What AoS can learn from the new 40k

[Killax]

Just now, WoollyMammoth said:

@Killax
I haven't mentioned anything about "broken" melee units because, in most cases you can negate any kind of sayl bomb by screening your army with chaff, forcing a bad charge on your opponent (tactics). Shooting has no tactics. Unlike WHFB, where you could have a fast moving combat unit engage a shooting unit to pin them down to screen your advance (same as 40k 8th), there is literally nothing you can do, other than hide behind scenery, or stack saves in cover and pray. 

Its semi true, the thing is that to me Sayl still feels like a typical 'gotcha' and that fits into the same realm as many of the other mentioned pieces. 
What I personally dislike the most in the way shooting works now is how casual and new players continiously are suprised it works the way it does also.

As someone who likes to fiddle with gamedesign and who has cooperated in playtesting for several games I think this is always a prime indication that "something" is wrong with the rule.

What I really like about AoS is how several units have several meele distances and hope to improve some importance for that aswell. I think that any small limitation to the shooting phase would be a step forward. I also think this about both Magic and it's smaller brother Summonning.

We will see how it pans out. I love how GW showed us some thoughts of their 40K game design and how they too realize that trying to put everything under one rulesset isn't ideal in the end. I feel we will see a better catering of the narrative and matched seperated eventually. Both are very cool but also revolve around other games and win conditions.

[Earthtremor]

The simplest fix for shooting is to go back to having a rule that means units engaged in melee cannot shoot nor can they be shot at. 

Or, you can shoot into melee but have misses hit your own force?

Or a fixed penalty for shooting into or out of combat.

For skyfires and Rukks etc... The most frustrating thing is the lack of any penalty for them being in combat

Imho any of these would be preferable to rolling the points adjustment dice.

[lare2]

12 hours ago, Earthtremor said:

The simplest fix for shooting is to go back to having a rule that means units engaged in melee cannot shoot nor can they be shot at. 

Or, you can shoot into melee but have misses hit your own force?

Or a fixed penalty for shooting into or out of combat.

For skyfires and Rukks etc... The most frustrating thing is the lack of any penalty for them being in combat

Imho any of these would be preferable to rolling the points adjustment dice.

I'd be happy with any of these options to deal with shooting. 

[ZephyrExia]

On 17/06/2017 at 4:34 AM, WoollyMammoth said:

they have been ignoring death for two years

Well Death did get FEC, though I do understand what you mean. I hope there will be a new model/tome release for Deathrattle when shadespire launches. Hopefully Vampires get a <insert subfaction name here> special rule (I don't like necromancers :P).

I am interested to see how quickly the 40k Indexes become codices, as the vast majority of Grand Alliance subfactions have not been touched in the 2(?) years since AoS came out.

[someone2040]

Lack of counterplay essentially, is the biggest issue with the shooting phase and the magic system. 

When you simplify things so much, you've got what Age of Sigmar's shooting phase is. Can I see it, am I in range? I can attack it. It's rubbish rules writing all for the point of getting the rules down to 4 pages. As much as people want the nice 'Can't target characters unless they're the closest' rule from 40k, it would absolutely ruin Age of Sigmar. 40k has all it's characters written from the ground up with those rules in mind (and most buffs only being 6"), in Age of Sigmar we've got stuff like Kunnin' Ruk's, Bloodsecrators and every single General running around with a command ability. It's not so feasible to put that into the game.

 

I think, perhaps a middle ground would be to introduce some clearer line of sight rules that subtract from the hit rolls of shooting. One unfortunate result of the top tier armies dominating with shooting, is because their shooting causes mortal wounds which ignores part of the shooting counterplay which should be cover.

I really don't get why GW went with cover adding to armour saves. Perhaps, they thought if it affected hit rolls it would bog down protracted combats in cover too much.

But anyway, If there was a rule in the game, such as if when shooting a model can't draw line of sight to any enemy model's in the targeted unit without passing over cover/other models, they got a penalty of 1 to hit, then it would add an element of counterplay into the shooting phase.

It would mean that characters can still be picked out, and magic in theory is a more reliable way of doing so (as it wouldn't need to hit), but it also adds counterplay as you can screen more important units with cheaper units and have it actually matter. Whether or not one element would be enough counter play to make the shooting phase interesting, not really sure.

