Hello everybody, if it's Wednesday, it's Warhammer and that must mean it's time for another episode of Warhammer Weekly Joining me as always is my co-hostess with the mostest. It's Tyler. What's up, buddy? How you doing? Not your one and only co-host? I keep you on your toes. Okay, thank you. Good. Good to be here. Got our best friend Matt. That's that's a call back to something before the show Also joining us his first time on the show Matthew Swinney Matthew Sir, it's an honor and a pleasure to have you on the show. Good to have you buddy Thanks. I appreciate being here. I I consider it an honor to be to be invited by you two esteemed gentlemen If you found out how we do it around here events reaching out to him 48 hours before the show He's like standard. First off. Is this is this unusual? I'm like you you don't know how we do it around here It varies like sometimes we'll have people booked three weeks and month in advance Sometimes it'll be like a day or two in advance Life is very busy and tumultuous, but we're happy to have you to be clear I want I want to set the stage here for Matthew Matthew is what I call the round five assassin.  Yeah, I was I was actually thinking about it and and I think I am four and oh versus the warhammer weekly I've never beat you. I know that's Sure I felt really bad about Tyler because uh, he was he was my final match for the first Season of nash con. Yeah, and we threw down. Yep. I think that's the first time we met, right? Was man. Yeah, and I was the running flaw I was too conservative In our game. I paid the piper for it Yep, anyway. Yeah, that was no, it's fine. All right round five at adepticon. I'm wandering by the top tables Martin Orlando our good buddy friend of the show good painter elf man He's on a hot streak.   And I roll up to the table at him and I see Matthew across the table and I clapped Martin on the shoulder and I was like, well Sorry about your loss like this is the three seconds into the game They were deploying and I was like, this is this is over.  I'm just telling you this is what's gonna happen I'm sure enough. There was one winner of that game and one loser and uh Martin wasn't getting the W. So anyways, that was a that was a good game and his part his his His army looked substantially prettier than mine So Matthew is an excellent player and one that I'm happy to have on as we talk about our topic tonight, which is how to Get good, I guess But a more practical actionable guide and like the actual skills you should use if you're interested in improving at Warhammer Age of Sigmar So But first of course the news tyler, what do we got? news rumor engine So somebody's in a tweet out Apologize. I can't recall who it was showing this image next to a little ghoul And seemed pretty spot-on to me Vince. Did you see that? Yeah, there are sort of three potential worlds of what this is Okay In my mind based on what it is. So option one is yes, it's like some generic uh Dead guy fec thing Um, which is certainly possible. They have like that long Hair thing in places and and often have bones and skulls and stuff trapped and tied in them Option two is usher on or whatever his name is the old special character Named hero effectively. He was stragoi. I believe which is sort of the predecessor to Uh to what flesh eater quartz represents the sort of ghoulish side And then option three is like a beast of chaos thing like shaggoths or stuff like that that also have frequently Uh, a lot of beast of cast have that same shaggy fur and have bones and skulls and bodies tied up in their fur Could be any of those And I don't have a vote as to what it is so Right on any of those sound fantastic So let's see. Yeah I I was just to say matt if you had to pick one of those three matthew, which one are you picking? Which one do you want to see? most With uh out of those out of those three options Generic flesh eater quartz guy special character Flesh or flesh eater quartz guy from the old world or a new like maybe let's call it a shaggoth model What's your pick? Uh, I feel like a new fec I feel like they haven't gotten some love in a while I agree It's an army that could use some units and could definitely use some love in the meta right now So hey, I'll even take an underworlds warband at this point. Whatever it is. You never know. It could be good You could end up with a a grass rack or a Or a uh, or a sling skitter pack. It can happen so all right Next free free war cry rules download It's this map so Uh, as everybody probably knows we're getting a new edition of sorts of War cry Because that's on pre-order this next week or whatever and it's um It's gonna you know herald not much of a change to the old edition honestly It's pretty much just existing war cry with a little bit of reaction action sprinkled in Uh, but it's basically the same game. However, it does require an update to all of the cards all of the army cards So you can use all your existing forces and work right Um, traditionally this comes in a thing called like the tome of champions. That sounds right. I don't know Let's let's just say i'm correct for now And that book is not so but instead of releasing the book Uh, they have put out these pdfs Uh, which is awesome. So they put out all the rules for all your warbands for free or at least this point We've gotten order What destruction and death so I would assume chaos is tomorrow. I think that's what's been released Uh, so that's great Uh, and it's you know a good update good rebalance of a lot of the the cards that were in there a lot of the stats some of the more pesky things were kind of Tamped down so they they fit a little better to the power level of the uh the existing You know war cry specific warbands. So good things overall like hey Free rules for your game. So you can keep playing war cry. That's great I mean all all around fantastic Matthew you ever play any war cry I've played a couple games, but I never I never got super into it the the terrain. I feel like is awesome Um, but I can't really comment at all about the ruleset because I've only played like two games of it. So It's a fun game. I will say I and and one of the things that I really like in the new Uh edition this we're not talking about war cry, but let's give a quick thing here One of the things I really like in the new edition is they tightened up some of the deployments Uh, so you don't you're not like waiting and often until deep into the game to get your third deployment group out You like have two groups coming in and then another one very quickly afterward often. So, uh, yeah So good edition good update Basically the same rules so you don't have to learn a whole new game and throw your old stuff away and free rules to support it That's a That's a win right there in my book So if you're you know, I would say if you're if you're interested in war cry Or you've been thinking about if your war cry curious, this is a this is a good time to hop on pop. So there you go this Thanks coach. Yeah, let's see. It looks like that image I mentioned on twitter Just reference was shared by warhammer rob not the honest wargamer rob the other rob Let's thank you coach and then last item here Golden demon tickets sold out. Oh my goodness. So golden demon tickets. So so let's I just want to dive in on this for a moment I was thinking about going Wasn't sure I wanted to go but I was like, I'll buy a ticket and then I'll see what I feel like I don't buy a Because you could cancel up to a certain date I was like if I don't buy my plane ticket by then I'll just cancel and let it back out into the world somebody would get it So I logged in six minutes after the time when I knew they were going on sale because I was like in a work meeting And didn't have time to that went long didn't could just like turn and go buy golden demon tickets And uh sold out they sold out in a minute and then they brought up a new set of tickets a new trunch That was just for golden demon Not for the weekend event basically those sold out in like a minute and a half In the time where I looked at it and texted somebody that hey, there's golden demon specific tickets I know you missed out you can go get those and then I went to click buy it It was like bloop no longer available and I was like oh They're going to release a second tranche of tickets apparently on the 8th Uh, so september 8th at I guess it's 2 p.m. Eastern local time. So seven o'clock British time So wherever you live in the world figure figure from those two numbers Um, I don't know how many tickets it will be clearly they reserved some to try to spread it out, but um but yeah That's uh They have a hard cap on how many people they can invite so it makes for an interesting year We'll see who amongst the artists who you know, I wanted to go got tickets and who didn't time will tell Uh, so at any rate, uh, it was just fascinating that they sold out like A lot of people who want to go to golden demon in the uk after being gone for three years right most most uk Artists couldn't come over to um To the us obviously so Okay Uh the man among all are the free download war cry rules also included in the compendium as a one-stop shop for all Current new rules or is that something else the They're in the heart of girl you get like the core rules everything you need to play the game in that box In the free download is everything you need to use all the other Warbands like if you have your regular chaos armies order armies and so on there you go Uh, so There you go that explains that Uh, I don't know about that coach. That's probably a bit strong, but I appreciate the sentiment Uh, all right now Is that our news? I think that's it quiet news week, right? So yeah cool beans All right Let's keep going uh, so Pick of the week Matthew, what would you like to share with everybody and boost the signal one? Uh, so I had two choices. Um, I know you like that when people pick multiple things love it loves it Um, so first off, I was just going to say uh aos coach, which apparently is in the chat. So that's pretty cool um, but I like his combo of kind of like He has like brief Videos where he like lasers in on a specific topic and then he has other ones where he takes like a really deep dive two plus hour Chat with uh, somebody that's had some success with a particular army and he kind of deep dies So I like that helps me keep a little bit up to date with the meta to the extent that I can um, and then another was uh season of war Which I like specifically I like the format that they do for the the battle reports, especially like the top down view where they kind of speed it up And then they just kind of give you the highlights um You know, I I love watching battle reports But you know, it's it's kind of time prohibitive when you have these ones where they're just literally just videotaping the whole thing It's like I don't really have time for that. I need it condensed.  I used to watch Once bitten, I think no, sure Be 360 chat was a hero Yeah, like I love I loved his battle ports, you know, he you know He'd take a few pictures and kind of give you the high level You know bits and pieces and you know the the the tactics and all that stuff But it was you know pretty pretty brief and so you can kind of digest it really quickly. So I like that stuff But uh, definitely would like to see some more people trying to do it that sort of style. I guess I'm for cement. Yeah, it's hard to make time for two and a half hour about reports It's it's tough I mean unless you're painting and whatever, but yeah, I think that you know often the the good middle ground for me is Is is re-rolling ones like I don't usually miss a re-rolling ones And it's as simple as they cut out the movement phase and often a lot of like the piling in or stuff like that, right? Like they they cut out the fiddly bits, which is what takes a long time Like if you get rid of all movement from a game of aos, it's shocking how much faster it gets Right So there you go. Um Okay Tyler You got shout outs galore Uh, so events. I figured out how to take this to a new level. See what you do Do you link to a google doc? Or in you have 20 different picks of the week Technically, it's only one because it's just one link Oh expect more of that in the future So I think I think that's a good solution Good at aos resources So we'll have that link just I've been trying to compile as many things as I could find Around the community over the years send them to us. Yeah, check it out. If you don't see anything in there I'll go and mention this now. So the goal here is to Together some kind of future content, right? That would actually be a checklist or a series of checklist on this topic I mean at minimum it'll be a google document that will have contributions from a number of folks from the community We've got a lot of ideas that have been sent in So Yeah, uh, check that out. And then I wanted to give a shout out to mergonck in particular It's been on the show. He had an awesome checklist as part of those ideas that got submitted I thank you to carl stokes too as well. Carl. I need to get yours into a google buck I finally week and decadent. Uh, they are a new battle report channel They had skaven versus lumenath my good friend derrick Center, uh, do you know derrick vince? Have you ever met him? I don't I mean, I might have met him. I apologize Hello, derrick. If you've met me and I don't remember your name. I apologize. I'm bad with names If I saw his face, I'd know Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Anyway, derrick's yeah, amazing guy Really interesting lumenath list running the the twins Against new skaven. So yeah, it's a new channel. Give them a subscribe Come out I got nice awesome Uh, I have two special picks the week. Um this week. So mine are a little unorthodox and different But they are very special.  So, uh, medical costs bring a huge burden to one And especially when they're two, you know independently Employed authors or sorry artists basically, sorry And so gen con, uh, the the guys at gen con put together a special piece of merch a shirt that you can buy That has a commemoration of fort wobble on it and all the proceeds go to Kathy and james to help with their medical expenses in this in this time So check that out. The link is down there. It's super awesome of them to do that The guys who run adepticon are amazing people obviously and uh, it's I mean like that's just the Goodest guy move they went out and did this and and uh, you get an awesome shirt That commemorates an awesome thing and you get to help somebody out Uh on that same tip Uh harder and steinbeck who make uh awesome airbrushes Um, you may have heard there's this war going on over in the ukraine. You may have heard about it It's been a thing for the past six dragging now into its sixth month Harder and steinbeck had resources in the ukraine most of which they managed to to relocate over to other countries They funded those people getting out of ukraine and resettling somewhere else But there are artists who use harder and steinbeck airbrushes in the in the in ukraine One of them in particular is an amazing artist who couldn't leave the country because she has Ties to a family that basically can't be relocated. She is an incredible incredible artist And so harder and steinbeck reached out to her and to myself and uh, some other Folks in the community. They made a special airbrush, which will be launching this friday If you've been looking to upgrade your airbrush, um, it's a it's basically a an infinity airbrush. It is beautiful Um, I don't know if I'm allowed to show it, but it's right here So there you get a little little tiny sneak preview. It's an absolutely gorgeous airbrush comes and it has two different cases It's made with all the same high quality parts as the normal infinity Um And there's a link down in the description to the temporary site right now if you're watching this before friday You can't go and purchase it right now But if you purchase it once it becomes available on friday the profit from that airbrush goes to support Uh, a local charity there amongst harder and steinbeck by when I say local.  