Hello everybody, if it's Wednesday, it's Warhammer and that must mean it's time for another episode of Warhammer Weekly Joining me as always is my one and only co-host Tom. What's going on brother? How you doing? Hello friends Tom good to have you on the show as always joining us as well The man the myth the legend the Warhammer hero my personal idol in life Someone I hope to be more like every day Dug what's going on brother? How you doing? That's a lot to live up to I'm doing well. Thank you Doug you should be the guy who has the cure for cancer We're gonna be diving into the new fire slayers tome tonight, that's right. We're gonna talk about Naked ginger dwarves. That's what we're gonna do spend hours doing that If there was truly one army in this entire game that I did not care about at all It would be this so I've brought on two people who are very passionate and excited about this book To share their opinions namely Tom and Doug who what that means is that Vince didn't even open the book? Yep, no research zero. We're going in cold, baby. I'm gonna learn everything as we go. It should be fine No, obviously I did read the book, but I'll admit a lot of it washes off me This stuff doesn't stick Because my brain doesn't want to retain information It knows it will never need to use because I will a never play this army and be my chances of playing Against this army at a tournament are so close to zero as to not be worth worrying about. Oh You'll play me. It'll be okay And I will give you a terrible experience I'm sure yeah, but Tom will bring him to Warhammer world or whatever or we have it But of course first the news Tom, what do we got did Tom open the news before this time? You know it's we we live in an interesting day and age. Let's just talk briefly about I Don't know. We'll fix it the war in Ukraine Let's not that sounds like something not to talk about at all. Well, what we'll do is I will start with the news item that gw Has decided to stop selling models there in Russia in Russia. Yeah, sure. Yeah, that was a That was a I mean it it was a surprising move, but it was a move it happened And by the way, that's not on your news list shame on you that's Left it off because it happened and I have nothing to say about it other than okay It is a wide world of geopolitical disaster. So it's beyond me. It did and yes, of course Kenny This is stalling of course Let's get to the actual news Okay, that's her. So we have this grenade spear Uh-huh. Mm-hmm. So we have sword guns and now we have grenade spears. Well, this is a traditional So so this is one of two things This is either a rough rider lance from 40k Because as we all know DMX is alive and well in the 41st century and His rough riders carry grenade lances. I used to play rough riders quite a bit in when I played Imperial Guard back in the day Anyways, this is one of their weapons. So it's either a new rough rider of some kind or It's an ash wastes necromunda type thing. Yeah, that's kind of I was thinking either Like it could be that like they know well that these grenade lances existed for Rough riders and so they're like, oh, haha. We'll trick them.  Yeah, it's probably an ash waste thing and that's fine. Like I want I want mad max High-jagging trains with grenade spears. Yeah, sounds fun to me Yeah But More importantly than all that let's talk about the new us open season that was announced boom There's the map. It is up on the screen. Oh, yeah, I forgot that that was this week And Like I would say Locations that are probably more central to more people this time. I think yes With No But yeah, so Seattle, Washington, San Diego, California, Santa Ana Pueblo, New Mexico, which I don't know what that is Is that a suburb of a larger city in New Mexico? I Didn't look it up. I think it's Phoenix area Maybe That's that's Arizona. No, maybe it's not. I don't know. It's it's it's all down in those It's fine it's the other sandy dusty place. Yeah, so No, there's nothing down there It's right near that right there alone star state. They call it the windy city the big The big banana that's what it is if it's if it's not in Phoenix and there's really just nothing sure I don't know if that's like near a larger city. I I've not heard of that city So I assumed it was a suburb of another city Um and then Kansas City and Chicago like you look at that list and those are all quite well-known u.s. Cities except for that one And so I was playing the The one regs basement Exactly Just like an old abandoned shack in the middle of Montana wilderness, you know like So I just assumed that was probably the case Montana also a different state but continue. Yeah, sure. I mean it's just my point is like it's as though when they say like the Warhammer Citadel is in what like grapevine or something like that Texas and it's like well, okay But that's really the Dallas Fort Worth area. Yes, you're yes. Yes Like you don't you don't fly into grapevine or whatever you fly into Dallas No, no one has purposefully gone to grapevine and been excited about it in decades Yeah, I know that's your old that's your old stomping ground there Doug. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep Tristan said it's a rolling Badsbury Kleiner warehouse. I like it. I like that So at any rate the yeah, new u.s. Open season five locations so bigger season I do like the locations Tom you you making your way to Chicago or you go into Kansas City? Which one are you gonna hit or both? I think I'm helping you go to Kansas City because And looking at like my commitments this you know this Fall I think I can make Kansas City work more easily than Chicago But maybe not I don't know like we'll we'll see is the right answer I'm going to make one of them But the four unfortunate thing is is that I one of my dear dear friends in Houston is getting married When finals is in November, so even if I were to qualify I can't do the like the championship Gotcha. Well, there you go Please pass along that I appreciate not getting an invite as usual I know exactly who it is and as you just tell him it's exactly what I would expect from him Invites have not been sent out yet. So sure Just gave me I saved a phone call. No, that's fine It's good, dude. Um, okay Maybe you should be a better DM. I'll invite you next time. Maybe you should be about that at any rate The Yeah, I'm excited about the new season. It seems cool. I last one was well received seems like they do some fun stuff Cool good stuff Man, it'd be nice to have something on the East Coast, right? Well, I mean, you know, I'm sure it'll move around year over year The East Coast is pretty expensive, especially for renting like yeah, so that's I'm sure that's a challenge, right? Yeah, I don't I don't know but it feels like they should look like maybe North Carolina or something That'd be a good place. That'd be a cool place to go. There's some good places down there Like the research triangle that they could probably yeah hanging out in Raleigh. That would be cool Yeah, maybe you know doesn't have to be Northeast, right? So You'd be the old Southeast Atlantic region there at any rate. What else we got in the news? Oh So you're ready for this Well, I don't know I'm all right battle scroll so Guess what everybody you're in luck. I don't know yet I'm gonna pause.  So Tom Any high-level thoughts on battle scroll before I get into it I'll let Doug go first. Okay, Doug. Okay For me my main takeaway was that they're trying something new and I firmly encourage that whether or not it will make This specific approach when I look at things. It's it's not just The immediate change but what this could show in the future So like they threw this together and then they can tweak it just like they did with the mercenary rules or any number of Rules that have been bolted on to AOS over time into this epic snowball that is their tradition And so either way I look at it. I look at it very positively. It's not a good Change necessarily now, but it heralds cool design directions in the future So cool. Does that make sense? It's not the hero. We needed but it's a hero We kind of want later on when they figure out their powers No, I mean conceptually I think what you're saying. I mean, I don't want I don't want to put words in your mouth So please tell me if I'm wrong, but conceptually what you're saying is you like this kind of like positive exploration it's good to see them chart new game design space and look at alternative ways to kind of shake the game up as they have frequently in the past and regardless of the implementation or execution of this specific one you like when you like in general the idea that they're they don't see it as a A calcified game, right? They're still willing to experiment and and and look at different angles on yes, and you know Regardless of effectiveness, I like the concept or the focus of like Let's try to just not change the books and see how we can raise up the bottom versus punishing the top too much Which not everyone. I mean some people think that they punished various factions, but I don't know. Overall, I like it. I'm going to play around with it and try and then I thought You know, I just talked to your to and see if they want to use it That's all there is right on Tom I mean It's fine I think that at the end of the day, it's going to be pretty meaningless Um, and I don't mean that Dismissively per se. It's just that it's not I don't think that it's going to turn as many games as you think it might Of course, um I think that it's only going to it's actually once this outrage cycle passes I think it's going to be largely forgettable. Yeah, probably so much so That we're most people are really going to forget that it's even a thing Many are let me say it that way and Many will probably even forget it's a thing in the actual event itself Like people remembering to like score those points and stuff like that Like in general, it's just not going to be a thing likely Like a real big news item a real big complaint until it is and what I mean by that is What's going to happen is we'll have one or two instances where This will overturn an event This will um And what might happen is the person that they're playing like has forgotten that extra points are being scored And then each are kind of tallying their points or whatever you get to the end of the game and suddenly a win was a loss And it might be at a high table and it's going to throw up a bunch of shade and open a bunch of wounds and It's just going to be a mess Because in general most games it's it's going to be inconsequential until it is consequential Again, it sounds silly, but um Like I don't know that it's going to generate anything but feel bad experiences um for a majority of the base because What it's going to do is it's either going to be forgettable unattainable or punishing, you know that that captures a majority of the base forgettable punishing or um unattainable And then for the handful of armies that can actually capitalize on this that has a strong enough base to to To hunt those targets. Yep They're gonna they they are going to uh do great with it. So um All I gotta say is knight haunt bitches I am fantastic ending to your thoughts Okay, oh my god, that was so dramatic of a neck crack Let's get to it So here's the deal everybody you get not one power point tonight, but two because fence was so worked up about this That uh That he made another power point Was and m here we go. Let's talk about economics and warhammer. That's right That's what we're going to talk about because that's what this is This is just raw unbridled econ 101 okay Because this is an incentive structure The very basics of economics is the belief that through the altering of incentives you can change behavior This can range from very small effects like the nudge units in various countries Including the uk that have shown great success at changing slight behaviors with low cost solutions To extremely large incentive structures like changing your entire tax code or something like that Uh creating and you know isolating out the 401k so that money moves into to wall street as opposed to say private savings or something like that So this is nothing more nothing less than incentives It doesn't change any of the actual rules. It just simply says these are your incentives Do this you get bonuses do this you get pain those are incentives in the simplest form So we are applying economic principles to warhammer. Okay. All right, great. So what does this do? I don't really feel I need to explain all of the detail that's on the slide at this point because Uh, frankly, all of this has been covered like a hundred thousand times, but in brief There are now a list of priority targets priority targets are War scrolls that they have identified as effectively too powerful Okay Or too prolific It could be that as well They're using prolific as a substitute for power Like they say they show up too much There's plenty of war scrolls that show up in a lot of lists that aren't right here on this list So that cannot be the cut point alone right Because there are simply more popular war scrolls than these Sure all right So those now become priority targets when you kill them you get some number of scaling additional victory points What this means in the shortest form is that there are now more victory points in the mix of what you can get Okay, put theoretically The maximum score for a single battle tactic instead of being three Or perhaps four is now eight Just as a simple example Okay, if you had a Prime hunter which we'll talk about if you had a prime hunter monster complete a battle tactic to kill A battle line unit of let's say six dragons that would be worth eight points Okay Cool, I love it So and I encourage you to attempt to do that calculation on your own. It's fun Uh, and I am sure about I would say at least 30 of the people do that run into such a similar or close situation in a game We'll get it right at least 30 percent will get it correct um, I wouldn't bet much higher than that the Uh, this also introduces the concept of prime hunters prime hunters are effectively underpowered armies Right. Um, so sylvaneth gloomspite bone splitters. Yeah, bone splitters. There we go. He'd knights skaven knight haunt and ociarch Uh, the idea being that all of these factions are in some way underpowered And so they can score an additional extra point whenever they kill these priority targets um, so If you're not a priority target, by the way, you do not score the points if you kill a priority target with a priority target So if you use your fulminators to bring down a gate breaker, no points are scored. No money changes hands. Fantastic If you however use your vampire lord on zombie dragon to bring down a gate breaker You get two points if you use the black coach to bring down a gate breaker you get Uh, three points if you use a gate breaker mega gargant in a gloomspite gits army as a mercenary To bring down a gate breaker mega gargant in a sons of behemoth army. You get three points Somehow that is also true Here we are Because the giants all exclude their use as mercenaries If you use cragnos in a bone splitter army to kill a gate breaker, you get three points So good times All right So that's the basics. That's just laying down the facts of the situation. Okay Now let's get into it overall feelings There are three normal methods of balance changes war scroll changes rules changes and points changes The reason I separate war scroll and rules is because those are two very different things in practice Uh, of what they've shown they can do. So like rules changes definitely have definitely Generally happened through like an FAQ where it'll be sort of buried in here, right? And they'll say like replace the text of this with this Whereas a war scroll change they'll often publish a new war scroll. They do this all the time Think of uh, the last one of these right where we got new scrolls for cragnos archion and um Uh, Nagash Okay, so this adds a fourth method right, this is an incentive structure method of altering the Of changing the perceived overall balance now whether it's effective at that Uh That is something we're going to discuss in a moment, but it is theoretically a venue They're trying to use an incentive based structure instead of direct market intervention Again, this is all just econ Okay Where I begin with is the following game design 101 is all game design rules must answer a single question Does this need to exist? When you are writing a game You have to start with a set of guiding principles that then from that point every rule you write has to be checked against them And you always ask the question does this need to exist? If so, why all game design choices have both good and bad as part of them everyone Every game design choice you make has a downside to it has bad things that happen So even when they're overwhelmingly good, they're still bad And even overwhelmingly good things when added en masse without answering this question makes a bad game You can have a terrible game consisting of nothing but good rules Okay You can throw a single stone in a river. Nothing changes. You throw a couple thousand stones in the river.  