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

[tokek]

20 minutes 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.

When all the serious contenders take that approach it really just comes down to who gets lucky with the match-ups. No list is an auto-win against everything so it is the old rock-paper-scissors of who you get in the draw.

GW want to create a ruleset where the play on the table is a larger part of what gets you the win.  It happens that the way they want to do this is by introducing a significant unknown (but not random) element to the games which push players towards diluting down the more single-minded lists in favour of giving themselves more tools to deal with the unknown. 

Some people genuinely want tournaments to be all about list design and luckily dodging your bad matchups - for those players what GW are proposing is not what they wanted GW to propose. The truth for GW as for any company is that you can't please all the people all the time, that should not stop the designers form making their opinion known nor from explaining that this approach is what they had in mind when designing and balancing the game.

[Skabnoze]

5 hours ago, Dead Scribe said:

I think from a tournament player perspective, you'd definitely never take a shooting based army to an event anymore with these rules in effect.

All of the ones that negatively impact shooting do the same thing for magic.  Nagash gets hit just as hard as Kharadron Overlords by some of the Ulgu realmscape effects.

[Undeadly]

On the topic of list designing, I'll say this: When ever I usually design a list, I don't exactly plan on countering everything. Rather, I think of what the army can do, what challenges the army provides to the enemy, and what challenges can the army effectively answer. These three components, in my opinion, are what can make a list great, or in other cases, terrible. 

The problems that arise when including Realms of Battle is that unless the organizer is already picking what realms and rules that will be used (Which creates its own kinds of problems, where players build lists that maximize using that realm therefore negating the whole point of diversifying lists), then it simply becomes too many variables to really work with. I mean, how can you really plan around around 7 realms, with at least one spell and command ability each, and 6 random traits? Armies that rely on good armor saves and high rend can be absolutely crushed on Chamon? Or say your in Ghur, and your opponent has gotten you into a bad position on his charge; And then he rolls a 6+ and gets to whomp you again. And with Ulgu, half of its traits are just limiting range of attacks for ranged and spells, but at least that has the benefit of having a Command Ability that lets you re-position your units, so your only helpless if your get a 2 on the features roll.

 

Still, how do any of these help armies diversify lists?  You cannot predict how the realms will affect your army, so its almost always a better idea to simply just build a list as your normally would, and hope that you don't get one of the ones that ruin how your army plays, and pray that you either get one that actively helps, or at the very least, doesn't hinder your army. 

If the actual rules for these realms were different, or only offered bonuses to both armies, than there would not be a problem. But when the very fundamental concepts of a faction are removed or hindered, like Kharadrons shooting , Nurgle relying on running, Slyvanneth using terrain, death making use of hordes, Nighthaunt having flying, Wanderers using Board edges, than it boils down to luck favoring one army over another.

[Skabnoze]

4 hours ago, Overread said:

I think one thing might be fairer is if GW stopped doing realm rules on a "roll a dice" system. Sure its optional to roll and is presented as such; but it still creates a sense of the realm being very random in an already random game. This is purely a wording and display aspect. If GW gave 6 options and said "pick one and agree with your opponent which" and then said "or if you can't roll a dice" that would be seen differently too "here are 6 options, roll a dice to work out which you will use" . 

But a lot of the systems throughout the game work like this.  Picking your scenario uses a dice roll, but we let the TOs assign that.  The realm system seems the same to me.  I would think that the TOs would just pick the realmscape effect from the chart rather than having people randomly roll it up. 

[Undeadly]

7 minutes ago, Richelieu said:

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?

Because that is how the armies are balanced and played. Why can Stormcast deep strike and get minus -1 to hit when they do so? Why do Idoneth get different buffs every round? Why do  Daughters of Khaine get stacking buffs every round? Why do Dispossessed get such good bravery mitigation? 

Thats because armies are made with specific abilities in the mind, and how they function with those abilities. Nighthaunt pay for that Flying, Unrendable save and Double strike ability by:

Having less wounds on their units and heros than other armies

Having no better save than a +4 re-rolling 1's 

Having very few weapons with anything better than rend -1

Having very few weapons which are multi-damage

Low access to MW saves outside of their Deathless Minions 6++ and a few specific abilities

And thats just to name a few. I mean, why does any army have allegiance abilities, or special rules at all? 

