Tournament Balance and GW's Next Big Decision

[swarmofseals]

It's closing in on two years since I made my first big post on this forum, tackling the issue of balance and building the AoS community (this post). A great deal has changed in the game since then, with two GHBs, many battletomes and a new version of the rules. I thought it might be a good time to revisit my thoughts on the state of the game and take a look ahead at the next major dilemma that GW has to address.

I'm sure that some of you will disagree with me, but my impression based on reading tournament results from around the globe is that AoS is better balanced at this point than it ever has been in the past. I find this interesting, as there are loads of examples of warscrolls, spells, and abilities that are clearly "overpowered". Ultimately, I think GW has chosen to take an approach of balance through imbalance. Just about all of the competitive factions have at least one or two things that are just obviously great (in addition to a solid set of allegiance abilities). The result is that a bunch of factions have a nice foundation to build a competitive list on, and the diversity shows in the final standings.

While this does certainly tilt list building towards these units, it actually doesn't seem to crowd out other warscrolls too badly. I'll use Daughters of Khaine as an example: Witch Aelves and Hag Queens are extremely efficient (to the point where some competitive lists take huge numbers of both), and yet just about every warscroll in the DoK allegiance sees at least some competitive play with the exceptions of Khinerai Lifetakers and Blood Stalkers (and even those might show up rarely). Most of the "above par" units tend to be pretty bread-and-butter types (with eels as an obvious exception), which results in armies that just spam that one thing being very one dimensional. As a result, you often see lists that lean on these hyper-efficient units but still take plenty of other things as well because they lend tremendous tactical depth.

I will readily acknowledge that not all factions are competitive. However, GW has shown with the Beasts of Chaos and Legions of Nagash tomes that they can take struggling factions and push them into a great position with just a battletome release. I very much believe that many of the factions that are currently struggling can benefit from this treatment in the future, and those battletome factions that whiff can likely be buffed into shape later on with points adjustments.

I'll also acknowledge that while faction diversity is currently in a very solid place, an argument can be made that strategic diversity is not. The metagame is generally quite aggressive, with many competitive lists intending to deal a very solid blow on turn 1. Some of this is due to many recent factions having abilities that enable some combination of very fast units, deepstriking, and bonuses to charge rolls. Even factions that don't have their own charge bonuses can use Chronomantic Cogs to get in on the action. I think a case can be made that this metagame is actually healthy for tournament play -- fast gameplay that starts with combat on turn 1 means that games will finish more quickly on average. There's also a case to be made that this dynamic is pushed too far and too many games effectively end with one army being crippled before they can really play the game. I honestly don't have a solid opinion on this and I think a valid argument can be made either way.

 

So what is the point of all this? I think that GW is going to be facing a critically important decision when it comes to their approach to GHB2019. Assuming we don't see a new battletome come in and cause huge problems, GW will be writing the new GHB with a very diverse metagame (at least factionwise). I see two main paths that GW can take:

1. Try to shake things up. Right now we have competitive diversity because many factions have access to above par warscrolls and abilities. If GW wants to shake this up, it'll need to nerf a lot of things and supplement that with significant buffs. Some factions may fall out of competitive play while other step up.
2. Try to build on their success with a light touch. This approach will likely minimize nerfs while carefully buffing factions that need help. The goal here is to try to maintain the current competitive diversity and perhaps add to it if possible.

Personally, I think the second approach is by far the better approach for GW to take and I very much implore whomever is making these decisions to not try to shake things up just for the sake of it. That path may have some upside, but the downside risk is massively greater. Path #1 would likely create more churn as competitive players shelve nerfed armies and pick up the new hotness, but IMO the marginal benefit to GW here is very small. If Path #2 is taken, players will still get bored of their armies and pick up new ones, particularly if new battletomes add new contenders to the mix. I think that the slice of the playerbase that purely picks an army based on competitiveness and will stick with it exclusively until it's no longer competitive is absolutely tiny. Meanwhile, extensive nerfs risks alienating enfranchised players and destabilizing an already diverse metagame is much more likely to result in a less diverse one.

