AoS 2 and what it means for Destruction

[novakai]

2 minutes ago, blueshirtman said:

Man I get that some people are taking AoS not very serious. But imagine someones anwser to how the new toyota is going to be , was that it may go up in flames 9 out of 10 times, but at least the flames arepatrician shade of cobalt blue and not some pleb red/yellow.

Well all one can do is wait and do what mr Sherriff says. Play soup and wait for a battle tome.
 

Cars have more Business Liability then Miniature war gaming rules

[Skabnoze]

I have been reading the Legions of Nagash book lately, because I have wanted a ghostly wraith army since the 90s and NightHaunt has me excited.

One thing that stands out to me for Legions of Nagash is that it is mainly a collection of Allegiances.  In addition, most of those allegiances are slight variations of each other that are based around named characters.  They have the basic allegiances in there like Soulblight and standard Death grand alliance, but the main thing is the allegiances for Nagash and each of the Mortarchs.

If they were to make a similar book for Destruction (Waaagh!  Gordrakk) then either they would need to add new names characters or figure out some other way to organize the various allegiances within the book.  Destruction only has a single named character and that seems like a very limiting factor for this type of book.  I get the feeling that Destruction is still in a weird enough place that GW probably does not know how to make a decent anthology battletome.

One way that they could solve this is to have the allegiances contain rules to create the hero they are designed for - like how the Ironsunz allegiance has the extra rules for Dakkbad.

But Destruction, more than any other grand alliance, should really have its armies built around notable warlords.  Right now we don’t have any aside from Gordrakk so it seems like it would be tough to make the anthology battletome without solving that issue.

[blueshirtman]

11 minutes ago, novakai said:

Cars have more Business Liability then Miniature war gaming rules

Well to be more hobby close, lets hope that grots/brc won't end up like no mans sky or Solo.

 

12 minutes ago, Skabnoze said:

One thing that stands out to me for Legions of Nagash is that it is mainly a collection of Allegiances.  In addition, most of those allegiances are slight variations of each other that are based around named characters.

Yeah, I remember reading someones tactica about undead, and they pointed out how with the same models they can play different legions. That is very cool. As much as I disliked stuff being linked to big kits and named characters, which destruction doesn't have.

It would be really cool if we could take the same 3 big beasts and either play a BCR scouting party, or the main thrust, or the read guard where according to fluff huskards are priests that can control weather.  I think it would rise the number of players and sells for GW.

 

[Skabnoze]

8 minutes ago, blueshirtman said:

Well to be more hobby close, lets hope that grots/brc won't end up like no mans sky or Solo.

While Solo may not have been a massive box office success on opening weekend (Memorial Day is always the worst movie weekend in the US - dumb date for them to release on), I have to say that I loved the movie.  It won’t win any oscars, but to me it was just fun all the way through.  If all of the new Star Wars movies had simply been fun like that then I don’t think anyone would have complained about any of them.

I am old enough that I saw Return of the Jedi in the theater as a kid and I grew up with the original trilogy on VCR and I watched the snot out of those movies.  I really liked Rogue One, but Solo was the first Star Wars movie I have seen since the 80s that just had the fun feeling of the originals.  The prequels tried to capture that but just couldn’t.  Neither has the new trilogy.  But for me Solo did pull that off.  A fun movie was all that I wanted and I was very happy to get it.  I have seen it twice now.

So, if Grots were to end up getting something that was not amazing but a whole lot of fun then I would be absolutely happy to have it.

[blueshirtman]

Ok am not going to go in to why Solo was a bad movie, it is enough to not be happy about one thing here.

What example is going be better? Someone giving you warm beer, but saying you should be happy, because the glass your drinking from looks cool?

[svnvaldez]

19 minutes ago, Skabnoze said:

While Solo may not have been a massive box office success on opening weekend (Memorial Day is always the worst movie weekend in the US - dumb date for them to release on), I have to say that I loved the movie.  It won’t win any oscars, but to me it was just fun all the way through.  If all of the new Star Wars movies had simply been fun like that then I don’t think anyone would have complained about any of them.

I was in Vegas for Memorial Day and didn't see Solo till yesterday. I loved it. I also liked rogue one. I hate the speed they pump out marvel movies but If we get one spin off star wars movie each year I'll see them all.

