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I am curious about this personally as I have limited AOS experience, but from that experience comparing to 40k I've found that typically the game is a bit less deadly than 40k in general, with the major exception being if a player with a low-interaction army (either a shooty army or an army with an 'always fight first' type mechanic) gets a critical double turn.

Overall, on average how many turns do your AOS games last before the game is a foregone conclusion and one side is very nearly or totally tabled? 3 rounds, 4 rounds, 5 rounds?

Foregone conclusion? Turn 3 is usually enough. After that it's just unpleasant mop-up if one of the players insists on dragging it out.

Over all AoS and 40K is not very deadly. The closest I have come is a small cut with a knife. Just be shure to ventilate if you use plastic glue.

 Niiai wrote:
Over all AoS and 40K is not very deadly. The closest I have come is a small cut with a knife. Just be shure to ventilate if you use plastic glue.

Clearly haven't built any slaanesh chariots! I've lost 2 good friends when one accidentally catapulted the half built start collecting box into the air...

Jokes aside, I find turn 2 deadliest, but 3-4 is the most vital and important where any reserves really come into play / 2nd wave clashing and mad dashes for objectives. Very tense and fun!

Last night I played a game against an Ogor player and had a hard time sticking any damage onto him overall, but he had an easy time sticking damage on to me.

That being said, I had summoning mechanics to make up for lost units and could keep feeding fresh nits to him to keep him locked down.

Game only lasted 3 turns but that's because it was a 3000 point game and he had 4 units total to my 10+summoning so I was able to collect a lot of points and he conceded.

However, I played a goblin player the other day and they were able to use a command ability to make a unit of 60 goblins (of which like 40 got in range with their spears) to cause mortal wounds and that was a crazy amount of damage. They deleted the unit they were engaged with almost effortlessly.

I ask, because it seems to me the potential to cause huge damage seems FAR more baked into 40k comparative to AOS, simply by the mathhammer involved.

Just based on the stats - a Starshard Ballista is 100pts, comparative to something like an Ironstrider Balistarii at 75.

If you fire a Starshard at a shooting-focused enemy target, let's say an Arkanaut Frigate since that's also a fairly recent book, you'll deal about 1.5/14 wounds to that target, a little bit more if you've got that Messenger Hawk ability in range.

A comparable target in the 40k example would be lets say a Death Guard Plagueburst Crawler, at 165 points it's a bit cheaper but so is the Balistarii.

The balistarii starts out dealing 2/12 wounds to the PBC, and has numerous army-wide abilities, reroll auras etc it can use to make that go even higher. just by being in mars, the balistarii can make that 4/12 on the turn Wrath of the Omnissiah and the +1 to hit skitarii protocols get popped.

Is this just a matter of me not knowing the combos present in AOS versus 40k?

The games of AOS I've played some of my units just end up feeling like defensive gods, and I'm playing what's supposed to be the weakest faction and a glass cannon faction. I usually have a unit of Ishlaen Guard in front of a turtle and my opponent can only target them with shooting attacks and they've got a 2+ invulnerable save.

I was sure that there'd be more Lumineth wombo-combos to make Starshard Ballistas nasty but I didn't find any.

There are certainly combos, but 3.0 has toned down a lot of them. You still have things like Lumineth Vanari Sentinels shooting without needing line of sight for 30" and causing mortal wounds on 4+ or whatever, which with a unit of 30 of them is quite the damage output, but that's also a big expenditure of spells, points, etc.

To start with, you're comparing two imbalanced units. KO is one of the top dogs right now, and while Lumineth is too, is sure as heck isn't because the Ballista is any good.

As well, Idoneth Deepkin are not a glass cannon. Ishlaen Guard are nuts defensive wise, against traditional damage dealing methods, but they crumble to Mortal Wounds, which are far more common in AoS than they are in 40k.

Let's take another Lumineth Unit, the Vanari Sentinels. 140, or 150 points I don't recall off the top of my head, for 9 Archers and a leader. 30" range bows that can ignore line of sight. 4+/4+, no rend, 1 damage. A big fat meh.

Toss in their Sunmetal, hit rolls of 6 deal a MW, and the attack sequence ends. Now we're getting somewhere. They've got a baked in spell, low cast value in an army that can stack on casting bonuses, to bump the MW effect to a 5+. Nice. On average, expecting about 3 mortal wounds for a unit of 10 Sentinels. Well, why not make them a bigger unit, they don't cost too much anyways. Now we've got 1 leader, and 19 Archers. Looking at around 6 Mortal wounds from a 280/300pt unit. Well, you've got the rest of your army. You can take an Endless spell, and a Lumineth spell, that lets you give Rerolls to Hit against a single target with missiles. Spellportal Endless Spell for more range + Lambent Light spell. With both of those' you're up to lets say 9 mortal wounds in the shooting phase.