 

Magic is another part of the game, which at the moment is quite boring. There's so little counterplay that can be done in the phase, because most wizards are so frail you need to keep them as far back as possible to keep them alive. 40k got it right in that the psychic phase happens after movement, and coupled with the targeting rules and larger unbind range, it makes it a more interesting part of the game overall.

A simple approach without changing the game structure would be to increase unbinding ranges to 24" (perhaps even to unlimited range, but still of course, requiring line of sight). A 24" range is still pretty poor though, as it puts your wizard within range of enemy fire and again, comes back into the shooting phase issues.

 

But overall, I think that to put AoS on the same level as 40k, GW need to alter both the rules and warscrolls alike. It's just not easy to make an interesting game that makes sense in 4 pages :). But hopefully the Generals Handbook 2 adds some elements of 'Advanced Rules' into the game.

[Killax]

I think one of the biggest cool factors in good GW games (and many other miniature games) is that the visual and narrative logic matches up decently well with the game rules in most circumstances. In some cases this is true for AoS while in others it's not. 40K has created a deeper experience due to it's Core rules because the core rules are fleshed out more and come with a logical pro and con.

Ultimately these pro's and cons are also what balanced game design is about. If you shoot really good, ideally, your not that good in combat and vice versa. In that same vein, if you can summon units really well (so basically have shooting immunity and great movement) you arn't the king of combat or shooting also. 

I personally like the idea of -1 to hit for shooting, I think no shooting in melee is an option (but requires drastical re-costing of shooting units) and in general I think both Magic and Summonning in 40K is fleshed out better. In general the whole Core rules system is where most of the AoS flaws shine trough due to how much depth the armies have gained in the last two years.

Players also like this depth, not only matched but arguably even much more so narrative and open players. I say this because good rules are rules who feel 'logical'. The fact that Magical Items/Artefacts can be taken theoretically infinite times while a Magical Spell cannot makes little to no sence for me from a narrative standpoint. I also feel the same about Shooting and Combat. Combat cares for 3" enemy models, Shooting somehow does not. It doesn't matter to me how Lord of the Rings characters shot in melee, what matters is that Legolas while he was on the Mumakil didn't attempt to shoot the Witch King from his Dragon. The latter is how Age of Sigmar does play out.

[Iradekhorne]

I agree with the shooting phase, but not in the rest guys.

As a AOS player since the start, I love the game, I re-started now in 40k and I can say this: AOS can be simple, but brutally deep if you whant know all and know how cut the combos.

40k dont have the same deep on combos as AOS, in fact, the size of his combos are really low compared to AOS combo complexity.

In one army you can have 5-6 combos with the auras or psi powers, but in aos is easy find more than 15 combos on all armyes cause the spellcasters have diferents spells, the commanders dont have the same command hability, you have warscroll batallions adding rules, etc.

Also I see the wound table unnecesary, I think 14-18 wounds with 4+ or 3+ save and rules to half wounds, etc. That represent well this. The rend on aos is much less usual than ap on 40k, and the monsters have easier to survive because we have místic shield, you need make good decisions about you monster, in 40k they are "inmune" to a lot of troops... I dont see well this.

 

For me, the deep right now in 40k is in his rules, and not in his combos, and I dont know if I like it, I love the brutally complexity of AOS when you try to master it, and I dont know if 40k is going to offer to me this complexity... Cause I dont want complex rules, I want complex combos with armies with personality, and I love learn about know how cut theese combos. That mean I can plan vs all and cut his combo with my army, if I cant cut the combo cause they dont have any combo, and are simply stronger than my army..... Or a lot effective vs my army....

[karch]

7 hours ago, Iradekhorne said:

I agree with the shooting phase, but not in the rest guys.

As a AOS player since the start, I love the game, I re-started now in 40k and I can say this: AOS can be simple, but brutally deep if you whant know all and know how cut the combos.

40k dont have the same deep on combos as AOS, in fact, the size of his combos are really low compared to AOS combo complexity.

