Thoughts on the new rule leaks?

[CoffeeGrunt]

There's more than just Necromancers, though. I can't get a Vampire Lord across the table right now. If these nerfs are true, I won't be able to get anything shy of a VLoZD across.

[Grimnaud]

Every tome since DoT has gotten some sort of movement shenanigan. With the removal of summoning (which seems to be in line with the development in MoN), Death has seemingly lost the only possibility we had. So I'm confinent that some sort of movement buff/spell/something is hiding in the allegiance abilities, traits, items, or spells. Add some sort of protection to that and a battalion for a low drop army, and the picture is no longer so bleak. Guess we'll see more with the previews this week. 

[Jamopower]

If one of the key mechanisms seem to be centered on the keyword "summonable", I somehow doubt that summoning has been removed...

[Grimnaud]

5 minutes ago, Jamopower said:

If one of the key mechanisms seem to be centered on the keyword "summonable", I somehow doubt that summoning has been removed...

Yeah, should have been more specific there. With the removal of the summoning spells such as they are on the current warscrolls. I'm sure that we'll still see some sort of summoning, but I'm willing to bet that it will be tied to some sort of army mechanic such as the contagion points for MoN.

[Jamopower]

Yes for sure it has been changed. It will be very interesting to see what they have invented for it. Looks like it's not dependent on spells, which is nice change IMO as my wizards have already their hands full casting the other spells. Especially when they get their own new spell lore. Maybe some tweak from the 40k daemon summoning, just with a modification that it's actually worth it, would be nice

 

Overall looks like my existing core will be quite nice on the table (vampire, wight king, necromancer, banshee, 40 skeletons, 20 grave guard, 10 black knights, 3 spirit hosts, 10 zombies for summoning and some other bits and bobs). Grave guard seem to be choppy as they were and they get a nice boost from the hero triggered resummoning and my 10 black knights seem to have a reason to exist in the future. The new standards also have their uses combined on the banshee. The heroes need to be played carefully, but I'm not too worried about that as we have enough terrain on the tables that shooting is only problem from the close range. Waiting eagerly for to book to see which Mortarch I will pledge my alliance on and still keeping my hopes up on the vampire thralls unit.

[Sception]

The necromancer rule no longer applies to mortal wounds.

People say 'oh, of course it'll be good, because GW is trying to make it good', as if GW trying automatically means GW succeeding.  Do you think GW was trying to make our GH17 rules bad?  Do you think they were trying to make the 4th or 6th ed Chaos Marine rules bad?  Were they trying to make the 6th ed Dark Elves bad?

Bad rules can happen without bad intent.  These rules were almost certainly written before GW saw significant feedback from GH17, and thus should be expected to continue the trajectory set for our rules in that book.  Do you honestly expect the death or soulblight allegiance abilities to be wildly different from what we saw a mere 6 months ago?

Absent evidence to the contrary, I don't.  Nor do I expect the legions to be wildly more powerful than the other allegiances in the same book.

[Jamopower]

If you look at what allegiances are not modified from the GHB, nighthaunt and flesh eater courts, it's quite obvious that the big change to the allegiance abilities is the summoning. The deathly minions will most likely be the same, as it is already included in the FEC and nighthaunt abilities. As vampires have the resurrection skill and the units in the soulblight allegiance are not summonable, at least for the most part, it's quite sure that their abilities have something to address that. From the mortarch abilities, nothing is known however. They are one of the most interesting parts of the book along with the spell lore, especially as you can still have all the units with those allegiances. Especially interesting is to see how the Grand alliance death can be anyhow reasonable allegiance if you have four others that gets you the same units.

[Sception]

The inly way is if the other four allegiances all have very modest rules that are intentionally constrained to not be stronger than the base death rules, which ahain i doubt are changed much if at all from GH17.  So it seems wrong to expect huge power jumps from them.

[Jamopower]

My guess is that you need to have the "poster boy" mortarch (or Nagash) in your army for those allegiances.

[Sception]

That's currently my guess as well, which would mean one less mechanical element to work with, as they wouldn't get command traits.  But it's just a guess, it's not really based on anything like leaks or whatever, so I haven't been bringing it up.

[Jamopower]

If they work are such, aren't the allegiances sort of "super command traits" for the big four? 

[Sception]

Kind of no, because they'll replace the normal death allegiance rules (& maybe artefacts, I'm not sure if we've seen confirmation that the legions get their own artefacts).

