Age of Sigmar: Second Edition

[Turgol]

10 minutes ago, Barkanaut said:

That’s the downside of a quick growing community. Not much experience. Honestly with how balanced 8th is I think we’re good. I just hope that they make the rules a little distinct from each other as I don’t want to play a 40k clone. AoS should have its own nuances. 

Indeed. And if my social medial reading skills are not failing me, a substantive growth in the community should follow after 2nd edition. I have read quite a bit of AoS reluctant sites and communities in Spain and Germany showing interest for example. Will the very British AoS community become bigger and more cosmopolitan? Time will tell! One thing is sure: if it does, community is sure to turn increasingly similar to what WHFB community was. Which is quite exciting and dangerous at the same time!

[Rogue Explorator]

17 minutes ago, Richelieu said:

You were hoping for more?  You wanted characters to be invincible to shooting?  I am not a fan of lookout sir.  Surgically removing your opponent's synergies was one of the many strategies that made AoS so dynamic.  Now there is one less way to play the game.  I do not think this is a positive, nor do I think shooting armies were enough of a problem to warrant the change.

I think this is less an adressing of a balance issue as a thematic one. AoS is a game of epic fantasy. The heroes going down first in a targeted hail of arrows does not fit the theme and GW has shown themselves chronically concerned with building the games so they match theme. In bad times, to the degree of sacrificing balance, playability, appeal and accessability.

A -1 to hit is hardly the end of character assassination. View it as an additional level of challenge, where before shooting down a Bloodbound hero was as easy as killing a handful of Bloodwarriors, you now have to make an effort to take out the more worthy target. Even in 40k, where characters can not be targeted unless they are closest, outmanouvering the unit or picking the right tool for the job still allows picking of characters.

To be completely honest, I do not see where "surgically removing" comes in when heroes can simply be fokus fired on as easily as any other unit with little to no way to keep out of LoS.

13 minutes ago, Turgol said:

It is really an impressive fact, but very telling of human behavior, that TGA very quickly became what it was created not to be: your usual Warseer or Dakka forum where you are very likely going to find mostly whining at how GW sucks big time because your army suddenly is the worst in the world (because of a minor tweak). This thread is the equivalent of Dakka’s 8th edition 40k thread or Warseer 8th edition WHFB one. A big achievement going from a small haven towards the mainstream forum, but it did come with a cost.

It is the new edition bug, I have seen it throw the most restrained and sophisticated of gaming communities into crisis and doommongering. Compared to even a lukewarm D&D edition war, this is all still very civil and respectful, imo.

Every revealed change so far has been a moderate modification where sweeping change seemed likely. At this rate, the level of hobby leveing discontents will be small, though no doubt any that do come up will air their grievances.

I think the dust will settle soon enough and I really do not think AoS will be much changed afterwards (which is well and good, imo, AoS is great, it needs no more than fine tuning).

4 minutes ago, Turgol said:

Indeed. And if my social medial reading skills are not failing me, a substantive growth in the community should follow after 2nd edition. I have read quite a bit of AoS reluctant sites and communities in Spain and Germany showing interest for example. Will the very British AoS community become bigger and more cosmopolitan? Time will tell! One thing is sure: if it does, community is sure to turn increasingly similar to what WHFB community was. Which is quite exciting and dangerous at the same time!

AoS has been growing astonishingly since I joined it. I do wonder though how many are already active wargamers, how many are returning from a long hiatus and how many are entirely new to the hobby. Sadly, I do not think even GW has any halfway usable figures on the split.

[Urauloth]

3 hours ago, Burf said:

New warscrolls too?! Man that's annoying. So anyone who uses paper has to flip through the main rulebook for the general rules, the FaQs for clarification, the GHB for new warscrolls, and their battletome for unchanged warscroll.

The edition doesn't sound bad so far but it's certainly edging into 'irritating'.

Is this satire? I don't think I can tell any more.

