Hello everybody, if it's Wednesday, it's Warhammer and that must mean it's time for another episode of Warhammer Weekly We're back at home back from adepticon Ready to rock and roll joining me as always is my one and only co-host ignore last week. Tom forgot to mute his thing again It's Tom Hey, I'm back.  It's what I would expect It's just it's it's just Tom also joining us for the first time and I couldn't be more happy to have him on the show Simon what's going on buddy? How you doing? Thanks very much for having me on and it's going pretty great. I'm really excited to be on the show. I Am excited to have you. I knew I wanted to have Simon on the show. I Told him this right before so I'll just repeat myself from the moment that I saw he went for one with a slaves to darkness list recently and Most lists when I read them. I know how they take like I know enough about this is part of a thing I do for a pseudo living. I pay attention to us, you know, I look at lists. I'm like, okay I get how that's gonna play. I know what their path to victory is. I read this list. I was like, I got nothing. I Got nothing with this. I don't know how this list is winning I certainly don't know how it went for one and I was like I reached out I was like Tyler get Simon on the show. We got to do this immediately I need to know I had guesses, but I had no idea. Okay So At any rate, we're gonna be talking slaves to darkness tonight and We're gonna be talking about You know, but what what up with them? Why why is this faction not winning more? It seems like it should win all the time and yet It doesn't nor are a lot of people playing it Which is also weird But we'll get into it. So first off some news Um, yeah, so let's start with the adepticon preview I mean, we did a preview show on this, but I feel like we need to at least acknowledge Some of what went up this weekend Uh, most importantly amongst that list is uh ghost pirates They are not pirates It is a guy in a boat boatmen But we have luncheon the soul see you sir. So like I don't I feel like we don't have a pirate either You don't get in a dingy and become a pirate. He's a ghost Captain, I'll accept that that is a true statement. That's correct Tristan. I was right. I'll look at that Uh, all right. Here's the rumor engine long pointed Sure to the uh Yeah Yeah, look you want our opinions on it. You can go back and watch last week's show What I want to know is Simon, how did you feel overall? about the adepticon previews I think they're pretty good. Like It's hard not to love ghost pirates, right? It's hard not even if Even if they're up for debate, it's hard not to love that kind of thing And you've got like the other night horn stuff they reveal in the same time and all that kind of stuff. I think I think they're looking like really interesting like I don't know exactly. It'll depend on how much some of the stuff like seems like it's gonna cost But that might be quite cool. The heresy stuff was also amazing. That looks really cool That might actually be the game that I never realized I wanted to play for a long time Okay, well the heresy thing was cool. I really liked the new 40k ks nights Uh, my overall statement is show us the summer books you cowards Uh, that's what I wanted to see. That's what we all want to know Show us Prove be right that it's scaven. That's what I want. We all know it is we all know you're hiding rats up in there Show us the scaven. This has been months of me dealing with four books. I honestly don't care about Okay And now but but that's okay because I believe That at the end of this road The horned rat has a reward for me and that's what I want to see. So Show us the scaven Okay, cool. What else we got tom. Let's keep going. What else is in the news? Tom sorry, I'm having some issues Yes You're right. I'm having technical Yeah, your internet's like not great right now and you're not wearing headphones Just just terrible everywhere Well, tom works on his technical issues Uh, I'll go ahead and pick up with with with some of the news here because there's a lot going on Uh, so let's let's tom you you work on yourself Maybe you got maybe it was you who's downloading some things, huh? How about that trying to come after me before the show? All right So Here we go, uh arena shades up on pre-order this weekend. I've got that picture over here on the side Uh, this is obviously the herald of the new night haunt and doc books that'll be coming Who knows how much time we'll have in between those two Next question simon you excited for new doc and new night haunt either these armies your armies either these things interest you in any way Both makes nearly interested me But okay because you know, they're quite they're quite cool But I think the main thing I'm surprised with I hope It's like a double it's like really quick in a row updates for daughters of kane. Yeah, and I'm really I'm really curious as to like what's driving That idea like do they think the current book like doesn't work? and so they're like, oh idea we need to push out like a new daughters of kane book because We did not want that army to just be snakes and flying snakes We wanted like people to play, you know proper units like is it that or is it just like Hey, I had some cool ideas for what Else we could do with daughters of kane like Or is it that they've got loads of the old fashioned mechanics if like old fashioned You know like the stuff that's dropping out of the 3.0 books like re-rolls and that kind of thing Right daughters of kane have loads of those so maybe and maybe it's a combination of those things night haunt. I think They probably need some help more than daughters of kane So I think I'm very happy with night haunt players because if you've been playing like night haunt non-stop And you've not been running like 14 units of two chain gas to some of the weird things you saw on tts But if you've been playing proper night haunt for like a long time And like now is gonna be your time. I just hope that like it works out With all your wildest ghostly dreams We all do really cool. We all do I I agree with everything you just said simon My hope is that maybe we get a more balanced take, you know The first time it was all witches and sisters this time the second time it was all snakes Maybe the third time's a charm and we get some we get like a good They've they've seemed to been showing pretty well on internal balance like we can talk about external balance challenges in the book But other than stormcast where they've got some units that are kind of out of whack and distorting things for the most part The internal balance has been pretty solid in in all the books Um, especially like, you know, you look at nergal idk fireslaters. Those are great examples of good solid internal balance um So, you know, my biggest advice to everybody with the arena of shades is um, probably don't care too much about whatever rules Happen to be in this box. This is why I wish they would just release the book closer to the box But I understand, you know global shipping is is terrible right now. So it is what it is.  Everybody was like, oh the world is over. Everything is destroyed All that I love has come crashing down. Well, that is to say the The four fireslayers players in the world said that but you know, then the book came out It was like, oh never mind Okay, it's it's fine. We're good Right. So what do you think about the new fireslayers? Oh, sorry. No, I do. What do I think about it? I It's good. Like it's not broken. It's right where books should be It felt like it's got play. It's got options. It's got multiple different sort of Consistencies and paths to victory It's how books should be written and I hate fireslayers like as an army. I despise it I think it's just an awful army But I read the book and I was like, I'm kind of interested in this I'm still never gonna collect it, but This is an absolute win. If you can make me not hate fireslayers. You've written a good book They're fine Simon that that's my take. They're fine. Yeah. I think so like they're fine I'm not I don't think it's an army that you're gonna like see it in and pair it and be like, oh Jesus I'm gonna play fireslayers, but I don't think it's when you be like, oh, that's fine I'm just playing fireslayers. He's like they've got like, you know, they can do models like magma druffs seem really Solid, like my you I mean we'll get to this when we drop with my armies But my first instinct is probably like hit the unit many times the same one if it think it's probably good And magma druffs feel like you could just play like, you know, the the memelist they posted was like six of those Right. It's probably a legitimate army was like five magma druffs. I think right like they seem pretty effective at The things that they're trying to do But half god berserkers made me a bit sad like 160 points Like they've got a case of like we used to be good and so we're gonna be expensive forever Like like this Lanesh stuff. I think Yep. Yeah, so I agree with you, Simon. Vince does not So yeah, we'll we'll move on but yeah, so my answer is I hope we get Something like I here's my honest answer to you, Simon I want more books to feel like nergal and fireslayers Okay, where you feel like there's interesting things you can play with but you don't look at it and go Well, this is kind of bent, isn't it? Or you immediately find some bent thing in there Like I just don't understand why we celebrate so hard when a book comes out.  I'm like that's gonna be terrible in a month. We're all gonna be pissed Why are we happy about this? It's it's a bad thing. I want Power level just pitching in the middle of the road with multiple interesting builds That's what all I want where it relies on the player skill to guide to victory I don't and by the way slaves to darkness was my previous winner for best design book for this exact reason I just want to say that tie this all together okay Let's uh, let's keep going with the news Uh, because we gotta we gotta move son. We got we got so golden demon and so old golden demon. How about those winners? Yeah, like well, let's I wanted to I'm just gonna share a few pieces here that are some of my favorites From the event. Yep, uh, which is first off this awesome piece from sam lens This thing is incredible. I've seen this up close and in person many times And Like this thing is truly ridiculous. It's as ridiculous as you think it is It's even better in in your hand Those are all little nurglings under there that that palanquin is on that he's lovingly rendered each little nurgling And yeah, it's just amazing that banner is obviously all freehand sam is a master of everything This is just like such a incredible incredible piece so Well done sam well earned Uh, this diorama from mammoth can Um, like who I had the pleasure of meeting for the first time here. This thing was this is incredible Like by the way, there's so much detail in this As you get close up to it. This diorama was just mind-blowing for this battle scene. It was so big and there's so much Stuff going on that when you like it is truly like a whole novel in Miniature form as you look around and see all the little things hidden around in here and Tom he's using the you probably can't see him. You would have had to be there in person to really see him but he's using the familiars from uh Silver tower as like extra little demons and sort of commanders and things that are happening in there Like the little lord of change guys kind of plotting next to the Next to the sorcerer lord who's in charge and the book guy is running around and stuff like that So it's just it's just gorgeous and wonderful and I love it delightful. Yep Uh, this was from kata Who I also met and who is a lovely amazing person an incredible artist Obviously And obviously like she goes by kaha on online and she's just I mean like next level as far as her style She's the only person who paints like her in the entire world And her stuff is next level gorgeous. This took silver in single miniature and then of course Uh the absolute winner from Gavin Garza who this is maybe one of the most perfectly rendered Sort of miniatures we've ever seen in a competition A lot of people ask the question You know of how this thing won.  Yeah, it is what it is um, so the age of skink mar is upon us he got uh, it's it's uh warhammer skinkle Skinkle miniature category, uh, and he won the uh, the skinkle sword So I'm excited for him It just I think it blew people away and started a lot of conversation But it's just it won by being stupidly good. It's pretty much that easy Like it's not a lot more to it. I think So good stuff. Um, it was a great competition I was of course sad that you know didn't bring home any hardware from this one, but that's okay We we pick ourselves up and we uh, we continue on so look forward to you had a bunch of you had the guy commended and stuff though, right? Yeah, yeah, I did have a bunch of pieces that made it into the commended entries Which is now the new like final so there's like finalist Pins you get and then there's commended entry which is like the level above that Then they pull the three winners out of the commended entries. And yes, I had multiple commended entries, but that's okay such as life There are there are always more competitions in anything you lose in anything warhammer tournaments Painting competitions anything like that. Let me let you know a secret you lose more than you win Right like depending on how you define victory and if victory is bringing home hardware or whatever You lose more than you win and almost everything, right? So Okay So let's let's talk about the non-functioning AOS app Well, yeah, so what's going on with that? It's back now as far as I understand There's another update that was out and you can now Read the war scrolls again My guess is something got screwed up and it got accidentally locked because clearly you could still go to other places and still read The yeah war scrolls So, I mean somebody hit the wrong button in code somewhere or commented out a line That should have been commented out like things like that happen and and as far as I know it's fixed now So and even when it wasn't you could still access the scrolls to other places But yeah, I as far as I know it's fine now. So Do not like that's what I want to say like I hope that that does not become normal Yes, absolutely. I mean they well you can see them again now.  