GHB17 - massive regiments. Horde armies rejoice.

[Sleboda]

Which part of my post do you mean? That AoS is not a mass battle game?

I mean that while it is fun,  having even 50 - 100 models per side doesn't feel very "army-ish" to me or to lots of ppl I know. 

In my games of WFB, it was not at all uncommon for the armies to have 200+ models per side. I often put 40 Tomb Guard between two blocks of 60 skeletons as my center, then added 3 units of 10 archers, some light cav, 6 carrion, and characters,  for a force of aroind 200 models.  Those games looked like wars and took maybe 3 hours.

In AoS I put out maybe 50 models, all in loose clouds. It looks like a playground fight and takes the same 3 hours.

 

[PraetorDragoon]

WHFB dissapeared near the end around here, mostly due to the large model counts. AoS made a great resurgence, mostly due to the low model count.

 

And I don't want to go back to the days of having to paint 60 skeletons for a single unit. I have no longer the will and time for that.

[Killax]

7 minutes ago, Sleboda said:

Which part of my post do you mean? That AoS is not a mass battle game?

I mean that while it is fun,  having even 50 - 100 models per side doesn't feel very "army-ish" to me or to lots of ppl I know. 

In my games of WFB, it was not at all uncommon for the armies to have 200+ models per side. I often put 40 Tomb Guard between two blocks of 60 skeletons as my center, then added 3 units of 10 archers, some light cav, 6 carrion, and characters,  for a force of aroind 200 models.  Those games looked like wars and took maybe 3 hours.

In AoS I put out maybe 50 models, all in loose clouds. It looks like a playground fight and takes the same 3 hours.

 

I mean what I exactly said in the opening post. Horde armies are not always a good thing, WFB is an example of what happens if you enforce it too much. It kills your game. Likewise we have armies who cannot be fielded in a Horde. If there is no advantage given to them, what's the point in only boosting Horde armies? As what Ive said before, are we now trading (shooting) one extreme for another (hordes)? 

50-100 models is what practically is a norm for AoS. It fits in a single big case, it's affordable. I could list all the reasons as to why going bigger as that isn't functional for most hobbyists, army transportation is one of those reasons aswell. Time duration for bigger armies (if you thake 3 hours for your AoS games) will now likely expand aswell with the more lose models you will need to bring for AoS. Are you looking forward to change those 3 hours to 4?

Having more loose models is not always a good thing. Thake that from me if you havn't experienced it yet.

[Terry Pike]

2 minutes ago, Killax said:

50-100 models is what practically is a norm for AoS.

I think the new norm will be 80-120.

It all depends on what gets a reduction and how much it is. I mean if Blue Horrors or Brimstone Horrors get a reduction, well armies could easily be 200 models.

[angelust]

I think competitive play gets a disproportionate amount of forum/blog/report coverage, which can skew our perception to think that k.rukk and skyfires and such are more prevalent than they are across the world. Even gaming clubs themselves are more prone to competition once you get a number of guys together- an easy way to set up games is to make a league, an easy way to incentivize a league is to create rankings and prizes, and then you have all the motivation you need to start adding a few keen edges to your game until the whole league gets cranked up. If you start off with someone already prone to min-max, and he's got his shiny new Skyfire army, the club tends toward normalizing up rather than down in competition.

However, I'd be willing to be that a hugely under-the-radar group of players are just small and more informal groups of players who are often playing one offs at game stores and basements. My main (and mostly only) opponent is a real hobbyist playing Asgorh and Tamurkhan...I have tons of armies but I'll never bring Skyfire or a pimped out Stormcast list or the like against him. Guys that focus more on hobby/casual/immersion usually aren't trolling forums. The main reason I checked out TGA was just to answer the question, "how does this game scale competitively, in case I wander toward tournaments?" My own assumption there tells me something.

[Killax]

Just now, Terry Pike said:

I think the new norm will be 80-120.

It all depends on what gets a reduction and how much it is. I mean if Blue Horrors or Brimstone Horrors get a reduction, well armies could easily be 200 models.

I absolutely agree with that. The one thing Im looking most forward to is how much time has been spend into a change I'm uncertain was waranted.
I completely get how this is more profitable for GW. In general I'm just afraid that new players will turn away when they basically see the entry costs go up by 25% because the model count goes up by 25%.

