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Real Talk about the Double Turn


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5 minutes ago, TheOtherJosh said:

And by "Football" you appear to be referring to what they refer to as "Soccer" in the States? As opposed to "American Football". Which is known as "Football" in the States?

Right? (Though your analogy applies... even more so to Blood Bowl.)

 

True dat

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7 minutes ago, TheOtherJosh said:

 


And by "Football" you appear to be referring to what they refer to as "Soccer" in the States? As opposed to "American Football". Which is known as "Football" in the States?

Right? (Though your analogy applies... even more so to Blood Bowl.)

 

To be fair, we're the only backwards place that doesn't call that foot-oriented sport "football." So it's rather asinine of the US to have the sports names it has...

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12 minutes ago, rokapoke said:

To be fair, we're the only backwards place that doesn't call that foot-oriented sport "football." So it's rather asinine of the US to have the sports names it has...

To explain, The American Football was about 1 foot long when they named it; hence, football. The US was never really interested in soccer back then, as it was primarily a game introduced to conquered countries. ;)

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2 minutes ago, heywoah_twitch said:

To explain, The American Football was about 1 foot long when they named it; hence, football. The US was never really interested in soccer back then, as it was primarily a game introduced to conquered countries. ;)

Fascinating. We're still backwards, though. ?

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40 minutes ago, rokapoke said:

To be fair, we're the only backwards place that doesn't call that foot-oriented sport "football." So it's rather asinine of the US to have the sports names it has...

Australia calls it soccer also, for the most part. Since they have their own sport called Football.

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2 hours ago, chord said:

Agreed those Beast Claws (that crazy frost breath MW only fails on a 1 ability) is crazy broken.  Don't know what they were thinking when they wrote that.

So it saddens me that some people have this reaction to Thundertusks. Having played with them since GHB came out I can tell you that against MOST armies played reasonably well they are taken out of the equation pretty quickly. It's actually very simple to deal with them. Firstly you ensure that your key heroes are out of range (34"/32"/29" depending on Ravager/Destruction move/Beastclaw allegiance). Then you shoot/attack them ASAP and put 5 wounds on them - they are only a 4+ save. That's like killing 2½ Judicators i.e. not very hard. The beastclaw player is then kind of left with a model that can do D3 mortal wounds at 18", like for example an arcane bolt can do - but the models costs over 300 points rather than 100 points for a typical basic wizard. 

I will happily concede that the Huskard's healing ability is undercosted (no units are 'broken' in AoS - only 'undercosted'), and hopefully that will be fixed shortly. It never ceases to amaze me how many opponents leave key characters in range or rush them forward into range and then scream 'foul' when they die. The combos of "Moo-Clan" or "Rukk-Mash" are very powerful too and enhance the Ttusks as they are harder to get at without shooting. However,  even these are slaughtered and outmanouvered as a rule by the newer Battletomes of Tzeench and Kharadron Overlords. So I feel Ttusks will be 'old hat' very soon.

In summary, don't rage against Ttusks. Learn how to beat them. Practice, and then just do it.

Mind you Khemists are Totally broken, and shouldn't be allowed and the rules writers must all be in institutions now and if they don't get rid of them from the game I am so rage quitting and gonna burn all my models live on Twitter and complain to the human right commission etc. etc. etc....

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12 minutes ago, Soup Dragon said:

So it saddens me that some people have this reaction to Thundertusks. Having played with them since GHB came out I can tell you that against MOST armies played reasonably well they are taken out of the equation pretty quickly. It's actually very simple to deal with them. Firstly you ensure that your key heroes are out of range (34"/32"/29" depending on Ravager/Destruction move/Beastclaw allegiance). Then you shoot/attack them ASAP and put 5 wounds on them

Um only if you have enough ranged attacks to do so, long enough range to get into shooting distance, or actually get into combat with it if you don't have ranged units , and if they didn't go first and demolish your key hero/or ranged unit. 

If they had given it a 3+ or 4+ to activate I would have no issue with it.  But a 2+ is just too easy to trigger it. 

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2 hours ago, Auticus said:

That would be plausible except GW has a history of this.  Back in 7th ed WHFB, Mat Ward broke demons this badly and then said "well yeah they are demons they are supposed to be broken".  

+1.  GW's designers have shown, on stream no less, that they have a very child-like mindset when it comes to designing rules.  Not even counting the pressure to "just make rules" for whatever the design team has come up with (which, I have read, is done independently of the games designers; I have read that the design team doesn't even know what the new models are until they are handed them and told to write fluff/rules for them!), their approach is like a kid:   "It looked cool." "wouldn't it be awesome", with little or no concern for actual balance or how it interacts with the rest of the game (one of the GW designers, I think it was Simon Grant, said on the Twitch stream once that they did not use math or formulas to determine things).

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1 minute ago, chord said:

Um only if you have enough ranged attacks to do so, long enough range to get into shooting distance, or actually get into combat with it if you don't have ranged units , and if they didn't go first and demolish your key hero/or ranged unit. 

