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Well I have Nurgle with plenty of extra daemons and I have alpha strike Skryrefyre so personally I'm in a good spot at least

I'll wait and see, because as much as the internet histeria wants it to sell it, for example I bought into the "omg warhammer 40k is so letal, everything is dead turn 2!" and then this past weekend I played in a 64 player tournament, with a ton of very competitive lists, and no game ended before turn 3, with games going up to turn 4 and 5 without a problem.


I know, anecdotal evidence, but since January I have played in ... 10-12 tournaments , some more competitive than others, but in all of them games did go to turn 3-5 without a problem.

I think the round 1-2 ending games are going to be more for tournaments or when two players have different power levels in their armies (for whatever reason). It's a shame that there will still be a huge disparity between a decent army and an optimized one but I'm not thinking it will be too much worse than now, or that much better.

Or in other words, tournaments will still be a crapshow, casual games are getting a lot of fun things to play with, and mismatch of army power levels will remain a problem holding AoS' popularity back.

I mean I played in a 64 player tournament for 40k two weeks ago and there were tons of turn 1 surrenders and devastation that made further turns pointless. It was only in the later rounds that some of the top tables went to full length

auticus wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
At this point we can just wait and see. I'm seeing a concerning narrative shift from GW from 'we want summoning to be fun but balanced' to 'you summon or you build to counter summoning'.

This was pretty much what the Ben & Ben show stated. You spam summoning, and if you don't want to do that then you have to output a lot of damage to control it. Control vs aggro.

It went from "wait and see, summoning won't be that bad" to "spamming summoning is as intended, its one of the new cornerstones of the game, and you counter it by spamming mortal wounds and doing tons of damage"

Now also...I've only read/seen about five battle reps now but all five ended by Turn 2 so summoning wasn't as big a deal since the game was over so fast.

And any game that sees a double turn will have an accelerated conclusion.

 Marmatag wrote:

auticus wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
At this point we can just wait and see. I'm seeing a concerning narrative shift from GW from 'we want summoning to be fun but balanced' to 'you summon or you build to counter summoning'.

This was pretty much what the Ben & Ben show stated. You spam summoning, and if you don't want to do that then you have to output a lot of damage to control it. Control vs aggro.

It went from "wait and see, summoning won't be that bad" to "spamming summoning is as intended, its one of the new cornerstones of the game, and you counter it by spamming mortal wounds and doing tons of damage"

Now also...I've only read/seen about five battle reps now but all five ended by Turn 2 so summoning wasn't as big a deal since the game was over so fast.

And any game that sees a double turn will have an accelerated conclusion.

Not necessarily in the way one might expect though.

Just because it was never a thing in 40k, will we see a rise in people taking units to disspell summoning? Units like the Cygor intrigue me because while not a Wizard, they can dispel two spells a turn, dealing a Mortal wound to the caster and healing a wound every time they do.

Quite possibly. It would be even more interesting if summoning hadnt been separated from spellcasting in so many instances.

I think unbind abilities will see popular use now and I think the semimeta of magic (aside from endless spells) has been effectively -dispelled- by the 30" unbind range. Endless spells are a different beast but from what I see the only problem there is the cogs and the portals costing half what they should.

I won't be surprised to see new units released with a "banishment" mechanic that allows them to remove xd6 models from the game that were previously summoned. The thing that people seem to be forgetting about the new summoning mechanics is that they can be balanced after the fact pretty easily. The number of summoning points a given army generates can be adjusted as can the number of points needed to summon a unit. I have no doubt that there will be some serious balance issues when 2nd drops, but I also know that GW is willing to make tweaks to their games these days.

The problem will be living with those serious balance issues for an entire year. Thats a lot of potential players run off if its as bad as feared :(

 EnTyme wrote:
I won't be surprised to see new units released with a "banishment" mechanic that allows them to remove xd6 models from the game that were previously summoned. The thing that people seem to be forgetting about the new summoning mechanics is that they can be balanced after the fact pretty easily. The number of summoning points a given army generates can be adjusted as can the number of points needed to summon a unit. I have no doubt that there will be some serious balance issues when 2nd drops, but I also know that GW is willing to make tweaks to their games these days.

I am hoping they will recognize them, what I find concerning is they seem to be surrounded by the gaming equivalent of yes-men.

I don't understand why you'd pick on summoning without first seeing how it works, whereas we know exactly how the double turn works, and it's an awful mechanic.

We kind of know how it works though. AOS before reinforcement points was wrecked from free points summoning.

I know enough to know that in any game where one side can summon in over 20% or so of the starting point size and the other can't that the game is often a foregone conclusion.

Much like how the double turn can easily dictate game over.

 Marmatag wrote:
I don't understand why you'd pick on summoning without first seeing how it works, whereas we know exactly how the double turn works, and it's an awful mechanic.

I'd say the biggest reason is that we know how the double turn works--but we also know that there's a downside to taking it with the new Endless Spells being in play.

The only real (practically speaking--aside from killing the things that are part of the mechanics) counter that Summoning has is Gryph-Hounds and Shooting.

auticus wrote:
The problem will be living with those serious balance issues for an entire year. Thats a lot of potential players run off if its as bad as feared :(

It just took a couple month for GW to nerf flier spam in 40k. I don't see why they couldn't do the same thing for AoS balance issues. They make balance passes far more than once a year. We get a big FAQ twice a year, and they've already shown a willingness to create beta rules in those. The GHB is where they make a big sweeping balance pass, but they have made smaller changes in between them.

