EnTyme wrote:
"I'm the dude playin' a dude disguised as another dude!" - The Changeling

"You went full Changeling. You never go full Changeling." -The Changeling.

This thread is officially the first time Tropic Thunder is relevant. Love it!

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Until you go against 1 drop army with shooting and then you go second, all your Gaunt summoners are shot off so you don't have to place them.

If you deploy them in range and in line of sight sure!


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 EnTyme wrote:
That Tzeentch list doesn't sound fun to paint (not that That Guy would care), and definitely not fun to play against. Hopefully something will happen in the FAQ to prevent that sort of thing. Maybe their free summon can be limited to only one Gaunt Summoner per game, or Gaunt Summoners could become a unique profile. Based on their lore, they should probably be unique anyway. If only 9 exist in the multiverse, why would Tzeentch risk more than one in a single battle?

It isn't as bad as it seems, because you have an army without real support elements and almost everything will melt in melee. Sure it will beat up an average list but plenty of tourney-grade ones have the offense to dismantle it, and with guild of summoners it can only summon LoC.

Yeah, that's definitely not a list I'd worry about in a tournament. It's something that I wouldn't want to see brought to a casual game, though, so I hope they do something to prevent it. As for me, my Tzeentch list is going to be a Witchfyre Coven lead by a mishmash of heroes.

Here's a funny msu:

-6x Plague Priest
-14x10 Plague Monks
-2x10 Warriors of Chaos (MoN) (Allies)

Basically, the priests and monks all have a hero phase ability to deal MWs and the army stalls until attrition from that sets in. The two warrior units are actually durable, while having so many small monk units means they can be set up in layers to avoid any significant number being wiped out at once and allow for opportunistic charges.

You MAY miss out on turn choice though...

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Here's a funny msu:

-6x Plague Priest
-14x10 Plague Monks
-2x10 Warriors of Chaos (MoN) (Allies)

Basically, the priests and monks all have a hero phase ability to deal MWs and the army stalls until attrition from that sets in. The two warrior units are actually durable, while having so many small monk units means they can be set up in layers to avoid any significant number being wiped out at once and allow for opportunistic charges.

You MAY miss out on turn choice though...

13 inch range on those prayers/books. So I could see it being fun to play against once or twice. Its still 140 plague monks. *Shivers*

Will definitely lose out against anything that can just sit back and shoot you/magic you off of stuff.

I think we're getting to the point where we don't need to actually play anymore.

According to your incessant rants, we hit that point a week after the first GHB.

 EnTyme wrote:
According to your incessant rants, we hit that point a week after the first GHB.

Like when the first GUB it is a matter of matchup. We all know there there are some where we can look at the two lists and immediately know who will win. Obviously this is something we are generally used to existing, but the severity shifts as dramatically as the meta does.

If I had to guess I would say Auticus means to comment on the severity. I find saying we don't need to play at all as rather hyperbolic though.


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 Carnikang wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Here's a funny msu:

-6x Plague Priest
-14x10 Plague Monks
-2x10 Warriors of Chaos (MoN) (Allies)

Basically, the priests and monks all have a hero phase ability to deal MWs and the army stalls until attrition from that sets in. The two warrior units are actually durable, while having so many small monk units means they can be set up in layers to avoid any significant number being wiped out at once and allow for opportunistic charges.

You MAY miss out on turn choice though...

13 inch range on those prayers/books. So I could see it being fun to play against once or twice. Its still 140 plague monks. *Shivers*

Will definitely lose out against anything that can just sit back and shoot you/magic you off of stuff.

120+ rats is pretty standard for skaven tourney armies, you know!

I find saying we don't need to play at all as rather hyperbolic though.

It means often you can look at two lists and already know who is going to win without even playing the game.

True transcendence won't come until we can grade the quality of building and painting without seeing models. Only being able to predict the outcome based on lists is only half the battle - we must achieve true enlightenment.

 auticus wrote:

I find saying we don't need to play at all as rather hyperbolic though.

It means often you can look at two lists and already know who is going to win without even playing the game.

Honestly, i've only seen this twice, once of was old FeC before the nerf and the 2nd was old HoS vs Ogres, but those 2 armies has been fixed (for the most part, enough at least). I play BoC and kill very little, it always looks like the opponent should win but yet they don't. B.c numbers are not everything in AoS.

A good example is OBR, everyone was crying how OP they are, well then didn't do well in the last 3 events event tho they have solid stats. Yes on middle tables they are strong, but when it came to pushing the top, it was harder than people thought, even against old DoT at LVO they only placed 8th, 7th at WW, and they did get a 2nd place at CanCon, but out of the huge amounts of players playing them only 1 placed in each top 10. And yet everyone said "I can't win that match up with X, Y, or Z" and yet they did.

The game is more balanced than what these last few posts has been saying.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 auticus wrote:

I find saying we don't need to play at all as rather hyperbolic though.

It means often you can look at two lists and already know who is going to win without even playing the game.

Honestly, i've only seen this twice, once of was old FeC before the nerf and the 2nd was old HoS vs Ogres, but those 2 armies has been fixed (for the most part, enough at least). I play BoC and kill very little, it always looks like the opponent should win but yet they don't. B.c numbers are not everything in AoS.

A good example is OBR, everyone was crying how OP they are, well then didn't do well in the last 3 events event tho they have solid stats. Yes on middle tables they are strong, but when it came to pushing the top, it was harder than people thought, even against old DoT at LVO they only placed 8th, 7th at WW, and they did get a 2nd place at CanCon, but out of the huge amounts of players playing them only 1 placed in each top 10. And yet everyone said "I can't win that match up with X, Y, or Z" and yet they did.

The game is more balanced than what these last few posts has been saying.

But you highlight a great deal of imbalance present right here--OBR is not strong enough to win tournaments in any consistent manner and yet there is a huge swathe of lists (and even entire armies) that have no reasonable means of beating competently done Petrifax. That OBR has many armies even stronger than it is a sign of how bad the balance is, not how good. To tell all players that if they can't beat an army of that caliber it's their fault is extremely misleading.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 auticus wrote:

I find saying we don't need to play at all as rather hyperbolic though.

It means often you can look at two lists and already know who is going to win without even playing the game.

Honestly, i've only seen this twice, once of was old FeC before the nerf and the 2nd was old HoS vs Ogres, but those 2 armies has been fixed (for the most part, enough at least). I play BoC and kill very little, it always looks like the opponent should win but yet they don't. B.c numbers are not everything in AoS.

A good example is OBR, everyone was crying how OP they are, well then didn't do well in the last 3 events event tho they have solid stats. Yes on middle tables they are strong, but when it came to pushing the top, it was harder than people thought, even against old DoT at LVO they only placed 8th, 7th at WW, and they did get a 2nd place at CanCon, but out of the huge amounts of players playing them only 1 placed in each top 10. And yet everyone said "I can't win that match up with X, Y, or Z" and yet they did.

The game is more balanced than what these last few posts has been saying.

But you highlight a great deal of imbalance present right here--OBR is not strong enough to win tournaments in any consistent manner and yet there is a huge swathe of lists (and even entire armies) that have no reasonable means of beating competently done Petrifax. That OBR has many armies even stronger than it is a sign of how bad the balance is, not how good. To tell all players that if they can't beat an army of that caliber it's their fault is extremely misleading.

Whenever I hear people claim AoS is quite balanced, I am always confused.
Do these people take into account the factions in the lower strata of the meta?

For example Ogor Mawtribes, Stormcast, Sylvaneth, Seraphon, Maggotkin, Nighthaunt, etc.
Following data provided by HonestWargamers, these factions have winrate of less than 45% as of 13th December 2019.
That's already nearly a quarter of entire AoS factions with battletomes.
Their winrate is 5~6% lower even when compared to middling factions such as Blades of Khorne or OrrukWarclans.

It's as if those people believe game is "balanced" as long as top performing factions in tournaments change once every year.
They do not seem to care at all about the aforementioned low tier factions being relegated to footstools for top factions.

