Hello everybody if it's Wednesday, it's Warhammer, and that must mean it's time for another episode of Warhammer weekly Joining me as always is somebody who constantly makes me question my own life. It's Tom. What's up, buddy? Hello friends Also joining us this week. He's back. That's right. We can't get rid of him. It's mr. No, and well What's up, buddy? Gentlemen, thanks for having me again. I'm doing well. He of the of the previous title holder of longest Show you might still be for like longest single guest show But obviously slanesh set a record that will be nigh impossible to beat. Yeah, there's an asterisk on that one You can't place me in the same category. Sure. I mean there's always an asterisk on slanesh That's right. Yes. That was a that was a multi multi guest episode because it was such a Such a celebration. Let's be honest. I mean, I wouldn't say celebration But it was it was great and nobody complained and slanesh has been wonderful to this day or at least it's wonderful as of this day So whatever however way you want to think about it. That's fine All right, so at any rate, let's let's get right into it because we got a lot of big stuff to cover tonight We're gonna talk about the big FAQ. We're gonna break down in in light of that FAQ We're gonna talk about some design. We're gonna get crunchy. We're gonna get deep into it folks I hope you're ready to nerd out on a deep discussion of meta and meta meta and Design meta. Oh, yeah, we're gonna go We're gonna nerd out. So if you want to get into the hardcore crunch of making a game If you fancy yourself someone with opinions on how this game should be made well Then this one's for you. If you know what the word. What was that word you lenticular design lenticular design? Correct, and this is a show for you. That's right Absolutely. All right, but first we got like no news, but anyway, Tom, what do we got? Let's talk about the rumor engine. Sure. Yeah, it's up on the screen right now and I like that I don't know man, I'm excited about this one. It looks like something was photoshopped out of the side of it, right? Yeah, maybe maybe Like that looks like a deck if you turn it sideways the deck of a ship and Looks like something was photoshopped off the bottom like it looks and like an uneven cut off the edge Oh, I think those are barnacles. I think they are too Like I think these little things are barnacles But I just feel like something was removed out of this image Like is there really a hole with nothing in it these two like little white spots here Is there really nothing underneath those because if so, what is it? Is it just a completely wrecked half ship buried in the ground? maybe maybe it is a I'd enough and let's spell Sure What what's your hope Tom? I Goblin airships Yeah, the grot bag scuddlers. Yes.  Gotcha. All right Tyler any thoughts on what this thing is? Yeah, it was basically the same thing that Tom thought. Yeah grot bag scuddlers the long rumored Flying grots, but it doesn't really have that feel to it At least based on this. I don't know hard to say Agreed it helps if you look at it at an angle. I guess here's my here. Okay. Here's my call I do think this center area was colored out. Okay, because it's there these these two missing boards and I think it's a I think it is a new terrain Peace not a terrain not for an army. I think it's a terrain piece for for like terrain You understand I'm saying yeah, and I think we're gonna get a cool new set of terrain that we haven't gotten before and There's there's another piece. It'll be part of it that other thing we saw that also I'd like that the lines Yeah, and it'll be like a coastal setting like the like the terrain setting would be like the The Or something like that. It'll be a bunch of like wrecked boats and stuff like that Wasn't the city let this wasn't that all on like a Motion, I don't know maybe but it'll be like that map that we loved in war The one where you had to go to steal the ship part. Yeah. Oh, yeah, I serpents passage serpents passage. There you go. Yes Bam look at that on the top of my head years Yeah, so there you go Wow two-plus tough dropping some lore knowledge on us in Heish the realm stone is a solid light that can be harvested from the sky That's amazing. Like I want more stuff that plays with things like that Everything in Heish and will goo is awesome everything in most the realms is awesome like some umber prayed normal like okay That's fine. The like oxhi is fire and lava place.   Yeah, that's my that's my That's my guess and people are asking if you got a new house. No, this is the same table Tom always sits at You're just at a 90 degree angle of where he currently So when I work from home like do research and stuff like that This is where I sit like it's literally like I can reach over to my painting area But it's how I reorient my brain to actually doing work rather than doing hobby Okay, so you go Yeah, we have news Sure, it's pretty awesome So you can use him in your games of war cry in a lot of different ways like they have an endurance mission Where you can go fight him and it's not about killing him because that's nearly impossible for a single warband to do It's about how many rounds you survive It's like one of we've all played that in a in a game before right where it's like you're going to lose It's just about how long you can how many battle rounds you can survive before he kills you so that's kind of cool and You can also how you can hire him as a mercenary and stuff like that But he can't stay he just like shows up for a game and then leaves and all sorts of fun different ways You can actually use him you can also do like a big scrum where you get together with other warbands and actually try to kill him So it's just a bunch of cool stuff for him in there Which is great and the rules you can just pull him down right off the site. So everything's just there It's exciting. Yeah, pretty neat. So if you got a go track and you got work, right? You know, you have a go track. I hear that you can win a go track right now. You can that's another new piece of news So I painted up go track. I shared him yesterday he's in my case like right over here and He is going to be Darren Watson who is running the go track glorious go track. I'll include a link below Website where it is hosting results for people who use go track in their 2k tournament armies At the end of a season the person with the most with the highest Ranking ranking. Yeah, exactly and in first place wins that go track wins that painted go track That go track will be going with me to Golden Demon I'm not gonna say anything It could be a Golden Demon winning That is being given away if you run go track in your tournament lists Luck yeah, now he isn't venturing to Golden Demon alone, but all that's all I'll say of that. It's dangerous to go alone I Indeed it is Yeah, this is amazing project with a lot of people involved in it a lot of people who are sponsoring or providing Rewards awards as well along with the winner getting the incredible model that's been it up. Yeah, it's really cool It's ridiculous Will I would assume he said does anyone know what base I use go track on and work right? I mean I would assume probably is 32 Because that's that's sort of his gaming base. I think the 40 is really only for display Yeah, I mean the 40 makes sense if he's been killing war bands though. Sure. It's all the dead bodies. Yes You edit you were about to say something Tyler and I know where you were gonna go to oh Oh, yeah Well on the go track, but and I we when got your came out. We have been talking about the idea Talk with you guys about it or maybe multiple people had the same idea around the same time when culture came out That we need to have a basically like a fellowship of the ring prize or award at an event Yes Yeah, so Brendan is actually Went ahead and designed that as one of the awards that's going to be available at His event bruce city brawl next year. That's awesome. Yeah for bringing the whole party Yeah, yeah, absolutely Yeah, I think also what you were gonna say is that the ko book and the disciples of zinch book are out of stock and not going to be replaced Yeah, they are not just temporarily out of stock. They are gone yet another in the long line of things We already knew was happening like that. Yep. Those are sure getting new armies I would imagine we'll hear about it pretty early into the new year Like it's that they're not gonna say anything around Christmas because probably no one really would pay attention too much If they haven't already been talking about it, but it might be like right after Christmas. They'll talk about it Yeah, I mean what I'd say is this we had predicted february But like we know that what we have a sister's release in january. We don't know what else is dropping in january That's if that's just a box and some books I could see that being a like a Like an early january drop in order to be like a cash grab for christmas money Sure. Well, I could see like a week one or week two release of that potentially sure Good retail sales is also just as much about january as it is about Christmas now because people spend money as somebody who was in retail for many many years I will tell you that january was a huge month So So the last three years it's been gits in january, right? That's right. Yeah, and then it was nergal the year before it sounds right. Yeah, and then zinge was here before that their anniversary So those were all yeah, those were all range essentially sort of revised or updated Ranges based on some existing kits. I wonder if It would be too hard to speculate that maybe just maybe serif on might fill that role well, we had speculated that but I think that that was uh That was in lieu of any evidence Like like that had cropped up as a speculation piece, but we've heard nothing of serif Yeah, we've just heard nothing and so like I like we would have heard something by now if we had serif on dropping in four weeks Something would elite. Yeah That that that's my suspicion That that says to me that we don't have serif on was serif on the actual first book It was I what was it the very was it the force phone passing corn? Uh, it was the first book Okay, was it the first like standalone book that they did before they had rules in them. They were more or less just story books, right? Yes, they had battalions though. They had uh, they had He's like that's where like the uh, like the skink like the shadow whatever comes from Like the shadow the star or something either way it'd be great if they began with serif on and ended with serif on It's my point, right? Like let the lizard men bookend the Two-plus stuff says it was the third one. There you go. Okay. It was the third. Oh, was it after storm caston? Yeah, it's probably after those two storm gas and corn sure Yeah, it makes sense that those two were the first since they had uh, we're probably there supporting the initial stuff But either way if it was the first sort of standalone for not supporting a box set It'd be great to begin and end it that way Yep, let's see blood bounce serif on there you go So we've been beating around the proverbial bush here because The FAQ dropped this week That's right boy big FAQ time and we had we had kind of called this last week. Do you remember that? That we said that hey, we called but yes, probably we said it would We said that hey, it it sounds like it might have been bumped up and we could see it as early as next week Behold our prognosticative powers Yeah, let's get into it. This thing is great. I am excited about this. So let's let's do the high level tyler Yeah, start us off Was this a good FAQ? Are you excited about did you? Yeah, absolutely. No, I thought this was The probably the best update that we've gotten since they have begun doing these FAQ Updates FAQ and a rat updates. Yeah, absolutely. I agree. There are a couple of things that we'll we'll touch upon But all in all, yeah, it shows a very clear sign of Engage, you know continuing this overall positive trend of Engaging with the community listening to the community and reflecting that and the updates that we're seeing I love it I love it. Yeah, like it's like I Like there's not really any changes here that I don't love um Uh slanesh We'll get into the we'll get into the specifics in a minute because we're gonna go We're gonna blow by blow it quickly through all of them. So high level you're saying you're happy Yeah, okay high level. I agree. There were two misses in this for me Like this was a 99.5 positive Yeah, right here that I am more positive than vince is yes. That's because you like the broken thing. I don't like Sorry bent thing. I don't like it's not But yes, uh, but that's fine like that's in no way I mean it's a forest for the tree situation, right? Like this was an unbelievable victory. Like I was so thrilled with every change here Uh, I think this is the best most positive FAQ we've seen. I think there were two mistakes But we'll talk about those briefly, but overall this is great. So let's get through these. All right. We ready Incidentally the thing that you didn't like I was so thrilled that I got to be the one to Spark that uh mom and dad Fight not really fight, but I hadn't I hadn't experienced one of those this year I'd gone an entire year without getting one of those and then yes without tom and I going at each other. Yes Yeah Yeah, we were in a we were in a facebook chat with some other content producers and like and uh Tyler got vince and I going at each other for 20 minutes And then like 130 some messages back It's it's true Events telling tom. What what did you say to him that? Oh, don't worry. We're gonna do this is all just news Technically the FA let me answer this real quick. Somebody said no hobby time. Don't worry. We're gonna do hobby time The FAQ is all happening under news. So there's gonna be a long new section Little tiny pick of the week in hobby time and then meta discussion. This is how we're gonna break this up Don't worry. We're good to all that. I got plenty of stuff. I want to talk about Uh, all right, so we're gonna blow by blow this ready. Yeah, here we go Nurgle all the battalions down by 60 blight kings and the other blight king people all you know go on unmodified sixes Hallelujah, hallelujah about time could have done it a year ago, but better late than never They did that and i'm like, okay. Nurgle's fixed. Yeah, exactly like that's great It's great. I think we could still push a few more things I'd love to see a couple little little more. Yeah, like there's maybe a couple they're very very small tweaks We could make in nurgle, but I think that's great Like fantastic overall Wonderful. Okay beasts. Oh chaos Duel down 20 to 100 bull goers down 20 to 140 cygor down 40 to 140 Gorgon down 40 to 160 No other significant rules changes Uh, yeah fine all good stuff. I'm excited honestly about 100 point doom bowls. I like me 100 point doom bowl I think he carries his water for 100 points. I think he is a decent hero for 100 points Uh bull goers 140 or at least mildly interesting over enlightened Who should probably kind of go drift up just maybe slightly and maybe Skyfire should kind of slightly drift back down a little. Well, that's fine. Whatever. It's a different discussion Um, but like and even gorgons at 160 is like interesting. That's an interesting bully at 160 Yeah, I played played two over the weekend and they're scary, man Especially if they're in if they're in the god marked battalions, right? Like a corn gorgon is Pretty good Like that guy does some work He is worth 160. He is worth 160. Yes, like you're gonna get 160 points of punch out of a corn gorgon Yeah, so in the in the brass, uh, whatever that thing is. I can't remember the name Brass to spoilers. Thank you. Brass to spoilers Uh, yeah, so good stuff Uh, I'm just by the way as far as order goes folks. I'm doing these in the random order I have them written down so don't this isn't like alphabetical or anything Uh deep kin the uh, both of the aspects went down 40 points So 380 for this the c which is the caster and 360 for the storm which is melee Are we down to 300 points yet with them? Uh, no, no, okay Yes as as hawo wonderfully I can go lower. Yes the leviadon down to 310 because we just can't get that 300 number And the sharks down for 20 points from 120 to 100 Significant rule changes Yeah, man sharks got pretty interesting Uh, oh real quick other thoughts on beasts. Yes, I think there's still a couple other things in beasts They can have points moves down. Okay, there we go. Yes But this is good. These were all positive moves at any rate. Yeah, sharks at 100 is amazing The leviadon at 310, you might see it here or there I still don't think it's good enough to make a like to make a super hard list But I think it's actually like interesting enough to take in some more fun 32e type of lists now for sure. Yeah. Yeah And the the list that most people should be playing. Yeah I don't I don't have a problem with it and I have a feeling we'll see people experiment with aspects to see if they're actually worth it yet My suspicion is they need to drop 20 to 40 more before they actually carry their full water Which would which would point them at how much? Like 320 to 340 somewhere in that area. Yeah, sure Like they just don't feel like they're they're on quite that level. I mean, they're closer now They're closer as quick to see two casts to unbind Yeah, he has a he has a two caster. Yeah Yeah, I I think that a solid three to 320 would make them imminently playable That's what I'll say. Sure. Sure. I don't think there's any question about that but I mean like I It's tough. It's tough with them. They're a really interesting odd piece, right?  