dosiere wrote:Anyone else find it odd they’re still releasing a generals handbook this year? I guess for point adjustments to older tomes?
Some would say GW is just sucking money out of their customers. Others would say GW is a business and needs to do to make money. Me? I would say the point costs should be in the rule book and we don't need to go down the road of having multiple books, but here we are starting a new edition with multiple books now. Not upset or surprised, just find it funny that Age of Sigmar was suppose to be about streamlined and making it easier, but already starting out the gate on being cumbersome because of a minimum of 3 books or two books and a bunch of printed out pages of Warscrolls to start playing a game.
What ever happened to having just one book to start with?
You're not getting points in the main rulebook. Realistically, you should never want that. The main rulebook isn't something that I ever really bring with me at this point.
If you want points without having a GHB, buy an army that has a book and isn't Seraphon, Fyreslayers, or one of the other 'first wave' books.
We've been using look out sir since 2015 AOS dropped (only it was in the traditional sense where heroes got to pass on wounds from shooting on a 4+)
This I'll take as a compromise. Our houserule has been refined anyway to be more in line with LOTR adaption, where every terrain piece you cross and enemy model you cross to hit your target you take a -1 to hit (-3 max).
That came in place of saying area terrain flat out blocked line of sight.
Anyone else find it odd they’re still releasing a generals handbook this year? I guess for point adjustments to older tomes?
They said from day 1 of GHB 2016 that the GHB would be an annual release where they coudl use it to tweak points and add things to the game. Expect a new one every year.
dosiere wrote:Anyone else find it odd they’re still releasing a generals handbook this year? I guess for point adjustments to older tomes?
Some would say GW is just sucking money out of their customers. Others would say GW is a business and needs to do to make money. Me? I would say the point costs should be in the rule book and we don't need to go down the road of having multiple books, but here we are starting a new edition with multiple books now. Not upset or surprised, just find it funny that Age of Sigmar was suppose to be about streamlined and making it easier, but already starting out the gate on being cumbersome because of a minimum of 3 books or two books and a bunch of printed out pages of Warscrolls to start playing a game.
What ever happened to having just one book to start with?
You're not getting points in the main rulebook. Realistically, you should never want that. The main rulebook isn't something that I ever really bring with me at this point.
If you want points without having a GHB, buy an army that has a book and isn't Seraphon, Fyreslayers, or one of the other 'first wave' books.
I disagree here respectfully. While I could be wrong here so I am only talking about myself, one of the reasons why I never got into The Hobbit when it was being a new edition for Lord of the Rings, was because of the multiple books I had to buy here. By that I mean I bought the starter set. Then GW wanted me to buy another $100 book just so I could have the points. WTF?! No thank you. So while the small mini rule book was included in the boxset of the game it had no points like the other editions had.
This is how I am seeing it. I see where you are coming from, and I agree, but I also see GW of old starting to trickle in. Again it's the "nickle and diming" us to death all over again. Well at least it's starting to.
To me a new edition should have everything in the book/boxset to play the game. I don't believe I should have to buy multiple "DLC" to get the FULL EXPERIANCE of a game to play. I guess I am old school and don't like the way how GW is trying to make their table top game as a video game.
If anything the new points should be free and we can download of their website. But alas, we need to buy two books now because points are updated. Another part bugs me about paying for updated points, is this should be Errata which should be free. Now we are paying for "patches". At least GW is not asking 40K prices yet for these patches.
The rules for the new edition will be free, Davor. The book that's being released sounds like it'll be mostly fluff, maps, etc. to me. We've always had points updated in the GHB. It's where players expect them to be.
NinthMusketeer wrote:So your stuff is bad, their stuff is good, and they need a nerf.
EnTyme wrote:
That "one trick" is basically a delete key for any non-monster enemy hero, though. Most lists only have at most three-four heroes that actually matter to the list. Two units of 30 Glade Guard could easily wipe them out or at least cripple them. I'm not saying magic and wizards don't need to be rebalanced, I'm just saying Glade Guard are good at taking out characters. Spell sniping is a problem, but so is ranged sniping. Thing "X" being more broken doesn't mean thing "Y" is balanced.
And "ranged sniping" is being addressed. Remember that we've been told that ranged units cannot fire out of combats. Magic sniping isn't being addressed at all, or at least we haven't seen anything suggesting it has been.
And if you can't
NinthMusketeer wrote:
Btw, 20 shots at 4+/4+ is an average of 5 wounds, easily able to kill a foot hero in that turn they have rend -3. Arcane bolt won't do that.
Arcane Bolt can be used multiple times during the course of a match and can be buffed up with a Balewind Vortex to have more range than a Glade Guard's Longbow.
Btw, suggesting that a 20 model block requiring no enemies within 3" of them at 4+/4+ with a "once per game" ability active is an "easily able to kill a foot hero" thing is a bit disingenuous, don't you think?
You're not talking about a single Hero giving a buff there. You're talking about quite a bit of caveats and blowing a once per game ability to 'delete' a character--that's a one trick list and it's getting nerfed between the locking of units into combat and the Look Out Sir silliness.
Though I would totally get behind heroes ignoring look out sir when making their own shooting attacks, that's a good idea.
This needs to be handled very specifically though. It can't be just a blanket rule, because then it still makes Wizards get a boost. Look at the Aspect of the Sea for example; it gets to make ranged attacks as well as cast and have CC attacks too. It also benefits some Heroes that get ranged options for whatever reason.
It needs to be specific to units like the Waywatcher, Knight-Venator, and the Ironweld Engineers. Characters that aren't super fighty, aren't super commandy--they're basically just monster/character killers.
So your stuff is bad, their stuff is good, and they need a nerf. You are playing up your own downsides and completely ignoring theirs (for starters, arcane bolt is an average of 1.66 mw a turn, so three turns to do what bodkins will do in one). Also, vortex is a problem, we established that above. The only reason to bring it up again is to deflect because you can't defend your position.
EnTyme wrote:The rules for the new edition will be free, Davor. The book that's being released sounds like it'll be mostly fluff, maps, etc. to me. We've always had points updated in the GHB. It's where players expect them to be.
All the rules will be free? That is good to know. I didn't know that. Mind you while it seems I am complaining, I am not complaining, just saying what I felt should have been done. After all I will be buying it just wishing it would have been more money to minis.
*edit*
Sorry depression kicked in today. I see the negative side is coming out. Will try some painting, and hopefully I have a better nite and a good sleep for tomorrow.
NinthMusketeer wrote: So your stuff is bad, their stuff is good, and they need a nerf. You are playing up your own downsides and completely ignoring theirs (for starters, arcane bolt is an average of 1.66 mw a turn, so three turns to do what bodkins will do in one).
If you want to realistically get into it, remember that Arcane Bolts are Mortal Wounds while Arcane Bodkins are "just" -3 Rend. Yes, you can put a hell of a lot more shots with Arcane Bodkins into a single target--but it's a once per game ability that requires you to be within 20 inches and is on what is supposed to be a premiere ranged unit that somehow is just hitting on 4s and wounding on 4s. We're also, as of the current crop of previews, seeing that now an enemy Wizard or Hero will get a flat -1 to Hit simply for standing around near a friendly unit. We're seeing that those Glade Guard are now going to be hitting on 5s and wounding on 4s, not counting any Command Abilities or spells that grant additional negatives to hit.
Additionally:
Glade Guard to get their +1 to Hit requires that the unit at the time of use be 20+ models and not be within 3" of an enemy unit.
I'm well aware that Glade Guard are able to 'delete units' as EnTyme put it, but I think you're ignoring the point I've been trying to hammer home here. There's very few ranged units that can do what Glade Guard do and this silliness of the "Look Out Sir" is targeting something that realistically isn't an issue. If it applies to spells? I'll retract my statement. But until we have that confirmed--or we get more things like the Glade Captain with Battle Standard(an 'umbrella' of nope to spell wounds) spread across multiple armies--I will always consider ranged to be a nonissue when spells exist.
Also, vortex is a problem, we established that above. The only reason to bring it up again is to deflect because you can't defend your position.
The reason to bring it up is, again, that it is nothing but beneficial for the caster. You cast it once, it's there. It renders the caster immune to CC, it grants them +1 to their casting values, and it makes it so that the range on their spells is perked up significantly.
auticus wrote: The vortex is indeed a giant pain in the ass that needs addressed properly.
I think it needs to be re-designed from the ground up. There's just no way to flex it in its current incarnation so it won't be abused. I could see that being addressed in the new rulebook though, including the batch of terrain warscrolls in there would be nice.
NinthMusketeer wrote: So your stuff is bad, their stuff is good, and they need a nerf. You are playing up your own downsides and completely ignoring theirs (for starters, arcane bolt is an average of 1.66 mw a turn, so three turns to do what bodkins will do in one).
If you want to realistically get into it, remember that Arcane Bolts are Mortal Wounds while Arcane Bodkins are "just" -3 Rend. Yes, you can put a hell of a lot more shots with Arcane Bodkins into a single target--but it's a once per game ability that requires you to be within 20 inches and is on what is supposed to be a premiere ranged unit that somehow is just hitting on 4s and wounding on 4s. We're also, as of the current crop of previews, seeing that now an enemy Wizard or Hero will get a flat -1 to Hit simply for standing around near a friendly unit. We're seeing that those Glade Guard are now going to be hitting on 5s and wounding on 4s, not counting any Command Abilities or spells that grant additional negatives to hit.
You're proving my point. Why don't we agree to disagree and drop it?
EnTyme wrote: The rules for the new edition will be free, Davor. The book that's being released sounds like it'll be mostly fluff, maps, etc. to me. We've always had points updated in the GHB. It's where players expect them to be.
like with the 40k rules?
and if you want to play anything but "open" you need the book (no one would consider a game as "free were only lvl 1 is available and you need to pay to get lvl 2-10)
Matched play rules have always been in the GHB, and I expect them to stay there. I expect the "AoS 2.0" book to be more or less optional. I expect the content to be closer to this than this
EnTyme wrote: The rules for the new edition will be free, Davor. The book that's being released sounds like it'll be mostly fluff, maps, etc. to me. We've always had points updated in the GHB. It's where players expect them to be.
like with the 40k rules?
and if you want to play anything but "open" you need the book (no one would consider a game as "free were only lvl 1 is available and you need to pay to get lvl 2-10)
This remains to be seen. With 40k, you have access to "Power" levels as well as "Points". You don't need a Codex for anything but the army special rules/relics to play if you do strictly Power.
AoS doesn't have Power. We just have Points, and people are apparently hopelessly unable to figure out how to balance armies without someone telling you "This big scary monster is meaner than Dave the Accountant" so Open Play is basically nonexistent because of it.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
EnTyme wrote: Matched play rules have always been in the GHB, and I expect them to stay there. I expect the "AoS 2.0" book to be more or less optional. I expect the content to be closer to this than this
I'm thinking that the rules for Matched Play, Narrative, and Open Play will be in the AoS 2.0 rulebook same as they are for 40k.
EnTyme wrote: The rules for the new edition will be free, Davor. The book that's being released sounds like it'll be mostly fluff, maps, etc. to me. We've always had points updated in the GHB. It's where players expect them to be.
like with the 40k rules?
and if you want to play anything but "open" you need the book (no one would consider a game as "free were only lvl 1 is available and you need to pay to get lvl 2-10)
This remains to be seen. With 40k, you have access to "Power" levels as well as "Points". You don't need a Codex for anything but the army special rules/relics to play if you do strictly Power.
Like I said the full game is not available for free, you get 1 Scenario and Power Points (from the online army builder) together with the core rules
EnTyme wrote: The rules for the new edition will be free, Davor. The book that's being released sounds like it'll be mostly fluff, maps, etc. to me. We've always had points updated in the GHB. It's where players expect them to be.
like with the 40k rules?
and if you want to play anything but "open" you need the book (no one would consider a game as "free were only lvl 1 is available and you need to pay to get lvl 2-10)
This remains to be seen. With 40k, you have access to "Power" levels as well as "Points". You don't need a Codex for anything but the army special rules/relics to play if you do strictly Power.
Like I said the full game is not available for free, you get 1 Scenario and Power Points (from the online army builder) together with the core rules
And you can get more scenarios from Chapter Approved for 40k.
On a totally different plane of existence, AoS gives you points and scenarios/battleplans for your army in your army book.
And you can get more scenarios from Chapter Approved for 40k
You missed that we are talking about "free rules" here, so it is still that the full game is not available for free and you should not expect it to be different for AoS 2.0
And you can get more scenarios from Chapter Approved for 40k
You missed that we are talking about "free rules" here, so it is still that the full game is not available for free and you should not expect it to be different for AoS 2.0
Except you're literally missing, again, that you're trying to compare two different game systems.
That's what I'm wondering. Getting a few extra command points in exchange for keep 150 points in reserve may actually give me an incentive to look into summoning.
And you can get more scenarios from Chapter Approved for 40k
You missed that we are talking about "free rules" here, so it is still that the full game is not available for free and you should not expect it to be different for AoS 2.0
Except you're literally missing, again, that you're trying to compare two different game systems.
AOSdoesn't have Power costs.
AoS does not have any kind of points so you conclude that the full game will be free in 2.0
I say there will be point costs in 2.0, as there will be free rules, were you can try the game or run test/demo games and the full game will only be available if you pay for it (this is nothing bad)
and you have not brought an argument to proof me wrong yet
Matched play will have point costs. Those will be in a book that is not free as has been the case since GHB 2016.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Looks liike we can spend points on command points. 50 points = 1 command point. (edit: nevermind I see a few of you talking about this already lol)
Seems like some people think that it's applicable to reserve points, while I thought it was unspent points period. Since you have to allocate points to reinforcement/reserve during list building, I'd assume that you literally you'd just have to have unspent points
Skimask Mohawk wrote: Seems like some people think that it's applicable to reserve points, while I thought it was unspent points period. Since you have to allocate points to reinforcement/reserve during list building, I'd assume that you literally you'd just have to have unspent points
The next one is by the interpretation of the rule, you can spend points on a battalion, get the +1 CP for that, then also get the applicable CP on top of that, since a battalion is not strictly spending points on an actual unit.
So say you have a 200 point battalion. You'd get +5 CP for choosing it.
+1 CP for choosing the battalion, then +4 CP for choosing to spend 200 points on something not a unit.
The wording says "not spent on units", so it'll need some clarification, but the FB page replied to several questions about reinforcement points and CP with the implication that they'll be talking more about reinforcement points in another preview.
auticus wrote: The next one is by the interpretation of the rule, you can spend points on a battalion, get the +1 CP for that, then also get the applicable CP on top of that, since a battalion is not strictly spending points on an actual unit.
So say you have a 200 point battalion. You'd get +5 CP for choosing it.
+1 CP for choosing the battalion, then +4 CP for choosing to spend 200 points on something not a unit.
It seems like that is true ATM but I imagine that is not how it will work, probably fixed with an FAQ or errata.
I already have people asking me about this for our public campaign and I am nixing that unless the FAQ comes out and says thats how you get to do it. Seems absurd to me right now that that is how it works so hopefully it gets clarified.
Are people trying to fudge the rules, even though everyone knows full well how they're supposed to work, or making grand assumptions about changes even though we've heard nothing about such changes taking place yet?
auticus wrote: Nervous to see what happens today with tzeentch in regards to summoning. I have a bad feeling summoning may become the busted that it was before.
You mean just being able to summoning things without having paid for them?
auticus wrote: Nervous to see what happens today with tzeentch in regards to summoning. I have a bad feeling summoning may become the busted that it was before.
You mean just being able to summoning things without having paid for them?
Right. So we know how nurgle and khorne work already by generating a tithe. Slaanesh has depravity points. This system can be ok provided an army doesn't have an easily farmable source of points that can be spammed to summon out the wazoo again. For example, if an army generates points by simply casting spells, then a player would just show up with max casters and start farming points and free summoning.
The nurgle book, khorne book, and legions of nagash all have different ways to summon that have their own rules for generating points before you can summon. Legion of Nagash uses grave sites.
Oh I see. That’s actually pretty good. Very fluffy. I take it Khorne used Blood Tithe points? Would totally make sense; spilt blood attracts the demons of Khorne and all that jazz.
Elf Monoliths have always looked like that - they used them to control the warp energy entering the Old World and here using similar devices to contain Slaaanesh whilst they pull souls out of it.
It was the Elf Gods Tyrion, Teclis and Malarion plus Morathi and a number of mortal sorcerers who created them.
So we get spell lores for each Mortal Realm? This seems pretty cool.
I also like the changed 'old' spells. Looking at the Nurgle and Nagash battletomes, there were a few spells that also did D3 mortal wounds but had a higher casting value than Arcane Bolt and made them kinda pointless. Now I see why they aren't.
They started that in the realmgate books. We had realm specific spells. Problem was... no one wanted to buy those books so very few knew about those spells lol.
The toning down of arcane bolt and shield are great IMO. Anything that helps remove 2++ saves will always get a big thumbs up from me.
Banishment looks fun as well I'm looking forward to seeing all realms have their own time of war rules that are accessible to everyone instead of being in realmgate books that no one wanted to buy.
auticus wrote: They started that in the realmgate books. We had realm specific spells. Problem was... no one wanted to buy those books so very few knew about those spells lol.
The other reason is that those Realm specific rules also heavily favored certain armies/builds. The two that were in the main rulebook were Realm of Fire and Life.
Realm of Fire prevented ranged armies from dominating(I always made sure that we did Realm of Fire whenever I was doing demo games for new players and using my Wanderers) and Realm of Life made Nurgle stuff super irritating while punishing basically everyone else.
It shocked a lot of people that there even was rules for that stuff in the BRB.
The toning down of arcane bolt and shield are great IMO. Anything that helps remove 2++ saves will always get a big thumbs up from me.
Banishment looks fun as well I'm looking forward to seeing all realms have their own time of war rules that are accessible to everyone instead of being in realmgate books that no one wanted to buy.
The thing is, I can see people opting to not play in a specific realm just to avoid the swinginess of the new spells. Guess it depends on how deciding on which realm to play in goes; they've been pretty good with toning down the broken stuff so far so I'm content to wait and see
Skimask Mohawk wrote: Banishment looks crazy, I assume its meant to say more than 24"?
Correct. Just remember though that Banishment is only able to be used when playing games in the Realm of Light.
Currently, the rules from GHB2017 for Realm of Light's "Plain of Sigils" has the following traits:
Domain of Symmetry and Purity: Subtract 1 from the Bravery of all Daemon and Death units.
Dazzling Glow: Subtract 1 from hit rolls for attacks made against enemy units that are in cover.
Speed of Light: Roll a dice in your hero phase. On a roll of 6, you can pick one friendly unit from your army. Remove all of the models in the unit from the battlefield and then set up the unit anywhere on the battlefield that is more than 9" away from an enemy model. This counts as the unit's move for the following movement phase.
Pha's Protection: Wizards in the Plain of Sigils can use the Pha's Protection spell in addition to any other spells that they can use. Casting value of 5. If successfully cast, select a visible friendly unit within 18" of the caster. You can reroll save rolls for that unit until the caster's next hero phase.
It looks like GHB2017 brought in a few spots for us to 'trial', with us getting more areas to play around in with rules specific to those areas along with some generic rules for the realm proper.
The thing is, I can see people opting to not play in a specific realm just to avoid the swinginess of the new spells. Guess it depends on how deciding on which realm to play in goes; they've been pretty good with toning down the broken stuff so far so I'm content to wait and see
I could see that, but at the same time...if the rules for other parts of it would cripple/annoy their opponent a bit more I could see them opting to risk it.
If Hysh gets to have "Dazzling Glow" as a permanent fixture, for example, I could see Idoneth players really opting for Hysh as a go to against other armies.
I like these modified spells. It makes total sense for the generic ones to be pretty basic, and if it encourages people to use the warscroll spells more then great.
Skimask Mohawk wrote: The thing is, I can see people opting to not play in a specific realm just to avoid the swinginess of the new spells. Guess it depends on how deciding on which realm to play in goes; they've been pretty good with toning down the broken stuff so far so I'm content to wait and see
I'm interested to see the new generic artifacts, traits and what they've done to the wizards. Would be nice, if every wizard would come with a counter-spell scroll like the new Stormcast has.
My second thought is that a Hallowhearth army could be rather interesting in new edition.
Kanluwen wrote:The Pylons were constructed by the Twins and Malerion to imprison Slaanesh while they retrieve the Aelf souls.
I love how you capitalized pylons. These are no ordinary pylons we're seeing. I'll see myself out.
Well... the banishment spell already has some gotchas.
Its possible to use Banishment to daisy chain the enemy unit and intersperse it 1" from other enemy units to prevent any of them from being able to move (assuming the movement rules are the same)
I think the different realms could be fun. Maybe if they added some negatives to the bonuses one would get. Like your spells may be more powerful but it may just be a bit too powerful where it is possible to have a miscast due to the overwhelming power you are trying to harness being on that realm?
Vash108 wrote: I think the different realms could be fun. Maybe if they added some negatives to the bonuses one would get. Like your spells may be more powerful but it may just be a bit too powerful where it is possible to have a miscast due to the overwhelming power you are trying to harness being on that realm?
Take a look at the Realm rules as they exist now in GHB sometime. There's benefits and drawbacks.
The DoK faction focus is out. Makes mention of a Look Out, Sir! mechanic.
Also, not sure if it was mentioned elsewhere but says the past year's Battletomes were designed with second edition in mind, which is reassuring to me.
Captain Joystick wrote: The DoK faction focus is out. Makes mention of a Look Out, Sir! mechanic.
Also, not sure if it was mentioned elsewhere but says the past year's Battletomes were designed with second edition in mind, which is reassuring to me.
LOS! is -1 to hit if a hero is within 3'' of a unit with more than 3 models.
And yes, this was mentioned since maggotkin of nurgle.
auticus wrote: So it appears all summoning across the board is now free again based on army mechanics.
The question for me is... which one will be busted? Because thats the one you'll suddenly start seeing a lot of on the table.
Ugh, free summoning.
I think neither the current points nor the armies without summoning are balanced for this.
I reserve final judgement for release of course, but this seems like it could be game-breaking.
I agree. I am nervous about this coming back because I know my area's AOS players will all jump aboard the free summon train like they did before trying to get 4000 points out of a 2000 point army.
Excited about summoning, hopefully all those cool alliance abilities won't be utterly useless. There are paragraphs describing what i can do that i never get to touch, because who sets aside reinforcement points for them, honestly?
No one wants reinforcement points because summoning is supposed to be free extra points, and then they want tto take the free extra points and turn that into double their army size if possible lol.
Waiting on the edge of my seat to try to find the spammable farmable abilities. Or maybe THIS will be the time GW gets it right?
I'll see. Maybe there will be a spell that exiles them from the game or something.
Regardless "opponent gets free units" is just horrible design, even, if you have mini objectives to complete. I'd be more optimistic, if GW wasn't the one handling it. Things tend to scale beyond control in their systems.
It would be interesting to also have some sort of penalties involved, if the summoning army can't fulfill those mini objectives in time.
Summoning could be good if you assume it as a core principle of an army and then you make all of the army with the idea that they will summong more units.
So basically, weaker troops than their equivalents in other armies, but that compensate by the fact that you can keep summoning more as long as you do your specific task to gain summon points (Other tool to add more refination and balance). So you are rewarded by doing what your army is supposed to do, and you are punished if you fail... like every other army of the game.
And some people could say "But what if I don't want to summon?!" then... I don't know. If I don't want to use Chavalry and Monsters I wouldn't play Beastclaw Raiders.
I mean, has anyone here seen a branch wraith in competitive play? The super incredible ability to let you summon 2-12 dryads is, on its surface, an easy way to generate objective holders for spots you aren't worried about the enemy trying to contest, but immediately turns to poison when you realize you're paying for 10 or 20 dryads out of your reinforcement pool to do it.
I don't think you need reinforcement points to be the control that limits summoning, so long as they have -something-.
