Sorry if this comes a bit ranty. So I have been a big proponent of AoS lately, but yesterday I had a game that really soured me on everything because of how insanely powerful shooting seems to be. I played a 1500 point game with my Flesh-Eater Courts; my opponent brought Sylvaneth. Our armies were:

Me (Flesh-Eater Courts)

Abhorrant Ghoul King on Terrorgheist
Varghulf Courtier
Crypt Haunter Courtier
Crypt Ghast Courtier

2x 20-man Crypt Ghouls
6x Crypt Haunters

Battalion: King's Ghouls

Him (Sylvaneth)

Drycha Hamadreth
Treelord Ancient
Branchwych
(Some other branch thing)

2x 3-man Kurnoth Hunters w/bows
20x Dryads
20x Spiteful Revenants (may have been 10 actually I'm not 100% sure)

We rolled the "Gifts from the Heavens" scenario. Long story short I got absolutely wrecked with a combination of him dropping forests to let one of his units grab the objective in my zone while he sat on the one in his, but what hurt the most was his shooting. Sniping out my characters, me having no real way to prevent it without blocking my own units from doing anything, moving his Hunters back to the very edge of his board so he could keep shooting, shooting at my units engaged in combat, shooting at my units that finally did get to him, etc. just basically being able to roll over me with barely any effort (this on top of all the Sylvaneth power themselves like staying in your own forest so I had a -1 to hit, and his guys had like a 3+ save, and all the mortal wounds they could dish out)

How are you supposed to handle the fact that there is essentially zero ways to limit shooting other than hiding behind large impassable terrain pieces that then prevent you from doing anything else? I should note that my opponent was not in any way, shape or form a jerk. He was friendly and a great guy, just being absolutely crushed with basically no point during the game where I felt I had any chance at all to win was pretty devastating.

Is there any good way of dealing with it short of giving in and trying to fight fire with fire?

You probably just felt the worst of what shooting is like. Kurnoth Hunters w/ bows are regarded as some of, if the not best ranged unit in the game points per pound.

I don't think I would have minded it so much if there was a way to stop it. I mean, shooting into a melee should carry a penalty, and you shouldn't be able to shoot if you yourself are in combat.

It's really just the Sylvaneth army. Between their drop a Wyldwood and teleport to it for objectives and insane shooting ability, they're not fun to play against.

I feel the same way. I play Ironjawz and I just have to weather the shooting. When I get close enough to charge, he just teleports to a different Wyldwood. It's so frustrating that I want to flip the table and walk away.

I have yet to play against Sylvaneth shooting, but my buddy just bought KHunters yesterday so we'll see.

Are you willing to expand to GAeath more broadly? A Vampire Lord on Abyssal Terror using his spell to catapult a Mourngul 24" turn one is a great way to get in people's faces with a non-rendable party-pooping monster. Throw Mystic Shield on it as well and your opponent will have an aneurysm.

As an Ironjawz player, I just suck it up.

Try to use cover as much as possible, block line of sight to your characters, field your own shooty units, take units that can outflank. Every little thing helps.

Its hard to make out from what you say, but it sounded like you probably didn't have terrain. Make sure you have a good amount of terrain, this isn't warhammer of mass battles on an open field. Sitting right on your own edge and hitting stuff in the other half shouldn't be that easy.

Remember a good number of armies are really good at something, and dealing with that is often hard. Flesh eaters can be insanely resilient, replacing models and healing left right and center. There are those who ask how do you deal with that. Ogres/Orrucks can be insanely fast across the board and hard hitting in melee, how do 'I' deal with that. Others deal mortal wounds en mass etc etc. Its the nature of a game where you often have 2 focused armies very good at something that it can feel pretty tough dealing with the enemy.

Play to the Scenario. Most games are 4-6 turns with Victory points for objectives. Killing the Hunters isn't always going to be needed. You have the ability to mitigate losses due to model replacement, grab objectives and weather the storm, put something on his to stop him scoring etc.

Switch away from too focused an army, and move out a bit more into wider death. Bat swarms are a useful death unit for countering enemy shooting a bit (especially any that get special affects on hits of 6), and the Abhorrent king is a Death wizard so automatically knows the spell. They have a good enough radius for their ability to make it easy enough to use them. They effectively reduce the Hunters ability by 33%, which makes them nice, and whilst they will be quickly targeted that is a turn something is distracted by them rather than objectives.

Your army feels a bit slow to me, fast units to get within objective range can be very useful, especially in the sort of scenario you had where you are not sure where the objectives will be to start with.

We had terrain, we have a lot of GW buildings, but my issue with big buildings is you have to move around them while keeping 1" coherency (unless I'm missing something) so it makes it very hard to maneuver with big units of 20 guys.

I'm not super familiar with FEC, but it seems to me like you might be overreacting to his shooting (or his rolls were just abnormally good).

Kurnoth Hunters are very efficient and very hard to deal with. That said, their damage output is not *that* impressive. Even without considering the spell from the Ghoul King, they should only be putting out an average of 3-4 wounds per turn total. They can chip away at your King, but with the regeneration ability their progress will be very slow. Your courtiers are more vulnerable, but you should be able to protect them to some degree by hiding behind terrain. You won't necessarily be able to protect everything all game, but you can do enough to make sure that the Hunters don't cripple you unless they roll really well.

So basically, I'd suggest not getting too worked up about the hunters. Keep your characters out of LOS of them as much as possible, or at the very least position such that both units can't focus fire on the same character. If you can do that you will end up regenerating most of the damage they cause. Don't worry about going after them. Unless you have a great opportunity, just chasing them is a waste of time. Focus on the objectives and on catching and destroying the Sylvaneth units that you can actually get to grips with.

I think other commenters that mentioned your army is kinda slow are spot on. Sylvaneth is fast, and you are going to struggle against a fast army that has some shooting when you play a slow army with no shooting. If the scenario forces them to get to grips with you, then this disadvantage will be somewhat lessened... but if the reverse is true, then you are well and truly screwed.

If you're curious to how good they actually are:

http://www.louisvillewargaming.com/AOSStats.aspx

Go to the sylvaneth link.

These are stats based on pure math of the stats, and no abstract math is put in there at all. It shows you point for point that the sylvaneth is a highly efficient and highly damaging force and it wasn't just your imagination, though their shooting is not their prime strength.

kurnoth Hunters are massively OP, so there's that. You should really drop Kings Ghouls and run Ghoul Patrol. That will make life more difficult for any Sylvaneth player. Plus it's so good for the cost and has all your battleline so I'd say its among the most auto-take options in the game.

To deal with shooting I use the changeling and summoning to get a small force in his back line; plus screamers.

Tricks and speed are my strength. Playing to yours helps, but any army needs either a ranged reply or speed to deal with shooting

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
kurnoth Hunters are massively OP, so there's that. You should really drop Kings Ghouls and run Ghoul Patrol. That will make life more difficult for any Sylvaneth player. Plus it's so good for the cost and has all your battleline so I'd say its among the most auto-take options in the game.

Probably, but at 1500 points I didn't have the points for third unit of Ghouls unless I went with three units of 10 (which in retrospect might have worked). That will be my go-to at 2000 and I might experiment with three units of 10 ghouls. I guess I'm more miffed that I come from games where you can't just shoot at anything you like, without any LOS restrictions (barring buildings) or even if you're in combat, so it's a little jarring to like want to rush up to engage the enemy with a melee army, but the shooting units don't care and can still get a round into you, two if they are engaged. It feels, even if not true, like it's really bad for melee armies and makes me want to consider picking up a second army that has some shooting (I'm already thinking of a 2nd army anyways) so I can play that game too.

I am not super worried, I mean this was after all only like my 3rd AoS game; it also didn't help that my opponent had like 3 turns of winning initiative in a row. Just shooting seems like it's way over the top with nothing beyond just buildings everywhere (which then impedes the melee army) to handle it. Speed, but it seems like speed is not enough because just getting into combat with the shooty unit does nothing to stop them from continuing to shoot at you, so you not only need speed but you need to be able to alpha strike them to wipe them out, otherwise you're getting two rounds of attacks from them (shooting + combat) in their turn instead of only one.

Wayniac wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
kurnoth Hunters are massively OP, so there's that. You should really drop Kings Ghouls and run Ghoul Patrol. That will make life more difficult for any Sylvaneth player. Plus it's so good for the cost and has all your battleline so I'd say its among the most auto-take options in the game.

Probably, but at 1500 points I didn't have the points for third unit of Ghouls unless I went with three units of 10 (which in retrospect might have worked). That will be my go-to at 2000 and I might experiment with three units of 10 ghouls. I guess I'm more miffed that I come from games where you can't just shoot at anything you like, without any LOS restrictions (barring buildings) or even if you're in combat, so it's a little jarring to like want to rush up to engage the enemy with a melee army, but the shooting units don't care and can still get a round into you, two if they are engaged. It feels, even if not true, like it's really bad for melee armies and makes me want to consider picking up a second army that has some shooting (I'm already thinking of a 2nd army anyways) so I can play that game too.

I am not super worried, I mean this was after all only like my 3rd AoS game; it also didn't help that my opponent had like 3 turns of winning initiative in a row. Just shooting seems like it's way over the top with nothing beyond just buildings everywhere (which then impedes the melee army) to handle it. Speed, but it seems like speed is not enough because just getting into combat with the shooty unit does nothing to stop them from continuing to shoot at you, so you not only need speed but you need to be able to alpha strike them to wipe them out, otherwise you're getting two rounds of attacks from them (shooting + combat) in their turn instead of only one.

Im having the same problem with ranged with my khorne army, so I picked up the trees to have some shooting as well, if your opponent has 2 or more ranged units, and you lose initiative and they go back to back, I lose every time, so annoying.

I guess it will depend on your play style. If you army is a slow moving you will get killed by shooting.

Try using spells that help you teleport or summon units in this will give you the range needed to reach where you need without losing you whole unit.

Speaking of summoning: the ghoul king has a command ability that lets you bring on a unit from any table edge.

Leave points and bring on a unit near him to disrupt shooting. Dead models don't shoot and if your opponent shoots the new unit the rest of your army gets to move up while taking less shooting.

I will say that if your opponent is running a shooting heavy list and gets a double turn 2 or 3 you are just screwed. There's not much you can do about that. It's a big reason why we just alternate turns at my flgs.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I will say that if your opponent is running a shooting heavy list and gets a double turn 2 or 3 you are just screwed. There's not much you can do about that. It's a big reason why we just alternate turns at my flgs.

Yes, I realized that I actually like rolling for initiative each turn, but it seems like it can be too devastating and make for a one-sided game.

If you like rolling for initiative I recommend free-for-all games (3+ players). There is a scenario near the front of the GHB designed for such that involves an artifact in the center of the board. We use this scenario but swap out the reinforcement rules with those from the Escalation pitched battle scenario. It works really well. For straight two-sided battles you can try only rolling for initiative on turns 4 and 5, which eliminates the risk of early game decimation from double-turns.

yea, one thing I miss from 40k is tying up a ranged unit in melee, wish this game had that, only thing I dislike about it. even if I used a crappy unit to just die, at least it cuts out the shooting for a turn or 2.

My opponent uses 2 units of judicators, 2 wounds each it takes a while to get through them, all they while they are still sniping units away.

Makes me want to fight fire with fire when I look at another army. which isn't a good thing, but still something I am considering.

Currently a mix of vampire spells and a mourngul to throw it 20" towards said shooting unit in my first hero phase.
With that plus 12" movement, charge range etc it's always a 1st turn charge on anything really.

While I dislike charging units like kurnoth hunters, it has to be done at times.
The mourngul can usually chew through them and by turn 2 I'll have fell bats or blood knights around to help if needed.




But you did have a poor game if that's your only real AoS experience of shooting.
Kurnoth hunters really are a top tier unit and the bows just make them better.

Wait, people play without rolling for initiative? Huh. I hadn't honestly considered altering the core rules to such a degree. I haven't found it a problem in the games I've played or in the tournament I attended, in fact I really like the tension it adds, but I guess I haven't played against a super shooty army. Only change I would make is that whoever went first the previous turn should win any ties, to lower the chance of a double turn for their opponent.

It depends if your meta realizes the benefits of double-turn gambling. Its not very difficult to go second and bet on a double turn without much penalty if you don't get it and a massive payoff if you do.

 Mymearan wrote:
Wait, people play without rolling for initiative? Huh. I hadn't honestly considered altering the core rules to such a degree. I haven't found it a problem in the games I've played or in the tournament I attended, in fact I really like the tension it adds, but I guess I haven't played against a super shooty army. Only change I would make is that whoever went first the previous turn should win any ties, to lower the chance of a double turn for their opponent.