This is decent, for a long-ranged shooting unit of that cost. Melee is more deadly, but Shooting is free. The enemy doesn't really get to interact with it. You might play a game where you have guns, and the other person has none at all.

Let's go through my personal favorite unit, the Stormfiends. 6 big beefy models with a forced assorted weapon configuration. I take 2 with melee, 2 with a ratling cannon, and 2 with a plaguewind launcher. 630 for the whole lot right now.

Each ratling cannon spits out 3d6 shots, averaging about 21 shots with 2 of them, at 12" range, 4+/3+/-1 rend, 1 damage

Plaguewind launchers are 3 each, 6 total, 24" ignore LOS, 4+/4+/-3 rend, d3 damage. Decent enough profiles, but Skaven can buff them up a whole lot.

More-more warp power spell, give a unit reroll to hit and wounds until the skavens next hero phase. Take d3 MWs when the spell ends. Skryre Faction ability, give up to 3 Skryre units missile weapons +1 damage for a shooting phase, for the cost of a faction resource. Vigordust Injector, give a unit +1 to hit rolls until Skaven hero phase, take d3 MWs when it ends. Or, just use a +1 to hit Command Ability.

21 shots, 3+/3+ Rerolling -1 rend, 2 damage. 19 hits, 15 wounds, -1 rend and 2 damage each. Rough math, not exact, but close enough. Pretty spicy damage output.
6 shots, 3+/4+ rerolling, -3 rend, d3+1 damage. 5 hits, 3 wounds on the lower side, at -3 rend d3+1 damage. I've been told that Warpfire Throwers are the better choice instead of plaguewind, but I like my longer range stuff.

With buffs, the damage gets high. But, I would never shoot with these against Ishlaen Guard, unless I had no choice. I'd be shooting those suckers with my mortal wound spam spells, my Warp Lightning Cannons, and so on, because they're not the ideal target. for traditional shooting.

In conclusion, yes there's a lot of combos to get damage high. However, the actual ability to apply said damage is typically more limited than it is in 40k. Both factors lead to lower damage output. Shooting tends to be lower except in some cases.

At a competitive level it can be extremely deadly, almost as much as 40k, thanks to the sheer number of mortal wounds being thrown around. But generally speaking it is nowhere near 40k levels. For starters, most of the game's damage is dealt in the combat phase and even the absolute shootiest of AoS factions would qualify as hybrid melee/shooting ones in 40k. That gives more time to maneuver before things really get going and gives more opportunity for the opponent to attack back outside of their turn. Models from both sides die and the units have less attacks to throw at each other.

Another factor, indirectly, is fixed wound rolls. Instead of toughness models are generally made more resilient via a higher wounds count, and across the board AoS has more hit points than 40k. It means taking damage is less swingy with units more likely to be in the margin between unharmed and totally dead. Couple with damage values and rend being much lower on average.

Most of the games I played up until I quit aos the games were usually decided by turn 2 or 3. I'd say about 25% of the games were decided by turn 2, and about 60% of the games were decided by turn 3. A scant few went past turn 3 into turn 4 or even 5 but those were the exception and not the rule.

I also played in the bowels of competitive-plus environment where everything was a netlist of adeptcon or LVO lists so it was designed to be that way.

In a more casual environment if you have one of those, your results may differ.

 the_scotsman wrote:

Overall, on average how many turns do your AOS games last before the game is a foregone conclusion and one side is very nearly or totally tabled? 3 rounds, 4 rounds, 5 rounds?

Turn 4 s our usual if it's going to be a foregone conclusion.

To answer the question of "how long" games last usually...
A lot of our games only go to turn 3. Not because of tabling or doing a lot of damage, but because we're all terrible players and one person almost inevitably gets an insurmountable lead on objectives.

3.0 is not as deadly as 2.0 from all the games I have played outside of KO and LRL, seems everyone took a good hit other than them, yes they did go down as well just not as much as others.

Over all though, i still have units on the table by the end of the game and I play BoC. SO can't be that crazy damage output lol.

AOS2 it was generally turn 4 with sometimes round 5 priority might affect.

AOS3 it's turn 2/3 at which point one side is too crippled to win. Side effect of doing scenarios that turn game from objectives into table the opponent.

tneva82 wrote:
AOS2 it was generally turn 4 with sometimes round 5 priority might affect.

AOS3 it's turn 2/3 at which point one side is too crippled to win. Side effect of doing scenarios that turn game from objectives into table the opponent.

