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Daedalus81 wrote:
Ayyy cynicism!

One thing I haven't seen discussed is how AoS handles unit options. What comes in the box are the options you can take.

Devastators don't come with 4 lascannons so I wonder if they will be able to equip a whole unit with them still. I think it's somewhat handy to prevent spamming certain things and makes it easier to people buying into the game to not stress about finding extra lascannons. I suppose it could go either way at this point.

In AoS you have a list of options in the warscroll and then can pretty much give them whatever you want out of the list. Sometimes it's an all or nothing swap, like all swords or all spears, sometimes it's a one member can have this weapon kind of deal.

This doesn't cost anything, although there aren't normally as many different weapons in AoS as 40k so you may still need to pay for upgrades in matched play.

You will. We already know there will be a 'Power Level' cost, akin to a flat Warscroll cost, and a granular 40K-esque Matched Play cost in the launch army list books.

 streetsamurai wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 streetsamurai wrote:
That would be great, but unfortunately, I'm pretty sure facing will completely be removed and nothing will be added to replace it. Sincerly hope that I'm wrong

Facing going bye-bye isn't losing anything of value at the scale 40k games are played.

Don't get me wrong, I can see where vehicle armor facing added some tactical depth in some ways, but ultimately having only one unit type in the game care about facing, with no real balance reason or other gameplay necessity, just added complication and headache, not to mention how awkward facing could be on many vehicles.

Facing makes sense in a game with one or two vehicles and maybe a dozen or two infantry on the board at most. When we have games with potentially two dozen vehicles on the board, it no longer makes sense to portray at that scale.

If 40k were played at the model count of Dropzone Commander, Heavy Gear, or Infinity, armor facing could be a great mechanic (though even those games don't use facings for armor/toughness/etc purposes really), but not when tables routinely have a dozen or more tanks and often twice that number, and especially when no other units, not MC's, not Cavalry, not Infantry, nor anything else, has to worry about it despite ostensibly often having the exact same vulnerabilities.

Let's just say that I strongly disagree. Some of the most fun moments in 40k for me involved the decision on whether I should shoot at an unit with a vehicule, while exposing its rear to another, or rather play it safe.

I totally get that, I really do understand the extra depth that positioning adds.

The problem is that with tons of vehicles on the field and wonky shapes, it gives rise to lots of unnecessary disagreement and time lost to finagling with what ultimately are rather trivial micromovement details a battle commander shouldn't be concerned with, and when the mechanic only applies to one unit type with no real reason as to why (surely facing should just as much have some relevance to a Dreadknight or Carnifex as to a Dreadnaught or Killa Kan?), the mechanic just causes balance problems.

AV is a big part of why vehicles were always so wonky in 40k, and why their rules and functionality varied wildly between each edition, and why MC vs Vehicle balance in particular has never quite worked right.

 rollawaythestone wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 streetsamurai wrote:
That would be great, but unfortunately, I'm pretty sure facing will completely be removed and nothing will be added to replace it. Sincerly hope that I'm wrong

Facing going bye-bye isn't losing anything of value at the scale 40k games are played.

Don't get me wrong, I can see where vehicle armor facing added some tactical depth in some ways, but ultimately having only one unit type in the game care about facing, with no real balance reason or other gameplay necessity, just added complication and headache, not to mention how awkward facing could be on many vehicles.

Facing makes sense in a game with one or two vehicles and maybe a dozen or two infantry on the board at most. When we have games with potentially two dozen vehicles on the board, it no longer makes sense to portray at that scale.

If 40k were played at the model count of Dropzone Commander, Heavy Gear, or Infinity, armor facing could be a great mechanic (though even those games don't use facings for armor/toughness/etc purposes really), but not when tables routinely have a dozen or more tanks and often twice that number, and especially when no other units, not MC's, not Cavalry, not Infantry, nor anything else, has to worry about it despite ostensibly often having the exact same vulnerabilities.

In a tank combat game, or Titan combat game, facing would be a fine mechanic, but as of now, it's really kind of unnecessary for 40K. I'm fine to see it go.

