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Wayniac wrote:
I will maintain that in my opinion the reason AOS 0.0 failed was because of people being unwilling to adopt a 70s/80s style wargaming mindset in the 21st century. The idea that you had no points and had to discuss what sort of game you wanted to have is very much rooted in the historical wargames of old and comes from a simpler time before people wanted to make everything highly competitive.

If people were more willing to do that rather than try and do whatever to "win", and if pickup game mindset wasn't so prevalent where you barely know the people you're playing against so you don't care to talk about the type of game you want to have.

I disagree and I don't think its all about "winning" at all.

I think at its core its about a fair game or at least a game where both sides (be they strangers or friends) can come together and have a game with each having a chance to win provided that their skill and understanding of game mechanics is similar.



Historical games sort of skirt that because many of the games they play can often be about re-creation of historical battles where there's written records and conversions into the game already out there. So you are already agreeing to an imbalanced game because you're aiming for a tactical experience. AoS at launch didn't have that at all in any shape nor form. There were no books of example armies from historical battles to re-create; there were no huge campaigns to play out or the like and the rules themselves were jovial in nature. Again something historical games didn't have (in fact they are pretty serious rules sets by and large).

AoS without points and rules could work, but the problem was you'd have to increase the pre-game phase a lot in order ot ensure you were both coming to the table with the same expectation and approach. To ensure that you didn't endup with one player bringing 10 dragons and the other bringing 10 units of swords men who couldn't hardly touch let alone harm the dragons. Furthermore it was my observation many were making AoS work back then by basing things off the Old World points values as a base line.

Another issue is that historical games are often smaller models; so you can more practically carry most of your army with you. AoS has big models in some armies to the point where you can't easily carry the whole army to the game club (esp if you don't have a car or the parking is a long way off). That in itself adds an additional layer of limitations; a disaster if, in the example above, both players only brought that army with them to the game club.



Now yes I think GW could do more with Narrative, right now its sort of "there" but they've not really addressed it and mostly left it up to players to work out (which basically is nothing different to how their games worked before they formally added narative and open play). I think one of the barriers is the variety of armies and factions, yet if we look at Total War the CA team has already put in a load of challenging quest battles, so such things can be done. Pre-designed armies or concepts or appraoches to the game could be beefed up. GW could do more to support alternative play ideas and one could even argue that the mini-games in their duel boxes are already sort of approaching that idea.

I'd definitely agree with that. The concept of not having points at all and just throwing stuff down narrative-style was as alien to the current gen of players as could be.

GW has open and narrative play as a way to play. But really... ask people what is narrative play and watch as you get 100 answers back.

No one really knows what GW is pushing there. The closest universal I have found is that narrative play is basically matched play with a story around the battle and likely not using a matched play scenario.

auticus wrote:
I'd definitely agree with that. The concept of not having points at all and just throwing stuff down narrative-style was as alien to the current gen of players as could be.

GW has open and narrative play as a way to play. But really... ask people what is narrative play and watch as you get 100 answers back.

No one really knows what GW is pushing there. The closest universal I have found is that narrative play is basically matched play with a story around the battle and likely not using a matched play scenario.

Isn't it though? I find even when people talk about "narrative" they really mean a story, not imbalanced forces like a last stand where your opponent has twice your points, or an ambush where you need to divide up your army, or things like that. It's basically "matched play with looser restrictions", whether that's an asymmetrical scenario or something like saying ignore the Battleline/Behemoth/etc. restrictions.

The fact GW isn't really doing much of anything for narrative play to really demonstrate it isn't helping. The few they've shown in White Dwarf have either been like that or been "We each decided to take a couple of units and some heroes" with no real guidelines on HOW to do that.

I think if they had an article in a White Dwarf (maybe written by Jervis since he's shown he likes that style of play) showing just how to approach that sort of pre-game talk, like how do you decide what's fair, how do you compromise with your opponent if they want to take a specific model (e.g. Okay sure you can take that extra monster, I'll take an extra unit and character to compensate) and so on Open Play style might be more accepted since there will be actual examples of that negotiation. They could even show it on WHTV,, like actually have the two people playing the game talk about it beforehand, to show how it would really work with someone. But right now it's really "take whatever you want, talk with your opponent about it" and that's not really any guidelines at all.

