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 Klerych wrote:

You know, it's easier to come up with a rule about moustache for renaissance knights or beards for dwarfs, but what would you cast as a feminine rule? Who has bigger breasts? Curvier body? That's sexualizing.

First, in Tolkien's universe, even the female Dwarves had beards. It's a Dwarf thing.

Second, I cannot grow a beard. I do not complain.

Third, I would totally wear a padded bra if it allowed me to reroll 1's. That's just how I (re-)roll.

Fourth, people looking to be offended will always find something. Going through life, terrified of -isms is no way to live.

 krodarklorr wrote:
I was enjoying a few games of AoS, until my local group all decided to adopt a specific comp which kills summoning. That's half the reason I played again.

It's not a specific comp just to kill summoning and straight up banning Nagash and Arkhan just because you have them, it's because they're quite powerful in whats supposed to be a slow growth escalation, with the first week being 500 points per PPC comp. Also, summoning was house ruled to be not as strict as PPC.

 Klerych wrote:

Makumba wrote:

I guess what I'm saying is please don't get overemotional about it. It's only a rule. It's okay if people think it's dumb and say so.

Let me guess your not female? I would have no problem with the stupid rules, if there were also rules that work for female players too.

You know, it's easier to come up with a rule about moustache for renaissance knights or beards for dwarfs, but what would you cast as a feminine rule? Who has bigger breasts? Curvier body? That's sexualizing. Has more make-up on? Sound slaaneshy, tbh. Be able to name at least seven different shades of some colour? See, it's not that easy - beards and moustaches are just tropes for those things based on history and precursors of the genre. What'd be the feminine trope that fits the era? Who cooks better? Who does better laundry? That's awfully sexist. Maybe wearing a dress? But that's still dodgy, what if she wears a skirt or shorts/pants? It's hard to find a feminine trait that can be used as an idea for a funny rule without being offensive and you can't blame GW for including one in their game. Maybe they even tried and failed, we'll never know.

That's not even hard - bonus for whoever has longer hair.

Too concrete, has to be better hair.

Just ignore the joke rules and assume their effects work automatically. The game is still playable.

I agree GW misjudged the audience reaction to their efforts at humour but we've had six weeks to get over it.

To get back to the summoning thing, If you have Lizard Men their wizards can summon a wide variety of units at the rate of three or four units per game turn, subject to counter-spells.

I can see how it might become excessive. OTOH each summons is a lost opportunity for a different spell, so perhaps it balances.

Sqorgar wrote:Third, I would totally wear a padded bra if it allowed me to reroll 1's. That's just how I (re-)roll.

If one of my guy friends wore a padded bra to 40k, they could reroll anything they wanted, as many times as they wanted, as long as they let me snap a picture.

Kilkrazy wrote:To get back to the summoning thing, If you have Lizard Men their wizards can summon a wide variety of units at the rate of three or four units per game turn, subject to counter-spells.

I can see how it might become excessive. OTOH each summons is a lost opportunity for a different spell, so perhaps it balances.

I'm sure this has been brought up before, but all summoned models do NOT count towards the total number of models in the army but must be counted as casualties when determining victory whether or not they're alive at the end of the game. So if you have a 30 model army and summon 30 more models, you've automatically lost unless you can table your opponent -- at the end of the game, you'll have lost 30 models out of 30 total, even if nothing died.

Even if someone's not that extreme -- each summoned model needs to kill 1 opponent's model just to pay for itself. It needs to remove TWO opponent models to be worthwhile. So if you want summon 5 critters, unless you kill more than 5 enemies, you're in the hole for counting up minor victory.

However as a Lizard Man army, what you would do is to have some wizards protected by large blocks of cheap troops, and summon expensive models like Stegadons and Temple Guards that can do a lot of damage.

Obviously your objective will be to gain a major victory. As your summoned troops don't become casualties twice if killed, you don't mind expending them to protect your original army.

This reduces the problem of summoning.

But we are getting off the point, which is that there are already controls built into the game, and there is no need to introduce house rules regarding summoning.

 Talys wrote:

Sqorgar wrote:Third, I would totally wear a padded bra if it allowed me to reroll 1's. That's just how I (re-)roll.

If one of my guy friends wore a padded bra to 40k, they could reroll anything they wanted, as many times as they wanted, as long as they let me snap a picture.

Kilkrazy wrote:To get back to the summoning thing, If you have Lizard Men their wizards can summon a wide variety of units at the rate of three or four units per game turn, subject to counter-spells.