Yeah, in an armored company battle game or something, tank on tank stuff, fine. But yeah, when it's tank vs infantry vs demigod vs godzilla vs supersoldier vs flying demigod vs ultratank, it does become rather awkward

I'm sorry for the people disappointed by facing going but I think it's a fair call and it's also likely we will still see rules on the unit cards that effect the armour and that may extend to facing, we need rules after all for void shields quantum shielding and armoured cerimite to name a few. But over all It's just not needed or relivant. In a world where people can punch a hole in a tank with their fist you'd think more vehicles would be like the land raider or necrons and equally armoured all over anyway. Also having seen a lot of tanks in person, the ones made to take a hit have fat armour all over, fair enough not the same all over but none of this no armour on back rubbish, but almost all have very little on the top yet in game top hits counted as side hits, so it was never 'realistic' or tactical. It's not like by angling your facing you could bounce another tanks shots. It was just a needless abstraction for scale and setting.

 Yodhrin wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
A standard game of 40k definitely needs to be completed within 2.5 hours in my opinion, so that 2 day, 5 game events are possible. For Age of Sigmar it takes 60mins for every 1000 points you have on the table (or near abouts). That's what I would want for 40k too. I am very happy to hear the game is speeding up.

Aye, but I don't think the argument was "they shouldn't speed up the game" or "speeding up the game is bad", it was "considering the hilariously long list of problems that needed solving, making game length a top priority and so probably a bigger consideration when writing or balancing rules than, say, complexity and tactical depth seems to have more to do with who they chose to playtest than the priorities of the community as a whole". Seems a perfectly reasonable point to me - I don't know anyone who actually wants to spend four hours on a normal game, but I know plenty of folk who'd put getting the game down to a tournament-friendly 90 minute average way, way down on their list of wants from a new 40K edition.

The thing is, of the 3.5 hours an 1850 game of 40k could take only about half was ever really anything tactical, so they had a lot of fat to cut.

I mean take it phase by phase, the movement phase had a lot of extra time spent just making sure things were exactly 2" apart, which isn't a particularly deep gameplay mechanic.

The psychic phase was essentially either nill or 'get off as many powers as I can while you hold all your dice to block whatever one you think is the most important.' upwards of 20 minutes for some armies with 1 tactical interaction.

Shooting had running which bogged down slightly because it was broken off into the shooting phase for no real reason when moving and running at the same time accomplished the same thing only faster. Then you had templates that could add either a handful of minutes or close to half an hour depending on army conpositions and player attitudes.

Almost the entire assault phase lacked any tactical depth. The charge phase was interesting and tactical and challenges were cool but in general it was just filling in a spreadsheet and pulling models away. Cinematic as all hell but not particular interactive or tactical and god help you if you had multiple units fighting the same combat. You could be stuck there for up to 20 minutes. Tac on all the minor time losses involves in looking up rules, arguing rules, vehicle facings, terrain tests, etc and you get an idea why 7th was collapsing under it's own weight.

Tl: dr
The 3+ hours an 1850 game of 40k takes usually tops out at about 90-120 minutes of actual strategic gameplay anyway; if they cut right they make games of 40k much more palatable without losing anything meaningful.

 insaniak wrote:




On the large models... I'm a little torn. I love the idea of degrading models, but this:

Different vehicles will be reduced in effectiveness in different ways too – some will get worse at shooting, some will slow down, and some some will become less effective in melee.

...is going to be a nightmare to keep track of. Could we not just have a standardised formula so that we don't have to refer to the unit card for the entire game?

It's not, really. Sure it is more than before, but I imagine similar types will degrade in similar ways.

 Sersi wrote:

 Grinshanks wrote:

 warboss wrote:
Anyone else worried a bit about wound spam with vehicles after that?

Yes.

Now vehicles require more firepower to reliably take down I am worried about a possibility of new spam lists.

We haven't seem everything though, and will probably be something to keep them in check weapons wise. So not throwing a wobbler yet.

However given GW's form for missing out (despite their insistence of more playtesting), I welcome the rules with a degree of caution.

