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Ground assets up for pre order on Friday

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2020/11/01/sunday-preview-the-road-to-godhood/





Will make some nice additions to Adeptus Titanicus as well...

Man those Tau ground assets are ace. Shame that (for me / my group) the game had no legs at all, but as you say will be useful for AT or other (possible future!) small scale endeavors by GW...

RiTides who knows once game groups get back to running if GW has released another faction or two you might have a try and get it going. If you've two squadrons and some ground assets and the board the whole visual experience in a demo game might convince a few to join in.

I think the hard part is to convince people to play more than a few games.

But first they need to hire a rule writer, one that isn't bound by nu-GW "overly simplified games for babies and people with ADHD" rule, Blood Bowl,AT, and Necromunda have shown that people can handle games that are a bit more complex and had ton of variety.

Also rule writer for this game required to have some basic aviation knowledge and WW2 battle. And read the old book and 40k book, so we don't have embarrassing error like T'au using infrared tech.

Chopstick wrote:
I think the hard part is to convince people to play more than a few games.

But first they need to hire a rule writer, one that isn't bound by nu-GW "overly simplified games for babies and people with ADHD" rule, Blood Bowl,AT, and Necromunda have shown that people can handle games that are a bit more complex and had ton of variety.

Also rule writer for this game required to have some basic aviation knowledge and WW2 battle. And read the old book and 40k book, so we don't have embarrassing error like T'au using infrared tech.

Did you ever play the original AI? I thought it was a pretty good balance between actual aerial combat and sufficient abstraction to make it playable.

GW already had a good ruleset, they just screwed it up when they went to the hex board by making planes too agile, making the balance worse and oversimplifying some things.

There were actually some people who used AI rules with WW2 planes, as most of the WW2 rulesets were either way too detailed (painful to play with more than a couple of planes) or way too abstract (good for big squadrons, but so much of the dogfighting was just abstracted), AI was a good middle ground.

I think I have answered that question over a couple dozen times already.

Chopstick wrote:
I think I have answered that question over a couple dozen times already.

And you could have answered again in less time than it took to type that, and not wasted my time opening the thread again to check what you wrote.

I'm not going to go back through a 46 page thread to find what you answered last time. You should have just not replied at all if that's what you were going to write.

Chopstick wrote:
I think I have answered that question over a couple dozen times already.

And yet he keeps coming back to complain!

I’d be curious if he’s actually played the new game; or at least built the models. Having not mentioned the problems with some of the models in the line seems to indicate he’s never built or seen anything after the initial launch.

 Soundtheory wrote:

Chopstick wrote:
I think I have answered that question over a couple dozen times already.

And yet he keeps coming back to complain!

I’d be curious if he’s actually played the new game; or at least built the models. Having not mentioned the problems with some of the models in the line seems to indicate he’s never built or seen anything after the initial launch.

Are there any problems to look out for with the Valkyries?

JWBS wrote:

 Soundtheory wrote:

Chopstick wrote:
I think I have answered that question over a couple dozen times already.

And yet he keeps coming back to complain!

I’d be curious if he’s actually played the new game; or at least built the models. Having not mentioned the problems with some of the models in the line seems to indicate he’s never built or seen anything after the initial launch.

Are there any problems to look out for with the Valkyries?

I don't recall having any problems when I built mine.

The only issues I've had with any AI models is the damned hole for the flight stand either being too small or too large, but that wasn't a problem with the Valkyrie. The Eavy Bommer has too big of a hole, so it just falls off its base, the Lightning and Tau aircraft the hole is too small so you have to force them on.

Give these as 28mm :/

 CragHack wrote:
Give these as 28mm :/

The Tau stuff is there, or at least easily converted from existing 28mm terrain.

Ground assets up on FW, 22 pounds for 2 guns and 1 objective.

Was expecting £20 so not too bad. Little over £7 per piece

They seem to be bigger than the plastic ones too, by one of the photos they appear to almost fill an entire hex.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Did you ever play the original AI? I thought it was a pretty good balance between actual aerial combat and sufficient abstraction to make it playable.

GW already had a good ruleset, they just screwed it up when they went to the hex board by making planes too agile, making the balance worse and oversimplifying some things.

There were actually some people who used AI rules with WW2 planes, as most of the WW2 rulesets were either way too detailed (painful to play with more than a couple of planes) or way too abstract (good for big squadrons, but so much of the dogfighting was just abstracted), AI was a good middle ground.

I agree with this a lot; my experience so far has been that Tigersharks significantly outshine Barracudas, simply because the loss of agility isn't anywhere close to offsetting two and a half times the durability. The old AI was significantly more restrictive in maneuver. I'll have to go check my rulebook to see exactly how it differs; maybe the new game can be houseruled to work more like the old one.

Also yeah, off the top of my head Sturmovik Commander is a WW2 ruleset using A:I as the base. Seems pretty cool, haven't played it though.

 catbarf wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Did you ever play the original AI? I thought it was a pretty good balance between actual aerial combat and sufficient abstraction to make it playable.

GW already had a good ruleset, they just screwed it up when they went to the hex board by making planes too agile, making the balance worse and oversimplifying some things.