Most of the scenarios seem to be objective based from what I've seen in 3.0. What about the 2.0 objectives kept armies away from eachothers throats more? and is that really the only thing that causes the gap in deadliness between the systems? Certainly in 40k almost everything seems to be in range of everything all the time, because 36" range which is like artillery pieces in AOS is like 'slightly more than a basic rifle' in 40k, but also it seems like it's way more common for weapons to be dropping flat 3, D6, or flat 2 damage in 40k than in AOS because there isn't the wound spillover mechanic. and in 40k there's generally at least two more layers of army-wide special rules which tend to be offensive way more than defensive, because Subfaction Traits tend to be two-parters and you've got the doctrine purity bonuses.

Does the AOS morale system make up for the reduced weapon deadliness, then? Or is it just the mortal wound saturation?

Morale is about as much of a factor in AoS as it is in 40k. So, if your army is built well, you can skip the phase 90% of the time. If you don't build your list to ignore the phase, it can hurt pretty bad.

My Skaven, with low leadership, rarely loses anything significant in battleshock.

I would also note that a round 1/2 or 2/3 double is extremely powerful and it is perhaps more difficult NOT to decide the game at that point. Getting such a double makes it very easy to set up a situation your opponent cannot recover from. Given the majority of games will statistically have that happen...

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I would also note that a round 1/2 or 2/3 double is extremely powerful and it is perhaps more difficult NOT to decide the game at that point. Getting such a double makes it very easy to set up a situation your opponent cannot recover from. Given the majority of games will statistically have that happen...

Imagine a hypothetical scenario where all the people playing AOS games have not hit their heads enough times to play by that rule, I suppose.

If you want to go to/prep for tournaments, you're stuck with it unfortunately.

There are a surprising amount of stubborn people in my play group who will refuse to exclude that rule, then lose top of turn 2 after my Skaven gets a double turn. And still not consider that maybe the rule is gak.

 Thadin wrote:
If you want to go to/prep for tournaments, you're stuck with it unfortunately.

There are a surprising amount of stubborn people in my play group who will refuse to exclude that rule, then lose top of turn 2 after my Skaven gets a double turn. And still not consider that maybe the rule is gak.

I don't, so, no worries there. The rule is basically not ever used at my local shop, and I have zero intention on trying to insist on it, lol. Just seems like the potential benefits (potentially forcing players to play slightly more defensively to try to guard against a double turn, I guess?) are massively outweighed by the number of close games it straight up decides on a single d6 roll.

 the_scotsman wrote:

 Thadin wrote:
If you want to go to/prep for tournaments, you're stuck with it unfortunately.

There are a surprising amount of stubborn people in my play group who will refuse to exclude that rule, then lose top of turn 2 after my Skaven gets a double turn. And still not consider that maybe the rule is gak.

I don't, so, no worries there. The rule is basically not ever used at my local shop, and I have zero intention on trying to insist on it, lol. Just seems like the potential benefits (potentially forcing players to play slightly more defensively to try to guard against a double turn, I guess?) are massively outweighed by the number of close games it straight up decides on a single d6 roll.

Despite the likelyhood of another thread devolving to doubleturn...

Pfft, why don't you just play further back on the board and not run up to lessen the impact of double turn against armies like... Skaven with long range. Stormcast with long range/teleporting. Seraphon with long range/mobility. Tzeentch with long range/mobility. KO with long range/mobility. Deepkin and Ironjawz who WILL charge you turn 1 if they want to and you don't get to say no.

Sitting back defensively incase of a double turn gives you an edge against the bad armies of the game.

I wish I could get my group to ditch the rule, but the competitive sorts AND the casual sorts are against it for the most part. Casual sorts since it... imbalances the game further, in either direction, and competitive sorts since it's how tournaments are played.

Where I was, you didn't use houserules and had to use official tournament rules - so double turn was something in effect nearly always and yes it was what played a huge part of the numbers I posted above (25% games ending by turn 2, 60% games ending by turn 3)

However this coupled with the shorter table sizes and design direction of "MOAR DEATH MOAR EXCITEMENT MOAR GAMES SHORTER GAMES" seems to tickle a lot of people who want gameplay to fall within a 60-90 minute window.

Regardless of one's stance we can all agree that it tends to shorten game length overall, if the OP is not using random initiative we should account for that when giving estimates of how long the average game is going to be.

In my experience it will, on average, be mostly decided by the bottom of 3 but still need round 4 to be played to solidify it. Most games would be effectively over by the end of 4, with games finishing earlier than that generally having been lopsided from the start due to list disparity. Round 2 or 5 games are the exception.

 Thadin wrote:
If you want to go to/prep for tournaments, you're stuck with it unfortunately.

Fortunately I have no intention of setting foot in a tourney.