So There you go But hey, cool accidents happen. Um, well a couple uh news that's not related, but I'm going to make it related Uh slanash Heed nights are getting an update in white dwarf Which apparently is just what they need because I think they went 5 and 0 this weekend um Over across the pond. So I mean our our is plan as she's going to be fixed uh Yeah, it's all fixed now. It's it's done. We're good.  So just that's it just give us like Maybe you could just copy paste the herdstone rules right onto the pizza cutter and I'd be fine with it Great jobs are good We're done. I mean that checks out Simon how what are you hoping for in the slanash article? But fixes slanash other than like an article that says reduce Here's the new summoning table double all points cost. Here's the new points for the army reduce it by half go Yeah, like if you can't do if you can't do points like If I don't know if the terrain piece was if you think you're like similarly to the herdstone If you said that well the terrain piece is going to be board wide maybe Maybe the locus is on a two plus for all the levels of heroes board wide or or you got plus two to it So on the greater demons it was like guarantees Maybe that like starts to help a bit because you're not like how am I super fragile army that makes you fight last and oh I didn't roll it and oh now i'm dead Like maybe that would help them a little bit And and just like a way to be a bit tougher Because they're not I think as armies go They're supposed to be very fast and there's some fast things in there But there's not like loads of really fast things in the army. No, it's actually quite especially compared to the moderate by current standards. Yeah Yes, but you get the stuff like the real stuff that's nearly there and you're like, okay Well, you've got like double moving stuffing living city. You've got like double moving dragons You're like loads of teleport and charge stuff and then you've got like oh, we can bring more orders on from a board edge Yeah, okay, like so Either a bit tougher or like somehow faster would be quite helpful. I think so Yep, if you can't just slash the points Right. Yeah, I mean they should have always they are the speed kills army, right? Like that should be their premise I don't mind them being glass cannons if they're just like the fastest thing in the universe And by the way the game is already really fast. It's almost hard to picture something being faster Then what current fast is now when you have 36 inch moving? Maw crushes in the world, right? Like I don't know what I don't know what speed even means anymore But I know 14 inch walking movement doesn't qualify you as fast anymore. It qualifies you as like good That's it. Yeah The entire idk army is just doing doys around you and just laughing right So it is what it is Yeah, dome celestial. I mean it was inevitable I I won't lie. I was like kind of holding out a little bit of hope that we would get the doc treatment And they would just be like no no no no forget about that book. Here's another one on the back of that, right? Just Throw that one in the trash where it belongs. Here's a new book Um, but sadly no dome celestial it is. Okay It's all right now. I just I've moved my goalpost Yeah, exactly. No, I just want the beast of chaos one exactly. We all want the beast of chaos one Or do you get corn or do you get the corn update? Like That's we'll see we'll see next month Oh, I mean like so I was taking around with a uh a slanash list and I don't like I don't hate it You would like uh, you know I I hear that I do but again like I ran dude I ran dreadside herdons this weekend come on dude like they are more expensive and less killy than Then daemonette So It's fine and look at how it catapulted you to the heights of 3 1 in 1. Yes, absolutely Hey, hey, hey Oh All right at any rate anything else in the news? Uh, yes, uh Yeah, so adepticon obviously was this last weekend um The uh finals were announced kind of went live, you know when everything was announced on sunday and then A hiccup there's a retraction and now there's a controversy Yeah, I mean all all if you don't mind I'd like to take the the address on this. Okay. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead So I didn't participate in the event. I like I helped them out. I paint judge do the final paint judging for the event Shout out to all the amazing armies that were there Hobbies a big part of the event and I love to see it because it meant I had 18 incredible armies to review and like seriously They were just exceptionally well done um The top two armies top three actually were just three of the best armies I've ever seen ever anywhere And So shout out to all those folks as far as the the controversy with the standings like there is one thing to say it totally sucks and Uh, you know one of the people who was working on the scoring came out today and directly apologized for it Then took responsibility for it, which is an amazing act of You know sort of bravery as it were and and also just being a good stand-up person They didn't have to do that.  I do hope That what will happen here is gw will extend a second invitation to emma to who was thought to be the winner I don't know anything about that, but I do that would be a great way to make it all better Well, better is the wrong word, but that would be a good that would be a good step in the right direction That's the appropriate thing to say Yeah I mean, let's be honest even making it second out of 200 person event not too shabby It's incredible But to go from thinking you were best overall and you had the ticket to the the finals To not is it it's just an incredible kick Um, I know I know I agree with that completely. Yeah, I agree with that completely. I played emma In round four. She gave a great game. That's all I'm talking about. I'm I'm saying to gw Number two not so bad for two person event There it's worth an invitation. That's all I agreed completely. So I hope gw does the right thing Extends her the same invite. They were going to give to first place. It's unfortunate But come on This is a rounding error in the truest sense of the word on your overall budget and it goes a long way toward making things better in the community and trying to make things a little right For a mistake that's made that we will all make. I only hope that we all have the grace To accept the flaws in our fellow humans as we go through life because we will all be in a position where one day We're asking for forgiveness from somebody else for a mistake. We've made And it might not be as public as this one But it could be bigger. It could be smaller. So that's all Yeah, so there we go So that's it. There we go. That's what I'll say about that and and you know, I'm sure they'll be back next year and And run a great tournament And I'm sure it'll be a lot of fun for everybody involved I only heard positive things from the people who are involved this weekend seem like everybody was having a lot of great games So good stuff Okay Good That's the news Ending on a down note, but that's all right. Hopefully we get some hopefully Emma gets taken care of all right Let's talk about pick of the week Simon You're the guest You get to go first. What would you like to recommend everybody? So Thank you. My pick of the week comes from the man himself. Owen Jackson. He suggested this one to me and Owen Jackson If the If the Owen Jackson recommends something to you that is really a recommendation you should take seriously And so I'm passing it on to the good viewers of what I'm a weekly and it is Stuart iron gets ones McCow and new series The dust when the dust settles He's basically He's doing videos where he looks back like a couple of months after the book comes out and he goes, okay So this is not like hot takes and like oh, I've read the book and I think this unit is good on rate It's like I've read the book. I've gone away two or three months played some games loads of people have played games And this is like some serious considered analysis of like all the different things in the book and I have to say like For someone who doesn't watch like a huge amount of like content because there's like so much and like on release weekend There's like man reads book Okay, you get that and then it's okay. Well now man has read book and I can see the book man has read I want to read the book and then it's like coming back to it after a couple of months Okay, well I don't play magic in of noble but I do want to know how it's been going in the game And it's really really good content. So I definitely recommend big shout out to Stuart for that Fantastic. I'm going it's I I love the I love this idea This is a lot what we're trying to do right now with this right when we come back and revisit armies So I'm all about this because You can you can sort of armchair worry at all you want when that when the book comes out But you have to see things in play and how they feel um So yeah linked already in the description Uh, I mean stewart's awesome bottom line. So I'm he's been on the show He's a great dude, and I'm all about it. Tom. What's your pick? Uh Obviously we did a like live show last week. That was a big deal You know in reaction to kind of the adepticon preview Uh, but I want to give a shout out to a aos coach Who did a live reaction show? Of his own where he had like their stream up as he's like interacting with it And it was just simply delightful Like I loved it. Like coach did a wonderful job. I love the format of like I you know I'm a sucker for a good reaction video, right? And uh, and and coach just he delivered So I would encourage people to check it out Okay, very good Awesome, uh, my pick of the week is very simple and it has to do with this little Skink fellow right here Gavin was interviewed by andy from call to paint. They put together a little video It's only like a six minute interview, but it's very nice He talks about Painting the piece and what he was going for and things like that So go and check out that interview. It's linked in the description Gavin, I did not get a chance to talk to him at all He seems like the nicest guy in the world and obviously he's a great artist So Go check out that interview with him. Um, I would love to have him On the channel sometimes honestly and and and have a talk about sort of the what it takes to For pieces like this because I think it's just it's really good And I'd love to hear what makes him sort of how what he was what was going through his head as he kept working on this Like the endurance that it must take right Um, because this is this is for real. I want everybody to imagine working on something That's like an inch tall for 200 hours of your life That's that takes a mental fortitude Right, this dude's made of steel. It's all I'm saying Stuffer than me okay All right, uh Well, let's talk about a little hobby time uh, so Simon, what are you working on man? What's on your desk? What you've been painting? What you've been putting together? So until recently I was planning to dip my toe back into a 40k event um, but we just haven't been able to kind of I mean So I used to play 40k like a lot a few years ago, and then I kind of switched to aos a lot I was like, oh, maybe I love ternits I was like, maybe a new ternit book and like flyers are cool and like and So i've been working on like loads of different flying ternits. So like hive tyrants harpy's crones that kind of thing and so Yeah, they've been painted like in a kind of like electric blue Like kind of glowing blue bodies and then kind of a Wine red kind of like carapace. It's it's coming out quite nicely but I was I was on the verge of like, well, do I just Switch to speed painting mode to try and finish these or do I just be like, well, you know what? Maybe I won't go to this tournament, but I'll actually paint them nicely And for the one of the first times in my one career I was like, you know what? I'm not just going to speed paint for the event. I'll just paint them nicely So I was very pleased with myself Nice nice Uh All right, tom what you been working on buddy? Uh, obviously we had uh, we went I went to a depth con this weekend So, I mean, I've literally been playing warhammer for four days straight for folder four full days um played night hot and in the current meta for four days with the old book and It was delightful Um, I enjoyed my games Somebody asked about how I went or what a rundown was I went three one in one My loss was to Emma who had been announced as as first I'm just kind of showed um Yeah, it was good. It was good. I I was happy with my list. I don't What it is is not going to be able to survive into the new book I know that for a fact because all the re-rolls were gone. We've seen that from the warscrolls, which is really unfortunate um, but uh It's funny like I watched a number of people Um Basically take the the approach I did and a lot of them did very well Um, you know for me my list was kind of it's Vince dubbed it bullshit go Where it's just a bunch of like high efficiency body. Yes. Say what you need to work random on the front of that Oh, yeah, I'm sorry random bullshit go. There you go. Um, where it's just a bunch of high efficiency bodies out there and just Doing what they do and it you know having no centralized Like nervous system to take down and so like for example game one um, I won against 60 Sentinels and a severed list Lumineth with uh my night hunt ridiculousness Game two was a squig nose list, which I drew Long story. It was a great game. Uh, we just ran out of time and it was going to be too close To call so it got called as a drawl for both of us. Um Which is unfortunate, but that's just what happens. Um game three I had a wonderful gaming with john wanger and his uh and his doc So I played dot game three game four was emma and her rot coven nervel and game five was so bright sole blight graveyard So blight grave lord 60 zombies just a bunch of bodies But what I was saying is is what the list that actually ended up doing very well at efticon I know at least two of them that went five and oh were just bodies Um, sure. So like tom's tom's list was uh, three blocks of 40 zombies Two more tarks, right? And that well, you know, that went five and oh and then another was uh, a guy that I had He who in five and oh was an oc arc list Which was like 50 or more or more tech and again just regenerating restorative bodies That like that wasn't real centralized, right? That the you know, the enemy would have to grind through