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-host Tom. What's going on buddy? How you doing? Hello friends. Uh, yeah, it's you know, it's going pretty well I'm glad to hear it. Super enthusiasm. Here we are. It's the end of February not the last day of February There's one more day begin this year in our wonderful leap year. We're all ready to celebrate leap day Williams tomorrow And I am of course not at home as you can tell I am on a as as a standard for leap day. I'm on a Michaels craft craft cruise So, you know, that's what's important but at any rate we're gonna talk about heroes and Bad but importantly we're gonna talk about the actual secret tiering system to heroes. It's there. We all use it But we don't know it and when it's wrong It makes us angry There's it. That's funny because I I've been wrestling with heroes all day as I've been trying to fine-tune my FEC list and you know that whole thing revolves around heroes That's right. So that's right But of course first the news what do we got Tom? So we have a rumor engine, okay, this one legitimately excited me, okay Now I want everyone to mark the time and date Vince has gone on record as saying he is legitimately excited by a rumor engine.  Like I want to see a reindeer man You know you do you really like this is probably just a holiday model That they're previewing right could be I don't know I mean horns show up on a lot of different models So, you know could be a current off type thing like obviously that would be the big hope But a lot of nergal models have horns of various kinds that does show up in the bad guy side there as well But it you know could just be a big stag or something could be an old-world model like a Alfa on a stag, you know like Could be the holiday many like you said like there's lots of options here, but I think it's a big reindeer or deer And stuff like that. I just hope it's not like attached to a dude's head. It's boring Like a cool reindeer I've built my share of nergal over time and what I'll say is this there's a blight king with those almost exact horns Yeah, exactly. Well, is there like white and flat, but but yes, I understand like that's a hundred percent There's nergal uses that iconography as well Someone said that new but it they're not they're not which those are yes Some Bartek said that new peri-ten or how we say it pre-ten, you know, I'm talking about the super cool. Yep D&D monster You know those Man, that would be awesome. If we got one of those guys like I'm all about that like let heck. Yeah, let's let's see that guy We have a cockatrice. So it'll be a whole new line of realm monsters Yeah, man, we have the cockatrice and we'll get this weird Peri-ten thing. I would be all about it. That sounds fantastic. I say let's do it All right, but yeah cool good rumor engine for once like because it's actually interesting You're showing me something kind of cool that could be any of a few models and I like it and I'm here for it So thank you It's just not like a gun belt Right, right. Yes, exactly. Just not a rant or like completely sort of obtuse Thing like this is actually something. It's something. It's not an amazing thing, but it's something so I'll take it All right, cool. What else we got? Yeah, um, so we had some leaks this week Namely a Spru that got out there Hot off the presses now We're not one to normally talk about leaks because normally I don't care that much is my honest answer like I just don't Like we all it's because you're like a leak like that generally comes like a week You know often it just comes like a week before you see the actual thing You're looking at bad potato cam footage like I'm just not interested. I want to see the actual right But this one we can't not talk about we add a War machine a scaven war machine sprue leak out there Amazing as all I gotta say it looked like about five crewmen Big giant gun look like a giant size drivable Three-wheeled scaven rally gun. I'm here for it. I'm here for it. I mean that that checks out, right? Like that is like right in your wheelhouse. Yeah, I mean, let me tell you why I'm the most excited for this I mean one that to me in my mind. It's like, okay. We were right the whole time It's definitely scaven for fourth edition like that's that that's the reason for celebration, right unfurl the banner Mission accomplished if I could roll it down behind me. I would write like there you go but the The real reason I'm Excited for it is because it doesn't really match an existing model Like it's not really a new warp lightning cannon from the look of it It's not really an existing rattling gun from the look of it, right? It looks like a sort of it's something new and I'll be honest with you one of my big problems you know this Tom with Scaven in the mortal realms has been their army is still just held over from the old world right for the entire diner history of a OS and Although they got some good stuff during the end times, right? The reality is Scaven are a very industrious Group of beings, right? They don't actually they clearly have to have been up to something Yeah, like a thousand sphere. It's not just a scryer all the scryer takes the sort of lead for this but like Scaven advanced very quickly.  Because you want to test like genetic derivation very fast. So Scaven have a very fast iteration cycle, right? And so to the fact that they've been just like stuck for potentially what a thousand years or however long we've been kicking around the mortal realms a couple thousand apparently Yeah, to me it was always just like that's inappropriate. Like that doesn't work Right, but it just didn't fit for the lore because Scaven should be making new war machines the ninja Eshan Rats should be even cooler the plague people are creating new plagues new plague devices new plague delivery mechanisms, right? Like it's just the nature of Scaven. So yeah, that's what I think and Nathan Fee said they might also be doing this to distance the Scaven IP from the Scaven in the old world That way they can double-dip and explore different creative boundaries. Yeah, maybe I mean Scaven are one of the legacy armies in the old world They're not one of the actual like supported armies as it were So I you know clearly the future for Scaven is with a OS night. I couldn't be happier But because what I really want to see is new stuff. So this was just like a double-dip win for me It's a cool new war machine Right of some kind clearly and it tells me we're not just gonna get like Remakes of all the existing stuff, which is what I want.  I've had him for 27 years now or something like that. I Would expect that to happen and I'm happy to throw that upon the like some portion of my army upon the altar of sacrifice If it means I get even cooler new amazing Models that fit better in the realms like that's that is simply a win Ephraim said Scaven Lord in Terminator armor. Let's go. Let's go. That's what I'm talking about I mean, that's the arch that was always the arch warlocked anyway, right? Like he was the three up guy running around in Space Marine armor. It's amazing, right?  I love that guy So anyways, that's that's what I think I like I would love for that. I hope it's just The biggest craziest release ever just this unending stream of new insane units. Okay, that's all I want like like seriously It would be amazing you can retire most everything like if what we kept into the next into the next iteration Tom was You know like we got new clan rats and they just gave us a new remade clan rat Okay, because those need all was sort of say and a new remade storm vermin and then the storm fiends and a claw lord and the demon Vermin lords yeah, I and then everything else got canned like I'd be fine with it I'd be fine with it. The screaming bell has changed a bunch of times in history Since I started collecting like all of my figs did you know this this gave and I bought now I shouldn't say all Actually shockingly a lot of several of them are still the same ones I used back in the 90s And they're still literally the same big soul, but many of them have changed and that's just part of what happens. Yeah Okay, cool, what else we got Well, we have some ancillary like news with ancillary out like Warhammer iOS lines one of those being the old world It got announced that the tomb kings and Brett individual boxes pre-orders are coming up So for those of you that were jonesing for a bone dragon now's your time And yeah, those look great. That's fine. Um, I love the new like the new foot tomb king He looks great He does like yes the new footage the so I just finished painting up I don't have pictures of him. I'll share him next week But that was like I'll jump ahead in my hobby time But like I finished painting the tomb king on foot that if you don't if you put the lid on the dragon, right? That guy's amazing. He's a really good sculpt Um, I really enjoyed that. That's the one that's holding like the outsized flail You can you could model him with several different weapons. He doesn't have to be using the flail But yes, that's that's that's that one. Yeah in the picture They model him with the flail and their studio army, but you can also give him like a big Glaive type two-handed weapon and other stuff like that Uh, I was talking about the emissary, etc Like that dude's awesome, but I was talking about the emissary, etc Yeah, sure was the guy like standing on the hero rock with the roll. Yep. Nick hop Yeah, I love that dude. He looks great. Yeah, it's cool army too. I like the cop in his army Actually, I think he's he's more interesting to me than setra. That's it feels bad to say but yeah I like sick. I like the cop a lot.   