GH17: 5 Greatest Hits (and 1 Opportunity)

[PlasticCraic]

With the GH17 era coming to a close, I'd like to create a thread to celebrate the best of GH17.  A lot of these will be actual content in the book but these can also be your own personal achievements, or great moments you've enjoyed along the way.

I will also comment on one thing I think could have been done better - keeping it constructive.  I will open up with this one to end on a positive:

Opportunity: I think the Warscroll Batallions could have been handled better.  95% of them were just jacked up by 100 points, so the underlying value of the Batallion was not properly reassessed and rebalanced.  So for example the Kopp Rukk still costs more than the Kunnin Rukk, even though it was already clear that the latter was the power build, so it's the only one you ever see.

To compound that, the few that didn't change in that manner were real head scratchers.  Plaguetouched Warband being a prime example.  To paraphrase Jervis, if we are saying reduced drops + artefact = 100 points, then we are arguing that the Plaguetouched's actual benefits are literally worthless, which seems rather a stretch.  On the other hand you have the Ardfist, which actually does not have any functionality in Matched Play other than drops + artefact, going up from 40 points to 140 points and coming in above the Plaguetouched.

Hopefully the new book will repoint Batallions more comprehensively to reflect their relative worth in this brave new world (where ironically the Ardfist might be absolutely baller!).

And now my own celebration of the Greatest Hits:

Hit #1: Allegiance Abilities.  It's been great to see what a difference some decent Allegiance Abiilties can make.  Fyreslayers zooming up to the top tier, Seraphon getting a real lift, Free Peoples and Wanderers becoming viable.  Points adjustments are of course part of this too, but I don't think we saw any real examples of points drops alone catapulting a faction forwards.  Not all of the new Abilities saw armies zoom into the stratoshphere (if everything is top tier, nothing is top tier), but overall GH17 was a great showcase for how powerful this mechanism of updating an army's rule in a quick manner can be.  Gutbusters this time around, please!

Hit #2: The Australian Tournament Scene.  A fairly personal one this one, but it's been great to see the number and size of events here balloon.  Cancon for example went from 46 to 104 players between Jan 2017 and Jan 2018 (shaping up to be the second largest event anywhere in the world under GH17 - beating the LVO which was held on the same day).  Meanwhile my own gaming club (Measured Gaming) is getting 30 players to tournaments in the Australian Bush, and the number of GTs in my state of Victoria (which includes Melbourne) has gone from 1 to 3.  I hope the scene wherever you is equally thriving.

Hit #3: The Battleplans.  How cool are they!  Star Strike in particular is a big favourite of mine.  I personally wouldn't be sad to see Take and Hold / Knife to the Heart rested from the next batch, but overall they have been an excellent resource.  Even as we are (presumably) nearing the end of their life cycle, I am a long way off being sick of these bad boys. 

Hit #4: Triumph and Treachery.  I personally got onto this very late, but it is awesome!  For anyone looking for a change of pace, you need to give this a go asap.  The backstabbing and grudges will make Skaven or Duardin out of all of you.

Hit #5: The Lore.  How good has it been seeing the storyline develop!  Across each of the Black Library fiction, the posts on the Community websites and of course the consistently innovative background in the Battletomes.  Now that the Realms have been quantified as being sprawling but finite, everything feels waiting to be explored but meaningful.  And as well as being gripping in its own right, the progression of the timeline has meant (for me at least) that the earlier Lore, which not everyone was a fan of, kind of makes more sense too, in that it feels like a creation myth from a bygone age...except that it "really" did happen. 

I'm hoping for more Black Libryary support for Destruction armies this time around...a Moonclan release in particular would be ripe for that.  And let's not forget the excellent Malign Portents stories.  My own personal favourite was the one about the Reforging, a little insight into what it is specifically that makes the Stormcast less human each time.  

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So how about everyone else?  Let's take a moment to celebrate the great times we've had along the way!

Farewell, GH17, you magnificent b*****d!

[Praecautus]

(Some of this happened just before ghb17 but would have been done by he with that book in mind)

I am going to shout out for the Open War cards, well worth the £10 for the pack to create a huge number of scenarios. Each game has been a blast with them.

Its been a year of battletomes getting better and better as GW found their groove with them and experimented.

Models. Need I say more. From the Tzeentch acolytes through dwarfs with guns to snakes and turtles. AoS has the flagship models right now - a joy to build and paint.

Its been a good year and a bit.

 

[Primes]

Nice Topic!

 

#1 Scenarios - Just like you said, the are super diverse and fun; what I have done and will be doing ist copying the matched play scenarios of GHB 2016, 2017 and future GHBs and compile a best of for casual play with my buddy

#2 Rules of One - They bring much needed restrictions to some units, that would otherwise dominate the meta; this is also the thing I am most curious about going to GHB 2018. My wish would be to include Prayers in a similar way to magic.

 

Opportunity: Terrain Rules - As we all know a healthy amount of terrain is essential for making a lot of matchups fair (Khorne Bloodbound vs. SC Aetherstrike being a prime example and one of the most boring matches I´ve ever played as a SC player). I would love to see more/ updates terrain rules.

