KO Thunderer GHB2017 Changes Information Gathering Poll

[rokapoke]

I would tend to call the change a clarification rather than a nerf, but count me among those who believe it should have been communicated earlier/better. Like as soon as that page was finalized. 

[Ollie Grimwood]

This sort of thing is always going to pop up due to the new willingness to update stuff on a much more frequent basis. Don't forget it was something that was being demanded by large section of the GW customer base.

 

Could it be avoided by more thorough playtesting? Possibly but that may increase costs and I think we know who that'll fall on.

 

Through I will say If this is the unit I've seen on twitter by Tom it's a really shame because it looks really nice.

 

 

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[Karchev23]

Personally i had a feeling this was going to happen, and since i cant afford almost 800 NZD worth of models for a unit of 10 dudes i went with all rifles anyhow ( and very effective i might add ).

The thing that annoys me is that KO were honestly fine as they were IMHO. Sure khemist buff is powerful and 36" range on a single weapon is also good. But the mortar was the only weapon in the whole army ( apart from grapnel launchers ) with that kind of range. To me this nerfs a faction that didn't need nerfing. 

I sold my favorite army just to start KO. I was the only competitive Beastclaw Raiders player in the NZ scene for a long time, my first AOS army too. And i got rid of them to fund my Overlords.

Crying aside, while i encourage GW to make the game more balanced and interesting acrosd the board. Don't do it to a faction which didn't need it. 

[Nico]

Quote

Crying aside, while i encourage GW to make the game more balanced and interesting acrosd the board. Don't do it to a faction which didn't need it. 

KO pre-nerf were pretty grotesque in tournaments and not much fun to play against. Clown car with 10 Cannons firing twice and 9 Riggers buffed is pretty horrific. Routinely crippling/tabling opponents in two turns, often with their opponent having literally nothing to do but remove models - they move and buff turn one, then KO come down and kill all their valuable troops. They do have counters in a few factions, but were very likely to be nerfed. It was similar to the Clan Skryre list except with a better effective range.

Hopefully, the whole faction is rebalanced, with Frigates, Gunhaulers and heroes other than Khemists coming way down , while Riggers get a small hike.

[Aezeal]

Just now, Nico said:

KO pre-nerf were grotesque in tournaments. Routinely tabling opponents in two turns, often with their opponent having literally nothing to do but remove models - they move and buff turn one, then KO come down and kill all their valuable troops. They do have counters in a few factions, but were very likely to be nerfed.

Which, my remark about testing aside, was pretty obvious. Stacking Khemist (and secrators) are a bane to balance, it should be removed so you just get 2 to have a backup (and then a 200 points per 2 they'd STILL be worth their points EASILY). And their routine shooters are about the most powerfull in the game point for point. Then they get transports and deployment stuff too which protects them in what could be a vulnerable part of the battle.

[chord]

This doesn't impact me but that aid I think fixing "broken" warscrolls are a good thing.  The issue stems from how they get update and communicated.

I recommend GW set up an online database of warscrolls along with last updated date, etc.  Make this accessible via web api rest end points so the community can create apps and notifications when they update. GW can also use this in their app.  Then as soon as one is updated (or flagged so the public sees the update) it could be automatically tweeted and is accessible by everyone.  

[Shadowheart]

I got off slightly luckier than you here. I bought 4 boxes of em, made a unit of 10 with rifles, but a unit of 5 with cannons and 5 with mortars, still annoying though

[NoTurtlesAllowed]

The only Issue I had playing against them was the 36" range

[Kosmion]

to sum up future assembly strategies id say: build whats in the box ONLY to be 100% bulletproof safe. however, thats not very restricting and inefficient...and not very fun tbh. i guess its a risk, each one has to ask themselves if its worth taking. i see how this is a "stab in the back" especially since some people supported GW early on by buying their new product when it was completely fresh. and as Tom ha stated: GW SHOULD have broken these new earlier on, in order to avoid a ******-over. 
however, i think the nerf is good for the game, not so good for those people that actually went out and bought 10+ boxes. 

[Gecktron]

I don't think the changes are terrible but Im still a little annoyed with this.
First of all, I usually play a rather soft list when using my KOs. Never more than 5 Thunderers and I only have 1 Khemist in my army.
So I never got the feeling that Kharadrons are over powered.

