So as LVO wraps up, we're starting to see a big difference between balance at the high end for AoS vs 40k. The current top 8 in 40k is represented by 5 codex marine lists, 1 eldar soup list, 1 ork list, and 1 Imperium soup list. If you extend that out to top 16 you add 3 MAYBE 4 factions ( I don't have access to their full lists at the moment but with the way they're listed in BCP only 3-4 even COULD be something other than codex marines). That's a total of 8 factions MAXIMUM in the top 16 with NINE of them being marine lists.

AoS Champ's top 8 are comprised of 7 different factions. Extend that out to top 16 and you end up with 12 different factions total, with no faction being represented more than twice.

So why does AoS have FAR healthier factional diversity than 40k? Here's my take:

1. Marines are too strong. I don't think I'm being controversial saying that at this point but it's the biggest reason for the particular spread that we have but it's not EVERY reason. Keep in mind that Slaanesh in AoS was considered to be extremely OP before the recent nerfs and yet NEVER managed anywhere near the representation marines are getting. Usually taking 3 or 4 out of the top 16 AT MOST.

1b. Marines have too many goddam units. Their toolkit is so big that SOMETHING is likely to be significantly over the powercurve at any different moment.

2. Clearer army identity. While AoS DOES have allies, armies are much more clearly designed to work best within their own books and take far better advantage of the keyword system to curb abuses than 40k does. The new Sacred Rights/Super Doctrines system is a step in the right direction in this regard, but is not something they've managed to nail down yet.

3. Forgeworld. AoS has almost no forgeworld support, and what they do have is incredibly mediocre. 40k has TONS of forgeworld support that is not evenly distributed AT ALL. Forgeworld will always have the potential to massively skew the competitive landscape due to the simple fact that it supports Marines and Chaos FAR more than other factions, with some factions like Sisters and Dark Eldar having essentially 0 representation. Even if Forgeworld units were perfectly balanced across the board, having a massively larger toolkit will always benefit Marines and Chaos more than the handful of additional options other armies get access to. This combined with the units not being balanced(the forgeworld indexes were an exercise in incompetence) leads to things like underpriced, overpowered Dreadnoughts of all varieties kicking around nearly every table, artificially inflating the power level of already VERY strong marine rules.

The new indexes should hopefully mitigate the issues that come with things like Chaplain Dreads and Leviathan's being significantly outside of the power curve, but it won't do anything to deal with the toolbox issue unless a CRAZY number of units go legends.

4. AoS as a whole, but their codexes specifically, seem to be designed more coherently and with a greater understanding of the game than their 40k equivalents. Compare the release of the Ironhands supplement vs the release of the Hedonites of Slaanesh battletome. Hedonites of Slaanesh released overtuned, though not unmanageable, and the designers admitted that they had thought in playtesting that it might be a bit too strong but wanted to see what players did with it. When they realized it was still significantly overperforming(though again, nowhere near what marines are doing even now) they put in some sensible nerfs and the codex remains powerful but much more vulnerable.

The Ironhands supplement on the other hand released as the single most busted book since CWE in 7th edition, with rumors circulating that playtester advice was ignored because the designers didn't believe the new book made marines strong ENOUGH. This led to ironhands putting up 80% across the board win rates and decimating any event that wasn't at least 50% paint score. This lead to an emergency nerf that was, on paper, pretty massive but left Ironhands as still basically the be all end all of armies in the game until Ravenguard and Imperial Fist came out and now it's just Codex: Space Marines that's massively better than most other armies.

Now GW seems to be addressing THIS too because none of the PA books have broken anything too badly while buffing most factions up at least a bit and the Sisters of Battle Codex representing an AoS style, powerful but with clear weaknesses and very good internal balance Codex release.

5. It's easier to balance a melee game than a shooting game. I'll give GW that one. It's not THIS much harder though.


So while GW is getting a lot better with their overall design paradigm and at addressing their mistakes in a way that's good for the game, they're struggling FAR more with 40k than they do with AoS. The 'Marine Meta' is a symptom of this problem and fixes aren't coming in fast enough.

Marines didn't need the supplement books. In their effort to try and make supplements unique and worth purchasing, they overstepped the boundaries of manageable buff-combos.

Well AoS books have been far more spaced apart for releases (or at least it feels like it). People keep forgetting that most of the current codexes were rushed out the door in order to catch everyone up on 8th Ed and give them their strats etc.

AoS is actually trying to balance the books. They said in the AoS shorts pod cast number 2, that they spent a FULL YEAR working on how to balance their Battletomes for AoS, to make sure everything is RAW and RAI, to make sure its all the same language, and around the same power level (At least 1 of the 3 ways to play for each book). NOTE: i mean 3 ways to play as in 3 different builds, they are trying to get at least 3 different playstyles for each book.. Yes some of the books are more powerful at release, but they do 2 balances, 1 every 6 months and each time the armies are closer and closer to being very well balanced.

Some of the armies that are doing bad are still able to win 4-1. Example, i main Beastmen and i have done 3-2 in a GT even doing perfect scoring games, i have won games vs top armies like HoS at the time, i win against Khorne and IDK as well, even tho its a weaker book.

And even if there is an army that is way out of line, they are know to fix it within the 1st month of release, StD had an insane powerful build that was re-balanced right away, DoT right now just came out and has an insane OP build and i'm 100% sure that will be re-balanced in a couple weeks. So not only is it every 6 months, but battletomes are also patched within the first month as well.

Finally, there are NO VP'S FOR KILLS, Kills are only for ties.

 Sim-Life wrote:
Well AoS books have been far more spaced apart for releases (or at least it feels like it). People keep forgetting that most of the current codexes were rushed out the door in order to catch everyone up on 8th Ed and give them their strats etc.

AoS books have "been far more spaced apart for releases" because a decent chunk of them have been whole new armies with model releases to go with.

 Sim-Life wrote:
Well AoS books have been far more spaced apart for releases (or at least it feels like it). People keep forgetting that most of the current codexes were rushed out the door in order to catch everyone up on 8th Ed and give them their strats etc.

6 books in the last 5 months ish for AoS; StD, KO, DoT, OBR, Mawtribes, Orruks

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
Well AoS books have been far more spaced apart for releases (or at least it feels like it). People keep forgetting that most of the current codexes were rushed out the door in order to catch everyone up on 8th Ed and give them their strats etc.

6 books in the last 5 months ish for AoS; StD, KO, DoT, OBR, Mawtribes, Orruks

Which is some of the fastest pace we've had in awhile for AoS, and of those?
Orruks are combining Ironjawz and Savage Orruks together.
Mawtribes combines Beastclaw Raiders(who had a book) and the other Ogres(who didn't have books)
Slaves to Darkness gives us the title faction(didn't have a book) along with Everchosen(who did).
Disciples of Tzeentch is a 2.0 book as is Overlords.
Bonereapers are a brand new faction.

Are you really blaming FW Dreads for the Iron Hands release?

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Finally, there are NO VP'S FOR KILLS, Kills are only for ties.

I don't know much about AoS - so my view be nonsense.
But I'd expect this to be the key factor. Killing is much less important than the mission. Which is why for instance I don't think you get as many mathhammer calculations on AoS units (unless they are egregiously bad).
Its more tempo driven. Unit X will be "good enough" if its in the right place at the right time.

Interestingly Nayden may be about to win this 40k semi-final with very AoS style play that has rendered the mathematics of the Ironhands largely irrelevant as we go into turn 4.

But normally you'd go "oh look, the offensive power of Ironhands or Ravenguard Centurions is so good that 90% of my army is dead after turn 3, that means they are maxed out on secondaries and own the board for holding objectives, GG".

Which isn't to say armies don't annihilate each other in AoS - but movement seems to be the key. Which makes it softer - a bit like CA19. (Which isn't to say Marines don't dominate because of raw power, but still.)

Tyel wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Finally, there are NO VP'S FOR KILLS, Kills are only for ties.

I don't know much about AoS - so my view be nonsense.
But I'd expect this to be the key factor. Killing is much less important than the mission. Which is why for instance I don't think you get as many mathhammer calculations on AoS units (unless they are egregiously bad).
Its more tempo driven. Unit X will be "good enough" if its in the right place at the right time.

Interestingly Nayden may be about to win this 40k semi-final with very AoS style play that has rendered the mathematics of the Ironhands largely irrelevant as we go into turn 4.

But normally you'd go "oh look, the offensive power of Ironhands or Ravenguard Centurions is so good that 90% of my army is dead after turn 3, that means they are maxed out on secondaries and own the board for holding objectives, GG".

Which isn't to say armies don't annihilate each other in AoS - but movement seems to be the key. Which makes it softer - a bit like CA19. (Which isn't to say Marines don't dominate because of raw power, but still.)

Right, my BoC wins not by killing armies, but by having huge board control and killing the right units at the right time to maintain board control. There is 1 more thing that is different, you can not move within 3" of any unit either, so you can zone out large parts of the board near objectives.

Beastmen are also 1 drop armies, so i go first most the time, and given i can move 15-25" a turn with almost everything, plus i can Outflank anything i want, its easy for me to zone things out.

They aren't using official GW rules for 40k so LVO means nothing in terms of indicating the meta.

AoS is using the official mission rules.

Only thing LVO shows is how armies perform in ITC homebrew missions. It's actually staggering that this topic doesn't point out the custom, 3rd party missions as a massive differential.

I've recently just gotten back into AOS because the current state of 40k is pretty abysmal. The lack of massively long range weapons is nice. I also like the static dice rolling for to hit and to wound. For instance my clan rats hit on 4+ and wound on 4+ against everything before buffs. Makes it so that all units can be dangerous and nothing is really safe. Also being able to single out buff bots with ranged attacks is pretty huge as well nothing can not be targeted.

ERJAK wrote:
1. Marines are too strong. I don't think I'm being controversial saying that at this point but it's the biggest reason for the particular spread that we have but it's not EVERY reason. Keep in mind that Slaanesh in AoS was considered to be extremely OP before the recent nerfs and yet NEVER managed anywhere near the representation marines are getting. Usually taking 3 or 4 out of the top 16 AT MOST.

1b. Marines have too many goddam units. Their toolkit is so big that SOMETHING is likely to be significantly over the powercurve at any different moment.

2. Clearer army identity. While AoS DOES have allies, armies are much more clearly designed to work best within their own books and take far better advantage of the keyword system to curb abuses than 40k does. The new Sacred Rights/Super Doctrines system is a step in the right direction in this regard, but is not something they've managed to nail down yet.

These are the two most important aspects.

40K is a Marine game. Horus Heresy/30K is that even stronger (and considered the more balanced game). In Fantasy, Elves had the most representation, with Undead and Humans the next largest. None of the Elves had a similar fighting style other than high Initiative. Undead was even better. Humans had pike & shot versus the court of King Arthur. But looking at Marines, we have standard Marines with Supplements, Marines with some Rage, Marines with Secrets, Wolf Marines, Psyker Marines, and Spiky Marines, with the last two being the only ones with significant diversion across the whole line. The Marines are made powerful because they are the signature/mascot line of 40K, while Fantasy had...??? They tried to make the Sigmarines the mascot line of AoS, but it didn't take off like the Space Marine had with 40K.

None of the Elves had a similar fighting style other than high Initiative

Elf units were literally copypasta of each other across factions, with the exception that wood elves didn't get bolt throwers, and didn't get the great weapon unit until late. TK and VC overlapped a lot with their skeleton and guard infantry, but diverged over time with monsters and whatnot.

Go back far enough and you'll find (sea elf) wardancers in the 3rd edition high elf list.

hey tried to make the Sigmarines the mascot line of AoS, but it didn't take off like the Space Marine had with 40K.

Mind you, they tried real hard, to the point that Sigmarines are the biggest model line for AoS, with triple the content of a lot of armies, and only a few come close (Cities of Sigmar, Legions of Nagash).
And much like 40k, if you bought box sets, you got Sigmarines. It just hasn't been enough time for the critical mass of people deciding that they can just throw a Sigmarine army together because they've got that much stuff lying around anyway. But if they keep going, it will get there.

FWIW the AOS team also seems to have a bit more sense than the 40k team. Not a lot, as AOS is still plagued by the typical GW problems, but it's way better than 40k balance-wise even if it's far from "good".

