AoS 2e previews

[Sception]

Core Rule previews are starting to appear, here's the first explicit one:  https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/05/16/16th-may-rules-preview-turn-prioritygw-homepage-post-2/

Main point to note:

Double turns stay in the game, but become 1/6 less likely, since turn order on tie goes to the person who went first in the prior round.  Because double turns are so bad for the undead, or at least for the Legions of Nagash, this is a beneficial change for us, but not nearly as significant as I had hoped for.  I honestly had hoped that they would ditch the double turn altogether.  Maybe even the player turn completely, and instead alternate in phases.  Like, roll for priority each round, then take turns activating hero phase abilities starting with priority player, take turns moving units starting with priority player, etc etc.  Kind of like how the combat phase currently works.  That would have not only elimited the player turn, but also would have reduced the boredom that can come from waiting for your opponent to resolve the bulk of their turn before you get a chance to do anything.  I've played in games where one player or the other went as long as half an hour or more without making any meaningful decisions.  That only gets all the worse with double turns, making them, imo, bad for the game as a whole, not just bad for our army which relies on consistent pacing for recursion.

But I guess that was a bigger change than they really wanted to mess with, so oh well.  Again, this is a slight improvement for us from where things used to be, even if not as big a change as I might have liked.

..........................

Other changes already mentioned in the rather understated announcement video:

No shooting out of combat.  Not entirely clear how this works.  Can a unit in combat still shoot the unit its in combat with, just not other units?  Either way, it's a slight improvement for us, since we don't do shooting so much, and are particularly weak against shooting used against us.  The ability to throw a fast unit of dire wolves or outflanked morghast archai or the like into a shooty unit and thus prevent that unit from shooting our more vulnerable units and heroes for at least a turn (unless the enemy is one of the fewish units that can withdraw and shoot in the same turn) is obviously a pretty significant boon for us.

All of your heroes can use command abilities.  Again, not clear yet how this works.  There was talk somewhere of there being something similar to 40k's stratagem system.  It's possible activating command abilities will consume a limited resource pool so you you won't be able to use them all willy nilly.  That said, this is also a pretty big boon for us, as we have a few heroes with strong command abilities who are a bit too fragile to take as your general in most normal sized games.  Specifically, wight kings, vampire lords,  and knights of shrouds.  The ability to use their command abilities, even just a couple times per battle, might be enough to justify taking wight kings and knights of shrouds as support heroes in larger games, while also making vampire lords useful as more than just a pricey spellcaster.  So this is definitely an improvement for us, though other factions are likely to benefit just as much as we do from this change, so I'm not sure it's a relative shift in our favor like the turn priority and shooting changes mentioned above probably are.

[Kramer]

2 minutes ago, Sception said:

I've played in games where one player or the other went as long as half an hour or more without making any meaningful decisions.  That only gets all the worse with double turns, making them, imo, bad for the game as a whole, not just bad for our army which relies on consistent pacing for recursion.

Yeah those are annoying. For me they don't weigh up against the advantages so i'm personally happy the double turns still in. But I agree it seems a bit like a compremise instead of a total revisit of the game element. 

 

4 minutes ago, Sception said:

So this is definitely an improvement for us, though other factions are likely to benefit just as much as we do from this change, so I'm not sure it's a relative shift in our favor like the turn priority and shooting changes mentioned above probably are.

I agree, it won't be much of a game changer for one or two faction but for the whole playing field. Will be interesting to see how it goes. I play a little Slaanesh myself and the three generals trait works like a treat. It's a nice strategic challenge to get multiple command abilities off while keeping 12" away from each other but I don't expect that to carry over. curious to see if the command point pans out.  Also from a fluffy perspective it sometimes feels weird that certain command abilities only work if it's the general and don't for exactly the same guy  Why would your second wight king be unable to animate a different unit for example?

[Silverline]

Bat  Swarms in particular should become far more viable at shutting down shooting units - which is a bit of a shot in the arm for Soulblight, which suffers from a bit of a diversity problem

[Sception]

command point/ability preview is up:

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/05/18/18th-may-rules-preview-command-abilities-and-command-pointsgw-homepage-post-2/

basically any hero can use command abilities, but they cost points.  You get one point each hero phase (though not all command abilities happen in the hero phase anymore), and can save them up to spend multiples in later turns.  You also get one extra at the start of the game for each battalion in your army.  Also inspiring presence is different (use in battleshock to cancel test for one unit in just that phase), plus two other generic abilities (re-roll charge, or run 6" instead of rolling).  All the generic command abilities can be used on units within 6" of any hero or 12" of your general.

