Jump to content

Real Talk about the Double Turn


Recommended Posts

8 minutes ago, Tidings said:

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". 

Ya. I kind of feel like.... "Of course there should be units that are awesome." 

If everything else was really vanilla, then the game would be boring. You want big scary threats. I wouldn't want to water down everything. Taking out the double turn.... you can get one or maybe zero turns with the automatic mortal wounds. Say, the Thundertusk goes first. They move up a bit, and toss out 6 mortal wounds. That's huge, but not game ending if you deployed right. If they don't go first, you can run some chaff into it, and try to counter. 

If you get double turned on the end of it? Yikes. He's always going to be a first priority target as well. So if the player running the Thundertusk gets double turned, that's also not fun. Try Huricanum + Kurnoth Hunters. You can delete a Thundertusk with that extremely easily.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 260
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Sure, but GW is insane if they think that attitude is a healthy business move. If I just can't beat certain armies with my army, then there's no point even playing them. It's a fun game when both players have a chance of winning, even if it's not perfectly balanced. But as of right now lots of armies just flat out lose to other armies. If people start going to stores and then leaving without playing because the only opponents there were 90% auto losses, that's people not playing the game. If GHB2 moves AoS more in that direction, I'm not going to "buy a more competitive" army, I'm going to quit playing. I can't be the only player who feels that way - and GW needs people playing the game if they want to sell models. 

Coming full circle, I don't know anyone who tried AoS and decided they loved the double turn so much that they wanted to invest in the game. On the flip side, I know lots of people who hated the double turn and either didn't start playing because of it, or sold their armies and quit. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Tidings said:

... I'm not going to "buy a more competitive" army, I'm going to quit playing. I can't be the only player who feels that way - and GW needs people playing the game if they want to sell models.

I am right there with you.  The cheese-mongering has lead me to give up on playing 40K for a while, which is a shame since I was super-excited about the new rules, but between the way the rules work and knowing the local players, I know that I won't enjoy the game.  It's all good anyways, as I have a bunch of new Reaper Miniatures to paint and kids to raise.

2 hours ago, Tidings said:

Coming full circle, I don't know anyone who tried AoS and decided they loved the double turn so much that they wanted to invest in the game. On the flip side, I know lots of people who hated the double turn and either didn't start playing because of it, or sold their armies and quit. 

I thought the double-turn was kind of neat when I first tried the game, so long as the game was no more than 1500 points (ish) and did not feature the shenanigans of the powerful shooting armies.  I mean, when Ironjawz and Khorne BLoodbound meet in the middle of the table, it is an awesome sight to behold, and getting the double turn does not always guarantee victory.

I wouldn't say that the issue is in the double turn, but the over-powered/under-priced units or combos.

I think that if you add alternate activation to the double turn, we'd really have something then!  That I would play in a heartbeat!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Speaking of alternate activations, I found it interesting that the new Necromunda is going to have them. Is this a first for GW? I go back and forth on IGOUGO vs. alternating activations frankly. I kind of like the way Frostgrave does it (and Necromunda will follow suit apparently), where you can activate a leader and all units within X inches... or just individual units that are outside the leader's influence.

Not sure that works on a large scale though. It was wonky in the Battles of Westeros game.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Auticus said:

In 2013 I helped write a total-war like game (the basis of which I am using for a different project) and we had consumer beta testing where the user built up whatever army they wanted, and then they had to face various AI armies.  By far and large, the AI armies that had a lot of tough elements were deemed not very fun to play against.  We actually lost players when we kept the AI's difficulty threshold equal to the player's army threshold.  We had to keep the difficulty level one or two steps below the average player for them to rate the fun of the game in a positive manner.  

Our "extreme difficulty" mode was actually nothing more than the AI having the same power level as the player.

And I think those players are more numerous than we'd like to think.

To be fair, I am the same way when I am playing PC or video games.  I will often play a campaign of Rome Total War just to relax and not worry about real life stuff going on.  I have never played either of those games on a difficulty higher than Normal/Medium, because to me, the challenge in those games isn't in the battles themselves, but in the settlement management and logistics of building up the armies to take over the world.

I play Age of Sigmar (and other tabletop games) for relaxation and to socialize with like-minded hobbyists.  I don't stress about if I win or lose, because I just want me and my opponent to have a good time.

