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2018/06/18 21:56:52
Subject: Navigating AOS changes - why are we so accepting of imbalance and army hopping and its effects
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
If you have both an astrolith bearer and a slaan general (has to be your general to perform celestial conjuration) then you're getting 10+d3 per turn. Odds are 66% in your favor of summoning 100-140pt unit or 2 of the level 6 things per turn. That means odds are solid that by the end of turn 2 you could add a siginificant monster to your army. And that doesn't take the engine of the gods into account either. Seraphon and their summoning is going to be fairly ugly honestly on boards with terrain to hide the slaan and astrolith.
Best Painted (2015 Adepticon 40k Champs)
They Shall Know Fear - Adepticon 40k TT Champion (2012 & 2013) & 40k TT Best Sport (2014), 40k TT Best Tactician (2015 & 2016)
2018/06/18 21:58:49
Subject: Navigating AOS changes - why are we so accepting of imbalance and army hopping and its effects
NinthMusketeer wrote: @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.
No worries man. I know I can be a bit of a chore to deal with sometimes, it's why I've tried to just start stepping away when I feel like I've gotten too involved in the discussions. Even good-natured conversations over valid things can turn ugly fast when both people have a vested interest.
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.
I still have to read Legions of Nagash to really get a feel for their stuff, but I definitely feel like Tzeentch is(shocker...) going to be on the strong end of things again.
If you have both an astrolith bearer and a slaan general (has to be your general to perform celestial conjuration) then you're getting 10+d3 per turn. Odds are 66% in your favor of summoning 100-140pt unit or 2 of the level 6 things per turn. That means odds are solid that by the end of turn 2 you could add a siginificant monster to your army. And that doesn't take the engine of the gods into account either. Seraphon and their summoning is going to be fairly ugly honestly on boards with terrain to hide the slaan and astrolith.
I'm, personally, going to wait for clarification as to whether or not it's supposed to be 3 points per spell or if it's just "you can't cast anything".
I'm leaning towards the latter just based upon the way that Nurgle is built but I could very well be interpreting the design ideas wrong.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/06/18 22:02:05
2018/06/18 22:42:28
Subject: Navigating AOS changes - why are we so accepting of imbalance and army hopping and its effects
If you have both an astrolith bearer and a slaan general (has to be your general to perform celestial conjuration) then you're getting 10+d3 per turn. Odds are 66% in your favor of summoning 100-140pt unit or 2 of the level 6 things per turn. That means odds are solid that by the end of turn 2 you could add a siginificant monster to your army. And that doesn't take the engine of the gods into account either. Seraphon and their summoning is going to be fairly ugly honestly on boards with terrain to hide the slaan and astrolith.
One thing that does concern me is the interaction with the new Endless Spells. Sit a Slann on a Balewind and they get +1 spell. Put the Chronomatic Cogs down next to him and he gets another +1. That turns into 16 points per turn then with an average roll on an Astrolith Bearer that's 18 points per turn. Sit Kroak up there and it's 21 points, but whether that's worth the extra points investment is questionable.
2018/06/18 22:50:57
Subject: Navigating AOS changes - why are we so accepting of imbalance and army hopping and its effects
If you have both an astrolith bearer and a slaan general (has to be your general to perform celestial conjuration) then you're getting 10+d3 per turn. Odds are 66% in your favor of summoning 100-140pt unit or 2 of the level 6 things per turn. That means odds are solid that by the end of turn 2 you could add a siginificant monster to your army. And that doesn't take the engine of the gods into account either. Seraphon and their summoning is going to be fairly ugly honestly on boards with terrain to hide the slaan and astrolith.
One thing that does concern me is the interaction with the new Endless Spells. Sit a Slann on a Balewind and they get +1 spell. Put the Chronomatic Cogs down next to him and he gets another +1. That turns into 16 points per turn then with an average roll on an Astrolith Bearer that's 18 points per turn. Sit Kroak up there and it's 21 points, but whether that's worth the extra points investment is questionable.
Now that IS a problem. Though tbf chronomantic gears are a notable problem on their own.
