I’m spinning this topic off from the main discussion thread because I think it warrants its own thread. So, balancing AoS...how do we do it? And what do we even mean by balance?

I suppose I’m talking about both external balance (faction v faction) and internal balance (different builds within a faction). I want any faction within this game to stand a reasonable chance of defeating another in matched play. No one should suffer an inheriantly weak force that’s doomed to failure before the first unit is even deployed. It’s not right. And as for the second point, every faction should have multiple viable builds. Every unit deserves a decent look in.

Personally I would start by looking at the top three most powerful factions and seeing what makes them so powerful in the first place, then I’d look at the three weakest factions and see what they need. For the top three; I suppose that would be FEC, DoK and...who? The bottom three; Ironjawz, Beastclaw Raiders and KO. Definitely KO.

Also, I’m not really one for nerfing things. I’ve been on the receiving end of nerfing, and it sucks. I’d rather balance out things by increasing the power of underperforming units, whilst adjusting the prices of overpowered ones. Price adjustments are a key part of this I think.

So, what do you guys think?

You examine the points, and you adjust them accordingly. Just like the community comps did before GHB, and in those days every faction was viable because we did it that way.

First you establish your baseline. For me when I did Azyr that was calculating a selection's average offensive output (expected wounds vs every save in the game) and their average defensive capability (how many wounds they really had before dying, taking saves vs all the rends and mortal wounds into account) to get a baseline score.

Then you sort every unit by that score. Then you have range bands and from those range bands you come up with points costs.

I treated heroes separately because they are force multipliers in many cases so you couldn't just look at their offense and defense, you had to look at how much of a multiplier they were.

At that point you have a bell curve and a standardized baseline to work with and you tweak here and there as needed.

Since I upkept Azyr I have kept up with the current models and the bell curve was shattered a few times. Lately by the FEC book.

The goblin book largely fell within the bell curve so was mathematically pretty balanced overall.

The FEC book has builds that shifted the entire bell to be more narrow which made a lot more builds useless.

A side effect of the FEC book was that things like evocators suddenly fell into the bell curve instead of being broken over the bell curve.

However there is a huge amount of units that are never going to be seen because the bell curve is currently so narrow and quite frankly extreme.

From there you can look at factions overall and get their average outputs and defense and see what factions are hurting and those need boosts on their scrolls mostly. Points can only fix so much.




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Last on summoning, if the community and designers are going to insist on this vapid direction of free summoning, then all armies need some form of free summoning and all factions should be comparable at it. Otherwise it can in the non tournament sense swing far too much over to the summoning side.

Yes from a tournament powergamer sense its not that big a deal because as a powergamer, one will be maxing out damage outputs and the summoning is a form of buffing up your defensive stats to overcome the min/max output of the offensive score of the powergamer's min/max build.

From a casual / campaign stance, either min/max output or summoning are busting the game.

At least give all factions equal tools. Let them max out output or max out summoning. Don't give us garbage factions that can't do either and just lose by virtue of showing up.

Thats inexcusable.

Well firstly I think balance means many things to many people, but to me it's the idea that:

A) Every faction can, in theory, and with an equal setup, do well against any other faction; i.e. there is no case where a faction "auto loses" against another faction simply because they lack the tools to deal with something.

B) In a faction itself, every unit should have a viable role and potential synergies that give it a reason to be used; i.e. there should never be a case where Unit B does the same thing as Unit A but better/cheaper, thereby invalidating Unit A. A player should never feel "punished" for liking Unit A over Unit B and there should be ways they can make Unit A operate well enough for it to not reduce their chance of winning a game *only* because they didn't take Unit B.

This doesn't mean that there won't be units that are slightly better or slightly worse, but it's always a choice that you can make work. Even if Unit A isn't as good as Unit B there needs to be options that you can take with Unit A that will make up for it (for example, if you take this character model and this other unit, either of which could also not be great on their own, the synergy between them and Unit A will make Unit A a viable choice)

Now, I don't think Warhammer *CAN* be balanced, because the design team (despite seemingly being made up of UK tournament players who should be wanting balance) have no desire to actually follow A or B above. I'm not sure if this is intentional or due to tight deadlines placed on them by sales and marketing (which, let's be honest here, still drive the company. And no, before anyone brings it up this is not because "they're a business and need to make money" this goes far beyond that) or simply because they have no desire to actually play a balanced game, but it's clear that Warhammer has never and will never care about A or B.

Warhammer players, perhaps more so than players of any other wargame, see to want almost 100% of the "skill" to be in list building and finding that broken combo or insane synergy that lets you just completely crush your opponent. Whether this is picking undercosted units so that your 2000 point list behaves like 3000 points or blatant min-maxing like stacking buffs to get some insane ability (pre-Wrath and Rapture Bloodletter Bomb springs to mind where it was something like you could do mortal wounds on a 3+ with the right buffs), Warhammer players and apparently the designers themselves seem to find nothing wrong with having "must take" and "never take" choices or having choices that completely invalidate other choices within the same book They are okay with combos that can make entire factions nonviable for play because they have no way to deal with them.

That's bad design, but without a fundamental shift in how GW writes rules (which we have been waiting almost 30 years for it to happen), there's no possible way that Warhammer can be balanced because there's no desire to. The crazy combos and units that are just better than other ones and emphasis on winning the game before it begins with an "uber list" are too prevalent across the player base and the design team.

This is why I point to a game like Warmachine MK2 as a good example of this, although it had some issues. There were very few units that were really "bad". Almost everything had *some* way to become viable or even good, you just had to put a certain level of effort into building the right synergies. But there was almost never a case like you see in Warhammer where someone would ask "I like Unit X, how do I make it work" and the answer was "You don't. Take Unit Y instead." You almost always had a way to make Unit X work decently enough for the majority of play (except for major tournaments) if you took things that worked with it.

The real core issue here is that GW games gameplay is so shallow that list building is rarely more involved than just finding stuff with the best damage output/soak ratio for the points. When that is your only consideration, of course there will be a most efficient unit.

One half of the problem is the unified way units are treated, where there's little functional difference between a dragon and a mob of grots of equal points. They're going to deal similar damage, soak similar damage and degrade at a similar rate no matter what you hit them with. About the only other factor in a unit's statline is speed, which feeds into the second half of the problem:

All the scenarios are about standing on points and preventing your enemy from standing on points. This feeds back into damage/soak being the only meaningful measure of a unit after the initial scramble to reach those points, which is usually decided by who goes first.

Bottm line, the game has no battlefield roles besides "be killy" and "be tanky". If you needed different types of units to accomplish different things then there would be a bigger requirement to make a varied, yet coherent, army list, rather than just taking the most undercosted unit since they all do the same thing anyway.

All the scenarios are about standing on points and preventing your enemy from standing on points.

You don't always have to stand on points in Age of Sigmar after you claim it. Depends on the mission. Very often you can claim an objective and then move out from it to both defend from incoming forces or attack other objectives.


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Bottm line, the game has no battlefield roles besides "be killy" and "be tanky". If you needed different types of units to accomplish different things then there would be a bigger requirement to make a varied, yet coherent, army list, rather than just taking the most undercosted unit since they all do the same thing anyway.

You also need mobility. That is a role in itself. You really don't take Khinerai for their damage output, but you do take them for the mobility and deep-strike ability.


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Don't give us garbage factions that can't do either and just lose by virtue of showing up.

I assume you are referring Kharadron Overlords. Many of the older tomes are losing out on old design principles and KO probably suffer the most there. The big problem GW has always had is that when they go on a release schedule they often take years to finish their cycle and in that time designers may get new ideas, new ambitions, or get new writers, and this always creates a mismatch between factions. It's also why some people like the index idea of Warhammer 40k as it is one time where it appeared GW approached all factions at the same time.


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Last on summoning, if the community and designers are going to insist on this vapid direction of free summoning, then all armies need some form of free summoning and all factions should be comparable at it

Summoning is weird and I feel it was a mistake for GW to approach summoning like this. Free points means armies must be balanced with those "free" points in mind which in turn makes summoning a requirement for a matched army. It's an approach that kinda locks factions into very singular approaches.

I think summoning as a whole causes potentially the most balance changes.

We've had free, reserving points for it, summoning that Is "not summoning" etc.
Then, only certain armies can summon and all to a differing degree.

It's always been a core part of the game and mostly with the old undead, so it's really not going to go anywhere any time soon.
The issue is, it's a huge aspect of the game that causes endless balance issues.

The original free summoning was just a mess.
The second someone took Nagash you knew that by turn 3 the army you were fighting, despite damaging it is now 3 times larger than at the start.

I personally liked the idea of having to reserve points to summon.
It allowed some flexibility in an army and made it different.

This however all died when we got summoning that wasn't counted as summoning.
This meant some armies were returning dead models endlessly while some had to use points and other just simply couldn't do either.



Now I understand there are alot of rules issues, but I feel summoning is potentially the biggest for causing imbalance.
I'd like to see the reserve points system again and none of the free crap.
All the time summoning is free, it will simply be abused and push up the power level of that army.

The summoning in whfb is about 1/10th of what AOS summoning is.

Summoning in whfb could be dispelled. AOS summoning cannot be stopped at all.

Summoning in whfb scaled up with difficulty. You were adding d6, 2d6, or 3d6 models but to cast those spells they got progressively harder to cast.

AOS summoning you get full strength units or bring back entire dead units at full strength. By drawing air into your lungs and stating you are going to do it.

Summoning is indeed one of the biggest issues in today's game as far as balance is concerned. Apparently not at the powergamer tournament level, but definitely in the casual for fun campaign level.


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I assume you are referring Kharadron Overlords

There are many factions that fall into that category. Khorne mortals fall into that as well and their book is not super old. Any faction that does not have a book is this.

auticus wrote:
The summoning in whfb is about 1/10th of what AOS summoning is.

Summoning in whfb could be dispelled. AOS summoning cannot be stopped at all.

Summoning in whfb scaled up with difficulty. You were adding d6, 2d6, or 3d6 models but to cast those spells they got progressively harder to cast.

AOS summoning you get full strength units or bring back entire dead units at full strength. By drawing air into your lungs and stating you are going to do it.

Summoning is indeed one of the biggest issues in today's game as far as balance is concerned. Apparently not at the powergamer tournament level, but definitely in the casual for fun campaign level.

Having it count as magic would go a long way.
As it's then able to be dispelled, it makes it alot harder to fire off 5 summons a turn or so.
But I agree, WHFB summoning was very minor in comparison and could easily be controlled.
AoS summoning has just gone to the point of insanity.
How can you balance something when it gives free points to an army and isn't available to all?

How can you balance something when it gives free points to an army and isn't available to all?

You don't. The populate myth is that GW has baked in extra points to these units to make them more expensive than they should be to make up for it.

But that is laughable. It is mathematically and objectively laughable. I can take say a FEC Adepticon army and get its overall score based on its average damage and average defensive ability, and compare that to my blood bound mortal army, or a beastman army, or a slaves of darkness army, or a bunch of any other army, and without summoning the two armies are still not in the same league really. Its somewhat playable but there's already a schism between the two scores. Now add FEC summoning into the mix and that score goes into the stratosphere. At that point in the playtesting cycle I would stop and say "hold on, this is not just a little bit OP, this is game breaking OP." As opposed to what GW does which is "ship it!" and the community goes "oh come on its not THAT bad, git gud!"

Some units indeed like horrors this is a true statement. And you will also notice no one takes them. Because for summoning to be used people have to feel its free or at a very low cost.

Now how it works at the powergamer level is that armies that aren't summoning also do hideous and obscene amounts of damage so they are killing a whole slew of models and the summoning player is basically trying to replace those.

So at that level "its not that bad".

A casual or for fun army is not going to have hideous and obscene amounts of damage, so the summoning is quickly oppressive and a game-ender.

If I were the one doing that ruleset there would be no free summoning on that level #1. It would be something you had to earn (kind of like blood tithe) and what you could summon would be very small utility units. Not free blood thirsters.

Recycling dead units would also come with a cost somewhere.

#2 because I would have the output list of every unit in the game in front of me, I would make it a mission to stick to the bell curve of output and also point things appropriately. There would be none of this spamming mortal wounds garbage.

Those two things by themselves would start reigning in the extreme ends of the system and by default bring factions on the other end of the spectrum (the garbage spectrum) into playability again.

OR

I would have my team write a book for every faction in the game that did not have current rules so that everyone was up to date and release that. If spamming mortal wounds and loads of free summoning is the hill that they want to die on, then fine. Give every faction the same ability in some fashion.

The staggered release that they do is definitely something they do to maximize their business, which I understand, but its also the #1 reason why their games are a joke in terms of balance and why you have to just accept chasing the meta around.

There are many factions that fall into that category. Khorne mortals fall into that as well and their book is not super old. Any faction that does not have a book is this.

It's not super old, but it is 2 years old and belongs to an older edition, same as Kharadron. I've said it before but there is an evident design paradigm shift from Maggotkin and up. With factions that haven't gotten a book you can't really count them as they've never been properly addressed and can barely be considered legit factions at this point. For all we know these factions could be squatted any moment now.


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The staggered release that they do is definitely something they do to maximize their business

It is their approach as it allows them to meet quarterly earnings and whatnot. It's one of the imbalanced features of capitalism.

Personally I think they just need to move their entire thing to digital and charge subscription(like Azyr, but keep it full featured akin to a book). That way they can address things faster and just make a better game. FFG is kinda doing this already(except no subscription I think).

The staggering is a very good point.
By the time say book 12 is released, book 1 is severely under power by comparison.
I fear this will get worse the more they add factions aswell.
We have alot more books to come I'd say and this will only make that issue worse.

I think the core of it though is due to releases.
They want new models with these books, so design time plays a big part in it.
They don't have a dev team working on all armies at once so this will always be the case sadly.




On summoning, I'd like to see it costing points again.
Or, culled as you said so we aren't seeing a greater daemon pop up for free.
I'd also like to see points factored into units that can return dead models to make up for this, just as horrors have.

The issue with the staggering has existed forever, just back then it was you had to wait until a new edition and hope your book was on the schedule (see armies like Bretonnia, may they rest in peace, that had like what maybe 3 updates during their entire lifetime?).

But it is frustrating when the designers have a cool idea midway through, and never go back to retroactively apply it to older factions just add it to the new ones so the old ones get further and further behind and then you have to hope that they decide to update. Like how they are updating Blades of Khorne again to give them endless spells, but there are still battletomes from before even having army specific abilities that haven't even gotten a second book, let alone a third.

But it is frustrating when the designers have a cool idea midway through, and never go back to retroactively apply it to older factions just add it to the new ones so the old ones get further and further behind and then you have to hope that they decide to update. Like how they are updating Blades of Khorne again to give them endless spells, but there are still battletomes from before even having army specific abilities that haven't even gotten a second book, let alone a third.

The question there is twofold: Do GW look at Blades of Khorne as an iconic army that needs a revisit, or are they just viewing it as a low-hanging fruit? Because if it is the latter they could be trying to organize something larger with other books in comparison whereas low-hanging fruits can be shot out to get a little money in the bank. Could also be that they consider Khorne such a large faction(because they were in the original starter) that they feel obligated to update it in fear of losing out all those who bought into AoS at original release.

Because of all the factions I think Destruction needs a lot of new units to bulk up their forces and if GW thinks the same they might want to make a bigger splash release out of it. We of course won't know until they do of course. I can't even remember many Destruction armies in the field except the new Gloomspites who got a large release.

There is also the thing we've all wondered(and feared) which is whether they want to continue certain armies or not due to how they want to build their AoS landscape. Greenskinz are currently out so one has to wonder who might be next.

On that last note, I suspect they have backtracked from having loads of tiny factions and we'll see more combined. Like I fully expect to see the remaining (A)elves rolled up into one, maybe with a Light/Dark style tome split. It's a possibility BCR will be rolled back into Ogor Kingdoms with Gutbusters. Duardin is likely as well, maybe incorporating Fyreslayers (but maybe not).

Now here is how I have addressed these balance issues in my campaigns, which are public events. I have 24-30 players in my campaigns on the regular, and while I have to combat the TFG powergamer guys that don't believe you should ever tone down, my numbers stay high BECAUSE I'm giving attention to something other than LVO or Adepticon power lists.

I don't like having to say "you can't do that". I don't like saying "you can't take those things in your army". So instead of saying no, I try to say "thats fine", and then have scenarios that enforce balance instead.

So I have implemented the sudden death system, which is part of the core rules actually so is not a house rule. I'm taking an existing rule and using it in my scenarios.

For my scenarios, if you at anytime summon or recycle or gain free units that exceed 25% of the game point value (500 points in 2000 points) your opponent gets a sudden death victory condition from the core rules.

If at any time you push out 20 or more mortal wounds in one turn, your opponent gets a sudden death victory condition from the core rules.

If at any time a player has a sudden death victory condition AND THEN also summons 500 or more points or does 20 or more mortal wounds, they lose the sudden death condition.

What this does is at least give players playing a book or faction that is garbage a fighting chance to win scenarios.

Now this has in my powergamer meta about a 75% approval rating. About a quarter of the players that play AOS hate this because they feel I'm invalidating their power army and they don't feel that should ever happen, but I'm ok with that because it does make the lists in our campaigns more diverse and people have honestly had a lot more fun with it, without pushing house rules (I don't see playing narrative style mode to play incorporating existing rules structures in the core rulebook like sudden death as house ruling, its just not pure matched play which my events are not anyway)

As far as balance itself goes I really think it would require a fundamental change in mindset from GW which will never happen (it's had 30 years to happen and really never did already).

They just aren't interested in it. Why I couldn't say. Whether it's sales based or just ignorant/incompetent or the idea that it actually makes the game more interesting I don't know but it's as much a part of Warhammer as anything else.

No they, and the people that love AOS and 40k, are not really interested or care about balance. However if you care about balance, you're going to have to take some matters into your own hands, so this is a good discussion on how to do that.

Ultimately I'd just like to see summoning reigned in a bit and certain things(like Endless spells) banned/limited under certain point costs. I have seen some brutal battles where one player wins the game on the first round because of wonky Endless Spells on the first round. We have an escalation league that only allowed certain things on a higher point level, but even then we had issues with some of the things at 1000 points.

 Eldarsif wrote:
Ultimately I'd just like to see summoning reigned in a bit and certain things(like Endless spells) banned/limited under certain point costs. I have seen some brutal battles where one player wins the game on the first round because of wonky Endless Spells on the first round. We have an escalation league that only allowed certain things on a higher point level, but even then we had issues with some of the things at 1000 points.

Well, part of the issue with summoning is that before when it cost points it was useless and you never really saw it.

What might work is allow you to recycle but not create new. So if you had a unit destroyed you could summon to bring it back, but not add points to your list over the cap. People would still complain, but I don't think it would be quite as broken.

Yeah scale has always been something of a joke. The game is pretty much written for 2000 points. Deviation from that brings problems.

Future War Cultist wrote:I suppose I’m talking about both external balance (faction v faction) and internal balance (different builds within a faction). I want any faction within this game to stand a reasonable chance of defeating another in matched play. No one should suffer an inheriantly weak force that’s doomed to failure before the first unit is even deployed. It’s not right. And as for the second point, every faction should have multiple viable builds. Every unit deserves a decent look in.

That is a nice and workable definition. Props.

Wayniac wrote:
Warhammer players, perhaps more so than players of any other wargame, see to want almost 100% of the "skill" to be in list building and finding that broken combo or insane synergy that lets you just completely crush your opponent. Whether this is picking undercosted units so that your 2000 point list behaves like 3000 points or blatant min-maxing like stacking buffs to get some insane ability (pre-Wrath and Rapture Bloodletter Bomb springs to mind where it was something like you could do mortal wounds on a 3+ with the right buffs), Warhammer players and apparently the designers themselves seem to find nothing wrong with having "must take" and "never take" choices or having choices that completely invalidate other choices within the same book They are okay with combos that can make entire factions nonviable for play because they have no way to deal with them.

I think those players don't actually care about skill, they just say they do (to not look like donkey-caves and/or stroke their own egos). They care about winning before all, not the challenge of the game, not about their opponent enjoying the game; winning by as much as possible is what is important.
NOTE, not saying all or even many Warhammer players are like this, but poor balance in a game attracts that kind of player because they can win without having to do the hard part. They then add toxicity and their kind of "competitive play" to the community and make it difficult or even more unpleasant to not take part in at least a small degree and turn the whole apple crate bad.

That's bad design, but without a fundamental shift in how GW writes rules (which we have been waiting almost 30 years for it to happen), there's no possible way that Warhammer can be balanced because there's no desire to. The crazy combos and units that are just better than other ones and emphasis on winning the game before it begins with an "uber list" are too prevalent across the player base and the design team.

Mostly my take too. I don't think the design team is part of that though. I think their part is either naively believing that players will be nice and want their opponent to have fun (to be fair, the most balanced games of either Warhammer I ever played were no points AoS) or part GW's business practice.

lord_blackfang wrote:The real core issue here is that GW games gameplay is so shallow that list building is rarely more involved than just finding stuff with the best damage output/soak ratio for the points. When that is your only consideration, of course there will be a most efficient unit.

