The new direction of summoning.

[Arkiham]

With the release of khorne bringing tithe points, allowing you to summon with no wizards,

Nurgle also following this but more strictly,  being only summonable now via the tithe system (excluding various other things) summoning nurgle units now is done via tithe points generated, bigger units and stronger models are higher, and harder to get etc. 

 

I suspect, as do many others this is the future for summoning. 

So, I've four questions.

Is it better? 

 

Summoning was already a very minor thing in age of sigmar, its versatile granted, but reliable? Not always. 

If the new system follows suit with nurgle, big monsters and units will be harder to summon, but easier to do the summoning,

fair trade off?  

The point of summoning was so allow you to adapt to what you faced,  what you needed and where you needed it depending on what you faced. 

If you find you need it turn one, you want it turn one, not three or four turns later when the game could be all but lost, this is the risk of summoning, you either get it, or you don't. 

Under the new method, you're stuck, you have to wait until the new method allows it.

Given that it's going to be harder to summon,

should the reward for doing it be better? 

Examples

Larger units for the point cost than you could field for instance, 15 of generic unit x not 10 , perhaps closer to the enemy, 

 

Will the restrictive new nature of summoning it kill it, or save it?

[shadowgra]

Kill it for me. Timing is too important in a game where you need to have an impact on the first turns or lose.

 

Also the armies that rely on summon are mostly melee armies ,(tzeentch and seraphon excluded) and having less points on the board against an alpha stryke or a shooting army can cost you the game easily

[RuneBrush]

I quite like the look of what they've done with the Nurgle summoning and looking forward to seeing how it works in practice.  I can see what you mean about the issues with potential lack of first turn summoning though.  What appeals to me the most is that it removes the requirement for having to keep a wizard alive on the board, which  means you're not going to have them sniped off turn one and hamstring your entire army.

Is it better?  Possibly, but possibly not.  I don't see the Khorne one being particularly useful currently but Nurgle has the potential to be a good replacement.

Fair trade off?  Time will tell, removing the option for summoning Nurgle units for other Chaos forces could be a bit of a steep cost for those other armies, although summoning isn't that prevalent in the game currently.

Better reward?  I think the maximum cap ideally needs to stay to prevent some units becoming too powerful (primarily the ones who have the +1 for every X models).  What would be nice would be the ability to summon "into" a unit to bolster it back up - so a unit of Plaguebearers has dropped to 12 so you summon another 10 to pop it up to 22.

Kill or Save?  I'm putting my mark in the save box.  Adding mechanics that are separate to magic certainly feels like a really good move because it opens up more options, however I think this could be dependant upon being able to boost your starting pool of summoning mojo.

Am I the only one that's nervous about what might come along for Slaanesh summoning

Just also had a thought - wonder what we're going to get in Legions of Nagash?  Will this follow the new non-magic summoning trend?

[Nubgan]

Summoning just makes me sad, I'm really surprised they didn't give armies like undead a similar mechanic to the Tervigon in 40k where you get a free unit of X models per turn and just bump the cost of units that summon them. Using as a tool to essentially deepstike a prepaid amount of points is nice, but a little boring

[Burf]

1 hour ago, Nubgan said:

Summoning just makes me sad, I'm really surprised they didn't give armies like undead a similar mechanic to the Tervigon in 40k where you get a free unit of X models per turn and just bump the cost of units that summon them. Using as a tool to essentially deepstike a prepaid amount of points is nice, but a little boring

Pretty sure the tervigon got changed so it can only add to units for free, not summon new units of gaunts (at least not for free)

[Nubgan]

31 minutes ago, Burf said:

Pretty sure the tervigon got changed so it can only add to units for free, not summon new units of gaunts (at least not for free)

It just adds 10 new vanilla gaunts every turn, so I am guessing that the larger price of the tervigon pays for them. Before it was a random 2(or 3?)D6 that wounded you if you doubled.

[AverageBoss]

I don't see anything in the new summon rules that say they do not cost reinforcement points. Would that not automatically make this new summoning worse?

[Arkiham]

5 minutes ago, AverageBoss said:

I don't see anything in the new summon rules that say they do not cost reinforcement points. Would that not automatically make this new summoning worse?

