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 is my co-host. I think it's Tyler this week Tyler. I think you're the official co-host this week Looks like it's been good man. I've been like been two months since I've been here. It's been a minute It has been a minute, but that's all right. It's a we know it's it's holiday time Hopefully you spend it with kith and kin with family or the various having some good games of Warhammer Which is of course the much better way to spend your holidays as we all know Tom's here too. What's up Tom? Hello friends Yeah, Tyler you need to pull your weight around here. I've been doing like all the shows for the last few years with them Perfect internet connection right here. Yeah, it's been great. Hey, I'm back to normal. We're good. I'm live I'm here Not bad connection. We'll see absolutely he's back So tonight tonight will be our belated Thanksgiving episode our annual tradition get excited It's time for thank you or janky where we look back over everything that 2023 has given us and we say Whether we're thankful for it. It's thank you or whether frankly We're not and it's janky. There you go. So we want your votes too Because we want to know what you think of all these releases We'll get into that in a normal course of events but of course first you should hit like and do those things because It's cool thing to do and it makes you a cool person and don't you want to be cool? So, you know be cool Be cool. All right, Tyler. Let's do some news. What do we got man? rumor engine You guys gonna guess is what this I mean that first thought what it's given off some sense of a minute vibes At least to me it was but I don't know if that's likely Probably not likely I don't know. Beast chaos thing. How about that? Mm-hmm. Yeah, they like shrunken heads Yeah Yeah I don't know some kind of vampire we got going on there. No, no Well, we do have full on like a vampire head of the new book coming up And we know that it's gonna have all death factions So maybe that there's something in there I mean, I don't think that they've been doing new models per se for those fun factions. Well, no, it's not true about Thanos And those were all new so I don't know maybe could be maybe something that or it could be something in like nine months Should be an overall thing as well frankly Legitimately that's that's pretty easy So who knows it's one of those things where you know exactly what it is, but it could be a million things, right? Yeah I it's definitely not 40k Can we say that? I don't know. No, I can't say that. I Really can't It could very well be 40k Tom very well The worst You should bring your mic closer to yourself. All right. Yeah All right, what's next next up old world psychology looks like a Old world article that I did not read. Yeah, buddy read this. I did I did because I'm interested in this So let's talk about it. I've got a picture up here Tyler. You're ready. Okay. We go so You've got you've got these choices or not choices. I should say you got these results So when you make a break test our old our old fan the break test, okay, wherein you had the In one of our fantasy basically the key idea was if you got beat in combat You made a break test and if you failed you ran and if you ran and you got caught then you got run down It's kind of like battle shock Only instead of losing a couple models you lose the entire unit, right? So it was always terrible design, right? Because what it really encouraged you just encouraged a lot of like really hinky-jinky stuff But anyways now they've they've also cotton to this that it was bad design But we've got to still have some version of it. So what we've come to is this so let's go through our example here You ready? Okay, a unit of sword masters who are leadership eight have come off worse In a combat against some stone trolls and have lost by three points Okay, so they lost by three and then in the grand totaling of things all all told I assume this means Oh many of them died like lost by three Models by no, they lost by three because you total up the score. I don't think you Combat example, but it's like it's it's classic stuff. You would expect like plus one per rank plus one for having a banner Plus one for the army banner plus one for higher ground Yada yada yada, okay? It's it's it's what you remember Yep So at any rate the calculation of that came to them losing by three which I assume means a lot of them died Because stone trolls don't generally have ranks and sword masters do and have a banner Which is which an old fantasy made like monstrous infantry pretty terrible usually because they were like starting the fight losing by four right But anyways So then we roll they now make a break test and they roll their 2d6 If they get a 2 through 5 so their modified roll is equal or lower than leadership Then I think they're fine. Basically, they give ground or something like that If their modified roll is Higher, but they're still under their or equal to or less than their actual leadership So in other words eight seven six right because they were at eight minus three or whatever Yeah, so that's that creates that eight seven six gap Yep, then they fall back in good order, which I believe means they just like fall back out of combat They don't run like lunatics and then if they roll the nine plus Then that's when they break and flee so basically created this extra gap In the middle right so you're more stable on your base leadership but you're still like Moving falling back out of combat and then needing to be re-engaged and stuff like that hmm So okay, this is going to be very complicated to explain to people. I like this seems Like a lot. I mean, it's it's understandable. It's not that I can't grasp what's going on here It's just this kind of math is hard people to get their head around as a side note My game design rule for myself is I generally avoid including subtraction in games Because I find subtraction too hard for most people the average person to do on the fly Okay, so this is a bit above that That's sort of a thing. I tend to live by But anyways, that's I mean I feel like bravery checks, you know They maybe are an example of that in a was because we have kind of something like that you got it Oh, sure. No, I hate the math the number of times. Yeah, I've had to re-explain that Some of my friends were like wait, how's this math work? It's terrible. I completely agree. It's garbage We basically don't know how to do bravery. That's what it comes down to So I get it they wanted to keep the break and free flee thing I mean what it'll effectively mean is that just like always if you have a high leadership and The unusual happens you just oopsies your way into losing a game because your key unit It was like leadership nine or ten.  Oh the number of times I Mean many of those will will end up being immune to psychology Which is the other thing they shared they shared though like I don't have the image But it was the image of like the dragon ogre shaggoth who's like mr. Key word soup Just yeah 50 key words of stuff And I'm like, okay Sure, why not? Let's get it all in here But he was immune to psychology most importantly which generally meant things like that Anywho Yeah, that's old stuff. I mean again I just want to like I the way to get my head around this is I want to get the rules in my hand and play a game of it Like that's what yeah, totally. Yeah How much is this just 8th edition my one of my probably my least favorite edition of fantasy and how much are they actually drawing from the earlier editions? Probably not we'll see You're gonna you're gonna look at it and be like I have to open up this book. Nope. I'm done Like that was there Was there one main thing you could point to for why it was your least favorite edition? Yeah, it was gummy. It was gummy and overly complex like it had too much going on And that that fickle rulebook. I remember that it had I don't know how many of us take But it was when I say it's gummy what I mean is it was just like a very Slow plotty game. It didn't really encourage a lot of action. It encouraged like very large Horty units that would kind of like really just dance like move and position and move and then hit And if you didn't get lucky and break them, then you just kind of sat there for a while So that was generally what it I had a bunch of armies that I tried very hard to play differently Like my all-sphinx army or you know, so no no troops whatsoever terrible army, but I tried it all the time You know stuff like that. Yeah, I Completely miss on 8th. I saw some of our friends had a good time over the last weekend I think at mini wargaming Rob and Chuck and others play in I Don't know. I warm a fantasy battle or the Old World.  Yeah, something to do with warm fans in square Yep, so that was that was cool to see Yeah, but yeah good Enjoy. Yeah It looked like they had a very fun time So that would that seemed like a great way to spend a holiday weekend in my estimation. So there you go. Absolutely All right, we good with that absolutely Okay, we've got a flesh and a quartz box set on its way as quick turnaround from the preview to this It's cool to see Yeah Well, we've got going on in this box quite a few different models. I love the new Vargulf. I think that looks amazing These calf or sweets. Yeah Little surprise they didn't get rid of the ghouls. It looks like this is gonna be just another goal unit here It's 20 models. They've got in the box But yeah, they they went over the rules this week and like oh, okay Report thing and like those like the ghouls in the box are bodyguards for the Gotcha Okay, and so they seem to have some type of function like that Yeah, the the gore warden the flyer there Can fly high and deep strike with like any of the other units that are flying high at the beginning Oh, nice the spell that he can cast and And grab him and any other flying unit that's nearby Hmm, and it's a spike cast the winds of Shaiish maybe and it picks them up and puts them in you It basically deep strikes them anywhere they want on the board So I understand.  Yeah, so Pretty cool. I Just noticed the little cards the artwork you guys see the artwork in that photo. Yeah. Yeah, it's great That's great. Like there's it's both. I think there's the delusion side and then Side yeah, it's pretty awesome. Yeah, that's cool Yeah, so are we doing that next week or are we waiting? Next week there you go Tom pre-releases this Saturday that means next week is is fec I am so I am ready for this my body already got our guests lined up for next week So there we go as But yeah, it's it's gonna be super cool. So there you go Okay, okay, I think that's it. That's all let's let's move out of the news As Vince remembers that he's supposed to be time stamping all of this Piece of paper. I'm gonna add I'm gonna add an additional element. That wasn't it go for and just a reminder for folks Lexington the has the Trash bash in the blue grass, maybe I think that's what it is Clash trash clash. I think crash clash in the blue grass. I don't know what did we all sign up for I signed up for the thing Yeah, Tyler send me the mic and I was like, yeah, man. Okay. Yeah, let's go. Yeah, we're all signed up for it It's gonna be great. It's in it's in April. It's gonna be Lexington's first two-day event for AOS It is currently full but I would encourage folks to sign up for the wait list there will likely be drops There will be opening so sign up and come join us roll some dice and then as well It'll set expectations for what we might be able to achieve at the next event So that we can get an appropriate size bend Nice right now. Make sure you hit me with a link. I'll drop it in the show description Speaking of things in the show description. Hey, let's turn to some pick of the week. Shall we? Alright, so Tyler, what would you like to share with everybody? Got a measly two today Slagged one very much so So Ben watching some of the coverage coming out of the world championships The channel Saga of dice Robin company Carson was on talking about his experience. So Carson did really well top 10 Finish with the Fatties over Maud tribes And yeah, it was just good to hear his experience of the event They chatted about it over a couple hours going a lot of detail about the games and everything Also plastic crack article that I'd recommend checking out with another other emphasis on ogres and then a little known battle report channel that it feels like I haven't mentioned in six months had a phenomenal member only game So you got to become a member which everybody listening should be a member of this channel Do I have to say the name of this channel? I really should if you want people to go there. Yes I season of War The two one out the two og's the og's I'm going on forever Ridge and Jordan Ridge playing his gits list and Jordan playing this I net list that they took to the boys They both did incredibly well very competitive game fascinating game loved it more of that boys It was fantastic. So yeah, everybody check that out It's always interesting to see I'd net doing reasonably well in any setting right now. So yeah, I'm sorry Is it a shark heavy list? Is it a shiver? It was not actually that that was it dude It was three by ten Reavers 31 by 30 thralls I don't even know if you had a shark in there.  Yeah, really interesting that they went 5-0 with that list nice at the boys So and and Ridge pulled up for one gits are still very terrifying Turns out Dozen nerves Yeah, oh, we're gonna talk about that in thank you or janky. Don't you worry none son. That's gonna be a We're gonna talk a lot about all of that But yeah, no great stuff for my pick of the week, I'm gonna send us on send everybody over to our good buddies Scott and John Minniak and then John for the most recent episode of trapped under plastic Where in Scott recounts his journey that he just took recently to Monte Sansevino Which is One of the coolest miniature painting competitions in the world that happens every year in Monte Sansevino, Italy And he went there with Roman the pot after a sort of a couple day coaching with Roman Seemed like an all-around amazing time certainly a certainly one of those trips of a lifetime kind of things to be able To spend time with Roman and then drive down there with him. So much respect. It's a great story. Seems like you had a lot of fun Certainly, it's a journey. I'm planning to hopefully make this next year Head over to Italy to do that in next November. So yes looking forward to it. It's nice to hear everything What's going on? So there you go? Oh Okay, so check it out linked down below Tom We're coming to you. What are you sharing with everybody? You're muted Tom. You're still muted. You're talking on mute. There you go I have an unusual share this time around and it is a patreon Uh for onwards aos I don't know that we've ever shared it on the the page before. It's darin watson's Uh Patreon if any of you that know darin darin has been a consummate and list builder and wonderful performer at a number of events over in the uk And wonderful human being an all-around wonderful human being and here on onwards aos It's basically a coaching patreon where you can come and get intentional kind of like Coaching on like list building and tactics and stuff like that with varying peers I was talking with some folks that were in it and just hearing some of the tips that they had received and I was just really impressed By some of the guidelines that they like just some basic coaching tips of like each game recording like what mistakes you Made that were obvious. What that are general mistakes versus match up specific mistakes versus You know, thank like target priority, you know, in you know, six scenarios specific observations Like for journaling at the end of each each Like game that you play and stuff like that. And so just like a wonder a bunch of wonderful just Helpful tips and I just realized, you know when I was interacting with folks But it just seems like it's been a really helpful community for those wanting to kind of sharpen their game And so I wanted to to share it with everybody Very nice Okay Very good. Uh, all right Uh, what was that? Gentlemen, let's uh, let's move on to some hobby time Uh, this is going to be supremely disappointing For me personally, but we'll talk about it Uh, Tyler, what do you uh, what have you been working on? How how goes the plans on the new army? Have we moved out of the planning stages yet? We are so you'll be happy to hear we're still in the planning stages. I have done some hobby I've done some priming of terrain. I've done my first building bonafide building Simbling whatever word is used by you hobbyist of models liberators. So I'm starting out Back in 2015. All right. Yeah, that's fine. It was Starting from from the beginning We've got 10 liberators built. So that that was that was interesting. That was that was fun And yeah, I've got my document going with various links and Resources being built.  