oh, hold on. I need to address this. No, Martin. No, they won't. Let me tell you a story from that very game with that same. I'm sorry. You scared me with that same stupid, unwounded mountain. So I lost all 10 of those twin souls because he turned around and just went, ha, ha, ha, five damage smashes your dad. Okay. So they all died. Fine. Um, I'd like the last round of the game I summoned a keeper and I charged the stupid cow mountain with Sigvold and the summoned keeper both went it. Okay. and Sigvold fought first and fought twice, and the keeper fought, and at the end of that the cowl mountain had two wounds left. After all three of my my keeper did one wound to cowl mountain. Okay? And one. And he's at full profile. He was he had two wounds left and then he turned around fighting me at full profile because he has like eight million rules for no reason, because they're happen to be a stone mage somewhere in the zip code. Okay? Yep. And he turned around and went and smacked my my keeper from full to dead. No no drama, 20 wounds knocked it out of the park. Like golf swung her off the board. Okay? And then went for his stomps onto Sigvold and basically rolled hot liquid garbage. Like he like the only thing that saved Sigvold was he rolled utter trash with his stomps. He rolled three ones and a two and then the game sounds like he should be a solid 500 point model. It was it was great to charge 600 points of something with multiple piling in into that stupid cowl mountain and do nothing. Anyways, sorry that triggered me. That was a story that really it really hurt me right here when that happened. But I did one and then he did 20 back to me and we cost the same amount of points. It really hurt my soul. I want you to know that. Anywho, let's talk about the best sub factions in the game. So we're gonna go around. I want everybody to pick what we'll do. We'll do two quick rounds of this when everybody to pick a sub faction they think is one of the best ones in the game and why given everything we've talked about so far why it hits from you. Chuck, I think we already know what your first one is going to be but tell us what your first one is. It is craith. It will always be craith. Craith is the best sub faction because not only does it portray what that army is about which is that sub faction about which is just wanton murder like there is there blood there? Yeah. Okay. Well, we need some more. You still have some blood inside of you. We need to get it out. I love that it also adds an extra interaction with you and your opponent and that interaction became it is gold to me. That's as much as important to me as the drughead of actually getting it is that moment between when it's like I pick up it like the opponent's about to like, all right, let me choose what I'm gonna fight. And I'm like, well, granted, it's changed now to end of combat as opposed to immediately after combat. But like that when they think that this phase is done and I pick up a dice and they're like, oh, no, you may not be done. That interaction between an opponent is gold. It fits what that sub faction is about. It is fitting what daughter's cane is about and cranking that to 11, which is murder. I want to murder you more. So I'm going to murder you more. Right on. I like it. Okay. Matt. It's gonna be a little bit of a shocker. Okay. But let's marinate on a little bit. Take or try. All right. Okay. You're hurting my soul. But all right, let's get into it. Well, I agree. I actually don't know. I actually agree with this. 100% especially in that book. But yeah, tell me why. So first and foremost, go with Chuck's reason. I mean, does it get more narrative? I mean, it is the taker tribe, you kill a guy with an artifact. Oh, you get something for it because you took it, you know. But it's not broken. So you don't just get that artifact, you get something else. Right. It definitely highlights all of the aspects of taking a crack in eater. You know, just overall, it's just a great. It's a great way to show the narrative, get some extra push. It's just it does what it needs to do. I agree. It's one, it's narratively aligns. It makes sense, right? It has that story hit of these like, territorial claiming giants, like what they're all about. Two, it expresses that actually really well in the rules, right? Like, look, being 30 and 15 models is really powerful, right? That's why the list that you see that actually are competitive with sons of M that tend to be takers, not all, but tend to be, right? Yeah, and I agree, it expresses that like, one of the elements of giants is we're really good at playing the objective game, right? Like that's part of the army. And why does it heighten that aspect? Right? Yeah, I agree. Okay, Tom, what's your pick? Some