auticus wrote:

Why would anyone actively encourage and support years of that?

Because many many people, especially if you look outside of online communities frequented by the most emotionally invested of us, don't actually care that much about balance. They want some cool minis and to chuck some dice about with friends.

Right. And gw has no incentive or care to make good rules because its fanbase simply doesnt care so long as their investment is safe.

Yup. That's capitalism. They create something I want to buy, I buy it. That's literally what "vote with your wallet" means.

Meaning everytime someone complains about the rules or bad balance or bad matched play, point them to the fact the community doesnt care and in fact warmly embraces those facets and gw caters to that, not balance or strong rules.

It can shut down long tangents faster. Believe it or not some people will find that very hard to believe or accept (that that is the reality)

 auticus wrote:
Meaning everytime someone complains about the rules or bad balance or bad matched play, point them to the fact the community doesnt care and in fact warmly embraces those facets and gw caters to that, not balance or strong rules.

It can shut down long tangents faster. Believe it or not some people will find that very hard to believe or accept (that that is the reality)

Yep basically. GW's success has shown that most of the players don't really give a gak about having good rules or well-balanced armies where one isn't totally busted. So you end up just pissing in the wind because the people don't want to hear how it's bad rules, just distracted by "ooh pretty models" as though that was the only thing that mattered.

I think to a lot of people pretty models and people to play with are the main things.

I swear, you are right on the verge of understanding what this forum has been trying to explain to you for 4 years.

Living in a competitive area, where rules should matter the most, it is very repellant and feels like living in the upside down.

Wait, wait, wait, I’m confused. Don’t you like casual play, where people bring what they like, don’t worry about crazy stuff, and you hate competitive play? Now it sounds like you’re against the “people buying what they like the look of, regardless of power”? I mean...it sounds like you ordered chocolate cake, got chocolate cake, and sent it back because you didn’t get chicken nuggets.

Have you made a single positive post about how awesome the StD models are? Cuz they’d great!!

 Stux wrote:

 auticus wrote:

Why would anyone actively encourage and support years of that?

Because many many people, especially if you look outside of online communities frequented by the most emotionally invested of us, don't actually care that much about balance. They want some cool minis and to chuck some dice about with friends.

This is not represented in my real-world experience. My biggest obstacle to recruiting new players is balance. The biggest complaint I hear from existing players is balance. The main reason I lose players from my leagues is balance. Because people want to chuck dice with friends, not pick up their models while one of those friends chucks the dice.

I posted somewhere around here last night how I liked the new chaos warrior models and was going to use them in my kings of war chaos warrior army. People like to either forget that I post the cool hobby stuff, or they don't read it but seem drawn to the other posts so think that I don't post anything positive about their little eco system. The new chaos warrior models are pretty solid. As are the knights. I don't care what their rules are because I will only be using them in a system I know I can get the most mileage out of them... and AOS is not that system. At least right now. I'm hoping a 3rd edition will check the boxes or some of the boxes that I need.

I play competitively in nearly every game that I play. The difference being in GW games you are basically forced to constantly buy new armies and change stuff around yearly. I play tournament standard tournament level games in every other game that I participate in and I don't have to rebuy and repaint entire collections every year to do so to remain competitive. I've been playing the same kings of war force for four years now and I can still do very well with it and its not even what their "meta" considers very good.

I like casual play except in my area casual play means some people are bringing what they like, and the other half only own groin stomping lists so they groin stomp the casual players and drive them off.

I like campaigns and run public campaign events except that because the rules are as poor as they are, you can't have actual campaign games where people show up bringing their cool models because 25-40% of our player pool are going to be bringing their nasty adepticon lists, so anything other than tournament play is going to break down in a week or two and people are going to be driven off because they are getting blown off the table by people that either don't know how to tone down, or only own one set of models... the competitive tournament powered models.

I've been pretty up front about that for the past many years of being here.

Exactly - huge imbalances are not fun to play with because in typical situations only one player in a pair gets it and if they win every game purely because their model is super overpowered then its not fun. Not for them because their wins are too predictable and easy; and not for their opponent(s).

Meanwhile they still want to use the model because it looks awesome; possibly cost them a lot and took time to put together and paint. Slaanesh Keepers of Secrets are a prime example. I don't want to see GW slap a 200 point rise on them to balance them; I'd rather they addressed the actual root cause of the imbalance and let people keep taking 3 keepers if they want; just not become a huge winning benefit to them.


Improved balance improves sales; improves army diversity (which improves products sales overall). There's honestly not a downside to it save for the very minority group who want a super easy to win button.



Heck it doesn't even truly benefit GW to have "super OP new releases" all the time because people do spot the pattern and for those who are not the market for that product its a null release that could jeperdise them spending more.





That said AoS is improving and eh wait a sec this is the general chatter thread not the balance thread! Back back I say to the balance thread with your balancing points discussions! Bring on the Sphinx chaos cat worship!

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Stux wrote:

 auticus wrote:

Why would anyone actively encourage and support years of that?

Because many many people, especially if you look outside of online communities frequented by the most emotionally invested of us, don't actually care that much about balance. They want some cool minis and to chuck some dice about with friends.

This is not represented in my real-world experience. My biggest obstacle to recruiting new players is balance. The biggest complaint I hear from existing players is balance. The main reason I lose players from my leagues is balance. Because people want to chuck dice with friends, not pick up their models while one of those friends chucks the dice.

That is the same as my experience here.

Got to agree here: in my shop, new players pick a faction they like the look of and intend to play with it, then discover they're really underperforming (usually after having patiently and lovingly assembled and painted 1000 pts) when facing a regular faction and then lose heart and sell the army or wait for an update before playing. I've never seen this casual play because it doesn't exist here, people build lists they think are good and play against someone with the same mindset because nobody likes to lose or get trounced hard.

And it's the same thing for people buying an army they like the look and the gameplay of, then discover they're extra busted and watch helplessly as they're destroying every army facing them. It's not the player's fault, it's the rule team's.

What has me irked is that AoS was improving on balance for a long time but it feels like 2019 has stepped backward. LoN and DoK at their peak were not as strong as Slaanesh, Skaven, and FEC are now.

But anyways, I love that new cat. It's chaos but a different slice of chaos, instead of gribbly and mutated it's creepy and sinister. The too-long neck really sells it for me. Ogroid is cool too, pretty vanilla in a sense, but that is needed to make other stuff stand out both aesthetically and in gameplay. I dig the hemorrhoid crusher as well, especially with the two-tone skin.

 auticus wrote:
I posted somewhere around here last night how I liked the new chaos warrior models and was going to use them in my kings of war chaos warrior army. People like to either forget that I post the cool hobby stuff, or they don't read it but seem drawn to the other posts so think that I don't post anything positive about their little eco system. The new chaos warrior models are pretty solid. As are the knights. I don't care what their rules are because I will only be using them in a system I know I can get the most mileage out of them... and AOS is not that system. At least right now. I'm hoping a 3rd edition will check the boxes or some of the boxes that I need.

I play competitively in nearly every game that I play. The difference being in GW games you are basically forced to constantly buy new armies and change stuff around yearly. I play tournament standard tournament level games in every other game that I participate in and I don't have to rebuy and repaint entire collections every year to do so to remain competitive. I've been playing the same kings of war force for four years now and I can still do very well with it and its not even what their "meta" considers very good.

I like casual play except in my area casual play means some people are bringing what they like, and the other half only own groin stomping lists so they groin stomp the casual players and drive them off.

I like campaigns and run public campaign events except that because the rules are as poor as they are, you can't have actual campaign games where people show up bringing their cool models because 25-40% of our player pool are going to be bringing their nasty adepticon lists, so anything other than tournament play is going to break down in a week or two and people are going to be driven off because they are getting blown off the table by people that either don't know how to tone down, or only own one set of models... the competitive tournament powered models.

I've been pretty up front about that for the past many years of being here.

Fair enough to the first paragraph; I missed that post. Unfortunately, I don’t have the opportunity to delve further into the rest of the post, but it REALLY seems like the breakdown of the statements over the last page (barring this one) can be boiled down to “I don’t like competitive play for AoS. These models either are or aren’t competitive. They’re only good for casual games where there is a script.” Which sounds a lot like a complaint about getting exactly what is up the alley you profess to have in regards to AoS. That’s all.

On topic...looking forward to getting rid of my old CWs to get these new ones!!

I spent over a decade of my life playing grand tournament level 40k and warhammer, top tenning one 40k and two fantasy grand tournaments and playing in over one hundred regional level qualifier or rtts.

I am most certainly not against the power gamer venues.

What i dont like is a combination of poor rules and competitive style players that want to play in narrative campaigns but wont stop bringing tournament powered lists to a campaign that is supposed to be for casual for fun lists because the bad rules encourage it.

So I've gotten to go through the bonereaper tome in detail now. Sticking by my earlier assessment that they are easy to lose with; there is a huge gulf between how the exact same list could perform if done poorly vs done well. I also said they have the tools to do well at tournaments and I now feel that was a bit of an understatement. This army turns into an immense cheese factory very quickly if the controlling player simply knows what they are doing, let alone if they are actually good at it. On the upside there is always a sort of vindictive fun in watching bandwagon/netlist players get slaughtered at tournaments because they don't know what they're doing.

Some things I noticed:
-Mortek Guard + Harvester is OP given merely competent positioning.
-Each artifact chart has a pretty clear 'best option' and these will be tapped since the army is going to want battalions.
-Immortis Guard siphoning damage from characters on a 2+ is rather absurd, especially combined with their battalion.
-The spell lore is really well designed IMO. It will be tough chosing spells because they are all good with strong tactical elements to boot. And none of them are mortal wound spam! Good job on this one GW.
-IMO, a good chunk of units are undercosted for what they do. Consider Necropolis stalkers; averaging out their stances the price makes sense, but realistically they will only ever use +1 damage & rend (with re-roll saves on occasion). When their basic weapon is rend -2 2 damage they suddenly hit above their point cost. Or the Harvester, which is ridiculously cheap considering how many points it can recycle.
-The free terrain feature is extremely strong, which buffs the allegiance overall.
-Bone-Tithe shrieker is auto-take.
-Petrifax Elite are the best sub-faction, but everyone already knows that.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
So I've gotten to go through the bonereaper tome in detail now. Sticking by my earlier assessment that they are easy to lose with; there is a huge gulf between how the exact same list could perform if done poorly vs done well. I also said they have the tools to do well at tournaments and I now feel that was a bit of an understatement. This army turns into an immense cheese factory very quickly if the controlling player simply knows what they are doing, let alone if they are actually good at it. On the upside there is always a sort of vindictive fun in watching bandwagon/netlist players get slaughtered at tournaments because they don't know what they're doing.

Some things I noticed:
-Mortek Guard + Harvester is OP given merely competent positioning.
-Each artifact chart has a pretty clear 'best option' and these will be tapped since the army is going to want battalions.
-Immortis Guard siphoning damage from characters on a 2+ is rather absurd, especially combined with their battalion.
-The spell lore is really well designed IMO. It will be tough chosing spells because they are all good with strong tactical elements to boot. And none of them are mortal wound spam! Good job on this one GW.
-IMO, a good chunk of units are undercosted for what they do. Consider Necropolis stalkers; averaging out their stances the price makes sense, but realistically they will only ever use +1 damage & rend (with re-roll saves on occasion). When their basic weapon is rend -2 2 damage they suddenly hit above their point cost. Or the Harvester, which is ridiculously cheap considering how many points it can recycle.
-The free terrain feature is extremely strong, which buffs the allegiance overall.
-Bone-Tithe shrieker is auto-take.
-Petrifax Elite are the best sub-faction, but everyone already knows that.

I can agree with most of this, but I don't think they will turn into a cheese factory. I just think everything costs a lot and the army is missing a lot of the key things we see at top tables like Always Strike first, mass mortal wounds, and multiple fight agains.

I also think there are really only one or two battalions worth taking. Some look good at first glance, like the shield corp, then you realize you can get a Boneshaper for 10 more points, which gives you the RD point and another usable character over an artifact. The Aegis immortal battalion is very good, but it's also 690 points minimum for it. You also really only want to take it if you are protecting a high value character like Arkhan, which at that point you have at least half your army in points.

I really think the Army is going to be strong, and likely will influence the meta, but I don't think it's going to be oppressive like Slaanesh, FEC and Skaven have been. The army makes you pay for everything, and it forces you to make trade offs.

Also the army will often suffer in objective based games early on. This will mean that any mistake in the early to mid game is going to hurt their progress all the more. Make the wrong call on using abilities; deploy wrong; heck get one turn where the enemy rolls a few dice really well and tarpits a unit can be damaging to progress.

Even though they've got some fast units and options to speed them up; it all costs them in points and activation abilities during the game.

I can foresee them being an army which would win many games if they were purely run until everything on one side is dead; but losing because by turn 6 they are behind on objectives/points.

 Sasori wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
So I've gotten to go through the bonereaper tome in detail now. Sticking by my earlier assessment that they are easy to lose with; there is a huge gulf between how the exact same list could perform if done poorly vs done well. I also said they have the tools to do well at tournaments and I now feel that was a bit of an understatement. This army turns into an immense cheese factory very quickly if the controlling player simply knows what they are doing, let alone if they are actually good at it. On the upside there is always a sort of vindictive fun in watching bandwagon/netlist players get slaughtered at tournaments because they don't know what they're doing.

Some things I noticed:
-Mortek Guard + Harvester is OP given merely competent positioning.
-Each artifact chart has a pretty clear 'best option' and these will be tapped since the army is going to want battalions.
-Immortis Guard siphoning damage from characters on a 2+ is rather absurd, especially combined with their battalion.
-The spell lore is really well designed IMO. It will be tough chosing spells because they are all good with strong tactical elements to boot. And none of them are mortal wound spam! Good job on this one GW.
-IMO, a good chunk of units are undercosted for what they do. Consider Necropolis stalkers; averaging out their stances the price makes sense, but realistically they will only ever use +1 damage & rend (with re-roll saves on occasion). When their basic weapon is rend -2 2 damage they suddenly hit above their point cost. Or the Harvester, which is ridiculously cheap considering how many points it can recycle.
-The free terrain feature is extremely strong, which buffs the allegiance overall.
-Bone-Tithe shrieker is auto-take.
-Petrifax Elite are the best sub-faction, but everyone already knows that.

I can agree with most of this, but I don't think they will turn into a cheese factory. I just think everything costs a lot and the army is missing a lot of the key things we see at top tables like Always Strike first, mass mortal wounds, and multiple fight agains.

I also think there are really only one or two battalions worth taking. Some look good at first glance, like the shield corp, then you realize you can get a Boneshaper for 10 more points, which gives you the RD point and another usable character over an artifact. The Aegis immortal battalion is very good, but it's also 690 points minimum for it. You also really only want to take it if you are protecting a high value character like Arkhan, which at that point you have at least half your army in points.

I really think the Army is going to be strong, and likely will influence the meta, but I don't think it's going to be oppressive like Slaanesh, FEC and Skaven have been. The army makes you pay for everything, and it forces you to make trade offs.

I think there is a lot of room for cheese without hitting the very top end. I feel the aegis battalion isn't about protecting characters, it's about canceling damage. With that battalion you are free to put characters in front because the roll to intercept damage negates it on a 5+. Mortal wounds in particular can be cancelled by that, then assigned to the Archai for another 5+, then finally a 6+ from deathless warriors. Archai can also keep up with a fast character. Overall the battalion serves to spread damage out, allowing it to be subsequently healed.

I think battalions in general will be important. To start it is harder to wipe them off the board than a single hero, making for more reliable discipline generation. They also give another artifact, which is big since the first one will be taken up by the sub-faction requirement, and there are some really good artifacts on the generic charts. The ballistari and trident seem pretty lackluster but I can see a place for the others. The aegis would be my go-to though, the investment is fully worth it because the army just falls apart when characters die bar mortek+harvester blob.

Speaking of, that is what the big 3 are likely to have trouble with: mortek guard bubbling harvesters. Because half the dead guards will be coming back immediately--they will recover between abilities that allow for attacking twice. Skaven, on the other hand, will have trouble with their own casualties triggering the harvester. Also of note is that as it stands if a model dies while within 3" of multiple harvesters it triggers the ability multiple times, allowing for a single casualty to potentially regenerate more than one dude. I hope that get's errata'd away though.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Stux wrote:

 auticus wrote:

Why would anyone actively encourage and support years of that?

Because many many people, especially if you look outside of online communities frequented by the most emotionally invested of us, don't actually care that much about balance. They want some cool minis and to chuck some dice about with friends.

This is not represented in my real-world experience. My biggest obstacle to recruiting new players is balance. The biggest complaint I hear from existing players is balance. The main reason I lose players from my leagues is balance. Because people want to chuck dice with friends, not pick up their models while one of those friends chucks the dice.

This is the thing though - an FLGS is still an echo chamber. You need to factor in all the people who buy stuff and occasionally play with a buddy, but don't hang out at the shop. I know loads of people like that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
For the record, I'm not saying I like that there's no balance, or that a casual game and balance are mutually exclusive. Of course you can have a game designed for casual play that has good balance.

What I am saying is if GW thought investing a lot of time and effort in creating a more balanced game would pay off for them in sales then I'm pretty sure they'd do it, or at least do more. I feel it's more likely they've reached an equilibrium point they're happy with.

I think its more likely that they hit a ceiling and didn't realise it was a balcony and they could go higher. Just look at the massive sales differences when they shifted from their old system of "One codex every few months and perhaps by the end of the edition "most" armies would have one" to their new attitude of "release index at launch and then complete all army codex within 1.5 years".

Their sales boomed so much (alongside re-releasing specialist games, many of which have somewhat if not totally tighter rules sets) that they have spent nearly £10million on a brand new factory in the UK to keep up with demand.


I think that the rules style that GW has is a result of the fact that they've a company culture and the same people writing rules for decades. So they achieve the same level of results each time because their method and staff leading it hasn't changed. Even now we still get reports from those who beta-test that GW doesn't send out the whole document, jsut a pre-designed list.
Again GW could make even bigger strides even if they just hired a more technical writer and ironed out many of the hazy wordings that they use so that, even if there is imbalance, at least the core rules read easily.

