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But where are the fiends?! Poor things!! We need to start a fiend support group!

Oh no!

A great looking competitive army built to compete in a 100 player competitive event. What are we going to do!?

The point was that there might be an Apocalypse like version of AoS and the overall direction leads there rules wise or that big monsters will be the focus. Nothing certain from a single picture, but it is the expected route to go.

 CoreCommander wrote:
The point was that there might be an Apocalypse like version of AoS and the overall direction leads there rules wise or that big monsters will be the focus. Nothing certain from a single picture, but it is the expected route to go.

I disagree about what the point was supposed to be when homeboy posted that pic from twitter to this board, but I do think an Apocalypse like version of AoS would be cool.

 auticus wrote:
If you were ever interested in seeing how the lead designer envisions his AOS and the game:

https://twitter.com/BenJohnson0013/status/1155886166358536197

*sigh*


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 nels1031 wrote:
Oh no!

A great looking competitive army built to compete in a 100 player competitive event. What are we going to do!?

You're missing the point and you know it.

Is the point that a member of the company made an army to compete in an event?

Yeah, it's cheese. Oh noes. Worth mentioning that he's not "the lead designer" of anything. He's the product development lead, specifically for boxed games.

Can we perhaps clarify the point so that we are all on the same page? Cause right now I think we might have several different viewpoints on the same image.

What I'm getting, is that a product designer and boxed game designer is taking a Slaanesh cheese list to a tournament. Some people are taking that as someone who, at first glance of their job title is not involved in writing rules for base AoS, believes that tournament cheese is how AoS is meant to be played.

Rather than just them taking a competitive list to a competition.

 Overread wrote:
Can we perhaps clarify the point so that we are all on the same page? Cause right now I think we might have several different viewpoints on the same image.

The point is that the image of a quad-keeper army is what an ideal Slaanesh army looks like. It isn't 'oh no a developer brought cheese!' It's that GW finds an army design where a good list is four greater daemons and a handful of infantry as not only acceptable but something to be proud of. Auticus is raising it as a single piece of evidence in an overall trend. The response to Auticus' post was to paint it as overreacting as a means of ignoring the matter he was addressing. It is something I have seen the individuals involved do before, thus my comment that they are well aware of what he actually means.

 Thadin wrote:
What I'm getting, is that a product designer and boxed game designer is taking a Slaanesh cheese list to a tournament. Some people are taking that as someone who, at first glance of their job title is not involved in writing rules for base AoS, believes that tournament cheese is how AoS is meant to be played.

Rather than just them taking a competitive list to a competition.

Bingo.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Worth mentioning that he's not "the lead designer" of anything. He's the product development lead, specifically for boxed games.

He's still someone who played a big part into the new direction of AoS.

http://stormcastpodcast.com/episode-27-the-ben-johnson-story

Here, his message can be understood by "buy lots of Keepers of Secrets for cheesing up your army". And indeed, with the current rules and points they cost, they do.

On the other hand, since he's a big competitive player, I do believe his first intent here was indeed to be proud of his army list for the event with a three colors basis to still have a good result on the board.

 Thadin wrote:
What I'm getting, is that a product designer and boxed game designer is taking a Slaanesh cheese list to a tournament. Some people are taking that as someone who, at first glance of their job title is not involved in writing rules for base AoS, believes that tournament cheese is how AoS is meant to be played.

Rather than just them taking a competitive list to a competition.

Some people like competitive, that doesnt mean thats the RIGHT way to play it. Its just his way.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Well the first mistake is using the StD allegiance abilities; unless you need the knight/horsemen/chariot battleline go with generic Chaos instead. If enough is marked the same to grab the khorne/tzeentch/nurgle everchosen battalion you can do that too.

The Khorne battalion doesn't help much, since it only works with units that have multiples of 8 if I remember correctly

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Thadin wrote:
What I'm getting, is that a product designer and boxed game designer is taking a Slaanesh cheese list to a tournament. Some people are taking that as someone who, at first glance of their job title is not involved in writing rules for base AoS, believes that tournament cheese is how AoS is meant to be played.

Rather than just them taking a competitive list to a competition.

Some people like competitive, that doesnt mean thats the RIGHT way to play it. Its just his way.

Yeppers, I have no qualms about people running competitive lists, in a tournament setting or a game between friends. Casual, competitive, somewhere inbetween, every sort of list has it's place in GW Games.

There's no wholly correct way to play the game, and that's why GW gives us a bunch of structures to play inside of.

Guy takes super competitive list to tournament. Which is what competitive lists were made for. *Yawn*. Honestly, 4 Keepers actually seems like a bad idea; I’d rather take 3 and make sure there’s room for a contorted epitome and Cogs. I’d say THAT’S more worthwhile than 4 keepers. You’re likely to summon a few more keepers at that point anyway. So he COULD be making something worse. Or is it just cuz he works at GW that panties are getting all twisted up in knots?

