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Realm of Battle rules have been officially suggested to be used in tournament matched play


Enoby

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How well the realm rules work is partly a function of how the TOs incorporate them into the event.  Even Ghur could be included in an effective way if TOs want to.  When GW said that they recommend TOs use the realm rules they did not say that they had to be randomly determined using the core rules to decide a realm for each game.  In fact, they specifically recommend that the TOs don't just use the random generation for each game and instead select the realm for each game in some fashion - and they gave a couple recommendations.

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4 minutes ago, Sleboda said:

So, yes, it's true that you can choose to not attend. but it's not a reasonable option for some, which means tournaments end up being attended even when their rules are not great. It creates a false sense that people liked the rules. This is why feedback forms are vital and why TOs need to have thick skins and open minds when reading them.  In fairness, when people do attend an event with rules they dont' like, they really should be proactive and submit thoughtful feedback as well.  Simply not going is not the answer.

Ok, but what if the TO like the realms, because it suits the playstyles of their armies or the players they play the most, or plain and simple maybe it gives an edge to their friends lists. Thick skin or not, stuff like that does happen often, and people that are friends with the TO often know and can pre to events sooner then others, and that is on top of knowing how the terrain or tables situation is going to look like.

 

I get it core GW rules aren't the best, maybe not even good, and TO have to change the rules to make the stuff work. The end goal should be having as many people as they can possible supply with good tables to play on. The realm stuff, interesting as it maybe, favors very specific armies, armies which are already good, but what it worse they also nerf some armies that are weaker. What KO player is going to want to go to any event, if he knows that he will auto lose 2 out of 6 games, by virtue of not being able to shot in one game, and not having scoring wizards in another.?

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2 minutes ago, blueshirtman said:

Only that lowers the number of actually playable armies. If lets say one out of X realms screws over shoting armies and shoting units, then the shift is going to be to use stuff that either can ignore it or not taking range units ever. 

Let's not go overboard.  I doubt that the overall reaction to a single realm making some mechanic less useful would be to not take those units ever.  More likely the reaction would be to not build completely around that mechanic unless you know that you won't fight in that realm.

The issue of some armies being very poor with realm rules is not necessarily an inherent problem with realm rules.  It is a problem with that particular army and GW should address that.  The number of "actually playable" armies is something that GW controls through writing the battletome and it should be addressed that way (or in an errata to the battletome).

If a particular realm has issues then those should be addressed on a case by case basis - not by simply tossing the entire set of realm rules.

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4 minutes ago, Skabnoze said:

How well the realm rules work is partly a function of how the TOs incorporate them into the event.  Even Ghur could be included in an effective way if TOs want to.  When GW said that they recommend TOs use the realm rules they did not say that they had to be randomly determined using the core rules to decide a realm for each game.  In fact, they specifically recommend that the TOs don't just use the random generation for each game and instead select the realm for each game in some fashion - and they gave a couple recommendations.

Ok, how would we change the rules for picking the realm/realm artefacts to make them seem fair, and not just buff specific armies.

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3 minutes ago, blueshirtman said:

Ok, but what if the TO like the realms, because it suits the playstyles of their armies or the players they play the most, or plain and simple maybe it gives an edge to their friends lists. Thick skin or not, stuff like that does happen often, and people that are friends with the TO often know and can pre to events sooner then others, and that is on top of knowing how the terrain or tables situation is going to look like.

If this happens enough then I would assume that people would take that up with the TO and if it is bad enough then attendance will suffer.

As someone else said, vote with your feet.  This is an issue for that specific tournament and TO and not an issue with the rules.

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It's an age old problem we've faced for years and we've almost always babied our bathwater. 

Some of the Realm rules seem inappropriate-> garbage the entire concept of Realm rules.

It's a disproportionate response.  You know what I'd like to see?  Well, for starters I'd like to see them all actually get used and tested, and see what the GW response is to feedback.  But assuming there is still a perceived need for it...