So at any rate, um, yeah, I like happiness those came out pretty fast on the heels of that box That was a pretty timely release. Honestly. I like I That's pretty great people. What is it month ago? The regular box came out or something. It wasn't that long So that's pretty good fast follow. Like that's a nice. That's nice. Let's let's hope that they can keep up their release schedule Yeah, um, that's great. Absolutely. Um Related it wasn't in the show notes, but I'm gonna mention it because I thought it was a big deal um, and that is the warhammer underworld they announced a new Weird revised box Oh, yeah, sorry. I forgot about this. Yeah, um, yeah, which was basically four classic um four classic war bands uh One is near and dear obviously to my heart which is um, so like the four being uh Spike claws form, which was your scaven. Um, which is a wonderful set of sculpts sculpts um, and then uh gets which was um, the the first, um Moon clan one with a couple just and again another wonderful set of sculpts Um, and then followed by uh, mallogs mob, which is the troll and his little buddies That guy was hard to find and actually pretty interesting in the troll army since that that army of renown So, yeah, well, that's what like, I mean, that was one of the things that like really was a bummer for me when I was looking at doing Uh Trog's army. Yeah for holy wars was I wanted like I wanted him As a second hero and the problem is is that like it was $150 for that unit Yeah in the secondary market, which is just a non-starter, right? Um And so, uh And I was afraid I wasn't going to be able to get it. Well now, uh, they've announced that this uh, this set's releasing So that's exciting. Absolutely I agree. So, yeah So, yeah, um for if you if you miss those kits and want to add those units to your aos army This is a great opportunity To paint them because they're all like excellent kits Like really like I wouldn't feel bad about just picking them up to like have them. They're great Yes, I've painted One of them And I've built all of them except for mologs mologs is the only one I don't actually own currently Got you out of those three or four. So, yeah, they are all excellent kits. Yeah Rock and roll. So, yeah, that's the news. Very good. Well, let's go to some, uh, pick of the week What what do we got for everybody tom? What what's your what do you want to share with everybody this week? Yeah, um, I had mentioned this a couple weeks ago this channel and I'm just going to spruke it again because Um doom and darkness baby is back. He's back baby. Um, and he is making he He made a battle report swarm cast first slays the darkness. I don't know man. I just love doom's personality I love his late back nature. I love his kind of no nonsense directness. And so, um If you want to support doom go check out his channel. Very nice Uh, for me, I'm going to shout out our good friend friend of the show all around great human being dug. Mr. Two plus tough Uh, he's doing an olfenkarn narrative series right now. That's really good. Um It's related to the soulbound stuff is where he's drawn a lot of this from But obviously it also relates to curciti scary scary village whatever um And it's just it's just a really good series like there's a lot of interesting story there than the the soulbound expansion is really cool If you're a fan of soulbound as I am, I think it's a really great game Like if you're Um, if you're out there and you maybe have played some dnd or dabbled in some fifth edition dnd or something like that And you've thought about role playing in the world of of aos Soulbound is very easy to pick up if you're familiar with dnd. It's and yet like really really fun and smooth. It's a very well designed game There's a lot of parallels frankly to to sort of dnd and kind of the pace and speed and feel of the play and the rules Who are going to be familiar ish to you, um, and so You know, like we've done Multiple games or marathons and stuff with soulbound and had a great time. So it's super cool The the olfenkarn book looks just really really really great. So if you want to check that all out Check out two plus tough linked down in the description. So there you go And of course we have to welcome back. I agree with you completely our good buddy doom and darkness It's always it's always good when he's when he's making content. Uh, all right Tom with that Yeah, let's turn to some hobby time, man. What are you working on? I we I I know part of what you're working on you can't talk about part of what you're working on because you and I spent An hour and a half last night Digging into basically what's going to be the next game for for snarling badger Uh, which it's and I think we've got to a real good place. It's in editing right now as well in parallel Uh, uncle adam is doing a bunch of work right now The the the engines are full ahead steam leading up to our our release of this one later this year And uh, we're really stoked about this and I think this is going to be great So I know that was a good chunk of your time. So I I know you that that's right I spent a lot of time this week rolling by so alone. You did The development weeks are rough on Tom He does not like I I'm going to completely excuse Tom if he didn't paint a thing this week because I was paying him not to do that It's like to do a different job and you did an admirable work as always. Tom is a great developer. I just want to say that So, um, yes, I did do that. Um, but I actually have another side gig as well. So, um, I finished up one wave of uh, uh, commission paint work that I was doing Um, and transitioned back to another project that I had had on a back burner for a friend Um, so I I've spent a lot of time doing commission paint work And so which is which is fine. Um, I uh, I love helping out a friend and I you know, I happens I I do enjoy making some cash on the side. So, um, those are always delightful. That said, uh, I I'm feeling the press of um The lexington two-day event coming up actual the actual trashes event And in light of that the blue grass Trash bash or whatever it's called. Yeah, there's something along those lines. That's like in middle of When we're doing that, right? Yeah, it's like second week of a second weekend of april. And so I need to Um, get my stuff painted Uh, because I have half of an army painted Very good. Oh, well, I'm I'm ready to go Uh, brian said just curious vince. Why not leak? Uh, your new game like why not tease what it's all about? Well, okay I'll I'll I'll tease something would everybody like a tease would everybody like a tease about the new about the new game Uh, I'll I'll tease something you're ready. Here's what I'm gonna tease It is Uh, a game from adam and I and it will be a skirmish game and it will have solo co-op and Versus modes There you go. And all in equal balance That's that's my tease for now come back next week. We might tease a little more And but that's that's what we're doing right now. Maybe I'll take up. Maybe I'll leak a potato cam But if you know, shake my phone around over over some images or something at some point But that's what I've got for you right now So that that is that is worse than most rumor engines Like let me just I'm gonna I'm gonna call you to the mat then Like if you're gonna tease anything Like give them something ask them a question ask them if if there's a certain role Any certain type of thing they've ever wanted to be I look man I think that is that's more information than they had five minutes ago. Okay Yeah, I'm just saying see multiple people enjoyed that you might know that time But you know what the game is for them They don't know if it's gonna be solo and co-op and versus like I have all of those It's really important And this one most of your games check all check all those boxes. Let me just let me just call you that is true Most games we do do all of that I think what's different about this one is it really does it in very equal regards Like we are this game is a hundred percent meant to be played solo and co-op or Versus and it plays and like both of those have been given equal attention. So there you go so And it's uh, I'll add a couple nuggets as well This is probably the most robust System that we've put out with regard to Player options and building is what I would say More so than I think Any of the other games that that that have been put out by sterling batter I agree. I agree And I can just simply say that because I had to test all of it. Yeah, sure. Absolutely All right, so My hobby time since that is the section we're talking about.  It's fun And it'll make you cooler um at any rate Uh, my hobby time I finished up that that uh, tomb king. I mentioned I have photos of him But not ready on this computer sadly um, and so like they're all back on my camera and I'll Get them and I'll share it next week Uh, and now I'm actually trying to decide on what next big project is But I've just I've been traveling all week. Basically. I was Out of town with my wife since the last show I got back saturday and then got on a plane monday and came here So I had not much hobby time at all. I got to finish up that guy and then get on a plane again.  I hate it. Like I just I want to have something I'm working on I don't want to pick.  I'll share pictures next week. Sorry everyone Uh, okay with that Tom are you are you ready? Are you ready to talk about? Uh heroes tom? Sure All right Let's get to the feature topic for this week. Okay Which is Oops, sorry. I was on the wrong slide like a dummy. There we go. Which are hero tiers In improvement and why are most heroes bad? Tom, why are they bad? That's the question we're going to answer first. We're going to talk about heroes Okay, a little bit Let me get over to an overview here after that picture of hamlet car that great great picture Okay, so most heroes fall into one of five tiers All right. Now these aren't real These are secret tiers Okay That's what we're going to talk about in the second part of this little journey And so The the second part of this journey is our is the secret tiers. We'll get to those in a second Okay Heroes also have one of three types. So you got tiers. You got types. That's right And the types are utility monster and bad You could just call the foot hero That's it's not like the real name here is melee assassin. Okay, right like Yeah That's the real name here. Okay and In general In this game Those are really the three types of heroes that we see on the table right utility monster and bad And That's a really weird feeling because basically all of fecs heroes or a majority of them are just bad By that rating one. Yeah, a lot of courtiers are bad right Like yes Correct I mean, is anybody going to the mattress for the crypt ghoul courtier that dude's trash I mean at at 80 points. He's interesting. He's he's he's trash, and you know it. Um the But like a lot of your abhorrence have utility, right? Like why did everybody immediately jump on like the fec such a fascinating example Okay. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Like why did everybody jump on the arch region? Why why is like every? Yeah, yeah It's because he does all the things that you need him to do in the army, right Because he has incredible utility, right? He can quite easily build himself up to he he's got an incredible model restore That works, you know independent like I like a courtier, but but independent of his noble deeds points He is You know good as a caster base. He's tough enough to survive He heals he um builds he gets himself to six noble deeds easily and works as a great sort of like Broadcast piece out for your army blah blah blah blah blah utility for days utility for days. Yeah, right. Yeah I mean it's true true and Hades said I'd like to repeat the big three melee assassins or st or all others are bad. Yeah, you're not wrong. We'll talk about it Hades or I think you're gonna be probably aligned here um, okay so My my main argument here is that lower cost heroes Generally have very little purpose in the game Because their wounds slash damage to points ratio is just almost always worse than taking another unit All right. Yeah, but the exception are utility heroes synergistic heroes Right that are force multipliers. They're force multipliers exactly that that that like vastly increase your units that they're power pairing with Or aiding or just like being able to buff that unit's viability Yeah, if they can like if they're a wizard and they have a special ability Like let's say they can grant their like they're a spellcaster and they can grant a unit run in charge All right. Yeah That's an incredible hero if it costs like a hundred points Right because it doesn't matter that it's a bad wounds and damage to point ratio That utility is going to make some other unit of You know 30 killers become like incredibly more valuable because they get a mystic shield and then they shoot forward next to You get a six inch movement buff Right Yeah and So like that's actually and and it's funny too because there's an inverse ratio here That utility if I put those same two abilities on a 600 point hero It's trash. It doesn't matter Right if that hero has no offense Yeah That same utility on a on a high point hero is worthless Yeah, right It's it's about the intersection of cheap And The utility And and that's what's killed me for the the the history of aos that we tend to point melee assassins And high utility foot heroes the exact same like we're like we're basing their points off of their Um Off of their wounds and armor and their profile and it's completely irrelevant Right most of the time their stats could just be like Sixes to hit sixes to wound one attack zero damage, you know like Six up save And it wouldn't like the only stat that often matters on those kinds of people is their movement because if they get too slow It gets hard for them to keep up with the rest of their arm That's it. Mm-hmm, right Yep Save doesn't matter wounds basically don't matter. I mean occasionally if you're failing facing like aoe bomb lists You know it can matter a little splash. Yeah aoe bomb lists and splash wins. Yeah Yeah, okay Now monster heroes So our our second type, right Usually if they're pointed correctly, then they often get included Because they both whether they have utility or not sometimes they do sometimes they don't right Yeah, they fulfill a hammer roll. They fulfill a hammer roll They can they can depending on where they fall It's potentially like it's within the realm of possibility for them to make up their points Right and keep mine. They are a when you really think about it. They are a sucking hole in your points to wounds ratio Right, you're paying like three four five hundred points and you're getting like 12 or 14 wounds If you put that same point into models depending on what army like into units depending on what army you're running It could be two three times the amount of wounds you have on the table, right and potentially even more damage But you're getting but like usually these monster heroes have a high amount of mobility and so on right now If that's combined with actually some amount of defense And or utility then you get like auto and then then's when you start drifting into the auto include Especially if they're pointed too efficiently even slightly. Yeah, think about like a lot old school vlogs on like an unrendable Yep, absolutely like the frost lord on stone horn has often fallen into this category, right?  They just don't do anything That's ultimately the problem. They don't do anything Like on average five attacks three threes minus one two damage the attack profile. We've all come to know and love in aos 3.0 Okay, just isn't really anything That's the problem Right It's like very funny that you say that because I literally I literally have Almost one of those exact heroes in like it's one of the decision points. I actively made in my fec army Now the reality is that he has utility like he's bringing other things He's actually bringing rent to which nobody almost nobody else does and some other stuff, right? But it's so funny that you say that because it's true like he's one of the only melee heroes that I would put in my in In an army, but he also because of the rest of the army He can functionally have a movement of 15, right? So like it's one of those foot heroes that actually can actually get in and do something Yeah, and we'll talk about delivery mechanisms and all of that. That's a big part of it Yeah, yeah 100% we'll we'll definitely be talking about that kind of stuff Now obviously these are broad rules like we're talking about the foundational stuff here There are exceptions to all of this there are individual things within these categories like certainly there are plenty of bad monster heroes I don't think a laurel's tearing up the The charts, right? She's a monster hero. Yeah Um The frost lord I mentioned frost on a stone horn the frost lord on thunder tusk does not enjoy the same uh fondness in people's lists that his his uh His big horned brother does right? and so um You know, it's like The the there are exceptions to all these and it's about how often do they end up getting being valuable, right? And in my mind, it's it's a very hard like if I was to place a value on the typo system here It would be a very hard like utility top monster second melee assassin Way down because foundationally that they average like two damage a swing against a four up unit, right? And if they average about two damage, which is just nothing They have five six wounds if they themselves have like a four up save They're just as likely to get killed on the crack back very easily And they're generally slow and have no delivery mechanism Like that's it. They have nothing going on counting as two is nothing. That's nothing All right The only season where these guys had some kind of value was when they could like teleport around or count as 10 You know our galatian champion season, right when we were like vastly revaluing these guys because they suddenly had a whole bunch of different abilities Right. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Yeah Just they're foundationally broken and they have been since the the basically since the launch of of aos I don't think that's I think that that's always been a spot in the game Yeah, it's been perennial like um, they have to have just truly outsized value Or or just or non like say non typical abilities is an understatement Like it has to i'm thinking about things like sig vault ignoring ward saves and also having a delivery mechanism Or something like uh go trek um You know and be able to just weather the world like weather the storm Sigbold's such a good example. That's what it takes. Yeah. Sigbold's such a good example Because he's it if there was ever a perfect exemplification of the difference a delivery mechanism makes it sigbold Right. He's the tale of two cities. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times Sigbold showed up in most slanes lists when he could be taken as part of the the Uh, sub sub faction when you could take those extra rules, right? And he could ambush in Right So you could actually like keep him off board So he was safe and then he'd pop out from a board edge and he had the extra three inch charge So even though he's coming in at nine inches he could basically land the charge with a high reliability And so he showed up a lot and he could do damage, right? Once that went away He's a he's a guy walking around the board at six inches like he's just not going to get there with any kind of reliability And and that's the problem All right, and and otherwise quite quick army and so he just he just didn't have he wasn't bringing the value The new book also didn't align well to him, but that's a different story. Okay So the next slide I've got here, thomas I wanted to expound a little on our two types of good heroes. Okay, I just wanted to talk about this a little bit Remember we're still in types. We're not in tiers yet. We get to tiers in a second Um, so utility heroes I have here often good Okay, I think there's more good than bad utility heroes in the game broadly construed Like if you just take the utility heroes, so this would be wizards priests and people with Some kind of area buff or or or grantable buff or something like that. Yeah, right? Like the the classic version was like the uh Like the witch elf the the hag sure Sure, absolutely. Yeah Haggon the three examples I picked here are like this the the Skinky priest Right, this dude's classic like at many again. These guys have had varying rules over time, but you know This dude was a has been a stone cool classic through a lot of aos where he could like grant different buffs to units He was a wizard You know, he's super duper cheap Right the definition of a great utility hero like whether he could grant he like Different versions of little skinky priests over time have had like People that did a grant run in charge or fly or plus one does save or whatever and then they're also a spellcaster mortals on sexes Yeah, sure, right yep and The so that's that's kind of the great all around her if you will right Then the next one I picked was the scaven grace here Um, the grace here is like an incredibly efficient doublecaster with an excellent cast buff built into him, right? He can eat his rocks And cast on 3d6 for one of his casts Um, he has access to to decently good Uh enhancements like magic items and stuff like that, right? And they can they can buff units like scaven brew can buff units. He can take Um, you know things that make people battle shock immune like he's he's got good choices Right, um, and again, he's a doublecaster for like 110 120 points The fact that he's like six or five wounds on a six up save is fairly irrelevant Right, he's always been buried in rats and often untargetable or or whatever easy to hide Something like that and again cheap effective like to me wizard power is the is the same as utility Right being able to take skitter leap or death frenzy or you know having mystic shield and so on and so forth It's just value Yeah, um And Then you've got the lord relector not the knight relector the lord relector was my other choice, right?  