AOS 2 is great, but here's what it needs next

[Overread]

2 minutes ago, MrZakalwe said:

From Tyrion  Deepkin are Teclis' castoffs. 

Also why resist? I sure wont be. 

I'll only be able to not-resist if I've not bought most of my Daughters force by then (and both of those hinge on the eventual Slannesh release). Otherwise I'll just be adding to the mountain of unfinished models around and I want to avoid that (models in boxes are not as fun as those assembled). 

[MacDuff]

Boxes of models are called terrain.

[Griffounet]

I think what AoS 2.0 need next is some focus for the destruction : starting by updated Moonclan, spiderfang and/or gutbusters range kit or, at least, bring a battletome with fresh allegiance abilities  and bataillons.

 

6 hours ago, Kurrilino said:

No offense but i guess you don't grasp the point of battaillons.

To keep your army themed limits your choices and that is what you are rewarded for with battaillons.

Having your army mixed, opens up countless combinations which gives you a great advantage.

Therefore you don't get battalions.

This equal to asking: my units are heavily armored but are slow and don't hit hard. I would feel better if GW would change my warscrolls to

35 hitpoints each , 25 movement, 1+ saveroll, 1+ to hit, 1+ to wound, -6 rend and  immune to mortal wound and rend

An expension which benefit mixed factions in Grand Alliances, similar to the Great Cities from Firestorm could make sense. For exemple, a bataillon  with a lord ordinator and 3-4 warmachines from Ironweld/Stormcast fit well in a Freecity/Sub-alliance focus on warmachine. Or for a nomadic order sub-alliance, mixing only Shadow warriors and dark riders in a bataillon who let you redeploy the bataillon (with the initial restrictions) before the first round.

[Beliman]

We talk a lot about how AoS could expand and bring more gameplay options. It could be awesome to have new GA:Order/Chaos/Destruction/Death battletomes like 1.0, but removing every warscroll and just updating the settings for every Grand Alliance:

-After choosing a Realm, open a new option to take some free cities for every Grand Alliance army (like firestorm cities). Hammerhal could be an option for Aqshy and Ghyran for example (expand that concept and we will have alot of customization for people that like to go really deep in that matter). 

-Battalions. Some generics (for every GA), other specific for each realm (for everyone), and other specific to their cities (for people that only take GA abilities). They don't need to be really powerful, but they need to bring possible 1-3drops armies and maybe help them to be more flexible. Example: 1Hero + 2Battleline units. During the first turn, the battleline units  can use the hero Bravery for their battleshock test if they are within 3" from him/her. (60points). For 10 points more than CP, you gain 1drop/3units, CP , 1 artefact and an ability.

-Update alliances and maybe some warscrolls. Ex.:Make Maneaters a cheap hero that could be listed in Chaos, Order and Death like a mercenary hero (new ability: they can take one artifact for free, and it can be taken from another realm than his army!!).

-Re-print artefacts, spell-lores and all allegiances from past books.

It's just a concept but it could work. And having all rules in GHB and all List-Building options in GA battletome makes everything more eazy for everyone!!!

[PJetski]

On 7/8/2018 at 5:18 PM, MacDuff said:

Boxes of models are called terrain.

I would really like for them to make more AOS-themed terrain that can block line of sight properly.

[Nin Win]

I'm okay with whatever format its published in, but I'd like to see a couple pages with allegience abilities, artefacts, a battalion or two, units being battle line as appropriate for the types of generals, and maybe a spell lore for each of the following keywords:  Aelf, Skaven, Duardin, Order AND Human,   The types of armies you could build with the last one might already be covered with things like the free cities, so maybe only the first three would be great.

Especially the skaven one.  Explaining how to make a skaven army using warscroll builder to a friend who's new to the game was awful.  Choose from this clan and that clan and then this clan and oh, over here too.  Oh, but then your allegiance is Chaos as you have things from multiple clans but not in proportions that ally properly.  Ugh.

 

[Guest]

As an Anvilgard player I think multi-faction allegiances are a great way of collecting and theming your army, especially for people like me who struggle to finish an army because we get bored of painting the same model 50 times. They're also a great way of giving some of the micro-factions a meaningful place in the lore, and freshening up some of the older kits.

I'm massively in favour of more stuff like this. I was disappointed that the Malign Portents book didn't have a way of combining Freeguild with Deathrattle - the way the living and undead population worked together to defend their patch of Shyish was jaw-droppingly exciting to me, and I would have loved a structured way to represent that on the tabletop.