40k is only "a marine game" because Marines are currently top of the pile.

For about 18~ months (say from CA17 to the Marine Codex release) they were essentially nowhere, outside of Guilliman lists. Last year Marines represented just 13.5% of all mono faction lists. This weekend its been about 1/3rd.

If they were to get a hard nerf, things would go back to where they were.

Also, when AoS came out it re-invented stat lines...starting with essentially fresh units/armies. GW made 8th and for some reason...felt the need to convert stats almost directly from 7th edition despite changing the game fundamentally. Old stats don't work with the way 8th edition plays and it has caused a gak ton of problems.

GW should have taken 8th as an excuse to fully rethink all of the statlines of major units.

 Elbows wrote:
Also, when AoS came out it re-invented stat lines...starting with essentially fresh units/armies. GW made 8th and for some reason...felt the need to convert stats almost directly from 7th edition despite changing the game fundamentally. Old stats don't work with the way 8th edition plays and it has caused a gak ton of problems.

GW should have taken 8th as an excuse to fully rethink all of the statlines of major units.

This, 8th is broken at the core, and they only been trying it patch it via codex's instead of fixing the problems. They did change a couple core rules at least (Ro3, limited factions for detachments, Fly)

Go back to before the SM books released and you see a wide variety of armies in 40k tournaments.

I agree that the AoS team does a better job in general and has a better approach to the game (a great example I like is when the mini rulebooks were released. 40k was a strait copy from the out of date rulebook, AoS included all the changes from faq's and general handbooks)

But in broad terms GW simply shat the bed with the Marine release. Its entirely possible the AoS team screws up at some point and releases a horribly broken book that will have the same result. (And I think it looked like that for a while when Slaanesh first came out).

To further add to the problem Space Marines released just before the end of year Faq so they were not in that, leading to about the longest possible time of dominance the codex can get (assuming GW nerfs them in april).

Tyel wrote:
40k is only "a marine game" because Marines are currently top of the pile.

For about 18~ months (say from CA17 to the Marine Codex release) they were essentially nowhere, outside of Guilliman lists. Last year Marines represented just 13.5% of all mono faction lists. This weekend its been about 1/3rd.

If they were to get a hard nerf, things would go back to where they were.

So, theyre one faction.

Out of what...twenty?

And 2..5x representation from 1/20th of the army lists is a bad thing?

the_scotsman wrote:
So, theyre one faction.

Out of what...twenty?

And 2..5x representation from 1/20th of the army lists is a bad thing?

I don't understand what you are saying here?
I'm all for nerfing Marines. I was just saying there is this view that 40k is all Marines all the time. We just had a length of time when this wasn't the case.

Tyel wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
So, theyre one faction.

Out of what...twenty?

And 2..5x representation from 1/20th of the army lists is a bad thing?

I don't understand what you are saying here?
I'm all for nerfing Marines. I was just saying there is this view that 40k is all Marines all the time. We just had a length of time when this wasn't the case.

Maybe from a rules perspective. But it has been all marines all of the time since I got back into the game just shy over a year ago. All the books, all the models all the posters all the media. Everything has a space marine on it if it has a 40k logo on it...

I'm beginning to think I might have made a mistake getting back into 40k...The nostalgia has largely worn off and SM/IOM don't interest me for the most part. So what's left for me..? Don't fancy being an NPC faction in a game... That's boring. Ill keep completing my army and doing the hobby side/ enjoying the game. But once I'm done? It'll probably be time for another system rather than another army unless there will be some change in direction.

I think also huge part of the difference is you have the swingy initiative in AOS. So winning is largely due to that roll of the dice to see if you get a double turn. A weaker army can in theory still win thanks to that.

In 40k you have factions with units throwing out something like 60+ dice with re-rolls... The dice game becomes meaningless when you have weight of dice..

ERJAK wrote:
So as LVO wraps up, we're starting to see a big difference between balance at the high end for AoS vs 40k. The current top 8 in 40k is represented by 5 codex marine lists, 1 eldar soup list, 1 ork list, and 1 Imperium soup list. If you extend that out to top 16 you add 3 MAYBE 4 factions ( I don't have access to their full lists at the moment but with the way they're listed in BCP only 3-4 even COULD be something other than codex marines). That's a total of 8 factions MAXIMUM in the top 16 with NINE of them being marine lists.

AoS Champ's top 8 are comprised of 7 different factions. Extend that out to top 16 and you end up with 12 different factions total, with no faction being represented more than twice.

4 factions top 8, 5 top 16, 10 top 32. One thing to keep in mind is size of the event, 800ish players is massive, really threading the needle.

1b. Marines have too many goddam units. Their toolkit is so big that SOMETHING is likely to be significantly over the powercurve at any different moment.

True, but a solid testing format and no free rules would make the game a breeze to balance.

4. AoS as a whole, but their codexes specifically, seem to be designed more coherently and with a greater understanding of the game than their 40k equivalents.

The 40k team doesn't even try to build focussed lists for testing or test units in the subfaction they are most effective within.

Now GW seems to be addressing THIS too because none of the PA books have broken anything too badly while buffing most factions up at least a bit and the Sisters of Battle Codex representing an AoS style, powerful but with clear weaknesses and very good internal balance Codex release.

Most factions? Excuse you, a handful of factions. It's gak from a balance stand-point that armies should be getting buffs a couple factions at a time.

So while GW is getting a lot better with their overall ådesign paradigm and at addressing their mistakes in a way that's good for the game, they're struggling FAR more with 40k than they do with AoS. The 'Marine Meta' is a symptom of this problem and fixes aren't coming in fast enough.

They went from Scrooge Mcduck levels of moneygrubbing corperate game design to incompetent fluff driven writing and updates. The only truly good thing is CA and CA19 wasn't even proofread, that is the most important document in the game outside the core rules.

 Ishagu wrote:
They aren't using official GW rules for 40k so LVO means nothing in terms of indicating the meta.

AoS is using the official mission rules.

Only thing LVO shows is how armies perform in ITC homebrew missions. It's actually staggering that this topic doesn't point out the custom, 3rd party missions as a massive differential.

You are trying to obfuscate the power of Marines, it is not working, go play 30k. 40k can be played with any mission format and as the most common tournament format ITC is valuable in determining balance.

Marines in 40k have too much of goddamn everything.
Support, models, rules, strats, you name it they have too much of it.

Voss wrote:

None of the Elves had a similar fighting style other than high Initiative

Elf units were literally copypasta of each other across factions, with the exception that wood elves didn't get bolt throwers, and didn't get the great weapon unit until late. TK and VC overlapped a lot with their skeleton and guard infantry, but diverged over time with monsters and whatnot.

Go back far enough and you'll find (sea elf) wardancers in the 3rd edition high elf list.

Not really when Fantasy died. Oh, if you go back far enough, the changes become fewer and fewer between them all, but even after AoS, we have several different Dwarf factions that still feel a whole lot more different than Blood Angels versus Raven Guard do.

There was a lot of diversity between the elves, with no single unit being available across all three. Sure High and Wood Elves both had archers and High and Dark Elves both had Spearmen, but they really didn't have anything consistent all the way through all the races. Sure, High Elves and Dark Elves both had more in common, but it still was about as different as Empire and Bretonnia when you look at the entire army, and that's not even getting in to the special gear.

TK and VC only had overlaps with one unit, the basic skeleton unit. TK had no heavily armored infantry or cavalry units, while the Vampires had no ranged abilities that weren't magic (or sound). Vampires could create and add units, while TKs could only restore unkilled units' strength. TK used constructs while Vampires used horrors. There really wasn't much overlap at all.

Voss wrote:

They tried to make the Sigmarines the mascot line of AoS, but it didn't take off like the Space Marine had with 40K.

Mind you, they tried real hard, to the point that Sigmarines are the biggest model line for AoS, with triple the content of a lot of armies, and only a few come close (Cities of Sigmar, Legions of Nagash).
And much like 40k, if you bought box sets, you got Sigmarines. It just hasn't been enough time for the critical mass of people deciding that they can just throw a Sigmarine army together because they've got that much stuff lying around anyway. But if they keep going, it will get there.

It might, it might not. A lot will depend on how they take it. If you combine a lot of people's old kits versus this new one, and it not really taking with a lot of the old crowd (and with them disparaging it), I doubt it will take off enough that we have 15 variants (9 Loyal to Sigmar and 6 for Chaos) in 20 years unless it is forced by GW.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Elbows wrote:
Also, when AoS came out it re-invented stat lines...starting with essentially fresh units/armies. GW made 8th and for some reason...felt the need to convert stats almost directly from 7th edition despite changing the game fundamentally. Old stats don't work with the way 8th edition plays and it has caused a gak ton of problems.

GW should have taken 8th as an excuse to fully rethink all of the statlines of major units.

This, 8th is broken at the core, and they only been trying it patch it via codex's instead of fixing the problems. They did change a couple core rules at least (Ro3, limited factions for detachments, Fly)

T1 deepstrike, boots on the ground, CP regen limitations, prepared positions, full deployment, smite fix, beta bolters, and character targeting as well.

GW has hardly been sitting on their hands.

The current issues won't be fixed easily by core changes and some won't be concerned about point changes. GW has to fix the codexes causing the lion's share of problems.

It's gak from a balance stand-point that armies should be getting buffs a couple factions at a time.

Maybe but GW knows people won't buy a single massive 100 dollar book that gives every faction a buff at the same time

Nerfing some of the IH rules and maybe nerfing the Dread damage reduction to only work on 11 wound dreads or less might be the way to go, and see if more nerfs are needed from there.

My personal opinion on where GW went "wrong" with 8th was starting off with such a large pool of options instead of releasing an Index with like 20 units for each Faction that would be far easier to playtest and balance, and then releasing bulkier Codexes over time that they could also properly handle. But I get that they didn't want to alienate their fanbase by saying "here's a new edition of the game, but you can't use a lot of your current stuff with it until later on".

BrianDavion wrote:

It's gak from a balance stand-point that armies should be getting buffs a couple factions at a time.

Maybe but GW knows people won't buy a single massive 100 dollar book that gives every faction a buff at the same time

And yet they expect us to spend $40 on roughly 6 pages of rules?

How well did any SM place that weren't IH-IF-RG, or using CT other than Master Artisans or Stealthy?

Genuinely curious.

My take; GW doing balance is analogous to a colorblind person painting a rainbow while being apathetic to the results. Not only are they largely uncaring to balance, but they also don't even know what balance looks like. I no longer have any interest in matched play outside of trusted friends I can rely on for decent matchups.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I no longer have any interest in matched play outside of trusted friends I can rely on for decent matchups.

I feel like that's how 40k was designed. It's not made as a tight and limited game with a focus on competition, more of a sprawling mess to create memorable moments with friends.

Check out Tabletop Tactics smashing fluffy lists into each other and having a good time. The game works really well in that kind of context.

Lol so cynical. This is a specific tournament with cash price incentive.
It's not an indication of what pick up games would be like in all instances.

For whatever reason GW has not wanted to try and manage the scope of the game, nor adjust marine statlines or basic costs terribly radically. As a result, they've decided to just pile on special rules to compensate for metagame balance issues instead of addressing the core gameplay and design problems, and used that same route to add "flavor" in the form of blatant power bloat with the supplement books. At this point it's nigh impossible to keep track of all the special rules, hat tricks, combos, exceptions, character gimmickry, and reroll availability to armies in general, but especially prevalent in marine armies. My head was sent spinning trying to keep track of everything against a game with Raven Guard this weekend as my opponent blew through 7 CP before the game even started supercharging stuff (more relics, making someone a chapter master, etc), and almost every action/attack made through the game had some sort of reroll or ignored some sort of restriction or had enhanced AP or something similar (or combination thereof). Meanwhile I think I used 1 CP for a command reroll the whole game

GW's scope of "flavor" also doesn't help. They attempt to represent often subtle concepts like guile and cunning or ambush and preparation with direct power bonuses. For instance, sneaky stuff ends up effectively playing "tanky", receiving bonuses that make them difficult to hurt in some way and as a result they become oddly resilient, when they're often supposed to be glass cannons (as we've often historically seen with Eldar for instance through many editions and different games such as BFG). GW seems loathe to examine other options such as being able to alter/choose deployment types or change objectives or obj control distance or terrain placement or game duration and other such concepts that would better reflect such capabilities without cranking up the direct tactical power levels. They want something that'll have an effect on a statline or dice roll most of the time.

