Do you think summoning ruined Age of Sigmar again? GW did it twice now? I am sure summoning is a way to sell more miniatures and trying to incorporate it into the rules again seemed to me AoS is not as hot as it was. Not because people don't like summoning but how unbalanced it seems to be.

The traffic here on Dakka is way down compared to when the General's Handbook came out at least to me. Then there was lots of excitement for 2.0 but once 2.0 hit, it seemed to drop off again. I only visit Dakka so not sure how other sites have dropped off or not in AoS traffic, discussions.

So has summoning killed AoS again or at least cooled off what was becoming a steady climb? Have we reached the cliff already because of how unbalanced summoning is?

Did Mr Roundtree do a Kirby to increase sales of miniatures and not really worry or care about balance? Is this the reason why AoS 2.0 doesn't seem as hot as General's Handbook 2016/2017 seemed to be?

Sorry for making a new thread about this, but I thought it might be off topic in the other summoning threads and didn't want to derail them.

No, one can barely keep up with discussion on dedicated AoS boards.

No, but I think it is going to limit growth of the game long term. I suspect the damage done now will color a lot of opinions going forward.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
No, one can barely keep up with discussion on dedicated AoS boards.

This.

Also, AoS never really got a foothold on DAKKA it seemed to me. Go to TGA instead, if you want to read/discuss AoS. And as Blackfang said: Good luck keeping up with the forums there

I like the fact the that they changed it for this edition. That means free summoning could be over in 2,5 years for 3.0. (or when a new GHB drops) it is a nice way to change the meta.

 minisnatcher wrote:
I like the fact the that they changed it for this edition. That means free summoning could be over in 2,5 years for 3.0. (or when a new GHB drops) it is a nice way to change the meta.

Just flicking a rule on and off is not a good way to evolve the meta. The meta should evolve with the addition of more meaningful player choices. The choice to get free reinforcements or not is not a meaningful choice as if you can get the free reinforcements then you should do it, there is never a situation where free reinforcements would be a bad choice.

Thenord wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
No, one can barely keep up with discussion on dedicated AoS boards.

This.

Also, AoS never really got a foothold on DAKKA it seemed to me. Go to TGA instead, if you want to read/discuss AoS. And as Blackfang said: Good luck keeping up with the forums there

TBF the TGA is positive-only, so any problems would not be discussed regardless of severity.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

Thenord wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
No, one can barely keep up with discussion on dedicated AoS boards.

This.

Also, AoS never really got a foothold on DAKKA it seemed to me. Go to TGA instead, if you want to read/discuss AoS. And as Blackfang said: Good luck keeping up with the forums there

TBF the TGA is positive-only, so any problems would not be discussed regardless of severity.

PLEASE DO NOT CIRCUMVENT THE LANGUAGE FILTER - BrookM

Oh cmon.. Has PC culture taken hold in wargaming as well...

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

Thenord wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
No, one can barely keep up with discussion on dedicated AoS boards.

This.

Also, AoS never really got a foothold on DAKKA it seemed to me. Go to TGA instead, if you want to read/discuss AoS. And as Blackfang said: Good luck keeping up with the forums there

TBF the TGA is positive-only, so any problems would not be discussed regardless of severity.

It's far from positive only, there are loads of critical things being said.
That said you could say that the community in general is more up-beat/positive in outlook and attitude than some other forum communities.

They must have changed it then. A number of people were banned for criticizing the game on the TGA and were point blank told that the TGA wasn't the forum to criticize the game.

Did summoning ruin AOS? That will depend entirely on your perspective.

If you are a tournament player playing other tournament players, then no summoning won't have ruined the game for you because you are going to either be running a summons army yourself or you are going to be running an army that puts out a lot of mortal wounds so the summoning won't seem that big a deal.

If you are a competitive player not playing at tournaments but enjoying hard lists, then summoning won't have ruined AOS for you.

If you are a casual player that doesn't want to powerlist and your group also plays where they aren't spamming summoning or mortal wounds, then summoning won't have ruined AOS for you.

If you are a casual player that doesn't care much about winning or losing and just want to throw dice and push models, then no summoning won't have ruined AOS for you.

If you are a player that wants a good game and either doesn't want to be compelled to and/or does not have the models to run a high powered list that summons a lot or pushes a lot of mortal wounds, and you come up against someone that is summoning a ton of points (or pushing a lot of mortal wounds), then AOS won't be very fun for you.

The only things I've found that work are either players that know how to dial it back outside of the tournament hall (your mileage will vary here) or like what I do in campaigns, put a sudden death victory condition in if someone spams summoning against someone not pushing a ton of mortal wounds and not summoning to keep the game interesting. Sudden death victory conditions are a part of the actual game, its just that they are not part of matched play so get forgotten.

Like Ninth says above, I think that it definitely will hold back the game's overall health and growth because the direction of the game and what is viable to collect and field is very limited.

 minisnatcher wrote:
I like the fact the that they changed it for this edition. That means free summoning could be over in 2,5 years for 3.0. (or when a new GHB drops) it is a nice way to change the meta.

Uuuhh...Hopefully you don't think they could then on 4.0 switch free summoning back on? Because that, while would be typical for GW of changing things just to deliberately shift stuff that sells rather than aim for balance, would be HORRIBLE for balance.

You dont' do something to "change the meta". That's what you do when you are looking for just making money rather than balanced game. You change things because they are bad for game balance. Will remain to be seen will GW ever do that

auticus wrote:
They must have changed it then. A number of people were banned for criticizing the game on the TGA and were point blank told that the TGA wasn't the forum to criticize the game.

Was that in the early days of AoS? I can well see that happening on some forums focused on the game since its reception was - well - hostile to say the least from many old fantasy fans (and in all fairness GW didn't just drop the ball, they booted it out the window into the next street when it came to the general way they launched AoS*).
I've not seen any attitude like that from the staff now and critical views are aired all the time.


*With exception to the models, the models were and still are fantastic

I was banned last summer (2017) for criticizing the game. I was told that the TGA was not a place to criticize the game, that there are plenty of other forums and facebook groups for that, the TGA was created for positive posts only.

The post in question that got me banned was from another member complaining about true line of sight and terrain not doing anything in the game and I posted an acknowledgement of what they were seeing was how it played and how I also strongly disliked that (a record of which can be found here on these forums), and when I got docked for it I confirmed with the moderator that posting in a negative thread that someone else had created was grounds for a banning. Moderator said yes... the TGA was not for negative posts... so there you have it. Looking back at it, I think a lot of it has to do with how riled up people would get when you talked about forests blocking line of sight. It would really set some people off and cause heated arguments because those players had built up shooting armies and didnt' want to see them be negatively impacted by terrain that blocked line of sight like in other games, and I think really what the moderation staff wanted was for there to not be heated arguments so get rid of topics and opinions that could cause those.

If they've changed that ridiculous stance, then good. If everything is all rainbows and happiness all the time, you don't get any change. I want to see the game be healthy and not just be a powerlisting exercise, thats why I post negative comments in the appropriate threads. Things like the current look out sir and forests blocking line of sight I have to think were a part of people in general complaining about the lack of terrain rules and how easy it is to snipe out characters in a ridiculous format that doesn't follow any form of literature or cinema. If they weren't allowed to complain or express frustration at that, those rules never would have been considered and put in by the design team. (and I got slagged plenty over the course of the last year or so here for talking about either of those topics)

 Overread wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

Thenord wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
No, one can barely keep up with discussion on dedicated AoS boards.

This.

Also, AoS never really got a foothold on DAKKA it seemed to me. Go to TGA instead, if you want to read/discuss AoS. And as Blackfang said: Good luck keeping up with the forums there

TBF the TGA is positive-only, so any problems would not be discussed regardless of severity.

It's far from positive only, there are loads of critical things being said.
That said you could say that the community in general is more up-beat/positive in outlook and attitude than some other forum communities.

Admittedly my knowledge is is a bit dated, I probably should have added that caveat. Thank you for correcting me.

(by the way I have always liked your avatar)

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Overread wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

Thenord wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
No, one can barely keep up with discussion on dedicated AoS boards.

This.

Also, AoS never really got a foothold on DAKKA it seemed to me. Go to TGA instead, if you want to read/discuss AoS. And as Blackfang said: Good luck keeping up with the forums there

TBF the TGA is positive-only, so any problems would not be discussed regardless of severity.

It's far from positive only, there are loads of critical things being said.
That said you could say that the community in general is more up-beat/positive in outlook and attitude than some other forum communities.

Admittedly my knowledge is is a bit dated, I probably should have added that caveat. Thank you for correcting me.

(by the way I have always liked your avatar)

Archibald is the best Gryph-hound!

I think if you use Dakka as a barometer then summoning ruined AoS. I think if you spend time anywhere else discussing AoS or playing then summoning has just added a new spectrum to the game.

Regarding TGA I can understand banning Auticus. Auticus, you don't just voice your opinion, you voice it over and over again. People get tired of having the same argument in several threads just here. Honestly, I don't post as much on here because of the 1-2 punch of Auticus and Ninth on almost everything.

TLDR: Summoning hasn't ruined the game in any measurable method.

you don't just voice your opinion, you voice it over and over again

So by this logic, we should respond just once and then when the conversation comes up in the future, we should just not post about it again because that one time we already responded.

I mean I can see where you are coming from if I was incessantly posting / creating the same threads, but I rarely create a new thread, and if I do its topic varies wildly.

But to say its a valid bannable offense because we have a negative position on a topic that you disagree with and we post in threads started by others stating that opinion in those multiple threads (on topic of the thread) is bad, I don't know what to tell you.

There's also the fact that new people view topics all the time, and didn't read old topics that were already discussed.

Summoning hasn't ruined the game in any measurable method.

There have been many pointed lists about the negative impact summoning can have in the game that are quite measurable.

You may not hear any counter points anywhere else simply because they are banned, or the people that have negative experiences with it moved on to other games.

One thing that is a constant is there are no counter points to any of the negative bullet points to summoning other than "no its fine" and the people that say "no its fine" i find the gross majority of the time are tournament style players who are ok with lists that break the game, because thats the point of competitive play.

Or ultimately - if a player creates a list that isn't spamming mortal wounds or summoning, thats their fault and they should be doing that. Mortal wounds and summoning aren't broke if everyone else is doing it, they are only broke if a player makes bad decisions and doesn't min/max like everyone else.

summoning has just added a new spectrum to the game.

This is not a new spectrum to the game. Its been tried before at this level in the past and has always been very binary and polarizing. You either love it and embrace it, or you hate it for the imbalance it brings and you trash it and find something else.

If you could counter point some of the above and explain how 3000 points vs 2000 points is fine, and why its fine, I would be happy to consider your opinion.

tneva82 wrote:

 minisnatcher wrote:
I like the fact the that they changed it for this edition. That means free summoning could be over in 2,5 years for 3.0. (or when a new GHB drops) it is a nice way to change the meta.

Uuuhh...Hopefully you don't think they could then on 4.0 switch free summoning back on? Because that, while would be typical for GW of changing things just to deliberately shift stuff that sells rather than aim for balance, would be HORRIBLE for balance.

You dont' do something to "change the meta". That's what you do when you are looking for just making money rather than balanced game. You change things because they are bad for game balance. Will remain to be seen will GW ever do that

The days that I looked for balance in a gw game have long since passed.it is impossible to balance via pts. Imagine that in a chess game you could choose your setup by spending pts. How many would play the classical setup: 0
and no way the game would be fair. you would see after setup who will most likely win (if the players are evenly skilled) unless you have a mirror list.

Summoning paid almost killed some armies. and it feels very wrong for undead armies. The new summoning mechanics need tweaking but I do not see it as a bad thing.they may go in 3.0 but I do not see a problem with gw introducing a new mechanic in 4.0, or even in the next GHB.

And changing rules to change the meta. that is what happens in community thriving card games these days. like mtg, yu gi oh etc via banlists , formats, etc. to me it seems gw is going down that road. were list building is the same as deck building. there only problem at the moment to do this is that you cannot pick up an army and start the next day (it needs to be painted and assembled) so they need to go slower. then a game like magic. this would not be more expensive then playing one of those card games. A standard mtg deck easily costs 300 euros. and can be played for +-3 months so imagine keeping up for 3 years. It is good for bussiness. but also for the community as it gets new players on new releases some stop some come back after a while but we can clearly see those communities thriving world wide. People seem to think you should be able to buy an army and have a good army for the rest of your life. For that to happen the wall should have tumbled to the other side.

From a Blades of Khorne player's perspective: I can use my Blood Points for summoning or other useful things depending on my army composition. I choose to go with summoning because I already have the models for Khorne Daemons and also have lots of Khorne Mortals. If I had different Khorne Mortals models I could play differently and still make it work through tactical Blood Point use, or different Khorne Daemons I could play differently as well. If I go out of my way to push summoning I can reach the coveted 1000 points per game extra Daemons, but they aren't by any means "free". My entire army is geared towards maximizing my summoning potential. I know there are other armies that can designate a smaller force in their army to summoning and still get by, but I haven't faced them yet. I'd like to and see what all the fuss is about.

TGA feels very competitive minded, it's why I rarely post there. Got a hello letter, if I'm still interested in being a part of the site. I guess they'd prefer to have more active members or just a clean database?

Either way, I feel lucky to not face optimized lists and the two other players more or less take what they like.

 Knight wrote:
TGA feels very competitive minded, it's why I rarely post there. Got a hello letter, if I'm still interested in being a part of the site. I guess they'd prefer to have more active members or just a clean database?

Either way, I feel lucky to not face optimized lists and the two other players more or less take what they like.

Really? I feel like TGA is, or at least was, very deliberate and open about all three ways of play, even if the listbuilding for Matched play always seems to draw a lot of discussion.
Actually TGA seemed like a sanctuary from all the negative complainy-pants, that is usually found on most forums, and especially the biter WHFB players looking to lash out. Maybe even TGA changes slowly over time, but I would say that their active moderation have helped keep it a constructive and pleasant environment for people that share the love of the game.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
No, but I think it is going to limit growth of the game long term. I suspect the damage done now will color a lot of opinions going forward.

Honestly I feel like a lot of "the damage done now" is just that it reinforces opinions already held.

The bigger thing causing damage is some of the pricing on things like the Daughters of Khaine and Fyreslayers.

Haven't had any issues playing against summoning armies whatsoever and haven't thought of it as being overpowered.

I play Death as well and find the restrictions on it to be pretty good. Speaking about Death in particular, it's a great string in my bow but the restrictions mean I'll only be bringing back 1 destroyed unit per game. No doubt it's powerful but it's not game breaking.

Spiky Norman wrote:

Really? I feel like TGA is, or at least was, very deliberate and open about all three ways of play, even if the listbuilding for Matched play always seems to draw a lot of discussion.
Actually TGA seemed like a sanctuary from all the negative complainy-pants, that is usually found on most forums, and especially the biter WHFB players looking to lash out. Maybe even TGA changes slowly over time, but I would say that their active moderation have helped keep it a constructive and pleasant environment for people that share the love of the game.

Browsing the WIP and other blogs are what mostly attracts me on the site, it's also why I like to browse Reddit AoS, it's mostly WIP and showcases. It's also nice that the link to new YT battle reports is posted there. The general TGA discussions seem to be about what works and what doesn't at a competitive level or how to fix a unit (looking at mostly Order), seems that a fair number of tournament posters also post there so it's not uncommon to see people asking for their lists or thoughts.

To be honest, re-rolling ones and 2+ tough channels have become my favorite source of online AoS entertainment.

Honestly most forums talk about competitive play because it gives a baseline to work from. There was a TGA thread all about what narrative play was and the general upshot was that it was a huge number of different things to different people. Narrative and Open play have relaxed rules and thus are hard to talk about in a general sense because each game can be totally different. So its no shock to me that matched play and balance is the general focus of online discussions.

There has been a bigger push, mostly on the sportsmanship scores, for tournaments on TGA, but that's only been in the last week or two.

Matched play / tournament play has historically since the dawn of the internet been what 95% of internet forums and social media groups discuss.

@Auticus

I said I could see why they'd ban YOU specifically. It isn't that you have a negative opinion or post it but that you feel the need to reply to all posts and post the same things. What that means is that, like now with summoning or game enjoyment, we see you posting about your opinion on summoning, in 4 different threads now saying the same thing. People essentially can't have a conversation without your personal soapbox if it's even related by finger nails.

As for summoning ruining the game you get a bit hyperbolic so arguing with you has proved pointless. EVERY list is summoning 1k and not suffering for it in the building phase in the least and there are no counters to it to slow it down period. I've heard people discuss summoning but not one has voiced that it's ruining the game. And yes, some people that feel that way may have moved on to other games but that doesn't mean it's broken, just that they felt it was.

Numbers don't currently bear out that it's broken at a competitive level. At the entry or narrative level it can probably feel that way because of lack of knowledge/systems in play. Or if you have people playing at different levels. It's a social game and balance is never going to be perfect to where you can take whatever you want and be fine. Not even KoW, renowned for it's balance, does that.

we see you posting about your opinion on summoning, in 4 different threads now saying the same thing. People essentially can't have a conversation without your personal soapbox if it's even related by finger nails.

I guess I don't see the point of a forum if we're supposed to avoid threads that others create simply because there are similar threads other others created that you already responded in.

There are several threads, none of which were created by me, that talk about summoning and ask how we feel about it or if they ruined the game. The beastmen thread was discussing summoning because its a part of their mechanic.

EVERY list is summoning 1k and not suffering for it in the building phase in the least and there are no counters to it to slow it down period.

Well if you could give examples of armies summoning 1k and not suffering for in the building phase that would be illuminating to me.

There are for the most part no counters other than kill the caster. If you have other counters, feel free to post them.

The worst offenders all DO summon roughly 1000 points per game. Thats not hyperbolic. Those are the builds that I'm discussing that are breaking the game unless you are following suit.

Numbers don't currently bear out that it's broken at a competitive level.

I state nearly every time that its likely not broken at the competitive level because at that level everyone is breaking the game, so no one is breaking the game. The entire fulcrum point of this discussion being a useless one is centered around competitive players not seeing it as a big deal because in their swimming pool everyone is doing it. We lose the context of reality in that not everyone is or wants to be a competitive min/max player.

If your goal is that everyone be a min/max powerlister then certainly I can see why removing the people that don't want to do that would be seen as a positive thing however.

At the entry or narrative level it can probably feel that way because of lack of knowledge/systems in play. Or if you have people playing at different levels.

You have different people playing at different levels. Thats the entire crux of the olde crusade here. That GW gave an abusable system that if you don't abuse, you shouldn't bother playing.

It's a social game and balance is never going to be perfect to where you can take whatever you want and be fine. Not even KoW, renowned for it's balance, does that.

I've been playing KoW for a little while now and I've yet to encounter this type of thing. Not once. I've even actively looked for it, asked about it, tried finding a way to produce it.

Its most definitely not razor balanced but there are no features that let you show up with a bonus 1000 points and your opponent just takes it on the chin.

