Like it, hate it, or apathetic, many of us enjoy sharing our opinions (or simply venting) in regards to summoning in AoS. Clearly such a discussion has need of its own thread...

For reference to those of you coming over from 40k or who joined AoS recently; in first edition AoS operated off reserve points like 40k does now where summoning a new unit meant paying its point cost mid-game so players needed to reserve points out of their list if they wanted to do so (the advantage being one could summon the exact unit they needed for a given situation). In second edition AoS transitioned to free summoning where each army that summons has its own resource mechanic but the units ultimately summoned with that mechanic are free.

Remember to keep it polite!

One thing I dislike about summoning is when GW does it like they did for Slaanesh.

In that case only heroes generate summoning points to pay for summoning and they only do so by taking wounds (not being killed) and by giving wounds (not causing death). This results in a limited resource that has some peculiar properties.

1) It means that multi-wound heroes are the BEST thing to take in the army in terms of being efficient. It also means that summoning more multi-wound heroes is the best summoning option.
This weights things heavily for the heroes and has left many other army builds out. Going chariot heavy; going for fiends or deamonettes or more combined balanced forced - all are invalid compared to taking lots of multi-wound heroes (often keepers of secrets).

This is bad for the internal balance of the batteltome/army because it gives a huge bonus to taking one or two specific types of list and making limited actual choices. The choice to limit generation of points was a good one, but the method has resulted in a huge imbalance.

2) The way its generates by causing wounds, but not when those wounds cause a model to be killed; means that generating points varies greatly on the opponent.
A whole army of 1 wound skaven will generate way less than an army of stormcast of the same points; since all those stormcast have more than one wound for the most part.

This results in a situation where some armies will balance better against them than others. That 1 wound skaven army will have a much easier time than the multiwound Stormcast; even though otherwise their battle performance could be very similar.

This is bad all round because it means that values for the total estimated number of points per turn vary greatly and means that whilst the numbers for buying new models might balance out quite fair if against a 1wound majority army; they could be too great against a multiwound.
Conversely the opposite is true; if the costs were balanced against multiwound then any single wound opponent would have a much easier time by far. .






In the end the choice to limit was correct, but the method results in a system that leaves imbalance within the army and imbalance without the army - the latter of which is almost impossible to ever balance fairly for both opponent types.

My biggest issue with summoning is how often it is a free upgrade; armies with full and viable sets of allegiance abilities will get the ability to summon on top of that. It is actually easier to count the armies for which that is not the case.

Khorne and Seraphon (with the new battletome) have 'integrated' summoning where there is a trade off that requires giving up something for the ability to bring in free units.

Nurgle and BoC both have sets of allegiance abilities that are notably lackluster if summoning is not included. Both also have integrated terrain features that play an important role in how summoning, and for Nurgle the army, functions.

IMO either of those design directions are good. It is too bad such is the exception rather than the rule.

My opinion on summoning is that there are shades of grey for it.

Some armies that are C-B Tier that have summoning capabilities rely on it to be more competitive, such as Sylvaneth summoning in more Dryads to hold objectives and screen. However, this is also on the more mild side of summoning, as it's a spell that needs to be cast on a 7+, has restrictions on it's placement (Inside forest) and can "only" bring on one 100pt unit per turn.

Then, on the opposite side you had armies like the old Seraphon where they were doubling their army point total over the course of the game, but their units were pretty bad and they needed it. I played a few games against Seraphon before their new book, and even thought they were aggressively summoning, the games felt tight and were over all pretty alright.

And the other type of Summoning Army... Ones where the army is already strong (FEC, Slaanesh, Legions of Nagash) and then they have summoning added on top of their strong units. I'm sure there are other examples, but those stand out as the worst offenders to me.

In a perfect world, one army wouldn't need a points advantage to compete. In a better balanced world, armies wouldn't have summoning tacked on to powerful profiles that make for an obscene army.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
My biggest issue with summoning is how often it is a free upgrade; armies with full and viable sets of allegiance abilities will get the ability to summon on top of that. It is actually easier to count the armies for which that is not the case.

Jeez, was writing up a post and both of you already shared basically how I felt about it. Whole heartedly agree.

Sylvaneth seem to be designed as if Tree and Spite Revenants are front-line melee infantry, which they are not. At all. This leaves a glaring hole in the core strategic functionality that dryads desperately struggle to fill. The dryad summoning on its own is broken in balance (an 80 point hero summoning 100-point units for free, no further explanation needed) but in the context of the army they really need it.

However that is a niche case and when people refer to summoning as a concept they tend to mean armies that have a major mechanic for doing so.

All i will say is points should be equal across the board for all armies. 2000 points should be worth 2000 points. Not 1500 for some armies and 3000 for others.

If some armies need summoning free points to be competitive, that is a highlight to how bad the points are.

The already-strong armies also getting free points on top is just vulgar.

Matched play balance means nothing right now.

The problem with the statement that 2000 points shold be 2000 points and not 3000 is that some armies do not get the same for one point spent. Not just in different armie books, but also from one sub optimal list to an optimal list within the same armybook.

 Niiai wrote:
The problem with the statement that 2000 points shold be 2000 points and not 3000 is that some armies do not get the same for one point spent. Not just in different armie books, but also from one sub optimal list to an optimal list within the same armybook.

Ok, but it's not normally a 50% discrepancy (outside of maybe a handful of hyper over or under performing units).

The only summoning I have seen that it is properly balanced is the khorne one because basically if you summon you have no allegiance habilitie.s

 auticus wrote:
All i will say is points should be equal across the board for all armies. 2000 points should be worth 2000 points. Not 1500 for some armies and 3000 for others.

If some armies need summoning free points to be competitive, that is a highlight to how bad the points are.

The already-strong armies also getting free points on top is just vulgar.

Matched play balance means nothing right now.

Who says getting summon units isn't equal to another armies non summon worth in points? If 1 army has a unit that fully equal to another unit, but it is getting 1/2 the rules, or costs more but they can summon it, how is that not equal? Special rules costs points.

The problem is that we don't know GW's value on special rules, they may value higher movement over higher wounds, or Fly over armor.

IMO about summoning

When it comes to summoning, all summoning armies do have draw backs from non-summoning armies, take IDK for example, they can have a full army with Fly, fight first, +1-5 attacks, +3-9" to the charge, 3+/3+ with re-roll 1's across the board, MW bombs, outflanking full armies, and still a low drop army (3-5 easily), depending on how they play they can turn 1 charge you with the full army (forgoing +attack buffs) and try to table you turn 1. They do not have summoning but are still consider high tier. They also completely counter OBR and DoT if played correctly.

To properly determine the value of summoning we would need to know a close value of all the rules in the game. How do you value Fight twice? Some units its extremely strong on and others its pointless, so do you value it as a whole or unit by unit? Or how do you value armies like CoS? They have one of the most broke units in the game, you don't see it being played b.c most players are not willing to drop $900 and paint 18+ chariots (each one is equal to 5 models themselves), a 50pt unit with 2 guns that can hit on 2+ wound on 2+ are -1 for D3 and can deal MW's, 6 wounds each, 12" movement, can either Ouflank or run and shoot. Then you also have Shadow warriors, Phoenix guard, Hammers, etc.. etc.. all these units are extremely point efficient for their damage/survivabilities. 1 unit hammers are able to deal over 100D to a 4+ save unit, they can literally 1 round out a unit of juiced up DoK.


When looking at balance and summoning we should look at how the army is preforming over all, see why they are winning and if summoning is a factor or not. Examples: BoK do win events, but they do so with almost 0 summoning, BoC almost never win events and they summon 200-300points a game easily.

Why is it that FS, DoK, IDK, CoS all can win an event even tho they don't have summoning, if summoning wasn't balanced? WHen it comes ot DoT and HoS the top 2 best armies with summoning, they are not winning b.c of summoning tho, they are winning b.c of 1-2 units are extremely good. Play any HoS without KoS or chariots, or DoT with Tzaangors (no horrors or Flamers) and see how well it goes with those 2 armies, it wont be pretty thats what.

 Niiai wrote:
The problem with the statement that 2000 points shold be 2000 points and not 3000 is that some armies do not get the same for one point spent. Not just in different armie books, but also from one sub optimal list to an optimal list within the same armybook.

The fact some armies do not get the same for one point spent is entirely the problem.

Granted thats impossible, but it should be in the same ball park.


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 Amishprn86 wrote:

 auticus wrote:
All i will say is points should be equal across the board for all armies. 2000 points should be worth 2000 points. Not 1500 for some armies and 3000 for others.

If some armies need summoning free points to be competitive, that is a highlight to how bad the points are.

The already-strong armies also getting free points on top is just vulgar.

Matched play balance means nothing right now.

Who says getting summon units isn't equal to another armies non summon worth in points? If 1 army has a unit that fully equal to another unit, but it is getting 1/2 the rules, or costs more but they can summon it, how is that not equal? Special rules costs points.

When looking at balance and summoning we should look at how the army is preforming over all, see why they are winning and if summoning is a factor or not. Examples: BoK do win events, but they do so with almost 0 summoning, BoC almost never win events and they summon 200-300points a game easily.

Why is it that FS, DoK, IDK, CoS all can win an event even tho they don't have summoning, if summoning wasn't balanced? WHen it comes ot DoT and HoS the top 2 best armies with summoning, they are not winning b.c of summoning tho, they are winning b.c of 1-2 units are extremely good. Play any HoS without KoS or chariots, or DoT with Tzaangors (no horrors or Flamers) and see how well it goes with those 2 armies, it wont be pretty thats what.

When you perform a linear regression model on the entire game (as I have) you will see that there are massive discrepancies in a lot of point values. At its base sure if a unit can be spam summoned it shoudl cost more etc etc, but thats not always the case. Often is not the case.

When you start breaking out tournament results to back up your claim you are forgetting about the other massive amount of people that don't do tournaments, and aren't running the most optimal lists. Yes a handful of super optimized lists can deal with summoning. That doesn't mean off the chain free summoning is perfectly fine because a few lists can deal with it though. It means if you are playing an optimized tournament-powered list that you can deal with it. But if you aren't playing an optimized tournament-powered list you are pushing pretty models around and rolling dice with an already predetermined outcome. Out of the entire game, how many builds can deal with off the chain free summoning? Not very many.

When it comes down to playing at the store on a saturday, and your opponent shows up with three keeper of secrets and then summons an additional 2000 points by the end of turn 2, and you aren't rocking an adepticon list, there is no point in you playing that game. And I will never agree with the whole git gud concept where you have to go out and buy very specific optimal lists to have good games and on top of that, those armies change every 6 months to a year because of new ghb or erratta/faq. Thats not a good system. I don't care if a few power lists can deal with it just fine, the vast majority of the builds cannot, and it destroys any concept of what matched play was touted as being.

