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 ingtaer wrote:

There is a topic here and its not discussing other posters. Remember the rules and please stick to them.

Thanks,
ingtaer.

If you look at OPs body of work, you’d see a pattern of using supposed Twitter statements, Facebook “discussions”, always unlinked, to gak on AoS and AoS competitive gamers, the alleged users on twitter and facebook as a proxy to hide behind if he’s called on it.

His own statements in this very thread contradict each other and don’t make sense if you parse them out. Dude is a troll who cries “personal attack” whenever someone points it out.

And its a shame too, because I used to respect his opinions.

Imo, summoning shouldn’t even be free. It’s disgusting in some armies, being able to add an extra 500+ points of units in some cases. At smaller point games, summoning is even worse. It needs to be changed back to costing points but making it an easier roll to get them in, instead of how it used to be (it was too hard to be worth it).

Same goes for battalions. You should never just get free advantages over someone else. Models that cost the same for gaining a mount are also an example and should be altered to cost more for a mounted version of the model.

7th ed was horrific with free formations and I hope to never see any GW game go that way again, and I sincerely hope summoning is changed back as well.

I am doubtful that they will change anything on the summoning front. I think summoning being "free" could be "ok" if they were to curb the excesses and then there are other armies like nurgle where their summoning just doesn't scale at all and is really powerful at the lower levels.

auticus wrote:
I am doubtful that they will change anything on the summoning front. I think summoning being "free" could be "ok" if they were to curb the excesses and then there are other armies like nurgle where their summoning just doesn't scale at all and is really powerful at the lower levels.

I agree, free summoning is fun -when it is within reason.- The problem is twofold; summoning that is too strong, and summoning that does not scale well. Nurgle is a great example of the latter; at 2k it's pretty reasonable (barring the impractical horty battalion build) but at 1k it is the same amount.

I'm one of the people who put the different ways to play in a blender. Sometimes we use points, sometimes we care about battle line, sometimes we don't. Sometimes we pay for endless spells, sometimes we don't.

I've noticed that the event points matched play type games aren't necessarily more balanced as any other game we play. It seems to really, really come down on what someone spends their points on an how much synergy they get out of their selections.

If a battalion bonus contributes to the army's overall plan, then they're usually worth the points but if it doesn't then they're usually not. Just like any unit's ability. It's like a hero that helps units fight better standing next to a shooting unit.

The whole ideal of matched play only really works when both players take the same approach, both have about equal skill in list design and both are working from the same foundation in terms of overall battletome power level.

This is also why multi round swiss style tournaments work. Game after game sorts people into the bottom and top tables. Some of the most "balanced" games of AoS will be in the last round of an event, regardless of where you are in table numbers.

Where it can really fail is when someone is starting at a much stronger starting point (say Daughters of Khaine or Grand Host of Nagash) vs a much weaker one (grand alliance Chaos to play all the different skaven clans together or something). Then add in priorities in list building and you'll have one player with a command trait or spell that enables a massive increase in power and another with something that sounded cool. In that environment, points for battalions is going to be too little too late anyway.

On the tournament side of things, it actually doesn't really matter as the events rely on the swiss sorting to solve the inherent imbalance in matched play. The illusion that matched play helps make balance is compensated for with the swiss structure. Similarly in a local group of players, an arms race can accomplish the same thing. Or the refusal to participate in one.

I started playing the Keyforge card game and it has random procedural generated decks (your deck comes as a single pack) where no two decks are the same. Again, swiss events sort people into balanced final round or two games. The end result is that there are overlapping distributions of good deck + good player all the way down to bad deck + bad player. I believe there are quadrillions of possible decks in Keyforge so balance is impossible without some sort of sorting method. If two people each got a deck and just played game after game, they'd have to be very lucky to have a balanced game. I have since stopped playing keyforge as the game is about buying deck after deck until you get lucky.

So if we assume that the people who go to swiss paired AoS events enjoy themselves and what they do, then I think they should keep points for battalions. It's another decision making point based on evaluating if something is "worth the points" and any balance failure will get sorted out in swiss pairings.

It's what they want, so they should have it.

Great post.