They load that truck up with food and supplies and clothes And things that people will need and they drive down directly to the border and meet refugees coming across And help to find people homes and shelter and food and get them resettled It is direct charity in the truest sense of the word Um, there's no middleman. There's no big big organization where a bunch of money is going somewhere It's that money is going from harder and steinbeck directly to the people who can use it and put it in play And the whole thing is a dedication to this artist who lives in the ukraine So you get a beautiful high quality truly incredible airbrush And a lot of people who are going through one of the worst things you can possibly imagine Get supplies and things they need So at any rate, um, that link is also down in the description It's the one that says harder and steinbeck down there. But like I said, the link to purchase it won't be active till friday Tune in saturday I have a whole video on leveling up skill with your airbrush featuring that airbrush and that'll also have the link and stuff like that So there you go. Um, those are my two links a little more serious than what we normally do on this show But both things that I think are are important Okay, absolutely Uh, so with that Let's turn to a bit of a lighter topic Now that we've brought everybody down with wars and and, you know, medical burdens Let's instead talk about some hobby time. The thing we use to escape from the burdens of our life So, uh Oh, that's a fair point. Chris Black said just ukraine. I kept saying the ukraine. Yes. It's totally fair. You're right, chris Um at any rate Matthew, what's on your table, man? What have you been painting? What have you been working on? You have a beautiful clean hobby space behind you, by the way It it it varies. I huge. I i'm transitioning So right now it's it's a little bit cleaner than it normally is but So I I I remember one of the warhammer weeklies where you guys were going through, um all the all the factions And pointing out like, you know, which units were going to be good, which one's going to be bad in the new paradigm Sure, and um, and I remember, you know, the stormcast list You said, you know, the worst glation veteran unit is the vanquisher.   I just want to point this out like I I had had four games Where I had more or less had a pretty good run through my opponents And then nope couldn't that star drake that was the good old days too because you had that was the days of like, um Uh, what was it the the scales with the four up mortal war? Ignax Ignax scales. There we go. Yep. Yeah The good old days I can't wait to see you just absolutely crush whatever I put on the table with With vanquishers and I'm forced to literally eat my words I I actually screenshot that and circled it and sent it to to tyler just because I thought it was I thought it was hilarious because I'm like sitting here. I'm like I'm like painting them as I'm watching the show No, and I'm just like well but Amazing amazing. So that's I'm frantically trying to get that those 20 vanquishers painted in time for nash gone So that that's what I'm I'm up to Very nice. I I haven't seen a list with 20 seen a lot of lists with like 10. So I'm excited Yeah, two squads of 10. I'm yeah, we'll see I think they could do some work you and your original tenors I remember back in the day with you're like, here's my 10 retributors and 10 protectors or whatever the hell you were running That, you know, you never see Uh, yeah Very nice. Uh, yes, Mike.  You did. Well, actually I did. I mean Quote-unquote painted. I I got stage one of the slapety chop Going we we got some black primer with an airbrush talking about airbrushes That airflow control man.  Yeah, thumb thumb was the guide not the Correct. Yes. Yeah, that will also be discussed in this week's video on saturday. So check it out Um, but yes, this is the correct position middle finger under thumb pressed against the trigger here Finger on top like this more or less. Yeah, more or less had that.  I don't know.  Don't do it with a small brush.  Just have a good time. It's nergal. That's the whole point Just start start slapping some color in there. You know, it's not a good choice I feel like Exactly. You can't go wrong. What color isn't nergal skin is the only question. Is it brown, red, purple, green, yellow? Yes, it's all of those It's great. Um, my friend Lucius, he put together just at a beauty. I thought it was an amazing looking Nergal army in like two weeks before vault wars So that that sold me. Thank you to Lucius and brice in particular Who was loading me all his his goodies airbrush and everything While I yeah, you know future down payment on some babysitting. I'm going to do for for he and his wife. So there you go Appreciate appreciate friends. I ladies and gentlemen We got him. All right, so I I don't have a balloon drop scheduled if I could have I would have uh, let me say that Um, secondly, well, let's wait till I get to at least some contrast. I mean, I don't yeah, sure You know, we gotta get I don't consider that painting, but I'm in the process priming is painting. You're getting somewhere There's been times where you know, sometimes all you get to do is you have the assembly phase then you have the priming phase. It's all good Uh, now here's the important part There is like more than 200 people watching the show right now And I'm not seeing enough hits of the like button for tyler who has never painted a model in his life Painting, let's see some let's see some like button here. Let's celebrate this folks Smash that button Okay For myself, uh, I am working on a thing. I'm very excited about the thing. I can't show you the thing That's it, but I did get to painting this week Uh, most of what I've been doing has been honestly just recording videos because I'm trying because as I mentioned You two gentlemen beforehand my month of august isn't a whole entire nightmare And so I've just I've like done nothing but recording and recording and recording and recording videos to try to get ahead of The curve so I'm not missing a week or anything Um So basically I've just been spending hours and hours shooting and editing and shooting and editing But I am painting a thing that I'm pretty pretty stoked about You'll see it eventually Uh, all right With that gentlemen Shall we Turn to the main topic of the night Get Good, let's talk about getting good. Shall we? But Okay, boom getting good leveling up in age of sigmar Uh All right, let's talk about what this isn't before I get into any of my slides. This is not Us being a jerk and saying this is the way You should play or have to play This is not saying you're a bad person if you don't take these tips or do these things This is not saying there's anything more right about playing in this way than any in any other way You're comfortable with nor that there is any innate quality of goodness to being better at a game One particular game of tiny plastic people Okay, there's no moral imperative here. I just want to want to super hard draw a line under that All right But if you are someone who is inclined to want to, you know, improve your skills If you've been playing you'd be like, I don't know what I'm doing wrong Or you're looking for the sort of those basics or you're new to the game and you want to know how you could up your skills That's what this is for Oh my goodness, excuse me. I'm so sorry so um That's we're going to be focusing on and that's why we brought in the big guns. We brought in matthew because uh because he is He is a great player like all joking of a side Matt I've had the occasion to watch you play, you know, several times now and you are truly I think and in my mind and I've said this Uh when you're not on the show Uh You're an amazing player because you're also no part of you playing as you're kicking people's teeth in Are you ever mean or rude or to make people feel bad or you play fuzzy in any way You play a tight game.  I'm I'm not sure if i'm quite up to par for all of those, but I appreciate it Ben Thank you. I I do I do like the um, I think playing by intention is is a great motto, um, I think it it makes for Better games friendlier games and I think it makes you a cleaner player anyway So 100 definitely big thumbs up to that Yep So if you didn't watch our playing by intention show two weeks ago Watch that as well because that's very much a companion piece to this show, right? That was the the how to sort of execute and you know Establish clarity. This is the what to do and and what to do to get better and to build your skill And I've divided this into some sections Because of course we have Uh so Let's start with the uh foundational stuff. Let's start at the beginning Uh, let's just lay this down to I want to I want to meet this challenge head on skill matters in age of sigmar okay like we have Uh, we had jp on a previous episode where he did a bunch of statistical regression to show how much skill mattered Especially at the top and bottom of the skill curve Uh, there's a reason why the same players frequently end up in the top 10 tournament after tournament different rules That are different rules that different army in their hands Okay Uh and Knowledge matters a lot in this right so like skill can sometimes be just being forearmed with knowledge About how your army plays the nuances of it how your enemy's army plays How the scenarios play so on and so forth There's just a lot of things to know and remember And skill comes in both understanding your opponent what you're going to do to win what they're going to do to win and being able to act accordingly And so the question becomes what are the practical actionable steps you can take to build skill? And let me say this research and resources. I'm glad you're all watching this show. Thank you.  I wish you could battle reports can help Shows like ours can help But in the end you do have to put some models on the table and drop some dice Because nothing will teach you like the real thing All right anything foundational I missed there tyler anything before we get into the the actual tips and tricks Oh, no, that's a pretty good start. Yeah Well, while I'm thinking about we were talking about the applying by intent I was excited to see a tweet from the team america aos account I think it was this morning that they sent out and it was replied to a thread that I had started a few days ago Just happened to coincide with this show. I don't know it it happens every once in a while weird throw That's weird. So they mentioned explicitly and one of their line items was By intent is More or less part of their core operating codes or at least that's what they said they they want to live up to And and how they want to operate and you know and avoid gotcha hammer You know that as we talked about there's some greatness to what is what is not gotcha hammer But I feel like most the times we know what it is Uh, particularly when we when it happens to us and we're and we're we're sitting in it So anyway, uh, yeah, I I I just really liked seeing that from from them in particular I agree. Matthew anything from you foundation wise that I should lay down here So there is there is one Relatively big topic that I wanted to go through and I'm not sure if if this is the best spot for it Or if I should wait, but okay Um It has to do with kind of how I start most of my games and it kind of has to do with you know, the tricks and that kind of stuff Um But I don't know if should I just go for it here or let's save it for for deployment because I think it'd be a good conversation To slide into that that area. Okay Oh good One of the things that comes in my events this has been on my mind of late Yep I'm not sure of the but okay, so it's generally I was talking with tracy about this Okay, tracy patasic. We were just talking before the show about partners in the war Tracing steve awesome played steve recently They've been going to a lot of tournaments love those two they get their sons involved. They go to tournaments all together as family Tracey They're both, you know, they're now relatively experienced players. I've been playing for a while, but not too long ago They were very new players And so tracy and I we've had some conversations over the months about her experience of going through the stages of becoming a wargamer what that's been like and how hard that can be particularly when it comes to basic Notion that we have in our heads about assessing how well we're doing at this thing, which is are we winning or losing? How much of an issue that can be particularly when you're playing a lot of good players, right? When I started out I did a lot of losing a lot and So I think it's I feel like we don't talk about that enough and the challenges Getting people through that stage or kind of learning how to be comfortable And losing games and kind of reframing it Thinking about it differently, right? All of that. It's a huge topic in itself. I feel like but I mean, we've lost players locally one recently because He got I mean there's different variables going on, but I think he got tired of losing But and he's a pretty solid player. He's just playing really experienced people Sure. And so anyhow that that's been in my mind as kind of part of this Yep Uh, I think that's right I think you you have to develop a taste for losing and playing people better than you is definitely going to be part of this Yeah 100% all right, so We're going to kind of step through this chronologically. All right. It's kind of the way we're going to lay this out Because I think there is a skill up possibility at at every phase of the process And the first one's in army selection All right, and what I mean here is understand an army's play style and how that meshes with you And I think this is a sort of understated point I didn't see a lot in the responses you talked about, but this is one that I really think is important You have a certain set of preconceptions and biases as to how you want to play the game And if you pick an army that plays the opposite of that Okay, you will tend to perform worse Because in moments of like high stress when you fall back on heuristics and shortcuts You will start making erratic decisions that are not in line with the game plan of how that force should be played You will fall back on the way you want to play it.  You love a good a good alpha strike You're like you want to get in the fights. You want to get to crumpen. You're a born orc at heart Right If that's the case then playing a kg castle mobility army that never goes in and fights You know playing some legion of the first prince nonsense It's probably going to be a bad time for you because you won't make the right decisions Your brain isn't telling you to make the right decisions right Uh This is something I think you probably ran up against tyler with your iron jaws because you're exactly the opposite.  