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So the first thing I am noting here; the meta we are warning people about is shooting, monsters, battalions, and the tournament you raised to oppose those predictions fits very well into that. The second thing I am noting here is that I dictated what battalion that Ironjawz player was using without knowing anything other than the fact he won. All in all it is a very good example to support the predictions myself and others are making. Personally, I am not trying to begrudge players who don't exploit the meta or those who find ways to play against it, but rather to call out those who state it isn't a significant problem. I feel like while such statements had legitimacy to them before they no longer have much backing to them, and ignoring or downplaying a real issue doesn't do the fan base any service.

I don't see what the complaint is with Battalions though. They have point costs and aside from a couple are costed appropriately. Nothing about the Ironfist feels like cheating. I can see complaints about the Kunnin Rukk, but as pointed out even that one relies on a lynchpin model that can be removed by several means.

Actually, at that event only Nagash felt like cheating, since he and Neferata teamed up to give him a 2+ rerolling save, and he still lost on points because it turns out having more than half your army in 2 models doesn't do much of anything as far as scoring goes. The Flesh Eaters player with 4 behemoths lost 2/3 games despite "spamming" pretty good monsters, which felt cheesier than the Ironfist.

I play Skyborne and I would say that feels the cheesiest out of any battalion I've seen so far, but it's pretty well countered by proper screening (and a Gryph-Hound if you're Order). No one thing in the meta atm feels unfun to play against or broken.

Well, it breaks down as follows: Shooting is favored in the meta because it disproportionately benefits from rolled initiative as compared to melee. Monsters & battalions on the other hand just tend to be priced too cheap (sometimes WAY too cheap) for what they do. For an Ironjawz player, an Ironfist is 60 points to get deployment benefits, an extra artifact, and a negation of the army's main weak point (slow speed on melee units). There's no cost other than the 60 points because the units required from the battalion were already there to fill battleline requirements. Honestly there's very few armies in the game that would not pay 60 points to get those benefits.

I guess I just don't agree with the whining. Double turns affect melee armies just as much if not more than shooting armies. I don't think there are that many underpriced monsters/battalions, at least none that are breaking the game like the Wraithknight is in 40k. The Ironfist is good but even at 60 points I think you're paying enough for the benefit, because it's enough to take up a noticeable space in an army list and also feel like you're paying for the benefit (which is pretty minimal compared to other battalions).

Feel free to disagree, of course, but the amount of people complaining about balance at this point in time is a small minority.

Requizen wrote:
I guess I just don't agree with the whining. Double turns affect melee armies just as much if not more than shooting armies. I don't think there are that many underpriced monsters/battalions, at least none that are breaking the game like the Wraithknight is in 40k. The Ironfist is good but even at 60 points I think you're paying enough for the benefit, because it's enough to take up a noticeable space in an army list and also feel like you're paying for the benefit (which is pretty minimal compared to other battalions).

Feel free to disagree, of course, but the amount of people complaining about balance at this point in time is a small minority.

I think it's fair to say that you can't be competitive unless you bring Shooting, Monsters or Battalions. Foot dudes with Magic support don't win games consistently. I think people forget that there are currently 61 factions/allegiances. Only about 10% of them have meaningful access to Battalions/Monsters/Decent Shooting. I'd hazard a guess that people who play the other ~55 factions realize they're grossly underpowered, understand that they might have to wait YEARS for new rules and simply don't participate in tournaments. Some of them can't even build a Matched Play legal list without pulling in generic Batteline units from another allegiance. I'd be shocked if anything other than Flesh-Eater Courts/Ironjawz/Bonesplitters/Beastclaw Raiders/Sylvaneth/maybe Skyre place in the GT.

 Kriswall wrote:

Requizen wrote:
I guess I just don't agree with the whining. Double turns affect melee armies just as much if not more than shooting armies. I don't think there are that many underpriced monsters/battalions, at least none that are breaking the game like the Wraithknight is in 40k. The Ironfist is good but even at 60 points I think you're paying enough for the benefit, because it's enough to take up a noticeable space in an army list and also feel like you're paying for the benefit (which is pretty minimal compared to other battalions).

Feel free to disagree, of course, but the amount of people complaining about balance at this point in time is a small minority.

I think it's fair to say that you can't be competitive unless you bring Shooting, Monsters or Battalions. Foot dudes with Magic support don't win games consistently. I think people forget that there are currently 61 factions/allegiances. Only about 10% of them have meaningful access to Battalions/Monsters/Decent Shooting. I'd hazard a guess that people who play the other ~55 factions realize they're grossly underpowered, understand that they might have to wait YEARS for new rules and simply don't participate in tournaments. Some of them can't even build a Matched Play legal list without pulling in generic Batteline units from another allegiance. I'd be shocked if anything other than Flesh-Eater Courts/Ironjawz/Bonesplitters/Beastclaw Raiders/Sylvaneth/maybe Skyre place in the GT.

I mean, of course the less fleshed out armies aren't going to have as many options as the ones that have had more releases or have synergies. That's just basic logic, isn't it? There's nothing keeping those armies from playing general Grand Alliance, though. You can make a GA:Order army with shooting, monsters, and battalions that isn't SE/Sylvaneth(/Seraphon, but I don't know if they're in that pile). Celestial Hurricanums are bonkers. Dark/High Elf characters on dragons are quite good. Maybe not Gordrakk strong, but pretty good.

I agree there probably aren't any top ranking armies that don't include Battalions/Monsters/Shooting. But.... is that a bad thing? I don't really think so. I think those are just part of the game and are prevalent and available enough to anyone that it's not that big of a deal.