One half of the problem is the unified way units are treated, where there's little functional difference between a dragon and a mob of grots of equal points. They're going to deal similar damage, soak similar damage and degrade at a similar rate no matter what you hit them with. About the only other factor in a unit's statline is speed, which feeds into the second half of the problem:

All the scenarios are about standing on points and preventing your enemy from standing on points. This feeds back into damage/soak being the only meaningful measure of a unit after the initial scramble to reach those points, which is usually decided by who goes first.

Bottm line, the game has no battlefield roles besides "be killy" and "be tanky". If you needed different types of units to accomplish different things then there would be a bigger requirement to make a varied, yet coherent, army list, rather than just taking the most undercosted unit since they all do the same thing anyway.

Yes, more meaningful on table tactical decisions would help.
AoS is largely about big stompy things and epic abilities, which do make it significantly more difficult to balance. A system of stacking buff makes it even worse. Add a company that doesn't even seem to try and this is what you get.

auticus wrote:The staggered release that they do is definitely something they do to maximize their business, which I understand, but its also the #1 reason why their games are a joke in terms of balance and why you have to just accept chasing the meta around.

I would argue that the staggering itself isn't the issue, it's the powercreep. Each new thing is more powerful. It is difficult not to be cynical and explain it as a gakky business practice to sell more of the new releases to take advantage of people willing to chase the meta.
Corvus Belli releases new lists, with entirely new rules and concepts several times a year and they don't have this problem. With the exception of the handful of sectorials (subfactions) that have holdovers from last edition; any list can stand up to the newest thing and reasonably expect to win (baring the new stuff catching one off guard the first time ). Including the sectorials that are OOP! Those got a list update before the mini's were retired.

That balance thing combined with terrible rules writing (most rules arguments would go away if GW just defined and consistently used terms ), then re-actively changing rules to counter "broken lists" and then charging money for books that mostly throw the armies at the back of the powercreep a bone is why I just don't play GW games anymore.

Edit: Excuse me! That turned into a bit of a angry/salty rant. I am that disillusioned with GW though and I don't think GW is going to do better (i know, the next edition/battletome or FAQ will fix things; just like you thought the last one would). There I go again.

Will leave it up though; not sure it it's a glimmer of hope that GW might listen if enough of us speak up or if it's because I hope others will learn that there are other games produced by companies that don't do this gak.

Mostly my take too. I don't think the design team is part of that though. I think their part is either naively believing that players will be nice and want their opponent to have fun (to be fair, the most balanced games of either Warhammer I ever played were no points AoS) or part GW's business practice.

The GW design team for AOS are all tournament players that play in many tournaments a year, to include the big daddy ones in the UK. They know all about tournament player behavior because they themselves are tournament players and they know the iintent of tournaements is to break the game.

In fact a couple years ago it was postulated heavily that because the design team were all tournament players that this would usher in an era of balance never seen before and that the community efforts to comp were not needed. This was a massive talking point on twitter, on the tga forums before i got banned from them (as i participated heavily iin that conversation) and to an extent on dakka in these forums.

And to an extent they were right. The tournament scene sees a fairly diverse list of armies in the top 10. Which I have found is what they mean when they say balanced. When they and the community that love AOS and 40k say balanced what they are looking for is not game-wide balance, they are looking for tournament balance where the top 10 are diverse enough and not the same 2-3 armies. Its generally accepted by they and the community that you need to cycle your army out to whats strong to play the game. When we talk about all factions being balanced and having an equal viable foothold, that is waived off as naive, not possible, or not a priority.

In short, game-wide balance is not something that the tournament community, and therefore the design team, care much about, if at all and is not a metric that they use or even consider.


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I also wager most communities are competitive-bent and this is why it seems that only a few of us are standing on this mountain willing to die on it waving the balance flag, because the competitive-bent communities all understand that as long as tournaments are diverse, they are happy.

The casual campaign for fun players aren't on their radar or its not their problem.

I base that on many interactions daily for years with people from all over the world that all claim their areas are mostly competitive. My input is overwhelmingly in favor of that mindset.

What might work is allow you to recycle but not create new. So if you had a unit destroyed you could summon to bring it back, but not add points to your list over the cap. People would still complain, but I don't think it would be quite as broken.

It would be better. It would at least give you breathing room to attempt to kill the hero before it resummons a dead unit.

Summoning is most definitely a major issue with the game.

If it was up to me, summonable units would be treated a bit like endless spells...you have to pay for them, and they can either be deployed as normal or be called in by successfully casting them, which also means that they can be dispelled. And they can also be ‘banished’...as in an enemy unit that can attempt dispells can roll against their casting value in place of casting a spell, and if they beat it, the unit takes mortal wounds. But if the unit is destroyed then you can always attempt to bring it back by casting them.

I suggest this because as powerful as endless spells are, they have never seemed op to me. And the fact that they are fully paid for might have something to do with it.

You are talking about the reserve system which GW already tried. Summoning used to go off of reserve points. And none of the players ever used it. Because to the community at large if summoning isn't free then it isn't really a bonus and that just means part of your army isn't deploying and you are smaller and therefore easier to kill.

Thats why the desiign team changed it. Because no one was using reserve points pretty much ever.

Or "its not FUN if it isn't also FREE"

auticus wrote:
You are talking about the reserve system which GW already tried. Summoning used to go off of reserve points. And none of the players ever used it. Because to the community at large if summoning isn't free then it isn't really a bonus and that just means part of your army isn't deploying and you are smaller and therefore easier to kill.

Thats why the desiign team changed it. Because no one was using reserve points pretty much ever.

Or "its not FUN if it isn't also FREE"

Which to be fair is not wrong. 40k still uses reinforcement points and you rarely, if ever, see summoning there as well.

auticus wrote:

Mostly my take too. I don't think the design team is part of that though. I think their part is either naively believing that players will be nice and want their opponent to have fun (to be fair, the most balanced games of either Warhammer I ever played were no points AoS) or part GW's business practice.

The GW design team for AOS are all tournament players that play in many tournaments a year, to include the big daddy ones in the UK. They know all about tournament player behavior because they themselves are tournament players and they know the iintent of tournaements is to break the game.

In fact a couple years ago it was postulated heavily that because the design team were all tournament players that this would usher in an era of balance never seen before and that the community efforts to comp were not needed. This was a massive talking point on twitter, on the tga forums before i got banned from them (as i participated heavily iin that conversation) and to an extent on dakka in these forums.

And to an extent they were right. The tournament scene sees a fairly diverse list of armies in the top 10. Which I have found is what they mean when they say balanced. When they and the community that love AOS and 40k say balanced what they are looking for is not game-wide balance, they are looking for tournament balance where the top 10 are diverse enough and not the same 2-3 armies. Its generally accepted by they and the community that you need to cycle your army out to whats strong to play the game. When we talk about all factions being balanced and having an equal viable foothold, that is waived off as naive, not possible, or not a priority.

In short, game-wide balance is not something that the tournament community, and therefore the design team, care much about, if at all and is not a metric that they use or even consider.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I also wager most communities are competitive-bent and this is why it seems that only a few of us are standing on this mountain willing to die on it waving the balance flag, because the competitive-bent communities all understand that as long as tournaments are diverse, they are happy.

The casual campaign for fun players aren't on their radar or its not their problem.

I base that on many interactions daily for years with people from all over the world that all claim their areas are mostly competitive. My input is overwhelmingly in favor of that mindset.

In regards to the last points there, players can be both.
I attend a fair few tournaments each year, but I also love casual play.
Some sadly can't differentiate between the 2.
My local meta isn't too bad, but that's because there's a general understanding that it's casual lists unless we have a tournament, then it's just pure brutality.

I'd love to be able to run a fluffy list in tournaments, but most fluffy lists are going nowhere.
Kind of annoyed as my skryre were my pride and joy and I played them a ton, and then the 1st GHB happened and they became broken and no fun to use casually.
Even a poorly built skryre army caused heavy damage.

Then on the flipside, I'm now building a moulder army and even in casual play, it will struggle alot.


The issue with going for as best balance as possible is that you do away with competitive and casual play, it just becomes a game.
So I can see that too muchbalance e can hamper it to a degree, but it currently needs alot more.

For my money, there shouldn't be a "tone down" at all. The rules should indicate what a valid list is and you should operate within those confines.

Thats how I play kings of war, battletech, warlords, and any other game I've ever played and its largely been ok.

Thing is though, I the old system, did you have to pay points for a single unit and that’s that? Because in my system you pay the points for the unit, but you can keep bringing it back as many times as you want. Like an endless spell.

You pay 120pts for a unit of plague bearers, deploy it or summon it, it fights, it’s destroyed, you summon it again, and so on and so forth. Contagion points are used to return dead demons to the unit, even beyound it’s starting number. So it’s like a slight hybrid of the systems.

auticus wrote:
For my money, there shouldn't be a "tone down" at all. The rules should indicate what a valid list is and you should operate within those confines.

Thats how I play kings of war, battletech, warlords, and any other game I've ever played and its largely been ok.

That's the issue though.
Alot of people like that the same game can go from highly competitive to a beer and pretzels type of game just by altering lists.
If you remove any form of that and leave only a single way to play, alot of people will dislike it.

Now that's not because they are a WAAC power gamer or a casual only player, but it's because there is simply no variety in it anymore.
I think that's one reason GW has alot of success despite wonky rules.

This game is not balanced and never will be. the closest you can get is by
a: create pre made lists for all players that are +- on par.

b: both players powerplay as hard as they can. This has given me the most interesting games and I would say pts cost is derived from ultra competitive play and often does not make any sense when certain combos are not present.

c:?

Just imagine that you have a chess game where you could bring what you wanted. even with an attached pts cost, you would never see a standard start game, and you would have very unbalanced games even if the pts are even. This is basically what warhammer is doing, and then not even giving both sides access to the same stuff or kind of stuff, inventing mind blowing abilities that are next to impossible to put pts on, combinations that should cost more but if not put together should cost less.. etc...

Saying that summoning is broken, I agree, but I also have to say all new armies are getting a lot of broken combos to do something about it (skaven, IDK eel spam, DoK) also seeing the new FEC I would say summoning is getting nerfed next GHB, last summoning rules update were in the last GHB after all and not in the core rules.

In a more balanced system, you have more viable builds thus more viable ways to play, not a single way to play.

I don't personally understand the difference between highly competitive and beer & pretzels. Its still about fielding a force and trying to win with it.

There is a ton of variety if you have a balanced system.

auticus wrote:
In a more balanced system, you have more viable builds thus more viable ways to play, not a single way to play.

I don't personally understand the difference between highly competitive and beer & pretzels. Its still about fielding a force and trying to win with it.

There is a ton of variety if you have a balanced system.

I don't know about "tons" but certainly more than Warhammer's "one build to rule them all" in tournaments and most units being completely outclassed such that you actively reduce your chance of winning just for not picking them.

Not AOS related but slightly balance related GW today put up a community article about how to expand the new 40k Shadowspear box for Matched Play. They suggested taking 3x10 squads of Chaos Space Marines (CSM are in the "barely playable" category right now in 40k). They were lambasted on Facebook for giving such terrible advice and promptly started to delete negative comments (surprise, surprise). This is sort of what is happening, and the opposite is what should: There shouldn't be a situation like this where if you like Chaos Space Marines (feel free to substitute with any nonperforming AOS unit instead) you will automatically be at a disadvantage simply because of liking that unit. And yet, this is way too common in Warhammer as a whole. A small fraction of each book is actually viable and, perhaps worst of all, these glaring inconsistencies and imbalances are often found within hours of a book release, if not before it even releases when leaks inevitably come. That questions just what GW is doing to playtest if people are discovering pretty basic issues immediately yet a team of "professional" designers haven't discovered them during playtesting. Most of the things discovered aren't even hidden gems or require comparing many different things, they are very basic that even an inexperienced player could see.

That's bad balance.

auticus wrote:
In a more balanced system, you have more viable builds thus more viable ways to play, not a single way to play.

I don't personally understand the difference between highly competitive and beer & pretzels. Its still about fielding a force and trying to win with it.

There is a ton of variety if you have a balanced system.

Then I think that's the issue.
GW is a successful company and AoS has done insanely well despite it's poor start - This is pure facts based on sales.

However, alot of that is because it's not just a so gel way of playing.
Fielding a force multiple ways is not the same as a tournament list compared to a casual game list.


I'm happy to take the most broken crap I can to a tournament because that's the setting there.
You expect stupid lists that abuse the system as heavily as possible.

If I go into my local GW for a pickup game though, I'm not going to run a list anywhere near similar.
I'll be running something more based around fluff and looks than sheer effectiveness.


Now, this is in no way an insult towards you, but not being able to see the difference kind of makes this discussion pointless.
For alot of people, the draw to it is that they can either have fun casual games or hard hitting tournaments.
This way it appeals to far more of the players than a single strict way of playing.

As I said, this is in no way an insult to you, I'm just trying to explain it the best I can.
From your statement about playing to win, I'd say that's more of the tournament style than the typical beer and pretzels type of play.

I've played in casual campaigns most of my life. Despite the players there not being tournament players, no one is playing to lose. Thats why I don't understand the difference.

The biggest fundamental difference I note is that casual for fun recognizes that there are X number of ways to build a list, but tournament player only uses X(.1) or 10% of the game and casual for fun player wants a larger diversity of builds to keep their attention, not see the same .1 of the game every day untiil burn out happens and they find something else to do.

The most fundamental flaw in designing a game where you expect people to tone down is there is nothing making someone tone down. Nothing stops someone from making a jacked up list, so long as it is in the rules that lets them do it.

And when I say "please tone down", what does that mean?

You can ask 20 people that question and get 20 different answers.

Breaking your statement down further "for a lot of people the draw is that they can either have fun casual games or hard hitting tournaments"

This denotes you have List A and List B. List A iis hard hitting tournament. List B iis fun casual game.

Now if the game were actually balanced, you could field List A or List B in either hard hiitting tournament OR fun casual game. You are literally losing nothing here. You would still be able to field either List A or List B, iin both environments, as opposed to needing to filter it out iin one or the other.

With the added benefit that you no longer have to negotiate what "toning down" means or have to deal with 20 interpretations of "toning down" on game night. Everyone can just buiild a list and play.

You can still play the same in tournaments OR in casual for fun games. Nothing is lost. Other than it would be impossible to go teabag the casuals and let them nom nom on the sweaty stank of the powerlist's taint any longer (and people would be losiing games on the merit that they are inferior players as opposed to them liking the inferior models)

Why would it be superior and a draw to a game to have environments where you should have to take certain types of lists as opposed to more viable lists on even ground? Why is it superior and a draw to say that thiis game requires you to bring a power list to tournament and thiis game requires you to play a nebulous "toned down" liist somewhere else? I don't see how that is a draw. What I see that doing is attracting tournament players and powergamers and running off casual players or campaign players to other games (this is where someone steps in and says they are a casual gamer and they love it, which iis fine, but I don't think that that is a majority) because running a power list is an easy standard, whereas "toned down" is a nebulous subjective term that can mean taking a list that does 1% less mortal wounds to someone so thats "toned down" (when in reality its still just as filthy)

It's not about the difference between it, it's that a game as unbalanced Warhammer the list you bring to your local GW for a pickup game might be head and shoulders better than anything your opponent can field, simply because you happened to choose an army that has/had a good release.

Case in point, my primary army is Flesh-Eater Courts. I started them right around when the first General's Handbook came out, and (IMHO) they were very poor at the time so much that my army was considered a joke and the sort of army you played against for an "easy win"

Now though, FEC got a major boost. If I were to bring even a casual list to the GW, I could end up curbstomping someone because my army is now considered very powerful, if not "OP" through no fault of my own.

That's the danger of an unbalanced system like Warhammer. What's casual today might be OP tomorrow, regardless of if you're playing a tournament list or a casual one, and you could be ruining someone's fun because you like Unit X and it just so happens the latest release made Unit X very good.

auticus wrote:
I've played in casual campaigns most of my life. Despite the players there not being tournament players, no one is playing to lose. Thats why I don't understand the difference.

The biggest fundamental difference I note is that casual for fun recognizes that there are X number of ways to build a list, but tournament player only uses X(.1) or 10% of the game and casual for fun player wants a larger diversity of builds to keep their attention, not see the same .1 of the game every day untiil burn out happens and they find something else to do.

The most fundamental flaw in designing a game where you expect people to tone down is there is nothing making someone tone down. Nothing stops someone from making a jacked up list, so long as it is in the rules that lets them do it.

And when I say "please tone down", what does that mean?

You can ask 20 people that question and get 20 different answers.

Breaking your statement down further "for a lot of people the draw is that they can either have fun casual games or hard hitting tournaments"

This denotes you have List A and List B. List A iis hard hitting tournament. List B iis fun casual game.

Now if the game were actually balanced, you could field List A or List B in either hard hiitting tournament OR fun casual game. You are literally losing nothing here. You would still be able to field either List A or List B, iin both environments, as opposed to needing to filter it out iin one or the other.

With the added benefit that you no longer have to negotiate what "toning down" means or have to deal with 20 interpretations of "toning down" on game night. Everyone can just buiild a list and play.

You can still play the same in tournaments OR in casual for fun games. Nothing is lost. Other than it would be impossible to go teabag the casuals and let them nom nom on the sweaty stank of the powerlist's taint any longer (and people would be losiing games on the merit that they are inferior players as opposed to them liking the inferior models)

Why would it be superior and a draw to a game to have environments where you should have to take certain types of lists as opposed to more viable lists on even ground? Why is it superior and a draw to say that thiis game requires you to bring a power list to tournament and thiis game requires you to play a nebulous "toned down" liist somewhere else? I don't see how that is a draw. What I see that doing is attracting tournament players and powergamers and running off casual players or campaign players to other games (this is where someone steps in and says they are a casual gamer and they love it, which iis fine, but I don't think that that is a majority) because running a power list is an easy standard, whereas "toned down" is a nebulous subjective term that can mean taking a list that does 1% less mortal wounds to someone so thats "toned down" (when in reality its still just as filthy)

Wait, so this game isn't for casual players?
You realise that the majority of people that buy GWs products are causal, right?
Some don't even play atall.
If you removed the casual players GWs yearly profits suddenly wouldn't look so great.

Alot of players play this game for the setting and the background of armies aswell.
People don't literally just think "I must always win"
And no, people don't only play the game to win.
People play the game to have fun and enjoy themselves.
While to some, winning is the fun part, that doesn't apply to everyone.

I've picked bottom of the barrel armies before to take to tournaments.
Did I expect to win it? Hardly.
I did it because I found alot of fun in using an army that no one else there had taken and it was different.



Essentially, your saying it should only be a tournament style game and nothing else.
I think if that's how GW went with it, alot of people would just stop playing.
Not everyone wants dead serious games all the time where they strive to win, no matter what.

I've known quite a few clubs to have AoS nights where you simply go along for some fun games, grab a pizza and have a few drinks.
While I love the tournament setting and atmosphere, nights like that really are good fun.

I'm still not understanding how if the game is a lot better balanced and there are more viable armies that suddenly going to club night to have pizza and drinks and having fun games is suddenly not possible.

Nor do I understand how if the game has a lot better balance that that is the same as being dead serious all the time. I don't understand how needing the game to be this lopsided promotes fun and pizza and drinks and being less serious or how you cannot do any of those things if the game was more balanced.

The last tournament I played in was in 2007. I am the last person on earth that wants the game to be nothing but a tournament game.

auticus wrote:
I'm still not understanding how if the game is a lot better balanced and there are more viable armies that suddenly going to club night to have pizza and drinks and having fun games is suddenly not possible.

Nor do I understand how if the game has a lot better balance that that is the same as being dead serious all the time. I don't understand how needing the game to be this lopsided promotes fun and pizza and drinks and being less serious or how you cannot do any of those things if the game was more balanced.

Because the second you make everything 100% serious it does kill the fun for some people.
As you said in the previous post, you play just to win.
That's not everyone else's mindset.
You said yourself you had was it 350 complaints because it was too balanced? I'd wager alot of those were casual players.

Tournament players love it and hell, the second I saw your comp I managed to push it into my groups tournaments with ease as it was perfect for that.
I'm not saying that armies should be poorly balanced, I'm saying that it shouldn't have to be deadly serious made to win armies the whole time

auticus wrote:

Mostly my take too. I don't think the design team is part of that though. I think their part is either naively believing that players will be nice and want their opponent to have fun (to be fair, the most balanced games of either Warhammer I ever played were no points AoS) or part GW's business practice.

The GW design team for AOS are all tournament players that play in many tournaments a year, to include the big daddy ones in the UK. They know all about tournament player behavior because they themselves are tournament players and they know the iintent of tournaements is to break the game.

In fact a couple years ago it was postulated heavily that because the design team were all tournament players that this would usher in an era of balance never seen before and that the community efforts to comp were not needed. This was a massive talking point on twitter, on the tga forums before i got banned from them (as i participated heavily iin that conversation) and to an extent on dakka in these forums.

I stand corrected. Thats even worse than I thought.

And to an extent they were right. The tournament scene sees a fairly diverse list of armies in the top 10. Which I have found is what they mean when they say balanced. When they and the community that love AOS and 40k say balanced what they are looking for is not game-wide balance, they are looking for tournament balance where the top 10 are diverse enough and not the same 2-3 armies. Its generally accepted by they and the community that you need to cycle your army out to whats strong to play the game. When we talk about all factions being balanced and having an equal viable foothold, that is waived off as naive, not possible, or not a priority...

Yet other games manage.

Future War Cultist wrote:Summoning is most definitely a major issue with the game.