I'm sure people would still dismiss it (or try to abuse it, which IMHO just shows they shouldn't be playing Open Play anyways), but at least there would be a concrete example from GW on how to broach the subject.

Agreed I also think that they need to show how the pre-game can be fun to talk about and not a chore; perhaps even provide some streamline structures for players to work with to aid them speed it up. Considering that many might only get one or two games a week and that those games will be hours long a time I think many are cautious to subscribe to a game approach that might prove so unbalanced as to be unfun.

Plus I think many are worried that Steve only likes to push "narrative or open" games because he can take his deathstar of 10 dragons and beat everyone with it because its "his" narrative. Ergo that it will attract power gamers putting down super overpowered combos for the fun of it.



I think we might see GW open up more on the two modes once they've got the last of the Battletomes out. Because like it or not the warscrolls, at the very least, are pretty much core to the whole game working

A neat twist and something they could do is shift narrative to the use of things ilke Grand Alliance books. Ergo leave matched play focused on mostly single faction armies with allies; and then focus on bringing Grand Alliance armies (and other such allied forces) into Narrative games. That would give Narrative a start of its own identity for players to work with; brings back the idea of motley armies with no single unified faction - all without touching the games balance nor expereince in Matched play.

auticus wrote:
We can call it hold overs all day long. The thing is they sell those holdover models. If they are selling the faction they need to make the faction playable. Otherwise just get rid of the models.

For the longest time they claimed to be a model designers first and foremost going as far to claim they were the Apple of the Miniature toy world. As someone who enjoys painting and assembling models I am happy and grateful GW does not take a cue from you as that would mean ruining a large part of the hobby for a good portion of the customer base.


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Wayniac wrote:
With respect to auticus I think a big issue is that they kept a lot of holdovers from WHFB to not piss off the old guard who had WHFB armies and wanted to use them in AOS (which ended up largely happening anyway). So you have situations where someone had an army from years ago, wants to keep using them and expects to be able to.

True. It was a weird moment for GW where they tried to have a cake and eat it too. Ultimately the era between WHFB and AoS 1.0 is an era that just was weird. I still remember the weird rules where you had to have a beard or something or shout something to one another. For me 0.0 was just a long Andy Kaufman joke.

I think the joke rules were just that, but people were already bitter over WHFB being killed and AOS being brought in with "dumbed down" rules, no points, etc. that the joke rules were just the straw that broke the camel's back.

0.0 was the experiment; 1.0 was the beta; 2.0 is the launch.

As for holdovers I think AoS will never lose its "hold over" aspect because even in the lore its still tied to the Old World model line. It will always have that legacy to work with. GW made a deliberate choice with that when they could have retired the whole Old World line and went with a new game. So I don't see it so much as a "hold over" I see it simply as the evolution of the original game (albeit with some issues along the way).

I agree with the experiment, beta, and launch.

I also think that some of the holdover models are also there because of several reasons.

A ) Beautiful models. They can sell them to miniature painters and DnD hobbyists. It is good to keep in mind that the greatest casualties of the model purge were the butt ugly models people bought only to use in armies like the High Elf Spearmen. They even brought the High Elf Spearmen from the Isle of Blood box for some time because of demand. Otherwise a lot of the old models went the way of the dodo.

B ) A part of them probably wants to use some of the existing models to expand into a larger force and I feel like we might see some of that coming this year. This is probably the most self-evident reason.

C ) Strangely enough a lot of the old models are excellent for various conversions. I can't tell you how many people buy Cold One kits or the High Elf knights models to make prettier Shining Spears. A lot of the still available kits are quite good as an alternate unit for existing models or as a base for beautiful kitbashed models. Again a good reason to keep those lines for us who like to make things more personalized or just want to enjoy other aspects of the hobby. I mean, the entire Dark Elf line is ripe for Drukhari conversions of all kind. The old Wood Elf line combined with High Elf is also really fun for Exodite and some Corsair conversions.

What I think the big problem was that GW split all their factions into these supposedly different factions and then had each and every faction as a tag on the GW website. This created potential confusion and it seems they've realized this as they've combined the leftover tags into generic ones.

They probably should have just created a tag called "Legacy Lines" or something similar.


