GH2017: the honeymoon is over

[Captain Marius]

The other house rule listed with base to base is points per model - does anyone here do that?

[Thanatos Ares]

admittedly i haven't read back on this very interesting discussion, and i apologise if its been covered.

that being said in the debate of house rules vs.... it seems to me that matched play is the biggest subject for these house rules...

why not just play open play as you want to? matched play has a lot of factors bringing the balance of the game, house ruling something, whilst being a potentially very obvious and community embracing change, will always effect the inherent balance of the way the game (in matched play only) plays and feels.

 

house ruling has always been a thing and i hope it continues to be as well, but i feel as though it belongs in the open play arena of the game. 

just my 2pennies 

[FRoper]

I think House rules should only be agreed between participants or by the organisers of a tournament. 

Some House rules makes a lot of sense such as measuring base to base in terms of making the game fairer as well as easier to play, but in terms of collecting it makes more sense for Games workshop to ignore that as they would have to rebase the entire range to single style rather than changing them slowly, when the product runs out. 

Open play is the easiest to add house rules to as there is no restrictions. it is also something that I personally play with friends in special cases with unique scenarios  such as a hold out mission until pickup. house rules make sense for this, so that it makes the scenarios more special. 

House rules will remain, and I like using them if myself and my group feel that they make the game either more balanced or generally more interesting to play. 

[Arkiham]

1 hour ago, Auticus said:

My problem with just leaving them as house rules with no official mention is that I am an event organizer and its a very difficult task to putting unofficial houserules in events, even if my events are narrative events and not matched play tournaments.

The biggest AOS event in the world had house ruled nearly the entire thing, custom scenarios, volume-metric measurement, additional core rules seen here and here so house ruled events in general clearly are not the issue. 

you keep using this term " unofficial house rules "

 the only ones mentioned are mentioned in passing comments, they arent expanded upon or explained in any further way other than a small paragraph, measuring base to base or costing the models individually, ones which arent dramatically changing the core mechanics of the game, measuring base to base or costing the units per model rather than unit doesnt really affect the game as much as forced alternative turns...

its not the "officalness " of the event, its if people want to do it or not. if people do not want to play with certain rules they wont goto it, if people want to play base to base they will, (and did, before it was mentioned in the generals handbook), if people dont want to play with alternating turns they wont.

i dont mean to offend saying this but.

Have you ever considered that if you're struggling to get people to attend your events with your house rules implemented, that maybe people just dont want to do them in your area? and by making them " official/unofficial but mentioned"  is just forcing something onto people they do not want? so may end up not playing all together if this happens.

dont get me wrong, i want to see people playing and expansion and your events be successful, but you cant force people to willingly participate in something if they dont want to. 

[Arkiham]

Lol what?!

I thought this edition of 40k is widely regarded as one of the best ever made.

It sounds like they just like picking faults in the game rather than playing it and using that as an excuse to quit.

The more "advanced "rules tbh sound like making the game easier, and less tactical, forced alternative turns, stopping shooting into combat, are they then painting their armies to the exact specifications laid out in the army books ? for instance all bloodletters must be red otherwise thats house ruling...  

 

Tbh with their attitude, they sound excatly like the type of people I'd rather not play than accommodate.

[RuneBrush]

Have to agree with @Arkiham here, it sounds like you've sadly a group of people locally who enjoy complaining!  I expect that if GW did make an advanced set of rules, they'd likely find fault in them too.  Sadly I think you're on a hiding to nothing trying to please them, regardless of if GW made some house rules official or not.  It generally only takes one pithy comment to start off a snowball effect too.

[the_prophecy]

i was drawn back to Death BECAUSE of the new GHB2017. I always wanted to play a vampire themed army and with the soulblight allegiance, iam all in now. 

The Nighthaunt Allegiance is also a great thematically way to represent a ghost army on the battlefield, i cant understand why death players whine because of that. Death got more Allegiances and Deathrattle will be the next Death Release this Year so what??

[Seraphage]

On 20/9/2017 at 11:13 PM, heywoah_twitch said:

My army got nerfed hugely to stop people from taking my best model to make waac lists with a bunch of random non-bcr units. So now the cheese list is dead (yay), but unfortunately so is BCR, as they did not use a scalpel, they used a chainsaw (and it hit random stuff that wasn't even in the cheese lists like stonehorn).

