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 EnTyme wrote:
"I'm the dude playin' a dude disguised as another dude!" - The Changeling

"You went full Changeling. You never go full Changeling." -The Changeling.

This thread is officially the first time Tropic Thunder is relevant. Love it!

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Until you go against 1 drop army with shooting and then you go second, all your Gaunt summoners are shot off so you don't have to place them.

If you deploy them in range and in line of sight sure!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 EnTyme wrote:
That Tzeentch list doesn't sound fun to paint (not that That Guy would care), and definitely not fun to play against. Hopefully something will happen in the FAQ to prevent that sort of thing. Maybe their free summon can be limited to only one Gaunt Summoner per game, or Gaunt Summoners could become a unique profile. Based on their lore, they should probably be unique anyway. If only 9 exist in the multiverse, why would Tzeentch risk more than one in a single battle?

It isn't as bad as it seems, because you have an army without real support elements and almost everything will melt in melee. Sure it will beat up an average list but plenty of tourney-grade ones have the offense to dismantle it, and with guild of summoners it can only summon LoC.

Yeah, that's definitely not a list I'd worry about in a tournament. It's something that I wouldn't want to see brought to a casual game, though, so I hope they do something to prevent it. As for me, my Tzeentch list is going to be a Witchfyre Coven lead by a mishmash of heroes.

Here's a funny msu:

-6x Plague Priest
-14x10 Plague Monks
-2x10 Warriors of Chaos (MoN) (Allies)

Basically, the priests and monks all have a hero phase ability to deal MWs and the army stalls until attrition from that sets in. The two warrior units are actually durable, while having so many small monk units means they can be set up in layers to avoid any significant number being wiped out at once and allow for opportunistic charges.

You MAY miss out on turn choice though...

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Here's a funny msu:

-6x Plague Priest
-14x10 Plague Monks
-2x10 Warriors of Chaos (MoN) (Allies)

Basically, the priests and monks all have a hero phase ability to deal MWs and the army stalls until attrition from that sets in. The two warrior units are actually durable, while having so many small monk units means they can be set up in layers to avoid any significant number being wiped out at once and allow for opportunistic charges.

You MAY miss out on turn choice though...

13 inch range on those prayers/books. So I could see it being fun to play against once or twice. Its still 140 plague monks. *Shivers*

Will definitely lose out against anything that can just sit back and shoot you/magic you off of stuff.

I think we're getting to the point where we don't need to actually play anymore.

According to your incessant rants, we hit that point a week after the first GHB.

 EnTyme wrote:
According to your incessant rants, we hit that point a week after the first GHB.

Like when the first GUB it is a matter of matchup. We all know there there are some where we can look at the two lists and immediately know who will win. Obviously this is something we are generally used to existing, but the severity shifts as dramatically as the meta does.

If I had to guess I would say Auticus means to comment on the severity. I find saying we don't need to play at all as rather hyperbolic though.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Carnikang wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Here's a funny msu:

-6x Plague Priest
-14x10 Plague Monks
-2x10 Warriors of Chaos (MoN) (Allies)

Basically, the priests and monks all have a hero phase ability to deal MWs and the army stalls until attrition from that sets in. The two warrior units are actually durable, while having so many small monk units means they can be set up in layers to avoid any significant number being wiped out at once and allow for opportunistic charges.

You MAY miss out on turn choice though...

13 inch range on those prayers/books. So I could see it being fun to play against once or twice. Its still 140 plague monks. *Shivers*

Will definitely lose out against anything that can just sit back and shoot you/magic you off of stuff.

120+ rats is pretty standard for skaven tourney armies, you know!

I find saying we don't need to play at all as rather hyperbolic though.

It means often you can look at two lists and already know who is going to win without even playing the game.

True transcendence won't come until we can grade the quality of building and painting without seeing models. Only being able to predict the outcome based on lists is only half the battle - we must achieve true enlightenment.

 auticus wrote:

I find saying we don't need to play at all as rather hyperbolic though.

