 Hello everybody. If it's Wednesday, it's Warhammer and that must mean it's time for another episode of Warhammer Weekly. Joining me, as always, my own personal nefarada, giving me negative one to hit perennially. It's Tom. What's up, buddy? Always. Just always negative one to hit. Absolutely. You've been Manfred before. You've been Archon before. Last time we did OBR, I wanted to call you my little crotch skeleton, but you know, here we are. I mean, I mean, it's a pretty terrible way to spend eternity. Sure, absolutely. Also joining us this week, so glad to have him back on the show, co-host of Trapped Under Plastic, as well as an amazing hobbyist in his own right, John Enos. What's up, buddy? Hey there, Minzy V. Hey, Tommy Boy. Hey, family. I am glad that that nickname was caught on, by the way. That was an earlier episode. Don't remember what? Folks, if you're not listening to Trapped Under Plastic, I don't know what you're doing with your life. Every other Monday, fantastic podcast that John and Scott, the miniature maniac, put out, and it's great. You guys are hilarious together. It's a truly wonderful, wonderful podcast. And now you're remote, and you haven't lost a bit. Well, I appreciate the kind words. I feel like we have, but I think the more episodes that we're apart, I think the closer it gets to us being together, some weird cyclical effect that way I don't understand. Well, trust me, five years is much better not seeing Tom weekly. So this is, you know, I've gotten used to it at this point. I wouldn't want to spend that much time with him in person. Oh, God. Have you guys ever done a show in person, like at a con or anything? Yeah, a couple times. Yeah, at conventions we've both been together in the same room. They're terrible. Always the worst, yes. All right, so we're going to talk, we're trying a new, I wanted to try a new thing. I had an idea. And having John on gave me a great idea to trot, a great time to trot it out. And that is to do a State of the Union show, which each focusing on some different elements about the game. And today I thought we'd talk about the Death Grand Alliance. So we're going to be focusing in on death as a whole, not general, not Grand Alliance death as an army, but like all of the constituent forces that make up death, where they are, where we'd like to see them go. Basically, everybody who reports up to Big Pop and Nagash, how they doing? How they doing? I like it. Yeah. John is a, you're a death lord. Tom has certainly piloted some death as well. That was his last, when I was rolled teams with him here this last time. That's what he was playing. So I felt like it was a good time. Yeah. It's a good time to talk death. I agree. All right. But first, of course, we have a very small amount of news. Anybody tiny amount of news, but one of them is a really good news thing. The smallest. Rumor engine. Yes, I've got it up on screen. John, have you seen this lizard man rumor engine? I've seen it and it took about two seconds until I just clicked through it. Cause I'm like, well, we know what that is. Let's keep going. Right. It's a Seraphon Warcry warband. Yes. Yes. Do you think it's war cry or do you think it's underwhelmed? It's war cry. It's war cry. I mean, if they're, if they're going with war cry to push away from just chaos and we know that there's going to be one order warband. Right. In the Dark Elf, amazing looking people. Yes. I think this would make sense that they're going to go with an order theme here and we're going to have multiple order war bands. I agree. Like it feels like what they're going to do is probably have a season of order. Like, yeah, a season might be too strong, but yes, like they'll do a couple order war bands and then they'll do destruction and whatever, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. But that being said, we also know that there's a death one coming. So that's why I'm saying a season might be too long. Right. Oh, good point. So because the OBR warband is clearly coming as well. And you really don't think it's underwhelks? I don't. I really don't. Now again, could be wrong. It certainly could be either, but my money's on Warcry. They're just, I think that they've seen that Warcry has a lot of traction. I think they see the value of how it gets people into AOS, right? It truly is a strong on-ramp into AOS in a way that underwhelks isn't as much. My kids love it. Like, I can sit down and play a good competitive game with my nine-year-old of Warcry. Like, that's about your tactical level. So that makes sense. I said it was good. See, I haven't followed the underworld's kind of news lately. Have they announced another season? I know because they announced the last season far enough in advance. And so when we'd see some of these, you know, pictures hidden in stuff, we would just assume and they were right. Do you guys know if they have announced some of that? So I can talk about, they have not. There's rumors of it, of course. Right. And I'll say this. So last year, we got our first mention of this current season we're in. At Warhammer Fest, which it would have technically been this weekend. Like, actually, had we not been in this current situation, I would be getting on a plane tomorrow very early to go to the UK. Right. And I would have you buying me goblins from Portugal. Right. And so like at that Warhammer Fest is when they showed, was when they announced the new season and they showed, but they didn't really show much about it. They were just like, we're doing new underworlds and they were real mysterious about it. And they showed you the lion. Like that was the only thing they showed out of the other like, and also here's this lion. What do you think he's from? And then that was it. So it was a very sort of minimalist announcement, but that was the first mention we got of it. Right. You're saying we're in the window of time that it would normally be announced. Normally if they probably didn't have their entire release schedule up here. Right. That's exactly right. So it's not surprising that we haven't heard it yet. Yes. Also, I do agree Tristan Tristan said RIP Vince's frequent flyer miles. One, don't worry. They don't ever expire for my airline and two, all of our status has been maintained through 2021. So I'm good. This is great. I got a year off from trying to run the treadmill of maintaining status. It's fantastic. At any rate. Yeah. I mean, I would rather see more work or more bands to be completely honest. They don't have either of you, but either underworld or bands. Any of them from this season, from these great this season. No, I have zero from this season. No, I don't have any either. I have zero from the season as well. I only asked that because I just in the last couple of weeks, picked up the KO and the goblin one from last season. And I'm having problems getting like cards and dice, you know, like gathering all the accoutrements, you know, at a year out. And so like, I, you know, I wonder, I wonder if underworlds is not performing like they want it to. Well, it's a question. Now they have underworlds on computer and that, that actually I believe is doing really well. So is that just the future of the game for the most part? Hard to say because if they can monetize that to such a level, where they can 5x the player base, but get, you know, X less revenue off each time, but it's in perpetuity and requires a lot less factory run of input materials. You know, yeah, I mean, there's just a lot less design that they have to be doing. Yeah, I don't know. I just, I would, it would not surprise me if those energies went into underworlds. Yeah. Yeah. Like, or not even into work. Yeah. Yeah. Look, I've bought every pack of cards they've released for war cry, period end of story. I've bought models specifically for war cry war bands that they've released. Right. Like I own every, all that stuff because it's, you don't, you don't, you don't own the goblin snuffler card and you don't own the, the Banshee card either. Yeah. And most of you don't either, even if you bought the packs and here's why, most people didn't know this. We didn't announce this on the show because I didn't know about this till later. I'm going to say it now, just so people know the war cry boxes that are like army starters for the goblins and the night haunt. Not only do they come with all the normal cards, they come with an additional unique card that only comes in that box. Bonus card. So if you want the snuffler card, it's not in the 2019 tone of champions where all the rest of the the moon clan stuff are the blooms fight stuff is. And likewise in the night haunt, the Banshee's not on that page. You have to buy the box, the starter box, and then you get the card. I think I really mixed feelings about this. As one who runs both of those armies. I wasn't so happy when I found that out. I don't like, I don't have any snufflers and I wouldn't use snufflers in my gets work. You're out of your mind. They're actually like the one of the best goblins. There are 15 hit hit points for 85 or 85 points for 15 boots. That's fine. I've got a goblin warband. I really like. So there you go. John, what do you think? Like where were you at? Where were you out on the whole war cry thing? You know, I've just played it a little bit. But what it's done for me is it's made me spend more money on models for ranges. I wouldn't otherwise collect. I really like these models and war cry is my incentive to say, I could use it in a game because I like the model. So I mean, I'm all for it. If there's any kind of incentive to like make your, make your fans feel better about their purchases. I'm okay with it. Whether or not I use it. Great. Yeah. I mean what I will say is this. I'm buying a goblin army. Like I'm in the process of like acquiring goblins. Like I'm in like it's happening. And the gloom spy war cry box is the only hoppers that I will buy because it's the exact same price as a box of 10 hoppers. You get 10 hoppers and you get three snufflers. And you get a pack of cards. Sure. So I can eBay the cards for 10 bucks with the unique goblin snuffler in there. I can, and then I get a half a box of snufflers in addition to the models that I wanted anyways. All right. So it's actually a really good deal as Paul notes in the comment. It's yeah, they are a great deal. And actually I am, I am quite smitten with war cry right now. It's probably the only game that I'm playing. Yeah. Sure. I'll talk about that here in a minute. Sure. All right. What else we got? Don't bury the lead, Tom. We've got some big news. Stores are opening up, not the United States. No, it's the, well, yes, but also like that is true. But also the web store reopens on May 1st. Right. But that they're still not shipping from the US to the US. It depends on the locations. I don't know if the US is included or not. No, I looked on the announcement and it said we're shipping to the US, Australia, Spain and Italy. Gotcha. And so, sorry, like we're still like, yes, it is opening up for the UK. It's opening up for a bunch of people. Awesome. I'm so excited for you all. Why isn't it opening up for us? That said, I talked to some independent retailers and apparently they have been able to put in orders. So even if they're not direct, direct shipping in the US, some independent sockets may start getting their stuff. I think it's a good sign. What it tells me is that, and as they mentioned there, they don't know when the new stuff is coming out. Like there's no news on new releases, which is what we're all anxiously waiting for because we have to get those stupid elves out of the way so we can get to my giants. No. But, you know, I'm hoping that it's trending in the right direction. That's the key. Sure. Yeah. That's the same kind of reaction I had to this is it's a sign. Right. And I've seen other smaller manufacturers, miniature manufacturers that had all, you know, shipping shut down and then it came in waves. First, typically around Western Europe and then the rest of the world. I just got an email today about opening up to US shipping after opening to just Europe about a week ago. So I think that we're going to crack that pretty quick. Yeah. Also, I would just like to say I agree with AOS coach who said, you know what? It's probably just easier if they release the Gargants first. I completely agree. It's one box and a book. Like, you know what? That seems like our super low bar. It's probably already in the warehouses. Let's just get that out there. It's really easy to ship because all the same size box, you know, easy to pack, easy to get out. Yep. So you're right. Let's push the elves back a little bit. Get the important army out here that we really want, like Giants. The elf people, they've waited a long time they can wait longer. What's the difference? That's what I say. I mean, you're not wrong. That's going to be a strong out release too. You know, it's going to be like some of the other big new releases we had like OCR. And I think even when Night Haunt came out, they strung it out over a month or more. And it's just like, come on, just throw all those elves out here and let's move on. They did say that like the box is going to come out and like it's where you'll be able to pick up the units first, which implied that like they're pulling a sister's battle box. Like where there's going to be a gap release. There you go. Okay. Easy. No. Great. We've got it. Ready? Okay. First week that we can really get stuff rolling whenever that is. Yeah. Let's take the energy. Okay. Week one, special box for the elves. That gets thrown out. Elves are done now. You're good. Next week, giants. Better. Elven special box and giants. Huh? There we go. Then we can wait a couple of weeks and do the rest of the elves. That seems fine. Then the elves get stuff. You get your stuff. Yeah. You get your special box. You've got a limited, a sweet, sweet, limited edition tome. I do want to know if I'm still going to be able to get my limited edition gargantone because I'm, I'm getting one of those. So I hope, I hope that it's a, I hope it's one of the wide bound books. Like, so if you guys have ever been like the oversized books, if you've ever been in like library sciences or like, there's always a section of the library of like oversized books where it's not the standardized shelving, like they're extra big and extra tall. I really hope that the gargant book is that. That would be great. Like I hope that, how awesome would it be if it didn't fit? Yeah. Like the big story. Turn it on its spine and set it in. Yeah. It would just be fantastic. Yeah. It's like the size of a 40 inch TV. Right. What? Well, I got to get my battle tone out. Two more foals. Yeah. Big heavy pages. They don't think that it's going to make a, you've got to feel a physical wind when you turn the pages. Yes. Very light plastic figs should be blown over from you, from you shutting the book. