 Hello everybody, if it's Wednesday, it's Warhammer and that must mean it's time for another episode of Warhammer Weekly. Joining me, as always, it's Tom. What's up, buddy? How you doing? Hello friends. Tonight, we are going to be fixing them gits. Gits. I can't do it as good as Hey-Woo does, but I'll do my best. Yes. At any rate, we're gonna be talking about Gloomspite and how we'd fix them, assumingly they have a book coming sometime. So... Sometime. I'm hoping that we're... I'm hoping, Tom, that with this show we're gonna get in on the curve. Like, maybe it, maybe that book is being discussed right now and we can kind of sneak in there and get them to make some changes. That's or how they're thinking about it. That's my, that's my hope. We'll catch them, right? Thank you. You are way too ambitious. Look, we're gonna get them right in the sweet spot. Hey, how you doing? Various GW designers and playtesters. The show's for you. All right, as well as all the Gits fans. But of course first. No, it's just gonna make the Gits fans sad. Well, I mean, yeah, a little. Here we go. Rumor engine. Yeah, start us off. Yeah, rumor engine. We got some news. Who doesn't like the horn? So it's a, it's a BoC thing because it looks like a tiny version of the big horn. It's obviously tiny, like literally looks like the endless spell horn. Yeah, the dirge horn or whatever. Yep. So are we sure it's BoC? I mean, it looks exactly like the BoC endless spell. So I'm going to say that that's a reasonable assumption. OK. And then the question becomes, so if it is, but it's clearly tiny because you can see that it's tied to a thing with a rope and you can see the paint line across it. So we are like way zoomed in here. OK, so what is this thing? Well, it's not a terrain piece. OK. I mean, you say that, but it easily could be. I understand that. So I'm going to go with it's part I'm going to be ambitious here. Sure. It's part of the Beastman relaunch. OK, OK. I'm excited. And I think that this is going to be part of the diorama base of a new like grouping like a herd of heroes. So, you know, like it's the war herd, right? Yeah, sure. You're going to have a little like gaggle of like, like. So in other words, like maybe this is what's just a morgore or whatever. Like he and he's coming back Catacross style, something like that. Right, exactly. Like you'll actually have the other beasts around him, like a representative of each of the factions on the base or something. Right. And you'll have like a herd. OK, OK. That's an extremely bold call. Isn't it? Isn't it? Boy, that is a that is pointing at the parking lot. I mean, I think this is a I saw some people say Tuskourch area, like a redone Tuskourch area, which could be that it certainly looks like it could be the sort of binding and cross hatching of something like that. So I think that's a very reasonable call. That's an extremely old kit and it would make sense that, you know, when they relaunch B.O.C. whenever that happens that like we get a new hero and instead of crossboos, you know, you get like the chariot, right? Is something like that, you know, clearly addressing a couple of kids. I mean, this is what I'll say. There's been a lot of like chatter of there's there is of B.O.C. being rolled into slaves. Like I like that rumor popped up a long time ago, right? Yeah. Yeah. And then we like I keep hearing it and it doesn't seem like it's same sources. OK. So I don't believe that rumor because if they had to do that, they would end up axing like a huge part of slaves. Yes, right. And then they would happen. Yes. And they would end up axing a huge part of beast just to get all that into one book, because both of them are expansive armies. Agreed. It's never going to happen. Yes, I just I can't imagine. I can't imagine that happening. And so I think like a reinvention is what has to happen. OK. Yeah, I mean, I'm not worried about that. I always thought that was nonsense. B.O.C. has its own long legacy and there's a lot of big fans of BC chaos there in the studio. So I just, you know, this is a legacy army that they know has some strong support behind it. So I see two options. One, it is, in fact, just quite simply exactly what it seems like on the tin, which is a relaunched test for chariot. The other option is it is a new. Underworld, underworld's yeah, it's it's underworld's part two. Yeah, I mean, it just is. Look, we haven't had a second underworld's thing yet. Yeah. Right. For them. Well, well, what I'll say is this, the one we have is all. Well, hold on. I'm getting there. Let me explain. The one we have is like beasts. And it's gore stuff, right? Grashnacks or whatever it's all gore stuff. Yeah. Yeah. That means that like you could have some version with a minotaur in it, right, a bull gore. Right. And this could be like part of his little shoulder pad situation. Right. Right. You could just be tied on his shoulder. I mean, you could also have a like a dragon ogre with some small other things. Yeah, sure. Sure. That's what I'm saying. Like you could it could be like the the there's more two beasts than just gore stuff. And so this would be a way to like your your second with the second underworld's warband. They often explore the other components that they didn't before. I.E. with the first work lands, we got our boys. And the second time around, we got the roots, right. And this would be the same thing. Yeah. Yep. I mean, I could see it. Or it's another giant kit. Okay. Okay. I like where you're going. All right. So it's a relaunch of the giant book. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. And they do a second kit of megas. Okay. With some named ones. And this is the loot on that giant. Okay. All right. How about that bold call? That's these are all fair. All right. So fun stuff. We'll see, I guess time will tell. Maybe, in fact, time will tell next week because that's our second piece of news. Well, yeah. And it's interesting. So we have the war, the digital Warhammer fest. And do you have the silhouette? Can you pull the silhouette out? I don't have the silhouette. I just have the out of the thing. It's the because funky demon guy with all the different components. Well, it made me think about like a Jabberwocky. Sure. I mean, it has probably the horn from the rumor engine. Like the longest oldest unspoiled engines is like some little horn that's coming down. And it looks exactly like what that silhouette seems to be holding in his in his hands. Yeah, which we thought was like a chaos night resculpt. That's what you would call. Yeah, it's what it felt like, right? I mean, it looks like the same horn. But I guess they're just expanding that out to just like chaos horn. But yeah, I mean, well, you know, what are we going to see at fest? Well, from the parade of flags, the only thing I think we're going to see next. The only thing I shouldn't say is we will see more for AOS if they're dedicating a day to it, they're not going to give us just one reveal, right? Right. And clearly they can't sneak war cry stuff in on the AOS day to pad it out because that has its own day on Friday, right? Right. Well, that that tells me we're probably going to get both armies for whatever summer. Yeah. Yeah. And obviously whatever models happen to be there. Now, obviously we have Sylvan F icons here on the flags. Like there's two different Sylvan F icons. We're so great. Okay, cool. So Sylvan F confirmed as far as I'm concerned, they're they're the order summer book, which is fine by the by like that's I'm totally okay with that. They're probably the order faction that needs the most right now. So that's valid. That's a perfectly good book. I am disappointed by the general lack of of horned rat imagery. It's in this place. You have to like look in the margins of all the flags and you'll see little rats hiding. That's like that's because they're sneaky, you know, like they're not they're not going to be bold and, you know, it's the sneaky rats. It's a good point. It's a good point. Okay. So Yeah, I think the big thing is going to be a horse heresy though. Like that's the big, yeah, like that's the big push. That's the big, yeah, which is fine. It's fine. Now we'll see what ends up with Sylvan F. Will Sylvan F get more than a single hero? Time will tell. Will the other book be Skaven? I don't know. Will we be doing a live show on Thursday? No. No, we will not. Uh, highly, highly, highly unlikely because I will be in the UK for this whole event specifically for the horse heresy thing. So I'll be at weird Warhammer HQ next week during all of these days. And so that's going to make doing a show after that problematic since I won't realistically be near my computer probably. Well, I mean, you know, I'm a text away. I understand. Well, we'll see. We'll see what happens if it's if it's late at night. Maybe they maybe they bring you on the real live stream and do a reaction. Yeah, absolutely. Here's what we take over this roll it out. Just put it in my info. Yeah, broadcast from their setup. Yeah, that'd be great. Um, but anyways, uh, yeah, I look forward to seeing what what's in store. Um, I certainly look forward to seeing stuff for Sylvan F. So there you go. Good. And I better see some scaven stuff. That's all I'm saying. I better see it. Show me them rats. So that that means you may get to see them in person. I mean, I doubt it, but we'll see. That's going to depend on whether or not I go like full clan Eschen start sneaking through the vents and stuff. Yeah. Like dropping down out of the ceiling, pulling a mission impossible. Yeah, we'll see. Oh, or yeah. And that's the other flip. Like this is it just becomes the Tyler and Tom show next week. Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Yes. With that, that would require me to give both of one of you access to all the stuff that makes this show run, which seems unlikely. Oh, really? All right. So, uh, what's next on her news? Um, let me pull it up. I had it up just a minute ago. Uh, doc previews, like coming out of nowhere, coming, coming swinging. We got a bunch of doc previews with a bunch of changes to the abilities that aren't surprising at all. No, I mean, the rights to all the re-rolls exactly how I expected it to be all the re-rolls became bonuses. Right. Just down the line. Yeah, like I assume there are, uh, a bunch of other things beside that because so far we're still at this could have been FAQ territory. Yeah, it's interesting. It makes me wonder what's going to happen to the witchbrew because witchbrew inherently is like it was re-roll wounds. And so naturally that would go to plus one wound like it was fire slayers and everybody else, but they already get that on the table. So like, is it just going to literally be redundancy? Um, because if it's not reliable, then like that redundancy, I don't know. I just could be a completely new effect. I mean, it could still be battle shock immunity. Of course. That's true. That's true. I would just like that side to stay and it's still valuable. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, it'll be interesting. Uh, I mean, Marathi and the Bo Snakes, um, that band that I hear their tour is over. Probably one can only hope that that summer tour has come to a close. Uh, yeah. So I mean, that probably says book releases are eminent since we're starting up the preview hype machine. Uh, the preview hype machine is usually a good indicator of this. These books are coming pre-orders. Yeah. Yeah. Like they couldn't have gotten it any earlier. So like I'm taking night haunt to vault vault wars in like two weeks. Yeah, three weeks and I'm going to be on the old book. Because of cutoff deadlines. But I'm going to be using the news, but I have to use the new scrolls. Sure. From arena of shades and like they couldn't have just pushed it up like a month. How about just a couple of weeks? It's all the same. We'll see. I mean, it's a look. This is that. This is the the unfortunate of the, you know, the world of timing of releases. So it'll be the last, the last tarot ghost. Yeah, you'll get a final last hurrah and probably be sad because you'll probably want your new rules. Although interestingly, as an aside, chain gas now give plus one to hit. But the old right Norse court condemns still give reroll all hits. Yeah, sure. CW said, where's my night haunt night machine article? I assume coming tomorrow would be my answer. Like they usually tend to alternate days on these. So either tomorrow or Friday is probably when you're going to see it, whatever the first night on one is. Okay. Yeah, but something else happened today. It did. That's right. So Tom today, we got, we got our FAQs for IDK and we got our IDQs, sorry, our FAQs for IDK and fire slayers. There we go. That's never have I been not as surprised. Well, let's talk it through here. So was there it sounds like there was nothing in there that surprised you, which is a fair answer by by the by. Okay. Cool beans. No, I mean, yeah, go ahead. Okay, let's talk about the fire slayer changes because these are pretty simple. Yeah. So can you feed multiple auric flame keepers off a single fire slayer death? Yes. Cool. I mean, we all assumed as such. There was no reason to assume otherwise. So right, it's just a confirming of how we all thought it worked. And then the battle Smith was fixed. Yay. So he can only affect fire slayers units. Probably should have been. Do it all do it in. Yeah, but it was a mess. But it's like, I understand the fierce energy. Like I get it. And so it's just safer to, you know, keep everything all the painting within the lines, which I don't know. I'm happier with it being fire slayers is my honest answer than do it in because I'm I'm nervous about what that would have meant for like regenerating rallying 30 packs of of iron rakes. I mean, maybe that would have been the immediate move. Again, maybe. Maybe, but it just means that they're immune to shooting, but it doesn't change. Like if they get in melee, like they still can't rally if they're in combat. So like that would have that would not have been as significant to me like they can't fight their way out of those out of those fights. And there's not a lot else that would have actually like been significant. There's nothing in KO or that would have been meaningful. So I like it would have just been interesting to me. It's unfortunate that they went that route, but I totally understand why. Yeah, I think it's a safer route. I'm happier with it. It's probably the right answer in the end. Yeah. Okay. We also had the IDK items. Yes, there were also some core book changes. We'll get to those. Don't worry. So, okay, the Yes, the answer of the Seraphon changes were the most important. If you're a path to glory player, you didn't know how to how to do that. That's that's what's there. So IDK with tsunami of terror. Can I affect the same unit multiple times? So tsunami of terror is the aspect of the C spell that basically Rips off three units. Yeah. Well, D three units. Yes. Yeah, basically choose off one of their save increases your rent by one herb you want to think about it. And you know, we had talked about it of like you can machine gun a unit into the ground to basically unarmor them. Yep. And they're like, yep. And and you know, as we were talking about it, we were like, well, we're not sure. We're not sure this will stick. Will they get to do this answer? Yes, you can. In fact, with that aspect of the C just machine gun on a single unit and be like, if you roll that three on the D three, make three to save or it's the same reason why it's the same reason why Lumenath can take a unit of wardens or whatever and throw them 18 inches up the field. Sure. They're like, here, choke on this. Right. Like, yeah. Yep. So, uh, so cool. Okay. Uh, what else was in the IDK when? Oh, um, of course, the Achillean King answer. Uh, we just, we just, this is the way it should have come down. I'm glad it did. It's not what it says in the text, but hey, cool. Good. I'm glad these things work like this. Yeah. Not complaining about it. But no, you can only ever activate like the Lord of Tides ability, uh, once regardless of the number of Achillean Kings. So which let's be honest, do they really need that many for strike combat basis? No, cause three is already too many. Right. Right. Right. So, so that's fine. I'm glad we just stopped at three. I'm okay with that. It's fine for the whole army. It's fine. The, there was a clarification on what happens if you use the, the thing that you set up another shipwreck. Yes. You have to do this. Do it in the same way, blah, blah, blah. Um, Dom Hain got better somehow. Somehow. Somehow this is true. Somehow Dom Hain got better because Dom Hain already lets you take your Nomarty charge, charge, fight, kill, charge, fight, kill, right. That's already happening every year all the time. And that was if you went first in the round. If you go second instead, what you got is the whole like, um, you can, you can redeploy three units. Right. Well, then the, then that, the problem with every time they write silly things like that is they never bothered to answer the question of wait, do all three units have to be in range of an enemy at the same time? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so they could have answered it with just, yes, all three units have to be in range when you decide to answer this, that making it sort of a still, still making it a single response, but instead, nope, that's not how it changed. Dom Hain just gets to redeploy three times in the enemy movement phase, just whenever they want. So they can do it and then later on more people move and then they can do it and then they can do it. So, hey, fantastic. Just keep redeploying. Um, way better. Awesome. Awesome. Way better. Obviously you still can't issue it to the same unit twice. Sure. Because no part of the rule embrace the multiple receiving of a command ability, but you can issue the order three times. So, yeah. So that's cool. I guess that's what I would say and then they cleaned up some key wording like both the both the aspects of the sea and storm became totems totems and the people appropriate people got the deep mare and then Brotan Brotan got even stronger. You thought low tan was just good. No, he's great because they changed his ability to we can cheat phases. Yes. If this unit's on the battlefield at the start of your hero phase, you can pick one ritual from the instrument rituals table and one friendly identity. Can you know holy within 12 until your next hero phase the unit you picked is affected by that ritual in addition to any others. It is affected by even if the tides of death ability required for that ritual does not apply. Meaning you can break out of sequence because normally he could just sort of grants it. Right, right, but it had to be like the ritual you had to match the sequence. It had to match the way we sort of read for we all we all interpreted it. I should say was that you still had to match the current tides round. He was like mocked for as one of the worst right like he was a punchline. Yeah, he was a punchline. He was he was the punchline no longer. This is true. This is absolutely true. He's he's back on top now. And then there were a few core rules updates as well. Specifically to the most relevant one I think we should talk about is a very funny one that if you use the at the double command to set your run at six effective what happens to other things that affect your run. And it said those are ignored. The answer was all other effects are ignored. So what that like bonuses to run and also penalties and indeed right. So like the corn demon prince that has run in charges or scaven abilities that have run in charges or whatever there's a million abilities that have runs right or something like that or that or that are minus to run or plus to run or whatever. All of those if they just don't apply now you just run whatever you run. So it's your move plus six and you you punch through all of those abilities when you at the double and you just ignore all of those other negatives and positives which is interesting. I'm not sure that's what they intended to happen there. Well it's a good day to be a doc player unless that changes. Sure. Who is who assuming they sell us a bunch of run and charge built in. Yeah. Because now you can just fly through all of that stuff and move right up to them. Yeah. Um because you've got built in plus one to run at turn one and built in plus one to charge on turn two baby. So and and many of your your units have built in run in charge. So there you go. They seem like a good firm answer to that demon prince indeed. Go carve that dude up. That's for sure. Uh so. Okay. Like I guess I I would say. My answer would be fine. I like it doesn't break the game or anything. It's not the biggest deal. Sure. Sure. But I my my question would be um is that what you meant to happen? Like that doesn't feel like I just realized I had this trunk too much. Um or too big rather. Um is that really what you meant to happen? It feels like probably not but I guess we'll see. Consequences. Uh yes they would also ignore the plus one. Yeah that's correct. OPTT would route. Yes they would ignore the plus one but they would still just punch through it. Right. Um they would still be able to run in charge later because that's not affecting the run. That's affecting the charge. That's the point. My point was more. You can run them straight up to three inches away and then charge and then charge and you'll still get your plus one to charge. Um yeah. Okay. Well so there you go. That's the FAQ. That's I think everything of sort of value. Um but alright. Cool. Good stuff. Uh the only answer I think that truly surprised me was the um was the fact that you could machine no the fact that you can machine gun the well the the run thing was just like unasked for I don't know where that came from. No like the machine gun debuff that why is that surprising they made the exact same ruling on the Sentinel ability which allows you to move 18 inches across the table. If that's okay I really thought they were going to say oops we forgot the word different. Like again we have like Har Quran which like you know the buff strips all saves right on the target that you cast this is you know like on a d3 you know a third chance that it does the same functionally for most units like a longer range on a much stronger spell casting body. I understand like a soup on a stone horn body but we are talking about Elvin armies. I understand I'm just saying within your your example of the acid Iker out of out of Har Quran or anvil guard that strips armor saves right right which is great. Don't get me wrong it's good spell is like an eight inch range that a sorceress or somebody like that is going to cast right. Sure sure as opposed to a flying stone horn with rerollable casts that teleports the teleports. Yeah so it's a thing you know at any rate you know whatever tomato tomato tomato tomato tomato. All right so news done as we go to pick of the week. Hey don't forget to hit that like button if you're excited about whatever anything we talked about I don't know stuff if you're excited about anything in life hit the like button which just we can just get that spill over happiness. I'm good with it. All right. Let's talk about pick of the week Tom. What's your pick of the week. My pick of the week. We had have we picked coaches interview with Emma on Nerval. Yes we do that last week. Yes. I wasn't on the show last week so I'm going to pick that you can say it again. It's okay. It was a good catch it Emma did a wonderful interview with coach on Nerval and how she played her list. I would encourage you to check it out. Nice I my pick of the week is pretty simple. So Andy Wardle from called to paint did a wonderful look back and sort of breakdown of his Golden Demon entries and he was very successful at Golden Demon. He's a great painter great artist and a great painter for Golden Demon like he his style is is particularly well suited to Golden Demon and he did he certainly reaped the benefits of that and he kind of walks through all of his entries and stories behind him and it was really revealing and just interesting him sort of sharing the the vision that he had for it as he went through the projects because he kind of shares some whips and stuff like that. So check out that that video. It's a really nice retrospective on his entries and the journey he went through with them and everything like that and I really enjoyed it and you know I I don't want to spoil it but there's a there's truly a heartbreaking moment that happens in the in the video where like as he's going through the whips and I felt it as somebody who's worked on competition pieces and know what that is. So yeah it's it's worth a watch and shows that even the best artists don't always feel like they get it right every time. Okay cool. Let's do some hobby time man. Tom what are you working on man what's on your desk what do you want to share with everybody? I'm still doing corn. I slowed up a little bit and so now I'm doing I'm working on an aspiring deathbringer. I've been working on leather so I'm getting close. We're almost there we're almost there. So not there yet but I want this commission done. I'm ready for that. Sure and then I have a couple of ghosts to paint. I was I was thinking about taking fire slayers to vault wars but I decided to go hard mode and I was like you know what I'm doing ghosts all the way. Right. Exactly. So I'm going to do my last hurrah with them. I need to paint it but they're doing there's the option of a multivariant of the multi-list format. So I'm going to take I'm already my main list is going to be a variant of what I took to adapt to con. I'm going to trim it a little bit because of obviously my some of my worst goals changed and that means that like I need to move some numbers around and then I'm going to take a variant of that list as as anti giant tech like in the event that I in this very narrow match up you know I'll change it up but in general I'm going to just stick with the other one so. No it's reasonable yeah so I'm going to paint two models and be ready to take that army so. I mean your anti giant tech could also turn into anti-nergal tech both both force a sort of DPS check on you. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. For myself guess what still working on this lady right here because that's what it takes to go full skink mode as we've talked about full skink mode my my tempting to paint like Gavin here let me tell you what takes a long time it's just you just keep working I worked on like one butt muscle on her pants for I don't know three hours not her pants one cheek okay I was just like kept going back and forth I just wasn't happy I'm using that's what full skink mode requires but it's getting there still probably many more hours to go but but I'm happy with it but sitting in the wings waiting to drop look at this bow bow yeah this is the Skaven guys from I see it Nether maze yeah so they're next up on my on my thing a little bit jealous these ladies bad boys put them together they are wackadoo to put together as many new models are but they're beautiful when they go together they are easy to build like they're wacky I mean as far as like the way that the pieces fit together you know it's one of those kids where it's like an arm and part of a body and things just kind of magically fit together but it all works and it actually hides all the lines and joins really well like they're extremely well-designed kit they just when you when you first start working on you like what what it's wait what piece is this how is this going here but they go together easy enough and yeah they're great I love their scenic bases of the sewers I think they're just really cool so I'm very excited about those guys yeah I kind of want to do those like a super high standard and make them a unit entry for Golden Demon because I don't think there's going to be another unit that inspires me it's going to come out between now and ever that will that will that I think would be cooler so yeah there we go okay so that's my hobby time I like what I found I'm doing with her is I'll probably get to a point here soon and then set her down into the side like cover up so she doesn't get dusty take some good photos of her and then leave her for a week and then come back and spend another 20 hours and then repeat and just repeat repeat repeat because that way I don't burn myself out hard on just one model like I've got the time why not work in a slightly different way so anyways just my own personal experiences if people are trying to hit like a real high quality I think that's a nice way to go so you don't burn yourself out alright Tom my dog are you ready to talk about kids yeah yeah clearly what's gonna have to be my next army after night haunt like I've ridden those bottom waves the waiting pool right of the ocean there and so I'm just gonna jump right into get after I get done with night haunt well Tom apparently I only play broken armies oryx sons slanash I just go from one stormcast dragons it's all I do I mean I'm gonna go back to like if if Skaven is the name of the game in summer I think we all know what I'm going back to I mean that's gonna be an odd issue which you'll mean I'll have to pay new Skaven but okay so what I mean I mean I'll say this if they release a nice rat get like I will do an all rat army like not not Skaven let's be very clear like an all-molder rat army just giant rats everywhere just giant rats all of them giant rat carpet yeah okay yeah at any rate so gets fixing Spite gets yes I wanted to start with the problem summary so when I when I do my my business cases and things for work we always start with a problem statement yep and this is the most troubled army of it's so bad like over the weekend I think Ben Johnson took gets okay because he was running like I saw on his feet he was running trolls okay sure like I don't know if it was crying I just saw like he had some trolls and they were wonderfully painted and he just made the comment