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

[BaldoBeardo]

5 minutes ago, DanielFM said:

Please show me a competitive, interesting, 2000 points Kharadron  list that doesn't rely on long range shooting. Please.

Maybe you are reading a different battletome than the one I do.

I was summarising other people's comments not my own, just to clarify.

But I couldn't even if I wanted to, as it's likely your definitions of competitive and interesting are very different to mine.

[hughwyeth]

41 minutes ago, Ravinsild said:

Clearly I didn’t realize this as I’ve never been to an event. 

Here I was thinking it was all pros that would crush my soul if I didn’t get a lot of practice and preparation in..

.....

Based on what’s reported and the way people talk about tournaments it’s pretty easy to come away with the impression they’re for hard core players only and scarred veterans that have been playing for several years. 

I've only been to one tournament, but was pleasantly surprised. Out of the 80 players, about 15 were serious hardcore players, the rest just had really nice painted forces and wanted to play some challenging games. Didn't have a single negative experience at all, whether against competitive players or more casual ones. I think right now AoS is in a great place for tournament experience. Even if you're not a great player (like me!) it's worth trying a tournament- perhaps a one day, 3 game event would be worth starting with. 

[Wraith01]

I love it! No more spamming the same lists. Only good things can come from this. 

[Ravinsild]

3 minutes ago, hughwyeth said:

I've only been to one tournament, but was pleasantly surprised. Out of the 80 players, about 15 were serious hardcore players, the rest just had really nice painted forces and wanted to play some challenging games. Didn't have a single negative experience at all, whether against competitive players or more casual ones. I think right now AoS is in a great place for tournament experience. Even if you're not a great player (like me!) it's worth trying a tournament- perhaps a one day, 3 game event would be worth starting with. 

I definitely plan on going with either Ironjawz or Khorne.... or maybe I really will use my tax return to drop on a new shooting style army just for giggles. 

And I hope they use realm rules >:D

[amysrevenge]

Gotta say I am enjoying reading both "shooting armies are nerfed into oblivion by realm rules" and "shooting armies are buffed into the stratosphere by realm rules" expounded on with such passion in such close proximity.

[Infeston]

17 minutes ago, ianob said:

I'm glad you expanded this because I wasn't sure from your initial comment if you were kidding or not.

It's a shame you've gotten this impression. Tournaments are awesome, and if you want to play competitively are actually a great way to practice and learn. Nothing teaches you like a good solid loss!

I hope that if you have the facility to get to events, you try some. They're great fun.

I also have to add that I have never been to a tournament, because if you are reading posts and comments on the internet or here on TGA as a casual, narrative or new player you get the exaxt same impression as @Ravinsild said before. I know many people who also think that way and stay away from tournaments for this reason. 

Many people just want to play their army and have fun with it and don't want to be stomped in an overly competitive setting.

I have only ever been to a card game tournament in my life and I didn't like the overly competitive atmosphere there. But I would really be interested in taking part at a narrative gaming event.

[Undeadly]

Just now, amysrevenge said:

Gotta say I am enjoying reading both "shooting armies are nerfed into oblivion by realm rules" and "shooting armies are buffed into the stratosphere by realm rules" expounded on with such passion in such close proximity.

Well, Its not that one army is getting buffed, though. Its that multiple armies can either get lucky and get a massive boost or get unlucky and loose a lot of strength all because of simply two dice rolls, and with no way of predicting or countering it. You could get a boost to shooting, or you could loose out on half your range. Is that fair to armies like Kharadron, unless you bring a lot of Close Combat units? And is loosing the ability to run fair to Maggotkin armies, unless you bring Gargoyles and Drones? These aren't things that can change playstyles, these are things that can actively weaken or entirely ruin what would otherwise be good and fun lists to play for as arbitrary a reason as being unlucky.