In one army you can have 5-6 combos with the auras or psi powers, but in aos is easy find more than 15 combos on all armyes cause the spellcasters have diferents spells, the commanders dont have the same command hability, you have warscroll batallions adding rules, etc.

40K has just been rebooted. Give it a while and you'll see complexity and options go up.

Especially since 40K is GWs cash cow.

[Jamopower]

Now I managed to test out the new 40k. It was fun, but at the same time it proofed some of my concerns. The game is quite similar to AoS, but even with the limitations to shooting, there was still too much shooting for my taste. The shooting system isn't very interesting as such (effectively it is just one player rolling lots of dice and the other removing casualties, taking big part of play time) compared to the close combat and as the close combat is bit more simpler than in AoS, I felt that as an overall I prefer AoS more. Of course, if I would have to endure shooting heavy meta for AoS, my view would be very different. That said, there are some things that I wouldn't mind having in AoS. Possibility to move close enough, that charge can't fail even with double 1s would be one one and the restriction to shooting while in combat (though it wasnt much of a restriction when playing with dark eldar) would be another, though I would be happy for it just to be limitation of 3" range while within 3" of enemy.

[Killax]

On 2017-6-19 at 3:21 AM, Iradekhorne said:

I agree with the shooting phase, but not in the rest guys.

As a AOS player since the start, I love the game, I re-started now in 40k and I can say this: AOS can be simple, but brutally deep if you whant know all and know how cut the combos.

40k dont have the same deep on combos as AOS, in fact, the size of his combos are really low compared to AOS combo complexity.

In one army you can have 5-6 combos with the auras or psi powers, but in aos is easy find more than 15 combos on all armyes cause the spellcasters have diferents spells, the commanders dont have the same command hability, you have warscroll batallions adding rules, etc.

Also I see the wound table unnecesary, I think 14-18 wounds with 4+ or 3+ save and rules to half wounds, etc. That represent well this. The rend on aos is much less usual than ap on 40k, and the monsters have easier to survive because we have místic shield, you need make good decisions about you monster, in 40k they are "inmune" to a lot of troops... I dont see well this.

 

For me, the deep right now in 40k is in his rules, and not in his combos, and I dont know if I like it, I love the brutally complexity of AOS when you try to master it, and I dont know if 40k is going to offer to me this complexity... Cause I dont want complex rules, I want complex combos with armies with personality, and I love learn about know how cut theese combos. That mean I can plan vs all and cut his combo with my army, if I cant cut the combo cause they dont have any combo, and are simply stronger than my army..... Or a lot effective vs my army....

I can't really agree with you in the depth of combo's. What appears to me is that a lot of the 40K online community has to process all these differences first. Let me say it first and out loud, the newest edition of 40K actually looks a lot like WarmaHordes Mk2 in a way. Yes you technically have easy to understand combots but it sure doesn't stop at the fewer spells you have available in forms of Aura's, Psychic Powers, Orders and many other effects.

40K is build like a rock, paper, scissors system and you have to realize, as both players advance through the game, which is best suited for which task at the given time. There is no "immunity" there only is a wrong or good choice made. For example:
- If you play Imperial Guard, you'll likely want Chimera's and have them as dedicated transports for units, be it Veterans or otherwise. In the cases where opponents brought high numbers of attacks at S4, your MUCH better off rolling your Chimera in there and 'flee' next turn so the Veterans can continue shooting. At the same time the moment your opponent brings a smaller squad of say Terminators, your MUCH better off even charging your own IG in there. They will most certainly die but this allows you to proceed with your own tatcial strenght applied at the right scenario.
This depth is wonderful and does not apply to AoS at all. 
- In AoS you ideally apply as much shooting as you can with Rend or Mortal wounds, if this is unavailable you want to chuck out loads and loads of attack. Not only is there no tactical variance in AoS we unfortunatly even live with such a predictable top 3 that the moment you do not see Hunters, Judicators, Skyfires or Kunning Rukk your 'suprised'.

