Emerging meta: Brimstone Horrors

I agree with flocks, I think that's where they shine.

Can we aim combats at the flanks of the wall to split the Brinstone Sea?

Wyches would do well I think, hit on a 3+, wound on a 3+ (They are T2 yeah?), rend doesn't matter

Hamey is a good tourney guy regardless, always good to have anti pskyer, and he does well in assault

I have faith in the living ruleset, I also hope they make knights cost more. So broken rn

aurynn wrote:

You cannot expect that with this number of faction and even with reduced uniqueness of 8th there won't be rock-paper-scissor. Anytime anyone will play a denial list (even though it is much harder to do in 8th save for IKs) it will end this way. Most powerful variation I have seen is a full CHSM cultist list with HQs for rerolls. Brimstones can go eat dirt against that. And that was only GW cultists, not FW renegades. Those will be much more "fun". :-D

I hope you're wrong. The only time I've really enjoyed 40k has been when TAC lists have been possible. 7th often felt like pandora's box had opened and all the evils of poor game design had filled 40k, never to be restored to a playable state.
I'd have much preferred if 8th heralded a return of "a well-built list will have at least a fighting chance against whatever the enemy puts on the table". I'm realizing that was a very long shot, and their commitment to allowing people to bring whatever they brought in 7th was probably what killed the chance for 8th to return to a balanced state. But still, when we're seeing stuff that's about as bad as the worst of 7th's dregs, with promises of worse yet to come...
Meh. Someone call me when TAC comes back.

The brimstone spam is going to be mean but it will be a major hindrance in kill point missions. If competitive follows the "whoever finishes deploying first, goes first" rule, it should be an automatic first blood for the opponent. Doesn't change that it's going to be a pain to deal with but some things to think about.

@RedRegicide They are T3.

Wait a minute: aren't both Magnus and DaemonPrince heroes with 10+ wounds?
Because if that so, you can shoot at them free.

Magnus yes. Princes no.

Princes yes. Only CHSM princes have less than 10 wounds.

@mynamelegend
I remember that time. Time when every TAC list was beaten by denial or specialist list. TAC can only play against TAC. TAC is a list of fractured power and without focus. 8th edition with the new wound tables and stats made TAC at least possible again. I think you should be happy with that. I mean it seriously and think it is a good thing. But if you face a melee specialist list and they manage getting into melee with you, you lose. Which is as it should be. Castling is gone now. Movement is what is really important. Do not throw away the game just because few people are willing to even bring list like 120 brimstones and friends to the table. Its the people that are not worth playing, not the game.

This us a competitive game. You must always be prepared for the tough lists.

Hmm T3 eh. I think pulling them into combat and then crucible once they are packed tight

For a competitive video game, the bare minimum requirement is that two competitors can come into it with their nastiest, most competitive, most cutthroat strategies/builds/races/classes and be able to compete on even terms - the outcome dictated by their skill above all else.

In most fighting games and strategy games they aggregate tens of thousands of matches for each possible matchup, and anything worse than a 45-55 split is considered a serious balance issue in need of addressing. (In some very cutthroat ones, anything worse than 48-52 is considered a nearly unplayable matchup)

The measure of a good game, in a very real sense, is not how fun the low-level players have with it. It's how much fun the top-level players have with it. If a game only works as long as you don't look at it too hard, it's a pretty flimsy game.

It's understandable to say "don't play with the type of people that would unbalance the game", but how would you define that? We get awfully close to "I know it when I see it" territory. Video games are considered dead-on-arrival if "just don't play against the unbalanced stuff" is the only solution to making them playable. (For a stark and recent example, how many people do you know that still play For Honor?)

This is, as TA says, a competitive game. If I can't play it in a competitive way, at the big boys' table, and still have fun... why am I putting so much money and time into it?

Though ... Come to think of it The true kin are probably better equipped than most other armies to handle the 120 brimstone horrors ... Not because of the amount of shooting we can put out or the number of cc attacks we can make but because from turn one we actually get a save against mortal wounds albeit a 6+++ but still it's better then most everyone else has, and now we continue on to being the crafty tactical​ genius's 7th edition has made us simply because GW had to give everyone else a serious handicap by nerfing us into the spot of the worst codex ever ... So now we need to look at all the subtle nuance's within the poorly written index that give us the edge, I could see an army or 5-10 man Wrack units with ossefector, hexrifle, and liquifier guns as a possible counter through in some Cronos to regenerate wounds on the models that lose wounds to smite by getting into cc with the easy for it to kill brimstone horrors and watch as the wounds inflicted are brought back, the hexrifles snipe at the characters and if there are enough will kill the buff monsters by turn 3 possibly turn 2 on lucky rolls ossefector and liquifier guns thinning brimstone horrors ranks before the Cronos even gets in and slightly off-putting any of the other 1700 points from charging because yay out overwatch hits thrw in our aircraft that can speed across the board and stay out of charge range of any "fly" demons that can threaten it and harass those same 1700 points with D6 missiles that wound on a 2+ and 6 dessie Cannon shots that deal 2 damage a piece, and our faster transports with elites run off to capture objectives ... no matter how we build ... Or how any army builds this fight will last all 5 turns without the demons being​ tabled ... But that isn't the only way to win especially competitively, in this case it isn't a matter of shooting them off the table but to tactically out maneuver them and secure the win out from under what seems to be impossible odds ... It's what the true kin are know for anyway ... If Vect were still a character (that we could place on the table) he would look at the 120 brimstone horrors list and laugh ... Or be incredibly bored ... Either way there are ways around this list that competitive players will probably be able to see far more clearly then myself as a filthy casual player of 40k, just gotta find it ... End of rant ... Or whatever this would be considered