 

 

 

[Skabnoze]

3 hours ago, Richelieu said:

Thinking maybe we should start a thread for each realm.  I was just looking at Aqshy again and I think it would be a blast to play a game with every single realm scape feature in effect.  It would be bananas, but there's nothing in there that seems terribly imbalanced other than shooting armies would have a bit of an advantage.  

When I posted previously with an example of different realms and preselected realm scape features I found Aqshy one of the harder ones to pick a single rule from.  It has pretty neat stuff.  I especially like the burning terrain realmscape feature that makes each terrain piece block LOS across it due to billowing clouds of smoke.  That seems like a very interesting effect that could greatly impact a game.  I chose the burning arrows simply because it was the most notable ability that improved shooting - also burning arrows are cool.

[BaldoBeardo]

37 minutes 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.

No, no there isn't. 

People who pursue that process like to kid themselves it requires some amazing talent or skill to do, but in effect you are simply working through the Dominos menu, flicking through available pizza/topping/side combinations until you strike the ultimate meal deal.

GW want to encourage thinkers and players, not monkeys with typewriters.

 

 

[amysrevenge]

5 minutes ago, Undeadly said:

Because that is how the armies are balanced and played. Why can Stormcast deep strike and get minus -1 to hit when they do so? Why do Idoneth get different buffs every round? Why do  Daughters of Khaine get stacking buffs every round? Why do Dispossessed get such good bravery mitigation? 

Thats because armies are made with specific abilities in the mind, and how they function with those abilities. Nighthaunt pay for that Flying, Unrendable save and Double strike ability by:

Having less wounds on their units and heros than other armies

Having no better save than a +4 re-rolling 1's 

Having very few weapons with anything better than rend -1

Having very few weapons which are multi-damage

Low access to MW saves outside of their Deathless Minions 6++ and a few specific abilities

And thats just to name a few. I mean, why does any army have allegiance abilities, or special rules at all? 

And, whether you believe the claim or not, the claim by GW is that Nighthaunt pay less for those abilities than they otherwise would, because of the potential for having them negated by the wrong Realm rules coming up.  And so if you don't use Realm rules, Nighthaunt are relatively too cheap.

(Again, that's the claim by GW.  I'm not sure I 100% believe it, as the point system really isn't in my opinion granular enough to really take this into account.  But maybe I'm all wrong...)

[Ravinsild]

2 minutes ago, BaldoBeardo said:

No, no there isn't. 

People who pursue that process like to kid themselves it requires some amazing talent or skill to do, but in effect you are simply working through the Dominos menu, flicking through available pizza/topping/side combinations until you strike the ultimate meal deal.

GW want to encourage thinkers and players, not monkeys with typewriters.

 

 

In other words they want the WAR in WARGAMING. Like how generals in actual wars didn’t just write down how many men they had and showed up only when they knew they could win because you know, things like ambushes exist. And gathering intelligence. And literally all the components of war that aren’t just “I have 10,000 infantry, 250 planes, 5000 tanks” etc... 

they want clever tactics on the table top, feints and routs, and intelligent deployment and actual strategy and thinking ahead and planning for the worst case scenario and actually trying it out on the board. 

[Undeadly]

1 minute ago, amysrevenge said:

And, whether you believe the claim or not, the claim by GW is that Nighthaunt pay less for those abilities than they otherwise would, because of the potential for having them negated by the wrong Realm rules coming up.  And so if you don't use Realm rules, Nighthaunt are relatively too cheap.

(Again, that's the claim by GW.  I'm not sure I 100% believe it, as the point system really isn't in my opinion granular enough to really take this into account.  But maybe I'm all wrong...)