Besides, there are plenty of strong armies aside from the ~6 you noted. Moonclan Grots did very well at Warlords and have lots of strong combos. Spiderfang is pretty solid as well. Gutbuster Ogors actually nearly fit your "no Battalion/Monster/Shooting" desire aside from Leadbelchers. Tomb Kings and Brettonians are pretty nuts. Free Peoples fall into the "Shooting" category and are pretty good if you build them right. Nurgle armies are stupid hard to kill and I would wager we'll see more than our fair share of Plaguebearers on the board once people figure out how good they are.

We probably won't see any GTs until next year (LVO and Adepticon have them coming up, at the very least), so we'll see. But I honestly think we'll see way more diversity than people believe we will.

I play it as much as possible, because armies composed of pre-End Times models get steamrolled instantly if they get to melee.

I find that as long as your playing the missions shooting armies aren't that bad. Most shooting armies lack either mobility and or numbers. Either they have to move foward to try and grab my objectives or they hang back and try to widdle me away from a distance. At any rate I try to wait till I have the highest advantage only committing to them at the bottom of the turn and only committing my forces to one area.

When the argument is 'the balance is not as bad as 40k' that's a pretty strong confirmation there's a balance problem.

I agree there probably aren't any top ranking armies that don't include Battalions/Monsters/Shooting. But.... is that a bad thing? I don't really think so.

While its fine to not consider that a problem, I doubt the majority of people feel similarly.

Our of curiosity, what armies/units do you use?

Is that a bad thing?

Yes to me it is a bad thing. Anytime you pretty much HAVE to build a certain way to have a good game and eschew the rest of the game, that is a bad thing to me.

GW power curves have always had steep bell curves. Meaning that the number of viable builds is always usually templated and a tiny percentage of available builds.

If you don't mind chasing the meta, then its not a big deal. You simply find whats busted at tournaments and build accordingly.

If you aren't interested in chasing the meta, this will turn you away from the game.

 auticus wrote:
Is that a bad thing?

Yes to me it is a bad thing. Anytime you pretty much HAVE to build a certain way to have a good game and eschew the rest of the game, that is a bad thing to me.

GW power curves have always had steep bell curves. Meaning that the number of viable builds is always usually templated and a tiny percentage of available builds.

If you don't mind chasing the meta, then its not a big deal. You simply find whats busted at tournaments and build accordingly.

If you aren't interested in chasing the meta, this will turn you away from the game.

YES! This whole "competitive meta" thing is atrocious. If a game is unbalanced enough for only a few builds to be "viable" (i.e. op) then it shouldn't be played that way, because you have people bringing winning lists (rather than skill or tactics) making is ty for casual players and starting toxic "arms races". This thing is what is wrong with Warhammer in general.

If a game is balanced enough for serious tournaments, then buying new armies to "chase the meta" isn't worth it. You can just adapt a list, because no one faction is completely incapable of dealing with anything and none are inherently more powerful. Warhammer is AWESOME, but not one of those games.

 DarkBlack wrote:

 auticus wrote:
Is that a bad thing?

Yes to me it is a bad thing. Anytime you pretty much HAVE to build a certain way to have a good game and eschew the rest of the game, that is a bad thing to me.

GW power curves have always had steep bell curves. Meaning that the number of viable builds is always usually templated and a tiny percentage of available builds.

If you don't mind chasing the meta, then its not a big deal. You simply find whats busted at tournaments and build accordingly.

If you aren't interested in chasing the meta, this will turn you away from the game.

YES! This whole "competitive meta" thing is atrocious. If a game is unbalanced enough for only a few builds to be "viable" (i.e. op) then it shouldn't be played that way, because you have people bringing winning lists (rather than skill or tactics) making is ty for casual players and starting toxic "arms races". This thing is what is wrong with Warhammer in general.

If a game is balanced enough for serious tournaments, then buying new armies to "chase the meta" isn't worth it. You can just adapt a list, because no one faction is completely incapable of dealing with anything and none are inherently more powerful. Warhammer is AWESOME, but not one of those games.

You've never really played/followed a truly competitive game before have you? Only a few builds are EVER viable at the extremely high level. When you get world class players going head to head a 1% difference in point efficiency, dps, average CS differential, win rate, etc becomes game breaking. If you play at Matt Root, Faker, Fabiano Caruana, or Firebat's level the only way to keep armies from being crazily imbalanced is if they are totally identical.

Secondly, the 'competitive meta' only comes into play when dealing with competitive games. If you're just sitting around the shop getting a game in a rainy saturday morning then the fact that Arrer Boyz are more point efficient than Moar Boyz doesn't mean anything to you anyway. Once you enter into a competitive environment, I.E. a tournament, you have accepted that people are going to do everything they can to gain an advantage to win, including bring extremely powerful lists. If you don't bring something that can stand up to that then that's your fault; The Patriots(U.S. Football team that wins a lot for non U.S.) Don't hire anemic toddlers for the same reason you should leave your Paladin Decimator footslog spam at home.

Finally, no matter how imbalanced the game gets, really good players are still going to win. You could go copy Matt Root or Brandon Grant's 40k lists point for point and never make top HALF at a gt. Those guys get 1st prize because they are insanely good, the fact that they have very strong lists is secondary. The idea that you can just take a crazy netlist to a tournament and roflstomp everyone for free is a silly misconception held by players who see tournaments and other competitive events as being aberrations of the game.

Yes to me it is a bad thing. Anytime you pretty much HAVE to build a certain way to have a good game and eschew the rest of the game, that is a bad thing to me.