So Check back in Six months from now. Okay Okay I'm sure that uh, this is going to be as completely insane and over planned as anything you would ever do tyler So I look forward to it. I look forward to eventually getting rolling. Oh War cut at 2.0 is about done. So That's related that counts Yeah, uh shout out to uh, jeff. I feel like I'm always going to butcher his name jeff viscades You actually jeff joked with me at vault wars It was the one name that you pronounced correctly all year. So congratulations. It was jeff's last name. Nice He was like he was amazed that you nailed it. I don't know what the context was but there you go It must have been like a list review show we did for vault wars. I said, that's what it was. Yeah Yeah, so weird knobs and amazing, you know austin weird knobs. I've talked about them before anyway He he's done all kinds of great design work. He's helped me with the design on amazing guys. Nice. Yeah, so we're getting close Uh Absolutely the bob 288 I love this comment so much and and yes, it is very useful So you should totally hit it be cool like the bob 288 and hit like that's absolutely Okay, maybe that's a that's a fantastic comment Uh for myself, I am working. So like my hobby's actually been myriad so first off over the Holiday weekend, I actually did a d&d marathon. So I was and I was running the game So I was running like 48 hours of d&d basically over a four day period And so I did not get a lot of time to hobby this may you may shock you to learn uh But I am working on something that I can't share Maybe I'd be able to share it relatively soon-ish who knows Like maybe it's related to something we were talking about earlier. Maybe it's not. I don't know I don't know Could be anything Could be anything I'm not saying anything Hard to hard to say And then I realized on this girl who I'm still working on my uh my my Nergalafide sister a battle here That I am completely off base and I was staring at it and it was really bothering me and I realized I did a bunch of stuff wrong and I conferred with a couple people for feedback and they were right They were they were like, yes, you did you done messed up And I realized kind of where all these different places I had gone wrong on the model Which is fun It's fun to realize when you're this deep into it that you've you've gone the wrong direction in a lot of ways And so uh now I'm going to repaint a bunch of that stuff after 100 hours of work Points here that uh when you get something wrong you fix it if it's a model that matters See if you had planned a little bit better. Yeah, you've done a little more planning The funny part is I had planned this out. I just didn't like and then upon execution realized my plan was flawed Fair this actually had more planning than I've generally done with models, but But here we are nonetheless Uh, I just can't win I've also been working on our Uncle Adam and I's next game It is approaching our first alpha test So we've got Basically the the the boys are all coming into town next weekend for vincy con not this coming weekend next weekend And we're gonna be running the first alpha test there. We've got some got the rules in a nice shape where it's playable A little bit more to do and then they'll be ready to rock and roll so Sounds like we're gonna have Jobs again, Tom That's exactly these guys I'm writing a new game and I'm like great. I have more development to do Tyler's like great. I have more editing to do. I can't stop won't stop. Good lord Yeah, that's the train rolls ever onward my friend. Just it's like we're like snow piercer over here. We can't stop just Keeps rolling Uh, so it's been a it's been a quite a for not having many hobby days I am happy that what I'm gonna do it and now I've got a direction for this figure going forward So I think you're gonna see it look a lot different next week.  Exactly That's right. If I would have not planned who knows I might have made different choices All right, Tom, what about you buddy? Which how's your how's your work been going? Now you and I were talking about a little planning this week speaking of planning Yeah, so Tyler, when did you when were you starting to plan your project? Like how long ago was that? Oh, I mean, let's not be generous And let's no let's be generous And say two months to be generous Cool. So I would move through multiple armies in that time And not only that like in the last week. I finished the building and basing of 100 models, maybe Oh Be slow down, buddy. I mean we're I'm in the process of Uh, like I'm moving I have a lot of stuff in boxes or in like bits Collections and I was like no more even if they're not painted. I want to be how to be able to have them on the table for play. And so Like added 12 additional bins to my closet for like fully completed models Uh for my sole blight just did a outrageous number of stuff that I finished building And I was getting ready to start painting on my Holy war's army Which was my trolls with vins and then made an executive decision at like one o'clock in the morning that I think I'm gonna go corn So, okay I'm Late night the blood got into him. He wanted some blood for the blood gods skulls for the throne of corn He couldn't stop himself the I may have made a very expensive order from landmine that will include multiple boxes of skulls And I'm building claws of karnak even now as we speak so very nice Now the dog can I can I get a corgis? Yeah, yes Now they can I get a corgis coal? Uh question from earlier in the week that I saw makes sense Well, he has a dog, right like I So here's the funny thing. I have a corgis call But I I need a corgis call and a corn lord because both of them have dogs See that's the point of the 1k list is it's all dog beautiful Yeah Now some of them are actual dogs and some of them are dressed like dogs or some of them are just carrying dogs But all of them are dogs. That's the point. It's dog related It's dog all the way down. Yeah, exactly. That's that's what matters.  I'll figure it out. So there you go Um, all right, it means of him trying to figure out what he's doing. I'm just purchasing additional for me. Yes All right So For myself Or yeah, that's it. That's all that's that's hobby time. Good hobby time. Okay, not myself. I already talked about me darn it We're moving on to the next thing 30 minutes. We did it. We did it Uh, I know how this show works. We've only done it for almost 10 years For nine years or something. I don't know forever forever. This is like sisyphus Uh, okay. Hey Let's uh Let's talk about thank you or janky. Shall we? Mm-hmm. All right So thanky or janky Da na na na na na na na na na na na na na. There you go. There's our there's our theme music as we all know As that's exactly the same theme music that I've done every time You really need to get a soundboard No, we yeah, I should I really should and that's uh, That's a list for Kathy. Yeah for like my christmas list a soundboard. I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah. I hear she loves you Uh, it's it's a rumor. I don't let her hear that um So This is our 2023 look back. What we're gonna do is we're gonna look back at the Major releases of 2023. Not every single product that was released is in here. Okay. Give me a break. Come on now First of all Do you know how annoying it is to scroll back to january on the warhammer news site? Yeah Can't say I've ever done that but I imagine yeah It took me on this current site. It took me 20 plus minutes to scroll because I had to go Like I had it down to where I could do it without needing more Like I was I was yeah I was like watching something else and then just I would go one two three four mouse scrolls click One two three four click one two three four click and I had to do that I don't even know how many times so many Okay, you think they would have the like go to date x You would think but as we saw from the recent launch of the Uh, like I didn't include the launch of the warhammer the new AO or the new sorry website in here the like not that not the community website But the you buy things website. I didn't include that Because it's not worth even discussing. It's janky like end of discussion It is I have never seen something be more universally panned in the history of like the internet This is the Whatever her name was Caitlyn Jenner Pepsi ad like nobody likes this Yeah Okay, have you guys ever seen age of miniatures.com? No They I don't know if I'm just gonna make you feel better or worse But they do a great job of tracking everything that happens during the year Okay, and they're pretty accurate as as far as I can tell over the years. Yeah So yeah, they track everything going on in a os and 40k. Well, that'd be way more helpful in the future So I'll check that out very nice Uh, Keith Rogers said Vince. I have a question. Would you like to load more? Yeah, exactly. Yes, I would Yes, I would like I understand why they don't you know They don't have a load all option because it would just like explode the the The server right and trying to load all of that data like I get it. Okay Um, but jeez-al-peets. I wish there was a load more or something like more than more more than just the next Two weeks or whatever they you load up Okay Uh Warpstone enjoyers said you're going to include the new aos video gamers that next year once the dust settles That's probably next year Or only we're only counting like the the actual mainline game stuff released this year Uh, I didn't touch any of the video games or there were things like that and celery stuff But we'll we'll see once all that comes down. We'll we'll see how that works I did watch robb's discussion about the aos video game Which I which I found very interesting because it was like why do people still hate aos I I almost selected that video. I was like that close. It's worth a watch. It's a good discussion It is a worth a watch. It is good. Yeah um Okay. Hey, uh bonus pick go check out robb's video on why people still hate aos. I think it's I think it's quite insightful Uh at any rate, let's get into it here We're to start with uh, I've broken this up this year instead of going purely by date They're organized by uh Like type of thing first and then by date makes sense Okay So let's start with this just seemed a more logical way to me. I don't know why it just did So we're gonna do ghp first It's not but okay, that's fine. I like sub hierarchies tom Okay, we should just do release dates. That is our sub hierarchy That's that's only one hierarchy. I prefer multiple hierarchies sub hierarchies tom.  Okay. You've seen my magic arts and how they're organized and and you know I like sub hierarchies. It's insanity So at any rate ghp's Okay, so let's start with of course, we've only got two of these. These are pretty obvious It's not hard to remember But I'm counting this one even though technically it was like released at the end of last year It's still it was the first six months of this year obviously. So it's you know, it's this year's ghp first half of the season at least And this is our galatian champions one right We all suddenly cared about tiny Foot heroes or at least we were supposed to so This was a six month season Obviously came on the back of of the previous ghp, which wasn't greatly loved to put that Let's call it To put it mildly, let's say it wasn't greatly loved Then we got this one to galatian champions one I'm gonna be honest with you When I made this slide The reason I wrote galatian champions here was so I would remember What the heck was going on in this general's handbook?  It was just gone. I could not remember anything that this season was about Yeah, it was about like tunnel finding under thondi or whatever, right? So yeah, these little nine wound heroes and stuff And you had your little galatian champion benefits and buffs and your little abilities and things It was the foot hero ghp. Yeah. Yeah, sure okay So Let's talk about it. What what's your feeling? Tyler start over with you on this one. How'd you like this season? Yeah, uh, let's see I Liked it less than the other one the other the one that we're currently in sure fair amount less The so we had sharpshooters battalion. Yeah, I'm just looking back here. Wahpedia to cheat real quick We had the sharpshooter battalion. That was a thing although not as pronounced as the bounty hunters battalion was and the one before this one The bonds of battle that was amazing I really, you know, we've talked a lot about that right bonds of battle where they introduce the Basically two ranks a half inch or half inch. Yeah two ranks fighting Often feels like that should just be a core role and the worst goals designed without a mind that sort of thing You have a lot of units that were affected by the loss of that that are affected by the loss of that right now So that was nice the yeah, it wasn't too bad as the missions we had See you still a prize. Yeah, we prize of gallets We had a number of missions that were kept from the last season Dolls of gallant was excellent hours for the taking great I think position of our power was pretty good only the worthy pretty good Not as good. I think there was like seven good scenarios out of 12 five of them. Yeah, that sounds right That sounds right. Yeah, and we've got a we're doing a little bit better. I think in this current season than that Absolutely So we're up to like eight and a half nine nine and a half eight half nine. Yeah Yeah So yeah It's a few thoughts. So so what's your what's your final vote here? Are you thanky or are you janky? What's your what's your voting on this one? Say thanky. Yeah, I mean, I I do. Yeah, I think it tips over to the thanky. This is my third I'm gonna have to get used to this. It's my very first. Thank you janky show. I'm excited. No, it's really exciting I know I've never known one of these four. There you go. Tom. What about you? Which thing in this season? Janky Okay, why is it? Okay Let me begin first. It was a six month season. Yeah trash Two it was all about foot heroes and the fact that you couldn't remember it Just says it all right like if somebody who talks about this game literally every week couldn't remember it That's a flag Yeah, like that's a that's it at least a yellow flag on the field, right? Sure Um, I just like I'm so tired.  