Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

auticus wrote:
I've listened to him talk on his podcast about it. He prefers that woods only grant a cover bonus of +1, he doesn't like terrain that blocks line of sight because it makes missile units not be able to shoot at things, which he thinks is very bad game design and very frustrating.

Truthfully? He's not wrong. Missile units currently are pointed at the same--or in many cases, higher than a similar melee unit. With this ability now to simply 'shut off' shooting attacks by forcing ranged units to fire through 1" of Citadel Woods--it's an exceedingly powerful thing. There's no terrain that does similar to CC units or magic. As always though, there's some kind of penalty for ranged units because reasons.

And if you think that some of them are getting preferential treatment, you're dreaming

Well they get access to all of the product two weeks before any of us, are part of the playtesting crew that provides feedback to Ben & co. and have historically had a great amount of influence in changing things.

I've been a part of the community for over twenty years now, and my club were playtesters back in 6th and 7th edition. Playtesters have the ability to influence game design a lot more than you are giving credit for.

Sure, they have the ability to influence it--that doesn't mean it is actually happening.

Sure, they have the ability to influence it--that doesn't mean it is actually happening.

Except that its been happening for 20+ years. Without Ben sitting here going over a checkpoint list of what he's considering and being influenced by the playtesters by (which is their job) though this discussion is pointless.

As to the rest... thats what an intuitive battle design is. Using the battlefield to your advantage. Something that AOS never had up until now really.

In my opinion if one wants to play a game where all units can do all things equally one should play the card game version of Warhammer. It was called Invasion.

You simply deployed your unit and tapped it to attack and pointed at a target and applied damage.

Thats what AOS was before they started making terrain matter again.

In my opinion a miniature wargame should employ some common sense and battlefield management. Otherwise its not really a wargame to me. Its simply pretty models taking the place of a deck of cards but you can achieve almost the same experience by just playing the card game version.

Much like the power gamer vs casual playstyle arguments have raged forever, so too have the gamey vs intuitive arguments been a big thing since 2010 or so when wargames started entering the realm of emulating card game design ethos and less on actual battlefield management.

auticus wrote:
Oh hell there is some noise on twitter from some of the podcast celebrities about woods blocking line of sight being not necessary and now sylvaneth wild woods blocking line of sight is "broken".

*Edit* missed a page of the convo, saw it being discussed whom.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Truthfully? He's not wrong. Missile units currently are pointed at the same--or in many cases, higher than a similar melee unit.

But than the problem is that the GHB18 got the points wrong and not the basic rules are bad because units are not worth their points

I think having the woods block line of site is a great idea. If terrain has no effect then there’s no point in having it.

Also, I’ve been thinking about the Stormcast again. Right now they’re too cheap for what they can do yes? If so, my attitude is that I’d prefer to have more models on the table rather than jacking the price up. So I’d tone them down a bit rather than making them more expensive. This is that conflicting philosophy thing in action.

Take concussors for example. I’d knock the stormbreath back to just 1 mortal and the intorable damage to D3. That’s still pretty dangerous yes, but more in line with the points yes?

Having done my GHB 2018 analysis I would say that the points are in a very bad place right now. The GHB 2016 they weren't great, but had a skew of about 17% (meaning that 17% of the units pointed sat above or below the average bell curve for what they "should have cost" within a tolerance level)

The GHB 2018 is at roughly 22%.

I would agree that some shooting units should come down in cost a bit. A lot of them are too expensive in general, especially if they can't shoot with impunity any longer. For example, I think skyfires should drop to about 180 points which would put them back on the bell curve when you take line of sight blocking into account now.

Stormcast are wildly undercost. Most just a little. Some by quite a bit. I think that is intentional though to make stormcast the easy-mode army (based on the design ethos of catering to different peoples' tastes, some people like easy to use armies)

Of all the factions, the stormcast have the most skew in their point cost and most of it is on the upper end of the bell curve (meaning they are too cheap for what they do)

From a design standpoint it is much easier to adjust points than it is to redo whole warscrolls.

My guess on the design side of things is that the points are wildly off because a lot of new mechanics were put in place (return of free summoning, line of sight blocking woods, look out sir) but points tweaks were really not done except in extreme cases. I would expect if rules stay stable in 2019 that point costs will even out and that the 22% skew will drop to about 15-18% again.

