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 NinthMusketeer wrote:

-To use the example of 500 points of summoning over a game, this isn't as simple as making it 2500 vs 2000, because those summons require mechanics that must be used properly and more importantly these summons only see use during a fraction of the game rather than the whole thing.

Another thing is to factor how much of points of 2000 goes to summon but not else. Albeit I don't know how the AOS new summon works but say you have to have ~200 pts model that does basically nothing else but summon. Okay 500 pts free. Great. Except in practice more like 300 pts. The 200 pts summoner would be doing very little other than summon. Might also give up on his other uses like regular spells so instead of dropping pile of mortal wounds to enemy instead summons own guys. Free points but less points removed from enemy.

auticus wrote:
I don't see them having to get their own points back. If the slaan is generating 600 points in a game thats still 600 free points. Thats points showing up and popping objectives and reinforcing where needed for free.

Additionally spells like banishment can be cast by other casters. You're not losing anything by taking multiple casters. You're getting a summoning battery to bring in reserves that you dont' have to pay points for.

I heard this exact same argument in 2015 with AOS 1.0 to try and say summoning back then wasn't broken at all. I don't really buy it. Especially since I've seen what over a 25% bonus in free points does to a game if the other person is not doing the same.

As of GHB 2017 (haven't seen the new points), that's a 240 point model you're effectively taking out of the game to generate those 600 points. A net gain of 360 points. Those points also have to be placed in range of the Astrolith banner. You're not free to place them anywhere you want. As stated, this is a strong ability, but not as game breaking as you're making it out to be. I really think this is the kind of thing we'll need to see in an actual battle before we can determine just how strong it really is.

They have abilities that let them teleport units. So yes they have to summon next to the standard, but then they can also teleport the unit after that. Unless that was changed.

Now I've not noticed the battle reps this weekend between groups that already have the rules and points mention summoning much, so that was good (that would seem to me that its not as bent since these are players that are intentionally trying to break the game to take to the next GT)

The thing being mentioned quite a bit is how lethal the new endless spells are combined with the spell portal to do a ton of damage, and that a lot of games seem to be like 40k now in that the game is over by Turn 2 on average because they upped the casualty count per turn.

auticus wrote:
They have abilities that let them teleport units. So yes they have to summon next to the standard, but then they can also teleport the unit after that. Unless that was changed.

I don't know if it was changed or not, but:

Summoning happens at the end of the Movement Phase. Teleporting happens during the Hero Phase. It can also only be used once, unless you have "The Great Rememberer" trait on your Slann.

Now I've not noticed the battle reps this weekend between groups that already have the rules and points mention summoning much, so that was good (that would seem to me that its not as bent since these are players that are intentionally trying to break the game to take to the next GT)

The thing being mentioned quite a bit is how lethal the new endless spells are combined with the spell portal to do a ton of damage, and that a lot of games seem to be like 40k now in that the game is over by Turn 2 on average because they upped the casualty count per turn.

The issue is that, as NinthMusketeer mentioned elsewhere, you can't guarantee that this will work. If you get a double turn, then the other player can take advantage of it and throw your mirror of doom combo back at you since you don't get a chance to dispel the mirror.

Yeah I know you can't guarantee it'll work. I'm just saying I read about five battle reports over the weekend from five different groups and all five of those games ended in Turn 2 with concession tablings.

Without the ability to read all the rules myself though, we cannot discuss in full context, which annoys me that the rules are available to a chosen few for a couple weeks before everyone else, when I can't see what that accomplishes.

Hulksmash wrote:I dont' want imbalance personally but I do want armies to function differently. Which is a hard sell to get right honestly. I'm a personality list person. My lists generally don't contain a massive load of "da best" current units. They contain the stuff that works well for me.

Yea, same. Basically every game I play, I spend some time digesting the meta, keeping up on its shifts and overhauls, and then I find stuff I like, that either has or I can fit cool models to, and that isn't too aggressively in-meta, and I run that. I'm pretty drawn to bucking the meta, because Obviously Good things aren't that fun to play with for me, but I do it with full knowledge that I'll be punching above my weight against meta lists. Which is fine, because my goal isn't victory, it's to use models I like with rules that fit them and me well, and get in a few good scraps and have some beverages.

But even then, it's much more fun to use what you want in a game with balance, especially with internal balance. KOW continues to be the king of this for me, especially after playing GW games for so long. It's one thing that no faction is really superior to another, but even more impressive that all the units within a faction are playable. While there's some sense of in-meta picks (flying stuff is still good), that meta isn't as concrete as other games nor is it as constraining for army builds. You really can take whatever you want, assuming you know how to make an army.

jreilly89 wrote:I don't think GW's aim is really balance. It's to sell great models and a fun exciting system.

As I limber up and prepare to dive back into AOS (for a third time!) with a new Ogre army, I keep wondering why I'm doing it, as I'm fully aware that gak's not going to be balanced, that WAAC bois are going to be summoning their brains out and paying their way to victory (honestly one of the lamest parts of summoner metas is the pay-to-win aspect - see Ressers in Malifaux pre 2018's scenario tweaks, or the worst of them, AOS pre-GHB), and my armybook-less Gutbusters are automatically on the back foot without the fancy stuff other allegiances have.