Path #2, on the other hand, gives GW a chance to excite players for buffs while minimizing backlash. It reduces risk of decreasing diversity and increases the chance to improve on it. 

Just to be clear, I do think that there is a situation where Path #1 might be superior. If AoS was a very mature game that had been stagnating, with players largely complaining of boredom with the status quo, then shaking things up has a lot more upside. That just isn't where AoS is right now, particularly on the competitive level. Competitive AoS is still very much in a maturation process and the game overall is (I hope) in a growth phase. Maintaining competitive diversity will keep competitive players happy and also help drive growth at the less competitive level. When casual players see tournament results with few factions placing well, they are more likely to get discouraged even if they don't ever play in tournaments. When the metagame is diverse, the opposite is true.

 

Beyond this key question, I also think GW needs to decide if it wants to continue supporting the same level of aggressive play. I don't really have a horse in that race, and ultimately I think it's the kind of thing that could either be left as is or fixed through any combination of errata, points changes, and battleplan design. While I'm sure some folks feel strongly about this one, I suspect that whatever GW chooses it will have less impact on the health of the game than their answer to the previous decision.

[Dead Scribe]

Balance is boring.  If the game were balanced and any faction was viable against any faction, that would stagnate the game and cause people to look elsewhere.  From where I am sitting, there are obvious imbalances in the game that can be quite severe, but I enjoy those and my guess is so too do the designers because they are not hidden.

 

[SuperHappyTime]

1. Warscrolls and Battalions should never be changed. Ever.  They are supposed to reflect how the model(s) would act if put on the battlefield.

2. Points should never be static from GHB to GHB. Lower played/performing armies should receive points decreases (and we should get smaller degrees of point changes, than 10 points at a time). “Must Take” models should receive increases.

3. New battalions can help out suffering armies. New models/releases can also help.

4. As points decrease for all armies, and we are putting more and more models on the table, there are two options: A. Make 1500 points the tournament standard (from 2000, or 2000 from 2500). Or B. Increase all points across the board to match the battle to the correct size. 

[Overread]

1 hour ago, Dead Scribe said:

Balance is boring.  If the game were balanced and any faction was viable against any faction, that would stagnate the game and cause people to look elsewhere.  From where I am sitting, there are obvious imbalances in the game that can be quite severe, but I enjoy those and my guess is so too do the designers because they are not hidden.

 

Balance isn't boring, consider most competitive sports and games are very balanced. Go, Chess, Drafts, Poker, Football, Swimming etc... Even computer games aim to achieve as even a balance as possible.

Balance means that each army should have multiple viable choices to build a competent force out of so that no one army is just stuck doing one trick over and over or variations on that trick. For AoS this is even more important as many armies are quite small on their own in terms of model range, so you don't want to end up with there just being on viable buy-in option for the army.

Balance means that between armies there is viable challenge that isn't broken at the building an army level. Otherwise certain combinations of army vs others are auto win/lose for the players. That honestly isn't fun for either player. If you're going to spend hours painting and building and setting up a game ; most people want to see a good few hours and as close to a full 6 turns each before the game is over. Otherwise its just boring. The player with the overpowered army wins too easily and the other player loses before they've even had a chance to play.

 

That isn't fun for anyone and its not fun as a mechanic because it means that you've either got to chase the newest unbroken element all the time - which means lots of buying and selling and building and painting and probably giving up on painting anything half decent because you'll be selling it on a few months. 

 

 

Instead if you've got balance the game becomes one far more challenging because it comes down to how you actually play the game on the tabletop rather than how you build the army. Considering that army building is comparatively quick for most people, to me it seems far better to have more time playing and outthinking your opponent and executing tactics on the tabletop, than just taking the Death Star combo that will sweep the board without thinking and win you the game.