I was singing the "skeletons are very broken now" with the GHB 2017 release giving them a huge point discount on top of their insane blob buffs on top of the hero buffs they can get.
That was shot down with "yeah but they don't win tournaments so they are fine". But the real problem was that they at the time didn't have their own dedicated book and people were waiting for that before jumping on the bone-train (no one wanted to run them until they had a proper book)
Oh man... this sounds awful. Someone WILL find a way to break Summoning as its just too disruptive of a mechanic to have a place in matched play.
Even severely restricted "points-less" summoning could be awful to anyone less than a power-gamer. I've seen plenty of folks bring a mid-tier army like Flesh Eater Courts, and just make a miserable game happen by restoring tons, and tons of Ghouls and Horrors turn after turn.
NewTruthNeomaxim wrote: Oh man... this sounds awful. Someone WILL find a way to break Summoning as its just too disruptive of a mechanic to have a place in matched play.
Even severely restricted "points-less" summoning could be awful to anyone less than a power-gamer. I've seen plenty of folks bring a mid-tier army like Flesh Eater Courts, and just make a miserable game happen by restoring tons, and tons of Ghouls and Horrors turn after turn.
The Flesh-Eaters are slated to get a revision in General's Handbook 2018.
Very likely it will be something like adding a Command Point cost to the "Muster" abilities.
On one hand, I agree that the reserve points based summoning was generally not that great. Sure, you could have some use out of it, but by and large it wasn't that great. I suspected some kind of overhaul with the Nurgle BT, but I'm not sure every faction having a "mini-game" to get summoning points is going to work out much better, unless the points costs for all armies with summoning in any way are adjusted. Even then, still not sure how it will work out, as I agree there will be more folks trying to go for the 4k in a 2k list.
I think the teasers aren't quite enough to really base anything on, though, so I'll be anti-Dakka and hold judgement until full release. ;P
My orks and ogres won't have any problems with the enemy summoning more models.
Thats just more heads to bash!
(And I won't have any problem if my Khorne models become more expensive because the blood tithe points are super easy to gain and with free summoning, if they don't change them, that can be a big problem)
I'm extremely unhappy about this. The summoning mechanics themselves are pretty cool, but free models just takes us right back to the very worst parts of the dumpster fire that was 7th edition 40k.
I wouldn't even mind if summoned models came at a discounted point value to account for actually having to go through the motions, especially since they're now more developed than just casting a spell. But points are used to emplace a limit on a game. I go into a 2000 point game expecting a certain type and size of encounter, it needs to represent an upper limit. This crap destroys that.
Summoning in 40k was literally "Take Psykers, take Daemonology, spam summoning". You had nothing to prevent it aside from killing the Psykers.
Here, you have caveats. If I go within 3" of a Feculent Gnarlmaw, I know I can prevent a Maggotkin player from getting an additional D3 Contagion Points. I know I can prevent them from scoring 2 by making sure I have models in both mine and their territories.
Summoning in 40k was literally "Take Psykers, take Daemonology, spam summoning". You had nothing to prevent it aside from killing the Psykers.
Here, you have caveats. If I go within 3" of a Feculent Gnarlmaw, I know I can prevent a Maggotkin player from getting an additional D3 Contagion Points. I know I can prevent them from scoring 2 by making sure I have models in both mine and their territories.
Agreed. It's nowhere near what it was. Also, surprised no one complained about Daemons of Chaos, as they had Summoning way back in 6th with their Warp Storm roll. The caveat was they only got it on boxcars, but it was a free 2d6 + 3 unit.
So I'm hesitant but relatively relieved. As long as it's like that or has some sort of hindrance, I think it'll be fine.
Summoning in 40k was literally "Take Psykers, take Daemonology, spam summoning". You had nothing to prevent it aside from killing the Psykers.
Here, you have caveats. If I go within 3" of a Feculent Gnarlmaw, I know I can prevent a Maggotkin player from getting an additional D3 Contagion Points. I know I can prevent them from scoring 2 by making sure I have models in both mine and their territories.
There's tons of issues with this, starting with the fact that putting a unit within 3" of a feculent Gnarlmaw makes them DRAMATICALLY more vulnerable to the shenanigans Nurgle can do, and allows the nurgle player to control where you move. You're going to have to cripple yourself for the sake of stopping nurgle from getting an extra 400pts summoning, not to mention all the other crazy shenanigans the nurgle player will be able to pull to get around anything you try to do to counter.
Realistically, no matter what you do a Maggotkin of nurgle player will end a game with around 2400-2500pts based on their current summoning system. A legion of Nagash player can end up anywhere between 2200- freaking 6k.
Summoning in 40k was literally "Take Psykers, take Daemonology, spam summoning". You had nothing to prevent it aside from killing the Psykers.
Here, you have caveats. If I go within 3" of a Feculent Gnarlmaw, I know I can prevent a Maggotkin player from getting an additional D3 Contagion Points. I know I can prevent them from scoring 2 by making sure I have models in both mine and their territories.
Agreed. It's nowhere near what it was. Also, surprised no one complained about Daemons of Chaos, as they had Summoning way back in 6th with their Warp Storm roll. The caveat was they only got it on boxcars, but it was a free 2d6 + 3 unit.
So I'm hesitant but relatively relieved. As long as it's like that or has some sort of hindrance, I think it'll be fine.
Like I said in the previous post, we already KNOW two of the systems and Maggotkin WILL be getting 400pts per game(at least) and Legions of Nagash are capable of recycling their entire army several times over the course of a game. Legions of Nagash is a bit easier to neutralize that Maggotkin are, but they can also just baff full units out onto the field. Not to mention the gravesites+deathly invocations. Would you rather kill my ENTIRE unit of graveguard and let me bring the whole thing back or just MOST of my unit of graveguard and let me bring 12-15 back?
Its not gonna be that bad is it? At least for LoN, the General has to be with in 9" of a Gravesite and then there has to not be enemies with in 9" of them.
Growing Nurgle's garden is pretty easy. You run a not terrible chance of being able to throw down over 100 points of models on the first turn, and it just goes up from there.
Fafnir wrote: Growing Nurgle's garden is pretty easy. You run a not terrible chance of being able to throw down over 100 points of models on the first turn, and it just goes up from there.
It costs you 7 Contagion Points to put down 5 Plaguebearers(understrength unit), 1 Feculent Gnarlmaw, or a single Nurgling base(understrength unit).
Your statement would require Horticulous Slimux to be present and you counting his "Cultivating the Gardens of Nurgle" ability to trigger before you would add up Contagion Points(both take place "at the start of your Hero Phase"). CTGN requires it to be set up within 3" of Horticulous and 1" away from any other terrain feature(both of which heavily limits your placement opportunities turn 1 unless you're planning for it right off the bat).
So you could hypothetically have:
4 Contagion Points for having a Nurgle unit within your territory(3 normally; +1 for no enemy models in the same territory)
d3 Contagion Points for your Feculent Gnarlmaw having no enemy models within 3" of it.
d3 Contagion Points for your second Gnarlmaw(assuming you think the order of operations for CTGN is before tallying up Contagion Points)
That would cap you out at anywhere from 6 to 10 Contagion Points; giving you access only to the 7 tier of stuff(5 Plaguebearers, 1 Nurgling base, or another Gnarlmaw) for turn 1.
Turn 2 you could maybe get 6 CPs for having a unit in enemy territory via the Drone based stuff, but I just don't see any real way to be giving you crazy amounts of stuff.
Having played with the nurgle book a while and we are narrative and don't use the matched play reserve points mechanic, no you really can't easily spam a bunch of summons with nurgle. I typically get to pull in a unit of drones (3 models), or maybe two units (6 models total) and a feces tree. Thats my average.
VictorVonTzeentch wrote: Its not gonna be that bad is it? At least for LoN, the General has to be with in 9" of a Gravesite and then there has to not be enemies with in 9" of them.
Gravesites cover a HUGE amount of the board, considering there are 4 of them. You'll likely be able to pick 2 you can block, the rest will be free game for a competent LoN player. At best, in an even match, you'll be able to force them to pop-up in their deployment zone, but considering dire wolves, hexwraiths, and blackknights are all summonable and fast, that won't account for much. Even if you do manage to stop him from summoning at any of the gravesites, how sustainable is blocking off all 4 really going to be? And you're probably not going to be sniping characters with the new shooting changes and the expanded unbinding range. The biggest limitation the LoN player is going to have to deal with is command points, but considering they benefit the most from the resurrection in the late game and have good, cheap battalions, you could be looking at a turn 2-5 where they just replace everything they lost the previous turn.
It's possible that all they get over the course of the game is a single unit of blackknights...but it's also possibility they get a 10 man unit of hexwraiths, a 30 block of dogs, a 40 brick of skeletons, and a 30 block of graveguard.
As for Maggotkin, you can definitely get a GUO turn 3 with minimal effort on your part, which seems like pretty big deal to me, or failing that force your opponent to be in the area of the board he really doesn't want to be. Of course, even just 20 plaguebearers could be game winning in the later turns.
It seems like a lot of games between summoning and non-summoning armies are going to come down to 'Can you win before the summons go off?' It doesn't help that the armies that benefit the most from summoning also tend to be very high powerlevel already(Maggotkin and Tzeentch are top tier, LoN has had some pretty respectable performances of late)
(Legion of sacrement lists also have 'kill an enemy unit on a gravesite, on a 4+ bring back a unit
VictorVonTzeentch wrote: Its not gonna be that bad is it? At least for LoN, the General has to be with in 9" of a Gravesite and then there has to not be enemies with in 9" of them.
Gravesites cover a HUGE amount of the board, considering there are 4 of them. You'll likely be able to pick 2 you can block, the rest will be free game for a competent LoN player. At best, in an even match, you'll be able to force them to pop-up in their deployment zone, but considering dire wolves, hexwraiths, and blackknights are all summonable and fast, that won't account for much. Even if you do manage to stop him from summoning at any of the gravesites, how sustainable is blocking off all 4 really going to be? And you're probably not going to be sniping characters with the new shooting changes and the expanded unbinding range. The biggest limitation the LoN player is going to have to deal with is command points, but considering they benefit the most from the resurrection in the late game and have good, cheap battalions, you could be looking at a turn 2-5 where they just replace everything they lost the previous turn.
It's possible that all they get over the course of the game is a single unit of blackknights...but it's also possibility they get a 10 man unit of hexwraiths, a 30 block of dogs, a 40 brick of skeletons, and a 30 block of graveguard.
As for Maggotkin, you can definitely get a GUO turn 3 with minimal effort on your part, which seems like pretty big deal to me, or failing that force your opponent to be in the area of the board he really doesn't want to be. Of course, even just 20 plaguebearers could be game winning in the later turns.
It seems like a lot of games between summoning and non-summoning armies are going to come down to 'Can you win before the summons go off?' It doesn't help that the armies that benefit the most from summoning also tend to be very high powerlevel already(Maggotkin and Tzeentch are top tier, LoN has had some pretty respectable performances of late)
(Legion of sacrement lists also have 'kill an enemy unit on a gravesite, on a 4+ bring back a unit
Why block off all 4? Only need to block the one nearest the general until he's sniped out.
VictorVonTzeentch wrote: Its not gonna be that bad is it? At least for LoN, the General has to be with in 9" of a Gravesite and then there has to not be enemies with in 9" of them.
Gravesites cover a HUGE amount of the board, considering there are 4 of them. You'll likely be able to pick 2 you can block, the rest will be free game for a competent LoN player. At best, in an even match, you'll be able to force them to pop-up in their deployment zone, but considering dire wolves, hexwraiths, and blackknights are all summonable and fast, that won't account for much. Even if you do manage to stop him from summoning at any of the gravesites, how sustainable is blocking off all 4 really going to be? And you're probably not going to be sniping characters with the new shooting changes and the expanded unbinding range. The biggest limitation the LoN player is going to have to deal with is command points, but considering they benefit the most from the resurrection in the late game and have good, cheap battalions, you could be looking at a turn 2-5 where they just replace everything they lost the previous turn.
It's possible that all they get over the course of the game is a single unit of blackknights...but it's also possibility they get a 10 man unit of hexwraiths, a 30 block of dogs, a 40 brick of skeletons, and a 30 block of graveguard.
As for Maggotkin, you can definitely get a GUO turn 3 with minimal effort on your part, which seems like pretty big deal to me, or failing that force your opponent to be in the area of the board he oreally doesn't want to be. Of course, even just 20 plaguebearers could be game winning in the later turns.
It seems like a lot of games between summoning and non-summoning armies are going to come down to 'Can you win before the summons go off?' It doesn't help that the armies that benefit the most from summoning also tend to be very high powerlevel already(Maggotkin and Tzeentch are top tier, LoN has had some pretty respectable performances of late)
(Legion of sacrement lists also have 'kill an enemy unit on a gravesite, on a 4+ bring back a unit
You gotta keep in mind that only the General can bring back units through Gravesites. Kill the general, you cut off the summoning.
I get that no one used summoning before, but 20 dryads are a huge defensive block, hunters are crazy good (and are getting a point decrease now? Guess the character sniping nerf deserves it?) And a freelord is something else entirely. Like really, you just pop soul amphora turn one since you don't need to heal and give yourself a free unit of hunters or a treelord. No counter play.
Sylvaneth were my first aos army, and while I'm sure they got blasted at top tables, theyre frustrating enough to not need a free monster or blobs of guys off of a model that already beats people down
So for our narrative, I'm implementing a mechanism to combat some of this... as a lot of our power gamers began salivating at the thought of sweet sweet free points again (because why would you never)
Everytime you get a free unit or model you note how many points for free you just got. once you've crossed that 25% of your total army threshold (so 250 pts in a 1000 pt game... 500 pts in a 2000 pt game etc) your opponent may draw a sudden death victory condition from the open war deck.
I get that a lot of people are super stocked about getting free stuff again but this type of thing really drives players away, particularly those not wanting to invest in more models while the guys that have no problem with it will spam as much as the rules allow (and no one wants to play against the 3000 pt army masquerading as a 2000 pt army in a 2000 pt game)
auticus wrote: Everytime you get a free unit or model you note how many points for free you just got. once you've crossed that 25% of your total army threshold (so 250 pts in a 1000 pt game... 500 pts in a 2000 pt game etc) your opponent may draw a sudden death victory condition from the open war deck.
Yeah. If there's no risk to doing it and the answer is why would I never do this, everything devolves into that. And then a bunch of people sell their stuff and quit, which destroys my community and I really really hate that lol.
For competitive AOS I'd never do that though, but for narrative campaigns, there needs to be something to reign this stuff in.
I hate being negative but I’m growing increasingly concerned about these summoning mechanics. I can see the abuse coming from a mile away and I think I’ll be on the receiving end of it.
Interestingly enough the community seems split on this. A good chunk are concerned, the other chunk is excited and wants summoning to be free points and very influential in the game.
auticus wrote: Interestingly enough the community seems split on this. A good chunk are concerned, the other chunk is excited and wants summoning to be free points and very influential in the game.
I'm of the opinion that it should be influential in the game--and it absolutely looks like it will be for the armies that have access to it. The non-Daemon stuff we'll have to see how it works or is worded, but I think a lot of the doomsaying ignores that what makes Maggotkin and Arcanites strong isn't their summoning alone, it's that they're quality books.
Therein is the rub and why thiis has destroyed my community in the past.
1) not everyone has equal access, so the powergaming meta moves toward only the armies that can max out summoning (reference: pretty much everytime this situation existed in the past, 7th edition whfb, 6th and 7th ed 40k, aos 1.0) and if you are playing armies that can take 2000p and turn it into 3000p there really is no point in playing the game unless you can too.
2) it compels people to feel like they need to buy even more models. This causes a lot of people to feel that its "pay to win" and quit altogether.
Now like my maggotkin army... I can usually get around 22 points to summon with frm their point system in a game. I usually snag another tree and two units of drones. I once had 26 poiints and almost had another GUO. Those results aren't game wrecking to me.
Watching a couple 40-model units of skeletons come back at full strength after killing it though will probably incite a lot of rage.
So, I run legion of sacrament and that current ability being complained about is totally useless.
I need to:
(a) set aside reinforcement points at the start of the game, so i'm actively weaker than my opponent (b) need to keep my opponent fighting on gravesites (c) need to keep my heroes alive (d) need to lose a unit (e) need to kill a unit (f) need to roll a 4+
Then yes, I can bring back a unit and realize the potential of those reinforcement points.
OR, i could just add the unit to my army at the start of the game and not worry about the stars aligning perfectly.
A lot of the LoN abilities in 1.0 are flat useless in matched play rules, and everyone plays matched play, so what's the point of them? You haven't even seen the full rules on summoning yet, but can we at least agree that the LoN abilities are flat useless in their current form?
Ok, serious question: is there even a sizable enough competitive scene for AoS for things like questionable balance to matter? Do people actually play this game competitively on a regular basis?
I just don’t see it, at least where I’m at and certainly not in my personal games. The admittedly few times I see it played by people at the store it’s incredibly casual. I dont think most people even keep track of victory point or even see who won/lost? I can’t remember the last time I even heard of a tournament for it.
My point is, unless the new summoning stuff is just mind boggling broken I don’t think it really matters if one side ends up with a hundred extra points on the table.
Edit -I should note I play exclusively at home with people who aren’t really gamers themselves, with house rules and such. I’m very disconnected from any wider AoS community aside from what I happen to notice at my FLGS, which is the occasional game on Warhammer night (99% being 40k), or a narrative event hosted by staff.
Kind of the same impression as you. It doesn't seem meant to be a competitive rule set in the first place. But, we haven't even seen how summoning and reinforcement points will be replaced. All we know is it is different... without the surrounding details. So all of this is jumping the gun anyway.
I don't play pure matched rules. We have always used a form of free summoning but we paid comp points to be able to use them and they always capped out at about 25% of your army to prevent them from getting way too overbearing.
y point is, unless the new summoning stuff is just mind boggling broken I don’t think it really matters if one side ends up with a hundred extra points on the table.
100 extra points? No. No one cares about that. I'm not tallking about +100 points.
We're talking one or two 300 point skeleton units that come back (in essence, another free 300 points) or greater demons or things like that.
I find once you go over 25% of the game's point level, things have gone into busted town. At 1000 points, summoning in a free greater demon is overbearing to a lot of people. At 2000 points, bringing in more than 500 points is overbearing to a lot of people. It causes people to quit the game regularly and this is exactly what I don't want happening.
Whether or not there is currently a sizeable AoS competitive scene is irrelevant. If GW ever hopes there to be a good sized competitive scene, they need to make sure they balance these summoning rules carefully, because, as has been said, this can drive a lot of people away.
We see a ton of armies that have access to it and a ton of armies that don't. That already splits the factions into 'haves' and 'have-nots'. That already is... questionable at best. Competitive players will flock to those armies (and honestly, many already do play things like Death, Seraphon, Sylvaneth, and Nurgle because of how strong they can be) and if something doesn't come in to balance these summoned units, the meta will quickly devolve into just that.
The fresh new Stormcast, Deepkin, and Daughters of Khaine models will cease to sell. Older players at shops will tell the new players interested in the game "If you don't like any of these competitive armies, don't bother."
"Why?" The newbies will ask.
"Because these special armies get free units, which means you have a 2500 point army when your opponent will only have a 2000 point army if they don't play one of these special armies."
"Oh! I'll do that then!" the new player will say, or at worst, "Oh, that doesn't sound very fair..." And they'll go play something else.
My thinking is that GW is aware of this issue. With all of the complaints bombarding their Facebook accounts and with complaints in the past about summoning systems, they must be aware that something needs to balance these 'free' (or really, 'freemium') units.
And here's the thing... everyone's talking about how you can counter this strategy or that strategy, capping gravesites or sniping generals, but a good player in control of one of those armies will make sure to prevent that from happening. "Well, don't fully kill the unit of 40 skeletons, then!" The Death player will find a way to suicide a weak squad to get it back, or will use that squad to cap an objective, knowing you don't want to kill it fully. It gives that Death player a massive strategic advantage that other armies don't have access to. It means that I have to engage my opponent on their terms in every game, that they can control my movement by placing these gravesites and positioning their units however *they* want, and I have to respond to that, or else they get a lot of free crap.
It means I have to make a concerted effort to play an extra game within the game. I have to put units in my opponent's deployment zone to prevent Nurgle from getting more points so that I don't get a GUO in my face. It means I have to bubble-wrap Alarielle, to be right where SHE wants me to be just to prevent her from getting an extra 20 dryads that she can plop out whenever she wants, and I may not be able to prevent that from happening if she does it turn 1!
It does, without a doubt, turn the game into a 2200 vs 2000 point game for many matchups. It may not be a problem if you have, say, Sylvaneth vs. Legions of Nagash, or Khorne Daemons vs. Nurgle Daemons...
But what happens when it's Orruks vs. Nurgle? Deepkin vs. Sylvaneth? LoN vs. Kharadron Overlords? Any of these combos means one side gets extra points that the other does not. Any hoops that the 'have-not' army has to run through is another strategic disadvantage that's hard to calculate in points. It means they may come upon more auto-lose situations where if they cap the objective, the opponent gets a free unit that will kill them next turn, but if they try to prevent that from happening, they lose out on the objective.
It's bad. There's concerns. The more we learn, and the more rules that come out, the less faith I have that GW knows what they're doing and the more I fear they just want to sell more models at the expense of the game system.
If people are already coming up with house-rules to put on extra limitations to a broken set of rules, that's a really bad sign guys. In a game that normally takes 3 hours to play, I've seen many a game conceded on turn 2 because of a bad matchup, and that's in the current rules. I foresee games being conceded as soon as a 'free' unit is put on the board, either by sore losers, or simply by people that see that happen late game and determine 'strategically, there's nothing I can do to stop this and it's all downhill from here'. Very few people will continue that game thinking 'maybe my opponent's free GUO will roll really poorly'. No, we assume he'll roll average, slaughter a bunch of units that you didn't get for free, and better control the table.
More games given up by the 'have-nots'. More games conceded as soon as a giant block of free units hits the board. Fewer games had. More people giving up the game. It all comes down to one rule that, let's be completely honest, AoS didn't need in the first place. Yes the summoning rules as they were weren't doing anything for the game, but I fear that these new rules will really damage the game more than help it.
Absolutely. It allows one player to force how the game is going to play everytime while the other player has to react the whole time. (unless of course you both are running one of the meta armies which means armies start to begin to be samey, which has always been a GW games issue)
Have we seen evidence to suggest this isn't in the middle ground?
The points that you get or the rules that give you access to summoning thus far have no limitations except for what you bring in your list. We have seen GW hyping up the rule, but not talking about the balance of it, and that's what everyone is worried about. We've seen all of the good with none of the bad, but good for armies with summoning is only bad for armies without.
drbored wrote: The points that you get or the rules that give you access to summoning thus far have no limitations except for what you bring in your list.
How do you come to this conclusion? Is blocking Gravesites, avoiding to wipe a Skeleton block or prioritising their Army General only related to what you bring in your list?
Many (granted, not all) of the summoning mechanics mentioned so far are tied to conditions that can be controlled by the player's decisions and performance.
drbored wrote: We have seen GW hyping up the rule, but not talking about the balance of it, and that's what everyone is worried about. We've seen all of the good with none of the bad, but good for armies with summoning is only bad for armies without.
I agree completely, but they will have something in store for those armies. Endless spells are a strong suspect, but they'll definitely have to show us something sooner or later.
So yeah if there is a commodity tthats good. Unless the commodity is easily farmable or say you can trade in a command point for 300 points of skeletons.
A CP you can get for +50 points spent. I'll spend +50 points all day every day all year for 300 points of skeletons.
Or like... I take a batallion, spend +50 points for another CP, and start with one. The game begins with 3 CP. And I get a CP each turn, so a five turn game I'd have a total of 8 Command Points thatt I could use to minmax powergame the summoning phase with.
If its like the nurgle book I'm not worried. The legion of nagash book is a bit bent though IMO iif its just one CP = your recycled unit because if I'm going to break the game for some sweet wins you bet I'd spend 3 or 4 of those CPs on 300 point skeleton units or whatever.