When the Freeguild battletome comes out I'm hoping this will be an opportunity for Games Workshop to reaffirm their commitment to the Free Cities and perhaps even expand on them a bit. Being able to create your own Free City a la skyport rules but with the option to mix a small selection of factions would be great.

[Overread]

I think that Sigmar handles alliances reasonably well. Most of the groups that can ally share a visual unity between them (mostly because they are the remains of once bigger single factions) and they also share a variation in what each group offers to the table. The limits on how many you can take further help to reduce min-maxing. 

About the only weakness is catch-all allies like the Stormcast as that can get messy since you've already got a very well rounded faction which can take allies from any source; it fits the story but can leave itself open to abuse in that its the ideal way to plug any built in faction weakness. 

 

And that's often the crux of make or break with allies. When you've a formal alliance system in a wargame its got to be designed in from the ground up, which is why you often see mercenaries (which is honestly what most of the allies in Sigmar are closer too) and then a mercenary faction that is the - catch all motley - designed faction. That way each faction has its built in strengths and weaknesses and can't take enough or specific mercenaries to patch over those weaknesses. Thus there is balance.

 

When you do what 7th edition 40K did with totally randomly assigned allies based on lore with no design in the game rules or stats for it; the system broke. Marines and such ahd a glut of allies that they could min-max to insane degrees; whilst Tyranids were at the other extreme with not a single ally option. It fit the lore of the game, but it broke the game part of the game itself. It's why most wargames work best without allies between major factions and if players want an allied game they just take two smaller armies; its not tournament nor formal focused and its just for fun so it doens't break the games overall balance. 

 

I think the big question mark with Sigmar is how GW is going to handle the currently minor subfactions. We still don't know if they will expand them all to full armies or leave them as small mercenary forces. I'd really like them to re-do the Grand Alliance books to clarify this. I'd love to see them say that groups like Shadowblades, Order Serpentis, etc.... are minor factions which can ally to major factions (ergo battletome factions) in limited numbers, but if an army is comprised only of subfactions then the ally limits go away ore are significantly reduced. 

[Luke82]

If they did a Free Cities battletome that conglomerates all the disparate Order factions like Legions of Nagash did for Death, an Orcs and Goblins book, one for Ogres, one for Beasts of Chaos, and one for dark elves as well perhaps, would they really need a rewrite of the Grand Alliance books? It’d be just as good and likely much better for the smaller factions, and not much more in the way of work. 

[Asensur]

Tribes of Destruction (normal orcs/gobs/ogres)...

Armies of Azyrheim (human/dwarf/ironweld)...

Aelf Cohorts...

 

I would buy it.

[Sleboda]

I'd like to see a unification of all the chunks that are spread everywhere.

For example, when I am building a Daughters army, for example, I find annoying, inconvenient, and confusing to have to check a FAQ, the GHB, the Malign Portents book, the Malign Sorcery book, the core rules, my battletome, and who knows where else just to make sure I've (for example) looked at all my magic item options and that I'm "legal."

 

[Guest]

14 minutes ago, Sleboda said:

I'd like to see a unification of all the chunks that are spread everywhere.

For example, when I am building a Daughters army, for example, I find annoying, inconvenient, and confusing to have to check a FAQ, the GHB, the Malign Portents book, the Malign Sorcery book, the core rules, my battletome, and who knows where else just to make sure I've (for example) looked at all my magic item options and that I'm "legal."

 

Haha! Yep! It normally takes a good few years for a new edition to suffer from this level of bloat and supplement overload - AoS 2 managed it right out of the gate! 

[Dead Scribe]

There are too many rules spread out across too many books.  I would like them to start consolidating the standard game into one place and then provide optional layers for people that care about those in different books.   Keep things like realm rules, non-standard terrain rules, optional magic, etc... in their own books away from the standard rules.

For competitive players, the best state would just be to have to have the core rule book with us and our army warscrolls.  Right now I have to have the core rules, the general's handbook, malign sorcery, and any army books for my armies.  

[Sleboda]

That's sort of the situation now, though, right?

The additional layers are in other books and the core has the basics. Remember, in theory it's all optional. So with that in mind, things like the Realm rules are actually core rules, as is the terrain stuff. Remove it as you like, as it is optional like everything else, but that stuff is no less "core" than magic items are.

