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All fair points Ninth, although if you played first against Nagash I presume either summoning wasn't a big part of the army, or your entire army was a Warscroll battalion - or PPC has a houserule where the first turn is decided by a dice off.

Usually an army that uses heavy summoning will always go first because it finishes deployment first and then these the arguments of board control and forcing the opponent to summon elsewhere have a lot less weight in my opinion.

I still think summoning is going to be a viable tactic for lots of builds. It's just not the "no-brainer" it can be if you are getting stuff for free or at a discount.

 Bottle wrote:
I still think summoning is going to be a viable tactic for lots of builds. It's just not the "no-brainer" it can be if you are getting stuff for free or at a discount.

I more or less agree with this, but I think summoning will only be useful for a small subset of builds designed to take advantage of it. Just bringing Nagash won't result in a good summon list, as you said.

(Also yes it was a battalion!)

I totally agree with Bottle. Summoning will now be a tactical tool for skilled players for board control and deployment.

This whole change with summoning can only be a good thing imo, and it is the first time I see summoning in a game that is not broken in some way.

It is really tiring to begin a game with 2000pts and your opponent ending up by turn 2 with almost 3000pts. It is not fair and makes up for poor games...

I think the new summoning rules are stupid and poorly designed. It's basically a gakky deep strike now.

Overall all these new rules we see are disappointing to me. They look more like angry nerfs than constructed gameplay adjustements. There's nothing creative, only restrictions.

I for one find all the changes to be in good to great direction.

They give points and "force organization" so the game can have balance, structure and pick up games be viable again.

They fix the most broken summonig wich made the game unplayable most of the time.

They fix the spam spells (especially mystic shield, a spell that gave rise to unkillable deathstars).

They fix the auto-hit nonsense.

And on the creative side:

They give each grand alliance some extra rules.

They give each Grand Alliance artifacts.

They give something like warlord traits for your generals.

They give some scenarios to go with the matched play.

So for me from what I've seen so far the matched play rules are pure win!!

100% don't agree. There's still lots of decision to be made. However if I was going to bring only Necromancers, I wouldn't bring Zombie Dragons to be summoned up. You think about your turn 1 strategy, how you want it to play out and you build an army that can best do that. If I want monsters summoned up, I don't rely on Necromancers to do it.

And this is why I think this has been done badly. We have gone from a game where you had choices mid game as to what to try to summon, a much larger matrix of decisions. But as you don't think summoning a dragon was a good idea on turn 1 you think it is good to effectively kill any such variety. Summoning does not come with a only on turn 1 rule?


PS where are people seeing these rules, is there some version with the changes laid out, or hints as to points etc? I was asking in store this morning how we are meant to prepare for this summer campaign thing without some up front knowledge of what it would look like. If its going to require some points/structure then I could do with plenty of warning as I'm not the fastest modeler/painter if I have to adapt what I have.

Summoning does get around to army composition restrictions (like behemoths and maybe artillery in the future...).

Although summoning to go from OP as hell to pretty tame rewards for the risks involved.

@puree summoning a dragon on turn 1 is a fine idea (could be a great idea). Not with a Necromancer though.

I think you miss my point. You seem to be so focused on either Nagash or turn 1 summoning that might be almost automatic that you seem to be missing anything else. You seem to think no one will want to try and summon something that might only be a 50/50 or less never mind mid game, which if you have to pay full points just to have that possibility will basically be a no-go.

The point I was making was not that summoning a dragon on turn 1 was a good idea, it is that because you think it is a bad idea you are prepared to sacrifice the flexibility and variety of armies and effectively make summoning workable purely on your idea of what is 'strategically' good on turn 1, rather than come up with a mechanism that sticks to addressing your very specific concern without sweeping side affects on what others might want to do.

