AoS 2 and what it means for Destruction

[Sheriff]

what i mean is that at matched play events they will just ban it, like they ban firestorm allegiances, or like at LGT where the realm rules were ignored despite being in the pack. 

[svnvaldez]

10 minutes ago, Sheriff said:

what i mean is that at matched play events they will just ban it, like they ban firestorm allegiances, or like at LGT where the realm rules were ignored despite being in the pack. 

Also we have no idea what the matched play section of the GH will say. May have additional rules of 1 like no stacking of CA. May also say ignore realms unless both players agree. We have to watch and see. First impression of 7 unique realms with 7 spell lores is that wont work for tournaments and I hope this is a narative and open thing. Are we going to roll off each game? then take time to pick spells depending on the draw? Its going to add alot of time to each game.

[Skabnoze]

22 minutes ago, Sheriff said:

what i mean is that at matched play events they will just ban it, like they ban firestorm allegiances, or like at LGT where the realm rules were ignored despite being in the pack. 

Well events != matched play.

An event can make whatever modifications they want in their rules pack.  They will just have to decide what will be best for their attendance - since that is the primary goal of an event.

But, this seems like a fairly big part of the game.  We have not seen the full rules for the new edition, but this seems like a core part of the rules.  It feels to me like removing it would be akin to removing Allegiance Abilities - which people seem fine with using.  My gut feeling is that the most common way this will be handled in most matched play games will be the simple roll-off in the current rules.  As for events, I think they will use this and either use the player roll-off or else directly assign a realm to the various tables that they have.  It might be based on specific tables, or each round will be within a certain realm, or something like that.

Another alternative that some events may use is to simply treat the realm lores more like the old-school winds of magic lores and let each player choose the one that they want.  Although that seems like a fairly poor option (hey, but events do dumb stuff sometimes).

[svnvaldez]

Just now, Skabnoze said:

Well events != matched play.

 An event can make whatever modifications they want in their rules pack.  They will just have to decide what will be best for their attendance - since that is the primary goal of an event.

Very true. But I do not play events when it is not matched play.

[Skabnoze]

2 minutes ago, svnvaldez said:

 Are we going to roll off each game? then take time to pick spells depending on the draw? Its going to add alot of time to each game.

This was never a big issue in past editions of Warhammer Fantasy when you generated your spells randomly (pretty much every edition since they created a Magic phase).  Sorry, but I fail to see how this going to be a problem.  In any sort of major tournament people will most likely have planned out a preferred realm and set of spells and then a group of spells from other realms in case they don't get to use the realm that they want.

[Skabnoze]

1 minute ago, svnvaldez said:

Very true. But I do not play events when it is not matched play.

No, what I meant was matched play is a broader set of rules than a tournament event.  Tournament events generally provide an event packet and then they use a subset of the matched-play rules or they institute some house rules for that specific event that layer onto matched play.

Matched Play is the game framework that GW provides in the General's Handbook - and that is it.  If you are using more or less than what was presented in the GHB then you are playing a set of house rules.

[svnvaldez]

Just now, Skabnoze said:

This was never a big issue in past editions of Warhammer Fantasy when you generated your spells randomly (pretty much every edition since they created a Magic phase).  Sorry, but I fail to see how this going to be a problem.  In any sort of major tournament people will most likely have planned out a preferred realm and set of spells and then a group of spells from other realms in case they don't get to use the realm that they want.

Not to be abrasive but do you play large events? I am a regular in the USA and slow playing is a problem when additional rules are introduced through side missions in a pack. Top players know this and design there army to get through 4 rather than 5 turns in complex packs. I don't know all the rules of the new editions so I am reserving judgment but early thoughts are realm selection will be challenging at events.

4 minutes ago, Skabnoze said:

his was never a big issue in past editions of Warhammer Fantasy when you generated your spells randomly

I played often in 8th ed as well. I do not think AOS to 8th is a good comparison.

[svnvaldez]

5 minutes ago, Skabnoze said:

No, what I meant was matched play is a broader set of rules than a tournament event.  Tournament events generally provide an event packet and then they use a subset of the matched-play rules or they institute some house rules for that specific event that layer onto matched play.

Matched Play is the game framework that GW provides in the General's Handbook - and that is it.  If you are using more or less than what was presented in the GHB then you are playing a set of house rules.

Agreed. I typically play events that use limited house rules and side missions. My preference is GH + FAQ and a few house rule such as ovals are required.

[Skabnoze]

24 minutes ago, svnvaldez said:

Not to be abrasive but do you play large events? I am a regular in the USA and slow playing is a problem when additional rules are introduced through side missions in a pack. Top players know this and design there army to get through 4 rather than 5 turns in complex packs. I don't know all the rules of the new editions so I am reserving judgment but early thoughts are realm selection will be challenging at events.