I'll take them at their word Okay Does it do that? This is the question that needs to be answered because if it doesn't do that then not only does this fail But it's worse than that Because it's added rules bloat And it's created unintended consequences all over the system Yeah, okay And that leads us to the next part of economics by when you institute large-scale Regulation incentives to change behavior. You have unintended consequences secondary and tertiary unintended consequences Again, this is just sort of And the part of this is soft incentives. That's what this is. Absolutely. Okay. Yeah. All right, so If if this doesn't work, it's worse than just this thing not working. There's more on the line here Sure. Okay The challenges. Okay, what's good about this? It shows they know what the problem units are Like they've made a pretty good list of the problem units.  I don't I I want you to be able to interject So what were you gonna say? Oh, no, no, no. No, I was just I was just uh, you know, like well, they know what the problem is And just made me think of An expert that was hired in the oj sims in trial to like verify that they were stabbed He's like a eight-year medical guy just being like, yeah, they got stabbed. It's like, yeah, we Nobody we all know the problem I couldn't well documented I couldn't agree more. Okay. Yeah, like Anybody who plays this game to any degree knows these problem units like it's just well Someone argues What's that? Some would argue that there are other units that needed to be on that list like of course, of course, of course Yeah, yeah, I'm not saying it's a perfect list. Okay, like but they got most of them. They got a good That's a good list. It's not a bad list all right And it's a good concept to play with game mechanics as a balance function Uh, and it shows they know where the weak armies are like one of the things I've talked about was that You know, they could mess with game mechanics and incentives as an as a An actual method of balancing armies in an army book like imagine you had an army that wasn't very good at offense wasn't very good at defense wasn't super mobile Right, but had But imagine they had a bunch of special things going on that were bespoke written into their rules That was like they got extra points when they did certain battle tactics or whatever, right? If they held if they held one two held one held two held three or held more sorry If they achieved that maybe they got four points instead of three, right? You could play with different things like that to give them chances right, so you could actually make them mechanically powerful to to to Balance against the the the weaker quote unquote in game rules. So that's theoretically on there Okay All right, what's bad about this And I'm just using words like good and bad because I just want to avoid Sort of normative connotations like we're just going to take this down to five-year-old words like good and bad. Okay It does not create balance It creates new winners and losers It does do that But it doesn't really help the lesser armies win or stop good powerful armies from exploiting it Okay, looking at you idk Yeah, like if you're you know There's if you're already good I'll talk about it more in a moment But if you're already good and have a deep bench You can now exploit this to go hunt extra points the one of the best one of the armies That should be most excited right now is something like seraphon Who has a ton of great units many of whom are not on that list they got two on that list who cares they're hunting now Right they are the hunter Okay Yeah, it is also this is this is actually my major problem with it point two is my major major problem with it It's completely based on killing And what I mean by that is it overweights the importance of killing we left that world behind Yeah, when we left behind Fantasy battles right when we said no no we're playing an objective based game now and like killing is part of it and waits in Yeah, but objectives are what matter. That's how you score Right and we already pushed back into killing to some degree With the battle tactics often in the current round of crop of battle tactics often incentivizing killing This pushes even harder Well, and the irony is that these units often are over like overly tuned towards killing Like they are overly efficient killing units already. And so the response it's given is is more killing just the other direction Yeah It's interesting like imagine a world where instead of Uh, it being based on killing these units you just said They can't they can't contest objectives Sure, like there could have been other ways you played with this. Yes, they wouldn't Dragons can't contest objectives. Sure. You could have gone in many different ways, right? Um, but they didn't they said no all you need is kill Instantly that that what that creates a soft secondary incentive of is damage matters more than anything All right, because that's how you get these points. You don't get these points for partially killing a unit Right, right not for damaging a unit not for running or retreating from a unit Not for holding an objective when that unit's also contesting it Nothing you get it for killing it. So you better hit that unit hard and with everything you've got and it better die Yep, and ramp damage was already the strat Which leads me to my point number three this incentivizes shooting in a big way The thing that's already the number one problem in the game So if you have a problem with shooting, I would have a problem with this rule set because let me tell you what If I know I could get bonus points.  I just fought with to your counter charge Or I can just shoot you from here and risk nothing But and let me just let me just highlight point again These are these predator units are overly Are these priority targets priority units are overly tuned combat units So what you're proposing is sending in Lesser tuned combat units into the grinder against these overly tuned ones Sure, sure that is a losing proposition. The right answer is to shoot them Yeah, your gore weren't going to take down the dragons. Okay, or whatever.  Anyways, okay So shooting is is back on the menu in a big way like it's the number one way to get this If you have power projection in your army, I go back to seraphon Congratulations because they've still got a bunch of power projection that wasn't a priority target meaning they can go hunting hard It's more complexity for casual players to remember point number four Do you know how many times players forget the one bonus victory point for monsters? all the time okay And so like asking them to now on the fly calc this fun interaction of like, okay I had a prime hunter and he's a monster and I killed your unit as part of my battle tactic So I get two for the tactic one for the bonus one because I killed a monster.  Okay. That was reinforced Good times Good times that I'm sure that's no there's no way that would slow the game down or people wouldn't mistake or forget those points now On top of that. This is technical debt and not scalable I think what a lot of people look at this they look at this is like This is also just happening now like this is they think of it in the present. I don't think of things in the present I think of things in the future. This is tech debt This isn't scalable all both those things are separate things and I'll show you what I mean by both Are we going to update this every quarter? Like you're the the prime hunters fall off the list automatically when they get a new book How often do we now update our priority targets? Are those is this now up? Is this now part of the quarterly update where priority targets get updated? Like if we're going to need to put new stuff on that list, what if idk comes out? Like what if idk is just dominating? They have units that are just blowing the meta apart Which I I would put money on uh You mean a kelly and kings and uh turtles aren't going to be on that list, right? Like yeah, just something from that from idk end up on here. Like how often do we update this? Because this is now something just like points and just like scrolls and just like rules if you want to put a fourth method in It's got to stay current That's tech debt. Yep. That's more work. Somebody has to do Okay How long does this stay in the game? Does this say is this like for now until the ghp? Do we just retire this when ghp 2023 comes out? And then we say bye Is this like forever I don't know I know war scrolls rules and points are part of the game forever. I don't know what the heck this vestigial appendix is Okay Yeah And ultimately the fix for bad rules Is it more rules? Oh, and the other thing I'll say is this isn't scalable when I say scalable. I mean How many times can you do this? They can't keep making new subsystems like this these big layered things If we get one to two of these a year, can you imagine what the game would look like in three years with six of these laid on top of the game? I can't imagine sigmar meme.  I can't. Yeah, just reset it I mean there are already too many layered systems Okay so Let's talk winners and losers Winners anybody who isn't on this list of priority targets Who also was a good army? Like When you apply massive regulations to an economic system The people who respond to that the easiest are large rich Companies because they can afford to treat those heavy regulations as The cost of doing business they can set up whole new departments and just throw bodies at the problem Okay, whereas Like smaller people independent people who don't have those kinds of resources It's much becomes much harder to navigate complex regulations. It's the same thing here The people who are already winners who are already rich in our game terms Which is like soul blight and eigneth and seraphon those kinds of armies that were real strong And have a deep bench and don't you know have enough priority targets for their good units Oh, they're gonna clean up in this world. This is the rich getting richer, baby Like if I was playing lizards, I would be stoked If I'm idk I already thought idk was going to rock it to the top of the competitive meta as it were This just I mean you might as well put them in a catapult and shot them to the moon Because they're they're going baby Mercenary mega-gargants proceed.  I don't think a lot of people are going to shed a tear right But there will be a ton of mercenary mega-gargants who show up since they're accepted They can like in two of the armies where they can show up and they can get you Many bonus points for killing things Like that gate breaker costs nothing and can go stomp the crap out of things and get you bonus points everywhere Because he is capable of taking out a lot of the other priority targets Uh ironically somehow I agree smorgans said it's the biggest buffs seraphon have received. I completely agree I completely agree. It's the best thing that's happened to seraphon Because they risk very little even if they include a few of the priority targets basties are so tough and so ranged damaging deadly Like It's completely worth it. And you have other great units you can fall back on Well, and it you can force the enemy to make bad decisions to come into you. Yep. Yep. Absolutely Uh lumeneth realm lords somehow sent sentinels aren't on the list and sentinels are awesome power projections So just like sentinels can be like bam bonus points. Bam bonus points. Bam bonus points. Whoo. Yeah Like who doesn't love mortal wound no line of sight shooting with re-rolls, baby Let's get them priority targets pop pop good great make sentinels better. I say I say make sentinels great again That's what I say night haunt Uh, so this is actually buff to them both the death factions I think are funny here because there's clearly it's sort of this weird Thing that happened where they had no priority targets and both of those armies were actually not terrible Night haunt was worse than bone reapers like bone reapers is a big winner here They were actually pretty fine like they were coming out kind of in the middle of the stats As it were like what a great buff for them. Good day to be bone reapers Uh, so nice Uh storm fiends cave and spam boy if you like storm fiend spam Um Today's the day, baby Because because those storm fiends are now prime hunters and can just go And launch them win launchers at all the priority targets just blowing them away And then of course crag knows who can show up in a multiple of the prime hunter armies And just go smash people for bonus points like many bonus points Okay Yeah, negosh it said negosh is humiliated. He's not worth the bonus points unlike salamanders I was kind of my thought like if you're not on that list if you don't have any models on that list I just imagine all the grand alliance death. He'll be like, oh Yeah, yeah Negosh, he's already not killie enough for his points And I know that sounds silly, but he's the highest pointed thing in the game and he's just not killie enough Yeah, so like I understand why he's not there No, no, no, I mean, I don't I don't want him to be there. I just more I'm more just saying it's really funny to have games workshop acknowledge like These are the battle tomes that are the factions that we have like they're already neutered. They're good boys. They're okay Yeah, yeah, totally Um, the losers are storm cast who did loot like many of their powerful units showed up and often they were reinforced units And often they were fragile units now They're the weakest of the losers because one they were overtuned already But to it like it's one of the few examples where this might work to curtail some dragon spam because you do risk some points But I should say it won't actually matter to any of the loser armies Like none of the the prime hunter armies are going to win against dragons because of this bonus points Dragons burnt all of those armies off the table at the top of two So now instead of losing 33 to five days armies can lose 33 to eight. What an exciting day for them Okay, that's what happens to them. But if you're but the problem is they they do risk a lot Against idk soul blight and seraphon or something like that or or even lumineath by running a dragon spam, right?  