Is Competitive AoS Backing Itself into a Corner?

[Twitch of Izalith]

When I started playing AoS everyone in my group was playing fairly elite high damage output armies, minimum unit sizes were the norm and while playing to the objectives was the most important factor in winning, being able to kill enemy models was probably the dominant mechanism for achieving these objectives.

Tzeentch, Khorne, Sylvaneth, Stormcast, Skyre, Beastclaw and Bonesplitterz all did this pretty well and games were always fast, fun and lethal – with very few models left by turn 5.

GH 2017 has certainly changed the game in favour of bigger units and put even more emphasis on holding objectives.

The thing I think has really changed the game however is Fyreslayers. One of my main opponents has been playing them since release – and they were always pretty strong in my opinion – but the massive 150 points decrease in the cost of 30 vulkites means I now have to fight 90 of them – coupled with the Ur Gold runes which give them really strong army-wide buffs for free…

Other than being a massive pain in my behind Fyreslayers have pointed out to everyone how strong resilience builds are and while you can grind through these builds by optimising your damage output, it often leaves you without enough models to cap objectives and unlucky dice can mean you just bounce off and get chipped away before you make enough impact.

Its far safer and more reliable to just make your own army as resilient as possible, So my Fatesworn warband now has a ton of chaos warriors with runeshields and 6+, 6+ wards, I’m even running a cheesey balewind and treacherous bond! Our Nurgle player now has 90 plague bearers and Nurgle marked warriors and runs GA chaos with Cunning Deceiver (he’s like -3 to hit in the first round or something!!)

I was listening the lists for the UK Masters and saw the same lists reflected there, A variation on my Fatesworn, a variation on the Nurgle, The fecking Fyreslayers… And the 5+,5+,5+,5+ Daughters of Khaine Build.. Ok there are some left field choices (hat off to the guy playing Wanderers!) and I’m sure Changehost and Murderhost will still be strong but having experienced a fight between 90 plaguebearers and 90 vulkites I hope those lists miss each other because in my opinion it’s going to be a really boring game!

And that, I guess is the point of my really long rant to start the new year. With Nurgle no doubt about to become even more disgustingly resilient and presumably a relaunch of undead on the way (I can’t imagine them not strongly featuring some kind of regen/regrow mechanic) is this going to become more and more part of the meta? (dammit I got this far without saying meta).

In my small gaming group we have just stopped taking extreme versions of these lists because they are boring to play and boring to play against but I can’t see that kind of multi-lateral disarmament happening in the tournament circuit or even at clubs and stores. I really hope that GH 2018 will give resilience mechanics an appropriate reflection in their points costs because that’s the only way out that I can see – there is no hard counter to multiple saving throws - which is why I feel the game is backing into a corner.

So sorry for the long post and thanks for reading, I would be interested to hear what other people think – if the same thing is happening in your group, and if you think these lists are fun to play with/against. Endlessly rolling dice while nothing happens is the worst play experience possible for me so 2018 looks set to be the year I become a narrative gamer  - I suppose I’m getting old!

[chord]

Having played the last couple years against already resilient Nurgle lists I do not look forward to the new battletome.  Nothing like watching everything bounce off it.  

I hope they raise the points back on the Fyreslayers...that was a mistake making them so low.  

But I agree overall , seems like the pendulum swung too far in the opposite direction of where it was in 2016.  

The cynic in me wonders if GW did it to boost sales by competitive gamers? 

[Gaz Taylor]

I think the real answer is "It depends". We all know that some games can be very 'Rock/Paper/Scissors' due to what people take and I know with how some units can play, it can seem that there can be these boring none game games. But that is all based upon the last few months of what was updated in the Generals Handbook and what people had available to use and this can all change over the next few months.

I'm fully expecting to see a lot more Seraphon armies now, especially with the Maggotkin coming out soon and the dominating Murderhost type lists. But I'm also expecting this to change again as we will see more and more releases for the Malign Portents. So what I'm trying to say is that whilst the meta looks fairly static, it's not. It's just slow. Just be thankful that this isn't like 40K where the meta changes every month!!