As far as I'm aware there aren't even ways to summon free points in KoW because they know how unbalancing and auto-take that is.

So while there are definitely balance issues in every game, there aren't this drastic of balance issues and/or auto-takes in every game to the point of Sigmar... which is you should always max out on your summoning, and barring that you should max out on your mortal wounds.

The people that all say its ok usually follow up with "and I play a summoning army and don't feel that its that bad" or "and I play this list that summons 800 - 1000 points but I don't feel that its that bad" or "and I play in tournaments and have a tournament level army myself".

so reword the question better: "Is a game where I'm not summoning or pushing a lot of mortal wounds going to be one-sided or not much fun if my opponent is summoning northwards of 500 or 600 points?"

Don't bother with him Auticus, Hulk has demonstrated repeatedly that he does not understand the subject matter and refuses to learn.

To be clear this is the guy who said at the launch of AoS 2nd that my tournament army -which he has never played, played against, or even read a battle report of- was going to do badly (it does fine btw). He basically just pulled assumptions out of nowhere and recited them as truth. This is the guy who said a unit was complete trash on one page and literally the next page of the thread said it was good in a casual setting and merely sub-par at tournaments. I could go on, but the point is he does not care for good-faith discussion. He is even dragging out the 'but summoning lists have downsides which compensate!' argument that you and others have debunked at least a dozen times.

How can summoning be fixed? Units that can summon should cost more?

Or how about say a 1000 point game, if you want to summon 250 points, you make a 750 point list and can summon as much as you want. This way you start at 750 points and can go up to 1250? Or say start at 500 points in a 1000 point game, and summon up to 1500 points then.

This way you are at a disadvantage in the beginning of the game, have to get your summons out and end game can be more powerful. So risk vs reward. Right now it seems there is no risk just reward.

So just like being a mage in D&D and video games, the mage starts off weak but can be the most powerful unit in the game later.

I don't know, just trying to throw it out to see what GW has is the best solution or not.

How can summoning be fixed? At its root it cannot. Once you summon, even +100 or +200 points, you have created an imbalance. What you have to create is a tolerable imbalance between all states of the game (that being, we typically have three overall states in Age of Sigmar today, the maxed mortal wound state, the maxed summoning state where we are getting 1000-1200 points of freebies at the extreme levels, and the state where neither of those things are happening)

At the max mortal wound state, you are able to tolerate summoning excess because you do so much damage they are having to summon to keep up with your damage output.

At the max summoning state, you are able to tolerate summoning excess because you are doing it too.

I find the bulk of people that feel summoning is fine are also playing in one of those two states.

At the third state is where the issue lies and is the "foundation of my soap box". For me the fix was adding sudden death victory condition to those that are in the first or second (or both) state against the third state.

This way the third state can achieve a victory as well through sudden death conditions and a fun game at least feels possible.

I could go on, but the point is he does not care for good-faith discussion.

My whole deal is I've laid out entirely where my issue is but its hand waived as not an issue because at tournament levels its not an issue and at the casual level, you just either get good and build a powerlist yourself, or you don't play.

I find that a horrible way to grow the game. It works great if you are at the powerlisting level and enjoy it. Not so great otherwise.\

Its especially frustrating considering the 18 months or so of wailing about how points are supposed to bring balance and no points meant the game was horrible because no balance, but the reality is points were never wanted for balance. Once imbalances are introduced, they are embraced strongly and lovingly caressed like a true love.

Davor wrote:
How can summoning be fixed? Units that can summon should cost more?

Or how about say a 1000 point game, if you want to summon 250 points, you make a 750 point list and can summon as much as you want. This way you start at 750 points and can go up to 1250? Or say start at 500 points in a 1000 point game, and summon up to 1500 points then.

This way you are at a disadvantage in the beginning of the game, have to get your summons out and end game can be more powerful. So risk vs reward. Right now it seems there is no risk just reward.

So just like being a mage in D&D and video games, the mage starts off weak but can be the most powerful unit in the game later.

I don't know, just trying to throw it out to see what GW has is the best solution or not.

I would totally be down for that. And agreed on risk vs reward. I just want to see something done. I prefer the idea of it occupying what would normally be a major allegiance ability (for example Idoneth get their tides, Nurgle gets his summons) but that does not seem to be what GW wants to do as it keeps getting tacked on as a free bonus. Maybe a hard cap of points summoned would work? Like being unable to go above, say, 20% points summoned or having a penalty if you did. Maybe have a command ability that lets players block summons for a round. I still really like summoning being free in a general sense as it is a lot of fun to have a chaos spawn pop up from a mutalith, daemons drawn forth during the battle, etc. I do not want to see it go, just made reasonable.

Thats what I do. If you summon in more than 20% of your army and your opponent has not pushed 20 or more mortal wounds in a turn yet and has not also summoned 20% of their army, they get a sudden death card from the rulebook.

It doesn't say "you can't do this", but rather it puts a cost to doing so. It pushes a decision that has weight to it. It could cost you the game if you are too greedy.

auticus wrote:
How can summoning be fixed? At its root it cannot. Once you summon, even +100 or +200 points, you have created an imbalance.

I disagree; as mentioned above I think there are various methods summons could be addressed to fix the issue even at a fundamental level.

When I say that it cannot be fixed, I am speaking broadly from an introduction of imbalances term. You introduce an imbalance willingly you have broken the game.

You instead have to find a way to create a tolerable imbalance amidst all of the states within the game to keep the game a game and fun for all those participating, not just for the ones that are maxing out on one of the states of play and forcing their playstyle by maxing out.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Don't bother with him Auticus, Hulk has demonstrated repeatedly that he does not understand the subject matter and refuses to learn.

To be clear this is the guy who said at the launch of AoS 2nd that my tournament army -which he has never played, played against, or even read a battle report of- was going to do badly (it does fine btw). He basically just pulled assumptions out of nowhere and recited them as truth. This is the guy who said a unit was complete trash on one page and literally the next page of the thread said it was good in a casual setting and merely sub-par at tournaments. I could go on, but the point is he does not care for good-faith discussion. He is even dragging out the 'but summoning lists have downsides which compensate!' argument that you and others have debunked at least a dozen times.

Hey Ninth, the tip of your nose is brown again. I discussed numbers, styles of play, counters, and examples of play. I pointed out that your list wasn't in any way tearing up the scene (still isn't and never came close) and I said it would be sub-par at the tournament level (turns out it has been). Not my fault you got uppity, didn't respond to 90% of my arguments and then got holier than though in your responses and set me to ignore

@Auticus

I realize you don't see the problem. It's why you'll never understand why traffic is down in this area or why people get annoyed with your style of discussion. And here we have a single sub forum. I can only imagine how annoying it would have been on TGA seeing you pop up literally everywhere.

Moving on to your replies to my last post I'll try and break it down;

Only 2 armies can reasonably summon 1k. One is Seraphon and one is Legion of Nagash. The most you can get out of most other armies is 500pts on lucky rolls or building specifically to it. So let's look at the 2 armies that can do 1k+ in 5 turns.

Legion of Nagash. This is an army that can only summon back units that were eliminated and also requires the general to be near a grave marker. So much of this is dependent on positioning, grave yard placement, and your opponents ability to kill your units. Legions of Nagash really only excell on board control. To counter them you just need to be able to get into them fast and hard and have them spend the game hemmed in. Where summoning back dead units is cool but if you control the table for 2-3 turns you win. Summoning means literally nothing in this scenario. People getting hung up on killing stuff doesn't break the game. Preventing access to grave yards isn't that difficult if you plan ahead. Nagash doesn't suffer for their summoning but I also don't feel like they fall into the "summon" armies. They just do have the ability to get back 1k+ in 5 turns if their opponent is murdering entire units every turn.

Seraphon. To summon 1k+ over the course of a game you need the following; Slaan, Astrolith, Cogs, Balewind Vortex, Starpriest and Engine of the Gods. That's 820pts of stuff. It nets you 13+d3 turn one and 16+d3 turn 2 on. So an average of 15pts and then 18pts per turn. The average point per summoning point for Seraphon is 12.2. So every turn you're looking at 183 turn on (likely 120-140 since you can't hit 18) and then 219 turn 2+. That not including a 33% chance of 140pts back from the engine so an additionaly 47pts per turn (230 and 268). That times 5 turns does net you about 1,302pts per game. That's an impressive amount of free stuff. But out of the list of units taken the only one I took prior to summoning is the slaan so that's 560pts to get 1302. So now we're down to 742 "free" points. That's assuming the following;

-No one take out the astrolith bearer (unlikely as he is probably going to be fairly up the table so you can summon usefully)
-No one dispels cogs and balewind causing you to lose 3pts per turn
-No one hits the engine for a few wound to drop down the dice

So numbers start to drop fast if any of the above happen. If you can pull down the slaan (note, not something I put in the likely above) then the lizards are hosed because they built a list around summoning.

Name the other worst offenders because I don't see a single other army doing that. Most summoning 400-600 and have to built a specific way to do it (i.e. the Blades army mentioned or Beastmen or Tzeentch)

I understand YOUR local meta makes this a crusade for you because they don't care about anything other than min/max. The game is designed to be played at different levels. Pick up games will probably have imbalances. Why? Because people are bad at talking to people. Or seem to be. And it seems especially bad in your area. But you really should take a breath and not push your issues of your local meta onto the community as a whole. Summoning, at a competitive level, is just another tool in the box and you can win with or without it. Summoning at a lower level depends on your meta, the personalities in said meta, and peoples ability to adapt and skill level.

As for KoW before the nimble change on monsters you did see the equivalent of showing up 1000 extra point because you simply couldn't compete with flying units like that. Chariots seem to be on the same level for a few armies now. There are unit choices that you simply don't take and if you do then you are basically playing down. Sometimes significantly.

I think there is solid competitive balance that doesn't require mass summoning or mass mortal wounds. I think there is general balance as long as you simply say "don't max summoning" or "don't mortal wound spam" in anything less than the competitive level.

And in response to the reword my answer would be no. I think it would still be good fun and is pretty decently balanced.

I think the part about Seraphon summoning I find the most egregious isn't how overpowered it might be. No, my problem is that it is exhaustedly tied to Slaan Warlords. This effectively lock Seraphon out of other possible Warlord option, pushing them towards a more mono build strat.

 Hulksmash wrote:

Numbers don't currently bear out that it's broken at a competitive level. At the entry or narrative level it can probably feel that way because of lack of knowledge/systems in play.

Interesting. Could you show some data showing how summoning armies aren't dominating at the top? So far the ones I have seen, albeit not that many, shows summoning being pretty damn common at the top.


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 Hulksmash wrote:
The game is designed to be played at different levels. Pick up games will probably have imbalances. Why? Because people are bad at talking to people. Or seem to be. And it seems especially bad in your area. But you really should take a breath and not push your issues of your local meta onto the community as a whole. Summoning, at a competitive level, is just another tool in the box and you can win with or without it. Summoning at a lower level depends on your meta, the personalities in said meta, and peoples ability to adapt and skill level.

What you describe there is symptom created by incompetent game designers...

Right. Traffic is down in the AOS forums on dakka because when someone posts a summoning thread I post my opinion on it. (because I post in a lot of forums on here, not just the AOS one)

Traffic has always been down on the AOS forums on dakka since day 1 of AOS.

It was so bad on TGA that I was in the top 10 on their leaderboard for liked posts and had more likes than I had posts. I had hit #8 all time according to their scoring metric and standings site you can go to when I got booted. Additionally I was a content creator and had six different campaign supplements and the Bretonnian AOS conversion hosted on there. Three of those files were at their top ten most downloaded. At one point one of my items hit #2, which hitting #1 was impossible because it was Bottle's hinterlands ruleset and that was astronomically above everything else in the content pool.

All of those people that were having an awful time were just compelled to score me high on the TGA like-meter. (looks like you can still get to my profile, shows 1046 posts and 1108 upvotes)

So no that too is a crock. There are certainly people that strongly disagree with what I have to say and some love piling on when they get a chance, but no I don't feel the entire community was all wrung out with their panties in a wad whenever I posted and were counting down at the pub for my banning. Just some of them. As they were when I would gripe about terrain not doing anything in the game and how that would destroy the game. And then the design team put terrain that did stuff in the game again. Just as some were put out of their minds for when I discussed a form of look out sir because its not cinematic at all to have our leaders hiding in the back because of how easy it is to snipe. And then something was put in the game for it.

The point of all that not to be all proud that people upvote what I have to say and liked what I created, but certainly paints a different picture to the masses huddled around their screens wishing for my demise so that they could properly discuss things.

Those debates made visible some of the issues in the game. Not talking about them at all because some people would get offended or annoyed, well that defeats the purpose of a public forum in the first place where the whole point of being is debate and discussion.

Only 2 armies can reasonably summon 1k. One is Seraphon and one is Legion of Nagash

And tzeentch. And now we've seen a blades of khorne army offered up that can. My nurgle army can push 600 and I literally do nothing different or have to build anything different. I have no idea what slaanesh can do simply because I have not seen a slaanesh army yet. I'm building one up for next year so we'll see hwat depravity pointts do.

At the levels where people want to break the game, those are typically the only armies you see running amuk.

So even if you have 100 builds and only 6 or 8 of them are the worst offenders, it is typically those 6 or 8 offensive builds that make up the bulk of what you see in the wild.

Additionally as has been pointed out a great many times, most of these armies running "summoning specific builds" aren't giving up anything to summon more. Their guys are for the most doing exactly what theyd be doing if they weren't summoning. This concept that you're spending all of these hundreds of points so the summoned points aren't free is quite false for the most part. Those models that had the hundreds of points spent on them are contributing to the game (many exactly the same) in almost the same way they would be if summoning didn't even exist.

The game is designed to be played at different levels. Pick up games will probably have imbalances.

I have never read a dev blog that stated that they intended the game to be balanced for different levels so I have to say that unless you have some direct contact with the design team somehow, that I don't believe that.

The game certainly seems like it was designed at the powerlist level and the rest of everyone else can just get good and build powerlists too or roll the bones and pray to baby jesus that their community isn't going to have people in it that will do nothing but min/max all the live long day.

That is bad game design. Most certainly the farthest thing from tolerable imbalance that exists.

People aren't bad at talking to people in my area. They can say all day long what they want, the guys that are going to build to what the rules say they can are not going to change because they bought their armies to min/max no matter what you ask them to do.

Because of bad game design.

You don't adapt to a 1000 point disadvantage without yourself going out and buying and painting up an army that can do that or blow your load on mortal wounds.

So while this is all great for the competitive people (you yourself admittedly being one of those people) who are powerlisting anyway, it is most definitely not as much fun on the other end of the spectrum if you have a small community of players and have to choose between playing at all or playing against bob and mike the min/max kings that won't adapt their list because you need to git gud.

Because bad game design encourages that. And in this instance its such a small thing to make tolerable again by giving win conditions to those armies that aren't playing extreme min/max builds. They already put it in the game. They just need to expose it to matched play which is the only version of the game that it seems 99% of the playerbase consider.

Davor wrote:
How can summoning be fixed? Units that can summon should cost more?

Or how about say a 1000 point game, if you want to summon 250 points, you make a 750 point list and can summon as much as you want. This way you start at 750 points and can go up to 1250? Or say start at 500 points in a 1000 point game, and summon up to 1500 points then.

This way you are at a disadvantage in the beginning of the game, have to get your summons out and end game can be more powerful. So risk vs reward. Right now it seems there is no risk just reward.

So just like being a mage in D&D and video games, the mage starts off weak but can be the most powerful unit in the game later.

I don't know, just trying to throw it out to see what GW has is the best solution or not.

There are multiple ways you can do it in AoS. Units can simply cost more base to make up for it (see units like Pink Horrors). And there are multiple unpointed advantages and disadvantages many armies have in AoS. Deepstriking and at will teleportation, bonus close combat phases without the opponent getting a reaction, summoning, complete control of the opponents shooting phase, complete lack of presence in a particular game phase, lack of unit variety/versatility, the strength or weakness of different armies spell lists, are all just a few of the things in the game that are unpointed, and could be balanced around each other. Like the Necromancer in Diablo 2, summoning could just be what certain factions do.

@Auticus

I'm going to be honest. If you had someone like Ninth over on TGA I'm not surprised you had slightly more than a like per post. It only takes a few people who agree with you to hit that button on most your posts. There are a lot of people that don't post and your style of blitzing threads would lead to more of that. I'm just pointing out why you might have been booted and that I can understand booting you not because of what you say but at the frequency and exhaustive repetitiveness in which you say it.

Tzeentch doesn't summon 1k. Even assuming realm spells you'd be looking at 6 characters that all cast two spells and two pinks. That gives you a bit of depth and if you get them all off congrats, you got 120pts. You don't have to cast spells as an opponent so you're looking at 600 "free points" where your minimum investment is of 960 in characters and 400 in "battleline". So you're at 1360 if you only bring Curselings and 20 pinks. Now you take the important blue scribes and probably a lord of change and your points jump. You probably grab cogs because it's an extra spell and makes up for the curseling. Essentially you're building around summoning and eating up way, way more points that seraphon to summon worse stuff. You'll nuke one major unit and then you start to drop off.

Khorne gets nowhere near 1k. 3 prayers on turn one generate on average 2.25pts (i.e. not even 100pts) while doing on average 29.75pts of damage to you're own army. It's very dependent on losing models to get extra points and you're building around the summoning as you're losing some really good abilities out of the priests for your units. If you're opponent brings a lot of smaller units, you do too, and he doesn't kill you're priests then you'd still be looking at max 800pts and that's if things break right in every way (not some ways, EVERY way).

Slaanesh is even more specific. Nurge you originally posted over and over were fine and you were sitting at about 400pts and now in this conversation it's 600.

But this is the problem. I point out the ACTUAL numbers on these things and you ignore it (like the Seraphon above and the BoC in that thread) and shift goal posts. You say everything is contributing the same way even when I point out that it isn't, how, and how it's limited. You don't want to have a conversation about things. You've made a decision and bombard people with it.

I think it's interesting that in your area the hardcores somehow hold the entire area hostage to their game play outside of tournaments. In tournaments sure but outside of it I don't understand how it happens. Here if you do that kind of thing you simply don't get invited to play again in a casual setting. Where people talk to each other and dial back, creating fun and interesting games. But maybe we're lucky in that when it's gone that direction we've cut off that limb outside of events and built up a new group of like minded people.

So to me I find the game balanced because a lot of things work great if you're not looking to break the game (casual) and a lot of things work great if you are (hardcore tournament).

I've said it over and over again that your meta seriously influences your view of the game. And the more you post the more I see that.

Also yes, the people I've talked to have said it's geared toward levels of play but maybe they were feeding me a line. I'm still much more plugged into 40k that AoS at the design level.

I'm going to be honest. If you had someone like Ninth over on TGA I'm not surprised you had slightly more than a like per post. It only takes a few people who agree with you to hit that button on most your posts.