Ehm no offense but.. with all the damage output, something with a HERO keyword and thus taking objectives if needed, having 27 wounds minimum made sense to you ? His wounds number alone reminded of other games as the maximum of all the rest was 10 - 12 besides few very expensive choices of 16

I am no destruction player, but the experienced / tour winner ones I know, think of this change as rational and senseful !

[Thebiggesthat]

I do sympathise with BCR players, it's a horrendous nerf. I played one last week and boy, what a change 

[Captain Marius]

3 hours ago, Thebiggesthat said:

I do sympathise with BCR players, it's a horrendous nerf. I played one last week and boy, what a change 

I think its a good change, it stops my huskard on stonehorn being point and click - now he has to think twice about running full pelt into a ton of damage 1 attacks! The fact my thundertusk STILL does 6 mortal wounds on a 2+ at range makes me feel the faction has some better internal balance now.

[Infeston]

5 hours ago, Seraphage said:

Ehm no offense but.. with all the damage output, something with a HERO keyword and thus taking objectives if needed, having 27 wounds minimum made sense to you ? His wounds number alone reminded of other games as the maximum of all the rest was 10 - 12 besides few very expensive choices of 16

I am no destruction player, but the experienced / tour winner ones I know, think of this change as rational and senseful !

And now Stonehorns have to die through massive shots against simple base units?  It doesn't even fit their theme! Lorewise they are known for their Stone Skeleton and big defenses. Also Stonehorns were always very expensive. 460 points for a Frostlord. Maybe they are very resistant, but on the other hand they also got big weaknesses. Also they were only that strong because of the Battle Brew and the fast movement. I think many people would have been okay with just nerfing battle brew and the destruction movement. But no, they also had to nerf the Stonehorns most signifant ability. Everybody knows you can also outplay them by putting weak units in the 12'' range, so that they have to charge them. Maybe you couldn't kill them that fast, but most scenarios don't even need the player to kill all enemy units. 

And BCR has no real body count units. I could maybe take Grots as allies to get more body count. They also have no massive shooting. And Thundertusk gets close to useless if they suffered some wounds.

But just because tournament winners say something is unfair doesn't mean they are right. Also it was the combination of Kunning Rukk and Stonehorn that was unfair.

But has anyone every played pure Beastclaw Raiders and found playing against them that unfair? I have always heard about the cheese lists which were unfair. There were decisions which I would call rational, like nerfing Battlebrew for example. But on the whole it just seems like GW only listened to the outcries without trying to be reasonable.

I wouldn't complain if they would have adjusted the points of the Stonehorn to compensate the nerf. But they haven't. 

[Infeston]

10 minutes ago, Auticus said:

If basic units can't kill certain things, and min/max play means always taking things that basic units can't hurt, you get no one taking basic units.  Thats garbage IMO.

But there should be reasonable changes. 200-300 points of Archers shouldn't have the ability to annihilate a 460 points monster without it doing any damage to the enemy at all. 

If you would need a similar amount of points (Maybe a little bit lesser) to kill a Stonehorn it would be reasonable. But maybe I am also playing the Stonehorn wrong. But now I see no reason in taking a Stonehorn instead of a Thundertusk, which does everything better than the Stonehorn at the moment.

Does no one else think the Stonehorn changes were a bit too much?

[Tomir]

I really do feel you, but as an just returning high elf player.

High elf, so many high elfs, all dem heroes baby all dem named heroes, footsies.

have like 20 heroes and they are now

,-dragon noble-,

wtf.... :((

but ill hang in there.

[Myzyrael]

Honeymoon is already over?  Personally, I don't feel like this, as I haven't played as many games as I'd like to

But what I can tell (from our player group's perspective) is that we all are pretty satisfied with the GHB2017. There was a thread I've opened concerning the problem of mortal wounds and even though they weren't addressed directly, all the subtle changes in points, rules and especially the FAQs shifted the power level enough so that I can go crazy with the wizards without killing the fun. Heck, playing against Seraphon is like the hardest thing now for my tiny winy tzeentch mages  (damn you Lord Quak and your global unbinding). 

I just wanted to throw this in, as I have the complaint thread with the mortal wounds here and want to tell you how the GHB has changed this feeling for me.