This is... a really mixed bag for us, and far less beneficial than the original 'any hero can use command abilities' news implied.  Aggressively limited command points means we're still not going to get much use out of our wight kings and knights of shrouds, since there won't be points left after inspiring presence/dread knight/what have you.

And the extra points for battalions make the painful lack of affordable battalions in Legions of Nagash, and the post-release nerf to the deathrattle march, all the more painful.

To the extent that we were counting on this to 'fix' wight kings and knights of shrouds, I don't think it's going to cut it.

 

The changes to inspiring presence are interesting.  Only one battleshock phase, instead of 'until your next hero phase', which previously might have been three whole battleshock phases.  But you get to use it reactively, so your opponent can't just ignore the inspired unit and focus down on your other units, which is a nice change for the 2x40 skeletons core that seems common at the moment (though we'll see if it survives the next round of points cost adjustments).

If LoN had some more decent, smaller, affordable, not-tied-to-specific-expensive-special characters battalions, I'd be a lot more excited about this change.  As it is, it seems like it's going to help every other published AoS faction's heroes a lot more than it's going to help ours.

[Sception]

 the fyreslayers article is also up today:

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/05/18/18th-may-faction-focus-fyreslayersgw-homepage-post-3/

and it reveals that there are going to be a bunch of new artifacts available based on whatever realm your army hails from.  This is nice in theory, but if the restrictions on artifacts remain as they currently are (one plus one per battalion), then it’s not likely to affect Legion of Nagash armies much, since, again, we’re rather lacking in easily-to-include battalions.

.............

Of course, not all undead armies are Legion of Nagash.  Unfortunately, outside of Legion armies things aren’t much better.  Generic Death and Soulblight armies have even fewer affordable battalion options than Legion lists.  Dedicated tomb kings have exactly none now, unless your opponent lets you play with the deleted compendium

Flesh Eaters stand to gain a bit more, as they have a lot more battalions available, and their current artifact selection is pretty lackluster.  On the command ability side, sadly their heroes don’t really have good command abilities, so their benefits from that are limited, but at least the expanded range of generic abilities helps.  So the ghoulies will benefit more from these changes than other undead, but still probably less than other AoS factions.

As for the Nighthaunt, well, that depends on what their character and battalion options look like in their upcoming book.

[Elmir]

5 hours ago, Sception said:

command point/ability preview is up:

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/05/18/18th-may-rules-preview-command-abilities-and-command-pointsgw-homepage-post-2/

basically any hero can use command abilities, but they cost points.  You get one point each hero phase (though not all command abilities happen in the hero phase anymore), and can save them up to spend multiples in later turns.  You also get one extra at the start of the game for each battalion in your army.  Also inspiring presence is different (use in battleshock to cancel test for one unit in just that phase), plus two other generic abilities (re-roll charge, or run 6" instead of rolling).  All the generic command abilities can be used on units within 6" of any hero or 12" of your general.

This is... a really mixed bag for us, and far less beneficial than the original 'any hero can use command abilities' news implied.  Aggressively limited command points means we're still not going to get much use out of our wight kings and knights of shrouds, since there won't be points left after inspiring presence/dread knight/what have you.

And the extra points for battalions make the painful lack of affordable battalions in Legions of Nagash, and the post-release nerf to the deathrattle march, all the more painful.

To the extent that we were counting on this to 'fix' wight kings and knights of shrouds, I don't think it's going to cut it.

 

The changes to inspiring presence are interesting.  Only one battleshock phase, instead of 'until your next hero phase', which previously might have been three whole battleshock phases.  But you get to use it reactively, so your opponent can't just ignore the inspired unit and focus down on your other units, which is a nice change for the 2x40 skeletons core that seems common at the moment (though we'll see if it survives the next round of points cost adjustments).

If LoN had some more decent, smaller, affordable, not-tied-to-specific-expensive-special characters battalions, I'd be a lot more excited about this change.  As it is, it seems like it's going to help every other published AoS faction's heroes a lot more than it's going to help ours.

