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Could just tell the summoners to git gud. Actually that should be your default response whenever one of those players from your local meta complains about being nerfed. I would be so curious to hear how they respond to that.

I have retorted with versions of that. It then boils down to "you have no right to invalidate the army that i spent my money and time on by arbitrarily changing the rules, I'd have never bought this army if the rules were as you are changing them to".

Which is how I interpret it "I bought my army knowing it was powerful and I don't want to play a weaker list to accommodate players that have weak armies, they should buy new armies to play up to me"

Which honestly can be argued both ways as being fair.

However my campaign group went private earlier this year so those player that get mad at things like that are not part of the group and its a lot more fun for us because we can use our existing armies without needing to go spend $500+ on a new army and paint it up and then continue to cycle armies as the GHB neuters meta and raises others up in their place.

I meant more when GW changes things, but I suppose the response would be similar. But the response to their response would still be 'well if you needed a gimmick to win, you weren't skilled were you? getting some will fix that.'

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
You said FEC summoning is balanced.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

auticus wrote:
I have used a rule in the past where when the thing responsible for the summoning died to remove its summoned units; more particularly in AOS 1.0 when chain summoning was off the hook and we were trying to find a way to reel it in with Azyr (it was a part of the Azyr document for a time)

It was removed because people complained that they didn't like seeing units that were summoned suddenly poof out. They complained that it was too hard to remember which units were summoned by a certain entity when said entity died. They complained summoned units on the table was a hassle to remove because they could have been in combat already and it was annoying to have to pull them off the table.

While not a direct correlation to your command point idea, I think it would be met with the same or similar complaining and people would complain that summoning doesn't matter anymore since you can just command point it away.

People REALLY REALLY REALLY like free units that give them free benefits and putting any type of cost to that seems to exponentially have a dampening effect on whether or not they'd consider using it.

In essence the magic formula seems to be:

{if mechanic cost < benefit AND risk near zero then always take, else do not take}

Obviously some people wouldn't like it, but would it work? Also keep in mind people really really do not like seeing an opponent get free stuff when they do not.

Yes it is balance, i have 0 problem with them. Slaanesh summoning as of right now is not balanced in any way. If i player wanted to spend insane amounts of money to buy 50 of the Harps, he can have them all on the table by turn 3 and shoot you 300 times a turn with rend. GL with that. I would argue Seraphim summoning is stronger than FEC.

FEC has a couple tricks that are solid, but not over the top. Its more of a Rock, Paper, Scissor match, when playing pick up games you can prepare for that, for events its always RNG on who/what you fight. At Adepticon for Team, my team didnt want to fight 1 list, and we ended up fighting that 1 list, the other 2 games we Major and Minor, the 1st one we also won to RNG b.c we counter them.

I went against a FEC top player, his summoning did nothing, the double turn is why he won, the summoning units all died or was away from Objectives and just filled empty space for no reason. If it wasnt for the fact his Ghoul King on Terror fighting 1st 2 turns in a row. Me playing BoC, my Summoning ended up being more useful, even tho its consider weaker, b.c i can summon Spawns for more damage (+1 attack if within 12" for 1CP) and summon Shooting units.

Yes it is balance, i have 0 problem with them

So summoning is balanced game wide? Or summoning against your list, which is an adepticon tourney level list is not that big a deal and is balanced? (because we have discussed that several times that its probably not that bad against tourney power level lists)

Would you be taking slaves to darkness or a mixed dark elf army or a tomb king army to adepticon and also call summon spam armies balanced across the game?

auticus wrote:

Yes it is balance, i have 0 problem with them

So summoning is balanced game wide? Or summoning against your list, which is an adepticon tourney level list is not that big a deal and is balanced? (because we have discussed that several times that its probably not that bad against tourney power level lists)

Would you be taking slaves to darkness or a mixed dark elf army or a tomb king army to adepticon and also call summon spam armies balanced across the game?

I never said summon is balanced game wide. If you go back and actually read my 1st post about it and not a comment on a comment that is talking about 1 part of my post you will see i think some are NOT balance, but they are getting a new book and will be in line with the others that are balanced.

