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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnT91G408iM&feature=youtu.be&t=98&fbclid=IwAR0FY2vPSNF3BPwj8kVx-NqA47nIU2Mn253quCNGoQyOrhfUpyLbZW81roI

I've watched Sylvaneth BR's and they all wrecked opponents (including a Skaven Skyrer shoot clan). Other top ones same with the e.g. Monster 3D6 damage hits ending games quickly.

To win this player had to cheap unit zerg and just enough points to buff the horde. Saw same done with a goblin army once.

I believe this ruins a game. I also choose to believe AoS is "a child" atm and it will get better, balanced. I'm new to AoS, oldschool Fantasy player and tbh i miss Fantasy.

Thoughts

Thoughts are that is pretty much correct. AOS is a game of listbuilding. IIf you don't have the proper counter-list, you lose based on not having the correct excel file on hand.

You have to have the specific counter build or don't bother playing when you are playing at the min/max powergaming level of the game.

I'd hardly call Sylvaneth the IMBA FOTM faction, they're middle of the pack in terms of competitive from what I've seen and experienced through playing.

But, on to the actual complaint you put forwards - High armor saves.

Yes, Treelords of all sort are quite strong, with 3/4 3+ 3+ -1 D6 damage attacks each, Durthu being even more bonkers for damage. But, I've run my Treelords in to SCE bricks. Let me tell you, it is depressing trying to damage Defense Stance Sequitors with Staunch Defender, or the 6+ FNP trait.

Put damage on to multiple Treelords, if you can't take one down in a single go. We as Sylvaneth can only heal 1-2 of the Treelords per Hero Phase. D6 healing with Regrowth Spell, then d3 healing while near trees from a relic. There may be more options to heal them, such as Alarielle for certain.

Try to force the Treelords to split up. If you huddle up hard, that lets the Sylvaneth player do the same with their Treelords, which gives more chances to stack up the -1 to hit Stomp or just get it off.

Sylvaneth have a few good things going from them. Board control through trees. Magic discouragement and mortal wound output through trees. And tough monsters/elites, in Treelords, Drycha and Kurnoth Hunters.

Their trees also make them stronger against non-flying Shooting armies, since very little in our army is Flying, letting us hide in/behind forests. Clan Skryre isn't exactly a good army right now, since it lacks a proper battletome.

Their trees also make them stronger against non-flying Shooting armies, since very little in our army is Flying, letting us hide in/behind forests. Clan Skryre isn't exactly a good army right now, since it lacks a proper battletome.

The clan was Pestilents, one of the armies i saw defeated by them was the Skryre i meant.
It wasn't quicker (tabled or more points) because he rushed the Rat Lord along the frontline and got 2 turned by 3 trees, almost only by their shooting. If he had stayed behind buffing, doing the ranged 1inch mortal wounds and going for the 6+ to chose the better imba buffs would have been amazing.

str1keOne wrote:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnT91G408iM&feature=youtu.be&t=98&fbclid=IwAR0FY2vPSNF3BPwj8kVx-NqA47nIU2Mn253quCNGoQyOrhfUpyLbZW81roI

I've watched Sylvaneth BR's and they all wrecked opponents (including a Skaven Skyrer shoot clan). Other top ones same with the e.g. Monster 3D6 damage hits ending games quickly.

To win this player had to cheap unit zerg and just enough points to buff the horde. Saw same done with a goblin army once.

I believe this ruins a game. I also choose to believe AoS is "a child" atm and it will get better, balanced. I'm new to AoS, oldschool Fantasy player and tbh i miss Fantasy.

Thoughts

AOS has been out for almost 4 years now. It is what it is. It’s not going to get any better.

Pancakey wrote:


AOS has been out for almost 4 years now. It is what it is. It’s not going to get any better.

That's a very simplistic statement considering that the first year to two years of its life it went through major focus revisions. It's launch state was with jovial rules and was basically a boutique miniature game. Even when they added the early Battletomes and rules they were only collecting up the warscrolls and lore and weren't even putting in faction abilities and the like.