So here's why:
1) Easy to get pickup games
2) Local events (KOW all require 2-4 hours of travel)
3) Fun + easy modelling
4) Dice-driven carnage
5) New edition has ratcheted up the cinematic and fantastical nature of the in-game experience, thanks to massive expansion of magic and mystical realms, which are the things missing from KOW and from what I can tell the things that WHFB had that KOW didn't pick up and do better
6) AOS2.0 has addressed enough NPEs to get me to consider it again

I'm simply going to continue to be ok with other players playing their armies like they want, as I play my army like I want. And I figure if the enemy wants to keep summoning stuff, it'll just give me more for my 'Guts to smash to pieces

- Salvage

I need to figure out how to adopt the mentality that its ok if I am fielding a middleweight list and my opponents are all fielding power heavy weight lists simply because the models I love aren't the current chosen ones of that particular edition.

I was spoiled for so many years, being an undead and chaos player because they were so OP and busted from 5th - 7th edition that I was just able to roll people with models I loved.

I'm starting a Thursday Night's Main Event (play on saturday night's main event from old wrestling days) once the new rules kick in where we will be focusing on how to learn to play through the imbalances and counters that the powergamers will be employing and hoping some fruit can be borne from that.

auticus wrote:
They have abilities that let them teleport units. So yes they have to summon next to the standard, but then they can also teleport the unit after that. Unless that was changed.

Now I've not noticed the battle reps this weekend between groups that already have the rules and points mention summoning much, so that was good (that would seem to me that its not as bent since these are players that are intentionally trying to break the game to take to the next GT)

The thing being mentioned quite a bit is how lethal the new endless spells are combined with the spell portal to do a ton of damage, and that a lot of games seem to be like 40k now in that the game is over by Turn 2 on average because they upped the casualty count per turn.

The teleport ability also comes with a 1 in 3 chance for that unit to be unable to do anything that turn, and as Kan said, it can only be done once per turn, and it triggers before the summoned unit can be placed, so the summoned unit will be out of position for at least a turn.

auticus wrote:
I was spoiled for so many years, being an undead and chaos player because they were so OP and busted from 5th - 7th edition that I was just able to roll people with models I loved.

As an aside, one of my buddies has started up an Oldhammer summer escalation league, using 7E rules. We talked a lot about choice of edition and problems with 7E, and eventually I asked what everybody is playing. Out of a dozen players it's mostly daemons, vamps and dark elves, with warriors, high elves and I think ogres rounding things out. Pretty much my experience of 7E

He was also a little crestfallen that I didn't want to play, but I don't often enjoy Oldhammer, and frankly I was thrilled to leave 7E behind when 8E dropped

- Salvage

Yep 7th edition was vampire counts, demons, and dark elves pretty exclusively for me since all I did was play tournaments then and those were the busted-three.

I too was happy for 7th to die. I'd play 6th again with ravening hordes though. And 8th is fun... provided you cap steadfast and do something about the "six dice Purple Sun for the win" crap.

 Boss Salvage wrote:

jreilly89 wrote:I don't think GW's aim is really balance. It's to sell great models and a fun exciting system.

As I limber up and prepare to dive back into AOS (for a third time!) with a new Ogre army, I keep wondering why I'm doing it, as I'm fully aware that gak's not going to be balanced, that WAAC bois are going to be summoning their brains out and paying their way to victory (honestly one of the lamest parts of summoner metas is the pay-to-win aspect - see Ressers in Malifaux pre 2018's scenario tweaks, or the worst of them, AOS pre-GHB), and my armybook-less Gutbusters are automatically on the back foot without the fancy stuff other allegiances have.

So here's why:
1) Easy to get pickup games
2) Local events (KOW all require 2-4 hours of travel)
3) Fun + easy modelling
4) Dice-driven carnage
5) New edition has ratcheted up the cinematic and fantastical nature of the in-game experience, thanks to massive expansion of magic and mystical realms, which are the things missing from KOW and from what I can tell the things that WHFB had that KOW didn't pick up and do better
6) AOS2.0 has addressed enough NPEs to get me to consider it again

I'm simply going to continue to be ok with other players playing their armies like they want, as I play my army like I want. And I figure if the enemy wants to keep summoning stuff, it'll just give me more for my 'Guts to smash to pieces

- Salvage

Hear, hear! I applaud and agree with this. Also, I too recently started up a Gutbusters army, so let's go Ogres!

auticus wrote:
I'd play 6th again with ravening hordes though.

This was my strongest suggestion to him from a 'so I hear you want to play a mostly balanced fantasy rank-n-flank Warhammer edition' standpoint, however his player base protested that there wasn't enough magic, magic items or army diversity. Such is the burden of balance (and our discussions shed some light on how KOW was probably developed and why they cut what they did).

More on topic, I agree with the comments about just giving non-summoners more points in a summoner-meta. Or didn't GW do that by dropping some points? I thought I read that that was why, for example, some nasty Destro stuff was receiving what at first look like undeserved price drops.

But anyway, point being that summoning as a concept is super themey for plenty of armies - undead, daemonkin and I guess seraphon (not lizardmen ported over, the actual light-powered lizardangels of AOS) in particular - as well as being pretty cool cinematically. It just sucks from a balance perspective. Oh, maybe worth noting that another way to balance things is to simply make summoned things worse or worse at winning. In MFX, for example, summoned things are typically less effective the turn they come in as well as not at full health, and this year's tournament rules also make them not score for at least some scenarios, which severely hampered some summon spam.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 jreilly89 wrote:
Also, I too recently started up a Gutbusters army, so let's go Ogres!