They're scared of the other people who do not appear on this list and are actually good Right Yeah The sons of batemot are now in a rough time because they're one of the they're this weird army that actually Won by standing around not by killing things And so they actually Lose very hard on this Like I I really do think this is an interesting nail in the coffin of sons of batemot They will still just absolutely house all the prime hunter armies who can't pass the dps check Like if you couldn't pass the dps check before you can't pass it now Uh, nothing magically changed about your unit's ability to do damage So they'll still win those but it just takes them out of like actual tournament contention Okay All prime hunters except knight hunt no br losers because this did nothing to actually help them You were already losing more or less by turn two before you will continue to do so in the future in most cases Uh corn who apparently wasn't a prime hunter for reasons. I guess I don't know why They don't seem that strong to me. They have like a 40 win rate, but okay. Sure. I guess that tome celestial was better than I thought Oh, yeah Uh legion of the first prince who seemed to get just like systematically targeted by the chaos things like the the priority target list of the Uh, it means like it reads like the core of a legion of the first prince army list You can just play that That's a bad army So that's rough And then flesh eater courts who have an even lower win rate and somehow are still not showing up on the list. I don't Uh, I don't get that and by the way, I have no book on the horizon Like i'm not saying we're not going to get this year. Who knows? I don't know But i'm saying we know there's no death book in the summer books. It's a chaos and order book So it ain't flesh eater courts. So they're waiting till at least fall Okay So that's my winners and losers list. Um, it helped no one it was supposed to help and Suddenly will rocket a lot of unintended armies up to the top of the list Great stuff. I'm I'm curious to see like how quickly when the when the night haunt book rolls out How quickly do they get pulled off that list? Sure. Uh, well, it's it's immediate when the book comes you you drop your prime hunter How do you where do you come to that conclusion? They had said that in the article. Oh, did they? Yeah No, okay. Yeah, it didn't say that in the actual prime hunter sheet in the article. It didn't it said it in the article. Yeah Okay, so assuming they they'll just it'll like automatically roll to the app when when the book drops to the app It'll update this with that. I would assume Okay, uh Caleb wants to know if uh adaptive con should use these rules. No, okay easy answer Um, uh, I will end with a simple question Like if you're unconvinced by everything I've said so far And I do want to say I actually agree with Doug's point Okay, despite everything I've said I agree with Doug's point Which is well founded That I want them to start playing with these new mechanics and explore a new design space This just just this particular Uh This particular Thing didn't do it. Like you didn't get there And this isn't t-ball. You don't get credit for trying. There's no participation trophy. You have to change your game. You own it Okay And So If you're unconvinced by everything I've said Here's the simple answer Which of these two worlds would you have preferred to live in? This additional rule set the world we currently live in or a world where all priority targets of war scrolls are just fixed Which one and and to me that answer is prima facie obvious I would have they just rather fix the broken scrolls But you're assuming Like the whatever like you're you're saying it is if it's just literally like flipping a switch And you're assuming that they can fix the broken scrolls Hey woe did a pretty decent swing at it in 90 minutes I I don't disagree. I don't disagree. I am assuming they can do it because that's what they're literally paid to do you're assuming that You're assuming that you saw hey woe do it. You're assuming they can do it. I am good game designers They're quality. There's there's smart people in that building I don't disagree with that I don't disagree with that Um, but I just wonder I don't know I Yeah Yeah so, uh So pinfold or said, what do you mean by fixed fixed? fixed I don't care. I don't need to get into the minutiae of it fixed Not as overcosted overpower or not. Sorry does undercosted overpowerful game breaking Obvious choice, whatever. There's a million definitions fixed There are 50 solutions you could do with every war scroll I'm not the arbiter of what's the correct solution. That's I'm just the outcome. I am a user I provide problem statements and my problem statement is I would like these war scrolls to be fixed It's a developer's job to figure out how to implement that It just dawned on me that The lifespan on some of the things on this document may be counted in weeks Sure, absolutely Because dock and night haunt are coming Yep So my point is and you know just as a final thought we know they can change the the war scrolls. They just did it Right the last one of these which I thought was pretty good by the way Yeah, uh Like it for the things that they touched the scrolls they touched um They just published new scrolls and pushed them to the app And like they know how to do very targeted simple but effective and powerful fixes See archion change. There were some minor changes and yet man it hit it It was like laser focused Zoop, yeah Okay, so anyways, that's my thoughts on battle scroll um Nice try good concept. Please keep exploring design space I'm glad you know what's wrong. I'm glad you know what armies are weak Please do things. Please fix things better than this like do the actual work Until then I will take my bonus points at it up to con. Thank you very much Sure, absolutely. All right Hence the end of the very long new segment. Sorry everybody, but you know, I had a lot to say here Okay, it's all GW. It's fine. You're doing exploratory stuff. I get that We can revisit it in three months. I don't think it's going to change a whole lot I think it's going to be largely fair forgettable. Um, just fix this goal Yes, just fix the scrolls. All right, let's go to pick of the week Uh dug What would you like to share with everybody this week as we handbrake turn away from this segment? Yes, um for me Oh my gosh, what do I want to um Uh, the uh gibbering dome is coming up here for adepticon and uh while I sadly am not going to be able to attend This year, I just wanted to throw a shout out to the guys organizing and running that because I've been chatting with them a whole bunch recently and and they're just awesome people. Um I just appreciate it. So yeah, the event organizers are really great. The narrative guys. I mean specifically It's an awesome event. It's an absolutely awesome event Like I always I often find myself wandering by and just watching people Play through because it's such a cool unique experience. So yes 100. I I support this Uh, I didn't have a video specifically to share but I uh, I just wanted to talk about the event Oh good. I love it. I hope I can't wait. By the way folks, we are officially officially Seven days from adepticon. That's right. Whoo Come on fast. Yeah that number scary Seven days That uh, I I have 10 times that number of models that need to be finished Oh Well, that's going to be a good time for you Uh, by the way, I didn't say it yet, but uh hit like for the return of You know events. I'm excited about it. I I'm very very very thrilled to be able to see everybody At this upcoming event and I hope events are coming back to your area wherever you are I hope that is something that can happen for you over 2022. So don't forget to hit that like button Tom, what do you got? I'm gonna take a detour out of the drama and Even that like this probably should have been in the news, but I'm gonna focus it now here in my pick of the week In that events are back, baby And that means go get tickets to midwest meltdown, which is available now Tickets are about to be to go live for nova in a couple weeks. They're about to go live for nash con in a couple weeks There's lots of different stuff happening and uh Go get tickets. Um Uh, I have a soft spot in my heart for events that do weird things And so I don't know if you all saw the midwest meltdown announcements But midwest meltdown has They're letting you bring a free underworlds warband That's cool. That's cool. Yes. So in your grand alliance. So if your order grand alliance order You could bring anything basically that is with an order And I love it like it's just there's just so many weird corner list ideas that i'm like, well I wasn't considering bringing this faction, but maybe I might now So Oh, yes, as martin said, uh, Atlantic city open tickets as well. Yes, that'd be another one on your list. Yep Absolutely as always you can check, uh AOS shorts AOS shorts keeps uh on his website up keeps a full events list and keeps it very up to date So you can always go check that out for upcoming events in your area Uh, my pick of the week is going to be actually simply a thing for this show um Which is to say next week we will be live Uh, not like we're not live right now, but like live and in person with an audience whatever that means Uh, because we will be doing a show Uh live from adepticon Uh on wednesday night immediately pre pro immediately after the Uh gw reveal show Are we doing it with a live studio audience or are we hiding in our rooms? No, we're doing it with a live studio audience tom You didn't watch the show last week clearly. I guess I didn't bother to tell you this yet But hey, now you can find out like everybody else. Yes, we are going to do this with a live studio audience I think we're in innovation. I think is the room, but it's down in the one of the art rooms on wednesday night I think it's innovation, but I don't remember the exact name Um, it'll start at so tomorrow next week will be a late night show um, so it'll be um starting at The gw show goes until 10 Central which is 11 eastern and we'll start basically right after that because we'll leave a little early to get everything going um, so we'll probably start at 11 eastern immediately after the gw Reveal show and it will be largely a reaction show. Yeah, so yeah, yeah, how many how many people does that room hold? I don't know some number Be there early. I guess I don't know I'm just trying to figure out how well you've thought this out. I mean, I'm in But when we stand up and leave from the the The show the the reveal show I don't know follow. I guess That's gonna be quite a walk out.  I will I will bring my microphone. That's what I'm hearing you say Uh, yeah, we'll talk about tech stuff, uh at any rate So that's going to be my pick of the week. By the way, if you want more stuff on battle scroll Uh, more thoughts on battle scroll then, uh, you can check that like I've linked other people discussing battle scroll Down in the comments a lot of people did some some nice thoughts about it. So there you go Um, but I am very excited to do a live show with a live audience with audience interaction, of course Uh, how we're going to do that. I don't know. I haven't figured that part out yet But it's only I've got a week to do it.  All right. No, we're just gonna have people like popping in on the side of the camera Just talking at the microphone. So there'll be a camera facing the audience Well, no, there'll be the scrolling comment bar like the chat bar that we have Very nice All right, so with that Uh Gentlemen, let's get to some hobby time Uh Doug, what have you been painting buddy? Uh, lots of bone splitters. Um, I am very excited for Tyler's event Volors in may And so speaking of speaking of events. Yep. Yeah, I'm headed there and uh, I I have never actively gone to an event and tried to win a thing Like Like specifically to win I always just go because I have an army and I'll enjoy playing and it's a guaranteed three games Sure. Um, but this specific one they have an award that is It's called underdog, which is that you win at least two games Uh with an army that is um, just crapped here for the just simple ease of expression Uh, bone splitters are the one that I'm going with and I think it's according to Uh, the honest wargamer, uh, staffs. Is that right? Like whatever whatever they determine the weakest Yeah, it's like knight haunts on there now it could change whatever Um, but uh, yeah, so that's what that I've never like I said, uh I've never head hunted a trophy before and so that's exactly what I'm doing and so, um Yeah, it's going to be all all orc butts until May Very nice Thanks ziggie appreciate it. Have a good have a good night ziggie. Uh, all right Uh, I love it paint a lot of a lot of mostly naked orcs because you're you're you're on brand For the show you're like partway there Yeah, whatever. I'll take it You're you're you're prime hunters are rolling out also you're painting a bunch of naked dudes That's also on brand for this show since we're doing five So actually yeah Synergy synergy dug Unstoppable that's right Uh, no, I'm I'm excited I am I can't wait to see you five o the event. That's what's gonna happen. Are you are you going Vince? No, I won't I won't be at that one for I have a conflict. Unfortunately Well, I am so I don't know Boom, uh, I don't know what I'm gonna take. I'm probably gonna take fire slayers ironically enough, but right now I'm working on this mess Ghosts Ghosts Yeah, I wrote my list and then I didn't actually think about how much of it I was having to like Paint new and so I was like, yeah, that's definitely what I'm gonna do and then You know recognizing I took night haunt to a an event last month And now I'm functioning painting an entirely different army So that's happening That's exactly right So Yeah, I'll get it done Very nice Well, I finished a project for my hobby time. I finished a project. I can't reveal yet But at latest everybody will see it next week at a depth con if not before I am beyond excited for this But really my main hobby stuff has been uh focusing up all in all my golden demon entries So now that we're in the week to 10 days prior Uh That means it's time to pull every golden demon entry out give it a complete once over Clean up anything that doesn't look good look at it with fresh eyes and do some repainting So I have been deep in the bowels of uh painting what I already painted That's been my week Uh, which is not the most rewarding thing Go ahead. What are you gonna say? Uh, no, I was gonna ask how how long in advance do you actually paint those things because I always think of it as like Down to the wire, but if you're like having time to put it away think about your life, you know reflect on yourself And come back to it Yes, exactly. Yeah I started on one of the entries in may of 2019 Oh god is your answer Because I was at the last golden demon in the uk when they announced the us I flew home and began assembling stuff that weekend To that was two armies ago for me, man Oh Exactly Yeah No Um, so and by the way, I saw some people Who were complaining about my my statement that obr was like, okay And saying they deserve prime hunter. I'm not saying they don't I'm fine with them as a prime hunter I totally have no issue. I do agree that they're they could use some help I wasn't trying to say that I was just saying like why them and not fec. That was really my point there Um, because I think fc release is bad I I watched them almost win an event last month. Sure. It could happen. Yeah, it's fine. They like again Yes, they probably both be on that list and it really doesn't speak well to death Right now who's in a rough spot overall? That's what I'm saying. Oh, we're not even on you can't even know me worth killing Okay worth killing Yep, okay. Anyway, so that's my hobby time. I got so much to do before Uh adept con but we're we're we're knuckling down Uh, that's that's been what it is We're gonna get it all done Uh, all right gentlemen. Well with that, I think it's time that we switch gears And we talk about damn fire slayers Okay so fire slayers By the way, I really like this piece of art Um, I think this was in like this is from a warhammer community article Um, originally where it's just where I pulled it from But I really like this piece of art. I really like the look of them not with the fiery mohawks, but with the like black Hair and beard. I just think it looks really cool.  