Meaningful terrain rules are necessary to have tactical challenges beyond just target selection. 40k hasn't had them in 10 years but AoS now does. Of course having to contend with an opponent's clever maneuvering, and not just calculating dice odds, does not sit well with tourney grinders.

 Skimask Mohawk wrote:
I think the Los thing could have been a bigger problem if the fly rule wasn't there. Most big casters have fly, so can see any units hiding. Endless spells also help since non of them are targeted

Incidentally, would a Wizard with Fly still ignore Woods when drawing LoS from a Spellportal?

auticus I'd agree that the big shift in mechanics is going to have an effect on the balance. It's one reason I've often disliked how each edition often makes big sweeping changes to how the game functions.

Granted under the old GW this was also coupled to factions getting very slow turn around on updates and some even skipping whole rule editions so they never had a chance to adapt or catch up.

With the new GW if they can give us a year or two of stable game mechanics then yes the revisions and regular updates should let the points settle.




I know that in Daughters of Khaine the main ranged unit is overcosted or understatted for what they give; Bloodsisters are trapped being not all that great at range and not all that great at close combat and not really excelling in either enough to really make them an attractive choice for their points value (if they were cheaper they'd at least be more viable as they'd thenbe an affordable skirmisher).

I can't fathom people saying they'd rather terrain be meaningless. At that point, why even have it? You're basically playing on an empty table if everything is just pretty decoration but serves no real purpose on the table.

Some frames of thought:

* terrain is not useless if you just gave a +1 to cover. That way missile units can still always shoot whatever they want.

Of course, a +1 to cover is rather minor and the more destructive shooting units that are shooting high volume couldn't care less if you get a +1 to cover most of the time because its a minor annoyance at best (until you are dealing with a 2+ save with reroll 1s but those are rare)

* terrain that is not useless slows the game down because people get too fiddly spending a ton of time trying to perfect their positioning.

I hear that one often. The game goes faster when terrain doesn't do much so that means its good the way it was.

* terrain wasn't useless it had random abilities (that no one seemed to want to roll or use) which made forests not useless if you rolled the random abilities.

This is the splitting hairs argument. Technically it is correct. It wasn't "useless". It just didn't have much impact (because the word useless shouldn't be used, the debate goes down a dark rabbit hole of technicalities)

For my money I want meaningful terrain because a battlefield should be about managing the terrain as much as it is listbuilding and target prioritization.

This added another layer of management and depth, and was a compromise in my favor this time.

 kodos wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

Truthfully? He's not wrong. Missile units currently are pointed at the same--or in many cases, higher than a similar melee unit.

But than the problem is that the GHB18 got the points wrong and not the basic rules are bad because units are not worth their points

Realistically, the issue isn't GHB but rather it's the mentality that "shooting armies can decimate the other side without penalty".

We see it all the time here with Auticus' posts on the subject. There are people who genuinely believe that units like Reavers with their 1 shot at 18" that is 4+/4+ OR 3 shots at 9" 4+/4+ with 0 Rend and 1D apiece is worth 140 points for 10 models while the Thralls being 2 attacks 3+/3+ with -1 Rend and 1D(or 3 attacks if fighting units with 1W per model or 2D each attack if fighting a unit with 4+W per model). They point towards the existence of things like Judicators or Celestar Ballistas or warmachines as the reason they claim that shooting armies can decimate the other side without penalty while ignoring that actual shooting armies like Wanderers have to rely upon a "once per game" thing to have any meaningful Rend value on their Shooting Attacks.

I guarantee you that if Reavers had a similar rule boosting their attacks value or damage value, he'd be up in arms about it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Wayniac wrote:
I can't fathom people saying they'd rather terrain be meaningless. At that point, why even have it? You're basically playing on an empty table if everything is just pretty decoration but serves no real purpose on the table.

There isn't really anyone seriously arguing that they want terrain to be meaningless from what I have seen.

The argument right now seems to be that the Citadel Woods rules might need to be fine-tuned since they are now confirmed to be applying to Sylvaneth Wyldwoods(an item that can be summoned and brought at 0 points by a Sylvaneth player) and since you can actually have a ranged unit inside of a Citadel Wood being unable to shoot a unit on the same stand.

