Smaller, winged witch elf may not be Morathi

[Galas]

I doubt she will transform mid game. Probably you'll pick one or the other. Not picking both at the same time in the same army.

[BURF1]

17 minutes ago, Payce said:

There's a very large difference between "common knowledge" and "the accepted rumour". I, for one, have doubts, because from a games theory and design perspective, it's a terrible idea to have the two models represent the same character on tabletop. In a game where character sniping is one of the largest weaknesses of competitive play, the idea that you might never even put your €100 model on the table because she never ascends (because she's DEAD) is terrible, terrible design, and a surefire way to sell less models.

Yes, there are absolutely visible similarities. Yes, I'll be the first to eat crow if they turn out to be the same (and booooooy, do they need a good, clever ruleset to back up an idiotic design idea like that to make it work). Doing something new for the sake of something new isn't innovative and progressive, and as a longstanding Har Ganeth-player, I genuinely fear the possibility of the release I've anticipated the most since AoS was released to be sullied by oxenfeces gimmicks. If there are in fact two Morathis and no generic character option, I fear the army is going to be suffering from the get-go. I really hope I'm wrong. This whole thing just reeks of terrible decision making at the studio.

You could copypasta this into a WHFB rant about AoS with almost no effort tbh.

 

Maybe let the mechanic exist before calling it idiotic? Cause like...it doesn't yet. 

[Richelieu]

20 minutes ago, Payce said:

There's a very large difference between "common knowledge" and "the accepted rumour". I, for one, have doubts, because from a games theory and design perspective, it's a terrible idea to have the two models represent the same character on tabletop. In a game where character sniping is one of the largest weaknesses of competitive play, the idea that you might never even put your €100 model on the table because she never ascends (because she's DEAD) is terrible, terrible design, and a surefire way to sell less models.

Yes, there are absolutely visible similarities. Yes, I'll be the first to eat crow if they turn out to be the same (and booooooy, do they need a good, clever ruleset to back up an idiotic design idea like that to make it work). Doing something new for the sake of something new isn't innovative and progressive, and as a longstanding Har Ganeth-player, I genuinely fear the possibility of the release I've anticipated the most since AoS was released to be sullied by oxenfeces gimmicks. If there are in fact two Morathis and no generic character option, I fear the army is going to be suffering from the get-go. I really hope I'm wrong. This whole thing just reeks of terrible decision making at the studio.

GW has been delivering at a high level recently and it would really shock me if they screwed up the first Aelves release of AoS.  I'm not one to speculate about what new rules might be since, quite frankly it's just shooting in the dark, but by my estimation GW has earned a little bit of faith from its players. 

And I will absolutely be buying that glorious giant Medusorathi regardless of if I have to transform on the battlefield or pay obscene Nagash-level points for it.

[Yokai]

49 minutes ago, Payce said:

There's a very large difference between "common knowledge" and "the accepted rumour". I, for one, have doubts, because from a games theory and design perspective, it's a terrible idea to have the two models represent the same character on tabletop. In a game where character sniping is one of the largest weaknesses of competitive play, the idea that you might never even put your €100 model on the table because she never ascends (because she's DEAD) is terrible, terrible design, and a surefire way to sell less models.

Fully agreed, I wish and hope that the rather awesome snake-Morathi shown in the recent concept art isn't hampered by an ill-thought out shapeshifting ruleset. The wording in the Valentine's rhyme certainly seem to imply some sort of illusionism or shapeshifting. It will be interesting to see what GW has in mind for her, that is for sure.

[Aelfric]

Can there be a third version where she's flying around on a pegasus?

[BURF1]

42 minutes ago, Yokai said:

Fully agreed, I wish and hope that the rather awesome snake-Morathi shown in the recent concept art isn't hampered by an ill-thought out shapeshifting ruleset. The wording in the Valentine's rhyme certainly seem to imply some sort of illusionism or shapeshifting. It will be interesting to see what GW has in mind for her, that is for sure.

she's a named large centerpiece character in AoS. regardless of if her shape-shift mechanic is good or not she'll be priced high enough that the list will have to 100% revolve around her for her to be good like every other large named character in AoS except Arkhan. And you still won't want to make her your general anyway.

Worrying about her mechanics seems silly when we all know she'll end up a gimmick character like every major lore figure before her.

[Hyperion]

Is this really still speculation? Especially with the video they just released for Vday. With her “revealing” her true form and all.  “Standing up” on a snake tail even...

