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So it is obviously quite a bit better for the MSU list vs straight KP (4 vs 18), but the knights are tough to kill. It would take some testing, but seems to me like it makes a more interesting KP game than the marines needing to table the opponent to win.

Well, I was actually refering to KP in addition to maelstrom or eternal war points, but that is not possible if you use PL points. Pure KP missions are so awful I don't think they are worth discussing.

In our group, in 7th, we actually played the three type of missions at the same time: eternal war (9 points total), maelstrom and KP (max +6 points). It was actually great, as you needed a versatile well rounded army, just capturing points or just killing would not grant you victory.

Yes it can work in complicated missions but at that point does little to curb MSU as the advantages on MSU in Maelstrom and EW missions generally trump the elite KP advantage.

So if you have maelstrom + KP max at 6, then I often find that is a wash for most matchups and gets maxed basically every game, then it is just an EW mission.

I think a revised Maelstrom could do just as well as having any KP as you could just reward points for killing units with certain objectives, at which point you don't really need KP at all.

Yes, I don't think that would work in 8th, in fact nothing involving KP will work. But some modified maelstrom (d3 changed to 2 and discarding unachievable objectives) or maelstrom + eternal war could work.

As we were saying, I think the "smalles to deploy goes first" rule is enough to deter MSU, and that's why I think it should stay as it is.

I actually think the small deploys first deters medium MSU, so not super elite, but not super MSU, I think you either decide to bank on going first, or you don't care at all and go super MSU to mitigate the effect of any alpha strike.

For Maelstrom I think you could actually modify the cards, so there could be a card where you got 1 VP per unit killed on a given turn, or in a given phase. I'd also like to see it be a little less random. Maybe instead of a maelstrom deck, you have a maelstrom hand, and you pick 3 to be in play at any one time, remove repeats for objective control, then combine it with EW. I think this would force more flexibility to be important, right now a lot of time Maelstrom ends up having a lot of luck because you get control the same objective twice in a row or similar.

I think it would be interesting tactically to decide, "This turn I think I can kill 4 units during my shooting phase, so I'll play that card."

It is strange to me that they went with the "first to deploy goes first" mechanic.

The part that's strange is that they it's actually really pretty good, taken without looking at the rest of 8th. The moment you add "split fire everything" in there, you've broken what you almost fixed.

That could have been the balance. "Sure you can have a four Knight list. Good luck only shooting at four things."

Instead, I can rock two baneblade chassis, pretty much always going first, and still have an effective army. Hell, I could just do what everyone threatens and pack the Banehammer or whatever it was called full of lascannons and heavy bolters and actively shoot decent weapons at your entire army while you can't do a thing.

 daedalus wrote:
It is strange to me that they went with the "first to deploy goes first" mechanic.

The part that's strange is that they it's actually really pretty good, taken without looking at the rest of 8th. The moment you add "split fire everything" in there, you've broken what you almost fixed.

That could have been the balance. "Sure you can have a four Knight list. Good luck only shooting at four things."

Instead, I can rock two baneblade chassis, pretty much always going first, and still have an effective army. Hell, I could just do what everyone threatens and pack the Banehammer or whatever it was called full of lascannons and heavy bolters and actively shoot decent weapons at your entire army while you can't do a thing.

Well that and multiple units riding in transports.

It's the reason two stormcrows work, so good. They are bristled with guns and you can split fire Twin-Mulitmelta (Armored Target 1), Twin-Assault Cannon (Infantry Unit 1), Missile 1 (Armored Target 2), Missile 2 (Armored Target 2 or 3), Hurricane Bolter 12 shots (Infantry Unit 2), Hurricane Bolter 12 shots (Infantry Unit 3).

With two of these you can completely cripple armies that work off some other gimmick, such as Ynarri.

In the case of Ynarri, if you drop every unit in their army to 1 or 2 models without killing a single unit. They might as well surrender.

Breng77 wrote:


Well that and multiple units riding in transports.

That's been an element of the game for at least a little while though, and isn't really that abusive as far as I can tell outside of the IG superheavies.

 daedalus wrote:

Breng77 wrote:


Well that and multiple units riding in transports.

That's been an element of the game for at least a little while though, and isn't really that abusive as far as I can tell outside of the IG superheavies.

It has never been part of the game where # of units deployed determines first turn. If not for that it doesn't really matter, but when you can basically MSU but also have 1/3rd or fewer the number of drops it is an advantage, especially since it isn't something that can be equally done across factions.

Going forward, here's an issue with changing how first turn is awared: GW is making rules, stratagems and units based on the idea that an army may start with first turn.

By changing how it is awarded, you are changing how those armies work, how their rules etc work. You could be invalidating lists, playstyles etc because of that.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Dont worry guys, AoS has you covered! Instead of rolling for the first round, you roll for every other round! That way the turn order can switch from round to round and add to the fun!

(sarcasm)

That's actually an old (and good) mechanic that introduces an element of uncertainty to the game. I prefer something more like alternating unit activations, or Bolt Action's draw system, but UGO-IGO isn't exactly the pinnacle of game design, and hardly a reason to try and piss on AoS for varying it.