Sure Instead of the exact same cover Yeah, but tom tom the the the binding on the side is red instead of a dark blue like it was for soul war So it's totally different. He's got you on that But you know, it's not different my collector's edition book Look, well Who bought it? um Yeah, I mean Looking at the the you look at your books on the shelf by the spine those you'll know which one's different like Does any psychopath out there? I want to know in the comments right now I want to see it in chat if somebody displays their warhammer books on a bookshelf face out You understand, I'm saying like if they have them all Face out like on little standees like just Book displays, whatever. Yeah, like yeah like a comic book display, right? But not over. No, but I'm going to now Not overlapping. I want I'm talking Individual standees Boom boom. They are pieces of art right in everyone. Yes um So at any rate that would be um That would be amazing, but yeah, everybody just you you put books like you put books on a shelf with the spine Yes, and as as no balls has said I heard it, you know joked about as well on twitter It's not the same art. It's just that they all all fireshowers look the same Exactly Uh, okay Uh Boom boom fireslayers 2022 Let's talk about this. Uh, oh, we've got some people who do put the face out. It's you're crazy people You have like four books. You have a lot of or a lot of real estate. I guess I don't know Maybe you have a lot of bookcases. I got too many books. I couldn't face out anything. Yeah Okay Army army books facing out behind their armies in a display That sounds good. That's an interesting idea. Okay. Okay.  Yeah, this isn't a green screen In a gw store, right? Yeah It's actually been broadcasting out of like a small shack that that same shack from earlier. I mentioned in in upper montana. All right. Yes so Uh fireslayers 2022 here's my general summary from reading the book and understanding one I don't like this army two. I don't care about this army and three This is not an interesting army to me Uh survey says it's not a very interesting army to most people as it is consistently ranked as the lowest aesthetic and played army in the Uh Of all active factions And and that hasn't changed nothing change nothing about that change with this release sure So I mean you'd have to put out new kits probably to move that needle Okay, but here's my here's my read of the thing. Tell me if the two of you agree I think it's a solid mid tier army book. It's got some options. Okay. Like I don't think it's bad. I don't think it's Um broken or anything like that. I think it's pretty firmly in the middle Um, which by the way, it's not a bad thing. I'm not writing that as a negative. Let me be super clear on that All right. This is how like books should be releasing and we go. Yes. That is a solid mid tier book That is how books should be released. It's like a mall tribes book Right like fine great. Thank you um Well, mall tribes has some design issues that this doesn't have but I understand your meaning on power level Okay, we can talk about that. Um My question are the activation wars back? Hmm, maybe a little kind of no, uh the last two weeks All it's it's just interesting how much asf. We've seen mentioned over the past Two weeks. Yeah, um now one of these books has a lot more of the last two week reviews than the other one does But it does show up in both Um, it is still limited ultimately by its small range of troops and those troops not having different defined roles That is to say this is by small range of troops. It's every non hero unit in the army, isn't sure Yes, I mean, there's three. There's three non heroes in the army. Yeah, I I mean effectively four I guess the way they split one of the worst roles, but it's really three It's three. Okay. They have the same keyword Which by the way does not need to be the death of an army Iron jaws only has three units and it's been consistently good and fun and even perhaps sometimes too powerful Like maybe right now, but it's based on the core design difference. Right. Yes, but it's right like those units have roles Right. Yeah, there's there's differentiation.  In fact, there's a lot of synergy that can push some of these worst roles to do some really interesting things But you have to actually see the whole sort of spider web here. It really does rely on different kinds of synergies Happily 36 attack Rend like three magma droths. Yep. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's yeah, absolutely Um, it is still a melee focus army that has overall mobility challenges. That's not changing Um, I do think the magma droths have more options and power now. They're a more interesting part of the list Um, I'm like, I think that they're they they did a nice job With them overall there is like kind of one problem. I have with that scroll We'll talk about when we get to them But on the whole better magma droth better So thumbs up good And it's really important for you to know your runes and know how and when to activate them and the different rune the different rune I don't want to say this like The different tech that is gonna you're gonna have at your disposal to mess with the runes Uh, like victory will be Victory will be secured with this army based on how well you layer once for game abilities period. Yes. Yep. Yeah That's it. Yep I would agree Okay Any anything I missed there gentlemen. Is that a fairly decent summary for my read? Yeah, I would say so for me. I would I would just say that if you already liked fireslayers it's just That only more so like all it did was just kind of explore more options for the things that already existed But fundamentally it's not it's not like a night and day. I mean Herdstone giving out one rend was a bigger change I feel like for a piece of chaos Then this entire battle tome was for fireslayers because they don't function differently But they um if you already like them, there's so much in here that you'll love That's that I think that's yeah, I think like if you were already a buyer I don't this is not a bad day for you. No, okay You did not get a slinesh book here. Let's just lay that out right at the top Yeah, right. No, I agree with that and there's actually like Um, there's some interesting like flexibility that's never been introduced to the book um with they like Bringing in dwarven allies is a real thing And you're actually can you can share Your rooms which is a big deal. It just is Yeah, like so like go trek with that extra move and now doing morals on wounds and uh and uh And to hit and to to wound on around Kind of a big deal. Yeah Yep, I Very much agree like that that's I know exactly what you're talking about and that thing stood out to me on first read I was like, oh Hello there, uh, that was uh, that was a general Kenobi moment for sure um Okay, so You know, so overall You know good honestly Kind of I think you said it really well dug when you said it's kind of more of the thing Yeah, yeah, that's all it is. Yeah which is When it when an army book wasn't horribly off of what it felt like it should be that is to say like Oh, the this army feels like it should be this that's kind of how I'd want to see the army books Come out. I don't need them to be like a complete. Hey, we we got nuts and totally rewrote everything from the ground up And now fire slayers are in all shooting low defense. You know Glass can in our man like wait, what it's not like nervels rewrite, right? Like with a new core mechanic and a new base concept and how you engage That's not what this is.  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah So, um, let's get into the specifics. Let's talk, uh, let's start with The path to glory. That's right. You didn't think we'd talk about path to glory But we did and that's because dug is here and dug because we outsourced it Because we outsource it. I did not read this section. I'm not going to lie Uh, so Doug, tell us why the path to glory section of fire slayers is so awesome. If you're a path to glory fan Okay, so if you like casual games and storytelling with your friends, it's the single best one because All the other path to glory options really just have you either doing management of resources like the bones or The bones for asiak bone reapers or that kind of thing Um Where as this There is that element, but it puts on a level of decision making that lets you as a player feel like you have to Approve and turn down contracts for your magma hold the take which is sort of like a meta narrative thing That I really think is terrific. Um, essentially The it's kind of scattered around a little bit But you're going to generate a person who's trying to hire you so they have a whole like Convoluted d6 chart here where you can generate a table. I did see the table.  There's a way to give them all bravery 10 which sounds rad um Yeah, basically Hold a guzzfest everybody gets so drunk that the next day they're super brave. Um You can delve beneath the mountain which just means you get better Territories which is only a very path to glory specific thing And like it's just cool because like as you're playing games You're building this story. You can keep working for the same paymaster. You can find a new one and layered on top of this Resource management of money and gold is a reputation system. So if you keep Working for the bad guys you get lots of money, but terrible reputation and that has consequences So I guess what I'm saying is it's decision making that reflects What makes them coolest from the narrative and that is the moral gray of a mercenary um And you're constantly having to like Well, I need that money But I can't take the hit on my reputation because it locks you out of certain things and and conversely you'll do stuff for reputation so In terms of just having an engaging Uh type of format for like a personal one player campaign It's it's terrific Very nice Uh, yeah, I I thought this was like I I did give this a quick glance Um, and I just thought it was like I thought the table was neat. Like I saw the whole like the whole thing of like generating Uh, you know who's trying to hire you and all this. I was like, wow, this seems a lot more in-depth than what I you know looked at Yeah I would really lean into the narrative of this army Yes more of this and path to glory this Because fundamentally if you look at something like stormcast stormcast is Do the core book and then here's a few other options And their only unique thing is that your heroes don't have to die. They just come back glitched Which is like that's totally different than saying you're actively Pursuing contracts fulfilling them and there's reward mechanics for Forging new artifacts for yourself.  Yeah, sure, right? Yeah, absolutely So that's kind of I just I thought it was a really cool design space that they hadn't It's it's it just seems different than like the deep kin one or bone reaper or something like that Yeah No, it's great. And and it speaks to the the What what I like about this conceptually is that it shows that this army Is narratively rich and interesting Yep, right And unfortunately just because the nature of the aesthetics Of the models doesn't live up to Kind of what it could be Uh in getting people involved Like look at the art on that I know it's such a good piece of art Which one the the piece on the page on the screen. Yeah, like he doesn't look like a naked baby there one of the path to glory section He's kind of the oh god. She gets you guy over in the corner there. Like he just looks regal as Mm-hmm. Yeah, like if if it wasn't loincloths and more like meaty bojangly Like gold hanging from belts and doodads and geometric stuff I don't know Yep less loincloths Probably just like pants and shoes. Maybe that would probably help too that gold way I say less loincloths too, but just don't replace it with anything just be out there Be out and proud Exactly Okay That's they call that the the beard bump in the dwarven community. So, um, these are the x's the x's So super cool Now let's let's pivot here. Thank you, Doug. I appreciate you sharing the path to glory excitement with everybody Thank you for humoring me. Oh not at all. No, I was actually excited that you were excited about it because it's something I never talk about and I don't do it. Yeah for any other reason that I'm just not interested enough to really understand the whole ecosystem Coach nails it when he says like what if they were more mercenary like dogs of war or even like the giants Right, like if if if we had true mercenary fire slayers Yeah That could show up in any army like remember when we did that back and in addition ago Yeah, I wasn't at a general's handbook or whatever when they had that. Yeah, there's a ghp. They got those rules.  Uh, all right, let's talk allegiance abilities.  Some of this is going to be Somewhat familiar some of this not as we go through kind of the general lay of this Some things have same names and have kind of like moved around like they use the same name But it's now in a different place Right. Yep. Yep. The GW double speak. Yes. Like we really like that name. We thought of it, but now it has different rules. Okay So of course there are lodges sub factions. That's fine. We'll of course break into those in a little while Yep. Um, they have a new generic command ability called fierce counter attack You can use this command ability at the start of the enemy combat phase The unit that receives this command must be an orc hearth guard hearth guard berserkers or volkite berserkers unit. So Your non hero units effectively. Yep. Yep. That is within three inches of an enemy unit that made a charge move In the same turn Yep And not within three inches of enemy units that have not made a charge move in the same turn Cool The strike first effect applies to that unit until the end of that phase A unit cannot receive this command more than once per battle. So You can as part of the so basically it's the whole idea is like they get charged But they fight for it's a melee on leech out. Yep. It's a melee on leech out That's now But there are some notable differences there Yes, okay One this is happening during the command or sorry, uh during the combat phase Apologize right. So you miss the other command abilities. So you don't get all out attack or all out defense, right? It's working against those Two you can be roared out of this Mm-hmm. Yep, right because the roar can shut off your ability to drop Command abilities on the unit in the combat phase Okay. Yep And three it's only the enemy Charge phase, which I think people will sometimes screw up if you don't really pay attention that right It's it's you taking the charge.  It's not them going in and hitting first. It's them getting charged and yet Striking first because they're sort of ready and tough Okay, that's cool. It's a cool ability. It's probably like a good implementation of asf Because it actually is Costed in an opportunity cost fashion Against these other high value things and it's only once a game and it's only once a game per unit. Yeah. Yeah, yeah Well, and I like the fact that it happens in the combat phase So like your opponent does all their charges and you with that information can then assess where It's necessary. It's not like a You have to call it at the top of the charge phase of your opponent or anything like that It's you got a chance to see if it's going to be meaningful and then just ignore it if it's not Yep Yep Okay So the one thing that oh good. Yeah The one thing that jumped out at me that like it didn't land until later and this talks about that like layering of abilities conversation Um, you're going to find out that I'm like super negative on or or a curve card Like the shooters like I'm really really negative Um But we'll get there But what's fascinating to me is that it's only like as I considered play style Like how units are interacting with other units on the battlefield It dawned on me that like there's a really interesting play for Oric units that get charged Okay So like let's imagine a world where you come into my 10 or a curve card.   