As for wound tables. Where I agree is that the issue I do forsee with 40K is that equipment is priced as a vacume. This simply results in certain Weapons being better throughout the game on certain set ups (note not turn, game). As an example the fact that a Heavy Bolter costs the same on a 1 wound model as it does on a 16 wound model is a reason of concern for me. One will last you throughout the game while the other doesn't.
Ignoring this seems like a strange choice to me. By large because it wasn't the case in the previous editions and there vechicles had often 3-ish wounds (HP) where they now have 10+ wounds.
Long story short, cheap vechicles are extremely good. Obviously it depends on the load out they have but cheap Flamer vechicles (especially flying) seem to be well set up to be the upcomming king of the game. Because you have auto-hits, resilence and the size to preform a ton of board control with. *Now this is true in real life aswell so I applaud them for that but typically speaking weapon integrations in vechicles are more expensive as a seperate weapon.

Last but not least, what do you find complex about AoS? I mean it with all respect to you.
- Is thaking 30 Bloodletters with Sayl complex?
- Is thaking 15+ Skyfires to thake out your opponents key pieces complex?
- Is Kunning Rukk complex?

The fact that 40K has been so well set up in hard counter vs hard counter (R/P/S) makes it 3 demensional to me, where AoS to me currently is very much 2 demensional, ye shoot, ye hit hard.


 

[Killax]

13 minutes ago, Auticus said:

I agree fully.  AOS is very flat and predictable right now.

The prime source of it for me again comes from how we can 'control' the battlefield. AoS has a fantastic Combat phase in it's core rules and we also see this part directly copied into 40K (or at least for 90%).

'Board control' as I like to call it is what gives WarmaHordes, Malifaux and now also 40K the largest part of it's depth. A depth that can only be experienced in bringing your armies to the table and much less so in list construction, which I love because largely speaking if a rock/paper/scissors design is well created there is no "best list".

For AoS to replicate something like that I would actually love to see a R/P/S design in AoS revolving around Combat, Shooting and Magic. If GW can somehow realize this I think AoS as a game would transend above itself. Where Shooting would be the logical awnser to Combat, Combat the logical awnser to Magic and Magic the logical awnser to Shooting. 

What this could imply (in my mind) is:
- I hope GW considers to have the Shooting phase to be akin to that of 40K. You can stop it in melee but before that all happens you still have your "stand and fire charge reaction" akin to that of WFB.
- I hope GW considers that if Shooting is also subject to board control created by having enemy models 3" near you that Summoning can become a deeper part of the game. Likewise I hope something like Mystic Shield or 'weather manipulation' could be applies to a Wizard so that Shooting drastically effects them less. If Magic becomes a defecto awnser to Shooting, shooting in the process can become/stay more powerful.
- Lastly I hope GW continues the way combat works in AoS and perhaps even reconsiders that <10 wound Heroes might be capable to pawn their wounds of to units they are close with. So they can technically be targeted but have the updated version of WFB's  "Look out Sir".

So as per previous pages, I believe AoS would drastically improve if it obtained some of WFB qualities in a diluted version. Im not asking for a Purple sun to return but askin for an RPS design. Meaning, Magic becomes relevant again globally which in turn can keep Shooting very powerful and Combat the prime source for "board control".
Lastly the double-turning ideally would be removed aswell, but I think that globally AoS players arnt a big fan of this part of the game anyway. It isnt too often talked about though...

[Jamopower]

11 minutes ago, Killax said:

The prime source of it for me again comes from how we can 'control' the battlefield. AoS has a fantastic Combat phase in it's core rules and we also see this part directly copied into 40K (or at least for 90%).
 

The combat phase is similar, but there are big differences. The ranges in combat are such, that positioning has a lot less impact as everything can hit at least 3" from enemy and you have 3" additional consolidate. Also allowing all charging units to strike first, there is lot less of risk/reward in the combat as you can charge "all in" and the advantage is strongly on the charger.

 

About rock paper scissors, the less of that the better. It makes the game a lot more list oriented and at least I think that the list shouldn't be the main influence for the outcome of the game, but actually what you do on the battlefield would be the main factor. In which the AoS combat system is good.

[chord]

5 minutes ago, Jamopower said:

About rock paper scissors, the less of that the better. It makes the game a lot more list oriented and at least I think that the list shouldn't be the main influence for the outcome of the game, but actually what you do on the battlefield would be the main factor. In which the AoS combat system is good.

Agreed,  I wouldn't want a rock paper scissors approach.  