FWIW I am in the main AOS Facebook group and I don't recall seeing any discussion of this or a link to TGA. I don't follow anyone on Twitter. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't be discussed. Auticus is one of the few highly intelligent posters here who will say things as they are and not just gush over the latest GW model and say how the game is the most amazing thing ever, and too often he gets flack for that by the GW fanboys for not towing the party line (e.g. this is the reason he was banned from TGA; the pro-GW owner and staff there want it to be the unofficial GW forums since they know the GW staff and have them view the board, so silence any criticism). Many of his ideas are sound and rooted in actual theory and fact.

Anyways on topic I don't think they need to be free, but I do think they need to revert the high-end cost of them. Many of them simply aren't worth anywhere near the points you have to pay for them. This is roughly the same problem that Warmahordes had with their old theme forces in Mk2: The drawbacks for the vast majority of theme forces made them simply not worth taking at all, while the handful of them that were good were so good that you always saw them because the benefit greatly outweighed the drawbacks, and a handful had no meaningful drawbacks at all.

The issue is if they are free the really good ones become even better, and the really bad ones become acceptable. If they cost points then the really good ones are kept in line but the poor ones (of which there are a lot, especially the mega battalions) are never seen in Matched Play and so might as well not exist at all.

So what are battalions actually for?

"If you wish, you can organise the units in your army into a special type of formation by using a warscroll battalion. Doing so will give you access to additional abilities that can be used by the units in the battalion."

Organization and abilities (including command points and extra artefacts).

My more casual minded friends use them for the first part. We actually have chosen what unit to build and paint based on whether or not it will fill out a battalion. For example, a mortis engine/coven throne/bloodseeker palanquin was built as the worst option-- the palanquin-- because it was part of the battalion. Most matched play people probably aren't going to do something like that.

With command points costing 50 points a pop, that's probably a minimum for the battalions. Then there's the aretefact, the single drop during deployment and the the abilities themselves. And yet, no one who plays in events is going to pay the 110 points for the Court of Nulahmia. The abilities might actually be worth the 60 points over a command point, but the inclusion of the palanquin means it's a non starter for tournament minded people.

So not only do the battalions themselves need to be costed, they need to be costed based on the opportunity cost of the items inside of them.

Good luck GW.

GW should probably take a look at all the lists for the top half of tournaments they can get their hands on since the launch of AoS2. And note every battallion used by lists that finished in the top half-- paying special attention to any battalions present in the top tables themselves. Then cut the rest in price by half or more. Then wait and watch and review again in six months. They're never going to get them right, but they could probably get them to be better.

Yeah, originally I liked the idea of battalions as something you could build towards; I also liked 7th edition Formations (before they went crazy) for the same reason. It became a "shopping list" of sorts e.g. I have 1 of these and if I get 2 more and this other unit I can get a nice little buff for fielding things I like.

When they cost points that interest dropped a bit because it became a matter of justifying them and when the cost doubled or more across the board that became even more because now you could sometimes get a full extra unit for the price of a battalion. In many cases, the battalion's cost was not worth the price when you could add another unit.

Of course, my primary armies are Flesh-Eater Courts and Maggotkin of Nurgle so there are only like maybe 2 battalions worth even considering.

I think a big thing is that the battalions are not properly costed. They are for the most part not "optimal" and thus ignored by a lot of people.

The bonus synergy abilities I'm fine with, so long as there is some type of cost or negative for taking them so that its not just an obvious take. (that was 7th edition 40k's death knell to me there was no negative, you always went for the freebies or you couldn't get a good game against an opponent that was likely going to be doing exactly that)

Free summoning kind of set a precedent again where a few factions could really benefit from these "free points" where making battallions also free is at least on a minor level something that some people desire. It looks like that that opinion is not in the majority so thats cool to note.

I think they need to drop the "deploy as one" thing, that alone seems to be a big reason why you see battalions taken, and now with 2.0 there is also the extra CP which just like in 40k is becoming more and more valuable.

With the impact of double turn and the benefits for finishing first in deployment to get to possibly control that double turn, I'd absolutely agree with that.

Personally I like the fact that battalions deploy all at once. If anything I would change first turn to a role off and give first to deploy victory in a tie.

auticus wrote:I am doubtful that they will change anything on the summoning front. I think summoning being "free" could be "ok" if they were to curb the excesses and then there are other armies like nurgle where their summoning just doesn't scale at all and is really powerful at the lower levels.

I haven't played in ages. I thought Age of Sigmar 2.0 became properly balanced and minis were costed correctly in what they can do. So I thought when a unit can summon free stuff he costed way more points because of this. This way, you are at a disadvantage in the early game, mid game, are on about equal footing and then end game is where you would have more free points.