[novakai]

If Moonclan get a battletome this year, I am more optimistic that it be written on the stronger side mainly because the last four batletomes have been done really well IMHO.

Plus there always that Stigma of power creep for every new battletome released

[Skabnoze]

9 minutes ago, novakai said:

If Moonclan get a battletome this year, I am more optimistic that it be written on the stronger side mainly because the last four batletomes have been done really well IMHO.

Plus there always that Stigma of power creep for every new battletome released

I don’t ever expect goblins of any kind to end up on the stronger end of the power curve.  If it happens then that’s great - but I won’t hold my breath for it.  All I hope for is an army that has a lot of fun and flavorful abilities.

My current issue with Moonclan is that this flavor abilities either trigger infrequently enough that they might as well not exist or there is very little opportunity for synergy with the ones that can be regularly triggered.

Spiderfang is pretty great in that all of the available units have fun and thematic synergy abilities.  The problem with Spiderfang is simply that it is such a shallow allegiance.  They just don’t have enough options - but what they have is flavorful and great. 

Gitmob is somewhere in between Moonclan and Spiderfang in this regard.  Gitmob has a lot of stuff, but like Moonclan there is not a whole lot of flavor abilities and not much synergy.  But like Spiderfang and unlike Moonclan what little synergy and flavor abilities that Gitmob has are good and actually do combine.

Again, all I want is for something that has some fun shenanigans.

[Donal]

13 hours ago, Skabnoze said:

I don’t ever expect goblins of any kind to end up on the stronger end of the power curve.  If it happens then that’s great - but I won’t hold my breath for it.  All I hope for is an army that has a lot of fun and flavorful abilities.

My current issue with Moonclan is that this flavor abilities either trigger infrequently enough that they might as well not exist or there is very little opportunity for synergy with the ones that can be regularly triggered.

Again, all I want is for something that has some fun shenanigans.

The Moonclan double damage on 6s is amazing and is super reliable.

Re: their other flavour abilities, fanatics dying on doubles, manglers getting +1 on balls & chains on a double and squigs (colossal, mangler, cave) doing mortal wounds when they die is great.

Personally i love when someone asks the range of a colossal squigs and I say somewhere between 4" and 48".

I'll admit im definitely biased at the minute cause im loving moonclan over the other grot factions.

[broche]

I'm so disapointed at Giant at 160, they are so conservative. Every faction have much better option for 160 pts... 

[sporadicMike]

38 minutes ago, broche said:

I'm so disapointed at Giant at 160, they are so conservative. Every faction have much better option for 160 pts... 

2 khorgoraths

[kenshin620]

Well we know what those point savings are going towards, they're going towards spending points on Endless Spells in Matched Play! Also mentioned this on the grot topic but there doesn't seem to be any new allegiance traits or abilities. So yea, sucks to have an ogor army right now.

[Skabnoze]

The big reveal of the new box set, GHB, and spell box was great.  But I was saddened when they listed the Allegiances that are in the book and it was simply the same allegiances that were in the previous GHB.  Now, that does not mean that there won't be any new allegiances added, but at this point it feels pretty unlikely to me.  I hope that sometime soon they at least start talking about what their plans for Destruction are - because without the GHB adding some allegiances we will be left behind even more.  I am going to assume they have a plan for that, and I can be patient, but I would like to know a bit about what it is.

[broche]

I think they made it pretty clear over the past weeks that they would mostly keep the same allegiance ability, with minor rework to adapt to the new command point mechanic.

what we could hope is that the eventually release a new battletome à la Legion of Nagash style for rest of Destruction.

 

[Skabnoze]

On 6/4/2018 at 4:15 AM, Donal said:

The Moonclan double damage on 6s is amazing and is super reliable.

Re: their other flavour abilities, fanatics dying on doubles, manglers getting +1 on balls & chains on a double and squigs (colossal, mangler, cave) doing mortal wounds when they die is great.

Personally i love when someone asks the range of a colossal squigs and I say somewhere between 4" and 48".

I'll admit im definitely biased at the minute cause im loving moonclan over the other grot factions.