Nice! Guts out, bro

- Salvage

auticus wrote:

Something I have read or heard a lot is the importance of points as a balancing mechanism. That they are required to hold interest in the game as they bring balance to the game.
Taking Age of Sigmar as the sample, but easily swapping out 40k as well, in actual reality on the table (where the rubber meets the road) we seek to actively break balance. Thats a given. Thats expected. When we talk about listbuilding we are talking about creating a powerful list that can win the game before the game even starts. This seems like a common goal with the community as a whole and also very expected.
I ask - why is this acceptable? Not even acceptable... why is this desired? Why is imbalance desired? Why do we see stated over and over how important points are for balance but then when imbalance is given, the community embraces it and extols its virtues to the heavens?

There’s a few things here.

Perspective is a thing. For a lot of people, ‘playing with points’ is all they know, and for the more extreme, its akin to a creed, or dogma. Just like religion, some people put blind faith in ‘points’, and cannot comprehend that others can find their ‘salvation’ in any other way that isn’t adhering to their dogma. Now, generally, I will defend points. They have their place. In a well crafted system, where variety isn't excessive, where a suitable amount of other load bearing structures in the game (I often point to WMH's multi-list formats, or multiple win conditions as examples of this) points are perfectly fine. Point based games work for the pragmatic side of 'pick-up-games' where frankly, they're kind of necessary and where the 'negotiation phase' of collaborative list building is simply too cumbersome or too much of a burden. (That said, a lot of things get sacrificed on that altar to make it work, and I don't necessarily think it's always worth it).thst said, points are not perfect. In fact, I'd argue they're kind of limited in what they can do, and most of that is really down to the limitations of the medium-i.e. Dice based ttg's are far more limited in terms of what you can acheive than, say, a computer game. That said. It doesn't matter how often you point to the faults, or the limitations of points of the medium- too many people are unable or unwilling to look beyond the dogma.

When ‘points’ is all you know, it’s kind of difficult to comprehend, other ways of playing that can work. I often wonder when I see what people say about their preference for points-based games, is it because of an actual preference (which would assume knowledge of, and experience with other ways of playing), or is it just because its all they know. And I don't say that to be mean - you need to have grown up in a particular kind of environment to appreciate and understand the narrative/points-less games and know they can work, and how they can work. Typically, you see a lot of this in historicals and that, and while there is an assumption that people typically get into wargames via 40k or whatever, I don't think this is always true - but I do think that there is a lack of cross-over in both these gaming cultures.

I think some posters hit the nail partly on the head, when they said people don’t want balance, they want the illusion of balance. It's about gaming the system. I think more than anything else, its partly this, but it’s also partly about adhering to an official ‘creed’. People don’t necessarily want points values that are accurate, they are more concerned with just having points values (ie the official company ‘line’) that 'are'. People want points values that are ‘official’ even if they’re wrong, so you can look at X, Y or Z and say this is good, bad or whatever, and game the system. I mean, we see it here on Dakka frequently enough, if we know unit X is broken, do many folks actually play it, and play 50points (or whatever) down to reflect what unit X should really cost? Nope, people will play unit X as it is, because that’s what the official rules say and will project and either say really, it's not their fault, they're doing nothing wrong, it’s actually the other guy’s fault for taking an underpowered list instead; or will blame the company for writing it that way, but shrug off their own role for actually taking the thing and say what they’re doing is perfectly legal (it's why I always say balance is a two-sided coin-developers may let a howler through the gate, but players are not without blame, since often, they're quite happy to bludgeon each other over the head with said howler too).
Gamers, for the most part are extremely conservative in ‘how’ they play, and in adhering to the officialdom (kinda like blind faith in an angry god – you follow the rules, not because they’re right, but because adherence to the rules is what’s important). Or in other words, gamers wont deviate or step out of their comfort zone, or ‘default’ mode of play and try other non-standard scenarios, or whatever- auticus, you yourself have seen this more than anyone.
A further point is when you have ‘officialdom’ as a shield, you can shrug off your own responsibility – kind of like the ‘ve ver just following ze orders’ defense of war criminals – for what you do and can blame someone else. It’s not your fault, it’s the games developer’s fault. Last point is while I enjoy the DIY approach to scenario-building and collaborative game building, there is a view out there that isn’t entirely wrong, where folks want to play a game ‘out of the box’, and don’t want to put in work of building their own games, the responsibility of balancing said games, and feel game developers should provide this instead. You can argue as well, when its you designing your own missions, the onus and responsibility is on you, and only you, and people don’t want the responsibility or the ‘shame’ for unbalancing their own games – which is generally A pretty reasonable position to have.

 EnTyme wrote:

auticus wrote:
They have abilities that let them teleport units. So yes they have to summon next to the standard, but then they can also teleport the unit after that. Unless that was changed.

Now I've not noticed the battle reps this weekend between groups that already have the rules and points mention summoning much, so that was good (that would seem to me that its not as bent since these are players that are intentionally trying to break the game to take to the next GT)

The thing being mentioned quite a bit is how lethal the new endless spells are combined with the spell portal to do a ton of damage, and that a lot of games seem to be like 40k now in that the game is over by Turn 2 on average because they upped the casualty count per turn.

The teleport ability also comes with a 1 in 3 chance for that unit to be unable to do anything that turn, and as Kan said, it can only be done once per turn, and it triggers before the summoned unit can be placed, so the summoned unit will be out of position for at least a turn.

I would point out you can easily teleport the Standard and then summon off of him with people in position. It's a 1/3 chance he doesn't go anywhere but even if he's decently deployed it still a reasonable distance and not to terribly out of place.

