How much do you think summoning will affect the 'meta' in AoS 2?

[stickybluetoffee]

So is there a limit on Seraphon summoning at all? Number of Slaan in an army, points you can spend a turn etc?Because I think I’ve worked out something hideous.

 

6 Slann and 60 skinks (bubble wrap) leaves you points for an extra command point or some Endless spells. And it’ll be hell to deal with.

55 summoning points per turn. Teleport 1 Slann across the board then summon with him. Rinse and repeat 5 times.

I would hate to see that be viable. It’s horrific!

Please someone say that’s not possible?

[AaronWilson]

I don't see why that's not viable, seems legit. 

[angrycontra]

1 hour ago, stickybluetoffee said:

So is there a limit on Seraphon summoning at all? Number of Slaan in an army, points you can spend a turn etc?Because I think I’ve worked out something hideous.

 

6 Slann and 60 skinks (bubble wrap) leaves you points for an extra command point or some Endless spells. And it’ll be hell to deal with.

55 summoning points per turn. Teleport 1 Slann across the board then summon with him. Rinse and repeat 5 times.

I would hate to see that be viable. It’s horrific!

Please someone say that’s not possible?

Only one slann and one astrolitwhatever bearer will give you summon points (and that one slann must be your general.) So no worries, it's not going to be anywhere near as bad as you describe.

More on the topic, I think there are only 3 factions with summoning that could be a real threat:

1st. Nurgle. Nurgle summoning is really weak by itself however Nurgle has proven to be quite a contender in tournament scenes, so when you put crappy summoning on top of that, nurgle ends up even more powerful.

2nd. Legions of Nagash. Not only LoN summoning doesn't require any "point collecting" but you can easily just summon whole units of 40 skellies, 30 graveguards etc. For a mere command point. With that said, outside of Nagash lists, I havent't seen LoN breaking tables anywhere really and nagash himself is getting massive nerf (that mystic shield nerf is basically equivalent of giving every opponent of nagash free extra rend), maybe this summoning is actually needed to keep them competetive.

3rd. Seraphon. Even with single slann, seraphon can get huge amounts of free points and they also received significant point drops as well. With their already powerfull teleport, seraphon can really easily summon stuff and throw that stuff where it's needed most. I'll say one thing though: Slann is 260 model (or something like) who literally does nothing but unbind stuff and give some army buffs. As long as you're summoning with him, he basically doesn't do much at all in the game itself, which means that you kinda need to summon 200 points worth of stuff to break even. Sure he'll do that relatively fast but Slann is really easy to kill with deepstriking units and such which means you can end up losing more than gaining from that investment.

[mmimzie]

I don't get the seraphon summoning and folks saying it's anymore powerful... than anyone else. 

So each celestian conjuration pt is worth 10pts each. A slann is 260pts ( dont know how much he is with pts changes) and can generate 90pts a turn meaning they need a solid 3 turns of  work to get hier pts back outside of what they also bring from unbinding.  Plus those points you get have the oppurtinity cost of misisng turns 1, 2, and 3.  So you really start pretty much on the back foot.  Would you pay 260 pts to get to play 1.5 units of skinks each turn that might beable to shoot the turn they drop, but have to start futher away from the enemy units and can try for a long bomb charge??

Really in my opinion the strongest summoning will be tzneetch. With pink horrors getting to freely split being amazing, and getting more free models for doing what you were gonna do any way ( casting lots of spells). It's just a happy place. In summoning will be broken tzneetch will break it. Even though they have a very weak summoning mechanic. It doesn't cost them really anything to do, or in the case of pink horrors while they cost more it means you can bring nothing but pink horrors (more spell cast) and get more blues and brims than you would if you were playing change host normally before. 

As far as summoning will go i think it's folks kind of missing one of the other big monsters in the room, and that being spamming command abilities. As far as i know both death and deepkin have command abilities that let you spam lots of +1 attacks on units that can do devastingly large amount of damage. Both armies will likely use some alpha strike mechanic, and then bide thier time until they get into position and get enough CP to go into mega god mode; blowing up key parts of the opposing army in a single turn. 

[Qaz]

1 hour ago, mmimzie said:

Really in my opinion the strongest summoning will be tzneetch. With pink horrors getting to freely split being amazing, and getting more free models for doing what you were gonna do any way ( casting lots of spells). It's just a happy place. In summoning will be broken tzneetch will break it. Even though they have a very weak summoning mechanic. It doesn't cost them really anything to do, or in the case of pink horrors while they cost more it means you can bring nothing but pink horrors (more spell cast) and get more blues and brims than you would if you were playing change host normally before. 