The reality of tournaments is that you MUST be able to deal with mass summoning, or you simply are not running a top-tier list in the first place. Just like mass MWs or nearly-unbreakable armor that is simply something that if an army cannot deal with it, it is not a top-tier tourney army.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
The reality of tournaments is that you MUST be able to deal with mass summoning, or you simply are not running a top-tier list in the first place. Just like mass MWs or nearly-unbreakable armor that is simply something that if an army cannot deal with it, it is not a top-tier tourney army.

Tournaments yes, but the game shouldn't be (and isn't) balanced around tournaments. So when its basically "play a top tier list or get crushed by summoning" that's not a good response.

 auticus wrote:

 Niiai wrote:
The problem with the statement that 2000 points shold be 2000 points and not 3000 is that some armies do not get the same for one point spent. Not just in different armie books, but also from one sub optimal list to an optimal list within the same armybook.

The fact some armies do not get the same for one point spent is entirely the problem.

Granted thats impossible, but it should be in the same ball park.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 auticus wrote:
All i will say is points should be equal across the board for all armies. 2000 points should be worth 2000 points. Not 1500 for some armies and 3000 for others.

If some armies need summoning free points to be competitive, that is a highlight to how bad the points are.

The already-strong armies also getting free points on top is just vulgar.

Matched play balance means nothing right now.

Who says getting summon units isn't equal to another armies non summon worth in points? If 1 army has a unit that fully equal to another unit, but it is getting 1/2 the rules, or costs more but they can summon it, how is that not equal? Special rules costs points.

When looking at balance and summoning we should look at how the army is preforming over all, see why they are winning and if summoning is a factor or not. Examples: BoK do win events, but they do so with almost 0 summoning, BoC almost never win events and they summon 200-300points a game easily.

Why is it that FS, DoK, IDK, CoS all can win an event even tho they don't have summoning, if summoning wasn't balanced? WHen it comes ot DoT and HoS the top 2 best armies with summoning, they are not winning b.c of summoning tho, they are winning b.c of 1-2 units are extremely good. Play any HoS without KoS or chariots, or DoT with Tzaangors (no horrors or Flamers) and see how well it goes with those 2 armies, it wont be pretty thats what.

When you perform a linear regression model on the entire game (as I have) you will see that there are massive discrepancies in a lot of point values. At its base sure if a unit can be spam summoned it shoudl cost more etc etc, but thats not always the case. Often is not the case.

When you start breaking out tournament results to back up your claim you are forgetting about the other massive amount of people that don't do tournaments, and aren't running the most optimal lists. Yes a handful of super optimized lists can deal with summoning. That doesn't mean off the chain free summoning is perfectly fine because a few lists can deal with it though. It means if you are playing an optimized tournament-powered list that you can deal with it. But if you aren't playing an optimized tournament-powered list you are pushing pretty models around and rolling dice with an already predetermined outcome. Out of the entire game, how many builds can deal with off the chain free summoning? Not very many.

When it comes down to playing at the store on a saturday, and your opponent shows up with three keeper of secrets and then summons an additional 2000 points by the end of turn 2, and you aren't rocking an adepticon list, there is no point in you playing that game. And I will never agree with the whole git gud concept where you have to go out and buy very specific optimal lists to have good games and on top of that, those armies change every 6 months to a year because of new ghb or erratta/faq. Thats not a good system. I don't care if a few power lists can deal with it just fine, the vast majority of the builds cannot, and it destroys any concept of what matched play was touted as being.

But again, thats the KoS fault not Summoning, like i said, play without Keepers or Chariots and see how well it does. You talk about not bring a tournament list but yet you said a HoS with 3 Keepers, the beginner go to HoS tournament list.




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Wayniac wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
The reality of tournaments is that you MUST be able to deal with mass summoning, or you simply are not running a top-tier list in the first place. Just like mass MWs or nearly-unbreakable armor that is simply something that if an army cannot deal with it, it is not a top-tier tourney army.

Tournaments yes, but the game shouldn't be (and isn't) balanced around tournaments. So when its basically "play a top tier list or get crushed by summoning" that's not a good response.

Not but tournaments heavily show what is good and isn't, if someone was broken (say summoning) then you can easily tell by the lists and numbers of the results of those events. Watching the armies play as well (everything is recorded now days, at least for some events) and looking at their unit choices/list builds etc.. etc... Then we can conclude what is OP.

From the data we have right now, we can say that summoning is not a problem, as 1/2 the top armies are not summoning, and a couple that do summon are using it more as a tool and not a full out way to play like it was 6 months ago with the stacking CP FeC/BoC lists.

CoS, IDK, FS, DoK, Orruks, BoC/Ogres, OBR has all won events with at least 30+ players from the last GH, but so has DoT, HoS, BoK, and FeC. If summoning was a real problem we would see it i the data.

EDIT: ADD: PS; If you are talking about pickup casual games ONLY and ignoring tournaments 100%, then honestly the bigger issues is shooting lists and unkillable super heroes (like Nagash or Archaon) i feel, they are leaps and bounds more scarier for a lax player than summoning. But we can get into that in another thread.

I'm talking about the entire game. The entire game is casual pick up games, power listing tournament armies, all of it.

If the goal of matched play is a balanced game then I don't see how anyone here can say that free summoning supports that goal in its current incarnation.

The great divide and gulf in these conversations is that for some, if its not broken at a tournament, the game is fine to them.

The response is still play a top tier list or get crushed by summoning.

None of that indicates a well balanced game. It indicates that the game has a huge skew towards certain things and if you aren't using those certain things you might as well not play at all or be ok with getting crushed.

If its ANY element that requires a tournament level list to be able to have a good game against, it goes against the goal of matched play.

 auticus wrote:
I'm talking about the entire game. The entire game is casual pick up games, power listing tournament armies, all of it.

If the goal of matched play is a balanced game then I don't see how anyone here can say that free summoning supports that goal in its current incarnation.

The great divide and gulf in these conversations is that for some, if its not broken at a tournament, the game is fine to them.

The response is still play a top tier list or get crushed by summoning.

None of that indicates a well balanced game. It indicates that the game has a huge skew towards certain things and if you aren't using those certain things you might as well not play at all or be ok with getting crushed.

If its ANY element that requires a tournament level list to be able to have a good game against, it goes against the goal of matched play.

Ok, how can free rules be balanced and supported? There is no point value to army rules, then how can you say the game is balanced without making them point costed? I can say the same thing here for what you are saying about summoning, How can you balance the game with rules like Tides? Or can't be shot at but being the closest, how about rules like Herdstone? It can make you -1 save and give me immune to moral phase. Thats 16.7% more damage for my full army, but then you have terrain like Ogres that heals, how can you balance those two against each other and still have match play?

Free summoning isn't free tho, just b.c you can't see a numerical value for it doesn't mean the army isn't paying for it in some way or another.

And i can tell you don't play just by this response The response is still play a top tier list or get crushed by summoning. b.c the armies that crush you don't do it summoning. Sure some might win b.c they sommoned something onto a objective, but you didn't get crushed that way. HoS did get to summon to much, but now that is gone, and it finally is showing the problem wasn't summon but the KoS are the problem (well and the fight first, but IMO that is still a problem b.c its still a 3+ on KoS)

Wayniac wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
The reality of tournaments is that you MUST be able to deal with mass summoning, or you simply are not running a top-tier list in the first place. Just like mass MWs or nearly-unbreakable armor that is simply something that if an army cannot deal with it, it is not a top-tier tourney army.

Tournaments yes, but the game shouldn't be (and isn't) balanced around tournaments. So when its basically "play a top tier list or get crushed by summoning" that's not a good response.

Ah I must not have communicated clearly, I meant to say that summoning is a strong enough tactic to be considered standard at the most powerful level of play. I was commenting on how strong it is, not saying everyone should be able to deal with it.

 auticus wrote:
I'm talking about the entire game. The entire game is casual pick up games, power listing tournament armies, all of it.

If the goal of matched play is a balanced game then I don't see how anyone here can say that free summoning supports that goal in its current incarnation.

The great divide and gulf in these conversations is that for some, if its not broken at a tournament, the game is fine to them.

The response is still play a top tier list or get crushed by summoning.

None of that indicates a well balanced game. It indicates that the game has a huge skew towards certain things and if you aren't using those certain things you might as well not play at all or be ok with getting crushed.

If its ANY element that requires a tournament level list to be able to have a good game against, it goes against the goal of matched play.

Yeah, sorry, I'm just not feeling the overwhelming threat from our Sylvaneth player summoning wise. He summons Dryads & slightly annoying trees.
So I'm thinking it's not ALL summoning that's your problem.

His problem is really "free points" since people love to say matched play is balanced (while everything else isn't) because "points are equal" when due to summoning that's really not true at all. So the first thing is the hypocrisy of the "matched play or bust" crowd because it's actually not equal anything if you factor in summoning. The general quality of what you summon isn't really the point, it's still free points that make "2000 points" a lie to feel like things are balanced when they aren't.

I think that's auticus' main issue: Not so much summoning is op (and it is in certain cases) but because it's showing people really aren't as concerned about actual balance where 2000 points is actually 2000 points despite saying how important balance is since summoning, no matter what form, turns 2000 points vs 2000 points into 2000+ vs 2000.

You have to remember auticus is one of those people that constantly get backlash about how "balanced" Matched Play is while everything else is scary and unfamiliar and might be unbalanced because "it's not equal points" but neither is Matched Play equal points when you get down to it, there's just the illusion of equal points. So I suspect that's a big part of his problem. Summoning making 2000 points 2500 or 3000 or whatever just throws balance out the window and yet people still try to claim that Matched Play is balanced while nothing else is.

My main issue is that if I'm playing a 2000 point game I want it to be a 2000 point game. I don't want it to be a 4000 point to 2000 point game, or a 3000 point to 2000 point game.

There are many games where you can get in free summons and its not as bent. There is summoning in AOS that is also not bent. There however is a lot of summoning that IS bent and people build around overwhelming their opponent with army and a half to double the army vs theirs, and I find that to be vulgar.

Sylvaneth summoning is an example where your opponent might get 500 extra points of dryads. Thats an advantage sure, but not a vulgar advantage.

When you have armies that are gaining 1000 - 2000 points of extra troops, that is vulgar. And they aren't just like dryads they are getting. They are summoning in more greater heroes and elites as well as trash troops.

So you're right its not ALL summoning I have a problem with, its the several factions in AOS that can do vulgar summoning because it wrecks the concept of matched play without every faction having a counter balance of some kind.

And we've seen yes tournament powered forces have counter balances to vulgar summoning, but if you are forced to field tournament powered lists to counter vulgar summoning, thats not balanced, nor is it aligning with the goals of matched play which was to provide a fair and balanced game (as can be).