about boy these things are swinging it was just kind of it was like this flip it like am I shocked surprise statement I'll have to see if I can find on Twitter it's amazing and I was like boy if if that doesn't summarize it from the horse's mouth yeah sure right sure like yeah it's a it's a rough army right now yeah and I mean look I'm talking about what we're looking at here is I'm gonna specifically address the book as the book and the army as the army not gets plus crag nose or trolls plus crag nose not with incarnates mixed in you know whatever like I'm aware that those things exist but if those tools are powerful they can be they can still be powerful in other armies hands like other armies can make better use of that that piece yeah okay and so so we need to make sure the book itself works in and of itself okay the exact quote was great day at the warhammer world team event this is an April 23rd troggs are so much fun but boy do you need a little luck with them yeah sure yeah yep yep alright so gets have suffered since their initial release they've never been strong this is also famously Tom and I is greatest misprediction because we thought that boy and grot bounders were gonna be a lot more powerful than they were then yeah no you're right you're right they did not they did not move the needle at all yeah and AOS 3 hasn't helped them one bit it's only further week into their situation so so here's my list of problems with this army Tom tell me if you think this is correct yeah horde slash mobility this isn't a friendly meta to hordes and this army loves hordes in addition the reinforcement limits hurts this army in addition mobility is a challenge outside of like squigs in maws of jork okay okay like you've just you you bump up against that for reinforcement list real easy in some lists no so let me just say I agree with the reinforcement evaluation totally agree with that is like this army is asking to be mass bodies and like that's just not how the game works right now and so you are really handicapped because it is a low quality unit for all the goblin sure and so you just need bodies and you can't actually do that so you can never actually hit critical mass to be effective with most of those units and then on mobility I don't know if I agree on the mobility evaluation because you can like there's a lot of high mobility units there's a lot of there's reliable teleporting outside of what whoa whoa reliable teleporting no there is a teleport it is a spell no spell is reliable not in a world like of especially with their spellcasters they do not have a spellcasters I understand that but the reality is that like people have been having a lot of luck running with a wizard shaman with the re as a general with the re-rollable cast they have a teleport spell right that does one thing mobility problem and yes they have and they have and they have a deep striker they have like they can have a are you counting the skitter strand arachnarok is their deep striker yes it is a deep striker I okay sure I'm not saying it's a good one but I'm saying they have one good yeah sure the rules exist like fine like they have some mobility that's what like they are not war they're not fire slayers they're not running around on a four-inch move is the entire army that's just not what this army is or that's fine it's like okay yeah you're right most the armies on a five-inch move there we go we're good you go I mean like that's why I said outside of squigs because yes squigs and mausage or like outside is outside of that they're fairly bad but inside of mausage or you can end up with like 3d6 reroll plus certain bonuses sure okay sure like sure that ends up usually being quite a decent move value yeah right but it can also not be but it can also not be that's the problem even their good move is still swinging random right right right I agree with that yep but at least it's not 2d6 just that's it like it is right on the sort of scroll right right like that's the problem with base 2d6 movement and why I said it's got to be outside of my like outside of mausage or because you have to layer on all those bonuses like just having flat like random movement is almost always a killer unless it's real big I don't mind it on the doom wheel because the doom wheels base random movement is 4d6 right right you're gonna average at least ten inches yeah I mean like exactly right yeah so but the fact that you've got to go into maus you've got to you know get to get to 3d6 base use other other stuff other sort of command functions to get them up there with those bonuses and re-rolls and whatnot there's there's just a lot of effort you're putting into it and even then I'm not sure what you're delivering okay like right and I don't disagree with like which leads to my next item your best your best delivery most of the time what I've seen is like large blocks of buffed up twig herd sure the least interesting thing right but like that's you know thus like and when you hit back they explode and you also can toss mortals to you know like that's also possibility yeah quick nose build yeah this quick nose build so in general it's lackluster I don't disagree with that agreed damage is the next one that's a problem like the current meta thrives on damage whether it's completing battle tactics there's a lot of high dps things a lot of hammers armies often have three four hammers in their list easily yeah right yep and there are dps check armies we already mentioned them sons and nergal and this army just has problems causing damage they do not have a ton of rend they do not have a ton of mortal wounds they do not do a lot of damage based on the scroll you know like there are a couple spots here they do have lots of mortal wounds they do okay but it's all gated on weird conditions sure that's like because like like let's tick down the boxes and this is what's so fascinating about this army is that there are like so many mortal wounds in this army everything from your you know like the squigs that we just talked about right we are bounders mortalling on charges to the normal hoppers that are gonna mortal by passing over sure to the one foot hero giving mortals to all your spears on six is to wound again weird triggers and that's what I'm talking about you have you throw mortals in the stone troll list sure you there's a bunch of weird mortal options like obviously spider bites and stuff all the spider bites mortal on sex is dead so there are tons of mortals I still I still disagree with that statement tons is not the right word you look at like dragons is a ton of mortals like this is a lot of hurt there are a ton of options for mortals there are lots of little mortal wounds that you have options for but none of them are moving the world you know there's no like there's no croak just going like bling bling bling bling here there's no techno there's no you know we are far from the day of the the nuclear bomb and let's spell yeah I mean this isn't right like this isn't a single unit of sentinels will put out more mortals in two turns then yet an army built out of gifts it will do the whole game yep yep and they'll do it at better range more accurately etc etc right yep okay so like and yes there are a couple spots of like decent rend on some of the trog's but for the most part it's not a rend army it's not a mortal wound army like you wouldn't say that's their thing right no no and that's what I'm saying like it's just sprinkled everywhere right but it's on weird conditionals and none of it's gated and hard to get at it's unreliable yes I mean an unreliable is the the the name of the game when it comes to gets right which leads to the next point which is keyword bingo like yeah you know I thought about this a lot as I was thinking about the the army and how and fixing it as I was how it was supposed to play yeah yeah this feels like it's supposed to be the Johnny army of destruction right yeah so Johnny is your your combo your synergy your clever army your Trixie army right where there you go everybody the dogs are with me tonight so hit like for dogs the and they're being quiet because my wife's not here for the one to bark at so the they're supposed to be the one that's cunning but brutal right that's the right right that's the that's the thing you would expect right orcs are that just straight up brutality where you can just smash your way in there like Timmy style you can yolo and and go I did that though the weekend I played a game against Lumineth I ran some Kragnos iron jaws and we yoloed hard and then there was no more elves so that's what happened there um so but that doesn't feel like how this army should play it should be synergistic clever you've got to use the pieces and parts you've got right to make them punch above their weight and so on and so forth and that's just not the book they got written you know all sorts of things are like really weirdly gated locked off this can't buff that even though it would make obvious sense and so on and so forth right um Levi said that seems to have shifted to cruel boys yeah I mean you're not wrong cruel boys are encroaching on their space or to a degree was another bite at that apple yeah it was but I've actually got a way we can give this book its own personality I'll talk about that as we go into solutions I think I have an idea here on how to make this thematically distinct from cruel boys drugs no I mean sure okay that sure let people huff some weird mushrooms and stuff yeah that's cool but but that's not that's not a theme that's a ephemera okay um and then finally defense like the army can generate a decent wound count but otherwise lacks any traditional defense mechanisms and is easily just lifted off the table in the high damage meta it is a low value like low value wounds yeah all your wounds are low value right yes I mean so much of your army in the current meta of like high rend high damage your units just its pick up your toys mate yeah that's it um yeah so and there's just not a lot of units that they have that can can do that like trolls are maybe supposed to be that like what I'll say with this um trolls I think are an interesting option in the meta like the stone trolls particularly are an interesting option in the world where we have rally now because they will often fight themselves out of combat and then have the option of rallying very high value wounds back onto the table now I mean I think that's why people most of what people play right now like the trolls are the current elite world because trolls plus cragnos something like that or the squagnose list we've seen a few times right are uh are kind of what people have defaulted to that's that's that's sort of the play if you're going to take a run at this at all right right yeah it's like your best of a bad a bunch of bad options right but again the reason why that works for trolls is that there's actually some value in defense there yeah sure it's one of the few units that can actually take up a punch legitimate punch yeah yeah sure yeah and then I've got my fun fact at the bottom fun fact the chaos dread hold has had the same number of battle tomes as gloom spike gets you love that factoid I love that you have trotted that out so many times to me because it makes me laugh so as you've pointed out technically if you want to get real real persnickety about it the chaos dread hold actually has more battle tomes than gets because the chaos dread hold does show up in a second book later the minion of chaos which is called chaos dread hold which this book is right but it's like it's like yes but then we'd also have to count like the broken realms book that had all the stuff and so there you go so yes they're equal no matter how you cut it pedantic or not let's do some quick stats stats as always our courtesy of Ziggy Warhammer Rob and the TSN Stats Center thank you gentlemen for all your amazing work it's not hard to find the gloom spike gets on these charts by the way as I was looking through all this isn't going to be a huge stats breakdown because I want to focus on the fixing but it wasn't hard to find gloom spike on any of these power BI charts I just looked at the bottom right on all of them on all of them it is shocking if they weren't the very bottom army on almost every chart it was because somebody was tied with them and by some rounding they ended up in second place like they would both be the bottom and like numerically on the screen to plate displayed exactly the same no difference between the two so they could have flip-flopped them right there's probably just like a slight rounding deeper in the numbers that that put them up or alphanumeric or alphabetically they were before that if that's how it's sorting the only exception was when you go the most recent like 3.1 night haunt cut drops to the bottom but they're still in like the top three or bottom three or four yeah yeah this is since all of 3.0 yeah that's what these stats are okay so 33% win rate not great not great no this is I think it depends on whether you cut it 3031 or 32 I'm going for maximum data here since there was no like there's been no actual change to gloomspite that would have mattered throughout all 3.0 so we're just taking the holistic data right so 33% over all of 3.0 so then since launch last summer ouch like they are lower by a margin like five points off of their next competitor that's a that's an oof that's you know you know so okay okay so so they don't win games let's so that's fine okay let's talk about going there positive win rate potential so your positive win rate potential is your is the percentage of armies that have gone three two or better right so it's kind of a an analysis of going three two or better how many of all the lists that have played have ended up with a final record of three two four one or five oh that's basically what this is looking at yep the average here being 49% gloomspite gets again coming in right at the bottom of the chart easy to find 21% to one wow that means roughly 80% of the gloomspite gets armies that are that have been played in tournaments since the launch of third edition have gone to two one one and four or 015 80% yeah 80% that's a lot yeah four guys a coach a coach said he went three and oh last month with kids that didn't count three and oh that's not that's not a two day was that that's nothing it's nothing GT that's not in this case we all what we all know that that's not in this that's not an average coach well will well done wait way to break the met but uh no i mean obviously that's it's just it speaks to the the the general toughness of this army right there they're in a rough spot these two stats are here just to reinforce my problem statement of this army is in a rough spot which I think is prema fascia obvious if you've ever played this army or against this army can we fix it behold the power of my photoshop skills I mean it's pretty classy thank you thank you I was particularly proud of Bob himself there I thought that was pretty good that was a pretty good little little change there