 Ishagu wrote:
Lol so cynical. This is a specific tournament with cash price incentive.
It's not an indication of what pick up games would be like in all instances.

So are you actually arguing that loyalist marines new rules and superior internal codex balance doesn't translate to an advantage over other armies in a casual setting as well as tournaments? If I bring a fluffy Night Lords list to a pickup game do you think I'd start out on equal footing against a fluffy loyalist marines list? With their doctrines and superior chapter tactics?

 Ishagu wrote:
Lol so cynical. This is a specific tournament with cash price incentive.
It's not an indication of what pick up games would be like in all instances.

You're right; pick up games are often much worse since tournaments at least have a shared mentality and expectation.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Yoyoyo wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I no longer have any interest in matched play outside of trusted friends I can rely on for decent matchups.

I feel like that's how 40k was designed. It's not made as a tight and limited game with a focus on competition, more of a sprawling mess to create memorable moments with friends.

Check out Tabletop Tactics smashing fluffy lists into each other and having a good time. The game works really well in that kind of context.

It isn't 'designed' really. The entire game is a toolbox for players to make an experience out of. Open/narrative/matched are just examples of some ways it can be done.

Gadzilla666 wrote:
If I bring a fluffy Night Lords list to a pickup game do you think I'd start out on equal footing against a fluffy loyalist marines list?

If not, why wouldn't you just adjust the armies to make things more fair?

It's quite easy to tone down lists just through relics and HQs. Proxy a Warpsmith instead of Feirros, no 5+++ aura WLT for the Apoc, no Ironstone, no character-status for the Relic Leviathan, no Indomitus Intercessor WLT. Chaplain Dreads are still a problem but they're due for the nerfbat at some point.

IH will still be as hard as nails of course, but we broke most of the synergies in a top-tier list without touching a model. So don't pretend as if there's nothing to be done.

If the other player just wants to stomp you in a "friendly" game, fair or not... sounds like there are going to be issues with more than game balance.

Yoyoyo wrote:

Gadzilla666 wrote:
If I bring a fluffy Night Lords list to a pickup game do you think I'd start out on equal footing against a fluffy loyalist marines list?

If not, why wouldn't you just adjust the armies to make things more fair?

It's quite easy to tone down lists just through relics and HQs. Proxy a Warpsmith instead of Feirros, no 5+++ aura WLT for the Apoc, no Ironstone, no character-status for the Relic Leviathan, no Indomitus Intercessor WLT. Chaplain Dreads are still a problem but they're due for the nerfbat at some point.

IH will still be as hard as nails of course, but we broke most of the synergies in a top-tier list without touching a model. So don't pretend as if there's nothing to be done.

If the other player just wants to stomp you in a "friendly" game, fair or not... sounds like there are going to be issues with more than game balance.

Yes but negotiations before a game wouldn't be required if gw hadn't jumped the shark with some of the supplements and such negotiations aren't an option for tournament players.

You mentioned pick up games, not tournaments. That IH LVO list which passes off wounds pulls from 5 different rules sources and has 3 Chaplain Dreads, which were probably conversions You're never going to see it fielded by accident in a casual context.

If you brought a "fluffy NL list" to a tournament? You'd get stomped by any highly optimised faction in the game.

Yoyoyo wrote:
You mentioned pick up games, not tournaments. That IH LVO list which passes off wounds pulls from 5 different rules sources and has 3 Chaplain Dreads, which were probably conversions You're never going to see it fielded by accident in a casual context.

If you brought a "fluffy NL list" to a tournament? You'd get stomped by any highly optimised faction in the game.

My point was that loyalist marines are broken in all formats. But you are correct. No fluffy list could compete at tournament level.

Gadzilla666 wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

It's gak from a balance stand-point that armies should be getting buffs a couple factions at a time.

Maybe but GW knows people won't buy a single massive 100 dollar book that gives every faction a buff at the same time

And yet they expect us to spend $40 on roughly 6 pages of rules?

Well, I think they'd say that the rest of the material in the book contributes towards the cost of it.

I'm not convinced by that, but then I think they lost the plot when they changed 40k from a setting to a story.

Gadzilla666 wrote:

Yoyoyo wrote:

Gadzilla666 wrote:
If I bring a fluffy Night Lords list to a pickup game do you think I'd start out on equal footing against a fluffy loyalist marines list?

If not, why wouldn't you just adjust the armies to make things more fair?

It's quite easy to tone down lists just through relics and HQs. Proxy a Warpsmith instead of Feirros, no 5+++ aura WLT for the Apoc, no Ironstone, no character-status for the Relic Leviathan, no Indomitus Intercessor WLT. Chaplain Dreads are still a problem but they're due for the nerfbat at some point.

IH will still be as hard as nails of course, but we broke most of the synergies in a top-tier list without touching a model. So don't pretend as if there's nothing to be done.

If the other player just wants to stomp you in a "friendly" game, fair or not... sounds like there are going to be issues with more than game balance.

Yes but negotiations before a game wouldn't be required if gw hadn't jumped the shark with some of the supplements and such negotiations aren't an option for tournament players.

In all my (30) years of minis gaming, no matter what companies stuff, or who's playing, or where, I've almost never had any type of PU/casual game that didn't involve some sort of discussion. 40k, WHFB, AoS, other Gw stuff, Battletech, WWII, Naval games, space ships, Historical stuff, Star Wars, Clix, whatever... Agreeing what/how to play is part of the hobby.
Reducing that discussion down to: 40k, 2k pts, play = Y/N? is absurd.

As far as tournaments? No you don't get a discussion. You chose to forgo that step when you signed up. And as you signed up to play tourny 40k despite all it's flaws &/or issues with the tournies format? Well, you get what you get.

I do believe that W40k is in need of rework. To me endless special rules are just not attractive. Its inherent gameplay is nonsensical and not attractive. I think that GW can do a lot better by taking few pages from other popular games.

As for a lot of models. I do not think that quantity is a problem. It is rather that quantity and quality is too great. W40k kinda has to have a lot of models. Giving a faction countless mediocre pieces will rarely cause issues, it is when faction has no identity and you keep piling good stuff on it, this is where problems emerge.

I would recommend stripping most special rules. Anything which is special has to count and make unit unique. More reliance on stats. More power shifted towards the fantasy of faction/race of what they were supposed to be good at. This way out of place units will offer less problems, because if your main combination is designed to be stronger than single units, it is unlikely that bloated unit choices will ever result in unforseen OP combinations. When done right it is more of an individual preference what he would like to have more or less in his army and having greater potential to optimize his list against specific threats if any single faction proves to be too powerful.


Btw: I play Infinity and Warmachine. Discussions there do not happen at least not as often as it had been described. The most problematic things is when you are pushing something to happen, like unit being just that tiny bit from getting what it wants to do. Though in Warmachine we have special tools to quickly and without question to resolve ranging disagreements.

While I'm often one of the first to criticise GW for their rules writing and what I think are sales focused rules, I don't think this period of Marine domination will last for much longer.

GW have been far better at fixing problems more quickly than we've seen in the past. I'm sure they'll jump on the most egregious marines as they no doubt understand that leaving them as they are will cause players to leave.

AOS seems to have a better and more balanced design philosophy behind it, but it didn't exactly start well - it's something that has developed over time. It has also had a much slower release schedule than 40k. Finally - it tends to be the test bed for future 40k ideas, hopefully the same balanced design philosophy will enter the 40k rules writing soon enough.

On a bit of an offshoot...as an old skool player from the start of 40k/Fantasy....I have no interest at all in AOS in this conception.

Not sure what it is..just preferred the old world.

My question though out of general interest in the hobby is how is AOS actually doing? Is it pretty popular?

 vict0988 wrote:

You are trying to obfuscate the power of Marines, it is not working, go play 30k. 40k can be played with any mission format and as the most common tournament format ITC is valuable in determining balance.

Except ITC gives only data regarding ITC enviroment which is "sit back and shoot all as you can win with just killing without actually moving or controlling board".

Marines are problem yes but ITC exaggerates it. Outside ITC gap isn't as big.

And it's actually rather logical why ITC isn't as relevant and anybody interested in balanced competive game should be able to see why. It's different rules. When you change mission you change entire game style. Unless GW uses just ITC to balance(rather than their own scenarios) then the data isn't telling the true picture. You can't change huge part of the game and expect it to have no effect to game balance. The idea that you could is unicorn land level idea. Totally busted concept.

 Ordana wrote:
Go back to before the SM books released and you see a wide variety of armies in 40k tournaments.

But in broad terms GW simply shat the bed with the Marine release. Its entirely possible the AoS team screws up at some point and releases a horribly broken book that will have the same result. (And I think it looked like that for a while when Slaanesh first came out).

AoS has managed to release quite a few OP armies over time. The difference is that they have managed to up their nerf rate faster than the 40k one. When Skaven and FEC came out they were massively OP, but then they released a FAQ that changed a few wordings and re-pointed units and Skaven went from Massively OP to very strong armies.

Same with Slaanesh recently as their Christmas FAQ again included point changes and rule changes to existing armies.

That is one of the things I like currently with AoS. The design team has shown themselves to be slightly more responsive and fluid in regards to their balancing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

My question though out of general interest in the hobby is how is AOS actually doing? Is it pretty popular?

It's been growing by leaps and bounds and with almost every existing faction as well as new being near up to date it is in a decent place.

I know ticket sales for AoS LVO has increased a lot over the years and Cancon's server apparently died when they added more tickets to the pool. So there is a lot of excitement for AoS these days.

I've personally shifted much more towards AoS over the past year as I find the game having less baggage than 40k due to the fact that "stratagems" in AoS are just bespoke command abilities on the Warscroll. On top of that I like the AoS missions more than ITC and I have every warscroll at my fingertip in the AoS app. It means when I compete I only take my phone, my Battletome, and mini-rulebook with me.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Elbows wrote:
Also, when AoS came out it re-invented stat lines...starting with essentially fresh units/armies. GW made 8th and for some reason...felt the need to convert stats almost directly from 7th edition despite changing the game fundamentally. Old stats don't work with the way 8th edition plays and it has caused a gak ton of problems.

GW should have taken 8th as an excuse to fully rethink all of the statlines of major units.

This, 8th is broken at the core, and they only been trying it patch it via codex's instead of fixing the problems. They did change a couple core rules at least (Ro3, limited factions for detachments, Fly)

T1 deepstrike, boots on the ground, CP regen limitations, prepared positions, full deployment, smite fix, beta bolters, and character targeting as well.

GW has hardly been sitting on their hands.

The current issues won't be fixed easily by core changes and some won't be concerned about point changes. GW has to fix the codexes causing the lion's share of problems.

They fix core rule yes, i even said they did, i was referring to the problems with balancing issues, Fly, smite, CP regen, DS turn 1,Booots on the ground, was all things players exploited and spammed. And beta bolters is not a general rule, not all bolters get it only Marines thats a Marines rule.

When talking about the core balances, its the AP system, Wounding/hit system, Tanks are equal to units system, MC can melee in buildings, Fallback has no penalty and to easy, terrain, etc.. then there is the detachments/CP system that is also messing everything up even more do to power combos and spam units.

Example: Why were marines bad? b.c everyone basically auto killed them lol, no one still takes tac marines for a good reason.

So LVO was won by marine list with something like 40+marines, a few dreads, no flyers, no big high cost sets. I love it. A good list everyone can get without spending thousands of dollars.

Karol wrote:
So LVO was won by marine list with something like 40+marines, a few dreads, no flyers, no big high cost sets. I love it. A good list everyone can get without spending thousands of dollars.

If you don't care about "counts as" or conversions sure.
Genuine Chaplain Dreads would be Black Lotus cards from MTG.

Anyway,

I feel these debates always range from
"Marines are a bit too good" to "40k is literally unplayable, I don't know why you bother, please change literally the entire game."
Its possibly why the debate never really evolves in an interesting way.

I don't think 40k is that bad, and people all over the world clearly are having pickup games every week, so this view its impossible is a bit hard to square.
Marines are however the best faction and that maths does tell.

