Discussion : Point Reduction for Non-BT Armies

[JackStreicher]

Hello War Gamers,

after a hell lot of games with AoS 2.0 and two recent games which confirmed our opinions our gaming group figured that most Non-BT armies would need a simple points reduction to be able to keep up with newer armies. To be more specific concerning Darkling Covens, Order Serpentis and Dispossessed:

It would be enough if Ironbreakers, Hammerers, the Warden King, Irondrakes, Drakespawn Knights and all DC Units  dropped by 20 points, while losing the point reduction at max size.

The Chariots would have to drop 20-40 points.

we would have suggested the same for Breyherds but they were pretty much fixed with the new BT.

 

Could your non-BT faction be fixed by also just dropping 20pts/Unit? What do you think about it?

 

 

maybe we can generate enough attention so GW will fix our underwhelming armies in the near future  (though it‘s unlikely)

 

[Gaz Taylor]

@JackStreicher As I say in all these sorts of threads - Any feedback about points or anything like that, drop an email to  AOSFAQ@gwplc.com or go to the Age of Sigmar Facebook page and provide it there https://www.facebook.com/GWWarhammerAgeofSigmar/

The folks in the design studio do visit this forum but best way to let them know about things like this is to go via email or Facebook. Also I would suggest you be as constructive as possible  

On the subject of armies that do not have a Battletome yet and have to rely upon the Generals Handbook, I'm fully expecting them to disappear over the next few years and get updates like what we've seen with the Legions of Nagash and Beasts of Chaos. It's a great way for GW to update and sell a range without having to put a lot of resource in producing new models for them. I'm fully expecting to see  Darkling Covens, Order Serpentis and Dispossessed appear in new things in the future. For example, I would expect to see the Darkling Covens and Order Serpentis find models into the faction that will support Malerion. This helps keep the look and feel of the faction and GW only have to produce a few new models but still get use out of the older models (same happened with Daughters of Khaine). When we see the Wrath and Ruin stuff appear in the near future, again I'm expecting to see a new Slaanesh Battletome with some new models to support (such as the teased Fiends).

So short answer is GW are aware and listen to feedback and if you are patient, you will get something you will be very happy with. Ask Legion of Nagash or Beasts of Chaos players  

[JPjr]

12 minutes ago, Gaz Taylor said:

For example, I would expect to see the Darkling Covens and Order Serpentis find models into the faction that will support Malerion.

Whilst I can totally see the reasoning, part of me honestly thinks they'll keep any new lines totally separate so they can create strong new identities that are wholly AoS. Easy enough to do in fluff too, ie Now Malerion, Tyrion, Teclis are god tier beings they're now only interested in the Aelves they've had a direct hand in freeing/moulding/creating and see the old lot as a relic of the past.

Personally I just really like the idea of just going sod it and officially combining (deep breath...) Ironweld Arsenal, Disposessed, Collegiate Arcane, Phoenix Temple, Order Serpentis, Eldritch Council, Devoted of Sigmar, Wanderers, Free People, Swifthawk Agents, Lion Rangers and Order Draconis into one big official possible army.

It makes sense in terms of both the game and reducing the number of battletomes they need to produce to keep everyone happy and making people with older armies viable, and in fluff it would be good too, after all these are the people going out settling, building and importantly defending all the new cities.

Quite a nice change from all the usual mono-racial/special(?) armies. Something that actually represents diverse civilisations  rather than the fantasy equivalent of Apartheid South Africa. And you could have some great rules and looks for different cities in different realms etc to give mixed armies a coherent design.

[JackStreicher]

28 minutes ago, Gaz Taylor said:

@JackStreicher As I say in all these sorts of threads - Any feedback about points or anything like that, drop an email to  AOSFAQ@gwplc.com or go to the Age of Sigmar Facebook page and provide it there https://www.facebook.com/GWWarhammerAgeofSigmar/

I already did ?