That's not huge, but it's it's fine They're on a keeper base. They're on a keeper base. That's right. They're uh, you know, they're They're wounded like a monster, but they have no chart that gets that gets worse, right? Which has value to it like that has value Yep, they they are not a monster so they can hide in terrain Uh, yeah, I mean they just they have interesting Things that they get look out, sir Uh, they can't hide in they can't hide in terrain again. They they have I don't think whatever I do It's war machines. It's war machines over seven loons Um, it's what you're thinking about not heroes. It's monsters and war machines over seven loots. There you go Yes, they can absolutely hide and train. There you go. Yeah, I knew they could look out, sir Uh, but yeah, they're just like they're really in a weird place as like just kind of this big Hero not monster thing, right? Like it's they don't have the output of uh Like they don't have the output of of something often up around that points cost But i'm not sure they don't have the utility It's it's very hard for it to point utility heavy pieces. I think is what you see throughout the game, right? Yeah Yep, I think it's pretty when you say hiding when you say hiding in terrain, you don't mean they fly. Do you mean something different? I think you mean to get their ability to take cover take cover.  Yeah Uh, or a two up if they're based three up. I I haven't looked at them Yeah, they're based three up. Yeah, okay. So go to a two up save by by standing on a rock Yeah, that's what I'm that's what I'm interested in sure. Yeah All right, uh Okay, so sylvaneth, uh, who cares about these people? No, no, no, no, no A laurial back down to 600 where she should have stayed forever I don't know why she suddenly jumped up 60 a long time ago. Yeah, spirit of dirt down 40 Sure to 300 tree lord ancient down 40 points to 260 which is actually I think probably the right number for him Uh, yeah, they needed to go to two cast to unbind, you know, given up And the tree lord down 20 points to 180 no real significant rules changes Um, yeah, I mean good stuff. I'm honestly way more excited about these as part of living city In cities of sigmar than I am Uh, for them like sylvaneth as an army, I'm ready to just write it off personal perspective.  I hate the way it plays on the table It's a really I just like it's got to be in the running for my least favorite armies to play against Vince is like hard pass. Yeah Well, it's unfortunate because I do think that the army still maintains The it's enjoyable to play outside of those woods Yet the play style it's a very it's very interesting to play against sylvaneth, I think It can be sometimes outside of the woods outside of the woods, which I know can be difficult to separate those two It is very hard seeing as how that's their that's basically most of the strats It's under their shtick. Yeah, that's what they do. Yeah You know, we might we might see more uh triple or quad derpy list Sure, sure, uh run some cheap outcast battalions give some artifacts run them in two two pairs to you know two by two And yeah, take advantage of the stomps turn the stomps into 75 chance of making enemy always strike last Yeah, I didn't have the guts to ask for a 40 point drop on derpy's latest run of feedback So I was kind of surprised by that I mean, I think it's uh These were all points that needed to go down, right? Yeah, like all of these things were too Expensive for what they were. Yeah. Okay, so start there. These were all good changes. These were the right changes, right? I look at all these and go yep, correct. You've made the correct choices That doesn't mean like I don't think we should look at the FAQ like it needs to solve all problems with an army simultaneously If that's your expectation, you're just setting yourself up for disappointment Every one of these should be about moving in a positive direction You can't just like there are so many variables flipping around here that it's really hard to just like go and nailed it I flipped 40 switches and now the army's perfect like that Like you want to do one lever like a handful of levers at a time, you know If there's 40 you want to do four or five maybe And you're like slowly moving the needle and that the hope is that you're moving towards right And I think what we've seen over the last couple iterations is mostly positive movement, right? Like for the most part it's all been going in the right direction And and this is more of that so like do sylvaneth probably need some more touches Now we're just staring at Tyler's chest. There you go. Sorry all right See you've been working out The uh Yes, I mean the answer is yeah, I think they still need another touch I I honestly would love to see them like, you know what third time's a charm. Let's try it again with that book That's what I say You want to republish the book republish the book pull that one. Let's just do it again And let's go to one set of trees any time you would summon trees just make that turn turn a Into an overgrown and it becomes a forest functionally talked about it a hundred times. It's the right answer Yeah, and even in slaves to darkness they started playing with literally like you changing the nature of terrain on the board, right? And adding Like they thought of it like three books too late or five books too late or whatever, you know Like again the answer was was uh was easy Well, again, I'm still a big fan of that latest book Yeah, clearly it has it has an obvious issue that was maintained But from the standpoint of viable variety Uh, I think it did a really nice job there with no roots cornerleaf Heartwood dreadwood Was my favorite, you know, we talked about dreadwood. I thought that's going to be the most competitive That commandability is one of the best things in that book and lorry. I still think it is Yeah, anyway, so yeah, no, we can move on. Absolutely. All right. The point is good direction I'm excited about it I the only reason I didn't get rid of myself enough because I was excited now because they have a purpose again Because I can use them in my city's armies. So yeah Daughters of cane avatar of cane down 40 points to 140. Who cares? And blood stalkers down from 140 to 120 Who cares? No other significant changes Keep going. Yeah, I mean Both of those things are just like they're not going to be useful. I don't really care what they're pointed at They're just never going to have them. They are scrolls that will not have a purpose in that army in their current version So here's the deal I'm not going to pay 140 for a terrain piece until turn three Even if I get to make a prayer to move it around and um I'm not going to pay 120 of 20 points for five shooting attacks That do one damage right It's not I don't care that they're on two wound models like it's like At a hundred I might be willing to run them in the battalion in mid in mid In mid unit sizes But they're just like You want to do something with them? Here's what you do with them You move them up to instead of one attack a model you do two attacks a model and you make their their snipy Mortal wounds on sixes only trigger if they did not move There you go sure It's interesting and now they're worth 140 Yeah works for me We Doc might be one that we'll touch upon later and yeah, there's events. We were talking about this a little bit earlier Yeah, there's I I'd reached out to a few doc players of the last couple of days here and just to get feedback on the changes And yeah, it was essentially tom's view that he just expressed. It doesn't really change things Right. No, because here's the deal doc has fundamental flaws despite what yeah, doc's current thing. There are like huge Doc is a big gilded house on top of like a rotten foundation That's that's the best way I can describe if I want five shooting attacks. I'm picking harpies So With the same effective range of movement and and shooting Sure. Yeah All right, so we'll talk we'll talk doc a little later Uh legions l o n nefarada down 20 manford down 20 Uh, yeah, there you go Okay, so there's still that issue that uh Let's see arcane and Negash Yes, can are still worse in legions than they are in obr. Yeah with their spellcasting limitations, right Not mine a little bit I didn't I didn't quite get that one unless i'm missing something why that didn't get changed I wonder if they're yeah, I don't know. Maybe it was because of the Like they didn't touch obr at all in the big FAQ here So I you know, it probably just suffered from that right like again I guess that's technically a legions thing, but it probably falls more under like them looking at with obr And they're probably thinking of like what do they even want to do to that with legions, right? I don't think that we'll see I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it like I could see them redoing the legions book sooner rather than later And reimagining that force in a sequence of books sure Like it doesn't probably need to be one giant force honestly like you could you could you could It can or it can't like there's too much crap in there as it is I've always hated that death is all just reporting up to one guy Uh, I mean, I guess if any army is going to be or if any alliance is going to be the ultimate dictatorship you know Death it is death, but still All right, let's see scaven This is one of my two misses. I'll talk about it in a minute Uh plague monk's got a new war scroll. We don't we it's it's better. It's correct. It's the right war scroll I like it. I love it. They killed all the dumb complexity It's still perfectly scary and fine for 280 if you don't think so you're suffering from anchor pricing because the old one was so broken sideways That you're used to getting like outrageous amounts like This is this is just you were you were way under market norms there for what you were getting Now that you have to pay market normative prices. You're like, this is a ripoff. No It's just what everybody pays. Yeah, your your prescription is six months of liberators at 100 and judicators at 160 That's right. Yeah and come back to me and talk to us then reset those anchors Um, what I'll say is this uh, if you want a discussion of this go to my uh, my twitter feed um, and I started I like laid all the numbers beside each other's and like functionally like Uh, the monks are priced almost identically to which elves Hmm Like attack profile for max block size or 20 points cheaper Same functionally same defenses and they actually have more abilities than the witches do for what they're getting in the same attack profile Uh, but nobody would say that they're Like like that witches are bad I mean I would say witches are annoying, but we'll talk about that later. Yeah No, they're not bad. Yeah, right and but and but everybody now is saying that like monks are terrible or they're bad or whatever No, again, that's just anchor pricing like it's all it is It's it's it is When you're when you've set your anchor and this is one of the problems that they have right now Like everybody wants these big sweeping changes But the problem is is that like they have to be careful of how much they move stuff around Because if they take something that's real broken And just bring it all the way back to holy fixed people lose their minds, right? Because everybody's already anchored to the like this thing I was getting this level of value and now I get less Even if that's now the correct point even if they bring it down to the theoretical benchmark or accurate thing It still feels like a loss and people register loss is harder Right. Yeah So like I get it but to me plague monks are like yep Okay, that's now a valid unit glass cannon hammer and should perform about like it should at its points Yeah Yep, we had a few other things was given Uh, yeah. Oh, yeah, sure. Sure. Sorry. That was the big one Bombardier it went up 20 which is correct because he was the better version It was all silly. They were the same price screaming bell went up 20 to 240. Okay, sure Seems about right Deceiver went up 20 that felt unnecessary my poor my poor ashen deceiver That's fine. Like whatever just come out with a new ashen book and all new rat sculpts and I'll forgive you Uh The warp seer went up to 320, which is the correct amount back when we did the show when we were reviewed scaven I said there's there's original number, which was like 260. I said, this is nonsense. This guy's 320 At least at least it took nine months But we got there like that was absolutely the right number from from the jump Okay, and he might still be 20 points too cheap, but still uh And then storm fiend max unit size was decreased from nine to six Okay, yeah, so so where's the miss? Here's the miss. They didn't move any scaven points down Like I know it's fun to hate on scaven Okay, because they have all this undercosted crap and look I support every one of these up changes every one of them I think they were all correct. Okay Like they're all right that is all correct But there are there are things in scaven that are just overcosted that would are never going to get played and it's a shame Because they're not super great, but it but it like rat ogres need to come down a little bit Those guys could be really fun and could have a potential role Right, but they have like the elite problem They have their their elite with low defenses that don't kick out quite enough damage move them down 20 points Maybe we'll talk, right or or something like that.  Yeah, I haven't seen that thing in list since the What spring fact whatever the last fact was prior to this one Yeah Never see it because it's not good and it dies super easy And it does it comes sure it can come back sometimes like 33 time with some number of wounds But like it's not it's not a fire phoenix.  