Age of Sigmar: Second Edition

[Freejack02]

4 minutes ago, PJetski said:

I don't think that is true.

I'd love to hear why?

[PJetski]

Just now, Drofnum said:

Right now they are pointed assuming they can use their guns to hit anything in their range at all times.  They're changing it to make it so they can use their guns to hit some things in range at some times.  It definitely is going to require some tweaking of point values to make them balanced.

Shooting is currently strong and possibly even under-costed given how much of this game is focused on melee. This change does not massively diminish the power of missile weapons. I don't think you need to change any point values for shooting units to accommodate this change.

[Drofnum]

5 minutes ago, PJetski said:

Shooting is currently strong and possibly even under-costed given how much of this game is focused on melee. This change does not massively diminish the power of missile weapons. I don't think you need to change any point values for shooting units to accommodate this change.

We'll see, i guess.  I agree that some shooting is strong and undercost but I definitely dont think that can be said for all shooting.  Its not like KO are tearing up the tournament scene right now and they are as heavy a shooting army as you can find. 

I think it will require a point change but we also dont know exactly what the change is, so its possible that its not as big a deal as I think it is.

[Sleboda]

13 minutes ago, Drofnum said:

Not sure how you could get over 100% win rate.  My experience is that the people that play the game without accounting for or protecting against the double turn are the ones that get impacted the worst by a double turn.  The people that plan for it dont have the same problems.

If you have someone playing and planning for an aggressive double turn against someone who doesnt plan for it at all then you do tend to end up in one sided games where the person playing for double turns easily wins the game.  I ran in to this a lot with my KO, I would give the other person first turn and let them advance into my gun range.  If i got the double turn the game was generally over by my second shooting phase, but all you had to do to counter it was be aware of my ranges and either close so fast you get in to combat turn 1 or play it cagey and stay just out of range of my guns and hit me turn 2.  In melee my army would fold pretty quickly.

Yep. I know this sounds like Git Gud, but... get good.  Better players account for more possibilities and tend to have more success.

Like Seneca said, "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity."

In other words, be ready for fickle fortune and have a plan either way.

[lolwut]

8 minutes ago, Drofnum said:

Not sure how you could get over 100% win rate.  My experience is that the people that play the game without accounting for or protecting against the double turn are the ones that get impacted the worst by a double turn.  The people that plan for it dont have the same problems.

If you have someone playing and planning for an aggressive double turn against someone who doesnt plan for it at all then you do tend to end up in one sided games where the person playing for double turns easily wins the game.  I ran in to this a lot with my KO, I would give the other person first turn and let them advance into my gun range.  If i got the double turn the game was generally over by my second shooting phase, but all you had to do to counter it was be aware of my ranges and either close so fast you get in to combat turn 1 or play it cagey and stay just out of range of my guns and hit me turn 2.  In melee my army would fold pretty quickly.

His language wasn't perfectly clear, but reading his post more carefully leads me to conclude that he meant to say a 100% increase in win rate, which in effect means they win twice as often with the double turn than without it. So if you had a 40% win rate without a double turn, you would have an 80% win rate with the double turn in your favor.  Essentially, in a truly otherwise balanced scenario the deciding factor was the double turn. This is his data, not mine, so if you want to challenge him on it be my guest, just making an effort to explain. 

Your post actually kind of reinforces why I strongly dislike the idea of double turns. Melee combat happens in an alternating sequence, but using hero powers, casting spells, and shooting do not. 

 

[NemoVonUtopia]

I like the potential swings that a double turn sometimes brings. The last game I played Im pretty sure I only won because I got a double turn after my opponent failed all his magic rolls. He had a skaven army with lightning cannons, warlock jezzails, warlock engineer, arch warlock, grey seer, and screaming bell protected by a sea of clanrats. My Legion of Azgorh army got bogged down in clanrats and destroyed by all the ranged mortal wounds. I won when I broke through a flank and got a double turn achieve the objective and win. If I had not gotten that turn, the small force would have been blasted away like the rest of my army.

Without the chance of a double turn I might as well have given up turn one or not even played because I knew I didn't have the range or speed to get to his damage dealers. Now my opponent probably has the opposite opinion on double turns after that game.