Good job you don't have that in AoS then. Ive had good games and have never felt I had to 'build' a certain way. talking to the other guy coming up with scenarios etc is all part of the game as well. I certainly don't play on an empty table where cover doesn't exist and don't get overly distracted by shooting units over victory conditions.

I assume you are missing the key qualifier - IF you are going to a tourney. If you are at a competition there is bound to be 'builds' that are not good and 'builds' that are, I've not really encountered a game that isn't like that. That is what happens when winning by any means possible (bar cheating) is all that matters (and yes whilst some go to tourneys for other reasons, the tourney is by almost by definition about gettingmax wins and trying to be top dog).


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And I agree with much of what Erjak above said. I used to play a particular space combat game in tourneys. I was always bemused by the complaints there as well . One of the forces that the really good players saw as OP and underpointed had one of the worst win records by a large margin, why? because the top few percent of players understood the major weaknesses and how to deal with it whilst taking advantage of its huge advantages , the other 95% just died if the dice did not go their way. However, whilst the top players saw it as OP they also tended to not take it for tourneys, as the extremeness meant that it was too easy to lose one game against another top player over a tourney and therefore cripple your chances of being top dog when there was only a limited number of games.

In a way I see the whole shooting stuff like that. We end up talking about extremes of armies, but extremes *tend* to have extreme strengths in return for extreme weaknesses.

I've played tournament warhammer (lived breathed and died by it) for over a decade, so yes I am familiar with the concept.

The problem is in some of our metas, my own included, everyone plays this way and won't tone their lists down. So yes that is the only viable way of playing short of being ok with getting rolled every game.

AOS is just as bad. There are definitely builds that stand way out above the others.

"IF you are going to a tourney. If you are at a competition there is bound to be 'builds' that are not good and 'builds' that are, I've not really encountered a game like that."

I encounter a game like that every week. Its how my community plays. They play no holds barred tournament style games.

When tournaments aren't happening they are playing games to prep for tournaments.

Extreme armies usually have a hard counter. They will always roll a balanced army. You don't see balanced armies going to competitions because balanced armies don't do well. Saying that extreme armies have extreme weaknesses is to me overstating, because the OP builds that I have run and encountered over the years are usually called OP builds because they have few if any real weaknesses short of bad dice and a hard counter that could exist (warhammer and 40k for years are nothing but expensive paper/rock/scissors games). If an OP build had extreme weaknesses, it wouldn't be an OP build. It would just be a build, and it wouldn't be seen in a min/max environment very often.

The whole creed of being a tournament player is to find the extreme OP build that will have as few hard counters present as possible to maximize your odds of not facing them and thus roll the others to max out your score. If you are not rolling an OP build, one typically will feel or mention or both that they probably aren't going to do well but are going to have fun (and thats legit and fine).

In AOS there are builds that as of yet have no hard counter. The skryre teleporting mortal wound dishing stormfiend warp fire army is one of those.

There's very little you can do against that army/battalion, especially when they get two turns in a row. There are ways to attempt to curb it, but you have to play a perfect game while the skaven guy has to be able to breathe, roll dice, and sip his mountain dew.

The points structure that they adopted has its issues as well, as has been pointed out by anyone that has actually done the math. I broke down the stats model by model and posted the efficiency scores for everything in the game on my website. A lot of the values are fine but there are definitely issues with how the monsters are costed. They are too cheap by about 25-35% on average. Is that game breaking? Not by itself, but it means that if you are trying to break the game and win tournaments or dominate your local scene you are silly to not bring monsters because their efficiency scores are so much higher due to them being a bit too cheap.

Is that a bad thing? That's subjective. I don't like things that are obvious takes. To me, too cheap models that do more than their cost are not a good thing.

If you don't dwell in a competitive-build-at-all-times community, this won't be an issue, and thats awesome for you.

If you live in a community that will always be rocking tournament builds, even in their "for fun" games, this becomes more of an issue.

As to the whole "good players will win no matter what"... sorry but I also heavily disagree. I have seen with my own eyes top guys folding when they aren't using an OP tournament build. There are a couple that can indeed win with weak armies but they are very much the exception. We have one in our community that plays a generic Blood Angels army that utilizes a lot of tactical marines, and he dominates local tournaments and always places high in all of the GT circuit events he attends. However, I can count on one hand guys like him that I've met in the over twenty years that I have been a part of the warhammer community. That includes several years of extensively traveling to every GT on North America and playing a ton of games against the names of that era and watching them experiment with weaker armies and watching them get rolled.

Yes they may still be good players, but being a good player and knowing the game does not negate that this game is essentially a mathematics exercise and that giving a good player a middling army is going to put him at a disadvantage against a strong army.

I typically find a great player with a middling army vs an middling player with a great army is a great game, because the great player is handicapped and the middling player has a crutch in the form of the math favoring him. The game can often go either way (this is 20+ years of watching, playing, observing, and setting those type of games up to challenge our top club players when we were a traveling tournament team)

I agree with auticus to a point; I find people are much more likely to be playing "tournament style" games all the time, rather than the opposite. So for someone like me this means either I need to adjust my own "fun" to accommodate that, or else run the risk of losing all the time due to not fielding an army of a similar caliber and then risk just saying feth it and stop playing because I got tired of being crushed week in, week out. That typically results in me compromising and playing something I'm really not super keen on, just because it will give me at least a decent chance of not always losing.

