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Can Age of Sigmar 2 be a competitive game?


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I often read stories of one guys collection getting rolled over by another's and suppositions of 'balance issues. The game doesn't start when you get to the table - half of the game in Matched Play is list compilation. It can be competitive if you're competitive and fully take part in this element of AoS,  If you rock up to the table with a random assortment of models and no strategy you will be in trouble.

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14 minutes ago, Marc Wilson said:

I often read stories of one guys collection getting rolled over by another's and suppositions of 'balance issues. The game doesn't start when you get to the table - half of the game in Matched Play is list compilation. It can be competitive if you're competitive and fully take part in this element of AoS,  If you rock up to the table with a random assortment of models and no strategy you will be in trouble.

And this is exactly what AoS isn't made for. Matched play list construction allows for a limited selection of "broken" models and rules to dominate every other option. You can build a nice list with a few heroes, some magic support and a balanced selection of troops, but you will sure as hell lose to someone who picks the cream of the crop.

 

AoS is not balanced and if players don't actively try to break the game it doesn't need to be, however it seems to be the main thing the most vocal players are into.

Also don't underestimate the amount of people who play open and narrative AoS. They may not be very visible because they don't mingle in balance and rule discussions but the sales  numbers don't lie. I think GW found a way to reach an audience that cares more about the hobby and the stories then they do about the rules.

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7 hours ago, Sedraxis said:

And this is exactly what AoS isn't made for. Matched play list construction allows for a limited selection of "broken" models and rules to dominate every other option. You can build a nice list with a few heroes, some magic support and a balanced selection of troops, but you will sure as hell lose to someone who picks the cream of the crop.

 

AoS is not balanced and if players don't actively try to break the game it doesn't need to be, however it seems to be the main thing the most vocal players are into.

Also don't underestimate the amount of people who play open and narrative AoS. They may not be very visible because they don't mingle in balance and rule discussions but the sales  numbers don't lie. I think GW found a way to reach an audience that cares more about the hobby and the stories then they do about the rules.

The sales numbers say that the most powerful units(and large centerpiece models) tend to sell the best and that AoS was struggling mightily until they added a more competitive element to the game.

Also, just real quick, people talk about 'breaking the game' to mean 'bringing really strong stuff to the table' and that's not what it means. Bringing 24 skyfires isn't 'breaking the game', using GWs poor wording to bypass the Balewind vortex FAQ so that you could put a LoC on top of it was breaking the game. Bringing 3 thundertusks and a stonehorn backed up by grots with fanatics wasn't breaking the game, using the loose wording of the 'set up' rules to weave your grandhammers past their screen into combat with their heroes was breaking the game.

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11 hours ago, Richelieu said:

I think some people equate balance with universal competitive viability.  If the former is what you seek, AoS is quite balanced.  Many different factions and list compositions make regular appearances in the top ten at the largest tournaments and even the most dominant lists only have a slight edge over the other to tier lists.  If the latter is what you seek, I've got no advice.  

I appreciate this outlook, but it's being very generous. Essentially what it boils down to is that the top 2-3 strategies for 3-5 armies are roughly balanced. But GW, since they started taking a more  active role in making sure their games aren't obnoxious, broken messes like 40k 7th was, has struggled far more with the BOTTOM 50% of their powercurve than the top 50. The GHBs are far too conservative on improving bottom tier units, and far too liberal on making changes that compound on each other. Two of the worst balance decisions GW has made in the past few years was deciding "Destroy destruction GA traits+Increase points on Beastclaws+nerf Stonehorns" and "Drop tons of Fyreslayer points+Give strong new allegiance abilities+give new battalions" and that junk happened in 2017.

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Short answer is that I would not advise it.

I would be curious to see how many other games people who post here also play. I often find that people who think the Warhammers are balanced well enough don't seriously play NON-GW games.

Yes, you can play competitive Warhammer (applies to either of them) if you want to. It is certainly bigger than other games. Definitely not what it is designed for though. AoS gives epic an fun battles with crazy things going on and lets you play with the nice models you own and really lets thier fluff (that you probably also love) shine through. It's great fun. I'm looking forward to my game on Monday because we're fighting IN THE SKY! 

