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To be honest, I hate it.

I hate it so much that I MUST be understanding it, and would like for someone to please correct me in what I -must- be doing wrong.

Here's where my woes began.

20 point patrol for Tomb Kings.

Heroes.

Tomb King: 3 points. Okay
Liche Priest: 2 points. Okay.

So alright. I have a General with an alright command ability and a weak caster, but he comes with a dispel scroll, so that's fun. I can also summon some guys, per Azyr comp as well. Granted, summoning is pretty diluted, which is great.

Warmachines and Monsters.

I -should- pass. My command ability is aimed at Reanimants and Skeletons. That said, I have some nice painted SS catapults, so I'll nab them both.

Catapults: 4 points.

Army Dudes.

Woo! Time for some skellingtons!

Wait.. what?

Skeleton Archers.

2 points for 5 models. +1 point for a banner. 2 models for an extra points.

So..

5 for 2 points base.
1 standard for 1 point.
4 archers for 2 points.

5 points for 10 skeleton archers?

Alright, well that's expensive it seems.

So for 14 points I have 14 models so far. Time for more things!

4 more points = 10 skeleton warriors.

2 more points = 1 tomb scorpion.

So my entire army is ..


1 Liche Priest
1 Tomb King
10 Archers
10 Warriors
1 Scorpion
2 catapults

Color me unimpressed.

Remember those 10 skeleton archers? Here's a list of other things you can get in Azyr Comp for 5 points.

1 Giant
3 Minotaurs (4 points)
1 Lord of Change
5 Seeker Chariots (At 6 wounds each, I might add)
20 Empire Crossbowmen (6 points)
12 Chameleon Skins (Deploy anywhere, have better hit/wound/ and poison)
50 Goblins
5 Oges (20 wounds)
1 Demon Prince
1 Celestant Prime (6 points)


Really?

I was pretty excited about giving this comp a shot, but this seems a bit crap. Please talk me off the ledge.

Azyr comp is the quick-and-dirty balance system. Its simple and easy to get into, but the balance is a bit off in places. Unfortunately its a matter of finding what is best for the point costs, much like in WHFB or 40k. If Azyr comp doesn't provide the balance you are looking for then I suggest Project Points Cost (see my signature), its more work to make a list but you shouldn't have the problem you are seeing here. Ultimately neither system is inherently better, its down to personal preference.

I only know alittle of the Azyr since I'm more into making lists using detailed points (who'd figure...) But, do you know if the guys behind Azyr know about this? Maybe you've found something that can be fixed - or at least you could get some explanation to it.

I hope user auticus sees this, maybe he can shed some light on the matter.

Cheers and good luck!

First off I'll say every single model in the game had the exact same formula applied to it. The formula applies to a great many things, to include their stats of course, the weapon profiles and how much damage on average they output, if they can cast spells, if they can summon, if they have ranged weapons, total number of attacks (as you can shoot into your own combat thats boosting attacks) etc.

There is even a version of Azyr I have that is precision point based where it uses the raw scores that can be used in "2000 point games". I don't have it released out because thats not the direction I wanted to go with Azyr, there are about a dozen comp systems out now that are all trying to be precision based and I like that I can make an azyr roster in 60 seconds or less as opposed to sitting there for 30 minutes trying to eek out my efficiency to the last little point.

Undead were the most complained about thing ever out of every army combined because of their healing banners.

We watched dozens of games with tomb kings AND vampire counts face rolling people because of those banners.

There were about 8 suggestions to try to fix it. In the end the almost unanimous decision was to make the banners cost +1 pt per selection.

As expected, no matter what direction you take with the undead, especially their banners, someone will complain. There was literally no choice that could be made that would have made everyone happy. If I had my way those banners wouldn't exist. You could heal through your casters and thats it. Or make the banners have to roll like a spell so they can fail instead of always working.

Also after 750 registered games, the tomb kings and vampire counts sit atop the win % at around 62% and 60% (the average is 54%) even with these changes.

