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2017/02/14 11:28:34
Subject: Age of Sigmar News & Rumours ; Pg 183 general's handbook II points hint
Yes, I remember Gorkamorka being insanely popular, it sold so well on release in my area, nobody was buying anything else, and the local stores couldn't keep up with demand.
There’s a difference between having a hobby and being a narcissist.
2017/02/14 11:35:14
Subject: Age of Sigmar News & Rumours ; Pg 183 general's handbook II points hint
“At the time, roleplaying was still really big,” he said.
“Rogue Trader still had a lot of roleplaying elements in it, it still had an umpire. But we quickly realised that a battle game was what people wanted, and we gradually developed the rules for choosing armies and for playing without an umpire.
“I think by the time we did the second edition in 1993 it had moved from essentially a roleplaying skirmish game to a battle game, which is commercially advantageous because you’re selling more models with it.”
The 40K universe was bleak, dangerous and engulfed in endless war. Human civilisation had expanded across the galaxy, encountering a host of alien species based on typical fantasy races. Elves became Eldar, mysterious, lithe and deadly creatures travelling on giant spacecraft that served as artificial worlds. Orcs received a science fiction makeover to become Space Orks – essentially a race of green-skinned football hooligans. Squats – later dropped from the game – were a futuristic take on dwarves.
“I just sort of bunged all the ideas I could think of into it,” Priestley said.
“We just plundered everything. Obviously Tolkien was a big influence, and in terms of 40K there’s a lot of Frank Herbert’s Dune in there. If you’ve read Dune, every chapter starts with a bit of an excerpt, and I rather enjoyed that, so I just copied the idea by putting little bits of pseudo fiction in.”
Other influences included the works of Robert Heinlein and H.P. Lovecraft, but it was a much older source – the 17th century poet John Milton – who would provide the inspiration for the game’s greatest conflict.
In a reimagining of the epic poem Paradise Lost, which deals with an attempt to overthrow God by a faction of rebel angels, Warhammer 40,000 featured a cataclysmic schism within the forces of the Empire of Mankind. In an event known as the Horus Heresy, chapters of Space Marines – genetically engineered, fanatically religious super-soldiers – turned against their Emperor after falling prey to the influence of the Chaos Gods, the supreme antagonists of this dark future setting.
“The original idea for Chaos was Bryan Ansell’s,” Priestley said.
“He wrote a Warhammer supplement called Realms of Chaos where he came up with the gods and the demons. He produced this huge hand-written manuscript where he defined all of that, and I took what he’d written and developed it as a book.”
But Priestley’s idea of Chaos differed from Ansell’s, and in 40K he sought to expand on the concept.
“Bryan’s idea of Chaos was very much derived from [science fiction and fantasy author] Michael Moorcock,” he said. “I always thought it was a little too close for comfort, it looked like we were just copying.
“But I’d always had this sense of Chaos existing as described in Paradise Lost. I’d tried to bring elements of that into the background and gradually change it from a description of demons into a kind of force out of which came realities, a kind of literal primal chaos.
“Unless you’ve read Paradise Lost you don’t get it. The whole Horus Heresy is just a parody of the fall of Lucifer as described by Milton.”
“TO ME THE BACKGROUND TO40K WAS ALWAYS INTENDED TO BE IRONIC”
The civil war within the human Imperium would set the scene for 40k’s entire backstory, and the Space Marines would become the most recognisable figures in its fictional universe. But while recent editions of the game have cast them in a heroic light, Priestley argued that Games Workshop had misinterpreted the intent behind the characters.
“To me the background to 40K was always intended to be ironic,” he said.
“The fact that the Space Marines were lauded as heroes within Games Workshop always amused me, because they’re brutal, but they’re also completely self-deceiving. The whole idea of the Emperor is that you don’t know whether he’s alive or dead. The whole Imperium might be running on superstition. There’s no guarantee that the Emperor is anything other than a corpse with a residual mental ability to direct spacecraft.
“It’s got some parallels with religious beliefs and principles, and I think a lot of that got missed and overwritten.”