[Sleboda]

1 hour ago, Twitch of Izalith said:

this going to become more and more part of the meta? (dammit I got this far without saying meta).

Good effort.  That said, this is a digital space - you can revise.

[Elmir]

I don't know... I've been keeping an eye out for the composition of top 10 lists at tournaments and so far, there seems to be a pretty healthy mix of armies that can break into the top 10 right now. 

If anything, I think we are beginning to see that some armies (like Tzeentch, KO, Seraphon, Fyreslayers,SCE,IJ....) are all reasonably close to eachother in terms of raw power if you make top builds out of them.  I would much rather see the rest of the subfactions being brought up to a similar powerlevel, rather than AoS becomeing a "whack-a-mole" of nerfs vs buffs every year.  

And I see nothing wrong with a balance between tanky armies vs damage ones... 

That being said: I do think AoS would be better in the long run if battletomes (for the rules at least), would make way for a system with good printed warscroll cards and army abilty cards that can be upgraded/downgraded if things really get out of hand with abilties that stack too well. The problem of fixed battletomes is that it's an unwieldy system and "mistakes" that get through the playtesting phase can last several years before they get fixed.

[Samanar]

Would love to read an overview of different armies and what potential builds they could use. I know that we got one pinned but it's so largely outdated that I learned more from single post in this thread already

[Gaz Taylor]

3 minutes ago, Samanar said:

Would love to read an overview of different armies and what potential builds they could use. I know that we got one pinned but it's so largely outdated that I learned more from single post in this thread already

If you (or anybody else) wants to proved stuff, let me know  

[Ar-Pharazôn]

I think Privateer Press has a decent system in place when it comes to balancing factions in Warmachine/Hordes. Perhaps GW could stand to look into how other's keep balance.

[BobbyB]

It's definitely something worth thinking about. At blood & glory it seemed to me that games were over-running a lot more frequently than at other tournaments I'd been to.  Even my games which are usually done in about 90 minutes once I've been tabled.  I've been mulling over whether 2000pts is still the right size for tournament games, although it would be a shame to throw the baby out with the bathwater by cutting it down.

I'm over the moon that the annual GHB system exists, I just wish there was more potential to change warscrolls outside points adjustments, because by simply adjusting points you have a knock on effect on how many models are taking in an army, which might impact an armies play style, for example does anyone really see fyreslayers as a swarming horde?

 

[Twitch of Izalith]

I think the time it takes to produce these armies is a factor for tournaments and the monetary cost is also significant for some of them. 90 vulkites cost £315 at GW retail which is one reason they aren't everywhere. Also being keen to paint 100 naked dwarfs is definitely in the "special interest" section... 

However, if you look at the results from Blood & Glory, EVERY player running fyreslayers placed in the top 20 - and they weren't all running the most optimised versions of the list.

@Gaz Taylor I don't think there is a response to these armies in terms of causing a shift away from this aspect of the meta - other than increasing the points value of the units/abilities. Seraphon don't really counter it. I think Nurgle and Death will add to it. I do share your optimism for seeing a load of new armies on the table this year in more general terms though. 

1 hour ago, Elmir said:

If anything, I think we are beginning to see that some armies (like Tzeentch, KO, Seraphon, Fyreslayers,SCE,IJ....) are all reasonably close to eachother in terms of raw power if you make top builds out of them.  I would much rather see the rest of the subfactions being brought up to a similar powerlevel, rather than AoS becomeing a "whack-a-mole" of nerfs vs buffs every year.  

I agree we have a big mix of lists capable of competing outside of the bunker lists I'm talking about and that is great for the game. But, while bunker units are a great tactical tool, I think that the availability of bunker armies can lead to really static and uninteresting games. I'm particularly thinking about the possibility of  live-streaming tournaments going forward and this being a promotional tool for our hobby. Nobody is going to get inspired by a slapfight between whole armies that have 3 different saving throws for every model.