We've been in this world for a year and a half now Right. Yep. Yeah, we've been in this world for a year and a half and it's terrible and I'm ready for it to end Okay, like this is not how you write a ghb Um, it is too heavy. It's too heavy of a design or something What whether it's six month or a year Like when you have that heavy of a design as as an overlay It just messes with some armies in the ways that are not fun to play any Yeah, right like I understand they're giving new opportunities, but I just I I think that it's a jank jank design. That's where I'm at Fair enough Yeah, honestly, I'm gonna give this one a janky as well. I think the seven out of 12 Battle plans that were worth playing are no good Uh, that's that's a bad ratio. We can do better than that as the current one proved Uh, I agree with you. The fact that I couldn't remember is like a huge strike, right? Strike one right there and I also agree with you. These things are way too heavy Like I just I don't understand like this. See who is this written for? This is written for like a small segment of the population that plays every week and wants like a lot of churn and change in their in their their game Most people who play this game play like once every three months. They get like A couple games in and any given ghb, right and when they have to completely reorient their entire list writing and stuff like that It just feels too heavy I I I would rather see us play with a couple interesting mechanics or do something fun or introduce a couple new core battalions Like you can play around but have multiple different directions going at the same time, right? Where it's like you get some interesting encouragement for this type of thing and strat a strat b strat c Right new ways to explore those three strats and then you could lump it under whatever narrative Collection you want. I just tend to agree with you. I think this one was very forgettable is what it comes down to Nobody actually likes foot heroes We all just took a bunch of them all of a sudden because we were like ridiculously incentivized to do so Right. Yeah. Yeah And it and it shaped and defined list building because of it. Yeah. Yeah So i'm with that i'm with that Okay, I like foot heroes I sure sure I mean, I do you like here's a question. I want to let me explore that for a second Okay, sure because I actually really love foot heroes too Okay Like I was being a bit hyperbolic and sarcastic I think a lot of foot heroes are like the coolest heroes as a as a scaven player I mean, this is like a gracey or on the cover, right? Like my life is little tiny foot heroes and I generally love those guys But do you Do you feel frustrated by them often in the game For what they accomplish because of the sort of fundamental rules of the game and how they work When they're not just purely a utility buff hero Yeah, I think so. I mean part of that is because you go to a tournament and You may play two out of five games where Area of effect damage power projection that you have no answer to just takes your five six wound heroes off the board Just like that. Yeah It almost was like at this point in the game They all need a three-up bodyguard to have yeah I mean if if we're going to have Four or five night vexlers or four night judicators or whatever the hell is going on But there's there's a fair amount of that in the game right now. Sure. And yeah, so it's not a fan of that, but yeah Yeah, we handled the shooting problem that these guys can't be picked off anymore easily But the reality is you weren't targeting these guys most most foot heroes for assassination with like your long strikes Unless they were like the super utility hero that was going to enable something right the The utility guy that's going to do the three six cast and give them three six run in charge or something like that Right, okay, like the chaos sorcerer lord needs to die because he's a lynch pin giving out eye of the gods and giving out You know run run in charge or whatever, you know that kind of stuff or or whatever Now you can pick your utility thing that's like good enough. It's worth killing because it's a lynch pin Right. Yeah, and now we switched over to a world where a lot of these guys just like Incidentally die because they just get kind of wiped out by by aoe effects and I'm like, oh that doesn't feel good You know Yeah I mean, yeah, it's a little I fully I'm aligned with what you guys are saying sort of structurally like Let me be I I get that I like foot heroes. I do Okay, you know we all because that's the classic thing like I was being I was joking Right, because the the joke is they're just fundamentally bad in the game But but it is the truth that a lot of us like them and like what they do they represent classic characters Well, and so I think this is the exact point The reason why I think you were like what let me ask this tyler was the reason why this season appealed to you Was it because suddenly foot heroes seemed to be more useful? And if that's the case is it Is it that the season is good Or that the base design is bad and the season had to overcompensate for the base design Sure. Yeah, I think it's more of the latter. Yeah, I mean, right Also, it didn't make them good and like utilities in the game. Sorry to jump in but I just really want to strike on that It made them you took them because there was like multiple battle plans that you might run into where they were necessary for Scoring or whatever, right? That was why you had them. It wasn't like they suddenly now they're good in the game. They can go fight and and be okay. No, no, no like Yeah, I mean it yeah Outside of the battle plans. They were exactly as functional as they always had been Yeah, and that it that it that exactly makes my point right that is my exact point is that The season was too heavy and it forced Everything else like it forced your hand Into this stuff into list building into all that and it's just like It's it's too heavy design Yes For a general for the general audience nature of the broader audience Leaning on spaces that are under designed already like yeah, let's just fix those base things rather than try to Do this overlay that's gone in six months Sure. Yeah Yeah There were a few a few things to point out. Anyway, we don't want to I know we've got a lot of things to cover We've got a lot of these now. Let's keep going Speaking of it the next general's handbook came out in the middle of the year. Obviously, we're in it right now We're in it to win it And we're in this season until obviously fourth edition launches next summer And This is the primal magic dice season. This is our magic key magic season magic magic magic magic Uh, okay So tyler, let's start with you Current season. Yeah, I'm feeling about it We're in it. So like I said, yeah, I'm This has been my favorite of these three seasons that we've had. Okay. I think we've had three of these I believe if I'm remembering correctly And why Really like the all is equal I enjoy the magic mechanic you and I have had in particular I've had a fair amount of conversation around it. You're not the biggest fan in the community of magic. I think it's fair to say I I just I like this system that they've designed broadly speaking. I'm sure there are ways it can be better I think the primal magic is fun creates four interesting moments There is Certainly magic that's relevant in the game. It's not all anti magic There's this I think meaningful yin yang that has existed this season Broadly speaking again, there are edge cases that you can point to Maybe zinch is being impacted too much austy arc bone reapers in null myriad exactly merciless blizzard There it is. Yeah, there's your yin yang uh This was the best set of battle plans that we've had of these seasons. Yeah, it's third edition seasons and Yeah, I've really for the most part Enjoyed this general sandbook And then I'll have a different opinion when we get into some of these battle tomes. That's fine That's fine. Uh, so are you sir? You're you're you're coming out of thank you on this one as well. Okay. Okay. Yeah I'm trying to I'm trying to be positive here here early because I know what's coming. That's fine. That's fine Tom, what do we got? Thank you? It's trash. It's all trash Same reasons the last time but not six months.  We went to holy havoc and I was like having a fun time until I realized that they were still playing the rules With primal dice and I'm like, I hate it. I hate all the get rid of all of it That was the most unfun part of the event was this stupid Uh, all of those things that were just so heavy that you either had to have them or you were crippled without them Yeah so this one's interesting for me because positive column this one's really going to be a tough one to balance for me And Because positive column I do like going back to a year ghb like regardless of whatever whatever these should be a year long Right, that's I think I agree with that. Yeah I would say a year long with the need for a like a six month battle pack or battle plan expansion We need to basically do it. There should be an event pack pdf release in the middle point of the year There's just like got some additional battle plans and six new battle plans something like that. Yeah boom bang. Good Go keep the turn basically happy. Yeah, why I'm doing work on it like just fill that fill that gap So that's number one number two Uh, I agree with you completely on the battle plans. I really do think there's like nine Good battle plans in here and I said nine and a half because there's even another one that I I could play it I don't totally hate it. There's really only sure. There's really only two that I truly truly despise and think are basically non functional Um, so Yeah, I mean anyway, we could we could quibble about that. I heard I heard plenty of champion players from the championship We say that yeah, they they were happy to play all these I'm not sure there were many who were not happy to play frigid zephyr if they have a shooting army at the world championships event But you know, anyway, I'm we're thinking of the two towers and but but sure. Okay. That's fine. Yeah Um, yeah, most of them are good or functional. Yep So I that's that's all good like and that's that's the bones of this ghp Right when we're really thinking about it like the the battle plans are the bones of the thing right Uh, I think your experience with this ghp to be completely fair is And that's exactly what warpstone enjoyer said and I agree with you How much you you are? Thank you or janky on this book is almost completely how much you like magic in aos I'm gonna put I'm gonna put you back on that While I agree that it may map to some degree with magic.   I love magic Traditionally, I've done quite heavy magic lists.  Why are you playing with magic? Right?   Some people are privileged players to play in this space Right, not everybody has plus cast wizards or re-rolls or or or or good foot wizards that are not Um, that are not unique characters that are under nine People who could just reliably get it whore for us without, you know, using uh primal magic dice people Yeah, and so that's the challenge like that's my frustration Is that like it's highly dependent on on What army you're playing as to how much you can actually monopolize on this and you can't control that And so for a year, you're just in a bad magic arc Right, and so you have to suffer through this while everybody else gets to play with these new toys So like I so it it on one part of it is yes Do you hate the magic system?  Yeah Yeah, someone who right now plays and and really prefers playing a lot of non magic armies, right? So I play iron jaws without the caster because then the caster's dumb. He's not wearing armor I didn't get into iron. I didn't get in the iron jaws game not to get dudes coated in steel. Okay Uh Or plays suns or stuff like that, right? I just don't I don't run a lot of wizards and the So so like I just feel like I'm not participating in the season in a big way right right Well, I think part of that been the null stones in my mind were a sizable miss Correct. They were the normal dormant like that section. That's supposed to be the opposite side of the coin And it's just so weak because and the reason for that's obvious, right? In previous seasons basically like in the big monster season. No one ran monsters Right because the the monster hunting tech was way better than the monsters or whatever right in the horde season We had bounty hunters Or whatever right and so suddenly no one ran hordes because bounty hunters would explode your horde if it touched you Right. Yeah, I I definitely agree with that one. I feel like there were a fair number of monsters But I mean very fair point on the horde on the right Sure, sure My point is oftentimes in these previous seasons It's ended up being about the opposite of the thing they want because the counter measure that they put in there Was too heavy. They're wrong. Yeah, right and so In this season they were like well, we got if we're going to do the magic season. Let's really do it We got to be careful with our anti magic thing And so they put in those three null stone adornments and they're just weak sauce. They're just complete in total weak sauce right um like Most of time I even I like I've taken those in plenty of non magic armies. It mattered dot It just didn't didn't matter uh Doesn't do much to 46 mortals every turn. Sure. Um And I still like ultimately I just don't like the primal dice experience. That's what it comes down to Um, I just think it's a lot of extra weight around stuff and getting these weird giant cast numbers And it creates spiky magic situations where depending on how they're used either everything gets unbound or Or a couple really key spells just get powered through and you have no response whatsoever Right kind of depending on how things shake out with the dice and the individual roles and whatever like it's It really it causes very very swingy effects With spells that are already very very very swingy like whore frost and you know, somebody pops the three and throws that on rend And suddenly they're like regular base skeletons or zombies or whatever just like Just explode to the unit that they were touching or that they go fight right right And or they're source warriors or whatever. I don't care. You pick your thing, right? I know obviously merciless blizzard is is it's quite strong. Um, and in many ways, I think it's like the governor switch on the game right now Merciless blizzard because it just allows like anybody to be like, oh, let's go for it and just like boom accidentally level a unit and So it can kind of like accidentally dig people out of bad situations Unless they're fading like no myriad or something, but sure um But at any rate like I I openly admit I've got to give this one janky as well But i'm actually not super janky despite all of my hatred of the core mechanic and thinking it's too heavy I do want to commend them for the fundamentals and this feeling a lot stronger like and it really does matter Having good battle plans to me matters I think The most of any of the things that are in any ghp. I want fun interesting battle plans to play Right. I don't oftentimes don't even need like all the extra rules. I just want to play some fun new battle plans Right. And they did they cleared that bar well with this one But ultimately that primal system is just like I just hate it. I just hate it Uh, I I for all three like I second all the things you said tom that says what comes down to Okay Cool Battle tomes. Here we go, baby It's time to talk battle tomes. All right so Uh, obviously we had a lot of battle tomes this year and we stand now on the precipice The literal precipice tyler and tom of every army having their battle tone Okay So wonder if that's ever happened No, no, no not in aos. In fact, I don't even know the last edition where every army had a battle tone May it literally might have never happened in the history of war hammer Be had a had a current edition battle tone right I I really don't think it's ever happened Maybe fifth edition who didn't get updated in And I feel like second edition had some misses. Yeah, maybe soul blight soul blight got it three months before That's right. They did Look, but