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Wayniac wrote:
I think the joke rules were just that, but people were already bitter over WHFB being killed and AOS being brought in with "dumbed down" rules, no points, etc. that the joke rules were just the straw that broke the camel's back.

The weird thing is that DoK has one rule that reminds me a bit of the old joke rules. Death's Touch where you have to put a dice in one hand and have the opponent pick which hand. It's such a stupid and pointless rule that is easily replaced by a 50/50 dice roll.

I think the issue overall was they killed WHFB without warning then were like here's a new game that uses the same models but is completely different. They should have just done like a post-End Times WHFB that allowed for both small scale (AOS) and large scale (WHFB) style play (like the LOTR games). What they did though was blow up the world and recreate the world to be over the top cartoony fantasy. So people were already bitter over that. I think if they had given more warning about it, it might not have felt like being kicked to the curb.

They could have kept a lot of the early lines too: Stormcast could have been a knightly order from the remnants of the human kingdoms that worshipped Sigmar, rather than virtually immortal respawning angel-knights created from magic lightning.

An almost post apoc WHFB would have been cool without just scrapping the old world.

Wayniac wrote:
I think the issue overall was they killed WHFB without warning then were like here's a new game. They should have just done like a post-End Times WHFB that allowed for both small scale (AOS) and large scale (WHFB) style play. What they did though was blow up the world and recreate the world to be over the top cartoony fantasy. So people were already bitter over that. I think if they had given more warning about it, it might not have felt like being kicked to the curb.

They could have kept a lot of the early lines too: Stormcast could have been a knightly order from the remnants of the human kingdoms that worshipped Sigmar, rather than virtually immortal respawning angel-knights created from magic lightning

True, but AoS came out of a time in GW that appeared to be influenced by two things: Copyrighting enough to be unique and where there was no communications at all from GW at large. It was night impossible to get any rumors or news of what was coming and sites like Faeit had a larger userbase mostly because there was nowhere else to go to get "potential" news.

I would say that the so called "NU-GW" is at best 2 years old now(release of 8th edition 40k) and in those two years GW has made a lot of changes and I expect more changes down the line. GW before that time as well as Warhammer feels like Magic the Gathering in the 90s before MTG became the big kid on the block with all its stuff. If anything it feels like GW has been entering the big league in the last year or so.

 Eldarsif wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
I think the issue overall was they killed WHFB without warning then were like here's a new game. They should have just done like a post-End Times WHFB that allowed for both small scale (AOS) and large scale (WHFB) style play. What they did though was blow up the world and recreate the world to be over the top cartoony fantasy. So people were already bitter over that. I think if they had given more warning about it, it might not have felt like being kicked to the curb.

They could have kept a lot of the early lines too: Stormcast could have been a knightly order from the remnants of the human kingdoms that worshipped Sigmar, rather than virtually immortal respawning angel-knights created from magic lightning

True, but AoS came out of a time in GW that appeared to be influenced by two things: Copyrighting enough to be unique and where there was no communications at all from GW at large. It was night impossible to get any rumors or news of what was coming and sites like Faeit had a larger userbase mostly because there was nowhere else to go to get "potential" news.

I would say that the so called "NU-GW" is at best 2 years old now(release of 8th edition 40k) and in those two years GW has made a lot of changes and I expect more changes down the line. GW before that time as well as Warhammer feels like Magic the Gathering in the 90s before MTG became the big kid on the block with all its stuff. If anything it feels like GW has been entering the big league in the last year or so.

With everything except rules quality, it seems Since their proofreading is as bad as ever (at least on the 40k side, not really sure how it is on AOS side) and balance is and always has been terrible.

I think the issue was that whilst Kirby did turn GW around in a bad spot years back, his management approach got more and more isolated from the market. A top-down approach which increasingly isolated itself from their actual customers.

The lack of marketing outreach and even ignoring major social media avenues of that era I think showed how much they were distancing themselves from their customers. I think more than copyright, they wanted to be the Apple of wargames - to define what the market wanted rather than satisfy the market desires.


You can see that in early AoS. It was clearly a project designed in meetings and around boardroom tables focused on what made it work best and cheapest for GW management and the like. There was clearly less player input, far little to no real feedback and the whole approach clearly ignored the customer (esp with the way they handled the end of the world - having just given Old World new models and marketing in abig way after years of ignoring only to pull the carpet out from under the gamers by ending the whole game and replacing it with something totally different).