Hopefully the new strategic double turn adds more control or counterparts but still allows for comebacks and tense moments.

[Aelfric]

1 hour ago, PJetski said:

Shooting is currently strong and possibly even under-costed given how much of this game is focused on melee. This change does not massively diminish the power of missile weapons. I don't think you need to change any point values for shooting units to accommodate this change.

Certain shooting units are strong, but that is not the same as shooting in general. Also, most shooting units are terrible in melee, so shoooting is usually the only thing they do.  If it is going to be harder to do what they do, then a re-evaluation of their points seems to me to be perfectly reasonable.  I play Wanderers and I can tell you that they are not overpowered in shooting and quite expensive points-wise ( well maybe not the Waywatcher  ).

[Burf]

On 5/14/2018 at 3:29 AM, Kramer said:

From a competitive setting sure go all out and play rules as written. So give your thralls an icon per person so you essentially upgrade them all and your clanrats all either a banner or bell so you never have to think about who you remove. But as long as they sell sets that don’t allow you to build them as such their is and will be a discrepancy there.

Personally I still believe that to be the reason for the thunderers warscroll change and less so the battlefield impact. A point change could have solved that. 

Which doesn't make the fact that they completely obliterated that unit's usability down to 0 any better, unfortunately.

[Burf]

1 hour ago, PJetski said:

I don't think that is true.

You think wrong. An equivalent change for melee would be 'after turn 2 you may not move, charge, or pile in for the rest of the game'. You tellin me you wouldn't want melee units to be cheaper after something like that?

And no, that's not hyperbole. Any shooting unit powerful enough to be worth targeting will end up locked up by the bottom of turn two (and be useless as a result).

If the change is only that they can't shoot OUT of the combat then it's not quite as bad, but I'd still like to see every shooting unit in the game except skyfires get a 20 (good units like judicators) to 60 (terrible units like shadowwarriors or Sister of the watch) point reduction.

[TheOtherJosh]

29 minutes ago, Burf said:

Which doesn't make the fact that they completely obliterated that unit's usability down to 0 any better, unfortunately.

They have uses, they just don’t have a “give every model an auto-Choose weapon with a 36 inch range that can be modified to have a crazy number of shots due to unit synergy” benefit. They did get additional inter-unit benefits for choosing multiple types of weapons within the group, it just becomes a tactical choice, instead of a “this is the only solution.”

14 minutes ago, Burf said:

1 hour ago, PJetski said:

I don't think that is true.

You think wrong.

We can understand your frustration. But the only verbiage we have heard out of GW is that “you can’t shoot out of combat.”

Please be patient and let’s see what the total scope is before succumbing to the blood rage of Khorne ...

and remember to follow Bill and Ted’s advice “Be Excellent to each other, (and party on!)”

[Kramer]

7 hours ago, Burf said:

Which doesn't make the fact that they completely obliterated that unit's usability down to 0 any better, unfortunately.

On which scale? Because I can think of more on which they score high than low. Only on the ‘I judge everything by me reading top 10 GT lists’ and making assumptions on that. When was the last time you fielded them and were obliterated because of that? Or won a Gt because you didn’t? Or won one for that matter?  When was the last time you had fun playing this game? 

It, usually, tends to be fairly useless judging of units by a very niche scale* that the person making the claim hasn’t personally explored. 

So it’s nothing personal  but I’m done with all the judging every Gw decision  and unit by a scale that, close to, none of us experience. And comment telling stuff is overpriced because their faction doesn’t win the big tournaments and the designers apparently are useless because of it. Not everything can be the best, not everything you like should be the best, and no experience is ever the same. 

So again, its truly not personal but it’s becoming a very whiny culture again. It’s complaining that the one toy fantasy soldier one person likes isn’t the best compared to the one someone else likes. Again toy soldiers ?

* other scales could be, do they have a different role in the army, are the models cool, are they fun to paint, are they collectible, etc.

[AlphaKennyThing]

9 hours ago, blueshirtman said:

It can't just be me, we more then 40 people playing in events the last few years, and not all of them fairly new players like me.  As bidding or screening goes I play brc and we don't have units to do it, at least not against the armies being played here. 