I don't think we got everybody in second edition. I think I did Like I think we did I think we got everything. Uh, I think you're right. Yeah, so blight came out just before third edition But it was three months before. No, we carried a couple over from first What Was no because idk was still first Oh So there you go. We all never had two editions of idk I I'll I'll go back and look but anyways, it is whatever the case it feels both like The lowest bar Right like hey all of the armies we sell models for have a book of rules you can play Hey, wait That's the thing you're celebrating. Isn't that just like required? Um, I mean like let us not forget how long tomes celestials went on remember those Remember when armies got their rules in a random white dwarf article. Wasn't that fun? I do because I was sorting stuff in my basement today And I found like the warshproll cards for the corn altar and the herd stone Nice that came in a white dwarf dwarf article and I was like, oh, yeah You love to see it. Ah tp grint says nergal as well by the by both nergal and idk. So there you go Okay, at any rate, we're here. We got there this very low bar has been tripped across so congratulations We did it six months before the addition drops six months before the addition drops We got there Here's to forth binning all of these things into the ash bin of history And uh, and we get a new index and we index everything. Let's do it The great leveler. Okay uh, all right Let's start in the beginning Back in the beginning of the year now technically for those out there. I'm just I'm gonna do the push up the glasses here You jerks People are gonna um actually me and tell me that the S2d tome was the first of the year which is technically true But it doesn't count. We did it on last year's thank you or janky show because we reviewed it as part of the box That came out at the end of the year Okay, so the first new tome was beast of chaos All right, so boc There was a lot of hope for this tome when it first came out Obviously, we didn't get much in the way of model releases. We will talk about models separately later Here we're talking about when we review this. We are talking just about the battle tome Not the full release that happened around it, right? So the fact that all they got was a single beast lord hero should not weigh into our decisions We are evaluating the quality of the tome All right So boc Tyler what you feeling about this one? So this is one of the armies that I don't know particularly well From what I've gathered though I think this would be one of my thanky's The power level was within bounce Which is an exception to the rule this year sadly The play style matches broadly speaking How I think about this army, you know, the battle traits I think that's interesting the whole ambushing putting stuff off the board potentially your whole army off the board That's that's quite it's quite quite different I'm very unique in its play style I remember liking a number of the spells I've seen at least a couple of Different sub factions feel like I see dark walkers a lot There's another one whose name I'm forgetting that I see a fair amount The I remember the artifacts like how good those were there were certainly a number of misses on the war scrolls I seem to be thinking that some of the monsters were a miss The cockatrice was cooked horrific rules design But all those equal grading on the curve of this year. Thank you Okay, okay, okay I will point out you said it's with it was it was within bounds One of the other things I was doing as I was going back through, you know, 11 12 months of news articles, right? Yeah, yeah Was every time I a meta watch article popped up I would pop it open and take a look at it to just kind of understand the running Trends and I will remind you that in the first quarter of this year BOC had a 61 wind rate Okay, so they were well out of bounds on launch Uh Now all armies are going to get a little high up when they get a new book Just because a lot of people go and play them and they people don't know how to react to them And their new rules and they don't have the experience the muscle memory built up If I had to deal with their tricks and stuff like that, but they were definitely like they were the number one army After this book launched Yeah, like like you said, it's always hard to judge when it first comes out Especially when it's such a different play style now later in the year They would fall back within bounds through both some nerfs through battle scrolls But also through points adjustments and through just other things coming into the meta that were quite effective at hunting these guys It also generally Felt like I don't have the data back this up But my feeling if this you might know Vince this is generally accurate that this army was not particularly that popular That a lot of people were playing this army again You're kind of grading on yeah grading on the curve whatever Number of the players who were playing it as often happens, right when playing an army That's not played a lot or excellent players. So your Noah sings your The Owen Jackson's of the world, you know playing this army doing well with the army I like also I forgot to mention. It's a relative. It seems like a high school floor relatively high school floor army Yeah, gotta be pretty good at the game to do well beats of chaos. So anyway, I agree Tom where you living with this one? I like it. It's fine. Um, I agree that it it spiked early Um, but I like in general it um I think it was received well. I think that once people understood how to play against it it leveled out Um, and overall like it did what books are supposed to do like in some sense. They're supposed to um To enliven the player base. Yeah, sure and and to and to present new gaming experiences and challenges Um, and so inevitably you're gonna have that that you should have a peek after a book book release And then it should drop off like that that should be a normal part of the graph growth I don't know that it should peak that much it jumped up 20 points But nonetheless, I take your meaning well, maybe like because some of these books aren't touched for four years, right? And so in some in some sense like some of them it should be a jump because you're playing with outdated tech Right like that's like that's my hope Alan Kay, you haven't missed we've just gotten into the battle tomes, buddy This is battle tone number one. You're right on time Hit like for being here when you are that's what I'll say. There you go. All right. Go ahead. Tell me what I'll say is this I don't like I think that this is a pretty standard vision of what book releases should look like and and the experience and I I was content with with the beast release okay Yeah, one one thing tom that I feel like needs to be mentioned is We saw a lot of play this year around bulgur's A lot of bulgur's Okay, all right. Yeah, the the Lack relative lack of variety left a fair amount to be desired. I would say when it comes to list building Yeah, relative because it's pretty good over previously, right? Like it was right. Well, which is also not great And then they fell off a cliff Yeah, yeah my issue with this book So so overall I'm gonna give it a thank you as well, but I think this one's just in like this is my 51% thank you Okay, I think it was a good book. I think it did have some good design in there I think from a casual army perspective It did open a lot of interesting doors as far as play styles and stuff like that goes and that's to be that's to be lauded, right Um, and I think they did a good job of capturing the the feel of the thing Uh, I think it was I think the the the entire bulgur section is is overcooked like the doom bull and the bulgur's are overcooked Um in what they can do and frankly, they've been a crutch These guys would be back down Like drop those two units out of the the tome And this thing's down in like the low 40s. Oh sure. Yeah, it's a bliss bar bar church type situation Right that we saw with slenesh recently. Yeah, we'll talk about it. We'll talk about it Yeah, I mean it's a crutch, right?  I mean there's like we could pick 10 different scrolls probably in this book that are like that That's a real shame. This isn't that huge of an army right um and so I think that's That's a challenge to me because I capturing and and opening up play styles For casual players is my number one most important thing with a book Okay Like having it be obvious there are multiple venues of fun ways to experience the army number one most important thing and I think on that it's a success My number two metric is is it well internally balanced where all those lists actually feel like you're not just doing something for funsies Right, but you're actually like it's not just for the memes You you actually have like some chance. It doesn't need to be wildly competitive I'm not asking to 5-0 with all these different options, right? Just that you feel like you're in the game and I don't think it hits that bar You know very fair So but it's still thank you to me. I agree with you on the whole it just you just got there beasts. You just got there Um, okay Next up gloom spite Yits Uh, I'll go first on this jank II janky Say it with me folks janky These guys are bent sideways from release. They've had to be nerfed so many times To get them back in line And I think one of our quotes when we first reviewed this book was like well, they've sucked for a long time So we'll give them a minute to be to be better than average. They were whatever, you know to be a little little bent Well, I did not realize just how bent this was going to be right These guys by the way in the meta watch article following that like where you had the beast's one Then you get the one with the gits in it, you know Yeah, and it's like whoop No Like the gits just rocking it to the top of the lid to the top of the charts top of the pops, maybe Uh, and and they have remained a menace It took so long to get them in and to in line Um, and I think we're probably finally there like we're we're there, but they've they still have some real real Strong strong stuff. I'm glad to see that my outdated one book old four-year-old prediction on boingrott bounders has finally come true Um, yeah, you know just like stuff like that Um, I know they were bad before but the belief that they then deserve to be broken is what gets us Into this bad situation guys. We can't have that they should think books shouldn't be bad They should swing to be competitive and interesting in the fat middle Not broken because then otherwise what you have to accept is that the next the next book should suck Because that's the appropriate payment or penance you have to pay for over performance All right, and I don't want like can we I don't want the the the the pendulum Sorry, this is a pendulum. I don't want this All right, this this is the thing from the top of the piano Metronome. I don't want the metronome. Okay Spoken like a true slush player Yeah, yeah Yes, so anyway, there's there's my rant on gloomspite like it just it took so much to hammer this book into like Not busted And it's still really yep Very strong. Yeah I like squigs I like I've liked squigs for a long time I called out the squig herd And just the raw meat that was that ridiculousness. Um I I really struggled to give it janky like It it was you can have your own opinion. You don't have to have mine like, uh I'm gonna say it. I'm thank you for the bouncy squigs like I just love it I love that they're useful and they're good and they're competitive viable now. Yes, they you know Maybe a little bit over tune, but I'm thank you for the book. I really am Just just just a little bit a little bit A little bit. I mean we can we can put a flag in the ground here and say this was the beginning of a dark time of Battle Tome releases That is true. They herald Yeah The gloom spike hits came forward as the herald of of of real dark times on the horizon I mean Yeah, vence you you said about everything. I mean, I will say the variety of Compelling war scrolls is off the charts with this battle tone. Love the variety. Love the rules designed There there's so much to praise in the rules writing In the point values That's another issue when this book came out, you know, maybe maybe we didn't need the forp rally That's been an ongoing bugaboo of the show for a while But in general we could quibble about some other things like maybe the What contesting from nine away? With moon clan introducing that mechanic to the game But yeah in general huge fan on that front With the the nature of the rules writing, but yeah, it was just completely busted And it's still like trying going up against two by 15 bounders And all the tools to buff them to the nines And more and see if yeah get double turned by that see if you can stand up to it Like the army. Yeah, we'll still push push your poo and really really good Yeah, they still slap and in like a in a in a way that feels I don't know insane um And the recursion also like every the recursion. I mean, this is this is the army that we that finally We had to fix rally for Yeah Right because it was just like so obviously broken right out of the gate It was just like oh if we don't fix rally this game goes off the rails Yeah Yeah, because we're letting three units four of rally Which is just madness that somebody wrote that down and was like, yeah, this is fine That's right Yeah So, okay, uh cool Yeah, I'm oh what's your vote by the way?  I'm like I'm like three for four on the jank side. All right, it's only gonna get worse Okay, uh Cara drawn or caradrin or however you want to say it overlords ko So Tom you're you're going first on this one.  And one of the things that we saw with this ko book was a fundamental change in how Andrew and Richard And even how some of the mobility work and you know, I Like again barring like their super brokenness that we experienced later this year Yeah Um, I I think that it was largely working correctly Like I don't hate where they were at prior to the the thunderer apocalypse Sure. Um And so I I'm thank you for for this new new version of the books and the willingness To to revisit the base formula Like throwing endring rigors throwing wardens into boats like that's new Like that's a new exploration moving some of this stuff into Changing the way you fly high changing all of that stuff. Yeah.  