Thankfully I think GW also needed to make AoS 0.0. It kind of needed to take its mistakes to the next level to result in the massive changes we've seen over the last few years. Since then GW has shifted its focus entirely. Sure some elements are still the same, but heck look at what happened when the Slaanesh fiend sprue got leaked. GW of old would have issued threats/legal orders to shut down the person listing it and done their best to hide it - GW of today (far as I know) didn't bother with the guy listing it for sale*; instead they made a video to advertise the leak. Sure I bet whoever let it out got a good telling off internally; but overall they went with the event and built on it rather than being hostile.

Heck I recall when GW went after news sites and tried shutting them down from reporting on rumours which led to several dropping any GW news at the time (some still do ignore GW marketing).



Suffice it to say some big attitudes have changed and GW now does marketing and community interaction 7 days a week and didn't even stop over christmas.


* I actually ebay messaged the person listing it because they appeared to not have a clue what they were selling and they replied that it was rather shocking them how high the price on the sprue was going. I figure they didn't want to wind up with a load of jovial prices being bid and then dealing with the fallout of cancelled bids and the like.

GW is all about creating a lifestyle now. It's why they have a strong community and gave us that weird Hammer-feather logo. It's why we now have ton of Warhammer merch for all kinds like leggings and cereal bowls. It's like they finally realized what they had in their hands and are now embracing it.

For the longest time they claimed to be a model designers first and foremost going as far to claim they were the Apple of the Miniature toy world.

That was actually only for a handful of years. And new players today have no idea what was being said five - ten years ago. They go into a gw store, they see the awesome varangar models, they get excited about those, GW guy tells them how awesome they are, they drop a crap ton of money on those models, and then find out that they are the equivalent of flaming trash and that their opponents need to give them sudden death victory conditions just for playing that faction.

Several times a month we have new people come in and get ready to drop a ton of money on factions that are garbage because the default assumption is that everything is at least playable, and thats the farthest thing from the truth.

If they aren't forewarned, you have bitter people that dropped a ton of money on something that can't play the game hardly at all.

If you're just in it to paint then sure, thats great. Put a disclaimer on the box "warning: this model is flaming garbage on the table"

And they've had several GHB iterations that could have fixed their points at the very least, and they chose to just lol them.

What I think the big problem was that GW split all their factions into these supposedly different factions and then had each and every faction as a tag on the GW website. This created potential confusion and it seems they've realized this as they've combined the leftover tags into generic ones.

In world building terms each fof the minor factions should have been expanded upon from the start instead of the myopic focus on Stormcast and Blood Warriors. Factions like the Daughters of Khaine and many of the smaller factions have begun to have intersting elements in the background - which is why its a bit sad they are re-focussing on the same armies again rather than a pdf update of them all and then getting on with new stuff - however the new skirmish game does look like some good new info.

Several times a month we have new people come in and get ready to drop a ton of money on factions that are garbage because the default assumption is that everything is at least playable, and thats the farthest thing from the truth.

If they aren't forewarned, you have bitter people that dropped a ton of money on something that can't play the game hardly at all.

Sounds like your area is top-tier ultra competitive. With the exception of KO(which players have given up here) most factions with books are seeing playtime and people are having fun where I am. Hell, last tourney we had there was a Gloomspite in first place, ogor in second place, and Nagash finally in 3rd place. When people are playing regular games they are having fun and very few are being actively curbstomped. Only time there is active imbalance is when someone brings an army that isn't currently supported by GW(and KO) and the players who have those armies are very rare as they have to rely on DO to order stuff which - and I am reiterating - is not really accessible to innocent Timmys and Tammies who are just starting out in the hobby. This means that that crowd tends to be much older and more active at reading up on what they are buying. They more often than not go into the faction knowing full well what they are doing.

I also find it strange that you have new players coming in, putting a ton of money on a faction without ever having played the game before. That just sounds like your area is filthy rich or has a lack of impulse control. Again, maybe the difference is that you are at the cutting edge of tournament play and the attitude is different, but when a new player comes where I've lived they usually just buy something easy and accessible like the dual faction starters or the Core Starter. Even the kids that go to the FLG/GW store just buy some small pack to assemble and paint before participating in LVO.

