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Well, I will take your words for it. I am gonna hang on and see how the rest of the releases pan out. Maybe we are in the middle of something and the end result will be worthwhile. I really hope so, genuinely, because I would like to be able to easily find a game with strangers because right now that is gonna be my only way in.

IDK if you have a facebook and if you dont you dont need all your personal info on it, but Facebook at least in my area has groups for the area for warhammer (a couple groups of 500+ people each depending where you live). It is very easy to get people to play. I would check that out. Also there is Meet-up groups as well and some others.

With 10min of research you might be able to find a couple stable groups near you.

 Da Boss wrote:
Well, I will take your words for it. I am gonna hang on and see how the rest of the releases pan out. Maybe we are in the middle of something and the end result will be worthwhile. I really hope so, genuinely, because I would like to be able to easily find a game with strangers because right now that is gonna be my only way in.

My expectation is that we'll see more Battletomes released at a steady rate continuing for the rest of this year and into early next year.
One complicating aspect is that we don't know what, if any, combined armies GW might do. For example if they combined Beastclaw Raiders with Gutbusters into a single battletome then that cuts the number of tomes down. Destruction could be covered with just 2 tomes if they did a combined ogors and combined orruks tomes. In addition coming over to Order depending how they sort it out Aelves could be one tome or multiple or none at all (removed).

Combined tomes speeds things up, but it also makes smaller niche forces more viable as armies because now the yare bolted onto the side of another. That lets the player easily draft in more units if they wish without the allies penalty kicking it. It also means that updates to one "niche" of an army can count for all groups.


Eg for Skaven being in a single book means that the new Warlock Engineer model, whilst aimed at Clan Skyre, still counts as a new model for the whole range and a Skaven Pestilens player can draft that model in if they wish (though they'd have to field a general skaven force of course).


We've some hint that A battletome Ogors could be a thing since in the GW survey Ogors were mentioned as a single force. Though the store page hasn't been updated, but then again barring Tome updates the store hasn't changed since just before Christmas.

Combined Ogors I imagine will be a thing, they really need it to balance out their unit choices. A lot of destruction, them included, is stuck with grand alliance which is simply among the worst sets of allegiance abilities out there. Ogor units themselves are not bad at all for their cost but with such meager support from allegiance the army does badly.

If you got rid of allegiance abilities, would it make the game more balanced?

 Da Boss wrote:
If you got rid of allegiance abilities, would it make the game more balanced?

No because they are not at the core of all the balance issues. Even when they are its specific ones that could be adjusted rather than removed. They are important too because they give an army flavour outside of their warscroll unit descriptions. This both binds the army together; can provide a basic focus for the army building and use and also helps armies which share units, to have different styles of play even with similar unit types.

I also feel that, rather like spells, they are part of what makes factions unique beyond warscrolls.


Again its not a clear cut "just get rid of them" to improve balance.

 Da Boss wrote:
If you got rid of allegiance abilities, would it make the game more balanced?

There would probably be a net increase of balance. But I imagine I speak for many in saying it would make the game dramatically less fun. And there would still be plenty of issues. Something to remember is that the majority of units & allegiance abilities are reasonably well balanced, it's just that the outliers are frequent enough and severe enough to create the strong disparity we see.

Grand alliance Destruction, for example. Units? Not bad. Artifacts? Not bad. Command traits? Not bad. Allegiance ability? Absolutely terrible, so bad that it nerfs any faction using it into obscurity, which includes Ogors. For any group willing to house rule I would replace it with the version Ironjawz got, something that instantly would bring most Destruction armies to a level of viability.

 Da Boss wrote:
If you got rid of allegiance abilities, would it make the game more balanced?

Nah, it wouldnt change anything honestly, just less viable units for some players.

Allegiance abilities aren't by themselves unbalancing, they are the salt and pepper to the mix that adds flavor. They are good ideas to have. Mostly executed in a way that is acceptable.

The unbalancing is mostly the fault of poor points costs and some warscroll ineptness. When powergaming, one goes for the things that are underpointed, to give their 2000 point list the fighting power of a lot greater than 2000 points.

Warscroll rules that are either too strong like Flesh Eater Courts have, or flaming garbage like slaves to darkness.

Actually, allegeance (and factions, and artifacts, and spells that are part of the army rules as well as the iconic terrain...) abilities are a big part of the unbalance you're talking so much. That's where a lot of summoning rules are, as well as some problematic command abilities like the possibility of Flesh Eater Courts to attack twice in a row in the combat phase immediately.

Yes, that's what makes it possible to "personnalize" more your miniatures. Well here's the truth - unbalance come naturally from characterization. The more you try to give a unique flavour to something, the more you risk to set the balance off. Perfect balance is symetry, which is why games like Kings of War are so easy to balance because their rules and profiles are using the same base for all armies. Even army special rules are actually variants of core rules that can be found in other armies in one way or another, including the core spells.