I know some folks think of Matched Play (and even then, only certain parts of it) as The Core, but that's simply not the case.

My issue is with how some things that are useable by a Core-built army are spread across multiple sources (such as the magic items I mentioned in my previous post).

Group all of the things-of-a-type, at least.

[Skabnoze]

I think they consolidated some of that into the core rules for good reason. 

1.  They want people to use that stuff and so cooking it into the basic framework and core book makes it more "official".  AoS 1 was full of tons of stuff that I am sure they worked hard on, but hardly anyone used.  I expect that they would prefer more people use a lot of the stuff they put in.

2.  Most of what is in the core book are basic frameworks.  So they can put the building blocks into the core rules and then expand them out with supplementary content.  For example, endless spells are in the core rules but they can add more of them in various supplements.  The ways they designed scenarios is much the same way since the GHB scenarios are now just assembled from the scenario rule building blocks in the main book.  Each scenario does not have to explicitly define rules for scoring and other things.  Realm rules are similar as well.  The core of how to choose realms and some of the effects are in the core book and then supplements can add more to that - as malign sorcery does.

I like how they approached it for this edition - although I will agree with @Sleboda that it does lend itself to having stuff scattered across multiple books.  It might be cool if they addressed that with the app.  I don't really need a list builder, as point costs are simple enough, but I would probably pay for the convenience of consolidating all of that stuff for browsing on the app and filtering.

[MacDuff]

I'd like a card deck for all MP artifacts and spells. Ditto for them in all Realms. They could be smaller, and I could clip them to Warscroll Cards.

[Envyus]

Like I hope the next book is something like Grot Tribes. 

[Envyus]

On 7/8/2018 at 12:24 PM, chord said:

I think there are too many layers being added to AOS.  

How so? 

[MOMUS]

17 hours ago, Dead Scribe said:

There are too many rules spread out across too many books.  I would like them to start consolidating the standard game into one place and then provide optional layers for people that care about those in different books.  

I agree, they should just put it into one big red book.

We could call it the BRB for short.

[Ravinsild]

It is getting a bit out of hand. If I used everything possible available as an Ironjawz player, I would need to bring my own desk with: Malign Sorcery with several pages book marked including Realm Rules to keep track of the additional spells, abilities and what the effect is currently ongoing, the realm artefacts and items to remember what those do, the GHB 2018 for my Allegiance Rules so I don’t forget anything important from there, my Warscroll Cards, and then probably the core rule book on the terrain page to remember what each piece of special terrain does. Wowee that’s a lot to keep track of. 

[EccentricCircle]

40 minutes ago, Ravinsild said:

It is getting a bit out of hand. If I used everything possible available as an Ironjawz player, I would need to bring my own desk with: Malign Sorcery with several pages book marked including Realm Rules to keep track of the additional spells, abilities and what the effect is currently ongoing, the realm artefacts and items to remember what those do, the GHB 2018 for my Allegiance Rules so I don’t forget anything important from there, my Warscroll Cards, and then probably the core rule book on the terrain page to remember what each piece of special terrain does. Wowee that’s a lot to keep track of. 

I'd suggest referencing the rules you will need before the game, and typing up a "cheat sheet" of all the information you need. If you don't want to type up a lengthy section then you can always photograph it and put that picture on your cheat sheet. It helps that they've made so many warscrolls available as free pdfs, as the appropriate text can just be copied from them (or the relevant page printed out).

Depending on how much you are using you might still end up with a few pages of rules and scrolls, but at least it will be laid out in the order that you find most intuitive, and can all be kept in one place. If you want to be really organised then they can be pasted into a notebook in a sensible order to keep them all together. I quite like to use a "display book"* so that you can just slot the notes and scroll sheets you want into the appropriate plastic sleeve.

I'd typically include the core rules and battleplan at the start, followed by the warscrolls of each unit i'm using, then a few pages of additional rules, spells, artifacts and information.

* e.g. https://www.theworks.co.uk/p/pocket-display-books/black-a4-pocket-display-book---30-pockets/5052089019423?CAWELAID=1420299321&CATARGETID=720011340002590627&cadevice=c&gclid=CjwKCAjw4avaBRBPEiwA_ZetYgVNHK5uJtIAOESz6Y71Xd9BLkE8gfaxZEmhekSYwj_WIYJdqbPnsBoCUuYQAvD_BwE