It was still It was still ko But it but it still felt like ko Sure And it and it and it still was a viable play, you know, it It introduced a viable play style a viable set of explorations for that concept. So I I was thankful for it Yeah Tyler So I haven't played against this army enough this year Ah kind of funny to say that Not that I necessarily want to get shut up more by 30 thunder would have wanted to get shut up more by 30 thunders, but My Impression of the army has been I would have liked to have seen another pass at simplifying its rules It still feels too overwrought to me at least my perception of it So for example, it's still the way that the embarking and disembarking and the the special Sort of edge cases that they have to account for just that's a long conversation. Like how do you simplify all of that? but in general Facing against this army. It just feels like there's a lot you have to try to understand wrap your head around you've got Articles and amendments and footnotes. You've got got everything else that we have commend abilities commend trades blah blah blah It's yeah, it seems like it's too much complexity going on. That's a little overwrought. So there's one thing that stood out Uh again the Tom mentioned like let me point out that like that right has always been there Yeah, yeah The so where I mentioned the thunders issue. We don't have to hammer home that one a complete catastrophe forp rally They're still really good. I do love. Yeah calm tom. You covered a lot of it. I mean the the salt boat amazing I like that you can run Competitive mixed arms list obviously I have a huge bias for mixed arms variety list That is it seemed like for the first time tom really on the table With ko with like engine rigors and maybe it was there a little bit I don't remember it being there as much before with like clown car Tom was one of them trying to push it, but he was he was one of the few most people just shot Okay, yes Like I was running like I was running arms tradition Um, and then but but again the alpha shooting was just always so strong It there was almost it was very little reason to do Yeah, yeah A lot of the heroes are interesting, you know, they're this is another battle to him A good example of what they've been getting better at which is making these Various heroes notable particularly from a utility standpoint, you know worth considering So I thought it was pretty good. Not all of them are hits, but certainly more hits than misses in my mind when I can remember Uh, Brock is on the table now. That was never the case. Largely. It seemed before. I think he's pretty cool. Uh, yeah Uh, thank you janky. I still gotta go janky because this book was a A Bust a disaster when it came out Like it's very strong. It was very strong And then KO have remained really strong throughout much of the year Um, I will still go thank you on this one. They did bust the the numbers They were outside of the fat metal on launch. They pretty quickly got rained in and fell down Um, I do think it's always harder to balance a shooting army and like the 40k army and aos is always tougher to balance Ultimately, I'm going to come down. Thank you on this one because I respected that for basically with the reasons that they gave that Tom gave of like I respected that they tried to like, okay Let's let's rain in some of this like fly high nonsense and disengage and stuff like that And they you know, they tried to put the right controls in there and They relatively quickly got it under control. I mean it's again also Much worse natural predators entered the meta that that knocked this thing down a level but Yeah, but nonetheless I think it's a really strong book. I do think it was like It was too strong agreed Tyler But the other stuff they did in there was interesting enough That for all the reasons you mentioned that I still come down. Thank you on it, but I get it Yeah, that's fair Do you do you find vents like this? I don't know if I communicate that very well But I gotta say it's like actually playing against it the number of times I have it doesn't feel as overwrought The actual experience of playing against it. But just when I'm trying to get my head around all of the What does this army do? How do I counter it is really hard, right? Yeah It's like it's It has so many weird things going on that interact with the game rules in weird ways That you you just have to like know their army almost as well as they do Yeah to play against it and yeah Kuhl says part of the book strength was was the bridge Was bridge right and bridge being more broken Sure, I mean a hundred percent and once bridge got rained in that that also quite strongly adjusted them Another reason I hate on the spells And just wish they didn't exist um Because they've the number of times we've gotten broken builds just because of some silly on the spell like bridge is too many to count Sure Okay, so but yeah, ultimately I think we're we're gonna come down to thanky and one janky on this one All right fair enough some mixed reviews next up Blah days of corn Okay, the blah days Uh, tyler, I know you've got some strong feelings on this one Well, I might surprise you. I mean I actually would come down thanky on this battle term and I Like I would hope that that was clear when we did the original review I had one main issue with this battle term murder and it was obvious what the issue was with the battle Yeah, it was murderless murderless. It's always been murderless. Yes And yeah, I still feel that was a reasonable position to have Original recipe murderless was a little overcooked The battle term itself was quite amazing Yeah, there again a wide variety of interesting war schools Um, I like I'm a johnny like tom at heart So I like the the johnniness of the events you maybe would like to see a little bit less johnny the Yeah Similar a lot of the heroes are interesting multiple directions. You can go with the sub factions Playing against them has generally been a Unenjoyable experience once murderless got rained in a little bit and yeah, so I'm actually pretty thanky on this one I think it's it's a solid very solid battle term the Some of the points again a running theme some of the points have been off I think that's been helped a little bit Uh, yeah, this book was quite strong. It remains quite strong, but it's within the where it needs to be It's right there in the fact that basically this stayed within bounds the entire time of its existence Yeah, yeah Okay, tom I've been uh spending quite a bit of time in this battle toe recently as you might imagine And actually like I like I'm a thanky just out of the gate Because it it And what I'm thinking for is that the redesign of some strategic subsystems? We're just such a big deal, right like the redesign of Like so the obvious one being blood tithed, right? And how that's operating and not dumping the entire pool and all all of that like that's a big deal But I would say even more than that something as small as um locus of fury Moving being a word save for demons to let them close the gap Like that's a like that's a huge change, right? And that and that is and that's what they needed They need to live long enough to get in and punch people in the face and it did that Where the book has still been slow to move away from the ballet Of like eight inch circles, right of like making sure this is in range and this buff like I'm still encountering that as I'm building lists Like I'm thinking about how this army moves and like the the the the murder ballet still has to happen with this And so I'm still disappointed about some of that but watching how they fix so much else Like I'm just super super thankful for that. Um, yes murder loss was bad But guess what so much else of what they did was good. Like I just I think overwhelmingly I'm I'm thankful for it and like you mentioned the even the moving the bloodthirster away from eight eight blood types Which is what it used to be Like so that it's not just this overwhelmingly obvious option, right? But moving it up 10 like I I I like all of that I do You mentioned the blood type table. That was one that I felt needed some additional work That list seemed off Some of the elements on that list like, you know the classic thing I've been she made this point in different contexts. I'm trying to remember what but oh the cost of endless spells The endless spells that are often the least valuable are the least pointed Yeah, yeah, of course That yeah, we had that going on with the most valuable and the most are the lowest points the worst And the spells are the highest points. Yeah That's the highest points. Yeah Yeah, we've had too much of that in the history of endless spells Similar with the blood type table at least where it started again Sure, or the list got got helped out with that. But yeah, so that that seemed a little bit off But anyway quibbling Yeah, my only negatives really I would I would I would label here are the following I mean myrtle us we've talked about it be to death. That's fine. And I agree Um, I think bloodthirsters still aren't as good as they should be they should be like 400 450 point Greater demons. Um, greater demons just aren't greater demons in this game. They're like some faux Uh shadow of an impression of the thing that's meant to be like, you know The sort of these embodiments of corn's wrath given material form and they're just like, okay It's a thing. I'll kind of Shoot a little bit and then it'll die Because it's not Excess and mortal wings Yeah, like and so Um, I just I'm I continue to be let down by bloodthirsters and what they are and what they're capable of and all that Um, but that being said, I think I love most everything in this book Like it is a more johnny book. So it's not personally for me But I can still respect good design I see it and I like a lot of the I like a lot of the unit design I like a lot of the different units. I think skull Let's go. What are they? I think mighty skull crushers are cool with the base two up. I think the What are they skull reapers or whatever the little the the the other build of wrathmongers? I think those guys are pretty yeah, we're first.  I'm thanky. I think we're three thanky's on this one. This is the first one We're all aligned Go corn who would have known All right. Good job corn. You did it. Yay Blood for the blood god. All right okay Next up He denies of slanash folks Do I need to Do I need to we got there? We got there Take it away competitive slanash I hate this book It is the definition of jank some of these have been kind of close where it's like That's a little janky or a little thanky right like i'm holding on one side of it Nope, this is a landslide victory for janky. Okay, there's no the shooting slanash book You always wanted was this is not triggering any recounts Okay with with 10 of the vote reporting. I am happy to inform you that janky is the clear winner uh the This book is so I It's so not slanash. There's number one number two It was propped up by a single unit namely bliss bar bar chers Right and then arguably bliss barb seekers if you want to make that to like supplement that okay um Three the core mechanic of dice giving is so dumb I just I cannot I hate it. I hate tracking at people. I don't know who likes playing against this I don't know who likes playing with this Uh, they're out there. They are out there. I know they are they always should pop up in the chat Every time there's some people who like this uh, they're Melee units are so tragically underwhelming the keeper of secrets is the most comical monster in the world at 400 points speaking at 400 point greater demons the keeper of secrets and the named keeper of secrets shallaxi helbane are That's like written as a joke Okay, that's like a serving size Is like two cookies on a thing of cookies like that's that's the joke Okay, uh No, stop it I hate everything about this book from top to bottom.   So who cares about a couple of d3 mortals, right? What's the matter? What's that matter? All right, sorry stormcast. Sorry about your luck um but uh You know like does the soul blight player or an obr player or any of these people Even give two thoughts to taking a d3 mortals. No Never it's irrelevant means nothing Okay, I don't even know if there was a slanesh player at the championships event and i'm like, yeah Yeah, I mean may not have been This book was highly competitive and in the broken it was it was it's bad also because it was despite everything I've said it was still broken and punching at like a 60 win rate on the back of its two busted units It was competitive in the worst of ways, right? It was competitive in the worst of ways Okay Like the the worst way a book can ever be competitive is the a single skew list relying on two cooked units That can just carry it so far because it's so hard to counter right Uh, where it's just obviously bent sideways on these two units and the second you pull that That beam Right, the whole house of cards just Collapses in on itself, which is what happened here Um, right Uh Yeah, so there you go. I I I If you told me vince, we're gonna let you rewrite this book I would throw this entire book in the trash and start from scratch That's how much I hate this book I I've heard you say that before yeah, and I mean it what's the What's the elevator pitch elevator version of how you One way that you would be very happy to see slanesh go If slanesh is now the mixed arms chaos list Which is I think what it's meant to be now Okay, like we introduced so many shooting units for just like reasons I guess Yeah, um Shooting should be an ancillary play on a largely speed kills melee strategy right The classic Speed kills beauty lifts or but beauty lifts forever. Yeah, I guess we've had this conversation before. That's correct. Okay. That's right Where you're using your shooting units to apply pressure to things you want to hit in melee to finish them off Right to weaken and then and then one two punch. It should be a Like tactical speed kills one two punch tempo based army where you're using those things to get in hit Sacrifice a lesser piece and then repeat Right where you can bleed them faster than they can bleed you That's it Yeah, so that's the 40 000 foot view. What's what's your mechanic that that captures excess and Um, I don't know you do 10 different mechanics that could capture it properly But like make them faster make a locus that has them run in charge or it gives them 3d6 charge or whatever give them more rend Okay, you know do something like there's lots of options right It could it could play out in like many many ways, okay and Uh, nicholas zang said that's already eyed net though. You know, I'm not responsible for that I so the mesh was here first Okay, get your wet elves out of my space Okay And I'm sure somebody mentioned doc already as well. Let's see. I mean doc is is is different I I gave the the full doc much before and a previous show of how you play it differently of how you can you can speak to that um But at any rate that's that's that's it You should also want to mix your demons and mortals right and stuff like that So there should be incentives along both lines. We're still we're still being able to run either army individually I mean, I've always been more So yeah, there you go Funny, I want to do a mortal side Sure, I mean that's that's fine And yes, and like there's going to be some overlaps in high-level play style The individual detailed execution is where you'll feel the difference You can have multiple armies that want to fit that sort of like that play style. I just described Right, and that'd be okay Because the execution of like this particular units you're putting on the table and Exactly what they're good against or bad against will vary Yeah Okay There you go. I mean I I welcome alternative opinions Tom and Amachi, I'll happily join you though on the jank train It's fine. Like it's jank. Like I I know I don't contest Other than to say that like we got there folks bliss barbs. I've been calling them for a while I'll praise slanesh. We got there so Yeah, bliss barbs for you. We're like my call of boingrod.  Yeah, you're like I see it. I see I see it coming. This is going to be busted. Just he's a cook and something just wait And they did it just took them, you know a new battle. Yeah. Yeah, wait. All right. Hold on We got a positive show. So I had always associated that bounder's call with mr. Tom Lines Are you telling me Four years later that this was a ventsy v I think it was both of us Was it both of you? It was Tom who probably started it, but I was certainly on board like I'm not I don't want to absolve myself Like I I was I was I was bitching on the four up more I was like, oh my gosh.  