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Uh, all right. So, uh, cool. That's basically the news. I don't really think there's anything else. So there you go. I mean, not really. Yeah. I mean, we have now reached the end of everything that could be news in this period. We beat whatever. We win. Yep. And as we said before, it's over. Yeah. I mean, hopefully we're, we've reached the bottom. There's nowhere to go but up. That's what I say. So there it is. Uh, all right. So let's go to some pick of the week. John. What would you like to share with everybody? He said, asking the question and knowing darn well the answer. You only know the answer because you are the inspiration for this pick of the week. Um, so randomly, about a week ago, Vinci V sends me a message and he says, have you seen Trent Denison's YouTube videos? And I'm like, like, like big den of paints Trent. And he's like, yeah. And I'm like, I didn't know he made YouTube videos. Sure enough. Vince sends me over that direction. And this dude has an amazing YouTube channel of him just talking through and walking through how he paints. Um, and after a couple of episodes, you'll realize the way you've been painting is wrong. Um, at least that's what I told myself. And so now I have to throw it all out the window and start, start again. Um, so it's just simply Trent Denison, a wonderful Aussie with a great accent, slightly better than my Australian accent. And he is, he just makes great stuff. He paints beautiful figures. He walks you through it. He typically doesn't cut anything. Um, he just, he runs it at double speed or, or standard speed and talks over what he's thinking and what he's doing. And the quality of miniature he gets completed in about four hours work will make you snap your brushes. Um, but yeah, that's my pick of the week. Trent Denison. Check him out on YouTube. Also his Instagram handle is big Den O paints. Yes. I will link it below. It's, uh, it's fantastic. Uh, if you just search for Trent Denison, you'll find it, but I'll link it below. Um, yeah. I mean, it's amazing. And, and what I particularly like about the way he does his videos, which by the way, I want to steal his format for a few, for a few, for, for some times when I record things. So I think he's, I think he's nailed it to be honest. And cause he is just like running the camera. And then he comes back and narrates over it. And I finally figured out that like with the new software I started using to make videos, I can narrate a lot easier. The old software I had really sucked at narrations. I rarely did it. But, uh, the, um, but like what I love is his actual talk track. Cause he'll be like, oh, get back on camera. Oh, you're such an idiot. Way, way to go, Jenna. Way to go. And he'll just like, he'll talk to himself in a, in a hilarious fashion. And he's just, he's a really funny, engaging guy. As, uh, as he, as he goes. So yes, great, great pick. Tom. The self, the self deprecation is a beautiful thing. You know, and it's endearing. We're going to like you more if you make fun of yourself. So I appreciate that. So Vince, make fun of yourself more. I will try. And like I said, there's no reason not to. I've certainly had plenty of reason. And, and so, so Deno was the, the head judge for, uh, Crystal dragon at can commis last year. The way he talks about his own stuff there is the exact same way he judges the paint competition, like with everybody in the room. So all of us are there who, who put in pieces. We're all just standing in the room and he's going around with the other two judges from craft world and he'll just like pick up the piece and be like, yes, it's all right. It's pretty good. Uh, skin's pretty, pretty crap house. I don't know what you were doing there. It's like you didn't even try. Uh, this would be a bronze, but then you put this ugly base on it and the space is terrible. Uh, so I'm not giving it a medal. Okay. Next. It's amazing. It's the most fast, honest feedback you'll ever get. It was, it was wonderful. It was truly, truly awesome. So, and he's very friendly about it the whole time too. Like he knows who painted what and it was good. So anyway, Tom. Uh, yeah. So I'm going to do a shout out to a video that's not out yet. Okay. Uh, Paul Conti, who was on the show last week, um, was spurred on and by our conversations to do a math hammer show on KO. And that show is coming along. Uh, him and I have talked a little bit and I know he's super excited. He's been producing it and run all the numbers and everything. And so I want to promote that video. And so, uh, I'll put, I'll be posting it on Twitter as soon as it is live. Sure. And I'll just link Paul's channel for now. So people go and check it out. Easy enough. Okay. Right on. Uh, my pick is also for sort of a thing that isn't necessarily there yet, but I'll still, uh, still shout it out. So, uh, our good friend Sam Lenz, uh, painter of great renown and all around awesome guy is launching his, uh, patrion this weekend. Uh, so wherein he'll be doing tutorials and videos. He's still streaming like he always does Tuesday to Thursday, uh, 2pm central. Uh, but, um, and, uh, but now he's going to have a patrion and videos and tutorials and stuff like that too. And really, I mean, Sam is just in the absolute upper echelon of painters in the game today. You could not, uh, you could not do better than to have, than to sub into that patrion when it becomes available and, uh, and certainly learn from one of the, the absolute masters of the craft. So there you go. That is a good one. That is a good one. I will, uh, I will link out the info that's out there down the bottom so people can go check it out. Uh, Matthias, the name of it was Trent Denison. You can see it up in the, some like Mandali's up above in the comments actually just kind of through the person's name up there. There you go. So yes. And he was an old school, uh, Warhammer and War, what's the other game called? The, what's that other game called? Warmaster. War Machine. War Machine. That's what he also played. He also played War Machine. He was a real competitive top player there too. Uh, anyways, uh, Sue, gentlemen, what you working on? John, what's on your desk, man? What is on my desk? A lot of film equipment right now, um, as, as well as like my work computers and everything. Can I just talk about how I think the best thing, the silver lining, if we're to find anything and look in this, in these troubled times, it's important to find silver linings. It is. And let me just say that the great silver lining of this is how many people are like, well, I'm stuck in my house. I guess I'll make some YouTube tutorials. And it's getting, it's getting you on the, on the stick Trent started doing it because of this. So I've seen a bunch of people start putting up more tutorials and I love it. I love it. Yeah. It's, it's all these, it's, it's the, the group of people of whether this is kind of your niche or if there's something else was on your bucket list of things like I'm interested in doing, but just regular life, it just doesn't crawl to the top of the priority list. And so here's like, if you don't do it now, when are you going to do it? So I think we need to all ask ourselves that question and on some aspect of either a hobby or something else in our, in our lives is if I'm not going to do it now, then I should just quit worrying about it and never do it. So I need to do it. So yeah, making some videos. I'm also setting up my OCR bone reapers for a painting army in a weekend challenge. I'm going to do a video on that because nobody's ever done that, especially nobody on this show. So nobody on this show happens to have a video that's literally going to publish this Saturday about painting an army in 24 hours. It's impossible. What would, what would be the chances of that? No, I just, I just thought it was completely original idea. No one's ever done it. So I was going to do it. It's just weird. Yeah. You're, you're a trailblazing here, my friend. I know somebody has to be the first fence. It may as well be me. That's a tough army for a 24 hour challenge. A lot of detail on that army. Yeah. It's also a no, I also set like stupid stipulations for myself or no contrast paint. And then I'm going to be using oils and enamels, which is a terrible idea when you're into a time crunch because of drawing factors. As long as it's the last thing you do, I suppose it just feel like there it's done. You can't touch it. It's timing. So it's going from Friday, Friday evening to Sunday evening. So I've got to time my oil and, and my, especially the enamel work right before bed and then hope to God it's dry by morning. Which it mostly will be. I mean, what is dry? You know, how dry? I bought this stuff. This is a Abtolung 502 matte effect thinner. Oh, nice. So, so when you're dealing with oils, the thicker the oil, it doesn't matter if you, I'm not, when I say thick, I don't mean how like much you gooped it on, but the, the thickness of the paint right out of the tube is going to increase drying time exponentially. So you got to thin it down. And then also they tend to dry shiny. So I'm like, I'm going to try this stuff, thin it down so it'll dry quicker and it will have that matte finish right away. So it's one of my secret tricks that will either work great or I will crash and burn. You'll have to check it out. Nice. I am excited, my friend. Yeah. So that's what I'm, that's what I'm doing. I'm actually also painting my giant stupid train thing. We saw Tom's giant stupid train thing just before the show and I'm working on mine. And so this is kind of be my test model. The caveat, I'm not painting this giant fricking thing in the 24 hours, but I'm making, making sure my scheme works prior. And so that's why this, this has paint on it already. It's a good call. I too set the terrain out as being separate from the 24 hours because I mean, it's pretty deploys. Yeah, okay. You don't have to. And in, in, in his case though, it's actually a useful piece of terrain. In the case of the Seraphon, it's like, do I have to put this down? Can I just not? Yeah. It's a hindrance and they, they confirmed with the FAQ that, yeah, no, no, we were right. It's terrible. It helps them more than you. Carry on. Take a shot. Hope you hear that building. Yeah. It's less like a piece of your terrain and more like you get to set up a garrisonable building that might or might not benefit you. Right. Yeah. All right. Tom, what are you working on? A ginormous piece of terrain that, you know, I'm going to just hold it up. Yeah. It's shiny. You guys can't tell because the lighting is terrible, which is awesome. It'll all will be revealed hopefully this week. I'll get it done hypothetically. That's so much. And I made a mistake deciding to freehand every mushroom. That's all I'm saying. And then just as John was kind of saying, if not now when. So for me, I, I finally began that thing that I said that I was going to do years ago. And so here's an image from earlier this week that I was working on. So we're, I should have some war cry content coming out this week and went out and build a rig. And some of you, I posted some that on Twitter, some we all saw. And so, yeah, it came out nice. Works well. That looks good. I'm excited. Yeah. So for those that are interested in war cry, I'm going to be doing some content. So very nice, very nice. It's funny, John, that you mentioned oil. So what I'm working on is this big giant here. This is just one of the regular giants. And I've come to a realization. I hate this model. I love the big giant, the new one. I think he looks fantastic. This guy drives me nuts. I spent so much time futzing with this guy before I even painted him like I added hair. I wanted to give him dreadlocks because he's going to be like a swampy dude. And I cut his arm shorter because they have like super duper long arms, like too long by a measure. So I even cut back his arms. I cut off part of his belly. Like I shaved off about a quarter inch from his fat gut and then refilled it and sanded it down and gave him like a little plate on his on his belly. I don't know if that shows up or not, but like almost like an ogre style thing. And then I got, I did all of that. And I was like, nope, I still definitely hate this. And I don't like it at all. And, but it's still, so this probably won't end up in my eventual giant army. This guy will just end up being a test piece that joins my old giant army. But bright side is I did get to have fun with him because all of the skin on him, so all of his beautiful, beautiful folded flesh, I painted with oils. And I got to do a nice video out of that because painting flesh with oils is one of the most fun things you can do if you ever have problems getting your flesh smooth and getting subtle tones and color nuances and stuff like that in there. Just paint flesh with oils once and you'll be like, oh, I get it. This is why the old masters used this. It's so easy. It is a different world and it's amazing and so much fun. And so I was happy to make a video out of that. And yeah, coming soon. So there you go. I got to play around with my oil brushers. Got to play around with just a big giant pile of other Winton oil paints. And yeah, it's good. Showed how you can work in any color. Fun times. Fun times. So I got a question for you, Vince. So when you start your giant army and there's a requirement to have the baby giants. Yeah, sure. My nightmare, yes. What are our options? I'm saying us here because I don't know if I've made this public to this crowd, but I'm in on giants as well. Of course. And so what are our options for the gargants, the baby gargants, other than those derpy looking guys? Yeah, look, I've never said the word moobs more in a tutorial than I did in the oil flesh tutorial. I talked a lot about moobs and moob shadows and moob highlights. It was a major part of that tutorial. And that'll come out sometime next month. But the, the dude, I am up in the air on this. I wish I had an answer for you. Okay. I wish I do. I hope they require it. Well, look, I've gone around and around. So the issue is this. So the Gorgon is about the same size height wise. He's much more muscular and shapely, but he's also furry, which is fine, whatever, whatever. If you don't mind a little hairy. Furriness into a cloak, like for a cloak. I mean, sure. Yeah, you could. You could expand it out because it's just like a triangle down the center's back. You could just branch it out. The real issue is I think the giant head is going to be way too small on the Gorgon body because the Gorgon has this very like front head that's kind of like down low. His shoulders are above his head. Right. He's, he's bestial in that regard, right? Where his head is sort of down beneath his shoulders. I thought about bloodthirsters. Honestly, they're not that much bigger. They're about like take the wings off, obviously. You'd have to putty over the back, but that's no big deal. The bloodthirster is like, he's only about five and a half inches tall without his wings. He's not super tall, but his legs. But all your, all your dudes, unless you get some scar brand, all your legs are like jumping. Yeah. Cause they're all like, whee. So all your giants look like they're about to go like triple luts. The frolic giants. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, uh, soul grinder bodies are really good actually. Like the soul grinder body would be really nice. It's about the right size and size. Challenge. There is, I have no legs. I have no legs. You know, like, so I don't know, man. I don't know about keeper of secrets. Uh, she's quite a bit taller. So she's like, I mean, you could, there's nothing. She'll still be shorter. If the, if the new giant size estimation is correct, he'll be a head taller than her. It's not a lot. It's not a lot though. No, like, so for size perspective, she's about six. I mean, it depends on which head you use and how tall, like, if you got the top knot on it or whatever, you know? Right. Um, so she's about six, six and a half. The giant is four and a half. The old metal giant. Uh, like the old, old, not the marauder giant, but the, um, the old metal giant is like three and a half. He's baby tiny now. Uh, so I don't know, man, I'm looking, I'm looking hard. I'm open to suggestions, audience. That's what I'll say. If you out there have a thought, I'm ready. Drop it in. Give us some suggestions. But yeah, it's like, it's tough. I think the closest one I've got so far is the, um, is the bloodthirster. But you'd have to get your hands on scar brand legs as well. Cause then scar brand has that just sort of wide stance. He's not joking. Yep. Um, and the legs are interchangeable with the same torso in both kids. So, So you just buy a scar brand kits? Just buy a butt. Well, you might want one jumping giant. I mean, okay. You know, jumping jack, jack, flash the giant. Leaping giants. Leaping giant. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. Somebody asked about the demon prince. Yeah. The actual current demon prince is way too small. Yeah. Tiny. He is a, he is a little baby boy. Uh, but yeah. Oh well. Uh, you know what? You know what I really, I, here was the one option, but they don't make the fig anymore. Uh, did you ever see John, did you ever see Roman Lopot's, uh, giant slayer? Like it wasn't really a dual piece, but it was kind of a diorama where he had the normal size person, you know, staring down the giant. Yeah. Yeah. And that wasn't actually a giant. It was a 92 millimeter barbarian. Okay. It was just like, it was just an upscaled fig because that's really all it is. And the 92 mil fig is actually about the right size. Interesting. Uh, the challenge and like obviously the, the challenge is not a lot of people work in that scale. There's not a huge selection of people doing 92, the 90 mil models, a lot of 54, a little bit less 75, very little 90, but that was a cool trick. It's, and sometimes those the, the kind of Norse looking warriors, typically are thicker and robust looking guys too. That it feels like it could fit to a giant. Yeah. Yeah. As well. Absolutely. I like that. That's a, that's a good idea. So I was, I was prowling Mr. Lee's minis to see if I could find anything, but nothing, nothing caught my eye, but who knows. All right. Anyway, so yeah, that's, I'm working on this fat boy who's probably going to go on the shelf and I'll hate him, but you know, there he is. That's it. There's a bunch of tests, right? Textures, leathers, oil, flesh, make the symbol for my army, like tattoos, all that kind of fun stuff. Why not? Why not? So there you go. And my, my old giant army that's back in the case somewhere, I'll have an extra giant. There you go. All right. Oh, somebody said, just find a bunch of 90 millimeter pirates. Yeah. That's, I'm going to have to be Googling something here. Somebody else talk for a minute. No. I like where your head's at. All right, gentlemen. So shall we move on to our feature tonight? Shall we ready to talk death? Sure. All right. So death is bigger now than it's ever been, right? Because we have theoretically all of the following things going on. We have the legions of Nagash and night haunt and let's call it soul blight. Sure. Let's say that that's a thing for the moment. We'll get like a half finger on that one. We have FEC. We have OBR. Right. We got, we got a lot of stuff floating out there. Yeah. And obviously in the legions of Nagash itself, there's quite a lot rolled under that. Yeah. Okay. And yet it seems like most of death right now is pretty much FEC and OBR. That's what we actually see played the most. It's what takes up the most meta percentage wise. And so I thought it'd be good to check in on, on death, on, on the forces of Nagash and kind of talk about what we see as each force, where we'd like to see it go, what needs to happen with it and so on. But first off, 40,000 foot overview. Let's, let's do this high level. John, you, you picked up OBR. You went in hard on it. What are you, are you a big death fan in general? Was it just OBR specifically? Like what grabbed you about that army? No, I brought out all my battle tones. I mean, I own and play all of them other than FEC. I own all the armies and play them all. I liked OBR because it was a new army. That was death. And death is the good guys in their own minds. So I love that. But they're just bad to everybody else. Yeah, it's just semantics at this point. So, I mean, if they win, chaos does lose. So that's exactly, exactly. True statement. All right. In an alternate universe, it would be storm cast that would be the bad guys and death that would be the cover boys. So it's just, it's just a matter of perspective, really. I like OBR and I don't like OBR. I like OBR because it makes me feel powerful as a death player. Usually you're just like just weight of bodies or keeping a gosh alive long enough until they succumb. But it feels strong. It feels strong in a really negative play experience way for me most of the time, though, in that I just feel my rules are just better than your rules. And I just lean on you and you can't do much about it. And in games that I lose, it's because the restrictions of the army are set up in a way that by you playing a certain rock to my scissors, I just feel like I'm three steps behind from the get go. So there's some frustrating space in OBR and much of it comes to issues with many armies and that is a narrow cast in how to play them and not the flexibility. You have some options based on where the meta goes to develop what with new battle tomes comes a change in meta and how can my army still be viable and still play in this space because of the flexibility. It doesn't have that. Can I ask a question? I think this is true. But I'm interested to test what both of you think. Is death, when taken in the aggregate, the most frustrating grand alliance currently to play and or play against? Most frustrating grand alliance? Yeah, not as GA death, but just like when you kind of look around the armies, it feels like every army and death has something frustrating about it, either to play or to play against. Whereas when I look at other fact other other alliances, I don't necessarily see the same thing. Is that fair or am I over reading it? I think it's probably if you're looking at it kind of as a whole, you put your hand in the hat and you randomly pull one out. There are situations where either side of the match could be incredibly frustrating. And a lot of just blind pairings of other armies outside of this grand alliance. That's much more of a rarity, I think. Yeah, I just when I looked on the list, I'm like legions of Nagash feels outpaced now and Nagash himself feels really unrewarding to play in it, right? Night Haunt, it feels like you're playing a destruction type army because of your slot machine mechanic and a lot of the units feel under damaging. FEC still feels like it's still one of the more annoying forces to play in many cases because of just the outrageous damage their main monster can do and the power of Chalice and how just like if you don't blow them off the table, you'll just spend the whole game doing absolutely nothing. And OBR is OBR and for obvious reasons, Petrofex is still continually frustrating. Yeah, and Soul Blight is not an army, although we all want it to be. We all want it to be. I haven't heard anybody who's like, oh, vampires are stupid. I'm sure there's going to be somebody in the comments who's like, I don't really care about a vampire army. But I think there is an overwhelming love of the concept if people would love a vampire-esque army. Yeah, right. So everything about the alliance is frustrating to me. Most of the time, honestly, I think FEC are some of the most frustrating games I play. I'll be honest. Yeah. Sometimes if you just either you just can't deal with or you just get smashed by the by a good roles on the Gull King, Ontario guys, like you're just at their mercy. They roll enough sixes to wound there. I mean, you're done. And he comes. Oh, I attacked. Oops, 18 mortal wounds on the first time I attacked. It's like, OK, well, that's cool. I guess that thing's dead. Then that unit meet. And being completely honest about an understanding strategy and screening and understanding your opponent and what their strengths are and playing to that is absolutely something we should consider here. But there are just many armies, you know, OBR included, that you just can't your army isn't set up to deal with that. Your army doesn't have 7000 skinks at your disposal to just just like meaner, meaner, go for it, big guy. That's true. Skinks for days, homie. Again, through this wall. Oh, stink or clean rats or whatever, or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. That's why that's why traditionally just loved legions in a gosh. And this is this is pre night home. This is pre pre grim gas Reaper shenanigans. Or it's just like when the world was in a place where I got two or three 40 blocks of skeletons. And by the time you chew through them, I've got myself position where I want to be. And then I boop. I just bring the 40 back. I just felt so good. And now, and now they're just the, the, the power creep has put this army so far behind the eight ball that it requires you to have a certain level of rules to back you up for your strategy to be viable. And the rules have passed them by for the army to be viable. That's my thoughts on them. Sure. Yeah. I mean, let's, let's in fact, like not jump out what you just said though, I want to dig in on legions. So, so Tom, since you haven't got to go and I like, this is, I want it, let's just go straight into the first thing. Go Tom dive in on legions. Let's, let's go straight to legions. Yeah. Like, let's like, I want to, I want to lean in on what you just said about like, yeah, you know, like, ah, you've almost ground through them now for, you know, 40 blocks on the table. Sure. That is not a good play experience. I've played no, no, no. And, and so I think that this gets right at what you're talking about, Vince. Like the army is built around attrition. And basically like free, you know, like gimmies, you know, like, yeah, like grind, grind, grind. Oh, if you haven't positioned correctly and got people in the backfield and zoned out all of the graveyard markers, the unit's coming back. And it's going to come back and punch you in the face. And so I, it's just this really interesting mechanic where like it is underpowered until it's not. And so I just have really mixed feelings about, about legions and like, gosh, like I still have mixed feelings. Sure. And one would also imagine that one of my issues with that is because so much often rests on that commandability, right? Oh, yeah. And that commandability has to be done by your general. Yeah. So we always talk about boxing out the graveyards, which most good, most good players will make it so you can't really box out the graveyards because they'll bury one in a place that you can't get to. And so, you know, unless you just have overwhelming force, right? In which case they were already dead anyways. Who cares? And I just feel like that mechanic is not great, right? Like, because what it's saying is, okay, if I keep my general alive, I get to frustrate you in the weirdest way possible, right? And if you kill my general, I lose the cool special ability that actually sets me apart. Right? Yeah. And I understand what they were going for with it because obviously in the, in the, in the old world that was right, you had this sort of concept of like when the general died, every round you had to start taking break tests on everybody and, you know, everything you failed your leadership test by was models that started crumbling, right? You had the dreaded crumble for those who played death back in old Warhammer, right? So they were clearly going for like a positive version of that mechanic, right? Where losing the general stops your ability to bring whole forces back. But one would have to imagine as sort of like shooting armies and armies that can really project power in unusual ways. By that, I mean like a zinge type army too that can overwhelm you with magic or seraphon or something. As those armies would become more prevalent, just that mechanic falls. If the, if the meta is almost all melee, that mechanic super valuable, frustrating and high value. If the meta shifts to a lot of shooting or ranged power projection, that mechanic almost worthless. Right? Cause all your, all your eggs are in this one basket almost no matter what. Well, and it forces you into Nagash. And so what it does is it creates this cascading series of decisions that get premade for you in order for you to reliably be able to use that ability. Yeah. Sure. Um, and, and so just to, to answer some of the comments, Autumn Lotus said Vince, you just described most armies losing your general hero kills, uh, most synergy. I don't know. I, I build not, it's the, the, the effect here is so much more explicit. Iron Jaws definitely doesn't work that way. No. I mean, I often will build my army so that my, my general can go away and like I've got plenty of redundancy to him in, in Iron Jaws. Uh, in my like city's army and my Tempest eye army, my general's like, just some guy. Yeah. He can, if he lives cool, if he dies, you know, that's okay. Like, I'm not relying on him. We covered KO last week. KO is another example. Right. Sure. Your general who? Your general who? Like they have generals? Like it's not the ironclad? You'll make the whole army and they'll be like, Oh crap, I've got to make somebody a general. All right. I got to a point where I was like, Oh, I have to get KO 9. So, no, but I mean, it's, it's not an unfair point. Like there are some armies that are more reliant on the power their general brings to the table. Sure. So perfectly fair. Um, I just think that in this case, that's really hinging one of your major mechanics to a singular model. Well, not only that, it, like Night Haunt does the same thing. Yeah. Like Night Haunt's best ability, it's relocated in it rather than resummoning. It is as completely tied to the general. Yep. And they don't get Nagash with the bag full of hit points to rely on there. Yeah. And that's, that's another issue with Legion of Nagash is that you, their heroes are so squishy barring Nagash himself. Or Ethereal Vlasda. Yeah. Yes. Yep. Those are your two options. Yep. Um, and the other thing is it's compounded further by things like the, um, uh, the Minions rule. That is another really big nasty part of the army that's tied to your hero. And most times you're running Nagash. He's one of two heroes or one of one heroes in your army. And so it's, it's a true one domino that fells the whole swoop. Um, and it just feels, feels terrible. Yeah. So to me, it's, it's, I just, what is the, okay, let's ask this question. Let's, let's do it this way. Here we go. Okay. Yep. If OBR has become the bone based attrition army, which I guess that's what it is, right? It's bony dudes who fight an attrition war where they are going to out grind you. Yeah. Okay. If that's the, that's the, and we can talk about how good or bad they are at doing that and what we want to see fixed with them later. But that's their personality. I think that's fair to say, right? And you're going to say that Legion of the Legion is not an identity anymore. That's exactly what I'm going to say. That, that that identity of legions, if that's gone, but that was only theoretically one of them is the right answer that there shouldn't be a legions of Nagash anymore. And then instead what we should be doing, she is the ultimate future of legions of Nagash to just pull the Band-Aid off and break it up. Yes. Absolutely. It's always been like that's always been the trajectory of legions of Nagash that like, because if you'll remember the three legions that we got with Nagash, those, that's the first time we saw that mechanic. Sure. But basically like three army books, like one army book being three army books. Like that's the trajectory. That's where we're going. Sure. And like the writing was on the wall when OPR dropped that like this is what's going