If there is any problem I have with the situation right now its from a completely different angle: I need to look at the rules, the current GHB, my batteltome and two FAQs (AoS and faction) and this is something I used to love about AoS: not having to do that... This for me is the biggest bummer, really going onto my nerves as it is tedious to look for the right spot ("... where did  I read this, but wait, I know there was a ruling for it now....").

Overall, AoS  and the GHB2017 really feels (again: for us / for me) like pretty well balanced now and I'm extremely happy with it.

[heywoah_twitch]

6 hours ago, Seraphage said:

Ehm no offense but.. with all the damage output, something with a HERO keyword and thus taking objectives if needed, having 27 wounds minimum made sense to you ? His wounds number alone reminded of other games as the maximum of all the rest was 10 - 12 besides few very expensive choices of 16

I am no destruction player, but the experienced / tour winner ones I know, think of this change as rational and senseful !

None taken. 

First, stonehorns and pure bcr themselves were not in any sense a top tier army in 16, and I'm not sure why they're celebrating a mid-tier army getting knocked down to low, but moving on:  The reason stone skeleton made sense was that bcr is the poster child for elite low model count army. With our useable battalions requiring at least 2, sometimes 4 behemoths, monster mash is the intended way to play them, and their main draw for prospective players myself included.

Sounds scary until you figure wounds in bcr army vs a typical competitive list like fyreslayers, khorne, seraphon, w/e. We're talking in the realm of 30 fewer wounds in my army, and old stone skeleton was a way of softening that disparity and making up for part of the massive disadvantages low model count armies suffer (even more so now with ghb17). Long story short, our nightmare matchup type has now become the ideal way the play. 

The tightrope to balancing an LMC army is to have the behemoths actually overpowered to overcome said disadvantages mentioned above, without making them easy for mixed armies to poach and enjoy spamming an OP unit but with none of the LMC down sides (aka let's take 3 thundertusks and have a horde of powerful, numerous rukk orcs or a hundred grots).

Moving on from an explanation, I now have a gripe: new stone skeleton is inelegant and messy, awkardly looking up damage characteristics half way through rolls, but MWs are halved afterwards, but not if they trigger one at a time, damage 1 stuff ignoring it so that the mighty behemoth's Stone Skeleton is powerless against the weakest attacks in the game. Why not something simple like can reroll saves? Besides that being good, I mean. 

[Infeston]

26 minutes ago, heywoah_twitch said:

None taken. 

First, stonehorns and pure bcr themselves were not in any sense a top tier army in 16, and I'm not sure why they're celebrating a mid-tier army getting knocked down to low, but moving on:  The reason stone skeleton made sense was that bcr is the poster child for elite low model count army. With our useable battalions requiring at least 2, sometimes 4 behemoths, monster mash is the intended way to play them, and their main draw for prospective players myself included.

Sounds scary until you figure wounds in bcr army vs a typical competitive list like fyreslayers, khorne, seraphon, w/e. We're talking in the realm of 30 fewer wounds in my army, and old stone skeleton was a way of softening that disparity and making up for part of the massive disadvantages low model count armies suffer (even more so now with ghb17). Long story short, our nightmare matchup type has now become the ideal way the play. 

The tightrope to balancing an LMC army is to have the behemoths actually overpowered to overcome said disadvantages mentioned above, without making them easy for mixed armies to poach and enjoy spamming an OP unit but with none of the LMC down sides (aka let's take 3 thundertusks and have a horde of powerful, numerous rukk orcs or a hundred grots).

Moving on from an explanation, I now have a gripe: new stone skeleton is inelegant and messy, awkardly looking up damage characteristics half way through rolls, but MWs are halved afterwards, but not if they trigger one at a time, damage 1 stuff ignoring it so that the mighty behemoth's Stone Skeleton is powerless against the weakest attacks in the game. Why not something simple like can reroll saves? Besides that being good, I mean. 

Jeah rerollable save rolls for Stonehorn would have been a nice choice. This would also fit their theme and does not make them too OP.  Maybe the existing ability with halving damage (or maybe without halving damage from normal attacks and only mortal wounds) + rerollable saves. But I would also be okay if it were just rerollable saves.

So it would still be reasonable. And also fit the Stonehorn theme. For me it seems totally crazy that a horde of aelves with knifes could still do more overall damage than big monsters with giant axes and huge hammers.

Now it is like this:

1. Multiple little guys with a tiny knife: Oh no! They completely slice through the hard Stone Skin of the Stonehorn like butter. 