With the point changes, Tzeentch is actually really thin on the ground in battle round 1, if you have lots of fast-moving units, you can overrun them and they have pretty bad matchup against Nagash and KO Zilfin. For tzeentch is a game of bogging you down with horrors and spawns while the casters do damage. 

I would say that summoning has added more 'Control' game into the 'meta'. Armies if not pressured early, will utterly overwhelm you out. 

New edition, new game, …. new army?

[Aaron Schmidt]

12 hours ago, Jamopower said:

My feeling, which is supported by Russ Veal's article in WHCommunity, is that the there will be sort of Mtg Aggro vs. Control feel. Either you swarm your summoning opponent from turn one, or will be at a disadvantage later in the game.

Could you elaborate on this more? I only have a rudimentary grasp of Magic play styles. Hypothetical examples?

[Requizen]

16 minutes ago, Aaron Schmidt said:

Could you elaborate on this more? I only have a rudimentary grasp of Magic play styles. Hypothetical examples?

In MTG (and other card games like Hearthstone or Eternal), most decks break down into a couple archetypes: Aggro - which is play a lot of small stuff/spells fast and beat face quickly but has no staying power, Combo - where you try to get a specific combo off that's really strong or near-unstoppable, Midrange - where you just play a lot of strong stuff but don't have a real finisher/trickery, or Control - which focuses on preventing the opponent from doing anything until they can reach an endgame state.

To convert it to AoS terms, Aggro would be full Alpha Strike - something like Hammerstrike Stormcast or Murderhost, where you just run forward and try to do as much damage on Turn 1 or 2, knowing that if the opponent survives til later turns you don't have the late game power to combat them. Control would be something like Vanguard Wing, where you don't really have as much killing power on Turn 1 without outplaying, but you can lock down the entire enemy army while racking up points and getting everything positioned as you want it. 

Currently I would say most armies in AoS fall into Midrange. They just try to have a good mix of stuff that can all affect the board, not as much all in on one trick. Death lists are a bit more Combo, where you try to stack as much stuff onto one or two units and rez them repeatedly and buff them into the stratosphere. 

A lot of times in the card game world, Aggro beats Combo by killing them before they can get their trick off, Combo beats Control by setting up the board/gamestate in such a way that it can't be stopped, and Control beats Midrange by killing/removing all their strong things. Aggro vs Control is a bit more involved, because the Aggro player will try to rush down the Control player before they can get to the point where they can remove things, while the Control player knows that if they can sacrifice health early and stabilize later, it's a guaranteed win. 

It'll end up similarly in AoS, I think. Alpha v Summoning will come down to how T1 goes - if the Alpha Strike army can kill all or most of the enemy Heroes on T1, the Summoning player doesn't have much of a way to start getting more stuff. But if those Heroes survive properly and get the Points to Summon, the Alpha Striker will be overwhelmed and won't be able to turn off the tide of bodies before it scores everything. Very interesting gameplay.

[Sleboda]

I really, really don't want to see our hobby broken down into that. It's fine for card games where there is zero investing of your passions, creativity, and so on, but for this hobby it would be so sad to sit across from an opponent, have him sneer like a spoiled 9 year old, and say "Ha. Midrange. My l337 Combo gonna waste u in 2, noob."

This is a hobby, dammit, not Street Fighter or Hearthstone (both fun in their own right, for what they are).

[Requizen]

1 minute ago, Sleboda said:

I really, really don't want to see or hobby broken down into that. It's fine for card games where there is zero investing of your passions, creativity, and so on, but for this hobby it would be so sad to sit across from an opponent, have him sneer like a spoiled 9 year old, and say "Ha. Midrange. My l337 Combo gonna waste u in 2, noob."

This is a hobby, dammit, not Street Figured or Hearthstone (both fun in their own right, for what they are).

I mean, it already is like that. KO Ziflin Alpha Strike killing Changehost Heroes can end the game on T1. Vanguard Wing army-charging an opponent with no easy retreat option does the same. Alpha Strikes blow out combo stacking by shutting them down before they get off. Part of playing those decks/armies is learning how to play into your weak matchups, it already is and will continue to be into AoS2.

[Sleboda]

I suppose I'm fortunate and don't encounter that. After I spend 400+ hours on building and painting an army, the last thing I want is to have the whole experience degraded to rock-paper-scissors and be over in 30 minutes.

[Enoby]

Kind of related to the current discussion, but how healthy do you think alpha strikes are for the game? 