What bothers me are two things. First, the change to the mortars, reducing their range to just 12" makes them just ****** aether canons. Reducing them to 24" would have been okay in my mind. Damaging anything with only a 4+ to-hit and no rend is hard enough. 
Second point, letting them all have the same weapon is just more aesthetically pleasing. I like the special weapons team look. One special weapon per team is also okay (thats how I built my Thunderers 4x rifles, 1x special weapon). But I will never give every dwarf in a unit a different weapon. 

Just making it so that Khemists can't buff Thunderers at all could have stopped most of the shenanigans one willing KO player can pull.

As I said before, its not like this is ruining my experience playing my KO army, but I would have preferred a different solution. 

[DynamicCalories]

I think they should have been clear about this from the inception of the Battletome, and the release of the kit. It wasn't hard to see which weapons were good, and with no restrictions, why would modders or those with the finances do anything other than approach the lists with this simple solution?

That said I am not particularly concerned myself, as long as they keep this in mind going forward. Warscrolls need to reflect what the unit can be built as, and these changes should not happen this late in the day. They need to be caught earlier though. 

In reality I am more annoyed about the Port/Paint stuff, because unlike Marine Chapters, there are no unique models to give you an incentive for painting a certain way, just a restriction for those who decide they don't want to follow GW's scheme, which feels the opposite of the appeal of AoS imo. I am happy with GW overall, these are just two small niggles I have with the KO release.

[Thomas Lyons]

4 hours ago, Bryan C said:

Next people that brought 27 sky fires will be asking GW for a refund when they invariably go up in price - it's not going to happen people - live with the consequence of your choices, learn from them and move on.

This is simply different.  It is the equivalent of them changing Skyfires and requiring all Skyfire units to only have one bow in each unit and the rest instead need to be build as an Enlightened on disc and another on foot.  The actual physical composition of the unit is being changed by this warscroll change.

4 hours ago, Bryan C said:

@The Golem but people only built them that way to gain maximum gaming advantage  - it's no different to in days of old buying 4 hydras because they are awesome but then global comp imposing a limit of max 1 of them. 

Correct.  Myself and likely many others purchased and built KO Thunderers from GW when they were released 4 months ago under good faith that the rules we were given to build the units were correct, with the consequence being that people who wanted optimized WYSIWYG units had to fork out cash.  Some of us did, and then GW pulled out the rug from underneath us.  This is a change very different from changing point values because it changes what is legal in how a kit is assembled, something that is different from buying extra kits.  

4 hours ago, The Golem said:

 

@Thomas Lyons I don't know how your thunderers are assembled (I haven't bought any) but couldn't you use an X-acto knife and carefully separate the mortar from 9 of your models then put other weapons instead?

They are not easily separated given I needed to custom greenstuff tubes to get all the backpacks and bodies to work with cannons.  See the image below. These are Thunderers I just finished on Thursday.

2 hours ago, Ollie Grimwood said:

Through I will say If this is the unit I've seen on twitter by Tom it's a really shame because it looks really nice.

They are indeed.

[Seraphage]

No offense guys but I think this is silly complaint. We all knew that GH2 was coming his summer and we looked forward to it due to one thing : Changes it would bring.

 

Publishing 2 months beforehand could be said by any army since any change, alternates the play style. And since they would do that, they might as well publish the whole book.

But then, same could be said for 2 months before that date.. what I am trying to say is that things like that cannot be avoided because there is nothing to avoid from the company. It is OUR purchases before the update. OUR choice.

No offense meant, this is truly my opinion and I do believe it makes sense 

[MrCharisma]

What I don't understand is why they didn't restrict the khemist abilities and leave everything else alone. 

Having played KO in my local meta, the multi stacking khemist is one of the few things that makes KO OP, otherwise, they are a fantastic unique force. 

[Nico]

By my maths, 5 Thunderers with 1 Khemist buff are 3.78 damage per 100 points shooting at a 4+ save target (17 shots).

Skyhooks are only 2.78 per 100 points shooting at a 4+ save target (assuming no +1 to hit buff) - 6 shots.

If the pistols are in range then the Arks do better.

Admittedly Thunderers get worse as you increase the unit size as the Champion buff is smaller and you will frequently get that +1 to hit on the Arks. Then again the pistols become more and more dead weight in the calculation at 20 models plus.

I feel the Thunderers play the role of shredding 5+ save infantry now - something that we will increasingly need going forward - packs of cheap 30 Bloodletters on the march.

[awcamawn]

4 hours ago, Tzaangor Management said:

I personally wouldn't have bought marauders had I known their minimum unit size was increasing.