Expanding the empire
The dark and bloody tone of Warhammer 40,000 resonated with its core audience of teenage boys, and Games Workshop owner Bryan Ansell was keen to capitalise on this connection by offering new products for these loyal – sometimes obsessive – customers to spent their money on.
“Bryan ran Games Workshop as a bit of a personal empire,” said Priestley.
“He was very into music, so he decided that as well as selling games, he wanted to be a music publisher. He worked with bands like [British heavy metal act] Saxon, it was all part of his ‘we can do anything’ attitude.”
The company would work with other UK artists including thrash metallers Sabbat. But their best-known partnership was with legendary death metal band Bolt Thrower, whose war-obsessed lyrics and extreme, aggressive sound were a perfect fit for the war-torn galaxy the company had built.
Strange new worlds
As Games Workshop’s empire expanded, so did its Warhammer 40,000 universe. Over time the game incorporated new playable races. The Tyranids, an alien species from beyond the known galaxy, bore a marked resemblance to the Xenomorph, developed for the Alien film franchise by Swiss artist H.R. Giger. The sinister skeletal mechanoids known as the Necrons served as a futuristic take on the undead armies of Warhammer Fantasy, and had a similar appearance to the robotic killers of the Terminator films.
But while these new armies expanded the game, its creative director was keen to explore aspects of the setting in far greater detail, and Games Workshop produced a number of smaller skirmish-level releases that focused on specific locations within the expansive 40K galaxy.
Set in one of the gargantuan hive cities constructed across human-inhabited space,Necromunda depicted the conflict between rival gangs in pursuit of renown, money and power. Released in 1995, it reintroduced some of the RPG elements that had been stripped out of Warhammer and 40K over the years, with individually named characters who gained experience, suffered injuries and upgraded their weapons and equipment over time. The game presented a jarring, punk-infused take on a fusturistic dystopia, and it was perhaps the most obvious example of one of the main inspirations for the 40K universe – the British comic book 2000AD.
“We all read it,” Priestley said.
“It was very influential from the early days of 40K, and the 2000AD artists actually worked with us on some of these games. I got to meet [Judge Dredd co-creator] John Wagner, which was quite a privilege.
“I actually wrote the Judge Dredd roleplaying game in the 80s and we produced miniatures for it. That was just before we produced 40K, so there’s a lot of spillover.”
And where Necromunda borrowed from the colourful, violent and often satirical stories of 2000AD, a subsequent release took its inspiration from the post-apocalyptic world of Mad Max.
GorkaMorka was another skirmish-scale game. But where Necromunda had focused on gang warfare in a cramped, claustrophobic urban setting, this new release depicted battles on an arid desert planet between rival bands of savage Space Orks. Marooned after their spacecraft crash-landed on the isolated world, they fought using salvaged and highly unpredictable vehicles and equipment.
Both games met with a positive reaction from players, but according to Priestley they led to a crisis within the company – now headed by Tom Kirby, Games Workshop’s former general manager, who led a management buyout that saw Bryan Ansell depart in 1991.
“Tom had to borrow a lot of money to buy the business,” Priestley said. “That meant we had to grow the company very quickly.
“I thought that one way to do that would be to expand the product line, so you’d have Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000, then this series of games that would let you explore the universe at a much closer, more detailed level.
“But it ended up being one of the great dividing points of Games Workshop. We’d grown internationally at a very fast pace, and we had to deal with French, Spanish, Italian versions of the games. The print runs of the foreign language editions were always bigger than we could sell, and after several near-disasters where we’d printed way too many of something, GorkaMorka being a classic example, we’d nearly bankrupted the company.”
The financial scare spooked management, Priestley said, leading to a change in Games Workshop’s culture.
“The appetite for new games just disappeared,” he said.
“But I have to say that this was not due to the concept being wrong, I think it was due to them not having the sophistication to manage the stock or manage the new sales divisions that had been created.