Whereas iron jaws. It's like you can do that a little Right But it's struggle the most with iron jaws of any army that i've ever played in this game. Yeah, you gotta get in Yeah iron jaws. They're kind of the definition of aggressive, right? Yeah Exactly like you got to be willing to go like some part of playing iron jaws is knowing your math well enough to understand Like I will do this x amount of damage to this save and it's time to risk it for the biscuit Right like you if you play iron jaws, you have to be willing Probably fairly early in the game turn one or two to push all your chips toward the toward the middle of the table and say all in right Uh, you got to pull you got to pull an optimist prime and say one shall stand one shall fall Okay But this also comes to fundamentals of like the number of figures you want to move the number of decisions You make on average in the army the complexity of those choices You know, I think of something like sons of bad luck Say what you will for that army one of the great things about playing it is boy Do you not have a lot of decisions to make you're like it is a pure fundamentals army, right? Where are you moving? Who are you fighting? That's it. You don't have like hold on. I'm playing lumeneth I've got to I've got to do this and my cathilar does this to make these people not sad And then you have neg one brave for you and then I'm going to pass this around and do to do to do to do to do Right, that's not a jab on lumeneth.  I I like daughter's cane at any rate um So I have so here I want to turn this around Matthew Why like you played stormcast a lot if you it's more or less your main and every time I've ever met you You played stormcast Why what is it about stormcast and how does it mesh well with sort of your take on playing this game? Well, so that's That it's kind of twofold. It's kind of somewhat of a happy coincidence here because the main reason I actually initially made the purchase was actually aesthetics because I you know for the longest time I I actually kind of hated the way they looked like I really hated like the robotic faces And and all that and so but then, you know, I had the idea to do the Bretonian Conversion and all of a sudden I'm like, oh wait, you know, look at this this dracothean guard I can do all this I can you know, I can get rid of this I can put on some Yeah, so anyway, so I think aesthetics definitely played a big part. I think once I got into it I really like the fact that um, I like having a big selection of Good utility heroes and tools And I think for a long time Stormcast has had that like their heroes have always been Really good synergy pieces Um, which I really enjoy. I really like Um, how tanky they can be and to you know, to a somewhat frustrating point at certain points in time For your opponents, you know, if you just really want to make something rock hard You can do that. They can also, you know, punch they have some mobility Um, they have a lot of different tools in the toolbox Um, so I think it was somewhat of a happy coincidence because I kind of got them for aesthetics reasons to do that You know, specific conversion that I really wanted to do Um, and then it ended up kind of working out because I think the playstyle does sort of suit me Um, pretty well Yeah, you're my my experience of you is you're a very considered player And because the way Stormcast sort of do have different synergies and often have optionality in how you use your pieces Uh, I think that just there's like a natural alignment there, right? It's it's how am I getting the most out of all these units? You often don't have maybe the same number of of Options as some other armies, so you got to use your piece as well. Yeah, okay Okay, uh The other thing on the other good Oh, I was gonna say what I think about it one thing. I remember thinking this playing Matt you and playing Sean Clark at Both a Nash con and in two different years you guys are both some of the top players around and Gave me the feeling of hope of Of You know, it was like pretty clear to identify the gap that I would sometimes feel between what you guys would do and what I would do It felt like a very surmountable gap, right? Like I've often had this feeling when it comes to the best players Now I could be telling myself a story. It's like that there's not a gap, right in terms of we're not talking about a Michael Jordan Versus Aim your all-star, right? We're average NBA all-star. There's like I feel like there's a certain seal now I could just be making this up. I'm sure Bill Suza and others are phenomenal Ronja with how well she's done But I've just gotten that impression over the years of playing at least among the best players that I've played Consistently they're not doing anything that different than what I think of as good fundamental Warhammer Which gave me a lot of hope in playing people like you You know for whatever that's worth I think that was the weirdest backhanded compliment in history I think what he said Matthew is he thinks you're good, but I mean like it's it's an achievable good It's an achievable good I guess it's got me to be completely honest like even you know, I guess you were relatively new at that NashCon tournament But like I thought I thought you you know, you knew your rules well Like I thought your tactics were pretty decent. You made it a couple of strategic errors But yeah, no, I mean, I guess I would follow up with saying you know Like you said, you know, I don't think there's any like Michael Jordan's when it comes to this sort of stuff I think most people can can learn Learn the fundamentals they can they can learn their rules they can gain experience and they can become great players You know, I don't think there's any there's nothing stopping anybody from becoming That's the main yeah, that's what I'm trying to say exactly better, you know, yeah I've played a lot of good players in seven years like people yet playing but just yeah No one has ever done any Yeah, like it's not rocket science as this Sure, you're not getting absolutely taken to the cleaners in such a way where like it would be if you lined up against, you know Even current MJ on that on the half Right, right, exactly Yeah Okay The other thing I'll say here is I think this is important is once you've made your choice of an army understand two things This is I think so important Its power level will change over time You will not always be in the best position vis-a-vis the meta that doesn't necessarily mean you can't do well with it As many people have shown right Your knowledge of your army and knowing how to actually utilize it to the best of its ability is worth far more To you than the percentage a few percentage points of win rate you could get by jumping forces Now that's not to say don't if you play the army and you don't like it It's isn't aligning with their place value were wrong on point one, you know like oh I thought this would work and it didn't Right Then they switch cool no issues right no drama llama But if you're but if it's aligning you're just not having the sort of luck Understand that like maybe you need to improve and work on more but that that proficiency With that individual army is going to go a long way And then you have to practice and stick with it to improve deliberate practice We'll talk about what that means on coming slides Okay Yeah I think I think again I sort of Matt I kind of lucked out into that to a certain extent because I'm a relatively slow painter And so to a certain extent like I have I have a couple of other armies but it takes me so long to paint That usually by the time you know tournaments rolling around I'm like okay well My stormcast are the only thing painted so that's that that's pretty much what I'm going to roll with but it does It does mean that I've gotten a lot of experience playing stormcast over the years so That's another kind of funny Yeah it's it's worked The of all the armies I practiced against I will tell you I did not practice against a storm drake And liberators with my with my son ish that wasn't on my radar So next up is list building and oh boy oh boy is this one an important part of the phase I think this is something that a lot of people have a conception is pretty important But I think that but why or how is the tougher part of this right like it's easy to say Hey list building is important cool right like now what what do I do with that I what do you think I've been doing not building lists like I'm trying over here man Okay not just randomly putting models on the table this isn't 2015 open play or something So here's the first thing so I'm gonna rattle off my items here Let's let's have some discussion as we're going I'll try I'll do a couple here spend time thinking about your list This is this is it that's the step one it's so simple but just spend some time thinking about it Like don't just roll in and get to the first list play around a little see which your options are Understand what you could switch what is maybe what's a what if I get rid of this What does that open up for me right don't just settle on the first 2000 point thing You crank out because it happens to fit I mean if you're just having fun that's fine But if you're trying again as with all these things we've trying to improve do that And so use that to try different combinations units power pairs combos Maybe those vanquishers are the hotness if you get them on the table the right way right So that's where I'll start I'm going to pause there for a moment Tyler what do you think about that it does it makes me Actually think about I was watching a show with Emma Emman Engels She had a show with coach and she showed the spreadsheet that she had used for Developing her nergalist that she took to Debtcon we had that whole thing she and I Think she ended up so she ended up second at a Debtcon and did really well with this Unique Rob Bringer Coven list almost nobody at the time was playing Rob Bringer Coven Anyway she went through all these different iterations with that list to get to her Final point that she took to a Debtcon it was awesome like good detail notes Going through why she did this result. She got why she changed this So yeah, I think keeping track of that in a spreadsheet just having a way to document that You can look back on it and obviously doing that with your games in general I've started doing that over the last few months it's been amazing just having that Documentation I can go back and look okay I did this wrong did this right Etc over games that you'll never be able to remember without something like that Something like that document sure. Yeah, what about yourself? So yeah, I would say this is one of the one of the steps that I do think I do Relatively well and and usually I spend a lot of time kind of thinking about List composing lists, you know mix mixing and matching usually, you know Usually I find that my lists kind of build themselves up to about like 14 to 1600 points sure and then it's usually that last you know Few hundred points where I'm like okay well I could take this I could take this These are all the options, you know which one makes sense which one I like and then I kind of Build a few lists and then I'll go and I'll play some games with those lists Ideally against different opponents So you don't kind of get just one experience with it and then kind of sit down And then kind of evaluate it And hopefully if you have some good friends that you can kind of Have a discussion about it and say okay well what You know what what do you think of this list? What do you think of this unit? What do you think of this unit? You know what if I you know and have the Conversation right after the match and say you know well I was thinking of Swapping this this guy out for this or this unit out for this What do you think and then kind of get your opponent's feedback from their perspective Like okay well that would have you know that would have changed Things in this way and maybe this would have played out differently and So yeah now list building is definitely something my wife will tell you I I spend a little too much time Racking my brain on but it's definitely important So the next thing I want to hit these next three points in kind of order And that is understand the role of every unit that goes in your list Like everything that goes in your list should be intentional in some way Should have a purpose it you know We've talked a lot about the pet unit I'm gonna leave that to the side for a moment I tend to believe you can make that work as long as it still has a role Like you can use your pet unit that isn't as good as long as it still Is filling some overall synergistic purpose some role in the overall list But you know what's it there to do is this a hammer is this an anvil Is this a deck chair sitter is this mobility is it utility Is it chaff is it multiple of these roles right Like what is it there for who is it pairing with who would it want to be Deployed with who does it want to stay near during the game Am I restricting my mobility too much by doing this This is a thing I think people often miss like this kind of thing Not only just what is each unit's role but also then how it's going to work with its friends Is it enabling that role or reducing that role So for example you guys would see this a lot where people would build all these buffs And be like look at how amazing I can make this one unit Cool your entire army has to stay within eight inches of this lynchpin Right and all you've done is just make it so your army is so restricted on the board You're just you put a noose around your own neck right and you made an easy thing for me to target Sorry go ahead Matthew Sorry yeah no you know one one thing that I've kind of found you know this is a very specific example But it kind of speaks to that point is you know Gardis You know I've played some lists with Gardis and it seems really strong You know I'm just like oh man I really want that five up board save on those fulminators That just sounds so brutal but you know it restricts you so much You know and it's a 12 inch bubble so it seems like it's a lot But you know when you actually get down to play you know it's like oh I want to you know I want to teleport this guy over here And hit from behind I want to deep strike these guys over here and do this And then you're like oh wait you know literally only one unit is actually benefiting from this thing that I'm building this army for It's like you know what I I'll just take I'll just take the the six up board that I get from Hammers And now I have a bunch more flexibility to do everything that I want to do on the board and I'm not constrained in this little bubble You know around this little foot slogging hero Yep So yeah It's a perfect example of why I don't think you see Gardis as much because it's banking too much on a tiny bubble on a slow guy Right Yeah there's just not much flexibility Right and so I think you know you have to think not only what's that role you're feeling but is this guy can this unit operate independently What does it need to reach its efficiency level where it's going to pay its points Right what power pair what hero do I need to escort it to babysit it to make it work You know you think about like here's an example from from Scaven you think about like a warp lightning cannon I look at a warp lightning cannon a list says 150 points that's a lie Right it's 255 Because to make a warp lightning cannon do anything you're gonna have to have an engineer babysitting it sitting Right and that thing moves no inches effectively So you've got two units now a little more than 10% of your army that's just sitting in the back Now if you roll the one and pop 12 mortal wounds straight into something and just ice it off the table Hey great you but you paid your money back that's a great day Right But it's very easy for that not to happen You have to ask yourself like am I willing to dedicate this amount of resources into this thing Right The second thing I'll say on this is know your threats So you should have at least three to four threats and know what it takes to use those threats Know the math of those units by the way Threats don't necessarily mean they can go kill something though that's often what it is often this manifests as hammers But it doesn't have to be just that Tree revenants in Sylvaneth are a threat Because they can sit anywhere Way out of range and they threaten every objective on the table And they're Galatian veterans Somebody