There's damage there. Yep. There's damage And then the 10 dudes now that have rend On threes and threes neg one one will all can strike first as well Yep So you can double You can double unleash hell first unleash and shooting then unleash and melee back to back phases So you'll basically Like super double activate if you drop the command points with with that unit before the enemy can actually start grinding through them Yeah, depending on what charges them they could really deplete that unit Right. I mean they could they could put some serious serious hurt Um on a unit that comes into them like you need to come into them with heat in order to actually like Um to pick up that unit. Yep Which I like because the idea of doing all of that letting even just a 10 man unit swing above their weight class It's a gotcha. I mean not a gotcha as in you shouldn't tell your opponent about it But it's like if people don't see that in action. It's easy to not think about as being dangerous, but Ten of those dudes will mess you up if you let them do all of that Right like Functionally shoot and then also melee. Um, yeah, it's it's interesting. Um, I still don't think they're worth their points, but It's interesting Sure All right, the other big one here is grim wrath oaths um So at the start of the first battle round, which is an interesting timing It's it's actually a really like that's a great timing that you're making that you're doing this I love this ability so much This book is like, hey, did you like grim wrath berserkers? Do you want to see them played? Well, we're gonna give you some reasons Why don't you just trust us on exactly? Why don't you tuck right in? Yeah, absolutely like six It's a good day if you wanted to put some grim wraths on the table, which is cool. I like that I like um for going back to wormer fantasy like I loved the different levels of Slayer right you had like more and more elite slayers that had more and more elite special abilities And this kind of lets you get back at that same Theme right? Yep. Okay. Yeah, I Just as inside like yeah, I have not made a fire slider list that does not have at least one grim raffin it I completely believe that I don't I think you would now you would just you absolutely would include one because they're actually Oh, yeah, good right like right Yeah, they're good. Okay Yeah, I mean there were moments when in list building when I was like 160 points For one of these stupid units like five of these guys or 10 of the guy dex chair setters Or I could give up this in vacation And get two more grim raffin right Mm-hmm Yeah, I'll take two more grim raffin Yeah, absolutely. So to baseline it just for we'll we'll get to them eventually but grim raths are 105 points, right? Just so we all understand what we're dealing with And they're not they're not leaders so they don't count against your leader slot and so you can just yes But they're heroes so you can throw as many of them in as you want All right So at the start of the first battle round, which is a great time to pick this You can pick one of the following oaths for each friendly grim rath berserker to swear The rule for that oath applies to that until the end of the battle If your army includes more than one grim rath berserker, you can't pick the same oath more than once so okay They all have to swear their own oaths um tom There's a lot of oaths here. I'm not gonna read all these right because there's six different oaths Instead, I know which one you like the best. I also know which one I like the best That's fine. I'm gonna I'm gonna I'll wait.  Uh proving grim nears might to our allies like I am I am in on that so hard Okay So I will prove grim nears might to our allies add one to hit rolls and wound rolls for attacks made by this unit If it is within 12 inches of any friendly allied units Okay Yep, um, I Love knowing that I'm gonna be on twos and twos Meg to rend to damage each double piling in like that that sounds hot to me And with a way to get double your attacks Yeah, and they able to double my attacks once a game. Yes, please. Yep. All right I'm gonna go to there. Yeah. I want I want to go that place, please And then oh not only that and because you can like trigger a heroic action like on that turn that you double attacks You can jump to meg for rent So your twos and twos four attack or eight attacks double piling in twos and twos meg for rent to damage each It's a lot of rest That is a lot of red For 105 points. Yes. Yep. Um, so I mean like I love that one because the reality is is that there's I almost never I don't think I've built a No, I built maybe one or two, but almost all of my list 90 percent of my lists have a gun hauler in them At least one gun hauler. Okay. Um, because this this army needs mobility, right? Like it has to have mobility and gun haulers are the The kings of being wherever you need when you need them and so like The gun hauler now is a hundred and five 55 points of hot sex of like 10 wounds teleport wherever Do damage and oh by the way it gets plus one plus one to your grab wrap now So I like I like having and like it doesn't it's not tied to one model. So if I have like two um Gun haulers like I can keep one within range For him fighting and then jump the other one around and then late game if I need to move him across table I can do that So, I mean, it's not the best of the to be clear It's not the best of the oaths, but it's the one that I like the most Fair enough Doug. What's your pick for oath?  That's a good idea. And you're like Yes, and then the second punch comes from the grim wrath with double the attacks. That's awesome. Um for me, uh my second one Where was it at? What's it called? Uh Oh, I liked so I have a huge uh interest in like personal retinues for my heroes because it's Because I am a narrative nerd. I mean, that's just what I am And the idea of I will guard them with my life instead of picking one Hearthguard or Hearthguard berserker unit on the battlefield to be a retinue of a father or rune son You can pick the grim wrath berserker. So it's just like You lock him to a hero and then it's just him fist bumping your rune father as he's got his grand axe and Ah, yeah, that is like it.  Yeah, like I mean Mobility is the name of the game You know me and this is anything that say if it if an ability says you can run and charge, you know where vince is living That's where it's at. Well, I got like it doubles his movement functionally Like let's be very clear. He goes from four to like seven and a half average with that rerollable run and um And rerolling charges like not only does that never been bad Um, but now it's really interesting because this army like there's a number of instances where I'm like Well, you know instead of deep striking a unit of like 10 or 20 guys Like I could see a world where I deep strike a hearthguard berserker that has rerollable charges You mean you mean a grim wrath berserker. Oh, that's right. Like a grim wrath berserker. Yeah, like I like I put I pair him with the Rune smiter. Yeah, so that I can put him like because placing two models on 32 mil bases Uh, good luck zoning me. Yeah, it's so easy to accidentally slip those in somewhere right where somebody just didn't zone out properly or or just can't Can't physically stop it. It's often easy to stop a whole unit, but not some tiny 32 mil bases Now you have an angry missile. That's only 105 points.  Oh, yes Big things. Yep. Yes All right. Good stuff. Um Let's talk about cup. There's these these continue. By the way, we're not we're not done with allegiance abilities yet Yeah, uh, we kept our urgul runes, of course. Um, now some of these effects have changed But they're still the same basic concept at the start of your hero phase You can activate one of the following six types of runes You state which rune will be activated you make an activation roll on a one through five You get the normal effect on a six. You get the enhanced effect Before we talk about those I want to just quickly jump down to blaze a fury because it's super like it's very connected to this Yeah, um fire slayers have a new heroic action So and both of these by the way are at the start of your hero phase Which is relevant because you can choose to activate the rune Make the roll and see if you get the enhanced effect And then if you don't then use the heroic action. So anyways the timing on these does work in a in a combo-ish good So At the start of your hero phase, you can carry out this heroic action with a friendly fire slayers hero Instead of any other heroic action you would carry out. Um, so you don't get more it just replaces as always Um, but you pick one friendly fire slayers hero until the end of your turn the enhanced effect Of the ergold rune that is activated in this hero phase applies to that hero Regardless of the activation roll. Um, you cannot carry out this heroic action with the same hero more than once in this In the same battle hence to tom's point Of suddenly jumping your grim rath berserker from rend two to rend four Because you can use the rune of awakened steel, which I think is the strongest rune on this list But but maybe i'm wrong Yes, please. Yeah, like the basic effect is Everybody everybody's melee weapons rend goes up by one the enhanced effect is everybody's melee weapon Rend goes up by another one for two total. So all of a sudden that hero's got plus two rend Um, which is real potent and by the way, we're talking about it in the light of the grim rath But of course keep in mind that's gonna that capability On that struck rune turn is going to apply to any one hero you might want to be You know kicking teeth with right right question. Uh, just because I Forgot to read the mount rules. Would this affect the magma droth attacks, too Uh, yes The runes affect the The magma droths the whole war skull has that keyword. Okay. Yes Was that keyword so as as written? Yes, that would increase the rend of the magma droth attacks hence the 36 attacks On the mag father, which has been called the murder droth by it was it was trademarked by max There you go. There you go So, yeah, I mean that's uh that you could so you can turn many heroes into very scary things with that kind of effect But of course there's more than that. All right. Um There's I mean What other runes will go with same order tom? Uh, what other runes? you know, are you Keeping in mind here because it's not like that's the only good one. There are other good runes in this list. What's your other hot pick runes? Yeah, um, so runa fury, obviously because it frees up command points. Yep Um, because it the default one is plus one to hit on melee attacks Um, and so if you know that you're going to be receiving a charge that turn Um, we talked about how like the one counter strike ability removes the opportunity cost of the plus one to hit um Like are being able to do all out of assault this fixes that right because it gives them that bonus On that counter strike Um, and then like running rolling the enhanced effect, which you can't guarantee the plus one attacks. It's just hot Like it's just it's just really good Yep And then of course the the other one in my book that that really rises to the top is the room Oh, sorry. Yeah, Doug. I'm sorry. Doug go. What was your? Oh, no, no, you're good. Um, I assume you were going to say relentless zeal. I was yeah, sorry. I was trying to jump the line No, you're good. You're actually the one I was going to say was searing heat Um Because because of the thing that tom was explaining where you can do the is it like the overwatch and then melee and So it's uh, if the unmodified wound roll for an attack made by a fire slayer unit six It causes a mortal wound in addition to any damage So like I like that one because all those attacks again It's just dice, but if you throw enough dice at a problem all of a sudden this 10-man unit of volkites can swing above their weight class Oh, yeah And so I like that one. I mean it requires it's situational like if you're you know, you're about to take a punch It's not a bad idea. Uh, just to throw it on to do that I think the interesting thing about the rune of searing heat It is I too like the rune of searing heat says a couple things about The rune of searing heat. It's interesting The rune of searing heat is not keyed to melee attacks Correct as as many things in this table are Yes, so you're like Throwing Yeah, your throwing axis is the key here. Yeah, so I say yeah overwatch and then you get to actually Strike first in combat all of that. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so like you're throwing 40 attacks off of 10 um 10 uh dudes 10 orcs Yeah, like you're in in your previous situation you construed right between their shots and then the axes and then their attacks It's 40 attacks where all of them are now causing a mortal on a wound of six basically right 41 I guess with the champ shot. Um So like that can add up It's also interesting because I think about There's a way to get these runes onto allies Yeah, yeah And there are dwarf allies that have guns Yeah, so it would now benefit from this as well so That's just an that was an interesting thing that occurred to me I have a list with 40 arcanots in there. Yeah, that's Yeah, because Between because one thing that where you're gonna find is that this army has a lot of priests and where there are priests There is curse And so suddenly giving uh, arcanots who have 40 pistol shots um Are not 40 like 30 Some ridiculous number, right? They have a big number of pistol shots. Yes a big number of pistol shots uh, suddenly giving them mortalling on sixes to hit and wound From one from curse and then the other from this rune is searing heat suddenly that's Enticing I'm gonna say fire o'copter meta. Yeah, sure. Yeah, that's that's a very funny one shooting It's in there and all I got you a horde unit if we get a horde meta Hmm Yeah, bruno in the chat said cough iron drakes cough and i'm like, yeah, exactly. That's a Not a bad pick in general when you could be improving also their wren just like the normal trick So, yeah So the point is is that like the rune searing heat's really interesting actually in the different ways It can affect or work with allies if you go that route where your allies can benefit from this stuff And then yeah, the last one is that I really like is the rune of reliance zeal Just because it does add to their move characteristic plus two to run and then the enhanced effective plus two to charge We mentioned already being able to give that to to go track to get him going along and chugging Which is very scary With the allies, but I mean just the army's main challenge is mobility There's obviously a big answer that this is this one's more or less the same. It's always been It's a great turn one uh trigger Of course. Yeah, and honestly like to the point of the um, I just want to slip this in here I'll be quick with the ergold runes. The reason I like it is because I like When it's my turn coming up with a plan and then you're locked in like you have to execute that plan And it's it's one of the things I love about the game conquest. I'm not Sure if anyone here has played it, but like you come up with your all your order of activations At the top of the turn and then it's just a matter of when you activate units Playing it out and this is the exact same way of like I just need to move That's all that you just pick the room for