People focus in on the broken elements Right. Yeah, we talked about this with doc today in the chat um Is that like people focus on doc, but if like you just remove the hagnar witch block stuff Like they have non-functional pieces of their army That like people just never see right. You're not blood really solving any rude issues by doing that, right? Yeah Um, so, you know like it There are just many units in scape. I mean scaven as is like one of those factions that has more units than anybody else So of course, they're always going to be bad units super fine. I'm okay with that, right? Like I don't I'm not asking for 48 or whatever they have playable perfectly balanced worse roles. That's insanity That's never going to be the case, but there's still positive stuff we can do, right? Yeah. Yeah, I agree with this. Okay All right, uh, moving all right moving right along to do do do storm cast Oh I'm excited about this one for reasons that have nothing to do with storm cast The drake swan temp are wonder why down from 460 to 420 the lord sellison on star drake down from uh, down from what? 560 to 500 even why hello? Hello And the evocators on draca lines down from 300 to 260 uh, great great changes all around I think the star drake has been underrated for a while Uh ever since he acts like that's my kick to her ass, but yes ever since he took me behind the woodshed And showing your like the scaven like slinish. Sorry. That's just doesn't have the power to kill that unit Like it's just not in the cards Uh, and that single model can kill the entire army and anything I'll summon I can keep summoning all day It's fine. I tell you guys about the storm wing trade Yeah, yeah He was doing that. Oh, okay. I didn't know I'm like that's gotta be just something that I haven't heard discussed Yeah, of course he was doing it Like he would mortal wound me on the move and then on the charge and then on the pilot and like my units were just dying Yeah, for those of you that don't know what we're talking about, uh, storm wing This will last probably six months until the FAQs get, uh Right now it triggers on all the moves Yeah, it just says on whenever you move if you move over an enemy do a d3 mortal wins And so like you can do it on charge you can hey We're gonna share all 5 000 of our of our 20, you know, our views or whatever. However many views this video gets Everybody's gonna know about it That the star the star drake Um on move on any move does the d3 mortals if he passes over an enemy base And so you can do it on move on charge and on pilot Right, he would just come over like a you know a tiny touch of like He would just flip and then land and clip and then land and clip and then land And and it meant that Like can they duplicate mount right now? I don't think so Oh, I'll bet they can I'm gonna look at that because that means you have four Like Alex says with drake temple. You can put it on two drakes Since it's right. Oh, yeah Oh, oh, right. You get an extra one per battalion right an extra mount trade Yeah, you could that'd be amazing. Yeah. Yeah, by the way This the the drop of this to like 420 made me want to get out that uh, that battalion No, the the drop of the drake's worn template to 420 I thought you dropped to 400. No, he's 420 it's 500 on 420 now Yeah, first of all, obviously don't need to say it, but let's just go ahead and say it Fantastic change for cities of sigmar like yet again another win for the for the free folk Uh, like I immediately said how am I going to make a Dragon conversion for my whirlwinds edge army because I absolutely want to take one of these bad boys In tempasai and one of these bad boys in living city where they both in both of those it seems very appealing um I I love the yes, t 420 all day long, uh the uh, I I love that templar in living city because he can shoot and fade I love either of them frankly in tempasai where they can shoot across the board and be on like a two plus Yeah, but I want to take that that What I really want is a stormcast book that that re does that three Uh star drake battalion and makes the ability not utter garbage, right? Yeah, but I don't care even if it doesn't okay even if they even I would play it right now I've got a bunch of extra dragons in there that I was trying to figure out how to up armor And if they're big enough to be star grapes like just I've got dragons from like reaper and stuff and I was like Oh Simplest army ever Yeah, three of those bad boys out. I just got to figure out three battle line and I am jobs are good and there you go Like uh, I've seen liberators and done exactly look. I still got painted liberators. It's cool. Um No problem, uh So at any rate the uh There were there were other things with the storm cast so the The main errata. Yes, uh was the long strikes So for the hero phase shooting, there's been a long-standing debate about whether they get to shoot at 30 inches In the hero phase And they said no, sorry, you don't get to have fun And likewise like the hurricane crossbows Hurricanes only going to be six shots not nine shots in the hero phase It's not the end of the world. It's definitely good. I think you'll feel it. It's fine. It's fine. Yeah It's fine. Sigmar is going to pop a new chamber in 2020 And everything will be fine crack in your chamber. Yeah, that's that's probably why there's a lack of widespread changes or or more changes than these three war schools Yeah, there's probably a book that's on the way relatively soon. Yeah, and and yes, uh, math is correct This is me at my most timmy you tell me I could have a three dragon army Um, I remember I mean look hashtag three mag meta was started on this show. Okay. That's all I'm saying So you tell me three star drakes and that's playable now. I'm in like I'm in okay like that sounds so fun and amazing Like I love that At his at his at his height. Yes, because I want to push dragons forward going Like yes Yes They are vences monster trucks.  I think they're the 2019 version of iron jaws in 2018 Where they're actually better than people think they are Yeah, there's some hidden there's some hidden like solid lists in there. Yeah, yeah Yeah, there's there's been a lot of obsession about the 43 and a half percent win rates in l of v stats, which I get it it's it's been going down quite a bit over the last 18 months, but They're uh, they can be a lot better than that win rate suggests. Yeah, I would agree. I played played him a ton this year Well, yeah, I mean I was I was like my personal win rate with iron jaws in that year you're talking about was over 80 percent So, you know, right, right. It's fine at tournaments. So whatever Uh at any rate, uh corn Mighty skull crushers down from 180 to 160 and blood crushers down from 120 or sorry 140 to 120 both down 20 points Uh Yep, both real good Minor changes but made them both very interesting skull crushers more than blood crushers blood crushers always are problematic for a host of reasons, but they're even at 120 I'm like, okay, we've hit that like magical one wound to 10 point ratio So like I can live with it as an interesting just chaff element or you know, slightly heavy chaff element But skull crushers at 160. Oh You have my attention Right, uh, that is like, um That's a good gap for 160. Yeah, that's uh, that's a solid pick. I am I'm I'm in on that I like those no other significant corn changes Uh, but yeah, good good changes there. Um, I dig it Yep Yeah, autumn lotus says I'm bringing 18 blood crushers. I mean, yeah, that's like you really can get outrageous numbers of those guys now Even at like even at 120 it makes a big difference, right? Sure You know times six units like that's a heck of a lot of points you saved That's that's by six units to get one free right there On the points changes. Uh, all right fire slayers Miss number two is contained here Uh, Volkite berserkers down from 160 to 140. That's fine. Uh, and earth and what's that? Nothing to see here. Sure. It's I mean, I thought they were fine at 160 But I think they're fine at 140. So that's cool. Um The Uh, I'm like, I'm not gonna fight that change. It's cool Uh, earth guard berserkers max unit size decreased to 20 if they had stopped there I would be like positive change Yes, good stuff a plus I like where we're going But I thought you said you wanted to like sprinkle in some positive with the negative and so they did They said, you know what we are gonna cap it at 20, but we don't want to just leave it there No, and in fact, they now gained a hoard discount at 20 of 1 2400 Meaning instead of paying 480 for 20, which is what you would have paid previously You're now paying 400 for 20 an effective savings of 80 points Um Yeah, and the reality is the weak way to play them was always the giant death star Because this game isn't about shoving a death star a single death star down your enemy's face in most matchups, right? Right, it's just not You need multiple centers of power. So 220s was always the stronger choice The problem was you were overpaying because the hoard discount existed up at 30 And it actually was, you know, quite unfavorable to do that Now, however, oh Good good Zerkers everywhere Like one of the worst units to play against in the game Like one of the least fun units to play against because They can very very easily Be highly defensive and highly offensive at the same time We can argue about exactly who they how they need to be babysat How many different heroes they need to have, you know, like they certainly they've got to have like a battle smith And there's a prayer that can trigger or do they need to be go all the way to two up? Rerolling ones, which is a thing they can achieve And a four up against wounds and mortal wounds and they can certainly kick out like an outrageous amount of pain That'll chop down anything that hits them. They were already the gold standard of one of the hardest units in the game And you can get two of them Still quite hard like can they both be ultra buffed? Probably not And they both be super tough You betcha Can three of them still be super tough? Yep, and and lists like that can exist I don't I do agree with tom who has posted some sample lists And I agree with him that like actually the most powerful list probably isn't Like all yeah like all in on zerkers like 320s I think two 220s or something in that nature is probably the right area 220s, it's what you need And then you get to have all the rest of your toys Right, right, then you actually have enough of the other toy support pieces mobility Yeah, can can you fit a magnet draw off like room father and actually Yeah, um the list that I'm playing with right now Um the one that so I came up with the list vince that you had seen that was a three drop Um, I was 20 points over on that list. So that actually was bad napkin math Um, and so that's not actually viable. Um, which forced me to like go back to the drawing board go back to one battalion instead of two and uh I'm the list that I'm looking at right now for my fireslayers has a that's a mag smiter in it So rather than the lord the hero because like you don't want your general on a magnet draw Please don't get sniped off. Like, you know, like they're actually more survivable when they're on foot Yeah, that sounds really counterintuitive, but they are they're more survivable on foot because of the oryx because of the Firewall because you can hide them easier because of lookouts or because of all those things Yeah, it's better to have Them on foot. So I don't want my general on foot or on a mag But you can't fit a mag in and like my like my what I consider like a hyper competitive list It's actually running a magnet off now, which I wasn't previously so yeah I mean like I consider this a miss these guys should just be they just shouldn't have a horde discount Like they just published a whole slaves to darkness book that is absent horde discounts. These guys don't need a horde discount Um, that's that's the position i'm gonna take Uh, is it like break the world? No, are they bent? Yes Are they like but there's plenty of other bent units in the game Okay, and so like this isn't me saying that this is like the last this is the last hill or this is the end of the game No, this is not new. No, definitely not. No, no, no, no, no, no, no I'm not saying that I'm saying this was a bad change that didn't need to happen Like it just it didn't need to be there they were fine, yeah Everyone's favorite pastime is to make Comparisons particularly cross faction comparisons and there can be challenges with it But good lord, you can go to town with cross faction comparisons I think I posted eight during the argument we were having which was about this Yeah, and there is no other like there is here is my blanket statement. Yeah, you ready There is no other 400 points 400 point ish unit Give or take 50 60 points in the game That delivers this amount of value Yeah That's the argument Yeah, hard press to to think of counters, but anyway, uh my favorite from today my friend Sam certainly 20 chaos warriors Ain't matching up to this well that that was yeah, it was same. Yeah, same I was about to say that Sam sent me 20 chaos warriors at 400 Right like 20 chaos warriors at 400 and it's actually a good comparison because they too often will want a babysitter With about the same aura reach often right of like this 12 inch holy with their bubble And they'll often and they also have a lot of synergistic bonuses and they have they're on the same basis of 32 mils And like, you know, they'll there's a lot of similarities there, but there's just no comparison that fight happens Hearthguard walk away chaos warriors do not Okay um And like again both of those need Like and people are saying like I like in the in the chat people like they need support to function Yup support you were going to take anyways You were going to take a battlesmith everything in the game needs support to function Well, almost zero units function completely independently the game is about power pairs and synergy That's every army Yeah Sean park is suggesting that 30 more tech guard sitting in the similar space to Which is the same price as uh 20 earth bar preserters. Yeah, cuz 30 is Is 30 exactly 400? It's 390. There you go. Oh, I accept that. I accept more tech guard are are tied Well, the other is they're synergistic as well right because they want other support pieces around to really turn that I'm on now they have a slight advantage in that In that interdependence piece and that their champion can also do some of the hero Right. Yeah, but they do want support to be like, you know, whatever again I'm making a bigger. Thank you. Sean 390. They do like I don't want to Again, I know I'm making a big deal. Listen. It's not really a big deal.  I find it generally annoying I think and it's it's it's emblematic of a unit that shouldn't exist that by the way more tech guard also are Which is a unit that can simultaneously be highly defensive and highly offensive Right It's a functionally your witch elf prop like your hagnar witch elf problem again, correct But with more survival heroes more more survivable support heroes And less mobility Sure, totally fair. Yeah Yeah, but but like I would just I would just haphazardly clump all three of those together As mr. Rificio said just bring more red just bring more rend and get good.  