Truth be told I feel like you are making a mountain out of a molehill, but not really knowing how cuttthroat your area is I could be not seeing how bad the playerbase you are engaging with is. If it is truly this difficult, toxic, and just vile you have my sincere condolences. I'd probably not bother with the hobby in that type of environment if I were to be honest. It's the reason I couldn't be bothered with M:TG after a while.

I also think this is where there is a bit of disconnect going on. Ton of people are having immense enjoyment out of AoS and if it were as bad as you have described in detail I would rather think the hobby dead than alive. This especially considering the marketshare GW lost in previous 40k editions when their balance was truly atrocious. So my stance - at least until I experience the playerbase you engage in - is that Age of Sigmar is in a neat little place right now. Could use some tweaks here and there, but for the most part people seem to be having fun even when they are playing matched games.


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In world building terms each fof the minor factions should have been expanded upon from the start instead of the myopic focus on Stormcast and Blood Warriors.

I think originally they were stuck with a limited pool of faction as they probably had a very small budget for the entire thing. Which is probably why had so much Stormcast and Khorne in 0.0 early on. The problem is that it is most likely a recursive problem. With the launch of AoS 0.0 and continuation of 1.0 they probably got a ton of new players who invested in Stormcast and Khorne due to cost(It's why I have Stormcast and Khorne for example) so when they release an update they must address those userbases quicker as they are more recent userbases in comparison to other factions that exist in "maybe" limbo. It's basically the same reason you tend to see Space Marines come first in new edition. Most people own starter armies and therefore releasing a book targeted at starter armies is more likely to stabilize retention rates whereas a new faction(or a faction that hasn't been selling well) is more of a risk. So ultimately I think the approach is purely a logical market move even though one would indeed like to see more factions added to the game.

Ton of people are having immense enjoyment out of AoS and if it were as bad as you have described in detail I would rather think the hobby dead than alive

I would say thats more a statement that the community in general for AOS is not really that concerned with balance and viable factions and that its acceptable to just say play a different army.

People are having fun. Because balance is not as big a concern for them as it is people like me who want to see all factions viable and an internal balance that gives you multiple viable builds so you aren't railroaded on what builds you can take to be able to have good games.

People are having fun because it is acceptable to say "half the game is trash, so just don't play that half of the game and you'll be fine".

Its not a disconnect. I am fully aware of how much of a minority I am, because the people like me play other games where those issues are not as big a deal or mostly dealt with, or just simply don't play anymore. So you will largely never hear from people that share my opinion.

The phrase "why do you even bother anymore" is one I hear several times a week.

People are having fun because it is acceptable to say "half the game is trash, so just don't play that half of the game and you'll be fine".

I would personally argue that less than half the game is trash, but that seems to be more based on us having different conventions and boundaries. I personally only count actual supported armies(that have had a tome and such) and do not count un-tomed factions as they are - for all we know - still on the chopping block. Even then, some interesting things have happened. Seen some magical stuff happen with good Ogor and Order Draconis players.

Ultimately I think that for a good portion of the players there is acceptable balance in AoS. The tourney balance that has been discussed here ad infinitum show that in a certain context and at a certain level there is balance to be had. As I have had the habit of hanging around with people of all ages I have discovered that the competitiveness is very generational and me - being as old as I am - would probably be considered a filthy casual by many younger players. These same players are also probably more accustomed to having to adjust their armies accordingly and play differently(mutable playstyle) than the older generation(fixed playstyle) which I have always felt to go for more thematic than competitive. I just know that the people who grew up playing boardgames, card games, and video games tends to have a much more adaptable spirit when it comes to playing effectively. It's different to what I grew up with in some extent, but at the same time I appreciate it for its own worth. Because life is just such a wonderful progression of evolutionary changes in societal systems.

The difference is instead of saying "half the game is trash don't play it" you're saying "that half of the game doesn't exist, so if you bought into those models you knowingly bought into a faction that doesn't exist even though models and rules exist for those models".

I'd actually argue those two statements are basically the same thing: "half of the game is not valid, just play the half of the game that is valid".

For me thats just not an acceptable place for a game to be sitting in.