to happen to all the rest of the death armies. And so like when Night Haunt dropped, it wasn't surprising because there weren't a lot of energy boys in legions. Yep. And then what was taken was largely adapted. The exceptions being like the, like the chariot units were the exceptions that got left out of that, which I'm still bitter about. But so I don't know. I think that it's going away. Yeah. So is the answer, we mentioned Soul Blight. Great. So let's take Legion of Blood and Soul Blight, one new army release some new vampire kits. And there's an actual full army. Right. That's what we're saying. John, what do you think? Yeah. I think that there's some, there's some units that fall into the gaps here with this. I'm just trying to think this through for the first time. If you have a vampire based army, Legion of Blood, Legion of Night and Soul Blight kind of all fall under that realm. Sure. You've got some stuff there. I feel like there's some kind of general army, something where your standard Black Knights, your standard skeletons, your zombies, I mean, zombies can go with vampires. And so can the dire wolves. And so can obviously the bats would, where does Necromancer fall? It feels like there's Soul Blight. And then there's one other thing. And I think that's like the real magic bastards. That's where I think that would go. Yeah. I think that that's actually like a partially human force of like a death-aligned city's style, like it's the society of the death cultures. So I think that that, I think that that's what that last thing is. They're the ones that generate zombies, because they have the bodies, right? And they're also the ones that are the wizards and the worshipers, but the mortal worshipers of Nagash, who will someday become immortal worshipers of Nagash. So that's who that, that that that fact, more like thralls and cultists and that kind of stuff where they're still in a civilization type of thing to it. Yep. Yep. Yep. They are the ones who, in one sense, keep death going. Sure. Because they're the one, they are procreating and providing the food for the death armies. So then, so your three designations, let me see if I split this up. Let's see how we like this. Okay. So OBR basically consumed death rattle, as it were. Yeah. And so like, yes, like black knights are just going to disappear. Yeah. That becomes, well, I mean, that's the question. What do you do with regular skeletons with black knights? Right? Do you just kill them? Yeah. Or do they just end up in, they don't have to though. They could end up in these other armies as just, you know, let me say this, I could see regular skeletons being in the human army, because again, human armies would generate skeletons. Sure. You can keep that stuff around, right? You bring them into OBR and we solve all of our issues with numbers problems. That's mine. Sure. Just bring them on in. Come on in. What is fine. So, so you've got, because Archon and Nagash showed up along with big Krakatoa in OBR. So, okay, that's cool. They can belong there. And then, I think, I think Nagash ends up most more than one place no matter where they go with this though. Yeah. Well, let me, let me talk about Nagash at the end. Cause I, I totally agree with you, John. I totally agree. The, we get a new vampire army. That's what, like I think that's the one that, does that have the human courtesans in it, Tom? I mean, maybe, maybe because you need humans to make vampires. So possibly is the answer. I watched Castlevania season three. It's all about keeping humans alive. I think there's a value. Like I still want them to revisit new Lamia. I know a lot of people don't, but I think that that, like that's, that's what's fascinating to me. And I think the nefrada is the natural gateway to that. And you could bring in some old TK elements. And you could bring in some, you know, some of the stuff that just doesn't fit elsewhere. You could, you could create a new culture. Right. Um, and that would be interesting to me. I don't know that they would do that, but, uh, like Manfred seems to be your vampire guy. Yeah. Well, I don't know. I like, I, here's the thing. Here's how I'd break it up. Uh, I mean, I understand why you're saying that, but at the same time, nefrada holds the distinction of the first vampire. Right. Okay. So you take nefi and human courtesans and court, and you make it like, the army has the feeling of spies and infiltration and sneaky, sneaky tactics. It's the sneaky, sneaky army, right? Yep. And that we launch off as the, like the new legion of blood, right? Slash soul blight. It has blood nights and stuff like that in it too. So it can, it can do all that, which obviously the blood nights get a new kit. It's the courts of blood. The courts of blood. There you go. Yes. Well, Q, U, ARTS. Yes, exactly. Uh, and then what we do is we take all this stuff and what we do is we take all this other junk. Okay. So regular skeletons, regular zombies, dire wolves, bats, uh, all that, all what I'll call, uh, death classic. Okay. Yep. And death classic goes under Manfred. And he's the one who has, cause he was always more associated with like bats and wolves and zombies and stuff like that anyways. So like, I'm not pulling at nothing here. That was his trick. No, he's some more dark of night for a reason. Sure. And that army is ambushy and like it is now, and it's, it's, it's more, it's the Horde Horde. It's the current, it becomes the very Horde version of death. Right. And it takes zombies and makes them actually useful in some way because right now they're dumb. We get a new zombie sculpt. Right. And it's about sort of the, the carpet, just like wolves flooding and bats swarming everywhere and zombies overrunning the countryside. Right. And like that's the power of Manfred. His army is the swarm that just comes in from all these different tables. It's not finesse. No, it's a giant wave. It is as finesse as a tidal wave. Right. Of low value, high bodies. Just sounds like Manfred to me. Exactly. Yes. Just tons and tons of dead stuff sweeping over everything. Manfred, Manfred is just like the throw the kitchen sink army at it. Right. The army's all kind of have a very distinct personality there. Right. Yup. I like that. Yeah. So that's, I like this. I wasn't expecting us to go down this road. I like this. Yeah. But I didn't think we're going to get this deep into it, but this, this, this came about organically and I like it. I could see that being two distinct sides of the same, same book too. I could see them not wanting to do two separate death releases that are both like, what? This is vampire, but that's also kind of vampire. Sure. Can we talk about Night Hawn? No, they could do it. We'll get to Night Hawn a second. Yes. I do want to talk Night Hawn, but you do it. I got a, John, once again, you're, this MF spitting right here. You're dropping some hot fire. Okay. Because you're right. It's a war clan style book where you have two completely individual forces, but they're both led by vampires. Right. Right. And so then you, you just, what you've just said is you have legions of Nagash, but two are. No, because you don't have any grand host and you don't have any, because it's, you don't have any grand host. You don't have any of the, whatever, I can't even remember what the other one was. I don't remember. Sacrament. Thank you. The Legion of Sacrament. Yeah. You don't have that. Okay. And instead you get two distinct forces with very different units. Right. The point is they're not overlapable. Like if you're playing the court of blood, this is the army list. Just like if you're playing iron jaws, you don't just get to go grab bone splaters. Right. But you do have a combined army that has a completely different set of allegiance rules, not or you're trying to retrofit everything up into some grand set of rules. Right. You have a big war version on the back end. Now real quick, let's tie this off. Nagash, once all this is done. Okay. Once we've actually fixed this nonsense, we just released new Nagash rules. Okay. That actually properly works with all of the forces. Can we stop printing new Nagash scrolls that invalidate the previous Nagash functionality with his other armies? Just like, here's his, here's his scroll. And then if he's fielded in this allegiance army, this other ability, if he's fielding in this one, this other ability and you print all four or five armies or whatever that he can show up in. And that's it. Done. Nagash is done now. Okay. Done. Yeah. I think so. It seems like what they did with him in OBR, kind of set that up to be a possibility where it was like if so and so, whether Archon or Nagash, if so and so is fielded in this army, they get this thing. And so don't have these contradicting rules on the scrolls. Just say each unique aspect, which makes Nagash different in Night Haunt, it'll stay right on there. And in Nagash being in Night Haunt would change a lot of, make that army a lot more interesting. Right away. Oh my gosh. Right away. But yes, I agree. And I think that's doable and simplistic enough where they can pull that off and not be the convoluted mess that it is right now. I want to shout out a good idea. Our good buddy Caleb Walters here in the comments said, I would like to see a horde army on larger bases, like 30 zombie models on 100 male base. Less bases, more like a walking dead horde. That is actually, as I first thought about that, I was like, I don't know, would that work? And then I was going to click to my head. Yes, of course that would work, Vince. Stop being stupid. Think of spirit hosts. Spirit hosts is the great example. So like that actually, I think Caleb is on to a great idea here because that could be how you actually differentiate zombies from skeletons in a real way. Like skeletons remain the same thing they always were. They're little dudes with swords and shields and they're on a 25 male base and yada, yada, yada. Great. They're like little horde troops. Cool beans. But zombies have and always are best when they're like a horde of zombies. That's the cool thing. So you're saying they go back to old school war and fantasy battles, movement trade rules. No, I'm saying they become spirit hosts. But at a bigger scale, because spirit hosts are on a 60 male. Is that right off the top of my head? 50, I think. Whatever. They're in something in that range. I like the idea of having like horde of zombies, 100 male base. That's a pretty decent sized base and it would represent just like a chewing mass of them that by the way does restore itself every so often. So the idea of like returning wounds becomes much more easy to mitigate because you don't have to balance like a single model coming back. What's returning a single model versus healing? Like nah, nah, nah. Horde of zombies. It's no different than horde of nerglings. Does it have a degrading chart? Just like a monster. We killed 15 zombies. 15 hit points have lost. There's less scrapes coming at you now until it heals more back from the dead. I'm saying yeah. Absolutely it does because that would let you make it more powerful at the top end. If you put a degrading chart on it, the 100 male that represents like 30 zombies or some massive zombies of twisted flesh and writhing jaws, because it doesn't have to be 30 zombies. It could be some of them are just torsos, some of them are like a head and an arm crawling along the ground and just creeping claws and feet that are running along, kicking at you. Just classic zombies. And that horde could be actually really, really scary when at full health if it had a degrading profile. And then it has a self-heal. The more it kills things, the more it heals. I want this so bad right now. Caleb, you've cracked a hell of a nut here. A plus on this idea. See, we're crowdsourcing this. We're getting this done. We're sending an email right away. Hope you're watching too. Get out that pencil. Ben Johnson, where you at buddy? Come on, start taking notes. We got you covered. Yeah, I think that's cool as something because they've shown that they're willing to do a horde on a large base. Again, spirit hosts, nurglings. It isn't like this is a crazy idea, right? Like there's precedent for it. Swarm of bats. Swarm of bats. There are two examples literally in this orbee. Yeah. And the cool thing about it would be it would be a way to play a horde army without having a horde without having the model to move the masses. It may be a roll on its scroll is like it counts for how many wounds it has left. Just literally that's how many bodies are there. Yeah, it could have its own special capture roll. Yes, right. And it also deals with one thing that we mean we are frustrated with a lot of armies, but legions and the gosh is notorious for this is dangerous. It's notorious for this is daisy chaining your big ass unit of 40 all the way across the map. And then you're returning, you're returning those models. Yeah, you can't do that with this thing. Right. And oh, by the way, the answer for how many models it counts as on the objective, it's not wounds because that's like, I've never liked that math. The answer is it's one of the degrading profile items. Yes, of course. It just shows up on the degrading profile. And then eight, six, four, three, two dead. Easy. See, look, boom. Cracking these nuts. Can we have like an undead ogre that if he's within three inches of the zombie horde, he can do D3 damage to them to use a range attack that he shoots. He chucks them across the field. Throw some zombies at people. Yes. As a side note, I would love to see some undead of other distinct races, I think would be sweet. The old Legion of the Damned or whatever it was out of Dogs of War where you got like a Lizardman skeleton and an elf skeleton and a dwarf skeleton and so on was like the coolest thing. So anyway. Well, we've solved legions in a gosh. Done. Okay. Because right now it's problematic, it's been outpaced. It needs love. I think we all agree on that. And it's one of the old books. Like it's one of the first edition books. It was the first second edition. Again, like let me say this though. Like I pointed this out before. Let me point it out again. The binding is different. Like yes, the logo is the same of second edition on the top, but the hammer at the bottom of the binding is different on four books. Dock and I did it. Those four were the four books that launched the new logo, but weren't in second edition formally and that's represented by the hammer. I get it. I understand. I'm just saying they were very clear that they built those looking forward to second edition. But yes. Sure. All right. So the obviously second edition launched with Stormcast and our next army we're talking about them. Let's talk about them. Dem ghosts. So Tom, I had so much hope. Yeah. Tell me about you played night hot quite a lot. I played it on a team with you. Talk to me of your where you feel night hot is at right now. Like. I just it makes me sad. Okay. Because like it just has some really major and it's inexplicable. Like they're holes that just they don't make any sense. You have no heroes with wounds over seven. Yeah. And very, very few that even have that. Most of your heroes are just five wound heroes. Yes, there are a couple or wonders, but most of five wound heroes. Yeah. And I like the thing that still gets in my go, like I was ranting about last fall and it's still like it's painful to think about is like the black coach minor clarification. You said gets in your goat. I don't care. It's crawling in the goat. I just want to make sure I understand that sounds terrible. So it's really annoying you continue please. The black coach doesn't have the hero keyword. Yes, I