They still cost points, it's part of the core rules

[stato]

I think it is better.

Sure you cant get it turn 1 (probably?) but you are in control of getting it. YOU will be doing actions or something to generate the points YOU want, removes the risk of traitorous dice (unless your tzeentch obviously).

[Sleboda]

I think for narrative games,  this is neat. 

For matched,  not so much. 

[Thomas Lyons]

If everyone moved to the new system and summoning units were free (rather than costing reinforcement points), then I'm in.  But having both temporal restrictions (what turn you can summon something on) and also point limitations (how much you have stocked away in your Reinforcement pool) makes it basically worthless/unreliable in my mind.  

Almost all of my competitive Chaos lists left 120+ points for summoning so I could do last minute summons and grab objectives.  Now they most likely won't. 

Moving forward, I'm not sure what will happen.  In the Nurgle WhatsApp, I commented that I'll just keep summoning Tzeentch daemons with my Nurgle armies since they nerfed Nurgle summoning and Ben Johnson replied that won't be happening.  I suspect in the near future, we'll see additional restrictions on what you can summon (likely restricted to allies pools at least, if not restricted to your actual allegiance).  I guess only time will tell.

[Malakithe]

25 minutes ago, Thomas Lyons said:

If everyone moved to the new system and summoning units were free (rather than costing reinforcement points), then I'm in.  But having both temporal restrictions (what turn you can summon something on) and also point limitations (how much you have stocked away in your Reinforcement pool) makes it basically worthless/unreliable in my mind.  

Almost all of my competitive Chaos lists left 120+ points for summoning so I could do last minute summons and grab objectives.  Now they most likely won't. 

Moving forward, I'm not sure what will happen.  In the Nurgle WhatsApp, I commented that I'll just keep summoning Tzeentch daemons with my Nurgle armies since they nerfed Nurgle summoning and Ben Johnson replied that won't be happening.  I suspect in the near future, we'll see additional restrictions on what you can summon (likely restricted to allies pools at least, if not restricted to your actual allegiance).  I guess only time will tell.

Pretty much. As far as i can read most Nurgle players have already tossed out summoning altogether with this new system.

Now we wait to see how Death will change

[stato]

8 minutes ago, Malakithe said:

Pretty much. As far as i can read most Nurgle players have already tossed out summoning altogether with this new system.

That almost guarantees everyone will be summoning in 6 months. 

Initial knee-jirk reaction, everyone follows, give it a few months to u-turn and its the best thing ever  < every GW rule change ever?

[Yeled]

I hate the current summoning rules so any change seems good to me. I understand there needs to be limits to summoning or else it goes crazy, but the flip side of using reserve points makes summoning completely boring and, often, less than useful. Yes, it allows some flexibility, but at the risk of not having a unit when you need it and at the cost of actually having models on the board. Summoning, thematically, should be about bolstering your army by calling on nefarious/heroic powers from beyond. The way it works now you have to start at a disadvantage and hope you can call in that unit when you need it. 

In Narrative and Open Play the new Nurgle system might be really good, as it might actually allow summoning to work without being overpowering. In Matched Play I'm not sure the Nurgle system fixes that, since you still need reserve points. I would like to see them develop an entirely new summoning system that is not reliant on reserve points at all. That might mean balancing things by increasing the points of models capable of summoning or giving non-summoning armies some other allegiance ability to make up for their disadvantage. Either way, summoning is one of the worst parts of AoS. It is broken in Open/Narrative Play and severely limited/broken in matched play.

[Hyperion]

Nurgle stuff all going up in points, combined with the turn/contagion build up restriction will see Nurgle summoning go away in all but the most specific of lists.  

 

Do do we know 100% that something like this mechanic will be happening to the other summoning factions? 

[Arkiham]

1 hour ago, Hyperion said:

Nurgle stuff all going up in points, combined with the turn/contagion build up restriction will see Nurgle summoning go away in all but the most specific of lists.  

 

Do do we know 100% that something like this mechanic will be happening to the other summoning factions? 

Not 100 % but the tithe system seems to be the way books are heading. At least chaos, considering death is not too dissimilar from chaos its not a stretch to see it being the same.