GW can offcourse give combo deals again, that would really help  

[RuneBrush]

4 minutes ago, Killax said:

50-100 models is what practically is a norm for AoS. It fits in a single big case, it's affordable. I could list all the reasons as to why going bigger as that isn't functional for most hobbyists, army transportation is one of those reasons aswell. Time duration for bigger armies (if you thake 3 hours for your AoS games) will now likely expand aswell with the more lose models you will need to bring for AoS. Are you looking forward to change those 3 hours to 4?

Completely agree with this.  Transport logistics is a big part of the hobby if you wish to travel around for games (even more so for those of us who use public transport).

I am slightly concerned that game turns are going to take an increase in time which for armies that have little to no shooting is going to make a huge difference.  I know from the games I've played, games that finish on turn 3 I'm more likely to lose than games that roll out to 4 or 5 turns, quite simply because it takes me that long to get into combat!  If this is because it's taken my opponent fourty+ minutes to move his massive units, it's really going to start to hamper my enjoyment (believe me seeing somebody move a unit of 40 skeletons one at a time is a bit like watching paint dry).

[Sleboda]

15 minutes ago, Killax said:

I mean what I exactly said in the opening post

Sorry for the confusion. I was referring to the bit where you essentially called me a liar. I wondered which part of my view you thought was a lie.

[Killax]

6 minutes ago, Sleboda said:

Sorry for the confusion. I was referring to the bit where you essentially called me a liar. I wondered which part of my view you thought was a lie.

I didn't call you a liar or wanted to do that! I said that I don't believe everybody in your area wants to see larger armies. 

However time will tell, there are a lot of influences GW can have to make this work out. But selling those Horde units by the 10 models for roughly $25 dollar while you want 40+ is typically not something that most players like. As before, WFB showed the results of that.

$100 per unit is quite a lot, too much for most players I know.

 

[Sleboda]

@Killax

Ah. When you wrote "I don't think what you are saying holds much truth to be honest" 

as a response to me saying "I, and several folks I know,  want mass battles, not big skirmishes. "

I wondered how you could think I was not telling the truth. After all, it was just my experience I was describing.  I never said "everyone" , but if you interpreted my reference to myself and some others I know as "everyone" I can see why we're not on the same page. 

No biggie. 

[Sleboda]

Fantastic post, @Auticus. Useful insights.

Competition is at the core of the human experience (it is why we survive and evolve as a species!), so it's not surprising when ppl "break" a game to win. 

It's why I almost never blame the player, but rather the rules writer, when he or she makes the best use of the tools provided. 

Utopian ideals are wonderful, but biological/psychological realities always seem to win. 

[Captain Marius]

Itll be interesting to see how this all shakes out. With the Verminus list weve seen so far, you get a horde of clanrats for 200pts but the stormvermin horde is 500pts! 

Clanrats suck no matter how many there are, so even with 120 at 600pts theyre gonna die so quick without doing much damage itll be a joke. See also Zombies.

Stormvermin are way more deadly, but many of those expensive bods will be mainly acting as wound counters, which will be the case for all the hard hitting glass cannons like bloodletters etc.

The ones who will really benefit are the resilient blobs like plaguebearers, who exist to hold objectives forever - fortunately the new always hit on 6s rule means even crappy stuff has a chance to still whittle them down.

Another consideration is time limits - hordes of infantry are slow compared to all the elite stuff that will be able to outmanouevre them and grab objectives before the game ends prematurely due to time limit.

Also this has all been designed with the new scenarios in mind, the only one of which weve seen has heroes and behemoths as the only scoring units!

[wayniac]

1 minute ago, Captain Marius said:

Itll be interesting to see how this all shakes out. With the Verminus list weve seen so far, you get a horde of clanrats for 200pts but the stormvermin horde is 500pts! 

Clanrats suck no matter how many there are, so even with 120 at 600pts theyre gonna die so quick without doing much damage itll be a joke. See also Zombies.

Stormvermin are way more deadly, but many of those expensive bods will be mainly acting as wound counters, which will be the case for all the hard hitting glass cannons like bloodletters etc.

