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Earlier today, Taco Bell linked to a WarSeer "leak" of optional Laws of War PDF that provides non-points mechanisms for balancing games of AoS.

Basically, if your force is generally "weaker" (fewer Heroes / Monsters / elites), you get to select up to 5 more scenario special rules to mitigate the disadvantage. The player might have the ability of recycling basic units back to the tabletop, or causing extra wounds on multi-wound models. An example to mitigate mass summoning:

LAWS OF WAR - ULGU

SPECIAL RULES
Entangling Mist: If your opponent would “summon” a new unit onto the
battlefield (not considering units with special deployment rules which
were set up with the rest of the army), roll a D6. On a 4+ the unit gets lost
and doesn’t appear. In addition, each newly created unit can only contain a
maximum of 10 wounds. New units created from scenario rules or from the
Laws of War – Shyish warscroll are not affected by these rules.

To me, this seems like a not unreasonable way of assessing relative advantage and mitigating excesses, consistent with the permissive "no points" design goals of the ruleset.

Yet nobody on Dakka is interested in this?

The problem with this idea is just that if Heroes, Monsters and Special Rules are not balanced, then balance is not obviously going to be achieved by juggling them.

It's the same as the core rule that if you have Nagash and I have two Skinks, you are outnumbered and get a Special Rule to help you in your uphill fight.

In both cases, the system relies on players using their common sense, game experience and good will to try and balance things by feel. Whilst most people are capable of that, a lot of them would simply prefer the easier option of an already balanced game with clear indicators.

Interesting rules in that document, but I don't think it was written by GW. Oh and in my experience as a night goblin player, the last thing my opponent needs is even more bonuses to kill my whole army.

I'm not sure it's real, either.

But it is a breath of fresh air from the whole "must have points" thing.

Too bad certain people just can't let go of points.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
I'm not sure it's real, either.

But it is a breath of fresh air from the whole "must have points" thing.

Too bad certain people just can't let go of points.

Oh, I agree. If this turns out to be real or GW comes out with their own similar document, I'll be happy.

The one problem with the removal of points in my opinion is the weakening of certain playstyles. Horde armies in AoS are worse than before, because your opponent can use Sudden Death to make the game a ton easier for himself. The thing is though, if a special rule was added to units that are meant to be hordes to combat this, all would be well in my opinion.

And honestly, I find it difficult to talk about AoS in great detail. I think I've played about 10 games total up to now, so I don't know if I can really form a proper opinion yet.

 Mumblez wrote:
Interesting rules in that document, but I don't think it was written by GW. Oh and in my experience as a night goblin player, the last thing my opponent needs is even more bonuses to kill my whole army.

I agree. I don't think the language is wholly consistent with GW stylistically. However, it's an interesting spin on balance!

 Mumblez wrote:
The one problem with the removal of points in my opinion is the weakening of certain playstyles. Horde armies in AoS are worse than before, because your opponent can use Sudden Death to make the game a ton easier for himself. The thing is though, if a special rule was added to units that are meant to be hordes to combat this, all would be well in my opinion.

And honestly, I find it difficult to talk about AoS in great detail. I think I've played about 10 games total up to now, so I don't know if I can really form a proper opinion yet.

"Horde" units in AoS have special rules as they add models. 20 Empire State Troops are better than 10 Troops or even 10+10 Troops. And 30 Empire Troops are better than 20+10 Troops. The explicit Strength in Numbers mechanics are a significant bonus for hordes, and balances against the sheer number of wounds in such units. So one has to choose whether to take a big unit with a lot of wounds, against the risk of Sudden Death. Rather than blindly placing units of 50+ Empire State Troops with blocks of 20+ Handguns / Crossbows, the Empire player has to decide how many wounds to commit to the unit.

There is a sub-game of whether to place fewer such units (to go first) versus a MSU approach that sacrifices going first for having more tactical options on the battlefield.

I rather like that those decisions are made on the fly - it's dynamic balance, in very sharp contrast to the previous static "balance" of a fixed list of X points for WFB6/7/8 tournaments.


Oh yeah, if Laws of War is an actual GW product, then it means that ranked units are definitely coming back as an optional set of rules that players may take advantage of. Along with Heroes joining non-Hero, non-Monster units. And WFB "Maelstrom" missions. The notion is that GW has a planned rollout, and anticipated various criticisms. However, the method to the madness is that they want players to start with the base rules, and then add pieces bit by bit until the "full" AoS ruleset is "released", whatever that might be. Hopefully, the full thing ends up under 16 pages, preferably <12 pages.

Had a look at this yesterday and while not done by GW its a very smart, thought out set done in a similar way to actual warscrolls.

GW may release something like this eventually. Time will tell

While in general I prefer the simplicity of points especially in a system where everything can hurt everything. This seems like something to try out and look at to see if it works.

Could be fun

I think this is both fake and not really fair. Recently after playing against my friend who plays Bretonnia and seeing what knights of all flavours do, I came up with a list like this:

King Louen Leoncoeur
Fay Enchantress

5 Questing Knights
5 Questing Knights
5 Questing Knights
5 Questing Knights
5 Questing Knights

Trebuchet
Trebuchet

At 75 wounds as per the supposed store comp it sports 25 ridiculously good knights, two war machines accounting for four d6 damage shots and two great characters while I tried to make an Empire army based on Greatswords that could still be able to defeat them and came up with this:

Karl Franz on Deathclaw
Balthasar Gelt
Master Engineer

30 Greatswords (here you get 2 models per each model bought for wounds as per the document when buying models for units that have 10 or more men)
10 Greatswords
10 Greatswords (both for counter-charges and flanking)

Great cannon
Great cannon
Great cannon

And... this army still seems to be weaker. Sure, my cannons can soften his army up before it gets off a charge, but other than that Questing Knights are mighty great and thanks to this Laws of War pdf he even gets bonuses because his army seems to be "less powerful", so he can choose to burn my already weaker dudes. I have more heroes, more war machines, more models, more special characters, more 4+ due to 50 greatswords, so even if my army is weaker than his, he still gets bonuses. Hell, he almost gets Sudden Death with his 35 models (25 knights, king, enchantress and 8 crewmen) against my 65 men. All it would take is replace one unit of knights with a 5 wound hero to get it!