 Thadin wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Thadin wrote:
What I'm getting, is that a product designer and boxed game designer is taking a Slaanesh cheese list to a tournament. Some people are taking that as someone who, at first glance of their job title is not involved in writing rules for base AoS, believes that tournament cheese is how AoS is meant to be played.

Rather than just them taking a competitive list to a competition.

Some people like competitive, that doesnt mean thats the RIGHT way to play it. Its just his way.

Yeppers, I have no qualms about people running competitive lists, in a tournament setting or a game between friends. Casual, competitive, somewhere inbetween, every sort of list has it's place in GW Games.

There's no wholly correct way to play the game, and that's why GW gives us a bunch of structures to play inside of.

Which is 100% not the matter Auticus or I are referring to.

Then what is the problem?

I don't get it either and I usually agree with auticus. Ben Johnson is a known tournament player. But he's also equally stated that he enjoys the other aspects of the game. So what's wrong with him putting on the competitive hat when going to a tournament and bringing a cheese list? Isn't that what you would expect a tournament player to do at a tournament?

I just wish people would be more explicit about what their problems were with this so we could avoid pages of people guessing what one person means and that person saying "nope, that's not what I meant."

Communication is key, otherwise people are going to make up your minds for you regardless of how many times you say "That's not what I meant".

I think his problem is that the structure of the Battletome tome means that the way the army is designed is that its made to push gamers toward using lots of leaders and very few troops - almost taking only the minimum in troops (ergo 3 deamonettes) and pushing the rest into high cost leaders.

Basically summarising that the Battletome is built around the one-trick pony that is the depravity point generation system and that one of the best ways to generate it is to take big multiwound models that can deal out multiple attacks - ergo Keepers of Secrets.



Personally I do see it as a weakness with the book; its not that other options are not possible; just that right now the way depravity is generated its really built around taking a leader-heavy force and just summoning more leaders to the table for more depravity through the game. It underplays the troops which is an issue as it means that you're ont encouraged to take blocks of infantry; nor cavalry; whilst lots of chariots is not really there either. In addition it pushes some models like fiends out of many army lists. It's not that they are bad for their points; its that once you've paid for 3 you could have paid for a leader and thus had more depravity generation potential to summon more to the game.


And that's the issue; GW has tried to limit depravity to leaders to curtail it, but all its resulted in is that the top end competitive armies are all built around that mechanic.



Personally I feel that they need to add depravity generation to regular troops (some or all) and at the same time either reduce how much is generated or increase the costs of things to summon. I also proposed the concept of capping the total amount that could be generated "per turn" which whilst that would really push people to hit the limit; would at least make it more practical to cost out the models to summon because then the army has a known maximum value. If that value were then made quite easy to achieve it makes it a reliable value without the army having to be built around it.



Eg if you could only, at best, generate 20 over the whole army generating it from wounds given/taken then you can cost up that a Keeper could be 35 points. Now you know you'll, at best, only get to summon 2 in most games (the 3rd would only appear in the last turn if you chose to summon then) and also that you don't need to always load up on only leaders to hit that 20 limit per turn.

 Overread wrote:
I think his problem is that the structure of the Battletome tome means that the way the army is designed is that its made to push gamers toward using lots of leaders and very few troops - almost taking only the minimum in troops (ergo 3 deamonettes) and pushing the rest into high cost leaders.

Basically summarising that the Battletome is built around the one-trick pony that is the depravity point generation system and that one of the best ways to generate it is to take big multiwound models that can deal out multiple attacks - ergo Keepers of Secrets.



Personally I do see it as a weakness with the book; its not that other options are not possible; just that right now the way depravity is generated its really built around taking a leader-heavy force and just summoning more leaders to the table for more depravity through the game. It underplays the troops which is an issue as it means that you're ont encouraged to take blocks of infantry; nor cavalry; whilst lots of chariots is not really there either. In addition it pushes some models like fiends out of many army lists. It's not that they are bad for their points; its that once you've paid for 3 you could have paid for a leader and thus had more depravity generation potential to summon more to the game.


And that's the issue; GW has tried to limit depravity to leaders to curtail it, but all its resulted in is that the top end competitive armies are all built around that mechanic.



Personally I feel that they need to add depravity generation to regular troops (some or all) and at the same time either reduce how much is generated or increase the costs of things to summon. I also proposed the concept of capping the total amount that could be generated "per turn" which whilst that would really push people to hit the limit; would at least make it more practical to cost out the models to summon because then the army has a known maximum value. If that value were then made quite easy to achieve it makes it a reliable value without the army having to be built around it.



Eg if you could only, at best, generate 20 over the whole army generating it from wounds given/taken then you can cost up that a Keeper could be 35 points. Now you know you'll, at best, only get to summon 2 in most games (the 3rd would only appear in the last turn if you chose to summon then) and also that you don't need to always load up on only leaders to hit that 20 limit per turn.