If the proposal is as unsubtle as it seemed to be hinted (and not having seen anything yet, that is a guess) then you will probably not see 'decent' stuff summoned as it won't be worth the points, unless you have taken some very expensive summoner/buff units that allow you to predictably summon an expensive unit.. Decent doesn't have to be the dragons etc on 10+. It might be the Hexwraiths on a 6+ or the Morghast stuff on a 7+ etc. With a 1 in 6 chance of a fail even summoning the stuff that is 5+ may look like it is not worth it if you have to pay full points, and that includes a lot of pretty basic summon fodder like skeletons.

Someone earlier did wonder whether it would just be a pool of points, and you can decide on the fly what to go for. Not perfect but quite a lot better, allocate 100pts (or whatever) as your summon value, and then bring along any models you want and choose on the fly what you actually want to go for casting.

puree wrote:
Someone earlier did wonder whether it would just be a pool of points, and you can decide on the fly what to go for. Not perfect but quite a lot better, allocate 100pts (or whatever) as your summon value, and then bring along any models you want and choose on the fly what you actually want to go for casting.

That's what the rumours say, and so it will likely be so.

As to everything else. I am not the creator of this system. All I argue is that there are still lots of tactics and strategies to employ around summoning. It has of course been nerfed if you played SCGT before (or if you played free summoning), but it has by no means been rendered useless tactically.

Randomized usage absolutely does render it useless tactically.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Randomized usage absolutely does render it useless tactically.

Yep, just like charging and attacking and everything that uses a dice to decide the outcome...

 Bottle wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Randomized usage absolutely does render it useless tactically.

Yep, just like charging and attacking and everything that uses a dice to decide the outcome...

If you cannot tell the difference between "I can no longer rely upon summoning as it was a key part of my strategy of using a small force that got bigger as the game progressed" and "Dice are random too!", we cannot have a discussion like grown-ups here.

Was Summoning broken, depending upon how people played it? Absolutely.

But I don't see anything here really toning down Arcane Vortices(a common thing tied to a Summoning heavy list; Summoner goes up on a vortex for a save and improved LOS/cast range) or stacked spell modifiers etc--which were just as broken and a huge part of these Summoning spam lists.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Bottle wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Randomized usage absolutely does render it useless tactically.

Yep, just like charging and attacking and everything that uses a dice to decide the outcome...

If you cannot tell the difference between "I can no longer rely upon summoning as it was a key part of my strategy of using a small force that got bigger as the game progressed" and "Dice are random too!", we cannot have a discussion like grown-ups here.

Was Summoning broken, depending upon how people played it? Absolutely.

But I don't see anything here really toning down Arcane Vortices(a common thing tied to a Summoning heavy list; Summoner goes up on a vortex for a save and improved LOS/cast range) or stacked spell modifiers etc--which were just as broken and a huge part of these Summoning spam lists.

So you're at the same time arguing summoning is still easy to pull off and yet not tactically viable?

*edit* anyway, if Kanluwen is getting involved in this thread, this is where I take a bow out. The other users are probably not enjoying my back and forths throughout this thread anyway.

I still think summoning has lots of options to be employed effectively in Matched Play. The end from me.

 Bottle wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Bottle wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Randomized usage absolutely does render it useless tactically.

Yep, just like charging and attacking and everything that uses a dice to decide the outcome...

If you cannot tell the difference between "I can no longer rely upon summoning as it was a key part of my strategy of using a small force that got bigger as the game progressed" and "Dice are random too!", we cannot have a discussion like grown-ups here.

Was Summoning broken, depending upon how people played it? Absolutely.

But I don't see anything here really toning down Arcane Vortices(a common thing tied to a Summoning heavy list; Summoner goes up on a vortex for a save and improved LOS/cast range) or stacked spell modifiers etc--which were just as broken and a huge part of these Summoning spam lists.

So you're at the same time arguing summoning is still easy to pull off and yet not tactically viable?

*edit* anyway, if Kanluwen is getting involved in this thread, this is where I take a bow out. The other users are probably not enjoying my back and forths throughout this thread anyway.