I played often in 8th ed as well. I do not think AOS to 8th is a good comparison.

I have not gone to events the last few years, and not for Age of Sigmar. 

I fail to see how spell-lore selection at the start of the game is a slow-play issue.  Do these events not give an allotted time for set-up, review the opponents list, etc?  In the past, I used to see events have that part of the game sectioned off.  Maybe they don't do that anymore - although that seems like a poor idea.

As for 8th edition, the pre-battle and set up portion of the game has not changed much (and is fairly similar in almost every wargame).  Randomly selecting spells from your lores worked for Warhammer for over 25 years and many many more events have been run under those systems than for Age of Sigmar - so I fail to see how that comparison is not relevant.

[broche]

In a tournament (or matched play event) you need to submit army list that include allegeance, artefact and spell. For me there is two likely scenario for match play:

1. You won't be able to use Realm spell in match play.

2. GHB match play section will mention you'll get to choose a Realm that is your army origin and use that spell lore (or subfaction will have a dedicated Realm they can use)

i think 2. is the more likely.

[Malakree]

On the spell lore's I really hope for tournaments we get to pick a realm lore that we want. If I buy the Packman I want to be able to use the Packman, not lose a roll and suddenly my opponent get's to use his Swirly Orb and I can't use it because I don't have the model.

I really like the Arcane Bolt change, lowering the MW output available to everyone is just good. It also means that unique spells are now better in comparison,  Now Foot of Gork is a 10 but Arcane Bolt was CV 5 for D3 vs D6. Now you lose the 5-10 affect of 1 MW but get all the other advantages. Also Green Puke was irrelevant because Arcane Bolt existed, now it's actually a viable alternative. 

The Mystic Shield change is amazing for one reason, units/armies with re-rollable saves. Dragonlords, Fyreslayers and Stormcast are the best example for this, because they already have inbuilt rerolls mystic shield is now worthless to them, where as before it made their already broken affect even more bonkers. Armies without rerolls took a small hit but it's not irrelevant, it's now a less powerful choice but it's still an option. For example, on the cabbage, against 0 (or -1) rend it was (30/36) wounds would be saved where as now it's (24/36 + 4/36) = 28/36. So for every 18 saves we make we now take an extra unsaved wound. Compare that to a Stardrake which has gone from 1/36 to 7/36 and you can see that it's an enormous loss for them.

It's such an on the nose change it's unreal, I love the Mystic Shield change.

Lastly on Look out Sir I agree it should be either Behemoths or Only heroes with a wounds characteristic less than 10 (like 40k). Other than that I again love it, a general survivability buff to all our characters that needed it is awesome.

[Richelieu]

2 hours ago, svnvaldez said:

Not to be abrasive but do you play large events? I am a regular in the USA and slow playing is a problem when additional rules are introduced through side missions in a pack. Top players know this and design there army to get through 4 rather than 5 turns in complex packs. I don't know all the rules of the new editions so I am reserving judgment but early thoughts are realm selection will be challenging at events.

I played often in 8th ed as well. I do not think AOS to 8th is a good comparison.

Not only that, but I hope that GW recognizes that there are players like me who deeply enjoy list building and that a whole mechanic that adds a level of randomness to the carefully crafted lists we've developed is not enjoyable.  

I am hopeful though and will also reserve judgment.

[PlasticCraic]

45 minutes ago, Malakree said:

The Mystic Shield change is amazing for one reason, units/armies with re-rollable saves. Dragonlords, Fyreslayers and Stormcast are the best example for this, because they already have inbuilt rerolls mystic shield is now worthless to them, where as before it made their already broken affect even more bonkers. Armies without rerolls took a small hit but it's not irrelevant, it's now a less powerful choice but it's still an option. For example, on the cabbage, against 0 (or -1) rend it was (30/36) wounds would be saved where as now it's (24/36 + 4/36) = 28/36. So for every 18 saves we make we now take an extra unsaved wound. Compare that to a Stardrake which has gone from 1/36 to 7/36 and you can see that it's an enormous loss for them.

It's such an on the nose change it's unreal, I love the Mystic Shield change.

Do you think it will make their saves worse in practice though?  The two I come up against a lot are Stormcast and Sylvaneth.

Taking Stormcast: your Stardrake starts on a 3+.  With Staunch Defender it is on a 2+.  With a Castellant it is on a 1+.  Facing rend -1 it is now saving on 2s, rerolling 1s...just like it always did.  If anything it'll be worse because the Drakesworn Templar now gets to reroll 1s, so they get the whole shebang for cheaper.

