Age of Sigmar: Second Edition

[pseudonyme]

I read someone here talking about a fire wall, which I think would very classic and pretty cool!

[Lemondish]

3 hours ago, blueshirtman said:

Oh that is easy to explain. Let me guess, you play an army that does ok on its own, so ally are considered a minor buff or a change of playstyle. It is very different when your army is bad, because then with each ally unit added, your asking yourself why do you actually play with your army at all. Because if you just started with the stuff you allied in, you would have had more fun. Sadly GW does not have a return policy, as far as not working armies goes.

I'm new to AoS and jumping in with second edition. I'm trying to learn, and up until now this community has been a pleasant boon for that. I don't quite appreciate your tone here, so maybe you should scale back the sarcasm and your concerns might be taken seriously. At this point, with the way you're carrying on, I see no reason to be sympathetic towards your position. Ally in what you need, or play without it of your own volition. At this point, I think you're being a little too overdramatic about the whole thing here. 

In any case, thanks for your input, even if it was unnecessarily hostile, but I think we're done here. I can see now that the situation isn't nearly as dire as has been explained, it's just that folks want more than they currently have, and by presenting it as being in a worse place than it really is they hope to strengthen their position. I've seen it before in 40k every day - so more I'm keenly aware that it will happen. Pity it's happening with AoS. 

[RuneBrush]

Guys, can we keep this discussion on the new edition please and avoid the "my faction is worse than yours".  We're less than a month away from the new rules and handbook dropping and every army is going to change in some way or another so it's just guesswork on this!

thanks ☺️

[Mayple]

I'm really curious how Archaon's command ability will interact with the potential for command ability stacking. I know we got a preview that mentioned it, but I don't have the full picture yet. Got a sneaking feeling it might be very useful

[GeneralZero]

The thing that I can see: there are so many ways to make your army NEW that the creativity of player will so much boil that we will have many competitive factions/armies very soon (and maybe few OP) . But the real winners: fun and creativity. The main losers: wifeys who we don't take care (enough) and who won't be able to shop due to their beloved plastic junky

[Captain Marius]

I think the tweaks and add-ons to the game look cool. Im not really a fan of piling on loads of artefacts and spells (ever since the sylvaneth book came out and made the new at the time GA Allegiance Abilities look 2 bit!), however it seems youll generally still be limited to taking the same number of items and casting the same number of spells, so fair enough.

The warscroll/battle trait review seems fair enough to me, as so far it appears to have exclusively been to clean up the summoning rules and amend rules that clash with the core rule tweaks.

The points review will probably cause the most debate as itll have the most effect on creating armies for matched play, but it looks like theyre going for points reductions this year where last year was very much about points increases - particularly with battalions.

[AlphaKennyThing]

27 minutes ago, Lemondish said:

I'm new to AoS and jumping in with second edition. I'm trying to learn, and up until now this community has been a pleasant boon for that. I don't quite appreciate your tone here, so maybe you should scale back the sarcasm and your concerns might be taken seriously. At this point, with the way you're carrying on, I see no reason to be sympathetic towards your position. Ally in what you need, or play without it of your own volition. At this point, I think you're being a little too overdramatic about the whole thing here. 

In any case, thanks for your input, even if it was unnecessarily hostile, but I think we're done here. I can see now that the situation isn't nearly as dire as has been explained, it's just that folks want more than they currently have, and by presenting it as being in a worse place than it really is they hope to strengthen their position. I've seen it before in 40k every day - so more I'm keenly aware that it will happen. Pity it's happening with AoS. 

As with any wargame Lemondish, in a brutally competitive tournament scene, some armies are better than others as I'm sure you well know.

The fantastic thing about AoS is that even with 'uncompetitive' armies, you still get a decent game. I turned up to my first tournament with a totally garbage Slaves to Darkness/Blades of Khorne list and the only match in which I got truly battered was against the newly released Ironjawz, but that was mainly because I was playing like an idiot. Granted, I only won two games out of the six or so I played, but they were all really good fun and felt like I had a chance.

Contrast this with at the time 7th Ed 40k, and it was the polar opposite. I had a 6th Edition combined arms Imperial Guard list, and the game was over at the end of Turn 3 against any kind of formations. I'd never been so disheartened by the game before.

In any scenario outside of Matched Play (and lets remember there are currently 12 Matched Play battleplans, versus some 50-60 + battleplans for other game modes) AoS allows the use of almost any army in any combination and you will get a decent game out of it, and that is why I love it.