If they had given it a 3+ or 4+ to activate I would have no issue with it.  But a 2+ is just too easy to trigger it. 

Oh indeed, you are quite right. But if you have no ranged attacks then you are at a severe disadvantage if your opponent has spear chukkas, kurnoth hunters, skyfires, rocket batteries, Vanguard raptors etc. etc. i.e. anything with very long range. So not really a huge difference there.

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3 minutes ago, wayniac said:

I think it was Simon Grant, said on the Twitch stream once that they did not use math or formulas to determine things

As a data engineer/data scientist this kills me. We live in an age of data and machine learning, etc.  This could easily be all modeled out and tested prior to release with data. 

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2 minutes ago, Soup Dragon said:

Oh indeed, you are quite right. But if you have no ranged attacks then you are at a severe disadvantage if your opponent has spear chukkas, kurnoth hunters, skyfires, rocket batteries, Vanguard raptors etc. etc. i.e. anything with very long range. So not really a huge difference there.

The ranged units would still have to put on 10 wounds have to get through since they have a 50% chance of saving (not counting rend since it varies).  Sure it might work if the strategy is to spam ranged units, but that's not a good approach.  

And those are a differences as all those units have to make an hit/wound roll and you get a save.

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The issue IMHO with Thundertusks is twofold:

1) 6 mortal wounds

2) Awful LOS rules that make it nearly impossible to hide anything.

The two combined means that a single thundertusk, especially if one gets a double turn, can just delete at least 1 "key" hero per turn in most armies.  With an 18" range it can easily stay behind chaff units so you can't engage it to wound it, so the entire game it is sitting there doing 6 mortal wounds to something.  It gets worse if you take more than one, because that doubles the potential.  Two thundertusks with a double turn can wipe out virtually anything in the game barring extreme luck, and two thundertusks aren't exactly an uncommon sight.

The downside, of course, is the traditional problem with GW's lack of caring about balance:  It's a cool model, and as a result someone is unduly punished if they look at BCR and think "This is awesome, an elite army of big scary monsters" only to be treated with disdain because they just so happen to like an "OP" model.  Even just a lord on Thundertusk and a single Thundertusk is "OP" to a great degree while really being something you would see and want to get if you were playing BCR.

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@RuneBrush@TheOtherJosh@Charles@Siegfried VII Some great suggestions, thanks guys! My opponent and I played a second game right after on a different scenario, and I won with a minor victory. I'm familiar with how to play against a list like his, though I definitely made a number of mistakes, as did he.

Him being able to throw 14 mortal wounds out is a problem on it's own, but since it's only on the first turn, it's less of an issue. In the second game, and in the first game had he not gotten the double turn, this is what happened. He moves into range with his Thundertusks, does his damage, then I proceed to kill one outright and bump the other down to half health with my shooting. I make sure one is completely dead to reduce their healing capability, since if they are both at a few wounds left they can still easily heal themselves back up. I completely ignore his Stonehorn every game, just sending speedbumps/chaff at it as long as possible.

Regarding deployment, we actually had the same number of drops, so that choice was left to dice roll as well. With him having the choice, I have two options.

A) I can position as close to him as possible, which means he would take first turn to do damage before I alpha strike him. Sure this denies him the double turn, but it means he is guaranteed able to move in range of key units with his Thundertusks on his turn, meaning the 14 mortal wounds will be more precise and damaging. I require synergy and certain units to even be able to kill the Thundertusks, so this is not an option. 

B) Deploy along the back edge, since he has to move up anyways and is relying on dice rolls for bonus movement. The bonus move distance is less reliable so he is less likely to get both Thundertusks in range of everything he wants to kill, meaning a lot of the Mortal Wounds will go on other units I care less about. His obvious choice here is to give me the first turn, since he can't guarantee the damage he wants to do. Doing this leaves me more likely to be able to retaliate but also gives him the chance of a double turn. 

Following option B), since that's how I played it, I bubblewrapped everything in my toughest units, sent chaff forward as speed bumps, and cast a spell at him to slow him down (Teclis). Other than that, I had my objective so I basically waited for him to come to me, since I don't have enough movement and shooting range to go to him. His threat bubble is much larger than mine. Since he has crazy movement and the Thundertusks are ranged, bubblewrapping only helped against the Stonehorn (who again, I completely ignore). If he didn't get the double turn, like I said what happened in the second game, I would have lost a depressing amount of units but I was still able to blow one Thundertusk off the table and reduce the other one to non-scary levels. 

The difference between option B and option A basically covers 90% of the "strategy" behind the double turn. Because my choice was either "guarantee he can hit what he wants or play defensively and risk a double turn" I chose the second option because at least there's a 50% chance of it not happening. He chose for me to go first, so I had to plan with a double turn, and I moved units accordingly. The double turn happened and the sheer one-sided damage resulted in me with a ~1500 point army with no general or synergy facing a 2000 point army at full strength. Without the double turn, as demonstrated in other games, the damage is scary but so is mine, so it evens out. 