makes something approving ground they can pop over there and grab it Yeah there's a case we made that they're the poster unit for this season right now Sure The battle tactics that we have with how these missions are actually played It's free revenants yeah they are they just generate you battle tactics left right Yep I see the word threat as something that generates momentum for your side Scoring points removing enemy units things like that right And so this could be a main punch a counter punch a mobile threat mobile objective grabber All that stuff can be threats have three to four of those you want a density of that in your list To where somebody can't just pick one off right Which leads to the last point I'll make and then I'm going to throw it back over to you Matthew Which is know what you can lose this is a game where things die Okay so you got to get into that you got to accept you're going to lose stuff That's number one like you will lose models you will lose things you care about What can you lose and if you lose it what's your plan B C D E right What can you afford to lose and have your path to victory still be open Arguably know what you're supposed to lose a lot of list or have Sure yeah yeah we'll talk about that actually on the on the on I think the next slide Or maybe the slide after that I don't know two slides from now we'll talk about that Matthew what do you think about this how do you think about list building in these terms You think about like what you can afford to lose how do you fight if this thing's gone so on and so forth Yeah I mean I definitely I definitely have a clear picture of what units are getting work done And where my my liabilities are I think so for me I you know when I read know what you can lose I you know I immediately said know what you can't lose Sure absolutely yeah Sometimes you know ideally you want to minimize those sorts of units right You know I don't like having crutches basically where it's like this one thing if your opponent takes it out you know because that makes you fairly fragile It was it was one of the things that I kind of didn't like about my my adepticon list was those damn raptors now granted raptors have ridiculous range And so it was incredibly painful for the opponent to actually get to them In the back of my mind I always knew you know if somebody had something that could reach out and touch those raptors that's probably the game Because you were stormkeep right with that list you were not excited Yeah yeah I was stormkeep you know You didn't have to get out of jail option to silence Yeah you know I yeah I think the meta choice probably is is scions but I kind of got tired of of scions so I want to try to stormkeep And I they do do some good stuff but for instance I played at adepticon I played a deepkin list and I think the matchup was his He had he had a lot of 24 inch like 14 inch move units that could that could easily have have countered my raptors and you know and he just shuts off shooting in that first round right And so you know from from deployment that matchup I'm like wow this this is his game to lose because he just has my raptors dead to rights Like there's no reason why you know and I ended up kind of playing some mind games you know I have bastions so I could do some redeploys and And I ended up shoving the raptors all the way on the right side of the board to try and kind of force them out of position and all this other stuff But it was it was definitely a matchup where that you know I was very aware of the fact that this one unit was very powerful but somewhat fragile that I could not afford to lose And my opponent had a really really good counter to it and so it definitely put me on the back foot right from the get go Yep I like that And then my next point is is understand your wound count your drops that the sort of key numbers of your army you know versus the benchmark and plan accordingly So like the benchmark for wounds is probably around 100 wounds right now across all the armies it's in that range maybe 90 maybe 110 surround there And it's probably three to four drops Okay so like you can look at that and know what your plan is right if you're running a thin list you've got like 80 wounds Well then you know you need to use your pieces very carefully because you don't have extra extra wounds to bleed right If you've got 200 wounds worth of bone splitters on the table you know that you can play a little a little messier You can go for a more board control strat because you might have double the wounds of your opponent right so you can afford to throw some bodies in the fire If it means you maintain some kind of board presence or you know make them play differently Even if you don't pick up their pieces if you just put them off their game off their strat and then you lose a unit that's a fair trade for you You know you had 20 extra wounds you could just throw in the bin If you are super high drops great know you're higher than average and in most games you won't have the choice and plan accordingly What do you do if given the first turn what do you do if given not the first turn right like what is going to be your response How are you deploying assuming you have no clue what's going on right and in most games you can probably tell just because you can look at how the opponent's setting up and what they're choosing as to what they're going to do But at any rate we'll talk about that in the deployment section but you know make your plans aware of the generic benchmarks Like call it a hundred wounds and four drops how are you vis-a-vis that spectrum Then I have here other notes casters and none the spells okay I'm going to ask a question I think we're probably careening into a world where spell doms are at least a thing right like and magic matters a lot Do you always put a caster in your list in an age of spell doms Matthew what's your take on it you might have a slightly different take a storm cast to have an ace in the hole for a crappy caster Yeah well for me I almost now granted it's because some guys don't really have a lot of great alternatives but pretty much I'm finding myself always taking master of magic so that it and that's kind of my my low bar it's like at the very At the very least I've got one to spell that I can reroll on and you know that doesn't that doesn't prove your odds fairly significantly and you know short of an incantor just shutting one down I'm pretty much putting that master of magic in every list now again if if you're playing an army that has better choices that compete better for master of magic then maybe that's not Maybe that's a more difficult choice but for me that's that's kind of my low bar for having at least one reasonably good chance at shutting down a spell Sure makes sense because oftentimes they'll will be one spell is the one you need to stop right which is why the incantor can be a great pick in storm cast because at least it gives you one round where you know you've got it turned off Yeah no I think that's the when if you're going up against the spell down or if you're going up against somebody that just you clearly know they have you outmatched you have to recognize that and say okay you know which which spell can I really not afford to let them get off and then that's the one you target and hopefully you know hopefully they don't roll box cars or you're not you know I'm gonna be against checklist or some other nonsense Sounds familiar I'll tell you but we'll discuss that up here a game I played this weekend and then endless spells like expect they're gonna be out there like they're they're a thing right now in a big way in the meta Purple Sun alone is gonna occupy a lot of tables but beyond that you're gonna see plenty of other things you're gonna see you know cogs and spell portals and maybe some gnashing jaws here and there and you know like maybe some some little gammonids like these things will be around so expect them to be there and you know know how you're going to answer them Good to see the rune lord showing up in more lists right now rune lord is a little 95 point but a hero that can go slot into certainly storm cast list a number of different a lot of order a lot of order armies can ally in cities of sigmar so yeah slot in a rune lord it gives you a plus two to unbind and I believe this spell as well I can't recall if it has two unbinds maybe it's just one but yeah it's just one yeah but still yeah help you get read I mean yeah you're gonna get hit initially by whatever but the chance to get rid of it could be really impactful Plus two is a massive difference to your unbinds to your to your dispels I mean it's just it's crazy what how that mathematically affects your chance to get rid of a spell especially in a world where if you don't happen to be fighting a spell dumb like it's crazy the difference that makes I want to answer a few questions that came up in the chat Eric Doty said what role does a deck chair correspond to a deck chair sitter deck chair sitter is a unit of five dweebs who are meant to sit around in the back and be on an objective and then maybe go do something later they're meant to sort of sit on your home objective and usually hedge out teleports or hedge out ambushes or things like that they can be used as sort of backline chaff often or backline board control or just as your army moves forward they sort of cover the rear as it were they can slot in and be a second level of chaff if you need to protect yourself against if you need to protect yourself against like being double turned so you can have double chaff lines your deck chairs will often step up in that role so that's where that is and then what are you guys using for AOS list building war scroll builder all the time every time it's on it's the only thing you build with I don't know why anybody uses the app it is war scroll builder on the Warhammer community site created and run and updated by our Lord and Savior Tony P who is the man the myth the legend himself and it is the only resource you need in this building it generates beautiful efficient easy to read gorgeous lists and calculates everything you need in it it's wonderful and his coach points out and it is a great point Tyler because he is a priest and not a wizard he can take advantage of the of heroic willpower to get that bonus unbind so he could do to a plus two oh yeah that's cool yeah yeah and priests can help out as well I played against fire slayers and with Nurgle had no answer to that firewall that you actually cannot pass over so I wasn't thinking about to give my opponent first turn and he just plopped out right in front of my I'm not playing the fly spam list the Blackmore spam list so had to do with that most of the game but yeah without any way to get rid of it right no no priests in the army so yeah that's a good shout the couple other things that came up I saw Vince Shawna that mentioned this building battle tactics in mind is another level reminds me I want to do some shout outs because again we had a lot of people send ideas and I just want to try to give some coverage of some of these things so we have a list of thank yous and the show notes for everybody thank you everybody in the community contributed to this like I said there'll be more coming in the coming weeks with all of this but Mason Knox he had a great point about what he called road mapping just part of this building for him so he generally as a plan that he tries to sort of like an adaptable plan right that he comes into every game mission and so on with but he can sort of like I want to try to do these battle tactics in this order when I try to execute these things in terms of how I'm using my pieces I'm doing my deployment blah blah blah to have a roadmap roughly in mind that can be adapted now obviously when you get punched in the face things go wrong you got to be able to adapt that's where a lot of players can fall short though I like that concept of road mapping within this I thought it related well to what Sean said yep absolutely Eric examples of deck chair sitters sir I got you covered buddy five liberators it is the most classic example in the world because they can be chaff they can sit in the back line they could get thrown around by a translocate later they can they're actually tough enough that you like your opponent has to dedicate some of our resources to actually lifting them and because they they and they will count as a lot if in something like storm keep or if they're if they're an expert conquerors or whatever so stuff like that all right Matthew I know you're a big fan of the liberators been put into good use so I've I've won I've won a lot of games off of liberators it's it's funny I've won like I feel like half my games I've won off of liberators just like keeping points or or outlasting I mean I don't know how many times I've had people think that they're going to pick up a five man unit of liberators that are sitting in cover on a on an objective with some other battle line unit it's like that's not going to happen right right yep exactly all right next up pregame so this is you've got your list should not play in the game yet this is pregame okay I think this is a phase a lot of people skip this is to me is important number one checklists and practice okay so like practice means by the way that doesn't mean that might mean playing might just mean actually setting up your army and seeing how it fits and seeing how you can cover the board like you can just set up your army on a board it's entirely possible you can do that nobody nobody has to be on the other side of the table so you can just play with different setups and understand what they are right and then a checklist by phase what are you going to do start of the hero phase I do this and this and this there's a OS reminders out there that will do it automatically for you you can easily make your own checklist if you don't want like the only problem I have with the OS reminders is quite heavy is quite a lot to it you might just want to make your own checklist that's fine whatever but but make a checklist just have a piece of paper you can reference to go I did that I did that I did that I did that I did that cool good I didn't miss anything right use it to get off the book you know it's like I've just been doing this with Nurgle of course so I put my cycle of corruption and the summoning the all I've got all of this info that I need on two pages now the order of operations hero phase etc mostly have all that down now after doesn't games cycle corruption all the critical stuff is there on the first page and never touch the book war scroll I don't list out all the stats on the war scrolls only the ones that for some reason my brain can't remember so like play bears I can you know those fours and threes force to hit threes to wound is it is a fours and threes is a threes and fours that that sort of thing you know it will go on that page yeah absolutely get off book that's a huge thing yeah no I have a I have a similar sort of cheat sheet where I kind of put everything in there and and I put rules that I keep forgetting you know like when a new book comes out or something and for example like blaze of glory for storm cast was something new that can actually be really strong but like my first few games I kept forgetting it and so I put it right at the top of the list so that every time I'm like oh no now I remember you know and you'll you'll kind of train yourself and the cheat sheet will kind of adapt and you know as you start remembering things you can take stuff out and put in stuff for me one of the biggest things is actually I have a little table where I shorten the descriptions for the battle tactics because because I don't know about you but for me like I'm glad that they're painstakingly going into all this detail to make these battle tactics