[wayniac]

I think the intent is going to be that the realm rules will be predetermined, not randomly rolled.  So it's unlikely a TO is going to pick the one that cripples shooting or makes it stronger, they might pick the LOS blocking one for variety and to tone down gunlines without making them useless.  In this way, it will add variety but not necessarily cripple armies, but make it so you cannot perhaps put all your eggs in one basket with a gimmick list.

[BaldoBeardo]

50 minutes ago, Undeadly said:

Well, Its not that one army is getting buffed, though. Its that multiple armies can either get lucky and get a massive boost or get unlucky and loose a lot of strength all because of simply two dice rolls, and with no way of predicting or countering it. You could get a boost to shooting, or you could loose out on half your range. Is that fair to armies like Kharadron, unless you bring a lot of Close Combat units? And is loosing the ability to run fair to Maggotkin armies, unless you bring Gargoyles and Drones? These aren't things that can change playstyles, these are things that can actively weaken or entirely ruin what would otherwise be good and fun lists to play for as arbitrary a reason as being unlucky.

Your point appears to be "is it fair that a player has to pick a variety of units to mitigate the game rules?"

[Sleboda]

6 hours ago, DanielFM said:

So for you there is only "lolfunzies" and "srsbsns" in AoS, with nothing in between. You are either a casual which plays for laughs in your basement and care not about winning or losing, or a super pro tournament player which only cares about winning.

And you are worried about hyperbole ? that's one of the worst oversimplifications I have read in TGA. And a harmful one, for the hobby.

Never said that. At all. Please don't put words in my mouth.

I very much appreciate that tournaments are fun as heck. I was simply responding to the idea of self-limited armies and complaints that they cannot compete as desired when attending an event that is, by definition, a competition. A fun event, of course, but still a competition.

If you opt to compete at less than your full potential, which is your right, then at least be honest enough with yourself to admit it's a limit you've imposed on yourself. The game didn't do that.

 

[Richelieu]

52 minutes ago, hughwyeth said:

I've only been to one tournament, but was pleasantly surprised. Out of the 80 players, about 15 were serious hardcore players, the rest just had really nice painted forces and wanted to play some challenging games. Didn't have a single negative experience at all, whether against competitive players or more casual ones. I think right now AoS is in a great place for tournament experience. Even if you're not a great player (like me!) it's worth trying a tournament- perhaps a one day, 3 game event would be worth starting with. 

This has been my experience as well.  I only attend local events although would like to travel if I had the time.  Even though at the GT I attended in June I played people from four different states, only a few players were paying power lists that they had loads of experience with.  The vast majority were mid table players like myself who had fun, close games with each other and if you encountered a power player, sure you might have one rough game, but it wasn't a bad experience for anyone (OK, except plaguetouched warband, that list was bruuuuutal).  

I truly have difficulty thinking of any realm rules that would have changed this experience for anyone at the tournament.  The power players would have brought lists that would  be resilient against the negative realm rules and all the midfield players would have just had fun with the lists they brought.  

[murphs]

1 hour ago, Ravinsild said:

He didn’t use the word ally. He used the word units, which implies they’re already options in the army. 

Why does it matter? They are both available options.

1 hour ago, Ravinsild said:

Swear on me mum I’m about to take my 900$ tax return, buy a SCE army or something and make them ONLY shooting and show up to the next available and closest tournament and just go as far as I can. Idk maybe I’ll buy KO or Freeguild. 

??

[Nos]

On 8/1/2018 at 3:57 PM, Dead Scribe said:

 

If I go to a major tournament wanting to compete at the highest level with the goal being to win, and I build a list that depends on alpha striking and I roll a realm that prevents that from happening and I lose the game and have no shot at winning the event because of that random realm roll, I'd just as soon not spend the money on hotel, travel, and the time spent for nothing.

If you go to a major tournament with these rules and the goal is to win but you take an army that requires specific circumstances (that you know full well might not occur) to work then you're army list dosent deserve to win. A Hail Mary like that isn't going to hit 6 times in a tournament designed to encourage balance and strategy. 

