CP having more variation

[AaronWilson]

For what it's worse my personal opinion is - 

Is Endless legions too strong? Looking at the number of points I get from a average Gnarlroot game is 30 Dryads & return 3 Kurnoths which is 500, armies like Seraphon & Slaanesh do a similar number, more if it all goes well. Armies like Nurgle, Khorne, Tzeentch do around 300-400. Returning 2 units 30 Grimghasts is on the upper end of summoning but not totally out of bounds. 

How is it done? I think that's the real issue, maybe not from a balance perspective because you can force them to bring the unit back in a weak spot but more from a psychological perspective.  Killing 30 models with a 4+ save which can't be modified is not easy, only to have the opponent go "I'll spend 1 CP and bring them back" leads to a lot of feels bad. Especially if that unit have some fought twice and wiped out 30% of your army. 

Another issue is that most summoning is on a progressive track and most event games get to turn 3 before it's decided or time is up. So those armies which near to get to those higher numbers just don't, where as LoN EL is always active at it's most potent. 

I'm not going to suggest changes, again I don't have a good enough overview of every army and the game design to really dive into it. I think it's the most easiest "summoning" to achieve and quite often to leads to a lot of feel bads. 

[Satyrical Sophist]

People over think the feel bad aspect. Sometimes people seem like they are learning about the mechanic for the first time. I don't play legions myself, but I've played against them a fair few times. You can't always do it, but a severely damaged unit cannot be resummoned until the whole thing is dead. So try to knock down that massive unit, not wipe it out. Don't be surprised when an opponent resummons that Grimghast unit just where you don't want it. There are definitely times when you couldn't do anything different, but I think that there are a lot of times when you could.

One issue may just be Grimghast. They are fast and lethal, but also work really well with healing. If the enemy is using Black Knights then they are also fast and damaging, but don't heal nearly as well, so are a lot more manageable. 

[Lemon Knuckles]

2 hours ago, AaronWIlson said:

Killing 30 models with a 4+ save which can't be modified is not easy, only to have the opponent go "I'll spend 1 CP and bring them back" leads to a lot of feels bad. Especially if that unit have some fought twice and wiped out 30% of your army. 

It should feel bad.  It should feel bad that you a) didn't kill the general first, or b) didn't block off the gravesites.  

I honestly don't know if the ability needs a nerf or not.  My gut reaction to these these types of things is almost always take it slow and take it incrementally.  I'm not a fan of using big nerfs to try and adapt to changes.  Part of the problem with Endless Legions is that a lot of people haven't really figured out how to play against it properly.  But I don't know how much of the problem that is.  It's possible that it's enough of the problem that the ability doesn't need any changes.  Or its possible that a better and more informed counter-strategy still needs to be supplemented with some light tweaks to the ability.

[Vasshpit]

Perhaps make gravesites destroyable.  

[AaronWilson]

6 minutes ago, Lemon Knuckles said:

It should feel bad.  It should feel bad that you a) didn't kill the general first, or b) didn't block off the gravesites.  

I honestly don't know if the ability needs a nerf or not.  My gut reaction to these these types of things is almost always take it slow and take it incrementally.  I'm not a fan of using big nerfs to try and adapt to changes.  Part of the problem with Endless Legions is that a lot of people haven't really figured out how to play against it properly.  But I don't know how much of the problem that is.  It's possible that it's enough of the problem that the ability doesn't need any changes.  Or its possible that a better and more informed counter-strategy still needs to be supplemented with some light tweaks to the ability.

Appreciate I know that's the "counter play" but as I described in the previous post

1) The general is normally either Nagash, not that trivial to just "kill" or a necromancer surrounded by skeletons with a 6++/6+++. It's easy enough to say on the internet "just kill the general" but on the table it's often very hard in practice, especially with 60 Grimghasts shoved down your throat.

2) "Block the gravesites" again, really easy to write over the internet. There are four and any clever LoN player will deploy a defensive one which is very hard to get to. If you're able to block off 4 bubbles from the gravesites In the game you're probably winning hard enough for it not to matter anyway. 