“The studio, the creative part of Games Workshop, had always been kept apart from the sales part of it. One thing Bryan said was that if the sales people got to be in charge of the studio, it would destroy the studio, and that’s exactly what happened
2017/02/14 17:32:49
Subject: Age of Sigmar News & Rumours ; Pg 183 general's handbook II points hint
Vorian wrote:It's seems more prudent to be conservative in your estimates and have to reprint / expand future options than over estimate and have product sitting around / cancel work that's already done.
It's the first real test of the market for them in a long time afterall
You would think doing research would be prudent then eh?
Agies Grimm:The "Learn to play, bro" mentality is mostly just a way for someone to try to shame you by implying that their metaphorical nerd-wiener is bigger than yours. Which, ironically, I think nerds do even more vehemently than jocks.
Everything is made up and the points don't matter. 40K or Who's Line is it Anyway?
Auticus wrote: Or in summation: its ok to exploit shoddy points because those are rules and gamers exist to find rules loopholes (they are still "legal"), but if the same force can be composed without structure, it emotionally feels "wrong".
2017/02/14 17:39:41
Subject: Age of Sigmar News & Rumours ; Pg 183 general's handbook II points hint
“At the time, roleplaying was still really big,” he said.
“Rogue Trader still had a lot of roleplaying elements in it, it still had an umpire. But we quickly realised that a battle game was what people wanted, and we gradually developed the rules for choosing armies and for playing without an umpire.
“I think by the time we did the second edition in 1993 it had moved from essentially a roleplaying skirmish game to a battle game, which is commercially advantageous because you’re selling more models with it.”
The 40K universe was bleak, dangerous and engulfed in endless war. Human civilisation had expanded across the galaxy, encountering a host of alien species based on typical fantasy races. Elves became Eldar, mysterious, lithe and deadly creatures travelling on giant spacecraft that served as artificial worlds. Orcs received a science fiction makeover to become Space Orks – essentially a race of green-skinned football hooligans. Squats – later dropped from the game – were a futuristic take on dwarves.
“I just sort of bunged all the ideas I could think of into it,” Priestley said.
“We just plundered everything. Obviously Tolkien was a big influence, and in terms of 40K there’s a lot of Frank Herbert’s Dune in there. If you’ve read Dune, every chapter starts with a bit of an excerpt, and I rather enjoyed that, so I just copied the idea by putting little bits of pseudo fiction in.”
Other influences included the works of Robert Heinlein and H.P. Lovecraft, but it was a much older source – the 17th century poet John Milton – who would provide the inspiration for the game’s greatest conflict.
In a reimagining of the epic poem Paradise Lost, which deals with an attempt to overthrow God by a faction of rebel angels, Warhammer 40,000 featured a cataclysmic schism within the forces of the Empire of Mankind. In an event known as the Horus Heresy, chapters of Space Marines – genetically engineered, fanatically religious super-soldiers – turned against their Emperor after falling prey to the influence of the Chaos Gods, the supreme antagonists of this dark future setting.
“The original idea for Chaos was Bryan Ansell’s,” Priestley said.
“He wrote a Warhammer supplement called Realms of Chaos where he came up with the gods and the demons. He produced this huge hand-written manuscript where he defined all of that, and I took what he’d written and developed it as a book.”
But Priestley’s idea of Chaos differed from Ansell’s, and in 40K he sought to expand on the concept.
“Bryan’s idea of Chaos was very much derived from [science fiction and fantasy author] Michael Moorcock,” he said. “I always thought it was a little too close for comfort, it looked like we were just copying.
“But I’d always had this sense of Chaos existing as described in Paradise Lost. I’d tried to bring elements of that into the background and gradually change it from a description of demons into a kind of force out of which came realities, a kind of literal primal chaos.
“Unless you’ve read Paradise Lost you don’t get it. The whole Horus Heresy is just a parody of the fall of Lucifer as described by Milton.”
“TO ME THE BACKGROUND TO40K WAS ALWAYS INTENDED TO BE IRONIC”
The civil war within the human Imperium would set the scene for 40k’s entire backstory, and the Space Marines would become the most recognisable figures in its fictional universe. But while recent editions of the game have cast them in a heroic light, Priestley argued that Games Workshop had misinterpreted the intent behind the characters.