@mynamelegend
My friend... you are describing chess... I do not want W40K to become chess. Nor computer game. The aggregation you speak of is simply impossible with ruleset as varied as W40K even in this edition.
Kings of War are supposedly very balanced, but look at the rules. The game is so bland that I didnt even want to play a single game of it.

Another point is that we are talking about a chance game. Like it or not, W40K is as much chance game as skill game. Therefore comparison to any system that is based only on skill is off IMO.

Without any intention to offend you, it always seemed to me that these calls for "ultimate balance" are cries that in fact say "whatever I come up with has to be competitive". There are always viable strategies and tactics and lists and unviable ones. Saying that everything should be viable is wishful thinking. In addition, pardon me, but making this ultimate balance would remove the fun from the game for others. For those who love specialist armies and accept the risk of rock-paper-scissor. I repeat - 8th is, in my opinion, as close to balance between styles and armies as possible (with some exceptions ofc.) So I would definitely try it if I were you.

It is your choice whether you want to TAC or Spec. You CAN win with both, but if you let the enemy play his game with specialized list you will most probably lose and that is where your skill comes into play and I for one consider this fair. TAC list is a defensive list by definition. Specialists are mostly offensive. Anytime you start thinking about going proactive and push your game, you are leaving TAC behind.

Lastly, you can play with the big boys, but the way you put it it seems that you want to win to have fun. If you do, you have to push your game... and that you simply cannot do with TAC. You never could even in previous editions.

Please do not take this negatively. I am only trying to encourage you to explore the game beyond TAC. You will find much more fun there.

I'm struggling to see whats so nasty about this list? I mean sure a wall of Brimstones is annoying but it's not that hard to deal with, especially since it's Smite is both reduced power and 18" range. As for the stuff behind it, I completely fail to see the reason why you can't just shoot it, only characters with less than 10 wounds can't be targeted but the Hexrifle can shoot at them and is available to both Wracks and Haemi's.

I think the problem with facing this list is scoring. You can't get the enemy off the point because they take casualties where they want, and it would be hard to Allie score any maelstrom cards requiring you to kill a unit depending on the supporting cast.

My vote is on morale.

One thing to note is that every time a Brimstone Horror usese smite, one model dies.


Secondly, they are LD 7. Can get a boost of +1 to the roll and/or LD 10 from a Greater Demon.

Lets assume LD 10. At T3, and 1 wound, with a 4++, it will not take a lot to start forcing them to make moral checks. Killing 4 with a phantasm grenade hit can mean a 6 loses another. Not that great, but a starting point. For every model killed over 4 (or 5 with-out any other modifiers) they lose more.

So lets start with our basic troops splinter rifle. 10 guy at double tap range (assume the drove up in a raider for now - yes I know not a perfect vacuum but we probable got the first turn anyways)

20 shots nets us 3.33 wounds. Not that impressive, but hey, we probably are not taking basic warriors with nothing else.

Lets add in a Phantasm, splinter cannon, and shredder.

16 splinter cannon hits = 2.67 wounds
Splinter Cannon = .75
Phantasm = .11 (it could happen....)
Shredder = .56

all together nets us 4.08 wounds.
Vs LD 10 (10 - 1+1) this won't do much in the moral phase.
Vs LD 6 (7-1) they are loosing models on a 3+. Up to an additional 4.

That unit comes out to 96 pts.

Brimstones come in blocks of 10 at 20 pts a block. While that is far too cheap for what they do - they also have a max move of 6+d6 advance, or a threat range of 34-30". In all honesty, I would ignore them.

Our speed, skimmers, and range means we can give them a relatively big bubble until we have dealt with the more pressing things in their army. Then, bringing a fair bit of focused fire down will drop them pretty quickly. Two of the above mentioned warrior squads, or their equivalent, will do 8 wounds. Vs LD 6 they are looking at loosing another 3 to 8 guys. And in return they are using smite on a 5+?  Pass or fail, they lose a model. I am not too worried yet

mynamelegend wrote:

For a competitive video game, the bare minimum requirement is that two competitors can come into it with their nastiest, most competitive, most cutthroat strategies/builds/races/classes and be able to compete on even terms - the outcome dictated by their skill above all else.