Azyr is not a precision system. It is not designed to be a 1 model for 1 model comparison. I don't feel that that is good for campaign systems because

A) no matter how much work you put into a precision system there will always be must haves and never takes and

B) those points are usually designed for pitched battle, so other scenarios that are not pitched battle those precision points start to fail pretty hard (which is why historically over the past 20 years it is usually very difficult to get anyone to play any of the scenarios in the back of the rulebooks because "they arent balanced" - which is true - the points were balanced around pitched battle - not around anything else.

This is a system of general balance, and in again 750 or so games we have had about an 80% success rate with close games (and we've had about 37 revisions where we have addressed issues)

The ability to heal models without needing to even roll is HUGE.

Those 20 archers or whatever aren't really 20 archers. You usually have to kill 30 or more before they are all dead.

If you like - don't add the bonus point for the banners. You should, as is the case 99% of the time, have a vastly easier game and your opponent may be a bit irked (and write me that the undead are broken, I have a whole folder in my azyr email called "undead are broken" that is full of email from people about them)

I would also say - a lot of complaints are from people who eyeball the system and then complain about it, without having used it.

A good example came over the last weekend. I was chaos, my opponent was dwarves.

I had 65 wounds he had 33 wounds (20 pt game). Pretty much everyone was saying that the comp was completely off its rocker to allow something like that.

Nevermind that 20 of my wounds were reavers which are horrible

The game came down to my lord vs his lord and I pulled off a win in the last turn. With 2 models left alive. In a game that started 65 wounds to 33 wounds where people were eyeballing it and saying it should have been a chaos steam roller. (the point system takes a lot of things into account, and thats why even though the wounds were about 2:1 the points were even and the game was very even - and also why I would never use wounds as a balancing mechanism because it flat out is horrible for that)

Those are fairly common in my experience despite people wanting to go off wounds or whatever and eyeballing it and calling it a disaster. It is a system designed primarily to facilitate public narrative campaigns though as opposed to tournaments - though many tournaments have been used with it (which helped provide a lot of revisions in the past couple of months)

auticus wrote:
no matter how much work you put into a precision system there will always be must haves and never takes and

B) those points are usually designed for pitched battle, so other scenarios that are not pitched battle those precision points start to fail pretty hard

In defence of PPC, I don't think there is a single model in either of those two categories, and I have seen no problems with any scenarios played thus far. Besides, it doesn't seem to me that he is criticizing the whole system as much as the fact that he can't run the ay he wants in that system. Particularly he seems to be addressing 9 skeletons for 4 points as opposed to the 1 point banner. It isn't supposed to be 'war of the comps' here, Azyr has pretty good balance overall but there is certainly a wide variation of effectiveness within a given army, which is where the OP is having trouble. I don't know Azyr well enough to give advice on that but maybe you could help him out with getting more bang for his buck.

Not going for war of the comps, I was explaining my stance on general comp vs precision comp and why I did what I did and chose the path that I did.

I could be mistaken on what he is trying to address but it seems he was saying that his skeletons are X points, and then other models are also X points and that this is broken because of that, which is a precision vs general difference (I get that quite a bit) and that the models are too expensive in Azyr and should be cheaper so you can get more models on the table for 20 points.

20 point patrol battles are supposed to be fairly small, a step above a small skirmish clash.

Last campaign day we had 20 point battle and the tomb king player there had 2 casters, 6 chariots, and like 20 archers or so and 10 tomb guard. 38 models, and something like over 60 wounds (with the banners healing full blast)

It was a potent force as well because the chariots can do damage on the charge, and its really hard to kill them all since every turn they pop one back up.

Now the 30 and 40 point battles are more reflective of "how it used to be". 20 point games are meant to be fairly small and quick. 10 point games you can do in 30 minutes.

I would say if you want more models on the table, don't take the healing banners. You can get more bodies on the table that way and you still have raising the dead abilities to add more models.

Also looking at the final list that comes out to be 17 points.

liche 2
tomb king 3
10 archers with banner 6
10 skeletons with banner 4
scorpion 2

There are still 3 points to play with there.