 

 

[Enoby]

21 minutes ago, Dead Scribe said:

Balance is boring.  If the game were balanced and any faction was viable against any faction, that would stagnate the game and cause people to look elsewhere.  From where I am sitting, there are obvious imbalances in the game that can be quite severe, but I enjoy those and my guess is so too do the designers because they are not hidden.

Casuals seem to get mad when they want to play with suboptimal lists and when a proper list faces them and blows them off the table they get mad.  Some people are very vocal about fixing that or making it not as bad by bringing in more balance, but that would kill the game in my opinion.  I'm not sure casuals really look at tournament standings and care to be honest.  

While stagnation is a worry, I do believe large imbalances are also an issue. AoS is an expensive and time consuming hobby, and so a rotating meta may keep people from wanting to begin in the first place (if they wish to play competitively). To help illustrate this, take an example of a person who could only afford/had the time for one army per year. If they wanted to play competitively, then they may be put off starting the game as by the time they've finished their army it may have been outclassed. If they could be more certain that their army's viability was safe in the long term, then they'd be more likey to buy in. 

In addition, if the armies were all brought into a tighter balance, then it would open up the doors for more people into a competitive scene. Obviously, things can't be 100% balanced, but if GW worked on giving every army a solid battletome then that would only help against stagnation as more lists would be created and more players would put forward ideas. If we look at a game like YuGiOh, the meta is often dominated by one or two decks (which change depending on banned cards and new sets). A player would find it nigh impossible to beat a top tier deck with a casual deck, but this isn't necessarily healthy for the game. Many people complain about the top decks until another banlist comes out - people get bored playing against the same combos over and over again. The banlist never fixes the core problem (one deck will always reign supreme), it just resets the cycle. The terrible balance creates stagnation.  

The way I see it, more balance means more creative lists which means less stagnation. 

[Dead Scribe]

But if anyone could just create a list that was viable that would remove listbuilding as a skill.

[Luke82]

There’s no skill when a list is just a google search away though.

[Overread]

Just now, Dead Scribe said:

But if anyone could just create a list that was viable that would remove listbuilding as a skill.

List building in AoS isn't "that" much of a skill to start with - and with the ease of sharing info on the internet you no longer have the isolated bubble of the local scene or meta to purly " protect" players from knowing about the unbroken and powerful combos. Heck TGA itself has LOADS of threads on how to build good armies and what options to take.

 

It's not like Magic the Gathering where you have to deal with random draws and hundreds of cards per colour, let alone 5 colours and colourless (so 6 blocks).

 

Plus there is cost. 1 army a year, as suggested above, is actually really generous. Many people might only have 1 army at all. If you've only got one army and that one army isn't the one with the broken death-star power list or there is only one for your army that is boring. It discourages you from getting started because nless you start with the uber-army you will be on the losing side of things. Furthermore it means if you did start with the uberpowerful army that then gets nerfed and a new super army comes out you're left feeling like everything you've bought, painted and played with is not worth less than it was before. It doesn't encourage people to buy a new army - it more encourages them to give up.

 

MTG is different - you can buy random packs and such so by and large most people will have a large pool of cards to build from  so if they want to shift form red to blue its just a case of building a different deck plus perhaps a few cards off ebay. In Warhammer it means spending WAY more just getting basic troops and that's before you spend hours assembling and painting. 

[Future]

I think anyone creating a viable list and any faction being viable are two different things. Any faction/model should be viable. Not saying any model in conjunction with any other model should be viable but if I create a list around a targeted purpose with a specific model in mind I should be able to find a composition that 'works'.

[mmimzie]

5 hours ago, Future said:

I think anyone creating a viable list and any faction being viable are two different things. Any faction/model should be viable. Not saying any model in conjunction with any other model should be viable but if I create a list around a targeted purpose with a specific model in mind I should be able to find a composition that 'works'.

I agree but i'd say it more should be that any given unit should have a purpose that lets it stand out from any other unit in it's faction. Looking at for instance stormcast who are getting the space marine over saturation of units treatment, we can see how swiftly various units can be made pointless when you have too many models in a faction trying to do the same thing. 