Providing the alpha strike isn't stopped in some way, it often ends with an opponent losing half of their army before they get a chance to recover, and I can't imagine it's very fun to be on the receiving end of it. While it can be countered (setting up further away or screening), some armies don't really have the means to do this very well (if they need to be on the deployment line in order to reach combat/objectives more quickly or they don't have much of a choice to take cheap chaff to cover all of their important stuff). The only time I've ever experienced it was when I was doing it, and my opponent had absolutely no fun at all (they quit before their second turn). 

I'm mostly curious because some armies now have summoning that is aided by an alpha strike (especially Khorne, and Slaanesh depening on what you strike with) and those armies alpha strike well, and I don't know if this will power it up even more - giving the alpha strike more sustain which they lacked before. 

[Darkfine]

46 minutes ago, Enoby said:

Kind of related to the current discussion, but how healthy do you think alpha strikes are for the game? 

Providing the alpha strike isn't stopped in some way, it often ends with an opponent losing half of their army before they get a chance to recover, and I can't imagine it's very fun to be on the receiving end of it. While it can be countered (setting up further away or screening), some armies don't really have the means to do this very well (if they need to be on the deployment line in order to reach combat/objectives more quickly or they don't have much of a choice to take cheap chaff to cover all of their important stuff). The only time I've ever experienced it was when I was doing it, and my opponent had absolutely no fun at all (they quit before their second turn). 

I'm mostly curious because some armies now have summoning that is aided by an alpha strike (especially Khorne, and Slaanesh depening on what you strike with) and those armies alpha strike well, and I don't know if this will power it up even more - giving the alpha strike more sustain which they lacked before. 

Winner winner chicken dinner.  Armies who can alpha and summon are about to be overtly dominate, armies who can summon shooting units will be pretty good.   At the bottom of the summoning pile is Nurgle, pillow fisted and almost zero ranged firepower.

 

[stratigo]

13 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

One thing to bear in mind when looking at the "you get X points free" is that the points are skewed towards summoning.  So to say you get a unit of Plaguebearers free (120 points) those PB's have been inflated by lets say 20 points.  That means you're realistically only getting 60 points free and won't have access to them for at least one turn.  I'm guessing the inflation here, but think it makes sense.

I just can't wait to get some models on the table and play with everything!

 

Plaguebearers aren't inflated at all. Nurgle armies are fine WITHOUT free summoning. They place at major tournaments and even dominated the London GT. Nurgle is a top tier army that just got much better.

 

 

The new meta will be Summoning armies and everyone else.

[grungolah]

2 hours ago, Darkfine said:

 At the bottom of the summoning pile is Nurgle, pillow fisted and almost zero ranged firepower.

 

Turn 3-4 for Nurgle,  in pretty much any setup,  guarantees a unit of flying plague drones on the table.  They get extra attacks simply by being near a hero.   Doing nothing nets a hard hitting flying unit.  Most games will provide exactly 2 of these units.   It's difficult to summon 3 units, so there's the restriction. 

 

I find the most important use though is summoning more Gnarlmaws.   They are summonable after movement,  after running,  allowing for a run/charge.   It is near impossible to mess this up.   Nurgle has an alpha strike potential of 29+2D6", flying over the top of everything.  I'm not all that interested in ranged attacks at that speed. 

 

That's the trick though...  Even if you throw down Gnarlmaws,  you will still get the Drones. 

[Darkfine]

16 minutes ago, grungolah said:

Turn 3-4 for Nurgle,  in pretty much any setup,  guarantees a unit of flying plague drones on the table.  They get extra attacks simply by being near a hero.   Doing nothing nets a hard hitting flying unit.  Most games will provide exactly 2 of these units.   It's difficult to summon 3 units, so there's the restriction. 

 

I find the most important use though is summoning more Gnarlmaws.   They are summonable after movement,  after running,  allowing for a run/charge.   It is near impossible to mess this up.   Nurgle has an alpha strike potential of 29+2D6", flying over the top of everything.  I'm not all that interested in ranged attacks at that speed. 

 

That's the trick though...  Even if you throw down Gnarlmaws,  you will still get the Drones. 

Having played it both with and without Menagerie it just isn’t how it works.  Most of the time you get a unit of drones on 4 and if you fail the long bomb charge then they might as well not even be there.  

Sure if you get hot dice and roll threes on your trees every turn it pans out a little better but so far I am extremely unimpressed with the Nurgle summoning mechanics.  

Now the army as a whole is still fine I think, but summoning certainly didnt impact the games I played overly much.