Some of the Realm rules seem inappropriate -> garbage those particular Realm rules.

 

5 minutes ago, blueshirtman said:

Ok, but what if the TO like the realms, because it suits the playstyles of their armies or the players they play the most, or plain and simple maybe it gives an edge to their friends lists. Thick skin or not, stuff like that does happen often, and people that are friends with the TO often know and can pre to events sooner then others, and that is on top of knowing how the terrain or tables situation is going to look like.

There's literally no way to stop a TO from cheating their own event.  Certainly nothing within the ruleset of the game.

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35 minutes ago, swarmofseals said:

It's a double edged sword where the edge is WAY sharper on one side. You get to set the model up 9" away from your opponent after setup. That's pretty much a guarantee that you will control that monster on turn 1. Given that you can then move and charge with that monster on turn 1 (with essentially guaranteed success), you can then position that monster in such a way that you are very likely to continue to control it for the vast majority of the game. If for some reason there is no way to set it up such that you would get immediate control, you can simply choose to not set a monster up at all. 

Insofar as TOs have the authority to adjust the rules however they want, every rule could be argued to be a TO problem and not a rules problem. That argument just doesn't sit well with me.

While you may be fine with losing a round to the guy who showed up with extra monsters just in case, there are many players for whom that would create a very bad experience -- particularly new players that might not understand all the realm rules to start and who might not know that forgeworld even exists. 

I just don't see how this is fundamentally different than someone getting a free lord of change, or a double turn against a new player.  There are plenty of scenarios that are simply unfair in Age of Sigmar. I played a game recently where the scenario was scoring based on heroes in proximity to objectives. I had only 1 hero in my army (was 1,000 points) so naturally i couldn't win the games. I still had fun. 

And tournament organizers don't play in competitive tournaments. In casual or narrative tournaments sure, but that's not what we're concerned about, right?

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Just now, Skabnoze said:

Let's not go overboard.  I doubt that the overall reaction to a single realm making some mechanic less useful would be to not take those units ever.  More likely the reaction would be to not build completely around that mechanic unless you know that you won't fight in that realm.

The issue of some armies being very poor with realm rules is not necessarily an inherent problem with realm rules.  It is a problem with that particular army and GW should address that.  The number of "actually playable" armies is something that GW controls through writing the battletome and it should be addressed that way (or in an errata to the battletome).

If a particular realm has issues then those should be addressed on a case by case basis - not by simply tossing the entire set of realm rules.

But that is exactly how it works. Lets say you have 6-8 rounds, if you know that you auto lose 2, or more then going to the event stops being worth it. And the fact that some realms buff some armies sky high and debuff others is exactly the problem. Even a bad player will notice that some armies do not suffer from , lets say range limitations, while having nice buffs playing other realms and some don't. And the don'ts won't be coming to the events, this leads to a smaller pool of valid armies or valid unit choices. And that is bad for any game. 

Now I get that in top 8 this is less of a problem, but for those people that were playing on table 30 with their BCR or KO list, it is a crucial thing.

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1 minute ago, blueshirtman said:

Ok, how would we change the rules for picking the realm/realm artefacts to make them seem fair, and not just buff specific armies.

Realm Artifact rules do not need any adjustment.  They benefit armies with battletomes more since those give access to battalions and can give you more artifacts, but that benefit already exists without the realm artifact rules.

As for the rules for picking the realm that a battle takes place in, the first idea that jumps out to me would be for the TO to announce in the event pack which realms will be used for each round in the tournament.

For example, in the event pack it could say: round1 = shyish, round 2 = aqshy, etc etc.

If the realms are known ahead of time then people can plan their list building knowing what realms they will fight in and potentially when.  They won't know who they will be fighting in each realm, but they will know what realm rules will be in effect and which realm spells will be available.  If you are worried about TOs playing favorites then this method seems like the best since everything is known ahead of time.  If the realm is decided 15 mins before a round then there is a chance that a lousy TO could look at the match-ups and give certain armies an advantage in a round, but if the realms for each round were decided ahead of time then that cannot happen.

