6 Nations take aways

[Sleboda]

16 minutes ago, TheOtherJosh said:

Just because something has a story, doesn’t make it less of a game.

I know. That's not what I was implying.

I'm saying that narrative play is about the story. If there is no story, it's not narrative play.

That does not, at all, preclude stories being in Matched Play games. My game last night (first 2.0 game yay!) was 1000 pt MP, but we still draped a story over it for flavor. The story just didn't dictate how or how much to complete, whereas in narrative play we certainly would have made or not made certain moves in order to better serve the story.

[Sleboda]

7 minutes ago, JackStreicher said:

The way we do it is that you try to build a strong list which is thematic while not including abviously broken combos/units.

you still give your best but lists more often turn out to have an equal powerlevel

I get ya, but the net effect is you've still chosen to underperform in deference to your opponent's inability to elevate his or her own performance.

To me, it's a question of knowing the activity you've chosen to undertake. To save space, I'll link to a longer explanation.

[amysrevenge]

I guess maybe it's about what "win" means? 

"I don't care that my unit of Ogors abandoned the objective to hunt down an otherwise unimportant Hero, because they are the Hero-eaters and killing and eating Heroes is all they care about - I ended up losing the game but consider it a win".  Is that playing a game, or is it making stuff up?

[Sleboda]

The battle plan tells you how to win each game.

You can, of course, get enjoyment from other things, but to win the game you need to do whatever the battle plan indicates.

 

So, since words matter, I guess what I mean by "win" is what the battle plan says it means.

[Skabnoze]

I think there is some sort of disconnect between being a good player and having the most highly tuned list.  Those two concepts do overlap, but the are not the same thing.  If they were then this game would be 100% about list building and little else.

List building is strategic, in-game play is tactical.  Those two things both complement each other but they are not mutually exclusive.  You can improve as a player by pushing "sub-optimal" units around the table.  In fact, this is often a better way to improve your tactical abilities as a general than simply using the best of the best.  If your goal is to improve in all aspects of the game, even as an extremely competitive player, then there can be value in playing games with units of varying power level.

Imagine chess as an example.  If you are trying to improve as a Chess player is there value in starting the game from a specific board state where you might be at a disadvantage to your opponent?  Or what about simply taking a powerful piece off the board at the start - like the queen.  You would never do this in a chess competition, but I expect that starting the game in those states would force you to figure out how to better use other pieces. 

Long story short, you can find value playing games with all sorts of forces.

[Richelieu]

3 hours ago, Infeston said:

I also am a little bit sad that all of the boards and forums are dominated by lists, points and competitive discussions. 

I see people say similar things to this and it simply is not true.  Yes, the faction mega threads and whatever the latest tournament results thread happens to be are mostly about lists and competition. Why shouldn't there be a place for people who enjoy these things to talk about them?  However, a quick scan of this Forum reveals far more active threads about hobbying, lore, home brew rules, narrative play, etc.  Nobody is forcing anyone else to take part in a discussion that is explicitly about how a tournament will affect the future of the part of the game that some of us enjoy.

[Mephisto]

I thought the entire tournament was exceedingly entertaining. Some of the creative use of rules were things my friends and I were already sort of chuckling both in person and on podcasts. This tournament was a great platform to show GW some oversights and opportunities for clarification.

Age of Sigmar has been on an upward trend since the release of the first GHB. They had to do the delicate dance of not alienating their existing fans while incorporating new ones or bringing people over or back from other wargames.  Over the course of the years they've gotten better at rules writing and catering to the competitive scene. I sort of consider everything prior to 2.0 "alpha and beta testing." To continue with that metaphor, we've now gone live with 2.0 and GHB2018, 6Nations was sort of the stress test. There will be live content patches (FAQs/Errata) going forward. The 6 Nations Tournament puts together a broad range of players with their different approaches to list building through the lens of team play. Simply, great diversity to really explore and prime how the meta game will develop going forward. By the time the GT circuit and Adepticon roll around, some of the most perceived egregious things will be fixed.

I've been putting together and playtesting different iterations of my Grand Host army since the beginning of the year with my eye on Gencon and NOVA this next month. Speculation even at the beginning of the year was that we'd have a new GHB and such but a new GHB and New Edition and New Spells... it's all so damn exciting and now I have new data. I dunno, but I'm a real nerd for exploring rules and watching metas develop and adjust.

Good show everyone involved. Good luck everyone going forward.