There were actually some people who used AI rules with WW2 planes, as most of the WW2 rulesets were either way too detailed (painful to play with more than a couple of planes) or way too abstract (good for big squadrons, but so much of the dogfighting was just abstracted), AI was a good middle ground.

I agree with this a lot; my experience so far has been that Tigersharks significantly outshine Barracudas, simply because the loss of agility isn't anywhere close to offsetting two and a half times the durability. The old AI was significantly more restrictive in maneuver. I'll have to go check my rulebook to see exactly how it differs; maybe the new game can be houseruled to work more like the old one.

Also yeah, off the top of my head Sturmovik Commander is a WW2 ruleset using A:I as the base. Seems pretty cool, haven't played it though.

I think the original AI manoeuvre system needed a bit of work but it was on the right track. It was slightly flawed in that planes with "very high" didn't have much of an advantage over "high", but in the new AI system even the lowest agility planes like Eavy Bombers can do a complete 180 in a single turn. So yeah, I agree with your assessment of the Tau aircraft, the new AI biases itself far too much to aircraft that have good firepower and lots of structure points over aircraft that are supposedly better dogfighters because all aircraft are sufficiently agile to get an enemy in their arc easily.

The way the original AI linked altitude and speed with the chosen manoeuvre was also nice, as that's how real aerial combat works, managing the energy by trading altitude for speed and then burning energy with tight manoeuvres. Made the game feel a lot more authentic.

The downside to the original was that many of the very high cards were in practice no better than the high cards. I think there were 10 cards, but a few could have been removed.

Protection against ground asset and extra throttle for +1 cost is good.

24pts still too much for an aircraft with only 2 structure points.

Imperials have Thunderbolts with 3 structure for 21-25 pts, Tau have the 24pt Tigersharks with 5 structure. Orks were struggling with their 2 structure Dakkajets getting popped in T1, and they're only 16pts, I think all these 20+pt models with only 2 structure points aren't going to function well with how the rules currently favour the highest firepower and structure for the least number of points.

With Corona I haven't had a chance to play with the new models, but it looks to me like the Lightnings are also going to struggle at 19 points with only a TL lascannon or 23pts with the TL multilasers, not enough firepower to justify the points with only 2 structure.

Thunderbolt cost 23, TBolt Fury cost 25.

Tiger Shark with its 4+ handling will crash and burn in low attitude mission no matter how many hull point it have

With Stealth -2 the Ghost avenger is immune to attitude 2 turret at attitude 2, and attitude 4 turret at attitude 4.

Forgot the Bolt went up to 23, but still it has so much more utility than the other Imperial fighters it's a no brainer.

The low altitude I think is more of a gimmick, if you have so much terrain on the board that it's not easily avoidable it'll lead to a crappy game IMO (not to mention there's heaps of planes that would immediately become useless, like the entire Ork airforce which is 4+ or worse handling, Valkyries and so on).

It's not so much a concern that your poor handling planes crash, rather it's a boost to your high agility planes that they can use terrain to get a free turn.

I guess if you manufacture the terrain specifically to benefit the couple of high handling aircraft (Lightnings, Avengers, Barracudas) they become viable or even a necessity.

TBH, whilst I haven't played a low altitude game yet, it seems to me those low altitude rules need some work.

There are also the chase where plane that love to hang back like railgun shark will be left behind and the mediocre handling will get them out of the game for good. Lightnng is extremely good in that scenario

[quote=AllSeeingSkink
The only issues I've had with any AI models is the damned hole for the flight stand either being too small or too large, but that wasn't a problem with the Valkyrie. The Eavy Bommer has too big of a hole, so it just falls off its base, the Lightning and Tau aircraft the hole is too small so you have to force them on.

Amyloid know when WD 458 is scheduled to hit the stores?

This coming Friday or Saturday.

Anyone else notice on the WHC White Dwarf 459 (Dec) preview, on the table of contents...

"Aeronautica Imperialis.
Page 112 Aerial Anomalies.
Looted Imperial fighters? Imperials fighting for the Greater Good? There must be something in the air!"


Hmm so maybe a Looted Avenger Strike fighter for Orks? Valkyrie stolen and converted into a Chinork? Gue'vesa human auxiliary pilots helping the Tau?

These may be more narrative driven but I'm really curious how this turns out, the modelling opportunities alone sound fun.

This has the potential to be a really neat addition. Here's hoping the rules are good and it's as cool as it sounds.

I do not know how they will look in AI 2, but the community made up some rules for Gue'Vesa aircraft and a list for AI 1 from FW.

You can check it out here:
https://app.box.com/s/2mwdb2pl02nu9mxe6ns0

Here are a few pictures of the new defenses for Imperium and T'au from FW (order came today at home) :



They're quite bigger than the first plastic ones (ork and imperium sold with the first starter).

And here are the new terrains with a 6mm Vanguard miniature "not sister of battle" from the Convent range :



Feels like the Imperium terrain is a bit bigger for 6mm scale.



The T'au one is fine, though, IMHO.


Hope that helps people !

Any chance of spoilering those vast images?

Maybe because it's 8mm and not 6mm.