um So, uh, yeah, so, um, the meta is shifting is what I would say Um, it's you know, it was interesting to see a bunch of people. I know jake, uh, uh, jake Uh didn't go five and oh, but jake took a bunch of beastmen meat You know is basically what his stuff was Right and so, uh, a lot of people. Yeah, so anyways, so well night hunt Well, I had a blast a lot of great games had a great bunch of great team games as well. Um Yeah, it's good Uh, the horde meta approaches, uh, especially depending on what happens with the ghp We sit on the precipice of hashtag horde meta's return Okay, my let me just say this i'm gonna jump in real quick. Uh, It it it breaks my heart with the horde meta arriving Because uh chain gas we saw from the war scroll it looked like they're changing in ways that I'm not happy about Because I love like man going and uh jumping in To a block of 60 zombies with two chain gas and getting that two inch roll and I was like, uh, 22 attacks from these two models um, you know On which one no it did against against that against that Yeah, I understand you're you're game two We're like weird that that calculation might be super slow and inefficient That calculation happened to game five. Thank you very much. Um, that wasn't involved in my game two at all Uh, but what I would say is but anyways it went well, uh for what it's worth. I took best night hunt Yay, um again Yeah All three of us So, uh, yeah Yeah Hey, whatever. You're the best out of three. Well, well done. Tom. I wouldn't have probably rated you maybe even number two out of three But hey, there we are. So Uh, my hobby time is going to be quick. It was working on a lot of stuff That I can't show anybody. So there we go. That's that's just what it's going to be probably for a little while Unfortunately working on something big and I can't talk to it about it and talk to anyone about it. So Uh, okay, cool With that, let's let's get into the the meat of this here But boom Slaves to darkness 2022 revisited. All right s2d um I'm gonna I'm gonna try it out my summary, but then simon. I want to I want to come over to you For what you feel I missed or your your take on it. Okay So this first thing we gotta say is this is a large faction It's 47 war scrolls just straight up in the in the faction obviously through allies and stuff It can be you know, you can you have other tools you can access but just in faction you got 47 war scrolls And only 15 of them are leaders. So it doesn't have the ratio like something like stormcast You actually have quite a lot of units here You know a storm cast where it's like 73 scrolls, but 39 of them are heroes, right? It's a different ratio um Under strategies, they have really large selection, but they do have limited play in some phases, especially shooting uh And They have some of the most powerful leaders in the game pound for pound point pound for point whatever you want to say Archeon varangar demon princess cast sorcerer lord bellicor. This is not the exhaustive list. There's more Right like their leaders are not just even powerful in melee. Some of them are that they're powerful in their effect on the table Um, this army has an incredible amount of synergies and buffs that would make most armies jealous like it's wild The buffs that you can get the sort of cross unit buffs that you can get It has more save stacking than almost any other army Uh in the meta period, uh, there's just so many ways to get bonuses to save Probably like storm cast and maybe sylvanath of the other two that could claim the same thing Uh, and they have incredibly good chaff options for board control Especially with the recent white dwarf update where you have now marked cultists And those cultists become battle line if they share a mark with your your general As well as the ability to have sort of other interesting units have marks like the dark oath chieftain and things like that Okay, so i'm gonna pause there for a second Did I miss anything simon from your perspective on kind of the general strategy high level view there Yeah, so I'd say there's like maybe Maybe two or three Things that I would just touch on one is like you talked about like they have a huge selection of war scrolls You touched on like they've got allies They have a lot of allies Yeah, and you can go in like you can take that 400 points And you've got loads of cheap units and slaves to darkness you can get a huge number of like Allied units in if you want or a huge range you can take the list in so many directions with like I'm gonna have all the as each spell casting buffs and have all the core and melee buffs I want some really interesting. Well the new nergal book is a more keyword locked before you can still do some cool stuff there So so I say that allies and they can ally beasts and beasts of chaos are still Even with 8 danube of some rate. There's still not bad quite a few of them Then I'd say the spell law Is also although it like the casting is not like as reliable as like your teclis is and as you're kind of like other Like seraphons the effects you get from the spell law are really good Like roll a dice for like whispers of chaos. Yeah, it's only 12 inch range. Yeah, it's cast on a seven But you roll it and if it's cast you that unit is doing nothing until your next hero phase Like the one where you roll a dice to remodel the unit are six If they take a mortal wound that if they take at least one mortal Then that unit can't move until your next hero phase That's like an incredibly powerful thing and same for like a fight last spell full re-rolls to hit and wound for A reasonably good hero against like something it wants to kill like a hero monster So I think those those two things for sure And then maybe we'll come on to it in a bit later, but the sub factions Are as well as all being quite different There is like real real power in what the sub faction abilities lay on top of what is already a generous set of allegiance abilities Like the auras, you know The the generic buffs you get are powerful and the sub factions are really ramps and stuff up like several levels So I'd say those are like the three things that I would like approach the book and add to the list because everything you've said on the list is absolutely correct I would just add like I mean there's so many things to watch for as well Yeah, three really really good points totally agree with all of that like It really is just shocking sort of the kind of synergistic play of this book and and your point about the sub factions is so good because They really nailed it with this and I worry what that's going to feel like when we get the new book where the sub faction is like one Ability or something unless it takes a different form which by the way it could Right, there's nothing saying they have to design everything like this now It could it could still be they could still be very different in some fashion But the three the three sort of four sort of main ones, I guess and then idolaters being sort of Stuck on there, right? They're just so different and the armies that they sort of encourage you to build the play style what they're doing It's really interesting how much it pushes you while still having a lot of flex Right, it's not as though because you went into this one sub faction suddenly It's all 2000 points your list is decided not at all What I found is it like It means you definitely want to take a few key core units and sort of move those synergies and Exploitations as it were but man then the rest of it you can like you can just sort of slap a whole One of different multiple chassis as it were on to that engine And have it go and that's just a really good balancing act. They hit with this this book And it's one of the few like that Um, so yeah, okay Cool Uh, I have some questions on this main page you want to answer before we get into the stats I want I want both simon you and tom are gonna answer this. I'm not gonna answer this because I'm just asking the question So simon you're first question number one Does this army have any real hammers as defined by the modern hammer Bar that has been set other than archeon Or maybe six varan guard in the appropriate build now.  Yeah, he's almost has to do enough work, right? He's not he's not outsized hitting for his points He's hitting like an 800 point model. Yeah Exactly.  He's like, yeah two more turns of that I think a break even like Let's hope like, you know Right, like if I can keep him killing 200 points a turn over the game, I'm fine Like it's crazy really but so I think threes of varan guard are still pretty solid like Because like six is like super but when you've got the double activate built in and all that kind of stuff I think Then if I mean I always like the idea of playing chaos knights with lancet in my head I'm like, yes When to damage to access to re-rolls like Out of combat phase plus ones are here and then in combat phase double fight I'm like, yes, I can see it and then I get to the table and I like roll them into something and then they go Okay, that's dead and then they all die Yep, I'm like and this only cost me like loads of points and loads of buffs and oh Yeah, so I think I'm really using them in fives So I've tried like fives.  So Maybe the answer is like 15 just like triple down, but I just don't feel like that's that's a winning like Yeah, the heroes are good in Savior's Darkness like a bellicorps does hit pretty hard Like it's a lot of attacks damage to rend two a little bit of three like um But again after that list you kind of start to run low But the allies that you can ally in a boom thruster The intensive bloodthirst if you want like, you know, I think that's gonna like go off and do a lot of damage so But yeah inherently, I think I think they struggle a little bit for like I'm gonna take a unit from my battle tone and point it at that thing and it's gonna die I think they really struggle with that kind of thing. I mean corn marked splinter fang though, right? Oh, yeah, well like that's not like a I well, I suppose that's a hammer like like if you play I can come on to one of the lists of it later like I later splinter fang are like Probably like point for point and even if you like Like ruined the ratio and said, okay, they're gonna cost double They ain't fight like anything in the game massively. They're just they just burrow it off. It's like It's really really crazy damage out. But so So when you get like four attacks each with re-rolls to hit and then like Really they're just yeah, exactly.   Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true like but Sentinels that cost like less than half of what sentinels cost, right? Yeah Yeah, I think By the way, uh, I didn't say it earlier, but hey hit like and subscribe and do those things Don't forget to like button. It helps everybody So if you like slaves to darkness like we do hit that like button to show how much you like slaves to darkness Because it's a super fun army. Yeah, I mean Yeah, damage seems like a problem to me It really does because the current meta is so reliant on doing damage Right because the nature of battle tactics and things like that You want to you need to feel like you can pick up a unit Pick up a target fight your way out of something if you get alpha bunkered and yet They have a challenge in doing that often and the cast nights are one of the biggest disappointments to me It's it's funny. You said that like cast nights just should be like blood nights The the fact that there's that that big of a gulf in between those two You know when traditionally in you know, like older older additions. They were actually very similar types of units Sort of the most dangerous Cavalry in the game like one unit of cast nights and in old enough additions that got down your flank would just clear your whole army And and now they're just like, okay, it's some It's some slightly some decent damaging ponies on a four up save base I mean, but it doesn't help that Like they're unwieldy to use and like in larger groups, right? Like you can't use them in more than five. No, they have to be far really Yeah, like they have to be fives Yeah, I think like I think they suffer from varen guard existing So what's the design space because like you're big badass like night night unit of old That's varen guard now like the the ultimate conquerors of the mortal realms that go in and they kill everything And it's okay and then chaos nights are like between marauder horsemen and varen guards And they're really at the marauder horsemen end of the scale and they need to be much closer to the middle of that scale Yeah, yeah, it almost feels like we need to move it all up Right like varen guard need to go up points and up capability Because they're supposed to be the swords of archion and they should be like that kind of frightening It should be like a unit of heroes. Yes. Like they don't feel like that now I mean wounds wise they are but they're actually the same wounds as a unit of cast nights, right? It's it's it's about 15 wounds And then and then the cast nights need to tick up accordingly and in efficacy and in in points as well and that would That would probably feel better. Um And that's part of the problem is that right now, you know, when you think of when I think of this army Okay picture this army in my head And it's the it's the super metal cover of most of the classic books Which is just like these, you know iron clad steel clad whatever you want to say Warriors and knights and chaos lords with a war shrine like lumbering behind them And all of that stuff, you know, it's like it is the hosts of chaos Right. Yeah, maybe some marauders out front something like that. That's just not how you build the army right now It doesn't look anything like that Okay Because you look at warriors and you're like, yeah, that's a cool tar pit How about I just do the same thing with iron golems and it's going to be better and cheaper Right. Yeah, this is the problem. I mean I hear that I So I've been building slanash and maybe it's just in slanash, but I actually really like a block of 20 or a 10 chaos warrior Or I'm sorry. I'm not 10 20 like 20 for 400 like that is an immovable like No one's clear who's clearing that So it's like 40.  Mm-hmm. And like and they're on the same save base Yeah Yeah, exactly and you're like, okay.  