Age of Sigmar: Second Edition

[Drofnum]

5 minutes ago, blueshirtman said:

What if my army doesn't have mages, has no shoting and is bad at melee. The fix always was to ally in a butcher, what I hated by the way, now that single butcher can't hang back to buff my deads, because he will get unbinded by other mages, and probablly have free unbinds after me trying to cast.

If you cant cast, shoot or melee you cant really do anything at all... And no BCR is not bad at all those things, they have their problems but its definitely not THAT extreme.

 

6 minutes ago, blueshirtman said:

So you want destruction to be removed as a faction from AoS, because they are many things, but heroic, colorful is not one of them. And grim and dark is.

Orks and goblins are very colorful and pretty good comic relief a lot of the time.

 

I hate to sound like a ****** but if you hate everything about your army and all the changes, maybe the game just isnt for you?  There are probably other game types out there with a different set of rules you would enjoy or if you do like the rules maybe you need to try a new army to see how they work for you.  BCR has had it rough recently for sure, but these seem like pretty big over reactions.

[pseudonyme]

10 minutes ago, mikethefish said:

 

I hate to nitpick about one specific thing here, but I feel compelled to.

You cannot seriously  classify Flesh Eater Courts as a "funny" faction, can you?  I mean I get that they have the whole "gibbering madness & delusions" thing going on, but that doesn't provide one little bit of comic relief.  If anything the FEC are the ultimate in Grimdark, because their story is so completely warped and 'effed up.

Goblins and Skaven frequently serve the purpose of comic relief, but the Flesh Eaters are basically a lot like Heath Ledger's Joker.  Sure they both exhibit wacky antics, but very few folks actually laugh at them, and when they do, it's usually laughter as a shocked response to whatever messed up action they just perpetrated.

I stand behind what I said. I think their background is very funny and I could not stop grinning while reading their Malign portents short story. It is clear to me that the author chuckled when he wrote it.

[blueshirtman]

4 minutes ago, Drofnum said:

If you cant cast, shoot or melee you cant really do anything at all... And no BCR is not bad at all those things, they have their problems but its definitely not THAT extreme.

When was the last time a BCR list placed in top 8 of any event? I am assuming your right and it is just me that play them the wrong way, and everyone else plays them right.

 

5 minutes ago, Drofnum said:

Orks and goblins are very colorful and pretty good comic relief a lot of the time.

They torture people for fun, burn them alive etc , they are canibals. That is like saying a bunch of kongo child soldiers are a "colorful bunch", because their uniforms are all colors of the rainbow.

 

7 minutes ago, Drofnum said:

I hate to sound like a ****** but if you hate everything about your army and all the changes, maybe the game just isnt for you?  There are probably other game types out there with a different set of rules you would enjoy or if you do like the rules maybe you need to try a new army to see how they work for you.  BCR has had it rough recently for sure, but these seem like pretty big over reactions.

Yeah I don't like how BCR are right now, they are borderline unfun to play where I live, and the changes in the new edition are not helping my army. Worse some are nerfing it. Like the look out sir rule. I think it is a good rule, I like it as a concept, I think something like that was needed. But it does not change the fact that my army can't use it to protect itself, while its own shoting is suddenly done at -1 to hit.

If I could change my army I would, but the second hand market in my city is small, and there is 0 people wanting to buy my army here. The fact it looks ugly, had to paint it to play at my store, doesn't help either.

11 minutes ago, pseudonyme said:

I stand behind what I said. I think their background is very funny and I could not stop grinning while reading their Malign portents short story. It is clear to me that the author chuckled when he wrote it.

You know maybe it is my family background, but somehow no stories about canibalism seem funny to me. At best they make sick, at worse it makes me rethink my families history.

[CaptainNippon]

2 minutes ago, blueshirtman said:

 

They torture people for fun, burn them alive etc , they are canibals. That is like saying a bunch of kongo child soldiers are a "colorful bunch", because their uniforms are all colors of the rainbow.

Exaggerated cruelty and violence can be fun in a fictional context, because there are no repercussions in the real world.