The ones who will really benefit are the resilient blobs like plaguebearers, who exist to hold objectives forever - fortunately the new always hit on 6s rule means even crappy stuff has a chance to still whittle them down.

Another consideration is time limits - hordes of infantry are slow compared to all the elite stuff that will be able to outmanouevre them and grab objectives before the game ends prematurely due to time limit.

Also this has all been designed with the new scenarios in mind, the only one of which weve seen has heroes and behemoths as the only scoring units!

See to me a scenario that requires heroes/behemoths to score is broken out of the gate; just kill off your opponent's heroes (trivially easy with any sort of good shooting) and then laugh as your opponent literally cannot win on scenario, or if I recall reading it right even "contest" you outside of killing your own heroes/behemoths.  It becomes a trivial scenario to "game"

[Warboss Gorbolg]

I feel like it is still too early to be overly concerned.

First off we have a number of other changes coming to matched play that may very well be more important than this change and might even overshadow it in a month's time.  What will all the points adjustments look like?  Will max unit size also change? Etc.

My second thought is that in my local GW, typical games are only 500-1,200 points.  It will be a decent investment in points for someone to take advantage of max sized hordes in this context.  Much larger games are discouraged to allow games to cycle through.  I think that it's interesting that the attractiveness of the discount might change depending on what size games you decide to play.

Third, I just don't see people currently collecting and playing horde armies much.  My personal experience is that it's all about elites (and therefore mortal wounds) and shooting.  May GW go too far with this change?  Perhaps, but right now I think that it is just as likely that we'll see a greater variety of units taken because of it.

Lastly, as someone that recently dusted off my BfSP Moonclan and purchased a couple more boxes of Grots, currently I'm not convinced that I would even go for the discount in a 2k game.  Do I really need units of 60 Grots?  Say the discount is similar to the clanrat one, so 60 points discounted on a unit of 60.  Those last 20 Grots are still costing me another 60 points (originally 120 on every 20 Grots).  Instead I could keep a unit of 40 Grots and grab a Grot Shaman, 2 fanatics, another unit of cave squigs, or a pump wagon with those 60 points.  Unless you're already running these units at max size, there is still an opportunity cost to get the discount.

[Mirage8112]

There were a lot of things that killed WHFB. Its wasn't soley the model count. You could easily play an army that had a relatively low model count and not have to invest in hordes (although some armies were horde armies almost exclusively. That was frustrating. At least you can play Skaven competitively now without having to paint 200 slaves for every 750 pts of army). I never really went the horde route myself (I played WoC and Wood elves. Mostly MSU lists) and did quite well. A lot of players didn't like hordes because they gained a ton of special rules that made big blocks nearly invincible. With rank bonus, steadfast, an extra row of attacks and a wide frontage (gut-star anyone?). There is nothing in the rumors we've seen so far that makes the massive regiments rule look anything like that. Truthfully the horde bonus in AoS looks so slight, I don't see why everybody is getting so bent out of shape over it. FFS, it's a 15% bonus to a single unit, stop pretending we're looking at the new Gladius.

As a Sylvaneth player, even if dryads gained the massive regiments rule with a 15% reduction for max sized units, what's the most I could hope to "get free" out of this? Maybe 60 pts per unit (assuming dryads don't go down in price) If I were to replicate that across the army, I could maybe get 180 pts for "free". That's not even close to what we saw with the Gladius formation with it's oodles of free transports in 40k. That was 730 points of free models on top of 2k points of elite fighting units. Hell, even if I could get a "free" unit of hunters out it, I'm not at convinced it would be worth it. 

Do you have any practical experience of having to maneuver 90 Dryads around the table? Groups of 30 dryads have virtually no chance of getting into cover, are unwieldy as fk, are nearly impossible to null employ thanks to proximity rules, not to mention I've now spent 900 pts on battleline units. Leaving me a hell of a lot less room for anything else.  And everybody is worrying about how broken that is?  Cmon....

If you don't want to paint 60 skeletons, don't. I'm reasonably confident there will still be a competitive place for elite armies or MSU lists. It just gives players who want to play horde armies a bit of an inceptive to do so. It's makes that play style a little more viable; not mandatory. Some players may have "tested" these new rules and declared they are broken, mandatory, or some other nonsense but that's about worth as much as me telling you I have tested the Generals Handbook 2020 and Night Goblins taken in units of 17 are going to be most OP broken thing EVAR...