I'd also argue that the slaan doesn't need to get back 260pts to be worth it for summoning. I no joke used him now to:
a) try to dispel 3 times per turn
b) to use great remember to move 2 units.
c) to summon under the current system as I left off about 200pts for rando summons to fill holes in my lists

Once in a while he would cast something but it was pretty rare as he was normally hiding. So I'm looking not only as a gain of whatever he can summon but the added bonus of about 40+ pts because I never fielded the standard before but will now. I'm pretty happy with that.

 Hulksmash wrote:

I would point out you can easily teleport the Standard and then summon off of him with people in position. It's a 1/3 chance he doesn't go anywhere but even if he's decently deployed it still a reasonable distance and not to terribly out of place.

So you teleport the Standard and redeploy him. He has a 1/3 chance of being unable to move or do anything during your turn, meaning that when Movement happens--he's stuck wherever you placed him.
Which means I can kill him when my turn rolls around.

Or it means that I deployed poorly and actually gave you room to be able to put something in place for summoning.

 Da Boss wrote:

Spoiler:

Some excellent discussion in this thread. Thanks!

I had never really copped the dichotomy between designing lists for "balance" when you know everyone is going to seek out the imbalance. Very interesting! I think with some distance from everything it is easier to see that now.

But I think it is important to look at the ways in which Warhammer is not like Magic. In Magic, you do not have much attachment to the cards, generally. They are cheap game tokens, and you have loads of them. The way you buy them even encourages you not to get too attached to one particular colour of magic.

In Warhammer, people pick a faction and then spend hours and hours assembling and painting VERY EXPENSIVE miniatures before playing. The emotional and monetary investment in what you have bought is important. People pick their faction for a variety of reasons - aestethics, gameplay, faction background or "feel" or even just price.

But that faction identity is strong, and it is a major part of the success of Warhammer.

But what a new player does not know, and what none of us can know before a new edition drops, is that from a gameplay standpoint some of these factions (and choices within all factions) are "right", and others are "wrong". I was an Ork player from the end of second edition to the start of 6th. I identified strongly as an Ork player, and brought Orks to tournaments for years. It didn't matter that I knew other armies were more powerful, I slogged on. But I was often disatisfied and found it difficult to maintain my enthusiasm for the game when I would face obviously unbalanced match ups so often. I did not have the money to invest in a new army or the time to paint one up - I wanted to have a fair shot with my Orks. But for most of that period I just didn't. I see that it is the same nowadays for Ork players.

I played Orcs in Fantasy, and I would say for 5th to 8th when I played, it was a lot fairer in general, but that things started to get really badly out of hand by 7th edition and by 8th it was just depressing showing up to play. I faced Dark Elves, Demons and Undead constantly, and usually unpainted or slapped together ones against my fully painted Orcs and Goblins.

This emotional side to it, the attachment we have to the factions we chose, is a big part of what keeps us from really seeing the wood for the trees. You might play Seraphon for the power, or you might just like the look of the models.

I think WM/H did a better job with this for a long time - most factions had their own flavour of power, but you could for the most part make it work with whatever you brought. Seems like they eventually fell prey to imbalance as well thouugh.

Good post. Thing is as you said you were facing lots of Dark Elves, Demons and Undead. Sadly I would say most of these people didn't play these armies because of the "passion" like you had, but had the spare time, and money and played these armies to win.

Sadly GW new this, and people who played Fantasy and 40K, knew people would not quit but just spend more money to "keep up with the Joneses". So lots of times, espeically at tournements, lots of people play to win and only win and others play because they are jocks with plastic toy soldiers. This made GW money until recently. I really wished people would play an army because they loved them. I don't know anyone doing the "flavour of the month" army but I do feel pitty for them when they do so.

After all these are man dollies, toys and we "PLAY" so we should be doing this for fun. Only if GW would actually make balanced rules and balanced units then people would play for the passion of what they like, like how Games Workshop claims we should play. I just find it sad that it's the company that inspires this for sales but yet claims we should play for fun. Sadly fun doesn't keep up the sales, after all if you have everything, you don't buy anymore. So we will always have this imbalance as long as we are playing GW rules.

With AoS I just buy what I think would make a cool army.

To me it makes sense with Nagash leading a giant army of undead, so that's what i'm making. Lots of skeletons, lots of skeletons, Nagash, and some more skeletons. And the new Nighthaunt stuff, because, hey why not.

I don't even own a general's handbook, and I won't be buying it in 2018 unless it has some content besides points. It's been my experience that generally in AoS points don't create a fair game.

In 40k though I have far more competitive games at 2000 points. Maybe this is because Tyranids are a decent army, but it seems like there's a lot of decent armies. In general 40k is more balanced that Sigmar, at least in my experience.

I can't recommend the General's Handbook enough to be honest. They're doing a great job adding new content in there. The Sky Battles bit alone looks awesome.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
None of those are solutions. They are all units that will get the snot beaten out of them in equal points vs evocators.

And this is the problem I have with calling, in my opinion, a specific unit out. Especially before we have the damn Battletome in hand.

And no, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask that you clairfy context on the internet.

Fine:
SPECIFICALLY DEALING WITH THE CONTEXT OF GROWING A NIGHTHAUNT ARMY OUT FROM THE STARTER SET, I personally feel that Myrmourn Banshees are going to be a viable counter to Evocators being grown out of the same starter set using the same path.

Remember that the various "grow your army" things tend to be based around themes, and with the Sacrosanct Chamber? Who knows what the hell the next "suggested" items are going to be past the Easy to Builds.