Dropping the heal banner on the skeleton warriors you have 4 points to play with. You can get 12 more skeletons with that.

Combined with the summoning that the liche can do, this is not a bad force in a 20 point game.

My 20 point chaos list is:
Priest, chaos lord
20 reavers
10 blood warriors
1 cannon

33 models total and the chaos lord can bring in up to 2 units (on a 4+ to bring in a unit per turn, giving up my command ability) vs the tomb kings being able to summon and heal units.

That seems like it would be a pretty good matchup.

Thanks for the reply, I really appreciate you taking the time to go over your points thoughts with me.

I misunderstood about the banner tax and actually mean to have 9 skeletons with a banner. Or skeleton archers I mean. Then add in two catapults.

I guess it just seems really skewed towards Undead. Or against rather. I am playing my first game vs ogres this weekend and have a significant disadvantage in total wounds combat skill and staying power. I do not know if summoning a few extra skeletons will be enough to bridge that gap but you can be sure I will provide feedback if you are still accepting it.

Having played a lot of wound compt Sigmar I found a lot of disparity between things like goblins and Phoenix guard. So when I see 9 wounds of skeleton archers costing the same as v 6 wound demon chariots I get concerned.

The banner tax came about simply because the undead were steam rolling everything mainly because of their ability to self heal at the level that they could because of those banners. Ogres may be an exception, ogres are very strong in Age of Sigmar... but we tweaked ogres to be more expensive too.

But yes the tax was introduced because you were paying points for say 20 skeletons but reliably actually had 30-40 skeletons due to the healing of the banners.

A lot of what we do depends on playtesting as well. By feedback though I need detailed feedback, not "i played ogres and they won and i think the system sucks" lol

I've had a lot of weekend afternoons spent watching games and players that said the comp screwed them, they actually made a lot of mistakes during the game.

Our stormcast players feel the comp punishes them, but they win most of their games, for example. When they play without comp I sit down and add the lists up and the stormcast players idea of a fair game ends up being like a 70 - 50 point game if they had been using points (and they do win handily usually)

More tomb kings vs ogre games would definitely benefit us from a playtest standpoint. The only time I get to see that matchup is during campaign days, and our tomb king player uses a lot of chariots.

You have a lot of range and ogres are really good at getting across the table very fast (they can run AND charge). That means right there, you are at a disadvantage because you created a ranged list against an army that can get across the table in a couple of turns (points not standing, you're at a handicap)

When looking at something, like 10 skeletons costing the same as a 6 wound demon chariot, look at how much damage the chariot does on average and how much the skeleton unit as a whole can do on average, as well as counting the fact that the demon chariots cannot get its wounds back where as the 10 skeleton unit CAN get its wounds back.

Treat them like two shapes as opposed to 10 skeletons and a demon chariot.

That goes back to my game which was 65 or so wounds vs 33 wounds of dwarves that everyone thought for sure I would win by a landslide because of the wounds.

Wounds don't do much in terms of telling us balance in this game... its just a cog in the machine. The machine is made up of other things like movement, saves, and how much damage on average a shape (unit, model, etc) puts out in a turn. That all goes into that model.

Also when it comes to skeletons, because the undead are a lot of fun to balance - they get more attacks the more models are in the unit.

Archers get +1 attack if 20 or more, skeleton warriors get +1 attack if 20 or more or +2 attacks if 30 or more.

Now raw a skeleton warrior is not worth 3 for 10 when it only has 1 attack. Its really worth about 1 for 10 when you strip all the special rules away.

Now add in the extra attacks. At full power these things ahve 3 attacks each. A horde of them is putting out dice cubes of attacks (and thats what people were doing!) ON TOP OF BEING ABLE TO SELF-HEAL!

So what we did for undead that have these abilities (and also things like empire state troops etc) is took their bottom most value and their top most value (that is what they'd cost with 3 attacks) and found the average.

So undead are inflated in cost simply because of what they *can* do when horded out.

