All right, hello everybody if it's Wednesday, it's Warhammer and that must mean it's time for Another episode of Warhammer weekly joining me as always my one and only co-host which you know for sure Because he has this little character in the the opening show thumbnail. So, you know, he's got to be the only co-host There's no third little character there. So it must just be Tyler. What's up, buddy? How you doing? It's I love my little guy. Good. I thought there was at least a 25% chance. It was gonna be a skincare rat You would do that to me because you aren't capable of doing that. No, it has to be your true self. That's just it Also joining us this week first time on the show We've upgraded Tom's old Tom was boring He can't win tournaments anymore. He was like 20 second at bruhammer. He's out of here We got new better Tom winner of bruhammer tournament player extraordinaire Tom, how you doing? One wonderful. It was a I was surprised when I got the DM from the One I forgot who's the kind that was because I thought it was the kind of that's like, would you like to come to one? I'm really like, oh, that's great. Like my friend really loves your guys's show and he like watches it when he paints those like And your one has like favorite paper Well, we're glad to have you on you've been going to you're you're you're on the West Coast But you've been tearing up the scene all over the place and today I couldn't think of a more perfect yes To talk about the meta because we're gonna ask the question Is the age of sigmar meta broken? Is this is this are we are we living in a broken time? And will we find an answer probably not will we discuss it a lot? most definitely okay so With that of course first we're gonna start with the news Tyler. What do you got? news it is Definitely not Valkia get it out of your system everybody stop it. I'm sorry. It's a tyrant it Probably some hive tyrant or gargoyle. All right moving on counter opinion Disagree it is definitely Valkia Here you go her wings these wings and you might say as Konstantinos pointed out original credit to the shared image He also said but wait this wing has little holes in it I give you the Valkia art wherein she has the holes and as we all know they base their new sculpts very frequently on classic art so hence It's Valkia mystery solved.  I Thought was a daughter the canary like a canary. Yeah. Yeah, they do have very similar wings. You're not wrong There's aren't there's aren't holy Oh Art is pulled up. I never seen that. All right, I would never be more happy to be wrong. There you go So, yes, look, we all want new Valkia if we're on the one hero to book release in 2022 I've as I've said so Is there any other more reasonable hero than the one in that range that's still stuck in fine cast? Mm-hmm. It's a slam dunk. It's a slam dunk Yeah, her old models are very tiny. She is she is very small. Yeah, she needs the like Sigvald treatment right where she's kind of like scaled up for no reason. Yeah, still it's still immortal But just big for no reason I would love a bigger like a bigger Valkia. That'd be that'd be sweet. Yeah. Yeah, yeah Like look when you turn to chaos, it just gives you like bone mass That's what you mainly get.  You know, so there you go All right. Okay, we had an article on the Akelean Lpex is getting some love in the new forthcoming Idoneth book If you're interested in all the details check out that article I saw that the harpoon launchers for tax getting D3 damage, I don't think they had that last time they did not It wasn't the worst girl the fury and fire whatever the fear of the deep thing. Yeah. Oh, that's right. Okay. Yes. Yeah, that's where it That's where it changed. Yeah But like all right, so here's so Tom Give us your take on on IDK. Are you here's what I'm asking you are Do you have stonks on the IDK book? Do you think it's gonna be good bad something in the middle? Where are you putting it right now? well before I say that I currently have Basically the whole range of models just in boxes Okay, I'm like on my on my table and I've been waiting for the book to drop to see what I need to build I love the aesthetics like even when they first released an AOS one I was like, oh these these are some excellent models like even you know back then No, nobody played AOS around me by still almost models models. Just like They were that strong. Yeah I look I also look super cool the point cause in the fury and The in the starter set didn't look super promising like I also played against the mix of the new rules from the star box and the old rules in the bruhammer finals and they feel like if the point cause They stayed up around the same that could be very good But if everything goes up like the reverse and the thralls and the Allopaxes did I think you could run to problems of having to elite of an army without having too good of a safe Okay, okay. Yeah, you're that was that quite a final game there you against the the futhin player there Blotting out the skies with those 60 Reavers. That's a it's a heck of a matchup. Oh, yeah, it was a wild So obviously whenever the book comes out, we'll do the review so looking forward to it I say of the two books that are releasing. It's the one I'm minorly interested in There you go. There's my there's my stonks for you Yeah, I'm very very interested in it. We'll see how good they are Indeed Tyler what's next? Good. We had a little article on Grand Cathay The warhammer the old world of course We've been seeing a lot about them with total war warmer three getting released this over this past week. Uh-huh and Yeah, anybody have any thoughts on this I Stay away from keeping Peter games because I almost failed high school due to an addiction I Get a video game 103 very good been playing The article very Not good. It doesn't like satisfy any Questions people might have had about the this show through square base game, but But I love today. So if they make miniatures for it, that would be cool Yep, all I like If anybody had any concept this game was gonna come out before like 2024. I hope this article puts that to rest Because they're still just like talking about a thing they drew like a map. That's nothing I don't I don't want to say that like that's it's cool Like the people who do the like art for maps is actually a really cool skill. It actually is awesome So I don't I'm not disrespecting the artist that map looks super cool. I love all the maps. They've shown I like fantasy maps in general.  Yeah, so Yep, uh Probably not coming I was listening to an interview that they did an article David Geimer who wrote this cognose book. That's a novel that's coming out Yeah, and he mentioned if you guys heard that The novel was planned to come out like a year or two ago Wow release of the crag nose model Wow So Well, that's fascinating inside to their schedule and how messed up it's gotten Yeah, I mean it's I as I've said before they have to be eight months plus off at least so But it's impressive. They still have so much stuff coming out. So great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah That they just they think about what the think about what the release schedule would have been like sans-covid You know remember in 2019 when we just got a deluge of stuff. It was just raining on us constantly That would have probably been the pace For the last two years, right but obviously then Such as the world I'm not sure I'm sad about it. Okay. So, uh, any other any other news or is that it? That's it. Yay news over. Okay pick of the week We're we're flying through these because I want to get to the main topic pick of the week. Tom What would you like to share with everybody? uh, so one of the My friends in the my club or on base heroes has did a interview recently with the aos coach about his Underguts list that he wins four and one with at the most recent tournament, which is a long start in down in that Dallas So people should check it out when it when that gets posted Fantastic love it Always repping the coach and always repping ogres. Love you love to see it So I will link that down below tyler What do you got? Yeah so Duck with strength ham strength hammer. He had a good chat with Brendan Melnick from cubic shenanigans as a follow-up to his chat with joe crier So it's kind of a counterpoint on the whole itc aos discussion. That's ongoing Good check it out. We're gonna have garth thomas on and not too long from now.  I'm sure I'm excited about it. I really am Like there was such a good burn today on twitter. It was wonderful. So yeah, it was great. I'm I'm very excited about this show so absolutely and then Two channels bad rep channels Each did a bad rep with one of the war core war coda battle plans. I can't talk tonight. Good lord War coda battle plans. So one was t3 war gaming. It was Sam and scott sole blight versus storm cast on battle for the past and scott was running the you know, one of the defining sort of meta list right now for dragon six long strikes versus a Really immobile the sole blight army Mainly relying on grave sites so it's a good example of some of the challenges when you have a sort of Intense power projection army with a long board and a relatively slow army particularly with how it played out Giving it away a little bit, but I appreciated their critiques I thought they had Some really good discussion at the end and maybe some tweaks we can make we could consider it's about it for the past To address a couple of things and then the other one was the dice cast They did a game on focal points cruel boys and night haunt. That was pretty interesting as well to see So, yeah, thanks to everybody who's doing these battle reports With the war coda plans. I know there's going to be some more coming out pretty soon I think sag of dice and hammer of war are going to be putting some of that. So yeah, that's all I got Very nice Donnie, I boosted it a little tell me if that makes any difference. Okay, so The my Pick of the week is going to be very straightforward because it connects to what we're talking about So down in the description, you will find a link to aos shorts on twitter and you will find a link to The t-sports network stats center From ziggie and rob and all of the t-sports stats center crew And I wanted to link to both of them because a lot of what we're going to be discussing tonight About the meta and stuff like that I wouldn't have these stats if it weren't for both all of those fine gentlemen who do a lot of hard work keeping up all of these stats collecting everything aggregating everything so Both of the all of that the site twitter. It's all linked down below go follow check it out yada yada yada Do those things if you want more data than what we give you Or you have different conclusions or you want to crunch some of the numbers yourself or slice dice Julian fry that data in any way You go right ahead All that's there and I I certainly encourage people to do so Okay cool beans I will yeah, I will do so down Okay, let's uh before we get deep into the topic. Let's have a little hobby time Uh tom you mentioned that you have a giant Collection of idk Waiting for you to see what's good. What else has anything else been on your hobby table recently? You've been painting anything or are you just flying to tournaments constantly? uh, so I Mostly I just built the models and then my friend Hey, so that's a good plan. So you and tyler are birds of a feather here man Yeah, so uh before the idk I built Basically, uh all the play bears I was using for Dallas the long star gt and then build the Play drones and be so nervous. So Yeah, very nice. All right. That's good. Those are actually uh The plague drones are kind of an annoying build, but most of nerdles are pretty enjoyable build. It's kind of fun Yeah, kind of a fun thing to build Uh, I really like what the play drones look also So that's sort of happy how they throw that. Yeah, the only the only uh Downside of them is obviously they're those those wings those wings do not want to stay Like attached All right tyler hey buddy Uh, I'm ready Did you build anything this week? Oh That's so nice of you. Of course not but that's very kind But throwing a throwing a curve on me. I have nothing to report Although someone did have an ingenious idea. I've got to say That might actually get me to pay in something In terms of just extraordinary leverage that could be achieved For this idea. I don't want to give it away yet. I want to work out the details first Okay, but this might do it It has to do with a community terrain project Leveraging the worldwide community I'm excited about this. I'm excited. We found a point of leverage. It's it's tough It's all about yes Have the right lever. Okay. Well give them the biggest lever. Yes indeed uh for myself I'm working on a Zombie dragon thing not a normal zombie dragon, but this zombie dragon. He's made from different things This is courtesy of just more sole blight grave lord stuff is showing up at my house This one's courtesy of crazy horse. So thank you. This is the big dragon in his current presence Here's the little guy that goes on top of him and stuff like that. So At the beginning of this when I was doing it as just a joke I thought well, I'll do it all in non-metallic metal because it'll be a fun chance to practice that Now is normal. I regret that decision. But here we are. We're not stopping now So i'm working on that guy And uh I also got a game in this weekend tyler with your new war coat. We used Uh, we used focal points in our game this weekend played a nice one-on-one use the new boc rules And took out some living cities with it Uh, it was a really fun game and let me tell you what man, uh, boy did that rend feel good Felt great even just chopping through things It's fantastic Gores dragon ogres. What else you have? I didn't have any dragon ogres I did try two gorgons. They were worthless. So I was sad about that But best to gore were in fact the best Regular gore were still very useful just a sort of chaff and unleash hell absorbers.  Let me tell you right now. Shaggoth was great. Uh, cockatrice was great Skyfires, baby. They're back. That's right back 2017 all over again get into it. The skyfires were here and they were ready.  You know, they they're shooting Their shooting profile even though it does mortal wounds on the hit is not what you think it is Like it's not as good as you remember Those guys were like right the terror. Yeah one attack each on fours threes neg one d three, right and obviously sixes go to d three mortals and and like When you're only making six shots, it's just not what you know in a normal shooting phase like a plebeian okay It's just not as effective as you think but but Once you up all their rend by one in melee So then they can zip around shoot and then charge in and remember they still re-roll everything if they fight first All hits all wounds Okay All of a sudden you give all of that rend. Mm Tasty tasty neg two rend on them choppy chop bites and then neg one on everything else Uh, I rate them. I rate them Uh in boc so much are we paying for skyfires right now? 195 in boc. Okay, okay All right, interesting and you like the mission. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead Tom That seems pretty reasonable like in round three they go to rent two right with the hearthstone That's right in round three their shot obviously their shot always remains neg one because the herds don't only affects melee But yes in round at the you know from top around three on their main attack of the bites of the disc's bites is rend three And then they the all the rest of their attacks are rend two Which is you know pretty good on re-roll everything like re-roll all hits and wounds Yeah, it's it's not bad It's not bad Mission mission seemed pretty good. Yeah, I look like it was great It was a very fun mission that tetris p set up was it was funny because I told my buddy We're gonna play this mission. I didn't tell him anything about it And I kind of just put it down explain the setup set everything up And he like I you know let him read the rules and whatever because he hadn't seen it before And as he's setting up He's like man this setup is really challenging because I'm not I'm trying to decide if I want to like overextend up this way Or how I want to go and I was like perfect Exactly what tyler was going for so you like he felt it site unseen. I did not prep him for that That was just the feedback he gave so and yeah, we liked it. So it's a good mission I I hope they just I hope they just carte blanche steal your Mission and put it in an xghp or something. Yeah I like to really appreciate the feedback, you know the good the bad and the ugly The the main piece has been on that battle for the past like I could see a case For splitting down the middle and then 12 off the line so that you move from 30 inch between to 24 inch between Makes aggressive expansion a little more interesting. I think because now your home objective On battle for the past will not be eligible for aggressive expansion So you are going to probably rely on those two middle ones Then of course you could burn in round three. So one of those middle ones could go away And then but it also balancing it out It makes savage spearhead a little more viable with the extended deployment. So anyhow, just little little things like that I could see some but yeah more feedback the better You know, we're going to be looking at some tweaks at some point to these things. Yeah, right on Okay, well gentlemen with that concluded I think it's time we get into the the meat of this show All right. So let's do it Let's get into some meta talk. Here we go. Let me bring up our presentation Oh boy But boom By the way, Tom, I've got to ask are you do you so I've heard you're a very fast player in war machine I feel like that's translated pretty well to aos that you you play Okay, awesome. Well, let's talk about that sometime. We probably I sent vents a list of Items for the show that's like six hour conversation with you and he checked he removed that one Sadly from the list, but I'd love to talk to you about that sometime. Well, let's just real quick We can have a brief conversation. Let's do this Tom if you had three tips to give people to play faster What would be the three tips you'd give them that you utilize in your games? Number one most important know what you're gonna do when Before your turn starts. Yeah, like that could be like looking at a mission deploying just like Like if in a situation where you're where you're probably gonna go first if you're like a high drop Or if you're like just plan out where your turn one is going to be without thinking too much about like your opponent's stuff like It doesn't always work out, but you should get your turn one now. That's like pretty I would say if you're not like one those like shoot, uh, like a shooty luminous or some cast army Where you're not like a magic heavy army like zinch You should your turn one should be just pretty fast it like it just should just be you moving models to set up like You're like either I aggressively expansion on um mission that's where relevant or just Setting up to take either try to set up or double or set up so you don't get like completely overwhelmed That's number one Number two, I just know all the rules in your army without like having to reference it like before you do anything anything Like that that comes up a lot when you're playing when you're playing against or ask seraphon like Like you need to know the range of all your spells or your prayers or your uh abilities like the Serpent staff like your slants command ability like your uh star seriously You need to know all the range of your bubble So with that so you don't like I think it's 15. I think it's 18 I think it's 12 so then you have to like go reference it then then it really slows down the pace of the game because You have to reference it then you look at the board state again And then you have to think do I really want to do this like it it creates like right Like a lot of downtime. That's very unnecessary. Like if you just knew it at the start it's like oh, it's full I'm gonna do this do that like and then third they just Third they just try to be like Prepared to react like if I'm getting shot Like when they declare this target, I'm like a lot of defense for that and then like if they move within 90 I'm not gonna re-declare that like Like I'm not gonna say cp for later round for in case my unit gets wiped out by like half I need to save it for like rallies like that just comes with playing Like that's not always like super easy to do because sometimes there's like two targets you want to protect in like a round of combat or or like In like in a shooting phase, so you have to like oh, which he picked this target for uh But it's valetactive. I really need this thing to live for my just hold this point Those are complicated situations, which takes time But normally it's pretty simple what your opponent wants to do and you should and it's pretty Like it's pretty projected like I am broken ranks or four skanks.  So right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yep right on I like it. All right. There we go, Tyler We got it in Just for you All right, let's talk about the aos meta The good the bad The potentially ugly as we ask the question is the aos meta broken so Let's go around the horn right now before we go to any slide No, I want no explanation on this Okay, you are not allowed to defend Or extrapolate on your position You must be right now Talking to all of us. We're all like I I given I haven't talked to tom a lot So I don't know maybe he would maybe he would just rip this out But I know you and I would ramble because this is more for the two of us. So Is the aos meta broken? Yes No Kinda like maybe there's all a middle answer is fine here Okay, Tyler you have to answer first No, okay tom No, okay My answer is going to be Maybe There we go. All right. That's what I wanted to say, but I We know okay, but none of us answered. Yes All right, and and I think there's something to that Uh because you know Broken is hard to define and it was funny because you asked the question on twitter Tyler today and I read through all the responses I read through the responses to my post as well Everybody who posted today on twitter in response to this I was watching Okay, and I did read everything. So it's all good discussion Thank you everybody. Uh, thank you. Yes everyone for all the feedback Uh, and I just want to remember real quick here since I just thought about it. Hey hit like And subscribe and do all those things if you haven't like yet hit like for tyler's new little sprite in the thumbnail Hit like for I don't know something something you enjoy Uh, so there we go. Okay. Just hit the button. It's cool. Be cool Uh, all right So but I do want to talk about it because I do think it's off kilter in some way right And like there's something that feels wrong about the meta right now In various ways and I think that emerges in different In different elements. We're going to look at some of the stats. We're going to look at talk about units We're going to talk about consequences. We're going to talk about how we might fix it And then what would the consequences of that fix be? okay, uh because I think a lot of people offer very simple solutions to things and Something like the state of the meta and the balance of 25 very complicated armies Probably doesn't have a simple solution where we can like just change one rule and then everything's great like Is it though? Is that really how the world works? Probably not Probably not okay All right, let's start with my here's my summary and then I'll get I'm going to go around the horn and we'll get takes on this All right, so some problems have been resolved My ultimate my my starting statement is this is far from the worst meta we've ever had Okay, and I don't think it's actually broken or unplayable or anything like that I think an amazing number of great games are happening I think a lot of people are playing in metas. They're having immense amount of fun both casual and competitive by the by okay I do think however Uh, or I think we've solved some really strong problems that were out there kind of messing things up Uh, but I think we have some new some some problems emerging. Okay And the way I think of this Is like this it's the proud nail problem If you have a bunch of Nails like a bed of nails you can lay down on it Or walk across it right and it won't hurt your foot because or your or your body because The weight is evenly distributed across all of those tiny little points Right, but if you have a single nail stick sticking up out of your deck And you step your foot down full weight on it Oh You feel it Okay, yeah Hard to think about Uh And so my point is as we've sort of hammered in Some of these other problems The ones that still stay there Right become more pronounced And if they're sort of allowed to run unchecked then they can become quite dominant You know, you could use this example in a hundred other ways I could have said like you think of an ecosystem It's relatively in balance you take a couple of the large predators away suddenly some other you know like boom the whole Ecosystem flies off right so it's like things like that Are what I mean So we've resolved a lot of problems with sort of god type models archon's not the terror he once was Nagash is not the terror he once was I think both of these models are like Nagash is probably maybe a little overcosted still but he's he's fine Marathi held back by her army Yeah, I mean Marathi sit like exactly like doc Is a okay army. We'll see what happens with the new book Her commandability is super annoying, but she is ultimately a solvable problem Right, it's not that especially in this current meta. It's not hard for most of the top tier armies to do three wounds a turn to her Right. Oh, yeah. Yeah, she's generally dead at the top of three or bottom two or however you want to phrase it, right? Yeah The amulet of destiny has been weakened which weakened both the power of Sons of Behamat as well as you know other types of other things that would empower these sort of unkillable single models You know crag knows to started to show up in lists. He's certainly a fun piece But he's ultimately a killable threat, you know, he's he's 18 wounds on a on a real good save But a six up after save, right? Yeah Our current challenge that remains kind of the the the big overwhelming In my mind proud nail that's sticking up is power projection Which is taking multiple forms Right. I think that the meta right now and i'm curious as to both of your takes on this is defined by either Having the ability to project power and we'll talk about what that means in a minute in more detail But to really project power in a significant way at range or To be able to withstand and resist that power projection And and and still achieve your goals and to basically fight in the shade Okay That's my argument. Tom. What do you what do you think about that that my my sort of resolution right now? my summary, but I think it's it's very uh, what's it called very accurate like picture of the meta like And I think the fix Over the just Diverse a little bit. I think the fix for shooting has to come in the form in ghp of how Terrain works. Yeah, that would be a great place to start. No no disagreement for me yeah, I think like Like a very side tension If we if we just imagine ourselves playing 40k, but with al s terrain was that game would just not be playable in any Either any circumstances great But portica has great terrain rules which makes the game very fun for a lot of people and There's still problem with book releases like like a gw. That's like a gw problem But I think step one of the addressing shooting in the miniatures game has to come from Either terrain or just how like How shooting in general works like yeah, like should you be able to allow to shoot into combat? Like should you be able to you know, like should there be any like kind of penalties for shooting a long distance? Like that kind of thing Yeah, because I think addressing each each unit case by case would just not be efficient use of their time Like then they have to like it's luminescent. No, it's too good. It's like this is like what's called salad matters So good is like the best still down with the solar engine too good. Then they have to like Spend time testing it and like I think addressing how shooting works like fundamentally Because like one of my favorite things about age of sigmar at least 3.0 is how how much counter player there is available Like hey, I'm gonna get charged.  Well, I can Look in my factions slash allies to find things with high rent. So I like that So I think if they want to address shooting, they should do it In the with how terrain works and like like cover is a great cover save Like not covers it. Just like cover in general in als is pretty good Like makes like plus one to save against both shooting and melee. So maybe To expound upon that would help this current situation a lot But I don't think is even at this current point It's very oppressive and they can like make for a very negative play experience But if you if both players going into it know What it's expected. I don't think it's super like unplayable It's it's not the greatest miniatures game, but it's still it's still fun Yeah, yeah, yeah, I I I agree with that especially the terrain thing my goodness gracious goodies Sakes do I want us to have like some stronger terrain rules? I mean we've done I don't even know multiple shows on it now at this point Just begging for those kinds of terrain rules. So I'm behind it tyler What's your what's your thought on my sort of summary of the current situation? Yeah, I think it's pretty good. I mean we've talked about doing a show in defensive shooting before where like my feeling is could go too far in toning down shooting Where we end up back in one through q3 2019 Where we had a melee power dominant meta with very few counters Uh looking back on it. It seemed like we could have had counters come into play sooner than we ended up having but We eventually got there in q4 Scaven stormcast anvils cities of sigmar iron drakes obr catapults and then that led into 2020 With the four books that we got near the you know q1 q2 lumenath serif on ko zeech and the daughters of cain Later on the year. So and you know so I in my mind. We've been in this our projection being a little out of balance era since late 2019 or less I think we've improved from where we were in 2020 Which was the absolute worst meta in my experience over six years of aos. Thankfully it was mostly on tts And we weren't experiencing it in the real world. So You know, I I think it's a little out of balance Not necessarily a lot. There are a lot of counter examples even now Of which we could seem Start to come to the forefront more like I was looking at old town throwdowns list, uh, top gareth never know. It's called gareth or tom gareth had sent me today And there were very few long strikes Were very few dragons. Yeah, it was a lot of soul blight crag nose wound density And so on. So there are you know, I went down the list of 25 some factions There are many factions right now that I think are capable of responding To the power projection meta that we have Just we've yet to see it as much and then there's also more stagnation than we would like because we've only had what A storm cast nergal three books in eight months. That's yes. Yeah work lands. Yeah, and that's that's part of the issue as well So, I mean a lot more thoughts, but those those are a few to kick off. Yeah okay, so Power projection and and I don't want to spoil this for everyone because