If you have both an astrolith bearer and a slaan general (has to be your general to perform celestial conjuration) then you're getting 10+d3 per turn. Odds are 66% in your favor of summoning 100-140pt unit or 2 of the level 6 things per turn. That means odds are solid that by the end of turn 2 you could add a siginificant monster to your army. And that doesn't take the engine of the gods into account either. Seraphon and their summoning is going to be fairly ugly honestly on boards with terrain to hide the slaan and astrolith.
One thing that does concern me is the interaction with the new Endless Spells. Sit a Slann on a Balewind and they get +1 spell. Put the Chronomatic Cogs down next to him and he gets another +1. That turns into 16 points per turn then with an average roll on an Astrolith Bearer that's 18 points per turn. Sit Kroak up there and it's 21 points, but whether that's worth the extra points investment is questionable.
Those extra regular points cost more points though. And unlike the normal set up of slaan plus astrolith (which are both already taken in a lot of lists) now you're talking more, and putting your slaan on display. You'll get more hiding him.
Best Painted (2015 Adepticon 40k Champs)
They Shall Know Fear - Adepticon 40k TT Champion (2012 & 2013) & 40k TT Best Sport (2014), 40k TT Best Tactician (2015 & 2016)
2018/06/18 22:53:25
Subject: Navigating AOS changes - why are we so accepting of imbalance and army hopping and its effects
@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.
Have you been here on Dakka when 8th ed 40K happened and half of the community praised the Indices phase and whished the game would forever stay static and contained with only incremental annual refinement of point costs to "prevent bloat and eventually achieve true balance" while the other half cursed Indices 8th for blandness, sameness and general lack of depth? There are at least some strong minorities that would want a chess-like TTGs. But that is a just a sidenote, because the point I was trying to make is that in the grand scheme of things it is apparently better from GW business standpoint to mantain an ever shifting landscape of rules and fluctuating power curve that have mantained the flow of players and money for 30+ years than try to achieve static balance - if the opposite were true then we would most certainly have near-perfect balance soon after GW went public. I agree however, that GW fails to mantain their imbalance healthy and in result have to deal with a lot of black PR from frustrated players that they could do better to avoid. My previous post was from more theoretical "game design theory" POV in the response to OP question rather than defense of exact GW practices. I have rage quit 40K myself after 2nd-to-3rd transition and I've split ways with "officialdom" again after 8th kicked in and forked away into "myhammer" (but not because of balance issues but because general game design decisions that just don't suit my needs anymore). If I were to describe myself through paraphrasing OP "Nowadays I'm very accepting of the fact, that the game I so love will never stay long in a place I wish it to stay".
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/06/18 22:54:18
2018/06/18 23:24:41
Subject: Navigating AOS changes - why are we so accepting of imbalance and army hopping and its effects
Balance will always be under continual erosion. New releases won't have their points locked down on perfect values, new editions and allegiance updates will mess with balance, etc. No one wants GW to just stop releasing new stuff, accordingly no one wants truly static balance. People want dynamic balance where new things are released and updates are made but things are also re-balanced to fit that. And GW games sell more when they are balanced, because the purchases made by players chasing the meta are dwarfed by the purchases from players who otherwise avoid the game entirely.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/06/18 23:25:14
NinthMusketeer wrote: Balance will always be under continual erosion. New releases won't have their points locked down on perfect values, new editions and allegiance updates will mess with balance, etc. No one wants GW to just stop releasing new stuff, accordingly no one wants truly static balance. People want dynamic balance where new things are released and updates are made but things are also re-balanced to fit that. And GW games sell more when they are balanced, because the purchases made by players chasing the meta are dwarfed by the purchases from players who otherwise avoid the game entirely.
Oh, I agree with what you write here about realities of dynamic and practically achievable semblance of balance in a living game. I just disagree with "no one wants..." part. I just looked up your dakka activity areas table and I see that you do not frequent 40K side of the board that much - there are lengthy, repeatable and heated balance discussions there, with quite a lot of people wanting not only to stop GW to release new factions but even cut existing range in half, trump codices and generally make 40k a more contained game in the sake of their conception of "true" balance.
