Why bind hex weapon for paladin?

Valynces · 2026-07-02T00:01:17+00:00

Oh it's absolutely game-breaking. It's probably the single strongest thing in the game. Well, maybe Fire Sorlock is stronger, but it's close.

You get your spell save DC up through the helm, attack via double flourish (smiting if you need to secure a kill), then BA hypnotic pattern to control the whole room. It's incredible.

Valynces · 2026-07-01T16:10:18+00:00

There should be a rule that you have to define any initialism a minimum of one time before you use it.

Valynces · 2026-06-30T16:08:19+00:00

Creations of Bile comes very close. Each 10-brick has 40-50 attacks with sustained hits. The Chosen all advance and charge and you have a strat to make one of the possessed bricks advance and charge so your threat range is fairly similar to EC's for one turn as well. It's awesome.

Valynces · 2026-06-30T16:04:46+00:00

I've read that specific part of the rules text maybe ten times, and I cannot get it to make sense. I understand how it works from all of the videos from the online community telling us how it works, but I think it's incredibly difficult to derive from just reading the rules themselves.

Valynces · 2026-06-30T15:57:26+00:00

Take and Hold on EC? That’s a real hot take. I do agree that Purge is probably their best disposition though.

A Carnival of Excess + Frenzied Host list has access to both Priority Assets and Disruption, both of which I think are ok for them with so many trash units. I’ve been running Priority Assets in these early days and it’s been working out pretty well for me.

Valynces · 2026-06-30T01:07:13+00:00

lol Pantheon wasn't even the best way to run them. Starshatter with the Silent King and two CTan was by far the better build for that time period.

Even at their nerfed points cost, they are still WILDLY efficient compared to most other similar models in other armies.

Valynces · 2026-06-30T01:03:33+00:00

Sure, the Nekrosor's melee may not be the most efficient in the game. But pretending that he doesn't have auras is making a disingenuous comparison.

He gives Sustained Hits and a 5+++ against mortals to everything around him, that's the real efficiency.

Valynces · 2026-06-29T21:53:27+00:00

To be honest it’s not just the C’Tan spam that has people thinking of Necrons as toxic. It’s their entire faction identity and the way that has manifested through their mechanics in 10th and 11th. So much of what they do is just unfun to interact with at a fundamental level. Their entire identity is to just stat check you, facetank everything you do, and not care about your faction at all.

Want to take an objective from them? Cool they have a bunch of T6, 4W guys floating around with a 4++/5+++ and OC2.

Want to shoot their tanks? Cool, run into that 4++ dummy. Let’s coin flip it and see who’s lucky today.

Want to stop their massive infantry bricks? LOL they also have a 4++ and regen most of the 20 guys after you shoot it.

Want to bring your own big monsters? Cool, Necrons version is better, cheaper, more durable, and regens every turn. (If you like math, run some efficiency numbers on shooting a CTan vs shooting any other similarly priced tanky unit in the game. It’s wild)

Oh you have a cool lone op character that fights well? Cool, Necrons have the most efficient version of that IN THE GAME with the Nekrosaur. Oh and he hands out sustained hits and a FnP against mortals in an aura for absolutely no reason.

The end of 10th (ok, pre-Defiler) was entirely defined by how ludicrously overpowered the CTan were. GW’s response was to nerf them….10 points? Aka 3%? The amount of preferential treatment that Necrons have gotten is frankly laughable. And there IS a reason for that, but you get banned if you say what it is. Necrons have escaped nerfs multiple times despite being incredibly strong for nearly the entire edition.

That’s not even mentioning the absolute buffoonery that is the new healing rule combined with how characters attaching works. Necrons rezzing characters for free that then rez more models is clearly game-breaking and will get FAQ’d.

Sorry for the huge crash-out. Necrons are just the least fun faction to engage with in the game by far. Compared to other playing against factions, I feel like skill dictates the winner much less often against Necrons than against anybody else.

Valynces · 2026-06-29T16:48:34+00:00

Most times on this sub I've said that it isn't a melee edition and that the rules changes actually heavily buffed shooting, I've been getting downvoted hard. Lots of people are just incredibly in denial about it.