It's a Save in my play fire slayers frequently. It's actually it's it's fine. It's fun game. Hey events. Yeah Uh, I can't wait to roll some dice with you this weekend. Yeah, man. What are we playing this weekend? I'm sure you'll bring your fire slayers and that's fine I may have 40 hearthbar berserkers built over there and mostly bring them along I can I'll I'll help me sharpen the knife on how much I hate them At any rate, let's move on Well, let's say our local guy ryan who plays fire. He's starting up a fire slayer He had to explain the firewall to me very slowly That it seemed quite janky and we didn't see any changes to it. Don't you need? Yeah, like perfectly fine. No No, I mean in april in april. I said that it needs to be fixed. I highlighted it I made a big deal out of it and never got fixed and so I said fine. I'm gonna play with it Um, and which is basically for those of you guys don't don't know the firewall fire fire slayer wall says this If line of sight is traced to a unit um Or a model within that who's the center of their base Is within a half inch of this wall or within an inch of this wall. Yeah, that's what it is within an inch of this wall um Then you can't draw line of sight to them. You can't draw line of sight which means that you can literally You can stand in front of the wall and be protected from line of sight You can be base to base with these models and be out of line of sight. Correct Yeah, pretty seem to seem pretty janky so Uh and it also grants a 12 inch bubble. Um a mystic shield. Yeah, it does. Yeah That's often where your re-rolling ones is going to come from often but not always it could also just be the command ability but Often yes or burning your forge sure. Yep. Yep Yep Let me say this way It's often going to be where your re-rolling ones comes from if you're playing tom Since tom loves that stupid wall and uses it all the time It's 40 points like I i'm not going to lie like I Put in like two units and then the wall and then the rest of my less gets built. I get it. Yeah All right, flesh eater courts crypt whores went from 150 to 130 cool. They were the fine. Yeah No issues good good change thumbs up Gloom spike gets I like this change You notice I like all the ones a lot where they just make monsters cheaper We're gonna talk about that later A ragnarok with flinger down 30 to 220 a ragnarok with the war party down 30 to 200 And skitter strand down 40 to 200 aces Dig all of that all them big spiders getting cheaper. So But they're cool Still not gonna play any of them not a single one I still that this just makes my pie to the face armies that I talked about in the gets Review all the more viable. There's like three skitter strands in the battalion. That's like a straight. What that battalion's 100 points, right? You're not gonna get me to run that spiders army because it's rotten Because the base unit the spiders the spider riders are terrible. Sure Like it's like that's the problem with that army. I get I hear you. No, I just want to use that one battalion I could build other out the other third the other 1300 points can be whatever I'm just saying three skitter strands That battalion I unburrow them in charge and just block up the whole board with those giant 160 mil pipe lights Yeah, they're not gonna do anything and they're still gonna murder through your spiders. I'm sure that's true Uh, so when do we want to talk about the? The sequencing issue in just a moment. It's what it was going to end on it Okay, we have one more one more point thing to go through knight haunt lady o down 20 curdos down 20 black coach down 40 I know you're excited about that tom because the coach performed pretty well for you It's actually like I was really impressed with the black coach constantly Yeah, I mean what i'll say is this like it it has all of the problems like it's actually a really interesting problem that it creates um because it's um That army has no objective holding heroes Like it has no heroes that have more than seven wounds or Eight wounds that hold that are in any way sort of tough. Yes, right Like like there's just nothing in the army that that can can take any heat It's a lot of serial four boots with no aftersave Right and so like when you give items you give items to foot heroes because there's no one else to carry items um, and so The problem is is that like The coach should probably be a hero It has a cairn wraith Which is a foot hero On the coach. Yeah, the right answer here is just the steam tank commander right black coach 220 black coach with with, uh, You know, whatever cairn wraith driver uh 260 yeah, yeah or 300. I mean 300 might still be high, but you get what i'm saying Something my critique is that like it should have had the hero keyword and my and so I had provided some feedback Right after havoc when I took it to havoc and my feedback was this either It needs to gain the hero keywords Or it needs to lose, um more points because it's it can't do what it needs to do And uh, it lost more points. So um at 220, uh I mean, I was a buyer. I was a reluctant buyer at 260 at 220 I don't think i'm wasting those points at all. No, I will say it always did good work for us like in the teams game Like when we when you and I were a team it was always because it it's so much faster than people anticipate Yeah, and you would just shoot it across the board and pin things and people would not and like against lower defense stuff It will do pretty significant damage Right, especially when buffed by all the stuff you were kind of buffing it with Yeah, I mean it has a it has like if I want to run it Which I can do pretty easily like it has run in charge with on like the second upgrade um and so like Doing a 23 inch base movement is not hard on that thing, right? um because like the item that you take is the plus three movement in the movement base banner And so like you can shoot, you know easily 23 and then it charges on top of that Um, so I mean it can it can move it can shoot across the table and it can retreat and charge as well When it levels up and so like it it can be where you need it to be Like I said, I was telling people in the night haunt army like they were They were really stubborn for a bit right after I took it And one of the things I said is that I I consider it a necessary piece in that army in night haunt It does things that no other piece in that army can do right, right? Um and on top of that it's model It's like restoration aura that it does that everybody like doesn't think much of Um, it's models d3 models not d3 which was paying big dividends with with your hex rates Right because between that and the general aura. That's also the d3 models I'm returning two d3 models to hex rate units, right? And so like that's you know all that's on four up and vulnerable saves So that's not you know two moon models. It's not too heavy. Yeah, so I agree all in all I thought these points changes were great Like I was really excited about all these a lot of these are armies that I play or have and I was like Oh, man, I want to this makes me want to put some stuff on the table I got on my boc and like reorganized everything to make sure all my gorgons were in line and stuff Uh, a couple of those guys need to be rebased not they're not on squares. They're on the wrong rounds This is what I was telling Tyler before the show because like armies that I put together Back in 2016 of which boc is largely won because I built at the same time I built my zinch slaves darkness army in like in in the early part of aos one like basically pre points is the first when I started building that and um The I agree with strength hammer by the way craith is in fact the hard counter to the black coach as we saw I've seen as much. It's true indeed uh, the um The the problem is I didn't know what bases were so I just like guessed and I guessed wrong in many cases Like I realized today tom when I was going through my and like looking at my zinch stuff for s2d and my uh, and my boc That my war shrine is on a night Titan base. It's on the coach Like 170 I know we talked about that on the 120 When you were basing it, I told you that and you're like i'm gonna make it look good and i'm like I don't remember this discussion. I don't think that how I do I do because I was building a shrine at the same time. I was doing my nergal shrine and you're like Uh, you were more concerned with aesthetics. We we literally talked about this Well, there was no basic chart So it was fine aesthetics was good and I like it on the big base by the way broadcasts a bigger aura, but But you know She to win. Yeah, that's what i'm doing modeling for advantage. That's what I was doing No, I like I just realized that a lot of those things like I've got two gorgons on the wrong bases because whatever uh At any rate, I don't know if I'll ever rebase them or not. I probably will there's I'm sure there's tons of rebasing We could all do and you know, it's always the lowest priority. Isn't it more fun to just paint new models? That's more fun Just make new models and put them on the right base. Let's talk about the activation wars guys All right. Here we go. So also codified Yeah, was a change that had actually come up a little while back, but it was buried in sort of the boc rules Yep, and it was about the sequencing of sort of a Last in first out kind of thing where like basically the the effect that happened last takes precedence Uh, and this had been in the boc with a specific example, but now they officially like with this one moved it into the core And gave a new example With like two of the worst actual examples they could give Okay, he said it doesn't actually matter But yeah Yeah, they used the locus from Salinash, which has its own rules that don't get overwritten by this change and the iron jaws smash and embassion which isn't um Actually a thing that we're really concerned with triple stamping the double stamp here, right? Uh, so I've prepared a handy dandy visualization So let's bring up that visualization. I'm going to cover both your faces with this and we're going to just talk it through I'm going to let tom talk about this. So here we go Uh, I have my activation wars post FAQ visualization real quickly just uh, uh, a big thanks to my friend shad for bitching to me yesterday Uh about all of this and how it impacted him with his git's army in in the works particularly itchy nuisance fell Uh, which led to reaching out to tom and and all of this. So so thank you chad. Yeah doing a good job Oh, no, that's okay. Alex it is It always they just clarified it worked the way it obviously did like based on that previous boc thing and how Common sense would would work with smash and embassions. I'm not I'm not upset you emailed the question It's a great question. It need to be done. I'm just saying they should have reframed your question Into like things we're about to talk about so tom Show us this info grab talk us through what's happening here to walk it through Yeah, so basically what the new Like what the FAQ has clarified, which again was always there in the beast's chaos As a lot of people pointed out But like it's brought been brought front and center in the core rules is that there's implicitly a hierarchy amongst uh amongst Counter Effect things like things that are are like Uh, like gated basically ones or zeros like on or off things that are completely mutually exclusive to effects Right. Um, what they've done is they've said that the most recent of those things to be applied Always trumps Like like always wins in the in the face off between two competing abilities And where this is most, uh Impactful is in the activation wars and particularly always strikes last and always strikes first abilities Those are the examples of things that um Uh, those are the examples of things that are truly like opposite abilities And so what's going to happen is is that Whatever gets activated most recently are going to be the things that will overwrite every other ability Right, so what I've prepared here Is what this means is that there is a hierarchy of power not all asf or asl is equally powerful And i'm really killing myself right now that I didn't left Uh that I didn't left align the top box on the right. It is literally killing my soul I missed the left alignment on that but at any rate here. We are Um, I get for some reason. I can't see it. I don't know if you could send it to me or That's just me. Are you?  You'd have to be watching it on a separate screen But uh, yes, I'll send it. I am watching it on the screen. I'll talk through it um, and so basically what it is is that um, the lowest uh, Tier and by the way, you should have inverted this The lowest tier the lowest powerful of the effects are what we would call persistent abilities No, they're right. They are things the strongest as it says. Yeah, and I'm showing what replaces it Because it's cascading. I I know but normally you want to ascend when you're doing that. I'm not descending. Not in a turn order Okay, so basically what this means is that things that are persistent abilities A lot of that grant always strikes first or cause always strikes last which there actually aren't any persistent always strikes last um But not that I know of Uh, I'm trying to think of whether the I need to go look up the the frost the alpha star guy Yeah, that the yeah He might I don't know if his how win his how is how his asl or is Right is worded worded. Yes, but anyway So anything that grants a persistent ability to all things around or to itself at all times is the lowest tier So example examples of this would be like the command trait from tempest i that gives the uh, the swift as the wind Which gives your general always strikes first all like persistently Or uh, so the slaves to darkness the demon prince has a persistent like always strikes first ability Those are what we would consider like the least, uh Impactful because what's going to happen is is that if you get hit with an always strikes last ability that is not persistent Like a hero face spell it will overwrite it.  By the way, just as a as a point. This isn't meant to be an exhaustive list These are examples just so people know what we're talking about There are many others beyond what is here listed. I just wanted to make sure everybody had a grounding in the Also in this is the idk allegiance ability Because the allegiance ability that is turning always strikes on Always strikes first on those units Not in the phase Hierarchy right at the start of the turn that becomes a persistent effect, right? And so if they get hit with like an always strikes last ability With that next hero since in the hero phase and then somebody hits them with a flinger and then blah, blah, blah, yes Yeah, it shuts off their always strikes first. Yes, the exception would be if they had been hit with that always strikes first and then double turned Um, their ability would have turned on after The always strikes last that would be the one exception to that. Um, you're saying if they got hit with the If they got hit with itchy nuisance at the bottom of two and then got double at the top of two They they top of two they get hit with itchy nuisance and then they go bottom of two Or it all I'm sorry any time in in two And then they go first in three theirs turns on at the start of three The other one would be turned on in two it gets shut off by the always strikes first of the item Yes, we'll talk about interactions in a moment. But yes, the the key here Not to I don't want to dive. I don't want to like super drill this down Sure into death tom But the the point with this is is that each later phase is going to overwrite whatever happened earlier, right? So what this creates is this natural hierarchy Until we get to the combat phase where things technically get the best But we can talk about where that gets weird in a minute because that does have its own Because that's also where you're fighting. It has its own challenges Where effectively if something's happening in the combat phase, it's going to overwrite anything from before So if you itchy nuisance Those hearthgard zerkers Right when they're in hermdar in the combat phase, they can just go like nope You know and they can colossus from x-men and just bust out of that because that's going to overwrite it You could hit them with itchy nuisance and then hit them with the flinger You know, I just on and on and just keep hitting multiple layers have always strikes last It doesn't matter when they turn on always strikes first in the combat phase. They will overwrite all of it, right? Um And yes, alex