Thats cool. If the rules had t hings like... you are -1 to hit for each set of forests you are shooting through, where it was possible to hit your target but not without penalty, I'd also be ok with it. Something where you had a penalty to hit at least so that the terrain was giving you some kind of benefit.

But when you have 30 guys taking cover, 29 are out of sight completely, 1 guy's horn on his helmet can be seen through three layers of woods because citadel woods don't block any line of sight, and the entire unit can be shot at with no penalty, I have a major problem with immersion at that point.

Maybe its that all of the guys i play with that hate it, to include myself, are military veterans that were in combat MOS that know that firing through treelines with tanks that have image enhancement still is more difficult than shooting targets out in the open, and would like that reflected just a little bit on the table. (I was a 19k, tanker... filled every role on a tank from driver to gunner to tc)

 Kanluwen wrote:

 EnTyme wrote:
Kanluwen, the limits of melee are built into the mechanics of the game. Charge can be "shut off" by the dice, and we don't need a terrain piece that makes units untargetable by melee beyond 1" because most melee weapons only have a 1" reach. The open table makes units untargetable by melee beyond 1".

There's a difference between "unable to attack" and "untargetable".
A unit that is out of 18" range for a bowman is "untargetable" by your definition otherwise.

Functionally, what's the different?

 EnTyme wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 EnTyme wrote:
Kanluwen, the limits of melee are built into the mechanics of the game. Charge can be "shut off" by the dice, and we don't need a terrain piece that makes units untargetable by melee beyond 1" because most melee weapons only have a 1" reach. The open table makes units untargetable by melee beyond 1".

There's a difference between "unable to attack" and "untargetable".
A unit that is out of 18" range for a bowman is "untargetable" by your definition otherwise.

Functionally, what's the different?

It's a bit hard to explain but the basic concept:
Your melee unit being outside of that range does not mean that you cannot ever use the melee unit. You'll also know from the very outset that "This is going to be out of range" and plan accordingly--whether it be with stuff that lets you run+charge or running the unit from cover to cover to prep for a charge. Effectively while a melee unit might have a range of 1" on their weapon, their actual threat radius is 12".

A ranged unit has a (no pun intended) threat range of a certain distance, with the potential threat range dropping significantly once a melee unit hits 12" out since that's the average Charge range and will then lock the ranged unit into combat with them either being forced to retreat during your next Movement or only being able to shoot that specific unit.
Retreating, unless you have an Allegiance or Warscroll specific ability, means you can't do anything during your Shooting.
Staying put means that you're being leashed by the melee player. I can't throw a roadblock unit in front of my ranged unit to prevent being leashed in--if the enemy can pile into me? Ranged are then forced to be shooting that target.

Now certainly it might be my fault in that second example, but hey if we're simply going off "immersiveness" what's more immersive than a shieldwall holding off the enemy fighters while your ranged fire volleys over their heads?

 Future War Cultist wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Overlords have no wizards; they cannot cast the Aethervoid Pendulum. They would need an allied wizard to do it.

Is that a joke? I honestly can’t tell.

I was thinking more of don’t nerf shooting too much because whilst it has an advantage it’s not the be all and end all.

It was a joke based off wildly misinterpreting "swing the pendulum"

Now certainly it might be my fault in that second example, but hey if we're simply going off "immersiveness" what's more immersive than a shieldwall holding off the enemy fighters while your ranged fire volleys over their heads?

I may just not get the jist of this example visually in my head, but this very occurrence happened last night in my game.

My opponent had a shieldwall of tzaanagors holding off my blight kings while his skyfires and other ranged heroes were firing volleys of magic and arrows from right behind them over the combat and into my great unclean one.

auticus wrote:

Now certainly it might be my fault in that second example, but hey if we're simply going off "immersiveness" what's more immersive than a shieldwall holding off the enemy fighters while your ranged fire volleys over their heads?

I may just not get the jist of this example visually in my head, but this very occurrence happened last night in my game.

My opponent had a shieldwall of tzaanagors holding off my blight kings while his skyfires and other ranged heroes were firing volleys of magic and arrows from right behind them over the combat and into my great unclean one.

If there had been space enough for you to do it, you could have piled in your Blight Kings and locked down the Skyfires to only firing at them.

That's where the issue comes from. As long as you touch an enemy's ranged unit with one of your units, they're leashed in.

Well that part I don't have a problem with, and I know you disagree with me and thats fine. But to me if a unit is engaged in melee, they aren't going to be ignoring the unit they are in melee with to shoot something else.

That to me is not immersive. That to me is gamey.

The only consideration that I have is actually how I had it set up in Azyr back in the day, and it went over well, was that models within 3" of an enemy could only fire at the enemy.

So if you have a unit of archers, and some were in melee, then the ones not in melee could fire at whatever they wanted.

This was a houserule I used all the way up until last fall (2017) when we were asked to minimize houserules so that one got cut. But I liked it a lot.

 Kanluwen wrote:

auticus wrote:

Now certainly it might be my fault in that second example, but hey if we're simply going off "immersiveness" what's more immersive than a shieldwall holding off the enemy fighters while your ranged fire volleys over their heads?

I may just not get the jist of this example visually in my head, but this very occurrence happened last night in my game.

My opponent had a shieldwall of tzaanagors holding off my blight kings while his skyfires and other ranged heroes were firing volleys of magic and arrows from right behind them over the combat and into my great unclean one.

If there had been space enough for you to do it, you could have piled in your Blight Kings and locked down the Skyfires to only firing at them.

That's where the issue comes from. As long as you touch an enemy's ranged unit with one of your units, they're leashed in.

The Tzeentch player would have ensured a 3" gap, that is a bit obvious.

auticus wrote:
Well that part I don't have a problem with, and I know you disagree with me and thats fine. But to me if a unit is engaged in melee, they aren't going to be ignoring the unit they are in melee with to shoot something else.

That to me is not immersive. That to me is gamey.

And a unit that is engaged in melee isn't going to be ignoring the unit they're in melee with to go stab something else.

It's funny how you're all for "positioning" and "tactics" when it comes to ranged armies having to move, but you just shrug and call it "gamey" when melee armies can do exactly what you accuse ranged armies of--them just doing whatever and then getting rewarded for it.

How does a melee unit ignore what they are in melee with? They have to swing at something.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
The Tzeentch player would have ensured a 3" gap, that is a bit obvious.

With the size of the base for Blight Kings? Doesn't matter.

Also doesn't matter as the shooting rules specify a 3 inch "leash"--so it's a hell of a lot worse than I've initially represented it. As long as you're within range to perform a Pile-In, you're leashing ranged units.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
How does a melee unit ignore what they are in melee with? They have to swing at something.

By piling in to grab another unit and swing at that unit instead?

You're not forced to swing at the unit you charged.

A unit that is in melee is composed of multiple models. Those models are fixated on a target.

If I'm in melee and I slide off to engage an archer next to the unit, I'm (the model) engaged with the model.

That is a world difference from an archer engaged with a model trying to cut their head off and ignoring them and firing arrows over the units head while a guy's trying to kill them.

Having spent five years in the SCA doing armored combat, those things are exactly what happen in a battle. If you are stupid enough to put archers right behind a mainline unit that is getting enveloped by a larger enemy or are outpositioned and flanked by an enemy, they are going to overlap and hit the archers too.

The simple answer is keep a 3" gap between your missile unit and your melee screen and you don' t have to worry about it except for if you want to split hairs to win some technicality.

Or do what I had to do and houserule the game to where you enjoy it more.

 Kanluwen wrote:

auticus wrote:
Well that part I don't have a problem with, and I know you disagree with me and thats fine. But to me if a unit is engaged in melee, they aren't going to be ignoring the unit they are in melee with to shoot something else.

That to me is not immersive. That to me is gamey.

And a unit that is engaged in melee isn't going to be ignoring the unit they're in melee with to go stab something else.

It's funny how you're all for "positioning" and "tactics" when it comes to ranged armies having to move, but you just shrug and call it "gamey" when melee armies can do exactly what you accuse ranged armies of--them just doing whatever and then getting rewarded for it.

I'm not sure what you're referring to here. Are you saying a unit wouldn't break combat with one enemy to go defend an objective, or to find a more favorable fight? That's pretty common.

And you're also shifting goalposts. A lot.

This originated with discussing forests and not shooting through them.