Now, I think I've reached my personal limit of time involvement in this thread, so thank you for your time and responses. Cheers!
2018/06/19 04:22:02
Subject: Navigating AOS changes - why are we so accepting of imbalance and army hopping and its effects
So an article on warhammer community popped up where the person they were interviewing basically came as close to shouting 'SUMMONING META' as he could without outright stating it. TBF also talked a lot about command points, which I'd say is the bigger change overall but one that is reasonably even in how it affects armies.
Fortunately my friend is also rather wary of summoning. We'll give it a try before deciding, if it's something we'd like to see in our games. Nothing that was previewed so far made me less anxious or more enthusiastic about entire mechanic or even idea of it.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/06/19 05:53:21
2018/06/19 06:59:40
Subject: Navigating AOS changes - why are we so accepting of imbalance and army hopping and its effects
Rule of 10%: The first 10% of points worth you add to your army (150 for a 1500 point battle, 200 for a 2000 point battle, etc) is free. After that, pay reinforcement points.
I watch the designers on twitter and they are close knit with a lot of the tga guys. Summoning Meta is definitely a thing, by design, and its a thing that I have to say 9 out of 10 people hugely embrace. It went from "we'll just wait and see I'm sure its not going to be *that* bad" to "well ok it will be that bad but thats just the direction the game went and thats good, free models are good, you just need to learn how to combat free models"
Just like so many embrace non intuitive rules and some get downright hostile about keeping the rules abstract.
If there's anything AOS has taught me is how very different the games and gaming community's wants and desires are from 30, 20, even 10 years ago.
For my money and experience, once an army has exceeded roughly 20% of the point value of the game and the other has not, the game becomes severely lopsided. I will continue to use sudden death cards for armies that summon more than that to keep games interesting.
We're starting a thing called Thursday Nights Main Event (taken from the old WWF Saturday Nights main event) where we will be playing strictly by the book though. I plan on posting some text driven battle reports to give my own feedback.
This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2018/06/19 12:21:48
2018/06/19 13:24:15
Subject: Navigating AOS changes - why are we so accepting of imbalance and army hopping and its effects
auticus wrote: I plan on posting some text driven battle reports to give my own feedback.
Holla! I look forward to them. Admittedly one of my other main drives for getting back into AOS is having some more games to report on, and AOS is both easy and fun to write about - detail light, action heavy, generally short
Unrelated: Does anybody know what the Umbral Spellportals or Chronomantic Cogs cost? In a vague sense? I'm having trouble seeing how they help the game from a comp perspective, especially competitively. The Cogs are an auto-include for anybody with a wizard (so everybody), and I have yet to see the value (to the game) of the Spellportals, besides wombo-combo with an endless spell that actually hurts things (which also seem to be the most expensive ones) or to just erase any concept of offensive spell ranges. I guess the first one is expensive to set up, and both require casting two spells to matter? So just hammer down on the Portals / Cogs or force them to cast them outside that mega 30" unbind?
So maybe I talked myself out of that, as long as you bring a thing that unbinds, but still not a fan of #obviouslygoodthings that just become #alwaystaken
EDIT: Nevermind I found what I needed ...............
VAGUE EDIT #2: Wow did DOT jump up in points O_O
- Salvage
This message was edited 5 times. Last update was at 2018/06/19 13:52:25
auticus wrote: I plan on posting some text driven battle reports to give my own feedback.
Holla! I look forward to them. Admittedly one of my other main drives for getting back into AOS is having some more games to report on, and AOS is both easy and fun to write about - detail light, action heavy, generally short
Unrelated: Does anybody know what the Umbral Spellportals or Chronomantic Cogs cost? In a vague sense? I'm having trouble seeing how they help the game from a comp perspective, especially competitively. The Cogs are an auto-include for anybody with a wizard (so everybody), and I have yet to see the value (to the game) of the Spellportals, besides wombo-combo with an endless spell that actually hurts things (which also seem to be the most expensive ones) or to just erase any concept of offensive spell ranges. I guess the first one is expensive to set up, and both require casting two spells to matter? So just hammer down on the Portals / Cogs or force them to cast them outside that mega 30" unbind?