Is this not the case? Did GW go back to GW of old just so people will jump on the "easy or easier" armies so they can become game jocks? ( I don't mean that in a belittling way, but someone who basically plays to win) Wow, I really missed a lot as of late.

Personally I don't think battalions should come without a cost, but I feel that they shouldn't cost points. To me it seems counter intuitive to have a miniatures game where you put a serious number of points into something that has no visual representation in the game at all.

Yes a battalion has units that comprise it, but you can take those same units without the battalion plus likely another hero or unit instead of the battalion.



I can see logic in linking it to points, it keeps things simple and easy to follow, however most battalions are already hungry on points in terms of the models required to take them. If you took them out of points you'd still likely not see a huge update of them because you're still paying a "unit" tax to field them.

Personally I'd rather see things like command points and battalions as their own separate points system. Perhaps 1 "point" per 500 army points with the option to take 1 battalion or a command point. That's simple, scales with the army size and introduces a cost whilst at the same time helping players put down full armies and more actual models on the table rather than wanting to hold off on a couple of hundred points for additional benefit.s



Keep them costed, but shift the cost away from army points into something else and reserve army points for putting models down on the table.

Davor wrote:

auticus wrote:I am doubtful that they will change anything on the summoning front. I think summoning being "free" could be "ok" if they were to curb the excesses and then there are other armies like nurgle where their summoning just doesn't scale at all and is really powerful at the lower levels.

I haven't played in ages. I thought Age of Sigmar 2.0 became properly balanced and minis were costed correctly in what they can do. So I thought when a unit can summon free stuff he costed way more points because of this. This way, you are at a disadvantage in the early game, mid game, are on about equal footing and then end game is where you would have more free points.

Is this not the case? Did GW go back to GW of old just so people will jump on the "easy or easier" armies so they can become game jocks? ( I don't mean that in a belittling way, but someone who basically plays to win) Wow, I really missed a lot as of late.

Summoning is most definitely not balanced. I didn't see models get overcost because they can summon. In the best of cases, summoning is kind of just meh. Those cases, while not "balanced" in the strictest sense of the word, don't tip the game over into listbuilding wiins. In the worst of cases if you aren't also summoning with your opponent then you are at a severe disadvantage. From a casual non-tournament standpoint, the Legion of Nagash's abilities to return dead units back and things like the lizardmen summoning batteries are game-over if you can't match them or play a certain way. People say they are ok simply because "they aren't winning tournaments" but most people at the LGS aren't playing in tournaments, they are just playing in pick ups or what not.

Then there's summoning that is meh at one end of the spectrum but broken at the other other points spectrum (like nurgle whose summoning doesn't scale at all and at lower point values is gross but at tournament standard level is ok).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Personally I'd rather see things like command points and battalions as their own separate points system. Perhaps 1 "point" per 500 army points with the option to take 1 battalion or a command point. That's simple, scales with the army size and introduces a cost whilst at the same time helping players put down full armies and more actual models on the table rather than wanting to hold off on a couple of hundred points for additional benefit.s

The big problem with this approach is that not all battalions are created equal, but if you make them cost the same resources, you have effectively created a ton of false choices and traps because the best ones now cost the same as the worst ones so guess which ones will always get picked?

Additionally with them granting extra artifacts etc it has become almost like 7th ed 40k. If you don't have a bangin formation/battalion, you are playing at a serious disadvantage if your opponent picked an army that does.

My example was purely simplistic. You could easily take that same system and have some Battalions cost 1 point and some cost 2.

The key is that its a points system just like they have now, but instead of making it complete with models you make it complete with other non-visual elements such as command points.

Of course with my suggested approach the free command point per battalion would, obviously, go away.

That could work with the costing, but still leaves you stuck with the original issue of the armies that have the sweet battalions that tip the game over on its head being chosen over the armies that do not.

They'd also have to revisit every battalion to curb the abuse before that could be introduced without continuing on the path they currently tread of a wide array of the game being not playable if one of the two players at the table is running a tournament powered list.

Yes but those issues would be potentially present no matter the balancing system; they are a function of balancing approach and skill of writers and testing as well as their overall intentions, budget, timeslots and the like.

Thats also true. I don't have faith in the gw design team however getting something like that right.