You have taken my approval of this rule for immersion purposes and are trying to somehow make that wrong or illogical because there are other gamey elements (in your opinion)

So if I like immersion... and I like that forests block line of sight... the game shouldn't allow that because if I don't keep a 3" gap melee units can fight whatever they want and thats gamey too.

Sorry. Pick your battles. Petition to have that rule changed too and see what the designers do. Or houserule it for your games.

auticus wrote:
A unit that is in melee is composed of multiple models. Those models are fixated on a target.

If I'm in melee and I slide off to engage an archer next to the unit, I'm (the model) engaged with the model.

That is a world difference from an archer engaged with a model trying to cut their head off and ignoring them and firing arrows over the units head while a guy's trying to kill them.

Having spent five years in the SCA doing armored combat, those things are exactly what happen in a battle. If you are stupid enough to put archers right behind a mainline unit that is getting enveloped by a larger enemy or are outpositioned and flanked by an enemy, they are going to overlap and hit the archers too.

The simple answer is keep a 3" gap between your missile unit and your melee screen and you don' t have to worry about it except for if you want to split hairs to win some technicality.

Or do what I had to do and houserule the game to where you enjoy it more.

Hey, you know how different things have different sized bases?

And realistically, if you want to try to lecture someone about "shifting goalposts"--I'd suggest you revisit your own strategies for discussion. You've been doing nothing but shifting goalposts. You keep talking about "ranged armies" dominating tables or throwing anecdotes about them driving people away while continually forgetting to mention that it's trash like Judicator and Skyfire spam. That's not a ranged army, that's people playing tournament min-max filth in a casual setting.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 EnTyme wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

auticus wrote:
Well that part I don't have a problem with, and I know you disagree with me and thats fine. But to me if a unit is engaged in melee, they aren't going to be ignoring the unit they are in melee with to shoot something else.

That to me is not immersive. That to me is gamey.

And a unit that is engaged in melee isn't going to be ignoring the unit they're in melee with to go stab something else.

It's funny how you're all for "positioning" and "tactics" when it comes to ranged armies having to move, but you just shrug and call it "gamey" when melee armies can do exactly what you accuse ranged armies of--them just doing whatever and then getting rewarded for it.

I'm not sure what you're referring to here. Are you saying a unit wouldn't break combat with one enemy to go defend an objective, or to find a more favorable fight? That's pretty common.

I'm saying that he's a hypocrite and this showcases it.

He'll talk and talk and talk about how ranged armies need to be controlled but when push comes to shove, he won't say crap about similar issues for close combat units.

I shouldn't be able to drop a unit of Akhelians or Thralls and lock down a gunline. But I can. And from his posting, it seems that's a-OK by him.

That said, I'm going to duck out of this for awhile and go enjoy some painting.

Jesus christ dude. Adding you to my ignore list. You won't get anymore responses from me.

*redacted* I'm bored of this conversation.

Personally I’m a fan of forests blocking LoS. I do think 1” is a bit much. I prefer a simple see into, out of, but not thru. Not going to really complain about the 1” though.

 AduroT wrote:
Personally I’m a fan of forests blocking LoS. I do think 1” is a bit much. I prefer a simple see into, out of, but not thru. Not going to really complain about the 1” though.

I'd like this solution a little more but ultimately I like the addition of the rule. I don't play much in the way of shooting lists so I admit some bias but overall I like that forests create better alleys and blind spots.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
The Tzeentch player would have ensured a 3" gap, that is a bit obvious.

With the size of the base for Blight Kings? Doesn't matter.

Also doesn't matter as the shooting rules specify a 3 inch "leash"--so it's a hell of a lot worse than I've initially represented it. As long as you're within range to perform a Pile-In, you're leashing ranged units.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
How does a melee unit ignore what they are in melee with? They have to swing at something.

By piling in to grab another unit and swing at that unit instead?

You're not forced to swing at the unit you charged.

I do not understand how base size matters to having a three inch gap between a shield wall unit and a ranged unit behind them. Nor how a pile in to shift targets is unrealistic; if two lines of infantry hit each other that pile in isn't going to allow the whole unit to direct all their attacks to one guy on the flank. You are not making sense here.

I really enjoy the LoS blocking rule that appeared with the forests. Had a situation where an opponent recklessly charged into a unit, only to get piled in by the hidden unit later on.

Is it possible to have auticus and Kan put each other on ignore?

I don't want to ignore them because I appreciate many of their posts bit I feel like I'm reading the exact same argument month after month when their paths cross.

I've already put him on ignore and won't be responding to any of the things he posts from this point forward.

 AduroT wrote:
Personally I’m a fan of forests blocking LoS. I do think 1” is a bit much. I prefer a simple see into, out of, but not thru. Not going to really complain about the 1” though.

The old 40K way of doing it where the woods counts as area terrain, and you can only see 6" deep in or out but never all the way through regardless of depth was about the perfect solution. I'd have loved it if WFB had adopted that as well, as it was the terrain rules for WFB were a bit unforgiving.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Future War Cultist wrote:
The other day I had to fight a Stardrake that had a 1+ save with rerolls on the 1, a 4+ save against mortal wounds and healing. 40+ attacks from Orruk Brutes failed to do anything. An entire game spent attacking it did nothing. I am a little disappointed that this kind of thing can happen in the game. Am I a sore loser or is ok to be peeved at this kind of thing?

You are entirely justified; that is an unfun experience and I encourage you to send GW an email stating as such. GW wants AoS to be a big thing but to do that they need to be better. That means we need to inform them of issues like this because the people they use for playtesting are (as has been made abundantly clear through three GHBs) insufficiently skilled at the task.

I don't think it's that the playtesters are doing a bad job, I think the biggest problem is that there are too few of them... from the podcasts I listen to that feature these playtesters my impression is that it's a pretty small group of guys that sometimes goes to GW to play for a couple of days and give their input during that time. Which is nice, but what they actually need is a community of playtesters who could actually keep up with testing hundreds and hundreds of new and old warscrolls when there's a new release or big rules change.

I would be less harsh in my criticism if things that are obvious problems just from reading the rules were not present, or limited to one or two issues. When something like Seraphon slips past that tells me there was no critical analysis of significance, nor was there any testing of the army worth mentioning. Many units can be seen as over/under powered from math alone, even ones in the starter that should have been tested more thoroughly.

 Mymearan wrote:


I don't think it's that the playtesters are doing a bad job, I think the biggest problem is that there are too few of them... from the podcasts I listen to that feature these playtesters my impression is that it's a pretty small group of guys that sometimes goes to GW to play for a couple of days and give their input during that time. Which is nice, but what they actually need is a community of playtesters who could actually keep up with testing hundreds and hundreds of new and old warscrolls when there's a new release or big rules change.

There actually is and have been a community of play-testers from the beginning. GW just chooses to pay attention to those that are within an arms reach, can see in person etc - it is just a policy of the company I guess. PPC and Azyr have been probably testing and balancing the point costs since day 1.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I would be less harsh in my criticism if things that are obvious problems just from reading the rules were not present, or limited to one or two issues. When something like Seraphon slips past that tells me there was no critical analysis of significance, nor was there any testing of the army worth mentioning. Many units can be seen as over/under powered from math alone, even ones in the starter that should have been tested more thoroughly.

The marketing dept has truly taken over design dept!

 CoreCommander wrote:

 Mymearan wrote:


I don't think it's that the playtesters are doing a bad job, I think the biggest problem is that there are too few of them... from the podcasts I listen to that feature these playtesters my impression is that it's a pretty small group of guys that sometimes goes to GW to play for a couple of days and give their input during that time. Which is nice, but what they actually need is a community of playtesters who could actually keep up with testing hundreds and hundreds of new and old warscrolls when there's a new release or big rules change.

There actually is and have been a community of play-testers from the beginning. GW just chooses to pay attention to those that are within an arms reach, can see in person etc - it is just a policy of the company I guess. PPC and Azyr have been probably testing and balancing the point costs since day 1.

From what I've been able to ascertain, a lot of it comes down to the fact that they can see in person and verify how those playtesters are playing things. That seems to be just as important to them as anything else.

It also looks like certain groups/testers are given specific responsibilities/factions--and they usually have some kind of vested interest in the faction from the outset. Which is good(they have knowledge of the faction and what's important to it) and bad(they might just let the power go to their head and conveniently 'forget' certain things they noticed during testing).

To be fair playtesters that you only know through email can be a risk. WE know first hand here how varied opinions can be from players based on the huge range of backgrounds and experiences those players have. Some are going to game and find the rules great evne if they are glaringly full of holes; others will see gaps and problems everywhere and many are going to not see flaws so much as personal preferences but will flag them as flaws etc....

