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If you think summoning needs an extra bonus beyond that, then run it like clash. Deploy X choices less than you're allowed, be able to summon X choices of new units during the game from your undeployed collection, without needing to nominate specific units in advance.

Gives summoning an advantage in on the spot versatility rather than cumulative deployment pool.

Then the other side deploys the same amount regardless of what they're playing against, and summoning armies can summon more or less without feeling like they're throwing away points - the way the current rules punish summoners for summoning anything less than the maximum amount allowed.

 Malisteen wrote:

Fully count summons towards your total army limit. Treat it as an alternate deployment method, nothing more. It's the only way.

As a rule, I'm going to object to almost any instance of someone saying "it's the only way". I think there's a lot of flexibility and SCGT (to say nothing of AoS) is way to young a comp/game to think that we've got it all figured out.

I think we all agree that there's a cost/benefit to summoning models instead of starting with them on the table. How we evaluate those costs/benefits is where the difference lies, I think. I believe you understate the cost, overstate the benefit.

As already mentioned, you have to sacrifice another casting and risk failure in order to summon. In my army, giving up a mystic shield or daemonic power. That's a big deal as both those spells are easier to cast, and have a more immediate effect.

The unit you summon isn't going to be as large as you like- when it comes to units like skeletons or daemons that benefit from greater numbers, that's an important distinction.

I think saying that a summoner gets to drop a unit "anywhere they like" is vastly overstating the power of summoning too. For one thing, summoned units have to be within X of the caster and Y (usually 9") away from the enemy. In a messier battlefield, that can be a pretty restrictive "landing zone". This is made *more* complicated by the fact that summoning happens in the Hero phase, *before* your caster has a chance to react to the situation on the table. It's not like they can just run over to where they're most needed and then drop the spell.


And as far as units getting to enter the field of play without fear of retaliation, a charge from 9" out is going to fail about 3/4 of the time. That means that most of the time, retaliation will be possible.

I concede that it pressures armies that *can* summon to do so, but I think it's possible to make an army that is as strong (or stronger) without summoning.

But again, this is conjecture, and I don't think any of us have enough table time right now to not make it worth trying out. I just don't think it's as bad as you seem to think.

The current format punishes non-destruction players for not using summoning when playing against opponents who do.

The current format punishes players who do use summoning for using anything less than the maximum amount of it whenever they play against destruction players.

Either way, it doesn't work, functionally restricting player options rather than enabling them.


In vanilla age of sigmar, anything you summon could have just been deployed instead. Any comp that isn't looking to throw hitself out of joint in this way needs to maintain that. If summoning becomes a niche tactic as a result, well, so be it. I've played quite a bit both with undead and against daemons, and neither faction feels considerably disadvantaged even without any summoning at all.

As such, letting these units be stronger when summoned (as they are if summoning lets you field more units or models than you would otherwise be allowed, then that's a problem.

A problem recognized by SCGT with the bonus destruction points, but as mentioned, that patch doesn't actually fix anything, and in some ways makes things worse.

I really disagree, but I guess it's all a matter of opinion. I like having summoning come from a side board. Otherwise, you guys may see some advantage of not starting on the table, but I would strongly disagree. I guess different comp systems are designed for different people. Some have shooting, summoning, hero, ect restrictions to appeal to different players.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

broxus wrote:
I really disagree, but I guess it's all a matter of opinion. I like having summoning come from a side board. Otherwise, you guys may see some advantage of not starting on the table, but I would strongly disagree. I guess different comp systems are designed for different people. Some have shooting, summoning, hero, ect restrictions to appeal to different players.

I love having summoning come from a side board. IMO, clash does it best, you have a 'total army', you deploy a subset of that, if you want to summon then you deploy X less, and can summon X stuff as you wish from the undeployed sideboard during the game.

But what do you disagree with?