I see. So... everyone else that gets high marks over there, they are getting high marks because the community overwhelmingly agrees with them and they are good. But someone like me has high marks because I have a couple of sycophants that meticulously follow what I say and just like everything to give the illusion.

lol.

I'm just pointing out why you might have been booted

Per Gaz Taylor and Ben Curry - because negative posts have no place on TGA and criticisms of the game can be done on other forums or groups, but on TGA there will be none of that.

Per a couple others outside of those two that claimed to have some insight (so take with a grain of salt since I didn't hear th is directly from the horse's mouth but from some people that sit with the horse's mouth at the pubs over there)- because the moderation team are tournament players that felt the game is perfectly fine (much like you) and the dev team read those boards and they didn't want design influenced by people like me when they thought the game was just fine how it was.

I can understand booting you not because of what you say but at the frequency and exhaustive repetitiveness in which you say it.

And whenever anyone creates a topic about things that I don't like asking questions about it, I will continue to post my opinion on it. Because thats what a public forum is for.

I have a serious inclination that if I was posting about how balanced it was in every thread, you'd have no issue with the "blitzing". Its that you don't agree with it and don't want to see it.

I've said it over and over again that your meta seriously influences your view of the game. And the more you post the more I see that.

Everyone's local meta seriously influences their view of the game because a local meta is someone's experience playing the game in their reality. Just like a tournament player that powerlists is going to have a powerlisting meta and think the game is perfectly fine because in the powerlisting meta everything is fine so long as you are playing the top 5% or whatever tiny fraction of the game is viable. THe game is rosy up there.

I point out the ACTUAL numbers on these things and you ignore it (like the Seraphon above and the BoC in that thread) and shift goal posts.

I haven't shifted anything. My stance has not changed one bit since pre release of 2.0. You are putting out numbers. Your numbers are not absolutes. If I "ignore" something from someone it is because they posted something that has no way to refute it. I don't need to verbally agree with everything, if I'm not disputing it that means I'm not disputing it. I watch on a weekly basis every weekend a seraphon army cranking out over 1000 points a game and I see on a fairly regular occasion a legion of nagash army recycling over 1000 points a game with my own two eyeballs.

Additionally - the threshold for me to think summoning is too much is not capped at 1000 points. Like... if a force is only pushing 800 points then I'm suddenly ok with it.

To date I've either taken a part in or been a part of over fifty games of 2.0 and where summoning existed on one side beyond say 400-500 pts and did not on the other and the other wasn't pushing out tournament level mortal wounds, the summoning side has a 100% win rate based around the fact that they were getting new models into the game and the other side was not.

I think it's interesting that in your area the hardcores somehow hold the entire area hostage to their game play outside of tournaments. In tournaments sure but outside of it I don't understand how it happens. Here if you do that kind of thing you simply don't get invited to play again in a casual setting.

Its very simple math. You have been around the competitive circuit for a long time so you should already know how this works.

It only takes ONE guy to cause the arms race. We have several guys that escalate the arms race.

If you do public campaign events, you cant disinvite them.

Additionally those guys show up for pick up games and influence the new players there by curb stomping them.

Which causes the arms race.

Its not always that easy to do.

The game is fine - at the hardcore tournament level. The game requires effort on the players part to make it fine at anything less than the hardcore tournament level. Summoning is most definitely NOT fine at the casual level when someone wants to play tournament level summoning in a casual environment with someone that is not. The same as spamming mortal wounds is most definitely NOT fine at the casual level when someone wants to play tournament level mortal wounds spamming in a casual environment with someone that is not. In both instances the game allows those things to happen because the designers let that happen and a good chunk of the community embraces that level of imbalance.

Also yes, the people I've talked to have said it's geared toward levels of play

Again - I've never once seen any developer post about that or anyone ever having said that once until now and I follow a lot of different AOS groups.

You and I have nothing more to say to one another. You are a tournament player trying to assert that the casual game is just fine and the solution is simply not to play people that want to play tournament level everywhere. So long as the game encourages you to break the game and does not stop you from breaking the game, and the imbalances exist when you try to shove a tournament list into a casual environment this will be an issue. To make this not an issue there needs to be design considerations taken for lists that aren't running extreme builds or caps need to be put in place to stop from going over a limit which breaks the game.

At the tournament level you'll never worry about this because you are also actively breaking the game.

I am telling you Auticus, Hulk is not worth your time. He has a well-demonstrated unwillingness to carry out a good-faith discussion. Evidence does not phase him. Logical reasoning does not phase him. The reason he dislikes you so much is not your position but because you keep hammering those and he cannot counter it. We have dozens and dozens of posts to show this. There are plenty of others interested in talking to each other rather than at each other.

Put differently, this is all two of Hulk's responses to you:
-Your evidence is outweighed by my opinion, so your argument is wrong.
-Some people do not agree with you, so your argument is wrong.

Seriously, it is really difficult to find anything that does not fit into one of those.

Thats why I have concluded with he and I have nothing more to say to one another, its just turned into a ridiculous hamster wheel.

I've posted my say. There will undoubtedly be a return comment but I will not respond to that. We've gone over our opinions on why or why not summoning "ruined" AOS, who is most affected, who will not be affected as much, and alternative ways to make it not as heavily impactful as it is for those that it affects.

If anyone else wants to chime in, great. Otherwise... I think we've exhausted the topic.

At any rate, what do people think would be a good way to address summoning? Davor brought up the subject of summoning being about being weaker at the start of the game and I think that is ultimately the core of the issue. But for all the talk of what is wrong with summoning we might as well talk about how it can be made better.

Auticus has mentioned before using the sudden death cards for players that summon more than 20% points above the starting value. Personally I am not a fan since I would like any solution to be self-contained as much as possible rather than needing an outside rule source. There are also certain issues (perhaps you can elaborate Auticus), like if one player summons, say, 22% while the other summons 18% one gets the benefit even though the difference is small, or if one player hits the 20% only for the other to bypass that later in the game, etc.


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auticus wrote:
Thats why I have concluded with he and I have nothing more to say to one another, its just turned into a ridiculous hamster wheel.

I've posted my say. There will undoubtedly be a return comment but I will not respond to that. We've gone over our opinions on why or why not summoning "ruined" AOS, who is most affected, who will not be affected as much, and alternative ways to make it not as heavily impactful as it is for those that it affects.

If anyone else wants to chime in, great. Otherwise... I think we've exhausted the topic.

Though really you should just have rebuttals ready to cut & paste since the same arguments get dragged out over and over anyways

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I am telling you Auticus, Hulk is not worth your time. He has a well-demonstrated unwillingness to carry out a good-faith discussion. Evidence does not phase him. Logical reasoning does not phase him. The reason he dislikes you so much is not your position but because you keep hammering those and he cannot counter it. We have dozens and dozens of posts to show this. There are plenty of others interested in talking to each other rather than at each other.

Put differently, this is all two of Hulk's responses to you:
-Your evidence is outweighed by my opinion, so your argument is wrong.
-Some people do not agree with you, so your argument is wrong.

Seriously, it is really difficult to find anything that does not fit into one of those.

Ninth,

To be fair, and I am a neutral party in this, I think Hulks posts have been pretty reasonable, and backed up by numbers and game mechanics. Granted, I am still learning the mechanics myself, but everything hulk has pointed out has seemed quite logical and reasonable. Would you or Auticus mind disproving the numbers he is putting out, if he is mistaken?

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I am telling you Auticus, Hulk is not worth your time. He has a well-demonstrated unwillingness to carry out a good-faith discussion. Evidence does not phase him. Logical reasoning does not phase him. The reason he dislikes you so much is not your position but because you keep hammering those and he cannot counter it. We have dozens and dozens of posts to show this. There are plenty of others interested in talking to each other rather than at each other.

Put differently, this is all two of Hulk's responses to you:
-Your evidence is outweighed by my opinion, so your argument is wrong.
-Some people do not agree with you, so your argument is wrong.

Seriously, it is really difficult to find anything that does not fit into one of those.

You have not provided a shred of evidence against his claims, you have constantly attacked him and his personal character rather then actually arguing in good faith at all.

Overall from what I've seen Summoning hasn't really dominated the tables over good play.. It helps some armies against players who don't know how to deal with it, but that's the extent of experience seen.

Would you or Auticus mind disproving the numbers he is putting out, if he is mistaken?

Can you give an exact line / number that you would like to discuss? In going over his posts he is focusing on my issue with 1000 point summoning armies by showing most armies don't summon 1000 points.

That doesn't touch on where exactly the threshold for armies that are not summoning can have a good game against an army that is summoning, its just trying to use semantics to say that in the pile most armies can't summon 1000 points.

It doesn't touch on competitive metas focusing on the more extreme builds though (while its true most armies cannot summon 1000 points or more in a game, in my area those are typically the armies you always see if you are trying to summon, its go big or don't bother)

I may be mistaken, but going over his current posts they are all about armies that are *only* summoning 500 or 600 free points (which I still believe is tipping the cart over against armies that are not summoning at all and are also not mortal wound spamming you to death either) because he feels i"m being hyperbolic and since most armies are doing 500-600 points, its not that bad and the armies that are doing 1000+ points are rare and you can just get around them by getting better at the game / building a stronger list. (git gud is not something that I feel is valid at that extreme, and building a stronger list is not a viable option to people that don't want to keep buying new models just to keep up and have a good game, no matter how common or accepted it is by the tournament community to do so, we are not talking about the tournament community here, I am talking about growing the game at the casual level and as I've mentioned probably 100 times now, the issues I have are not at the tournament level of the game, they are at the casual level of the game that I feel poor game design allows to get run amuk over)

Ninth has mentioned that there are other power builds out there that neither summon spam or mortal wound spam, and I defer to him on those builds since my only experience are with the former en masse. I don't see armies that don't do those things winning games against those style of armies, but I also realize that I'm only around the same 8-12 dudes every week and there could be other power builds that just aren't in my meta.

Then we see this line:

Khorne gets nowhere near 1k.

And then a page prior we have a khorne player saying he regularly gets 800 points in 4 turns and can get over 1000 points if he gets 5 turns.

The khorne players here (there are two) are both casual mostly and they are putting about 500 points on the table every game freely because they have to if they want a chance against the seraphon 1000 point guy or the legion of nagash guy doing 1000 points or more in recycled units a game.

(they don't ever beat those two, their 500 points aren't enough and they always lose to attrition)

The tzeentch player at our last group game weekend in september summoned roughly 650 points and complained he was being stymied because his opponents wouldn't cast spells to help him summon more lol.

So let me present you with my hard numbers from our last non campaign capped games that have happened since mid September on what has been possible to summon based on my note taking as I always ask them to list what was summoned and get me the point totals so I can adjust and work with future events on what is being done
Seraphon player #1 - 1000 points summoned - hasn't lost yet
Seraphon player #2 - 1050 points summoned - has only lost to seraphon player #1
Legion of Nagash Player #1 - 1000 points recycled - has only lost to seraphon player #1
Legion of Nagash Player #2 - 650 points recycled before general was killed - never lost to someone not summoning
Tzeentch player - 650 points summoned - struggles to win against mortal wound armies, has never beaten seraphon or legion of nagash player because they win on attrition
Khorne player #1 - 500 points summoned - typically always wins against no summoning, typically gets beat by a lot more summoning from the guys above
Khorne player #2 - 550 points summoned - same as Khorne player #1
Nurgle player (me) - 400 points summoned - have never lost against someone that didn't summon, nurgle mortal wound resistance keeps me up against the mortal wound guys and attrition always sees me over those not summoning - lose to the seraphon and LoN guys that summon more than me due to attrition
Sylvaneth player #1 - 350 points summoned - summoning is usually not that big a deal, wins due to a combo of summoning, mortal wounds, and ranged teleporting objective holding
Sylvaneth player #2 - 350 points summoned - summoning is usually not that big a deal, just learning her army and takes aleriele - wins as much as loses but as learning mortal wounds and teleporting becomes better

Other armies - 2 stormcast players (no summoning, they pump out around 40 mortal wounds a turn though and compete that way)
Fyre slayers - gets trounced because minimal mortal wounds and doesn't summon
Iron jaws - loses to attrition because of no summoning and his army doesn't push a lot of mortal wounds
Beastclaw raider - no summoning - does beast claw raider mortal wounds which helps him keep up
Bretonnian player #1 - uses Deus Vult list - does well due to mortal wounds and arrow storm
Bretonnian player #2 - uses Deus vult list - loses to summoning attrition because he doesn't summon and doesn't do enough damage
Tzeentch Player #2 - doesn't have the model count to summon - gets beat pretty handily because he doesn't summon and can't take a lot of damage

There are other armies on the roster that have not shown up

I'm not sure what else hard numbers are going to show here or what we are trying to state with showing these values other than if you aren't summoning a lot and you aren't mortal wounding a lot and you are up against an army doing a lot of either, you are essentially a jobber making your opponent look good

Personally I am not a fan since I would like any solution to be self-contained as much as possible rather than needing an outside rule source.

The sudden death rules are part of the core rulebook. I use them simply because they are not technically house rules, they are scenario rules using rules from the core rulebook.

Short of just saying "you cannot summon more than 20% of your army" this was the best solution that I could come up with to keep things in a casual narrative campaign setting from getting to adepticon levels.

Its actually not had a lot of negative heat either, which kind of surprises me, but thats mainly because its a rule found in the core rulebook and not an auticus spawned houserule that was created by me. They would be more annoyed if i capped their summoning completely at 20%, and I've had over half of the players say they liked it because it gave them an interesting choice in a game that has few interesting choices during the game that don't make themselves obvious.

I am open to other formats as well if a good one presents itself. So far, that rule has kept the mortal wound spam and summoning spam down and has made most of our event games fun for the guys that don't want to go out and buy new models so they can spam summoning or mortal wounds to have good games (otherwise my campaign would lose about 75% of its players)

auticus wrote:

Would you or Auticus mind disproving the numbers he is putting out, if he is mistaken?

Can you give an exact line / number that you would like to discuss? In going over his posts he is focusing on my issue with 1000 point summoning armies by showing most armies don't summon 1000 points.

That doesn't touch on where exactly the threshold for armies that are not summoning can have a good game against an army that is summoning, its just trying to use semantics to say that in the pile most armies can't summon 1000 points.

It doesn't touch on competitive metas focusing on the more extreme builds though (while its true most armies cannot summon 1000 points or more in a game, in my area those are typically the armies you always see if you are trying to summon, its go big or don't bother)

I may be mistaken, but going over his current posts they are all about armies that are *only* summoning 500 or 600 free points (which I still believe is tipping the cart over against armies that are not summoning at all and are also not mortal wound spamming you to death either) because he feels i"m being hyperbolic and since most armies are doing 500-600 points, its not that bad and the armies that are doing 1000+ points are rare and you can just get around them by getting better at the game / building a stronger list. (git gud is not something that I feel is valid at that extreme, and building a stronger list is not a viable option to people that don't want to keep buying new models just to keep up and have a good game, no matter how common or accepted it is by the tournament community to do so, we are not talking about the tournament community here, I am talking about growing the game at the casual level and as I've mentioned probably 100 times now, the issues I have are not at the tournament level of the game, they are at the casual level of the game that I feel poor game design allows to get run amuk over)

Ninth has mentioned that there are other power builds out there that neither summon spam or mortal wound spam, and I defer to him on those builds since my only experience are with the former en masse. I don't see armies that don't do those things winning games against those style of armies, but I also realize that I'm only around the same 8-12 dudes every week and there could be other power builds that just aren't in my meta.

Then we see this line:

Khorne gets nowhere near 1k.

And then a page prior we have a khorne player saying he regularly gets 800 points in 4 turns and can get over 1000 points if he gets 5 turns.

The khorne players here (there are two) are both casual mostly and they are putting about 500 points on the table every game freely because they have to if they want a chance against the seraphon 1000 point guy or the legion of nagash guy doing 1000 points or more in recycled units a game.

(they don't ever beat those two, their 500 points aren't enough and they always lose to attrition)

The tzeentch player at our last group game weekend in september summoned roughly 650 points and complained he was being stymied because his opponents wouldn't cast spells to help him summon more lol.

Personally I am not a fan since I would like any solution to be self-contained as much as possible rather than needing an outside rule source.

The sudden death rules are part of the core rulebook. I use them simply because they are not technically house rules, they are scenario rules using rules from the core rulebook.

Short of just saying "you cannot summon more than 20% of your army" this was the best solution that I could come up with to keep things in a casual narrative campaign setting from getting to adepticon levels.

Its actually not had a lot of negative heat either, which kind of surprises me, but thats mainly because its a rule found in the core rulebook and not an auticus spawned houserule that was created by me. They would be more annoyed if i capped their summoning completely at 20%, and I've had over half of the players say they liked it because it gave them an interesting choice in a game that has few interesting choices during the game that don't make themselves obvious.

I am open to other formats as well if a good one presents itself. So far, that rule has kept the mortal wound spam and summoning spam down and has made most of our event games fun for the guys that don't want to go out and buy new models so they can spam summoning or mortal wounds to have good games (otherwise my campaign would lose about 75% of its players)

Well, for instance let's look at the Khorne one. While I understand a player says he can get it regularly, can we actually go through the mechanics and circumstances that allow this consisently?

Khorne gets nowhere near 1k. 3 prayers on turn one generate on average 2.25pts (i.e. not even 100pts) while doing on average 29.75pts of damage to you're own army. It's very dependent on losing models to get extra points and you're building around the summoning as you're losing some really good abilities out of the priests for your units. If you're opponent brings a lot of smaller units, you do too, and he doesn't kill you're priests then you'd still be looking at max 800pts and that's if things break right in every way (not some ways, EVERY way).

Hulk seems to point out that you have to have everything go right to get even close to summoning near the 1k number that has been pointed out. Is this consisent with the mechanics? I'd really like to see the numbers, what has to go right and the averages on this. I'd like to understand what is hyperbole, and what is much more likely

Tzeentch doesn't summon 1k. Even assuming realm spells you'd be looking at 6 characters that all cast two spells and two pinks. That gives you a bit of depth and if you get them all off congrats, you got 120pts. You don't have to cast spells as an opponent so you're looking at 600 "free points" where your minimum investment is of 960 in characters and 400 in "battleline". So you're at 1360 if you only bring Curselings and 20 pinks. Now you take the important blue scribes and probably a lord of change and your points jump. You probably grab cogs because it's an extra spell and makes up for the curseling. Essentially you're building around summoning and eating up way, way more points that seraphon to summon worse stuff. You'll nuke one major unit and then you start to drop off.

This one seems to indicate the same thing as the Khorne one. How much are we really summoning here? What are the averages?


I just want to see some more fleshed out numbers and understand it a bit more. I'd do it myself, but I'm still kind of new to the rules and don't have all the books required here.

I posted above. The khorne players here are doing about 400-500 points.

Is that too much?

In my opinion, 20% of 2000 points is 400 pts, and thats usually not RUINING the game for a casual. 500 pts is very much pushing it.