I've already seen So the gareth said zero long strikes eight dragons six crag nose five corn demon princes Uh, what was the who ran the list? Why can't I think of his name tyler that we were talking about simon simon? I mean is that weekly? Yeah, okay. Thank you this This mad lad taking like fifth place with a five human friends list I don't even know what to make of it. I gotta we gotta have this guy on the show sometime simon if you're out there This is me officially telling you I want to have you on the show sometime and talk about this insane list Because most lists I read them like yeah, I get it. I get what I get what this is doing Or I can picture its strategy to victory. I read this list and I was like, I don't know what this is doing I do not know It is Wonderful. Yes. So simon You get my tip of the hat for for really, uh, uh, crazy sideways list anyways all right like We're going to talk about what makes what would define broken. Okay It in like what that even means because it is a super loaded term But before we get into that I wanted I want to take one possible direction We can look at this in right like one of the there are multiple ways we could evaluate what broken means. Yeah We could say Well tournament results are one of the ways we could look at it Right that that's that could be one viable way Now, obviously we know we're getting a very small subset of players if goon hammer is to believe that's like 0.4 percent Of all active players in the game. Okay but It's like it's one way we can slice and dice right because people are bringing most armies at least some and if we see win percentages or Win versus meta representation or you know, lots of different ways we could slice and dice that But we could say, okay Maybe that's one metric to say that the meta is broken or out of balance Certainly that was what was alleged in 40k during something like the iron hands release, right iron hands suddenly hit They were they were the top of every Tournament they were a huge outsized represent when when percentage they became an outsized part of the meta and everybody said well They're broken, right? So I think there's something about That that we would all find at least partially defensible though. It certainly isn't the only metric. Okay Okay, so let's let's break that down. Let's let's think about it first from this perspective But I guess that there's multiple we're going to attack this from multiple angles Hmm. Okay. So here are some results So I pulled this from bloodshed in these are lists from bloodshed in the shire from this recent Weekend this is a tournament in the uk decent sized tournament First place went to mike stewart 5o saraphon list Right engine of the god salon star master double skink priest three by ten skinkies uh two by two sallies Uh, and then two bestilladon solar engine all in thunder lizard. So the bestilladons the basties are double shooting pew pew Lots and lots and lots of power projection, right? Not to mention it's in thunder lizard, which has a just an absolutely bonkers good rule for the meta right now of reducing all incoming damage by one, right? Yeah Strong spell caster the engine itself is very strong Uh, there's double shooting basties are strong. Yes, so it's more bodies on the table the source He plays mission well have good force projection and is generally just There's no doubt. There's really nothing bad about like the um The thunder lizard build people are playing currently one thing one thing that sometimes runs in the issue is like The whole army is render one. So if they right if they don't allocate their mortals correctly You could see a run into problems Yep, but they do have a lot of access to the portal loose, which is a really like it's a nice mix It is it's an extremely diverse Pretty powerful army with lots of different unit choices with you know backed up by a really solid allegiance ability Good sort of cross synergies all over the place, right? Uh, you know, it's just it checks most of the boxes But I would argue the heart of this army is certainly power projection to some degree, right? Oh, yeah Uh, like it's hard to ignore the power projection that this army has that is it's not all it is It's a lot more than that But that is a big part of it's it's it's win con not to mention It's doing that power projection often not all the time but often with monsters who could score bonus Uh, you know bonus points for doing things, right in the current gga Okay So easy enough. This was first place second place was max barton with a storm cast of turtles be beautiful This is basically every All twitter users anchor made it into one Yes, that's correct. If you could just distill down Yeah, everyone hates my aos into one army. That's it. That's just Right if you can distill down all You're you're exactly right tom. Just boil all of twitter anger down you would get this list It would be what you like. It come out of the sieve right at the bottom So Hammers nitro conus as the only hero Okay Maybe we do need to bring back apex predators. I'm not sure um Two storm drake guard two storm drake guard two storm drake guard all with warblades, which is the build I prefer as well I actually like the warblade more than the the lance. Uh, I prefer the grind capability a little more anyways Rather than being flatfooted on the charge And then a single storm drake guard making seven dragons total plus the ever famous six pack of long strikes All wrapped up in a battle wretch one drop coming in at 1970 86 wounds of pure terror Lean it's just like it's basically just If it that as efficient as possible of doing what it wants to do like it wants to it wants to move a lot and During their turn shoot a lot of mortal wounds and then charge in the combat. That's it. Yep. It does that pretty well Yep Again, I think it's pretty easy to say when we look at this power projections a big part of this list Right like we've got the long strikes. We have seven dragons breathing potentially between nothing and d6 mortal wounds Right not to mention the knight draconis himself We have the ability to trigger them off and shoot in the in the hero phase So we're we're we're ticking our old double Double tap box our old the old favorite box not to mention of course We've got thunderbolt volley to do the same thing with the raptors, right?  Oh, yeah, this is like the kind of army that also is uh One of the person playing the game is not gonna have fun Either they run either the guy playing this list run for a counter and let's just But let's imagine a quick scenario where you're playing against soap like great for and they have like 160 zombies And then you're playing this you're looking at it's like well Like my army doesn't really do anything useful and then now they're unhappy or you're run or you're on the other side They're playing against I don't let example of armies that can't handle like a dragon shooting mortal wounds and a long strike shooting twice Like their army gets evaporated during like the first turn first turn of the game and then Well, why I don't know why I showed up here today to play this like right Yeah, it's very it's like a very binary army, which causes a lot of people's having an issue with it. Yep Yep, it is just all raw Like awful awful power. Okay. Yeah, but you're right. They're gonna be listed. I think I love that you point out the 160 zombies thing That might come up later. Okay. So yes, it's good. It's good teaser. Okay Uh, let's look at third place dan Bradshaw. What's up dan? I hope you're doing well I haven't I haven't seen dan since like nova 2018. I think was last time I saw him Uh, but I hope dan as well. Good. Great guy Uh, great guy great list, uh plan living cities, uh, you exploiting maybe the jankiest of jank in the current, uh, like sort of Cheaty ways to play I don't mean that any negative dan's a completely straight player. He would never actually cheat I just mean like this has got to be the exploit of exploits in the game right now Uh, so anointed on frost heart. Yeah, super tough Guy obviously with a with a fantastic utility debuff deralia van denst everybody's favorite van denst Uh, and then a free guild general with 10 Three by 10 free guild cross bowman just to add some more shots in the mix And then somehow magically we have fit more than a thousand points of storm cast have snuck into this list Uh with uh, it's more than half of this list is storm cast in four by One by four fulminators and one by four storm drake again armed with the war blades Glad to see everybody's going toward the war blade. So I agree with that A lot of Chaos players would look at the list like this and ask why is order exempt from the coalition rules change that chaos has been impacted by That brought archon much more in line In in chaos for example Yeah, wait That that inconsistency definitely stands out. We've had a lot of discussion locally about that Yeah, all of chaos basically and what just to put a fine pin on that tyler because I think it's a good It's point worth mentioning with when you're looking at a list like this is that All of chaos with the last update with the last power balance, whatever we're called whatever we called that update, right? Lost the ability for coalition units to benefit from allegiance ability So like you can still take chaos knights or something in your nergal army If that's what you want to do go nuts, you know, like you can do that, but they don't get The disgustingly resilient they don't cause disease. They're just cast knights. They act like cast knights They do what it says on the war scroll, right? That did not happen with cities where these dracothean guard fulminators and storm drakes are coming in from off-board Shooting and then getting to move closer to the enemy for scp right Um, so it was you know like Chaos got this this change. You can argue it was good or bad. Whatever it was Is all we're saying like it factually happened That's so whether or not you yeah, yeah, I was like chaos does collectively pay for the sense of siege Disciples That's right Yeah, that's right. The hammer came down very wide on that one. All of chaos took the hammer. Yes. Yeah Okay It's just funny that yeah that that inconsistency has led to I mean as you said this is the most I mean, I I can't think of anything more exploitive than You know what you can do with living city right now in the game Which like it's just incredibly powerful. It reminds me of vanguard wing back in the day The similar pattern but with more damage output more raw power than we've we had with vanguard wing back in the day So, yeah, it's crazy. Another single sofa to follow Right Very good point Oh Now they stay at home. They guard the city itself. I think All the battle like the silveneth just line up around the city while that while the storm cast and humans go out to fight clearly Okay They should put put like a rule in there for all the specific cities Like half of the list have to be like that specific thing like you have to have a thousand points of chaos Carrager overlords for your tempest irv or like a thousand players put a hard cap on it Not just can be one of four. Yeah Um Again, I think it's pretty easy to see how power projection is a big part of this list Right between a lot of just generic shooters that are just kind of there to pepper between obviously your your Your uh, your storm cast units that are coming in having great range power projection And then being able to come in and then move and then hit, right? Okay. Oh, yeah All right not to oh and then deralia sniper supreme like let's not forget about her over there Just just dropping hot shots Uh, she has nothing to to mess with okay So that was just a recent like just that's a sample size of one tournament, right? But I thought it was interesting that the three lists the top also completely captured The whole power projection issue, right?  It says you must be this tall or ride this ride. Yeah sure It's like the top 10 in a tournament all say You must either have this much power projection or a direct answer to this much power projection to enter this zone Right. Yeah, and if your army just can't generate that like if you happen to be in one of the armies because not every Many factions can but many cannot to you know as well and if you happen to be in one that can't I guess sorry you don't get to win tournaments anymore. Is what I guess what happens So that's rough Uh This is just a fun thing on on the subject of power projection This is again bloodshed and the shire. They talked about what where did all the dragons place? So here you can see on this page Where all the dragons placed in the tournament? Who was piloting them and then what army they were in so they were so dragons were in lists that placed Second third seventh 14 16 17 28 and so on quite well spread throughout the entire event. I will say Uh, which is important to understand that they're not just a instant Five oh Right. It's not like we so to be very clear. It's not as though the recipe is No skill plus dragons equals tournament win That is not what we're claiming. Not we're saying. Here's the direct numbers Right. Okay And that's why I'm not you know saying like oh, no, it's just dragons are the problem or something like that Like no, I just thought this was interesting that they were so spread amongst the whole list Yeah, right. Definitely I saw that Steve Curtis the to or one of the tos and dan george was the other one with bloodshed decided to do Tooth and nail I believe round Three round four Yeah, yeah, it's all mainly because the state of the meta he wanted to have some way to Rain and There's not some random heat that I played that's I know that's yeah, exactly. They can Sorry, yeah, yeah, you get to like you learned haze invaders list. It's really just getting like double smacked by that for no reason Yep Okay, the pointer dragons. I just wanted to say something Drag storm tree guard is a very incredibly cool model. So all kinds of people are buying it like yes And they're and they're all expecting probably different things from it Like the tournament players love it. It's a very strong worst girl It's a good for the current ghp as a monster. I can do all the tactic Other people looking at it's like I can play an army of dragons on the in the fantasy miniatures game Yeah Yeah, at various points in time.  