This is without even considering the local meta; of how their opponents are just as important as the people testing themselves; how good their boards and terrain are (a player playing with little but one wood is going to give a very diffrent reaction to one playing on a board so choked with terrain that you can't fit a large base model on it easily)

Not AOS but from what I heard from a guy who knows some of the playtesters for 8th edition 40k, the playtesting they do is very limited. It's not really looking for combos, it's "Take these prebuilt armies and play them and see if anything feels off" which would explain why often the armybuilding parts are what seem to never get caught; for 40k at least it seems the playtesters were not actually expected to build their own lists but use what GW said to use.

If that's what they are doing for AOS as well, it's no wonder so many things slip by. Although it shocks me seeing how most of the AOS design team and playtesters are tournament guys, so they should be testing list building and combos as well as gameplay.

I'd agree with that.

Knowing how people are playing the game is paramount to understanding the data coming back.

An example from azyr comp testing days.

Khorne mortals vs dwarves. Hammerers were doing a ton of damage and dwarf player basically took an army of mostly hammerers. (this was back before battleline was a thing or we even knew what a matched play was).

The khorne player basically had 3x the models that the dwarf player had. Before the game even begun there were some negative comments about the point system in that it was obvious the khorne player was going to dominate the game because he had so many models.

The game ended up going to the khorne player... but it was as close a game as could be and the khorne player had two models left on the table when all was said and done (two blood warriors).

A lot of playtest comments coming back via email were "the points are whack they aren't balanced" without having played them or playing a couple times without putting any real context into them.

Me watching the games made a huge difference.

Another example: a player would complain that the points were screwing him over because he was losing all the time, and it was because he should have 20% more models based on his estimation and the points were just way wrong.

So we watched his games closely.

Five games.

Five sets of notes.

Player was constantly losing because player was playing very badly.

So we swapped things around and had that player build army lists and had another player play the list. It performed as we expected, with the games being very close (our goal remember was that 2000 points was really 2000 points meaning a 2000 v 2000 game should be close barring bad play)

Had we not been able to be there to watch that player play, we'd only have his input to go off of. That being the points were bad and he was getting destroyed every game because the points are bad. Because people rarely tend to look at how they could play better, they like to play armies that have a lot of advantages to cover up bad play.

Now there's some merit in that as well and something I strongly believe GW does. They do have intentionally easy armies like stormcast that allow people that arne't great at the game have an army that they can do well with because its easy or underpointed.

The problem comes into play when a GOOD player uses those armies and skews the rest of the game with it.

But conclusion: knowing the context of your playtest data is crucial. Otherwise if you are letting random people on the internet playtest and going off of their comments you don't really know anything other than their base opinion.

You can't see if "this army is soooo bad its broken and horrible" comments are legit or if its really "i'm a bad player that makes mistakes and i can't use an army like this effectively". Or vice versa "this army is fine" comments in the hands of a good player may very well be "this army is very bad" in the hands of a bad player.

We got a lot of those comments.

Unit X is soooo overcost it needs to come down in points!

Followed two emails down with:

Unit X is sooo undercost its OP it needs to come up in points!

Which is it?

My club playtested WHFB 6th and 7th and we were basically given stock lists to use and report what we thought about the mechanics. I don't know if the playtesting approach is different today.

Wayniac wrote:
Not AOS but from what I heard from a guy who knows some of the playtesters for 8th edition 40k, the playtesting they do is very limited. It's not really looking for combos, it's "Take these prebuilt armies and play them and see if anything feels off" which would explain why often the armybuilding parts are what seem to never get caught; for 40k at least it seems the playtesters were not actually expected to build their own lists but use what GW said to use.

If that's what they are doing for AOS as well, it's no wonder so many things slip by. Although it shocks me seeing how most of the AOS design team and playtesters are tournament guys, so they should be testing list building and combos as well as gameplay.

I would really like to see those pre-built lists. It'd be interesting to see what GW thinks a balanced list looks like.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Pancakey wrote:


The marketing dept has truly taken over design dept!

Keep beating that dead horse. I'm sure it'll cross the finish line eventually.

 EnTyme wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
Not AOS but from what I heard from a guy who knows some of the playtesters for 8th edition 40k, the playtesting they do is very limited. It's not really looking for combos, it's "Take these prebuilt armies and play them and see if anything feels off" which would explain why often the armybuilding parts are what seem to never get caught; for 40k at least it seems the playtesters were not actually expected to build their own lists but use what GW said to use.

If that's what they are doing for AOS as well, it's no wonder so many things slip by. Although it shocks me seeing how most of the AOS design team and playtesters are tournament guys, so they should be testing list building and combos as well as gameplay.

I would really like to see those pre-built lists. It'd be interesting to see what GW thinks a balanced list looks like.

I would too but I think the information is kept under NDA so I doubt we will ever know. I'd imagine something using Power Level rather than points, and probably like their armies in White Dwarf; usually one of each type of unit, very little spam (and when it's the same unit, different loadouts) and going for variety over min/maxing. So probably something like a couple tactical squads with different weapon options, maybe one in a Rhino, a unit of Terminators, a Predator, captain with plasma pistol and power fist, etc.

Not sure what that would equate to for AOS If they are testing the same way. But I doubt any of the playtesters for AOS will state what they are doing.

I had my first game against both Nighthaunt and Daughters Of Khaine yesterday. Both games were over for me by turn 2. They’re both brutal. But I was playing Ironjawz so maybe that’s not a fair assumption. Maybe I’m just unfairly complaining but I do wish it was possible to keep a game going beyound the second turn even in a tournament. For example, in my third game (against Rotbringers) it lasted down to the wire and was fairly evenly fought. It can’t be hard to achieve this can it? Maybe things like the Nighthaunts ability to fight twice if they get a good charge roll need looking at.

So long as listbuilding remains as important, then I don't see how you can achieve close games unless both lists involved are tuned against each other.

I think that the design ethos and fan base desires are very much opposite of wanting close games though. The design ethos was to encourage blowout games so that they ended faster so that game speed was increased, and I think the community overall as a majority want to be able to win before the first turn with a better list.

The amount of people I encounter that want close games seem to be in the minority.

Obvious disclaimer: thats my own experience combined with what I have read about in terms of the goal being to speed the game up by making it more devastating to kill more models faster.

And I think you're misinterpreting your data. The fact we want faster games doesn't mean we want the games to be non-competitive. I see a lot of complaints about the high damage output of AoS and 40k specifically because they don't want games to be over after the first turn. I want the game to flow faster with more player reactions. I don't really like Alternating Activations for reasons that are well-documented on this forum, but I would love to see alternating phases with casualties pulled at the end of the phase so I could immediately react to my opponent's turn before I have to remove models.

I want list building to matter because I want a layer of strategy to the units I'm bringing, not because I want to win in the list building stage of the game. I like reading through a battletome (or codex) and thinking "this unit would work really well with this leader, especially if I give the leader this artifact". You seem to think this make the system too gamey. To me, it makes list building important. You keep mentioning your philosophy that 2000 points should mean 2000 points, and I agree for the most part. Where I differ is that I think a 2000 point list doesn't have to be 2000 points at the start of the battle. When it comes to summoning, a 2000 point list means that over the course of a battle under normal conditions, 2000 points worth of models should be in play. I think summonable units should be prohibitively expensive to take as part of your base list, but their points cost should be baked in to the units that summon them. I'm not sure if I'm explaining that the right way, but hopefully you understand what I mean. You shouldn't be taking Skeletons as your battleline because they're too point-inefficient to take. You should be summoning them with a Necromancer who you paid a premium to take.

Disclaimer: I don't play Legions of Nagash. I'm just using Necromancer/skeletons as an example. I'm no necessarily making a comment on the balance of Legions of Nagash's points values or summoning mechanics since I don't see them much in my local meta.

Mainly my current stance is because when we were testing azyr, close games were actually discouraging people. Close games created a lot of tension and stress and were seen as a negative play experience by a lot of my playtesters.

That might be a culture thing where people are just used to tabling their opponent by turn 2 or whatever, I really can't say.

auticus wrote:
Mainly my current stance is because when we were testing azyr, close games were actually discouraging people. Close games created a lot of tension and stress and were seen as a negative play experience by a lot of my playtesters.

That might be a culture thing where people are just used to tabling their opponent by turn 2 or whatever, I really can't say.