AoS as it stands now is really about a year to a year and a half old if we base it around the 2.0 launch where the rules and structure have matured a lot. We are already seeing improved new Battletomes and GW is re-releasing older ones too - Flesh Eater Courts and Skaven are both getting a big update which we can expect to go hand in hand with them getting revised and newly updated and advanced Battletomes.

AoS had a very rocky start and has had at least two or more major revisions of its core focus and structure which goes beyond just rules and into army compositions and what models count as an army and release plans and the like.



Heck have a look at some skaven stuff and things like the Warp Cannon still have some of the earlier comical rules (it has a 13th result for a 2D6 roll). So even some of the armies core balance and stats are not properly up to date.

“...some of the armies core balance and rules are not properly up to date.” After 4 years?” YIKES!!!

Pestilens has always been OP with plague monk spam, the problem is as you see; the guy had 200 of them. That's a ton of effort in the practical sense and can even have problems finishing within time limits on tournaments if the player is not fast.

But anyways, AoS is in a much better place balance wise than it was with GHB1 (though unfortunately not as good as several fan comps were). There was all sorts of cooky stuff running around then, and even for the duration of GHB2 we had to put up with Tzeentch being so massively OP.

Pancakey wrote:
“...some of the armies core balance and rules are not properly up to date.” After 4 years?” YIKES!!!

You clearly haven't been around Warhammer all that long - seriously it was 1 edition ago in 40K and AoS that you crossed your fingers to see if your army even got a new codex/battletome for the duration of the new rules edition!


And like I said above, AoS 2.0 is not 4 years old, its closer to 1.5 years old. AoS itself is 4, but it had huge changes through its early years.

 Overread wrote:

Pancakey wrote:
“...some of the armies core balance and rules are not properly up to date.” After 4 years?” YIKES!!!

You clearly haven't been around Warhammer all that long - seriously it was 1 edition ago in 40K and AoS that you crossed your fingers to see if your army even got a new codex/battletome for the duration of the new rules edition!


And like I said above, AoS 2.0 is not 4 years old, its closer to 1.5 years old. AoS itself is 4, but it had huge changes through its early years.

AoS 2.0 just launched last summer. So its actually only about half a year old now. It does seem like it was longer ago than that though.

It is dissapointing to me that balance is still not even close to what fan comps produced in one year. I know that is GW standard but still.

I think the big difference is that the fan comps weren't trying to introduce imbalance as GW does. The fan comps were going for a much wider bell curve. The closer to balance I seen us get to, the more negative commentary on how boring that was I received. I have to think that GW puts in imbalance on purpose to the level that they do. I've mentioned that before but I think this because

* the closer to real balance you get to, the more "boring' the game gets to some
* they want listbuilding to feature heavily in their game, that is their target audience
* they seem to want to emulate the magic the gathering approach and put imbalances in to make the game interesting for spike personalities. I feel with the amount of narrative that they push out they feel they are catering to the other approaches to the game already and that narrative types will just sort out the busted balance on their own.

auticus wrote:
I think the big difference is that the fan comps weren't trying to introduce imbalance as GW does. The fan comps were going for a much wider bell curve. The closer to balance I seen us get to, the more negative commentary on how boring that was I received. I have to think that GW puts in imbalance on purpose to the level that they do. I've mentioned that before but I think this because

* the closer to real balance you get to, the more "boring' the game gets to some
* they want listbuilding to feature heavily in their game, that is their target audience
* they seem to want to emulate the magic the gathering approach and put imbalances in to make the game interesting for spike personalities. I feel with the amount of narrative that they push out they feel they are catering to the other approaches to the game already and that narrative types will just sort out the busted balance on their own.

Pretty much. They seem to think narrative players don't care about balance at all and will figure things out themselves, and seem to not get that Matched Play style (even if adjusted for narrative) is still the vast majority of gaming.

I just don't think GW intentionally does imbalance; I find it far more plausible that they are simply apathetic to balance and don't allocate much time or effort to it. And I don't believe a majority of players want imbalance either, just that complaints are given more voice than compliments (as with everything) and so when balance improves it makes sense that the people who do not like it would be most visible. There is also the (I believe huge) factor of people who do like balance and are just not playing as a result.

