Age of Sigmar: Second Edition

[Overread]

24 hour twitch begins !

 

[GeneralZero]

D-Day Yes!

[Bellfree]

2 hours ago, Enoby said:

Yeah, I think tiers often become self fulfilling on the internet. "Army X is bad because a lot of people said so" becomes a bit of a mantra on the internet, but in reality there isn't a massive difference between most armies. Unlike Yu-Gi-Oh, where there's a world between tier 0 and tier 5 because tier 0 stops tier 5 from playing, AoS can be won through good planning and a bit of luck regardless of 'tier'. 

There is still a difference, don't get me wrong, but the difference is pretty small - most armies will stand a fighting chance. Except maybe Devoted of Sigmar. Poor Devoted of Sigmar. 

The Yu-Gi-Oh comparison is, in my opinion, actually far more correct than 'all you need is a bit of luck!' in terms of actual difference between tiers. GW games are famous for their poor balance and Sigmar is no different in that regard. You're no more likely to beat a tricked out Changehost with Dispossessed than you are to beat a True Draco deck with a structure deck.

People see Idoneth, DoK, Nurgle, mixed order, mixed chaos, and LoN jostling around the top 20, combined with that one Ironjawz guy in their locals racking up some decent win counts and think the game is more balanced than it is. You also see people bring the same army with the same strat week after week consistently getting destroyed thinking the game is less balanced than it is. The impression of power gets skewed all over the place by the relative stigmatization of winning that the narrative origin of games like Sigmar have, and the strong feelings perceptions of unfairness can bring. There's a reason WAAC gets used more often in 40k/AoS than basically any other game system out there.

Basically it breaks down to this:

1. It is possible to beat a 'high tier' list with a 'low tier' list but it requires excellent planning, a lot of luck, and at least one massive mistake from your opponent(this is the important one). It is also not something that's going to happen very often. Notice how that squig list that won that one event never managed to do anything ever again?

2. The tier-ing that the internet gives lists is absolutely not a self-fulfilling prophecy. The players and lists that win events are the ones who are making/refining these lists to their competitive edge, the internet is mostly just a tool for additional input. Russ Veal, Terry Pike, Dan Ford, etc aren't just taking these lists because the internet says they're good. In fact most often it's the other way around. The internet also isn't a total hive-mind like people want it to be. Spend any significant time on the faction tactics threads and you'll see dozens of competing ideas on how to get the best out of each army. That's why they get so many pages.

3. The tier-ing is also not quite as rigid (and is much more complex) than many people believe it is. Following the tier list doesn't guarantee victory any more than expensive clubs guarantee birdies. It's extremely easy to read tournament results and go 'yep, these are the best armies' but it's much harder to fully understand the full breadth of why and  how those armies are doing what they're doing.

4. There is a massive amount a player can do to f*** up in a single game of Sigmar and that opens up opportunities that shouldn't ever of been there.

[Kirjava13]

Two points: 

1) I don't know whether I'm suffering from a head injury or what but the 'easy to build' Grimghast Reapers and Guardian of Souls are a pain in the backside! Getting their heads in is extremely aggravating- or at least, it was for me. 

2) New pre-orders are up on New Zealand's website!

[SugarMaple82]

Do we know when the Azyr list builder will update? Looking forward to trying a million new lists.

[Xasz]

7 hours ago, carnith said:

It really is amazing what an army can do once someone brings it up to competetive levels. People at my store know my Slaanesh list is nothing to mess with and that it swings hard unless properly dismantled. I had someone throw several units at my keeper of secrets, and not kill it due to my stacking of buffs and debuffs. 

Local-hero-syndrome.

Personally, I find baseless optimism as obnoxious and toxic as unreasonable pessimism.

On the other hand, it shouldn't be forgotten that we've had all the pieces of 2.0 for about two weeks now and it's not unlikely that several predictions about faction powerlevels will turn out to be rather accurate.

[hughwyeth]

8 hours ago, Skabnoze said:

What I find interesting is the level of group think that goes into them.  I won't argue that some armies are better than others.

But most of the time over the years when I have seen the tier structure shaken up is when the players who experiment and ignore the internet group think break the commonly-accepted mold.  The tier structure is very much based on the current meta - and the current meta is defined to a fair degree by group think.

I'm not trying to make the case that every army is amazing.  I have played Orcs & Goblins waaaaay too long to hold that opinion.  But I will say that the internet has a large tendency to jump to certain things as established truth until some crafty player proves that wrong at another tournament.