Taking Sylvaneth: your Treelord Ancient is on a 3+.  Give him Oaken Armour and he is on a 2+.  Give him Gnarled Warrior and he is ignoring rend -1.  Now you have two choices: pop your Command Ability to get him on a 2+ rerolling 1s, or use Mystic Shield for the same effect, and save your Command Point for something else.  So his armour save is exactly as broken as it always was, but now he has two ways to achieve it, and situationally he can save the Command Point to make that 30 Dryads block impossible to shift with Battleshock.

So personally, I'm reading that and thinking it does nothing to fix the ridiculous saves that Order has access to, but makes things slightly worse for the Have Nots (i.e. Destruction).

[PlasticCraic]

@Malakree I'm not trying to be facetious here by the way, I genuinely hope I've got this wrong because 2+ RR 1s are my biggest pet peeve in the whole game.  So if I've missed something please do put me right!  

It's going to be great fun trying to kill a Bloodsecrator in cover and / or rocking a Bronzed Flesh.  Those natural 1s were the only way you could hurt him previously - now he's joined the Mortals Only club.

The armies that already have all the toys just have so many other ways to +1 their save (including cover saves on their non-Monster Behemoths) that they will be big beneficiaries of this change as far as I can see.

[Malakree]

16 minutes ago, PlasticCraic said:

The armies that already have all the toys just have so many other ways to +1 their save (including cover saves on their non-Monster Behemoths) that they will be big beneficiaries of this change as far as I can see.

This is the point though, most of the really obnoxious armies already had it. (I'm hoping that things like the Castellant are also changed in the same way but I suspect that's a pipe dream). In the example of the Bloodsecrator he's at 2+ RR1 with a single buff, if you then have any rend he drops to a 3+ RR1 again, where as previously he was at a 1+ to a 2+. Specifically for -1/-2 rend (which is what we run at) +1 save is way more painful to face than RR1's, because the 2+ RR1's is so much worse than 1+ and equally, as I said above, a lot of the most obnoxious one's ALREADY run RR1's or RRf for fyreslayers.

The treeman is a very specific example that has joined the ****** club but that's only because he's functionally being pushed into the 1+ now with RR1's. Honestly I'm still hoping that one of the rules change is save's can never be improved to above 2+, that would fix so many issues on it's own.

Essentially RR1's is strictly weaker than +1 save except in the very edge case where you can get to a 1+ save AND didn't already have RR1's, that's more niche than you would imagine.

 

[svnvaldez]

28 minutes ago, PlasticCraic said:

 I genuinely hope I've got this wrong because 2+ RR 1s are my biggest pet peeve in the whole game.  So if I've missed something please do put me right!  

How can you hate 2+ RR 1s??? It just means that beautiful models stay on the table longer... don't you like looking at beautiful models. I dont think your WAAC attitude is good for our hobby. (*statement is said with heavy sarcasm)

Sidenote: 90+ battleline means we can have even more beautiful models on the table!

OOOHHH and we have to nerf the stonehorn thou. That model is only 60 bucks not 100. Not expensive enough to be on the table

[PlasticCraic]

 

34 minutes ago, Malakree said:

This is the point though, most of the really obnoxious armies already had it. (I'm hoping that things like the Castellant are also changed in the same way but I suspect that's a pipe dream).

 

Yep, I think that's what my concern boils down to.  The units / armies that already had access to 2+ RR1s still have it. 

There will be other units that did not have access to 2+ RR1s that now do have it. 

So rather than solving the problem, it has made it worse (in the absence of any other changes we don't know about).

I do like your suggestion and that of @Skabnoze that a cap on how much you can buff your save can be would be beneficial to Matched Play.  The original Rule of One did exactly that (1s always fail so you always have a window), effectively limiting you to a 2+. 

It's the rerolls that killed that, and the rerolls that will continue to kill that.

[svnvaldez]

7 minutes ago, PlasticCraic said:

 It's the rerolls that killed that, and the rerolls that will continue to kill that.

Rerolls are a really big problem. It literally moves the chances of getting a wound through from 1/6 to 1/36 for those 2+. I have a feeling that whoever introduced them didn't really understand their effect.

Rerolls are my biggest single issue with Krukk as well. When its just 90 shots and procs its manageable. But 90 shots/rerolls/procs/rerolls more than doubles the time. I don't thing the multiplicative nature (rather than additive) was considered properly.

[Malakree]

So personally I can't see anything relevant which is getting it that doesn't already have it. I think the -1 weapons on Ardboyz, and anywhere else destro can get them, just became even more important. As long as you field rend you're strictly better off against anything which can't hit that 1+ and most of those would 1+ with rerolls anyway.

It really depends what else they do, if they are moving away from mass save stacking abilities then that would be the ideal. As it stands I think the increased access to MW (through different spells) is probably more impactful than the Mystic Shield change. 