And I believe Wayne is also correct - I have a very strong desire for balanced games where someone can't just be the rooster strutting over the board crapping on everything because they keep up with the busted things and don't really have to invest much in playing the game (yes I know the top tournament players yadda yadda they always win, yes they are truly good players, I'm not referring to them). If you follow my complaint about summoning upstream, it is because it severely disrupts the whole "balance" of the game in regards to specifically the armies that can vulgar summon 1000+ free points.

But thats my point, you can't say summon is free points without saying army rules are free points.

IDk has a +1 attack hero that can give 3 units +1atks and can stack X times along with full army fight first. But when you look at BoC with an equal unit (Enlighten Tzaangor on Disks) and Gave spawn able to give them +1 as well as a Taurus to make them fight first, once you look at the difficultly, the points, etc.. to make 3 units equal in strength, you find out really fast that the BoC player is well over 10c harder to get the same damage and abilities, they are relialing ona Spawn (easy to die, slow, etc..) and 3x the CP, along with a spell to even get to fight first (which can back fire and make YOU fight last).

How can you say summoning is not balanced and then say all abilities are balanced? I just can't understand that type of thinking.

We have given a few examples that summoning isn't OP, Sylvaneth, BoC, BoK, MoN all are mid/low tier armies and has summoning. When has any thought those armies summoning was to strong?

From my pov, what i really see is when they are losing and then someone summons in something it feels like a kick to the gut while they are down. Not that summoning is a problem, but it makes a bad experience feel worst. But the same thing happens if you had 1 more combat and you stack +1atks 4x onto a uit you know is already dead, people don't like that either, its just not as easily brought up, or when you declare you fight first when you know you won, etc.. It could also be that tje people are complaining hasn't played in the last 6 months as summoning has greatly been nerfed (or its just lingering bias).


Finally a Question for @Auticus; when was the last time you played a game of AoS vs new Sylvaneth or MoN and then have you played against nerf HoS? What about OBR, CoS, and KO? They don't summon. I would like to hear your games, what you played, what they played, etc..

I can't comment on Summoning too much. I make use of it in a limited way via Warcry Cultists and the Occasional Eye of the gods result which are both limited either by spending a CP or randomly getting a free summon. I often find it kinda a hassle as I have bring extra models to have the option to use it as they aren't always worth summoning or don't happen at all.

However, when it comes to free points, how to people feel about Healing or similar abilities that bring back units? It technically isn't summoning, but can bring back a fair amount of points. At least against an army such as mine that does low damage. Because of that, I have played games where my opponent basically got a few units for free as I just can't wear them down off an objective fast enough.

I am sure that most don't see healing as nearly as problematic as summoning. They're probably right. It is a sort of free points though.

But thats my point, you can't say summon is free points without saying army rules are free points.

I certainly can because models that are appearing for free have a point value attached to them.

If my opponent summons in two squads of daemonettes, two squads of daemonette cavalry, another keeper of secrets, etc those have fixed points values.

If an army rule is "all models in the army gain +1 attack if Mr. Man is on the table" I can also find its points values through a regression by inflating all units in the army with +1 attack and following the linear progression to see what their new true value is.

I can also tell you, having done exactly this, that the free models often outstrip these army rules. Which is why the powergamers are summoning in literally up to 2000 extra points, because that is far more useful in most cases.

I'm also not really sure what the point of when the last time I played against armies that don't summon is.

This is a thread on the current summoning.

Your point is centered around "these armies don't summon but are very powerful and those armies need free summoning to keep up" - going back to your army rule argument.

I'm not disagreeing with you.

What I'm disagreeing with is once again we have things in place that not every faction has the tools to deal with. Which is absolute garbage.

And again, tournament power lists can deal with summoning is great. If you're running tournament power lists.

The rest of the game gets face planted against vulgar summoning.

Vulgar summoning is pay to win in many cases.

Pay to win needs to go away.

The vulgar disparity in balance needs to go away as well.

If all factions are not able to play against each other and have a good game, the overall game is garbage in my opinion.

That means if vulgar summoning is going to be a thing, there had better be a counter available to every single army in the game. Not just a handful of the chosen tournament factions.

If there was a viable counter to it that every faction possessed to keep things in check, I probably wouldn't care so much.

But spending the entire three or so years of watching the powergamers in my area **** all over narrative campaigns with pay to win summoning, forcing the rest of the players to either give up or go out and buy tournament armies defines my opinion on it.

I am sure that most don't see healing as nearly as problematic as summoning. They're probably right. It is a sort of free points though.

Free healing is the same as free summoning. In limited measures its fine. In vulgar displays where you can just recycle your whole army over and over its busted unless there is a counter to it. Its a huge negative play experience to throw a bunch of resources at your opponent, and then they just shrug and chuckle and recycle the unit that you just removed, if you have no counter play available.

The nexus point of this entire issue seems to boil down to not every faction has comparable tools which means if you aren't chasing the power armies, you don't get a good game without either giving in and chasing the power armies, or pleading with an opponent to not field their adepticon list against you because you chose to like a gimp faction.

Many players in my experience will summarize that with "not my problem".

Circling back to army rules being worth points, which I agree with, the problem with those (outside of the scope of this thread which is on summoning) is that some of those are equally busted and worth much more than they should be because they cause the same problem - not all factions have the tools to counter and thus a poor game experience is very common.

Summoning could be done in a way that adds flavor to an army. Something like legions of nagash resurrecting the dead to fight once more, or Daemons where bloodshed, violence and warp energies draw forth more Daemons to the field to battle, as has already been done.

The concept of summoning doesn't need to be broken in my mind. It does however, require appropriate balancing so that, even with an average number of summoned/recycled units per game, that the armies still end up balanced.

The execution has ended up done poorly, where LoN pay the same to bring back 10 Graveguard as they do to return 30 Grimghast Reapers or 20 Hexwraiths, or Slaanesh essentially getting a free Keeper of Secrets from one KoS dying and doing damage with a certain faction trait.

I'm glad that the only summoning I need to experience on a daily basis is my own Sylvaneth, or my opponents Khorne/Nurgle summoning, or a unit of Grots maybe coming back.

I would agree that the concept of summoning doesn't need to be broken, and there are other games and even past versions of whfb where summoning wasn't as bent as it can be today.

The power gaming right now is NOT summoning 2k points, no army can do that anymore without giving up a LOT of other stuff. DoT can summon a LoC each turn, but no one plays it, why? B.c its BAD, yes summoning a Greater daemons turn 1 is bad b.c its a huge investment, one that doesn't work out in the end compare to what else you could be doing, like teleporting Horrors, using Flamers. Etc.. you need at least 5 casters to make that list work otherwise you get run over and don't have the tools to make it work, and when you do all of that it still is to slow and doesn't work well. Especially when looking at Duplicitous horror bombs.


"The nexus point of this entire issue seems to boil down to not every faction has comparable tools"

I don't see that in the game other than weak armies like Sylvaneth, Goblins, etc.. some armies are just to weak in general and won't be able to handle summoning or non-summoning armies. We have given many examples of many armies that can handle it. When you look at the armies that can't, you'll see they all have the same 1 thing in common, its a weak force in general. Or its the player playing with a weak list.

note
I want to talk about that for a second, when i say a weak list, its not always "power level" weak. A lot of the times there is no synergy within the army, or there is to much of 1 thing and not enough of another. Even tho you should be able to play with all units in a army, you still need to have balance with what works together and what doesn't. This is most likely one of the reasons why GW decided to move everything into categories of buffs, artefacts, traits, etc.. to help the common player build their armies. When building a army you need to have some plan as to how to play that army, how to win, and how to handle different things. If you are not putting all that into consideration, then yeah you shouldn't be able to handle a player that is doing that, regardless of the rules or balance, etc..




Automatically Appended Next Post:
PS i want to add, the worst part about summoning IMO is for ties, they don't count for kills.

Your perspective is still skewed primarily at the tournament level. As long as we keep going back and forth from a tournament-only perspective to the overall game perspective, we will never be meeting in the middle.

There are a number of factions that cannot deal with excessive summoning. Outside of the realm of the tournament where most players are powergaming.

Then looking at the factions that CAN deal with excessive summoning, a number of those have to build a certain way to deal with excessive summoning, leaving a very large number of builds that cannot from those factions.

PS i want to add, the worst part about summoning IMO is for ties, they don't count for kills.

Totally agree. There is no cost to doing it. Its all free and all beneficial. If there was a risk of some type added, it wouldn't be as bad.

I'm not talking about tournament level anymore, and i haven't been for a bit.

You can't expect to put any unit on the table and do well, you still need synergy and a means to an end even at casual levels. Each unit should have a purpose, even if you are playing it for fun you should still look at what the unit does and what to expect it to do, work with those expectations. Just randomizing units together you might get 2 units that can't even work together.

Take the BoC Herdstone, a Daemon prince is a very good Ally, but Belakor is better simply b.c the Herdstone won't effect him but it does effect the Daemon Prince (-1 to the save of all units that are not BoC). Even at a casual level this can ruin a Daemon Prince, a unit that is consider very good, all b.c you didn't look at how it'll work with the army.

You don't need to do to the extremes and make super combos, just like my example, some as little as that can change how you play the game, or that unit.

 auticus wrote:


There are a number of factions that cannot deal with excessive summoning. Outside of the realm of the tournament where most players are powergaming.

What do you think those factions are?
For that matter which factions are you accusing of "excessive summoning"?

 auticus wrote:
Then looking at the factions that CAN deal with excessive summoning, a number of those have to build a certain way to deal with excessive summoning, leaving a very large number of builds that cannot from those factions.

What factions do you think those are? And the (summarized) builds required.

I would constitute anything greater than 500 free points as excessive summoning and anything cascading higher than 1000 points as vulgarly excessive summoning.

Just randomizing units together you might get 2 units that can't even work together.

That one gets thrown around quite a bit but I'm not suggesting randomly putting units together and making it work.

There is absolutely no way I will believe you can take a non tournament list to a game where your opponent is bringing out 1000 free extra points and expect me to acknowledge that some sort of competitive good game is going to be had with that. I've seen literally dozens of those matchups and they have never been fun to watch or fun to play (on either side of the table).

 auticus wrote:
I would constitute anything greater than 500 free points as excessive summoning and anything cascading higher than 1000 points as vulgarly excessive summoning.

So it's vague. And I'd wager influenced by exactly what's being summoned & when.

You still didn't tell me what factions you think can't handle this 500pt+ worth of summoning. And there's a difference between dealing with 500pts spread over 4-5 rounds of entry vs all at once.

 auticus wrote:
I would constitute anything greater than 500 free points as excessive summoning and anything cascading higher than 1000 points as vulgarly excessive summoning.

Just randomizing units together you might get 2 units that can't even work together.

That one gets thrown around quite a bit but I'm not suggesting randomly putting units together and making it work.

There is absolutely no way I will believe you can take a non tournament list to a game where your opponent is bringing out 1000 free extra points and expect me to acknowledge that some sort of competitive good game is going to be had with that. I've seen literally dozens of those matchups and they have never been fun to watch or fun to play (on either side of the table).

