Experience with not playing with rule of one

[Melcar]

Hi...

 

I'm a very new player, and I'm trying to find out what people think of "the rule of one" and whether or not people here have any experience with not playing with it. I know there can be players who without strict rules just breaks games, but not including those, how is playing without the rule of one affecting the balance of the game?

 

Thanks

 

 

[Squirrelmaster]

My personal experience of casual/friendly games without them are that it doesn't make much difference, most of the time.

I suspect the main difference arises from some of the more extreme/broken combos that become available without them. If you and your opponent just aren't using those combos anyway, it doesn't come up.

Pretty much the main ones are:

1. Stacking multiple Mystic Shields on the same unit for a 1+ save.
2. Stacking multiple "To Hit" penalties to produce a required 7+ to hit.
3. Runaway "extra attack" bonuses that just keep going.

It also means that having multiples of the same wizard so you can re-use the same spell multiple times becomes viable, but to be honest that one isn't normally hugely broken. Arcane Bolt spam is kinda boring, but I wouldn't say it's overpowered, really.

It does make a really big difference to Nagash, and Pink Horrors, since both often find themselves unable to use their full casting potential otherwise.

The Tomb King spell "Righteous Smiting" gets a lot better without them, but not always to the extent of being a broken runaway combo — it depends how many To Hit bonuses you stack, and how many times you cast the spell on a single unit.

Honestly auto-hitting and auto-wounding aren't that big of a deal. Even a 1+ save is not much worse than a 2+ re-rollable, it's just that stacking Mystic Shield makes it more readily available.

[Euphanism]

We play with a somewhat modified version of it in my group that works pretty well, in terms of spellcasting. Basically, each Wizard can only attempt to cast each spell once per turn, but a different wizard can try the same spell. This limits arcane bolt or mystic shield spam (especially with models like Nagash) without totally stripping them of a lot of power. So far it works out to be pretty fair without making wizard heavy armies feel unfairly nerfed.

[Squirrelmaster]

I want to add: the bigger question is how you deal with summoning. Even among relatively casual gamers, I've seen unrestricted summoning seriously unbalance the game, and it's just not fun to play against (for most people, anyway).

I mention this because both the Rules of One and the rules for reinforcement points are from the Matched Play variant, so players usually (again, in my experience) play with either both or neither.

[Killax]

15 hours ago, Squirrelmaster said:

I want to add: the bigger question is how you deal with summoning. Even among relatively casual gamers, I've seen unrestricted summoning seriously unbalance the game, and it's just not fun to play against (for most people, anyway).

I mention this because both the Rules of One and the rules for reinforcement points are from the Matched Play variant, so players usually (again, in my experience) play with either both or neither.

Summonning without summonning points is indeed too big of a game changer. While it's obvious that Death has a lot of this and is also not competing well in the competative Matched Play format the way it works now should eventually be a good standard as placement after deployment in itself is allready a huge advantage.

I think the rules of one in regards to Magic work well. I also think that @Euphanism's way could also work out well. The prime reason as to why I believe it's incorporated into the game is because not every faction has or (from a narrative standpoint) wants Wizards. Khorne is such an example, the same applies to Fyreslayers and Stormcast Eternals.

One of the ways to easily mix things would have been to have Wizards and Priests functionally act the same but narratively speaking comming from a whole different set of powers. However at this time and point in Age of Sigmar that design alteration isn't really possible (anymore). So perhaps this will change in a future edition of Age of Sigmar but for now the Rules of One act as a bandaid to keep those types of powers in check, indeed it also would have made more sence to incorporate Prayers into it but as is it works out well.

Examples where Magic still is insanely powerful and works out well are in Tzeentch and Slaves to Darkness (Sayl). If Death as a faction gets the propper re-design it requires it too will be able to hang with the most powerful Wizards in the game.

[Melcar]

47 minutes ago, Killax said:

Summonning without summonning points is indeed too big of a game changer. While it's obvious that Death has a lot of this and is also not competing well in the competative Matched Play format the way it works now should eventually be a good standard as placement after deployment in itself is allready a huge advantage.

I think the rules of one in regards to Magic work well. I also think that @Euphanism's way could also work out well. The prime reason as to why I believe it's incorporated into the game is because not every faction has or (from a narrative standpoint) wants Wizards. Khorne is such an example, the same applies to Fyreslayers and Stormcast Eternals.

One of the ways to easily mix things would have been to have Wizards and Priests functionally act the same but narratively speaking comming from a whole different set of powers. However at this time and point in Age of Sigmar that design alteration isn't really possible (anymore). So perhaps this will change in a future edition of Age of Sigmar but for now the Rules of One act as a bandaid to keep those types of powers in check, indeed it also would have made more sence to incorporate Prayers into it but as is it works out well.

Examples where Magic still is insanely powerful and works out well are in Tzeentch and Slaves to Darkness (Sayl). If Death as a faction gets the propper re-design it requires it too will be able to hang with the most powerful Wizards in the game.

A few questions:

1) I seem to understand the first part of your post as saying that death relies a lot on summoning and as of right now, are hampered, and thus fairs poorly in tournament play? Is this what you are saying?

2) You say if Death gets a proper redesign... Could you elaborate on this? I just started playing Death, and there are so many facets I have yet to discover and understand.