[Ravinsild]

17 hours ago, SuperHappyTime said:

1. Warscrolls and Battalions should never be changed. Ever.  They are supposed to reflect how the model(s) would act if put on the battlefield.

Never ever? I asked a question in another thread but it went unanswered but maybe it will be answered here: 

Apparently Blood Knights are really bad. Some people have had a bit of success with them, but the overall impression is that they’re basically trash. 

Same with the Wight King. 

I’m not sure what makes them bad though. 

Is it their points? If Wight King was 80 points and Blood Knights 140 (same as Mighty Skullcrushers and Gore-Gruntas) would they automatically be better? 

Or is it their abilities? Are they weak in ability? If their warscrolls never change, unless they’re absolutely dirt cheap, and even if they are, if their attacks are weak, or their abilities meaningless, or they don’t move fast enough or have a bad save, can they be salvaged? Just with points? 

If Wight Kings were just 60 points and Blood Knights 80 points would they be too strong? 

What makes something bad to begin with...

[mmimzie]

1 hour ago, Ravinsild said:

Never ever? I asked a question in another thread but it went unanswered but maybe it will be answered here: 

Apparently Blood Knights are really bad. Some people have had a bit of success with them, but the overall impression is that they’re basically trash. 

Same with the Wight King. 

I’m not sure what makes them bad though. 

Is it their points? If Wight King was 80 points and Blood Knights 140 (same as Mighty Skullcrushers and Gore-Gruntas) would they automatically be better? 

Or is it their abilities? Are they weak in ability? If their warscrolls never change, unless they’re absolutely dirt cheap, and even if they are, if their attacks are weak, or their abilities meaningless, or they don’t move fast enough or have a bad save, can they be salvaged? Just with points? 

If Wight Kings were just 60 points and Blood Knights 80 points would they be too strong? 

What makes something bad to begin with...

Well it goes back to my response. 

 

Every unit needs a purpose in its faction. There are lots of role units can fill. From hammers. Anvils, chaffee, utility, objective grabbers, etc. The problem with blood knights is that other units do the job better for less. From VLoZDs to black knight you have so many other options in faction that are just completely better. 

 

Which means either the blood knight have to be cheaper/made better on thier war scroll, or blood knights need to be part of a thier own faction with other units that let the blood knights shine. 

 

For instance the night haunt heros qnd some of the units aren't too great but if you play a faction night haunt list sudden some of the options become alot more appealing. Partly because to get your faction bonus you have no other choice, and partly because you get access to buffs, abilities, and artifacts you cant get out side of themoon facrion list.

[Ravinsild]

28 minutes ago, mmimzie said:

Well it goes back to my response. 

 

Every unit needs a purpose in its faction. There are lots of role units can fill. From hammers. Anvils, chaffee, utility, objective grabbers, etc. The problem with blood knights is that other units do the job better for less. From VLoZDs to black knight you have so many other options in faction that are just completely better. 

 

Which means either the blood knight have to be cheaper/made better on thier war scroll, or blood knights need to be part of a thier own faction with other units that let the blood knights shine. 

 

For instance the night haunt heros qnd some of the units aren't too great but if you play a faction night haunt list sudden some of the options become alot more appealing. Partly because to get your faction bonus you have no other choice, and partly because you get access to buffs, abilities, and artifacts you cant get out side of themoon facrion list.

So overall their Warscroll is fine, they just need to be cheaper to be made better? 

Theyre literally better Black Knights in every way. 1 more wound, 1 more attack, better to wound rolls, -1 rend, D3 damage on the charge, better save especially against ‘-‘ rend opponents and a self heal. 

Black Knights are amazing, and 120 points. 

Would Blood Knights be fair at 140? 160? They’re like a heavier hitting hammer. 

You could charge with BcK to pin an enemy down, tar pit them if you will, and then use BdK as a hammer to buff them up and smash the pinned unit. 