Alternatively, they might need to remove Wyldwoods from being able to be placed later in the game and stick them to the same setup as the Gloomtide Shipwreck(which was just FAQ'd to not be able to be placed as area/objective denial).

Woods (of any kind) blocking LOS or at least giving some kind of to-hit penalty or something just makes sense. EVERY other minis game does something like this, and not just for woods but for lots of other kinds of terrain.

I'm also firmly in the camp that "terrain needs to have an actual effect" (block LOS, limit movement, grant cover, whatever) or there's no point in having it. Otherwise, you're just fighting in the parking lot, which is maybe kinda fun once or twice, but quickly becomes nothing more than Yahtzee meets Checkers (which, incidentally, is what I thought of many older versions of WHFB and KoW and other "rank and file" games, and thus why I didn't play them).

While I'm fine with some levels of abstraction for games (after all, if you want a "combat simulation" go play Advanced Squad Leader or the like), I do still want some things that represent some form of reality, because it at least gives you interesting choices to make. Without interesting choices, you have a boring game that can be "solved" rather easily and becomes stale very quickly.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Realistically, the issue isn't GHB but rather it's the mentality that "shooting armies can decimate the other side without penalty".

Fantasy has always been the melee and 40k the shooty game
If Fantasy now get shooty as well than there is not much difference any more and no reason to play both.

AoS and 40k are very similar in rules, most differences are just cosmetic except the strength/weakness if shooting and melee
If one wants more shooting play 40k, if you want melee play AoS.

If you are complaining that full shooting armys are not viable any more, I have to say that you are playing the wrong game

For me - there are melee armies that can decimate the other side without penalty. THere are magic armies that can do the same. I don't care that its shooting, so long as there is some modicum of intuitive rules behind it.

If shooting is powerful, great! Just make it so there are battlefield elements where you can take cover and hide. Like a real battlefield would offer. Just like powerful melee should be tamed through good use of a battlefield (hindering movement, bottlenecking, etc)

The day I saw an 8th edition whfb cannon brigade fire through three layers of forests because they could see the forearm of a model was the day that I lost my fervor for wargaming. AOS poured salt on that for me, and I have to say the moment I saw woods once again blocked line of siight without the need for houserules and arguing with people over houseruling being the devil, was a milestone moment of joy for me in terms of my interest in playing.

And I play armies with shooting in them too.

auticus wrote:

If shooting is powerful, great! Just make it so there are battlefield elements where you can take cover and hide. Like a real battlefield would offer. Just like powerful melee should be tamed through good use of a battlefield (hindering movement, bottlenecking, etc)

So much this. I really don't mind ultra deadly shooting, especially in modern and sci-fi games, but there has to be reasonable cover rules to help offset it and make you play "smart" and use the damn cover. A couple of smaller skirmish sets I've been messing around with do this fairly well (Scrappers most recently) and it makes for a much more interesting game, IMO, when not only do you have neat terrain on the board but actually use it as part of your tactics.

 kodos wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

Realistically, the issue isn't GHB but rather it's the mentality that "shooting armies can decimate the other side without penalty".

Fantasy has always been the melee and 40k the shooty game
If Fantasy now get shooty as well than there is not much difference any more and no reason to play both.

AoS and 40k are very similar in rules, most differences are just cosmetic except the strength/weakness if shooting and melee
If one wants more shooting play 40k, if you want melee play AoS.

If you are complaining that full shooting armys are not viable any more, I have to say that you are playing the wrong game

The Mongols weren't feared for their swords, nor were the English feared for their pretty armor.

 Valander wrote:
Woods (of any kind) blocking LOS or at least giving some kind of to-hit penalty or something just makes sense. EVERY other minis game does something like this, and not just for woods but for lots of other kinds of terrain.

Which, again, nobody is arguing against. But if this is going to be the case--then ranged units need to have their points values or the ranged weapons in general need to be rebalanced. There's now two things that are effectively 'shut-off switches' for ranged units--close combat(meaning the unit can only shoot whatever unit is within 3" of them) or Citadel Woods(if their target or the firing unit does not have the Fly keyword and has at least 1" of Citadel Woods between them and the firing unit, the firing unit can't shoot).