So maybe I talked myself out of that, as long as you bring a thing that unbinds, but still not a fan of #obviouslygoodthings that just become #alwaystaken
EDIT: Nevermind I found what I needed ...............
VAGUE EDIT #2: Wow did DOT jump up in points O_O
- Salvage
Those two spells are 60 pts each. At that price, the portals will be auto-include for most armies, and I would imagine the cogs will be as well. My Slaughterpriests are definitely going to get even more use this edition. Their unbinding is just too important now.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/06/19 13:57:10
2000 Khorne Bloodbound (Skullfiend Tribe- Aqshy)
1000 Tzeentch Arcanites (Pyrofane Cult - Hysh) in progress 2000 Slaves to Darkness (Ravagers)
2018/06/19 13:57:10
Subject: Navigating AOS changes - why are we so accepting of imbalance and army hopping and its effects
In fact, so much so that my schemes to run Omniscient Oracles isn't really possible in normal games. That package starts at 2250 pts now, up from 1710
NM, I just have to use Acolytes. Game on.
- Salvage, kicks a rock and shakes the quadruple LOC out of his shopping cart fills his cart back up with big magical chickens
I wouldn't be surprised to see something similar to the Rule of Three from 40k. I'm definitely not buying anything until I see the rulebook.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
auticus wrote: I agree. They've created some false decisions again, where you are foolish to not take certain options because they are so cheap to use.
I mean, I was already taking two for the Gore Pilgrims battalion. Only thing that's changed is I now have more reason to take a third.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/06/19 14:55:13
2000 Khorne Bloodbound (Skullfiend Tribe- Aqshy)
1000 Tzeentch Arcanites (Pyrofane Cult - Hysh) in progress 2000 Slaves to Darkness (Ravagers)
2018/06/19 15:16:57
Subject: Navigating AOS changes - why are we so accepting of imbalance and army hopping and its effects
I assumed because it's specifically dictated by a battalion (Kairos + 3 LOC) that it would still be a thing, even if AOS is piggybacking on 40k changes. Oh duh, it's also still only 3 LOC, 4th is the specialest chicken
Seeing more of the points there are definitely some false changes in play points.
Oooh... Cannons for Ironweld went down 20pts a piece? Well, their essential BFF Lord Ordinator went up 40pts... so you're likely in the same spot you were before, etc...
I'm definitely excited to keep on chipping away at my big Assorted Dwarf Bros. hobby project, but I definitely expect they got even worse in the age of magic and summoning. :-p
11527pts Total (7400pts painted)
4980pts Total (4980pts painted)
3730 Total (210pts painted)
2018/06/19 16:31:50
Subject: Navigating AOS changes - why are we so accepting of imbalance and army hopping and its effects
Boss Salvage wrote: I assumed because it's specifically dictated by a battalion (Kairos + 3 LOC) that it would still be a thing, even if AOS is piggybacking on 40k changes. Oh duh, it's also still only 3 LOC, 4th is the specialest chicken
- Salvage
Ah. Didn't realize you intended to build one as Kairos. I don't know for a fact that the Rule of Three is coming, I just wouldn't be surprised. In either case, you'd be good if one was built as Kairos.
2000 Khorne Bloodbound (Skullfiend Tribe- Aqshy)
1000 Tzeentch Arcanites (Pyrofane Cult - Hysh) in progress 2000 Slaves to Darkness (Ravagers)
2018/06/19 18:24:08
Subject: Navigating AOS changes - why are we so accepting of imbalance and army hopping and its effects
Have you been here on Dakka when 8th ed 40K happened and half of the community praised the Indices phase and whished the game would forever stay static and contained with only incremental annual refinement of point costs to "prevent bloat and eventually achieve true balance" while the other half cursed Indices 8th for blandness, sameness and general lack of depth? There are at least some strong minorities that would want a chess-like TTGs. But that is a just a sidenote, because the point I was trying to make is that in the grand scheme of things it is apparently better from GW business standpoint to mantain an ever shifting landscape of rules and fluctuating power curve that have mantained the flow of players and money for 30+ years than try to achieve static balance - if the opposite were true then we would most certainly have near-perfect balance soon after GW went public. I agree however, that GW fails to mantain their imbalance healthy and in result have to deal with a lot of black PR from frustrated players that they could do better to avoid. My previous post was from more theoretical "game design theory" POV in the response to OP question rather than defense of exact GW practices. I have rage quit 40K myself after 2nd-to-3rd transition and I've split ways with "officialdom" again after 8th kicked in and forked away into "myhammer" (but not because of balance issues but because general game design decisions that just don't suit my needs anymore). If I were to describe myself through paraphrasing OP "Nowadays I'm very accepting of the fact, that the game I so love will never stay long in a place I wish it to stay".