Or another example would be if say tzeentch gets summons points for spells cast... max your spell casters and cast easy spells to start farming those summon points and then unleash the change tide on your opponent's face.
So again if its like nurgle book currently, I'm not really sweating that. Thats pretty under control IMO. To get a greater demon you'd need to bank some serious points and even then you're probably not getting it until turn 4 or 5 anyway.
If its a CP = a sweet recycled unit for Legion of Nagash, that will be bad.
Knight wrote: It does seem really bonkers. We'll give it a go. Worst case, we'll just move the entire summoning rule set into quarantine.
Yeah, without some restriction or downside we haven't seen yet this will probably just get banned from many game groups and certainly many tournaments.
drbored wrote: The points that you get or the rules that give you access to summoning thus far have no limitations except for what you bring in your list.
How do you come to this conclusion? Is blocking Gravesites, avoiding to wipe a Skeleton block or prioritising their Army General only related to what you bring in your list?
Many (granted, not all) of the summoning mechanics mentioned so far are tied to conditions that can be controlled by the player's decisions and performance.
drbored wrote: We have seen GW hyping up the rule, but not talking about the balance of it, and that's what everyone is worried about. We've seen all of the good with none of the bad, but good for armies with summoning is only bad for armies without.
I agree completely, but they will have something in store for those armies. Endless spells are a strong suspect, but they'll definitely have to show us something sooner or later.
To the first point, the problem is that blocking gravesites, avoiding wiping skeleton blocks, and prioritizing the general means that I'm having to allocate resources (dice rolls) and units to doing those things /instead/ of playing the objective. It means skirting around weak skeleton units, and lets'b e honest, LoN have ways of bringing that skeleton block back up to full strength WITHOUT having it die and be re-summoned, so whether it's wiped out and summoned, or left with a few models and grows back, either way my opponent is getting a lot of free models. With the nerf to sniping heroes, it's harder for an army to take out that general. It requires better positioning, significant shooting, or significant spellcasting. Most heroes that would be generals have good defenses or can be bubblewrapped by other units to be protected so they can do what they want to do. And finally, if I want to block gravesites, it's likely I have to put models there that now are away from objectives, or where my opponent wants them, not where *I* want them. It puts a lot of the flow in the opponent's hands, which puts me at a disadvantage just so I don't allow him to have free points. If the only way to balance this is by putting it on me, as a player, to out-play my opponent, then that's not really balance. That means that if I have the same skill level as my opponent, he has an advantage, because he has more options of play than I do, and can ultimately have a larger army than me by virtue of summons or reviving models. If there's another point of balance, I would love to hear it, and that's what I want from GW right now.
To the second quote, I agree. I'm hoping that the endless spells help balance out the summons. My concern, however, is that armies with summons will ALSO be able to use these endless spells, or that these endless spells can be dispelled like normal, which is now easier than ever with the 30" range. It means that if I don't get that spell of on turn 1, I may get unlucky and not get it off at all if it's unbound by the enemy that may have better spellcasting or unbinding than me. Idoneth Deepkin don't have the outrageous bonuses to dispelling or spellcasting that LoN or Tzeentch do. So, on top of being able to summon, if those armies can also use these endless spells, then that's even less of a balance.
I've talked a lot, but at the end of the day I am still hopeful that GW has some sort of balancing mechanic in mind, or that there's just not enough in our hands to paint the full picture. I know plenty of people out there are laying out examples of how a game would go against a summoning army, but I'm just not convinced. There are many people that will push their army to the extreme to either farm CP, farm points for summons, or do other things to give them a leg up. I already see plenty of Sylvaneth players talking about the merits of Alarielle, and how her turn 1 summon is effecitvely a discount on her cost as a whole. Taking her and some Branchwraiths could mean that while the Sylvaneth player starts at 2000 points, they can get up to 2500+ very easily, flooding the board not just with wyldwoods that are already incredibly potent, but also dryads and other things. It's even harder to snipe Sylvaneth units that can summon thanks to all of the terrain they can put down to block me from getting to them, and all of the healing they get access to.
We'll see. I'll just be anxious until we get an official word.
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Marmatag wrote: Well, ultimately we'll have to wait and see, but it sounds like you earn points which can be spent on these abilities by achieving something in games.
In either case, if you kill say 35 skeletons and leave 5 left alive, you've essentially played around the revive.
Except most armies that will take that many skeletons can get 20+ back through other spells and abilities anyway. So either way, the undead player is getting free models. :/
Yeah, I see where you are coming from. In a perfect scenario, your opponent will have to work against your strategy just as hard as you have to work against his, but there is always going to be imbalance across factions. Concept wise, I like the idea of having to prevent the enemy from summoning as just another objective, depending on which opponent you are facing. It could very well lend more depth to AoS and I'm excited to see if this is going to be the case.
People will, as with every edition, find the best combos and the most efficient lists, some of which will most likely result in cheese of varying degrees of maturity - it's inevitable.
The best solution to that is to pick your opponents and refrain from fielding filthy lists yourself, because the game will not provide the right framework for equal strength across multiple factions.
The good news for me will be, my undead army that I used for ten years on the GT circuit when vampire counts were filthy busted (5th, 6th, and 7th ed) will be dusted off and allow me to play in tournaments again
auticus wrote: The good news for me will be, my undead army that I used for ten years on the GT circuit when vampire counts were filthy busted (5th, 6th, and 7th ed) will be dusted off and allow me to play in tournaments again
VictorVonTzeentch wrote: Its not gonna be that bad is it? At least for LoN, the General has to be with in 9" of a Gravesite and then there has to not be enemies with in 9" of them.
Gravesites cover a HUGE amount of the board, considering there are 4 of them. You'll likely be able to pick 2 you can block, the rest will be free game for a competent LoN player. At best, in an even match, you'll be able to force them to pop-up in their deployment zone, but considering dire wolves, hexwraiths, and blackknights are all summonable and fast, that won't account for much. Even if you do manage to stop him from summoning at any of the gravesites, how sustainable is blocking off all 4 really going to be? And you're probably not going to be sniping characters with the new shooting changes and the expanded unbinding range. The biggest limitation the LoN player is going to have to deal with is command points, but considering they benefit the most from the resurrection in the late game and have good, cheap battalions, you could be looking at a turn 2-5 where they just replace everything they lost the previous turn.
It's possible that all they get over the course of the game is a single unit of blackknights...but it's also possibility they get a 10 man unit of hexwraiths, a 30 block of dogs, a 40 brick of skeletons, and a 30 block of graveguard.
As for Maggotkin, you can definitely get a GUO turn 3 with minimal effort on your part, which seems like pretty big deal to me, or failing that force your opponent to be in the area of the board he oreally doesn't want to be. Of course, even just 20 plaguebearers could be game winning in the later turns.
It seems like a lot of games between summoning and non-summoning armies are going to come down to 'Can you win before the summons go off?' It doesn't help that the armies that benefit the most from summoning also tend to be very high powerlevel already(Maggotkin and Tzeentch are top tier, LoN has had some pretty respectable performances of late)
(Legion of sacrement lists also have 'kill an enemy unit on a gravesite, on a 4+ bring back a unit
You gotta keep in mind that only the General can bring back units through Gravesites. Kill the general, you cut off the summoning.
Which relies on you A. Having shooting units that can kill a -3 to hit character(easily achievable) B. Have magic strong enough to bypass the second best magical army in the game or C. Dive their backline to get after the most protected unit in the entire army. It's not a reliable strategy for anyone but Tzeentch.
It also doesn't account for the Legion of Sacrament rule where there is a 50/50 shot the death player gets that unit of Graveguard you killed back(in your backfield, on your objective) because he put a gravesite directly under the objective you were camping with 10 marauders or w/e and then managed to sneak a unit around to kill them.
The LoN summoning has counters, sure. It's unlikely that in a normal game they'll get more than 500pts or so across the entire 5 turns even. But preventing him from getting those high-roll resurrections is going to involve spinning a ton of plates, whereas getting the highroll resurrections is just waiting to see which plate you drop.
I admittedly have the same problem with LoN summoning for free that I have with every army(as well as the realm specific spells) which is the balancing nightmare they are GOING to end up being. My specific problem with Nagash is how much more punishing it makes the army to play against, and how binary it makes your counter strategy. Thanks to deathly invocation, you can't afford to leave weakened units alive. They'll just come back. Summoning though, means that killing units risks the whole thing coming back in one shot. If you don't have the resilience or model count to outplay them on the mission, your strategy becomes 'Go after the general or lose' and/or 'block the gravesites or lose' which doesn't seem very engaging to me. It also makes units like Morghasts and Terrorgeists much less appealing on the simple basis of not even having the OPTION to come back.
Maybe they'll have some sort of additional caveat they haven't mentioned yet and maybe other armies are getting something equivalent that we haven't heard about yet(unlikely) but I just don't see how an army stuck at 2000pts(beastclaws, Kharadron), even strong armies like Daughters of Khaine or Fyreslayers are supposed to keep up with sylvaneth lists running 2240, Nurgle lists at 2400, death armies at 2300-2500, or whatever unholy nightmare DoT end up being capable of. We've even seen the Daughters of Khaine preview and they got NOTHING.'oh but they got relics' actually those relics were just copies of things already in the DoK battletome.
It seems like they're either making thematic changes at the expense of a reasonably balanced game, or they're using summoning to force people to play larger games, which forces people to buy more models, as a fairly cynical cashgrab.
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Marmatag wrote: Well, ultimately we'll have to wait and see, but it sounds like you earn points which can be spent on these abilities by achieving something in games.
In either case, if you kill say 35 skeletons and leave 5 left alive, you've essentially played around the revive.
Like was mentioned early, Deathly invocations will just let you replenish the 35 skeletons you lost anyway, the only difference is that you don't get a free deepstrike out of it.
drbored wrote: The points that you get or the rules that give you access to summoning thus far have no limitations except for what you bring in your list.
How do you come to this conclusion? Is blocking Gravesites, avoiding to wipe a Skeleton block or prioritising their Army General only related to what you bring in your list?
Many (granted, not all) of the summoning mechanics mentioned so far are tied to conditions that can be controlled by the player's decisions and performance.
drbored wrote: We have seen GW hyping up the rule, but not talking about the balance of it, and that's what everyone is worried about. We've seen all of the good with none of the bad, but good for armies with summoning is only bad for armies without.
I agree completely, but they will have something in store for those armies. Endless spells are a strong suspect, but they'll definitely have to show us something sooner or later.
The armies with the most summoning are the ones who have the best magic also. It's more likely that endless spells pushes summoning armies further ahead than nerfing them in some way.
Yeah, I see where you are coming from. In a perfect scenario, your opponent will have to work against your strategy just as hard as you have to work against his, but there is always going to be imbalance across factions. Concept wise, I like the idea of having to prevent the enemy from summoning as just another objective, depending on which opponent you are facing. It could very well lend more depth to AoS and I'm excited to see if this is going to be the case.
People will, as with every edition, find the best combos and the most efficient lists, some of which will most likely result in cheese of varying degrees of maturity - it's inevitable.
The best solution to that is to pick your opponents and refrain from fielding filthy lists yourself, because the game will not provide the right framework for equal strength across multiple factions.
I certainly have no problem with being choosy in my opponents, and my local group isn't as cheesy as some others. The problem comes when there are imbalances that are so great that you are much more likely to lose no matter what kind of list you play if you go up against certain factions. Let's assume that the game only consists of armies that have been fully brought into Age of Sigmar, leaving out things like Darkling Covens, Dispossessed, Scourge Privateers, etc that are pretty much just remnants of the past that happen to have plastic kits and that are, by and large, in need of some changes to keep up with the newer factions. If we leave those out and I take Deepkin and my opponent takes Nurgle and by virtue of their buffs, special rules, magic, and, on top of that, they also have access to summons for 'free' units, I should be able to point to my own faction and say "Alright, that's all powerful stuff, but I have my own special rules too." And, I do. I've got Tides of Death and Forgotten Nightmares which gives me a little bit of added defense and offense. My units are faster and cheaper to a degree as well.
The trouble is, if after playtesting and game after game, I'm losing more and more often against things like Nurgle because they *also get summoning* on top of their faction special rules and magic, then I'm going to become much more frustrated. A growing schism is created, again, because of the 'haves' and 'have-nots'. I get that there's no perfect balance, but the risk is that summoning without proper checks and balances may swing the pendulum too far, giving a significant advantage to the 'haves' and leaving the 'have-nots' in the dust. That's my concern. I'm not looking for or expecting perfect balance. I just don't want the difference in strengths of armies to be thrown even further off.
And again, just to make sure I don't come off the wrong way, I still want to wait for the full rules. I'm not saying that this is definitely how it will go down, that's just my concern. I'm sure they've playtested these rules with their combo of playtesters to make sure there are no grand oversights that would cause problems like this, and it's also likely that actual games won't go the way that we are imagining at all. Still, I'm waiting for some official word, or the full rules, before we can determine if it's horribly broken or if this is a lot of hoopla about nothing.
You're going to have issues with Idoneth versus Maggotkin not because of summoning, but because Maggotkin are best served by shooting/magicking the snot out of them before they can get anywhere near you.
Idoneth don't have the kind of shooting/magic necessary to do that. You have to play very well thought out in order to succeed against Maggotkin with Idoneth.
Although it's also worth mentioning that Idoneth are, in general, going to be much stronger versus shooting heavy armies than they are anything else. Forgotten Nightmares ensure that.
auticus wrote: The good news for me will be, my undead army that I used for ten years on the GT circuit when vampire counts were filthy busted (5th, 6th, and 7th ed) will be dusted off and allow me to play in tournaments again
You'll be a skilled and experienced player again!
I know right? I'll suddenly remember how to play the game and git gud
Don't worry everyone, just give it a little time for Gdubs to sell a bunch of undead stuff (that they haven't been able to move in forever because they gave no love to them), and once that stock is moved they will nerf this. Claiming "unforseen consequences" just like they did with tide is traitors in 40k after they sold a ton of cultists and poxwalkers.
NinthMusketeer wrote: I think we are all half-hoping that there is a massive unseen factor and half-dreading that there isn't.
Feel free to check back here on release day. My job gives me plenty of time to comb through the books and come up with every busted combo and broken wording in the new GHB/Core rules. Normally I'd only do my army but I've seen so many people on so many sites be either completely blindly optimistic about the changes or spreading misinformation(Oh, they said every army is definitely getting summoning! Oh Tzeentch will be worse cause horrors can't split even though there has been no indication that they won't, oh it's only units with the Summonable keyword even though no it's not, that's a death specific thing.) that I'm deeply personally invested in breaking this system as hard as possible.
(Kanluwen and Auticus have been fairly pro summoning, but they're not in the group of people I would categorize as 'blindly optimistic)
And again, just to make sure I don't come off the wrong way, I still want to wait for the full rules. I'm not saying that this is definitely how it will go down, that's just my concern. I'm sure they've playtested these rules with their combo of playtesters to make sure there are no grand oversights that would cause problems like this, and it's also likely that actual games won't go the way that we are imagining at all. Still, I'm waiting for some official word, or the full rules, before we can determine if it's horribly broken or if this is a lot of hoopla about nothing.
That's a reasonable perspective to have, in my opinion, paricularly considering GW's history.
So from my conversations and reading over the past week what I am seeing is that there are a giant chunk of people who WANT summoning to be highly influential in the game and who WANT it to be along the lines of what it used to be so long as everyone else can do it.
Which really really rubs me wrong because this is a big red warning sign considering some of these people are supposedly in the UKGT scene and are part of the playtesting...
(I have detailed above why summoning can wreck communities, even if everyone else can do it - because it forces a playstyle to have to do it and forces people to feel like they have to buy a bunch more models)
Listening to the podcast, the new "Predatory Endless spells"? Your opponent can seize control of them.
Jervis comments that there are some that will "give you a permanent buff" so there's some interesting ideas here. If an enemy is within 3" of you, you can only target that enemy with your missile weapons.
Endless spells are moved at the start of each battle round after determining who gets the first turn, with players taking it in turns to pick a spell to move, starting with the player that has the second turn that round. You’ll be able to move any Endless Spell with this move, not just the ones you control, representing their wild and untameable nature. Summon a Suffocating Gravetide and you might find yourself needing to volunteer to take the second turn in a round to stop your opponent from sending it crashing into your own units! Suddenly, always shooting for a double turn can become a very dangerous prospect indeed…
Realm selection is a core rule. It's mostly been ignored since it didn't have much effect on the game up until now unless you used the Aqshy rules from the Age of Sigmar tome (which I didn't even know about until Kanluwan pointed it out in another thread). They may actually change how the selection is made in the next edition, though. It does seem pretty important now. The previews also seem to be hinting at some sort of realm affinity or home realm mechanic that takes place during list building.
I feel like lists are going to become very interesting. Like, I will always take a spare Tidecaster JUST to spend the spellcasting to prevent my opponent from getting an Endless Spell off. We'll see how that goes down.
I'm torn on this as I am with summoning. I'm a bit concerned, mainly because I was hoping that Endless Spells would be the thing that helps balance summoning, but that's clearly not the case. It'll be interesting to see how the spell tug-of-war plays out in actual games. If nothing else, I'm loving seeing the models for the spells and am already planning on getting some to use for spells in DnD.
EnTyme wrote: Yeah. Like I said, up to this point, the realm hasn't mattered much, so it's been more or less ignored.
And if they keep the 'roll a dice and pray' system it's going to be rejected. Whether or not it's a "core" rule is irrelevant. All that matters is whether it's stupid bullgak or not and randomly winning the game because you started in Hysh and got banishment(which is by FAR the most powerful spell in the game) against my Ironjawz army is so blatantly asinine that I can't see it being accepted in matched play.
As the realms exist now, based on what information we have on them, they have no place in matched play. It's incredibly unlikely that the relics you get access to will be equally useful to both armies and the realms specific spells are inherently unbalanced both in how they effect the armies they're used against AND how they can be used by the armies that cast them. Endless spells only exacerbate this.
You're looking at tons of situations where you roll up the the table, roll for the realm you're playing in, look at their army, look at your army, shake hands and go to lunch. At best the realms will make games significantly more difficult for one player for no reason. And in an edition where armies with strong wizards and strong summoning are already at a massive advantage and where shooting is the weakest it's ever been, this is looking very, very bad so far.
Like here's one combo already Arkhan->Umbral spell portal->Banishment puts your 4" move, 10 man unit of brutes into the far corner of the board away from any heroes that could speed boost them, that unit may as well be dead for how useless it's going to be, and he can do that 4 more times. You lose outright because your opponent used things he was already taking anyway to take advantage of poorly thought out realm specific spells in a way your army isn't capable of. No ironjawz army is going to get an unbind off against arkhan, he's +3 to cast BASE AND has a longer casting range than you, and the chances of getting your own banishment off are miniscule. You'll be lucky to even make the casting value, let alone get past Arkhans unbind.
I was more referring to you and your opponent agreeing on s realm, and using a roll-off to decide if you can't, but blindly panicking and screaming "THE END IS NIGH!" also works, Erjack.
I've been reading that you will pick the realm your army comes from and that you get the realm specific bonuses of that realm to your army.
Cool idea. However if one or two realms have OP abilities compared to the others, everyone will just choose those which will end up causing heart burn.
If true of course. If true.
Another trend I've picked up on in conversations is the idea that models that can now be summoned will be jacked up in points so that spam summoning them wont break the game and in fact "spam summoning will be how you are expected to win with those armies".
EnTyme wrote: I was more referring to you and your opponent agreeing on s realm, and using a roll-off to decide if you can't, but blindly panicking and screaming "THE END IS NIGH!" also works, Erjack.
If the realm is random, and it will have to be against any two armies that benefit from different realms differently, then it will empower one army over another with no investment on either players part. This is bad. This is especially bad for tournaments. For this to not be rejected by matched play, they will have to find a better system than 'rolled a 6, cool, my army is massively better now'. A realm system is not necessarily bad(although Banishment is certainly not helping the cause any) but it being totally random absolutely IS.
It's cute that 'pointing out obvious flaws with randomly handing one player the game for free' is panicking and screaming to you though.
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auticus wrote: I've been reading that you will pick the realm your army comes from and that you get the realm specific bonuses of that realm to your army.
Cool idea. However if one or two realms have OP abilities compared to the others, everyone will just choose those which will end up causing heart burn.
If true of course. If true.
Another trend I've picked up on in conversations is the idea that models that can now be summoned will be jacked up in points so that spam summoning them wont break the game and in fact "spam summoning will be how you are expected to win with those armies".
The first system is definitely superior to 'rolled the realm my army is best on at the start of the game, aren't I skilled?', but basically becomes just additional allegiance abilities. Of all 8 realms each army will have a handful of spells/artefacts that it strongly favors. It's basically just more bookwork. For Narrative play it will be fluffy and cool but for matched play it'll just be another tab at the top of the List-builder.
The other point makes sense, but I can't really see it happening. GW are generally more conservative(and less skillful) with points changes than that kind of thing would require. The GHB 2017 was a dumpster fire of over-buffing and over-nerfing armies that managed to still miss a bunch of things(Kharadron, most of destruction).
Both are pure speculation though. They've made no indication that anything is being done to temper the power gained through free summoning(so far) and they've been incredibly vague with how the realm system will actually work.
Dude, I'm not saying you roll for the realm. How do you roll for seven options on a d6? I'm saying you and your opponent agree on a realm (like you do now). If you can't agree, you roll off and the higher roll chooses the realm. Also, I can't imagine tournaments won't specify the realm and let players know ahead of time.
It'd be pretty cool to have realm-themed tournaments with realm-themed terrain and such. Would love to have a tournament in the Realm of Metal with lots of crazy stone and metal structures.
So in its last days Fantasy became Hero-Hammer, and it sounds like they're damn insistent on 2.0 AoS becoming Wizard-Hammer.
Meanwhile, as a Dispossessed/Ironweld/Fyreslayer fan, i'm just watching the meta burn, and embracing what at a glance looks like being absolutely trash-tier.
The upside is that 8th ed WHFB wizardhammer couldn't be fixed by a trio of one-sentence house rules; 'no summoning' 'no realm spells' 'no endless spells' assuming worst comes to worst and these things have no balancing element of note there is at least a way out. That said the part where the player who summons an endless spell may not get to keep controlling it is certainly helpful.
auticus wrote: Based on the overwhelmingly positive response it would appear that wizard fight club is what the community is wanting.
I'll admit what drew me to this game was Swords & Sorcery.
I am super amped for these rules. Abilities should not be useless. It just so happens that i elected to play undead, and have Nagash all ready to go, right before the news dropped for 2.0.
I picked death knowing they were weak in 1.0. Them getting better in 2.0 is a nice bonus. In general i've observed that players on this forum want bad armies to stay bad. Not sure why though
I'd be alright with summoning if units that were summoned came at a discounted value. Say, 50% of their normal unit value or something. It would still allow you to define the upper limit to the intended size of a game, and require players to actually plan and set aside resources for their use. But it would provide enough of a value to justify jumping through the hoops needed to get those models on the table in the first place (excluding instant drops, like Alarielle's). But it should absolutely not be straight zero-cost.
I don't want bad armies. Or OP armies. I want every army to be viable.
Right now the panic is that a lot of us have lived through bad gw rules destroying our community, particularly with free summoning.
7th edition WHFB it was a bitter topic (demons and undead). 6th and 7th 40k it was a bitter topic. AOS 1.0 took it to a whole new level of stupid with chain summoning (i summon a wizard, who summons a greater demon, who summons another wizard, who summons horrors, that summon a wizard, that summons a greater demon)
I don't have a big problem with wizard fight club 2.0. I'm really after armies clashing to be honest.
Conquest finally put their rules up and I'm waiting patiently for that game to drop.