That they've also improved FAQ and Errata and are doing annual rules/points updates suggests to me that they are aware that improved balance does result in improved sales.

An "easy to learn, hard to master" sort of army that becomes cheese at the master level of play isn't necessarily bad. In fact, I'd argue that's pretty good design because the better you get with it, the better it is. The issue is everything else that has this rollercoaster balance where one release is well balanced, then the next two are insanely OP to anyone who reads the book for 5 minutes, then slightly weaker but not terrible, etc. and the fact that with so many armies have one power build and everything else is pretty much garbage that hurts you more than it helps if you are "foolish" enough to prefer unit A to unit B or actually want a themed army rather than simply taking the best options.

The worst part is that the AOS rules team is NOT the same as the 40k rules team anymore. They are made up of a lot of the big-name UK tournament players, at least some of them (Ben Johnson springs to mind as a well known one). So it's either:

1) The rules writers want to write balanced rules but don't have the time due to release dates (e.g. Here write rules for these 10 boxes we're releasing in 3 months)

2) The rules writers don't know how to write good rules (lack of experience, whatever) but are trying and often go with "this sounds cool" without enough testing.

3) The rules writers don't WANT to write good rules to reward "system mastery" like in Magic where over time you learn what's good and what's bad and know what combos to stack. In effect, they are designing the game so the competitive people can get a kick out of finding that "uber" combo.

There was a WD article where Jervis was talking a little about their design process, and he stated that first, they're shown a model and have to come up with stats based on that; he didn't indicate if there was a thought process from the model team on what it was meant to be (e.g. "We came up with the idea that these are skeleton constructs created by Nagash rather than just raised from graves so they have similar design to the Morghast") or just "Here's this model we came up with, you figure it out" but I'm afraid it seemed the latter. So that's the first and most important problem: The rules team are seemingly just handed models that have been developed without their input at all, and possibly without any sort of goal or background ideas in mind, and have to come up with a way that it "fits" into the game story-wise as well as with rules that fit how the model looks, regardless of how that affects the game.

He also said they have a formula for determining things, but I'll be honest I don't believe this due to how fluctuating the balance is. A formula should be preventing that, not encouraging it. There's also the fact that I don't think the design team has nearly enough time to actually playtest things properly, and from everything I've read I seriously doubt they are giving more than a cursory look at the sort of lists you can build with it, instead letting that be one of the things that comes up later as people play with the army. That might not be wholly their fault due to time constraints, but it's still bad design to test units and not see what sort of combos you can build, especially when most of the "broken" combos are found almost immediately after the book releases, if not from scrutinizing the previews.

 Overread wrote:
I think that the rules style that GW has is a result of the fact that they've a company culture and the same people writing rules for decades. So they achieve the same level of results each time because their method and staff leading it hasn't changed. Even now we still get reports from those who beta-test that GW doesn't send out the whole document, jsut a pre-designed list.
Again GW could make even bigger strides even if they just hired a more technical writer and ironed out many of the hazy wordings that they use so that, even if there is imbalance, at least the core rules read easily.

That they've also improved FAQ and Errata and are doing annual rules/points updates suggests to me that they are aware that improved balance does result in improved sales.

I think you are right about this.

Personally I think they could go further and just have the points online and update them on a bi-monthly basis. Basically make the game more dynamic than once a year point update.

It has been interesting to follow the honest wargamer as of late. With the exception of the mutant that HoS is, there is a lot of weird mixing with the rest of the factions. I would even say that GW is moving in a positive direction(again, HoS is the exception).

It's too hit or miss, that's the thing. HoS, FEC, skaven to a lesser extent are all pretty high on the power curve,while Free Cities and Orruks are more middling. There's no real consistency and the outliers tend to skew things in a bad way because they are so punishing against everything not at their level.

the AOS tournament scene does seem to be better than the 40k one though, for the most part. You still have the issue of armies having one viable tournament build, which is problematic because while that in and of itself isn't bad, it usually comes at the cost of the other choices being pretty bad.

At the power level, sure. Only in that at the power level there are more armies with a power build instead of a trifecta and thats it.

They continue to generate a minefield of trap units and continue to allow the one or two bulls to run amuk at all times.

The trap units being so plentiful and there not being rules to restrain powerbuilders in a casual environment are what kill it for so many.

 auticus wrote:
At the power level, sure. Only in that at the power level there are more armies with a power build instead of a trifecta and thats it.

They continue to generate a minefield of trap units and continue to allow the one or two bulls to run amuk at all times.

The trap units being so plentiful and there not being rules to restrain powerbuilders in a casual environment are what kill it for so many.

Trap units tend to afflict armies that have too many units to begin with. This is also evident in 40k that has a plethora of armies that are old and bloated with units.

Perhaps the worst army in this is Stormcast. So many units and sometimes multiple options within the same unit. Easier to screw it up than not. I would say BoK faces a similar issue at a smaller scale with their mortal counterpart.

I also think one of the biggest issues and a big issue to the hobby, in general, is that you often get communities which will only play a certain points (usually 2000 because "tournament standard") and refuse to do anything else (often because they've only bought a specific 2k list rather than build their collection up).

This is extremely detrimental to new players because nobody wants to be told they need to drop $500+ on models before they even play the first game because nobody wants to play 1000 point games or, god forbid, even what are basically open play games with say a Start Collecting and another unit or hero, the sort of thing that a new player is likely to buy when starting their army so they can actually learn how to use the army gradually as they play them and add units which they feel best suit their playstyle or shore up their weaknesses.

In fairness GW marketing Warcry, Killteam and Underworlds as well as games like Blackstone I think has broken "some" of the "we only play at 2K" attitude. There is a wealth of options that, whilst some were present in the past (killteam has been around for ages; they were within the main game and not marketed so often a newbie wouldn't even know they were out there as options.

Plus many gamers appreciate faster games like Killteam and Warcry when they've not got a whole evening to play; or when its to fill in that 30-40 min gap before their friend gets to the club etc...


I think that that has helped a lot in the growth of the games; certainly for games like AoS where in the past the Old World fantasy game really was a 2K or bust situation where the 1K and 500 point options "sort of" worked but were often not all that ideal nor interesting

It has, but for AOS proper it still seems to be the norm. Of course in my area Warcry, Killteam and Underworlds aren't that popular (Killteam is the most out of all of them, the rest are essentially unknown). But I still feel there's a lot less desire to accommodate new players until they have a "proper" army, which defeats the purpose of learning the ins and outs of the army.

 Stux wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Stux wrote:

 auticus wrote:

Why would anyone actively encourage and support years of that?

Because many many people, especially if you look outside of online communities frequented by the most emotionally invested of us, don't actually care that much about balance. They want some cool minis and to chuck some dice about with friends.

This is not represented in my real-world experience. My biggest obstacle to recruiting new players is balance. The biggest complaint I hear from existing players is balance. The main reason I lose players from my leagues is balance. Because people want to chuck dice with friends, not pick up their models while one of those friends chucks the dice.

This is the thing though - an FLGS is still an echo chamber. You need to factor in all the people who buy stuff and occasionally play with a buddy, but don't hang out at the shop. I know loads of people like that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
For the record, I'm not saying I like that there's no balance, or that a casual game and balance are mutually exclusive. Of course you can have a game designed for casual play that has good balance.

What I am saying is if GW thought investing a lot of time and effort in creating a more balanced game would pay off for them in sales then I'm pretty sure they'd do it, or at least do more. I feel it's more likely they've reached an equilibrium point they're happy with.

So basically, my experience doesn't count in the face of your theory.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Eldarsif wrote:

 auticus wrote:
At the power level, sure. Only in that at the power level there are more armies with a power build instead of a trifecta and thats it.

They continue to generate a minefield of trap units and continue to allow the one or two bulls to run amuk at all times.

The trap units being so plentiful and there not being rules to restrain powerbuilders in a casual environment are what kill it for so many.

Trap units tend to afflict armies that have too many units to begin with. This is also evident in 40k that has a plethora of armies that are old and bloated with units.

Perhaps the worst army in this is Stormcast. So many units and sometimes multiple options within the same unit. Easier to screw it up than not. I would say BoK faces a similar issue at a smaller scale with their mortal counterpart.

I play Nurgle, half the battletome is trap units. FEC and Fyreslayers are both small factions where one of their three troop options is strictly worse than using the others. Even Stormcast, their biggest trap unit is their only generic battleline and the one at the very top of the list. To say nothing of trap options within equipment/allegiance. Seraphon have 6 artifacts and 9 command traits, but one combination is so much better the charts might as well be labelled "narrative only." Nighthaunt have one command trait that renders the others pointless. Nurgle has one artifact that renders all others secondary. I praise GW when they publish a chart that isn't like that, because such a case is the exception.

Yep. Trap units are everywhere. In every army. Trap units destroy the user experience.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I will also say my aos community is mostly dead. 40k is the big whale and the lure of itc world rankings and money in twitch streams and patreons and endorsements lured most of our players.

Warcry has a bigger following due to speed and less investment in money and time and less trap units.

Besides being cheaper is warcry less unbalanced, and am not asking if there is no army at the top, but more about how big the gap between armies 1--3 and rest is?

In an ideal game, the gap between the top armies and the lower performing armies, as well as between units within the same army, would be fairly low. In GW games, the gap seems to be grand canyon sized at best, and "across the pond" size at worst.

Karol wrote:
Besides being cheaper is warcry less unbalanced, and am not asking if there is no army at the top, but more about how big the gap between armies 1--3 and rest is?

As a Warcry enthusiast I can tell you the gap is significantly smaller. The basic Chaos bands (so, with the models out of the box) are all pretty much balanced against each other, with just Iron Golems suffering more than the others. When you come to building lists based on multiple boxes you can start doing crazy comps and there the Splintered Fang become really good because of the snakes.

There's a different balance with the generic factions though, they tend to be more powerful then the others simply because there's more freedom in list building, and they have access to powerful models. However Warcry is written in a way that the Matched Play missions are quite symmetric and with the Activation system you can't destroy the other band in one turn like in 40k. It requires a fair amount of strategy and thought and the victor is often more decided by the better player rather than the better band.

My experience in Warcry balance wise also has been much better than in AoS. But then Warcry has Bottle's influence all over it, and that shows in a very good way.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
My experience in Warcry balance wise also has been much better than in AoS. But then Warcry has Bottle's influence all over it, and that shows in a very good way.

He's one of the people I hope might start to make some headway into changing the attitude/style/approach of rules design at GW. Like I said its most likely only going to be as we get new blood like him in key positions that we will start to see a shift in attitudes and approaches to rules.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
So basically, my experience doesn't count in the face of your theory.

It's not that it doesn't count, it's that you have to recognise that people who go to a store to play regularly will tend to have a set of biases that may not tally with the wider population. Just in the same way that people who engage regularly in a forum will tend to have certain biases.

 Stux wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
So basically, my experience doesn't count in the face of your theory.

It's not that it doesn't count, it's that you have to recognise that people who go to a store to play regularly will tend to have a set of biases that may not tally with the wider population. Just in the same way that people who engage regularly in a forum will tend to have certain biases.

Official AoS balance was at it's worst during the launch period pre-GHB, where there was no balance. GHB1 hits, provides some balance, and popularity increases. GHB2 makes some improvements, popularity continues to increase. 2nd edition comes along...

There is a pretty clear trend.

I'd bet there's diminishing returns with each improvement too.

 Stux wrote:
I'd bet there's diminishing returns with each improvement too.

Eh so far AoS seems to be increasing in returns from what I can tell in the general chatter of people picking it up and the activity on forums and such. I would say that so far returns are increasing. Of course there is a diminishing aspect; but lets not forget that its not a straight correlation and other elements come into play. Furthermore we have to consider the long term aspects such as player retention. One issue that the previous management had was that not only were they focused on new customers; but they were so focused on it that they were bleeding experienced ones like crazy. Tighter, better rules means more chances of not just securing new customers, but also retaining the old ones. Now you might argue that once Dave has built his 5K army he's not going to buy many more minis and that's right. But you can likely get a new Battletome sold every few years; possibly the new characters and models every so often. Furthermore even if Dave isn't buying any more models and is only getting the rules via "free" methods then they are still appearing at the game club. If the rules are good and they are playing then they are playing other gamers; some of which will be new.

It's basically the same as free users in MMO games. Sure they aren't investing into the product much if at all, but they are providing games, community, interactions etc.... For wargames experienced people are far more likely to also run those local clubs and events. So retaining them is of critical importance toward the growth and health of the game.


There's no point ignoring the experienced customer and focusing only on the new because you just set yourself up for a fall. We saw that with the Old World - heck you can see it again with Privateer Press (slightly different as it was the PG shutting down that didn't help matters, but its the same concept of that long term, loyal customer being the cornerstone of providing for the new

Since when do veteran players actually stop buying models anyways? I've never seen that to be the case.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Since when do veteran players actually stop buying models anyways? I've never seen that to be the case.

Well I was going for worst case situation. You are right though, long term gamers rarely stop buying models unless life forces them. They either start building a massive single army (prime customers for Apoc) or they start building new armies. That Tyranid player gets some Stormcast or some Beastgrave. Plus as models evolve many active gamers evolve their army with the "newest". How many Slaanesh or heck even marine players are still using early generation models? Barring a few (those old deamonettes) most old sculpts tend to fall to the side as new stuff appears. GW doesn't even have to write them out of the rules, just provide new sculpts.

I do see some Vets slow down in purchases, often only because they've a huge backlog of models. But yeah actually stop buying is rarer

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Since when do veteran players actually stop buying models anyways? I've never seen that to be the case.

Not stopped but def slowed down - got the money but no more space!!

On a different note, had time to go through the Ogor battletome in detail and I really like it. GW did a good job with this one; it is reasonably well balanced with the only trap choices being the scraplauncher and most of the battalions. I've said before that I would much rather GW price battalions too high, essentially labeling them for narrative play, than risk the opposite. A good diversity of sub-factions that are all viable without one being clearly better (though some stand out a bit more than others). The terrain piece is a nice buff without being game-defining.

Options. Tons of them. This battletome technically has similar amounts to others, but the different is that so many of them are viable and offer equivalent benefits to one another. Nothing is auto-take and even for a dedicated optimizer there are many items to consider. On top of that everything is relatively tame, Ogors must be lactose intolerant because there's very little cheese here. Not to say that it is weak, however, because the tools Ogors need to compete on the tabletop are definitely here and here in abundance.

Well done GW, you did a good job with Mawtribes.

Both a nice thing to see and a frustrating reminder of the isolated approach they seem to take. They should be working as a team considering how the book will fit into everything they've built and how it's internal balance holds up.

Judging by the up and down quality of the books and their podcasts each book is handed to 1-2 people to complete which is a big part of this rollercoaster effect.

 Eldarain wrote:
Both a nice thing to see and a frustrating reminder of the isolated approach they seem to take. They should be working as a team considering how the book will fit into everything they've built and how it's internal balance holds up.

Judging by the up and down quality of the books and their podcasts each book is handed to 1-2 people to complete which is a big part of this rollercoaster effect.

It also seems (and has seemed for a long time) that their playtesting is equally as laid back as they are in general when you would think the point of playtesting is to find the broken parts. They seem to indicate that "playtesting" means setting up a game and having a go at it and sort of take notes, rather than apply a sort of scientific method where you set up a specific condition to see how it works (e.g. What if we take Unit X with Unit Y as allies and give them the Sword of Uberness as an artefact) so you can see how it works in the bigger picture.

Instead, it seems like they do each book in isolation, with a cursory glance at best to how it works against other armies (likely only the few they use to playtest, rather than consider all the armies)

That's still no excuse in my eyes. If the people they are giving the book to can't keep it in line with the others... give it to different people.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
That's still no excuse in my eyes. If the people they are giving the book to can't keep it in line with the others... give it to different people.

I think this goes back to the fact that the game is bloated with too many factions, with too many abilities and not enough consistent language, for the team to manage. It's worse in 40k but even AOS has too many independent factions and too many special rules and abilities that aren't really considered in the big picture, and that's before you take into account that it's the model design driving the rules, rather than them working in tandem. That alone is a huge problem because it means (most likely) your miniature designers aren't aware of or on the same page as your rules writers and vice versa. It could reasonably be assumed that they play the game, but they are disconnected from how the models they design are likely to interact with the rules. We haven't gotten complete insight to the process but what they've stated seems to indicate that the models are designed without any input or consideration for how they work in the game, and then get dumped on the rules writers to design rules that fit how the model looks, and fit it int the game background.

Wayniac wrote:

 Eldarain wrote:
Both a nice thing to see and a frustrating reminder of the isolated approach they seem to take. They should be working as a team considering how the book will fit into everything they've built and how it's internal balance holds up.

Judging by the up and down quality of the books and their podcasts each book is handed to 1-2 people to complete which is a big part of this rollercoaster effect.

It also seems (and has seemed for a long time) that their playtesting is equally as laid back as they are in general when you would think the point of playtesting is to find the broken parts. They seem to indicate that "playtesting" means setting up a game and having a go at it and sort of take notes, rather than apply a sort of scientific method where you set up a specific condition to see how it works (e.g. What if we take Unit X with Unit Y as allies and give them the Sword of Uberness as an artefact) so you can see how it works in the bigger picture.

A lot of game companies have the problem, unfortunately. 'Just play normally and give us ancedotes, demonstrating problems with math doesn't help' was a real (and baffling) problem during the playtest of the Pathfinder 1 RPG. I once volunteered to test a patch for the Temple of Elemental Evil CRPG and asked the dev running the testing group what he wanted us to focus on, how they wanted to divide up testing and got a blank 'Just play the game...' in response. I was utterly baffled. Granted, this was post launch and the publisher wouldn't pay for more patches, so they were doing this unpaid, but not setting up any standards or procedures just baffled me.

Game design is often amateur hour, especially in the testing phase. People with the math and science backgrounds to do playtests properly go get jobs that pay better.

Wayniac wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
That's still no excuse in my eyes. If the people they are giving the book to can't keep it in line with the others... give it to different people.