I think it only becomes an issue with a shooty army because that's two turns of shooting in a row that can decimate you. Imagine if you could get two turns in a row in 40k, and it's basically the same thing. A lot of times I see people forget about it and just go normal IGO-UGO like 40k, but I do like how it adds to the tactics. I just wish shooting wasn't so devastating and if there was a good way to actually stop it using a non-shooting army besides just hiding in a corner (which then gives your opponent reign to control the battlefield). It seems that the main issue as well is that not only does shooting tend to have long range but a lot of it is multiple damage, so a unit can easily get wiped out by a concentrated volley, which makes sense but makes for an unfun game especially when only a handful of armies have shooting and the Death and Chaos factions barely get any.

This is why I really wish the game had the mechanic of activating a unit, then your opponent activating a unit.

I really despise IGOUGO and the double turn of shooting makes games less than fun if your opponent is min/maxing and has an overbearing amount of ranged attacks.

I say that as a bloodbound player...

I don't understand your argument against terrain. Put a good amount of terrain down, that heavily mitigates against shooting. It has minimal affect on melee armies, I'm clearly missing your issue with 'move around them while keeping 1" coherency'. Yes it puts stuff in the way of simply charging across an empty field, but why is that an issue vs getting shot up by shooting heavy armies.

I also must be missing why 2 units of Kurnoths were a problem in a 5 turn game which was just about objectives. They do something like 8 damage average, flesheaters can regenerate more wound per turn than that. If he ran back to his edge then ignore them, keep your guys fighting for objectives.

Sylvaneth as whole are quite nasty, but I'm with those who say the shooting should not have been your problem.

auticus wrote:This is why I really wish the game had the mechanic of activating a unit, then your opponent activating a unit.

I really despise IGOUGO and the double turn of shooting makes games less than fun if your opponent is min/maxing and has an overbearing amount of ranged attacks.

I say that as a bloodbound player...

Battletech YES!

You know I wouldn't have minded if they did something like in X-wing where you move through your initiative. Would really make that stat important then. Since we don't have that stat in AoS it's a moot point here, but since someone mentioned 40K I thought it would be good for 40K.

That said and it's off topic now, sorry, Wayne said he is looking for a new army. How about instead of a new army when you are ready for it, how about adding to your existing army or do you want something totally different?

I am a big fan of battletech yes.

Davor wrote:

auticus wrote:This is why I really wish the game had the mechanic of activating a unit, then your opponent activating a unit.

I really despise IGOUGO and the double turn of shooting makes games less than fun if your opponent is min/maxing and has an overbearing amount of ranged attacks.

I say that as a bloodbound player...

Battletech YES!

You know I wouldn't have minded if they did something like in X-wing where you move through your initiative. Would really make that stat important then. Since we don't have that stat in AoS it's a moot point here, but since someone mentioned 40K I thought it would be good for 40K.

That said and it's off topic now, sorry, Wayne said he is looking for a new army. How about instead of a new army when you are ready for it, how about adding to your existing army or do you want something totally different?

Because Eldar aren't yet dominant enough in 40k.

It was an issue because he was using them to snipe all my characters that were behind the regular squads, so I couldn't replenish units, and had Drycha eating a unit. Although one mistake I made was sending my King on Terrorgheist to attack Drycha instead of wiping out the squad of Revenant guys that was by an objective. I still likely would have lost, but he wouldn't be getting double points every turn.

Don't present targets if possible Dunno, actually, haven't experimented much in AoS playing other than Fyreslayers against shooty armies. Duardin and Seraphon games were luckily not vs. all judicators or bolt throwers.

Well see the issue here is that you didn't take your 2+rerollable save that ignores rend up to -2 against shooting attacks. Or is it only Stormcasts that have that...?

ERJAK wrote:
Well see the issue here is that you didn't take your 2+rerollable save that ignores rend up to -2 against shooting attacks. Or is it only Stormcasts that have that...?

Actually it's Seraphon and Death stuff that has ignoring rends.

Kunoth Hunter is really good for their toughness and suvivabilities but not damage output. If you have weathered freeguide shooting or Kunning Orcs you will know the pwer of real shooting.

But yes, Kunoth Hunters are even more powerful caompare with other shooting units because of their toughness. Most shooting die immediately facing deep strike troops. Kunoth Hunter can stand for a way longer time.

Try playing with balefull realmgates on the board, this way it's doable to reach units surfing the edges of the battlefield.

Requizen wrote:

ERJAK wrote:
Well see the issue here is that you didn't take your 2+rerollable save that ignores rend up to -2 against shooting attacks. Or is it only Stormcasts that have that...?

Actually it's Seraphon and Death stuff that has ignoring rends.

Fulminator+Castellant+cover gives you a 0+ save so -2 rend still leaves you at 2+

Played another small game against an Empire ("Free Peoples") force yesterday. Small game, guy had a cannon, a unit of 30 guys with sword and shield, a general and a unit of 20 archers. Did not move the entire game because his general gave some ability that gave his guys a bonus to hit/wound if they didn't. Again, I found eating a ton of shots to be not fun at all (although nowhere near as overpowered as Kurnoth Hunters). but once I got into combat it was quickly over for him.

I still feel that shooting needs another limitation, like you suffer a-1/-2 penalty to hit and/or wound if you are shooting INTO melee (and then some guys like Skaven can ignore it because Skaven) and you cannot shoot if you are engaged in melee (maybe even limit it to models engaged, not the entire unit)

When I wrote Azyr, we had tried a few rules to limit shooting.

All were shouted down by the community because they went against the official rules.

So I agree with you that shooting needs some limitations. Mainly realistic limitations, like if an archer unit is engaged in melee its not free to shoot at other units outside of its melee, and that shooting a mortar into a combat is not going to magically just hit the enemy.

However, that is not a realistic wish.

Well, it is if GW decides to listen and FAQ it. Problem is, a lot of the most vocal people tend to be the competitive types, so they probably WANT to keep shooting high end so they can steamroll tournaments with Skyrefire or Kurnoth Hunters or whatnot. Look at how the rabid vocal minority got the new Prospero 40k things thrown into being formations for Battle-forged, just so they would not have to sully themselves by playing Unbound.

My major problem now is that I am looking at doing another AOS army, and I feel the fact that shooting is so OP is making me want to consider an army that has shooting just so I can take advantage of it, rather than actually look at something I want to play that might not have shooting because I don't wnt to go through it again with being continually blasted off the board with literally nothing except hiding behind a large building to stop it.

As an aside one thing I find hilariously funny (in the bad way) is how many people are willing to do things like say to measure from the base, which is a house rule but are unwilling to add in other house rules because it's "not official". Neither is measuring from the base. So what, exactly, makes one fine and expected, and the other an anathema?

Wayniac wrote:
Well, it is if GW decides to listen and FAQ it. Problem is, a lot of the most vocal people tend to be the competitive types, so they probably WANT to keep shooting high end so they can steamroll tournaments with Skyrefire or Kurnoth Hunters or whatnot. Look at how the rabid vocal minority got the new Prospero 40k things thrown into being formations for Battle-forged, just so they would not have to sully themselves by playing Unbound.

My major problem now is that I am looking at doing another AOS army, and I feel the fact that shooting is so OP is making me want to consider an army that has shooting just so I can take advantage of it, rather than actually look at something I want to play that might not have shooting because I don't wnt to go through it again with being continually blasted off the board with literally nothing except hiding behind a large building to stop it.

As an aside one thing I find hilariously funny (in the bad way) is how many people are willing to do things like say to measure from the base, which is a house rule but are unwilling to add in other house rules because it's "not official". Neither is measuring from the base. So what, exactly, makes one fine and expected, and the other an anathema?

Blatant misrepresentation as far as the SoS Custodes go. The VAST majority of people WANTED to be able to bring those models into battleforged lists and honestly there was no good reason they shouldn't of been. It's the vocal minority that whines about it 'fer mah immersion!'. Secondly, things being OMG WTF BBQ OP suck for the competitive crowd too because EVERYONE takes them and there's no variety. Yeah rolling over locals is funny sometimes but at anything bigger than 20 people, half are bringing the same OP BS as you and that isn't interesting either. Having a number of very powerful competitive builds is great and having 2 of the 3 big time power builds be shooting based is no bueno.

That aside, we've ruled that your can't shoot OUT of a combat and got rid of random initiative and that was really all it took. Shooting units are extremely strong but they also tend to be very expensive and not great in melee. Certain armies(Stormcast, skaven, some destruction armies) don't care about shooting at all, so small adjustments is where you would start in terms of balancing.

Wayniac wrote:
As an aside one thing I find hilariously funny (in the bad way) is how many people are willing to do things like say to measure from the base, which is a house rule but are unwilling to add in other house rules because it's "not official". Neither is measuring from the base. So what, exactly, makes one fine and expected, and the other an anathema?

Base to base measurement can be found as a house rule in just about every AoS event that GW runs. That's why most find that as an acceptable house rule.

 Ghaz wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
As an aside one thing I find hilariously funny (in the bad way) is how many people are willing to do things like say to measure from the base, which is a house rule but are unwilling to add in other house rules because it's "not official". Neither is measuring from the base. So what, exactly, makes one fine and expected, and the other an anathema?

Base to base measurement can be found as a house rule in just about every AoS event that GW runs. That's why most find that as an acceptable house rule.

Oh I agree, but it's still a house rule, and not playing by the "official" rules. So I'm curious why that's okay, but adding other house rules is seen as taboo.

Wayniac wrote:

 Ghaz wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
As an aside one thing I find hilariously funny (in the bad way) is how many people are willing to do things like say to measure from the base, which is a house rule but are unwilling to add in other house rules because it's "not official". Neither is measuring from the base. So what, exactly, makes one fine and expected, and the other an anathema?

Base to base measurement can be found as a house rule in just about every AoS event that GW runs. That's why most find that as an acceptable house rule.

Oh I agree, but it's still a house rule, and not playing by the "official" rules. So I'm curious why that's okay, but adding other house rules is seen as taboo.

Like I said, its because GW uses it. That's why its okay.

Re evaluating the point costs and changing them to better represent yeah unit's value would balance shooting and other things besides. Other than that, don't roll for initiative; it helps.

Requizen wrote:

ERJAK wrote:
Well see the issue here is that you didn't take your 2+rerollable save that ignores rend up to -2 against shooting attacks. Or is it only Stormcasts that have that...?

Actually it's Seraphon and Death stuff that has ignoring rends.

Tyrion has it too... well, minus the re-rollable but he can go back to life. fething donkey-cave brought him with teclis and loaded a bunch of bolt-throwers.,

Sup all. In response to OP. I played against a similar list. I am a sylvaneth player as well. Your ghoul king on a terrorgheist is a monster. Do not be afraid to put him up in the face of those Kournoth Hunters. They have an average bravery and no way of avoiding mortal wounds. Be sure to use the synergy of your army. The healing, rerolls, and the moving of models. You are tough to kill and your high bravery will make it tough on the sylvaneth. Do not be intimidated by him. I found out that most of my opponents see my ancient and hunters intimidating and try to avoid them. I have the hardest times dealing with opponents who come straight at them. This is my biggest piece of advice.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Re evaluating the point costs and changing them to better represent yeah unit's value would balance shooting and other things besides. Other than that, don't roll for initiative; it helps.

I think the point costs for most shooting units is pretty close to where they should be (arrer boyz, Kurnoths, and Stormfiends(?) not withstanding) maybe a 5-10% increase but I think the random init is a MUCH bigger problem. Against a shooting army a melee army generally wants to go first and charge as hard as they can across the table so they can be in top of turn 2, with random initiative that's SUPER dangerous. In fact the only time random initiative doesn't help a shooting army is when the shooter went first, had no meaningful range and the melee player headlong charged and then got the double turn and ate the entire shooting army in one round of combat, which is no fun for the shooting player.

TLR random initiative inflates the power of shooting armies and makes them much more 'Swingy' which is usually bad news.

I do note a trend where the people who enjoy random initiative don't seem to play with/against shooting-heavy lists.

Random initiative is ok for melee against shooting if you can build a fast deployment force (battalions or large units) and force them to take the first turn. Few armies have the range to do much even if you deploy on the line, and then you have a chance at the double turn. I've seen an Ironfist with a Mawcrusha use this to great effect, they almost always get to choose to go second and then get a T1 or T2 charge.

If you're playing more MSU against shooting, it's a bit more up in the air. But again that's just in army building.