Well I am just a bit concerned about how daemons are going to translate over. I'm sure Tzeentch will translate over just fine with all there ranged Psychic powers. But what about the other three gods without some serious shooting how are they to disable tanks or crack open transports? I love to be able to play without spamming FMC, or psyker heavy. Id' be nice to have all four faction be viable as mono-god lists. Without shooting to deal with all these multi-wound monsters and vehicles. I have to assume that MC can do multiple damage with their melee attacks. It also make you wonder how they'll translate Rending USR attacks over in the new addition. In AOS for instance Slaaneshi daemons just have a -1 armor save modifier. That won't be enough given that we still have S vs T, and S3 will be doing noting versus vehicles and monsters. Maybe auto wounding on a wound roll of "6"? Perhaps helblades and plague knives with do multiple damage, etc.

Everything already autowounds on a 6 in 8th; or at least they've said everything cam hurt everything.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Daedalus81 wrote:

 insaniak wrote:




On the large models... I'm a little torn. I love the idea of degrading models, but this:

Different vehicles will be reduced in effectiveness in different ways too – some will get worse at shooting, some will slow down, and some some will become less effective in melee.

...is going to be a nightmare to keep track of. Could we not just have a standardised formula so that we don't have to refer to the unit card for the entire game?

It's not, really. Sure it is more than before, but I imagine similar types will degrade in similar ways.

Yeah, you generally check the card once per turn when you attack. Most people in sigmar don't even bother remembering the tables because it takes so little time to look up.

ERJAK wrote:

Yeah, you generally check the card once per turn when you attack. Most people in sigmar don't even bother remembering the tables because it takes so little time to look up.

That's painful.

Armies I use regularly, I'm used to just remembering the stats. A system that is either directly 1:1 proportional, or at the very least a system that is consistent across all models that degrade, would have been vastly preferable to one that effectively forces you to check the card before doing anything with the unit.

Lack of armor facing is a downer, though 40K was not well designed to make it an actual point of game play (especially after russes went to 13 side armor) - unless you were a Chimera, in which case it was a big deal.

 insaniak wrote:
Could we not just have a standardised formula so that we don't have to refer to the unit card for the entire game?

But everything is bespoke now, insaniak! You're going to need to look at the unit card for everything.

Everything!!!

Maybe we get a standard formula in that at half wounds its time to check the vehicle? would be nice if gw included that whole statline in the box on a handy card.

 rollawaythestone wrote:

Seito O wrote:
Just a side note...
the Tyranid Tervigon Brood Progenitor set is no longer avaible...coincidence or change of use?

They are probably going to slowly remove all the Formation bundles on the website.

Brood Progenitor wasn't a Formation Bundle though, it was just the Tyranid version of the Troop + Transport bundles.
In any case it's still for sale on the Australia webstore. It is listed as a webstore exclusive though (which I think is new perhaps?).

Stand by for Citadel™ Unit Card Protektorrs™ and Citadel™ Dri Wype Markers™ to allow you to check the damage off as you go!

 insaniak wrote:

ERJAK wrote:

Yeah, you generally check the card once per turn when you attack. Most people in sigmar don't even bother remembering the tables because it takes so little time to look up.

That's painful.

Armies I use regularly, I'm used to just remembering the stats. A system that is either directly 1:1 proportional, or at the very least a system that is consistent across all models that degrade, would have been vastly preferable to one that effectively forces you to check the card before doing anything with the unit.

Armies you use regularly you can absolutely just learn the table, same as any other statline. I'm just saying most people don't bother because it takes almost nothing to just check.

And the issue with this idea is that you end up with some models getting absolutely murdered by their table while others don't care.

Imagine if a riptide dropped the same way a Morkanaut does, 'oh no, now i've got less movement and melee attacks, whatever shall I do with a Riptide that can't melee anymore...'


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Stand by for Citadel™ Unit Card Protektorrs™ and Citadel™ Dri Wype Markers™ to allow you to check the damage off as you go!

I wish this wasn't as plausible as it is...

Personally, I kind of wish that large models had a mechanic a bit like Battlefleet Gothic. You go along until you drop below half your starting hitpoints which counts as being "crippled." At that point, all your stats are halved--nice and simple mechanic. I like nuance and I'm actually happy that large models suffer performance degradation as a damage mechanic, but I'm just concerned that all of these variable stats that are different for every single unit is going to make for a lot of book keeping.