We're seeing a lot of archer units getting two fire modes--why not make it three and have a 'volley fire', which hits on a worse value but allows you to ignore LOS?

 EnTyme wrote:

The Mongols weren't feared for their swords, nor were the English feared for their pretty armor.

Just good that this is not a historical game, otherwise we would need some rules for units moving in base to base formations etc.

 kodos wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

Realistically, the issue isn't GHB but rather it's the mentality that "shooting armies can decimate the other side without penalty".

Fantasy has always been the melee and 40k the shooty game
If Fantasy now get shooty as well than there is not much difference any more and no reason to play both.

Except for when 40k had the terrifying CC and Fantasy had huge blobs of Archers, amirite?

AoS and 40k are very similar in rules, most differences are just cosmetic except the strength/weakness if shooting and melee
If one wants more shooting play 40k, if you want melee play AoS.

If you are complaining that full shooting armys are not viable any more, I have to say that you are playing the wrong game

And I would say if you're arguing that the army shouldn't be viable, then you need to learn how to actually argue a point.

Nobody's army should be rendered no longer viable because of some nonsense argument like the one you're espousing. Ranged armies should be able to work in AoS. There's definitely ranged builds(read: BUILDS, not ARMIES) that work by exploiting the exploding 6s mechanic that Stormcast and Skyfires have.

And that's the important thing to remember. There are not really ranged armies, but there are ranged builds--and the sooner you and Auticus understand that those are not the same thing as armies built around being a ranged faction, the better.

There's a slight problem in adjusting points for shooty units with the assumption that there will be enough LOS blocking terrain: if there isn't such terrain, then they're too cheap. Now, I'm not really disagreeing with you--rebalancing points is definitely called for. It's tricky, though, because without official "you must have X terrain on the board" it becomes a crap shoot on whether or not those points are balanced for any given tabletop.

A thematic "solution" to the sweet, sweet tears of Sylvaneth players currently (personally, I have zero sympathy for them at the moment and revel in the fact that the Citadel Woods rule was FAQed to definitely apply to Wyldwoods), might be giving them an allegiance ability that let them ignore Sylvaneth Wyldwoods' LOS blocking. That would probably require even more rebalancing though, so it's a vicious circle.

auticus wrote:
For me - there are melee armies that can decimate the other side without penalty. THere are magic armies that can do the same. I don't care that its shooting, so long as there is some modicum of intuitive rules behind it.

And yet here you are complaining, still, about shooting armies while there are now two things that "tame" them without affecting magic or close combat.

If shooting is powerful, great! Just make it so there are battlefield elements where you can take cover and hide. Like a real battlefield would offer. Just like powerful melee should be tamed through good use of a battlefield (hindering movement, bottlenecking, etc)

A "real battlefield" is a copout. All you do is complain about ranged and give weird anecdotes that really only apply to crap like Skyfires or Stormcast shooting.

The day I saw an 8th edition whfb cannon brigade fire through three layers of forests because they could see the forearm of a model was the day that I lost my fervor for wargaming. AOS poured salt on that for me, and I have to say the moment I saw woods once again blocked line of siight without the need for houserules and arguing with people over houseruling being the devil, was a milestone moment of joy for me in terms of my interest in playing.

Maybe you should have used the battlefield better and hidden that forearm behind a tree, y'know--like "a real battlefield".

And I play armies with shooting in them too.

That's nice, but it doesn't change the fact that you've consistently been against anything suggested that would give shooting ARMIES(not the same thing as "my army has shooting in it") a more level playing field.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Valander wrote:
There's a slight problem in adjusting points for shooty units with the assumption that there will be enough LOS blocking terrain: if there isn't such terrain, then they're too cheap. Now, I'm not really disagreeing with you--rebalancing points is definitely called for. It's tricky, though, because without official "you must have X terrain on the board" it becomes a crap shoot on whether or not those points are balanced for any given tabletop.

Here's the rub:

It's not "just" LOS blocking terrain to consider now. It's also the fact that a unit that gets engaged in combat can only shoot at whatever they're in 3" of. This is something that Auticus consistently ignores.
It would be a different manner entirely if skirmisher units like Reavers, Empire Archers, Vanguard Hunters etc had the ability to dip out of the combat and then retreat+shoot with no penalty...but most units don't have things like that.