It's like a live and it bashes you a bit. Okay. I'm gonna take some proper damage but like Chaos knights like maybe just build that plus one save in like just the coming in They're covered in so much iron Like the storm cast have a three up save. Yeah, justice for warriors Like justice for warriors. That would be mine. I think for the traditional army Knights and warriors should be on a three up save easy peasy lemon squeezy fix the point is you need to it's just where it should be I don't like this conditional plus one to save nonsense. They should just be on a three up base They are like the I mean It's it's wild to me that they're such a poor save by the standards of the game right now because When I started playing war hammer, they were the only unit basically outside of a few heroes that were just rolling around on a one up save Like that was what they were they just had a one plus And you know strength obviously modified that right or the particular weapon But they they were just the best save because chaos armor was better than everything else Yeah, right. No No, they're just I bought the start collecting box instead of iron golems, right? Right like Which is real real shame because you should buy the start collecting box and have like a really solid like Because they should do that that job Absolutely, tom like they should do that thing when you just place them and you go, ah 10 warriors here you're gonna struggle to kill them but Yeah, a bit of save and then see how we go But that would immediately because once you can get to that magic pressing on a two on the dice That's like obviously we all know that's like so so helpful Yeah, the the math just shifts completely and it just feels like you've got your what what sort of kills me about it Is it feels like you got your two perfect rolls there? Roll not that dice rolls rolls role right like anvil hammer warriors knights like it's Right, I mean i'm not crazy here. It just feels like that's what they should be Yeah, okay Enough of my yes Two plus. What's up? Doug said hashtag fossil talk. Yes. I am an old man. Thank you Uh, I appreciate that. Okay. I think where we what we see is I I ask these two questions not for us to answer. I'm here Can their traditional strategy win can it like by that? I mean like a more traditional mixed arms type of build of how we think of like platonic warhammer Four is like a more controlled strategy a path to victory. Okay, so Uh Those aren't to answer now Those are for us to answer as we look at the lists and go through this. Okay, cool beans Let's get into let's get into some stats stats Oh, yeah, who loves stats. We all Love stats. Okay Uh All right slaves to dark and stats as always all stats our courtesy of rob Ziggy and the t-sports stats center link is in the description if you want to go check out any of these you're on your own You certainly can they are awesome. You can see all sorts of stats I didn't include here like the armies match up against other armies. It's t whip It's round uh first round loss. Uh, what it tends to lose to first all that kind of stuff Amazing amazing work by rob ziggy and the whole team Uh, so thank you for all this and for making it publicly available. It's fantastic All right overall win rate 47 percent pretty middling. They're in the middle zone lower middle but middle okay That's fine. There's a lot of worse off armies so That's not too bad. I don't feel bad about that simon. What's your feeling about that number? I think Yeah, you can't you can't reasonably complain about something being between that kind of like that 47 53 like spread like yeah, if you're hitting there like that's pretty If you were if you were designing the book and you're like, okay after a year 18 months I want to be hitting that I want to be hitting a win rate. That's about the level you pick so I mean the only thing that maybe does push them down is that The start connect the the boxes that you buy when you get into the army And so a lot of people will play because they're an iconic army Don't contain as we've talked about the really kind of Juicy stuff from the book But I don't hate an army with a 47 percent win rate like same as if it was like 53 I wouldn't be like well, these are clearly too strong. So I wouldn't say these are clearly too weak on that basically Yeah, yeah, if we had the whole meta hitting between 47 53 or something like that We'd be like, oh my god, this is the we are in a golden era of balance in warhammer, right? So yeah, I feel like they're within acceptable bounds. So this this army can win, right? We're not dealing with like when we talked about Uh You know like slanesh A couple weeks back and it was like can this army win because they're down at like 38 percent in the same time period Woof Right and and even then yes, haha. We all we get they got a 5-0 in poland We all know and I'm happy for that player amazing player Um, but that's the player winning not slanesh in general, right? Like if I handed that army to the masses It's not going to go well Okay Uh cool Very good. Um Next up their meta representation Low lower than I would expect and this is something I can't I we're gonna take some swings at this. Why is this? Like they're at 2.7 percent in their meta representation That's super low Well, that like that's that's, you know, approximately three percent at adepticon There were only three of them in 200 which is 1.5 So there was half that actual representation added at adepticon this weekend Yeah, shout out to our friend dan who plays with vince weekly who took best, uh best slaves to darkness, uh this weekend, um With a uh a not stellar record Good job, Dan Yeah, I mean they're within striking distance of like Legion of the first prince in gloomspite Which it's just crazy that those are all kind of in the same area here or night haunt Like this is slaves to darkness This is the many fold hosts of chaos the ruinous powers How is this a 2.7 percent? I think a lot of people Well, it's the same kind of thing like they're a really good intro armies of the game right because The core mechanics of a lot. I mean there's a lot of complexity there But it doesn't have to be if you don't want in your arm You can be like I've got my nights. I've got my warriors I've got a lord who buffs the fighty stuff. I've got a sorcerer who dispels I've got a wash rind that prays and protects things There are a lot of I think they're a very easy like I need to start playing warhammer And I would love to start playing warhammer Let's stop playing age of sigma and I play these and then you go There's other armies that do all of the particular bit of the game that I love much better Unless I invest loads of effort in the complexity So I'll just switch to one of the less complex but higher Performing at the bit.  Or you want like, you know, something that's just like tough blocks of like bodies in advance You could switch to like stormcasts although chaos the stormcast like narrative league But if what you're interested in is like the mechanics and then if you play like if you like I love chaos It's like well Do you love all of the chaos gods the same? What do you want to play one of the faction books? Yeah, sure There's a lot of pull factors away from them in like various different directions. I think Yep Yeah, no, that's a really good point and yeah So to clarify and ziggy made this point because I think he's in the in the in the chat there This is 3.1 and 3.2 is what I'm including here. So yes, this is since the the winter update Uh is what these stats are drawn from. Um, not all of 3.0 Uh, okay So I think that I think that's a good explanation. I really I really think you nailed it. It's it's almost like S2d ends up being this weird beige wallpaper Of chaos where where oftentimes you're going to be wanting to pull into something a little more Uh I don't know how to say this Yeah, a little more like with a certain thing about it, right? It's not generic chaos. Yeah, right You want to you buy it and you then you want to redecorate Yeah, yeah, I think sure. No, there you go. Good. It's good. It's good Absolutely Uh boy that stormcast faction representation rate is way out of whack. I just get this table blows my mind man Uh, by the way, there are 25 armies In Uh aos So if everything were to be completely for perfect you would see a mode right here of like four percent And that would sort of be where most things would group hopefully more tightly around Obviously, this is not mode at four percent just so that's clearly obvious um, okay Next one. I thought this was really fascinating I'm gonna I'm gonna go through both of these slides and then then I'll come back to the point because it's kind of over Two slides. I had to split it up here, but this is the win rate versus the top tier middle tier and bottom tier Okay, so the armies that are above 55 below 45 and in the middle That's out. That's how you get whether you're in top middle or bottoms here Okay So their win rate against the top tier is 41 percent right on the average line Right because if you see the average it's 41 percent Obviously not a great win rate against the top tier, but they are hitting the middle line All right Probably fine. They're in good company here Right with a lot of other stuff sons iron jaws beasts maggotkin Disciples daughters all are basically within the margin of error of this number right yep You look at their win rate versus the middle tier higher 49 percent there are three percent above the average again remaining a lot of good company But now let's drop to their their their win rate against the low tier The worst armies their win rate against the worst armies is 44 percent It's 10 points below the average What is it about like gits and beasts or and everything else that's been beating up on the slaves to darkness Why is this happening? Night haunts like oh, yeah, here we go. Yeah, this is like our night hot cleaning these guys clocks like what's going on here? Uh, I thought this was fascinating. Skaven are just apparently rocking all over their their generic chaos brethren um, I think It's it's a weird one But if you look at the armies that are down there, it's like Skaven, okay Well, actually storm fiends just ruin chaos because you can't shoot with chaos if you place later darkness You don't play shooting like you go. I've got a soul grinder. You go, okay Cool These are storm fiends like one of you is playing shooting and one of you is rolling a couple of dice right like So and that will like annihilate a lot of chaos stuff and the same like sylvaneth even like kernath hunter with the bows Allarial spear that's all like fine quality shooting that pulls out your buff heroes So I think a lot of like the slaves to darkness builds Even the good performing ones you need buff heroes in you need some way of pulling the reasonably fine units you have and like juicing them up so they're really effective And armies that happen to be able to shoot those off quite straightforwardly Even ones that don't shoot them off very efficiently They shoot them off at all You're in a real problem where there's a lot of the middle of the pack stuff It's like Other stuff that is pretty quick and maybe overruns the lower tier shooting armies and still bumps into bumps off the higher tier stuff But it kind of okay. We're gonna have a big fight and chaos is like oh a big fight That's what I can do and I can do that pretty well Like you know idolators eight fight anything in the game Like the spoilers can kind of control the cornprints controls a lot of fights. So So I think it maybe it's not like those books are bad It's or you know and they happen to beat them It's like those books do a thing that is normally not that great But slaves to darkness have like uniquely few options to not be vulnerable to their strategies Yeah, the popular sentiment in the comments in the in the chat seems to be that They a lot of those lower tier armies tend to also have hordes and a lot of chaff and stuff like that And so it's hard for them to punch through they don't have singular threats They get controlled or taken out by bellicor or or get you know stopped as easily by The corn demon prince or stuff like that, right? So they just don't it's it was tom's strategy, right? There's nothing to shoot. There's nothing of value in this army.   I'll have that every single time But like you're rolling a seven because then i'm blind you've got like a beta 50 50 shot Are they coming off right side? Okay.  Nope makes total sense. Yeah Yeah, I just thought this was such a fascinating stat because the swing around the average was so interesting to me, right? Okay Unit representation within faction this is let's let's have a little talk about units here I thought this would be a good this would be a good slide to sort of talk about You know What's in the army what we see? Uh, and then what we don't see and why we don't see it So you look at this unit representation within faction and slaves to darkness demon prince surprise surprise 12.8 My guess is 12.7 of that is uh corn demon princes And the other point one is this each demon prince that was in your list That's it He's really good. We're all ones to save on a three up scroll save never going to complain But yeah, I mean he's he's like a side show to the corn demon prince like palooza because that Like god slick ground is For me hands down the best. I mean the best commandability in the game Maybe second best is rk on in host of the ever chosen.  So on a three plus you can't charge me, right? Okay, cool I said, oh like the amount of times people have failed a battle tactic on that kind of thing So I was just gonna move up and charge something and you're like no, you know, it's gone. Sorry Right. Yep. Yeah Uh, I think we need to talk about No, no, I was gonna say I was gonna jump to the next one Which is because I think we all know the corn demon prince is just Bent sideways good Like it's a joke that he's the same points cost as the other three demon princes It's the most comical comparison to me Um But but he's a prime target now. Oh, yeah. Well, that's totally worth it. Uh Yeah, I would still take him every time and who cares uh You got to make your charges in order to right. Yeah, exactly Good luck because he's in the middle of like pitch black and unchargeable. So good stuff. You can't shoot him Can't fight him. I don't know what's killing him If you get one of those prime hunter points, I'll just shake your hand Because it's These will never die. I was I was a prime hunter this weekend and I got Zero. Yeah, sure zero points Caste sorcerer lord is this guy still pound for pound like one of the best Just regular foot heroes in the game even with his increased points. He went up 20 points At the last point update and I still think he's incredible I mean So um iracular visions is great.  