Most aspects of AoS and 40k are exagerated in a competitive environment and aren't actually much of an issue to 95% of people playing them - which is why this is just something interesting to talk about rather than a serious problem. It will probably only affect you if you are aiming for top 20 results in GT's - which is not a big group of people. Maybe not even then, because I think our armies are more than just gaming pieces to most of us and hopefully that will keep the variety high. there's always someone though...

[Galas]

I like games that last longer. I like games where at the end, each army has like 30-40% of his forces remaining. It makes tactic decisions more important, because you can't win with just a big alpha strike. Every turn is a back and fort agaisn't your opponent, to see who do better in objetives.

Obviously, glass-cannon armies should be viable, and theres should be a balance between hard and fast-hitting armies and slow-grinding ones. But this "Slow armies are unfun!". Sorry? Not everyone likes to play elves! I know for many people Zombie Hordes, Nurgle Chaos Warriors in old fantasy or Dwarf were boring. But they are a legitimate playstile.

 

[chord]

24 minutes ago, Galas said:

I like games that last longer. I like games where at the end, each army has like 30-40% of his forces remaining. It makes tactic decisions more important, because you can't win with just a big alpha strike. Every turn is a back and fort agaisn't your opponent, to see who do better in objetives.

Obviously, glass-cannon armies should be viable, and theres should be a balance between hard and fast-hitting armies and slow-grinding ones. But this "Slow armies are unfun!". Sorry? Not everyone likes to play elves! I know for many people Zombie Hordes, Nurgle Chaos Warriors in old fantasy or Dwarf were boring. But they are a legitimate playstile.

 

For me it's not the slow large armies, it's the multiple ward saves...That really drags down the games and when you combine it with a large horde...very boring.  I do like large number of battlelines with the back and forth.  

[Galas]

I can see how a bunch of ward saves stacked on top one another can become tiresome. But when we use a d6 sistem,  stacking saves like that is the only way to make things more durable once you pass a certain point of armour and wounds. Or with rerolls.

[chord]

1 minute ago, Galas said:

I can see how a bunch of ward saves stacked on top one another can become tiresome. But when we use a d6 sistem,  stacking saves like that is the only way to make things more durable once you pass a certain point of armour and wounds. Or with rerolls.

Being a large blob of 30 wounds makes it durable       But I'd like to see another approach than stacking

[kaaras]

36 minutes ago, chord said:

For me it's not the slow large armies, it's the multiple ward saves...That really drags down the games and when you combine it with a large horde...very boring.  I do like large number of battlelines with the back and forth.  

This. At least with 40k they took away the ability to roll heaps of saves and make you choose. Nothing is more frustrating than sitting there waiting for a player to roll an armour save, a ward save, a regen save, another rule save. The damage output to get through that is difficult to build. True, this is predominantly a tournament issue; however, non-tournament gamers still look at these lists and build their armies accordingly with their own twist as well, so these things filter through the community.

[Richelieu]

1 hour ago, Galas said:

I like games that last longer. I like games where at the end, each army has like 30-40% of his forces remaining. It makes tactic decisions more important, because you can't win with just a big alpha strike. Every turn is a back and fort agaisn't your opponent, to see who do better in objetives.

Obviously, glass-cannon armies should be viable, and theres should be a balance between hard and fast-hitting armies and slow-grinding ones. But this "Slow armies are unfun!". Sorry? Not everyone likes to play elves! I know for many people Zombie Hordes, Nurgle Chaos Warriors in old fantasy or Dwarf were boring. But they are a legitimate playstile.

 

I agree.  For me I think rather than constantly adjusting the power levels of various armies, a better approach would be to ensure that no scenario is an auto-win for a given army archetype.  For example, Knife to the Heart is exceedingly to win against a bunker army and Duality of Death isn't far behind.  I think the other scenarios are actually remarkably well balanced (minus the whole Murderhost-Scorched Earth shenanigans). 

[Carnelian]

So we are all agreed: Fyreslayers are a bit boring. 

That is such a shame. The models are ridonkulous!!!!

[swarmofseals]

Limited internet time at the moment so I haven't read through all the replies. This is really a response to the original post only.