Dude. i was playing the TURTLE before the points went done even once and i faced summoning armies just fine.

For a long time my IDK list was Ishlaen guard x12, thralls x20, reavers x20, Tidecaster general, Soulscryer (no king) and a Leviathan. If you don't think that is a casual list, then i honestly wouldn't be able to talk to you about this anymore lol (I know you think thats casual, just showing it can't get anymore casual than that).

Back when I played IDK, I had a rather similar list, sub out some Eels for Sharks and swap heros around, and the list tore through Seraphon excessive summoning. 6 Ishlaen Eels could easily tear through triple their points worth of old Seraphon.

This comes down to points I think both of you have made in this thread already, that summoning isn't necessarily broken, but can be a broken tool in any setting, depending on how accurate/balanced the actual points are.

 Thadin wrote:
Back when I played IDK, I had a rather similar list, sub out some Eels for Sharks and swap heros around, and the list tore through Seraphon excessive summoning. 6 Ishlaen Eels could easily tear through triple their points worth of old Seraphon.

This comes down to points I think both of you have made in this thread already, that summoning isn't necessarily broken, but can be a broken tool in any setting, depending on how accurate/balanced the actual points are.

Yeah, the crazy thing is, that was before the points hike on the Morrsarr guard, so it was literally just worst to take Ishlaen when you could MW bomb with 3 units of 9, it was insanely OP lol.

Summoning has been a problem a few times, i'm not going to deny that at all. But for a while now (sense the CP changes) summoning isn't bad, some armies that can summon has been bad.

So i would like some of the other players in this thread to show/give examples as to how/why summoning is actually bad in its current state other than "its free units" b.c we are easily argue that doesn't matter, different armies get different things, so armies get bonus power/rules, others get more models to bring in.

I mean just look at Clan rats with all their normal buffs (before spells) vs Daenettes (which can be summoned) the Clan rats can deal almost equal damage as the Daemonettes before spells, and they don't break moral (if playing correctly), they also are 3x as many throw away unit. Then you look at Plague monks and its not even a contest. These is a reason why most min/max HoS players take Bestigors/Ungors over Daemonettes, b.c they are very lacking, Why is that? Well most likely b.c you can summon a lot of them.

HoS players aren't summoning basic Daemons from what I can gather, it's just more Keepers. I'd consider them the worst offender for summoning due to the sheer power of what they're summoning, the method of summoning, and how it feels like they're not giving up much at all. Now, it's gotten nerfed quite a bit which is quite a good thing, but is still nasty.

Two Keepers in a Syll'esk army dying nets you (13 Wounds taken before death x2 keepers x 2 for Syll'esk) 52 DP, allowing you to summon another Keeper to the board, with 7 points to spare. And then, what if the Keepers or Syll'esk deal damage to a monster, or a bunch of Fyreslayers(or two wound infantry)? Their efficiency just gets better and better.

Correct, b.c KoS and a couple other heroes are the problem. When you relay on your heroes for literally everything but holding back objectives, that is a problem.

I'm with you there, the issues with HoS aren't entirely because of summoning, but they're just made worse by it.

Its a symptom that I feel makes the problem worse. If there was some design ethos to prevent summoning in the scale that armies like slaanesh and others before them have done, then it wouldn't be as big a deal.

When they said at the beginning of 2.0 that they were unleashing the summoning, I was very against it because having lived through the brief time of people in my area fielding tzeentch demons and just literally doubling their army in one turn, I knew what was about to go down.

And it did. Throughout the history of 2.0 there have been a number of factions whose summoning was grotesque. Not just one or two.

There needs to be a reign or a stop or a counter point somewhere where the design team stops breaking the game with it.

And yeah with Slaanesh its their keepers that are the primary problem. My slaanesh army was a single keeper and a bunch of daemonettes and daemonette cavalry and a couple chariots. It did great in casual games and was mowed over by tournament lists because I didn't take the other two keepers that were mandatory.

When I ran triple keepers I suddenly couldn't lose. And summoning was a big reason why. (and I fielded that army against the other tournament lists because I don't like playing a game where I lose in turn 1 or 2 because I liked the wrong army).

My main army is/was Slaves to Darkness. They still have a very hard time and facing against armies that can blow their army up by an extra 1000 points or more make those games not even worth playing.

yea, I miss the days where you had to pay extra points for summoning. I hate summoning because there are some games that were super close, and I would have had a chance to win based on movement alone if they didn't do something like summon a block of blood letters onto an objective on the last turn of the game. It feels pretty unfair to be cheated out of a victory after an uphill battle all game, where it was a close battle the entire game and both sides were beaten down to a pulp, but they just bamf in new units.

It feels unfair when one side gets 2500 points to your 2000.

While I don't disagree, when summoning cost points it was almost never worth taking and you rarely if ever saw anyone do it in Matched Play. So it's really a double-edged sword.

Compromise. Points reserved from the list are worth twice as much for actual summoning.

That starts introducing tougher choices, which I would say is anti what aos is designed around. Tougher choices is considered a barrier of entry to playing the game and doing well at it. Looking at summoning how it is now, particularly with the factions that can overwhelm with summoning, the choice is made for you that that is an awesome direction to go in and you should do it, since basic math tells you that if you can get at least 1000 extra points in a matched play game than your opponent, that you are going to have an edge against most any casual list and a good chunk of competitive lists.

Of course you can't market it as a 3000 v 2000 point game, because people would get upset at that, but you can introduce the summoning to make it like that, and then that becomes ok.

Of course - there are counters. One simply also has to rock up with a high powered tournament-style list as well. If you don't have one of those or don't want to be pigeon holed into one of those, well, find a new game to play.

 auticus wrote:

Of course - there are counters.

Please, enlighten us as to what they are.
For example, how would you counter say.... Beasts of Chaos? Just assume the Beasts player is going the All Herd/Herd Stone sacrifice/Amethyst Gem from Malign Sorc. route & you know this going into the game.
(I picked Beasts because before the Covid lockdowns this was the army I was playing. I wonder if your solutions differ from my opponents. Btw, my opponents do not have high powered tournament-style lists.)

 auticus wrote:
One simply also has to rock up with a high powered tournament-style list as well.

But this is just the generic counter to every problem. In every game, AoS or otherwise. And is this included in the counters you alluded to or in addition?

 auticus wrote:
If you don't have one of those or don't want to be pigeon holed into one of those, well, find a new game to play.

Piss poor advice. Granted, if you run away from the AoS table you don't have to deal with the summoning. But it doesn't help those who choose to stay & roll some dice.

Please, enlighten us as to what they are.

The three main pillars of play that I observed were: excessive summoning, excessive spam of mortal wounds, or excessive speed to capture objectives.

If you could do more than one of those things you were generally in a VERY good place. Casual lists typically don't do any of those things excessive which is why they get nut shot against the armies that do regularly.

Now in the past when I complain about summoning being gross, I get dogpiled on by the tournament players telling me its not that bad, and tournaments aren't being dominated by summoning so its perfectly balanced, and that you just need to git gud and learn the counters. So I'm passing that along here as what I expect to hear from the people that think its fine.

Piss poor advice. Granted, if you run away from the AoS table you don't have to deal with the summoning. But it doesn't help those who choose to stay & roll some dice.

Really what choice do you have? Its a part of the game, its a very loudly cheered on part of the game, and its not going anywhere.

You have a few options.

One - you do it as well or come up with a tournament powered list that does so much damage that summoning can't keep up.

Two - you have to socially engineer your group and beg and plead and politic with your opponents to not stack their list like this. This has variable results. In my group it will get you laughed at by a few people and they aren't going to tone anything down.

Three - you just drink beer and roll dice and don't care about the outcome, knowing you are going to take nut shot after nut shot after nut shot if you choose to play casually in an environment where your opponent can and will bring an adepticon powered list.

Four - you lay down houserules that stop summoning from being so gross. I did in my events. You could summon up to 25% of your force's points, but if you exceeded that your opponent got a sudden death victory condition (from the core rules no less, those actually exist but few know that they exist since they aren't part of matched play). This made people think before just spam summoning.

It also has the nasty tendency to incite a ton of drama from people that hate house rules and can divide your community in a pretty heated way so ... use with extreme caution.

Five - you find a different game to play that doesn't have issues of this magnitude (every game has issues yes but not of the magnitude present in 40k or aos). This is what I have done.

Its the lowest impact of the bunch, though your investment gets flushed. But I have found a game that has none of these issues, I sold most of my GW collection last year, keeping my slaves to darkness for Kings of War purposes, and hoping one day the whfb old world project is something they write for people like me (they have done great with Titanicus so ... they have the power) or that AOS 3.0 swings that pendulum back out of magic the gathering territory with the rules and puts some limits on excessive summoning.

The main issue is ... well... why most people are here in the first place. AOS has a mega fan base and as such it makes people feel safer, happier, etc, to participate than other games that they'll have to struggle to build a community around. Many people aren't here for the rules (though a lot of those people will voice annoyance with the rules) - they are here for the pretty models and the massive fan base. If Joe's Game Shop came up with the game Age of Sigmar, it would be in the "Other" forum section here with 17 replies in four years or something because the rules by themselves would never have gotten any traction without the GW name and fanbase behind them. The only sin GW committed in 2015 was not having points. Had they released AOS with points, the rage issue would have been limited to just the old world being blown up. The game issue people had were almost entirely around no points existing. GW could release practically any ruleset they wanted in regards to their 40k or fantasy line, and so long as points exist, its going to do well because they have the one thing that no other game company will likely ever have: the massive fanbase which is the #1 attractor for so many people.

Summoning will always be something that’s insanely hard to get right.

No matter how it’s done, there will always be a downside to it one way or another.

Previously some summoning costs seem to have been factored into armies to account for this.
While this is good, it means the army is then hampered if not built for summoning.

Likewise, armies with no added costs can just spam away and end a match with close to double the points they started with.

It really is a delicate balance between something being useful and completely useless.



I’d like to see something along the lines of the following:

Limit on what can be summoned - keep it to basic troop types with the odd elite unit thrown in at once per game limit.

Troops can’t capture objectives - the main issue I see in games is late game summons landing troops on multiple objectives at once for quick last minute wins.
Preventing these units from scoring would prevent that entirely.



While the above does give a huge hit to summoning, it still allows for armies to reinforce themselves, provide quick chaff and drop units for hero hunting.

In WHFB (the old days) you could summon new units but they were things like zombies and skeletons. So basic ... TRULY core units.

You certainly weren't summoning greater demons.

So I'd agree with that, limit what can be summoned and how much (in the old system it was d6, 2d6, or 3d6 depending on how high the power level of the spell was and how many dice you threw at it).

The problem with saying that summoned troops can't cap objectives is things start to get confusing fast. "I can't remember, was that unit summoned?"

