The Meta is Dead, Long Live the Meta

So next week, Tiberius will have a much more thorough, well-reasoned, dispassionate summary of the latest FAQs and Erratas that dropped on Thursday. 

But while you're waiting, allow me to be dis-dispassionate and express what we're all feeling:

Photo Credit: tenor.com (and The Wizard of Oz, of course)

So I have slightly mixed feelings about some of the changes that were made to a few popular lists (well, okay... one very popular ally choice). But overall, I'm like the rest of you: all my very thematic list ideas are overjoyed tonight that another round of power-creep fad lists have been restored to their proper place: history (or at least the niche pile).

In no-particular-order-of-overjoyness:

No more Lake-Town Spam (well, allied at least)

Like most of you, when I first read The Armies of the Hobbit, I took a look at the Army of Lake-Town, thought "man, that's boring," and kept right on reading. Then, like you, one day I was looking around for something cheap and decent to ally into something very large and cool and expensive (it's usually some sort of list with Gwaihir, isn't it?), and thought "hey, this is a VERY cheap way to get 50+ dudes who aren't complete duds in combat." And then I (like you, maybe) took them to a tournament, felt kind of guilty about it, and then forgot the guilt after kicking other people's butts with them.

Well, no more. At least mostly.

So the Master of Lake-Town (a 50-point Hero of Valor who made the whole thing work) now has a new rule thanks to the latest errata (p. 5). Basically, he has to be the leader of your army if he's in your army (think Denethor, only this time it's punitive) and if your alliance is Yellow or Red, he also counts as a Hero of Fortitude, which means you can't ally with just him in your force (because Yellow/Red alliances require both factions to have a Hero of Valor or higher). Which means that the only way you can ally Lake-Town into anything that's Yellow or Red is... with Bard (who counts as a Hero of Valor in the Army of Lake-Town list).  

So here's the thing about Bard: he's perfectly fine as a hero. Fine. Not "great." Yes, he's got 3s in all the right places, and yes he's good at shooting with his great bow, and yes he can take a horse. But he's remarkably fragile (base D4, D5 with armor) and his base cost is really high (140 without any upgrades) and a huge reason why his base cost is so high (Savior of Lake-Town) doesn't actually help anything in the Army of Lake-Town list (no Lake-Town Captains or Militia) unless you bring one or more his kids along... which actually increases your points investment to over 200 (without upgrades). Oh, and Braga hates him (which is exactly what you want in an army where you're paying 150-200 points for a hero who isn't even your leader).

Is the change bad? Probably not. Does it bring about the end of "cheese" lists featuring the Army of Lake-Town plus whatever? I expect it does.

But at least I got my win first, eh Tiberius?

A (better) experience against ballistae

We have a relatively small (and mostly pretty vibrant) gaming group here at TMAT. Our tournaments usually run between 6-10 players, most of us have been playing a long time but aren't overly competitive (or at least we try not to be, most of the time... sorry Dronak about our last game), and we tend to have a lot of players who cycle through trying different army lists with relatively few repeats. Anyway, that's my long-winded way of saying that there's not really a "meta" on our scene... but even our scene's been infiltrated recently by the Assault on Helm's Deep Legendary Legion.

As any of you who've played against this legion know, it's good. Uruk-Hai are rock-solid, the expanded warband sizes for the captains allow you to get very good numbers, and the access to crossbows, pikes, and berserkers means you can build a lot of threats into your list. But the key reasons to take this legion over vanilla Isengard have always been (primarily) the buffs to siege weapons.

Well, now both of those buffs have been nerfed.

The Bomb Team was nerfed a couple of iterations ago, when they clarified that you had to drop the bomb in contact with both carriers, couldn't place it overlapping a model's base, and couldn't detonate it unless there's at least two enemy models (or an enemy siege target) in range of the blast. Now, the ballista has followed suit (p. 2). It's a relatively minor nerf (instead of rerolling all to-hit and to-scatter rolls, you can now only reroll to-hit and scatter rolls of "1"), and as Red Jacket commented to me, it's still nice to have those rerolls to take care of a fail (in Scatter's case, the only "fail"). But it definitely reduces the odds that one will hit (from approximately 75% to around 56%--Tiberius will have the actual math), and will make those 6s on Scatter rolls more difficult to come by. I still expect you'll still see a pair of them in every Assault legion, but you may not see three (perhaps demo teams will make more of a comeback). Whether or not it'll make the legion as a whole less popular remains to be seen (though I suspect not).