You can see the issue though; people are betting on the double turn where if they get it the game is more or less decided. Who cares about tactics when you can bet on a 50% and net a win provided you don't do anything stupid? If that 50% fails oh well, you'll have to actually play the game.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
You can see the issue though; people are betting on the double turn where if they get it the game is more or less decided. Who cares about tactics when you can bet on a 50% and net a win provided you don't do anything stupid? If that 50% fails oh well, you'll have to actually play the game.

See but don't see as an issue

 VeteranNoob wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
You can see the issue though; people are betting on the double turn where if they get it the game is more or less decided. Who cares about tactics when you can bet on a 50% and net a win provided you don't do anything stupid? If that 50% fails oh well, you'll have to actually play the game.

See but don't see as an issue

Perhaps I should clarify; I am saying that is the issue with rolling for initiative, not that rolling for initiative is the issue. There's plenty of ways such problems could be addressed while still maintaining rolled initiative, but I think most would agree that it the outcome of a game has a 50% chance of being decided by a single d6 roll that is a problem.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 VeteranNoob wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
You can see the issue though; people are betting on the double turn where if they get it the game is more or less decided. Who cares about tactics when you can bet on a 50% and net a win provided you don't do anything stupid? If that 50% fails oh well, you'll have to actually play the game.

See but don't see as an issue

Perhaps I should clarify; I am saying that is the issue with rolling for initiative, not that rolling for initiative is the issue. There's plenty of ways such problems could be addressed while still maintaining rolled initiative, but I think most would agree that it the outcome of a game has a 50% chance of being decided by a single d6 roll that is a problem.

It's not, though. In the situation that the melee player goes first and doesn't get the double turn, the game plays as normal. In the situation where the melee player goes first and gets the double turn, he's in a good spot.

So the ranged player adapts. He knows this is how things are now, so he either brings more screening units or plays even further back and spread out, knowing that he can play towards a possible double turn himself. Or he brings battalions of his own and races setup. Or he does deployment shenanigans. Or he mixes shooting with a solid frontline unit (like a wall of Plaguebearers or the like).

Things will evolve quite naturally, you'll find. I don't think there's anything wrong with melee or shooting at this point in time, people have yet to learn how to play the metagame.

I remember when the GHB launched and a few of us said 'this is going to create a battalion, shooting, monster meta' and weren't taken very seriously. So when I'm here saying the same trend will get worse it's difficult to take the 'it will balance out on the tabletop' argument seriously since that is the same one I saw before. Seeing who wins the upcoming grand tournament will provide some evidence for the matter I suppose.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I remember when the GHB launched and a few of us said 'this is going to create a battalion, shooting, monster meta' and weren't taken very seriously. So when I'm here saying the same trend will get worse it's difficult to take the 'it will balance out on the tabletop' argument seriously since that is the same one I saw before. Seeing who wins the upcoming grand tournament will provide some evidence for the matter I suppose.

Totally agreed. The least fun armies for my melee heavy army to play against are all battlations/shooting/monsters.

I'm really not going to be shocked when the winner of the GTs are primarily shooty monster type armies that make extensive use of certain battalions.

I wouldn't throw out too many predictions on that front. Our local tourney had two shooting heavy armies (Tzeentch and Free Peoples) and three Monster heavy armies (Death with Nagash/Neferata, Flesh Eaters with 3 Terrorgheists and a Zombie Dragon, and Ironjawz with Gordrakk + Boss on Mawkrusha). The winner was an undefeated Ironjawz player with only one Mawkrusha that he's already talking about switching out.

Requizen wrote:
I wouldn't throw out too many predictions on that front. Our local tourney had two shooting heavy armies (Tzeentch and Free Peoples) and three Monster heavy armies (Death with Nagash/Neferata, Flesh Eaters with 3 Terrorgheists and a Zombie Dragon, and Ironjawz with Gordrakk + Boss on Mawkrusha). The winner was an undefeated Ironjawz player with only one Mawkrusha that he's already talking about switching out.

I don't know anything about the tournament other than what you said here, and my only question is if he used a second battalion or if it was just the one Ironfist.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

Requizen wrote:
I wouldn't throw out too many predictions on that front. Our local tourney had two shooting heavy armies (Tzeentch and Free Peoples) and three Monster heavy armies (Death with Nagash/Neferata, Flesh Eaters with 3 Terrorgheists and a Zombie Dragon, and Ironjawz with Gordrakk + Boss on Mawkrusha). The winner was an undefeated Ironjawz player with only one Mawkrusha that he's already talking about switching out.

I don't know anything about the tournament other than what you said here, and my only question is if he used a second battalion or if it was just the one Ironfist.

Just Ironfist as far as Battalions go. He pumped up on heroes to get the most out of Rampaging Destroyers and had some Ardboyz units to hold objectives. The core of his force was the Boss and Brutes just rolling around 2d6+4" per turn and beating everything short of Nagash each turn, those things are nasty.

Actually what I found about Behemoths is that their main role in many armies is to just be a fire magnet. People see a Stardrake or Zombie Dragon and want to pump all their damage into it to kill it asap, and unless they're Skyre or other mass Mortal Wounds, the main draw of a Behemoth isn't the killing power, but the ability to draw all the arrows and bullets away from your foot dudes for as long as possible. Our Khorne player lost his Bloodthirster first in all of his games but the rest of his army was able to get further up the board because they put so much into killing it.

So the first thing I am noting here; the meta we are warning people about is shooting, monsters, battalions, and the tournament you raised to oppose those predictions fits very well into that. The second thing I am noting here is that I dictated what battalion that Ironjawz player was using without knowing anything other than the fact he won. All in all it is a very good example to support the predictions myself and others are making. Personally, I am not trying to begrudge players who don't exploit the meta or those who find ways to play against it, but rather to call out those who state it isn't a significant problem. I feel like while such statements had legitimacy to them before they no longer have much backing to them, and ignoring or downplaying a real issue doesn't do the fan base any service.

I don't see what the complaint is with Battalions though. They have point costs and aside from a couple are costed appropriately. Nothing about the Ironfist feels like cheating. I can see complaints about the Kunnin Rukk, but as pointed out even that one relies on a lynchpin model that can be removed by several means.

Actually, at that event only Nagash felt like cheating, since he and Neferata teamed up to give him a 2+ rerolling save, and he still lost on points because it turns out having more than half your army in 2 models doesn't do much of anything as far as scoring goes. The Flesh Eaters player with 4 behemoths lost 2/3 games despite "spamming" pretty good monsters, which felt cheesier than the Ironfist.

I play Skyborne and I would say that feels the cheesiest out of any battalion I've seen so far, but it's pretty well countered by proper screening (and a Gryph-Hound if you're Order). No one thing in the meta atm feels unfun to play against or broken.

Well, it breaks down as follows: Shooting is favored in the meta because it disproportionately benefits from rolled initiative as compared to melee. Monsters & battalions on the other hand just tend to be priced too cheap (sometimes WAY too cheap) for what they do. For an Ironjawz player, an Ironfist is 60 points to get deployment benefits, an extra artifact, and a negation of the army's main weak point (slow speed on melee units). There's no cost other than the 60 points because the units required from the battalion were already there to fill battleline requirements. Honestly there's very few armies in the game that would not pay 60 points to get those benefits.

I guess I just don't agree with the whining. Double turns affect melee armies just as much if not more than shooting armies. I don't think there are that many underpriced monsters/battalions, at least none that are breaking the game like the Wraithknight is in 40k. The Ironfist is good but even at 60 points I think you're paying enough for the benefit, because it's enough to take up a noticeable space in an army list and also feel like you're paying for the benefit (which is pretty minimal compared to other battalions).

Feel free to disagree, of course, but the amount of people complaining about balance at this point in time is a small minority.

Requizen wrote:
I guess I just don't agree with the whining. Double turns affect melee armies just as much if not more than shooting armies. I don't think there are that many underpriced monsters/battalions, at least none that are breaking the game like the Wraithknight is in 40k. The Ironfist is good but even at 60 points I think you're paying enough for the benefit, because it's enough to take up a noticeable space in an army list and also feel like you're paying for the benefit (which is pretty minimal compared to other battalions).

Feel free to disagree, of course, but the amount of people complaining about balance at this point in time is a small minority.

I think it's fair to say that you can't be competitive unless you bring Shooting, Monsters or Battalions. Foot dudes with Magic support don't win games consistently. I think people forget that there are currently 61 factions/allegiances. Only about 10% of them have meaningful access to Battalions/Monsters/Decent Shooting. I'd hazard a guess that people who play the other ~55 factions realize they're grossly underpowered, understand that they might have to wait YEARS for new rules and simply don't participate in tournaments. Some of them can't even build a Matched Play legal list without pulling in generic Batteline units from another allegiance. I'd be shocked if anything other than Flesh-Eater Courts/Ironjawz/Bonesplitters/Beastclaw Raiders/Sylvaneth/maybe Skyre place in the GT.

 Kriswall wrote:

Requizen wrote:
I guess I just don't agree with the whining. Double turns affect melee armies just as much if not more than shooting armies. I don't think there are that many underpriced monsters/battalions, at least none that are breaking the game like the Wraithknight is in 40k. The Ironfist is good but even at 60 points I think you're paying enough for the benefit, because it's enough to take up a noticeable space in an army list and also feel like you're paying for the benefit (which is pretty minimal compared to other battalions).

Feel free to disagree, of course, but the amount of people complaining about balance at this point in time is a small minority.

I think it's fair to say that you can't be competitive unless you bring Shooting, Monsters or Battalions. Foot dudes with Magic support don't win games consistently. I think people forget that there are currently 61 factions/allegiances. Only about 10% of them have meaningful access to Battalions/Monsters/Decent Shooting. I'd hazard a guess that people who play the other ~55 factions realize they're grossly underpowered, understand that they might have to wait YEARS for new rules and simply don't participate in tournaments. Some of them can't even build a Matched Play legal list without pulling in generic Batteline units from another allegiance. I'd be shocked if anything other than Flesh-Eater Courts/Ironjawz/Bonesplitters/Beastclaw Raiders/Sylvaneth/maybe Skyre place in the GT.

I mean, of course the less fleshed out armies aren't going to have as many options as the ones that have had more releases or have synergies. That's just basic logic, isn't it? There's nothing keeping those armies from playing general Grand Alliance, though. You can make a GA:Order army with shooting, monsters, and battalions that isn't SE/Sylvaneth(/Seraphon, but I don't know if they're in that pile). Celestial Hurricanums are bonkers. Dark/High Elf characters on dragons are quite good. Maybe not Gordrakk strong, but pretty good.

I agree there probably aren't any top ranking armies that don't include Battalions/Monsters/Shooting. But.... is that a bad thing? I don't really think so. I think those are just part of the game and are prevalent and available enough to anyone that it's not that big of a deal.

Besides, there are plenty of strong armies aside from the ~6 you noted. Moonclan Grots did very well at Warlords and have lots of strong combos. Spiderfang is pretty solid as well. Gutbuster Ogors actually nearly fit your "no Battalion/Monster/Shooting" desire aside from Leadbelchers. Tomb Kings and Brettonians are pretty nuts. Free Peoples fall into the "Shooting" category and are pretty good if you build them right. Nurgle armies are stupid hard to kill and I would wager we'll see more than our fair share of Plaguebearers on the board once people figure out how good they are.

We probably won't see any GTs until next year (LVO and Adepticon have them coming up, at the very least), so we'll see. But I honestly think we'll see way more diversity than people believe we will.

I play it as much as possible, because armies composed of pre-End Times models get steamrolled instantly if they get to melee.

I find that as long as your playing the missions shooting armies aren't that bad. Most shooting armies lack either mobility and or numbers. Either they have to move foward to try and grab my objectives or they hang back and try to widdle me away from a distance. At any rate I try to wait till I have the highest advantage only committing to them at the bottom of the turn and only committing my forces to one area.

When the argument is 'the balance is not as bad as 40k' that's a pretty strong confirmation there's a balance problem.

I agree there probably aren't any top ranking armies that don't include Battalions/Monsters/Shooting. But.... is that a bad thing? I don't really think so.

While its fine to not consider that a problem, I doubt the majority of people feel similarly.

Our of curiosity, what armies/units do you use?

Is that a bad thing?

Yes to me it is a bad thing. Anytime you pretty much HAVE to build a certain way to have a good game and eschew the rest of the game, that is a bad thing to me.

GW power curves have always had steep bell curves. Meaning that the number of viable builds is always usually templated and a tiny percentage of available builds.

If you don't mind chasing the meta, then its not a big deal. You simply find whats busted at tournaments and build accordingly.

If you aren't interested in chasing the meta, this will turn you away from the game.

 auticus wrote:
Is that a bad thing?