I think this goes back to the fact that the game is bloated with too many factions, with too many abilities and not enough consistent language, for the team to manage. It's worse in 40k but even AOS has too many independent factions and too many special rules and abilities that aren't really considered in the big picture, and that's before you take into account that it's the model design driving the rules, rather than them working in tandem. That alone is a huge problem because it means (most likely) your miniature designers aren't aware of or on the same page as your rules writers and vice versa. It could reasonably be assumed that they play the game, but they are disconnected from how the models they design are likely to interact with the rules. We haven't gotten complete insight to the process but what they've stated seems to indicate that the models are designed without any input or consideration for how they work in the game, and then get dumped on the rules writers to design rules that fit how the model looks, and fit it int the game background.

Still no excuse to me. When it takes me an hour or so going through the battletome and hashing out combinations to figure out areas that need balance improvement there is no reason someone being paid to do so can't do it. And I am FAR from unique in doing that. The reason it doesn't happen is because, for whatever reason, GW doesn't care. Or because (as Auticus theorizes) they actively put imbalance in.

An hour? Most of the super broken combos are found within minutes

I think Auticus' theory is right but the only problem then is why isn't everything super broken, or at least have a super broken option? Some (a lot more recently...) do, but some actually seem like they were written well. That leads me to think that it depends on who writes the book (which they don't tell us anymore) as it seems clear that some books are written by more powergamer inclined people (Ben Johnson?) and some are written by regular gamers who aren't looking to bust things open but want solid options. Naturally, the problem here is that there doesn't seem to be any sort of collaboration here to come to a happy medium and it's more like "Do whatever you want" which leads to one book being okay and the next being stupidly broken. I mean, I do think they bake imbalance in, that much is clear because they want to reward the competitive players' desire to "break the game" by finding and using the broken stuff. But it's the fact it's so inconsistent to the point of nearly being random chance if a given book will be OP, balanced or weak, makes me think it's not deliberate because if it is, then it's selectively being applied and applied poorly at that since the combos are discovered immediately; there is no "experimentation" period where various things are being tested to discover the best combos.

The only thing I can think of is some perverted idea of the system mastery/fool's gold concept: The factions that aren't broken are "newbie traps" or "hard mode" type factions while the ones that are broken are the ones you learn about and switch to when you "git gud". Similar to how Magic has cards that at face value seem good, but they're really not and are designed to "teach" you how to determine good cards from bad by not being as effective as you thought. The only reason I even consider this is because Jervis once stated for Blood Bowl (a game where this type of thing is at least acceptable) there were teams that were stronger than others to represent the game equivalent of Easy/Normal/Expert modes in video games (e.g. Halflings are deliberately weaker because they are akin to playing on hard mode, while say Chaos might be really strong so is an easy mode). That might work in Blood Bowl but I shudder to think if they really applied that to Warhammer proper.

I'd rather not think they do that intentionally because.. well, do I have to explain why that's a wretched, putrid and all-around ludicrous idea?

Its not really a matter of 'excuses,' its just how the industry functions.

Even people who complain about it accept it anyway, and keep playing.

Voss wrote:
Its not really a matter of 'excuses,' its just how the industry functions.

Even people who complain about it accept it anyway, and keep playing.

Which is a big part of the problem, because it reinforces the fact that it's not as big a concern as it should be. I haven't found any game other than Warhammer where you have such extreme (and random) cases of imbalance. Sure, other games may have issues with the "OP flavor of the month" but it's nowhere near as bad and you get the impression the designers of those games are at least trying to balance things, even if they miss the mark. With Warhammer though, it feels as though either it's random if something will be garbage or OP, or simply an intentional thing being done.

Or because (as Auticus theorizes) they actively put imbalance in.

Spike game design. Gotta have things that are busted for Spike. Spike likes min/maxing. They just take that and push it to 11.

Johnny and Timmy just need to not play Spike and everyone is happy. I'm told that by many people in many communities that powergaming is not really a problem, you just have to actively not play those people if you don't want to bring filth yourself.

Johnny and Timmy have their own paradigms specifically for them. This just screams GW aping magic the gathering game design which does the same thing.

The alternative is that the gw team are all imbeciles. And I don't believe thats true.

then is why isn't everything super broken, or at least have a super broken option?

Because if everything is super broken or has that option then everyone can powergame and that is not as attractive to Spike. The point of min/maxing is to have the BEST list. If everyone can take the BEST list there is no BEST list. That gives Spike a frowny face. The obvious lists that write themselves are there to attract Spike, and make no mistake, Spike is not a scarce minority.

But still shouldn't there be a level of depth that doesn't get theory crafted within minutes of a book release? Spike wants to power game, and as a result, only picks the stuff that lets him power game, so the idea there is that by having some things strong and some things not, the spikes only play the things that are strong and think they're clever at finding the broken combos? Especially since everyone has an equal opportunity to take the best list?

I never did understand that Spike/Timmy/Johnny thing. I get that they correspond to like the guy who wants big kewl stuff (Timmy?), the guy who wants to theorycraft everything and find the "best" combo and pwn n00bs (Spike?), and I forget the third trope. But how it actually applies to design I could never wrap my head around.

The whole Spike Timmy thing is very simplified gamer concepts. Very few people actually fit perfectly into any of the named categories and most often people are a blend of them; not just at one point in time but also through time as well (this might even be within hours - ergo a player can be a spike at one game and a timmy in the next).



As for combos that are harder to spot, mostly that only comes with either making the rules more layered and complex or simply doing what a lot of mmo games do which is throwing more and more and more and MORE options to muddy the waters. However in the day of the internet it only takes one person to spot the powerbuild for it to spread. So most often all you do then is create a lot of casual gamer "noise" within the game which just confuses more casual/newer players.



Personally I think that building armies to fit certain personas is a false concept because it focuses purely on the gamer who views models as statistics. Numbers on the table.
This works quite well in Magic the Gathering but less well in wargames. In a Wargame a model isn't just its numbers, its hours of building and painting. Not to mention that the physical elements of the model are very different to those of a card. A Dragon model is vastly different to a gryph hound - but in card form the only variation is in the artwork and name.

Furthermore swapping armies doesn't happen all that much. If you make Stormcast the "spike" army that is power win easy all the time; that's great for Stormcast players. But what about Spike who likes Orks and collects Orks. He's not going to sell those orks nor is he going to feel all that confident in having to buy a whole new army to win. Especially when we all know that those power builds chagne edition to edition and even (as now) year to year.



In the end a smoother playing field that has each army capable of winning on a much more even footing with less extreme power swings works. Because Spike will still get the power army build; they will still use it. But it will remain more balanced because now the power-swing difference isn't as great. It's still there; there's still the OP build; its just not a night and day difference.

To a lot of people, wargaming is just that... numbers on the table. The building / painting etc are not factors in their decision making.

I'm around folks who swap armies like their underwear. The buy/sell group in my city is constantly filled with old armies being sold for the new OP armies.

Seen that too, there are people who buy a new army per month if necessary and do not really care about "but I like Orcs more".

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Still no excuse to me. When it takes me an hour or so going through the battletome and hashing out combinations to figure out areas that need balance improvement there is no reason someone being paid to do so can't do it. And I am FAR from unique in doing that. The reason it doesn't happen is because, for whatever reason, GW doesn't care. Or because (as Auticus theorizes) they actively put imbalance in.

There is another possibility, the Books are written is an independent product, one at a time.
There is no game development with several factions being there to test, but just the stuff that is available by that the time and 1 new thing.

So playtesting of the yet new book happend at least 8-12 month in the past, with just the armies/rules that were available by that time in a bubble without any other releases or changes being considered
Result is that by the time the book is released the game is not the same that it was while the book was tested or better said the book was tested in its own bubble like a stand alone game

And I assume there is no big plan for what the game shall become or in which direction it should develop but the decision is made with each book on its own and can change several times during an edition

Voss wrote:
Its not really a matter of 'excuses,' its just how the industry functions.

Even people who complain about it accept it anyway, and keep playing.

The ones still talking about it are those who did. The ones who didn't accept it are playing something else. I know, because I see them doing just that. They put their money elsewhere, lost sales for GW.

Which, despite that and in spite of the rules, GW has thrived like never before. Which shows them that those people who left really don't matter in the end, and the things they do wrong still get them record-setting profits so there's no need to fix it.

The community size is what keeps people in. Its the safe investment. They may enjoy Kings of War or 9th age or conquest more but they don't want to spend $800 on a new army only to have no one to play.

GW is too big to fail.

Wayniac wrote:
Which, despite that and in spite of the rules, GW has thrived like never before. Which shows them that those people who left really don't matter in the end, and the things they do wrong still get them record-setting profits so there's no need to fix it.

They're only setting records because they went from Kirby-era doing nothing to Roundtree-era responding to customers. Just because they have a lot of sales doesn't mean they couldn't have more.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 auticus wrote:
The community size is what keeps people in. Its the safe investment. They may enjoy Kings of War or 9th age or conquest more but they don't want to spend $800 on a new army only to have no one to play.

GW is too big to fail.

I don't think that's true. While undoubtedly an immense factor in GWs popularity I feel that if GW did not produce a viable product it would fail. And at the end of the day GW produces really nice miniatures, and a ton of them.

So, since I finally got Chaos Warriors- and I mean, newer and better one...

I'm curious as to what I should get for AoS to go along with Slaves to Darkness. I'm not a huge fan of Archaon, or the Varanguard (Cool models, but a bit much).

Semi related. Which God book makes best use of Warriors/Knights in case the new book is terrible?

With the current rules, Knights are worthless. I don't mean that in an exaggerated sense. They are worthless. They have no role, they do no damage, they can't really do much of anything.

Warriors with shields are good at holding objectives. So... any army where they struggle to hold objectives could use warriors to sit on something.

Kinda figured. I've had limited success with Knights, Daemon Mounted Lord and Blades in Nurgle but that is approaching Rube Goldberg levels of complexity for what other factions pull off more easily.

Of the four, Khorne Knights are probably best. Adding on additional attacks is probably the best call. Slaanesh Knights got access to battalion rules now though (in October WD), but not much has been said if they’re viable.

Generally speaking, Nurgle. The Harbinger of Decay gives them a 5+ FnP which makes them crazy durable. And knights have a good combo within Nurgle as well (see below). Knights are tricky because their stats are such that they make poor cavalry, use them like monstrous infantry and you'll have more success. And don't take the lances.

 auticus wrote:
With the current rules, Knights are worthless. I don't mean that in an exaggerated sense. They are worthless. They have no role, they do no damage, they can't really do much of anything.

Warriors with shields are good at holding objectives. So... any army where they struggle to hold objectives could use warriors to sit on something.

Not so--Nurgle uses them with a CL on Daemonic plus Blades of Putrefaction to deal MWs on 5+ to hit.

But I would not be surprised to see new warscrolls, which will change things.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
So, since I finally got Chaos Warriors- and I mean, newer and better one...

I but wait hold on they aren't out yet


As for advice right now I'd work on building a solid core of the models that aren't being replaced but are highly unlikely to vanish. Things like sorcerers, chariots, manticore, warshrine etc... You might even consider some of the current warriors and knights to bolster the new ones to be-released.

Otherwise its hard to say because Chaos hasn't got a battletome yet (which is why their rules are currently bad). You might consider a warcry warband. They already have their stats (rules download tab on the gw store page) and they are unlikely to change - its most likely that they will functionally replace marauders as a cheap chaff/mass unit. However their individual natures also shine through; so the Iron Golems have the best saves and are the most tanky; whilst Untamed Beasts are a faster hard hitting group etc....

TGA down for anyone else?

 lord marcus wrote:
TGA down for anyone else?

Happens from time to time. It’ll be back in a day or so.

 nels1031 wrote:

 lord marcus wrote:
TGA down for anyone else?

Happens from time to time. It’ll be back in a day or so.

Glad it wasn’t just me.

It's back up for me.

Was for me as well. Clear your cache - should fix it. Does for me.

 Eldarain wrote:
Semi related. Which God book makes best use of Warriors/Knights in case the new book is terrible?

Worries dispelled, eh?

Anyways, quoting myself from another thread just to throw it out there:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Sal4m4nd3r wrote:
Is this the new normal?

Around the start of AoS 2nd edition the game had been on a trend of improved balance for some time. Yes it was terrible by the standard of any other wargame but it was still a trend of improvement. 2019 has seen a backslide of that over the course of the year, not so much in the frequency of units/abilities that are imbalanced but more in the degree. DoK would stack buffs to get re-rolls on everything, but now we have a 110 chaos sorcerer who does that on his own. LoN would summon back slain units with the general, Slaanesh summons back that much then more off any hero. Kurnoth hunters get a 3+ re-rollable save in the combat phase if they don't charge and stay in their woods for cover, Mortek guard get that whenever they want.

I feel like GW is just cycling through another period of 'who cares about well-designed rules' and will swing back to 'oh, that affects our sales' eventually. For me GW balance is generally tolerable because the games & miniatures are so much fun, but the situation is rapidly becoming something where I just don't want to engage in matched play at all.

So yes, this is the new normal.

^^^^^^

I endorse Ninth's message.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Eldarain wrote:
Semi related. Which God book makes best use of Warriors/Knights in case the new book is terrible?

Worries dispelled, eh?

Anyways, quoting myself from another thread just to throw it out there:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Sal4m4nd3r wrote:
Is this the new normal?

Around the start of AoS 2nd edition the game had been on a trend of improved balance for some time. Yes it was terrible by the standard of any other wargame but it was still a trend of improvement. 2019 has seen a backslide of that over the course of the year, not so much in the frequency of units/abilities that are imbalanced but more in the degree. DoK would stack buffs to get re-rolls on everything, but now we have a 110 chaos sorcerer who does that on his own. LoN would summon back slain units with the general, Slaanesh summons back that much then more off any hero. Kurnoth hunters get a 3+ re-rollable save in the combat phase if they don't charge and stay in their woods for cover, Mortek guard get that whenever they want.

I feel like GW is just cycling through another period of 'who cares about well-designed rules' and will swing back to 'oh, that affects our sales' eventually. For me GW balance is generally tolerable because the games & miniatures are so much fun, but the situation is rapidly becoming something where I just don't want to engage in matched play at all.

So yes, this is the new normal.

It's true. New book both excites and depresses me. My primary opponent is Petro Mortek spam Reapers so having something even close to their nonsense is nice but the game doesn't seem in a great place if this is what is required to compete. My gobbos don't seem to have anything to contend with the Bonereapers.

Stone trolls are the gloomspite counter to bonereapers. Their MW shooting not-attack can put damage on characters (forcing use of boneshaper/Katakros heals on them) while rend -2 does a number on armor saves. The ideal formation would be a line of stabbas with trolls behind them. That way they must suffer nets and swinging on chaff while also getting beat upside the head.

That works pretty well against most things, for that matter...

I have also seen Mangler Squigs mess up Bonereapers units. I don't know if that was luck or the Gitz player knew their units really well while the Bonereaper player was still learning theirs or what though. Looking at its warscroll seems pretty dangerous to me.

Might have just been the evils of dice but I've tried Stone Trolls fighting over the gobbos with 10 Fanatics hidden too and it all bounces off the Guard.

Trying for a Hand of Gork to get some Trolls or Fanatics into Arkhan or Katakros maybe.

The best I've done with the Mangler is Runeblade and Fight another day. He's sitting on -1-2 to hit constantly because of Katakros and that damn terrain piece.

Eventually some Morteks get a hold of him and one shot him. Unreal how much offense they can pump out of such a tough unit.

Honestly I think Ossiarchs would be fine if GW got rid of Petrifax or adjusted its save bonus. A +1 save is just impossibly hard to pass on. Kind of a shame because its the most likely one people iwll pick and yet there's some fun alternative forces like crematorians.

Of course some like the one that counters mages is "more" for set matches if you know you're going against a magic heavy army.

The +1 to save is the best bonus even in a vacuum, but it is particularly good on bonereapers since they already have a 4+ base anyways and their main battleline unit has easy access to re-rolls. On top of that the 'cost' to a sub-faction is generally a sub-par artifact & command trait but those of Petrifax are excellent and would see use even if they were on their own. On top of that their command ability is excellent (and a hilariously huge upgrade from the crematorians one). If the petrifax ability just dropped the +1 save entirely with nothing to replace it, it would still be worth taking.

Hell, the inverse (+1 to saves but general gets no command trait & the army loses its first artifact) would still be overpowered!

I've played three games thus far, two without using Petrifex Trait and one with it. 2x 1000pt games against Khorne Mortals, different lists but same player. The first game was an absolute slaughter, by the end of it I was down 6 Mortek Guard and had just about wiped the guy. His list was a melee-buff-focused khorne mortals list with only one priest.
In his second game, it was a different list against my same list since he wanted to play it again. Took a very different list, with Hexgorgers, Wrathaxe and two priests. Prolific use of Blood Boil and Judgements tore my army apart, and that sort of damage it wouldn't matter if I was Petrifex or not.

Third game was 1500pts against Flesh-eater courts. I forgot how to play against Feeding Frenzy, and lost just about half my army to a single terrorghiest top of turn 1.

Ossiarchs are slow, and weak against heavy mortal wound output. High quality, but low wound count. And it certainly seems like it'll be hard to play, so I'm hoping to get more practice in with them to better learn how to play the army. Their style is very different from how I'm used to playing my other armies. And probably just learn how to play better overall

There is little Ossiarchs can do against ranged MW output, unless the source can be killed by crawlers. In melee you just need to use the harvester-guard combo though.

Yep, I'd agree whole hearted with that. Though as always, Royal Terrorghiests are the exception and are the counter to everything. I've only got one crawler, but I'm playing a rematch vs the same FEC player and hoping it'll do work... and hoping that I play better and remember that dragons are fast

Yeah obviously if something is game-breaking it's just that. The FEC Terry can put out enough MWs that even cancelling half of them isn't enough.

Ossiarchs might actually have one of the few armies that could reliable run minimum units in multiples and do better than running them as fewer larger units.

They've a strong enough save to keep units alive from regular attacks, whilst at the same time going against a high MW model or army; spreading out the number of units means the other army has to use more units to attack with to cut the Ossiarchs down. Dealing 20MW to a unit of 20 Mortek is deadly; but if you had those as two units of 10 suddenly half those attacks are wasted. Taking two turns to take out the same number of units.

