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I personally don't consider all of the 2.0 battletomes to be in the same field as each other.

For example: nurgle. That book is not a trash fire, but it pretty much will never stand up to Skaven or FEC if the skaven or FEC player is fielding hyper optimization powergamer build.

Thats just to head off how the whole game will therefore be balanced and everything will be great discussion that tends to follow.

However, on the plus side if they can bring by the end of 2019 75% or more of the factions into 2.0 rulebooks, it will in fact bring a lot of player satisfaction back if they keep the books at the same power level as goblins and khorne (both books I find fun and well written without glaring WTF power builds staring at you once you crack the cover))

I do consider nurgle book vs khorne book to be an entertaining game with a slight nod to khorne in power but player skill can compensate and the insidious double turn can artificially make the game win / loss at least more balanced regardless if you find it fun that the game is won or lost by a double turn (another discussion that has been had a billion times that doesn't need repeated here)

I'm really ok with no models being released right now so long as the external and internal balance is being upgraded so that all of the factions are viable and that internally multiple builds are viable.

Well look at that my prediction the free people book would combine humans and dwarves was spot on.

When ive suggested it ive gotten a fair amount of backlash for that idea. I was exactly today years old when i heard cities book with a mlx of races being a serious idea for a battletome.

Or maybe it was just people still hate the idea of mixing races and want battletomes to remain “pure”.

Whatever makes slaves to darkness have to wait longer to not be garbage is the answer.

That zombie kit was around when I got my first undead models in 1998.

Goblins are a fun book, and ride about the middle of the pack in terms of power. A "B" list.

So long as then they also (dispossessed) don't then get move buffs additionally.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 auticus wrote:
So long as then they also (dispossessed) don't then get move buffs additionally.

Running joke in my group is "as I am playing Nurgle, a slow army, my infantry will be running 16" across the board then charging you."

Yeah. In Kingmaker I have the PtG portion where you get no faction allegiance abilities. And a nurgle player was displeased saying his army was now unplayable because he could no longer turn 1 run and charge.

Mortal wounds are one of the pillars of minmax play. Max summoning (free pts) is another. Both will easily tip a game if one player is “optimizing” it and the other is not.

There are always outliers. Its still the pillars of play to build on for most. The best strategy in AOS is to minimuze opponent agency as much as possible.

Unfortunately the game is not balanced very well, and is a deckbuilding exercise where often one person will win based on their list vs the other.

That being said, once you get more games under your belt you will recognize the pillars of listbuilding and be able to build better lists that won't flop like a wet towel.

I'd say the gloomspite gitz book is a solid "C" average book, has a lot of fun entries in it, but you will be challenged by a lot because there are not a lot of i-win buttons.

Khorne is almost on par with you though, maybe slightly more powerful (C+ maybe a B- list depending on the power build being used) so once you figure out how to do epic tons of damage back to your opponent you will find the games are a bit more fun.

That unfortunately does require you to build a certain way though with a certain subset of models.

The key feature of AOS (and 40k) is to minimize player agency, meaning the more you can do things to your opponent that he cannot respond to or just stands there helplessly watching, the better off you will be doing. This is not a bug or a defect either, its an intended feature that a lot (a lot) of people love. Just because you have 2000 points and your opponent has 2000 points, most often does not mean the two armies are balanced and a good game will be had unless both players are tuning as hard as possible.

Yeah. I'd say the problem I see quite a bit is that new people walk into the store, see the models they really like, and then figure "if i am building say 1000 pts, and my buddy builds 1000 pts... that we'll have a good game."

Because thats logical.

And no one tells them different. And starter forces are a logical first step for a lot of people.

The game of AOS has a lot of unfun elements sprinkled in it. But as people like to say a lot on social media... its all broke so none of its broke. You just have to know that going in, and know what the broke is so you don't waste time and money on stinkers.

Yep. Id say for every new player that joins, ten more look at you with shock as to why anyone would play a game like that.

And i notice nearly all that join have a magic the gathering background and understand churn and burn.

Most of our new players dont have “recruiters”. They come in with a friend and buy starter forces with the expectation that even pointed forces are balanced against each other.

One of the two chooses poorly and gets smoked several times and it is then that they learn the truth of gw points and community expectations and choose to churn and burn or cut their financial losses at that point.

Some will ask us what forces are garbage first. Those again are usually all ccg players that know how this racket works. They are about half of our new players.

The gas to the fire is when they learn that this style of churn and burn is desired (it is hard for some people to wrap their minds around why people would enjoy being forced to update their collection annually) and that gw games really are the only game in town for miniatures.

This effect is tripled for 40k as it attracts exponentially more people at the gate.

Often when a new player cuts and runs and puts their stuff up for sale, people who anticipate the stock of those units rising with an faq jump all over it for pennies on the dollar.

We call it the cycle of life.

A few find our narrative campaign stuff and stick for the open play house ruling of the things we find most negative. A few drift to pro warhammer at one of our pro player tournament clubs. A lot have a shelf life of less than a year...which to me is bad.

But they paid their money into the company so bottom line is it works.

That maybe but there are also a lot of games that dont make you churn and burn.

Awesome! But if you are playing people that have a min/max bent, you will need to chase the meta along with them to have good games. Or at the minimum be ok with having your face rubbed in pooh the whole time.

It doesn't sound strange or weird at all. Its just not very likely to work over here as it does over there.

An example is the thread in tournament discussion about going off the rails etc 40k hate.

For a great many folks over here, asking them to not max out their list is seen at the very least as mildly irritating and at the worst, a direct insult.