I'd say I like the new LOS!, but it mostly benefits the things I play or plan on playing, so I suppose I would.  I'm pretty confused about the moster exclusion, though, when there are behemoth heroes running around. Maybe the idea is that a regular sized hero on a platform (like a coven throne) can still get out of the way if they're warned, while a big beast can't because they're too large a target? Still seems iffy, though. I guess we'll have to see the book for proper context.

[rokapoke]

I’ll predict, with nothing to go on but hope, that attack’s that deal mortal wounds on a particular roll will only activate on “unmodified” natural dice rolls. So you won’t be able to buff your Bloodletter bomb to make a billion mortal wounds (but you can definitely generate a ton of successful hit rolls). 

Just one man’s opinion. 

[Richelieu]

7 minutes ago, rokapoke said:

I’ll predict, with nothing to go on but hope, that attack’s that deal mortal wounds on a particular roll will only activate on “unmodified” natural dice rolls. So you won’t be able to buff your Bloodletter bomb to make a billion mortal wounds (but you can definitely generate a ton of successful hit rolls). 

Just one man’s opinion. 

With every rules adjustment that has been revealed my belief that this will be the case has grown stronger and stronger.

[Chikout]

I think a little concern about a new edition is a natural and unavoidable thing. Letting people air their concerns and come to terms with some of the changes before the new editions hits is also probably a good thing. I also understand of Ko players especially as the rumoured changes all seem to be nerfing KO. I have been following the dakka thread on aos2, and this forum is still very restrained in comparison.   It was fun yesterday though, seeing people go from anxiety to relief in a matter of minutes as the look out sir was first revealed, then explained.

At this, still early, stage, I think if we just took the changes we have seen so far , AOS would be a better game. The double turn is a little less frequent, command abilities give more choice to players, without being overpowered. The new abilities can be taken by any hero. So even armies that only have one command ability hero will now have 4 to choose from at any time. Warscroll battalions go form an auto ignore in many lists, to something that might be considered. I still think a lot of people will choose to spend the points on more minis. Do you want three more command abilities or 30 witch Aelves?

The look out sir rule makes heroes just a bit more survivable. As it stands now the default choice for a shooting army is to snipe the hero. The new rule means I would be tempted to shoot off a small unit first if it removed the hero’s -1. It adds another choice to something that was thoughtless before. It aslo makes players pay a bit more attention to positioning.

I will be very interesting to see how the rest of the changes turn out. 

Another small change I would like to see is an increase to the range of unbinding spells. This would work nicely to balance some more powerful spells. 

I am also looking forward to the KO faction focus. Ko is a very popular army with some gorgeous minis. It is very much in gw’s interst to make sure they are fun to play and decently competitive in the new edition. I have a feeling they be one of the factions to get the most tweaks.  

[Brightstar]

1 hour ago, Rogue Explorator said:

It is the new edition bug, I have seen it throw the most restrained and sophisticated of gaming communities into crisis and doommongering. Compared to even a lukewarm D&D edition war, this is all still very civil and respectful, imo.

Every revealed change so far has been a moderate modification where sweeping change seemed likely. At this rate, the level of hobby leveing discontents will be small, though no doubt any that do come up will air their grievances.

I think the dust will settle soon enough and I really do not think AoS will be much changed afterwards (which is well and good, imo, AoS is great, it needs no more than fine tuning).

AoS has been growing astonishingly since I joined it. I do wonder though how many are already active wargamers, how many are returning from a long hiatus and how many are entirely new to the hobby. Sadly, I do not think even GW has any halfway usable figures on the split.

I absolutely agree with you. I havent seen anyone say yet they were quitting or leaving the hobby. I'm not. I really wanted some fine tuning and for the most part feel like they have done an excellent job.  

I was an active wargamer before AOS dropped for nearly a decade. I've been playing it since it dropped. I did not play warhammer before.