This does suck a bit if you want to run little 10 man units of skeletons but the problem is when you run them as 40+ blobs like a lot of people were doing, the low cost was easy to game so we had to bring them up to compensate.

Any system can be gamed I suppose, its just unfortunate that the formula for undead has to be based on such variables.

In order to get the minimum unit size bonus for a unit of skeletons, which are not very good, you have to spend almost a third of your points.

Ill be sure to send some feedback detailing how it goes and the differences made.

We had a lot of people working on it. None of us could come up with a better solution. Every solution we came up with made someone else mad.

The one we implemented with the banner tax was the one most people were comfortable with.

The undead sliding power scale via unit size really makes it so you need to have points costs for 10, then 20, then 30 so that you can take 10 and it cost like 10 instead of taking 10 but having to have it cost what 20 would cost because tahts the average.

I will say when you have 40 skeletons and they are throwing 120 attacks, there is a reason why they cost what they do. Especially in AoS where there are no strength or toughness variables anymore.

Do one better and have a wizard cast shield on that unit so their save improves as well as being self-healing and that is a monster tar pit that can cause some damage to other units that aren't as big.

I lost a unit of 10 blood warriors, a khorgorath, a priest, and 5 knights to a unit of 40 skeletons before i finally wore them down.


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What I suspect is going to happen in your game because you are pretty much all ranged is that you're going to hopefully get a couple turns of shooting in, you'll drop a few ogres, then he'll get in on you and start beating on you because you don't have anything really strong in combat in that list and you aren't getting the bonuses to offset him.

(thats where the chariots and things like that come in)

I'm not a fan of Azyr either or any other points based comp tbh, the skeleton cost in them is just crazy.

Skeletons/zombies or any other 1 wound, 0 rend 'core troops' are just not as good as mathhammer makes them out to be for a number of reasons.

1) 99 times out of 100 your never going to get all of them into combat unless of course your opponent lines his troops up 20 wide and in a straight line.
2) They are really poor and will be demolished by any elite unit/big monster in short order due to casualties and battleshock.
3) Can be neutralised by anything with a decent save and Mystic Shield. Heroes with a 3+ save can stand all day with a massive unit of 'core troops' tying them up,give that hero Mystic Shield and the unit has no chance.
4) As soon as numbers drop and the bonuses disappear you've got a chocolate fireguard unit.

I've played so many games now with my main armies VC,TK,Empire and Skaven to know that in a points based game taking skeletons etc are a big waste of points and elite units are the way to go.Elite units always offer a threat to any other unit regardless of their size,skeletons etc are only threatening if you get to attack 1st and at full strength.

With all due respect, over one hundred reports and a few tournaments into playtesting said otherwise.

Raw without benefits they are indeed very poor. They are as good as other trash units like goblins and marauders which in Azyr are 1 pt for 10 models.

Throw in healing banners, and then throw in +1 attack if 20 models and +2 attack if 30 models and you have a model that has 3 attacks, which is 3x more attacks than the other models that cost 1 pt for 10, and additionally can bring back models every turn not counting what the casters can do (i don't include what casters can do in the points)

All that and they are vastly superior to other 1 for 10 pt units and again - much playtesting showed exactly that. (skeletons were originally cost at 1 for 10 way back in the first draft and that was quickly changed after a couple weeks into the system seeing what they could do.

As the models have upwards of 3x the number of attacks and self-healing, they should indeed cost more than the other 1 for 10 units that do not get those benefits.

As we hit over 750 playtest games overall, our win / loss percentages are quite tight, and the number of blow outs a lot smaller than in the 8th edition and prior days. We're at about 80% success rate in those regards, and I'll take that anyday.

Have you considered gating skeletons for more accuracy? Or is that just too much work (Not being snarky, legitimate question) because it would open the floodgate of having to gate skaven and goblins and everyone else with unit size incentives?

1 for 10 (+1 banner)

3 for 20 (+1 banner)

5 for 30 (+1 banner)

I can't imagine even if I made all my units melee oriented, at my costs I could stand up much to the ogres.

