Age of Sigmar: Second Edition

[daedalus81]

54 minutes ago, oscisi said:

Hey guys! Do you think this model represents the spell Suffocating Gravetide, or something else? In that case: what is your best guess? What realm?

 

Very likely.  From Shyish.  

Sorry names escaping me...

Purple Sun - Uglu
Banishment - Azyr
The wall - Hysh
The mouth - Ghur
The swords - Chamon
Burning head - Aqshy
Clock thing - Ghyran maybe?

I think that covers it so far.

 

[Gotrek]

1 hour ago, Infeston said:

Jeah would also work. If it isn't just an "allied" shooting unit, but a BCR shooting unit instead. You could for example equip each Mournfang model with a pistol with more than one shot rather than just the captain.

But I still don't think the 6 wound mechanic is that bad, because you can still work around it. Just don't try to get to close to the Thundertusk or maybe cast an "Endless Spell" to attack the Thundertusk, so that his 6 wounds ability gets reduced to D6 wounds.

If BCR has no allied Butcher or Firebelly in their team, they will not even be able to dispel it. Because they can only ally in casters or shooting units, they also have very limited access to magic or shooting. 

But please don't demand to nerf this ability. It is the only ability we BCR players have left, which is kinda cool. Let BCR please have one ability so that they can still have an impact on the game. I don't think this will hurt so much.

1) the snowball IS just a bad mechanic, period. 2+ for 6 mortal wounds at a 26" threat range (move + shoot) is TERRIBLE. Way too reliable and way too hard to mitigate (being as its mortal wounds and not normal wounds). Its even worse when you remember that you can bring 4 of them and 2 of them are your battle line.

2) "just hurt the thing" you're conveniently leaving out the part that you can heal these ****** 

3) "hide your dudes", hiding them is dependant on the table you're on and whether or not the dude im hiding needs line of sight to do what i brought him for.

4) your hit/wound stats arent any worse than anyone elses, the only thing that hurts is that since each hit deals multiple damage you get less attacks.

5) in my opinion BCR isnt placing at tournaments because they dont have the bodies they need to get the objectives. It has nothing to do with the power level of the models and everything to do with being forced into an MSU playstyle 

6) sorry to come off as combative but the snowball is a terrible mechanic and it's keeping it as it is or even making it more powerful wont help BCR. They are an army that is forced to use allies.

[Infeston]

29 minutes ago, AlphaKennyThing said:

They can do that?! I need to get me one o' those!

Jeah. But only once per game. They can even do more if they consume a mushroom. Here is the ability:

Quote

Deffcap Mushroom: Once per battle, in the hero phase, you can choose for the Fungoid Cave-Shaman to consume a Deffcap Mushroom. If you do so, then until your next hero phase, you cannot attack with this model’s Moon-sickle, but you can re-roll failed casting, unbinding and save rolls for this model, and can cast one additional spell with this model.

He will be a great tool, especially considering the incoming importance of magic with this ability.

[AverageBoss]

2 minutes ago, Gotrek said:

1) the snowball IS just a bad mechanic, period. 2+ for 6 mortal wounds at a 26" threat range (move + shoot) is TERRIBLE. Way too reliable and way too hard to mitigate (being as its mortal wounds and not normal wounds). Its even worse when you remember that you can bring 4 of them and 2 of them are your battle line.

2) "just hurt the thing" you're conveniently leaving out the part that you can heal these ****** 

3) "hide your dudes", hiding them is dependant on the table you're on and whether or not the dude im hiding needs line of sight to do what i brought him for.

4) your hit/wound stats arent any worse than anyone elses, the only thing that hurts is that since each hit deals multiple damage you get less attacks.

5) in my opinion BCR isnt placing at tournaments because they dont have the bodies they need to get the objectives. It has nothing to do with the power level of the models and everything to do with being forced into an MSU playstyle 

6) sorry to come off as combative but the snowball is a terrible mechanic and it's keeping it as it is or even making it more powerful wont help BCR. They are an army that is forced to use allies.

Going to have to agree with this. Honestly I feel the the snowball is such a bad mechanic, it is going to keep BCR from growing as a more interesting and competitive faction in the future. It just restricts design space too much imo.

[Skabnoze]

3 minutes ago, Infeston said:

Jeah. But only once per game. They can even do more if they consume a mushroom. Here is the ability:

He will be a great tool, especially considering the incoming importance of magic with this ability.