aren't going to be surprised by this at all. Okay. Brock Zelfen. Sure. Sure. No surprise here at all. Tell us why, Tom. So I'll open with its weakness. You're forced to take an item that gives you plus one to hit. Okay. You're saying that you're saying that's the best part of it. And that's still that is the worst part of the entire subtle. Sure. So what does it do? Let's I'm going to start with the strings. You know, the ability, there's always a breeze. When you need it, or there's always a breeze if you look for it, gives you a hero phase move on on any unit, which could be a run, retreat, disengage or fly high. Yep. So this is what allows you to like pick up, put down a ship and then pop spell bottle, right? Sure. Like this is what because it makes sure that you're within range of wherever you need to be. This is the thing that lets you like get where you need to be to like push forward with an 18 inch move and still be able to dump all your troops six inches out on a on an objective. Like there's just like the utility. There's very few other games that are just so unencumbered of a free hero phase movement like this. Like that game that ability will single handedly win some games period. If that isn't egregious enough, all units, not just ships, but all your foot troops and everybody else auto run six always, always those foot heroes that are trying to keep up those chemists are just running six. So they just move 10 because they're not going to be doing anything else anyways that your heroes, right? So like even your foot heroes can like hoof it to wherever they need to be. Those are your article and amendment. Let's jump up to the generic. Just a bonus and dream work for a ship. Right. So if you don't take a battalion, you're at two. If you do, you're at three three. Sure. And then the other negative by the way is a command trait that you take if you have an admiral as your general, which is 100% avoidable for most KO armies. Okay. So so it is a it is a sub allegiance that has and then obviously the item that plus one day it has four banging abilities. And you don't have to take the command trait. Sure. Sure. Yeah, that's an interesting point we didn't discuss right of the idea of the the the things you can dodge. Like some of them will have stuff requirements you can dodge, which is always interesting as a sneaky bonus. I can think of no other sub faction where everything is banging on all cylinders. Sure. Just a down the line, like every single ability is just better than almost like almost any one of those you compare across the board with any of the other sub factions. And on every level, whether it's a generic ability article amendment footnote. It's Oh, Oh, sorry. Oops. Oops. I forgot one. Yeah, I forgot the article, which was all of your ships always reroll ones to hit against units that fly. Sure. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot to it. Like it's obviously very competitive. I don't think I sang Barack Ziplin being competitive is going to be a real shock to anybody, right? But I'm actually saying I think it's the best sub sub allegiance. And if you look at every single one of those lines that I just listed, when you compare it against every single other sub allegiance, it wins in every single category, which I think might point to it being a problem rather than a benefit. But sure. I mean, I don't know what you're talking about. It's great. Okay. So all right, my first pick. My first pick is gonna be our good friend, the maus of jorke. And yes, that is the correct term for it. Don't correct me. Fight me. It's the maus of jorke. Um, like, basically your squig sub faction that was published in White Dwarf. And I don't say that because it's actually very competitive. I don't think it super is. But I do think rules wise, it adds the rules you would want to see. I think story wise, it's awesome because you want to play with squigs because they're fantastic. And this does lean into that really well. It does like on the on the does it heighten part of an army into a fully expressible thing? Boy is that one getting a 10 out of 10, right? Like 100 percent. Okay. Um, and it's just cool. Like it's just fun. When you line up against somebody who's playing maus of jorke, you're not sad. You're like, Oh, this is awesome. This is good. Let's have a fun game. Right. And like, that's that is not a bad thing. Like knowing that you're taking something that you're going to have a fun time with and your opponent's going to enjoy playing against. And it really is expressing both a story and heightening apart like one of the coolest parts of the gitz army. I think is makes for a best sub faction. Right. Overall, again, viewing these holistically, right? Okay, round two. Here we