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20 minutes ago, wayniac said:

It's a cool model, and as a result someone is unduly punished if they look at BCR and think "This is awesome, an elite army of big scary monsters" only to be treated with disdain because they just so happen to like an "OP" model.  Even just a lord on Thundertusk and a single Thundertusk is "OP" to a great degree while really being something you would see and want to get if you were playing BCR.

Right. That's the conundrum. As a BCR player I have no interest in having an OP list, I just like the models. What am I supposed to do, not use it? My list is very reasonable and flavorful, using only one thundertusk and one stonehorn. But that's still too much for some people.

 

I'd actually like them to be nerfed.

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45 minutes ago, Siegfried VII said:

They either need to be more expensive in points or have their warscroll ammended to do d6 damage from the start (or some other tweak) so they 'll still be good but not broken.

I'd make the ability trigger on a 4+.  Then lower points.  

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39 minutes ago, wayniac said:

The issue IMHO with Thundertusks is twofold:

1) 6 mortal wounds

2) Awful LOS rules that make it nearly impossible to hide anything..

I agree 100% with #1    With #2, the Thundertusk has an advantage of height so even better LOS rules would still make it pretty potent.  (granted this would mean you could still target it with round ranged units easily)

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This just in from the preview of Destruction in GHB2:  "Great Cauldron triggers on any Ogor units – imagine how powerful a well-timed Spinemaw would be providing +1 to hit for a Frostlord on Thundertusk!"

I didn't mean to derail the convo from double turn to Thundertusk. I honestly feel that in a you go I go game, it's not THAT big of a deal. The example I provided was just to show that the double turn offered very little in terms of extra strategy, but had a huge effect on multiplying the effects of an OP unit. Even without any OP units, going twice just has way too much impact. That's why it feels 'exciting' to roll for it. Not because of strategy or uncertainty, but because it matters so much

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12 hours ago, rokapoke said:

To be fair, we're the only backwards place that doesn't call that foot-oriented sport "football." So it's rather asinine of the US to have the sports names it has...

In Australia and NZ football is rugby as well, not soccer.

I'm waiting to see what happens to bcr before I try adding any of them as allies to a destruction list.

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On 11/08/2017 at 1:56 PM, chord said:

Agreed those Beast Claws (that crazy frost breath MW only fails on a 1 ability) is crazy broken.  Don't know what they were thinking when they wrote that.

Not disagreeing that the Thundertusk ability is super hard, but it was written alongside all the other wfb units when they were given rules for AoS, a year if not more before the points were decided upon. In this case there was no ulterior motive to make a unit an 'auto-buy'. 

This particular ability is however very out of line with the rest of the AoS rules. I would be in favour of a revision to the rule to make it hit on 3+, with a points adjustment (up or down) as necessary.

Its worth considering that the rules for units are no longer written to account for competitive play - points, as well as the matched play rules, are just a bolt on for those players who prefer to play 'balanced' armies.

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13 hours ago, Captain Marius said:

Not disagreeing that the Thundertusk ability is super hard, but it was written alongside all the other wfb units when they were given rules for AoS, a year if not more before the points were decided upon. In this case there was no ulterior motive to make a unit an 'auto-buy'. 

This particular ability is however very out of line with the rest of the AoS rules. I would be in favour of a revision to the rule to make it hit on 3+, with a points adjustment (up or down) as necessary.

Its worth considering that the rules for units are no longer written to account for competitive play - points, as well as the matched play rules, are just a bolt on for those players who prefer to play 'balanced' armies.

Honestly, I think part of the problem is, that this faction that should be primarily combat focused, has one of the best shooting abilities in the game.

Definitely hitting on a 3+ (And following normal to-hit rather than special to-hit) would make it a more interesting piece to interact with.

Personally I feel 6 mortal wounds needs to go as well. I don't really believe any single attack as reliable as the Thundertusk should exist, especially not at the kinda threat range the Thundertusk has. It feels bad because even at 3+, it's a 66% chance to delete X. Rather than, a 66% chance to hit followed by a lucky roll that deleted X.

The double turn just exacerbates the issue, as Thundertusks essentially might get two opportunities to use their really strong and completely un-intractable attack.

  

But overall, I think in terms of healthiness, at the very minimum it should use ordinary to-hit rules so it can be interacted with by debuffs. Not that there are a lot floating around, but more interactivity in the game is better than none.

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Exactly this ^. Thundertusks are a problem because they can delete most heroes on a 2+. They have a huge threat range because of bonus movement. If you increase the points, the problem persists. Thundertusks will still either be an auto pick or never pick (if the points increase too much) and in either case, that's poor balance. Rewriting the warscroll is the only fix for it. Take away the vulture attack and make the snowball start at 4 wounds, drop to d3+1, then d3, etc. That way a single Thundertusk has no way to single handedly take out most generals on turn one. 

The Double turn is the main point of this thread though. A broken unit goes from being pretty broken to exponentially broken when there's a double turn. That's the real problem. It takes strategy out of the game and makes many victories a matter of "Thundertusks got a double turn and did 28 mortal wounds before the first player could do anything". 

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