That's definitely kind of a weird one, but something I can see; there are a lot of folks in this hobby, it seems, who like clubbing seals, and view a game that they can't win more or less instantly as "bad."

Personally, I actually really prefer games that aren't lopsided. At the same time, though, I am older and have less available free time for the hobby (and it's progressively harder to get folks together to play as they deal with their own lives; I avoid random pick up games with unknowns like the plague), so it's hard for me to get long games in. Something that has a good pace and "not too long" overall play time is highly attractive, but quick curb-stomps either way are not, for me, fulfilling.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
I had my first game against both Nighthaunt and Daughters Of Khaine yesterday. Both games were over for me by turn 2. They’re both brutal. But I was playing Ironjawz so maybe that’s not a fair assumption. Maybe I’m just unfairly complaining but I do wish it was possible to keep a game going beyound the second turn even in a tournament. For example, in my third game (against Rotbringers) it lasted down to the wire and was fairly evenly fought. It can’t be hard to achieve this can it? Maybe things like the Nighthaunts ability to fight twice if they get a good charge roll need looking at.

A big part of it comes from the ability to bring stuff on later. It might sound silly, but I had this same thing happen when I was fighting Nighthaunt with my Idoneth. I had a Soulscryer, King, and Leviadon all come on at the same time and basically decapitating strike the Nighthaunt in one good wave(no pun intended!) of success.

auticus wrote:
Mainly my current stance is because when we were testing azyr, close games were actually discouraging people. Close games created a lot of tension and stress and were seen as a negative play experience by a lot of my playtesters.

That might be a culture thing where people are just used to tabling their opponent by turn 2 or whatever, I really can't say.

I would imagine that is cultural. I'm constantly seeing complaints about one-sided games on reddit. Personally, I don't think one-sided matches are any fun. If I'm roflstomping someone, I think I'm actually having less fun than the person I'm playing. I was never the kind of kid who pulled the wings off flies. I've actually been known to pull punches if I realize my opponent is in over his head. I do a lot of demo and intro games in my local area, so end up having to do this a lot just because I'm my opponents often don't have the experience to know how their army works.

I agree with Auticus that there is a certain desire for the 'listbuilding phase' to dominate (though I do not feel it is as severe). But I maintain that a huge and unseen factor is that the players looking for close/balanced games both outnumber them vastly and simply do not play AoS. I imagine that if AoS was made balanced there would be complaints about said, while the number of players overall shot up.

Also a very large amount of people get put off by the double turn.

auticus wrote:
Mainly my current stance is because when we were testing azyr, close games were actually discouraging people. Close games created a lot of tension and stress and were seen as a negative play experience by a lot of my playtesters.

That might be a culture thing where people are just used to tabling their opponent by turn 2 or whatever, I really can't say.

That is very strange. My experience is that close run games are the best. Everyone is laughing and having fun, it gathers attention from passers by and at the end the loser doesn’t feel so bad. It’s the ones that are effectly over after 1 turn that are the negative play experience. I’ve been on the receiving end of these so often and they make you wish you never bothered. It’s especially bad when you see it happen to beginners.

I could stomach an ability that lets you immediately fight after charging if you got a good charge roll if that was just the units activation period. It’s letting them do that on top of fighting normally latter that pushes it in unbalanced territory in my opinion.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I agree with Auticus that there is a certain desire for the 'listbuilding phase' to dominate (though I do not feel it is as severe). But I maintain that a huge and unseen factor is that the players looking for close/balanced games both outnumber them vastly and simply do not play AoS. I imagine that if AoS was made balanced there would be complaints about said, while the number of players overall shot up.

Also a very large amount of people get put off by the double turn.

Yeah. This is something that I think about as well. The game promotes a certain vibe, and if that vibe isn't gelling with an individual they won't be around. A lot of the guys I know that are more about balanced games still won't play AOS so for sure my data is skewed.

Only able to speak to personal experience, obviously, but I feel like every game I "remember" has been a close one. I love last turn, clever move to snatch one more VP wins... and feel like while I am pretty good at the math-hammer phase of almost any mini-game, the experience I actually love are the ones that required meaningful play.

auticus wrote:


The amount of people I encounter that want close games seem to be in the minority.

I think this is super important, to me at least. I hate games that are over at list building and its clear one side has won immediately. This has happened to me before in both sigmar, but mostly 40k, where I have lost half of my army to high str, high RoF shots that I cannot retaliate on the return. It has mostly turned me off of 40k. Sigmar, I've only had things happen a few times where I couldn't do anything and the game was over turn 2, one of the times being adepticon against a ghb playtester and heelanhammer player. I felt I lost at list building and so the game was seeing how far until I had to concede.

This thread feels like it has pretty rapidly turned into a 'people that play AoS have badwrongfun'.

I think we all know which side of the debate Farseer falls on.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:
This thread feels like it has pretty rapidly turned into a 'people that play AoS have badwrongfun'.

That is an inaccurate assessment.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:
This thread feels like it has pretty rapidly turned into a 'people that play AoS have badwrongfun'.

That is an inaccurate assessment.

Perception is reality - more to the point I've seen quite a bit of finger wagging regarding balance, bad players who need list writing to feel good, and baby seal clubbing to name some examples.

I don't think any of those indicate bad wrong fun. Especially considering any design course you take on game design is going to address all of the above as facets that you need to support in your game.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:
This thread feels like it has pretty rapidly turned into a 'people that play AoS have badwrongfun'.

That is an inaccurate assessment.

Perception is reality - more to the point I've seen quite a bit of finger wagging regarding balance, bad players who need list writing to feel good, and baby seal clubbing to name some examples.

Can you quote where someone has said playing a certain way is bad?

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:
This thread feels like it has pretty rapidly turned into a 'people that play AoS have badwrongfun'.

That is an inaccurate assessment.

Perception is reality - more to the point I've seen quite a bit of finger wagging regarding balance, bad players who need list writing to feel good, and baby seal clubbing to name some examples.

Can you quote where someone has said playing a certain way is bad?

Listbuilding is more difficult in a balanced game, not non-existent. Having the right balance of front line, support, hammer, anvil, etc will still crush an army of randomly selected options. People know this. But some are afraid that without being able to get a dramatic advantage by making an overpowered list they won't be able to win as many games. Saying this sounds petty so there are other reasons brought up as a cover.

Sounds pretty derogatory to me.

That's definitely kind of a weird one, but something I can see; there are a lot of folks in this hobby, it seems, who like clubbing seals, and view a game that they can't win more or less instantly as "bad."

Doesn't really sound like a glowing endorsement (and is fairly hyperbolic to boot).

I don't know that I'm surprised - Dakka is one of the most negative places regarding the Tabletop hobby as a whole (not just AoS related).

I don't think it derogatory, but then again I've had to deal with those kinds of people.

We've got a duo that basically do exactly what is mentioned in that snippet. They'll sit in a corner by themselves and try to talk softly about it but they try to plan as much filth into a list as they can. It got to the point where they're just not asked or suggested to people just getting into AoS or 40k as potential opponents.

When they got upset about this and asked "why", had it explained to them they just claimed that they "only wanted to make purchases that would be useful units" and they "didn't want anything that they couldn't budget for". When it was pointed out to them that they basically are a revolving door of armies, they just kind of shut up and moved along.

Thats not really derogatory no. There are reams of forums discussions on this very topic with lots of players explaining that if they don't take an over powered list then their time would be wasted and they wouldn't place as high at tournaments or they'd get rolled in their casual pick up games.

The world isn't black and white. Its not "if you don't support this, then you think its bad and its negative".

auticus wrote:
Thats not really derogatory no. There are reams of forums discussions on this very topic with lots of players explaining that if they don't take an over powered list then their time would be wasted and they wouldn't place as high at tournaments or they'd get rolled in their casual pick up games.

The world isn't black and white. Its not "if you don't support this, then you think its bad and its negative".

Certainly not but I'm pretty used to finding a ton of negativity on Dakka. I'd hoped AoS was a bit different (perhaps a reflection of the real life community for the game) but its really no better than the 40k community here.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

That's definitely kind of a weird one, but something I can see; there are a lot of folks in this hobby, it seems, who like clubbing seals, and view a game that they can't win more or less instantly as "bad."

Doesn't really sound like a glowing endorsement (and is fairly hyperbolic to boot).

I don't know that I'm surprised - Dakka is one of the most negative places regarding the Tabletop hobby as a whole (not just AoS related).

