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This is probably just a crazy conspiracy theory, but the last two fantasy books (Lizards and High Elves) seemed to be - to a small extent - hard counters for other books/aspects. High Elves had several options to give daemons a hard time (Alarielle/BotWD), while Lizards seem to have a lot of tools to deal with multi wound models (Carnosaur/pirahna blade/Stegadon upgrade)

Was this a design choice? or just something I've happened to pick up on, or am I just picking up on certain aspects, when there are others in the new books that combat other books/troop types...?

Assuming it was intended, I quite like this direction (except the Banner of the World Dragon was a step too far). It seems the designers have carried on with the "We don't design for tournaments" line they put out and are trying to make the books different. and now it feels like the armies play like their fluff, rather than every army having the same tools. I can see this probably annoys serious tournament gamers.

However in an attempt to make all the books different they are making them more the same. High Elves, dark elves, beastmen, Lizardmen all have a special rule that applies to all/most of the units. (Speed of Asuryan, hatred, Primal Fury, Primal Fighter - or whatever the new lizardmen one is called). All these special rules grant a re-roll to hit in combat (all under slightly different cirumstances though). While I liked all these to begin with, now they seem a tad boring and stagnant

Questions:

- Who likes these directions?
- Is this another divide in the Fluff V WAAC discussion?

I'm not convinced it is a move in that direction but if it is I hate it, rock paper scissors lists is what drove me away from 40k and into fantasy in the first place.

That's what I dislike about 40k, but more along the lines of if you don't bring the scissors you'll never beat the paper. Whereas in fantasy that is less of a problem, whatever tools you bring still have a shot. Movement still makes a huge difference to nullifying a target you'd otherwise struggle with.

And at least from the tournament point of view, with fantasy, bringing Alarielle, the BotWD etc isn't going to help you with your match up against majority of the armies out there. So balanced lists aren't going to be weighted so much that they will always crush a particular army.

It just seemed for a while that every army was being re-written to include a monster, monstrous infantry/cav, a support character, fast cavalry. So every "balanced" army essentially looked the same. Where is the fun in that

Triple_double_U wrote:
That's what I dislike about 40k, but more along the lines of if you don't bring the scissors you'll never beat the paper. Whereas in fantasy that is less of a problem, whatever tools you bring still have a shot. Movement still makes a huge difference to nullifying a target you'd otherwise struggle with.

And at least from the tournament point of view, with fantasy, bringing Alarielle, the BotWD etc isn't going to help you with your match up against majority of the armies out there. So balanced lists aren't going to be weighted so much that they will always crush a particular army.

It just seemed for a while that every army was being re-written to include a monster, monstrous infantry/cav, a support character, fast cavalry. So every "balanced" army essentially looked the same. Where is the fun in that

I'm sorry, but bringing Alarielle + BotWD + Banner of Averlorn and slapping them into a White Lion unit is about as angry a Deathstar as there is... +8 to-cast her Life magic, a 5++ vs mundane stuff and a 2++ vs anything magical in nature? Oh, and of course you'd be daft not to add the complimentry Lv2 High Mage w/Ring of Fury to help build on the basic 5++ save Alarielle gives the unit.
Plus Immune to Fear/Terror & Ld10 Stubborn?

Give me a break.
An Alarielle army is just as outright broken and stupid as an Epidemius list is.



At least with Lizzies, anyone fielding those multi-wound models can counter them. (Lizzies tend to have across the board low initiative, meaning plenty of tricks to play against them) I wouldn't call that a built-in hard-counter or rock/papper/scissors type of design. Anyone fielding lots of big stuff can deal with the Lizzies ability to play-up the 'I inflict multiple wounds with lots of stuff'.

A Daemons player vs BotWD however? You need a tailored list and near perfect play and/or to get outrageously lucky casting an instant kill spell at those elves to really stand any kind of chance.

There are definitely tough units in fantasy, but all of these anti-death star complaints are just silly.

There is no paper, rock, scissors in fantasy.

There are so many tactical moves you can make based upon terrain, list design, etc. that one unit, no matter how tough is just not going to get the job done.

Yeah, you're making mountains out of molehills here.

For HE, the BotW (with or without Allarielle) is just a stupidly designed item, due to the fact it's nigh impossible for Daemons to beat it. I very much doubt this was intended to be a hard counter to Daemons. If we take Daemons out of the equation, a 2+ ward against magical attacks for 50pts is perfectly reasonable. It's just a shame that it was overlooked that ALL Daemons have magical attacks.