Since I worry about you silly tournament people coming in and potentially mucking up my very serious game of giant robots being piloted by half-dead quadruple octogenarians, I ran some quick simulations on rolling off to go first with a bonus of +0 (straight rolloff) to +5 (player who finishes first always goes first unless seized). I could work out the full math, but I don't see it changing anyone's opinion so I'm not really convinced it's worth the effort over a quick program.

Below are the probabilities of going first, given that you finish deploying first.

In all cases, both players roll off to see who goes first. In the case of a tie (after modifiers) both players reroll until one player rolls higher (after modifiers). After the roll, the player who rolled lower may choose to attempt to seize by rolling a 6; if they do not roll a 6, they may spend a command point to attempt to seize again.

The rulebook case where the first player to finish deploying goes first corresponds to a bonus of +5 (since her roll is at least 6, her opponent's roll is at most 6, and they reroll ties.)
The +0 bonus really is just a glorified coinflip. I mainly included it to make sure I didn't make any really stupid mistakes in my simulation.

I give probabilities assuming that either both or neither player will reroll their attempt to seize.

Bonus +0, No Reroll: 49.3%
Bonus +0, Reroll: 50.7%
Bonus +1, No Reroll: 62.4%
Bonus +1, Reroll: 57.5%
Bonus +2, No Reroll: 70.8%
Bonus +2, Reroll: 62.2%
Bonus +3, No Reroll: 76.9%
Bonus +3, Reroll: 65.8%
Bonus +4, No Reroll: 81.2%
Bonus +4, Reroll: 68.5%
Bonus +5, No Reroll: 83.0%
Bonus +5, Reroll: 69.4%

A +1 bonus doesn't really move you very far from a straight coinflip. Finishing deployment first is certainly advantageous, but probably not enough that it's worth taking into consideration when list building (you'd probably be better off trying to get more Command Points and just planning on rerolling your seize attempt if you need to.)

With a +4 bonus you may as well go with the rule as written from the rulebook. The only way for the player who finishes deploying first to *not* go first is to roll a 1 while his opponent rolls a 6, which will happen a little less than 3% of the time.

A bonus of +2 or +3 gives you a fairly substantial advantage, but not too overwhelming.

All that said, if you *really* want to tweak the goes first rules, I really like the idea of bidding command points. Each player writes down a secret bid of how many command points they are willing to spend in order to go first. Whoever bids the highest loses that many command points and goes first. The other player keeps all of their command points. In the case of a tie you just do a new round of secret bidding. This does give an advantage to MSU armies for going first, but it comes from the advantage they will already have from having more command points. Plus it replaces randomness with player choice, which I'm a fan of, especially for important game events.

It is looking like you did not account for Seize on the bonus +1.

For feth sake people... How about playing 8th edition from the book as it is. Stop trying to change gak. The codexes aren't even out and tournament organizers & players want to change things.

 oni wrote:
For feth sake people... How about playing 8th edition from the book as it is. Stop trying to change gak. The codexes aren't even out and tournament organizers & players want to change things.

8th Edition is a lot more balanced than previous editions (so far) but there are still issues with the rules and game interactions. While 8th strictly by-the-book is perfectly fine for most games, in the case of highly optimized competitive lists serious balance issues start to crop up.

Consider 3 Knights and Rowboat. Apart from a mirror match or 4 Knights, there is no list that I can think of that has fewer deployments. Knights are fast enough to traverse the board, can shoot into their own CC, and have a base large enough to bock enemies from contesting an objective if the Knight stands directly upon it. Three Knights and Girlyman is also one of the nastiest alpha-strikes in the game, and due to the way shooting works now MSU is no defence.

I would be much more likely to attend a tournament if I knew that I would have a chance to counter such a list by potentially going first. At the end of the day, TOs aren't concerned about what lists will win. They are concerned with how many people they can get to attend the event. The more the rule set for the tournament is balanced to give the largest number of potential armies a chance at winning, the larger the attendance a tournament can expect.

 oni wrote:
For feth sake people... How about playing 8th edition from the book as it is. Stop trying to change gak. The codexes aren't even out and tournament organizers & players want to change things.

I exalted this post. Not only is it jumping the gun, it invariably creates other issues.

Having said that, I'm confident that lots of monkeying will take place for a variety of selfish reasons rather than the overall good of the game.

MVBrandt wrote:
It is looking like you did not account for Seize on the bonus +1.

Nope, it's in there. Double checked while I was stuck in a waiting room.

Without rerolls, you have a 105/186 chance to roll higher and not get seized or a 10/186 chance to roll lower and seize. So 115/186, or about 61.8% .

With rerolls, you have a 525/1116 chance to roll higher and not get seized, a 60/1116 to roll lower and seize on the first try, and a 50/1116 chance to roll lower and seize on the second try. So 635/1116 or about 56.9%.

 gorgon wrote:

 oni wrote:
For feth sake people... How about playing 8th edition from the book as it is. Stop trying to change gak. The codexes aren't even out and tournament organizers & players want to change things.

I exalted this post. Not only is it jumping the gun, it invariably creates other issues.