I point to AoS trending to higher player count alongside better balance. There may be issues now but they are tame compared to last GHB's Tzeentch, let alone GHB1 which was a bit of a crapshow. And I do want to give GW credit for improving things.

Here's one big reason why I think they intentionally do imbalance.

At the height of the fan comps, the model that GW chose to go with was the one that intentionally underpointed monsters because the authors stated that they wanted to encourage to play with monsters more so they were intentionally giving them a discount.

Additionally we see the discount being offered to units if you take max amount of them.

The discount philosophy is rooted strong in their model. They feel that it is appropriate and encourages gameplay the way they feel is positive for the game.

As to whether or not the majority of players want imbalance, I cannot stand solidly on any global data since none exists.

I will however point to the very many polls that have existed over the years recently that asked how much should list building impact the game, and the overall results are always in the heavy side of things. That list building should heavily impact the game.

The whole point of list building *is* to imbalance the game in your favor.

I think people definitely would give lip service to wanting balance, but on the other hand complain if the game is balanced because then list building doesn't matter and 2000 points will be 2000 points and give you just as much chance as Timmy's 2000 points.

I also know that was the #1 complaint against Azyr (the fan comp, not the list building app that gw chose to name the same) was that it was "too balanced and boring and list building didn't matter".

That would be a neat topic, one that i've asked for but can never really get off the ground - how you can have both list building heavily impact the game, yet have the game be balanced, as list building is building a list that imbalances the game in your favor if you list build better than your opponent does.

People say that if you balance the game then list building has no impact and I disagree with that.

Balance isn't having it so that ANY 2K point army can beat ANY 2K point army.

It's so that armies built within the same level of skill have an equal standing against each other. It's about NOT having doom stacks or death stars or other mechanics/tricks/combos that allow for extreme power levels to be achieved.

Those big party tricks can sound really fun in design, but they are not fun to play against. for a game where you might spend 4 hours or more playing you don't want something where the win or loss is worked out in the first 2 minutes of the game when they players look at each others army list. That's not, in my view, conductive to a solid experience.


Nwo I think GW's biggest hurdle isn't just overpowered stuff; nor introducing things like titans which require specific counters (which are way more easily countered now than they were originally). It's the whole turn structure. Giving a player a whole turn to do everything then handing over to the opponent has a weakness in that it allows one player to have a really good solid turn. They can do a massive amount of stuff in that turn with little comback for the opponent until its their turn.

This I think builds ontop and makes any power list or power combo even more powerful because the opposition has less chance to counter or adapt. I think I'd really like to see GW consider an Igo Yougo approach - heck maybe one day they will try it with a 4th game mode

I would have to see an example of what is considered a balanced game where list building is also heavily favored to get an example or idea of how that is accomplished so that I could follow.

I do agree that the ancient IGOUGO mechanisms need to die in a fire, and that the double turn just exasperates the problem by making one person sit there for two turns in a row watching their army get nuked before they can respond.

I am much more for a turn system where you can't activate your entire force before your opponent can. I'm really excited for the new warlord game written by Rick Priestly to hit my doorstep as that is based on gates of antares and uses a command structure that I adore.

Listbuilding having an impact is not mutually exclusive with balance. If all units are on approximately the same level listbuilding matters because a proper balance of characters, units with different roles, etc still matters. A game where listbuilding doesn't matter is a game where an army composed of one unit spammed is the same as a mix of different units, and it should be no surprise that people don't want that.

As for which fan comp was used, that one was based in the UK so any others would have to be much more successful to overcome that advantage. The horde unit discount also makes sense in places; when half the models in a big unit are stranded in the back unable to fight they are worth less. Some units have potent size-scaling benefits which compensate, and it's more or less only when the two intersect that the max unit discount actually makes a unit OP. Something like chaos warriors would never be worth taking at max size without it. But something like skeleton warriors are rocking triple the attacks at max size and so do not need such a benefit, nor do shooting units where all the models can still perform their main role from the back. GW got better about that between GHB 2 and 3 with some units losing their horde discount. I also can't think of any release since Tzeentch that introduced a new unit with significant size-scaling, and that unit (Tzaangors) has since been nerfed in that respect.