Limiting type of summoning, and quantity of summoning - both can let the free points summoning model work without being a huge negative cess pit.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Compromise. Points reserved from the list are worth twice as much for actual summoning.

So you're saying a 1500 point list could become a 2500 point list, against your 2k.

Believe it or not, I’m gonna say I think the best response to it is auticus’s; if you summon more than 25%, the sudden death rules that actually exist come into play. You wanna summon 1 Keeper into a 2000pt game? Cool. Summon a second? Hello, sudden death rules.

While a “house rule” that he loves adding in, it actually adds one of GW’s legit rules in from back when outnumbering was a thing. Which summoning makes a thing again anyway. So it’s not so much a house rule as it is adding back in an old rule that made sense.

Auticus, THIS is the kind of thing you should be adding to here; not the “I don’t play it, it sucks, but I HAVE to make events for people so I basically re-write the rules and anyone who wants to play well should play my rules”. Personal opinion, this suggestion solves the summoning problem. Using a legit AoS rule to do it. Serious props, and I think if you haven’t put it directly to GW yet, you might want to consider it. After all, it’s their own rule you’re requesting to make a comeback.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Believe it or not, I’m gonna say I think the best response to it is auticus’s; if you summon more than 25%, the sudden death rules that actually exist come into play. You wanna summon 1 Keeper into a 2000pt game? Cool. Summon a second? Hello, sudden death rules.

While a “house rule” that he loves adding in, it actually adds one of GW’s legit rules in from back when outnumbering was a thing. Which summoning makes a thing again anyway. So it’s not so much a house rule as it is adding back in an old rule that made sense.

Auticus, THIS is the kind of thing you should be adding to here; not the “I don’t play it, it sucks, but I HAVE to make events for people so I basically re-write the rules and anyone who wants to play well should play my rules”. Personal opinion, this suggestion solves the summoning problem. Using a legit AoS rule to do it. Serious props, and I think if you haven’t put it directly to GW yet, you might want to consider it. After all, it’s their own rule you’re requesting to make a comeback.

I don't know that rule; is it that you autolose if the original (non-summoned) part of your army is destroyed?

Auticus, THIS is the kind of thing you should be adding to here

I've posted that and a handful of other things about 1000 times over the past few years here lol. It either gets ignored, or slammed for being a house rule, or slammed for being "not needed, the game is balanced already". I also posted this on facebook groups and TGA with the same results many many times.

In fact I started a whole thread on this topic some time ago here, on alternate ways to deal with free summoning, using this house rule as one proposal and it largely got dismissed.

I don't know that rule; is it that you autolose if the original (non-summoned) part of your army is destroyed?

Sudden death victory conditions are a series of win conditions that the outnumbered player can still achieve to make it a game.

Things like "kill the enemy warlord and win the game". As I recall there is a chart you roll on. Some of them are laughably hard to achieve. I would also suggest that table get rewritten to make it more of a threat.

But basically if you come into a battle, your opponent sneezes and three more keeper of secrets pop up along with a second legion of demons, you are no longer trying to achieve a military victory in the conventional sense. You are there to do a precision strike (kill the warlord) or some other thing (survive, take objective 2, whatever).

This puts an actual risk to spam summoning and makes it less of an auto take because its no longer ultra optimal because it can lose you the game. It also introduces valid choices into the game now that make the game deeper one step at a time.

I wouldn’t suggest modifying the sudden death chart. Try to stick as close to what GW originally wrote for best chance to avoid having it labeled a house rule. Random strangers online don’t like “AoS is broken, but I have all the answers, play it my way or have a crap game”. Nobody listens to that. “GW made a rule back at the beginning about overwhelming odds, why not include that to deal with summoning spam” and you suddenly have an audience. One is arrogant, one is helpful using already existing rules of the game.

I've never posted AOS is broken, I have all the answers, play it my way or have a crap game. I have posted what I have found and have asked for discussion on it.

Those discussions went nowhere so I stopped posting them.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/777313.page#10489809
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/660/772521.page#10488040 - several times
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/540/763364.page#10367572 - several times
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/60/765039.page#10187441
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/1770/756703.page#10082241
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/759935.page#10058684
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/30/759842.page#10052853

Some of those i started, some i contribute in. All have the sudden death principals I have been bringing up for a few years now.

I post the same way regardless of forum. Yet in the forums I am posting in the more popular opinion, suddenly I'm no longer arrogant and people like what I"m saying I have a deep feeling its really about presenting topics that go against what is popular or acceptable marks you for being liked or not liked by the overall population. Funny enough I was "arrogant" on warseer when I was defending AOS too but the AOS fans were pretty vocally supportive of me.

When you just have text to go off of, applying a tone of arrogance to someone you've never spoken to tends to come from the person that is projecting the emotion onto the text. Whenever anyone has asked me to go into depth on why I feel the way I do, I'm glad to do so.

Certainly if you like AOS as it is, its not a crap game to you so someone else feeling it is a "crap game" shouldn't matter anyway.

I’m not quoting, I’m paraphrasing. You absolutely have decided AoS is a garbage game as is and you’ve talked about how heavily you modify it and have recommended it over and over again on here, then got upset that people asked you to stop complaining. Numerous people on here, myself included, have told you we hate the negative way you go after AoS then act like a battered wife that continues to be involved with it.

However you’ve just gotten me to agree with your solution that doesn’t involve some random stranger online “fixing” a multi-million dollar company’s game, and rather uses one of their own rules to fix it. I’m agreeing with you and think it’s a solid rule and telling you THAT is the way forward for the majority of us to appreciate what you have to say and not ignore your points.

Cool I appreciate that. I'm just pointing out that being tarred as a constant stream of negativity with no constructive content is grossly unfair and I have posted examples above.

The "battered wife" comes from an over ten thousand dollar investment into the system. Had I started out in 2015 or 2016 instead of 1998 with warhammer, we wouldn't have this conversation because I never would have invested anything and it would have been no loss.

 auticus wrote:
Cool I appreciate that. I'm just pointing out that being tarred as a constant stream of negativity with no constructive content is grossly unfair and I have posted examples above.

The "battered wife" comes from an over ten thousand dollar investment into the system. Had I started out in 2015 or 2016 instead of 1998 with warhammer, we wouldn't have this conversation because I never would have invested anything and it would have been no loss.

TBF, if you've had fun with AOS for 20 years (1998-2018), you probably made back your $10,000 investment. I know if you watched a movie a week since 1998 you'd've spent more than $10,000 on the fun. So it wouldn't've been a loss!

Trust me, I have just as much invested. I get it, and I was absolutely one of the ones who failed against AoS when it first came out and made it my mission to show how broken the game was without points by just overwhelming opponents with hordes of models (10+ Daemon princes in a single game, plus GDs). However, through points I’ve come to appreciate it as a new game. I miss the old world. I miss the rank and file positioning tactics that were decided by skill and an ability to gauge distances. But this is something new. And I’ve decided to appreciate it for what it is now, instead of lamenting what it used to be. I’m focusing on the cool new dynamic models that couldn’t exist before in a RAF game, and the combos I can create. Winning, as it is, is a way for me to gauge if my thought process works or if I need to go back to the drawing board. It’s a way to challenge myself. I don’t want to cash in on some “I can’t lose no matter what”, I want to earn my win. So I absolutely support a way to limit broken aspects. But I also like having a reward for choosing the right targets. And I do think the SD revisit is a perfect way to make it work.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Compromise. Points reserved from the list are worth twice as much for actual summoning.

So you're saying a 1500 point list could become a 2500 point list, against your 2k.

With all due respect, being intentionally obtuse is not going to get this discussion anywhere. For example:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 auticus wrote:
Cool I appreciate that. I'm just pointing out that being tarred as a constant stream of negativity with no constructive content is grossly unfair and I have posted examples above.

The "battered wife" comes from an over ten thousand dollar investment into the system. Had I started out in 2015 or 2016 instead of 1998 with warhammer, we wouldn't have this conversation because I never would have invested anything and it would have been no loss.

TBF, if you've had fun with AOS for 20 years (1998-2018), you probably made back your $10,000 investment. I know if you watched a movie a week since 1998 you'd've spent more than $10,000 on the fun. So it wouldn't've been a loss!

TBF, anyone who thinks AoS launched in 1998 has no place in this discussion because they do not have even the most basic of knowledge required to engage in it.

 auticus wrote:

Please, enlighten us as to what they are.

The three main pillars of play that I observed were: excessive summoning, excessive spam of mortal wounds, or excessive speed to capture objectives.

If you could do more than one of those things you were generally in a VERY good place. Casual lists typically don't do any of those things excessive which is why they get nut shot against the armies that do regularly.

Now in the past when I complain about summoning being gross, I get dogpiled on by the tournament players telling me its not that bad, and tournaments aren't being dominated by summoning so its perfectly balanced, and that you just need to git gud and learn the counters. So I'm passing that along here as what I expect to hear from the people that think its fine.

I'm not a tourney player. I don't give a gak about what's perfectly balanced (or not) in that environment, or what those people want to hear. All I want you to do is provide an example of how you would go about stopping (or, as a lot can't be completely stopped short of the game ending, at least greatly hindering) army x from summoning. How would you stop them from doing their trick?
Pick two forces: How would you stop _____ from summoning, using _____?

Matching/exceeding them with summoning of your own is not really the answer. They're still doing it. And the question is how to make them NOT do it.
Excessive speed to capture objectives? Also not the answer. I'm not asking how to win the game. I'm asking how to keep the other guy from summoning while I do that.
Spamming mortal wounds? Better, but vague. What are you doing the MW to? How are you delivering those MW? Does it matter what forces you're using/facing?

As for casual lists not making use of excessive summoning, MW spam, or excessive speed? Well, that's on the players as every Tome I'm familiar with provides options for at least 2/3 of those. And you don't need to make tourney lv lists to make decent use of your options.

 auticus wrote:

Piss poor advice. Granted, if you run away from the AoS table you don't have to deal with the summoning. But it doesn't help those who choose to stay & roll some dice.

Really what choice do you have? Its a part of the game, its a very loudly cheered on part of the game, and its not going anywhere.

You have a few options.

One - you do it as well or come up with a tournament powered list that does so much damage that summoning can't keep up.

Two - you have to socially engineer your group and beg and plead and politic with your opponents to not stack their list like this. This has variable results. In my group it will get you laughed at by a few people and they aren't going to tone anything down.

Three - you just drink beer and roll dice and don't care about the outcome, knowing you are going to take nut shot after nut shot after nut shot if you choose to play casually in an environment where your opponent can and will bring an adepticon powered list.

Four - you lay down houserules that stop summoning from being so gross. I did in my events. You could summon up to 25% of your force's points, but if you exceeded that your opponent got a sudden death victory condition (from the core rules no less, those actually exist but few know that they exist since they aren't part of matched play). This made people think before just spam summoning.

It also has the nasty tendency to incite a ton of drama from people that hate house rules and can divide your community in a pretty heated way so ... use with extreme caution.