It means often you can look at two lists and already know who is going to win without even playing the game.

Honestly, i've only seen this twice, once of was old FeC before the nerf and the 2nd was old HoS vs Ogres, but those 2 armies has been fixed (for the most part, enough at least). I play BoC and kill very little, it always looks like the opponent should win but yet they don't. B.c numbers are not everything in AoS.

A good example is OBR, everyone was crying how OP they are, well then didn't do well in the last 3 events event tho they have solid stats. Yes on middle tables they are strong, but when it came to pushing the top, it was harder than people thought, even against old DoT at LVO they only placed 8th, 7th at WW, and they did get a 2nd place at CanCon, but out of the huge amounts of players playing them only 1 placed in each top 10. And yet everyone said "I can't win that match up with X, Y, or Z" and yet they did.

The game is more balanced than what these last few posts has been saying.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 auticus wrote:

I find saying we don't need to play at all as rather hyperbolic though.

It means often you can look at two lists and already know who is going to win without even playing the game.

Honestly, i've only seen this twice, once of was old FeC before the nerf and the 2nd was old HoS vs Ogres, but those 2 armies has been fixed (for the most part, enough at least). I play BoC and kill very little, it always looks like the opponent should win but yet they don't. B.c numbers are not everything in AoS.

A good example is OBR, everyone was crying how OP they are, well then didn't do well in the last 3 events event tho they have solid stats. Yes on middle tables they are strong, but when it came to pushing the top, it was harder than people thought, even against old DoT at LVO they only placed 8th, 7th at WW, and they did get a 2nd place at CanCon, but out of the huge amounts of players playing them only 1 placed in each top 10. And yet everyone said "I can't win that match up with X, Y, or Z" and yet they did.

The game is more balanced than what these last few posts has been saying.

But you highlight a great deal of imbalance present right here--OBR is not strong enough to win tournaments in any consistent manner and yet there is a huge swathe of lists (and even entire armies) that have no reasonable means of beating competently done Petrifax. That OBR has many armies even stronger than it is a sign of how bad the balance is, not how good. To tell all players that if they can't beat an army of that caliber it's their fault is extremely misleading.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 auticus wrote:

I find saying we don't need to play at all as rather hyperbolic though.

It means often you can look at two lists and already know who is going to win without even playing the game.

Honestly, i've only seen this twice, once of was old FeC before the nerf and the 2nd was old HoS vs Ogres, but those 2 armies has been fixed (for the most part, enough at least). I play BoC and kill very little, it always looks like the opponent should win but yet they don't. B.c numbers are not everything in AoS.

A good example is OBR, everyone was crying how OP they are, well then didn't do well in the last 3 events event tho they have solid stats. Yes on middle tables they are strong, but when it came to pushing the top, it was harder than people thought, even against old DoT at LVO they only placed 8th, 7th at WW, and they did get a 2nd place at CanCon, but out of the huge amounts of players playing them only 1 placed in each top 10. And yet everyone said "I can't win that match up with X, Y, or Z" and yet they did.

The game is more balanced than what these last few posts has been saying.

But you highlight a great deal of imbalance present right here--OBR is not strong enough to win tournaments in any consistent manner and yet there is a huge swathe of lists (and even entire armies) that have no reasonable means of beating competently done Petrifax. That OBR has many armies even stronger than it is a sign of how bad the balance is, not how good. To tell all players that if they can't beat an army of that caliber it's their fault is extremely misleading.

Whenever I hear people claim AoS is quite balanced, I am always confused.
Do these people take into account the factions in the lower strata of the meta?

For example Ogor Mawtribes, Stormcast, Sylvaneth, Seraphon, Maggotkin, Nighthaunt, etc.
Following data provided by HonestWargamers, these factions have winrate of less than 45% as of 13th December 2019.
That's already nearly a quarter of entire AoS factions with battletomes.
Their winrate is 5~6% lower even when compared to middling factions such as Blades of Khorne or OrrukWarclans.