Deadly terrain for example cost me my Star Drake on tunr one vs. a Slaughterpries,t who forced me to run through it. For sure one of the strangest and - if you think about it - most epic moments for me from the GHB 2017 era.

[Thanatos Ares]

Love the topic! 

 

Epic moments for me are

one shotting a full health mawcrusha with a GKoT who had a single wound remaining. I got tabled in the game but loved it nonetheless 

second is the mystical terrain I failed at heat which lost me the game on the twitch feed. Awesome game, awesome opponent with an equally awesome army! Games that are remembered as epic sagas wholly enjoyed by both players are the best games (whether it’s hyper compatible matched play or narrative scenario with a club mate)

[kuroyume]

13 hours ago, Praecautus said:

I am going to shout out for the Open War cards, well worth the £10 for the pack to create a huge number of scenarios. Each game has been a blast with them.

I agree with this. I've only had one bad game of Open War, where the combination of deployment and objective basically gave the victory to a player from turn 1. Other than that time, I've had a ton of fun with the deck. Would love an expansion.

[MrZakalwe]

Like the thread.

 

The Good: Allegiance abilities really added a lot of flavour to more themed armies and the points values were significantly more balanced than the first try. The massive unit bonus was excellent for persuading people to try something other than minimum strength units and thus making battleshock matter. The rules of 1 were excellent marred only by the fact they didn't apply to prayers so later ended up shifting the problem rather than fixing it (a LOT of new prayers have been introduced since GHB2017). 

More Good: Scenarios - this deserves it's own paragraph because the expanded scenario list did more for AoS than anything else since the original points introduction in my eyes. Why doesn't AoS have a massive gunline problem (since Skyfires and Kurnoths got their points increase) because the battleplans just aren't friendly to them. It's the same reason Infinity isn't really friendly to netlisting and it's good to see it come to warhammer! The need to hold backfield objectives in many of the plans helps too.  

The Bad: The balkanisation of the mini factions wasn't fixed (the combination of the keyword system and mini factions is terrible and means we still need some serious warscroll rewrites or expanded factions) and the factions without allegiance abilities fell further behind (poor Greenskinz). The treatment of Compendium (though that may be about to get worse, we'll see).

The Ugly: GHB2017 points changes were under the shadow of the double turn so many ranged units are overcosted if they don't get an early double turn and undercosted if they do. Only partially an issue with the GHB2017 but it didn't introduce any mechanics to mitigate the points balance issue there and it's the book for points.

[Jamopower]

The Triumph and Treachery was (and is) my favorite part of the General's handbook, unfortunately our gaming group consists of people with 1-2 small kids, so we never got enough people at the same time in the same place to test them out. We played many games with the old rules and the newer ones were improvement on those, so looking forward to get to play with them eventually.

Other than that, the Open war cards were really fun addition and it was also nice to have Allegiance abilities for my Slaanesh and Lizardmen. The pitched battle scenarios have also been solid in both incarnations. Especially the meteor scenario.

[PlasticCraic]

Thanks @Primes, @Thanatos Ares and @MrZakalwe I'm glad you are enjoying this topic!

@Primes we resisted the Mystical Terrain rules at first out of laziness, just to get the games going quicker really.  We only started using them regularly when we started going to tournaments because we knew we'd need to get used to them.  They add so much to the game!

Scenery Dice helps facilitate that a lot too, I have had so many people ask where I got them (here in Australia at least they aren't as well known, but becoming moreso).

@MrZakalwe yeah they micro factions was a really odd one, still don't know where they were going with that!  Hopefully that gets resolved this time around.

[Jamopower]

On 5/30/2018 at 12:28 PM, Jamopower said:

The Triumph and Treachery was (and is) my favorite part of the General's handbook, unfortunately our gaming group consists of people with 1-2 small kids, so we never got enough people at the same time in the same place to test them out. We played many games with the old rules and the newer ones were improvement on those, so looking forward to get to play with them eventually. 

We played today four player match with 500 points. One hero and halved unit sizes, it was great fun. One of us had never played AoS and ended up second. Totally random, extremely fun.

[Bellfree]

Wasn't the rebalancing done in the GHB pretty poor? I mean the new content was pretty great across the board but things like point changes seemed to be missin' the trick a lot.

The change to the Thunderer's warscroll hurt Kharadron real bad, and the fact that their boats were still super overcosted didn't help. The changes to the baseline destruction GA abilities basically tore apart mixed destruction even before adding in nerfing the stonehorn. Most battalions became crazily expensive while a few (Vanguard Wing, Changehost, Murderhost) didn't get hit hard enough. And fyreslayers(especially vulkite berzerkers) Got buffed out the waz'.

 

Don't get me wrong, T&T, the other narrative and open stuff and the new allegiance abilities were all crazy cool, but the balance stuff coulda used some more percolating.

[svnvaldez]

Great thread idea: I’m going to edit this and provide rationales later but here my 3.

Hit  #1:  GH Allegiance Abilities

Hit  #2: FAQ schedule (announced at LVO)

Hit  #3:  Removal of compendium