I can see how it might become excessive. OTOH each summons is a lost opportunity for a different spell, so perhaps it balances.

I'm sure this has been brought up before, but all summoned models do NOT count towards the total number of models in the army but must be counted as casualties when determining victory whether or not they're alive at the end of the game. So if you have a 30 model army and summon 30 more models, you've automatically lost unless you can table your opponent -- at the end of the game, you'll have lost 30 models out of 30 total, even if nothing died.

Even if someone's not that extreme -- each summoned model needs to kill 1 opponent's model just to pay for itself. It needs to remove TWO opponent models to be worthwhile. So if you want summon 5 critters, unless you kill more than 5 enemies, you're in the hole for counting up minor victory.

But that is not how summoning works. Your dead summoned models count to your casualties, but your living summoned models do not. The rules states that you do not increase your original army size. Meaning, if you have an army of 30 models, you summon 30 models, and you enemy kills 30 models of you, you lost 100% of your original army size. If the enemy kills 20 models, you lost 66%, and if your enemy kills 40 models, you've lost 133%.

IE: The enemy still needs to kill the same amount of models for the same amount of percentage, regardless of how many models you have summoned.

 Lolcanoe wrote:

 krodarklorr wrote:
I was enjoying a few games of AoS, until my local group all decided to adopt a specific comp which kills summoning. That's half the reason I played again.

It's not a specific comp just to kill summoning and straight up banning Nagash and Arkhan just because you have them, it's because they're quite powerful in whats supposed to be a slow growth escalation, with the first week being 500 points per PPC comp. Also, summoning was house ruled to be not as strict as PPC.

Well, yeah, I'm aware. But as I said before, I standard Liche Priest using summoning isn't game breaking, especially if we play that you need the Warscrolls on the table in the first place to even summon them. But the comp makes summoning more or less useless, and then house rules such as "May only successfully summon a unit once per game" is just icing on the cake.

I'm not trying to whine here, as I was totally on board for AoS (at least for fun, ever so often), but my whole store is on board with whichever comp system it is, and it's just.....eeeehhhhhhh. I'm not a fan of non-official rules.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
As your summoned troops don't become casualties twice if killed, you don't mind expending them to protect your original army.

I'm not sure I understand what you are saying here. When a model is defeated, it is removed from play (and can not be summoned again). How could summoned casualties ever be counted twice?

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
As your summoned troops don't become casualties twice if killed, you don't mind expending them to protect your original army.

I'm not sure I understand what you are saying here. When a model is defeated, it is removed from play (and can not be summoned again). How could summoned casualties ever be counted twice?

That's because the initial size of your army doesn't change with summoning. And since it's the % of models killed in comparison with the initial number of models you started the game that decide the victory, that's why it's a double penalty.

- Your summoned models count in the number needed to kill to win
- They don't augment your initial number of models so that to see if you managed to kill a % enough to win

Well, we played our games first with simple wound count.
It doesn't really work. For instance, take 10 Executioners and compare them to 10 Bloodreavers. Same number of wounds but the Executioners are absolutely mean.
Now we play according the Azyr comp system. Seems to be a much better approximation.
Here 10 Executioners cost 6 pts, while 10 Bloodreavers cost 2 pts.
It appears that Warmachines are slightly undercosted.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
As your summoned troops don't become casualties twice if killed, you don't mind expending them to protect your original army.

I'm not sure I understand what you are saying here. When a model is defeated, it is removed from play (and can not be summoned again). How could summoned casualties ever be counted twice?

What I mean is that if you accept the meaning of the rule about summoning to be that summoned models count as casualties, then it doesn't matter if they get killed and become casualties, because there is no such thing as a double casualty. This leads to some interesting possible tactics using summoned units, based on the points that the summoning player doesn't mind if they are killed, and the opposing player would rather avoid killing them in favour of attacking units that will count towards the score.

BTW where is the rule that says that a summoned model that gets removed from the table cannot be summoned again?

 Kilkrazy wrote:
What I mean is that if you accept the meaning of the rule about summoning to be that summoned models count as casualties, then it doesn't matter if they get killed and become casualties, because there is no such thing as a double casualty. This leads to some interesting possible tactics using summoned units, based on the points that the summoning player doesn't mind if they are killed, and the opposing player would rather avoid killing them in favour of attacking units that will count towards the score.

My reading of the rule is that they only counted towards the casualties if they, themselves, became casualties, but upon rereading the rule, it does appear that summoned units are added to casualties, full stop. So if you have a 50 model army and summon 50 models, you get 100% casualties regardless of whether any of them are actually killed?