For me personally, I find shooting to be supremely hard to counter without bringing your own shooting force (due to the rules allowing you to shoot even while in combat, while in other games you typically counter shooting by engaging them with fast-moving units), which not everyone can do (Death, for example, has practically no shooting at all). Is it game breaking? I don't think it's quite that bad, but it is a very strong way to build a list and, as a result, crush anyone who doesn't match that level simply because there's no counter to shooting short of either being able to weather it and deal more damage yourself, or hide behind buildings the entire game so you block LOS (which easily results in being unable to capture any objectives).

I will point out that I don't think shooting armies are invincible.

However... they do take full advantage of the dual turn mechanic which makes them much more powerful than if a melee oriented army gets two turns in a row for a few reasons:

1) range means they can hit without being in melee range two turns in a row without a response.

2) you can shoot and fight in melee in your turn... which means that even if those units ARE in melee they are getting two phases of attacks back to back. That of course means more dice being rolled and more casualties being inflicted on the other side.

The math is heavily in favor of shooting-oriented armies in AOS because of this.

If shooting armies could not shoot whilst engaged in melee they would lose point #2 and just have point #1 going for them, which while still powerful would be less obscene.

Alternatively if you could not go back to back turns you would lose #1 and #2 which is why a lot of groups adopt this houserule.

I still honestly don't understand the complaint. Yes, I see that people think that shooting, monsters, and battalions are strong. But every army in the game has access to at least 2 of those 3 - bigger subfactions within their own faction, and smaller ones by using the Grand Alliance.

Is the complaint, then, that you can't just take melee foot dudes with a couple heroes and win the game? Well.... that's true. And that's fine. List building is part of the game and building a one dimensional force with no ranged support or heavy units should be punished. You also can't win a game of Starcraft by building only Zealots or Zerglings.

There's a huge variety in the strong lists out there compared to most asymmetrical tabletop games. Just because an army of all Chaos Marauders can't beat an optimized list doesn't mean that the game is bad.

If you live in an environment where everyone only brings top tier lists and you just want to play the non-optimal stuff you have, then that sucks. But don't blame the game for that. In a game with as many asymmetrical options as AoS has, it's doing pretty darn good.

Except that you can win the game by building a one dimensional force of shooting.

I don't see the huge variety unfortunately. I see the same handful of power builds.

I'm not complaining because an army of chaos marauders cannot beat an optimized list. Thats pretty extreme.

"List building is part of the game, ehhh get over it" doesn't work for me. I want more variety in the game. I'm not seeing the variety. I'm seeing a GW game that has the same flaws as its predecessor and that 40k shares.

To the subject matter... how do you deal with shooting? You have to take shooting yourself because it is quite powerful and if you don't take a lot of shooting you are handicapping yourself. Same as in 40k.

I do blame the game for its steep power spike. The developers could have done a lot better job at lowering the power spike and making the bell curve a lot broader instead of narrow. The community comps seemed to do a lot better job at that, and we aren't paid game designers.

I have explained in depth my complaint with the system and why I feel that way as well as what I would consider better. At the end of the day it boils down to I don't like severe imbalance in games, and my threshold for what constitutes imbalance and severe imbalance is my own and is subjective. I do know that I can enjoy other games that while imbalanced, are a lot less so.

For me to enjoy AOS I will require an agreement with my opponent to not build an extreme list, or myself go out and buy and paint an extreme list. Out of the box, with the GHB, the point system that GW has decided to use has failed me in terms of what I want out of the game. I'm glad it works for who it works for though.

Requizen wrote:
I still honestly don't understand the complaint. Yes, I see that people think that shooting, monsters, and battalions are strong. But every army in the game has access to at least 2 of those 3 - bigger subfactions within their own faction, and smaller ones by using the Grand Alliance.

Is the complaint, then, that you can't just take melee foot dudes with a couple heroes and win the game? Well.... that's true. And that's fine. List building is part of the game and building a one dimensional force with no ranged support or heavy units should be punished. You also can't win a game of Starcraft by building only Zealots or Zerglings.

There's a huge variety in the strong lists out there compared to most asymmetrical tabletop games. Just because an army of all Chaos Marauders can't beat an optimized list doesn't mean that the game is bad.

If you live in an environment where everyone only brings top tier lists and you just want to play the non-optimal stuff you have, then that sucks. But don't blame the game for that. In a game with as many asymmetrical options as AoS has, it's doing pretty darn good.

For me personally I feel it's not that extreme, it's that I am at a disadvantage for no real reason. For instance, I play Flesh-Eater Courts. I get my replenish, but a shooting army can easily snipe my characters unless I hide them (and they are melee character, so there's a bit of bad synergy, what in Warmachine is called "Skornergy", there), so I don't get my my replenishing. There's also the fact that I have no way to stop my opponent from shooting, so as auticus mentions even if I get into combat, they are getting two rounds of attacks to my one, and in my experience FEC can soak wounds but are hit easily and don't get saves, so two sets of attacks can destroy even my Horrors and Flayers; it could even easily kill my Ghoul King.

As someone who often prefers to play melee armies (they usually strike my fancy more) I feel that shooting has very few limitations that a melee army has a much harder time to deal with (especially the aforementioned two set of attacks versus one) and I don't think the answer is to take your own shooting to combat it because 1) Not every faction has access to shooting and 2) Some army themes or concepts don't use shooting.

Again I don't necessarily think it's game-breakingly OP, but it is IMHO way stronger than it should be for no discernible reason.

 auticus wrote:
Except that you can win the game by building a one dimensional force of shooting.

Sure you can. To the extent that you can win the game by building a one dimensional force of melee dudes.

You can run all shooting and then lose to an army with high mobility or high durability melee. You can run into 2+ rerollable Nagash and your shooting will be for nothing, and then you have no tarpit for him. You can run against another shooting army with longer range or a deep strike army like Skyborne and lose.