He's got an incredible like he's he can be like the superest of super priests Right where his spells become almost automatic like he fails one in 36 prayers. He casts Wouldn't build in certain ways Even since the beginning he's been easily easy to make untargetable He had the right prayers in that army that did the things you wanted to do like translocation and stuff Right, this dude was a again In like most lists, right? Yeah, okay So to me that's that's like your example utility heroes what they need to be able to do This is why they're often good Spells are an open-ended good thing Right. Yeah. Yeah Is it more lords are always being added or other ways like endless spells being able to back things in there? Yep Exactly. Oh new endless spells dropped. Oh this season's the magic season. Oh, whatever, right?  Yeah. Now if curse was 18 inch range, we'd have to have another conversation. Totally different conversation. Yeah, absolutely Yeah Um, you have got to stop hitting your mic wherever it sits. It is so loud when you do that It's so loud at any rate noted. Okay Yeah, that whatever you just did Like did something My hand was on my desk. My mic my mic must be turned up way loud. It's very interesting right now. That's fine Monster heroes now here. I have sometimes good because I think it's really easy for these guys to be bad Okay, and like I don't I didn't I haven't looked at every monster hero in the game certainly right But they are Sometimes good and they show up in plenty of lists and they have over time again depending on what book we talk about I have the velocity here your vampire lord on zombie dragon, right? I've got the frost lord on stone horn again a stone cold classic That's like basically been the only unit keeping that army afloat Uh for for at various points in history and probably now Um, you know, I've got the bloodthirster here, right that kind of thing These these sorts of heroes and again over the additions over the various books Sometimes they've been better than others Yada yada yada like an individual monster heroes luck can really rise and fall um, but You know, they're here. So tom in your mind. What makes what pushes this guy Into good territory or perhaps put another way. How does it fall into into bad? Right? What are the pitfalls here and what what are the things that make them stand out? um What I would say is this for monster heroes They have to have survivability like survivability is the key because it can be super big and super zombie But if it's going to get lifted at the top of one, that's meaningless, right? And so unless it's so killy that it's worth the risk, right? So like my counterpoint to that would be something like scar brand like scar brand has been a pretty popular choice But that's because if he hits he just kills whatever he touches, right? And so like but I take your meaning. Yes. One of the most common routes to success is like some amount of durability. Yeah Some amount of durability For utility, uh, most of the time you're going to have your best bets when It's truly a force multiplier meaning that a single buff from that individual is being shared across A unit of 40 model other models or 60 other models You know in this sense like this is one of the reasons why it's hard for like fec to have bad heroes Because all of their heroes bring a plus one attack bubble with it Like assuming they're generating hero deeds. They're they're generating this big aoe bubble that's benefiting all their nearby allies um And so there is like built-in utility there. So the key is is that something that is going to be uh, that's going to Be a full force multiplier or bring something that just no other units have Right, like that is a very real Like I remember back in the day, you know, obviously blood citrator and corn has changed quite a bit But back in the day like the aoe battle shock bubble on corn was a really big deal You know in prior editions like when you have this huge 18 inch bubble plus one attacks and battle shock community Right, and there wasn't any other easy way to back into that in that well, you know I think that for me I agree completely and when I look at monster heroes Right, and I know that what you're quoting wasn't a monster here But you're talking about exceptional unique utilities as an example Well, I was talking about both of them like what pushes both of them and good both the utility heroes and the monster Yeah, yeah, I agree when they're doing something truly unique, right um You know, again scar brands a good example of that like he has this unbelievable mortal wounds Uh delivery mechanism, right? He's just like he has a mortal wound machine. He just crushes for huge damage um The and you know the somebody like the valaz dead various times either healed a ton or just like spit out an absolute metric Ton of damage comparative to sort of at a high rend or something like that, right? But if they have the sort of they also tend to have more speed by default They often fly although not always obviously the the frost on zonar doesn't but like You know these big monster heroes will be by default faster Like almost at minimum they're eight inches and that's the slow ones. Most of these end up being like 10 12 14 16 inch moves, right? and um If and if there's any way to give them run in charge as there sometimes is in these armies as well Then they get even more dangerous and like because then they can be in your face top of one Think of your your old classic the mega boss on maw crusher who I think is actually like horrendously overcosted now where he is But like, you know, that guy's still a terror to some people who don't either don't know how or don't have the capability to screen In their army because the way he can just be like teleported around the board or suddenly shoot 36 inches across the board Or you know, whatever and then and then just slam into somebody like a bowling ball right, um and so the The the point here being is that monster heroes what to me the pitfalls is exactly what you said complete lack of of defense Right if they if they're just if they have no durability and they and they don't have Either some incredible utility buff to pay it off or they're not like offensive machines Where it's just like, okay. Yes, sir. If somebody focuses it's that they'll take it down But it's worth the risk Right because if I can get this thing into their army, I'm gonna lift like 800 points Like he'll this thing will double its points before it goes down, right? um, yeah Or if they get like these guys are really sensitive to being overcosted Which is funny to say as a single unit, but because their points are so high It's really easy for them to be like just out of the range because if they end up If they should be 400 points and they're 480 that's like a lot Percentage wise that's actually about the same. We tend to move other units that are like 100 points around, right? But it's a lot more when you're doing 20% on a on a 400 we're gonna you're removing like Like a chap unit, right? Like that's a cost of a chap unit is what they're overcosted, which is a big deal Yep, exactly Uh, Joe McGill says I'd add a god to your both monster We're not there yet. We're not to tears yet, Joe. This is just types broadly speaking all the gods Archeons and monster heroes same as anybody else and boy, is he another one We're like at certain points in time in aos. He's just been like auto include every army He was showing up in that dude was leading personally every small skirmish force of slaves to darkness that were rolling in the mortal realms, right? He was he was willing to show up for every battle And uh, yeah, or or Nagash another example, right? And then there'll be other time periods in the these nine years or it's just like haven't who? Haven't seen this that dude never around Right Like that guy's nowhere to be found Uh, so yeah, I mean they really can break pretty hard on like their points and then what they're they're the sort of Universe of what they find themselves in I will also say monster heroes are more susceptible One of their interesting pitball has almost nothing to do with them and more to do with the meta as a whole um These guys are sort of a rock and if their paper Exists then they get weaker as a class and their paper is High damage long range shooting Right, the more of that that's present in the meta the more you can like As a as a as a class as a concept the more artillery is present. I don't mean that in the aos typed Artillery, yeah, I mean like the more can and type things there is around or like, you know, uh The the the reign of lrl Uh archers right when they're shooting exactly when they're doing like super long range No line of sight more wound shooting Just like the existence of that kind of stuff of long strikes or whatever when when if the meta is full of those things then By nature this whole class of hero gets worse Through no fault of their own right So, uh Ephraim said the never chosen in response to archion. That's solid. That's solid Ephraim. I like that Yes, exactly. He goes from always chosen to never chosen pretty fast depending on just some other interesting things going on. Okay so, uh You know like that's Exactly brawn who made said when yeah, when you suddenly have to deal, uh With six long strikes and you lose 300 plus points in a single turn and there's really nothing you can do about it Right, I mean that's that's if that's the meta as it has like shooting has ascended to the top of the heap A couple of times in aos history and when that happens the stock in these heroes plummets Right, um unless they have some weird ability to like not be shot basically Um, okay Cool anything else we want to say broadly on these two types of like good heroes Obviously the other people are just the melee assassins and they're generally terrible for all the reasons we talked about like they're just bad Like it's it's a big enough class. You can just call them bad Okay All right Now All of that's fine. Okay. We've talked about we we've kind of Talked around some of that before tom Um In the past But now I want to pivot we're going to look at a different axes Okay Instead of talking about types of heroes like those those exist the types but those intersect with the tiers And the tiers are Secret and hidden But we all have this bias or i'm going to subject to you that most people do And I chose this this image. I'm holding