Theyre a step between like Grave Guard and Morghasts except way more expensive than both. 

Should their Warscroll be allowed to change or only their points? 

If we make them better does that invalid something else? 

[Yoshiya]

19 hours ago, SuperHappyTime said:

1. Warscrolls and Battalions should never be changed. Ever.  They are supposed to reflect how the model(s) would act if put on the battlefield.

2. Points should never be static from GHB to GHB. Lower played/performing armies should receive points decreases (and we should get smaller degrees of point changes, than 10 points at a time). “Must Take” models should receive increases.

3. New battalions can help out suffering armies. New models/releases can also help.

4. As points decrease for all armies, and we are putting more and more models on the table, there are two options: A. Make 1500 points the tournament standard (from 2000, or 2000 from 2500). Or B. Increase all points across the board to match the battle to the correct size. 

Don't agree with point 1 at all. Warscrolls are made to interact with the core rules, either alongside them or breaking them. You can't change one half of the equation and expect the other half to keep making sense. AoS1.0 and AoS2.0 didn't have particularly huge changes and yet look at how many warscrolls suddenly have weird interactions with the rules.

Look how many command abilities had to be errata'd just because of command points and stacking being introduced.

Imagine if in the future AoS4.0 or whatever suddenly decides to go the 40k route and separate magic from the hero phase to put it after movement, or a prayer phrase was introduced with its own set of rules. These changes seem unlikely now but we have no reason to believe AoS is going to play exactly the same way based on how previous versions of Warhammer have evolved.

What do you do in those cases? Try and force Hag Queens to keep playing by the same prayer rules out of a stubborn determination to not update their warscroll because that is how it was originally written?

Additionally, your statement makes the assumption that all current warscrolls reflect how the model should feel which isn't always the case.

Take the Knight-Questor for Stormcast for example. He's clearly meant to be a character assassination with a lore incentive of having a quest to kill a certain character. Yet his rules make no sense. He can pile in 6" towards a hero but the current pile in rules state he can only pile in toward the nearest enemy and he can only pile in if within 3", meaning the most he can ever really pile in is 3". He also doesn't get to ignore other units to go after the hero despite that clearly being his goal.

In cases like this it can be better to look at a warscroll again and rewrite it, either small changes or from the ground up.

[AlphaKennyThing]

20 hours ago, Dead Scribe said:

Balance is boring.  If the game were balanced and any faction was viable against any faction, that would stagnate the game and cause people to look elsewhere.  From where I am sitting, there are obvious imbalances in the game that can be quite severe, but I enjoy those and my guess is so too do the designers because they are not hidden.

 

That seems very odd, as in every other thread you've been vehemently against anything that skews the playing field in favour of one side or the other. A chronic imbalance between armies before the game even begins is one of those, surely?

 

[Ravinsild]

19 minutes ago, AlphaKennyThing said:

That seems very odd, as in every other thread you've been vehemently against anything that skews the playing field in favour of one side or the other. A chronic imbalance between armies before the game even begins is one of those, surely?

 

No he’s very consistent. List building is god to him. He will play only the strongest lists and strongest armies. Everything must be accounted for and controlled. There can be no RNG, because that might accidentally give his opponent an edge he hasn’t planned for. The meta is god. RNG that might favor his opponent is the devil. 

Hes very consistent with this. Basically he wants to win before the game ever begins by playing the strongest list from the strongest army and anything that might disrupt that type of play is bad for the game. 

[AlphaKennyThing]

1 hour ago, Ravinsild said:

No he’s very consistent. List building is god to him. He will play only the strongest lists and strongest armies. Everything must be accounted for and controlled. There can be no RNG, because that might accidentally give his opponent an edge he hasn’t planned for. The meta is god. RNG that might favor his opponent is the devil. 

Hes very consistent with this. Basically he wants to win before the game ever begins by playing the strongest list from the strongest army and anything that might disrupt that type of play is bad for the game. 