[lolwut]

"Yeah I played this guy and got a double turn and tabled him before he got his turn 2 with my super shooting list!" - Acceptable 

"Yeah I played this guy with my super shooting list but it was in Ulgu so I didn't automatically win, SUCH BS" -Unacceptable

Right? 

[Dead Scribe]

11 minutes ago, Nos said:

If you go to a major tournament with these rules and the goal is to win but you take an army that requires specific circumstances (that you know full well might not occur) to work then you're army list dosent deserve to win. A Hail Mary like that isn't going to hit 6 times in a tournament designed to encourage balance and strategy. 

When going to a major tournament, lists that win are often overloaded for a certain circumstance.  Mainly because tournaments often tend to run similar to each other and that circumstance is what you optimize against.  The other part of it is knowing what the percentage of people playing what are so you can build their hard counter and hope you don't get put up against your own hard counter.

If a tournament has multiple win conditions and sets of rules, you can't optimize against it, and list building really becomes secondary.  

I've won or placed in many tournaments over the last few years because I knew what those circumstances were to optimize against.  Something like these rules being randomly determined during the event would kill the ability to listbuild properly.  If the TO made it known ahead of time what the realm rules were ahead of time, that would be a little better, but would also require buying more models and paying someone to paint them for me so that I had the ability to adapt better. 

Once a year was fine by me.  But now this is potentially every event.  Removing listbuilding or making it weaker is not something I think will go over very well because its why a lot of people play games like this.  I don't know anyone that enjoys just taking a general list thats supposed to try to cover every base.  At that point you might as well just go ahead and balance the game properly and make points have more meaning than they do today, which is nothing more than a structure to optimize against right now.

[hughwyeth]

9 minutes ago, Dead Scribe said:

Removing listbuilding or making it weaker is not something I think will go over very well because its why a lot of people play games like this. 

But do you understand that for others this comes across as players wanting to have won the game before the game even started? It sounds like those players are annoyed because they might have to develop some strategic thinking rather than dumping a winning list on the table and just going through the motions? The list building is still there, it's just harder now- you need to prepare for a greater number of possible game setups.

We really don't want AoS to go the MTG route, where you could really just say "i've got this deck, what have you got?" and then decide the game there and then without actually playing. If you really like having won the game before the game's played, MTG or Clash of Kings would seem a way better alternative, especially considering when I see these kinds of players they always have unpainted or barely painted armies, just thrown together because that's the power list. Like that's 80% of the hobby that you're passing over!  You could even play Clash of Kings on the bog and smash every opponent because you spent £500 on chests  (or whatever they call them) and not have to waste time making and painting miniatures. 

[Dead Scribe]

But I do think a lot of players want exactly that.  Thats why people like me play.  To craft a list that wins the event.  

There is a lot of strategic thought in crafting strong lists and combinations.

From what I've been seeing, warhammer in general has been a lot like MTG in that exact scenario where games are decided in the beginning.  Its one of the things that made me pull the trigger and get into the game in the first place when my area started building AOS earlier this year.

[Nos]

3 minutes ago, Dead Scribe said:

When going to a major tournament, lists that win are often overloaded for a certain circumstance.  Mainly because tournaments often tend to run similar to each other and that circumstance is what you optimize against.  The other part of it is knowing what the percentage of people playing what are so you can build their hard counter and hope you don't get put up against your own hard counter.

If a tournament has multiple win conditions and sets of rules, you can't optimize against it, and list building really becomes secondary.  

I've won or placed in many tournaments over the last few years because I knew what those circumstances were to optimize against.  Something like these rules being randomly determined during the event would kill the ability to listbuild properly.  If the TO made it known ahead of time what the realm rules were ahead of time, that would be a little better, but would also require buying more models and paying someone to paint them for me so that I had the ability to adapt better. 