If I want a real challenge, I will go back into Amtgard (boffer-combat LARPing) or play Team Fortress 2 (I'm one of the best Engineers you will find, there's a reason that's my forum avatar :)).  But in a game that requires hundreds or thousands of dollars to "chase the meta", that is just impossible for me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah in a game where chasing the meta doesn't cost hundreds of dollars and a massive amount of time, having power spikes with different armies isn't as big a deal. I play Wood Elves because I loved the lore for them, the aesthetics, and the old playstyle. They were never really strong per say, but I never felt like any game was a straight up auto-loss. Now, there are lots of matchups that I just table without any challenge, and others where I lose in the first two battle rounds. This is a mix of poorly thought out mechanics like the double turn  and unrestricted shooting compounding poorly balanced units with broken rules. 

If the only way I can ensure games won't be so insanely one-sided is to buy, build and paint another army, I'm not going to bother. The very idea that I have to do that to have fair matches means the game is broken, and that's a game I don't want to invest more in. If the game were really well balanced and every army had ways to beat every other army, I would actually have an easier time getting friends to play and would likely buy more armies myself. Luckily I have a great gaming group and have fun matches with my Aelves but I would never try to compete seriously with them. And in a different store with a more tryhard group, I would just stop going in to play.  I really enjoy most aspects of AoS, but I think GW is walking a fine line here. If they tightened it up and really worked to balance things better, I think the game and community playing it would grow a lot more. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, Auticus said:

I often see the counter-argument "if you want a game with deep strategy and balance, try chess".

Ha! That reminds me of the bush-era comeback when you would bring up wanting some minor improvement to the US: 'if you don't like America, move somewhere else.'

A defensive non-starter that betrays a total lack of confidence in their position, or at least the intention to slippery-slope. Obviously, you don't need to leap all the way to chess when discussing one single improvement to the balance of the game.

2 hours ago, Tidings said:

Coming full circle, I don't know anyone who tried AoS and decided they loved the double turn so much that they wanted to invest in the game. On the flip side, I know lots of people who hated the double turn and either didn't start playing because of it, or sold their armies and quit. 

Being new to the game, but not gaming or game systems in general, I took the double turn concept as 'sending a message'. Specifically to me, a natural powergamer and playtester/designer who loves to find exploits in the mechanics of a system. The message to me read loud and clear: "Randomly people get two turns in a row, to reinforce how flashy and exciting, but also how casual and non-competitive we desire this game to be." That's fine, MtG is my competitive game, AoS can be my fluffy one.

Mechanically, the double turn will naturally exacerbate imbalances, particularly ranged, as igougo and distance tends to even out melee.

--

On Thundertusks and armchair gamedeving, I'd balance them by making it a proper ranged attack so just 8" movement a turn (no running or rampaging destroyers), and removing the blizzard-speaker bonus casting roll for stacking multiple tusks near eachother (making the heal always a coinflip).

This keeps them very strong for balanced lists, but disincentivizes syngergistic spamming, and reduces their effective range (which softens their early double turn impact). They seem designed to be a strong ranged unit that makes up for some overcosted and/or weak choices in a pure BCR army list. The problem is when three of them are splashed into a general destruction list that enjoys an extra D6 movement and doesn't need to waste points on mournfang and/or frostsabers.

I think this is a better nerf than just having them do 1D6mw right out the gate (with D3 after 3 wounds), since the goal isn't to make them awful. I think the idea is to keep them exciting, but not oppressive.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah, having MtG as your competitive game and AoS as your casual one is a good approach if you're just starting. It's just frustrating to see a few single problems go unfixed when you've been playing Warhammer games for 15 years and have already invest tons of time and money. When you've spent hundreds of dollars and hundreds of hours lovingly hobbying your army of choice, only to have it lose 100% of the time against certain other armies, it's not fun. Makes ya not want to play against anyone with those armies, since it's not even a game anymore, just a repeat of your last loss against them. Whether they want it to be competitive or fluffy doesn't really matter with this issue; it still hurts the game and the community who plays it when people have to pick and choose their opponents just to have a fair match. 

If they simply removed the double turn mechanic, imbalances would be less exaggerated or exploitable, and the game would already be in a better place. 

