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 auticus wrote:
Target audience loves rolling buckets of dice and rerolling them *shrug*.

That is part of the fun I suppose.

 Thadin wrote:
I mentioned it earlier, it's a non-mechanical feel thing. Rerolling dice gives a feeling of control over the result, even though it really doesn't. I know for myself it feels nice to reroll a bunch of misses in to hits after applying buffs to my units.

That’s a good point actually. There is joy in the feeling of personally intervening in the result. Although having said that, a lot of people I see playing rush through rerolls like it’s a chore.

No more a chore than rolling a bunch of dice to begin with. I can have 20 Dryads attack with 40 attacks, or another unit with 30 attacks that has rerolls and get roughly-ish the same amount of dice rolled.

I do love rolling buckets of dice, and even getting rerolls. I also like blasting a tough enemy with mortal wounds.

BUT. I like needing to EARN those things. I don't like it when my army just shows up and does it without any effort beyond slapping the right things in my list. When I need to get off a difficult spellcast, ensure support bluffs are in range, make sure my artifact carrier is still alive, and generally use positioning and tactics to make the right unit get the bluffs at the right time it is far more satisfying.

So many extremely powerful buffs are very easy for certain armies to get off.

I can't think of many examples that don't require support pieces. Slaanesh Heroes sacrificing a relic, Flesh-Eater Ghoul Kings on dragons rerolling their bite hits. Mortek Guard rerolling armor saves from their unit Sgt. Jezzails and their situational no-move = reroll hits. Sequitors rerolling their attack OR defense in melee. May just be my play group, but the army I see rerolling the most is my Skaven, and they all require support pieces, buff ranges and spell-casts.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I do love rolling buckets of dice, and even getting rerolls. I also like blasting a tough enemy with mortal wounds.

BUT. I like needing to EARN those things. I don't like it when my army just shows up and does it without any effort beyond slapping the right things in my list. When I need to get off a difficult spellcast, ensure support bluffs are in range, make sure my artifact carrier is still alive, and generally use positioning and tactics to make the right unit get the bluffs at the right time it is far more satisfying.

So many extremely powerful buffs are very easy for certain armies to get off.

If you like rolling lots of dice that you need to earn then play BoC with a 30man block of Bestigors, get a spawn near, wait a couple turns and charge something, then have the spawn with them +6 attacks, aetherbrooche relic to get 2-3 more attacks for a grand total of for 11-12 attacks each! Thats only around 330 to hit rolls!

 Thadin wrote:
I can't think of many examples that don't require support pieces. Slaanesh Heroes sacrificing a relic, Flesh-Eater Ghoul Kings on dragons rerolling their bite hits. Mortek Guard rerolling armor saves from their unit Sgt. Jezzails and their situational no-move = reroll hits. Sequitors rerolling their attack OR defense in melee. May just be my play group, but the army I see rerolling the most is my Skaven, and they all require support pieces, buff ranges and spell-casts.

It is non-binary; there is more to it than simply the presence or absence of a cost. For example, a chaos sorcerer on foot is a single relatively cheap support hero that provides a free mystic shield every turn just for showing up, and casts a single spell that provides re-roll all hit and wound rolls. The spell isn't even difficult to get off, and lasts until the next friendly hero phase when it can be cast again. That is a huge amount of buff potential that requires very little effort, setup, or thought.


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 Amishprn86 wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I do love rolling buckets of dice, and even getting rerolls. I also like blasting a tough enemy with mortal wounds.

BUT. I like needing to EARN those things. I don't like it when my army just shows up and does it without any effort beyond slapping the right things in my list. When I need to get off a difficult spellcast, ensure support bluffs are in range, make sure my artifact carrier is still alive, and generally use positioning and tactics to make the right unit get the bluffs at the right time it is far more satisfying.

So many extremely powerful buffs are very easy for certain armies to get off.

If you like rolling lots of dice that you need to earn then play BoC with a 30man block of Bestigors, get a spawn near, wait a couple turns and charge something, then have the spawn with them +6 attacks, aetherbrooche relic to get 2-3 more attacks for a grand total of for 11-12 attacks each! Thats only around 330 to hit rolls!