Absolutely my thoughts. It's a little frustrating that essentially people view armies as having 1 or 2 lists and no other combos, and each army's  1 or 2 lists are all aiming for the 1st place powerlist for the year. It's nonsense. Netlists do well because they're powerful, but there are 600 or so models in AoS, the majority of which are never played in these lists and never experimented with. 

This little interview with Darren Watson is interesting.

Quote

Last year I came 4th at the South Coast GT with a list built around Kroak.  At the time you didn’t see many Seraphon armies and the types of army lists on the tournament scene (“the meta”) were pretty unattractive to me (Kunnin Rukk with Thundertusks, Skyfire spam, Tzeentch in general etc).  I’m not a fan of net-listing (using a list available online that has had success previously) and like to make things work that people don’t use a great deal.

He had great success with an Archaon list (which is now likely a netlist to be played frequently in tournaments) which no netlister would ever consider previously. He could get -2 or -3 to hit in combat, essentially making his 40 marauders impossible to damage whilst reducing bravery by 4 of enemy units. And he didn't even take advantage of the Plaguetouched warband's rule of 7!

[hughwyeth]

9 hours ago, Freejack02 said:

The Doomwheel only deals Rolling Doom damage once, not for each unit it rolls over... (unless GW has once again abandoned clear english rules text)

You're absolutely right..... it was doubles and it was partner's understanding of the rules is my excuse. We wouldn't have won in any case and it was hilarious!

[Jamopower]

2 hours ago, Xasz said:

Local-hero-syndrome.

Personally, I find baseless optimism as obnoxious and toxic as unreasonable pessimism.

On the other hand, it shouldn't be forgotten that we've had all the pieces of 2.0 for about two weeks now and it's not unlikely that several predictions about faction powerlevels will turn out to be rather accurate.

Well most of the gaming is done in local groups, the big hundred player tournaments are visible, but very small part of the whole gaming scene.

Part of the tiers is that some armies are bad because they lose so easily against others, but as the game is generally played in groups of less than ten people, it very often is so that the army split is totally different from the "tier meta" and the armies that are causing the shift is not present at all and the best army may very well be the Slaanesh or Spiderfang grots. 

Of course due to internet, sometimes the power lists trickle down to local groups as well,so it's not completely off, but there is still big variation. 

[Karol]

1 hour ago, hughwyeth said:

Absolutely my thoughts. It's a little frustrating that essentially people view armies as having 1 or 2 lists and no other combos, and each army's  1 or 2 lists are all aiming for the 1st place powerlist for the year. It's nonsense. Netlists do well because they're powerful, but there are 600 or so models in AoS, the majority of which are never played in these lists and never experimented with. 

 

I don't think that there are many people that have 600 different models, and experiment. Those that do, are happy people. But if I had enough money to buy that much stuff, I would be happy too, even without playing AoS. From what I see locally most people have one list and maybe some ally, or some left overs they don't use. No one is going to spend 300$ on units just to experiment, and find out that the stuff doesn't work. That is why people look up to high rank tournament lists, that get played over and over again, as those things seem to krow. That is why it is down right scary for a new player that maybe even likes how a faction models look like, but sees that first the army isn't played at tournaments or scores really low over and over again, or that people already playing those armies give the army units really bad reviews. No idea what is the worse army in AoS, but I bet it is something destruction themed. This means there are very few people playing those armies, and fewer people means fewer buyers, and this gives GW less incentive to fix them.

 

1 hour ago, Jamopower said:

Of course due to internet, sometimes the power lists trickle down to local groups as well,so it's not completely off, but there is stilm big variation.

That is interesting, because people here play some sort of power lists or a modified version of it almost exclusively.

 

[Beliman]

3 hours ago, Xasz said:

Local-hero-syndrome.

Personally, I find baseless optimism as obnoxious and toxic as unreasonable pessimism.

On the other hand, it shouldn't be forgotten that we've had all the pieces of 2.0 for about two weeks now and it's not unlikely that several predictions about faction powerlevels will turn out to be rather accurate.

 IMHO, it's just the regional meta and not "local-hero-syndrome".

I mean, the competitive players are going to build the min-max lists of top tier armies (selling and  switching everything to have the most "OP" units). But, not all people can afford that, so the vast majority of players will try to min-max what they have. Because of that, a new sub-meta is created, and people will start learning the weakiness of their rivals to win more (in other words, the tier list can vary a bit from top tournaments to regional gaming groups).

So, every gaming group will have their small variation of the "Big-meta" that internet seems to follow like the word of god (or god-emperor!!). Of course the pr0-scene will have an impact in building all this diferent metas (because we are all folowers of the "big meta" like mindless zombies), but that means that every gaming group will have diferent tiers.