All right. Well, he looked difficult and now he's dead Yeah, so I think whereas I think the manticore guy like he's much further down the list But he gives like a bit more, you know, he's still got iracular vision He doesn't have demonic power But you got lots of ways to get re-rolls in this army And I think he might in the meta You might see a bit more of like a bit fewer of the foot sorcerers who can just die And a few more of the manticore ones who can survive a bit long, you know Who cover stuff like that and maybe like keep kicking at the buff and they've got the brilliant like attack profile as well Yeah, I mean against other monsters. Actually, they're not they're not a good scrap, right? Especially do like a titanic duel with the re-rolls like sure. They'll put out some damage I have to wonder though if we move away from shooting through a couple different, you know Pressure points that are getting put on shooting perhaps Yeah That this guy doesn't just become more and more powerful because Again utility wise, you're obviously right. He is he packs one of the best utility spells and one of the best utility abilities Anywhere Archeon what can be said about him? Sure. I mean, he shows up a lot. By the way, all this all these stats I should say again just to repeat for everybody These are all from Ziggy and Rob at the t-sports center link is in the description Go check out all their amazing work, but also they're all 3.1 and 3.2. So post Uh the december end of december update. Okay Right It's not when Archeon was dominating. This is all post like war scroll change. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah um Varengard bellicor marauders untamed beasts Uh the cast lord the war shrine the knights warriors Cockatrice was a funny one. Well, he really worked his way up there higher than I thought Uh the cast sorgh lord on manticore the cast spawn the cast lord on carcadrack and cast marauder horsemen I mean, we're not in we're not in a beast man army But that cockatrice can still do some work. Sure. Yeah, we have four It's the thing and four of those it's like, okay Well, if you need a way to like reach out and do a bit of damage and like actually play that phase that is between movement and charging They're quite helpful and they're not very expensive. So I would like I would support that as like a pick and especially into the game at the moment It's like, you know, four of them just roll into some dragons and do okay and the dragon disappears Yeah, it's a good time I want to give a shout out to jonathan enzer in the comments who said shout out to sail the faithless Poor one out for an og tom and I I did not remember that sail the faithless existed until tom and I were on the drive To a depth con and we're talking about old lists And he brought up And it's like, whoa Yeah, like that guy We just all forgot that guy ever existed He was he was in every list He came with his own names chaos bond. Do you remember what his chaos bond name was? No, I do not Nightmore, right What was it? Nightmore It was Very nice. I was looking because he's still on the aos app Because I'm always like I'm looking for like what weird stuff can I put in my chaos list with like a few points? And it's like, oh, is this guy still possible because he's great and it's like no, he's he's gone I'm so So If it's if he's in legends Take him out of the app Like For the app early if you're in legend, don't tease me like there's you know, like, oh, maybe you can't you can't still play sail so enough's enough just Grip the band laid off The One of the there's just a couple of other items that jump out of me here You look at how much of this stuff is control Slash buff and I think that speaks to your point, right? Like the demon prince this sorcerer lord bellicourt now that he can't do other things. He certainly can Um, I would argue the untamed beasts fall into this because they're they're control chaff right the chaos lord the war shrine right The chaos orc lord on manticore All these things have some element of like control slash utility to them. They buff other things They control the board space. It's a big part of their game plan Overall, right? They're they're not actually just like a force like they have been at many points in chaos's history where it's just like no No, we kill you by being better than you and just pushing forward This is a lot of their history where they they won by just having better stats than everybody else and just walking forward And that just isn't the way it works now at all I think I'm surprised not to see And maybe it's because the the white dwarf update hasn't like filtered through into people's like hobby purchases and but his iron golems right Like and as I missed that I had to like double check this. I was like, I'm pretty sure I'm not seeing iron golems and having I think like until you play with them and you realize like I can spend 225 points on battle line Park it in some cover on some objectives and never worry again Like they are really and if you can make them like zinch They're just like obscene like some like imagine if The what that the 4% the the nearly 10% of the units that are knights or warriors Imagine if each of those was instead iron golems That 10% gets 100 points cheaper. So basically, you know, everyone's yelling like a few extra points in every single list If you do nothing but switch from The old style units that look cool, but do nothing into these weird walk-by guys that somehow Amazing they carry could they carry a five up after save or like a five up war against mortals But in general that doesn't justify the cost difference Yeah, the rate Yeah, yeah, and like you're still bravery eight on iron golems like they just They do like so and they and they're just so cheap.  Yeah, so I like I'm very aware of what they can do You would right you would you've been okay. Well, that's that's that's only 25 points more expensive than 10 warriors Right, right.  I think yeah, I roll the dice Like, you know, they have hand axes like they're fours and fours eight inches And I had to laugh because I watched Dan run up and be like, uh and roll like 20 attacks and I was like I guess they do that which is as many as they would normally get almost Yeah, there's also the little minor trick that you can remove nine wounds from the unit but only lose three bodies in irons, which is Super relevant because you can just pull the the if you say if you're talking about a max unit, right? Because you can just pull the pull the ogres And that kind of albed of wounds while still remaining above the key 20 count Right like you think of what a gargant tends to a mega gargant tends to count as which is 20 These guys can lose nine wounds and still be 21 It's actually just a really nice way the number works out for them. And as you mentioned all for just dirt dirt dirt dirt cheap, right? Um, I saw somebody mentioned it earlier But yeah a couple units that didn't occur on here that I think are of value the other one being the the I think you mentioned it. I think I saw in the chat. I don't remember who mentioned it It was all over the place the mind stealer spear ranks man the kitty cat Uh kitty cat is another ace pick. I've been I've been back in the kitty cat since The kitty cat came out because I think it is super good Uh in everything it does. I think it only got better in 3.0 um, oh, yeah Yeah, go ahead. He's good at playing They're really effective like You can just create you can make your army essentially like very very difficult to trade with Right. You put anything within 12 inches of cat.  Well, so you just put yes ranks in the middle of your army There's a beautiful like bowl is a monster opens Because you don't have like you could take the sorcerer lord But opens up the battle tactic if you take him on a sorcerer lord opens up spearhead and throws his advance to metamorphosis So loads of great options and again, no expensive like less than a hundred points. Yep All right, super choice Yep So yeah, the the kitty cat is a hot pick for me for sure What's on the like you mentioned the two that are on this list that surprised you um Let me ask you a question Is the chaos lord on karkadrak? Is he held back more? From appearing by his lack of rend on his main weapon or by chaos knights not being very good Which one is it because he because if you looked at him in the void, you're like students are pretty good hero I Think I think he like perfectly He costs a little bit more than and in his role in the army totally competes with in terms of lack of rend and having a few mortals The demon prince. Yep. If you've got like 225 to spend And you haven't got a demon prince. That's a demon prince every time like that's the serious Like you've got a stark collect like I would imagine 1.2 percent of people have bought the stark collecting box and decided to use their karkadrak And he's nice cool model like and he hits kind of hard And even if you've got a demon prince, it's like well A second one of these is also really good compare. I mean I like four or five Right, but a second one is still going to be better off overall I'm just having another karkadrak because they still you know, they don't take an activation to fight with They're fast like they fly which is really helpful in the game. Um And it's a backup of that commander, but they shoot one off and you're okay Still not charging me It just tells me that That if chaos knights were cheaper He would be a real there would be a decision to make Because of what he's bringing to their offense Yeah, I think if his commandability was doing something really amazing with cast knights and if cast knights were good Then you would be like, okay He's not I could see that competition breaking the other way Right if cast knights were a real hammer and he was like juicing them even more Then you want both tools I think if he was plus one attack for knights, you might see him because In a book with like the chaos sorcerer re-rolls to hit the war shrine re-rolls to hit You've got real ones to hit just for playing as corn like A source of plus one to hit you got down to rain man Like you know half the time on your side of the border or somewhere near a fight anyway Yeah, plus one to hit is not a particularly spicy broth that you're going to spend 225 points on a guy who On his weapon that he needs to kill stuff with the heal has no rent right Right yep Okay, any other units That are not here that we think should be here I would the newton of vortex beast was on this list. I wish that's the one unit that I wish was like It's like they're not terrible. It's gonna like go like the metal if like Two of them in like the pregame move thing So they can get into range and start because you're putting mortal wounds like a long way down range And there's no way to get around it if they're in right you just roll the four plus and you take d3 or d6 there But they're just not there and I just have to live with it, but I wish they were there. Maybe maybe the next list is four of those, but probably not Well, I certainly understand I have two Painted mutalith vortex beasts. So I'm a big fan. I understand completely where your heart's at But yes, you're right. They're they're goofball, but man, do they just not do it? But yes They will have their day in the sun I love the Darko both of the heroes like the aesthetics of them. Sure. Um, I just wish they actually saw the table You know, obviously in marauder heavy builds They can see the table occasionally, but I don't know. I just I like to me. I wish marauders weren't what they are And we actually got aesthetically, you know, like marauders like much like closer to the tire spire it or the The spire tyrants That's a very funny search the tire spire in I have those models and I rebased them to 25s as my marauders Because they're just so much nicer It's like I don't want to play with these weird out of date triangle viking So I want to play with like the beautiful walkie scopes, which are just like sublime and The dark oath is like okay in idolaters the chieftain for fight on death. That's a really If you've got loads of juiced up But like cheap models having them fight on death Is really helpful like it really plays well into like a combat trading meta, which I think we're very nearly out Yeah, yeah, and actually I think that's probably we didn't like we just kind of breeze by this when we did the fire slayer talk, but I actually think that that's one of the strongest aspects of Of a number of the fire slayer units that we just never talked about was the trading that Like I think that they they play well in that space and obviously Slaves does that as well um part of me wishes that A lot of the other like there are I mean, I suppose I'm being greedy But there are three I think At least three. Yeah, I'll say three. I'll stand by that valid war cry war bands Uh, that that have a home in armies, but there's a lot of war cry folks Uh, and I kind of wish more of them had a place. I wish they did have some differing role Um where you could see reasons to take more of them I love my cypher lords like aesthetically. I love what they look like. I wish they actually had a role Yeah, I mean, that's just it. There's a bunch of them. They're like that, right? Where like most of the cast war cry war bands are pretty beautiful models It's just like they don't do anything that's worth anything What's your third unit? I'm assuming the first two are golems and untamed What's your third one that you think is like? Snakes, oh, sorry. Yeah, of course. Of course. Yeah. Yeah, you're fine I think I don't think I like cypher lords If that was just once per game make something minus one to hit for 70 points Okay, I'll say that like I'll throw that into like an important combat. Maybe that's not expensive and they can be battle line Like but yeah, you're right. They're just not there's a lot of them that are not quite there And then there's a couple that are like really pushed and it's like well, if I'm gonna buy something war cry I'm gonna buy These three exactly. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, unfortunate Okay, uh, let's see Next up win rate versus opposition faction So this is how often They win against the opposition faction Okay So first of all our discussion of sylvaneth earlier They're crushing it over here crushing the sylvaneth The um Winner versus yeah, okay. I just want to make sure I had it right like that. I'm looking at this the right way around Yes, that's right.  