[JackStreicher]

As example: the new Miniwargaming battle report is pretty much how we play (Nighthaunt VS Legions of Sacrament (except a small narrative is missing in the batter) 

 

[Karol]

2 hours ago, amysrevenge said:

I guess maybe it's about what "win" means? 

"I don't care that my unit of Ogors abandoned the objective to hunt down an otherwise unimportant Hero, because they are the Hero-eaters and killing and eating Heroes is all they care about - I ended up losing the game but consider it a win".  Is that playing a game, or is it making stuff up?

Making stuff up.

[Brad Gamma]

4 hours ago, Sleboda said:

I get ya, but the net effect is you've still chosen to underperform in deference to your opponent's inability to elevate his or her own performance.

To me, it's a question of knowing the activity you've chosen to undertake. To save space, I'll link to a longer explanation.

I’ve been reading this thread for a while and I’ll drop in now because this is the sort of attitude that I don’t understand. There has been some back and forth over this already, and a bit of a competitive vs non-competitive thing, but I find this stance to be extreme.

That is the idea that handicapping yourself in any way is a bad thing, in a game that is, in my opinion, at its absolute best when you have a discussion with your opponent beforehand about what sort of armies you want to play with.

It is rarely an opponents “inability to elevate his or her own performance” in warhammer. The biggest factor for a lot of people, is the models that they own. I don’t want to talk down list building, I love to spend my time tinkering with lists to squeeze performance out of what I have. Ultimately list building can be considered a separate activity before the game where you are aiming to make the game as easy as possible by taking the most optimal list. There is nothing wrong with this,  but if you take the list building as a separate component, then if you bring  a powerful list against a player with a weak list you are playing the game on easy mode. And that’s why I find “competitive” to be a bit of a misleading term for weighting the odds in your favour pre-game (Im being a bit unfair, but stay with me).

But surely list building is part of the game? Well sure, but it is not hard to find a successful list online or even to learn the strategy behind it. But the biggest investment by far is purchasing and painting that army. There are very few examples of other sports/games that have a similar lack of flexibility in what you can play with.

At tournaments? Sure! Anything goes! It’s great to push a game to its limits. If you are entering a tournament scene you are accepting what comes with it.

But every other environment? Figure out power levels, play custom scenarios, give yourself handicaps. Challenge yourself, bring others closer to the game. Sometimes it might be as simple as just explaining beforehand “heads up, I think I’ve got a sweet list here and I’m not gonna hold back!”. Maybe you let them decide a twist for the rematch if you win. That’s not choosing to underperform, it’s chosing to foster a game where both players have an opportunity to perform, rather than neither of you.

 

p.s. I’m really liking the direction of AoS2 so far. Some really great comments from the attendees ?

[Solaris]

Some great points @Brad Gamma. I generally agree with you, though I think there's a difference between coming into a game with a less than optimal build, and making intentional mistakes during the game. The former I am happy to do, but the latter I'm not so keen on. I do think it could be insulting to some if done wrong.

[Roark]

6 hours ago, Solaris said:

making intentional mistakes during the game

I don't want the following question to lead to specific finger-pointing at all, but: has anyone even suggested doing this? I'm not sure they have...

[AaronWilson]

So I played a 1500 point game with a fairly heavy MW Tzeentch list (Lord of Change, Gaunt Summoner, Tzaangor Shaman,Blue Scribes) & Portal. I played against Idoneth with Lens & allied Arcanum + Comet. I was able to use LoC 42" unbind to push Arcanum out of position and sniped him with portal, I was able to play around lens by picking at things that weren't in range / dealing enough MW in a spell to not worry about it. Was happy to see Lens isn't the end of Tzeentch lists completely, though it made things harder and target priority had to be on point. 

[Backbreaker]

23 hours ago, amysrevenge said:

I guess maybe it's about what "win" means? 

"I don't care that my unit of Ogors abandoned the objective to hunt down an otherwise unimportant Hero, because they are the Hero-eaters and killing and eating Heroes is all they care about - I ended up losing the game but consider it a win".  Is that playing a game, or is it making stuff up?

Playing the game and having fun the way you want, because in the end, we are all looking for something diifrent when we are playing !

More on the subject, I think its probably to early to cry about balance issues. Some of them are obvious, but let's wait what crazy competitiv players will find to counter that !

[Infeston]

1 hour ago, Backbreaker said:

Playing the game and having fun the way you want, because in the end, we are all looking for something diifrent when we are playing !