I do believe the book is meant to be character heavy, and honestly thats not a bad thing, many other armies are not character heavy, having a few that are Preist/character heavy as well. HoS is monster hero heavy, sure thats fine, nothing wrong with that. But funny enough, i'm seeing a good number of BoC battalions with 60 Ungors (40, 10, 10) Beastlord and 2 Shamans with 2-3 HoS heroes, they are completely forgoing HoS troops (BL's are really good they are 6 attacks -1 rend with re-roll 1's and re-roll all wounds vs heroes for 90pts with 5 wounds, so they give you 4 points and they can take up to 6 points.)

I would have like to see DP also on all other units, at least 1 per unit killed or something, but i dont agree that you "Dont want to" load up on heroes If they indented the army to be a hero army. I'm ok with it being hero heavy.

To be fair I've always felt AoS to be much more hero heavy than 40k for example. I would almost argue that that was the intended design originally considering how many heroes were available to starting armies like Stormcast and Blades. Hell, they made an extra boardgame just to sell more heroes(Gorechosen).

 Eldarsif wrote:
To be fair I've always felt AoS to be much more hero heavy than 40k for example. I would almost argue that that was the intended design originally considering how many heroes were available to starting armies like Stormcast and Blades. Hell, they made an extra boardgame just to sell more heroes(Gorechosen).

I think that was more the original feel that AOS was larger-than-warband level, but not 40k full army level. So you had a lot of heroes and their followers and it's just grown from that. Which honestly I feel would have been better if they kept AOS smaller scale than what it became (but not unexpected). Like 30-50 models max.

Wayniac wrote:

 Eldarsif wrote:
To be fair I've always felt AoS to be much more hero heavy than 40k for example. I would almost argue that that was the intended design originally considering how many heroes were available to starting armies like Stormcast and Blades. Hell, they made an extra boardgame just to sell more heroes(Gorechosen).

I think that was more the original feel that AOS was larger-than-warband level, but not 40k full army level. So you had a lot of heroes and their followers and it's just grown from that. Which honestly I feel would have been better if they kept AOS smaller scale than what it became (but not unexpected). Like 30-50 models max.

Honestly if many of the Behemoths got better you would see less models ont he table, I would love to play my Leviathan more often (I have 2) but for 350pts when 2 units of eels out damages, can get cover, has more wounds, are just better why take that model? Same for BoC, why take Ghorgons? 200pts for a 5+sv 14 wound guy that does 7 wound son average, and there are at least 20 more like that.

I would rather have the ability to have 200 models like we do now, but also have the ability to take 10-50 models as well. We have the tools, just not the balance.

I think there's a difference between being hero heavy and having a reason to take heroes and having an army where not taking lots of heroic leaders is a significant detriment to one of the army's core mechanics.

In the first instance the army can go heavy heavy, but they can also vary things up and still be viable with other approaches; in the latter the army pretty much has to play the hero game to function within their core mechanics. This puts less pressure on troops and more on heroes and twists how and what viable army combinations there are.

I feel like GW did indeed want to encourage a hero heavy army (and not just because all the new models were heroes - save for fiends); but went just a touch too far with the depravity. I think if they can tone depravity back a bit it can make other combinations more viable and increase the versatility of the army. More versatility is a good thing - giving players more options to load up with loads of chariots or seekers or infantry etc...

Well, the more i think about it, the more i like it, the purpose so Slaanesh is to be greedy, what better way than having a lot of Heroes trying to get all the kills?

Overread pretty much nailed it: it isn't that competitive armies exist, it's that running a Slaanesh army as an army is handicapping yourself--an effective Slaanesh 'army' is 75% of your points spent on heroes and actual troops kept to a minimum. That is not good for the game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Well, the more i think about it, the more i like it, the purpose so Slaanesh is to be greedy, what better way than having a lot of Heroes trying to get all the kills?

Well, look at what Slaanesh armies are in the fluff, in the art, in the images, in the sample armies. Four KoS and a handful of daemonettes are not it.

I don't have a problem with tournament player playing tournament games with tournament lists.

My problem is watching the game every year continue to push the big models over and over until now we're starting to see Infinity / Kill-team-like armies in a regular AOS game.

And indeed if behemoths were better, there would be far fewer "armies" running around. For a variety of reasons discussed in numerous threads over the years that topic "how i wish warhammer would let me play with 20 models or less".

Things have been starting to swing in that direction for some time, and every year ups the ante.

Remember also ... in my area... and I'm sure that its not just my area... dudes see Ben Johnson post that army on twitter, and go out and emulate it. So I'm going to see **** like that outside of a tournament too.

Shrug. I LIKE the big models. I have zero qualms with them pushing the big stuff.

I have no issue with them indirectly dropping the size of the game by encouraging a bunch of big monsters/beefy infantry over hordes and hordes. I hate that some armies still need like 100 models or close to that.