I'll make another magic reference later very very formally in this So everybody who's playing the at-home bingo game for warhammer weekly here comes your first magic reference. So check that square You know at certain times in magic history, there have been like very cool But very efficient Like big power toughness or big or like high power toughness But mana efficient slash with a cool ability creatures that have gotten made Okay, often like they often jump in like white green or red is usually where these things end up right And they're the same way where like casual players will love them because they'll end up in their like super casual deck Just as a cool monster because it's oh, it's a neat monster and it's not hard to get out or pay for right But they'll also end up in competitive decks because they can fit into like a mid-range or strad or something like that, right? Yeah, yeah Yes, yes, exactly. And then all of a sudden that thing is like a you know, at least At least that's not a problem. AOS. So it's like, oh my god, everyone's playing storm figure now is 150 Oh, yes, we can all count our lucky stars that that's not how this works. Absolutely. Yeah as I well 50% people playing lost rags are now 70 dollars. Sorry Yeah, don't give GW any ideas on their new pricing model. All right, here we go I want to talk real quick about simple solutions Okay, so I'm just gonna we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna take a little we're going down that the the examining Is the meta broken from the tournament lens here? and But I want to take a little exit. We're going to pull off in the rest area of simple fixes on this, okay We've talked about uh We've talked a lot about You know power projection and One of the most common refrains I see On in twitter. I saw this discussed a lot was just move the mortal wounds to six to the wounder Okay, this is offered as some some like silver bullet cure all The the the golden light shines down from heavens and everything is fixed Okay, that's often how this is framed like if we just put it on the wound roll everything's fine Okay, here's the math for long strikes with the hit on a six versus the wound on a six triggering the mortal wounds Okay, I don't know if the numbers are too small for everybody to see But let's just take the four plus save line. Okay Long strikes where their hit of six causes two mortal wounds. This is this is six long strikes Do 15.11 damage against a four up save on average. It's very easy for them to spike higher Or lower right depending because of course a lot has to do with when you roll the sixes It's a very swinging unit But 15.11 is sort of the average If you move that to the wound roll Okay on their normal hit number Which I know their their base hit on the scroll is three But they're always on twos like let's just be honest with ourselves either birds or all-out attack or whatever like it's something it's something Okay The average damage goes down by point five It goes from 15.11 to 14.44 All right So I guess we're solved mission accomplished unfurl the banner They do a half damage less on average. So I so that that was it. No No Silver bullets aren't going to work at solving this problem. Right. And by the way It would certainly that would have an outsized impact on some units So sentinels lofting shot because they're on fours certainly moving it to the wound roll would make them less effective But if they're straight shooting like i.e within 18 inches and they all out attack guess what they go to hit on Why it's our old friend the two Okay, so again whenever it's on the two it it's often by the way, especially if lamb but lights still around it Like then it's just completely irrelevant. It just doesn't matter So lamb it just makes the whole situation worse because obviously then they can fish for for five sixes, but um All right That was just a little sidetrack, but I say that to say I'm not going to talk a lot about fixes in here because it's a big complicated situation and there is like A bunch of different fixes that can be employed And probably should be employed like it's an across the board thing. There's no silver bullet. It's probably Terrain is a good start. There's probably some war scroll fixes that need to happen Maybe we tweak a couple rules here and there right like it's Yeah, you know it makes it's probably a mix of A bunch of different things like otherwise if it's a simple like delete this set state It'll probably a not be that big of a problem or b and then just like it would be done already Right exactly Um, yes, I'm sorry the numbers are so small everyone. This is how that it prints out on the page I'll see what I can do in the future But yes 15.11 versus 14.44. So there we go. All right Let's zoom out a little on our competitive journey here's everything since 3.1 started basically since the battle scroll winter FAQ Okay, this is I cut this to the top three All right, so these are all the results courtesy of aowa shorts. Thanks dan You're a hero and I have this broken up in two different sort of views. This is the same image I just did I just manipulated the lower image a little bit. Okay So the top image is all the results The bottom image is the same thing, but I blacked out All of order Okay, and look at the void All right When you take order out of this now, I will state only six of the nine order armies are actually represented in the order armies that placed Okay Sylvaneth KO and fire slayers being the three that don't show up at all here in your enemy They did not have a top three finish in this time period The other six all did uh lumeneth I would point out only had one But Out of 21st place finishes seven were non-order only three different armies Legion, nergal and suns Out of 22nd place finishes six were non-order we're showing being five different armies uh suns Maw tribes nergal uh Gloomspite and war clans Yeah, okay, there we go And out of 19 because we're missing a third place finisher I don't think we didn't we couldn't we didn't know who that was at lone star who got third So if you're the whoever got third, I don't know who you are. I'm sorry. Whoever got who got third alone Bone reapers Oh, no, that's right. Sorry London open London open is who we're missing it. There you go. Yes. I have the bone reapers Okay, sorry I I read my chart wrong across for where the blank space is So if you're the person who got third place the London open, who are you? What army were you playing? I don't know um At any rate out of the 19 third place finishes eight were non-order Uh, but only four different armies bone reapers soul blight war clans and nergal all in twos Two by two they came into third place Uh, which is interesting And out of 59 finishes in first through third place 16 Were storm cast Now if you expand that to you to armies that included storm cast units, it's 20 More than one third Uh, oh dance as he left it off because third place was three two. That's fine um More than one third of the victories Okay Belongs to one armies To one army or its units well That is wild Okay, it's like I I really hope ever that number hits for everybody like it hit me when I put this together I thought that was the most insane stat To have there are 25 armies folks in aos All right 100 divided by 25 does not give you 20 percent. We're all we're all here, right? We all understand the math like is this far from equity okay Storm cast are just on a tear right now And I would argue a huge part of what's motivating their power Is their power projection? But if you look at the other things and we're gonna slice this in a couple other ways It's not just Storm cast their power projection seraphon have a huge amount of power projection as well as we already talked about They're in here a ton as well Yep, okay We talked about this before what I mean just get in while it's on my brain The counter example to this stuff is ko So in past years carajun overlords were top tier They had power projection what you know like crazy clan zilfin clown car and so on They've been quite tame in 3.0 Why is that? I suspect a lot of us would say it's because they're not doing mortal wounds as part of their power projection They're doing minus one rend minus two rend And they're not killing things quick enough which further exacerbates their model count Challenge in terms of competing on objectives So does that seem to be you know because that's the clear Counter example to this trend they have power projection But they're nowhere to be found on top tables Unless you know like tom ran a two list format Dash con which I think he would say definitely helped him in competing With ko at that event. But yeah, do you guys have any thoughts on that? Why we're not seeing them do as well dense I have a thought but I well i'm going to get to it on another slide actually here soon I have a pretty direct answer, but I'll wait tom you got a thought If I had to guess it's probably a combination of Uh, like you said, they don't play well on missions and Their output is not exactly the greatest One of the things that makes stormcast and seraphon both Good besides the massive amount of shooting is They're quite durable dragons nine wound models with a three of armor safe that have a four of Spell ignore Seraphon if you're playing thunder lizard you ignore all damn you reduce all damage by once and And you all terrain pieces on your side of the territory is mystical. Everything has a six up after save So Besides having a lot of long threat rate long power projections. They're also very durable Also plays the missions quite well dragons by being a monster kind of five on a on an objective Seraphon by having by having a lot of skinks and monsters are just A mix of a lot of different things, but that's a good point. Tom. Yeah, no monster keywords to be found You have a clap kind of us too Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you're exactly right. I think I think tom nailed it is my point. Yeah, I think you're exactly dead on tom And so I just want to hit a couple comments real quick power creep is so this was Calhasse who said power creep has been a historic consistent tactic by gw Well, I've talked before about power creep and I just don't think it's actually real Because if that was true, I would expect to see nergal showing up a lot more than it does like it's in here Don't get me wrong But I would expect to see it more there are three armies Maybe four in war plans only one of them actually appears here One of the worst performing books is one of the most recent books Which is you know selenesh came out and it's one of the worst performing books Okay, like it is literally in the in the the sullen six like one of the lowest in the whole thing Okay So like there is There's there's lots of unevenness to it I I just I creep implies that they're sort of this projected this this constant Upward trend and like if that was the case idk would be getting buried and yet idk shows up on this list multiple times Okay, and they're still running on the fumes of in a very old book given with some more school updates and stuff But they have been a presence throughout doc shows up on this list And you know doc was has been consistently on this list over all of their history Just when they had books and then it would sit there and they would just like the book would get age and they would just You know what I love about these daughters of kane The meta keeps getting older and they just keep the same win percentage. All right So, you know, I mean like It's not it's not as linear as that some counter example of new books crew boys came out right there deep deep in the swamp bracket of win percentages Who knows where big wag is at like phone splitters still exist. So Iron Jaws is good. Yes, but Iron Jaws has a Very it's very limited selections. Like yes one thing I will say about the Overall just like comparing like Coming from playing magic and playing mini skates. There's a fundamental difference You see a deck do well in a magic tournament. I can go to my store pick all up Right like 10 minutes You see a list do well in the in the aos tournaments You go to a local store and then you have to you have to put out to get Right to find some way to get a pain like It's also probably it's also why I believe there's a lot more personal feelings into into like stats discussion in aos because There's a lot more thought put it for your army that you play You're much more invested in it right because you built it you painted it you you have like emotion attached to it often Right, it's your army.  Yep. Absolutely Um escott satan said I don't know if it's been mentioned but order does have the largest number of factions of any grand alliance That said storm cast percentage is a bit insane. Yes. So as I said, so order. I don't know if I mentioned specifically like let's give the numbers There are 25 armies in aos Nine of them are order, but only six of them appear here Okay, so six out of the 25 have a massive footprint In this in this in these results massive footprint Leaning very much toward just a few armies and all of these armies in my mind, especially when you when you look at like the first place, right? A lot of what gets represented there in my mind is I have a combat. I either have power projection So like the doc hag gnar is shooting snakes. It's marathion the bow snakes se Is you know dragons or or long strikes or some combination of that kind of thing going on often Uh, it could be in different sub factions, but it doesn't matter sarifon again thunder those are thunder lizards Thunder lizards thunder lizards. We've talked many times like everything that they do well, right? So on and so forth. Okay, so power projection power projection power projection power projection By the way, that isn't all just shooting a lot of what we've been talking about is shooting because it tends to be a Pretty common way this gets trotted out, but there are other forms of power projection too okay, um Or strong counters to that like look at who else shows up in that one in that first place bracket in trips Legion of the first prince and nervel right Two armies that will either control or endure their way out of it Yeah, right Okay So again, as I said, this is just looking at the tournament side of all of this There's other ways to evaluate broken meta. We're gonna talk about those two I know everybody has strong feelings about the tournament stuff But I just but this is just like it's good raw stats that we can get at that shows some things that I think are out of whack Like I don't think you can look at at a list of results over a two month period Uh in 20 events and say yep totally makes sense to me that stormcast should have 16 out of 59 Places in the top three. That's crazy. Um, yeah, I cannot think of a world where you would justify that and go that looks right No Um, yeah, I mean, I'm sure there are many stormcast players out there who remember the nerf that evocators and sequiturs got early on in 2018 second edition Where they were all the rage for a short wind of time They got hit I would say they got hit too hard and they got hit a little too quickly as well though I like I get the Concern of you know with that as a point of reference in particular because it's the same faction You know, I I don't see a direct equivalency personally with that but The I know it's complicated with this another thing I wanted to say on this is We have we talked a little bit about this but just to say it part of the challenge that I See with the state of the game is just the raw damage output from These war scrolls nowadays This is partly more of like an aesthetic argument in terms of list building and how lists function Where if the power were more distributed As I remember feeling in years past. There's certainly our counter examples. I mean we've obviously we've had a significant damage output in the past This could be recently biased, but it feels like We have continued to ramp up as this game evolves in the in the raw damage of some of these war scrolls That that would be a better place to be in if we didn't have you know a unit of six long strikes Which some armies can deal with pretty easily There are 12 wounds. There are four up saved. They can get better than three up saved They could get a five up feeling of pain from Gartis whatever like that's relatively straightforward a lot of armies to deal with But if you can't the raw damage gets crazy, so it's that rock paper scissors I feel like in some ways has been amplified more and more As we've gone forward with the game I agree Yeah, I mean suns was this huge moment right where when it came out there wasn't a lot of dps Like people weren't building armies to dps Them down and now the reason you've seen suns drop like a rock Is because the the dps check can get passed by a lot of people who are building a lot of armies like they'll Can you kill a giant around isn't the question for for many of the top tier armies? It's can I kill two giants around like am I going to table you by the bottom of two is usually the question these armies asked Right. Yeah So Real quick, I want to say something else because there's some people talking about my homeboy scaven in the chat And look folks, I want scaven to be good too right now, but trust me They are not the answer The problem is they don't do any damage if you're not running like storm fiends And then you don't have the