Just like BoC, Khorne, FEC, there is much more limitations to summoning, i said Slaanesh is not balance, but they are getting a rules change very soon and seraphim is the only other one, Only those 2 armies summoning is stronger than the others.

You look at Deepkin and DoK, 1 of the top armies and they have 0 Summoning, if summoning was such a problem why are still some of the top armies?

Im saying, for the most part summoning isnt that much of a problem, there are a couple that can be a problem, but its still a rock, paper, scissor match, as they are still weak to many other armies. ANd that all new battletomes are taken into account summoning.

He was saying FEC summoning is balanced and I don't know how to respond to that. It just is not true.

I never said summon is balanced game wide.

Thats why I was asking for clarification. I just saw "yes it is balanced, I have zero problems with it".

if summoning was such a problem why are still some of the top armies?

I've also said quite a few times that if you live in tournament powergamer land that summoning is probably not as big a deal as if you are casual playing and not fielding a powergamer list.

Powergamer land - summoning is probably ok.
Not playing in powergamer land - summoning seems pretty busted and is the opposite of balanced.

GIven answer to this: don't play non powergamer lists and you'll be ok.

I've never experienced a casual meta in all my years of GW gaming. Everyone just complains about the craziness amd fields their armies bleeding edge choices. After a while holdouts with crap armies usually start new ones to keep up.

I applaud anybody willing to try and swim against that current though. Must be super aggravating.

auticus wrote:

I never said summon is balanced game wide.

Thats why I was asking for clarification. I just saw "yes it is balanced, I have zero problems with it".

if summoning was such a problem why are still some of the top armies?

I've also said quite a few times that if you live in tournament powergamer land that summoning is probably not as big a deal as if you are casual playing and not fielding a powergamer list.

Powergamer land - summoning is probably ok.
Not playing in powergamer land - summoning seems pretty busted and is the opposite of balanced.

GIven answer to this: don't play non powergamer lists and you'll be ok.

Anytime someone is using the fullest to their battletomes abilities against someone that isnt, yes they are going to have a bad time, with or without summoning.

You cant say anything is OP when talking about causal, b.c your casual is not the same as someone elses.

 Eldarain wrote:
I've never experienced a casual meta in all my years of GW gaming. Everyone just complains about the craziness amd fields their armies bleeding edge choices. After a while holdouts with crap armies usually start new ones to keep up.

I applaud anybody willing to try and swim against that current though. Must be super aggravating.

To my understanding that trend is stronger in the US. Unsure how true it is, but if the min-maxxing is worse here than elsewhere it would explain why correcting that element is less important on a global scale. It also fits with how US culture tends to be.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Eldarain wrote:
I've never experienced a casual meta in all my years of GW gaming. Everyone just complains about the craziness amd fields their armies bleeding edge choices. After a while holdouts with crap armies usually start new ones to keep up.

I applaud anybody willing to try and swim against that current though. Must be super aggravating.

To my understanding that trend is stronger in the US. Unsure how true it is, but if the min-maxxing is worse here than elsewhere it would explain why correcting that element is less important on a global scale. It also fits with how US culture tends to be.

I know more casual than comp players, out of 3 locations its easily 4/1 (casual/comp) and im in the USA

I run campaigns. I also have about five legacy armies that take up two whole rooms in my house with all my terrain so just going out and buying more armies to keep up isn't happening.

Anytime someone is using the fullest to their battletomes abilities against someone that isnt

I'ma gunna stop you right there. Most agree on a few points.

1) The external balance is getting better among books just released, and the outliers of armies that don't have books just released exist. The overall external balance when it comes to the game as a whole, defined as every faction, trends to poor.

The tournaments are great so the game is great comes from a larger number of factions now appearing in top 10s (thats good) but those factions largely have poor internal balance which is indicatitive of those armies largely being the same type of build. (thats bad)

2) in a system that sells hundreds of types of models and units, having 10-20% of those units performing well and the rest being non-takes is bad.