2. A big guy with a giant hammer: Ha! Try harder next time! You can't get through my thick Stone Skin, where only little knives can get through. 

 

You could also do a "Only rerollable saves against attacks with "No Rend" or "Rend -1", so that it seems more like the Stone Skeleton actually consists of "Stone". So big monsters with high rend could be very effective against Stonehorn.

 

Now instead of fighting Monsters with Monsters, it seems more to fight the Stonehorn with little guys, which for me makes absolutely no sense "lorewise". But maybe for some people "balance" is more important than the "theme" of a unit. But I also think you can balance something and still match the theme.

[Infeston]

8 minutes ago, Auticus said:

I like the change.  Simply because while it may be true that against other powergamed lists they weren't that bad, I know against casual non power gamed lists they were still a nightmare to have to fight against and were most definitely not fun to play against unless you knew they were coming ahead of time.

Jeah but maybe that is also because you have never played Beastclaw or only against them. I think if Beastclaw Raiders players complain about something it should also be taken seriously. And i see many people agreeing that this change was simply too much. Also players who don't even play Destruction. Many say that nerfing Battle Brew and the Destruction move was everything which was needed.

I wouldn't complain if I found the change reasonable. There are some nerfs which I found very reasonable, which also hit some of my other forces. But this change is something i can't agree with. 

And I think many Beastclaw players aren't complaining, because we wanted to use cheese lists and stomp people into the ground. We are complaing, because we care about our army. Pure Beastclaw armies were never at the top. 

And I think many of us have a reason to complain about the changes. 

[Infeston]

12 minutes ago, Auticus said:

I know that based on the math that beastclaw raiders were largely easy-mode and undercost in 2016.  They were in the top 10% of point-efficient units.  (yes I have the math uploaded in a database) I think that players that are used to having an easier time that suddenly get smacked down and nerfed will always complain.

Is it justified?  Sometimes.  I'd need to see the math to show why its justified.  I heard someone just say that its ok for beastclaw raiders to be OP because they are low model count and have fewer wounds.

The whole definition of OP should not be ok IMO.  

Agree with it or not, this is the rule now.  There is a ton about the game that I don't agree with that I have to live with also.

But we can discuss about what could be changed? Maybe this will influence GW's future design decisions. If you don't discuss something, nothing will change. The complaints about the Stonehorn also changed the rules before. If we talk about this in a reasonable way there could be better changes which could not only please some players, but all players.

And i don't find the change justified. In the genre of tabletop I found that "math" isn't a secure way to balance something. You can't argue with math and stats to justify changes, because there are some factors which can't be put in an equotation, which are very relevant on table. Sometimes math can help. But it doesn't justify everything.

How do you calculate the Stonehorns "has-to-charge ability" for example? How do you calculate all other abilities which don't increase the stats by a certain number? You can't simply look at all the "numbers" and just ignore everything, which isn't a number. Numbers don't say anything at all in the end. 

And maybe I have to live with this change. But saying nothing at all and giving no feedback also does not help.

[Myzyrael]

39 minutes ago, Infeston said:

1. Multiple little guys with a tiny knife: Oh no! They completely slice through the hard Stone Skin of the Stonehorn like butter. 

2. A big guy with a giant hammer: Ha! Try harder next time! You can't get through my thick Stone Skin, where only little knives can get through. 

The change to stone skin is a huge nerf for the stonehorn, thats nothing someone could argue about I assume.
But I can totally come up with reasons for this from two different perspectives:

A - Gameplay: The stonehorn now is less of a Swiss knife but more of a unit that works like rock paper scissors. It has it's weakness as well as it's strengths and I think this is always good. It might be possible that this, together with horde discounts, is a little too much.

B - Fluff: Maybe the stone skin protects less, but I can totally see it in front of my eyes how many small, weak fighters approach such huge monster in battle, knowing that there is little chance of survival if this beast is able to crush into them, stomp them, slice them with its horns. So they charge, knowing many of them will die flattened and crushed, having their bones splintered but still are couraged enough to try and swarm that big beast, looking for the weak spots, running around, using their agility, slicing the weak spots in the thick skin to eventually bring it down after the fight. But beware if they fail to do so before its horns crush them to death. Its like one brave soldier running towards a tank, avoiding the machine gunners on top, striking them with their pistol in close combat, jumping on top of 40 tons of pure death and throwing a hand grenade in the barrel of the big gun... Great cinema!