bodies because all all scaven if you actually go break down their war scrolls Their damage is just consistently low across the board and they are exceedingly punished by reinforcement points And you can you will just lose your bodies in mass To a lot of hammers now some of these might not pick them up like I'm not saying every build it out there But a lot of power projection will just kill every piece you have that matters And then blow your clan rats and support it off the board like as somebody who's run 120 clan rat lists plus They die So fast to the high damage of this meta because people are building to do 40 50 damage around easily Right and that's to like a four up save Your little clan rats aren't living in that life Right Yeah, bodies need to have recursion slash after state built it Zombies is good not because they're cheap They're good because they have a six of board usually followed by mechanics that brings them back Yeah, and because they have cheater like six inch pylon and because they do mortal wounds, right? Like they're a they're a really good package Oh, yeah Yeah, so you're like saying 120 zombies Closer to like 180 and then you put if you count the six of words you have to do like 200 plus damage like to To like I try to kill Something that's like 600 points Yeah, yeah What's up smorgans age sigmar list labs saying clan rats are not the way now I I agree. I want them to be the way I would I saw that we could suddenly take them in 60s I was all about it. I ran that list so many times and tried to make it work But goodness sakes. Okay Uh, but here's hoping for the summer of rats. We will rise again. Okay so Uh, let's take a couple more views on this. This is courtesy of Ziggy rob and the t-sports network and their stat center. So thank you Uh All right, let's look at meta versus win percentage. Okay, so this is what's your representation in the meta Versus your four plus wins representation All right, and then that creates a ratio Everybody with me. So the first column is how often you appear in the meta I hate you windows so much the the first one is how often you appear in the meta The second one is then your four how many how much you four plus So a four win or a five win would both count in four plus right and then that creates a ratio x to y Okay, seraphon comes at the top with only a 5.8 percent meta representation, but 10 and a half percent on the four plus wins That's a powerhouse slaves to darkness was a shocker for me coming in next Uh at 1.7 i'dneth that doesn't surprise me at all. Like I've said i'dneth consistently powerful book Uh, this is just in 3.1 by the way, but i'dneth have been very powerful Throughout they've always had some good answers and they're on a definite upward trajectory We'll see what the book does city's coming into 1.65 and then stormcast at 1.52 Now stormcasts four plus win percentage is the zonkers at 24 and a half percent The only thing that's dragging them down is their meta representation is madness It's 16 percent because they're such a popular easy to get into faction that a lot of people play that you know They like I get it Right, so because of that you've got players of lots different skill levels and noobs and senior people or experienced people like High and low information players all given them a shot. So hence they they end up with this like very high win percentage But you know an even higher proportionally representation All right Any thoughts on this this list gentlemen does anything here surprise you? As to like sort of who's coming in at the top versus who's coming in at the bottom By the way Shout out to Two blades of corn bone splitters flesh eater courts gloom spike gets Skaven and sylvaneth None of whom have managed to rack up even one four plus win yet in the recorded stats So that's why they have no numbers there. They have The goose egg Well, uh gloomsphile one five oh In dallas, so there's one I guess Yes, I still think it's in these stats. Yeah. Yeah, they they haven't uh, this doesn't have Uh Loan star loaded up into it. Yeah, that's why because the lone star was big and they were they they this this got pulled before They got lone star updated. So yes, you're right. I might would show up with one now I would uh, I would think magikins should be hard Based on my experience with that book. Yeah Yeah, I do you think it's partially the same thing that because they've got a new book Do you think there's maybe we're gonna talk about nergal a little bit, but I have some theories on nergal Let's let's save it. Let's talk about nergal more because I agree. Well, I've got a whole slide dedicated to nergal I agree with you. I think nergal's got gas um Definitely gas Good or bad, but they have gas Yes, yeah, as I said, everybody's sorry. This list didn't have lone star in it. So that's why there's no That's why gets are still showing up as zero. So I apologize. Get should have one entry and be a 0.7 or 0.6 Or whatever that would be. Sorry everybody. Yeah, okay. I think my my favorite of this is the slaves of darkness. Yeah I've played a lot of chaos warriors in recent weeks And that's a unit that I feel has been undervalued As one response of many that are out there to this Bleed damage meta You can save stack like crazy You have the five up against mortals You can reroll hits wounds You can put a number of layered buffs on those units and they are very they can be very difficult to shift So, yeah I'm not too surprised by that. I feel like slaves is a A faction that can respond pretty well to this current meta Yeah, uh, let's just take a little bit further look back in time.  Flipping back here. They were at 1.86. How much does nerfing archaeon how much of a crutch was archaeon to your army? More than one percentage point of ratio That and emma mangles put it well on twitter this evening, you know pre dragons and post dragons Yeah, sure sure the the situation that the foundation of their feet changed and They got the Punch directly in the face by losing archaeon, right? People playing a lot of spell tonight Yep, and the last the only part of the army that doesn't rely on spells Yes, not a good combination. Not a good combination. I I agree with both of those points. Yes 100% So thank you ziggy rob and the t-sport stat center again linked down below if you want to go check out more of this There is some awesome power bi I I went and discovered I was curious as to what they were using and they're using power bi so I like it good good choice there. It's just a complete tech thing But I like they got some really really great power bi presentations out there You can check out on this on that's linked down below. So if you want to see more cool stats, go check them out All right I hope after all of this What we have said is that ages sigmar and most wargames for for that matter Are about applying your power in the smartest way, right isn't stripped to the studs That's what wargames are, right? You have x amount of power You want to apply it in the smartest way possible to attempt to get a win Power here very broadly defined Right. Yes. Yes. Okay. There are some very niche examples of what that's not the case But and you do not want to live in a play a game that is not about projecting power Those are very degenerate games So If that's the underlying thing then naturally if you can project your power Like would you rather have to be next to somebody when you light them on fire?  Obviously, it's just easier to throw fire on people, right? So Power projection broadly construed here means ranged units magic. Whatever will always be better in the void Okay, like again, what I'm saying is all else equal If I can Hit you and do damage, but I have to be within three inches of you or I can do damage to you from 24 inches away Which one's better? Obviously the 24 inches, right? If that's the only variable That's back when they invented bow and arrow in the human Right. That's that's what they were thinking So In my opinion, we now have a meta Where entrance to the top tier is gated by your ability to project power or ignore it Like that is to say ignore other people's projected power Right to withstand it to anvil it to toughen it out Whatever, right And in my mind what makes power projection off kilter right now Is the following some combination of the following things one long range 24 plus inches two mortal wounds On some way to trip into them usually resistant to debuffs, right?  It's like, okay fine. Here's still all your mortal wounds eat it, right? High base damage that can be a part of this too Right, but still dons do a bunch of like real good damage to chaos stuff or whatever you can pick your thing, right? Sally's have d3s and also trip mortal wounds like you can you can do both high damage and mortal wounds that sometimes happens Multi attack so you shoot twice shooting the hero phase the out of sequence blah blah blah blah blah, right? And dependability high accuracy Rerolls like, you know hitting on twos or having rerolls or or whatever, right? Again, you don't need every one of these things but units that tick Too many of these boxes Right that put this dangerous Chemical that put this many dangerous chemicals together you get an explosion Because here here's my argument. There are a lot of shooting units in this game Yeah, okay 98% of them are completely unimpressive and Fine. Yeah right Yeah, but like we're not complaining about engor Raiders.  That's a great call. Yeah, sure. Absolutely, right? Um, but I mean we keep going bliss bar birchers Okay, soul grinders. I don't know pick your thing, right? Like there's just we could just keep going naming shooting units for the next hour And we would not name any that are particularly offensive or cause a lot of npe Or are making people get to the top tournaments tables or whatever Right Like it's the most shooting in the game is fine But some shooting in the game has created a gate And it is it is basically said you've got to be this good now We're going to talk about the other side of this besides the tournament rankings in just a second, but Tom, what do you think of my list here? Like do you think I've accurately sort of summed up the the cocktail of things that make Something become bad Danger it's it sounds like you were trying to describe storm drake are without name Is that what that's like was basically but Yeah, no no it makes sense right because If you are playing a you range unit as some like as someone who like plays tournaments Like you would definitely just try to find the army slash with the best range unit and play those Because they're put they're good because they're better than every other like range options you have range range is better than melee except for one situation and just like How good they are at like dealing with scenarios and then you want to find Then you want to find a combination of good range unit that either have Even superior output that even the other good units or just ones are durable platform durable platforms comes to mind like but still not like um What's called storm cast judicators and then like things with higher output, but maybe not durable like uh vanguard rafters or like luminous like those you That's where people probably go to to like pick the range unit, but in general You know Those units do stand out more than the than the bad ones which Which makes it like more less of a shooting shooting problem more of a worse school problem Yeah, I want to address our future guest gareth here in the chat real quick He said no mention of the other side of power projection magic first of all I most certainly did it's right there on this on the slide Gareth come on now. I literally say magic first first sentence up there power projection range units magic whatever it's right there But secondly, I think you're right that it's not as much of a problem in most cases Because if you had to pick the sort of magic power projection The issue is most magic power projection isn't tripping enough of those boxes Right, it's not putting together like yes, it's probably mortal wounds But it's not often a lot of them like most spells end up being like what a d3 Okay Fundamentally magic there's a magic has a self countering mechanism Don't miss casting right. Yeah magic has a built-in counter Well, my point gareth was to say I want like you pivoted you pre-pivoted me, but that's fine to say most magic Just can't satisfy these things because it doesn't have dependability as you just pointed out tom, right? It's it has counters built in and stuff like that unless you have a castle like the only example I can think of that would easily trip into this is Tyros through the portal Yeah, right where he can just reach out at an extremely long range and Hit somebody for six mortal wounds and lift a small hero off right and leave behind a spawn that then causes other problems Yeah But most magic just doesn't fit this thing It's almost by its nature short range like most damage most magic damage stuff is like 12 18 inches Unless you're portaling it out, right? And then you're only getting to do it once It's naturally not dependable. It's by its nature can't be multi-attacked It's often not high damage. The only thing it has going for it is mortal wounds the fact that it's almost by default mortal wounds Yeah, right It was more of an issue in 2.0. I would say 2020, you know, it was pretty rampant That was when we in the spells were more powerful geminids and so on Croak was more powerful croaked in the devils new war scroll yet You had zinch you had seraphon you had lumineath And so yeah, I think it has been toned down more. It's a lot more reasonable now and the The shooting the missile attack output has increased in the in the ecosystem Yeah, one of the best bow in the game currently is mystic shield, so right Absolutely still remains one of the best spells always, you know It came up when I don't remember what the rule was we were talking about something where you got a free cast And I was like, what are you going to use this for the answer is mystic shield, right? Like that's that's oh, it was the uncounterable spell thing and bone reapers or whatever I was like, but you're going to use this for you're going to use it for mystic shield because of course you are and so Power projection like as it is we've Because that's The broad term I'm lumping in under most of which which fulfills that is shooting But by the way, yes, we don't have a lot of magic examples right now But we very easily could we have in the past, right? It's almost happenstance We don't have it now as you mentioned tyler, right and the spells being toned down or something like that, right? Yeah, there's also as people are pointed out, which I think is fair is you know It's happening but pre-movement So you often have to be in range from the term before we're shooting is happening post-movement So the effective threat range gets modified in some in some degree, right? I mean the way that you have to find it here it Like for example, and maybe it's not necessarily obvious that Living city fulminators are within at least certainly how I think about power projection absolutely within that category You know, it's like power delivery if you will maybe if that's an important subcategory of projection But you know what I mean like there are units that You can we were joking about how there's not enough discussion about this Pretty silly trick you can do where apparently you can legally Brands locate Four storm drake guard Then they can move in the hero phase But they're once per game move After you've translocated them and then they could charge right That's like power projection in my mind power delivery. Yeah, yeah, it's a little a little out of bounds right now Yep. Yeah. Yeah, I agree um And so my my point being is that like right now Some of these things are off kilter And it is a small number of overall units that are probably causing the majority of the problem They happen to be shooting units right now for the most part. There are still other spellcasters Maybe techless falls in this list. Maybe croak falls in this list. I don't know croak has a pretty hard built encounter in that he's like Uh, he's not dependable. He can just suddenly disappear And so he doesn't like spike doesn't like him very much, you know, you can just kind of accidentally lose him on a bad roll um But at any rate The like most of this is falling into some small cadre of shooting units. Yeah Yeah Um, which which would suggest a worse score problem could worse score change could fix it But you have to consider a lot of things before you make like Fundamental changes like that. I think Yeah, I that's absolutely and that's why we're actually not gonna talk too much about fixes because I think that as I said, you know It I think it needs a multifaceted fix, right? And and I agree the number one thing I'd want to see is just terrain have better rules I'd love to see it honestly. Um, because I think then no matter what if other things go off kilter If you accidentally have units that sneak through or become powerful because of the situation Right the terrain is still always there Keeping for a better play experience regardless Step one is to have more wild woods on tables Oh, geez, please not.  