They were they were fine with that Yeah, I totally Then we rewind to three weeks ago or four weeks ago at Holy Havoc where Tom's piloting 100 zombies around or whatever And he was like, oh, yeah, I was building those to be fair. I was building a painting those before Before the new book. Yeah, they were just as bad in the prior book. So I'll admit my worst call coming up here shortly, but to be fair I've got an excuse not a very good one But yeah, we'll get there At least I think my worst call. I mean, I still hold the bounder's thing over my head I I've I've mentioned that many times and I'll take full full credit for being completely wrong on the original book of that I am happy to be somehow proven right three and a half years later Uh, accidentally Okay, uh, Ossiarch Bone Reapers O They've come to collect the tithe Gonna pay your taxes Okay Uh Tyler we're gonna go to you on this one first. Yeah Yeah, so we had Brenda Melnick on the show this was Vince I can't recall Your well, no, I think we were all pretty aligned on our take with this book Mike so by the time we got to this OBR book, right? I mean, we had just been hot and heavy these battle tone reviews and the shows that we were doing Dude, honestly for better or worse. I was checked out. I was so fed up With the nonsense of the year of jank that we had entered I just didn't care. I don't like cool. Let's this isn't this is the greatest battle tone. They've ever released It's amazing the point value what we had come to our collective opinion on this in my memory Was that oh, we just need to adjust. Yeah, if it's too strong, let's just adjust some point values and that'll be fine That might be there. It's like 25 true Maybe but That's generally wrong. Uh, so yeah, I just remember It's sort of in a State of ecstasy or whatever. I don't know having an absurd opinion that this book was fine Even though I knew it was not this was one of the most over tuned Overcooked horrific Play experiences of the year and that's really saying something in the year of our lord 2023 With all of the nominees of this year So, yeah, complete Jank with apologies to the obr players Who will apologize to this endlessly? Apologize for who will be apologetics about this. Apologize is Tom It's trash like it's jank all the way through There's no excuse. Yes, you like your book. Yes, you were bad in the last edition the last book. That's fine But it was bad like it was so egregious the place That's what I have So I want to I want to flip to a positive a couple positives here around There are some yeah, yeah, there are some and I will say just very quickly I know even originally I was down on null myriad and hated that implementation of that design. So that's fine I still stand behind that. I think it's just the wrong design. I don't think this is right stuff like that I think it should be interactive in some way But things I do appreciate about this is Like for a long time The amortis guard and the necropolis stalkers and the morgast Erikai and and the morgast in general Yeah We're basically not seen on tables. They were really cool models Right and everybody just spammed more tech guard and maybe catapults in the early days or you know harvesters or whatever Yeah, eventually stalkers. Yeah second edition. Yeah, or third edition proof of the new book. Yeah Yep And this really did open those units up to being played which I was which I am which I am Again my original First and most important bar of a book number one is does it open up a lot of different play? For people to experience. I think if anything the biggest miss originally in this book was more tech guard Which didn't really have a cat on Yeah, and a catapults. Yep Yep, and that was really a shame because this should qualify as a like mixed arms Force or like a traditional siege force, right? That that is how it should be played right infantry cavalry on the side Or heavy artillery behind right firing over the top like that that feels like what this should be like And so if we're missing on the catapults and your frontline infantry That's a real that's a that's a real problem, right? Yeah, so on the plus side You should have crossbow like a crossbow unit in this in this army. Yes, of course they should as well as like actual ballasty, all right and my My my issue is I'm so glad that they made all those other units that never saw the table actually playable But I'm sad because the internal balance was still pretty far off like really far off And ultimately I am going to give this book a janky as well And that's because the internal balance was like so just like rip You know what? I mean, it just it wasn't there And the list you saw out of this book looked Nothing Like the silhouette you would expect this book to play with Yeah This was not like a a siege force arrayed against you. It was like a unit of six dudes a unit of six dudes A unit of three dudes catacross Absolutely the second and some dumb wizard floating around Second lowest model counter on the in the game Obviously giants number one. Yeah. Yeah And that's just and and if you lifted like one unit by the end of the game, you were like man I I gave a good game Right right Yeah Like this very quickly went outside the bounds of win rate It was obviously terror and it it still is to some degree a very very very powerful army. Like I don't want to undercount it It's still up there Yeah, multiple OBR in the top 15 top 20 of the championships from a couple weekends ago. So yeah run run, you know, like Anyway, obviously all amazing players. And so it's it's hard to just take that, you know in isolation, but anyway, yeah It's all amazing players. That's the point like you're right, right? Amazing players and so at that point once you have high skill level across all armies the actual Nuts and bolts of the armies begin to show through Yeah, yeah So ultimately, I just think this thing came out as jank and it was really a shame because this is like to me This ends up being just the second most busted thing of the year. We haven't gotten to the most busted yet This also so I haven't mentioned it yet. We've talked about it a fair amount The design of a number of these battle tomes were the Darren he was the first person I had to refer to this the everything everywhere all at once principle was At play right with so many of these battle tomes This one is just stuff to the gills with rules and options and tricks and it's like, oh, you can do You can do 50 things here. Cool. You can retreat and charge. You can blah, blah, blah, right? It's it's such it's such an impressive or insert a friendlier words For casual players, especially but it's it can be it's just a nightmare playing against us Some of the worst play experiences that I've that I've had in the game ever Absolutely agreed absolutely agreed. Okay Uh, so like it was just I mean and that's ultimately the nail on the coffin on to me on the janky side which is This is just unfun to play against Yeah That's it death writers are cool. They did a good job of the death writers I'll I'll say something positive. Yeah, I'm a big fan of how they did the ponies. Yeah Uh hector. Yes, we did do beast of chaos. I think it got a thanky from two out of three of us So there you go. It was it was a it was a mostly thanky book But yeah, this one again we're unified. It's jank across the board Yeah Ah, here we are Hello darkness my old friend Uh, is this the nadir of the year This is it right? This is the low point I think which one are we at so blight grave lords So blight grave lords. Okay Like this was it right? I mean this was where it went fully off the rails. I didn't even find They and I I don't know that I would distinguish them events. I mean they were flip sides of the same coin OBR one so blood and the other in my minds, but I don't think there's a lot of separation between the two I mean I OBR you couldn't kill so blight you could kill and it didn't matter. I'm not sure which is worse Okay, you could kill it didn't matter and you died doing it. Okay. Like what a great time I like that's fine. History can argue over Which one of these was more busted or which one was worse to play against I imagine that'll That'll relate probably largely to your own individualized experiences I think what we could agree on is this book has had to be again hammered by nerves repeatedly Like the funny thing about the OBR book is that actually some of the units ended up getting buffed quite a bit over Sure, right Because because the internal balance was so wackadoo. Okay, and Uh So ncw critter said they've made skeletons great again. So I'm thanking which is fair. I get that No, I mean it's legitimate That's fine. I understand like I skeletons should be a thing. It shouldn't be like all zombies all the time. Yeah, right?  It's coming back at half strength zombies were comically pointed comically pointed Okay I mean like they were Wild what were they like 81 I can know they were they weren't that low. They were like one dude. They were Cheap, I think they were cheaper than that when they started. They were either one time They started but it was comically cheap. I know I know the skellies were 85 Sure, pretty sure. But yeah anyway at At 20 wounds, but effectively 30 because you're gonna regen 10 of those when they die For that many points that also kicked mortals back in the way that they did it was 150 There you go 15, okay Yeah, fair and then I think it quickly got adjusted but down to like 110 Could they shave the five off or something or maybe up to 120? I don't remember which direction it went Probably went up. Sure. Yeah, we're we're at 150 right now It was 115 and then it went to 120 at some point and then jumped to 150 Yeah, I think it was 130 in the middle there too and that still wasn't and it's still not high enough Um, it's still one of the best deals in the game okay So Like I just we could start listing and I don't know when I'd stop but it's just also Like the the over emphasis like not just to talk about the things that are broken and we're bent The over emphasis on summonable units Right meant that suddenly a lot of other interesting units just fell off and you don't see amus because they're not summonable Why I'm not gonna bother this crap. Like why would I put blood knights in the list? I can't regen a unit of blood knights. That's garbage And they're gonna die Yeah, the I think that actually like I agree with your jenki assessment here as one that has built and been been painting a soul play um My frustration was when the nerf came down for zombies. I was like, oh, I'll do something else Maybe I'll try cast a lot and then I looked at it and was like, okay So I don't get to use any of my allegiance ability. This is like a my sub faction doesn't matter No, my entire allegiance ability suite doesn't matter because I don't have non summonable I I don't have summonable summonable. Right. Like and it's like It was heartbreaking So like realize that most of my like my core mechanics don't matter at all for my I may as well be Grand alliance death For what I'm doing out of this, right? Yeah Yeah, I just like it just the the insane over emphasis on rules tilted towards summonable meant that obviously those are the units And if you're if you are summonable, you're at least good Maybe great if you're not summonable.  I am like that much if you don't want to say it like I am And for me it's not like again points can be readjusted, right? Like that's what it's like points can be readjusted but You can't fix my core abilities Not in any meaningful way or not without major FAQs and rewriting the book And so the challenge is is that like I can't play another I can't play in other styles and oh by the way as matt said, yeah, here's a great example of this problem Legion of night teleport blizzard Sure, obviously that's been corral now, but sure this army had access to blizzard wizard for a long time to teleporting blizzard wizard Yeah, yeah, like it needed it Right, right So I have a ton of thoughts on this battle tone. Let me try to summarize so I'm not even sure when to come. Well, no definitely jenki.  Yeah, it it goes without saying It's certainly top two for me So point taught me mission points. That was number one issue Way too cheap wait like they just structurally fell to sufficiently account for recursion In too many of these point, right? I went back. Yeah Can I like I'm gonna add to that is like this is a point that we haven't pointed out yet Yeah, it was so funny to me as I was playing it I had to double check like I knew this but it like it hit me in the gut. It's not just recursion Okay, it's one thing to bring goblins back out during your movement phase on a four-up or whatever. That's fine It's every movement phase Yeah, yeah, right. And so because it's every one I know you're literally doubling the number of times that Like it's egregious. Yes. Okay, go ahead. It should have never been written to work in the enemy turn It's madness Go ahead. Yeah Yeah, so I were in a much better place As far as I can tell with their current point values with where they are I've actually been playing soul blight. I've gotten about four games in with legion of knight Barring an army. I wanted to for the first time in eight years play an army with a fair number models and try to get better at Doing that and getting game in getting five rounds in in three hours So a lot of thoughts on this based on just those four games alone But uh backing up I think there's another battle tone where they did make a lot of the war scrolls, particularly a lot of these heroes Right. We've got a ton of heroes that were coming out of the what was that called the box set The haunted village Yeah, the with all of the the virkos war scrolls It's a curse city. I'm making a journey. Oh, sorry Yes, uh curse city. There it is All of those, you know, a lot of them are really interesting. So I I love the Variety of viable stuff actions here virkos I think castles is being slept on a little bit. I played against castles a little bit I think you can do some interesting things there. Uh legion of blood etc etc legion knight, obviously That's good the Some of these rules where the you are doing a fair amount in your opponent's turn I feel like that's kind of another structural thought on the state of the game We have too much of that happening in the game for my taste nowadays for what it's worth This is an example of murderless, right? So I'm playing legion of knights And I can redeploy I can charge with man for it in the form of redeploy I can heroic action every hero phase. I can potentially heroic actions teleport anywhere with with a vampire I can counter charge, right? We've got a quite a few examples of counter charging going on That's can be amazing for denying that it's just How do you guys real quickly? I'll pause. How do you guys feel about that? Like the nature of those mechanics where Okay, yeah, if you're really really good at the game, you're really on the ball You're thinking about that in your movement, right? You're thinking about what my opponent can do In my charge phase and like, oh, I'm going to catch myself to where I'm not going to make a charge within 12 inches of this unit That can charge another one of my units and then deny me my lead into the melstrom battle tactic I'm going to how many players right in general are going to be thinking about that I I hate stuff like that in the game right now. I understand I like some amount of it because it's a good skill testing element, right? So to be fair It's not as though it's just like prima facie bad. Sure. Sure Like in general reaction based things this is true in a lot of games Hmm reaction based limited resource things are skill defining things to use Okay, when do you use your counter spell and magic is a really really is a thing that will separate a good player from a bad player Okay um, when do you shield in in Against your attacks versus using absorb elements versus making an op attack and dnd Like how you use your reaction can oftentimes determine how well your character does during a combat encounter, right? yeah, like so So like those kinds of things are good to be in the game as a concept, but They can go Busted real fast and the actual example I'll give is Is blight creek or whatever it's called? from Nurgle yeah clock from gawkin. There you go. Thank you. I could think of his name for some reason you know I mean that guy right now I don't know if you played