If Moonclan gets a battletome as rumored (I know reliable rumor-mongers have pretty much said this is a given at this point - but I still hedge my bets) and they add some sort of allegiance specific magic lore then he becomes an even better piece.  Currently within Moonclan I am not overly thrilled with him and he is basically a secondary shaman as I prefer the Curse of Da Badmoon spell that the normal moonclan shaman comes with.  But more spell choices changes that equation greatly.

[Infeston]

I can agree that a different mechanic might be better. But at the moment it is the only good one we have. I can live with the mechanic being removed if we get something different and better instead. But as long as GW doesn't want to reworked the whole faction and give us something as a replacement I don't agree on it being removed. 

@Gotrek To answer your questions:

1) The ones who can heal and the ones who are battleline are different units. So you always have to decide which one to take. And I still don't think it is such a bad mechanic compared to all the other armies, which also have a lot unfair deepstrike potential or new summoning mechanics, or new spells. I think it is a good mechanic. But compared to all the others it isn't that bad.

2) The healing effect only heals D3 wounds and triggers on a 4+. I don't think it is such an unfair mechanic. 

3) "Hiding" should be a crucial gameplay element. You can't expect to use the same tactic with every army. If you have to face a BCR army you have to adjust to their weaknesses and use them to their advantage. And I also said before that there will be a new spell where you can cast a wall everywhere. So it shouldn't be that big of a problem to hide from it. 

6) Jeah I agree that maybe a better mechanic for the Thundertusk would be better. I would be happy about a rework of the BCR. But at the moment I have the feeling that an outcry about an unfair mechanic would just lead to GW removing this ability and doing nothing instead, like they did with the Stonehorn.

On the other hand I don't think the mechanic is that bad as you stated. I think Stormcast have far better mechanics at the moment. There are a lot of models "on par" with the Thundertusks at the moment (and they are not even limited in their number, because of the Behemoth keyword). I have to say that I am happy that GW still keeps this ability and has reduced our costs. This is better than nothing. 

But what do my Beastclaws fellas think? I always see the criticque on our mechanics coming from people who do not play BCR and also all of the changes to BCR were often not coming from us but only from people who played against us.

It is often like we are the NPCs which get changed in a game, because the players don't like playing against them. So the game designers don't orientate on our opinion but instead on the people who fight against us. But this is just my personal feeling and opinion. I have no facts backing things up. ? 

[Brightstar]

17 hours ago, Asamu said:

It was the community that demanded points, because having a basic system for players to balance casual games around makes the hobby more accessible.  GW did not, and does not, insist on points being used in their games; they just created a system for people that wanted one to use, because there was a high demand for it, and they already had other systems in place with points systems, so it was the natural way to go. They continue to support the narrative system in addition to the points system, but not everyone does narrative play. Some people just want a reasonably fair way to play the game that doesn't rely on using a set of homebrewed rules that is difficult to find/access if you aren't already a part of the gaming group.

It's also a whole lot easier to create house-rules when there is already a core system in place than creating a system of house rules for balancing the game from scratch, and, in order to have a strong competitive community, which can bring in more players and makes for additional marketing opportunities, a standard balancing system is necessary.

The community asked for an accessible way to balance AOS, part of that community asked  for points and that's how we got points.  Accessible balance is important to the game.  There are tons of games that manage to find balance without using points - chess, checkers, countless board games, dozens of CCGs, other wargames, etc.   Again, a multi-million dollar company, with millions of fans could have given us something else to balance the game that is just as accessible as points since that was the direction they originally wanted to go with AOS.   People kept asking for flip phones until the smart phone was invented.   But instead of continuing on making their smart phone, they decided to stick with the safe business model of flip phones. 

GW doesn't insist on us using points, but that isn't exactly true, is it?  As you say:  it is the most accessible system.  Their last narrative event had a points value attached to each game.  Firestorm muster points ties directly to their points system.   So yes, GW doesn't directly say you have to use points.  But as gamers, our two options are: Use the points system - which offers, streamlined, accessible, core mechanical advantages and speed of set up, or, dunno, just figure it out, I guess.  The only balance for non point users they have ever given us is to match warscroll to warscroll.  But as the points will show you, there are serious differences between the scrolls.  So "fixing" points to appease part of the community does not help the other parts.    

My point has always been, that what I would have liked to have seen in AOS 2 was more intrinsic balance between the scrolls and updating scrolls that need to be updated instead of more points adjustments - which they do every year in the general's handbook.  Instead GW is changing points to "balance" the game for another year.

      

  

[chord]

21 minutes ago, AverageBoss said:

Going to have to agree with this. Honestly I feel the the snowball is such a bad mechanic, it is going to keep BCR from growing as a more interesting and competitive faction in the future. It just restricts design space too much imo.