go. Chuck, what's your second pick? Breomedar from the IDK. Oh, okay. Why so? Well, I'm more of a fan of the Marty builds. I do have some eels in my list because you're silly if you don't. But I love the fact that I can add an extra unit to bring it on my soul scratch. It fits the narrative that they're kind of in the quote unquote forest of the sea with all the kelp and everything they have if you read their lore. But it is also so satisfying and Tom and actually Matt, you both play KO so you'll understand how wonderful it is to walk up to a table full of terrain. And it but in your mind's eye, it's just flat to you because you can just fly. You know, you can't fly over models for but you don't want to. And the best part even even better than that is walking up and playing a weaker IDK list against IDK and you put down two boats and all of a sudden, I can still come over those boats and you can't. I have the advantage in this game even though you have the better sub faction. I just I just love that feeling. It's so satisfying ended to do it with, you know, a bunch of foot elves is doubly satisfying for me as opposed to a bunch of ship dwarfs. Fair enough. Fair enough. I like that. Matt, your second pick. I'm going to go with my current army. Zytrek. I feel like they do a really good job once again, the double downing on on the lore and then also figuring out a way to transition that into interesting rules that that add a little extra kick to the army. Sure. And expressing that spell casting part of it really well. Right. Right. Yeah, I can see that. Yeah, I think Zytrek, I like as a sub faction, I think Zytrek is really interesting. It's one of the ones that like, I don't mind playing against when it comes to LRL. I'm like, okay, yeah, I see what you're on about here. You're you're like, I get it. This feels, you know, in flavor of what the elves are about. You're going to dominate the magic phase. I hate magic anyways. This seems pretty good. You were probably already going to dominate the magic phase law before you chose that. So that's good. And like, yeah, I agree. Like I think Zytrek is cool in what it's doing and what it lets you say about the army and it has like, again, rules wise, it's got some perfectly viable choices in it. Like it's not like you're picking something that's competitively weak here. Right. Yeah, I'm with that. I like that choice. Tom, what's your pick two? I'm going to go with Tempestai. Solid. So I was hoping somebody was going to mention it. Okay, great. Yeah, so the allegiance ability for Tempestai, so it gets all the city stuff, which is just like, good. Yep. Just a bunch of bonus stuff like the adjutant and the so like bonus bonus points amplified magic. So like all those generic traits, plus it adds three in your turn one, it adds three to movement, which is often like the turn that you want to be moving, like you want to be getting into position. And it adds plus one to save roles so that if you are first or second, it's good. So whether you're like going to weather an alpha at the top of one, or whether you're moving into like charge at the bottom of one, it like that bonus save actually like, you know, does some work. Plus one to run is always welcome. Like it's not, it's just not a bad thing. Because you're going to often be running and shooting in this army or running and charging. And it that plus one is going to be applied to a bunch of different units. This is also the army, the force for cities that can pull in KO. So you actually have a really good ad. You know, they're like, you're getting real value out of some of those units because this is a heavy shooting army. It has a real standout command trait, which is plus one to wound in a 12 inch bubble, which is really, really good. Or the ability to give your general run in charge and fight first, which that's pretty good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like, there's actually two real decisions to be made here. Like on like two real decisions to be made to real options for your decision around command traits. The artifacts are like, you know, okay, that whole bonus command point 50% of the time is pretty good. Sure. Like, because that doesn't exist a whole lot anymore. And then, you know, especially with losing the like the five up, save your command point. This is actually like doing some work with the four up. And then finally, it has some good spells. Like I'm really I'm a fan of the AOE bonus attack bubble. Sure. Yeah, I'm also a fan of the cast to spell get a command point. Yeah. Oh, yeah, I forgot about that one in the midst of everything. Yeah, yeah. I mean, Tempest Eye is the sub faction of cities that was so compelling to me. I built an entire completely kit bashed, customized