I came out all right so at any rate yes that's can we fix this this train wreck okay let's let's find out starting principles so do you want to talk just in general like obviously we taught we do our own design shows and stuff like that often but let's just let's take a moment and explain to the audience for those that don't know what are starting principles when you start a design process the starting principles are always the thing you want to begin with because it's going to guide the rest of your design choices the thing people often do when they try to either design games or rules or fix things is jump immediately to the ephemera yeah and and the ephemera is the last step of what you care about in other words they'll say all we need to do is fix this one ability yeah and then everything's finished that's sometimes that may be true but you've got to pass other gates before you get there right and so we're actually not going to talk a lot about like specific war scroll changes or crap like that because I don't care that's what they like there are 10 different war scroll changes you could make that would all satisfy the design principles and be valid and improve the army right right the key is to first lay down your guiding principles you're trying to operate within and then set the structural paradigm with which those ephemera changes need to happen right and each one derives the next what you're doing when you do starting principles think of it like when you're like for those that have been bowling with bumpers yeah sure because what you're doing with the bumpers you're setting up bumpers you're setting up guidelines that will control any of your actual design decisions yep yep it's saying this is the lane you can be in this space yep okay yep so now let's talk about what the starting principles are here okay so starting principle number one is this is supposed to be a Johnny synergistic combo army so we're going to remove the keyword bingo right yeah needs to not be like that I consider that keyword bingo to be a thematic failing of the book okay the art the book is militating against the actual character of the book correct yes exactly right because what you would think you would want is a mixed arms force of a lot of different things interestingly working together in different potential power pairs and synergies and combo options and methods of deployment of your abilities and you occasionally see get glimpses of this so for example the way that the horde units work with the war like the boss right so the because he gives them mortal wounds and then you add the squig stufflers to add a bonus attack and suddenly you you have like a really interesting set of combo beat with those three units right that's how the whole army should be functioning right right but right now you have to choose you end up having to choose a sub faction in order for any synergies to work at all and you have to leave all of the other sub factions out yeah basically if you don't want your squigs to be bad you're in full mausage org and then you got to Jettison other stuff right and that's what it's so it actually has the same problem that that Skaven have in that it was designed around the time yeah when it was designed around the same time was two months to two are one month launch difference right a little more than it was like three months but yeah sure they were close well the one was dropped in February and this dropped in January beginning of January because uh Skaven dropped in January but sure okay no it dropped the same time as flashy records because both were ready for adepticon they made the two-week cutoff yeah yeah okay sure yeah you're right they're very close either way they were very close okay so here comes here comes my controversial point you're ready you're ready for this time yeah this army has always had like a chaotic wild feeling right going back to the earliest warhammer fantasy battles goblins are wild and crazy and sure all those kinds of things yep and I'm gonna mention this on a later slide but I'll bring it up here goblins test the limits of our of top-down design okay unpack that sure so top-down design is when you start with a thing like a concept what is this thing yeah and then you write rules that make it feel like that thing okay so this is really easy if you're doing something like okay I've got a big monster right all right so he's a big monster I'm looking at the model he's got a big some big claws and he's got big slavering jaws and you know stompy feet whatever okay you're like great okay so he's a big monster I'm gonna give him a lot of wounds he looks super tough I'll give him a decent armor save and I'm gonna make his attacks he's gonna have some claw attacks you know some stompy feet attacks he can eat people cuz his mouth is really big right that's top-down design right make the thing feel like the thing you see in front of you that the rules should flow from the the simple concept big scary monster okay now make rules that equal big scary monster right and I've long said that the problem with elves like why are elves in every addition of this game going back 30 years overpowered because they be it from a top-down perspective top-down perspective they're perfection and so they are conceptually designed to be better than everyone else they're better than you and they know it right like that's elves they're faster than everybody they're more graceful than everybody they're more intelligent than everybody they're better Marshall prowess they have better spellcasters we're better at everything maha and then that design on that yeah it just creates well they should have better to hits and better spells and better but all the time the line the problem is goblins are the inverse of that because it's just bad the top-down paradigm of goblins is they're bad they're just bad they're weedy little nothings like right they're not threatening no nope it when they win in the stories if which is rare but when they win in the stories they win through just like sheer stupid numbers overwhelming yep right that's it it's just like to make hard yeah this ridiculous way to bodies and that's not actually how the game plays one because right now and in most times you don't like running a bunch of hordes as an immediately equal victory by just overrunning people bodies to the reinforcement point situation stops that three you can throw a million Ren zero goblins at most of my stormcast units I'll take zero damage and then kill your entire horde yeah no I mean you're exactly right like only zombies get to do that sure yeah zombies are a great example of how you get around that because they have like silly six-inch pylon tricks and mortal wounds and bonus attacks and and because they can run in and chomp and mortal wound their way through they consume everybody and get restocked because you're gonna set up whole units with or flop or with with grades right and and you've also got this problem that you the game itself has some kind of tipping point where you'll just have too many models yeah right so the answer can't be put 300 goblins on the table I mean it would be awesome if it if it was sure but I just doesn't work right right that's not how they want the game to play right now like they they will just the game will collapse in on itself right like a white dwarf star because it's just too many models you know the enemy movement phase and pilots are gonna take 18 million years you just never finish games where'd you get to top of two in three hours great awesome right like the game just has some kind of breaking point on the number of models you can actually utilize okay so I've got an idea Tom you ready I thought about this I am so ready yep let's just let them let's make one of the ways you can play this army is they're just bad they're just bad at all of the normal things that actually win games okay like they're not good at doing a bunch of damage or being maybe highly maybe mobile is the one thing we give them sometimes we'll talk about that in a minute they're not defensive they're not offensive they're not defensive they don't have traditional hammers they don't traditional animals they're bad they're goblins they're weedy little idiots okay yeah but in fact let's let that be their strategy okay like are you talking about my my the tactic that I employed a bullshit go no not necessarily okay okay like because of the way you you win in this game right now yep you actually could make an army that's bad at those fundamentals but still actually very good at winning games because there's a difference between good being good on the tabletop I killing units and we're standing enemy unit attacks and stuff like that yeah and winning games certainly because like if it be as if an objective play is not tied to the standard metrics for example objective play and battle tactics yeah okay yeah so what if we gave them options to screw around with either the core battle tactics or their own battle tactics or make it so basically they could very easily complete battle tactics like that's actually part of their strat now rely on by the way part you go there you go cheat to win cheat to yeah exactly and and now you can redo any battle tactic that you've already done like gloom spite almost by default walks into games getting its five battle tactics in his grand strat okay sure slam dunkathon right they're starting at 13 points okay yeah yep right you could do that you could that would be easy to design yeah and and that would be an advantage them by the way they they're they're shrinking the space to do this by printing stupid by printing stupid battle tactics and grand strats in everybody else's books which they shouldn't have done I repeat this right it should have been like a thing that they reserved for special armies like this that they want to make bad but still have game and that's a way to do it but because we decided to print these dumb things now they're just out in the world making the game actively worse can't wait to see everybody next week so my point is is that like it could be an interesting way one path to victory I'm not implying that that's the only method I'm implying that certain builds could lean into that certainly all right so as I said this army remains Johnny let's break down the barriers right and it ultimately it should be about encouraging clever play and using units well like part of what I am saying is this army will have a higher skill floor than its destruction counterparts yeah yeah I mean like I'm thinking about a like KO is not necessarily a great example but KO has a higher skill floor like you play on a knife edge if you make a mistake you lose like there's just no way around it and you could easily create a destruction army that has a similar skill floor where you have to play smart and if you don't you just don't win yeah sure sure like suns and iron jaws their skill floor is it's not just on the floor it's in the basement you got to dig down you got to use some archaeology to find that skill floor it's so low you can just push forward right and so but I think it can be interesting to have an army within the destruction paradigm that has a that has a higher skill floor and that by the way the flip side of that is it rewards skilled play right what I would actually love to see them be is the IDK of destruction would that be neat right yeah lots of lots of tools spread across the army solutions for most problems yeah and yes autumn I'm not worried nobody nobody nobody gets angry me for criticizing that nobody at GW has ever been mean to me I have a very friendly relationship with everybody I get along with all the everybody at GW they I've always given them honest feedback and I don't think they would expect any less and they're they're generally very open and receptive of it like that like to pull back the curtain for a second and be honest with everybody just to answer that question everybody I've met from the design studio and who works in this game is legitimately wonderful nice amazing hardworking people who are very open to feedback they always have been and they they should be especially like we're lucky we're very lucky that we are shepherded by the the group of people they do and just because some of the choices that are made in the way those things manifest in games isn't always the best doesn't mean that those people are any less for it because every one of them in their hearts wants to make a great game so there you go okay and that's not blowing smoke that's absolutely true and I will continue to criticize vis a vis much of this document okay so uh let's get into there you go yeah generic abilities all right step one it's fixed a bad moon right like this is is this the most ridiculous allegiance ability the actual army mechanic yeah yeah uh like the is this the most ridiculous allegiance ability the fact you mean do not have a having one that may not show up may not show up in turn two and then basically could suddenly rocket its way off the board accidentally and it's like peace out good luck the moon is like its own player and it's like i'm out you're on your own you're on your own today it's like a team's game where your partner is very unreliable right i i i don't know what fix in this context means there could be 10 different ways you could fix it right so we could for example uh weaken some of the abilities or make it more of a choice of the abilities you want on like pick ex abilities from the the table below and they're on think like cruel boys do this right because they can pick their their their dirty tactics and the moon could just be present the whole game like right that's what the bad moon does for your army based on the mad ravings and mushroom ingested prophecies of your particular leader well like so here here's another possibility right sure so imagine a world like everybody's talking about the tides right now and they're comparing it to the i-net tides right you can compare it to like the tides the nirgle table the nirgle wheel i should say and the blood rights table the blood right the easy progress or the easy progression mechanics that are similar so imagine a world where you're always getting some bonuses but it'll spike at random times in the game sure yeah yeah and so the intensity of the bad moon may shift in any given turn yep yeah that's that is the other option right like think of it if you scaled back maybe some of the complexity because the bad moon has a lot of different sort of things it buffs every sub faction differently right it could have more like generic but reasonable types of things that are on all the time yep right and instead what you could be rolling for is like you know is the moon behind the clouds is the moon waxing or waning you could roll for all sorts of different wacky things like that right and you could roll every turn like you could have it be random yeah that's okay especially if all the moon came out from behind the clouds now you get the big bonus right or right it's the full moon yeah yeah you get you