 

Likely something like models killed or souls generated etc. I dunno 

[PJetski]

I don't think it's a "new direction" it's just appropriate for those factions to summon in that way. Khorne summons daemons into existence through spilling blood, Nurgle through spreading disease, and Tzeentch through arcane rites.

[Drofnum]

Nurgle sounds like you can pretty easily build up contagion points if you build a list based around it, same thing you had to do with summoning essentially.  There were ways to get 7+ points per turn and even start the first round with multiple points depending on how many trees you drop, if you have Horticulous, etc.  

I think the complaints are a bit premature until we see how it plays but from listening to some podcasts and some potential lists I can see where summoning would get easier with Nurgle than it used to be.  It may take til round 2/3 to get rolling but that is also a pretty big theme of the book and army now anyway, the inevitable corruption of Nurgle as the game goes on and the rot spreads, via trees, the cycle and all that. I could see plenty of situations where not having a summon round 1, but then in later rounds knowing exactly how many points i can accumulate and being able to see a turn or two ahead to what i can summon, with no chance of failure, would be extremely advantageous.

[Killax]

15 hours ago, Arkiham said:

So, I've four questions.

Is it better? 

fair trade off?  

should the reward for doing it be better? 

Will the restrictive new nature of summoning it kill it, or save it?

Good topic, nice chat. In terms of your questions this is my thake on it:

1. No I don't think it's better as it was. To date I don't know why AoS has not adopted the same variant of 40K's approach to this idea. I am not a really big fan of how it's fleshed out for Daemons there but it does work better. Meaning, there is a disadvantage in for example not being able to move, but you can then place a specific unit by matching a certain roll. Your opponent here has no real way to interact with it but if you succeed this is good, if you fail it can have some consequences.

2. I think that summonning in general would be best approached by having it basically work out as deepstriking while being near to a character. Keywords can decide which character it should be and which atributes it should have. For example I feel summonning Undead would work for models who have the Wizard Keyword. For Chaos Daemons I feel summonning Daemon X should depend on the character having matching Keyword X, so Khorne can summon Khorne but not Slaanesh etc.

3. I think there is some good reward for it allready but the issue it comes with now and largely in 40k is that it still hinges on a succesful roll. The summonning is not guaranteed and because of that I would say it's just quite unpopular.

4. The new nature of summoning will not really change anything because the roll has been essentially replaced with turn time and ultimately is still roll dependant in the case of Contagion points too. As in there is a fixed Contaigion point income but what will ultimately generate the most points are the D3 points from the Blight Tree.

-

In conclusion I feel the best way to have summonning be part of the game is to allow armies where it makes sence to have a max of 25% point spend in summonning units for Matched play. In addition (all play systems) I would actually guarantee the summon but have it closer to character X or Y with a required Keyword. What this underlines is the importance of this model and it's placement. This is where the tactical depth of AoS lies and actually makes it fun/good/competitive/tactical.

[wayniac]

Honestly, I think it makes it worse.  Now you have TWO things you need to pay from.  IMHO Reinforcement Points were bad enough, and made summoning almost useless unless you had very specific plans/requirements to summon something.  Now, for example, with Maggotkin I not only need to set aside points for my army AND try to get enough Corruption Points to do it.

I would have rather Corruption Points (and Blood Tithes, perhaps) be the replacement for Reinforcement Points, not in addition to them.  As it stands, I don't see any reason to really bother with Corruption Points, because summoning is such a minor factor in anything.

EDIT:  I should clarify to say that, in Open/Narrative play I'm okay with this mechanic being the replacement for summoning as it was before.  In Matched Play though (and let's not mince words, we know matched play is the vast majority of games) I feel it's an extra layer that makes summoning even worse.

[Sleboda]

19 hours ago, Drofnum said:

I think the complaints are a bit premature until we see how it plays

Well, it wouldn't be the internet without knee ****** reactions, opinions based on zero actual games,  and so on. 

[Ryan Taylor]

There was a similar system in 6th edition with the Sylvanian Vampire Counts list for the Storm of Magic. it was fun then and I can see it being even more fun if they implement it with Death and other factions. I think this was a way to keep the factions separate in Chaos.