There is no "build this and win GTs" army, despite what people might whine. I have yet to run across an army that has no reasonable hard counter.

I don't see the huge variety unfortunately. I see the same handful of power builds.

What a nonsensical statement. See where?

Online, where people only talk about the FOTM power builds? Of course that's the case.
At your local FLGS? People probably don't own multiple armies so that's not surprising.
Topping events? Bull. How many actual AoS GTs have there been since TGH? Like, 2? I know Kunnin Rukk won The Warlords, but I can't find the rest of the top 10 and one event is not statistically sound anyway.

If in 8 months we're sitting in a world where the only lists winning GTs are Kunning Rukk with Arrows and Skyre shooting, I'll eat my words. I'll shamefully put in my sig that you were right and I was wrong. But until that point, it's just baseless whining and I honestly don't agree with it.

Ok. Your inflammatory attacks are noted sir. We don't have anything further to discuss.

Fine, perhaps "whine" was too harsh.

But still. There's no evidence to back up the statement that you can, and I quote, "win the game by building a one dimensional force of shooting" other than anecdotal. And my anecdotal evidence is that the shooting heavy armies in our meta lose more games than they win, even when our Dwarf player runs his double Flame Cannon with Engineer cheese, getting up to 4d6 auto MWs per turn.

Many things look much scarier on paper than they do in practice. Some things are just as scary - Kunnin Rukk is obvously very strong (though has the counter if you can take out the lynchpin hero), but the internet has a habit in games like this to decry something as too OP before actually seeing it on the table. This is true in 40k, this is true in AoS, this is true in MtG or any other number of Tabletop games.

But I digress. I'm still not sure if the discussion is "shooting is OP and will win all games/tournaments" or "shooting is unfun to play against". The former is not true just on a logical basis, the latter is opinion. I have not found shooting to be unfun to play against, though when I bring my Skyborne Slayers I am the pure counter to it. When I run against it with my Nurgle Daemons, I find that I have the ability to weather it fairly well and if I can get in with the GUO/Prince/Be'lakor (all of whom are tough or fast enough to get there reliably), I can usually dismantle those armies unless I get outplayed.

Requizen wrote:
Fine, perhaps "whine" was too harsh.

But still. There's no evidence to back up the statement that you can, and I quote, "win the game by building a one dimensional force of shooting" other than anecdotal. And my anecdotal evidence is that the shooting heavy armies in our meta lose more games than they win, even when our Dwarf player runs his double Flame Cannon with Engineer cheese, getting up to 4d6 auto MWs per turn.

Many things look much scarier on paper than they do in practice. Some things are just as scary - Kunnin Rukk is obvously very strong (though has the counter if you can take out the lynchpin hero), but the internet has a habit in games like this to decry something as too OP before actually seeing it on the table. This is true in 40k, this is true in AoS, this is true in MtG or any other number of Tabletop games.

But I digress. I'm still not sure if the discussion is "shooting is OP and will win all games/tournaments" or "shooting is unfun to play against". The former is not true just on a logical basis, the latter is opinion. I have not found shooting to be unfun to play against, though when I bring my Skyborne Slayers I am the pure counter to it. When I run against it with my Nurgle Daemons, I find that I have the ability to weather it fairly well and if I can get in with the GUO/Prince/Be'lakor (all of whom are tough or fast enough to get there reliably), I can usually dismantle those armies unless I get outplayed.

Skyborne Slayers is a hard counter to heavy shooting. Nurgle Daemons can weather shooting better than the overwhelming majority of other armies. Your experience isn't average. You're at the peak of the "not caring about shooting" bell curve. Many other players feel it as much more painful and it can be very much NOT fun to play against.

I think the discussion is more that "shooting is generally stronger than melee due to the structure of the game and factions with heavy shooting generally have a better chance of winning than factions without heavy shooting" AND "heavy shooting is frequently not fun to play against". It's not that ONLY heavy shooting armies will win. It's that a no melee/heavy shooting army is perfectly viable while no shooting/heavy melee isn't... at least at the highest levels. Ironjawz will never defeat Kunnin Rukk or Skyrefyre.

I play Ironjawz. It's a brand new faction for Age of Sigmar, with all but one of the faction units being newly introduced. It has a Battletome and everything. Other than not having its own GHB allegiance abilities, it can easily be argued as a 'modern AoS army'. I don't have access to ANY shooting in my faction. Telling me to just open up my allegiance and find something else in Destruction is equivalent to telling me to go out and buy a new army. Having to buy a new army to be at the same level of competition as other armies means that GW has failed and should have done a better job of balancing the army rules/units. Heavy shooting isn't fun to play against because I have no real counter. I just have to hope enough of my models survive to wipe out the shooting unit in combat. If the shooting unit is super durable or the shooter gets a double turn, the chance of me wiping them out in combat drops. It's just not that much fun.

I agree with that. I play Flesh-Eater Courts which is also a modern army (repacked models, but still). My grand alliance doesn't even really have shooting unless I want to track down OOP Tomb King stuff that technically doesn't exist. My entire army is built around the idea of having leaders who can mitigate my losses, but I find shooting makes it trivial to just snipe them out first and then I have a bunch of 5+ save guys that fold like paper against basically anything.

 Kriswall wrote:

Requizen wrote:
Fine, perhaps "whine" was too harsh.

But still. There's no evidence to back up the statement that you can, and I quote, "win the game by building a one dimensional force of shooting" other than anecdotal. And my anecdotal evidence is that the shooting heavy armies in our meta lose more games than they win, even when our Dwarf player runs his double Flame Cannon with Engineer cheese, getting up to 4d6 auto MWs per turn.