The primary issue is just the transition time. It's cool when everyone is on even footing. Indexes were cool because it was the first time in forever everyone was on the same page. 6 months later, there were definite haves and have nots. Now we're just about to where people are on the same page again, and as someone who pined for the Index months, I'll admit the game has become more interesting now that there's a large diversity of armies making proper use of the CP system. I think if we had gotten something akin to Chapter Approved to start, it wouldn't have been nearly as painful, but there's really nothing that makes not getting access to the "real game" until a year after your friends less frustrating.
On that note, I'm very curious if the Sigmar CP system will evolve as much as the 40k one did once Battletomes start seeing release.
2018/06/19 19:05:49
Subject: Navigating AOS changes - why are we so accepting of imbalance and army hopping and its effects
They have FOCs, but reward you for breaking them. Imagine if you could just add any wars roll battalion from your corresponding grand alliance into your list without breaking faction. It's pretty much that. You just see the most cynical guard or cultists or deldar battalions to get some nice strats and cp
5,000 Raven Guard 3,000 Night Lords
2018/06/19 19:14:26
Subject: Navigating AOS changes - why are we so accepting of imbalance and army hopping and its effects
You can't view summoning as imbalance based on points while also discrediting points as a balancing mechanism. Either points are pivotal to balance and we can proceed, or they're not, and we have to discuss why summoning is a bad mechanic in the context of unit versus unit balance. I would still argue that ranged units are more powerful than melee. Unless there are summonable archers, gunners, or something with ranged mortal/regular wounds, i don't think the core balance will be that affected.
It's also worth noting that summonable units are seeing a price increase in points. For instance, when you buy a squad of Pink Horrors, you're paying for the Pinks, the Blues, and the Brimstones, with a slight discount for all 3.
Galas wrote: I remember when Marmatag was a nooby, all shiney and full of joy. How playing the unbalanced mess of Warhammer40k in a ultra-competitive meta has changed you
Bharring wrote: He'll actually *change his mind* in the presence of sufficient/sufficiently defended information. Heretic.
2018/06/19 19:16:08
Subject: Navigating AOS changes - why are we so accepting of imbalance and army hopping and its effects
40k just has a bad definition of "faction" as a result of continually trying to sell players the same Imperium models over and over again. Sigmar has similar things as a result of the handful of models from abandoned factions that haven't been dropped from the game entirely.
2018/06/19 19:17:10
Subject: Navigating AOS changes - why are we so accepting of imbalance and army hopping and its effects
At this point we can just wait and see. I'm seeing a concerning narrative shift from GW from 'we want summoning to be fun but balanced' to 'you summon or you build to counter summoning'.
NinthMusketeer wrote: At this point we can just wait and see. I'm seeing a concerning narrative shift from GW from 'we want summoning to be fun but balanced' to 'you summon or you build to counter summoning'.
How?
Look at the points increase of Pink Horrors. Yes they split, but you're paying for it outright.
The cost of "free stuff" units is going up.
Speaking from a fun standpoint, it isn't fun for me to have half of my legion abilities utterly useless in 1.0. For instance, as Legions of Nagash, I get the ability to revive fallen squads. Great. Only i have to pay points for it, making it essentially worthless.
Galas wrote: I remember when Marmatag was a nooby, all shiney and full of joy. How playing the unbalanced mess of Warhammer40k in a ultra-competitive meta has changed you
Bharring wrote: He'll actually *change his mind* in the presence of sufficient/sufficiently defended information. Heretic.