It's as if those people believe game is "balanced" as long as top performing factions in tournaments change once every year.
They do not seem to care at all about the aforementioned low tier factions being relegated to footstools for top factions.

P.S.
Yes, I know the data I quoted does not take into account the CanCon 2020 results.
However, the low performing factions I mentioned still does not seem to show signs of improvement, with the exception of Ogor Mawtribes.
I play Stormcast Eternals and I was depressed to see the highest ranking Stormcast player taking 45th place out of 223 players, who was the only Stormcast player in top 50.
Sylvaneth and Seraphon are worse, but I am not sure whether or not I should feel reassured.

That also does not account for build diversity. Khorne's 'mid-tier' at tournaments is actually contingent on a minimum of two bloodthirsters, usually three, and the reapers of vengeance subfaction. What may seem in the data to be diversity is usually only about a 10-30% of battletome options being used.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
That also does not account for build diversity. Khorne's 'mid-tier' at tournaments is actually contingent on a minimum of two bloodthirsters, usually three, and the reapers of vengeance subfaction. What may seem in the data to be diversity is usually only about a 10-30% of battletome options being used.

This. Having one solid list in a tournament meta doesn't make the army good, it just means there's one thing that can be abused.

Cronch wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
That also does not account for build diversity. Khorne's 'mid-tier' at tournaments is actually contingent on a minimum of two bloodthirsters, usually three, and the reapers of vengeance subfaction. What may seem in the data to be diversity is usually only about a 10-30% of battletome options being used.

This. Having one solid list in a tournament meta doesn't make the army good, it just means there's one thing that can be abused.

The keepers of secret spam lists have kept slaanesh sat at the top for a long while now.
People consider them a solid army, yet without the keepers it falls apart.

This applies to quite a few army as well.
In fact, this has basically defined the meta any way.

Armies aren’t graded based on a unit to unit analysis, they are graded in reflection on tournament results for the most part.
In these tournaments you won’t see the poor options being taken.

This also holds true for any army from any game.
In a competitive setting, only the best options will be spammed, that’s kind of how it works.

And it inherently distorts the actual balance of the army. The tiny percentage of tournament players wags the whole body of the game balance.
And while yes, in every game there is a competitive meta, most do a much better job of keeping internal power balance, so even the "worse" options aren't pure trash.

I’ve very much been out of the loop for a good few months now. Are there still some glaringly op armies? Slannesh for example?

Probably a stupid question actually...

Whenever I hear people claim AoS is quite balanced, I am always confused.
Do these people take into account the factions in the lower strata of the meta?

I think this line of thought comes mostly from people who are playing both 40k and AoS or just 40k. I play both systems and in my mind AoS is in a much more balanced state than 40k, with a variety of factions often represented on tourneys along with some diversity in the top 20 seats. In 40k at the last LVO Space Marines were 8 out of 10 listings in the top 10 if I recall correctly. So taking that into account AoS will look much more balanced in comparison.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Future War Cultist wrote:
I’ve very much been out of the loop for a good few months now. Are there still some glaringly op armies? Slannesh for example?

Probably a stupid question actually...

Slaanesh has been nerfed somewhat but still strong.

Ossiarch Bonereapers have a strange faction trait that's out of this world. A Flat +1 to all saves and they already tend to have 3+ and 4+ saves.

Disciples of Tzeentch are coming super strong out of the gate with an incredibly high winrate. People are hoping that will be addressed in their upcoming FAQ.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 auticus wrote:

I find saying we don't need to play at all as rather hyperbolic though.

It means often you can look at two lists and already know who is going to win without even playing the game.

Honestly, i've only seen this twice, once of was old FeC before the nerf and the 2nd was old HoS vs Ogres, but those 2 armies has been fixed (for the most part, enough at least). I play BoC and kill very little, it always looks like the opponent should win but yet they don't. B.c numbers are not everything in AoS.