To this date, one of my most memorable games of AoS was a Matched Play game using my Ironjawz, and this was at the height of their power under GHB16. I was playing against a friend who I'd just got into the hobby, and he wanted to try out a competitive game. I offered to tone down my list, but he said nope, go all out. He turned up with an Aelven Order force. The army was a mixture of Darkling Covens, Phoenix Temple, Swifthawk Agents, Wanderers and a single Stormcast hero. I was gearing up to absolutely annihilate it, as I figured there was no way an Elf soup army with seemingly sweet naff all synergy was going to beat the tournament ready Ironjawz. It turned out to be the closest, most entertaining game of AoS I've had, one of those games where it came down to a single combat on one objective at the end of Turn 5 to determine the winner.

There is no single faction in AoS that gets annihilated in every game in every method of play, no matter what models you choose. The only time you're ever going to start comparing your army's performance and get sad about it is in ultra competitive Matched Play, which is just one aspect of AoS. Matched Play is volatile, and is probably the most expensive way to play AoS as you have to constantly buy stuff to make your army better as things change.

I think you will find AoS a really enjoyable game, Lemondish, so keep up the enthusiasm and the posts. I would genuinely ignore any chatter on what faction is 'best' and what factions have no hope because it's usually not entirely true, and everything is about to change.

I also highly recommend Path to Glory!

 

[CaptainNippon]

6 hours ago, blueshirtman said:

yeah, the thing is 2.0 seems to be all about magic. But then again am not suprised, before when BCR players said that they struggle with the objective game, and we were told the same. Fixs are coming in the GH, though only nerfs happened. You should have struggle with objectives or just take ally. At the same time those peoples armies were doing great in caping objectives, killing stuff, not getting nerfed in the GH and working just great without ally.

Also as my expiriance with the use of  wizards  is rather limited. how does taking a firebelly help against an army who runs 3-4 wizards, out of which one is always something like a LoS or a Nagash etc. Because, and I maybe wrong here, it seems to me that the firebelly is not going to help a lot with all those spells being cast around. At the same time, he is not going to cast spells of his own, and as he is kind of a bad in melee and slower then the rest of the BCR army, he is kind of a wasted points. Or am I missing something here?

Well, this time around reductions in cost are already confirmed, so that's a net plus. 

As for the wizards, it's not always something like Nagash or a LoC. In fact, most of the time it's neither because not everybody is playing Tzeentch or LoN. Maybe people in your area are, but that's not representative of the community as a whole.

If you play against any army that has no uber wizard (which is true most of the time in my experience), your firebelly has one attempt at casting and one at banning. So usually you will be looking at 2D6 from your Firebelly against 2D6 from the enemy mage, possibly or even likely something like 2D6+1 or +2 for the enemy if he invested in support or artifacts for his wizards (think Necromancer with corpse cart in Legion of Sacrament). But even then the variance in 2D6 is easily high enough for your Firebelly to win his roll and unbind one enemy spell or cast one himself. He won't be able to do more than that and further enemy spells will go through once successully cast, but that's what multiple wizards get you and it costs points to do that.You could field a second Firebelly or a Butcher to get more out your magic phase yourself.

Also, he's not bad in melee at all with Rend -1, D3 damage and 2" range, he deals D3 mortal wounds on 6" range in the shooting phase + another D3 mortal wounds to all enemy units within 3" if he manages to get his spell through. He's also reasonably durable for a support character. Granted, he's not fantastic, but I think you can make him work if you really want to field him.

As for the other point you made, winning not being your No. 1 priority has nothing to do with masochism, but with preference. 

This might be an interesting read on that particular topic: https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Player_type

Long story short, different kinds of players draw their enjoyment from different things when playing and winning is not necessarily a high priority for everyone.

If I had to guess, I'd say you are playing in a very competitive environment while being rather competitve yourself, so your experience might very well be as terrible as you've described  - and in that case I  sympathize with you. I'd just ask you to consider the fact that not everyone is in the same situation and that it's not necessarily all bad as it stands.

 

[Infeston]

55 minutes ago, CaptainNippon said:

This might be an interesting read on that particular topic: https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Player_type

I am a Timmy even though it says that Timmys are often younger players. But this profile perfectly describes what I am looking for. Funny thing cause my name is also Tim. ? 

On the aeshtetic side I might be a combination of the Melvin and the Vorthos. Maybe more Vorthos than Melvin. ? 

Funny profiles, although I think many players are somewhat in-between. And I think you can't directly compare psychologic profiles from Magic players to the profiles of tabletop players, because there is  a huge difference. Magic doesn't have the whole painting, building and designing aspect. So I would predict a lot more Age of Sigmar players interested in the aesthetic side of the hobby.