Way to cherry pick. Though, I suppose it's reasonable to assume I meant this only for AOS, but I didn't (I did say "this hobby", but since this is in a thread about AOS I clearly must be talking about just the "AOS Hobby"). It's something I have seen in pretty much all of the gaming community, whether boardgame, minis, or video games. And yeah, the hyperbole was intentional, but I guess I need to make sure to use more disclaimers to avoid misinterpretation.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:
This thread feels like it has pretty rapidly turned into a 'people that play AoS have badwrongfun'.

That is an inaccurate assessment.

Perception is reality - more to the point I've seen quite a bit of finger wagging regarding balance, bad players who need list writing to feel good, and baby seal clubbing to name some examples.

Can you quote where someone has said playing a certain way is bad?

Listbuilding is more difficult in a balanced game, not non-existent. Having the right balance of front line, support, hammer, anvil, etc will still crush an army of randomly selected options. People know this. But some are afraid that without being able to get a dramatic advantage by making an overpowered list they won't be able to win as many games. Saying this sounds petty so there are other reasons brought up as a cover.

Sounds pretty derogatory to me.

That's definitely kind of a weird one, but something I can see; there are a lot of folks in this hobby, it seems, who like clubbing seals, and view a game that they can't win more or less instantly as "bad."

Doesn't really sound like a glowing endorsement (and is fairly hyperbolic to boot).

I don't know that I'm surprised - Dakka is one of the most negative places regarding the Tabletop hobby as a whole (not just AoS related).

So your only evidence is circumstancial at best.

It seems that, as I stated, your assessment was inaccurate.

So in reviewing the game now and having seen or played in a few dozen games, some conclusions that I have come to.

* Our campaign starting up in September won't have any houserules. The changes in 2.0 are a good compromise, and include a lot of rules we had already houseruled the past three years.

* Listbuilding's importance is still very important. If you build a list that cannot summon a decent amount of free points or does not spam mortal wounds, and you are up against a list that does one or both of those things, the game is for the most part already finished before the first die is cast.

* The realm rules are pretty narrative and fun but really annoy competitive players with their random effects.

* Malign spells are a fun addition but only a scant few are regularly seen, indicating a balance issue with the spells. Additionally a lot of competitive players are calling for their removal at official major tournaments.

* The new terrain rules slim down the number of terrain warscrolls and brought back some semblance of intuitive rules, and break up the battlefield now.

Overall I give AOS a firm 6.5 / 10. There are some minor tweaks that I'd like to see, but overall the only real complaint that I personally have is that free summoning is now a cornerstone of listbuilding alongside spamming mortal wounds, and that perturbs me a little bit.

One thing I think people forget with Realm rules is allied wizards.

If you take realm rules and spells then allied mages become far more effective as they can now use the realm lore. Otherwise they get stuck without their native lore and without being able to take their allied faction lore - so they only have their warscroll abilities, the bog standard spells (arcane bolt, mystic shield) and their unbind.

Unless GW changes how allied wizards can take spell lores that gives one good reason to consider realm rules a bonus. I do agree though that they need some adjustment and that if the game takes realm things into the tournament scene then we might consider some kind of sideboard feature of say 100 points (since Endless spells are affected by realm selection); and/or being allowed to change equipped artifcats/items on heroes/leaders.

auticus wrote:
So in reviewing the game now and having seen or played in a few dozen games, some conclusions that I have come to.

* Our campaign starting up in September won't have any houserules. The changes in 2.0 are a good compromise, and include a lot of rules we had already houseruled the past three years.

* Listbuilding's importance is still very important. If you build a list that cannot summon a decent amount of free points or does not spam mortal wounds, and you are up against a list that does one or both of those things, the game is for the most part already finished before the first die is cast.

* The realm rules are pretty narrative and fun but really annoy competitive players with their random effects.

* Malign spells are a fun addition but only a scant few are regularly seen, indicating a balance issue with the spells. Additionally a lot of competitive players are calling for their removal at official major tournaments.

* The new terrain rules slim down the number of terrain warscrolls and brought back some semblance of intuitive rules, and break up the battlefield now.

Overall I give AOS a firm 6.5 / 10. There are some minor tweaks that I'd like to see, but overall the only real complaint that I personally have is that free summoning is now a cornerstone of listbuilding alongside spamming mortal wounds, and that perturbs me a little bit.

I'm curious why competitive players are against Endless Spells.

 EnTyme wrote:

auticus wrote:
So in reviewing the game now and having seen or played in a few dozen games, some conclusions that I have come to.

* Our campaign starting up in September won't have any houserules. The changes in 2.0 are a good compromise, and include a lot of rules we had already houseruled the past three years.

* Listbuilding's importance is still very important. If you build a list that cannot summon a decent amount of free points or does not spam mortal wounds, and you are up against a list that does one or both of those things, the game is for the most part already finished before the first die is cast.

* The realm rules are pretty narrative and fun but really annoy competitive players with their random effects.

* Malign spells are a fun addition but only a scant few are regularly seen, indicating a balance issue with the spells. Additionally a lot of competitive players are calling for their removal at official major tournaments.

* The new terrain rules slim down the number of terrain warscrolls and brought back some semblance of intuitive rules, and break up the battlefield now.

Overall I give AOS a firm 6.5 / 10. There are some minor tweaks that I'd like to see, but overall the only real complaint that I personally have is that free summoning is now a cornerstone of listbuilding alongside spamming mortal wounds, and that perturbs me a little bit.

I'm curious why competitive players are against Endless Spells.

I Haven't heard this at all, every comp list I've seen is taking advantage of endless spells (usually Cogs, I think?)

I can't really answer that as I'm more of a narrative player and love them.

My guess would be the less rules bloat in the tournaments the better.

Everyone around me loves at least cogs and the portal. They're also in favor of the realm rules for events. And with Nova and likely LVO running realm rules for their big AoS tournaments I think the realm/malign stuff is going to stick.

 Hulksmash wrote:
Everyone around me loves at least cogs and the portal. They're also in favor of the realm rules for events. And with Nova and likely LVO running realm rules for their big AoS tournaments I think the realm/malign stuff is going to stick.

Are they running realm rules or just realm artefacts?

Essentially in each round the mission tells you what round you're playing on. So army building you say the realm you're from and you can select artifacts. Then when you get to your first game you're playing in the fire realm and all mages know the fire spells. Then game two you in Shyish and all mages know the Shyish spells. Etc...

Plays really really well and gives a bump to those armies without their own lores.

auticus wrote:
* The realm rules are pretty narrative and fun but really annoy competitive players with their random effects.

* Malign spells are a fun addition but only a scant few are regularly seen, indicating a balance issue with the spells. Additionally a lot of competitive players are calling for their removal at official major tournaments.

Realm artifacts yes/no? Also first I've heard of removing the endless spells, their inclusion IMO does more to offer variety to those subfactions that don't have a spell lore than unnecessarily power up strong battletomes (said in light of the spell portal nerf).

Overall I give AOS a firm 6.5 / 10.

I was going to say maaaybe 7/10, however compared to other games I play, 6.5 feels generous enough. Fun and worth putting some time and money into, but not as rewarding or engaging as better balanced wargames, due in large part to a strong potential for asymmetrical match-ups stemming from widespread imbalances in list power, subfaction power (i.e. battletome yes/no?) and player mindset.

- Salvage

Realm artifacts I think can be fun but the problem I'm running into is now everyone wants to be from the realm of light. Which is contrary to narrative.

To get around this, a narrative I do set in a specific place will have specific forces that fit the story that are from specific locations, so the ones from the realm of light are the ones we know are legit from there. Stormcast, for example, in our Firestorm campaign are allowed to hail from Azyr or Aqshy for this campaign. Sigmar isn't pulling legions from Ghur or Shyish (and there are no mentions of them in the realm of light right now) to find an artifact in Aqshy when he has forces in Aqshy and Azyr that can be used.

6.5 / 7 is about fine. Its fun enough for me to dedicate resources to it now without needing a ton of houserules and scratches the skirmish level itch.

Still looking for that army-scale game and developing one but AOS is solid with a couple of deeper flaws in balance that can put a wet blanket over everything if playing with people that want something different out of the game.

But thats true of a lot of games.

auticus wrote:
So in reviewing the game now and having seen or played in a few dozen games, some conclusions that I have come to.

* Our campaign starting up in September won't have any houserules. The changes in 2.0 are a good compromise, and include a lot of rules we had already houseruled the past three years.