Well if you have a harvester behind them 20 Mortek guard will take 48 MWs to remove (6+ deathless minions, 4+ revive). The advantage being potential return shenanigans (if he, say, kills 10 you could remove them from the back and make a daisy chain 20" long over to an objective, squishy character, etc) and buffing them with spells or command abilities (notably the rend increase petrifax have).

Just feels like a lot of inconsistency. Like today, my Deepkin v Bonereapers. My scenery piece can do a mortal wound to something within 3 inches. The Bonereapers? 36. Mortek Guard are pretty much identical points costs to Namarti, which die in a stiff breeze. My opponent could more or less reroll everything, heal wounds and brought back whatever died to the table.

It’s not all that fun, really. Before that I had a game against Nurgle, much more balanced, a good scrap that went the distance and could have gone either way. As a relatively new player, it certainly feels like some of these new books are almost impossible to beat!

That comes back to the whole "balance is not needed to have fun" counter argument.

You are correct. Some of the books are impossible to beat unless you are fielding one of the impossible books. Thats GW game design for the past 12 odd years since 2007 or so and the first trifecta of modern gw game design (that being chaos demons, vc, and dark elves of that era)

And it splits the player base down the middle with some saying they don't care about that bad balance because they just want to smash their plastic men against each other and roll dice and drink beer, and the other half would like to know that every faction is viable and that a fun game can come out of it.

Bone reapers are one of the filth tier capable books, alongside slaanesh. So you are also playing a mid-tier book vs a filth tier book. You're going to struggle and just have to accept if you want to play mid-tier books that you'll have fun so long as you don't care about who wins or loses, or you only play other mid tier book opponents.

If fantasy army games are your gig, and you want a better balanced game then you need to look at Kings of War or Conquest. Otherwise you just have to go into it knowing what to expect and be ok with that.

That description ignores a lot of nuance, though. For example, the bonereaper book is A-tier with the petrifax subfaction but drops to B-tier without them, and Idoneth eel spam sits at B-tier as well. So simply saying Bonereapers>Idoneth is true in a sense but also misleading via oversimplification.

Same for it being standard imbalance for GW. Yes, GW is bad with balance but HOW bad has varied considerably from year to year. AoS has never been well balanced but there was a trend of improvement from GHB1 up until 2019, where we have seen a backslide to the point we are now which, IMO, is the worst balance AoS has ever had. And even then it is not so much the quantity of OP elements but the degree to which they are game-breaking.

For example, Stormcast Evocators on release were seriously overpowered; they did way more damage than their point cost accounted for on top of being a spellcaster. But any army could still deal with them, it just required a disproportionate amount to do so. Meanwhile, petrifax mortek guard are sitting at a 3+ rerollable save in melee. Unless an army has a reliable source of rend -2 or MW spam that cannot be dealt with. Most units are simply not getting through, even if you quadruple the points at them, because 3+ rerollable is saving 8/9 wounds against rend - and 3/4 even against rend -1. It becomes a 'list check' where the unit asks "do you have MW spam" and if the answer is no, you lose. And most armies don't. That is a much different situation to what we have had previously, it is tremendously discouraging and unfun.

I call the book filth tier because while its true there are b and even c tier lists that can be made with any book (i can make a c tier slaanesh build) you dont really see those very often.

Or at all depending on your local meta.

If 100 builds can be made but you only really see 10 of them, the discussion will often center on those 10, not the 90 others that are rarely seen.

For new players especially, they need to be ok with the filth builds, because i find those are what make up a good chunk of your random games and tournament games.

Thing is when one choice is head and shoulders better than the rest, Petrifex in this case, that's going to be the go-to choice because it's so much better and brings up the old "why shouldn't I pick the option that gives me the best chance of winning" argument from the sort of people that will never use anything but the best choice and how dare you suggest they "dumb down" their list.

I've just started Deepkin, mostly because I like the models, they are fairly good with the ability to scale up to pretty competitive (eels) and while I was interested in OBR the models just looked too ridiculous the more I looked at them.

Kinda having regrets seeing how good they are but I have to stick to my guns, especially since I'm sure there's a few people jumping on the bandwagon with OBR anyway.

There's a list of factions that got points updated in the faq, if anyone's interested.

 cole1114 wrote:
There's a list of factions that got points updated in the faq, if anyone's interested.

Spoiler:

Seems like the errata documents are still the same though...?

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 cole1114 wrote:
There's a list of factions that got points updated in the faq, if anyone's interested.

Spoiler:

Seems like the errata documents are still the same though...?

The new FAQ is dated 16th which is today. Might be that they accidentally released this pdf ahead of the rest because so far we do not have any updates on the WH Community site.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Regarding balance I feel the biggest issue GW has is that they really have a bad time balancing their sub-factions and/or manage to ignore them outright overall.

Way too many books have that one or two sub-faction that are a must take and can be problematic how much they boost the overall faction. I felt this as a FEC player who just like playing Morghaunt and played that sub-faction. Then, after a few months, I tried Blisterskin and it felt like I had activated the hyperdrive on my army. Same goes for my Craftworld army. If I don't play Alaitoc I am handicapping myself in battle.

GW made it easy for themself:

Here you have the rules for a faction, there are a lot of possibilities that are equal strong and people can decide to use them based on fluff/background alone

but we also included one option that is much stronger than everything else, so you should not use it unless you want to be "that (WAAC) guy".

And if you see one using that option, you should call him out as "that guy" and not blame us for including that one option in the first place.

And people fall for the trap, complain about WAAC players, complain about people not talking about the other weak options and so on and also start defending GW as they can do nothing about those people who just use the rules as provided

Its the cycle of life. This particular forum and the tga forum both have aided in changing my mindset on what the average GW player wants in a game though. The past few years have been more enlightening for me in that subject matter than the 17 years that came before it when I first started talking about warhammer on AOL chat rooms with my dialup in the late 90s. It has been enlightening for me both as a player, as an event organizer, as one that has to choose which set of games to put focus on, and as a game designer myself.

 kodos wrote:
GW made it easy for themself:

Here you have the rules for a faction, there are a lot of possibilities that are equal strong and people can decide to use them based on fluff/background alone

but we also included one option that is much stronger than everything else, so you should not use it unless you want to be "that (WAAC) guy".

And if you see one using that option, you should call him out as "that guy" and not blame us for including that one option in the first place.

And people fall for the trap, complain about WAAC players, complain about people not talking about the other weak options and so on and also start defending GW as they can do nothing about those people who just use the rules as provided

Not always so cut and dry though.
There’s a difference between a naturally strong army and someone who will min/max that army.
It also heavily depends on the surroundings you are playing in.
If you are in a tournament there’s no complaining, everyone is expecting to min/max to push for the win.

In friendly games or pick up games it’s generally frowned on.
This isn’t always a case of the army, it’s the player.
If you wish to push an army to top tournament level in friendly games then you will likely get some hate for it.
I can’t see how someone can blame the book here instead of the person making out on the best possible units.

Now, this isn’t defending GW, it’s pointing out that a player is using the best possible list in a friendly environment.

The books are hardly balanced by any means, but min/maxing an army will always make this worse.

Agreed - powerful armies are powerful however at some point if you are playing games within a fixed group of people a general level of skill and army power will display itself. At that point it becomes a social thing - do you weaken your army or take a handicap so that when you play Dave who always loses the game is more evenly balanced (account for player and/or army power variation); or do you keep beating Dave until he stops playing you.


It's a symptom of smaller game populations. If you've only 5 people in the club then yeah any power variation is going to be very obvious and regularly an issue. If you've 50 in the club that turn up each week chances are you'll have a greater potential spread of player skills.


Groups that don't recruit new players can also suffer this issue and within age brackets as the age of the gamer gets older the skill base typically increases. This is reflected by the fact that most get into hobbies like wargaming at a younger age so the older the player the more potential experience they've had.

Exactly what I meant

It is not GW's fault to make Gristlegore stronger, but the players fault for not ignoring it (even if he likes the fluff).

I guess there was no possibility for GW to do anything about it but calling people out (instead if doing a better job in the first place)

GW already did a very good in getting people into believing that not the bad rules are the problem but the players who use them.

And if it is that clear to everyone what is over the top and should not be used in friendly games, why was it impossible to spot for GW before printing it.

I didn't relieve any blame from GW.

GW still has fault when they produce imbalances within the power structure of the game itself.

The fact that player skill is also a contributing factor doesn't reduce any blame to be portioned toward GW. GW should very much work better to produce a smoother power curve in their game without armies like Slaanesh suddenly appearing super powered compared to other armies.



Player skll should, in theory, be the greater component when two armies have two well made lists against each other.





However in the real world when you can't just make GW do what you want and you have a rules set with in balance and you have players with varied skill levels; there ARE practical tools and ways you can address it so that both can have an engaging and fun time gaming.

Again this isn't hand waving away GW's problems, its simply addressing that there IS a problem and presenting options to mitigate it since GW isn't going to hand wave those problems away in a second. Furthermore its the same tools that overcome player skill variation without relying purely upon one player "magically getting better" at playing.

 kodos wrote:
Exactly what I meant

It is not GW's fault to make Gristlegore stronger, but the players fault for not ignoring it (even if he likes the fluff).

I guess there was no possibility for GW to do anything about it but calling people out (instead if doing a better job in the first place)

GW already did a very good in getting people into believing that not the bad rules are the problem but the players who use them.

And if it is that clear to everyone what is over the top and should not be used in friendly games, why was it impossible to spot for GW before printing it.

That is the biggest question of all. The "OP" combos are found within minutes, but GW constantly misses them. It's really weird. If it's intended, then all that talk about picking which appeals to you the most is horsegak because you can inadvertently pick the most OP choice because you like it the best and be "that guy" because you did what GW said you should. If it's not intentional then it's incompetence of the highest magnitude since they aren't discovering basic things.

My issue with sub-faction traits is that they should either have their own point cost for units or you pay for the faction trait(via points). Currently it's just free tricks that vary wildly in effectiveness.

I have a hunch I have a good direction on what could make GW care more about balance and not releasing the easy to spot OP stuff within 30 seconds of getting the book in the players' hands.

Players not buying their products anymore until they pay more attention to the rules quality.

 Overread wrote:

However in the real world when you can't just make GW do what you want and you have a rules set with in balance and you have players with varied skill levels; there ARE practical tools and ways you can address it so that both can have an engaging and fun time gaming.

One possibility would be to stop hoping that stuff get fixed by GW and go back to community comp/point systems (simple solution if the too strong options would also cost more points per model)

AoS had them because GW did a bad job.
GW is still doing a bad job but now it is acceptable because the players can always decide to not use the rules.

 auticus wrote:
I have a hunch I have a good direction on what could make GW care more about balance and not releasing the easy to spot OP stuff within 30 seconds of getting the book in the players' hands.

Players not buying their products anymore until they pay more attention to the rules quality.

Bwahahahaha. You know that won't happen. Enough people don't care about quality or quality is "good enough".

The community point systems existed because GW had no points at all. (and I felt that this was the golden time of AOS because even the ones that weren't as good were still better than our current point system)

Trying to get people to use a community point system would be pointless (lol pun) because the vast majority of players don't want houserules or comp, they want to use the official rules.

It would take an ITC equivalent to change the rules for AOS or the points for AOS and have them accepted on a mass scale.

Bwahahahaha. You know that won't happen. Enough people don't care about quality or quality is "good enough".

Oh absolutely it won't happen. The last five polls I've seen, what two from this site by itself, have shown that there is a huge number of gw players that rate balance and rules quality as lower on the totem pole of things they care about. I was just commenting that that is the only way you're going to see them start to care, start qvc testing better, or actually actively stop putting in spike-builds in their book intentionally.

 kodos wrote:

 Overread wrote:

However in the real world when you can't just make GW do what you want and you have a rules set with in balance and you have players with varied skill levels; there ARE practical tools and ways you can address it so that both can have an engaging and fun time gaming.

One possibility would be to stop hoping that stuff get fixed by GW and go back to community comp/point systems (simple solution if the too strong options would also cost more points per model)

AoS had them because GW did a bad job.
GW is still doing a bad job but now it is acceptable because the players can always decide to not use the rules.

That's why GW "canonizing" SCGT points as official wasn't a good thing. There were way better fan comps out there (take a bow, auticus!) that did a much better job of balancing the game. But at least some of the GW guys were close to the SCGT guys and now that there are "official" points, it's not only an uphill battle to not use them (muh balance!) but god forbid you want to use a fan comp (if any are still maintained which isn't likely) to balance it better.

The main reason I didn't like SCGT point system was that it intentionally (as in this was on warhammer.org.uk from the author's account posting) made monsters cheaper to incentivize players to take more of them. Or... it intentionally made the points imbalanced to encourage a certain type of models to be showing up regularly.

I think they did a good job in most of the other areas, but that one thing is why I never would use SCGT points and why when it was adopted for the first GHB that I had my reaction that I did.

Azyr and PPC were different but both by and large got you to the same destination. There was another one I can't remember that was similar. One of the podcasters took the four of those and did a break down of rosters and found that three of our comps (all but SCGT) made rosters that were pretty much very similar, but SCGT gave you more monsters, which was "more fun" at the expense of balance.

The other three couldn't be used to move product as well since everything was in line with itself largely. I can't speak for the others but Azyr had its Win % for all factions down to a max of 58/42 (and under 60 was our goal). Game balance across the board was our #1 objective.

I will point put that it is natural the average GW player does not care as much about balance, because a player that does care about balance is more likely to move to other games. Those are lost sales GW could claim/reclaim if they improved, whereas the player who like imbalance will still be playing GW because seriously where are they going to go?

I think the ability to move to other games will be dependent on the player's local scene and how readily available other games are to them though.

I know a lot of people have voiced how they would love kings of war or conquest but no one near them will play it so they stick with AOS to get *something* in.

Its Star Wars Legion, X-Wing, Infinity, and Malifaux that people move to at my FLGS.

In unrelated news, FAQs are going up with adjustments.

Our area is dominated by 40k. As in... I'd say 80% of the community is 40k easily.

The AOS group had a mini revival with one of the tournament guys now running regular tournaments at another store so they are up to about 16 players now, down from 6 active. (so tournaments are responsible for directly bringing back 10 of those 16)

Legion in my area is mostly dead with a small gruop that plays occasionally. XWing was the king daddy for two or three years, trumping even the 40k group with an active membership over 60 players and filling the stores every friday night every week for months and months, but it is now mostly not something I see except for the random tournament.

Malifaux has a tiny group as well that plays sporadically. Infinity has been mostly dead.

Its 40k40k40k40k. (and our blood bowl always has 20-24 players in a season but we only run once a year from jan - may)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Wayniac wrote:
In unrelated news, FAQs are going up with adjustments.

This will be interesting. I wonder what happens to the daddy filth tier?

Blightkings get the "unmodified 6" wording, as of todays FAQ!!

And some adjustments to Battalions that I'll have to look at later.

I see slaanesh has no points updates. Neither does the masters of the universe undead. I guess the team feels they are working as intended.

 auticus wrote:
I see slaanesh has no points updates. Neither does the masters of the universe undead. I guess the team feels they are working as intended.

Ossiarchs only released a month or so ago. It's no surprise that they don't have updates. Also besides Petrifax most people don't think Ossiarchs are undercosted for points at present.

I can understand skeletor won't be changed that fast, thats probably not reasonable.

Slaanesh on the other hand...

Thats pure clown car comedy right there.

My view is you can't fix slaanesh by changing points right now - the real issue is depravity as a mechanic needs changing in how it works. Both at the generation and at the cost to summon


But that's an endless cycling debate so we'll have to see what GW does change if anything.

Slaanesh isn't getting POINT updates. Which means they might be getting RULES updates. Hold your horses until we see. If they don't get any adjustments at all then we can resume talking about how ridiculous it is.

OBR are too new for updates.

OBR will escape the nerf bat like Slaanesh did due to timing.

I've only played one game with them so far, but they seem pretty insane with mortek guard in Petrifex elite... Oh well, we'll see.

I am hoping for some interesting changes. Apparently the Skaven FAQ talks about an updated Plague Monk Warscroll so maybe Slaanesh at least is getting some changes rulewise.

OBR is too new and will sadly escape the nerfhammer.

 Eldarsif wrote:
I am hoping for some interesting changes. Apparently the Skaven FAQ talks about an updated Plague Monk Warscroll so maybe Slaanesh at least is getting some changes rulewise.

OBR is too new and will sadly escape the nerfhammer.

Yep:

Page 116 – Plague Monks
This warscroll is no longer used. It has been replaced
with the warscroll on the Games Workshop website.

Seems like a big deal. Hopefully its not a one and done.

Also:

Who the feth asks these questions:

Q: Does a Skaventide Hero garrisoning a terrain feature
move the terrain feature with them when they use Skitterleap?
A: No.

Where are you seeing the Skaven changes? I only see Base Sizes, Maggotkin, and the GHB19 on the community site.

Who the feth asks these questions:

heh. I get asked about a dozen of those questions every campaign with people trying to pull shennanigans and then rules lawyer my event explaining why their wild idea is the rule as written.

 mokoshkana wrote:
Where are you seeing the Skaven changes? I only see Base Sizes, Maggotkin, and the GHB19 on the community site.

Someone has a link on TGA, in the rumors thread.

try this:

https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/b52ed84a.pdf

Also, if you sort "Z-A" you get the BoC changes. Its like a puzzle we all get to solve together!

And this whole FAQ rollout has been disastrous. Either incompetence or it was an accident and someone jumped the guns.

I agree that for both Slaanesh and Ossiarchs there are other issues that need to be addressed before points can really be evaluated. As it stands the massive issues of summoning and petrifax respectively obscure the true value of the units involved. Though there are certainly some that can be seen through that it makes sense to do the rule change first THEN come in with point costs later.

 nels1031 wrote:

Who the feth asks these questions:

I always imagine that every FAQ session at GW goes as follows:

Social Media intern: *Asks rules team a question from Facebook

Rules team: " . . . No . . . "

Intern: *Asks rules team a question from email

Rules team: *Stares in dumbfounded silence for three full minutes. " . . . No . . . "

Social Media intern: *Asks rules team a question from Reddit

Rules team: *blinking in disbelief "You're just with us, right?"

