Age of Sigmar: Second Edition

[Mr. White]

14 minutes ago, michu said:

In my opinion there is nothing wrong with a bit of both - different people have different preferences and AoS is a big enough place for varied genres.

That's what I'd like to see...a bit of both.

To be honest, even though I don't play Stormcasts, I like them as straight up good guys. I know the world (both real and mortal) is full of shades of grey, but this is imagination fantasy-land and I wouldn't be too excited if Stormcasts start descending into Space Marine levels of decadence and depravity.

There are many, many factions in AoS and 'a bit of both' means some factions are good, some are bad, some (maybe most) are in between. If all are "in-between" (which a lot of Order factions seem to be)...how much variety do we really have?

[Undeadly]

Honestly, I'm not super thrilled about the new Arcane Bolt and Mystic Shield, especially since re-rolling saves doesn't do much when the enemy's rend negates my save entirely. Although I'm sure Nighthaunt players will be especially pleased, since they couldn't benefit from Mystic Shield anyways.

The 30" dispell seems a bit over kill range wise, and doesn't do enough, in my opinion, to beat magic magic heavy lists like Nagash and Tzneetch, but other than that, its fine.

I'm honestly pretty neutral on the whole realm-based artifacts and spells; Thats not to say I don't appreciate them, infact, I think they might be fun to play around with. But unless they make it so that you can actually pick which ones you want without selecting a realm, I honestly doubt they'll ever see play in matched. I rarely see random terrain in matched either, so I doubt that random board wide rules will be regularly incorporated into games either, making the spells and artifacts reserved for friendly and fluffy games.

Look out sir! Is useful; I appreciate the effort, although it alone won't save your heros if they get into a bad spot. Stacking it though... that can get pretty nasty.

Endless spells could be cool, but I'd need a better look at how they work.

No shooting out of combat will certainly dampen the power that shooting has by quite a bit. Quick screening units will obviously get more picks now; things like Direwolves, Wild Riders, etc.

The command point system seems intresting, and I think helps prop up the idea of bringing smaller heros in your lists. I like the idea you can essentially buy more points, at the cost of some of units. Intresting stuff all around.

 

[Mcthew]

6 minutes ago, chord said:

but the heroic material has dried up.  

GW is focusing on the ‘grim-dark’ setting as it’s a good bet in engaging the AoS community as End Times demonstrated. But equally it gets old pretty quickly. Hopefully a lesson GW has learned and campaigns along more heroic lines will be introduced.

In the absence of such a thing, how about a TGA campaign run along the same lines as Malign Portents but not grim dark?

[RuneBrush]

9 minutes ago, Undeadly said:

Look out sir! Is useful; I appreciate the effort, although it alone won't save your heros if they get into a bad spot. Stacking it though... that can get pretty nasty.

Look out sir doesn't inherently stack, but you can stack it with -1 to hit from other sources.

[Twitch of Izalith]

17 minutes ago, Mcthew said:

GW is focusing on the ‘grim-dark’ setting as it’s a good bet in engaging the AoS community as End Times demonstrated. But equally it gets old pretty quickly. Hopefully a lesson GW has learned and campaigns along more heroic lines will be introduced.

I don't think it does get old for a huge number of GW customers - The 40K universe has been unrelentingly gritty, dark and brutal for its entire history and is more popular than ever.

I think the change in tone for AoS is directly in response to feedback from customers who found the epic high fantasy stuff childish and difficult to engage with.

I think it would be fair to say that the "Grim Dark" setting is GW's USP as far as it compares with other popular fantasy and future fantasy settings - Its what hooks most of the fans with those universes - and of course its great for a game about fighting endless wars.

I've said this on here before but the main thing for me is that the lore attached to the game inspires me to fight battles and collect armies. A story about a god fighting with a space dragon the size of a small planet is slightly tricky for me play out on the tabletop.