Yes to me it is a bad thing. Anytime you pretty much HAVE to build a certain way to have a good game and eschew the rest of the game, that is a bad thing to me.

GW power curves have always had steep bell curves. Meaning that the number of viable builds is always usually templated and a tiny percentage of available builds.

If you don't mind chasing the meta, then its not a big deal. You simply find whats busted at tournaments and build accordingly.

If you aren't interested in chasing the meta, this will turn you away from the game.

YES! This whole "competitive meta" thing is atrocious. If a game is unbalanced enough for only a few builds to be "viable" (i.e. op) then it shouldn't be played that way, because you have people bringing winning lists (rather than skill or tactics) making is ty for casual players and starting toxic "arms races". This thing is what is wrong with Warhammer in general.

If a game is balanced enough for serious tournaments, then buying new armies to "chase the meta" isn't worth it. You can just adapt a list, because no one faction is completely incapable of dealing with anything and none are inherently more powerful. Warhammer is AWESOME, but not one of those games.

 DarkBlack wrote:

 auticus wrote:
Is that a bad thing?

Yes to me it is a bad thing. Anytime you pretty much HAVE to build a certain way to have a good game and eschew the rest of the game, that is a bad thing to me.

GW power curves have always had steep bell curves. Meaning that the number of viable builds is always usually templated and a tiny percentage of available builds.

If you don't mind chasing the meta, then its not a big deal. You simply find whats busted at tournaments and build accordingly.

If you aren't interested in chasing the meta, this will turn you away from the game.

YES! This whole "competitive meta" thing is atrocious. If a game is unbalanced enough for only a few builds to be "viable" (i.e. op) then it shouldn't be played that way, because you have people bringing winning lists (rather than skill or tactics) making is ty for casual players and starting toxic "arms races". This thing is what is wrong with Warhammer in general.

If a game is balanced enough for serious tournaments, then buying new armies to "chase the meta" isn't worth it. You can just adapt a list, because no one faction is completely incapable of dealing with anything and none are inherently more powerful. Warhammer is AWESOME, but not one of those games.

You've never really played/followed a truly competitive game before have you? Only a few builds are EVER viable at the extremely high level. When you get world class players going head to head a 1% difference in point efficiency, dps, average CS differential, win rate, etc becomes game breaking. If you play at Matt Root, Faker, Fabiano Caruana, or Firebat's level the only way to keep armies from being crazily imbalanced is if they are totally identical.

Secondly, the 'competitive meta' only comes into play when dealing with competitive games. If you're just sitting around the shop getting a game in a rainy saturday morning then the fact that Arrer Boyz are more point efficient than Moar Boyz doesn't mean anything to you anyway. Once you enter into a competitive environment, I.E. a tournament, you have accepted that people are going to do everything they can to gain an advantage to win, including bring extremely powerful lists. If you don't bring something that can stand up to that then that's your fault; The Patriots(U.S. Football team that wins a lot for non U.S.) Don't hire anemic toddlers for the same reason you should leave your Paladin Decimator footslog spam at home.

Finally, no matter how imbalanced the game gets, really good players are still going to win. You could go copy Matt Root or Brandon Grant's 40k lists point for point and never make top HALF at a gt. Those guys get 1st prize because they are insanely good, the fact that they have very strong lists is secondary. The idea that you can just take a crazy netlist to a tournament and roflstomp everyone for free is a silly misconception held by players who see tournaments and other competitive events as being aberrations of the game.

Yes to me it is a bad thing. Anytime you pretty much HAVE to build a certain way to have a good game and eschew the rest of the game, that is a bad thing to me.

Good job you don't have that in AoS then. Ive had good games and have never felt I had to 'build' a certain way. talking to the other guy coming up with scenarios etc is all part of the game as well. I certainly don't play on an empty table where cover doesn't exist and don't get overly distracted by shooting units over victory conditions.

I assume you are missing the key qualifier - IF you are going to a tourney. If you are at a competition there is bound to be 'builds' that are not good and 'builds' that are, I've not really encountered a game that isn't like that. That is what happens when winning by any means possible (bar cheating) is all that matters (and yes whilst some go to tourneys for other reasons, the tourney is by almost by definition about gettingmax wins and trying to be top dog).


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And I agree with much of what Erjak above said. I used to play a particular space combat game in tourneys. I was always bemused by the complaints there as well . One of the forces that the really good players saw as OP and underpointed had one of the worst win records by a large margin, why? because the top few percent of players understood the major weaknesses and how to deal with it whilst taking advantage of its huge advantages , the other 95% just died if the dice did not go their way. However, whilst the top players saw it as OP they also tended to not take it for tourneys, as the extremeness meant that it was too easy to lose one game against another top player over a tourney and therefore cripple your chances of being top dog when there was only a limited number of games.

In a way I see the whole shooting stuff like that. We end up talking about extremes of armies, but extremes *tend* to have extreme strengths in return for extreme weaknesses.

I've played tournament warhammer (lived breathed and died by it) for over a decade, so yes I am familiar with the concept.

The problem is in some of our metas, my own included, everyone plays this way and won't tone their lists down. So yes that is the only viable way of playing short of being ok with getting rolled every game.

AOS is just as bad. There are definitely builds that stand way out above the others.

"IF you are going to a tourney. If you are at a competition there is bound to be 'builds' that are not good and 'builds' that are, I've not really encountered a game like that."

I encounter a game like that every week. Its how my community plays. They play no holds barred tournament style games.

When tournaments aren't happening they are playing games to prep for tournaments.

Extreme armies usually have a hard counter. They will always roll a balanced army. You don't see balanced armies going to competitions because balanced armies don't do well. Saying that extreme armies have extreme weaknesses is to me overstating, because the OP builds that I have run and encountered over the years are usually called OP builds because they have few if any real weaknesses short of bad dice and a hard counter that could exist (warhammer and 40k for years are nothing but expensive paper/rock/scissors games). If an OP build had extreme weaknesses, it wouldn't be an OP build. It would just be a build, and it wouldn't be seen in a min/max environment very often.

The whole creed of being a tournament player is to find the extreme OP build that will have as few hard counters present as possible to maximize your odds of not facing them and thus roll the others to max out your score. If you are not rolling an OP build, one typically will feel or mention or both that they probably aren't going to do well but are going to have fun (and thats legit and fine).

In AOS there are builds that as of yet have no hard counter. The skryre teleporting mortal wound dishing stormfiend warp fire army is one of those.

There's very little you can do against that army/battalion, especially when they get two turns in a row. There are ways to attempt to curb it, but you have to play a perfect game while the skaven guy has to be able to breathe, roll dice, and sip his mountain dew.

The points structure that they adopted has its issues as well, as has been pointed out by anyone that has actually done the math. I broke down the stats model by model and posted the efficiency scores for everything in the game on my website. A lot of the values are fine but there are definitely issues with how the monsters are costed. They are too cheap by about 25-35% on average. Is that game breaking? Not by itself, but it means that if you are trying to break the game and win tournaments or dominate your local scene you are silly to not bring monsters because their efficiency scores are so much higher due to them being a bit too cheap.

Is that a bad thing? That's subjective. I don't like things that are obvious takes. To me, too cheap models that do more than their cost are not a good thing.

If you don't dwell in a competitive-build-at-all-times community, this won't be an issue, and thats awesome for you.

If you live in a community that will always be rocking tournament builds, even in their "for fun" games, this becomes more of an issue.

As to the whole "good players will win no matter what"... sorry but I also heavily disagree. I have seen with my own eyes top guys folding when they aren't using an OP tournament build. There are a couple that can indeed win with weak armies but they are very much the exception. We have one in our community that plays a generic Blood Angels army that utilizes a lot of tactical marines, and he dominates local tournaments and always places high in all of the GT circuit events he attends. However, I can count on one hand guys like him that I've met in the over twenty years that I have been a part of the warhammer community. That includes several years of extensively traveling to every GT on North America and playing a ton of games against the names of that era and watching them experiment with weaker armies and watching them get rolled.

Yes they may still be good players, but being a good player and knowing the game does not negate that this game is essentially a mathematics exercise and that giving a good player a middling army is going to put him at a disadvantage against a strong army.

I typically find a great player with a middling army vs an middling player with a great army is a great game, because the great player is handicapped and the middling player has a crutch in the form of the math favoring him. The game can often go either way (this is 20+ years of watching, playing, observing, and setting those type of games up to challenge our top club players when we were a traveling tournament team)

I agree with auticus to a point; I find people are much more likely to be playing "tournament style" games all the time, rather than the opposite. So for someone like me this means either I need to adjust my own "fun" to accommodate that, or else run the risk of losing all the time due to not fielding an army of a similar caliber and then risk just saying feth it and stop playing because I got tired of being crushed week in, week out. That typically results in me compromising and playing something I'm really not super keen on, just because it will give me at least a decent chance of not always losing.

For me personally, I find shooting to be supremely hard to counter without bringing your own shooting force (due to the rules allowing you to shoot even while in combat, while in other games you typically counter shooting by engaging them with fast-moving units), which not everyone can do (Death, for example, has practically no shooting at all). Is it game breaking? I don't think it's quite that bad, but it is a very strong way to build a list and, as a result, crush anyone who doesn't match that level simply because there's no counter to shooting short of either being able to weather it and deal more damage yourself, or hide behind buildings the entire game so you block LOS (which easily results in being unable to capture any objectives).

I will point out that I don't think shooting armies are invincible.

However... they do take full advantage of the dual turn mechanic which makes them much more powerful than if a melee oriented army gets two turns in a row for a few reasons:

1) range means they can hit without being in melee range two turns in a row without a response.

2) you can shoot and fight in melee in your turn... which means that even if those units ARE in melee they are getting two phases of attacks back to back. That of course means more dice being rolled and more casualties being inflicted on the other side.

The math is heavily in favor of shooting-oriented armies in AOS because of this.

If shooting armies could not shoot whilst engaged in melee they would lose point #2 and just have point #1 going for them, which while still powerful would be less obscene.

Alternatively if you could not go back to back turns you would lose #1 and #2 which is why a lot of groups adopt this houserule.

I still honestly don't understand the complaint. Yes, I see that people think that shooting, monsters, and battalions are strong. But every army in the game has access to at least 2 of those 3 - bigger subfactions within their own faction, and smaller ones by using the Grand Alliance.

Is the complaint, then, that you can't just take melee foot dudes with a couple heroes and win the game? Well.... that's true. And that's fine. List building is part of the game and building a one dimensional force with no ranged support or heavy units should be punished. You also can't win a game of Starcraft by building only Zealots or Zerglings.

There's a huge variety in the strong lists out there compared to most asymmetrical tabletop games. Just because an army of all Chaos Marauders can't beat an optimized list doesn't mean that the game is bad.

If you live in an environment where everyone only brings top tier lists and you just want to play the non-optimal stuff you have, then that sucks. But don't blame the game for that. In a game with as many asymmetrical options as AoS has, it's doing pretty darn good.

Except that you can win the game by building a one dimensional force of shooting.

I don't see the huge variety unfortunately. I see the same handful of power builds.

I'm not complaining because an army of chaos marauders cannot beat an optimized list. Thats pretty extreme.

"List building is part of the game, ehhh get over it" doesn't work for me. I want more variety in the game. I'm not seeing the variety. I'm seeing a GW game that has the same flaws as its predecessor and that 40k shares.

To the subject matter... how do you deal with shooting? You have to take shooting yourself because it is quite powerful and if you don't take a lot of shooting you are handicapping yourself. Same as in 40k.

I do blame the game for its steep power spike. The developers could have done a lot better job at lowering the power spike and making the bell curve a lot broader instead of narrow. The community comps seemed to do a lot better job at that, and we aren't paid game designers.

I have explained in depth my complaint with the system and why I feel that way as well as what I would consider better. At the end of the day it boils down to I don't like severe imbalance in games, and my threshold for what constitutes imbalance and severe imbalance is my own and is subjective. I do know that I can enjoy other games that while imbalanced, are a lot less so.

For me to enjoy AOS I will require an agreement with my opponent to not build an extreme list, or myself go out and buy and paint an extreme list. Out of the box, with the GHB, the point system that GW has decided to use has failed me in terms of what I want out of the game. I'm glad it works for who it works for though.

Requizen wrote:
I still honestly don't understand the complaint. Yes, I see that people think that shooting, monsters, and battalions are strong. But every army in the game has access to at least 2 of those 3 - bigger subfactions within their own faction, and smaller ones by using the Grand Alliance.

Is the complaint, then, that you can't just take melee foot dudes with a couple heroes and win the game? Well.... that's true. And that's fine. List building is part of the game and building a one dimensional force with no ranged support or heavy units should be punished. You also can't win a game of Starcraft by building only Zealots or Zerglings.