Of course, the players behind the army can impact that too and push their army one tier above or one tier below. But that's not what we are talking about.

I can give you an example using the League of Legends pr0-scene: In Korea (the "gods-emperor of League of Legends", all hail the Korean Overlords!) used some characters  that if just played together, they had a stun-chain of 5 seconds (something like a combo that the other rivals couldn't do anything until they finished the chain, giving them only a frame-reaction in the first movement of the chain to avoid a sudden death) that had enough impact that everybody played like them. Their experience with that meta give them an edge over other regions. Well, that meta was the "word of god" but in the World Championship (the BIG tournament), they had a hard time with some random EU teams (one of them being Rookies) because in Europe, a character called Morgana was played a lot in the support rol; something that the Koreans weren't prepared because Morgana wasn't enough strong to be played in their meta. From 4 Korean teams that started the championship, only 1 achieved to be in the semis.

The thing is, was Morgana a tierS character? No, that toon didn't have enough stats and builds to be tier S, but her abilities give her the tools to work over the main top tier strategies (and stop the main combos). Something like KO playing vs Tzeentch in 1.0, but switch the KO to Bretonians and give the Tzeentch power to 4 other armies.

P.D: I'm not saying that they are going to win (Korea won that championship btw) , but that's why we see beastmen in top 20, or even more rare armies in  big competitions. 

[Xasz]

The local-hero thing is something I've witnessed so many times when I was active in the 40k tournament scene.

Players being overhyped from other players, local tournaments or the internet. Which then got utterly destroyed when confronted with a bigger tournament, better lists and better players.

There is no shame in that and the point i want to make is not about how elite the tournament scene is and whatnot... but it is a reminder that experience in a vacuum is almost entirely worthless, especially when people try to map theirs onto a bigger scale.

TBH, this thread is going dangerously off-topic again and due to the release of the new edition should eventually be closed.

[Karol]

12 minutes ago, Beliman said:

The thing is, was Morgana a tierS character? No, that toon didn't have enough stats and builds to be tier S, but her abilities give her the tools to work over the main top tier strategies (and stop the main combos). Something like KO playing vs Tzeentch in 1.0, but switch the KO to Bretonians and give the Tzeentch power to 4 other armies.

P.D: I'm not saying that they are going to win (Korea won that championship btw) , but that's why we see beastmen in top 20, or even more rare armies in  big competitions. 

Ok, I get it,card games have it too, when a deck becomes too good and too popular, people start running deck made to counter it and the play rate of the "best" deck drops a lot.  There is a huge difference in cost between geting a LoL character. If somewhere tzeench becomes dominant, very few people can go and buy a new army made just to counter tzeench lists, specially as those counter list will be probablly useless when tzeench players get nerfed or stop playing.

[Jamopower]

27 minutes ago, Karol said:

Ok, I get it,card games have it too, when a deck becomes too good and too popular, people start running deck made to counter it and the play rate of the "best" deck drops a lot.  There is a huge difference in cost between geting a LoL character. If somewhere tzeench becomes dominant, very few people can go and buy a new army made just to counter tzeench lists, specially as those counter list will be probablly useless when tzeench players get nerfed or stop playing.

Of course it also goes the other way. Not so many people would buy a new Tzeentch (or whatever)  army just because it's the latest best army. Especially nowadays as the rules are tweaked few times per year. Most likely the players go with what they have and then try to cope with it the best they  can. Depending on the local level of competition it can mean different things. Around here a Darkling covens army with some stormcast allies is a proper army to beat anyone, somewhere else you might need something stronger. 

[Bellfree]

1 hour ago, hughwyeth said:

Absolutely my thoughts. It's a little frustrating that essentially people view armies as having 1 or 2 lists and no other combos, and each army's  1 or 2 lists are all aiming for the 1st place powerlist for the year. It's nonsense. Netlists do well because they're powerful, but there are 600 or so models in AoS, the majority of which are never played in these lists and never experimented with. 

This little interview with Darren Watson is interesting.

He had great success with an Archaon list (which is now likely a netlist to be played frequently in tournaments) which no netlister would ever consider previously. He could get -2 or -3 to hit in combat, essentially making his 40 marauders impossible to damage whilst reducing bravery by 4 of enemy units. And he didn't even take advantage of the Plaguetouched warband's rule of 7!