P.S.
Yes, I know the data I quoted does not take into account the CanCon 2020 results.
However, the low performing factions I mentioned still does not seem to show signs of improvement, with the exception of Ogor Mawtribes.
I play Stormcast Eternals and I was depressed to see the highest ranking Stormcast player taking 45th place out of 223 players, who was the only Stormcast player in top 50.
Sylvaneth and Seraphon are worse, but I am not sure whether or not I should feel reassured.

That also does not account for build diversity. Khorne's 'mid-tier' at tournaments is actually contingent on a minimum of two bloodthirsters, usually three, and the reapers of vengeance subfaction. What may seem in the data to be diversity is usually only about a 10-30% of battletome options being used.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
That also does not account for build diversity. Khorne's 'mid-tier' at tournaments is actually contingent on a minimum of two bloodthirsters, usually three, and the reapers of vengeance subfaction. What may seem in the data to be diversity is usually only about a 10-30% of battletome options being used.

This. Having one solid list in a tournament meta doesn't make the army good, it just means there's one thing that can be abused.

Cronch wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
That also does not account for build diversity. Khorne's 'mid-tier' at tournaments is actually contingent on a minimum of two bloodthirsters, usually three, and the reapers of vengeance subfaction. What may seem in the data to be diversity is usually only about a 10-30% of battletome options being used.

This. Having one solid list in a tournament meta doesn't make the army good, it just means there's one thing that can be abused.

The keepers of secret spam lists have kept slaanesh sat at the top for a long while now.
People consider them a solid army, yet without the keepers it falls apart.

This applies to quite a few army as well.
In fact, this has basically defined the meta any way.

Armies aren’t graded based on a unit to unit analysis, they are graded in reflection on tournament results for the most part.
In these tournaments you won’t see the poor options being taken.

This also holds true for any army from any game.
In a competitive setting, only the best options will be spammed, that’s kind of how it works.

And it inherently distorts the actual balance of the army. The tiny percentage of tournament players wags the whole body of the game balance.
And while yes, in every game there is a competitive meta, most do a much better job of keeping internal power balance, so even the "worse" options aren't pure trash.

I’ve very much been out of the loop for a good few months now. Are there still some glaringly op armies? Slannesh for example?

Probably a stupid question actually...

Whenever I hear people claim AoS is quite balanced, I am always confused.
Do these people take into account the factions in the lower strata of the meta?

I think this line of thought comes mostly from people who are playing both 40k and AoS or just 40k. I play both systems and in my mind AoS is in a much more balanced state than 40k, with a variety of factions often represented on tourneys along with some diversity in the top 20 seats. In 40k at the last LVO Space Marines were 8 out of 10 listings in the top 10 if I recall correctly. So taking that into account AoS will look much more balanced in comparison.


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 Future War Cultist wrote:
I’ve very much been out of the loop for a good few months now. Are there still some glaringly op armies? Slannesh for example?

Probably a stupid question actually...

Slaanesh has been nerfed somewhat but still strong.

Ossiarch Bonereapers have a strange faction trait that's out of this world. A Flat +1 to all saves and they already tend to have 3+ and 4+ saves.

Disciples of Tzeentch are coming super strong out of the gate with an incredibly high winrate. People are hoping that will be addressed in their upcoming FAQ.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 auticus wrote:

I find saying we don't need to play at all as rather hyperbolic though.

It means often you can look at two lists and already know who is going to win without even playing the game.

Honestly, i've only seen this twice, once of was old FeC before the nerf and the 2nd was old HoS vs Ogres, but those 2 armies has been fixed (for the most part, enough at least). I play BoC and kill very little, it always looks like the opponent should win but yet they don't. B.c numbers are not everything in AoS.

A good example is OBR, everyone was crying how OP they are, well then didn't do well in the last 3 events event tho they have solid stats. Yes on middle tables they are strong, but when it came to pushing the top, it was harder than people thought, even against old DoT at LVO they only placed 8th, 7th at WW, and they did get a 2nd place at CanCon, but out of the huge amounts of players playing them only 1 placed in each top 10. And yet everyone said "I can't win that match up with X, Y, or Z" and yet they did.

The game is more balanced than what these last few posts has been saying.

But you highlight a great deal of imbalance present right here--OBR is not strong enough to win tournaments in any consistent manner and yet there is a huge swathe of lists (and even entire armies) that have no reasonable means of beating competently done Petrifax. That OBR has many armies even stronger than it is a sign of how bad the balance is, not how good. To tell all players that if they can't beat an army of that caliber it's their fault is extremely misleading.

No 99% of people played the same style of list, that style didn't work, not the army. For example i think Stalliarch Lords is a more competitive style of play and the 2 big 500+pt heroes are a trap to use. But w/e i got laughed at.

Sagittarii Orientalis wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 auticus wrote:

I find saying we don't need to play at all as rather hyperbolic though.

It means often you can look at two lists and already know who is going to win without even playing the game.

Honestly, i've only seen this twice, once of was old FeC before the nerf and the 2nd was old HoS vs Ogres, but those 2 armies has been fixed (for the most part, enough at least). I play BoC and kill very little, it always looks like the opponent should win but yet they don't. B.c numbers are not everything in AoS.

A good example is OBR, everyone was crying how OP they are, well then didn't do well in the last 3 events event tho they have solid stats. Yes on middle tables they are strong, but when it came to pushing the top, it was harder than people thought, even against old DoT at LVO they only placed 8th, 7th at WW, and they did get a 2nd place at CanCon, but out of the huge amounts of players playing them only 1 placed in each top 10. And yet everyone said "I can't win that match up with X, Y, or Z" and yet they did.

The game is more balanced than what these last few posts has been saying.

But you highlight a great deal of imbalance present right here--OBR is not strong enough to win tournaments in any consistent manner and yet there is a huge swathe of lists (and even entire armies) that have no reasonable means of beating competently done Petrifax. That OBR has many armies even stronger than it is a sign of how bad the balance is, not how good. To tell all players that if they can't beat an army of that caliber it's their fault is extremely misleading.

Whenever I hear people claim AoS is quite balanced, I am always confused.
Do these people take into account the factions in the lower strata of the meta?

For example Ogor Mawtribes, Stormcast, Sylvaneth, Seraphon, Maggotkin, Nighthaunt, etc.
Following data provided by HonestWargamers, these factions have winrate of less than 45% as of 13th December 2019.
That's already nearly a quarter of entire AoS factions with battletomes.
Their winrate is 5~6% lower even when compared to middling factions such as Blades of Khorne or OrrukWarclans.

It's as if those people believe game is "balanced" as long as top performing factions in tournaments change once every year.
They do not seem to care at all about the aforementioned low tier factions being relegated to footstools for top factions.

P.S.
Yes, I know the data I quoted does not take into account the CanCon 2020 results.
However, the low performing factions I mentioned still does not seem to show signs of improvement, with the exception of Ogor Mawtribes.
I play Stormcast Eternals and I was depressed to see the highest ranking Stormcast player taking 45th place out of 223 players, who was the only Stormcast player in top 50.
Sylvaneth and Seraphon are worse, but I am not sure whether or not I should feel reassured.

Seraphon is getting a book now so we need to wait and see as they were built in 1.0, even then they have won big events before. I do agree that Sylvenath is straight bad, but point changes can fix them easily. Same for Nighthuant as their rules are not bad, actually Nighthuant has some of the more competitive rules IMO, but they are just to costly by about 15-20% and i full understand why GW is hesitant to lowering them to much.

Overall we are talking about a few armies that are struggling, and a couple armies that preform a little better. But all armies are very tight for GW IMO, i play what is consider the worst army with a so called "30.8" win rate, well for me in events i have a 50% win rate (I went 3-3 at a GT, 2-1 in a team GT, 1-2 in a different team event but this was a year ago, and in local events 3-0, 2-1, 1-2, 1-2) But all numbers say BoC is bad, and i agree they are weak when it comes to raw stats, but their rules makes up for it a little bit, when i can beat IDK, FeC, Khorne, i don't see a problem.

I'm just saying, its more balanced than what people keep calling out, YES there are some clear unbalances and there OFC is a top couple armies and a bottom couple and those should be fixed a bit more, but its not all doom and gloom for those armies (Well maybe besides Sylvenath, they really need something to change, everyone i know that plays them hates them now).