Honestly, if I may put my own ideas and thoughts out there, I think its quite unlikely that GW actually factored in any of the Realms of Battle effects into the balancing and creation of Battletomes. Now, is it still their intention that Realms of Battle would help? Well, yes, I do. But since so many of these rules hinder armies, rather than help open new tactical or interesting choices,  it just doesn't seem that GW took the actual rules into account. Like I said before, having players deal with the Flames and Smoke and Burning Missiles rule at the same time makes for a really interesting game in my opinion. Meanwhile, if you rolled the 12 range and had the command ability in Ulgu, you could also have a neat game of teleporting around, trying to get into range so you can effectively engage the enemy. 

 

When both armies GAIN something, instead of LOSING something, It makes the game more interesting. That's why I'm not all that against the spells of the realms, since both armies have SOMETHING they can gain from it, rather than simply losing out.

[Skabnoze]

51 minutes ago, Dead Scribe said:

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.  

This is one of the worst parts of this type of game. 

The point of a miniature tabletop wargame is to push miniatures around the tabletop and play war - not to have the battle decided before it begins.  It is ok to have one side with a disadvantage and those games can often be quite fun if constructed correctly.  For example there is the classic case of a scenario where one force has a defensive advantage but less forces and has to survive against all odds.  Or a smaller force that is raiding against a larger one and has an initial ambush & deployment advantage - maybe the defender is attacked while on the march and they are in a long convoy formation.  But even in those situations things are usually designed in such a way that both sides have a chance at victory as they have asymmetric win conditions.

It is not as horrible in a card game if games are practically decided at the start based off of the decks because the game plays very fast and many events use multiple decks & multiple games.  Tabletop games are long affairs that have a lot more ancillary costs.  Building a deck or constructing an army list are easy and pretty similar - but the rest of these two forms of games are very different.  Tabletop miniature games require a lot more time assembling & painting your force.  The games themselves take far longer than card games.  Simply transporting and setting up all of your toys for the game is much more involved than in a card game.

These games are best when the victor is decided more by the actions taken on the tabletop and less by the list-building decisions made ahead of time.  Most people would prefer to think of themselves as a great general rather than an amazing supply-master.  List building by it's nature will always be an important part of the game, but if it is the primary determination of the victor then the game has some serious issues in it.

[Ravinsild]

12 minutes ago, Undeadly said:

Honestly, if I may put my own ideas and thoughts out there, I think its quite unlikely that GW actually factored in any of the Realms of Battle effects into the balancing and creation of Battletomes. Now, is it still their intention that Realms of Battle would help? Well, yes, I do. But since so many of these rules hinder armies, rather than help open new tactical or interesting choices,  it just doesn't seem that GW took the actual rules into account. Like I said before, having players deal with the Flames and Smoke and Burning Missiles rule at the same time makes for a really interesting game in my opinion. Meanwhile, if you rolled the 12 range and had the command ability in Ulgu, you could also have a neat game of teleporting around, trying to get into range so you can effectively engage the enemy. 

 

When both armies GAIN something, instead of LOSING something, It makes the game more interesting. That's why I'm not all that against the spells of the realms, since both armies have SOMETHING they can gain from it, rather than simply losing out.

Or they did exactly that because they were imagining a Kharadron Overlords force in the fiery realm of Aqshy, with billowing volcanoes belching ash and soot into the sky clouding the lenses of their goggles. 

Their planes/blimps/sky...boats hampered and unable to fly, a roving band of bloodthirsty Khornates come screaming from over top of the hills. Visibility is low, their weapons difficult to aim and fire.... what do they do? 

How do they play this out on the table top? How do they adjust their tactics? What interesting new options does this open up for both players? What if the Khorne army over estimates how hampered they are and goes full bore into the KO but.... they literally can still shoot... AND fight and they rip through the unit of 20 Bloodreavers with their pistols then carve the rest down in the combat phase. 

The Khorne player didn’t account for this and is now on the back foot. The Dwarves rally and begin to press forward gaining the momentum. 

Who knows. Someone wouldn’t even play this game and find out because the “rules mean they automatically lose.” 