Once a year was fine by me.  But now this is potentially every event.  Removing listbuilding or making it weaker is not something I think will go over very well because its why a lot of people play games like this.  I don't know anyone that enjoys just taking a general list thats supposed to try to cover every base.  At that point you might as well just go ahead and balance the game properly and make points have more meaning than they do today, which is nothing more than a structure to optimize against right now.

I mean fair enough if that's your thing. I personally would feel hollow winning something due to a gimmick or relying on imbalance, that's more a case of exploitation than skill. You're right that AOS is not a remotely balanced game however, so maybe the meta is more appropriate if catered towards a Go Hard or Go Home mentality.

But I think it's indisputable that crafting an army to win across multiple conditions and scenarios is a far more impressive accomplishment and thus what most people would expect at the pinnacle of competitive play. The best sports people and teams always have a speciality but they also have the mastery of the game to win when it dosent favour their preferred approach. For that reason I think most people when thinking of elite AOS players won't be thinking of a guy who has one list who does one thing all the time or loses.

[hughwyeth]

1 minute ago, Dead Scribe said:

But I do think a lot of players want exactly that.  Thats why people like me play.  To craft a list that wins the event.  

There is a lot of strategic thought in crafting strong lists and combinations.

From what I've been seeing, warhammer in general has been a lot like MTG in that exact scenario where games are decided in the beginning.  Its one of the things that made me pull the trigger and get into the game in the first place when my area started building AOS earlier this year.

But there really isn't strategic though in bringing changehost in AoS 1 is there? To each his own, but i can't see the point in choosing warhammer if the modelling, painting and playing of the game is not enjoyable for you. That just sounds insane to me. Like what a ludicrous waste of the potential of the hobby. MTG or Clash of Kings is just that listbuilding and that's it- why have the overhead of miniatures assembly when you can build a deck?

[Undeadly]

30 minutes ago, BaldoBeardo said:

Your point appears to be "is it fair that a player has to pick a variety of units to mitigate the game rules?"

No, my point is, is it fair for armies to just straight up get penalities that actively hinder the majority of the army? Like I said before, EVERY single Nighthaunt unit is flying, and the only allie they can bring that ISN'T flying are Bloodknights from Soulblight. And one of their key abilities relies on them getting a 9+ to charge. How is it fair for a Nighthaunt army to get the possibility of MW when ever they move their full move distance or charge?

 

In a Maggotkin of Nurgle army, Gnarlmaws allow Nurgle armies to actually move where they need to. And even without that, they need to be able to run to effectively get to places. When their army has only 3 units that FLY, how is it fair that every other unit gets left at speeds as slow as 4"?

[amysrevenge]

10 minutes ago, Dead Scribe said:

When going to a major tournament, lists that win are often overloaded for a certain circumstance.  Mainly because tournaments often tend to run similar to each other and that circumstance is what you optimize against.  The other part of it is knowing what the percentage of people playing what are so you can build their hard counter and hope you don't get put up against your own hard counter.

If a tournament has multiple win conditions and sets of rules, you can't optimize against it, and list building really becomes secondary.  

I've won or placed in many tournaments over the last few years because I knew what those circumstances were to optimize against.  Something like these rules being randomly determined during the event would kill the ability to listbuild properly.  If the TO made it known ahead of time what the realm rules were ahead of time, that would be a little better, but would also require buying more models and paying someone to paint them for me so that I had the ability to adapt better. 

Once a year was fine by me.  But now this is potentially every event.  Removing listbuilding or making it weaker is not something I think will go over very well because its why a lot of people play games like this.  I don't know anyone that enjoys just taking a general list thats supposed to try to cover every base.  At that point you might as well just go ahead and balance the game properly and make points have more meaning than they do today, which is nothing more than a structure to optimize against right now.