On the other hand, generic death's allegiance trait is 'deathless minions', and the other death allegiances so far are 'deathless minions plus some other thing', so kind of yes?

We'll see.  I'm hopeful that the legion allegiances will at least be interesting.  But then again, I think the deathly invocation / summonable keyword rules are interesting.  Just not, you know, good.

[Jgregs]

We are getting a drip feed of rules this week on the community site correct? today should be the first one I believe.

I just hope they have the infernal standard as an artifact for my wight king considering I literally just converted on up last week.

[Sception]

I haven't heard anything about more articles on the way.  I mean, I expect some, but maybe not.

[Jamopower]

43 minutes ago, Sception said:

Kind of no, because they'll replace the normal death allegiance rules (& maybe artefacts, I'm not sure if we've seen confirmation that the legions get their own artefacts).

On the other hand, generic death's allegiance trait is 'deathless minions', and the other death allegiances so far are 'deathless minions plus some other thing', so kind of yes?

We'll see.  I'm hopeful that the legion allegiances will at least be interesting.  But then again, I think the deathly invocation / summonable keyword rules are interesting.  Just not, you know, good.

My theory is that the main reason for those allegiances is to give you benefits while having the big four as your general, as in the end, if you're running a Mortarch of Nagash as a general for Grand Alliance Death, you are missing on the traits and artefacts, thus when choosing the Allegiance for say Neferata, you can run her as your general and still get some additional benefits (which probably have something to do with their abilities as they are now). They are some of the main stars of the whole storyline of whole universe, so there is a reason for encouraging the players having them as leaders of their forces.

 

The teasers should be given, as they have done them for almost all releases recently, but aren't they normally on the preorder week, thus starting next week?

[Jgregs]

15 minutes ago, Sception said:

I haven't heard anything about more articles on the way.  I mean, I expect some, but maybe not.

 

below is the last paragraph  from the "next weeks's Pre-orders" post on 28/01/2018

 

You’ve only got a couple of weeks to wait before Death hits a shelf near you, but in the meantime, make sure to check back on Warhammer Community next week as we preview Legions of Nagash in detail, taking a closer look at what the changes to Death mean to you.

[Sception]

Ah, thanks, missed that bit.  So one (or more) more official preview(s), but still a week away.

Still leaves us spinning our wheels for the rest of the week, unless we get leaks from the printers.

[Jamopower]

After the preorder date we should also start getting the blogger previews etc. as they usually get the books on the preorder day. Also the stores often have preview copies available from pre-order day.

[Cargo Cult]

5 hours ago, CoffeeGrunt said:

Because then I'd have to potentially waste money on a book only to find out it was as bad as expected. There's a lot coming out, plus older stuff I aim to buy, so buying one thing precludes another. That's not even considering things outside the hobby.

Also unless your plan is to close down the Death subforum until release, this is all we have to talk about. There's literally no other source of discussion that hasn't been resurrected over and over ad nauseum. The fact that it looks bad has naturally coloured said discussion.

I mean we're the first major AoS release since the new format Battletomes began that has zero new models for starters - KoS doesn't count because that's a Malign Portents thing and everyone gets one - and now we're seeing that this book purely being sold on the basis of rules might have really bad rules.

I mean we can pretend it's all wonderful, happy and good but it clearly isn't. I'm not going to applaud a ****** for the pleasant yellow of its sweetcorn.

I totally get the money point. I’ll definitely buy the LoN book but I haven’t a clue whether to spend money on the Malign Portents book for example.

I’m only saying that deciding it’s a bust based on a few leaks with no context (points for example) seems premature. The depression level seems to have actually increased since they finally announced we get a battletome!

[Sception]

The depression level increased since they finally announced we get a battletome... without any new models to come with it, so the only thing to hope for from it in terms of game play was revised rules for our existing stuff.  And then that depression level increased again when supposed leaks from the new book came out and mostly only showed revisions to our existing rules in the form of nerfs.

I agree we don't have all the details to make a final judgment on the book yet, but I refuse to believe you genuinely find it strange or mysterious that the enthusiasm among death players that accumulated during the malign portents buildup has mostly drained away at this point.  Single faction adherents are understandibly underwhelmed with this release after all that build up, while players who didn't just play death have set them aside entirely to be excited about the glorious new daughters of khaine previews, with their actual new releases.