So on balance for me there are two things that make a game "balanced".

External balance is good when they get the win/loss ratios down to 59/41 or better. Currently not even close.

Internal balance is good when each book has multiple viable builds that can compete against other viable builds. Thats not to say every build is viable, but there should be a number of viable ways to build an army.

Also currently not even close. There are a number of books that have no viable builds (external balance is bad) and the books that have viable builds typically have one base build they stem from.

When people try and say AOS is a fairly balanced game, I have no rational answer to that. I realize we all do have our own thresholds of what is considered acceptable. I may consider 59/41 my boundary, a lot of people seem to consider 70/30 "not that bad". Or you play in casual groups where people aren't maxing out their roster so the balance may seem like its not that bad. Or you use tournament results and say if at the tournament level its fine (no it really isn't, the external balance is a bit better yes but defiinitely not the internal balance) then the whole game is fine you are dismissing the people not playing at the tournament level who show up to the store to face off against someone wanting to use a tournament powered army and smokes them and leaves a horrific play experience behind them.

And I know as much as a lot of you hate math and feel that statistical regression and analysis is useless in a tabletop game built entirely around discrete mathematic principals of probability, if you toss up the probability scores for the entire game and do a linear regression on it you will note that the deviation scores are not just bad, they are grossly bad.

Especially when you do the same analysis on other games (infinity for example has a tight deviation boundary that is fairly close to the mean line).

From my experience with Infinity (EDIT: this was a bit ago, 4yrs, so it might have changed) it wasn't really balanced at all b.c of such a low dice pool game, 1 crit hit could end the game for you, or using up your turn to roll for the objective and you roll that dice poorly. To me such important rolls that can literally make you win with bad plays isn't balanced.

I didn't play enough to to full get into what is BiS and not, b.c after a few months of playing i couldn't handle the RnG of the game. Sure it might be well balanced in 1 way, but very frustrating to play in other ways. Balance is also a fun factor. I don't have fun with that game.

My experience with Infinity is that I have a whole lot of builds I can play with that will give me a good game. There are no factions that are really hanging in the wind, and if I show up with any number of builds I won't be playing nightmare mode or just GG turn 1 if my opponent brings a max force list.

In AOS I need to first know what factions are viable in and of themselves (so slaves to darkness is my favorite and up until recently were flat out burning garbage, and right now they are a lot better than they were, but are still going to be facing a very hard battle if my opponent brings their adepticon list whcih in my neck of the woods is common) and then I have to know in that book, what is the one (or if I'm lucky two) builds I can make that won't leave me playing on nightmare mode or GG turn 1 when my opponent brings their adepticon list to campaign and I get the luck of being paired with them.

So I am essentially shoe-horned into collecting a certain part of that faction, whether or not i like the models, to have a game that is not nightmare mode. And then every six months I have to be ok with potentially (not always) having to buy and paint new models to keep being able to play the game that is not nightmare mode because a lot of my opponents trade armies every six months for what is currently dominating the honest wargamer's stats.

For me, the fact that I can play Infinity with a large number of builds is great, and playing games on nightmare mode when I have to be paired against someone who is bringing Adepticon list, because of the army I chose to like, is very frustrating.

I do agree that a lot of people that say they don't like Infinity also say its because the balance part is not fun for them. That same complaint is levied against Kings of War for the same reason. Its more balanced, but less fun because balance isn't the primary motivator.

For me though balance IS the primary motivator. Diverse builds and not being shoe-horned into an obvious build is very important for me. And ultimately a game that measures your ability to win at the table much more than just picking the ultra adepticon netlist is very important to me.

Infinity does have an easier time, because of how tiny the stat variation is between factions, and how generic the equipment is.
The lists are much more equal between the armies (unless someone decides to drop a ku**a spam on you without warning), but the game can be very swingy based on the dice rolls. But apparently they're changing the crit mechanics in 4th edition, so hopefully that will change.

Cronch wrote:
Infinity does have an easier time, because of how tiny the stat variation is between factions, and how generic the equipment is.

compared to AoS?
No, the differences between Armies and viable builds is much bigger for Infinity

The thing is, faction in AoS are not that different by stat variation or equipment, those are overall the same but Special Rules make the point were the difference come from
but this is also the source of in-balance as the amount of equal strong special rules is limited if variation for everything else is not there.

Same for the dice rolls, a lucky roll for double turn in the right moment will decide the game, I can't see why this is so much better than crit mechanics in Infinity.

Have you played "Hive" its like chess but you add pieces to the board instead of taking off and try to surround the Queen (equal to a king) has some of the same movements as Chess too. You might like it, really fun, much more fun than Chess imo.

I don't feel shoe-horned into playing any faction for my armies. All 3 of the armies i play/ed i could make work with all factions (or at least all factions with the models i have, for CoS i have a limited range).

BoC, IDK, CoS.

BoC I play all 3 factions to equal success, and all 3 look largely different from each other in many ways

IDK, Tidecaster i played 3 factions, king general i played 2 of the same and 1 different one for a total of 4 out of the 6.

CoS, i really can only play out of 3 of them for now, Living, Hammerhall, and TE. Living and TE are for sure better, but me and my opponents both have more fun with Hammerhal (B.c i am playing Drakespawn Knights, YES the "Worst unit" in CoS).

I'm also looking at getting Nighthaunt, i might sell my CoS (don't like how they play).

It sounds like you and your opponents also work together to make sure the game is not overbearing for one or the other, which is good and will definitely give you a much better play experience.

I do a lot of open public games so some of my opponents will do that, but a good chunk of my opponents will plunk down three keeper of secrets and prepare to summon an additional 2000 points of models, that if I'm not bringing an equally filth list will not have much of a game against.

 auticus wrote:
I think we're getting to the point where we don't need to actually play anymore.

I do not think I've ever seen you actually enjoy AoS for all the posting you do on this forum

On topic though, AoS is booming in my local area. We have narrative slow grow campaigns, tournament scene and everything in between with players flitting between game styles. No game is perfect, but for a way to have fun and relax AoS is currently a success far as our city is concerned.

Also our local HoS player has learnt, no you cannot make my fanatics fight last, and yes they will pummel your keeper into the dirt!

 auticus wrote:
It sounds like you and your opponents also work together to make sure the game is not overbearing for one or the other, which is good and will definitely give you a much better play experience.

I do a lot of open public games so some of my opponents will do that, but a good chunk of my opponents will plunk down three keeper of secrets and prepare to summon an additional 2000 points of models, that if I'm not bringing an equally filth list will not have much of a game against.

I play players that try to win and bring top style lists, i got to events even major GTs with 200+ people, i do teams and solo events. For pickup game nights yes we play nice, but a lot of the time's we do not. We enjoy both. We just say "friendly or not?" before each game, we also have a 24/7 gaming club with out own chat for local community, you can get pick up games and schedule serious or not, which we do. Last week it was all comp games practicing for a doubles event coming up.

To me it sounds like you are not talking to your opponents as to what game type you want for pick up games and making it sound like its other peoples problems.

If players need to consult each other to adjust the power levels of their armies, what is the point of using matched play system?

Are not points and restrictions ought to bring optimal balance without tedious process of moderating army balance done by players?

I am not against players discussing to decrease the gap between armies for more enjoyable games. But if this process is semi-compulsive even when using matched play, I daresay it shows how miserably matched play has failed as a system that aims to promote competitive games.

Sagittarii Orientalis wrote:
If players need to consult each other to adjust the power levels of their armies, what is the point of using matched play system?

Are not points and restrictions ought to bring optimal balance without tedious process of moderating army balance done by players?

I am not against players discussing to decrease the gap between armies for more enjoyable games. But if this process is semi-compulsive even when using matched play, I daresay it is an utter failure as a system that aims to provide competitive games.

Its like that for everygame every, even chess, there is a reason why in chess there are skill ranks. If a top player is asked to play he is going to ask what rating he is. You can't get around some imbalances no matter the game.