Greenskins and Skaven have always been "the funny factions" not despite their cruelty, but exactly because of their over the top cruelty. 

[Drofnum]

16 minutes ago, blueshirtman said:

When was the last time a BCR list placed in top 8 of any event? I am assuming your right and it is just me that play them the wrong way, and everyone else plays them right.

I'm not saying they are competitive, they definitely arent right now.  They can be fine in casual games though, I play against a guy that runs them pretty regularly and he still does okay cause we dont run tournament lists at our game nights generally.   I also think GW knows that Destruction as a whole is in a terrible spot right now and would wait for the Faction preview for BCR before going too crazy about the changes, they've already shown with Ironjawz that they are willing to drop point costs to get units to be more competitive and that could be all you need to see competitiveness again.  All this is without knowing what all the changes mean as a whole as well, these snippets are fun teasers but honestly tell us very little about the overall balance that they're trying to achieve.

[michu]

Quote

They torture people for fun, burn them alive etc , they are canibals. That is like saying a bunch of kongo child soldiers are a "colorful bunch", because their uniforms are all colors of the rainbow.

 

It's called black humour - and if you want less drastic example of orruks as comic relief consider army organization of Ironjawz: their basic fighting formations (fists) are made of 5 units, because they can only count to 5 on their fingers, but some "smarter" megabosses noticed that you can use your second hand - and started using 10 units in their fists (If I remember it right. Maybe some IJ player will correct me if I'm wrong somewhere).

[TheWilddog]

These faction focuses have me a little worried. I understand that they are leaning on the newer releases but I would love some more Death and Destruction info.  So far we have gotten 1 Death (Nighthaunt) 1 Destruction (Ironjawz) but 3 Order (Stormcast, Fire Slayers, Daughters of Khaine) and 5 Chaos (Slaves, Nurgle, Khorne, Tzeentch, Slaanesh). We need some FEC or Bonesplitterz love.

[Enoby]

Too add to the discussion of Grimdark vs Noblebright, I think I prefer Grimdark, but not in excess. 

My problem with Noblebright is that it often lacks a challeng to the heroes that gets me invested in their story. That was my issue with the Stormcast in the first few books - nothing seemed to challenge them at all, and so it left me thinking "what's the point of reading if I know it'll be mostly smooth sailing?". I personally prefer a constant, nigh unwinnable situation because it feels much cooler when they do actually win. For those who play videogames, you may have found that it's enjoyable to play on harder difficulties because it feels much more rewarding - easy mode doesn't really feel like you 'deserved' the win. I think most people are familiar with the phrase 'Mary Sue', and I think the reason people don't like those types of characters is because there's no point of reading their story as they'll never fail - there's no struggle to keep you invested. 

That said, Grimdark can go way overboard. Going back to the videogames allegory, there's a big difference between difficult and cheap. If a world feels like no matter what happens you'll lose, you get another case of "what's the point?". I think 40k's lore often teeters on the side of this, but Malign Portents has a good balance. 

I personally prefer a nigh unwinnable struggle of the little guy vs the big bad: there's still a little bit of hope that they'll come out okay, but there's a big chance of failure - and that keeps me invested.

[Burf]

9 hours ago, Redmanphill said:

@Karol do you take no shooting because your opponents has more? Do you take slower units  because your opponent has faster ones? Do you take units that are poor in combat because your opponent has better ones? 

If you can’t unbind all of your opponents spells then this introduces some tactics to the game. You have to dispel those which are most important rather than them all, you also have to accept the fact that their magic phase will have some effect on you. Beside that if they can attempt to dispel each of your spells you have choice. Do you maximize your wizards positions to prevent unbinding yet remain in an effective range to utilise your spells?

While I can be very critical of things in our game I do believe that all the changes we have seen previewed are for the best and are improving our game. Once everything is revealed and understood we can be more critical as we will then know how everything interacts. Now is the time to enjoy the hype and get ready for the new edition.