it is high. It's it is a persistent effect. That's the whole point Yes, it's a and persistent effects get overwritten by the the newest effect that happened So it's always there, but it's overwritten very easily. That's what they don't actually gain always strikes first as an ability until turn three But it wouldn't even if it said even it was structured differently as a persistent thing It's over. No, but but he's asking about the turn two like if they itchy nuisance in turn two and then it turned on in turn three that the The trait is first is all the turns, but that ability doesn't actually is not granted to them until starting at turn three Because it's a like it's a sequencing Yes, correct. That's right. Hence why that right Okay, so oh and by the way the alvegar ancient thing is uh because it says at the start of the combat phase And there was in three inches this model at the start of the combat phase So it's actually one of the more powerful always strike last abilities. Yeah now the exception to this I would argue that the all around Most powerful versions of this. Okay, like if you just average it out would actually be the charge phase things Okay Because if because activating in the charge phase Yes, you could get oh first of all if you if you can activate your your ability in the charge phase like your You can tend to dodge It avoids the on your enemy's turn Their start of combat phase stuff happens first Right, so I run up by me again. Say that again. Okay in if it's not your turn All all start of combat things happen for a player based on turn priority right So if it's my turn All of my start of combat phase stuff happens first Right. Yeah. Okay. Right. So like imagine your hermdar Yep, and you have this ability to asf that in the combat phase very powerful ability obviously, right? Yep. Yep, but if it's not your turn Okay and uh And somebody else Uh always strikes first all like always strikes first. They'll beat you to the punch Right. They'll they'll go if it's their turn if it's their turn They will always do that anyways Because they because all of their always strike all their start of the combat phase happens up and then all of yours does So it doesn't matter it will always default to players turn right once you get to the combat phase Correct, so that's not actually true The well, no, that's what I'm saying it will it will happen to if they didn't have any asf at all You can just kick on and go before them is my point, right? But but like if they have asf you can't beat them with your asf in the combat phase anyways You're saying you had it earlier. Sure. Even if you had in the combat phase, you can't be in the charge me Yeah, you can't be yeah, because they're gonna go first. Yes. I agree right, but interestingly I'm sure everybody followed that perfectly. No, it's fine. I know we're gonna wait That's the problem with this all we're just gonna bleed viewers because who cares this is way too in the weeds Here's a fun interaction. Tom think about this, okay Yep, think about that alvegar agent. We just talked about it says at the start of the combat phase He forces you into asl Okay Yep If the fire slayers are near him at the start of the combat phase They get tagged with asl during the ogre player and it's the ogre players turn they get tagged with asl Right at the start. Yep. Yep, but the ogre player is not fighting. They have no fight at the start, right? Soon it goes to their start of the combat phase and they just Colossus their way out of it. Oh They're out, right? They just like it lasted a half a second. No, they're right back Because no so interesting. No, so like it's actually it's the inverted so the ogre player It's most effective in the in the fire slayers turn Correct Because if it this is what this is, you know, this is what I was going to point out tom Yeah, if it's the ogre players turn the ogre players ability does it's worse Right, right. Because the herd arc can just break out of it Yes, if it is the fire slayers players turn His start of combat stuff. No, it wouldn't matter then he punches them to death Before they can trigger their start of combat make them fight last so it never does anything Yeah, that's true. I don't want to put that in my own head. This is very simple stuff guys. Why can't anybody just get this? It's so easy So they activate. Yeah, so what will happen is on their own turn. They're going to activate to strike first and just murder it Anyway, I'll post this little infographic on twitter so people can oh, that's fantastic. It's fun So what I don't want to get into but anyways, this is how it all got formalized Now Here's what I'll say Yes, there could be some goofy interactions like the thing we just talked about like that Alvagar ancient just got so much worse in my mind Because like in so many cases like that that's what's going to happen You can speed of light your way to out of it as well. By the way, if you're in the if you're in high Well, the point the at the end of the day the point of it is is that um, It just means that there are some abilities that are just king Sure, like think about all not the things here's what you need to keep in mind as a player One Not all asf and asl are created equal Realize that the later in the the turn it's happening the more powerful it is That goes for you too gw designers who might not have contemplated this level of complexity yet I don't know. Maybe they did maybe they didn't but think about it because like something it's persistent is weaker than something That's in combat if they're well aware of that kudos to you for realizing it uh and the um And that actually this isn't a big deal like I know we just made all that all that hay of it Yeah, but I actually don't think all of that's a huge deal It causes some weird rules interactions that can sometimes pop up like that Right, but like it's not actually a huge part of the game like some of those things on my list Like who cares when does dirty stomp people are talking about it at the start of the combat phase So let's take an a simple example or hopefully a simple example. All right spirit of derthu versus a demon prince It's the sylvaneth players turn spirit of derthu Does the stomp on a four up to make the demon prince Always right last it gets the four up What happens then it who's it? It's the sylvanest turn the sylvaneth then the demon prince goes last correct. He wins Because it's the yeah derthu wins because it's because his triggers first he stomps it goes last But what so what are we doing here? This makes absolutely no sense In slaves to darkness if it's the sd. It's their turn Yeah They go first and they strike first before the stomp ever happens right correct Because because they get because their start of combat stuff before you all start of combat stuff first happens for the um for For the activating player first and then all the other start of combat for the other player happens Okay So asf trumps asl Well in this case well that that's in that case In this particular case because it's not trumping it because the effects actually are never interacting Because by the time you stomp he's already activated And and so he's not going to activate anymore. Anyways, right Yeah, unless Unless the chaos lord buff is on him once he gets to activate twice If that if that's true that he gets to fight twice and he'll start strike first Okay, yeah, he strikes first and that second time gets pushed to the end No, he wouldn't he'd strike twice first Because the cast really yeah the cast lord buff Is as soon as you're done activating the first time when you have another valid activation Which by the way is immediately after that in the asf phase because it just says during combat And during and they have clarified during to be start normal and oh That's a good call the cast lord can make him double tap during start of combat Yeah, because always strikes first because it's a persistent effect. It applies to all of their activations And the answer erin is no the seleneth would not just cancel out And then they would not fight normally the whole like you put an asf plus an asl And you get a neutral that kind of makes that only works that only works in slenash Yes, because with slenash locusts codified to say that because that it actually codified and so slenash actually breaks the sequencing Oh, i'm so confused And so the only exception to all of these always strikes last is if it's the locust If it's the locust then they literally you just remove both abilities From the war scrolls lava juice amen Yeah, this is like I said, here's the thing I play a lot of games And do you know how often one of these interactions actually comes up about never Okay, like it just doesn't happen that these two things slam into each other that often Sometimes they will though Like and it's if you're on top tables You need to know how this works right and it is this weird corner case of the rules in most of your games Oh, the cast lord probably is only from mortal units. That's true. Um, oh, yeah, that's a good call. There you go fair fair dinkum. Uh, sorry, so let's say a Let's say a chaos lord on mana core wearing the helm of many eyes boom. There it is Now he either in double tap derp through before you're through can stomp him Thank you. Yeah, we haven't done the s2d. So I review yet. So I don't have all their rules locked in my head. I apologize Yeah, that would work. Yes, if you're running to spoilers with the helm of many eyes, yeah Boom nailed it. All right. So At any I know we probably want to wrap this up But I'm trying to trying to simplify this what world were we in before this happened? We were in this world before this world. It just hadn't that's my whole point It's been like this for like eight months. What world were what world were we in before? We realized we had been in this world before the Taurus chaos No, no good answer Yeah, people didn't have a real answer not bound People didn't have a real clear idea of how this stuff interacted and they would argue about it um And unless you had all the FAQs including the beasts of chaos FAQ in mind Um, because again, this is just a this is just a movement of the of the beasts of chaos FAQ into the main rules This did not change this what I what the world that I thought we were in Because I didn't know about the Taurus fact was When you we just mentioned in a few minutes to go maybe someone in the comments mentioned it when you have a situation of And always strike first getting turned off by an always strike last They cancel out and then it goes to who's who has priority who whose turn is it? So you go you that is you go to normal activation that was Only with slanash, right that would be logical what you're saying, but that's not how it works Because of the way they've construed the start and the end of combat phase to work Okay, all right It's probably gonna take too long to to figure this out. You're good If this is all confusing to you, don't worry Like I said, we've lived in this world for nine months This just codified it into the core rules and it's always been in the FAQ was just hidden in beast Nobody really thought about it if you haven't experienced this in your games That's not surprising to me because it's not gonna come up a whole lot But what also is this in the lot the differences in the last nine months We've got like 10 books added sure With a lot of these sort of abilities most of those Books have these abilities. That's the difference And so now we can look at the slaves of darkness and see a persistent effect an item effect triggered on charges and a spell all in the same book And you and you spread that out against across 10 books Suddenly it's really going to start this stuff is going to start clashing into one another in increasing measure And so that's why we need that's why we need to know that's why we need to know It's it's an amazing amount of of weird oddities and picadillos and what the rules makes and frankly It needs to be unwound Like not for any reason we'll talk about it later. This is in the meta discussion design We'll talk about it in that this should all be unwound anyways. There you go. That's that that's the news There you go news done We're on a good pace here gentlemen. All right standard show Okay, not not looking good for my 90 minute cap that we were aiming for Well, these we knew this show and next show we're going to go along But yeah, we'll stick to your time. Tom is in the final just everybody's aware Tom is in the final stages of his dissertation. He's doing really well So we're going to try to keep our shows beyond this and slaves to darkness next week Which will be on christmas day and I was like, are you really writing your dissertation on christmas day? We're but we will try to keep them pretty tight for tom because him graduating after being in school for basically his whole life Is pretty important uh for him and his family and his marriage and my marriage by his wife You all you all wanted a new another spouse's show Uh that that might happen just so my wife can get me off of the show to do my own work Yeah, but so we'll but uh, but not tonight as you can see don't worry. We're gonna keep going So anyway, let's talk about some pick of the week all right, so Tom what would you like to share? Um, can I choose something that has nothing to do with any of this? Yeah, man Like this like this is truly like nothing to do with uh Uh our hobby at all. What what are you gonna share tom? Actually, I want to thank tyler for this tyler. Thank you for sharing this link with us. Yeah um tyler was looking like This is a momentous a week a momentous week. I don't know if y'all realize this Even though it might very well be terrible Rise of skywalker comes out this week. Yeah, sure And this is like the culmination of 42 years of film. Sure Oh or as some people would say Not a big deal, but yeah, that's fine. Like what you like I mean Like and so Sure, and so what i'm gonna say is is that tyler Offered this he was looking for a positive review of star wars the last time in particular Of the last Jedi trying to get myself pumped up for this way. Yeah. No, it's it was good And he found a video and it was like 25 minutes long And it is basically an overview Of the first eight movies The first eight episodes right in the skywalker saga. Yeah, um, but it's not like somebody talking about it It's literally like movie clips Cut over 25 minutes Of all the movies run together Yeah, what yeah like where you get all the major beats of the movie and it's all set to like the normal star wars scores Right, uh, it's greed. Greedo does not show up in in in it because again, it's the major movie beats It's the major introduction of characters. It's the it's the major kind of turns It's all of those things that that capture the essence of the first eight movies with a lot of the bad stuff removed Sure And so it's just it's a very inspiring like 25 minute take on those eight movies And it's a great watch if you're wanting like I I was watching it yesterday and my wife It grabbed my wife's interest and I was like, um here I know you don't remember what happened in most of these movies because that's not how your brain works And I know you're not gonna watch eight movies So watch watch the rest of this with me and remind yourself of what came before very nice No, that's fair I don't want to dwell on it, but if you're excited cool, I'll link tom's sum up video All right, and that's fair. It's a big deal.  