Five - you find a different game to play that doesn't have issues of this magnitude (every game has issues yes but not of the magnitude present in 40k or aos). This is what I have done.

Its the lowest impact of the bunch, though your investment gets flushed. But I have found a game that has none of these issues, I sold most of my GW collection last year, keeping my slaves to darkness for Kings of War purposes, and hoping one day the whfb old world project is something they write for people like me (they have done great with Titanicus so ... they have the power) or that AOS 3.0 swings that pendulum back out of magic the gathering territory with the rules and puts some limits on excessive summoning.

The main issue is ... well... why most people are here in the first place. AOS has a mega fan base and as such it makes people feel safer, happier, etc, to participate than other games that they'll have to struggle to build a community around. Many people aren't here for the rules (though a lot of those people will voice annoyance with the rules) - they are here for the pretty models and the massive fan base. If Joe's Game Shop came up with the game Age of Sigmar, it would be in the "Other" forum section here with 17 replies in four years or something because the rules by themselves would never have gotten any traction without the GW name and fanbase behind them. The only sin GW committed in 2015 was not having points. Had they released AOS with points, the rage issue would have been limited to just the old world being blown up. The game issue people had were almost entirely around no points existing. GW could release practically any ruleset they wanted in regards to their 40k or fantasy line, and so long as points exist, its going to do well because they have the one thing that no other game company will likely ever have: the massive fanbase which is the #1 attractor for so many people.

Sigh....
This isn't a discussion of the merits of the game, why people play (though for the record; my group plays because we generally find it fun - if we didn't we'd certainly be playing something else.), what game you play since leaving AoS, or what you've done with your models.
House rules & recommending begging/social engineering/quitting are also non-answers.
House Rules - while those will certainly work, I can't look those up in my books. I can't apply those outside my own circle. And they aren't needed in my group.
Begging? Really? When they say no, how do you deal by the rules?
Social Engineering of the group? Like house rules, not in my books & not useful outside my group.
Quitting?? The whole question is predicated on the exact opposite of that.

So after all that? You only bit of useful advice is to out-damage them?

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Compromise. Points reserved from the list are worth twice as much for actual summoning.

So you're saying a 1500 point list could become a 2500 point list, against your 2k.

With all due respect, being intentionally obtuse is not going to get this discussion anywhere. For example:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 auticus wrote:
Cool I appreciate that. I'm just pointing out that being tarred as a constant stream of negativity with no constructive content is grossly unfair and I have posted examples above.

The "battered wife" comes from an over ten thousand dollar investment into the system. Had I started out in 2015 or 2016 instead of 1998 with warhammer, we wouldn't have this conversation because I never would have invested anything and it would have been no loss.

TBF, if you've had fun with AOS for 20 years (1998-2018), you probably made back your $10,000 investment. I know if you watched a movie a week since 1998 you'd've spent more than $10,000 on the fun. So it wouldn't've been a loss!

TBF, anyone who thinks AoS launched in 1998 has no place in this discussion because they do not have even the most basic of knowledge required to engage in it.

I don't think AOS launched in 1998, but I don't think he spent 10,000 dollars since AOS launched, either, given that he said he wouldn't've bought anything....

Also, I literally just asked what you meant. If points deducted from a list count double for summoning, then someone who brought 1500 to a 2000 points game could summon 1k, making their list 2500 against your 2k. That's literally what you meant, right?

I think we all know that many of the warhammer models from the previous game carry over into AOS.

That if I had invested over 10,000 into warhammer as a whole that is INCLUSIVE of AOS. Not two separate things. That by including my start time that that should have meant that in the 22 years of GW gaming with warhammer as a whole I have spent that much, not 10,000 spent since AOS launched in 2015.

So after all that? You only bit of useful advice is to out-damage them?

So after distilling through your hostile aggressive post, what you are after is a legit way with no house rules and no negotiation, just plain old by the rules, ways to counteract excessive spam summoning.

Play an army that can do it (counter it or do it yourself). If you play an army that can't do it (counter it or spam summon), I guess you locked yourself into a paradox if the rest of those pointers were not useful. A good portion of the army books cannot really deal with it very well.

Its so odd, b.c i don;t see this "spam" summing you keep talking about. The past 6 months had no lists dedicated to spamming summoning as the core mechanic for a win condition. Players use it as a tool to help just like how many armies can Teleport, Move fast, Heal, Count as more models, Fight twice, Fight first, 1 Drop, etc..

No list is built to win from summoning anymore, sure a year ago that might have been. But GW has changed that and made it much harder to do. The last army that was able to do that (Seraphon) now literally loses a host of rules in order to do it and i haven't seen 1 person playing it that way anymore.


So please point me to a list that was built and won via Summoning as its core purpose, after the new GH and with a new Battletome. GW as i see it, its not a problem but inexperience players not understand how to counter a mechanic, or a player bringing a casual list vs a non casual list.

I believe it’s still considered “broken” for Slaanesh. Syll’Eske’s host and KoSs with minimal troops and just summon more heroes. Tzeentch as well. Khorne, Nurgle and S2D are under control, and I believe the rest of the other summon armies are as well. Just DoT and HoS are considered filth summoning.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Its so odd, b.c i don;t see this "spam" summing you keep talking about. The past 6 months had no lists dedicated to spamming summoning as the core mechanic for a win condition. Players use it as a tool to help just like how many armies can Teleport, Move fast, Heal, Count as more models, Fight twice, Fight first, 1 Drop, etc..

No list is built to win from summoning anymore, sure a year ago that might have been. But GW has changed that and made it much harder to do. The last army that was able to do that (Seraphon) now literally loses a host of rules in order to do it and i haven't seen 1 person playing it that way anymore.


So please point me to a list that was built and won via Summoning as its core purpose, after the new GH and with a new Battletome. GW as i see it, its not a problem but inexperience players not understand how to counter a mechanic, or a player bringing a casual list vs a non casual list.

Are you joking? Slaanesh summon-spam won LVO, among the biggest AoS tournaments worldwide, and that was after the summon nerf.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Its so odd, b.c i don;t see this "spam" summing you keep talking about. The past 6 months had no lists dedicated to spamming summoning as the core mechanic for a win condition. Players use it as a tool to help just like how many armies can Teleport, Move fast, Heal, Count as more models, Fight twice, Fight first, 1 Drop, etc..

No list is built to win from summoning anymore, sure a year ago that might have been. But GW has changed that and made it much harder to do. The last army that was able to do that (Seraphon) now literally loses a host of rules in order to do it and i haven't seen 1 person playing it that way anymore.


So please point me to a list that was built and won via Summoning as its core purpose, after the new GH and with a new Battletome. GW as i see it, its not a problem but inexperience players not understand how to counter a mechanic, or a player bringing a casual list vs a non casual list.

Are you joking? Slaanesh summon-spam won LVO, among the biggest AoS tournaments worldwide, and that was after the summon nerf.

With old rules, LOV didn't have all the new rules. But thats ok, w/e.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
I believe it’s still considered “broken” for Slaanesh. Syll’Eske’s host and KoSs with minimal troops and just summon more heroes. Tzeentch as well. Khorne, Nurgle and S2D are under control, and I believe the rest of the other summon armies are as well. Just DoT and HoS are considered filth summoning.

DoT is for sure a problem, but not for summoning, as i practice against them for events. Its the 1 drop turn 1 i kill 1/2 your army with 20 Horrors in your face that makes them win. If they can't do that then np.

While yes HoS still summons, after the updates (what i'm pointing out) is not very strong now. Many events with over 20 players (anything less then its just to local) HoS haven't been amazingly for how this tread is saying summoning is broken.

8th place https://www.bestcoastpairings.com/bcpevent/CYxt2EEFIL?league=24wBDHSRsT&embed=true
5th place https://www.bestcoastpairings.com/bcpevent/GMcdcjTtHM?league=24wBDHSRsT&embed=true
6th place https://www.bestcoastpairings.com/bcpevent/cofjUesebE?league=24wBDHSRsT&embed=true
14th place https://www.bestcoastpairings.com/bcpevent/YQztxmmluG?league=24wBDHSRsT&embed=true
13th place https://www.bestcoastpairings.com/bcpevent/zUqn876d8X?league=24wBDHSRsT&embed=true


The only problem is DoT, and thats b.c high range shooting. They literally have multi summoning only lists, but those are not the lists that are winning. ALso note the 1st 2 events i posted yes DOT was top many, but after that you see they slightly are worst b.c the FAQ came out.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
PS i wanted to note before anyone says. "But these are events not open table games"

You can't find balance in open table games b.c not everyone wants the same game, and not everyone might be equally skilled, so i look at events as they are the ones looking to find what is and isn't balanced. Joe and Bob for a pick up game isn't doing that, but if Billy brings his super CAAC lists Joe and Bob might still look like an donkey-cave to Billy.

There you have it. Summoning is fine because in tournaments its fine. Just get good and stop fielding non tournament powered lists. And don't choose or like factions that the designers happen to not have given tournament powered options to.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Its so odd, b.c i don;t see this "spam" summing you keep talking about. The past 6 months had no lists dedicated to spamming summoning as the core mechanic for a win condition. Players use it as a tool to help just like how many armies can Teleport, Move fast, Heal, Count as more models, Fight twice, Fight first, 1 Drop, etc..

No list is built to win from summoning anymore, sure a year ago that might have been. But GW has changed that and made it much harder to do. The last army that was able to do that (Seraphon) now literally loses a host of rules in order to do it and i haven't seen 1 person playing it that way anymore.


So please point me to a list that was built and won via Summoning as its core purpose, after the new GH and with a new Battletome. GW as i see it, its not a problem but inexperience players not understand how to counter a mechanic, or a player bringing a casual list vs a non casual list.

Are you joking? Slaanesh summon-spam won LVO, among the biggest AoS tournaments worldwide, and that was after the summon nerf.

With old rules, LOV didn't have all the new rules. But thats ok, w/e.

Which new rules was it lacking, exactly?

Summoning is fine overall. Fine =/= perfect.

Currently HoS is really the only egregious offender, with Syyleskan Host exacerbating that offense. Maybe a Tzeentch build can get silly?

If we made a list of all the armies that have a summoning ability, I believe we’d see that the overwhelming majority are largely balanced. The broken stuff are truly outliers.

 nels1031 wrote:
Summoning is fine overall. Fine =/= perfect.

Currently HoS is really the only egregious offender, with Syyleskan Host exacerbating that offense. Maybe a Tzeentch build can get silly?

If we made a list of all the armies that have a summoning ability, I believe we’d see that the overwhelming majority are largely balanced. The broken stuff are truly outliers.

I agree with the overall statement, but I feel it is more a matter that summoning is as misbalanced as everything else. However, summoning armies have more of a floor; while some may not be good, there are not any summoning armies that are actually bad.* Pre-Wrath of the Everchosen Nurgle is probably the only one.