There's a huge variety in the strong lists out there compared to most asymmetrical tabletop games. Just because an army of all Chaos Marauders can't beat an optimized list doesn't mean that the game is bad.

If you live in an environment where everyone only brings top tier lists and you just want to play the non-optimal stuff you have, then that sucks. But don't blame the game for that. In a game with as many asymmetrical options as AoS has, it's doing pretty darn good.

For me personally I feel it's not that extreme, it's that I am at a disadvantage for no real reason. For instance, I play Flesh-Eater Courts. I get my replenish, but a shooting army can easily snipe my characters unless I hide them (and they are melee character, so there's a bit of bad synergy, what in Warmachine is called "Skornergy", there), so I don't get my my replenishing. There's also the fact that I have no way to stop my opponent from shooting, so as auticus mentions even if I get into combat, they are getting two rounds of attacks to my one, and in my experience FEC can soak wounds but are hit easily and don't get saves, so two sets of attacks can destroy even my Horrors and Flayers; it could even easily kill my Ghoul King.

As someone who often prefers to play melee armies (they usually strike my fancy more) I feel that shooting has very few limitations that a melee army has a much harder time to deal with (especially the aforementioned two set of attacks versus one) and I don't think the answer is to take your own shooting to combat it because 1) Not every faction has access to shooting and 2) Some army themes or concepts don't use shooting.

Again I don't necessarily think it's game-breakingly OP, but it is IMHO way stronger than it should be for no discernible reason.

 auticus wrote:
Except that you can win the game by building a one dimensional force of shooting.

Sure you can. To the extent that you can win the game by building a one dimensional force of melee dudes.

You can run all shooting and then lose to an army with high mobility or high durability melee. You can run into 2+ rerollable Nagash and your shooting will be for nothing, and then you have no tarpit for him. You can run against another shooting army with longer range or a deep strike army like Skyborne and lose.

There is no "build this and win GTs" army, despite what people might whine. I have yet to run across an army that has no reasonable hard counter.

I don't see the huge variety unfortunately. I see the same handful of power builds.

What a nonsensical statement. See where?

Online, where people only talk about the FOTM power builds? Of course that's the case.
At your local FLGS? People probably don't own multiple armies so that's not surprising.
Topping events? Bull. How many actual AoS GTs have there been since TGH? Like, 2? I know Kunnin Rukk won The Warlords, but I can't find the rest of the top 10 and one event is not statistically sound anyway.

If in 8 months we're sitting in a world where the only lists winning GTs are Kunning Rukk with Arrows and Skyre shooting, I'll eat my words. I'll shamefully put in my sig that you were right and I was wrong. But until that point, it's just baseless whining and I honestly don't agree with it.

Ok. Your inflammatory attacks are noted sir. We don't have anything further to discuss.

Fine, perhaps "whine" was too harsh.

But still. There's no evidence to back up the statement that you can, and I quote, "win the game by building a one dimensional force of shooting" other than anecdotal. And my anecdotal evidence is that the shooting heavy armies in our meta lose more games than they win, even when our Dwarf player runs his double Flame Cannon with Engineer cheese, getting up to 4d6 auto MWs per turn.

Many things look much scarier on paper than they do in practice. Some things are just as scary - Kunnin Rukk is obvously very strong (though has the counter if you can take out the lynchpin hero), but the internet has a habit in games like this to decry something as too OP before actually seeing it on the table. This is true in 40k, this is true in AoS, this is true in MtG or any other number of Tabletop games.

But I digress. I'm still not sure if the discussion is "shooting is OP and will win all games/tournaments" or "shooting is unfun to play against". The former is not true just on a logical basis, the latter is opinion. I have not found shooting to be unfun to play against, though when I bring my Skyborne Slayers I am the pure counter to it. When I run against it with my Nurgle Daemons, I find that I have the ability to weather it fairly well and if I can get in with the GUO/Prince/Be'lakor (all of whom are tough or fast enough to get there reliably), I can usually dismantle those armies unless I get outplayed.

Requizen wrote:
Fine, perhaps "whine" was too harsh.

But still. There's no evidence to back up the statement that you can, and I quote, "win the game by building a one dimensional force of shooting" other than anecdotal. And my anecdotal evidence is that the shooting heavy armies in our meta lose more games than they win, even when our Dwarf player runs his double Flame Cannon with Engineer cheese, getting up to 4d6 auto MWs per turn.

Many things look much scarier on paper than they do in practice. Some things are just as scary - Kunnin Rukk is obvously very strong (though has the counter if you can take out the lynchpin hero), but the internet has a habit in games like this to decry something as too OP before actually seeing it on the table. This is true in 40k, this is true in AoS, this is true in MtG or any other number of Tabletop games.

But I digress. I'm still not sure if the discussion is "shooting is OP and will win all games/tournaments" or "shooting is unfun to play against". The former is not true just on a logical basis, the latter is opinion. I have not found shooting to be unfun to play against, though when I bring my Skyborne Slayers I am the pure counter to it. When I run against it with my Nurgle Daemons, I find that I have the ability to weather it fairly well and if I can get in with the GUO/Prince/Be'lakor (all of whom are tough or fast enough to get there reliably), I can usually dismantle those armies unless I get outplayed.

Skyborne Slayers is a hard counter to heavy shooting. Nurgle Daemons can weather shooting better than the overwhelming majority of other armies. Your experience isn't average. You're at the peak of the "not caring about shooting" bell curve. Many other players feel it as much more painful and it can be very much NOT fun to play against.

I think the discussion is more that "shooting is generally stronger than melee due to the structure of the game and factions with heavy shooting generally have a better chance of winning than factions without heavy shooting" AND "heavy shooting is frequently not fun to play against". It's not that ONLY heavy shooting armies will win. It's that a no melee/heavy shooting army is perfectly viable while no shooting/heavy melee isn't... at least at the highest levels. Ironjawz will never defeat Kunnin Rukk or Skyrefyre.

I play Ironjawz. It's a brand new faction for Age of Sigmar, with all but one of the faction units being newly introduced. It has a Battletome and everything. Other than not having its own GHB allegiance abilities, it can easily be argued as a 'modern AoS army'. I don't have access to ANY shooting in my faction. Telling me to just open up my allegiance and find something else in Destruction is equivalent to telling me to go out and buy a new army. Having to buy a new army to be at the same level of competition as other armies means that GW has failed and should have done a better job of balancing the army rules/units. Heavy shooting isn't fun to play against because I have no real counter. I just have to hope enough of my models survive to wipe out the shooting unit in combat. If the shooting unit is super durable or the shooter gets a double turn, the chance of me wiping them out in combat drops. It's just not that much fun.

I agree with that. I play Flesh-Eater Courts which is also a modern army (repacked models, but still). My grand alliance doesn't even really have shooting unless I want to track down OOP Tomb King stuff that technically doesn't exist. My entire army is built around the idea of having leaders who can mitigate my losses, but I find shooting makes it trivial to just snipe them out first and then I have a bunch of 5+ save guys that fold like paper against basically anything.

 Kriswall wrote:

Requizen wrote:
Fine, perhaps "whine" was too harsh.

But still. There's no evidence to back up the statement that you can, and I quote, "win the game by building a one dimensional force of shooting" other than anecdotal. And my anecdotal evidence is that the shooting heavy armies in our meta lose more games than they win, even when our Dwarf player runs his double Flame Cannon with Engineer cheese, getting up to 4d6 auto MWs per turn.

Many things look much scarier on paper than they do in practice. Some things are just as scary - Kunnin Rukk is obvously very strong (though has the counter if you can take out the lynchpin hero), but the internet has a habit in games like this to decry something as too OP before actually seeing it on the table. This is true in 40k, this is true in AoS, this is true in MtG or any other number of Tabletop games.

But I digress. I'm still not sure if the discussion is "shooting is OP and will win all games/tournaments" or "shooting is unfun to play against". The former is not true just on a logical basis, the latter is opinion. I have not found shooting to be unfun to play against, though when I bring my Skyborne Slayers I am the pure counter to it. When I run against it with my Nurgle Daemons, I find that I have the ability to weather it fairly well and if I can get in with the GUO/Prince/Be'lakor (all of whom are tough or fast enough to get there reliably), I can usually dismantle those armies unless I get outplayed.

Skyborne Slayers is a hard counter to heavy shooting. Nurgle Daemons can weather shooting better than the overwhelming majority of other armies. Your experience isn't average. You're at the peak of the "not caring about shooting" bell curve. Many other players feel it as much more painful and it can be very much NOT fun to play against.

Neither is yours if you play an army that is weak to heavy shooting. As I said, anecdotal evidence is not evidence, neither is opinion. Our resident Beastclaw Raiders player doesn't care about shooting because he buffs up his 3 Stonehorns and halves wounds. The Nagash player I know gets his 2+ rerollable and laughs at shooting (except I guess Skyre, but usually he can outscore that with blobs of Skellies). Our Grot player takes massive blobs, buffs them up, and then doesn't care about losing 20 models because he has 60 more. There are plenty of armies in the game that don't care about shooting that much.

For an army like Ironjawz, which you play, you do. Bad matchups exist, though. My Skyborne have their counters that I hate playing against, as do most armies. That's healthy for the game, if every army felt fine against every other one, it would be because there's no variety. As long as the game is asymmetrical, there will be good and bad matchups. And that's good for the game. List building is all about trying to figure out how to compensate for those weaknesses, and sometimes you just play the mission instead of trying to table people.

I think the discussion is more that "shooting is generally stronger than melee due to the structure of the game and factions with heavy shooting generally have a better chance of winning than factions without heavy shooting" AND "heavy shooting is frequently not fun to play against". It's not that ONLY heavy shooting armies will win. It's that a no melee/heavy shooting army is perfectly viable while no shooting/heavy melee isn't... at least at the highest levels.

Disagree. There are plenty of melee-only armies that look like they'll do just fine at the top levels.

If you're trying to say "a melee only army consisting of just normal foot dudes and no support structure isn't viable", then yes, you are correct. And again, that's a good thing. At the highest levels (your words, not mine), people should be encouraged to do more than just take the things they have. List building is just as much of the game as the actual gameplay, as is practicing and knowing your list.

Ironjawz will never defeat Kunnin Rukk or Skyrefyre.

Bull. It's a hard matchup but neither of those matchups are an autolose game. Gorefist especially can play a huge part in winning those games by having massive Turn 1 board control. Blobs of Ardboyz actually would make a fine fight against Rukk, since you're relatively tough and have more non-monster bodies than they want to deal with, especially with the mobility and combat advantage they have over Arrowboyz.

Just because something is a counterbuild doesn't mean it's broken. It just means that the game is asymmetrical.

I play Ironjawz. It's a brand new faction for Age of Sigmar, with all but one of the faction units being newly introduced. It has a Battletome and everything. Other than not having its own GHB allegiance abilities, it can easily be argued as a 'modern AoS army'. I don't have access to ANY shooting in my faction. Telling me to just open up my allegiance and find something else in Destruction is equivalent to telling me to go out and buy a new army. Having to buy a new army to be at the same level of competition as other armies means that GW has failed and should have done a better job of balancing the army rules/units. Heavy shooting isn't fun to play against because I have no real counter. I just have to hope enough of my models survive to wipe out the shooting unit in combat. If the shooting unit is super durable or the shooter gets a double turn, the chance of me wiping them out in combat drops. It's just not that much fun.

1) Your anecdotal evidence doesn't hold any more weight than mine. If my anecdote is "shooting armies are actually weak because I play Skyborne" and yours is "shooting armies are OP because I play Ironjawz", then who do we listen to? On average, they seem about fine, no?

2) Nobody is telling you that you have to go out and buy a whole new army. However, the balance of the game is not dictated by one person buying a single assortment of units and expecting it to be viable against every army type in the game. That's about impossible. If you want to compete "at the highest level" (again, your words), then you have to be willing to use the tools available to you. If you just want to bring the army you have and enjoy, that's great too... but you have to realize that there will be limitations and gaps in your army because that's how the game is balanced.

I listen to the math.

Shooting heavy armies get to attack in two phases of a turn. Melee heavy armies in one.

If a shooting heavy army gets two turns in a row then thats four phases of attack dice rolled vs the melee army's two.

With there being no way to stop shooting models from shooting, and with alternate turns this becomes a data model for skewed statistics.

If both forces are using shooty heavy armies then that brings the math back on par.

If you go with a melee heavy army you are playing at a disadvantage, and in some cases a severe disadvantage.

The obvious answer to this is "suck it up and don't play a melee heavy army", but thats not a good answer to me.