I'm not sure I agree with you there. We do have low cost battalions (yes, tied to main characters, but we do have some of the cheapest, 70p costing battalions) that are quite potent in matched play. I also think the value of a single command point in a game is a bit exaggerated by the community at this point however. 

We do have BRILLIANT command abilities like bloodfeast/lord of bones tucked away in minor heroes that you never got to use before because of the frailty of those characters. We have some really good command abilities and all of this will allow for more flexibility for death. Additionally, our high bravery and ability to get troops up the field quickly through summonable keyword, means we will not have a need to use the new command abilities that often early on, which I think will help to stockpile command points. 

There are some very fun combos and the humble vampire lord was already an insanely good addition because of his good DI... with bloodfeast now becoming more readily accessible, VLs became some of the most flexible heroes in the game if you ask me. 

[Honk]

GHB18 seems to be stirring the game up quite a bit... guess things will get interesting in the near future.

just lost a game to double turn ? but was my fault for greedily double turning myself

And I hope necromancer get a command ability...

[Sception]

Let's not be facetious.  Lords of Sacrament doesn't cost 70 points, it costs 790.

 

[Elmir]

If that's your reasoning, I don't think many other armies out there will be rocking very cheap battalions to spam either.  

Although I'm not that happy that even more advantages are given to battalion warscrolls, I don't think this particular change is hindering LoN any more than virtually any other army out there...  First cohort, lords of sacrament (and yes, even Neferata's court in a double dragon build) can be run to make quite decent competitive lists. I don't see this changing our overall position in the meta at all tbh. 

If rumours are to be believed, first turn changes might make battalions less desirable and maybe this offsets it a bit, so we just have to wait for the whole picture. 

[Elmir]

Looks like there will be a complete overhaul of summoning in AoS.... as hinted at in the Slaanesh preview. 

And I believe the "free summons" might have big repercussions for Legion of Nagash armies. Suddenly, the command ability endless legions makes a ton more sense, as does the ability  the master's teachings for the legion of sacrament. 

[Sception]

I dont see depravity points as implying that other summoning abilities wont have reseeve costs.

[Elmir]

Nothing's for certain of course... But there are strong rumours going around that summoning points are gone and summoning being restricted through very finite resources. This last line in the Slaanesh preview seems to be in line with that: 

"They’re not the only faction to be receiving summoning changes, either…"

Summoning getting streamlined across the board would be quite good for the second edition. If the LoN become the masters of resurrecting their units (even when they've been destroyed), reinforces their niche even more. 

[Sception]

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/05/20/20th-may-rules-preview-look-out-sirgw-homepage-post-2/

First a reduction in the likelyhood of double turns, but only by 1/6.  then non general heroes can use command abilities, but the command points available to do so are so limited that your general might as well be the only one usingbthem anyway.  Now shooty protection for non monster heroes, but only in the form if -1 to hit so shooty armies will still be sniping away support heroes with impunity.

Dont get me wrong, all the changes we've heard so far are changed in the right direction.  They just don't go nearly as far in that direction as they needed to, imo.

[smucreo]

They are still changes in the right direction, so for now I'm moderately happy. We'll see what else is to come, but for now I'm content. 

One thing I'll say is that necro became a lot better now, he wants to stay at 3" of summonable units anyway to pass wounds, so an extra survival mechanic is more than welcome. It means you can give the -2 to shooting artifact to a VLoZD for example if you are running Sacrament to have an army pretty resilient to shooting.

[Deadkitten]

Agreed.  Sweeping changes are more likely to just muck things up in other areas.  This is an intuitive light touch and I'm happy to see it.  I've just a noob though so I don't have a whole lot of context.

 

[Elmir]

These changes are not sweeping,  but they don't have to be. A nudge in the right direction rather than a redesign is all that's needed I think. Granting very hard resilience to shooting for characters can cause a world of hurt in a game that has some pretty insane combos you can pull off using heroes.  But targeting them indiscriminately with shooting feels quite bad, and this seems like a good middle ground. 

In general, Legions of Nagash is doing really well with the veils that are being lifted for AoS v2: 

- CONFIRMED: Look out sir will protect our minor heroes a bit more, giving us longer access to Deathly Invocation. Having no shooting ourselves = pure buff.

