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Removing the free lunch they get by making their feeding frenzy have a cost.

To be fair the Feeding Frenzy does cost if you are using Courts. You can only pick a Delusion if you are not running a specific Court. As nice Feast Day is I have found it much better to run a Specific Courts and run with those synergies.

I also think the Charnel Throne should be revised. Having it only make summoning free for two units(regents and non-dragon kings) is a really limited ability considering many other faction terrains. Would just like the throne changed completely.

 frozenwastes wrote:
So you see problems in the actual design and very little in the points costs. Wow.

One thing I've noticed about current GW design is that they have really moved away from negative traits. So I don't expect them to add a down side to feeding frenzy.

If you could change no rules and no warscrolls, do you think it's possible to correctly point cost them as is?

This is true, they have moved away from negative traits. Or really making any downside at all, essentially giving players all reward with no risk. I also feel that is an intentional design decision, and its one I strongly disagree with.

Well, they did add a negative trait to that Ferryman Endless Spell. Lose a model if you use it.

Thats true in that it can be a negative, but in how I'm seeing it being used (100%) is that the units being used to ferry are large blobs of murder units where losing a model is negligible.

But if you were using it on multi wound models that could be more of a cost. I am just not seeing it be used for that yet. Its being used to transport murder units like witch elves or demonettes or blood letters that have a lot of models over to insta charge turn 1 something so losing a model is meh.

Negative traits tend to be tricky and usually ends up with people just using the stuff that has no negative trait(unless the cheese is strong enough). Also, negative traits tend to fit card games better than miniature games in my opinion.

Now that I remember, 40k has a few negative traits of -1 to hit when using certain weapons. These items are only picked if you can cheese it properly(Smash captains come to mind).

Heavy armor comes to mind. In many games, and even in whfb past, heavy armor gave you a better save at the expense of movement.

It was immersive, made sense, and gave you a trade off.

Thats one example of a negative trait.

Great weapons were another. Increased damage at the expense of speed.

In AOS, great weapons just do more damage, have better rend... and cost nothing. So why would you never take them? No trade offs. You typically get less attacks but when you do the math it always seems more beneficial to have better rend and a damage stat over more attacks with no rend and 1 damage.

 auticus wrote:
Heavy armor comes to mind. In many games, and even in whfb past, heavy armor gave you a better save at the expense of movement.

It was immersive, made sense, and gave you a trade off.

Thats one example of a negative trait.

Great weapons were another. Increased damage at the expense of speed.

In AOS, great weapons just do more damage, have better rend... and cost nothing. So why would you never take them? No trade offs. You typically get less attacks but when you do the math it always seems more beneficial to have better rend and a damage stat over more attacks with no rend and 1 damage.

The less movement for better armor is now just built into the unit. Good example is Bloodreavers vs. Blood Warriors. With Great Weapons I assume you are talking about a very specific unit because most Great Weapons I think of tend to have limitations and/or their cost baked into the unit. For example you can only have one Great Weapon per 10 blood Warriors(ie. MSU-ing is not an option). There are some outliers that appear to be what you are talking about. One comes to mind such as the Slaugherpriest, but even there they've made it harder to decide which you prefer(barring of course whether you want your slaughterpriest in combat instead of Blood boiling). However, even if one setup has slightly better damage, the total potential damage output is the same(6) so it is more a question of what synergy you are going for.
Now, there are some systems which muddle things a bit. For example Gorefist and Bladed Buckler. Not exactly Great Weapons, but I have found people to favor one over the other(although with DoK it depends on how much boosting you are doing).

This is why I also think that negative traits tend to fit better into card games as there are more ways to apply negative traits(lose cards, reshuffle cards, give cards, lose monster, negative tokens, etc etc) than in AoS which has a very closed system(ie. you don't have much room to manipulate a unit before entering with it into the battlefield).

What I personally like about AoS is how units are in many ways normalized, ie. don't have too many setup options and that all costs are more or less built into that. Makes playing and collecting the game much relaxed for me.

I was just giving an example of options that had a negative consequence to taking them.

If some of the OP things running amuk had a consequence to using them, you could still design things over the top, its just that players would have to weigh the cost with the reward instead of it being all reward.

What are the units you see being flung forward with the boat?

1 wound model units that can do a fair amount of damage. Primarily as a sniper rifle to kill heroes or other high value monsters/units in the first turn.

I think I've seen the boat used now more than any other endless spell combined lol. It at least has the most utility of any of them. Shackles being the second most common.

The new deployment formations are to basically put your high value stuff clustered together and then encircle them with either your own garbage units or the units that aren't high value enough to put inside the circle to prevent this from happening.

Though we're only on week 2 now of the Boat. We shall see where we are in a month and then two months with it.

Yeah, turns out putting high value targets in the front with nothing protecting them is a bad idea.