But all in all I seem to be a Vorthos-Timmy. ?  I don't care if I win or I loose the game. As long as it will be spectacular and fun! I need Chaos, I need drama, I want big fight with things exloding everywhere and folks dying all over the place. But I think balance is often important for things like this. Because only a balanced battle is an exciting battle. If a battle is too one-sided it doesn't get exciting for me. So I think even for Timmys balance should be a crucial things, because an even matchup often leads to an exciting battle.

But I think many conflicts could often be solved if more players who prefer a similar playstyle would also play together or if players would tell the other player what they are looking for.  On the other hand you sometimes have no choice. I have very view friends and people to play Warhammer with. And they sometimes prefer more competitive playstyles. Sadly not everyone has access to a gaming group which likes their playstyle. 

[Mayple]

@CaptainNippon

Oh! That's very interesting. I haven't had the pleasure of reading up on player types presented like that, so it was a nice read. Definitely applicable to Age of Sigmar.

I'm a big Johnny

[Lemondish]

59 minutes ago, AlphaKennyThing said:

As with any wargame Lemondish, in a brutally competitive tournament scene, some armies are better than others as I'm sure you well know.

The fantastic thing about AoS is that even with 'uncompetitive' armies, you still get a decent game. I turned up to my first tournament with a totally garbage Slaves to Darkness/Blades of Khorne list and the only match in which I got truly battered was against the newly released Ironjawz, but that was mainly because I was playing like an idiot. Granted, I only won two games out of the six or so I played, but they were all really good fun and felt like I had a chance.

Contrast this with at the time 7th Ed 40k, and it was the polar opposite. I had a 6th Edition combined arms Imperial Guard list, and the game was over at the end of Turn 3 against any kind of formations. I'd never been so disheartened by the game before.

In any scenario outside of Matched Play (and lets remember there are currently 12 Matched Play battleplans, versus some 50-60 + battleplans for other game modes) AoS allows the use of almost any army in any combination and you will get a decent game out of it, and that is why I love it.

To this date, one of my most memorable games of AoS was a Matched Play game using my Ironjawz, and this was at the height of their power under GHB16. I was playing against a friend who I'd just got into the hobby, and he wanted to try out a competitive game. I offered to tone down my list, but he said nope, go all out. He turned up with an Aelven Order force. The army was a mixture of Darkling Covens, Phoenix Temple, Swifthawk Agents, Wanderers and a single Stormcast hero. I was gearing up to absolutely annihilate it, as I figured there was no way an Elf soup army with seemingly sweet naff all synergy was going to beat the tournament ready Ironjawz. It turned out to be the closest, most entertaining game of AoS I've had, one of those games where it came down to a single combat on one objective at the end of Turn 5 to determine the winner.

There is no single faction in AoS that gets annihilated in every game in every method of play, no matter what models you choose. The only time you're ever going to start comparing your army's performance and get sad about it is in ultra competitive Matched Play, which is just one aspect of AoS. Matched Play is volatile, and is probably the most expensive way to play AoS as you have to constantly buy stuff to make your army better as things change.

I think you will find AoS a really enjoyable game, Lemondish, so keep up the enthusiasm and the posts. I would genuinely ignore any chatter on what faction is 'best' and what factions have no hope because it's usually not entirely true, and everything is about to change.

I also highly recommend Path to Glory!

 

Thanks for the insight! I'm eager to jump in - I've done the competitive side of 40k and I'm loving the more fantastical thematic lean to AoS. The thing I've noticed, even in 40k, is the tendency for competitive players of all stripes to look at the top lists at large tournaments like LVO, Adepticon, Canhammer, the recent London GT, or the ATC/ETC and use that to base their entire read of the competitive meta, irrespective of their local scene. That's great for getting ideas or learning techniques and synergies, but to base your entire perspective on what is good on that is like comparing your beer league team to the pros. It's just a whole other level.

This happens in every 'competitive' environment, where the performance of the top tier is used as insight for balance discussions that instruct how one should engage with the game even if they aren't in any way close to the top tier. I see this in MMOs like WoW, where certain players of a class use the performance of top tier raid players to lobby for changes. In almost all cases, becoming a better player and improving your skill through experience would be loads more beneficial to your performance than a couple buffs. 

In any case, I'm entering AoS alongside a couple newbies that haven't played any wargames before. They're drawn (like me) to the world, the absolutely phenomenal looking models, and the bombastic spell effects and cool flavourful items. 

 

[S133arcanite]

Interesting change to piling in: https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/06/03/3rd-june-rules-preview-measuring-and-piling-ingw-homepage-post-2/

[bsharitt]

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/06/03/3rd-june-rules-preview-measuring-and-piling-ingw-homepage-post-2/

Base to base is finally official.

Now pile in has to be at least as close as before, not closer. So now you're free to wrap around those big models. That's going to be a big deal.