I'm excited. I like the movies. Yay Movies are fun. Isn't it nice that we live in a world where they happen. All right, so, uh, tyler you have like 17 Takes of the week. I'm sure I'll skip it. Yeah, I had a whole slideshow prepared and everything It's been 15 minutes on but we'll skip it and just uh mention a few Ben curry and ben johnson. So ben curry on twitter. He Did a warhammer list of the decades the best warhammer army list you played with over the last 10 years fantastic thread And then ben johnson shamelessly copied it By doing a warhammer model of the decades Uh, which is arguably even better and includes all kinds of beautiful models including a set of four by someone incredibly depraved and who might happen to be on the show showing off his, uh I don't know. I talked about those models. So yeah, beautiful beautiful keepers. Yes Truly the greatest model of the decade all others pale in comparison indeed I put my uh, my black coach up there because I felt like it was a wonderful reimagining of that model And it was a it was truly a joy to paint like Of all the night haunt that I painted like it was probably one of the most fun Right, it was no it was the most fun of my night haunt. Nice. Yeah, it is awesome. I love I love how you did that and very practical Thanks makes makes a lot easier to play with that model. It does. So yeah, uh, check that out include links to those amazing threads for ramping the europe And the decade and then we've got uh, mr. Mephisto has been knocking out of the park with his ramp cast Uh, just yeah, chuck moron Recently, I think he just did a show today Um, he had an amazing show the psychology. What's that?   The psychology of sigmar talking about there was another show that they did talking about All kinds of fascinating subjects for wonky people And yeah, I'll just leave it there right on do so I'm on well. I want to my pick of the week is uh, I want to share, uh A site that I go to often here As golden demon is upcoming in the us and people are probably win this like I imagine maybe some people are thinking about competing here in the us are thinking about, uh Stuff that they would want to have to compete and there's a wonderful site That uh, I utilize called competition minis.com. I'll link it down below. You can get plinths and paint and it's really really a great site It's run by an awesome guy uh, who has who, um like really really Has basically everything you would ever want as far as doing great bases and dioramas and and everything like that that you would want Um, so competition minis go check them out. Uh, it's run by Uh, uh gentleman and his wife who are both like two of the nicest people in the world It is a great store. They here's a physical store there in maryland. So if you're in that area, you can go actually to the store uh, but Uh, there you go That's like check them out. Uh, if you're looking for like where I don't know where to get Plints or I don't know where to get the stuff that people make with bases like where there's a wall behind the character or whatever Hey, you can get all that stuff there. They have it all. So there you go. That's where I get most of my stuff so So cool All right Uh, and by the way, yes I purposely didn't talk about the slowness changes even though they were big because I'm gonna use them to Segway into our ladder discussion. Cool Okay, because I imagine there were people wondering why we didn't cover the slowness changes in the big FAQ Which were which were big We will don't worry. Uh, let's talk hobby time Uh I got some I got some games in last weekend. All right, man. Nice First games in months many many months. Good. What were you playing? Yeah, we had a we had a like a 14 player one day or at metagames. It was fantastic Nice Shouts to the st. Louis crew jeff and Paul and all those guys for for coming down. They had we had six folks from st. Louis come down And they they brought some terrain and yeah, it's an amazing time Nice awesome So, uh, by the way a the list that won it was laran's like Six stone horns and thunder tusk and that was basically it I love everything and the full monster truck boulder headless everybody. Yeah Nice Fantastic Um, me, huh? Yep. Uh, I uh, I am putting together chaos knights Dun dun dun dun. Uh, are those old cast knights or new cast knights? Those are old. These are these are old ones. Yeah Um, I mean come on. I have models and I'm not buying new ones the uh Yeah, I'm putting those together. Um, I may or may not play uh slaves of darkness this weekend when I come visit you Vince sure I'm actually like As I was complaining to Vince in a very, uh, first world manner, uh, I there's a perfusion of riches right now Um, where like I don't know whether to play std Uh fire slayers cities Or knight haunt. Mm-hmm. Like I I have like four actually very like hyper competitive armies And I don't know what to play. Well, the johnny and you there's an obvious johnny answer, tom Oh knight haunt Yeah, maybe maybe Maybe I mean Uh, like Yes, that's that's where the glory exists.  Well, that's I do want to see his tempestilis at the table You just you just have a really good tempestigh dwarf list. I think it is good. Yeah Yeah, so I don't know. We'll see like all of them. I'm I'm like just short on models painted actually knight haunt I have to paint the most models I have to paint like 60 some models in order to put my knight haunt list on the table Where like most of my dwarves are done by a handful For slaves most of my slaves are done by a handful for fire slayers Like most of them are actually like Down to like highlights It's all irrelevant tom because the ko book's gonna come out and that's what you're gonna be playing Well, which like that might be possible too like I may drop and just play ko so I don't know is the answer And I'm like I'm struggling because like I just I have all these like very close to high tier competitive armies Almost painted and it's just and so I'm I'm putting together chaos nights so that I don't have to paint anything So I can actually play my uh slaves list that I want to what I want to run it So we'll see I don't know. Do you think they're pretty well priced 180? I think they should be 160 or 160 that's that was my my sense of that I think 160 would make them a lot more competitive. Yeah, but I think at that point But at that point, I'd be a little not 10 nights for 320 versus three baron guard. Yeah It's not even like you're not even in the same ballpark. So like I think that there's that's I think five 70 Uh, yeah, I mean what I say is this I think five nights are still really competitive and actually since they're on 75 mil Um, like I don't know if that's changed or not, but they're on 75 mil rounds That's calf like that's not the Yeah, they're not on the 60 mil ovals that are like the 55s They're on the 75 and like getting 10 of those in Actually kind of an issue. Yeah Like well, we'll talk about it in the s2d review next week because I think everything in cast is slightly overpriced And I think that's okay. That's good. So there you go. Yeah, I would agree with that Like yay, that means we can only get more value for our money as time goes on Yeah, no, I would agree with that. Yeah, it's fine Uh, my hobby time I too got a fun game in this last weekend where I took out a 1500 point zinch slaves to darkness list Uh, host of the ever chosen and you know what you get in 1500 points and host of the ever chosen basically nothing Because my army consists of like archion three baron guard five cast warriors a war shrine and a chariot And that was the list And uh, it it died real bad it like archion got chumped with some of the worst rolling ever But it was a lot of fun zinch. I think is the Weakest option in the book. We'll talk about that more next week Uh, which is a shame because that's the whole massive slaves to darkest army. I have painted but yeah That's fine. My my nergal super happy. I'm sure But on the whole it was still a lot of fun I did really enjoy putting those models on the table again And it got me so keen and pumped that I was like, you know what I got to get some more stuff ready I got to get painting on them more slaves to darkness like the tempest iron I finished up my two additional gyrocopters and my steam tank and I'll work on that but those things are big conversions I got to start working on some more stuff I got to get this lanesh slaves to darkness ready because that's what I really want So of course what what model did I jump to tom out of the whole slaves to darkness range? What would be the thing that I would be like this is what I've got to attack first I've got to get this thing done Warshine It would be the slaughter brute tom. That would be the thing I pick That's right. Everybody's hot pick I'm out of the book strong with the slaughter brute I've had this little guy for a while and I was like I already have a zeech slaughter brute and a zeech mutilith vortex beast So yes, that's right. I already have one of these each painted and I was like, you know what I need a third one of these things Uh, you're out of your Mind although like I think that you should do a slanesh Soul grinder like we haven't heard any soul grinder talk and I don't know why Like I actually like really like the soul grinder. Goodbye. Yeah, um reasonable. Bye. I don't know Yeah, I uh, I have uh Don't worry. I've got a soul grinder still sitting in box two just waiting So he'll he'll pop up all the bad units So yeah, I like the soul grinder what he's priced at but we'll talk about that. Sure. No, uh, I don't know. This is just a really fun model like these slaughter brutes are actually a really fun cool model So I just wanted to paint him up because I really enjoy him. So yeah, there you go Yes, so he'll be uh, he'll be a fun toy to play with in that army Uh, whatever he he can uh, he can double hit on sixes in the aura. It's cool or something Probably not no because I don't think he gets marked. It doesn't matter. It's irrelevant He can exist. That's what he can do He can exist and make a tax and that's fine Uh, he's just a fun center or a big fun big monster to paint. I like painting big monsters. All right Oh before I forget. Yeah, so uh, aosavents.org Dan is Dan of AOS shorts is still updating it for 2020 events happening in 2020 Anybody has any just reach out to me or dan on twitter or events remember and it will get the events added Especially interested in any q1 events With the united states by I don't know of that many q1 events that are happening other than the The mainstays, you know, the lvo's and whatnot. So yeah, I would love to hear about any events Tournaments, you know that are going on anywhere in the world aosavents.org. We're compiling them Nice Uh, yes, I do love that I've built two slaughter brutes and neither of them have the only mark This thing can actually take which is corn, you know, who cares? It's fine. Who wants that crappy mark? at any rate, uh Let's talk about Gentlemen, let's talk about I want to I want to transition to this and I want to transition to this this way So we're going to talk about meta meta and sort of design philosophies So slanesh also had big changes in the FAQ And the big changes were were basically this the depravity to summon was bumped up significantly 20% sort of for the lower hanging thing or the the the the uh items that aren't as valuable or chosen as often And 50% for the like hot picks as it were. Well the stuff that refunds its own depravity For things like keepers and and yeah stuff like that. So let's call it 20 to 50 percent The most important part being a keeper of secrets used to cost 30 depravity to bring back on the table I know everybody always was like, you know, six depravity to be gained and everybody'd be like, that's another keeper It's not actually that easy, but okay fine But it moved from 30 to 45 and Which is obviously a significant hit to how fast you can summon another one on And as well the locus of diversion moved from a base four up to a five up And obviously the keeper will still add the plus two to that so it'll now trigger on a three plus Yep Now we're not going to get into what that means for slinnish because this isn't yet another slinnish show I will simply say I was very happy with these changes. I think it did Most of the work that needed to be done. I think that was very positive I think they addressed the two chief sort of offending things Of slinnish, uh, and I was like I was excited because I said, okay, I feel good about this I feel like I can bring the army back out now So, I don't know if it was you somebody made the comparison that in some ways Uh, slinnish is the ko of combat. I said that yes, okay. Yeah, which I I really resonate Yeah, I've always felt that about slinnish that this is a difficult challenge for them to try to get this right It could easily tip over in the wrong direction. I always felt that when we're playing slinnish even though it was strong Yeah, it the reason I call them the ka though like their melee ko is because one of the most challenging things for for gw To traditionally balance has been like the all offense glass cannony armies, right speed kills Yeah, because they exactly when when all you have is kill, right? Yeah, because the um The challenge there becomes Like how do those um How do those armies actually balance because if they're just slightly too strong They'll just plow through everybody and that's what happened with slinnish and and frankly like early ko too, right?  So everybody just punches them off the table, right? Um, so it's just a tough balancing act. I'm sensitive to that Yeah, and we also have been in the heavy shooting heavy durability meta Over this year since slinnish was released. So there's that factor as well We've had some shooting, but it hasn't really been that heavy. Yeah, right um the Yeah, I mean, I'm so alex has said he thought that it should have it should have they should have pushed the keeper to like a Plus one. There's several different ways. They could have went about it. I am happy with this. That's what I'll say I feel like the army's okay. I think things like the epitome are better now, whatever Yeah Okay, any who The reason I use that to segue into it is because I want to talk about the nature of design That's what we're going to talk about a lot here, especially in the meta and how this works Mm-hmm, and I think that One of the most common refrains that people say Is like this I hear this all the time is like, how did they miss that? Yeah Okay And like people made very disparaging comments about some book authors Recently and I don't support that at all if you're if you're disparaging one of the writers or the rules writers of the books You've you have never created a role playing or or game supplements because you would understand that it's actually much harder than you think it is Uh, there is opportunity for improvement here, of course But I have no patience for insulting people who are working very hard to do nothing but entertain you and bring you fun That is unacceptable. You can complain about the product. You do not attack the person The person is nothing but a good person who's trying to work hard to do good by you Okay, that's unacceptable Uh If you differ with that opinion I don't care Um, like I'm going to plant that flag solidly Yep, um But the That doesn't mean by the way that like bad design Is suddenly okay Because again, you can have bad or gets a pass. It just means we don't attack people We look at products and say this is how this should have been better, right? Um And so the Uh And even with that even so that little dumb graphic that went around wasn't even correct because they left armies off of it intentionally where Where some of the authors had crossed over and it because it destroyed the narrative Always be wary of propaganda like that Sure at any rate, uh What I want to say is here's my supposition off the rip Okay Uh Right now especially post this FAQ The game is trending toward the best place it's ever been in Aos history We will have more armies in the fat middle where they should be and i'll do mine the fat middle Let's just call the fat middle right now a 40 to 60 percent win rate Maybe we need to be aimed tighter. Maybe eventually we go 