“To me the background to 40K was always intended to be ironic,” he said.
“The fact that the Space Marines were lauded as heroes within Games Workshop always amused me, because they’re brutal, but they’re also completely self-deceiving. The whole idea of the Emperor is that you don’t know whether he’s alive or dead. The whole Imperium might be running on superstition. There’s no guarantee that the Emperor is anything other than a corpse with a residual mental ability to direct spacecraft.
“It’s got some parallels with religious beliefs and principles, and I think a lot of that got missed and overwritten.”
Expanding the empire
The dark and bloody tone of Warhammer 40,000 resonated with its core audience of teenage boys, and Games Workshop owner Bryan Ansell was keen to capitalise on this connection by offering new products for these loyal – sometimes obsessive – customers to spent their money on.
“Bryan ran Games Workshop as a bit of a personal empire,” said Priestley.
“He was very into music, so he decided that as well as selling games, he wanted to be a music publisher. He worked with bands like [British heavy metal act] Saxon, it was all part of his ‘we can do anything’ attitude.”
The company would work with other UK artists including thrash metallers Sabbat. But their best-known partnership was with legendary death metal band Bolt Thrower, whose war-obsessed lyrics and extreme, aggressive sound were a perfect fit for the war-torn galaxy the company had built.
Strange new worlds
As Games Workshop’s empire expanded, so did its Warhammer 40,000 universe. Over time the game incorporated new playable races. The Tyranids, an alien species from beyond the known galaxy, bore a marked resemblance to the Xenomorph, developed for the Alien film franchise by Swiss artist H.R. Giger. The sinister skeletal mechanoids known as the Necrons served as a futuristic take on the undead armies of Warhammer Fantasy, and had a similar appearance to the robotic killers of the Terminator films.
But while these new armies expanded the game, its creative director was keen to explore aspects of the setting in far greater detail, and Games Workshop produced a number of smaller skirmish-level releases that focused on specific locations within the expansive 40K galaxy.
Set in one of the gargantuan hive cities constructed across human-inhabited space,Necromunda depicted the conflict between rival gangs in pursuit of renown, money and power. Released in 1995, it reintroduced some of the RPG elements that had been stripped out of Warhammer and 40K over the years, with individually named characters who gained experience, suffered injuries and upgraded their weapons and equipment over time. The game presented a jarring, punk-infused take on a fusturistic dystopia, and it was perhaps the most obvious example of one of the main inspirations for the 40K universe – the British comic book 2000AD.
“We all read it,” Priestley said.
“It was very influential from the early days of 40K, and the 2000AD artists actually worked with us on some of these games. I got to meet [Judge Dredd co-creator] John Wagner, which was quite a privilege.
“I actually wrote the Judge Dredd roleplaying game in the 80s and we produced miniatures for it. That was just before we produced 40K, so there’s a lot of spillover.”
And where Necromunda borrowed from the colourful, violent and often satirical stories of 2000AD, a subsequent release took its inspiration from the post-apocalyptic world of Mad Max.
GorkaMorka was another skirmish-scale game. But where Necromunda had focused on gang warfare in a cramped, claustrophobic urban setting, this new release depicted battles on an arid desert planet between rival bands of savage Space Orks. Marooned after their spacecraft crash-landed on the isolated world, they fought using salvaged and highly unpredictable vehicles and equipment.
Both games met with a positive reaction from players, but according to Priestley they led to a crisis within the company – now headed by Tom Kirby, Games Workshop’s former general manager, who led a management buyout that saw Bryan Ansell depart in 1991.
“Tom had to borrow a lot of money to buy the business,” Priestley said. “That meant we had to grow the company very quickly.
“I thought that one way to do that would be to expand the product line, so you’d have Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000, then this series of games that would let you explore the universe at a much closer, more detailed level.