[Brightstar]

21 minutes ago, Chikout said:

IWarscroll battalions go form an auto ignore in many lists, to something that might be considered. I still think a lot of people will choose to spend the points on more minis. 

Another small change I would like to see is an increase to the range of unbinding spells. This would work nicely to balance some more powerful spells. 

I am also looking forward to the KO faction focus. Ko is a very popular army with some gorgeous minis. It is very much in gw’s interst to make sure they are fun to play and decently competitive in the new edition. I have a feeling they be one of the factions to get the most tweaks.  

I still dont see why they just didnt get the axe? Why not find some other way to include this concept other than try to fix something that just doesn't work well except in some few cases? Formations in 7th & 8th 40k don't work well and the battalions have similar problems. They are allegiant ability light mostly - since you pay for them - or a way to power stack allegiance and/or scroll combos. Which is neat, but can pigeon hole quickly. 

There are other way battalion effects - not that the game needs them at all - could be included, especially from a narrative standpoint. 

I just dont see anyone in the community really being sad the day they go away.

But they are here to stay so......

I had no idea thr Ko perform sp well. No one plays them in my area. I mean they do, as squats

[Tittliewinks22]

56 minutes ago, Brightstar said:

I had no idea thr Ko perform sp well. No one plays them in my area. I mean they do, as squats

They don't really. There's only one list (zilfin clown car) that occasionally puts up results.

You never see any of the other 5 named cities or a custom build.  You also never see a zilfin list other than clown car place.

I don't have a clue why there is so much hate for shooting, they just released 4 battletomes that have hard counters for shooting lists (DoK, LoN, Nurgle, IDK)... I would prefer a rock paper scissors where some armies are strong vs some strategies while soft to others.  Makes taking "all comer" lists much more enjoyable.

[Brightstar]

2 minutes ago, Tittliewinks22 said:

They don't really. There's only one list (zilfin clown car) that occasionally puts up results.

You never see any of the other 5 named cities or a custom build.  You also never see a zilfin list other than clown car place.

I don't have a clue why there is so much hate for shooting, they just released 4 battletomes that have hard counters for shooting lists (DoK, LoN, Nurgle, IDK)... I would prefer a rock paper scissors where some armies are strong vs some strategies while soft to others.  Makes taking "all comer" lists much more enjoyable.

Thats really too bad. I was sort of hoping someone in our area would play them. We have a unique set up system and balancing the Ko in it would have been challenging but fun. 

The problem with shooting has nothing to do with the shooting mechanics per se - which are fun as is - but how those mechanics interact with the rest of the system.  It doesnt really work. They really need to address that or all the shooting based armies are going to continue to have it really bad or way too good. Hopefully they will. We'll have to wait and see.

One option I seriously doubt they'll take is to fold shooting into the combat phase and balance it from there - something like choose to shoot or melee, etc. Then move some shooting attacks to melee, like dragon breath attacks, treelord vines, etc.

The shooting mechanics are a new thing for gw - and in some cases for wargames - something their traditional design has trouble handling. LOTR has the same problem and they have never gotten it right there either. Its either too good, terrible, or costs too much to be effectual.

[Chikout]

When I said Ko were popular, I meant that they have a lot of very nice models which a lot of people bought. They have been hampered by a battletome with poor internal balance which makes them less fun to play.

Hopefully the next edition will redress some of those problems.

 

[Olincay]

My god it's a -1 to hit in the shooting phase, it's not the end of the world. 

[Ar-Pharazôn]

Just now, Olincay said:

My god it's a -1 to hit in the shooting phase, it's not the end of the world. 

It's a Games Workshop product and this is the internet. It may as well be the IRL End Times.

[Killax]

9 hours ago, chord said:

Except in my area it's almost impossible to find people who play with anything less than the core rules.  So unless I want to play alone I'm forced to use all the core rules.  Not everyone has a thriving community

We don't really have a massive AoS community here either. In large part thanks to the core rules, as the shift came with GH2016 in terms of actually having a sufficient large enough group to consider it a community  

So if anything I'd say in order to have a community grow I'd say be the first to thake the next step. A new edition also means another chance to discover the game as the whole metagame and every units use will be reset and needs to be redescovered. 