Okay fair enough Seraphon is given as the same win rate like what kind of battle time is this? Will you beat scaven as often as you beat seraphon? Like that's really wild Like you like seraphons are scaven. They're just trash right and seraphon are amazing like paraphrasing like there's more complexity but broadly And then you like the slaves of darkness you're like both of those are a coin flip for me Like that's a weird headspace for a battle tone, but it speaks to the design I think we can go so many so many ways right right 40 nights That's that's they're used to it Um, yeah, I mean when you look at this obviously the armies they have challenges against that stand way out are like daughters Zinch Right. I somehow cruel boys Lumineth I guess cruel boys just got these guys numbers not a lot of fights under there. There hasn't been a ton of those bad jumps We'll just ruin slaves like you go right nice looking buffy as same if they all took six model wounds That's the end of that game Right, right, right. Yeah. Yeah, indeed And and it does very much break down as you said earlier, right to to a point of like Who wants to have a fair punch up in the middle? Or something like that versus who's going to just sit there and be like that's a problem. That's dead. That's dead. That's dead.  Yeah, uh, what's going on with big walk? I so few people it's always hard with big while there's just keep mind That's so such a small meta representation There's a really small amount of games under there So that stat is not statistically reliable because it's just that's probably eight games or something out of the thousands that have been Well, sure and big walk is probably running a bunch of cruel boy crossbow guys anyways So like that's probably mixed in with iron jaws, right? And so that's probably like they're probably lifting all the same support heroes as well Yeah, the problem with big wise. There's such a small meta representation and there's such a there's a there's a few Like really good players who play them that They they get this weird Math thing that just kind of throws everything off All right lists Let's talk lists folks Okay, now we get to the fun part Uh, we're I want to talk about the lists these lists are From simon and one of them is from somebody else that simon passed along to me. We will credit them when we get there Um, so but I like both of these lists I I did not delete any of your names Uh of the of the leaders, but I did delete all your names from the actual iron golems Because you had named everybody in the iron golem unit and I had to fit this onto one page somehow The exact same happens at the tournament I went to Just for the individual I they're just as important as everyone else in that in that list Yeah, I just want to point out to everyone simon is a hero when I got this Every one of these Battle line iron golems. There was literally a list going down of all of the individual iron golems named 24 individual uniquely named guys based on who they were their role and stuff, right?  You bring in the narrative here. Okay So this is the list that I originally saw and it blew my mind Because I couldn't figure out what you were doing to win with this list against who you were beating Um as I said before the the show you've got the worst mega gargant.  And then a couple of the spells take us through this man Okay, so So to start with like I mean before we get into the tech because there's so there's layers and layers of tech But the units and the actual stuff there They are all and I can talk about when I'd run. I can why I think he's kind of fine But they are all really good on rate each of those units like iron golems In my opinion the best battle line you get in slater's harness Especially if you don't want them to do anything if you're just like I need to in I need to fight and kill and my battle line really do that without loads of extra investment that can be shot off So they're fine corn demon princes fight really well on the charge It's like twos and threes depending on the weapon re-rolling ones to hit twos to wound on everything and they got a mortal wound spike as well on the six to hit Bellicor is obviously great and then and the one I've grown it He's a weird one because he's so he's a monster which gives you more play with the monster's rampages with raw Which is really helpful when you don't have too much rent and He he almost always effectively fights on top profile Because it's very easy for him to get to his maximum number of attacks regardless of how much damage he's taken So that's very helpful and then It's very difficult for people to engage him when I don't want him to fight them So then that leads nicely into like the tech in the list. So So I've got like a spell enhancement. I've got an extra artifact for the arcane tome I've got two warlord battalions for extra cps and enhancements and and so So the idea is that like you have the demon princes and then you play into spoilers which means On in your hero phase on a four plus they heal and you can do that after you miss gas So you can time it so that you cast your spell and then if you miss cast you then roll the heal near the end of the phase And you and you've got life swarm for kind of more healing that combos nicely with that You've also got pitch black terrain from being the spoilers. So whenever you move any kind of move And you turn every terrain feature within six inches of a demon prince that moves Into one inch lost box if it goes through more than one inch of it Then they can't see through it and there's no if you fly you can shoot through it or any There's no exemptions You just can't see and that's really helpful in the game at the moment And the combo is really nicely with the endless spells because you need line of sight to dispel them So you can't with once I get the life swarm down You can't get rid of it unless you're seraphon because you can't ever see it to dispel it because I'll just put it Into the rain and similarly for the palisades Because the pitch black wording is closest point to closest point I can have the I can kind of angle the palisade And basically make a piece of pitch black terrain bigger and like extend off the side with the palisades Which is really quite quite flat. That's quite if you've only got a small piece in your deployment zone That's really helpful And then the command trait for the pregame move means even if you're going second D three units move five inches So you can use a demon prince with that to trigger the pitch black terrain Well, you've basically clustered all of your demon princes in a ball behind the one piece that they can be in and not die So you've kind of got like this And then obviously what the corn demon princes for the defensive You know heart and charges tech so so you've got something that's quite hard to dig out if it doesn't engage you Like, you know, all the demon princes are on three up armor saves on the scrolls So it can easily get to two ups on the dice, which as we know is very effective The zinge guy is a little bit tougher again because he's got those real ones So he's quite a nice pin piece. You know, you can put mystic shield finest hour and all that defense on him And he's going to be really difficult for a lot of stuff to remove. They all get cover as well So then you've got like, how does it play the game? Which I think was your main challenge It was fair enough Like so you look at the shape of a lot of armies and the the doombringer blade is really good into the shape of a lot of lists. So this is the dispoilers artifact. You pick one hero or monster in their list your whole army All the dispoilers stuff. So not the mega garden, but everything else even the golems We will all hit some wounds against it all game Just for free. It's just like you just do that. So if you've got like the classic with the four dragons in a unit It's like really really Useful they push those dragons towards you then gang up on them with kind of all your units fighting. Yeah That leaves nicely into like the second point about the combat, which is Okay, yeah a demon prince on his own. He's just like fine damage. He's got four attacks Uh fours threes minus one d three Dicks to hit do two mortals instead and the corn ones get real ones to hit and plus one to wound And they all get plus one to hit on the charge But I don't fight with one I fight with one two three four and then I pick my first activation Right as a giant Which is a giant all bellicose depending on what I need and which and where where it's kind of is So you're normally fighting With 1500 points more or less before they get an activation So actually like you're kind of by the back door playing activation wars You're saying well, I'm not gonna I'm not interested. I mean the next list is also kind of similar It's like, you know what? I'm just gonna Push four demon princes into you they're on 60 mil bases, which is really nice because It means if somebody engages one And there's another one touching it they engage that one too and then both of them fight you So even if you do make that charge from three inches away where you need a six If there's a demon prince Buddying up with another demon prince Both of those get to fight you before you get to fight them and that will take quite a lot off most things So that's really helpful as well. So then so you end up playing like a You can't really get to me with shooting before I rush you And if there's a big open stretch of ground where it's like There's a long way between me and those long strikes over there. That's when you slam bellicor. You go, okay I've rushed. I'm in the open bellicor Stop the long stretch that three plus is the most nervous roll Because if you fail it, you just lose because you are my plan is not to get these guys shot I've moved them forward on the basis that I'm going to roll a three plus And if I don't that's the end of the game, right like so that is That's why the win rate's not massive, but you've still got play And so it's you end up playing like you play as a ball. They're fast and you go Okay, I've killed this bit and you just move through the army killing bit by bit. So I plays Oh, well, I pause there actually Anymore It's great. I you know like Obviously the the because the demon princess fight at the start of the phase that that's always something that's occurred to me Because you can obviously Sort of they go and then you still get to pick But I want to go on record as saying Vince I pointed that out to you that all of them are fighting at the top of the phase and you're like Yeah, sure. It's no big deal. It's it's like look at when described, especially with following it up with the giant Right, that's or or with bellicor as appropriate. I think that's the key of how much of it's flowing in there I hadn't thought about the sort of sequencing of it and what was going to happen, right? Yeah Yeah, you you pick the thing and because you like again if they don't have shooting You just go okay as long as you can't charge me turn one and if you need a what if you can't charge me turn one I then control combat forever That's then going to be fine for the rest of the game So against melee armies, okay. Well, even if you've got like a big threat piece. I just make sure after I charge I'm your move plus six inches away And then you can't get me Like and then So that's like kind of how it plays there. So I played like I first played four making gardens So the classic like gate breaker double kraken and a war stumper And you know giants go forwards and one of them do bring it So that one dies quite straightforwardly and easily to your arm You just you just really rinse through it pretty fast and then like the others When I've grown up it's really helpful as a pin piece It's 35 wounds It's pretty tough against other giants and he gets quite a lot of attacks against them And you basically just just jump around bellicor with call to glory We'll knock down more or less half a giant every turn like it's a lot of really reliable like Two's and we're talking like two's and three's or four rolls level eight So it's really helpful.  Then I played like via costs and of right costs the the grave lords like loads of dark And the wolf dragon Yeah, zombie some blood knights and if we hit the zombie dragon like fully juiced up I got I got a bit lucky But I had um, I mean this is one corner thing But I had like some iron golems into mystical terrain just in cover being like, yeah I'm just holding this bit of space And it's like, okay my zombie dragon and five blood knights from all charts And I've got like, you know, our flaming weapon and all the business. I was like, okay I'm just gonna and like I mean cover. I like, you know, I'm just really really tough I think he left them with like four wounds left in the unit I thought it's hold everything. They're just really difficult to shift until people go there But I mean generally If you're playing a diagonal You can dictate which side you fight on and then the stuff that's not that side doesn't get You until you decide you want to fight it and when you do you fight it with 1500 points Nice. Then I played Seven dragons and some long strikes And I lost that one by a point And it's on the vice. So it's quite a low scoring one Anyway, and the the double move on the dragons. You just send a pair in that a bust up Is quite tricky because I can put doombringer on one unit But I can't do it every single time and if I go to kill it and it doesn't all die I'm then a bit out of position and that's a bit tricky there So that's a bit awkward And but you know, you played it really well And it came down to like turn five Bellicorn needed to kill a six wound dragon with all the re-rolls and he just failed So, you know, it's like a close game.  