Regarding Thundertusks, I suggested removing the vulture attack and setting the snowball to 4 damage at full health, then reducing it to d3+1, then d3, etc. The main issues with it is that it makes almost all heroes irrelevant. Having it do less than 5 wounds means a single Thundertusk has no way to snipe a hero in one turn by himself. BCR don't have other shooting really, so taking two Thundertusks for a turn one general snipe is cheesy, but more balanced, since that is a lot of points. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree with @Auticus - since the first GHB the list builders returned to AoS sfter GW went to such ridiculous lengths to get rid of / change them with the launch (blowing up the old world, no points etc).

To be fair though, i think its the list builders who have propped up AoS and made it a real success since the GHB was launched, hence GW kowtowing to them now and bottling out of going pointless in 40k!

AoS being more competitive has knackered some of its core rules. Ive never had a problem with the double turn or mega shooting in narrative or open games because they are both simply contributing to the story of the game. Within the context of matched play they seriously impact the balance of the game however.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 hours ago, Auticus said:

I think if you took away the auto-win buttons, you'd lose a lot of players as well.  I dont' like saying that, it feels kind of dirty to me, but I strongly feel players that need those I win buttons will move to a different game if you took them away.  

Do we think this would this be a good or bad thing?

I feel that the overarching attitude towards AoS over the past year has become less positive in comparison to when it originally came out and wonder if there being more auto-win buttons is part of this?  It might have nothing to do with it of course :) 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I personally think it has become more positive, especially due to the GH2016 and this will likely repeat in GH2017 which seem to aim to make more armies relevant and not just the semi elite or the armies GW has created specifically for AoS. 

To date I still dont think that the double turn adds to populairty for the game. It's unique to AoS but not so much in any good way. I am happy they did not apply it for 40K.

In terms of the I go you go versus alternate activations, the latter is cooler but costs way more time, it's ideal for Skirmishes however and that is why games like Necromunda and Shadespire can easily adopt it.

Cheers,

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It adds popularity with me, I like it. It's an important part of the game which feels stale and a bit lifeless without it. I love the drama it causes and the fact it adds the need for tactical flexibility as one can't rely on a set strategy being feasible.

 

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 hours ago, Tidings said:

oming full circle, I don't know anyone who tried AoS and decided they loved the double turn so much that they wanted to invest in the game. On the flip side, I know lots of people who hated the double turn and either didn't start playing because of it, or sold their armies and quit. 

Hi! You do now!  Not the full reason but the fact that's it's open, exciting and a bit of random makes it the perfect game for me and some friends. 

The decision to add such a huge random factor in the game is a crucial element in making it an easy and fun game. The arguments to remove it (adds strategy, balance reasons, etc) are about making it the best competitive game possible. But that's not the point of AoS (at least that's how I interpret the design choices). 

So removing It would seriously hurt the fun and random aspect of the game. And well... it's a dice game after all ;) 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

35 minutes ago, Auticus said:

 

As much as I hate it, because I hate that only a small handful of builds are legit and the rest will get rolled by those handful of builds and in a competitive environment you'll face a lot of those builds, competitive play is the base of any game today I think and without the competitive play you have a much smaller player base....

What will it take to stop perpetuating this myth? What's a handful - 3? 10? 20? Take a look at the last 20 tournaments (the epicentre of 'competitive builds I suppose) and tell us how many distinct builds there are in the top 3. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, Marc Wilson said:

What will it take to stop perpetuating this myth? What's a handful - 3? 10? 20? Take a look at the last 20 tournaments (the epicentre of 'competitive builds I suppose) and tell us how many distinct builds there are in the top 3. 

 

Haha, Don't you know 1 in three players always plays a mega squig list to bounce up and down on your head ? 

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/07/06/warhammer-age-of-sigmar-grand-tournament-heat-3-recap-squigs-sportsmanship-and-surprisesgw-homepage-post-4/

As long as my dwarfs don't have trampolines how can I compete ;) 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, Auticus said:

....Everything else is the same, but the pedant will say they are not the same build because technically they aren't.

Distinct meaning multiple different units and / or battalions in lists. Like Stormcast Eternals - they have so many wholly distinct, competitive, potentially tournament winning lists. People are finding new lists and synergies all the time. Hopefully GHB2 will further add to this.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

From what I've seen the variety in the competitive end of the game isn't bad at all. Especially with the more fleshed out factions. The problem seems to be more with the older stuff missing the allegiance abilities etc. (which is not surprising as they are essentially free stuff) and that should change really soon to better.