- CONFIRMED: we have some really strong command abilities on minor heroes that you would never want to be the general, but you can use them now.  Given how we can even get shoehorned into obligatory generals (mortarchs, Nagash), this is nothing but good news for us. 

- UNCLEAR: if summoning becomes free across the board as rumored, abilities like endless legions/the master's teachings are insanely good for LoN. If summoning truly becomes free and things stay as they are: FEC might just be back in a big way! Especially since all their summoning is tied to command abilities. 

- PURE RUMOR: charging units might be striking first. Really good news for legion of Blood and Night, who tend to play more aggressively on the charge.  It will probably not be great news for skeleton units however. 

[Honk]

Same with the three modes of command...especially for legion of night, the reroll to charge might tune down the mighty plus of the harbringers.

same with the changes for battleshock. If you’re going up against legions of blood and have to inspire both turns, your command points will melt like a snowball in hell.

 

so I think they are turning a lot of wheels and pushing a bunch of buttons for this edition.

Even if it is like sception says just minor adjustments, the overall impact seems to be huge: 3 basic commands, additional command possibilities, look out rules, tougher battleshock rules, ““double turn““, ?!summoning?! ( well we don’t really summon anymore)... they haven‘t  even talked about points yet.

but I think a lot of adjustments swing in our favor 

[Sception]

Looking back at the command point article, it says you get a point every turn.  If that's every player turn, making two points per round, that might be enough to answer my complaint about the number of command points total, though id still prefer if additional points hadnt been tied to battalions.

[Ashtyn]

On 5/19/2018 at 12:51 AM, Sception said:

Let's not be facetious.  Lords of Sacrament doesn't cost 70 points, it costs 790.

 

You could say this for every single battalion in the game......

[Sception]

14 minutes ago, Ashtyn said:

You could say this for every single battalion in the game......

Not every battalion costs 790 points.  Some costs a lot more.  Many factions have battalions that cost a lot less.  Also, LoS is legion-locked to just sacrament or grand host.  Most factions aren't further divided into subfactions, each with access to only a small fraction of the overall factions already small battalion pool.  LoN is not in a great place for battalions, but even they're better off than factions like tomb kings, who have no battalions at all.

Again, there's a wide variety in the number, cost, quality, ease of inclusion, and just overall availability of battalions between factions, and as long as that's the case (probably always), I'd really rather the system not punish those who are lacking in the battalion department by withholding artefacts and command points from them as well.

[smucreo]

Not counting legacy factions like Tomb Kings or Brettonia, I could very easily see GW releasing a host of new battalions, artifacts and command traits for those factions without tomes to compensate at least until they get properly covered. 

If the rumour about extra artifacts costing CP is true (which could very well be) battalions would basically be the same they were this first edition. Remove the one-drop capability of battalions and I'd say the situation would be a lot more balanced.

[Sheriff]

2 minutes ago, smucreo said:

Remove the one-drop capability of battalions and I'd say the situation would be a lot more balanced.

But GW said they have made changes to speed up the game - taking ages to take turns deploy individual units was surely on the chopping block in that review. 

[Sception]

Actually, this bit from the new blood bleeders faction focus, combined with 1/turn cp instead of 1/round, answers most of my cp gripes

and to be clear, they were mostly just gripes, i still though the cpnsystem was an improvement

[Ashtyn]

6 hours ago, Sception said:

Not every battalion costs 790 points.  Some costs a lot more.  Many factions have battalions that cost a lot less.  Also, LoS is legion-locked to just sacrament or grand host.  Most factions aren't further divided into subfactions, each with access to only a small fraction of the overall factions already small battalion pool.  LoN is not in a great place for battalions, but even they're better off than factions like tomb kings, who have no battalions at all.

Again, there's a wide variety in the number, cost, quality, ease of inclusion, and just overall availability of battalions between factions, and as long as that's the case (probably always), I'd really rather the system not punish those who are lacking in the battalion department by withholding artefacts and command points from them as well.

Its not legion locked at all. You can take it in night but you just have to take Manfred.

[Honk]

And with changes in the summoning rules, this could be interesting...

fe Nurgle summoning with trees and stuff, you could try to hold out for two three rounds with a bunch of command points and then bring in the great unclean one...