Welcome to the Theme Age

I honestly hope that we do get another theme or two. With steamroller as it is, PoD is not the powerhouse it once was, as you now have to bring infantry to score round zones but it doesn't have any good infantry available outside of minions.

Kriel Company is also a bit of a joke, no melee units/beasts leaves it incredibly vulnerable to 2-3 heavies if you can't shoot them down at range.

I would like to see changes to Kriel Company allowing more combined arms, than just all the guns as our gunlines just aren't strong enough to be competitive in top tier play.

PoD probably also needs a rework as just beasts struggle to contest and score scenario elements.

More combined arms themes would also be good.

Agreed, there is a lot of variation in both SoTN and BOH that allows for strong list builds. Also what may work for one person may not work for others depending on playstyle and local opponents.

Not sure where a 5th theme would slot in, to be honest. PoD is armor skew, SotN is the closest Trolls come to DEF skew, BoH is obviously infantry horde, KC is the gunline theme.

So really I feel like that leaves another sub-faction theme, like SotN or something goofy, since I'm not seeing a tactical theme.

For something goofy, and more of a "pure" theme. Maybe raiding party? Everything (or several things gain ambush) Light trolls only, Scouts, Pygs, battle engines. I realize this sucks tactically, but I'm just spitballing.

Honestly, I don't know.

Rather than expanding the themes, which I suspect are going to be fixed for some time, I would rather expect more models added to them over time.

An "irregulars style" theme would instantly invalidate all other themes. The reason it works in mercs is that they are built much more like sub factions than any other faction. Operating theater sees play cause that is the only place you are allowed to play cephalyx. Kingmaker sees play cause you are allowed to play trenchers there. Laelease sees play cause you are allowed to bring other factions there too but with other casters than kingmakers. Dwarf theme sees play cause it turns out that Ossrum pretty much only needs dwarfs and the theme bonuses are strong.

The pirate theme does NOT see play cause it can basically be replicated better in Irregulars. IF some one plays it is is because ambush is a powerful theme benefit, and they were going to play Shae.


Our themes have weak benefits in and of themselves in general. KC is probably the strongest one, but that has the worst selection of models so we hate it. If you implemented a theme where we could get FIVE free things just from playing the things we wanted, you would instantly invalidate PoD. SotN has weak benefits and you might as well play NK models in "iregutrolls" right? More free stuff!. BoH has a pretty strong benefit in RFP, but that list would be way better if i were allowed to bring a unit of scatter gunners. Also, 2 more free solos? yes please! And KC? you think we would keep trying to play around the insane restrictions if we could just bring WWs in "irregutrolls"? Nope! Even if it works like Irregulars and you actually do not get free stuff for bringing battle engines, you can still easily get 3 free things and double WWs, so...

Irregulars is just that: an irregular theme. No one else will get it, so stop asking



As for what we need theme wise? It is obvious. We need a KC that actually works.
1) remove the SotN options (except lookouts) so the theme actually becomes thematic.
2) Lift the warbeast restrictions
3) Do something about Boomhowlers. SPD 6 and i will stop complaining, but it would be nice if they were actually a GOOD unit.
4) Make Blitzers cost 14 points.

Tadaa! Now we have a thematic list revolving around gun-toting trolls. We have a decent melee unit in the bomhowlers and we might even put the blitzer on the table. Maybe. We can bring a Mauler to allow the other beasts to punch hard when needed. If you have 28 or more WB points you could play Mauler double Blitzer, or Mauler, Bomber Axer in your BG and still get 3 free solos. Who knows? We even might use the atrillery for one of those three options... Probably not, but still...

Not even with Janissa. Ragnor does not have magic ability so he cant make use of battle wizard. He gets the ability, but it has no function...

I don't follow the fluff carefully, but didn't Madrak take most of the trollkin across the sea? I've got it stuck in my head that our next theme will be island/sailor trolls. A tropical theme, basically.

I agree with pretty much everything you have mentioned above. Northkin units being allowed in the theme really detracts from the whole militarized theme and should really be removed even though they are the strongest units allowed. I hope that if PP chooses this route that they actually decide to do a rework of most of the ranged units as they really do strugle to get much work done through a combination of low RNG/RAT/POW and survivability and Burrowers and Scouts definitely need to be reworked to make them viable choices.

The warbeast restrictions need to be removed for sure. Low POW guns with no meaningful way to crack ARM is just crap and its this restriction that tends to break the themes back the most.

Boomhowlers need to be reworked as well, at the moment they are completely overshadowed by Raiders who are cheaper and acrually do work.

Blitzers need to be cheaper, sure they can put out a lot of attacks, but they are still only P+S 15 and d3 shots is just terrible, make it d3+1, I could live with that.

Lastly the free options in this theme are pretty bad, the Runebearer is the only one worth taking. The Fell Caller is pretty useless in a ranged theme and Braylen never seems to get work done and seems to die way too easily compared to ranged solos in other factions. The artillery is also a bit of a joke. The Thumper needs AD and at least RNG14 for it to have any effect on the game, SPD2 and normal deployment with RNG12 is just useless. The Pummeler is okay but could still really benefit from AD as it is also pretty slow.

What gets me most about the free models is how few viable options there really are, we need a couple more solos to really open up list design a bit.