that. Right. I just need to attack pick a rune that's good at that Yep So yeah, I mean, uh, I do love that we still have the rune of farsight We just can't let it go We just can't let these things go Here's the deal If you have most of your army within fighting range Yeah, sure. That's like 60 to 100 attacks that just move to threes and threes. Sure. Yep On on the on the the enhanced strike. Yeah, yeah on the enhanced strike. Yeah, of course, of course But I mean that's that's pretty good Like it's gonna do damage and that's the key it's it's gonna get something through There is some damage that will likely result from that. Yes Something might happen. I do not disagree with this because because you need to always ignore those axes like all just simply ignore the axes Um, except when you actually like when you hit a saturation point of like everybody's in combat Then suddenly you're in a different world with those axes. Sure I just think it's funny that the thing that actually makes the axes like the rune of steering heat is Makes the axes scarier than the rune of farsight the one that specifically bonuses the axes So like that's kind of funny. Um, all right Okay, let's talk command traits Um, I'm just gonna blow through the the orc rune father and rune sends real quick Here and then we'll kind of go through from there Those are the winners all of them. Yeah, like yes all of them are good. I like them all just pure magma uh, like I actually like I think All of these somehow that's true Like I want to I was trying to find some way to say that's not true But they this is so unusual to me. My body doesn't know how to react to it Yeah, they all of this feeling inside this feeling of of satisfaction They wrote four command traits and I could see a world where you'd want to use All of them It's so weird. I'm not used to this. All right So fury the fire slayers add one to charge rolls for friendly fire slayer units holy within 18 Um bonuses of charge are amazing and that is a very generous bubble Especially on a guy who can be on a monster chariot base Well, no, yeah No, I was just gonna say remember you also have the blaze of fury ability with Relentless seal which can give you plus two And to your chart so like all those things they do rack up on a hero So that's all I was gonna say. I'm sorry them. Um, no I was just gonna say that your volkites which are like half of your squirrels Right I'm not heroes girls are Which like and there are reasons to take both sets of volkites now. Um, are natively plus one to charge So this oh, yeah, that's right. Plus two And there is a battalion that people forget about called vanguard That gives you a rerollable charge once a game without issuing the command or receiving the command And So you could feasibly drop a block of 20 volkites in in vo starg And like you're not gonna get them all into combat Realistically, but they'd be on like a seven rerollable Sure, which is a good number as anyone who's played annihilators knows Yes, like that's a good number and they're like at Three attacks a model possibly four if a ruin father is near. Yep. And so suddenly like and you're on twos and twos Like that's like you're gonna do work when you make on even if you do 10 of those You're gonna come in with 30 to 40 attacks on twos and twos. Yeah That's pretty good Good Like bonus to charge good good good synergy with everything else you mentioned Blood of the berserker once for battle in the combat phase after this general is fought for the first time You can say they will go berserk if you do so this general can fight for a second time in that phase The strike last effect applies to this general when they fight last or when they fight for the second time Only unfortunate part of that that I don't like I wish you'd just let them The next time you get to make an activation choice is when that should happen not not strike last I don't know why we put that on there But nonetheless as mentioned there is a potential to make the murder drawth And you know this can be a part of it if you've got a dude Running in there on redonk rend slash damage going wild like he'll probably live against most units because he's Probably killed most of the unit he's fighting just make sure he's within three inches of somebody or I should say four to five inches of somebody Yeah, I mean like he'll lift a giant like let's speak like when he pops he'll lift a giant. Sure. Yep. Yep Hmm Um, so that's pretty generally fighting twice on super killy heroes Good Again, this isn't like yeah, this isn't super complicated math, right? That's why I love it. Yeah The murder machine fighting more is good because he does more of what he's good at Um spear to the grim near um if this general is on the battlefield when you make an activation role for the purposes of Ergal runes the enhanced effect applies on a five plus instead of a six That's actually quite a big statistical shift in your chance to get the enhanced effect Yeah, this is like the whole game like if if if I start with this Command trait and then I'll migrate to one of the other ones if my army build is appropriate. Yeah, sure It's just but this is how I start. Yeah Because the enhanced effects are so strong on a lot of those runes Other than the rune steering heat, which is funny It actually isn't I don't ever care if I generally get the enhanced effect like it's okay at best But for a lot of them, it's really strong. It's pre mortals. Sure. It's it's not nothing I'm just saying like if I don't get the five six. I'm not I'm like, okay Whatever, but getting plus two to charge getting plus one attack, right? Like one more. Yeah getting one more rend like these are big bonuses For your army y5 up under the effective, right? Yeah um So Literally doubling the percentage chance that that happens every round Uh, it's it's a big deal And then finally leader of the duart driss is all the hall. Yep. Okay Um water of all the different dwarves Um, if this general is on the battlefield Jordan allied units are treated as if they have the fire slayers keyword for the purposes of urgold runes battle traits Literally the only articulation for hospitality to your neighbor in all of war hamberdom, but yes Um, so yeah, like which means if that general is still alive Uh, and you have those a four mentioned ko units or um Or iron drakes or whatever and you Uh, you know, you strike the appropriate rune it can apply to them Um, or whatever Your ally dwarves happens to be go trek hammers You know, whatever. I don't care something Yeah In general you want melee power I'm sure your allies gyro copters Gyro copters sweet sweet gyro copters Getting in there. I'm just gonna end on them on them copter blades plat plat I'm on a respected competitive play platform. So I'm just gonna say random crap and I'm sure someone will believe me Seems right to me.   It's a weird it's a weird feeling, but here we are. Um, tom uh Do any of the fire slayers priest ones tempt you away from the glory that is the inheritance of rym near I have one Okay You said no He said no Oh, okay. So there's one called avatar of vulcatrix Basically when you come pick duck, it's so you Yeah, it's the best I talked about So basically your general is a priest and so when he dies it immediately spawns an endless spell of the Whatever it is. Yeah Yeah, I'm holding for enough And so then immediately acts and if you don't have him in your army like you didn't pay for him You get him for free and all of the brune priests now know the chant to bring him onto the table and He immediately activates also if you already had him on the table meaning you don't get to spawn a second one Wherever the existing one is it also gets to activate so like it gets to move its 2d6 and do the mortal wounds thing Um, I love it ever since like gave spawn from beast of chaos sure like when a hero dies you get a spawn This is like the same thing and it's just the best consolation prize It's like rewarding me for being stupid and charging the priest straight into combat And uh, I love it. This is the piece of candy like reward, right? Like it's it's the bonus nachos.  I'm here for The only like for me it's it's it's the only thing that I thought about was master priest. Yeah Because that's the strike the rune of rending twice in a game. I was like, yeah, that's that's what that's doing That's what that rune says that ability says get your rend rune twice I was like, okay. I'm two fifths of a beast of chaos army. Here we go I I agree with on that like if you're looking to like bring teeth everything in the Rune father and rune son is perfect There are some corner cases if you want to build this particular list around priests, but But well the challenge like so like I would invite us to think kind of meta meta consider Like how these units are functioning. So you have two units to pick from as your general, right? One is the rune master Okay The other is the rune smiter Unless you're you're running a mag smiter like a smiter on mag midroth Mm-hmm Both of those units have very specific like Functions and places to be with the rune smiter being your deep striker So you're often like he is a throwaway piece if you put him like because you're always gonna be deep striking He is there only to get another unit somewhere. Yeah So like him like he's not on the battlefield Like you can't until you deep strike him you cannot double right Yes, because he has to be on the battlefield. Yeah, right And And then on top of that like he's likely to die because he's probably going to be in a place that you deal deep striking units The rune master, which are is the other like likely one. He's the one that you look at and you're like, yeah I could see you know taking him and being all like Having him be a general right? But the problem that you run into with the rune master Is that one of his abilities specifically the only triggers when he is near the general? When he is near another model that is the general. Yeah. Yeah, I got you. I got so in order to actually like utilize his His ability, right? Yeah, you you have to Um Well, I don't know. Sorry. It's within any three inch of any friendly rune work rune if you're general Is it within yeah, so maybe it does trigger for yourself that you generate let's put a pin in it and we'll get to it When we get yeah, okay. Anyways, yeah, that's fine. Let's talk artifacts Cool, okay So Doug i'm hitting you up first on this one Uh, this is a page with a lot of different artifacts. Okay Yeah, they are just to set the table for everyone. They are divided between The rune father runesons The fire slayers priests and then fire slayers heroes just in general So they could also be given to the like grim wrath people You know, so our berserker fellows. So our our berserker friends can only Uh select from the bottom three but From any of these because I I don't think these are as strong all throughout but there are there are some some really fun ones in here Really they these they have some of the most like they have some of the fewest artifact lists in the game and There's very few misses here. Yeah, I would agree There's a lot of them that I love That's fine. I Okay, we can get to the point where I'm thinking about painting up mine as gray fear just to get two more of them like Yeah, most of my armies have been gray feared. Yeah, I agree that this is better. I'm just saying like these aren't all winners No, no, of course not, but let's count how many out of the 10 are Okay. Yeah, let's let what what do we like dug hit me first. Give me give me like two picks of what you like Okay, uh first one is for relics of the feared. So this is one that grim wrath berserkers can do Once per us drop of the magma malt magma malt ale. There we go. I'm so glad we went here first It's everything. Yes. Yes. Yes. It's the elephant room Once per battle at the start of the combat phase You can say this bearer will drink their magma malt ale If you do so double the attacks characteristic of the bearer's melee weapons until the end of the phase Which is important real important Yep, um throw it on a grim wrath berserker He can attack twice within the same phase whether he dies or not And uh or you know a murder magma draught mega daddy Yes, yes, it's the best and you make a lot of attacks. Yes. Now, obviously This isn't this one will not double the attacks of the mount, but it would double Mount but it doesn't matter like the the father will be at five base attacks doubled Yeah, I'm just just laying it out. This is that is in no way a strike against this item I think he will double pile in with blood of the berserker. Yeah. Yeah, absolute absolute winner. What else you got dug? the other one I really um It's not sexy, but the the volatile brazier it just lets you reroll chanting rolls for the bear And do what? Sorry when you when the bearer attempts to summon invocation You can reroll chanting rolls for the bear and the range of the prayer is doubled Yep. Yeah. Yep. Yeah Talk about that a little bit, Doug uh, so I I mean, uh Is there a specific thing that you're seeing because for me my thing is like the wall Like I'm gonna throw that little wall down way up in there the nose. So hopefully 36 inches.  Um Yeah, the molten infernoff normally has a range of 12 So being able to draw like to where he set up. He has his range is beyond that Yeah, but That extends it out to the way he works. It's gonna just make it like yeah, sure whatever. Yeah, 24 and moving eight And you can just chuck him like a yo-yo. Yeah, why not? Yeah, because he can just suddenly be anywhere So yes, yeah, and so like he will hit the pockets like the key is is what the the volatile Uh, what the brazier allows you to do is to drop him turn one into their line Because normally he would not be able to get in turn one. Um, and so that allows like Because you're gonna put this on your rune master who's going to be in your back field with your Or like midfield with your With your forge right hiding behind it and he's going to drop Their infernoff like into the line, which is just Like hot now he can also drop the wall 36 inches And it's impassable and you're going to set it up like farther than one inch away from other terrain And so you can actually create choke points and like make units not move be able to move at all Like things just stop moving and I don't think that giants can step over it Uh, they can They can they can move over in the spells and prayers Uh, does it specifically call out invocations on their war scroll? Yes Okay, and and even if they're impossible Wait, wait, so the runic firewall has specifically has a rule. It says nothing can go across it unless it has the magma drop keyword Right, right. I mean like they rule trumps giants Like or can fly My I don't know. It's worth an FAQ question Like a pretty casual reading of the thing would say you can walk over top of it. Okay, like The the the intention is clear and it says they can walk over invocations So I don't know man. It feel like feel free to FAQ. I wouldn't bank on that strat. You don't need it against giants Oh, no, no, no, I mean don't bank on it. Yeah, but yeah, but again against like 32 mil bases. You can pull them Uh, you can pull them out of combat like or you can like you can if they're terrain depending on how it's set up You can make it so 32 mil bases can't pass through an area and have to run like an additional Like 20 inches because it's only an inch. You're absolutely right anybody who's bigger than a 25 mil base and can't fly You can just lock them in Yeah, yeah, like so you could just choose people to not get to play and there's like no getting rid of it There's no unbinding the invocation That wall is there until they burn the the the like the The word save what you're not gonna do if you've done if you've chucked it into their line And so, uh it's It's uh Terrifying like it's like it like to me. It's it is so like it is a hot pick Especially in an army where you're so slow. Here is the current reading of long shanks because I saw. Okay. Um, like Coo-ho a cahool Cool, I'm not sure. Sorry In the in the comments was saying it does not it does because the FAQ for long shanks reads like this Okay When this unit makes a normal move run or retreat Okay, so not charged importantly, but yep It can ignore other models which this is This is a model Right and terrain features when you trace the path of its move across the battlefield But it cannot finish that move within three inches of an enemy unit Right. So interestingly that is the current FAQ wording. Yes, but here's the deal This model has a special rule a special ability on it. I understand.  Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I say I'm ignoring it. You're saying I can't go over it Sounds like it's not it's not just an issue of passing over a model. It's an issue Of a special rule is prohibiting all movement. I understand that I get it And so it's definitely an FAQ Yeah, cool. Yeah, cool. So I don't believe that they can pass over it, but yeah But it's definitely an FAQ. So it doesn't matter what you believe or I believe it matters what they say the answer is So there we go. Okay. Cool. Got good picks. Uh, yes Those are his two. Um, like, uh So the like the acts of grim near Um, it like there are no other weapons like it in the game for like picking like How do I want to say this? um for choosing To like increase the effectiveness Like most things either if that increase rent increase damage or increase attacks But very few of them increase rent and damage Yeah, well and oftentimes you'll see limitations on that rent improvement like for the weapons that improve rend You'll often see it say But it cannot improve it to more than like rend three and we've already talked about the various Ways that rend could be going up in this army like that rend could be moving And so, you know, it's that like this is just one more on the pile Yeah, right and one of the weaknesses of the rune father is that he has rend one on a three damage attack And this acts of grim near pushes it to rend two on a four damage attack And when he when he pops off with that rend rune, he's on rend four with a four damage attack Yep And he can have or he can he can have he can't double But he could if he still if you do the acts of grim near with The berserker you could still get to ten attacks at rend four four damage Okay Sure, absolutely So that's one of them. The other one that I really like is I'm partial to the null city and icon I I like ignoring spells on a four plus spells and endless spells on four plus There's still enough magic. There's not a lot of magic out there, but there's still enough You know techless is still floating around croak still floating around That if I'm running four or five artifacts with this army, which is very possible by the way Um, like this is getting this is getting thrown on the pile Because I'm going to have a battle smith. Sure I'll tell you my pick because I actually only have one more.  Yeah, and this dude is a competent melee fighter By the way that you could don't have doesn't have to be on the grim wrath. They can be on other people as well No, but this is like grim wrath number two. I put the demons later on grim. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely He's a great pick for it, right?  He's a small base hitting into like four big bases People often stretch their blight kings out in a line Right, like it's a very common thing to have blight kings move forward and sort of align Because they can so he just can like hit a corner of a unit and just go ham and chop that unit to bits Nope So that's why I like the demons later. There's a lot of annoying things with annoying ward roles in this game and that says nah Like it's just a great and rarefied answer Um, that's that that's my one pick. I I just don't buy a lot of the other ones like the fiery ring. No, please stop Um, the master rune is is neat. Certainly to have a three plus ward for like a phase Yeah, right But it's not making my list here. Just I like the army's tough enough. It's there. There are better choices I which sounds crazy because a war of three plus is so insane but Right, but that's the point is that you're there's just a profusion of excellent items That that one doesn't even normally get a second look Yeah, I mean My issue with it is it's it's too easily dodgeable What I mean by that is like if I know That you've got that and it's on that guy. I'm just not going to target that guy with a thing. I want to kill, right? Yeah, I just won't literally activate it when it means anything Yeah um, the plus two charge roles like again like You can get plus one elsewhere like you can make that count Yeah, my point is I'd want it on a melee type hero who wants to go fight and there are already better options I it's like three other better options in this list. I would put on the melee hero who can go Yeah, I get that that's that's the issue Ash cloud rune could it could have been an epic choice if it would have done spells and shooting Yeah, yeah, that was yeah that one because it's just spells and like right now There's just I mean maybe I'll say this the ash cloud rune could change in value if we hit a more magic heavy Yeah Right, but like right now. There's just not a lot of people using offensive spells on your army It's people use spells to buff their own units, right? My doing arcane boulder. Am I doing mystic shield? Like what a joke of a choice, right? I would have even settled for like keep it with spells But just spells don't work within 12 because then at least my My priests that I dump in there to transport units forward can offer something like he can But yeah And then the drop helm like I can see that in a in a lafnir list Like where you're running multiple drops because you're gonna want the the mag smiter in a support position Yeah, sure and Most of the the those Um, or sorry will affect the claws and horns Attacks because there's no three up to wound Right so that goes to two ups and then like and it doesn't overlap with like the runes will give plus one to hit You know and so that's like I like again, I I that's ended up in some of my lists in my in my uh in my uh In my lafnir list and so what's fascinating is we've just walked through these and at least Six of the 10 Are solid That have a real a real place My my list might be closer to five, but I'll give you six I don't want to argue over it like it because I wouldn't I wouldn't die on that hill But you're right. It's a higher hit rate than than most other book we see. Yeah. Yeah out of 10 like Like oh, I'm just curious. Which one don't you rank out of there out of the six that I need the null city Okay, that's fair Just again It's one of those like yes, maybe there's a world where it's highly valuable Okay, yeah, you're just saying in the current meta. It is not. Yeah, right, right That's all that's that's not a statement on the nature of that in general And i'm not even sure like it's bad to have those things Okay, no totally. Yeah, I mean like because again it does change and armies that are out there do change In it like it gives you a hard counter Right to castle against techless against Because like you can move all your heroes or all your kind of strategic spots in one of your big, you know melee units into this bubble and Which is functionally 24 inches Yes, and it's And it's against techless croak and negash Because a lot of negash's damage is coming from um Is coming from arcane bolts. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, and if we start seeing him on the table more than this thing increases in value Yeah, I don't disagree. Okay. Um, so somebody asked could we please clarify? How the plus one attack combines with a drought of magma tail I'm seeing loads of states and how to handle this quadruples margin year 22.2.4 handles it Yes, so the the basic rule of what happens when you have to apply both addition and multiplication to a To a single number Normal rules of math effectively apply here So multiplication and division happen first then addition and subtraction, right? So you would like if you have plus one attack And you have double your attacks you double the whatever the number says and then add one and then add one So like let's say it's three base you go to six seven you don't go to four eight So some people have tried to make the argument that based on when they are being applied Like so Because it's Like at during certain phases. Sure, right? Are adjusting to the characteristics and then being applied afterwards the reason why that doesn't work Is because it's keyed on the attacks characteristic right, okay, and so Like you have a singular number that is getting modified. So either it's being multiplied or it's being added and so The those calculations are always interfacing and that doubling is always being It taken effect before the addition or subtraction. This is why by the way when you get affected by a half movement spell Running still works Well, or why bonuses to charge are really good against like the demon the demon prince Of core ability, right? Because if you have like plus two to charge and you get your charge halved Suddenly you have it and then you add then you add the nice cushion. Yep. Yeah, exactly So all of a sudden like the five inch charge isn't that impossible anymore Even though it became a quote unquote 10 on the dice because yeah And like on runs runs add a v6 to your base characteristics. So the having happens before you add the d6, right? It's the same type of thing. Yeah. Yep. Okay Cool prayer scriptures and mount traits Tom, I just want you to talk about the prayers here. Tell us about the prayers It's interesting because When I look at the prayers, there is nothing here that like Stands out that I want to use every turn. Yeah, I agree But I want to be able to use all of them every game Well, which fortunately is actually possible three of the four like three of the four I want to use every game. Um I prayer of ash is Wonderful because it's basically is a Buff to one of your fire slayer units that gives them make one to wound to be wounded. Sorry And so this is functionally a variant. This is where the Um This used to be a minus one to hit and it moved a minus one to wound So it's basically it's like the aura that Um, what's their faces used to have? Um Permed are used to have but now lets you pick a unit and buff them 18 inches out Which is nice, right? It's a good buff Is a good buff Moving down ember storm. It gives the run in charge to hearth guard berserkers or volkites Amazing because you're going to use that We've talked about why we all stand why we all stand that already. Yes, more run in charge is good Yep, what's scarier than that hearth guard or that? Grammarath berserker getting there and they're mixing it up Well, in fact, it's let him letting getting him getting to do that in the hero phase Um and prayer of grammar fury will do that. Um because it's a fireflare hero without a mount within three inches of enemy unit They can fight in the hero phase. So that's hot Um graph of voltricks is the only one that really falls down for me and it's simply because um, you know, it allows a magma doth to um fight at the top of their damage table regardless of how many wounds they've suffered Um, and I mean, that's fine But in the current meadow where we can spend a command point to do the same thing when we need to Um, it is somewhat redundant now This would let you like all out defense or all out assault and Do you know and fight the type of profile? Which is fine. So there are some uses for it start completely useless But it's the one that is the weakest to me. Yep Doug I'm coming over to you for the mount traits. Um, you can pick one. Yes fire slayers magma draught hero to get a mount trait Uh, we'll talk about obviously ways to modify this stuff eventually. There is a sort of weird comical thing uh about this but uh What's your what's your what's your take on the mount traits, Doug? Um I I honestly the first two are really the ones that I would take. Um, maybe All of them are good. How about that? I'll just say all of them. I mean One of them like the stomp it adds some mortal wounds to one of your monster does a stomp the other one some mortal wounds I mean When we're throwing 40 freaking axes and doing sixes to wound a mortal wounds.  Yes Like that's a big swing Yes, it is it is it is my favorite is the second one where Um, when you have a magma draught and it does the fire stream It's a tax characteristic is based on the number of models in the unit you're hitting up to 10 And so this just says it's if it's below five, it's treated as five which I like the consistency It makes the gun more meaningful against heroes Which is not it's not a super long range, but it's a cool little be neg to rend.  Give it to me daddy, uh because Subtract one from the damage characteristic of melee weapon attacks against this thing. It is good. They're all good. I mean It's only melee weapons. That's fine, but The what's fascinating to me is that like you see the best of all of the abilities across the entire meta Sprinkled in at various points in this book. Yeah, sure So like you get one unit that's going to be resisted against multi damage You get one unit that bypasses Wardtaves. Yeah, yeah Um, and I love that because it's like again for a for somebody for a johnny Who can pull all the right strings and line up the right fights? It's golden Yeah Is it gives you a tool for everything? Yeah, I'll tell you Doug my biggest problem with by the way Just a just a small note to the writer of this book I enjoy the young blood adult ancient thing. It's cute. I like that profession It's a little thing. They didn't have to do that. It's just a neat thing I like when writers write cool stuff like that. It's just it's nice. It's a fun little sort of narrative progression Right, right. Yeah, it's just cool Um, so shout out. Well done. Uh, sometimes it's the little things the um I hate lava tongue adult Doug and I'll tell you why Um, not because I disagree with any of your appraisal of it. I completely actually agree with your appraisal of it I just think it's how They're roaring fire stream should work Like I don't think this should be a montrake. I think this is just how That it should be shooting attack should be All right, like I would agree. It doesn't feel bad when you have this like stream of fire And it's like me me against heroes or like a giant huge huge Right. Yeah, it's more like the luke fire at that point, right? Yeah He plays he fires like I play call of duty, which is yeah, not good. Yeah I mean imagine if it or or Imagine if it calculated based on either model count or Uh, wouldn't characteristic whichever is higher. I mean that would be hilarious But I mean like again just This is the kind of thing that you just be at ease of use thing to make some short attacks on monsters Not not worthless. They're already not great when you're dealing with like ultra short range stuff like this Yeah, yeah, like what do you feel? Yeah You know it's come on. Yep. I mean sent those aren't priority targets anymore. Aren't priority targets So so they're clearly fine. So I you know go nuts This should be the standard and then the um Mount trait should be like it does a number of attacks equal to It's a value for holding an objective Like crag knows 30 damage Uh add The mount rate would be like add Three or five or double the number and increase the maximum accordingly Of course. Yeah, so instead of capping at 10 you cap it 15 or something like that like wow That'd be neat, right? You see you can have a real like he's got a lot of spits hot fire dial in dial in dial in dial in dial in I spit hot fire. Okay. Yeah, so anyways, there you go Alrighty lodges Yes Okay, so what we're going to do here is to cover this we're going to each pick our lodge Okay, done. Yes. So tom What lodge are you joining? Yeah, you get to go first. You get to join the lodge first You get pick of the litter as it were tom. You're um, you were the first to the magma hold Uh, well, I know what Doug's gonna do and so I'm going to Oh, that's nice of me. I I I'm gonna not take it if I get I'm just gonna go with vo start Okay, um, yeah, because vo start to me like makes like it makes a vol crates great again Um, like now, let's not get excited. Not the shield ones. They're just still okay. Um, I'll cast risk right there. Yeah, like one inch reach one attack models Yeah, it doesn't matter how many bonuses to hit when you're giving them, uh, but this really turns up um This really turns up the double axe volkites Um to the point where like it's like because when they're coming in they're coming in on twos twos to hit two So it gives plus one to hit and wound to uh, vol kite berserker units.  