on this image for a minute not for any not not not by accident This was like an image out of one of the trailers for one of those total war games I never played any of those total war games. Okay I I hear they were the kiss left one total war dream. Okay, cool. I hear they were pretty fun I I don't know anything about them. I watched the trailer for this because I thought the trailer was super cool I tried to play total war two with the high elves and uh I It's just not my game. That's fine. That's fine But like I my understanding is people liked this game. That's fine. I have I have no judgment on it if it was cool good Um, I just don't play video games. So I just don't have time for him. So that's what it comes down to um But this trailer did you watch this trailer with his arena where she comes out and and like it's just awesome And just like wicked ripping ba, right and she and it sort of ends with her staring down a bloodthirster. Yeah Okay I love that trailer and I love the idea of the on foot melee hero being able to stand against monsters and take them down Sure And I think tom I love that because You and I have been playing dungeons and dragons Since we were very young since you were younger than me uh and and When our good friend suddenly brought you around and I was forced to be introduced to this new person that I didn't know uh and You know in d&d You generally are playing like a person-sized being Right like you might be you might be something weird like you could be a rabbit person or or whatever like there's lots of weird Species you can be in d&d, right? Frog. You'd be a frog person. Absolutely. Yeah Or just a frog. I don't know but like but the point is you're still just like a person-sized person You know what I mean?  Yeah And Uh Yes, oh, oh that's such a good example of obscure, uh manager. We'll walk into that in a second but like in d&d when you're level high Whatever that means to you, right?   Shooting star of the demon dragon of demon dragon mountain or whatever, right? Like yep, those things are maybe it's a tough fight You know what I mean, but you probably will win most of the time right right and so You like the the you can be A mortal man or woman or what are you gonna? I'm saying right like you're just a mortal person Yep, and yet you're killing hundreds of points and yeah Yeah, exactly right and have like yes all these hit points and all the offensive capability of this thing That is a massive creature right now given it's there's like four or five of you probably fighting this one thing But but the point still stands, right? right Okay Warhammer does not have that It just doesn't other than go track. It doesn't and and Yes, exactly go track is the one exception right right Yeah, it is he is and it's We'll talk about go track. He's such an interesting case Okay, and but because I actually don't think he's mistiered It's just interesting because he's sized differently, but he's but he's not mistier All right, so here we go. Let's get into the tears Okay All right, tier one And these and and here's the reality of this tom The tears are basically points, but points aren't what makes them Okay, if that makes sense sure like yeah, it's sort of an oroboros Right like the points to find the tears, but the points aren't the tears like it's You'll see So tier one is just like just some slightly special guy Or gal or thing Sure, right. That's tier one And these heroes are all like Tilda a hundred points right I I I'm I'm gonna use the tilde here, which just means roughly. Yeah, okay. They're gonna run a 140. Yeah Yeah, exactly and They're generally like the commanders or left-hand ins or equivalent or captains or whatever You know, whatever goofy word boss that that that arm loses Sometimes they can be minor special characters as well Like the the the sort of not the sort of not stars the show special characters, right? Well, we'll we'll we'll sometimes fall into this space or they're just like some special dude What's that guy in obr that has like the coffin on his back walking around was like the first guy We met bulk morton or whatever. Is that his name? He falls in this category, right? Just like oh, yeah, sure Some named guy. Okay. Why not, right? And What's funny is like in the world these are often the characters with the most Personality like they end up showing up in a lot of stories. So think of like callous and toll stories, right? And but they're the weakest here And The interesting part here is this is where a lot of melee assassins live, right? They make a lot of heroes who sort of live in this category Who their only point is like I do damage And I've got some of them down at the bottom here. Like I have got some picture examples like the lord cellistants Uh, like your chaos lord or exalted hero of chaos or whatever, right? Um, the herald they almost all the heralds in the demon armies fall into this category, right? Yep, and they basically do worse damage than a unit of their same point costs. Correct Yeah, exactly. They're basically trash They have no board presence. No capture power No ability to do damage and die relatively easily because they just don't have the same wounds to point ratio Right Now the flip side of this is utility heroes in this category are often auto-include. This is your this is your prime tier for utility heroes Right Like this is where you want them to be To do a more to for to add a force multiplier That's right, you know, like y'all throw 100 points away at a big plus one attack bubble. Exactly Exactly.  This is the this is the alchemyte war forgery at launch it rid large, right?  Like if you're going to make a melee assassin By the way, most time these guys have no delivery mechanism because monsters basically don't appear in this category because they're just not this cheap Right. Sure. Sure. And most and most aren't high mobility like very few are like kato that can give themselves like Right exactly Yeah, there are exceptions at every tier here kato is an interesting kato at ectazar Whatever his name is is like an interesting exception because again He's like tough enough and has a good damage thing and can deliver and things like that So and even he's not like that popular. He doesn't get used that much, but he's okay right um He's about as good as they get as a melee foot assassin Yeah Whereas your point as well taken here is one that brawni just made that I think is worth talking about or worth mentioning at least That both cities and fec Have this thing where like any rando hero gets turned into a utility piece because like in cities They can have orders Right and that makes them valuable. So even like garbo Trash melee assassin heroes have value because they can be order givers, right in fec They can collect noble deeds points and that makes them just valuable by virtue of existing, right? So you can engineer positions where they actually have value, but a lot of armies don't you know the the When's the last time a lord saladin on foot was in a stormcast list? Holy god It's been many years Okay, sure All right That's tier one just some slightly special guy We're gonna tier two special people okay special people or Slightly larger people. That's the other one. I didn't I didn't have enough space to type it all in here but this is also where like Where people who are slightly bigger for some reason end up going right mounted heroes. Yeah, but no, it's just slightly bigger often Yeah Right in that case sure they're bigger because they're on a mount But you could be bigger because you're like an ogre or some kind of monstrous rage creature, right like sure If they made or if if they made like a a kreuger warspawn hero Okay, if we got that concept back He would end up being in this tier. They'd make him like 200 points Because yeah, and when he says around 200 what he's saying here is they're like you're talking like a 50 to 250 right? exactly yep and it's so funny to me because You ever see the meme with invader zim it's like it's a 40k meme, but it's like here's the size of a human Here's the size of like a space marine scout. Here's a space marine. Here's the Elder space marine. Here's a primark. Here's the emperor and they're just like progressively taller bigger guys or whatever, right? And invader zim's like wait, that's how you choose your leaders. Just who's bigger or who's taller whatever the quote is, right? and That's that is war hammer Like war hammer with the exception of basically go trek Is just your points equal how big you are That's almost completely how this gets broken down Right, you cannot be that strong and be small. That's it. It's not allowed You're not allowed to be a dnd hero like in actual war hammer when you have Can I give an example that's like a gross example of this? teclis Even when you have the biggest most Bombastic arc mage out there and he's like the size of a normal dude or almost the size of normal dude They have to put him on a 60 mil pi plate with a monster Even though the monster is not actually The meat of what that thing is Right That's right. That's right and he's a god Right, but they couldn't make him 600 or 700 points and just make him on a 40 mil round like he could have I would have been fine with it if it was just like him floating with like a stat like the old teclis model was that Yeah, right. It was just a dude He was just some guy with a stick and a sword A powerful guy with a stick and a sword right And so like like literally size almost perfectly maps to uh To points increases Right again go track accepted exempted and so These are like heroes with increased wounds or capabilities. They could be from a monstrous race They could be on a mount. They might be a slightly more special person They might have a non like, you know, they're there. There's not going to be like a monstrous mount at this level But they're going to have like something so like Here I've got like the lord on karkadrak the ogre tyrant and my favorite Mount my favorite couple the the true the the the couple of couples in aos, which is silesk, right? It's not a great sign that that like our most enduring Romantic couple in aos is a daemonette and her demon prince companion, I guess Uh, where's the emotion in this world? That's all I'm saying um so You know, even game of thrones had romance going on. Come on. I'm just saying so Okay, these are still generally worthless melee assassins Right generally now Sometimes I think a few more can escape out of here, especially if they're mounted and have like a high speed or bring utility Right, but here the utility bar gets higher