A thematic "solution" to the sweet, sweet tears of Sylvaneth players currently (personally, I have zero sympathy for them at the moment and revel in the fact that the Citadel Woods rule was FAQed to definitely apply to Wyldwoods), might be giving them an allegiance ability that let them ignore Sylvaneth Wyldwoods' LOS blocking. That would probably require even more rebalancing though, so it's a vicious circle.

Nah. They'll be fine, the tears are mostly from the bads who did crap like camp Hunters as far in as they could.

Yep this takes us down the path of subjectivity.

In a standard non-sylvaneth involved game... some tables will have NO line of sight blocking terrain. Some tables will have a couple buildings that kind of block line of sight.

On those tables, the shooting units are now more powerful.

Then on other tables there might be 2-3 forests on the table, limiting the shooting units a little bit.

On those tables, the shooting units are now less powerful.

Against sylvaneth, their "thing" is that they can now pop up line of sight blocking terrain during the game.

So... how do you point cost shooting units for that? Make them all cheaper? Then they are too powerful when there isn't proper terrain. Keep them expensive? Then they are fine until there is forest terrain on the table.

Now having played this houserule where woods blocked line of sight the entire time AND where shooty units could only shoot the things they were fighting, and our group having a lot of shooting units on the table over the past three years, I will say from my own experience that shooting units are still plenty viable with line of sight blocking terrain and shooty units only engaging what they are in contact with.

They still contributed to the battle, they still did a lot of damage.

What was different was that the element of maneuver became much more important to use them as effectively, AND they had to be screened against melee units wanting to come lock them down, instead of being able to be run on autopilot and not worry about that since they could just shoot whatever they wanted anyway.

That increased importance of maneuverability was and is for me today KEY in keeping my interest because it made the game shed loads more interestiing than stock AOS where shooting units were able to do what they wanted (despite the damage they may or may have not done).

There wasn't any real interesting decisions for the shooty player other than target priority.

Now there's maneuvering to see your targets AND screening your units so that they can continue to shoot what they want.

In other words... it moved closer towards being a wargame over a glorified card-game mechanic style game with pretty models.

I love it. I don't see that as gimping or crippling shooting units at all... nor do I see them grotesquely over priced in general with some exceptions like Skyfires which I feel are way too expensive now for what they can do.

I'm still using the houserule where shooting into combats you aren't part of hit your buddies on misses for my narrative events (again also always been a rule for the past three years for my narratives) but the official rule changes made me happy.

The things that I was not happy about (yay free summoning yay) I got around with specific narrative win conditions that can kick in (sudden death) if these elements are abused.

A "real battlefield" is a copout. All you do is complain about ranged and give weird anecdotes that really only apply to crap like Skyfires or Stormcast shooting.

Nah. A real battlefield is a battlefield where you take cover and have places shooting units can't hit you unless they move to get better sight. Nothing copout about that.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Except for when 40k had the terrifying CC and Fantasy had huge blobs of Archers, amirite?

Than in detail, there was never a time when a pure melee army in 40k was considered top tier, it always had some kind of shooting to be strong
The same in Fantasy, no matter what, there were always melee units to support the shooting (even the famous Skaven Shooting Army of Death had melee units with them)

 Kanluwen wrote:
[
And I would say if you're arguing that the army shouldn't be viable, then you need to learn how to actually argue a point.

I was just countering the "line of sight blocking terrain makes shooting builds useless"

Because moving around the table to get line of sight is not an option I guess and the enemy will always hide everything behind LOS blocking terrain for the whole game?

If the problem is that magic or a charge does not need line of sight, this is something different and maybe should be changed too

But just because there are ranged builds and there is LOS blocking terrain does not make them useless or underpowered (there is a save against mortal wounds, so all MW wound builds are useless now for the very same reason)

auticus wrote:
Yep this takes us down the path of subjectivity.

In a standard non-sylvaneth involved game... some tables will have NO line of sight blocking terrain. Some tables will have a couple buildings that kind of block line of sight.

That's on the players or the club or the tournament organizers then.