Its not even really maths - its the potential. Most troops units don't for example get to have 4 attacks with a thunderhammer that can (luckily) kill 4 slightly underperforming shining spears. Its not that this is guaranteed to happen - its just that when it does, it swings games.

I think ITC exacerbates this, because it arguably is more strategic and precise. Picking secondaries "is" a skill. Calculating out whether you can get killed more/hold more or the bonus point "is" a skill. As we saw in the finals, two top armies played by top players are often decided at the wire by a point.

Arguably making the game more "skillful" is good. But it also makes a lot of potential army builds artificially crap, because giving your opponent an "easy" 12 points on the secondaries and probably "killed more" clearly reduces your chances of winning and this cannot easily be factored into the game.

It turns out that converting's pretty straightforward, though sourcing the bits may prove challenging in light of the demand spike..?

https://lourollinsminis.blogspot.com/2020/01/proper-librarian-livery-conversion.html

Catulle wrote:
It turns out that converting's pretty straightforward, though sourcing the bits may prove challenging in light of the demand spike..?

https://lourollinsminis.blogspot.com/2020/01/proper-librarian-livery-conversion.html

Could also just get Bits wings and glue on, this is what everyone i know did. The Scourge wings of DE work, so does BA wings.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

Catulle wrote:
It turns out that converting's pretty straightforward, though sourcing the bits may prove challenging in light of the demand spike..?

https://lourollinsminis.blogspot.com/2020/01/proper-librarian-livery-conversion.html

Could also just get Bits wings and glue on, this is what everyone i know did. The Scourge wings of DE work, so does BA wings.

Flat-backed wings that fit neatly onto the Dreadnaught plating might work better. The Blood Angels icon panel off of the Stormraven is a pretty cheap bit and about the right size.

Not allowing the half damage strat to work on dreads with invulnerable saves would make it much less obnoxious.

 Vaktathi wrote:
GW's scope of "flavor" also doesn't help. They attempt to represent often subtle concepts like guile and cunning or ambush and preparation with direct power bonuses. For instance, sneaky stuff ends up effectively playing "tanky", receiving bonuses that make them difficult to hurt in some way and as a result they become oddly resilient, when they're often supposed to be glass cannons (as we've often historically seen with Eldar for instance through many editions and different games such as BFG). GW seems loathe to examine other options such as being able to alter/choose deployment types or change objectives or obj control distance or terrain placement or game duration and other such concepts that would better reflect such capabilities without cranking up the direct tactical power levels. They want something that'll have an effect on a statline or dice roll most of the time.

To be fair, trying to incorporate guile, cunning, sneakiness, and strategic planning like ambushes can be hard to do in an environment where everything is known. The players are rather omniscient, knowing where units are, and even what units will be involved in the game. This is not something that most field commanders get to have their hands on.

Infinity seems to run it better, but then they do this with single models that you can only take a couple of with those rules as opposed to 100 models that are supposed to be so sneaky they can pass across an open field without being detected.

Battletech had an optional set of rules which effectively allowed one to be sneaky, but it required a game manager and 3 sets of the game in order to get it to work.

 Ishagu wrote:
They aren't using official GW rules for 40k so LVO means nothing in terms of indicating the meta.

AoS is using the official mission rules.

Only thing LVO shows is how armies perform in ITC homebrew missions. It's actually staggering that this topic doesn't point out the custom, 3rd party missions as a massive differential.

There are far too many people on the ITC Bandwagon pointing out how it's this great balancing factor that fills in the rules gaps that GW has for 40K, when it's essentially a bunch of House Rules that favor a certain type of army build, and if your army doesn't fit that mold, it won't do well.

Comparing 40K to AoS is a bit like apples to oranges. No army in AoS can shoot like a typical 40K army, and there is no Overwatch. There is a Hero Phase in AoS with no corresponding phase in 40K (conversely, 40K has the "Psykic Phase", but let's be real, it's basically a magic phase). AoS has no strategems beyond Command Abilities, and those can only be used by Generals and Hero's. The rules sets are similar, but very different.

If you play AoS, you quickly realize that there is usually only one way to play your army. To play it any other way is to hamstring yourself. You'll see dozens of different Space Marine lists using dozens of different units. If you play Iron Jaws, you'll have five or six units in total, and all they will be good for is running straight at the enemy and getting into close combat. In other words, army lists are very shallow in AoS, while in 40K they are very deep.

With all that being said, I prefer AoS over 40K for competitive play, as the "play space" for lack of a better word, is more narrower and well defined in AoS. In 40K, there are just too many combos, too many rules interactions, and when you have weak rules interactions, it opens up spam, abuse, interpretations... basically, there is a lot more wiggle room in 40K, and that's what ITC attempts to do- reduce that wiggle room, but all it does is add to it. It becomes a game of "OK, this month, there is no rule about unit X interacting with rule Y, so we'll spam unit X and abuse the heck out of rule Y until they make a ruling on it."

kingheff wrote:
Not allowing the half damage strat to work on dreads with invulnerable saves would make it much less obnoxious.

Or the Iron Hands "Operation Human Shield" tactics...

 Eldarsif wrote:

 Ordana wrote:
Go back to before the SM books released and you see a wide variety of armies in 40k tournaments.

But in broad terms GW simply shat the bed with the Marine release. Its entirely possible the AoS team screws up at some point and releases a horribly broken book that will have the same result. (And I think it looked like that for a while when Slaanesh first came out).

AoS has managed to release quite a few OP armies over time. The difference is that they have managed to up their nerf rate faster than the 40k one. When Skaven and FEC came out they were massively OP, but then they released a FAQ that changed a few wordings and re-pointed units and Skaven went from Massively OP to very strong armies.

Same with Slaanesh recently as their Christmas FAQ again included point changes and rule changes to existing armies.

That is one of the things I like currently with AoS. The design team has shown themselves to be slightly more responsive and fluid in regards to their balancing.

Also, those 'OP' armies were never anywhere near as OP as marines are(statistically going by tournament results during their OP time), even post IH nerf. A book like release IH would NEVER make it to print in AoS.

You must have missed Flesh-Eater Courts when the Archregent first dropped.

 Ishagu wrote:
They aren't using official GW rules for 40k so LVO means nothing in terms of indicating the meta.

AoS is using the official mission rules.

Only thing LVO shows is how armies perform in ITC homebrew missions. It's actually staggering that this topic doesn't point out the custom, 3rd party missions as a massive differential.

Official GW rules favor marines MORE than ITC does. Eternal war missions heavily favor armies with heavy duty killing power and not having as much line of sight blocking means that things like leviathan dreads and chaplain dreads can just waste their way through an opponent's army unimpeded.

You're also ignoring the fact that not every tournament uses ITC, but EVERY tournament is seeing the same results. Some events that were previously militantly anti-ITC are using the ITC terrain rules in the hopes that the extra LoS terrain will curb marine's power a bit.

Switching to the GW mission is NOT the magic bullet of balance you seem to think it is and is likely worse simply due to Ewar having no real victory conditions beyond 'kill more than your opponent so you can sit on objectives easier'.

You don't want to believe that marines are OP. Cool, whatever. At some point you have to accept you're wrong and marines dominating EVERY event (even the ones where they didn't take first place had 4+ marine armies in the top 8) since they've been released should be a pretty clear indicator.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kanluwen wrote:
You must have missed Flesh-Eater Courts when the Archregent first dropped.

I played against them at Adepticon in the AoS champs when they were full strength. They were insanely strong but weren't anywhere near as bad as what marines are.

As much as I hate to admit it the ITC rule that first floor blocks LOS is one of the major reasons the IH list works. You can hide all of your troops in the building and your opponent has no choice but to shoot the dread because the infantry models fit so nicely in the building and there is no way to draw LOS to them.

The list is so killy that anything you try to maneuver around to get the LOS angle just dies because you can't move enough of your army there to present enough targets that the army cares about.

That's probably about where the "fault" of ITC lies. That IH list does board control and killing so good. The ability to grey shield one detachment and advance and charge with your troops one turn to get onto objectives if you have to was pivotal and being ably to casually blow anything not protected by the character key word (and in may cases kill them in two turns from out of LOS) means that you can't just "play the mission."

In the semi-final game the IH list basically tabled the eldar player in 2 turns. As soon as the eldar player tried to grab any objectives his units got smoked. If you can't survive sitting on the objectives it's really hard to get any points no matter the mission format.

I was wrong about the unkillable IH levi not being a huge issue at the top tables. I didn't foresee it being used to prevent you shooting at any other parts of the IH army while passing off wounds to 2 wound troops that got to take their FNP for those as well. Meaning you have to hit, wound t8, get through a 4++, get your damage halved and then reduced by 1, get through a 6+++ FNP, get through a 5+++ FNP and then have the wounds that go on the dread healed and then the wounds that go to the meatshields healed...

I didn't see that coming and I don't think a lot of other players did but my god if that isn't a billion rule stacking interactions combined with being able to hide all of the other targets in the army through character protection of ITC "home brew rules" made for the most powerful army in 40k at the moment.

Combined with one of the most killy factions it's no wonder that the list was so dominate, the levi dread unkillable and the only way to beat it was to get lucky.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, and that mani cheema IF list pretty much breaks 40k. It removes 800-1200 points of your army TURN 1 without LOS (unless you are an unkillable levi dread who bossess all of their saves/fnps or a chaplain dread who is just too angry to roll below a 5 on their invuln saves)....

I imagine that Games Workshop is fully aware of how much of a nightmare the game is becoming with the amount of bloat in the game. Space Marines are certainly OP, though I don't see this changing. Honestly, I think the chances of a new edition coming this Summer to work as a soft reset are actually quite likely. It just seems like the easier solution.

Darsath wrote:
I imagine that Games Workshop is fully aware of how much of a nightmare the game is becoming with the amount of bloat in the game...

And yet they're still putting Psychic Awakening books adding doctrines, more stratagems, more relics, more psychic powers, and more warlord traits to more armies.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Darsath wrote:
I imagine that Games Workshop is fully aware of how much of a nightmare the game is becoming with the amount of bloat in the game...

And yet they're still putting Psychic Awakening books adding doctrines, more stratagems, more relics, more psychic powers, and more warlord traits to more armies.

Probably because they already know it's coming. They did something similar last edition too.

Darsath wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Darsath wrote:
I imagine that Games Workshop is fully aware of how much of a nightmare the game is becoming with the amount of bloat in the game...

And yet they're still putting Psychic Awakening books adding doctrines, more stratagems, more relics, more psychic powers, and more warlord traits to more armies.

Probably because they already know it's coming. They did something similar last edition too.

And the end of fantasy was the same way as well. So they have done this twice now.

GW did it twice or is it that most people did not play 3 or 4 editions ago?

Karol wrote:
GW did it twice or is it that most people did not play 3 or 4 editions ago?

I wanted to focus on the most recent example. This has been the case more often than not with new editions.

bananathug wrote:
As much as I hate to admit it the ITC rule that first floor blocks LOS is one of the major reasons the IH list works. You can hide all of your troops in the building and your opponent has no choice but to shoot the dread because the infantry models fit so nicely in the building and there is no way to draw LOS to them.

The list is so killy that anything you try to maneuver around to get the LOS angle just dies because you can't move enough of your army there to present enough targets that the army cares about.

That's probably about where the "fault" of ITC lies. That IH list does board control and killing so good. The ability to grey shield one detachment and advance and charge with your troops one turn to get onto objectives if you have to was pivotal and being ably to casually blow anything not protected by the character key word (and in may cases kill them in two turns from out of LOS) means that you can't just "play the mission."

In the semi-final game the IH list basically tabled the eldar player in 2 turns. As soon as the eldar player tried to grab any objectives his units got smoked. If you can't survive sitting on the objectives it's really hard to get any points no matter the mission format.

I was wrong about the unkillable IH levi not being a huge issue at the top tables. I didn't foresee it being used to prevent you shooting at any other parts of the IH army while passing off wounds to 2 wound troops that got to take their FNP for those as well. Meaning you have to hit, wound t8, get through a 4++, get your damage halved and then reduced by 1, get through a 6+++ FNP, get through a 5+++ FNP and then have the wounds that go on the dread healed and then the wounds that go to the meatshields healed...

I didn't see that coming and I don't think a lot of other players did but my god if that isn't a billion rule stacking interactions combined with being able to hide all of the other targets in the army through character protection of ITC "home brew rules" made for the most powerful army in 40k at the moment.