very like you know specific but you know every one of them is like a paragraph and so it's like no I just I just need to know you know what do I do I need to pick a unit kill unit you know what's what are all the details I need so that I because you know that's something that you're going to do at the top of round every round and it's incredibly important that you get that right but you don't want to waste 10 minutes like going through and reading the whole thing and be like okay no I don't want that one no I don't want that one you know you want to be able to kind of glance through it spend one or two minutes you know making sure you're considering all your options and then make the right choice and move on yeah 100% 100% yeah agreed um it's so funny you mentioned that uh that freaking explosion I forgot it for the first half of the game because this last weekend I was just playing like a cat I was doing some tournament prep but I didn't have like my I haven't made my checklist yet because I'm playing with a couple different lists right so I didn't want to make one when I might sub out or swap units or whatever because I got it for like half the game I was like oh crap I have this blow up thing and then I was I was I remembered it and then literally he turns around with one of his units kills my one of my heroes who had charged in and then the hero blew up and killed his unit in return and I was like well there we go glad I finally remembered it's worth it yeah I find I finally got to the point now where I'm actually factoring the blow up into my math in my head you know because I'm like you know what I used the the vanquishers against a practice game they came in they killed the unit that I wanted and then he countercharged them and with like a demon prince and some other trash and I'm like sitting there doing the math and I'm just like pretty sure I'm gonna blow this demon prince up with my with my explosions and sure enough you know he's like oh yeah I'm gonna take out all these vanquishers and I'm like yeah yeah I knew you're gonna take out the vanquishers but now they're gonna blow up your demon prince along with the primary target that I took out so it's like this 250 point unit you know cleaned up like 400 500 points worth of you know targets and you know it was you know the explosion was was was pretty pretty nice nice nice alright know the battle plans know the scenarios I can't I cannot impress upon everybody this enough like read them play them understand what the paths to victory are in them and the nuances of them do not make the first time you're encountering a battle plan when you rock up to game one of your tournament right like if you're if your tournament posts the scenarios they're gonna be playing or like Nash Khan does where they post seven and say hey we're gonna play five of these that's what I've been drilling on I've been I've been that list of seven has been like my Bible that I use to play every game right now I'm like we're playing one of these seven you know we can play whatever you want was one of these seven right and that leads to this so like know your opponents army even if you don't even like you just even if you just understand the basics I understand that like hey look life it's pretty busy you got a lot going on folks I understand that you got kids you got partners you got a job you got everything else in the world going on it's like how in the the heck universe can you memorize what 25 armies do times X number of units that's that's un that's unreasonable I'm not saying that like Tyler and I and Tom know a lot of these things because we have to because we talk about it every week but most people don't have the luxury where you're forced to memorize all of this stuff for just for your show so but even if you just understand the basics how does this army play what are the threats in the army right like we've mentioned iron jaws okay what do you need to know about iron jaws we need to know they move fast they hit super hard they can they can cheat movement and jump across the board right and pigs and the mega boss do an outrageous amount of damage especially if they call the wall so your chaff is really important and your counterpunch is really important right even if you just know that I mean there's more to know but even if you just know that that puts you in a much better place than coming in cold and right and that's pretty easy that kind of thing is easy to remember you can sit up at the table and be like okay cool big thing on the monster dudes on pigs I got to watch out for those they're super fast hit hard got it right okay right yeah most everybody's familiar with yes there's often a set of the same questions that we ask each other at the start of a game if we're in particular not familiar with I was having a chat with Matt after he wanted it gone and you were telling Matt that you weren't that familiar with some of the armies that you played right and you actually asked the email they sent over to us was the exact question I asked people just kind of colloquially your tricks yeah those and everybody knows what this is the best time for you to talk about what you mentioned earlier Matthew so take us through that point you had mentioned earlier because I think this is this is a good one to talk about this right now yeah so you know and I'll say you know this is this is probably the piece of it that I think a lot of people might be surprised with how little I actually know about a lot of people's armies you know the the research and all that like I just I just don't have the time to know everything about every army you know and I like you said I didn't really try to know kind of big picture like what they do and how they win but a lot of times you know for instance like the Fire Slayer book had just come out like right under the wire right for Nash or for adepticon and I think the deep can actually had gotten a new book and said that that counted for three of my games so it's like you know how can you prepare for that right unless you're just on top of it right at release you buy the book and you know you're sifting through it anyway so you know the way you know the way that I I kind of get around that gap to a certain degree is at the beginning of the game usually even before deployment you know when we kind of share lists I'll ask my opponent you know you know what you know what are your tricks you know my tricks and generally you know to kind of keep it friendly and to hopefully you know make them more comfortable you know I'll be completely 100% transparent and say you know these are my tricks you know this guy teleports you know this guy has some silly thing where if you don't kill him he heals up all the way and you know this guy can do this these guys are incredibly killy don't you know you don't want to be charged by these guys you know whatever and then you know I'll ask them you know what are your tricks what are your gimmicks what are your shenanigans and then you know once they kind of give me that rundown I'll ask like kind of a slew of you know kind of a checklist real quick you know you know do you have any teleports what are your you know what are your move ranges do you have anything that can run and shoot you know what are your shooting ranges what are your sources of like mortal wounds and rend you know defenses you know what's your armor saves you know ward saves you know just kind of these basic stats that you can kind of register as they're going through okay you know paying okay that's the source of mortal wounds okay that's that's where he's getting his armor cracking that's that's his teleport you know etc etc that way you can kind of rack and stack you know and and I'm kind of already thinking about target priorities you know matchups that I definitely don't want like okay you know this into this is really bad for me you know this is a matchup I want etc etc yeah you mentioned it earlier but like some part of it is being able to when they just even if you don't know if you have the general concept and then they explain what their kind of tricks are if they're talking about their army that's going to connect the dots for you real fast right if you have the foundation the high level the big picture it becomes much easier for you to understand the specifics when they then lay it out for you right you're you roll up against doc you remember like okay bow snakes shoot real far and do mortal wounds and I can't kill Marathi you know I can't get her off the table in one round right and then they explain how their army works you know like okay got it lynch pin is kill those bow snakes if I can and make sure I do three wounds to Marathi right because they tell you Marathi can't die she can take three wounds around and she can't ever heal blah blah blah blah right cool yeah and how do you connect the dots go ahead Tom no I'm good okay yeah no for example for stormcast you know for me you know one of the things I'm always looking for is you know where's their rend coming from because if they've got you know if they've only got one unit who can really crack armor you know that's something I hone in on real quick because it's like okay well if I pick that up then he just can't touch me right you know or if it's mortal wounds or whatever yep absolutely and that kind of leads to the next one which is you know know your own path to victory and this has to do with again like you mentioned earlier Tyler the roadmap your general plan right what do you have to do in this scenario to win right you've got a set of tools you know your general plan now map it onto this scenario okay and how do you get around that if you can't use your normal tactic right oh hush up Caleb I think you're just fine I don't think you need any help from me especially especially when you know you might be rolling into a new book at some point in time soon here so the I'll give you I'll give you an easy example actually from this last weekend's game so right now I'm playing like a spell dom stormcast army that's what I'm that's what I'm bringing to Nash gone okay interesting okay yeah yeah yeah good times anyways so that's what I'm doing and so this last week I tested against my nightmare which is I played against a teclas army okay who's like certainly better at magic than I am with a big dragon right and so I was like all right well I want to I'm gonna be open here but I'm gonna test this stuff out and and see what's what's what now this is a slightly unusual luminous army and that the player took teclas and wanted to try the all stone people army so you had like two cows and a bunch of the stone mallet guys the whole army's immune to run to which I'm like well stormcast that's what I've got so his whole army's immune to all of my rent right except teclas now I have some mortal wounds which I know are gonna be now highly valuable right I'm like okay gotta prioritize where my mortal wound shooting goes that's super important now all of a sudden cuz why I cannot rely on any of my normal damage because I'll roll in there he'll pop a penny or an AOD or something or something and suddenly he's on just like a three up save effectively unrendable right and so I started by I drew out his his auto say no teclas is auto unbind with the atavistic tempest hmm which I was trying to like he had a unit that he knew he needed to keep in line cuz it was like teclas is personal chaff right and so I threw the atavistic tempest at them knowing he would auto dispel that so then I moved Cronus in a position in between his two casts and then unleashed a purple Sun and that's when I learned course yeah I cast over the top of teclas in the second one but that's when I also learned just how good my opponent wasn't rolling four ups cuz obviously every time this endless spell goes out it's gonna it's gonna give this four up chance to like to do nothing and then ping me back mortal wounds what happened there was I got basically no negatives to save on any units and took seven mortal wounds so that was a great time and I was like all right well this isn't working so I had to change tactics and what I realized was I had enough three inch reach to go over the top of his of his bodyguard unit cuz he had put teclas right up against the back of this unit right I couldn't get at the unit like I couldn't get teclas and so I brought everything in to that front unit went with the dragons over the top into teclas got him down to two wounds left and I was like no that's it but I also had fulminators in there the rest of the dragon boys all attacked into the little stone guard and then they threw someone up into the tempest he pulled one guy I only got one one of these little dopes dead okay but it opened up enough space for my fulminator to then pile in three inches into teclas and finish him right and so like I knew the path to victory for me was through teclas's corpse right like I couldn't out magic him I tried that it didn't work and I was like all right the plan has to be he dies and I've got a risk it for the biscuit here because if I let this dude go ham and by the way the spell I had shut off with my dispel was his protection of teclas because I knew that was what was going to keep him alive having the five upward he could put me under total eclipse he could do everything else he wanted I didn't care but if he had a five upward it threw off all the damage calculations right so find that one spell and find how you're going to win around it right or how you're going to play around that thing I think a lot of things this happens a lot with like death stars people are like I can't kill that unit so they just throw everything at it no no no no run yeah that is that is one thing that I will say that I think a lot of novice players but even some some reasonably see them to players have a really hard time with is just acknowledging that there's there's a target on the board that you know even if it is killable maybe it's it's going to take so much effort that by the time you finally kill it the game's going to be over and you're going to have lost and and you're much much better off just saying okay that thing is just a brick wall I'm going to comply I'm going to completely ignore it I'm not going to target with a single attack and I am just going to wipe everything else out that I can you know and and a lot of people just they don't that it's some sort of instinctual thing they're just like no I've got to go kill that big stompy monster or you know this unkillable thing or this unit that's just rock hard you know and it's just like be okay just retreating you know just retreat from it don't give them an extra round of combat you know and just you know throw some throw some chap in his way so that he can't get into your important stuff that's that's a lesson that I feel like some people take a long time to learn yep absolutely and then the last one's a simple one which is double check any heuristics and bias you have about how your army works in general versus this game in specific right like okay normally you mentioned like your your Raptors your long strikes right against the IDK it's a great example like suddenly this unit that has incredible reach and can kind of pick out the target you need goes up against IDK and it's like very different set of functionality right yeah so you can't rely on the same heuristics you often have like I know I can control and remove their linchpin piece because you may not have that capability all of a sudden right so to always be double checking your biases okay cool all right let's keep going deployment deployment is next I have lots of points here and these are all phrased in like questions many games are won and lost in deployment okay here's a fun story tell you a quick fun story before I get into this a lot when we did our first Vinnie Conn and had Scott and John and Sam