This is actually a nonsense argument. If I take judicators and you take skyfires we both get to shoot. If I take a battlemage and you take Nagash you get a magic phase and I DON'T. I can't even realistically unbind anything.

You don't have to make the 'unbind/cast' decision, all the units in the game that are oppresively good at dispelling can already afford to be on the frontlines. With this change, so long as the LoC and Nagash are common picks, they'll crowd out other small casters. Taking a lone Butcher or Grot shaman will be the same as tossing away 80+pts in any game where an LoC, Nagash, Arkhan, or even human form Morathi are in play.

It's what I like to call 'The GW Problem' 90% of every caster in the game is fine, but a handful get boosted to an MUCH greater degree. It makes the best casters in the game better and the mediocre casters slightly worse.

This doesn't mean it'll be broken, it's just going to be a frustration. And who knows, maybe there will be some other mitigating factor. As it stands though, it's a sad time to be a single cast unboosted wizard.

[Tittliewinks22]

6 minutes ago, Burf said:

This is actually a nonsense argument. If I take judicators and you take skyfires we both get to shoot. If I take a battlemage and you take Nagash you get a magic phase and I DON'T. I can't even realistically unbind anything.

You don't have to make the 'unbind/cast' decision, all the units in the game that are oppresively good at dispelling can already afford to be on the frontlines. With this change, so long as the LoC and Nagash are common picks, they'll crowd out other small casters. Taking a lone Butcher or Grot shaman will be the same as tossing away 80+pts in any game where an LoC, Nagash, Arkhan, or even human form Morathi are in play.

It's what I like to call 'The GW Problem' 90% of every caster in the game is fine, but a handful get boosted to an MUCH greater degree. It makes the best casters in the game better and the mediocre casters slightly worse.

This doesn't mean it'll be broken, it's just going to be a frustration. And who knows, maybe there will be some other mitigating factor. As it stands though, it's a sad time to be a single cast unboosted wizard.

Why complain that an 800 point model is shutting down your 80 point wizard. Sounds like a bad points exchange in your favor.

Literally go kill him with shooting (ya know that thing that LoN has zero of) or in melee with some rend 1 or high volume of non rend. He no longer has mystic shield... It won't be hard...

[Kamose]

5 hours ago, kuroyume said:

That won't work as well when the wizards will have penalty to be hit, while being free to snipe your own heroes with spells.

You said it exactly. Wizards have a "penalty" to be hit. It is not a prohibition. They can still be shot and killed without restriction. If AoS used 40k rules for shooting at characters i.e. they cannot be targeted at all unless they are the closest, then we'd have a problem. As it is, nonMonster wizards are slightly harder to hit. Nothing more.

[Captain Marius]

9 minutes ago, Burf said:

This is actually a nonsense argument. If I take judicators and you take skyfires we both get to shoot. If I take a battlemage and you take Nagash you get a magic phase and I DON'T. I can't even realistically unbind anything.

Good. If an army is putting all its points in magic it should able to overwhelm an army not designed for it. Just like my Bloodbound cant snipe heroes with shooting, or my Freeguild are in trouble when even the worst combat units get in combat with them.

I think the 2nd ed tweaks are balancing things for average TAC armies but matchups will still be skewed when specialised armies are involved. Thats kinda the point?

[Aelfric]

The impression I got from the Tzeentch focus was that they were trying to give the impression that they would still be good in the new ed.  This, to me,  implies that there will be big changes and they want to let people down gently.  Saying that it'll be fun to take lots of cheap wizards tells me that the larger ones are going to be more expensive and they're showing alternatives, even as far as dangling an under-used model as an option.  They offered nothing new, whereas the other focuseseseses ( foci ?) gave little tidbits of of future improvements.  I suspect that most Tzeentch players were expecting some reduction in power somewhere along the line, so it should not come as a surprise.  Hopefully the reins have been pulled back just gently enough for the other horses ( esp the 3-legged ones) to catch up a bit. 

[TheOtherJosh]

1 hour ago, blueshirtman said:

What if my army doesn't have units that roll many dice at range? 