You should always talk to your opponent for everygame. I also used to play comp OW (Highest was 3,470 never could get masters) until Blizz f'ed up and bowed to china, when playing with IRL friends my rank was much higher than theirs, i had a 2nd account just for friends so it would find a more balanced team and i would play off heroes to practice and have more fun than try to win.

edit: spelling

Just because perfect balance cannot be achieved in any form of game does not mean degree of unbalance is same for all games.

Correct me wrong, but I am moderately shocked to see a chess come up as an example to advocate AoS balance issues. I heard going first creates unbalance problem in chess, but it is incomparably skill-based compared to AoS. At least in AoS players can attribute their loss to army tiers or specific builds. In no way can this happen in chess.

Sagittarii Orientalis wrote:
Just because perfect balance cannot be achieved in any form of game does not mean degree of unbalance is same for all games.

Correct me wrong, but I am moderately shocked to see a chess come up as an example to advocate AoS balance issues. I heard going first creates unbalance problem in chess, but it is incomparably skill-based compared to AoS. At least in AoS players can attribute their loss to army tiers or specific builds. In no way can this happen in chess.

Chess is by far a very balanced game, thats why it is brought up. No one is saying they are closely balanced, b.c they are not. I only used it to show even a balanced game you should talk to your opponent first, or at least "know" their level/rating.

Just walking up and saying "play me" could be extremely unbalanced just from a player skill level regardless of the games you are playing or the units in an army.

 kodos wrote:

Cronch wrote:
Infinity does have an easier time, because of how tiny the stat variation is between factions, and how generic the equipment is.

compared to AoS?
No, the differences between Armies and viable builds is much bigger for Infinity
Same for the dice rolls, a lucky roll for double turn in the right moment will decide the game, I can't see why this is so much better than crit mechanics in Infinity.

I mean, that's not what my experience has been. The difference is usually 1, maybe 2 stat-points apart. The "shooty" army of the game, PanO, has +1 BS vs the "melee" army of YJ. Both are in essence the same, the only difference is how easy it is to get MSV or missile launchers in each army.
And yes, double turn is strong, but not nearly quite as as say, losing a key HI unit because a 10-point cheerleader managed to roll a crit twice in the same burst, because crits make armor, a stat that is otherwise fairly heavily weighted in points, useless.

Cronch wrote:

 kodos wrote:

Cronch wrote:
Infinity does have an easier time, because of how tiny the stat variation is between factions, and how generic the equipment is.

compared to AoS?
No, the differences between Armies and viable builds is much bigger for Infinity
Same for the dice rolls, a lucky roll for double turn in the right moment will decide the game, I can't see why this is so much better than crit mechanics in Infinity.

I mean, that's not what my experience has been. The difference is usually 1, maybe 2 stat-points apart. The "shooty" army of the game, PanO, has +1 BS vs the "melee" army of YJ.

which is kind of more different to the variations of 3+/4+ we get from AoS as 1 stat point difference already makes a shooty army.
Even different weapons in AoS throughout all the armies are more or less the same and difference can only be seen of you go full math-hammer and and see that there is a slight advantage for one against a specific enemy.

the main difference between AoS units and factions are army wide special rules, what you can take as battle line and access to buffs
and this causes the problem as most of those play the same but one get the better combination of army rules, battle line and buffs to get thinks working, combined with a lot of RNG.

I see the same in Kings of War (or Deadzone), one Stat-Point difference is enough to get a completely different play style while some people look at the stats and conclude that they must be all play the same, while in AoS every Army plays different.
But in AoS, they don't do because of the Stats, is there is no difference between factions at all.

After a game of Infinity, I am more often in the situation to say I lost because of 1-2 mistakes I have done than blaming the dice or poor army decision

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 auticus wrote:
It sounds like you and your opponents also work together to make sure the game is not overbearing for one or the other, which is good and will definitely give you a much better play experience.

I do a lot of open public games so some of my opponents will do that, but a good chunk of my opponents will plunk down three keeper of secrets and prepare to summon an additional 2000 points of models, that if I'm not bringing an equally filth list will not have much of a game against.

I play players that try to win and bring top style lists, i got to events even major GTs with 200+ people, i do teams and solo events. For pickup game nights yes we play nice, but a lot of the time's we do not. We enjoy both. We just say "friendly or not?" before each game, we also have a 24/7 gaming club with out own chat for local community, you can get pick up games and schedule serious or not, which we do. Last week it was all comp games practicing for a doubles event coming up.

To me it sounds like you are not talking to your opponents as to what game type you want for pick up games and making it sound like its other peoples problems.

You would be incorrect in that assumption. When we do public campaigns its in big bolded flaming words "do not bring your adepticon list". And people bring their adepticon list anyway. And then complain that they are being moderated or told to weaken their list and that that is not fair. There is no place in the world where I can take my slaves to darkness army and have a good game against the new tzeentch or 3 keeper of secrets list that will be any kind of fun or enjoyable.

And the pick up games at the store are the same. The expectation in my neck of the woods is: if its legal, deal with it. If you dont like being smashed by adepticon style lists, build your own adepticon style list, or don't play. Or be ok with getting smashed and play for beer and dice and not caring about who wins.

How your local group plays, or decides to collectively be unpleasant towards you is not indicative of the game as a whole. Telling people there's no point in playing the game because your local group overall sucks is just needlessly negative.

I could use my own group, where we play and have good friendly fun games regularly, as my opinion for the game's balance and say it's perfect and fine, but that would be wrong too. Pinning down a metric for what armies are actually balanced is a difficult thing, and it's my opinion that the best way to find stats is from tournament play, where the players are trying their best to win. Anecdotes and experience from pick-up games can only go so far.

Thats really not whats happening at all. The discussion was on the balance of the game, and how in many cases there is no need to play the game because you can figure out the outcome.

Somehow that has now morphed.

Pinning down a metric for what armies are balanced is not a difficult thing at all. Its actually quite easy to get a point based system in line with itself and be not perfect, but a lot tighter.

I think its a lot harder to point down a good matched play system in a game that lets you summon to the level AOS does and where mortal wounds get blown up so much as they are, but I don't think its very difficult or even difficult.

We (the community) did it several years ago.

I think saying that its difficult to do so it doesn't matter as much is a giant cop-out meant to hand waive the fact that balance isn't what you are after, and that its ok to have the disparities in the game that exist today because they are fine by you. Its ok to not be after balanced play. I realized a while ago that there are a lot of people that dont' care about balance so long as they have a giant community to interact with. I think in the end most if not all of us know what the real story is in regards to the power disparities, and that it should just be ok to say "we know the balance isn't great, but we simply don't care." instead of trying to hand waive it or say its not really that bad.

 Thadin wrote:
How your local group plays, or decides to collectively be unpleasant towards you is not indicative of the game as a whole. Telling people there's no point in playing the game because your local group overall sucks is just needlessly negative.

I could use my own group, where we play and have good friendly fun games regularly, as my opinion for the game's balance and say it's perfect and fine, but that would be wrong too. Pinning down a metric for what armies are actually balanced is a difficult thing, and it's my opinion that the best way to find stats is from tournament play, where the players are trying their best to win. Anecdotes and experience from pick-up games can only go so far.

I completely agree with this, and well said.

The game has too many variables and different army builds and different synergies that are hard to put in to points.

Using your previous examples of having a bell-curve where you put in unit stats and their point cost, to compare them to all the other units in the game and place them on a scale from under-costed to over-costed and anywhere inbetween, was it able to account for synergies and buffs between units?

Lets go with... If unit X is worth 200 points, and unit Y is worth 200 points as well, and both are perfectly balanced on your bell-curve. Unit Y has a special rule to improve the power of Unit X specifically, where do the points increase to keep them balanced? Increase the points of both units so they still sit balanced? Then, when they're not taken together, they become overcosted?

I'm actually interested to know if there was a way to account for this in the comp you had made, or if you have a solution to this situation. A system where different units have a different points cost depending on how your army is built?

Edit: I will concede that Summoning is busted. No way around it, free points are unbalanced.