I do think you are on to something. While I can't really say if the pendulum has swung too far toward defense (I don't have nearly enough hard data), I think there is some reason to suspect that it might have. I think GW is in the early stages of taking competitive balance seriously, and I don't think they have backed themselves into a corner at all. The fact that the game has swung away rather dramatically from Alpha Strike builds demonstrates that GW does have the power to have a strong influence on competitive balance through releases like the GHB. I would expect some of the things that got buffed in GHB2 to get toned down in GHB3.

I think that overall this is a tricky situation to balance correctly, however. There are several interests that aren't necessarily aligned:

1. Hobbyists - while I don't have any hard data on this or anything, my impression is that most hobbyists don't like painting massive horde armies. There are certainly some who do, and a well done horde is SUPER impressive on display, but I think it's safe to say that a lot of painters that buy into a horde army regret it at some point in the process.

2. Gameplay - I think that gameplay tuned too far towards the defensive or towards the offensive threatens to make the competitive environment stale and unfun. In a highly defensive metagame, the game will often boil down to who gets on the objectives first as neither player can realistically shift the other. If the defense in question requires hordes of cheap wounds, then the game is also very cumbersome to play. On the other hand, highly offensive games are often over very quickly and it can easily feel like an early double turn leaves one player without an opportunity to meaningfully participate in the game. It's also possible for too much offense to remove any semblance of tactical depth from the game. A middle ground is highly desirable as it leads to a multiplicity of viable strategies, deeper gameplay and a higher likelihood that both players will feel like they are participating for more of the game. Similarly, high model count needs to be good for certain things but it shouldn't be the primary method for playing any particular strategy. 

3. Financial - GW has an incentive to sell a lot of models. I can't pretend to know if GW gets a better profit margin off of horde armies or elite ones, but it's conceivable to me that GW could have a simplistic profit motive in pushing one playstyle or the other. The problem though is if GW is shortsighted about it and ends up degrading the quality of gameplay in order to sell more models. That will be ruinous in the long run.

 

A couple of things that I think would be really helpful for striking a better balance in AoS:

 

• Larger defensive units. Right now the best defensive units in the game are pretty much all hordes. It would be very good to have some monsters, monstrous infantry/cavalry or what not that are primarily defensive in nature. This would enable defensive strategies that relied less on horde mechanics.
• Linebreakers. Right now the main way to deal with defensively efficient hordes is to either optimize your damage output or be faster and get on the objectives first while also playing defense. Both of these are problematic. Encouraging the former risks tipping the raw offensive too high, resulting in unfun gameplay. Encouraging the latter leads to clunky games that are also unfun. We currently have "horde buster" warscrolls like Drycha and the Gaunt Summoner, but these are just point and click offensive solutions. What we need, I think, are linebreaker mechanics. Basically this would be a type of support unit that isn't super efficient in its own right but has the ability to negate horde bonuses. I'd mostly give these abilities to cavalry/monstrous infantry/monstrous cavalry and maybe the occasional behemoth. Vulkite Berserkers would be more manageable if you had a unit that could temporarily disable the bonuses they get from unit size (in this case increases in bravery and increases in their special save) by hitting them with a linebreaker type unit. Importantly the linebreaker unit itself needs to not be super efficient offensively, as then you could just spam linebreakers. Instead, you want it to be good enough so that it isn't a waste against non hordes, but not so good that it can just delete hordes on its own. Thus a successful strategy requires combined arms -- you need to support your linebreakers with an offensive unit to mop up, and your opponent needs to use support units to protect their massive regiments. 

 

I really like the linebreaker solution as it adds more tactical depth to the game, encourages "combined arms" lists instead of spammy lists and provides some relief against hordes without tuning up overall offense. It also provides a unique battlefield role for a unit type (cavalry) that currently doesn't really have one. 