Part of the issue that Auticus faces is that the "balance" is really what he is saying: "Good enough" if you metagame and check what armies are doing well. Which is understandable, but GW also is the first ones to go and say how you should pick an army that pops out to you visually or because you read a story and really liked them or you like their background. So it is more than a little dishonest that they say this, but there are choices that are essentially not worth spending money on because they are so bad.

This is where that "trap" comes from: Someone looks at KO which are an absolutely amazing concept, and then has to either be told that army is garbage don't pick it unless you want to lose constantly if you actually plan to play the game, or else risk them getting really fed up when they are doing exactly what GW says you should do and end up just getting curbstomped every game because the "balance" is all over the place. If this was a video game then it'd be a simple matter of picking a different character. But someone who drops money on an army that looks awesome and they really enjoy is going to feel lied to and cheated if they find out after the fact that it's piss poor. Unless they frequent forums or happen to have players in their area who will tell that person considering KO that if they want to win they really need to pick a different army, they are going to be essentially tricked into buying a lemon.

If you look at the tournament level, which already ignores 50% of the armies and a huge swathe of unit choices in the armies that are viable, so a very small percentage of what is actually available, then it might look like balance is there. But if you look below the surface, there isn't as much balance as you think because you are purposely ignoring large chunks of armies, and entire armies, when talking about "balance". Is that an acceptable way to "demonstrate" balance? It's balanced if you only consider these certain armies, and within those armies ignore everything except these units?

Auticus is one of those people who want to embrace the game as it was originally intended before it was turned into a wombo-combo MtG type competitive focused game. His area is well known for being pretty cutthroat and dominated by tournament tryhards who hate narrative play and expect everything to be "tournament standard" and he's had an uphill struggle to push something beyond that.

Actually as much as it took to get me on board with accepting AOS for its wombo combo ccg design, that is a secondary issue for me that I have learned to overlook.

I have learned to overlook AOS lack of immersion, and its basically being a card game with models because thats just the way it is and will never change.

So I can accept that and not really gripe about it.

What I absolutely do not want to deal with is the disparity in power levels. If I want to run a public campaign event, I don't want it populated with adepticon lists, because the people I want to play in it won't show up because no one wants their nose rubbed in dog crap all game because they fell in love with a faction that "isn't viable so don't play it" or "you have to run that one mono build if you want this to be a good game and not a one sided stomp fest"

I play lots of tabletop games, so the "all games are imbalanced" doesn't work for me because... none of those other games have this problem to this degree. And I know AOS could be better and could be tons more engaging if the devs would actually through their actions make the game playable for all factions and not release things like Kharadron or the current FEC book.

On that note I do find it interesting that GW games are the only games that have such a huge imbalance/power gap. Sure, every game has its "competitive" builds, but from when I played Warmahordes it was way less; you could and often did see "dark horse" janky lists show up specifically because they weren't meta builds but asked a question/answered a question.

You almost never saw anyone say "X sucks don't use it" with very few exceptions, and even then it was usually "X isn't that great, but if you take Y and Z you could do 123 with it and it could work".

It's only Warhammer that I have found which has this "Well just don't play that army" and "It's okay to have some armies garbage tier and some good" mindset and to this day I don't know where it comes from or why it's accepted when elsewhere that mentality would be considered such a huge flaw of the game that it would most likely cause outrage

I firmly believe its because they design their games with the magic the gathering foundation on a white board in the room.

Have to make the game appeal to people that like big explosions, people that love to list build and figure out janky combos, and then the people that love powergaming and require bent lists.

The require bent lists means you have to cook in imbalances on purpose to appeal to Spike.

That works in magic the gathering because they have "formats" where you have events and formats specifically for Spike and then they have formats that appeal to the others.

In AOS you basically have matched play. Which is supposed to appeal to I assume Spike, but then narrative and open play i guess are supposed to appeal to big explosions Timmy and List building and do it how i want Johnny. But the problem is the format in magic actually says "spike you can't bring your adepticon FEC list" whereas the narrative play in AOS says "spike can teabag the narrative group by the rules all he wants".

Auticus is one of those people who want to embrace the game as it was originally intended before it was turned into a wombo-combo MtG type competitive focused game.