[Ravinsild]

9 minutes ago, Undeadly said:

Honestly, if I may put my own ideas and thoughts out there, I think its quite unlikely that GW actually factored in any of the Realms of Battle effects into the balancing and creation of Battletomes. Now, is it still their intention that Realms of Battle would help? Well, yes, I do. But since so many of these rules hinder armies, rather than help open new tactical or interesting choices,  it just doesn't seem that GW took the actual rules into account. Like I said before, having players deal with the Flames and Smoke and Burning Missiles rule at the same time makes for a really interesting game in my opinion. Meanwhile, if you rolled the 12 range and had the command ability in Ulgu, you could also have a neat game of teleporting around, trying to get into range so you can effectively engage the enemy. 

 

When both armies GAIN something, instead of LOSING something, It makes the game more interesting. That's why I'm not all that against the spells of the realms, since both armies have SOMETHING they can gain from it, rather than simply losing out.

Ahem ACTUALLY as a Khorne player using only the Warscrolls in my Battletome *adjusts glasses* I don’t have any Warscrolls with the Wizard keyword and so therefore I gain nothing from any of these spells from the realm spells. 

Please don’t be an ignorant plebeian and SUGGEST I ally in a Chaos Sorcerer Lord because everyone knows Khorne hates wizards and it’s frankly uncalled for. And please note that because I ALWAYS bring a Bloodsecrator it would make my own chances of casting a spell a lot more difficult. 

I mean honestly I just came here to have a good time and I’m feeling really attacked right now. I don’t gain anything from all these fancy new endless spells or realm spells :’( and there’s LITERALLY NO WAY I CAN CHANGE MY PLAYSTYLE TO INCORPORATE THEM OR BENEFIT FROM THEM! Like this is literally just ruining my life and you guys just don’t understand what I’m going through. 

[Skabnoze]

32 minutes ago, tokek said:

GW want to create a ruleset where the play on the table is a larger part of what gets you the win.  It happens that the way they want to do this is by introducing a significant unknown (but not random) element to the games which push players towards diluting down the more single-minded lists in favour of giving themselves more tools to deal with the unknown. 

Some people genuinely want tournaments to be all about list design and luckily dodging your bad matchups - for those players what GW are proposing is not what they wanted GW to propose. The truth for GW as for any company is that you can't please all the people all the time, that should not stop the designers form making their opinion known nor from explaining that this approach is what they had in mind when designing and balancing the game.

GW is smart for advocating for this position rather than list design & match-up dodging.  By introducing unknowns like this and trying to increase the importance of on-table play what they do is make it much harder to determine clear winners & losers in their model range.  That in turn means more things are arguably viable, and that means more of their product range has good sales potential.

GW spent plenty of years with rock-paper-scissor armies, abysmal balance, and a list-building mentality and the results of that was generally the power-creep sales strategy.   They still need to drive people to purchase their products.  Spectacular models will sell, but better rules will make things sell even more.  They were well aware of this in the past and you could easily see it in how their rules developed in previous editions of their games.  And not only does that lead to power-creep, but it leads to period pendulum resets where they make good things terrible and massively boost bad things.  They have flipped the script like that in their games before.

It is not good for GW to have a massive product footprint that mostly sits around while a small handful of items are huge best sellers.  From a business point of view that encourages you to simply discontinue the items that are not selling and make more of the handful that do.  It is better for GW, and for players if their product range has a much broader sales appeal.  

A good example of a game company that has structured their game in this way is Wyrd and Malifaux.  That game is extremely heavily scenario based and it is full of models that are very good in niche circumstances.  In a game like 40k or AoS those niche models are much less popular because you don't always know if their niche will be useful unless you can plan explicitly for it.  In Malifaux you only build your list once you know what faction your opponent is playing, what the terrain set-up is, and what the scoring objectives are for the game.  You then build your list with that in mind and so you usually know when those niche models will be valuable.  A model that is slow and durable is good for a situation where you need to survive and hold a position.  Glass cannon damage dealers are good when you know you need to kill a lot of stuff.  Fast and mobile models are good when you know that you have to cover a lot of ground or interact with things on the table.  The result is that Malifaux has very few dead-models in their range.  Most stuff is pretty useful to own.  There are some redundant models, but not a ton.

The closer GW can get to that situation the better for them - and the better for players as well.  