Now to foster good discussion we can discuss "how do you deal with shooting" knowing that one is at a moderate to severe disadvantage if playing a melee-oriented army vs a shooty-oriented army.

Asymmetrical games will obviously have a variety of match-ups where one side is stronger than the other. The issue with AoS (and 40k) is that there are factions that will have the advantage more often than not. The "faction power bell curve" is way too steep with a relatively limited number of factions at the peak. In 40k (not comprehensive, just an example), alpha strikes and heavy/D shooting are devastating. Because of this, and all else equal, Space Marines (alpha strike builds) and Tau Empire/Eldar (heavy/D shooting builds) aren't particularly fun to play against because the opponent feels like the game is an uphill battle where every play has to be perfect to have a real chance at winning.

As an Ironjawz player, it's USUALLY not fun to play against heavy shooting lists. I'm not saying I can't win and I'm not saying it's a 100% advantage 100% of the time. I'm saying that even when I win, it's not fun. Sure, I could add my own shooting, but that would involve adding 300+ points of generic Destruction Battleline units that don't synergize at all with my army as a 'tax' before I can even look at shooting units. It would be nice if every "major" faction had a basic Batteline choice. They don't.

It's just an odd game. GW is really bad at balancing factions against each other. I'm unclear as to what they're trying to do with AoS/GHB. There are 61 distinct factions. A good number don't have Batteline units at all, so there seems to be a clear intention that we're supposed to mix factions... except that the most recently updated (Sylvaneth/Bonesplitterz/Beastclaw Raiders/etc) are fully fleshed out and stand on their own. It's like the authors have no idea what the game is supposed to look like. The factions are a mess.

 auticus wrote:
I listen to the math.

Shooting heavy armies get to attack in two phases of a turn. Melee heavy armies in one.

If a shooting heavy army gets two turns in a row then thats four phases of attack dice rolled vs the melee army's two.

With there being no way to stop shooting models from shooting, and with alternate turns this becomes a data model for skewed statistics.

If both forces are using shooty heavy armies then that brings the math back on par.

If you go with a melee heavy army you are playing at a disadvantage, and in some cases a severe disadvantage.

The obvious answer to this is "suck it up and don't play a melee heavy army", but thats not a good answer to me.

Now to foster good discussion we can discuss "how do you deal with shooting" knowing that one is at a moderate to severe disadvantage if playing a melee-oriented army vs a shooty-oriented army.

That's too simplistic. Shooting armies also tend to be crap in melee, so that "second round of attack" is basically nothing compared to a combat focused unit. For many of them, it's hitting on 5+ wounding on 4+ or worse, and then 1 damage and no rend. In fact, most shooting attacks are also 1 damage no rend, though some "powerful" ones are -1/1. Melee focused power units tend to be at least -1 Rend with either multiple attacks, ways to deal mortal wounds, dealing multiple damage, or some combination of the above. Melee units also tend to have better saves and durability than ranged units on average (with some exceptions).

Would you say a unit of Freeguild Archers is better than a Mourngul because they get to go twice per turn to its one? No, of course not.

Just looking at the number of activations means nothing. General sweeping statements like that are illogical and ignore the stats of many units, as well as the combo effects of many armies. There are lots of combo effects that grant mobility, durability, or extra attacks/better rolls in combat. There are a lot less that boost shooting prowess.

It's disingenuous to assume that a unit of shooters is going to do as much with shooting + melee as a melee unit is going to do in combat alone. Most of those shooting attacks are balanced to be weaker because range is such a strong bonus, as is that second round you are talking about.

For the straight up example, look at the terrifying Arrowboyz vs Ardboyz. Arrowboyz get 2 shots at a range (3 if they're 20+) with 5+/4+/-/1. In melee, they get a single attack each at the same profile. Their save is 6+ with 2 wounds.
Ardboyz are melee only. If they're with two weapons, they get 3 attacks at 4+/3+/-/1. If they have big weapons, it's 2 at 4+/3+/-1/1. Their save is 4+ with 2 wounds.

20 Arrowboyz getting to shoot and punch deal 6.66 wounds at the end of the turn, killing three Ardboyz
10 Ardboyz with double weapons deal 8.33 wounds, killing 4 Arrowboyz
10 Ardboyz with big weapons deal 6.66 wounds, killing 3 Arrowboyz

And the Arrowboyz cost 20 more points than Ardboyz. If it was 10 v 10 it wouldn't even be close. As soon as the first round of combat for the Ardboyz is over, they lose that extra attack and the damage output during shooting goes down.

The Kunnin Rukk makes the Arrowboyz scarier, sure, but the Ironfist makes the Ardboyz scarier as well since they can start outside of the Arrowboyz range (thus negating 3/4 of that damage calculated) and still reasonably get charges off.

So yeah. Just saying "extra activation = more deader" is incorrect, at least in this situation. I picked two that were evenly matched. There are plenty of combinations of melee units vs ranged units that are clearly tipped in the melee's favor, as there are those tipped in the shooter's favor.

 Kriswall wrote:
Asymmetrical games will obviously have a variety of match-ups where one side is stronger than the other. The issue with AoS (and 40k) is that there are factions that will have the advantage more often than not. The "faction power bell curve" is way too steep with a relatively limited number of factions at the peak. In 40k (not comprehensive, just an example), alpha strikes and heavy/D shooting are devastating. Because of this, and all else equal, Space Marines (alpha strike builds) and Tau Empire/Eldar (heavy/D shooting builds) aren't particularly fun to play against because the opponent feels like the game is an uphill battle where every play has to be perfect to have a real chance at winning.

As an Ironjawz player, it's USUALLY not fun to play against heavy shooting lists. I'm not saying I can't win and I'm not saying it's a 100% advantage 100% of the time. I'm saying that even when I win, it's not fun. Sure, I could add my own shooting, but that would involve adding 300+ points of generic Destruction Battleline units that don't synergize at all with my army as a 'tax' before I can even look at shooting units. It would be nice if every "major" faction had a basic Batteline choice. They don't.

It's just an odd game. GW is really bad at balancing factions against each other. I'm unclear as to what they're trying to do with AoS/GHB. There are 61 distinct factions. A good number don't have Batteline units at all, so there seems to be a clear intention that we're supposed to mix factions... except that the most recently updated (Sylvaneth/Bonesplitterz/Beastclaw Raiders/etc) are fully fleshed out and stand on their own. It's like the authors have no idea what the game is supposed to look like. The factions are a mess.

GW doesn't. Never did, I'm sure they add things as they go along, the problem with that is they do it midway through and decide "Oh hey let's go this direction instead!" so you have half the factions that get that update, and half that don't because they lucked out done before the studio decided to change direction.

It's a huge problem, also because GW picks factions to update at once rather than do small things for every faction; Warmachine and Hordes for example when a book comes out, everyone got something, even if it was like a new character and new warjack and that was it. You didn't have huge gaps of getting absolutely nothing.

 Kriswall wrote:
Asymmetrical games will obviously have a variety of match-ups where one side is stronger than the other. The issue with AoS (and 40k) is that there are factions that will have the advantage more often than not. The "faction power bell curve" is way too steep with a relatively limited number of factions at the peak.

You keep saying that, but
1) We don't have enough data to make a graph
2) I honestly don't believe it will be that way when it shakes out. It just feels like "sky is falling" to me.

As an Ironjawz player, it's USUALLY not fun to play against heavy shooting lists. I'm not saying I can't win and I'm not saying it's a 100% advantage 100% of the time. I'm saying that even when I win, it's not fun. Sure, I could add my own shooting, but that would involve adding 300+ points of generic Destruction Battleline units that don't synergize at all with my army as a 'tax' before I can even look at shooting units. It would be nice if every "major" faction had a basic Batteline choice. They don't.

No one is telling you to. I think Ironjawz can beat top lists while keeping their Allegiance. I've seen it happen multiple times.

"Fun to play against" is a completely subjective statement and shouldn't come into contention when talking about balance. I think Brutes moving d6+d6+2+4" per turn and hitting as hard as they do is insane, and I don't have fun when they roll hot and get across the map faster than Cavalry. But I know it's not imbalanced.

It's just an odd game. GW is really bad at balancing factions against each other. I'm unclear as to what they're trying to do with AoS/GHB. There are 61 distinct factions. A good number don't have Batteline units at all, so there seems to be a clear intention that we're supposed to mix factions... except that the most recently updated (Sylvaneth/Bonesplitterz/Beastclaw Raiders/etc) are fully fleshed out and stand on their own. It's like the authors have no idea what the game is supposed to look like. The factions are a mess.

I totally disagree. They know what the game looks like right now - there are subfactions that are designed to stand alone, and there are those that are not. Not everything has to be the same. Smaller factions are meant to be building blocks (such as the Elf subfactions), while larger ones are designed to make a single thematic army. Both are options, and they've done a good job of it.

Which is why saying "61 distinct factions" is basically dishonest. 61 groupings, sure, but Aleguzzler Gargants and Troggoths aren't really factions. Neither are Deathmages, which is literally just a Necromancer and the Mortis Engine. Just because you don't agree with that design decision doesn't mean it's a bad one.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Wayniac wrote:

 Kriswall wrote:
Asymmetrical games will obviously have a variety of match-ups where one side is stronger than the other. The issue with AoS (and 40k) is that there are factions that will have the advantage more often than not. The "faction power bell curve" is way too steep with a relatively limited number of factions at the peak. In 40k (not comprehensive, just an example), alpha strikes and heavy/D shooting are devastating. Because of this, and all else equal, Space Marines (alpha strike builds) and Tau Empire/Eldar (heavy/D shooting builds) aren't particularly fun to play against because the opponent feels like the game is an uphill battle where every play has to be perfect to have a real chance at winning.

As an Ironjawz player, it's USUALLY not fun to play against heavy shooting lists. I'm not saying I can't win and I'm not saying it's a 100% advantage 100% of the time. I'm saying that even when I win, it's not fun. Sure, I could add my own shooting, but that would involve adding 300+ points of generic Destruction Battleline units that don't synergize at all with my army as a 'tax' before I can even look at shooting units. It would be nice if every "major" faction had a basic Batteline choice. They don't.

It's just an odd game. GW is really bad at balancing factions against each other. I'm unclear as to what they're trying to do with AoS/GHB. There are 61 distinct factions. A good number don't have Batteline units at all, so there seems to be a clear intention that we're supposed to mix factions... except that the most recently updated (Sylvaneth/Bonesplitterz/Beastclaw Raiders/etc) are fully fleshed out and stand on their own. It's like the authors have no idea what the game is supposed to look like. The factions are a mess.

GW doesn't. Never did, I'm sure they add things as they go along, the problem with that is they do it midway through and decide "Oh hey let's go this direction instead!" so you have half the factions that get that update, and half that don't because they lucked out done before the studio decided to change direction.

It's a huge problem, also because GW picks factions to update at once rather than do small things for every faction; Warmachine and Hordes for example when a book comes out, everyone got something, even if it was like a new character and new warjack and that was it. You didn't have huge gaps of getting absolutely nothing.

Except now with the way AoS is set up, they can update warscrolls any time they want on the app/website. Which they've already done a couple times. And they've said that TGH will be a yearly release and all armies will get points at the same time, insinuating that they will be pointed against one another and not on a faction-by-faction basis.

Requizen wrote:

 auticus wrote:
I listen to the math.

Shooting heavy armies get to attack in two phases of a turn. Melee heavy armies in one.

If a shooting heavy army gets two turns in a row then thats four phases of attack dice rolled vs the melee army's two.

With there being no way to stop shooting models from shooting, and with alternate turns this becomes a data model for skewed statistics.

If both forces are using shooty heavy armies then that brings the math back on par.

If you go with a melee heavy army you are playing at a disadvantage, and in some cases a severe disadvantage.

The obvious answer to this is "suck it up and don't play a melee heavy army", but thats not a good answer to me.

Now to foster good discussion we can discuss "how do you deal with shooting" knowing that one is at a moderate to severe disadvantage if playing a melee-oriented army vs a shooty-oriented army.

That's too simplistic. Shooting armies also tend to be crap in melee, so that "second round of attack" is basically nothing compared to a combat focused unit. For many of them, it's hitting on 5+ wounding on 4+ or worse, and then 1 damage and no rend. In fact, most shooting attacks are also 1 damage no rend, though some "powerful" ones are -1/1. Melee focused power units tend to be at least -1 Rend with either multiple attacks, ways to deal mortal wounds, dealing multiple damage, or some combination of the above. Melee units also tend to have better saves and durability than ranged units on average (with some exceptions).

Would you say a unit of Freeguild Archers is better than a Mourngul because they get to go twice per turn to its one? No, of course not.