We talked about I'm curious tom What's been your impression of you've gone to a lot of tournaments Of the aos tables and terrain like is there a very much line of site blocking? Is there any use of these terrain keywords like obscuring on things? Yes, but it's different turn them by turn them. So it's not like it's not consistent right So it's a so it's hard to like comp it together. It's like It's hard to plan for right because like one example I would say is like garrison that that's it's like a rule in the The core rules like how it works But it has a lot of loopholes People don't always enjoy using them But I assume at its intent was to make it better for if you want to like Hey, let's hide if I want to hide something in the building that makes it hard to get get get to and then the next Or you can like get out and charge I assumed that was the intent of it But then it wasn't it was written poorly So it's not used a lot, but it is very powerful So stuff like that So it's not it's hard to prepare for it's hard to when you go to a tournament it's hard to Plan how you want to use to right as part of your victory condition because it's while it varies different turn by turn by turn right Yep Yep Okay So I want to pause here for a moment and take another tack on this And obviously we're not going to have a bunch of data slides to back this up because this is more just talking about The softer side of this right so evaluating this from a sort of casual perspective With these kind of power projecting units that we we seem to show as a problem And they're acting as this gating mechanism and leaping some armies to pretty high power levels You know goon hammer did their big survey Now it was mostly on 40k and stuff, but and you know what came out of their survey that was real interesting We talked about it a little last week, but What was interesting and it was most people who went to goon hammer went for competitive coverage But we're casual players identified as casual players first vast majority Okay, identified as casual players first And when they and that was sort of backed up by when they said, you know, how many games have you played in the last year? It all grouped around not many frankly Right Which of course there's probably a reason for that in a lot of geographic locations Obviously, there's has been kind of a situation going on in the world So uh but One of the things they pointed out was that sort of Wildly imbalanced armies and they were talking this in terms of 40k So they were talking about like add mech or jukari during sort of the height of their their awful power right If you only played a couple games a year if you're a casual person, it's entirely possible. You didn't play them at all Yeah, right and you just played other mid-tier armies and to you the game seemed perfectly balanced and you were having a grand old time And that's great Right wonderful. That's what we want But they said there's a dark side to that too if you only play a couple games Let's imagine you play like a game a quarter You know, you play four games a year, which is pretty common spread for a lot of people especially in these times reasonable uh If you happen to have let's say two of those games be against add mech or jukari And you were just bringing some like mid-tier, you know average army and you that feels real bad right And So the same thing I think is true here, right like we talked about that dragon list earlier that took second place right Yeah, and I can't imagine being like the casual player who gets a game in once a quarter In some way like maybe at the shop maybe against a buddy Maybe against a rando. It doesn't matter But you show up with like your blades of corn army that you really like Okay, and you line up against that storm cast list and i'm just like Yeah, what do you think this game is like at that moment? sir I think it's for that. I think it's important That when you play a game of age of sigmar That you both understand that what you're trying to get out of it. Yeah, I think that's very important like Like if you go to a tournament like people anything that is legal And then people are trying to win and it's intention for People there to go to a tournament not for everyone but for some it's to win So they bring what they could perceive as the best list What like what what what they like to play how they like how they want to win stuff like that When you go to like a local cat Like just a local game to like play like a picket game like People have wildly different expectations.  You want to cast cool spells and then do like cool things like that. Yeah, sounds awesome, right? Like yeah, this is my cool sweet dragon. He cast cool sweet spells. Yeah, okay. Yeah And then but then you can also so and then you play the guy that brought like Oh, I saw this list do well at the most recent tournament on like Like a or a shorts on this website Wonder what that's like if those two people play your it's not They're not even to play in the same game at that point Yeah, yeah, I mean, I don't think I'm talking around at autumn lotus. I'm straight up saying that's a horrible experience like that I mean that's like yeah, that's not a thing you should be willing to like right and I think that Yeah, I think that you're right that it's like having a good Discussion with your opponent about the type of game is often the thing that said right and I agree with it It's good advice. It's perfectly reasonable advice.  That's always a challenge as well, right? If if it's just what you said imagine if their first army Right instead of them showing up and saying I want to buy crondis and the cool purple sun They're like, oh these these stormdred guard looks super cool because we but we all say they look awesome And so they just buy a bunch of those Right, and they're like they go to the store owner And they're like can I make a whole army out of these guys and the store owner is like, yeah Absolutely, you can't actually they're like great.  You should be limited by that But it is a two player game. So If like if it's not at the tourism you should like at least tell you like tell your like friends or like a phone like Hey This does this Are you okay with me doing this in the game of aos where we're not like like There's none. There's effectively. I'm saying this When you play a like a o age of sigma game, there's no stakes at both, right? Like both people should just try to have as much fun as possible. Like that's why you Especially outside of a tournament setting, right? We're literally just you playing a pickup game. There's no stakes. None Yeah, you're just trying to have fun like it's like so Yes, you should play Whatever model you want to play because that's there's no limiting to that but you should also try You should also try to consider what you're the person on the other side is Feeling like you should at least convey that in some form or another. Yeah The game is not going to be balanced Never will be and as the people should get that out of their mind Sure And then the newest release will likely always be better than the previous ones because that's just how things are to either To either fit what their designer wants to do with what they The models they made or to to help sales that just how things new things are better than old things Like you wouldn't want the new army to be worse than the old arm Well, as a sliders player, I can assure you know, I did I can say no, I did not enjoy that Yeah, so yeah Having good at least then like In some ways, right if the new army is better than the old arm at least Some people will enjoy it if the new army is worse than the old army It didn't nobody would enjoy is like if you didn't like the army before you're definitely not gonna like it now If you like the army before then you're gonna hate it Yeah So I just want to uh my good buddy My good buddy here in the chat who just left a comment topic reminds me of one of our friends from back in our early magic playing days by the way, uh Dave um So tom our guest plays magic and I told him what year You would like you and I started playing magic this is one of my oldest friends in the world here in the chat and We started playing magic before tom my guest was born. So there you go. That's a fun. That's a fun thing But he said, uh, so this this guy was playing mono red burn when fire blast first released first round He matched up against a a girl playing mono a mono white angels deck, which this is like keep mine folks. This is like 1994 95 So playing mono white angels. We're talking like extremely high mana cost. No ramp. This isn't that kind of world And just burn her off the table. Just like Gone before a single thing can happen. Like that's She was holding like healing cell while you were there chain lighting That's exactly how those fire blastings like see ya Exactly Uh, so there you go. Okay. Um Let's talk about what are the challenge units. I made a little list here. This is not all of them What do you think of my list of challenge units? I have storm drakes Rap, uh, you know long strikes bow snakes sentinels Bastis salamanders Note that the armies that show up more than once on my list with problem units are also the high overperforming armies Hmm Yes It's good. It's good times all of these are all the order, right? I owe multiples of every unit at this picture Right Um And yes, you're certainly right, uh, that like the bow snakes are enabled by marathi. Yes, I do agree with that Um, and this isn't meant to be an exhaustive list, by the way, this was just meant to be a little little sample Okay, there are lists. I can only fit so many little pictures on a single page folks. Okay Um, but there that like units that are this or act like this Right Are Effectively what we're talking about and when you look at these there's a lot of common traits It is all those power projection traits. I was just talking about right Uh, it is Good platforms for delivery long range ability to double tap mortal wounds high damage Durability Salamanders the ability to play double duty Right where they can not only do what they do and have a bunch of albed of wounds in their little skin curdos Right, but also then can charge and do a bunch more damage in melee prokking even more mortal wounds to maybe finish off What they don't want, right? And So like there's just a set of things that these units tend to act like. Yeah, go ahead Everything besides salamanders in this picture can shoot twice That's her Uh, some others kind of shoot twice because they're melee outputs the same as a range Yeah, it's that that's effectively shooting twice if they're the only unit that charges in That's the most weird. That's the weirdest thing ever I want to clarify something for lockjaw because I know it's not what you meant Lockjaw asked it was tom's earlier point that the game can't be balanced So we shouldn't complain with a new step so p. No i tom. I don't want to speak for you But I don't think that's what you're saying you were saying the goal shouldn't be Perfect 50 50 down the line that like we don't we can't make perfect the enemy of the good here, right? We're not aiming for perfect. We're aiming for better That's the point we should complain. We are because these are problem units yes Both boys are an interesting example as well regarding why they're not on this list, you know, they Only get 24 inches if they do not move So that helps keep them in check relatively speaking And there's some other challenges going on with cool boys right now. Like yeah the rest of their army around them is weak Yeah Yeah, that's that that certainly impacts it. But I mean, so the obvious Obvious thing is we've talked about doing a what? Colonel sends of rules design and one of those would be hero phase shooting Needs to be removed from the game. I feel like that's a fair statement at this point in time Yep, I would just like to obstruct from existence. I don't know why it exists. It doesn't feel like it needs to exist Like when I look at the totality of rules in aos, I don't look at that and go Hero phase shooting was a game was an exception based rule. We needed To make the game I like hero phase fighting because that's a totally different thing like getting in melee is much harder You got to set it up the term before blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Oftentimes you'll have like one of your your opponent will often have a turn in between when you you got into combat And you could first choose to activate that, you know, if you're the one you charged like yada yada yada yada yada There's lots of ways to mitigate that I don't have as much of a problem with like that kind of thing, but hero phase shooting just makes no sense to me That's where the spells go Just just get hero phase shooting out of this game Why is it here? Yeah on on this A chair with with these so obviously these are the units that have been causing fits in the meta for a little while here I play a lot of deliberately toned down lists including usually when I go to tournaments at least try to and So for example, I played a fair amount of 10 snake bows even without Marathi And did that last night and 10 snake bows feel reasonable when they're just shooting once I I think it's an interesting conversation. What is A upper bound To what degree could one try to define an upper bound or That space of upper bound in this point range for these kinds of units So i'm a big fan of playing 10 judicators as well in my smoke cast list and they Yeah, I do have thunderbolt volley. So they're benefiting that it's not 15 judicators. It's not six long strikes It's more toned down. It does still feel good I would happily play 10 judicators without thunderbolt volley at 200 points I would not want to pay any more than that because that it's kind of in that range where That is starting to feel a little high potentially in terms of roi If if they just stay the same sixes to hit our mortal wounds, etc anyhow, so like when I think about bow snakes 10 of them 15 without marathi double shooting judicators without thunderbolt volley that feels pretty good to me in terms of An upper bound on shooting again long strikes are going to be more because they have more damage output And so on all these things are not created equal obviously, but anyway, just curious if you guys have any thoughts on Some of some of that Like what is the ideal amount of shooting or what's what's an ideal more? I'm sure we'll get into this. What yeah, what i'm trying to say is like Shoot it shooting