In such a case you would determine the value of the buff to unit X and incorporate that into the point cost of unit Y. This is where subjective elements and playtesting come in, because the strict mathematical value of the buff is offset by both units needing to be fielded together for it to work. That makes it impossible to get a perfect value, but what people really want is 'good enough' which is not all that difficult to determine provided a set of designers/playtesters that are experienced, knowledgeable, and have the right intentions.

But... it isn't even that. Many would be very happy to have battletomes & codex where the OP and UP options at least require play time to determine instead of being readily obvious upon reading.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
In such a case you would determine the value of the buff to unit X and incorporate that into the point cost of unit Y.

I agree with this, to an extent. In the hypothetical example I put forward, unit Y only buffed the specific unit X and nothing else available to the army. Both X and Y are appropriately costed and perfectly balanced when they're separate, but together they're much stronger than what they're costed. Would it then be feasible to have a system where the same unit has different points costs dependant on the rest of your army comp?

Edit: Just thought of an example after posting. Warmachine and Hordes, your Warcaster/Warlock has a Jack/Beast Allotment for your army, and their allotment basically amounts to free points. A 50pt game of Warmachine will have your Warcaster, their free allotment of Jacks, and the rest of the points filled by extra jacks and units and so on. Depending on the strength and powers of the Leader of your army, you have a certain allotment of 'free' units. Perhaps something along that concept could work in AoS, or reworked or something? Just a thought I had, I'm by no means a game designer.

Unit Y would cost more points than it was worth on it's own, because using it that way means the player has chosen not to utilize it to it's maximum potential. Obviously players will always be able to ruin a unit's performance through error, or perhaps the specific context means that the cost to unit Y's mathatical effectiveness pays off in tactical value. (Using Evocators to camp a backfield objective is, generally speaking, a poor use but if it happens to win you the game it is still the right choice to make.)

To go further, if unit Y only offers a small buff to unit X then the increase to it's cost will be small or even zero and thus the 'penalty' to use it on it's own is also small. If the buff is large then the increase will also be but in such a case unit Y is designed to be a support unit intended for use with X. Sneaky snufflers' point cost, for example, is due to the buff they provide and only a fraction due to their own combat potential.

a unit that gives a buff to one unit is not the problem

a unit that gives the same buff to more units at the same time is one as you cannot adjust the point costs without setting the number of buffed units for the player

as with such a simple game like AoS, the player will figure out were the break even point is very fast (eg Lord Ordinator+2 Ballistas vs 3 Ballistas)

This is also were GW pre-select lists for the players, if you like a specific model, the best way to bring it on the table are obvious and much better than other options so that players feel they miss something if they don't take the combination

Army wide buffs are another problem if not all units profit the same way from it.


So yes AoS is hard to balance, but not because it has much more variation than other games (which it don't have) or such different stats or play styles
but because of design decisions at a basic level and the way how GW additional rules (everything is designed in its own environment and not written as complete game were basic concepts for all factions are layed out at the very beginning)

 Thadin wrote:
How your local group plays, or decides to collectively be unpleasant towards you is not indicative of the game as a whole. Telling people there's no point in playing the game because your local group overall sucks is just needlessly negative.

I could use my own group, where we play and have good friendly fun games regularly, as my opinion for the game's balance and say it's perfect and fine, but that would be wrong too. Pinning down a metric for what armies are actually balanced is a difficult thing, and it's my opinion that the best way to find stats is from tournament play, where the players are trying their best to win. Anecdotes and experience from pick-up games can only go so far.

That maybe true, but if it happens often enough to people from different countries, then it means that it is not just one store where auticus plays, but a general trend. And at what point does a general trend become reality? because I tell you it is way before it reachs happens to 100% of people. There are things that happen to less then 1% of population and people still live and act, as if you did them, it is going to happen to you 100% of time.

I think from the balance perspective that if you totally removed summoning, or made it a lot less than what you could do with it now, that a lot of the problems would back themselves up. Also the thought that certain units are over pointed to account for summoning just doesn't fly well with me, because when you can summon in 2000 points extra for free, I'd expect keepers to run 750 points a pop or something. As it is the keeper is also above the efficiency line in what it does summoning not withstanding. So I don't believe massive point drops are called for for armies that spam summons.

Triple keeper of secrets slaanesh armies without summoning are not that bad. Its when they are dumping 2000 extra points on top of you that the game has gone off the rails.

The game has too many variables and different army builds and different synergies that are hard to put in to points.

Hard yes. Impossible to baseline? No. Not at all. It just takes some effort. You aren't going to get 100% pure 50/50 balance and no one is suggesting that that is possible. However you can find that from a base statistical analysis of just the stats that a unit thats on average doing 12 wounds in combat and can tank 20 hits that costs 150 points is much better than the unit doing 14 wounds in combat, tanking 20 wounds, but costing 190 points. Optimizers with zero statistical background can figure that out and those are the kinds of things that exist in the army books to some degree.

After summoning, the second biggest issue are the battallion buffs. Without those, again the worst offenders aren't that big a deal.

Either make them worth their appropriate cost, tone them down to stop being ridiculous or remove them all together.

Those three things alone bring the game into a much better experience where people aren't winning by virtue of their army that they show up with and lessens the need for social engineering to try to beg and plead and convince your city's play group to not min/max because you don't want to chase the meta with them.

How your local group plays, or decides to collectively be unpleasant towards you is not indicative of the game as a whole.

The more open to abuse the game is, the more social engineering is required to enjoy the game. Which now makes the game also subject to the people around you as opposed to rules that just prevent the nonsense in the first place. So i disagree. If the rules allow a group to play in such a manner as opposed to the rules stopping all of that nonsense, that is indicative of the game's rules. Which is why I think the above things should be implemented or looked at.

The moment they said unfettered summoning was coming but not to worry it would be fine, I said that the game was about to get derailed hard. Free points are free points, and its obvious the more free points I have than you, the more of an advantage I have. To put it more cynically - thats pay to win. You don't just need your army now, you need your summoning side board.

Yep. Unlimited summoning obviously a cash grab idea from GW. It is so obviously bad for the game and benefits those with huge collections.

I have a huge collection that I’ve accumulated over time. I like the idea of being rewarded for having been a loyal customer for almost the past two decades. But yes, free summoning is rough. The in-game stretch goals aren’t the right way to go.

I think a better plan would be like 40k old “deep strike”: they’re points in your army, set them aside early, cant put more than half into “summoning”, comes down in movement phase and either scatters on impact outside of range of a “summoning tether” (hero, icon, gravemarker, etc) or focuses on the tether to come in where you want it. I don’t need free points. But playing like my old 4th/5th Ed 40k Daemons would be just fine for me. (Yes, this would bring back the scatter die. So what?)

And things like current horrors that have a hefty cost but allow for the unit size to increase based on conditions isn't "summoning a new unit"; it's baked into the cost. Models turning into Chaos Spawn or Princes aren't summoning new units: they're changing from one thing to another (yes, this includes enemies turned to spawn in spell casting). Heck, even "one off" models like Gaunt Summoners who can summon a single unit once per game pretty much have the unit's points baked into theirs (anything except horrors is 110pts/unit, and the GS is 240 or 260, depending on which one you take and it falls over if somebody even looks at it). Basically...Undead raising, Seraphon summoning, Depravity, Blood Tithe...stuff like that shouldn't exist; they should give you enhancements like the Blood Tithe original table did, but not "free" summons. The summons should be a point cost but not require a spell casting

It worked like that in 1.0, and it wasn't great either, because there's very little reason to deep-strike, and against a semi-competent player, it might even be nearly impossible to deepstrike anywhere but in your own deployment zone. That's still true, but at least you're not tying points up. I think the best option would be to put a hard cap on how many models you can bring down via summoning.

Cronch wrote:
It worked like that in 1.0, and it wasn't great either, because there's very little reason to deep-strike, and against a semi-competent player, it might even be nearly impossible to deepstrike anywhere but in your own deployment zone. That's still true, but at least you're not tying points up. I think the best option would be to put a hard cap on how many models you can bring down via summoning.

And yet, 5th edition 40k worked just fine with deep strike. In 1.0 it required you to have casters give up casting to summon and the model had to come down in a certain range without forgiveness. I'm proposing something different. Doesn't give up casting and units can DS wherever they want; but if you do it outside of the range of the tether you chance scattering.