If it was up to me, summonable units would be treated a bit like endless spells...you have to pay for them, and they can either be deployed as normal or be called in by successfully casting them, which also means that they can be dispelled. And they can also be ‘banished’...as in an enemy unit that can attempt dispells can roll against their casting value in place of casting a spell, and if they beat it, the unit takes mortal wounds. But if the unit is destroyed then you can always attempt to bring it back by casting them.

I suggest this because as powerful as endless spells are, they have never seemed op to me. And the fact that they are fully paid for might have something to do with it.

The only times I've seen summoning be remotely balanced (kinda) is in games with action economy, like Malifaux. So summoning comes with an opportunity cost.

auticus wrote:For my money, there shouldn't be a "tone down" at all. The rules should indicate what a valid list is and you should operate within those confines.

Thats how I play kings of war, battletech, warlords, and any other game I've ever played and its largely been ok.

That's the thing. The casual vs competitive problem is only a problem if a game isn't balanced. I can bring the same list KoW list to a tournament or a casual game and not crush or be crushed because one of us misjudged what the other guys army is capable of (or someone decides to be an donkey-cave).
One of the worst games of Warhammer that I ever had I steamrolled a guy because his army simply couldn't deal with mine, I wasn't even trying.

Jackal90 wrote:

auticus wrote:
In a more balanced system, you have more viable builds thus more viable ways to play, not a single way to play.

I don't personally understand the difference between highly competitive and beer & pretzels. Its still about fielding a force and trying to win with it.

There is a ton of variety if you have a balanced system.

Then I think that's the issue.
GW is a successful company and AoS has done insanely well despite it's poor start - This is pure facts based on sales.

However, alot of that is because it's not just a so gel way of playing.
Fielding a force multiple ways is not the same as a tournament list compared to a casual game list.

I'm happy to take the most broken crap I can to a tournament because that's the setting there.
You expect stupid lists that abuse the system as heavily as possible.

If I go into my local GW for a pickup game though, I'm not going to run a list anywhere near similar.
I'll be running something more based around fluff and looks than sheer effectiveness.

Now, this is in no way an insult towards you, but not being able to see the difference kind of makes this discussion pointless.
For alot of people, the draw to it is that they can either have fun casual games or hard hitting tournaments.
This way it appeals to far more of the players than a single strict way of playing.

As I said, this is in no way an insult to you, I'm just trying to explain it the best I can.
From your statement about playing to win, I'd say that's more of the tournament style than the typical beer and pretzels type of play.

You've entirely missed the point. How weak is a "fun casual list" exactly? Chances are someone is losing that game because their fluffy stuff is weaker or one player didn't tone it down as much as the other.
If your game is balanced though, you both bring an army and you know they're quite close to equal in power because they are the same number of points (shocking, right!? Who would have imagined?), then you can both take it seriously and try to test your skills or have a beer and a laugh and not think too hard.
People try to win even casual games, even if it's secondary. If you want to insist that you sometimes don't, then please explain what the feth you do? Grow turnips? Pretend your models are having a conversation? Trying to get objectives or destroy the other army is trying to win, even if you're not too fussed.

Jackal90 wrote:
Wait, so this game isn't for casual players?
You realise that the majority of people that buy GWs products are causal, right?
Some don't even play atall.

Those wouldn't be players, now would they?

If you removed the casual players GWs yearly profits suddenly wouldn't look so great.

Citation needed.

Alot of players play this game for the setting and the background of armies aswell.
People don't literally just think "I must always win"
And no, people don't only play the game to win.
People play the game to have fun and enjoy themselves.
While to some, winning is the fun part, that doesn't apply to everyone.

See above. It's not much of a game if no one goes for the scenario.

I've picked bottom of the barrel armies before to take to tournaments.
Did I expect to win it? Hardly.
I did it because I found alot of fun in using an army that no one else there had taken and it was different.

Essentially, your saying it should only be a tournament style game and nothing else.
I think if that's how GW went with it, alot of people would just stop playing.
Not everyone wants dead serious games all the time where they strive to win, no matter what.

I've known quite a few clubs to have AoS nights where you simply go along for some fun games, grab a pizza and have a few drinks.
While I love the tournament setting and atmosphere, nights like that really are good fun.

That's not what he's saying. Casual gaming is just as possible and more fun when some of the armies don't happen to be more powerful for no good reason.
Also helps if that guy can't abuse the game easily.

Final note. A lot is two words. Do you say alittle, abit, aspacemarine, apoint or aporkchop? (yep, credit to The Oatmeal)
"Your" means that you are about to mention a thing that belongs to the person you are talking to. If you are too lazy to type out or say "you are" then your're going to use a ' to show that you left stuff out.

Edit: Warhammer threads bring out the worst in me, I will stop now.

Fair points but who plays a game to LOSE?

Aren't we all playing to win in some way, even if it's not serious business tournament play? Do people really go to play a game and not care if they get their teeth kicked in game after game after game?

As you said in the previous post, you play just to win.

I have never said I play just to win. I said I don't play to lose.

Additionally I don't see how having a ruleset that is balanced has anything to do with serious or not serious. I can have just as much a siilly time with a balanced ruleset as I can with a lopsided GW ruleset. I have casual games with Kings of War and wiith Middle Earth. Those have much tighter rulesets.

I don't think if GW had a more balanced ruleset where there were more viable options that people would be like "woah. hold on guys... this is a little too serious for my liking".

What it would accomplish however is to narrow the gap between "competitive players and casual players". Because competitive player is just another word for player that min/maxes and casual player is just another word for player that does not min/max.

I'll start by answering your last point.
I'm currently at work and using my phone to post, which also has a cracked screen.
While I do check through it, auto-correct likes to change it as I go.
So it's not so much lazy as it is having a beaten to death phone and a small screen.




In regards to citation needed, why? It's common sense.
If casual players stopped then GW would lose profit.
That's not something that needs any proof as it's quite simply common sense.
Now, if I said they would lose X% amount each year, then I would need to show how I worked that out.


In regards to playing to win, no, I play to socialise with people and have fun, winning isn't always the primary reason for playing.


I'm guessing by your further comments there that you maybe don't get out much around other humans, I'd work on those social skills a bit, it will go a long way.
If warhammer threads bring out the worst in you then it's an issue with you and no one else.
The fact you know that then wander through them by choice is down to you.


Before I offend you further by not quoting and answering in blocked sections as you have, I'm using a phone.
Breaking it into sections will have me here all night.

Wayniac wrote:
Fair points but who plays a game to LOSE?

Aren't we all playing to win in some way, even if it's not serious business tournament play? Do people really go to play a game and not care if they get their teeth kicked in game after game after game?

As someone who gets their teeth kicked in regularly (I can count the number of games of aos I’ve won on one hand...literally) in both tournaments and casual play I can tell you, it gets really grating after a while. It really does sap your enjoyment for the game because you spend more time setting up and watching your opponent rolling dice than you do actually playing.

Everyone else has an ‘easy’ mode that literally just deletes units on the trot. By circumstance, I never have these options, and what’s more, they insist upon bringing these options out for every single game. “Causal game you say? No matter, I’m summoning Riperdactyls within 3” of you anyway, to destroy whatever my twin star engines leave behind.”

Even if they didn’t, they could argue that by not bringing that option, anything I do will be a hollow victory because they ‘threw’ the game. And this is the kicker. I shouldn’t have to shelf my armies and start over with a faction I don’t care about just to stand a chance of actually winning for once. Even in bloody “casual’ games.

And therein lies the madness of GW's rulesets (LotR a notable exception) A balanced game benefits all levels of play.

This artificial Casual vs Competitive nonsense is just a construct to excuse terrible rules (Some of the nastiest balance travesties have been the most lore accurate forces many times).

A side effect of the almost insurmountable lead GW has from being the biggest show in town from the beginning. As the most played game we forgive/excuse the quality as it's the easiest to find opponents for wherever you go.

auticus wrote:

As you said in the previous post, you play just to win.

I have never said I play just to win. I said I don't play to lose.

Additionally I don't see how having a ruleset that is balanced has anything to do with serious or not serious. I can have just as much a siilly time with a balanced ruleset as I can with a lopsided GW ruleset. I have casual games with Kings of War and wiith Middle Earth. Those have much tighter rulesets.

I don't think if GW had a more balanced ruleset where there were more viable options that people would be like "woah. hold on guys... this is a little too serious for my liking".

What it would accomplish however is to narrow the gap between "competitive players and casual players". Because competitive player is just another word for player that min/maxes and casual player is just another word for player that does not min/max.

^This

Jackal90 wrote:
I'm guessing by your further comments there that you maybe don't get out much around other humans, I'd work on those social skills a bit, it will go a long way.

That's just gakky of you.
I said I would stop and I'm basically just agreeing with auticus.

The compromise between free summoning and reserve points is players dedicating X points of their list as reserve, which allows one to summon in 2X points during the game. That is still strong and IMO could be implimented right now with no other changes and would improve balance dramatically without over-nerfing anyone.

As for MW spam, I feel the best way would be to simply stop giving them out so easily. IMO, way too many things do d3 mortal wounds when it should just be 1, and way too many things do d6 when it should be d3. And nothing should be dealing flat increments of 6 MWs unless it is from a demigod-level character like Skarbrand, Morathi, Nagash, etc. Why do spells always need to deal MWs? Why to so many '6 to hit' mechanics need to deal MWs? Make a 6 to hit wound automatically. Make a spell inflict X wounds at rend -3, Y damage. There is so much room for 'in between' mechanics that is not used at all and the game would be better if it were.

The easy house rule solution would be to, say, make all MWs in excess of 1% the points value (so 20 for 2000 points) become regular wounds at rend X, 1 damage. The problem I have with auticus' method is that a player with reasonable MW output could just happen to roll well in a given turn, do 21 mortal wounds, and get unjustifiably screwed when his army was not overpowered in the first place.

 DarkBlack wrote:

auticus wrote:

As you said in the previous post, you play just to win.

I have never said I play just to win. I said I don't play to lose.

Additionally I don't see how having a ruleset that is balanced has anything to do with serious or not serious. I can have just as much a siilly time with a balanced ruleset as I can with a lopsided GW ruleset. I have casual games with Kings of War and wiith Middle Earth. Those have much tighter rulesets.

I don't think if GW had a more balanced ruleset where there were more viable options that people would be like "woah. hold on guys... this is a little too serious for my liking".

What it would accomplish however is to narrow the gap between "competitive players and casual players". Because competitive player is just another word for player that min/maxes and casual player is just another word for player that does not min/max.

^This

Jackal90 wrote:
I'm guessing by your further comments there that you maybe don't get out much around other humans, I'd work on those social skills a bit, it will go a long way.

That's just gakky of you.
I said I would stop and I'm basically just agreeing with auticus.

His very 1st post at the top of the page states you play to win.

I never denied there were balance issues.
The new FeC push these issues even further, I really feel sorry for any player running an army like overlords against them.

It wouldn't however narrow the gap as such, it would remove it altogether if everything was purely set to a complete balance (or atleast best possible)



So you drop constant gakky comments towards me in your post then say it was gakky of me?
My apologies if any feelings were hurt in the process of reading that then, good sir.

If it was wrong of him to be gakky, it was wrong of you to be gakky.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
If it was wrong of him to be gakky, it was wrong of you to be gakky.

I simply treat others how they treat me.
While it was wrong (and 2 wrongs don't make a right and all that) I'm still going to dig back.
Its all in jest anyway.

The problem I have with auticus' method is that a player with reasonable MW output could just happen to roll well in a given turn, do 21 mortal wounds, and get unjustifiably screwed when his army was not overpowered in the first place.

We are implementing a new piece for that actually where after the 20th MW you can choose to make the remainder just be regular wounds that get regular saves.

To my great surprise, it took a full page and a half before this thread degenerated into name calling and insults directed at people for playing the game for other reasons than you do.

So do most people only have one list they play at all times regardless of what kind of game their playing? auticus mentioned a List A for match play and List B for casual. I have about 2500 points of Khorne Bloodbound and at least that much in Slaves to Darkness to run with them at this point along with few Khorne Daemons for good measure. I do that because I like the models, and it's nice to be able to tailor my list to my opponent. If someone brings in a tournament-caliber list, the Bloodthirsters come out. If they're bringing in their old Dwarf army they've had since 5th edition, I'll use mostly Chaos Warriors of Khorne with a Bloodsecrator and Mighty Lord. Toning down a list doesn't mean you're "playing to lose", it means you're bringing a list that your opponent has a chance against.

I often wonder if true balance can be achieved with the current mechanics of the game. The whole IGYG system the game currently uses as opposed to alternating unit actions. For the record, I think IGYG is out of date, but it’s currently entrenched and changing it is a whole new area of discussion.

Also, mortal wounds are thrown out way too often. Way way way too often. But also mortal wound cancelling effects also seem too common. It’s a pain in the ass watching all your hard earned damaged blocked by saves upon saves upon saves.

Question; what gives DoK their extra saves (name and fluff reason), and does anyone else agree that they need big point hikes to offset their op abilities? It really really really bugs the hole off of me when the DoK outnumber me 2 to 1 despite the fact that they’re also roughly 2 to 3 times as powerful as my units on an individual basis. In effect, it feels like you’re playing an army that’s literally triple your points. And it’s...it’s gak.

Now again, I don’t believe in nerfs. Just fair points cost. You know 10 wytch elves are cheaper than 10 arkanauts, despite being superior in damn near every single way. That’s bs.

Jackal90 wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
If it was wrong of him to be gakky, it was wrong of you to be gakky.

I simply treat others how they treat me.
While it was wrong (and 2 wrongs don't make a right and all that) I'm still going to dig back.
Its all in jest anyway.

Ah, you have me there.


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 Future War Cultist wrote:
I often wonder if true balance can be achieved with the current mechanics of the game. The whole IGYG system the game currently uses as opposed to alternating unit actions. For the record, I think IGYG is out of date, but it’s currently entrenched and changing it is a whole new area of discussion.

Alternate unit activation would change how the game functions on a fundamental level though, it would not be 'AoS but with X change' it would be a completely different game entirely. For me personally it is also incredibly non-immersive. I can get behind the idea of one army surging forward and doing a bunch of stuff while the other is on the backfoot, then retaliates. But one unit running up and doing stuff while everyone waits?

Alternate by phase on the other hand works extremely well with the changes needed being much smaller. There needs to be two combat phases (since you fight twice per round) and abilities that expire on the end of turn/are used once per turn need to be tweaked (we do it by calling the second combat phase a separate 'turn' for purposes of ability use). A number of movement tactics not otherwise in place open up and that changes the game, and some per-battleshock-phase abilities are trickly to re-balance. But it still plays like AoS and still feels like AoS.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

Jackal90 wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
If it was wrong of him to be gakky, it was wrong of you to be gakky.

I simply treat others how they treat me.
While it was wrong (and 2 wrongs don't make a right and all that) I'm still going to dig back.
Its all in jest anyway.

Ah, you have me there.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Future War Cultist wrote:
I often wonder if true balance can be achieved with the current mechanics of the game. The whole IGYG system the game currently uses as opposed to alternating unit actions. For the record, I think IGYG is out of date, but it’s currently entrenched and changing it is a whole new area of discussion.

Alternate unit activation would change how the game functions on a fundamental level though, it would not be 'AoS but with X change' it would be a completely different game entirely. For me personally it is also incredibly non-immersive. I can get behind the idea of one army surging forward and doing a bunch of stuff while the other is on the backfoot, then retaliates. But one unit running up and doing stuff while everyone waits?

Alternate by phase on the other hand works extremely well with the changes needed being much smaller. There needs to be two combat phases (since you fight twice per round) and abilities that expire on the end of turn/are used once per turn need to be tweaked (we do it by calling the second combat phase a separate 'turn' for purposes of ability use). A number of movement tactics not otherwise in place open up and that changes the game, and some per-battleshock-phase abilities are trickly to re-balance. But it still plays like AoS and still feels like AoS.

Getting jabbed at in an online forum really is nothing to worry about, my skin is far to thick to be irritated by it.



The alternating activation worked well for epic I feel.
However, that was very different and revolved mainly around shooting.
I also think there are far too many mechanics in play to let it run smoothly.
The average game would drag on alot longer.

Epic is still a solid game though, but the rules for it were simple and to the point.

We use alt activation. By overwhelming vote wanting that because the hate for double turn is strong where I am.

A agree the Ninth on alternating activations. I think it changes too much about the game to just be thrown in on top of existing rules. I also fully agree on the immersion factor. It feels very "game-y" to me. Alternating phases has been pretty successful around here.

auticus wrote:
We use alt activation. By overwhelming vote wanting that because the hate for double turn is strong where I am.

What kind of alternating activation? In regards to double turn it is as simple as putting objective control to the end of the round then alternating turns.


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 EnTyme wrote:
A agree the Ninth on alternating activations. I think it changes too much about the game to just be thrown in on top of existing rules. I also fully agree on the immersion factor. It feels very "game-y" to me. Alternating phases has been pretty successful around here.

Something my mind drifts to first when considering alternate unit activation is my Nurgle army. The very core of the strategy is a consistent line of units next to each other, advancing together such that no one part can be engaged separately. Alternate by unit I cannot do that. I go with one unit first and that unit can get jumped and engaged before my other units move up. If I run with one unit and get a good roll, I do not know how far to move up because the other units may not roll as high. It takes my entire turn to get what is supposed to be a steadily advancing line of troops up to where I want them, piecemeal, with my enemy getting a chance to disrupt that after every move.

That is strictly tactical stuff, without getting into abilities like, say, a Beastlord. He has a command ability that can be triggered when he kills a enemy model, granting an AoE buff around him. The use is that he charges alongside some other units, goes first and kills something, then triggers the ability. But in alternate unit activation this means he must charge in, by himself, then trigger the ability to buff units that may or may not be in range and/or in combat, assuming he does not get immediately ganked and slain for being a 5-wound character that just charged in by himself.

There is also listbuilding. 3 units of 3 jezzails is suddenly much worse than 1 unit of 9 jezzails, because that unit gets to activate all at once and thus six of them will be shooting earlier in the phase than they would otherwise. Death star shooting units in general become incredibly strong because of that.

I think alternating activation works better for AoS than 40k as AoS tends to have fewer but larger blobs due to its Warhammer Fantasy roots, or rather, a MSU squad that costs 45-50 points isn't as common in AoS.

Regarding general balance I do think that if people wanted balance the game would have to be toned down as currently we have such a level of lethality(40k suffers from this even moreso) that if you happen on a bad turn you could have lost half your army to one of those epic turns where your opponent gets nothing but 6.

Interestingly enough I have been playing Batman miniature game of late and I have found the system to be an interesting alternative. Although I don't foresee AoS work in a skirmish-like manner like Batman there is a different level of lethality and scoring tends to be different. I am especially fan of how differing scores can result in a tie as long as the score between player A and player B isn't too different. So if I were to score 29 points whereas my opponent scores 33 points it would result in a tie. This tends to force people to play harder for objectives instead of going for the kill as you need a proper lead on the score to actually win a match.

I once got tabled but won on objectives, pretty fun and I'm very glad that is a thing in AoS. Like... If there's an objective, that's the objective. I shouldn't be able to win by doing something else.

What kind of alternating activation? In regards to double turn it is as simple as putting objective control to the end of the round then alternating turns.

Double turn isn't simple, its infuriating. Its you standing there for two turns doing nothing but removing models. It is the single worst mechanic I have ever encountered in wargaming ever.

Alternating action as in the form you don't like much. We voted on keeping turns the AOS way (double turn), alternating phases, or alternating action on a unit (unit completely activates from hero phase down to end of combat phase) and then roll off to see who activates next unit (so kind of double turn but not an entire turn)

The unit activation won by a landslide. When I finish the campaign packet I'll post it, you can check it out. I know you aren't a fan of that but it'll explain better.

Have used it now two years in a row and I find it works great. The game is a lot of fun and it even handles the alpha strike love that GW has by lessening its impact (since you aren't standing there with your hand on your **** watching as you are getting uppercut by a unit you can't do anything about since it just showed up and charged wherever it wanted)

Sorry I meant fixing it is as simple as...

And I really cannot imagine how alternate unit activation works without changing the game completely. For example, how would you deal with any.of the examples I gave?

It doesn't change the game at all other than the flow.

You activate the unit. It does its hero phase. It does its movement phase. it does its shooting phase. It charges in. It fights.

Your units can respond to one charge per turn to fight back (allowing them to both charge and counter fight, essentially fighting twice in a turn just like normal AOS).

After that is done you roll to see who activates again. Then that continues.

At the end of it all you do one battleshock instead of two. Thats the primary difference.

It does make it a different game. For us - a vastly more desirable game that is more than just overwhelming someone else with math and mortal wounds. It play similarly to bolt action and warlords and battletech which have similar structures.

I only bring it up because someone brought up alternate activation, its not a balance thing. Its a gameflow thing that is much more engaging. No one stands there for an hour getting double turned.



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It is true that you don't get your 100% steady line of troops moving together and guaranteed synergized together. But thats intentional and intended. It introduces risks that you have to decide are worth it or not instead of knowing it will always work how you want it.

Ah, I see. That makes much more sense. For me personally, and my community, that would change the dynamic more than we like, but there is no wrong way to play things.