3) Tournament players trend very hotly to "the game is fine you just have to powergame and it'll be fine" because thats what they are doing, and indeed at that level the game probably does seem fine.

Thats the point of this thread.

If the mindset is simply "just powergame, then you'll be fine" that is not addressing the overall balance of the game. Thats saying "yeah the balance is bad... so just powergame to get around that, thats just what you have to do" when there are cures for those bad balanced items.

Thats what we have been discussing in this thread. How we get around those bad balanced items.

How to make more factions viable.

How to increase the internal viability of factions even if they have a powergamer adepticon build, because people dont' want to be forced to use the same build just so they can have a good game.

So back to the original quote, not everyone has a battletome they can powergame out of firstly. Secondly, it is not desirable for many people to field mirror armies of power builds just so they can have a good game.

We can do that cheaper with card games.

My regional culture here is very hotly powergamer (US). If you aren't powergaming, gtfo. It took a great many years to build up a campaign group, and even if you get a dozen guys together that play by a ruleset that illustrates how not to powerlist on someone for a narrative game, there are always one or two fellas that show up that want to play campaign narrative games, just with adepticon power lists. It is because of that, that threads like this exist, because we need ways to get around that and be able to have good games that encourage people to play, not drive them out because they don't want to invest many hundreds of dollars on miniatures when 80% of the line is garbage in terms of rules and many hundreds of hours painting when their model collection is largely garbage because meta.

Now the hardcore powergamers are indeed about 1 in 4 players. But the 1 in 4 power gamers infect the 3 in 4 casual players and force them to arms race so they aren't getting turn 1 tabled, and that makes for difficult times in trying to do narrative games with a wider model collection.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Eldarain wrote:
I've never experienced a casual meta in all my years of GW gaming. Everyone just complains about the craziness amd fields their armies bleeding edge choices. After a while holdouts with crap armies usually start new ones to keep up.

I applaud anybody willing to try and swim against that current though. Must be super aggravating.

To my understanding that trend is stronger in the US. Unsure how true it is, but if the min-maxxing is worse here than elsewhere it would explain why correcting that element is less important on a global scale. It also fits with how US culture tends to be.

I know more casual than comp players, out of 3 locations its easily 4/1 (casual/comp) and im in the USA

It's something I have heard from a lot of places over the years but never been sure of. Could be totally wrong.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Eldarain wrote:
I've never experienced a casual meta in all my years of GW gaming. Everyone just complains about the craziness amd fields their armies bleeding edge choices. After a while holdouts with crap armies usually start new ones to keep up.

I applaud anybody willing to try and swim against that current though. Must be super aggravating.

To my understanding that trend is stronger in the US. Unsure how true it is, but if the min-maxxing is worse here than elsewhere it would explain why correcting that element is less important on a global scale. It also fits with how US culture tends to be.

I know more casual than comp players, out of 3 locations its easily 4/1 (casual/comp) and im in the USA

It's something I have heard from a lot of places over the years but never been sure of. Could be totally wrong.

One of the biggest local tournaments (I dont go to, b.c i would ruin it) is a causal tournament, they are so casual that Balewind vortex can no be with in 6" of objectives b.c its unfair.

I play in both causal and competitive, i prefer a semi-competitive honestly. But i do play down (Like i will take a Ghorgon instead of another unit of Tzaangors on Disks)

I know its antidote but my full area isnt hyper comp.

Anyways, going back to the cp-to-deny-summoning thing, what are some potential problems with that approach? I can imagine that saving up for a 'big' summon becomes much less attractive. But at the same time it creates a game of chicken in regards to summons; break it up into a bunch of little things and the enemy won't stop it but the summons are also less efficient, bundle it into larger summons and the result is better but can be more readily blocked. I think there is a certain 'unfairness' that can seem to be in play; the summoning player loses out on a whole unit just because the other guy spent a CP! But the thing is that unit was free and the summoning player rarely needs to expend notable effort to get it, and the CP option is just to provide a counter-play to free stuff that does not particularly exist otherwise for many armies.

The biggest thing that I see is that people will say it makes summoning worthless because you can just stop it with CP.