So you suggest to remove the 9" no-drop bubble that is in every summon/deepstrike rule in 2.0?

Anyway, summoning is bad and no matter how you cut it, getting free units is bad for balance. if you don't get them for free, you're most likely hamstringing your army.
And none of it matters, cause GW knows free summoning is a great way to get people to buy multiple boxes...so it'll stay.

I would be fine with deep strike with no scatter, if you had to pay points for it.

Cronch wrote:
So you suggest to remove the 9" no-drop bubble that is in every summon/deepstrike rule in 2.0?

Anyway, summoning is bad and no matter how you cut it, getting free units is bad for balance. if you don't get them for free, you're most likely hamstringing your army.
And none of it matters, cause GW knows free summoning is a great way to get people to buy multiple boxes...so it'll stay.

Its not bad if points are taken into an account along with other balancing rules.

Sure. Remove 9”, but if you scatter onto something you mishap. Worked for 5th. Having the tether removes the risk and allows for charges. You can get reliable charge-placements, but you have to plop your tethers in enemy space and risk their health as the catch. It would provide risk/reward and kill off free summoning. Enjoy.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Sure. Remove 9”, but if you scatter onto something you mishap. Worked for 5th. Having the tether removes the risk and allows for charges. You can get reliable charge-placements, but you have to plop your tethers in enemy space and risk their health as the catch. It would provide risk/reward and kill off free summoning. Enjoy.

And everyone i knew in 5th other than marines with Drop pods hated those rules and there is a reason why its not in the game anymore.

When it comes to summoning I think if you are paying for it in points then the deep-strike should be pretty reliable for the player. In fact it should be as reliable as deploying units regularly to the battlefield at the start of the game.



If summoning is "free points" during the game then I think its better to have more risk to the summoning ability. You're basically adding to your army so having a degree of risk might help balance it out. Would that 3 Keeper army that summons 2 more keepers appear as deadly if there was a 50% chance of losing what you summon each time (or it landing really badly so it ends up taking a lot of harm very fast etc...). Furthermore would you be encouraged to summon keepers with such a high risk or would you rather summon three or four groups of deamonetts which have the same risk each, but because its happening multiple times for the same summoning cost; you get to reduce the risk that nothing gets through.


I do recall that when you paid for summoned units no one liked it when you could lose them in an instant.

I think that if you're going to let free points reign supreme in the game that you bring in the sudden death rules that are already a part of the game. If you want to vomit 2000 free points into my face, thats great, but my army realizes it can't win a traditional battle against a force like that and now needs some other victory condition to have a fun game with.

Thats what I've been using for 3 years now. It works - GREAT - other than the tournament guys that hate house rules and don't like that their min/max army now isn't guaranteed a win against the baby seals at campaign. It was voted in by the majority three seasons straight.

I'd rather the priority roll goes away instead of free summoning, i have 0 problems with the summoning. Well for ties summoning unit should count as 1/2 points at least or something.

When it comes down to a 4000 point game vs a 2000 point game with no change to the victory conditions, I don't find that to be much of a game. There has to be a point where someone reasonable finds a point where the free point train moves beyond "this is cool" to "this is pointless".

 Amishprn86 wrote:
I'd rather the priority roll goes away instead of free summoning, i have 0 problems with the summoning. Well for ties summoning unit should count as 1/2 points at least or something.

Yeah if I had to pick one to blow up I'd definitely go for the priority roll too. That's never fun for me, at least summoning is fun when it isn't busted. I'd also go for bringing back reserve points and summons cost half.

conspiracy theory on:

GW is doing summoning that way so that everyone gets that points are pointless and people request a change back to first edition "no points" and they can remove those unwanted stuff

 kodos wrote:
conspiracy theory on:

GW is doing summoning that way so that everyone gets that points are pointless and people request a change back to first edition "no points" and they can remove those unwanted stuff

Pointception!

at least summoning is fun when it isn't busted.

There's your kicker. At what point does it stop being fun and turn into busted?

Why is having risk introduced into the game seen as a bad thing? Why would it be bad to introduce a system where the opposing player could pick an easier win condition if you were summoning double your army onto him?

Funny, if you look at the history of top armies it keeps going from Non summoning to Summon, back to non summoning then back to summoning and repeat.

If summoning was that bad only summoning armies would be at the top every, well.. thats not the chase so you thinks it OP but really it only ever have been a few times.

Why are DoK, IDK, FS, Orruks, BCR, CoS, doing anywhere from well to great when they can't summon? And why is it that Khorne that can summon only does so once out of 10 times hmm...


So can we finally stop this back and forth crap, the game has shown its not so out of balance it needs to be fix, but rather some army combos were the problem.

You're basically comparing power gamed min/max lists and saying summoning is fine because at the power gaming min/max level it fluctuates back and forth.

What about the other 90% of the game?

How does a non tournament optimized list have a good game against tournament level summoning? how does a non tournament optimized list have a good game against even moderate summoning? At what point is it unreasonable? At what point do we stop only considering the game at the power gaming level and consider the rest of the game?

 auticus wrote:
You're basically comparing power gamed min/max lists and saying summoning is fine because at the power gaming min/max level it fluctuates back and forth.

What about the other 90% of the game?

How does a non tournament optimized list have a good game against tournament level summoning? how does a non tournament optimized list have a good game against even moderate summoning? At what point is it unreasonable? At what point do we stop only considering the game at the power gaming level and consider the rest of the game?

But thats the point.... if summoning was that good and that broken you would only see summoning in events.

You know what is worst at mid tier? Always fight first double fighting super heroes/units.

I will ask the question again.

If I show up to game day, at a non tournament campaign event and I bring my slaves to darkness list, and I get paired against a triple keeper list, how is that a good game?

At what point do we have a reasonable conversation on what is too good and stop hand waiving that summoning isnt' busted at a certain level and what is that level?

What is and is not dominating Adepticon doesn't mean anything to me if I'm not talking about Adepticon or LVO or whatever grand tournament results we are comparing against. I'm talking about showing up to my local campaign night with a non tournament army at a non tournament event, and being paired against someone who is bringing triple keepers (in this scenario) which is not an uncommon scenario in my locale.

Who around thinks that is a reasonable matchup? Why is it reasonable that the game allows the triple keeper bonus 2000 point build? Because it won't always dominate Adepticon? Is that our community standard? As long as it doesn't dominate Adepticon its fair game?

Can you actually still realistically get 2000 points in summoning in a 3 Keepers list after the Nerf?

The player locally that I match up with doesn't use three keepers, and the most I've seen him summon was another unit of daemonettes or the riders after the Nerf.
And if it's just Slaanesh that still has broken summoning, that means it still needs to be adjusted right?

 auticus wrote:
I will ask the question again.

If I show up to game day, at a non tournament campaign event and I bring my slaves to darkness list, and I get paired against a triple keeper list, how is that a good game?

At what point do we have a reasonable conversation on what is too good and stop hand waiving that summoning isnt' busted at a certain level and what is that level?

What is and is not dominating Adepticon doesn't mean anything to me if I'm not talking about Adepticon or LVO or whatever grand tournament results we are comparing against. I'm talking about showing up to my local campaign night with a non tournament army at a non tournament event, and being paired against someone who is bringing triple keepers (in this scenario) which is not an uncommon scenario in my locale.

Who around thinks that is a reasonable matchup? Why is it reasonable that the game allows the triple keeper bonus 2000 point build? Because it won't always dominate Adepticon? Is that our community standard? As long as it doesn't dominate Adepticon its fair game?

You can ask the question a million times. If your FLGS is full of WAAC and TFGs then you need to find a different location to play AOS. Its picking up significantly in popularity and your whining won't stop people from playing it or enjoying it. If the game has taken such an emotional toll on you its probably time to step away from the game.

Right - so the answer remains - the game is fine - so long as you don't have to socially engineer your group and they all understand what playing nice is.

Why are you all seemingly so afraid to admit that the game is jacked up in balance?