“But it ended up being one of the great dividing points of Games Workshop. We’d grown internationally at a very fast pace, and we had to deal with French, Spanish, Italian versions of the games. The print runs of the foreign language editions were always bigger than we could sell, and after several near-disasters where we’d printed way too many of something, GorkaMorka being a classic example, we’d nearly bankrupted the company.”
The financial scare spooked management, Priestley said, leading to a change in Games Workshop’s culture.
“The appetite for new games just disappeared,” he said.
“But I have to say that this was not due to the concept being wrong, I think it was due to them not having the sophistication to manage the stock or manage the new sales divisions that had been created.
“The studio, the creative part of Games Workshop, had always been kept apart from the sales part of it. One thing Bryan said was that if the sales people got to be in charge of the studio, it would destroy the studio, and that’s exactly what happened
Thank you so much. That was a great read. Happy Valentines day to you.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Vorian wrote: Erm, how exactly are they going to do this? They aren't prescient.
They estimate
It was a joke. How Kirby boasted in one of his preambles that GW doesn't do market research.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/02/14 17:48:42
Agies Grimm:The "Learn to play, bro" mentality is mostly just a way for someone to try to shame you by implying that their metaphorical nerd-wiener is bigger than yours. Which, ironically, I think nerds do even more vehemently than jocks.
Everything is made up and the points don't matter. 40K or Who's Line is it Anyway?
Auticus wrote: Or in summation: its ok to exploit shoddy points because those are rules and gamers exist to find rules loopholes (they are still "legal"), but if the same force can be composed without structure, it emotionally feels "wrong".
2017/02/14 17:59:48
Subject: Age of Sigmar News & Rumours ; Pg 183 general's handbook II points hint
You need to be waaaay more obvious of you're being sarcastic. People post stuff much worse than that all the time and in all seriousness :p
There was more to the interview, but that seems to be gone - that was the most interesting stuff. There is another one somewhere where they talk about how Cawdor was the vanilla gang they based everyone else off for Necromunda which confused me somewhat
2017/02/14 20:04:08
Subject: Age of Sigmar News & Rumours ; Pg 183 general's handbook II points hint
Looks like some peeps over on TGA forums have got hold of the new Stormcast battletome in German. Now I really, really want GW to get on with releasing a non starter set Lord Relictor*sigh*
2017/02/14 22:35:18
Subject: Age of Sigmar News & Rumours ; Pg 183 general's handbook II points hint
Baron Klatz wrote: [Edit]: that was weird, showed a double post and then deleted it.
Tends to happen on this site with large page count threads, I think.
"Sometimes the only victory possible is to keep your opponent from winning." - The Emperor, from The Outcast Dead.
"Tell your gods we are coming for them, and that their realms will burn as ours did." -Thostos Bladestorm
2017/02/14 22:48:44
Subject: Re:Age of Sigmar News & Rumours ; Pg 183 general's handbook II points hint
Skaven! About bloody time!
And I have to be honest, the only thing worse than the sigmarine aesthetic, is one riding a bird. It looks really weird in that pic.
There’s a difference between having a hobby and being a narcissist.
2017/02/15 00:42:02
Subject: Age of Sigmar News & Rumours ; Pg 183 general's handbook II points hint
That is unfortunately old art from the godbeasts book. If I remember correctly it is supposed to be a kind of walking city, so much too big to become a mini. I do think we will see a clan Skyre book sooner or later though.
2017/02/15 03:55:43
Subject: Age of Sigmar News & Rumours ; Pg 183 general's handbook II points hint
The whole section on 'preventing enemy pile-ins' shows the source of 75% of matched play's balance issues. Elite units and monsters have an inherent advantage in melee but their costs are not increased to accommodate for that.
NinthMusketeer wrote: That's a parasite engine from the Godbeast's book. They are literally walking Skaven cities; you would have a battle in one, not battle with one!
shinros wrote: Tactical Tool box post on warhammer community. Charging etc.
The whole section on 'preventing enemy pile-ins' shows the source of 75% of matched play's balance issues. Elite units and monsters have an inherent advantage in melee but their costs are not increased to accommodate for that.