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2 minutes ago, amysrevenge said:

There's literally no way to stop a TO from cheating their own event.  Certainly nothing within the ruleset of the game.

It is not cheating. If it was cheating people would just never show up to the next event done by the same guy or groyp of guys.

 

1 minute ago, lolwut said:

I just don't see how this is fundamentally different than someone getting a free lord of change, or a double turn against a new player.  There are plenty of scenarios that are simply unfair in Age of Sigmar. I played a game recently where the scenario was scoring based on heroes in proximity to objectives. I had only 1 hero in my army (was 1,000 points) so naturally i couldn't win the games. I still had fun. 

Did you have to travel to get that 1000pts game, pay for a hotel or some sort of other stay? I lose with BCR on a weekly basis, it is not fun, but all it costs me to play is going 2 hours with a bus. Plus you never know if someone gets a double turn, that is a totaly different thing then knowing a month in advance that your not going to win game 2, because your army realised too much on shoting, and probablly lose game 4 as you don't have the extra monster models required to use in Ghur.

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4 minutes ago, blueshirtman said:

But that is exactly how it works. Lets say you have 6-8 rounds, if you know that you auto lose 2, or more then going to the event stops being worth it.

None of the realm rules cause someone to auto-lose.  If they do then the first thing I would examine would be the army list you chose.  There is not a single realm that has a rule that says "Armies from X battletome automatically lose".

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2 minutes ago, Skabnoze said:

If the realms are known ahead of time then people can plan their list building knowing what realms they will fight in and potentially when. 

But unless you play the armies that are already uneffected in a bad way by the realms it won't matter. A BCR player is not going to suddenly strong arm GW in to making wizards for BCR, and the KO player won't make GW fix his battletome focus on shoting. At the same time a LoN player is going to loling at all of this, because he gets everything, more spells, more artefacts, buffs, debuffs to stuff that hurt his army, heck one realm just makes his army stright up better, just because GW decided to be so.

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1 minute ago, blueshirtman said:

It is not cheating. If it was cheating people would just never show up to the next event done by the same guy or groyp of guys.

 

Did you have to travel to get that 1000pts game, pay for a hotel or some sort of other stay? I lose with BCR on a weekly basis, it is not fun, but all it costs me to play is going 2 hours with a bus. Plus you never know if someone gets a double turn, that is a totaly different thing then knowing a month in advance that your not going to win game 2, because your army realised too much on shoting, and probablly lose game 4 as you don't have the extra monster models required to use in Ghur.

No, but for a tournament that I would travel for, such as the Las Vegas Open, I would know the rules well in advance. I would know if I needed heroes, or if realms were in play and what specific realms would be used. 

And, this might sound bad, but this is a fantasy game, I have 0 sympathy for armies that rely heavily on shooting getting the shaft. Maybe that's unfair. But I view this as a melee focused game, and shooting is already very strong, far stronger than it should be. 

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2 minutes ago, blueshirtman said:

It is not cheating. If it was cheating people would just never show up to the next event done by the same guy or groyp of guys.

It's cheating.  The thing you described (a TO specifically designing an event to help their buddies, and then selling it as a tournament and not just a gameday for their buddies) is cheating.

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3 minutes ago, Skabnoze said:

None of the realm rules cause someone to auto-lose.  If they do then the first thing I would examine would be the army list you chose.  There is not a single realm that has a rule that says "Armies from X battletome automatically lose".

yeah, because having all shoting ranges halfed is not an auto lose to KOs, or being hit by banishment is not the same for low count armies like BCR.

Plus it warps the unit pulls. A SCE player may well be able win with his army, but he is going to be more or less forced out of the stuff he already bought, and maybe even likes, to buying the new stuff. And if he stays with the fulminators+judicators builds he is punished for buying those models and playing with them.