 Carnikang wrote:
Can you actually still realistically get 2000 points in summoning in a 3 Keepers list after the Nerf?

The player locally that I match up with doesn't use three keepers, and the most I've seen him summon was another unit of daemonettes or the riders after the Nerf.
And if it's just Slaanesh that still has broken summoning, that means it still needs to be adjusted right?

Yeah, people use the Syll'Eske subfaction from White Dwarf which doubles depravity generation within 12" of them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 auticus wrote:
Right - so the answer remains - the game is fine - so long as you don't have to socially engineer your group and they all understand what playing nice is.

Why are you all seemingly so afraid to admit that the game is jacked up in balance?

I don't understand their position either, but repeating the same arguments that have failed to convince them in the past isn't productive to anyone. Sometimes we all need to agree to disagree and walk away.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jjohnso11 wrote:
You can ask the question a million times. If your FLGS is full of WAAC and TFGs then you need to find a different location to play AOS. Its picking up significantly in popularity and your whining won't stop people from playing it or enjoying it. If the game has taken such an emotional toll on you its probably time to step away from the game.

And repeating this argument over and over again isn't going to help anyone either. Let's just move on to another subject.

I've got a subject idea/question.

I play OBR, done several matches trying out some different lists, and quite a few Petrifex lists. While playing them, their weaknesses are becoming clearer. 3+ Save Mortek guard are nasty, but they're slow as hell and expensive single-wound models. I've had my ass beat by Khorne Priests bloodboiling them to deal, getting shot to death, or Beastclaw Raiders first-turn charging me, tying me up for at least two turns and losing the game on objectives... Ironjawz with their out-of-order fights and just solid melee profiles have done good work too.

Basically, how are people who have actually played as or against them, feeling about the faction? Interested to get a feel for it on the forum.

How many are you using?

Cronch wrote:
So you suggest to remove the 9" no-drop bubble that is in every summon/deepstrike rule in 2.0?

Absolutely. It should be reduced to being the same 3" bubble everything else has to obey during movement. And anything that somehow enters within that range is simply removed as a casualty.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 auticus wrote:
Y
How does a non tournament optimized list have a good game against tournament level summoning?

Look, if you know that's how your likely opponents play? And you still show up with something that can't compete & you agree to play anyways? Or you don't have some kind of discussion about how you'd like to play a game & reach an agreement? Then that's on you. Afterall, since it's not a tourney, you're not being forced to play a match you won't enjoy.

 auticus wrote:
how does a non tournament optimized list have a good game against even moderate summoning?

Pretty easily in my experience.
In our most recent Path to Glory campaign we had 4 forces that could summon: Seraphron, Nurgle Demons, Khorne Demons, & Tzeentch Demons. As it's PtG nobody could go crazy with the summoning (at least not how they'd built), but summon they did. So I'm going to call it moderate.
As a wizard/squig/endless spell based Gloomspite force? I gave every bit as I good as I got & enjoyed every game. Especially the last one that I played against the Khorne. I was 2 wounds shy of dropping my 3rd Bloodthirster (1 started in play, 2 were summoned via blood points). He beat me, but it wasn't because he'd put free pts on the board. No, it was because I'd made a mistake late game & wasn't in range of an objective with enough models. That loss is on me as I didn't bust out the tape measure, relied upon eyeballing it, & accidentally gave away a few pts.
Nor did I see the Nighthaunt or Skaven player having a bad time. And they are both definitely players who if they aren't enjoying a game will stop playing it.

 auticus wrote:
At what point is it unreasonable?

What's that saying about porn/indecency? It's hard to define, but I'll know it when I see it.... It's alot like that.

Path to Glory, while totally awesome, isn't matched play nor is it particularly comparable. Especially not in balance terms.

 auticus wrote:


Why are you all seemingly so afraid to admit that the game is jacked up in balance?

they aren't, you are misunderstanding their point.

no matter which game you play there will always be a best deck. Right now there are 3 armies that are bending things, and 1 that is outright busted. However that doesn't mean the fluff bunny who spent 2 years collecting X while its was bad suddenly isn't allowed to play because his fluff list can now podium tournaments. It is incumbent on the players to understand what they are getting into when playing their chosen opponent, and bring an army accordingly. If you want to bring bad STD into triple Keepers that is on you, not the game or your opponent.

By the same logic if the person wants to bring triple keeper into bad StD it is on them, not the opponent.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
By the same logic if the person wants to bring triple keeper into bad StD it is on them, not the opponent.

yes, yet auticus doesn't want to accept that who you play matters.

If you want to bring bad STD into triple Keepers that is on you, not the game or your opponent.

When you go into a casual narrative campaign thats public there is:

1) the assumption that it is casual narrative and not adepticon power levels.
2) you don't know who your opponent is going to be match to match. That is set up by the campaign.

I'm definitely not saying if you go into a game with StD knowing that triple keepers are there, and then whine the game is unbalanced that that is reasonable. But thats just it. If you are matched up against that player, you have a choice. Play a bad game or don't play.

Triple keeper of secrets build and what it does should not exist as a thing in any reasonable game.

That triple keeper of secrets build and what it does IS the game.

Many of us don't get to dictate who we play in public events, and public events shouldn't always be about triple keeper of secrets builds.

I have probably said 1000x if you have to socially engineer your group or who you are playing against to have good games, the game is not good.

cwcriner wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
By the same logic if the person wants to bring triple keeper into bad StD it is on them, not the opponent.

yes, yet auticus doesn't want to accept that who you play matters.

but it should not
if it matters who you play with, I don't need AoS as I can play whatever me and my opponent want and like

they only advantage that GW games has over other games is that a lot of people play it and you can easily find someone to play with.
yet if it matters who you play, this advantage is gone and there is no reason to play it at all

 auticus wrote:

If you want to bring bad STD into triple Keepers that is on you, not the game or your opponent.

When you go into a casual narrative campaign thats public there is:

1) the assumption that it is casual narrative and not adepticon power levels.

yeah, no. Unless its like LVO friendlies where the organizer is auditing every list for a power setting this will never happen; because sometimes a fluffy list is also super competitive. see: every Gladius ever.

2) you don't know who your opponent is going to be match to match. That is set up by the campaign.

I'm definitely not saying if you go into a game with StD knowing that triple keepers are there, and then whine the game is unbalanced that that is reasonable. But thats just it. If you are matched up against that player, you have a choice. Play a bad game or don't play.

depends on how the campaign is set up, this is why I recommend having factions not tied to grand alliance for narrative play, because then you have team and teams can work around "I don't want to play against that"

Triple keeper of secrets build and what it does should not exist as a thing in any reasonable game.

So my local fluff bunny who was running triple keeper before the Slannesh book even dropped suddenly isn't allowed to play anymore? hell no.

That triple keeper of secrets build and what it does IS the game.
Many of us don't get to dictate who we play in public events, and public events shouldn't always be about triple keeper of secrets builds.

that was three books and a FAQ ago, keep up.

I have probably said 1000x if you have to socially engineer your group or who you are playing against to have good games, the game is not good.

then go play chess, I guarantee you'll have a balanced game. Again there will always be a best deck/list/army regardless, and you'll eventually have to decide if you want play against it. If you can't accept that maybe this hobby isn't for you.

 kodos wrote:

if it matters who you play with, I don't need AoS as I can play whatever me and my opponent want and like

Then do so. Seriously if you don't want to play AoS go play something else. A game that is not fun for you is not a game, but a chore.

 Jjohnso11 wrote:

You can ask the question a million times. If your FLGS is full of WAAC and TFGs then you need to find a different location to play AOS. Its picking up significantly in popularity and your whining won't stop people from playing it or enjoying it. If the game has taken such an emotional toll on you its probably time to step away from the game.

You can accidentally stumble into making a really broken list. Hell, you don't need to be a WAACer to realize how good summoning is and incorporate it into your list, you just need eyes and a working brain. What you're saying is people should do GW's job and "balance" a product themselves.

Somehow I think we need to get the general discussion thread off the balance debate all the time. Of course its important, but its got its own thread and I think the AoS Dakka fanbase needs more than every thread on AoS ending up stuck in the quagmire of circular balance discussions (esp since most of those talking have had the same argument in circles for a while - myself included).