I'll be curious to see how some of the weapons profiles will work out--particularly now that we've seen a bit more about how vehicles and MCs will work now. Of particular interest to me is the new "D" stat. I think it could really make for interesting weapons profiles. I hope random damage roles of a D6 like for the lascannon are not necessarily the norm for more powerful weapons though. If, for instance, things like heavy bolters or Autocannons got a 2 or more for their damage stat, it would help to mitigate the fact that their AP might only be -1 or similar. That way, if you DID manage to get a shot through on a multi-wound model, it would really do some damage. That could actually make heavy bolters an interesting option to fire at something other than light infantry and it would make autocannons still worth shooting at dreadnoughts and other multi-wound models. Despite their [traditionally] poorer AP values.

ERJAK wrote:

Imagine if a riptide dropped the same way a Morkanaut does, 'oh no, now i've got less movement and melee attacks, whatever shall I do with a Riptide that can't melee anymore...'

Which is why I wouldn't imagine that.

I would have gone with something more like 'Below half Wounds, drop all stats by one. Below a quarter wounds, halve remaining Movement value.' Applies to everyone evenly, and is one single formula to remember, regardless of what you're using that day.

I wish this wasn't as plausible as it is...

The markers would be ten a penny still, but a bespoke unit card size isn't impossible.

I'm not unduly worried though, basically every other game I play or take an interest in has some off table bookkeeping in the form of markers, cards or checking off damage on a card in a sleeve, doesn't unduly disrupt those games, don't see why it would inherently be a problem in 40K.

Counters would be a good option to replace the lost income from blast markers, too.

 Brother Xeones wrote:
I hope random damage roles of a D6 like for the lascannon are not necessarily the norm for more powerful weapons though.

The fact that they gave the lascannon variable damage when it has no specific reason to have such makes me suspect that D3 or D6 Damage will be the norm for heavy weapons.

While I get that it may be a bit uncomfortable to adjust to unit degredation when it's not uniform, at the same time, why should it be? Why should a walker degrade the same way as a tank and why should those degrade the same as a skimmer? Why should a Biotitan and a Knight degrade he same way?

If similiar unit types (grouped into something like: walkers, tanks, skimmers, flyers, big bugs, chariots ect) come apart like each other that's fine, but I feel like there should be some difference between different kinds of models. A tank should lose shooting attacks instead of a walker's melee attacks for example. A Helbrute could gain attacks as its wounds drop as it becomes more crazed while losing WS to represent it going nuts.

There is a lot of flavor that could be mixed into the game this way and frankly I look forward to what they do with it.

Worst case scenario we can petition changes as this IS a living ruleset.

 insaniak wrote:

 Brother Xeones wrote:
I hope random damage roles of a D6 like for the lascannon are not necessarily the norm for more powerful weapons though.

The fact that they gave the lascannon variable damage when it has no specific reason to have such makes me suspect that D3 or D6 Damage will be the norm for heavy weapons.

I fear you may be correct, but I hope you aren't If they just go with either a 1, a D3, or a D6, it passes up a big opportunity for some really good options for nuance and balance tweaking.

 insaniak wrote:

ERJAK wrote:

Imagine if a riptide dropped the same way a Morkanaut does, 'oh no, now i've got less movement and melee attacks, whatever shall I do with a Riptide that can't melee anymore...'

Which is why I wouldn't imagine that.

I would have gone with something more like 'Below half Wounds, drop all stats by one. Below a quarter wounds, halve remaining Movement value.' Applies to everyone evenly, and is one single formula to remember, regardless of what you're using that day.

Except again it hurts things differently because things are different.

A Hive tyrant going from 3+ to hit in shooting to 5+ is infinitely better than a gorkanaut or other orc shooting platform going from 5+ to can't hit and if you say 'well just x' now you're adding rules to cover holes in a bad system and I seem to recall someone saying that was bad...hmm...