[Chikout]

5 hours ago, Payce said:

There's a very large difference between "common knowledge" and "the accepted rumour". I, for one, have doubts, because from a games theory and design perspective, it's a terrible idea to have the two models represent the same character on tabletop. In a game where character sniping is one of the largest weaknesses of competitive play, the idea that you might never even put your €100 model on the table because she never ascends (because she's DEAD) is terrible, terrible design, and a surefire way to sell less models.

Yes, there are absolutely visible similarities. Yes, I'll be the first to eat crow if they turn out to be the same (and booooooy, do they need a good, clever ruleset to back up an idiotic design idea like that to make it work). Doing something new for the sake of something new isn't innovative and progressive, and as a longstanding Har Ganeth-player, I genuinely fear the possibility of the release I've anticipated the most since AoS was released to be sullied by oxenfeces gimmicks. If there are in fact two Morathis and no generic character option, I fear the army is going to be suffering from the get-go. I really hope I'm wrong. This whole thing just reeks of terrible decision making at the studio.

Models changing into other models has been a part of warhammer and 40k for ages. Whether it is chaos Lords changing into demon Princes, the Changeling bring revealed,  creatures changing into spawn, etc. Expensive models failing to reach the board has also long been a part of the game with failed summoning or deep strikes, transports exploding etc. 

Morathi transforming when she loses her last wound in her regular form would easily sidestep the problem you are worrying about. Aos is at its best when the player is given difficult decisions so having each form having strengths and weaknesses would be interesting.

I could imagine that Morathi's regular form would give her army buffs and be strong magically,  while the monster form is stronger in combat and debuffs the enemy. 

I am very interested to see where this design goes.

As for other characters, I am expecting a few more, whether that is in clam packs or to be built from the snakes and birds custodes style. 

[valenswift]

19 hours ago, Twitch of Izalith said:

Does anyone remember that comedy sketch about how it would be funny if more food was named along the lines of "I can't believe its not butter"?

"Beans? your're kidding!" and "Bollox these are pineapple chunks!" were my favorites 

Pretty sure this was The Mary Whitehouse Experience 

[DantePQ]

If you can trigger the shapeshift by yourself without silly rolls or casting a spells game wise it could begreat mechanic.

Lets say smaller version is much more potent at casting spells and give some kind of protection to your army and larger is combat monster and devuffs enemies. So if you can change once a game from small into big that opens a lot of nice combos and hard decisions for you and your opponent I would love such mechanic. 

[Yokai]

11 hours ago, BURF1 said:

she's a named large centerpiece character in AoS. regardless of if her shape-shift mechanic is good or not she'll be priced high enough that the list will have to 100% revolve around her for her to be good like every other large named character in AoS except Arkhan. And you still won't want to make her your general anyway.

Worrying about her mechanics seems silly when we all know she'll end up a gimmick character like every major lore figure before her.

Good point. Large centrepiece models might be good for your ego, but not so fun when they get focused off the table in the first turn.

I wonder how many times Nagash, Alarielle, et al earn their rather obscene point cost back on the battlefield?

[Guest]

What interests me about a mechanic in which a model on a smaller base is replaced with a model on a larger one is this - how does it displace the models around it? Summoned units usually have to be set up a certain distance away from any enemy models, so I don't believe this situation has needed to be addressed before.

What if Morathi is completely surrounded by enemy models in combat? Do any models covered by the larger base get destroyed? Are they moved back? Who moves them - the player controlling Morathi or the player controlling the displaced models? What if there's no space to move back - are they destroyed then?

And those are just the questions I can think of off the top of my head. It seems like a situation potentially ripe for mid-game arguments and confusion.

[TalesOfSigmar]

43 minutes ago, Jamie the Jasper said:

What interests me about a mechanic in which a model on a smaller base is replaced with a model on a larger one is this - how does it displace the models around it? Summoned units usually have to be set up a certain distance away from any enemy models, so I don't believe this situation has needed to be addressed before.

What if Morathi is completely surrounded by enemy models in combat? Do any models covered by the larger base get destroyed? Are they moved back? Who moves them - the player controlling Morathi or the player controlling the displaced models? What if there's no space to move back - are they destroyed then?

And those are just the questions I can think of off the top of my head. It seems like a situation potentially ripe for mid-game arguments and confusion.

Balewind does this when it's summoned. Everyone is moved directly away 3".

Could easily just push everyone directly back to fit the larger base in. Imagine in battle something larger exploding out of a small spot everyone's going to be thrown backwards with the force.

