Raze and Ruin - Comp Preview Part 6

I'm back!

I had a great time on holiday, but all the time I was receiving feedback to the comp I had presented in the previous posts. Lots of people got in touch, and I'd like to extend my thanks to everyone who did. It's a real help to be able to hear from people who play these armies on the comp I'd written. In particular, I'd like to thank Jake Corteen, Terry Pike, Shahrul Azmi, Graeme Nicholls and everyone on the TWF thread for their input!

Going over this, I've made a few changes to what was presented in those earlier posts. The plan here is to go through them to explain why they were added/removed/changed, and to give everyone a little more time to test them for me! The final pack will be released next Friday, and I'll put the final version of the comp on here so it is available for all who have been following this to see.

Generic Comp

The changes here were to streamline some things that appeared in multiple armies. A lot of the time it seemed like Death and Life were being hit, and also in two cases Light spam was targeted for comp. As these spells are universal, it made more sense to put them in the generic comp rather than waste lines repeating myself. So, the following two lines were added:

-1 per character who knows 3 or more spells from the Lore of Death or the Lore of Life.  Special Characters are exempt from this.

-1 per spellcaster who knows spells from the Lore of Light after the second.

I also made a change to the race-specific magic item line. The bit about Runic Weapons in the clarifications got me wondering about the Dwarven Heirlooms, as I thought they should count for this. When I looked at them though, there was only the Standard that was over 75 points. I then started looking in other books, and a lot of the more expensive items wouldn't count for this bonus. I was going to bring it down to any item over 50 points, but then I saw that the Book of Hoeth would get a bonus at that level. I have compromised though, and the line now reads:

+2 if your army includes a race-specific magic item that costs 60 points or more (note that Exalted Gifts from the Daemons of Chaos army book and Runic Items from the Dwarfs army book do not count, though Dwarf Ancestral Heirlooms do count)

That's it for the Generic Comp changes, now onto the Army Specific changes. I'm going to just do a list of these for each race under the following headings - Added, Removed, Changed. Then I may add some commentary for some, but may not for others. Here we go!

Beastmen

Added: +1 per unit of 8+ Razorgor

Bretonnia

Changed: +2 per Grail Reliquae

Chaos Dwarfs

No change

Daemons of Chaos

Added: +1 per Keeper of Secrets

Removed: -1 per Level 3 or 4 Wizard

Changed: +3 if your army consists solely of units/characters of 1 Chaos God (note that this means you may not have any unmarked units)

Dark Elves

Added: +1 per Manticore

Removed: -1 per Supreme Sorceress on Death

-1 per character mounted on a Dark Steed after the 1st

Changed: -1 per character mounted on a Cold One, Dark Steed or Pegasus after the 2nd (includes Morathi)

-1 per unit of 9+ Cold One Knights

Dwarfs

No change

The Empire

Added: +1 per unit of Outriders

+1 per Hellstorm Rocket Battery

Removed: -1 per Wizard/Wizard Lord with Lore of Light after the 2nd

Changed: +2 per Wizard Lord on a Griffin
+2 per Wizard Lord on a Luminark of Hysh
+2 per Wizard Lord on a Celestial Hurricanum 

High Elves

Added: -1 for each character mounted on an Elven Steed after the 2nd

-1 if you have no Core Infantry in your army

-1 for each 9+ Dragon Prince unit

-1 for each Ellyrian Reaver unit after the 3rd

Changed: -1 for the first Frostheart Phoenix, -2 for each additional Frostheart Phoenix

-1 for Book of Hoeth

Lizardmen

Added: -1 per unit of Chameleon Skinks after the 1st

+1 per unit of 4+ Jungle Swarms

Removed: -1 per Slann on Lore of Death or Life

Changed: +1 per 9 Cold One Rider unit

+1 per Slann with Lore of Fire, Lore of Beasts or Lore of High Magic (including Focus of Mystery)

Ogre Kingdoms

Changed: -1 per Ironblaster, -4 if you have 2 Ironblasters

Orcs & Goblins

Added: +1 per unit of 20+ Black Orcs

Skaven

Added: -1 per 30+ Skaven Slaves unit after the first

-1 per Warlock Engineer after the 3rd

Removed: -1 if the number of Slave units in your army is higher than the total number of Clanrat, Stormvermin or Plague Monk units in your army. (For example, an army containing 2 Slave units, 1 Clanrat unit, 1 Stormvermin unit and 1 Plague Monk unit would not incur a penalty)

Changed: -1 per unit of Giant Rats with less than 10 models after the first
-1 per unit of Rat Swarms with less than 3 swarms after the first

-1 per unit of Gutter Runners after the first

-1 for 1 Warp Lightning Cannon, -4 for 2 Warp Lightning Cannons
-1 for 1 Hell Pit Abomination, -4 for 2 Hell Pit Abominations

Tomb Kings

Added: +1 for a character mounted on a War Sphynx
Removed: -1 per Liche High Priest/Priest with Lore of Light after the first

Vampire Counts

Added: -1 per Ethereal character
Removed: -1 per Banshee Character
-1 Ogre Blade
Changed: +2 per Abyssal Terror
+2 per Coven Throne

Warriors of Chaos

 Added: -1 per Disc of Tzeentch in the army
-1 per Hellcannon

Changed: -1 per unit with the Mark of Nurgle, excluding Marauders
+1 if your entire army consists of units/characters with the same Mark (not including Undivided)
Note that anything that does not have a Mark of Chaos, or an option for one, can all be included in such an army without costing it this bonus.

Wood Elves

 Added: -1 Spellweaver on the Lore of Shadow
-1 for each Glade Rider unit after the 3rd

+1 per Unicorn

+1 per Great Stag

Removed: -1 Spellweaver on the Lore of Death

-1 Acorn of the Ages

Changed: -1 for each character mounted on an Elven Steed after the 2nd
-1 for more than 40 models with an arrow from the following list:
      Trueflight arrows, Hagbane tips
This is increased to -2 for more than 60 models, -3 for more than 80 models, -4 for more than 100 models etc...

-1 for each unit of 9+ Sisters of the Thorn

+1 per Branchwraith (up to +2)

OK, hopefully that all made sense! :-)

In general it was the Elf armies that had the most changes made to them. A few people that got in touch suggested that the High and Dark varieties were undercomped, and that the Wood ones were overcomped. I sort of expected the second, as I've not played against them yet and was hoping to hear feedback on this before setting it in stone. I also looked at the three Elven armies together, and tried to put them on as even a footing as I could. Hence they are all hit for their Fast Cav, they are all hit for their Cavalry used to form a bus and they are all hit for excessive numbers of mounted characters. I know that they all play differently, but there are so many similarities between the Elf armies that it made a kind of sense to keep the comp similar too.

For the others, it was mostly adding more positives and tweaking the odd bit of language to comp what i wanted to hit rather than something else. There were some negatives added to some armies, Skaven particularly, and I think this is a case of me trying to do too much in too short a space of time as there were some obvious things that had been missed off before.

I'll leave this by reitterating that the comp will not be finalized before the pack is released next week, so if you feel that anything here is wrong, or that I've missed something out of this second draft, please let me know. My contact details are all in the previous post.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts!