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People love to insist that their obviously OP faction is anything but, and have double-rage when it gets taken away; rage from their army being nerfed and rage because it confirms the army was indeed OP.

Absolutely. Its a time honored tradition for people running OP armies to tell everyone they just aren't playing right and their army isn't THAT bad and just l2p. I can trace all the way back to the late 90s where forums were full of bickering on that topic on whatever was busted at the time and its players saying "nah brah you just need to l2p".

Have that going on locally now with a couple FEC players.

And I will say that when I was powerlisting and doing the GT circuit, I was telling people to l2p too, so I'm certainly no angel, but I recognize where it comes from and why.

One thing I've noticed is that some lists really rely on synergy to become truly powerful. One thing I'm contemplating is keeping track of any time a unit is subject to more than one ability not found on it's own warscroll. So it's fine for a wight to grant a bone rattle unit extra attacks, but then if a necromancer also casts danse macabre then you'd note it. Then if a vampire also uses it's command ability on the unit you'd note that as well.

Another example would be a unit of liberators benefiting from staunch defender and then a castellant shines a lantern on them.

It seems like many of the strongest lists rely on stacking abilities on a single target.

A question arises though about what to do with this information once you have it. Sure, undead puts multiple abilities onto one 40 strong unit of skeletons. And when they get hurt they recover both from battle traits as well as character abilities to return models. It seems some armies rely more on this than others, so perhaps addressing this simply elevates other lists to become problems.

I'm glad though that I don't really have to solve this as my regular opponents don't build for list strength nor intentionally construct combos.

The synergy thing has always been a somewhat AoS thing since 1.0 was a thing. I find AoS much more synergy reliant on force multipliers compared to say Warhammer 40.000* as a lot of stuff can boost each other in AoS whether it be attack, regeneration, or something else. This is a cool design, but at the same time much more fragile as it means it gets harder to price units as their price starts to reflect certain combo-wombos. Doesn't help if a unit almost becomes an auto-take like the Bloodsecrator or say Gore Pilgrim in 1.0.

*According to friends who play CSM this synergy thing has now started to creep into the CSM codex.

A question arises though about what to do with this information once you have it. Sure, undead puts multiple abilities onto one 40 strong unit of skeletons. And when they get hurt they recover both from battle traits as well as character abilities to return models. It seems some armies rely more on this than others, so perhaps addressing this simply elevates other lists to become problems.

With undead, or at least Nagash, the problem I see is that in a small game they tend to synergize way too much as all the buffs they have are usually in close proximity to their blobs and their flaw - their speed - is not as much of a flaw as a blob can cover a good portion of the table.

It seems like wombo-combos don't happen by accident. To have the skeleton bomb you need to take the needed characters, take one huge skeleton unit and deploy them and grave sites in such a way to make sure a 30+ skeleton unit gets into combat after getting all the power ups. It's simply not going to happen unless you intend to have it when you build your army.

Same with 20 sequitors/liberators with a staunch defender castellant combo.

Taking a unit and applying a single power up doesn't usually result in a wombo-combo situation.

I wonder what effect an event rule would have that said something like "other than battle traits, a unit can only benefit from a single ability not found on it's warscroll in a given phase"? For example, a player with a unit of skeletons that has both an extra attack from a wight lord and danse macabre cast on it by a necromancer would have to choose which bonus to apply when it came time to actually fight with the skeletons. If they chose the extra attack, danse macabre would have no effect.

Would this wreck the game or improve it?

There are actually simple ways to fix the problems with FEC Courts, I believe.

Just put the mortal wounds of Terrorgheist's maw on 6 to wound, and D6 instead of full 6. Would still be interesting, but far more difficult to achieve - and give a more fair choice with Zombie Dragon.

For Feeding Frenzy, just remove the part saying it's "immediate" - just let it attack another time, but as normal activation or end of combat phase. Even if it's just normal activation, it would already change a lot of things, even with Gristlegore warlord.

For Summoning, just price accordingly like Karanak. It will mean the Archregent would get way more expensive, as it should be. I still believe these guys shouldn't be allowed more than one per army, but I understand people wanting to have the choice of taking multiple warscrolls for whatever reason.

Throne should give free summoning only once per turn.

A lot of people drawn to aos (including the devs) are drawn to it FOR the wombo combo listbuilding so i think limiting it would break the target demographic.

auticus wrote:
A lot of people drawn to aos (including the devs) are drawn to it FOR the wombo combo listbuilding so i think limiting it would break the target demographic.