49 minutes ago, wayniac said:

See to me a scenario that requires heroes/behemoths to score is broken out of the gate; just kill off your opponent's heroes (trivially easy with any sort of good shooting) and then laugh as your opponent literally cannot win on scenario, or if I recall reading it right even "contest" you outside of killing your own heroes/behemoths.  It becomes a trivial scenario to "game"

We have a scenario like that already. It's called three places of power and is meant to balance armies that ignore characters in favor of unit with more killing power (say by making a unit champion your general to gain protection from shooting). It's actually a good balancing mechanism to discourage that particular aspect of min-maxing. Sort of like the old blood and glory scenario from WHFB where you were required to take a certain number of banners on units and if those units were destroyed you lost automatically. Most tournament players hated that scenario because it meant they had to pay for "non optimum" units to avoid not auto-losing because they didn't have enough banners. The same thing goes for scenarios that have objectives that an only be captured by characters. 

[Gotrek]

1 hour ago, wayniac said:

See to me a scenario that requires heroes/behemoths to score is broken out of the gate; just kill off your opponent's heroes (trivially easy with any sort of good shooting) and then laugh as your opponent literally cannot win on scenario, or if I recall reading it right even "contest" you outside of killing your own heroes/behemoths.  It becomes a trivial scenario to "game"

i dunno, 3 places of power doesnt seem that broken as long as you dont take squishy heroes.

[Sleboda]

30 minutes ago, Mirage8112 said:

If you don't want to paint 60 skeletons, don't.

Los of ppl don't.  They put a gravestone or one skeletal arm or skull on a base and tell the lie that they were making a cool diorama unit, not cheaping out to powergame.

Just sayin.

[PraetorDragoon]

Just now, Sleboda said:

Los of ppl don't.  They put a gravestone or one skeletal arm or skull on a base and tell the lie that they were making a cool diorama unit, not cheaping out to powergame.

Just sayin.

Hey now, it's called unit filler, and a time-honored practice.

[Mirage8112]

6 minutes ago, Sleboda said:

Los of ppl don't.  They put a gravestone or one skeletal arm or skull on a base and tell the lie that they were making a cool diorama unit, not cheaping out to powergame.

Just sayin.

Truth.

To be fair I do have marauder unit that replaces a few with big rocks. To fair it's a heavily converted unit so I give myself a pass; but still....

[Sleboda]

21 minutes ago, Auticus said:

Blood and Glory and watchtower were always "lets reroll this to something else"

Lol. As a Tomb Kings player, those were the two I prayed to get since they were the only ones I stood a chance of winning.

 

Hey now, it's called unit filler, and a time-honored practice.

Unit filler is #2 on my list of Things That Justify Me Throwing Your Models In A Blender Or Microwave Oven

[PraetorDragoon]

15 minutes ago, Sleboda said:

Lol. As a Tomb Kings player, those were the two I prayed to get since they were the only ones I stood a chance of winning.

 

Unit filler is #2 on my list of Things That Justify Me Throwing Your Models In A Blender Or Microwave Oven

What is no 1? Yellow paintjobs?

[Sleboda]

8 minutes ago, PraetorDragoon said:

What is no 1? Yellow paintjobs?

Aw hell no! I love painting yellow.

#1 is NMM on models anywhere other than banner or shield designs. I actually dq'd a model from winning a golden demon one year back in my GW days because it was NMM. Gorgeous, displayed tons of skill, but was completely misused.

[PraetorDragoon]

5 minutes ago, Sleboda said:

Aw hell no! I love painting yellow.

#1 is NMM on models anywhere other than banner or shield designs. I actually dq'd a model from winning a golden demon one year back in my GW days because it was NMM. Gorgeous, displayed tons of skill, but was completely misused.

Huh, that is interesting.

[daedalus81]

NMM?

[PraetorDragoon]

Just now, daedalus81 said:

NMM?

Non-Metallic Metal. Paint technique to paint metal without using metal paints.

Way beyond my skillset.