against like a blight creek uh focus list with like 30 plague bearers where They counter charge Yeah, but with a slobby behind Lobby, yeah, so nobody can pile in against the plague bearers So the right gawkin makes the plague bearers charge off turn Right, they charge the unit and put one model close to the the enemy And then on the charge spread the plague bearers out at 2.9 inches from as many other units as they can possibly tag Absolutely, okay, and now basically They'll pull model like that you that unit they're fighting like one thing's gonna get a fight Right Because it can't pile in at all Maybe it kills a plague bearer too if it does you just pull the two that are at within combat range And then that whole unit just sits there Yeah, right, right, and that's it and now all your units are gummed All right, you can choose to retreat, but they'll just go after you again next round right All right, and you never fight you can't ever swing Because you're stuck at 2.9 Can't pile it up Yeah, and and That's a horrendous play experience And it's the sole reason why nergal are doing so well That why their win rate has gone up because that has been everywhere in the scene around the world that those kinds of lists That's like the default and has been for a little while now. Yeah, I've I've played anyway It's why I moved away from nergal because I it became Anyway, it just it it's keeping that army afloat basically. Yeah, it's kind of like what the yeah, so my short answer is I quite like Interactivity, I mean as inquisitor, you know inquisitor said is an interactivity something we don't want more of to a degree But again, you know when we did the magic show last week somebody was like What if aos was like magic where it was like I cast a spell I unbind the spell I unbind your unbind I unbind your unbind I whirlwind denial all unbinds right? Okay, cool. I storm off you know like Like there is a level where Where it can become problem And that's what you're putting your finger on right now. I don't know If what's happening there in an spg. That's not the main thing. I would put my finger on as the problem with spg Yeah, right You know all vampire heroes just magically healing six wounds every combat that might be a thing I would put my my finger on recurring half your units in the enemy phase and setting them up, you know very close Not anymore, but originally that's the thing I would put my finger on right. It's that kind of sure Sure, but what I'll say is this like some of it the tech was built in and was there and this is why I didn't understand So Tyler for example, you were talking about Legion of night teleporting in the enemy, right? I had to go check that again Yeah, and make sure and you're right. It's any hero phase The reason why is that all the the vircos hero phase abilities Are the heroic actions are your hero phase only? And so they have the tech of restricting the hero phase heroic actions to your hero phase only in the same And so I had to double check and make sure all they were mixed and they and they are Um And so it baffles me like why didn't they do that teleport only in your own hero For heroic action It's probably I mean it is more thematic with Legion of night and the nature of manfred and lore wise and all that Like I get that I don't mind I'm similar to what vince is saying I don't mind some of it But it just feels like we've got a little too far off the rails with the nature of the game Especially if you're trying to think about the broader context of the game not people playing on top tables at gts And as far as the the guy in this also runs for me into the social contract Uh of the game where I don't want to be completely screwing I and this is just a personal thing, right? We've talked about this before Tom I one thing I appreciated that you said a long time ago is that More or less You don't want to win on gotchas And I don't want to win on gotchas That's that break that often just to me breaks and I know there's some gray area subjectivity. What are what's a gotcha? What's not but if my opponent if Like to me personally Yeah, if I Went a game off of counter charging with leech in a night because a good player like it may be a great player It's not thinking about that in that moment. Is that the way to win the game?  It's it's kind of like I use the term What what the term was that you just use vence and magic For for stuff like it's a counter spell. Yeah, it's just a counter. Yeah I I just I struggle personally with with too much of stuff like that And and how that rubs into the social or rubs against the social contract for me personally Sure, does that does that make any sense? No, it makes complete sense I'm with you because it presents you with that situation where It's it's not a real gotcha in the in sort of the traditional sense But but a dense enough amount of unusual information and play interactivity and exception based design Will accidentally emerge as a gotcha because you cannot communicate all of it to your opponent in a friendly way And they will trip into it Right, like you can warn them at the beginning of the game But if you have six abilities that are all interrupted, right, it's like it's it will surprise them Yeah, and just yeah, some of the some of these things that are outside the normal bounds of what are sort of subconscious aggregate, you know understanding the game how the game works It's Will will come up that some of these things they can have such they can decide games The single events can with how close scores are in the games nowadays, right? It can just decide a game right there. You can fell a battle tactic the game's over. Anyway. Yeah, I'm ranting about that But that's one thing it's kind of a side issue. I think we're all So here's the question. Are we all janky on spg? Yes 100? Yeah. Yeah Uh, I I think it's important to say in my mind. They are in a pretty good place Right now like it's definitely better. We've we've after repeatedly Just cracking them in the knees over and over and over again. We've got them into a decent spot. Yeah, and and um without you know and Cw says he's talking about like well, that's their core power fantasy and sometimes that isn't fun to play against To a point that can exist, right? Like certainly somebody's like that the sort of Main strat of the army may not be fun for certain people to experience. So for example You know some people like okay, obviously they bring back units well bringing back units might not be fun for some people to play against I might just hate the concept of that right base and so like that thumbs up against that That's fine. That's different than Being way too efficient at doing that thing Yeah And not paying the appropriate amount of points to to do that thing and so on right?  You can make skeletons. That's what necromancers do like got it, right? um But there's a difference, but that's fine Then they have to pay for that in the in the nature of like a Roughly balanced ecosystem where we're all playing a game here where we shall have some kind of equal chance to Compete right and that's where this book just completely failed at the beginning So yeah, definitely So, okay Uh next up seraphon Uh, they they just the books just keep coming. There's so many of them so many books All right, seraphon tom you're starting us off this time Talk about talk about lizard talk about the lizard wizards They're fine They're not like I will acknowledge that they exist um Is it is it bad that my favorite unit is not even it's a war cry unit?  Yeah, sure. No. I just you know as as cw frider said mortal wounds the book Sure, right like all the problems that we've that we've seen before just continuing on like in their trajectory upward I just I love that they did new Uh, I love that they did new New models like I love you know god. Yeah about models, right? But right. I love the types of things that they were doing I hated the actual mechanics of what they're doing Yep, uh like to me this one's gonna get a janky and I'll tell I'll make my reasons very clear Starborn was was bent one way and coalesced was was weak the other like it was Real real tale of two cities over here real best of times worst of times situation Skink chief on stegadon for 300 in some points or whatever he was originally as a war crime Somebody used to be brought before the Hague for that point value on that guy. Okay um like yeah, it's just I Big big no for me dawg Like I've never seen a more unbalanced internal book than what was going on with these dudes Not to mention the fact that like agridon lancers the one of the coolest new units They made were like tragically over pointed Um, kroyger who they had a final chance to make interesting with cool super new models and the new war spawn versions and stuff like that Still underwhelming like just Oh boy. Oh boy I think yeah, I think we're there with the lancer point jobs, but the kroyger Crocsigar are not quite there yet. Yeah, I agree I think I do I do think we've gotten lancers to a pretty interesting place now where they're like a viable unit in the army Yes, but boy were they off originally And like points are points. I'm not gonna dock heavily for that because you know those those things can be fixed Those things can come back. Um, that's adjustable but like cheesal peats What an unbalanced book And obviously playing against a star born mortal wounds explosion spam is just like it's truly awful Yeah, I mean how many times we have to say it then so you've always emphasized on this show Like trying to think about the broader context of this ecosystem And we keep making the same damn mistakes year after year after year And we might have hit the highest expression of that mistake With things Of so-tech. Yeah, and the amount of mortal wounds that they can do. I don't know. I'd have to think back I was joking with brendan today. We need to do a top 10 war crimes And home runs in the aos history. Love it. Uh, this This this would be uh Vanguard wing go Vanguard wing, yeah I've shared the story of Taking 50 mortal wounds and one turn and turn one before I move to model Oh, you know, that seems like that that shouldn't be a thing in this game. Sure. And uh, so it's It's just What else should I just say colost? Lost a lot of its flavor The monster a lot of monsters were amiss Like it got hit in any, you know, that classic expression because it was too too good So we got kneecapped a lot of the the flavor was removed not replaced Monsters not not a lot of interestingness there. I mean, there's there's a few things that are then interesting, but yeah The just yeah, it was a it was quite a mess this battle tone Are we all janky on this one? Yep, yep All right alignment, but not in the good way. All right next up Cities of sigmar Are one of our newest entrants in here? uh, so Tyler wait, what do you what do you think about cities? I'll let you take the take the reins on this one okay, so Uh generally, let's see.  Yeah, absolutely Cities of sigmar so of course the humans were the The poster sub-action or you know model range, etc Obviously, they're gonna get most of the love here. So you gotta have that asterisk. Yeah on this battle tone I do think though that you can do some interesting things with the dark lean covens. Whatever we're calling the the dark elves You know, you yeah, you can do something or whatever new phoenix guard black guard. Yeah the scourge runner chariots Uh, you still got that great spell to remove. Anyway, you can do something. I haven't seen a whole lot of Dwarden list Uh, some decent units there. Maybe maybe not Tommy might have some opinions on that when you come to you The yeah, a number of these sub-factions are interesting I think the play style is pretty cool again that we're running into this design of limiting information and Surprised potentially surprising your opponent.  You know about that like you don't know about that until I I know he's gonna have a little token Uh, that I know basically I cannot shoot those 20 or 30 or however many fusiliers I can't shoot them because he's gonna have a token there, but I forget about it. I forget about that token Right. He's shooting the fusiliers. It's shooting the hero shooting the hero. That's next to the fusiliers that then shoot you Right, right, and that is hidden information that like that's truly hidden information. Yeah Yes, technically right, but you can often have a sense of What's going on, right? Obviously. Yeah, what's gonna happen? So Is that good design? To me, it's kind of part of this broader theme that I think we have too much of Uh, because you can have those moments where oh crap, I forgot But if you're in the situation where the player isn't being maybe not being as reasonable as they could be So not not a huge fan of that but in general, yeah, I like the design a lot of these war scrolls The ways that this army functions with the whole Shield wall, whatever they call it the cast the light cast Cast light formation. I think that's what it's called. Uh, that's that's pretty cool Uh, the yeah And in general, I'd probably go thinking Okay Yeah, for me, this one would come down just on the thanky side. Um, we're not talking models. We're just talking rules Um, I think the orders are interesting. I think it's a neat sort of style to introduce I don't want all command abilities to be that and it's not personally for me But I do know a lot of people actually like this quite a bit like this sort of style So I'm respectful. That's nice to open up that door for people who who enjoy it um I think rules-wise there's there's actually some interesting stuff going on with the fuseliers and the steel helms and All that kind of stuff and how they want to interact it will encourage you I think often to Get several things. Yeah, you kind of have a Wide range of forces. I do think there is some play in the other the other In the dwarves and elves as you said they didn't give them as much love as they should have There's like multiple units in each of the dwarves and elves that are just complete trash And you would never take they're just garbage, but there's at least a couple units You can you can you can play with in each in each faction. So that's fine um, yeah, like overall, I think it's an interesting book. Obviously it had the the fuseliers and the and pontifex and estra and the War caster whatever we're just completely war forger. Uh, sure. Sorry Just completely under pointed ridiculous nonsense right launch. So, you know There we go So like obviously that kind of stuff that that that is just points. There is there is reasonable points values for those units Right, it's just yeah, it isn't what was printed there. It's not like they're fundamentally broken right, um so you know like It's Like I overall i'm thanking for the book. I think it took a certain big swings it introduces some new design I would have like I still want to see more focus on internal balance and roles and utility the same drum I've been beating for Eight years of this game on the individual books. So like when we go into the the dwarves and the elves We're like, okay, this is the hammer, but it does this and it's like it's functional as a hammer But it has some secondary purpose. So you can have multiple hammers by by aligning different secondary purposes This is my speed hammer. This is my attrition hammer. This is you know, whatever right, and I think that would be um A lot more interesting But I think overall that that i'm thank you for the book. It could have been better. It's not a huge thank you Certainly not a landslide, but I think I come down on the on the on the thank you Tom Yeah, I would say that I am um, I think i'm thank you for the book I Things I appreciated I appreciated some of the design space that they explored I appreciated the attempt to streamline You know, like we don't have multiple groups of