 Overread wrote:

Pancakey wrote:
“...some of the armies core balance and rules are not properly up to date.” After 4 years?” YIKES!!!

You clearly haven't been around Warhammer all that long - seriously it was 1 edition ago in 40K and AoS that you crossed your fingers to see if your army even got a new codex/battletome for the duration of the new rules edition!


And like I said above, AoS 2.0 is not 4 years old, its closer to 1.5 years old. AoS itself is 4, but it had huge changes through its early years.

You're replying to Pancakey, at this point I doubt he bothers actually reading others' comments, but rather just skimming through seeking our outrage, so to speak.

Lord Kragan wrote:

 Overread wrote:

Pancakey wrote:
“...some of the armies core balance and rules are not properly up to date.” After 4 years?” YIKES!!!

You clearly haven't been around Warhammer all that long - seriously it was 1 edition ago in 40K and AoS that you crossed your fingers to see if your army even got a new codex/battletome for the duration of the new rules edition!


And like I said above, AoS 2.0 is not 4 years old, its closer to 1.5 years old. AoS itself is 4, but it had huge changes through its early years.

You're replying to Pancakey, at this point I doubt he bothers actually reading others' comments, but rather just skimming through seeking our outrage, so to speak.

He does read and respond, but he does have a very negative angle on many topics. I reply because I feel that those who might be less experienced might read too far into his comments and viewpoints and that might tarnish their interest in the games.

Listbuilding having an impact is not mutually exclusive with balance. If all units are on approximately the same level listbuilding matters because a proper balance of characters, units with different roles, etc still matters. A game where listbuilding doesn't matter is a game where an army composed of one unit spammed is the same as a mix of different units, and it should be no surprise that people don't want that.

I still haven't seen such a game exist where list building was heavy and balance was good. Even with warmachine, which was the champion of list building games for a decade or more.

CCGs, from which AOS seems to draw a lot from, are also not balanced, but rather have "formats" of their events that dictate what is king, whereas AOS and miniatures games I've found never do that .

But something like skeleton warriors are rocking triple the attacks at max size and so do not need such a benefit, nor do shooting units where all the models can still perform their main role from the back

Yeah you and I both talked about that when they started the discount thing with skeletons, to much negative commentary about how that their discount was perfectly fine since they weren't winning tournaments. But you know that I agree that skeletons rocking that many attacks have a built in reason to take max unit of them, they certainly didn't also need a point discount on top of that.

The point being though that the models that they are using involve discounting, and discounting involves undercosting intentionally, and thus when you are playing with the proverbial fire you are bound to get burned. Or in this case when you are playing with discounting as part of the core of your model you are going to undercost things that break the game because you've made them OP.

Somewhere on the spectrum some of these things in the game like Evocators were either intentionally undercost to that degree, intended to be undercost but whoops I got burned by the discount model and applied it a little too liberally... or ... the entire design team is incompetent as all hell.

Having seen them discuss things in person, I don't believe that they are incompetent.

So the answer to me lies in one of the previous two.

auticus wrote:

Listbuilding having an impact is not mutually exclusive with balance. If all units are on approximately the same level listbuilding matters because a proper balance of characters, units with different roles, etc still matters. A game where listbuilding doesn't matter is a game where an army composed of one unit spammed is the same as a mix of different units, and it should be no surprise that people don't want that.

I still haven't seen such a game exist where list building was heavy and balance was good. Even with warmachine, which was the champion of list building games for a decade or more.

CCGs, from which AOS seems to draw a lot from, are also not balanced, but rather have "formats" of their events that dictate what is king, whereas AOS and miniatures games I've found never do that .

Adeptus titanicus? Balance is good but one cannot just randomly slap weapons nor is it most expensive weapons are automatically best(most expensive warlord would be 2xvolcano cannon+laser blasters at 545. Swap one volcano to sunfury and lasers to missiles and you get to 500 but as the weapon loadout is more sensible with good roles actually more effective. Nevermind real crazy random combo's like vulcan mega bolter, sunfury plasma and quake cannon where you have long range gun that becomes more inefficient at short range, weapon whose max range is where the long range gun hurts efficiency and one weapon that's even more short ranged in super slow platform! The weapons are basically all competing with each other how titan wants to act).