Well yeah that would be stupid. I never really ever see anyone put high value targets up front.

But with things like the boat, front can be a 360 degree circle.

Can you describe an example of how such a thing worked? Because I just don't see it being a reliable option unless one is looking to capitalize on an opponent's mistake.

I played 1500 of stormcast on a 6x4 yesterday and I was able to make sure that 9" covered my back table edge and close enough to the sides that you really couldn't put the boat and unit there at all. At 2000 with any even moderately higher model count army you should be able to protect your rear/flank. I think the boat attack will be better turn 2 and on when enough models are removed (or have advanced) to leave a space.

Its used to force your opponent to deploy in a very specific way and if they don't, they will have their head tore off.

You have to employ the same type of deployment against stormcast should they decide to do the teleport half their army trick. Only now everyone gets to do it by spending 80 pts on the spell.

Because you can move after deploying, if there are any gaps at all in the formations, you can charge into pretty much anything you want.

If you had to stop 9" from the enemy like everything else, it wouldn't be as useful.

I know when the entirety of our powergamer community is buying the spell, something is up.

But this was talked about already in the other thread and I don't think it has to do with balance. It is not an unbalanced spell. It is just a spell that enforces point and click gameplay and forcing your opponent to do a specific counter-formation, forcing your will on your opponent's gameplan without needing to exert much effort.

I played 1500 of stormcast on a 6x4 yesterday and I was able to make sure that 9" covered my back table edge and close enough to the sides that you really couldn't put the boat and unit there at all. At 2000 with any even moderately higher model count army you should be able to protect your rear/flank. I think the boat attack will be better turn 2 and on when enough models are removed (or have advanced) to leave a space.

Thats legitimate but it also depends on scenario and deployment areas.

Can you describe an instance of how you saw it work? I'm not asking in a rhetorical/passive-aggresive way I really do want to hear some examples.

Sniping heroes that aren't fully wrapped up by garbage.

 auticus wrote:

I played 1500 of stormcast on a 6x4 yesterday and I was able to make sure that 9" covered my back table edge and close enough to the sides that you really couldn't put the boat and unit there at all. At 2000 with any even moderately higher model count army you should be able to protect your rear/flank. I think the boat attack will be better turn 2 and on when enough models are removed (or have advanced) to leave a space.

Thats legitimate but it also depends on scenario and deployment areas.

And as well, it forced me to deploy more on the table to cut off avenues of attack, so I had less to deploy in deep strike mode. Modifying how people deploy is a real strength.

Quite a few changes coming plus a FAQ with points for recent tomes in July.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2019/06/14/the-generals-handbook-2019-major-points-changesgw-homepage-post-2/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=AoS&utm_content=AoShandbook14June&fbclid=IwAR0fhpjgHGWtx0BeJZrjJ4em0tN4mfYOvB1IHv-UnooeX5z-x_OHHBtrhf8

Oh my!

And More!
We’re committed to keeping Warhammer Age of Sigmar as awesome as possible, and so, with this year’s General’s Handbook, we’ve gone the extra mile. Usually, books published in the immediate lead-up to the General’s Handbook would not see points changes. However, to make sure your Pitched Battles are as balanced as possible, we’ll be releasing an early (and free) points update to the most recent battletomes – for reference, that’s Skaven, Blades of Khorne, Fyreslayers, Hedonites of Slaanesh, and Flesh-eater Courts. Keep an eye out for this – and the General’s Handbook 2019 FAQ – in early July.

In the meantime, you’ll be able to pre-order your copy of the General’s Handbook tomorrow!

Kind of impressed they are getting out in front of the newest filth. How they handle it will be another matter altogether.

Unfortunately with some of the filth, point increases alone won't stop them from being spammed.

They may help mitigate a little bit but some of the warscrolls are just too OTT compared to the rest of the game to prevent them from being taken short of a drastic point increase that makes them unplayable.

I'll agree with auticus here. Some armies are untouched because of the mechanics, not the points cost. FEC bringing in a free 500 points for no cost can't be rectified easily, same with how much benefits DoK get from witch elves and their hag.

 auticus wrote:
I was just giving an example of options that had a negative consequence to taking them.

If some of the OP things running amuk had a consequence to using them, you could still design things over the top, its just that players would have to weigh the cost with the reward instead of it being all reward.

They would just not use them. The more you introduce risk, the less viable a unit is, regardless of reward. In a tournament setting you have to win 5 games in a row to have a shot at first place. No one is going to take a unit that tail-spins and butt feths you one out of 5 games, no matter how good it is the other 4.

If the risk cannot be mitigated, the unit will be thrown out the majority of the time.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Carnith wrote:
I'll agree with auticus here. Some armies are untouched because of the mechanics, not the points cost. FEC bringing in a free 500 points for no cost can't be rectified easily, same with how much benefits DoK get from witch elves and their hag.