[TerrorPenguin]

38 minutes ago, Infeston said:

Pure Beastclaw armies were never at the top. 

I think this is such a difficult variable. Although pure beastclaw were never at the top, they were often a component in a mixed destruction list. So your choice is to make the stone skeleton 'beastclaw allegiance only' or to nerf it for both destruction and beastclaw.

I agree that I think it's a step too far and re rolls would have been better.

Tbh I'm not sure why, given that forgeworld took this opportunity to re issue their warscroll, gw didn't as well. Yes it would be a big change and people would complain about their books being invalidated, but that's essentially what the faq does as well

[Infeston]

15 minutes ago, Auticus said:

We can't really discuss then where we will come to a common ground because I'm very much math-driven.  The stonehorn beastclaw stuff was OP busted before, and you couldn't have a fun game against them in a casual setting where your opponent wasn't also powergaming.

That in and of itself is to me a failure and why I am for their nerfing.  

The math said they were busted.  The tabletop experience having to go against them when you weren't running an equally OP tournament list indicated that they were busted.  They were one of the top three negative play experiences that I can cite in 2016 from a casual non-powergamey standpoint.  

Convince me otherwise, but please don't fall back to "git gud" as the response.  Beastclaw Raiders ran several people out of my gaming group to Kings of War and other games.  It would appear enough complaints were levied against them that the devs looked at them and agreed.

Show how even though the math put them in the top 10% of point effectiveness due to them doing so much damage so easily that that really doesn't make them broken and that they were perfectly fine and balanced against casual lists that weren't also in and of themselves busted.  I can see how they would struggle against the skyfires and kunnin rukks of 2016 but everything did.

Explain fully how they did not need to be changed in the context of the entire game, not just against the top three powergamer min/max lists.  Use the perspective of players playing with normal non optimized powergamed lists.

I am not denying that the Stonehorn needed a nerf. But the nerf was too much. The Kunning Rukk and Stonehorn list was also unfair.

But have you played against a pure Beastclaw list? You have to also consider aspects which can't be calculated. Like the charge of the Stonehorn. It HAS to charge if there is a unit within 12''. This is a huge disadvantage, which can be strongly used against the Stonehorn.  You can't simply just take all the numbers and ignore abilities like this. 

The Stonehorn was also always a huge target. Then it also gets weaker if you do damage to the Stonehorn. This are all things which aren't considered if you only look at the numbers and statistics. 

And I don't say that the Stonehorn shouldn't be nerfed, but I think the nerf was simply too much. And there would have been other ways to compensate the problems (like rerollable saves or other abilities). 

You only say that the Stonehorn needed a nerf. But you don't explain why the change had to be this big. I don't disagree, but I think the nerf left the Stonehorn completely useless and there could have been better ways to change this.

[heywoah_twitch]

I didn't know so many casual players hated playing against beastclaw despite them not being very competitive, and I certainly didn't mean to step on this hornet's nest.

 In the interest of players not hating the game of course we should change units that are so aggravating as to cause players to leave, but we can agree that ideally we should do so in a way that doesn't make the unit and army in question garbo.

[heywoah_twitch]

Well in that case we just want different things for AoS. I'd like a few good options, both competitive and casual for each army.

[Infeston]

12 minutes ago, heywoah_twitch said:

Well in that case we just want different things for AoS. I'd like a few good options, both competitive and casual for each army.

/signed 

Especially because there are other units in need of a bigger nerf, which were barely scratched. Look at skyfires for example. Kunning Rukk is still good.  Stonehorn wasnt the only unfair unit, but it was one of the units, which took a hit that was too big. 

If they would have reduced the point costs to compensate for the change it would have also been different. But they left the Stonehorn still at 460 points. And even if you use math or compare stats everyone would agree that they are now overcoasted instead of reasonably coasted.

I am happy that they  didn't nerf the Thundertusk too, because then BCR wouldn't have anything threatening or effective on the table.

[heywoah_twitch]

I'm not trying to start a signature campaign or anything, and I don't exactly think pointing fingers at troublesome units for nerfing is all that helpful. I'm actually quite motivated to really dive into balance and talk to experienced dudes in their own faction's forums about it to gather info. Cheers.