Which realm hurts LoN, by the way, or at least to which of the realms do they have to change their lists or adjust their unit choice? If it is fair for all they should have the same problems as others. And yes I know that life or AoS is and was never fair, but adding more inbalance to the game does not make it better.

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Considering the rules for Ghur: What if TO pre-select monsters in a tournament and publish which monsters can occur in Ghur for the event? So the TOs could look for monsters which are somewhat fair and everyone knows which monsters will appear before the event and can prepare for this. 

This could be a way to also use the Ghur rules. People don't have to bring their own monsters if the TOs change the rule so that only the monsters from the tournament organizers can be used.

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4 minutes ago, lolwut said:

No, but for a tournament that I would travel for, such as the Las Vegas Open, I would know the rules well in advance. I would know if I needed heroes, or if realms were in play and what specific realms would be used. 

And, this might sound bad, but this is a fantasy game, I have 0 sympathy for armies that rely heavily on shooting getting the shaft. Maybe that's unfair. But I view this as a melee focused game, and shooting is already very strong, far stronger than it should be. 

What about armies where shoting is suppose to replace the lack of magic caster, or which GW themselfs created in a such a way that they lean on their shoting abilities to do anything?

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Just now, Infeston said:

Considering the rules for Ghur: What if TO pre-select monsters in a tournament and publish which monsters can occur in Ghur for the event? So the TOs could look for monsters which are somewhat fair and everyone knows which monsters will appear before the event and can prepare for this. 

This could be a way to also use the Ghur rules. People don't have to bring their own monsters if the TOs change the rule so that only the monsters from the tournament organizers can be used.

Ok, this works for huge events that you know months in advance, and people still would be forced to buy a single model to use in a single round of an event. Acceptable if it is something big. But how do you do it for local events? The chaos, LoN players would be running around with their cheap to get counts as monsters, that they probablly got since WFB times, while someone who has a non monster using army or a new AoS army would have to buy stuff.

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8 minutes ago, blueshirtman said:

What about armies where shoting is suppose to replace the lack of magic caster, or which GW themselfs created in a such a way that they lean on their shoting abilities to do anything?

No army lacks a wizard.  Every army has a wizard.  KO, Fyreslayers, BCR, tiny GHB factions.  All of them.  Choosing not to use them is a self-restriction, not a rules problem.

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38 minutes ago, blueshirtman said:

yeah, because having all shoting ranges halfed is not an auto lose to KOs, or being hit by banishment is not the same for low count armies like BCR.

Plus it warps the unit pulls. A SCE player may well be able win with his army, but he is going to be more or less forced out of the stuff he already bought, and maybe even likes, to buying the new stuff. And if he stays with the fulminators+judicators builds he is punished for buying those models and playing with them.

Which realm hurts LoN, by the way, or at least to which of the realms do they have to change their lists or adjust their unit choice? If it is fair for all they should have the same problems as others. And yes I know that life or AoS is and was never fair, but adding more inbalance to the game does not make it better.

My bold. This is something that is uniquely rubbish about playing anything competitively. Tactics and the what is 'top-tier' changes so frequently, that you'll be constantly forced to buy new stuff all the time. Matched Play is arguably the most expensive way to play for this reason, and is a great source of reliable income for GW, Wizards of the Coast, and all the companies that have a competitive aspect to games. Unfortunately if you're not happy, or are unable to part with the necessary dollar you're going to be stuck with an army that is sub-par.

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3 hours ago, tokek said:

Having faced pretty much that situation at Warhammer World at the weekend[1] I would say that you can either learn to love a challenge or perhaps what you need is a more predictable game without dice and stuff. Finding ways to make those games winnable is what makes you get out of your usual gaming rut and really win the game on the table and not in list building.

Do not patronize me.

If I am playing my Freeguild army and I'm limited to 6" range on my missile weapons, I lose. There is no challenge, other than that to my patience.

A challenge is if someone slaps 12 Fulminators down on the board, it is not the total negation of one of the phases of the game.