So... how do you point cost shooting units for that? Make them all cheaper? Then they are too powerful when there isn't proper terrain. Keep them expensive? Then they are fine until there is forest terrain on the table.

If you can't weather 30 shots of 4+/4+ with 0 Rend and doing 1 damage a pop--how the hell are you weathering a similar melee unit hitting 3+/3+ with a point of Rend?

There wasn't any real interesting decisions for the shooty player other than target priority.

Now there's maneuvering to see your targets AND screening your units so that they can continue to shoot what they want.

Unless you're Tzeentch, because YOU LITERALLY DO NOT CARE ABOUT CITADEL WOODS. Skyfires have Fly and thus don't care.

In other words... it moved closer towards being a wargame over a glorified card-game mechanic style game with pretty models.

I love it. I don't see that as gimping or crippling shooting units at all... nor do I see them grotesquely over priced in general with some exceptions like Skyfires which I feel are way too expensive now for what they can do.

You should, but for whatever reason you don't seem to understand that most shooting ARMIES are sitting on 4+/4+ with 0 Rend or similar statlines.
Dark Riders for Shadowblades faction? 5+/4+ 0 Rend 16" range 3 attacks.
Shadow Warriors for Swifthawk Agents? 3+/4+ 1A 18" 0 Rend. Swifthawk Bows for the Skycutters 16" 3A 4+/4+ 0 Rend--Charioteers Bows are 2A 18" 4+/4+ 0 Rend.
Wanderers--a shooting centric army has their Battleline unit(Glade Guard) sitting at 20" range with 1A each and 4+/4+ with a once per game ability to increase their Rend to a -3.

If you want to try and sit there and tell me that you think that a unit like Glade Guard should be paying 120 points for 10 of them while having a 6+ save and no special survival traits--you can excuse yourself from any further conversations about game balance, because you are completely and utterly biased when it comes to this topic. For 120 points, that ability better be every damn turn and they better be 3+/3+.

Especially when one sits down and compares them to the Sisters of the Watch at 180 points.

kodos wrote:Than in detail, there was never a time when a pure melee army in 40k was considered top tier, it always had some kind of shooting to be strong
The same in Fantasy, no matter what, there were always melee units to support the shooting (even the famous Skaven Shooting Army of Death had melee units with them)

Yeah, that's not even remotely accurate but okay.

I was just countering the "line of sight blocking terrain makes shooting builds useless"

You're replying to an argument that isn't being made. LOS blocking terrain doesn't make "shooting builds useless"(once again: stop trying to use these interchangeably, armies != builds) but rather it affects shooting armies more than it does those builds.

Do you really think Skyfires give a crap about Citadel Woods?

Because moving around the table to get line of sight is not an option I guess and the enemy will always hide everything behind LOS blocking terrain for the whole game?

When many shooting units are balanced around the idea of them not moving or staying out of a certain range threshold to get a reasonable hit/wound value or things of that nature--well yeah, it becomes less of an option.

If the problem is that magic or a charge does not need line of sight, this is something different and maybe should be changed too

Fwoooooooooooooosh.

That's the sound of the point going over your head again. Magic can't be "locked down" like shooting can by throwing chaff at a unit. The same with CC builds--me throwing a chaff unit at another CC unit does nothing negative to that unit.

But just because there are ranged builds and there is LOS blocking terrain does not make them useless or underpowered (there is a save against mortal wounds, so all MW wound builds are useless now for the very same reason)

Strictly speaking, yes. Yes it does. When you literally can turn off the ability that an army is balanced around, it makes them useless or underpowered.

And there is no global save against MWs. There are Relics granting them or some armies have the ability to take saves against them, but that is not the same as there being a save against them.

If you want to try and sit there and tell me that you think that a unit like Glade Guard should be paying 120 points for 10 of them while having a 6+ save and no special survival traits--you can excuse yourself from any further conversations about game balance, because you are completely and utterly biased when it comes to this topic. For 120 points, that ability better be every damn turn and they better be 3+/3+.

I've never gotten into a point by point discussion of any unit. However what you have done in this quote is create a strawman argument and then attacked it whole heartedly as if I had mentioned point by point arguments on units for you to attack.

That gets us nowhere.