[Killax]

6 minutes ago, Jamopower said:

The combat phase is similar, but there are big differences. The ranges in combat are such, that positioning has a lot less impact as everything can hit at least 3" from enemy and you have 3" additional consolidate. Also allowing all charging units to strike first, there is lot less of risk/reward in the combat as you can charge "all in" and the advantage is strongly on the charger.

 

About rock paper scissors, the less of that the better. It makes the game a lot more list oriented and at least I think that the list shouldn't be the main influence for the outcome of the game, but actually what you do on the battlefield would be the main factor. In which the AoS combat system is good.

Thing trough what you say Jamo, because the practical differences are much better.
- Positioning does not have a lot less impact, as your units can be deployed 2" away of each other and 6" wide. In addition there are much larger models in 40K as there are in AoS, making the impact much bigger actually in 40K as in AoS.

- There is absolutely no less risk/reward. As every model has a gun and regardless of you making the charge or not your going to eat Overwatch shots, Flamers in particular auto-hit and eat great gaps into units that fail charges.

- There is no advantage for the charger other than hitting first which in the case of the many Vechicles available actually doesn't matter all to much anyway. By large again because of how well the Rock/Paper/Scissor design is applied. Certain charges, like certain shots can be useless.

What a good RPS game does is make games less list orientated because again lists will not be compremised of solely rock, paper or scissor. The added demension and the way it counters others actually is productive to remove spamming as a whole from the game.
Something that does not  apply to  AoS because the game does not offer you a hard awnser to Skyfires for example. You do the same trick or you thake it to the chin and hope you make the other side with enough models.

What you do on the battlefield is little to no factor in AoS because of the Shooting phase largely ignoring all restricting rules found on Combat phase and Magic phase. It seems to be that you are either ignoring tournament results or want it to be different and arnt willing to localize the issues in AoS.

AoS is the most list based game out there to be frank. You can give it a green or red light purely based on it. It's why Sayls and Kunning Ruk Warscrolls sell like hot cakes.

 

[Jamopower]

I don't agree. If I play 40k and my opponent brings say 8 razorbacks on the table and I have general all around list. There will be very big uphill battle to climb, because the opponent's list needs more tools that I don't have and there is little that can be done by playing to counter that. AoS equivalent would be something like army full of stuff that has 2+ rerollable save which shoots a lot. If you don't have reliable mortal wound output, preferably ranged, you're out of game. Lukcily in AoS, there isn't many this kind of combos available where you would need those counters. Whereas in 40k, there are both of those kind of units available, but still having less optimized army will lead to losses even against players that don't know how to play too well, just because their rock is so strong.

 

About positioning in close combat. I didn't mean positioning between units, it's very similar in both games. I meant positioning inside combat. In AoS larger bases are bad for your units, in 40k they are plus as the ranges are not from the model itself, but from the friends. Thus while in AoS second rank of stormcasts can't strike in combat as they have 1" range, in 40k they would strike from 1" + 40mm + 1" -> more than 3" range. That has a big impact especially for stuff on 32 mm bases.

 

And bout overwatch, to be honest, I don't see it mattering much. One unit rarely does much on overwatch and when doing multiple charges, you can charge just one unit and move bit over 1" from the other units you want to strike, thus not triggering overwatch and then pile-in on those units, and as you are charger, still strike before them. 

 

Edit: And in general, I'm talking about game as such, not individual units. Skyfires might be broken, but they are not end and all of the whole game. 

 

Edit #2: I don't actually think that the "op shooting" is so much a problem of the basic rules either (though I would like to have some sort of possibility of counterplay to that in addition to just killing the shooters), but more of a mistake in the design of some individual units. The shooting on grand alliance book level is pretty tame and especially short ranged, which means that the shooters end up easily taking fist in their face. Few longer range options like warmachines are on the other hand quite easy to kill. Then for some reason they decided to add up stuff like kurnoths, savage orks and skyfires that have long effective range, are hard to kill and do lots of damage (in the case of arrerboyz due to volume of fire) reducing the downsides. 

[Killax]

56 minutes ago, Auticus said:

I have in the past rallied against paper/rock/scissors because players always tend to go extreme, bringing all Rock for example.