plastic card infused terrain using army, just to play with it, right? So I think that's probably a statement in of itself right there. Yeah, I mean, it's so cool and compelling and unique and expressive. And also just like a really cool place. Like if you read the lore of Tempest Eye, it's just a really neat location in the mortal realms. So yeah, I dig it. So yeah. And you can play KO without feeling dirty because you're playing KO in in a not KO army. So it's great. You can take there all their ridiculous rules and throw those to the side and just be like, now she's go plus one to wound and call it a day. We're done. That's all we need, boys. They're pretty good. Yeah, it's just pretty good. There we go. Okay, cool. My second pick is going to be a bit of a cheating because I'm going to call it a tie. But I'm going to call it a tie between Knights of the empty throne and to spoilers, both of whom I love, both of whom are out of slaves to darkness and or you know, quote unquote wrath of the ever chosen, but they're both slaves to darkness things. I love Knights of the empty throne because I think that Varengard leading a force as a hero is just such a cool idea. I love the idea. You take these six basically hero Knights, right? And then they become this 130 wound hero. It's like amazing. And they have cool artifacts and cool command abilities and stuff like that your old grasping plate for the six inch pylons obviously pretty popular and cool. But it's just also a really sweet narrative because the Varengard, even though they're sort of the swords of of Archeon, you have to imagine that there's that they also just do their own thing. They don't only hang around with their boss, right? And each of them is a legend, you know, a Titan amongst the forces of chaos. Right. And so when they get together and lead a force, it says something, you know? So and they feel pretty, pretty darn awesome in that sub faction. Like if you want to make Varengard feel like Varengard should feel in that sub faction, they feel pretty strong, right? Like you you feel the the power of that stuff. So I really dig empty throne to spoilers because my other favorite unit out of slaves to darkness beyond what I mentioned so far, which is all the like heavy armor and stuff. So Warriors Knights and Varengard is the demon princes. I think demon princes are just like classically one of the cool elements of chaos and partially that's because the narrative has constructed it as a goal, right? Like the mortal heroes are trying to earn the favor of chaos and become a demon prince or whatever, right? Often not always, but often that because that's your role of a boxcar is right on the on the the eye of the gods table. And to spoilers again, make sure demon prince is really cool between being able to like pitch black terrain and they self heal, you know, much much better than they would in any other case, right? Their aura is real big like they push the you know, because they start is all about pushing out that aura and suddenly making it an 18 inch aura is is really impactful on it's just sort of the game how effective that aura can be, right? The difference between a 12 inch or an 18 inch or is actually massive on the table, right? So those are my two. I love playing both of them. I've played a ton of both of those and what I like about them is neither of them are extremely determinative of your broader faction like your broader inclusions in the list. Sorry, that's what I mean, right? Like you can do the spoiler thing and then actually the meat of the army is marauders if you're a horrible bent cheater and a bad person, right? Or you can do like the spoilers and the meat of the army is a bunch of sweet cast knights in a in a in the ruin battalion if you're awesome and a cool person, right? So like you can go either direction and it's still perfectly valid. So it still has this like great flexibility in army building that still defines the character without setting the entire list. That's why I like it. Okay, actually real quick, could I offer for one more bonus one? I was literally about to say let's do one or two more bonus ones. You don't have to go in full defense. Just knock out some quick wins you think are all so awesome. Chuck, go ahead. Well, this is going to be purely from an area of standpoint. It's why I've chosen it. Iliatha because we have cloning through magical means in the mortal realms. Okay. Teclon El Therian's body to you know, to a T based on what he found and I look at that from a narrative aspect and why I've chosen it. So if I ever wish ever wish to reinvent Tehrathie, she can be cloned to create a character and have them be changed. They can be cloned now. There you go. Techless. What have you done? You've opened