Oh right. Well, we all have our likes and dislikes!

I never found AoS to be granular enough to make it a list building kind of game. Stuff on paper should in theory trump the world, and yet the dice can let you down and all of a sudden your Nagash list has lost to a mixed Greenskin Destruction list.

[Overread]

1 hour ago, Ravinsild said:

No he’s very consistent. List building is god to him. He will play only the strongest lists and strongest armies. Everything must be accounted for and controlled. There can be no RNG, because that might accidentally give his opponent an edge he hasn’t planned for. The meta is god. RNG that might favor his opponent is the devil. 

Hes very consistent with this. Basically he wants to win before the game ever begins by playing the strongest list from the strongest army and anything that might disrupt that type of play is bad for the game. 

Which is fine for Magic the Gathering because a match can be over in 5-10 minutes. Plus they have multiple brokenly powerful decks to build. In Warhammer you've not even set the board up and put your armies down in that time frame. So to have armies that are brokenly powerful is terrible for the game really. If you've won the match on listbuilding then its no fun to go through 4 hours of losing/winning. The winner doesn't "really" get that full sense of winning (first couple of time they will, then its just turn up and steam roll) and the loser doesn't get that feeling of rising to a challenge or even having a chance. 

So it becomes an un-fun situation for both sides, esp the loser who is likely to leave the hobby or migrate to another tabletop wargame instead of going out to spend hundreds of $/£ and dozens of hours building up their own broken new army. Many people pick their first army and most of their armies on the lore and visual appeal; so it should be standard that each army is powerful in line with the others. Plus having more than one powerful viable list within the army means that you can vary things.

You can take Morathi; or leave her behind and take a legion of witches; or a slithering smattering of snakes or a mixture and still have viable chances to win each time. 

 

It's not about making "any" list work, there will always be bad choices; but its about having a majority of decently put together lists function well. That puts some pressure on the army building and more on the player skill and use of their army in the game. Shifting toward objective based games instead of purely combat based ones also helps increase this aspect

[Kevlar1972]

Imbalance sells models.  Of course the new flashy miniatures hot off the sculpting press are going to get the most favorable rules.  That's how they drive sales.  Always have, always will.  

[Overread]

In the past the imbalance was inherent to the way they released things.

 

Prior to the last few years GW released 40K and Fantasy armies in the same way; which was to update the core rules and then drip feed out a new battletome/codex along with a big wave of new miniatures for that army. The result was that that army would be the primary marketing focus for a large chunk of time - we are talking many months. At the same time the fact that each army only got an updated set of rules one at a time meant that power creep was very apparent because "new" army books would work better with the new rules than older ones. This was compounded by the fact that many armies could skip whole rule editions and still never see updated stats and thus could be using very out of date stats and abilities. 

That would lead to factions steadily becoming unpopular, so not only did GW have to launch those with an update and new sculpts but also there was pressure to REALLY make sure that they worked well with the rules. So powercreep wasn't just an accident or a function of comparing old to new rules, but it was likely also a guarantee mechanic to ensure that the newly updated army and all those expensive moulds sold well by making them very powerful on the tabletop.

 

 

With the current editions of both fantasy and 40K there's been a massive culture change. First we got indexs and now we've had a very very fast release of codex/battletomes. 40K almost has every single army updated in under a year and a half (including the addition of several new factions and the restoration of Sisters of Battle). Fantasy is taking longer, but a good reason for that was that it was launched under an old management system to a different structure so its had a bit of lag and legacy issues slowing it up. 

That siad right now GW is pushing out all armies on a much more equal footing. In that environment its seen their sales SORE far far higher than ever before to the point where demand has outstripped production and to where other companies are feeling the pinch. This is after several years where many other companies have pushed into the market. GW was on a downer with their old pattern of releases. The new hotness is updated rules that match armies together far more closely on balance than ever before. It creates a game state where they are not pushing just one army at a time per game; where they are not seeing dwindling sales on the underpowered army all the time (which then forces them to either suffer a huge customer relations hit by dumping the army; or invest a massive amount of resources to kickstart the army back into life). 