8 hours ago, DanielFM said:

New warscrolls? Were are they intended to be amended? GHB? New rulebook? Or is it just speculation?

There is a suggestion that some Warscrolls will be updated too. Quite logical because this is what happened since the first Battletome's arrived really.
But so far we havn't seen a complete "1st to 2nd edition updated Warscroll" and to be honest I don't think there will be that many anyway.

Other than that, like before GH2018 will contain the costs of units and Battalions so I honestly don't think that many Warscrolls will or should change. In a way it would be a bit like GH2017. I actually expect Battalion Warscrolls to change before Unit Warscrolls for example.

9 hours ago, Karol said:

That doesn't really help kunnin rukk or other footbased shoting army like the free people gunlines.  And again my army has 0 shoting, and almost no casting, so it is not like I have something to lose here. Technicly I should be happy about shoting nerfs, but I understand that some serious rules rewriting is going to have to happen on the battletome level to make those armies work.

In terms of Kunnin Rukk and Free People gunlines, you believe they need help? Help to win more tournaments and lead to such a simple strategy you can do it with your eyes closed? 

The oddity I see here in these types of posts is that players state shooting is nerfed. To which I say, where does this idea come from and where is this based upon?

- We don't know if there is a "stand and fire" rule in the new core rules.
- We don't know the cost of shooting units per GH2018.
- In addition to all of that, having a Hero with a -1 to hit hardly means you can't shoot it to death. It just means that instead of just focussing 10 shots on a Hero to get the job done your more likely to use the full unit/20 shots.

In reality all this nerf talk is very incorrect, by large because it completely works on assumptions. It considers GH2017 costs as fact and assumes this is all there is to the Core rules. How I thought this community was actually smarter as your typical DakkaDakka rant topic. I'm quite sad about it.

[Karol]

9 hours ago, Turragor said:

He can fold his wings up like all birds and he can stop shooting planets and sparkles out his butt.

And a khorn DP can not?

[Jamopower]

1 hour ago, Tittliewinks22 said:

 

I don't have a clue why there is so much hate for shooting, they just released 4 battletomes that have hard counters for shooting lists (DoK, LoN, Nurgle, IDK)... I would prefer a rock paper scissors where some armies are strong vs some strategies while soft to others.  Makes taking "all comer" lists much more enjoyable.

Having whole armies themed so that they are strong against some armied and weak against others is quite problematic way of designing this kind of games. As I believe typical gaming group is like ours where there are 3-6 players that have chosen their forces mostly because of what fits their fancy model- and themewise. Now if from those armies army A beats army B 75% of time and army C beats army A with the same ratio, it can get pretty stale. 

It's essentially the reason why I have stopped playing 40k even when I still have over 500 painted models for it. The game result is often clear after the first roll off for the turn. The rest of the game is just seeing the result.

[Karol]

5 hours ago, Rogue Explorator said:

The best way to balance an asymetric game like a wargame is to make (sensible) changes as frequently as possible. That does not make for a perfect balance, but at the very least it ensures that everyone gets times of strength and times of weakness and usually it will get a closer aproximation to balance with every round.

The thing is in a system where they change the rules every year, the balance only happens if all factions have more or less the same number of units to play with. Prosecuturs get uber buffed, judicators nerfed, well you still can play stormcast eternals just fine. You play a faction that has like 4 units, out of which 2 are valid and GW nerfs the good ones, there is a chance they did not buff the other two enough to make them the core of the list. Not to mention that in some fringe cases like BRC, if suddenly ytheis and hunters get buffed, it matters little to BRC players who picked up their factions, because of deep love for wool rhinos and mastodonts.