Agreed its a terrible mechanic. 

[amysrevenge]

What if the snowball was given a proper missile weapon profile, Range 18", Att 1, Hit 2+, Wound 1+, Rend and Damage [refer to table] and the table was the same mortal wounds table as now?

Penalties to hit and wound would apply, giving some tactical options to oppose it, But by and large it would hit exactly the same most of the time.

[Turragor]

31 minutes ago, daedalus81 said:

Very likely.  From Shyish.  

Sorry names escaping me...

Purple Sun - Uglu
Banishment - Azyr
The wall - Hysh
The mouth - Ghur
The swords - Chamon
Burning head - Aqshy
Clock thing - Ghyran maybe?

I think that covers it so far.

 

It is the Drybrushed ball of creeping deadlines

[Gotrek]

5 minutes ago, Infeston said:

I can agree that a different mechanic might be better. But at the moment it is the only good one we have. I can live with the mechanic being removed if we get something different and better instead. But as long as GW doesn't want to reworked the whole faction and give us something as a replacement I don't agree on it being removed. 

@Gotrek To answer your questions:

 

1) The ones who can heal and the ones who are battleline are different units. So you always have to decide which one to take. And I still don't think it is such a bad mechanic compared to all the other armies, which also have a lot unfair deepstrike potential or new summoning mechanics, or new spells. I think it is a good mechanic. But compared to all the others it isn't that bad.

2) The healing effect only heals D3 wounds and triggers on a 4+. I don't think it is such an unfair mechanic. 

3) "Hiding" should be a crucial gameplay element. You can't expect to use the same tactic with every army. If you have to face a BCR army you have to adjust to their weaknesses and use them to their advantage. And I also said before that there will be a new spell where you can cast a wall everywhere. So it shouldn't be that big of a problem.

6) Jeah I agree that maybe a better mechanic for the Thundertusk would be better. I would be happy about a rework of the BCR. But at the moment I have the feeling that an outcry about an unfair mechanic would just lead to GW removing this ability and doing nothing instead, like they did with the Stonehorn.

 

 

Im aware that the battleline troops (as well as the guy who makes them battleline) dont do the healing. The battleline comment was just to illustrate the absurdity of the thundertusk.

The healing happens on a 4+, BUT you add 1 to the result for every thundertusk within 18", so its pretty easy to trigger on a 1 or 2+.

The point about hiding wasnt a "i shouldn't have to adapt" thing, i was just trying to point out that hiding isnt always an answer. Either because my heroes need to stay close to the rest of my troops (like my death army) or because i need line of sight to do stuff (wizards), or because the scenario demands i put my heroes out in the open (duality of death), or simply because there is no place TO hide because the way you positioned the thundertusks gives you line of sight no matter where i am.

[blueshirtman]

29 minutes ago, Gotrek said:

1) the snowball IS just a bad mechanic, period. 2+ for 6 mortal wounds at a 26" threat range (move + shoot) is TERRIBLE. Way too reliable and way too hard to mitigate (being as its mortal wounds and not normal wounds). Its even worse when you remember that you can bring 4 of them and 2 of them are your battle line.

What else that is good does the faction have? I understand a mechanic can be unfun, broken etc and if it is warping a setting imo it should be fixed asap.    But it doesn't look, to me at least, that beastclaws are warping how 1-6wound models are being used in AoS,or are going to be used. If The Ball gets nerfed, the the new firebelly better be really good, because someone is going to have to replace that mechanic. Also I would like to point out that the damage efficiency of The Ball drops with numbers lost, and doing 6 is a thing only against range and magic light armies, after first phase.

 

16 minutes ago, Infeston said:

And I also said before that there will be a new spell where you can cast a wall everywhere. So it shouldn't be that big of a problem to hide from it. 

And if it gets dispelled the whole army stops working? Well it could maybe work if AoS was going away from magic, but it is the opposit. So considering other armies are going to have to be build with magic heavy armies in mind, the chance that one beastclaw caster is going to get off that spell at a crucial moment is not that high.

[blueshirtman]

8 minutes ago, amysrevenge said:

What if the snowball was given a proper missile weapon profile, Range 18", Att 1, Hit 2+, Wound 1+, Rend and Damage [refer to table] and the table was the same mortal wounds table as now?

Penalties to hit and wound would apply, giving some tactical options to oppose it, But by and large it would hit exactly the same most of the time.