Perhaps this is then the root of the problem. Me, you, or anyone else have actually little to no claim of what is currently intended* or not when it comes to anything GW makes. What GW intends is what GW intends and we will always be beholden to that. As much as Auticus fears buying a useless unit I fear losing beautiful models because GW might one day decide that it isn't worth keeping the models around(and much to the chagrin of hobbyists around the globe). The difference is perhaps that I accept that GW does not abide by my rule and all I am doing is buying into a theme park ride, and for me - honestly - that theme park has been fun; at least since 2.0 came out. 0.0 and 1.0, regardless of any balancing intentions, was a really boring game.

In short, past or future intentions of GW mean little to nothing in the grand scheme. We have what we have as GW intend it to be right now and we can either enjoy it or not. As my buddy Alan Watts would put it:

The future is a concept, it doesn't exist. There is no such thing as tomorrow. There never will be, because time is always now. That's one of the things we discover when we stop talking to ourselves and stop thinking. We find there is only present, only an eternal now.

On that note I do find it interesting that GW games are the only games that have such a huge imbalance/power gap. Sure, every game has its "competitive" builds, but from when I played Warmahordes it was way less; you could and often did see "dark horse" janky lists show up specifically because they weren't meta builds but asked a question/answered a question.

Sadly I have seen this in every game I've tried, including Warmahordes. As soon as you dwell fully into a game you will find the imbalance and it will be as unsightly as the imbalance in other games. Warmahorde included and one of the reason I had no interest in the game. It's just that when you have something else to compare it you are more likely to forgive the imbalances and when Warmahorde was at its height it was comparing itself against 6th and 7th edition 40k which were legendarily imbalanced. In that comparison Warmahordes would exemplify the near literal perfect balance. Hell, I saw the same thing happen again in X-Wing 1.0 at the time. People claiming it to be perfectly balanced, but at the same time admitting ton of builds being crap and unviable and some units ouright broken. Yet, it was "balanced" for all intents and purposes because there were other things considered more imbalanced.

I also see janky lists do wonders in many GW games. I think the problem is more that a lot of the tryhards tend to go for for netlists instead of testing things out for themselves so it ends up contaminating the sample of what could work and what doesn't. I think another problem we don't see more janky lists is also that some of the armies are severely limited in their unit selection. You really don't have breathing space to make things janky to begin with unless you ally or something similar. It's one of the reasons the jankiest lists I encounter are Grand Alliance lists and Khorne. AoS factions tend to be mostly starved for units except for the two release behemoths(Stormcast and Khorne).

It's only Warhammer that I have found which has this "Well just don't play that army" and "It's okay to have some armies garbage tier and some good"

GW is unique in the fact that they managed to make exactly one garbage army for each game: Grey Knights and KO, although I wouldn't be surprised if KO would see redemption sooner rather than later. Nobody thinks that it is okay to have one army or two in garbage tier, but we are also in the age of early access and I can tell you that 0.0 and 1.0 of AoS are the definition of Early Access game. The parallels are actually quite interesting now that I put my mint into it.

I have learned to overlook AOS lack of immersion,

For me that is mostly because the lore and such has been stuck in Early Access for so long. When you buy into 40k you buy into a monolith of stories and general drama. With AoS you have much less to go on.

If you look at the tournament level, which already ignores 50% of the armies

This is if and only if you are considering non-tome factions as viable and established forces for which they aren't. Auticus has for example talked about three of his armies which two - Dark Elves and Tomb Kings - are in fact Faction non Grata in the entire game and have never been promised or indicated by GW themselves. This leaves Auticus with the only real faction gripe being Slaves to Darkness which I admit should have gotten a tome a long time ago as they've established already(imo with the Darkoath Queen release) that they intend on keeping them in the game.

Which is why I pointed out that the discussion is really stuck in the gap of definition. Some of us define the game as armies with tomes, whereas Auticus et al considers each and every single idea of a faction released as an individual army. This will always create a discordant dialogue because people are arguing from completely different corners both considering our views objective in the grand scheme of things even if neither are. It is also the reason why this discussion will probably never go anywhere as our individual definition of the borders of the game are just too different. It just means we'll be arguing in circles until the cows come home and started playing BMG.