But the more I think about it, thats because GW's "paper/rock/scissors" is to create a rock that not only annihilates scissors, but can shrug off paper as well.

 

This is the case, the issue with the R/P/S system is that it's tactically so deep attaching costs to it becomes very difficult indeed. However, what AoS has done really well is actually to attach those costs because the basic infantry designs are actually quite common.

However Id also like to state that current AoS doesnt have this at all. We go to combat because we can't shoot. We see the shooting meta thake over for a while now because they can combat aswell. If the ranges on missle attacks wernt 24"+ in most cases the impact of it could have been reduced also but this is currently not an availability to the game.
 

25 minutes ago, Jamopower said:

I don't agree. If I play 40k and my opponent brings say 8 razorbacks on the table and I have general all around list. There will be very big uphill battle to climb, because the opponent's list needs more tools that I don't have and there is little that can be done by playing to counter that. AoS equivalent would be something like army full of stuff that has 2+ rerollable save which shoots a lot. If you don't have reliable mortal wound output, preferably ranged, you're out of game. Lukcily in AoS, there isn't many this kind of combos available where you would need those counters. Whereas in 40k, there are both of those kind of units available, but still having less optimized army will lead to losses even against players that don't know how to play too well, just because their rock is so strong.

 

About positioning in close combat. I didn't mean positioning between units, it's very similar in both games. I meant positioning inside combat. In AoS larger bases are bad for your units, in 40k they are plus as the ranges are not from the model itself, but from the friends. Thus while in AoS second rank of stormcasts can't strike in combat as they have 1" range, in 40k they would strike from 1" + 40mm + 1" -> more than 3" range. That has a big impact especially for stuff on 32 mm bases.

 

And bout overwatch, to be honest, I don't see it mattering much. One unit rarely does much on overwatch and when doing multiple charges, you can charge just one unit and move bit over 1" from the other units you want to strike, thus not triggering overwatch and then pile-in on those units, and as you are charger, still strike before them. 

 

Edit: And in general, I'm talking about game as such, not individual units. Skyfires might be broken, but they are not end and all of the whole game. 

 

Edit #2: I don't actually think that the "op shooting" is so much a problem of the basic rules either (though I would like to have some sort of possibility of counterplay to that in addition to just killing the shooters), but more of a mistake in the design of some individual units. The shooting on grand alliance book level is pretty tame and especially short ranged, which means that the shooters end up easily taking fist in their face. Few longer range options like warmachines are on the other hand quite easy to kill. Then for some reason they decided to add up stuff like kurnoths, savage orks and skyfires that have long effective range, are hard to kill and do lots of damage (in the case of arrerboyz due to volume of fire) reducing the downsides. 

Your initial impression of 40K leaves me to dive into your experience with AoS aswell. It seems limited or a new vision on the game that doesn't actually explore the depths of it. 8 Razorbacks are actually not terrible difficult to counter. Apply flying units and you will see what I mean by that. 
Unlike 40K 7th this game does not have to be a shooting stand off, it can become that, however in many case one will be the victor in that so the oppossing player will have to work in his own advantage.
- As I can tell you now, your SM Razorback plan will get out-shot by Imperial Guard, Tau, Necrons and more. If you attempt to outshoot Rock with your Scissors you will see a gradual decline in your forces in 4-5 turns.

AoS' larger bases being a strict disadvantage is a fictional online thought. The thing is that most players just assume it is so because someone said so.
What I want you to do is consider the use of the unit and apply larger or smaller bases. Because I will tell you, a swarm of tarpit zombies will be better on 40mm bases as 25mm bases. As their functionality is not to combat but to prefent opponents from reaching key combats.
- The prime reason as to why not to many seem aware of this is because Shooting in it's current form doesn't care for either and shooting in AoS is much better as it is in 40K because not all armies have acces to Rend/Mortal wound shooting. Where in 40K everybody does.

If you dont see Overwatch mattering, again I suggest playing the game. Not only does 40K provide you with a ton of 1's re-rolls it also provides you with auto-hit weapons that do not care about the roll 6's to do X.