Then it would stop balancing the lack of machines, mages and other MW sources in the army. Also against armies that can stack hit debuffs and with Look out rule, they would be very unreliable. Specially if the stats change of the shot would end up with the same wound lost scaling it has right now. 5+ wounds lost and the shot would stop working.

Also no idea how it would work against the new undead too. New factions, from starterboxs end up very popular, and If I remember right they have  a blanket -1 to hit for the whole army.

[AverageBoss]

2 minutes ago, blueshirtman said:

Then it would stop balancing the lack of machines, mages and other MW sources in the army. Also against armies that can stack hit debuffs and with Look out rule, they would be very unreliable. Specially if the stats change of the shot would end up with the same wound lost scaling it has right now. 5+ wounds lost and the shot would stop working.

Also no idea how it would work against the new undead too. New factions, from starterboxs end up very popular, and If I remember right they have  a blanket -1 to hit for the whole army.

No, their saves can't be modified up or down. Mortal wounds don't really care about that.

[Infeston]

7 minutes ago, blueshirtman said:

Then it would stop balancing the lack of machines, mages and other MW sources in the army. Also against armies that can stack hit debuffs and with Look out rule, they would be very unreliable. Specially if the stats change of the shot would end up with the same wound lost scaling it has right now. 5+ wounds lost and the shot would stop working.

Also no idea how it would work against the new undead too. New factions, from starterboxs end up very popular, and If I remember right they have  a blanket -1 to hit for the whole army.

I also have to add that there are many new artifacts coming out and many armies also have the ability to work against mortal wounds with an extra mortal wound save. So if you have to face BCR you can still try to equip artifacts which give a mortal wound save. 

This artifact was also previewed in the newest article:

 

For example, you could equip this on a small wound hero in a battle against BCR and use it in the first battle round to defend yourself from the mortal wounds caused by the Thundertusk. It is a 4+ mortal wound save after all. After that you could do enough wounds to him so he cannot do significant damage with his shooting  attack anymore. I think AoS 2.0 will give plenty of options to compensate for the 6 wound shooting attack.

[blueshirtman]

It is not about saves, but about changing the snow ball in to a normal range attack, and am assuming it would degrade with wounds lost right now. So a hero with LoS , and a relic or some other form of protection would suddenly be hit on a +3/+4 and lose not 6, but 3 wounds.

 

:edit: Infeston said it better, then me.

[PJetski]

1 minute ago, Infeston said:

I also have to add that there are many new artifacts coming out and many armies also have the ability to work against mortal wounds with an extra mortal wound save. So if you have to face BCR you can still try to equip artifacts which give a mortal wound save. 

This artifact was also previewed in the newest article:

 

You could equip this in a battle against BCR and use it in the first battle round to defend yourself from the mortal wounds caused by the Thundertusk. After that you could do enough wounds so he cannot do significant damage with his shooting anymore. I think AoS 2.0 will give plenty of options to compensate for the 6 wound shooting attack.

I think this only works on wounds, not mortal wounds

Every other ability usually specifies "wounds or mortal wounds".

[Asamu]

13 minutes ago, Brightstar said:

The community asked for an accessible way to balance AOS, part of that community asked  for points and that's how we got points.  Accessible balance is important to the game.  There are tons of games that manage to find balance without using points - chess, checkers, countless board games, dozens of CCGs, other wargames, etc.

GW doesn't insist on us using points, but that isn't exactly true, is it?  As you say:  it is the most accessible system.  Their last narrative event had a points value attached to each game.  Firestorm muster points ties directly to their points system.   So yes, GW doesn't directly say you have to use points.  But as gamers, our two options are: Use the points system - which offers, streamlined, accessible, core mechanical advantages and speed of set up, or, dunno, just figure it out, I guess.  The only balance for non point users they have ever given us is to match warscroll to warscroll.  But as the points will show you, there are serious differences between the scrolls.  So "fixing" points to appease part of the community does not help the other parts.    

My point has always been, that what I would have liked to have seen in AOS 2 was more intrinsic balance between the scrolls and updating scrolls that need to be updated instead of more points adjustments - which they do every year in the general's handbook.  Instead GW is changing points to "balance" the game for another year.

What other miniature war game like AoS doesn't use points in some form? Checkers and Chess have fixed mirrored pieces; there's no creation step to the game before you can start playing, so they aren't comparable; CCGs are again, not comparable to AoS, as you do not start with your entire deck/army in play. What other way would you want the game to be balanced? The only way to balance the game off of something like wound or warscroll count would be to homogenize units so every warscroll has the same value, which would take a lot away from the game, rather than adding to it. If you want to do that for yourself, that is something you can do by using their points as a basis for it.