That summoning players are punished for not summoning the max amount possible? Destruction players get 10 pool point extra against summoners regardless of how much or how little you summon. If you want to summon a single banshee, then congratulations, Destruction now gets more stuff than you do total, including your summoned banshee, and gets to start with it all on the table. In system where summoning was just taken point for point from your deployed army, the summoning player in this example would start the game behind only one banshee from their opponent no matter what opponent that was - a banshee that they could bring on mid game. But in the SCGT system as it exists, against destruction opponents they'd start minus half a banshee and ten more pool points on top of that, and even after they got the banshee on the table they'd still be playing at a handicap. So if you do any summoning in SCGT as it is and don't want to be dealing with a big devicit against Destruction players, then you have to plan to summon a lot, and are pushed towards the max amount possible.

That playes of factions with access to summoning are punished for not exploiting that option? If you play a non-summoning chaos army (say, dedicated beastmen or chaos mortals with no daemons), then when you play against a summoning enemy you could be facing a total deficit of as much as 20 pool points once the other side has their stuff on the table (not hard to do if you build for it). The rules even recognize that this is unfair by giving destruction 10 extra pool points against summoners, but since your non-summoning force is chaos and not destruction, you get nothing. How is it fair that an ogre player would get 10 extra pool points against a summoning opponent, but a pure beastmen player would get none?

To not be playing at a deficit, the beastmen player is forced into fielding summoned stuff of their own, and then the previously described effect pushes them to max out that amount.


So the current system pushes players with access to summoning to use it even if they didn't want to, and even more so to maximize the use of it, again even if they didn't want to use it at all in the first place. It's unreasonable. And most of this hassle is to fix a problem that doesn't even exist in vanilla uncomped age of sigmar (mess that it is), because, again, anything you summon could have just been deployed, making summoning just an alternate deployment method. It's trying to force summoning to be more than that that makes this a problem in the first place.

So much work just to get a game to work, its not even worth it in the end as the war-scrolls are so similar with the buckets of dice just pushing out the averages once you have it fully balanced with the i go you go mechanics you might as well just roll off at the beginning to see who won, to the extent that when 95% of people discuss there win loss rate its always near the 50/50 mark.

I hope you'l all ready to make new point systems in the future too as 40K will soon do the same thing.

I understand if you don't like it, there's plenty not to like. But I doubt I and Broxus/Zeke would be debating this as heatedly as we are if we didn't all see something worthwhile in the game.

As for sameyness, frankly I find considerably more variety among Age of Sigmar units in their rules and how they play than between, say, Kings of War units, where the faction rules read like spread sheets, and a +1 in this stat or -1 in that stat are supposed to give two completely different units their defining characters.

Granted, there's a fair bit less variety than in, say, Malifaux units, but that's a much smaller scale game, where individual models have a bit more room to breathe, and it gets gummed up and bothersome if you try to play particularly large games with it.

 Malisteen wrote:
I love having summoning come from a side board. IMO, clash does it best, you have a 'total army', you deploy a subset of that, if you want to summon then you deploy X less, and can summon X stuff as you wish from the undeployed sideboard during the game.

But what do you disagree with?

That summoning players are punished for not summoning the max amount possible? Destruction players get 10 pool point extra against summoners regardless of how much or how little you summon. If you want to summon a single banshee, then congratulations, Destruction now gets more stuff than you do total, including your summoned banshee, and gets to start with it all on the table. In system where summoning was just taken point for point from your deployed army, the summoning player in this example would start the game behind only one banshee from their opponent no matter what opponent that was - a banshee that they could bring on mid game. But in the SCGT system as it exists, against destruction opponents they'd start minus half a banshee and ten more pool points on top of that, and even after they got the banshee on the table they'd still be playing at a handicap. So if you do any summoning in SCGT as it is and don't want to be dealing with a big devicit against Destruction players, then you have to plan to summon a lot, and are pushed towards the max amount possible.

That playes of factions with access to summoning are punished for not exploiting that option? If you play a non-summoning chaos army (say, dedicated beastmen or chaos mortals with no daemons), then when you play against a summoning enemy you could be facing a total deficit of as much as 20 pool points once the other side has their stuff on the table (not hard to do if you build for it). The rules even recognize that this is unfair by giving destruction 10 extra pool points against summoners, but since your non-summoning force is chaos and not destruction, you get nothing. How is it fair that an ogre player would get 10 extra pool points against a summoning opponent, but a pure beastmen player would get none?