all come we played some AOS a whole bunch and I told Scott I said you know I'll play a game against you I said I'll beat you I don't care you can take whatever you can pick any army I have I'll beat you and say pick my orange I was like okay that's fine so I said go ahead and like you know I'm this many drops you're this many drops whatever let's let's do this we set up I said we set up and I said we finished setting up and I said okay you lose do you want to rewrack real quick and try to do this again and he's like what do you mean I was like your linchpin is this piece like it's obvious this is what you care about you have it wide open I can come right in there with my my mega boss or my pigs or any unit and I can lift both of these units without any fear of strike back because your other units are too far away to get involved in this fight right and and I was like so here's what I would do and I gave him some some thoughts and then he reset up and I was like okay now let's play right and you're not gonna do that in a tournament game but my point is just like deployment is a very important thing and then you have to answer a lot of questions in deployment what are your screens in chaff what is your bait I think bait is the often unanswered question I love bait like you're gonna lose stuff I love throwing stuff out there that is that will get my opponent salivating to come make a bad choice that's like one of my favorite things right put something there that you know they're gonna want to come after you can that you can afford to lose and watch them come chase it down and make a bad choice and open some part of their army up for a price right there's often some risk there because if they like roll super explosive on the dice or get something lucky it could turn against you but most of the time it won't and sometimes you gotta play the odds you do that much try to bait much don't that's not really the kind of player I am yeah I mean I don't know if this is exactly what Vince was just talking about but and it sounds really weird and but a lot of times I'm actually okay letting my fulminators get charged so you know one of what what one of my oldest tricks and it's it's one that's worked a lot is I'll just stack armor buffs on the fulminators and I'll push them into the middle of the board and everybody you know everybody in the back of their mind is all you know fulminators are gross on the charge they just melt anything on the charge right and so you know and they have this gnawing thing in the back of their mind they were like well I've got to get into them you know I've got to make sure that they're not that I'm not going to get charged by them but you know for one when I have all those buffs on them you're you're not likely to do much unless you're like rockin rend three or just doing gobs of mortal wounds so I'm not really risking much and and honestly if you do the math and you you calculate out how much do fulminators do on a charge versus how much do they do in two rounds of combat with two shoots because they get to they get to stand and shoot so if you do two rounds of combat off the charge with two shoot shooting attacks they actually do surprisingly similar amounts of damage and as long as I'm not losing fulminators then I just want I just want them in combat right and so that that's probably one of the ones that I've used a lot I don't like said I'm not sure if that's exactly what you literally exactly what I'm talking about yes it's a it's you put a piece out there that you know like sure because there's some risk to you putting it out there right they could roll off the charts you could roll a few too many ones things could go south right it like it it can happen you're making you're taking some calculated risk but what do you know is actually going to happen is mathematically is you're going to get to push a bunch of free damage into them and now they're out of position where you can counterpunch their their their hammers without as much risk yeah 100% that's what I'm talking about yeah I think a lot of people try to over protect their pieces right you have to like puts you have to give your opponent something to fight because because that's what makes them move out of position in some way and as we're talking about this I'm realizing that I definitely misspoke because I mean that was the design of the Midwest Bash stormcast list was Bastion Bastion is used in one of two ways he's either utility piece with the bunker or he's a distraction bait piece I want my opponent to go after him if I know that he will be able to survive on average because mystic shield warding Lantern to finest hour plus three etc right all at fence potentially plus four with a four up ward and his healing he's incredibly tanky and it's just it's it can be difficult for players to not want to deal with him when he's in your backfield he's on the side that stretches them out yada yada yada so yeah absolutely I see the value of it yeah Bastion Bastion is great right because you know you can you can actually completely heal everything they put into him so he's definitely one of those ones where it's like if you go you know if you're gonna go for him you better kill him or else you you probably lost the game because you put so you put so much effort into him and then to come up with nothing you know that's that's a huge you know that's a huge swing yep if you come at the king you best not miss by the way big Tom the answer is tree revenants it's just tree revenants it's easily tree revenants what's the threat range of the enemy army this is like my number one thing I'm always thinking about because it's going to determine a lot of how I deploy and by that I don't just mean what they can shoot although that's a relevant part of the calculation what is their magic range do they have something like portal you know what's their mobility do they have the ability to ambush out right are they going to try to alpha me like what is their what capability do they have to reach me and threaten me and threaten things I care about right do they have an orthodox drops like if you're playing scaven who have multiple units that can show up within six inches instead of nine right that changes a lot of your math all of a sudden right so like what do they have off board what can they take off board all this kind of stuff and then what what is their ability to touch me around one right because that can set a lot of deployment you know you have to play you have to be tighter you have to have your pieces more sort of castle more board control more more backing out your blocking out your backside and things like that if you think you're going to be ambushed and stuff like that right the flip side of the earlier question what can't you afford to lose in this game and how are you going to protect it you know if you are in something like science does that go in the heavens because you don't want to lose it right is that the is that the plan sure you know if you know they've got a turn one big alpha capability that range they can just you know fifteen Bosnaks PPPU with that thing in the heavens or something like that like whatever right mm-hmm don't set up on the line know what their threat range is you know move back off the line uh will you have priority or not that's a knowable thing how many I'm I'm two drops how many drops are you okay I will have priority that is a knowable fact right during deployment so react accordingly right and you have a yeah go ahead sorry no please no I was gonna say I have I do have a funny story that's sort of relevant to the threat range thing um please be honest with your opponents when you're when you're when they ask for your threat range give them give them the actual threat range okay probably probably one of the worst games I ever play this this was actually I was playing war machine before you know ages more actually became a game and you know I played you know I was learning this is like my fourth game or something which again like treat treat treat the newbies a little bit better but anyway I asked him like I'm like you know so what's the threat range of this piece and he just told me basically it's base movement you know when I asked for the threat range and so you know I set up all my pieces and then you know it goes to his turn and he he's like okay well this ability gives him plus two to move and this ability gives another plus three to move and now he's making that threat charge and of course he blows everything up and I'm like why why did we even play this game like I asked you what the threat range was I was clearly making decisions based off of that and then you pull like an extra five inches out of nowhere and then of course you know that's that's the whole game right so a hundred percent yeah like when people ask me the question like if I've got a shooting unit or something or I have a teleport I'll be like well you know I've got a teleport so I could do that that could make me drop at nine so I can place around right this shooting unit can move five and then shoot X so you know it's effectively this range right though those are the kind of ways that you generally if you're like not a jerk should phrase things right yeah or like exactly what you said you know all these guys move five base but I can a good example again just to return back to Skaven it's a really easy one to say where you're like well you know my base move is seven I can get plus three to run in charge so that factor that into your thinking right because a nine inch charge is a really easy charge for me with plus three or something like that right whatever so then I have this series of questions when to castle when to spread when to be on the line and that is scenario slash matchup dependent a lot right it is not always the right answer to tighten into a castle but sometimes you kind of have to if you think that like somebody's going to bring their entire iron jaws army into you turn one then it could be right that you that you castle up by the way it might also be right to completely spread out and give them no density of targets to hit right so they have to pull their own forces apart but like what's the makeup of their thing this is one of those things that's really really hard and I think you kind of have to learn by example but you know I will generally I don't set up on the line unless there is some reason to do so like some direct reason like I think I'm going to go first and like or I have reason to go first so I know like I have priority and I know I'm going to want to go first because this particular scenario has a huge you know first mover advantage and so I want to get out an alpha bunker with as much as possible and just move out in t-pose like crazy right so I'm going to buff and and and walk and I want as much of my army as possible to get out there and effectively I'm going to try to build my castle out in the middle of the board right which there are multiple battle plans that are like that in this current season yeah around some cash and the prize of however you pronounce word Gallant Galay never and yeah where yeah I've had three games where each after each game my note was probably should have gone first I'm so unaccustomed to going first we were playing realm stone that tech list against stormcast game I was talking about that was against realm stone because I wanted I wanted to see how that would play when I gave away the first turn and just let him move up and squat on it with his castle yeah it was it's funny because nor normally I like going second in most matchups but most of the lists I play I don't actually have the choice and so I actually really like to make lists that are flexible and they can they can go first or second and I kind of let my opponent sort of picked up their poison but it at at depth of con one of the only games that I actually out dropped my opponent was against fire slayer guy and you know generally it's like yeah no brainer like you know I'll let him come up he can't do anything to me and then I'd smash him and I have the chance for the double right away and just sweep him away but then but he had nothing but those Volk right berserkers sure that have the four up Ward and all right berserkers yeah and he had he just had a ton of them and so I sat there and I'm just like man I really don't want to give him first turn and just let him sit right in the middle of a battlefield because I don't have more bodies than him like I'm not going to out body him on the points and if we're going to have this you know throw down throw down slobber knocker you know just bloody contest I want it to be in his deployment zone so that I can sit on the points and rack up some points so that even if that you know bloody brawl goes poorly for me by the time he can actually move off of his employment zone and start scoring points hopefully it's too late right and so I ended up going first and I just I came screaming across you know the battlefield and you know tried to keep him in his deployment zone as much as I could yep absolutely the next one was how much can you react to your opponents deployment now one of the advantages like we all know the advantage is going low drop it gives you a chance for priority but I don't think we talk about the advantage to being high drops as much which is you can react to your opponents deployment you know I've some some of my favorite scaven lists I'm not even putting a model on the board until their armies deployed even if they're like four drops right I'm like 13 drops my first five drops or reserves or null you know and so I'm just like this things in reserve this things in reserve this things in reserve this things in reserve and then I get to watch them set up their whole army and then react accordingly okay now I'm going to put my pieces where they're going to capitalize the most right in opposition to you and I know you've got priority and so and and you know that also gives me then some understanding of what's going to like generally I it's pretty easy to read are they going to want to try to alpha you are they going to want to give you the first turn right and that often has to do with again answering the earlier question of what's their threat range and what's their alpha potential right right yeah bastion bastion is amazing for the deployments that you know phase you know one of the things that again it was I think is somewhat a human psychology sort of thing is you know that I'd put those raptors and I just kind of line them up and do some ranging you know to see which targets I can hit you know I put them kind of there and I'm just like oh yeah they can hit there they can hit there okay yeah yeah you know they're big they're big toy that they really don't want me to just nuke off the board you know and then they're just like okay well I'll go first and then I'm like okay well bastion is going to pull these guys back to where they're perfectly safe and now you can't really do much and you know now I get to go second which is what I wanted to do anyway and friend love it love it and then my last point on this one is have a plan for your first two turns deployment is your first movement phase right that's how you should think about it deployment is your first movement phase so make decisions accordingly right like are you putting pieces at risk in a way that you wouldn't do later right are you setting yourself up in some negative way and what is your general strat for the first two turns in the game is like somewhat knowable you don't need to try to map out all five turns that's not possible things are going to go in weird ways in almost every game but like okay in the first two turns be a turn ahead right don't shoot where the target is shoot where the target is going to be right like you and and we'll talk about this some on the next slide okay cool