I still think summoning has lots of options to be employed effectively in Matched Play. The end from me

Fwiw I think you made for a reasonable discussion with a lot of fair points, even if I didn't agree with some of them. But you make a good point anyway about Kan being here, perhaps it's better to just let it die.

Putting it bluntly, he has some good points but quite frankly?

Summoning, as something that could be cast by multiple casters, was not something I really saw as an issue.

Are you going to tell me that Orion summoning up his Hunting Hounds and a Spellweaver also summoning up Hunting Hounds was overpowered?

Every Summoning heavy list I have seen, personally, that was designed to somehow abuse the system? They all had a few things in common beyond being a "Summoning" list:
The Balewind Vortex scenery piece was the most important and notable thing: This was literally the first thing cast at the start of the game for models like Nagash. +1 to Cast/Unbind and no models within 3" of the Vortex while a Wizard is on it and doubling their spell range?
The other most notable thing was that the Summoning was only ever done on units that had already been deployed and were destroyed; only to be resummoned over and over and over again.

The issue was the seemingly "unlimited" nature of Summoning units and the ability of certain casters to Summon with basically no effort.

 CrownAxe wrote:

 rybackstun wrote:
Summoning needed a nerf but this change in rules has take summoning from "must have" to "stay away"

There's legitimately no reason to summon now unless you want a janky "deep strike" unit for your army.

I don't see what is so bad about deep striking in a unit that can shoot and assault like normal. This "janky deep strike" basically guarantees you get units across the table and into combat completely unharmed and exactly where you want them to be.

Should you succeed on your cast roll and should your opponent NOT succeed on his Unbind roll, yes this could be the case. It's still not the greatest situation due to the fact that unless you do it turn 1 (in which case, what was the point?) your Caster has a chance to be killed before it can summon. There are a lot of factors that make Summoning risky but prior to this gakky ruling it was WELL worth it to do so because you could just summon every turn and swarm your opponent with models.

I agree that summoning needed to be nerfed but for all intents and purposes summoning was nuked from the game.

All IMO, of course.

With this new summoning stuff I see the point to put restrictions on it because nagash is nasty with it BUT it's not worth summoning now. If they ran it like storm of magic did with the +25% of the size game you were playing I'd say that's fair. A graveyard worth of models. Also you should absolutely be able to summon back units lost in game....c'mon skeletons die if you look at them wrong. I agree with not casting the same spell from the same caster and not stacking the mystic shield. Look at tzeentch demons, what else do pink horrors have besides arcane bolt? They suck in combat the purpose of several units was to hammer units with that spell.

We've played AoS about half a dozen times so far. We've only used the starter box forces until today. I pitted my chaos half of the starter against a regular opponent in other games. He brought a bloodthirster and 3 units of bloodletters. We used the KDV points values but no house rules.

He summoned bloodletters over and over He was also merciful and didn't bring any more bloodthirsters into being.. Even with my abilities to make him reroll successes, he wore my forces down without much sweat on his part. I finally conceded when I only had a couple of models left in a couple of different units.

Curious to see how General's Handbook will address summoning because it's obvious from just one game that it can be very powerful.

Another problem with summoning is you had inconsistency in how it worked too.

Daemons? Summon a unit that can potentially summon another. Death? Summon a unit unless you roll high enough then you may double that unit in most cases. Sylvaneth? Summon a new unit of 2d6 models, but only in a wyldwood up to 12" away and must be placed completely inside that woods. Out of them I feel like the Sylvaneth (though with the most restrictive model range) was probably more on the right track to dealing with summoning (it had a set range from the caster and then it was a gamble just to how much you're getting for it in the end), only change I would have made is adding the ability to maybe add those models (or half of them) to an existing unit as well. Scale it for bigger things, and I think it probably would have been fine the way it was. Then just add in a summoned unit cannot attempt to summon during the turn it is summoned and I feel as if the problem is probably solved without the need to really add any points for units that are summoned.

I suppose one thing to keep in mind is that GW has not done this in a vacuum informed only by their beliefs. If you look at many widely used comp systems they limit summoning.