Just looking at the number of activations means nothing. General sweeping statements like that are illogical and ignore the stats of many units, as well as the combo effects of many armies. There are lots of combo effects that grant mobility, durability, or extra attacks/better rolls in combat. There are a lot less that boost shooting prowess.

It's disingenuous to assume that a unit of shooters is going to do as much with shooting + melee as a melee unit is going to do in combat alone. Most of those shooting attacks are balanced to be weaker because range is such a strong bonus, as is that second round you are talking about.

For the straight up example, look at the terrifying Arrowboyz vs Ardboyz. Arrowboyz get 2 shots at a range (3 if they're 20+) with 5+/4+/-/1. In melee, they get a single attack each at the same profile. Their save is 6+ with 2 wounds.
Ardboyz are melee only. If they're with two weapons, they get 3 attacks at 4+/3+/-/1. If they have big weapons, it's 2 at 4+/3+/-1/1. Their save is 4+ with 2 wounds.

20 Arrowboyz getting to shoot and punch deal 6.66 wounds at the end of the turn, killing three Ardboyz
10 Ardboyz with double weapons deal 8.33 wounds, killing 4 Arrowboyz
10 Ardboyz with big weapons deal 6.66 wounds, killing 3 Arrowboyz

And the Arrowboyz cost 20 more points than Ardboyz. If it was 10 v 10 it wouldn't even be close. As soon as the first round of combat for the Ardboyz is over, they lose that extra attack and the damage output during shooting goes down.

The Kunnin Rukk makes the Arrowboyz scarier, sure, but the Ironfist makes the Ardboyz scarier as well since they can start outside of the Arrowboyz range (thus negating 3/4 of that damage calculated) and still reasonably get charges off.

So yeah. Just saying "extra activation = more deader" is incorrect, at least in this situation. I picked two that were evenly matched. There are plenty of combinations of melee units vs ranged units that are clearly tipped in the melee's favor, as there are those tipped in the shooter's favor.

I posted the pure mathematical statistics with efficiency scores for every model in the past and have it up on my website. The math backs that up.

Saying "extra activation = more deader" is short hand for research that I have already done. In general it holds true overall. Yes we can cherry pick examples but what we are going to see in real life aren't things that are shooty heavy will predominantly do more damage and thus have an advantage.

The things that are shooty heavy that I see aren't bad in hand to hand combat either.

Are all shooty models like this? no. I'm not saying they all are. However from a min/max powergame perspective thats not generally what will be selected either.

To get actual examples you'd need to take a standard tournament list vs a melee heavy list and then record the statistics to get your actual weighted scores and compare them to the averages (which are composed of the numbers of every model in the game). The tournament builds scores are a lot higher than the averages.

Short of exhaustively posting each tournament build that we've seen up to this point, and comparing each build's score, there isn't another way to pull hard data.

Lets post some tournament builds and then find their average damage output compared to their point cost and then lets look at some melee-heavy armies and do the same.

Requizen wrote:
For the straight up example, look at the terrifying Arrowboyz vs Ardboyz. Arrowboyz get 2 shots at a range (3 if they're 20+) with 5+/4+/-/1. In melee, they get a single attack each at the same profile. Their save is 6+ with 2 wounds.
Ardboyz are melee only. If they're with two weapons, they get 3 attacks at 4+/3+/-/1. If they have big weapons, it's 2 at 4+/3+/-1/1. Their save is 4+ with 2 wounds.

20 Arrowboyz getting to shoot and punch deal 6.66 wounds at the end of the turn, killing three Ardboyz
10 Ardboyz with double weapons deal 8.33 wounds, killing 4 Arrowboyz
10 Ardboyz with big weapons deal 6.66 wounds, killing 3 Arrowboyz

And the Arrowboyz cost 20 more points than Ardboyz. If it was 10 v 10 it wouldn't even be close. As soon as the first round of combat for the Ardboyz is over, they lose that extra attack and the damage output during shooting goes down.

Your example doesn't take into consideration that the Arrowboys get to shoot at least once before the Ardboyz charge in. So, realistically, you're charging in with fewer than 10 Ardboys. Also, the Arrowboys will likely be sitting in some sort of cover, so it's pretty easy to give them a 5+ save instead of 6+. We're not operating in a vacuum. These are very common real world likelihoods.

Assuming the Arrowboys shoot and then the Ardboys charge in the subsequent turn into cover... you'd have...

Arrowboys turn.
1. 20 Arrowboys fire, killing 2 Ardboys and dealing 1 damage to a 3rd.
Ardboys turn.
2. The remaining 8 Ardboys charge in. Let's say they have double weapons. They deal 5.33 wounds back, killing 2 Arrowboys and dealing 1 damage to a 3rd.
3. The remaining 18 Arrowboys attack back, dealing 1.5 wounds and killing the damaged Ardboy.

A full game round is done. The Arrowboys lost 10% of their unit. The Ardboys lost 30%.

With pretty standard cover deployment... deploy near the edge, so if you get charged your opponent never gets cover... this will go on for several rounds until the Arrowboys eventually win.

Of course, the dice gods might go decide the battle in the first round. I'm talking average rolls over a million fights.

auticus wrote:

I posted the pure mathematical statistics with efficiency scores for every model in the past and have it up on my website. The math backs that up.

Saying "extra activation = more deader" is short hand for research that I have already done. In general it holds true overall. Yes we can cherry pick examples but what we are going to see in real life aren't things that are shooty heavy will predominantly do more damage and thus have an advantage.

The things that are shooty heavy that I see aren't bad in hand to hand combat either.

Are all shooty models like this? no. I'm not saying they all are. However from a min/max powergame perspective thats not generally what will be selected either.

To get actual examples you'd need to take a standard tournament list vs a melee heavy list and then record the statistics to get your actual weighted scores and compare them to the averages (which are composed of the numbers of every model in the game). The tournament builds scores are a lot higher than the averages.

Short of exhaustively posting each tournament build that we've seen up to this point, and comparing each build's score, there isn't another way to pull hard data.

Lets post some tournament builds and then find their average damage output compared to their point cost and then lets look at some melee-heavy armies and do the same.

You yourself said in the thread relating to that site that it's just pure numbers calculation. Pure numbers are a pretty small part of the game, and things that look "damage efficient compared to their points" can have usability issues in the game, as is evidenced in many places.



I agree, let's look at tournament data when we have it. I'm simply saying it's way too early to say "the sky is falling (and raining shooting units)" when we have no statistically relevant data to verify that.

However, if you want to go back to pre-TGH, then the top placers in the South Coast GT 2016 (the points of which is what TGH was based off of) were Nurgle mortal (mostly, some Daemons, no shooting), Stormcast (no Skyborne, mostly foot. Not even a Retributor bomb, which I find odd), and an Order mix (mostly Elves, some Stormcast heroes, a couple archer units but not "shooting heavy").

Granted, this was before Kunnin Rukk was a thing, and the point values are a bit different, but I think there'd be at least one shooting heavy army in the top 3 if it was as broken as all that.

Kriswall wrote:
Your example doesn't take into consideration that the Arrowboys get to shoot at least once before the Ardboyz charge in. So, realistically, you're charging in with fewer than 10 Ardboys. Also, the Arrowboys will likely be sitting in some sort of cover, so it's pretty easy to give them a 5+ save instead of 6+. We're not operating in a vacuum. These are very common real world likelihoods.

Assuming the Arrowboys shoot and then the Ardboys charge in the subsequent turn into cover... you'd have...

Arrowboys turn.
1. 20 Arrowboys fire, killing 2 Ardboys and dealing 1 damage to a 3rd.
Ardboys turn.
2. The remaining 8 Ardboys charge in. Let's say they have double weapons. They deal 5.33 wounds back, killing 2 Arrowboys and dealing 1 damage to a 3rd.
3. The remaining 18 Arrowboys attack back, dealing 1.5 wounds and killing the damaged Ardboy.

A full game round is done. The Arrowboys lost 10% of their unit. The Ardboys lost 30%.

With pretty standard cover deployment... deploy near the edge, so if you get charged your opponent never gets cover... this will go on for several rounds until the Arrowboys eventually win.

Of course, the dice gods might go decide the battle in the first round. I'm talking average rolls over a million fights.

Saying percentages is again, disingenuous. Arrowboyz lost 2, Ardboyz lost 3. That's not "zomg huge damage difference". And the Ardboyz have better Bravery - Brav 8 once in combat and a 6 ignores any battleshock losses, while the Arrowboyz are 5 and will lose more models on a 4+.

Arrowboyz don't get a whole lot of shooting if any at all on the Ardboyz. If the Ardboyz are in a Ironfist, their average move is: 3.5" for Ironfist + 3.5" for Rampaging Destroyers + 2" for Ravager (Command Trait) + 4" move. A 7" average charge is 20", meaning you can, on average, start 2" outside of the Arrowboyz shooting range and get a charge off. And depending on the layout of the terrain and Arrowboyz, even if you are in range less than half of them might get to fire.

This also isn't taking advantage of Cover and LoS blocking terrain (which you should have at least some of).

This also isn't taking into account that both will be moving towards objectives, meaning that the Arrowboyz won't just get to plop themselves in the best shooting spot and play keep away. Even if the Ardboyz are taking ranged losses, if they're sitting on an objective and the Arrowboyz are afraid of getting into combat with them, the Ardboyz are winning the game.

So yes, in your situation the Arrowboyz are winning out. If the Ardboyz don't get shot and get the charge, they win super hard. Even if the Arrowboyz are in cover, they have more models to pile in (actually probably won't get all their attacks in melee) and have a 50/50 of losing more to Battleshock, while the Ardboyz are basically immune.

It's easy for shooting to feel super strong if the situation is set up in their favor. Playing the game is a different story.

Right, so ultimately there are tons of factors and we can argue forever whether or not heavy shooting is fair or balanced... none of which changes that it isn't even a little fun to play against for a casual player.

Requizen wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 VeteranNoob wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
You can see the issue though; people are betting on the double turn where if they get it the game is more or less decided. Who cares about tactics when you can bet on a 50% and net a win provided you don't do anything stupid? If that 50% fails oh well, you'll have to actually play the game.

See but don't see as an issue

Perhaps I should clarify; I am saying that is the issue with rolling for initiative, not that rolling for initiative is the issue. There's plenty of ways such problems could be addressed while still maintaining rolled initiative, but I think most would agree that it the outcome of a game has a 50% chance of being decided by a single d6 roll that is a problem.

It's not, though. In the situation that the melee player goes first and doesn't get the double turn, the game plays as normal. In the situation where the melee player goes first and gets the double turn, he's in a good spot.

So the ranged player adapts. He knows this is how things are now, so he either brings more screening units or plays even further back and spread out, knowing that he can play towards a possible double turn himself. Or he brings battalions of his own and races setup. Or he does deployment shenanigans. Or he mixes shooting with a solid frontline unit (like a wall of Plaguebearers or the like).

Things will evolve quite naturally, you'll find. I don't think there's anything wrong with melee or shooting at this point in time, people have yet to learn how to play the metagame.

We, since we're all being respectful here (yay!) I agree and my thinking is the necessity to adapt is part of the huge tactical element imo AoS has over Fantasy and partly why for me it's so much more fun to play. Not just involving turns but the more you add on (multiplayer, special scenarios, expansions, campaign rules, etc.) it becomes more and more unique without being cumbersome and more required considerations like 40K has at the moment. I can see the complaints against initiative, I just don't agree personally.

Weren't the last two major tournaments won by Kunnin' Rukk shooting and Order shooting, respectively?

I know Warlords was won by Kunnin Rukk but I haven't heard anything about the other one. Which tournament was that?

 VeteranNoob wrote:

Requizen wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 VeteranNoob wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
You can see the issue though; people are betting on the double turn where if they get it the game is more or less decided. Who cares about tactics when you can bet on a 50% and net a win provided you don't do anything stupid? If that 50% fails oh well, you'll have to actually play the game.

See but don't see as an issue

Perhaps I should clarify; I am saying that is the issue with rolling for initiative, not that rolling for initiative is the issue. There's plenty of ways such problems could be addressed while still maintaining rolled initiative, but I think most would agree that it the outcome of a game has a 50% chance of being decided by a single d6 roll that is a problem.

It's not, though. In the situation that the melee player goes first and doesn't get the double turn, the game plays as normal. In the situation where the melee player goes first and gets the double turn, he's in a good spot.

So the ranged player adapts. He knows this is how things are now, so he either brings more screening units or plays even further back and spread out, knowing that he can play towards a possible double turn himself. Or he brings battalions of his own and races setup. Or he does deployment shenanigans. Or he mixes shooting with a solid frontline unit (like a wall of Plaguebearers or the like).