has shooting needs to have a role in this game So how much are we talking about the need to tone it down? My general feeling is that The state of the game doesn't need that much that that many changes To balance things out you need to have the meta adapt a little bit more and you need to have Certainly some if not all of these Get adjusted on this screen and there might be some others that i'm not thinking about right now But like I don't find that we're that far off I'm a healthier place I don't want it to go back to 2019 Solan ash fleshy to quartz daughters of kane where we had almost no shooting and I worry about His workshop actually putting us into that space Sure because range projection goes too far out of the game As a reaction to what we're talking about and what the community will talk about possible consequences, right? So anyway, so that's kind of where my headset right now with this stuff I was just I'm I'm curious on their intent of Like what they when they like let's say In the like when they get into the head designer, right when they roll the Judicator worst rule like what would they think what like they're thought on like what they wanted this unit to do Like stuff like stuff like that that would be helpful If you're gonna have like how do you feel tom about maybe just as a baseline? How do you feel about five judicators? no thunderbolt volley War scroll out of the box 200 points for five of them. How do you feel about that in terms of the health? health of the game and so on Uh, it's definitely healthier and I wouldn't take it Would not take it. Okay. What would you think would be a They're too they're too much at 200. Is that the thought? Yeah, 200. Yeah, 200 points for five for that kind of output It's just not something that works in the list What what do you think they would need to be for you to find them? Reasonably attractive not auto-include but reasonably attractive because the 180 points that they would need to be 170 Yeah, something like that because the other side of this hold on. Hold on. I want to get into that real quick Okay, let's just let's but but see you're the problem here is anchor pricing You have anchor pricing associations with this. We're gonna do a little thought experiment ready dragons don't exist long strikes don't exist Not just are different points. They do not exist in that book. They are no longer found I just erased those war scrolls from existence. Okay They're dust. I I Thanos snapped all right Our 10 our judicators not 10 sorry our our judicators for 200 Now a reasonable purchase No, because I would just take tempesters instead Okay, okay. Yeah I would take tempesters. I would take I would go look at visual visual ores, and I will look at like um The vanguard hunters of the the cross the the big big cross the hurricane crossbows. Yeah So the point is you would you would fall to some other Other shooting that you happen to like more, right? Yeah, okay Okay, that's interesting. It's it's it's a it's a tough thought experience. We can't actually snap them out of existence but The reason I wanted to push on that some right is because I think that you're right Tyler that shooting has some kind of place it has to have in the game We'll talk about why in a minute, right? Jonathan says, why did you just Thanos them earlier? We could have solved this problem Oh darn it I was missing that I was missing the soul stone um at any rate, uh, you know like It has to be here to some degree The question is finding the right balance for it is so hard Like power projection is a critical part of the game and a critical part of the overall feel the tactics Everything like that. I don't think anybody would argue it should be we again. We don't want to your right We don't want to go back to the dark days of 2019 Right because that has a lot of consequences. We're going to talk about I mean it goes with that saying Ben's that we have plenty of examples We could battle off right now of what would come more that are viable that would really come to the forefront If starting with the cabbage and kragnos and other things like that. Yeah, which we'll get to which we'll get to And let me answer we're gawk, which is to say what do we what we say to ranged projection where it's double triple move You know iron jaws for instance, uh, I am on record as saying that like That iron jaws current move situation is off kilter. I'm absolutely that's a different discussion than where we currently Have and and actually I'm going to talk about it in just a moment. We're gawk. I'll I'll tell you exactly what I think will happen Yeah, I know I I'm very scared of every time people talk about shooting Because the flip side of that is so much worse. Right, right, right. No, exactly So I want to talk real quick about magic the gathering Oh, yeah, that's why not that's good. Oh, yeah I've got a little picture of frog mite up here Now if you only were casually familiar with magic the gathering you would look at frog mite Who is a four colorless artifact creature frog? He's adorable. I think we can all agree on that frog mite is adorable Uh, but he's four mana for a two two with effectively no actual combat abilities He is a four mana two two no first strike no vigilance. No gets plus one plus ones under certain situations No, none of that Okay, that doesn't exist But he has this ability called affinity for artifacts. This spell costs one colorless less to cast for each artifact you control And frog mite there was a point in time where he was one of the most commonly seen creatures in the meta Why he's obviously bad on face value Okay, but in fact, he's amazing because he could effectively drop for zero because you had artifact lands and zero cast artifacts And one drop artifacts and so you would just like pop pop pop pop pop boom free frog mite, right? And then out would come the skull clamp Which is the powerhouse that would just send him over the over the him or his buddy Or an ornithopter or whatever else you had to swing into the red zone with right And the skull clamp. Yeah cranial plating. Yes. Sorry. That's what I meant. Yeah, sorry That would come cranial plating. Thank you. Sorry. Yeah And sorry, it's been a lot. It's it's I mixed up my equipment Um, yeah, it's been a while since the I've I've buried a lot of bad memories of the affinity meta, honestly Like I it's traumatic But at any rate so yes outcomes the cranial plating and then it's going to get switched over to whoever needs it needs to And then whammo blammo incomes like a million damage Okay Now during the time of this little cute adorable frog Being everywhere there was effectively two types of decks About 80% of the meta was affinity And about 20% of the meta was anti affinity Okay That was it That was what people played It crowded out everything else Now we aren't that bad Not even close. Okay. I just want to be super clear but but Directionally, there's a similar theme right of where either You have this kind of power projection or you have the answer to this kind of power projection Right, that's a similar type of play though not nearly. Let me put a real fine pin on this Not nearly as bad as what this was Okay So just to be a hundred percent clear So what's the counter? Let's talk about the counter boys All right And and this is where uh, this is where we're going to get into some some fun stuff Let's assume that we just say Some part of our audience some part of the twitter responses some part of people said no, there's no problem Met us completely fine, right and there's a wide range of opinions on here all right So Let's just say for a second. Everything's fine. I don't personally disagree with that or sorry. I don't personally agree with that I think there is things very wrong. I think we've made the case for that Let's just assume we're talking to somebody who's unconvinced and they want to counter Uh This sort of thing the power projection meta. What's the counter? I have three answers My three answers are big wounds, which is masses of bodies or wounds too high for the shooting to stop in time Off-board and ambush, right? So like removing the key pieces from the line of fire i.e. you have the ability to to Ambush in to be out of basically not be set up right here in the heavens or whatever, right? You're in reserve in some way Or just being tough Being able to thwart reduce the mortal wounds below the efficacy level necessary for winning, right? Like being super tough with mortal wound protection or slash whatever. Yeah Uh That by the way being tough could also be having enough healing to just recur back Your bodies accordingly that I would also put that in the same category, right?  Who cares? You did nothing, right? That would fall into the same category Okay Did I miss any counters? Tom? What do you think? Are there any other counters? I didn't uh, I don't have in here No, because funnily enough the Nurgle a magikin The most the most recent faction that plays that checks all three of these categories. Yep. That's exact Yep. Check check check. Yeah. Yeah I've got iron jaws blood tubes in my head vents, you know with their that mechanic Maybe we could generalize that type of mechanic or those mechanics where of course they combine Both speed and the ability to move at the end of a charge phase so that they can blow up a screen And they get into the ranged units behind those screens That's quite, you know, that's that's generally I would guess why iron jaws blood tubes is the go to That's a good point. So, I mean, they've got some big they they have some big wounds, right? Like oftentimes is our higher wound armies Um, but at the same time, you're right So maybe maybe there's a fourth category that we would call like tricks like specific Yeah, right where you can move so fast get out of there or like target restriction would fall into this category, right? so line of sight blocking Like Simon Weekly's army that was I assume throwing pitch black everywhere like it was going on a sile Just pitch black the board every round. He was just moving and touching terrain and everything was pitch black So there's just no line of sight anywhere By the way, Simon, if that's how you were playing it and your army worked like that where you were sort of making everything pitch black Then Simon was playing in The world where the terrain was functional, Tom Right because he had like four demon princes and so every time he moved he pitched black terrain So he could manufacture terrain that worked The way sort of 40k terrain would for blocking line of sight If they had to pitch black terrae is like every table people would talk about the situation a lot less. Yeah But yeah, so I think that's probably a fourth piece that I didn't have here I'll call it like specific counter tricks. Yeah, there we go.   We'll shoot right through your bullet. Yeah, exactly. Yes It's a great point. There's always a counter of like they brought guns. I brought bigger guns. So sorry Uh, the you're talking about the trading game. Yeah, you know, so if I have six long strikes I have 18 point. Yeah, or if you've got Two by three, let's say, but you've got other threats. You've got distributed threats distributed output I have to put my six long strikes there and signs the storm I've got to put them on the board at some point in this game, but then you have counters Up your sleeve to then shoot them. Like I like that idea. Yeah, this kind of to out trade your opponent With with your shooting threats that could work to or your general power projection threats Yeah um Yeah, like it's it's an interesting conversation of shoot better Aaron said just play a one drop and I'll shoot them most of these lists that are doing this are one drops So like this is an interesting stat from bloodshed because I much respect the to who did all these really neat Did all these neat like sort of stats, right? And then it was like well the average drops of the whole tournament is 4.78 And I was like that is lying with statistics like no offense. It was a cool Like it was really cool stats, but my point is who cares that the average drops are 4.78 Okay Like because all the lists that need to be one drop that are going to win on one drop are one drop And those will take up the majority like what was the average drops of the list that finished in the top 20? It was real low It was real low Okay, it was like one point something So like I don't care that the person in 80th place There's a bunch of eight and nine and 10 droppers down there, you know, like dragging down the average They were dead before they knew it All right They got like they got fist of the north start They they you're already dead. Okay I am curious about once that that's hard to collect is how many people when they had the lower drops Like what did they choose to go first or second? It's good that would be interesting. Oh, that's good because I yeah And I'll say I'm not trying to say like having low drops equals good good winning list That's not what I'm saying because there are there are good lists that are high drops Those two things can't meet together My point is is that the list that need to have that decision can very easily have that decision And when they do have that decision They win Right it empowers There like it's a it's a it is a catalyst to victory for a list already in a prime position to capitalize with its with its power projection There we go And yes, I would change battle rich Uh To answer your next question Erin All right, and my question at the bottom here was what if you don't have any of the things we discussed? So we talked about these three plus. Let's call it, you know combat tricks Right or specific tricks, which there's a good number of armies that can counter the meta Right, some of your big ones that are out there are certainly like nergal Uh legion of the first prince war clans Soul blight, but I think all these armies have game. I don't think any of us would disagree with that Right But there's certainly some that don't Right they kind of can't do any of this And so that's challenging Right, yeah, there's gonna be some number of armies. Maybe it's five six eight You know, it's not all of them. It's not a majority of them But it's some of them and if you're a player of only that army Woof wow That's rough. Oh, yeah, probably don't have many options. All right Okay, let's keep going Let's talk about nergal because you mentioned it. You set us up for this tom. Here we go Uh One of the things that I like about nergal It's an excellent counter higher wound count mortal wound protection ability to be off board They can actually true null deploy not that that's a good list But it's a funny thing that you can like literally zero deploy on the board like I put nothing on the board Zero items Which is fun Uh hui if you run max knight runners, you'll make smorgen very happy. Um, that's what will happen there um And so uh The one guy what faction would you say specifically doesn't take at least one of these boxes sylvaneth ko Probably gloomspite without cragnos or a giant ally Or you know participant. I should say they're not an ally in traditional sense. Um slanesh Definitely doesn't take any of those. Um, probably corn I mean like there's a good number. I'm probably I'm forgetting some but but anybody who in my earlier chart showed up at zero Okay, it's just gonna be an answer there um Plus maybe a few more Um, that that isn't yeah, that is interesting actually Like if you think about this in kind of three camps. Yeah, the the ones who are uh Causing the issue the ones who are responding or capable of responding to it and then the third group that's sll We're just like outside the store looking at it. Everybody playing in the in the bouncy balls Just like and just being like oh those guys look like they're having fun It's feeling like, you know, that's not the worst summary of the state of win rates in this