A good example is OBR, everyone was crying how OP they are, well then didn't do well in the last 3 events event tho they have solid stats. Yes on middle tables they are strong, but when it came to pushing the top, it was harder than people thought, even against old DoT at LVO they only placed 8th, 7th at WW, and they did get a 2nd place at CanCon, but out of the huge amounts of players playing them only 1 placed in each top 10. And yet everyone said "I can't win that match up with X, Y, or Z" and yet they did.

The game is more balanced than what these last few posts has been saying.

But you highlight a great deal of imbalance present right here--OBR is not strong enough to win tournaments in any consistent manner and yet there is a huge swathe of lists (and even entire armies) that have no reasonable means of beating competently done Petrifax. That OBR has many armies even stronger than it is a sign of how bad the balance is, not how good. To tell all players that if they can't beat an army of that caliber it's their fault is extremely misleading.

No 99% of people played the same style of list, that style didn't work, not the army. For example i think Stalliarch Lords is a more competitive style of play and the 2 big 500+pt heroes are a trap to use. But w/e i got laughed at.

Sagittarii Orientalis wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 auticus wrote:

I find saying we don't need to play at all as rather hyperbolic though.

It means often you can look at two lists and already know who is going to win without even playing the game.

Honestly, i've only seen this twice, once of was old FeC before the nerf and the 2nd was old HoS vs Ogres, but those 2 armies has been fixed (for the most part, enough at least). I play BoC and kill very little, it always looks like the opponent should win but yet they don't. B.c numbers are not everything in AoS.

A good example is OBR, everyone was crying how OP they are, well then didn't do well in the last 3 events event tho they have solid stats. Yes on middle tables they are strong, but when it came to pushing the top, it was harder than people thought, even against old DoT at LVO they only placed 8th, 7th at WW, and they did get a 2nd place at CanCon, but out of the huge amounts of players playing them only 1 placed in each top 10. And yet everyone said "I can't win that match up with X, Y, or Z" and yet they did.

The game is more balanced than what these last few posts has been saying.

But you highlight a great deal of imbalance present right here--OBR is not strong enough to win tournaments in any consistent manner and yet there is a huge swathe of lists (and even entire armies) that have no reasonable means of beating competently done Petrifax. That OBR has many armies even stronger than it is a sign of how bad the balance is, not how good. To tell all players that if they can't beat an army of that caliber it's their fault is extremely misleading.

Whenever I hear people claim AoS is quite balanced, I am always confused.
Do these people take into account the factions in the lower strata of the meta?

For example Ogor Mawtribes, Stormcast, Sylvaneth, Seraphon, Maggotkin, Nighthaunt, etc.
Following data provided by HonestWargamers, these factions have winrate of less than 45% as of 13th December 2019.
That's already nearly a quarter of entire AoS factions with battletomes.
Their winrate is 5~6% lower even when compared to middling factions such as Blades of Khorne or OrrukWarclans.

It's as if those people believe game is "balanced" as long as top performing factions in tournaments change once every year.
They do not seem to care at all about the aforementioned low tier factions being relegated to footstools for top factions.

P.S.
Yes, I know the data I quoted does not take into account the CanCon 2020 results.
However, the low performing factions I mentioned still does not seem to show signs of improvement, with the exception of Ogor Mawtribes.
I play Stormcast Eternals and I was depressed to see the highest ranking Stormcast player taking 45th place out of 223 players, who was the only Stormcast player in top 50.
Sylvaneth and Seraphon are worse, but I am not sure whether or not I should feel reassured.

Seraphon is getting a book now so we need to wait and see as they were built in 1.0, even then they have won big events before. I do agree that Sylvenath is straight bad, but point changes can fix them easily. Same for Nighthuant as their rules are not bad, actually Nighthuant has some of the more competitive rules IMO, but they are just to costly by about 15-20% and i full understand why GW is hesitant to lowering them to much.