Having said that, I'm confident that lots of monkeying will take place for a variety of selfish reasons rather than the overall good of the game.

They want to change it because it makes sense and the GW way of doing it really only works for a narrative campaign or the like.

It is too early to really say with only one codex out so far.

I am starting to think that shooting phase should be a joint phase where both sides units take turns shooting. So, player 1 chose a unit and fires everything that unit can fire. Then player 2 chose a unit and fires everything, and then back to player 1. And they continue until all shooting is concluded.

Then we move to other phases.

General Hobbs wrote:


Going forward, here's an issue with changing how first turn is awared: GW is making rules, stratagems and units based on the idea that an army may start with first turn.

By changing how it is awarded, you are changing how those armies work, how their rules etc work. You could be invalidating lists, playstyles etc because of that.

I am starting to agree with Hobbs on this one.

The less drops = going first mechanic is actually a very big part of the game. Looking at the base rules design and how army composition can be created as well as the new codexes with its abundance of stratigems i am starting to move in the direction that we might be effecting a huge part of the game and creating a different type of meta...one that is no better than the prior.


GW..has so far proven that they seem to want to address problems with the game via Faq. The going first mechanic has been addressed in part by the flyer nerf. Codexes and future faqs should adrees them further. Maybe we need to stop messing with the base part of the game and let things settle out.

I don't even think there was a vote for this change... simply an "executive" decision due to lobbying from certain players.

: /

 Primark G wrote:
I don't even think there was a vote for this change... simply an "executive" decision due to lobbying from certain players.

: /

It was made by tournament organizers who feared losing out on many entrants because the "drop" system is too abusable...

Hold on, lets not get too mad about this change. It was made for legitimate concerns about the meta at the time.

A lot of things have changed recently:

1. 31 power was banned, which if you are an army using a 31 power unit you are, necessarily, not going to have much else.
2. Flyer spam has been weakened. It needs to be weakened further (they shouldnt be able to block wounds for chars) but otherwise its on the downward trend of OP'ness in a very clever way.
3. We now have better progressive missions.

The combination of these new factors and the fact that knights arnt tearing up the meta means that we can re-evaluate this ruling and hopefully vote on it soon.

I dont think its healthy to view the initial ruling with suspicion or anger, they are just trying to keep things balanced as best as they can listening to all our doom and gloom. It's best to just evaluate how things are NOW, post BAO, and see if we still need the change.

Personally, I would prefer we instead go back to the BRB and allow command points be used for seize re-rolls.

Largo39 wrote:
Hold on, lets not get too mad about this change. It was made for legitimate concerns about the meta at the time.

A lot of things have changed recently:

1. 31 power was banned, which if you are an army using a 31 power unit you are, necessarily, not going to have much else.

Did ITC implement this ?

Yep!

Also there is the fact that the Reecius/TOs all played with the CODICIES< not just the indicies. So the meta they are talking about is the one we arnt seeing yet.

Part of why the FAQs came out so quick is because that was probably the original notes/questions the playtesters had when they were starting out this process.

We're like 4-5 months behind having the same questions they did.

 zedsdead wrote:

Largo39 wrote:
Hold on, lets not get too mad about this change. It was made for legitimate concerns about the meta at the time.

A lot of things have changed recently:

1. 31 power was banned, which if you are an army using a 31 power unit you are, necessarily, not going to have much else.

Did ITC implement this ?

The BAO used a ban on single models of 31 power level or more. SO for example you can still take a unit of 6 Kastellan Robots with PL 36, but you cannot take a Stompa with PL 49

I don't know - even with playtester knowledge, I'm not a big fan of changing the "who goes first" rule like that. I have to think on it some more, but would've liked to default to the base rules unless it really, really had to be changed (and have that be borne out in tournaments first).

In one of the meta threads, people were discussing swarms being nuts and just not being seen yet because folks have to get them all painted first. This would naturally counter that becoming the dominant meta in some ways. I'm not a fan of uber low model count armies either, but again feel like it should have a chance to be shown as broken (if it really is) before being changed!

I know the first 8th edition tournies had to act quickly, but we shouldn't diverge from the rules too much unless it's absolutely needed going forward.

The items that became obviously broken was Flyers being used in a non-standard way. IE. Making an entire army of nothing but flyers.

The going first by low model count only became an issue really because of Flyers plus split-fire. Stormravens put out so much firepower, that 5 of them can easily cripple an opponents army before they even get to move.

Changing the rules to not allow flyers to count towards models in play. And possibly banning the 3-5 flyer formation. Would fix that issue entirely.

That leaves you with Brimstone Horror swarm. Scion formations and the mythic 4 knight armies.

The last one is far to easy to destroy as any army taking 9+ lascannons will tell you.

I am going to cast my vote for keeping the go-first rules as written by GW. Without the ability to tactically minimize drops, some armies just get blown off the table. Adding a "+1 to go first" rather than keeping the actual rules, just balances in favor of the armies that don't mind going second anyway. I am not sure if this was included in an ITC poll (do those guys even do polls anymore?), but it should be and my vote would be to keep things as GW intended!