Elite units and monsters have the major drawback of their deaths being meaningful. Taking 5 Mortal wounds against your unit of Dracoths will cost you 120 points, taking 5 mortals wounds against clanrats is 30., 16 mortal wounds against a stardrake and you're out 600 points, 16 mortal wounds against a unit of skeletons and you're out maybe 80 after regen and death saves.
The vast majority of elite units or monsters seen in matched play are either a handful of standout powerhouses(Stonehorn, VLoZD, Mourngul, Durthu, Kurnoths) primarily shooting based(thundertusks, stormfiends, Kurnoths again) or 1 or 2 condensed units meant to be the backbone of the army(15 brutes, 2 units of 6 necroknights, morghasts, 2 units of 10 paladins).
Large groups of cheap bodies are incredibly valuable in AoS already, they don't really need the help. Also, the better they become, the longer games start to take. We don't really need to go full hordehammer.
2017/02/15 07:54:05
Subject: Age of Sigmar News & Rumours ; Pg 183 general's handbook II points hint
NinthMusketeer wrote: That's a parasite engine from the Godbeast's book. They are literally walking Skaven cities; you would have a battle in one, not battle with one!
shinros wrote: Tactical Tool box post on warhammer community. Charging etc.
The whole section on 'preventing enemy pile-ins' shows the source of 75% of matched play's balance issues. Elite units and monsters have an inherent advantage in melee but their costs are not increased to accommodate for that.
Elite units and monsters have the major drawback of their deaths being meaningful. Taking 5 Mortal wounds against your unit of Dracoths will cost you 120 points, taking 5 mortals wounds against clanrats is 30., 16 mortal wounds against a stardrake and you're out 600 points, 16 mortal wounds against a unit of skeletons and you're out maybe 80 after regen and death saves.
The vast majority of elite units or monsters seen in matched play are either a handful of standout powerhouses(Stonehorn, VLoZD, Mourngul, Durthu, Kurnoths) primarily shooting based(thundertusks, stormfiends, Kurnoths again) or 1 or 2 condensed units meant to be the backbone of the army(15 brutes, 2 units of 6 necroknights, morghasts, 2 units of 10 paladins).
Large groups of cheap bodies are incredibly valuable in AoS already, they don't really need the help. Also, the better they become, the longer games start to take. We don't really need to go full hordehammer.
Yeah, this is why we see horde armies dominating tournaments
NinthMusketeer wrote: That's a parasite engine from the Godbeast's book. They are literally walking Skaven cities; you would have a battle in one, not battle with one!
shinros wrote: Tactical Tool box post on warhammer community. Charging etc.
The whole section on 'preventing enemy pile-ins' shows the source of 75% of matched play's balance issues. Elite units and monsters have an inherent advantage in melee but their costs are not increased to accommodate for that.
Elite units and monsters have the major drawback of their deaths being meaningful. Taking 5 Mortal wounds against your unit of Dracoths will cost you 120 points, taking 5 mortals wounds against clanrats is 30., 16 mortal wounds against a stardrake and you're out 600 points, 16 mortal wounds against a unit of skeletons and you're out maybe 80 after regen and death saves.
The vast majority of elite units or monsters seen in matched play are either a handful of standout powerhouses(Stonehorn, VLoZD, Mourngul, Durthu, Kurnoths) primarily shooting based(thundertusks, stormfiends, Kurnoths again) or 1 or 2 condensed units meant to be the backbone of the army(15 brutes, 2 units of 6 necroknights, morghasts, 2 units of 10 paladins).
Large groups of cheap bodies are incredibly valuable in AoS already, they don't really need the help. Also, the better they become, the longer games start to take. We don't really need to go full hordehammer.
Yeah, this is why we see horde armies dominating tournaments
This is starting to get derailed but I think we can all agree that grots are used frequently by competitive destruction, aren't they? And eighty regular bodies on a 2k match is kind of an horde.
Also, Mongoose matt has the battletome and has done a review. I think there's plenty of things we didn't know here:
NinthMusketeer wrote: That's a parasite engine from the Godbeast's book. They are literally walking Skaven cities; you would have a battle in one, not battle with one!
shinros wrote: Tactical Tool box post on warhammer community. Charging etc.