[Aginor]

I hate to say that, as I normally prefer the underdog role, but I agree that summoning armies might be dominant for some time.

Right now I can hardly express how much I like to get my hands on the new books and try all that stuff. It almost sounds too good to be true for my army (and it probably isn't, I halfway expect nerfs to the warscrolls of our units...)

Fun fact: one of the reasons why I picked Seraphon when I started the hobby was that people were telling me it was a mediocre/weak army, with no real chance of being competitive. Then after a while (and because of complaints about "OP cheesy Seraphon" when I started winning with them) I picked up Deathrattle, an even weaker army according to people around me. After LoN those are pretty great now, too. Not as great as some of the new stuff but good enough.

So while I apparently suck in choosing underdogs (will probably start Brayherd or some Destruction army next, maybe Spiderfang Grots) it tells me one thing: armies left and right are getting better. Granted, there are still armies that are quite weak (Destruction needs a buff especially) but I think the game as a whole is getting better.

This time it is summoning and magic that got a buff, and...yeah probably it is too strong and tournaments will see non-summoning armies (especially those who also lack magic, Kharadron maybe) drop in power, but I am reasonably sure that GW will fix that if it occurs. They created the parameters to tweak (summoning isn't free but tied to resources that can be adjusted).

So... carefully optimistic it won't be too severe.

[grungolah]

2 minutes ago, Darkfine said:

Having played it both with and without Menagerie it just isn’t how it works.  Most of the time you get a unit of drones on 4 and if you fail the long bomb charge then they might as well not even be there.  

Sure if you get hot dice and roll threes on your trees every turn it pans out a little better but so far I am extremely unimpressed with the Nurgle summoning mechanics.  

Now the army as a whole is still fine I think, but summoning certainly didnt impact the games I played overly much.

I did say 3 to 4, but 3 is reasonable. 

Doing "nothing,"  you can get 16 + 3D3 points in 3 turns.   Just get into their territory on turn 1.   That's a far cry from needing hot dice to get to 21.  

With Slimux, you get 16 + 6D3.  3 turns.

Buying a tree, you have 9 + 5-6 D3.  Starts needing above average rolls. 

Menagerie adds 3D3. 

If your opponent is foolish enough to stay on their side,  add 1-2.

Epidemius adds 1-2.

It all seems very straightforward to me.  Your  opponents can slow you down, at expense to themselves.  You should be able to get 22 in turn 4 without trees, and it feels unblockable by your opponent (except for  annihilation) 

[Darkfine]

That is a lot of work and luck for a maybe “decent” unit that still won’t impact the game.

For Nurgle anyway most of your summoning is going to be the odd beast to roadblock or unit to tip objective totals 

[blueshirtman]

I hope GW tested the rules vs extrem situations. And that trying to overload the game with mass summoning won't work. But I still think that in normal games this is still going to be a very powerful thing. Being able to drop a second unit on an objectives or table quarter or enemy deployment in last turns of the game is a big thing. Being able to shield your wounded big dude with a fresh summoned chaff is a nice option to have. Now if summoning is going to be overpowered? I do not know, I think it will be very strong for armies that can easily do it, and people already pointed out that Nurgle or tzeench summoning points gain more or less themselfs. I think it maybe a problem in non tournament games, but most strong mechanics are problematic vs non fully optimised army lists.

[Tittliewinks22]

13 hours ago, angrycontra said:

Legions of Nagash. Not only LoN summoning doesn't require any "point collecting" but you can easily just summon whole units of 40 skellies, 30 graveguards etc. For a mere command point. With that said, outside of Nagash lists, I havent't seen LoN breaking tables anywhere really and nagash himself is getting massive nerf (that mystic shield nerf is basically equivalent of giving every opponent of nagash free extra rend), maybe this summoning is actually needed to keep them competetive.

 

False.

Legion of Nagash cannot summon new units. They can only bring back units that have been completely wiped out. The restriction to this:

General is only one who can do it, he must be within 9" of a gravesite, and you must be able to setup the returned unit wholly within 9" of the gravesite and more than 9" from enemy models.

This is so fragile and easily stopped from multiple angles.

Some examples:

Don't wipe put the unit completely unless it's favorable to do so (general not in position).

Kill the general.

Park on top of gravesites.

 

 

As for summoning as a whole. I think it's going to be perfectly fine, and people are so use to the old pre GHB/8th days and allowing that to cloud their judgement.

[mmimzie]

52 minutes ago, Tittliewinks22 said:

False.