[Jamopower]

The leaking of the few warscrolls was probably the worst thing that could have happened on the hype front. Now people have super limited information in very unorderly format about the book, which is something that GW most likely didn't have in their mind on the build up to the book with the trickle of information from the awesome Malign portent short stories.

 

Edit: Today's "why we fight" snippet sums it up nicely:

The Legions of Nagash

The Great Work nears its fruition but is at its most delicate stage – even a small disruption could see countless centuries of plans set back or ruined. The Grand Necromancer has commanded it – let none stand in his way

[Cargo Cult]

5 hours ago, Sception said:

The depression level increased since they finally announced we get a battletome... without any new models to come with it, so the only thing to hope for from it in terms of game play was revised rules for our existing stuff.  And then that depression level increased again when supposed leaks from the new book came out and mostly only showed revisions to our existing rules in the form of nerfs.

I agree we don't have all the details to make a final judgment on the book yet, but I refuse to believe you genuinely find it strange or mysterious that the enthusiasm among death players that accumulated during the malign portents buildup has mostly drained away at this point.  Single faction adherents are understandibly underwhelmed with this release after all that build up, while players who didn't just play death have set them aside entirely to be excited about the glorious new daughters of khaine previews, with their actual new releases.

Maybe I’m just a noob, but I do find it strange. If the universal view is that death is underpowered, as backed up by empirical evidence, then I simply don’t believe that a new death tome is going to make death worse overall. GW know enough about their own product and market to avoid that mistake. 

Anyhow  we will know soon enough.

Thanks for the heads up on  Arkhan model by the way. I’ll arrange to pin it to a strategically placed rock as recommended.

[Sception]

35 minutes ago, Cargo Cult said:

GW know enough about their own product and market to avoid that mistake. 

As a player of their games for 20 years now, this is simply not an accurate assessment.

I added the statue from the cemetary terrain set to Arkhan's base, reposing the steed's front claws slightly to be touching it, to provide an extra contact point.  Looks cool, and makes the whole model quite sturdy.

I would take a picture, but mine's currently in storage.  I really need to get it out and finish painting it.  I have tomorrow off, maybe I'll bust it out.

[kozokus]

On 28/01/2018 at 11:52 AM, Sception said:

Again, the whole thing turns completely around if AoS gets a 40k style 'cant shoot the heroes' rule,

That rule is by far one of the most badly written rule they ever wrote in their whole history. It is so bad it is a meta defining rule and the favourite of rule abusers.

I love the simplicity AOS offers about that, "you see me, you can shoot me, you don't you can't".

ANY rule they ever produced about heroes joining  units, beeing protected by beeing nearby a 5-man unit, untargetable because X, targetable if monstruous/over10wounds/placed on different base than the unit/etc... had aweful flaws that made the game a nightmare to play when some situation came in front of you.

-Sure, that is a unit of 7 heralds of Tzeentch in a unit of X screamers.

-Nope, you cannot target my 6 Daemon Princes of Nurgle running at you because of that tiny nurgling that happen to be closer to you than them.

-Yup, that is a gigantic primarch warrior circled by 5 Stormraven flying 50 meters above with -1 to hit. Yes you have to kill them first.

-So my hero has joined a unit, i buff the unit, then the hero leaves, does he keep the buff? steal it? Share it?And with the bravery test? And if he has different movement rules?

-Indeed! my Nasty™ Dwarf lord just joined a miner unit to enjoy the alternative deployment option they provide.

(I won't speak about shared model profiles like Models with a 2+wound mount that could be killed)

 

The current simplicity is good and whe should love it.

[Sception]

I simply disagree that the current system in AoS is any better.

It doesn't make any more sense that clunky inaccurate warmachines and clouds of raining arrows can hit one lone person with as much accuracy as they can hit a giant monster or unit of 100.

Nor does it make any more sense that a cannon can bank a shot under one units legs, then through two forests and a cracked door, to murder a hero by brushing their cape, again with the same accuracy as hitting a giant dragon sleeping in an open field.

It isn't fair that shooty armies can pick out whatever individual models they like while melee based armies have to fight their way through the chaff.

It isn't reasonable to rely on "realistic" true line of sight to screen heroes when they're all half again as tall as normal infantry because the sculptors aren't concerned with realism when they make the models.

But most of all, Age of Sigmar is a heroic fantasy battle game, where heroes are supposed to lead the charge and fight to the last breath.  Not a realistic war simulator, and between "heroes die first" and "heroes die last", one of those conveys heroic fantasy, while the other completely subverts it.