To not be playing at a deficit, the beastmen player is forced into fielding summoned stuff of their own, and then the previously described effect pushes them to max out that amount.


So the current system pushes players with access to summoning to use it even if they didn't want to, and even more so to maximize the use of it, again even if they didn't want to use it at all in the first place. It's unreasonable. And most of this hassle is to fix a problem that doesn't even exist in vanilla uncomped age of sigmar (mess that it is), because, again, anything you summon could have just been deployed, making summoning just an alternate deployment method. It's trying to force summoning to be more than that that makes this a problem in the first place.

The part I disagree with you about is summoning is a certainty and has no risk. If you want to risk it, then start with half your army off the table and try to summon everything else in as you state you have discussed. I will only wish you good luck as only get to attempt 5 spells a turn in the SCGT pack and I Have 120% more points than you at the start of the game. Not to mention everything in my army trying to kill you wizards and dispel your spells. You will have no mystic shields or support magic to help protect thos fragile casters and most of the units you will summon will be minimum sized and fragile. I will pick them apart piece by piece and you will always be on the defensive trying to play catch up. That is why the risk vs reward is so good in this system.

As I said different systems are for different people. There are plenty of comps that have no real summoning if it is something that really bothers you.

Re-examining your argument- I think we can maybe agree to disagree on the relative strengths/advantages of summoning.

Where I *do* agree with you is that SCGT looks to be trying to have it both ways by granting Destruction extra points to play against Summoners. Whatever mechanics you use to balance summoning should just be the "fix". Granting Destruction bonus points vs. summoners is kinda like admitting your fix wasn't good enough.

So... TLDR-

I concede the point that on paper, the SCGT pack doesn't look like it got summoning right. But I contend that the fears about summoning are a little overblown.

And as to Hettar's comments- I've said before- a lot of guys I respect quite well have decided AoS is not for them and I'm totally cool with that. After a rocky start, my games have felt really engaging, balanced, and tactically challenging. Add to that the hobby aspect, and I have a game that's ticking the boxes for me right now.

 Malisteen wrote:
As for sameyness, frankly I find considerably more variety among Age of Sigmar units in their rules and how they play than between, say, Kings of War units, where the faction rules read like spread sheets, and a +1 in this stat or -1 in that stat are supposed to give two completely different units their defining characters.

Mmm, spreadsheets ...

Granted, there's a fair bit less variety than in, say, Malifaux units, but that's a much smaller scale game, where individual models have a bit more room to breathe, and it gets gummed up and bothersome if you try to play particularly large games with it.

Funnily enough, I find KOW sooooo much more inspiring as a modeling endeavor. Malifaux is an intense game that oozes with flavor, but I'm actually struggling to get paint to model, as the hobby side is really stifling for me. Not that that has anything to do with AOS SCGT comp!

Actually, I'm sad we can't just go full off topic and talk about summoning in AOS (though we're pretty close to doing so!), because I want somebody to speak up and tell me about a game where summoning enhanced both players experience. There's a lot of agreement that it's a problem, that there are many solutions but none of them work for everybody, that it's part of the rules dammit so it should be a thing, but I'm more and more interested in just dropping it. I really fail to see the point, from an enjoyment standpoint, except when one heavy summoning list, with a deep sideboard of minis, goes up against another heavy summoning list, with a deep sideboard of minis. Then both parties can have a summonfest that no doubt has some serious tactical merit - kind of like the batrep here on Dakka with Glottkin vs the Carsteins. That is easily the first AOS game I've seen where summoning made sense and didn't just tilt the game, because why not.

- Salvage

I've been playing with a system of "agree to the forces before deployment, and if you want to summon something then put it in reserve instead of deploying it" for a while, after tons of bad experiences with every other method (summon whatever, or as much as you want but only of stuff already there, or one unit per 'level' of summoning mage at a time, or X units total at a time).