Official base suggestion chart coming too, but not "technically" required, but you can bet tournaments will make it a requirement.

[Naflem]

15 minutes ago, bsharitt said:

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/06/03/3rd-june-rules-preview-measuring-and-piling-ingw-homepage-post-2/

Base to base is finally official.

Now pile in has to be at least as close as before, not closer. So now you're free to wrap around those big models. That's going to be a big deal.

Official base suggestion chart coming too, but not "technically" required, but you can bet tournaments will make it a requirement.

Ugh, I've got a real fear I'll have guessed wrongly on some of my rebasing bases...  

[Enoby]

I wonder how this will pan out for models that are bigger than their base. There aren't many of them, but the exalted seeker chariot has huge amounts of spill over on the base it comes on; getting anything into base to base contact with it often ends with your models getting far too intimate with the seekers (which can end up with snapped models).

[Lardidar]

37 minutes ago, Naflem said:

Ugh, I've got a real fear I'll have guessed wrongly on some of my rebasing bases...  

I'm using the base chart here so I'm holding @Ben personally responsible!

So I'm looking at it and it says 

So my model is 2.5 away from lets say the champion, I pile in away from him so now I'm 3 away but I'm 2" away from the drummer.....I was 2.5 away from the nearest enemy model at the start, I'm 2 away from the nearest enemy model at the end. I may be reading this so wrong and it was the champion I had to stay near...Turns out I'm either tired or a moron...and I slept really well  

[DanielFM]

Official base to base? Cool

Anti-pile in tactics gone and turned into a big, dumbed down mosh pit in which you can't control who reaches you in any way? Just the kind of change we didn't need.

Base-to-base locking was the last remnant of formations and flanking having any impact in combats.

[Waiyuren]

Hmmm. I'm  reading those pile in rules and the ones in the basic rules side by side, trying to get my head around what changed, and to me there's technically no functional difference in how they'll work... Can someone please give me an example of what we can or can't do now that will be different? ?

[Gotrek]

15 minutes ago, Lardidar said:

I'm using the base chart here so I'm holding @Ben personally responsible!

So I'm looking at it and it says 

So my model is 2.5 away from lets say the champion, I pile in away from him so now I'm 3 away but I'm 2" away from the drummer.....I was 2.5 away from the nearest enemy model at the start, I'm 2 away from the nearest enemy model at the end. I may be reading this so wrong and it was the champion I had to stay near...Turns out I'm either tired or a moron...and I slept really well  

"As it was at the start of the move" so youre measuring to the same model. However, instead of closest model i wish they had changed it to "unit you are engaged with" 

[Lardidar]

5 minutes ago, Gotrek said:

"As it was at the start of the move" so youre measuring to the same model. However, instead of closest model i wish they had changed it to "unit you are engaged with" 

So...whats changed?

EDIT - that sounded aggressive, its not I'm just confused

[Cerlin]

Is anyone else excited to see them put the FAQ into the rules and making it more clear and fun? Overall I am happy.

I also will try to put newer army on rounds but my old armies are on the squares they came on.

[GeneralZero]

Our beloved Gobs are out

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/06/03/3rd-june-faction-focus-grotsgw-homepage-post-3/

 

[Lardidar]

It's not the most exciting...I'm still holding hope for a Q3-4 Grot book

 

[Drorik]

    "Secondly, you can’t choose not to attack with a unit anymore – the combat phase only ends when every single eligible unit has piled in and participated. Again, this is a simple change, designed to improve immersion – you’d hardly expect a group of bloodthirsty warriors not to take the chance to kill their foes, would you?"

    While this change makes sense thematically, I think it may make the combination of Akhelian Ishlaen Guard and the Sisters of the Thorn's Shield of Thorns spell a bit strong. Just cast it on a unit of 15, which can be done relatively unhampered due to the 18" range for a support spell,  and then have the unit charge making sure to touch as many heroes and or units as possible.

    In short, 1/9 of the attacks will make it through to the unit, while 1/3 will do mortal wounds to the enemy. If there is a further way to increase the save to a 2+, then this changes to 1/36 attacks making it to the unit, while 1/2 of the attacks do a mortal wound to the enemy. 

    Though luckily you can still choose not to pile in, so this isn't too effective on lower wound models. 

[HorticulusTGA]

So I was worried there would be another (third) week of Imperial Release : https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/06/03/pre-order-preview-march-of-the-warglaives/

But : "You’ll have to wait a wee bit longer for the last new release to go alongside the new codex. The valiant Freeblade Sir Hekhtur, and his Knight Preceptor steed Canis Rex, will be available later in the year".

So as expected, new edition preorder 16, release 23 ou 30 !