And you still dodged that the banshees aren't a solution anyways. This is how it goes Kan, you raise invalid points to disagree for the sake of it, get called on them, raise further nitpicks that still do not validate your position, then eventually drop it only to start things up the next time.

A "solution" does not mean simply that in a 1:1 fight, they'll push the snot out of the Evocators. A "solution" is something that gives you a way to answer the problem: in this case, that Evocators are a heavy hitting melee unit that also has a single spell that they can cast, and will likely be getting spells cast upon them to beef them up.

With Myrmourn Banshees, they get to Unbind spells as though they're a Wizard and for every 4 Banshees, they get +1 to their Unbind roll. They start at 4 and go up to 12 in Matched Play--meaning they'd be at a +3 to their Unbinding Rolls, meaning it's very likely to be 13 hits(the unit champ gets 2 attacks) that deal D3 damage at a -2 Rend. They're also Summonable, meaning they can be affected by the Guardian of Soul's "Spectral Lure" spell.
Are they going to walk all over Evocators? Maybe. Maybe not. But they can do something Evocators can't, and that's come back from the dead while dealing D3 wounds every time they make a successful attack. And let's not forget that what Evocators have going for them against many other units(Rend and Mortal Wounds) is partially mitigated by the Ethereal special rule.

Which is a shame, because it drowns out the numerous good things you have to say.

Meh. I've been taking to just simply walking away from arguments now if I'm going to be honest with you. It's not worth the time or energy in many cases. I'd rather discuss things in a positive manner than just shout and tell people "NO YOU'RE WRONG!".

So toodles. Back to Idoneth painting!

I'll be honest, I was procrastinating on reading this because I thought it was going to be a lot of nitpicks I'd have to go through one by one. I shouldn't have, because you threw a tantrum instead. So first off, context. The context of your initital statement wasn't clear, you could have said 'whoops, I forgot context' (I certainly have had to do so in previous discussions) but instead you decided to get angry about it. So right off we have emotion dominating your position.

Next, the issue at hand. You still sidestepped that banshees do nothing to even things out, first you expanded things out to the whole armies to dodge that they obviously don't work one on one. But that opens them up to having one dispel vs three wizards on the stormcast side. You bring up that they can be brought back via spell, laughable since the stormcast have three units to potentially dispel that with plus one which has a once per game auto-dispel and you were mere sentances previous arguing one dispel as a counter to three casters. Finally you went on to suggest that 'well we aren't sure' as a means to insure yourself against counter argument, when really its just that you have yet to prove the validity of your position in the first place and attempting to use that as a cop out.

Last but not least you say you want to discuss things in a positive manner, despite you making plenty of comments involving criticism or complaints that your models aren't strong enough in previous discussions (which there isn't even anything wrong with doing). Then comes suggesting I am simply saying 'you're wrong' when I have been very specific about my arguments and raising evidence to suppprt them, hypocritical given that you are unable to back your arguments with evidence and even went to far as to say 'well I don't care about the math' which is the epitome of just saying 'you're wrong because I say so.'

Grow up dude.

@frozenwastes and deadnight - some good points and good reads in your posts, both of you mostly cover my POV on the matter, but I would like to add one angle, that hasn't been covered yet.

Lets assume for one moment, that by some strange turns of fate we actually get a well enough balanced AOS or 40K and GW starts to adhere to this balance with every new release. By "well enough balanced" I mean something reasonably achievable, that is that in a strict competetive and well defined format every faction has equal amount of choices on the entire bell curve and that either every faction has access to every major strategy or every major strategy is equal to any other. Now let's follow a newbie just starting his journey with Warhammer. At first there is quite a lot to explore - many factions to choose from, many major strategies to learn about and utilise and that is great. But then such a newbie hits a wall of experience, because by the very nature of ballanced systems, you must be trully competent to win a game against a skilled enemy and pretty much everyone that started the game earlier than you is more skilled. Moreover, as the game is ballanced and there are hundreds of thousands people on the internet trying to crack it, we can safely assume, that the entire meta is pretty much solved already - every small discrepancies pinpointed, every, even small exploit named and foundable, strongest netlist builds are easily available and there is nothing new to discover on competetive level anyomore - one can only memorise more on-the-table moves and tactics, exactly as is with chess. The game is purely skill driven (but with a significant luck factor because of dice) and... stagnant. Once you bought a competetive army there is no reason beside aesthetics to ever change faction and buy new models. There is no arms race by design, there is no new hotness, if you are poor strategist (and by definition, a skill based game has it's own, well defined bell curve of players population skill level) there are no prostheses to aid you in winning even occasionally and now there is absolutely nothing to blame for your personal failures as balance of the game is common knowledge...

I don't really think that such vision would suit a large portion of the community nor that it would atract more people than what we have now - a permanently shifting and updating meta that cannot be permanently solved and will never become stagnant, so people of any skill level have plenty to do within game system untill they are either bored or frustrated by it enough to drop out.

Of course the question of "where exactly on the scale defined by such two extremities GW products lie" remains open and it is pretty much the unspoken underlying question of all balance related threads on dakka. But we all know that drill well enough.