*As previously established, having a niche spell or ability that technically summons something does not make a summoning army. Sylvaneth, StDs, etc. are not in that category for the purposes of this argument.

Are there many armies or pre summoning builds, that were made unplayable, because they couldn't deal with armies that summon a lot of units?

Karol wrote:
Are there many armies or pre summoning builds, that were made unplayable, because they couldn't deal with armies that summon a lot of units?

Depends how far back you look.

Very early Nighthaunt were considered strong. Stormcast and Legions were ok. All kind of trash in any competitive setting now.

It is good that it ain't too many armies. Maybe in the end every army is going to be doing summoning, and this way it balances itself out. Well to a degree that GW games can be balanced of course.

Karol wrote:
It is good that it ain't too many armies. Maybe in the end every army is going to be doing summoning, and this way it balances itself out. Well to a degree that GW games can be balanced of course.

I certainly hope not!

I dont want to have to buy, paint, and bring with me 3k of models to play a 2k game without hobbling myself.

Summoning fine overall - I'd say if you take all of the armies that can get free points that most of them don't break the game wide open. That part is true (and I posted that on a previous page in this thread).

Summoning as basically free bonus points, besides the fact that I hate that because its basically a mechanism in place that makes balance now impossible, would be ok in the hands of a team that has a track record of not busting their game wide open several times a year.

Now the armies that can excessive summon, which are armies I'd say that can push near 1000 free points in a game, may be a smaller number and thats also true.

However in my neck of the woods, few people play the armies that cant compete at Adepticon, so the armies that excessive summon are the common armies alongside the armies that have excessive damage output that can table you in 1 or 2 turns.

While its true there are a fair number of armies that are for the most part ok, those armies are rarely seen because they are for the most part ok.

Which means the common opponents are the ones either pushing damage output to table you in 1 or 2 turns (thats another topic for another thread), or summoning free 1000+ points in a game.

Which concludes that if you want to enjoy yourself in AOS and that is your environment, you need also be playing one of those forces. Which also means every GHB and every FAQ you need to be prepared to buy a new army.

Overall summoning may be ok. I can concede that overall when all factions are included thats fine. But in the wild... thats not what you see. In the wild its the armies that have excessive whatever that takes the most visibility and who, unless you are playing in a private group, you will have to face off against.

For free summoning to be OK - GW needs to stop playing amateur hour with their rules design and stop releasing armies that bust the game wide open with it. As of the release of 2.0 where free summoning returned, there has always been multiple armies that can do it that cycle back and forth. There has never once been a time in 2.0 where there was no excessive summoning running amuk.

Being fine and ok in the tournament world is fine and ok if you live in the tournament world and don't mind buying new armies to keep up with the tournament world. Its not ok for the rest of us that don't want to have to buy new armies to keep up with the tournament world every year.

Being busted in public open gaming is fine if you have a private group and dont ever do campaigns or public events so you can bounce people out that want to continue doing it even after told not to.

Its not ok otherwise.

I'd say a good percentage of people play open tables or events of some type and I don't find it a reasonable request at all to have to buy new armies regularly to keep up with the GW power fluctuations to have good games.

I don't see how people defend that as a good system or a good game unless they just truly don't care about outcomes and just want to socialize and lolzer the dice around the table for fun (which I know a couple people like that so I know its legit).

What about the flexibility approach Chaos marines got in 40k.
For certain not broken because you can't exceed your points but a handy flexible multitool (who am i kidding the most summoned stuff is what is worth it's points )

Is the cost of summoning added in to lists that summon in some way, like maybe the units that aren't summoned cost more, or the summoned army have lower stats and weaker rule sets, then those that do not summon stuff?

Or is a totaly free?

You will get debate on that. I have done a complete linear regression on the game and the cost of a lot of those models are still way undercost. In essence: free.

Keepers for example are very undercost for what they do and are not only summoned, but the key in which slaanesh lists with triple keepers generate most of their summoning points.

People tend to not summon the weaker stuff. They are summoning the good stuff. And the good stuff tends to not be costed more, or if so its marginal.

There is a counter that these units "cost more" but I have never heard that officially been stated, nor does the math really support that statement overall.

Well if they are still so efficient, the either the "more" isn't enough or the "more" is just mythical.

But I assume it is different among other armies. I can bet 1 internet, that there probably is one list that can summon that is considered medicore or maybe even bad, or good only in a very specific, maybe soup, build.

Karol wrote:
Is the cost of summoning added in to lists that summon in some way, like maybe the units that aren't summoned cost more, or the summoned army have lower stats and weaker rule sets, then those that do not summon stuff?

Or is a totaly free?

No, you leave points out, as in if you play 2000 pts you field a 1500 pts CSM army and then can summon for about 500 pts. It's also tied to a roll, and can potentially make your HQ go pooof.

Honestly, i wonder what would happen if everyone had access to summoning. Not the ‘teleport in a blood thirster’ Kind of summoning, but more like the units come in off a flank or arrive at a specific point. Would it be more balanced then?

Yes if everyone had the same level of tools that would help out a lot.

There’s no reason every army COULDNT have that. The S2D faction does it easily enough. Reinforcements coming from a table edge are doable by dwarf, man, rat or elf.

Doesn't have to be summoning per se either. I am sure units could be teleported in by magic or even be hidding or outflanking. There are scouts, as in real world scouts or ranger, units in AoS, right?

Karol wrote:
Doesn't have to be summoning per se either. I am sure units could be teleported in by magic or even be hidding or outflanking. There are scouts, as in real world scouts or ranger, units in AoS, right?

As I say though, I would hate for that to be a core part of the game for every faction! Fine if it's a few armies but it needs to be balanced against armies that dont have it - or at least there needs to be a tradeoff whereby you are not at a disadvantage for not using summoning.

Reason being you shouldnt feel forced to buy excessive quantities of extra miniatures to play a game just so you have a buffer for summoning.

Well I don't think that "not being forced to buy excessive quantities of extra models" is an option with GW.
To use AoS examples, why can't the spells in AoS just be cast or be tokens, and not high cost models everyone has to buy? Or why does every army require an obligatory terrain pice , why can't the rules be just part of the army?

well it is all done to make people buy more models, and after a threshold it is hard to quit or dumb an game you spend 1000$ or more. And even if someone does quit at the 600-700$ mark they still made good money for GW with all the expansions, obligatory models etc.

All GW needs is to have GW specific dies and their own measerment for ranges. Call it something goofy and make it impossible to use normal cm or inch tape measurs, so that everyone has to buy the official thing. Heck they could make different ones for different armies, so people wouldn't be able to share one, outside of mirror matchs.

Hard disagree there. As it stands, most armies in AoS I could buy exactly 2k points of and while I wouldnt have the flex to keep up with the tourney scene I could build something that did well in store games for a long time.

You dont have to buy spells. They cost points, theres a tradeoff. You arent hobbling yourself by not using them.

If every army got free summoning, you would NEED to own a ton of extra models or get steamrolled by anyone with a bigger collection. It's an awful idea.

One thing I have told myself is any future army I do cannot have summoning. I have no desire to buy a solid core of an army and THEN buy a bunch of extra crap to summon too.

 Stux wrote:
Hard disagree there. As it stands, most armies in AoS I could buy exactly 2k points of and while I wouldnt have the flex to keep up with the tourney scene I could build something that did well in store games for a long time.

You dont have to buy spells. They cost points, theres a tradeoff. You arent hobbling yourself by not using them.

If every army got free summoning, you would NEED to own a ton of extra models or get steamrolled by anyone with a bigger collection. It's an awful idea.

And this way you just get steam rolled, if your army doesn't happen to either summon stuff itself or is so super efficient that it doesn't need to summon. Although from the looks of what is winning stuff around the world, the summoning armies, seem to be doing real well.

I don't get the part about the store games being different from tournament games. I mean sure the armies, maybe ain't painted, and maybe aren't 100 optimised. But is it really so much of a differance, in AoS, if the opposing army summons 500pts turn 1-2, or just 300-400? Specialy if your army happens to be one of the weaker ones.

Our store games are pretty much similar to tourney games. Youll face the same stuff.

Karol wrote:

 Stux wrote:
Hard disagree there. As it stands, most armies in AoS I could buy exactly 2k points of and while I wouldnt have the flex to keep up with the tourney scene I could build something that did well in store games for a long time.

You dont have to buy spells. They cost points, theres a tradeoff. You arent hobbling yourself by not using them.

If every army got free summoning, you would NEED to own a ton of extra models or get steamrolled by anyone with a bigger collection. It's an awful idea.

And this way you just get steam rolled, if your army doesn't happen to either summon stuff itself or is so super efficient that it doesn't need to summon. Although from the looks of what is winning stuff around the world, the summoning armies, seem to be doing real well.

I don't get the part about the store games being different from tournament games. I mean sure the armies, maybe ain't painted, and maybe aren't 100 optimised. But is it really so much of a differance, in AoS, if the opposing army summons 500pts turn 1-2, or just 300-400? Specialy if your army happens to be one of the weaker ones.

I'm not saying things are fine as they are at all. I'm saying I think giving every army the ability to spam summons is a terrible way to fix it.

Instead Summoning needs to be a proper tradeoff, with checks and balances.

It depends on the store, but a lot of store games will be more casual and you dont need to bring a top tier list to win reasonably often. Your mileage will vary of course, and it will depend on who exactly you are playing. My comment was specifically about how if you want to consistently do well in tournaments you likely need to continuously change your list or whole army every time something changes the meta, which is costly. No player should feel they need to do this in casual settings unless they want to.

Thinking along the lines of the idea posed earlier, of using rules already in the game with the Sudden Death mechanic, I feel a big big change needed for Summoning comes in mission tie-breakers. It's really not right that summoned in units dying doesn't count towards your kill-count in the event of a tiebreaker, that's a big thing that needs to change.

On top of that, another idea I had was;

What if Summoned in Units (Units added to your army after creation, however it ought to be worded properly) do not count towards the model count to control objectives.

Honestly, Some kind of mechanic where the summoned unit begins to Disolve or suffer attrition, maybe taking mortal wounds the longer they stay active on the field, or losing models in this way?

Yup. This is what I would do as game wide rules:

1. Destroyed Summoned units count for kill based VP.
2. Summoned units cannot hold objectives.
3. Hard cap on total point value of units summoned - as a starting point, maybe set to the allies limit? So in a 2k game you can never summon more than 400pts.

Or just give sudden death win conditions to the other side if player summons 500 or more points. No caps, big tradeoff and a risk.

Keeping track of which units are summoned can be a pain. Rather they should count for VPs and for objectives. One less bit of book keeping.

I do think it is ridiculous that summondef units don't count when determining minor victories. And that a hard cap equal to the tally limit would be a nice easy way of reigning things in in a manner simple enough that GW couldn't screw it up.

What if every summoned unit destroyed gives the opponent a victory point?