The khorne forces that are optimized combine summoning 400-500 pts of summons with mortal wound bombs, so that goes back up somewhere above where I talked about the three states of AOS and that if you are maxing summoning, maxing mortal wounds, OR combining summoning with mortal wounds, you are going to be beating down someone that is not doing either (which again is the crux of my issue on the bad game design)

In that instance its not "OMG khorne player summons breaks the game" its "khorne player can summon a good amount of stuff to supplement his mortal wound beat down bomb" which is appropriate for tournament halls, but can ruin casual night in a hurry.

Now for those doing extreme buildings... the khorne list posted by the player saying he gets 800 points is maxing out summoning which has the same game experience as above. Against someone powerlisting at a tournament - no big deal. Against a casual player like half or more of the list of players I posted above, not a fun time.

To the original topic "Did summoning RUIN AOS again" -> largely by itself no. It contributes strongly to the divide between power play and casual play though and through poorly thought out balancing mechanisms ignores the third state of the game - that being the army that is not leaning on the summoning pillar or the mortal wound pillar. (and whatever other power builds may exist that I just haven't seen that I would love to be educated on for my own knowledge)

In my personal slice of the game, an army summoning more than 500 points against an army not summoning at all nearly always wins. The guys pushing 800 or more points only lose to each other. Every time, every week, every game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
However I feel a lot of this is arguing semantics.

The real dirty issue is simply - if you have an army that is not pushing a ton of mortal wounds and not summoning a ton or at all, how do you have a good game against someone that is doing those things?

Thats where I feel summoning dings the game hard and why I have said if you are powerlisting you won't ever have to worry about that.

auticus wrote:
I posted above. The khorne players here are doing about 400-500 points.

Is that too much?

In my opinion, 20% of 2000 points is 400 pts, and thats usually not RUINING the game for a casual. 500 pts is very much pushing it.

The khorne forces that are optimized combine summoning 400-500 pts of summons with mortal wound bombs, so that goes back up somewhere above where I talked about the three states of AOS and that if you are maxing summoning, maxing mortal wounds, OR combining summoning with mortal wounds, you are going to be beating down someone that is not doing either (which again is the crux of my issue on the bad game design)

In that instance its not "OMG khorne player summons breaks the game" its "khorne player can summon a good amount of stuff to supplement his mortal wound beat down bomb" which is appropriate for tournament halls, but can ruin casual night in a hurry.

Now for those doing extreme buildings... the khorne list posted by the player saying he gets 800 points is maxing out summoning which has the same game experience as above. Against someone powerlisting at a tournament - no big deal. Against a casual player like half or more of the list of players I posted above, not a fun time.

To the original topic "Did summoning RUIN AOS again" -> largely by itself no. It contributes strongly to the divide between power play and casual play though and through poorly thought out balancing mechanisms ignores the third state of the game - that being the army that is not leaning on the summoning pillar or the mortal wound pillar. (and whatever other power builds may exist that I just haven't seen that I would love to be educated on for my own knowledge)

In my personal slice of the game, an army summoning more than 500 points against an army not summoning at all nearly always wins. The guys pushing 800 or more points only lose to each other. Every time, every week, every game.

Ah, Did not see the edits until after my post.

Ok, so then Hulk was correct about his numbers? Everything you've posted actually seems to agree with him on that front.

I am curious about the tournament results. I perused some, but there is not a whole lot of data out there. It seemed like LoN was the largest share of the meta, at about 12%, but I saw very few seraphon lists. And to that point, a lot of people seem to think that Nagash is the problem and not really the summoning.

This discussion has been quite informative, and I hope you and Hulk continue to have them as they are quite useful for newer people like me to see multiple perspectives.


EDIT:

owever I feel a lot of this is arguing semantics.

The real dirty issue is simply - if you have an army that is not pushing a ton of mortal wounds and not summoning a ton or at all, how do you have a good game against someone that is doing those things?

Thats where I feel summoning dings the game hard and why I have said if you are powerlisting you won't ever have to worry about that.

To be fair here, in nearly every game format an optimized list is going to usually crush an unoptimized one. You see the same thing in other games like magic for instance. It becomes about the social contract then, and expressing your desires to your gaming group and people you play with regularly.

I can understand your point of view about summoning, I haven't played enough yet to provide an opinion.

I haven't disagreed with his entire position. I've stated as much that if I'm coming at the game the way he is that I would think there's nothing wrong either.

The disconnect is that (as I understand it) he has felt that there is no problem at the casual level because you can just choose to walk away from a game, but thats not how our events work and it drives away casual players, which is why I'm the way I am on this topic.

To be fair here, in nearly every game format an optimized list is going to usually crush an unoptimized one.

To a point yes. I'm new player to Kings of War, and I've found that even the optimized lists going against our new group (we have vets running tourney lists and we are trying to find our footing) aren't over in turn 1 or 2 like AOS is though. You feel like you can have a good game, and you feel that you can build off your losses.

I also play a lot of LOTR. There are things over there that are unbalanced as well, but again not to the magnitude of AOS. You don't feel like you lost before turn 1 finishes due to gross list building differences. I've never had that over there.

In AOS you feel like you lost before the first turn is over in some of these cases and the only way to get a better game in is to open your wallet and buy more models with OP stats or go all in summoning and buy the models to summon.

Thats the major difference.

Summoning is a tool to give you free cards / points. You may "pay" for them in some way by having to have a certain build but often those models are contributing in your army even if you aren't summoning.

This could be addressed in several ways. Constructive conversation would be how to have armies not spamming summoning and mortal wounds deal with those armies that are. Thats the kind of discussion I'd rather have.

Not the chest thumping or hand waiving or anything like that. Actual conversation on how to address the issue I've pointed out other than by saying "then don't play people that do that and you don't have to worry about it".

Magic the Gathering WAS designed to appeal to three personality types from the mouth of their designers.

AOS 2.0 was supposed to be this monument to fair and balanced play.

 Sasori wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I am telling you Auticus, Hulk is not worth your time. He has a well-demonstrated unwillingness to carry out a good-faith discussion. Evidence does not phase him. Logical reasoning does not phase him. The reason he dislikes you so much is not your position but because you keep hammering those and he cannot counter it. We have dozens and dozens of posts to show this. There are plenty of others interested in talking to each other rather than at each other.

Put differently, this is all two of Hulk's responses to you:
-Your evidence is outweighed by my opinion, so your argument is wrong.
-Some people do not agree with you, so your argument is wrong.

Seriously, it is really difficult to find anything that does not fit into one of those.

Ninth,

To be fair, and I am a neutral party in this, I think Hulks posts have been pretty reasonable, and backed up by numbers and game mechanics. Granted, I am still learning the mechanics myself, but everything hulk has pointed out has seemed quite logical and reasonable. Would you or Auticus mind disproving the numbers he is putting out, if he is mistaken?

Sure, I'll break down the last post he made:

 Hulksmash wrote:
If you had someone like Ninth over on TGA I'm not surprised you had slightly more than a like per post. It only takes a few people who agree with you to hit that button on most your posts. There are a lot of people that don't post and your style of blitzing threads would lead to more of that.

As Auticus mentioned above, this is basically stating that anyone with a high number of likes just has "a few people" who agree. So he is either arguing that no one's likes matter or he is saying that Auticus' likes do not matter because reasons. Also glossing over that Auticus was a content creator with objectively popular resources people were using. There is also the implied statement that I always agree with Auticus, which is a tired old strawman he has brought up before that also ignores the nuance of how much I may agree or disagree. To use Dakka's exalts as an analogy, I do not exalt even 20% of Auticus' posts, let alone all of them. That is because I do not throw an exalt onto every single post I happen to agree with and I am sure there are others that are the same, which ties into the above.

I'm just pointing out why you might have been booted and that I can understand booting you not because of what you say but at the frequency and exhaustive repetitiveness in which you say it.

This would be a fair argument if Auticus had not explained the matter in detail several times before. That Hulk made the argument in the first place is not the issue; it is that has has continued to bring it up again and again despite it being addressed previously.

Tzeentch doesn't summon 1k.

This, and others, is where he is making the argument that if an army does not summon 1k then its summoning is not an issue. That is clearly ridiculous, and then he accuses Auticus of moving the goal posts when he says that 800 or 600 points of summoning is still a balance issue, which is something he always said was. Not only if the argument disingenuous from the start, but the accusation of moving the goal posts is entirely falsified.

You say everything is contributing the same way even when I point out that it isn't, how, and how it's limited.

There is truth here in that Auticus does not point out how each unit is contributing. This is because the only way Hulk's argument works is to assume the unit is not contributing. There is another issue at hand that Auticus, myself, and others have indeed gone through his posts point by point before, only for him to ignore it and move on to do the same thing again (often with the same examples). But to go through it here...

Even assuming realm spells you'd be looking at 6 characters that all cast two spells and two pinks. That gives you a bit of depth and if you get them all off congrats, you got 120pts. You don't have to cast spells as an opponent so you're looking at 600 "free points" where your minimum investment is of 960 in characters and 400 in "battleline". So you're at 1360 if you only bring Curselings and 20 pinks. Now you take the important blue scribes and probably a lord of change and your points jump. You probably grab cogs because it's an extra spell and makes up for the curseling. Essentially you're building around summoning and eating up way, way more points that seraphon to summon worse stuff. You'll nuke one major unit and then you start to drop off.

There is a lot wrong here:
-6 characters at two spells each plus two pinks is a convoluted way of saying "14 spells at turn" he phrases it like that to deliberately make the situation seem more difficult, because summarizing it as 14 spells a turn from any combination of characters/units/abilities (Tzeentch has several models which can gain extra spellcasts due to a warscroll ability) it is immediately obvious that there are countless ways to make that happen without even considering a factor he glossed over; that enemy spellcasts count too.
-These spells are made out to be a cost to summon, when really even if there were no summoning at all many would still be there. Spells are useful, they have an effect. Further that is how Tzeentch plays; casting a lot of spells. What does happen is that a summoning-optimized army is built to cast more spells than it normally would, which is indeed a cost, but a trivial one because it is offset by the performance of the spells themselves before the summons are even taken into account. And again, enemy spells count too.
-I do not know where he is getting that 14 fate points = 120 pts, that is not the case. For 12 fate points one summons a 140 point model. One could average out the number of points summoned per fate point spent (maybe that is what he did) but such is inaccurate because players are only going to summon the best options and not the less-effective ones.
-He throws out specific "numbers" which are arbitrary since they are based off his cherry-picked scenario that entirely ignores the options available. And there is the implied statement that these models are somehow not worth their points in basic performance just because they were brought to enable summoning.
-He mentions Blue Scribes, a LoC, and Chronomantic Cogs, but these would be present in an optimized Tzeentch list even if summoning were not present at all. Mentioning it pads out his explanation and makes it seem like he has evidence when he in fact does not. Someone who does not play Tzeentch or understand the dynamic is trusting that Hulk is portraying an accurate picture (and there is nothing wrong with that). The problem is Hulk is not portraying things accurately, probably unintentional considering he does not seem to understand such very well.
-Hulk tops this off by making the argument that 'Tzeentch is not as bad as Seraphon so it is OK' which is laughable since Seraphon are the best summoning army in the game; every army is worse than them at summoning.
-"You'll nuke one unit" is his summary of the above mentioned units' performance. These are strong units and a huge chunk of points that without Tzeentch allegiance would achieve quite a lot on the battlefield. But Hulk is saying that because the army gets to summon from what those units were doing anyway they somehow do less.

Khorne gets nowhere near 1k. 3 prayers on turn one generate on average 2.25pts (i.e. not even 100pts) while doing on average 29.75pts of damage to you're own army. It's very dependent on losing models to get extra points and you're building around the summoning as you're losing some really good abilities out of the priests for your units. If you're opponent brings a lot of smaller units, you do too, and he doesn't kill you're priests then you'd still be looking at max 800pts and that's if things break right in every way (not some ways, EVERY way).

See above for the 1k thing. Khorne summons using blood tithe, and the primary means of generating blood tithe is when a unit is wiped out (from either side) that adds 1. As you can imagine this adds up quickly over the course of the game, yet only warrants half a sentence in Hulk's summary here. The rest is referring to a Khorne prayer that does d3 mortal wounds to one of your own units but generates a blood tithe. These prayers are used by a character option that shows up frequently in Khorne lists anyways (in fact, competitive Khorne lists often had 3 even before free summoning). The average numbers are again wrong (too high, actually) but also a misrepresentation both because they do not consider a number of factors that would alter them (positive and negative) and because they are merely a supplement to the main source. There are also other ways to generate blood tithe that do not involve prayers, and a strong battalion that buffs prayers which could change the numbers further. It adds up to making a math approach for calculating Khorne summoning largely pointless because in-game context matters far more. It also goes to show that Hulk really does not have the expertise he presents himself with. But more importantly to me, (IMO) Khorne summoning is not that bad because the blood tithe spent on summoning competes with spending it for beneficial abilities, meaning that to go all-in on summoning makes that the only allegiance ability the army is benefiting from.

Slaanesh is even more specific.

Auticus has never mentioned Slaanesh since by his own admission he does not know how it performs. Hulk is probably bringing this up to say that Slaanesh summoning is not unbalanced as evidence that summoning as a while is not unbalanced, which if true (I honest do not know) is completely overturned by the abundance of summoning that very much is.

Nurge you originally posted over and over were fine and you were sitting at about 400pts and now in this conversation it's 600.

Hulk is confusing what Auticus personally summons in his games with what Nurgle can potentially summon. But the issue with Nurgle summoning is a matter of scaling; at 2000 points it is not a problem but Nurgle summons the same amount at 1500, 1000, etc. The units brought in at 2000 points obviously have a much larger impact at 1000.

But this is the problem. I point out the ACTUAL numbers on these things

As established, he does not point out actual numbers but rather just throws out a scattering of points that misrepresent the situation.

and you ignore it

Because Auticus got tired of doing a time consuming, point-by-point breakdown only for Hulk to deny it and bring up the same arguments again later. So he instead addresses the larger concepts at hand.

You say everything is contributing the same way even when I point out that it isn't, how, and how it's limited.

As established, the cost Hulk is talking about is tiny and his argument hinges on assuming units perform significantly worse when used in a summoning army than they would otherwise.

You don't want to have a conversation about things. You've made a decision and bombard people with it.

Straight up hypocrisy. Further, while Auticus is indeed very stubborn in his viewpoints he also goes into more depth and detail about his positions than any other poster in the forum.

I think it's interesting that in your area the hardcores somehow hold the entire area hostage to their game play outside of tournaments. In tournaments sure but outside of it I don't understand how it happens.

Considering 'how it happens' has been explained several times, and the idea of powergaming is common knowledge due to its frequency, I think it is highly unlikely that Hulk does not understand unless he is willfully ignoring the evidence.

Here if you do that kind of thing you simply don't get invited to play again in a casual setting.

Which is great for him, but as has been repeatedly explained that is not the case for everyone.

Where people talk to each other and dial back, creating fun and interesting games. But maybe we're lucky in that when it's gone that direction we've cut off that limb outside of events and built up a new group of like minded people.

Points are supposed to crease a reasonably balanced game. The situation where everyone talks to each other to agree on things is what open & narrative play is for. Matched play is supposed to be the situation where two armies of the same point values are close enough in power that they can play a game where each side has a reasonable chance of victory. Hulk is throwing the most fundamental element aside as a protection, saying "well even if I am wrong about all of the above it is still OK because being unbalanced is OK" which is ignoring the central point of Auticus' argument entirely. If powergaming did not exist Hulk would have a point, but that is not the case.

So to me I find the game balanced because a lot of things work great if you're not looking to break the game (casual) and a lot of things work great if you are (hardcore tournament).

This statement translates to "because there are good things the bad things do not matter" as he is saying that simply because there are elements that work the game is therefore balanced as a whole.

I've said it over and over again that your meta seriously influences your view of the game. And the more you post the more I see that.

Auticus has said again and again that he does indeed speak from a competitive meta and explained, thoroughly, why that matters to the game as a whole.

Also yes, the people I've talked to have said it's geared toward levels of play but maybe they were feeding me a line. I'm still much more plugged into 40k that AoS at the design level.

Auticus asks for evidence of Hulk's claim, to which he gets "the people I've talked to have said" which really summarizes the lack of good faith discussion Hulk is engaged in.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I am telling you Auticus, Hulk is not worth your time. He has a well-demonstrated unwillingness to carry out a good-faith discussion. Evidence does not phase him. Logical reasoning does not phase him. The reason he dislikes you so much is not your position but because you keep hammering those and he cannot counter it. We have dozens and dozens of posts to show this. There are plenty of others interested in talking to each other rather than at each other.

Put differently, this is all two of Hulk's responses to you:
-Your evidence is outweighed by my opinion, so your argument is wrong.
-Some people do not agree with you, so your argument is wrong.

Seriously, it is really difficult to find anything that does not fit into one of those.

You have not provided a shred of evidence against his claims, you have constantly attacked him and his personal character rather then actually arguing in good faith at all.

There was a time when I did go through his arguments and break them down, but after him repeatedly ignoring it and regurgitating the same thing later I decided it was not worth my time. As shown above, I am fully capable of backing up my statements but that is a ton of effort for effectively no gain. But what specifically made me give up was when he told me how my tournament army would perform badly in 2.0 despite never having seen this army on the table, or even the list itself. It is not some personal insult I have taken but rather a recognition of the 'logic' at hand. An army I have played for years, that he has never, ever, seen played, and he thinks he is the more qualified source on how well it will perform. Think about that and tell me how it is a good faith argument.

You guys are hilarious. Always makes me smile on my lunch break catching up with this thread.

Thats good I'm glad you are entertained and amused. Appreciate the contribution to the conversation.

My gaming group is very casual, so I don't know the extent of which summoning can overrun a table in a tuned list piloted by a win at all cost player. I seems to make sense to me though, that armies with access to summoning have an advantage over non summoning armies, its just free stuff you don't really need to sacrifice anything for.

What if summoning still had an in game cost through command points? Say like 1 command point per 100-200 points summoned. That should limit power armies from generating 1k summons, and make even smaller summons a weight of new unit vs powerful command ability.

Thats not a bad approach, but the flaw is command points can be farmed to max out summoning.

If a command point is worth 100-200 free points, and in a five turn game I can grab 5 of them, plus additionally I can get more for batallions, I have not solved the problem, I've just created an alternative to achieving the same result.

Now if summoning increased command point cost each time you use it (making it more expensive each time) then that would be something in the current system I'd be for.

First time 1 point, second time 2 points, third time 3 points, etc.

If its per summon, it does not stop big summons, like a bloodthirster per say.

If its 100 points per command point, you are limited to around 500-700 depend on build, and you put all your command points to it. Presumably, your non summoning opponent used their command points to get some sort of leg up that can counter your extra points. It at very least makes summoning some what of a tactical approach, instead of just free stuff.