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I am thinking of a way to use it as a 1x bonus in a game however. It will cost CP but only usable once and from gameplay in previous games to unlock it.

auticus wrote:
The biggest thing that I see is that people will say it makes summoning worthless because you can just stop it with CP.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I am thinking of a way to use it as a 1x bonus in a game however. It will cost CP but only usable once and from gameplay in previous games to unlock it.

It will make it completely worthless and skavin with be top army with no way to beat it. They easily get 3-4 CP turn 1 and can keep getting them back here and there on 5+, with massive powerful shooting and endless spell. GL.

auticus wrote:
The biggest thing that I see is that people will say it makes summoning worthless because you can just stop it with CP.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I am thinking of a way to use it as a 1x bonus in a game however. It will cost CP but only usable once and from gameplay in previous games to unlock it.

I think we both know that what people SAY does not always correlate with what actually works. Your point on making it 1x/game is a good idea though, makes me wonder what other 1/game 'generic' abilities could improve things.


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 Amishprn86 wrote:

auticus wrote:
The biggest thing that I see is that people will say it makes summoning worthless because you can just stop it with CP.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I am thinking of a way to use it as a 1x bonus in a game however. It will cost CP but only usable once and from gameplay in previous games to unlock it.

It will make it completely worthless and skavin with be top army with no way to beat it. They easily get 3-4 CP turn 1 and can keep getting them back here and there on 5+, with massive powerful shooting and endless spell. GL.

Skaven are already a top army that many factions cannot compete with, that is unrelated to summoning. Also, I am pretty sure there are non-summoning armies with ways to beat Skaven.

Thats my points, if non-summoning armies are already OP, that just makes them even more OP if you take away the summoning from others.

Non-summoning armies are not OP, they underperform compared to summoning ones on average.

But that is tangential to saying that only summoning armies can beat skaven, I am curious as to how you reached that conclusion.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Non-summoning armies are not OP, they underperform compared to summoning ones on average.

But that is tangential to saying that only summoning armies can beat skaven, I am curious as to how you reached that conclusion.

You seem to not understand.. if all non-summing armies can shut down summoning armies with 1CP per unit for summoning, armies that are non-summoning that dont relay on summoning to work (AKA Skavin) but also are very strong and can easily get CP (AKA skavin) with the tools to deal with heroes, elite units, or hordes easily as well, then non-summing armies will out-class all summoning armies.

Look at it this way
Player A - "My army is balanced to summon"
Player B - "Mine isnt"
Player A - "I summong this unit"
Player B - "I spend 1 CP to stop it"
Player A - "Can i stop your army from teleporting?"
Player B - "No, thats stupid, teleporting isnt that strong"
Player A - "Tables Flips"


Also, Non-summoning armies with battletomes do not under-preform, DoK, IDK, BcR, SCE, all has done extremely well for not having Summoning.

On average, summoning armies outperform non-summoning ones.

But I am not asking about that, I am asking why you think only summoning armies can beat Skaven. I am not trying to be snarky here, I genuinely want to know how you reached that conclusion.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
On the command ability topic, was thinking about a less extreme version; start of any hero phase spend a CP and pick a friendly hero/the general, enemy models cannot be deployed within X" of that model this turn. Since it is only one hero per CP I'm thinking 18" (double the normal amount) would be appropriate, but I could see as low as 12" or as high as 24" working.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
On average, summoning armies outperform non-summoning ones.

But I am not asking about that, I am asking why you think only summoning armies can beat Skaven. I am not trying to be snarky here, I genuinely want to know how you reached that conclusion.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
On the command ability topic, was thinking about a less extreme version; start of any hero phase spend a CP and pick a friendly hero/the general, enemy models cannot be deployed within X" of that model this turn. Since it is only one hero per CP I'm thinking 18" (double the normal amount) would be appropriate, but I could see as low as 12" or as high as 24" working.

