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Jimmy Hats posted:New warlock is totally worthless outside of tharn theme which is loving stupid. Cyrenia got loosened a bunch to be more useful outside Exemplar by the end of CID, so be hopeful.
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Aug 29, 2018 23:34
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---Morv1 changes seem to address most of her problems. The rest are mostly addressed by Ravagers being good now. She's locked to Tharn theme until wolves get a CiD though. ---I really don't have enough experience with Morv2 to know if she's good now, but she's substantially less risky now. ---Iona the Tharn likes Tharn and only plays with Tharn. Kinda disappointing, considering we already have several warlocks who basically are locked into Tharn. ---Gnarlhorn's strength increase alongside the Warpwolf cost decrease basically makes it the cheap beatstick of choice. Riphorn probably needed to drop a point to compete. ---Shadowhorn is downright excellent now. It's a very dangerous non-linear threat and toolbox with decent stats for a cheap-as-dirt heavy. ---I still don't like Brennos but he seems like he's a worthwhile toolbox now. ---I'm not convinced the Storm Raptor buffs are sufficient. It's still really fragile for how huge a target it is. ---Ravagers and Wolf Riders are excellent now. Bloodtrackers were already fine, and now they're a bit better. ---I'm reserving judgement on Blood Pack. It seem pretty solid now but might cost too much for what it actually will get done. ---Ambushing Bloodweavers are going to be a minor terror, especially with Haruspex. ---What are Brighid & Caul even for? They have a ton of overlap with existing units. ---Lord of the Feast is still terrible for his cost. ---Ravager Shaman ugh. Please give him a different offensive spell that doesn't invariably cause him to blast his buddies. ---Whitemane has a point now but I'll have to see how he pans out in play ---Rip ridiculous solo assassin Night Witch. Dispel is good, but I don't think she's 100% secure in her role with ambushing bloodweavers and haruspex being things. ---Wolf Rider Champion turns Wolf Riders into obnoxious monsters. ---Blood Shaman is fantastic and desperately needs to be a thing in Wolves. ---Well of Orboros looks really loving good. fool of sound fucked around with this message at 03:56 on Aug 30, 2018 |
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Aug 30, 2018 01:39
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TotalHell posted:I don't suppose anyone here is doing any mystery box swapping? There was nothing in SA Mart so I figured I'd ask to see who else indulged in getting a box. Which box did you end up getting? I got the Cryx one.
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Aug 30, 2018 03:54
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Loki got added to the theme in the update already. Which is nice since he was stuck never seeing the table, and the model is pretty cool. It doesn't look like he's actually going into the CID, so he might feel over-costed at 19 by the end? I think it's the only place to get shield guard in that theme, so he might remain an interesting choice. I still hope he gets added to the Wolf Sworn theme someday also, as the model's look and theme really fits better there.
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Aug 30, 2018 04:33
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Yeah he really should be in secret masters just based on Tanith, though. Anyways the secret of the well of orboros is that 9/10 times you're gonna be better off dumping a gallows grove on the table.
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Aug 30, 2018 04:36
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Jimmy Hats posted:Yeah he really should be in secret masters just based on Tanith, though. I mean if I'm bringing in a Wolf Rider Champion the Well is costing me effectively 8 points at that point. A decent gun and +2" to control is probably worth 8 points in a lot of lists. Brighid and Caul are pretty neat, a decent shield guard with a decent (for a small base) gun for 8 points that can one round a heavy if the stars align and you can get a buffed Caul into something with some corpse tokens on him. Like the changes in general, male Tharn getting Rapid Healing is a really solid buff for them. Basically feels a lot like the Legion CID, after this Circle will have a really solid heavy infantry theme, which seems like a winner in this meta (although it is something that I imagine people are starting to tech for).
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Aug 30, 2018 05:24
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Not sure there is anything solid in legion. Passable, maybe, but it really need another go at its themes.
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Aug 30, 2018 10:52
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Iceclaw posted:Not sure there is anything solid in legion. Passable, maybe, but it really need another go at its themes. What. Primal Terrors is one of the best themes in the entire darn game.
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Aug 30, 2018 13:09
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Yeah Primal Terrors is ridiculous my dude
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Aug 30, 2018 13:18
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Daemonqueller posted:Which box did you end up getting? I got the Cryx one. Same. Judging by my local meta I think I'm gonna end up getting stuck with the Cryx one. Oh joy.
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Aug 30, 2018 13:31
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Jimmy Hats posted:What. Primal Terrors is one of the best themes in the entire darn game. Too bad about the rest of the faction, though.
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Aug 30, 2018 14:23
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Isn't that true for most (non-Cryx) factions? They have one bonkers theme and the rest of kinda meh?
