With the rules and units now available thanks to honest gamer lets discuss how to make them as competitive as possible in AoS.
Honest gamer video
Some resources i made from the video
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I like the looks of a WW1 style Zharr Vyxa force:
Castration battery
Fire you worms
Scroll of petrification
Helsmiths: slow enemies with hateful fractures (spell) and increase artillery range in turn 1-2.
Tormentor bombards &/ Death streker rockets: to deal the damage and gets the deamon points when the deamonsmith doesnt need them to increase the damage.
Hobgrots:
Use their pregame move to gain board control and screen. They cam despoil ground for more Deamon points.
For the last slot i think Infernal razors with Blunderbusses to make up for the slow movement.
Thoughts?
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First of all I just wanna post this here as a resource for people to look at.
Courtesy of Kraile over on reddit, this is a breakdown of the average damage our units have versus a 4+ save target while having 3 DPP.
As for my own thoughts, as others are pointing out everywhere I think there are three standout units in our army that have incredibly strong rules. Those being the Bull Centaurs, Infernal Razers with Blunderbusses & Urak Tarr. The former two because of their ability to deal damage, and Urak for his ability to shift around DPP in the enemy hero phase - while still being a very good piece.
These three units even work together, swapping Urak* with a Daemon smith on Taurus gives Bull Centaurs the ability to charge & retreat (letting them cycle charge to trigger their mortal wounds ability over and over), and the Blunderbusses can soften up a target for the Centaurs, giving their target ASL for the Centaurs to engage more safely. It is notable that the Bull Centaurs (who are the stars of the show) only have a 4+ save, which makes things like ASL quite valuable.
If you just want maximum power I think your list will be built around these three units, in the Bullfather’s Horns Battle Formation.
Honorable mention to the Hobgrot Vandalz, as I think these will be mandatory no matter what army you play.
My general observations:
I find our prayers to be absolutely incredible, but limited by 12” & 18” ranges on our footslogger Ashen Elder. Units like Anointed Sentinels can’t be used aggressively to bait charges if they want to benefit from prayers like Furnace Blessing, unless the enemy is doing early rushes or alpha striking us.
A potentially hilarious benefactor of that prayer would be a reinforced unit of Hobgrot Vandalz getting an extra attack from a Despot. Though they would never be in range to attack with everything, surely (it would be 20 mortal wounds on average, lmao).
EDIT: It seems like a minimum sized unit of Hobgrots is 10, despite them coming in a box of 20? If that is true, what I suggested is impossible.
Thinking about the Daemonsmith Cabal Battle Formation - the most value I see in it is with aggressive armies vs the Elder, or high armor values vs a Daemonsmith on a Taurus & Molten Metal. This means the value of this Battle Formation differs significantly on your local meta.
Hashutite Host I find fairly underwhelming, though it’s important to note I haven’t played an army with this much infantry before (I played KO).
Castigation Battery I think can be fairly useful, and Bullfather’s Horns is obviously amazing if you are running anything beyond a single unreinforced unit of bulls.
Dominator Engines is a really strange unit I haven’t really digested the potential of yet. It is a warmachine, so it benefits from the Daemonsmith on foot’s healing, and from the Castigation Battery. In general I think it is a roadblock (with that 2+ save) an opponent can’t ignore. It also potentially really helps out our Ashen Elder to survive if you chose the Servile Automaton trait.
I guess you could potentially run it with maces and make it the bodyguard of a Taurus mounted Daemonsmith, and then go hunt big hero minis with it? The average damage breakdown places it as better than a treelord with 3DPP, but worse than Durthu. It’s a strangely versatile roadblock.
I could continue to waffle on about my thoughts, but it would end up making this post overly unorganized and unhelpful.
Points costs might drastically change what ends up being viable or not, so I am really looking forward to seeing those. As it is, things like Anointed Sentinels should be significantly lower points than Bull Centaurs for example, but knowing GW I sincerely doubt they will be.
Hope they prove me wrong!
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Thank you very much for the amazing comment, im a newbie to aos and only a few games in using my maggotkin so this is extremely helpful thank you.
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Fantastic post. I’m not a gamer at all so it’s really useful to get breakdowns and thoughts like this.
Also, what do you think of the points, I think they are out now?..
Found this
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Great stuff, been looking all over for the mounted helsmith points. Thank you very much
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Hope it helps,
I got it from The Honest Warhammer YouTube post, he’s been right with the other stuff he’s posted so there should be some weight behind them 
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I had to edit my mega post, as I got one rule wrong, and some new info has come out!