Fafnir wrote: I'd be alright with summoning if units that were summoned came at a discounted value. Say, 50% of their normal unit value or something. It would still allow you to define the upper limit to the intended size of a game, and require players to actually plan and set aside resources for their use. But it would provide enough of a value to justify jumping through the hoops needed to get those models on the table in the first place (excluding instant drops, like Alarielle's). But it should absolutely not be straight zero-cost.
If units that can get summoned came in at a discounted value, then what's the point of playing a non-summoning army? Do armies that can hold units back off the board get a 50% discount too?
Right now, we've got only a few things that are able to 'instant drop'. Alarielle has it as a "once per game" usage of an ability she has and the rest is just kind of up in the air for the fine details of the mechanisms.
auticus wrote: I don't want bad armies. Or OP armies. I want every army to be viable.
Right now the panic is that a lot of us have lived through bad gw rules destroying our community, particularly with free summoning.
7th edition WHFB it was a bitter topic (demons and undead). 6th and 7th 40k it was a bitter topic. AOS 1.0 took it to a whole new level of stupid with chain summoning (i summon a wizard, who summons a greater demon, who summons another wizard, who summons horrors, that summon a wizard, that summons a greater demon)
I don't have a big problem with wizard fight club 2.0. I'm really after armies clashing to be honest.
Conquest finally put their rules up and I'm waiting patiently for that game to drop.
The difference I see between this and older edition summoning issues is that GW is taking a more active and aggressive role in balancing their games now, even if they don't always get it right. Keep in mind that AoS is on the same rules schedule as 40k. They'll release an Errata/FAQ shortly after a book is released, and we'll get two "Big FAQs" a year to help balance things in addition to the yearly GHB points adjustment. As Ninth pointed out, all of the issues people have mentioned with the new summoning system can be fixed or adjusted either through house rules or through errata. I hated free summoning. I also hated full-point summoning. I think "conditional summoning" is an interesting compromise, and I'm willing to see how it actually plays out before I make a judgement. If it turns out to be broken, my group will make the necessary adjustments until GW does so officially, and I don't believe the current leadership will be willing to throw away the good faith they've rebuilt over the last few years just to turn a quick profit. They seem to understand that long-term success comes from a happy fanbase.
I will revisit this after June 23rd when we can objectively see how many free points the worst offenders can manage, and then decide if thats enough to be a problem or not.
As I mentioned earlier... i'm just REALLY hoping I don't feel miserable buyers remorse in a month.
I JUST spent $500 on Fyreslayers to reconcile making my old Fantasy Dwarves into a competitive contemporary army for AoS, and with all the focus on Wizards, and Summoning... I feel like without some neat inclusions in GH3, i'm going to feel awful.
Well if you're a competitive player and you've been on the gw merry go round then you know any competitive army you buy is only going to be optimal powergaming material for a short time before you have to buy the next powergaming army.
This is why I got off that merry go round eleven years ago.
auticus wrote: Well if you're a competitive player and you've been on the gw merry go round then you know any competitive army you buy is only going to be optimal powergaming material for a short time before you have to buy the next powergaming army.
This is why I got off that merry go round eleven years ago.
I wasn't even looking for "optimal power-gaming". I just wanted to naively modernize my Dwarves with some more competitive list-building options. I also didn't think they'd possibly go right back to bottom-tier quite that suddenly. :-p Its true we can't judge until the books are all out, etc... but so far the fixation on spells and summoning has me filled with dread.
These abilities now cost no reinforcement points and have been tweaked so they work once per Ghoul King. In short, this means that every Ghoul King essentially comes with a free unit, while your Courtiers will ensure they stay in the fight. Our recommendation? Take a Royal Family Warscroll Battalion, max out on Ghoul Kings of your choice and quickly multiply your army with command points for maximum efficiency.
Considering the value proposition of a Ghoul King on Terrorgeist as a Wizard and now source of guaranteed free Courtiers... their price better go way up, or we'll have... pardon the pun... a monster on our hands.
Ironically i've owned three forever with no desire to run them. :-p
auticus wrote: Well if you're a competitive player and you've been on the gw merry go round then you know any competitive army you buy is only going to be optimal powergaming material for a short time before you have to buy the next powergaming army.
This is why I got off that merry go round eleven years ago.
Yeah but there's a guilty pleasure in having a busted-ass cheese list 'in the back' in case a player gets uppity...
That said, Tzeentch and Stormcast have had top-tier status in GHB1 and 2, we'll see if they stay as such. Stormcast are the poster boys so probably, but I HOPE to be taking vindictive joy in watching Tzeentch be nerfed to oblivion.
Yesterday I was admonished on twitter by some of the tga crew that are also playtesters that my 25% sudden death rule would break certain armies that require spamming summoning to be "viable". Today with the flesh eater court reveal we see what they mean. I was going to quote the piece directly but Kanluwen already did for me.
Automatically Appended Next Post: And breaking that down at least with what we have now... each ghoul king can bring in roughly a 150 point unit. And you can have 4 in 1000 points and 6 in 2000 points.
Spend 100 points on 2 CPs. Take a batallion. Start the game with 4 CPs. Blow my load in turn 1 on 4 free units (600 points). If I have 6 heroes then in turn 2 and turn 3 I'll bring in another one for a total of 900 free points in a 2000 point game.
2900 - 2000 point game.
I don't see why they don't just say "if you're playing flesh eater courts you get an extra 500 points per 1000 points played" because essentially that's what they are doing here.
And Legion of Nagash will be similar only with recycling dead units.
Fafnir wrote: I'd be alright with summoning if units that were summoned came at a discounted value. Say, 50% of their normal unit value or something. It would still allow you to define the upper limit to the intended size of a game, and require players to actually plan and set aside resources for their use. But it would provide enough of a value to justify jumping through the hoops needed to get those models on the table in the first place (excluding instant drops, like Alarielle's). But it should absolutely not be straight zero-cost.
If units that can get summoned came in at a discounted value, then what's the point of playing a non-summoning army? Do armies that can hold units back off the board get a 50% discount too?
Right now, we've got only a few things that are able to 'instant drop'. Alarielle has it as a "once per game" usage of an ability she has and the rest is just kind of up in the air for the fine details of the mechanisms.
Wait, so free summoning is ok, but summoning for half point costs makes summoning armies OP? Can you clarify?
auticus wrote: Yesterday I was admonished on twitter by some of the tga crew that are also playtesters that my 25% sudden death rule would break certain armies that require spamming summoning to be "viable". Today with the flesh eater court reveal we see what they mean. I was going to quote the piece directly but Kanluwen already did for me.
And breaking that down at least with what we have now... each ghoul king can bring in roughly a 150 point unit. And you can have 4 in 1000 points and 6 in 2000 points.
Spend 100 points on 2 CPs. Take a batallion. Start the game with 4 CPs. Blow my load in turn 1 on 4 free units (600 points). If I have 6 heroes then in turn 2 and turn 3 I'll bring in another one for a total of 900 free points in a 2000 point game.
2900 - 2000 point game.
I don't see why they don't just say "if you're playing flesh eater courts you get an extra 500 points per 1000 points played" because essentially that's what they are doing here.
And Legion of Nagash will be similar only with recycling dead units.
I can see part of that reasoning when it comes to the "viable" part... FEC right now is so woefully weak that you could field 3k vs 2k and still lose in their current state... Given how everything has skyrocketed past them in powerlevel, you might as well reduce all the costs of each unit by a large chunk and still not consider them insane.
I've also been puzzling with this faction since this preview... The foot Ghoul King (at 120p) can bring in 10 ghouls (100p) and the monster riding ghoul kings (400/440) can summon in courtiers (up to 160p) or big gribblies (up to 160p), but they can never allow you to max out heroes due to their points cost. Additionally, you really do need the courtiers (who have no command abilities to speak of) to replenish any units. I think they can now take units above starting size (as the article implies). So realistically, you are talking about maybe 3 guys who can summon new units worth 440p (perhaps?) and then possibly some ballooning of other units through the three courtiers you could then get, but I think your 900-1000p number is more inflated than any FEC unit will ever get...
On top of that, it leaves you with an army without any proper command abilities for buffs (because the only command abilities they have, are the once per game summoning ones), no worthwhile rend options (I've seen this army snap like a twig against 10 SCE liberators with proper hero backup who tanked them the whole game), and an extremely weak magic output at best to easily take the characters out... I'm not 100% sure this army is going to tear things up, even with a "points handicap" to the opposing side.
Unless of course they start leaving in a lot of options to have the mounted ghoul king general summon twice of even three times per game (like majestic horror or attendants at court might), but until I see that, I can't judge that yet...
The amount that can be efficiently and optimally brought in via a proper power coefficient will not be known until the whole set of rules is released and min/maxers get some time to input variables into their spreadsheets.
However if its even 500-600 points, and if 2500-2000 advantage is still not good enough for an army, then I'll go back to my two year old argument that the gw point system in effect is useless for balance and is more a structuring tool than anything else.
However if its even 500-600 points, and if 2500-2000 advantage is still not good enough for an army, then I'll go back to my two year old argument that the gw point system in effect is useless for balance and is more a structuring tool than anything else.
The GW points system is absolutely rubbish and has been for the past 20 odd years in many of their game systems... But at least it's now more tweakable than it's ever been via GHB/CA.
And any competitive side to these games (old WHFB, 40k, AoS, bloodbowl) has always been about "breaking that points balance"(it just does it now by adding more to one side). This summoning thing (which they seem to be limited quite a bit more than some people are shouting) is just another way the competitive players can break it, next to hunting for the most efficient/undercosted units, or ways to stack buffs until the points assigned to the units are no longer representable for what the unit can do.
In other words: nothing new to see here! Just another new layer of trying to make your army better (or more) than it was originally designed.
And if it gets really bad in one way or another, GW is pretty hands-on these days through FAQ to remove the worst excesses of it.
FEC aren't high-tier but they certainly aren't bad. I'd say they are among the most commonly misplayed armies out there. I've seen time and again people attempt starting a FEC army then give it up as a crappy allegiance after losing a few games. They aren't actually bad, they just have a steeper learning curve than most.
Fafnir wrote: I'd be alright with summoning if units that were summoned came at a discounted value. Say, 50% of their normal unit value or something. It would still allow you to define the upper limit to the intended size of a game, and require players to actually plan and set aside resources for their use. But it would provide enough of a value to justify jumping through the hoops needed to get those models on the table in the first place (excluding instant drops, like Alarielle's). But it should absolutely not be straight zero-cost.
If units that can get summoned came in at a discounted value, then what's the point of playing a non-summoning army? Do armies that can hold units back off the board get a 50% discount too?
Right now, we've got only a few things that are able to 'instant drop'. Alarielle has it as a "once per game" usage of an ability she has and the rest is just kind of up in the air for the fine details of the mechanisms.
So wait, units that are summoned at a discount make playing non-summoning armies pointless, but units summoned for free don't? That doesn't make any sense. This is the most confusing thing you've ever said on the this board.
However if its even 500-600 points, and if 2500-2000 advantage is still not good enough for an army, then I'll go back to my two year old argument that the gw point system in effect is useless for balance and is more a structuring tool than anything else.
The GW points system is absolutely rubbish and has been for the past 20 odd years in many of their game systems... But at least it's now more tweakable than it's ever been via GHB/CA.
And any competitive side to these games (old WHFB, 40k, AoS, bloodbowl) has always been about "breaking that points balance"(it just does it now by adding more to one side). This summoning thing (which they seem to be limited quite a bit more than some people are shouting) is just another way the competitive players can break it, next to hunting for the most efficient/undercosted units, or ways to stack buffs until the points assigned to the units are no longer representable for what the unit can do.
In other words: nothing new to see here! Just another new layer of trying to make your army better (or more) than it was originally designed.
And if it gets really bad in one way or another, GW is pretty hands-on these days through FAQ to remove the worst excesses of it.
The big problems so far are that A. For the first time since probably the Eldar 7thed codex it seems like GW is going out of their way to make certain armies dramatically more powerful, including armies that REALLY didn't need it like Maggotking, DoT, and to a lesser extent, LoN. And B. GW may be hands on at FAQing things now but they're still not good at it. They tried three different times to fix the Balewind vortex and ended up with an FAQ ruling that, by raw, doesn't actually have any affect on anything.
auticus wrote: Yesterday I was admonished on twitter by some of the tga crew that are also playtesters that my 25% sudden death rule would break certain armies that require spamming summoning to be "viable". Today with the flesh eater court reveal we see what they mean. I was going to quote the piece directly but Kanluwen already did for me.
And breaking that down at least with what we have now... each ghoul king can bring in roughly a 150 point unit. And you can have 4 in 1000 points and 6 in 2000 points.
Spend 100 points on 2 CPs. Take a batallion. Start the game with 4 CPs. Blow my load in turn 1 on 4 free units (600 points). If I have 6 heroes then in turn 2 and turn 3 I'll bring in another one for a total of 900 free points in a 2000 point game.
2900 - 2000 point game.
I don't see why they don't just say "if you're playing flesh eater courts you get an extra 500 points per 1000 points played" because essentially that's what they are doing here.
And Legion of Nagash will be similar only with recycling dead units.
I can see part of that reasoning when it comes to the "viable" part... FEC right now is so woefully weak that you could field 3k vs 2k and still lose in their current state... Given how everything has skyrocketed past them in powerlevel, you might as well reduce all the costs of each unit by a large chunk and still not consider them insane.
I've also been puzzling with this faction since this preview... The foot Ghoul King (at 120p) can bring in 10 ghouls (100p) and the monster riding ghoul kings (400/440) can summon in courtiers (up to 160p) or big gribblies (up to 160p), but they can never allow you to max out heroes due to their points cost. Additionally, you really do need the courtiers (who have no command abilities to speak of) to replenish any units. I think they can now take units above starting size (as the article implies). So realistically, you are talking about maybe 3 guys who can summon new units worth 440p (perhaps?) and then possibly some ballooning of other units through the three courtiers you could then get, but I think your 900-1000p number is more inflated than any FEC unit will ever get...
On top of that, it leaves you with an army without any proper command abilities for buffs (because the only command abilities they have, are the once per game summoning ones), no worthwhile rend options (I've seen this army snap like a twig against 10 SCE liberators with proper hero backup who tanked them the whole game), and an extremely weak magic output at best to easily take the characters out... I'm not 100% sure this army is going to tear things up, even with a "points handicap" to the opposing side.
Unless of course they start leaving in a lot of options to have the mounted ghoul king general summon twice of even three times per game (like majestic horror or attendants at court might), but until I see that, I can't judge that yet...
If you take an Abhorrant Ghoulking on Terrorgeist, make him your general and give him the Double Command ability trait that the Flesh Eater Courts have, he can, BY HIMSELF, summon 960 points in 3 turns with 3 extra command points. You can take a normal FEC army, cut 10 ghouls, and Balloon your army to 2860pts, with the only possible counter being your opponent being able to kill a 14 wound monster, that is also a wizard, with most likely a 4+5++6+++, surrounded by chaff, that can heal 3d3+d6(relic) wounds across those 3 turns, all without overextending himself and letting the outflanking Horrors/Flayers steal his objectives away. If the Command abilities are once per game now that would obviously stop this, but we aren't 100% sure on that yet.
Sounds like a fun game. Sign me up, where do I spend my hundreds of dollars on this system?
So after a very disappointing day reading this FEC change, and the community changing from "you don't know that you can spam summoning stop being negative" to "well yeah thats how iconic warhammer should be, you should be able to summon as much as you want", I stepped down from the campaign events that our GW runs and we're looking for a replacement. Most of the fantasy community is once again returning to kings of war, though I'm going to try to grow out Conquest. I dn't know how that will be since KOW is more established, but I suppose we'll see.
A good many of us are going to go into wait and see mode and watch for 6-9 months while we play other games. I suppose it may be time for me to donate my armies up so that I no longer have that emotional attachment to them, and thus to what GW does. I suppose if AOS 3.0 in a few years continues along this dumpster fire of a path, that will be a lot easier to do if I'm already into another system (its just that with fantasy there hasn't really been a good system that has caught my attention and I'm hoping that that game is Conquest)
“have been tweaked so they work once per Ghoul King.”
That seems pretty clear to me. Just one summon per ghoul king per game. I will admit though, that this along with the sylvaneth is an army that will encourage you to buy more minis.
So this is another case of encouraging perhaps $100 of extra purchases to be competitive.
I understand why some people are freaking out about this and also that asking people avoid exaggeration is like an old man shouting at clouds, but I dont think the sky is falling as much as people fear.
There are lots of rumours going around that summonable units are going to all get more expensive.
Gw has touted a few points drops and none of them have been summonable so it is possible.
I would hope at the very least that summonable units lose their massive regiments bonus.
Today we will get an article on shooting. We already know from the official podcast that if you are within 3 inches of a unit you may only target that unit. I wonder what other changes there will be.
Before the news of Aos2 hit, I was grudually building up a KO army. If there has been one obvious loser with the changes we have seen so far, it is KO. I hope a faction focus will illustrate some interesting options for KO in AOS2. At the moment the only way forward would seem to be a Barak Nar anti magic list.
Fafnir wrote: I'd be alright with summoning if units that were summoned came at a discounted value. Say, 50% of their normal unit value or something. It would still allow you to define the upper limit to the intended size of a game, and require players to actually plan and set aside resources for their use. But it would provide enough of a value to justify jumping through the hoops needed to get those models on the table in the first place (excluding instant drops, like Alarielle's). But it should absolutely not be straight zero-cost.
If units that can get summoned came in at a discounted value, then what's the point of playing a non-summoning army? Do armies that can hold units back off the board get a 50% discount too?
Right now, we've got only a few things that are able to 'instant drop'. Alarielle has it as a "once per game" usage of an ability she has and the rest is just kind of up in the air for the fine details of the mechanisms.
So wait, units that are summoned at a discount make playing non-summoning armies pointless, but units summoned for free don't? That doesn't make any sense. This is the most confusing thing you've ever said on the this board.
Units that are summoned at a discount and still require you to meet certain criteria would make non-summoning armies pointless, while units summoned for free wouldn't.
Why? Because of Command Points being present in the game now and how you acquire them. 1 for every 50 points difference between your army list and the points value of the match. If someone wanted to be able to, say, run a Maggotkin of Nurgle army and game the system? They'd be able to take Plaguebearers as Battleline, paying 50% less for them(in addition to any discount for taking them in large enough numbers!) since they can get summoned, and come in under the points value for the match to get more CPs than someone running a non-summoning army.
That would be in addition to them to meeting the conditions set forth for summoning units in the army and bring more crap in without having to pay points for it(or paying 50% less...not sure how you reliably plan for that since you can't actually really plan too easily for how many Contagion Points you get per turn).
Edit note-- I guess I could have been a bit more concise in my commentary, but it comes down to this: Giving one person a way to have discounted forces(battleline no less!) when points are going to be a deciding factor as to how many of a finite resource you get is asking for trouble.
auticus wrote: Sounds like a fun game. Sign me up, where do I spend my hundreds of dollars on this system?
So after a very disappointing day reading this FEC change, and the community changing from "you don't know that you can spam summoning stop being negative" to "well yeah thats how iconic warhammer should be, you should be able to summon as much as you want", I stepped down from the campaign events that our GW runs and we're looking for a replacement. Most of the fantasy community is once again returning to kings of war, though I'm going to try to grow out Conquest. I dn't know how that will be since KOW is more established, but I suppose we'll see.
A good many of us are going to go into wait and see mode and watch for 6-9 months while we play other games. I suppose it may be time for me to donate my armies up so that I no longer have that emotional attachment to them, and thus to what GW does. I suppose if AOS 3.0 in a few years continues along this dumpster fire of a path, that will be a lot easier to do if I'm already into another system (its just that with fantasy there hasn't really been a good system that has caught my attention and I'm hoping that that game is Conquest)
Its been fun. Thanks for the discussions
I wouldn't go that far yet. If the system really is that bad a lot of the people saying it's OK will realize otherwise once they try it, and it will be house ruled into oblivion. It doesn't seem difficult to go 'no summoning' in order to fix things. Yeah, it's worse than what we have now and worse than a functioning summoning system, but AoS would still be enjoyable.
I'm moving away from the houseruling route, simply because I take 1000 kinds of hell in my community for using them. I'm now at the point where.. if I have to houserule something out, I'm better off playing a different game. What triggered me this last time was pushing out the campaign document and an undead player saying "yeah but GW said they designed the game for spam summoning and you're saying I can't now or my opponent gets a sudden death card, so you're suddenly invalidating my army".
auticus wrote: I'm moving away from the houseruling route, simply because I take 1000 kinds of hell in my community for using them. I'm now at the point where.. if I have to houserule something out, I'm better off playing a different game. What triggered me this last time was pushing out the campaign document and an undead player saying "yeah but GW said they designed the game for spam summoning and you're saying I can't now or my opponent gets a sudden death card, so you're suddenly invalidating my army".
To be honest, you're not likely to be "spam summoning" from what's being said.
The requirement for Gravesites/Contagion Points/Doohickeys or one-off abilities to bring in stuff seems to be a limiting factor. At this point, you are trying to houserule something without having the actual rules.
Why not just say "We're not going to use the new rules for this campaign"?
Fafnir wrote: I'd be alright with summoning if units that were summoned came at a discounted value. Say, 50% of their normal unit value or something. It would still allow you to define the upper limit to the intended size of a game, and require players to actually plan and set aside resources for their use. But it would provide enough of a value to justify jumping through the hoops needed to get those models on the table in the first place (excluding instant drops, like Alarielle's). But it should absolutely not be straight zero-cost.
If units that can get summoned came in at a discounted value, then what's the point of playing a non-summoning army? Do armies that can hold units back off the board get a 50% discount too?
Right now, we've got only a few things that are able to 'instant drop'. Alarielle has it as a "once per game" usage of an ability she has and the rest is just kind of up in the air for the fine details of the mechanisms.
So wait, units that are summoned at a discount make playing non-summoning armies pointless, but units summoned for free don't? That doesn't make any sense. This is the most confusing thing you've ever said on the this board.
Units that are summoned at a discount and still require you to meet certain criteria would make non-summoning armies pointless, while units summoned for free wouldn't.
Why? Because of Command Points being present in the game now and how you acquire them. 1 for every 50 points difference between your army list and the points value of the match. If someone wanted to be able to, say, run a Maggotkin of Nurgle army and game the system? They'd be able to take Plaguebearers as Battleline, paying 50% less for them(in addition to any discount for taking them in large enough numbers!) since they can get summoned, and come in under the points value for the match to get more CPs than someone running a non-summoning army.
That would be in addition to them to meeting the conditions set forth for summoning units in the army and bring more crap in without having to pay points for it(or paying 50% less...not sure how you reliably plan for that since you can't actually really plan too easily for how many Contagion Points you get per turn).
Edit note--
I guess I could have been a bit more concise in my commentary, but it comes down to this:
Giving one person a way to have discounted forces(battleline no less!) when points are going to be a deciding factor as to how many of a finite resource you get is asking for trouble.
I'm going to assume you're being willfully obtuse on this one here. I'm pretty sure no one else is thinking that I'm suggesting reducing the base cost of summonable units. Moreover, reinforcement points, at least in this edition, count as points spent for determining triumphs. This should also not be a great leap.
Fafnir wrote: I'd be alright with summoning if units that were summoned came at a discounted value. Say, 50% of their normal unit value or something. It would still allow you to define the upper limit to the intended size of a game, and require players to actually plan and set aside resources for their use. But it would provide enough of a value to justify jumping through the hoops needed to get those models on the table in the first place (excluding instant drops, like Alarielle's). But it should absolutely not be straight zero-cost.
Fafnir wrote:
I'm going to assume you're being willfully obtuse on this one here. I'm pretty sure no one else is thinking that I'm suggesting reducing the base cost of summonable units. Moreover, reinforcement points, at least in this edition, count as points spent for determining triumphs. This should also not be a great leap.
You literally posted that you would be okay with summoning if units that were summoned came at a discounted value.