[Skabnoze]

20 minutes ago, Undeadly said:

Honestly, if I may put my own ideas and thoughts out there, I think its quite unlikely that GW actually factored in any of the Realms of Battle effects into the balancing and creation of Battletomes.

Bear in mind that the only battletomes that they likely created with these mechanics in mind are the new Stormcast and Nighthaunt battletomes.  Obviously the older ones were not made with this in mind (maybe you could argue Deepkin or Daughters of Khaine) because those rules did not exist.  I'm sure they tried to take some of this into account when they reworked the points for the GHB'18, but honestly there were so many moving parts in the rule system that I don't think the points will really level into a decent spot until the 2019 GHB (or battletome rewrites).

[Skabnoze]

26 minutes ago, Undeadly said:

When both armies GAIN something, instead of LOSING something, It makes the game more interesting. That's why I'm not all that against the spells of the realms, since both armies have SOMETHING they can gain from it, rather than simply losing out.

I disagree.  If you want a test of generalship then having to succeed as the scrappy underdog is just as valuable and interesting as rolling in from a position of strength.  In fact, I don't think you could competitively crown someone as a best general if you don't at any point test their ability to deal with hardship.

[Undeadly]

18 minutes ago, Ravinsild said:

Or they did exactly that because they were imagining a Kharadron Overlords force in the fiery realm of Aqshy, with billowing volcanoes belching ash and soot into the sky clouding the lenses of their goggles. 

Their planes/blimps/sky...boats hampered and unable to fly, a roving band of bloodthirsty Khornates come screaming from over top of the hills. Visibility is low, their weapons difficult to aim and fire.... what do they do? 

How do they play this out on the table top? How do they adjust their tactics? What interesting new options does this open up for both players? What if the Khorne army over estimates how hampered they are and goes full bore into the KO but.... they literally can still shoot... AND fight and they rip through the unit of 20 Bloodreavers with their pistols then carve the rest down in the combat phase. 

The Khorne player didn’t account for this and is now on the back foot. The Dwarves rally and begin to press forward gaining the momentum. 

Who knows. Someone wouldn’t even play this game and find out because the “rules mean they automatically lose.” 

And if we assume that both players are playing to the best of their ability and playing with lists that both made without any prior knowledge of the enemy lists, than I would presume that the Kharadron player would loose in a competitive setting, provided that dice rolls are some what average. This is all fine and good in a narrative game, or a game that was prior agreed upon between the two players, but it is entirely unfair to the Kharadron player in a tournament setting. Keep in mind, I don't have a problem with this. Infact, that sounds like a really fun scenario to play out, and could lead to a entertaining game. But in a tournament scenario, where both players expect to fight one another on fair and even playing field, this is entirely unjustified.  The Kharadron player is, without question, in a worse position than the Khorne. That is inarguable. Now the Kharadron player may still win, given he gets lucky, or is simply superior to his opponent as a player, but if we presume that they are even remotely in the same level of competency, I would never bet on the Kharadron to win. 

What interesting options does this bring up? How DO they adjust tactics? Because as far as I am aware, the Khorne player may continue exactly as he planned to: Charge up the field, engage in melee. But now he doesn't even have to worry about being shot half the time, since all he needs to do is stay out of LoS thanks to the ruins. Your hypothetical could happen; but its much more likely that the Khorne players will move out of the ruins, charge in, and wipe out the Kharadron player before he even gets the chance to shoot. 

That isn't a fair fight. And that's okay in a Narrative or Open play game. Or heck, even in Matched play. But this is not the kind of game I want to play in a Tournament.

[BaldoBeardo]

Who needs a knife in a nuke fight anyway?

[Undeadly]

8 minutes ago, Skabnoze said:

I disagree.  If you want a test of generalship then having to succeed as the scrappy underdog is just as valuable and interesting as rolling in from a position of strength.  In fact, I don't think you could competitively crown someone as a best general if you don't at any point test their ability to deal with hardship.