get full moon yes right um because again i don't know that you want it predictable like that's part of this right like it's okay if it's random if it's worthwhile when it spikes and that's the question is is it worthwhile when it spikes right now you not only do you have no control over that there's actually no baseline of how it's functioning because of how it's like based in different quadrants of the table itself yep um yeah exactly like you could have so it's always writing on something right there is always a present bonus you can rely on and then you get interesting spikiness throughout the game sure that's another way you could fix it right it could just progress like that's sort of the most boring way to fix it would be it could just progress right it could just becomes another table of start in your quadrant then it moves here then it moves here and then it moves to the lat like turn five it's on the opposite quadrant right right like you could do that so it'd be like one it's in your quadrant two three and four it's the board five it's in the far quadrant like you could write it like that too yep yep again the there but that's my point that's why that's why I say you don't want to focus on the ephemera the point is just it should be doing something of value in all turns of the game that does not feel like a controversial statement sure sure you know nurgle's wheel which is quite random and unpredictable is always it's always doing something is always doing something now some of those some of those options are like eh honestly and some of those are great game breaking if they have a right time yeah exactly but it's also not the only allegiance ability they have that's an allegiance ability writing alongside everybody's got a five up word save and everybody summons every round and summoning right like there's a lot of other stuff going on there okay so sure I mean why can't they get summoning out of the shrine just have more dudes come running out did the first like a yeah destruction summoning army sure having more dudes because I'm not keen to have more summoning armies is my answer I want to see less some no and I get that I get that but like it if there was ever any army they're bringing a hole in the ground already sure sure I mean and if you play if you play gun it was a gun bad was that the was at the dungeon in Warhammer online that was the gun to bad yeah where like you went in and like just you would just it was mass aggro and bodies everywhere and yeah unending goblins sure so real quick pin pinfoldorf says having it that random sounds more like a cast mechanic oh no my friend come on now orcs and goblins are the king of randomness like always have been you're talking about remember animosity animosity the army that used to literally have to roll for every unit basically to see if it punches you exceptions to see if it actually does anything this round and then oftentimes engaged in other random roles when they did do something like these boys oh like this is the orcs and goblins are the destruction owners of randomness and scaven are the chaos owners of randomness that's always been the case and by the way it makes sense okay at any rate um integrate and include sub factions into the form rules duh they're gonna do this the thing to think about here is remember right now we're relying real heavy on mausage orc and the trogoth brood and all of that to do like a lot of work a lot of heavy lifting and all of that is gone because that's just not a sub factions work anymore sub factions are one of right right so like all that has to be tied into the base army correct we're gonna have to move some of this to scrolls to the scrolls themselves yeah we're gonna punch up the scrolls where appropriate right because it's got to move out of there yep uh oh my god assistant ref did i play a squig herder tom did i play a squig herder in warhammer online yeah i had five squig herders in war much to my chagrin all level it's to every i had five squig herders one for every tier so we could so we could scenario every one like i had a 40 you know 30 you get it so i could always play in every tier with a squig herder if i wanted to yeah it's ridiculous i did i played i played a squig herder okay okay so uh at any rate the uh standardized the terrain piece just make that thing have it's all the rules where you're just picking to restore a unit i don't care what army you're in just let you pick units and restore them just do that just pick those things why does it need to be different just you can pick a unit that has some kind of keyword or something or or any off of this list i don't care however you want to format it and you just can do it you can roll and bring them back congratulations there you go that's it also could we maybe have the returning not work in the goofiest way possible where you like return them but it's that sort of the end of the turn but then there they can be within this weird range of enemies and how about we just roll for that when we would expect it to happen and then just bring things back how about that um um how nice would that be it'd be pretty nice and you just like if you're if you're doing if you got some you got a unit of trolls and you need to goblins and you just squigs and you you're rolling just roll for the one that's destroyed like great done okay uh and then i have here add some real allegiance abilities separate from the the bad moon um and arturias i'm i'm hoping not or it's in progress or something we'll see i don't know who knows would it be nice if it was like unending hordes ignore reinforcement requirements exactly right or or double the reinforcement points or whatever i don't care like you can take it a bunch of different ways right i like as it stands i don't think removing the reinforcement points would hurt like would do anything for the army like it would do nothing it wouldn't it wouldn't like pop it wouldn't break the game is it no not in the least but it would sure make lists building with them a lot easier to run the list you want yes yeah yeah so just like increase them remove the cap something they're goblins they're everywhere these yeah or as bryan s said just make it so they rally on a two plus within 12 inches of this shrine sure yeah you could that would be another cool way to go right yeah exactly make the loon shrine rally people really well yeah yep so um and then that's that's my other statement here is cunning plan make them real good at battle tactics and grand strategies and stuff like that right like they've got a cunning plan it seems like they're losing but no no in fact they're gonna they're gonna slap stick their way into a victory yeah exactly they just act like goofballs uh until they uh until they win uh remone says if you give them unlimited reinforcement points other people will complain okay i don't care okay other people complain about everything that's everybody has something special this can be one something special one of them you could do a similar thing hold on one second you could do a similar thing with beasts and uh skaven who are two other armies that would also have the same reinforcement point dilemma and you could just implement all three in different ways yep yep you could do something like this would be the place by the way to put the type of tactics of like getting your own units destroyed sure oh yeah absolutely like like like imagine if they can turn broken ranks take let's say broken ranks right like where it's destroying enemy battle line unit yeah imagine if they had like a cunning plan that said like replace the text of broken ranks with this or anytime it says an enemy unit you can substitute a friendly unit so you can just like run out one of your battle line units get them killed and be like haha or like outrun your friends right yeah and yeah and get a unit destroyed or something like yes like this needs to be where that stuff exists is in this type of army yep so yep i just think stuff like that would be super fun right and and what it would feel very in theme right this is inherently the humor army yes this is some of the lightest like most funny stuff that should be in there like the world i know everybody loves like it's so dark oh my god it's so dark have you seen their hats yeah yeah exactly like let's let there be some comedy to the world and goblins are funny right right okay so yeah they are i made them as my temmy army like that's what they are because like when you play them like you're not expecting to be good right that's not what it should be right so yeah doing things like switching battle tactic words for enemy enemy units for for friendly stuff get your own general killed get your own units killed you know whatever all that kind of stuff would be real fun and it wouldn't be that hard to like rules out that kind of thing yep okay um so yeah there you go uh that's kind of my take on some of generic stuff anything else here tom i missed or anything else we should know again like i the only thing that i would add is like humor like i think that like this is the army for humor and that needs to be like i would even actually push that back into starting principles um is that like one of the starting principles should have been like this is the army of funny yeah yeah this is like it's not the only thing but it can be a thread that needs to be a that needs to be like three has many threads and this can be one of them that that needs to be a bumper for this army right like a guideline yes you should apply for the next batman movie if i did i would apply to direct it i think i would and i would immediately edit that was way down uh did not love that new batman movie so you're out of your mind it was great nope okay next uh not what we're talking about uh because that will derail this entire conversation um all right the split a fundamental challenge of this army i submit to you tom is that we have four very distinct subforces okay four very distinct armies right all that got all that decided to roll together right well and if you'll remember that again this was designed when scaven was and scaven suffer from the same problem they are four very siloed like sub factions mm-hmm yes gets squigs trolls spiders right those that's our stuff yep okay so how do we make this stuff work well i know what you're probably your first solution is okay what's my first solution to kill the spiders i i'd like to i'd like to get rid of the spiders out of this book because there's like dangling participle okay um that just did this appendix that should be incised uh excise sorry well from the button like aesthetically aesthetically they don't really match with the rest of it but i am not going to recommend that because one everybody would lose their mind i would lose my mind two i think the arachnod kit is a really interesting kit and i think it's really valuable the problem we have is that the the actual right answer of spiders is make spiders good like do something with spider writers maybe make a new spider writer kit or no add it to it or something i can add you you're gonna hate this and i know you are and i'm okay with that you can add one line one word change to the war scroll and make it good i'm ready not that we're doing this but uh i mean sure uh the inventum fangs yeah just need to be poisoned weapons oh so it happens on the on the everything on the on the bows on the melee on the everything yeah sure i'm not sure that would legitimately make it good but i understand your point like i don't know i don't know maybe i mean each unit then would have 10 10 bow shots that mortal on sixes at 16 inch range they would do something and and and those would be units that people have to answer right because you can't have and then the problem is is that they could all be msu too i understand it would actually do something as opposed to what they currently do with which is nothing that's right fine right but strategically right how do we answer the split well yeah and i say we keep spiders i think they're cool i think the arachnod kit's a really good kit i like that you have to have a kit that can be built in so many different ways yep and and and like has a lot of different variability to it and what it can do can be here it can be three different monsters that's cool and by the way that hero like the hero like the spider hero the small one the big boss yeah um he already has this all of his weapons already mortal on sixes even the the spider guys just just make that with all spider writers and you and you solve a bunch of problems yeah not that we need more sixes to mortal in the game but if you're talking about having a role that's something that would be easy sure uh by the way donnie rongo just threw out pick two battle line pick two sorry pick two battle tactics before the game and keep them hidden if your opponent completes either of these tactics they gain no vp and instead you gain one done i love that so much donnie i love that yeah okay like how like how would that how would that feel uh i mean funny that's for sure it really really started this weird bluffing game it would certainly mean you that run three becomes more of uh uh because that's what everybody would pick everybody would pick you're gonna do run three this game because everybody does run three units every game and you're like thank you suddenly that's not an auto choice anymore um i love that so much anyways i think ultimately you want a kind of power pair strategy here or a power trifecta or something right um you mentioned already earlier this kind of concept um but it's not only that like i don't want only that okay i don't want a hard work power pairs sure i just want what we have i just want some more obvious and huge utilities power pairs yep but we'll talk about how i break that out when we get to the heroes sure we need a few quality blanket abilities that work outside of any pairing yeah i agree with that okay um where it's like this is the ability and it works on everybody around me if i do it uh you know so like whatever the the appropriate commanders are you'd pick like an achillian king or like the what is it rune father or whatever you know like some abilities that just say hey everybody in range all of us bloom spike gets whatever we are we all do this cool thing this round right right blanket i don't care what you're using using some trolls some squigs some gets some spiders all four whatever we all do cool stuff now because i'm the big boss and i said so right that kind of thing yeah um so that kind of combo right where you've got some pairing stuff and then some blanket you know wide buffs that are limited use would give you that nice johnny synergy right where you're trying to sort of maximize the punch and the the efficacy of your units yep right yep the other things i said is heroes should empower units to play the movement game i think this actually is something that that gloomspite should be pretty good at is the movement game in various tricksy ways so like by the by that doesn't just mean they move farther though it could all right let me give you some live i'm just again we're not i'm not dictating specific things because i don't have this specific answer but tom i'm going to give you four examples of what i mean by this right now sure ready yep okay here's example number one if this hero is in your list he can take some other he can take a unit with him they can go into reserve they can pop out of terrain yeah yeah they're sneaky they're sneaky sneaky sneaky yep right that's that's snuck on the battlefield early and hidden the terrain and then they pop out okay yeah one two all right um if this unit like any unit that runs starts it begins a move sorry within x number of uh inches of the of this hero if they run they add three to the run rule sure okay that's another way yep okay um here's a third one uh when this unit redeploys uh when when sorry when anybody around this unit redeploys or issues the redeploy command or something like that right whatever yep the unit that receives the command may roll two dice and select the best result yep or add two inches to their redeploy or something like that okay that's option three like you're playing the redeploy game i think is actually a really fun thing for them like goblins run away from you when you get close to them that's what they would do sure so like make them good at that thing right so that's actually hard to like pin them down and catch them when they don't want to fight because they're like give give them a free redeploy every movement base yeah sure sure all right here's option four okay um this like this unit when it's near this hero can retreat and still charge there you go that's another way to play the movement game yep right make a more mobile in combat like they can run away and then still go after somebody else yep okay or retreat and shoot maybe for some of the shoot units right yep those there's four different takes on mobility right and all of those are the kinds of things i would like to see the heroes in this book doing because i do think gits should play a sneaky version of the movement game whereas everybody else a lot of other armies just are very fast right now yeah yeah but what gates them is ultimately still the normal limitations of the game itself right like you can't move within three inches of unit and stuff like that yeah so you can play in that space and with the existing universal command abilities and things like that and with with redeploy with retreats with ambushes and with bonus movement and so on to make them feel like a very mobile hard to pin down trixie conan army without making them fly across the board 80 inches like so here's a funny thing imagine if they always redeployed six inches imagine how that would change the math on fighting this army so any move it would be like way too powerful but yeah i agree i agree but like any move to a three inch charge would always be a nine inch charge if they wanted to yeah right like but what i'm saying is like imagine if they just like that's part of what happens right if they just simply flee yeah yep so all of those kinds of things are the kind of stuff i would love to see them do sure right sure um and there's more that's not meant to be an exhaustive list right like brian has just mentioned something about additional pilins or or kind of that kind of thing sure yeah absolutely like you could play in that space they could pile in there without getting the six inch cheater pile in of zombie right yeah a thing i think should be stricken from the game um but you know there's there's there are lots of different areas to play around with there yep so there are options yep so let the heroes empower the units to play the movement game in a cunning tricksy way yep because then you don't need to worry as much about having super strong hammers and super strong anvils because you're kind of playing a different game right yep and again it feeds that johnny it's within the it's within the the the rewards skilled play right all right let's talk heroes uh most gets heroes are bad they're just bad yep um which is by design again because top down yeah they're bad yep so heads their heroes are just worse versions of other heroes my favorite is how bad the get is on the mangler's swing are you sure yes the squigs doing all the work yeah like he is that is a paradigmatic example of him being bad he can give himself reroll hits and boons for a turn sure and still do nothing he his modal damage is still about zero yeah yes so it's fantastic they are load most get heroes are low defense and low offense and the only reason they exist is for some kind of utility yep right because of a command ability they have or because they're a spellcaster or because they happen to be on top of a decent monster i even before mentioned mangler a spider or mangler yes yeah yeah um so how do we solve the hero dilemma while still making them feel like goblins right because if i suddenly just say here's the here's your goblin hero here's your loon boss and he's got seven wounds and a three up save and a five up after save you're like what i already don't feel good about two wounds gaven continue right they're like that is not a that's not a get anymore right like you just made some kind of ogre monster what is going on here right you can't share the same profile as the oric mega boss you know or something like that right right okay so then how do we actually fix this so one of the ways we could do it is we could divide function by type and what i mean by that tom is we could lean into the utility game yep okay and say that the heroes based on their type is defining what they're supposed to do and and be in that by type i mean are they a straight git are they a squiggy hero are they a spidery hero are they a trolley hero okay so for example we could say the uh the trolley hero is like anvilly and becomes the super tough one because he'd have the justification to be so and he makes other trolls around him super tough as well right so he just leans into that that role completely he's the anvil hero and he makes his units better anvils the mangler guy is your pure hammer right and we up his damage and you know we get rid of a lot of like the randomness out of his profile because he's got a super ridiculously swinging profile right now they can either like do a ton of damage or none and we make him a more reliable hammer and we lean into that and all the associated hammer accoutrement right so that's that's one option and the goblin heroes just are weak naturally but have like very potent utility abilities that are meant to only buff their dudes do you want to do you want me to throw another possibility yeah yeah that's yeah 100% okay i like where some of that is sure but how about we do something we take some of the tech that dwarves have picked up on okay and we lean into it and what i mean by that is this how about for half of the foot heroes they all lose the leader keyword or the leader type okay they stay heroes i understand but now they are 40 to 60 point heroes with no leader type okay they stay at four wounds like let them be what they are right which is like little zits you can pop like they're just not like they're not meaningful but they bring utility to the list let them be bad but the reason why the reason why we can't have bad heroes like that that are pure utility is because we run into a problem of in list building of having a requirement of maximum six leaders sure and so we actually have the list building tech of getting rid of the leader type but keeping the hero keyword yeah it's possibility sure i think that's a really i mean that's effectively the gabba palooza right i mean that's basically what gabba palooza is you're describing expanding the gabba palooza concept to additional you know heroes basically right the other heroes in the army everybody but like the loon boss needs to not be a leader yeah and interesting like your monster you know make sure they're they're low defense and stuff like that right yes yeah and and and bring them down so that they can be just kind of like sprinkled amongst the troops right they're just goblin big bosses effectively right yeah sure and you but you allow you like your loon boss and your various and assorted loon bosses on x our leaders right and maybe maybe them and your shamans or leaders well like you could you could probably bring one of the shamans to that same space but sure right but sure you know what i'm saying like something along that line where there's like some line there and then i think that i think that that's all that's an interesting solution to the hero problem yeah so the the other thing that i thought about was if you allow the distribution of roles within types and part of how you could do that okay is yep if you let's say we keep the heroes all as heroes right or or not sure whatever as as hero leaders i should say sorry and we let them be a little more definitive of the strategy you're going for okay so like the loon boss helps you lean into strategy a the madcap shaman helps you lean into strategy be your the cave shaman or whatever you know so on and so forth and because we often have different heroes that would fit this role kind of in the same space so for example you have like your your guy with cave squig and your guy with his pet squig and your guy with on a mangler squig like you got three different squig you know sort of loon boss heroes they could all they could be different takes on pushing different utility out to the army yeah right yeah leaning into different strats in a more defined way and by the way the substrat that maybe they that multiples of them inherit is the mobility thing like this is the guy that does better at being mobile and hitty this is the guy that does better at being mobile and tricksy this is the guy that does better at being mobile and defendy or something right just as an easy example and so you could kind of lean into that kind of shaping so you can build out your path to victory based on the heroes you're selecting sure i could do that um also probably i just put it in here as one word like bodyguard like some of these heroes should just have bodyguard abilities right if they're going to stay near by limited they should probably just have bodyguard abilities to pass wounds off to normal gets um that just feels like a kind of the non monster wins obviously that seems like the type of thing that goblins would do sure jump behind the other goblins yeah 100 right um yeah so just like how about we just let them bodyguard that's that seems reasonable that is an actual ephemera rule that just actually i've thought yeah sure i'll throw that in well i mean what i would even say is something even more egregious which would be like uh it should be something like i can't catch me ability and if you are if you are near another goblin unit that unit has to like you have to check for bodyguard does that make sense so rather than having the option to bodyguard as a lot of units do it forces the damage on those other you must give it to them yeah sure you must right because that boss is not going to take damage right sure i got you again this leans into the comedy of them being like nope i'm out yeah sure sure absolutely uh you know so i think you could go kind of some mix of everything we've said here and get to the point where the heroes feel like they're doing something in the army right right and like they have a purpose they should like the the sad truth of the matter is gits heroes should always remain somewhat killable they are in the end just goblins okay right so i don't want to hang the entire army on them that's why i said like a lot of the battle tactic completion stuff and things like that those would be obviously independent of the heroes right you just those are just things you're doing as a cunning gits player so you still have paths to victory even if your heroes get killed but when the heroes are around let them unleash their little individualized cunning plans according to the various role that you're trying to step into okay let's talk troops so this is this is really where the top down design challenge comes into print into into big play right because you really see it in the troops gits are bad hence they are bad yeah they all hit on fives wound on fives yeah it's just like right bad stats for bad unit right yeah this is where that top down design comes in an elf it's like if i if we said oh these are the elven sword master people so they of course they're twos and twos because they're the best sword masters in the world no one's ever wielded a sword aren't we we should count ourselves lucky to even watch them unsheath their magnificent blade and it's like well no but gits are bad so hence gits are bad they're on fives fives and fives no rent right yeah yep yep so it becomes a real challenge right uh so here we go let's talk about the base gits i kind of divided this by the four types because there's four very different troop challenges here yeah um because trolls are big and scary hence they write them to have better stats right so it's it's not sure they don't all have the same problem there okay um all right uh how do we avoid the challenge of all gits just becoming dumb chaff bodies should we avoid that challenge or is that actually correct and we use other methods to make piles of bodies valuable i mean if if it were me i don't have a problem with them being chaff like chaff mass attacks low value they just need to be costed appropriately sure you know right now it's like a hundred and what twenty five hundred and forty for twenty worthless bodies sure like your your low value wounds yeah yes like no no no 80 points for 20 bodies jesus getting aggressive if i'm on fives by the way if i'm on fives delma 20 stab us is 150 points i had to look it up because i could remember 150 150 no brother 100 points like because here's the deal like though they're just not going to do anything and that's okay they can also like there's a role for not doing anything that's fine um because imagine a world where like they like if you don't kill out the 20 bodies and they go down to like six they retreat out and rally you know like imagine if they're playing that mobility game then like that becomes a perpetual problem just the body these stupid gets keep running around the board rally rally is becoming annoying yeah right right like it's a real problem now i don't know that they should be rallying that's a whole another piece again top down design like essentially they shouldn't be um they they probably shouldn't be brave right like there shouldn't be rallying we could play with the rally mechanic it's fine but i understand sure but what i'm saying is is that like it's okay for them to be bodies of worthlessness if there are other things that do things right yeah um and so i don't mind like i think that this the solution that you presented here which is on one hand they could be worthless and just mass attacks would be appropriately pointed yep and also if you want goblins to be good they have to either