The social contract of the game in the states is often die fast, die hard, go max and play as hard as possible.

Which is why when we have global forums, people look at each other funny because the cultures are often so very different.

*to stop someone pedantically stating "not everyone is like that", thats true. Not everyone is like that. But its common enough here that it does affect how we view the game and what type of games we get to play.

Do you mean online or in person ? Because I have found that the tone is very different if you have your opponent in front of you rather than chatting with him on the net. When I find agreements, it is always in person. Online, it's...more difficult, I admit.

Either. Though usually the nasty words aren't spoken in person, they are reserved for online communication. However, I've watched the communication go down and it isn't overtly rude. However the competitive person makes it clear he's not dumbing his list down and the other player usually acquiesces (and then the game is as you'd expect, a one sided stomp fest).

You're not telling them "Ok so in the next 5 years you might see a book if you're lucky" its "in the next year there will be a book"

Very few people would be thrilled to hear either one of those things had they dropped $500 or more on an army only to find out its a flaming turd because the community wants its meta churn.

In aos, hero sniping is both trivially easy and required. Most armies fall apart without their magic the gathering buffs that heroes give.

You want to be sure you can kill his heroes as fast as possible and protect your own. That is another tenant of listbuilding (particularly useful combined with ranged mortal wounds or high rend/damage attacks he cant save from)

They don't have a current army book so are garbage tier. They were the hotness a few years ago and a ton of people grabbed an army since they were also the golden bullet points: low model count AND super powerful.

When they get a new army book they'll likely be at least C tier unless the magic roulette lends them to be OP for a six month - year stretch.

There is almost no chance that GW sunsets the BCR plastic model kits when they are only 3 years old.

Be VERY careful about your expectations. The tomb kings line (the sphinx, snake riders, etc) were only a few years old as well when they were removed and while I was feeling pretty sure we would see those new kits return with a tomb king reboot, we see that the masters of the universe release has not shown those (yet). So ... maybe those new kits return in the masters of the universe bone mortarch line, but they definitely set a precedent for being removed even though being only a few years old and plastic.

I expect a unified ogre book. Just like a unified orc book.

Chaos dwarves had a FW list in Tamurkhan hardback book. It was gw-official and could be played at the warhammer world events. That was the last edition of whfb.

They were shunted to FW yes, but their army list was official and was as of 2011 (8th edition) so a few editions past the ravening hordes list.

Its a toss up between

1) finding a game you like

2) being actually able to play said game since GW is in many cases the only game in town.

If one could play middle earth or kings of war or conquest like they can with 40k and in some places AOS, I think a lot of the angst we see in public forums would lessen.

Fancy that, no one wants to play a faction that looks awesome but couldn't fight off teletubbies, let alone anything else in the AOS game lol.

 Overread wrote:

 auticus wrote:
Fancy that, no one wants to play a faction that looks awesome but couldn't fight off teletubbies, let alone anything else in the AOS game lol.

I think its time to turn turn the record to Side B now that we've got a confirmed Battletome coming out in less than 2 weeks time

Just because they are getting a battletome does not mean they won't be flaming garbage.

A good chunk of the 2.0 books aren't viable against the top three or four books when those three or four books are running in powerplay mode. The pattern is alternating. Meaning a strong power book is followed by a mediocre for fun book. The last book was the masters of the universe undead book which is a power book right now. All signs point to slaves to darkness being a meh for fun book. Though the mawtribe book (a meh for fun book) might have been the for fun team's last effort, meaning slaves to darkness will be off the chains like slaanesh.

We just won't know until the book drops and we have our 12 second flip through of the rules trying to find the obvious busted pieces if they exist.

I know some of you guys feel that as long as its a 2.0 tome its viable, but I watch every week just how not true that is. Our AOS campaign that is wrapping up is about 8 players now, and we've gone through 14 players this year (since jan 2019) who started and quit for a different game because of the balance issues and almost all of them were using 2.0 tomes.

Sure there is a difference in power between books, but I in no way feel its as bad as you make it out to be. With a couple of exceptions most 2.0 tomes can give each other good games.

I would certainly challenge you to bring forth battle reports highlighting a "competitive" gitz, mawtribe, khorne, tzeentch, nurgle, orcs, or sylvaneth army taking on a competent player playing triple keeper of secrets, tournament powered FEC, or masters of the universe undead and it not being pretty much decided on the opening credits.

Yeah there are a number of 2.0 books that can give each other good games. And then there are the other half of the 2.0 books that don't bother showing up unless you are playing one of those set of books unless you are just there to mash models together and you don't give a damn about the outcome of the game.

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:

 auticus wrote:

Sure there is a difference in power between books, but I in no way feel its as bad as you make it out to be. With a couple of exceptions most 2.0 tomes can give each other good games.

I would certainly challenge you to bring forth battle reports highlighting a "competitive" gitz, mawtribe, khorne, tzeentch, nurgle, orcs, or sylvaneth army taking on a competent player playing triple keeper of secrets, tournament powered FEC, or masters of the universe undead and it not being pretty much decided on the opening credits.

Yeah there are a number of 2.0 books that can give each other good games. And then there are the other half of the 2.0 books that don't bother showing up unless you are playing one of those set of books unless you are just there to mash models together and you don't give a damn about the outcome of the game.

https://youtu.be/CL2h_ByV3R4

A recent GT where an Orruk player outright outplays the Hedonites meta list, at a significant GT, top table. :-)

Sweet thank you for sharing with some hard material, I appreciate it.