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Aug 30, 2018 18:58
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waah posted:Same. Judging by my local meta I think I'm gonna end up getting stuck with the Cryx one. Oh joy. Got the Ret box, which seems to have been fairly common. Might end up trading locally for one of the Hordes mystery boxes.
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Aug 30, 2018 20:46
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MetricUnit posted:Isn't that true for most (non-Cryx) factions? They have one bonkers theme and the rest of kinda meh? All the Skorne themes are good, but I wouldn't call any of them bonkers.
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Aug 31, 2018 00:12
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MetricUnit posted:Isn't that true for most (non-Cryx) factions? They have one bonkers theme and the rest of kinda meh? It was before my time, but as I understand it there's lingering Legion bitterness over a nerf to Oracles of Annihilation. PP bumped the threshold for free models up to 30 points from 25 for balance purposes. Some believe that immediately after, PP buffed other themes to put them in the same place Oracles of Annihilation had been in.
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Aug 31, 2018 02:14
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Gorefiend posted:All the Skorne themes are good, but I wouldn't call any of them bonkers. Yeah they're all quite different too which really makes building lists fun. But they all have serious flaws. Hivemind consensus is that Disciples of Agony is the "worst" of the the Skorne themes, but it's really fun to play.
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Aug 31, 2018 13:36
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Maneck posted:It was before my time, but as I understand it there's lingering Legion bitterness over a nerf to Oracles of Annihilation. PP bumped the threshold for free models up to 30 points from 25 for balance purposes. Some believe that immediately after, PP buffed other themes to put them in the same place Oracles of Annihilation had been in. It's more the fact all Themes, arguably sans PT are really restrictive, and kind of hard not to hyperspecialise. The faction, again sans PT struggles a bit to really live up to its name of glass cannon.
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Aug 31, 2018 18:22
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Children of the Dragon is much like Secret Masters: bad more or less from first principles and need to be overhauled or replaced with something more compelling.
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Aug 31, 2018 19:38
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waah posted:Yeah they're all quite different too which really makes building lists fun. But they all have serious flaws. Hivemind consensus is that Disciples of Agony is the "worst" of the the Skorne themes, but it's really fun to play. This will always baffle me. You get access to Rage and a ton of other cool stuff. Solos are limited but a free Willbreaker or Paingiver Tormentor is cute. Brigands + Nihilators is a solid infantry line. Bloodrunners are great even if ambush is almost always a trap. The only Skorne themes that bug me are the ones that are more about the playstyle than the interesting theme benefits. Winds of Death is just "Welp, Venators" and The Exalted is just taking as many Stonebros as the list can fit and your flavor of warrior-caster. I want to themes to be a bit more interesting.
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Aug 31, 2018 20:03
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Crazy Ferret posted:This will always baffle me. You get access to Rage and a ton of other cool stuff. Solos are limited but a free Willbreaker or Paingiver Tormentor is cute. Brigands + Nihilators is a solid infantry line. Bloodrunners are great even if ambush is almost always a trap. It comes down to the fact that you can only use 5 of the skorne casters in DoA and that's really what ends up making it "less good" No one is knocking down convention doors to show up with a Morg 1, Xekaar, or Naaresh list.
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Aug 31, 2018 20:41
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This might be me but I found naaresh to be really strong. The last thing I did with him though was out assasinate a caine2 pre adjustment so I'm biased.
For_Great_Justice fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Aug 31, 2018 |
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Aug 31, 2018 20:58
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Crazy Ferret posted:The only Skorne themes that bug me are the ones that are more about the playstyle than the interesting theme benefits. Winds of Death is just "Welp, Venators" and The Exalted is just taking as many Stonebros as the list can fit and your flavor of warrior-caster. I want to themes to be a bit more interesting. Honestly I wouldn't even mind those if they'd put a little more effort in - even "Welp, Venators" would be a lot more interesting if it didn't have Paingiver Beast Handlers but had an extra beast buff in its place. So my ideal Winds of Death gives all Skorne guns Hunter's Mark, my ideal The Exalted gives the beasts Dark Shroud, and my ideal Masters of War gives beasts Gang Fighter or is even light beasts only and hands out Flank. And Winds of Death is currently the theme for double derp turtle with an in-faction skirmish screen...
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Aug 31, 2018 22:19
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fool_of_sound posted:Children of the Dragon is much like Secret Masters: bad more or less from first principles and need to be overhauled or replaced with something more compelling. Eh I play secret masters quite a bit and have no complaints. The 'start with your upkeeps out' is a very powerful benefit, even if the other one is pretty lousy.
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Aug 31, 2018 22:28
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Jimmy Hats posted:Eh I play secret masters quite a bit and have no complaints. The 'start with your upkeeps out' is a very powerful benefit, even if the other one is pretty lousy. I'm really hard pressed to come up with a single warlock who would prefer to run Secret Masters than something else.