Well than we'll have to agree to disagree. Because Generalship in a game like of AoS should be based around how well they put the army together, how well they play that army, and how well they can counter their opponent. Even the best player, when given a rule that ACTIVELY hinders and hurts their army, will be at a disadvantage. These rules based entirely on luck; how in the world argue that this is good for a healthy competitive community, when some of these realm rules can just do so much damage against certain armies, but are based entirely on things as simple as single roll of a dice? You might as well be gambling at that point, since no amount of tactics or strategy can save you from some of these effects.

[Skabnoze]

20 minutes ago, Undeadly said:

Well than we'll have to agree to disagree. Because Generalship in a game like of AoS should be based around how well they put the army together, how well they play that army, and how well they can counter their opponent. Even the best player, when given a rule that ACTIVELY hinders and hurts their army, will be at a disadvantage. These rules based entirely on luck; how in the world argue that this is good for a healthy competitive community, when some of these realm rules can just do so much damage against certain armies, but are based entirely on things as simple as single roll of a dice? You might as well be gambling at that point, since no amount of tactics or strategy can save you from some of these effects.

They are not entirely based on luck.  They are only luck based if you constantly roll for the realm scape feature for each game.  Scenario determination is supposed to be done randomly as well - but we don't usually do that in events.  Using the Realm of Battle rules does not require someone to use the realmscape features table.  There is more to the realm rules than just that table.  Also, you can easily preselect items from that table.

But putting people into a situation where they play multiple games and each round a different mechanic in the game is either boosted or hindered does test their ability to overcome those restrictions.  If those rules are selected when the event is being organized, and they are compiled in such a way that they impact most major game mechanics at some point (magic, movement, shooting, etc) then it is likely that every player will have to adapt and overcome at some point during the tournament.

Personally, I am more interested to see who it is that rises to the top in those environments and the methods they use to do so than the people who succeed in non-adverse conditions.  But that's just like, my opinion, man...

[Undeadly]

30 minutes ago, Ravinsild said:

Ahem ACTUALLY as a Khorne player using only the Warscrolls in my Battletome *adjusts glasses* I don’t have any Warscrolls with the Wizard keyword and so therefore I gain nothing from any of these spells from the realm spells. 

Please don’t be an ignorant plebeian and SUGGEST I ally in a Chaos Sorcerer Lord because everyone knows Khorne hates wizards and it’s frankly uncalled for. And please note that because I ALWAYS bring a Bloodsecrator it would make my own chances of casting a spell a lot more difficult. 

I mean honestly I just came here to have a good time and I’m feeling really attacked right now. I don’t gain anything from all these fancy new endless spells or realm spells :’( and there’s LITERALLY NO WAY I CAN CHANGE MY PLAYSTYLE TO INCORPORATE THEM OR BENEFIT FROM THEM! Like this is literally just ruining my life and you guys just don’t understand what I’m going through. 

How do you even "adapt" your playstyle, if you have no idea what your going to face? How do you know what to bring, or include, if half your army could become ineffective with the roll of 2 dice? When whats incredibly broken in one game becomes incredibly weak the next, with little to forewarning? And we're not even talking about Endless spells or Realm Spells, both of which I think are perfectly fine. I'm talking about board wide, army crippling effects that players have no counters to, and can't really even predict. 

Tell me, what do you do when half your  army simply cannot run? Or can't shoot more than 6" inches? Or takes d3 MW when they run more than 6"? or when you roll a dice for each model in the unit, and if its under their armor save, they get that many MW if they get lucky and roll a 6+? Or if all of a sudden, none of you or your opponents have ANY rend? Or if every single terrain piece is Sinister?  

This isn't even counting the ones where if you or your opponent get lucky and roll a 6+ in the hero phase, they get some free MW?  How is that tactically engaging in the slightest to you? Theres no strategy, or change to deny it, its just roll a dice, maybe you get to do some damage for free.

I'm not even against these sorts of rules, but this is just impractical and silly to pretend that making every game a coin flip will fix the problems with the game, or even fix more problems than it will create. 

 

[Undeadly]

8 minutes ago, Skabnoze said:

They are not entirely based on luck.  They are only luck based if you constantly roll for the realm scape feature for each game.  Scenario determination is supposed to be done randomly as well - but we don't usually do that in events.  Using the Realm of Battle rules does not require someone to use the realmscape features table.  There is more to the realm rules than just that table.  Also, you can easily preselect items from that table.