I have a pestilens army.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
For example, a chaos sorcerer on foot is a single relatively cheap support hero that provides a free mystic shield every turn just for showing up, and casts a single spell that provides re-roll all hit and wound rolls. The spell isn't even difficult to get off, and lasts until the next friendly hero phase when it can be cast again. That is a huge amount of buff potential that requires very little effort, setup, or thought.

It's also a threat which requires little effort, setup, or thought to eliminate. Chaos Sorcerers on foot are among the glassiest of cannons.

If you build a bad table. Because of the army I play, when I build my table with terrain, I make sure to give places to hide from being gunned down. Not to my benefit. If there's nowhere on a table to hide something important from being shot from across the board, it's a bad table.

We're not at 40k levels of LOS blocking requirement, that's for sure, but we're also not a WHFB table where the battle is fought over an open field.

Honestly - I'm burned out on the EVERYTHING REROLLING

 Stevefamine wrote:
Honestly - I'm burned out on the EVERYTHING REROLLING

Not everything re-rolls tho, my CoS list has 0 re-rolls unless i cast Mystic shield and then its only saves of 1, and if it isn't unbind.

 EnTyme wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
For example, a chaos sorcerer on foot is a single relatively cheap support hero that provides a free mystic shield every turn just for showing up, and casts a single spell that provides re-roll all hit and wound rolls. The spell isn't even difficult to get off, and lasts until the next friendly hero phase when it can be cast again. That is a huge amount of buff potential that requires very little effort, setup, or thought.

It's also a threat which requires little effort, setup, or thought to eliminate. Chaos Sorcerers on foot are among the glassiest of cannons.

All of us know that is entirely dependent on the army you are playing and the nature of terrain, so I am a bit confused as to the point you are trying to make...?

Just what I stated. It's a really powerful buff on a unit that has low survivability. It evens out in my mind. As far as hiding the him in terrain, that also block his LoS to the units he wants to buff, so again, it evens out.

 EnTyme wrote:
Just what I stated. It's a really powerful buff on a unit that has low survivability. It evens out in my mind. As far as hiding the him in terrain, that also block his LoS to the units he wants to buff, so again, it evens out.

Sadly, not all armies are blessed with long range shooting. Sometimes that sorcerer behind the wall of Warriors and Marauders may aswell be bulletproof.

 EnTyme wrote:
Just what I stated. It's a really powerful buff on a unit that has low survivability. It evens out in my mind. As far as hiding the him in terrain, that also block his LoS to the units he wants to buff, so again, it evens out.

I think you might have misunderstood NinthMusketeer's point.

I don't believe he was claiming that Chaos Sorcerers were unbalanced or overpowered. Rather, his issue is that they're little more than a buff on a stick. He was saying that when it comes to stuff like rerolls, he wants them to be a reward for tactics - not just something that can be freely accessed. But with stuff like Chaos Sorcerers, their buffs are just point & click. There's no real decision-making, tactics or hard choices. The only thing that can go wrong is the casting roll itself - which you have no control over anyway.



As an aside, I still don't think GW has got casting right. In 8th edition WHBF there were at least meaningful choices to be made, though there tended to be massive disparities between casters and armies (e.g. 2 Lv2 casters cost the same as a Lv4 caster but the latter was orders of magnitude better), and far too much randomness, not to mention the spells that could wipe out half an army or the Miscasts that could lose some armies the game on turn 1. AoS (and 8th 40k, which uses the same system) removed most of the worst spell and miscast effects, but they also removed any element of choice or tactics. There's no longer anything akin to resource-management, nor any risk-management.

I think perhaps there is a happier medium yet to be found.

(I mention this because I found myself wondering whether a better designed magic phase would make Chaos Sorcerers and other wizards feel less point & click.)

he wants them to be a reward for tactics - not just something that can be freely accessed. But with stuff like Chaos Sorcerers, their buffs are just point & click. There's no real decision-making, tactics or hard choices.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that seems to be the entire point of AOS though. No hard choices, beginner friendly game where everyone has a chance against everyone because there are no hard choices to master. If you can do basic school boy arithmetic, you can do well with AOS. I think thats exactly the marketing of the game.