The question to be asked then are these command abilities equal to getting say 600-1000 free points?

I would say largely no based on my own command abilities. I lose regularly to the seraphon 1000 point summoning machine despite some pretty cool command abilities simply because his army stays roughly the same size, while mine deteriorates because I can't replace as much dead stuff as he can.

So if the command abilities aren't as good as summoning, we largely would have a false choice presented to us, because the optimum choice would be to summon. The only reason we wouldn't is because we eiither have a super busted command ability that is just better, we are purposely holding back to not overwhelm our opponent, or we don't have the models to summon with available.

I think this is one of those cases where the initial problem (completely free summoning at AOS release) had a "fix" (summons use reinforcement points from GHB1) that went too far towards one side, so the next "fix" swung a little far towards the original idea.

Now, don't get me wrong, I like the idea of the various summoning abilities requiring some kind of in-game resource. I think it's thematic, and has potential to balance things out. But likewise, I think the current methods are easily abused (meaning they're not balanced well enough).

Perhaps something that could be helpful would be keeping the current summoning mechanics, but each time you summoned a unit you granted your opponent a Victory Point. So sure, you could rebuild your forces, but at a bigger cost than is currently in place.

For the purely thematic feel, I would like to see keeping some form of the current "mini-games" that are in most of the summoning mechanics, but I do recognize that the scales are currently tipped towards summoning armies (with a sometimes counter of mortal wound spam).

I also like most of the thematic summoning from a narrative standpoint. I thought some of the implementation was pretty cool.

I know that the design team are all regular tournament attendees though and I think that tunnel-vision played a role in them not seeing the big picture outside of the adepticon tournament hall.

Granting victory points would be another cool way to give a meaningful choice. The problem is a lot of scenarios are basically "capture these objectives and if you own them by this point you win otherwise count up kill points" so I'm not sure how you'd fully implement something like that (which is why I went with the sudden death victory conditions instead)

auticus wrote:
I also like most of the thematic summoning from a narrative standpoint. I thought some of the implementation was pretty cool.

I know that the design team are all regular tournament attendees though and I think that tunnel-vision played a role in them not seeing the big picture outside of the adepticon tournament hall.

Granting victory points would be another cool way to give a meaningful choice. The problem is a lot of scenarios are basically "capture these objectives and if you own them by this point you win otherwise count up kill points" so I'm not sure how you'd fully implement something like that (which is why I went with the sudden death victory conditions instead)

Right, the granting VP would only work in some scenarios. Those that are "if you hold Objective X at end of Turn 5 you win" are harder to fix with that implementation. I also thought about "if you summon a unit, your opponent gets a Command Point," but as you've pointed out, not all command abilities are created equal, so this wouldn't be an "even" benefit. Still, I think the current risk/cost for summoning, while better than the fully free and costing reinforcement points, is skewed a bit. I think what's really needed is some kind of small bonus to your opponent when you summon, so that you actually have to make a risk/reward calculation. Right now, there's no reason to not summon if you've acquired your summoning points for whatever, which I think is what the unbalancing part is (at least, when facing less summoning-capable armies; I agree with the tunnel vision).

What about letting the opponent spend CP to stop opponent summoning? Perhaps not tied to point cost but rather 1 cp the first time you use it, 2 cp the second, etc. That creates a dynamic where the summoner wants to throw out little stuff for the opponent to use cp in blocking but the opponent may let it go through to save cp for blocking something else later.

As a general note, CP can be farmed but it is not like 40k; there is notable investment. And taking those CP away from command abilities does significantly impact army performance.

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auticus wrote:
Thats good I'm glad you are entertained and amused. Appreciate the contribution to the conversation.

He is trolling, but there is a (no doubt accidental) wisdom in his post about not taking any of this too seriously. Insight can come from any source if you look at it the right way.

@Auticus I know I'm late to the party, but I would say both can be true at the same time - That you made some pretty great looking AoS expansion rules, that I have praised you for in the past, and still think is great work. But also that your posting tone, for a lack of a better word, turned pretty negative and repetative on TGA, as it can be here as well. I don't remember it being that way in the very early days of TGA, though.
In that regard I agree with Hulksmash that TGA was not the right fit for that sort of posting-habit, even though people certainly can and do critisise GW and AoS over there. It's simply more of an active approach to moderation than the very lax one applied on Dakka, I think.

What's more is that, at least I found it increasingly difficult to respond to your posts, because they often seemed grounded in what seems like an extreme community, toxic even from the way you present it sometimes, that is so far removed from my own and the sort of community that I can read others are playing in.

Anyways, don't stop looking into ways to integrate many different game modes into a larger whole, as that is what I remember being the most impressive part of the content that you have shared on the Louisville Gaming site (?), if I remember correctly.
Maybe you don't have many (any?) players locally that are into that sort of more narrative games, but I am certain there are others around that globe that do and can get enjoyment out of your work.

My stance is essentially to help discuss and drive a game that does not have to be as staunchly traffic controlled in terms of power gamer vs casual as AOS and 40k largely are, especially in comparison to other games to which that level of divide is not as stark or great.

There is a lot of great stuff in AOS that could be the entire package with minor considerations in simply sitting down and going "what if I'm playing an army that is more casual and Im playing against power gaming timmy, what can I do to lessen that divide without having to go to war with timmy to have him tone down his list which was made in the structure of the rules"

Because in the end the overall result is that the "casual" power level and the "power gamer" power level start getting closer towards each other and less of a stark gulf that it is now.

That should be overall first and foremost the most important consideration when you put anything into a game. I think the dev team being nothing but tournament players hurts that because they are only looking at things from the tournament player perspective, and on forums and the internet the tournament mindset is usually the predominant by a large majority mindset.

Even the narrative event organizers (NEO) group that does a lot of really cool things is largely a tournament group that puts out narrative games that are still tournament oriented.

GW hired Bottle though, and his claim to community fame is certainly from the narrative side of the game.

Bottle posted a lot about competitive play. He was a fairly steady tournament player that also happened to like skirmish gaming and wanted to see a solid skirmish ruleset in the game.

When it came to discussing narrative gaming and what not he was very staunchly on the side of no house rules and letting people use power lists because thats what the game allowed, so it was up to the player to adapt and learn to build better lists.

Thats not saying he was anti narrative games, but he seemed (and its been quite a bit since his last post here so forgive me if the years passed have blurred my clarity) very much rules as written and no restrictions. He and I had a couple replies back and forth on that subject and he was mostly against the fan points at the time and was hoping for GW points and expressed that he enjoyed going to tournaments but at the time that was hard because of so many point systems running around (and at the time his group was using the SCGT points that would a few months after become the basis for official points). I also follow him on twitter and he attends competitive events fairly regularly (along with the other developers on the team)

I don't necessarily think his claim to internet fame was narrative gaming as much as it was producing a skirmish ruleset which was badly desired by the community at large.

Spiky Norman wrote:
GW hired Bottle though, and his claim to community fame is certainly from the narrative side of the game.

Personally I see skirmish as more of its own category rather than strictly narrative. Compare to Path to Glory which is very much narrative but is also still the same AoS ruleset. Bottle tended to be semi-dismissive of balance concerns as simply not being a big deal, he was somewhat of a GW white knight. I personally think he may have deliberately kept negative opinions to himself in order to make a good impression with GW (and wisely so), but that is just a theory. Though if I were GW I would have Bottle working on a new skirmish & fluff rather than generic AoS. Hopefully with Kill Team's popularity we will see a proper AoS skirmish penned by Bottle. Could call it Skirmish II: Electric Bottleoo

At any rate, what GW needs to do is hire someone like Auticus. Now I know what you're thinking, but hear me out. I like Auticus as a poster because he brings up a lot of points I agree with much more importantly has a lot of backing to them. However (no offense here Aut) I find his stance can be a bit rigid and overly critical, also based more in numbers and statistics than I personally feel is needed. But that is exactly why GW needs someone like him; someone who is a total stickler for balance and runs tons of numbers rather than going with the flow. Because they do not seem to have anyone like that and accordingly are missing a major perspective on rules design.

A more simple & direct approach would be to just have someone on staff run numbers for average damage output vs defense on units when they are deciding on points. Because the costs we have indicate that they do not.

I've actually changed my stance several times due to forum discussions (either here or twitter or tga or other places) when presented with a counter point that is backed by legit data that I can consider other than the usual emotional response or hand waiving that most internet discussions are full of.

Its why I like discussing in the first place, because it lets me examine a topic from multiple perspectives which helps me consider direction in my personal projects or the events that I head.

I base a lot of my stance on numbers and statistics simply because thats the only real objective measure we have when it comes to a game that is driven typically wholly by numbers and mathematics.

I have had the pleasure and honor of working on a few gaming projects over the years, some very small independent things, and others with a larger audience funded by a company, both PC based and tabletop, and I'd say GW's way of doing things ... while profitable... totally hamstrings their game devs to marketing.

From a gaming developer standpoint, I could never do that and enjoy what I did. Additionally my opinion on gw's rules are all well known by the gw rules devs and when i was banished from TGA they had some minor fun at my expense lol so I would say based on past feedback that they are really not interested in worrying about this level of balance because quite honestly the community doesn't care that much about it as a whole and are dismissive of casual gaming in general as being a git gud or go home type response.

In this example with summoning, the most direct and obvious reason for it being brought back is that it sells more models.

The critical flaw in its implementation was that it was built to allow Powergamer Timmy to blow it up with no regards to how Casual Gamer Gary plays. It took some cool ideas like thematic summoning (blood tithe, depravity points, etc) and then soured it by giving obvious farmable summoning options (seraphon, legion of nagash) and other high end summoning options that i've seen some armies pull (noted in explicit detail in previous posts in this and other threads) that had no disregard to the game unless you were also powerlisting too to keep up. Git gud or go home.

In Magic the Gathering thats not as big a deal because the audience is much more numerous so Gary can find other casual players easier, and additionally because its dealing with cards that require no assembly or painting or investment of time to play with. Gary could just as easily put together a more busted powerdeck without needing to go out and buy models that need assembled and painted. He likely already has the cards in his inventory if he's doing pre-releases and if he is missing something he can shell out the money for the card, but requires no time other than that to play. Miniature games have to shelve entire collections to go out and buy a whole new collection, assemble it, and then paint it at the worst case. At the best case they typically have to at least buy some new models and put time into getting them ready (if not the whole collection) or use models that they really don't like but have the most optimized bang for the points. Its a lot more offputting and time consuming in the tabletop world to have to match up with Timmy Powergamer than it is for the card player population.

After implementing any ruleset I have ever worked on commercially or privately, the next step was always "now how can we bust this wide open and ruin the game". For GW they either skip this step entirely or hand waive it with "players can just choose to not play those type of people and it'll be all good".

Other games get a lot closer to bridging the gap between their extreme gameplay elements and the median. I know GW can do so as well. I know the developers on the team from following them on twitter and what not are all very smart guys with a lot of creativity and a lot of good ideas.

Alessio (whfb developer 6th edition, considered one of the most balanced editions of warhammer that existed, and i agree with that statement fully having played through its entirety as well as 5th, 7th, and 8th plus AOS 1 and 2) made a statement on his facebook around 2015 when AOS was released when someone posted that he should go back to work for them to help them produce a proper ruleset that he couldn't work for a company that stymied their developers with their marketing department ever again. Take that for what its worth. His work in Kings of War and Conquest are both pretty highly praised examples of systems that while flawed also have a wider bell curve of powerlist vs casual which enables more closely fought and fun games that are not one sided stompings on the regular. I admire both his and Rick Priestly's work (Antares is another great system that doesn't end in turn 1 beat downs because you took the wrong list at the opening bell). I also admire their work because they actively talk about this very issue and how important it is to make sure that they get the balance as right as they can so that they can keep negative gameplay experiences down to manageable levels, whereas the gw community mocks that idea or at the very least pokes fun at it.

Trust me, if you never changed your positions I would not respect your opinion nearly as much.

I think the shorter point of my post was to say GW needs to diversify their perspective. I have mentioned before that a big flaw I see holding them back as a company is how they approach balance.

To use summons as an example; having it around may sell 500 points or so of extra models at a high estimate (because let's be honest; almost everyone has more models for their army than make it into a given list, so even 1000 points of summoning is likely to include models that individual owned anyways). But that means if one person leaves the game or does not start they need five players with summoning armies to make up for it.

Now take that and apply it to balance as a whole. What I see is that selling more models to existing customers at the expense of balance results in a net loss of sales. Even the flat stats of players leaving/not joining due to balance issues are deceptively small because were those players engaged they would draw in others by weight of popularity.

GW really turned a corner in 2016 and I really enjoy the company they are today (as opposed to reluctantly tolerating them at best) but they still seem to be stuck in the mindset that the models are selling the game. There is indeed some back and forth there, but ultimately it is the game that sells the models.

(Warning: text dump)

Flash edit: Here's the TGA thread: https://www.tga.community/forums/topic/19633-overview-of-the-tournament-scene. Latest data (as of Oct. 2) is on page 2.

I think it's pretty clear that summoning is strong, but isn't dominating AoS' large-tournament scene.

TGA has a thread that tracks the performance of armies at tournaments with 5+ rounds and 32+ players; the top-performing armies by raw numbers of 5+ wins are:
1. Daughters of Khaine
2. Legions of Nagash
3. Stormcast Eternals
Rounding out the top-performing armies (in no particular order) are Idoneth Deepkin, Maggotkin of Nurgle, Sylvaneth, Blades of Khorne, Disciples of Tzeentch and Destruction.
(Note that this particular figure is not weighted by attendance, so it's misleading. I think it's a useful starting point because there's a strong population bias to these armies.)

Notably, most of the armies in this stratum have match win ratios of 50 to 55%. (Destruction is the only sub-50% match win army with 2 or more 5+ showings.) There are some disturbing figures in the data — in my opinion, Daughters (70.6%), Legions (60%) and Deepkin (64.5%) are all scoring far too high in overall win percentages — but outside of those jagged peaks, the meta looks pretty healthy to my eye. Only 1 of those beyond-the-pale armies is a summoning army. On the other hand, Seraphon — a summoning powerhouse — is faring very poorly; its 42.9% win rate is abysmal.

I wanted to eliminate the population bias inherent in the rankings as they're presented at TGA, so I tallied a "4+ share" for each army (that is, what percentage of the players for a given army won 4+ games at a tournament). (I chose 4+ to try to hedge a little against bad matchups; it was a gut decision, and you could easily draw the line elsewhere.) I divided these into 4+ share tiers; here's the relevant results:

S-Tier (Armies that performed at least 1 full standard deviation better than anyone else)
• Phoenix Temple (2 players, 100%)
• Daughters of Khaine (36 players, 47%)
• Idoneth Deepkin (22 players, 41%)
• Order Draconis (5 players, 40%)
• Bonesplitterz (8 players, 38%)

A-Tier (Armies that beat the average 4+ share of 20%)
• Legions of Nagash (88 players, 29%) (Note that this army's overall win rate is good enough that it would be in an S-tier for overall results.)
• Maggotkin of Nurgle (48 players, 27%)
• Death (4 players, 25%)
• Spiderfang Grots (4 players, 25%)
• Blades of Khorne (38 players, 21%)

If we remove outliers — I didn't calculate a confidence interval because it'd be pretty wide, and instead drew an arbitrary line at 10 players — we're left with DoK and Deepkin being the best reliable performers, with various flavors of Nagash/Death, Maggotkin and Blades doing consistently well. (There's a whole grouping of armies hovering just under that average of 20%; given how exceedingly well the top armies are performing, if we drew our A- and B-tiers based on data that excluded the S-tier, we'd actually see a hugely varied A-tier, including Chaos, Sylvaneth, Flesh Eater Courts and Kharadron in addition to the traditional summoning armies.)

Right now, summoning looks like it's a tool available to many strong armies — but it's apparently trumped by the incredible killing power of DoK and Deepkin. While the TGA data lacks lists, cursory research suggests that Witch Aelves + Blood Hags and Eeeeeeeels are both very powerful tools in their respective armies' quivers, and are likely powering these incredible finishes. Moreover, while summoning might be strong, it's clearly not a do-all bromide — my precious Seraphon aren't making a dent in the competitive showing. Moreover, while I'm loath to include outliers, it's clear that skilled players are seeing success with niche armies like Bonesplitterz.

That data is pertinent to the tournament scene which isn't the crux of our discussion here. The tournament scene is fine. It can even be argued that as far as the tournament scene is concerned, that AOS is somewhat a success due to the broader diversity of winning lists than in the history of whfb where only 2-3 lists typically had any chance.

That data, however, has nothing to do with the casual scene or solve how powerful summoning is against a non-tournament army.

Further that data is by itself flawed in that it is simply not enough data.

For example, it indicates the phoenix temple is OP busted but only 2 people in nearly 100 played it and did well with it.

Thats not enough data to draw any conclusion unfortunately. To get a true perspective on army power based on purely tournament performance we have to

A) acknowledge that the boundaries given only deal with tournament powered armies, which in the case of GW games is night and day with non-tournament style armies and

B) have each faction have enough players to even out the distribution sample of data.

tldr: because something is not over powered or broken in the tournament scene does not mean that to the rest of the game (those not building tournament lists) that the game is fine.


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 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Trust me, if you never changed your positions I would not respect your opinion nearly as much.

I think the shorter point of my post was to say GW needs to diversify their perspective. I have mentioned before that a big flaw I see holding them back as a company is how they approach balance.

To use summons as an example; having it around may sell 500 points or so of extra models at a high estimate (because let's be honest; almost everyone has more models for their army than make it into a given list, so even 1000 points of summoning is likely to include models that individual owned anyways). But that means if one person leaves the game or does not start they need five players with summoning armies to make up for it.

Now take that and apply it to balance as a whole. What I see is that selling more models to existing customers at the expense of balance results in a net loss of sales. Even the flat stats of players leaving/not joining due to balance issues are deceptively small because were those players engaged they would draw in others by weight of popularity.

GW really turned a corner in 2016 and I really enjoy the company they are today (as opposed to reluctantly tolerating them at best) but they still seem to be stuck in the mindset that the models are selling the game. There is indeed some back and forth there, but ultimately it is the game that sells the models.

Without dev input this is just flat guessing but based on dev output before, my intuition states that they are trying to focus more on competitive tournament style players, who are very happy with the game's diversity and balance at the top tier of play where everyone is striving to bust the game apart. The players that would be discouraged by bad balance would not be breaking the game, and would likely be facing off against power gamers and be given the choice to git gud (buy a tournament powered army) or go off and find something else to do.

Enlightening conversation this afternoon locally but we are setting up a kings of war and gates of antares group for our 20th year anniversary as a club next year and ... there are a LOT of people suddenly voicing their opinion about balance being important that were silent that walked off because they just don't want to deal with the issue anymore with GW.