Let me preface this by saying that I too love Moonclan.  I have played an all Night Goblin army, through thick and thin, as my primary army since 1996 or so.  I have always played every variety of Orcs & Goblins from common goblins, forest goblins, black orcs, common orcs, savage orcs, to combined soup armies, but pure Night Goblin has been my favorite and always called to me.  I currently have about 2500 points of Age of Sigmar Moonclan in just squigs alone.  I have no idea how many Night Goblins I have, but it is somewhere between 350-500 of all types of models that have been released over the last 20 years.  I own probably 25+ fanatics (most of them metals).  I have every hero model that has been released for Night Goblins over that time and I have converted up a bunch more as fun projects.  I even have Night Goblin substitute models from non-GW companies that made cool looking stuff (Gamezone, Avatars of War, Rackham, etc).

I am familiar with every iteration of rules for Night Goblin units since 5th ed Fantasy, and I remember when those units worked well and when they did not.  When the army was actually good, and when it was something that GW relegated to just "fun" status but you were unlikely to win many games against a normal force.  For most of Warhammer Fantasy the core rules of the game were simply stacked against Goblins.  You had some fun random stuff, and if the dice went in your favor you could do very well - but most of the time you were a practice dummy for the opponent to beat the snot out of.  There was a few editions where Night Goblins were surprisingly good (early-mid 6th and all of 8th).

I don't disagree with your point that Moonclan currently does have flavor rules.  They do.  For the most part I greatly enjoy the effect of these rules (aside from the Warlord on Squig command ability - which is patently awful).

The rules for squigs causing damage when they die is great.  Cave Squigs have always had a rule where they would break loose from the handlers and run rampant.  Those rules have changed over multiple editions as to how they worked - but they have always been there.  This rule keeps that around and it is fun.  It was nice that they added some of that to the Colossal and the Mangler as well.  I like that.

I dislike the flavor rules for rolling doubles on a charge for most of the various Squig units.  The rules themselves are flavorful, but the trigger condition is awful and will happen so infrequently that the rule might as well not exist.  Some squig units have had similar rules in past editions, and despite playing this army for so long I can't really come up with many anecdotes for when I got to use them.  That is roughly the same rules as the system for critical-effects in Warmachine (roll doubles for an attack) and the critical abilities in that game are fairly worthless because they rarely ever trigger unless you have dice manipulation effects. 

Moonclan has zero ability to manipulate charge roll dice, so you are stuck with terrible odds to ever see these abilities in action.  The core rules state that you cannot move within 3" of an enemy.  This means that double 1s will always fail a charge - so there is one value that is gone.  That means best case you have a 5/32 (~15%) chance for these abilities to trigger.  But, you are also unlikely to be within 4" of a target for a charge and often not even within 6".  So most times you are looking at having these abilities trigger on an 8, 10, or 12 - which is 3/32 or 9%.  So we are talking about our "fun" abilities triggering less than 10% of the time in most cases.  You would be fine to pretty much forget that these abilities even exist.

That is what bothers me.  I like the abilities themselves, but I really don't like that you never really get to use them.  That is where the crux of my complaint lies.  Age of Sigmar, more than any previous edition of Warhammer Fantasy, is a game of synergies and neat abilities.  With that in mind I would like the army to have some synergistic abilities to either make those random abilities automatically trigger or to trigger much more frequently.  None of the units that those abilities are attached to are really overly amazing compared to other units in the game - even when those abilities are active.  I see no balancing reason why those abilities could not and should not happen more frequently.

The same thing goes for the Warlord's "stab em good" command ability.  The ability itself is neat, and it does have nice synergy with the basic unit of Grots.  But outside of that single interaction there is no synergy to be found.  There currently is no +X to Wound ability available to the army.  We also don't really have a unit with a high enough volume of attacks to effectively use an ability that random.  So, outside of Grots you are left hoping for really amazing rolls.  GHB '16 had a General's Trait that allowed you to hand out a +1 To Wound buff to a nearby unit, and you could use that in combination with "Stab em good" to do some fun shenanigans with Squigs or other units.  The squig-heavy Moonclan army that won a major tournament in that edition was built heavily around using that combo.  GHB '17 removed that ability entirely - and that was pretty much the only real synergy available for Squigs units.