* Listbuilding's importance is still very important. If you build a list that cannot summon a decent amount of free points or does not spam mortal wounds, and you are up against a list that does one or both of those things, the game is for the most part already finished before the first die is cast.

* The realm rules are pretty narrative and fun but really annoy competitive players with their random effects.

* Malign spells are a fun addition but only a scant few are regularly seen, indicating a balance issue with the spells. Additionally a lot of competitive players are calling for their removal at official major tournaments.

* The new terrain rules slim down the number of terrain warscrolls and brought back some semblance of intuitive rules, and break up the battlefield now.

Overall I give AOS a firm 6.5 / 10. There are some minor tweaks that I'd like to see, but overall the only real complaint that I personally have is that free summoning is now a cornerstone of listbuilding alongside spamming mortal wounds, and that perturbs me a little bit.

I really appreciate your thoughts, agree on some points, minor disagree on others, but was wondering if you would mind giving us a few of your scores for other mini-wargames, just for context? What would you score some of your all-time favorites, versus most reviled games?

Sure thing!

Warhammer Fantasy 5th edition - 5/10 - fun, but very hero hammer based. Almost like playing D&D with some cheer leader units supporting. Disappointing for a game I got in to play with armies.
Warhammer Fantasy 6th edition - 9/10 - very balanced out of the gate. Maneuver mattered a lot. Fairly deep. Toward the end had balance issues with codex creep that drops the score to 7/10 but going off of the first three years this is one of my favorite systems.
Warhammer Fantasy 7th edition - 6/10 - very unbalanced, very static
Warhammer Fantasy 8th edition - 7/10 - brought some fun back, but the GW team messed up balance yet again and the stupid 6 dice for the win tactic plus the stupidity of unbound unit size hurt it

Hail Caesar - 8/10 - very detailed, feels like an army game, very solid. Quibbles with a couple minor things.

Kings of War - 6/10 - very solid system, but very bland as well. My lower score here is from a narrative player perspective. KOW is geared more toward competitive players I find, and if I was a competitive player I'd rank it an 8.

Warmachine Mark 1 - 7/10 - solid system. GGave GW some good competition back in the day. Some balance issues and the obvious takes of the day soiled it a bit for me plus the community's severe restriction on conversions.

Age of Sigmar 1.0 on release - 3/10 - no balance, no real support, no real direction. A garbage mess that I only stuck with and wrote a comp system for because of my financial investment in the system over the past twenty years with my models.

Age of Sigmar post GHB days - 4/10 - the points system was not balanced, and a lot of rules that I couldn't stand, lack of immersion, lack of intuition, played a lot to me like a CCG with pretty models.

Battletech - 7/10 - very fun - very customizable - dinged for its over complicated ruleset and difficulty to find rules.

Warhammer 40k 3rd & 4th edition - 6/10 - very simple in terms of gameplay. Solid narrative. Severe balance issues. Idiocy in some of their mechanics like the rhino rush. Would rank higher but watched a guard player get tabled in 1 turn at a tournament ... and he hadn't gone yet. (Blood Angels rhino rushed him)

Warhammer 40k 5th edition - 5/10 - tighter rules, attrocious balance. Got out of gaming for a bit because of this edition.

X Wing - 5/10 - easy rules. Combo based CCG style game with spaceship models. The other games based on the same engine were never played, which speaks volumes to me. Its main appeal was that it was star wars and it was space fighter battles and you don't need a ton of stuff.

Battlefleet gothic - 7/10 - clunky rules at times as it was based on a naval rules battle system that they ported into space. Had some fairly deep tactics provided you weren't playing against a cheese weasel that would break the game (as always with GW games balance was an issue)

Warmaster and Warmaster Ancients - 8/10 - solid rules, solid gameplay, deep tactics.

Epic - 6/10 - ok rules, the earlier version much deeper than their latest attempt. Balance issues abounded.

Frostgrave - 6/10 - ok rules, balance issues, some spells obviously better than others.

Dragon Rampant - 4/10 - too simple. Loses a lot of flavor and character in being too simple.

Advanced Squad Leader - 9/10 - very deep very complex, but very rewarding to master.

Lol... and our stormcast player built a 200+ shot a turn list. I'm glad for the new forest rule doubly so now lmao. Curious for the gencon results.

auticus wrote:
Lol... and our stormcast player built a 200+ shot a turn list. I'm glad for the new forest rule doubly so now lmao. Curious for the gencon results.

Suddenly it becomes clear why Ulgu exists.

 Marmatag wrote:

auticus wrote:
Lol... and our stormcast player built a 200+ shot a turn list. I'm glad for the new forest rule doubly so now lmao. Curious for the gencon results.

Suddenly it becomes clear why Ulgu exists.

I'm genuinely curious as to what the hell kind of a list is going to be 200+ shots a turn.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:

auticus wrote:
Lol... and our stormcast player built a 200+ shot a turn list. I'm glad for the new forest rule doubly so now lmao. Curious for the gencon results.

Suddenly it becomes clear why Ulgu exists.

I'm genuinely curious as to what the hell kind of a list is going to be 200+ shots a turn.

Heldenhammer (command trait is to shoot or fight in the hero phase, FAQ'd to only be usable once per turn per unit), 12 Hurricane Crossbow Raptors (6 shots base, 9 if you don't move). Use the CA that's 208 shots a turn.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:
Heldenhammer (command trait is to shoot or fight in the hero phase, FAQ'd to only be usable once per turn per unit), 12 Hurricane Crossbow Raptors (6 shots base, 9 if you don't move). Use the CA that's 208 shots a turn.

And that trick is remarkably cheap. I daresay the greatest cost is having to run Anvils of the Heldenhammer, which don't look to have that amazing of mandatory traits / items / rules beyond the CA.

(Also here's me facepalming that there's a unit in this game that shoots 6 times per dude, let alone 9 )

- Salvage

 Boss Salvage wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:
Heldenhammer (command trait is to shoot or fight in the hero phase, FAQ'd to only be usable once per turn per unit), 12 Hurricane Crossbow Raptors (6 shots base, 9 if you don't move). Use the CA that's 208 shots a turn.

And that trick is remarkably cheap. I daresay the greatest cost is having to run Anvils of the Heldenhammer, which don't look to have that amazing of mandatory traits / items / rules beyond the CA.

(Also here's me facepalming that there's a unit in this game that shoots 6 times per dude, let alone 9 )

- Salvage

I've play tested running 2x units of 9 Raptors and using the CA on both for 324 shots as well. It gets more expensive when you move past one unit but it is a nasty build. Its also one of the reasons I like the forest changes - my opponent has the capacity to hide from it and possibly screen out a relictor translocate as well.

 Boss Salvage wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:
Heldenhammer (command trait is to shoot or fight in the hero phase, FAQ'd to only be usable once per turn per unit), 12 Hurricane Crossbow Raptors (6 shots base, 9 if you don't move). Use the CA that's 208 shots a turn.

And that trick is remarkably cheap. I daresay the greatest cost is having to run Anvils of the Heldenhammer, which don't look to have that amazing of mandatory traits / items / rules beyond the CA.

(Also here's me facepalming that there's a unit in this game that shoots 6 times per dude, let alone 9 )

- Salvage

Interesting.

I've been planning on running Anvils personally(I love the fluff of them being 'heroes of the world that was' and them 'mastering death as a weapon'), and holy hell that just makes a Vanguard Auxiliary Chamber(+1A for every missile weapon that is not on a Hero) like I was going to run that much more terrifying.
As silly as the trait may look, it makes it so that Gryph-Hounds and Aetherwings don't have to take Battleshock tests which is huge for them.

This is one of those things some of us were talking about earlier. That amount of attacks at range is a bit much imo.

By a bit much you mean absurd right lol

...yeah.

I know they need to be different from Judicators boltstorm crossbows but 9 shots each, becoming 18 by a command trait, is ridiculous.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
This is one of those things some of us were talking about earlier. That amount of attacks at range is a bit much imo.

Ehhh...
Hurricane Crossbows are 4+/4+ at 18"(Raptor Primes are 3+/4+ with no option for an Aetherwing) with 1 damage and 0 Rend--subtracting 1 from Charge Rolls for enemy units within 12" of them.

Honestly, I'd be more scared of the shot output from Raptors with Longstrikes doing the setup Farseer suggested.

2 units of 9 means 36 shots, 2+/3+ at 24"(30" if they don't move) with a Rend of -2 and natural 6s to hit doing 2 MWs instead.