Like because you're up in that as you said like around an average of 200 points Right, we we've got to have Uh A we've got to suddenly have more utility more more bang for the buck, right? Um, by the way in response a bunch of people said when I talked about the prices bunch people said Uh The price has to match right so like part of the reason for this is because they can't sell you 700 points of your army for what would be like a 60 dollar kit. Let's say they mark him way up, right? Like just like techless. He's an amazing on foot model. They make like 65 dollars, right? They can and actually that's what the old world does You are like Yes, it like in the history of this game They that they used to do that right like unique heroes. You had a foot hero that was like a court And he was that big. Yeah, sure I uh, I played some Bretonians in the world not this uh last not this last weekend. I played a os this last weekend but two weeks ago And that dude was 400 points. So he's fifth in my army Right. Is that one kid? Right? And that dude was a monster. He's unstoppable He killed half of the enemy army. He was outrageous Amazing. Okay So, um You know like I you look at somebody like Celesk Which I don't think is a very popular choice But I do think is a very interesting hero like I've used Celesk a lot in my lists I it's a it's an annoying unit to use with its rules But it is a pretty valuable unit if you can like play the balance game properly if I was playing Spanish I'd be using uh, uh, Celesk right because I love I just love the the model one the model is incredible to It actually does bring a huge amount of utility if again, you can play the balance game Right Uh zk do sig bolt and the light of authority and fit in this tier. No No, they go in the next one, which we'll get to in just a second Um Okay, so that's where these people fall All right I don't think many things get mislabeled Or bother some in tier one or two I think most of the problems that happen in this game happen in tier three and four Okay Yes, okay, there's a mistake. This is where the mistakes occur in tier three and four This is where the problems happen Aside from the fact that I hate like again just to return back to it and close the loop When I love that trailer where the Zarina walks out and stands against the bloodthirster It's amazing. Sure And in my mind she wins that fight Okay, because she's like the leader of a nation And super cool and powerful and and all this stuff, but in the game she is a stain on a rock five seconds later She gets saying in in tabletop.  That's it. That's end of end of Zarina.  I did an exempting go track Okay I have to keep I have to keep exempting that guy. All right tier three masters and commanders Okay, these heroes cost around three to four hundred points Okay And these are the in narratively. These are like leaders of entire factions or subgroups within those factions They may sometimes have monstrous mounts or just be real ba themselves or be like actual monsters Like on the border of it or or actually have that keyword in the and these can dip again The point range is just a range these can dip down to 250 Um, and then you may see these skew up to 450 or so Um, but in general like normally 400 is the cap on something. Yeah, I think 400 is pretty hard cap on these on on this tier Yeah And these can sometimes work as melee assassins if they have a deliberate delivery mechanism because we finally hit enough points For them to quote unquote justify having a real attack profile like something where their average damage goes higher than four Right. Sure. Sure. I mean, that's the reality of the thing Right, you look at most of the heroes the vast majority of heroes in tier one and two their average damage is less than four It's just not worth it. It's not doing anything Like that's nothing Right But these guys you can actually get to a like they'll they'll they'll let these people especially when they're like special characters That are unique. This is where you see a lot of unique characters. So you so they know you can't multiple up on them Right actually start to be Valuable as a hammer They also will now tend to have enough points that they can justify a good defensive buff as well Okay, so this is like where the um, uh, what are they called the the nergal? Uh, um People go, um the mega parts. Thank you. I've got I could not summon that to my brain Yes, the megathords, right? So morbidex and orgots and all of those guys they would fall in this space Uh bashing carthalos the light of all the ryan draka all these people Your your light monster writers sure sure exactly. Yep Or like their monsters have some built-in limitation, right? Like in the case of the nergal monsters Yes, they are all writing monsters, but they're all like eight inch move no fly Right, right, which is which is like a pretty healthy limitation on their on their mobility.  Yeah, he's like a vampire. Yeah. Yeah, exactly right And so imagine if you had an entire faction that just did that imagine be that would be insane tom that'd be insane um and so like Uh, no, we're still not to go track yet rambian. This this still isn't we're still not mass go track is still not falling within masters and commanders um But these guys will show up in lists when they're good and it's still the exception often That that proves the rule, right? But this is where we finally get to like melee assassins that can work You can take like or gods is a pretty great melee assassin. That's what he does Like yes, he's a monster hero because he's on that dude But bastion shows up here al-tharian, right? Like the the more you get into pure melee assassin Like the more that's the only thing they're doing the higher the bar goes and the less you see them included Al-tharian has one of the most amazing profiles We've ever seen on a model and yet he's still for like the the vast majority of aos wasn't hit most lists.  It's funny. Okay. Sorry. You're fine. Um Yeah, what what do you like what about this like this is a tier I imagine you've got some thoughts on Yeah, it's interesting because essentially the the problem with this tier is that Pure melee heroes unless they have Their own delivery mechanisms just don't work Right because the because first 400 points Like again, I'm gonna because I've been in fec, right like this is the world I've been living in it's For 400 points I can put 30 I can put 36 wounds Of horrors on the table, right that average buffed up average over 50 damage to a four plus eight. Yep I don't care what your foot hero does it can't compete those in that space And with 300 and 400 points of a unit like they like it just a foot hero Just isn't going to be able to put that kind of damage, right? Um on a Um on that level and so it's almost never going to be worth like sure Let's say you can let's say you can reliably do 10 wounds on a foot here It's still not even in the ballpark Right of a unit in that space and so it has to be it has to be bringing both damage and mobility and survivability and utility right To actually have a place on the battlefield It has to have all of those things and most of these war scrolls in this range just aren't designed that way Yep now This is where we get to our first mismatch story and we're going to go back to our old friend that was mentioned earlier sigvald. Okay Sigvald is in this tier Okay, yeah, but he only cost 200 points Yep, and that's a problem It's a problem because he should be in this tier He should be the equivalent of the light of eltharian of bastion carthalos of these kinds of people Right. This is where he belongs. This is where that kind of a character belongs Right And when we get a misalignment when they don't make the scroll good enough Because it doesn't hit the points it should Yeah, it is wrong. It feels wrong Right Ultimately, that's where a lot of huge so and you're to see this misalignment problem happen in other places in the next tier as well It's going to happen again right and so this is a real challenge because Sigvald like should be another 150 points. He should be like a 350 point hero And he should have the stats to be 100 To match exactly. Yeah, right and that those extra points should be buying him a reliable delivery mechanism Right, they should be buying him more damage. He still doesn't do enough damage. They're like not even close. Okay Um and more and more survivability. Yeah Yep, absolutely And so like and that's why I say the points define the tiers, but they aren't the tiers because Narratively we just have a conception Like a like a perception of what these things are right and like Sigvald is of a kind Of these guys these people these gals, right? Like it fits here Mentally in your sort of mental model This is the tier where that character belongs.  He just doesn't put it up. He doesn't have the the oomph In his rules to match what we conceptualize him as and when there's a mismatch Those are the heroes that feel the worst. Those are the ones that make me the most angry Because you look at them and go that should be in simplest terms They are not as badass as they should be That's it. Yeah That's it. It's really boils down to that. Uh, okay. I'm just looking at some of the uh, some of the comments here um Yeah, exactly like cruel boys have the Z case that cruel boys such a mismatch case, you know, 150 or $150 14 wound vulture at 200 points. Yeah, absolutely Like, yeah 100 we'll we'll talk about where that with the problem with that situation here in moment. Yeah Yeah Because at at minimum that cruel boy monster Thing should be in this tier Yeah, it should be as the master and commander at 300 to 400 minimum right, absolutely And and it's just like it's just not it just doesn't when you have to knock their points down so low Because the the stats on the scroll just don't hit this Uh It just feels bad you feel like this is not a good Scroll it's not a good investment. It doesn't matter. It's cheap like that's cool, but it feels wrong Yeah, okay. Yeah, uh, all right Tier four the lords of war Okay These heroes cost four to 500 points These are heroes of truly legendary power The top of the top of of what a being can be uh As a foe or what they can achieve, right? They're not gods But they're near that like Narratively they're the match for for dozens or hundreds of enemies like they might be all like narratively They might take on whole armies by themselves, right? They're a nightmare. You see one of these things you go the opposite direction Yep, right By the way, this is where go checkables right, he's he is The weird