agree. Yeah. It's the black hit coach has a Karen Wraith on it, which is a hero and it has a can rate profile, but does not have the hero keyword doesn't also have a vampire sleeping in the back. Yeah, there's a bit who is the also a hero. Yes. There are two heroes on the coach. Well, they cancel each other out Tom because they're arguing over who's actually in charge. And so neither of them actually gets to do hero related. Like that combined with like it's a high mobility army in all of its buffs are wholly within. Sure. And so like it's it's the best thing to like drop down and then if know that if you charge you lose all your buffs. Yep. And so you have to make the decision. Do I want buffs and to allow myself to be charged or do I charge will you always charge because your entire ability is predicated on on like rolling high when charging. Yep. And so which leads me to my next thought of like it's a great army when you roll 10 or higher. Sure. It's the slot machine destruction death army, right? Because just roll 10s or 9s if you're in death riders is your is your strat. Right. Right. Which I rolled death riders. So I just have to roll 9s. Like the answer is still always just roll 9s. And the irony is that like when I were all 9s I steamroll the opponent. It's a terrible play. Yes. I'm like I get to attack I'll attack again. You know, like it's just and I don't roll 9s and I lose the game. Yep. And so it's and then there's some other weird things like hammers are a real issue in that army. It's weak on hammers. It's weak on hammers. I make one rend is about as good as you're going to get. There are a couple of minor exceptions. It wasn't it wasn't terrible on hammers until they had to nerf Grimgas because of Liechtenstein. Gosh, not because of Night Haunt. Right. Right. It's so true. It doesn't really have restore at all in any meaningful way. It's and I don't mind the mechanic being different from the other restores. It's just sad when like I include a vampire in my army because I gain more from adding a vampire army in both restoring and in like and all the other like command ability, like a better command ability that I like I can trigger in my hero phase and then send them off and they gain all the combat buffs in the charge phase when they double pile in and in the normal combat phase where if I just use my Night Haunt abilities, they gain those bonus attacks only in the combat phase. And so it's like there's just a bunch of these just small things that just all add up and then some of the units are just still costed like I love my like I love my I'm blanking on their name. Hexrace. Hexrace. I love my Hexrace. 15 painted 5 more converted. They're not worth their points. They're still not worth their points even after 20 point drop. They're just not. I think if you were to say there's what was the main issue with this army, if you had to pick one thing, I would immediately go to they way overvalued in price cost the cost of Immune to rent. Yes, because they made this army valued at that being like OBR level of defense is how they that's how they valued it. That's how they pointed stuff out and that's how they they balanced all the other offensive side of it and made it just a limp noodle. It was just terrible design. Right. Like let me point something out. So Boingrot Bounders. 100 points, 10 wounds on a four up save. Versed the Hexrace 140 with worse attacks, worse ways to do mortal wounds. On five ups and they have to move across as opposed to just charge and worse attacks and 40 points cheaper. The mobility is greater and it has it's an unrendable five and it has six up after save. But come on like it's not 140. It's just not. No. And you're not seeing the Boingrot running all over the meta. It's not like you're talking about a really powerful unit here. Exactly. I just yeah. Yeah, I just so so my critiques would be this and I love my night on like oh Glaive Wraith Stalkers. What are they doing? Yeah. They've been in the game as this weird unit that everybody has models like falling out their yang of Glaive Wraith Stalkers that do nothing that have no role in the army, that have no function or purpose. Maybe they're chaff at 70 but why do I grab them as chaff when I can just grab 10 chain rafts at 80. Yeah. Sure. They're probably the most obsolete unit in the game. Yeah. They have no value anywhere ever. I have seen people use them as conversions to turn into night runners and gunner runners in Skaven. That feels like a value. There's a value for your buy. Absolutely. Yeah. Like they just don't they don't have a raw and inherent use in the army. And so I just I really struggle like I think that it's resolved by a couple things. I think it's resolved by a letting the gosh letting the gosh come in to the army. Okay. Well, hold on. Let's back up let's back up a step here because I like maybe maybe not on big pop and the gosh gets to join all of his forces. I don't care if he doesn't care if he doesn't but like because ostensibly there's a new Negosh scroll on the other side of this and so he could be balanced to make sense. There's always a new Negosh scroll. Yes. It's like it's as sure as death and taxes. Yes. So well, it is right there in the name. The only two sure things in life are death and taxes and by death I assume they met new Negosh scrolls. So here's my question. At a fundamental level why do night haunt have the slot machine mechanic of the charge? What is fundamentally night haunt about that ability? They're sneaky and so they go boo and they surprise you with a set of attacks. Is that what it's meant to be? I don't know. I don't know either because most armies when I read their allegiance abilities I go oh yeah. I get what's going on here. Right. Like I get it. Okay. I see what you're on about there. Right. What? They're just floating up from the ground. Is that the kind of their thing where they're there and you don't know they're there until they float up from underneath the gray stone? It's their surprise attack because I think what they're trying to accomplish. But I don't know that charging, getting that bonus on charges is accomplishing what they want to communicate. True. Yeah. Especially on a random role. Right. There's no way you could play into that where you've like hidden your ghosts beneath the the ground and then they pop up and boo and get you know that's not what's happening. They're three inches away. I just rolled an 11. Right. No. The way you do it is say if they charge in a turn that they set up they pilot at the end of the charge race. That's the way you accomplish it. Hmm. I just like I don't know that they need that. Let me be honest with you. I'd rather see real allegiance like I'd rather strike that one out like if I was if you were giving me carte blanche over over night haunt. Okay. And I'm sure this would this would hurt. But I promise you I'd give you something and recompense. I would just strike that out of the book and then give them different allegiance abilities that are more focused on actually being ghosts. So sure. As long as it lets them win. Sure. Yes. Because they are dependent upon that that ability to win. Right. I understand. I would give them offensive abilities that make sense because that's what they need. I think in general the problem we're putting our fingers on here is one, even as anvils they're often lacking. The ethereal doesn't carry enough weight. Right. They should have army wide mortal wounds on sixes. And I don't know if that's wrong. By the way, I don't I seriously don't know that that's wrong Tom. Like that was a classic piece of ghost design right was that sixes you got a free mortal wound out of it. I don't think that might be right. You might be exactly correct. Like get rid of the charge and make it so anybody in the army any attack they make universally if you get if you roll a six to hit you deal with a wound. But there's a lot of worse rules then that need to be revised. Sure. Well, we're rewriting the book. Right. Yeah. So okay. But doesn't that feel more ghostly like they're they're actually touch it there. The idea of that always was that they hit you well enough that they just they actually get a hold of your soul. Yeah. And pull it out of you like that one connects. Right. Yeah. Your physical being is not what's impeding them. They're there's their ghostly hand goes right through armor and touches your soul. Yep. Yeah. No matter what you're wearing. Exactly. It also feels like the army should have a lot more free retreat and charge. Okay. Because they're just not bound up like they don't care that you just charged their ranked lines. That's what who cares we're ghosts. We'll just leave. Right. They'll just go float into the ground and then go away and pop up somewhere else. That's what goes to do. They're ghosts. Again, it just feels like all of that should be they can just go pop up somewhere else because they're ghosts. They're not thrown off by retreating. That would give us kind of a visual in game of them just like floating through their enemies. Right. So they stop. They connect and then it just keep moving through you until they're on the other side. And then that's a movement based army that's got some more value there to not just turtling up behind your screens. The ghost will just come fly right through. Absolutely. And when you look at something like that right when you look at like a bunch of mortal wounds getting hit on this. Plus then this in plus the very let's be honest that would be a a huge amount of mobility. And we know mobility is the most powerful thing you can get in this to win games. Right. Right. That would we wouldn't have to do that much. One that also as Paul just as Paul in the comments just mentioned that also acts as an anvil. Right. Because if you can just retreat out of combat and recharge that is your anvil mechanism. Right. And you then don't have that heavy of a lift on a lot of the war scrolls. Like yes I agree. Let's take the glaive race and make them the rend boys or whatever. Right. So they they got them big old glaives. Maybe it's got some big old rend. Maybe we do some stuff with the I can't even remember their name the the alternate banshees what are they like they're so not played I literally can't even remember but they're so cool the dread the dread size dread size heritans. Yes. I have 30 of them in boxes. Sure. Maybe they become like another interesting option for sort of you know the rend component component of the army right or something like that or whatever. Right. But we could we could establish those roles pretty easy with I think minor changes to a lot of scrolls and by the way the answer with the black coaches I agree somebody mentioned the comments earlier that's what I was going to say as well. We already know how we solve this because we solved already with the steam tank and we solved it already with the stegodon and the answer is it has a separate hero you can choose to add right as the hero keyword that you can choose to add it and you make the regular one without a hero cheaper than it is now and you make the hero one about the same cost it is now. We have this technology right. Um we solve this problem before I just yeah and you sell a lot more black coach models dammit because I would I don't own one and I really really want one but I just knew I'm just never going to play it. I painted mine up and it's like one of the my favorite models I've ever painted and it's like it's just it is a stunning model and actually like it does work so don't misunderstand me like a lot of people poo poo the the black coach but I don't know that I would ever take knight on out without it now hmm um simply because it does things that nothing else in the army does it's one of the few solo operators that once it ramps up just a little bit can shoot across the board like 20 inches and actually hit something and be kind of on its own and still effective right like I ran mine 23 inches across the table and turned to with it like a auto run six and I was within my pendant my plus three move pendant and it literally like it was in game five of havoc last year and I needed to like free the general you know so you have to get like one of your models within like this bubble that you know in this scenario for this for the third unique scenarios and like I was like um can you hold the state measure tell me what that is 20 awesome I'll auto run six uh 20 23 movement um and then I'll charge because I've run in charge you know like yeah shark and so like you know it was just it was silly like it was just utterly silly so it does things that nothing else in the army does it's not super-hitty like it's not like the like a train like uh doesn't hit like a Mack truck but it kills things sure and if we make it a hero where we could maybe give it a magic item or something right even at the same points cost and then have a slightly cheaper version uh by the way Luminath not Luminath sorry the Luminarch or Celestial Hurricane then suddenly we've got gas in this tank right yeah I mean yeah I love the army like I want a reason to paint more of them I have 1500 points of them I would have loved to have painted like I was if Adepticon was going to happen this year if I had the band with I was thinking about painting take a night haunt to Adepticon this year um but that didn't happen for a variety of reasons um yeah I just it makes me sad like I I want to I want to play the army I have the I have the limited edition night haunt battle tone right there on the shelf and I wouldn't mind buying another one sure and let me point out that night haunt also when we did our aesthetics aesthetics survey yep one of the highest ranked armies in the survey right it was up at the top it's a beautiful army people love them dem ghosts yeah I I'm probably a an outlier in that in that I don't like them because they all look the same but the models themselves are beautiful in the sculpts I love them but when you when you have all of them in front of you and you you know I've got that many builds they all kind of look the same at about the one foot distance sure we so we ran into this trap last week and so I want to back out of this and say the army is perfectly playable in its current state right yeah okay like I like I I took it to an event and we did really well yep right like it it largely did a lot of what it needed to it didn't have all of the new bells and whistles there were definitely gaps and I had to work really hard to like shore up those deficiencies but the re but to be like to really be able to compete with the army let me say it that way but um it's playable absolutely it's like it like and it and so like if you have a night haunt army don't feel bad about that no I think you're doing you're doing yes if you're doing competitive like if you're doing friendly tabletop games basement games local club it'll play fine it'll kill things that you'll have fun I'm a a lot of what we're critique here is has been on the more competitive aspects of it mm-hmm yep so here hear me there it is a great army and it's a fun army it just it has some holes that it would be better it would better compete if it was fixed sure I'm with that okay uh cool alright so with our ghosty boys out of the way so we've solved legions we've solved not I would argue night haunts in a better place than original legions let me just say that I do I really do I think legion of griefs in a better place than both of them probably right it's a fair point uh but which we're going to discount because like yeah I don't want to get into legion of grief uh what is that just became the new night haunt sure sure sure sure in some way like just just reflavor it take some