 

 

2 minutes ago, JPjr said:

Quite a nice change from all the usual mono-racial/special(?) armies. Something that actually represents diverse civilisations  rather than the fantasy equivalent of Apartheid South Africa. And you could have some great rules and looks for different cities in different realms etc to give mixed armies a coherent design

If you put it this way I completely agree... Plus you could do "Stormhosts" depending on the General you pick, each "Stromhost" representing the entirety of the book fighting in a specific style: You Choose the Darkling Devision and every unit in your army gains the Darkling Keyword -> Can be sacrificed etc.
This could make for really tasteful armies (dark dwarfs, led by a dreadlord!)

[kenshin620]

I think the problem is you need to do a case by case....by case (there are a lot of non BT armies after all) basis.

A blanket "20 pt" discount would have some...unintended consequences. Especially for artillery/weapon teams. Mmmm 50pt warpfire thrower teams....

 

Plus even Battletomes struggle with point balances, look at SCE! All you have to do is mention "hey Paladins vs Evocators" and 10 people will go into a rant about how overpriced Paladins are.

[JackStreicher]

2 hours ago, kenshin620 said:

I think the problem is you need to do a case by case....by case (there are a lot of non BT armies after all) basis.

A blanket "20 pt" discount would have some...unintended consequences. Especially for artillery/weapon teams. Mmmm 50pt warpfire thrower teams....

 

Plus even Battletomes struggle with point balances, look at SCE! All you have to do is mention "hey Paladins vs Evocators" and 10 people will go into a rant about how overpriced Paladins are.

You forgot Sequitors VS Retributors

[Chris Tomlin]

There's definitely no blanket answer here. You can't just take 20pts off all non Battletome units and expect any form of balance.

My non Battletome armies are currently better off than my ones with Battletomes!

[Skreech Verminking]

18 hours ago, JackStreicher said:

Hello War Gamers,

after a hell lot of games with AoS 2.0 and two recent games which confirmed our opinions our gaming group figured that most Non-BT armies would need a simple points reduction to be able to keep up with newer armies. To be more specific concerning Darkling Covens, Order Serpentis and Dispossessed:

It would be enough if Ironbreakers, Hammerers, the Warden King, Irondrakes, Drakespawn Knights and all DC Units  dropped by 20 points, while losing the point reduction at max size.

The Chariots would have to drop 20-40 points.

we would have suggested the same for Breyherds but they were pretty much fixed with the new BT.

 

Could your non-BT faction be fixed by also just dropping 20pts/Unit? What do you think about it?

 

 

maybe we can generate enough attention so GW will fix our underwhelming armies in the near future  (though it‘s unlikely)

 

Well some units might need a point reduction.

but to give every unit in a non battletome faction a point reduction of 20,  won’t really fix the balance issue.

heck a 50p warpfire thrower that cost like nothing and those a ton of damage, might be a little bit overpowered.

 

[BobbyB]

Perhaps they should just rebalance all points across the board once a year? There's got to be some sort of handy book format they could adopt easily

[Kevlar1972]

Maybe they should just give the grand alliances decent artifacts and command abilities/traits.

That would go a long way toward balancing out the playing field.  No idea why the grand alliance rules are so terrible. 

[Overread]

Just now, Kevlar1972 said:

Maybe they should just give the grand alliances decent artifacts and command abilities/traits.

That would go a long way toward balancing out the playing field.  No idea why the grand alliance rules are so terrible. 

But it creates a soup problem whereby the game would lean too strong toward taking Grand Alliance armies. So suddenly all those Battletome armies would also start taking Grand Alliance builds. 

 

Grand Alliance is nice, but I prefer where its an option but not a balanced must have. This way factions retain a strong identity of self and can be fielded without diluting themselves taking allies from everyone else in a min-max madness. 

 

Honestly what's needed is jsut for GW to focus on AoS for a period of time like they have 40K. It' took them a year and a half and most of of 40K has an updated codex and several new armies and revamps. They can do the same for AoS 0 a year spent focusing and releasing Battletomes. It's actually something they can achieve now and have proven that they can do it. 