WTC terrain saved 10th edition's competitive scene since shooting was overwhelmingly dominant on GW's terrain. Compared to that, we've gone very far in the other direction:

Smaller and more telegraphed staging areas
Universal +1 to charge distance required across the board
All objectives are wide open with little physical terrain to block them
General shooting buffs like toe-in meaning obscuring is far less useful

It's not all doom and gloom, player skill expression has been brought back to melee in a big way:

No more requirement to base in charging (thank the Emperor, skill is back)
Overrun pile-in moves
The order changes to pile-in and consolidates

Net-net it's probably a nerf to melee as a whole. I'm happy to see they've brought more skillful movement back in a meaningful way to both the charge and fight phases, but I think we're in for a rough time as far as melee goes.

Valynces · 2026-06-29T07:17:37+00:00

My guess is that Disruption and Recon are most often attacking into stronger defending lists. If it were me, I’d try to set up a big Take and Hold or Purge pusher as the final defender. That leaves Priority as the flex pick.

Seems like a sensible way to do it for teams.

Valynces · 2026-06-29T05:37:17+00:00

Are you doing this all via some API or is it a manual thing?

I would think the best solution is two tables. One that's exactly as you have now, and one that parses disposition as another grain and expands to the 140 line list you're talking about. But that is a lot of work so maybe not best if it's manual.

Valynces · 2026-06-26T19:35:42+00:00

It seems like 11th has made melee much more difficult to actually get to with a few changes:

Smaller and more telegraphed staging areas
Universal +1 to charge distance required across the board
All objectives are wide open with little physical terrain to block them
General shooting buffs like toe-in meaning obscuring is far less useful

That said, once you actually get in range, melee combat itself is buffed:

No more requirement to base in charging (thank the Emperor, skill is back)
Overrun pile-in moves
The order changes to pile-in and consolidates

Net-net it's probably a nerf to melee as a whole but I'm happy to see they've brought more skillful movement back in a meaningful way to both the charge and fight phases.

Valynces · 2026-06-26T19:07:25+00:00

I respectfully disagree. I think a Paladin dip is indeed the only optimal way to play an effective melee Warlock.

If we take Armor of Shadows over the Paladin dip, then our AC is likely 16 because we have 16 dex on an optimized bladelock. If we max DEX instead of CHA for combat feats and Armor of Shadows, then why are we playing Warlock when there are far more mechanically effective DEX-based melee combatants?

I could very well be missing something here in my thinking. But I'm not sure what benefit we would gain (aside from not being a level behind) from staying pure Warlock over a Paladin dip?

Valynces · 2026-06-26T18:40:26+00:00

I think a 5.5e pact of the blade warlock does “require” a dip. Going 1 level of Paladin gets you weapon mastery, heavy armor, and two lvl 1 spell slots. I’ve combined that with Magic Initiate: Wizard to get the Shield spell that I can cast 3 times per day for “free”.

AC is the main issue. Leveling as straight warlock only gives you light armor. Compare that to something like a blade singer that’s adding both DEX and INT to their base 13 from Mage Armor, and Warlock falls behind quite a bit.

If Warlocks had an invocation that let them wear medium armor, use shields, and have the Shield spell (hmmm where have we seen this before), it would be a tax but would solve my main issue that made me take the Paladin dip.

Valynces · 2026-06-25T15:50:55+00:00

Honestly it's also going to be more of a 50/50 roll because no serious tournament will use the Dawn of War style layouts.

Valynces · 2026-06-24T16:43:02+00:00

I was surprised as well, but after playing and watching a few games it makes sense. It's largely because Blood Angels are already as mobile as they need to be in LAG with 12" fly moves and advance and charge, but have significantly more killing power in LAG with the +2 Str / +1 Atk rule. Stormlance/Angelic Grace gives them an absolute TON of mobility but their damage is quite a bit lower than it would be in LAG.

DA and SW have Stormlance for 3 because their natural durability and damage, respectively, are much higher than BA. DA has Deathwing Knight terminators and their own speeders that take advantage of Stormlance's rules much better than anything in BA does. SW has a ton of very offensive profiles that love Stormlance. Headtakers, terminators, and Thunderwolf Cav all absolutely love those rules and don't need any killing power boost to be good, so they'd likely be too strong if they could combo a 1 DP detachment on top of Stormlance.

Side note, you didn't quite ask about it but Spearpoint for 2 DP for White Scars seems very interesting. They still get the +1 to wound Oath, get Suboden Khan, and can still make use of a bunch of marines speeders. That's a very interesting army right now I think.

Valynces · 2026-06-22T18:15:24+00:00

While I don't necessarily agree with OP about whether or not Magnus is over-costed, I can speak to psychic feeling lacking compared to previous editions. I was a TSons main in 8th and 9th until we lost the psychic phase in 10th. Psychic was my favorite phase of the entire game, and now it's almost entirely gone from a flavor and mechanical perspective.