Sorry if this is a little off topic but I thought it was confirmed from a Warhammer TV General's Handbook preview game that their minimum unit size was actually not increasing. I didn't watch the stream of the game but the info that could be derived from it was collected here:

https://aosshorts.com/ghb2017-learnt-twitch-game-1/

The khorne player took a unit of ten marauders to cheaply fill out his battleline. "The minimum unit size for Marauders has not increased – 3×10 Maruader core is still a thing." 

[Hans]

TL:DR

i think the changes is right, a 100pts unit with the ability to equipment any special weapon at their whim doesn't make sense.

i played with all aether rifle pre GHB17, now it giving me reason to utilize the special weapon option with the ability that each special weapons come with.

though the mortar range looking stupid now, I reckon they should change back the mortar range.

[Stevewren]

 @Thomas Lyons why not just paint the remaining 90 thinderers you have? You'd have an awesomely cool Thunderer themed army for narrative play

[Thomas Lyons]

14 minutes ago, Stevewren said:

 @Thomas Lyons why not just paint the remaining 90 thinderers you have? You'd have an awesomely cool Thunderer themed army for narrative play

Thank you.  I wish I was still as excited about it as I was a week ago.  

[Kevin K]

I think this just highlights GW's limitations as rule writers. First they write a set of rules that clearly encourages play that can't be easily built with what is in the box. Then they "fix" that by releasing a set of rules that look unplayable. There is a lot of rolling of dice for little actual effect.

I like the idea of the rules matching the kit. I didn't buy any Thunderers specifically because that annoyed me. The new rules just don't seem worth using.

I do think a change this big should have been communicated a long time ago.

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[Rhellion]

5 hours ago, Aezeal said:

You know I really think gw playtests just with the unit as they are out of the box. I genuinely playtested quite a lot with a few pretty prdoction models or something with a common load out as in the box... But not with the pov of power gamers.  I'm not sure whether I think that is a wrong approach either.

You have seen who some of the playtesters are, right? There are some pretty strong power gamers on that list.

[Rimio]

I don't know if the KOs got to the play testers or not, but the first thing I thought about when I read the warscrolls was the Khemist combo. And that thing can shred an entire army if you go overboard on it. 20 thunderers + 6 khemists is 1000 points and the is not fun to play against. Even at half that, and its still deadly. But changing that warscroll never even crossed my mind. I was expecting the stacking to go away. 

That being said, I think the nerf went too far. The range on them should still be 36, they are mortars, that's a longs range weapon. And they did not adress the big problem with them, the lack of mobility. In my games against them I just lost my entire army to shooting, but before that I scored enough points that they couldn't capture the objectives on their stubby little legs, to make up the difference.  

This should have been communicated long ago, but GW is learning, and maybe this will be a lesson. I come from video gaming where patches and nerfs are a regular occurrence, and I would like GW to fallow that model. If something doesn't work fix it. That;s the beauty of digital distribution.

They still need a way to move around the table, so hopefully the boats got cheaper. That might make up for it. 

[Tzaangor Management]

1 hour ago, awcamawn said:

Sorry if this is a little off topic but I thought it was confirmed from a Warhammer TV General's Handbook preview game that their minimum unit size was actually not increasing. I didn't watch the stream of the game but the info that could be derived from it was collected here:

https://aosshorts.com/ghb2017-learnt-twitch-game-1/

The khorne player took a unit of ten marauders to cheaply fill out his battleline. "The minimum unit size for Marauders has not increased – 3×10 Maruader core is still a thing." 

Hadn't seen that, have been away for a bit and been trying to catch up. Thanks for the share.

Think the thought remains, that many people will probably have to review their armies post GHB 2017 and I look forward to seeing some innovative solutions, particularly from the man who brought you the teleporting Chaos Warrior block 

 

[Gaz Taylor]

++ Mod Hat On ++

I can honestly say I'm very please with how this thread is going considering the subject, however I do need to get my stick out and do some poking...

6 hours ago, Aezeal said:

Wow you actually bought 10 boxes.... must really love wysiwyg.. Didn't expect people to be really that.... stu.. I mean dedicated.

Having seen the unit I must say it looks great..Not 400 dollar great but certainly 100+

@Aezeal This is the sort of comment we don't really want to see. Can I ask you to think a bit more when replying please.

 

[Thomas Lyons]

2 minutes ago, Gaz Taylor said:

++ Mod Hat On ++

I can honestly say I'm very please with how this thread is going considering the subject

Thanks Gaz.  I wanted to be really intentional about creating a constructive environment for this discussion ;-)