Don't get me wrong, there are certain armies that are going to punish you hard if they double turn you, no matter what you do. Shooting heavy armies, or magic heavy like Tzeentch, basically, but that's because they are things that can mess you up constantly without you being able to do much about it. Against another melee army, though, double turns do very little. You alternate activation in combat, so at best it gives you an extra turn to manoeuvre and chuck a couple of spells down. How this translates to you automatically winning the game confuses me, as 50% of the time you double turn them straight back afterwards. 

The only correlation I've noticed so far is Tzeentch double turning and tending to win. With every other army, it's far from a game ender.

[RuneBrush]

12 hours ago, Hounsou83 said:

I taught there would have been a magic phase but , seeing the new stormcast wizard warscroll it doesent seems so.

I did ask the question this weekend and was told that we're not getting a stand-alone magic phase as I wondered the same

10 hours ago, Freejack02 said:

It's also going to warrant a points reduction for shooting units across the board - which makes them more feast/famine in general. Either they get protected and hit way above their point values, or they don't and get tied up / smashed. I'll wait and reserve judgement, but I'm hoping they consider every aspect of what they are changing...

We're not 100% sure what the changes are going to be yet so it's a bit soon to say that every shooting unit needs a reduction.  Not all shooting units are glass cannons, there are a lot out there that are pretty resilient or able to keep out of range of the enemy which likely wouldn't need to change.

8 hours ago, Burf said:

You think wrong. An equivalent change for melee would be 'after turn 2 you may not move, charge, or pile in for the rest of the game'. You tellin me you wouldn't want melee units to be cheaper after something like that?

And no, that's not hyperbole. Any shooting unit powerful enough to be worth targeting will end up locked up by the bottom of turn two (and be useless as a result).

One counter to throw in is that by turn two, that shooting unit may well have decimated a number of enemy units without them being able to react in any way shape or form.    However before this gets into too lengthily a conversation, the changes will all become clear by the end of next month

[Bloodmaster]

From this and the rumor threat one has to wonder, what it is with some guys that you always assume the sky is falling as soon as some (possible) changes are revealed. Even if combat is changed to attacker goes first, this isn't the doom of Aos, it simply changes strategic approaches. But we don't know yet, what else changes during the combat phase, how weapons reach might affect the changed order or counters it, if commands allow a guard mode, which could prevent the charger first. 

 

Tl;dr we don't know the whole picture yet, only fragments. Keep your cool and trust a bit in GW, they did quite good in the last few months to a year and probably won't break the game. 

[Jamopower]

I have understood that the whole reason why the rules info is trickled like this is to spark discussion and hype, so also the doom mongering sort of belongs to pre-edition time.

I agree that the individual changes might not destroy the game completely and just change the strategic approach, but e.g. this chargers going first rule leads to that kind of strategic approaches that I, and many others, don't like at all. And that's not just (complete) speculation as there is a lot of experience about this from 8th ed. 40k and past editions of fantasy battle. At least my interest in 40k pretty much died straight away, when I realized how much less interesting the combat phase is when I was used to tactically pretty interesting AoS version of the rules. So the game isn't ruined by that, but it is a massive change, that will surely lead to some people not liking it and maybe dropping from the game altogether. It would also lead to some people liking the game more. What is unknown at this point, is which of the groups is larger. But time will tell, it is still possible that it is just a misunderstanding or something from a past play testing version.

[Dragobeth]

"To create, you first have to destroy"

It couldn´t be named "2nd edition" if it didn't change the game A LOT, that's why things like "attacking first if charged will destroy the current game" are a no problem for me. We should wait to see all the new rules, leaks&rumours mongering is one think but scream "the sky is falling" shouldn't be  done. (saying "i dont like X"  it's not the same as "X will destroy all and kill everything you love" tho)

[pseudonyme]

And maybe attacking first at charging would be only for certain units like cavalery

[hughwyeth]

6 minutes ago, pseudonyme said:

And maybe attacking first at charging would be only for certain units like cavalery

That's actually a pretty neat way to do it. 