So Fly on a Monster is now... bad?

So until Thursday, there was absolutely no question that flying monsters were amazing. Yes, they're expensive. And most of them are fragile (Gwaihir notwithstanding). And Hurl isn't what it used to be. But even so: the ability to fly "over the top" of an enemy's formation, to threaten (if not take out) a priority target is really good in a game where, for the most part, you can't move past/ through enemy models (or their 1" control zones).

But there was always... the "hopping" thing.

So every six months or so, someone on one of the facebook pages would ask the question, "So, this flying monster... I get that it can fly when it moves. But if it hasn't moved yet, is it considered on the ground (so, like, guys on the ground in front of it count as in-the-way for shooting attacks)? Or is it up in the air (in which case, there's model-for-advantage concerns)?" And it was a fair question. And no one ever could agree on the answer. And of course the rules didn't tell us. Oh... and there were debates about the two Witch-King models (the one standing on its tail vs. the one that wasn't, and whether that made a difference).

Well, no more. Because now, "if you have a War Beast or a Monster with the Fly special rule" (which I assumes means "if you have (1) a Monster with Fly, or (2) a War Beast, and not (3) we're getting a future War Beast with Fly), the only models that count as in-the-way (friend or foe) are (1) War Beasts, (2) Monsters, (3) Siege Engines, or (4) models who are engaged in a fight with an aforementioned "War Beast or a Monster with the Fly special rule."

In other words, if you have a monster with Fly (we're looking at you, Gully), better find a rock or a tree or something real to hide behind, because six ranks of Orcs won't do jack now.

(On second thought, a Cave Troll would. Guess I gotta build a couple Cave Trolls into my Gulavhar lists moving forward...)

A (perfectly balanced) mix of Orcs and Goblins (...and maybe some tough hero choices)

So I have not played the Assault on Lothlorien legion in an actual tournament setting (and to be fair, when I played it I was using an army with 6 Castellans, so I wasn't too afraid of it), but I'll be honest: when the memes started to circulate on the GBHL about this legion being dead like poor Ori in Balin's tomb, I was a bit puzzled. Like, I know that people ran this list with lots of goblins, and now an errata clarifies that you have to take Muzgur as the leader (who I mistakenly thought already had to be the leader--shows you how little experience I have with this list), and that you have to have the same number of orcs as goblins in the list. But I guess I didn't realize that people were really spamming goblins, with just a handful of orcs (or perhaps no orcs? Again, I'm not really sure).

Anyway, those are both set in stone now (p. 7).

Unsurprisingly, I'm not sure exactly what this will do to the list moving forward. Yes, goblins are cheaper than orcs, but only by 1 point. They don't shoot any better than orcs do (both 5+ shoot, both S2 projectile, both 18" range), although I guess you're potentially losing 6" of range since goblins have Cave Dweller and orcs don't. And I guess having more Orcs means you have more models susceptible to bowfire (because again, Orcs don't have Cave Dweller). What I am curious about is how this will affect the hero suite in the game. I suspect Muzgur and Druzhag will still be the first two heroes taken. But was Ashrak a thing before? If he was, will he still be? If he still be, does that change the equation much (given that his warband was--I assume--filled with at least some spiders instead of all goblins)?

Eh, I have no idea. And I really don't care, because this list hasn't made our meta yet. But if you do, please set me straight (and I'll try to care).

So what's next?

Speaking of memes, I've seen a decent number about the Dragon Emperor and his legendary legion today (to the effect that they're the new top dog when it comes to legendary legions). I'm not a prophet by any means. And I certainly don't have any pull with GW (otherwise we'd have a completely re-vamped Rangers faction by now... which would be totally awesome and not at all broken, by the way). And as the father of a devoted Easterling player who's having the time of his life right now (well, okay, not "right now," as he's actually on GBHL soil atm with his mum... who must never learn that I referred to her as his "mum"), I'm very happy that he's got a way to play Easterlings that's very competitive right now.

But be warned... 

The last time the FAQs came out, the major question was: really? Nothing for Assault on Lothlorien? After all, GW's approach had been to break out the nerf bat pretty quickly after a release (remember when the Vanquishers of the Necromancer were making podiums at tournaments? That... went away). But if the bat is now coming out a couple of cycles later...

I guess the moral of the story is that nothing is safe. Or perhaps that if a list wins enough and people complain about it, things will change.

So does anyone have a petition they want signed?*

*Hey, hey, I'm joking... mostly... 'cuz I'm a lot like you.