As an example, that banishment spell is ****** disgusting in so many ways. Can't remove the RR2+ treeman on duality, just banish him to the back corner of the board!

Our biggest problem is going to be lack of good solid wizards, although I suspect we will see Fungoids everywhere at this rate, you can fit 5 in an army!

[PlasticCraic]

4 minutes ago, Malakree said:

As an example, that banishment spell is ****** disgusting in so many ways. Can't remove the RR2+ treeman on duality, just banish him to the back corner of the board!

Our biggest problem is going to be lack of good solid wizards, although I suspect we will see Fungoids everywhere at this rate, you can fit 5 in an army!

Yeah that Banishment looks amazing, so many applications.

Another one I spotted there (unfortunately not for Destruction) is the Gryph Hound.  You have to set up the Banished unit >9" away from your own models, and the Gryph Hound can trigger attacks on a set up at up to 10" away.  SC will be able to fling your Maw Krusha right into the firing line.

[Malakree]

Oh good, just what sc needed, more OP ****** for basically no points.

One vague hope I have is for a waaagh! Spell which is "increase the rend of target units weapons till your next hero phase."

That would fix a bunch of issues on the green side of destro

[Skabnoze]

4 hours ago, PlasticCraic said:

@Malakree I'm not trying to be facetious here by the way, I genuinely hope I've got this wrong because 2+ RR 1s are my biggest pet peeve in the whole game.  So if I've missed something please do put me right!  

It's going to be great fun trying to kill a Bloodsecrator in cover and / or rocking a Bronzed Flesh.  Those natural 1s were the only way you could hurt him previously - now he's joined the Mortals Only club.

The armies that already have all the toys just have so many other ways to +1 their save (including cover saves on their non-Monster Behemoths) that they will be big beneficiaries of this change as far as I can see.

The counter point to that is that we don’t know what other changes are lined up.

For me, the more armor stacking they pull out of the game the better.  I see this as a hopeful sign that they are looking to curb some of the poor design choices that they previously made.  I might be wrong and in practice these are terrible changes.  But there is no way to currently say since we don’t have a full picture.

All I can say is that I am hopeful by what I have seen so far.

[Skabnoze]

3 hours ago, svnvaldez said:

Rerolls are a really big problem. It literally moves the chances of getting a wound through from 1/6 to 1/36 for those 2+. I have a feeling that whoever introduced them didn't really understand their effect.

Rerolls are my biggest single issue with Krukk as well. When its just 90 shots and procs its manageable. But 90 shots/rerolls/procs/rerolls more than doubles the time. I don't thing the multiplicative nature (rather than additive) was considered properly.

I don’t think most game designers really understand math - least of all GW.  But I have seen rules and abilities in numerous games that are rather bonkers in terms of stats and often has me scratching my head about why that would be added to the game.

GW does a lot of things very well - but over the years I don’t find their rules designers to be as great as their artists, miniature designers, or the fluff teams.  These are the same people that have failed at basic proof-reading and editing for more than a quarter century.  They make games that are fun enough, I’ll give them that, but their games could be so so much more if they would not litter them with terrible design choices.

[PlasticCraic]

10 minutes ago, Skabnoze said:

The counter point to that is that we don’t know what other changes are lined up.

For me, the more armor stacking they pull out of the game the better.  I see this as a hopeful sign that they are looking to curb some of the poor design choices that they previously made.  I might be wrong and in practice these are terrible changes.  But there is no way to currently say since we don’t have a full picture.

All I can say is that I am hopeful by what I have seen so far.

For sure, I think that's absolutely right. 

What I think of as the abusive builds come from combining +1s to save and Rerolls to save.  So I guess my main point is that switching a source of +1s for a source of Rerolls is just kicking the can down the road when there are still units that have access to both, and now maybe even more do than before.  

But I absolutely agree with your point that we don't know what else is coming.  For starters if it was accompanied by the removal of Staunch Defender and a points hike on the Castellant, that would be a great development (imo).

[broche]

I agree with @Malakree here i think there's more overlap of reroll (not stackable) that in +1 (stackable). Beside Mystic shield, there's not much +1 save available (on top of my head i count stormcast, free poeple indomitable, armor of meteoric iron, DoK cauldron and sylvaneth item).

For most of these army (save sylvaneth who have base 3+ character that can go to 2+ with item), they already had the reroll 1 and abused the stack of a +1 and mystic shield, so you could have 2+ reroll 1 swords man or 2+ reroll 1 dryad on top of 2+ reroll Treeman. 

So assuming they are cautious in limiting the +1 save (of course, no garantee that they will, its GW and they are not mathematician we have many proof of that), the +1 save is a big loss for most army, and even more for those who had access to rerollable save which should be a good thing. Unkillable stuff is bad for the game.

Now next step is they don't choke on rule of one for ward save