What I am saying constantly is that not Missle attacks are OP but the whole Shooting phase is designed in such a way that it is the best phase of all.
- Shooting allows you to attack any with the largest threat ranges
- Shooting is allowed while you also make combat attacks
- Shooting is allowed while you have 3" enemies near you can you can do so upon ANY target you can see

[RuneBrush]

1 hour ago, Killax said:

Lastly the double-turning ideally would be removed aswell, but I think that globally AoS players arnt a big fan of this part of the game anyway. It isnt too often talked about though...

Amongst all of the people I've played or are within my usual group, I've yet to find one who dislikes the chance of a double turn.  Generally the only issue raised has been directed towards a particular combination - so Ruck, Bloodletter bomb etc.

[Jamopower]

18 minutes ago, Killax said:

 

Your initial impression of 40K leaves me to dive into your experience with AoS aswell. It seems limited or a new vision on the game that doesn't actually explore the depths of it. 8 Razorbacks are actually not terrible difficult to counter. Apply flying units and you will see what I mean by that. 
Unlike 40K 7th this game does not have to be a shooting stand off, it can become that, however in many case one will be the victor in that so the oppossing player will have to work in his own advantage.
- As I can tell you now, your SM Razorback plan will get out-shot by Imperial Guard, Tau, Necrons and more. If you attempt to outshoot Rock with your Scissors you will see a gradual decline in your forces in 4-5 turns.
 

I don't think you undertand at all where I'm trying to get here. The part about applying flying units is just the type of list optimizing what I meant that is not so nice part of the game and which has too big influence on the end result. To be honest, all miniature games are more or less R/P/S games, but to have it working well you need to have lots of different kind of rocks,  paper and scissors and those need to be present in all armies for the game actually be determined after the models are deployed. Otherwise the game can easily lead to a situation where there is something on the table that can't be countered by any means other than that you need to have the exact counter on the table. There are some issues like that also in AoS, but the fact that almost everything can hurt everything helps a lot in that. 

 

Quote

AoS' larger bases being a strict disadvantage is a fictional online thought. The thing is that most players just assume it is so because someone said so.
What I want you to do is consider the use of the unit and apply larger or smaller bases. Because I will tell you, a swarm of tarpit zombies will be better on 40mm bases as 25mm bases. As their functionality is not to combat but to prefent opponents from reaching key combats.

Yes, there are some cases where it's bit different, but I was talking mainly about combat, which is, outside of certain powerlists, still the main phase where the games are won or loss in AoS.

I don't play either of the games in competitive meta, so I don't have so negative experiences from shooting in AoS, but in 40k, the shooting is always prevalent and as I said, it's not very interesting in this kind of games where you don't have any sort of reaction possibilities (like in say Infinity, Dropzone commander, Bolt action, etc.). It easily leads to "who can shoot most" competitions, which is exactly what is seen from the lists that start to emerge for 40k in the net. The competitive lists I've seen (and I've access to the local ETC team's closed forum) have most been just spamming the most optimal units together and there are not many close combat units in those, other than for tying-up enemies shooters and screen own from preventing that happening.

[chord]

15 minutes ago, RuneBrush said:

Amongst all of the people I've played or are within my usual group, I've yet to find one who dislikes the chance of a double turn.  Generally the only issue raised has been directed towards a particular combination - so Ruck, Bloodletter bomb etc.

I've never played anyone in AOS who was against double turn. 

[BunkhouseBuster]

1 hour ago, Auticus said:

I have in the past rallied against paper/rock/scissors because players always tend to go extreme, bringing all Rock for example.

But the more I think about it, thats because GW's "paper/rock/scissors" is to create a rock that not only annihilates scissors, but can shrug off paper as well.

"I brought a balanced list today, with Rock, Paper, and Scissors!  In this game, my Rock is Gypsum, my Paper is thick corrugated cardboard, and my Scissors are a pair of my kid's safety scissors that have been dulled down from years of use."

[KnightFire]

On 6/16/2017 at 2:44 PM, Sleboda said:

I sincerely doubt the existence of a calculation. Ballpark it, play a few games, adjust based on experience,  and done. 

At least with annual GHB and points not being in the books there is a chance we could see yearly tweaks based on many games.