I love the army as much as anyone.  I love playing it, despite it having warts, and I have played this army through thick and thin as long as I can remember playing Warhammer.  But this is the FIRST edition where the army might actually see developer attention to make it something more than an ultra-niche sub-faction within an army book.  Night Goblins have always been one of the scheming faction full of dirty tricks and underhanded tactics.  So, what I really want is for some of that to be present in the rules.  I would like to be able to explore synergies rather than having just 2 obvious ones.  I would like to have some tactics that involve more than simply "put some fanatics into your units".  Right now I view most of the army as somewhat of a design failure from the developers.  They injected a lot of flavor rules, but they attached them to conditions that are highly unlikely to let players really use them.  When your flavor rules hardly ever come into play then that flavor is usually lost.  And when your available synergy is highly limited to only a couple of effective cases then your army becomes wholly predictable - which is the exact opposite of what Night Goblins tactics have always been described as.

I am very glad that you are currently enjoying the army.  But be warned that I have seen a lot of goblin players drop the army over time simply because the rules don't always work well.  You have to really love the models & themes and be willing to have your army utterly self-destruct and just get plowed off the board by most armies that have better rules.  If Moonclan gets a full dedicated Battletome then my "pie in the sky" dream is that we actually get an army that allows someone who loves goblins to effectively compete.  I don't need it to be top-tier and the best in the game, but I would like something that allows me to explore all of the fun themes of Night Goblins & Squigs, explore different synergies, and present a decent challenge to my opponent.  While I am happy to own multiple different armies, I would be overjoyed if I did not have to look for a non-goblin army if I want to field a force that can fight effectively.  I am fine with crazy & random abilities - I just like them to have a decent chance to actually occur or mechanisms to increase the likelihood (or simply trigger it).

[kenshin620]

For the allegiance less factions, I can think of 4 possibilities

 

1. They are indeed working on rolled up LoN style books but the new books take priority so they haven't bothered to make new GHB allegiances since it would be a temp thing.

2. They're waiting for the meta to settle down before making any jumps (especially to avoid the 40k syndrome of "hey half the mini factions have the exact same bonus rules)

3. They don't bother because they don't sell much. (seems highly unlikely despite the cynic inside of me because...friggin Beasts of Chaos have their own despite only being a fraction of a faction of what they once were)

4. They're lazy. (also actually seems unlikely given they made rules for artifacts and spells for all 8 magic realms)

[Skabnoze]

26 minutes ago, kenshin620 said:

For the allegiance less factions, I can think of 4 possibilities

 

1. They are indeed working on rolled up LoN style books but the new books take priority so they haven't bothered to make new GHB allegiances since it would be a temp thing.

2. They're waiting for the meta to settle down before making any jumps (especially to avoid the 40k syndrome of "hey half the mini factions have the exact same bonus rules)

3. They don't bother because they don't sell much. (seems highly unlikely despite the cynic inside of me because...friggin Beasts of Chaos have their own despite only being a fraction of a faction of what they once were)

4. They're lazy. (also actually seems unlikely given they made rules for artifacts and spells for all 8 magic realms)

These are fair points.  My hope is that it is indeed #1, but I would not rule out #3 or #4 either.

For the sake of completeness I think we need to add another:

5.  Nobody on the current design team plays or is otherwise interested in the Destruction subfactions and so there is not much enthusiasm or fresh ideas to work with them.

I add this last one to the mix because it is very much how the GW design team worked for decades.  The armies that got the most attention were very often in-house favorites with champions on the design team.  The armies that did not have internal champions received much less development in regards to rules, models, and background.

If we use 40k as a gauge of how GW is currently working it seems that they are much more interested in getting their games onto a broader footing for factions at a faster pace than they used to.  My hope is that production capacity and sales pipeline is what has prevented them from fleshing out Age of Sigmar as rapidly as they have done for 40k and with 40k winding down we will see a faster book release for Age of Sigmar.  

[kenshin620]

So all they really have to do is put out a job offer for Destruction Design team leader! That'll solve the issue! ????

[Sangfroid]

i think it’s a case of no news is good news 

Malign portents release 4 Harbingers and now 2 of them are getting armies built around them 

I cannot see a world where the same isn’t going to  happen to te Fungoid and Darkoath. 