Many things look much scarier on paper than they do in practice. Some things are just as scary - Kunnin Rukk is obvously very strong (though has the counter if you can take out the lynchpin hero), but the internet has a habit in games like this to decry something as too OP before actually seeing it on the table. This is true in 40k, this is true in AoS, this is true in MtG or any other number of Tabletop games.

But I digress. I'm still not sure if the discussion is "shooting is OP and will win all games/tournaments" or "shooting is unfun to play against". The former is not true just on a logical basis, the latter is opinion. I have not found shooting to be unfun to play against, though when I bring my Skyborne Slayers I am the pure counter to it. When I run against it with my Nurgle Daemons, I find that I have the ability to weather it fairly well and if I can get in with the GUO/Prince/Be'lakor (all of whom are tough or fast enough to get there reliably), I can usually dismantle those armies unless I get outplayed.

Skyborne Slayers is a hard counter to heavy shooting. Nurgle Daemons can weather shooting better than the overwhelming majority of other armies. Your experience isn't average. You're at the peak of the "not caring about shooting" bell curve. Many other players feel it as much more painful and it can be very much NOT fun to play against.

Neither is yours if you play an army that is weak to heavy shooting. As I said, anecdotal evidence is not evidence, neither is opinion. Our resident Beastclaw Raiders player doesn't care about shooting because he buffs up his 3 Stonehorns and halves wounds. The Nagash player I know gets his 2+ rerollable and laughs at shooting (except I guess Skyre, but usually he can outscore that with blobs of Skellies). Our Grot player takes massive blobs, buffs them up, and then doesn't care about losing 20 models because he has 60 more. There are plenty of armies in the game that don't care about shooting that much.

For an army like Ironjawz, which you play, you do. Bad matchups exist, though. My Skyborne have their counters that I hate playing against, as do most armies. That's healthy for the game, if every army felt fine against every other one, it would be because there's no variety. As long as the game is asymmetrical, there will be good and bad matchups. And that's good for the game. List building is all about trying to figure out how to compensate for those weaknesses, and sometimes you just play the mission instead of trying to table people.

I think the discussion is more that "shooting is generally stronger than melee due to the structure of the game and factions with heavy shooting generally have a better chance of winning than factions without heavy shooting" AND "heavy shooting is frequently not fun to play against". It's not that ONLY heavy shooting armies will win. It's that a no melee/heavy shooting army is perfectly viable while no shooting/heavy melee isn't... at least at the highest levels.

Disagree. There are plenty of melee-only armies that look like they'll do just fine at the top levels.

If you're trying to say "a melee only army consisting of just normal foot dudes and no support structure isn't viable", then yes, you are correct. And again, that's a good thing. At the highest levels (your words, not mine), people should be encouraged to do more than just take the things they have. List building is just as much of the game as the actual gameplay, as is practicing and knowing your list.

Ironjawz will never defeat Kunnin Rukk or Skyrefyre.

Bull. It's a hard matchup but neither of those matchups are an autolose game. Gorefist especially can play a huge part in winning those games by having massive Turn 1 board control. Blobs of Ardboyz actually would make a fine fight against Rukk, since you're relatively tough and have more non-monster bodies than they want to deal with, especially with the mobility and combat advantage they have over Arrowboyz.

Just because something is a counterbuild doesn't mean it's broken. It just means that the game is asymmetrical.

I play Ironjawz. It's a brand new faction for Age of Sigmar, with all but one of the faction units being newly introduced. It has a Battletome and everything. Other than not having its own GHB allegiance abilities, it can easily be argued as a 'modern AoS army'. I don't have access to ANY shooting in my faction. Telling me to just open up my allegiance and find something else in Destruction is equivalent to telling me to go out and buy a new army. Having to buy a new army to be at the same level of competition as other armies means that GW has failed and should have done a better job of balancing the army rules/units. Heavy shooting isn't fun to play against because I have no real counter. I just have to hope enough of my models survive to wipe out the shooting unit in combat. If the shooting unit is super durable or the shooter gets a double turn, the chance of me wiping them out in combat drops. It's just not that much fun.

1) Your anecdotal evidence doesn't hold any more weight than mine. If my anecdote is "shooting armies are actually weak because I play Skyborne" and yours is "shooting armies are OP because I play Ironjawz", then who do we listen to? On average, they seem about fine, no?

2) Nobody is telling you that you have to go out and buy a whole new army. However, the balance of the game is not dictated by one person buying a single assortment of units and expecting it to be viable against every army type in the game. That's about impossible. If you want to compete "at the highest level" (again, your words), then you have to be willing to use the tools available to you. If you just want to bring the army you have and enjoy, that's great too... but you have to realize that there will be limitations and gaps in your army because that's how the game is balanced.

I listen to the math.

Shooting heavy armies get to attack in two phases of a turn. Melee heavy armies in one.

If a shooting heavy army gets two turns in a row then thats four phases of attack dice rolled vs the melee army's two.

With there being no way to stop shooting models from shooting, and with alternate turns this becomes a data model for skewed statistics.

If both forces are using shooty heavy armies then that brings the math back on par.

If you go with a melee heavy army you are playing at a disadvantage, and in some cases a severe disadvantage.

The obvious answer to this is "suck it up and don't play a melee heavy army", but thats not a good answer to me.

Now to foster good discussion we can discuss "how do you deal with shooting" knowing that one is at a moderate to severe disadvantage if playing a melee-oriented army vs a shooty-oriented army.