[Killax]

1 hour ago, Melcar said:

A few questions:

1) I seem to understand the first part of your post as saying that death relies a lot on summoning and as of right now, are hampered, and thus fairs poorly in tournament play? Is this what you are saying?

2) You say if Death gets a proper redesign... Could you elaborate on this? I just started playing Death, and there are so many facets I have yet to discover and understand.

To an extend I am saying that indeed Death has a lot of summonning, however it isn't completely capable of relying on it completely. What the GH2017 has done is circumvent this issue by presenting alternatives to summonning, these alternatives are great but from a design philosophy I can't say it's the "ideal choice" as I believe the key to succes for every army is to work well with just a Warscroll and add bonusses to it, instead of creating additional rules that are in a way a design alternative.

In my opinion Death isn't preforming all to well because a good ammount of their Warscrolls isn't designed all to well when we thake GH2017 in mind. With this I mean that the Allegiance and Allies rules actually create some anti-synergy within Death, more as say in most other Grand Allegiances or Factions. As an example, Arkhan the Black is a fantastic possible General but the moment you thake Deathlords as an Ally you can't have him as your general. Playing Deathlords as your Allegiance the other way around only leaves you with 400 points (at 2K) to choose Allies from and that does not work out well because my perception on what should make Death powerful would be:
1. Numbers + resilience 
2. Magic/Prayers
3. Summonning
4. (General) Support

The issue Death players are faced with is that there is a mix of 1 to 4 in Grand Allegiance Death but it isn't found it it's Allegiances.
- Flesh Eater Courts has 1 and 3, to an lesser extend 4.
- Deathlords has 2 and 4 but doesn't have the Ally room for 1 and 3.
- Deathrattle has 1, 3 and a General Support choice but most competative factions are working with four or more Support options allready.
- Nighthaunt has 1 and thanks to Allegiance abilities more or less 3.
- Soulblight 2 and 4 and to lesser extend 1.

Now I do not want to persuede you into playing a whole different army but as above, it's very difficult for Death players currently to create the propper synergy outside of Grand Allegiance Death (still). Where for Order, Chaos and Destruction this is much less of a hinderance.

TLDR: What I am essentially trying to say is that the sub-sub-Factions in Grand Allegiance Death are too many to comfortably create an army with that has the same tactical diversity that is seen in other competative Allegiance Armies. 
As a Khorne player I can give an example of how Allegiance Khorne does have all of the above:
1. Bloodletters, Bloodreavers, Marauders + anything with a 4+ save.
2. Either Slaves to Darkness offers you Sayl which is an incredible Wizard (still) or you go the Slaughterpiest route with Blood Prayers.
3. Summonning Daemons is optional, not extremely potent within Khorne specifically but due to 1/2 it also isn't really needed. (Tzeentch on the other hand is a masterful example of Magic and Summonning and relies less on 1.)
4. The vast mayority of Heroes that can obtain the Khorne Keyword also have a functional Command Abilities.

[Melcar]

1 hour ago, Killax said:

To an extend I am saying that indeed Death has a lot of summonning, however it isn't completely capable of relying on it completely. What the GH2017 has done is circumvent this issue by presenting alternatives to summonning, these alternatives are great but from a design philosophy I can't say it's the "ideal choice" as I believe the key to succes for every army is to work well with just a Warscroll and add bonusses to it, instead of creating additional rules that are in a way a design alternative.

In my opinion Death isn't preforming all to well because a good ammount of their Warscrolls isn't designed all to well when we thake GH2017 in mind. With this I mean that the Allegiance and Allies rules actually create some anti-synergy within Death, more as say in most other Grand Allegiances or Factions. As an example, Arkhan the Black is a fantastic possible General but the moment you thake Deathlords as an Ally you can't have him as your general. Playing Deathlords as your Allegiance the other way around only leaves you with 400 points (at 2K) to choose Allies from and that does not work out well because my perception on what should make Death powerful...
 

Thank you for that elaborate answer.. now this naturally leads me to other questions:

1) What are these alternatives to summoning? I do have the GH2017, but I have not yet had the time to go through it properly.

2) So... your saying that I can't have Arkan the Black as a general, because you can only have a general from your main faction? I'm playing death-rattle, and was indeed thinking of getting Arkhan for his magical capabilities. Now if I can't have him be a general in my death-rattle faction army, can I have him If I just choose to go death allegiance?

Again thanks

[Killax]

1) Basically setting up units in reserve and have them show up on a 3+ role on one side of the board. Check Firestorm for Wraithfleet and Nighthaunt Allegiances. These Allegiances are explained in Firestorm (different AoS supplement) and page 148-155 GH2017.
2) You can certainly have Arkhan as your General in the Grand Allegiance Death. As in this case all available units only require the Death Keyword to be part of the Allegiance. It also means that you have no Allies but that's not a disadvantage compaired to the wide choice of Warscrolls you get to choose from. The part of Allies is explained on page 76 of GH2017.

Now despite the above keep in mind that the game works just fine at casual levels and this is also where the rule of one for example can be house-ruled differently. Sorry for the offtopic chat on what is essentially 'boiling down' Death. 

For games that are played at clubs, stores and homes I'd certainly play the models you like. It's just important to keep in mind that Allegiances/Factions and Allies do come with a certain set of restrictions.