More on the subject, I think its probably to early to cry about balance issues. Some of them are obvious, but let's wait what crazy competitiv players will find to counter that !

To expand on this. When discussions about something being unbalanced or too strong often occur on the internet, I always have to point out this video:

I can only recommend people to watch this video to understand how something could or should be balanced the right way. The problem is that some armies in AoS are "like this video stated" good at everything, which is not always the right way to do things.

[Karol]

The thing with this example is that  in starcraft the only thing you have to do, if your builds stops being fun to play is to learn to play something else. If your army stops working, your options are buy more models from your army and hope it is enough, buy another full army. It is like not liking the pedals on your bike, but being made to buy a new bike.

[blueshirtman]

1 hour ago, Backbreaker said:

Playing the game and having fun the way you want, because in the end, we are all looking for something diifrent when we are playing !

More on the subject, I think its probably to early to cry about balance issues. Some of them are obvious, but let's wait what crazy competitiv players will find to counter that !

What if playing the way you want to play your army is not fun. I play BCR, no matter what my opponent does, I first have to fight with my own army and then play against my opponent army. At the same time someone playing a LoN army gets a well oiled fighting machine.

[Skabnoze]

19 minutes ago, blueshirtman said:

What if playing the way you want to play your army is not fun. I play BCR, no matter what my opponent does, I first have to fight with my own army and then play against my opponent army. At the same time someone playing a LoN army gets a well oiled fighting machine.

Unfortunately, your three choices in this situation are:

1.  deal with it.  play your army and find something about it to enjoy

2. hope that it gets changed at some point and be willing to wait for that change

3.  find another army that has a playstyle that you like and that you enjoy playing

I completely understand your frustration.  I spent over 20 years primarily playing an army that could completely handicap itself with bad animosity rolls on any turn.  I continued to play Orcs & Goblins because I like Orcs & Goblins and I love the models more than any other army in the game.  But I was fully aware that I could pick a different army if I did not want my army to have a chance to implode with little that I could do about it.

It sucks to have to say that, but those are your honest options.

[blueshirtman]

No I know what the "fixs" are, am just saying that the argument in favor of an unbalanced meta in video games is not useful for table top games. And I do not claim that a meta shift doesn't hurt in video games. I had almost 12 days played when Burning Crusade came out, and my GL , who happened to main a mage, told me and every other mage that the guild requires only 1 mage per raid.

But even with the time invested in to playing and relearning a mage, and then more or less being asked to re-roll, is nothing compering to the money cost of a AoS army. Now if AoS had an army cost of around 200-250$, it would be different. I have seen people play or own multiple armies in xwing or infinity.

The 2000pts basic game does not help AoS to be "reroll" friendly. The prospect of buying in to a new army, and then it getting nerfed after 2-3 months is a scary. And not everyone can buy 2000pts in a single month to get in 11 months of playing.

[Infeston]

@blueshirtman I agree with you. But if you also look at the video that I posted, the design of BCR is a perfect example of how this could be done wrong.

Unbalance is only "balanced" if every faction has some extraordinary tools to use. But if there are factions which own all the tools like Stormcasts or other faction who don't own all the tools it just ends up being unfair.

I am all in for imbalance, but only if every faction has tools to counter other factions and not if one faction has all the tools (deepstriking + summoning + alpha striking etc.) whereas other factions don't have any tools.

 

But I also have to agree that most of AoS players propably don't have the money to always adjust to the changes. I for myself could never afford to buy a new army everytime the meta changes.

[Skabnoze]

1 minute ago, blueshirtman said:

No I know what the "fixs" are, am just saying that the argument in favor of an unbalanced meta in video games is not useful for table top games. And I do not claim that a meta shift doesn't hurt in video games. I had almost 12 days played when Burning Crusade came out, and my GL , who happened to main a mage, told me and every other mage that the guild requires only 1 mage per raid.

But even with the time invested in to playing and relearning a mage, and then more or less being asked to re-roll, is nothing compering to the money cost of a AoS army. Now if AoS had an army cost of around 200-250$, it would be different. I have seen people play or own multiple armies in xwing or infinity.

The 2000pts basic game does not help AoS to be "reroll" friendly. The prospect of buying in to a new army, and then it getting nerfed after 2-3 months is a scary. And not everyone can buy 2000pts in a single month to get in 11 months of playing.