Bump it to 3 units of 6 to do a Vanguard Justicar Conclave and add their Aetherwings in, they get to reroll hit rolls of 1 if the target is within 18" of any Aetherwings--and you can bring a Vanguard Auxiliary Chamber to add an additional 18 shots to the mix, for a whopping 54 shots at 2+/3+ rerolling 1s to Hit and with natural 6s doing 2 Mortal Wounds.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Future War Cultist wrote:
...yeah.

I know they need to be different from Judicators boltstorm crossbows but 9 shots each, becoming 18 by a command trait, is ridiculous.

9 shots at 18", provided they didn't previously move, becoming 18 by giving you a Hero shooting phase.

It's a lot of shots that might do something or they might not. It's the same thing as the Reavers for Idoneth getting in 9".

This is the thing I kept getting at with the idea of "ranged dominance". Yes, it's a lot of shots. But it's also a hefty investment.

2 units of 9 Raptors is 840 points. And they're NOT Battleline.

Might sound nasty with that amount of shots but with the forest rules, Prismatic Palisade etc no pure shooting list is going to be winning tournaments any time soon.

Right but remember not every game is a tournament game. That kind of thing against casuals in a casual environment will poison the well.

 Mymearan wrote:
Might sound nasty with that amount of shots but with the forest rules, Prismatic Palisade etc no pure shooting list is going to be winning tournaments any time soon.

More than that, it's going to have a 50/50 shot of failing miserably thanks to the 4+/4+ and then add in the 0 Rend...

To a lot of people, the fact that it won't win any tournaments doesn't really matter. It's the fact that if I turned up for a random pick up game, and faced that, (or probably dozens of other builds), without expecting it, I would have zero chance of winning. Which would make for a very boring and unfun game.

To stat it out.

324 shots. 162 hits. 81 wounds.

6+ save = 67.5 wounds
5+ save = 54.3 wounds
4+ save = 40.5 wounds
3+ save = 26.7 wounds
2+ save = 13.5 wounds

So situational. Considering that this is about 1/4 of the army and thus 1/4 of the output, against a 2+ unit you're not doing much but you also get the rest of your army to contribute as well additionally.

Against most anything else you should be wiping out a unit at the very least if not more depending on target priority.

My blight kings at 4+ save (10 of them) are at 41 wounds and should be erased in one turn of shooting by this combo.

My chaffe is going to be erased in one turn as well.

A double turn... thats going to be a non-game.

But against those builds that are primarily 2+ and 3+, they may not care as much.

This is the same play experience as the kunnin rukk. Maybe not a big deal in tournaments, but a casual community wrecking ball and cold war instigator that gets everyone in your group to escalate builds into tournament level builds.

auticus wrote:
This is the same play experience as the kunnin rukk. Maybe not a big deal in tournaments, but a casual community wrecking ball and cold war instigator that gets everyone in your group to escalate builds into tournament level builds.

This right here is the problem. It's not that such a list is good in a tournament, it's that it's the sort of unfun trash list that's going to piss off the locals because it feels ridiculously OP (whether it is or isn't is not relevant). All it takes is for "Bob" to show up with such a list at a casual game night, and people are going to either get so frustrated that they dial back playing the game or start to look for power lists just to stand a fighting chance against it. Like you said, auticus, it absolutely "poisons the well". And there are a lot of lists like that; not good in a tournament, but obnoxious enough that they will kill off a casual community by virtue of being a one-trick pony gimmick list that nobody has fun playing against.

Those types of lists are often more unfun than the tournament killer lists. I've seen a few people who just can't stop wanting to build some "kewl awesome killer list" that, while it may not be a tournament-caliber or even "good" list is gimmicky enough that it will make people hate the game by how unfun it is.

Wayniac wrote:
it's that it's the sort of unfun trash list that's going to piss off the locals

In typical GeeDub fashion, I've found my local scene is all dudes wanting 2k (or whatever the next tournament level is) games of facehammer. I can get 1k games in with newbies or actual friends, but even then the dial is pretty much on 10 at all times, unless AOS is their first mini game and they're just using what their entry set came with. Our local 40k community actually has more intentionally middle of the power curve games going on then AOS does, which is admittedly unexpected, with how derpy AOS can be at times. To that end I'm retooling for 2k and a mostly-competent Tizz list, but since it's still all daemons it's inevitably a touch meh.

Whiiiiich is to say that I expect this level of wombo-combo from AOS builds, as much as I dislike it it's part of the game. Here's some additional love for forests / terrain doing something to inject some more tactics into AOS.

- Salvage

Wayniac wrote:

This right here is the problem. It's not that such a list is good in a tournament, it's that it's the sort of unfun trash list that's going to piss off the locals because it feels ridiculously OP (whether it is or isn't is not relevant). All it takes is for "Bob" to show up with such a list at a casual game night, and people are going to either get so frustrated that they dial back playing the game or start to look for power lists just to stand a fighting chance against it. Like you said, auticus, it absolutely "poisons the well". And there are a lot of lists like that; not good in a tournament, but obnoxious enough that they will kill off a casual community by virtue of being a one-trick pony gimmick list that nobody has fun playing against.

Those types of lists are often more unfun than the tournament killer lists. I've seen a few people who just can't stop wanting to build some "kewl awesome killer list" that, while it may not be a tournament-caliber or even "good" list is gimmicky enough that it will make people hate the game by how unfun it is.

The funny part is that in my experience those individuals are the ones who also won't shut up about how their army isn't "viable" in tournaments.

That said, while it can "poison the well"...if the player's not an ass it can also be an interesting draw. I've had experiences in Infinity where people despised a certain style of list, until I tell them we can swap armies and they see how it's not "easy mode" like they were just griping about.

I’m lucky to be in a gaming group with zero TFGs, so these exploits aren’t really relevant to my personal play experience. Unfortunately not everyone is as fortunate, and it sucks if stuff like this puts someone off the game. To broaden the discussion, are there examples of games where these types of exploits are non-existent? That is, no matter how hard one tried, it would be impossible to build a list that, when played against a new player, would make them go “This is bs”. I think that for many games (such as historicals), the community is such that no one would even think of creating such a list, even if it was possible. Warhammer is a special case. It has gone from being a GM-regulated game, focused on asymmetrical scenarios and extreme randomness (1st ed WHFB), to a highly competitive tournament game, but the rules designers haven’t actually acknowledged or encouraged this until very recently. Especially Jervis has seemingly never had any interest in creating such a game, and judging from the launch of AoS and his vision of it, this hasn’t really changed. So what we have is what the designers imagined to be a narrative-focused game being dragged kicking and screaming into competitive play. It’s actually incredible that they have reached a point where the game has a thriving tournament scene. Can you imagine this sort of transformation for any other casual wargame?

Typically its not the game that enforces the lack of skew lists its the community.

Having experience in both historicals and battletech, if someone showed up to a game against a new player with a skew list, the community would quickly see that person out of their group.

We have a large historical and battletech group in my city and this kind of thing never happens except on the rare. But its not because the rules don't let you do it.

There's something about the community that centers around GW games that attracts the competitive players that want to run lists to try and break the game more than historicals or battletech do I suppose.

It might be a generation thing as well as a club thing

First up historical games TEND TO (not always) have an older roster of gamers compared to GW games. So part of a social difference could just be generation gap.

It could also be that many who come to historical games are often after as much recreation of history as they are a wargame; so that in turn influences how they pick armies. In short they are picking armies in a more visual/themed/fluffy manner rather than competitive because there's more of a social unspoken acceptance that people are recreating history not just playing for wins.
Warhammer lacks this totally because it hasn't got a battle history in the same way to base how people build their lists.


Club wise its much easier to keep people involved if you provide activities; esp for younger generations who are often busy with either school/uni/work/life/families and often don't live as "regular" life as those who are older who often settle into habits more regularly.
Tournaments and competitions are easy to setup and generate their own focus with little input.







As for the whole "big mean list VS newbie" that argument always gets thrown around in balance chats. It's likely happened or been seen to happen to/by us at least once. Most times its because of a breakdown of communications or simply that the advanced player isn't thinking with a teaching mindset. It's a game so they brought their army.
VERY few times is it someone just out to curb-stomp a newbie because its easy. Indeed I'd wager such people often get booted out of clubs; asked to leave or wind up with no one to play against.



Another aspect might be tht historicals and such simply have more mature rule systems that don't reinvent the wheel every edition and thus they achieve a higher level of internal balance. Thus meaning that "breaking" the game isn't as viable.