So I enjoyed it a lot like There's some I don't know if I'd play the same thing again like Granite is a weird one because he's really cool to have like a mega garden. You can't shoot That like really throws people which I really like when you sure the pitch black is not like Dispoilers units can't be seen right. You can't see anything So the mega garden being able to hide it's like really weird for people to to mentally like figure out But and the minus one to hit bubble after he fights is quite nice, but Generally a lot of stuff's dead anyway So that sounds like an embarrassment of riches problem, you know, but it's the case if you hit them with like 1500 points It's all dead. So minus one to hit on like whatever's left is fine basically I love it. I love it. I love this 30 models. By the way, that's I'm also I'm also a big fan of that. That's good 30 models is the ideal number of models basically for an aos army. So we're in a good place All right, very cool, man. Oh, thank you. This is great. I love it, but I also want to talk about this next list Uh, this is the idolator's list. It's time to talk about snakes is snake All right, tell walk people through the nightmare That is the snakes So so this is not 30 models. I think it's like 130 something like that Before you go, can I just point everybody to this drops number down here in the bottom? 17 17 but I had 13 this weekend. It's fine. This is 17. It's a lot more but 193 wounds Whoo Yeah, and it's it's all behind the wash rind as well. So you've got like another What and 20 percent of the wounds on top or no, no 17 percent of the wounds on top roughly, you know the 20 percent So So that's quite I mean, it's basically I love your hero load out like just all the heroes. This is this is this is my kind of list This is what my night haunt list looked like. It was just six foot heroes Uh, a totem and all the bodies Yeah, exactly. It plays they're quote real warhammer Like I played and sometimes I was like should we play some real warhammer, you know I just run to the middle and fight and they're like, okay, and I'm like brilliant So like the idolator lord He's a priest that can pray twice and he can do the same prayer twice And because he's corn his prayer is pick a unit and it gets reroll all hits And splintered fang like that for a lot And then the wash rind has a prayer which is reroll all hits and wounds And they like that a lot as again and so do the marauders So you make like I'm trying to think of a word that isn't losage, but it's just a big you make a big lozen shape ball of army And you push that lozen forwards And anything that it comes within because idolators every unit of cultists gets the marauder charge rule Right. So everything is you're making like 10 inch charges really straightforwardly. So and then you make them choke on it Yeah, exactly. So if this massive I mean, it's probably like two and a half foot across your army And it's just nothing but models in that whole space You've got like five wrathmongers in the middle the plus one attack all right Then in the middle of that unit like on the middle guy You've got the deathbringer for plus one attack to everyone in range, which is the same range And then you've got the bloodsucker toward the next to him So again, and so you've got plus three attacks on the whole army Everything even the heroes are plus three attacks to all their profiles And you've got a warshrine doing Seven and nice 16 attacks Great, I'll have that like that's fine Um It's corn to all re-rolls ones to hit and gets plus ones will be natively But the idea is you have this big death ball and the splintered fang with full re-rolls You're looking at four attacks each six is to hit do more wounds So on average a unit of 10 with uh, 22 attacks puts out about seven mortal wounds Exactly And then you've got a chaos lord in there for fight twice You've got the important units in hunters. So you can't stop me fighting twice You've got the spheranxes so that you can't activate between my first and second fight So overall so so I played um like oh in jackson. I played the oh in jackson with this So we're on the same team and we're staying in the same place in the draw and I've sat a day morning We were just like this is it this is it one of us is uh one of us is going home sad on sunday lunchtime and He had like negash, you know obi on negash and he's like Charge these 10 splinter fang and it's like because they're at the front You have the layers of the losage and it starts with like the least happening stuff And as you get closer to the middle, it's just more and more like horrendous And it's like 10 splinter fang with that plus three and re-rolls They said I'll just fight them and I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna fight on death for a cp with everything So that unit does eight damage to negash like through all of his buffs I'm like, okay, so he's like nearly dead right and then my go. I'm just like 10 more. Okay.  Well, I suppose this unit of 20 splinter fang will do 162 attacks into you Like six or mortals. Yeah. Yeah with full re-rolls But CD like maybe maybe 55 Mortal probably 50 mortal wounds. I'd like pretty consistently like that's dead Like rk on for a ward and I don't care if you've got 20 wounds, right? You're on average dead Like you come within you come within range to fight me So I've got like untamed beasts and golems that you hit first But the outer range of them will be within 11 and a half of the spherics Right because I've got two I can cover the entire losage Yeah, and the doom lozenge if you like it's just this massive doom lozenge blob of army And if you come within melee range of it, you just die next to just can't avoid it I'm sorry vince. This is actually what I'm I've been commissioned to paint Oh, yeah, I know absolutely. This is going to be in your basement in a in a couple weeks. I look forward to it It's it's so good. I really love it. It's really good fun.  He was like, I'm just going to push him up for monstrous takeover and I was like move six It's 11 inch charge for 20 splinted fan. They make that he's dead like and then I play Because you just go, okay, I've got a five at ward and all of this and you go here's like He's and then the chaos lords like sprinting into range to make them double fight And he's like, okay.  And I go, okay. I'll go with them again That's the end Like good night sweet prince, you know, right like that's the end of this And then I played seraphon with double basties and he just stood back and shot me off I just can't do it because you just push the lozenge forward and the basties go, okay That's the heroes dead the comments as well. He's just calm.  Oh 10 out of 10 player It's really amazing. So like functionally when I ran this week was double warlord Hunters like it was a variant of this only instead of all the mortals.  It's not like You know the the demon prince is like the other end of the scale You know, you You can work the idolators out you look at it and go. Oh my god. If that touches me, I'm Blended. Oh, yeah, absolutely like the math on this one's so clear, right? Yes 100 But then when you actually play you're like, I I can't be in much space without being charged next to And you have like arcane tome Because even with a blood secretary or like you're just throwing mask of darkness with the You buff up the marauders with four rolls to hit and wound and you go I need a seven and I have to reroll my own successful casts But if I get it that's a lot of output Yeah, I got charged up them by three zinch vanguard And they killed all the marauders and 21 of them fighting on death is like 105 attacks With full we rolled the hit and wound And he's like what I was like, yeah, yeah, because the buff lasts because it's a prayer it persists And they're in or a range of everything and they've all got a point of render like all of these because you kill them all at once So, right bur and there's very much is lift. I'm like, I'll take that trade like, you know That's fine Yeah, I mean this trades so well, right like again if somebody what exactly what you said If somebody wants to play quote unquote platonic fair traditional warhammer This is the way to go because this trades So brutally with everything else and you've still got you've still got the two untamed beasts Who if you need to can be the important sort of like chaffy out there just there to like Sure sacrifice on whatever it's 70 points. It's gone But then whatever comes on the counter punch Is is just killing whatever touched those untamed beasts Right exactly. Yeah If you don't have because it was at the point in the meta when there was not loads of shootings So that's how I got like a decent run. It's like Only the real kind of double basti thundalizid seraphon has the punch to get through Them quickly enough that I don't hit you with a critical mass But yeah, exactly as you say you come and you say, oh, well, I'll just I'll fight some untamed beasts I'll take back control of the middle objectives. Okay. That's fine They're yours this turn, but now the lozzy goes in Beautiful. I love it. It's so good. I can't wait to see this on the table in my in my basement. All right So this was this last list is from phil marshal. Uh, this is you titled this one never die chosen Uh, so this is in host of the ever-chosen six circle. Take us through this one Yes, so this is um, it feels also been doing really well with slaves as darkness in the uk And he's been he's like he loves arcane and the host of the ever chosen So this is the host where baron guard become battle line And where our kaon can look into the future or as phil calls it for up in the cup Like, you know because his command ability is he's bend a cp And you roll a dice and you keep it hidden and on one to three your opponent gets the next Priority and on a four to six you get the next priority So he just rolls a dice in the cup and keeps it hidden and then you know Good times into you the baron guard on the charge get plus one damage and all the weapons So he's got the six attacks. So normally threes and threes minus one one With arcane on the board they're twos and threes And then with arc with a host of the ever-chosen It's real ones to hit a wound on a thing that you want you just point at and you go that thing is really dead this turn So the whole army is more or less twos and twos rerolling everything And then the save is three up rerolling ones And then obviously loads of plus one options from the sorcerer lord and the wash rine if you want And then um, they've got double spell ignore for beings each Which is a bit crazy that you can roll two spell ignores against the spell Um, but you can so you should Um, and then obviously arcane on himself Who just goes in and deletes like whatever it is that's there because the chaos lord makes him fight twice So you get Loads of really good quality really reliable activations. It's a very tough army to unpick. He plays it very compact And you know, there are so many games where you'll just roll that four up in the cup You'll see it and you think okay this like this turn i've kind of hit Charged killed a bunch of your screens Then so i'm still i'm not in combat anymore And then i'm going to have another go straight away I'm going to double activate both units of varen god and arcane on Which is just six really high quality activations Into the meat of your army where you've no screens and he knows that play comes off when he goes for it Yeah, he's not betting on the devil. He's knowing on the double. Yeah, exactly And imagine like Because he's not got like loads of models and loads of stuff But when you just know it's going to work you just fall in with it like fall in, you know It's not a lozenge and i've played him with this and the lozenge one because Phil also wants to play i like platonic warhammer as i tell him i'm going to use that definitely Also likes to play platonic warhammer with this and Unfortunately, it can't take the bang That's all i like nothing can Um, but he does really well with this really consistently like it's just very very difficult to unpick and unpack It's all you know his broken ranks targets are like Hideous varen god with three up real ones or more of that or 20 wounds of golems with this and you're like I don't want to choose a battle tactic. Can I just run three every turn, please? Right. Is that okay this game like this? You know, it's really hard to like pick apart and Understand, yeah. Yeah, I mean what are you going to slay the warlord? Good luck. Are you picking broken ranks? Good luck, right? There's just like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Awesome, uh, this is a great list. This is such this is pretty classic. It looks awesome I love seeing archaeons on the list I mean the the great part about slaves darkness is it is now the home where archaeon is still good functional great Perhaps, um, which is nice. You used to only see him running in other showing up in other gods lists I'm glad he's back home where he belongs Uh over here and yeah, I think he's absolutely got play in a list like this and again Totally what I what I really love about this and what you kind of walk through here And the drops are a poor measure of this, but it's really interesting You know, this is a one drop and it's utilizing its one drop in a good way Through the four up in the cup, right? Whereas the previous list with the the sort of death lozenge Uh, somebody had recommended suppository by the way, because you know what's going to happen there. Um, but uh, the with that Drops are irrelevant. It's a completely different path to victory and you're just immune To caring about that sort of stuff for the most part. Yeah Yeah 100 um I think I put the snakes to the face. That's all I'm going to say on that comment. I think that's a better It's a little rich. Um On another cool thing that feels done in this list actually is to make broken ranks super because with the white dwarf update You can make cultists battle line if you give them the same mark as your general, right? So he's deliberately made the untamed beasts not zeech Right. Yes. So that way they can't give up white line So they can't give up broken ranks although you lose on like that that one mission Well, not lose but you have a slightly harder time on that one mission with battle line trump scoring power overall Push them up to the middle Play the middle objectives for a couple of points easily to start with and not worry about trading that for an immediate broken ranks So it's a really nice little like trick if in like in the idolators I would do it except all cultists have to have the same mark because you're generally idolaters You just can't get around it. Um, but as a general like tip. I think that's really really smart And I I definitely recommend doing that I think of the three if you're like, I want to play one of these three and get it on the table and kind of get it ready That feels is definitely