I mean, maybe I misunderstood what you're trying to say but I don't think your statement was too veiled.
auticus wrote: I'm moving away from the houseruling route, simply because I take 1000 kinds of hell in my community for using them. I'm now at the point where.. if I have to houserule something out, I'm better off playing a different game. What triggered me this last time was pushing out the campaign document and an undead player saying "yeah but GW said they designed the game for spam summoning and you're saying I can't now or my opponent gets a sudden death card, so you're suddenly invalidating my army".
Good point, I forgot that your local community is... Kinda toxic in that area.
I don't see why people are panicking so much about LoN summoning. Sure, returning a block of 30 Graveguard seems scary, but so does a single unit of Skeletons deleting Archaon in 1 Turn. When you actually consider all the set-up needed for it it begins to look a lot less scary.
Out of all the summoning mechanics revealed so far I'd say Flesh-Eaters seem the strongest, but they're pretty low on the totem-poll so I'm not that worried.
MalfunctBot wrote: I don't see why people are panicking so much about LoN summoning. Sure, returning a block of 30 Graveguard seems scary, but so does a single unit of Skeletons deleting Archaon in 1 Turn. When you actually consider all the set-up needed for it it begins to look a lot less scary.
Out of all the summoning mechanics revealed so far I'd say Flesh-Eaters seem the strongest, but they're pretty low on the totem-poll so I'm not that worried.
The single unit of skeletons deleting Archaon takes MASSIVELY more setup than summoning back 1 unit of Graveguard. It's basically the difference between making homemade Timpano and boiling hotdogs.
The problem with summoning isn't so much that summoning itself is going to get out of control(although it can) but that the armies that were already crazy powerful like Tzeentch and Maggotkin are getting free units on top of their already great armies.
People have also talked about being able to 'counter' their opponents summoning like that helps THEM, which is wrong. 'Countering' your opponents summoning is still a net benefit for your opponent, it's just a smaller benefit than they would have gotten otherwise. "Oh, instead of getting an extra 200pt unit I forced a decent chunk of your army out into the middle of nowhere? OH DARN! How will I ever come back from this slightly smaller advantage?"
All said and done though, summoning is going to push good armies up and mediocre armies down and that's about it. It's actually the 'realm rules' that I'm more afraid of.
MalfunctBot wrote: I don't see why people are panicking so much about LoN summoning. Sure, returning a block of 30 Graveguard seems scary, but so does a single unit of Skeletons deleting Archaon in 1 Turn. When you actually consider all the set-up needed for it it begins to look a lot less scary.
Out of all the summoning mechanics revealed so far I'd say Flesh-Eaters seem the strongest, but they're pretty low on the totem-poll so I'm not that worried.
The single unit of skeletons deleting Archaon takes MASSIVELY more setup than summoning back 1 unit of Graveguard. It's basically the difference between making homemade Timpano and boiling hotdogs.
The problem with summoning isn't so much that summoning itself is going to get out of control(although it can) but that the armies that were already crazy powerful like Tzeentch and Maggotkin are getting free units on top of their already great armies.
People have also talked about being able to 'counter' their opponents summoning like that helps THEM, which is wrong. 'Countering' your opponents summoning is still a net benefit for your opponent, it's just a smaller benefit than they would have gotten otherwise. "Oh, instead of getting an extra 200pt unit I forced a decent chunk of your army out into the middle of nowhere? OH DARN! How will I ever come back from this slightly smaller advantage?"
All said and done though, summoning is going to push good armies up and mediocre armies down and that's about it. It's actually the 'realm rules' that I'm more afraid of.
You can just agree not to use the Realm rules.
I doubt anyone is okay with "No summoning" rules, though. So how do you replace it if GW can't balance it?
I think summoning needs to have the right balance of risk reward;
There are already inherent risks in summoning; either you can't get the summoning spell off or the summoner gets killed meaning part of your army never turns up.
There are also inherant advantages in the reinforcment point system; you don't have to decide summoned units beforehand so can summon the exact unit you need and they don't have to slog up the board.
Making summoned units cost no points removes the risk from the equation, so I'm hoping these command points are valuable enough that summoning isn't a no brainer.
auticus wrote: I'm moving away from the houseruling route, simply because I take 1000 kinds of hell in my community for using them. I'm now at the point where.. if I have to houserule something out, I'm better off playing a different game. What triggered me this last time was pushing out the campaign document and an undead player saying "yeah but GW said they designed the game for spam summoning and you're saying I can't now or my opponent gets a sudden death card, so you're suddenly invalidating my army".
I'm going to have to side with your player on this one, auticus. You're nerfing his army before seeing the big picture or even trying the rules. I can't shake the feeling that the panic over the new summoning mechanics is going to end up being like the people screaming that 40k 8th Edition would be so MSU-heavy that hordes would be useless.
I never heard that about 40k 8th. When 8th dropped we all said massed quantities of shooting was going to be the place to go, and for a while that certainly was true with conscript spam.
I'm stepping down from the campaign it and watching how it plays out. If in a year it turned out to be no big deal then great. I'll be invested in Conquest until then and if AOS is in a better place then I can just resume then.
The campaign that runs at the shop this year will have no houserules so will be a tournament list wonderland so will be a great test-bed for seeing just how bad the players here can bust it (or not bust it).
The same was said in AOS 1.0 when I started limiting summoning in Azyr Comp... that GW obviously designed the game for spam summoning and it was completely fine and I was over reacting. The same was said in 40k 6th and 7th in my campaigns when we capped summoning. That it was over reacting and the game was designed for it. The same was said in 7th ed whfb, though I was saying that because I was the power gamer back then breaking the game with it.
Now, Warhammer Community wrote me today in response to what I wrote them (same thing I've been saying here) and said that it is a valid concern and that a lot of people have sent them messages saying the same thing and that they'd pass it along to their rules developers.
I saw the MSU argument in multiple threads leading up to 8th. You may or may not be right about the strength of the new summoning mechanics. All I'm saying is you should look at the full ruleset before starting to make houserules. From what I've seen from you, you are usually right about what the rules issues will be, but you really overestimate the impact of those issues. I've still yet to see Maggotkin dominating the tournament scene. It would be nice to see you voice your concerns without immediately jumping to "this one potential issue is going to make this edition unplayable." If you feel the need to play another game, I hope you enjoy it. I'm going to at least play a few games of AoS 2.0 with the full GW rules before I decide what needs to be adjusted.
Preview for shooting and combat is out. Looks like it'll be a minor improvement, but I still expect shooting to be hugely dominant, since shooting into combat will still be done without any penalty.
Fafnir wrote: Preview for shooting and combat is out. Looks like it'll be a minor improvement, but I still expect shooting to be hugely dominant, since shooting into combat will still be done without any penalty.
Yeah, I really wish they had put in some kind of penalty for shooting into combat, either some negative or possibility of hitting your own dudes. I am glad they put something in, though, as I never did like the "I have a bunch of guys right in my face but I'm gonna just shoot that one dude on the other side of the board" thing.
EnTyme wrote: I saw the MSU argument in multiple threads leading up to 8th. You may or may not be right about the strength of the new summoning mechanics. All I'm saying is you should look at the full ruleset before starting to make houserules. From what I've seen from you, you are usually right about what the rules issues will be, but you really overestimate the impact of those issues. I've still yet to see Maggotkin dominating the tournament scene. It would be nice to see you voice your concerns without immediately jumping to "this one potential issue is going to make this edition unplayable." If you feel the need to play another game, I hope you enjoy it. I'm going to at least play a few games of AoS 2.0 with the full GW rules before I decide what needs to be adjusted.
...but I never said the maggotkin would be dominating the tournament scene. I play them. They are a mid tier army with flashes of OPness if the dice are being kind but nothing I'd ever expect see win a tournament in a power gaming context.
Spamming summoning didn't make the game unplayable in the previous incarnations. A lot of people have giant boners for it. It makes it unplayable "for me" because for me if I'm not having close games or in the game, I feel like I've wasted an afternoon (that goes both ways, if I win by a lot or lose by a lot) and for me if I'm not playing an army that also spams summons then I'm going to be at a huge disadvantage and likely have a very not fun afternoon.
The last few days a good number of people in my community made it known that there will be no houserules. So its either play it RAW or don't play it at all. If I was a betting man I'd bet the house that this is not going to end well RAW.
The last few days a good number of people in my community made it known that there will be no houserules. So its either play it RAW or don't play it at all. If I was a betting man I'd bet the house that this is not going to end well RAW.
If I was in your community, I would be saying the same thing. There's no point in making house rules before you even know what the full ruleset looks like. I also think you are over-estimating the number of units you can expect to be able to summon in a typical game. They all have limiting factors that you seem to be disregarding. You're also forgetting that GW is taking an active role in game balance, and we no longer have to wait for a new game edition or even a new GHB for balance changes to occur. In summation, your concerns are valid. Please continue to voice them and send suggestions to the GW community team, but remember that you don't have all the data yet. As someone who is so focused on statistics, I would expect you to understand that you can't hope to balance a ruleset with incomplete information.
FYI, Auticus is told with every update that his concerns are invalid only for them to have turned out entirely valid every time. This could be the time it's different, but...
I was admonished and ive stepped out of the public group and any public events. The no house rules ever extends to even if stuff is broken. They want a solid tournament community not a narrative event community and definitely not restricting min max play.
NinthMusketeer wrote: FYI, Auticus is told with every update that his concerns are invalid only for them to have turned out entirely valid every time. This could be the time it's different, but...
He's usually right on the subject of the imbalance, but he usually overstates the impact of that imbalance. Also, auticus, if your entire group has decided they don't want you use your house rules, maybe the issue isn't your group.
NinthMusketeer wrote: FYI, Auticus is told with every update that his concerns are invalid only for them to have turned out entirely valid every time. This could be the time it's different, but...
He's usually right on the subject of the imbalance, but he usually overstates the impact of that imbalance. Also, auticus, if your entire group has decided they don't want you use your house rules, maybe the issue isn't your group.
Is he? He only ever comments on the nature of things in a min-max environment, where things have entirely been as bad as predicted. I'm lucky enough to have a community that doesn't pull crap like that in casual play but at tournaments it's cheese or die.
Who said anything about the issue being my group? Thats why I left. Because what I want doesn't fit in at all with what tournament players want. Tournament min/max players don't like house rules. Thats a given. There isn't a reason why I should continue trying to push the narrative flag in a region that wants nothing to do with narratives and only cares about beating peoples' skulls in with optimized lists. My GW store manager wants narrative to be the emphasis, thats why he always asks me to run the narrative events, but those narrative events always get trashed by the powergamers coming in and donkey squatting over everyone with their LVO / Adepticon lists.
There are casuals and narrative players in my region as well, but few want to venture into the public domain because of the min max stuff that goes on in the shop.
As to "overstating" or "understating", that will depend on each individuals threshold and tolerance level.
For the summoning thing, my threshold and tolerance level sits at roughly 25%. If you summon in or get for free more than 25% of your point total in a game, that goes beyond my tolerance level. We already see that flesh eater courts can pull in 900 or so points and legion of nagash can recycle 300 point units so can easily go over that 25% threshold as well for me.
That tolerance level is set at a point where casual and narrative players tend to abandon ship and say "**** this game".
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I'm lucky enough to have a community that doesn't pull crap like that in casual play but at tournaments it's cheese or die.
hehe thats the problem. We don't get to have casual games in public. They need to be relegated to a basement or garage somewhere. If its a public game it should follow tournament standard rules and be cheese or die.
Fafnir wrote: Preview for shooting and combat is out. Looks like it'll be a minor improvement, but I still expect shooting to be hugely dominant, since shooting into combat will still be done without any penalty.
Yeah, I really wish they had put in some kind of penalty for shooting into combat, either some negative or possibility of hitting your own dudes. I am glad they put something in, though, as I never did like the "I have a bunch of guys right in my face but I'm gonna just shoot that one dude on the other side of the board" thing.
If they were to make a penalty for shooting into combat, they should do the same for magic and mixed combats involving multiple units.
Because (anecdotal evidence here!) I'm just not seeing the sheer shooting dominance that people are talking about here.
I think they need to do it for the immersion factor alone. It makes no sense to be able to pound into a melee combat and only hurt the enemy with your explosive warmachine artillery.
This is something shared (anecdotally) with the large gaming room of 80+ Kings of War players in our region that won't touch AOS at all because of rules such as that making no sense (among a few other things).
Which is a shame because at one time we were all playing one game together and now AOS is this tiny thing holding on via life support while a game like KOW has firm control here.
auticus wrote: I think they need to do it for the immersion factor alone. It makes no sense to be able to pound into a melee combat and only hurt the enemy with your explosive warmachine artillery.
It makes no sense to be able to throw things like a guy whirling a flipping fiery anvil around without causing collateral damage, yet here we are.
We also don't really have that much "explosive artillery". We have the rockets and a few cannons.
This is something shared (anecdotally) with the large gaming room of 80+ Kings of War players in our region that won't touch AOS at all because of rules such as that making no sense (among a few other things).
Which is a shame because at one time we were all playing one game together and now AOS is this tiny thing holding on via life support while a game like KOW has firm control here.
KoW found a lot of support because it let people use their models they already had. Take that away and it would have been dead. Mantic's model offerings are just bleh, even now.
There's also shops that pushed the rules for it but got caught holding the bag because of it. One of my local shops after AoS dropped started pushing Mantic's stuff hard, badmouthing AoS from the getgo to their customers. They got some people who took it up--but don't ever do anything with it now. So they're having to try to poach AoS players from the local GW. It's amusing to see.
Fafnir wrote: Preview for shooting and combat is out. Looks like it'll be a minor improvement, but I still expect shooting to be hugely dominant, since shooting into combat will still be done without any penalty.
Yeah, I really wish they had put in some kind of penalty for shooting into combat, either some negative or possibility of hitting your own dudes. I am glad they put something in, though, as I never did like the "I have a bunch of guys right in my face but I'm gonna just shoot that one dude on the other side of the board" thing.
If they were to make a penalty for shooting into combat, they should do the same for magic and mixed combats involving multiple units.
Because (anecdotal evidence here!) I'm just not seeing the sheer shooting dominance that people are talking about here.
Using NOT anecdotal evidence(tournament results) I can say with some certainty that 'shooting dominance' has been an absolute MYTH since the GHB2017 came out. You have 2 primary shooting armies that see some success(mixed order gunlines and Clowncar) a list that has ancillary shooting attacks(Fyreslayers) and 1 extremely powerful unit(Skyfires) everything else is 'meh' or worse. Aetherstrike may be frustrating to play against, but it doesn't really win games. The best armies in the game are either melee or magic and of those armies only Tzeentch really has good shooting support.
Also, the kharadron preview is the saddest thing. 'This unit that doesn't do much can retreat!...if it somehow survives being a 1 wound 4+ save model within 18" of your opponent. OH, also you can buy models from a REAL army now! Exciting right!? The point drops are nice, but outside of that they were clearly struggling to find something good to say about the army.
We also don't really have that much "explosive artillery". We have the rockets and a few cannons.
But... we have some. We also have bows, guns, and other things shooting into melees doing no damage to our friends.
I can hand waive magic because "magic". I have a harder time doing so with mortars and dragons fire and flame throwers personally.
And you ignored the point about melee weapons like the Bloodbound guys swinging anvils because...?
I mean you can handwave the bows, guns, and other shooting into melees for the most part since they're on Order units as 'disciplined troops' if you're also going to say that things like a giant soulsucking ball of death is somehow easier to believe as not having friendly fire versus Elves firing bows at people while their friends are in combat, or trained Freeguilders who have the perks to let them attack/shoot when someone else is getting charged or in combat.
Using NOT anecdotal evidence(tournament results) I can say with some certainty that 'shooting dominance' has been an absolute MYTH since the GHB2017 came out. You have 2 primary shooting armies that see some success(mixed order gunlines and Clowncar) a list that has ancillary shooting attacks(Fyreslayers) and 1 extremely powerful unit(Skyfires) everything else is 'meh' or worse. Aetherstrike may be frustrating to play against, but it doesn't really win games. The best armies in the game are either melee or magic and of those armies only Tzeentch really has good shooting support.
I've heard Aetherstrike come up a few times, but what the hell was it listwise? I had a few people accuse me of cheese locally when I started going heavy into Vanguard stuff, claiming Aetherstrike.
Also, the kharadron preview is the saddest thing. 'This unit that doesn't do much can retreat!...if it somehow survives being a 1 wound 4+ save model within 18" of your opponent. OH, also you can buy models from a REAL army now! Exciting right!? The point drops are nice, but outside of that they were clearly struggling to find something good to say about the army.
I didn't read the Kharadron preview that way personally.
I read it as "Hey, you know how most armies with shooting units can't do diddly except Fall Back during the next Movement Phase they get and not do anything because of it? Guess what--you can Fall Back during the Pile In! That means your next Shooting Phase will be just dandy."
And you ignored the point about melee weapons like the Bloodbound guys swinging anvils because...?
I mean you can handwave the bows, guns, and other shooting into melees for the most part since they're on Order units as 'disciplined troops' if you're also going to say that things like a giant soulsucking ball of death is somehow easier to believe as not having friendly fire versus Elves firing bows at people while their friends are in combat, or trained Freeguilders who have the perks to let them attack/shoot when someone else is getting charged or in combat.
I guess because every game i've played in 30 years has melee items like that in it and if there are no templates then you just target your enemy, and every game i've played in 30 years has rules for shooting into combat except for age of sigmar whcih just lets you breathe dragon fire into a melee and only hurt your enemy.
In my mind's eye the khorne guys whirling anvils aren't whirling around like the goblin fanatics (which could also hurt their own friends). They are swinging large flails. Flails are in every middle ages style game I've ever played and never hit their friends either so for me, I don't have a problem, because I dn't see them Texas Tornadoing across the table indiscriminately. I see them using a flail that is composed of a chain and an anvil.
There is no perk in existence that would let a cannonball fire into a melee and only hurt one side.
We also don't really have that much "explosive artillery". We have the rockets and a few cannons.
But... we have some. We also have bows, guns, and other things shooting into melees doing no damage to our friends.
I can hand waive magic because "magic". I have a harder time doing so with mortars and dragons fire and flame throwers personally.
And you ignored the point about melee weapons like the Bloodbound guys swinging anvils because...?
I mean you can handwave the bows, guns, and other shooting into melees for the most part since they're on Order units as 'disciplined troops' if you're also going to say that things like a giant soulsucking ball of death is somehow easier to believe as not having friendly fire versus Elves firing bows at people while their friends are in combat, or trained Freeguilders who have the perks to let them attack/shoot when someone else is getting charged or in combat.
Using NOT anecdotal evidence(tournament results) I can say with some certainty that 'shooting dominance' has been an absolute MYTH since the GHB2017 came out. You have 2 primary shooting armies that see some success(mixed order gunlines and Clowncar) a list that has ancillary shooting attacks(Fyreslayers) and 1 extremely powerful unit(Skyfires) everything else is 'meh' or worse. Aetherstrike may be frustrating to play against, but it doesn't really win games. The best armies in the game are either melee or magic and of those armies only Tzeentch really has good shooting support.
I've heard Aetherstrike come up a few times, but what the hell was it listwise? I had a few people accuse me of cheese locally when I started going heavy into Vanguard stuff, claiming Aetherstrike.
Also, the kharadron preview is the saddest thing. 'This unit that doesn't do much can retreat!...if it somehow survives being a 1 wound 4+ save model within 18" of your opponent. OH, also you can buy models from a REAL army now! Exciting right!? The point drops are nice, but outside of that they were clearly struggling to find something good to say about the army.
I didn't read the Kharadron preview that way personally.
I read it as "Hey, you know how most armies with shooting units can't do diddly except Fall Back during the next Movement Phase they get and not do anything because of it? Guess what--you can Fall Back during the Pile In! That means your next Shooting Phase will be just dandy."
Aetherstrike is a list that has the potential to let a unit of 9-12 Vanguard Raptors with longstrike crossbows shoot between 2 and 5 times in a turn. It was a A- tier list before the GHB that struggled against anything with deepstrike and couldn't really cap objectives, and has difficulty dealing with hordes, but had a brutal amount of firepower. After the GHB it went up 100pts and never had any significant tournament success again.
If its an explosive that would make it even less likely that its only going to hit one side and not the other.
Thats all irrelevant anyway. The rule isn't changing and will continue to be what it is and people will continue to stay out of the game while that rule exists if what they are looking for is a wargame that feels like an actual battle and people primarily interested in a game-game will be fine with it, and never the two will meet.
And you ignored the point about melee weapons like the Bloodbound guys swinging anvils because...?
I mean you can handwave the bows, guns, and other shooting into melees for the most part since they're on Order units as 'disciplined troops' if you're also going to say that things like a giant soulsucking ball of death is somehow easier to believe as not having friendly fire versus Elves firing bows at people while their friends are in combat, or trained Freeguilders who have the perks to let them attack/shoot when someone else is getting charged or in combat.
I guess because every game i've played in 30 years has melee items like that in it and if there are no templates then you just target your enemy, and every game i've played in 30 years has rules for shooting into combat except for age of sigmar whcih just lets you breathe dragon fire into a melee and only hurt your enemy.
In my mind's eye the khorne guys whirling anvils aren't whirling around like the goblin fanatics (which could also hurt their own friends). They are swinging large flails. Flails are in every middle ages style game I've ever played and never hit their friends either so for me, I don't have a problem, because I dn't see them Texas Tornadoing across the table indiscriminately. I see them using a flail that is composed of a chain and an anvil.
There is no perk in existence that would let a cannonball fire into a melee and only hurt one side.
Personally, I never have any issue with things not being realistic or not making sense in settings like AoS and 40k. Canonball only hits the enemy? Magic canonball. Wooden arrow pierces steel armor? Magic arrow. Bolter round pierces Titan chassis? Magic bolter. Fish can fly? Well so can dragons, which is equally as fantastical. Generally I just accept that what I know about physics, chemisty, etc only applies to this world, not any fictional one. I can understand having difficulty with that level of disconnecting from reality though.
Fafnir wrote: Preview for shooting and combat is out. Looks like it'll be a minor improvement, but I still expect shooting to be hugely dominant, since shooting into combat will still be done without any penalty.
Yeah, I really wish they had put in some kind of penalty for shooting into combat, either some negative or possibility of hitting your own dudes. I am glad they put something in, though, as I never did like the "I have a bunch of guys right in my face but I'm gonna just shoot that one dude on the other side of the board" thing.
If they were to make a penalty for shooting into combat, they should do the same for magic and mixed combats involving multiple units.
Because (anecdotal evidence here!) I'm just not seeing the sheer shooting dominance that people are talking about here.
Using NOT anecdotal evidence(tournament results) I can say with some certainty that 'shooting dominance' has been an absolute MYTH since the GHB2017 came out. You have 2 primary shooting armies that see some success(mixed order gunlines and Clowncar) a list that has ancillary shooting attacks(Fyreslayers) and 1 extremely powerful unit(Skyfires) everything else is 'meh' or worse. Aetherstrike may be frustrating to play against, but it doesn't really win games. The best armies in the game are either melee or magic and of those armies only Tzeentch really has good shooting support.
Also, the kharadron preview is the saddest thing. 'This unit that doesn't do much can retreat!...if it somehow survives being a 1 wound 4+ save model within 18" of your opponent. OH, also you can buy models from a REAL army now! Exciting right!? The point drops are nice, but outside of that they were clearly struggling to find something good to say about the army.
Wait what? 'No shooting meta, minus the top tier army with a bunch of shooting.' And TBF 'shooting meta' is an oversimplification when it should be 'shooting & direct damage magic meta'; both of those achieve the same thing and are made stronger by the double-turn. Stormcast have an awesome shooting unit (Judicators) as battleline that sees plenty of use (without mentioning Vanguard), Order soup commonly makes use of Glade Guard & Skinks, Seraphon make tons of use of the latter. Kharadron only do well at tournaments because of how much shooting they have; go to alternating turns and they don't do nearly as well.
And to approach things from the other side, pure melee armies do not do well, period.
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Kanluwen wrote: Sure, when the cannonball is solid shot rather than an explosive.