I'm not saying that tongue in cheek. I 've literally heard dozens upon dozens of AOS fans over the recent months say something to that nature over and over on why its a superior game to WHFB or other games on the market. I've been told dozens upon dozens of times that if I'm after a game that has hard choices, that AOS is simply not the game for me, and its fans like that and thats who the target audience is. You either like that, live with that, or drive on to something else (and the community building frustration you will likely have to engage in a non-gw game)

And other games that have harder choices feel AOS' influence as well. In Para Bellum Conquest - there have been several people chiming in that they want the rules to be easier, that they don't like that list building is not as strong a thing, and that they wish for things like summoning to be introduced "because its fun", and that they want to be able to field armies of dragons and not have to field regular mainstay troops because in AOS you can field armies like that.

I don't think WHFB 8th edition had many meaningful choices either. That was when GW started descending into easy-mode and making the choices for you.

WHFB 8th was about blobs of massive units to maximize steadfast and then choosing one of the game ending spells for your mandatory level 4 wizard to six-dice for the win every turn (six dice for the win being if you got two sixes come up, the spell couldn't be dispelled and your "risk" was mostly a bruised toe nail after (if you rolled a 2-4 on 2d6 your wizard was toast, but the odds of that were very rare and didn't offset that rolling six dice to get 2 or more sixes was always well worth erasing half of an opponent's army or more)

I don't feel that any ideas on making the game have more hard choices will be met with much enthusiasm or bear fruit since one of its selling points is that its easy mode from beginning to end, and is supposed to be (as I recently read on twitter from one of the uk tournament celebrities) "the beginner system for GW, where players can then move into the more complex 40k".

Me personally, I do hold out hope that this new reboot of whfb or whatever it is is the more complicated hard-choices type of game that I proposed there being with "Advanced AOS" some time ago (that was also a very unpopular request and had a number of people hope that that never happens either).

 auticus wrote:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that seems to be the entire point of AOS though. No hard choices, beginner friendly game where everyone has a chance against everyone because there are no hard choices to master. If you can do basic school boy arithmetic, you can do well with AOS. I think thats exactly the marketing of the game.

I expect you're right but then I can certainly see players (especially former Fantasy players) being disappointed with that philosophy.

 auticus wrote:

I don't think WHFB 8th edition had many meaningful choices either. That was when GW started descending into easy-mode and making the choices for you.

I don't disagree. I certainly wouldn't hold up 8th edition WHFB's magic phase as being in any way well-designed.

All I meant was that, for all it's atrocious design, it at least involved some degree of choice and interaction (mainly in terms of how many Power Dice to use on a give spell).

AoS and 8th edition 40k both removed even that small element of control entirely. Now the only choice involved is which power you want to try and cast. The rest is just a flat roll.

 auticus wrote:

WHFB 8th was about blobs of massive units to maximize steadfast and then choosing one of the game ending spells for your mandatory level 4 wizard to six-dice for the win every turn (six dice for the win being if you got two sixes come up, the spell couldn't be dispelled and your "risk" was mostly a bruised toe nail after (if you rolled a 2-4 on 2d6 your wizard was toast, but the odds of that were very rare and didn't offset that rolling six dice to get 2 or more sixes was always well worth erasing half of an opponent's army or more)

Did you ever see the Chaos Daemons codex towards the end of 8th edition WHFB? There was a table you rolled on every turn, which included effects like 'If your opponents are using wizards, roll to see how many die.' and 'your general blows up. whoops.' (not the exact wording, obviously, but that was what it amounted to). I think that pretty much summed up the game, really.

 auticus wrote:

I don't feel that any ideas on making the game have more hard choices will be met with much enthusiasm or bear fruit since one of its selling points is that its easy mode from beginning to end, and is supposed to be (as I recently read on twitter from one of the uk tournament celebrities) "the beginner system for GW, where players can then move into the more complex 40k".