 

 

[syph0n]

1 hour ago, Gecktron said:

Funny that these two artefacts are basically taken nearly 1:1 from the Daughters of Khaine faction
The Crown is the Medusa shooting attack but with less range and the sword is a DoK artefact too. 

It's nice for other armies to have bit more choice though. Looking forward to trying the Sword of Judgment on my Ulgu Order Serpentis army! 

[Deepkin]

14 minutes ago, Twitch of Izalith said:

I don't think it does get old for a huge number of GW customers - The 40K universe has been unrelentingly gritty, dark and brutal for its entire history and is more popular than ever.

I think the change in tone for AoS is directly in response to feedback from customers who found the epic high fantasy stuff childish and difficult to engage with.

I think it would be fair to say that the "Grim Dark" setting is GW's USP as far as it compares with other popular fantasy and future fantasy settings - Its what hooks most of the fans with those universes - and of course its great for a game about fighting endless wars.

I've said this on here before but the main thing for me is that the lore attached to the game inspires me to fight battles and collect armies. A story about a god fighting with a space dragon the size of a small planet is slightly tricky for me play out on the tabletop.

 

 

Agreed. The "merry band of bold and noble heroes fighting against evilly evil of ultimate darkness" is lame IMO. Its just not what I enjoy. I like the darker tone. Witch hunters purging innocent and guilty alike, dwarf lords fuming over grudges in their half empty halls, plotting genocide against usurpers, arrogant elves seeing all others as servants at best, meat at worst...

 

Tbf, AoS has been moving in a better direction lately. Keep the noblebright stuff in comics and saturday morning cartoons I say.

[chord]

18 minutes ago, Twitch of Izalith said:

 

I think the change in tone for AoS is directly in response to feedback from customers who found the epic high fantasy stuff childish and difficult to engage with.

 

Interesting...I've always found the grimdark stuff to be childish...like a middle schooler trying to hard to be "cool" 

But its fine if GW wants to go that way, I mean they wont get my money but I'm sure they will still make money

[Deepkin]

3 minutes ago, chord said:

Interesting...I've always found the grimdark stuff to be childish...like a middle schooler trying to hard to be "cool" 

But its fine if GW wants to go that way, I mean they wont get my money but I'm sure they will still make money

Depends on how its done imo. Needs a good bit of humor to balance it out. Otherwise you just get 4chan edgelordery as a setting. GW at its best can pull off the gallows humor+dark setting. Think WFRP 1st and 2nd eds.

[BURF1]

The realm based artefacts and spells seem really tedious so far. They'll have to have a way better system than 'roll a die, that's the realm you're on' for them to get any matched play traction.

[michu]

!00% this @Deepkin. I don't consider grimdark genre as something inherently bad - it's just can be really overdone.But the same goes for over-the-top fantasy - both can be well or badly written. And I believe that with all of that Death-aligned turmoil in Mortal Realms we're going to have some epic high fantasy stories again. Sigmar didn't open the new ScE chamber for nothing - great battles are coming!

[Aeryenn]

10 minutes ago, chord said:

Interesting...I've always found the grimdark stuff to be childish...like a middle schooler trying to hard to be "cool" 

But its fine if GW wants to go that way, I mean they wont get my money but I'm sure they will still make money

Nowadays we have a flood of supposed-to-be-funny productions wich just happen to be childish with their design and graphics. Regarding video games I can't stand where blizzard went with their games - blocky, cartoonish, childish graphics. They used to be different - diablo 2. I'd rather play god of war, the last of us and prey than zelda, torchlight and mario even if the latter are good games. As long as Warhammer stays the way it is they have customer in me. 

[Mcthew]

Ah, yes. Any day now there will be a ‘fun’ Jar Jar Binks inspired character that will be truly inspired and a ‘fun’ warscroll to go with it.

A Gungan-style battletome awaits! ?