What does "more intrinsic balance between scrolls" even mean? Do you want clanrats to be just as strong as chaos warriors per warscroll? They can be, if you bring ~15 clanrats per 5 chaos warriors, which is what you get with the points system anyway.

Would you like them to provide fixed army lists for every faction/faction combination that people can pick from? That takes away the freedom of players to create their own armies with the models they have. It's either restrictive in a bad way outside of narrative games.

It's fine to say you don't like how they did things, but if you can't provide a reasonable alternative, then what's the point?

Why would they cater to a minority of players that don't like points seemingly just on principle?  Points are the easiest and most familiar way to balance a game like AoS, which makes it the most attractive method for both a game creator and the community. There is a reasonably sized portion of the community that never would have touched the game if it didn't have a points system or another good way to balance games, but I can't honestly think of an alternative that would be as good for a game like AoS that isn't essentially a points system.

[Infeston]

2 minutes ago, PJetski said:

I think this only works on wounds, not mortal wounds

Every other ability usually specifies "wounds or mortal wounds".

It says "every time you allocate a wound to the bearer". Mortal wounds are also wounds when they are allocated to a target.  But maybe someone else can clear this up? 

I would say this means any kind of wound. Normal wounds and mortal wounds. In my opinion wounds is just a category which includes normal wounds and mortal wounds. But I might be wrong.

[NurglesFirstChosen]

The wall endless spell might be a good way to manage the thundertusk ability. 

 

[AverageBoss]

2 minutes ago, Infeston said:

It says "every time you allocate a wound to the bearer". Mortal wounds are also wounds when they are allocated to a target.  But maybe someone else can clear this up? 

I would say this means any kind of wound. Normal wounds and mortal wounds. In my opinion wounds is just a category which includes normal wounds and mortal wounds. But I might be wrong.

They began differentiating between Wounds and Mortal Wounds quite awhile ago. Taking Legions of Nagash as an example:

Deathless Minions and First Cohort specifically mention Wounds AND Mortal Wounds.

Nagash and Morghast armors mention only Mortal Wounds.

Necromancer and Wight King both only mention Wounds on their special rules.

[PJetski]

5 minutes ago, Infeston said:

It says "every time you allocate a wound to the bearer". Mortal wounds are also wounds when they are allocated to a target.  But maybe someone else can clear this up? 

I would say this means any kind of wound. Normal wounds and mortal wounds. In my opinion wounds is just a category which includes normal wounds and mortal wounds. But I might be wrong.

Wounds are caused by Attacks and you have a chance to make a save roll against them, then allocate them to your unit. Mortal wounds are caused by abilities. They both cause the unit to lose wounds.

I agree that this is probably their intent for it to work on both, but virtually every ability in the game is worded "wound or mortal wound". I have to wonder if it's intentional...

In fact there used to be an ability that worked on wounds and they errata'd it to include mortal wounds. I think it was on one of the Verminlords?

[Skabnoze]

It would be nice if in the new rules they tightened that up a bit in terms of wording.  I think the 40k rules did do a bit of tightening and refer to a difference between damage and wounds.  Where one is the unsaved version (and mortal wounds bypass the normal sequence and go straight to allocation on the model) and the other is the result after saves happen and when it would be applied to the model.

I would not rule out the new rules having small bits of clarification like that.

[PJetski]

Just now, Skabnoze said:

It would be nice if in the new rules they tightened that up a bit in terms of wording.  I think the 40k rules did do a bit of tightening and refer to a difference between damage and wounds.  Where one is the unsaved version (and mortal wounds bypass the normal sequence and go straight to allocation on the model) and the other is the result after saves happen and when it would be applied to the model.

I like the 40k wording of "when this model loses a wound".

[Infeston]

Mhm okay. Maybe I got it all wrong. 

But I just wanted to state that people shouldn't enforce on our last good ability to be removed from the game just to be replaced by another really bad ability.

Especially because the more I look at the Faction Focus of BCR and compare it to all the others, the more disappointed I get that we didn't get anything special like some of the other factions did. Because we had to wait a really long time to get any news or information on the future of our faction. And in the end the only new information is just "You get points reductions and you can use the stuff all the other people get". I would have hoped BCR to play a bigger role. Now it seems more like BCR might also be one of the soon to be discontinued factions who got something to keep the last remaining players happy (but not really a sign that they will support BCR in the future or maybe release new models).

Maybe the new edition will present us new updates or allegiance abilities. But if you compare our preview to some of the other previews, it could have also been a lot better.