There is also one other reason that so many players like and demand biased listbuilding stage - for many, many players time spent on analysing sources, making draft lists, mathhammering them, changing, discussing options etc is how they interact with the rules part of hobby the most - not by playing actual games (most polls on the subject show that most people struggle to get averages higher than a dozen or two games a year), but imagining and designing armies. That is because of two reasons - one, mathhammering lists is solo activity, exactly same as building kits or painting minis, you can do this without social skills. Even discussing, especially on the internet, requires no or minimal social skills. And two - armies are costly and painting is time consuming, so if you are in only for the win and not collecting a larger-than-a-list collection of minis, then you better do your research carefully.

nou wrote:
There is also one other reason that so many players like and demand biased listbuilding stage - for many, many players time spent on analysing sources, making draft lists, mathhammering them, changing, discussing options etc is how they interact with the rules part of hobby the most - not by playing actual games (most polls on the subject show that most people struggle to get averages higher than a dozen or two games a year), but imagining and designing armies. That is because of two reasons - one, mathhammering lists is solo activity, exactly same as building kits or painting minis, you can do this without social skills. Even discussing, especially on the internet, requires no or minimal social skills. And two - armies are costly and painting is time consuming, so if you are in only for the win and not collecting a larger-than-a-list collection of minis, then you better do your research carefully.

And this right here is why I walked away from pre-GHB AOS. It wasn't angst over the death of the Old World, it wasn't some sense of betrayal by GeeDub, it wasn't really all the negative play experiences in the game itself (tho there were and still are plenty). It's that AOS couldn't sustain a hobby for me. It was just a game that used my old Warhammer minis. I had no way to scheme up new armies, thus I had no way to design, buy and implement them either. AOS had no life off the table, and that tabletop experience was largely shruggable in those frontier days of wound balancing and whatnot (where my Ogres did very, very well )

And this is also why I came back once official points dropped. The game had something for my mind to grind on again ... until I tried KOW and was hooked.

- Salvage

nou wrote:
@frozenwastes and deadnight - some good points and good reads in your posts, both of you mostly cover my POV on the matter, but I would like to add one angle, that hasn't been covered yet.

Lets assume for one moment, that by some strange turns of fate we actually get a well enough balanced AOS or 40K and GW starts to adhere to this balance with every new release. By "well enough balanced" I mean something reasonably achievable, that is that in a strict competetive and well defined format every faction has equal amount of choices on the entire bell curve and that either every faction has access to every major strategy or every major strategy is equal to any other. Now let's follow a newbie just starting his journey with Warhammer. At first there is quite a lot to explore - many factions to choose from, many major strategies to learn about and utilise and that is great. But then such a newbie hits a wall of experience, because by the very nature of ballanced systems, you must be trully competent to win a game against a skilled enemy and pretty much everyone that started the game earlier than you is more skilled. Moreover, as the game is ballanced and there are hundreds of thousands people on the internet trying to crack it, we can safely assume, that the entire meta is pretty much solved already - every small discrepancies pinpointed, every, even small exploit named and foundable, strongest netlist builds are easily available and there is nothing new to discover on competetive level anyomore - one can only memorise more on-the-table moves and tactics, exactly as is with chess. The game is purely skill driven (but with a significant luck factor because of dice) and... stagnant. Once you bought a competetive army there is no reason beside aesthetics to ever change faction and buy new models. There is no arms race by design, there is no new hotness, if you are poor strategist (and by definition, a skill based game has it's own, well defined bell curve of players population skill level) there are no prostheses to aid you in winning even occasionally and now there is absolutely nothing to blame for your personal failures as balance of the game is common knowledge...

I don't really think that such vision would suit a large portion of the community nor that it would atract more people than what we have now - a permanently shifting and updating meta that cannot be permanently solved and will never become stagnant, so people of any skill level have plenty to do within game system untill they are either bored or frustrated by it enough to drop out.

Of course the question of "where exactly on the scale defined by such two extremities GW products lie" remains open and it is pretty much the unspoken underlying question of all balance related threads on dakka. But we all know that drill well enough.

There is also one other reason that so many players like and demand biased listbuilding stage - for many, many players time spent on analysing sources, making draft lists, mathhammering them, changing, discussing options etc is how they interact with the rules part of hobby the most - not by playing actual games (most polls on the subject show that most people struggle to get averages higher than a dozen or two games a year), but imagining and designing armies. That is because of two reasons - one, mathhammering lists is solo activity, exactly same as building kits or painting minis, you can do this without social skills. Even discussing, especially on the internet, requires no or minimal social skills. And two - armies are costly and painting is time consuming, so if you are in only for the win and not collecting a larger-than-a-list collection of minis, then you better do your research carefully.

It's a very interesting and valid point you make here, but it sidesteps the reality that the situation will never get to that level of balance, nor is anyone expecting it too. What people ask for is a stronger effort to work towards that, because the best thing to do is get as close as we can even while knowing we will never get there.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I'll be honest, I was procrastinating on reading this because I thought it was going to be a lot of nitpicks I'd have to go through one by one. I shouldn't have, because you threw a tantrum instead. So first off, context. The context of your initital statement wasn't clear, you could have said 'whoops, I forgot context' (I certainly have had to do so in previous discussions) but instead you decided to get angry about it. So right off we have emotion dominating your position.

I don't see how my post immediately following yours could have made the context any more clear, but I guess I'll have to keep that in mind for the future.

Next, the issue at hand. You still sidestepped that banshees do nothing to even things out, first you expanded things out to the whole armies to dodge that they obviously don't work one on one.

I feel it's a bit more natural that I should talk about whole armies rather than individual units. The whole point of my mentioning the Banshees is that when you compare what Stormcast are getting from their Easy to Build sets(bulking out the Sequitors to 2 5 model units with Greatmaces mixed in or a single 10 model unit loaded with 4 Greatmaces and some more Castigators plus a Gryph-Hound) versus the Nighthaunt (a whole new unit in the form of the Banshees and bulking out the Glaivewrath Stalkers with the ability to retreat and charge again during their next turn).