BTW where is the rule that says that a summoned model that gets removed from the table cannot be summoned again?

It says that units you do not deploy are kept in reserve (page 2, set-up), so they have a designation which indicates that they are in play. However, on page 4 under inflicting wounds, when a model receives enough wounds, it is slain. Slain models are placed off to the side, "it is removed from play". (It may not be completely obvious, but I've always seen "removed from play" in board games used as "put that sucker back in the box, you won't be needing that anymore" - which this rule reads like)

I'm pretty sure the spirit of the rules is that you have your collection, which the opponent knows about, that you can summon from. You can't just go, "ah ha! I'm summoning these 37 demons that I never told you about" and then go "oh, you murdered my 37 demons... I summon them again! Bazinga!"

I think both those rules would greatly benefit from official clarification, since they reasonably can be interpreted different ways as they stand.

It seems to me that if your collection includes models that can be summoned, the other guy knows that, (I would tell him) and the point of summoning is that the troops don't have to be on the table, not that you have a limited number of them. Some units have the power of reincarnation, and clearly do come back on to the table from off it after being killed.

Certainly in 40K when running my Tervigon, whose power is giving birth to new Termagants, no-one ever thought it was a problem to bring the gribblies on to the table again if they had been shot.

Under Glorious Victory:

Models added to your army during the game (for example, through summoning, reinforcements, reincarnation and so on) do not count towards the number of models in the army, but must be counted among the casualties an army suffers.

Taking out the center phrase about not counting towards total number of models in the army, that reads: "Models added to your army during the game (for example through summoning) must be counted among the casualties an army suffers."

That means if you summon 10 models, they "must be counted among the casualties an army suffers." It doesn't say anywhere that they must be counted among casualties if they are removed.

I see no possibility of ambiguity at all. You could argue that that the latter phrase is Rules as Intended, but certainly as written it is clear.

By the way, I also read this as: if you summon a model, your opponent kills it, you summon it again, and your opponent kills it again, and you summon it a third time -- that counts as 3 casualties. Because it is 3 models added to your army during the game.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
It seems to me that if your collection includes models that can be summoned, the other guy knows that, (I would tell him) and the point of summoning is that the troops don't have to be on the table, not that you have a limited number of them. Some units have the power of reincarnation, and clearly do come back on to the table from off it after being killed.

I don't have a lot of familiarity with the legacy troops, but going by the Tomb Kings PDF, reincarnation seems to add a model to an existing unit, while raising skeletons summons a new unit of skeletons. Reincarnation would be clearer if they said "return" a model to an existing unit, since as written, it seems you can just keep adding new models, even more than you originally started with. Near as I can tell, there is no functional difference between "raise" and "summon". It could be that for reincarnation, you are not actually bringing back a model you have lost, but instead replenishing ranks with new skeletons. Reincarnation is mentioned in the casualty minor victory section in the same breath as summoning as "adding models to your army".

I understand what you are saying, but I think the rules are pretty clear. Models you don't add to your army go into your reserve, "playing no part unless fate lends a hand" - meaning they are in play, but not part of your army. Slain models are "placed to one side - they are removed from play". If the models were to be moved back into the reserve, it would say as much. Removed from play is a much stronger phrase than removed from the table, or removed from one's army.

A clarification would be nice though. For all we know, it's a typo and they should be "removed from pray".

 Sqorgar wrote:
it does appear that summoned units are added to casualties, full stop. So if you have a 50 model army and summon 50 models, you get 100% casualties regardless of whether any of them are actually killed?

Yup. That is why the other player should prefer to kill the initial 50 models, because 10 of those + 50 summoned = 60 casualties / 50 original models > 100% casualties!

I actually think the summoning rules are really balanced RAW. It prevents people from summoning stuff just because, but the skills are still valuable.

If you summon/resurrect a model and it can kill off at least one enemy model, you're ok; if your summoned creatures can give you some tactical advantage that's good too. But you can't summon your way to victory unless you're sure you can table the other guy, because at some point all those summoned work against your victory conditions.

Not wanting to turn this into a YMDC thread, but the phrasing around "casualties", "play" and so on is ill-defined, ambiguous and subject to different possible interpretations. Every time I go back and read the rules again, I change my mind again about what they might mean.

E.g. "removed from play" can be interpreted as models that are not on the table and able to do stuff. What does being "in play" mean? Most people would say it was being on the table. Who would argue that models that aren't on the table can move and attack? If they can't, perhaps being removed from play simply means that models cannot "do stuff".