Sure, but let's just assume that I have among my local players enough people who are anti-wombo-combo to have a 6 or 8 or 12 person sorta narrative event happen where you can't combo. One ability from off the warscroll per phase.

Would this actually work or is the game going to totally break? Or is it going to get better?

Can it really get worse?

A lot of armies are built around stacking more than one buff, and it is not inherently a bad thing. For example, nighthaunt models get +1 to wound from a guardian of souls, and re-roll hits of 1 from a spirit torment. Limiting to one buff would mean one of those characters aura abilities would then do nothing at least some of the time, which isn't very fun. Any buff spell would mean giving up one of those, as would any of the buff command abilities.

Armies that do not rely on buffs would have a massive advantage.

I think you might be right about some armies needing it. The issue seems to be that the various abilities are designed to be used here and there and combined to a small degree, but when people select them and build the army around them, they have a much larger impact.

I find that when an exploit is happening there is always an undercosted unit(s) involved. In an appropriately pointed environment buff stacking is, in my experience, just another tactic available to players.

 frozenwastes wrote:
I think you might be right about some armies needing it. The issue seems to be that the various abilities are designed to be used here and there and combined to a small degree, but when people select them and build the army around them, they have a much larger impact.

So...the problem is designing an army...well?

There are 3 actual problems with GW balancing. Outside of ambiguous wordings at least.

1. GW has no concept of a power ceiling. They create combos that are just...just way too much all the time. Sometimes on purpose, sometimes on accident. But yeah, they are the kings of create a single unit or combo that just utterly eclipses everything else. I think part of this comes from them not fully understanding that putting many buffs on one unit is almost always going to be superior to putting singular buffs on many units. This is actually not usually a huge problem these days because they do tend to fix them with points increases and FAQs a lot of the time. But still, it is an issue.

2. They create units that are obviously above everything else in the battletome and never fully acknowledge it. The idea that someone put a Retributor next to an Evocator and though, 'yeah, those are about the same' is insanity.

3. The BIGGEST problem with GW balancing is actually how many just...dogshit units they come out with. Look at Stormcast. Literally no one is using Palladors, any of the 4 units of Dracoths, Vanguard Hunters, Hurricane Crossbows, Castigators, any of the 3 units of Paladins, about Half of all the characters, liberators, etc. 3/4ths of that book ranges from mediocre to terrible. GW has trouble balancing the top end, but they're terrible at balancing the bottom.


To be fair to GW though, some of the issue does legitimately lie on the backs of the player. I know L2P is somewhat of a meme, but it's also a VERY REAL THING. The vast majority of people who play GW games are bad at them. Most of the time, it's due to lack of practice. Most players are lucky to get more than a game a week. Getting competitive, tournament style games you're lucky if your area supports getting you one a month. BUT there are areas, like Southern California, that you can get dozens of games in per week if your occupation and family give you the time to do so. Those two players meet at tournaments all the time and when Mr. 200 games this year stomps Mr. 20 games, it's very easy to put the bulk of the game on the list and not Mr. 20 games' complete lack of experience in dealing with what's out there, vs Mr. 200 games who knows what every unit is going to do before it does it.

Removed - BrookM

ERJAK wrote:
3. The BIGGEST problem with GW balancing is actually how many just...dogshit units they come out with. Look at Stormcast. Literally no one is using Palladors, any of the 4 units of Dracoths, Vanguard Hunters, Hurricane Crossbows, Castigators, any of the 3 units of Paladins, about Half of all the characters, liberators, etc. 3/4ths of that book ranges from mediocre to terrible. GW has trouble balancing the top end, but they're terrible at balancing the bottom.

I think you're right that this is the biggest issue. I still like taking my retributors, my knight-questor and my castigators. Combo or not, that's probably the greatest cause of my tendancy to lose against anyone who actually built a list to be powerful. My group tends to field things based on what they think looks cool, want to paint or like in the lore/novels, but we're adjacent to an active tournament scene so we occasionally end up with a game with someone who's looking to test out their gristlegore tournament list. Our army lists are built almost by accident and when we play against one that's made up of the best stuff and has combos, it's pretty much a single gaming experience over and over. "I'm here to do my powerful thing and you're here to have it done to you."

I've taken to not engaging and just sort of politely declining tournament practice games, but I feel like that's just ignoring the problem. At this point I usually just say that I don't play matched play anymore or decline to play with unpainted models on the table and that seems to cut out 90%+ of the problem, but it does seem like GW's balance failure is necessitating such a division.

Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe tournament minded gamers are best served by playing in events and playing practice games against other people who plan on attending the same events and those of us not interested in that can just do our own thing elsewhere. Maybe it's okay that GW's balance failure means that when those worlds collide it's just the same steamroller over and over again, so why bother?

GW devs have said time and again they expect the community to police themselves.

So the best approach is to do exactly what you said and let the tourney minded guys bash each other and let the others play themselves and not try to mix the two.

Some of us are lucky enough to be in a community that supports both. I think that is one of the biggest factors that leads me to be so critical of balance; I see and play on both sides of the coin. I bring deliberately weak lists to run against new players, moderate lists against players with some experience, and also run in tournaments (and do well). I experience first hand how insane the difference in power level is and experience how player skill factors in.

I play pretty much every week, mostly to playtest campaign scenarios. Our tournament guys have either moved on to 40k (where the bulk of the powerlisting is now) or have formed a small cell in a new store where they do tournament leagues.

I'm critical of the balance for mostly the same reasons as you. I watch a constant stream of players exit AOS for other games due to the whacked out list disparities and it sucks.

Biggest obstacle to recruitment :(

Recruiting is not that hard. Its retainment thats very difficult.

People are always interested. Its when they come in you have to let them know whats going to be a trap for their money and whats not. There is almost always a universal expectation that all of the factions are viable in some way.

Once they find out thats not the case they either adopt the competitive ebay attitude or they cut their losses and move on.

I hear you guys. I have to admit, I feel ‘conned’ by the KO. I’ve spent over £400 on an army that can barely function in the game due to a mixture of inherent design flaws and the competition completely outclassing it in every regard. If I was ‘new’, I’d be very peeved...to the point that I’d consider walking.

Also, I tried my hand at adjusting some warscolls; the Abhorrant Ghoul King on Terrorgheist and the Arkanaut Frigate. I would like to have posted the new warscrolls here but they don’t seem to work on iPads. So I’ll just post the basics:

Abhorrant Ghoul King on Royal Terrorgheist:

Fanged Maw still retains the Gaping Maw ability (on an unmodified hit roll of 6, it inflicts 6 mortal wounds instead of normal damage) but it is now modified so that it’s more like a Levidon’s crushing jaw. That is to say, it’s 1” range, 1 attack, hits on 3+, wounds on 2+, has -2 Rend and does D6 damage. So it’s just a single, powerful, potentially very powerful attack rather than a ridiculous unit deleting potential 18 mortal wound spamming insult to every opponent.

Death Shriek is now just D3 mortal wounds if it beats the targets bravery. That’s it.

Summon Royal Guard is now only usable if the model is your general. Instantly cuts down on spamming nonsense.

Meanwhile, the Arkanaut Frigate is more, significantly, changed:

It now has a movement of 12” and a 4+ save.

The range of the heavy sky cannon and heavy sky hook have been bumped up to 32”. And I will fight people on this. You know how annoying it is to have your supposedly magical high tec for the setting artillery significantly outranged by simple catapults?

Belaying Values now start at 6 Attacks and degrade to 2, but are still 1”/1/4+/4+/-/1.

Detonation Drills and Grudgesettler bombs are now two separate abilities: drills are dropped against enemy non flying chargers and force them to fight last as before, but they now work on a 2+. Grudgesettler bombs are now dropped on 1 enemy unit that the frigate flew over; on a 2+, it takes D3 mortal wounds.

Skymines are now roll a D6 if a flying enemy unit ends it charge within 1”; on a 2+, the unit takes D3 mortal wounds.

The skyhook ability is modified to match the errata.

Tireless Endrinrigger is now automatic.

Finally, disembarking is done in the movement phase, with it counting as the units movement. Embarking is also done in the movement phase. Basically, 40k rules are in effect now.

There was another change that I’ve been considering; using the garrison rules for ships. Which means that units embarked upon them are still in the game, can attack (and be attacked in return) and use their abilities. I tried it once before in a test game; it made a massive difference, but because I still lost, it still seemed fair.

What do you guys think? I hope these changes give an insight into my thinking about what’s fair and balanced.

I would change the ships to work like garrisons in all respects, including how getting in and out works. Bump the save up a point. Change nothing else. The key is to make as few changes as possible, and make said changes as simple as possible. It would be great to do a full rework but as a fan change it needs to be as palatable as you can make it.