"40k" "complex"

Joking aside, that's interesting (albeit a little depressing) to hear.

 auticus wrote:

Me personally, I do hold out hope that this new reboot of whfb or whatever it is is the more complicated hard-choices type of game that I proposed there being with "Advanced AOS" some time ago (that was also a very unpopular request and had a number of people hope that that never happens either).

That would be nice. I just hope it's not a retread of all the things that I hated from 8th edition WHFB.

I expect you're right but then I can certainly see players (especially former Fantasy players) being disappointed with that philosophy.

This my friend is one of the crux's of argument and heated commentary. This is where "all of the salt" is rooted in. A game system that had a certain appeal was transformed overnight to something else with nothing for the previous group to fall back on. It was either deal with it or gtfo.

Did you ever see the Chaos Daemons codex towards the end of 8th edition WHFB? There was a table you rolled on every turn, which included effects like 'If your opponents are using wizards, roll to see how many die.' and 'your general blows up. whoops.' (not the exact wording, obviously, but that was what it amounted to). I think that pretty much summed up the game, really.

Indeed. The demon random element chart was one of the things that annoyed people the most in whfb because it was starting to get "MOAR RANDUM!!!!"

As for 40k being "complex", i originally put (lol) after that but removed it because I don't want to get into arguments with people that believe 40k is complex (and there are a lot of them and its not interesting to me to debate that topic any longer). However objectively speaking, there is more complexity in 40k than there is in AOS.

The new game, my gut feeliing is that its rules will be standard GW fare that is not appealing to me because it will be filled with choices made for me by the book (obvious choices vs trap choices that scream out a mile away they are traps).

However, Warcry has been interesting to me so it really depends. They have triple downed on the fact that they are getting more profit from very easy systems (no argument, that is more appealing overall) so maybe this is their concession to the rest of us that want something more like Warcry started to be?

Time will tell.

 EnTyme wrote:
Just what I stated. It's a really powerful buff on a unit that has low survivability. It evens out in my mind. As far as hiding the him in terrain, that also block his LoS to the units he wants to buff, so again, it evens out.

With all due respect, you seem to be rather naive as to how many armies out there lack reasonable means of sniping a character at range. Not to mention any player is capable of the basic geometry required to position a support character behind terrain such that he has sight to one's own unit but the enemy does not have line of sight to him--that is a non-argument.


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 auticus wrote:

he wants them to be a reward for tactics - not just something that can be freely accessed. But with stuff like Chaos Sorcerers, their buffs are just point & click. There's no real decision-making, tactics or hard choices.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that seems to be the entire point of AOS though. No hard choices, beginner friendly game where everyone has a chance against everyone because there are no hard choices to master. If you can do basic school boy arithmetic, you can do well with AOS. I think thats exactly the marketing of the game.

Two points; first is that the balance is so terrible it's difficult to tell. Second, if that is the case (and don't get me wrong, I feel that is indeed a strong motivator) that still doesn't invalidate my desire for it to be different. But regardless, I do think your point is worth keeping in mind to avoid myself getting too frustrated.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
With all due respect, you seem to be rather naive as to how many armies out there lack reasonable means of sniping a character at range.

Complete aside but it does amuse me that in 40k, with all its hyper-advanced technology, no one but dedicated snipers can pick out a towering Daemon Prince from the meagre cultists in front of him. However, in AoS, even the most basic crossbowman can send an arrow through ranks of skeletons and between the legs of a Terrorgheist to hit the tiny Necromancer behind them.

Re-rolls have been excessive in both AoS and 40k for awhile now.

Like, I get that missing sucks and spending points on a unit that then whiffs and doesn't "make its points back" sucks as well. However in a game of dice missing is ok and its ok to fail as well.

I think it should be toned down across the board to be honest.

Two points; first is that the balance is so terrible it's difficult to tell.

Valid. The balance is indeed a smouldering dumpster fire. But thats at least how its justified by a goodly portion of the fanbase that loves the game so I'm sticking with it

Second, if that is the case (and don't get me wrong, I feel that is indeed a strong motivator) that still doesn't invalidate my desire for it to be different. But regardless, I do think your point is worth keeping in mind to avoid myself getting too frustrated.