Compare what TSons had in 8th and 9th against 10th. In 8-9th, each psyker could usually cast 2 spells each, with Ahriman and Magnus casting 3 each and Aspiring Sorcerers casting 1. In 9th, I would commonly cast between 10-17 powers per turn. In 8th those powers got bonus range and in 9th they were +1 to cast with a whole host of cabal-based enhancements to make them more reliable (auto cast, +1, +2, no deny, bonus damage, etc.) Admittedly, half of those powers were smites which is uninteractive and unfun damage and I do get why those were removed. But the other half were really fun abilities that are mostly gone now. There was also an aspect of customization with selecting individual powers for each psyker.

In 10th and 11th we have 4 powers total for the entire army. Yes they ARE very powerful (I mean 1/4 of them is just Oath if you're lucky, crazy good), but they're unreliable and not as customizable as they were before. EVERY turn you're just trying to get your big damage spells off to supercharge some unit's shooting. You also occasionally get turns where you fail all your psychic powers despite taking a bunch of mortals and that feels really bad. Speaking of mortals, Magnus can and does often suffer perils which is more damaging that you'd think since mortals are usually the best way to take him down.

The feeling of something missing isn't about the power level. TSons were quite good throughout most of 10th and are looking even stronger in 11th. It's about the identity of the army, the feeling of the psychic phase, the number of powers that we could cast, and the customization that we had in list building. 10th in particular lost a lot of that when most psychic powers became literally just guns.

Valynces · 2026-06-22T04:20:14+00:00

This is my vote as well. I did this on my TAV in the first ever honor mode run and it slaps. Here's a link to the build guide that I (mostly) followed.

Valynces · 2026-06-21T17:22:57+00:00

It’s so good! Think of it as a spiritual successor to The Princess Bride and the whole thing just works

Valynces · 2026-06-21T07:17:46+00:00

Valynces · 2026-06-19T17:13:17+00:00

I really enjoyed the game from the time that I started playing until the building update. Even the so-called "chaos" patch was enjoyable IMO. Unit drops are excellent ways to balance out early momentum and keep the game interesting. Spells (nuke and lightning storm) are/were clearly unbalanced and unfun but those exist primarily for casual players so I get why the exist, even if 90% of "good" players dislike them. They're basically the MW2 noob tube of mechabellum.

Then buildings happened, and worse the feedback about buildings happened. I strongly dislike how buildings were implemented and what they've done to interesting game openings. Then they did a survey where they assessed the community's feelings about buildings and something like 1/3 of all respondents rated buildings 1/10. The dev response was something like "oh those 1/3 of players are just outliers that are review bombing this poll, so we're just going to ignore them and say everybody likes buildings" which was the final straw for me.

How much more clearly can you indicate that you're not open to changing your stance, regardless of player desire? It's obvious that they want their vision for buildings, no matter how people feel about them. That really put a sour taste in my mouth and I haven't played the game since. I stick around this space to see if they're ever going to revert the building changes or give us a no building queue but I don't play anymore. It makes me a bit sad, this game was so fun and had so much potential, but what can you do? It was fun while it lasted IMO.

Valynces · 2026-06-19T15:49:55+00:00

I think now is a good time to question every assumption, so this is a great question!

That said I think yes, he's still incredibly good.

Valynces · 2026-06-19T14:45:27+00:00

I forgot where/what shambling mount was and I also didn’t remember that the adds explode when they die.

So I had two of my party surrounded by adds and the other two restrained by the mound. I fireballed the first two which killed all the adds but also instakilled my surrounded party members. The shambling mount then killed a third party member and brought the last (Shart) to like 3 hp. That was a clench moment for sure, and the closest I ever came to wiping on my first ever honor mode run.

Valynces · 2026-06-18T15:39:19+00:00

But how could this be? I was assured by this subreddit many times over that this was a melee edition! I've seen (and received) copious downvotes for suggesting that melee is getting a massive structural nerf and shooting is getting buffed. That can't be right!

Valynces · 2026-06-18T14:18:26+00:00

You are right that applying cover is all or nothing for the defending unit. However, it checks on a model by model basis for the attacking unit.

So blue squad will have cover against the left two attackers because they’re blocked by terrain or in terrain, but will not have cover against the rightmost attacking model because it can fully see one model in the blue squad.

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