 

In my experience with different games, is that many times the problems with some "netlists" is that they are easier to play. Thus in a local gaming group, where the players are about on similar somewhat low skill level, the players that use those powerful lists tend to get more victories. Then when participating in larger tournaments with better players and more of those powerful lists, the real strength of the list and the players start to show. This is especially true on different kinds of Warhammers as they tend to be heavily focused on list building.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 minutes ago, Auticus said:

Hopefully.  One of the biggest downfalls that I have experienced with trying to get people involved in AOS is that there are so many models and armies people become emotionally attached to, but if those aren't the "haves" then they get discouraged and drop out.  The more viable armies that exist, the more people will become interested, and the less TFG showing up rolling casuals there will be.  Which would be a huge positive.

Indeed!  That's the reason I didn't pick up Dwarves back when Warhammer Fantasy was still going - because they struggled against magic-heavy armies.  And everyone brought a Level 4 Wizard in every game because they were such strong force-multipliers.  I then went with my Lizardmen, and a Slann in my large games.

The same thing is happening in Age of Sigmar, at least in the "competitive" scene.  I'm lucky in that my local area doesn't take the game seriously (that's the 40K players).  With any luck, AoS will continue to be the relaxed game that serves to be the less serious game in my area.  If money were no object, I would have a Dispossessed, Free Guild, mixed Aelf, Warherds, mixed Ogors, a Slaves to Darkness Chariot & Cavalry, and a large Greenskins and Ironjawz armies.  Tell me, which of those are "competitive"?  As of General's Handbook 1, the Ironjawz would be the "most" competitive.  And money is an object in my current circumstances, so I can't just get all the models I want, and to be "competitve" I would have to spends hundreds or thousands of dollars to "chase the meta".  That is literaly impossible for me to do right now.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Kramer said:

Hi! You do now!  Not the full reason but the fact that's it's open, exciting and a bit of random makes it the perfect game for me and some friends. 

The decision to add such a huge random factor in the game is a crucial element in making it an easy and fun game. The arguments to remove it (adds strategy, balance reasons, etc) are about making it the best competitive game possible. But that's not the point of AoS (at least that's how I interpret the design choices). 

So removing It would seriously hurt the fun and random aspect of the game. And well... it's a dice game after all ;) 

Well I'm glad you enjoy it. :) I definitely have had fun with it too. I just come from WHFB and love deeper strategy. AoS has a ton of fantastic depth from relatively simple rules, I just wish coin tosses didn't determine games as often as strategy does. Matched play has been my go-to; but I also love role playing and narrative games. It would be nice if the double turn didn't apply in matched play, or was optional or something. 

Regarding build diversity, Auticus is spot on. Sure you sometimes see something break the meta, like squigs or a 4th place HE list, but that's the exception, and that's the point. If you have to fish for exceptions you are already acknowledging that in general the top 5 places are dominated by a smaller selection of armies.

3 of those armies are there in large part because of the double turn. Thundertusks, Kunnin and Skyfires basically auto-win if they go second and get a double turn, since they can all move in range on their first turn and get two rounds of one-way damage on you. Since they can often win deployment, they can generally choose to go second, meaning 50% of the time it's a free win because of how badly the double turn exacerbates certain OP units. 

AoS is a lot of fun if your opponent is not playing one of those armies. But the rules are a little broken, and a certain percentage of people playing the game will take advantage of it, meaning more people play against it which makes more people sour to the rules. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hmmm.. I don't know. Top lists from what perspective though? I think the meta is still kind of all over the place:

From the last heat:

1 Squigs  <-----?

Kharadron Overlords !!!!

Sythaneth 

High Elves (Actually played against a very similar list locally. Very fun to play against. My Gutbuster/Beastclaw army did fair against it as well.)

5 Beastclaw and Kunnin Rukk

http://www.tga.community/forums/topic/10289-alliances-at-heat-3/

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, eekamouse said:

Do people ONLY play the filth in their local meta? I get folks testing out builds for an upcoming tournament.... but folks never play random fluffy games? That's mostly what I play frankly.

The group I play with largely play random games for entertainment.  A couple of us have done the tournament practice thing and we've all done the current 6 matched play battleplans numerous times - which we've largely got bored with and trying out some of the other ones :)  Then again I do consider myself fortunate that we all have the same attitude to list building and can judge if we feel something is a bit overpowered so tweak our own lists rather than expecting our opponent to tweak theirs.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.


×
×
  • Create New...