In most fighting games and strategy games they aggregate tens of thousands of matches for each possible matchup, and anything worse than a 45-55 split is considered a serious balance issue in need of addressing. (In some very cutthroat ones, anything worse than 48-52 is considered a nearly unplayable matchup)

The measure of a good game, in a very real sense, is not how fun the low-level players have with it. It's how much fun the top-level players have with it. If a game only works as long as you don't look at it too hard, it's a pretty flimsy game.

It's understandable to say "don't play with the type of people that would unbalance the game", but how would you define that? We get awfully close to "I know it when I see it" territory. Video games are considered dead-on-arrival if "just don't play against the unbalanced stuff" is the only solution to making them playable. (For a stark and recent example, how many people do you know that still play For Honor?)

This is, as TA says, a competitive game. If I can't play it in a competitive way, at the big boys' table, and still have fun... why am I putting so much money and time into it?

"If a close look at something breaks it, then it was already broken."

What are Brimstones rules? can they even cast and deny? literally what is the points of them.

Pink Horrors can only cast/deny with 1 dice, i cant see Brimstones doing something stronger.

Has anyone got an example list? We need to see what else people are bringing alongside the horrors before we can really disect this.

If it's going to be 10+ wound models we can still target them and that's what we should be focusing on. The brimstones are a cheap way to pile models on to objectives and get denial ( both movement and psychic) and Smite, but at the end of the day they still have to roll well to cast it at and they lose a model every time they attempt to cast.

The way I see us playing this is fairly standard, try and place objectives in places we can reach more easily than the horde and attempt to break a flank early. If they spread their units right across the table to deny movement, they're going to have units that are a complete non factor for several turns. Also, if they're taking 6+ units of these guys, we're probably going first. Which is good, because it gives our Ravagers, Voidravens and poison a turn of hitting the most important stuff we can reach before they get to hit us back.

The things that will hurt us will not be the brimstones at the end of the day, it will be whatevers behind that. It's probably worth investing in some kind of fairly solid anti horde unit in most lists right now IMO, because Tyranids, Orcs, infantry guard and these guys seems strong.

What options do they have for ranged weapons? If we can break a flank from the comfort of one corner, or atleast put some hurt on it and focus down the nastier stuff like Magnus early, what is the reply bar moving towards us? We need to see lists before we can really start theoryhammering with this in mind.

I like the crucible of malediction if there all psykers, back it up with some sprays and the razorwings templates

I'd multicharge with wyches/reavers/hellions. Wyches are better in this case (I'll use 2x10 squads in my lists, maybe 10 bloodbrides also), as they'd be wound on 6's and get a 4++ save and the 6+ fnp, which is better than the others. Aso, pistols in the shooting phase and No Escape. Meanwhile, the rest of the army can shoot lances and poison to the units behind.

Not perfect, but I'd give a fight.

amishprn86 wrote:

What are Brimstones rules? can they even cast and deny? literally what is the points of them.

Pink Horrors can only cast/deny with 1 dice, i cant see Brimstones doing something stronger.

If you read my post above you will see their rules. All the horrors are the same. 1 die to cast. One cast, one deny (not that that really matter for us...) and a cast by brimstone losses them a model. The model they measure the power from

Well 1 dice to roll a cast for deny even if you had 15 units of them, thats still only a few casts and a few denys.

We can use our guns to kill off those other units and quickly melee down the brimstones.

Im not scared about this list at all honestly. (Having played against Pink Horrors, the multi units of them only killed 1 5mna unit of mine over 5 turns).

The problem with the brimstones is not really how much they kill. They will kill something but not that much. About 3d3 mortal wounds each turn if everything can use a psychic power with 9 units (so some good maneuvring will make you suffer 2d3 or maybe even just 1d3 wounds).

The problem is that for just 200 pts he puts down 100 models with t3 and a 4++ on the table.
That means that he can just clutter objectives, protect nearly everything he wants from assault and barely wasted any points in doing so. Now we have less problems with this than most people since we can fly with a lot of our units. But it means that objectives are really hard to grab. Those 100 models also are quite nice to lock things in combat (fortunately again we have fly).

Yeah but htey are low LD also, PGL's and some damage could make many more die and force them to use Commander points faster.

All Eternal missions are end of game as well, so you have 5 (maybe 6-7) turns to deal with it.

IDK much about Maelstrom as we only been using Eternal for now.

But is stuff like this not very easy to stop as a tournament organizer if you put a limit on both points and power? Most of those increadible spam options come from the spam of units without upgrades. by putting a limit on the power points you automatically limit acces to things like this?

Its on limited by the size of the points. if you have 1k or 2k is doesnt matter.
At 1k they can still have many brimstones and some Flying Daemons.

But for tournament play meta's shift time to time and we might see lists like this, but then players will adapt and it no longer will work.