And a screenshot floating around that Fyreslayers have Vulkites with a points reduction and Hearthzerkers capped at 20 with a new horde discount. Will try to post that soon, but at work.

Seeing nothing for Slaanesh so far..... ffs.

I would definitely be adding some snark to some of those FAQ questions, like:

"If a Skaven hero uses skitterleap while in a garrison, does the building move with them?"

"Only if the building is pulled to its new location by a sled-team of actual rats."

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I would definitely be adding some snark to some of those FAQ questions, like:

"If a Skaven hero uses skitterleap while in a garrison, does the building move with them?"

"Only if the building is pulled to its new location by a sled-team of actual rats."

That would do great for wolfrat sales though!

Cygor and Ghorgons went down 40 points. Doombull and Bullgors went down 20. Nice!

 Overread wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I would definitely be adding some snark to some of those FAQ questions, like:

"If a Skaven hero uses skitterleap while in a garrison, does the building move with them?"

"Only if the building is pulled to its new location by a sled-team of actual rats."

That would do great for wolfrat sales though!

Emphasis on "actual rats"!

Keep in mind the reason they need to address those wacky questions is that due to their poor wording if they don't someone will undoubtedly try to abuse it by claiming the rules don't say they can't.

So even though it's crazy to think, it has to be done to prevent rules lawyers from abusing it.

 nels1031 wrote:

Who the feth asks these questions:

I had a game where my opponent doubted the ability for me to have a unit charge multiple enemy units. After that, I decided not to try and also demonstrate hooking in additional units in combat via pile in as the game as already slow enough and I didn't know where to point out this could be done.

 nels1031 wrote:

 Overread wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I would definitely be adding some snark to some of those FAQ questions, like:

"If a Skaven hero uses skitterleap while in a garrison, does the building move with them?"

"Only if the building is pulled to its new location by a sled-team of actual rats."

That would do great for wolfrat sales though!

Emphasis on "actual rats"!

By skaven standards wolfrats are actual rats https://www.forgeworld.co.uk/en-GB/Skaven-Wolf-Rats

ShaneMarsh wrote:
Cygor and Ghorgons went down 40 points. Doombull and Bullgors went down 20. Nice!

Doombull went down to 100? That seems pretty crazy cheap. But I have noticed a trend of underpricing smaller heroes lately.

Maybe a counter to underpriced sniping abilities.

All the changes so far ! I'm boycotting playing against Fyreslayers with my Nighthaunt now

 Aaranis wrote:

Spoiler:

All the changes so far ! I'm boycotting playing against Fyreslayers with my Nighthaunt now

Thats the pic I was looking for, thanks!

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

ShaneMarsh wrote:
Cygor and Ghorgons went down 40 points. Doombull and Bullgors went down 20. Nice!

Doombull went down to 100? That seems pretty crazy cheap. But I have noticed a trend of underpricing smaller heroes lately.

Maybe a counter to underpriced sniping abilities.

I play BoC and even went to some GTs for them, the Doombull is crap. Its one of the most swingy units, same for Bullgors. It seems good, but remember its only 3 main attacks, 3+/3+ -2 for 3D, yes its 3 flat damage. Again its only 3 attacks, on average 1 misses, lets say you get the other 2 to wound, thats only 6 wounds from a melee specialist hero. Having 5 total attack (other are 2, 4+/4+ -0, 1D) so chanes are you wont eve do 1 MW from his ability.

I played him with relics, and he still doesn;t do much. I with over 40 games using him, he has never done 9 damage.

Well if dealing 9 damage in a combat phase is the standard by which he is measured then I suppose he isn't so great.

The new FAQs are up. They changed the Depravity Point Costs.

Sadly they've left depravity itself alone.

So what they've done is curb some of depravity's potential to generate more models, but if anything that only reinforces the internal balance problem with the Battletome; which is that you are strong-armed into taking all leaders and summoning more to get that summoning system working. Furthermore you're really encouraged to take multiple keepers with their multiple wounds for more depravity generation.

So internally there's still the issue that any non-3-keeper army is still playing as if "with a nerf" based on the tomes internal balance.

Externally there's still the issue that a 1 wound majority skaven army has much easier time fighting Slaanesh than a Stormcast army with all multiwound models. Again there's still that problem that Slaanesh plays so very differently against different kinds of army. That Stormcast army is still likely going to have to suffer another keeper and more being thrown at it; whilst the new costs might mean the Skaven army has a bit more of an easier time.


Depravity itself and how its generated is still the core problem with the Tome. Sadly I get the feeling GW did it on purpose to encourage sales of their new expensive Keeper. Which means we won't see it properly changed until such time as GW comes around again to release more new models for Slaanesh - which is likely years off.

Given that models come first I wouldn't doubt there was at least some talk about "how do we get the best use out of this fantastic Keeper model" which at some point led to creating Depravity Points.

Yeah I woke up to a thread rolling in one of the groups I am in with one of the tourney slaanesh players gloating and strutting and telling everyone that was saying his stuff was OP to learn to play better and stop telling him what he's not allowed to take and whining its too powerful, since GW had the chance to tone it down but clearly they felt it was fine and left it alone.

Which is why I'm glad I'm not playing AOS anymore. Models are great... but when they are at the detriment of why I buy the models and spend the time painting them (the game) then that is where its not great.

Edit: and now in getting my morning coffee and reading around, others are saying iit got super nerfed (lol?). Raising the depravity cost was I suppose a form of point tweaking. But as Overread mentions, all it really did was enforce that the triple keeper of secrets build is basically the only type of build you will see out of anyone who is building to win games (I assume most people) to get the most depravity possible to free-summon the most points.

Did anyone find the updated plague monk warscroll? As far as I can tell, it still hasn't been posted.

 auticus wrote:

Which is why I'm glad I'm not playing AOS anymore

We know. In fact, there's probably some uncontacted tribes in the deep amazon that know it by now.

 auticus wrote:
Yeah I woke up to a thread rolling in one of the groups I am in with one of the tourney slaanesh players gloating and strutting and telling everyone that was saying his stuff was OP to learn to play better and stop telling him what he's not allowed to take and whining its too powerful, since GW had the chance to tone it down but clearly they felt it was fine and left it alone.

Which is why I'm glad I'm not playing AOS anymore. Models are great... but when they are at the detriment of why I buy the models and spend the time painting them (the game) then that is where its not great.

Edit: and now in getting my morning coffee and reading around, others are saying iit got super nerfed (lol?). Raising the depravity cost was I suppose a form of point tweaking. But as Overread mentions, all it really did was enforce that the triple keeper of secrets build is basically the only type of build you will see out of anyone who is building to win games (I assume most people) to get the most depravity possible to free-summon the most points.

Seems more to me that the issue here is an obnoxious person in the group that doesn’t understand that WAAC mentality and a friendly environment don’t mix.
It’s always swings and roundabouts with power.
As of jan-feb there’s likely to be a new flavour everyone wants.

True but GW bad rules foster and endorse WAAC mentality and force groups to socially engineer and peer pressure each other, instead of letting the rules dictate what is and is not legal.

When sporting teams get together to play, they don't have to self-regulate themselves typically; the rules of the game dictate what they can and cannot do.

In the US at least, tabletop games are very similar to sports to a great many people.

Actually if a top pro football team goes to play with a local school club the top team very much do moderate how they choose to play.

Lack of play regulation at the social level only tends to come into practice when its a competitive event between like-minded individuals.

 Overread wrote:
Actually if a top pro football team goes to play with a local school club the top team very much do moderate how they choose to play.

Lack of play regulation at the social level only tends to come into practice when its a competitive event between like-minded individuals.

So I played soccer (football to those across the pond) for a great number of years. Both indoor and outdoor. This reminds me of a time a number of years back where my soccer club in a "B" FIFA league drew for whatever reason the city's professional soccer club. I want to say they had an odd number of teams in their "A" league, of w hich the pro soccer club was a part, and so the league organizer would pair a "B" with an "A" to make sure everyone had a game during the course of the season and there were no byes.

That game was fun. And ridiculous. We were destroyed and stopped counting score after it was 10-0 in the first half.

They however did not tone anything back. Everyone was laughing and it was all in good fun, but the competitive spirit was still there and they still tried as hard as they could even though we were obviously mismatched.

Thats how American tabletop games are also played, at least in my neck of the woods.

I am told so often on forums that this only comes to practiice when its a competitive event between like-minded individuals, and I push back on that so hard because its so blatantly and grossly false, and I know my region is not the only region in the US where this is true in game stores. Triple keepers smoking casuals happens every weekend in my local stores in non tournament events. Tourney power flesh eater courts nutsacking a casual campaign happens every weekend in my local stores. Not just at tournaments where its expected, and certainly not just between two competitive like minded people.

The unspoken rule is "if its legal by GW, you have to deal with it" as far as pick up games go, public campaigns go, and obviously public tournament events go. If you want to escape that you either don't play, or you try to assemble a private group in your basement or garage and then social engineer them to your bidding.

This obviously rankles and chaffes a lot of people, and considering you only have a dozen or so public players in your total player pool... it takes a tremendous amount of politics and personal willpower and energy to forge. As such it is also highly unrealistic, when if the rules were a bit tighter in the first place it wouldn't be necessary at all.

Chiming in, Auticus articulates what my area is like as well. We're close to one of the venues for bigger Tournaments (Adepticon), and our boys and girls make the trip to compete for 40k and AoS. So generally, pick up games are going to be just as hard as tournaments, though almost everyone barring brand new players try to build for that.

There are a few folk, myself being one, that do talk about narrative events and more casual leagues ... But generally those become corrupted with more competitive lists due to the need to win, or because someone provided a prize pool for the end, or something equally unfortunate.

I guess the saving grace for new folk is the Warhammer store that has free leagues meant to be fun and are so far maintained as that.

I think that a lot of people feel auticus exaggerates, and while his area does seem to be a bit extreme, it's a pretty common idea that "if the list is legal, deal with it" and caring how good it is versus your opponent is the lowest concern, if a concern at all. There are people who will bring a power list to casual games, curb stomp people and see nothing wrong with it (not all are the "git gud scrub" type who gloat about it, however). There are people who see nothing wrong with bringing a tournament list to a narrative campaign game or bring a heavy-hitter list to a teaching game for a newish player. They exist, and seem to be pretty common in game stores in the USA.

Worse though is the person who doesn't INTEND to pick a power army, but what they like happens to be the good stuff and they inadvertently curb stomp people and get a bad reputation when they just really like the KoS model or really like the idea of Eel cavalry or big undead monsters. Those people get hit the hardest because they are doing exactly what GW is telling them to, but since what they like is really good they just crush people.

I will, however, echo something mentioned in a thread long time ago. That the attitude and behaviour of players is very dependent on the area/country you play in. I know I, and a few people from other countries in Europe, are very lucky to have a more friendly playing areas.

Although I will admit that this is slowly changing in the 40k group as there are now a few people in that group that are now travelling to the US tourneys(ITC) and are becoming more and more competitive the more they play in that particular tourney circuit. As a social phenomenon I find it very interesting to watch.

Personally, I'm in an area where if a player has the attitude of "if legal, then your problem" then that player doesn't find pick up games. If cutthroat is the name of the game, that is always discussed ahead of time. And generally, it's not a long discussion either.

Player A: "Anyone got an army with them?"

Player B: "Sure. What were you thinking?"

Player A: "2000pts."

Player B: "Alright. Do I bring the thunder?"

Player A: "Yes." or "No." with optional clarification.

Takes about a minute.

I think that a lot of people feel auticus exaggerates, and while his area does seem to be a bit extreme

There is no exaggeration at all about my area, that is quite plainly how it is. I also have traveled the country and don't find my area to be extreme at all. I find it to be pretty normal how they operate as far as American gaming environments are concerned.

That the attitude and behaviour of players is very dependent on the area/country you play in.

I absolutely agree. Which is why when someone from the UK or other countries tries to say I am exaggerating and push that its just hyperbole, why I continue to counter argue. Because there is nothing hyperbolic at all about it. Thats american culture.

We have a gent that is from the UK that lives in our city now and he has claimed MANY times how different it is over here and how he likes that because he is a competitive dude and likes how the default in any store here is beat-face.

So I totally get that other cultures see this as an absurd cartoon caricature. Even the guys in the US that are blessed with a more casual play group say that, but thats just not the norm here.

The last time I went to Adepticon in 2018 it was to do the AOS narrative event. It was being touted as being casual and friendly and all about the story and the tournament guys had their tournament and the narrative guys would have this. So I was stoked.

Until I saw that the lists being brought to this were by and large not casual friendly narrative, and the narrative being told was that everyone has a super powerful force.

Which is why ... people who have casual groups or live in a country where that is the norm (casual play) that don't have to deal with this... I want better balanced rules from GW.

Player A: "Anyone got an army with them?"

Player B: "Sure. What were you thinking?"

Player A: "2000pts."

Player B: "Alright. Do I bring the thunder?"

Player A: "Yes." or "No." with optional clarification.

This is how it works in my three stores:

A: anyone got an army with them?
B: sure what are you thinking.
A: 2000 pts.

Note at this point the conversation ends 80% of the time and then the game is played
The other 20%:
B: Alright do I bring the thunder.
A: yes (default) - good game
A: no (not default) i'd rather you not bring your adepticon smash face list.
Three answers derive from this
---> 1) B: sorry I don't have the inclination and/or models to accomodate your wish. (players don't play, they go their own separate ways)
---> 2) B: ok, I removed one of the smash face models. Its now toned down from Filth to "A" tier. Lets play. (players play, bad experience)
---> 3) C: ok. (players play, lists are toned down, both players have fun)

I find all three happen in equal measure.

There is a fourth option I have seen happen a couple times a month. Both players unload their force. Player A looks at Player B's force, and says "I have nothing I can do to beat that, do you want to play something else?" To which they agree and play something else.

To sum up US culture in a nutshell, I once talked in my group about how I deliberately tone back armies and tactics so that I will lose games to opponents I could easily beat otherwise, because everyone having fun means more to me than winning.

Some people thought I was making it up, as an excuse for losing games.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
To sum up US culture in a nutshell, I once talked in my group about how I deliberately tone back armies and tactics so that I will lose games to opponents I could easily beat otherwise, because everyone having fun means more to me than winning.

Some people thought I was making it up, as an excuse for losing games.

I can understand why if you explained it that way, because it really sounds like you're losing on purpose.

Toning down your army list doesn't mean that. It means that you don't optimize everything to the extremes, but rather adapt to your opponent's list so that the game is still interesting. You can still play with the units at your disposal, use them at their best and still play to try to win.

I feel one part of the problem is that a lot of players are too focused on the list building part of the game. I always thought that there is no skill in particular while optimizing your list ; it's how you deal with your units on the battlefield that really show a player's talent.

Which is why I always get weird looks from competitive players when I'm telling them to play a game where the units are set from the scenario, like a narrative battle with specific armies. They usually see it as you can't play it "seriously" to win at all costs that way.

It is literally quite possible to not get a game if you are not tournament ready here in the States.

I can't tell you how often I have heard, "I'm preparing this list for the next tournament."

The only time a game isn't like this is if there are literally no tournament games happening like for Flames of War or Battletech. Warmachine? Steamroller or nothing (some only bring their Steamroller lists, and they can't build down from it). AoS or 40K? We have probably a dozen stores that sell GW in our metropolis, and so one of those games is having a tournament in a weekend. X-Wing? Oh, yeah.

I'm wondering if Marvel Protocols or SW Legion will be hitting that pace. One of the bigger stores just had Legion tournament at the beginning of the month, and they had a slightly better turn out then our WMH end of the year gathering.

I feel you are missing the point I was trying to make.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Well if dealing 9 damage in a combat phase is the standard by which he is measured then I suppose he isn't so great.

Your missing the point... he cant buff well, he gets outran for the unit he can buff, he isn't consistent damage, and his 1 buff cost CP and is actually bad within BoC b.c they don't need +to wound when you can get re-roll wounds a few ways. He is basically a supporting melee beat stick that isn't good at beating things. A chaos lord does what he does in melee but for 1 CP can make a unit fight twice, thats leaps and bounds better than 1 unit getting +1 to wound....

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Well if dealing 9 damage in a combat phase is the standard by which he is measured then I suppose he isn't so great.

Your missing the point... he cant buff well, he gets outran for the unit he can buff, he isn't consistent damage, and his 1 buff cost CP and is actually bad within BoC b.c they don't need +to wound when you can get re-roll wounds a few ways. He is basically a supporting melee beat stick that isn't good at beating things. A chaos lord does what he does in melee but for 1 CP can make a unit fight twice, thats leaps and bounds better than 1 unit getting +1 to wound....

Well we can crunch the numbers:

Doombull verses 5+ save: 4.83 average damage
verses 4+ save: 4.08

Chaos Lord verses 5+ save: 4.77
verses 4+ save: 4.11

So average damage is about the same. The doombull is faster and more durable, but does not have as good a command ability. So comparatively speaking they are on similar terms, though the superiority of the CL's command ability definitely gives him the edge. In that respect 100 for the doombull verses 110 for the CL makes sense. But I feel like the chaos lord should be in the 150 range, and only that low because there is serious competition for CP in the StD lineup. So by the same comparison the doombull would be more like 130-140.

But perhaps a better question would be, what 100 points of troop option beats a doombull?

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I feel you are missing the point I was trying to make.

Not at all, I get it. It's just the way you put it makes the misunderstanding easier for others not understanding your point of view.

That said, my statement about the inflation of list building's importance in players' mind still applies. And I believe most troubles here actually come from player's mindset about that specific part of the game. GW could make the best rules ever, as long as this mindset is the same, the troubles will keep appearing.

The problem existing or not isn't an issue, like most things it is the severity that matters.

And I believe most troubles here actually come from player's mindset about that specific part of the game. GW could make the best rules ever, as long as this mindset is the same, the troubles will keep appearing.

That can be proven to be objectively false.

During the 6th edition of whfb, the balance was the best its ever been, and these balance discussions were not common.

During the fan comp days of AOS, the balance was pretty good and these balance discussions being so off the rails were not common when using fan comps as the context (they were common in that people didn't want fan comp and wanted official points but thats a different context).

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
The problem existing or not isn't an issue, like most things it is the severity that matters.