I think originally the gamble was "narrative gamers will drive AOS sales, we don't need points" and we saw how bad that failed. NOt only did no one want to play the game, the narrative books they put out hardly moved at all and we don't see anything like them anymore being attempted by GW, presumably because they didn't make hardly any money. I know here there were like three of us total that bought any of the realmgate books or campaign books and the gw manager shipped the vast majority back unsold, and this is somewhere where we try to have regular campaigns.

I think now they swung the other way. Now its "ok narrative gamers didn't get us anywhere, lets fully support the tournament scene instead and as long as that is healthy and happy, the rest falls into place." I also think... thats probably the best way to go as much as I hate that direction because I honestly think that is where the majority lies. Speculation of course. We can't know that answer but it would seem visibly on forums and groups that the tournament gamer or competitive style gamer that maybe doesn't play in tournaments but still builds hard lists, that is happy with listbuilding imbalances is the current target audience and it is a large target audience.

Which begs the question is there even really a casual scene anymore and if so is the casual scene really just competitive style tournament gamers that simply don't play in tournaments? It woujld seem narrative gamers from the NEO movement are tournament style gamers that enjoy a story with their game. It would seem nearly all podcasts and youtube shows are at their seeded core tournament players discussing various portions of the game but it still comes back to competitive builds. Its hard to say that casual gaming is as popular when you never really see it in the wild or on videos / podcasts / media. (I know there is casual gaming ... I just think my version of casual gaming is not the same as what real casual gaming is anymore, but based on my own area the casual guys have given up on GW for other systems and are now becoming more vocal that we are supporting other games too)

I'd agree that focusing on the tournament scene makes a large degree of sense from a company standpoint. Back when Warmachine came out and started picking up steam, that was one of its foci: tournament play. At that time, there was a lot of discontent as I recall (I wasn't involved with GW games at the time, so mostly through grapevine) with the state of WHFB and 40K in the competitive scene. And the initial launch of AOS defintely wasn't a resounding success, having earned some pretty derogatory nicknames.

I think it's a fine line to walk, to try to support both "casual" and "tournament" level play in a single system. Short of doing a "tournament rules pack" (which, one of my all time favorite games does, and has done for years; Star Fleet Battles), getting a balance that is good for both the Powergamer and the I-just-like-these-models players is really tough.

I will say Neo-GW seems to be at least listening a little more to the community than they used to, so we might see some shifts in the next GHB or 2.5 or whatever. Granted, they are probably not listening to everyone equally, so it's hard to say which way the pendulum will swing next.

I think it's safe to say that the Internet haywired most casual scenes. While I agree with the larger point that tournaments aren't a perfect reflection of on-the-ground play, my personal experience has been that the gap between casual and high-level has never been narrower.

It's a fair point that in a truly casual setting, where players are assembling armies based on primarily on aesthetics rather than performance, tournament results are meaningless. Different approaches, different goals. But in my experience, most game-store metas are tournament-light settings, with players scrounging the Internet for lists, tricks and overperforming units.

As far as the soundness of the data — it's what we got. Everyone's acknowledged that it has outliers (as every data set does); you can still draw broad-brush conclusions — Legions is strong and very popular, Stormcast are popular and fair, DoK and Idoneth are spoilers that you must be prepared for.

And, of course, the ancillary — most supported armies apparently have answers for summoning, since many of them are still within spitting distance of baseline. (100% acknowledged that many smaller and almost all unsupported armies are struggling.)

I guess to answer the original question: No, I don't think the revised summoning rules ruined the game "again." I think it's better than at launch, and mostly better than 1.5 (GHB), but isn't quite "there" yet for overall.

Mewens wrote:
I think it's safe to say that the Internet haywired most casual scenes. While I agree with the larger point that tournaments aren't a perfect reflection of on-the-ground play, my personal experience has been that the gap between casual and high-level has never been narrower.

It's a fair point that in a truly casual setting, where players are assembling armies based on primarily on aesthetics rather than performance, tournament results are meaningless. Different approaches, different goals. But in my experience, most game-store metas are tournament-light settings, with players scrounging the Internet for lists, tricks and overperforming units.

As far as the soundness of the data — it's what we got. Everyone's acknowledged that it has outliers (as every data set does); you can still draw broad-brush conclusions — Legions is strong and very popular, Stormcast are popular and fair, DoK and Idoneth are spoilers that you must be prepared for.

And, of course, the ancillary — most supported armies apparently have answers for summoning, since many of them are still within spitting distance of baseline. (100% acknowledged that many smaller and almost all unsupported armies are struggling.)

I think it's fair to say that balancing for casual play only, also makes it much more difficult. Casual is so subjective that I think it is impossible to nail it down. I personally believe that nobody will be happy if they try to balance it primarily for casual play due to this. Balancing for high level play, is to me the most logical option, since it is going to be the type of play that can have objective data. This data is not perfect, but I think is the best they can really get.

I have no intention of playing competetive AoS, but I still think that is where the game balance should happen. In most cases it usually trickles down pretty well. While I can understand that this can induce an arms race in some places, that's where the social contract comes in.

I think having thought about it somewhat that indeed I would agree that the company has moved toward treating the game like warmachine and has largely a player base that resembles warmachine back in the day, with an indirect version of a page 5.

As such I would rescind my opinion on summoning. There isn't much of a casual game to worry about summoning in this instance I don't think. If you're playing an army that can't keep up with a competitive list, it would be on the onus of the player in this case to buy the models needed to have a good game, or find a different game to play. With that expectation in mind, that changes the landscape of the conversation for me significantly.

One thing I wish that tournament compilation document did was break up the 4 Legions allegiances. A Grand Host army is an entirely different animal than a Legion of Blood army.

I also imagine we would find Grand Host specifically over inflating those results, due to the majority of Legions tournament wins being attributed to the combination of Nagash + spell portal + realm spells.

Rising tide raises all boats; balancing the game as a whole would impact everyone positively. The tournament scene may be 'diverse' now, imagine if all the armies that currently get crushed by tourney ones were viable. I am seeing tournament players concerned with balancing only what they see, which is a narrow viewpoint. They do not seem to understand what they are missing.

WarmaHordes is an example that focused on tourney play from the onset, and that meant every army being viable. One can debate how good at it they were but they never looked at things, saw only one fifth of their factions performing, and said "working as intended."

Well WarmaHordes (along with practically everyone else other than GW), also tends to update every faction at once, rather than drip feeding updates over the course of several years.

I am sure many armies that do poorly (both casually and at the tournament level) would be in much better shape if their rules were actually made for the current gamestate like LoN, IDK, DoK, etc, rather than for a game that was made 3 years ago.

So in that case, what do we call the AoS version of chapter approved? Stormhost approved?

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
So in that case, what do we call the AoS version of chapter approved? Stormhost approved?

The GHB does not alter warscrolls, give spell lores, or introduce new units. It tacked on allegiance abilities for some armies (many still do not have anything), but mostly just alters points. Its nowhere near the across the board overhaul that PP put into edition changes. As it stands the majority of individual unit in AoS are still written with the beginning of 1st edition in mind.

NinthMusketeer wrote:GW really turned a corner in 2016 and I really enjoy the company they are today (as opposed to reluctantly tolerating them at best) but they still seem to be stuck in the mindset that the models are selling the game. There is indeed some back and forth there, but ultimately it is the game that sells the models.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Kirbynomics still happening. Maybe it's time GW to actually have a company that just writes rules and fluff. We have Forge World for the "high end" minis, we have Citadel who make the minis, but we have Lawyers and Accountants that make the game sadly. We need a new division that is just base on a great rule set.

In this case though if the target audience are people that want a deckbuilding style game balanced at the top because the ones in the middle or below can just buy new armies to have good games at the top, it can be argued that the game of AOS is selling the models because thats what the target audience wants.

That runs contrary to making more money, though.

But not if the assumption that they are going for is that the majority of the overall audience wants what they are giving.

Which based off of the commentary I've received on this topic for the past few years I will side with a huge chunk of the audience does in fact love this style of imbalance and listbuilding breakage.

I can't see their financials but we know GW is roaring right now financially and I have to think that AOS being a deck building game of imbalance advantage, that the management and dev team have to think that they hit pay dirt and should keep going in this direction.

Imbalance doesn't sell though.

At least not in the long term. We've seen this over the years as GW ignored balance and focused purely on models. Yes a new codex in prior editions of the game did generate big sales, but only for a shorter period of time. And through the whole process the company bled out and slowly lost customers.

Over the last few years we've seen them change, adopting a pattern of codex updates to update whole games at once instead of slow faction by faction (which often missed out many); and a general improvement in balance an speed up FAQ/Errata and updates.



To my eye this says that balance actually sells far better, even if it is also a harder target to achieve. Also look at most other competitive games - Magic the Gathering - Football - Starcraft 2 - counterstrike - Chess etc.... All the big names are big on balance

Of course GW has a long way to go; there are some culture issues in how they balance their game which are also compounded by how they write their rules. These are issues that should be resolved over time and we can hope they will.

From what the strong opinion from the community is though the imbalanced things like summoning are a lot of fun and "perfectly fine" because at the tournament level they are fine.

Yes and no - don't forget online is a single sounding box.

Also the concept and idea of summoning is fine - its the balance of it as an ability and function within armies that requires addressing. Perhaps we'll return to a time when you have to pay for summons much like Endless Spells; or perhaps they'll shift summoning and Endless Spells to their own niche of points so that armies without summoning might pick more powerful spells or abilities to augment their own force.

Also don't forget many people are fine when they are on the winning side of a battle; when they are on the losing its a different matter. Therefore as GW grows the game and more factions are released (esp those without summoning) the views against it might well grow. Right now there's an imbalance in opinion because whole rosters are missing from the game. Much of the Aelves are missing, humans are missing, a good chunk of skaven and orks/goblins too.

The people who like imbalance will still be playing if it improves; where are they going to go that has worse? The people who ARENT playing because of imbalance could be recruited if it was improved.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
The people who like imbalance will still be playing if it improves; where are they going to go that has worse? The people who ARENT playing because of imbalance could be recruited if it was improved.

Exactly, improved balance benefits everyone. If GW improve balance to the point where most armies have several viable builds and no clear single "best ever" list then it benefits them because now more of their market has a reason to buy more models. IF there's only one power-build then that's what the power builders will buy - and if its really bad imbalance even the casual people will be building that list.

So that means lots of sales on some models and fewer on others, which means GW has models which they've invested into which are not selling and returning on that investment. Plus when there's only one power build players hit the ceiling for purchases far quicker. When you've got multiple builds that are viable within a single army, then those who play that army are far more likely to add other models and try out other lists. That means more of those moulds are recouping their investment; it means sales are spread out over a greater range of the product and it means that the potential ceiling for each army is greater for most players.

Yes power-builds make things simpler and you can market with them, but long term it bleeds you out and means that you're always reliant on those power builds. Instead a flatter more even playing field introduces far more variety, model sales, gamer retention and more.

I don't disagree. I'm just tired of hearing the equivalent of "refer to page 5" from people and it seems that that is such a common answer that I have to believe it is the majority that feels its fine because few pipe in otherwise.


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Case in point this morning on a facebook group there was a ton of talk about some GT that just finished and how balanced and perfect the game was because of how diverse the top tier armies all are at tournaments.

As in over 100 posters saying the same thing and nary an opposing viewpoint.

Well, regarding balance: the honest wargamer (he used to be one of the warhammer community hosts, but went his own way to be able to speak a bit more freely it seems) made a quite good overview of AoS2 from all major events worldwide:



This is the most recent one.

As you can see, summoning armies are not running rampant atm. The "best performing" summoning army (Legions of Nagash) is doing quite strongly, but this is in no way true for the other summoners (Seraphon in particular are very underperforming in the current iteration of the game).

Lots of bodies doing craptons of regular attacks seems to be coming out on top again lately, but that's up for debate.

auticus wrote:
I don't disagree. I'm just tired of hearing the equivalent of "refer to page 5" from people and it seems that that is such a common answer that I have to believe it is the majority that feels its fine because few pipe in otherwise.

One of the reasons why I never started up that game. I want to play for fun, not a need to win.

@Elmir the thread premise is regular games, not tournament play.

Ah ok, I'd just thought I'd add this into it though, as summoning in it's own right isn't necessarily able to break the top levels.

I can imagine running a super summoning heavy list in a narrative/casual environment, it would destroy most of them. Then again, running super heavy summoning is not something I'd describe as "casual" to begin with.

But yeah, it definitely can break casual games.


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PS: this has nothing to do with the whole summoning argument, but I thought I'd mention a nice long chat I had with some of the rules writers at warhammer Fest Europe.

They are quite aware that a few "legacy armies" (meaning, anything that hasn't gotten a new battletome yet) are not quite able to compete all that well and it is kind of deliberate. There's a lot of discussion going on internally on shaping the new world and seeing how much of the old miniature range they are willing to keep vs redesign/expand. From a pure business point of view, stocking and producing as many tiny subfactions/armies as AoS now has (with part of it old WHFB ranges, parts of it being brand spanking new), is virtually impossible. So they are still in a transition phase between old/new warhammer it seems.

He also stated that they NEVER want to experience the thing that happened with Tomb Kings again: those guys dominating the competitive meta in the first year after GBH, but technically having been culled from the model line-up.... It just caused a lot of feelbadsies and absolute price gauging on the net.

The fact that some factions right now, are not exactly good yet (game wise), because a final decision on where to take the faction hasn't been made yet, is no accident. I personally wasn't too happy with that, as I thought it quite unfair because it's essentially a business decision having an impact on the gaming, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.

The entire premise of the argument states that:

* summoning is fine. At the tournament level. At the casual level it is busted.

* focusing on the tournament level - there is nothing that needs done

* focusing on the casual level, the game has a wide gulf of balace issues that the devs skip over because its balanced at the tournament level and should therefore be considered fine

* legacy armies don't necessarily mean casual. One can pick up any modern battle tome and play casually without creating an optimized list. A more "for fun" list. "For fun" lists are auto-beat by summoning lists if the for fun list is truly for fun and not spamming summoning out.

* my own argument was rescinded because it appears most of the community are all tournament minded or oriented, even if they don't play in tournaments themselves, and therefore the vast majority of players are fine with balance only existing at the tournament level

Except balance does not exist at the tournament level, as the chart above makes abundantly clear, and the apparent minority that understands that is left scratching their heads as to why anyone involved is deliberately choosing to have less nice things.


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 Elmir wrote:
Ah ok, I'd just thought I'd add this into it though, as summoning in it's own right isn't necessarily able to break the top levels.

I can imagine running a super summoning heavy list in a narrative/casual environment, it would destroy most of them. Then again, running super heavy summoning is not something I'd describe as "casual" to begin with.

But yeah, it definitely can break casual games.


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PS: this has nothing to do with the whole summoning argument, but I thought I'd mention a nice long chat I had with some of the rules writers at warhammer Fest Europe.

They are quite aware that a few "legacy armies" (meaning, anything that hasn't gotten a new battletome yet) are not quite able to compete all that well and it is kind of deliberate. There's a lot of discussion going on internally on shaping the new world and seeing how much of the old miniature range they are willing to keep vs redesign/expand. From a pure business point of view, stocking and producing as many tiny subfactions/armies as AoS now has (with part of it old WHFB ranges, parts of it being brand spanking new), is virtually impossible. So they are still in a transition phase between old/new warhammer it seems.

He also stated that they NEVER want to experience the thing that happened with Tomb Kings again: those guys dominating the competitive meta in the first year after GBH, but technically having been culled from the model line-up.... It just caused a lot of feelbadsies and absolute price gauging on the net.

The fact that some factions right now, are not exactly good yet (game wise), because a final decision on where to take the faction hasn't been made yet, is no accident. I personally wasn't too happy with that, as I thought it quite unfair because it's essentially a business decision having an impact on the gaming, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.

Honestly, I am OK with armies that have no allegiance being underdogs. Because to bring them up to par without allegiance would mean making their units overpowered, and then it just makes the Grand Alliance overpowered. What should be balanced is armies with allegiance; if it has allegiance then is should be roughly on par with any other army with allegiance. For GHB allegiances this could mean simply giving a very strong ability to make up for the diversity of spells/prayers/artifacts/sub-factions that a full battletome gets. Seraphon are a good example of how that can be done (just pretend the summoning is not there).

The crux being the question:

What does balance mean to you?

And that threshold is going to be different from player to player.

My guess from the very many heated rebuttals to my comments on imbalance is that the threshold for most players is simply "if the tournament scene has multiple armies winning then its balanced".

The data above, as I have pointed out to the four or five others that have posted it as well, is flawed for a few reasons:

1) it is not enough data. Each army would need a similar sampling.

If 88 players play stormcast and only 2 play fantastic army X, and those 2 players that play fantastic army X both place high in tournaments, then they are unfairly weighted very highly. People would say "fantastic army X is very powerful because it has a 100% placing" even though only 2 people make up its data point.

Conversely, if 2 people play fantastic broken army Y, but they are bad players and dont' place, it can be argued "broken army Y is fine because it doesn't win tournaments" even though its busted.

Whereas 88 stormcast players are likely to have a variety of skill and their placings will be more median and thus appear "balanced".

If anything, I'd simply look at how many people play each faction because tournament players tend to optimize in Excel spreadsheets and if 1/4 of your playerbase are playing from the same two books, I will promise you that the game is not balanced.

2) tournament play is vastly different from casual play. Casual play is (as I thought anyway) bringing what looks cool and for fun, tournament play is brought to hammer your opponents sensitive areas down their throat as fast as possible to garner max points.

To judge if the game is balanced, instead of looking at the nutcracker lists and discerning the game is fine because multiple nutcrackers exist, one should look at the gulf between for fun and ball buster and see how wide that is.

It seems most people would agree that a summon spam army will hammer a casual for fun army. But for whatever reason, thats seen as acceptable and totally not imbalanced. You will have to dig deep to find out why someone feels that is not imbalanced, but typically that answer revolves around a variation of warmachine's' page 5, or "git gud".

Your moving the argument around. No one said that the tournaments prove that the game is balanced. The results were only to show that summoning isn't inheritly unbalanced. Its also a good sign that not one army is dominating the tournament scene. No one will argue that there is a fair number of armies that are struggling and not competitive viable in the current meta. Most of these armies have not been fully updated to the current game environment.

Then you say that tournament play is irrelevant, but tournament play is the only way to measure the game in its most unbiased form. Casual play is going to very from place to place and person to person. So when you say that casual play is broken that is entirely your opinion.

I have posted a ton of different data pointers throughout here so ... not interested in rehashing again.

A lot of people in this thread and others have said "summoning is fine, the tournaement scene has a lot of different winners so the balance of the game is fine"

The whole (again) crux of the issue is that summoning is not fine because if you are summoning at the tournament powerlist level, and your opponent is not and additionally not spamming mortal wounds, that the game is likely over before it even began.

Casual play is defined here as playing the game not at the tournament level or running optimized lists.