And as for your claim that Lizardmen have tool to give multi-wound models a tough time. That's just ridiculous. Why? Lizardmen don't have cannons. It's armies like Dwarves and Empire that give multi-wound models a tough time, and have been doing so for many years.

As for the "making all the things the same" comment, whilst it's true to an extent, this is a tabletop wargame that uses dice. There are only so many advantages one can give to something, that use dice. Re-rolls is just a common way of adding in an advantage.

 Atlantic wrote:
There are definitely tough units in fantasy, but all of these anti-death star complaints are just silly.

There is no paper, rock, scissors in fantasy.

There are so many tactical moves you can make based upon terrain, list design, etc. that one unit, no matter how tough is just not going to get the job done.

The complaints are entirely valid... Deathstars take little skill to use are tediously boring to play against. Typically in a game involving a Deathstar build/s the game becomes one of two senarios;
a) You have the tools to easily counter the Deathstar unit. ie: against an Ogre Gutstar, if you have Purple Sun and cast it on them, you likely win a near-instant crushing victory due to their low initiative & wrapping half or more of their army into that one unit.

b) You do not have the tools to hand and are forced to simply play "avoidancehammer" for 5-6 turns while picking on the couple of units you can easily wipe.

No matter what, the game is mindnumbingly dull as it's either a foregone conclusion as to the outcome, or else you spend 2 hours running around doing almost nothing and watching maybe 500-600pts or so being killed.
Deathstars & 6-dicing the FTW spells needs to go away. Both are seen as the biggest failings of 8th edition.


And while Fantasy may not be nearly as rock/paper/scissors/tactical nuke as 40k is, it does indeed exist. If it didn't, then we wouldn't be seeing issues like Pit/Purple Sun vs I2 armies, or BotWD vs Daemons, or Ogres/WoC vs WE's and such things.

Keep in mind that while forums are typically geared towards a more competitive mindset, the vast majority of games are NOT! Tournament style games.
Sure, in a highly competitive setting you might really enjoy the challenge of avoiding the unit of 'uber doom. But we all know that people don't just keep their nasty Deathstar lists exclusively for competition.
Hence why Deathstars & rock/paper/scissors design is so awful - because it leads to games where only side is having fun. Most gamers won't be able to go and instantly tweak/tailor their list to combat the nasty power builds, and in some cases, some people don't want to change their lists because (shockingly enough) they only build/game with the models & units they like!

Overall 8th has been doing a better job of keeping the power creep to a minimum, but the OK & WoC books have a couple of problem units, while the difference in quality between Daemons & HE's is absolutely shocking in how bad they are.

 The Shadow wrote:
Yeah, you're making mountains out of molehills here.

For HE, the BotW (with or without Allarielle) is just a stupidly designed item, due to the fact it's nigh impossible for Daemons to beat it. I very much doubt this was intended to be a hard counter to Daemons. If we take Daemons out of the equation, a 2+ ward against magical attacks for 50pts is perfectly reasonable. It's just a shame that it was overlooked that ALL Daemons have magical attacks.

It's been pointed out numerous times, but BotWD is definitely far too good against everyone for just 50pts...
The Miscast protection alone is reason enough to take it. Stopping almost all fighter Lords/Heroes dead in their tracks is a happy little bonus. Then it also pays for itself exponentially vs the likes of Skaven, Dwarfs, VC's & WoC who tend to run a heavy magical shooting phase and/or can bring entire units of magical attacks that would otherwise just run those elves over.

By the same token, if BotWD is badly designed just on the negating of almost all miscast damage alone, then Pink Horrors are even worse!
Who cares about the so-called consequences of 6-dicing/miscasting when the only downside is taking 2-12/S10 hits that still allow ward saves?! (and even that is pointless, since you'll add back models to the unit through the kills you've inflicted on the enemy!)

If 6-dicing killer spells is seen as a problem, then GW should be helping to discourage it by ensuring that the risk is almost always worse than the reward, not the other way around!

I just don't believe any of what you wrote.

There are always tough match ups and there are always units and items that are either extremely powerful or not so much.

It all comes down to how you approach the game - period.