Severity only makes it worse, but it is the problem at the roots that actually sparks it all.

If that mindset didn't exist, that kind of problem would be irrelevant by nature. That's how I see it.

 auticus wrote:

That can be proven to be objectively false.

During the 6th edition of whfb, the balance was the best its ever been, and these balance discussions were not common.

During the fan comp days of AOS, the balance was pretty good and these balance discussions being so off the rails were not common when using fan comps as the context (they were common in that people didn't want fan comp and wanted official points but thats a different context).

Objectively false, when you're using a subjective statement ? On what facts was 6th edition balanced, actually ? I'm interested to see you prove that, really.

This is exactly the kind of reactions I get all the time. People using subjectivity from their competitive mindset and brushing it away like it was never the problem at the roots.

About AoS' debut, I believe the main reason is more to look at the community's mindset at that time. Let's face it, most hardcore competitive players from Battle didn't jump the boat at that time - and I'm not sure there were really hardcore competitive players in the first days of AoS. Their mindset was different, and so their point of view was as well. It was fine for them because they found the fun even so their game was dragged in the trash by those who left. If you didn't remember that time, I do - I was there.

 Sarouan wrote:

Objectively false, when you're using a subjective statement ? On what facts was 6th edition balanced, actually ? I'm interested to see you prove that, really.

by the pure fact that the 6. Edition Core Rules and Faction Rules (ravening hordes) were written by the same team at the same time

 Sarouan wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
The problem existing or not isn't an issue, like most things it is the severity that matters.

Severity only makes it worse, but it is the problem at the roots that actually sparks it all.

If that mindset didn't exist, that kind of problem would be irrelevant by nature. That's how I see it.

Absolutely, but really the root problem is simply that some people are donkey-caves. THAT isn't changing any time soon, so we are left dealing with severity. Or put differently, we are dealing with the amount of room donkey-caves have to work with.

Of course even that is somewhat secondary for the level of severe imbalance AoS is at, where even two people doing their best to balance against each other can easily end up with wildly different results.

A 100 point doombull feels completely wrong but I have to agree that even at 120 it wasn't good enough. And at 100, he isn't because hes part of a non functional army.

He should be in the 150-160 range and be worth those points.

After the point drops I have come to the realisation that the best way to use the Brass Despoiler batallion in a mixed khorne army is with 3x10 gors and 3 Doombulls.

Bullgors have much more damage than a Doombull (The bloodkine has nearly the same damage output than a Doombull), but they need a ton of buffs to be reliable. The Doombull offers a good punch in a nice package that doesn't work alone but as a bigger list with other things that punch harder can go under the radar.

The problem of course is the fething 190 point cost of Brass Despoilers.

 kodos wrote:

 Sarouan wrote:

Objectively false, when you're using a subjective statement ? On what facts was 6th edition balanced, actually ? I'm interested to see you prove that, really.

by the pure fact that the 6. Edition Core Rules and Faction Rules (ravening hordes) were written by the same team at the same time

by the same token 40k was balanced briefly in 3rd edition when all the then-current armies had lists in the BRB.

Unlike Index 8th which had a slew of issues (less than now of course) immediately.

About AoS' debut, I believe the main reason is more to look at the community's mindset at that time. Let's face it, most hardcore competitive players from Battle didn't jump the boat at that time - and I'm not sure there were really hardcore competitive players in the first days of AoS. Their mindset was different, and so their point of view was as well. It was fine for them because they found the fun even so their game was dragged in the trash by those who left. If you didn't remember that time, I do - I was there.

I can't speak for the world but in my region our AOS scene started with almost nothing but the hardcore competitive players. One of our hardest of hards was at the GW store with his 300 model tzeentch armies trying with a straight face to say that unbound summoning was just fine and you just needed to git gud.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Objectively false, when you're using a subjective statement ? On what facts was 6th edition balanced, actually ? I'm interested to see you prove that, really.

Are you asking me to mathematically prove balance? The win/loss percentages of the time were all pretty much the same across the board. There certainly was nothing like what we have today or even 10 years ago. There were no armies that were pulling higher than a 60% win rate at tournaments like slaanesh and friends do today. That started to change when they returned to their ways of leaking a book every 6 months or whatever, but the first two or three years of 6th ed were heads and shoulders better balance wise and army viability wise than today.

By the meaning of the response being that the intent seemed to be people will always complain about balance so nothing has ever been balanced so GW today with AOS is fine because balance can't happen, when back then there weren't a lot of wailing over balance, and when the fan comps in AOS were running ther ewasn't a lot of imbalance running amuk then either.

I can objectively say my comp had at worst a 58/42 win split for the worst offenders, which is several times greater than what GW has right now. I can objectively state that 6th edition whfb had less than a 60/40 disparity across the board as well at the GT level (because I was there at most of them for years and saw)

Thats as close as I can get to mathematically proving that the balance was miles better than when it started going to hell with Mat Ward and the demon book in 7th edition carrying on through GW's writing today. The caveat was that around late 2003 to early 2004, 6th edition started becoming the GW we all know, and that armies like the vampire counts started rising in power in part due to the bus death star build, and then swelling with ultimate power in 7th edition alongside demons and dark elves.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Well if dealing 9 damage in a combat phase is the standard by which he is measured then I suppose he isn't so great.

Your missing the point... he cant buff well, he gets outran for the unit he can buff, he isn't consistent damage, and his 1 buff cost CP and is actually bad within BoC b.c they don't need +to wound when you can get re-roll wounds a few ways. He is basically a supporting melee beat stick that isn't good at beating things. A chaos lord does what he does in melee but for 1 CP can make a unit fight twice, thats leaps and bounds better than 1 unit getting +1 to wound....

But perhaps a better question would be, what 100 points of troop option beats a doombull?

Shadow warriors; 2+/3+ if in cover, 18" range 10 shots, -1 for 1 vs 5+ its 4.68 damage, they can also deepstrike, not giving stats for the rest, but some more are, Freeguild Pistoliers, warpfire thrower, Leadbelchers, etc...

There are plenty, many are more niche or even more squishy, but there are lots. If you go with 100pts for blocks as well its even more so (but thats not full fair), there are MANYmore if you go up to CL points, some units can do double the damage for 150pts give or take 10pts as well. Sof or 50% more points to get many times double the wounds and damage? yeah sounds good.

since FW is cleaning house i was wondering, how are clossal squig, squig gobba and troggoth hag doing it on the table?

in a mono troggoth or mono squig army, are these models worth it to add?

 FrozenDwarf wrote:
since FW is cleaning house i was wondering, how are clossal squig, squig gobba and troggoth hag doing it on the table?

in a mono troggoth or mono squig army, are these models worth it to add?

The spitter does just fine, I always take one as range is scarce.
Always earns its place no matter what.

The colossal is squishy.
Hits like a train and I love using it as it can be insanely quick, but you have to avoid a fair few things (large blocks, dedicated CC troops etc)
As long as you pick your targets it will do well.
You would likely get more from the same points worth of bounders, but it provides a big distraction.

The hag I can’t say as I’ve never used one.
Dislike the model so I’ll never use it.





As a side note, I wouldn’t mind seeing a legion of Azgorh update either.
A few adjustments here and there would go a long way to helping them.
Not had any love for a while.
Not so fussy about spells and terrain like others have, but just a few tweaks to rules and points here and there.
Also want the skullcracker back on the FW site.
It’s a staple of most LoA armies but you either have to convert or find one on eBay.
Considering the last few have gone for around £300 or so, converting is the only reasonable option.

The new Plague Monk warscroll is up.

https://www.games-workshop.com/resources/PDF/AoS_Warscrolls//AoS_Skaven_Warscroll_card_Plague_Monks.pdf

With just a quick read over and no benefit of a stats deep dive, they still seem really good, in my opinion. Just not bonkers like they were.

Would like to see more of this kind of adjustment to warscrolls across the board,rather than just points +/-.

Would like to see more of this kind of adjustment to warscrolls across the board,rather than just points +/-.

I agree fully.

Agree here as well and its something I've long said. Sometimes points is good, but every time points go up in value it makes the potential number you can take of a model go down. This is bad in a model game because someone who enjoys taking 3 keepers in a list suddenly getting told "nope now you can only take max 2" now has a "useless" model unless the game goes to 3K points.

Changing the units warscroll means that players can retain the same point potential number to use in their army; but at the same time its core stats get adjusted. Also many times upping and lowering points isn't actually dealing with a problem. Heck sometimes when an army has a powerful core upping the points doesn't actually shut it down - Daughters of Khaine still use lots of witches supported by queens even though the points went up on both. The powerblock remained functional it was the support models that likely took a greater fall in use.

The fact that GW updated a warscroll is promising. For any other company, this would be a precedent to start doing it. Sadly with GW this may be the only time they update, or they could update warscrolls more frequently. It really is a crapshoot since their behavior is seemingly totally random and that's the worst thing of all; this update is good but there are a bunch of other things that need adjusting and who knows if they will be adjusted too.

 nels1031 wrote:
The new Plague Monk warscroll is up.

https://www.games-workshop.com/resources/PDF/AoS_Warscrolls//AoS_Skaven_Warscroll_card_Plague_Monks.pdf

With just a quick read over and no benefit of a stats deep dive, they still seem really good, in my opinion. Just not bonkers like they were.

Would like to see more of this kind of adjustment to warscrolls across the board,rather than just points +/-.

I like it, soooo much more user-friendly.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Well if dealing 9 damage in a combat phase is the standard by which he is measured then I suppose he isn't so great.

Your missing the point... he cant buff well, he gets outran for the unit he can buff, he isn't consistent damage, and his 1 buff cost CP and is actually bad within BoC b.c they don't need +to wound when you can get re-roll wounds a few ways. He is basically a supporting melee beat stick that isn't good at beating things. A chaos lord does what he does in melee but for 1 CP can make a unit fight twice, thats leaps and bounds better than 1 unit getting +1 to wound....

But perhaps a better question would be, what 100 points of troop option beats a doombull?

Shadow warriors; 2+/3+ if in cover, 18" range 10 shots, -1 for 1 vs 5+ its 4.68 damage, they can also deepstrike, not giving stats for the rest, but some more are, Freeguild Pistoliers, warpfire thrower, Leadbelchers, etc...

There are plenty, many are more niche or even more squishy, but there are lots. If you go with 100pts for blocks as well its even more so (but thats not full fair), there are MANYmore if you go up to CL points, some units can do double the damage for 150pts give or take 10pts as well. Sof or 50% more points to get many times double the wounds and damage? yeah sounds good.

Obviously a fast shooting unit can just kite him until he's dead if we are looking at things in a vacuum and not a battlefield where the doombull is getting look out sir and the ranged troops don't have the same space to maneuver. If that is the only was units could beat a doombull I'd say it's undercosted.

Also the doombull will crush a warpfire thrower easily, don't know who gave you that information.

Wayniac wrote:
The fact that GW updated a warscroll is promising. For any other company, this would be a precedent to start doing it. Sadly with GW this may be the only time they update, or they could update warscrolls more frequently. It really is a crapshoot since their behavior is seemingly totally random and that's the worst thing of all; this update is good but there are a bunch of other things that need adjusting and who knows if they will be adjusted too.

They did it for the Kharadron Gundstrok guys a few years ago, for what its worth.

Well yeah but this update is actually GOOD.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 nels1031 wrote:
The new Plague Monk warscroll is up.

https://www.games-workshop.com/resources/PDF/AoS_Warscrolls//AoS_Skaven_Warscroll_card_Plague_Monks.pdf

With just a quick read over and no benefit of a stats deep dive, they still seem really good, in my opinion. Just not bonkers like they were.

Would like to see more of this kind of adjustment to warscrolls across the board,rather than just points +/-.

I like it, soooo much more user-friendly.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Well if dealing 9 damage in a combat phase is the standard by which he is measured then I suppose he isn't so great.

Your missing the point... he cant buff well, he gets outran for the unit he can buff, he isn't consistent damage, and his 1 buff cost CP and is actually bad within BoC b.c they don't need +to wound when you can get re-roll wounds a few ways. He is basically a supporting melee beat stick that isn't good at beating things. A chaos lord does what he does in melee but for 1 CP can make a unit fight twice, thats leaps and bounds better than 1 unit getting +1 to wound....

But perhaps a better question would be, what 100 points of troop option beats a doombull?

Shadow warriors; 2+/3+ if in cover, 18" range 10 shots, -1 for 1 vs 5+ its 4.68 damage, they can also deepstrike, not giving stats for the rest, but some more are, Freeguild Pistoliers, warpfire thrower, Leadbelchers, etc...

There are plenty, many are more niche or even more squishy, but there are lots. If you go with 100pts for blocks as well its even more so (but thats not full fair), there are MANYmore if you go up to CL points, some units can do double the damage for 150pts give or take 10pts as well. Sof or 50% more points to get many times double the wounds and damage? yeah sounds good.

Obviously a fast shooting unit can just kite him until he's dead if we are looking at things in a vacuum and not a battlefield where the doombull is getting look out sir and the ranged troops don't have the same space to maneuver. If that is the only was units could beat a doombull I'd say it's undercosted.

Also the doombull will crush a warpfire thrower easily, don't know who gave you that information.

Im not pitting them vs each other, you asked me "What other 100pt units can deal the same damage" I gave you a few units as an example and then showed a few points more i can double the damage. Shadow warriors dont need to kite, they have equal damage and are always in range where the Bull has to run at them.

Unless you mean toe to toe in combat vs each other, but thats not my point, might be yours but then you are again missing my point, my point was he isn;t worth his points and thats why he went down. There is a very good reason BoC are one of the worst armies in the game and you don't see Doombulls being scary on the table. Heck double Beastlords with Volcanic Axe and Gavespawn Axe are much scarier, heroes run away from them (6 attacsk 3+/3+ rr hits 1's, rr all wounds, -1 for either 2D or 3D for 90pts), they also get the +3" movement buff for a 9" flat movement, and their CP is better, all breyherd within 18" gets re-rolls to hits if he killed any models and wounds if he killed a hero.

Ok then, what melee unit will exceed his damage output for 100 points, and has similar speed & durability. I am just trying to set up a comparison to establish relative effectiveness. Also, BoC are not among the worst armies in the game on the lower end, sure, but there are a number of armies worse off than them*

*A case could be made by going strictly off tourney win %, however due to the data points being non-randomized it is not reliable. I would note that Phoenix Temple had/has one of the highest win % ratings of AoS history., despite clearly not being at the power level of Slaanesh. If we look at tourney wins, where an army must be above a certain threshold to reach, BoC are sitting in the bottom third. Sub-par, but not the worst.**

**This is of course we are assuming 'armies' and not '2nd-edition battletomes' which is obviously a different case.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Ok then, what melee unit will exceed his damage output for 100 points, and has similar speed & durability. I am just trying to set up a comparison to establish relative effectiveness. Also, BoC are not among the worst armies in the game.

Edit: found a more recent version of the table. Beasts of Chaos are further down now, with only a 39% winrate.

 cole1114 wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Ok then, what melee unit will exceed his damage output for 100 points, and has similar speed & durability. I am just trying to set up a comparison to establish relative effectiveness. Also, BoC are not among the worst armies in the game.

Edit: found a more recent version of the table. Beasts of Chaos are further down now, with only a 39% winrate.

I realized my statement needed clarification, so I went back and edited it. I will concede that if one wants to measure army performance strictly by win % then they are among the worst. However, one them must also accept that phoenix temple were among the best.

Also, do you have any examples of Doombull-equivalent units performing similarly for 100 points?

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 cole1114 wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Ok then, what melee unit will exceed his damage output for 100 points, and has similar speed & durability. I am just trying to set up a comparison to establish relative effectiveness. Also, BoC are not among the worst armies in the game.

Edit: found a more recent version of the table. Beasts of Chaos are further down now, with only a 39% winrate.

I realized my statement needed clarification, so I went back and edited it. I will concede that if one wants to measure army performance strictly by win % then they are among the worst. However, one them must also accept that phoenix temple were among the best.

Also, do you have any examples of Doombull-equivalent units performing similarly for 100 points?

To clarify that guide isn't sorted by win%, it's sorta by wins in tournaments. So the more 5 win tournaments they have the higher ranked they are, then 4 win, etc.

As for the doombull, there's a bunch. Darkoath warqueen for example is better against heroes/monsters.

edit: there's also the skullgrinder after it becomes blood-blessed. The grimwrath berzerker. So on.

Well, a warqueen attacking a hero or monster deals an average of 3.55 against a 4+ save. Against a normal unit she deals 1.77 average. She also strikes at the start of the combat phase, and has a 6+ fnp that bounces mortals (which statistically will only trigger once before she dies).

The doombull deals 4.08 against a 4+ save regardless of unit type. He is also faster, has more wounds, and has a better armor save. So it is pretty clear the doombull fights better than the marauder warqueen.


The grimwrath berserker deals 2.96 average damage verses a 4+ but also gets another attack 5/6 times, bringing the average up to 5.43 (albeit with almost half of that coming at the end of the combat phase). He has 4+ armor and a 6+ fnp which goes to 5+ in melee, meaning his 6 wounds are realistically worth 8-9. So compared to the doombull he does more damage and is similar levels of durability, but is only movement 4", a significant downgrade from 7". Overall I would say he fights as well as the doombull, extra damage making up for slower speed.


The Skullgrinder doesn't do the blood blessed thing anymore, and has not for some time now. He is dealing out an average of 3.33 against a 4+ save, with added mortal wounds putting him at 5.0 against heores or monsters. So he beats out the doombull in damage only against heroes/monsters, otherwise he falls short. Same save as the doombull, but three less wounds and slower. The Doombuill fights better than this guy as well.

Based on that the Doombull is even with one and better than two others, which makes me think 120 was more appropriate. It also shows how the perception of a units performance can differ from the reality, and why it can be so important to run the numbers. Regardless, your assertion that these heroes fight similarly or better definitely falls flat.

On the matter of being among the worst armies, there is broad room for interpretation, and I should not have phrased it in as certain terms as I did. While I do not regard BoC position on that chart as one of the worst (I personally see the bottom 20% as 'the worst') but as a subjective term I do not think it unreasonable if someone said the bottom quarter or even the bottom third are considered 'the worst'.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
At the end of the day I want the doombull (and bullgors) to get something akin to WHFB minotaur rules where they gain stacking bonus attacks as long as they keep killing models. I want a doombull to be a 160-200 point beefcake of a combat unit.