There's so much more than endless discussion on turn priority and summoning that we can engage and enjoy and share in.

There's a whole General Discussion forum now. No need to keep it all in one thread anymore.

How bout let’s talk about this new Wrath of the Everchosen book instead. Like another new Varanguard battalion in it and mixing Daemons again.

I think everyone is sick to death of the “it’s balanced/not balanced, let’s offend each other for 60 pages”. We get it. Some people can’t be happy unless everyone around them adheres to their own personal house rules, and others accept that FotM is a thing in AoS as much as it is in card games. We’re here because we like the models, the lore, the rules, whatever. The amount of trying to convince the other camp that they’re wrong is the very definition of insanity. So yeah. I’m just gonna focus on enjoying the game. I get cool models, I get to throw dice with friends, and that’s good enough for me. I realize I don’t need “the internet” (aka some random guys I won’t ever meet) telling me that my triple Keeper list is offensive or that my Varanguard list with Archaon won’t ever win. I’m playing what I want, because I want to play it. Believe it or not, it’s happened in every edition of Warhammer. So play on or leave, the game is still there for the rest of us who are enjoying ourselves.

I think it's cool Belakor got an Allegiance all his own. Its pretty fluffy.

Time to drop rocks on him again with some Terradons... Just like the good old days.

 Carnikang wrote:
I think it's cool Belakor got an Allegiance all his own. Its pretty fluffy.

Yep. But as much as I love that model, he needs a newer, bigger and more glorious update.

I sculpted my Be’Lakor out of a modern daemon prince with a Juan Diaz prince’s sword, some Bloodcrusher chains and minimal green stuff. I’ll post it at some point soon.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Path to Glory, while totally awesome, isn't matched play nor is it particularly comparable. Especially not in balance terms.

Would it make any difference had I presented the battle as a true matched play game of 1100 pts worth of Grots vrs 1190 pts of Khorne?
Because we tally our forces up each week for fun & all of our armies are fairly comparable pts wise (we're all within about 150 pts of each other).
At full strength my grots are 1004-1100 pts (depends upon how you count the 3/5ths of the Palooza. Full cost = 240. 3 members works out to 144 pts. We count them as the lower value.)
The Khorne player hit 1190.
90 Pt difference? That looks balanced enough to me.
He has at best +190 pts on me & double my model count at the start. And then he summons more. In this case +2 Wrath of Khorne Bloodthirsters (a +640 pts value!). This after the games been going several turns & I'm down several models.

And yet we both had fun. And that summoning is NOT what gave him the game.

But the argument is that even moderate summoning of more units (+xxx pts worth! + x units! Oh NO!) results in unfun games.
So wether I call this a PtG battle or a 1100 vs 1190 matched play, shouldn't that hold true? Overall he put +50% of my army on the table as I was growing ever weaker. So Shouldn't I have lost horribly & gone home sobbing about how unfair things are?

 timetowaste85 wrote:
I sculpted my Be’Lakor out of a modern daemon prince with a Juan Diaz prince’s sword, some Bloodcrusher chains and minimal green stuff. I’ll post it at some point soon.

There is one thats based off of the Primarch Magnus as well. Awesome stuff.

Something that's been bugging me a little for the last week or two: Do you think we'll ever see any of the Daemons getting a Monstrous Infantry line ala Kroxigors or Bullgors or will the closest they get be the Spawn lines like the Beast of Nurgle?

 timetowaste85 wrote:
How bout let’s talk about this new Wrath of the Everchosen book instead. Like another new Varanguard battalion in it and mixing Daemons again.

I have gotten progressively more excited the more previews they have done. It is a ton of new content to chew through and given GW's track record with AoS campaign books a good portion of it is likely to be useful for my community. Really want to see what the united daemons allegiance looks like as it is something I've wanted to have a way to do for some time now (GA: Chaos allegiance somewhat defeating the point).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Charistoph wrote:
Something that's been bugging me a little for the last week or two: Do you think we'll ever see any of the Daemons getting a Monstrous Infantry line ala Kroxigors or Bullgors or will the closest they get be the Spawn lines like the Beast of Nurgle?

I would say it is likely to happen at some point, but it depends on how flexible your definition of 'infantry' is. Fiends and Beasts set a precedent for daemonic forms being quite bizzare outside the main infantry form.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:
Something that's been bugging me a little for the last week or two: Do you think we'll ever see any of the Daemons getting a Monstrous Infantry line ala Kroxigors or Bullgors or will the closest they get be the Spawn lines like the Beast of Nurgle?

I would say it is likely to happen at some point, but it depends on how flexible your definition of 'infantry' is. Fiends and Beasts set a precedent for daemonic forms being quite bizzare outside the main infantry form.

Consider the more classical definition used in Fantasy Battles 8th Edition and the examples provided.

Do you think they would be viable or interesting, or will they likely never be taken up even if offered.

Anyone pick up the WotE book today? The Varanguard host makes Varanguard heroes and gives them an ability to respawn on a 5+ (the whole unit). Plus a bunch more daemonic host options and Be’Lakor can push wounds onto basic daemons. Can also summon basic daemons on 3D6 at 10+. Bunch more stuff, largely host based so it replaces hosts from the other books. I think Slaanesh has the most options now, since they have 3 in this book, 3 in their own, and a few in the WD a few months back. Nurgle has 4 in this book, tzeentch has 6 in their own book and 2 here, Khorne has 6 total.

The Bloodthirster subfaction is insane. So insane that it can make Skarbrand works and everything!

It has all Bloodthirster need. Run and charge is phenomenal, the command hability is the best one that you could have for a bloodthirster (The attack two times is nice and everything but most of the time it was overkill), the command trait is just great sinergy with the passive bonus, and the relic isn't even bad.

Having 5 bloodthirsters is a trap. 3+Skarbrand or 2+Skarbrand in a Tyrants of Blood Batallion is enough.

I like it, it will be a fun resource to use in my leagues & campaigns. It isn't really balanced, but I've figured out that was a problem with my expectations

I don’t remember...Varanguard Battalion in StD book requires “hosts of the Everchosen” specifically to get, right? So this book doesn’t allow them to have a circle and the hero abilities? It continues to be the bottom battalion of the game. However, if it just requires 3-6 Varanguard to run...then holy crap! It would make it worthwhile!

My STD book is home, I’ve only got WotE with me currently.

The missing boxed set heroes are all going up next Saturday
Get yer Archregents, Archrevenants, Rats with Ratzookas, Vokmortians, and all! GENERAL RELEASES FOR EVERYONE!

At last! Great news for any who've wanted them!

Also there's the hypnocat! And a load of Necromunda and Lord of the Rings stuff. Quite a big week!

Well that's great news all around!

With everything under lockdown and now GW closing stores, I'm taking the time to step back and actually figure out what I want from the game. For years I've sort of just jumped from liking army to army, usually collecting some things and then feeling it didn't work.

I'm really thinking it is time to start exploring the game a bit more competitively/seriously, if for no other reason than to improve my game. The few games I've played I found were very sloppy and used a brute force approach, similar to how I vaguely remember playing WHFB 20 years ago. Basically just move forward and try to get into combat.

A lot of the more nuanced tactics of AOS have escaped me and I feel that if I take a more serious approach to the game it will help improve my gameplay.

Bonereapers are currently winning since the models do look really cool and the fluff is pretty cool but they are a bit FOTM and I'm waiting for actual news on the Lumineth (although my guess is on them being written by the "for fun" team). That said though if I want to play more competitive then I can't care about FOTM or how many people are playing the army so...

Hey guys,

It's been suggested in the Nuts & Bolts section that having a "General Discussion" thread in "AoS General Discussion" doesn't really make sense, and suppresses the creation of new threads because everything just gets talked about in here.

So, we'd like to try and see if we can get more threads going on various topics. I'm going to lock this one, but if you were coming here to post something, why not make a thread for that very topic?

Also, if you want to weigh in on this idea, you can give feedback here:
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/786725.page

Don't forget to make a new thread though! (Or reply to one, if it's already been created ). Cheers all