of the stuff out of there that makes sense make it all work done and dusted right but again the part of what legion of grief is doing is pulling the graveyard mechanic and what I'm partially suggesting with legions is we jettison the graveyard mechanic right so so sure uh is the short answer I guess um okay so now let's flip to the other side of this coin okay let's talk about them them actually do you want to start with John I'll leave this to you we starting with FEC or we starting with OBR who you want to talk who you want to hit first uh let's let's do FEC so we're kind of going in reverse order the way in my brain it's going so let's go FEC okay flesh ita quartz uh things I currently love about this army it is an army you can play with five models that's super cool right uh and the five model version is not the most powerful version of the army that's not actually the broken version right mm-hmm uh it's just a interesting fun version um the still competitive that's still competitive yeah yeah absolutely I'm saying that's not play and win games my critiques of the army are not going to where I think that there's stuff that's still out of whack is not the five flappy version is what I'm saying right yep uh I like playing against the five flappy version I've a lot of fun I've played five flappies a couple times now and I actually really like lining up against that um the most of FEC I really like that is to say I think blister skin and morgaunt and sort of unaligned are the not or un unchosen whatever their thing is called morgaunt though like the 200 gul morgaunt uh have I played against it no but I've watched it right I have never played somebody playing morgaunt I will be honest about that I played blister skin I've played crystal gore many times uh famously Tom McClure ran morgaunt he did I was petrified yeah it's amazing I mean he was just it's just like a wave but you know he's fast as long as it's a responsible player I have no issue with it if it's somebody who's like being really annoying moving their models it can be bad it's fine um you know Tom's a great player and he's really good at getting his his ghouls around so Tom McClure yes one of the nicest greatest most fun people to play against in the midwest uh an area of the country that has a laundry list of amazing players um but uh so I like all that uh I like that the army actually has a pretty uh steep learning curve and yes I'm using that correctly that means that it's easy to learn the army um it is something you can pick up and play with it doesn't require you to like really understand deep synergies you do kind of just have big hammers you can throw at people I like all that things I don't like is the gristle gore guy and the associated sort of stuff that happens there the way their command abilities trigger where it's like well I'll just fight twice oh you killed me I'll still fight twice like there's just no downside to the army with some of their key pieces and I don't like that chalice at all I hate hate hate the chalice it is the chalice is way too effective for what it does what I'm hearing you in all of your complaints Vince is you hate all model restore is everything that you want to remove has to do with putting models back on the table no not necessarily like again I'm saying I killed it like you mentioned because you're saying because I said kill the graveyards no I want to see I want to see the I just talked about like restoring tons of wounds to zombies and like I just want to kill the graveyard mechanic I want to spread out I want to see the dead people bring lots of other dead people back 100% I want that okay the chalice is just way too effective at what it does in that army at just like oh you're you're you're come quad your cool king on terror guys went down to one wound chalice fires off nice fine yeah it's true like hope you don't get there's no close that armies either dead or you're like everything has to be either completely dead or you're dead and that makes it really really hard for some armies to play against now ultimately competitively at a high level I think it's probably fine like that is to say I don't think that FEC has clearly fallen from its height it's not the most broken thing around anymore so you're saying it's actually problematic at the casual setting not in the competitive 100% yes and and and even still a little bit probably in competitive but not hugely it's at 53% as of the last time we had tournaments that's still certainly within a reasonable area that's in the fat middle right so if I was going to take I would be happy to give into some other things right sure yeah which would you consider it at this stage in a similar spot to I didn't have as a gatekeeper role for the upper tiers yeah because you have to be able to handle something that's going to come screaming into you and do like an overwhelming amount of damage it's still to this day you know a year later that's right right yeah a year later it is still like the gold standard of hammers when you when you try to think about what your anvil can stand up to it's the go-to example right can you handle this thing plowing into you and doing like 24 to 36 mortal wounds in a turn because that's that's that is legitimately possible on two pylons with a with a black hunger whatever it's called a cast on it and rerollings yeah and yeah right and and the answer to most people is just like no that's insane I have her score her guard of course sure yes and you know the most armies just look at that and go no that thing just kills one whatever it wants every turn and yeah sure sometimes you can chap it if you're the army that has a lot of chaff but sometimes you can't and then you still got to go kill that dumb thing right and you go kill it with something and it's going to go cool now I attack you twice not not and kill that right yeah it does all of the things that you've just said right like I'm not I'm not you're not exactly tails out of school here this is just legitimately what it's like to play that army and so it can be a very frustrating experience especially for newer players who don't or or more casual people who just want a fun game and then in comes this screaming cannibal maniac that's just like that's pacmaning your army with a power pellet yeah I don't know and I don't know what the solution is by the way probably I take that back just tone that guy down please for the love of God does he have 72 rules he doesn't need all of them let's cut some of those ok yeah and meanwhile the rest of the army is meh at best other than the new dude yeah absolutely like I think ghouls are pretty cool I think Varghais are pretty cool the Vargulf is pretty cool like all these things feel like they do what they do and they're in the reasonable space and are as scary as they should be like super buff ghouls are real scary but if you get into them you can kill a whole bunch of them yeah like all of that feels correct it's this one numpty sitting at the top of the pile who is just who's just he's like a screaming toddler just running around wrecking everything in the house just pulling everything off of shelves he just can't control him he's a whirlwind he's a drunken toddler yes exactly absolutely he's just breaking all your toys making you take off the table yeah and I think that there's so much that I think is fun to explore in the rest of the army when I mentioned in things like Varghain and Blisterskin and Unchosen whatever we want to call it non I don't remember what their things are called what are their actual things called it doesn't matter you know what I'm saying ghouls I don't know sure hungry hunks the hungry hippos cold cults that's their core thank you uncorked yes your courts you got me on that one Tom boy really feel like I was missing a trick there it's literally in the name yes it truly is yeah I don't know John what do you think anything else thoughts on FEC I think the biggest issue that I have and it is tying into this from a more casual standing point and even in a I played in a number of local we call it smaller tournaments we do a fun one day thing three rounds typically we usually get 10 to 14 of us there and many of the guys they like to play they're not just total noobs but that screaming toddler runs into you and it just it rarely feels fun in me as somebody that's want to foster our gaming community and grow it it's just a it's a frustrating thing and I feel like more times than not I have to play like emotions coach afterwards to be like look man it's not like dude your army is so sweet like it's cool there's like don't worry about that crazy drunk guy that screamed into your dudes like don't worry about him he's not going to always be around our games are fun this is fun and a lot of times too we're in that before you get to the real competitive side that's really before you min max your killer blocks right either big blocks of screens or big blocks of murder murder hobos or whatever that you take to win and when you don't have those big blocks that means the terror guys is even more scary yeah he dominates the table like there is no answer to him yeah right right right yeah because you're that's such a good often times you'll see especially newer players they don't have 20 blocks of earth guard berserkers painted or the 40 pack of whatever or they haven't maxed everything out yet the 40 grimgrass the 40 chain rasps just to eat the hit they just they haven't gotten to that point yet because it takes a lot of time they bought a lot of units because that's the fun thing you do when you're new when you start an army right they're like I want some of these like I've got a buddy I don't player and you know he has like 20 chain rasps and 10 grimgrass reapers and you know 10 of this and this over here he's got some hex rates and he likes his army it's a bunch of different things that he thought was cool but if I drop to like the angry toddler against him there's just nothing in that army he's gonna kill that angry toddler it's just gonna go hog wild on his army wouldn't that be awesome if they added every battle tone but in a number of them added a battalion that rewarded that just having some of all the cool units yeah wouldn't that be cool like and they could even do that pretty easily without making a mega battalion by actually like you know how so if you buy the the dual boxes now not only do they give you a battalion for each force but it's actually battalion that matches the contents and it dictates the size of your unit right right right yes right and so one unit of three endring rigors or something oh yeah oh I'm super aware yes it's three endring rigors three wardens a a gun hauler and a gun hauler which is like the worst numbers of all of those things but continue sure the point is yes we have this tech you could just right into a battalion that has some sweet abilities where you got a bunch of min units I like that idea John I agree alright so now can we shall we tackle the we never we never talked about in the gosh's role in all of this I thought we'd save him for the final wrap up as part of the army where he's functional in right now I mean he's only functional right now in one army and he's scary as all get out in in said army right right yeah and I've I've played enough games with him and without him to say he's in a I'm not saying the army is in a great spot RB OBR is in the ideal spot but Nagash is in a great spot within that army he is not warehouse he's great but he's not by any means mandatory and I would I would probably argue in nine times out of ten he's not the best version of the army so I don't know I really like the gosh of that army a lot I I mean I think again the best I don't know best my favorite version of the army I've seen was Nagash and all the horses yep Nagash and all the horses like zero more tech just ponies as far as the eye can see not in Stoli arc lords because of course that's for losers no you're obviously Petra Gash Petra Gash so everybody's on two's and three's ups three roll ones permanently yes and and and Nagash just becomes the distraction carnifex super bully he teleports forward using protection of Nagash threatens their whole army gets right in their line and doesn't care meanwhile your enemy teleports away exactly and then meanwhile your 25 horses are threatening the whole board they're taking every objective and just like ringing every objective and he's ponies and he's on a permanent two up three roll ones yep right and he can heal himself up with magic for his own ability I just love that he can cast a spell that's protection of myself on myself glad I made this it's the most Donald Trump spell in the entire game I'm so great I'll protect myself look I'm just saying he is kind of Donald Trump sure look Morton Kinen certainly cast Kinen however you want to pronounce it whatever that dude clearly used his own mansion his own dog his own sword his own fist you know like he renamed those spells after himself for a reason right this is a portable tower baby yeah yeah absolutely he slaps his name on everything this spell this can hold so much of my name right here I have played I have my favorite list with Nagash I run a unit of ten horses a couple units of more tech guard because they're just so strong and then catapult or two I think it's two I think I can fit two in there and it's just it's just terribly mean it's terribly mean it's still straight up loses in certain matchups right now just by lack of bodies and board control you can get that somewhat by being real sneaky with Nagash and your unit of ten horses so so here's my question let's let's let's just ask the blunt question Tom had to step away for a minute so John you and I will answer this question Tom no vote here we go blunt question is the current problem with OBR the obvious we just need to fix petrofex yes like just break petrofex and then in fact let's just do this let's just let's just do a little thought experiment here subtract petrofex from the bottom okay that page is now if some lorem text it doesn't exist I'm not replacing it with anything I'm just literally saying it doesn't exist is OBR still is it fine as an army no no okay tell me why it's I mean it's fine and it's fine as an army as if just like night haunts are fine as an army okay they technically are able to be tabled but it's not it's not I don't want to say it's not competitive because there's a version of running catacross in his legion that works yep that works minus bludgeon so minus the extra rend on everything which you can say the two up save is what makes the army great but play that army and you'll realize it's bludgeon that makes the army great it's the both that makes it great they're both amazing it's the superior offense and the superior defense exactly we got the best of everything it feels very lackluster as a book without them the problem is without Petrifex the problem is with Petrifex it's too far the other way but you could say the same thing for most battle tomes in the best version of the army when they have a clear winner you can say that if you took that out then it would be better well you have to take that out with everybody not just in a vacuum oh hey look I'm more than happy to there's a couple of tomes I'd love to do a kick in like that with where we get in there and go yeah zinge being right at the top of the list as a matter of fact where I would be happy to boot one of those things out of there okay so but I think we all agree Petrifex is a problem fair statement yes none of us are pushing that back okay so we talked to let me ask you a question real quick would you said the book would have a big issue well let's issue it would still