Edit - in my view MTG is actually worse as the game is built around complex interactions and deck lists that work fast with powerful combos; and the power difference there between entry or fluffy lists and proper lists is vast to the point where its not just hard to beat its actually near impossible unless the better deck gets a bad shuffle and either gets no land or all land

Most of the guys that club the baby seals aren't doing it for easy wins, they are doing it because they want the baby seals to immerse themselves in the OP lists so that they learn to build OP lists themselves and become competitive players to jump in the competitive pool.

They can often see it as a weeding out process.

auticus wrote:
Most of the guys that club the baby seals aren't doing it for easy wins, they are doing it because they want the baby seals to immerse themselves in the OP lists so that they learn to build OP lists themselves and become competitive players to jump in the competitive pool.

They can often see it as a weeding out process.

Yeah and in that case its often that the experienced player just doesn't know how to teach a newer player. Teaching is a skill of its own and just because someone is good at something does not mean that they can teach it. I know many skilled people who are really rubbish teachers.

The only person I know who actively seemed to seek out the baby seals to club did quite intentionally because he wanted wins and people who didn’t know rules well enough to catch him cheating. He wasn’t very good otherwise and eventually stopped coming after getting DQed out of a tournament for cheating.

I agree those people can exist (seeking out the baby seals for their sweet sweet easy win).

I'm just playing devils advocate that in a lot of cases those guys aren't gonig for easy wins they are trying to bone up their competitive player pool.

Overread very clearly pointed out a great fact though: teaching is not an easy skill and just because you have skill doesn't mean you are good at teaching the game.

I haven't seen a non-GW community in a long time (The closest was Warmahordes, which was competitive focused but the people were genuinely nice and helpful here. Even our top tier players would be glad to give advice and help out) but I would agree that GW games seem to attract the types that play it to win, despite GW games being often some of the most imbalanced games out there. I do vaguely recall some of those types in Battletech, but Battletech hasn't been seen in my area since like 1994 (I myself stopped playing Battletech when I discovered Warhammer). Historicals are unknown here (much to my chagrin as I'd love to play it). Infinity I think I saw played once. Malifaux never saw played or talked about. Kings of War has a small following here. X-Wing/Armada I've seen but had no interest in.

Luckily a friend and I have started getting people interested in AOS during the week, and while he has been a more competitive player he has an interest in growing the community with a variety of styles, and I would prefer to dabble in Open and Narrative play.

 Overread wrote:

auticus wrote:
Most of the guys that club the baby seals aren't doing it for easy wins, they are doing it because they want the baby seals to immerse themselves in the OP lists so that they learn to build OP lists themselves and become competitive players to jump in the competitive pool.

They can often see it as a weeding out process.

Yeah and in that case its often that the experienced player just doesn't know how to teach a newer player. Teaching is a skill of its own and just because someone is good at something does not mean that they can teach it. I know many skilled people who are really rubbish teachers.

That's why locally we have certain people 'forbidden' to teach new players. They would just throw the rulebook at them and expect them to know it inside and out, the teaching games would be over in 5-10 minutes and you'd never see the new players again.

We’ve definitely had a Guild Ball community as well as the GW, WM, and Xwing one’s. Batman and Infinity as well to a lesser extent.

 Kanluwen wrote:

That's why locally we have certain people 'forbidden' to teach new players. They would just throw the rulebook at them and expect them to know it inside and out, the teaching games would be over in 5-10 minutes and you'd never see the new players again.

Our solution just seems to be that I'm always wearing my TO hat; even on casual nights.

I was actually quite good at teaching new players the ropes. I would even aim to lose in their first match without making it obvious, because a win can really boost their confidence and get them hooked. I can't stand seal clubbing. I was on the receiving end of it, and I saw new players being driven away by it, and it sucks.

And I tell you all, if I made a game like AoS, I would make the power of the units quite restrained, so as to aim to avoid crazy unbalance. Like, as a rule of thumb, I'd keep the number of attacks of models in actual units under 4 unless they're something very weak (less than 4+/4+/-). Likewise, I'd keep the damage of attacks of the same under control too. No joke, I'd rarely go past 1, with multiple damage being reserved for special weapons or special bonuses, like a wound roll of 6+.

This is because there will always be something out there to boost the numbers of attacks or damage or whatever, and imo this is where things always get out of control, except for a few armies, who then get left in the lurch because of it. When units of 20 models are pouring out 150+ attacks, something is off. But this is all subjective though. People are bound to disagree. I just think that the game would work better if it was very hard to engineer 'unit deletion' units rather than that being easy.

So on the subject of TO hats, about to run my first AoS tournament here soon and I’ve got someone saying it’s a common rule where they don’t allow Allegiance Scenery such as Wyldwoods and the Nurgle tree near Objectives. I know the recent FAQs added that rule to the Idoneth shipwrecks, is it often used for the others as well and is that a thing I should do?

 AduroT wrote:
So on the subject of TO hats, about to run my first AoS tournament here soon and I’ve got someone saying it’s a common rule where they don’t allow Allegiance Scenery such as Wyldwoods and the Nurgle tree near Objectives. I know the recent FAQs added that rule to the Idoneth shipwrecks, is it often used for the others as well and is that a thing I should do?

I would strongly recommend that you do it.

Thats the first time I ever heard that before.

Just thought I'd change this post. No reason to dwell on jerks who damaged a local gaming scene now that they are gone.

One thing I'll say about the new edition is that I don't really like how the rules are strewn over so many books. I have the core book, ghb and malign sorcery and that combined with battletomes is a bit much for my liking. I'm thinking I'm going to take screen shots of my digital copies and make a folder of just rules page images on my tablet. It's annoying to have it all so spread out across multiple epubs. They don't load as fast as PDFs I have for other games and I think a folder of images in my photo app will solve the problem.

What do I hope is next for AoS?

A Legions of Nagash style book for all the other small factions. Spawn of the Horned Rat? Hordes of Gorkamorka? An army book about Free Cities that includes a place for all the orphaned order stuff even better than Firestorm did. Then after that, a version 2 of the initial run of AoS Battletomes like Sylvaneth, Seraphon, Ironjaws, Fyreslayers and the like. Then something new like Slaanesh.

 Future War Cultist wrote:

 AduroT wrote:
So on the subject of TO hats, about to run my first AoS tournament here soon and I’ve got someone saying it’s a common rule where they don’t allow Allegiance Scenery such as Wyldwoods and the Nurgle tree near Objectives. I know the recent FAQs added that rule to the Idoneth shipwrecks, is it often used for the others as well and is that a thing I should do?

I would strongly recommend that you do it.

So what, like 6”, same as the Idoneth shipwrecks?

In fairness the Malign Sorcery book you really only need to read out the stats for the items you take or the spells and then put that on a cheat sheet; the actual magic page is the same as in the core rule book.

 AduroT wrote:

 Future War Cultist wrote:

 AduroT wrote:
So on the subject of TO hats, about to run my first AoS tournament here soon and I’ve got someone saying it’s a common rule where they don’t allow Allegiance Scenery such as Wyldwoods and the Nurgle tree near Objectives. I know the recent FAQs added that rule to the Idoneth shipwrecks, is it often used for the others as well and is that a thing I should do?

I would strongly recommend that you do it.

So what, like 6”, same as the Idoneth shipwrecks?

Yes that’s right. It is probably for the best believe me.

This was posted to reddit today, and I would be interested to hear input from some of you. It's a list of tournament results thus far for 2.0. I'm trying to get more info on how and where the data was collected. Seraphon are a lot further down the list than I would suspect, and based on this, I would say Daughters of Khaine is actually doing the best given they have almost as many top 10 finishes as Legions of Nagash, but with less than half of the meta representation. Interestingly, all three Dark Powers with a proper battletome have performed about the same.

Sincerely apologize for the necromancy, but this seems like the best place to link it.

If its the list on twitter and making its rounds I will say that it is a tiny sampling based on a couple of "GTs". As such, while interesting and definitely has good debate points, I don't find it conclusive.

EDIT: saw the link and yeah thats the list. I posted my comment on twitter about it as well not being conclusive or having nearly enough data to make any solid conclusions with it.

Finally got a source. Looks like it was originally from TGA and features 7 GTs including NOVA

Using just GTs, where armies generally need to be painted, combined with them being scarcely more than two months after 2.0 release at the latest means this is not particularly relevant in my eyes.

I do, however, appreciate the effort whoever went through. It is still a point of data that can be combined with others down the road.