No one here likes the double turn, but that is generally fixed by simply not using it (usually do it WHFB style where you roll off at the start, person who finished first gets +1, then alternate turns from there). That does give an advantage to the player who goes first but it is a pittance compared to what the double does.

Come to think of it the only time I use normal AoS initiative is if it is a tourney/league where that is the rule. Even in PtG we push the first initiative roll to round 3 when doing 1v1s (more players than that we go by phase).

Come to think further I have never met someone in person who actually likes the double turn mechanic. Encountered a handful online but that is it.

I hate when I go second, win initiative round 2, and the rest of the game becomes a formality.

It is a different form of the game using alt activation. Thats why I put it to a vote. It actually wasn't my idea to do it this year, I was just going to go with a traditional IGO-UGO with no double turn but it was asked to put to a vote.

I’ve come to hate the double turn with a passion. It’s cost me dozens of games. I really don’t need the whole game going down the toilet for me just because I rolled poorly on a single dice roll. And I always roll poorly.

Also, Alternative unit activation would be a massive upheaval to the game at every level. I kinda regret mentioning it because it’s so huge it really is a whole other discussion. I’m just curious if the game can be balanced in its current form. Except for double turns. I’d get rid of that and use 40k’s system if I could.

One other thing; how do people feel about jacking up the cost of god teir characters like Morathi, Nagash etc. so that they don’t fit comfortably into a 1k list and aren’t an auto include in 2k lists either. I just think that there’s so many horribly undercosted units in the game, and it’s a good starting point to fix that.

The game can absolutely be balanced as is, provided the double turn is not in play. The fan comps did it, and did it well. I did work point costing battalions for some time so when a battletome comes out I can go through and pretty consistently get things right on which battalions are bad, decent, overpowered. Auticus can do the same for units. There are others out there who can do similar. The point being not only can AoS be balanced in its current state, but it is not even very hard.


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 Future War Cultist wrote:
One other thing; how do people feel about jacking up the cost of god teir characters like Morathi, Nagash etc. so that they don’t fit comfortably into a 1k list and aren’t an auto include in 2k lists either. I just think that there’s so many horribly undercosted units in the game, and it’s a good starting point to fix that.

There are a lot of undercosted units in the game. Some of the god tier options are in there, some are not. Stardrakes have a godlike statline but do not get abused because they are pointed like they have a godlike statline. Sequitors are a battleline option but so extremely undercosted they are the only battleline to show up in SCE tourney lists. OP units come from all walks of life!

I have run something in 40k with alternate unit activation, coming from some guys that mixed konflikt 47 with 40k.

They used tokens in a bag, if one of your tokens gets pulled, you get to go with a unit, a hero activates 2 non hero units with it at the same time (if i remember correctly)

It is way better then the original. But the big problem comes that it is time consuming . Games take twice as long especially when playing against someone that likes to think things over before he does something.


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these were the rules in question:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/11YBeUrlhDRehsGc43W8jpdygPMlEeWVW/view

Thats how bolt action works, also how warlords works. I did timing tests a couple years ago because that was a common complaint. That it appeared to take longer.

However from my tests the time during a whole round was pretty similar.

Average AOS turn (core rules) turn 1 and turn 2 (the longest turns) averaged out at 48 minutes for a complete turn (both players) and turn 3 and on averaged out at 37 minutes.

Alt activation turn 1 and 2 averaged out at 51 minutes and turn 3 and on averaged out at 40 minutes.

Those are from my playtest notes from two years ago where we timed turns to check durations.


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Caveat it will always depend on your game group. That was with mine and the time difference was negligible. I feel that it feels faster when you are doing your whole turn because you are engaged your entire turn so it seems to go faster.

Just like when you are sitting htere waiting a turn it is slow and sucks, and double turn is literally almost an hour of sitting there doing nothing but scooping models of the table and congratulating your opponent on his tactical mastery.

I wonder, if someone just went through available batreps and checked only win-loss and round 1-2 initiative, what is the % win rate of players who get a round 1-2 double?

"Win 75% of your games with one weird trick!"

In my experience its a solid 35% of games that end in turn 2 due to that.

I was once tabled in 20 minutes by a double turn. I went first, moved my KO ships into position, fired off a couple of rounds, dropped a few stormcast, then I just had to watch as my opponent double turned me to annihilation. And this was after they said they’d go easy because it was a supposedly friendly game. I haven’t played against them since...I think they know they fethed up too.

The way I see it, there will always be people who will play to break the game because they have to win at all costs, and as quickly as possible. The ones who don’t have a power army, and who actually want to play the game for at least a few turns, won’t stand a chance unless the very worst excesses of the game are reigned in.

Let’s get rid of the double turn for starters. I know that’s luck not skill, but when people are spamming teleporting mortal wound tossing units, it’s just too unfair.

One other thing; how do people feel about jacking up the cost of god teir characters like Morathi, Nagash etc. so that they don’t fit comfortably into a 1k list and aren’t an auto include in 2k lists either. I just think that there’s so many horribly undercosted units in the game, and it’s a good starting point to fix that.

Depends on the god tier unit in question really. Morathi is taken less and less these days which kinda indicates she is more appropriately costed than many other god tier units. To be fair I don't see many god tier units on the table except Nagash superheroes these days.

Most of the big models like nagash, and archaon... are costed close to the bell curve. Which is why you also dont' really see them taken very often. At least I don't ever and I don't read about them much either.

Nagash is appropriately costed if realm rules are not in play. Once he has the extra spells to draw from he becomes totally OP.

Morathi is still a staple of DoK tourney lists. They are showing up less but that is hardly a good measure overall. Either way the balance between her regular and monster form is poor (she is always transformed immediately).

That’s a good point actually. Every time I’ve seen Morathi deployed, she immediately goes into snake mode. I don’t know what should be done about that though...or if anything even should be done about it really.

If Morathi is at the right cost, what about other DoK units? They definitely seem undercosted on account of the amount I see crammed into a typical list.

I think Morathi's point cost should go up and her normal form buffed, or her cost should go down and the snake form nerfed.

In other news I played against a proper tourney FEC list today. He got turn choice, went second, doubled, and I was tabled round two.

Can you see my shocked face to gauge just how shocked I am?

I had a good time of it. I knew going in I was going to get tabled (played with this guy tons, he was good with FEC back when they weren't) but there was entertainment value in seeing how quickly it would happen. I think I would have held out to round four before getting tabled, or round three if he had doubled then.

I don't know if it has been mentioned before, but in the latest White Dwarf there is an article with Jervis where he goes into his process for assigning point costs.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I wonder, if someone just went through available batreps and checked only win-loss and round 1-2 initiative, what is the % win rate of players who get a round 1-2 double?

"Win 75% of your games with one weird trick!"

still better then 40k that had (before last CA, don't know about after have not played the game since) 90% game wins on players that got to go first. due to alpha strike, and heavy shooting capable of taking out enough to not worry to much of the counter attack


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auticus wrote:
Thats how bolt action works, also how warlords works. I did timing tests a couple years ago because that was a common complaint. That it appeared to take longer.

However from my tests the time during a whole round was pretty similar.

Average AOS turn (core rules) turn 1 and turn 2 (the longest turns) averaged out at 48 minutes for a complete turn (both players) and turn 3 and on averaged out at 37 minutes.

Alt activation turn 1 and 2 averaged out at 51 minutes and turn 3 and on averaged out at 40 minutes.

Those are from my playtest notes from two years ago where we timed turns to check durations.


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Caveat it will always depend on your game group. That was with mine and the time difference was negligible. I feel that it feels faster when you are doing your whole turn because you are engaged your entire turn so it seems to go faster.

Just like when you are sitting htere waiting a turn it is slow and sucks, and double turn is literally almost an hour of sitting there doing nothing but scooping models of the table and congratulating your opponent on his tactical mastery.

Our playtests were 2h -3h30 for 2000 pts regular, 2h30-5 h for alternate unit activation. we have a few players that start rethinking there entire strategy each time they get an activation token where in regular 40k they would only do it at the start of there turn. These are the slow players in regular 40k and really become slowpokes in this konflikt version...


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 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I had a good time of it. I knew going in I was going to get tabled (played with this guy tons, he was good with FEC back when they weren't) but there was entertainment value in seeing how quickly it would happen. I think I would have held out to round four before getting tabled, or round three if he had doubled then.

Seeing these FEC rules i really think next GHB will seriously nerf summoning. These is running up to the next ghb period making you crave for it and making everyone say they made good decisions. they do this trick every time.

 Eldarsif wrote:
I don't know if it has been mentioned before, but in the latest White Dwarf there is an article with Jervis where he goes into his process for assigning point costs.

Boy oh boy. I definitely need to get this issue. I want to know what he says. I've always liked Jervis' approach to the game, but damn if it didn't piss a lot of people off when he dared to say that you don't need points to have an enjoyable game.

I'm curious if there's actual math behind it or just sort of random guessing. Because if there are math and actual formulae, it sure doesn't seem like it although they said once on a cast or WHTV or something that they did have formulas.

Ive seen the jervis article. Its now being used as proof by the aos super fans that balance is impossible because jervis said it was.

Now i agree with some of his points such as things like terrain change the value of a unit etc but again they can get infinitely more closer than their “attempt” today.

auticus wrote:
Ive seen the jervis article. Its now being used as proof by the aos super fans that balance is impossible because jervis said it was.

Now i agree with some of his points such as things like terrain change the value of a unit etc but again they can get infinitely more closer than their “attempt” today.

What I found most amusing was they had an article around when AOS 2.0 first came out that said the weird realmscape rules that everyone was slagging as being "not fair" was intended to be used for all levels of games including Matched Play as units were costed with them being in use in mind. This was summarily said to be total nonsense and those rules are horrible and have no place in matched play (despite the studio saying they were) and that nobody would ever bother to use them because they screw over certain armies. Lo and behold, you don't see those used.

So basically, the AOS "Super Fans" will cherry pick things that fit their narrative. Otherwise, they should all be using the realmscape rules because the studio said that's considered a core part of AOS and something they expect to be used and that point costs reflect those being in use.

Yeah. Thats people in general unfortunately.


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The positive I'm seeing is that less and less people are saying the game is perfectly fine from a balanced state. They are just saying the game is perfectly fine as an unbalanced game. So the illusion that its balanced has largely worn off or that matched play, despite what gw says, is a balanced form of the game.

Minus a couple guys that are adamant that you just need to git gud. But when pressed on how factions like mortal khorne or slaves to darkness or high elves or kharadron overlords are supposed to git gud the typical response is no response or "don't play that faction".


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A fun straw poll would be to query the community on how many care about balance and how many are fine with bad balance and just rotate armies to stay on top of the meta, and how many are fine with bad balance and don't mind getting their teeth kicked in and just want to lolz and throw dice.

I really am interested in that, but I don't think a dakka poll would serve very well because there are like eight of us that post and that seems to be a 4-4 split.


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Balancing poll:

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/772628.page

The realmscape abilities and spells were a great idea on paper, but they went overboard and knocked everything out of porportion. I’ve got a particular beef with the Chamon ones; Steel Rain once cost me a game (destroyed a vital objective holding unit) and that other ability that cancels rend? Nerfed my overlords. And if there’s one army that doesn’t need a nerfing, it’s them.

@ auticus

That irks me, when people say just don’t play that faction. It’s like an insult. FYI, the people who argue against my suggestions for fixes to these factions are the same people who do not play them at all and who posess the broken ones. Unpainted armies bought on eBay btw. It just smacks of ‘protectionism’.

I know I sound quite bitter, but when GW almost deliberately makes a faction unplayable, it’s like they’re conning the people unfortunate enough to play them. That’s just how it feels.

Based on the input I have been getting in regards to balance, the community's stance on balance has not changed since I started posting questions and polls regarding balance in 2016.

That being: a huge chunk of the overall community likes some balance but its not a deal breaker for them. I know from having attended dozens of game dev convention/discussions over the past twenty odd years that single player games are definitely written imbalanced for the player. Most pvp style games (computer) they take balance seriously. The tabletop world, definitely not so much if at all.

Which explains the reactions you can get in balance discussions as well as how GW is making mad profit even though their system is so on its head.

Based off of concurrent results for the past three years that have more or less been identical, I feel that balance discussions are probably better left off dead or in game design forums.

Speaking of balance, or lack thereof, new Khorne is showcased and their version of endless spells aren't spells (because Khorne) so can't be dispelled at all and one can seemingly make wizards forget spells.

Seems totally fair and balanced to have hard counters and things that work similar but better.

Wayniac wrote:
Speaking of balance, or lack thereof, new Khorne is showcased and their version of endless spells aren't spells (because Khorne) so can't be dispelled at all and one can seemingly make wizards forget spells.

Seems totally fair and balanced to have hard counters and things that work similar but better.

Factions that only had priets before couldn't dispell endless spells either. Khorne, Fyreslayers, etc... so having factions WITHOUT priest not being able to dispell SOME "not-endless spells" isn't unfair if they are priced correctly.

Honestly I am fine with some magic hate being tossed around since it is so dominant right now.

Looking at the game as a whole, I am also fine with khorne being very anti-magic, because a khorne army won't have a wizard and it does produce a hard counter to a powerful tool.

It gives khorne some use other than as an enhancement talent making their opponent look good.

Something else too is that armies which really rely on magic, like Tzeentch or magic-heavy LoN, will still be able to power through some spells by virtue of their own bonuses & sheer number of them. And it is not like Khorne does not pay points for his anti-magic capability.

Of course now that I said that GW will decide anti-magic is not worth any points and it will become a free bonus that Khorne shuts it down without trying.

It all depends upon how it’s actually implemented, so I’ll reserve judgement until I actually see the rules. I’m not holding my breath though.

So what have we decided so far? Eliminate the double turn? What else? Reducing mortal wound output?

if you're going for balance then for me you eliminate double turn, reduce mortal wound output, cap summoning.

Do those things and the game then comes down to the point costs, which by itself is not great, but not as bad.

auticus wrote:
if you're going for balance then for me you eliminate double turn, reduce mortal wound output, cap summoning.

Do those things and the game then comes down to the point costs, which by itself is not great, but not as bad.

Yeah those three points are the parts there is general agreement on; if those were addressed the game would be in a much better place.

Someone pointed out to me the other day that there are more units which deal MWs than units with rend -2.

Someone pointed out to me the other day that there are more units which deal MWs than units with rend -2.

The designers are strangely afraid of two things: Giving -2 rend or better and giving a 3+ save or better. While at the same time they don't mind giving everyone and their grandmother a Mortal Wound output.

They have mentioned in the past they designed the game so that stuff dies in droves because when things dont die "thats not fun". So I would say that the mortal wound output thing is intentional.

Although obviously factions dealiing mortal wounds are at a great disparity overall. Some do it like breathing, others have to dig deep to do a half a dozen mortal wounds in a turn.

This is not a good trend at all. Ok yeah, you want your attacks to actually land and do something. But imo, units should be able to survive more than 1 round of attacks. And for armies that can’t throw out mortal wounds, they’re at a disadvantage.

Thats part of the balancing discrepancy and why I have a system to cap too many mortal wounds. Solely because not every faction can do it and the have-nots might as well not even come to the table.

I would consider an army that can spam mortal wounds on par with an army that can spam summoning as I see those two things as diametrically opposed. One does massive damage the other regenerates that massive damage.

Armies that can do neither of those things are trash against armies that can.

I liked Mortal Wounds when they were meant to be rare and the counter to things like 2+ rerolling 1s Stormcast or things that could ignore rend (Seraphon stuff springs to mind). But having everything dish out a ton of mortal wounds is just stupid.

Mortal Wounds, in general, are a "negative play experience" since there's usually nothing you can do about it, especially when it's mortal wounds on hit because it usually just removes these models.

The fact the AOS design team seems to be doubling down on them isn't a good thing IMHO.

Absolutely, 100% agree. Mortal wounds should have been special, and quite rare. Imo, they should have been limited to:

Magic
Artifacts
High level characters
The biggest monsters
The most elite units
Terrain effects

Not only that, but they should have been limited to 1 mortal wound 70% of the time, D3 mortal wounds 25% of the time, and D6 or higher should be as rare as hens teeth. But unfortunately they’re throwing them about like confetti...for some. And the ones who can’t are suffering bad.

I’ve been on the receiving end of deep striking star soul mace wielding paladins and the Sword Of Judgement...they suck.

Yeah. They never seem to be able to keep a good idea going, it always ends up with them going off the rails with it. Mortal Wounds were one case. Now we also have endless spells for everyone (except the factions that don't get it) and mandatory terrain for everyone.

It's still a completely backward design cycle where things are languishing because they have no reason to update it without new sculpts, but nobody is telling the model designers to make new sculpts for the factions that need them. I'm pretty sure the model designers decide on their own, without any input about the game, what to work on (possibly driven by management) and then *tell* the rules team to throw it in.

The result of this is if the model team has no incentive/desire to work on for example new Seraphon sculpts, they won't get any which reduces the chance for an updated tome because there are no models to go along with it, but if the design team suddenly decides oh it'd be really neat to have Stormcast golems they'll whip those up and then boom another Stormcast release when they don't need it.

I'm pretty sure the model designers decide on their own, without any input about the game, what to work on (possibly driven by management) and then *tell* the rules team to throw it in.

If they are like many other game design teams on a long term project there is overwhelming chance it is something like:

- Artists make something, then ask the rules team to fit them in somehow. Some artists may also be more interested in updating old models. That in itself is most likely a slower churn which is probably why we'll get a revamp of older models every now and then.
- The rules team approaches them with ideas because they(rules team) want to add something. The artists then make something to what the rules team requested.

In short: It is a two-way street.


I really doubt management is driving anything because if they are then GW has cracked one of the greatest secret of the game industry: How to hold onto talent while giving them no creative freedom. However, if this is scrum driven like many game development stuiods, then the artists AND rule team must make a case why something should be done because management must accept projects and money people must calculate potential time and money spent on a project vs. potential earnings. This is why if an artists or a rule team suddenly comes up with an idea to make a High Elf Spearmen revamp, and management doesn't see how that would fit into any line, it will most likely not get greenlit. However, if someone comes up with an idea to consolidate one faction into a tome that will use existing models and add a few new ones(like DoK) then management will give it a greenlight because it is a well thought out project that have Objective Key Results(OKR) they can make a case for.

They have design sessions and what ifs with their playtest team, which are largely also the tournament uk guys that hang out and go to the pub together.

So when they float things like endless spells, the idea was pretty awesome and likely the internal playtest crew were excited about it.

The implementation itself of course was another thing.

I always laught when people complains about Mortal Wounds in 40k (And there they are actually much more needed because invulnerable saves are much more common), because they are like 1/10 of what you have in Sigmar.

And I actually like that. I don't quite like mortal wounds, specially in the way they are handled in AoS.

Why is it that when people complain about aspects of the game, it's always stuff that isn't really a problem. Summoning isn't blowing up tournaments, neither are MW spam armies nor the double turn. They're all things that you learn to play around and stop really becoming an issue once you've experienced them a couple times.

The only possible outlier is Legion of Nagash resummoning Grimghasts, but that has a lot more to do with Nagash himself as a character and the addition of Grimghasts to LoN than the actual summoning mechanic. No one was complaining about resummoning Skeletons or Hexwraiths or whatever.

My only real complaint at the moment is armies whose books aren't up to date... and they've specifically said that their intent is to push out AoS books this year at a rate that they did 40k books last year, to get everyone on the same page asap rather than spread out across a decade.

 Eldarsif wrote:

I'm pretty sure the model designers decide on their own, without any input about the game, what to work on (possibly driven by management) and then *tell* the rules team to throw it in.

If they are like many other game design teams on a long term project there is overwhelming chance it is something like:

- Artists make something, then ask the rules team to fit them in somehow. Some artists may also be more interested in updating old models. That in itself is most likely a slower churn which is probably why we'll get a revamp of older models every now and then.
- The rules team approaches them with ideas because they(rules team) want to add something. The artists then make something to what the rules team requested.

In short: It is a two-way street.


I really doubt management is driving anything because if they are then GW has cracked one of the greatest secret of the game industry: How to hold onto talent while giving them no creative freedom. However, if this is scrum driven like many game development stuiods, then the artists AND rule team must make a case why something should be done because management must accept projects and money people must calculate potential time and money spent on a project vs. potential earnings. This is why if an artists or a rule team suddenly comes up with an idea to make a High Elf Spearmen revamp, and management doesn't see how that would fit into any line, it will most likely not get greenlit. However, if someone comes up with an idea to consolidate one faction into a tome that will use existing models and add a few new ones(like DoK) then management will give it a greenlight because it is a well thought out project that have Objective Key Results(OKR) they can make a case for.

When you put it that way it sounds like a logical and effective way to produce great miniatures and fun factions. It would then follow that people are willing to put up with wild imbalance because the game is fun enough when it does work, and the miniatures good enough looking, that it compensates. One could further follow that this is the reason that the imbalance exists to such an extent, and seems to get worse with more popular wargames; because they do not HAVE to fix it to attract players. The other side of the coin being that balance is still obviously an attractive factor (else smaller games with less resources but a greater need to attract players would not bother) and so to some extent these popular wargames are allowing themselves to 'rest on their laurels' rather than really refine their product. This reasoning would of course need to come with the caveat that it is but one of multiple factors and not the whole explanation itself.

But this is the internet where nuance and critical thinking do not exist, and all things must be black or white so I must say NO! GW devs just circle jerk whatever ideas they want and draw up rules on napkins during lunch!!