Pandora's box here. It's a narrative Pandora's box that like I don't think anyone has really started to begun to realize yet especially the GW lore writers like there's a lot that can happen and it could take things off the rails in a bad way. So caution but hey, sure. Cloning things get fun fast. All right. Cool. Any other bonus one you want to throw in at the end? No, I'll I'll I'll leave it there. All right, Matt. What are what are your what are your finest bonus hot takes? Your quick your quick hits. I think I got to give the award to most improved uh the choppas from Iron Jaws. Okay. Okay. Um man, they they went from what are you talking about? I need to go check my worst roles to see what you're talking about to. Oh, hey, yeah, that can actually do something. Sure. Sure. All right. I like that. Any other picks? Um Hermdar. No, I'm sure. Oh no, we can't escape them. Okay. Tom, any hot picks for you at the end here? Hermdar. Yeah, sure. It was inevitable. We can't escape it. Yeah. Um into spoilers. I'm a big fan of the spoilers still in um in uh Slaves Darkest. Okay. Uh for me, it's going to be Thunder Lizards in uh in Seraphon. Uh as I've said many times, don't hate me. I play a fair version of the army. I use zero Bastildons. Tom, were there any Bastildons in my Thunder Lizard list? No. Okay. Thank you. I play regular Stegodons and it's fun to play with Stegodons. I have a bunch of Stegodons old like old fifth edition metal kill a man by by hitting them with the model Stegodons and it's just really fun to play with like Triceratops or whatever they are stomping around uh going roar. So, I definitely dig that uh honorable mention to invaders in Slanesh which I've always repped for a long time. It is a command point engine. Uh people underestimate its power. They look at it. They're like, I don't get it. What's it about? It's about command points and command points are how you win the game. Okay. Uh I have hit double digits in command points in multiple games using that. So, you know, that's why I love it. Uh I don't ever like failing charges or running. I want to make every charge, run exactly how far I want to run, re-roll every one I could ever want to re-roll and fight twice on every model I could ever want to fight twice and the only way I'm going to feed that gluttonous appetite for command points is with invaders. So, uh so be it. Uh I'll take it and then my final quick honorable mention uh also in the the iron jaws has got to be uh over the iron sons. I mentioned earlier why I don't play but I do think it is a great sub faction. Uh it's super fun. Uh it's it's it has a lot of cool abilities and it's certainly very competitive. Um so that would be I think that's that would hit a lot of them. I think we've we've touched a lot of books. We've touched a lot of books over the course of this show. Uh you know, we've mentioned a lot throughout here of other things I like. Like we mentioned Blood Gulet which I think is very which is cool. You know, we mentioned Boulder Head, these kind of stuff in the Ogre book, which is obviously solid. Um we talked about you know, Beast of Chaos last week and I do stand behind like Gavspawn. It's the losingest thing according to uh the Listbot by the way. Gavspawn is like the worst but it's the most taken. It's like the most taken and the worst performing. It's completely flipped basically. Uh but I think Gavspawn is just cool. I love what it is. Caspawn are sweet and taking a bunch of Caspawn that give your people extra attacks is really cool. Again, expressing a really weird way to play that army and and a narrative thing that that for the Beast of Chaos, spawn is not a punishment. It's a it's a goal. It is their demon friends, right? So, I think stuff like that is awesome. What did we miss? What battalions didn't we we didn't we say? I'm sure you've got your favorites. Drop in the comments, defend your answer, tell us why you loved it. Chuck, Matt, thanks so much guys. It was so much fun having you on the show. Yeah, thanks for having us. Thanks for having us on. It's always fun. Iron Bark. There you go. All right. Uh I was wondering if anybody was going to mention a Silvaneth thing the whole day. We almost got we were this close to not even mentioning the name exist. Oh, no is the answer. All right. At any rate, give it a like. Uh if you're if you're still watching, we appreciate it. Like how liking it helps other people find the show. It's so easy. It's moving your mouse from here to here or just tapping your finger on if you're watching it on a mobile device. It's that simple folks. Give it a like. We really appreciate it. Hit subscribe if you haven't already. Uh but as always, thank you so much for watching and as always, we'll see you next Wednesday.