Oh--and when you're trained to know firing patterns of your support crews.
Also, things like the Wrathmongers and the guy swinging the anvil are described quite literally as whirling around like the goblin fanatics.
Specific units being unrealistic is not analogous to a basic concept of the game being unrealistic. Not that I don't dislike units such as the Skullgrinder...
There is something terribly immersion/narrative/last string of realism breaking (however you want to describe it) about the shooting and terrain rules in AoS. They’re not generally something that can be explained narratively, it’s just how the rules work. A solid shot cannon ball would potentially be even more indiscrimate in whom it kills than an explosive aimed at the periphery of an engagement.
The terrain and shooting rules are not even pretending to represent what’s happening, they’re simply attacks that happen to be made at range or pretty scenery that has little or no effect on the game. Shooting into an ongoing melee with nearly any weapon is dangerous, Even with modern high velocity and accurate firearms. A bow, from an entire unit of soldiers? There is no hand waiving that except again, it’s just how the rules work.
Which is fine, but let’s stop trying to argue that even a significant minority of shooting weapons in this game makes any kind of narrative sense shooting into a melee at full effect.
NinthMusketeer wrote: FYI, Auticus is told with every update that his concerns are invalid only for them to have turned out entirely valid every time. This could be the time it's different, but...
People think GW games are some subtle hard to figure out. Actually generally you can see what's broken and what's not pretty darn early.
Personally, I never have any issue with things not being realistic or not making sense in settings like AoS and 40k. Canonball only hits the enemy? Magic canonball. Wooden arrow pierces steel armor? Magic arrow. Bolter round pierces Titan chassis? Magic bolter. Fish can fly? Well so can dragons, which is equally as fantastical. Generally I just accept that what I know about physics, chemisty, etc only applies to this world, not any fictional one. I can understand having difficulty with that level of disconnecting from reality though.
Here's novel concept that GW has missed though. You can have magic AND have it make sense. Shock horror actually good writers have managed to do that. Not even that hard if you are professional.
NinthMusketeer wrote: FYI, Auticus is told with every update that his concerns are invalid only for them to have turned out entirely valid every time. This could be the time it's different, but...
People think GW games are some subtle hard to figure out. Actually generally you can see what's broken and what's not pretty darn early.
Personally, I never have any issue with things not being realistic or not making sense in settings like AoS and 40k. Canonball only hits the enemy? Magic canonball. Wooden arrow pierces steel armor? Magic arrow. Bolter round pierces Titan chassis? Magic bolter. Fish can fly? Well so can dragons, which is equally as fantastical. Generally I just accept that what I know about physics, chemisty, etc only applies to this world, not any fictional one. I can understand having difficulty with that level of disconnecting from reality though.
Here's novel concept that GW has missed though. You can have magic AND have it make sense. Shock horror actually good writers have managed to do that. Not even that hard if you are professional.
AoS is more greek/norse/egyptian mythology and the silmarillion. It's mythic fantasy.
In greek myth you got stuff like, Helios pulling the sun with his chariot or Hercules holding up the world. And a lot of the stuff with the Titans is weird. I suspect that the idea of "Godbeast" comes from the Titans and the world serpent. In some Egyptian Myth the god Atum created everything by masturbating and ejaculating. weird stuff like that can happen in the mortal realms.
The world of the lord of the rings/silmarillion is called "Arda" and it looks like this.
One of the reasons I like Aos so much is that they took big deliberate step away from realism. If you want realism, with guns and arrows behaving as they should, why not play historical wargames? I have always seen warhammer as a warGAME and not a WARgame, so the abstractions don't bother me.
My absolute favourite writer is Terry Pratchett, who basically invented a setting that would let him write about whatever his imagination could come up with. Aos feels a lot like that.
Eh? Pratchetts first couple Discworld novels were full of weirdness (which was mostly parody of other swords and sorcery novels, not imaginative), but that quickly settled down into hard limits with a consistency that was rarely violated. With a couple exceptions (like Golems and Trolls), they eventually turned into low fantasy lectures on real world problems, with 'racism is bad' turning up quite often.
As for historicals, the easy answer I can give you is deliberately getting history wrong by refighting battles incorrectly is super irritating.
Chikout wrote: One of the reasons I like Aos so much is that they took big deliberate step away from realism. If you want realism, with guns and arrows behaving as they should, why not play historical wargames? I have always seen warhammer as a warGAME and not a WARgame, so the abstractions don't bother me.
My absolute favourite writer is Terry Pratchett, who basically invented a setting that would let him write about whatever his imagination could come up with. Aos feels a lot like that.
Haha there is the old adage that every Wargamer eventually becomes a historical Wargamer! I keep buying books for historical game systems and will eventually take the plunge...
If you want realism, with guns and arrows behaving as they should, why not play historical wargames? I have always seen warhammer as a warGAME and not a WARgame
Because I like fantasy and what pulled me into fantasy WARgaming was WARhammer and how things operated in a way that at least made sense. I also do play historical wargames. I play Hail Caesar and Warmaster Ancients and Saga. None of those satisfy my fantasy desire however. That used to be what Warhammer was for me.
I can pose the same question to you. If you just want a warGAME why not play a CCG like the Warhammer Card game or Magic the Gathering?
I have no problem with AOS as a setting. I want my battles to feel like battles. I want my battles to reflect cinema and their books (which is something their marketing team continues to stress is their goal). The current game does not reflect any movies or any of their books in any way other than the army types like stormcast are present.
There are no movies nor are there any black library books where a dragon breathes fire over a swirling melee and only hurts the enemy, or a unit of archers or gunners sniper fires into a melee and only hits the enemy. Nor are there any movies or books where our heroic fantasy heroes are leading the battle from the corner of the table cowering in fear because every ranged shot in the other force will target them otherwise. (skaven excluded)
So the design team, stating that they want their game to be this huge cinematic and narrative experience, have a lot of ground to cover to back up their words. Also as their stated goal is for Age of Sigmar to be the #1 fantasy WARgame on the market, they have to find a way to bridge the divide between the people like me, of which I find I'm not as rare as you would like to think, its just that most people like me don't bother checking out AOS boards anymore so you don't hear from them, and getting them engaged with the game again over their competitors. There are many ways to accomplish that without requiring 100 pages of rules or whatever the counter argument to that desire usually is.
auticus wrote: So the design team, stating that they want their game to be this huge cinematic and narrative experience, have a lot of ground to cover to back up their words.
Pretty ironic that their big push for 'narrative' driven gaming also came at the time when they killed the setting with 30 years of worldbuilding and history and replaced it with the very bare bones of at setting and the promise of filling it in later..
If you want realism, with guns and arrows behaving as they should, why not play historical wargames? I have always seen warhammer as a warGAME and not a WARgame
Because I like fantasy and what pulled me into fantasy WARgaming was WARhammer and how things operated in a way that at least made sense. I also do play historical wargames. I play Hail Caesar and Warmaster Ancients and Saga. None of those satisfy my fantasy desire however. That used to be what Warhammer was for me.
I can pose the same question to you. If you just want a warGAME why not play a CCG like the Warhammer Card game or Magic the Gathering?
I have no problem with AOS as a setting. I want my battles to feel like battles. I want my battles to reflect cinema and their books (which is something their marketing team continues to stress is their goal). The current game does not reflect any movies or any of their books in any way other than the army types like stormcast are present.
There are no movies nor are there any black library books where a dragon breathes fire over a swirling melee and only hurts the enemy, or a unit of archers or gunners sniper fires into a melee and only hits the enemy. Nor are there any movies or books where our heroic fantasy heroes are leading the battle from the corner of the table cowering in fear because every ranged shot in the other force will target them otherwise. (skaven excluded)
So the design team, stating that they want their game to be this huge cinematic and narrative experience, have a lot of ground to cover to back up their words. Also as their stated goal is for Age of Sigmar to be the #1 fantasy WARgame on the market, they have to find a way to bridge the divide between the people like me, of which I find I'm not as rare as you would like to think, its just that most people like me don't bother checking out AOS boards anymore so you don't hear from them, and getting them engaged with the game again over their competitors. There are many ways to accomplish that without requiring 100 pages of rules or whatever the counter argument to that desire usually is.
If I may be so bold - if they fixed this, how would you feel? Are there other issues you have that follow this theme? I don't mean to imply that this is somehow a small issue since it's clear it means a lot to you.
The -1 to hit charcters coming up in 2.0 is a positive change that I liked, though not far enough, I viewed it as a compromise.
There are pretty much a solid two house rules that I currently insist on to do AOS. Resolve those two issues and have iit so I don't have to houserule anymore and that'd be great:
* shooting through terrain gives a -1 penalty to hit
* shooting into a melee also gives a -1 penalty to hit. I used to have it where you randomized hits into your buddies but then to make it just easier and not need a second roll, the penalty to hit was acceptable. (that was a compromise on my part to at least make it more difficult to hit into combat)
These stack to a max of -3. These have worked for the most part quite well. Most (80% or so) shots are not penalized at all since they are not in cover fully or not in combat. It makes terrain and cover matter a bit, and also influenced lists to not just be static gunlines. Both things I viewed as positive and the campaign guys (not the powergamers that hate houserules) were all for it because it made the game "make more sense" to everyone (there's a reason I've been able to do this for over 20 years, there are a lot of people that like those type of rules, the problem has always been the minmax guys hate houserules but want to do public campaigns for some reason even though they aren't tournaments)
The other issues I have with AOS are their point system and those being broken, with things like focusing on spamming mortal wounds and the like making casual games not fun, but that issue is in every game (powergaming vs casual) so I just accept that as part of needing to screen powergamers out of casual campaigns if they can't reign it in.
Given that basically all non-hero shooting is 4+, a -3 to hit is unacceptable. Not unless we give -1 to hit for CC units attacking units in Cover, -1 to hit for CC units attacking in a multi-unit melee, etc.
auticus wrote: The -1 to hit charcters coming up in 2.0 is a positive change that I liked, though not far enough, I viewed it as a compromise.
There are pretty much a solid two house rules that I currently insist on to do AOS. Resolve those two issues and have iit so I don't have to houserule anymore and that'd be great:
* shooting through terrain gives a -1 penalty to hit
* shooting into a melee also gives a -1 penalty to hit. I used to have it where you randomized hits into your buddies but then to make it just easier and not need a second roll, the penalty to hit was acceptable. (that was a compromise on my part to at least make it more difficult to hit into combat)
These stack to a max of -3. These have worked for the most part quite well. Most (80% or so) shots are not penalized at all since they are not in cover fully or not in combat. It makes terrain and cover matter a bit, and also influenced lists to not just be static gunlines. Both things I viewed as positive and the campaign guys (not the powergamers that hate houserules) were all for it because it made the game "make more sense" to everyone (there's a reason I've been able to do this for over 20 years, there are a lot of people that like those type of rules, the problem has always been the minmax guys hate houserules but want to do public campaigns for some reason even though they aren't tournaments)
The other issues I have with AOS are their point system and those being broken, with things like focusing on spamming mortal wounds and the like making casual games not fun, but that issue is in every game (powergaming vs casual) so I just accept that as part of needing to screen powergamers out of casual campaigns if they can't reign it in.
I kind of like those houserules you have there, but they seem really heavy handed against some armies. Some of those situations basically make it so units can be immune to shooting. That doesn't seem right. Though I think you could probably just steal from the 40k side of things instead of adding in so much -1 to hit. For example, Valhallans have a stratagem that lets them shoot into combat, but any hit roll of 1 is resolved against the friendly unit instead of the enemy. Makes for some fun, tense moments I think. The only issue I have with the strat is I can only do it once. I'd love to just blast into my own troops more often, safety be damned Guess there could also be an opportunity there for friendly fire to affect bravery a bit, too.
I also think the fear is that official rules that reduce or disallow shooting into combat would result in shooting heavy armies being very easy to tie down and silence. That may be okay for some (hell, it might even make sense) but I'm not a huge fan of reducing the efficacy of a fantasy army's identity to serve realism. Shooting only the enemy you're locked in combat with, and the new 'look out sir' rule seem to be solid compromises that address the biggest issues people seem to be having with shooting while not going overboard.
Do you find your house rules need to shift often as new books come out and a meta forms around them?
EnTyme wrote: I've always thought rolls of "1" to hit into melee should hit friendly units in the melee.
Lord of the Rings once upon a time had a rule where the bad guys could shoot into a combat, but had to roll a 50/50 roll first to see if they hit friend or foe.
If you are going into the game with the mentality that you should be bringing pure gunlines then yeah. Those rules can be heavy handed. But pure gunlines shooting through three layers of forests with no penalty is RIDICULOUS (caps intentional).
Of course GW also already gives us OFFICIAL rules (caps intenttional). Play in Aqshy and every piece of terrain totally blocks line of sight, and thats written in GW material.
So... I don't find adding a -1 to hit through layers of terrain ridiculous at all considering GW already gave us an OFFICIAL version that is similar only doesn't even let you try at all.
Additionally the amount of -3 to hit is like 1-2% of the entire game so stating that its ridiculous and game breaking is very much overblown. I can count on one hand the number of times that a penalty got that high in 20+ games using it.
At the most its -1 to hit with some -2s to hit. What it does require is that your static gunlines actually have to move to hit something trying to stay in cover. Like what would really happen in a battle.
And 6s always hit is a core rule so even 4+ to hit -3 will hit on 6.
Do you find your house rules need to shift often as new books come out and a meta forms around them?
Not really because those are the only real house rules we've used and to-date nothing GW has done has altered those.
The private campaign group I am now forming are all of the mentality that they aren't coming in to bust the game so we don't have to worry about capping power scores. What I did up until last fall was plug in everyone's lists into Azyr Comp's calculate (if you don't remember what that is, Azyr comp was the first fan comp for AOS before GHB killed all of the fan comps) and that gives me a power score for each army.
We capped power scores so lists would be jigged around until they conformed to the azyr comp power score for a casual event. That actually worked tremendously well and most all games were a lot closer than using GHB points (because Azyr Comp was written to minimize list building so the points values were closer reflective of true power)
I've always thought rolls of "1" to hit into melee should hit friendly units in the melee.
I thought of that a couple years ago but there are a lot of missile units or heroes that can reroll 1s so that would make this rule negligble and not really accomplish much so I didn't go that route.
EnTyme wrote: I've always thought rolls of "1" to hit into melee should hit friendly units in the melee.
Lord of the Rings once upon a time had a rule where the bad guys could shoot into a combat, but had to roll a 50/50 roll first to see if they hit friend or foe.
They still do have this as the basis of their rule. I love it. The middle earth system is something I wish AOS would have been instead (that was the rumor back in 2015 and a lot of people were very excited about it)
auticus wrote: If you are going into the game with the mentality that you should be bringing pure gunlines then yeah. Those rules can be heavy handed. But pure gunlines shooting through three layers of forests with no penalty is RIDICULOUS (caps intentional).
Of course GW also already gives us OFFICIAL rules (caps intenttional). Play in Aqshy and every piece of terrain totally blocks line of sight, and thats written in GW material.
So... I don't find adding a -1 to hit through layers of terrain ridiculous at all considering GW already gave us an OFFICIAL version that is similar only doesn't even let you try at all.
Additionally the amount of -3 to hit is like 1-2% of the entire game so stating that its ridiculous and game breaking is very much overblown. I can count on one hand the number of times that a penalty got that high in 20+ games using it.
At the most its -1 to hit with some -2s to hit. What it does require is that your static gunlines actually have to move to hit something trying to stay in cover. Like what would really happen in a battle.
And 6s always hit is a core rule so even 4+ to hit -3 will hit on 6.
Do you find your house rules need to shift often as new books come out and a meta forms around them?
Not really because those are the only real house rules we've used and to-date nothing GW has done has altered those.
The private campaign group I am now forming are all of the mentality that they aren't coming in to bust the game so we don't have to worry about capping power scores. What I did up until last fall was plug in everyone's lists into Azyr Comp's calculate (if you don't remember what that is, Azyr comp was the first fan comp for AOS before GHB killed all of the fan comps) and that gives me a power score for each army.
We capped power scores so lists would be jigged around until they conformed to the azyr comp power score for a casual event. That actually worked tremendously well and most all games were a lot closer than using GHB points (because Azyr Comp was written to minimize list building so the points values were closer reflective of true power)
I've always thought rolls of "1" to hit into melee should hit friendly units in the melee.
I thought of that a couple years ago but there are a lot of missile units or heroes that can reroll 1s so that would make this rule negligble and not really accomplish much so I didn't go that route.
EnTyme wrote: I've always thought rolls of "1" to hit into melee should hit friendly units in the melee.
Lord of the Rings once upon a time had a rule where the bad guys could shoot into a combat, but had to roll a 50/50 roll first to see if they hit friend or foe.
They still do have this as the basis of their rule. I love it. The middle earth system is something I wish AOS would have been instead (that was the rumor back in 2015 and a lot of people were very excited about it)
I don't think I ever said it was gamebreaking. I don't think I even came close to implying that since I thought it was clear I haven't played with your houserules and was only sharing my initial impressions. I only said I thought it was a tad heavy handed, and I'm sorry if there's been some kind of misunderstanding here. I was hoping to have a friendly discussion on the way you view this game since you have a unique perspective, I meant no offense.
Thanks for sharing, I'll leave it at that and won't expand any further.
I was looking at Para Bellum's Conquest rules this weekend and one of the first things I said was "wow I don't have to houserule ANY of this, because the rules all make sense and battles behave like battles."
That being said, it was written by Alessio - whom I have great admiration for as a game dev and who writes rules in a way that I really like. In Conquest, terrain "obscures" and if you are "obscured" you don't get to fiire as many ranged dice (reflecting that the unit is in some kind of cover)
Doesn't require 100 extra pages of rules either. Its very easy and makes a lot of sense and makes terrain matter a lot more than it does in AOS.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Lemondish... I was responding to this when i used "game breaking":
Given that basically all non-hero shooting is 4+, a -3 to hit is unacceptable.
Automatically Appended Next Post: As to -1 to hit in melee if behind cover, walls used to have that rule, and thats a rule that I'd like to see come back as well so if you are defending a wall or on a fortress wall, you get some kind of cover against both melee and shooting.
I like the way they're doing endless spells, having something that costs 20pts to throw into a list to round things out is actually awesome and it seems like, while you will absolutely need something like a Kharadron Navigator or Collar of Khorne, being able to dispel them in your hero phase means they don't just run over non-magic armies.
The 20pt thing is the bigger deal though, for those that don't know, a large portion of the US(and presumably NA) meta doesn't use Triumphs at all.
To answer your question Auticus. I like this more than a ccg because of the physicality of it and I like painting and also because there is a strategic layer to it.
I can understand the frustration of seeing a game move away from a style you prefered, but the nature of the modern market is that there are many great alternatives, whether it is conquest, Kings of war, 9th age, GW's own lotr game or the game of thrones game.
You always seemed like someone who disliked the very core of what aos is. I am surprised you stuck it out as long as you have.
I am surprised you stuck it out as long as you have.
When you have a $15,000 investment in something, it keeps you hooked. A great many alternatives doesn't let me really use that investment any longer, and there comes a point when having to paint whole new armies for things gets tedious. Truth be told if I had known that the investment of my time and money would have turned out how it did, I would have avoided warhammer, but you can't see years into the future so here we are.
I do dislike the core of AOS because the core of AOS is to me a gamey-game that has nothing to do with battles or immersion and are things I tend to have no interest in, and I think that it could be a lot more than what it is now. I also know there are a lot a lot a lot of people like me watching in the wings that feel the same way, so I will at least give voice to that in discussions until places like the TGA or facebook groups ban me because they don't want to see AOS move beyond a shade beyond a simple board game or ccg.
AOS could always remain what it is now and the rules guys give us a few more "advanced" rules. Many games do just that. That gives everyone something that they want and events can all pick and choose what they want to use.
AOS has a lot of cool things that I like too. There are just a few mechanics that I really hate and on top of that the player base has turned tabletop gaming into more of a spectator esport based on winning in a list building phase than what had originally hooked me. Good rules can circumvent that (like having a proper point system that is a lot harder to powergame). I know that AOS *could* be a great game that really does engage many facets of the wargaming community, not just the gamey-game players (I think that having a gamey-game version is fine, but I think to be the #1 fantasy wargame that GW claims is their goal they are going to have to find a way to transcend gamey-game rules, at the very least as an optional set of alternatives)
The 20pt thing is the bigger deal though, for those that don't know, a large portion of the US(and presumably NA) meta doesn't use Triumphs at all.
This is truth. Triumphs are not used, nor are a solid 80% of the game rules beyond the core.
auticus wrote: The -1 to hit charcters coming up in 2.0 is a positive change that I liked, though not far enough, I viewed it as a compromise.
There are pretty much a solid two house rules that I currently insist on to do AOS. Resolve those two issues and have iit so I don't have to houserule anymore and that'd be great:
* shooting through terrain gives a -1 penalty to hit
* shooting into a melee also gives a -1 penalty to hit. I used to have it where you randomized hits into your buddies but then to make it just easier and not need a second roll, the penalty to hit was acceptable. (that was a compromise on my part to at least make it more difficult to hit into combat)
These stack to a max of -3. These have worked for the most part quite well. Most (80% or so) shots are not penalized at all since they are not in cover fully or not in combat. It makes terrain and cover matter a bit, and also influenced lists to not just be static gunlines. Both things I viewed as positive and the campaign guys (not the powergamers that hate houserules) were all for it because it made the game "make more sense" to everyone (there's a reason I've been able to do this for over 20 years, there are a lot of people that like those type of rules, the problem has always been the minmax guys hate houserules but want to do public campaigns for some reason even though they aren't tournaments)
The other issues I have with AOS are their point system and those being broken, with things like focusing on spamming mortal wounds and the like making casual games not fun, but that issue is in every game (powergaming vs casual) so I just accept that as part of needing to screen powergamers out of casual campaigns if they can't reign it in.
I guess if you're not playing competitively(and especially if you're not using points) these would work, but honestly shooting is pretty underwhelming these days. There are only 4 armies that can have shooting as a strategy and 2 of those armies(mixed order and Tzeentch) have stronger builds focusing on combat/magic and the other 2(kharadron and to a MUCH lesser extent Kunnin Ruck) have fallen off massively. Things like Judicators and Kurnoths still see success, but they're not particularly powerful, just consistently useful. In a competitive environment, these changes, especially if they were combined with the other changes this edition, would limit shooting to basically just 1-2 units of skyfires. They also combo with other things oddly. You could make an entire DoK Army -2 up to -4 to shooting from turn 2 on(assuming good terrain, competitively built armies tend to hit combat bottom of 1 top of 2 or sooner depending on the list.) with their characters being -4 or -5 and Morathi topping out at -6. You could get a stardrake to -5 as well.
If it works for your group, more power to ya though.
auticus wrote: If you are going into the game with the mentality that you should be bringing pure gunlines then yeah. Those rules can be heavy handed. But pure gunlines shooting through three layers of forests with no penalty is RIDICULOUS (caps intentional).
The penalty is that the enemy unit gets +1 to their saves. Many shooting attacks have 0 Rend. Look at Namarti Reavers, Allopexes, and Leviadons. Weight of fire is supposed to make up for the lack of a Rend.
Of course GW also already gives us OFFICIAL rules (caps intenttional). Play in Aqshy and every piece of terrain totally blocks line of sight, and thats written in GW material.
So... I don't find adding a -1 to hit through layers of terrain ridiculous at all considering GW already gave us an OFFICIAL version that is similar only doesn't even let you try at all.
Which means nothing. The rule was that if you couldn't draw line of sight, you couldn't shoot the thing.
Additionally the amount of -3 to hit is like 1-2% of the entire game so stating that its ridiculous and game breaking is very much overblown. I can count on one hand the number of times that a penalty got that high in 20+ games using it.
Your claim was that you wanted to see a -1 to Hit for firing at units in Cover, -1 for shooting into Combat, in addition to the -1 for targeting a Hero. That's where I got the "-3 to hit" from.