If you're going to argue how an army is summoning 600 points against an army not spamming mortal wounds and not summoning is not one-sided, or how an army summoning 1000+ points against the same type of army not spamming mortal wounds or summoning is not broken, then great... show examples of how that is not broken or unbalanced.

I never said tournament play is irrelevant. I said that a tiny sampling of data does not prove nor disprove balance and that tournament data is only pertinent to balance at the tournament level. If you think tournament level performance is pertinent beyond the tournament level wherein tournament lists can play non tournament lists... great! Show some examples of how because at the tournament level ssummoning isn't broken that playing non optimized lists with tournament level summoning is not that big a deal and is fine.

Show some examples of how summoning is not broken outside of the tournament level when summoning is involved against an army that is not optimized.

That is the entire fulcrum point of the "is summoning broken" topic. Because summoning is a part of why unviable armies are unviable.

This isn't that tiny a data sample though. These are 11 major events with 685 armies in total. It's by no means all the data in the world, but if you can show me a larger data collection out there, I'd love to see it. This does show a pretty significant trend.

Also, the most dominant army now (DoK), doesn't spam MW, nor does it summon... I really don't agree with you that those are the only two options this game has to do for it to be power play. Good board control and brutal regular attacks with lots of bodies really are viable without being as "in your face" obvious.

Can summoning break a casual game? Yes... But if you create a "I summon 600-1000p in a game" type list, you are imo WAY out of casual range. Same if spam MW, same if you generate thousands of attacks with deepkin or DoK.

And mind you, I am really well aware that balance in AoS when Pitting none-updated armies (since whfb) is not good. A rules writer essentially admitted that. Most armies with summoning mechanics tend to be updated armies now (slaanesh being the exception, but let's face it, that book is rightt around the corner now), so that will also skew things a bit.

Does summoning play a role in that imbalance? It probably does. Is that role as big as some people make it seem? Probably not...

I think the factor "updated book Vs non updated" is the bigger problem now, but that's also debatable by armies like KO try really didn't age well in AoS2.

But if you create a "I summon 600-1000p in a game" type list, you are imo WAY out of casual range.

Does summoning play a role in that imbalance? It probably does. Is that role as big as some people make it seem? Probably not...

But which one is it? I can summon 600 - 1000 pts is way out of casual range... but isn't as big a deal in imbalance?

These are 11 major events with 685 armies in total.

Yes. 11 hyper optimized events that power gamers flock to.

We need events where there is casual data as well.

Unless we have casual data, you have a table of data pertinent to the top end powergaming spectrum of the game. You can't judge the balance of the entire game as a whole from both poles using only one extreme end of the game. You can judge the powergaming extreme and say from a powergaming extreme the game is more diverse, but you can't say that that is true for the game as a whole unless you are also in the same breath meaning that the powergaming extreme is really the entire game as a whole.

You can also say "we don't have that data so we can't judge the other end" but that circles back to knowing that summoning 600 - 1000 points (which are fairly common from optimized summons lists) will blow away a casual list based on the fact that the game is a 2600/3000 point army vs a 2000 point one.

 Venerable Ironclad wrote:
Your moving the argument around. No one said that the tournaments prove that the game is balanced. The results were only to show that summoning isn't inheritly unbalanced. Its also a good sign that not one army is dominating the tournament scene. No one will argue that there is a fair number of armies that are struggling and not competitive viable in the current meta. Most of these armies have not been fully updated to the current game environment.

Then you say that tournament play is irrelevant, but tournament play is the only way to measure the game in its most unbiased form. Casual play is going to very from place to place and person to person. So when you say that casual play is broken that is entirely your opinion.

The issue at hand is the people doing the balancing very much are saying that tournaments prove the game is balanced.

One can also say casual play is broken objectively using math, which is pretty bad when such a subjective argument can be proven without even hitting the table. The level at which one quantifies casual play is arbitrary because there is no level at which balance is not broken.

auticus wrote:

But if you create a "I summon 600-1000p in a game" type list, you are imo WAY out of casual range.

But which one is it? I can summon 600 - 1000 pts is way out of casual range... but isn't as big a deal in imbalance?.

Yes those two statements do not contradict.

Because summoning doesn't break the game all the time in a casual setting. It does if you do excessive amounts of it.... But then it's by no means a casual list, but you move into cheese territory. And in that cheese territory, it's turning out to be quite balanced... Because it's by no means the overly dominant "most effective tactic available" or meta.

Boils down to: unoptimised casual list will get annihilated by:
- hardcore summoning
- hardcore MW output
- hardcore alpha strike
- hardcore attack generation.

So yeah, playing a wargame at casual level is a gentleman's agreement to hold you punches somewhat. If you are summoning that much in that setting, your not a gentleman, but a d*ckweed.

But you would be as well if you agreed on a casual game and then spammed MW, started using gavriel sureheart with 2CP, etc etc. I think saying it's just a problem caused by summoning is a bit of a oversimplification tbh.

I don't think I've ever said the unbalance in AOS is solely caused by summoning. I've said many times that its a contributing factor. I find it to be a moderate contributing factor.

Its the same as a unit that is grossly undercost. You could say by that logic its not broken because it won't break the game all the time to be grossly undercost, and its only cheesy if you spam it, but thats pretty much the foundation of all powerlists.

And again this problem doesn't exist as severely in most other games as it does in the GW-sphere of games. (note the words as severely - we all know every game can be gamed, but the imbalance in the gw-sphere has always been epic)

It honestly sounds like the people arguing that summon are broken are using some sort of standard where we have to use Casual Play to try and balance it around? Is that correct?

Not many games try and balance around at that level because it's objectively broken to try and balance at such level.

No thats not correct. The goal should be in game design that powergaming not be as obvious and easy to achieve to lessen the gulf between powergaming and not power gaming.

In the case of summoning, it is distilled thus:

I have a mechanic that gives me additional points beyond what my game allows assuming that you are designing points as some kind of balancing mechanism.

* how many additional points would push the game to untenable if the other side was not doing this as well

That answer will vary on person to person. I have found once you exceed 20% of the army's size in bonus points you have begun making a one-sided game. Once you hit 30% of the army's size in bonus points you have all but assured that. That would mean I should look at capping how many bonus points you can get. GW decided to take this concept and crank it to 11.

* if the other side was not doing this, what can they do to make sure the game is not one sided and broken
If you have enough offensive power then you can reasonably chew through the bonus points and still make a good game out of it. in AOS that is the ability to produce a lot of mortal wounds or high damage attacks or extreme high amounts of attacks

* have we created a scenario where the game is basically won before it started if player A uses this new mechanism within the boundaries of the rules
In AOS case with summoning, yes this is exactly what has been created.

Why I have given up caring about this argument is simply because the player base ENJOYS this overwhelmingly (I assume based on few other posts to the contrary, though I find in non GW threads (or even in the why dont you play AOS thread in here) that there are a lot of people that dont play precisely for this reason) so the target audience is large enough that they want the dev team to make mechanics that can auto win them games if their opposition isn't doing it as well.

Saying that this is ok because if you are not in a power gamer arena you should just not do this or else you are a (insert derogatory shaming name here) is not acceptable to me. Because the rules allow it, and players will want to play by the rules, they shouldn't be shamed because they played by the rules. If you are playing by the rules and are able to create a one sided match up that ends the game before the game even begins, thats bad game design and should be addressed.

Once again, that's basically balancing for the casual market. As you've constantly stated, and circled around to in your arguments.

Thats balancing the game as a whole to minimize power gaming breaking the game.

In the case of summoning there are several solutions that would bring it inline and not so overbearing.

Except as shown with overall facts It's not a problem, and summoning if it were truly overpowered would've dragged Seraphon up to a higher tier rank rather then being the biggest of summoning armies, and the rest would be drawn up further as well if they access to summoning.

It's not breaking the game at all.

I don't have anything else to add to this conversation.

Right. Its not a problem. If you are powergaming and your opponent is not powergaming.

I've already said that about 100x in this thread.

Go play a non powergaming optimized list against a seraphon player pushing 1000 points of stuff in your face on top of his army and get back with me on how balanced and fun the game is.

Go play a non-powergaming list against an optimized list. You'll lose regardless anyways.

As summoning isn't breaking the game, you'll just have to play with un-optomized lists vs such anyways. Because a good list will destroy a non-powergaming list regardless.

auticus wrote:


Case in point this morning on a facebook group there was a ton of talk about some GT that just finished and how balanced and perfect the game was because of how diverse the top tier armies all are at tournaments.

As in over 100 posters saying the same thing and nary an opposing viewpoint

Which group? Seems most of the AoS pages I follow have devolved into "Check out my paintjob/conversion/whatever"(which is fine, I steal plenty of ideas!) with little to no tactics discussion. Would love to join a group that talks more about the gaming side of AoS.

Indirectly related, at lunch today, I happened to find this Game Theory video about possible permutations of Smash! Bros. matches. He does a segment in the first half on the restrictions that are placed on competitive play in order to balance the game for MLG.

https://youtu.be/R2a6fnYOHVU

auticus wrote:
Saying that this is ok because if you are not in a power gamer arena you should just not do this or else you are a (insert derogatory shaming name here) is not acceptable to me. Because the rules allow it, and players will want to play by the rules, they shouldn't be shamed because they played by the rules. If you are playing by the rules and are able to create a one sided match up that ends the game before the game even begins, thats bad game design and should be addressed.

How hard is it for players to have a conversation before they play to determine what kind of game they want to play and how many rules that want to use?

I have no mouth but I MUST POWERGAME BECAUSE THE RULES ALLOW IT

I would really, really like to be able to build a list I want to play and not have to worry about showing up and changing it because it is too weak or too strong. End of the day that is what bothers me the most; not the gulf between power games and casual but that without communicating I have pretty good odds of the game being decided before deployment.

In my gaming group I have two others who are experienced enough for us to agree to a power level ahead of time and show up with matched lists. If one of us wants to play another person we have to show up and see what the other's list is then match it because a majority of players do not have the large amount of experience needed to quickly gague the potency of a list by looking at it. Fortunately we are a group genuinely interested in balanced match ups, many are not so lucky.

The people who show up and get crushed with no hope of victory probably do not go to the forums; they are new to the game and not yet vested in the community. They just sell their models and leave AoS behind. When GW says no to balance, they say no to more money.

"Hey Games Workshop, would you like to make more money with the same product?"

"Nope."

You keep saying that poor balance is costing them money, and you may or may not be right, but GW keeps posting record profits, so the general public at least seems to be happy with the current state of GW's products. I think what you and auticus fail to understand is that this doesn't mean we all think the game is balanced or that we like imbalance, it just means that the game is balanced enough for what we are looking for.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Once again, that's basically balancing for the casual market. As you've constantly stated, and circled around to in your arguments.

IF the designers would do their job it would be balanced for both.

People seem to think casual gamers etc don't care about balance or benefit. Actually it's the casual players to whom having game balanced matters most. Balance helps everybody but the one where it's absolutely essential is casual games. Tournament games don't care if only 10% of the game is playable.


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 andysonic1 wrote:

auticus wrote:
Saying that this is ok because if you are not in a power gamer arena you should just not do this or else you are a (insert derogatory shaming name here) is not acceptable to me. Because the rules allow it, and players will want to play by the rules, they shouldn't be shamed because they played by the rules. If you are playing by the rules and are able to create a one sided match up that ends the game before the game even begins, thats bad game design and should be addressed.

How hard is it for players to have a conversation before they play to determine what kind of game they want to play and how many rules that want to use?

I have no mouth but I MUST POWERGAME BECAUSE THE RULES ALLOW IT

So it's okay for game designers to be lazy incompetent ones because players can do their job in their place instead. Yep yep. That makes sense. GW can sell whatever crap balance and it's okay because players are expected to do their job instead.

 EnTyme wrote:
You keep saying that poor balance is costing them money, and you may or may not be right, but GW keeps posting record profits, so the general public at least seems to be happy with the current state of GW's products. I think what you and auticus fail to understand is that this doesn't mean we all think the game is balanced or that we like imbalance, it just means that the game is balanced enough for what we are looking for.

And don't get me wrong; I love post-2016 GW. The AoS 2.0 rules are a huge improvement. Army allegiance in general is so awesome the game seems naked to imagine otherwise. Balance is absolutely good enough for me, else I would not be playing it. I am critical of AoS' flaws exactly because I enjoy it so much. If I was not so invested I would not really care. For me 40k is like that; I am aware imbalance exists and roughly its nature but am apathetic because it is only a side game to me. Though that cuts both ways; I do not care to get more invested in 40k because there is imbalance on that side too so I would rather stick with the setting and miniature lines I prefer if there is going to be that problem either way.

IF the designers would do their job it would be balanced for both.

People seem to think casual gamers etc don't care about balance or benefit. Actually it's the casual players to whom having game balanced matters most. Balance helps everybody but the one where it's absolutely essential is casual games. Tournament games don't care if only 10% of the game is playable.

A tightly balanced ruleset is not going to be able to account for the many variables one would be able to play with in one's list. If one can just take any sort of list, without any consideration for their own strategy, balance, and synergy it should fall to the wayside compared to a more optimized and planned out list. A list that looks like you just grabbed any model and tossed it in there and has a chance with something planned you've made a big issue that strategy or planning the list does not matter.

 nels1031 wrote:

auticus wrote:


Case in point this morning on a facebook group there was a ton of talk about some GT that just finished and how balanced and perfect the game was because of how diverse the top tier armies all are at tournaments.

As in over 100 posters saying the same thing and nary an opposing viewpoint

Which group? Seems most of the AoS pages I follow have devolved into "Check out my paintjob/conversion/whatever"(which is fine, I steal plenty of ideas!) with little to no tactics discussion. Would love to join a group that talks more about the gaming side of AoS.

TGA forums is pretty good on that.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

IF the designers would do their job it would be balanced for both.

People seem to think casual gamers etc don't care about balance or benefit. Actually it's the casual players to whom having game balanced matters most. Balance helps everybody but the one where it's absolutely essential is casual games. Tournament games don't care if only 10% of the game is playable.

A tightly balanced ruleset is not going to be able to account for the many variables one would be able to play with in one's list. If one can just take any sort of list, without any consideration for their own strategy, balance, and synergy it should fall to the wayside compared to a more optimized and planned out list. A list that looks like you just grabbed any model and tossed it in there and has a chance with something planned you've made a big issue that strategy or planning the list does not matter.

No one is suggesting that a list with random units should be on par with one that has a proper balance of battlefield roles.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

IF the designers would do their job it would be balanced for both.

People seem to think casual gamers etc don't care about balance or benefit. Actually it's the casual players to whom having game balanced matters most. Balance helps everybody but the one where it's absolutely essential is casual games. Tournament games don't care if only 10% of the game is playable.

A tightly balanced ruleset is not going to be able to account for the many variables one would be able to play with in one's list. If one can just take any sort of list, without any consideration for their own strategy, balance, and synergy it should fall to the wayside compared to a more optimized and planned out list. A list that looks like you just grabbed any model and tossed it in there and has a chance with something planned you've made a big issue that strategy or planning the list does not matter.

No one is suggesting that a list with random units should be on par with one that has a proper balance of battlefield roles.

Yeah thats an strawman that I hate to see when people say that they want balance and nearly equal chances of winning.

Look at it like Total War Warhammer. I know that if I make a full big-Dinosaur Lizardmen army my chances of winning are very swingy. I accept that the moment I make a spam based and unbalanced force, that I try for fun. But when I do a balanced force (A infantry core, supported by magic, monsters, cavalry, and/or artillery, etc... or whatever is balanced, for example if I'm playing a cavalry faction then I would have a cavalry core supported by other elements) I expect to have an equal chance of winning vs a opponent of my same level of hability.

AverageBoss wrote:

 nels1031 wrote:

auticus wrote:


Case in point this morning on a facebook group there was a ton of talk about some GT that just finished and how balanced and perfect the game was because of how diverse the top tier armies all are at tournaments.

As in over 100 posters saying the same thing and nary an opposing viewpoint

Which group? Seems most of the AoS pages I follow have devolved into "Check out my paintjob/conversion/whatever"(which is fine, I steal plenty of ideas!) with little to no tactics discussion. Would love to join a group that talks more about the gaming side of AoS.

TGA forums is pretty good on that.

Ya, I'm on TGA, but would love another venue to discuss AoS, or just read peoples varied opinions/experiences.

tneva82 wrote:
So it's okay for game designers to be lazy incompetent ones because players can do their job in their place instead. Yep yep. That makes sense. GW can sell whatever crap balance and it's okay because players are expected to do their job instead.

tneva82 wrote:
crap balance

Seeing as balance appears to be around the competitive meta, I'd say the game's balance is in a good place right now (could always be better, it'll never be perfect). What you want isn't balance, it's homogenization. You want to be able to bring a list you "think is cool" to the table against someone else's "cool list" and have a "balanced game" when the reality is there are TONS of "imbalanced" units, abilities, spells, terrain rules, missions, and battalions that the only way a "balanced" game can be played is by both players communicating with one another before pen hits paper. It doesn't matter if this communication is between two players changing their lists or between tournament organizers (using house rules or GW's own Matched Play rules) and players, the communication needs to happen.

Games Workshop have done their job already by making a decently balanced tournament meta. You need to do your job by communicating with whoever you are playing. That may mean not using some of the models you spent days on, but that is the cost of a decently balanced tournament meta. If they balanced around casual armies you would end up with homogenization and the killing of anything that makes armies unique, or you'd end up with a far smaller ruleset and amount of armies. This is the price we are all paying.

To say they are being lazy by doing this, after 2.0 and tons of FAQs, is absurd. Just be honest: the game's not balanced the way you want it so you're mad about it.

Did summoning ruin AoS again? No, the players did.

How is a tournament meta where only a small minory of the factions do well balanced? Can you explain the reasoning there?

No one thinks the balance is perfectly fine where it is. I don't think we are arguing that we like where things are, we are arguing that we like where things are heading.

The tournament data shows a clear discrepancy between Battle Tome armies and those without. That's not to say this is perfect either. Kharadron Overlords, despite being a newer army but I believe that can be fixed with some points adjustment.

Now it has yet to be seen where Beast of Chaos will land on the balance spectrum. But by its mere existence it shows that GW hasn't abandons these older factions. I look forward for the day when these factions receive their respected updates.

No one thinks the balance is perfectly fine where it is

I don't really care about the subject anymore as I've emotionally moved my investment from AOS, but I will say there are quite a bit of people saying the balance is perfectly fine where it is OR that the balance is actually desirable to that individual because the tournament standings are at a diversity level that they find acceptable and even desired.

More specifically to the topic at hand, that summoning is indeed just fine because at tournament levels there is a diversity of standings and the summoning armies arent' all winning tournaments, so therefore the game overall is fine and summoning is overall fine.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
How is a tournament meta where only a small minory of the factions do well balanced? Can you explain the reasoning there?

So, I think a huge problem with this is that a lot of the factions are lacking battletomes. It's no surprise that a faction without a battletome isn't going to be able to compete at the tournament level.