Why is it that when people complain about aspects of the game, it's always stuff that isn't really a problem. Summoning isn't blowing up tournaments, neither are MW spam armies nor the double turn. They're all things that you learn to play around and stop really becoming an issue once you've experienced them a couple times.

As has been said many many many times, we're discussing the games as a whole, not solely at the tournament level. Because things are fine at the tournament level does not mean the game is in a great place unless you are primarily a tournament player.

If you are a tournament player you aren't fielding the casual for fun lists. You aren't fielding about 90% of the game.

It is objectively true that many of the factions in the game cannot have fun games against the power builds. Not certain builds... entire factions.

Mortal khorne armies aren't going to be having fun against tournament mortal wound spam or summon spam armies. Kharadron overlords aren't going to have fun against tournament mortal spam or summoning spam armies. Slaves to darkness aren't going to have fun against mortal wound spam or summoning spam armies. Free people aren't going to have fun against mortal wound spam or summoning spam armies. Slaanesh demons or mortals aren't going to have fun against mortal wound spam or summoning spam. High elves aren't going to have fun, dark elves aren't going to have fun, wood elves aren't going to have fun.

All kinds of factions not going to be able to have fun against those armies.

Regardless if the tournament scene is just fine and hokey dokey.

Git gud won't help those factions. If you feel git gud will help those factions then please, post about how you take one of those armies against a power build and not get rolled by virtue of just showing up with the wrong faction.

Double turn is just *$*$*@ing a fun killer. Regardless of if its hokey dokey status quo at tournaments.

The game as a whole is not solely dictated by how smoothly your tournaments run because tournament play is only one facet of the entire game of which GW endorses and supports people buying ALL of the factions available, but only a portion of which can be played without getting stomped by a tournament.

A tournament player is not going to give two flaming craps about the casual or campaign players getting crushed because they aren't fielding those types of armies, and if they were going to play in a casual or campaign environment, often will take their tourney power list anyway and tell people to git gud and learn how to work around it.

Either that or you are one of those people that really don't care if you are getting stomped on and just want to play for playing sake. Which is fair enough. But since you brought up tournaments and everything is fine at tournaments my guess is you are a tournament guy and the casual scene below the tournament guys is probably not visible. To which no, by any means, is mortal wound spam or summoning spam just fine and git gud will fix it. Those factions that can't keep up can't keep up because they don't have the mechanical backed by mathematics tools to deal with them.

So as the rebuttal I know is forthcoming, please share HOW those factions, in detail, deal with FEC spam summoning or stormcast teleporting mortal wound spamming, or legion of nagash or DOK tourney builds other than by saying an alternate form of git gud. If there are ways around it that are just lost to a bunch of people, then I ask that those hidden ways be revealed so that these topics don't come up ever again. A youtube battle report or something explaining it or showing it would be greatly appreciated. Because I can't find any out there, so I'm figuring they are on the dark web of aos or something that I just can't find.

And realize some of us in this conversation are current or past tournament players with high placing histories in past WHFB games or current AOS so we're not all clueless baby seals waiting to get clubbed that just don't git it.

auticus wrote:

Why is it that when people complain about aspects of the game, it's always stuff that isn't really a problem. Summoning isn't blowing up tournaments, neither are MW spam armies nor the double turn. They're all things that you learn to play around and stop really becoming an issue once you've experienced them a couple times.

As has been said many many many times, we're discussing the games as a whole, not solely at the tournament level. Because things are fine at the tournament level does not mean the game is in a great place unless you are primarily a tournament player.

If you are a tournament player you aren't fielding the casual for fun lists. You aren't fielding about 90% of the game.

It is objectively true that many of the factions in the game cannot have fun games against the power builds. Not certain builds... entire factions.

Mortal khorne armies aren't going to be having fun against tournament mortal wound spam or summon spam armies. Kharadron overlords aren't going to have fun against tournament mortal spam or summoning spam armies. Slaves to darkness aren't going to have fun against mortal wound spam or summoning spam armies. Free people aren't going to have fun against mortal wound spam or summoning spam armies. Slaanesh demons or mortals aren't going to have fun against mortal wound spam or summoning spam. High elves aren't going to have fun, dark elves aren't going to have fun, wood elves aren't going to have fun.

All kinds of factions not going to be able to have fun against those armies.

Regardless if the tournament scene is just fine and hokey dokey.

Git gud won't help those factions. If you feel git gud will help those factions then please, post about how you take one of those armies against a power build and not get rolled by virtue of just showing up with the wrong faction.

Double turn is just *$*$*@ing a fun killer. Regardless of if its hokey dokey status quo at tournaments.

The game as a whole is not solely dictated by how smoothly your tournaments run because tournament play is only one facet of the entire game of which GW endorses and supports people buying ALL of the factions available, but only a portion of which can be played without getting stomped by a tournament.

A tournament player is not going to give two flaming craps about the casual or campaign players getting crushed because they aren't fielding those types of armies, and if they were going to play in a casual or campaign environment, often will take their tourney power list anyway and tell people to git gud and learn how to work around it.

Either that or you are one of those people that really don't care if you are getting stomped on and just want to play for playing sake. Which is fair enough. But since you brought up tournaments and everything is fine at tournaments my guess is you are a tournament guy and the casual scene below the tournament guys is probably not visible. To which no, by any means, is mortal wound spam or summoning spam just fine and git gud will fix it. Those factions that can't keep up can't keep up because they don't have the mechanical backed by mathematics tools to deal with them.

I participate in a lot of casual events and game nights as well, and of course certain factions are pretty bad at the moment... but it turns out faction rules > no faction rules, so I don't see how that's surprising. Instead of just giving the factions rules to catch up, you'd rather turn the game on it's head to try and balance it? Gitz, Nighthaunt, and Beasts of Chaos were considered almost joke factions before their books, now they're pretty darn good at both casual and competitive. But we need to completely restructure the game because Slaanesh and Free Peoples aren't on the same level? Patience is indeed a virtue, and the books and updates are coming.

(Not to mention KO losing against Summoning even casually is a joke with how good they are at killing Heroes and units that cause summoning. They're one of the best anti-summon armies in the game, their main issue is that they suck against fast melee and can't score certain missions to save their lives. Casually they're a fantastic army)


I think you're conflating some things, to be honest. You're essentially saying that a casual fun list can't play against the best stuff in the game. And that's true. But... why are you comparing a casual list on one side to a cutthroat list on the other? I could easily make a "try hard" Free People's list and a "casual" Stormcast list and then complain about Stormcast not being good enough to deal with the former. If one side is bringing all the best tools available and the other side is just there to have a good time... yeah it's not going to be fun. Is a random draft MTG deck going to do well against a honed Standard MTG deck that someone paid $3000 for? No, but that's not a problem of balancing, that's a mismatch of players.

If you're playing an army that's not yet up to par (say, Slaves) at a regular game night, and the opponent brings a netlist Daughters of Khaine army, it's going to feel like poo poo. But maybe one or both of you misjudged what the game night was supposed to be, rather than the game being problematic.

But maybe one or both of you misjudged what the game night was supposed to be, rather than the game being problematic.

Or perhaps the game is just grossly imbalanced, which is the topic of this thread, to discuss how and why the game is imbalanced.

If the game were balanced, or close to balance, then these situations where the powergamers bringing tournament lists everywhere wouldn't be as big a deal.

At the very minimum if every faction had tools to deal with it then it truly wouldn't be as big a deal. As it stands today, many if not most factions cannot stand against the grotesqueries that people bring, despite trying to say a social contract should prevent them from doing it (because in my experience the social contract doesn't mean anything and its go hard or don't bother showing up)

Hand waiving that as not a big deal is a big "eff you" to those people that bought in to the factions GW sells that weren't warned that those factions amount to flaming garbage unless a social contract is being observed.

In auticus' defense, he seems to play with people who will bring a netlist DoK army to a regular game night and say it's the other person's fault for not bringing a netlist and the should just git gud and play a real army. I recall someone, it may have been auticus or maybe not, who said something to the effect once that they saw a person do that and actually get insulted that the other player didn't bring a list "worthy of their time" or some sort of pretentious bullgak. Like they actually felt their opponent "wasted their time" because they didn't bring a tournament-caliber netlist to a game.

auticus wrote:

But maybe one or both of you misjudged what the game night was supposed to be, rather than the game being problematic.

Or perhaps the game is just grossly imbalanced, which is the topic of this thread, to discuss how and why the game is imbalanced.

If the game were balanced, or close to balance, then these situations where the powergamers bringing tournament lists everywhere wouldn't be as big a deal.

Are you joking? That's extremely naive if not.

There's no list or deck building game in existence where a Timmy and a Spike can both bring what they want and have an equal chance at winning (other than crazy random heavy games like Hearthstone where you can RNG to a win). List building is part of the game, and learning what tools do well and synergize is always going to separatee a good list from a bad list. Heck, even in a game like chess, where there's it's completely equivalent on both sides, knowing opening plays can make a game feel unfun and non-game in the first 5 minutes.

auticus wrote:
At the very minimum if every faction had tools to deal with it then it truly wouldn't be as big a deal. As it stands today, many if not most factions cannot stand against the grotesqueries that people bring, despite trying to say a social contract should prevent them from doing it (because in my experience the social contract doesn't mean anything and its go hard or don't bother showing up)

Hand waiving that as not a big deal is a big "eff you" to those people that bought in to the factions GW sells that weren't warned that those factions amount to flaming garbage unless a social contract is being observed.

What things can't be dealt with? Other than actual Legacy armies like Orcs and Goblins/Tomb Kings/Brettonians which will never get balanced, I bet you I can write a list that does well against one thing or another.

Will they be fun for you specifically to play? Will they have all the cool toys? Probably not. But I've seen Mortal Khorne, Free Peoples, and Slaanesh go 4-1 or better at events. I've seen casual map campaigns completely dominated by Ironjawz. But you can't just take whatever boxes off the shelf and expect it to happen.

"Going hard" is a social contract. What the social contract is depends on area to area, play group to play group, event to event. If you want to bring your favorite models and not think about list building, synergies and hard counters, make sure the group doesn't do that either. GW (or any other game studio for that matter) isn't going to modify the game to only be for one type of player, it's up to your group to figure out what that social contract is going to be and if you don't like it... well, try to convince your group or start running events of your own.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Wayniac wrote:
In auticus' defense, he seems to play with people who will bring a netlist DoK army to a regular game night and say it's the other person's fault for not bringing a netlist and the should just git gud and play a real army. I recall someone, it may have been auticus or maybe not, who said something to the effect once that they saw a person do that and actually get insulted that the other player didn't bring a list "worthy of their time" or some sort of pretentious bullgak. Like they actually felt their opponent "wasted their time" because they didn't bring a tournament-caliber netlist to a game.

How is that the game's fault? If someone shows up to play basketball and they dunk over your head and smack talk you, it's not Basketball's fault, they're being a dick. Don't change the game, change the players.

Good. Since you've stepped us to learn me, please craft a battle report showing a mortal khorne army with no demons stepping up to the plate against a FEC tournament army or a DOK tournament army and winning. Against a tournament level FEC or DOK player, not a newb.

I've been in game development and design for close to 30 years. While pure balance is impossible, as I've mentioned many many times, a balanced version of a game like AOS is definitely in the realm of possibility. Especially since the fan comps did exactly that, they produced a playable version of the game for all factions where all factions had a viable legit shot at playing.

Demonstrate and shut me up once and for all a legit battle report showing that happen. I promise you I'll never post another post in another AOS thread anywhere on the internet again if you can produce a legit non doctored battle report demonstrating to me how its done.

Hell you post that you will have successfully closed this thread down and showed us all that we just don't know anything about how to really play the game.

Talking about how you've seen those weak factions go 4-1 at a tournament means absolutely nothing because tournaments are ALL ABOUT matchups. I have played probably 1000 tournament games of WHFB in my life and every one of those was against a rainbow array of players and playstyles.

I took 5th in Chicago in the early 2000s because I got lucky against 5 of my 6 matchups. The year after I took 7th. That was two years top 10 placing because I got lucky in my placings. In 40k my eldar star cannon army took 3rd at Chicago in the late 90s. Again, armies made all the difference. I had a marine killer army and played 6 marine players. That doesn't prove nor disprove a balanced game, that proved that I had favorable matchups and got to have a top placing because of it. In 2007 in the height of matt ward mania with broken demons I placed like 28th with mortal chaos on foot. The game was busted as all hell, but I went 4-1-1. Because of my matchups. I played two hard opponents with two hard lists and drew one and got tabled by the other and played four sub par lists after to take 4-1-1. What does that prove balance wise? Not a thing, though anyone that played during 7th will tell you all about the balance of that edition and how it made AOS look like a great balanced game.

GOing 4-1 doesn't mean jack or that the game is balanced. It doesn't show what that player went against. He could have had 4 candy opponents with weak lists and 1 actual tournament list opponent.

The postulation is the game is grossly imbalanced. Your postulation is people just need to get good. So prove that. Demonstrate with a real legit game with a weak faction like mortals of khorne with no demon backup against a tournament FEC or DOK army against a tournament level player that you can win with them.

Its nowhere to be found on the internet. You'd have thunk if those scenarios you are saying exist truly existed that youtube would have some battle report for it, because there are certainly THOUSANDS of battle reports of power builds dominating.

auticus wrote:
Good. Since you've stepped us to learn me, please craft a battle report showing a mortal khorne army with no demons stepping up to the plate against a FEC tournament army or a DOK tournament army and winning.

I've been in game development and design for close to 30 years. While pure balance is impossible, as I've mentioned many many times, a balanced version of a game like AOS is definitely in the realm of possibility. Especially since the fan comps did exactly that, they produced a playable version of the game for all factions where all factions had a viable legit shot at playing.

Demonstrate and shut me up once and for all a legit battle report showing that happen. I promise you I'll never post another post in another AOS thread anywhere on the internet again if you can produce a legit non doctored battle report demonstrating to me how its done.

Hell you post that you will have successfully closed this thread down and showed us all that we just don't know anything about how to really play the game.

Wait, so because no content creators specifically made a BatRep where a Mortal Khorne army beat a FEC army, I can't have a discussion with you? I guess I'll have to start my own channel just to talk on the internet anymore.

I was at an event last month where someone brought Brass Stampede, maxed out on as many Blood Crushers as they could, and went either 3-2 or 4-1. Granted this was pre-FEC book, but it beat a FEC list that had free summoning and iirc a Nurgle army which coincidentally also has free summoning. Leaning in on fast, high wound count models that have MW saves, he gained board control and hit specific characters and units with spearhead strikes, using the KLoJuggernaught CA + allied Wizards to boost their output. But I guess it didn't happen without video evidence.

Like I said above, yeah it's probably not what you imagine as a Khorne Mortal army - no Bloodreavers, no Blood Warriors, no Wrathmongers, but it was very much so a Mortal Khorne army (perhaps with one Daemon Prince? Hopefully that doesn't invalidate the whole thing.)


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auticus wrote:


The postulation is the game is grossly imbalanced. Your postulation is people just need to get good. So prove that. Demonstrate with a real legit game with a weak faction like mortals of khorne with no demon backup against a tournament FEC or DOK army against a tournament level player that you can win with them.

Its nowhere to be found on the internet. You'd have thunk if those scenarios you are saying exist truly existed that youtube would have some battle report for it, because there are certainly THOUSANDS of battle reports of power builds dominating.

Wait, why do I have to prove my point and you don't? If your postulate is that "Certain armies can never win no matter what", then have you tried? Have you played those armies at a dozen events? Can you give me a statistically relevant set of data that the game needs to be changed?

It works both ways. You can't claim that the game is broken when your whole thing is pretty darn subjective, and certain pieces can be refuted quite easily.

You have objectively stated that the game is fine, that people just need to play better.

Since there is no where on the internet that has demonstrated this to be true, and since I have never in my entire life of playing AOS have seen this be done, I am asking you to produce objective data to your argument.

You are throwing around records like that means anything. I have already expressed why I feel records mean nothing, because they don't express the quality of opponent or say who they played.

I am discussing the balance of this game, how it sucks, and why it sucks.

You're discussing a brass stampede army that is using allies, I'm discussing how factions are not balanced and that is the crux of this entire thread.

If I want to go ahead and show up at my local store with the power gamer roost with "mortal khorne" i can show up with a couple mortal units and then throw in blood thirsters and blood letter bombs and say "well I used a couple mortal units, good enough, but that is not what is being discussed here.

It is already common knowledge that powergamer lists are about 10% of a book usually. Thats not a balanced game. Thats crap. Thats imbalance.

I know all about git gud, I lived git gud for over a decade. Git gud runs off players.

This is a conversation about balance. You said that the game is perfectly fine. We already said back on page 1 that we weren't talking about the powergamer environment.

So demonstrate a casual list from a non represented faction getting good and beating a power list to demonstrate the balance that is just fine, so that I can be educated on how that works so I can shut up and help preach the gospel that AOS is in a great place and is perfectly fine for the people in my community that hate trying to play a game when our resident power gamers show up with their adepticon lists and I have to write house rules to keep those lists out of my events.

Because brother I have to tell you I would *LOVE* to be wrong about this and see things your way.

auticus wrote:
You have objectively stated that the game is fine, that people just need to play better.

Since there is no where on the internet that has demonstrated this to be true, and since I have never in my entire life of playing AOS have seen this be done, I am asking you to produce objective data to your argument.

But you've said you won't listen do objective data, literally on the next line:

auticus wrote:
You are throwing around records like that means anything. I have already expressed why I feel records mean nothing, because they don't express the quality of opponent or say who they played.

You can literally just refute any win % as "well we don't know the matchups!" and then laugh all the way to the next page. Hell, even when you wanted a Battle Report, you stated "a non-doctored" battle report, insinuating that you would just call into question the legitimacy of any video you saw.

What evidence would you accept? Do you want a group of the highest winning players in the world, locked in a room together, playing the same matchup 100 times until statistically relevant data is reached? It's never going to be perfect data, especially in a game involving dice. It's pretty clear that you aren't actually looking to accept any differing opinions, only to smack them down by putting the burden of proof on the person trying to refute you, in a subject that is pretty much completely subjective.

PS: there is a place to look at some set of data: https://thehonestwargamer.com/aos-stats-5th-march/
Filtering out the random little subfactions and only looking at the 25 that GW considers "actual factions" + 2 FW Factions + the 4 GAs (so 31 factions), there are only 10 under a 45% win rate. So 2/3 of the armies in the game have an even or near-even win rate at tracked events, including some that you might consider bad. For instance, Free Peoples have a 46% win rate. Slaanesh has a 55% win rate. Pretty not bad for "armies that can't do anything about top lists".

auticus wrote:
I am discussing the balance of this game, how it sucks, and why it sucks.

Just saying "it sucks" doesn't actually discuss anything. Listing off mechanics you don't like doesn't actually make them bad mechanics. Double turn is contentious, but if it's not considered bad by at least half the people using it, and it hasn't gotten people to stop playing the game, is it really bad? Are MWs really that bad considering most armies have a way to ignore, dispel, or otherwise evade them? Some armies are weaker to MWs than others, and that includes a lot of "older" armies... but does that make the mechanic bad or does it just mean you don't like it?

Counterpoint - AoS might not be a game for you. There's plenty of games I don't play because the mechanics don't agree with me, but that doesn't make them bad games that need to be rewritten from the ground up.

auticus wrote:
You're discussing a brass stampede army that is using allies, I'm discussing how factions are not balanced and that is the crux of this entire thread.

I'm discussing an army that was literally 80%+ Brass Stampede with one allied Wizard on mount for thematic purpose. Allies are a base part of the game, and are considered in the balance of factions. To ignore them is to not actually be discussing the game. It was as much Mortal Khorne as a Gitz army is a Grot army even though it includes one unit of Trolls.

Besides, Mortal Khorne isn't even a faction. GW has made it very clear that they balance around Blades of Khorne, which is a faction, and if you're ignoring half the book then you're just limiting yourself.

"I can't make a good army out of only Saurus units and no Skink/Monster/Slann units!" well that doesn't mean anything to me, because Seraphon is still one of the best Factions out there. If you ignore half of it then that's a you problem.

auticus wrote:
It is already common knowledge that powergamer lists are about 10% of a book usually. Thats not a balanced game. Thats crap. Thats imbalance.

Subjective opinion. Also completely exaggerated because 10% of most books would be 2 units at most.

Counterpoint - most units are actually fine and have a place in lists or specific combos, but everyone netlists so you only see the same handful of units. There are very few units (perhaps ~5-10% of units in the game) that I would consider actively bad and not worth using in any list. Just because a unit isn't used doesn't mean it's imbalanced.

auticus wrote:
So demonstrate a casual list from a non represented faction getting good and beating a power list to demonstrate the balance that is just fine, so that I can be educated on how that works so I can shut up and help preach the gospel that AOS is in a great place and is perfectly fine for the people in my community that hate trying to play a game when our resident power gamers show up with their adepticon lists and I have to write house rules to keep those lists out of my events.

Because brother I have to tell you I would *LOVE* to be wrong about this and see things your way.

Literally what does this even mean? "Give me a bad list and then show me how it can beat a good list" It doesn't happen. You're playing the wrong metagame. A casual, slapdash list is never going to beat one designed to win, and wanting that is foolish. To go back to the chess example, it's like randomly jumping a Knight around the board while your opponent sets up a calculated checkmate and then complaining about tryhards.