(Edit: maybe I should’ve posted this on the rumour thread)

[pseudonyme]

42 minutes ago, chord said:

Interesting...I've always found the grimdark stuff to be childish...like a middle schooler trying to hard to be "cool" 

But its fine if GW wants to go that way, I mean they wont get my money but I'm sure they will still make money

 

37 minutes ago, Deepkin said:

Depends on how its done imo. Needs a good bit of humor to balance it out. Otherwise you just get 4chan edgelordery as a setting. GW at its best can pull off the gallows humor+dark setting. Think WFRP 1st and 2nd eds.

This and that.

I guess that their upcoming comic strips Roll models will inject some casualness and humour to counter the « always grim dark, all the time! »

And they have at least 3 « funny » factions in some way or the other (Flesh eater courts, Skavens and Goblins) that they could rely on, to add some frivolity here and there.

[Aeryenn]

7 minutes ago, Mcthew said:

Ah, yes. Any day now there will be a ‘fun’ Jar Jar Binks inspired character that will be truly inspired and a ‘fun’ warscroll to go with it.

A Gungan-style battletome awaits! ?

(Edit: maybe I should’ve posted this on the rumour thread)

I asked myself a couple times how star wars could have been awesome if they were targeted purely at adult audience. 

[Mr. White]

49 minutes ago, Deepkin said:

Agreed. The "merry band of bold and noble heroes fighting against evilly evil of ultimate darkness" is lame IMO. Its just not what I enjoy. I like the darker tone. Witch hunters purging innocent and guilty alike, dwarf lords fuming over grudges in their half empty halls, plotting genocide against usurpers, arrogant elves seeing all others as servants at best, meat at worst...

 

Tbf, AoS has been moving in a better direction lately. Keep the noblebright stuff in comics and saturday morning cartoons I say.

There are plenty, and I mean plenty of 'good guys' that are not noblebright. Kharadron Overlords? Daughters of Khaine? Idoneth deepkin? Sylvaneth? Fyreslayers? Heck, I'd wager just about all of Order is shades of grey, with maybe the 1e stormcast being the lightest. Probably followed by the Seraphon. The other three GAs are no doubt darkest greys and black.

But in a universe as vast as the Mortal Realms...can there not be traditional good guys?  Can you not have a large selection of shady forces to choose from, but also some 'heroes' for those that desire?

 

[Jamopower]

54 minutes ago, BURF1 said:

The realm based artefacts and spells seem really tedious so far. They'll have to have a way better system than 'roll a die, that's the realm you're on' for them to get any matched play traction.

Might be so because they are Narrative content? The current rules for the realms are in GHB narrative section and I don't see why it would change from that.

[michu]

9 minutes ago, Mr. White said:

There are plenty, and I mean plenty of 'good guys' that are not noblebright. Kharadron Overlords? Daughters of Khaine? Idoneth deepkin? Sylvaneth? Fyreslayers? Heck, I'd wager just about all of Order is shades of grey, with maybe the 1e stormcast being the lightest. Probably followed by the Seraphon. The other three GAs are no doubt darkest greys and black.

But in a universe as vast as the Mortal Realms...can there not be traditional good guys?  Can you not have a large selection of shady forces to choose from, but also some 'heroes' for those that desire?

 

Well, even in the ranks of stormcasts we have variance: for grey (or sometimes really dark) characters we have Knights Excelsiors and for heroes we have Hallowed Knights

[ZaelART]

So spells and artifacts tied to realms? This sounds too integral to list building to be left to chance. Maybe we can select a ‘home’ realm to access additional artifacts and spell lores for our army (chosen when list building), then get some other bonuses when we are actually battling in that realm.

[TheOtherJosh]

22 minutes ago, ZaelART said:

So spells and artifacts tied to realms? This sounds too integral to list building to be left to chance. Maybe we can select a ‘home’ realm to access additional artifacts and spell lores for our army (chosen when list building), then get some other bonuses when we are actually battling in that realm.

If this is anything like current, then taking Realm Artefacts from one realm would deny you the ability to take Realm Artefacts from a different one ... it may even be similar for spells. This means that one is having to deal with substantial additional variables and choice.