The movement phase makes all the difference

Experiment 626 wrote:

 The Shadow wrote:
Yeah, you're making mountains out of molehills here.

For HE, the BotW (with or without Allarielle) is just a stupidly designed item, due to the fact it's nigh impossible for Daemons to beat it. I very much doubt this was intended to be a hard counter to Daemons. If we take Daemons out of the equation, a 2+ ward against magical attacks for 50pts is perfectly reasonable. It's just a shame that it was overlooked that ALL Daemons have magical attacks.

It's been pointed out numerous times, but BotWD is definitely far too good against everyone for just 50pts...
The Miscast protection alone is reason enough to take it. Stopping almost all fighter Lords/Heroes dead in their tracks is a happy little bonus. Then it also pays for itself exponentially vs the likes of Skaven, Dwarfs, VC's & WoC who tend to run a heavy magical shooting phase and/or can bring entire units of magical attacks that would otherwise just run those elves over.

By the same token, if BotWD is badly designed just on the negating of almost all miscast damage alone, then Pink Horrors are even worse!
Who cares about the so-called consequences of 6-dicing/miscasting when the only downside is taking 2-12/S10 hits that still allow ward saves?! (and even that is pointless, since you'll add back models to the unit through the kills you've inflicted on the enemy!)

If 6-dicing killer spells is seen as a problem, then GW should be helping to discourage it by ensuring that the risk is almost always worse than the reward, not the other way around!

I'm not getting into ANOTHER BotWD argument. This isn't what this thread's about.

I think all wargaming is a matter of rock/paper/scissors, at least to some degree. Using one kind of unit to counter another kind of unit, while being countered by something else is pretty much the way strategic games work- think the Total War games for example. Cavalry counters archers, archers can take out spearmen, spearmen kill cavalry. How you use these units is what makes the game challenging.
Admittedly armies having specific counters solely to counter one army does smack of poor game design. It's all a matter of balance.

Az

Most of the hatred (race) seems to be fluff centered. Lizardmen have several ways to get hatred (skaven) and dwarfs have Hatred (O&G) because of the constant battling between the two within the fluff. In general I'm fine with this because having hatred to one specific army usually isn't an effective use of points.

Lizardmen need the D3 wound causing ability because they lack artillery. They only have 1 bolt thrower and it costs 210 points to get it. Cannons, Stone Throwers, and Bolt Throwers from other armies can easily out perform what lizardmen can put out.

BotWD is just a badly designed item.

I do really like different armies having army unique abilities that affect most of the models. It makes the armies more unique in how they play. VC and TK have their undead stuff, Ogres have ogre charge, Empire has detachments, Lizardmen have predatory fighter, HE have ASF, DE have hatred everything, etc.

Aben Zin wrote:
I think all wargaming is a matter of rock/paper/scissors, at least to some degree. Using one kind of unit to counter another kind of unit, while being countered by something else is pretty much the way strategic games work- think the Total War games for example. Cavalry counters archers, archers can take out spearmen, spearmen kill cavalry. How you use these units is what makes the game challenging.
Admittedly armies having specific counters solely to counter one army does smack of poor game design. It's all a matter of balance.

Az

That's not really rock/paper/scissors so much as it is 'advantage vs disadvantage' or 'strength vs weakness'

In a game, while infantry for example might be at a disadvantage/be weak against say monstrous units, there are ways to mitigate how much of a disadvantage they face.
ie: you can rank yourself deeper to gain Steadfast, while reducing your frontage to prevent all those big guys from fighting... and/or cast an Augment on your unit to make them tougher/better or cast a Hex on the enemy unit to bring their stats down to more or less equal your basic infantry guys.

A rock/paper/scissors match however typically has only a set counter that works.
ie: Ogre Gutstar w/Runemaw is lamented because right away offensive magic is near useless outside of Purple Sun - if you don't have that spell and/or the ability to force through at least 2-3+ Augments of your own, your unit/s will likely lose badly.

Same deal if you give an army access to something like BotWD - it's basically 'paper' to the Daemon's 'rock'. (and forces them to bring out a specific list to try and play 'scissors')

Imagine if for example Dark Elves were next given a magical cod-piece that gave that character & their entire unit something like "all models with the Martial Prowess rule require 6's to-hit, 6's to-wound & must re-roll all their successful saves vs the character & unit due to being intimidated by the Dark Elf player's immense manhood!"
It would be just as bad since now High Elf players would be forced to bring a very specific counter to deal with such a unit/build.