We know from several on-the-record interviews that GW use a spreadsheet to calculate points costs.

[Sleboda]

Then it's changed a lot. When I worked for GW and was a tester for 6th edition, it was far less scientific.

Not to doubt (honest) but can you list a source or two? Sounds like a worthwhile read.

[Killax]

2 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

Amongst all of the people I've played or are within my usual group, I've yet to find one who dislikes the chance of a double turn.  Generally the only issue raised has been directed towards a particular combination - so Ruck, Bloodletter bomb etc.

Well, that's good to hear. However I do wonder if the option adds something to the game at the point where Rukk and Sayl would be re-considered in terms of design.

2 hours ago, Jamopower said:

I don't think you undertand at all where I'm trying to get here. The part about applying flying units is just the type of list optimizing what I meant that is not so nice part of the game and which has too big influence on the end result. To be honest, all miniature games are more or less R/P/S games, but to have it working well you need to have lots of different kind of rocks,  paper and scissors and those need to be present in all armies for the game actually be determined after the models are deployed. Otherwise the game can easily lead to a situation where there is something on the table that can't be countered by any means other than that you need to have the exact counter on the table. There are some issues like that also in AoS, but the fact that almost everything can hurt everything helps a lot in that. 

 

Yes, there are some cases where it's bit different, but I was talking mainly about combat, which is, outside of certain powerlists, still the main phase where the games are won or loss in AoS.

I don't play either of the games in competitive meta, so I don't have so negative experiences from shooting in AoS, but in 40k, the shooting is always prevalent and as I said, it's not very interesting in this kind of games where you don't have any sort of reaction possibilities (like in say Infinity, Dropzone commander, Bolt action, etc.). It easily leads to "who can shoot most" competitions, which is exactly what is seen from the lists that start to emerge for 40k in the net. The competitive lists I've seen (and I've access to the local ETC team's closed forum) have most been just spamming the most optimal units together and there are not many close combat units in those, other than for tying-up enemies shooters and screen own from preventing that happening.

The point is that AoS doesn't have that. You can play AoS in a non-competititve setting, like you can with 40K. However it still does not remove the akward design that is the Shooting phase compaired to others. By default having a Missle attack is better as not having it because having a Shooting Attack allows you to process an additional Phase that some armies do not have acces too.

In competative AoS the main phase isn't the Combat phase. The examples we have to prove that are many lists so centered around Missle attacks who not only subsequently taken over the top 3, they are the most typical to win said tournament.

I don't have any negative experience about 8th 40K either, I can immagne you are in the same boat. 40K, due to its now finetuned rules does not lead to "who can shoot the most' competitions anymore, because there are several easy ways to prevent units from participating in the shooting phase.
 

[Jamopower]

Well the new 40k is in such an early stage, that I wouldn't dare to say that yet. My first game was with my dark eldar with little bit of everything against close combat tyranids, the close combat wasn't too impressing from either side, although it had it's part, mainly for mopping up depleted stuff. The game was more of me flying away from combat and blasting stuff from the table. Shooting and flyers (and masses of cheap fearless gaunts) on the other hand felt very strong.

And I understand the issues with shooting in Aos, but as said, besides those few really strong shooting options, there are papers for shooting rock. Stuff like empire handgunners or wood elf glade guard are hardly overpowering as they are mostly easy to kill and the damage output from their shooting is not so great. Still I agree, that there should be more ways to counter the shooting by playing, like being able to tie down the shooters. On the other hand I don't think it would change much, the skyfires just would have big bubblewraps of marauders around them. The problem is more in the actual units that have slipped through the game design process. I'm sure that there will be similar problems in 8th ed 40k as well. For example, the imperial guard armies sound awful.

 

Edit: That said, this doesn't change my intial view, that I think AoS is more interesting game, because they are very similar games, but in the end AoS still has less shooting (there are many armies that don't have any shooting options after all) and the close combat has bit more depth in it. I also like that the army composition is not so complicated and requires less of "slot-optimizing".

[chord]

53 minutes ago, KnightFire said:

We know from several on-the-record interviews that GW use a spreadsheet to calculate points costs.

Horrible way of doing it.  

GW Call me,  let's get you set up with some machine learning and some better data analysis.