45 to 55 But let's call it 40 to 60 percent right now. Okay Like a global win rate. Yep. Sure, which the closest take we have on that is lv stats And those should not be treated as like bible truth Okay, they are what they are they are statistics They can have underlying interesting quirks and picadillos Correlation doesn't always equal causation blah blah blah blah blah, okay, but they're good and they're useful And they should be instructive and give us things to think about and value and evaluate They shouldn't be the end of the discussion. They should be the beginning It shouldn't be like well, this army is at 43. Hence its garbage Right storm cast, right? Yeah, right like that. You'd ask like why is it at 43 percent? Yeah, yeah, and you and then you're gonna have some critical discussions about that right because maybe it's the design of the book Maybe it's the nature of the current meta. Maybe it's a hundred other things, right? And that should be investigation Okay, um as someone who one of their core jobs in life like what I do in my day job is actually design Very high-level complicated analytics for things and works with data scientists to do this kind of stuff like You don't we don't start with data and then go there you go. There's all your answers problem solved You start with data and that's then you synthesize data um at any rate The so we'll pause there agree with that statement. We're trending toward the best place ever Yeah, definitely. Absolutely Yeah, tom. Yep. Yep. Tom isn't there, but he agrees he agrees at a distance Yes Yeah, like I think that we're Uh, yeah, I agree Alex Alex just nailed it like stats are a starting point to discover the underlying root causes That's a great way to say it um the So I think we're in a very good place that doesn't mean we're perfect But I mean I think it's it's what we're seeing is a lot of Trending toward most armies falling in this space, right? Right right And so one of the things that kind of prompted this discussion originally tyler because this this whole show kind of came about from a discussion You and I had Yeah, so let me set this up real quick. We're going to go real inside baseball here folks. You ready? Let's get into it. Okay. So tyler you had said how hard is it to design toward sort of the fat middle, right? Right, and I said I don't think it's actually that hard Okay design and develop design. Well, I'll get there Okay Exactly. It's not hard if you're designing and developing toward it for the most part That doesn't mean it's easy. I'm just saying it's not an impossible task given the war scrolls and the variables we have here Right, and I think that's proved out by where we are right now. Like I'm not saying they're not working hard They have they've worked hard. I'm saying it's doable Because like what I was trying to answer was it's not an impossible task Right, because that's the first question like if it's not even possible if there's just too many variables Well, then we have to just throw our hands up, right? Right, right So I'm my answer would be it is a it is a challenge of Both creativity and process and this is where like the author thing goes off the rails If you can like Things like this are a group project Right. Oh, yes. They're the ones many people many people Yeah And my supposition has always been that like if I could change one thing about gw's Creation process it would be to formalize and separate a formal designer from a formal developer So let me see if I can explain those roles because tom and I have actually used this Um Tom and I have used this very structure when we design our own books Designers are not supposed to care about balance They're not supposed to care about what makes the most sense rules wise There are some designers are supposed to be creative and explore Design space. Yeah They're supposed to look at that the army the thing whatever whatever it is It doesn't matter if you're doing like if you're trying to make a new class In you know a role-playing game or something like a d&d type game Whether you're trying to make a new magic card whether you're trying to make a new army Designers are supposed to swing for the fences. They're supposed to get crazy They're supposed to look at a thing play around with both top down and bottom up design And just go nuts Right and try to make the most fun Interesting compelling version of a thing they can make and that is all they should be concerned with They should never test Correct you do for the same reason you don't have developers test their own code when you're writing software, right? Like you unit test to make sure it actually works, but they're not actually the ones doing the qa Developer's job is to be the accountant right if to come back in And be the numbers person the person who has a really good conception of like how things need to be constrained And they go behind and just like an editor Right what doesn't it like Goes and reworks your your If you're the writer you have an editor who's probably doing significant rework on your novel. Yeah, right? That's what the developers doing for the designer they come in and they say actually these are the numbers we need to correct here This is how we need to formalize this. This is going to have a bad interaction here This is out of whack with what units of this type should do The this is too much punch for a 25 mil base size. This is not enough punch for a 40 mil base size Right like they should have their rich running calculations Right there and like when they run per mutations. That's all they do yep And and they're basically qa. It's the same as any qa It process and again and like something like software design, right? Yeah, exactly you don't you segregate duties because you can't review your own work effectively And that's exactly right. So like this is a very classic. This isn't like some revolutionary thing. I'm talking about, right? Um, but you need to have somebody who's this is their formal job. It's not just having somebody else check your work Yes, of course that happens already I have no doubt that's already happening that other people are looking at the work because it is all a team process But there's a difference between having your buddy read your new novel Okay, and having an editor whose sole job in life Like the reason they show up to work in the morning Is to is to curate and manicure and improve Writing Something that will sell Yeah, and is and is functional and good, right? That's different than passing it to your buddy and saying what do you think of this book? Is it good? Two completely different things even if your buddy likes to read a lot Okay, you can be a great reader He can be a big fan of novels all right Because when I look at the challenges that we have right now in the game To me, it's always singular exceptions and otherwise quite well done things right the It's always a development issue. It's always a development issue when I look at the books that have come out I'm so shocked by the consistent quality across the board of these books Yeah, you need to let it become a force for the trees thing But when I look at these books, I'm just I'm blown away by how good and how compelling so much of so many of the books Over the last year have been but they'll often have like the fatal flaw Yeah, the gristle gore The the locus Depravity right or whatever like they didn't change any slush points and I think that's telling Right You're not necessarily defining fatal flaw fatal flaw in what sense In the sense this one thing that becomes the thing that defines The whole like that it skews the entire project the perception of it I think a lot of people think right now It's early, but if you look at aosreminders.com data It's a very strong majority 85 percent or something that are choosing petrofics elite right Yeah, it's a great example It's early, but but still that that's probably meaningful. Yep Yep Which by the way Another great data source we should be looking at on the other side because like with tournaments and tournament results That gets skewed by a lot of stuff The player scenario the tournament the terrain the realm rules blah blah blah z blah z blah z blah There's a hundred different Intangible invisible things that and and lv does a good job of correcting for some of that And he can he can regress some of that stuff out, but it's tough. There's my point is there's a lot of variables He is excellent at what he does But like aosreminders is just giving you raw data on choices and it's not just tournaments It's on preference on preference and that's very interesting on the other side of the equation, right? It's very valuable Right. Yeah, it's a different data point and and autumn lotus. Yes, even with mothribes I stand behind that like there are things in mothribes I look at and go That's a shame that should have been like that could have been done It feels like they left part of the room unfinished But the stuff that's in there like I love new gluttons. I love new Uh stone horns. I love new I thought I think iron guts are good. I like the tyrant. I think he's fun I think butcher and slaughter master are both really good like yeah, the gut buster side came out way better But there's still fun stuff in in in beasts I had that murder horn go through like half our side of the table on saturday Okay, that guy's a beast and a half um Yeah, just unpack this a little bit more. So with the example of petrifices elite and I think about The subnet book mentioned. Oh, what's up just aos coach said if only someone made a video about the aos reminder data Shout out to aos coach. Go sub this channel. He's doing some good data about that stuff aos coach. Keep it up I loved that video. It was awesome stats and that those kind of preferences and choices were fantastic to see So yeah, that those summarizes were excellent coach. You did it. You did a fantastic bang-up job. Like really I loved that vid Okay, anyway, I'm sorry, child. Yeah, yeah that this is a perpendicular Variable or however you'd like to say it it's another variable to consider with regard to this overall designing and developing for the fat middle discussion that is it's another Very evident I would say core first principle core value that they have In the design what they're going for in the design of their battle tomes That is that they are if you look at std slaves to darkness They've made a very Deliberate effort to try to create a pretty wide range of viable Variety of good diversity where you've got Interesting options and you don't have an outcome of 85 percent of the player base Choosing one sub allegiance. You don't have an outcome where It's hagnar and mostly only hagnar particularly in a competitive context. I love the sylvaneth book because to me You know, it could have improvements on the margins But generally when I look at that book, I see a stronger clear signal a viable variety of different play styles That are sufficiently attractive not perfect, but sufficiently attractive Even once gristle gore got addressed I think feg is an amazing example of that three out of those four sub allegiances are pretty attractive Especially from a competitive standpoint. So anyway, like to me, that's another core value Among a set of core values or first principles to think about Yeah, and and my argument is a lot of these these like what ends up happening with these one standout glaring issues Or whatever you want to call it. You don't like my use of the term one like these These cracks, right? Yeah, that's the job of development to catch that stuff And I think a lot of this ends up getting Like it shouldn't be the job of play testers to catch that stuff. By the way, that's too late in the process Okay, right like that should play play testers should never see that stuff right ever They should be focusing on more rarely Right. Yeah, they should be focused on stress testing They shouldn't be focusing on On design testing. There's a difference there One is sharpening design The other is is confirming the design and development that's been done, right? Yeah, and I I do say s2d not std I've switched to s2d that way. We don't that way. We're you know, it just Sure Yeah, much better. Uh, I play nergal. It's std. Sure. Sure Um So at any rate, I think that was is one of the big ways that that that could like address some of this now again None of this is like an indictment that I'm this is not an attack in any way because that's why I started by saying You know at the end of every piece of work that I do I with my day job I work in an agile, you know methodology. So I work in a scrum team and At the end of everything we inspect and adapt. What did we do? What do we want to keep? What do we want to change? What could we do better? Even when we have things we nail and knock out of the park, we still ask all those questions I think it's just healthy to do so And I think that on the on the whole what we've seen is a lot of great design Even under a tight time frame because this stuff has been rolling fast Yeah, yeah, they they've pitched down the middle a lot Especially for these season books Yes, now Where it seems to me They still have and I think when you look at how they're they're they're they're solving the problem right now with Uh sweat Right with with with sweat equity. What I mean by that is they're working harder and building tribal knowledge on how to correct this stuff Yeah, yeah, that's why we see the trend toward more positive Where things go off kilter Are when you hit lower frequency things that don't have the same number baseline to balance against new design space Yep, right So the the a frequent source of challenges are with the chamber design Right since we started going to chambers. Yeah, those tend to be the swingiest elements of a lot of books. They show up in right Because that isn't just numbers based you can look at a war scroll and it's a pretty limited number of variables Right, like you can know if if you write down that something hits on twos and wounds on twos and re-rolls ones You know, you get an idea of like what you're doing there right But they only get four bytes of this apple every book, right exactly there are thousands of war scrolls There's like 30 different of these chamber things written right and they have to be and they're balanced mainly on opportunity cost Yeah, like because it's not formal point costed. So they have a different balancing mechanism opportunity cost And they have a different and they have a much smaller sample set to work from and and they frequently have to explore Their job is usually to explore the design space introduced by the rules of the book itself Right. Does that make sense right there? Yes, and so it's meta design. It's design That has to be that's capturing that's layered, right? Yes You know, like we introduce ore of chaos in the s2d book, right? and then in The chamber we're going to say well the normal 12 inch order becomes an 18 inch order, right? That's that's layered design Yeah, right. You guys not only did they create you're stacking on top of it Yep So if you're if you're off slightly you can you know, this is where it can like On either layer of design, right? Then it can you'll you'll get the whole you'll get the leaning tower of p's are there all of a sudden right so um I think those are the elements that stand out which to me says like again A formal developer would help but even barring that what I would do is barring that I would say Okay, this is where we need to redouble our efforts to really Make sure that these are in line and really focus very hard before these go out the door Um, because when you look at petrofex Something like petrofex is a great example. Yeah, it's the problem child of of of the bone daddy's right like The bone daddy book I really like and think as well and then I look at petrofex and I'm like why but why