B.c they can gain CP and keep it moreso than many other armies, they have very good range to deal with armies like BcR and FeC (can easily stay away from 6MW attacks), they have the numbers and teleport abilities, the spells as well. But DoK and Deepkin can easily do it too, just that Skavin will be better at it. BcR are still very strong vs summoning armies without summon as well, 1 Drop, cant fallback, 6MW range bombs and massive amounts of attacks with extra movements, i just think Skavin will counter them more.

Also you wont see units like Alarielle anymore, she is only worth her points b.c she can summon.

So, DoC and Idoneth can't beat Skaven? I am honestly confused.

To be clear I see that there are many ways for non-summoning armies. There are many ways to beat skaven and "skaven" is a hugely broad term because even just looking at optimized lists there are a ton of options. So that leaves me at a loss as to why someone would think Skaven can only be beaten by summoning armies.

I am hoping for some insight here thst I can add to the oberall picture.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
So, DoC and Idoneth can't beat Skaven? I am honestly confused.

To be clear I see that there are many ways for non-summoning armies. There are many ways to beat skaven and "skaven" is a hugely broad term because even just looking at optimized lists there are a ton of options. So that leaves me at a loss as to why someone would think Skaven can only be beaten by summoning armies.

I am hoping for some insight here thst I can add to the oberall picture.

You are hyperbole now. You know by saying they will be extremely strong vs summoning armies with your idea of 1CP to stop a summon =/= mean they are unbeatable. Comments like the one you just made kills any motivation to even have any discussion with you.

You said that with the change summoning armies could not be skaven, thereby no one could beat skaven. This is to say you feel non-summoning armies cannot beat skaven right now. I really don't understand that, so I am really trying to figure out what you mean. I am not asking you about the effect of the cp ability right now, I am asking:

Why do you believe that non-summoning armies cannot beat Skaven? Why is it that only armies which summon can beat Skaven?

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
You said that with the change summoning armies could not be skaven, thereby no one could beat skaven. This is to say you feel non-summoning armies cannot beat skaven right now. I really don't understand that, so I am really trying to figure out what you mean. I am not asking you about the effect of the cp ability right now, I am asking:

Why do you believe that non-summoning armies cannot beat Skaven? Why is it that only armies which summon can beat Skaven?

With your "1CP to stop summoning" that was the entire point, to show you how strong stopping a game mechanic is.

How about 1CP to stop a spell? Or 1CP to stop a combat? Or 1 CP to stop shooting?

The suggestion to stop summoning with 1 CP will make armies "like" Skavin extremely strong, armies that dont need or have summoning at all and can have lots of CP.

Now are you done with this hyperboling? B.c you 100% what im talking about and im tired of saying the same thing over and over again.

I don't know why automatic dispel summoning as long as you have CP should be so dramatic?

Not that summoning had always those restriction.

Either it can be dispelled and summoned units easily destroyed by killing the army general, or you start paying points for it.

Of course summoning has a light pay2win touch as the one guy who just invests enough money in more models easy wins over the one who did not.
And no one wants that his invested money is being worthless after an update

But we cannot talk about balance as long as armies can add more units to bypass the initial point limit without a big disadvantage.

And now you say armies with moire CP will be stronger because they can easy keep summoning armies in line with a 1 CP dispel .

This indicates that armies like Skaven are already stronger than other non-summoning lists and that all armies that can summon are worthless with a restriction to it.

But this also just shows that the balance is much more off than most would think when some armies need 3000 points to beat other armies with 2000 points worth of models

I'd say summoning is loads more powerful than a spell.

But thats based on summoning is giving you essentially free points in addition to the points you already have.

And I know the counter argument is that GW bakes that cost in, but I also know that I have the numbers and bell curve in front of me and know that to not be a true statement. The cost of items being artificially high is no where near the investment that the free points gives.

It is essentially a false cost. If it did have a true cost, people would not want to use it.

The purest form of that was the old summoning mechanic of reserve points. Almost nobody used that because the cost was too high (you were still fielding a 2000 point force, but the reward of getting to summon them in and save them from being shot at was not high enough for the risk of them maybe not coming in)

The carrot on the stick in today's game dev has to be cost is way lower than reward to entice people to take, because the whole point of listbuilding is underpointed / low cost for high reward.