At the most its -1 to hit with some -2s to hit. What it does require is that your static gunlines actually have to move to hit something trying to stay in cover. Like what would really happen in a battle.
I mean if you want realism, then you'd have a separate shooting mode for archers compared to the other stuff where they're firing arcing shots at units in cover rather than trying to hit specific individuals.
Hell, more than that--one could say that Namarti should be capped to always hit on their stated score no matter what. They're blind, they're not going to get futzed by some line of sight nonsense!
And 6s always hit is a core rule so even 4+ to hit -3 will hit on 6.
So? Doesn't change that it's a silly thing.
I've always thought rolls of "1" to hit into melee should hit friendly units in the melee.
I thought of that a couple years ago but there are a lot of missile units or heroes that can reroll 1s so that would make this rule negligble and not really accomplish much so I didn't go that route.
And there's a lot of melee units and heroes that can reroll 1s too.
New seraphon teaser released. No point chart to go off of but looks like they can easily bank a bunch of their points to summon.
Slaan can give up each of their spells for a sweet 3 conjuration points, plus 1 sweet conjuration point if the general is a slaan (why wouldn't he be?) and another D3 pointts if there are astrolith bearers on the table.
At 6 points they can start summoning stuff.
And slaan cast 3 spells... so if I want to cheese weazel I just bank all my poiints for conjuring. Now I have 10 + d3 points per turn, and 6 is my threshold to start summoning. So I will likely have roughly 12 points a turn banking, just make sure to hide the slaan and astrolith bearer in a dark corner somewhere out of sight.
If its anything like the nurgle table, the bastilladon baby factory will be pumping those monsters out on around 12-18.
"But that means they can't cast any of their other coo spells Auticus"
If I can pump out 2-3 bastilladons for free, I don't need my other spells right away. I can save those for after I've made the game lopsided in my favor (unless my opponent is also spam summoning)
So? Doesn't change that it's a silly thing
K. I'm done arguing over subjective opinions being right or wrong. I'm not trying to change your opinion. You won't change mine. We'll just call it good at that.
Which means nothing. The rule is that the smoke and debris is so thick around the terrain features that it prevents you from seeing over things like woods, buildings, and walls+fences.
Not that you're blocked from seeing through them.
Thats totally not how I've seen the warhammer guys go on about it for their events that were there a couple years ago. In an event packet they even warned that the fire realm was used which meant you couldn't see through terrain features to target things beyond it so to design your lists accordingly. (I ran the event locally, it was downloadable for a bit on the gw website. This was back in 2016.)
K. I'm done arguing over subjective opinions being right or wrong. I'm not trying to change your opinion. You won't change mine. We'll just call it good at that.
Putting it politely, I feel like you're letting your personal feelings cloud your discussion in this thread a bit much. You don't have to be positive, you don't have to be negative--but man, it's a downer to just hear about how your group is upset with you because you're putting up houserules before the edition is even up for preorder.
Which means nothing. The rule is that the smoke and debris is so thick around the terrain features that it prevents you from seeing over things like woods, buildings, and walls+fences.
Not that you're blocked from seeing through them.
Thats totally not how I've seen the warhammer guys go on about it for their events that were there a couple years ago. In an event packet they even warned that the fire realm was used which meant you couldn't see through terrain features to target things beyond it so to design your lists accordingly. (I ran the event locally, it was downloadable for a bit on the gw website. This was back in 2016.)
Sorry, that's me explaining things poorly.
The rule, as detailed on page 147 of the main rulebook, is that you couldn't see over a terrain feature to any targets that lie beyond it.
Someone in said terrain could still be targeted however. It was fairly (sorry for the pun) heated discussion at the time.
Ah ok. Yeah in the terrain you can still see the target, no question. I was talking about shooting through forests to beyond them, things like that.
it's a downer to just hear about how your group is upset with you because you're putting up houserules before the edition is even up for preorder.
They aren't upset with me. They just made it be known that any public events should all follow tournament standard rules and never have houserules anymore because the environment they are trying to foster is a tournament oriented environment, and public events with houserules confuse people because events with houserules should be private and not in the shop. One even double underlined that a GW shop should never have any houserules in it ever because when he buys his armies it is with the understanding that he knows what is broken or overpowered and thats why he buys them because thats how you play competitively, and houserules kneecap that and screws him over, and thats a waste of his time and money.
My GW manager liked when I ran public campaigns because it emphasized narrative more, but a good chunk of players are not interested in that, so I stepped out of the way recently. He can deal with that however he feels he needs to, its his store. At this point I'd like to steer the conversation away from the AOS players in my city if we could and focus on the other stuff like tthe new changes or continue to discuss wishlisting or whatever.
Seraphon preview is up, looks like with a Slann+Astrolith bearer you'll be able get roughly 3 Terradon Riders(at the cost of 3 spells) per turn and it can be stopped by killing the slann+ any astrolith.
Positives: Seraphon are a solid B+ tier army so getting free units isn't as bad as Tzeentch and Maggotkin getting them. The summoning is very limited and requires using ACTUAL resources rather than something as inconsequential as Command Points(As long as a CP is cheaper than a unit they'll be an inconsequential resource for a summoning army.) And the table is fairly limited. You'll have to give up 3 spells and roll a 2 or higher on the astrolith to afford a unit of Terradon riders every turn. You'll likely hit a bastiladon every 2 turns doing this(pretty much guaranteed that if Terradon riders are 12 Bastiladon will be 24) , but the lost firepower from the Slann spells makes this okayish, It'll take 2 turns of bastiladon shooting to even out the amount of damage lost from 2 turns of your Slann losing 3 spells(most likely).
Negative: Restricts list building. Slann as a general and at least one astrolith bearer are 100% mandatory(assuming there are no further mechanics.) No mentions of the EotG means that it's most likely unchanged, so you have a pretty reasonable chance of getting summoning off with the Slann Reroll. Might lead to gimmick Quad engine lists that just pray for summoning units every turn. Could get even crazier if you use the summoning to summon more engines. Theoretically, you could end turn two with 17 engines of the gods on the board.
Then again, who knows if that's even still a thing yet?
auticus wrote: New seraphon teaser released. No point chart to go off of but looks like they can easily bank a bunch of their points to summon.
Slaan can give up each of their spells for a sweet 3 conjuration points, plus 1 sweet conjuration point if the general is a slaan (why wouldn't he be?) and another D3 pointts if there are astrolith bearers on the table.
At 6 points they can start summoning stuff.
And slaan cast 3 spells... so if I want to cheese weazel I just bank all my poiints for conjuring. Now I have 10 + d3 points per turn, and 6 is my threshold to start summoning. So I will likely have roughly 12 points a turn banking, just make sure to hide the slaan and astrolith bearer in a dark corner somewhere out of sight.
If its anything like the nurgle table, the bastilladon baby factory will be pumping those monsters out on around 12-18.
"But that means they can't cast any of their other coo spells Auticus"
If I can pump out 2-3 bastilladons for free, I don't need my other spells right away. I can save those for after I've made the game lopsided in my favor (unless my opponent is also spam summoning)
The summoned units do have to be placed within 12" of the Slann or banner, so hiding them in the corner would mean your summoned units will be pretty far from whatever you want them to do.
auticus wrote: New seraphon teaser released. No point chart to go off of but looks like they can easily bank a bunch of their points to summon.
Slaan can give up each of their spells for a sweet 3 conjuration points, plus 1 sweet conjuration point if the general is a slaan (why wouldn't he be?) and another D3 pointts if there are astrolith bearers on the table.
At 6 points they can start summoning stuff.
And slaan cast 3 spells... so if I want to cheese weazel I just bank all my poiints for conjuring. Now I have 10 + d3 points per turn, and 6 is my threshold to start summoning. So I will likely have roughly 12 points a turn banking, just make sure to hide the slaan and astrolith bearer in a dark corner somewhere out of sight.
If its anything like the nurgle table, the bastilladon baby factory will be pumping those monsters out on around 12-18.
"But that means they can't cast any of their other coo spells Auticus"
If I can pump out 2-3 bastilladons for free, I don't need my other spells right away. I can save those for after I've made the game lopsided in my favor (unless my opponent is also spam summoning)
So? Doesn't change that it's a silly thing
K. I'm done arguing over subjective opinions being right or wrong. I'm not trying to change your opinion. You won't change mine. We'll just call it good at that.
Which means nothing. The rule is that the smoke and debris is so thick around the terrain features that it prevents you from seeing over things like woods, buildings, and walls+fences.
Not that you're blocked from seeing through them.
Thats totally not how I've seen the warhammer guys go on about it for their events that were there a couple years ago. In an event packet they even warned that the fire realm was used which meant you couldn't see through terrain features to target things beyond it so to design your lists accordingly. (I ran the event locally, it was downloadable for a bit on the gw website. This was back in 2016.)
The GHB rules for Aqshy cause all terrain but hills to block LoS. The specific wording is 'cannot see targets that lie beyond them'. So Auticus is right as of GHB 2017.
auticus wrote: New seraphon teaser released. No point chart to go off of but looks like they can easily bank a bunch of their points to summon.
Slaan can give up each of their spells for a sweet 3 conjuration points, plus 1 sweet conjuration point if the general is a slaan (why wouldn't he be?) and another D3 pointts if there are astrolith bearers on the table.
At 6 points they can start summoning stuff.
And slaan cast 3 spells... so if I want to cheese weazel I just bank all my poiints for conjuring. Now I have 10 + d3 points per turn, and 6 is my threshold to start summoning. So I will likely have roughly 12 points a turn banking, just make sure to hide the slaan and astrolith bearer in a dark corner somewhere out of sight.
If its anything like the nurgle table, the bastilladon baby factory will be pumping those monsters out on around 12-18.
"But that means they can't cast any of their other coo spells Auticus"
If I can pump out 2-3 bastilladons for free, I don't need my other spells right away. I can save those for after I've made the game lopsided in my favor (unless my opponent is also spam summoning)
The summoned units do have to be placed within 12" of the Slann or banner, so hiding them in the corner would mean your summoned units will be pretty far from whatever you want them to do.
You still have the option to take disposable astrolith bearers(you only need 1 for the D3 points) Or just taking units that shoot(bastiladon) or units that are fast. It's not the worst summoning system we've seen, but it's not going to be easy to stop either.
So as I said above, a slaan with astrolith is going to be getting 11-13 summoning points a turn.
A player with a working pulse and capability to draw breath will keep a wall between his slaan and anything that can hurt it.
Getting 22-26 points by turn 2, I am betting my house bastilladon are on there for 18-24 points. If I'm minmaxing summoning you bet that I'm going to try to pump out as many bastilladon as I can (or engines of the gods) so feasible to do 2-3 a game extra.
EDIT: yeah turns 2,3, and 4 I can pump out a bastilladon if they are 18 points to summon (my guess that they will be 18).
At least this is what the three seraphon players here did before they capped summoning with reinforcement points. Each one had 4-5 in their collection purely to summon because they are that good and this system is... well... makes the choice for you in my opinion. Yeah slaan stop getting their other spells but getting two free bastilladon in the game will be worth 3-4 turns of no casting anything else with them, particularly when they can still get skink wizards to cast other things. And stopping this will not be trivial.
Nurgle contagion points are a lot more difficult to pull off and it takes 28 points to summon a greater demon which in my games takes about 4 turns to get. I put a bastilladon as in the same realm as a greater demon.
Automatically Appended Next Post: The natural counter to this is... spamming mortal wounds.
First glance at the Seraphon summoning feels "fluffy and kinda neat," but I'm sure it will be open to abuse. I do hope that Ripperdactyls are appropriately pointed and cost a lot to summon, and hope Bastilodons are really expensive because that's a lot of (currently very efficient) points to deal with.
Interesting, too, that they seem to have limited it to Slaan, not Skink Starpriests, etc.
Yeah, I'm a lizard player and I'm a bit worried about it. I currently keep about 240+ points already to summon in my list. So even if the slaan goes up significantly (because I haz one of those too) I'm still going to be way ahead. Add in that like Auticus said I can easily add 80-120pts per turn if I take the little stuff or probably 240+ pts in 2 turns is kinda nuts. Yes, it's "only" 400-600pts extra per game and a bump of 100pts on the slaan will eat into that but that's still significant. I'm really hope we see a drop in non summoning armies units kinda across the board. My Ironjawz are going to need it
Hulksmash wrote: Yeah, I'm a lizard player and I'm a bit worried about it. I currently keep about 240+ points already to summon in my list. So even if the slaan goes up significantly (because I haz one of those too) I'm still going to be way ahead. Add in that like Auticus said I can easily add 80-120pts per turn if I take the little stuff or probably 240+ pts in 2 turns is kinda nuts. Yes, it's "only" 400-600pts extra per game and a bump of 100pts on the slaan will eat into that but that's still significant. I'm really hope we see a drop in non summoning armies units kinda across the board. My Ironjawz are going to need it
Is it really worth spending over 400 points on a Slann and an Astrolith Bearer to act as summon batteries just to summon 400 points worth of other units? Seems like a minor benefit with a major list building limitation.
What are three bastilladons worth? Because my answer would always be "yes yes and yes" to your question is it really worth taking to be able to get 3 extra bastilladon in a game on top of whatever else I pay for. Particularly if your opponent is casual and didn't spam out on mortal wounds. Those bastilladon are almost impossible to move without mortal wound spam.
If you let the enemy's slann live long enough to summon 3 bastilladons (which I would imagine will take at least 4 turns), you deserve to lose that game.
Most of the seraphon players I know keep their slaan tucked nicely in the back.
You can kill the slaan if you take a lot of high quality ranged shots or have access to ranged mortal wounds. If you don't have much of either of those two things, you are likely going to have a very "fun" afternoon.
auticus wrote: What are three bastilladons worth? Because my answer would always be "yes yes and yes" to your question is it really worth taking to be able to get 3 extra bastilladon in a game on top of whatever else I pay for. Particularly if your opponent is casual and didn't spam out on mortal wounds. Those bastilladon are almost impossible to move without mortal wound spam.
I think expecting 3 is pretty exaggerated, no? I really doubt you'll be able to summon 3 in a game. We don't even know if it's an available option on the summon list yet lol
Though I imagine it will be.
auticus wrote: Most of the seraphon players I know keep their slaan tucked nicely in the back.
You can kill the slaan if you take a lot of high quality ranged shots or have access to ranged mortal wounds. If you don't have much of either of those two things, you are likely going to have a very "fun" afternoon.
Then the summoned units come in nicely in the back, far away from the fighting.
Combined with the (current) Seraphon allegiance ability to teleport things anywhere on the battlefield, doesn't mean much for Bastilodons being summoned in the back.
Edit: yes, you'd summon at the end of the movement phase now according to what they've previewed, but still not as big a "problem"
Three bastilladon are what you get with what we know and with bastilladon being 18 points to summon.
They revealed up to 12 points. Its not a huge stretch to put bastilladon at 18 points as the next tier up from what they revealed.
At 18 points you can get one in turn 2, turn 3, and turn 5.
Slaan gets 11-13 points a turn or 12 on average. Kroak gets 13-15 points a turn or 14 on average.
Considering that a bastilladon has its 2+ save that really can't be modified and 12 wounds, they hold up quite a bit (I have yet to see a seraphon player not buy 2 of them in their army not even counting summoning). You use them to tie up whatever nasty melee units they can and push the saurus line to hold lighter units.
Now cast mystic shield on your bastilladon as well so they are re-rolling ones (new mystic shield) and you have the 2++ bastilladon that ignores rend, and you want as many as you can get on the table because they are the ultimate tanking unit.
The counter to this is you have to have a lot of ranged attacks to hit the slaan and you need ranged mortal wounds en masse.
A teleporting stormcast army won't really sweat much of this.
I had to fight this army last year in our patth to glory finals (narrative, so no matched play limitation on summoning) and it was a beast. Lord Kroak was summoned in turn 5 on doubles and won him the game single handedly but I ended up killing 3 bastilladons and had a 4th down to half its wounds.
Those by themselves held most of my army up (nurgle).
Valander wrote: Combined with the (current) Seraphon allegiance ability to teleport things anywhere on the battlefield, doesn't mean much for Bastilodons being summoned in the back.
Edit: yes, you'd summon at the end of the movement phase now according to what they've previewed, but still not as big a "problem"
No, of course not. Still a benefit. But now all these points you spent, spells you sacrificed, command abilities you let rot in the back corner, all to try to ensure you could summon a Bastilidon or two probably could have gone towards fielding a Bastilidon or two right away instead. I think the summoning is strong because it's flexible and you can get what you need when you need it, but the way some folks are carrying on it looks an awful lot like they see this as a legitimate strategy. Rush to summon, and keep doing it throughout the game. Building an army so you can summon what you need when you need it seems flexible and valuable. Building an army around a Slann and a couple Bearers just so they always summon two or more Bastilidons is kinda silly to me since it costs more in points than just bringing the two dinos in the first place.
Building an army around a Slann and a couple Bearers just so they always summon two Bastilidons is kinda silly to me since it costs more in points than just bringing the dinos in the first place.
It enables you to keep a points advantage over your opponent unless he is also summoning, which can be a significant advantage.
Its a rare game that I've ever seen in GW universe where the army that summons the most points loses the game.
To answer your question Lemondish I'm already generally spending 400pts on the ability to reroll all hits on my warriors (I run 2 packs of 40), dispell 3 spells, summon units that cost points, and to fling 2 units around the board willy nilly. Now I get to get my approximately 80 extra points back (i normally summoned the astrolith) and I get to summon between 400-600pts per game? Yes please.
Also I will admit I tend to play in an area that will have some line of sight blocking and unless you're running 30"shooting my Slaan is normally pretty good.
Additionally I can sling my astrolith up the table, plant his staff and summon from him. That's pretty amazing turn 1 or 2 pressure. Especially if I've already flung 80 Saurus at you.
Hm. Just thought of another thing that could be nasty with summoning in general, and Bastilodons in particular.
Normally you're limited to X number of Behemoths, etc. I'm betting summoned units do not apply to those limits (they don't now), so could be a semi-cheesy way to get far more than you can normally take.
auticus wrote: Three bastilladon are what you get with what we know and with bastilladon being 18 points to summon.
They revealed up to 12 points. Its not a huge stretch to put bastilladon at 18 points as the next tier up from what they revealed.
At 18 points you can get one in turn 2, turn 3, and turn 5.
Slaan gets 11-13 points a turn or 12 on average. Kroak gets 13-15 points a turn or 14 on average.
Considering that a bastilladon has its 2+ save that really can't be modified and 12 wounds, they hold up quite a bit (I have yet to see a seraphon player not buy 2 of them in their army not even counting summoning). You use them to tie up whatever nasty melee units they can and push the saurus line to hold lighter units.
Now cast mystic shield on your bastilladon as well so they are re-rolling ones (new mystic shield) and you have the 2++ bastilladon that ignores rend, and you want as many as you can get on the table because they are the ultimate tanking unit.
The counter to this is you have to have a lot of ranged attacks to hit the slaan and you need ranged mortal wounds en masse.
A teleporting stormcast army won't really sweat much of this.
I had to fight this army last year in our patth to glory finals (narrative, so no matched play limitation on summoning) and it was a beast. Lord Kroak was summoned in turn 5 on doubles and won him the game single handedly but I ended up killing 3 bastilladons and had a 4th down to half its wounds.
Those by themselves held most of my army up (nurgle).
That would be strong, assuming Bastiladons are indeed 18 pts to summon. We don't know that's the case. From what we can see can be summoned for 12 pts, that seems kind of low to me. It's a big leap from Skinks to a Bastiladon. I would assume they would be 24 pts, and if an EotG can be summoned, I'd expect it to cost 30+.
Going by the points we're seeing I'd bet on them being 24pts. We're seeing units in increments of 40-60pts (currently) per 6pts. So somewhere between 24 and 30pt would be what I'd expect.
auticus wrote: The -1 to hit charcters coming up in 2.0 is a positive change that I liked, though not far enough, I viewed it as a compromise.
There are pretty much a solid two house rules that I currently insist on to do AOS. Resolve those two issues and have iit so I don't have to houserule anymore and that'd be great:
* shooting through terrain gives a -1 penalty to hit
* shooting into a melee also gives a -1 penalty to hit. I used to have it where you randomized hits into your buddies but then to make it just easier and not need a second roll, the penalty to hit was acceptable. (that was a compromise on my part to at least make it more difficult to hit into combat)
These stack to a max of -3. These have worked for the most part quite well. Most (80% or so) shots are not penalized at all since they are not in cover fully or not in combat. It makes terrain and cover matter a bit, and also influenced lists to not just be static gunlines. Both things I viewed as positive and the campaign guys (not the powergamers that hate houserules) were all for it because it made the game "make more sense" to everyone (there's a reason I've been able to do this for over 20 years, there are a lot of people that like those type of rules, the problem has always been the minmax guys hate houserules but want to do public campaigns for some reason even though they aren't tournaments)
The other issues I have with AOS are their point system and those being broken, with things like focusing on spamming mortal wounds and the like making casual games not fun, but that issue is in every game (powergaming vs casual) so I just accept that as part of needing to screen powergamers out of casual campaigns if they can't reign it in.
I guess if you're not playing competitively(and especially if you're not using points) these would work, but honestly shooting is pretty underwhelming these days. There are only 4 armies that can have shooting as a strategy and 2 of those armies(mixed order and Tzeentch) have stronger builds focusing on combat/magic and the other 2(kharadron and to a MUCH lesser extent Kunnin Ruck) have fallen off massively. Things like Judicators and Kurnoths still see success, but they're not particularly powerful, just consistently useful. In a competitive environment, these changes, especially if they were combined with the other changes this edition, would limit shooting to basically just 1-2 units of skyfires. They also combo with other things oddly. You could make an entire DoK Army -2 up to -4 to shooting from turn 2 on(assuming good terrain, competitively built armies tend to hit combat bottom of 1 top of 2 or sooner depending on the list.) with their characters being -4 or -5 and Morathi topping out at -6. You could get a stardrake to -5 as well.
If it works for your group, more power to ya though.
Auticus' house rules don't cause a problem for shooting in general, they just make it harder to shoot stuff if it is in combat or behind cover. Shooting players have perfectly valid options to shoot without a -3 penalty by not shooting at the thing in combat behind two forests, which was dumb they could do in the first place. If something is not behind terrain and not in combat, no penalty, which is going to be most units most of the time. You are assuming worst case scenario for everything all of the time coupled with stacking explicitly beyond the limit he set, which completely fictional situation that you only invented to make the argument work. Once you clear away the lies it isn't nearly as bad a penalty to shooting.
And again, I raise the question of how well mono-melee armies are performing. It isn't good.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Auticus' house rules don't cause a problem for shooting in general, they just make it harder to shoot stuff if it is in combat or behind cover. Shooting players have perfectly valid options to shoot without a -3 penalty by not shooting at the thing in combat behind two forests, which was dumb they could do in the first place. If something is not behind terrain and not in combat, no penalty, which is going to be most units most of the time. You are assuming worst case scenario for everything all of the time, which is a completely fictional situation that you only invented to make the argument work. Once you clear away the lies it isn't nearly as strong
Auticus' house rule plus the fact that shooting units trend towards being a 4+ mean that units designed and priced for shooting are seeing a penalty they didn't really need--especially now that characters get an autoderp of a -1 just for being near their own units.
And again, I raise the question of how well mono-melee armies are performing. It isn't good.
It's about to be a hell of a lot better than you think given that shooting units can only target units in 3" of them when they have a unit in 3" of them.