game across the 25 factions To look at a little more closely But anyway just kind of comes to mind as we're talking about this Because you're right a lot of a lot of those that are struggling on the bottom end Obviously, these chaos are now going to go up. That's going to be hopefully a good thing Hopefully not going to be too crazy more bodies potentially all the more bodies and or more msu and so on but Yeah, anyhow, that's that's kind of interesting to me Yep So then I said on the other hand, we haven't seen much top table performance nergal though There's been some like I said they they had they've they've had pretty decent But it hasn't been like they're not showing up ruling the field But I suppose that's kind of what you would expect from counter affinity, right like counter affinity Didn't most tournaments were still won by affinity, but that's just simple numbers Right like 80 of the lists were affinity 20 percent were counter affinity Just raw raw stats you would expect that to break out that way So maybe nergal is performing enough, but like Is there any what are their challenges tom you you're you took nergal Is there do you think there's a production meta challenge here? Do you think there's still some of the tome to unlock? Do you think mobility is a problem for them? Do you think they have a dps challenge or do you think none of those things? And it's just it's just time for them to show up and they'll keep actually they're on an upward trend Oh all those things are challenges that you have to Build build to like try to negate what them one way or another like Hide Don't we talk about this earlier, right? War scrolls in general have trended up in terms of damage except play bears Those things are one hack each fours and threes Yeah They they're in a list a lot to serve one purpose to stand around and do nothing right Like yeah a lot of the a nergal lists Doesn't actually do anything in the game of age of sigmar as I have played Couple in my in my experience Like throughout my long star games in my five games of playing Their mannequin there. I would say I moved my playing bears about like 10% of time Usually if there if there's a home objective, they sit out there. They never move sure Yeah, they're just like the ultimate deck chair sitters. They're ready to hold it and keep it held Yeah, like sometimes like if we play veins of garrion where else so they started in one place The objective showed up in another place and they moved it So it's a it's an expensive army and part of your army generally doesn't do anything Like productive voice like they don't do damage. They don't like project around the board like Sure, they they can't charge. It's legal, but you never do But the good thing about ergo is The stuff that actually do work they do like I extraordinary amount of it They are slow average average speed across the board is probably like four or five and then if you have drones They're like eight, right they come in. Yeah What they're Uh, what I find very amazing about nerdo just sent her one models worse girl and that is the glockin For when it first came out like it was a 700 point model people were like wildly said it was like too much It was not not remotely good But it's after playing it for around 10 game ish. I think it's actually very appropriately cost If it was any cheaper, it would be too game working because of the the blight the blight creativity Yeah, because that that because that ability is so powerful in what it does Yeah, like one of the things we talked about earlier is like if we just nerf like We just get rid of shooting right like maybe maybe you should make shooting just like small arms fire you will now For people that haven't played like against like a glockin when it's using when the when your opponent playing magnus using a Buildy like correctly. It makes the game very like miserable with very simple combinations like Let's say There's some answers to that like Cragnos is a very good one because they can stay out of the range of it and then still make chargers Let's say you're a let's say you're a normal, right? You have You have to move within like you want to be like generally around seven to six inches to charge because those are pretty reliable sure A glockin and you have like two units It makes us so a charging situation can doesn't ever go as you need it to because the glockin could just Go somewhere else right It like it effectively just nullifies charges if the magnum player sets it up, right because it's very hard to have Multiple threats that can threaten the glockin at once and it can like dodges It can you generally dodge the one threat that that could threaten it And it like let's say right a mall cursor comes like a mall cursor trying to get into me somehow Without like without being close enough to do the mighty Might be the sure charge in a hero phase, right? You can have you can have a demon unit next to it Glock like cricket and they say no pylon What they're in the counterface So now the the mall cursor kills whatever's Cheap demon unit, let's say a one piece a miracle or kill some players And then and then your glockin can just punish it with and then the glockin just keeps wondering on the table it is a very Negative experience if you're not expecting it to do it if you don't fully understand what blight creek does Like it's a very game working ability in the movement. Yeah, so yeah It is so it is good that there's like shooting to threaten it Which is why I incorporated some like outflinking elements in my list and then yeah, so the glockin That's why I think nargo has a very good spot in the meta because solely on that word scroll alone bliking is also good because they they're like They're a four wound model with a four base armor and a five up after safe And then the glockin spell can increase this wound threshold from four to five which makes it really good on an objective situation Yeah, so if you if you have 10 blikings If you have to get a spell off they suddenly go from 11 models on a point to 20 so Yeah, very hard to very hard to remove from the field like Like I don't know if people have thought about it, but like removing 40 wounds of 41 wounds with the four plus armor and the five plus after safe with access to like Coral's ability like rally is Almost impossible. Oh, yeah, sure Yeah Realistically, it's not gonna happen through shooting alone almost ever ever And and their attack profile is very good at dealing with Troops, which is like funny, right? Because like yeah One of the answer you could say to blikings like well I would just stack more bodies on a on the point to try to stop to try to score without interacting with it Well, they have five attack each on threes and threes and they render one one damage Disease mechanic just always good Like the nargo magicka book is built around units staying around and then just applying diseases three their attacks Which is hanging out and then you so like you suffer their regular attacks Relentless assault so you have three or less wounds The black king, you know would do extra extra mono at the end of the combat face to you Yep, and then after that you have to see so like It just never works out that like whatever you send into the blikings are gonna trade up effectively Yep, which is which is basically the theme of the nargo magicka book is like It just forces you to never be able to trade up effectively And and then they have and then they can always like do more damage than they look Which is which is a really fun Fun thing to play as a player on tabletop games because it it lets you make like a lot of decisions because You generally have a lot of models left throughout like your models never gets like alpha off the table And then you can you can through like good plays and the positioning and you can Win a lot of matchups that people think are very difficult for you Yep, but their flaw is also the the most like critical thing in the game to be worse at they're very slow So if you deploy incorrectly You will just lose the game because you can't reach Because we're fighting over objectives and if you there If people screen you out correctly and because you didn't deploy correctly You will just lose and then there's no recourse for that because there's nothing in the book that fixes mobility for you Right, right. Yeah Absolutely. No, I think that's a great summary and I here's I want to tell him I'm going to pitch a little situation at you here You're ready Yeah, okay Let's imagine the next ghp Coming in Four or five months. Okay Let's imagine we go away from monster focus To like Horde focus Where people are incentivized to have lots of like little People running around in some way Okay, that's sure To me that seems like almost the best case scenario For nergal because because units like black kings and stuff like that can take such can capitalize so hard on on that Kind of a situation. I don't I think that's where they're the best They can chew through those kinds of units just really really really hyper efficiently Yeah, if hordes come back nergo magikins very set up for it because they Black kings are good at dealing with small infantry, but they're not even the best that in the book Plague shows are so good at dealing with those kind of armies. It's kind it's insane. Basically. Yep Yep, I agree and I I for one welcome our new playground overlords. Okay So let's talk about that And that's basically nergo. They're they're a good choice to play if you expect a lot of shooting And like storm great guards that kind of that kind of setup They're a good choice But you have to know how to deploy correctly to play the mission like yeah, I would say it's not even the arm like Your opponent's army is sometimes not even the greatest difficulty in a game of agate It's literally sit is actually just navigating the board and like you have to plan out how far you can go right Yeah, right yep Yeah, I think they're very strong and putting I think they are already putting pressure on the sort of power projection meta And it actually leads me to what we're we're going to get to the like What does the world look like on the other side of this in just a moment? Okay, how does this meta end? Let's talk about the end of it because there are three ways in my mind this ends one Slow points changes and additional books weed it out. This is what I call the end of the 2019 melee meta Right, there wasn't some big day where it happened It was just over multiple points adjustments all the points on the things that were that were like Causing a problem crept up Skaven crept up fec crept up Selenash crept up right everything crept up and then additional books showed up that were just like no dog I've got the answer for you Right and just boom boom boom And and it was over just like that We've got the next option is hard war scroll changes So that's like the rule of archion right so archion was just this menace on the table And then all of a sudden he wasn't Yep Just like that right And then The third option is 1 to 2 very hard counters arrive that make playing it almost an instantly losing proposition So this is the beginning of the melee meta 2019 right when suddenly fec and fire slayers and selenash all shows up and gave rise to this melee meta Because it was like if you weren't playing something that could smash in melee They could absorb just these hits Right, I need them hits because they just showed up like james brown just they needed the hits Whammo, right Uh, you were you were dead in the water And so just like Basically a couple books came out and ruined the meta for whatever was there before Yeah Um Where they're just such hard counters, you know to like if if If the power projection is rock Just like paper comes out and like strong paper comes out some hundred weight paper comes out in two books Right I don't know which way it could be my answer is it could be any of these three and or a combination Right But I think these are the three ways that it could end you think I missed anything there Not pretty reasonable Uh mission change could also be a proponent of it Okay, I would I would like maybe that's lumped under hard war skull changes, but I should have called it out You're absolutely right. You're absolutely right Like if suddenly there's only center objectives, like there's no more home objective missions Or those are platelets that you suddenly would have to like I wouldn't it might not be as big of a deal. I might as I make it out to be biased I think they would trend down a lot of shooting units because One of the weaknesses of shooting units is they're generally all terrible and lately And it does not stand. Yeah, it does not stand, but like That's why like usually you declare victory like if something One of your melee threats sneaks into like a bow snake or a shooting kaito line, then it's like done right Okay, yeah Scenarios could definitely help but if I have to guess it's just like the slow trickle down like Hey deep kid makes a shooting a little worse. Hey Dot d. Okay became a more melee army and the hey nigh hunts Just doesn't care about shooting and then like whatever the new chaos slash order comes So I think that's the most like case and then you you like put the nail in the coffin and with the with the ghb changed it and now suddenly there's like Some you will see maybe like from 50% of your art list is a daily shooting threat to maybe like 35 to 25 to 10 percent that kind of I wouldn't be something like yeah, it wouldn't be something like all right power of a hish gone from stentals And then like Junicators rent zero no more bulls. It's probably not something like that. Right, right Okay Let's fix it Here we go. This is this is going to be a fun thought experiment. I'm excited for this one okay So let's fix it and we're going to fix it by waving a magic wand You ready because we're not going to talk about fixes because honestly It could be a million fixes could be any of the three things we just talked about that ended could be anything. I don't care What we're going to do here for this thought experiment is just assume We fix all units that are currently dominating with power projection in some way We're going to wave a little magic wand And suddenly some mix of rules war scroll changes points new scenarios Counter armies new books whatever. I don't care some magic mix of all of that makes this go away It's just they're not the de facto choice and are not seen as much Okay, that's our starting assumption It has been fixed What happens next Let's strap on the tinfoil hats. This is what we've been hinting at the whole time right what happens next And my argument is it's not like suddenly the world becomes a perfect place Oh, no, sure.  Yeah currently Let's put let's say the shooty things are like the bird in like in in the aos ecosystem And sure it's keeping the it's keeping the rats down Yep, sure.  Right, right. Yeah Um And so it's exactly right So here's my guests and we'll see what here's here's my three potential futures And by the way, these aren't mutually exclusive To be clear because these could all happen at like these could all come true Right Or only one of them could come true All right Mass bodies high wounds becomes a stronger play than it already is having a natural affinity to to the key objective control Okay, this gets especially true as as I've mentioned if the next ghp in any wide way Incentivizes this type of play instead of monsters like if we get a ghp that's a horde in center Or a mass bodies in center Okay Boy oh boy, uh the um We've got uh welcome back utility heroes You know, they're already they never really went away Uh much like ll cool j. They're not calling it a comeback. Okay but But basically other shooting beyond what we've discussed is already ineffective With most larger shooting units in the game unable to kill a five or six wound hero with a d