The whole section on 'preventing enemy pile-ins' shows the source of 75% of matched play's balance issues. Elite units and monsters have an inherent advantage in melee but their costs are not increased to accommodate for that.
Elite units and monsters have the major drawback of their deaths being meaningful. Taking 5 Mortal wounds against your unit of Dracoths will cost you 120 points, taking 5 mortals wounds against clanrats is 30., 16 mortal wounds against a stardrake and you're out 600 points, 16 mortal wounds against a unit of skeletons and you're out maybe 80 after regen and death saves.
The vast majority of elite units or monsters seen in matched play are either a handful of standout powerhouses(Stonehorn, VLoZD, Mourngul, Durthu, Kurnoths) primarily shooting based(thundertusks, stormfiends, Kurnoths again) or 1 or 2 condensed units meant to be the backbone of the army(15 brutes, 2 units of 6 necroknights, morghasts, 2 units of 10 paladins).
Large groups of cheap bodies are incredibly valuable in AoS already, they don't really need the help. Also, the better they become, the longer games start to take. We don't really need to go full hordehammer.
Yeah, this is why we see horde armies dominating tournaments
This is starting to get derailed but I think we can all agree that grots are used frequently by competitive destruction, aren't they? And eighty regular bodies on a 2k match is kind of an horde.
Also, Mongoose matt has the battletome and has done a review. I think there's plenty of things we didn't know here:
Actually that brings us to something I hope to see in the generals handbook (but doubt we will); scaling point costs. Numerous units get better with increasing size, meaning that grots 20-39 are worth more than 1-19, while 40-60 are worth more than 20-39. Pricing an average means that the bigger blobs are going to perform disproportionately well for their cost, which is exactly why we see those big blobs at tournaments. Even so, that is literally two infantry options (gitmob grots and moonclan grots) out of dozens and hardly proof that basic infantry are on even footing overall.
NinthMusketeer wrote: That's a parasite engine from the Godbeast's book. They are literally walking Skaven cities; you would have a battle in one, not battle with one!
shinros wrote: Tactical Tool box post on warhammer community. Charging etc.
The whole section on 'preventing enemy pile-ins' shows the source of 75% of matched play's balance issues. Elite units and monsters have an inherent advantage in melee but their costs are not increased to accommodate for that.
Elite units and monsters have the major drawback of their deaths being meaningful. Taking 5 Mortal wounds against your unit of Dracoths will cost you 120 points, taking 5 mortals wounds against clanrats is 30., 16 mortal wounds against a stardrake and you're out 600 points, 16 mortal wounds against a unit of skeletons and you're out maybe 80 after regen and death saves.
The vast majority of elite units or monsters seen in matched play are either a handful of standout powerhouses(Stonehorn, VLoZD, Mourngul, Durthu, Kurnoths) primarily shooting based(thundertusks, stormfiends, Kurnoths again) or 1 or 2 condensed units meant to be the backbone of the army(15 brutes, 2 units of 6 necroknights, morghasts, 2 units of 10 paladins).
Large groups of cheap bodies are incredibly valuable in AoS already, they don't really need the help. Also, the better they become, the longer games start to take. We don't really need to go full hordehammer.
Yeah, this is why we see horde armies dominating tournaments
It's not my fault you don't follow the tournament scene dude. Half the armies at the last uk masters had 120 models or more. Destruction and chaos both bring multiple large units of little gribblies as standard in competitive lists. Kunnin ruck lists can get up to what, 200 savage orks? Order and death don't really but that's mostly due to relatively expensive bodies(order) or very very strong behemoths(Death).
2017/02/16 03:19:53
Subject: Age of Sigmar News & Rumours ; Pg 183 general's handbook II points hint
I believe that Games Workshop has purposely under-costed the large models to insure that they are included in most armies. I think that they believe that large models look great on the table and draw new players to the game, and I agree with them on that.
Legion: Dark Angels 