And if you’re not in that realm ... you don’t get to use it?

I agree, that does sound interesting. 

[kuroyume]

41 minutes ago, Aryann said:

I asked myself a couple times how star wars could have been awesome if they were targeted purely at adult audience. 

meh, two of the best recent Star Wars products (The Clone Wars and Rebels) are aimed at children. Trying to go "dark and mature" just for the sake of it is not a guarantee of quality. Consistency and attention to detail is what matters.

[Undeadly]

2 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

Look out sir doesn't inherently stack, but you can stack it with -1 to hit from other sources.

Thats what I was trying to imply; Death especially has ways to make that mean. -1 to hit from Lookout Sir, -2 from Cloak of Shadows and -2 from a 9+ Overwhelming Dread would put them at a -5 to hit; pretty crazy if you can get it to work.

[mikethefish]

42 minutes ago, pseudonyme said:

 

This and that.

I guess that their upcoming comic strips Roll models will inject some casualness and humour to counter the « always grim dark, all the time! »

And they have at least 3 « funny » factions in some way or the other (Flesh eater courts, Skavens and Goblins) that they could rely on, to add some frivolity here and there.

 

I hate to nitpick about one specific thing here, but I feel compelled to.

You cannot seriously  classify Flesh Eater Courts as a "funny" faction, can you?  I mean I get that they have the whole "gibbering madness & delusions" thing going on, but that doesn't provide one little bit of comic relief.  If anything the FEC are the ultimate in Grimdark, because their story is so completely warped and 'effed up.

Goblins and Skaven frequently serve the purpose of comic relief, but the Flesh Eaters are basically a lot like Heath Ledger's Joker.  Sure they both exhibit wacky antics, but very few folks actually laugh at them, and when they do, it's usually laughter as a shocked response to whatever messed up action they just perpetrated.

[blueshirtman]

8 hours ago, Redmanphill said:

If you can’t unbind all of your opponents spells then this introduces some tactics to the game. You have to dispel those which are most important rather than them all, you also have to accept the fact that their magic phase will have some effect on you. Beside that if they can attempt to dispel each of your spells you have choice. Do you maximize your wizards positions to prevent unbinding yet remain in an effective range to utilise your spells?

What if my army doesn't have mages, has no shoting and is bad at melee. The fix always was to ally in a butcher, what I hated by the way, now that single butcher can't hang back to buff my deads, because he will get unbinded by other mages, and probablly have free unbinds after me trying to cast.

 

3 hours ago, TheOtherJosh said:

(Sometimes referred to as the “the person who rolls the most dice likely succeeds in their action rule.”)

What if my army doesn't have units that roll many dice at range? All the changes seem very nice and good, but the more I read about them, the less fun my army seems to be.

Command points? I don't have abilities to use them on, other then the basic ones, and the basic ones aren't that good for my army. Magic buffed? Awesome, love to see more stuff being added to the game. My army has 0 totems, priests or mages. Heros harder to snipe? Nice, maybe more utility heros will be use. Nice change, but not for my army. My heros don't have 5 wounds, and what is worse range shoting was my armies way, not saying a good one, to deal with lack of artiliery or magic. Summoning change to be actually usable is a good, if GW won't over do it. Again more stuff added to the game means, I hope, more list variaty. But again not for my list etc.

 

I can't find a single change that makes BRC powerful, and lot that nerf an already weak army.

3 hours ago, chord said:

I agree 100%!  I don't want to see the muck and grimdark of the old world in AoS.  I was attracted to the heroic fantasy and larger than life realms.

So you want destruction to be removed as a faction from AoS, because they are many things, but heroic, colorful is not one of them. And grim and dark is.

[michu]

If you think Greenskins are only grimdark and not colorful then you don't know them really good. Their one of the biggest comic reliefs in the warhammer - be it AoS or 40k.