I had the pleasure of meeting Phil Kelly at a tournament he attended here in Cali. He is a very bright young man. Personally I think Ward's Dark Elf book was his best. As for Cruddace, I love the WoC book. Sure, chariot spam and unkillable lords and demon princes can become annoying, but the army had plenty of weakness to make it balanced enough to not dominate the tournament scenes.
Did Matt Ward purposely build an Elf super army?
- Thread starter najo
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My problem with Cruddace is all his armies lack internal balance creating units that are must haves and others that totally are dead weight. Then they lack external balance because he will put weaknesses or strengths into the army with no counter balance. He has shown that he doesn't understand warhammer's meta mechanics.
I don't know, I've had ridiculous success with mono-gods back in my 7th Ed. demon days. It wasn't every day you can stack a leadership raping army so bad you make half the army run based on a terror check reaction, while the other gets Siren Songed and killed off piecemeal. Pure Slaaneshi demons was utter filth with Banner of Despair, as many Siren Songs as you can take, and Masque with Phantasmagoria. My mono Khorne army literally just pushed up with Juggernaught 0+ save Heralds, BT, Flesh Hounds and blocks of Bloodletters and killed everyone, it wasn't even fair. Nurgle just never died and attritioned every army to death, while mono Tz lists had like 36 PD on average. All of these mono-god armies won games, so that would mean they weren't limited and queued in as hammers, support and magic. They just won, and won hard because the book was powerful, all the units were good, and everything was well-priced.
8th Ed. Demons is better you say? Nurgle is insane, Beasts are severely undercosted, Skullcannons are the most laughably balanced unit in all of Warhammer, while Tzeentch and Khorne have been reduced to utter trash. Sure, it paved the way to randomness and fluffy fun, but also a huge degree of inconsistency and piss poor internal balance.
Regardless, I think GW is worse with Mat Ward. If they got rid of him, they made a big mistake. If they didn't, well, it's a huge loss to the design team because he was the one that really knew how to internally balance books. I agree that Phil Kelly is the man, as he basically has Mat Ward's sense of internal balance with respect to other armies. From what I've seen, Mat just wants his book to be good, with tons of player options, but without much consideration about the metagame.
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Archamedius
Grave Guard
I think the skill cannon is only stupid because cannons are laser guided. Fix cannons and the unit becomes a lot less threatening.
OK, so nevermind the fact they're 135 points for a chariot-based ITP Fear 5+ ward T6 3+ AS 4W cannon with impact hits S5 and have WS5 KB attacks.
A Dwarf Cannon is 120 points, and so is the Empire. The only thing similar is the Ironblaster at 175 and it's not remotely close to being as good.
Archamedius
Grave Guard
Maybe it's just me, but whenever I have played against it (and I have several local players who play demons and bring it against me) I fear the cannon way more than I fear any of the other bits. If my opponent charges it into me I take that as a win because my large targets are no longer getting shot at by the item that just makes me pick it up (cannons tend to just make you pick up whatever they shoot). Sure it might hurt when he charges, but a decent sized unit of even spearmen can absorb the initial charge's damage and still be steadfast. After that it suffers as any other chariot in close combat.
Well in my opinion he's better than Vetock who can't seem to make an army that works other than gunlines. This applies to Orcs and Dwarves.
In some respect...to the Lizardmen too.Yes! Very valid points. WAY WAY undercosted. The Ogre author got it right. Ward just did his usual "let's give them OP stuff!"
I agree with @Archamedius . What balances the Khannon is it can only perform one role at a time.
As for the new Daemons, nearly everything in there is both internally balanced and externally balanced. Nurgle is a bit more survivable and grinds well, so yeah, he is top heavy power wise. But I've seen nearly everything in the book used effectively in the right hands. My friend's father has played Warhammer since 1st edition. He makes me look young and I am one of the oldest here. He runs a mono-Tzeentch army with a tooled up lord of change, three heralds, three units of 24-30 pink horrors, two units of 9 screamers, a unit of flamers and a couple burning chariots. The way he plays it its as slippery as wood elves, and very brutal in the movement, magic and shooting phases. You can't out flank him, he can shut down most movement tactics and then it just throws out very reliable Tzeentch magic. The army is awesome. It took him 6 months to learn to play it from when the book came out and now he is on nearly a perfect winning streak and none of us can touch him. We get close sometimes, and he has been beaten here or there, but like 95% wins easily, with mono Tzeentch Daemons.
IMO, Khorne is the hardest to play well. But, khorne has the Khannon and Fleshhounds. So if you build your Khorne Daemons right, you can balance out the Bloodletters and Bloodcrushers being a little expensive.
I have a mono-Slaanesh army that I sometimes mix in Tzeentch. I don't play it a lot, but winning isn't uphill at all. Slaanesh magic is very strong and the units are effective when used as shock troops. So, I find Slannesh is competitive.