Combined with one of the most killy factions it's no wonder that the list was so dominate, the levi dread unkillable and the only way to beat it was to get lucky.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, and that mani cheema IF list pretty much breaks 40k. It removes 800-1200 points of your army TURN 1 without LOS (unless you are an unkillable levi dread who bossess all of their saves/fnps or a chaplain dread who is just too angry to roll below a 5 on their invuln saves)....

Same nonsense that makes shield drones broken. Units should not be able to use bodyguard abilities unless they are in LOS of the shooting unit. It is so plainly obvious as to why...

 Xenomancers wrote:
Same nonsense that makes shield drones broken. Units should not be able to use bodyguard abilities unless they are in LOS of the shooting unit. It is so plainly obvious as to why...

You have to be a LITTLE careful about stuff like this and accounting for the opponent's ability to block their own LOS, but yes.

bananathug wrote:
As much as I hate to admit it the ITC rule that first floor blocks LOS is one of the major reasons the IH list works. You can hide all of your troops in the building and your opponent has no choice but to shoot the dread because the infantry models fit so nicely in the building and there is no way to draw LOS to them.

The reasons are not binary, it's a bit more nuanced than that. The ability of these lists to deny secondaries is among the plethora of reasons for their domination, since most of their opponents are operating at a disadvantage in terms of potential scoring.

 Xenomancers wrote:

bananathug wrote:
As much as I hate to admit it the ITC rule that first floor blocks LOS is one of the major reasons the IH list works. You can hide all of your troops in the building and your opponent has no choice but to shoot the dread because the infantry models fit so nicely in the building and there is no way to draw LOS to them.

The list is so killy that anything you try to maneuver around to get the LOS angle just dies because you can't move enough of your army there to present enough targets that the army cares about.

That's probably about where the "fault" of ITC lies. That IH list does board control and killing so good. The ability to grey shield one detachment and advance and charge with your troops one turn to get onto objectives if you have to was pivotal and being ably to casually blow anything not protected by the character key word (and in may cases kill them in two turns from out of LOS) means that you can't just "play the mission."

In the semi-final game the IH list basically tabled the eldar player in 2 turns. As soon as the eldar player tried to grab any objectives his units got smoked. If you can't survive sitting on the objectives it's really hard to get any points no matter the mission format.

I was wrong about the unkillable IH levi not being a huge issue at the top tables. I didn't foresee it being used to prevent you shooting at any other parts of the IH army while passing off wounds to 2 wound troops that got to take their FNP for those as well. Meaning you have to hit, wound t8, get through a 4++, get your damage halved and then reduced by 1, get through a 6+++ FNP, get through a 5+++ FNP and then have the wounds that go on the dread healed and then the wounds that go to the meatshields healed...

I didn't see that coming and I don't think a lot of other players did but my god if that isn't a billion rule stacking interactions combined with being able to hide all of the other targets in the army through character protection of ITC "home brew rules" made for the most powerful army in 40k at the moment.

Combined with one of the most killy factions it's no wonder that the list was so dominate, the levi dread unkillable and the only way to beat it was to get lucky.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, and that mani cheema IF list pretty much breaks 40k. It removes 800-1200 points of your army TURN 1 without LOS (unless you are an unkillable levi dread who bossess all of their saves/fnps or a chaplain dread who is just too angry to roll below a 5 on their invuln saves)....

Same nonsense that makes shield drones broken. Units should not be able to use bodyguard abilities unless they are in LOS of the shooting unit. It is so plainly obvious as to why...

Drones are before the target makes saves. which makes a BIG difference when its a 2+/4++ model.
Christ imagine if you could pass of wounds to drones after trying a 3++ save on riptides. Oh the salty tears (with good reason).

Sure the IF is after damage so in theory is worse against multi damage weapons but lol half all damage and reduce by 1 first...

Darsath wrote:
I imagine that Games Workshop is fully aware of how much of a nightmare the game is becoming with the amount of bloat in the game. Space Marines are certainly OP, though I don't see this changing. Honestly, I think the chances of a new edition coming this Summer to work as a soft reset are actually quite likely. It just seems like the easier solution.

There's not going to be big revolution in 9th ed anyway. Minor tweaks, consolidiated rulebook. Codexes where the major issues lie will still work etc

Karol wrote:
GW did it twice

Oh GWs definitely done it at least twice.

Karol wrote:
or is it that most people did not play 3 or 4 editions ago?

Very likely. 4 editions ago would be 4e. If you go back to the start of that edition your looking at 12 years ago. That's alot of players coming/going.

 Ordana wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

bananathug wrote:
As much as I hate to admit it the ITC rule that first floor blocks LOS is one of the major reasons the IH list works. You can hide all of your troops in the building and your opponent has no choice but to shoot the dread because the infantry models fit so nicely in the building and there is no way to draw LOS to them.

The list is so killy that anything you try to maneuver around to get the LOS angle just dies because you can't move enough of your army there to present enough targets that the army cares about.

That's probably about where the "fault" of ITC lies. That IH list does board control and killing so good. The ability to grey shield one detachment and advance and charge with your troops one turn to get onto objectives if you have to was pivotal and being ably to casually blow anything not protected by the character key word (and in may cases kill them in two turns from out of LOS) means that you can't just "play the mission."

In the semi-final game the IH list basically tabled the eldar player in 2 turns. As soon as the eldar player tried to grab any objectives his units got smoked. If you can't survive sitting on the objectives it's really hard to get any points no matter the mission format.

I was wrong about the unkillable IH levi not being a huge issue at the top tables. I didn't foresee it being used to prevent you shooting at any other parts of the IH army while passing off wounds to 2 wound troops that got to take their FNP for those as well. Meaning you have to hit, wound t8, get through a 4++, get your damage halved and then reduced by 1, get through a 6+++ FNP, get through a 5+++ FNP and then have the wounds that go on the dread healed and then the wounds that go to the meatshields healed...

I didn't see that coming and I don't think a lot of other players did but my god if that isn't a billion rule stacking interactions combined with being able to hide all of the other targets in the army through character protection of ITC "home brew rules" made for the most powerful army in 40k at the moment.

Combined with one of the most killy factions it's no wonder that the list was so dominate, the levi dread unkillable and the only way to beat it was to get lucky.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, and that mani cheema IF list pretty much breaks 40k. It removes 800-1200 points of your army TURN 1 without LOS (unless you are an unkillable levi dread who bossess all of their saves/fnps or a chaplain dread who is just too angry to roll below a 5 on their invuln saves)....

Same nonsense that makes shield drones broken. Units should not be able to use bodyguard abilities unless they are in LOS of the shooting unit. It is so plainly obvious as to why...

Drones are before the target makes saves. which makes a BIG difference when its a 2+/4++ model.
Christ imagine if you could pass of wounds to drones after trying a 3++ save on riptides. Oh the salty tears (with good reason).

Sure the IF is after damage so in theory is worse against multi damage weapons but lol half all damage and reduce by 1 first...

They are both broken. Obviously the Ironhands version is more broken because it's Ironhands. Jezz - don't give them any ideas about the tau.

ERJAK wrote:



Also, those 'OP' armies were never anywhere near as OP as marines are(statistically going by tournament results during their OP time), even post IH nerf. A book like release IH would NEVER make it to print in AoS.

This isn't really true. The problem is that marines are WAY more accessible than Ynnari and it is only IH reaching Ynnari levels of crazy.

Ynnari
2018 (only real data outside LVO is July forward)

Jul - 67.3%
Aug - 69.8
Sep - 58.0
Oct - 60.8
Nov - 62.8
Dec - 47.0

IH
2019
Jul - 25%
Aug - no games
Sep - 54.9
Oct - 69.4
Nov - 65.8
Dec - 65.9

Tyel wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
So, theyre one faction.

Out of what...twenty?

And 2..5x representation from 1/20th of the army lists is a bad thing?

I don't understand what you are saying here?
I'm all for nerfing Marines. I was just saying there is this view that 40k is all Marines all the time. We just had a length of time when this wasn't the case.

OK, I'm confused here.

Are you saying it was 13.5% CODEX: SPACE MARINES or 13.5% Space Marines+Space Wolves+Dark Angels+Grey Knights+Deathwatch+Blood Angels+Chaos Space Marines+Death Guard+Thousand Sons?

I was under the impression you meant the former.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Karol wrote:
GW did it twice or is it that most people did not play 3 or 4 editions ago?

No, I've been playing since 4th, the only time they've done this before is 7th ed. There were not these huge campaign books with tons and tons and tons of rules in 4th or 5th or even...unless I'm misremembering when the first few subfaction supplements came out, 6th.

You have to understand though throughout most of 40ks lifetime you got one book every 2 months or so. The current release schedule is BONKERS compared to 2nd ed thru 5th ed.

bananathug wrote:
As much as I hate to admit it the ITC rule that first floor blocks LOS is one of the major reasons the IH list works. You can hide all of your troops in the building and your opponent has no choice but to shoot the dread because the infantry models fit so nicely in the building and there is no way to draw LOS to them.

I started out thinking this rule was a good idea, and the more time goes on, the more I see it getting seriously abused and causing issues just as bad as the ones it was trying to prevent, it cuts off *too* much LoS frequently and leaves a lot of things like character gimmickry much more capable than it should be.

 Vaktathi wrote:

bananathug wrote:
As much as I hate to admit it the ITC rule that first floor blocks LOS is one of the major reasons the IH list works. You can hide all of your troops in the building and your opponent has no choice but to shoot the dread because the infantry models fit so nicely in the building and there is no way to draw LOS to them.

I started out thinking this rule was a good idea, and the more time goes on, the more I see it getting seriously abused and causing issues just as bad as the ones it was trying to prevent, it cuts off *too* much LoS frequently and leaves a lot of things like character gimmickry much more capable than it should be.

If it can be abused tournament players will find a way. It would be impressive if it wasn't so depressing.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

ERJAK wrote:



Also, those 'OP' armies were never anywhere near as OP as marines are(statistically going by tournament results during their OP time), even post IH nerf. A book like release IH would NEVER make it to print in AoS.

This isn't really true. The problem is that marines are WAY more accessible than Ynnari and it is only IH reaching Ynnari levels of crazy.

Ynnari
2018 (only real data outside LVO is July forward)

Jul - 67.3%
Aug - 69.8
Sep - 58.0
Oct - 60.8
Nov - 62.8
Dec - 47.0

IH
2019
Jul - 25%
Aug - no games
Sep - 54.9
Oct - 69.4
Nov - 65.8
Dec - 65.9

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vaktathi wrote:

bananathug wrote:
As much as I hate to admit it the ITC rule that first floor blocks LOS is one of the major reasons the IH list works. You can hide all of your troops in the building and your opponent has no choice but to shoot the dread because the infantry models fit so nicely in the building and there is no way to draw LOS to them.

I started out thinking this rule was a good idea, and the more time goes on, the more I see it getting seriously abused and causing issues just as bad as the ones it was trying to prevent, it cuts off *too* much LoS frequently and leaves a lot of things like character gimmickry much more capable than it should be.

Combined with the character protection rule it is a broken game IMO.

the_scotsman wrote:

OK, I'm confused here.

Are you saying it was 13.5% CODEX: SPACE MARINES or 13.5% Space Marines+Space Wolves+Dark Angels+Grey Knights+Deathwatch+Blood Angels+Chaos Space Marines+Death Guard+Thousand Sons?

I was under the impression you meant the former.

13.5% of "mono-lists" (which you may say is a weird abstraction because soup was right there, drink the soup), were mono-Imperial aligned Space Marines. So Codex Space Marines, or SW/DA/BA/GK/DW etc. Chaos would be chaos.

I guess you can argue whether its a good or bad number - but you had about 3 times as many on a proportional basis turn up at LVO 2020 compared to the situation a year ago. This is because the rules changed, not because 40k is intrinsically all Marines all the time.
I was disagreeing with a poster above who believed it was.

The truth is that GW cannot be held to account for any meta that is built around 3rd party, homebrew rules. Hard to accept but it is what it is.
If the same volumes of data show the same problems in CA missions then we have more ground to complain. The recent events held by GW have not suffered from faction dominance the same was as the ITC have, and that is also a fact.