You know my history all too well with my frustration so yeah I'd definitely keep those things in mind.

Going back to the subject of rerolls, one thing I'll add (and this applies to both 40k and AoS) is that I'd much prefer rerolls be rarer but actually significant.

That is to say, I'm fed up of seeing 'Reroll 1s to hit/wound/cast/save/procreate' everywhere.

At least when you're rerolling all fails then it's actually significant. Rerolling 1s, on the other hand, frequently amounts to a lot of effort for negligible gain. And don't get me started on 'reroll 1s for this thing that only works on 6s'.

 auticus wrote:

Two points; first is that the balance is so terrible it's difficult to tell.

Valid. The balance is indeed a smouldering dumpster fire. But thats at least how its justified by a goodly portion of the fanbase that loves the game so I'm sticking with it

Second, if that is the case (and don't get me wrong, I feel that is indeed a strong motivator) that still doesn't invalidate my desire for it to be different. But regardless, I do think your point is worth keeping in mind to avoid myself getting too frustrated.

You know my history all too well with my frustration so yeah I'd definitely keep those things in mind.

TBF, it is a testimony to GWs narrative and thematic talent that AoS and 40k are so fun despite the drawbacks. "Bland" is never a criticism Warhammer struggles with, and I'd rather have to deal with an unbalanced game with good theme than a perfectly balanced one which feels stale. Perhaps why I have never found checkers particularly compelling.


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 vipoid wrote:
Going back to the subject of rerolls, one thing I'll add (and this applies to both 40k and AoS) is that I'd much prefer rerolls be rarer but actually significant.

That is to say, I'm fed up of seeing 'Reroll 1s to hit/wound/cast/save/procreate' everywhere.

At least when you're rerolling all fails then it's actually significant. Rerolling 1s, on the other hand, frequently amounts to a lot of effort for negligible gain. And don't get me started on 'reroll 1s for this thing that only works on 6s'.

I don't mind re-roll 1s as long as the roll is generally a 4+ or better to begin with. Re-rolling 1s on a 5+ feels like a chore, re-rolling 1s on a 6+ feels like an insult.*

*Now obviously rend+mystic shield can create that, but such is a bit different of a case.

They definitely aren't bland.

However I guess I'm too competitive in that I don't like playing factions that I love that are going to be nightmare mode because my opponent figured out 3 keeper of secrets and summoning an extra 2000 points is a good idea and I can't keep up.

The issue with triple keepers sometimes makes me think that we need some sort of ‘rule of one’ to cut down on spam.

Also vipoid is absolutely right. Rerolls could...nay should...be rarer but more significant. I like this idea. Suddenly things like triumphs become more interesting and significant.

Agreed.

Edit: With what he said about re-rolls being more rare.

Ro1 would be stupid honestly. That means so many less options its not even funny. Many tournament lists would be even worst than they are now b.c everyone knows they can only have 1 of X units (besides battleline) and everyone would play the same builds with no options b.c there would be no options. And on top of that many Battalions are now dead.

If units like KoS are a problem, then raise the points a little, thats why we have a points system in place.

They are notoriously bad at their points.

Additionally flat points don't solve everything.

However for spam I have always been a proponent of every choice after the first costs a bit more than the last time. And then actually point them correctly.

One of their equipment options is vastly superior to to others. Make it so the hand only heals if IT kills something rather than if any of the keeeper's attacks do and it'll go a long way to bringing the KoS in line.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Ro1 would be stupid honestly. That means so many less options its not even funny. Many tournament lists would be even worst than they are now b.c everyone knows they can only have 1 of X units (besides battleline) and everyone would play the same builds with no options b.c there would be no options. And on top of that many Battalions are now dead.

If units like KoS are a problem, then raise the points a little, thats why we have a points system in place.

These are the reasons why I ultimately reject it, no matter how many times the idea pops into my head. Points are the better way to fix such things.

Also if rerolls were to become more rare, would bonuses to hit/wound/damage etc. or extra attacks be a suitable replacement? Or would these just cause different problems?