Please stop. Also the tone of your posts is again coming off as angry and inflammatory. Thats not going to get anyone here anywhere other than another internet flame topic that gets shut down.

If you have a direct quote of mine that you feel is a debate point that you'd counter, by all means. But don't put words in my mouth and then assume thats the direction I am going in my discussion.

There are all kinds of units that are overpointed. Just there are all kinds of units that are underpointed.

That is a whole nother conversation and topic. We started on that topic in this thread and then Davor created another topic about balance etc that this would be a good discussion point for in that thread I think.

When many shooting units are balanced around the idea of them not moving or staying out of a certain range threshold to get a reasonable hit/wound value or things of that nature--well yeah, it becomes less of an option.

I would like to pick on the above statement a bit because I see this a lot from a lot of people.

None of us here in this conversation know what the AOS design team was considering when they designed anything. We don't know what units were balanced around. We don't know why units are pointed the way they are. There are no design notes (that I'm aware of) where the designers explain their decisions.

We can't say what units were balanced around because none of us know.

I do strongly agree that units need to start moving once again instead of being able to sit static. Because that makes for a more interesting game. IMO.

When an item literally has a rule that affects their performance based upon their distance from enemy units and/or whether they have moved or not, one does not have to "know what the AOS design team was considering".

Glade Guard warscroll wrote:Peerless Archery:
You can add 1 to all hit
rolls made for a unit of Glade Guard in the
Shooting phase if it has 20 or more models
and there are no enemy models within 3".

So not only are Glade Guard tied to remaining outside of 3" of an enemy unit to be a 3+/4+(oooooo, terrifying...)...it also requires 20 models in the unit for the effect to trigger.

Sisters of the Watch warscroll wrote:
Quicksilver Shots:
A unit of Sisters of the Watch can attack twice in their shooting phase if they did not move in their movement phase.

And look, another conditional...

Ok. My apologies for not having the entire warscroll library memorized for units I never see

My point still stands, though not in reference to you personally in this one instance because "gw designed the game for this... and this... " is a common item touted by the community.

Going back to your quote

When many shooting units are balanced around the idea of them not moving or staying out of a certain range threshold to get a reasonable hit/wound value or things of that nature--well yeah, it becomes less of an option.

This is a very old model on how to point cost something of which there is no correct answer.

* point cost the unit as if they are at max effectiveness because there are games when the bonus will often always go off.
* point cost the unit as if they are at average effectiveness because sometimes the bonus will go off and sometimes it won't.
* point cost the unit as if they were at minimum effectivess because their bonuses are conditional.

All of the above require a fairly robust formula in place. A formula that I don't think exists at GW because as I have been told many many times by many many people "you can't balance age of sigmar with math so stop trying".

So in a game where said unit never got within 3" and never moved, an ideal game being on planet bowling ball where nothing blocked line of sight... they'd be powerful.

In a game where they were being rushed by the enemy or playing on a table with line of sight blocking terrain they'd be less powerful. Because they have to move.

Which do you point for?

No one here can give the right answer because the answer is it depends on who you are.

Second, woods blocking line of sight.

Good for the game because now units have to move to get shots in and adds a layer of tactical choice?

Or bad for the game because our pet units are now not as powerful because they have to move to get shots in and adds a layer of tactical choice that is inconvenient when it was easier before to always have line of sight to everything regardless of if in combat or if unit was behind terrain, which true line of sight combined with the Games Workshop terrain library pretty much guaranteed will not block line of sight and additionally makes our cool special abilities conditional instead of always happening.

Again - the answer will vary depending on the person and their wants and desires.

For my money - if I want to play a game where movement and what not doesn't matter and want to play warhammer, I'll get back into Warhammer: Invasion the card game. It was pretty good and gives me all of that.

I am OK with units getting bonuses for not moving as long as it is thematic. Dwarves, Freeguild shooters, etc. Elves I do not see as static lines of archers; they should be mobile.

I like the new line of sight forests, but would like them better if it were 2" as just 1 feels too short.

 Kanluwen wrote:

When many shooting units are balanced around the idea of them not moving or staying out of a certain range threshold to get a reasonable hit/wound value or things of that nature--well yeah, it becomes less of an option.

So your basic problem is that "static build" or "never moving any model" army is not high tier any more.