Are GW balancing the factions perfectly? Not at all. Doesn't change the fact that homebrew 3rd party rules can have an effect on a game and alter the nature of the meta in one way or another.

 Ishagu wrote:
The truth is that GW cannot be held to account for any meta that is built around 3rd party, homebrew rules. Hard to accept but it is what it is.
If the same volumes of data show the same problems in CA missions then we have more ground to complain. The recent events they've held have not suffered from faction dominance the same was as the ITC have, and that is also a fact.

Are GW balancing the factions perfectly? Not at all.

If you think GW can't be held to account, you've never had a customer service role.

Now, if you're saying GW shouldn't be held to account, that's worthy of debate.

(Not literally disagreeing with you. Being a bit pedantic to call out the difference and put more weight on who people "blame" versus who people should "blame".)

Fair enough. I'll specify:

They should not be held to account for a meta built around 3rd party, unofficial, homebrew rules.

 Argive wrote:

Ill keep completing my army and doing the hobby side/ enjoying the game. But once I'm done? It'll probably be time for another system rather than another army unless there will be some change in direction.



In 40k you have factions with units throwing out something like 60+ dice with re-rolls... The dice game becomes meaningless when you have weight of dice..

So much this.

 Ishagu wrote:
Fair enough. I'll specify:

They should not be held to account for a meta built around 3rd party, unofficial, homebrew rules.

I mean... I agree, but I'll hold them to account for the disaster that is the SM rules in their own, 1st party, official, rules.

 Crazyterran wrote:
nerfing the Dread damage reduction to only work on 11 wound dreads or less might be the way to go

Except... It's not. "Stratagems" like this shouldn't exist at all. There's nothing "strategic" in Duty Eternal, especially since it's activated AFTER the opponent targets the Dreadnought.

I think GW made a giant mistake with how they designed their stratagems, which are the core of 8th edition and therefore, its core problem. They're basically just extra powers on a limited budget. Unfortunately, being able to use any stratagem at any time with virtually no opportunity cost ruins everything.

You want to fix 40k ? Make stratagems 1 use only OR allow only 1 stratagem to be played each turn. Now, you can call them "stratagems".

Edit : or have people draw stratagems like they draw Objective cards ! Draw 3, can't use other stratagems unless you've used the ones in your hand.

 Nym wrote:

 Crazyterran wrote:
nerfing the Dread damage reduction to only work on 11 wound dreads or less might be the way to go

Except... It's not. "Stratagems" like this shouldn't exist at all. There's nothing "strategic" in Duty Eternal, especially since it's activated AFTER the opponent targets the Dreadnought.

I think GW made a giant mistake with how they designed their stratagems, which are the core of 8th edition and therefore, its core problem. They're basically just extra powers on a limited budget. Unfortunately, being able to use any stratagem at any time with virtually no opportunity cost ruins everything.

You want to fix 40k ? Make stratagems 1 use only OR allow only 1 stratagem to be played each turn. Now, you can call them "stratagems".

In general, I hate that Stratagems exist.

But a counterpoint for why they're good? Fire And Fade. Eldar should be able to shoot then run away. But being able to do it with every unit every turn would be (/was) increadibly unfun for their opponent. The Stratagem mechanic allows GW to give them the rule, but limit it's use and give it a cost.

Bharring wrote:

 Nym wrote:

 Crazyterran wrote:
nerfing the Dread damage reduction to only work on 11 wound dreads or less might be the way to go

Except... It's not. "Stratagems" like this shouldn't exist at all. There's nothing "strategic" in Duty Eternal, especially since it's activated AFTER the opponent targets the Dreadnought.

I think GW made a giant mistake with how they designed their stratagems, which are the core of 8th edition and therefore, its core problem. They're basically just extra powers on a limited budget. Unfortunately, being able to use any stratagem at any time with virtually no opportunity cost ruins everything.

You want to fix 40k ? Make stratagems 1 use only OR allow only 1 stratagem to be played each turn. Now, you can call them "stratagems".

In general, I hate that Stratagems exist.

But a counterpoint for why they're good? Fire And Fade. Eldar should be able to shoot then run away. But being able to do it with every unit every turn would be (/was) increadibly unfun for their opponent. The Stratagem mechanic allows GW to give them the rule, but limit it's use and give it a cost.

Aye. They should be heavily, heavily reduced.

Probably won't be though, they're too flashy.

 Vaktathi wrote:

bananathug wrote:
As much as I hate to admit it the ITC rule that first floor blocks LOS is one of the major reasons the IH list works. You can hide all of your troops in the building and your opponent has no choice but to shoot the dread because the infantry models fit so nicely in the building and there is no way to draw LOS to them.

I started out thinking this rule was a good idea, and the more time goes on, the more I see it getting seriously abused and causing issues just as bad as the ones it was trying to prevent, it cuts off *too* much LoS frequently and leaves a lot of things like character gimmickry much more capable than it should be.

Interestingly GW use a less binary version of the same rule at their events

https://warhammerworld.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/15/2019/07/Warhammer-40000-Ruins-House-Rule.pdf

Given the way their terrain tends to be set up that does create some LOS block but if you build a list assuming you will always be able to hide your Intercessors then you are in for a nasty shock. Just one small gap in the terrain undoes your whole strategy.

However the GW tournament results are nothing like as skewed as ITC results and I really do not think you can put it all down to this difference in terrain rules. I do think that the missions are the biggest difference so you have to look at those as by far the most likely cause. As per the subject of this thread, it is worth noting that the ITC AoS tournament used the book missions rather than ITC homebrew and it had a far more diverse leaderboard.

With the release of malign sorcery, AoS obtained a whole set of relics, command traits, spells and endless spells that do not belongs to a particular faction but they are shared by everybody.

Some of this items are actually quite good. Other one's synergies well with different factions.

By doing this they kinda modulated the power level of all the battle tomes to be similar.

For instance, before to increase the points, there were an endless spell called geminids of uhl-ghysh that was broken. But this didn't brake the game because basically every army with 40 spare points could get it.

Aos is just much more simple in term of game design. Special rules are usually really limited in number as they are bound to units/characters.
40K is a complete mess in game design : the number of relics and stratagem is not even streamlined from one faction to another (this has gotten worse with the vigilus campaign, the SM supplement and PA) and sometime I feel like GW is not even trying to balance it all out !
For exemple, many factions have outright fluff rules/relics/stratagems, that makes sense from a fluff point of view but are not just that useful in a competitive environment.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

ERJAK wrote:



Also, those 'OP' armies were never anywhere near as OP as marines are(statistically going by tournament results during their OP time), even post IH nerf. A book like release IH would NEVER make it to print in AoS.

This isn't really true. The problem is that marines are WAY more accessible than Ynnari and it is only IH reaching Ynnari levels of crazy.

Ynnari
2018 (only real data outside LVO is July forward)

Jul - 67.3%
Aug - 69.8
Sep - 58.0
Oct - 60.8
Nov - 62.8
Dec - 47.0

IH
2019
Jul - 25%
Aug - no games
Sep - 54.9
Oct - 69.4
Nov - 65.8
Dec - 65.9

To be fair, because of how many Marine and IH players there are, those IH numbers are dragged down by the plethora of not-quite-IH-but-still-OP Marine lists, as well as other IH lists.

With Ynnari there was less mirror-matching going on.

40kstat win rates are controlled for mirror matches IIRC. Regardless, IH need another swing of the nerfhammer.

 Ishagu wrote:
They should not be held to account for a meta built around 3rd party, unofficial, homebrew rules.

That holds up until you sponsor events run with them, then you're on board, and consequently responsible. I know that's hard to accept though.

GW want to be where the community congregates. That won't change.

 Ishagu wrote:
GW want to be where the community congregates. That won't change.

Man, it's like you've almost made the logical link to the validity of the event, but you won't for painfully obvious reasons.

Your argument is really stupid lol.

If GW wanted to push ITC missions you would find them in Chapter Approved.

Simmer down and keep it polite please.

Darsath wrote:
I imagine that Games Workshop is fully aware of how much of a nightmare the game is becoming with the amount of bloat in the game. Space Marines are certainly OP, though I don't see this changing. Honestly, I think the chances of a new edition coming this Summer to work as a soft reset are actually quite likely. It just seems like the easier solution.

Here's hoping that SoB, most certainly the last Codex release of this edition, is the way 9th Edition Codices will be handled, assuming that the Sororitas Codex was written with 9th in mind (see the final army books for AoS before AoS 2.0 released). Because stuff like the Marines Codex and particularly the IF and ESPECIALLY the IF Supplements need to be nuked from orbit. Otherwise the next edition will be a mess from the get-go, considering it is certain they won't just replace all Codices in their entirety and reboot all factions like they did with the launch of 8th Edition.

What 40k needs is most of the old guard of rules writers (particularly those like Cruddace) being kicked out and replaced with young, talented writers actually interested in balance and heavily playtesting it and making sure there is good internal balance in a new book, like AoS does and the completely new Adepta Sororitas rules writer did.

 Ishagu wrote:
Your argument is really stupid lol.

If GW wanted to push ITC missions you would find them in Chapter Approved.

They kind of do? It's been pretty apparent the carry over of the way things score came from ITC among other items.

Its much easier to fix a game thats so basic you might aswell play chess.
As a narrative play dude, I cant stand AoS because its background is just so terrible.

I played two games of AoS early on around when Blood Warriors first came out.

Once with my Seraphon, and once with Bloodbound. The same week I sold all of my seraphon models and the bs battletone. How the hell did something so unique like Aztec Lizardmen end up becoming so stupid like Aztec Lizardmen ghost memories?

For Bloodbound, I still have my models because they look great...

Good models ate the one thing AoS has for them, and that had NOTHING to do with the setting. Infact, tons of AoS minis are ugly as feth. Idoneth, fyreslayers, Sylvaneth, and every other faction that is completley new and not just an extension of WhFB armies like the Gloomspite Nightgoblins

TLDR: AoS is boring as hell so you really shouldnt even care.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ragnar Blackmane wrote:

Darsath wrote:
I imagine that Games Workshop is fully aware of how much of a nightmare the game is becoming with the amount of bloat in the game. Space Marines are certainly OP, though I don't see this changing. Honestly, I think the chances of a new edition coming this Summer to work as a soft reset are actually quite likely. It just seems like the easier solution.

Here's hoping that SoB, most certainly the last Codex release of this edition, is the way 9th Edition Codices will be handled, assuming that the Sororitas Codex was written with 9th in mind (see the final army books for AoS before AoS 2.0 released). Because stuff like the Marines Codex and particularly the IF and ESPECIALLY the IF Supplements need to be nuked from orbit. Otherwise the next edition will be a mess from the get-go, considering it is certain they won't just replace all Codices in their entirety and reboot all factions like they did with the launch of 8th Edition.

What 40k needs is most of the old guard of rules writers (particularly those like Cruddace) being kicked out and replaced with young, talented writers actually interested in balance and heavily playtesting it and making sure there is good internal balance in a new book, like AoS does and the completely new Adepta Sororitas rules writer did.

Oh man. Cruddace is a massive idiot. Its actually super sad to see that a lot of the same people who helped shape 40k into such an awesome setting are the same ones who are really hurting it. Like, how the hell did every single one of them lose their touch?

What a damn shame.

123ply wrote:
Its much easier to fix a game thats so basic you might aswell play chess.
As a narrative play dude, I cant stand AoS because its background is just so terrible.

I played two games of AoS early on around when Blood Warriors first came out.

Once with my Seraphon, and once with Bloodbound. The same week I sold all of my seraphon models and the bs battletone. How the hell did something so unique like Aztec Lizardmen end up becoming so stupid like Aztec Lizardmen ghost memories?

For Bloodbound, I still have my models because they look great...

Good models ate the one thing AoS has for them, and that had NOTHING to do with the setting. Infact, tons of AoS minis are ugly as feth. Idoneth, fyreslayers, Sylvaneth, and every other faction that is completley new and not just an extension of WhFB armies like the Gloomspite Nightgoblins

TLDR: AoS is boring as hell so you really shouldnt even care.

And i love AOS background, i love how the Old world is a 1/2 history/myth with tales of legends and great events that no one knows what is wholly the truth and what isn't.