Overall we are talking about a few armies that are struggling, and a couple armies that preform a little better. But all armies are very tight for GW IMO, i play what is consider the worst army with a so called "30.8" win rate, well for me in events i have a 50% win rate (I went 3-3 at a GT, 2-1 in a team GT, 1-2 in a different team event but this was a year ago, and in local events 3-0, 2-1, 1-2, 1-2) But all numbers say BoC is bad, and i agree they are weak when it comes to raw stats, but their rules makes up for it a little bit, when i can beat IDK, FeC, Khorne, i don't see a problem.

I'm just saying, its more balanced than what people keep calling out, YES there are some clear unbalances and there OFC is a top couple armies and a bottom couple and those should be fixed a bit more, but its not all doom and gloom for those armies (Well maybe besides Sylvenath, they really need something to change, everyone i know that plays them hates them now).

So on balance for me there are two things that make a game "balanced".

External balance is good when they get the win/loss ratios down to 59/41 or better. Currently not even close.

Internal balance is good when each book has multiple viable builds that can compete against other viable builds. Thats not to say every build is viable, but there should be a number of viable ways to build an army.

Also currently not even close. There are a number of books that have no viable builds (external balance is bad) and the books that have viable builds typically have one base build they stem from.

When people try and say AOS is a fairly balanced game, I have no rational answer to that. I realize we all do have our own thresholds of what is considered acceptable. I may consider 59/41 my boundary, a lot of people seem to consider 70/30 "not that bad". Or you play in casual groups where people aren't maxing out their roster so the balance may seem like its not that bad. Or you use tournament results and say if at the tournament level its fine (no it really isn't, the external balance is a bit better yes but defiinitely not the internal balance) then the whole game is fine you are dismissing the people not playing at the tournament level who show up to the store to face off against someone wanting to use a tournament powered army and smokes them and leaves a horrific play experience behind them.

And I know as much as a lot of you hate math and feel that statistical regression and analysis is useless in a tabletop game built entirely around discrete mathematic principals of probability, if you toss up the probability scores for the entire game and do a linear regression on it you will note that the deviation scores are not just bad, they are grossly bad.

Especially when you do the same analysis on other games (infinity for example has a tight deviation boundary that is fairly close to the mean line).

From my experience with Infinity (EDIT: this was a bit ago, 4yrs, so it might have changed) it wasn't really balanced at all b.c of such a low dice pool game, 1 crit hit could end the game for you, or using up your turn to roll for the objective and you roll that dice poorly. To me such important rolls that can literally make you win with bad plays isn't balanced.

I didn't play enough to to full get into what is BiS and not, b.c after a few months of playing i couldn't handle the RnG of the game. Sure it might be well balanced in 1 way, but very frustrating to play in other ways. Balance is also a fun factor. I don't have fun with that game.

My experience with Infinity is that I have a whole lot of builds I can play with that will give me a good game. There are no factions that are really hanging in the wind, and if I show up with any number of builds I won't be playing nightmare mode or just GG turn 1 if my opponent brings a max force list.

In AOS I need to first know what factions are viable in and of themselves (so slaves to darkness is my favorite and up until recently were flat out burning garbage, and right now they are a lot better than they were, but are still going to be facing a very hard battle if my opponent brings their adepticon list whcih in my neck of the woods is common) and then I have to know in that book, what is the one (or if I'm lucky two) builds I can make that won't leave me playing on nightmare mode or GG turn 1 when my opponent brings their adepticon list to campaign and I get the luck of being paired with them.

So I am essentially shoe-horned into collecting a certain part of that faction, whether or not i like the models, to have a game that is not nightmare mode. And then every six months I have to be ok with potentially (not always) having to buy and paint new models to keep being able to play the game that is not nightmare mode because a lot of my opponents trade armies every six months for what is currently dominating the honest wargamer's stats.

For me, the fact that I can play Infinity with a large number of builds is great, and playing games on nightmare mode when I have to be paired against someone who is bringing Adepticon list, because of the army I chose to like, is very frustrating.