 

5 hours ago, silentdeathz said:

Longstrikes were barely passable before, and were used as hero snipers (outside of aetherstrike). Now they are very noticeably weaker. That is not something that you "adapt tactics" for, that is just an objective fact.

Maybe they will get to ignore the rules for Look out? I think a lot of the problems come from how the faction write ups are presented. Half or more of it is fluff, that matters not when it comes to playing the game, and the rest is so smoke and mirrors, it is hard to imagine what the game designers were thinking. When MtG desig team talks about new arc they are a lot more clear not just with game mechanics, but what they want to achive, plus they show or at least talk about game play data to strenght their arguments. I don't know how those write up looked in the past, as this is my first edition switch and I started less then a month ago, but I think they had very little time to actually write things down or the whole design team got changed out not so long ago.   For the slanesh write up for example, they spend 80% of the article about unimportant things, then thrown in a blurb of rules, and the rest is "fluff" army talk "they are fast", nothing about what the set ups should look like, or how they think the HQ/suppport section of slanesh armies should look like. They could at least give some data on what people are playing in slanesh armies, and use it as an argument to change or not change rules. This unit is clearly used a lot, clearly people want to use it, so we do this with it. That option or that does not, here is how we plan to change it and this is how it would points wise in a 2k pts army. And then maybe sprinkle some some, and this is a good ally section for slaves of darkness, which will have nice interaction in the coming slaves army write up. Right now all the articles seem to be very click baity, and at make people angry or go in to GW-can-do-nothing-wrong fanboi mode. And neither of the two are good for the game in the long run.

[Ollie Grimwood]

They’re teaser articles they are meant to give a little flavour and build the hype. They’re a trailer and not intended to give away all the detail. 

 

[Mikeymajq]

I really like the new changes so far!

the build-up of command pts will be a cool part of the game where you can tell if someone is loading up for a big combo. Also you can probably find yourself in situations where you end up having to spend them to react to your opponent or to avoid heavy losses, which is cool because if someone is loading up you can try to force them to spend command pts. 

Look out sir is a nice middle ground and should help the footslogging heroes to stick around a bit longer.  I feel it's better for Aos than porting over the 40k version so I'm glad they did it this way.

The alteration to the turn order/initiative roll is actually a house rule we've had for ages and it works great. Slightly less chance of a double turn and no need to reroll a bunch of times

 

My only concern is magic becoming too powerful and a few spells might be thew next hero sniping tools as LOS! won't affect them. But that's just a concern I have probably stemming from all the focus on magic lately and may be completelt unfounded?

[syph0n]

I'm also big into fighting games and the community is also really divided, argumentative and there's a group of 'wait and see' and a group of 'not playing anymore' every time a season update drops and the buffs, nerfs and general adjustments occur. Then everyone just carries on playing despite what they say and things often don't turn out the way they imagined because without the fullness of time and insight, it's hard to judge on previews and rumours. 

Let people get it out of their system, but let's also continue to say 'it's worth seeing and playing it when it drops before we decide'. It's ultimately good people are passionate, but both sides can be overly forceful in their opinion. Change is always something that happens, but it rarely pleases everyone, especially for what is truthfully an expensive hobby. 

I trust GW with AoS however. Provided the core rules remain free, whilst it's still so easy to get warscrolls and points values, it gets my vote. I can spend my money on models and not have a paywall of rule books or codices preventing play. Equally, it looks like v2 is adding value to the extra materials around matched play, which is win win and provides incentive to pick up the extras around the modelling aspect. And let's remember, models come before game as GW core business... 

[hughwyeth]

2 minutes ago, syph0n said:

Let people get it out of their system, but let's also continue to say 'it's worth seeing and playing it when it drops before we decide'. It's ultimately good people are passionate, but both sides can be overly forceful in their opinion. Change is always something that happens, but it rarely pleases everyone, especially for what is truthfully an expensive hobby. 