 

I'm sure GW also wants to do it - I'm sure that they want those models that are currently not selling to sell stronger and become established with fanbases and support and customers. 

[Yoshiya]

Whilst I think they could maybe increase the power of GA bonuses a bit, I agree they can't go too far or no one would use their own armies' and you'd end up with the soup issue 40k has where people mix and match the best units from the different armies (but with even less restrictions).

They need to work on creating a more solid framework for 'true' factions and 'ally' factions and ensure that all 'true' factions have their own abilities (temporarily through GHB and long term through a book of some kind, either their own or a soup one).

As it stands there is still factions that seem designed to be taken by themselves that don't have their own abilities (Gutbusters being the most obvious) and that just leads to balance issues.

As for OPs question, whilst I get non-BT armies are often struggling, what you're asking for just seems like an attempt to swing things in the opposite direction. As others have mentioned, some things would become severely overpowered with a flat drop in points (take a look at Order Draconis which is doing great without a battletome at the moment) and points changes need to be more nuanced than that.

[PlasticCraic]

Yeah I think a lot of people recall the GH16 days, especially towards the end it was dominated by soup lists (Moo Clan, Hurricanum Gunlines, Best of Chaos with the Letterbomb etc).

It made sense to have good Mixed stuff in that book when 90% of the armies were using them because there were very few "modern" Battletomes around (by definition...it was only then that books started to include Allegiance goodies).  Before the "Staunch Defender and Mirrorshield" era, a common inclusion for Stormcast was a Stardrake with Quicksilver Potion 

It looked like a proactive design choice at the launch of GH17 (and a good one imo) to move away from that to "proper" armies with their own Allegiances.  There were a lot more true Battletome armies by that stage (and even more now), and the book launched with Allegiance abilities for a lot of the armies that either didn't have a Battletome (Dispossesed, Wanderers, Slaanesh) or had an old style one with no Allegiance Abilities (Seraphon, Ironjawz, FEC).

That squared the circle and set the tone to a large extent, and I think that reverting to enhanced GA abilities would be a backwards step and an unneccesarry one.  That being said there were a couple of things that this release structure didn't or couldn't solve, being:

- Microfactions.  The shattering of WHFB Armies into smaller factions was inconsistent (Seraphon completely escaped it, Maneaters...not so much) and comes from an AOS era when the vision for the game was drastically different to what we have now.  It's not possible nor even desirable to have GA abilities, let alone a Battletome, for every microfaction out there.

- Destruction.  For some reason their GA abilities were taken away and replaced with nothing.  The decision to freeze armies like Gutbusters and Moonclan out of GH17 and GH18, coupled with the absence of Battletome support for years on end and the removal of all their Batallions, is totally out of step with the treatment of all other GAs.  I don't have a good explanation for this.

However all of these things have solutions that we can already see playing out.

1) The Big Book.  LON and now BOC have shown that GW can and will bring scattered armies back under an umbrella with modernised rules.  This is a great boon to those armies.

2) GW Genius.  Never underestimate GW's creativity in finding non-obvious solutions.  The best example is Firestorm in my opinion...I think that GW would handle the launch differently given the chance, but the idea was superb.  As has been pointed out in other threads, if we ever get a Battletome: Free Cities book, it could be a huge success.  Bringing smaller and larger armies together horizontally rather than vertically is a true masterstroke, and as they already showed it can apply to other GAs in the form of a specific Waaagh for example.

Similarly, I'm not in the least bit concerned that the Big Books box off a whole GA with no room for expansion.  LON was swiftly followed by Nighthaunt for example, and there is always room to expand with out-of-leftfield factions.  For example FEC have incredible lore and sit neatly outside of LON.  Similarly with a Green Soup book you could still see Grot Sky Pirates and whole universe of amazing ideas that someone like me could never conceive of.