mismatch because he's on a 32 mil base or whatever and he's Uh He's he's absolutely a lord of war, right? Like he he he earns his points like one of these things He always has been in this range always should be always and like and actually had a scroll to match Yeah, yeah, he earned his points. He earned his 480, right 100 so these are often monstrous like you you you just don't get foot people really again Other than go track at this points level, right? They're they're just monstrous by nature because of the like Your leaders are just the people who are bigger syndrome of warhammer Okay, like that's what it is They sit on bigger things. Yeah, exactly where they sit on bigger things. Yes right um Exactly, um ramion says he fits in this to your rules wise and lower wise just not in size. Yes Absolutely, correct. And like size shouldn't be the defining trait of this. I really hate that that's a defining trait I think ultimately a lot of the the sins of this come from the fact that we just have to have this almost Direct linear growth decides like yeah, I get it. I get it with the money But okay, cool if it's a special character and it's one cool special character on foot That's worth 400 or 500 points and that's in my army and I can take it. It might be their design language, too It could be their design language, right? Like from a design a model design standpoint when they're designing and they want silhouettes, right? Like they're probably like thinking in this space Of this this needs to be a centerpiece of the army. Thus it needs to be about the size or or larger. Yeah I mean You're not wrong There's certainly a rattlesnake quality to it, right?  It has the big silhouette. Yeah. Yeah I I don't disagree ready to roll says as an over player I don't think the plosh is taking on an entire army narratively on the table though dot dot dot I mean in the lore Frost lords on stone horns are like leaders of whole alpha stuns or whatever the whatever they're called like they're there they are Not a thing to be trifled with like these are these aren't just like bosses of bosses amongst ogres like these things lead entire Uh entire bcr forces like massive massive forces Go up to one frost lord on stone horn um I mean they're they're they're pretty narratively potent um, but The reason they these can succeed is melee assassins like this is your most popular melee assassin tier Right because this is the tier where the governor switch comes off You're on a monster. You have a monstrous rampage. You have the monster's attacks So they feel justified in doing like eight attacks on twos and threes rend two or three damage four right some nonsense profile like that, right? Like they just They can suddenly have that profile Okay Right and they have mobility to carry them into combat, right right And they oftentimes they're not always will have like a enough of a pile of wounds or enough of a durability bonus Like a ward save or something or a combination of the two That again, they're They're hard to bring down. Yes, exactly what ramion is what I was about to say next They also can make the most out of things like command traits and enhancements in general, you know artifacts Like oftentimes these guys will have a high enough number of attacks or a high enough Like they'll they'll be important enough big enough valuable enough That suddenly they end up they end up being really valuable when you put those things on them, right? like One of these things catching a mystic shield is a really great target for a mystic shield Right or whatever. Yeah Any kind of enhancement derivative thing? Okay now Let's talk about mismatches in this category The biggest mismatch in the game right now in this category is bloodthirsters Because bloodthirsters are pointed Like they're in Masters and commanders. They're pointed in tier three Bloodthirsters It's not that they don't get included sometimes they do like the one bloodthirster. He shows up in armies. I don't want to say he doesn't okay But he is simply not scary enough and by the way people like at various points in time People like they've been cheap enough people have taken way too many bloodthirsters Like that's a problem.  You have two of them, right? um so like the You know they bloodthirsters are just horrendously Built wrong They should be much scarier and they should be up in the 400 to 500 point range All greater demons should be in the 400 to 500 point range because greater demons Are like the next step away from the chaos gods Right, they are basically the the sort of equivalent Within the narrative of this world are the voices of the gods. Yeah, they're like the avatar of this god given form right And so they better be scary Uh I I don't disagree Artoria said basically all the greater demons have issues including that guo there Who is priced like a lord of war but brings the power of a master commander? I agree I agree. Yep. Yeah Um, can I go the the other direction? Sure Uh, the abhorrent king on zombie dragon, okay That bad boy pointed at like four sixty four or 450 somewhere in there Brings an average damage of like six. Yeah, sure.  Why does this matter? Like I see mark I saw mark andre said narratively. I agree but aos is a game. Yeah, okay That that doesn't matter like games work best when they match The expectations of the plate Yeah, they're very similar to like this is mark rosewater's talk writ large, right? This is zombies versus plants and like this is in the 20 lessons for game design This is like an all-timer that most game designers just ingest very early on Like you have to if you you can't design like If you know I was designing if they're designing a new book, right? They put out the vampire lord on zombie dragon Okay, they make that thing and it costs like a hundred points and does an average of like three damage That's instantly a fail Right, correct. Yeah, because it just doesn't it could be perfectly useful Don't get me wrong Like it could end up being because of the utility or the mix or whatever it has It could end up being like an auto include unit that shows up in armies left right and center But it's still gonna feel bad and people aren't gonna like it because you you haven't matched expectations And so all your basically you're just inviting sort of weird spiky behavior right So things just are better when they fit people's narrative preconceptions And these greater demons the way they are arrayed like you want to see what a greater demon actually is capable of go play soulbound and fight a greater demon And then roll your new characters Okay, sure Because that's what's gonna happen like one of those things will just destroy a party right Because in in that game boy, do they have the they have the juice They didn't hold back on the design of greater demons in Uh in in soulbound those things are greater demons when you see one run Right So You know, that's fine um Okay And I think that like I know I put 500 points here. I really do think that's almost like a hard cap It's weird to say But I think that like anytime you get these guys and they go over 500 points They just are bad almost instantaneously. There's something magical about that quarter of an army points value That just shouldn't be exceeded Then crondis and carzai who were like pointed at 600 points It was way too expensive like they clearly fall into this category But they were way overcosted and I think now basically they're down to 500, right? I don't remember what exactly what their last update was, but they're they've basically fallen 100 points All right, they're back in that space.  They should be on the low end of this Yeah, sure Make up like 400 points and make them weaker in melee, but make them triple casters or something like that, right? The bloodthirsters should be just like the the regular bloodthirsters should be in the low 400 scar branch To be in the high 400s they should both hit like like a semi truck going at you at 80 miles an hour right Like that that's what should be happening here Okay Um, I and obviously we're not even gonna talk about the keeper secrets. I mean that the keeper secrets Uh, you know hits like a special guy like a 200 point hero and yet it's it's in the lords of war category I have no I I don't I got nothing I got nothing. Yeah Yeah Okay tier five the gods Right tier five is the gods And by the way, when I say the gods or their avatars or anything like close to this That's this tier. It's the final tier. It's just more than 500 points Right, like they can run up to a thousand you can run you can just run the the the shop here, right? And they're they're literally representing something Approximating a god or their avatar in the game That that's what this is So, you know, they're so expensive. They often end up falling into either auto-include or trash Like never seen as we as we made the joke earlier, right? Like auto-chosen or never chosen for archaeon, right? Yeah Yeah, but that's because they have to have a mix of everything and at their points They can buy it but if they get that mix wrong or they're like 10 20 percent Mispriced which is like a normal striking distance for most things that is an egregious amount of points here That's like 100 200 points. They could be off, right? Yeah, and that makes that makes or breaks armies, right? Exactly now we're to like literally you're buying potentially multiple other units or one serious unit Because they're of the amount they're off on points, right? And if they don't have the right mix of like utility survivability melee power all the like they have to bring everything to the table because they are Basically going to end up being a third to half of your army. They're in that range Like they're they're more than a third and usually a little less than half right um What I put Gordrack in here. No, no Gordrack should be is a Gordrack's absolutely here in the Lords of War Like that's where he should be It's where he's pointed right now. I don't know that he actually earns this place there I don't know that the mega boss actually earns this place anymore I think he's pretty bad as a matter of fact, but you know is what it is Oops Like this is Nagash Archeon Marathi alloreal You know things like that checklist checklist Yeah, this is just this is the this is the biggest baddest wolves on the block, right? And You should basically always be unique Yeah, every these are always unique, right? There's no generic things, but Right. These are universally special characters cragnos. Thank you. Yes cragnos. Absolutely How could I forget cragnos? Because the whole rest of the aos world did for thousands of years too.  