Asymmetrical games will obviously have a variety of match-ups where one side is stronger than the other. The issue with AoS (and 40k) is that there are factions that will have the advantage more often than not. The "faction power bell curve" is way too steep with a relatively limited number of factions at the peak. In 40k (not comprehensive, just an example), alpha strikes and heavy/D shooting are devastating. Because of this, and all else equal, Space Marines (alpha strike builds) and Tau Empire/Eldar (heavy/D shooting builds) aren't particularly fun to play against because the opponent feels like the game is an uphill battle where every play has to be perfect to have a real chance at winning.

As an Ironjawz player, it's USUALLY not fun to play against heavy shooting lists. I'm not saying I can't win and I'm not saying it's a 100% advantage 100% of the time. I'm saying that even when I win, it's not fun. Sure, I could add my own shooting, but that would involve adding 300+ points of generic Destruction Battleline units that don't synergize at all with my army as a 'tax' before I can even look at shooting units. It would be nice if every "major" faction had a basic Batteline choice. They don't.

It's just an odd game. GW is really bad at balancing factions against each other. I'm unclear as to what they're trying to do with AoS/GHB. There are 61 distinct factions. A good number don't have Batteline units at all, so there seems to be a clear intention that we're supposed to mix factions... except that the most recently updated (Sylvaneth/Bonesplitterz/Beastclaw Raiders/etc) are fully fleshed out and stand on their own. It's like the authors have no idea what the game is supposed to look like. The factions are a mess.

 auticus wrote:
I listen to the math.

Shooting heavy armies get to attack in two phases of a turn. Melee heavy armies in one.

If a shooting heavy army gets two turns in a row then thats four phases of attack dice rolled vs the melee army's two.

With there being no way to stop shooting models from shooting, and with alternate turns this becomes a data model for skewed statistics.

If both forces are using shooty heavy armies then that brings the math back on par.

If you go with a melee heavy army you are playing at a disadvantage, and in some cases a severe disadvantage.

The obvious answer to this is "suck it up and don't play a melee heavy army", but thats not a good answer to me.

Now to foster good discussion we can discuss "how do you deal with shooting" knowing that one is at a moderate to severe disadvantage if playing a melee-oriented army vs a shooty-oriented army.

That's too simplistic. Shooting armies also tend to be crap in melee, so that "second round of attack" is basically nothing compared to a combat focused unit. For many of them, it's hitting on 5+ wounding on 4+ or worse, and then 1 damage and no rend. In fact, most shooting attacks are also 1 damage no rend, though some "powerful" ones are -1/1. Melee focused power units tend to be at least -1 Rend with either multiple attacks, ways to deal mortal wounds, dealing multiple damage, or some combination of the above. Melee units also tend to have better saves and durability than ranged units on average (with some exceptions).

Would you say a unit of Freeguild Archers is better than a Mourngul because they get to go twice per turn to its one? No, of course not.

Just looking at the number of activations means nothing. General sweeping statements like that are illogical and ignore the stats of many units, as well as the combo effects of many armies. There are lots of combo effects that grant mobility, durability, or extra attacks/better rolls in combat. There are a lot less that boost shooting prowess.

It's disingenuous to assume that a unit of shooters is going to do as much with shooting + melee as a melee unit is going to do in combat alone. Most of those shooting attacks are balanced to be weaker because range is such a strong bonus, as is that second round you are talking about.

For the straight up example, look at the terrifying Arrowboyz vs Ardboyz. Arrowboyz get 2 shots at a range (3 if they're 20+) with 5+/4+/-/1. In melee, they get a single attack each at the same profile. Their save is 6+ with 2 wounds.
Ardboyz are melee only. If they're with two weapons, they get 3 attacks at 4+/3+/-/1. If they have big weapons, it's 2 at 4+/3+/-1/1. Their save is 4+ with 2 wounds.

20 Arrowboyz getting to shoot and punch deal 6.66 wounds at the end of the turn, killing three Ardboyz
10 Ardboyz with double weapons deal 8.33 wounds, killing 4 Arrowboyz
10 Ardboyz with big weapons deal 6.66 wounds, killing 3 Arrowboyz

And the Arrowboyz cost 20 more points than Ardboyz. If it was 10 v 10 it wouldn't even be close. As soon as the first round of combat for the Ardboyz is over, they lose that extra attack and the damage output during shooting goes down.

The Kunnin Rukk makes the Arrowboyz scarier, sure, but the Ironfist makes the Ardboyz scarier as well since they can start outside of the Arrowboyz range (thus negating 3/4 of that damage calculated) and still reasonably get charges off.

So yeah. Just saying "extra activation = more deader" is incorrect, at least in this situation. I picked two that were evenly matched. There are plenty of combinations of melee units vs ranged units that are clearly tipped in the melee's favor, as there are those tipped in the shooter's favor.

 Kriswall wrote:
Asymmetrical games will obviously have a variety of match-ups where one side is stronger than the other. The issue with AoS (and 40k) is that there are factions that will have the advantage more often than not. The "faction power bell curve" is way too steep with a relatively limited number of factions at the peak. In 40k (not comprehensive, just an example), alpha strikes and heavy/D shooting are devastating. Because of this, and all else equal, Space Marines (alpha strike builds) and Tau Empire/Eldar (heavy/D shooting builds) aren't particularly fun to play against because the opponent feels like the game is an uphill battle where every play has to be perfect to have a real chance at winning.

As an Ironjawz player, it's USUALLY not fun to play against heavy shooting lists. I'm not saying I can't win and I'm not saying it's a 100% advantage 100% of the time. I'm saying that even when I win, it's not fun. Sure, I could add my own shooting, but that would involve adding 300+ points of generic Destruction Battleline units that don't synergize at all with my army as a 'tax' before I can even look at shooting units. It would be nice if every "major" faction had a basic Batteline choice. They don't.