But putting people into a situation where they play multiple games and each round a different mechanic in the game is either boosted or hindered does test their ability to overcome those restrictions.  If those rules are selected when the event is being organized, and they are compiled in such a way that they impact most major game mechanics at some point (magic, movement, shooting, etc) then it is likely that every player will have to adapt and overcome at some point during the tournament.

Personally, I am more interested to see who it is that rises to the top in those environments and the methods they use to do so than the people who succeed in non-adverse conditions.  But that's just, like my opinion, man...

Well than there's no point to the conditions than, is there? Because if the players know before hand, then they'll just  build their lists accordingly. All your doing is just shifting the meta, and making it so that players will just build armies that work around the realm, whether it be spells, features, command abilities or traits. This makes the whole point of "diversifying armies" entirely moot, because you'll just see the same armies, but adapted to the list. You'll see less players bring certain armies, because they know they wont work well with the stipulations, and instead see different armies that work better under the conditions.

Honestly, if I can bring this to a point because I don't like arguing on TGA all that much, then its this:

I think the idea of randomly picked features per battle COULD work. I think there's some neat ideas  you can do. But in its current state, the Realm of Battle rules are not effective at what they are meant to do. 

Secondly, I feel like this is also a band aid to certain problems within army books that frustrates me; Rather than simply having it be that each unit in the book offers some sort of tactical challenge to the opponent or some benefit to the player, its been boiled down to the fact that certain units will out perform others. If GW wants to see more diversity in the armies played or brought to tournaments, then the first step is to make it so that there is a reason for the army not to just spam the best things available to them. Don't try and retroactively make an army worse through special rules that can shut down a play-style. Make it so that each unit can enable unique and balanced play-styles. 

Make things better, not arbitrarily worse. 

[Dead Scribe]

Right.  These rules may be fun in non tournament / competitive environments, but in a competitive environment its really winning in some cases simply because you got lucky on the realm. 

[Infeston]

5 minutes ago, Undeadly said:

How do you even "adapt" your playstyle, if you have no idea what your going to face? How do you know what to bring, or include, if half your army could become ineffective with the roll of 2 dice? When whats incredibly broken in one game becomes incredibly weak the next, with little to forewarning? And we're not even talking about Endless spells or Realm Spells, both of which I think are perfectly fine. I'm talking about board wide, army crippling effects that players have no counters to, and can't really even predict. 

I think this woul be the core of "adaptation". Adaptation means that you have to adapt to the unique circumstances you are facing very fast without knowing what to face before.

I would say planning and adaptation are somewhat contrary to each other. I don't think you can "plan" to "adapt". You just have to face situation you are in and make the best out of it. 

 

For example if shooting range is reduced, use melee units to shield your archers until they can shoot or if shooting is boosted try to hide some of your units behind big terrain pieces (if you are using huge terrain pieces in the first place). If you are facing melee heavy armies, which are also boosted in the scenario you are playing try to cast the shackle spell which slows your enemy down. There are so many options you can adjust.

 

But if you try to plan the entire game before it begins and it also turns out like you predicted it is the opposite of adaptation. 

[Skabnoze]

1 minute ago, Undeadly said:

Well than there's no point to the conditions than, is there? Because if the players know before hand, then they'll just  build their lists accordingly. All your doing is just shifting the meta, and making it so that players will just build armies that work around the realm, whether it be spells, features, command abilities or traits. This makes the whole point of "diversifying armies" entirely moot, because you'll just see the same armies, but adapted to the list. You'll see less players bring certain armies, because they know they wont work well with the stipulations, and instead see different armies that work better under the conditions.

I don't buy that because I have seen games that do things like this and they don't have the issue you suggest.  If two units have roughly the same role and one is clearly better than the other then one will obviously rarely be taken.  The Stormcast Liberators vs Sequitors comes to mind.  But when units have different purposes a more varied environment pushes people more towards generalist lists and list building opens up a lot more.  An environment that favors skews generally moves to a handful of extreme skew builds and the playing field becomes a lot more narrow.