[Lemon Knuckles]

I didn't mean the comment in a bad way, and I made it clear that I don't know where the right balance is.

I understand that countering isn't trivial or easy, but if it was trivial or easy, then there wouldn't be a point to the ability in the first place.  The question is really about balance.  It's an ability that will inevitably feel bad when its pulled off; the more important issue is how consistently it can be pulled off, how many times in a game.

There's also another, not insignificant issue, which some people have brought up, and that's Grimghast Reapers.  They are somewhat of a problem unit, and I wonder if they are actually complicating the Endless Legions issue..

[Lemon Knuckles]

30 minutes ago, Vasshpit said:

Perhaps make gravesites destroyable.  

That's an idea I've never heard before.

[kenshin620]

As a completely different topic from the Death Summoning, I really wish Daemon Heralds could have Command Abilities.

Yea ok you have the Loci synergy, but I find it a bit silly generic mortal lieutenants like the 80pt Aspiring Deathbringer can give his mortal bros +1 attack but a Herald of Khorne that has been awarded the Blood Throne gets squat. The description of the Blood Throne even says

" From atop its dais, a Herald of Khorne hisses out commands to his daemonic foot soldiers"

what commands?!? (other than the generic 3)

 

[JPjr]

1 hour ago, Vasshpit said:

Perhaps make gravesites destroyable. 

I was thinking you could also add in some kind of 'rest in peace' ability to models with the keyword priest that allows them to stop summonable death units from returning. Though obviously that's not available to all factions, but something like that could be a nice fluffy way of at least giving some way of combating it.

 

[RuneBrush]

1 hour ago, Vasshpit said:

Perhaps make gravesites destroyable.  

Not sure how that mechanic could work in truth as they're simply a point on the battlefield.  Perhaps if they were made terrain pieces (with a fixed size) then that could but equally as a Death player I'd want Wyldwoods and Herdstones to be destroyable

1 hour ago, AaronWIlson said:

Appreciate I know that's the "counter play" but as I described in the previous post

1) The general is normally either Nagash, not that trivial to just "kill" or a necromancer surrounded by skeletons with a 6++/6+++. It's easy enough to say on the internet "just kill the general" but on the table it's often very hard in practice, especially with 60 Grimghasts shoved down your throat.

2) "Block the gravesites" again, really easy to write over the internet. There are four and any clever LoN player will deploy a defensive one which is very hard to get to. If you're able to block off 4 bubbles from the gravesites In the game you're probably winning hard enough for it not to matter anyway. 

What I would say is that the general needs to be within 9" of the gravesite they wish to resurrect from, that can massively inhibit the impact a general can have.

Going back to the original topic, one solution that would make Endless Legions a more challenging choice would be to limit heroes to only performing a single command per phase.

[Satyrical Sophist]

12 hours ago, Lemon Knuckles said:

There's also another, not insignificant issue, which some people have brought up, and that's Grimghast Reapers.  They are somewhat of a problem unit, and I wonder if they are actually complicating the Endless Legions issue..

I could really see them being the problem. They are pretty fast and have fly to get to the enemy again, plus a 2" range. I might be missing something, but the only other hard hitting and somewhat fast choice is black knights, who really struggle to get multiple ranks in, and have a single inch range. 

Don't get me wrong, a huge unit of skeletons coming back is dispiriting, but unless they happen to be at a close by grave site that you haven't blocked, it's gonna be awhile before you need to deal with them.

[Kirjava13]

The problem is that a nerf to Reapers because of their effectiveness in LoN lists unduly punishes Nighthaunt, for whom the Reapers are one of our only trump cards we can play.

[Arkiham]

seems to just be an issue with death really tbh.

just make a table of how many models in a unit you can restore for x command point.

the bigger or more elite the unit the more the cp cost. 

the summoning for the remaining factions is tiered, why not death. the current method is clearly broken so alter it. 