SCGT allows you to basically not deploy a number of pools and then summon them in later at a 2 to 1 ratio (i.e. summoned units cost half). Clash comp does the same but it is a one for one ratio. Most other ones either ban it or seriously limit access to summoned units. So, the way that GW has limited summoning is entirely in line with what the community has developed to limit summoning.

Is summoning still good? I would say yes. Sometimes you don't want to deploy a model on turn one. Sometimes having a couple of models that can summon will give you flexibility as to where a unit appears so a late game or unexpected summon may give you easier control of an objective. Some of the pitched battles have the objectives appear mid game so flexibility as to when and exactly where you put models is pretty useful. Sometimes you may want to hold points back because you don't have to put models into a summoning pool so you can decide mid game what to deploy. Sometimes you may want to circumvent slot restrictions by summoning on behemoth units on top of your limit.

Is Nagash nerfed? He is still the best caster in the game - potential 8 spells per turn, potentially +3 to cast, plenty of in faction spell buffs, knowledge of every spell in his army so plenty of spell options. He has a great command ability, which buffs him. He is tough as heck with his 3+ save, a healing spell, a 4+ save vs mortal wounds and 16 wounds. He is killing machine with plenty of good attacks, a ranged attack, and some mortal wound damage. His summoning is incomparable. Within the context of the rules as we currently know them he is still a beast.

Has anybody actually tried the new summoning or Nagash?

 Bottle wrote:


I think you're really underestimating how powerful a turn 1 18" move is. I have played against very strong summoning builds in Clash Comp where you pay a 1:1 ratio for your summoning pool.

If you have a game of objectives and those objectives are on the centre line across the board, Nagash can summon 5 doubled sized units (or 10 monsters) past the objectives to block the opponent advancement.

In tournament play, Summoning is a turn 1 strategy. You almost guarantee going first because your deployed army is so little. In turn 1 there isn't many spells that are useful to cast (you won't be in range for Arcane Bolt). It allows you to move a massive block of troops right into the enemy's face and can hopefully keep them tied up for 5 turns (standard game length) while your back units secure the objectives uncontested.

Doesn't that turn the summoning into 1st turn trick pony though? If you don't use it for that turn 1 charge trick what benefit summoning gives you wouldn't have gotten by taking those guys(and lot more due to saved points from summoners)...

Yes turn 1 charge is good.

Boring if that's all summoning is for though.

For me biggest beef with summoning as is was summoning units that summoned units. Simply taking single tzeenth exalted daemon resulted in average close to 100 new ones before running out...And spiral would just go forward on turn 2. They fixed this already with the rule of 1. Would have been happy with just that.

Never had problem with summoning in 40k either.

I don't know how all these comps play since I don't get to game so I never bothered with them. So basically is summoning now just deeps strike in 40K terms?

Yes except that you have to cast the spell successfully to get the summons off where in 40k you bring in reserves easier.

 auticus wrote:
Yes except that you have to cast the spell successfully to get the summons off where in 40k you bring in reserves easier.

And what you deep strike is a decision made when you deep strike, so in 40K terms an equivalent would be you can deepstrike but when you deepstrike you decide do you want a monolith, or a unit of wraiths, or immortals this turn and be able to potentially deep strike immortals next turn as well etc.

Caveat: I never cared for summoning as a game mechanic or even a narrative tool anyway.

I think, though, that for people who do like it, I would have liked to see the "summon whatever, but sacrifice that many VP" idea or the like.

What the rumours have it as is what I prefer, but though I might believe that summoning has no compelling narrative merit to it, I'm not going to pretend the genre of fantasy isn't chock full of summoners.

Still, as it stands it's definitely not janky deep strike. It's more unreliable than deepstrike yes, but you might be able to summon up the right answers.

If you can protect your summoners, summoning is extremely good even after turn 1.
With Seraphon the number of ways you can abuse summoning is just incredible.