One of the leakers here said "it's happening" regarding charges first. I did think that would require significant re-costing for all units and would push destruction to the top. Imagine a beastclaw raiders list (currently not too outstanding as a force) charging turn one with huge rend and damage before you can do anything. Ironjawz would similarly dominate I'd imagine. 

Just as deep striking has different names but is otherwise present in most forces, you could have a "attack first" ability (also present in various forms in a small number of units) for units which should be much better in combat from a narrative perspective- cavalry, hulking ogres etc. 

[Jamopower]

That would work, and similar rules are already in the game with for example Slaanesh Daemon princes or the Quicksilver amulet. I'm all for stuff that makes cavalry (and especially Chariots) more useful. It could be tied in to the CAVALRY keyword, it just shame that there isn't such a thing in the game. But universal rule combined to, say Murderhost, doesn't sound too fun.

[smucreo]

As I said in another topic, the changes to mechanics like alternating charges and double turns may be tied in with CPs coming to AoS, and, honestly, without them introducing stratagems, how I see command points being introduced would be making things like trying to take initiative on the second and the following turns, activating more than one command ability per turn or being able to alter the charge order (instead of I go, you go have it be I go, I go, you go for example) for one instance cost CPs . Maybe they'll even go further and introduce the reroll and autopass morale for CP too.

It makes sense. It allows for them to still keep things like double turn, alternating charges and such, and they can buff it/nerf it relatively easily by changing the ammount of CP available, the CP cost for each specific thing, etc. 

I still hope they reduce the importance of battalions and don't tie as much aspects of the game to them, but we will see. I'm guessing one-dropping might be reworked, but CPs and artifacts could still very much be tied to them. 

[BarrowLord]

Chargers going first impacts a massive segment of the game.  Armies that can cross the board in a single turn would simply sweep away non-optimized slower forces (even with command point backup).  I would hate to see the game devolve into an alpha strike vs msu screens counter alpha.

The only real answer (that I can see) is to slow down the faster forces, make slower units faster, or to make command points far more abundant.  Of those I think option one is more likely.  Given the recent 40K beta rules.

[smucreo]

As the game is right now yes, it would be a huge impact to the game and 2nd edition may devolve to a screenfest. But we don't know what else will change. Will damage still carry over? Probably, but as it is right now we have no idea. How will charging change? As I said I believe you could balance it by having a once per turn attack that breaks the alternating order that is tied to CPs. Give CPs the capability of affecting lots of big mechanics in the game and make them a bit restrictive and you'll have to tactically think on where do you want to use them. Do you want to try and take a double turn? Or would you rather attack first with two of your charges (or maybe, akin to 40k, and if the charges are changed to always go first, you pay CPs to attack first with a defending unit)? And how many CPs will you have left after that? 

There's a universe of balancing opportunities introduced around CPs, so I'm confident the game won't be as broken as people make it to be if a few changes like getting rid of double turn unless you are paying for it and such go through. And even if some aspect ended up a bit broken they can adjust it easily. You could increase the cost in CPs of certain actions, restrict uses, restrict CPs given by certain things, etc

[Jamopower]

Using the command points as a fixing mechanism might work, but it does sound a bit clunky way to balance the game. Especially as they are bound to get new ideas for them as they release new battletomes. Well it will be interesting to see how they are implemented. As an idea, they are one of the good things introduced in the 8th ed 40k, only tying them to the army composition doesn't seem to work. Interesting way could be to replace the triumph mechanic with command points, so that you could buy them with (leftover) points with increasing cost: first 10 points, second 20 points, third 40, etc.

 

Edit: Or a good way is also how it is done in Infinity, where everyone has 4 of them and some few master tactician characters (like Sun Tze) gives one extra.

[Dragobeth]

Tie CPs to game size in points (not sure how to put that in narrative maybe the battleplan tells you how many cp has each player) and have a way to buying them with leftover points could be cool. Maybe make the battlalions give you CP too and with the CP of the game size, the lefover points and the battalions you can buy artifacts and stratagems.

[smucreo]

I'd be wary of giving battalions this level of importance unless they plan on releasing new battalions for armies that currently do not have any.