If you don't want competitive players at your events, run them differently. Play different point values, or play narrative missions, or only have your events give out trophies for sports/paint/door prizes.

Are you running events where people want to win? Then people are going to bring good lists and try to win. And casual lists will never beat tryhard lists, no matter how you try to balance the game otherwise.

Certain factions of course conflate this. Free Peoples, Slaves to Darkness, and Ironjawz, for example, can have competitive lists, but their casual lists are going to feel even worse than other casual lists because they don't have faction rules (or at least, the GHB ones they have are way worse than an actual Battletome). That's expected, they have like half the rules. But again, they're getting books, so maybe wait before you start petitioning people to rewrite the game.

So while you still have not shown any actual proof or, well any reasoning in favor of the game being in fact balanced, why should there be a massively disparate power level between 'casual' and 'tryhard' list building? Of course, there will be obvious optimization and fine tuning within the list building strategy layer of the game, but I believe and understand from you know, actually reading the thread, is that people wish for there to be balance between relative army capabilities, and having no duds or useless units within their army, or to just lose solely in the list-building phase.

 Thadin wrote:
So while you still have not shown any actual proof or, well any reasoning in favor of the game being in fact balanced, why should there be a massively disparate power level between 'casual' and 'tryhard' list building? Of course, there will be obvious optimization and fine tuning within the list building strategy layer of the game, but I believe and understand from you know, actually reading the thread, is that people wish for there to be balance between relative army capabilities, and having no duds or useless units within their army, or to just lose solely in the list-building phase.

I just linked stats that show that most armies in the game, outside some outliers, have ~50% win rates at events. That's pretty darn balanced unless you specifically play Dispossessed or something.

Anyone who has spent any amount of time listbuilding can tell you the difference that one unit choice can make in overall efficiency. If you're complaining about internal balance, I would like an example of where you think an army has units that are basically completely unused vs units that are in any list, and I can tell you the reasoning behind it. As I said above, there are some units that are just stinkers, but most units that are perceived as "bad" can be quite strong with the right build, it's just that said build is not currently popular or doesn't fit well in the meta.

There's no way to make a game where any list is the same power level as any other list of the same point level. The list that thinks about synergies, builds combos in, takes tools to counter common threats, and/or builds around the current meta is always going to beat a list that is just a collection of models, or looks cool thematically. Full stop. I could link the Timmy/Johnny/Spike article, but I do hope most people have already read it or are aware of it.

Edit: also expecting a game with as many units as AoS has (easily in the hundreds, but I don't know the number off hand) to have each unit be balanced against all the others at the same point in time is the next closest thing to impossible. There's just not enough playtesting time in the world, and you can't do it based purely off math because synergies, combos, and random abilities throw those numbers off like nobody's business.

The above seems like the classic discussion boiling down to debunking and re-hashing "those examples of imbalance don't count."

When you put it that way it sounds like a logical and effective way to produce great miniatures and fun factions. It would then follow that people are willing to put up with wild imbalance because the game is fun enough when it does work, and the miniatures good enough looking, that it compensates. One could further follow that this is the reason that the imbalance exists to such an extent, and seems to get worse with more popular wargames; because they do not HAVE to fix it to attract players. The other side of the coin being that balance is still obviously an attractive factor (else smaller games with less resources but a greater need to attract players would not bother) and so to some extent these popular wargames are allowing themselves to 'rest on their laurels' rather than really refine their product. This reasoning would of course need to come with the caveat that it is but one of multiple factors and not the whole explanation itself.

I would add that it is apparent they do want balance, but since they are chasing their tail with analog - ie. hard copy book - releases I am not that optimistic they can properly do that. In digital game development we do have very strict staging dates. A build goes into a staging branch and we do final preparations for mass release. Now, because we are doing this digitally we can release hotfixes as needed, but this is not something you can do if you have a master that must be released to the printers at the beginning of staging where any delay can cost a lot of money. This is why Chapter Approved/General's Handbook will have less fixes than most people desire, and often followed with complaints that the books are not taking into account recent books.

This is why I kinda wish GW would embrace the digital revolution and have an app or something where they can update points on a monthly basis based on internal reviews of external data. I liked Jervis' interview about his approach to balancing, but I would also greatly prefer a more direct input from the developers of why they take certain approaches to their designs much like many digital game companies are doing these days. Sometimes a design decision is taken to directly address a certain meta. They did this with Overwatch when they wanted to address the GOATS meta and I would love if GW would explain their thoughts process better. The strange thing is that White Dwarf is the perfect place for these discussions if they do not want to make more videos than they are already making.

NinthMusketeer wrote:The above seems like the classic discussion boiling down to debunking and re-hashing "those examples of imbalance don't count."

Or maybe it's more complicated than "I don't see the units so they must be bad/imbalanced". Again, there are very few units that are actually "bad" when it comes down to it, just don't mesh well with current builds or in the current meta. You see "forgotten" units pop up all the time.

Eldarsif wrote:

When you put it that way it sounds like a logical and effective way to produce great miniatures and fun factions. It would then follow that people are willing to put up with wild imbalance because the game is fun enough when it does work, and the miniatures good enough looking, that it compensates. One could further follow that this is the reason that the imbalance exists to such an extent, and seems to get worse with more popular wargames; because they do not HAVE to fix it to attract players. The other side of the coin being that balance is still obviously an attractive factor (else smaller games with less resources but a greater need to attract players would not bother) and so to some extent these popular wargames are allowing themselves to 'rest on their laurels' rather than really refine their product. This reasoning would of course need to come with the caveat that it is but one of multiple factors and not the whole explanation itself.

I would add that it is apparent they do want balance, but since they are chasing their tail with analog - ie. hard copy book - releases I am not that optimistic they can properly do that. In digital game development we do have very strict staging dates. A build goes into a staging branch and we do final preparations for mass release. Now, because we are doing this digitally we can release hotfixes as needed, but this is not something you can do if you have a master that must be released to the printers at the beginning of staging where any delay can cost a lot of money. This is why Chapter Approved/General's Handbook will have less fixes than most people desire, and often followed with complaints that the books are not taking into account recent books.

This is why I kinda wish GW would embrace the digital revolution and have an app or something where they can update points on a monthly basis based on internal reviews of external data. I liked Jervis' interview about his approach to balancing, but I would also greatly prefer a more direct input from the developers of why they take certain approaches to their designs much like many digital game companies are doing these days. Sometimes a design decision is taken to directly address a certain meta. They did this with Overwatch when they wanted to address the GOATS meta and I would love if GW would explain their thoughts process better. The strange thing is that White Dwarf is the perfect place for these discussions if they do not want to make more videos than they are already making.

Eh, tabletop games I don't think work with fast updates like that. I'd be all for going full digital, but monthly just wouldn't work. There's not enough data in short time frames, especially when most of their audience is getting probably 1-5 games in a month. They could nerf/buff serious outliers as they arise... but often what happens is that the community finds something they think is a broken outlier, and before it gets nerfed, there's a new build or release or something that makes it not so scary and it doesn't seem so bad anymore. You see this all the time - a new list smashes some tournament, there's much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but then a new counterbuild or meta shift happens and it's a non-issue.

4 months is maybe as fast as I'd want updates, enough time to gauge if something is really in need of a patch, but faster than the current turnaround.

 Eldarsif wrote:

When you put it that way it sounds like a logical and effective way to produce great miniatures and fun factions. It would then follow that people are willing to put up with wild imbalance because the game is fun enough when it does work, and the miniatures good enough looking, that it compensates. One could further follow that this is the reason that the imbalance exists to such an extent, and seems to get worse with more popular wargames; because they do not HAVE to fix it to attract players. The other side of the coin being that balance is still obviously an attractive factor (else smaller games with less resources but a greater need to attract players would not bother) and so to some extent these popular wargames are allowing themselves to 'rest on their laurels' rather than really refine their product. This reasoning would of course need to come with the caveat that it is but one of multiple factors and not the whole explanation itself.

I would add that it is apparent they do want balance, but since they are chasing their tail with analog - ie. hard copy book - releases I am not that optimistic they can properly do that. In digital game development we do have very strict staging dates. A build goes into a staging branch and we do final preparations for mass release. Now, because we are doing this digitally we can release hotfixes as needed, but this is not something you can do if you have a master that must be released to the printers at the beginning of staging where any delay can cost a lot of money. This is why Chapter Approved/General's Handbook will have less fixes than most people desire, and often followed with complaints that the books are not taking into account recent books.

This is why I kinda wish GW would embrace the digital revolution and have an app or something where they can update points on a monthly basis based on internal reviews of external data. I liked Jervis' interview about his approach to balancing, but I would also greatly prefer a more direct input from the developers of why they take certain approaches to their designs much like many digital game companies are doing these days. Sometimes a design decision is taken to directly address a certain meta. They did this with Overwatch when they wanted to address the GOATS meta and I would love if GW would explain their thoughts process better. The strange thing is that White Dwarf is the perfect place for these discussions if they do not want to make more videos than they are already making.

As has been mentioned before, fan comps did it and got way better results. TBF much of that was prior to allegiance rules that undoubtedly complicate things, however there were still some that trailed on after that which still produced much better balance. I am willing to give GW some leniency because, as you say, they have a breakneck release pace and a ton of factors to manage. It can also be more difficult to balance the same things one is designing because the perspective is entirely different--like evaluating the quality of a book one wrote themselves. However, when players can tell literally within minutes that certain things are OP and give a pretty decent run-down of problem areas within a few days, that speaks to an effort not being made pre-release. Hell, balance would improve dramatically if they just asked Auticus for his formulas & spreadsheets then referenced them when point costing new/updated warscrolls. And that could easily be done before and between rounds of playtesting (though I strongly suspect their playtesting process is not done properly).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Requizen wrote:

NinthMusketeer wrote:The above seems like the classic discussion boiling down to debunking and re-hashing "those examples of imbalance don't count."

Or maybe it's more complicated than "I don't see the units so they must be bad/imbalanced". Again, there are very few units that are actually "bad" when it comes down to it, just don't mesh well with current builds or in the current meta. You see "forgotten" units pop up all the time.

Can you quote where someone said just that without any further explanation? Can you explain how that accounts for imbalance of entire factions and game mechanics? Can you show stats that support a broad balance between both factions and units within a faction?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Edit: To clarify, I do not think armies without allegiance 'count' as their own faction. But if it has a set of allegiance abilities it's fair game. And I did see the stats you posted earlier, but that came with the caveat of ignoring a good chunk of them to say things are balanced, which rubs me the wrong way.

I'm still waiting for objective battle report proof that the game is totally fine beyond the tournament level and casual or for fun lists are just fine in a power gamer environment, which would indicate a balanced or fine environment.

All I'm seeing is a circular discussion about how everything is just fine, people need to learn to play, and I'm asking for some proof or some solid examples, written, or video, that show that this is the case.

None have been presented.

I am not surprised because every - single - tournament - powergamer - that - has - claimed - that - the game - is just fine - has never been able to produce any evidence other than "well at these events some non normal list went 4-1 so that means the game is fine!" without really giving a run down of who they played, what armies they faced, what their roster consisted of, or even what the record of the people that they faced were.

Hell I can take my slaves of darkness trash list and go 4-1 down at the store if I'm playing newbs and guys that are just not that good. That doesn't make slaves to darkness a viable list when my good friend Tom the Powergamer shows up with his Adepticon list and rubs everyone's nose in their own feces with it because not only is he an ok player, his army is 10x more powerful. But I can say "hey I went 4-1 with slaves to darkness, that is PROOF that AOS is in a great place!" Because I read that on the daily on here, or twitter, or facebook without any context on who they played, or what lists they faced, or the actual skill level of their opponents. Only that they went 4-1. So its fine.

I've given years of math, been told that doesn't count, given years of examples, told those don't count, and now i'm asking for objective report to demonstrate how the game is just fine.

If that isn't going to happen, which we all know its not going to happen, then there's nothing more to discuss in those regards. You can't just say the game is fine and then not have any objective statistics and data to back that up short of non-provable anecdote.

It is objectively known that a solid half of the game is unplayable against power factions. And that, again, is the point of this thread. And not all of those factions "dont' have a modern book".

So its ok to say "i don't give a **** about balance and balance doens't exist but I'm ok with the game." Thats fine. Its ok to say "yeah power lists are going to **** all over your face if you don't take a power list too." And thats fine.

Its fullblown malarchy to say "yeah the game is just fine. Everyone is just fine. Every faction is finely balanced, you all just don't know how to play right."

@ auticus

Do you have your statistics for unit performance to hand? I may have missed it and I’m keen to see.

Also I had a quick glance through the malign sorcery book; on the whole, I think that the realm spells and artifacts are ok, but there’s a few that need dialled back. You probably know the ones...sword of judgement, I’m looking at you.

[redacted]

You know what? I'm done. I've realized that having a reasonable discussion about this game on this board is impossible. I hope you guys can find a game that you actually enjoy playing.



All good things,

EnTyme

auticus wrote:
I'm still waiting for objective battle report proof that the game is totally fine beyond the tournament level and casual or for fun lists are just fine in a power gamer environment, which would indicate a balanced or fine environment.

All I'm seeing is a circular discussion about how everything is just fine, people need to learn to play, and I'm asking for some proof or some solid examples, written, or video, that show that this is the case.

None have been presented.

I am not surprised because every - single - tournament - powergamer - that - has - claimed - that - the game - is just fine - has never been able to produce any evidence other than "well at these events some non normal list went 4-1 so that means the game is fine!" without really giving a run down of who they played, what armies they faced, what their roster consisted of, or even what the record of the people that they faced were.

"I want game proof that things are fine."
"Not that proof, the right proof. By my boundaries on my specifics otherwise it's meaningless and I'll ignore it altogether."

You know what, you're right, clearly no one can refute you. And unlike everyone else in the world, you have no burden of proof of anything, despite having a pretty unsubstantial claim. Lucky!

Your game is indeed broken. Alas, you cannot fix it, so might as well stop playing.

Requizen wrote:

auticus wrote:
I'm still waiting for objective battle report proof that the game is totally fine beyond the tournament level and casual or for fun lists are just fine in a power gamer environment, which would indicate a balanced or fine environment.

All I'm seeing is a circular discussion about how everything is just fine, people need to learn to play, and I'm asking for some proof or some solid examples, written, or video, that show that this is the case.

None have been presented.

I am not surprised because every - single - tournament - powergamer - that - has - claimed - that - the game - is just fine - has never been able to produce any evidence other than "well at these events some non normal list went 4-1 so that means the game is fine!" without really giving a run down of who they played, what armies they faced, what their roster consisted of, or even what the record of the people that they faced were.

"I want game proof that things are fine."
"Not that proof, the right proof. By my boundaries on my specifics otherwise it's meaningless and I'll ignore it altogether."

You know what, you're right, clearly no one can refute you. And unlike everyone else in the world, you have no burden of proof of anything, despite having a pretty unsubstantial claim. Lucky!

Your game is indeed broken. Alas, you cannot fix it, so might as well stop playing.

Where is your proof?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 EnTyme wrote:
[redacted]

You know what? I'm done. I've realized that having a reasonable discussion about this game on this board is impossible. I hope you guys can find a game that you actually enjoy playing.



All good things,

EnTyme

Enjoying a game and being critical of its faults are not mutually exclusive. And throwing up your hands to say reasonable discussion is impossible when pushed to provide evidence is not itself very reasonable.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
For the record, here is a good piece of evidence to show the game is quite imbalanced. Requizen actually linked it last page to show the game is balanced, which I think says quite a lot.

Eh, tabletop games I don't think work with fast updates like that. I'd be all for going full digital, but monthly just wouldn't work.

The monthly is more like a release cadence that would be optional rather than mandatory. Also, testing of various things takes time so if they are working with results of matches from Q1 then it could be spread over Q2/Q3 depending what QA they need to do. One month they could release point changes to Shining Spears and perhaps explain their reasoning, then next month they'd address Castellan and Dark Reapers. Just an example. I think we can all agree that yearly revisions are just way too slow and at this point they should probably aim for at least 6 month updates to keep things going.

As has been mentioned before, fan comps did it and got way better results. TBF much of that was prior to allegiance rules that undoubtedly complicate things, however there were still some that trailed on after that which still produced much better balance. I am willing to give GW some leniency because, as you say, they have a breakneck release pace and a ton of factors to manage. It can also be more difficult to balance the same things one is designing because the perspective is entirely different--like evaluating the quality of a book one wrote themselves. However, when players can tell literally within minutes that certain things are OP and give a pretty decent run-down of problem areas within a few days, that speaks to an effort not being made pre-release. Hell, balance would improve dramatically if they just asked Auticus for his formulas & spreadsheets then referenced them when point costing new/updated warscrolls. And that could easily be done before and between rounds of playtesting (though I strongly suspect their playtesting process is not done properly).

To be fair early AoS was a different beast. Ultimately I am beginning to suspect - based on some of the comments here and elsewhere - that the AoS team is balancing the game based on the meta which means they are approaching the army as a whole and not unit-wise. This means that if the army - warts and all - can face against the worst of the worst, and perhaps move the meta a bit, they might consider it a job well done. I am also suspicious that individual units can be balanced without doing a full on index rewrite like Warhammer 40k did as many units are just all over the place in regards to force multipliers and special cases.

There is also one thing I would love for GW to do is to start releasing Matched Maps. Basically layouts of battlefields they are playing with so we can at least play with something similar. I have tried a lot of different types of battlefields and have found the games(40k/AoS/KT) to change drastically with it. When I play Sector Imperialis with my friend who runs Ultramarines with a small Deathwatch ally and I play full-on Craftworld the game is suddenly a different beast. Different enough that at first I didn't really understand why people were complaining about the Space Marine Codex. It is these wild cards I would love to get more insight into when GW is working on these books. As I have probably said ad nauseum: I just want a bloody commentary on these tomes and related material from GW.

To be fair early AoS was a different beast.

I can promise you that the people involved with the fan comps before could do an equal job at balancing the game today.

ou know what, you're right, clearly no one can refute you. And unlike everyone else in the world, you have no burden of proof of anything, despite having a pretty unsubstantial claim. Lucky

Except that I've spent the past three years posting numbers and explaining those numbers to the point where repeating myself in every thread got to be pointless.

Your proof is posting tournament results. We've already rode that merry go round about how that isn't proof. Tournament results are not proof that the game as a whole is fine. Its proof that the tournament scene is fine.

I've already laid out a legit scenario to provide evidence for. A mortal khorne army, a faction on its current 2nd AOS book, cannot be viable against a current tournament level FEC or DOK army build.

Thats the postulation. Thats the argument. So my request is to prove that that is wrong. I even gave the caveat of just linking to some battle report somewhere on the internet that i missed showing in detail a weaker faction topping a tournament build.

The response I get is "well you don't have to prove it so ..."

We prove it every day by having to live it. You were the one that made the pointed assessment that the game is fine, we just don't know how to play right. The onus is on you at that point to prove your statement and show us how we're not playing right. So show me. Show me what I'm missing.
I sure as hell know if I was going to go up to someone's thread and tell them to git gud and that their claims were unsubstantial that I'd pretty quickly have a way to demonstrate how to git gud and show how their claims were unsubstantial.

You know what? I'm done. I've realized that having a reasonable discussion about this game on this board is impossible. I hope you guys can find a game that you actually enjoy playing.

You get cranky when people complain about the game. This is a thread specifically about balance. If you don't like talking about the balance in the game, this thread is pretty clear on what its subject matter is.

There is a general discussion thread for just general conversation. There are all kinds of things that can be discussed about the game. Avoid topics that you will find not interesting or that you strongly disagree with. Or prove that the game is just fine by linking a battle report showing that the game is just fine, so that I can be a believer too. I know your assertion is that the game is fine because the social contract means powergamers won't play casual players with power lists, and you already know that I disagree with you because it happens pretty much weekly all around me and because the powergamers won't tone down their lists, I have to write specific campaign rules barring those type of lists (ie houseruling) because they feel the game is just fine and we all need to just git gud.

If you feel the game is just fine as it is, then this isn't a thread that would interest you. That doesn't mean our stance on imbalance is unreasonable, there are plenty of components to back the game's balance at a faction level being bad. If you have some other nugget that is not beiing considered, by all means throw iit out there. Just as long as you aren't trying to use tournament placings as some proof that the game is great on all levels.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Do you have your statistics for unit performance to hand? I may have missed it and I’m keen to see.

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

Though it is about 18 months out of date so the data you will find there is currently not worth anything. I have a personal database on my gamedev machine that has up to date statistics but I don't publish them any more because I got tired of being told math is useless in balancing the game. It does not have your Kharadron Overlords on it, but on my version at home many of the units there are in the lower left quadrant ( meaning that for their point cost and for their damage output and their defensive capabilities, they are mostly trash, they need a massive point reallocation and a boost to their damage, which I am sure you already know lol)

I use it to develop my campaign books like Deus Vult though so that I can point cost things appropriately and not create some OP monstrosity that drives my players off (or create a wet napkin that no one wants to use)

I think what I find most obnoxioius is people pointing to event results as "proof" things are fine. This is the same line of horsegak that FLG uses to say the game is balanced "Look at the diversity!" when it's really no diversity at all.