3) Patience.  GW has not really supported the armies I'm most interested in for a couple of years now.  I've blown off steam about it on Twitter (which helps!), but what am I actually worried about?  Bonesplitterz can still compete at the pointy end, good players have been performing wonders with Moonclan, and Mixed Destro can still be devastating in the right hands. 

So in my own case it's probably moreso that I like buying shiny new stuff (don't we all), so I'd like more releases just so I have new stuff to buy, and being brutally honest a feeling of being treated badly - "it's just not fair". 

With regards to that latter point, it can be tempting to think that my armies are not getting the attention I feel they deserve because they lack advocates in the corridors of power at GW.  My main armies are Ironjawz (obsolete Battletome, thrown far fewer bones with 2.0 than armies like Sylvaneth that already had more tools) and GSC in 40K (the only army in the game with no book either in their hands or imminent).  

Well, that little conspiracy theory doesn't hold a lot of water when you consider that Pete Foley's main armies are...Ironjawz and GSC!

TLDR: The structures that GW have put in place are outstanding, they listen to feedback, and they will continue to innovate and keep making the game great in ways we wouldn't even think of.  It'll be fine.  It'll be better than fine.

[Lucio]

I'm not convinced for the need to pay attention to unfinished armies, and that's exactly what any force without a battletome is, unfinished.

Of course they're going to struggle because they'll lack a strong allegiance ability, and often model synergy too. Not to mention may well be missing key model roles in their army style.

 

Doesn't mean they should be made cheaper though, otherwise they'll become "well duh" ally choices.

[PlasticCraic]

1 hour ago, Lucio said:

I'm not convinced for the need to pay attention to unfinished armies, and that's exactly what any force without a battletome is, unfinished.

I completely disagree.  Over the last couple of years, "unfinished" armies who have has attention paid to them include Sylvaneth, Bonesplitterz, Tzeentch, Nurgle, Daughters of Khaine, Legions of Nagash, Beasts of Chaos and to a large extent Stormcast and Khorne because they were using GA abilities before that.

I think the game would be in a much worse place if GW didn't pay attention to those unfinished armies, so I hope they continue to do so.

[Yoshiya]

1 hour ago, PlasticCraic said:

I completely disagree.  Over the last couple of years, "unfinished" armies who have has attention paid to them include Sylvaneth, Bonesplitterz, Tzeentch, Nurgle, Daughters of Khaine, Legions of Nagash, Beasts of Chaos and to a large extent Stormcast and Khorne because they were using GA abilities before that.

I think the game would be in a much worse place if GW didn't pay attention to those unfinished armies, so I hope they continue to do so.

Technically Ironjaws are the logical expansion of Black Orcs (rebranded as 'Ardboys) too.

In fact I believe only Stormcast, Fyreslayers, Kharadron Overlords and Idoneth Deepkin are the only armies that are made up of entirely AoS-era models and units (though I will concede Nighthaunt is practically a brand new faction as is the aforementioned Ironjaws).

[Jamopower]

10 hours ago, Overread said:

But it creates a soup problem whereby the game would lean too strong toward taking Grand Alliance armies. So suddenly all those Battletome armies would also start taking Grand Alliance builds. 

 

Easy solution would be that when using non generic allegiance with allegiances older than the newest style of battletomes you get N number of points and with allegiances older than say Ironjawz, you would get 2*N and without any sort of allegiance, you'd get 3N. Where N is the evaluated cost of the allegiance abilities, spell lores, command traits, etc. that the newer stuff have in addition to the stuff that the older factions have. Of course there might be some outliers that would break this, like the phoenix temple seems to be, but otherwise it should be quite solid way to "quick fix" the older factions that are currently in pretty bad situation. Though I have to say that I don't like points fixing as the solution for game inbalances as the problems are not often the points, but the abilities.

[BobbyB]

doesn't sound like an easy solution ?

at present there's a healthy-ish mix of BT allegiance and grand alliance armies at competitive events, which suggests the balance is ok (death being it's own case really)