Yeah, so the best d and the best o combined in one thing Right that book like I'm just going to go ahead and set it to say it that plus one Blanket save across all war scrolls in that sub faction Should have never hit design or never past development. Sure ever There's nothing else in the game that does that And like and what I'm saying is not just like gives a blanket bonus, but moves that number save For everything unanimous of whatever it's modifying and an already fairly high armor In an already fairly high armor situation because that plus one to save as a type of bonus is very rare in this game now It's very rare. We've had fire slayers. We've had staunch cast but those have more built-in limitations Yeah, right like battle with a bubble. He's got to navigate Nervo Nervo warshrine just got it And it's like and it's like and it's one three up It's a one prayer on a three up not the entire army Now partly and when I was talking with vince about this earlier today What I'm hearing is It's almost in some ways not a question of whether the meta can respond To petrofix elite Which I suspect it can I'm not necessarily convinced that petrofix elite is going to get a 70% win rate Over the next six or so months. It's clearly going to be strong But is that fair that you're Emphasizing something different than just simply this question of well. Yeah, it's strong But the meta can adapt to it for reasons xyz Yeah, my answer is I don't care about the meta or how it adapts to it or anything like that Right, like because none of that matters to me. It's just like it's flawed at a conceptual design basis Of we shouldn't take the best defensive buff and one of the best offensive buffs we can hand out in the game like Playing with armor is very powerful because it's very it's a very limited controlled resource There's a reason that like nobody has is there a rend neg for written on a sheet anywhere Nope No, you can't get it. But no, yeah, like uh, what is it? Isn't volturnus the guy who has his special sword that they can like make it when he rolls a six to wound or something It's like that's right minus five. I think yeah, that's true Yeah, and like if there's a couple red neg threes around that you could buff and Whatever, well, there's an item that you can give generically heroes to a rend egg three. Yeah But like that's my point they they know how how powerful and potent that thing is right Your one magic item could be making one guy rend egg three, right? So being able to just like blow a bunch of units up one rend Right pushing everybody to an egg two or an egg three depending on the units we're talking about It's just ultra powerful like rune lords in dwarves, right rune lords Are considered kings because they can increase one dwarven unit On a two plus up rend one And that's like that's a really big deal That's a super powerful prayer That's a super powerful prayer that makes the rune lords Okay, right and yet they can do it to any eulin and melee for a resource that they get refreshing like a bucket load every turn, right And so my you know my ultimate argument would be like We need to be like to to transition this discussion of like away from have that formal development when I think about units Here's my supposition The problem units in the game right now the the boogeymen's Okay Are very rarely single models Sometimes they are but most time they're not because single models don't win this game very well Yeah, right single models have a built-in Weakness limitation. Yep. That is to say Other than like your your your murder horn or your crunch horn, right? Who count as 10 models which is amazingly good. Yeah, um The most one models are one model and this is an objective based game in scenarios now where you there are there is a There is a uh battle player. You know, there's a battle plan where you have eight Objectives, you know, right a single guy Can just very easily not do much there, right? Yeah, and I think we need to reorient the way we think about value of models Because most of the problem things in the game are when you can get a large unit that can do good o and good d right Yeah, I can't get a whole objectives with bodies because they are large units are naturally the best Thing at the game Right now at playing the game Vint always bust my chops Because I always choose armies That are blocks of troops. Yeah always always Like if it's up to me, I am always running blocks of 20 or 30 always Yes, because just from a raw utility in the game. They're just too valuable.  Yeah More tech guard more tech guard in petrifex Right The problem with all these units is off the rip 30 to 40 dudes has an immense advantage in the game Like just right out of the gate That's that is a good thing, right? That has built-in value and we tend the points tend to value that zero Whereas for some reason it tends to value monsters a lot Right, right like monsters, especially non hero monsters are just traditionally highly overcosted even though they are The lowest value piece They start with negative currency At winning the game Right, right. Nobody played tree lords at 260 when they started very few would play them Competitively you didn't see lorry running Tree lords at 200 you may not see even that many at 180 right now, right? Because if you were if I was going to stack rank Yeah, right the types of units and their innate value all else being equal It would go big blocks of troops Right. Yep single hero monsters Okay Yeah, who especially who are defensive because they there are there are you know two scenarios where they are relevant right two battle plans Where they're relevant Tom this is just a long overdue horde meta confession. I'm gonna join it. Let's keep going sure Uh Sure, I didn't say it. I didn't say it elite units All right, that's a little right elite units and then regular non hero monsters Right, right. Like I mean it's the reason why I was completely flipped Right, it's in you know for value for caught for unit value. I agree completely. It's the reason why I'm reluctant to buy um The black coach Right because it's actually in the lowest tier of of those units and it was fairly highly costed for what it was doing Um as a piece in general it has it has to bring a ton of utility to actually be worth its points But the reality is is that like And so my proposal to move it give it the hero keyword would bump it up two tiers into the second best tier Because it can now gain items it can now gain command traits. It can do those other things Yep Also, uh two plus tough for a os president. He said my platform is cheap monsters and expensive hordes Buddy, you've got my vote. We don't need a primary I'm right. You're going all the way to the To the azure house. I don't know the house. I don't know where I don't know The house. There you go. There you go. Um So at any rate like I think that basic conception is still a skew Right and how we think about these kinds of yeah points Because what I see all the time is these like hordes that get pointed at like less than one wound Or sorry less than 10 points per one wound and monsters that are rated at like 30 points for one wound, you know what I mean And I'm just like that is way off How what actually matters in the game? Right. It's a rare monster that can have the killing power to earn that back What yeah, you're right like what Like that doesn't win games right killing itself You know is like a component of winning because it is an objective base game and and like also by the way Second corollary to this is that defense is almost always more powerful than offense Because being able to sit on a point and hold it Yeah, no like this is something I'm very very on about being able to the way you win the game is by sitting on a point and holding it Right. That's the battle plans Yeah Okay Hence a unit that can and some of them even have scaling rewards where the longer you sit the more valuable the thing becomes Hence defense is better right now. You might say well, but offense is how you pull a thing off of there Sure. Yeah, what happens if somebody might defensive is high enough Right, then they don't I don't get them off This also then gets there's deeper rabbit holes We can go down here of like drops and being out how mobility factors into this and can you alpha bunker these points and something like that That's blosy blosy blah. I don't want to go into all that But the point is is that like defense in general will have a slightly higher value than offense Okay, yeah, it should it should It should be valued higher correct because it also like The other side of that coin is an offensive thing that can punch you off a point But then dies in return is now removed and it's just a trade Right a defensive thing that can grind a thing out and still remains is not trading No, it's just winning it exists and the other thing doesn't It has won right Yep, if you can out grind Right. Yeah, right. Yeah, that's been the pre that's been the predominant pattern. Now. We have had I've somewhat changed to that with silhouettesh and feck this year where the design nature of them has Allowed them to punch hard enough in a lot of cases where you can do reasonably well with Five of the big beasties, you know, ben johnson list and of course, we know how silhouettesh has worked Keepers and the chariots Being two central pieces to their damage output and then, you know, grinding people down with the summoning But yeah, the predominant pattern over the last four years Has been one variation of, you know, the scaven change hose pattern Of the equivalent of durability through cheap bodies with range damage Or just the straight up sequiturs, earthguard, witch elves, etc Yeah No, I agree. You look at something like silhouettesh, which generally didn't have any bodies Right, sometimes just summon 30 daemonettes to try to body block someone off a point But like if I looked at your silhouettesh list and you had 30 daemonettes off there, you know, in it off the rip I was like, oh, okay. That's cool. That's a bad list um Like it just they had less than that negative value, right The the reason that list was able to work is because again, you could shut down their whole army and plow your ultra offensive units Right, like you were so you were a glass cannon ramp 211 And you sit there and plow multiples of these super glass cannons into them and just remove them before they ever fought Right, yeah because of locus right So and like the So I think like we need to think about those things carefully You look at somebody like more tech where they can be very defensive, but also offensive By the way, armies without any hammers like they're hammers are still useful. You've got to be able to kill things generally generally Tom tested that certainly with his like nergal list, which basically did not a lot of damage We still win games just by like alpha bunkering people where they sat alpha blocking their starting zone and then taking all the points and holding them And never being able to die Yeah, and not only that like things would die to me Because of kick mortal wound kickback Yeah, like it just couldn't grind my mortar through it like it could not grind me fast enough To not kill itself because the more damage it did to me the faster a dam of the more damage it took itself Well, what's interesting about the meta and that list is back by the way It's totally back What's fascinating about the the nature of that list is that the skew that's happened in the the game itself over the past year or two Has been that there is no armies that could reliably put high defense things on the table right and so the highest offense people slanesh And doc and stuff like that were over performing because there was nobody who could actually match their level of offense with an equal Level of defense, right, which is great. I actually prefer the game tilted towards offense quite a bit Right like personal I don't I understand that but like it leads to boring games your way leads to boring games And like maybe it's not boring for you But I would argue it's certainly boring for the vast majority of people Like a game where you fight and then for the whole game and basically You end the game state with all your models still on the table and nothing much has changed and you lost And you rolled a lot of dice and nothing happened There are some people who enjoy that and kudos to them. You're one of them fine But like I would argue for the vast majority of player experience There's a lot more timmies Then there are whatever the hell that is. Yeah, I think I'm listening to the show over the past However, many years since 2015 and that was one of the first, uh Statements that you put forward then so that's an unequivocal truth at this point I think for the vast majority of the player base Oh that that likes to remove models That's offense is much more digestible than defense. Sure. Sure I mean like we would have had a riot if they made a bunch of armies that were on the defensive level power Of of that and that had been the dominant thing in the last two years. Everybody would have said that's boring Yeah, yeah, yeah if he's nothing dies because nothing dies What happened when we played for five rounds and four models died Right and and whoever got on the points first one Yeah, yeah, it would have been right race to the bottom for drops and stuff like that. Yeah, you know So, uh, I think that the meta is changing now because you're seeing higher, uh, you're seeing higher Defense armies become available like, uh, like bone daddies, you know Uh, that kind of stuff like by the way s2d who can also put very actually very very high Resilient defensive units out there. Indeed. Yeah Uh, so it'll cover that next week for those that are yeah, yes, we'll talk about s2d next week We're gonna we're gonna celebrate. It's gonna be Christmas with chaos So I don't know tyler, what did I miss there? I mean, I know I went on like a lot of rant and talked a whole bunch there Yeah, so don't feel like necessarily came back to Define the fat metal to unpack the fat metal I mean, it's it's most of those armies end up in that 40 to 60% win rate The closest thing we have to evaluate that right now is by is by his standards But I think your question is not what is it? It's why why is that variable right? And that's really what you're trying to get at. Yeah, absolutely. I have an answer. What's your answer? So The the fat metal. Yeah, I love that term that's caught on We've you've been uh, you've had a good year with terms I mean, this is it's another way of expressing one of the ongoing constant Discussion points probably for any wargaming community. It's another it's a fancier way in some ways of talking about approximate balance across an ecosystem and that you I mean, I have a very well known bias to play Armies that are to play lists that a little more reflective of three two pushing for four one Then trying to go for the five out. That's just personal bias and respect Whatever, you know play stop preferences anybody has It's all cool But in terms of for an overall ecosystem that me that's uh, that's that's much healthier Yeah, when you have the vast majority of Uh outcomes are reflected in that That space and I don't I don't as you said the best that we have right now at least Through this lens is l lv's data Uh 40 to 60 percent is pretty wide. That's actually wider than I had been thinking about it. I've been more around like a 46 to 54 percent I think that's too tight, but that might just be yeah, give it particularly in the context of that I think I think like the professional uh, like the professional esports stuff use a 45 to 55 rating Okay, okay interesting But yeah 40 to 16th that doesn't feel too bad um Here's the value to me. Why do why do we care? That's the preset. That's the question, right? Why? Yeah, who cares? um And I think alex jus