Having monsters degrade in different ways is better for balance, it's a better design space, it's fluffier, and most importantly it's not that big of a deal to learn I mean the Sigmar players handle it just fine and they're...whatever nasty name you apply to sigmar players.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
While I get that it may be a bit uncomfortable to adjust to unit degredation when it's not uniform, at the same time, why should it be? Why should a walker degrade the same way as a tank and why should those degrade the same as a skimmer? Why should a Biotitan and a Knight degrade he same way?.

Because when your stated goal is to reduce the time taken to play the game, introducing a mechanic that requires players to constantly stop and check a unit card is counter-productive.

 insaniak wrote:

 Brother Xeones wrote:
I hope random damage roles of a D6 like for the lascannon are not necessarily the norm for more powerful weapons though.

The fact that they gave the lascannon variable damage when it has no specific reason to have such makes me suspect that D3 or D6 Damage will be the norm for heavy weapons.

Lascannons run 20 points on a Devastator and upwards to twice that for some other armies while being able to actually do a single wound around 50% of the time or less due of it's low shot output. Variable damage makes them more threatening in average, takes the game from "spam melta for your tank needs" and generally makes the weapon better without breaking the game or needing to make it cheaper.

Plus a 3+ or better gets an armour save against it before the D6 goes off, so it lost a bit of bite from its shooting power with the change to AP.

ERJAK wrote:

A Hive tyrant going from 3+ to hit in shooting to 5+ is infinitely better than a gorkanaut or other orc shooting platform going from 5+ to can't hit...

OK. Why are either of these happening?

 insaniak wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
While I get that it may be a bit uncomfortable to adjust to unit degredation when it's not uniform, at the same time, why should it be? Why should a walker degrade the same way as a tank and why should those degrade the same as a skimmer? Why should a Biotitan and a Knight degrade he same way?.

Because when your stated goal is to reduce the time taken to play the game, introducing a mechanic that requires players to constantly stop and check a unit card is counter-productive.

Pretty sure the "90 minutes for 1,500 point games" was quoted with said degrading tables in play so it apparently doesn't need too much bookkeeping. I"m willing to bet that for most models they won't really start seeing changes for the first half of their wounds meaning you'd only need to check if it's under 1/2. Given enough games you may even be able to put the table off to the side as you won't need it anymore.

And if the "less than 10 wounds means no table" theory holds true you'll only need to keep on too of it for your big models (like Knights or the Morkanaut).

 insaniak wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
While I get that it may be a bit uncomfortable to adjust to unit degredation when it's not uniform, at the same time, why should it be? Why should a walker degrade the same way as a tank and why should those degrade the same as a skimmer? Why should a Biotitan and a Knight degrade he same way?.

Because when your stated goal is to reduce the time taken to play the game, introducing a mechanic that requires players to constantly stop and check a unit card is counter-productive.

Again, not that big of a deal. It adds less time than chucking templates saves, let alone all the other things they're doing to make the game faster.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

The fact that they gave the lascannon variable damage when it has no specific reason to have such makes me suspect that D3 or D6 Damage will be the norm for heavy weapons.

Lascannons run 20 points on a Devastator and upwards to twice that for some other armies while being able to actually do a single wound around 50% of the time or less due of it's low shot output. Variable damage makes them more threatening in average, takes the game from "spam melta for your tank needs" and generally makes the weapon better without breaking the game or needing to make it cheaper..

whatever nasty name you apply to sigmar players.

Aoshats?

 insaniak wrote:

ERJAK wrote:

A Hive tyrant going from 3+ to hit in shooting to 5+ is infinitely better than a gorkanaut or other orc shooting platform going from 5+ to can't hit...

OK. Why are either of these happening?

They went down 2 pegs in the table system you designed less than 5 minutes ago.

It's your system man.

ERJAK wrote:

Again, not that big of a deal. It adds less time than chucking templates saves, let alone all the other things they're doing to make the game faster.

That's kind of the point, though... They've stripped out a bunch of stuff to make the game faster, and then chosen to add unneccessary processes elsewhere.

Yes, checking the unit card isn't particularly time-consuming as a one-off. That doesn't change the fact that not needing to check the unit card is faster.