I'll expound on that a bit further down.

But that opens them up to having one dispel vs three wizards on the stormcast side.

Three Wizards on the Stormcast side, but one is conditional. Evocators are Wizards only while they are "2 or more models".

Sorry if that seems nitpicky, just making a specific point.

You bring up that they can be brought back via spell, laughable since the stormcast have three units to potentially dispel that with plus one which has a once per game auto-dispel and you were mere sentances previous arguing one dispel as a counter to three casters.

If that's the argument you were getting out of my statement, I'm going to have to clarify this quite a bit.
My argument is not that the Banshees are going to specifically be dispelling/unbinding and thus they'd be a counter--but rather that Stormcast players are going to learn to watch where they cast if Banshees are nearby. Adding an additional attack to a model that deals D3 damage per attack and unbinds a potentially key spell in the process would mean that after the first couple of times it happens to a Stormcast player, those who learn from mistakes will catch on and start making sure Banshees either get addressed by being shot or not casting key spells near them--it becomes similar to how I think the Gryph-Hound will make Nighthaunt players placing new units down(assuming they get an option to do so) become wary of that particular unit.

At this point, my statements should best be described as looking at things from the lens of someone who is a supercasual player. I'm looking at this particular circumstance in the vein of "if I were someone just starting the game with Soul Wars and following a proscribed order based upon things from the same visual and keyword appeal".

Finally you went on to suggest that 'well we aren't sure' as a means to insure yourself against counter argument, when really its just that you have yet to prove the validity of your position in the first place and attempting to use that as a cop out.

That's not really the reason why I did it, but okay. We're seeing a lot of language being clarified in new books(you've pointed it out yourself with regards to Idoneth and the "wholly within" thing) and we're also seeing some very specific things being addressed(Seraphon teleport being during Hero phase and their Summons being at the end of Movement as an example). As far as I'm aware, nobody has seen how the Stormcast Eternals book is handling their Deep Strike mechanics in the new edition. That's the whole reason I made a mention of it--As far as I'm aware, we have not seen the mechanics for them.

For all I know? The Stormcast Eternals book is going to be done similar to Legions of Nagash where we have a bunch of sublists present and each one will have its own 'style' of stuff.

Think it's deflection if you want, but that isn't the intention. Not trying to pick a fight with regards to it, simply trying to point out that we're not seeing the whole of the picture as far as I'm aware.

Last but not least you say you want to discuss things in a positive manner, despite you making plenty of comments involving criticism or complaints that your models aren't strong enough in previous discussions (which there isn't even anything wrong with doing). Then comes suggesting I am simply saying 'you're wrong' when I have been very specific about my arguments and raising evidence to suppprt them, hypocritical given that you are unable to back your arguments with evidence and even went to far as to say 'well I don't care about the math' which is the epitome of just saying 'you're wrong because I say so.'

I'd like to apologize if you thought I was specifically accusing you of running around doing that. That wasn't my intent. I was simply trying to state that I, personally, have taken to just walking away from arguments rather than just engaging in shouting matches. I don't enjoy being disagreeable all the time.

My statement regarding "not caring about the math" is specific to points values and calculations of that nature. It's great for crunching lists and the like, but what is or isn't actually worth their point values is not really doable unless you start by zeroing everything out and working from that.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

nou wrote:
@frozenwastes and deadnight - some good points and good reads in your posts, both of you mostly cover my POV on the matter, but I would like to add one angle, that hasn't been covered yet.

Lets assume for one moment, that by some strange turns of fate we actually get a well enough balanced AOS or 40K and GW starts to adhere to this balance with every new release. By "well enough balanced" I mean something reasonably achievable, that is that in a strict competetive and well defined format every faction has equal amount of choices on the entire bell curve and that either every faction has access to every major strategy or every major strategy is equal to any other. Now let's follow a newbie just starting his journey with Warhammer. At first there is quite a lot to explore - many factions to choose from, many major strategies to learn about and utilise and that is great. But then such a newbie hits a wall of experience, because by the very nature of ballanced systems, you must be trully competent to win a game against a skilled enemy and pretty much everyone that started the game earlier than you is more skilled. Moreover, as the game is ballanced and there are hundreds of thousands people on the internet trying to crack it, we can safely assume, that the entire meta is pretty much solved already - every small discrepancies pinpointed, every, even small exploit named and foundable, strongest netlist builds are easily available and there is nothing new to discover on competetive level anyomore - one can only memorise more on-the-table moves and tactics, exactly as is with chess. The game is purely skill driven (but with a significant luck factor because of dice) and... stagnant. Once you bought a competetive army there is no reason beside aesthetics to ever change faction and buy new models. There is no arms race by design, there is no new hotness, if you are poor strategist (and by definition, a skill based game has it's own, well defined bell curve of players population skill level) there are no prostheses to aid you in winning even occasionally and now there is absolutely nothing to blame for your personal failures as balance of the game is common knowledge...

I don't really think that such vision would suit a large portion of the community nor that it would atract more people than what we have now - a permanently shifting and updating meta that cannot be permanently solved and will never become stagnant, so people of any skill level have plenty to do within game system untill they are either bored or frustrated by it enough to drop out.

Of course the question of "where exactly on the scale defined by such two extremities GW products lie" remains open and it is pretty much the unspoken underlying question of all balance related threads on dakka. But we all know that drill well enough.