These areas where a greater degree of clarity by GW would be very welcome.

Anyway, we are digressing. Let's get back to the main topic.

If one summons and re-summons enough stuff (and it could be an awful lot of stuff), tabling should be a foregone conclusion.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
If one summons and re-summons enough stuff (and it could be an awful lot of stuff), tabling should be a foregone conclusion.

If the game lasts forever, sure. But if the games don't, summoners die, some units don't die so easy, and all that kind of thing. You also may trigger sudden death at a point when your opponent still has enough models to matter, too.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

E.g. "removed from play" can be interpreted as models that are not on the table and able to do stuff. What does being "in play" mean? Most people would say it was being on the table. Who would argue that models that aren't on the table can move and attack? If they can't, perhaps being removed from play simply means that models cannot "do stuff".

"Once the number of wounds suffered by a model during the battle equals its Wounds characteristic, the model is slain. Place the slain model to one side - it is removed from play."

If a model dies, you no longer use it. I think any other interpretation is overcomplicating what is a very simple statement. Remember that the rules are written for newcomers, they're just trying to stress that you can't play with a slain unit.

I don't think summoned models count towards Sudden Death because they are not part of your army. This morning I am leaning towards the interpretation that summoned units count as casualties, partly because it seems to balance against the previous point.

There are more constraints on summoning than are obvious, though. As noted above, you need a summoner. He can't summon unless there is space to do so, which is usually something like an 18 inch bubble centred on the summoner and at least three inches from an enemy model.

 Talys wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
If one summons and re-summons enough stuff (and it could be an awful lot of stuff), tabling should be a foregone conclusion.

If the game lasts forever, sure. But if the games don't, summoners die, some units don't die so easy, and all that kind of thing. You also may trigger sudden death at a point when your opponent still has enough models to matter, too.

Sudden Death is determined before the game begins, and is not "triggered" in any way mid game.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I don't think summoned models count towards Sudden Death because they are not part of your army. This morning I am leaning towards the interpretation that summoned units count as casualties, partly because it seems to balance against the previous point.

There are more constraints on summoning than are obvious, though. As noted above, you need a summoner. He can't summon unless there is space to do so, which is usually something like an 18 inch bubble centred on the summoner and at least three inches from an enemy model.

'Models added to your army during the game (or example, through summoning, reinforcements, reincarnation and so on) do not count towards the number of models in the army, but must be counted among the casualties an army suffers.'

So yes, summoned units don't count as sudden death, but do count as casualties towards minor victory objectives. Also summoning does seem to have limits as stated on the summoned units' warscroll or the summoner's. It's also a spell that can fail or be unbound by other wizards.

Nagash is still horrifically OP and I'd suggest creating a scenario around him or imposing heavy limits on his summoning.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I don't think summoned models count towards Sudden Death because they are not part of your army. This morning I am leaning towards the interpretation that summoned units count as casualties, partly because it seems to balance against the previous point.

There are more constraints on summoning than are obvious, though. As noted above, you need a summoner. He can't summon unless there is space to do so, which is usually something like an 18 inch bubble centred on the summoner and at least three inches from an enemy model.

Yeah, I think you're right, and I misunderstood the sudden death rules (which we never came across).

It always seems pretty farcical to talk about balance in a game like AoS.

Balance is quite obviously not the goal, and it's supposed to be up to players to do anything like that they feel is needed. If players want to have summoning, then they can. If not, then they get rid of it. Isn't that the philosophy of AoS? Balance is for other games.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
If one summons and re-summons enough stuff (and it could be an awful lot of stuff), tabling should be a foregone conclusion.

Yep. And not hard to do if you put a little effort into summoning. Some darn fine troops are summoned on low rolls. I wouldn't waste time trying for a stegadon when 3 kroxigors does the job.

We are doing an escalation league, where summoning would screw up the games something fierce. We've gone to using Azyr points system, but with a mechanic we are just calling "reservers". Currently at 20 point armies and 10 points of reservers. Reserve units come on the table either by being summoned (no need for the same unit on the table) or by moving on from a board edge similar to 40k. This gives armies that like to summon the ability to do so, and armies that can't an equal amount of troops.

 Da Boss wrote:
It always seems pretty farcical to talk about balance in a game like AoS.

Balance is quite obviously not the goal, and it's supposed to be up to players to do anything like that they feel is needed. If players want to have summoning, then they can. If not, then they get rid of it. Isn't that the philosophy of AoS? Balance is for other games.

I've said it before. If you want a balanced game, AOS isn't it.