I imagine that if you raised the remaining 1500pts by 500, that would considerably eb the flow. As for WE and hags, honestly that just tells me you don't really understand how the army works. Losing 90pts (60+30) per unit of witch aelves is MASSIVE even before you consider heartrenders also going up. It means you have to give up capabilities to maintain damage output. Finding a way to squeeze in magic support will be much more difficult for example.

People like to pretend like competitive armies are these unstoppable monoliths of destructive potential, but the truth is they're jenga towers more often than not. Hit the wrong thing the right way and the whole thing falls over.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 auticus wrote:
Its used to force your opponent to deploy in a very specific way and if they don't, they will have their head tore off.

You have to employ the same type of deployment against stormcast should they decide to do the teleport half their army trick. Only now everyone gets to do it by spending 80 pts on the spell.

Because you can move after deploying, if there are any gaps at all in the formations, you can charge into pretty much anything you want.

If you had to stop 9" from the enemy like everything else, it wouldn't be as useful.

I know when the entirety of our powergamer community is buying the spell, something is up.

But this was talked about already in the other thread and I don't think it has to do with balance. It is not an unbalanced spell. It is just a spell that enforces point and click gameplay and forcing your opponent to do a specific counter-formation, forcing your will on your opponent's gameplan without needing to exert much effort.

I played 1500 of stormcast on a 6x4 yesterday and I was able to make sure that 9" covered my back table edge and close enough to the sides that you really couldn't put the boat and unit there at all. At 2000 with any even moderately higher model count army you should be able to protect your rear/flank. I think the boat attack will be better turn 2 and on when enough models are removed (or have advanced) to leave a space.

Thats legitimate but it also depends on scenario and deployment areas.

You do have to stop outside of 9 if you want to get out. You also have to stay wholly within 3 of it. It sounds like your """powergamer community""" is using it wrong.

They would just not use them. The more you introduce risk, the less viable a unit is, regardless of reward.

If everything had this cost tag then that would up the viability.

If some things exist with a cost and some things exist with no cost, then yes of course the no risk item would always be taken.

Which is a problem that I see in GW games pretty much always. There is no thought in this required. Its obvious what to take for the most part and what to leave on the shelf (most of the rest of the game)

Especially when a giant chunk of the GW community seems to only play in tournament-mode.

Only way to design over top units with consequences is to make the consequences explicit. Such as 1 wound using an ability. Any random consequence is bad game design that tends to make the model very unfavorable. Anybody remember how popular plasma was before 8th edition? No? That's because nobody wanted to lose models on an errant roll of 1.

Also, I am sorry to say that even if there were consequences and the unit was somehow viable it would still cause an ire due to the fact that you only need one bad game against one of those units to still think it is OP despite the downsides. It's the nature of a dice game. Often it is the rolls that can make you feel like an army is OP.

I actually prefer games with randomness in them. Otherwise every game seems the same and i lose interest. I also fielded plasma most of my 40k years

The no risk all reward route gw takes leads to where we are now and where warhammer has always been.

The key with random is predictability.

That is to say having a random system that a person can interpret. A 1 in 6 chance isn't a high chance whilst a 5 in 6 is and its pretty easy for most people to work out the basic probability for themselves even without any maths understanding.

So you know that 6+ save is going to be pretty much failing most of the time but that 2+ save should be saving a lot more than it loses. You can still have your 6+ save win every time and your 2+ lose every time, but the chances of that happening are very remote (in fact to the point where if you rolled a 6 every time on a lot of saves people would question the accuracy of your dice).

I don't see GW changing that and the biggest change would be if they want D10 or such and increased the range of probabilities.

So, they have a guy reading off changes in the new book. Cogs went up to 80. I expected that, and it does little to change me using them. Still a hugely important Endless Spell.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
So, they have a guy reading off changes in the new book. Cogs went up to 80. I expected that, and it does little to change me using them. Still a hugely important Endless Spell.

This is kind of my problem with point changes for powerful stuff. Increasing the points cost on something powerful and good doesn't actually "stop" people using it. It just tends to stop them using something less powerful ever again. It's why I wish they were more open to adjusting abilities and stats not just point costs alone. Sometimes I think adjusting an ability or stat might well make something less powerful; but still good; whilst also meaning that you're not cutting down on model variety on the table.

Then again at present AoS is a bit overcosted across the board in my view. If you compare model costs like for like to 40K you can get more variety onto a 40K board for many armies. I think GW has done this because AoS is basically a new product with many of its customers building first and new armies within it. So keeping the model count a little lower isn't a bad idea.

Model count is also lower because theyve made monsters generally more optimal a choice coupled with peoples’ inherent laziness in having to paint along with the desirability of having a smaller collection.

One of whfb failures was that it pushed blocks of troops, and people have stopped wanting army scale games around 2004 in favor of low model count. Warmachine really started that expectation on its release and it snowballed.