let's talk about the action all right the action the action is joined gentlemen the game is a foot hey remember how we made those cheat sheets and reminders and use day was reminders or did whatever use it I've seen people break cheat sheets and they set it down and don't look at it I'm like why did you make that use the thing movement matters a lot like a lot like a lot so much it's the most important thing you do it's way more important than getting into combat or anything where you move will determine the scope and sweep of the game because where you move determines where your opponent has to move and vice versa this is where I have we mentioned this already earlier but don't get caught seeing red right like it's easy to get caught in a fight and over commit stop is this fight worth it leave if it's not retreat get out of there be ready to you know put yourself into where you could rally next turn right accept it also yeah by retreating out you can also get your opponents into a worse position sure they didn't have to keep you're extending the retreating off an objective for yeah except that some things will just die don't throw good money after bad this something I see a lot where like some unit gets charged by a hammer that's obviously going to kill it okay like it's so obvious it's clear that the unit that is being charged does not have the with the toughness to withstand the hammer that has hit them okay there's no help coming on the horizon right and then it gets to the combat phase and they're like all our defense and it's not a battle tactic unit right it's not like something that trying to keep alive for a battle tactic stop it use that somewhere else use that command unless like it's literally the bottom of the round and you're about to flush all your command points down the toilet like that's a resource what are you doing that unit was dead already it's dead whether or not you have that right like know the math if you're getting overkilled by by 15 wounds you're all at defense isn't going to move that those numbers back into saving right so like know when it's worth trying to know when to hold them know when to fold them as it were right and you get there by knowing the math of like how hard a thing hits versus your unit and even if you don't know the math you can get there even if you can get there through sort of like the gut instinct if you play enough units if you play enough armies if you play enough hammers you kind of know where it is right yes we did we talked about it just a little while ago okay we talked about it in pregame all right I'm gonna I'm gonna pause there Matthew what do you think about all that and like getting fights here you strike me as somebody who's sort of always thinking about like is this a fight I want to be in or not yeah I mean I guess to be honest with you I feel like everything that matters has already been done by the time you're in combat by the time by the time you're in combat hopefully you know all the important decisions have been made you know I I I wrote a note that I was going to talk about target priority but again you know it gets implemented in the action but honestly it's stuff that you should be thinking about in the pregame and in the deployment and in the movement you know what you know is it a linchpin do they have like a glass cannon that you just have to get off the table you know are they light on something that they really need like mortal wounds or rend you know and that becomes a much higher priority or sometime you know some I've seen some armies where you know they just really stack up on heroes and they've got just they've got no Galician veterans or no bodies no troops to actually contest points and it's you know it's like okay well I'm actually gonna just target your two troop units pick those up and now you've got like five bodies that you're never going to be able to take any of these points from even if you slowly kill my entire army you know I know if I pick up this and this you know now the the victory swings heavily in my favor just from an objective standpoint but you know that target priority really should be coming into play before you're you're you're in the action I think one I think one thing that I struggle with one of the few things that I struggle with when it comes time to actually start rolling attacks is splitting attacks when I you know when I know you know I can kind of gain yourself a little bit if you know that if you know the math and you're just like okay well I know that I really only need a couple fulminators to just completely destroy this unit and so I'm going to get greedy and I'm going to put these other two into this other unit start start you know beating them up and then you know if you just roll you know a little a couple standard deviations below and now all of a sudden that unit that you really need a dead is not dead or what have you so that's something it's always I always tell myself afterward that it you know I'm never going to split attacks again because usually when you try to you know when you try to fine tune the damage that you know you know when you're playing a regular right you can you remember you're playing a dice game yeah yeah so no that's fair I mean we have the master of splitting attacks in the chat we're only one jack is out there the man the man himself who splits attacks all the time and what I'll say is my rule of thumb for splitting attacks is how much does it matter if this unit I'm fighting guys if I'm in a fight where I'm just like okay I'm cleaning these two things up but this isn't the real action cool maybe it's the right idea to split both attacks or to split the attacks right because you're like well on dice I'll kill the one unit and damage the other and if I don't no big deal neither one's gonna gonna punch back at me hard enough to really matter right but if I'm like on a battle tactic to kill this unit or this unit's holding the objective and I've got to get it down whatever right if it's like a linchpin moment towards scoring you don't split you go all in even if you're sure you're gonna overkill him you go all in right like that's that's the the that's the decision point for me right the other thing I'll say is don't forget you can split attacks when you have units with wildly different reaches and you're fighting over the top the example I gave from earlier where like my little dragon attacks had this three inch reach and could go over the top whereas the little swords couldn't fine I split the attacks right because why not like this is the target I want to hit I put everything I can into it what I can't I'll try to pick up what I can do right you know another easy one is if you have like very different profiles in terms of like rend you know you want to send all the non-rending attacks into the lower armor saves and the high-rending attacks into bigger armor save 100% yep so like it's you have to like assess the nature of one how important is this thing I'm fighting like hopefully you've you've you've followed sun zoo and you're you're fighting on your ground right you've picked the fights you want to have and if that's the case then just answer the question of how important is this thing and decide according and moreover what's the appropriate reaction they're gonna have next point always assume you're going to get double turned if it's a possibility like if you're on the bottom of the round or sorry you're if you're not on the bottom of the round like you went top of the round right and so hence they have the bottom assume when you're moving in your turn turn like you have first turn so you move out they're gonna go at the bottom of two assume they're gonna pull the double it's not the statistical likelihood but assume it because you're gonna play differently when you do so you'll set up double chaft lines you'll you'll keep in mind what they get in two movement phases right and so on and so forth now you have to some this is where we get into the next line as well these two are in order which is you minimize risk unless you can get the win and this is the toughest challenge understanding the balance right because if you think they're gonna get the double you can't just sit there like two full movements plus charges away from their entire army all the time right you're never gonna be on an objective you're gonna just lose the game because you're overly cautious so it's not avoiding risk it's minimizing unnecessary risk right like I have the troops to put two chaft screens in the way right so I'm gonna do that so even if they get the double they're not getting to my goods right or I'm gonna put this unit I really care about that like I can teleport later it's gonna stay in the back line right because it doesn't need to be doing anything this round it's not winning me the game by it being out there this round cool let's keep it in quote-unquote reserve right until I need to use it later right where do my heroes need to be to make sure that like if they plow through what's in front of them I'm not risking my heroes if that's an important utility piece or something right and that's a really tough line to walk one more slight point I want to make on this whole thing don't always take the double this is like the easiest mistake I see people make all the time they roll they get the double they take it and the number of times I've been happy about that because suddenly it gave me the bottom of the turn which I knew was gonna be more valuable anyways right and they were in such a position because of how I had moved where they are not gonna be able to capitalize on it I'm like okay great cool and I like because I know they're just gonna throw they're just shoveling good money after bad huh right so sometimes it's not the right answer to take the double turn you like ask yourself the question it might give this away what really happens what does that put me in the position to do is that a better position for me is having the extra command point is having to choose the proving ground is being in whatever you know position to react to what they're gonna do is am I better because of that right and that kind of you know that kind of plays into what you've already said about if you play if you play the top of turn you know one or whatever in a manner that you expect them to get the double then you're probably putting yourself in a likely be in a better position to where if you know if they get the chance well now all of a sudden it doesn't look so bad so when they take it you're actually you kind of set yourself up for success you know to a certain extent yep 100% thoughts on this one guys sorry sorry one other thing that I think I see a lot and I think it's something that it's correct but it's not as correct as often as a lot of people think it is so one thing I'll see is people will look at the game state and they see that they're down and they'll just say well I need the double to win and they'll basically just throw the whole game you know they'll be super aggressive and they say well you know if I get the double then this might work and I might be able to pull the game out but they do it and there there is a time for that right if the game is really that bad to where you've got to have the double to win then it's good to acknowledge that and say okay you know I'm I'm gonna throw but realize that you're gambling the whole game on a single dice roll which is not usually good you're probably in a really bad hole at that point and I've seen a lot of people make that judgment way too early like the game is just getting started like one or two things have gone badly for them or maybe even not that badly but you know they're perceiving it as having been really bad and they're just like oh well you know I'm already behind the eight ball and I need the double so I'm just gonna over extend myself and gamble the whole game on this one dice roll and then they don't get it and then the game's over you know it's like yes that you know that is a state of the game that can happen and you know if it if it is then acknowledge it and go ahead and gamble but that should hopefully be very rare and I've seen a lot of decent players kind of make that gamble way too early yeah so I got so many thoughts on this one I feel like this is one of the fundamentals of going from a newer player to an intermediate player to a good player like a lot of newer players and intermediate players they don't get past this I think this whole double turn thing right that we've always had with this game packs so many things and that it's one of the defining yes or no have you gotten to a point where you know how to address this your list building and your planning and your deployment and your moving etc etc and thinking about your battle tactics it impacts just about everything like we've often talked about how it's not the double from one to two it's the double from two to three that you'll often see good players or great players well they'll give up the double from one to two but they'll take the double from two to three and pedal to the metal and maybe close out the game at that point or really break somebody's back not always the case there are times I mean this also impacts what kind of player are you like Darren Watson often talks a lot about how he's a very aggressive player be aggressive that's a play style that's Darren's play style it's not everybody's play style there are some armies that will lean into that and the one that take that double because they can break somebody's back going from bottom of one to two six inch pylon activations fighting twice like that could just burn through an army if you're not careful right if you get doubled by something like that but anyway yeah to me like there you could do an entire show just based on this one bullet point and how much it impacts in terms of winning or losing games so many players I see yeah still falling into this trap even intermediate players with quite a bit of experience of not not just making these basic mistakes that screw them time after time 100% and this is tough because you have to really overcome your own biases right when something tips in your favor like getting a double you're like oh yes yes finally my thing my good moment happened and it's like but wait a minute right are you going to actually capitalize on this or are you like so much of actually I think this skilling up is restricting back your instincts and engaging that second-order thinking as opposed to just relying on complete your first-order thinking of like go here kill this do that right getting caught and see in red not paying attention to your movement in detail all these kinds of things are just first-order thinking and not engaging your second-order thinking right I don't know like it could be a good exercise to like deliberately lean into this notion of this and playing games where you are focused on preparing for the double and giving away the double particularly around to all of the practice games I've done so far for Nashcon any time I win priority I give it away even if it means my opponent has to double it's always interesting what you're learning right it's just like in a practice game I don't like you win or lose who cares it's a practice game I prefer to learn right so like I will just give it away because I'm like okay how am I going to react to this when this happens in reality when it matters I can't bank on winning that dice roll so like don't just theory it out play it out when you're doing a practice game like give it away even if you know it's the wrong choice in a practice game and then see how you know you respond to it right play knowing you're gonna do that in the game and then give it away every time it's a good way to just like learn alright the deets let's get into them dirty deets this is the little stuff but I think it's important