Weapon that's good when you have proper roles for titans and weapons thought up counts more than just what looks powerful and what looks good can actually be defeated by having sensible loadout. I have read people drooling over 2 plasma gun warhounds and dismiss reaver gatling blasters but in practice spamming plasma warhounds will result in overheats and lack of aimed shots hurt while the gatling blaster is EXCELENT for finishing off with aimed shots(apart from primary role of shield stripping).

I don't have experience with Adeptus Titanicus. However, as I understand you also only have a small amount of builds.

I see that as a similar role as Battletech. Battletech is grossly configurable but a lot of groups make you run the stock builds siimply because the game goes off the raiils if you can min/max your builds.

You know, I don't know this I've ever asked you, auticus. What does "balance" mean to you. How would you define that term? To me, it means that two players of roughly equal skill can each bring a balanced army (i.e. containing multiple different units serving different roles, so not a spam list), and each would have a reasonable expectation of winning. And for the record, I don't consider AoS to be anywhere close to perfectly balanced, but I do consider it to be balanced enough to provide a fun experience.

AOS is a fun experience if two players show up and actively try to build a fun list that isn't exploiting the min/max.

Its actually quite a bit of fun in that instance.

AOS is also fun if you have ground rules in place that put a cost on exploiting the min/max. In AOS for campaign events, I have ssudden death card draws if you summon too much or do too many mortal wounds, since at least in my meta those are the things power gamed the hardest; if you aren't maxing out mortal wounds and/or maxing out the free summoning and your opponent is, that game will likely not be a fun experience for either player short of the guy that likes clubbing baby seals.

And yes it can be fun if both players are showing up min/maxing and trying to see whose list is better if thats what those two players enjoy.

Balance to me means that things are costed correctly. That there is no obvious choice. That there are few if any traps or false choices, where traps are selections you choose that are horrible, and false choices are a menu of options you can choose from but only a tiny percent of those are actually legit performance-wise.

Some examples: Evocators. Those present false choices because they are so undercost and sit in the same role as other models that there is no real choice there.

Nurgle summoning - not balanced because it does not scale. At lower levels the game is not fun because nurgle summoning can tip the game over.

Seraphon summoning - not balanced because it can easily tip the game over to not fun because you can just get so many free points from it that its a form of false choice if min/maxing is your aim, particularly against people not fine tuning their lists.

Not balanced - a list tuned to do a shed load of mortal wounds vs a list not tuned to do that, and also not taking advantage of summoning. Thats a miserable experience waiting to happen. The mortal wound list has a super high efficiency level because for every point they are spending they are doing a lot of damage. The scale is way off base and the game tips over. Can be offset if their opponent has high regen or high summoning since that will offset the damage, but that again starts getting into false choice. You *have* to build a certain way or you have no enjoyable game and get tabled.

If I choose to build a list that does say 35 mortal wounds on average a turn, I am now dictating what my opponent must bring for there to be an enjoyable game. If his faction cannot build to keep up wiith that, I win by virtue of knowing to pick the faction that can spam mortal wounds. I have to actively build down to his level to have a fun game. Thats imbalance because the fun factor of the game is now hoisted onto the players' social contract, which causes conflict and issues. The game itself should enforce balance so that both players are playing in the same realm as each other by virtue of playing the game.






Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ultimately when I design games in this genre I typically do build towards a rock / paper / scissors design for balance. To take my current project:

Sword infantry has an edge over spear infantry.
Spear infantry has an edge over cav.
Cav has an edge over sword infantry.

Missile troops are typically light and lose to all three above but have ranged attacks.

I take those base tropes in an effort to enforce if you decide to spam all of one, you are going to get beaten by a more even force.

Thats a broad overview of balance though since you have to get into the guts of the point costs and abilities.

Ex: if I have an ogre style infantry regiment, that may be able to weather a standard cav charge due to its resilience and strength, but it had better cost appropriately or else I have now broken my balance and presented the false choice of if you don't take that ogre infantry you are losing out on an exploit.

I don't want any exploits in my system.