Absolutely. Yes And so that's where the utility really matters, right? And what you see is when there's when the survivability isn't there Okay Poor alloreal Um, exactly alloreal you this thing doesn't get picked Right, right So when they're lacking in what because they again, you know, did you ever Tom back in the 90s? Did you ever collect like the marvel superhero? cards Like little baseball collectible cards for the marvel superheroes Yeah, I still have binders of them. So so do I glad to hear it Okay, so you know how when you flipped those over it had like the little ratings Right like strength intelligence Energy. Yep. Yeah, okay. I love those right. Um, yeah The masterpiece series is the best Those were those were really cool. But anyways, the the point is you flip over that card, right? You'd see the people it was really cool to see like the ratings in the direct comparison as they existed in the comics at that time and You know like dr. Do and read richards both with like this super intelligence and everything right all that But like when you got up to the cosmic beings Right like the living tribunal and eternity and infinity and so on, you know, you flip their card over and it was basically like sixes and sevens Down the line, right? Because they were it was a one through seven scale. By the way, everybody if you're if you're not familiar with these things And the like when you got to the god beings they were just they had everything right they had no Shortcomings it wasn't like, you know, you'd have other heroes farther down the the sort of chain that would be like Oh, they're really brilliant, but they they're not very strong or they're not very top or you know, whatever Like their durability is low or something, but no these dudes were just every bar Every slider was all the way to the top, right? And that's what these guys have to do like melee Utility or you know, sorry offense to the top You know utility up to the top defense up to the top, right? Like we just got to slide all them bars way over You know And then that's how you get to them actually being included in an army. Okay Um, so yeah, there you go. Alessandra said how good you have marvel cards in the 80s where those movies didn't exist until 2015 Amazing amazing That's that's very funny um Savage says my dad had tons of those cards, but he tossed them all oh boy. Oh no my dad Oh Did I just drink from the wrong cup in uh In indiana james, I think we might be we might be aging ourselves Hey, so be it Okay So the point being is that like because they can't actually just by nature of time In the game like there's only five rounds and people will retreat away from you and block you up And you might waste around moving and stuff like that You just it doesn't matter if your damage profile just said three attacks infinity damage, right?  Barring some goofball Thing occurring and whenever it does Immediately, that's when the game goes off the rails So like when lord croak launched and could just croak nato and croak bomb and everything like that That could easily kill more than 500 points and that's why that felt so dirty because not only was he doing it He was doing it at range right Yeah, so Yeah, there you go. All right, so there's my secret tiering system everybody And like I said to me all the mismatches occur in tier four and tier three We have a bunch of people in tier two Who should actually be tier three characters narratively and like what what we would perceive them to be And we have a bunch of lords of war who Either aren't like they're hanging out in this category, but they don't have the scrolls to match like their points Say they are but they aren't Or they're way cheaper and they shouldn't be and their scrolls should up to match right Okay So yeah, there you go. Um Yeah, where do the oh that's an interesting question Uh, rachel roll said where do the mortarx fall? That's a great question. I like that. They should probably normally be in either Normally, I would say High master and commander or low Agreed. I think they could fit in either category and it would feel appropriate Depending on the more historically they've been in both of those. Yeah Like for the most part, I think they feel pretty correct Like arc on sort of sits in master and commander territory and that feels right. He's kind of like negash's little lacky Right. He's in number two Hey, hey number one. Hey number two um whereas like whereas, uh What's his name uh usher on? Clearly pretty cleanly fits into lords of war and I think he earns that like he's he's pretty clearly in this category And I think that's apropos We'll see he's fine. Sure Okay so Yeah, there you go All right, tom anything else we want to say about that? I mean, I think that's that's most everything That's my secret hero tiers and I think a lot of the problems we encounter with heroes is when they when we expect them to fall into a Tier because we subconsciously have these biases and they design them in the wrong tier. I think that's it And and like I think that that yeah, go ahead go I think that it doesn't solve the melee assassin problem right um because that melee assassin problem Like crosses all of these tiers and it has to and it's this it's actually another Uh metric which is this intersection between utility and killiness. Yep. Um and the and the less utility they have the more, you know um And then mobility obviously in the midst of that like all of those are factors that then Can can move them to obscurity. Yep Ah, there you go. Hades. That's the mismatch in the more tarks It's lady olander She's down in like the special people points cost when clearly she should be up in the master and commander but she her scroll just doesn't actually Just doesn't just doesn't get there because because She's a single model the rest of them have monsters and so they're allowed to have monster profile and do monster stuff She has to be a single lady All the single ladies on a on a like normal base And so they just they can't well, well, obviously she's just a lady on a base We can't actually give her the power of a 350 point model. That would be insane That's that is the bias That is such a clear example of a bias. I'm so thank you. Hades for mentioning lady. Oh, I hadn't thought about her But you're a hundred percent right. That's such a perfect example Imagine if she was 14 wounds That's exactly monster. That's no you're you're I don't think you're I don't think that's a joke I think that's exactly what she should be She should be like 12 or 14 wounds with no chart Right. She doesn't need to be a monster. That's fine. She doesn't have monstrous actions. I don't care. She doesn't need those, right? We have idolans Yeah Yes, if we yes, exactly Like the she's basically an idol on like a hundred percent. That's how she should be Right and um, you know That that's that is such a perfect example Of this sort of like bias in action She has attendance. Yeah, they can do work Well, not on not as they're written.  Okay, there you go. Is is what makes manfred manfred von karstein right the more torque of night Is what makes him powerful The fact that he has a bone bat cat dog Or the fact that he's manfred freaking von karstein it's indeed like That is nonsense Right, but the only thing that justifies him is because like oh, he's got this weird bone monster under him So we get to actually justify that profile So are you making a case that we need a ground-up rewrite of basically Aos war scrolls or at least all heroes? Well, I am making a case that they need to eliminate this bias And I understand that sometimes that would mean people could get more points of their army For less money like sure sometimes that will happen Okay Make them like most of the time they should be special characters when this is happening Like if you wanted to lock this to only be special characters where this is occurring So you never buy more than one of them fine all right, but But like we have to ditch this this biases. That's what it comes down to Right.  Lady. Oh is a great example. Sig vaults a great example, right? Like Just make them more points who cares who freaking cares right so like Again, I understand the money to points ratio like, you know I remember uncle Adam many years ago did like the secret of how gw prices models and the whole point of the video Was like he couldn't figure it out. It's really easy. It's just points. That's all it is It's what percentage of your army does this kit represent? That's its price point Okay With like some slight modifications for for how special the tooling and stuff like that was right how elite I mean historically there have been some outliers like sure Like I remember like witch elves for example, right like back in the world where you we were paying 60 for a box of 10 right like That was a disc they were disproportionately high That was the point is that they didn't actually match the curve that everything else sat on exactly Exactly. So like I get it. I understand. That's why you know, sons of them are like $190 or whatever they are right like I get it because you only need four of them for your army So they have to make you and like they want an army to cost about $650 to $800 Right, that's that's how much an army should cost in their mind retail but My answer is It doesn't matter people will enjoy the game more and it's one character people will still invest It's not like people just suddenly stop at 2000 if you give people an army.  So, you know one unit that punches above its weight in your army Punches above its size is what I mean there, right? And so it hence has a higher points cost on a smaller base you sell for less money Does not suddenly mean gw misses its financial targets. That's nonsense Right Okay All right Cool. All right. Well. Hey everybody. 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And of course, there is our patreon But that's focused on hobby review and feedback and taking your next step on your hobby journey But thank you everyone for all your thoughts tonight Uh, I really liked like great interaction. Thank you all for watching really really appreciate it Thanks for sticking with us for a hotel show. This one was all right. The internet held up tonight Okay, didn't have any horrible problems. So Uh, that's probably my last time ever at this particular hotel. Um, but just because I'm moving office So that's part of why I'm here. Um, but at any rate, uh, I wanted to thank you all for watching We really appreciate it and as always We'll see you next Wednesday