Remember how angry people were with the death of the Old World and the new AoS. Nerd anger is usually misplaced. 

[Jamopower]

29 minutes ago, Mikeymajq said:

 

The alteration to the turn order/initiative roll is actually a house rule we've had for ages and it works great. Slightly less chance of a double turn and no need to reroll a bunch of times

 

Somewhere a bunch of Dragon ogres are crying

[stato]

44 minutes ago, Mikeymajq said:

The alteration to the turn order/initiative roll is actually a house rule we've had for ages and it works great. Slightly less chance of a double turn and no need to reroll a bunch of times

Had a game last week and we had to re-roll a priority roll draw 3 times in a row!  It was so tense!  Im going to be sad when that goes and its just a straight result on the first roll every time, where is the drama ?

[Killax]

17 minutes ago, hughwyeth said:

Remember how angry people were with the death of the Old World and the new AoS. Nerd anger is usually misplaced. 

Well not totally, but luckily Generals Handbook came to adress the wishes for those who wanted some form of restriction, some form of foundation for playing each other without needing to boil it down to a debate of what is "fair".
This time around, mainly thanks to Warhammer Community, GW actually communicates what is up and what is changed. This wasn't the case for Age of Sigmar at all. It suddenly was there and people expected more to come but that really took a while...

From someone who's playing a ton of systems though it actively adds to army character if Heroes arn't the easiest targets to kill. If shooting occurs at all in 'close combat' I've always found it extremely odd to see it occur up to the other side of the table.

To me, what is revealed so far, feels logical. Command abilities being there for heroes who arn't the General adds to their usefulness. Even if it means that there is a functional limit to how much it can be used. For those who worry a lot about Kharadron Overlords, I really still expect the Flying rule to be akin to that of 40K also. Meaning many of the KO ships will have an added functionality in the game. To me again, this makes sence. As the Flying units should still be able to focus on other targets if they want to. They arn't on the same level as their opponents, or at least have the option not to be...

All in all I don't think anger is really where the "assumption posting" comes from. In almost all cases it stems from a fear of needing to adapt again. People usually don't like change and why it applies so much for a hobby like AoS comes from the fact that the miniatures/armies allready cost additional time to create so changes will always lead to more time being invested into the hobby.

So while I get it it's only logical that this game needs to be accessible to newer players too, that rules can be found in a few logical places instead of:
- Core Rules
- Core Rules FAQ
- Generals Handbook
- Generals Handbook FAQ
- Grand Allegiance FAQ
- Allegiance/Battletome FAQ

If by good design at least the core rulesset will lead to something that can do without FAQ for the time things get 'easier'. Ideally it also incorporates good examples. Because this is the prime issue I have found with AoS's design since the getgo. Rules are often open to own ideas and this will lead to confusion.
While it's a different topic altogether, the prime reason why points are so important to the game if you are/want to be a larger community is that it skips steps of 'debates about balance' which in the end often also leads to confusion.
Rules should always help to speed up to the actual gaming, not increase non-gaming time to debate about rules.

 

[Aginor]

8 hours ago, Richelieu said:

You were hoping for more?  You wanted characters to be invincible to shooting?  I am not a fan of lookout sir.  Surgically removing your opponent's synergies was one of the many strategies that made AoS so dynamic.  Now there is one less way to play the game.  I do not think this is a positive, nor do I think shooting armies were enough of a problem to warrant the change.

No. Invincible would be both bad for the game and kinda immersion breaking.

But yeah I think that for a synergy based army that has rather squishy heroes sniping is not fun at all. And we have too many of those to ignore them.

Having units in the game that can just kill them, maybe even with mortal wounds, is something that needed a counter. I think that some of them are so good that a -1 to hit probably will not prevent them from doing that but I guess we will see how the other changes work to really judge if it is enough or not.

But the other side is important too:
If you cannot easily snipe heroes but lack the power to destroy the hordes of minions they throw at you that is just as bad of course.