All the undead units are just so costly, one decent melee and banner or not, an entire unit will vanish. Tomb Guard, Ushabti, it doesn't matter.

Is you database of game data available online somewhere? As a tournament organizer for the US Masters in the Mountain Region, I'd love to be able to troll through it.

Sliding scale points was one of the ideas offered up yes.

My database is not online no its a file I keep on my personal computer.

Any way I could charrm that off you? It would make scenarios writing much less of a crap shoot.

Its not in a format for human consumption other than my own lol. I'd have to scrub the data.

Part of a future project is to dump that into my sql database so that I can run reports off of it. When that is done I wanted to feed that to a web page to give people more data to go off of

Yeah, would still like to see the specific army versus army win/loss ratio sometime

Gating the costs of the units which become stronger the more you take sounds perfect.

Can you detail how the debate around that issue went?

My league tried Azyr comp when it first came out. We found that there were disparities in effectiveness of models vs cost. Most of the guys are happy with project point cost. My personal feeling is that if you want a balanced game, comp points by model work best, and if you want a fast and dirty game, just play rules as written. If your opponent is not a tool you should be able to play just fine. And please note, I mean no disrespect. It is hard work balancing game systems, props to anyone who takes that on.

 Eldarain wrote:
Gating the costs of the units which become stronger the more you take sounds perfect.

Can you detail how the debate around that issue went?

Complexity. One of the first iterations back in late July had sliding costs and it received a lot of flack for being too complex (it wasn't to me, it was just X for 10, X+1 for 20, X+2 for 30 to account for the graduating effectiveness).

When I say a lot of complaints, I mean a lot of complaints though. Enough that I changed it because the people in to what Azyr was offering (simple building simple scheme) were going to leave because it was too complex and I was attempting to make a system that stood outside of what everyone else was doing (precision model-to-model costing).

Also I never pictured Azyr would get very far because it was not model by model precision costing, which is what most people are into because well thats what they've been doing for many years. I explained why I chose to not go that route above though (a solid defense model may be great in a pitched battle, but would be worth much less in a battle where mobility was key, for example, and people would complain "this scenario is not balanced", plus pretty much everyone was coming up wtih precision systems and there was no need for me to create yet another in the mix - as it stands there are about a dozen comp systems out there now for AoS and most are precision based)




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If your opponent is not a tool you should be able to play just fine

Strongly disagree. It doesn't take being a tool to not be good at balance.

Most people I know when eyeballing the game are horrible at this. Most every game I've seen of AOS by the rules as written eyeballing forces ends in a steamroller victory for one side.

I like to capture the armies being used and point cost it just to see what it comes out to be and its always severely unbalanced to one side or the other with points, because what someone feels is balanced is often very much not.

Goes back to the above story of my chaos vs dwarves. Everyone in the store thought the comp was whacked and that I was going to steamroll my opponent because I had double his wounds on the table.

Everyone in that store would have added more dwarf models to the table to compensate, and then it would have truly been a dwarf steam roller victory (as it was again it came down to me having two models left at the very end and that was it)

No one would have been doing that to be a dick, but because visually it looked very schewed even though the dwarves were paying for their synergies and buffs and tough units and the chaos side had a lot of weak chaffe and in the end it was anyone's game, which is how the vast majority of my games in the system have been (which is why I still support it, if the games were coming out imbalanced and out of whack a majority of the time I wouldn't put energy into continuing with it).

Is it perfect? Nope. Does it appeal to everyone? Nope, I know its not going to, but there are literally a dozen model to model precision comp systems out there, that I didn't feel we needed to add another one to the mix because I felt that back in July there would be a lot of them. (and they all seem to work good either so I'm not knocking that its just that to me if I was going to create another precision system I could have just not bothered)