2018/06/19 19:27:13
Subject: Navigating AOS changes - why are we so accepting of imbalance and army hopping and its effects
Marmatag wrote: You can't view summoning as imbalance based on points while also discrediting points as a balancing mechanism. Either points are pivotal to balance and we can proceed, or they're not, and we have to discuss why summoning is a bad mechanic in the context of unit versus unit balance. I would still argue that ranged units are more powerful than melee. Unless there are summonable archers, gunners, or something with ranged mortal/regular wounds, i don't think the core balance will be that affected.
It's also worth noting that summonable units are seeing a price increase in points. For instance, when you buy a squad of Pink Horrors, you're paying for the Pinks, the Blues, and the Brimstones, with a slight discount for all 3.
That's the goofy things about points. They're really just a stat like any other that helps determine a models viability. Players put absolute faith in points to determine a models value, but at the same time don't want things that are the same points to be interchangeable. Free points is kind of an interesting extension of this. Take a model that's probably worth 40 that can be summoned, but got priced 30. People take lots of them in their list but summon other things that cost 40 instead of them. Devs update them to cost 50. People stop taking them in their list but start summoning them while other players complain they are getting more "free points". Realistically as a summoning option, absolutely nothing changed.
2018/06/19 19:43:29
Subject: Navigating AOS changes - why are we so accepting of imbalance and army hopping and its effects
To be honest, the splitting of pink horrors being build into them its how it always should have been.
For people without blue and brimstone, just give them two different point costs, with or without splitting.
I agree that paying points for summoning or similar habilities in the list building phase was stupid. The failure of GW is not being capable of making summoner armies balanced agaisnt non summoner ones.
Good summoning is Pink Horrours or Poxwalkers. X unit summons Y unit. Bad summoning is "Summon whatever unit allready in the game you want". Its impossible to balance that.
In all kind of games, summons are special units linked to special summoners for a reason.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/06/19 19:45:22
Dakka does have White Knights and is also rather infamous for it's Black Knights. A new edition brings out the passionate and not all of them are good at expressing themselves in written form. There have been plenty of hysterical responses from both sides so far. So we descend into pointless bickering with neither side listening to each other. So posting here becomes more masturbation than conversation.
ERJAK wrote: Forcing a 40k player to keep playing 7th is basically a hate crime.
2018/06/19 19:51:23
Subject: Navigating AOS changes - why are we so accepting of imbalance and army hopping and its effects
NinthMusketeer wrote: At this point we can just wait and see. I'm seeing a concerning narrative shift from GW from 'we want summoning to be fun but balanced' to 'you summon or you build to counter summoning'.
How?
Look at the points increase of Pink Horrors. Yes they split, but you're paying for it outright.
The cost of "free stuff" units is going up.
Speaking from a fun standpoint, it isn't fun for me to have half of my legion abilities utterly useless in 1.0. For instance, as Legions of Nagash, I get the ability to revive fallen squads. Great. Only i have to pay points for it, making it essentially worthless.
Uhm, pink horrors are one tiny instance within summoning that is irrelevant to the issue as a whole. It's not what I was referring to.
NinthMusketeer wrote: At this point we can just wait and see. I'm seeing a concerning narrative shift from GW from 'we want summoning to be fun but balanced' to 'you summon or you build to counter summoning'.
This was pretty much what the Ben & Ben show stated. You spam summoning, and if you don't want to do that then you have to output a lot of damage to control it. Control vs aggro.
It went from "wait and see, summoning won't be that bad" to "spamming summoning is as intended, its one of the new cornerstones of the game, and you counter it by spamming mortal wounds and doing tons of damage"
Now also...I've only read/seen about five battle reps now but all five ended by Turn 2 so summoning wasn't as big a deal since the game was over so fast.
2000 Khorne Bloodbound (Skullfiend Tribe- Aqshy)
1000 Tzeentch Arcanites (Pyrofane Cult - Hysh) in progress
2000 Slaves to Darkness (Ravagers)
4980pts Total (4980pts painted)
3730 Total (210pts painted) 