There is also one other reason that so many players like and demand biased listbuilding stage - for many, many players time spent on analysing sources, making draft lists, mathhammering them, changing, discussing options etc is how they interact with the rules part of hobby the most - not by playing actual games (most polls on the subject show that most people struggle to get averages higher than a dozen or two games a year), but imagining and designing armies. That is because of two reasons - one, mathhammering lists is solo activity, exactly same as building kits or painting minis, you can do this without social skills. Even discussing, especially on the internet, requires no or minimal social skills. And two - armies are costly and painting is time consuming, so if you are in only for the win and not collecting a larger-than-a-list collection of minis, then you better do your research carefully.

It's a very interesting and valid point you make here, but it sidesteps the reality that the situation will never get to that level of balance, nor is anyone expecting it too. What people ask for is a stronger effort to work towards that, because the best thing to do is get as close as we can even while knowing we will never get there.

I know thats my desire anyway.

What I'm seeing in v2.0 are some cool things, and then things like unmitigated summoning coming back and still keeping that divide between play these few armies over here if you want a good game or play a different army and likely get demolished. I don't feel that is good for keeping a community together; for my experience that does quite the opposite.

auticus wrote:

I know thats my desire anyway.

What I'm seeing in v2.0 are some cool things, and then things like unmitigated summoning coming back and still keeping that divide between play these few armies over here if you want a good game or play a different army and likely get demolished. I don't feel that is good for keeping a community together; for my experience that does quite the opposite.

I'm inclined to disagree with you in regards to summoning being "unmitigated", based upon what the GHB scans show. They all tend to be that the summon happens at the end of the Movement phase, meaning any tricks the Hero phase would bring are invalid.

As far as I'm aware you can still charge, and now spend command points to re-roll failed charges (and a 9" charge with re-roll has a 49% of success, so ... not super horrible if you are summoning offensively)

Defensively you don't need them to do anything except claim objectives.

Unmitigated being you are getting 25% or more of your points extra for free forcing your opponent to either bring a lot of mortal wounds, or their own summoning to be able to have a good game.

Forcing the two design paradigms of spam mortal wounds, or play something that can summon 25% or more of starting points value to compete and have a good game.

auticus wrote:
As far as I'm aware you can still charge, and now spend command points to re-roll failed charges (and a 9" charge with re-roll has a 49% of success, so ... not super horrible if you are summoning offensively)

Defensively you don't need them to do anything except claim objectives.

And here's the crux of the issue: If the enemy is playing the same objectives game as you are...they won't be leaving the objectives empty, so you can't summon there.

Unmitigated being you are getting 25% or more of your points extra for free forcing your opponent to either bring a lot of mortal wounds, or their own summoning to be able to have a good game.

You're not really getting them "for free" though. You're having to accomplish something in order to get them.

It's like the difference between the Starsoul Mace and the Evocators' trick. Starsoul Mace--point and boom, Mortal Wounds. Evocators? It happens at the end of you having actually engaged in Combat.

What do they need to roll for the summon?

 LunarSol wrote:
What do they need to roll for the summon?

They don't.

To give an example, here's the Seraphon:

The Slann sacrifice casting in order to perform 'Celestial Conjuration'. When you do so, you get 3 points towards it. When your Hero phase ends, if your General is a Slann you get an additional Celestial Conjuration point and if you have a Saurus Astrolith Bearer, you get an additional D3(reads as not stackable).

When you have 6 or more Celestial Conjuration points, you get to summon units from the list onto the battlefield.
If you get lucky with a single turn, you might be able to summon 10 Skinks, 3 Skink Handlers, a Razordon, or a Salamander. It looks like it's going to require either multiple turns OR multiple Slann and/or some hot dice to get summons off easily and early

@Kan at this point I'm tired, vented out, forgotten whatever point I was trying to make, and sorry I got so mean about things in the first place. Apologies.

auticus wrote:
As far as I'm aware you can still charge, and now spend command points to re-roll failed charges (and a 9" charge with re-roll has a 49% of success, so ... not super horrible if you are summoning offensively)

Defensively you don't need them to do anything except claim objectives.

Unmitigated being you are getting 25% or more of your points extra for free forcing your opponent to either bring a lot of mortal wounds, or their own summoning to be able to have a good game.

Forcing the two design paradigms of spam mortal wounds, or play something that can summon 25% or more of starting points value to compete and have a good game.

I don't think summoning will be a big issue. I think specific parts of it will be.

For example, Maggotkin summoning isn't bad at all in balance terms because they aren't bringing in that many points until later in the game and even then we aren't talking a 25% increase. A full half of their allegiance is given over to getting this summoning in place of something like the Idoneth shoot only the closest target or DoK 6+ ward save. But there's the exalted GUO at 30 contagion points when it should be 35, and there's the issue of a 1500 (or worse, 1000) point army summoning just as much as a 2000 point army.

Khorne and FEC aren't really strong in summoning, while Seraphon have to give up spells (and having faced some tough Seraphon lists I can think of times I'd prefer them getting free models over casting). Tzeentch I'm iffy on because they don't have to give anything up to get summoning on top of a tremendously strong allegiance ability already, but word is their points are going up as compensation for that. Legions of Nagash is more of a problem because they don't have to give up much of anything to get their allegiance. The whole idea behind grand alliance allegiance being weaker is because they get a wide variety of choices, but Legions still get almost everything while also getting a huge benefit for theoretically restricting themselves. Each legion should only have a subset of Death available to them, not the majority of it.