My realistic desire for balance would be where an average list (something similar to the sample armies in battletomes with a mix of different units) still beats an optimized one about a third of the time due to the player with the weaker list simply playing a better game. To me that would a reasonable compromise between wanting balance and the realities of making that happen alongside a breakneck release schedule and the huge diversity of armies/units/allegiances to work with. As it stands an optimized list will just curb stomp the average unless there is a huge mismatch of skill, and even then...

At the very least I want to see a game where the question "what can my allegiance do to counter X?" never has the answer of "pray you don't fight X."

Sidenote; I played against a seraphon army where the guy wanted to try running a low-summoning, saurus-focused list without a slann general. It didn't end well.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 EnTyme wrote:
And for the record, I don't consider AoS to be anywhere close to perfectly balanced, but I do consider it to be balanced enough to provide a fun experience.

auticus wrote:
AOS is a fun experience if two players show up and actively try to build a fun list that isn't exploiting the min/max.

Its actually quite a bit of fun in that instance.

This pretty much sums it all up for me.

auticus wrote:
I don't have experience with Adeptus Titanicus. However, as I understand you also only have a small amount of builds.

I see that as a similar role as Battletech. Battletech is grossly configurable but a lot of groups make you run the stock builds siimply because the game goes off the raiils if you can min/max your builds.

10 legions, 7 maniples and each titan has looooots of weapon configurations and knights of two type both with good definite optimal targets so neither is strictly superior(cerastus lancer is better per point vs biggest titans and other knights while the other knight is better vs smaller 2 titans. Cerastus is tougher vs low to medium to semi high strenght weapons while questors are tougher vs the best knight killing weapons). I could play two game a week and not exhaust possibilities.

So far no "spam this and win" has been found. Any weapon spammed is also generally doomed to fail. If you take good weapons vs shields you struggle to actually hurt target. If you take good weapons against unshielded target you will never get to even through shields so your guns are useless. And skew list of no guns and rush to combat is doomed from the start due to being too unbalanced in it's approach.

Age of Sigmar would be really easy to adapt into an alternating activation system, wouldn't it? The rules are really straightforward and modular, I can't imagine it would be super difficult to just have alternating unit activation rather than IGOUGO.

Honestly I think all it would need is someone at GW central Rules department to be bold enough to make the change. About the only downside of alternating activations is that you can get a bit more complex on remembering which unit has and hasn't activated. Otherwise its a system that can be very adaptive to a changing battle stage.

GW might be worried that they'd lose that cinematic element to their game s- that turn where you sweep in and smash the enemy in a pounding turn of destruction. However we've all been on the other end of that. We've all seen most of our army wiped off the table and been left with the dreg ends and a feeling of "well that's it 2 turns in and I've basically lost this game unless the dice gods curse my opponent." Not to mention if everything is locked in combat the number of choices to make dramatically drops so responding is very hampered.

Alternating activation can allow for more sneaky moves; more pincer attacks; more corralling and chasing enemy units; more forcing your opponents hands and an even greater sense of cinemiatic power when things pull off.

 Da Boss wrote:
Age of Sigmar would be really easy to adapt into an alternating activation system, wouldn't it? The rules are really straightforward and modular, I can't imagine it would be super difficult to just have alternating unit activation rather than IGOUGO.

I have an alternating activation narrative event ruleset that I use for AOS. I like it a lot. It also gets pretty high praise from a lot of the players that have played in it. The tourney guys give it hell for deviating from standard, but it absolutely can be done.

I have two versions. One you activate a unit throughout its entirety (hero phase all the way to end of combat) and the second I just parroted LOTR so you do hero phase, then I do hero phase, then you do movement phase, then I do movement phase etc.

Both were fun, both had more positive comments than negative, both change the game in pretty significant ways.

You simply use tokens to mark which units have gone. Its that easy.

Its also about 1000x more tactical on the table and 1000x more engaging. You're not sitting there for potentially two whole turns taking it on the chin while your opponent double turns. You're not even sitting there for one turn taking it on the chin. It becomes a lot like chess, with feints, thrusts, and parries into full attack. If AOS had this "officially" I'd probably have to say that it would be one of my favorite systems ever.