Then you need to leverage the changes to get into Melee combat faster.

Do what you’re best at, take something that your army is a 8 out of 10 and see if you can crank it up to 10 out of 10 (or work on cranking it up to 11. *looks around for his guitar amp*) 

The addition of rerolls to charges and 6” to run will help you do that.

There will be new Artefacts, and some of those may help as well.

[ledha]

5 hours ago, kuroyume said:

That won't work as well when the wizards will have penalty to be hit, while being free to snipe your own heroes with spells.

The look out sir ! don't work for monsters. So Nagash, Treelords, Lord of Change and any mortarch will be as easy to hit as before. And even more easy to kill, since they won't be able to improve their save with mystic shield.

As for the normal wizards, except Kroak; a -1 penalty to hit won't save them form a half-decent shooting phase. Most of them are still 4/5 wounds with a 5+/6+ save

And most of them cost A LOT and can't dispell more than 1/2 time, most of the time with only a minor bonus. Sure, Nagash is a pain, but since he cost 800 pts, being able to shutdown 3 casters at 100/120 pts each is the least he could do. A LOC only have two dispell at +1, and without a mystic shield, will be MUCH easier to kill than before.

[Freejack02]

1 hour ago, blueshirtman said:

Like the look out sir rule. I think it is a good rule, I like it as a concept, I think something like that was needed. But it does not change the fact that my army can't use it to protect itself, while its own shoting is suddenly done at -1 to hit.

Pretty sure your Icebrow Hunters can be protected from ranged attacks when near units of Yhetees/Mournfangs/Sabres, so not sure what you're talking about. Choosing not to field an army that takes advantage of LOS! is not a fault of the rule itself. 

Not to mention your best shooting attack (snowballs) are untouched by the change, and can still regularly delete Heroes every turn. 

[PJetski]

On the topic of Kroak, the ability for chameleon skinks to deploy onto a balewind vortex has finally found a use with the new LOS! rule

[ledha]

22 minutes ago, PJetski said:

On the topic of Kroak, the ability for chameleon skinks to deploy onto a balewind vortex has finally found a use with the new LOS! rule

Sinze you mesure from the base of Kroak to see if he is within 3" of another unit, isn't the size of the Balewind a bit too high for him to take profit of Look Out Sir ?

[Carnelian]

3 hours ago, mikethefish said:

ou cannot seriously  classify Flesh Eater Courts as a "funny" faction, can you?  I mean I get that they have the whole "gibbering madness & delusions" thing going on, but that doesn't provide one little bit of comic relief.  If anything the FEC are the ultimate in Grimdark, because their story is so completely warped and 'effed up.

Grimdark can be funny - look at the regimental standard. For my money's worth fec are hilarious. 

[AlphaKennyThing]

2 hours ago, blueshirtman said:

Yeah I don't like how BCR are right now, they are borderline unfun to play where I live, and the changes in the new edition are not helping my army. Worse some are nerfing it. Like the look out sir rule. I think it is a good rule, I like it as a concept, I think something like that was needed. But it does not change the fact that my army can't use it to protect itself, while its own shoting is suddenly done at -1 to hit.

If I could change my army I would..

Mate for your own sanity I'd try and organise a small narrative campaign or something. It sounds like you're having an absolutely ****** time with Beastclaw Raiders at the moment, and sometimes playing in a non-competitive setting for a while can re-kindle the ol' flame. Last time I played BCR I used my Slaves to Darkness and the Open War cards, we drew the card that was +1 attack across the board as a Twist. We came up with a scenario where I had to defend a Chaos-held town against a BCR pillaging raid, and it was absolutely brutal - but fantastic fun!

AoS is at its very best by a country mile when you play it that way. BCR performed really well, eventually winning a minor victory after a stunning Mournfang charge into my Bloodreavers.