Things will evolve quite naturally, you'll find. I don't think there's anything wrong with melee or shooting at this point in time, people have yet to learn how to play the metagame.

We, since we're all being respectful here (yay!) I agree and my thinking is the necessity to adapt is part of the huge tactical element imo AoS has over Fantasy and partly why for me it's so much more fun to play. Not just involving turns but the more you add on (multiplayer, special scenarios, expansions, campaign rules, etc.) it becomes more and more unique without being cumbersome and more required considerations like 40K has at the moment. I can see the complaints against initiative, I just don't agree personally.

Fun fact, if you go first you CAN'T get the double turn until your opponent gets one because math. Which is what european players manipulate in order to mitigate the double turn effect.

Its plenty possible to adapt to shooting or even counter it, but that doesn't negate shooting benefiting disproportionately from rolled initiative. To bring things back to the original question of the thread, shooting can be dealt with by:
-Not rolling for initiative
-Out playing the scenario (shooters are usually reluctant to move forward and capture objectives)
-Deploying out of range and going second, hoping for a double turn
-Bringing better toys. Shooting may have a small-but-notable advantage from turn structure but the sheer points efficiency of battalions and monsters offsets that and then some. OP units > shooting

Despite all of the back-and-forth here about shooting I think most people (even myself) would not feel it as big of an issue if that wasn't layered on top of other balance issues. In the OP's case we have the advantage of shooting combined with Kurnoths being very undercosted, for example. The Kunnin' Rukk also does the same.

I know Warlords was won by Kunnin Rukk but I haven't heard anything about the other one. Which tournament was that?

Honestly I don't remember the name. I know Bottle was talking about the list that won, maybe she can jump in to inform us.

So basically, git gud scrub

Seriously, I see people always saying how strong FEC is, but I just don't see it (this is likely another topic). They seem incredibly weak to me, folding like paper and the characters that are the crux of the army are easy to snipe out with any decent shooting (relevant to the topic yay!) and the regular units aren't able to dish out enough damage to really hurt anything, since the army seriously lacks rend.

I like playing against FEC with my khorne army but that's because I've not had a matchup that was super one sided.

Any melee-focused army seems like it would work pretty well against FEC. My (admittedly limited) experience has been that shooting can easily wipe me out, but it could just be lack of experience on my part.

Warlords was won by Kunnin Ruk, Alliance was won by Rob from Warhammer TV with a mix of Glade Guard, Kurnoth Hunters and Hurricanums. After that, shooting hasn't been dominating from what I have heard. Facehammer GT was won by Skybourne Slayers and Clash of Swords was won by Russ Veal with Stormcast (who lost the final of Warlords with Bloodbound). Just by chance the top 5 lists from Clash of Swords was just posted on TGA:

1: Russ Veal
1 Knight Azyros 100
1 Lord Castellant 100
1 Lord Celestant on Dracoth 220
10 Judicators 320
15 Liberators 300
10 Retributors 440
10 Protectors 400
10 Decimators 400
3 Prosecutors with Javelins 80
Warrior Brotherhood 140


2: Mark Wildman
Settra The Imperishable (360)
Royal Warsphinx (340) - Venom Spike Tail
Necrotect (100)
Liche Priest (120)
Tomb Herald (100) - Skeletal Steed
Tomb King (100) - Monarch's Great Blade
Necropolis Knights x 12 (640)
Skeleton Warriors x 30 (240) - Ancient Blades - tomb shields
Ushabti x 3 (120) - Ritual Blade Stave
Screaming Skull Catapult (120) Screaming Skull
Catapult (120)

3: Donal Taylor
Frostlord on Stonehorn (460)
Huskard on Stonehorn (380)
Huskard on Thundertusk (340)
Mournfang Pack x 6 (600)
Icefall Yhetees x 3 (120)
Frost Sabres x 6 (180)
Stonehorn Beastriders (360)
Eurlbad (60)

4: Ricky Mee
Archaon (700)
Lord Of Slaanesh On Daemonic Mount (140)
Chaos Sorcerer Lord on Steed (140)
Sayl The Faithless (160)
Lord Of Khorne On Juggernaut (140)
Bloodstoker (80)
Harbinger of Decay (140)
Belakor (240)
Varanguard x 3 (360)
Chaos Marauders x 30 (180)
Plaguebearers Of Nurgle x 20 (200)

5: Martin Morrin
Grot Warboss (1) 80
3x Moonclan Grot Shaman (3) 180
1x Grot Warboss on Cave Squig (1) 80
6x Moonclan Grots (120) 720
12x Grot Fanatics (12) 360
10x Grot Squig Hoppers (10) 160
2x Mangler Squig (2) 480
2 Grot Spear Chukka (2) 240
1 Doom Diver (1) 120
Great Moonclan Formation 80

This was a 2000pt tournament but with a 500pt sideboard (to swap in and out between games). Custom scenarios too (but very similar to GHB ones as this is the creator of "clash comp").

So we have..

1 balanced army (Stormcasts)
1 OOP (RIP) army (Tomb Kings)
1 Monster-heavy (BCR)
1 Are we playing Herohammer again? (Chaos)
1 Horde/Green Tide? (Grots)

The ones I found a bit surprising were the tomb kings for lack of chariots and the chaos list for putting so many eggs in one basket. I suppose the tomb kings list breaks the shooting/monster/battalion trend, though it still does so by exploiting some seriously undercosted models.

Oh man, I hope sideboards become a thing that more tournies include. It really makes RPS matchups a bit less painful. I wonder how it works with units in Battalions though.

I think Moonclan will be a big thing. I've said it before and I stand by it, that's a clearly strong faction especially when you mix in some other Destruction. Our Ironjawz players loves bringing his out and I've had some rough games against it, though that many bodies makes games long.

And that Chaos Hero list is freaking hilarious. Imagine your opponent being like "hey I heard we could bring 6 heroes so I didn't bring anything else". I would love to fight that army.

Well the bloodbound have a hero only battalion, but 1 too many for my Maleficent Seven band :(

And yes moving to a more flexible army would be great. I really liked the older event scenarios, bring what you want and deploy upto X models on the fly. It allows you to bring counters to various stuff and deploy them as needed or not, putting more emphasis on the game itself rather than some list building stuff meta game phase.

Requizen wrote:
And that Chaos Hero list is freaking hilarious. Imagine your opponent being like "hey I heard we could bring 6 heroes so I didn't bring anything else". I would love to fight that army.

The army brought 8 heroes, so they must have played with different rules than the standard Matched Play rules.

Spiky Norman wrote:

Requizen wrote:
And that Chaos Hero list is freaking hilarious. Imagine your opponent being like "hey I heard we could bring 6 heroes so I didn't bring anything else". I would love to fight that army.

The army brought 8 heroes, so they must have played with different rules than the standard Matched Play rules.

They played "bring up to 2500 points, only place 2000",which is not uncommon. You just swap out what you need based on the opponent, so only 6 hit the table in a game.

Requizen wrote:

Spiky Norman wrote:

Requizen wrote:
And that Chaos Hero list is freaking hilarious. Imagine your opponent being like "hey I heard we could bring 6 heroes so I didn't bring anything else". I would love to fight that army.

The army brought 8 heroes, so they must have played with different rules than the standard Matched Play rules.

They played "bring up to 2500 points, only place 2000",which is not uncommon. You just swap out what you need based on the opponent, so only 6 hit the table in a game.

God I hope adepticon does their sigmar tourneys this way, sideboarding is the business.

Sideboards are great. I might try to get sideboarding folded into our local events. I like that it adds back in the 'you know what your opponent has, but you don't know what he'll deploy' element during the deployment phase. I think that's the most fun part of 'pure AoS' for me. I always felt the game balanced well if people actually displayed everything they might deploy before starting deployment. Not knowing what might possibly hit the table is what caused imbalance in my community.

I like this idea as well. I may integrate it into my narrative events.

Honestly I don't like sideboards because it undermines the purpose of summoning.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Honestly I don't like sideboards because it undermines the purpose of summoning.

Summoning is still far more tactically flexible. A non summoning player would need to pick 500 points worth of models to set aside in a sideboard. A summoner still has every summon-able option his faction has to offer (assuming he has the needed summoners).

I do see what you're saying though. Sideboards give the average player a watered down version of an ability that is usually limited to summoning heavy lists and without the need for reinforcement points. Of course, summoning lists also gain that same ability AND still have summoning... so, they're still better off from a tactical flexibility standpoint. They're just no longer the only kids on the block to be able to play the tactical flexibility in unit choice game. As the man says, when accustomed to privilege, equality feels like persecution.

Eh... I don't generally play armies with summoning. I could say that that a sideboard option to me is a license to bring extremely OP models that might have a critical weakness against one faction, knowing I can swap them out if I happen to get that matchup. Without a sideboard I'd be more motivated to make an all-comers army instead of a one-trick-pony.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Eh... I don't generally play armies with summoning. I could say that that a sideboard option to me is a license to bring extremely OP models that might have a critical weakness against one faction, knowing I can swap them out if I happen to get that matchup. Without a sideboard I'd be more motivated to make an all-comers army instead of a one-trick-pony.

Out of curiosity, what would you consider an "extremely OP models that might have a critical weakness against one faction"?

Off the top of my head; thundertusks/mournguls against Bonesplittaz, kurnoth hunters against Nurgle Daemons, Skarbrand against a gun line, 'deep-strike' battalions vs gryph hounds, and daemon 30-man troop blocks vs Seraphon.

Granted some of those are not extremely OP, but I think those examples give the general idea. It also applies to certain army builds as well, like monster mash which so many people say is countered by msu, but with a sideboard it's easy enough to mitigate that if you see a potentially msu opponent across the board. There's also something to be said for generic counter units: I'd bring two or three knight-azyros in an order sideboard just because if I play chaos it's a huge advantage but I would never put that many in an all comers list.

I was thinking about this thread at the AoS event this weekend. Our team was two of us coming in late and paired up. Partner was quite new to AoS and he brought a Seraphon list I think mostly borrowed (was a cool guy and fun teammate) and I had Fyreslayers. This was a new type of event for me even though I went to the first Holy Wars last year. 5 games, 5 scenarios w/4 extra objectives, plus special features for each table (where the terrain plays, too). You can see pics, blurbs and even videos here as Beats of War covered it. http://www.beastsofwar.com/eventslist/holy-wars-age-sigmar-tournament-live-blog/

Anyway...games 2, 3, and 4 were very shooty opponents. Aside from scenario/objective points as none of our 5 games got past turn 3.
2 vs. Dark Elves & Stormcasts, Flagellents & war alter. I was tunneled for first two rounds before popping up to draw the cav away, kill the bolt thrower and before we basically left them little (if any) targets. Chameleon skinks were ace in this one.

3 - Kunnin' Ruck. Put all chameleon skink units ambushing to kill the boss since they gave us turn 1. (or did we win the roll...?) That imo gave us the victory.

4 - Empire war machines, hurricanumm, lumiark, units shooters, cav and 3 gryphons was too much so we started most of the game off the board as before and slann summoned stuff so once again we tried to present as little target options for the enemy as possible.

We didn't have the tools for some armies but by popping in and gunning for shooting concerns early on it made an immense difference.

That must have been a lot of chameleons!

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
That must have been a lot of chameleons!

15 or 20

We solved a big part of this issue in our last campaignday by placing a realmgate on the table far enough out of deployment zones so that nobody could use it turn 1. It gave slower melee armies the possibility to charge from any board edge turn 2 with multiple units which really is a serious problem for the all shooting list.

One thing I think worth mentioning about shooting is that it only activate on your turn where assault will activate on your opponents turn as well. So instead of a 2 to 1 activations its more of a 3 to 2 activations. In most cases 2 close combat activations from a range unit wont equal one activation from a dedicated close combat unit. Now most range units can make this back in turns prior to an assault unit reaching combat.

 Venerable Ironclad wrote:
One thing I think worth mentioning about shooting is that it only activate on your turn where assault will activate on your opponents turn as well. So instead of a 2 to 1 activations its more of a 3 to 2 activations. In most cases 2 close combat activations from a range unit wont equal one activation from a dedicated close combat unit. Now most range units can make this back in turns prior to an assault unit reaching combat.

While certainly true, and intuitively it seems like things would work this way, but on the tabletop a counter-factor of models in range becomes an issue. Shooting units generally get to make shooting attacks with every model, melee units often have models 'stranded' outside of melee range that don't get to attack. The latter is also a reason that more elite melee units need higher point costs than their stats would signify in order to balance them against more swarmy options (note; this generally doesn't happen).