Now I've seen with my own eyes games played where one player feels the comp sucks and is broken because he got beat around the table and blames it on the comp and then you sit down and break the game down and point out the four or five major mistakes he made during the game, which is why I need detailed reports and not just "i played with my X army against my opponent who played Y, and your system sucks because I got tabled in three turns so the system is not balanced" because there are memes dedicated to our community over our losses not ever being our own fault Stormcast players feel that stormcast are too harsh in the system because their guys all cost a lot. They fail to take into consideration their guys also do a lot of damage and have good saves and bravery rolls, but they look at model count and feel that because they are outnumbered that the comp is broken (and in the RAW they'd put more models on the table, and thats why its very rare IMO that I see stormcast lose in a RAW game of AOS because they are always 20-30 points ahead of their opposition due to eyeballing the balance and model count / wound count being used as their balance mechanism)

I know when ogres got tweaked a few weeks ago it was because literally I watched several games with them and saw that they had an advantage because they were a point too cheap and we fixed that.

I'm sure there are bugs in the system still. Tomb Kings and Vampire Count players are pretty vocal that paying for their abilities is kind of bad because they eyeball the list and it seems that they have few models and its not fair, but in the end when I watch their games play out they still manage to win (they are still at the top of the bell curve of statistics for wins) its just the games are much closer. And yes some of them lose too. Army selection is still important, and it is possible as in any system to create a list that is just not equipped for the scenario or the opponent brought its antithesis.

The undead have always been a major pain to balance with points because of their graduated abilities getting stronger the more of them there are, and people that want to field say 10 of them are paying a tax for only taking 10 when they aren't good at 10, but at 30 are super amazing if they were paying for them like they were only 10 pts. (zombies can be utterly brutal in hordes)

My email is literally full of requests and ideas, some of which were very good and made it into the document. Its been the task of a lot of people and I'm always open to reading detailed reports of how battles went down to tweak things and always will be (37 revisions and counting)

@auticus Thank you for your detailed reply and all the work you've put into Azyr. Despite some dissenting voices it must be satisfying to know so many people are enjoying your work.

 Eldarain wrote:
@auticus Thank you for your detailed reply and all the work you've put into Azyr. Despite some dissenting voices it must be satisfying to know so many people are enjoying your work.

Thank you it was a surprise but I am happy to have contributed to helping make AoS more enjoyable, but I can't take the credit when it was also a team of players putting in a lot of hours playtesting too Those players had as much to do with it as I did, I just format the document and came up with the initial tiers from a simple math formula

It all comes down to personal preference. I know the players at my FLGS didn't take to Azyr because of the balance issue, but we are also the types who prefer sitting down for 15-20 minutes to work out a list. I can respect that a notable portion of players just want to throw models down and play a game, where as long as things are mostly balanced its good for them. Neither side is right or wrong. Though I will note that the increased cost on Ogres was probably a good idea since they were a major sticking point when we tried Azyr.

Balance issues are resolved with playtesting and reporting

Another issue with Age of Sigmar is its hard to put a mathematical value on abstract rules buffs.

The ogres I think needed to pay that extra point for the ability to run AND charge. You just had no time to react to them and they were in your face by turn 2... kind of like the old 40k 3rd ed days of blood angels rhino rush (that they also paid no points for, their marines were 15 pts and a normal marine was 15 pts)

Put up my bat-rep in the appropriate section here.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/670346.page#8257546

version 1.8 was uploaded last night. Smaller units of skeletons are now cheaper.

Refer to release notes.

I'm excited to read it!

I owe Azyr comp two more battle reps.

Last weeks 30 point Warriors of Chaos vs Skaven and tonights Tzeentch Demons Patrol vs ???. (My opponent is being dodgy.)

Sounds good look forward to reading it.

I also posted in your battle report thread the results I had using my TK vs the ogres using almost the same list (i took out the banners and took horsemen with it) but that was with 1.7 point values as well.

Keep up the good work. You are really onto something good. Maybe we could get events with this like the ITC? A unified format to encourage more events and people playing.

With Azyr? Probably not, Azyr is mainly for general balance and for a campaign system. The tournament crowd overwhelmingly wants precision balance.

I actually like that there are multiple formats to play today instead of one format. One format works great if you like that one format, but is miserable if you don't. Multiple formats mean that you have a better chance of having a format that supports what you are looking for.