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Sep 1, 2018 00:49
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fool_of_sound posted:I'm really hard pressed to come up with a single warlock who would prefer to run Secret Masters than something else. Tanith runs it beautifully.
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Sep 1, 2018 01:20
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Anyways, in other news I present further proof that these guys don't quite know all the rules to their own game. I was whining about Ram being an idiotic rule and got this as a reply followed by a closed thread. 
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Sep 1, 2018 01:24
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Jimmy Hats posted:Tanith runs it beautifully. What, just for Affliction buffed druid gunline or something? Tanith is super good and can basically run any theme, but I'm not seeing what she offers Secret Masters that she doesn't offer to other themes.
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Sep 1, 2018 01:24
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No Quarter Prime has been cancelled. Not sure what, if anything, ought be read into that but it's kind of a bummer.
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Sep 1, 2018 01:51
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Jimmy Hats posted:Anyways, in other news I present further proof that these guys don't quite know all the rules to their own game. I was whining about Ram being an idiotic rule and got this as a reply followed by a closed thread. What's the issue with his response, exactly? Ram doesn't work on free strikes, as stated. And you can totally make free strikes with mounts nowadays.
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Sep 1, 2018 01:58
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rantmo posted:No Quarter Prime has been cancelled. Not sure what, if anything, ought be read into that but it's kind of a bummer. Not much to read into that. Physical magazines are basically a waste of money to produce anymore.
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Sep 1, 2018 01:59
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I've been stewing on this rant for a while and I think I'm ready to release this hottest of takes into the wild. Let me begin by stating I am firmly pro theme-machine. I think it was and is a logical solution to the problem of faction bloat (GW style invalidation of models is another solution, one which I think is more negative). Faction bloat isn't just a game problem, it's a business model problem as well, so it absolutely needed to be addressed. That being said, I feel a lot of factions are suffering, but not necessarily for the reasons most people seem to think. In my opinion this is due to the fact that they just don't have the models to make many of their themes interesting. Skorne Exalted Host is an example. The theme, benefits, lists you can make are all fine. However, it's hyper-focused on a portion of the faction that has...one unit, one generic solo (two if you count the poop handler), one character solo, and no beasts. This is slowly getting addressed with each theme CID but the game is currently in this multi-year flux where they've essentially split the factions up into mini-factions but then haven't been able to flesh the majority of those out. That's why I feel a faction like Cryx is doing very well. Almost all of it's themes have great internal variety and meaningful decisions are possible in list creation in a majority of cases. Which brings me to the the meat of my rant, in that balance is a bogeyman that the player base is wrong-headedly obsessed with,. What's more important is making each theme capable of supporting interesting choices. People take the perceived balance of the game way, WAY to seriously. The fact of the matter is that player skill is going to be the deciding factor in 99% of games, rather than model balance. People are terrible at this game, like really really bad (me included of course). Even the best players in the world are probably making "optimal" decisions at a rate of something like 30 to 40%. The game is complicated, abstract in many ways, has high random variance, and takes a long loving time to play. All of which make drawing statistically meaningful conclusions about it extremely difficult (as if humans weren't bad enough at that already). Most (if not all) players have no idea what's actually over or underpowered since the amount of actual games they can play and the opponents they have access too are both so limited. Players make a big fuss over tournament statistics without realizing that statistics based on sample sizes in the dozens, when you are talking about a game with this much random variance, are almost meaningless. All you can do is draw the absolute broadest of conclusions (ie: Cryx is strong, or at least easy enough to play that people can construct lists and play them somewhat optimally). In my opinion(notice the emphasis), the reason spam lists and factions like Cryx (whose best lists are often infantry-based) are so effective is because they mitigate the amount of decision making you have to make while providing you with a numerical (stats as well as model count) advantage due to their optimized value-per-point and access to large modifiers to chance that are universally applicable. Basically, they're easy to play and mitigate random chance, so people gently caress up less and get more consistent results. If they came up with a learning AI for Warmachine, my bet is that it would not only quickly be able to defeat any player currently in existence, it would also do it in a way we haven't even thought of yet. The game is so far from solved that all these pompous statements declaring absolute knowledge of what's good or bad are a joke. PP has to cater to them, since public opinion obviously matters, but most of the balance changes they make are pretty irrelevant in the long run. What's more important is the ability to make meaningful but understandable decisions, in list-making and on the table. This obviously requires some measure of balance, but PP's methodology for costing models (whatever it is) provides most of that baseline already. That's why the lion's share of their effort needs to continue to be put into new releases, rather than constant iteration on old things. Rebalancing old models is fine, but it's not a solution to the problems that theme-machine has created. The only way is to charge forward with model releases as fast as they can to reach a gamestate where every faction has 3-4 themes that have depth. That's my take. AttackBacon fucked around with this message at 02:03 on Sep 1, 2018 |
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Sep 1, 2018 02:00
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fool_of_sound posted:Not much to read into that. Physical magazines are basically a waste of money to produce anymore. Doubly so for physical magazines that don't have the game rules most people who'd buy them care about.