"Joe Nobody won LVO with this army!" doesn't mean the army is fine and balanced and everyone who isn't curbstomping people need to just git gud and learn to play.

Now I will admit AOS has less balance issues than 40k but there's still a large (too large IMHO) disparity between casual lists and competitive lists; THIS is what GW consistently has failed to grasp. In virtually every other game, the gap is extremely smaller. In fact in Warmahordes it was often that you would see more casual lists beat the netlists in the hands of a skilled player or just by virtue of being something unexpected and therefore not prepared for. I can't think of any case where I've seen similar happen in any Warhammer game in the past 15 years at least.

I feel AOS is in better shape than 40k yes. 40k is... well... I haven't touched 40k in a few years now because of the imbalance over there.

Though people will argue its in the best shape of its life.

auticus wrote:
I feel AOS is in better shape than 40k yes. 40k is... well... I haven't touched 40k in a few years now because of the imbalance over there.

Though people will argue its in the best shape of its life.

Well, considering the dumpster fire 7th was and the abomination 6th and end of 5th I would have to agree that it is in the best shape of its life. Of course, best shape is a relative term and does not exclude further improvements or new heights.

auticus wrote:
Except that I've spent the past three years posting numbers and explaining those numbers to the point where repeating myself in every thread got to be pointless.

Your proof is posting tournament results. We've already rode that merry go round about how that isn't proof. Tournament results are not proof that the game as a whole is fine. Its proof that the tournament scene is fine.

I've already laid out a legit scenario to provide evidence for. A mortal khorne army, a faction on its current 2nd AOS book, cannot be viable against a current tournament level FEC or DOK army build.

Thats the postulation. Thats the argument. So my request is to prove that that is wrong. I even gave the caveat of just linking to some battle report somewhere on the internet that i missed showing in detail a weaker faction topping a tournament build.

That's not how it works. This thread, and you as one of the primary posters, put forth the argument that the game is broken. The burden of proof is on y'all as the conversation starters, to prove something. Not to put forth a random, subjective statement and assume you're right until someone proves you're wrong.

PS - Mortal Khorne still isn't a faction. Buy different models if you want to win.

auticus wrote:
The response I get is "well you don't have to prove it so ..."

We prove it every day by having to live it. You were the one that made the pointed assessment that the game is fine, we just don't know how to play right. The onus is on you at that point to prove your statement and show us how we're not playing right. So show me. Show me what I'm missing.
I sure as hell know if I was going to go up to someone's thread and tell them to git gud and that their claims were unsubstantial that I'd pretty quickly have a way to demonstrate how to git gud and show how their claims were unsubstantial.

el
oh
el

"I don't have to prove it, I LIVE IT. I don't need to listen to your data, facts, or statistics, my feelings tell me it's true." This line of logic is on the level of an anti-vaxxer or flat earther.

So yeah, it's more complicated than "git gud" but guess what? The game is always going to be somewhat unbalanced due to size and complexity, and that's the point of GHB and Big FAQs throughout the year (not to mention all the new releases bringing older armies up to high levels). No matter what, being a Timmy is always going to be hard in a game heavily populated with Spikes and Johnnys. Asking them to change the game and cater the game to you specifically when it's fine for a majority of other players, and indeed is going through a massive spike in popularity and growth, is pretty laughable.

Mortal khorne is one of the two factions in the blades of khorne book. The other being demons of khorne.

It can be as laughable to you as you want. You still have not shown me where these factions that are just fine are doing fine in an analysis.

You don't have data, facts, or statistics. Your data, facts, and statistics are "in these tournaments some dude went 4-1 so the game is fine". and your facts have been to this point 100% tournament placings which don't show us anything other than in a pool of 120 players or so, some guys in little seen factions sometimes get up there in standings, but doesn't show who they played against or the combined win/loss record of those players, which makes it as useful as me saying "DOK are fine, because I went to a tournaemnt with them last weekend and went 2-4, if they were busted I should have done really well". Either of those are useless in terms of being objective data points.

Those aren't statistics.

I've already explained why tournament results are not valid statistics.

You have chosen to hand waive that.

Objective data points are mathematical numbers showing avg outputs, avg inputs, and demonstrating faction a vs faction b from an objective standpoint. Not - dudes went to a tournament and played some unknown people and did well, erego game is fine.

Asking them to change the game and cater the game to you specifically when it's fine for a majority of other players

Do you have a citation or statistic that shows this also to be true? That the majority of players overall is fine with this? Or are you saying the majority of tournament players that you belong to are fine with this?

There is a large difference in those two player pools after all.

So yeah, it's more complicated than "git gud" but guess what? The game is always going to be somewhat unbalanced due to size and complexity

Which is a whole different story than "the game is fine, all the factions are fine, you all just need to learn to play"

What you are really saying , as I interpret it anyway, in a thread discussing the poor balance of the game is:

"the game is imbalanced, but no one cares, its expected, just buy different models if you want to win".

Really you could have left your original post at just that, and no one would have probably replied otherwise since yeah, thats a known perspective. Instead you went with the more abrasive gaslighting format of "its all in your head, there is no imbalance, you just don't know how to play the game right, so learn to play and get good and you'll be fine".

The problem is, he(Auticus) has put forth proof of mathematical imbalance found in units, by having a software that can rate the performance of a unit with their various different stats as compared to their points cost, which then shows as a bell curve. Units in the middle are well performing, models to the left or the right are underperforming or overperforming. And this same system was used to fill the gap, back when AoS did not have point values, and people wanted them. General opinion was that this was a fine method.

We're not here to discuss if the game is balanced for tournament play. That's all you've put forth as data, tournament results. They're trying to find and come up with ways to balance the game for all levels of play. If you'd care to read the thread, you would have known that.

Myself personally, I don't want there to be such a difference between tournament caliber lists, and a casual lists. I'd rather execution and general strategy be the deciding factors, mixed in with dice rolls and of course, optimizing lists. I don't want to have to leave my shiny fun toys at home, such as Warp Storm Vortex endless spell, because though it may be cool, it's obscenely strong for it's cost.

auticus wrote:
Mortal khorne is one of the two factions in the blades of khorne book. The other being demons of khorne.

Nah son. The faction is Khorne. Mortal Khorne and Daemons of Khorne do not have different Allegiance Abilities. There's a couple different tables, but that's like saying Ghouls and Horrors are different armies within FEC. It's just factually incorrect.

auticus wrote:
You don't have data, facts, or statistics. Your data, facts, and statistics are "in these tournaments some dude went 4-1 so the game is fine". and your facts have been to this point 100% tournament placings which don't show us anything other than in a pool of 120 players or so, some guys in little seen factions sometimes get up there in standings, but doesn't show who they played against or the combined win/loss record of those players, which makes it as useful as me saying "DOK are fine, because I went to a tournaemnt with them last weekend and went 2-4, if they were busted I should have done really well". Either of those are useless in terms of being objective data points.

Those aren't statistics.

I've already explained why tournament results are not valid statistics.

You have chosen to hand waive that.

"Explained"
Once again, nah son. You've given your stance on on why you'll just ignore statistics.

By the by, I have posted Statistics in this thread, you just ignored them. Here, I'll do it again: https://thehonestwargamer.com/aos-stats-5th-march/

And here's some charts from that page





Oh look, Blades of Khorne is sitting at a 49% win rate since AoS2, 48% win rate since 2.2 (aka big FAQ). That's pretty freaking close to perfectly statistical.

auticus wrote:
Do you have a citation or statistic that shows this also to be true? That the majority of players overall is fine with this? Or are you saying the majority of tournament players that you belong to are fine with this?

Maybe the fact that AoS is selling better now than the WHFB did for a decade (decades?), or the fact that AoS events are growing and still selling out past max numbers, or the fact that the online community has grown by leaps and bounds in the time since GHB1 released? But I'm sure they're just buying, supporting, and playing a game they hate and wish would change completely, or something like that.

auticus wrote:
Which is a whole different story than "the game is fine, all the factions are fine, you all just need to learn to play"

What you are really saying , as I interpret it anyway, in a thread discussing the poor balance of the game is:

"the game is imbalanced, but no one cares, its expected, just buy different models if you want to win".

Really you could have left your original post at just that, and no one would have probably replied otherwise since yeah, thats a known perspective.

Factions are statistically fine. Pretty much all factions can be brought at a casual level and played with little to no problem. With some outliers, pretty much all factions can be brought at a competitive level and played with little to no problem.

Your argument last page was literally "I can't play a casual list against a tournament list and that's bad", which it's not, and it's crazy that you even think it is.

The other hand waive of bad balance is simply "just enforce the social contract and don't play with gits that will powergame in a casual setting."

Which would be less of an issue if the game itself were actually balanced for all levels of play. Like it was in the fan comp era.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
You're posting tournament statistics again to prove that all levels of play are just fine. Again. You're posting useless numbers that don't show what those armies faced. You're posting "some dudes went to a tournament and won half their games against unknown nebulous opponents, so the game iis fiine"

Your argument last page was literally "I can't play a casual list against a tournament list and that's bad", which it's not, and it's crazy that you even think it is.

Thats probably as polar opposite to what I am saying as black is to white.

Pretty much all factions can be brought at a casual level and played with little to no problem.

Based on tournament statistics, the casual level is just fine.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Maybe the fact that AoS is selling better now than the WHFB did for a decade (decades?), or the fact that AoS events are growing and still selling out past max numbers, or the fact that the online community has grown by leaps and bounds in the time since GHB1 released? But I'm sure they're just buying, supporting, and playing a game they hate and wish would change completely, or something like that.

There are many reasons why AOS is selling better now. Its not because the balance is somehow better.

The online community has grown by leaps and bounds because no one would play a game without official points. Had the game in 2015 on first release had official points, the mass exodus would not have happened.

As many polls show, at least half or more of the wargaming community simply does not care about balance.

But then the postulation would be injecting better balance would somehow make the game sell less.

auticus wrote:
The other hand waive of bad balance is simply "just enforce the social contract and don't play with gits that will powergame in a casual setting."

Which would be less of an issue if the game itself were actually balanced for all levels of play. Like it was in the fan comp era.

Rofl what? If you think the community comp was balanced you crazy. And the most popular community comp (SCGT) was used to make the General's Handbook, so if you think early community comps were balanced... then at least the first GHB should literally be balanced by the same thing.

inb4 "well obviously not that one, that was a bad comp and I preferred X comp"

auticus wrote:
You're posting tournament statistics again to prove that all levels of play are just fine. Again. You're posting useless numbers that don't show what those armies faced. You're posting "some dudes went to a tournament and won half their games against unknown nebulous opponents, so the game iis fiine"

I'm sorry, are you telling me thousands of points of data aren't ok because they took place at a tournament?

Literally, actually, honestly, what do you think facts are? Is there a limit to what you'll discount?

This has to be some crazy amount of trolling. You can't ask for facts and then ignore facts. That's a new level of low thinking that I can't even begin to imagine.

"oh but it could have just been matchups"
Yeah dude, I'm sure all 142 of those Khorne players across the world just got good matchups and actually they should be at a 20% win rate.

auticus wrote:
There are many reasons why AOS is selling better now. Its not because the balance is somehow better.

The online community has grown by leaps and bounds because no one would play a game without official points. Had the game in 2015 on first release had official points, the mass exodus would not have happened.

Hahaha this is a new level of reaching.

"It's only getting bigger because there's points now" There's been points for 3.5 years now, if it was that bad then people would have dropped it in 2017. Instead, every AoS event and community has grown year over year for the past 3 years. Tell me why that would happen if the game was so bad it was obvious to every single person, and not just you.

Thanks for sharing the link auticus.

I too think that aos is in a better shape than 40k is atm. It’s method of handling allies and command points is a lot more balanced. Definitely no complaints there from me. As we said, if we can get mortal wound spam, mortal wound blocking and summoning under control, with appropriate price adjustments too, we’ll have nailed it. Oh, and boosts for those weak units and factions as well.

I went through all the realm artifacts and spells etc. The latter actually seem ok to me as is, but the former? They’re mostly ok, but there are two that strike me as problematic; Uglu and Aqshy. You know the ones; sword of judgement, the doppelgänger cloak and the Ignax’s scales. They’re better than everything else, and the cloak in particular really pisses me off when it’s used on a monster riding hero.

My suggestion; change the Sword Of Judgement to a simple “on a hit roll of 6+ against Heroes and Monsters, it scores a mortal wound in addition to its normal damage”. Now, this makes it exactly like the Jadewound Thorn. Actually, worse than the Jadewound Thorn, because that one works on everyone, not just heroes and monsters. So, to keep balance, I’d change the Jadewound Thorn to “on a hit roll of 6+, it scores a mortal wound and the attack sequence ends”. So in comparison, the Sword Of Judgement is better, but only against heroes and monsters. This also brings them into line with the Magmaforged blade, which is an mortal wound on top of normal damage for a wound roll of 6+ against everyone. Now, all three weapons roughly fall into the same bracket. See? Balance is easily done!

The cloak, that people abuse the hell out of? Just put in a requirement that it doesn’t work if the hero has the monster keyword, or more than a certain number of wounds. In other words, it only works on foot or small mount characters, not great big giant flying monsters. Simple.

And the scales? I think they work ok as they are (4+ save against mortals only). But other artifacts that do the same but worse? The god wrought helm for example? Tweak them slightly. 6+ save, but against both mortal wounds and regular wounds. Narrow the scope between artifacts.

EDIT: I see the thread moved along quickly there. That’s why I wish, when I tell someone to give me a minute to type out a message, they’d actually do it instead of arguing about it with me...

And the most popular community comp (SCGT) was used to make the General's Handbook

This is an interesting point. Jervis admitted to doing this in his interview.

 Eldarsif wrote:

And the most popular community comp (SCGT) was used to make the General's Handbook

This is an interesting point. Jervis admitted to doing this in his interview.

Auticus *WROTE* a better fan comp than SCGT that actually had balance since his math showed SCGT (IIRC) undercosted monsters because people weren't using them or something like that.

What the people arguing with him forget is that auticus isn't just some random throwing his opinions around, he wrote a popular fan comp in the days before GHB and has actual math and statistics to back up his balancing (to the point where he was told it was TOO balanced, and therefore made Listbuilding not a huge deal and therefore was bad)

SCGT wasn't the most popular comp. SCGT was the comp written by guys in the UK that hung with the design team. We know that SCGT was used as the foundation of points because a warhammer community article was posted saying that the SCGT point system is what they were going to use.

SCGT was popular yes, I'm not saying it wasn't popular. I'm saying objectively it was chosen because those guys live in the UK and hang out with the design team. It was the comp that covered the entire UK's tournament scene. GW is based in the UK.

The SCGT comp author also said he intentionally undercosted monsters in his system because he wanted to see people take more of them in his events on the warhammer org forums a few years back.

Overall as my memory stands there were roughly five fan comps that were in wide circulation and used. I think that had any of those five been chosen as "official points" that the global community altogether would have been fine and happy, they just wanted points.

As to tournament guy and his tournament arguments, we will never reconcile that tournament balance != overall game balance, and we can leave it at that and jump off the merry go round circular pissing contest. I've already explained multiple times why I don't consider tournament win/loss records as a valid measure of balance to the entire game. If you choose to ignore those, then so be it. You consiider them to be biblical canon, I do not. There's nothing else to say.

auticus wrote:
As to tournament guy and his tournament arguments, we will never reconcile that tournament balance != overall game balance, and we can leave it at that and jump off the merry go round circular pissing contest. I've already explained multiple times why I don't consider tournament win/loss records as a valid measure of balance to the entire game. If you choose to ignore those, then so be it. You consiider them to be biblical canon, I do not. There's nothing else to say.

Alright, let's step through your arguments, shall we?

This part of the argument seems to be that at tournaments, you don't know what the lists that the person played against were, and therefore somehow the games are null and void because maybe they got matched up with garbage lists:



But, that's exactly the same as any casual pickup game of AoS. When you walk into the store, unless you have a rigid gaming structure, you don't know who you're playing against or how much effort they put into their list. You don't know if that casual game you're getting in at a casual environment is going to be against a player who just swept units off his shelves or just bought what seemed cool. So an army that seems good or bad at your FLGS can be completely influenced by what everyone else is playing and how much time they put into their lists. So the question I have is... how is this different?

You want a matchup of a Mortal Khorne army beating a Daughters of Khaine army (or equivalent). How do I know those armies and players are equivalent? It could be a bad player vs a good player. Or a complete noob vs someone who has run the matchup a hundred times. The mission could favor one, or the dice rolls. How is this casual matchup any different from a tournament matchup other than where it takes place? In fact, many (if not most) of the 3-2 or 2-3 placings at events are casual people who are just coming to a tournament to get 5 games in a weekend. Are their games somehow not relevant because it's not a FLGS, despite playing the same armies they'd play at home?

You're always going to be against a random player, whether it's a tournament or a local game. So why are tournament games against randoms somehow less legitimate than local games against randoms? It's not a completely different game, and if you've built a list to try and win (whether it's a netlist or not), then the outcomes should be similar no matter where you play your game. I could go to a local store with my non-Rukk Bonesplitterz and win four more games than I lose over the course of a year, is that somehow more relevant information than going to an event and going 4-1 with them, even though it's statistically the same result at the end of the day?



This part of the argument has more to do with "power builds" and "tournament armies" as being a different game altogether:

 Future War Cultist wrote:
What’s ironic is that when you talk about internal balance, the FEC are apparently the most balanced faction there is. Almost every unit, every play style, every item etc. is apparently viable. But then you move to external balance and well...you know.

This is my issue with them above all else.
Everything in that book works.
You can randomly generate a list by rolling dice to determine your units and it will hold its own stupidly well.
We did it for 3 games against different players and it was amazing to see how absurdly strong a purely random list was.

This was also against high tier tournament armies including an archregent spam FEC list aswell. (2 games at 2k and 1 at 2.5k)

In terms of internal balance, the book is pretty spot on.
Nothing is a must take or must avoid taking.




As a side note to mortal wounds etc, spamming them doesn't make an army viable atall.
Spiderfang can drop an insane amount every single turn, yet they aren't exactly doing much currently.

I think the internal balance is horrid; courtiers in a list at all (barring battalions) are never-take because an archregent is better and will summon one in for free. Courtiers that aren't a varghulf are never-take (barring battalions) because you are summoning them in with the archregent anyways so you just bring the best one. The dragon is strictly inferior to the terrorgheist, all delusions are vastly inferior to feast day, and only feast day competes with Blisterskin/Gristlegore in terms of strength. No mount trait comes even close to as good as the re-roll hits on terry maw. I could go on but you get the point.

That any random list is crazy good against other things speaks to how strong the battletome is, how any random list fares against a specifically optimized one is a measure of the internal balance. And the ghulf between those is vast.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Jackal90 wrote:
As a side note to mortal wounds etc, spamming them doesn't make an army viable atall.
Spiderfang can drop an insane amount every single turn, yet they aren't exactly doing much currently.

The argument is that MW spamming and/or summoning does better than armies which do not have it on average, not all the time. As has been mentioned DoK does very well without either (though they do have a not insignificant amount of MW negation), but that is but one point of data in relation the whole.

Spiderfang suffer because their MW output comes in bursts rather than consistently and there is only a limited amount of control over when/where those bursts happen coupled with the models dealing them being fragile and easy to kill if that burst does not happen at the right time. Compare to Deepkin where their MW output is not particularly high but they have a high degree of control when they happen and who they are dealt to, letting them get more mileage out of a much smaller amount. Ultimately you are correct that Spiderfang are an army (well, part of one) that deals MWs but does not perform very well.

MW spam is a pillar to build on, not the entire win itself. An army that has no access to MW spam or summoning spam faced against an army that can do those things will generally with some outlier exceptions like DOK be at a severe disadvantage.

 Galas wrote:
We should have a Godwin's law for balance discussions. Any time somebody mentions that even chess is imbalanced, he or she automatically loses the debate. (I know thats not how Godwin's law works but...)

If it were to be rephrased as the original Godwin's Law it should be something like:

"As an online Warhammer discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving chess approaches 1"


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Wayniac wrote:
You guys thought the Terorrgheist doing 6 mortals was bad? Skarbrand can do 8 mortal wounds or 16 mortal wounds if you roll a 6.

This stuff is going full ridiculous. How on earth does the team think that is even remotely okay?

A ) We haven't seen the full rules
B ) We currently have no way of knowing how he will work on the table after these changes we are not privy to.
C ) If this continues this will be the Kelermorph thread all over again.
D ) If this becomes the Kelermorph thread all over again we will need to talk about Cypher, the greatest marksman in 40k.

Who whould be AoS' Cypher? That Stormcast hero with the giant bow?

Can I run a little exercise here? The 3 ‘core’ Stormcast units; Liberators, Hunters and Sequitors. How do they stack up when compared to each other? I know that Sequitors are the best by far. What about Hunters? And what do you think of their current points costs?

 Galas wrote:
Who whould be AoS' Cypher? That Stormcast hero with the giant bow?

Well, it would be have to someone dual-wielding something. Neave Blacktalon? Basically Cypher before the Fall leading her Unfallen to victory?

 Future War Cultist wrote:
Can I run a little exercise here? The 3 ‘core’ Stormcast units; Liberators, Hunters and Sequitors. How do they stack up when compared to each other? I know that Sequitors are the best by far. What about Hunters? And what do you think of their current points costs?