Take all of that, and go mixed gods. The army is much more balanced (both internally and externally) than Warriors of Chaos. Really its only flaw is the Gift system would have been much better if it was a cross between 6th and 7th.
As for the new Daemons, nearly everything in there is both internally balanced and externally balanced. Nurgle is a bit more survivable and grinds well, so yeah, he is top heavy power wise. But I've seen nearly everything in the book used effectively in the right hands. My friend's father has played Warhammer since 1st edition. He makes me look young and I am one of the oldest here. He runs a mono-Tzeentch army with a tooled up lord of change, three heralds, three units of 24-30 pink horrors, two units of 9 screamers, a unit of flamers and a couple burning chariots. The way he plays it its as slippery as wood elves, and very brutal in the movement, magic and shooting phases. You can't out flank him, he can shut down most movement tactics and then it just throws out very reliable Tzeentch magic. The army is awesome. It took him 6 months to learn to play it from when the book came out and now he is on nearly a perfect winning streak and none of us can touch him. We get close sometimes, and he has been beaten here or there, but like 95% wins easily, with mono Tzeentch Daemons.
IMO, Khorne is the hardest to play well. But, khorne has the Khannon and Fleshhounds. So if you build your Khorne Daemons right, you can balance out the Bloodletters and Bloodcrushers being a little expensive.
I have a mono-Slaanesh army that I sometimes mix in Tzeentch. I don't play it a lot, but winning isn't uphill at all. Slaanesh magic is very strong and the units are effective when used as shock troops. So, I find Slannesh is competitive.
Take all of that, and go mixed gods. The army is much more balanced (both internally and externally) than Warriors of Chaos. Really its only flaw is the Gift system would have been much better if it was a cross between 6th and 7th.
You're missing my point, my point is that the thing is severely undercosted compared to everything else in the same category. If we're going to knit-pick, the only thing that's close to the same category of "fighting cannons" is the Ironblaster and Skullcannon, the Hellcannon is a slight deviation of the two since its more Stone Thrower. The thing costs 15 points more than a Cannon that cannot fight, and comes with all the bells and whistles while being a magical flaming cannon and sports a 3+ AS (compared to other WM that die when you shoot at it with missile fire).
It doesn't matter if its functionality is to either shoot or charge, the fact is that it can do both, do it better than most, and costs 40 points less. I don't know why you or najo are arguing around this.
@najo, please sing your praises of the 8th Ed. army book being better designed than the 7th over on DaemonLegion. I'm sure they would love to hear your reasoning considering the bulk majority of the people hate the book with a passion. Out of all the books that has changed, 7th to 8th Demons saw the biggest change of them all. Power level wise, I would argue that it's only slightly less powerful, but instead of seeing all the diverse builds I saw in 7th, I see the same crap in 8th. Why? Because certain elements of the book are ridiculous (in terms of price, power) while others are worthless.
Some of the best players I know had Demons back in 7th, I had them as well. All of the players I've spoken to agree that the new book is just garbage, not because it's weaker (in some respects its much better), but because the player options are not there. I don't know what your friend is doing with his mono Tz army, but aside from the wild mono Slaanesh that one of my friends play, most GT demon lists look pretty spot on identical. For me, that's when I know a book is poorly designed.
You know what? Mat Ward did 8th Ed. Demons too, but did he really? or was he put on an iron leash by production because of all the community backlash from subpar players and wannabe designers? Just know that in the gaming community, most outlash for designers are completely unwarranted and stem from ragers.
I'm going on a tangent, a mean hard line that borders on obscenities, so I'll pull out of this before it gets more heated.
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Tell beastmen players that Phil Kelly is the man and watch what they say. Didn't he write the original ogres as well?
As a former beastmen player, I can tell you first hand just how bad that list is. I remember when the book was still in the rumors stage. It was the first time in the game's history that players weren't complaining about a codex being overpowered as quite the opposite occurred. The book's rares are garbage and there is so little strength in the list that playing beasts has long been called "Warhammer on Hard Mode."
Kelly was playing a game at a GW shop with beasts about a year after the book was released (or even earlier than that) and he forgot special abilities and even made up a few as the game progressed. Onlookers were annoyed at the author's lack of knowledge of the army he himself had written. In response, he said that he doesn't know that much about Fantasy.
As a former beastmen player, I can tell you first hand just how bad that list is. I remember when the book was still in the rumors stage. It was the first time in the game's history that players weren't complaining about a codex being overpowered as quite the opposite occurred. The book's rares are garbage and there is so little strength in the list that playing beasts has long been called "Warhammer on Hard Mode."
Kelly was playing a game at a GW shop with beasts about a year after the book was released (or even earlier than that) and he forgot special abilities and even made up a few as the game progressed. Onlookers were annoyed at the author's lack of knowledge of the army he himself had written. In response, he said that he doesn't know that much about Fantasy.