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Sep 1, 2018 02:00
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neonchameleon posted:Honestly I wouldn't even mind those if they'd put a little more effort in - even "Welp, Venators" would be a lot more interesting if it didn't have Paingiver Beast Handlers but had an extra beast buff in its place. So my ideal Winds of Death gives all Skorne guns Hunter's Mark, my ideal The Exalted gives the beasts Dark Shroud, and my ideal Masters of War gives beasts Gang Fighter or is even light beasts only and hands out Flank. This more than anything. Skorne has decent themes all things being equal. It is just that they feel kinda boring. waah posted:No one is knocking down convention doors to show up with a Morg 1, Xekaar, or Naaresh list. Yeah, ain't that the truth 
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Sep 1, 2018 02:07
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CaptCommy posted:What's the issue with his response, exactly? Ram doesn't work on free strikes, as stated. And you can totally make free strikes with mounts nowadays. You cant make free strikes with anything but your longest weapon. E: i guess you could if hes moving past you within .5" but thats extremely corner case. The vast majority of free strikes are of the 'moving away' variety The Duchess Smackarse fucked around with this message at 03:22 on Sep 1, 2018 |
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Sep 1, 2018 02:53
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fool_of_sound posted:What, just for Affliction buffed druid gunline or something? Tanith is super good and can basically run any theme, but I'm not seeing what she offers Secret Masters that she doesn't offer to other themes. She benefits greatly from getting an extra 3" up the board on turn one, since a big part of her is threatening the board with her excellent gun. (running instead of needing to cast upkeeps) She makes mist riders very strong: affliction makes their impacts very reliable, and battle wizard can be triggered off of those. You can very quickly clear the other guy's board with just one unit. She benefits hugely from the celestial fulcrum's veteran leader. Rat 7 and mag 7 are a big deal compared to 6 and 6. She likes bringing una1 with her (fury efficiency). She also runs pretty much all of our warbeasts well, especially cheaper beaters like the satyrs. She likes wold wights and wyrds a lot more than the heavier wolds, who she doesnt have the requisite speed buff for. All of these elements only exist in secret masters. Its her best theme.
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Sep 1, 2018 03:03
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I'll have to try that out, it sounds pretty solid. I've been waiting to actually use my blackclads again for a while now.
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Sep 1, 2018 04:25
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This is legal in the current cid War Room Army Circle Orboros - Revenge of Witchy Wench Theme: Secret Masters 2 / 2 Free Cards 78 / 75 Army <! OVER POINT LIMIT !> Tanith the Feral Song - WB: +31 - Druid Wilder - PC: 0 - Gnarlhorn Satyr - PC: 12 (Battlegroup Points Used: 12) - Shadowhorn Satyr - PC: 12 (Battlegroup Points Used: 12) - Feral Warpwolf - PC: 18 (Battlegroup Points Used: 7) - Woldwyrd - PC: 9 Celestial Fulcrum - PC: 19 Blackclad Wayfarer - PC: 0 Una the Falconer - PC: 4 - Scarsfell Griffon - PC: 8 Druid Mist Riders - Leader & 4 Grunts: 20 Shifting Stones - Leader & 2 Grunts: 3 - Stone Keeper - PC: 2 Swamp Gobber Bellows Crew - Leader & 1 Grunt: 2 THEME: Secret Masters --- GENERATED : 09/01/2018 08:09:13 BUILD ID : 2067.18-06-10 Ive dropped Loki in this list, which is pretty sinful. He's incredibly expensive and I think having more bodies might be a worthwhile trade for him. Gnarlhorn + admonition lets you back up and counterslam. Mat is 6 but just the threat of it makes people think. The bellows crew is a great add-on since Tanith has prowl.
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Sep 1, 2018 13:13
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TotalHell posted:I don't suppose anyone here is doing any mystery box swapping? There was nothing in SA Mart so I figured I'd ask to see who else indulged in getting a box. PM'd.
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Sep 3, 2018 16:16
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34 point storm raptor and it has built-in phantasm. Sadly sky fire is only 1 turn now though, so less damage on plasma nimbus. It's good enough though I GUESS
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Sep 5, 2018 17:24
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Anybody got a second storm raptor for sale..?
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Sep 5, 2018 17:24
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