The next big FAQ for Age of Sigmar is in July, so we'll only see fixes for the most egregious problems. The next big FAQ afterwards would be in January 2019.

July is definitely a bit awkward given 2.0s launch. Still Anything found since the books went to print being fixed isn't the worst thing.

I think you missed what I'm saying. The big FAQs and GHB aren't the only places we'll see balance changes made. We'll definitely see balance changes in those, but 40k has shown that GW will make changes outside of them if they feel it necessary. See the flyer nerf and the first set of beta rules.

 EnTyme wrote:
... but 40k has shown that GW will make changes outside of them if they feel it necessary. See the flyer nerf and the first set of beta rules.

The flyer nerf came before the FAQ schedule and the first set of beta rule were a part of the big FAQ.

The problem I see with endless spells, is the non-predatory ones are really good. Balewind/cogs/mirrors don't hurt you for going first. I just played around on a game, and my opponent took 3 endless spells, all non-predatory. It didn't matter to him if he went first or second, because what was it going to do?

 Boss Salvage wrote:

 Boss Salvage wrote:
VAGUE EDIT #2: Wow did DOT jump up in points O_O

In fact, so much so that my schemes to run Omniscient Oracles isn't really possible in normal games. That package starts at 2250 pts now, up from 1710

NM, I just have to use Acolytes. Game on.

- Salvage, kicks a rock and shakes the quadruple LOC out of his shopping cart fills his cart back up with big magical chickens

I quite enjoyed this post as well as the lively discussion in this thread! Certainly seems like AoS 2.0 has people excited... I'm very interested to see what you guys think of it once you've tried it out

Carnith wrote:
The problem I see with endless spells, is the non-predatory ones are really good. Balewind/cogs/mirrors don't hurt you for going first. I just played around on a game, and my opponent took 3 endless spells, all non-predatory. It didn't matter to him if he went first or second, because what was it going to do?

Yup. It's a strangely common thing in gaming (video games, RPGs, wargames...) that the direct-damage stuff costs way more than the buff/debuff stuff even when the latter is far better. A discussion about that could be a thread in itself really.

Carnith wrote:
The problem I see with endless spells, is the non-predatory ones are really good. Balewind/cogs/mirrors don't hurt you for going first. I just played around on a game, and my opponent took 3 endless spells, all non-predatory. It didn't matter to him if he went first or second, because what was it going to do?

Mirrors absolutely do hurt you for going first--if you've set them up to be effective for you during your turn, then I can make use of a Predatory Spell and your Mirrors.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ghaz wrote:
The next big FAQ for Age of Sigmar is in July, so we'll only see fixes for the most egregious problems. The next big FAQ afterwards would be in January 2019.

Spoiler:

There was a comment made offhandedly that there are Warscroll changes on the way, but they wouldn't be done via General's Handbook--so not sure what to make of that.

I think it was Ben Johnson who said it a few weeks ago on the Twitters.

RiTides wrote:I quite enjoyed this post

Glad I could entertain RT

Kanluwen wrote:

Carnith wrote:
The problem I see with endless spells, is the non-predatory ones are really good. Balewind/cogs/mirrors don't hurt you for going first. I just played around on a game, and my opponent took 3 endless spells, all non-predatory. It didn't matter to him if he went first or second, because what was it going to do?

Mirrors absolutely do hurt you for going first--if you've set them up to be effective for you during your turn, then I can make use of a Predatory Spell and your Mirrors.

The Mirrors being usable both ways is what's keeping me from raging out too hard over them. Sure, you can invest a lot into going hyper-aggro through Turn 1, but you best be prepared for retaliation. It's probably the main reason I'd consider taking the Purple Sun, to slam it through a cheeky enemy Mirror in the name of vengeance and chaos. That and it's a giant spiny purple skull.

- Salvage

 Ghaz wrote:

 EnTyme wrote:
... but 40k has shown that GW will make changes outside of them if they feel it necessary. See the flyer nerf and the first set of beta rules.

The flyer nerf came before the FAQ schedule and the first set of beta rule were a part of the big FAQ.

The first set of beta rules was announced (and became more or less the way everyone played) shortly after the FAQ schedule was announced. The FAQ showed us the final form of those rules. I anticipate this is the way we'll see it. Players will point out an unintended interaction between rules or some other point of imbalance. GW proposes a fix in the form of a beta rule. Players begin using the beta rule and give GW feedback. When the next FAQ drops, GW makes tweaks to the rule based on feedback and the rule becomes official. In any case GW will make changes as necessary. They realize that major imbalance is bad for the game (and for sales). That's the point I'm trying to get across. The exact timeframe of those changes is irrelevant. It doesn't matter if the first "big FAQ" is released one month after the edition launches or six. GW is not limited to making balance changes in the FAQs and GHB. They have shown a willingness to make balance changes outside of those.

This is why I freely houserule in my campaigns. I don't have to wait for changes. I implement them immediately once an imbalance is found to be driving players out from frustration.

And not always but often our houserules have some kind of official adaption later on anyway (for example the look out sir being brought back and shooting through terrain getting penalized is something we've been doing the past couple years now) so it seems to even itself out.

Oh, we use plenty of houseruling, too. I'm just trying to remind people that when imbalances inevitably show up, we don't have to wait until a new edition comes out for them to be fixed.

Thats true, which is good. Waiting years to have things rectified is infuriating.