I'll point out once again that these rules are only for narrative campaigns to reflect a narrative environment and are not used for min/max powergaming competitions (tournaments or tournament pick up games or random pick up games using tournament standard rules)
The -1 shooting through terrain actually came from a Warhammer World scenario that I really liked. I used to use a flat you can't shoot through area terrain in my campaigns until I ran across that one.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Auticus' house rules don't cause a problem for shooting in general, they just make it harder to shoot stuff if it is in combat or behind cover. Shooting players have perfectly valid options to shoot without a -3 penalty by not shooting at the thing in combat behind two forests, which was dumb they could do in the first place. If something is not behind terrain and not in combat, no penalty, which is going to be most units most of the time. You are assuming worst case scenario for everything all of the time, which is a completely fictional situation that you only invented to make the argument work. Once you clear away the lies it isn't nearly as strong
Auticus' house rule plus the fact that shooting units trend towards being a 4+ mean that units designed and priced for shooting are seeing a penalty they didn't really need--especially now that characters get an autoderp of a -1 just for being near their own units.
And again, I raise the question of how well mono-melee armies are performing. It isn't good.
It's about to be a hell of a lot better than you think given that shooting units can only target units in 3" of them when they have a unit in 3" of them.
Now you are retroactively applying rules that aren't even current now to house rules he used in the past.
dosiere wrote: There is something terribly immersion/narrative/last string of realism breaking (however you want to describe it) about the shooting and terrain rules in AoS. They’re not generally something that can be explained narratively, it’s just how the rules work. A solid shot cannon ball would potentially be even more indiscrimate in whom it kills than an explosive aimed at the periphery of an engagement.
The terrain and shooting rules are not even pretending to represent what’s happening, they’re simply attacks that happen to be made at range or pretty scenery that has little or no effect on the game. Shooting into an ongoing melee with nearly any weapon is dangerous, Even with modern high velocity and accurate firearms. A bow, from an entire unit of soldiers? There is no hand waiving that except again, it’s just how the rules work.
Which is fine, but let’s stop trying to argue that even a significant minority of shooting weapons in this game makes any kind of narrative sense shooting into a melee at full effect.
Yeah, essentially this. This isn't even an argument.
auticus wrote: I got slagged pretty hard on bols the last couple days because of that topic.
BOLS? They still got a forum? Not a joke serious question. Been ages since I have been in the forums since I just read the comment sections. Need to see if I can remember my name and password.
auticus wrote: Considering that a bastilladon has its 2+ save that really can't be modified and 12 wounds, they hold up quite a bit (I have yet to see a seraphon player not buy 2 of them in their army not even counting summoning). You use them to tie up whatever nasty melee units they can and push the saurus line to hold lighter units.
Now cast mystic shield on your bastilladon as well so they are re-rolling ones (new mystic shield) and you have the 2++ bastilladon that ignores rend, and you want as many as you can get on the table because they are the ultimate tanking unit.
Considering that a bastilladon has its 2+ save that really can't be modified and 12 wounds, they hold up quite a bit (I have yet to see a seraphon player not buy 2 of them in their army not even counting summoning). You use them to tie up whatever nasty melee units they can and push the saurus line to hold lighter units.
Bastiladons are 3+ save and 8 wounds. With a 4+ save against any mortal wounds. You can't give them a 2+ save anymore since Mystic Shield has changed.
Yes they are tough. They're also just about the most expensive thing in the book, at 280 points, equal to an Old One on Carnosaur. Their cost in ritual points is therefore likely to be very high.
Plus getting them out requires giving up spells. A Slaan sitting there doing nothing but summoning is a threat to be sure, but so is a Slaan slinging spells around, especially some of the new endless spells. Yes, you can cast and summon, but it's a trade-off; if you give up spells for summoning, you have fewer spells, and if you want to cast spells, you'll have slower summoning.
Kanluwen wrote: At this point, I'm just excited to start hucking this at people:
Spoiler:
I'm assuming that's the 'Suffocating Gravetide' mentioned in the Legions of Nagash article. If I start Nighthaunts it will probably be a go to spell for me as well, even if it doesn't look as impressive as the Purple Sun of Shyish...
Good news though, it looks like you can have both as hailing from Shyish!
They said there's 13 Endless Spells, which would give you 1 for each of the 8 Realms(Ghyran, Azyr, Hysh, Ulgu, Ghur, Aqshy, Shyish, and Chamon) and space for another 5 to plug in there.
We know the following so far:
Suffocating Gravetide(assuming Shyish)
Spoiler:
Purple Sun(Shyish)
Emerald Lifeswarm(Ghyran--no details beyond that and it restores wounds somehow)
Chronomantic Cogs(probably going to be Hysh, since we've had some timey wimeyness in Hysh before)
Spoiler:
Ravening Jaws(Ghur)
Umbral Spellportal(Ulgu)
Burning Skull(Aqshy)
Crystal Wall-thingy(Probably going to be Hysh as well).
auticus wrote: So as I said above, a slaan with astrolith is going to be getting 11-13 summoning points a turn.
A player with a working pulse and capability to draw breath will keep a wall between his slaan and anything that can hurt it.
Getting 22-26 points by turn 2, I am betting my house bastilladon are on there for 18-24 points. If I'm minmaxing summoning you bet that I'm going to try to pump out as many bastilladon as I can (or engines of the gods) so feasible to do 2-3 a game extra.
EDIT: yeah turns 2,3, and 4 I can pump out a bastilladon if they are 18 points to summon (my guess that they will be 18).
At least this is what the three seraphon players here did before they capped summoning with reinforcement points. Each one had 4-5 in their collection purely to summon because they are that good and this system is... well... makes the choice for you in my opinion. Yeah slaan stop getting their other spells but getting two free bastilladon in the game will be worth 3-4 turns of no casting anything else with them, particularly when they can still get skink wizards to cast other things. And stopping this will not be trivial.
Nurgle contagion points are a lot more difficult to pull off and it takes 28 points to summon a greater demon which in my games takes about 4 turns to get. I put a bastilladon as in the same realm as a greater demon.
Automatically Appended Next Post: The natural counter to this is... spamming mortal wounds.
Based on the value of the other units shown, bastiladons will almost certainly be at least 24pts, if not in the 30 bracket, which is two turns with a non-zero chance it takes three. You can get 2 bastiladons per game assuming there are no further ways to gain points. You could get 3 with Kroak, but Kroak's spells are fairly impactful and not an easy thing to pass up on.
And honestly, your better option is just to kill all his stuff before the second bastiladon comes in. Not terribly hard all said and done.
dosiere wrote: There is something terribly immersion/narrative/last string of realism breaking (however you want to describe it) about the shooting and terrain rules in AoS. They’re not generally something that can be explained narratively, it’s just how the rules work. A solid shot cannon ball would potentially be even more indiscrimate in whom it kills than an explosive aimed at the periphery of an engagement.
The terrain and shooting rules are not even pretending to represent what’s happening, they’re simply attacks that happen to be made at range or pretty scenery that has little or no effect on the game. Shooting into an ongoing melee with nearly any weapon is dangerous, Even with modern high velocity and accurate firearms. A bow, from an entire unit of soldiers? There is no hand waiving that except again, it’s just how the rules work.
Which is fine, but let’s stop trying to argue that even a significant minority of shooting weapons in this game makes any kind of narrative sense shooting into a melee at full effect.
Yeah, essentially this. This isn't even an argument.
Yeah, the better argument is 'realism doesn't matter, we have dragons, flying fish monsters, literal daemons, and blimps made out of metal that fly on magic farts.' The idea that you can get past all of that and still be worried about 'muh immersion' is the craziest part. Want an explanation? It's magic. Canonball missed all my guys? Magic. Trees make my armor better? Magic. Plague monk somehow in range to stab an airship? Magic. Not one of those things is any more ridiculous than an 8 breasted ant-eater horse, or a giant wizard vulture, or transforming snake lady or whatever the hell drycha is.
And no, fantasy wasn't any better. In fact, I would argue fantasy was worse thanks to the disconnect between the more grounded setting and the totally fantastical nonsense like Morghasts and Chimera.
auticus wrote: The -1 to hit charcters coming up in 2.0 is a positive change that I liked, though not far enough, I viewed it as a compromise.
There are pretty much a solid two house rules that I currently insist on to do AOS. Resolve those two issues and have iit so I don't have to houserule anymore and that'd be great:
* shooting through terrain gives a -1 penalty to hit
* shooting into a melee also gives a -1 penalty to hit. I used to have it where you randomized hits into your buddies but then to make it just easier and not need a second roll, the penalty to hit was acceptable. (that was a compromise on my part to at least make it more difficult to hit into combat)
These stack to a max of -3. These have worked for the most part quite well. Most (80% or so) shots are not penalized at all since they are not in cover fully or not in combat. It makes terrain and cover matter a bit, and also influenced lists to not just be static gunlines. Both things I viewed as positive and the campaign guys (not the powergamers that hate houserules) were all for it because it made the game "make more sense" to everyone (there's a reason I've been able to do this for over 20 years, there are a lot of people that like those type of rules, the problem has always been the minmax guys hate houserules but want to do public campaigns for some reason even though they aren't tournaments)
The other issues I have with AOS are their point system and those being broken, with things like focusing on spamming mortal wounds and the like making casual games not fun, but that issue is in every game (powergaming vs casual) so I just accept that as part of needing to screen powergamers out of casual campaigns if they can't reign it in.
I guess if you're not playing competitively(and especially if you're not using points) these would work, but honestly shooting is pretty underwhelming these days. There are only 4 armies that can have shooting as a strategy and 2 of those armies(mixed order and Tzeentch) have stronger builds focusing on combat/magic and the other 2(kharadron and to a MUCH lesser extent Kunnin Ruck) have fallen off massively. Things like Judicators and Kurnoths still see success, but they're not particularly powerful, just consistently useful. In a competitive environment, these changes, especially if they were combined with the other changes this edition, would limit shooting to basically just 1-2 units of skyfires. They also combo with other things oddly. You could make an entire DoK Army -2 up to -4 to shooting from turn 2 on(assuming good terrain, competitively built armies tend to hit combat bottom of 1 top of 2 or sooner depending on the list.) with their characters being -4 or -5 and Morathi topping out at -6. You could get a stardrake to -5 as well.
If it works for your group, more power to ya though.
Auticus' house rules don't cause a problem for shooting in general, they just make it harder to shoot stuff if it is in combat or behind cover. Shooting players have perfectly valid options to shoot without a -3 penalty by not shooting at the thing in combat behind two forests, which was dumb they could do in the first place. If something is not behind terrain and not in combat, no penalty, which is going to be most units most of the time. You are assuming worst case scenario for everything all of the time coupled with stacking explicitly beyond the limit he set, which completely fictional situation that you only invented to make the argument work. Once you clear away the lies it isn't nearly as bad a penalty to shooting.
And again, I raise the question of how well mono-melee armies are performing. It isn't good.
And I raise the question of how mono-shooting armies are doing, and it's even worse. Mono-magic armies are pretty bad too. Maybe it's the 'Mono' part of those that's actually the problem. Shooting is a tool that a lot of lists utilize but it's mostly for reaching over stuff, not it's own damage. Outside of Skyfires, and fully buffed freeguild long-gunners, most Shooting units have actually abysmal output relative to their point cost. That bastiladon everyone is so afraid of all of a sudden? Does an average of 3 damage per turn to a 4+ save for 280pts. To put that into perspective a unit of liberators with a grand hammer would hit any 5 wound character for about the same amount of damage. In fact, the best shooting in the game comes from units that get it as an ancillary benefit, like vulkite berzerkers
And what planet do you play on that your stuff isn't in combat or behind cover most of the time when it gets -1 to shoot for being behind a rock? Most good armies are entirely in combat or in cover by the end of their turn two. Even if you can't take advantage of the bonuses for your whole army, you can certainly guard your characters, and shooting units that can't hit high value targets are essentially there for moral support.
Again, the rule is narratively focused, so it's fine. Do what you want. But it's a preference change, not a balance one.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
auticus wrote: Three bastilladon are what you get with what we know and with bastilladon being 18 points to summon.
They revealed up to 12 points. Its not a huge stretch to put bastilladon at 18 points as the next tier up from what they revealed.
At 18 points you can get one in turn 2, turn 3, and turn 5.
Slaan gets 11-13 points a turn or 12 on average. Kroak gets 13-15 points a turn or 14 on average.
Considering that a bastilladon has its 2+ save that really can't be modified and 12 wounds, they hold up quite a bit (I have yet to see a seraphon player not buy 2 of them in their army not even counting summoning). You use them to tie up whatever nasty melee units they can and push the saurus line to hold lighter units.
Now cast mystic shield on your bastilladon as well so they are re-rolling ones (new mystic shield) and you have the 2++ bastilladon that ignores rend, and you want as many as you can get on the table because they are the ultimate tanking unit.
The counter to this is you have to have a lot of ranged attacks to hit the slaan and you need ranged mortal wounds en masse.
A teleporting stormcast army won't really sweat much of this.
I had to fight this army last year in our patth to glory finals (narrative, so no matched play limitation on summoning) and it was a beast. Lord Kroak was summoned in turn 5 on doubles and won him the game single handedly but I ended up killing 3 bastilladons and had a 4th down to half its wounds.
Those by themselves held most of my army up (nurgle).
You're deliberately choosing the least like point value range(18-24) over the more likely value(24-30) to make your point sound bigger than it is. A squad of Terradons is 120, a skink starpriest is 80, that averages out to the 12pt slot being for 100pts(ish) of models. The 6pt slot is 45pts on average.
This means that the rough exchange rate is around 9ish-pts per summoning point. A bastildon is 280pts so it should be in the 30pt bracket. Now this is certainly circumstantial, but it's a whole lot more valid than 'i think it's 18 because GW are the dumzz.'
Paul Conti did a mathhammer video on YouTube where he breaks down the points value of summoning with contagion points with Nurgle. It came out to about 8.5 points per contagion point with a bias towards the expensive stuff being better value. The idea being that stuff you save up for and bring on later will have less of an impact on the game.
It is interesting that the Seraphon table has a similar value
The idea that you can get past all of that and still be worried about 'muh immersion' is the craziest part.
Just because a world has dragons and wizards in it doesn't mean that all "muh immersion" should just be hand waived, I still expect the world to function mechanically how it does in the books and movies. Thats the entire reason why I play.
Again, the rule is narratively focused, so it's fine. Do what you want. But it's a preference change, not a balance one
Its a rule that exists in some form or fashion in pretty much every other wargame that was ever written because it makes sense. "balance" is a word that means many things to many people. Cover rules aren't written for balance no. They are written to give meaning to terrain and to make movements more important as well as positioning. Magic isn't needed for balance. Its written intto a fantasy setting because people expect there to be magic, but its not for balance reasons. Dragons aren't needed for balance. They are written into a fantasy setting because they are fantastical creatures and are a preference. We could just as easily not have dragons. Siege rules and rules for taking cover behind fortifications aren't needed for balance, but if wanting to play out a siege scenario are a preference. Honestly terrain isn't needed either. In a lot of games that are "wargames" from the boardgame or card game variety there is no terrain. Terrain is there because its expected and makes sense to exist, but not from a balance standpoint. We could just as easily play a miniature game with no terrain (and well thats not far off from how a lot of tournament tables are anyway)
I don't think there's anything else more to be gained by discussing that particular topic as things are moving into inflammatory and personal and there's nothing more to be gained by discussing it. You don't like it? Cool. I'm not after a 100% approval rating, I've been around long enough to know that any given rule will have people that don't like it. And AOS upped the ante for nonsensical rules being ok because its just a game and created a pretty deep rift (or exposed the already existing rift since up until AOS, these type of nonsensical rules in a wargame weren't really a thing)
You're deliberately choosing the least like point value range(18-24) over the more likely value(24-30) to make your point sound bigger than it is.
I think its well understood that none of know the true value, so the scenario I laid out was if they went the lower value because thats what GW often times does. Especially if they are going to say slaan SHOULD have better magic and summoning because SLAAN. Its not out of the ball park that they'd do that at all. Especially for a model that only has 8 wounds and a 3+ save that can't be made into 2+ now.
It could very well be 24 or 30. I will believe baby jesus and santa will come screaming from the sky today before I believe GW will put a bastilladon @ 30 but hey its possible. Great Unclean Ones are 28. I think a Bastilladon at 24 is probably too high when compared to the greatt unclean one's cost, comparing the two stat lines, so thats why I think its likely 18 instead of 24.
It came out to about 8.5 points per contagion point with a bias towards the expensive stuff being better value. The idea being that stuff you save up for and bring on later will have less of an impact on the game.
From a free summons standpoint there is a bellcurve of effectiveness. Bringing in a greater demon on turn 4 of a 4-5 turn game is largely pointless, so yeah saving up for a greater demon in a 4-5 turn game if you can't get it out by turn 3 would be largely a waste.
When you’re writing your army list, you have the option to pick a Realm for your army to be from. Perhaps your Freeguild hail from Hammerhal Aqsha, in Aqshy, or perhaps your Slaves to Darkness raid the distant outskirts of Ghur. As well as providing you with loads of opportunities for roleplaying (not to mention painting and converting), you’ll be able to replace one of your normal Artefact picks with a special artefact from your chosen realm.
Each of the seven Mortal Realms has 6 magical weapons and 6 trinkets, artefacts or pieces of armour to choose from, boasting a range of thematic and unusual effects. We’ve previewed a few of these already in our Faction Focuses.
auticus wrote: Yeah and they confirm, you pick whattt realml you are from now as part of the list building phase to get access to spells and artefacts.
The way tthat banishment spell is... armies like stormcast can listbuild the gryph hound trap and then use banishment to get some free shooting.
There are going to be a lot of Hyish stormcast I'm betting (depending on if Azyr gets something equally as useful of course)
The article says "Each of the seven Mortal Realms...", so I would say Aqshy, Chamon, Ghur, Ghyran, Hysh, Shyish and Ulgu. We'll also need to see if Stormcast Eternals and Chaos can be from one of those seven Realms or if they're limited to Azyr and Chaos respectively.
Restrictions would be nice, though that begs the question... armies like nurgle could thematically be from Ghyran and Khorne could be from Aqshy and Tzeentch from Chamon as those chaos powers have long held dominion over those mortal realms.
Equally... there are now stories of stormcast based in the realm of beasts and life. So I don't think restrictions are very likely.
I actually like the realm flavorings, I have always used them. The only concern I'd have would be that within a month or so we will have ascertained which ones give the best bonuses and thats where all armies will hail from.
That falls into the same thing we had in pretty much every past incarnation of WHFB though where only the same 10% of items were ever taken so I'd classify that as minor and to be expected.
Yeah. The walking dead are everywhere now, not just Shyish. Also even before the necroquake there have been undead in other realms from the realmgate stories.
auticus wrote: Yeah and they confirm, you pick whattt realml you are from now as part of the list building phase to get access to spells and artefacts.
The way tthat banishment spell is... armies like stormcast can listbuild the gryph hound trap and then use banishment to get some free shooting.
There are going to be a lot of Hyish stormcast I'm betting (depending on if Azyr gets something equally as useful of course)
Do we know that realm affinity gives access to the spells? Can't read the article since I'm at work.
No they didn't say spells directly, so I'm assuming since we do know for sure that there are special spells per realm that choosing your realm will give you access to those as well.
auticus wrote: No they didn't say spells directly, so I'm assuming since we do know for sure that there are special spells per realm that choosing your realm will give you access to those as well.
From the "Magic: Casting and Unbinding" Rules preview: "Here’s one of our favourites that any Wizard can use, for when you find yourself battling in the radiant vistas of Hysh.... This is just one of seven spells available in this realm, and that is just one of seven realms you can battle in! That’s nearly fifty new spells to throw around!" (emphasis mine)
It would appear that while you choose which realm you hail from, and this in turn gives you access to the artifacts from that realm, the realm you and your opponent agree to/roll for battling in determines the "extra" spells you have access to during that particular battle (which both sides may use), at least in the case of Banishment.
@auticus I'm expecting that to be the case (and for those spells to be buffed if you're actually battling on the appropriate realm). Just wondering if it had been confirmed. I love the narrative implications of this, though! Hopefully every realm will have a "good" option. I'd hate for every army to be from two realms.
i need some clarification here guys.
if i choose to convert a tomb banshee to have a wraith bow, is that a wep in addition to the frost dagger and scream or does it replace them?
FrozenDwarf wrote: i need some clarification here guys.
if i choose to convert a tomb banshee to have a wraith bow, is that a wep in addition to the frost dagger and scream or does it replace them?
I don't see anything in the description implying you are replacing an existing weapon, so unless the rulebook says otherwise, I would say this is in addition to any attacks the model has.
EnTyme wrote: @auticus I'm expecting that to be the case (and for those spells to be buffed if you're actually battling on the appropriate realm). Just wondering if it had been confirmed. I love the narrative implications of this, though! Hopefully every realm will have a "good" option. I'd hate for every army to be from two realms.
Yeah I like that direction overall from a narrative standpoint. The good or bad options I suppose we have to wait and see for ourselves.
The more of this I see the more I think narrative is going to be great fun and anything approaching competitive is going to be a lost cause. Will probably transition towards snagging best painted awards at tournaments instead. We will see though, I remain hopeful that tournaments will be able to house-rule in some control over more egregious elements.
There are lots of interesting things being teased, but there are definitely some things, in my mind, to be concerned about.
We're wrapping up a Firestorm campaign right now, so it might be a good time to let AOS2.0 come out and dink around with some of our other games (GASLANDS!) for a couple of months to let the dust settle and get the first couple of FAQ/Errata out. I'm not doom-and-glooming, but our AOS group is kinda small anyway, and we're all addicts to miniatures in general and have more games than is reasonable, so playing with some of our other toys for a bit isn't a horrible thing.
NinthMusketeer wrote: The more of this I see the more I think narrative is going to be great fun and anything approaching competitive is going to be a lost cause. Will probably transition towards snagging best painted awards at tournaments instead. We will see though, I remain hopeful that tournaments will be able to house-rule in some control over more egregious elements.
Shyishian Mor'phann. Not sure if it's going to be viable, but I'll be damned if I'm going to get away from my theme!
Also, hucking Gravetides at people is going to be great.
Starting to think about a long-term conversion project of an Aspect of the Storm, firing a Wraithbow.
Valander wrote: There are lots of interesting things being teased, but there are definitely some things, in my mind, to be concerned about.
We're wrapping up a Firestorm campaign right now, so it might be a good time to let AOS2.0 come out and dink around with some of our other games (GASLANDS!) for a couple of months to let the dust settle and get the first couple of FAQ/Errata out. I'm not doom-and-glooming, but our AOS group is kinda small anyway, and we're all addicts to miniatures in general and have more games than is reasonable, so playing with some of our other toys for a bit isn't a horrible thing.
Off-topic but how ddid you find the Firestorm campaign? I'm going to be running a second private one this fall and want to blog its progress.
Knight wrote: There's also an Alchemist chain from chamon (?).
I need to check how the artifacts work. That's a lot of promised special artifacts, but you can only pick one of them?
Characters can only have one artefact. Right now, you're required to take Warscroll Battalions to get additional relics for other characters.
Added it and the Feather. Put them all into their own thread too. I'll update as we get them and I have time.
Valander wrote: There are lots of interesting things being teased, but there are definitely some things, in my mind, to be concerned about.
We're wrapping up a Firestorm campaign right now, so it might be a good time to let AOS2.0 come out and dink around with some of our other games (GASLANDS!) for a couple of months to let the dust settle and get the first couple of FAQ/Errata out. I'm not doom-and-glooming, but our AOS group is kinda small anyway, and we're all addicts to miniatures in general and have more games than is reasonable, so playing with some of our other toys for a bit isn't a horrible thing.
Off-topic but how ddid you find the Firestorm campaign? I'm going to be running a second private one this fall and want to blog its progress.
We've had fun with it. Made only 2 small house rules:
1. Forging the Scepter isn't an auto win (same change you made I think).
2. We roll off for order of who issues challenges.
Some of the games have been pretty lopsided due to Muster Points silliness, but overall still fun. We used the Open War deck for some of the scenarios because the "Sneak Attack" ones in the book were... odd.
Edit: Also we only had 4 players, and one for each GA, so kinda worked out there.
Nice. Yeah the forging the scepter being an auto win makes it so everyone just fights on those territories which was kind of lame so making that just give a bonus was nice.