Here's the thing - based on the community article and the podcast, this is clearly a style of tournament play that GW is not intending to support, and is going out of their way to challenge (the realm rules are in direct opposition to list design being the ultimate decider of a tournament).  Although they haven't done a super good job of it so far, so I can see why folks aren't confident that it's ever going to happen properly, it's clearly what they are trying for.

It's going to be a struggle to maintain a " best list wins the tournament" event style.  You'll be actively working against the rule writers to make it happen.  Which you can do, but it will get increasingly difficult, if they keep up their opposition, as more and more of the community will buy into the supported style (and as more and more of the player base realizes that if practice/experience and playstyle are made more important relative to model collections and meta-chasing, more players might be in for a chance to win).

[Skabnoze]

8 hours ago, Sleboda said:

Noooooo .....

That defeats how the balance comes in. If you can plan the realms, you can still optimize. Even their own new chart says to not show the Realm until right before the game.

I was not advocating that my idea should be how events are run.  I was making the case that TOs can modify and adjust these rules to a format that easily fits into their event structure.  I made a really quick example to illustrate that.  Also, you can publish a list of which realms and the chosen realmscapes ahead of time, but not publish which rounds will be in each realm.  That still conforms to the GW chart and is probably a good compromise to make between preparation & game-day uncertainty.

I am not a TO for a major event.  I have organized local events for games in the past, but they are almost always some form of campaign or league.  I'll let the TOs decide the best way to use these rules, but I do think they are useful rules both for shaping list building and also for adding thematic elements from the AoS universe.

I think the arguments GW made for why they prefer people to use these rules has merit.

[Dead Scribe]

23 minutes ago, hughwyeth said:

But there really isn't strategic though in bringing changehost in AoS 1 is there? To each his own, but i can't see the point in choosing warhammer if the modelling, painting and playing of the game is not enjoyable for you. That just sounds insane to me. Like what a ludicrous waste of the potential of the hobby. MTG or Clash of Kings is just that listbuilding and that's it- why have the overhead of miniatures assembly when you can build a deck?

Because people will buy the miniatures and it sells a lot of units and makes companies money.  Its not that people prefer cards or miniatures.  Its that people like that gamestyle that listbuilding/deckbuilding gives them.  

CCG listbuilding is HUGE and makes a lot of money.  Those same people like the listbuilding / deckbuilding aspect, and clearly miniatures as a medium is also attractive because it makes a lot of tabletop game companies a lot of money when they support and enforce that style.

[wayniac]

16 minutes ago, amysrevenge said:

Here's the thing - based on the community article and the podcast, this is clearly a style of tournament play that GW is not intending to support, and is going out of their way to challenge (the realm rules are in direct opposition to list design being the ultimate decider of a tournament).  Although they haven't done a super good job of it so far, so I can see why folks aren't confident that it's ever going to happen properly, it's clearly what they are trying for.

I hope so.  I hate how listbuilding is seen as the pinnacle of skill in Warhammer (and many wargames) and it's seen as a good thing if you win the game in the listbuilding phase.

[Richelieu]

18 minutes ago, Undeadly said:

No, my point is, is it fair for armies to just straight up get penalities that actively hinder the majority of the army? Like I said before, EVERY single Nighthaunt unit is flying, and the only allie they can bring that ISN'T flying are Bloodknights from Soulblight. And one of their key abilities relies on them getting a 9+ to charge. How is it fair for a Nighthaunt army to get the possibility of MW when ever they move their full move distance or charge?

 

In a Maggotkin of Nurgle army, Gnarlmaws allow Nurgle armies to actually move where they need to. And even without that, they need to be able to run to effectively get to places. When their army has only 3 units that FLY, how is it fair that every other unit gets left at speeds as slow as 4"?

How is it fair that Nighthaunt get there extremely powerful rule that all their units fly?  How is it fair that there get there extremely powerful rule that they get to attack twice after making a 9" charge?  How is it fair that Nurgle, the most resilient army in the game also gets to move wherever it darn well pleases?