Legion of Nagash cannot summon new units. They can only bring back units that have been completely wiped out. The restriction to this:

General is only one who can do it, he must be within 9" of a gravesite, and you must be able to setup the returned unit wholly within 9" of the gravesite and more than 9" from enemy models.

This is so fragile and easily stopped from multiple angles.

Some examples:

Don't wipe put the unit completely unless it's favorable to do so (general not in position).

Kill the general.

Park on top of gravesites.

 

 

As for summoning as a whole. I think it's going to be perfectly fine, and people are so use to the old pre GHB/8th days and allowing that to cloud their judgement.

To atleast one of these points there are mitigating factors. 

For instance, death would like it if you didn't finish off thier units so they could heal them back up. (its better to bring bad a wiped unit obviously).

Also, any melee based forces musted  do all availible attacks. So the skeletons could jsut them themselves atop your spears. 

While your points are quite valided and are the best ways to slow death bring back units. There are some built in work aways death can also play with. 

[Jamopower]

I think the main thing to consider is that however powerful the summoning might be, it's in most of the cases still an extra compared to now and as said, armies such as Legions of Nagash, Seraphon and Nurgle are already quite good and didn't get too much of changes in the new GHB. Same goes to many non-summoning armies such as Daughters of Khaine. The game as whole outside the free summoning, multiple command abilities and endless spells doesn't change too much. Thus it very much looks like that the summoning armies will in any case be better than they were before, while rest of the pack stays more or less the same, with some contenders like the changehost and mixed order are now worse. One thing to consider also is that the command abilities and endless spellls probably will make out some new combo armies after people put their thinking hats on.

As a disclaimer, I'm not interested at all of actually playing the game competitively myself, but it's fun to follow how the changes impact the "no holds barred game".

[Planar]

4 hours ago, Tittliewinks22 said:

This is so fragile and easily stopped from multiple angles.

Some examples:

Don't wipe put the unit completely unless it's favorable to do so (general not in position).

Kill the general.

Park on top of gravesites.

All those might not be very simple to accomplish...

Any units you don't destroy can be regenerated at an alarmingly quick rate. Also leaving small units can be a constant cause of harassment and bogging down for your more valuable units. It means you are surrendering an important part of table control to remnants of units here and there.

Killing the general is not a solution any more since you can nominate a new general in the new edition

Parking on top of gravesites is probably the most feasible thing to do but its simpler to say than achieve especially in smaller games or against low count armies

[Jamopower]

4 minutes ago, Planar said:

 

Parking on top of gravesites is probably the most feasible thing to do but its simpler to say than achieve especially in smaler games or against low count armies

As a side note. The Endless legions is horribly powerful ability in smaller games. I would even say that it's so powerful that it can ruin the whole game in those sizes. The other summoning abilities are mostly much better scaled for different sizes. It doesn't help that the gravesite mechanism already doesn't scale  at all, it should be one gravesite per 500 points instead of the fixed four, but I have a felling that they don't think too much about other sizes than 2000 when they make the rules.

[RuneBrush]

10 hours ago, stratigo said:

Plaguebearers aren't inflated at all. Nurgle armies are fine WITHOUT free summoning. They place at major tournaments and even dominated the London GT. Nurgle is a top tier army that just got much better.

The new meta will be Summoning armies and everyone else.

I think that there are so many changes being done in the game that it's impossible to make a statement that summoning is going to dominate the meta - yet.

From the information we know, I think there is the potential to make some super strong summoning lists - to the point that we may well get errata's to balance them.  Most armies have weak points in their summoning strategy, LoN is dependant upon the general, a command point and a gravesite being free.  Tzeentch is dependant upon spells being cast, Khorne units being killed etc.

26 minutes ago, Jamopower said:

As a side note. The Endless legions is horribly powerful ability in smaller games. I would even say that it's so powerful that it can ruin the whole game in those sizes. The other summoning abilities are mostly much better scaled for different sizes. It doesn't help that the gravesite mechanism already doesn't scale  at all, it should be one gravesite per 500 points instead of the fixed four, but I have a felling that they don't think too much about other sizes than 2000 when they make the rules.

I don't think Endless Legions is overpowered in small games, however when combined with massive units it becomes very powerful.  Personally I've said for a while that you shouldn't be able to spend more than 25~35% of your points on a single unit.  As an example that means you could only field a unit of 20 skeletons at 500 points and couldn't field a unit of Morghasts - but it would also mean you couldn't play BCR at that level.

I will grant you that gravesites don't scale - I'd probably say 2 for every 1000 though.