 Tiger9gamer wrote:
What if every summoned unit destroyed gives the opponent a victory point?

That just incentivises summoning harder to kill stuff like Keepers.

Yeah you either have to introduce a legit risk to summoning, or you need rules that hard cap what can and can't be summoned and it not be everything you want.

Personally I think a hard cap is better than risk. A hardcap you can work with because you've got limit points that you can plan for. Introducing risk to summoning adds a lot of random that you can't easily plan for. Just as you could chance and get way more you could also chance and get way less which makes the game swing too much on the summoning chance as a single element which is bad for game and army balance.

I don't understand how adding risk to summoning makes the game swing too much and how that is bad for the game and army balance, considering we are literally standing almost as low as we can go in terms of balancing already. Adding risk adds meaningful choices. Meaningful choices are at least from where I am standing what makes me interested in a game. Games that make the choices for me, such as AOS, are things that make games (to me) not good.

The more meaningful choice you can return to the game, the better it gets IMO.

A hard cap would be acceptable, but does not add meaningful choices. Instead, a hard cap adds a listbuilding constraint that can and will be min/maxed for optimal scenario. A risk can be mitigated as best as possible, but if written properly will always be an actual RISK that will be present and I feel is more of a choice to have to make over a hardcap because the hardcap will just be mathed and maxed, presenting itself with a decision that will make itself for you.

 auticus wrote:
I don't understand how adding risk to summoning makes the game swing too much and how that is bad for the game and army balance, considering we are literally standing almost as low as we can go in terms of balancing already. Adding risk adds meaningful choices. Meaningful choices are at least from where I am standing what makes me interested in a game. Games that make the choices for me, such as AOS, are things that make games (to me) not good.

The more meaningful choice you can return to the game, the better it gets IMO.

A hard cap would be acceptable, but does not add meaningful choices. Instead, a hard cap adds a listbuilding constraint that can and will be min/maxed for optimal scenario. A risk can be mitigated as best as possible, but if written properly will always be an actual RISK that will be present and I feel is more of a choice to have to make over a hardcap because the hardcap will just be mathed and maxed, presenting itself with a decision that will make itself for you.

B.c hard risks should be for tactics not for mechanics. Otherwise someone that thinks Healing, or spell casting is OP would want a higher risk than running at your and pound face.

What about shooting? CoS and DoT can literally shoot you off the board in 1 turn with some matchups, should you take blow back for shooting now? Its high risk, so its ok?

See what i mean? Basic game mechanics should never be high risk.

I strongly disagree with your assessment. Particularly when it comes to something like adding free points to your army which is an unbalancing mechanism which begs the question "why would I never do this?".

There is nothing tactical about maxing out free summoning. Its something so elementary of a decision that even the most daft among us realizes how useful and powerful it is to want to do it as much as possible. It is as tactical and strategic as being allowed to backload a chess board with all queens because you are smart enough to realize thats more powerful.

Pretty much EVERY wargame from time immemorial up until recent times had risks baked into their basic mechanics of varying degree. In WHFB, summoning was both limited to
* Basic core units
* you couldn't get that many of them anyway
* you ran the risk of miscasting which could blow your wizard or army up.

8th edition took the steps to removing risks by making the miscast table laughable to not be a risk. AOS took that ball and ran it across the goal line for maximum effect for no risk.

How about something like the way Khorne does it? You get one set of points; enjoy your summoning or your abilities and all points empty out on each usage.

I guess for me, the khorne stuff has been out for a long while now and 9 times out of 10 the people using it are always summoning instead of using the abilities - because free summoning will always be more useful.

That is something I consider a false decision. Its there, it gives the illusion you have all kinds of stuff to do, but in reality people trend toward the same choice.

Hence when you break from the mold and do something drastic, it throws people for a loop! Nobody expects the Khornish Inquisition!!

 auticus wrote:
I guess for me, the khorne stuff has been out for a long while now and 9 times out of 10 the people using it are always summoning instead of using the abilities - because free summoning will always be more useful.

That is something I consider a false decision. Its there, it gives the illusion you have all kinds of stuff to do, but in reality people trend toward the same choice.

Then I would say the Khorne players in your area should reassess their strategies. There are many occasions where adding a blessing to a unit or healing wounds would be much more useful than adding a unit of 10 Bloodletters

Nearly no khorne player I know summons specially competitive ones because the blessings are better for your bloodthirsters.

Would it help if summoning was limited to Baseline units?

 vipoid wrote:
Would it help if summoning was limited to Baseline units?

Maybe but the real issue is "free points" and nothing else.

I guess you could put that to a poll with a larger audience: hey khorne players - do you like to summon with your blood tithe or do you like to use it for blessings.

 vipoid wrote:
Would it help if summoning was limited to Baseline units?

The problem is, he has a problem with what he thinks is Free points. If you took out all summoning then these armies with summon would just be given more points of models anyways via making units cheaper, more heavily buffed them.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
Would it help if summoning was limited to Baseline units?

The problem is, he has a problem with what he thinks is Free points. If you took out all summoning then these armies with summon would just be given more points of models anyways via making units cheaper, more heavily buffed them.

I'm not convinced that level of care is being taken when writing the different tomes.

 Eldarain wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
Would it help if summoning was limited to Baseline units?

The problem is, he has a problem with what he thinks is Free points. If you took out all summoning then these armies with summon would just be given more points of models anyways via making units cheaper, more heavily buffed them.

I'm not convinced that level of care is being taken when writing the different tomes.

I fully agree with this.

But is the mechanic bad? Or is it only some books were written with imbalances? Or is it only bad b.c of a few books? My PoV is no, summoning isn't bad as a mechanic, but some books are bad. GW has notice this and has tried to fix it a bit (Some can argue not enough, which i can understand their PoV on it). I personally think at this point summoning isn't a problem, but power level of some books that can summon is a problema nd it isn't the summoning mechanic that makes those books the problem, instead its over powered units (Like Flamers and KoS) that are the real problem and if those units were toned down you wouldn't see summon as a problem other than some people mad that they dont be "free units" but we can ague that free units isn't actually free. My BoC Ungors are straight up worst than Clanrats, but i can summon an extra 30-40 in a game. Is an extra 30 Ungors really that strong? They are 1 attack 4+/4+ no rend, they are not going to do damage, its just more wounds on the table, but vs some armies this is pointless, against others is game winning. BoC summoning is only strong b.c they can summon on an objective near an edge. Otherwise the BoC player will wait 2-3 turns to get 1 unit that might do something. Is that really better than all 120 of my Ungors on the table literally doubling their damage and immune to BS? IMO No, i'd rather have the Immune to BS and Double damage, as i can take 30"+ movement units if i needed to steal back objectives. Really I don't need to summon to do what summoning does.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
Would it help if summoning was limited to Baseline units?

The problem is, he has a problem with what he thinks is Free points. If you took out all summoning then these armies with summon would just be given more points of models anyways via making units cheaper, more heavily buffed them.

I have pointed out a few times that other games that have free points do it in a sane way and have given examples. Baseline units... TRUE baseline units (aos flew that coop long ago by making elites "core") summoned in limited numbers would not break the game. The stupid crap with summoning entire half to full extra armies is bad. The ability to summon in multiple greater demons extra is bad. Limited summoning as a mechanic is fine and can be fun.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
How about something like the way Khorne does it? You get one set of points; enjoy your summoning or your abilities and all points empty out on each usage.

i absolutely love the way Khorne does it. It is fully integrated where summoning actually means giving up something else and I wish all armies were like that. But failing that just have a weaker set of allegiance abilities to compensate for summons, like Starborne Seraphon, Nurgle, or Beastmen.

I don’t remember; how bad is it considered to have an entire army of Gaunt Summoners that port in an army of Pink Horrors? You can get 6 Gaunt Summoners (3 on, 3 off disc), access to tons of magic for them with added Destiny Dice, and you have 500pts to cover Endless Spells, 3 core units, and you can have a total of 300 lesser daemons (each unit of 10 horrors can be seen as 50 potential bodies).

And yes, that’s a point of summoning. Plus make them a cult to LoCs and watch your first LoC drop into the game turn one from all those successful spells.

I know people say HoS is worse than DoT for summoning, but I think seeing that happen across the table from me would make my eyes water from the sting. That’s 1350pts summoned on turn 1, almost guaranteed (only LoC isn’t a guarantee).

Slaanesh is definitely not the only offender. There are usually at any given time in the life cycle of 2.0 2-3 builds that can do something obscene with summoning.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
I don’t remember; how bad is it considered to have an entire army of Gaunt Summoners that port in an army of Pink Horrors? You can get 6 Gaunt Summoners (3 on, 3 off disc), access to tons of magic for them with added Destiny Dice, and you have 500pts to cover Endless Spells, 3 core units, and you can have a total of 300 lesser daemons (each unit of 10 horrors can be seen as 50 potential bodies).

And yes, that’s a point of summoning. Plus make them a cult to LoCs and watch your first LoC drop into the game turn one from all those successful spells.

I know people say HoS is worse than DoT for summoning, but I think seeing that happen across the table from me would make my eyes water from the sting. That’s 1350pts summoned on turn 1, almost guaranteed (only LoC isn’t a guarantee).

Just FYI, there is no rule of three in AoS---one can take as many gaunt summoners as they like of either variety (up to 9, of course). And each comes with a 200-point unit baked in, so they basically cost 40 points!

They’re heroes. So 6 in a 2k game is the max, which is why I used that number.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
I don’t remember; how bad is it considered to have an entire army of Gaunt Summoners that port in an army of Pink Horrors? You can get 6 Gaunt Summoners (3 on, 3 off disc), access to tons of magic for them with added Destiny Dice, and you have 500pts to cover Endless Spells, 3 core units, and you can have a total of 300 lesser daemons (each unit of 10 horrors can be seen as 50 potential bodies).

And yes, that’s a point of summoning. Plus make them a cult to LoCs and watch your first LoC drop into the game turn one from all those successful spells.

I know people say HoS is worse than DoT for summoning, but I think seeing that happen across the table from me would make my eyes water from the sting. That’s 1350pts summoned on turn 1, almost guaranteed (only LoC isn’t a guarantee).

Its not good. You can no low drop that list. You will go second and have 60 models (or less if some summoners die) stuck in a corner, the other player just needs to bum-rush you instantly, or shoot you. And its just Horrors, while they take up a lot of wounds, they really don't do a lot back. In a game where its 90% objectives, you can easily lose if they get there 1st. Especially if they kill 1-2 Summoners turn 1 and zone out another 2 (Horrors needs to be outside of 9 of you and wholly within 9" of him, people don't really realize how small that is). And if you get long ways to summon off of them, they still are slow.

I've seen a few try this with endless spells to help deal damage. But really the Summons are just way to weak to spam. It would be better to just take a real list with some horrors.

The Summer really is a risk / reward unit. You are trying to save 40pts on a caster to have a unit come in later.