I do agree that a lot of people that say they don't like Infinity also say its because the balance part is not fun for them. That same complaint is levied against Kings of War for the same reason. Its more balanced, but less fun because balance isn't the primary motivator.

For me though balance IS the primary motivator. Diverse builds and not being shoe-horned into an obvious build is very important for me. And ultimately a game that measures your ability to win at the table much more than just picking the ultra adepticon netlist is very important to me.

Infinity does have an easier time, because of how tiny the stat variation is between factions, and how generic the equipment is.
The lists are much more equal between the armies (unless someone decides to drop a ku**a spam on you without warning), but the game can be very swingy based on the dice rolls. But apparently they're changing the crit mechanics in 4th edition, so hopefully that will change.

Cronch wrote:
Infinity does have an easier time, because of how tiny the stat variation is between factions, and how generic the equipment is.

compared to AoS?
No, the differences between Armies and viable builds is much bigger for Infinity

The thing is, faction in AoS are not that different by stat variation or equipment, those are overall the same but Special Rules make the point were the difference come from
but this is also the source of in-balance as the amount of equal strong special rules is limited if variation for everything else is not there.

Same for the dice rolls, a lucky roll for double turn in the right moment will decide the game, I can't see why this is so much better than crit mechanics in Infinity.

Have you played "Hive" its like chess but you add pieces to the board instead of taking off and try to surround the Queen (equal to a king) has some of the same movements as Chess too. You might like it, really fun, much more fun than Chess imo.

I don't feel shoe-horned into playing any faction for my armies. All 3 of the armies i play/ed i could make work with all factions (or at least all factions with the models i have, for CoS i have a limited range).

BoC, IDK, CoS.

BoC I play all 3 factions to equal success, and all 3 look largely different from each other in many ways

IDK, Tidecaster i played 3 factions, king general i played 2 of the same and 1 different one for a total of 4 out of the 6.

CoS, i really can only play out of 3 of them for now, Living, Hammerhall, and TE. Living and TE are for sure better, but me and my opponents both have more fun with Hammerhal (B.c i am playing Drakespawn Knights, YES the "Worst unit" in CoS).

I'm also looking at getting Nighthaunt, i might sell my CoS (don't like how they play).

It sounds like you and your opponents also work together to make sure the game is not overbearing for one or the other, which is good and will definitely give you a much better play experience.

I do a lot of open public games so some of my opponents will do that, but a good chunk of my opponents will plunk down three keeper of secrets and prepare to summon an additional 2000 points of models, that if I'm not bringing an equally filth list will not have much of a game against.

 auticus wrote:
I think we're getting to the point where we don't need to actually play anymore.

I do not think I've ever seen you actually enjoy AoS for all the posting you do on this forum

On topic though, AoS is booming in my local area. We have narrative slow grow campaigns, tournament scene and everything in between with players flitting between game styles. No game is perfect, but for a way to have fun and relax AoS is currently a success far as our city is concerned.

Also our local HoS player has learnt, no you cannot make my fanatics fight last, and yes they will pummel your keeper into the dirt!

 auticus wrote:
It sounds like you and your opponents also work together to make sure the game is not overbearing for one or the other, which is good and will definitely give you a much better play experience.

I do a lot of open public games so some of my opponents will do that, but a good chunk of my opponents will plunk down three keeper of secrets and prepare to summon an additional 2000 points of models, that if I'm not bringing an equally filth list will not have much of a game against.

I play players that try to win and bring top style lists, i got to events even major GTs with 200+ people, i do teams and solo events. For pickup game nights yes we play nice, but a lot of the time's we do not. We enjoy both. We just say "friendly or not?" before each game, we also have a 24/7 gaming club with out own chat for local community, you can get pick up games and schedule serious or not, which we do. Last week it was all comp games practicing for a doubles event coming up.

To me it sounds like you are not talking to your opponents as to what game type you want for pick up games and making it sound like its other peoples problems.