That 1 maw attack is going to turn into 3-5 when FEC attack buffs get involved. 1" range doesn't make sense when every other dragonoid still has a 3" one. IMO just drop the MWs, no other dragonoid maw does that and it is completely unnecessary. I agree with the scream change, though just d3 may be overdoing it; personally I would go with d3+1.

I suggested the FEC changes in my campaign channel. If i do them we will have no FEC players lol.


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SMH. They released a fyreslayer errata which states you cannot stack the battlesmith save bonus.

And people are going ballistic that they just painted six of them because they wanted to stack those onto a couple of already undercost hearthguard berzerkers.

Because we all need invulnerable death star units to return that also have high damage output.

And people are upset because GW put a stop to that.

auticus wrote:

SMH. They released a fyreslayer errata which states you cannot stack the battlesmith save bonus.

And people are going ballistic that they just painted six of them because they wanted to stack those onto a couple of already undercost hearthguard berzerkers.

Because we all need invulnerable death star units to return that also have high damage output.

And people are upset because GW put a stop to that.

Not seeing anyone rage about it on the Fyreslayer pages that I belong to. Mostly seeing people being reasonable about how it was an obvious breakable exploit and they were grateful that it was addressed so quickly for the health of the overall game.

Only "raging" I saw was how the first FAQ neutered the Forge, which was also fixed today.

What did the FAQ do with the forge?

I've seen three people now say something to the effect that they just bought and painted or bought and assembled six battlesmiths and GW just ruined them and invalidated their purchase in one fell swoop.

This morning.

Karma in action. Also their fault for not waiting a week. Also battlesmith spam is not even the best way to go in the first place.

auticus wrote:
I've seen three people now say something to the effect that they just bought and painted or bought and assembled six battlesmiths and GW just ruined them and invalidated their purchase in one fell swoop.

This morning.

Are they perhaps talking tongue-in-cheek with regard to the change.

auticus wrote:
I've seen three people now say something to the effect that they just bought and painted or bought and assembled six battlesmiths and GW just ruined them and invalidated their purchase in one fell swoop.

This morning.

Link? I'd love to gets some lulz.

auticus wrote:
I've seen three people now say something to the effect that they just bought and painted or bought and assembled six battlesmiths and GW just ruined them and invalidated their purchase in one fell swoop.

This morning.

Well I do believe they're in the minority here.

Also, it's not specific to AoS. When it was still Battle or it happens in 40k, it's the same : optimized hardcore competitive players whining about their "smart" combo list being broken by the nerfs/fix of new edition/FAQ/erratas for some time, before they get forgotten. You can see that as well in Warmachine/Horde, actually.

Unless I'm missing something, 6 Battlesmiths would also max out the Leader allotment at the 2000 point level. With the B-smith being the most expensive hero on foot in the book, that's 840 points before any battalions or other units.

No Droths, no prayers or magmic invocations, no way to tap into the Magmic Battleforge to get the most out of your Ur-gold Runes at no points cost, limit the command traits and command abilities to the Lodge specific options, and if you did take a Lodge, none of the Relics that must be taken first are particularly useful to B-smiths, no Runesmiter tunnelling, and crucially no Hearthguard Berzerkers as Battleline. I'm sure there's more I'm missing, but this is right off the top of my head.

Its entirely possible that someone went out and bought 6 Battlesmiths, but I find it highly, highly unlikely. No serious player would do that. It makes no sense. Most of the chatter in the FB groups and Twitter threads about stacking B-smith aura was in the context of "It'll definitely get FAQ'd. They generally frown on stacking the same abilities." And here we are.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
What did the FAQ do with the forge?

There was wording in the first errata/faq that said the buffs that the Forge provides went off in a different phase then when you'd cast the actual spells, or something to that effect(I may have it backwards). Was an obvious boo-boo and was quickly fixed by the FAQ team, to their credit.

Anyone play against the new Slaanesh? How anyone can say its not just a TOTAL hard counter to FEC..? Its so frustrating because it pushes the game towards rock paper scissors with tiny plastic people instead of hand gestures. I love the new Slaanesh book. On point in terms of style, theme, models..even the rules seem strong but not OP. Hate that it all seems planned and pre-mediatated to move the game in this direction. Also the depravity summoning is insane. Being able to summon 2 Keeper of Secrets per game is fething ludacris. In my Nurgle army I havent even been able to SNIFF summoning a GUO in the 1.5 years the book has been out.