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10 hours ago, murphs said:

Do not patronize me.

If I am playing my Freeguild army and I'm limited to 6" range on my missile weapons, I lose. There is no challenge, other than that to my patience.

A challenge is if someone slaps 12 Fulminators down on the board, it is not the total negation of one of the phases of the game.

GW have said that this has all been tested and is balanced to make sure that your non-desirable gunline army has to be redesigned to be more flexible and interactive. Stop being so stubborn.

Grab a unit of Evocators, and some Sequitors for them to buff. Add some Judicators as battleline. Grab Gavriel, a knight vexillor and incantor. Now change your faction allegiance to Stormcast, get your drop count down, and practice killing everything on turn 1. There you go! I found a way to make that game winnable for your freeguild!

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2 hours ago, lolwut said:

I just don't see how this is fundamentally different than someone getting a free lord of change, or a double turn against a new player.  There are plenty of scenarios that are simply unfair in Age of Sigmar. I played a game recently where the scenario was scoring based on heroes in proximity to objectives. I had only 1 hero in my army (was 1,000 points) so naturally i couldn't win the games. I still had fun. 

And tournament organizers don't play in competitive tournaments. In casual or narrative tournaments sure, but that's not what we're concerned about, right?

I don't think any of those situations are unfair. Both players have the opportunity to get double turns. If you get a free Lord of Change it's because you built your army to do that, and presumably your army's ability to do that kind of thing is built into the point costs in that army. You bought that Lord of Change and brought it as a part of your army with a chance to summon it in every single game you play. 

The Ghur rules involve potentially bringing multiple 90+ quid models just on the off chance that your tournament happens to be using Ghur as the battle realm in one of the games. It's not part of your army, and it's not predictably usable in any way. Remember, GW is suggesting that tournament organizers only announce the realm of battle for each round 15 minutes before the round starts! You'd have to buy and transport whatever monsters not even knowing if Ghur is being used or not.

2 hours ago, lolwut said:

No, but for a tournament that I would travel for, such as the Las Vegas Open, I would know the rules well in advance. I would know if I needed heroes, or if realms were in play and what specific realms would be used. 

And, this might sound bad, but this is a fantasy game, I have 0 sympathy for armies that rely heavily on shooting getting the shaft. Maybe that's unfair. But I view this as a melee focused game, and shooting is already very strong, far stronger than it should be. 

You wouldn't know the rules well in advance if they decided to follow GW's suggestion and announce the battle realm just beforehand. In many ways if a big event announces its using Ghur or Ghyran ahead of time it's even worse. Many people travel to those events, and it's already enough of a hassle to fly to an event with your carefully painted army. Do you really want to feel like you need to bring several extra monsters and/or scenery pieces just for that one round?

2 hours ago, Infeston said:

Considering the rules for Ghur: What if TO pre-select monsters in a tournament and publish which monsters can occur in Ghur for the event? So the TOs could look for monsters which are somewhat fair and everyone knows which monsters will appear before the event and can prepare for this. 

This could be a way to also use the Ghur rules. People don't have to bring their own monsters if the TOs change the rule so that only the monsters from the tournament organizers can be used.

Yeah, if tournaments want to supply a bunch of extra monsters for free for every table then by all means use those rules. I can't imagine many tournaments having the resources to do that unless they use proxies/paper cutouts. If they do though then I'd be totally fine with it and it'd be totally workable.

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3 hours ago, swarmofseals said:

particularly new players that might not understand all the realm rules to start and who might not know that forgeworld even exists. 

Wat. Why is a new player who barely knows what the game is at a tournament competing with the highest level of players? 

I mean I guess there’s always the people who have played a video game for 3 seconds and immediately jump into ranked (if there aren’t barriers preventing that which most games have) but why would you then be salty you lost against the most prepared and the best players because you were so new you had not read the realm rules and clearly understood them and didn’t know what Forgeworld was..... 

this is a stupid argument that makes no sense. 

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