Do I expect the winner to be able to credit thier win mostly to thier skill though? No. Can I tell who will win a game of Warhammer when I hear the match up or look at the lists? Not as bad as 40k, but fairly often. Is the actual playing if the game the most important aspect of winning? Not if you are primarily concerned with winning. To me, positive answers to those questions make a game balanced. 

By far, the most well balanced game I know is Kings of War. It is designed for and really shines in a tournament environment. Some people call it "fantasy chess". The models from Mantic are not as nice, but meant to be affordable. No issues using other models though; I have magnetic movement trays and use the same daemons for KoW and both Warhammers. 

Infinity is great too, especially if you like your rules crunchy. Models are not much cheaper than GW, but you need less than 20. Corvus Belli have struck a great balance between cinematic gameplay and balance. The game is designed to be intense and close though. So games often come down to a small detail or single mistake. 

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18 hours ago, HorseOnABeachBall said:

 

If you're coming from WM, your head is going to explode with AoS. WM has concise , neatly written mechanics that work, AoS is mostly a patch work where abilities that are similar sometimes behave the same , sometimes don't.

The double turn is still the epitome of "Lucky Roll".

I’m apparently alone in my loathing of WM as a competitive game.  It pretty much always devolves into who can roll dice better and given the skirmish level of the game there is typically not room for dice to even out.  

For me anyway WM is an expensive Farkle reskin.  

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2 hours ago, Bellfree said:

 ...AoS was struggling mightily until they added a more competitive element to the game.

 

This isn't true. AoS was selling better than WHF had been before the first GHB but it's release certainly propelled the sales much higher.

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21 minutes ago, Nick in York said:

This isn't true. AoS was selling better than WHF had been before the first GHB but it's release certainly propelled the sales much higher.

Yeah Sylvaneth and Ironjawz were constantly out of stock even before the first General's handbook.

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19 hours ago, Nin Win said:

So accept this or not.  The reality of the situation is that your army might not be good enough after the next battle tome comes out.  That's what you are signing up for when you play competitively.  If it doesn't work for you, then don't do it.

To be honest I don't know enough to be 100% if my army is bad. Not that I don't worry when I see people with high reputations pointing bad things about it of course.

But there are armies like KO or BCR, I wouldn't want to play. Again am not expirianced with battle games, but if an edition seems to focus on magic and a lot of troops, and nerfs shoting, and your an elite shoting magicless army, you may want to wait with starting that army till the army tome comes out. 

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1 hour ago, Nick in York said:

This isn't true. AoS was selling better than WHF had been before the first GHB but it's release certainly propelled the sales much higher.

But wasn't Fantasy un updated for a long time, with tomes for armies coming out every 4-6 months and not almost every other month like AoS? Plus it is hard to get people in to a game where you need 20 boxs to get a basic army which may not even be worth playing.

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35 minutes ago, Karol said:

But wasn't Fantasy un updated for a long time, with tomes for armies coming out every 4-6 months and not almost every other month like AoS? Plus it is hard to get people in to a game where you need 20 boxs to get a basic army which may not even be worth playing.

I loved fantasy. My best wargaming memories were playing pickup and tournament fantasy, but it was totally busted.

There was no real way to rescue it and it had to be AoS'd.

The barrier to entry for new players was prohibitively high, and the restrictions that made the game relatively balanced (high core tax, rare limits and duplicate limits) meant that the game wasn't particularly dynamic.

Nothing really did any damage, compared to the power creep in AoS, with the positive consequence that you couldn't really get alpha-striked off like you can now, and the negative consequence that Chaos Knights would frequently be routed by a handful of steadfast clanrats with ranks and a banner.

We can understand where this came from, the need to move on from Hero-Hammer and cavalry running every army down like dogs in previous editions, but as much as I loved it, 8th edition Fantasy wasn't a particularly dynamic game.

There's plenty wrong with AoS, but there's plenty more scope to fix it.

Furthermore, the division of releases into essentially subfactions, for example Idoneth & DoK as part of a growing Aelves master faction, means the game can be freshened up frequently, with more flavour. Contrast this with the need to remodel or release an entire master faction on a rolling basis.
 