So my prediction is: Some of us will consider AoS fun and relatively balanced all things considered, and Auticus or others might call us powergamers, ignorant, or even Timmys or whatever that word is(Only Tim I remember was the Prodigal Sorcerer in Revised) and so on. It will be a continual cycle for years to come and even if GW would fulfill Auticus' every desire there will be another Auticus(Noticus) to take his place who will claim that GW is this, players are that, and that things should be even better. It is the endless law of Dakka/online forums up until we experience the heat death of the universe or climate change so bad we'll all be wiped out.

Because in the end the cycle of pain and suffering is endless and through that limbo we all struggle to have our words and actions noticed in a world we fear to be uncaring. So for as long as we are witnessed we may be assured of our continued existence and place in this world of ours.

That was fun and probably my last post on this particular subject as this is really is a Danse Macabre for all involved.

* My belief is that the original intention was to make AoS and 40k cross-compatible like Warmahordes and if you disagree and can't show me definitive peer-reviewed proof that it wasn't I will consider you cray cray because why not.

As I said earlier, the people like me don't come to the AOS forums anymore. They moved on to other games or quit gaming altogether, so you won't hear their voices.

Where I am other games have no traction so its largely me playing with myself in my garage when I go that route.

You make it sound like I have 100 grievances with the game, which I feel is very much an unfair assessment. I have one grievance with the game. That is as I've explained it. It is impossible for me to participate in any campaigns or narratives where I am without having to deal with Adepticon lists, because the rules let it happen and the rules let half the game wallow in trash tier. It maybe that by the end of the year GW has released a ton of books to have marginalized this trash tier, and I hope so. As of today in April that is obviously not the case.

I just think you dismiss a lot as trash tier, and elevate to much to god tier. fething seraphon just won adepticon with skinks, and thunderquake LOL

Skinks are good tho.....

 Sal4m4nd3r wrote:
I just think you dismiss a lot as trash tier, and elevate to much to god tier. fething seraphon just won adepticon with skinks, and thunderquake LOL

Yeah, that stuff is really powerful.

 Sal4m4nd3r wrote:
I just think you dismiss a lot as trash tier, and elevate to much to god tier. fething seraphon just won adepticon with skinks, and thunderquake LOL

Trash tier is a large swathe of factions that have almost no chance in hell of having even remotely a good game against a "god tier".

Seraphon has always been powerful. When they released the ghb and the uber free summoning I said as much and got boo'd out of the room for suggesting that they were powerful. Then when kroaknado got FAQ'd out apparently a giant chunk of you all thought that was their only viable "god tier" mode build. I disagreed. ANd got boo'd out of the room again with the "how many big tournaments have they won again?" rebuttal. They have a couple of powerful builds that make a mockery out of the casual scene here. One of our seraphon players quit because the game was too easy (his words) and the other put them away because he felt bad for grinding down most of his opposition when they were trying to play for fun and he had a hard time making a "for fun" list with them. Both of these have to do with the casual players, which is where all of my energy has been devoted to keeping and retaining.

I'm sure the story may be different in a store where everyone is training for the wheaties endorsement, and seraphon drop down to just being a strong list in a morass of other strong lists dominated by a couple of "god tier" lists.

The amount of "god tier" builds is very limited to a handful. The amount of trash tier factions exponentially outweigh them. If a faction loses the game by virtue of showing up, and additionally has no adepticon powerbuild to even remotely come close to having a good game against their opponent, thats trash tier to me. From what I see in a community that has about four or five guys that have to have their adepticon lists at all times in all games, casual or otherwise, yes about half the game's factions are trash tier because they lose by showing up against these handful of jacked up Spike builds and they struggle on hard-mode against the moderate books like khorne and nurgle and the goblin book.

I think using the words "trash" and "god" to describe tiers is a bit extreme and implies a lack of nuance to the situation, which there certainly is. But certainly there are armies that barring an unusual context/specific build will just show up and win/lose against a different tier near-automatically.

And before it gets mentioned; tournament match win % stats are heavily skewed towards 50, because after the first round matchmaking is bent to do that by putting strong v strong and weak v weak. It also does not display any issues of internal balance.

Trash = tier 3
God = tier 1

Aos is a pyramid. Tier 3 wide base. Rising to tier 1, the point and fraction of the size.

I dont use the word god tier though i call it the powerlisting zone.

Tier 2 are those middle boys that are fun but will typically also get wrecked when up against the power lists tier 1.

I would prefer there only be one tier and all armies viable against each other.