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So, with the new summoning rules not requiring reinforcement points, what’s going to happen to the armies that have nothing to summon like Khorne Bloodbound, Stormcast Eternals, Beastclaw Raiders, Ironjawz, etc. Are they simply going to deal with being that much weaker when playing against an army that can summon?

SG

Kinda. Your strategy against summoners will be to target the units that summon, try to disrupt whatever rituals they may need to do so and use the new edition's magic and endless spells to your advantage while their casters may be tied up summoning instead of casting.

It'll certainly be interesting to see how it plays out. It'll take them time to summon new troops and to get strong units out it'll take either multiple turns waiting or focusing just on the summoning condition while also the summoner can't be at the table's edge that'll make his troops come into battle too late but being closer to the center puts him at considerable risk by an opponent who'll definitely be gunning for him.

My concern as well. Playing against summoning armies with non-summoning armies feels like it'll be forced into active engagement. You cannot play passively against them or you'll just end up losing to raw numbers. Puts the burden more on the non-summoning army to push for a win. At least, that's what it looks like at the moment imo.

Anytime this mechanic is in a game, the side that cannot match the free points will be at a disadvantage. Often a gross disadvantage.

The counter to free summoning is mortal wound spam. You have to be able to kill his army off as fast as possible and be aggressive the whole time, or you lose.

Note - Khorne Bloodbound DO summon. Stormcast has a ton of healing and regen wounds when taken so very resilient now.

The two other faction you suggested, beastclaw and ironjawz are very agro armies. They want in your face ASAP and can deal a ton of damage so I don't see a problem with them.

The Overlords have the most shooting so they can kill the summons pretty easily. Off the top of my head, I don't see it as much of an issue. It brings those armies to a more balanced level as ones who don't.

str00dles1 wrote:
Note - Khorne Bloodbound DO summon.

Blades of Khorne (which is Bloodbound + Daemons) can summon, yes. But, a purely Bloodbound Army (say someone who bought the original starter set and built an army of only Bloodbound) do not have anything that they can summon.

str00dles1 wrote:
The two other faction you suggested, beastclaw and ironjawz are very agro armies. They want in your face ASAP and can deal a ton of damage so I don't see a problem with them.

You're still facing down an opposing player that can summon maybe 500 to 1000 points of extra models onto the field. That being the case, as long as they protect their summoners well (which is entirely possible... especially if their summoners have a lot of wounds like Nagash who can also cast like 8 spells per hero phase), it's still going to be a 1000 point list versus a 2000 point list regardless. The player who can't summon is going to be at a huge disadvantage.

SG

Basically it seems like playing a non-summoning army vs a summoning one is kinda like playing an index army vs a codex one. It doesn't decide the game but it is an uphill battle, generally speaking.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Basically it seems like playing a non-summoning army vs a summoning one is kinda like playing an index army vs a codex one. It doesn't decide the game but it is an uphill battle, generally speaking.

I honestly don't know. I see your point, but even Index-only armies aren't as disadvantaged as non-summoning armies. Does it mean that a non-summoning army will always lose? No. Does it mean they have a drastically large chance of losing? I think it will, yes.

SG

You're still facing down an opposing player that can summon maybe 500 to 1000 points of extra models onto the field

Not all at once though and time spent hiding in the back making more troops is time not spent using your point-increased wizard to defend your army or casting spells (save your Nagash example but he's already a huge point-sink) which an army like Destruction will take advantage of to go full tilt into your forces and likely use endless spells to tear up your summoner defenders.

We'll see how it plays out though.

500-1000 points isn't going to happen in a 5-round game save extremely unlikely circumstances. It's more like 250-500, a good chunk of which is only going to see play a fraction of the overall game. Nurgle & Khorne at least have to give up something to get it (half Nurgle's allegiance abilities are given over to summoning, Khorne must spend Blood Tithe). Nurgle has a non-scaling issue but isn't too bad at 2k minus the exalted GUO. The problem armies will be Legions of Nagash, which have to give up next to nothing to get their allegiance (as opposed to say Nurgle, which gives up access to a good 70% of the Chaos alliance), or Tzeentch & Seraphon which just got free summoning on top of allegiance abilities that were extremely strong without it. But even then it's not so much that the summoning is inherently uncontrolled, it's that those armies did not have their allegiance benefits nerfed to compensate. TBF Seraphon did have a small nerf and has to give up spells to get summons at least, but the cost-benefit is still strongly in summoning's favor (and it forces a Slann general even more than before).

Played twice against seraphon with the new rules. The seraphon player both times elected to keep his slaan in the back as a summons battery because "why would you never".

auticus wrote:
Played twice against seraphon with the new rules. The seraphon player both times elected to keep his slaan in the back as a summons battery because "why would you never".

Yeah, which ties back into 'not giving up enough'. I think that in places GW forgot the fundamental of allegiance is to grant benefits that compensate/reward giving things up. So they've given extra stuff to certain allegiances without them having to give up anything.

I think thats intentional. That goes with the no risk-all reward mantra that they like to inject in their games.

auticus wrote:
I think thats intentional. That goes with the no risk-all reward mantra that they like to inject in their games.

I'm not so sure. The battletomes designed with free summoning in mind (Nurgle and Nagash) have weak allegiance abilities if summoning is taken out. Nurgle would have the cycle of corruption and a tree. Nice, but compared to Blood Tithe or Fate dice it's really meh. Nagash would have the (now much weaker) 'death save' and grave sites that grant an extra invocation/limited deep strike capacity, which is reasonably good but then Nagash's 'summoning' is also weaker since it's bringing back dead units and much more restrictive than others. The latter's issue comes from all the specific legions not really being allegiances but just free buffs since there's no restrictions--they should have made the grave sites a part of generic death allegiance than made the specific legions actually have to give up something to get their specific buff & summoning.