This is why when people ask me if they should get into the game, or what army they should choose, I ask them what they want from the game.  I am also pretty frank about the fact that rules in GW games do change with some regularity, forces are not always balanced, and that they should be aware of that.

If you will primarily be playing heavily competitive games, and losing a large majority of your games bothers you then you need to be aware that you will potentially have to spend more money.  You will need to do more investigation into how the different armies play, how much the competitive scene has been changing lately, and you have to be willing to regularly spend more money because it is highly likely that you will either need to change the units in your army and in extreme cases change your army entirely.  If you want to play very competitive then that is just going to be a fact of life or else you probably won't really enjoy the investment.

If you are going to play mainly in a less extreme environment then you should base your purchases on finding an army that has a playstyle you enjoy or the models you like the most - whichever is more important.

Long story short, understand what you are getting into and do it in a way that will maximize your personal enjoyment (whatever that may be).

[Skabnoze]

1 minute ago, Infeston said:

@blueshirtman I agree with you. But if you also look at the video that I posted, the design of BCR is a perfect example of how this could be done wrong.

Unbalance is only "balanced" if every faction has some extraordinary tools to use. But if there are factions which own all the tools like Stormcasts or other faction who don't own all the tools it just ends up being unfair.

I am all in for imbalance, but only if every faction has tools to counter other factions and not if one faction has all the tools (deepstriking + summoning + alpha striking etc.) whereas other factions don't have any tools.

 

But I also have to agree that most of AoS players propably don't have the money to always adjust to the changes. I for myself could never afford to buy a new army everytime the meta changes.

I have never really liked that video because of how they term things.  The whole "unbalanced" balance thing.  The term for this is asymmetrical design.  And Perfect Balance is a complete pipe-dream that will never really be realized.  They make a lot of fair points but I just don't like the way they present some of them.

Asymmetrical design is fine, but if a game is meant to be played in a competitive way then the designers need to be willing to do multiple tweaks to it.  The frequency of adjustments has always been GWs problem.

[Infeston]

@Skabnoze Jeah. I think they could propably have gotten more technical  and precise with the terms. And I also agree on what you said about the presentation of this video.

But I also think this video is created to make the concept more accesible and understandable. 

But to make something better to understand you often have to remove or reduce other aspects, which might have been important. And I think the term "Perfect Imbalance" is more accessible for people rather than "Asymmetrical design", which might be a better term from a linguistic or technical standpoint. 

[Skabnoze]

@Infeston Fair enough and I agree that the concepts they are trying to present are worth discussing and knowing.

It is probably just me being a crusty old grognard but the reason it bothers me is because the two things are different.  Something designed asymmetrically does not mean that the forces are designed to be imbalanced - but rather just not the same.  Almost every miniature game, or any video game with the concept of factions (or classes) with different things, are asymmetric by intent.  You want the things to be different from each other and be better at some things and worse than others.  Nothing in that conceptual framework means that those two things are inherently unbalanced. 

It is a subtle difference but one that I think is quite important to understand for this topic.  It is the reason that direct point comparisons across different armies does not always work.  We all do it when evaluating things.  Ball-park point comparisons (relatively the same within a reasonable difference) are decent, but in most well designed tabletop games the points for units are a combination of the general overall game, and then internal comparisons.  Two things that are similar should not differ too greatly in cost, but they will fluctuate based upon the design of the full army.  What matters more is the big picture of armies and less so the small parts.

[blueshirtman]

I agree with you . But, to again use a warcraft example, having all healers identical is bad, but on the other hand if you design all your encounters that only moving dps is worth taking, the class that does not have such an option just got killed. I remember what an uproar there  was when suddenly in Black Templa all druid tanks, that worked for their guilds for multiple raids, suddenly were informed that the raid requires uncrushable tanks and that they have to re-roll, although the spots for healing and dps are probablly already taken.

I don't mind this army being swarmy, that not shoting and another being magic heavy. As long as two things happen. First the points cost of those lacking mechanics are build in to those armies, and non of the skiped mechanics are moved from just a mechanic to core design paradigma. Magic is fun, adds another layer to the game. It is thematic too for a fantasy game. But you can't create a situation where not having magic casters kills the armies validity.

The new predatory spells are fine, some of the realm ones are ok too. But something like banishment or the spells being dispelable only by wizards should not be, specially as with the new edition we got the generals hand book, so we are stuck with the rules for another year.