the order of combat activation matters that one's probably pretty obvious for most people right but like think about what order you're activating your units in what do you need to kill and this goes and connects very closely to the next one which is pile in can be a huge deal that could bring other units into combat when it could block units out Tyler would you please tell your story about you screwing up the order of activation and how pile in messed you over could you tell that story again a few weeks ago playing a practice game this was yeah this is my last game leading up to midwest bash with my storm cast sell us in prime and bashing list and so I had an opportunity to act to go into combat with prime do you tag puppy some dire wolves and pile into Manfred whenever it came to the combat phase but to stay outside of Manfred's three inches in the charge phase right you couldn't blip away from that I can't blip away and so set all that up move and then go into combat phase and I activate with bashing first immediate because then the dogs they pile around the other way with sell us in prime missing me to go the wrong way in terms of what I intend to do with my pile and and yeah so do that that's that's a huge there there are a number of instances like that in terms of piling in that can take a little time to catch those instances and kind of gotta yourself and look at you know what could happen here in terms of how they could pile in to mess up a plan yada yada yada there's a number of different situations where stuff like that can come up but yeah it can make a big difference I think honestly I think piling is probably the most I don't know if technical is the right word but it's I think it's the it's the most technical skill that I think differentiates you know new to mid to great players because I mean you can do a lot of things like not only not only just you know bringing bringing units in bringing units out but even just like a lot of times I'll pile in you know into cover you know so that when they swing back now all of a sudden you know I've got some extra some some extra protection there that they weren't counting on you know so there's just there's a lot of little interesting facets that that piling can get into that you'll see a lot you'll see a lot of skilled players do some interesting stuff with piling piling checklist in itself Matthew yeah all the heuristics and you know potential opportunities like opportunity list try to keep in mind of what could be happening in any given time with piling and so many players I just see like they don't do anything with their piling you know they can be doing so much and they just skip it well and that's the thing because let's be honest what 60 70% of the time in a lot of fights it actually doesn't matter right yeah like most fights are just gonna be like one unit going into another unit there's kind of nobody else around I am everybody's already fighting you know my two fulminators are up against your five dweebs like it I've already got everybody's within combat range let's just do this I'll roll it out you know like I don't need to I'm not trying to do anything too wacky I'm not near an objective like or I'm already on the objective safely or whatever right like there's a decent percentage of the time it just doesn't matter okay and you can kind of just move fast the important part is to stop before you get before you make that call and say does this matter right can I pull a pile in pull somebody in that I need to lock up do I need to pile out get somebody out of combat by swinging around the unit I'm in and hence we're moving that unit from combat do I need to move to cover am I can I pile toward objective and then threaten the objective with more models you know those are the important questions to ask yourself right when that came up last literally last night guys was I got charged by a room son of magma droth I had five play bears and then or guts was slightly behind but in the range where I could have activated with or or guts early to hit the magma droth then or guts would be in range to be hit by that magma droth in addition to me taking the damage and whatever I do to magma droth on a four up he's doing more wins back to me so the thought came to me not immediately but after a couple activations oh he has if I pile in the play bears screen off his ability to reach or guts he has to activate against the plague bears he'll definitely math wise wipe out the plague bears then I can hit him with or guts and save that activation so anyway a lot of instances in terms of what you can do with this yep alright my next two points are somewhat related but it's it's about sort of like unless you're a spell dom don't bet on magic and even if you are a spell dom don't bet on magic frankly just don't bet on magic what I mean by that is like magic is so finicky even with big bonuses to cast it can let you down the ranges are often short dice are fickle like unless you have true re-rolls to everything you can easily roll two ones and miscast yourself out of a thing out of a good magic turn um then people get a chance to unbind against you then they might have some saves against the spell or you know award or a spell ignore or whatever right so like magic should be a part of your plan that isn't the linchpin unless you're running like a hard spell dom where you think you can get away with it right which if you can fine cool okay right um but the point is is that uh you need to like think of magic as bonus nachos not the actual thing it's always the it's the fries that are in the bottom of the bag you're excited about them bagular right you're excited when you get them bagular fries they're delicious but you're not banking on them you ordered the large fry that's what you're actually eating Caleb said magic is life well it's easier when you're playing uh a spell dom Caleb which is that's that was what I'm saying yes oh yeah especially especially now that cogs is ridiculous again sure yeah I mean how it's like it is again I do not understand basically made the same exact mistake again didn't they yeah like yes they did yeah yes I thought we learned this lesson already no cogs is like the the the the wheel in game of thrones it just turns and and nobody learns anything ever nobody breaks the wheel yeah no cogs is crazy I actually I'm I'm I'm sad to hear that you're you're rocking a purple sun at Nash con judge him harshly absolutely relying on I'm getting in while the getting's good baby this thing is broken it's all get out and I was like look the flip side of it to be fair is I am running crondis okay so like that is also simultaneously way now the worst choice in a purple sun meta because he can go in the in the sun pretty yeah he could go right in the bid yeah yeah no I think my main complaint honestly is that I feel like it's it's not so much that it's overpowered which it is it's that I feel like it's it's gonna make for a lot of negative play experiences 100% yes I mean to me is really the crying shame about it just stupid it's so stupid it is just stupid I like if tomorrow they put out an FAQ that said the the role ones to kill things is completely gone and that's it all it does is the neg one to save I wouldn't change my list at all because I'm using it actively for the neg one to save along with that and that's how you and that's how you should use it right because the ones like they are kind of unreliable you know they can be they can be game winning right and and if you if you ping enough heroes with them then you'll you'll you'll roll a one that thing loves eating heroes yeah it's yeah you know if you can get like if you can consistently ping like two or three heroes like for a couple two or three turns in a row like you're going to pick up some of those heroes yep but yeah now in the minus one rend thing like that's actually really strong especially if you build around it like that's more than more than worth its points yeah my list but yeah I love me storm cast was neg for rend it's pretty awesome yeah exactly we I my last opponent Matthew at mid post bash he leaned into this it was an amazing storm cast list he had crondis with purple sun four tempestors right yeah they're coming in minus two rents with purple sun potentially minus three run with atavastic tempest got judicators with both storm crossbows he's like yeah he really built around atavastic tempest purple sun for stacking up rent and quite potent yeah no I think I think you could if you lean into a shooting list it purple sun becomes gold yeah sure which leads us right to the next one which is remember your heroic actions the one that always gets forgotten is heroic willpower which is that non-wizard bonus unbind I'm every time I'm like how many casts do you have right and I'm like can I catch up by giving myself that bonus unbind or just like I need to I need to pop this this endless spell off and like it's got to go and I don't want to burn one of my casts heroic willpower is the thing that's a hundred percenter I don't like I have to roll to make the thing happen but like I don't have to roll a four up to get the bonus I just I do it I get the extra unbinder to spell it whatever so yeah the unbind is clearly the winner out of those in my book it's the sleeper hit that you don't see people use enough and I just like remember it's got to go on a on a non-wizard that's the only trick but like you probably have a non-wizard hero in your army unless you're playing I don't know this is your luminous I guess so um and then always remember like your monster's rampage is like your roar roar is so important and I mean this in both ways not just you should remember the roar and think about who you're roaring right but also if you charge a monster assume that one of those units is going to get roared and you will not have access to command abilities in the in the in the combat phase like just assume the roar right and you'll be that will change like maybe you now charge with two units instead or something like that right whatever the case is so um as you move keep your screens and placements in mind as well as enemy threat ranges and always watch your buff ranges for the next turn when you move oh goodness this is this is another one that I think really is like the the beginner player versus the intermediate player type of thing right like your hero has some range that he's going to try to do even if it's just like 18 inches for a command ability or something right because he's the general or a totem or whatever and the number of times I've seen people move out of their their range because they're only thinking about where the piece needs to be now not where that went not when it rolls back to their turn your your pieces are still going to be in mostly the same place unless they got charged and piled oh by the way another good way to use pylon bringing people back into to auras and and ranges if you're trying to squish just like ah crap I got an edge out of space we all do it sometimes like we're all going to make these music sometimes pylon could be a good way to be like okay back in we're good and I'm set up for my next turn to now be in range right so like think about your next turn buff ranges when you're moving now where do your people need to be yeah that was one thing that I learned I learned to appreciate bastions boardwide free command point because you know I'm making a list for Nashcon that has the imperitence you know and I'm like oh yeah he's kind of like a little baby bastion right because he's handing out the free the free command point but there's a there's a big difference between you know that 12 inch bubble and boardwide right yeah there was many situations where I'm like man I really I really want to capitalize on this command point but he's just not in range and so then I'm like man maybe I need to make him my general extra you know six inches because that makes a pretty big difference I thought he had the totem keyword he doesn't Castlin does but not the imperitent yeah no I'm I'm it's very tempting but it also makes the imperitent an incredibly juicy target for my boat oh sure absolutely we had a I had a stormcast versus stormcast game where we both had imperitence and annihilators and we both immediately recognize the value of our inheritance and immediately both of us had dropped and obliterated like I don't remember what the turn order was but it didn't matter in our back-to-back turns both of our imperitence got annihilated it's just like yeah no I wanted to I like to split up the utility my heroes so that there's none of them that are like clearly the one but you know if I want to make him the general well now he's got the arcane tome now he's got the master of magic now he's got the free CP he's my general so he's also my source of that CP you know he's also and then of course the deep striking at seven inches so it's like that's a lot of that's a lot of utility on a single hero it's just it's like World of Warcraft it just ends up having that giant hunter's mark arrow bouncing up and down on top of him like shoot this thing yeah so I have to make that this I have to make that very difficult decision the the last ones I have is enemy reaction should figure into your plans I already talked about this with roar but like assume somebody's going to redeploy away from you right assume somebody will unleash on you how does that change the way you charge the place you charge the where the area you move right all these kinds of things maybe you don't move within nine because you don't need that like that unit doesn't need to die this turn it's not my top priority let's not give him a chance to redeploy and do something wacky right like well yeah I think I think yeah so I mean I think something that is somewhat counterintuitive is that a lot of in a lot of situations you know staying just outside nine might actually be a more probable charge then you going into like seven and then having them redeployed right you know and so you're better off you're better off just sitting right outside nine and then you know maybe throw a re-roll at it so that you've got you know a decent chance at it at least versus you know risking that redeploy and now if they roll hot now you can't even make that charge anymore 100% yeah I will also say this is another place where bait can matter like you can try to bait them I love pulling these I talked about how in my cities list last year at Nashcon I used the night venator to pull all out defense in the shooting phase like I had a mostly shooting cities list and I would always start with the night venator targeting something I didn't really need to kill and I would like star buster arrow that thing immediately and I'm like blah blah blah does all this crazy damage and it's neg one rend the immediate response from the opponent is all out defense and I'm like great cool that wasn't my prime target now we've gotten that crap out of the way now I can just weapons free on the rest of your army and I don't have to worry about you using that command thing anymore right so like again you can you can bait out the redeploy by like moving this other unit you really don't care about it's gonna just get within nine and then they redeploy away from you like okay cool now I can just move freely with the rest of my army awesome right and and then finally game aids proper tools and measuring sticks speaking of nine inches six a three inch stick a six inch stick a nine inch stick and a 12 inch stick these are my go-tos now if you want real bonus points make yourself an 11 and a 15 to that way you can mark your little deployment squares but I like I rock up and I set them down in order I'm like there's my little sticks I'm ready to go I got special ones for all of them like little little things that I that like my little favorite three inch my little favori