If you're hoping to play competitively, BCR aren't going to cut the mustard as the game stands, however, don't dwell too much on previews. Pros off the top of my head based on the previews:

a) You can now shut down enemy ranged units with your Mournfang, or Frost Sabres, diverting lethal fire away from your big dudes whilst they stomp across the battlefield.

b) Highly likely a points decrease will be inbound, as Ironjawz got one and they're fairly similar to BCR, meaning you'll be able to take more in your army.

c) You can shield your own heroes, too. Granted only the one on foot, but it's still perfectly possible.

d) Enemy heroes are only protected from shooting if they stay close to other units. This means enemy units are likely to stay back in defence of vital heroes, meaning you're able to play the objectives a little more than before. If they do decide to advance the heroes with the infantry, it means they're moving closer to you, and therefore you'll be able to punch them in the face harder. Alternatively, focus fire the unit protecting a hero, then shoot the hero to death. Either way -1 to hit doesn't make shooting unusable.

Last of all, remember that armies fluctuate as they are balanced and fixed and all that good stuff. BCR will be brought back up.

[Freejack02]

56 minutes ago, ledha said:

Sinze you mesure from the base of Kroak to see if he is within 3" of another unit, isn't the size of the Balewind a bit too high for him to take profit of Look Out Sir ?

For the most part, yes I think so - but there could be a very tall unit that could possibly qualify?

Edit: Wait, I don't think anyone can be within 3" of a Balewind base anyhow, so unless you teleport a unit of chameleon skinks to share the space up there, I dont' think it's possible...

[PlasticCraic]

@blueshirtman it's also worth pointing out that the Thundertusk doesn't shoot with a "To Hit" roll.  It's an ability that triggers on a 2+, so it would not be affected by Look Out Sir. 

Similarly the Blood Vulture doesn't have a To Hit roll, and those two are most of the ranged output in a lot of BCR armies.

I hope BCR get some favourable points adjustments in the new book.

[Nikobot]

10 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

+++MOD HAT+++

I've just removed a number of comments that weren't related to the new edition of AoS.  Please keep this topic on focus.

 

Back on track - we're getting realm artefacts!  These two are from Ulgu

Has any looked at the wording of the Sword... "Pick one of the bearer's melee weapons to be the Sword of Judgement."

This wording looks slightly different to existing items that go like "Pick one of the bearer's weapons" and then go straight into abilities...

They don't suggest a replacement type scenario.

Anyone read anything into this? Could be an underlying magic item rules section in the future where magic items might replace an attack profile? or existing abilities?

Hard to figure out in this case because there is no suggested replacement attack profile

Just the wording it a little odd on this one...

 

 

[Mandzak-Miniatures]

1 hour ago, Nikobot said:

Has any looked at the wording of the Sword... "Pick one of the bearer's melee weapons to be the Sword of Judgement."

This wording looks slightly different to existing items that go like "Pick one of the bearer's weapons" and then go straight into abilities...

They don't suggest a replacement type scenario.

Anyone read anything into this? Could be an underlying magic item rules section in the future where magic items might replace an attack profile? or existing abilities?

Hard to figure out in this case because there is no suggested replacement attack profile

Just the wording it a little odd on this one...

 

 

I am sure it is just the typical GW lingo snafu. It could be a bungle, it could be intentional. Looks like we may have to wait for a FAQ on that.

I lean more towards that its meant to replace a weapon/ is a relic that is used in lieu of a battle tome artifact.

[Burf]

7 minutes ago, Mandzak-Miniatures said:

I am sure it is just the typical GW lingo snafu. It could be a bungle, it could be intentional. Looks like we may have to wait for a FAQ on that.

I lean more towards that its meant to replace a weapon/ is a relic that is used in lieu of a battle tomb artifact.

This exact problem is why I really hope neither the relics nor the spells end up usable in matched play.

GW is famous for inconsistent wording and exploitable loopholes, adding 50 new spells and 50 (or however many) new artifacts is going to result in at least a handful that either don't work properly or do things that end up being super OP.

And yeah, GW can FAQ that but A) It ends up a game of rules whack-a-mole and B) They tried to FAQ the balewind twice and managed to not fix the problem either time.