It's just an odd game. GW is really bad at balancing factions against each other. I'm unclear as to what they're trying to do with AoS/GHB. There are 61 distinct factions. A good number don't have Batteline units at all, so there seems to be a clear intention that we're supposed to mix factions... except that the most recently updated (Sylvaneth/Bonesplitterz/Beastclaw Raiders/etc) are fully fleshed out and stand on their own. It's like the authors have no idea what the game is supposed to look like. The factions are a mess.

GW doesn't. Never did, I'm sure they add things as they go along, the problem with that is they do it midway through and decide "Oh hey let's go this direction instead!" so you have half the factions that get that update, and half that don't because they lucked out done before the studio decided to change direction.

It's a huge problem, also because GW picks factions to update at once rather than do small things for every faction; Warmachine and Hordes for example when a book comes out, everyone got something, even if it was like a new character and new warjack and that was it. You didn't have huge gaps of getting absolutely nothing.

 Kriswall wrote:
Asymmetrical games will obviously have a variety of match-ups where one side is stronger than the other. The issue with AoS (and 40k) is that there are factions that will have the advantage more often than not. The "faction power bell curve" is way too steep with a relatively limited number of factions at the peak.

You keep saying that, but
1) We don't have enough data to make a graph
2) I honestly don't believe it will be that way when it shakes out. It just feels like "sky is falling" to me.

As an Ironjawz player, it's USUALLY not fun to play against heavy shooting lists. I'm not saying I can't win and I'm not saying it's a 100% advantage 100% of the time. I'm saying that even when I win, it's not fun. Sure, I could add my own shooting, but that would involve adding 300+ points of generic Destruction Battleline units that don't synergize at all with my army as a 'tax' before I can even look at shooting units. It would be nice if every "major" faction had a basic Batteline choice. They don't.

No one is telling you to. I think Ironjawz can beat top lists while keeping their Allegiance. I've seen it happen multiple times.

"Fun to play against" is a completely subjective statement and shouldn't come into contention when talking about balance. I think Brutes moving d6+d6+2+4" per turn and hitting as hard as they do is insane, and I don't have fun when they roll hot and get across the map faster than Cavalry. But I know it's not imbalanced.

It's just an odd game. GW is really bad at balancing factions against each other. I'm unclear as to what they're trying to do with AoS/GHB. There are 61 distinct factions. A good number don't have Batteline units at all, so there seems to be a clear intention that we're supposed to mix factions... except that the most recently updated (Sylvaneth/Bonesplitterz/Beastclaw Raiders/etc) are fully fleshed out and stand on their own. It's like the authors have no idea what the game is supposed to look like. The factions are a mess.

I totally disagree. They know what the game looks like right now - there are subfactions that are designed to stand alone, and there are those that are not. Not everything has to be the same. Smaller factions are meant to be building blocks (such as the Elf subfactions), while larger ones are designed to make a single thematic army. Both are options, and they've done a good job of it.

Which is why saying "61 distinct factions" is basically dishonest. 61 groupings, sure, but Aleguzzler Gargants and Troggoths aren't really factions. Neither are Deathmages, which is literally just a Necromancer and the Mortis Engine. Just because you don't agree with that design decision doesn't mean it's a bad one.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Wayniac wrote:

 Kriswall wrote:
Asymmetrical games will obviously have a variety of match-ups where one side is stronger than the other. The issue with AoS (and 40k) is that there are factions that will have the advantage more often than not. The "faction power bell curve" is way too steep with a relatively limited number of factions at the peak. In 40k (not comprehensive, just an example), alpha strikes and heavy/D shooting are devastating. Because of this, and all else equal, Space Marines (alpha strike builds) and Tau Empire/Eldar (heavy/D shooting builds) aren't particularly fun to play against because the opponent feels like the game is an uphill battle where every play has to be perfect to have a real chance at winning.

As an Ironjawz player, it's USUALLY not fun to play against heavy shooting lists. I'm not saying I can't win and I'm not saying it's a 100% advantage 100% of the time. I'm saying that even when I win, it's not fun. Sure, I could add my own shooting, but that would involve adding 300+ points of generic Destruction Battleline units that don't synergize at all with my army as a 'tax' before I can even look at shooting units. It would be nice if every "major" faction had a basic Batteline choice. They don't.

It's just an odd game. GW is really bad at balancing factions against each other. I'm unclear as to what they're trying to do with AoS/GHB. There are 61 distinct factions. A good number don't have Batteline units at all, so there seems to be a clear intention that we're supposed to mix factions... except that the most recently updated (Sylvaneth/Bonesplitterz/Beastclaw Raiders/etc) are fully fleshed out and stand on their own. It's like the authors have no idea what the game is supposed to look like. The factions are a mess.

GW doesn't. Never did, I'm sure they add things as they go along, the problem with that is they do it midway through and decide "Oh hey let's go this direction instead!" so you have half the factions that get that update, and half that don't because they lucked out done before the studio decided to change direction.

It's a huge problem, also because GW picks factions to update at once rather than do small things for every faction; Warmachine and Hordes for example when a book comes out, everyone got something, even if it was like a new character and new warjack and that was it. You didn't have huge gaps of getting absolutely nothing.

Except now with the way AoS is set up, they can update warscrolls any time they want on the app/website. Which they've already done a couple times. And they've said that TGH will be a yearly release and all armies will get points at the same time, insinuating that they will be pointed against one another and not on a faction-by-faction basis.