Good reads, as always!
The Faction Diversity post was surprising. I’ve been running some unisual armies it seems! I think my experiences track with their lack of popularity in competitive play though.
- KoM is a gateway army, and the basis for most other factions and lists. Probably not going to be seen on the top tables.
- Abyssals relies a lot on Regeneration, whoch can be fickle, and not something you want to rely on in competitative play!
- Herd has been funky to pilot. Pathfinder is nice, but very dependant on the table terrian, plus you pay a heck of a premium for it. They could do with some more hammers… but i can see why the RC might want them undertuned, as Pathfinder can be quite powerful, as shown by the items post.
My hypothosis on the Blade would be that it is linked to rising popularity of all these monster-sized heroes, and that their usual 5 base attacks is rough. Most have cs2 or similar, so the bigger hurdle is to hit. With the Blade being 5 points, it’s an easy pickup at the end of list building.
Fascinating to see the items not taken. I like the Varangur’s little flying Magnilde, and would have expected some lists to run the Wings of Honeymaze, like on a Dwarf Lord or Undead Pharoh or something, to fly up, hunt war machines, ground fliers, or just get in the way of things. Seems like the meta has shifted quite hard to scoring heroes since last year.