elves. We have one set of elves. We have one set of dwarves. We have one set of humans Sure, or actually that's not true and I'll talk about that. Um I Uh, this there were too many cities I don't care what you a lot of sub factions. There's just too much. It's too much um, I Uh, I think that there's a lot of tech to be unlocked in mixed arms lists Yeah, I think this is book like book Like power pairs the book right like yes, I'm so glad you mentioned that dude that the book wants you to run mixed arms Which I love yes, sure I wanted to do like humans And I was building and just realized like it's just suboptimal To running a mixed arms And so like I had to come to terms with that like if I want to do all humans Then it's a suboptimal list to run mixed arms Like to do a if I want to do mixed arms all humans Yeah, it's suboptimal to do all humans versus like having my melee unit be not humans Oh, I see what you're saying sure right like there are advantages to do the other Races and not do right like let humans be the core shooting And then let everything your mobility and your your fighty stuff. Yeah, you got chariots And you got black guard or whatever whether for a board is your main line and so on and so yeah Yeah, or or a Jordan hammer unit with the word bonus Yeah, all of it like all of those are just better um Misses I really struggled with Like and this is like a pet peeve, but I think it's very real Like they didn't lean in in the humans They basically gave us replacements for a lot of the units that already existed And they didn't lean into like the religious element basically at all outside of zinestro Yeah, because they they kept fanatics, which is fine They have a handful of witch huntery units that are basically like the remnants of like underworlds warbands In varying functions or like the peri heroes, but I just really struggled with The offering in that sense of what they were doing and how that was And it really frustrated me to be honest because They literally with some of those or those warbands gave them the order of easy or subfecture Like that is a that is a keyword on some of those witch hunter warbands Yeah, why didn't we play with that? Like why like we're missing at least two units there Like there there are two legitimate units that we're missing um Probably some type of unit of battle priests. I recognize steel helms have a recent every unit. That's not what i'm talking about like like having like a religious like battle priest style unit and then having Uh a witch huntery unit like a true witch hunters like uh skirmishy Weather jackets and hats and the whole deal and then maybe some other type of war altar. That's not as an s um Because she is war altar s, but she's palak when like she's more like more like uh reliquary She's also a lot of sick Yeah, about wheels like not so like what I didn't see was a lot of like she is this whole like wheel worshiping stuff That she's doing which is silly um Why don't we have more Like she's clearly an agent it's each why don't we have more worship of sigmar, you know in the cities of sigmar Which are actual people Honoring sigmar right doing sigmary things Yes, yeah, yeah, exactly Be like if the vatican rolled out and our man was all just rifleman She's like no it's just like okay Right right like and so like that was that was a miss to me Um where it just made me sad that they didn't explore about those spaces Yeah, fair enough. Yeah, that's a good point So are where you come down tom?  I'm like cautiously thanky. It's the best way that I would say it like it's fine I think this got a cautious thanky from all of us. It's not enthusiastic thanky, but it's there. Yeah It it could have been better is my answer Yeah, right I'll be remiss if I don't point out just for my friend Travis I've played like three games against two units of free guild command corps That on four up are just saying no to your use of command abilities The fact that I don't know seems a little strange that you can have two of those units in a list Two cracks don't get me started on bands of weirdos and why they should be unique all the time If your army contains a group of weirdos Right with different abilities. It should be a unique thing You get one and only one max period end of story Stop writing bands of weirdos as something that people are incentivized to take multiples of because then I have to be like All right, which one of these weirdos does that all right? Who do I need to kill to what am I trying to do here? Yeah, so annoying.  I hate groups of weirdos running around with like 15 different rules It's I'll put up with one of them one. Yeah. Yeah Sounds like you just need some spy masters in your army clearly all right supplementary books Here we go folks. We're finally out of battle tomes. We're not going to do fec obviously because it's not out yet So, you know, that's why and we'll do a review show. By the way, I lied. It's not next week. Tyler I realized as we were sitting here talking No Because I'm on the road next week for the last half of the year. So I'm not doing a battle tone review show from a hotel Um, so we're gonna do a short show next week at any rate supplementary books So it'll be two weeks from now after the actual release date. Sorry everyone Uh, okay, and in supplementary books. We're talking about dawn bringers book one Harbingers Uh, yeah, so I mean we could probably move through these relatively quickly Uh Yeah I'm thank you for this. I think I could probably wrap up the whole series like this But I'll talk about some of the individual notes as I get there I'm thank you for harbingers. I'm thank you for the the dawn bringer series I like what they've done for the most part. I think it's interesting Um, you know, this one gave us the actual harbingers like the four little new hero peeps Yeah, um, and they were cool And none of it came out incredibly busted or anything like that. Um in dawn in book one. So that was fun I'll just say in book one. Yeah And So I'm definitely a hard thank you for this it set up the story lower wise It was very fun. Um, like I liked what was going on in the in the actual story of dawn bringers And it was fun narrative interesting things. We got to meet the characters Yeah, all in all, thank you. I mean, this one's a pretty enthusiastic. Thank you. I like to book one. I liked it a lot Tyler Same Thank you. I'll leave it at that. I don't know a lot of thoughts. Uh, the the main thing I would say the harbinger of decay is the one that I've looked at the most Probably just another point value issue. I think it's just a little too high But that's that's a minor quibble So, yeah, I agree. But yeah, heroes are mostly pretty good. I feel like maybe there was one that folks were not too big on Maybe a fleshier to court one. I can't remember. I didn't take a look at him very closely, but yeah Grimhold exile is really cool. Sure. Tom Yeah, it's it's fine. Um, I wish that they had done more with the regiments or renowned stuff Well, we'll talk about. Yeah, sure. Sure. Sure. That's fine No, like even I understand the regiments are renowned. Yes Yeah, not the armies but the regiments like I love that as a concept. Let's do more of that Like let's play in that space a little bit more instead of just doing piecemeal allies I mean, if you want my if you want my hard opinion Tom, I don't think allies are going to be a thing and in In fourth That's my reading of the tea leaves. I think they judge as an ally is completely and just use regiments are renowned as your allies I don't hate that to be honest. I don't sure So would seemingly help with balance You won't have you know, it was an estrus showing up in a seraphon list just to add more mortal winds on top. Sure Just why not? Why not? Hey lizards, do you like circles? I'm here to pray with you. Okay Um book two reign of the brute Big thank you for me. This introduced. This is our first armies of renown now.  Yeah, I feel like you're not the target audience for this thing. I understand that's fine Going back to my number one thing Does it open up more interesting avenues of of of play for you know The the wide majority of the casual player base and to me the answer here would be an enthusiastic Yes for what we're doing here with armies of renown, which are basically replacement army rules Uh, so and I like that concept. I like the idea of like it's not a sacked book You can just take the old book and throw in the trash and this is your army you play now This is it. This is the only thing you need to read. It's the correct way to do that and I'm a big fan of it Um And so, you know, I'm like on the whole I think this was good again lore-wise story was was pretty fun Little little goofy at points, but but fun Um book two things happened Like actual things happened in the story, you know, you had goddess going down You had truce break falling like there's like things happened right Um So, you know, I thought that was that was That was cool. We both got a good story.  I thought this was good. It had rules. I like that story I liked big. Thank you rena book two rena the root wonderful I think i'm at a 51 percent Thank you on this. Yeah the Generally a fan of the armies of renown concepts been executed better in some places and others Finally played a game against an army of big pigs Just look amazing on the table like just saying that across the table. It's incredible I do wish the world rules better matched what you're actually seeing Did you watch your opponent go? Oh, that's the same. You lost more momentum. Oh, you lost more momentum Yeah I kept I kept doing yeah, it's like you're trying to empathize with your oh man. Yeah You know for the sixth time right saying like, yeah, just doesn't quite get there. Does it like, you know, what do you think they could do to change? Yeah, there's a lot of that going on. Yeah the so doesn't quite get Amazing models definitely miss on a lot of the rules. I wish they would have given more flavor to iron jaws Not so a whole lot, but just didn't quite expand the palette as far as iron jaws goes with these more scrolls and the rules and everything the But in general, yeah, thank you You guys covered everything else. Yeah the trolls and the hundreds Once again, all thank you Yeah Book three the long hunt Uh Story wise not much happened here. This was kind of like a nothing burger lore wise, which is unfortunate Um, as far as like the main thrust of the story goes But legit, this had my favorite character interactions for all of the other characters like Ionis talking to um What's his name to Vandis hammerhand like that exchange was Really good and deep and amazing and fun Uh, all the gods hanging out was was like was really really cool Like that does say the two big elder dragons and all that the council of life aside was really really good Um, a lot of the ancillary stuff to the story was actually some of the best stuff I'd seen it was really fun. Um Um And then, you know, yeah, I mean the actual things we got in there Rules wise like I like Ionis. I like bell Thanos. I think he's really really strong probably probably too strong at his points But again, I do think it's just a points issue. Um, sure. I think he probably should be 400 points not 360 Maybe 410 if you want to take the ally I mean he's he's a really interesting ally, especially like cities where he's given plus one to chance for Sinestra and potentially whatever that sub faction is that can do chance as a sub faction thing, but yeah Yep We're somewhere in there, but like overall I I'm thank you for this book. It was good. It felt like a middle book That's what I'll say Um, but overall I thought it was it was good Tom Yeah, I loved what they were doing with the army Uh, and the story was trash, but um everything else was great Yeah, these armies of renown felt a lot more in line is what I'll say Even though we got an all dragon faction, which is crazy to say that that's the like inline one, but you know I think for the most part these felt much more in line Yeah So yeah, the the one of its called that yeah that dragon army overnight That's the home run for me of all of them so far. I think that one is really cool And uh, I've been saying a lot of people write the list that we talked about events. Yeah, sure I don't know if you're on that show. It's crondis ionis nitro conus two by two dragons And every place comment. There you go. Have fun Russ is running that I saw he went to a team tournament Russ the face hammer And it looks great. Yeah, so I think that's competitive. It's interesting. It's cool. A little mild count Belfanos Talked like 15 minutes on our on our show about the wonders of Belfanos So we don't have to do that again. No, he's opening up a whole new world for seleneth and and that's what we that's what we needed to see for that army So it's it's good news Yeah, the ogres were a bit of a mess Yeah, as far as I could tell but yeah, so now everything's perfect. But yeah, that's definitely the best of the three. I thought agreed uh, yeah, I mean the Yeah, we don't need to talk about the ogres again. That's Swing and a miss they can't all be winners, but you know three out of four hold on stop stop stop stop I disagree All right, excellent. I'm ready so I started digging into ogres and Like the malls don't work for Any of the ever winter people correct? It does it hurts bcr It's not just actively it doesn't work for them. It hurts them the same as anybody else. Correct, but For either the rest of your army is immune to it Yeah, correct. If you as long as as young like your gut busters and like the new yeti unit is like I love that new yeti. I like I really do you don't mean yet. You mean gorger Gorger unit, right, which is also a gut buster. Yeah um, and so like I like I was playing around and like realized I was like I could probably build this army for fairly cheap Of doing like a full gut buster and it had me like thinking about like teasing teasing out the idea of putting together an ogre army, okay, so I don't hate it like I I know it got a lot of crap But I actually think that there might be some really fun play here like surprising play with the with the mall stuff because You can put the mall Like it just has to be outside enemy territory and it still reach out 18 if you can get your So like it could actually be damaging their whole army like if they're not on terrain fairly early sure So like and so which is why I think they have so much anti Like breaking terrain is because the idea is you put it out front and then make them make it start eating the enemy. Yeah, sure I get it. I don't know. I I'm not as I look like I'll say this way I am not like I was originally also poo-pooey and then I started playing around with it And I was like, you know, there might actually be some real gas here. Okay fair enough Either way, we're all coming down. Thank you on this one. So It's just a question of whether we're thanky or thanky thanky or really really thanky. So that's fine. Yeah Either way. All right, let's keep going next up models All right Uh now I've I'm not again. I'm not gonna review every model that's come out I'm not we're not we're not bringing every dumb little hero that's released with a book or something like that We're gonna talk about We're gonna talk about the major models right the major releases as it were. Okay Um, and then yeah, we'll go from there Okay, first up the new serif on stuff You know new slon Uh agridonis Right, we got we got the new little Skiing set up me crocs. Sig or crocs Yeah, gore Croyger got it Uh Yeah, new Croyger our little skinky frill rider dudes, you know Uh, huge thanky. I mean this is this is the part of the show where we just gosh I put this last because like I think Basically model wise most of these things are just huge wins this year. Um, love the new fat frog on his chair Love the agridon riders. I think they l