As someone that plays both, AoS is for sure for me is a better game, not only more fun, but also more tactics. In 40k i don't even use half that tactics i do in AoS. 40k doesn't match the fluff any better, honestly it matches worst i feel. Being in 8th its a 90% shooting game and i can literally lose 1/2 my army turn 1 from shooting right now, thats not fun, i haven't had fun in 40k for about a year now, and its just even worst with PA/marines.

Then the missions, CA is better, but i still prefer AoS missions, when movements matter 100x more, and you don't have to kill to stop a unit from getting objectives, but a better deployment and movement phase can gain you victory thats amazing. I win a lot of my games without needing to halfway tabling someone.

TLDR: 40k is boring as hell so you really shouldnt even care

happy_inquisitor wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

bananathug wrote:
As much as I hate to admit it the ITC rule that first floor blocks LOS is one of the major reasons the IH list works. You can hide all of your troops in the building and your opponent has no choice but to shoot the dread because the infantry models fit so nicely in the building and there is no way to draw LOS to them.

I started out thinking this rule was a good idea, and the more time goes on, the more I see it getting seriously abused and causing issues just as bad as the ones it was trying to prevent, it cuts off *too* much LoS frequently and leaves a lot of things like character gimmickry much more capable than it should be.

Interestingly GW use a less binary version of the same rule at their events

https://warhammerworld.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/15/2019/07/Warhammer-40000-Ruins-House-Rule.pdf

Given the way their terrain tends to be set up that does create some LOS block but if you build a list assuming you will always be able to hide your Intercessors then you are in for a nasty shock. Just one small gap in the terrain undoes your whole strategy.

However the GW tournament results are nothing like as skewed as ITC results and I really do not think you can put it all down to this difference in terrain rules. I do think that the missions are the biggest difference so you have to look at those as by far the most likely cause. As per the subject of this thread, it is worth noting that the ITC AoS tournament used the book missions rather than ITC homebrew and it had a far more diverse leaderboard.

We initially switched to the ITC-style ground floor blocking LoS for our ruins locally because, like a lot of people, our terrain was designed for an earlier edition and didn't work too well with 8th's absolutely terrible terrain rules. However, as time has gone on we've noticed these rules tend to produce very skewed games and unintended results where it's too easy to hide pretty much everything if you want, often crammed into a comically dense cluster of models huddled up against the wall of a shelled building. As a result we've now moved towards modifying our current terrain and building new terrain that works with TLoS. So there's a lot of blocked LoS on the ground floor of ruins, but not all of it. I think the ITC rule was created out of expediency but should be revisited and terrain renovated or updated to be more in line with TLoS rules. If that were then combined with a change to the core terrain rules to make them a bit more detailed we might see some of these offenders starting to fall away of their own accord.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
They kind of do? It's been pretty apparent the carry over of the way things score came from ITC among other items.

Madness, who uses facts in an argument like this. I find your entire premise offensive sir.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Ishagu wrote:
Your argument is really stupid lol.

If GW wanted to push ITC missions you would find them in Chapter Approved.

They kind of do? It's been pretty apparent the carry over of the way things score came from ITC among other items.

and taking the good parts of ITC is not a problem, taking good parts from anything is often a good idea. But this is about the effect of the bad parts.

 Ordana wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Ishagu wrote:
Your argument is really stupid lol.

If GW wanted to push ITC missions you would find them in Chapter Approved.

They kind of do? It's been pretty apparent the carry over of the way things score came from ITC among other items.

and taking the good parts of ITC is not a problem, taking good parts from anything is often a good idea. But this is about the effect of the bad parts.

Which is interesting since ITC was developed out of some perceived bad parts in GW's line up.

Of course, what is considered bad is not always universally recognized...

 Charistoph wrote:

 Ordana wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Ishagu wrote:
Your argument is really stupid lol.

If GW wanted to push ITC missions you would find them in Chapter Approved.

They kind of do? It's been pretty apparent the carry over of the way things score came from ITC among other items.

and taking the good parts of ITC is not a problem, taking good parts from anything is often a good idea. But this is about the effect of the bad parts.

Which is interesting since ITC was developed out of some perceived bad parts in GW's line up.

Of course, what is considered bad is not always universally recognized...

ITC comes from a time when GW withdrew from the tournament scene and the basis for the game was universally seen as bad. I'd argue we are in a different time now and the custom missions are no longer needed.

 Ordana wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:

 Ordana wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Ishagu wrote:
Your argument is really stupid lol.

If GW wanted to push ITC missions you would find them in Chapter Approved.

They kind of do? It's been pretty apparent the carry over of the way things score came from ITC among other items.

and taking the good parts of ITC is not a problem, taking good parts from anything is often a good idea. But this is about the effect of the bad parts.

Which is interesting since ITC was developed out of some perceived bad parts in GW's line up.

Of course, what is considered bad is not always universally recognized...

ITC comes from a time when GW withdrew from the tournament scene and the basis for the game was universally seen as bad. I'd argue we are in a different time now and the custom missions are no longer needed.

I don't see why both cannot exist. Personally I liek the fun of open war and chapter approved/codex missions but if somebody wants to play ITC I get the appeal. It used to really be a better way in previous editions, but with 8th it is more of an alternative than a necessity

It's not that they can't co-exist, its that a few very vocal people think the game should be balanced around the ITC rules, rather than GWs

 G00fySmiley wrote:

 Ordana wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:

 Ordana wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Ishagu wrote:
Your argument is really stupid lol.

If GW wanted to push ITC missions you would find them in Chapter Approved.

They kind of do? It's been pretty apparent the carry over of the way things score came from ITC among other items.

and taking the good parts of ITC is not a problem, taking good parts from anything is often a good idea. But this is about the effect of the bad parts.

Which is interesting since ITC was developed out of some perceived bad parts in GW's line up.

Of course, what is considered bad is not always universally recognized...

ITC comes from a time when GW withdrew from the tournament scene and the basis for the game was universally seen as bad. I'd argue we are in a different time now and the custom missions are no longer needed.

I don't see why both cannot exist. Personally I liek the fun of open war and chapter approved/codex missions but if somebody wants to play ITC I get the appeal. It used to really be a better way in previous editions, but with 8th it is more of an alternative than a necessity

Their models, their money people can do whatever they want. But when people complain about how dominated the ITC tends to be by whatever is seen as best right now I will point to the world outside of it where this is less the case.

ERJAK wrote:

 Eldarsif wrote:

 Ordana wrote:
Go back to before the SM books released and you see a wide variety of armies in 40k tournaments.

But in broad terms GW simply shat the bed with the Marine release. Its entirely possible the AoS team screws up at some point and releases a horribly broken book that will have the same result. (And I think it looked like that for a while when Slaanesh first came out).

AoS has managed to release quite a few OP armies over time. The difference is that they have managed to up their nerf rate faster than the 40k one. When Skaven and FEC came out they were massively OP, but then they released a FAQ that changed a few wordings and re-pointed units and Skaven went from Massively OP to very strong armies.

Same with Slaanesh recently as their Christmas FAQ again included point changes and rule changes to existing armies.

That is one of the things I like currently with AoS. The design team has shown themselves to be slightly more responsive and fluid in regards to their balancing.

Also, those 'OP' armies were never anywhere near as OP as marines are(statistically going by tournament results during their OP time), even post IH nerf. A book like release IH would NEVER make it to print in AoS.

Well Tzeentch just got a new battletome that can summon over 1500 points of models (note summons are free in AoS) turn 1 so there's that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sim-Life wrote:
It's not that they can't co-exist, its that a few very vocal people think the game should be balanced around the ITC rules, rather than GWs

All I can say is that as a player having yet ANOTHER set of rules I need to have and deal with is very unattractive.

And AOS is more balanced around summoning, my CoS army that doesn't summon that i use for events doesn't care if you summon 1500pts turn 1, as you also spent something like 1200pts to do that, so you really only gained a couple hundred points. Then turn 1 all your heroes are dead, so by by casters.

Thats the difference in AoS to 40k what seem OP isnt, look at OBR EVERYONE thought they was going to be top dog and they did really bad to what people was expecting in all 3 events this past weekend, b.c movement and board control is just as important to raw numbers and stats. OBR didn't have board control.

40k has a hard time with board control as a concept. Melee is such a binary component of the game for several reasons, but primarily because there's so much emphasis on shooting that melee shuts down, often permanently, that its really hard to make scenarios that are primarily about maneuvering to a position. A mission packet that could inject a healthy dose of board control into the game would be a huge win in my mind, but I'm not sure how when so many matchups can turn into
"move forward and get tabled/stay put and table them".

AoS is easier b.c of the 3" don't touch me zone, when each 25mm base now has a 6.98" movement denial (unless they have fly, but you still can't land there) zone, it makes a huge difference.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
AoS is easier b.c of the 3" don't touch me zone, when each 25mm base now has a 6.98" movement denial (unless they have fly, but you still can't land there) zone, it makes a huge difference.

Honestly, I find that the 2" coherence in 40K balances that out, a unit of 10 can block out a similar area of the table in both games. Small units zone better in AoS and larger units zone better in 40K is my general feeling.

I think the importance of zoning being greater in AoS is more to do with the missions between the two tournaments circuits. Zoning in the ITC missions is much less of a thing because it does nothing to stop your opponent winning on the primary and secondary VPs they can pick up for killing stuff. I play non-ITC competitive 40K and I find zoning just as important there as it is in AoS because its more about movement and objective holding.

happy_inquisitor wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
AoS is easier b.c of the 3" don't touch me zone, when each 25mm base now has a 6.98" movement denial (unless they have fly, but you still can't land there) zone, it makes a huge difference.

Honestly, I find that the 2" coherence in 40K balances that out, a unit of 10 can block out a similar area of the table in both games. Small units zone better in AoS and larger units zone better in 40K is my general feeling.

I think the importance of zoning being greater in AoS is more to do with the missions between the two tournaments circuits. Zoning in the ITC missions is much less of a thing because it does nothing to stop your opponent winning on the primary and secondary VPs they can pick up for killing stuff. I play non-ITC competitive 40K and I find zoning just as important there as it is in AoS because its more about movement and objective holding.

You are talking about 2 models then, 2"+50mm (so basically 2"). That means you have 1" on each side and 2" in the middle with the 2 bases for 2", a total of 6"

In sigmar 2 models are 1" apart with 1" bases for 3", but now its 3" on each side for a total of 9"


Then you have it in both directions, in sigmar you can make 1 line of 10 guys, this will be a total rectangle type shape of 26"x7". In 40k 10 guys will do 32"x3" Its that x3 vs x7 that is HUGE, 4" doesn;t sound like a lot, but when you have 2 layers like that you can effectively stop any unit from moving with a 14" dead zone were in 40k its 8", thats almost double.

Then some units that have fly still need to get within 1" of each other, so if you move correctly event with fly they might not be able to charge between at all (One of my main opponents its Deepkin, they basically are jetbikes, i would say equal to Shining spears without the guns), so i make a "w" shape so he can not pile in, it only take 3 models out of 10 to move slightly close to each other to stop a cavalry unit from fitting.

Its also more important b.c if you can move a 20-40man block right in front of them, they have to kill it, there is no going around.

 Amishprn86 wrote:


Then you have it in both directions, in sigmar you can make 1 line of 10 guys, this will be a total rectangle type shape of 26"x7". In 40k 10 guys will do 32"x3" Its that x3 vs x7 that is HUGE, 4" doesn;t sound like a lot, but when you have 2 layers like that you can effectively stop any unit from moving with a 14" dead zone were in 40k its 8", thats almost double.

In 40K you don't string units out in straight lines to zone areas out. I usually find myself putting units in an oval or square shape of some sort to zone out table space. I can then leave gaps in that so long as they are not large enough for the base of the opposing unit that has Fly - or if the unit has multiple models so long as the gaps are not close enough together for that opposing unit to land in unit cohesion. Yes it does end up looking a bit more like Napoleonic squares than classical ranks in lines but that is fine, all I am after is filling up enough table space to deny movement into key locations.

The key difference is that i have far greater freedom in model removal in 40K so I can remove models from the middle freely. If I do that in AoS I would lose big chunks of models - so if I maximise my coverage I can find myself forced to either reduce it when a spell takes out a couple of models or know that i am sacrificing half my unit later in the turn.