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10 hours ago, Bellfree said:

The sales numbers say that the most powerful units(and large centerpiece models) tend to sell the best

Do they?

I've never really seen any unit-by-unit sales numbers, or any analysis of such.  Wasn't aware that this was public knowledge.

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5 hours ago, Karol said:

To be honest I don't know enough to be 100% if my army is bad. Not that I don't worry when I see people with high reputations pointing bad things about it of course.

But there are armies like KO or BCR, I wouldn't want to play. Again am not expirianced with battle games, but if an edition seems to focus on magic and a lot of troops, and nerfs shoting, and your an elite shoting magicless army, you may want to wait with starting that army till the army tome comes out. 

This is why I think concentrating on one narrow approach to a single way to play is generally not a good idea.  You get a tragedy of the commons where everyone trying to make their army as strong as possibly makes the number of viable armies and units less for everyone. 

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2 minutes ago, amysrevenge said:

Do they?

I've never really seen any unit-by-unit sales numbers, or any analysis of such.  Wasn't aware that this was public knowledge.

It's not public knowledge.

What people are generally going by is things going out of stock both in their local stores and on GW's online stores.  And I suppose you could also get a sense of it on the used market as ebay buy it now items get snapped up and so on.

Basically there's a shallow pool of pretty much every product GW sells.  GW doesn't want to pay money for endless warehouse space full of models so they tend to make what they think will be enough.

And then add in competitive players often buying single items in multiples whereas a more casual player might want one of this, one of that and so on.  Now add in a consensus of what is the new hot thing and it would take a very small proportion of the players of a given faction to go through the available supply.  GW's sales channels will only get resupplied as their production schedule permits and the secondary market will require people deciding to sell those very items from their collection.

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Yep AoS can be and is competitive (have a listen to the Facehammer podcast) as long as one accepts that list building is part of the process. Selecting the right army is very much a thing in competitive play from building synergies to getting the most for your points.  If you fail to get a hold of it you’ll have a troubled time competitively speaking 

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41 minutes ago, Ollie Grimwood said:

Yep AoS can be and is competitive (have a listen to the Facehammer podcast) as long as one accepts that list building is part of the process. Selecting the right army is very much a thing in competitive play from building synergies to getting the most for your points.  If you fail to get a hold of it you’ll have a troubled time competitively speaking 

Warhammer in its all incarnations has always been a list building game. 

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27 minutes ago, Jamopower said:

Warhammer in its all incarnations has always been a list building game. 

With one small exception - pre-GH2016 it was a "how do you make a list?" game first, and then a list building game once we figured out how to make lists hahaha (I actually quite liked that initial SCGT comp).

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On 7/5/2018 at 1:12 PM, Richelieu said:

I think some people equate balance with universal competitive viability.  If the former is what you seek, AoS is quite balanced.  Many different factions and list compositions make regular appearances in the top ten at the largest tournaments and even the most dominant lists only have a slight edge over the other to tier lists.  If the latter is what you seek, I've got no advice.  

I think AoS 2.0 has changed it so that only a very narrow number of factions and lists are viable actually.

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So, It's mostly what I remember. My group tried 8th ed 40k for about 6 months and thought the balance was terrible compared to warmachine.  So AoS isn't any better than 40k?    I also love and play Kings of war. so I'm not looking for a new game, I was just hoping this game could be played the way I like to play wargames.. It sounds like it doesn't...

 

I guess I need to find a tier list of factions then, so I don't pick a faction that will crush my friends lists..

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31 minutes ago, sirbrokensword said:

So, It's mostly what I remember. My group tried 8th ed 40k for about 6 months and thought the balance was terrible compared to warmachine.  So AoS isn't any better than 40k?    I also love and play Kings of war. so I'm not looking for a new game, I was just hoping this game could be played the way I like to play wargames.. It sounds like it doesn't...

 

I guess I need to find a tier list of factions then, so I don't pick a faction that will crush my friends lists..

40k is in an odd place that the meta changes literally every month of not more since they are rolling out codexes constantly and most armies in the game are able to mix in a broad manner.

 

AoS usually (for a given definition of usually considering it's only been a few years) changes yearly. They might be more active in plugging bad exploits, but I suspect the balance we have now is what will last out the year

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