Sequitors are severely undercosted, the other two are decent though liberators are probably a wee bit overcosted. The hunters are more of a specialist/flank unit and don't serve well as conventional 'stand in the front' battleline. With stormcast you usually want some units with cheaper points-per-wound to be the 'chaff' of the army. But there are plenty of other ways to do things.

So would you suggest increasing Sequitors by 20pts and decreasing Liberators by 20pts?

I would put Sequitors up by 30 tbh--their ability to chose between re-roll all saves or re-roll all hits is really strong and their large amount of special weapons (2 per 5 and the champion) coupled with good attack profiles means their damage output is quite high.

Liberators I would just drop by 10. If they were on 32mm I'd say they are fine as-is, but a 40mm base hurts them enough that I think they should go down a little.

So the new Khorne stuff seems to be even more ridiculous than the last ridiculous stuff. They seem to be borderline broken strong.

This level of nonsense has me not wanting to bother with AOS. It's just stupid at this point. Each new release is usually (not always) even more broken than the one before.

I’ve been out of the loop. What have they done?

Unless the points have dropped dramatically nothing shown so far is overpowered. The majority of Khorne is underperforming; only Gore Pilgrims & Bloodthirsters have kept them relevant at all. As it stands they are not even OP, let alone on equal par with fotm cheese. Unless they are getting 25% point cuts across the board or some really broken artifact/command trait exploits they will not even be close to as strong as Skaven/FEC.

Endless 'spells' that you cannot unbind, cannot dispel, and have a massive effect, would be the first thing that comes to my mind. The strength of them combined with none of the counterplay typically found in Endless spells, and the other player not being able to control them if they go second in the battle round...

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2019/03/13/mar-13-blades-of-khorne-preview-judgements-of-khorne-and-the-skull-altargw-homepage-post-4/

The first one they show is just absolute bonkers. It has a 28" threat range of it's effect. -2 to casting rolls is strong, but if you can't get away from them (because they can be shoved across the board quite quickly) and can't deal with them, because they're undispellable, you get to have the pleasant joy of not only -2 to cast rolls, but also, any fails if you're near both of the skulls results in your wizard losing that spell for the rest of the game, and suffering d6 damage.

Edit: math is hard

They cost an unknown amount of points, and instead of you being able to unbind them (which can fail) they have a chance to unbind themselves at the end of turn without you needing to do anything. Again, there could be factors we have not seen like ludicrously low points costs but as it stands we do not have enough evidence to call OP.

For sure, they could be costed appropriately, but I'm not even sure how much something like that should cost. A little premature on calling it overpowered to be certain, which is why I tried to avoid saying or implying that.

The Skulls seem as though they'll have a huge effect on the game, even if they're around for just one turn. Similar to the Skaven Warp Vortex spell, that I've had to ban myself from using in 'casual' games.

I dunno... If one's army only has 1-2 casts a turn then it will not be uncommon to go a turn where no spells go off. It isn't crippling unless you failed that spell you really needed, because one is already prepared for the case where the cast simply fails. If those skulls are following around all game it would be an issue, but I see them being more of a threat to armies that are doing enough casts that they are counting on getting something off every turn. Even then there are mechanics that can be used to counter play, like grey seer warpstone tokens or destiny dice.

The problem will be if they are so cheap every khorne army shows up with them by default.

Did you hear too that Wrathmongers now only affect other khorne units? Not only this that a boost, it also diminishes the fluff slightly imo.

It was changed from all models within 3", to friendly units wholly within 8". Easier to buff your own guys and characters, though it may be harder to get the buff off on allies in some cases. MSU seems to be the way to go for Mortals more and more... Though now, it may be worth it to keep Wrathmongers out of melee for as long as possible, situation depending.

A little disappointed that it no-longer effected enemies, since it could be used in fun ways to force a monster or something to attack Wrathmongers, lose one or two, and have the monster or hero immediately attack itself with a buffed up statline. That tactic should still be effective, you're just going to lose 1 attack on each weapon.

Lame, the part where wrathmongers buffed everyone was one of the best thematic elements. But I get why they did it mechanically, and given that better mechanical functionality is what players have been asking for I suppose I am happy with the change.

Though they tend to get rules wrong often, MWG put up a brief review-game using the new Khorne Battletome.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xTHxUDQpV4

This gave us an important number to start with. Judgements of Khorne have a chance to disappear on the start of a new Battle-round. D6 roll, on a 1-4, the Judgement disappears. It changes to a 1-3 (+1 to the roll) if there is a Slaughterpriest "Nearby". Missing some more details, such as how much 'nearby' is, and if that chance to disappear is the same value for all judgements. No points shown, but perhaps that's in their longer review that's locked behind a pay wall?

Already, it's looking more manageable which is a good thing.

Here is a review where they also go over some details.

https://youtu.be/msf3zSK8k3g

Korgoraths are up a few points as well as Skullcrushers. Gore Pilgrim is down. Bloodthirsters and Skarbrand are staying the same. Most of the things are staying the same point-wise.

Considering the leaks so far I would say Blades of Khorne might end up as a good tome. Not over the top, but good. However, the thing I think it might bring to the table is a bit of a shakeup to any magical meta such as Nagash and Endless spells. This should be considered a good thing.

Only thing I am looking forward to see is if they tweaked Bloodreaver stats. I don't think that they are worth it at their current points at their current stats.

I saw the bloodreavers new statline. The only thing that’s changed is the fanatical devotion rule; the whole unit has to be within 16” of the totem now. So hopefully the points have been adjusted.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
I saw the bloodreavers new statline. The only thing that’s changed is the fanatical devotion rule; the whole unit has to be within 16” of the totem now. So hopefully the points have been adjusted.

Same points as before...

On the bright side the Bloodsecrator can move so they are a bit more mobile and survivable.

Dissapointed bloodthirsters staying the same as they are undercosted IMO. The reduction they got in GHB2 was unjustified. If gore pilgrims went down I am betting they removed the prayer re-rolls. Bloodreaver change is nice since it means the same measurement for that and portal of skulls. With the Bloodsecrator able to move now I see it as a non-issue that they must be wholly within.

Overall liking the changes so far, and the way judgements work. Tentative 'good job' and doing a bit to restore faith that skaven/fec are a fluke.

I like the fact that Bloodtihe can be used to summon OR enhance your current unit a lot. I hope we see that with Tzeentch and eventually Slaanesh.

So far, nothing jumps out to me as too strong. Seems like the Pendulum has swung back to tough but fair.

I agree; Khorne summoning is among the best implemented because it is a trade-off rather than a flat 'free stuff because you play this army'.

I would even say that summoning for Khorne is often a False Choice and is even touched upon in a Warhammer Community article.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I would put Sequitors up by 30 tbh--their ability to chose between re-roll all saves or re-roll all hits is really strong and their large amount of special weapons (2 per 5 and the champion) coupled with good attack profiles means their damage output is quite high.

Liberators I would just drop by 10. If they were on 32mm I'd say they are fine as-is, but a 40mm base hurts them enough that I think they should go down a little.

I used to think that Both Evocators on Foot and Sequitors were really undercosted. With all the recent battletomes though, I don't think they are nearly as strong as they used to be. I really think a small points increase, if any, is really needed on these units. At this point I think most of the rest of the SCE units need a points drop.

After watching a couple of BoK reviews I think they have gone from "meh" to "meh" unless you are using the endless spells and the altar vs a magic heavy army. Then they become "Actually ok".

For me the worst change is that I can't lash anymore my Khorne Minotaurs with my Bloodstoker. That was the best thing ... just the mental image of the scene was beautifull.

 Sasori wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I would put Sequitors up by 30 tbh--their ability to chose between re-roll all saves or re-roll all hits is really strong and their large amount of special weapons (2 per 5 and the champion) coupled with good attack profiles means their damage output is quite high.

Liberators I would just drop by 10. If they were on 32mm I'd say they are fine as-is, but a 40mm base hurts them enough that I think they should go down a little.

I used to think that Both Evocators on Foot and Sequitors were really undercosted. With all the recent battletomes though, I don't think they are nearly as strong as they used to be. I really think a small points increase, if any, is really needed on these units. At this point I think most of the rest of the SCE units need a points drop.

You are saying the overwhelming majority units should be changed instead of a handful, which I think is proof those handful are the problem. Bear in mind that SCE outperform other armies by a huge margin; they are in the top 3 armies overall. To say the army needs a buff on the majority of the units flies in the face of balance (not to mention would be taking a crap on other armies).

And before the suggestion gets made that those other armies should see a points drop too; that would be reducing the cost of 80-90% of units rather than increasing the cost of 10-20%, which is more than a bit nonsensical.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Galas wrote:
After watching a couple of BoK reviews I think they have gone from "meh" to "meh" unless you are using the endless spells and the altar vs a magic heavy army. Then they become "Actually ok".

For me the worst change is that I can't lash anymore my Khorne Minotaurs with my Bloodstoker. That was the best thing ... just the mental image of the scene was beautifull.

You can't have whipped cream anymore? Lame.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Sasori wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I would put Sequitors up by 30 tbh--their ability to chose between re-roll all saves or re-roll all hits is really strong and their large amount of special weapons (2 per 5 and the champion) coupled with good attack profiles means their damage output is quite high.

Liberators I would just drop by 10. If they were on 32mm I'd say they are fine as-is, but a 40mm base hurts them enough that I think they should go down a little.

I used to think that Both Evocators on Foot and Sequitors were really undercosted. With all the recent battletomes though, I don't think they are nearly as strong as they used to be. I really think a small points increase, if any, is really needed on these units. At this point I think most of the rest of the SCE units need a points drop.

You are saying the overwhelming majority units should be changed instead of a handful, which I think is proof those handful are the problem. Bear in mind that SCE outperform other armies by a huge margin; they are in the top 3 armies overall. To say the army needs a buff on the majority of the units flies in the face of balance (not to mention would be taking a crap on other armies).

And before the suggestion gets made that those other armies should see a points drop too; that would be reducing the cost of 80-90% of units rather than increasing the cost of 10-20%, which is more than a bit nonsensical.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Galas wrote:
After watching a couple of BoK reviews I think they have gone from "meh" to "meh" unless you are using the endless spells and the altar vs a magic heavy army. Then they become "Actually ok".

For me the worst change is that I can't lash anymore my Khorne Minotaurs with my Bloodstoker. That was the best thing ... just the mental image of the scene was beautifull.

You can't have whipped cream anymore? Lame.

Ninth,

Do you mind providing your data point for saying that the SCE are in the "top 3 armies overall" and over-perform other armies by a huge margin? I can't find any data to support that. Just scrolling through the recent tournament results, I am not seeing anything that indicates that. Besides the LVO, you usually only get 1 if any SCE list, if any in the top 10. There are some mixed order lists that place well, but that is not the same as a pure SCE list. The Sheffield Slaughter didn't even have a SCE list in the top 10. Instead you saw FEC, Skaven, Deepkin, Nagash and a BoC army take it.

And yes, just because you have some over performing units, does not mean the rest of the units in the tome are correctly pointed. Palladors, all of the Paladin units, and most of the mounted units are over-pointed. Castigators are 26 points a pop, which is just absurd.

I used to think that Both Evocators on Foot and Sequitors were really undercosted.

Evocators were one of the highest undercost units in the game on the bellcurve of points paid per power and defense raw stats.

That changed with FEC and skaven book. Those books actually made evocators drop down to the top of the bell curve instead of being off of it, so that is true. With the new books their point cost is now (though at the top of) acceptable, which makes the other units that share their same role in the stormcast books some of the worst in the game in terms of being overcosted now.

 Sasori wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Sasori wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I would put Sequitors up by 30 tbh--their ability to chose between re-roll all saves or re-roll all hits is really strong and their large amount of special weapons (2 per 5 and the champion) coupled with good attack profiles means their damage output is quite high.

Liberators I would just drop by 10. If they were on 32mm I'd say they are fine as-is, but a 40mm base hurts them enough that I think they should go down a little.

I used to think that Both Evocators on Foot and Sequitors were really undercosted. With all the recent battletomes though, I don't think they are nearly as strong as they used to be. I really think a small points increase, if any, is really needed on these units. At this point I think most of the rest of the SCE units need a points drop.

You are saying the overwhelming majority units should be changed instead of a handful, which I think is proof those handful are the problem. Bear in mind that SCE outperform other armies by a huge margin; they are in the top 3 armies overall. To say the army needs a buff on the majority of the units flies in the face of balance (not to mention would be taking a crap on other armies).

And before the suggestion gets made that those other armies should see a points drop too; that would be reducing the cost of 80-90% of units rather than increasing the cost of 10-20%, which is more than a bit nonsensical.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Galas wrote:
After watching a couple of BoK reviews I think they have gone from "meh" to "meh" unless you are using the endless spells and the altar vs a magic heavy army. Then they become "Actually ok".

For me the worst change is that I can't lash anymore my Khorne Minotaurs with my Bloodstoker. That was the best thing ... just the mental image of the scene was beautifull.

You can't have whipped cream anymore? Lame.

Ninth,

Do you mind providing your data point for saying that the SCE are in the "top 3 armies overall" and over-perform other armies by a huge margin? I can't find any data to support that. Just scrolling through the recent tournament results, I am not seeing anything that indicates that. Besides the LVO, you usually only get 1 if any SCE list, if any in the top 10. There are some mixed order lists that place well, but that is not the same as a pure SCE list. The Sheffield Slaughter didn't even have a SCE list in the top 10. Instead you saw FEC, Skaven, Deepkin, Nagash and a BoC army take it.

And yes, just because you have some over performing units, does not mean the rest of the units in the tome are correctly pointed. Palladors, all of the Paladin units, and most of the mounted units are over-pointed. Castigators are 26 points a pop, which is just absurd.

Sure thing:


But besides, to say Sequitors & Evocators are fine is to say the vast majority of all units in the game are underpowered and need to be buffed. Which would technically be a way to achieve balance. However, if you have 10 units of which 6 are about average, 2 are weaker, and 2 are stronger the solution is not to bring the 8 in line with the 2 strongest; the solution is to bring the 4 outliers in line with the majority. If evocators & sequitors were in line with other armies it would be different, but they are much stronger than the average unit from other armies. So it becomes not only changing the points of the majority of SCE but changing the points of the majority of armies overall.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Sasori wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Sasori wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I would put Sequitors up by 30 tbh--their ability to chose between re-roll all saves or re-roll all hits is really strong and their large amount of special weapons (2 per 5 and the champion) coupled with good attack profiles means their damage output is quite high.

Liberators I would just drop by 10. If they were on 32mm I'd say they are fine as-is, but a 40mm base hurts them enough that I think they should go down a little.

I used to think that Both Evocators on Foot and Sequitors were really undercosted. With all the recent battletomes though, I don't think they are nearly as strong as they used to be. I really think a small points increase, if any, is really needed on these units. At this point I think most of the rest of the SCE units need a points drop.

You are saying the overwhelming majority units should be changed instead of a handful, which I think is proof those handful are the problem. Bear in mind that SCE outperform other armies by a huge margin; they are in the top 3 armies overall. To say the army needs a buff on the majority of the units flies in the face of balance (not to mention would be taking a crap on other armies).

And before the suggestion gets made that those other armies should see a points drop too; that would be reducing the cost of 80-90% of units rather than increasing the cost of 10-20%, which is more than a bit nonsensical.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Galas wrote:
After watching a couple of BoK reviews I think they have gone from "meh" to "meh" unless you are using the endless spells and the altar vs a magic heavy army. Then they become "Actually ok".

For me the worst change is that I can't lash anymore my Khorne Minotaurs with my Bloodstoker. That was the best thing ... just the mental image of the scene was beautifull.

You can't have whipped cream anymore? Lame.

Ninth,

Do you mind providing your data point for saying that the SCE are in the "top 3 armies overall" and over-perform other armies by a huge margin? I can't find any data to support that. Just scrolling through the recent tournament results, I am not seeing anything that indicates that. Besides the LVO, you usually only get 1 if any SCE list, if any in the top 10. There are some mixed order lists that place well, but that is not the same as a pure SCE list. The Sheffield Slaughter didn't even have a SCE list in the top 10. Instead you saw FEC, Skaven, Deepkin, Nagash and a BoC army take it.

And yes, just because you have some over performing units, does not mean the rest of the units in the tome are correctly pointed. Palladors, all of the Paladin units, and most of the mounted units are over-pointed. Castigators are 26 points a pop, which is just absurd.

Sure thing:

Can you provide the source that you are pulling that from please.

https://thehonestwargamer.com/

That chart is an aggregation of data since 2.0 launched. When it launched, Gloomspite was not released yet.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
https://thehonestwargamer.com/

That chart is an aggregation of data since 2.0 launched. When it launched, Gloomspite was not released yet.

Yes, and looking through the recent results and the data provided, it doesn't seem to indicate that Stormcast are the 3rd best Army or overwhelming better than most other armies as you put it originally.

Looking at their Aos 2.2 results, which appears the most recent, Stormcast rank 10th place, without a single win. The past fourteen events, Stormcast have placed in the top 3 four times, with 0 wins, 1 second place, and three 3rd places.

When you go to the larger breakdown AOS 2.2 of 5+ wins, SCE have the same number of 5+ wins as BOC, Maggotkin, and FEC, while sharing a much larger meta%, putting it's overall winrate lower than BoC FEC by nearly 10%. The other breakdown speaks to a similar story.

All this points to Stormcast not being the 3rd best at all, and with the release of Skaven and FEC it looks to send SCE even further down.

Ok, show me your data that shows the majority of stormcast units need to be buffed.

Are we back to tournament results are balanced thus the game as a whole is balanced again?

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Ok, show me your data that shows the majority of stormcast units need to be buffed.

It's my opinion, which I didn't present as a fact like you did. That's why I asked for your Data, which we discovered doesn't fit what you were presenting as a fact.

 Sasori wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Ok, show me your data that shows the majority of stormcast units need to be buffed.

It's my opinion, which I didn't present as a fact like you did. That's why I asked for your Data, which we discovered doesn't fit what you were presenting as a fact.

Well I referenced the overall data since SCE last received an update. You asked me for my data then bent it to create a circumstance where what I said was no longer true. When called upon to provide backing for your position you fell back on 'it's just my opinion!'

I guess it is just my opinion that the most complete set of data we have should be presented as fact.

You also failed to address why the majority of units should be adjusted in points rather than the minority.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Sasori wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Ok, show me your data that shows the majority of stormcast units need to be buffed.

It's my opinion, which I didn't present as a fact like you did. That's why I asked for your Data, which we discovered doesn't fit what you were presenting as a fact.

Well I referenced the overall data since SCE last received an update. You asked me for my data then bent it to create a circumstance where what I said was no longer true. When called upon to provide backing for your position you fell back on 'it's just my opinion!'

I guess it is just my opinion that the most complete set of data we have should be presented as fact.

You cherry picked a single chart, and ignored the rest of the data which doesn't fit your narrative. This is the same thing that people do in politics to get across a false point, and it's very deceitful.

There has been numerous changes since the SCE last released, and when you factor the changes in, which the other charts do so, it shows that SCE do not "Overperform other armies by a huge margin" Even the chart you presented shows that, as the SCE had 1 single 1st place win over the next four armies.

You also ignored the meta% and overall win % which is much more relevant and paint a completely different picture.

I "cherry picked" a chart of aggregate data of tournament placings for all of second edition. I guess it is my opinion that is a valid set of data and it was not deceitful to present it that way. If the "my opinion" defense is valid for you then it is valid for me as well.

Win % is heavily weighted towards the middle, as I have explained before. Winners are matched against winners and losers against losers in rounds after the first, meaning there is a heavy skew towards 50/50.

Also, can you provide any data to back up your position? I am asking again.

Also, can you provide any reasoning for why the majority of units should have their points adjusted instead of the minority? I am asking again.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I "cherry picked" a chart of aggregate data of tournament placings for all of second edition. I guess it is my opinion that is a valid set of data and it was not deceitful to present it that way. If the "my opinion" defense is valid for you then it is valid for me as well.

Win % is heavily weighted towards the middle, as I have explained before. Winners are matched against winners and losers against losers in rounds after the first, meaning there is a heavy skew towards 50/50.

Also, can you provide any data to back up your position? I am asking again.

Also, can you provide any reasoning for why the majority of units should have their points adjusted instead of the minority? I am asking again.

Yes, you cherry picked an aggregate chart of all the placings for second edition. I'm glad you agree. The point is that the chart you picked isn't nearly as relevant, since there have been significant changes such as new battletomes. Are you trying to imply that these changes should not be accounted for? The data at that website does in fact have several charts that are account for and are more recent, and show that SCE rankings have been in a decline. This is much more relevant than the single chart that has old data that isn't near as relevant anymore.

An aggregate charts usefulness is based on how time-relevant the data is. Depending on the industry or the subject, some are useful across decades, while some are outdated in months. In this case, we must take into account the new releases, their meta%, and the match% to get a clearer picture of how things shake out. In this case, there are several other charts on that website that provide this.


I did point to the data backing up my position several points ago, I referenced the chart and the win % a few posts back.

As to the point why the majority of units should have their points adjusted, is simple. Nerfing a stronger unit does not always solve the fact that a weaker unit is over-pointed. These units can be internally and externally over-pointed. A good example is Castigators who are currently at 3 for 80. These are both externally and internally over-pointed. That means that nerfing Evocators does not make Castigators any better externally.