 

It makes for a much more healthy atmosphere and experience for gamers and GW. The only losers are those who want to have super overpowered "stomp everything without thinking" armies. Whcih are honestly a very small subset of players; even smaller when one considers those who have that mindset and who can afford to buy into the army flavour of the month/year/season.

[Nos]

My thoughts on balance are pretty well, documented on here, namely GW is fairly ambivalent towards it and much more invested in AOS as a system for simulating fantastical crazy factions acting true to form and expressing that through the rules that govern how they fight each other.  What makes it unique is what makes balance a lower priority. It's also what sells so I suspect any wider settlement of Balance which occurs will be a happy coincidence.

That said I think the game's biggest issue is a stale competitive meta. For a game with as much bombast and splendour as AOS it feels ridiculous for games to finish so quickly. There needs to be at least a few turns of competitive playtime to allow strategy to emerge and character and challenge to develop so that the system's strengths can come to the fore.

I know there are some to whom the challenge is to make a list which basically makes it impossible to even play the game and I think that's a very interesting approach. But I think it would be better to pair that with a more elegant and economic system. There is too much of everything in AOS, in respect to investment of money, accessories, assembly and painting time, means to transport models, time to set up and actually start a game, for it to make any sense that after *all that* a game is over before it's begun. People won't play that game for long.

[Overread]

Exactly and the fact that GW was bleeding players for along while whilst under such a system of having super broken armies kind of shows that whilst it works short term for sales, its a bad policy in the long run. People get disillusioned when their army doesn't get updated; doesn't remain powerful enough to even have a chance to compete and when another army just auto wins too easily because its got that one or two units that are just unbeatable or superpowered. 

Just look how the sale have skyrocketed under the new approach and that should be enough to tell that appraoching good balance is the key. 

[Skreech Verminking]

The new system Gw is bringing into their tournament events, is really interesting.

it may be a big mistake or a tactical good choice to use.

right now, this is probably something, I myself cannot say if it will be a good option in using it at  tournaments or not.

the only thing I know, is that trying something new, than doing always the same thing over and over again is sometimes the right way to go.

in other words, I believe that the new system may be an interesting choice or can go really badly, but only time can tell, and mistakes always happens.

 

[mmimzie]

I think the biggest problem GW needs to avoid with AoS is creating another Liberator vs Sequqitors or retributors vs evocators. Or for those who follow 40k thing they need to avoid the primaries marine vs normal space marine comparison. 

 

Those kind of choice really alienate the player base who already are firmly invested in there model, and it's like some one slapped the model out of thier hands.

 

I think to add new models they should either really add something to thier factions, or be thier own faction. I think looking at nighthaunt they kind of hit the nail on the head. While chain rasp have a decent niche in legions of negash, most of the line is only really competitive within thier faction. 

 

I think they should have done similar with sequators and evocators. Either releasing a chamber faction books or giving that chamber it's own alliegence abilities. So that those units could be competitive with out stepping on the toes of the stuff that was there before. 

 

I know alot of folks still lament factions be separated into bite sized chunks, but I think factions being about KO/IDK size is a pretty good thing as it gives each unit an opportunity to shine. Larger factions only serve to marginalizes of the model in thier line. 

[amysrevenge]

3 hours ago, Nos said:

That said I think the game's biggest issue is a stale competitive meta.

However, I think the community's biggest issue is overestimating the impact of the competitive meta on the overall health of the game.  The competitive meta doesn't even dominate the *tournament scene*, much less the whole game.  The competitive meta dominates the top 1/3 or so of tournament players, influences (but doesn't dominate) the middle 1/3 of tournament players and some casual players, and doesn't affect at all the bottom 1/3 of tournament players (other than determining what particular OP filth they play in round one on their way down to the fun tables) and most casual players.