So far destruction has had 3 books covering the classic Black orca, savage orc and ogres (I think BCR is where they want AoS ogres to sit for the time being sorry Gutbusters an Greenskinz) 

grots have to be next and I also think that they maybe working on destruction faction/factions that are totally new and fit the AoS “Destruction” faction theme (as opposed to shoehorning in old ideas) 

 

thats my guy feeling and I’m hoping next April we get a Destruction release in the same vein as KO and IDK ?????

[Zambo]

+1 to all of skabnoze’s comments 

As a long time O+G player it has often felt like the GW design team has little interest in making the boyz a competitive army choice, and it’s something you accept if you decide to stick with the army you love. 

AoS has given GW a unique chance to give each army a unique flavour and no army is more unique and flavoursome as the night goblins, I am sitting on 100s of painted models that I am desperately hoping get the much rumoured battletome, new models (plastic squigs please ?) and if it happens we may just get them sneaky synergies that will make us competitive. 

I would actually hate for MC to be top teer as it’s always been part of the fun to beat up the ‘big ladz’ but I’d happily take a solid mid 2nd teer capability 

[Ollie Grimwood]

Given what a harbinger is I’ll be a bit dissapppinted if  the Moonclan Harbinger isn’t one. 

[kenshin620]

Yea I am one that 100% believes in Moonclan, my posts are in reference to the non moonclan factions like spiderfang or gutbusters.

 

It doesn't help that Destruction also has a few subfactions that are made up of one unit type for no particular reason. Would it have been that difficult to have Maneaters as Gutbusters? I feel sorry for all the people who converted double pistol maneaters back in 8th when they had that hilariously silly double special rule.

[Malakree]

I kinda hope they release a second core box with moonclan vs slaves in it.

[gedrekt]

On 6/3/2018 at 11:14 AM, Skabnoze said:

I have been reading the Legions of Nagash book lately, because I have wanted a ghostly wraith army since the 90s and NightHaunt has me excited.

One thing that stands out to me for Legions of Nagash is that it is mainly a collection of Allegiances.  In addition, most of those allegiances are slight variations of each other that are based around named characters.  They have the basic allegiances in there like Soulblight and standard Death grand alliance, but the main thing is the allegiances for Nagash and each of the Mortarchs.

If they were to make a similar book for Destruction (Waaagh!  Gordrakk) then either they would need to add new names characters or figure out some other way to organize the various allegiances within the book.  Destruction only has a single named character and that seems like a very limiting factor for this type of book.  I get the feeling that Destruction is still in a weird enough place that GW probably does not know how to make a decent anthology battletome.

One way that they could solve this is to have the allegiances contain rules to create the hero they are designed for - like how the Ironsunz allegiance has the extra rules for Dakkbad.

But Destruction, more than any other grand alliance, should really have its armies built around notable warlords.  Right now we don’t have any aside from Gordrakk so it seems like it would be tough to make the anthology battletome without solving that issue.

I liked the Legions of Nagash book a lot. It did a good job of combining so many different sub-factions into a more cohesive force.

I've got lots of the old Orcs & Goblins models. I'd be really happy with a LoN-style book for them. When GHB 2017 came out and none of my Destruction stuff got any sort of Allegiance abilities I was thinking I'd give them until GHB 2018 to do something with Greenskinz and Gitmob or I'd just start converting the models over to 40k. The new edition and early GHB have convinced me to wait a little longer, and kenshin620's reasoning also gives me some hope.

[broche]

9 hours ago, Zambo said:

+1 to all of skabnoze’s comments 

As a long time O+G player it has often felt like the GW design team has little interest in making the boyz a competitive army choice, and it’s something you accept if you decide to stick with the army you love. 

AoS has given GW a unique chance to give each army a unique flavour and no army is more unique and flavoursome as the night goblins, I am sitting on 100s of painted models that I am desperately hoping get the much rumoured battletome, new models (plastic squigs please ?) and if it happens we may just get them sneaky synergies that will make us competitive. 

I would actually hate for MC to be top teer as it’s always been part of the fun to beat up the ‘big ladz’ but I’d happily take a solid mid 2nd teer capability 

Destruction was highly competitive between GHB 2016 and 2017. Boneplitterz remained Mid T1 for 2017. With 2018 adjustment they should be back on top (especially if Allies can use command ability)