On balance I find it is roughly equivalent between the two systems at around about 10 models. You may find it different but I think it unlikely that it is really anywhere near different enough to explain the different play between the two systems at LVO. I still think the missions putting much more emphasis on movement and table control in AoS is the big difference.

happy_inquisitor wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:


Then you have it in both directions, in sigmar you can make 1 line of 10 guys, this will be a total rectangle type shape of 26"x7". In 40k 10 guys will do 32"x3" Its that x3 vs x7 that is HUGE, 4" doesn;t sound like a lot, but when you have 2 layers like that you can effectively stop any unit from moving with a 14" dead zone were in 40k its 8", thats almost double.

In 40K you don't string units out in straight lines to zone areas out. I usually find myself putting units in an oval or square shape of some sort to zone out table space. I can then leave gaps in that so long as they are not large enough for the base of the opposing unit that has Fly - or if the unit has multiple models so long as the gaps are not close enough together for that opposing unit to land in unit cohesion. Yes it does end up looking a bit more like Napoleonic squares than classical ranks in lines but that is fine, all I am after is filling up enough table space to deny movement into key locations.

The key difference is that i have far greater freedom in model removal in 40K so I can remove models from the middle freely. If I do that in AoS I would lose big chunks of models - so if I maximise my coverage I can find myself forced to either reduce it when a spell takes out a couple of models or know that i am sacrificing half my unit later in the turn.

On balance I find it is roughly equivalent between the two systems at around about 10 models. You may find it different but I think it unlikely that it is really anywhere near different enough to explain the different play between the two systems at LVO. I still think the missions putting much more emphasis on movement and table control in AoS is the big difference.

Right and i was making it simple to show a point, in AoS you dont string them out either, you make all types of shapes just like you would in 40k, U, T, L, V, O, Q, etc.. The difference is in AOS you only need 50 models to literally cut off 1/2 the table.. this is my main tactic when playing BoC as i don't have a lot of the tools to deal loads of damage like other armies. And by 1/2 i mean he literally can't place models outside of charging on my 1/2.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
And AOS is more balanced around summoning, my CoS army that doesn't summon that i use for events doesn't care if you summon 1500pts turn 1, as you also spent something like 1200pts to do that, so you really only gained a couple hundred points. Then turn 1 all your heroes are dead, so by by casters.

Thats the difference in AoS to 40k what seem OP isnt, look at OBR EVERYONE thought they was going to be top dog and they did really bad to what people was expecting in all 3 events this past weekend, b.c movement and board control is just as important to raw numbers and stats. OBR didn't have board control.

Well the list I was mentioning has six gaunt summoners and brings in a lord of change turn one, and is summoning in six units of pink horrors that cast, and has minimum battleline that casts, and it isn't particularly optimized either. Oh and all those things shoot.

Also to be fair to the community it was only the less experienced who were saying OBR would dominate. Give credit to the tourney crowd who predicted (correctly) that Petrifax have trouble sealing a tourney win because they are likely to hit another tier-1 army at some point that will dismantle them.

 Amishprn86 wrote:



Right and i was making it simple to show a point, in AoS you dont string them out either, you make all types of shapes just like you would in 40k, U, T, L, V, O, Q, etc.. The difference is in AOS you only need 50 models to literally cut off 1/2 the table.. this is my main tactic when playing BoC as i don't have a lot of the tools to deal loads of damage like other armies. And by 1/2 i mean he literally can't place models outside of charging on my 1/2.

I am afraid you made an over-specific point that I found rather unpersuasive. I generally run 60-80 screening models when I run table control lists in 40K but in AoS I just find the points cost per model tends to be higher and that limits me to 50 or so models in that role. Given that a lot of my zoning is also against teleport - with a 9" zone around each model rather than 1" - I just find screening more productive in 40K. If you personally find it the other way round then that is fine but I stand by my comment - this subjective difference of opinon between us does not explain the massive difference in how important table control is between the LVO AoS and 40K tournaments. The missions go a lot further to explain why table control matters more in AoS - 80 screening models in the ITC 40K missions just gift my opponent easy kill/kill-more plus a trivially easy 4VP for a secondary - VP I will struggle to ever justify by getting Hold More a few times.

What are you using in BoC that is so much cheaper than skinks which are my AoS screening unit?

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
And AOS is more balanced around summoning, my CoS army that doesn't summon that i use for events doesn't care if you summon 1500pts turn 1, as you also spent something like 1200pts to do that, so you really only gained a couple hundred points. Then turn 1 all your heroes are dead, so by by casters.

Thats the difference in AoS to 40k what seem OP isnt, look at OBR EVERYONE thought they was going to be top dog and they did really bad to what people was expecting in all 3 events this past weekend, b.c movement and board control is just as important to raw numbers and stats. OBR didn't have board control.

Well the list I was mentioning has six gaunt summoners and brings in a lord of change turn one, and is summoning in six units of pink horrors that cast, and has minimum battleline that casts, and it isn't particularly optimized either. Oh and all those things shoot.

Also to be fair to the community it was only the less experienced who were saying OBR would dominate. Give credit to the tourney crowd who predicted (correctly) that Petrifax have trouble sealing a tourney win because they are likely to hit another tier-1 army at some point that will dismantle them.

I know the list you are talking about the gaunt summoner is 240pts summoning 200pts, you take 5 of them thats 1200pts to summon 1000pts, but at that point you are now 5 casters, without the summoning are value at 100pts, so you really only net 500pts, hence why i said a couple hundred points. Most high level summoning armies can easily do 500+ points. And those armies are more balanced with that in mind.

Yes then you can cast to summon, (if you casted 10 spells which would be average) you'll only get 1 more 80/100pt unit. And as soon as a couple of those gaunt summoner dies (only 5 wounds) thats it, you are spent.

Heck seraphon summons like 300pts a turn if you cant kill the Slaans, by buddy that i beat almost everytime normally summoning 2k points.

The game is built around summoning so it isn't all that big of a problem, yes DoT is strong right now, but thats mostly b.c of Flamers and Horrors together, and flamers are going to take a hit, Horrors might take a small hit too (Thinking you cant add more Pinks back in once they are gone).

Is it true for all armies, or is it just armies that have summoning themselfs that are balanced vs other summoning armies?

A number of non-summoning armies have done quite well for themselves. The outlier on OP was Slaanesh but they had many issues that didn't even need summoning to be a problem.

You'll generally see many other armies up in the top slots amongst summoners.

Many non summoning armies wins 1st place at GT's too and when they don't their still winning 5 games for the event.

FS, DoK, IDK, Skaven can all place in top 3.

The only reason why DoT is placing so well is not from Summoning, but a crazy damage combo of 6-9 man units that are dealing 80+ damage in 1 turn, which will be nerf really soon. GW over looked all the bonuses + teleport it seems.

EDIT: Also some summoning armies are doing bad, and then some armies with summoning (yes it is 2 different things) are also doing bad, Both Goblins and BoC are doing really bad and both can has minor summoning. Seraphon are hard to play even tho they can summon a crap ton and often dont win (tho they can, just depends on match ups and missions) vs anything with shooting they are instant lose.

Then you have 1 army that can summon but chooses not to, Khorne, b.c if they don't summon they can move or melee twice, and they are one of the top armies as well and they don't summon when they can lol.

Ordana wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:

Which is interesting since ITC was developed out of some perceived bad parts in GW's line up.

Of course, what is considered bad is not always universally recognized...

ITC comes from a time when GW withdrew from the tournament scene and the basis for the game was universally seen as bad. I'd argue we are in a different time now and the custom missions are no longer needed.

And the same group has apparently not seen anything to change their minds that there is something bad that needs to be changed.

Again, what is considered bad is not always universally recognized. What you think is bad may not be what they think is bad, and vice versa.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
And AOS is more balanced around summoning, my CoS army that doesn't summon that i use for events doesn't care if you summon 1500pts turn 1, as you also spent something like 1200pts to do that, so you really only gained a couple hundred points. Then turn 1 all your heroes are dead, so by by casters.

Thats the difference in AoS to 40k what seem OP isnt, look at OBR EVERYONE thought they was going to be top dog and they did really bad to what people was expecting in all 3 events this past weekend, b.c movement and board control is just as important to raw numbers and stats. OBR didn't have board control.

Well the list I was mentioning has six gaunt summoners and brings in a lord of change turn one, and is summoning in six units of pink horrors that cast, and has minimum battleline that casts, and it isn't particularly optimized either. Oh and all those things shoot.

Also to be fair to the community it was only the less experienced who were saying OBR would dominate. Give credit to the tourney crowd who predicted (correctly) that Petrifax have trouble sealing a tourney win because they are likely to hit another tier-1 army at some point that will dismantle them.

I know the list you are talking about the gaunt summoner is 240pts summoning 200pts, you take 5 of them thats 1200pts to summon 1000pts, but at that point you are now 5 casters, without the summoning are value at 100pts, so you really only net 500pts, hence why i said a couple hundred points. Most high level summoning armies can easily do 500+ points. And those armies are more balanced with that in mind.

Yes then you can cast to summon, (if you casted 10 spells which would be average) you'll only get 1 more 80/100pt unit. And as soon as a couple of those gaunt summoner dies (only 5 wounds) thats it, you are spent.

Heck seraphon summons like 300pts a turn if you cant kill the Slaans, by buddy that i beat almost everytime normally summoning 2k points.

The game is built around summoning so it isn't all that big of a problem, yes DoT is strong right now, but thats mostly b.c of Flamers and Horrors together, and flamers are going to take a hit, Horrors might take a small hit too (Thinking you cant add more Pinks back in once they are gone).

Well no, that is not the list. The list I was referencing is much more powerful but it wasn't a particularly serious reference either. This isn't really the place for an in-depth discussion anyways.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Karol wrote:
Is it true for all armies, or is it just armies that have summoning themselfs that are balanced vs other summoning armies?

While it varies (a lot) by army, summoning armies out-perform non-summoning on average.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

happy_inquisitor wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:



Right and i was making it simple to show a point, in AoS you dont string them out either, you make all types of shapes just like you would in 40k, U, T, L, V, O, Q, etc.. The difference is in AOS you only need 50 models to literally cut off 1/2 the table.. this is my main tactic when playing BoC as i don't have a lot of the tools to deal loads of damage like other armies. And by 1/2 i mean he literally can't place models outside of charging on my 1/2.

I am afraid you made an over-specific point that I found rather unpersuasive. I generally run 60-80 screening models when I run table control lists in 40K but in AoS I just find the points cost per model tends to be higher and that limits me to 50 or so models in that role. Given that a lot of my zoning is also against teleport - with a 9" zone around each model rather than 1" - I just find screening more productive in 40K. If you personally find it the other way round then that is fine but I stand by my comment - this subjective difference of opinon between us does not explain the massive difference in how important table control is between the LVO AoS and 40K tournaments. The missions go a lot further to explain why table control matters more in AoS - 80 screening models in the ITC 40K missions just gift my opponent easy kill/kill-more plus a trivially easy 4VP for a secondary - VP I will struggle to ever justify by getting Hold More a few times.

What are you using in BoC that is so much cheaper than skinks which are my AoS screening unit?

40k absolutely has more screening than AoS. Even without teleports/deep strikes in mind units can screen for characters in 40k and doing so is an important game element largely missing in AoS (for those who don't know: characters are at a penalty to hit for being within 3" a friendly unit of 3+ models regardless of positioning). 2" unit coherency also means fewer models can screen a much larger area so there is much more coverage per point relatively speaking.

That's more due to AoS having significantly less shooting though, so does that count.

Well at least the tournament wasn't dominated by Ork buggies and Emperor's Children Noise Marines, right?

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:
Well at least the tournament wasn't dominated by Ork buggies and Emperor's Children Noise Marines, right?

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:
Well at least the tournament wasn't dominated by Ork buggies and Emperor's Children Noise Marines, right?

Hey, Ork Buggies aren't good.

Well the Squig Buggy is broken but luckily we have Rule of Three in place to stop such abuses.

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:
Well at least the tournament wasn't dominated by Ork buggies and Emperor's Children Noise Marines, right?

I would prefer seeing that myself, but personal preference I suppose

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:
Well at least the tournament wasn't dominated by Ork buggies and Emperor's Children Noise Marines, right?

I would prefer seeing that myself, but personal preference I suppose

The buggies are coming, the buggies are coming !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!