I have largely stepped out of the
GW-universe for right now. We wrapped up our
AOS campaign a few weeks ago and afterward I got a review from all of our players.
The campaign was mostly successful but there was some frustration at some of the power builds running rampant, particularly with "stormcast teleporting all around the table and doling out so many mortal wounds" and the "spam summoning lizardmen and undead". Bearing in mind this was supposed to be a casual campaign and that the bad balance was wrecking that for a good chunk of the games that caused a cold war to erupt with lists turning into tournament lists to avoid being stomped. This led to lists becoming "sameish" and is what I consider "mono building" where you are only seeing a tiny portion of the overall game because the same power combinations are recognized and being used. Had this been a tournament the complaints would have been non existent since one expects that kind of thing at a tournament or playing highly competitive
AOS.
To be clear my same balance issues exist in
40k as well. Were going to be doing Killteam in January - April so will get to see where the balance is with that game at a smaller scale. The
40k system right now is ... well... a wash right now.
It is my genuine hope that the next
GHB offers some legit balancing that broadens the mono builds a bit. I know people have lashed out at that response from me and said tournaments were the most diverse ever and so the balance was fine, but I just don't agree at least from a local scope where we are trying to do non tournament level casual campaigns.
The "mono builds" (its easy to nitpick that word, there are factions like stormcast that actually have 2-3 very
OP strong builds not just one as the word mono implies) are something that is acknowledged, at least in my neck of the woods, as business as usual, and I'd really like to see more variety and actual decisions be put into the game, both at the list building level since that is to me never going away in terms of how impactful it will be in the
GW universe, and in the game (which right now we have a lot of what I consider false-choices, and the games I have been a part of the entire year have largely been sameish once you learn what the real choices should be and avoid the traps and false choices)
Steady balance should indeed be their goal. I'd like the design team to acknowledge how they go about that so that discussions are less speculation and more driven by the developers input.
My next
AOS game is set to be the fall of 2019 after I spend a good chunk of time in the kings of war universe and ranked mass battles (what I honestly prefer and what got me into the fantasy tabletop gaming scene in the first place back in the 1990s), so the new
GHB will be out then and I'll look with some cautious optimism at what they have done with the new
GHB then and the game overall.
I will at least be painting the new slaanesh stuff as I want to use that in my new army.
Automatically Appended Next Post: That said I do think we can all agree that most people identify most with the army(ies) they are playing at present. They want that army to be strong; to be well supported with lore, models, attention from GW; to win tournaments etc...
I agree. When I was powergaming
WHFB from 99 - 2006, I was fine with the system... because my favorite faction was always
OP (chaos and vampire counts).
I was full bore into the tournament scene, into making it a world championship event, etc... but because I was engaged with my chosen faction not being a wet noodle and being able to dominate people with the list.
Had my chosen faction(s) been weak or middling but not able to be
OP and let me compete and win tournaments or place high in
GTs as I was... i don't think I would have invested as heavily into the game and I probably wouldn't have lasted long.