Um... your math is wrong tho. He does an average of 3.58 damage to a 4+ save. How did you get over 4 damage? And that 3.58 is with the horns and chance of a MW.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
To add, a cool unit that is never talked about is a Master Moulder, he does 3.45 to all units with a 4+ save. His aura is good if you take those units and his other ability is good too if you take that unit (Heal D3 to a unit) for 100pts, his range is AMAZING 3" and 2". so you can fight from behind other units in safe zones against 1" units. Tho i wouldn't take Rat swarms, clan rats are just better.

https://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Packmaster

It's 3.58 without the MW. Average of 3 wound rolls means an average of 0.5 MWs, thus 4.08.

Skaven have so many OP options that conversation could go for days


Automatically Appended Next Post:
So on a positive note, and for giving credit where it is due, I want to say the nee plague monk scroll is really well done. First we have double weapons with one profile and weapon+stave with another. The re-rolls for hitting have been cut out for doubles while for stave armed units there is only one weapon profile to roll. Either way it is a lot of saved time, and the functionality of staves being the 'spear' option for larger units remains. The music & standard have been slimmed down to one bonus on each, neither of which involve keeping track of hits/wounds of 6 which is another improvement on ease of use. And a small thing, but the champion now has the same weapons as the unit so he never needs to be rolled separately. So props to GW on this one.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Um... your math is wrong tho. He does an average of 3.58 damage to a 4+ save. How did you get over 4 damage? And that 3.58 is with the horns and chance of a MW.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
To add, a cool unit that is never talked about is a Master Moulder, he does 3.45 to all units with a 4+ save. His aura is good if you take those units and his other ability is good too if you take that unit (Heal D3 to a unit) for 100pts, his range is AMAZING 3" and 2". so you can fight from behind other units in safe zones against 1" units. Tho i wouldn't take Rat swarms, clan rats are just better.

https://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Packmaster

The other key point is that he has a chance to bring back packs on a 5+
So rat ogres, giant rats, rat swarms, wolf rats etc.
Even if he brings back a min pack of rat ogres once he’s earned his points back without having to do a thing.

As someone who runs a pure moulder army, I tend to take 2-3 of him.
He’s literally the key point of the army, even if it is a low tier one.

Finishing painting my Charnel Throne is making me want to dust off my Flesh-Eater Courts again. At least I would have one army that's pretty top tier.

So I was thinking about Slaanesh summoning, and how I would redesign it if I could. I feel like the key points needed are it being based off torment but not killing, not being specifically tied to heroes/multi-wound models, and (if possible) having a trade off such that the summoning is not a free upgrade for the army.

The best I could come up with is something along the lines of:

"If an enemy model would be slain by the attacks of a friendly Slaanesh unit in the combat phase, you may choose for that model to be tormented instead. A tormented model is left with one wound remaining and any further damage yet to be allocated to that model's unit is negated (note this does not prevent the unit from taking damage later in the phase, should it be attacked again). A unit can only be tormented once per turn, even if the tormented model is subsequently slain. Generate 1 depravity point each time a model is tormented, generate d3 depravity points instead if the tormented model was a Hero or Monster.

Additionally, at the end of each turn roll a dice for each friendly Slaanesh unit on the battlefield that had damage allocated to it that turn (and not negated), on a 4+ generate 1 depravity point"

Obviously the numbers can be changed around to fit with whatever the depravity requirements to summon are, they are basically just placeholders to show the concept.

I'd still just incorporate a sudden death rule if you summon in more than 25% of free extra points to the game and your opponent does not. That way you can have whatever rules you want for summoning, but if you go nuts with it there is a downside that you are handing your opponent and easier victory condition to achieve.

Which brings choices back to the game.

Even that does not solve the core functionality of Slaanesh summoning. A low-summon army could suddenly be generating 600+ extra points of models just because they happened to go up against a multi-wound army. Not to mention all summoning being tied to characters.

I'd simply make depravity generation on a per-hit basis rather than per damage/wound.

IE - A single hit that deals 5 damage vs a 5 wound model generates 0 depravity.

Community Faction Focus wrote:Skyvessels have been tweaked considerably. Now, units embarked upon them count as a garrison.

Gentlemen.

Kharadron are coming.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Community Faction Focus wrote:Skyvessels have been tweaked considerably. Now, units embarked upon them count as a garrison.

Gentlemen.

Kharadron are coming.

And "Fly High" is back from 3-4 editions of WHFB ago.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Community Faction Focus wrote:Skyvessels have been tweaked considerably. Now, units embarked upon them count as a garrison.

Gentlemen.

Kharadron are coming.

I am happy they made this change. However, they should have done it when 2nd edition hit via errata. KO players have gone through a lot of needless crap on the tabletop because of GW's stubborn refusal to fix rules. They could have just done a straight replacement, keeping the bit about bailing out should the vessel be destroyed. It wouldn't have broken anything, it would have made the army entirely functional, and it would have taken all of 5 minutes to do.

Eh you can argue that for almost all factions at some point during the 2.0 lifespan. I think that honestly its been easier to wait for the 2.0 Battletome once the ball got rolling it was clear to see that the new tome was on the horizon. Though yes a painful wait for KO players who didn't know a year and a half ago that they'd be near the end.

Still just a steady 2 weeks to go and KO and Tzeentch will hit the shelves and game tables!

So having read the full article, the aether-share mechanic seems like it could be really fun while also being difficult to abuse since it is only once per game. This and the fly high mechanic I really like. The fly high in particular is a free teleport ability (something I generally do not like) but has some big drawbacks in being only the skyvessels and not being usable if it is too badly damaged. The latter part in particular adds a lot to tactical play for both sides.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Overread wrote:
Eh you can argue that for almost all factions at some point during the 2.0 lifespan. I think that honestly its been easier to wait for the 2.0 Battletome once the ball got rolling it was clear to see that the new tome was on the horizon. Though yes a painful wait for KO players who didn't know a year and a half ago that they'd be near the end.

Still just a steady 2 weeks to go and KO and Tzeentch will hit the shelves and game tables!

I disagree; there are no other factions where a single extremely simple change would have restored broken army functionality.

Given how salty people were over the errata'd Grundstock Thunderers, it's a safe bet to say that they didn't want to do something as big without a book again.

That and I suspect they didn't want legions of other army fans screaming for similar attention before their Battletome; or even making the battletome appear devalued if "many of the most important changes were free ones".

Another possibility is they didn't want to make it seem like they just lifted the idea from the various forums, reddits, etc and threw it into GHB.

It was a very popular suggestion.

As answers to the question of "Why do we want to let a faction be non-viable for over a year?" Those aren't convincing to me. It's sucked for people who want to play KO, it's lost sales GW could have been making. And not all of the players who left because the army they wanted to play didn't work will come back.

Same can be said for Slaves to Darkness, Cities of Sigmar, Orruks and most other armies. There is no denying that AoS was a total disaster of messy launch concepts that then went through two or three major product direction revisions and management revisions before landing on the 2.0 formula.

That isn't saying 2.0 is perfect, but its vastly superior, rules wise, than anything that came before since AoS started.



So basically yeah there was waiting, heck Auctus never let us forget that Slaves to Darkness were brokenly bad over the last year and a half or more .

KO are getting a new Tome, new rules, new model and should join the ranks of 2.0 factions in less than two weeks time.



I think we can muse on what might have been and on the better choices GW could have made, but in the end KO Are losing no models and are gaining functionality at last. Now if you want a rant then I'd say high elf players or such have got far more reason to rant. Or we can rage at the swathes of FW models being stripped from sale (after years of them adding very little to fantasy and GW hardly marketing anything that was up for sale from FW anyway).

Sorry, but Wanderers are the ones that get to rant the most.

Three iterations of GHB Allegiance abilities, etc--and they completely screwed us by just shoving us into Cities of Yawnmar.

It's frankly sad that they chose to go that route with Wanderers, seeing as how they have exceedingly little to do with the Cities. More's the pity that the flavorful units(Waywatchers and Glade Guard, notably) got dumped with no ceremony.

 Overread wrote:
Same can be said for Slaves to Darkness, Cities of Sigmar, Orruks and most other armies. There is no denying that AoS was a total disaster of messy launch concepts that then went through two or three major product direction revisions and management revisions before landing on the 2.0 formula.

That isn't saying 2.0 is perfect, but its vastly superior, rules wise, than anything that came before since AoS started.



So basically yeah there was waiting, heck Auctus never let us forget that Slaves to Darkness were brokenly bad over the last year and a half or more .

KO are getting a new Tome, new rules, new model and should join the ranks of 2.0 factions in less than two weeks time.



I think we can muse on what might have been and on the better choices GW could have made, but in the end KO Are losing no models and are gaining functionality at last. Now if you want a rant then I'd say high elf players or such have got far more reason to rant. Or we can rage at the swathes of FW models being stripped from sale (after years of them adding very little to fantasy and GW hardly marketing anything that was up for sale from FW anyway).

Well no, the same can't be said, because those were not completely new armies with the entire line being new. Even more importantly mixed order, ironjawz, and bonesplittaz were all viable for a long period leading into the corresponding battletome releases. Slaves to Darkness were not, but are again a completely different situation since all of those models could be used in the mono-god allegiances.

And, again, there is no one rule change that could have fixed any of those factions. With KO it is literally replacing a couple paragraphs with a single sentence changing them to use the garrsion rules. Bam, one sentence, army fixed.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Sorry, but Wanderers are the ones that get to rant the most.

Three iterations of GHB Allegiance abilities, etc--and they completely screwed us by just shoving us into Cities of Yawnmar.

It's frankly sad that they chose to go that route with Wanderers, seeing as how they have exceedingly little to do with the Cities. More's the pity that the flavorful units(Waywatchers and Glade Guard, notably) got dumped with no ceremony.

The gutting of factions is its own issue, similar but not what I'm addressing.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

With KO it is literally replacing a couple paragraphs with a single sentence changing them to use the garrsion rules. Bam, one sentence, army fixed.

I don't think it was the only problem with KO. Saying just that fixes the whole army is a bit exaggerating, IMHO, but it sure helps to make the skyvessels more incentive to take in your list. I believe making a whole new book is actually the right answer here.

 Sarouan wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

With KO it is literally replacing a couple paragraphs with a single sentence changing them to use the garrsion rules. Bam, one sentence, army fixed.

I don't think it was the only problem with KO. Saying just that fixes the whole army is a bit exaggerating, IMHO, but it sure helps to make the skyvessels more incentive to take in your list. I believe making a whole new book is actually the right answer here.

I agree it’s not a complete fix.
However, it was one of the biggest issues they had.
It now opens up a lot of more viable tactics and adds value to other units too.

May not have been a complete fix alone, but it’s likely to be the most significant in terms of impact.

Thunderers are looking a bit more useful now too.

Just hoping that the floaty boys get an option to be battleline.

I'm curious to see if garrisoned units always count as stationary or as moving when the ship moves/deepstrikes.

Some units could be fun if they remain stationary like irondrakes or Auric hearthguard with firepikes to knock out monsters could be nifty.

Being able to get places from the garrisoned ships easily, along with mobile firepower could make this army a lot more scary then it used to be on the battlefield.

Jackal90 wrote:

However, it was one of the biggest issues they had.
It now opens up a lot of more viable tactics and adds value to other units too.

May not have been a complete fix alone, but it’s likely to be the most significant in terms of impact.

Thunderers are looking a bit more useful now too.

Just hoping that the floaty boys get an option to be battleline.

It sure helps to vary the tactics and use their ships differently and I agree with that.

Like you said, I really hope they get more battlelines than skyvessels in one faction and the arkanaut company. The new hero looks like it could unlock some floaty boy as general. I would love an option for the grundstok thunderers to be taken as such as well, but maybe I'm asking too much here.

 Elmir wrote:
I'm curious to see if garrisoned units always count as stationary or as moving when the ship moves/deepstrikes.

Some units could be fun if they remain stationary like irondrakes or Auric hearthguard with firepikes to knock out monsters could be nifty.

I highly doubt that Barak-Thryng will allow other duardins to embark in their skyvessels. I bet they will keep the Skyfarer keyword as condition for units that can do that and I don't think the fyreslayer and dispossessed will get it in such an army.

I do hope they will be able to take gyrocopters and gyrobombers, though. Because come on, they are perfect escorts for Kharadron ships !

Pointy Aelves finally getting a battletome this spring. Maybe the reason they gutted the High Elf models from the aelf line and kept the Dark Elf.

They should keep the name, as a warning to those who criticize GW naming 'we can always make it worse...'

I am hoping that there is some parity between the models removed and the new one, so at least I can use my High Elf models as their counterparts in the new Light Aelf army.

Only time will tell.

I’m hoping they use this as an opportunity to re-release Spire of Dawn/Island of Blood: the BEST starter edition box they’ve ever made (and I say this as somebody who used to play O&G, Empire, and currently plays Chaos).

 timetowaste85 wrote:
I’m hoping they use this as an opportunity to re-release Spire of Dawn/Island of Blood: the BEST starter edition box they’ve ever made (and I say this as somebody who used to play O&G, Empire, and currently plays Chaos).

Excellent point. I already have 2 of those boxes and wouldn't mind more and being able to use them. The models were outright gorgeous.

I honestly hope they don't re-release it. I'd rather that they worked on those content concepts more. For example giving multie arm option rat ogres; giving a teams of rats that can use multiple different team weapons (throwers, grinders, etc...). I'd rather see GW expand on the concept of those models than re-release the mono-pose mono build set again.

Don't get me wrong its a great set, I'd just rather see them actually advance both sides with their own updated models rather than peddle a duel set that is, by the very nature of the casts, stuck being a duel set with limited options.

 Sarouan wrote:

It sure helps to vary the tactics and use their ships differently and I agree with that.

Like you said, I really hope they get more battlelines than skyvessels in one faction and the arkanaut company. The new hero looks like it could unlock some floaty boy as general. I would love an option for the grundstok thunderers to be taken as such as well, but maybe I'm asking too much here.

Thunderers can be battleline in one of the Port-Cities, Frigates in another, and Gunhaulers in a third.

Endrinriggers get unlocked if you take the new balloon guy.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Thunderers can be battleline in one of the Port-Cities, Frigates in another, and Gunhaulers in a third.

Endrinriggers get unlocked if you take the new balloon guy.

Yes, I saw the Guerilla Miniatures review. I must say that this battletome is doing a lot of changes other than simple garrison on the ships. In fact, there is a lot of restrictions on that garrison part...

Looks like a lot of range weapons got slightly reduced in...range. Just enough to make synergy with Fly High skyvessels not that overpowered in the end. On the other hand, they're clearly more deadly. Up in saves / resistance for a lot of units also helps (4+ arkanaut, not bad for what is still the main strength for holding objectives). But then, it's only one special weapon of each kind on the 3 per 10 arkanaut - no more three harpoons for 10.

510 points for the Ironclad...yes, its damage potential is deadly, but still that's expansive. Looks like there are a lot of counterpoints for all the strong points of the army. I must say I like what I saw. If only all the factions were like this...



About the pointy elves video, I dunno...I almost thought it was actually a hint at their Old World game, I mean are they really just putting the High Elves back as they were ? Otherwise, why focus so much on the old artwork ? I sure hope they're a bit more different than that.

 Eldarsif wrote:
I am hoping that there is some parity between the models removed and the new one, so at least I can use my High Elf models as their counterparts in the new Light Aelf army.

Only time will tell.

Almost certainly not. Why would they want you to keep using old models when they can sell you shiny new Pointy Elves?

Updating the warscrolls is great but how the heck do you keep track? The app hasn't been updated.

Cronch wrote:

 Eldarsif wrote:
I am hoping that there is some parity between the models removed and the new one, so at least I can use my High Elf models as their counterparts in the new Light Aelf army.

Only time will tell.

Almost certainly not. Why would they want you to keep using old models when they can sell you shiny new Pointy Elves?

Because a happy high elf player buying a battletome and some new guys is better than an unhappy one that buys neither.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
I’m hoping they use this as an opportunity to re-release Spire of Dawn/Island of Blood: the BEST starter edition box they’ve ever made (and I say this as somebody who used to play O&G, Empire, and currently plays Chaos).

Only $190 USD for the set

 usernamesareannoying wrote:
Updating the warscrolls is great but how the heck do you keep track? The app hasn't been updated.

Its not updated b.c it hasn't been released yet, the previews are leaks, it'll be updated on the 11th (well so i'm being told the 11th).

Thanks amish. They are on the downloads for the models so i thought they were official

Cronch wrote:

 Eldarsif wrote:
I am hoping that there is some parity between the models removed and the new one, so at least I can use my High Elf models as their counterparts in the new Light Aelf army.

Only time will tell.

Almost certainly not. Why would they want you to keep using old models when they can sell you shiny new Pointy Elves?

I would say the chance is 50/50 going either way, therefore I say: I hope.

 Eldarsif wrote:

Cronch wrote:

 Eldarsif wrote:
I am hoping that there is some parity between the models removed and the new one, so at least I can use my High Elf models as their counterparts in the new Light Aelf army.

Only time will tell.

Almost certainly not. Why would they want you to keep using old models when they can sell you shiny new Pointy Elves?

I would say the chance is 50/50 going either way, therefore I say: I hope.

Indeed. This could be Deepkin with a light theme instead of fish, or it could be another Cities of Sigmar.

We'll see which way they go!

I hope it diverges, personally. I'd rather a complete army be released than need to scavenge amongst the rubble of WFB to find unit options and characters.


Take the ogres for example- a lot of their stuff has been 'temporarily out of stock' for months now, and their new character is a unavailable exclusive. That's no way to launch a battletome, and definitely not a good way to launch a new army from an essentially unexplored realm.


The Return of Square Bases can recycle the old stuff, I'd rather AoS commit to the being the vehicle for new models.

Voss wrote:
I hope it diverges, personally. I'd rather a complete army be released than need to scavenge amongst the rubble of WFB to find unit options and characters.