If you used only the Great Alliance allegeance rules, I'm sure GW's design team would have a much easier job to get the points right for all the warscrolls. A lot of warscroll rules would also be less powerful with all the shenanigan combos coming from army rules/allegeance. Give less options to gamers and suddenly, they will have less ways to abuse the system. That's the reality of games.

Summoning by itself doesnt break the game. Its certain armies bent way of doing it that does.

So removing all allegiance abilities because two or three factions version of summoning would be overkill.

The same as removing all points would be overkill because some units are criminally under or overcost.

The allgeiance abilities just struck me as being more "CCG" and "Gamist" than I was used to in a wargame. I am not against them, but then I am not the sort of person who needs dramatic differences between my units to enjoy using them.

Why not just make every summoning point be dependent on a 3+ roll of a D6? I generated 30+ DPs in my first turn of a game. If each required a 3+ to get, I’d only have gotten around 20. Makes each point more valuable and not guaranteed. That’ll work for blood tithe, Tzeentch casting dependent summoning, etc.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Why not just make every summoning point be dependent on a 3+ roll of a D6? I generated 30+ DPs in my first turn of a game. If each required a 3+ to get, I’d only have gotten around 20. Makes each point more valuable and not guaranteed. That’ll work for blood tithe, Tzeentch casting dependent summoning, etc.

The problem is that you've not actually resolved the issue, just made it more random. So some games the Slaanesh army might get utterly crushed because the summoning dice rolls failed more than they should and the army wound up underpowered. Then in the very next game you make all the summoning roles every time and now you're back to being overpowered. It's not actually addressed the problem and has instead just muddied the waters by making it a touch more random. I think a better adjustment is to review how depravity is generated and spent.

Personally I'd be a fan of them shifting some depravity generation off the leaders and into some/all regular models as well and upping the cost to summon things at the same time. Right now slaanesh has a very odd way of going to battle because the best way is to take a LOT of leaders and almost no troops and then to use depravity to summon more leaders to generate more depravity. It's an army that almost doesn't want its troops and winds up appearing very top-heavy in terms of leaders (for points used).

 Da Boss wrote:
The allgeiance abilities just struck me as being more "CCG" and "Gamist" than I was used to in a wargame. I am not against them, but then I am not the sort of person who needs dramatic differences between my units to enjoy using them.

I agree with you for sure. But ccg mechanics pay the bills these days.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Why not just make every summoning point be dependent on a 3+ roll of a D6? I generated 30+ DPs in my first turn of a game. If each required a 3+ to get, I’d only have gotten around 20. Makes each point more valuable and not guaranteed. That’ll work for blood tithe, Tzeentch casting dependent summoning, etc.

I prefer the system i use. Not restricted but if you generate too many you give your opponent a sudden death victory condition they can achieve to win.

Ideally all summoning would be like Khorne; a trick you can use but that takes away from other stuff rather than being a free upgrade. Tzeentch, Slaanesh, Nurgle, FEC, all of these armies pay nothing or effectively nothing to summon, so if one plays them but does not summon they are handicapping themselves. A player that shows up to a 2000 point game with just a 2000 point army of them is holding themselves back for no benefit. I am unsure if the short term benefit to sales is really worth losing the players it drives away.

But in terms of fixing what we have right now, I prefer bringing back summoning for points but with a better ratio. Points are reserved, but summoned units come in for half cost. A simple change that brings summoning into line without nerfing it into oblivion. Not perfect, but easy to implement.

For players (not GW) any player driven away by that mechanic is a loss. Who cares about GW sales as long as they are making some bit of profit to keep going.

But I wonder if a lot of people like the unrestricted summoning. It certainly seems like AoS is popular, more popular than WFB at the end (though not as popular as WFB during 6th and 7th edition) so maybe people like that.

I hate the idea of it along with Double Turn, but I am an observer rather than a player. But those two things put me off, mechanically. I feel like summoning new units was cool when it was an undead only thing and the units you were summoning were mostly pretty weak. Now that you can summon whatever you like in some armies, whereas other armies get no summoning at all (!) I think auticus suggestion of sudden death objectives is a good one.

If a player is driven off who would otherwise have bought an army that is a sales hit for GW. Free summons undoubtedly brings in sales, but does it make up for that? I personally don't think so. Another factor is that it will not generate sales for every player of a summoning army; when Nurgle got free summoning that generated no extra sales from me because I already have WAY more than 2000 points, plenty enough to have units ready to bring in.

I would say out of the collective fantasy player base (all players into fantasy wargaming period) both the double turn and free summoning are off putting to a large portion. Is it the majority? We will never know.

However the aos community largely white knights the hell out of both the double turn being some great tacticians dream and free summoning being off the chains rawsome.

The double turn i dont understand the love for at all.

Free summoning i totally get because its a ccg mechanic in a game that pushes and is marketed for ccg style players.

Here's the thing, player A has an army that is alright, player B has an army that is optimized and crushes the army of player A. Player A knows that if he can get a good double turn, he at least has a chance to beat player B. In this manner the double-turn serves as a solution to and a masking of the problem of imbalance.

Like treating alcoholism with cocaine!

Yeah i get that. However if Powergaming Player B gets the double turn he doubly crushes player A.