 For every hidden gem people may have over-looked you have a hundred warscrolls that are exactly as bad as everyone believes they are. And even those hidden gems aren't actually hidden, people are generally aware of powerful combinations being possible with underused units, the issue is that such things can sometimes be crowded out by other strategies.

The idea that 'no netlister would ever consider[Achaon] previously.' is a blatant misrepresentation of the article. It states in the very next paragraph that people were already experimenting with variations on the same type of Archaon lists.

I think the issue is that people don't define terms properly and try to use 'netlister' and 'listbuilder' interchangeably. Netlisters do what hughwyeth suggests here and more or less blindly follows the consensus, hopping from power list to power list. These are not usually the people who do well at major events. List builders are the ones who are working toward creating that loose consensus and are also evolving it as time goes on. No listbuilder worth their salt will fully dismiss a 'borderline' unit( a good example here would be something like a Pallador) but the hard truth is that most units are not 'Great', 'good', 'borderline', or even 'specialized'. The majority of units in the game are trash, and get dismissed not because they're 5-10% below the powercurve, but because they're 40-60% below the powercurve. Shadow warriors are the example I always use for this. Shadow-warriors would be a hard sell at 120pts, at 200 you'd have to be nuts to take them. You're paying 40 skinks for a 20 skink unit.

The people who say 'well only this list from this faction can win!' are usually wrong(except about kharadron, poor kharadrons), but the people who think 'oh all these units that the INTERNET says are bad just haven't found their niche yet!' are usually wrong too.

[Beliman]

1 hour ago, Karol said:

Ok, I get it,card games have it too, when a deck becomes too good and too popular, people start running deck made to counter it and the play rate of the "best" deck drops a lot.  There is a huge difference in cost between geting a LoL character. If somewhere tzeench becomes dominant, very few people can go and buy a new army made just to counter tzeench lists, specially as those counter list will be probablly useless when tzeench players get nerfed or stop playing.

Well, that's not what I'm trying to say. 

In my example, Morgana wasn't used to counter the Koreans, it was used because it was a normal EU-meta pick  and the other metas (specially the Big Meta) didn't had enough experience versus her. The rookie that picked herexplained that he had more experience with her than other normal Big-Meta picks.

P.D: Sorry for the off-topic, but I want to make it clear that a counter pick or tailored building lists is not what I was trying to explain in my last  post.

[Furuzzolo]

The Age of Sigmar app can be updated, now. Very good interface and the warscrolls are lighter and easier to navigate. 

[Enoby]

2 minutes ago, Furuzzolo said:

The Age of Sigmar app can be updated, now. Very good interface and the warscrolls are lighter and easier to navigate. 

I really like the asthetics, but it seems like they've not put the new FW warscrolls on the app - I hope they update them there soon. In addition, looks like you can't take a daemon prince in Azyr for a god specific list, so I hope they'll change that to what it use to be.

[grungolah]

The mounted necromancer returns,  so I'm happy. 

[Furuzzolo]

Ok, do not chose a Skyport for you KO army, the app goes nutella.

 

[Jamopower]

Interesting that they have updated some of the changes on the scrolls but not all. For example the engine of gods have the results 14-17 and 18+ changed on the chart, but still includes the summon spell. 

[Furuzzolo]

Is there a way to print the new warscrolls from the App?

[Jamopower]

Hmm. I was bit of disappointed on the content in the new General's handbook. Maybe it'sbecause the last one was so great, but the amount of new content was very light. Are the multiplayer scenarios in the core book now? 

[Infeston]

11 minutes ago, Jamopower said:

Hmm. I was bit of disappointed on the content in the new General's handbook. Maybe it'sbecause the last one was so great, but the amount of new content was very light. Are the multiplayer scenarios in the core book now? 

I was also a bit disappointed that they left some of the multiplayer rules out. I really liked the Divine Intervention rules, for example. 

Also I found it sad they they didn't include the "Fog of War" rules from the last General's Handbook for "Multiplayer games". I mean I still own the GHB2017, but anyone interested in those rules for mutiplayer can't get them anymore.

 

For anyone who doesn't know the Fog of War rules for Multiplayer games:

You had the possibilitly to use those rules in Multiplayer games if you want. The rules were that you can't communicate about tactics with the other player you are playing with. But there were exceptions.

1. You can talk with your friend about tactics if both your generals are 3" close to each other or at the start of the battleround you could exchange notes with each other about the tactics. 

2. You are not allowed to coordinate your charges with your opponent.

 

These rules made some interesting multiplayer games and also made multiplayer a bit more realistic if you wanted to include these rules.

[Jamopower]

Yeah shame, my best games of AoS have all been with more than two players.