Take the ogres for example- a lot of their stuff has been 'temporarily out of stock' for months now, and their new character is a unavailable exclusive. That's no way to launch a battletome, and definitely not a good way to launch a new army from an essentially unexplored realm.

To be fair this is the pattern as of late for AoS. The FEC Arch-Regent is still not available outside of the Carrion Empire release. Same goes for the Skaven hero I think. Sylvaneth hero is also in limbo. It really sucks to get in on a new updated AoS army when the hero is unavailable unless you pay a hefty entry price for the box.

Personally I think the High Elf will mix old and new together. The video heavily hints at them wanting to make an army that might get older WHFB players and maybe snag some Total War High Elf players. Why bother with focusing on "pointy ears, pointy hats" in the video if you are going to eschew what made the faction's looks?

If they are not going to stick to older design aesthetic they could just as well skipped all that nostalgia in the video and just announced another elf army.

Rumors are they are 6 months behind if not more, combine that they are making more studios and space. I would "assume" they had the intent to release some of this stuff after all that was in place but with delays its taking longer.

And i too think it'll be a mix of old and new models, but some might stay in CoS. I'm also assuming more and more CoS units will be phased out slowly in the next couple years or so. SO i'm guessing that these pointy Aelves will be made with that in mind.

I'd expect Teclis' Elves will have some of the old High Elf aesthetic, but not units.

They're a new faction entirely. We haven't seen anything about them outside of them being Teclis' second attempt at creating Elves.

Does anyone have thoughts on Tzeentch? Having watched Ash's review, it seems like a particularly uninspired release consisting entirely of safe choices like lowering points costs while cutting the more outlandish abilities (Changeling might as well just be removed) and not adding a single new and exciting thing to the faction. Even the layout was genericized, losing the gold filigree bits that overlapped spell tables and such.

I wouldn't expect anything added since they already got new models last release. It needed to be corrected from the over-nerf that it received, to bring its power back up and to entice people to spend money on a new book

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Does anyone have thoughts on Tzeentch? Having watched Ash's review, it seems like a particularly uninspired release consisting entirely of safe choices like lowering points costs while cutting the more outlandish abilities (Changeling might as well just be removed) and not adding a single new and exciting thing to the faction. Even the layout was genericized, losing the gold filigree bits that overlapped spell tables and such.

You can see with things like the lost of the Changeling hability or the sky dwarves losing their hability to grab onto terrain and move that more and more AoS is losing that "crazy" spirit and trying to "Homogeinize" everything, becoming more and more 40k. For some people thats good. I agree that many of those crazy habilites were most of the time useless, and sometimes broken. But it was also the spirit that draw me onto aos. That they had much more freedom to innovate in the habilites of subfactions.

I remember when Tzeentch released. The Destiny Dice would had been something completely alien for 40k but in AoS it was seen as ultra cool. In 40k, you know exactly what your faction will get: Subfactions, Stratagems, Relics, Warlord Traits. AoS had that extra room for crazy alligiance habilities and unit habilities. And many of that is being lost. A shame.

Well, 40k is getting Faith Dice which are its own Destiny Dice mechanic.

Otherwise I have heard a lot of negative things from KO and DoT players so it does sound to me that this is a really "meh" release.

From KO perspective, it added a bunch of really no-brainer suggestions people have been posting online for years, did a small reshuffling of special abilities (most of which are not port-specific unlike previously generic), and while it did boost a lot of units, some remained...questionable (like insistance that certain skills or weapons ONLY work on airborne units, a limitations that almost no other faction has) and they did nerf the poor khemist into the ground. He went from being indispensable to "literally never take". There is also the question of one of the new "boosts" coming with an actual downside- KO get a new and very finite resource to use in game to use for Triumphs (so you know, mostly rerolls of one specific thing like to-hit). Which is great, but to use that resource incurs -1 to bravery that stacks. It might be the only faction ability that has an actual penalty to use, and one that doesn't go away at the end of turn/phase. I imagine Tzeench got similar treatment where the most glaring issues were fixed, but zero thought went into making it interesting or exciting.

The moaning I'm hearing is mainly that they were written by the for-fun team, and the for-stomping team books will continue for- stomping.

I can't confirm thats the case as I have not seen the rules, only parroting what is a common theme across my facebook and twitter feeds.

Is there any word on the streets when Seaphon will get their update?

Nope. The stars aren't aligned yet, it seems.

 auticus wrote:
The moaning I'm hearing is mainly that they were written by the for-fun team, and the for-stomping team books will continue for- stomping.

I can't confirm thats the case as I have not seen the rules, only parroting what is a common theme across my facebook and twitter feeds.

Well I don't know if there's any stomp in the book but there certainly doesn't seem to be any fun, so I guess both teams lose on this one.

What killed Kharadron for me was , instead of fixing the stupid Thunderer only 1 of each weapon, they made that also for the Arkanaut Company.

I tried Arkanaut Companies with 3 miniguns because feth yeah miniguns. I wasn''t really competitive but I loved playing that. Now is just... it is ugly. Having one of each weapon. I can't stand that.

What, you don't like having a bAlAncED MiX oF WeaPoNS on a unit while also cutting their range significantly?

Thunderers gained a buff specifically for having mixed weapons, which I think is an artful way of doing things; the situation for them is a bit different with four special weapon options on a 5-man unit and I feel the original 'free mix' was too much. The change to Arkanauts I think we all saw coming but is still unfortunate in my eyes. It would have been better to just balance the three options.


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 lord_blackfang wrote:
Does anyone have thoughts on Tzeentch? Having watched Ash's review, it seems like a particularly uninspired release consisting entirely of safe choices like lowering points costs while cutting the more outlandish abilities (Changeling might as well just be removed) and not adding a single new and exciting thing to the faction. Even the layout was genericized, losing the gold filigree bits that overlapped spell tables and such.

The idea that every battletome needs to add new stuff eventually leads to an extremely bloated system overall, while the 'change for the sake of change' mentality tends to be inconsistent and not even go over well. I think on a conceptual level taking a functional battletome and updating it without shaking things up is a sound decision. As for whether the updated mechanics are fun, that is obviously a very subjective topic.


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 Galas wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Does anyone have thoughts on Tzeentch? Having watched Ash's review, it seems like a particularly uninspired release consisting entirely of safe choices like lowering points costs while cutting the more outlandish abilities (Changeling might as well just be removed) and not adding a single new and exciting thing to the faction. Even the layout was genericized, losing the gold filigree bits that overlapped spell tables and such.

You can see with things like the lost of the Changeling hability or the sky dwarves losing their hability to grab onto terrain and move that more and more AoS is losing that "crazy" spirit and trying to "Homogeinize" everything, becoming more and more 40k. For some people thats good. I agree that many of those crazy habilites were most of the time useless, and sometimes broken. But it was also the spirit that draw me onto aos. That they had much more freedom to innovate in the habilites of subfactions.

I remember when Tzeentch released. The Destiny Dice would had been something completely alien for 40k but in AoS it was seen as ultra cool. In 40k, you know exactly what your faction will get: Subfactions, Stratagems, Relics, Warlord Traits. AoS had that extra room for crazy alligiance habilities and unit habilities. And many of that is being lost. A shame.

My perspective is different; where you see homogenization I see removing gimmicks. Yeah they were fun initially for the novelty, but that quickly wore off and they became either exploited or unused. They have been replaced with easier, more functional mechanics that I enjoy more because they are easier to play with and don't fall into the 'broken or not' situation that most gimmicks end up in. And KO still have a massive pile of unique mechanics no one else gets!

Also, have the Thunderer's Mortar have always had 12" range? I mean. How does a mortar with 12" range makes any sense?

If I remember correctly it was 30" or something like that before.

What I have realised is that in the early AoS nearly everything had a 4+ to hit. Now nearly everything has a 3+. For example with Kharadrons's cannons and all the Ogres. I had no problem with my ogres hitting on 4+. The problem was that made them awfull, but not because 4+. YOu can balance 4+ without a problem, they are slow brutes, thats fine, just give them more damage/attacks to compensate.

But alas, whatever, is not like it makes any kind of difference, just redundant variances to reach the same mathematical conclussion.

The problem with 4+ and KO guns was that they all had 1 attack, so your 150-240-480pts ships usually hit their target twice per game with their main weapon. And you still had to roll to wound and damage.

Anyway, no, the mortar used to be 18" i think, but then they nerfed it cause everyone took it as special option, and then they made it 1 weapon per 5, so the reason for the nerf disappeared, but GW forgot why they nerfed it, so it stayed nerfed.

Ogor guns are all 4+ still though. Except maybe the characters.

Makes sense that KOs would be fairly good at hitting stuff.

I didn't look into KO just yet, but i did look into DoT as i have a large Tzaangor army, tho its a BoC version, i am getting the book+spells even so. My BoC opinions at bottom.

-Shaman is cheaper 10pts
-EToD are up 20pts
-Tzaangors lost their horde discount, and shields slightly changed
-All Tzaangors lost Daemon keyword (helps and hurts)
-Horrors redesigned (in a good way, and IMO they are stronger now)
-Acolytes minor changes/buffs but went up in points
-A few ways to get bonuses to hit/atk/rend
-A single large caster can be buffed a bit more than it can now
-Fate Dice got nerfed heavily IMO (max of 9, limited uses)
-Army rule -1 to hit in melee within 12 for daemons is really good IMO (its why Tzaangors lost Daemon keyword i think)
Traits are optional which is good
-New Agendas is just a straight free bonus, 2 examples: with Fate dice the cast 2 endless spells one should be easy to get off,so you can have a caster on turn 2+ have +1 to cast always, 1 of the endless spells can be the Re-roll casts, if going Acolyte/Tzaangor heavy, kill a unit with 9+ models to get a +1 hits for that unit. Very strong on a large block unit or a 6-9man TEoD. Another is you make a 9" charge, for the rest of that turn you get a +1 to your atks, again for for melee armies
Changehost still there, but minor changes and i think it cost more

Thats only 1/2 of the important changes, some of the changes i noted out are for BoC players as well (will talk about this last). Its important to note that the Gaunt Summer and Horrors are a bit mroe costly now, but IMO they are an Auto include, at least 1 summoner with Horrors to summon for free and 1 unit of Horrors, that'll get you 20 Horrors, 40 Blues, 40 Brims. Horrors are 200pts for 50 wounds basically, so for 440pts you are getting 2 casts per turn and 100 wounds on the table. Combine them with a -1 to be hit in melee, its going to take a lot to kill them, throw them on an objective or two and win the game. Summoning will be easy to get points, you can easily have 7-10 casts a turn with some re-rolls, date dice, +to casts, etc.. Melee DoT got a huge buff, can easily have units with +hits, +atks, +rend, but they all went up in points.


As for BoC, 100% straight nerf if you took the 30block of tzaangors, or TEoD's, the Shaman is -10pts, but you are not saving points for Tzaangors, and you are spend 20pts more per set of Disks, very bad for BoC, if you take the Sigil endless spell you'll now be thinking of 2 endless spells and BoC don't do multiple endless spells very well, it costing a spell of 40pts and a Tzaangor caster (b.c we don't want to be dispell we need those re-rolls to get high casting roles), its 190pts to give a now +60pts unit +1atk where before it was 160pts and 1Cp to give it +1atk, thats +90pts. But you can now play out of Allherd or Gavespawn and save your CP. Now a BoC battalion inside a DoT book might be playable, i didn't look at that yet to see if the buffs outweigh the nerfs.


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I want to add, i might be allying in a Gaunt Summoner on Disc of Tzeentch for now on, as its 2 casts and it summon 200pts (up to 50 wounds) of models, so for 260pts you are getting 460pts of stuff. Even tho its not getting any buffs, its basically 4pts per wound on the horrors and a hero that can cast twice. 1 of the spells is a anti-horde spell, great for Rats, Gnobs, Mguard, etc.. i love the Gavespawn theme, and it fits well with that theme imo.

 Galas wrote:
Also, have the Thunderer's Mortar have always had 12" range? I mean. How does a mortar with 12" range makes any sense?

If I remember correctly it was 30" or something like that before.

Originally 30", which combined with the freeform weapon choice meant people running squads with all mortars combined with stacking khemist buffs to throw out tons of shooting at a huge distance. This was at the very dawn of the battletome, during that brief period where KO were actually quite potent when exploited properly. But the freeform weapons is gone, the attack-stacking is gone, and so this was the perfect time to put the mortar to 30" again, or at least 24". I totally agree 12" is nonsense.

What I have realised is that in the early AoS nearly everything had a 4+ to hit. Now nearly everything has a 3+. For example with Kharadrons's cannons and all the Ogres. I had no problem with my ogres hitting on 4+. The problem was that made them awfull, but not because 4+. YOu can balance 4+ without a problem, they are slow brutes, thats fine, just give them more damage/attacks to compensate.

KO hitting on 3+ makes more sense to me than 4+. But I am with you on Ogors; they aren't particularly skilled, just powerful. 4+ to hit with good wounds rolls made sense. The proper way to buff them would have been with rend which would maintain and enhance the 'crude but mighty' element of the army, and because the army is surprisingly pillow-fisted against good saves anyways. But GW is extremely stingy with rend in AoS. More units deal MWs than have rend -2, which is absolutely silly.

But alas, whatever, is not like it makes any kind of difference, just redundant variances to reach the same mathematical conclussion.

In a vacuum yes, but in the context of a battlefield it makes a huge difference once penalties/bonuses get involved. -1 to hit and re-roll hits of 1 are both extremely common and create very different results on a 3+/4+ attack verses a 4+/3+ one, for example. It also plays into theme of how strong an attack is verses how well it is aimed, and theme is definitely something that matters.

As someone new to AoS, how many copies of the first issue of mortal realms would be a good starting point? Probably more interested in the Stormcast Eternals side of things, if I got enough to get 20 Sequitors are they a decent foundation for an army?

The 1st issue comes with 3 sequitors. They all can be build 1 way only, and one of them is a unit leader. Not sure if you really want 2 units composed entirely of 3 of the same models.

Cronch wrote:
The 1st issue comes with 3 sequitors. They all can be build 1 way only, and one of them is a unit leader. Not sure if you really want 2 units composed entirely of 3 of the same models.

Not quite true. The unit leader has a helmet option, which makes it a little bit better.

Cronch wrote:
The 1st issue comes with 3 sequitors. They all can be build 1 way only, and one of them is a unit leader. Not sure if you really want 2 units composed entirely of 3 of the same models.

tbh I'm not that bothered (especially at £1 each), the last time I played warhammer i had 24 of these identical guys, so 3 variants sounds great to me!

if i just wanted to build a 1000pt army is 20 sequitors a reasonable starting point?

To get a "legal" unit of 10 without using the leader as basic trooper, you'd need 5 issues- you'd have 5 basic dudes, 4 dudes with double handed weapons and 1 leader, and a whole bunch of spares. If you don't mind clones, it's not as bad of a deal as I thought it'd be.

Cronch wrote:
To get a "legal" unit of 10 without using the leader as basic trooper, you'd need 5 issues- you'd have 5 basic dudes, 4 dudes with double handed weapons and 1 leader, and a whole bunch of spares. If you don't mind clones, it's not as bad of a deal as I thought it'd be.

thanks. looking at the sprue it seems a reasonably easy conversion to make the leader look like one of the basic troopers.

Shooter wrote:

Cronch wrote:
To get a "legal" unit of 10 without using the leader as basic trooper, you'd need 5 issues- you'd have 5 basic dudes, 4 dudes with double handed weapons and 1 leader, and a whole bunch of spares. If you don't mind clones, it's not as bad of a deal as I thought it'd be.

thanks. looking at the sprue it seems a reasonably easy conversion to make the leader look like one of the basic troopers.

As I say, the leader has a helmet option on the sprue. So you dont even need to convert.

 Eldarsif wrote:
Well, 40k is getting Faith Dice which are its own Destiny Dice mechanic.

Otherwise I have heard a lot of negative things from KO and DoT players so it does sound to me that this is a really "meh" release.

The only complaints I've heard were the nerfs to Tzaangors, primarily enlightened, which I think we all knew was going to happen. Some people are upset with horrors, but their role has completed switched and people now understand their new role are not as upset with them.

Tzeentch as a whole is significantly stronger. Destiny dice, the Locus, agendas and the covens has improved a lot of units dramatically. Tzangor enlightened are still strong, and it is very easy to get them the +1 attack agenda, and the fatemaster command ability removes the need for them to attack second.

The 1-drop changehost lists that are working their way around, are a tournament-winning level list for sure.

There are a ton more variety of a builds, which are all stronger, with several competitive lists floating around in the book.

Tzeentch came out ahead no doubt. Kharadon got the short end of the stick, I feel like GW went the "Safe" route with them. I fully expect they are going to get the digital points drops during the summer GHB.

IDK i think KO is very strong still, after reading both books with players that play both armies, they both are better than they were for sure. KO seems to might have only a couple good lists but are much stronger than they are now.

Yeesh, I'll need to read the book but garrisons on the flyers are pretty insanely prohibitive especially after warscroll changes for weapons on the arkonaughts. The reduced speed on the Ironclad for taking more than 15 models is silly.

Points for quite a few things went up and list building is going to be interesting. I'm going to give it a few shots but I feel like this is rough compared to most the other books that have come out recently.

My brother has been playing them and is doing alright in our group. The ships and their ability to Fly High help him quite a bit with mobility and their gunline style ends up doing some pretty strong dmg.

I think before passing judgement on the new KO battletome it is important to remember that all the units got significant durability buffs. Thunderers are 2W, Arkanauts and skyvessels all got increased saves. The army's ability to repair said skyvessels has increased as well. This is all before getting into the significant offensive increase from easy access to re-rolls, improved stats on a huge number of wearpons, and units getting full shooting while onboard vessels.

They aren't Tzeentch but I think KO players will be very happy to have a viable army.

General stuff to ask here, because I rarely drill down on AoS stuff...

Any guess as to when we can expect kits for the new StD Chaos Warriors/Knights, or even some new Chosen kits? I know nothing has really been teased, but I figure there's at least a noticeable pattern to 'full kits' after a release like the StD box.

And is there anything for WarCry in relation to the above, or any other factions? I'm about to '40k' the Warcry Terrain by kitbashing it with the new Necromunda terrain unless there's a good reason to keep it around.