be competitive no you said it wouldn't be competitive it would be night horn competitive could so what if more tech dropped to 120 and and your stalkers and all those guys dropped to 180 catapults still stayed at 200 but but Petrifex disappeared is it still problematic I think if you I mean if you're saying we could move some points down whatever those would be we could figure out those details if you're saying we could move some points around I think it could definitely be viable because then I would be excited about things like Nulmeriad that could give the middle finger to zinge which is what we need right now whereas it's right now the shoe is on the other foot where zinge just gives the middle finger to Petrifex but that Nulmeriad army wouldn't necessarily just squash iron jaws or squash FEC it becomes a little bit more balanced Pokemon types kind of worlds sure yeah I think that we talked a lot in the last time we touched on OBR of how to fix Petrifex we threw out like 10 different ideas because honestly it's something I'm not super inclined to do we could all sit here and the three of us could spend the next 20 minutes just dropping ideas for how to fix Petrifex but the reality is in GDW you just need to figure out what they want to do and do it I'll take the exact same stance I did with Petrifex that I did with Slash which was I don't care how you fix it there are 10 different ways you could have fixed Locus and Depravity they were both obviously problematic and I said very specifically I don't care how you fix it I can give you 5 different ideas if you want them just fix it somehow you go do the work now test which one works the best try your 5 ideas and come to me with the best one because we could do all of that and any of those myriad number of ideas could solve the problem right what I'd love to see I agree but it's a problem I'd love to see I think the one that's probably in the closest to find spot that basically you probably wouldn't need to touch if you deleted out Petrifex is Mortis Pretorians they're the one that still feels like yep that's doing what it's supposed to do it feels thematically appropriate it's the legion of this that makes the most sense got it I would love to see Stalyok Lords get a better buff that makes you actually want to run it and not just be duplicative it's battalion who wrote that shit the most obtuse stuff ever well we just copy pasted these I don't think anybody will notice next page it's not in a good way either Mighty Destroyers is obviously one of the things that makes Iron Jaws run and be scary and you can get a free Mighty Destroyers on your boss with Brutish Cunning but you can also get a free Mighty Destroyers on this battalion but those aren't the same Mighty Destroyers you can just do it twice around now yeah it's not completely like sometimes there's value in getting the same thing twice so it feels like you can do that with the battalion and Stalyark and have them be like sure the battalion represents horse lords and then the if you're actually in Stalyark Lords you're like the horse horse lords you're Aomir's writers a little bit dead you are the guys who arrive on the 5th day at dawn and wreck that army yeah like you're ready to go so as long as they were actually stacking abilities in some way where it was like here you get this and this and then if you're in the full thing you get this and this too cool now you've got super horses if only that's the world we live in yeah the issue with OBR right now at least in my head is that the S tier stuff just beats it and what what OBR does Petrofex Elite does is it puts in this gate kind of the A tier gatekeeper where teams or builds that could really make us into a more interesting environment for top tier top table situations doesn't exist because those armies have to run through at least one level of Petrofex Elite maybe twice in a tournament to get there and that it just so limits their design space to compete with the S tier stuff because OBR is always hovering and it's just going to squash you because it's outrageously high yes and you know the other problem with it John is the same feeling that I got with Slanesh I imagine somewhat can hang over OBR players heads which is that people hate when they see me show up with my army yeah it's literally poisoned the well of the army to the point where even now I do believe Slanesh is fixed now I think it's fair now some people might feel differently I don't know but I think it's fair now and there's a lot to it I don't to be fair Tom you lose to me most of the time so that's not like a new thing that's just a continuation of the same story but the I can see you just you want I can see you just bristle at that even because it's such a true fact at any rate the problem is it's poison the well even now when I play some people God we're fixed now it's better it's so much better now trust me it's it's more fair but like that even when they change petrifices you're still gonna have that feeling even if you rock up with stalliarch lords people just have this sort of built-in bias against the army I'd say it's I mean I'd say pre-nerf version of Slanesh it's different even if you're running petrifices a leak because a lot of people we're talking about 10% of player base we're talking seven of that 10% playing at a casual to high casual levels what I'll call it and those folks don't run 240 blocks of more tech guard they run all the toys and when you're talking slanesh you're talking all I need is to keep her secrets baby I need two models and they're cool models of the new cool models that is different that is different than $250 skeletons okay people don't want to build that and paint that because that's what makes the army awesome and petrifices a leak hold on I will answer one thing in the comments somebody said lord for me he said slanesh is not fixed because they have the double depravity shenanigans and LLV said if you remove the white dwarf thing slanesh is very balanced I I agree and also I would love to kill that white dwarf battalion I would love to I love love love that demon prince I'd love to shoot that battalion in the head I don't play it I think it's a garbo thing I'm talking when I say slanesh I really mean like the book slanesh the book that's what I'm counting as being the thing so anyway sorry to interrupt please back to you I just wanted to make you stand no I I think that I think that's where I was going with it I don't think I had a whole lot else to say with that it's it's it's one of those things that on paper you're right in in reality I mean and if it's too if it's if it's two guys getting together to play fun lists petrifices elite rules just tend to rule the day and so you're not wrong in that can leave that sour taste just like you know drunken crybaby can do sure sure sure yeah yeah it's like we we're getting together and we're fighting but I lose every single time when we fight this is BS that's what happens yeah so let me get this straight your general is super unkillable god of death and all of your units are super unkillable and kill me the second I touch them hmm this seems not great and a little dude that's standing on the giant skull brings back the two dudes that it took me two turns to kill what the H right right right so I think that the answer here remains the same and I have to wonder so let's let's look forward how does this how does this get fixed does this does this come let's let's put it this way what's happening in the summer FAQ is this getting changed is something getting fixed here is this getting addressed oh dear god I wish I mean like I the only way that you fixed OBR is to smash petrifices because then you can actually play with points you can't play with the petrific you can't play with the OBR you can't play with points right when everything has that setting right when everything has that setting everything is pointed to the optimum which is petrifics so it has so we're saying that this needs to happen not now what needs to happen when a general's handbook well you're referring to you need to understand like that's not how these cycles work I mean it could be there's no reason to I think at least this summer FAQ yes ideally you get a points adjustment with the correction but what'll happen is you'll get the correction with no points adjustment and then once they realize that it's forming then you get your points I'm sorry I was using logic I apologize that's how they normally do you're right you're absolutely right is that you'll get you'll get the nerve and then you'll get the points adjustment because they're not going to reduce points on something that they feel is already over absolutely no it's what we call the classic scavin problem where scavin came out and they were super they were super under pointed on some of their units and so all that's happened for the last cycles is the units that were honestly broken and way under pointed kept going up which again super fine please continue with that but all the stuff that was garbage and way over pointed it just hasn't been touched it just sits there can I get some relief on my right ogres over here I sure want to play with these guys I'm dying over here right and that's the problem but that's what has to happen is that it has to get corrected and if it doesn't get corrected then the points are never going to go anywhere they're not going to make stalkers more playable yeah no because that just makes the better thing better right right so I agree I would love to see this with the honestly with a the double the double tap the double tap so because here's the problem whenever you they power things down even if it's completely justified it often has some kind of like negative to it to the people who've invested right the people who you're affecting positively are the people who generally haven't bought the army right right because now they're happier playing against it they don't get their teeth kicked down the back of their throat right and the people playing the army are the ones who are the most negatively affected by it by a weakening by a nerve right and they're the ones who actually spent the money and who theoretically might invest deeper into the army if you give them reason to right so you have to be very careful with this so to me yeah it's got to be it's got to be a simultaneous thing you'd go carrot and stick the stick is we we whacked Petrifex real hard and the carrot is we lower the points on the now that we don't have to calibrate them for that anymore yeah and Valetron in the comments has a really good point here and he says are they really so powerful that they need to change things and that's a you could certainly argue that they're not because they're not S tier they're not they're not just taking everything home what they are is they're an army that's get as a large percentage of your tournament field and armies can't win against and you're right and so when I said gatekeeper earlier I meant that they just straight up make a poor play experience because they they narrow down what armies you see at the tournament because certain ones like Tom just said you just won't see because they just squash them but that doesn't mean that they're winning the tournaments in fact that their win rate is not that great their win rate as of the time we stopped counting was second I think only to zeech when you take out mirror matches right so they're winning pretty well yeah I mean that's no they're strong they're clearly here's what I'll say they're definitely outside the bounds of the fat middle even construed widely right now right I think if mirrors LLVs in the stats no correct me if I'm wrong but I think they're at like 63 or something like that which is outside that with mirrors or sorry with the mirrors in there I think that's what they're at and you know that that to me is a problem it's the same reason I'd love to kick zeech in the teeth you know what I mean like and I do think it's a damage control thing because when these the I think that fat middle calibration of 40 to 60 is where we're all comfortable where we all just like some people are still going to complain but it's kind of at a royal when things when things go outside of 60% high low daughters of King it's almost like there's this mental thing that starts happening where people start having this real negative feeling that just kind of permeates about the army so that's what I'll say I mean I'll say this I never like in the meta when I was prepping for it at the con like OBR was not a game I wanted to play and it's not that I had a bad like it was going to be bad for me I had an answer for what I needed you know like I had answers for what I had to but it was just not a game I wanted to play yeah I as an OBR player I hate I hate running into other OBR players it sucks ass it's like all right am I going to get lucky in my cat-port roles if I do I win if I don't we're going to flip a coin and that's the game and it's just a trudge so I agree so let's let's just finish out here on Nagash and I agree with that by the way that is a great shirt you're wearing yes top notch so let's finish out on big pop in Nagash let's assume we fixed all these armies okay so our big daddy he's got to stay in the game we've got a beautiful model for him he's amazing we're never getting rid of him he's around now and I wouldn't want to see him getting rid of I love the dude he's great that's right so does he then go into every once all these are fixed does he go into every death army question one John what do you think he doesn't go into flesh eater courts okay because every loyalist every loyalist okay so we got the heretics and the loyalists gotcha so I guess when we're coming to Manfred then there's a question there is Manfred still considered a loyalist or not so I would I would side with nope as well but everywhere else got it so he can show up in Night Haunt in the New World he can show up in our new vampire faction led by Nephi right he can show up in obviously an OBR still and all of that okay great so and here's my next question does he have different points costs in each of those books should he or would he whatever answer it how you like I think that in the that GW designs he would have a universal point cost I think that's poor because you you take all your grand alliance tomes and you immediately then get to shuffle them in order based on who takes best advantage of the gosh and I don't like this I don't like that in his current form Night Haunt would be up at the top the world it's not the world we live in but it's the world we deserve Tom it is oh man I just man he is such a solution to Night Haunt like just across the board sure alright so let's I think the answer is you're right he probably would have but I would honestly much prefer him to have a points cost set to that specific army where it makes sense with how he's functioning in that in that because he could be worth and I'm not talking about huge variants I'm not saying like he's 400 points in one army and 900 points in a different one right I'm saying like he's 880 here and 820 over here or 840 over here or something like that exactly exactly because otherwise you're in a design space where you have to point him for the place where he's most powerful right and then when you when you do that you immediately make everybody else you throw them down a peg it's the same thing they did with Grimgrass Reapers Grimgrass Reapers were a great unit enough struggling army and Night Haunt where they were point-crossed but then you're like well they're in that and we'll just throw them Legion of Gash look at you guys get some good stuff as well well they're broken over