As for malifaux, I don't know. Not as much call for conversions, but some of the models are very nice. I'm looking forward to painting izamu (izumo? the empty samurai armor ghost) for my fledgling yan lo list. The eastern theme of the associated models is a nice change of style from my fantasy undead, and fewer, larger models has me actually excited about painting, instead of feeling daunted, though that's my own fault for collecting a huge army at once for the end times instead of painting a bit at a time.

 Malisteen wrote:

Spoiler:

This system has worked fine, and in mid size games and larger I typically reserve six spirit hosts and a banshee, in an army that's otherwise mostly skeletons with some big things, always led by Krell, with some combination of necromancers, wight kings, and other special characters (often arkhan in larger games) backing him up.

Having the ghosts appear out of thin air mid game, called by necromantic magic, I find to be very rewarding narratively. Tactically, it lets me throw up a wall of ghosts where needed, or call in a banshee directly into scream range, so that she gets at least one scream off before the opponent has a chance to shoot at her. Between Arkhan's staff, his inherent bonus, an extra bonus from archai, and maybe a mortis engine or terrain bonus. Without arkhan, I rarely have trouble casting the spells, but usually try to get them off a bit earlier to avoid risk of dispel, and as a result I usually skip the banshee.

It's tricky, sometimes, to balance the timing of casting summon spells with getting off other casts (multicast special characters like arkhan & kemmler help a lot with that), but ghosts appearing in an unexpected location have swung some games for me, and it's always an interesting little narrative moment when it happens.

More importantly, however, since switching to this system, I've never had an opponent feel like it was unfair or they were getting cheated or they shouldn't have bothered showing up in the first place. Summoning hasn't added to my games in a huge way, just in some little ones, but it hasn't made the experience worse, the way it often had before.

Cheers for that. Your use sounds pretty legit, though most of the legitimacy for me is that a) it's vamps, who have always been summoners; b) it's pretty weak looking vamps, so bending the game ain't so big a thing; c) you aren't summoning crazeballs stuff; and d) you're interested in how the summoning adds to the game in a variety of ways, not just easy button terrorgeist ftw style.

I'll probably adopt your take on summoning should I run up against summoners locally. The few AOS players around here are very laid back, so should be game. Though most don't run much summoning anyway, due to imba + hatefest

- Salvage

 Boss Salvage wrote:
Cheers for that. Your use sounds pretty legit, though most of the legitimacy for me is that a) it's vamps, who have always been summoners; b) it's pretty weak looking vamps, so bending the game ain't so big a thing; c) you aren't summoning crazeballs stuff; and d) you're interested in how the summoning adds to the game in a variety of ways, not just easy button terrorgeist ftw style.

I think you'll find this method works fine for lizards and daemons as well. If you're agreeing to play against a particular set of units before the game starts (balancing by gut check or some comp system), then it doesn't throw things out of whack for a handful of those units to show up mid game instead of at the start.

This system is very much like deep strike, in that it is usually better to just deploy things rather than wait and incur risks to try and bring them in mid game, but it still has its uses - even if they're mostly edge cases, and even when it's not the most tactically sound move, it can still create some dramatic narrative moments.

After my experience with a variety of ways of handling summoning, I now look askance at any attempt to make summoning more than just an alternate deployment method just as I would at any comp trying to do the same for deep striking in 40k. I mean, yeah, deep strike is usually worse than just deploying a unit, but could you imagine a comp system that tried to 'balance' that by making deep striking units only cost half as many points as regularly deployed ones? That's effectively what the current SCGT is doing. Like, I agree deep strike isn't exactly super strong out of the gate, but the system breaks more than it fixes by trying to power it up, and the patches aren't actually patching anything.

A far bigger problem than summoning with SCGT comp is the decision to disallow discontinued models, even though the rules still exist, they're still present in the app as legal choices, the compendiums are still available as official rules on the GW site, and balance is entirely arbitrarily imposed by the comp pack anyway, so there's not even an argument to be made that they're somehow 'unfair' next to newer units.

And now that entire lines are getting discontinued, this is only going to become a bigger and bigger problem going forward, especially when players of order or chaos have umpteen thousand units to choose from in creating their armies, while death players as of right now will have only 35 if SCGT persists in this policy.