Strengths/inherent weaknesses are fine. Being completely hard-countered to the point of facing a huge uphill battle just to compete is not.

Experiment 626 wrote:


Imagine if for example Dark Elves were next given a magical cod-piece

I would immediately start a Dark Elf army as a magical cod-piece would be impossible to not have.

There are some rock/paper scissors builds out there but I don't believe that is the intent of the system/
It is the player that makes the game that way.
Someone made the comment about avoidance hammer to combat the deathstar..it's true it's not that fun but it is tactics and shows that rock can still beat paper.
And I don't see it as any less fun then 2 deathstars moving straight towards each other and seeing who rolls best.
We are given a game and we make the lists and play.
I find it ridiculous that we blame the game for the decisions we make.
My game group avoids deathstars the majority of times and our win loss ratios are quite even.

I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one who sees 40k as a thousand dollar way to play Paper Scissors Rock

I find it ridiculous that we blame the game for the decisions we make.

If the game creates an environment where boring one dimensional builds are encouraged in a competitive setting, then you'd better believe I'm going to blame those rules - because blaming the WAAC powergamers is a waste of time really.

 Dakkamite wrote:

I find it ridiculous that we blame the game for the decisions we make.

If the game creates an environment where boring one dimensional builds are encouraged in a competitive setting, then you'd better believe I'm going to blame those rules - because blaming the WAAC powergamers is a waste of time really.

While it is easy to blame poor wording/game design, I still lay the bulk of the blame on the players themselves...

For example, if you're going into a no-holds-bar Tournament that places emphasis first & foremost on winning, then fine, bring out every last drop of 'uber filth you can squeeze into a list. Such an event is designed around the unspoken agreement that by signing-up/paying your registration fee, you won't shed crocodile tears if/when you get completely stomped since the only objective is to crush the other guy & win some fancy prizes!
By the same token, if you're just playing at the local store on an open gaming night, you honestly should not be expecting 'Tournament Level' lists & attitudes to be an automatic given since you'll likely have all levels of gamer/hobbyist mingling about.

Thus, it is entirely the players' fault when you have things like a power gamer playing their same-old, same-old tournament list of doom and crushing the guy who brought a balanced TAC's or themed list to a friendly pick-up game.

Outside of tournaments/tournament prep, people should have the brains to realise they don't need to keep playing their same power lists, especially when there's nothing what-so-ever riding on the game beside having some fun & throwing dice about!
It can even be as simple a matter of the tournament list simply dropping the killer magic item and/or spell combos in exchange for a less ruthless build. For example, a Nurgle-heavy Daemon army can leave the Herald Locii ability/s at home and simply not take the Fencer's Blades on the GUO and perhaps exchange 1 of their Skullcannons for something else. Right there you've instantly gone from "Tournament Standard" and made your list much friendlier to non-optimised lists.

Just because you can game the system, doesn't mean you always should game the system!

Experiment 626's argument really only applies to a group of friends that are already like minded. Not everyone has the same views on how to play the game and therefore will use whatever the rules allow. If things can turn into a rock,paper, scissors style game when people make full use of the rules then it is the rules at fault for allowing it. This is why i do not play tournaments, things can get unfun very fast.

I want to point out that every game on earth is essentially some form of weakness vs. benefit.

If you could choose on a chess board to have all queens or a mix of rooks/bishops/queens, you're going to take queens. A game with no weakness vs. benefit is like checkers or tic tac toe.

REAL rock scissors paper is 100% success/failure when opposites pair. A rock will never ever beat paper. I like the game because that simply doesn't exist. A single Gnoblar can beat a Greater Daemon. It's just really really unlikely. Usually various "rocks" will have multiple counters, so different armies can use them and you're not forced to take certain things. Wizard is probably the closest thing to being forced to have something and that is for dispel purposes.

Are Lizardmen a hard counter to Ogres? I don't know, I'm on a trip and I have both Liz and Ogre books with me. I can't see Lizardmen ever walking over the fat boys just because of a few items/abilities.

 Atlantic wrote:
I just don't believe any of what you wrote.

I get that way too.

Even so, RPS 25 is good, we use it for office disputes, so. . .yes?

My wife and I use RPS to determine things like who washes the dishes.