So people clinging to a double turn like its a cure for powergaming lists is daft IMO.

You're right, it is like treating alcoholism with cocaine. Dr. Roxxo style.

I'd argue double turn is worse than summoning. The problem is anyone can get the double turn and in my experience those who are against it tend to only get there once they've been doubled turned a good few times. Ergo they've experienced that 2 turn period where they do nothing but roll for saves and remove their models from the table.

Balance aside that point alone should be why double turn is removed.

On the balance side double turns generally mean whoever gets it has won the game; or at the very least they've taken such big strides toward winning that their opponent has to pull a miracle out of the bag to win - unless, as noted above, the play who got the double turn is running a really bad army poorly. Ergo the double turn is masking a skill difference and the worse player got to have two turns.




If GW really wants to keep it have it resigned to open play as an optional mechanic and let matched play avoid it. Which is what I suspect will happen because that lets GW answer the issue for the matched play gamers, whilst getting to not actually remove it as a feature from the game. They just discourage it in "matched" and move it out into the optional realm of open play.

I really cannot understand why a mechanic like that would make it into a game at all. It brings the entire game down to luck.

and in my experience those who are against it tend to only get there once they've been doubled turned a good few times.

I was against the double turn the first moment I read the rules and noted it existed. I disliked it when it first hit my first AOS games regardless of what side of the table I was on. Winning via the double turn felt hollow. I "won" because I got to go twice in a row and teabag my opponent.

I also am against the double turn because it forces one of the players to be a casual observer that does nothing but remove models from the table for two turns in a row.

It is the worst rule I have ever encountered in any game ever spanning back to my first foray into tabletop gaming in 1988 because it forcibly removes player agency, forces players to be observers with no interaction, and loads the game down to who gets lucky to have a double turn.

The protagonists of the double turn that white knight it say that it forces some layer of strategic depth where you have to account for the double turn. To this day, four years later, no one has ever given a good example of what exactly that means.

Because this is a game where you can get locked into combat on turn 1. I don't see how you mitigate the double turn at all when the game supports units that can cross the entire table and engage in combat in turn 1 and where units can shoot freely into combats with no penalty. Other than screening.

You have to have screens and place them correctly. This is a most unappetizing pillar of play because it means whatever army you play has to have a slave-caste that gets set forward to screen against a gamist mechanic. That works for some armies, like skaven or even goblins.

Playing an elite style army, you have no screen. And if you have no screen you have no way to protect yourself from offensive starting on turn 1, and potentially being back to back.

An easy way to houserule it is push objective control to the end of the round and just alternate. For endless spells roll a d6; on a 2+ the person going second picks one to move first, on a 1 the person going first does.

I have to agree with Auticus on this one. I really don't get double turn except that it is a wildcard. Who wants double LoN spellcasting or a double Feeding Frenzy?

My FLGS has stopped using the turn priority for tourneys and it has, if anything, increased AoS interest in my community as a lot of players stayed away due to TP.

Double Turn is indeed a wild card. It is completely random, depending if you have luck with dice or not. People who like control on their games will tend to hate it for that reason.

You can indeed get locked in combat turn one, but unless you have an ability to hit first with a lot of units before your opponent can choose, it is mitigated by the way combat plays in AoS. It is much more important to have a double turn if you have lots of shootings/damage magic, since the opponent can't usually "interrupt" your chain of damage that way.

Dice always had a special place in GW designers' heart. "Rolling dice is fun !" is one of their mantra. The best way to counter optimization is randomisation : you can't optimize what you can't control. This is why the Double Turn is so hated or loved - it depends how you see the game should be, and with which point of view you're sided.

Some will certainly summarize it as "lazy" or "sign of incompetence". I'll say it's a design choice on purpose.

The best way to counter optimization is randomisation : you can't optimize what you can't control. This is why the Double Turn is so hated or loved - it depends how you see the game should be, and with which point of view you're sided.

Couple things with this line that I'd like to point out:

1) it doesn't address hating it because having a player stand there for two turns straight doing nothing is bad design.

2) optimization has not been curbed at all by double turn, the competitive community optimizes the living hell out of the easy to find undercost units, and optimized armies still crush non optimized armies regardless of double turn.

It's not even hating it for the lack of control, its the fact that you can randomly end up being left out of the game for two whole turns and you've nothing you can do about it.

You can't contest it nor even predict it appearing. Furthermore you can't really play with it much in mind as about the only thing you can do to prepare is hold back from letting the enemy get too close to engage. So basically that might work if you're not having to push forward for objectives and if your army is a tough shooty force; but most close combat armies want to advance forward.

You don't have to be a control freak for that to be a huge problem. Beginners, casual players - anyone is going to get huge issues with it.
It honestly strikes me as something that was in the supercasual joke rules at launch and which some how retained a core of enough fans to convince GW to keep the feature within the rules of the game. It might even be that, at launch, it was one of the "defining features" (since at launch AoS didn't have endless spells nor really any rules features as such).

I like Summoning. I don’t like the double turn.