Here is the list from the most recent GT:



Rank Name Faction Wins
1 Ben Savva Daughters of Khaine 6
2 Robert Sedgman Nighthaunt 6
3 Terry Pike Maggotkin of Nurgle 5
4 Gary Percival Stormcast 5
5 Steve Curtis Legions of Nagash 4
6 Nick Thompson Daughters of Khaine 5
7 Chris Myhill Order 5
8 Dan Bradshaw Idoneth Deepkin 5
9 Tony Moore Legions of Nagash 5
10 Colin Cochrane Daughters of Khaine 4
11 Ritchie McAlley Sylvaneth 4
12 Russ Veal Blades of Khorne 4
13 Andy Hughes Legions of Azghor 4
14 Rich Arnold Legions of Nagash 4
15 Ian Spink Bonesplittaz


That's fairly diverse. There was a different army played by each person in the top 5, and the top 15 has a ton of different armies. While this is no means perfect (DoK look to be a bit too strong) It does show a semblance of balance for the battletome armies.

when we say ton of different armies, lets also examine the actual army lists which tend to be very similar in a lot of cases.

This is highly misleading. I play a lot of nurgle. I know their competitive build and I know that if you deviate from that build, you are not going to be on the list above in a tournament barring some great dice luck and great play on your part and abysmal dice luck and play on your opponent's part.

So to say that the battletome army is balanced is very misleading. It would be more accurate to say that they've done a better job at making sure most battletome armies have a powergaming build to tournament with which is different from the past where only 3 or 4 of the 20+ factions had a powergaming build that could do well in a tournament.

But I think those two things (an army being balanced and a book having a viable powergaming build) are very different from each other.

18 battletome allegiances plus 6 others and 4 grand alliances, so 28 full armies. I do not have issue with non-allegiances being sub par since there is not a practical way of bringing them up without making units OP. But I leave it open; to call the tournament level balanced in the most liberal sense there should be at least a majority (15) that perform on approximately equivalent levels. This is still ignoring build diversity and that LoN is actually four allegiances. If it cannot be shown that the above is the case then I feel there is no room to objectively call things balanced. It IS a very subjective term, but to say a situation overall is balanced when it is not even a majority is definitely unreasonable.

All of that is to say, the tournament level is not at all balanced. Is it better than it was? Absolutely. But to say it is balanced is simply a falsehood. And to bring things back to summoning; from what I have seen balance has actually gotten worse outside or tournaments in that randomly matching one 2000 pt list with another results in worse gaps more often. I still think 2.0 is better because the new rules make up for that and then some. Yet if summoning were restrained things would be better at the non-tourney scene as well and that would expand the number of customers far more than the tourney scene ever will.

auticus wrote:
when we say ton of different armies, lets also examine the actual army lists which tend to be very similar in a lot of cases.

This is highly misleading. I play a lot of nurgle. I know their competitive build and I know that if you deviate from that build, you are not going to be on the list above in a tournament barring some great dice luck and great play on your part and abysmal dice luck and play on your opponent's part.

So to say that the battletome army is balanced is very misleading. It would be more accurate to say that they've done a better job at making sure most battletome armies have a powergaming build to tournament with which is different from the past where only 3 or 4 of the 20+ factions had a powergaming build that could do well in a tournament.

But I think those two things (an army being balanced and a book having a viable powergaming build) are very different from each other.

Besides the Legion of Nagash build, all of the builds are pretty diverse. If you look up the indivudal DoK list, all three of them are very different. One was a typical sisters one, while one had a bunch of melee snakes. From some of the comments of the Nurgle list, the one that the player took was not something , since he took the thircefold befoulment battalion.

He took three great unclean ones. The nurgle power builds require you to take a couple greater demons on average. The nurgle list taken here was not that grossly different from typical builds, and as usual relies heavily on the demons.

I was wondering if anyone else saw the power of thricefold befoulment.

12 Russ Veal Blades of Khorne 4
13 Andy Hughes Legions of Azghor 4
14 Rich Arnold Legions of Nagash 4

I haven't checked the C.dwarfs out in forever, but how did they become viable again? I remember them being very poor off quite sometime ago.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

12 Russ Veal Blades of Khorne 4
13 Andy Hughes Legions of Azghor 4
14 Rich Arnold Legions of Nagash 4

I haven't checked the C.dwarfs out in forever, but how did they become viable again? I remember them being very poor off quite sometime ago.

Seriously. There are two(another at 19) in the Top 20.

What happened?

They got allegiance abilities, and already had some strong warscrolls to draw from. I think some of the warscrolls got improvements as well. Dunno how much their points changed.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
18 battletome allegiances plus 6 others and 4 grand alliances, so 28 full armies. I do not have issue with non-allegiances being sub par since there is not a practical way of bringing them up without making units OP. But I leave it open; to call the tournament level balanced in the most liberal sense there should be at least a majority (15) that perform on approximately equivalent levels. This is still ignoring build diversity and that LoN is actually four allegiances. If it cannot be shown that the above is the case then I feel there is no room to objectively call things balanced. It IS a very subjective term, but to say a situation overall is balanced when it is not even a majority is definitely unreasonable.

All of that is to say, the tournament level is not at all balanced. Is it better than it was? Absolutely. But to say it is balanced is simply a falsehood. And to bring things back to summoning; from what I have seen balance has actually gotten worse outside or tournaments in that randomly matching one 2000 pt list with another results in worse gaps more often. I still think 2.0 is better because the new rules make up for that and then some. Yet if summoning were restrained things would be better at the non-tourney scene as well and that would expand the number of customers far more than the tourney scene ever will.

I want to address this again.

So, let's address your first point. The fact of the matter is right now armies without battletomes are going to be weaker than armies with them, in most cases. While this should be fixed overtime, and is a problem, you cannot reasonably expect them to compete in a tournament level.

If you count the battle tome armies, of which there are about 18, 10 armies were represented. Add in the Legions of Azgor, you have 11 different armies in the top 15. That is quite diverse, and very reasonable. Over half the battletome armies in a top 15 is objectivity excellent. Is there room for improvement? Sure. Also of note, summoning was not a major factor in the top ten, with 1 army in the top 5, and 3 in the top fifteen.

This presents to me a pretty healthy competitive scene. I of course think there could be improvements, but it looks to be much more balanced than some are making it out to be.

 Sasori wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
18 battletome allegiances plus 6 others and 4 grand alliances, so 28 full armies. I do not have issue with non-allegiances being sub par since there is not a practical way of bringing them up without making units OP. But I leave it open; to call the tournament level balanced in the most liberal sense there should be at least a majority (15) that perform on approximately equivalent levels. This is still ignoring build diversity and that LoN is actually four allegiances. If it cannot be shown that the above is the case then I feel there is no room to objectively call things balanced. It IS a very subjective term, but to say a situation overall is balanced when it is not even a majority is definitely unreasonable.

All of that is to say, the tournament level is not at all balanced. Is it better than it was? Absolutely. But to say it is balanced is simply a falsehood. And to bring things back to summoning; from what I have seen balance has actually gotten worse outside or tournaments in that randomly matching one 2000 pt list with another results in worse gaps more often. I still think 2.0 is better because the new rules make up for that and then some. Yet if summoning were restrained things would be better at the non-tourney scene as well and that would expand the number of customers far more than the tourney scene ever will.

I want to address this again.

So, let's address your first point. The fact of the matter is right now armies without battletomes are going to be weaker than armies with them, in most cases. While this should be fixed overtime, and is a problem, you cannot reasonably expect them to compete in a tournament level.

If you count the battle tome armies, of which there are about 18, 10 armies were represented. Add in the Legions of Azgor, you have 11 different armies in the top 15. That is quite diverse, and very reasonable. Over half the battletome armies in a top 15 is objectivity excellent. Is there room for improvement? Sure. Also of note, summoning was not a major factor in the top ten, with 1 army in the top 5, and 3 in the top fifteen.

This presents to me a pretty healthy competitive scene. I of course think there could be improvements, but it looks to be much more balanced than some are making it out to be.

Pretty much this, it's a surprisingly good spread of factions rather then one single battle tome dominating. There's a few problem codex's, but even they don't just strongly contest the top like you'd expect.

The battletomes provide a fair few benefits that even the GH2018 does not provide (Such as lores for some reason) so even if that helped, it's not going to be as close as a battletome.

That all will be subjective on the individual's personal judgement of what a "healthy" competitive scene looks like and at what threshold it is not.

For some people, I remember ten years ago in 7th edition whfb that 2-3 viable armies in the entire game was still a "healthy competitive scene".

summoning was not a major factor in the top ten, with 1 army in the top 5, and 3 in the top fifteen.

And also has been repeated ad naseum that summoning at the powergaming level is passable. Its at the casual level that its an unbalanced force that creates one-sided games.

Well yes, some people. But many people disliked the constant dominance of the top three. It would be a very small minority to claim that WHFB 7th editions tournament scene was even liked.

And also has been repeated ad naseum that summoning at the powergaming level is passable. Its at the casual level that its an unbalanced force that creates one-sided games.

And has been repeated ad naseum, that balancing at the casual level is a difficult endeavor at best, useless at worst.

Heh, balance is useless. Cannot argue with that logic.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sasori wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
18 battletome allegiances plus 6 others and 4 grand alliances, so 28 full armies. I do not have issue with non-allegiances being sub par since there is not a practical way of bringing them up without making units OP. But I leave it open; to call the tournament level balanced in the most liberal sense there should be at least a majority (15) that perform on approximately equivalent levels. This is still ignoring build diversity and that LoN is actually four allegiances. If it cannot be shown that the above is the case then I feel there is no room to objectively call things balanced. It IS a very subjective term, but to say a situation overall is balanced when it is not even a majority is definitely unreasonable.

All of that is to say, the tournament level is not at all balanced. Is it better than it was? Absolutely. But to say it is balanced is simply a falsehood. And to bring things back to summoning; from what I have seen balance has actually gotten worse outside or tournaments in that randomly matching one 2000 pt list with another results in worse gaps more often. I still think 2.0 is better because the new rules make up for that and then some. Yet if summoning were restrained things would be better at the non-tourney scene as well and that would expand the number of customers far more than the tourney scene ever will.

I want to address this again.

So, let's address your first point. The fact of the matter is right now armies without battletomes are going to be weaker than armies with them, in most cases. While this should be fixed overtime, and is a problem, you cannot reasonably expect them to compete in a tournament level.

If you count the battle tome armies, of which there are about 18, 10 armies were represented. Add in the Legions of Azgor, you have 11 different armies in the top 15. That is quite diverse, and very reasonable. Over half the battletome armies in a top 15 is objectivity excellent. Is there room for improvement? Sure. Also of note, summoning was not a major factor in the top ten, with 1 army in the top 5, and 3 in the top fifteen.

This presents to me a pretty healthy competitive scene. I of course think there could be improvements, but it looks to be much more balanced than some are making it out to be.

So balance is objectively excellent, if you cut out the majority of the product line. Even from a strictly financial perspective that reasoning is objectively bad.

"AoS fans, would you like to see more diversity of armies and more players?"

"No, because 9 different armies that count made the top 15."

Not even remotely what I said.

"No, because 9 different armies that count made the top 15."

There's 11 out of 15, Apparently counting, like balance is useless
Daughters of Khaine, Nighthaunt, Maggotkin, Stormcast, Legions of Nagash, Order, Idoneth Deepkin, Sylvaneth, Blades of Khorne, Legions of Azghor, and Bonesplittaz.

One cannot deny that's a very good spread of armies along the top fifteen.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Heh, balance is useless. Cannot argue with that logic.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sasori wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
18 battletome allegiances plus 6 others and 4 grand alliances, so 28 full armies. I do not have issue with non-allegiances being sub par since there is not a practical way of bringing them up without making units OP. But I leave it open; to call the tournament level balanced in the most liberal sense there should be at least a majority (15) that perform on approximately equivalent levels. This is still ignoring build diversity and that LoN is actually four allegiances. If it cannot be shown that the above is the case then I feel there is no room to objectively call things balanced. It IS a very subjective term, but to say a situation overall is balanced when it is not even a majority is definitely unreasonable.

All of that is to say, the tournament level is not at all balanced. Is it better than it was? Absolutely. But to say it is balanced is simply a falsehood. And to bring things back to summoning; from what I have seen balance has actually gotten worse outside or tournaments in that randomly matching one 2000 pt list with another results in worse gaps more often. I still think 2.0 is better because the new rules make up for that and then some. Yet if summoning were restrained things would be better at the non-tourney scene as well and that would expand the number of customers far more than the tourney scene ever will.

I want to address this again.

So, let's address your first point. The fact of the matter is right now armies without battletomes are going to be weaker than armies with them, in most cases. While this should be fixed overtime, and is a problem, you cannot reasonably expect them to compete in a tournament level.

If you count the battle tome armies, of which there are about 18, 10 armies were represented. Add in the Legions of Azgor, you have 11 different armies in the top 15. That is quite diverse, and very reasonable. Over half the battletome armies in a top 15 is objectivity excellent. Is there room for improvement? Sure. Also of note, summoning was not a major factor in the top ten, with 1 army in the top 5, and 3 in the top fifteen.

This presents to me a pretty healthy competitive scene. I of course think there could be improvements, but it looks to be much more balanced than some are making it out to be.

So balance is objectively excellent, if you cut out the majority of the product line. Even from a strictly financial perspective that reasoning is objectively bad.

"AoS fans, would you like to see more diversity of armies and more players?"

"No, because 9 different armies that count made the top 15."

No, the reasoning is perfectly valid when you consider that most of the armies don't yet have their battle tome. The Generals handbook has helped in this matter, but once again, it is not reasonable to expect a faction that has not gotten a full release to compete on the same level of a faction that does. The battletome factions will almost always have more units, more battalions, more relics, just more tools than non-battle tome armies. I do not see how you can think that it is fair to compare the two when this is taken into account.

At what point did I say or even imply that that I did not want to see more diversity? Now, you are just being disingenuous with your argument. I even said that there is room for improvement, and I addressed that not all armies having a battletome is a problem.

Also, it was 11 different armies in the top 15.

If GHB & grand alliance allegiances do not count, it was only 9. So do they count for balance or do they not?

And yes, I was being disingenuous. It was meant as a call out to you saying only a minority of armies count for balance, which is disingenuous.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
If GHB & grand alliance allegiances do not count, it was only 9. So do they count for balance or do they not?

And yes, I was being disingenuous. It was meant as a call out to you saying only a minority of armies count for balance, which is disingenuous.

While he was discussing how armies with all their options gained through battletomes which grant updated warscrolls (These do change when a battletome comes out) and lores that provides an army with better benefits and in general makes an army stronger as a result.

You decided to essentially bad faith post with actual disingenuous positions, with a strawman in there. He never said they should not count for balance, he is saying they would overall be weaker as a result.

How is that not saying they don't count for balance? The argument is that it is OK (if not desireable) for the overwhelming majority of GWs products to perform poorly in the game they are sold for, and that this is somehow a reasonable way to run the game. If that is the logic I am faced with it is entirely fair to return it in kind.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
If GHB & grand alliance allegiances do not count, it was only 9. So do they count for balance or do they not?

And yes, I was being disingenuous. It was meant as a call out to you saying only a minority of armies count for balance, which is disingenuous.

My argument is not being disingenuous. I fully acknowledged in my post that those armies not having a battletome is a problem that needs to be addressed. I also said there is room for improvement. But trying to say that all of these armies, most of which don't even have token level support, are expected to be on the same level in a competitive environment as full releases is absurd.






Automatically Appended Next Post:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
How is that not saying they don't count for balance? The argument is that it is OK (if not desireable) for the overwhelming majority of GWs products to perform poorly in the game they are sold for, and that this is somehow a reasonable way to run the game. If that is the logic I am faced with it is entirely fair to return it in kind.

I addressed quite clearly in my post that it is an issue that needs to be fixed. If you are just going to ignore that I ackowledged that there is a problem, then there is no further reason to dicuss this with you.

 Sasori wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
If GHB & grand alliance allegiances do not count, it was only 9. So do they count for balance or do they not?

And yes, I was being disingenuous. It was meant as a call out to you saying only a minority of armies count for balance, which is disingenuous.

My argument is not being disingenuous. I fully acknowledged in my post that those armies not having a battletome is a problem that needs to be addressed. I also said there is room for improvement. But trying to say that all of these armies, most of which don't even have token level support, are expected to be on the same level in a competitive environment as full releases is absurd.

THAT is a straw man. I said that the simple majority of armies with allegiance abilities (that can be made powerful enough to compensate for artifact/spell diversity) should be competitive to say the game is balanced. The response was that only allegiances in battletomes matter since all others are supposed to be worse, which is saying that the vast majority of the game does not matter for balance

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Sasori wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
If GHB & grand alliance allegiances do not count, it was only 9. So do they count for balance or do they not?

And yes, I was being disingenuous. It was meant as a call out to you saying only a minority of armies count for balance, which is disingenuous.

My argument is not being disingenuous. I fully acknowledged in my post that those armies not having a battletome is a problem that needs to be addressed. I also said there is room for improvement. But trying to say that all of these armies, most of which don't even have token level support, are expected to be on the same level in a competitive environment as full releases is absurd.

THAT is a straw man. I said that the simple majority of armies with allegiance abilities (that can be made powerful enough to compensate for artifact/spell diversity) should be competitive to say the game is balanced. The response was that only allegiances in battletomes matter since all others are supposed to be worse, which is saying that the vast majority of the game does not matter for balance

Once again, not what he's saying either.

And has been repeated ad naseum, that balancing at the casual level is a difficult endeavor at best, useless at worst.

Which is where I strongly disagree and 20 plus years of doing game design strongly disagrees as well. In regards to summoning its fairly easy to make summoning not destroy casual armies. Which is the problem that the entire topic is discussing.

Not how summoning is fine because tournament armies do fine against it.

But how summoning is a powerful tool that contributes to the imbalance chasm between powergamer and casual list.

And in regards solely to summoning (the topic of the thread) and nothing else that makes powergamer mathematically superior to casual, making summoning not break the game at the casual level has several options that can be worked in.

How would people feel if GW made a rule that said "If you summon a new unit, It only last for one(or two) turn'?

xking wrote:
How would people feel if GW made a rule that said "If you summon a new unit, It only last for one(or two) turn'?

It would probably have little effect. Remember most games only go to around 5 or 6 turns; plus some (like demon summoning) require you to generate points from taking actions, so you might lose one or two turns at the start to actually get to a position where you can summon. So summons are landing turns 2-3 which is about where the most meaty action takes place in the game. So summoned units would still do the most impact in those turns.

My impression is its more a question of volume and potential volume of summons rather than duration - since we have to accept that its only a valid mechanic if the summons can/will appear in time to actually contribute to the game in a meaningful way

When I was running azyr comp we had a trial rule where if you killed the summoner then their summoned entities would also disappear.

It was not very popular. It was fiddly and people felt like they were being robbed.

God, that's a loaded statement.