Urak Tarr doesn’t have the rule to give Bull Centaurs (& Anointed Sentinels) Retreat & Charge, only the Daemonsmith has that.
The new word on the grapevine is that Hobgrots are sold in boxes of 20, but taken in units of 10! If that is true you wouldn’t be able to give them that many attacks as I wrote for mortal wounds fishing.
@GhraskDragh I saw these! Apparently there is some credence to them being real (from multiple sources), and it seems like they might have been the final points values some play testers used.
Supposed sources
Some French Wargaming studio, Goonhammer & The Honest Wargamer. I haven’t double checked this.
Most of these points would be absolutely fantastic, but Bull Centaurs and Urak Tarr are honestly quite undercosted for what they do. I can already smell the nerfs coming for these units.
The mounted Daemonsmith, Blunderbusses, Mace Dominator & Hobgoblins are absolute steals at these points values too. I hope those don’t change much.
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they only thing i don’t like about the blunderbusses is that they come in a box of 5 instead of 10 (one unit) unlike the hobgrots who come in a box of 20 (2 units). Other than that, i am definitely grabbing both hobgrtos and blunderbusses for my list
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@TorcaAce
Infernal Razer’s with blunderbusses are one unit of 5 for 110 points! They never release boxes that are under minimum unit strength.
If you mean to say you would never take them unreinforced I could see that because you want to stack DPP on them for the rend. But MSU of 5 will still do some good work IMO.
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i meant that i’d like to see them reinforced just like how the hobgrot box essentially gives you a reinforced unit of 20 in only one box. It would be money saving for my limited budget i think
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AOS right now is a game of Hammers, cant score if your dead mentality is doing well, so I think the 3 reinforced units for centaurs and a taurus will do well, until the bulls pick up a predictable 20p increase. I think our army is one of the slowest in the game. we are as slow as fire slayers with out the options to teleport. strong secure front line with a counter punch. I am still unsure what battle tactics we will go with but I don’t think we can reliably take scouting or intercept.
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I coudn’t test the Helsmiths, but I got some of my friends already testing them (they are a bit competitive here).
The Bull Centaurs are crazy strong, we have a 350 players tournaments here that I expect A LOT of Bull Centaurs ramping on the tables. That would make screens really good again (yep, we need that role back in to the game).
But I think that I’m going for a castle-formation with just 1 unit of Bull Centaurs (I want to use the Annointed, but there is no point without a unit with 2” coherence range…). The damage of an artillery list is really good too, I can see some team tournaments (aka AoS Worlds) with a specialized players bombing from far away with a bunch of ward 5++ infantry taking the hits.
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Had more first game today, Desolators, both kinds have failed to impress, only reliable damage in the list looks to be both flavours of centaurs, The artillery is nice but if you not playing flying or monsters then any opponent that has managed to read this GHB terrain rules will cut that right down. The base infantry units failed to do much bar die slowly on objectives. I think B+ army really. so a good place but not broken, ( centaur spam does look like its going to be problematic)
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Going to play a Tourney at sunday this week end thinking of playing this :
Tourney list 1990/2000 pts Helsmiths of Hashut
Daemonsmith Cabal
Drops: 3 Spell Lore - Lore of Infernal Power Prayer Lore - Prayers of the Scorched Sect
Manifestation Lore - Primal Energy (20 Points)
General’s Regiment Urak Taar, the First Daemonsmith (350)
• General Bull Centaurs (380) • Reinforced
Deathshrieker Rocket Battery (140)
Infernal Razers with Blunderbusses (220) • Reinforced
Regiment 1
Ashen Elder (120) • Servile Automaton • Scroll of Petrification
Hobgrotz Vandalz (70)
Infernal Cohort with Hashutite Spears (100)
Infernal Cohort with Hashutite Spears (100)
Regiment 2
Daemonsmith (110)
Dominator Engine with Immolation Cannons (190)
Dominator Engine with Immolation Cannons (190)
Created with Warhammer Age of Sigmar: The App
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I think you are going to end up 10 points over as the points in the app for the infernal cohort is wrong at 100 it should be 110. my only other real comment is that in my experience immolation cannons are not a cost effective unit, they are fun and I am always tempted to run one but running 2 is a lot of points that may well not return that investment. personally I would be tempted to take a bombard and a mace Dominator see if that will free up enough points to reinforce a spear unit.