there so we got to increase their points which makes the Night Haunt book which was already struggling even worse so it's just a frustrating experience right totally agree okay so Tom how do we set him up for that does he just like let's do the obvious he absorbs the entire spell as to whatever legions you fielded him in right yep we all agree with that John that makes sense to you yep I'm in I'm in with that he's got all the spells whatever he drop him in if he shows up with the ghosty boys he get ghost spells if he shows up with the the court of blood the court of blood the court of blood then he gets all the courts of blood spells right whatever okay great easy that one seems like a slam dunk right yep alright he's still Mr. eight cast or whatever whatever yep and do we give him you know he has this like he has this command ability he's always had oh my gosh I love it it's so good it is what it is it's it's this like Battleshaw community re-rolling ones ability right not as good as an OBR but uh well let me make a proposal yeah we can get some actual command ability based on whoever he's grouped up correct and he can either I'll give you two options one he can keep his current generic command ability and then he gets a second one added based on the armies in and multiple command abilities is not unprecedented which is kind of what he would do already like when he moves into like assuming he's general when he moves in Legion of Legion of whatever he gains the Legion of the gosh one if you were to move into Night Haunt Generals get a set command ability right yeah yeah and so that but that's just printed on his new war scroll and where we have a bespoke one to allow him to interact smartly with every army right yep so that he's granting a Battleshaw community to OBR or whatever right we can either remove the old one and uh and and just have him literally get a bespoke one for what he's doing because he would be using a different type of command ability with each different force right yep ideally expressing his will in a unique way to the troops that have manifested here right uh what how oh what happens in Grand Alliance with the spells so if he's in like just Grand Alliance death like GA death spells just like he gains no bonus spells in any in no one else gains bonus spells in Grand Alliance order destruction but he just doesn't agree like it nobody should be doing those Grand Alliance like I don't know let me say it this way GW's design direction has not incentivized soup armies sure yeah that's not what they want they don't want to see order armies on the table they want to see cities armies on the table or they want to see fire Slayer armies on the table so the fact that cities armies a year or so ago doing really are not cities army generic order armies the last like two years up until this year were not doing or that they were performing well that was an accident that wasn't a decision you know and and they wanted to reel that in which is why you got like the hurricane buff moving from like a plus one to all order units to plus one to only city units stuff like that because they were trying to like bring in the universal buffs out of the Grand Alliance armies so yes you can run your soup armies they're just the design intent isn't that thing so when I say that's not like that's wrong I'm talking about design and I'm not talking about you putting your models sure yeah I mean there's there's two main reasons that I think that's the smart move and that's with what Tom saying and which is why they're going to continue that number one is a marketing standpoint which is you're going to sell more good shit with the new stuff comes out and and we get to build an army with all the new cool stuff that's pretty basic marketing 101 but number two you're not putting yourself in the crosshairs of a game design and rule standpoint of always having to worry about min-maxing based on this greater pool of resources so if you allow these grand alliances access to too many tools that's where your your your balance is just gonna crumble and so honestly we want they need to keep allowing grand alliance to be played 100% we can play our game don't get rid of it but you just you're exactly right you just keep it very in a box where you don't get all the special bells and whistles so we make sure our game isn't broken by some combination of rules that we didn't account for in the design phase exactly what it's it's meant to be the fun option for people who want to run all of that stuff together like that's what it is and that's what it's fit to purpose it's not meant to top table tournaments and the people who are putting together those grand alliance armies that's not their goal anyways right they put that together because they wanted to be able to run all of their toys yep so they get to keep doing that and we don't need to worry about like how well we balanced a gosh in grand alliance death like he's just part of it because there it is there he's in it right it was an act that like grand alliance order was doing so well you know and it's an accident that some gifts players would rather just run grand alliance destruction because their actual allegiance is trash like they get more out of running grand alliance destruction than they do out of gifts yeah I mean the only thing I could say in this regard is that death seems to be a little bit of an outlier in this in that grand alliance death somehow they all just kind of feel like they belong together because they all report up to the same guy yeah they just feel like you could put them on the same table and they feel as one but if I've got a table where it's like half my units are fire slayers and the other half are fish elves it just feels so segregated that it doesn't feel right but it's just an aesthetic thing though really and we should I should I should get beyond that make a comment in a response to comments to me said that well Brian S said that I think we'll see the grand alliance spell ores in this year's GHB like if people are really concerned about the grand alliance getting spell ores there's a really easy solution to this by the way like super easy solution you just give them the spell ores whatever realm that they that they adhere to so if it's a grand alliance then you would get the that's a very easy it's tech we have we do that for items already right like that was the original point was that you could do that and so like arguably some would say but some of the spells rocks you're so powerful yeah but you're taking a really junky set of grand alliance abilities in order to get into those spells hmm yeah interesting idea I've never liked the idea of handing the like a lot of people push back and said well if I say I'm from a realm how come I don't get those spells and I've been very firmly on the side of that was the correct decision they made not to hand that out yeah absolutely but that being said that is a really interesting point to be able to do that in the grand alliance where the rest of your rules are sort of so weak yeah that that's the special thing you get you can be your representative of a collection of that alliance from that realm not like it's home base force under its thing yeah the other thing I would say is that I think that you could even hand it out to like allegiance armies but you'd have to give it give them as a trade so instead of great instead of knight haunt spells you get or you get shy of spells so you would be a very specific swap like this like if you have like if you have allegiance axe and you gain spells for axe you no longer gain spells and prayers for axe you now gain it from your your realm instead yeah I understand I'm a lot less hot on that but I understand that like that's adding tools to a toolbox that probably don't yeah it's a lot of complexity I agree but I think for the grand alliance uh order of grand alliance destruction I think that I think the realm thing you know is a lot more balanced I'll say sure sure no I don't mind it all the grand alliances that's fine so super good with that okay uh alright great have we fixed it is that the state of the union for death have we done this I think so I think we fixed all the world's problems in the in the living dead world we've got our living dead girls we've got our cannibal corpses we've got everything important all set up here we've got our knights dawns days worlds that happens like what I mean by that is like fixing night haunt like we're really not near a night haunt like I can't imagine we're near a haunt no we're not like that's just not in the cards no but we could be near a legions 2.0 book where they break some of this stuff out like that you know like one of those things can happen I could see that like you know legions where we get a new legion of brief like institutionalized yeah yeah yeah exactly right the state of our union of death is strong we've got to continue to support our our hegemonic leader here in Nagash he's he has led us through yes his plan to turn a pyramid on its head and destroy all life in the mortal realms didn't exactly work but it was but it did cause a lot of random spells that have killed a lot of people and that's not bad can we can we talk about the fact that he like he went with like the star wars plan of just rebuilding the death star again sure he just keeps trying yes he is as bad as the emperor like just keep on building death stars black pyramids yes you know 3000 years prior to the you know the old world main timeline and then he did it again in the end times did another black pyramid this gave a mess up again and then he gets to age of sigmar and does it again but turns it upside down this time he's he's clever that one yes alright John what are your closing thoughts on on death you know I they're not in a bad spot overall I know I think this is really interesting and actually I've gotten a lot of really exciting kind of like juices flowing about what could be and I don't think we're far off in any way even one of these tangents for really getting them where they are now a lot of this is in under the umbrella of all other of the grand alliances would have a similar tweak itch as this state of the union would and then we'd all be tweaked together and I'm sure with all the factories being down and all the work being halted and working from home that everybody at games workshop has had all the rules yeah they're just just hammering on every single book and finding those tiny tweaks that they've never been allowed to have the time to do and now they're doing it we're gonna assume that's all gonna happen in which case I'm happy we're gonna be where we need to be depressing thing about this is I'm ready the GHB was likely finished like three months like the month or so before the pandemic it was probably like sent to print in like February March for a summer date and so this pandemic is not like rules are not in the scope now the FAQs might be but the points definitely would not sure the FAQs can get can get tilted around up until the last minute I suspect they do right and let me just say what's most fascinating like I am really interested to see what ends up in the new GHB because because we've removed all the allegiance abilities we'll do a prediction show we'll do a prediction show that is its own conversation yeah yeah look I remain very hopeful now that we finally got all the tones out it's time to start rocking rolling like I am excited for this brave new world anything's possible now we can do some relaunch tomes we can do armies of giants the second they said there's gonna be an army of giants I was like no that's it that confirmed it for me anything's possible in this bold in this brave new world we've entered like set all of your assumptions aside the world is our oyster we can do anything so the giants can go in any army you want you get a giant and you get a giant absolutely so I'm ready I'm ready for this this new world I live in I can't wait to see what crazy things they come out with that I have to buy what if night haunt isn't the army sorry it just you're left turning on me when I'm trying to close the show but like what if the book that gets dropped isn't night haunt but it's Legion of grief like what I think John said no but no no no we talked about Legion of night or we talked about Legion of the gosh updated that's not what I'm talking about what if a new book OBR style drops that integrates night haunt but blows it up to be larger than just simply what night haunt has been and that's the update for night haunt sure but again like why people loved Legion of grief was because it gave them graveyards this is where I said that part right and clearly that mechanic should change so okay but again just revisiting night haunt and just fixing the rules and rebranding it something else yeah I mean it's I'm not sure that's not the same thing just under a different name maybe maybe yeah there you go well gentlemen this has been really fun John as always buddy absolute pleasure hanging out I am always glad to be here we're going to have to make sure that I hope for all of this I missed you hanging out with you at adept con it was a real shame so I seriously the the only thing about this this whole situation that truly it sort of hurts in that way other than this all sucks but like the thing that truly hurts is hanging out with all of you out there hanging out with friends in the community I miss everybody these events I can't wait till we can all get back together John I look forward to seeing you again digitally for a little while and then in person eventually as soon as we can hopefully as soon as Nova knocking on wood that that one still makes its way through Nash con I'm holding out for Nash con hope I will point out that the other convention that's that weekend that was this wasn't in the news because it's not directly iOS related but it is actually here at the end the other convention the same weekend as Nova which is Reaper con did just cancel today but on the bright side of that they are moving to an all digital format where they're going to like stream everything and have classes online and all that stuff for free so and you can still buy swag bags and stuff like that and all that kind of things so Reaper con has already said nope we're not we're not doing it so we'll see I think that I think that that's smart because that gives them a lot of a lot of runway to really make the direction they're going successful instead of holding out and holding out and deciding I think that and it doesn't necessarily this is kind of me my positive spin doesn't necessarily have bad news for Nova being on that same weekend it just means that that's the direction they're going with so we'll see fingers crossed we'll see what happens but Tennessee Tennessee is opening up this next week sure so cross your fingers maybe that means that Nashcon happens I'll be there if it happens I'll be there with like a mask on and and gloves and I'll wrap myself in plastic so I will be there too so what happened events he passed out he had a plastic bag over his head okay so at any rate everybody who's watching right now that's there you go we can all cosplay as KO perfect thank you Alex every if you're watching right now hit like obviously that's really appreciated right now people are looking for a lot of content and YouTube has been very funny and strange recently with things like the algorithm so do please hit like it helps other people find this channel which I deeply appreciate John thank you very much for being here sir course all right but as all of you thank you so much for watching we really really appreciate it as always we'll see you next Wednesday