be on something or be operating a machine yes so so exactly here's how i was thinking about yes let's actually leave them as bad chaff bodies right sure let's let them play the mobility game as i've been hitting on we just in that's exactly your point that you talked about right and fine but then they can be this annoying thing they can make mass attacks they can chew stuff up if you let them right yada yada yada so on and so forth but also let's just bring back artillery can we bring back some goblin artillery what happened to good goblin artillery let's have scoblins do fun artillery things okay i'm in i'm in uh and like it's cool that they're bad again the top-down design of them is yeah gets are bad even in mass they're still just dum-dums right but that's okay they can still be part of a valid battle strategy like donnie rongo that's why i don't want them ever getting to threes and threes or twos and twos or something nonsensical i don't want gets on those kind of numbers because then that like i don't want them performing that way i want because you're breaking the meaning those numbers you're breaking the versatility of what they're supposed to be yeah yeah yeah exactly like no no they're always bad at combat even if there's like a million of them they're they are untrained underfed low intelligence with bad weapons right with sharpened sticks but they have a brutal cunning so if we let them play the ridiculous sort of tricksy games and have that be a good way to win then that can still be a path to victory and by the way if they are able to play that mobile game and like retreat out and be annoying and rally then they keep their numbers up more and that keeps them playing on objectives better right right and having something like artillery behind you supporting that would actually support a mixed arm strategy that seems like a valid path to victory right if it was literally just bodies and artillery that's a real army like that's a way armies win it was called for a lot of its history yes right right would you just flood it with wordlessness that they have to grind through and if they can't grind through they die sure the other option by the way here is you can you like you could go and have certain rules or certain heroes that can that and in the power pair can make them offensive by doing something in world so jacking them up on shrooms or having a prophecy of power of the bad moon or you know whatever right right who can like focus something onto them that turns them into little mad lads right right and using that mechanic we could turn them into something that is actually dangerous that i'm okay with right i mean maybe but that's technically what fanatics are supposed to be right like we have entire units that are supposed to be doing that thing yeah sure that's fine i'm just saying there are options no you doesn't i'm not saying we have to turn every goblin into a fanatic like fanatics are that extreme sure but we can play in the same thematic space yep right uh okay so uh here i say squigs hammer and trolls attrition anvil okay so like these are two areas the army let's talk about what is the problem of squigs tom because oftentimes if you look at squigs just on paper you're like yeah seems like an okay army because they evaporate in like 10 seconds and and so the key is is when they hit they don't actually kill the thing that they hit and then it hits back and then you don't have a unit anymore so we could either make them more hammering yep okay so like we we up hammer the hammer hammer time we go super hammer time uh and and so like yes they evaporate on the on the swing back but they but they trade well right uh where they where they like are much more likely to kill whatever they hit yeah that's option one uh option two is we make it so when something swings back they actually still die all right right and like so example of this is like squigs tried to do this yeah by by saying like whenever they flee you know uh 50 chance of to do a mortal wing sure well like let's punch that up those are rookie numbers right let's let's let's let's put punch that up like um all the squigs have built in death frenzy or sure or or gobs of sharp teeth right they're biting so like when you hit them on a six plus to you know if you roll a natural six to save it kicks back a mortal absolutely the other thing we could do like yeah so make it make it hurt to attack them in a significant way yeah right they're so turn them into a prickly porcupine where they come in hit decently hard and then they become a prickly porcupine yeah right option three is you give them a weird defensive thing which i'm not too like you pump their defenses way up which doesn't feel right to me the other thing with squigs is we need to we need to address that random movement thing yeah right which i mean i think it seems like it seems very obvious to me how they do how you do that okay hit me you you give them a fixed minimum and then so instead of like 2d6 it's six plus a d6 sure sure or or six plus 2d6 should probably be the place where it really is honestly sure for those but you because that would make them an average move of 12 which feels like a good yeah and that's fair and then like eight seems like a like a low low mobility cab unit sure right yeah exactly it would it like if you made them six plus 2d6 it would actually put them in the range of most cab in the game eight to 16 inch or sorry um uh eight to 18 inches so to be like on the top and they'd be a little bit faster when the best thing happens sure which is fine okay um and by the way you could you could you could do combinations of these things yeah like there are these are multiple squig units so you could do a bunch of different so like your your your squig herd could be a um like uh a two bitey or whatever and have the kickback of mortals and you could do just a super porcupine yeah super porcupine um so it doesn't hit as hard but when you punch back it's problematic against them versus um yeah versus the others that are doing mortals in different ways or whatever yep yep and so like that those kinds of things like let's turn them they feel like they should be the hammer units right squigs feel like they should be the hammer unit whether we're talking squigs or boing rots or whatever and it's what everybody wants to paint anyways it's fun they're fun they're cool yeah who doesn't want beach balls with mouths right okay so um trolls trolls feel like an attrition the attrition anvil of the army right which i think they already are to some degree yep regeneration slow damage incoming you need to up their save a little bit by like one step to fours and um um they should their their regeneration should be better that's like so let's I think there's two problems they should have like nurgling regeneration so any like any wounds that stay on a model get filled up completely the auto heal yeah completely um to turn regeneration up um I would make a big problem is objective holding right now sure sure like I would make um um I would change like if I was if I were to like tune up the water the fell water trolls right now they're like neg one to be hit in melee um I would do something really dangerous and make them like neg one to hit and make one to wound in melee which is like crazy sure but I but I think like but I think that that actually makes them that makes them uniquely defensive in a way that a lot of other units just that's not something in the game yeah you could put the I mean the rock hide guys could be like neg one to wound all the time because their hides are encrusted with diamonds and crap like that like well I don't mind giving them the after saving so they become the mortal wound protection and they're good against ranged units right and then the the the fell waters are good against melee units because neg one to hit and neg one to be wounded in melee sure you could the the take home point for me on trolls is I think their damage is probably about in the right place but they have two problems holding them back one is they're not tough enough and two is they don't play the objective game well enough for the elite models and small units that they are sure but if if you always had them supplemented with normal goblins that wouldn't be a problem though right but at the same time like we to me they need to be slightly better right now they're you got three trolls they're three models like you got three rock got tragus that's three models they're four wound models right well bump them up to five wounds each so they're they count as two so like a unit of three goes to six six counts of six models and again put gets it like 100 points for 20 of them yep okay so so that like they become like the trolls go in and they'd like sneak in behind yeah now we're living in the space right yeah like putting them at five wounds feeds actually both problems at once that's where I was going right because an extra wound is effectively a defensive thing especially if combined with the auto regeneration like the nirgling auto regenerate like trolls regenerate like mad that's that is the troll thing right right um and so like let's let their regeneration actually be real um and if they're then at five wounds then not only does that help in the the regeneration pile onto that but then they also count as two each for capture and the difference for a unit of three counting as six versus a unit of three counting as three is actually night and day in this game yeah right yep and so to me that it's interesting that there's actually one solution that can handle kind of both sure and it wouldn't feel wrong like I don't look at a troll at five wounds and go that's ridiculous right no it's like okay sure yeah it's fine I mean hell put them at six like you don't need to but my point being that like all of that is the versatility is correct yes yes absolutely yeah yeah um all right and then spiders uh I'm gonna turn to you on this one Tom because I've racked my brain around these these idiots I know you already said your thing of like oh give them some water wounds but like that's half of it they still die to a stiff breeze because these guys have like no defense very little offense yes they're mobile like they're they're decent like cav chaff is that the point of spider writers is that all it's supposed to be and like we'll get to the arachnarax in a minute are spider writers just literally like health writers they're just cheap cav chaff which is valuable in the game is that where we leave them no I mean so I would I would even say something like I think they need to be a utility like so here's what I would say is you could go one of two ways either they go pure damage but then they feel it feels like they're stepping on squakes right um and so I'm actually inclined to do like to give them the mortals that I talked about but because they don't have the mass attacks they can never actually hit that that like the weight of dice so they're doing real damage but they can never do actually like weight of dice in order to be your whole army I would actually give them some utility like there's two parts to the spider situation one is like conceptually when you think of spiders what are the what do you think of uh webs poison and done you got it no no no the two things are webs and poison as you're saying crawling all over things sure webs and poison and crawling all over things awesome we have three abilities that you've just named crawling all over things the fly ignore ignore ignore kind of whatever okay whatever done poison it's easy you make it move it from the fangs all weapons mortal on sixes to hit done okay so they're bows 10 attack for coming out of unit of five you're gonna throw on average one to two mortal wounds from the bows sure the rest of stuff is trash if they get into melee there's three attacks a model that's not bad 15 attacks throw in on sixes mortal you might throw some mortals like the unit's gonna do damage all the rest of stuff can be terrible numbers and that's fine but the webs the webs actually I think are the third missing piece it's the tech piece that they don't currently have sure so let me throw out some ideas for you I'm ready hit me with some webs maybe with the sticky strands of your imagination tom uh so here's some easy ones enemy units within three inches of this unit cannot retreat sure the problem is like it's not bad they can easily be killed it's not going to actually pin anything but they can disrupt plans for a turn but sure yeah enemy units within nine inches of this unit have charges okay they poop webs on people they poop webs in the area around them like them being in an area they are pooping webs all around them sure like that's what every unit of writer writers is just a horrible corn demon prince yes okay sure again and I'm just like 200 points for five continue say what I said they're now 200 points for five go ahead sure sure but but the point being there are lots of different mobility things they can do with webs yeah and we've just not seen any of that design space explored yeah it could also just be a specific like non-shooting shooting attack like that like the trolls throwing rocks or whatever right that happens where they can you roll a dice roll a dime on this they can't run they can't run or they can't retreat or they can't pick pick it pick it the the and maybe it's an escalating debuff of heaven forbid right you get hit by one web it does they can't you get hit by one web they can't run and you get hit by two webs they can't retreat you get hit by three webs they fight last or something yeah right sure like you could you could play in that space the point is play with the webs in some way I agree with you it is the missing piece of the puzzle on them yep right and or as Arturia structure said how about anti pylon oh sure I could see that yeah yeah could be another way to go for it 100% enemy units within x inches can't pile in and that's why I say most of these things that we're going to talk about you could write five 10 different abilities that would meet the criteria of what we need this is exactly what I'm talking about just pick some of them spiders need to have spot damage right and utility yeah so it needs to be your your weird tech piece it's not a hammer it's not an anvil and it's not just chaff like it needs to be doing something else sure and I think that this like what we've just lined out here would do those things it would do a little bit of damage and it would be a very weird unusual tech option as well which plays into the Johnny design bumper that I agree no I agree with that yeah that's absolutely true okay let's talk monsters the gitz monsters have all the normal non-hero monster problems even when counting for five models combined with almost universally bad defense like the the only monster in this book like non-hero monster I think that that crosses the line of general playability is the mangler yeah okay which is problematic because they have some really they they have some cool monsters namely all those