[PlasticCraic]

10 hours ago, Elmir said:

If anything, I think we are beginning to see that some armies (like Tzeentch, KO, Seraphon, Fyreslayers,SCE,IJ....) are all reasonably close to eachother in terms of raw power if you make top builds out of them.  I would much rather see the rest of the subfactions being brought up to a similar powerlevel, rather than AoS becomeing a "whack-a-mole" of nerfs vs buffs every year.  
 

Please tell me there is a faction I've not heard of with the initials IJ, other than Ironjawz. 

You cannot seriously be putting them in the same power bracket as the others you've listed?

[Nico]

Quote

I think the other scenarios are actually remarkably well balanced (minus the whole Murderhost-Scorched Earth shenanigans). 

Worth noting that Murderhost lists are usually quite a few drops - 3 or more. This makes them susceptible to some 1 drop lists and 2 drop lists. In this context, that Murderhost does well on one Battleplan out of 6 is hardly unreasonable. Most armies can do something to make the game winnable even if Khorne goes first. They don’t get to activatevthe second unit of 30 Bloodletters until after the Defender has an activation for example. Alternatively you can backline and opponent may fail the random moves and run Rolls 

[Richelieu]

23 minutes ago, Nico said:

Worth noting that Murderhost lists are usually quite a few drops - 3 or more. This makes them susceptible to some 1 drop lists and 2 drop lists. In this context, that Murderhost does well on one Battleplan out of 6 is hardly unreasonable. Most armies can do something to make the game winnable even if Khorne goes first. They don’t get to activatevthe second unit of 30 Bloodletters until after the Defender has an activation for example. Alternatively you can backline and opponent may fail the random moves and run Rolls 

Completely agree.  I typically run a unit of Aetherwings anyway (I love utility units), and foiling a single attempted burn while being in position to counterattack can even the odds.  I just think there are few lists that start out at such a substantial advantage on a specific scenario.  To your point though, it is only 1 of 6 battle plans.

[Malakithe]

Out of every faction that was updated with GH2017 Fyreslayers definitely came out as the winner.

The problem is how GW deals with changes. The price drops combined with their Runes makes them super strong. But if they increased points cost with GH2018 then Fyreslayers would be next to useless again. They are a horde army and need to stay as a horde to be effective. GW shot themselves in the foot by creating a standard they cant change without gutting entire factions.

Look at Destruction and Death. Both those GAs are next to useless with no real competitive options. They waaaay over nerfed all of Destruction and the tourney scene is reflecting that. Giving Ironjawz allegiance abilities doesnt mean anything if they can only be played one way.

Then look at Tzeentch. They got plenty of points increases and nerfs but are still top tier. GW needs to be very careful going forward.

[Elmir]

5 hours ago, PlasticCraic said:

Please tell me there is a faction I've not heard of with the initials IJ, other than Ironjawz. 

You cannot seriously be putting them in the same power bracket as the others you've listed?

Ironjawz ended up top 5 in  Facehammer and ended up in top 3 in both LVO and Grand tournament.  So regardless of your own succes with them, it would seem they can mix it up just fine with the other top lists after GHB17. 

[DinoTitanedition]

Quote

GW shot themselves in the foot by creating a standard they cant change without gutting entire factions.

 

But this is not the GWs fault. It`s the players who asked for a pointsystem, well knowing from the past, that there is no absolute balance. The rule is pretty simple: the more variaty in factions you have, the lower the balance of power.

 

 

[PlasticCraic]

11 minutes ago, Elmir said:

Ironjawz ended up top 5 in  Facehammer and ended up in top 3 in both LVO and Grand tournament.  So regardless of your own succes with them, it would seem they can mix it up just fine with the other top lists after GHB17. 

No idea about LVO, but the GT wasn't Swiss paired. They played 3 games against FEC so it was hardly mixing it up with the other top tier lists. 

Chris T is an awesome player and the fact he almost podiumed once with them doesn't prove they are one of the very best armies. It proves he is one of the very best players, and the real question should be why isn't he making podiums. The answer being that he uses Ironjawz. 

Or as Facehammer recently said about Kieran H - imagine what he could do with a proper army. 

Zero Ironjawz armies at that UK Masters. Weird that.