[Twitch of Izalith]

14 hours ago, Payce said:

the idea that you might never even put your €100 model on the table because she never ascends (because she's DEAD) is terrible, terrible design, and a surefire way to sell less models.

What if she ascends because she is dead? I mentioned the idea in the Lets chat DoK thread a while back and @Chikout has mentioned it in this one. Personally I think that would be the ideal mechanic - if the transformation gets triggered when the elf form hits zero wounds. 

Not only would you almost always get to use both of the models you paid €100 for if they are in your list but it would be an interesting "out of the frying pan, into the fire" dilemma for your opponent. I agree it would be a tricky mechanic to get right because the elf form would need to be powerful enough that your opponent wants it dead and the snake form would have to be scary enough to make it a real risk.

She appears to transform at will in the Valentine poem but i'm not sure how seriously we should take that. I'm sure many people would prefer to be able to choose when to transform - which would also be fine by me - but I think it would encourage limitation of the power of the snake form, because if its really good you will just shift right away. 

If the change is effectively decided by your opponent it would require both forms to be really dangerous. Admittedly thats a total fanboy perpsective  Morathi is one of my all time favourite warhammer characters.

I think we will still have a range of other leader options - the Cauldron obviously, and I think both types of Bloodwrack Medusa are likely to become characters (on foot and on the shrine). It would be great to see further distinction between the combat death hag with the sword and the support death hag with the witchbrew too. It will help if we get a full range of prayers to choose from.

Really interested to see if Morathi has carried her mastery of Dark Magic to the Mortal Realms. Do we get a spell lore and a set of prayers, or just one or the other. IF there is a spell lore I would really like it to be available to some of the other dark elf keywords the way all the chaos books have indirectly buffed Slaves to Darkness. They don't have a common keyword though so probably won't happen.

[AverageBoss]

Having multiple versions of named characters is nothing new for GW.

For a time we had 3 different Manfreds in WFB (and 2 in AoS). Each with completely different models and rules.

[Killax]

39 minutes ago, Twitch of Izalith said:

What if she ascends because she is dead? I mentioned the idea in the Lets chat DoK thread a while back and @Chikout has mentioned it in this one. Personally I think that would be the ideal mechanic - if the transformation gets triggered when the elf form hits zero wounds. 

Not only would you almost always get to use both of the models you paid €100 for if they are in your list but it would be an interesting "out of the frying pan, into the fire" dilemma for your opponent. I agree it would be a tricky mechanic to get right because the elf form would need to be powerful enough that your opponent wants it dead and the snake form would have to be scary enough to make it a real risk.

She appears to transform at will in the Valentine poem but i'm not sure how seriously we should take that. I'm sure many people would prefer to be able to choose when to transform - which would also be fine by me - but I think it would encourage limitation of the power of the snake form, because if its really good you will just shift right away. 

If the change is effectively decided by your opponent it would require both forms to be really dangerous. Admittedly thats a total fanboy perpsective  Morathi is one of my all time favourite warhammer characters.

I think we will still have a range of other leader options - the Cauldron obviously, and I think both types of Bloodwrack Medusa are likely to become characters (on foot and on the shrine). It would be great to see further distinction between the combat death hag with the sword and the support death hag with the witchbrew too. It will help if we get a full range of prayers to choose from.

Really interested to see if Morathi has carried her mastery of Dark Magic to the Mortal Realms. Do we get a spell lore and a set of prayers, or just one or the other. IF there is a spell lore I would really like it to be available to some of the other dark elf keywords the way all the chaos books have indirectly buffed Slaves to Darkness. They don't have a common keyword though so probably won't happen.

Seems like a great option. A ressurection mechanic can be really nice. At the same time though, I also believe it can be quite possible that smaller Morathi has the same number of wounds, just less offense as big Morathi. There are advantages to being smaller too.

One thing I think is much more important to highlight however is that models for Games Workshop are rarely designed with ideal competitive use in mind anyway. They are designed with a narrative context first, fleshed out into the model. If Games Workshop would really care about competitive design first to influence the model everything would be less dynamic and low on it's base. It's really not a great thing to go that route, because there is much more to AoS.

What you get out of the models you paid for is largely relevant to how much someone likes the model right? I mean mechanics aside the first inclination to get a model is liking it's design on a purely visual basis. I know this is how I picked up my armies and will always continue to do so.
If I like what I am seeing I'll get it.