spiders that I mentioned which I think is a super great kit yep okay but I mean it we have to be aware of the realities of that spider as well that thing is on a pipe plate yeah and anything on a pipe plate has to do so much work to earn its keep right like acceptable things on a pipe plate Archeon mega boss on maw crusher right like army enders things that will go in and if not answered will just kill your entire force 200 point units that don't do a lot not make not a great winner to to fill up entire lanes because that's what they're doing they're they are filling up entire channels and blocking off movement yeah yeah yeah we have the soul grinder problem here yeah so okay uh so let's talk the giant first which I saw some people saying get rid of the giant altogether I mean he's classically a part of this army I understand why they kept him so it's fine I don't mind him being over here can we please drop the fall over rule it's stupid it's so horrible and it alone means this thing will never get played ever no yeah you're saying what on charging like the doubles yeah yeah yeah on charging if you roll doubles you fall over and you fail your charge meaning you fail 16 percent of all charges rolled regardless of distance okay now you have actually failed a lot more than that because so for example if you needed a six inch charge yeah right well obviously a two three four five all fail right as normal but then double threes double fours double fives double sixes all fail as well correct right yeah and so like can we please just uh get rid of this stupid awful mechanic that has no place in the game and make this a cheap little distraction piece I think that's what giants should be they're a damaging angry giant that should run around and just be a little distraction monster you know give him some like he does decent enough damage make his damage okay maybe make him maybe make him a little bit more damaging because he's crazy drunk all right and like that's the difference between him and the man crusher gargants and the sons of batman where they're more controlled okay yeah yeah and make him cheap he's just cheap he's a cheap little dumb monster that can walk around and does does decent damage if left unanswered that's a fine enough rule I'm going to jump back brian s said you know on charging if you roll doubles you fall on to them doing 2d6 mortals but can't activate you're close it's you fall on to them do 2d6 mortals and you fight last that's the answer it's fine that's fun because you have to stand back up yeah sure sure I look if you want to turn into something like that I'm good with it that's because now we've gone now we've entered fun territory population us right and now we've turned what was just a rule that was completely negative and had no upside into something that's that's wacky and in theme fantastic okay so spiders here's my answer make the flinger a real artillery piece like actually something that shoots and does real damage and has real effects not whatever it is right now it is insane okay that this is a thing that we all read went yep this is good it's insane that that flinger should be like your movement stat becomes zero and you have charged I it can be utility effects it can be a lot of damage I like I'd honestly rather see them lean also into being doing some good damage out of this thing just because there are oftentimes you want to shoot at a unit in combat and it's like all right well I didn't need to move so if all of your if all your stuff is wrapped up in just movement saps if it's like oh it does you know uh neg 2 rend and and d3 damage and it's like but also all this movement stuff and and I get plowed into by an alpha striking army that's already in combat with me it's like okay oh no take away my movement as I kill your entire army sure like because you're throwing like because you're throwing this is what I would say because you're throwing hordes of spider nests right like you're throwing a spider bomb you're throwing something which includes spiders and webs and everything else yes there's nothing saying there's not a giant rock in the middle that but sure sure like and maybe that's the answer maybe you change you can maybe you can load the artillery and change what the actual ammunition is every time it fires I would be super okay with that I just want to also have a damage option in addition to like by the way I'm okay with like the movement utility sapping stuff I think that's fine I'm just saying that can't be its only roll that's still a fail sure like give it a here it is give it a utility sapping just pure webs or like a movement sapping give it a big ass rock that does a d6 damage neg 2 rend right yeah like just a heavy stone and give it a like a spider nest that if you hit a unit with it you roll a dice for every model on a six plus at mortals sure something like that yeah great awesome that kind of thing I'd love yeah so it's a it's a horde killer it's a it's a five wound uh hero killer yeah I can try to drop a rock a single rock on a hero lord of the ring style I can try to bomb a big unit with spiders and poison them I can try to just do damage yeah sure well sorry just no utility yeah there now your fling it has a function yep absolutely um and you get back to your johnny thing absolutely they have the they have the right answer they have the right answer big rock nest of spiders pure webs done so I agree the the war party arachnid rock I got a simple answer for this guy how about he just captures like 13 models sure because that's how many it is yeah because there's eight goblins on top of him yeah he's a monster plus eight goblins so like you know there's a bunch of goblins so I agree he captures his 13 I think that is a wonderful solution for that model yeah that he's just like this weird pseudo giant pseudo son's abandonment model running around you know that's very scary to get on pieces they're very scary you don't object if I'm sorry yeah yeah easy right like okay there we go uh done you sold me great the skitter strand I did not include here because I do not know how to fix this model I don't know what to do with it it's too like I understand it has ambush built in on the scroll it is too big to be that thing that's the problem it is fundamentally inappropriate for that role because it of its base that's the issue like to make it valid can I can I can I pitch another idea yeah go for it so what if it what if it had like slip into the ethereum okay right like because like one of the things is like they're traveling the webs between the realms or whatever yeah yeah yeah what if it doesn't have to sit in ambush there it can but what are what if it just movement phase redeploys like anywhere on the board sure that's better but I'm still not sure we have a problem because like turn two on you're often going to be the case where your places you can go with that ridiculous base are very limited sure and let and let's imagine that it had it universally or it always has re-rollable charges sure I guess I understand like it's it's it's problematic based on what it's supposed to be doing Tom I think it might just be bad I think this might be the one unit that might be beyond safe well and if that's the case that's an easy solution because it just comes with a how to us you can build it just put the other guys on it just put someone on top yes it's fine like I've always intentionally up its damage or something and give it a real charge sure I've always had a problem because that we don't actually have a big boss version I think boss on that spider I like I think we should have had a big boss so rather than it doesn't come in the box it doesn't matter you could choose like there's one of the there's a very angry goblin that's like that's pointing his spear right um and you just swap him the head piece with the shaman and make like put the shaman's head piece on him which is a huge feathery one with the pointing spear and then you build it not with the shrine up front but then the how to like there's there is a build where you can build a how to and put the hero on top like they just need to rewrite the build instructions like they did with um um fleshier reports and create another unit from the same uh some the same kit it's a very easy solution and that would let you build a hero arachnirach big boss sure um so that's what I like and and and you replace the skitter strand with the hero yeah I got or maybe the hero is the skitter strand oh make it a sentient spider okay now now well hold on we're back I'm back in I'm back on board okay so we got a shilob situation here all right now I'm back on board yes yes okay the reason it doesn't have the reason it doesn't have idiots on top of it is because it's an intelligent spider it's like no no no get off get off idiots what are you doing I don't like yeah okay because shilob spider I'm back on board well okay so if we're gonna go the shilob route I was still on the big boss route but make it get rid of that guy that's stupid it's not in the kit they're not gonna do it make this thing a hero yes okay yes Tom so so here's so then here's the next possibility ready is that in the lore they're worshiping like gorka morca is a manifestation like the the there's a spider god as a manifestation of gorka morca yeah yeah okay so it's the avatar I look I don't know if you need to go that far just sure fine great I don't care that's fine it can just be a big intelligent spider I'm okay with that that's creepy ass man sure uh like yeah make it a hero with like some cool hero stuff going on and now I'm man I am in like Flynn now we we've got a piece there leading its spider troops into into battle whoo okay now I'm in uh I am in for that all right we came back around that guy skater strand is now a hero done give it its own command traits and magic items and stuff yes sweet sweet maybe it's a spellcaster I don't know could be all right it has the ability to become one the mangler the mangler is the easiest one uh and because he's already close enough like he's he's the only one close to good but he should be the expensive damage hammer like he should be a lot of points and he should be a super hard hitting dude give him the same movement fixes we talked about before yeah right and it replaces very random swingy damage with a more a more set into randomness like three plus d3 or something like that right or just flat numbers a mix of flat numbers and flat number plus die so he's more reliable great and that's all you need to do with this dude that's it cool I think we just fixed the monsters didn't we yeah all right let's talk summary okay so my summary of this thing as I said it should be the Johnny tech combo army of destruction high skill floor where clever play pays more than just brute force yeah right they could be bad and still have game like this could be the army we explore that with yeah well at the same time still allowing for other play options for traditional mixes of hammer's anvil's mixed arms whatever that's my you like you'd have to be careful that the traditional mixed arms doesn't also like benefit from all the the army is bad but it's good so now the army is good but it's also better absolutely like that's that would be the warning the warning area that needs a lot of testing yep that's that's where you'd have to make sure it's constrained properly but that's going to be more interesting than dumb keyword bingo yeah agreed agreed and brian s said to question hero spider isn't a mount but could it get a mount trait yeah I mean it just have a monster trait like many things like that yeah those kind of monster traits see the avingori or whatever right yeah um so yeah I mean I think this is like gitz is actually a really unique and interesting army I know and I have a big gitz army that I want to play I want to paint up and play sure and I think that you could do a lot more by leaning into what they are and expressing those virtues as your guiding principles rather than just trying to like oh I want to make them like every other army I want to do the damage like storm cast and I want to be tough like nergal and I you know I mean like yada yada yada don't like we shouldn't just take all those things that are other armies and say this is the only way it can be built let's make them the smart tech army that leads into their chaos their randomness in ways that are virtuous as opposed to what a lot of it is now which is very not that yep agreed cool all right very good anything else we want to say on gitz before we call it a night tom um I think we fixed him right um did it we did it I like I like the other things I would say is that I love the nuclear mushroom spell yeah for the endless spells I just wish it was good again and I don't know how we do that in a non-horde meta well I suspect we won't have to wait long on that I I very much feel that the summer is going to bring us a change in the winds I don't know anything but it just feels like what's gonna happen so sure uh okay well there we go uh and as an aside hold on yeah I'm gonna push a little bit farther and say I think that this based on the lore I think that the spider wizards you know like the spider like the wizard lore web centers they should actually be priests because if you read the lore they're priests to the spider gods sure oh that's a fun idea okay I like that and so like aside from that from the mad caps and stuff right so what you do is is that the mad caps are the wizards right spider guys the priests worship the spider guys are the priests and then that actually gives you a curse in the army which is something you don't currently have sure um so it gives you some possible additional options well dropping in with a hot suggestion there at the end right I have no problem with that and again I think that's a cool lore idea that fits in well it would make them feel different than just different uh different wizards which and by the way you could change as part of that you could change the spider most people hate this idea but I'm going to go with anyways the spider summon spider swarm you could change that to an invocation rather than an endless spell because it's the priest spring the spiders yeah yep which would change the mechanics a lot of people don't understand the mechanics between two but there is some pretty significant differences between invocations and what they've shown they don't mind mixing like endless spells and invocations in a single army because that's adopted so yeah you can have that's a great idea tom I love that idea coming in with a strong finish there alright well very good well thank you everybody for watching uh really appreciate it uh as always hit that like button if you liked the show it helps other people find the show and we really appreciate it uh subscribe if you haven't already if you want to support the show just tell your friends about it there is a patreon down below uh that is focused on hobby and getting feedback and stuff like that so if you want 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