the one I would pick because the idolators is like a lot of Models, you know 129 models a lot and it's quite like effort intensive to play you're moving a lot of stuff You know, there's a lot of 12 inch bubbles. Yeah, yeah, exactly loads of stuff to measure out And then the demon princess is like a weird one to wrap your head right. It's rewarding But it does take quite a bit of like, okay, here's how all my army is going to start to work and pull together The ever chosen list is really effective at what it does It's still got nice tricks and plays and things it can do but it By and large you get a lot of certainty from the abilities and rules that are built in You're re-rolling everything hitting on twos saving on twos Good profiles awesome All right, well, let's bring us to a close then here with a little bit of talk about the future uh so The future of s2d Now we know we've gotten our Uh tomes celestial as the aforementioned uh cultist update So we're no we're not getting a book anytime soon, which is good. We're catching them at the right moment here Okay, so we can we can affect change. We can be that's the chaos change. We want to see in the world all right Uh, so what would we want to see with the army simon What would be the if you had if you had to pick one thing you're going to change about Slaves to darkness in its next incarnation What changes that what's your next what's your one thing? I think it would be If if if warriors and knights as three plus save could be one change it will be love with that but if not just one warrior three plus save like you need an excuse to take like an iconic unit and then Ideally and when i'm stretching the question but a point of rent on the melee. There isn't the helpers just so that They get like just they fight like liberators You know massive ask right? I want them to be Reasonably parity with liberators. I'm fine if you only take tens and they're bigger blobs That's fine, but some level. Yeah, that's my change combat parity with liberators for chaos warriors I like that very much. No, I'll give you the knights and the warriors for for one change Absolutely, like have the heavily armored chaos units actually be heavily armored and the rend point is so well One of the problems with moving back to the center of the army Yeah, one of the problems with chaos warriors is because they fall into that bad space, which which traditionally Has just had a bad home in the game Which is the sort of elite Infantry that you're almost always overpaying on Right like they in in the in this is true across all of war amour It's a problem because oftentimes you want things that are just you want to sort of push into the role as hard as you can So oftentimes like really cheap things win because they're just better and more efficient at getting more bodies on the table Which ends up being better than soaking a little more damage Or you want things that hit super hard and punch wave of their weight on that that kind of thing The the elite infantry the big elite infantry have had a rough ride that sort of two wound injury There has been exceptions, you know hearth guard at various point might be one of those exceptions But that was because they could both take such an incredible punch and deal so much damage They actually fought themselves out of the pit of despair, you know the only other example Like a thing of is probably phoenix guard, right? Just because again, they're so good at what they do with just a four up ward against everything And two inch reach So they can they can actually sort of have the attrition fight and generally being always immune to battle shock And getting a bunch of re-rolls and other stuff. It made them defensive enough and offensive enough to fight their way out That's the world we need to live in Right where chaos warriors are your your anvil attrition unit. They can grind their way out of a situation Yeah, but if you have that kind of thing available that doesn't that puts a damage back, you know If that unit's like reasonably tough already, you don't need necessarily all that defense So you can chaos lord them and fight twice with them and it's like, okay I've actually got an interesting center that is pretty like complicated to unpick And then I like as acting like I can play things that around that and swing around this and engage with the opponent's army But yeah, it would open up a lot more Interesting ways like even more interesting ways to play slaves Yep We're effectively with your answer by the way we answered my second question Which is can cast warriors and cast knights ever be the correct choice in 3.0? I think the answer there is yes, like it needs a scroll change, but the answer could be yes for the scroll change Yeah, I think the only time I've seen knights Do anything close to return on investment that you take them Is if you put five in the idolators So there's a build where you maybe you take a little bit out and you just have a unit of five knights with lances Because with the plus three attacks and rerolling everything, they really really do a lot of work. You're looking at like 26 attacks on the lances yep unlike And then fighting twice Yep And then if there's a strength in the way you can get 104 damage of attacks with four rolls to hit and wound Like at rent to like that is enough that that's good like rate that I would that I would pay for definitely Like I didn't have them so I didn't put them in the list, but So unless you've got a really niche and you really like Overclock them with crazy buffs. I just don't think They can work and even chaos warriors with plus three attacks. Just don't just don't do the work without that by rent Yep. Yep. Tom Yeah, um, man, it's tough because uh, like I think that my big lament is that the Chaos warriors and knights aren't at the center of the army, right? Um I uh I mean if so if that's if that's fixed, right, let's assume let's assume that's done. Yeah Yeah, if that's done then then my call is this um Find a roll for all of the Cultists sure fix the rest of the models that we want to run, right Like one of them becomes maybe like a pure ambushing unit where they can set up late in the game You know, like they can I mean like uh Cypher lords are look like ninjas. Let them be ninjas Yeah, it's something like you could you could imagine them each having some special ability that could give them a roll in a particular build Not the default choice, but in a build having a roll But yeah, like the fire guys like they mortal on sixes Okay, like guess what splitter fang do too and they do it better So, yeah Yeah, yeah, I think raptorics fakes raptorics That's my yeah, sure. They're just It's just off chickens awful units. Yeah, the wind chickens. Yeah um So mine is going to be a big one thing Okay, but here's what here's what I want I want a lot less synergy in the army Which is a strange thing to say But wait just stick with me stick with me ready Here's the trade-off the trade-off is you have just some of the best units Period like my one change would be keep the aura is keep those. That's a cool mechanic It's a cool idea. It makes sense the power of chaos and all of that But like this is such a synergistic army It almost becomes hard to even write points and balance for when what it should be is just really good on the scroll Like these things should just be a bunch of independent actors a bunch of independent actors because they are just supposed to be Really horrendously frightening on their own. I'm not saying get rid of all synergy I'm saying wheel it back like obviously a shrine is still a buff piece. Cool. That's what it's there for Right. That's what it's there to do But make the base scroll good on its own so you can feel like when you're spending the points You're not getting frankly what is in current aos a subpar unit Until it gets five layers of buffs on it Right and then becomes good.  This is my anvil It's a good anvil if I have if I want to invest the points in the buffs I can make it a great anvil, but it's a good anvil on its own. It'll grind hard Right and so on and so forth. They're like repeat ad nauseam for the rest of the army I think it I think the army is over reliant on synergies right now with subpar war scrolls and that doesn't feel like chaos to me Right, like that's not what this army is So that's my only point. Um, I don't want them to be like gloom spite. No No, no, no, no, I want individual dedicated good buff pieces that work across the army Not keyword bingo nonsense I think that's a bit like And with the synergies it seems a bit like kind of swapping how cities play with how slaves of darkness play Yeah, because I see cities as like that collection of good stuff. You just I want some tough battle line Okay, I've got iron breakers. I want like some fast shooting stuff. Okay. I've got like, you know Crossbowmen or I've got like all the are pistol ears and nightwriters and stuff They put like decent war scrolls and then You buff the thing with the thing that buffs the thing right the thing has a power pair that goes with it, right? Yeah, exactly Yeah, yeah, exactly. So so maybe there's like I can see the design space I think you're gonna point it and I don't it don't hate the idea as much as I did just now Okay, good. I brought you back around I brought you back around good Like I just because it's a it's an army of people where everyone is effectively trying to serve the chaos gods And these are all like everything even above like a base marauder has Has received some boon Of the chaos gods favor, right? Like you don't you don't get to be even a regular old chaos warrior without being something That's pretty frightening Right So like I just want to see that captured on the base scroll And I think that would open up a lot of play too For it if you had the ability to have both like here's my strong center Here's my independent actors that opens up a lot of different interesting angles to take with the army So where you don't have to just play in a loge and just lozenge to super buff everything, right? Okay Uh So I'll just jump to my third question since we already answered the second one Is this aren't like we all assume in the new ghp. We're going to go away from the monster meta Okay, like I'm just assuming this is the case. I I don't think we are but continue. It's fine. Let's just say we are for the moment Okay, let's just take that as a thing like we're gonna maybe maybe monster meta goes away in some way because of like Various things that happen. We get new we're going to get new battle tactics I would assume and they might not have bonus points for monsters Right, so like that we could shift away from it in some way. It could have bonus points for I don't know Reinforced units or something like that like that if you wanted to push a hoard meta like I don't know I have no idea, but assumingly we're going to change Is this army ready for a non monster meta? Uh Simon, what do you think? I think I think so. I don't think it would lie So if you if you don't have monster like if you have monsters at the moment you gain some points and you lose a couple and you stop seeing You I think what maybe you will benefit from in say to darkness is that more people will want to play like We'll have to take Blobs of stuff that wants to come and fight in the middle of the board rather than my monster Zooms in blows up some stuff and then goes away and is fine or something like that. I mean The the risk though of a non monster meta Is that it's easier for shooting to prosper when there's not these big angry buffed up things barreling down their sights Yeah, I think and if that happens Slater darkness May struggle Like if the meta gets a lot shootier and a lot more people are easily able to just shoot them off It is going to be very difficult for them so I think it's really difficult to say it because there's just so My my sense is that they're ready for more or less any meta you play as a book You just see the meta and then you pick the stuff from the book that is good into that meta So I'm sure if there was a non monster meta You'd be able to put together like a proper functioning High quality list from save to darkness But you'd also be able to put together a whole bunch that just die Yeah, yeah, yeah Tom you agree with that with that uh, let's save it. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think so Yeah, that that passes the smell test to me. It's one of those armies that has a big enough bench Even though even though it is lacking some capabilities like look, it's not seraphon It's not stormcast. We all know that okay Like those are huge massive scrolls that like can choose to lean into any phase can respond much more agilely to almost any meta but I think it's got a big enough bench and a big enough suite of capabilities and of like pulling between strong heroes interesting units versatile units That it's going to be responsive to the meta and and probably perform Well, kind of no matter with the right list that's you said it exactly right with the right list, right? It's not like the list you're running now is exactly the right list To go into into whatever that's going to be 3.3 or something, you know the post ghp meta of the summertime, right? But there's probably a list in there that is the correct choice. Yeah All right. Good stuff. Simon anything else you want to leave us with before we call it a day here Um, no just another big shout out to Owen Jackson the man himself and a big thanks for him for designing the logos for the Welsh Age of Sigma team There you go. Thank you very much Always thank you very much for having on the show Hey, it was an absolute pleasure Simon. I will we will have you back anytime Uh, you like I was blown away by your list and it delivered a hundred percent Thank you so much for coming on brother and saying up late. I know it is quite late where you are Uh, so thank you very much No worries. Thank you. All right for uh for all of you out there Thank you so much for watching. We really appreciate it. Don't forget to hit that like subscribe Don't forget. We've got a patreon. It's in the links down below if you want to support the channel So, you know go ahead and do any of those things the hitting the like hitting the subscribe Hey, that's free and we do appreciate it very much. It helps other people find the show So that's great stuff. Simon. Thank you again. Tom. Thank you as always everybody out there as always We'll see you next wednesday