Especially this month I see more and more posters seem to focus on the pure competitive/tournament aspects, this is not all AoS is. It's a shame that in that same manner all narrative context is lost or skipped as if it is irrelevant to AoS' game design. I see it in posts like you quoted and wanting to use campaign content outside of campaigns and new Battletomes not having 'destiny dice' as being an "issue"...
Really the hobby should always come first. Then if models are great/cool to use and have a compairable level in play, all is fine.

If Morathi is about as powerful as a Greater Daemon or Mortarch or other character X on Monsterous Mount I really think that there shouldn't be any concern for her physical stature. If she is more powerful that's awesome too but Archaon and Nagash like characters create a sub-game for that player that is very hard to master. I'd say from a design perspective it's not ideal to include that for what essentially is a brand new AoS army. There where DoK models used before offcourse but we know this release is paired with 6+ new units which in my opinion is worthy to be called a new army in itself.

[Yokai]

3 hours ago, Killax said:

One thing I think is much more important to highlight however is that models for Games Workshop are rarely designed with ideal competitive use in mind anyway. They are designed with a narrative context first, fleshed out into the model. If Games Workshop would really care about competitive design first to influence the model everything would be less dynamic and low on it's base. It's really not a great thing to go that route, because there is much more to AoS.

The competitive tail wagging the whole dog? It's a weird situation, innit.

Reminds me of the times when I played MMORPGs a lot, and there was a perpetual conflict between the competitive PvP crowd and the fluffy PvE crowd regarding how the game should play. Competitive players wanted the available options as equalized as possible whereas the fluffy players wanted tangible, discernable differences between the options. Needless to say, it was nigh on impossible to please both crowds at the same time.

[Richelieu]

4 hours ago, TalesOfSigmar said:

Balewind does this when it's summoned. Everyone is moved directly away 3".

Could easily just push everyone directly back to fit the larger base in. Imagine in battle something larger exploding out of a small spot everyone's going to be thrown backwards with the force.

This is not accurate, everyone just plays it that way.  The summon occurs first and you place the base.  If it can't fit, it can't be summoned. Nothing on the warscroll indicates that you break that fundamental tenet of model placement.  Once it is in play, you move the models 3" away from it.

[TalesOfSigmar]

25 minutes ago, Richelieu said:

This is not accurate, everyone just plays it that way.  The summon occurs first and you place the base.  If it can't fit, it can't be summoned. Nothing on the warscroll indicates that you break that fundamental tenet of model placement.  Once it is in play, you move the models 3" away from it.

Surely if everyone plays it that way then that's how its played..... playing countless games with/against balewind not once have I seen someone play it the other way.

Anyway you can set it up within 3" of an enemy and with it being terrain in theory with your argument, models can just fit on the terrain when it's summoned while it's set up before being pushed back 3".

But again my statement on Morathi changing still stands, could just have rules where before she changes everyone is moved directly 3" backwards and then swap her with the bigger model.  Hopefully it won't be too long before we see how it works, because at the moment for as good as it's worth we're all just speculating with no real idea.

[Richelieu]

20 minutes ago, TalesOfSigmar said:

Surely if everyone plays it that way then that's how its played..... playing countless games with/against balewind not once have I seen someone play it the other way.

Anyway you can set it up within 3" of an enemy and with it being terrain in theory with your argument, models can just fit on the terrain when it's summoned while it's set up before being pushed back 3".

But again my statement on Morathi changing still stands, could just have rules where before she changes everyone is moved directly 3" backwards and then swap her with the bigger model.  Hopefully it won't be too long before we see how it works, because at the moment for as good as it's worth we're all just speculating with no real idea.

It's fundamentally another RaW vs RaI debate.  RaW there is no possible way to interpret the intersection of explicitly written rules than that it can't be summoned unless there is space to place it.  I'm fully willing to accept that it makes more sense to play it the other way, the rules should just be FAQ'd to reflect it.

[Killax]

Question awnsered. Looking forward to the Warscroll!

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/02/18/shadow-queen-unveiled/

[Stevewren]

On 15/02/2018 at 3:00 PM, TalesOfSigmar said:

But again my statement on Morathi changing still stands, could just have rules where before she changes everyone is moved directly 3" backwards and then swap her with the bigger model.  Hopefully it won't be too long before we see how it works, because at the moment for as good as it's worth we're all just speculating with no real idea.

Its a horrible rules mechanic though. 

It all gets very messy and can lead to some bad feeling - does the model go here or here, is this the right direction etc. 

I would much prefer that you can put her down within an area. Could lead to some clever tactical play and placement. I guess we'll find out in the next few days.