Um, if you pop the fire rune, they're all mortar wounding on, uh, sixes to wound Yeah, exactly. And that's that's just it when you think about the stack with the runes there Like obviously it's it's item on item on item that can actually make that's why I said if you just read the scrolls You're like, I don't get this but when you start seeing these combos pop, you're like, oh my god. Yes It's 30 attacks on twos twos rend one or two Damage two like whoa Okay, now that's a whole different ballgame right right and that's and that's 170 points coming in right yeah And the best part about this is that like they can retreat out Right, you know, we're talking about these kind of waves they can retreat out and you have a battle smith that's riling on a four plus So you're gonna refill those units quickly Yep All right, good pick dug You're what lodge you're next up you you've arrived at the magma hold next you're banging on the door What lodge are you seeking entrance to? Uh, tom teed me up. I'm going gray feared um the morally dubious mercenary ones who Uh, their deal is add one to the wound's characteristic of friendly gray feared heroes that do not have a mount In addition, you can pick two additional artifacts of power and for me What that means is the rest of the list is going to focus on objective play and then i'm going to arm to the teeth of couple of cruise missiles of berserkers and other heroes and play the game with my opponent of can you take these objectives and also Try to play a defensive game in your back line against these things right try to zone me out when it's just a third You know that kind of stuff. Um That's what i'm here for because as long as I know how I have a number of like real threats in my pocket That I can put on the table at any time And they're low cost investment. I don't care if they die, but they put my opponent on tilt enough to Make mistakes. Yep. Yeah, I mean gray feared is the cash rules everything around me uh Force because yeah, like we already just talked about how there is a good number of good artifacts Getting two extra artifacts is a lot of extra artifacts on that list Especially in a world where you have heroes who aren't leaders The first list I wrote was a seven foot hero gray feared list. Yeah, that was my thing too. Yeah Uh, obviously i'm the last one to arrive surprise surprise and I've been grudgingly asking to join And if i'm gonna join I want the one with all the puppies. So i'm going loft near, um, you know It it does exactly what it does for all the monster stuff Which is add two to the wounds characteristic of friendly loft near magma draught units, which actually makes them have It's like quite a bit of wounds by the by these aren't small wound people um And in addition up to three loft near magma draught units in your army can be given a different mount trade So you can have which is all the mount which is all the all the mount rates I hope you liked those three. Those are what you get Yes, correct. So, um, but it pushes all of your magma draughts up to 18 wounds It does that's what i'm saying. It's not a small number of wounds like they started 16 This isn't stagadons getting plus two where they start at 10 and go to 12 or something Yes, like this is 16 going to 18 it ain't small And and like and you can run, you know, like the big thing you could run a six mag army Right because you can run, uh, the three battle line suns who the suns are all super fighty like And so I i'm a big fan of loft near like I think that there's a lot of heat there. I don't know that I would ever run six I think I would run three um Yeah, I think it's easy to fall into the trap of like just because you can do something this means Yeah, I think the right army there is one of each like a father a son and a smiter and then And then a holy smiter a father son and holy smiter and then we'll and then a bunch of like bodies for objective play and support heroes show yeah Do lodges apply to the entire army? Yes, as long as whatever's in the army matches whatever's going on here, right so like With with voss dark tom's pick. It's only vulcite berserkers who are getting this bonus, right? But yes, all of your vulcite berserkers will get it Now but also keep in mind. Oh, sorry. Go ahead No, I don't please go for it. I was just gonna say keep in mind that they The lodges affect everything in your army. That's not an ally even though there is a command trait that lets you be an ally for a turn That's only for the allegiance ability with the urg old So this it is a separate thing, but yes, it's army-wide Yeah, and the only time the only the only Unit that has a keyword associated with it is the underworld warband, which are voss dark Which again one of like all the models that aren't the hero in that voss dark are vulcite berserkers So they would get the plus one to hit and shard or hit and Uh Now we have to talk about the elephant in the room Uh, which is that oh how the mighty have fallen welcome my friends to the you were good in the previous In the instance of this book tax Take that hermdar You were the default choice for 99% of I don't understand What what is this? No, what what is it? Never heard of it. Yeah, never heard of it. Uh, what a non ability. This is just ridiculous It's So bad. It's hilarious. I love when these things happen when they swing the pendulum so far to the other side Like never be the best sub faction in an addition Because when the addition rolls over and you get your new book, you are instantly the worst like By a country mile You are the worst Yeah, keep your head low embrace mediocrity. Yeah, this is like all good lessons. They're so terrible Um, what was the why can't I think of it? Who were the storm cast double shooters in the previous? Um Thank you. Anvil's the helden hammer. The name was would not be something in my head. Um It's we should just call this being anvil'd like you got an anvil dropped on you or something like that because it's this That's the swing, right? That's the the example from best to worst. It's just all the way across. Okay Cool All right. Now the part of the show that I hate Uh, okay. Now is the part about baking muffins. So Um grand strategies and battle tactics Um, we're gonna get through this quickly. So they're a narrative Sure. I'm gonna I'm gonna take that the lead here Tom m said petrofex the lead is totally screwed. Oh, you're not wrong, buddy. That's gonna be Horrible whenever that new book comes out. It will be like the worst ability Exactly that they will get the same ability as herm dart where they will have battle shock losses in an army That's how bad it'll be. Yeah, okay. Plus one bravery Right Okay Here we go the thing about these grand strategies and battle tactics is That like most of these the grand strategies are underwhelming and the battle tactics are Silly, but things you will keep in your pocket when you can basically get them for free So the standard rules of all of these apply. They shouldn't be written. They shouldn't be in these books Please stop. I'm gonna keep saying this. I don't care Call me plenty the elder over here, but carthage must be destroyed um the Guarded lineage when the battle ends you complete this grand strategy if there is one friendly auric rune father and One or more friendly auric rune sons on the battlefield No, just no. Okay. Um, great. Why or or or a battle line unit? Like there's Whatever. All right, um Or how about your monsters since they're both monsters. How about you just take the one that's like Monsters are alive. Yes. Yeah Uh defend the lodge when the battle ends you complete this grand strategy If there are no enemy units wholly within your territory Never ever ever would you take this because you never know what's going to happen. You're not a highly mobile army People have drops and teleports. Yeah Oath takers and skull breakers, uh the old name for what used to be the good hermdar ability When the battle ends you complete this grand strategy If you completed at least four battle tactics and every battle tactic you completed this battle Was from the oaths of battle list on page 75 Holy moses that is hard. That is the best name Most unlikely to be completed. Yes. One of the hardest grand strategies. I've ever seen in print. That is shocking That's like move walk backwards on one foot. Cool And masters the forge when the battle ends you complete this grand strategy. If there are any invocations under your command on the battlefield like Okay, sure. You can almost guarantee that with the rune wall because you just summon it and then it stays Just leave it Yep All right, so whatever Uh battle tactics, um Look they are what they are. I don't want to read all these kill more things. They're just kill more Yeah, I mean like well, they're not all kill more things But a lot of them are the only thing I'll say the only thing I want to read on this list There's two things I want to read on this list is the awesome one There's there's actually two I want to read on this list.  There's two worth talking about one Settle a grudge because it's funny and it plays into the grudge thing and it's narratively cute And I appreciate it. I appreciate when they write this kind of stuff in Each time a friendly unit is destroyed by wounds caused by an attack made by an attack Make a note of the enemy unit that made that attack in a book of grudges if you wish When you pick this battle tactic pick one of those enemy units that is still in the battlefield You complete this tactic if that unit is destroyed. It's cute. I like it. It's fun. It's flavorful It will be an autocomplete on the turn you choose to activate it like you're going to lose something This is like your round four or five You're just going to do it when the unit that like when the unit of long strikes that shot your dudes is down to One long strike guy and you know, you're going to go kill that dude or whatever, right? That's that's what you'll do and you've already used broken ranks or everything else. Yep the Hilarious one I want to talk about is an igno an ignominious death Them openly admitting that the axes are terrible in the form of a battle tactic Like this is I've never seen a battle tactic. That's a self-own Yeah, and that's what that's making fun of the army. Yes. It's literally making fun of their own rules Pick one enemy hero you complete this tactic that if the sorry you complete this tactic if that enemy hero Is slain by wounds caused by an attack made with a fire steel throwing axe this turn.  Oh, yeah I almost feel like they deserve some kind of special award at the tournament Like just completing this battle tactic should qualify you in one round In one of 25 rounds if you during a tournament if you get this completed I feel like you've earned something Yeah, so I think I'm taking firesliders to Um So I have a narrative event coming up for ren 4 I think I'm going to take firesliders to it and it's one of my goals is going to be to kill Ain't nobody has death off So I'm going to aim because it's a four because it's it's a triumphant treachery So it's like four players at a table. Oh, yeah, sure Um, and I'm going to try every game To get to get it once Sure I say and I say Good luck Um, yeah, now they don't actually use like at the event. They don't actually use battle tactics That doesn't matter to me. I'm still gonna try to do it irrelevant Yep um Yeah, so there we go. I mean the rest of these is is pretty much what you would expect them to be There are more variations on the base ones. I guess Okay, cool Um It's that turn your whole army throws axes at a skink priest. Yeah, exactly like get him Get that four wound goblin with a six out save. We're gonna get him. Get him. Get him sweep the leg All right, let's get into the war scrolls. My goodness. This is a long show. All right We're gonna move through the war scroll somewhat quickly. Fortunately, there's not a huge number of them We'll give them there. Only heroes Yes So let's talk about the orc rune father on magma droth This is sort of the new this this will give us a lot of the new format for the magma droth as well because a lot of these Abilities are going to carry over um, so move 12 on a diminishing profile for monsters um the Uh Wound table has been moved up as we would expect to the standard four tiers not like it used to be So like as we see these books roll we go to the four tier wound chart Which is a good quality of life change 16 wounds four up save eight bravery. So again is much higher like is solid amount of wounds at 16 wounds The four up save was said to me. Yeah, sure. I mean, that's that's the thing here, right right You wanted a three Yeah, I wanted a three. Yeah, sure. I mean every hero wants like that and the breath Of course not in the breath weapon are the two things that felt like misses to me for these Yeah, which I think is worth talking about.  By the way By the way, it's rend one on him. Yeah, it is. Yes. He's got a really sharpened it up more Yeah, he's really good with that. He's he's up in the air. It's more. He's got more Sort of leverage momentum angle something. He's the one that grows last sure We had to get that. Yeah, exactly. Come on That's X. Bam Okay, the roaring fire stream as we mentioned It's a tax characteristic is equal to the number of models in the target unit up to a maximum of 10 So like just reading that what you're talking about is an attack that hits on it To if he's unwounded wounds on a three nag one rend one damage, right Now, obviously if you only have one attack, that is not that impressive And that's what happens when you target heroes or other things like that Now he has this other rule that I also hate just because I hate mental tracking stuff like this, uh, wherever shoe is at Uh, this is this is the exact kind of thing that shoe I think would despise Yes, if you watch this shoe and you do like this rule, please tell me But this is the kind of thing that I think he hates and I hate too In addition at the end of your shooting phase if this unit did not make an attack with its roaring fire stream You can say that an inferno is raging inside if an inferno is raging inside Improved the rend characteristic of its roaring fire stream by two after the next attack Uh by two so the next time it does it's now rend three instead of rend one. So cool stuff After the next attack is made with this unit's roaring fire stream. It is no longer raging inside. So there you go So if he if he alternates his shooting to every other Turn or something like that Um Then he can go to rend three Okay Even even at full potential like 10 attacks It's it's okay It's okay Um Like that's that's it in the best possible circumstances of like 10 rend three attacks It rises to the level of okay because it is a nine inch range thing I would just been happy with the salamander breath They're just literally Paced what it says on salamanders. Yes, it's they have a better attack. Yeah,