 

aside from death, id be happy to see some sort of tier for command abilities, they arent all the same value. lets not pretend they are 

[Fulkes]

I feel like some of the rage against Endless Legions comes from a mistaken belief on how it works. So let's talk the restrictions on the ability:

1. It costs CP. Which means you can't use that CP for other abilities your army may need (such as having a Wight King buff a unit to fight twice)

2. Only the general has access to it, and in matched play (where most of the complaints come from I've seen) that means only one model can do it. Naturally sometimes this model is Nagash, but he's an 800 point model who is likely be going up in points come GH2019 to combat the Nagash spam in tournaments.

3. The unit has to have the SUMMONABLE keyword, meaning that it's largely restricted to our Battleline units. No dragging back units of Bloodknights or pulling a Zombie Dragon up to wreck the enemy lines. Not to mention most of our units with the SUMMONABLE keyword are rather fragile (save for chainrasps who are more durable but lack some of the punch we can bring with other units) and that means they fall apart just as fast as we bring them back (if not faster).

4. The general has to be within 9" of a Gravesite, meaning that depending on what you're running that general might not be able to do it very often.

5. The returned unit has to be within 9" of the Gravesite, but further than 9" away from an enemy model. Models who can't meet this restriction are destroyed. This sounds like a weak restriction but it prevents us from conga-lining out from the Gravesite, and means that even if we're bringing back Dire Wolves, enemy interference can ruin our ability to bring stuff back if our general is only in range of a gravesite that's close to the enemy lines (such as with a general like Neferata, or a Wight King who needs to be forward to support the line). Basically, unless our general is sitting on a gravesite in our territory with the sole purpose of bringing units back they're not going to be doing this as often if our opponent is playing the game as something more than an anvil in their own territory (looking at your Dispossessed).

6. Save for Dire Wolves all of our eligible units are deathly slow (pun intended). 4" movement is pretty standard for most of them meaning that if we do have our general sitting in the back and returning a unit every turn that unit is basically useless if we're doing anything other than using it to hold objectives on our territory. And that's only assuming a gravesite is passively kept in our own deployment space and we don't push everything forward aggressively to ensure we can impact more of the table, or use them as points to pull things from the grave to get them in the opponent's board half pretty early in the game (a tactic favored for Legion of Night players to outflank some units and use a hero or two to summon a unit from the grave on turn 1 to have a more aggressive push into the opponent's territory), meaning that those aggressively placed gravesites can be more easily capped off. Placed too defensively and we can't affect the table in the late game to score points even if we're set up to allow ourselves up the maximum number of units returned at a time.

I'm not saying that the ability isn't strong, but any ability when only analyzed by its strengths and without consideration towards it's weaknesses will look stronger than it actually is. Death is the anti-attrition army, but it's heavily dependent on it's general and heroes to make that work. And while the current competitive meta favors a Nagash heavy build that can capitalize on this better than most, it's not a fair metric to use to say the ability to too strong in every build of the army when the issue stems from a single strong model who could probably be 900-1000 points and still see play on the table.

[CaptainSoup]

6 hours ago, Arkiham said:

seems to just be an issue with death really tbh.

just make a table of how many models in a unit you can restore for x command point.

the bigger or more elite the unit the more the cp cost. 

the summoning for the remaining factions is tiered, why not death. the current method is clearly broken so alter it. 

 

aside from death, id be happy to see some sort of tier for command abilities, they arent all the same value. lets not pretend they are 

Making a table for specific amounts of models for specific units sounds needlessly complicated. A single change in points to a unit can make the whole table unstable. And this is on top to spending more CP (in your system that is) than any other army in the game just to summon a single unit.

I also don't see how other summoning is "tiered." From what I understand most armies either pay special points earned through the game or under much easier conditions than death.

Forgive me for succumbing to the slippery slope fallacy, but it sounds like your want to make a number of additional rules for little gain. Before you know it it will be back to the days of being a studied scholar before you can fully understand how the game works, instead of the more streamlined system AoS created.

 

[Lemon Knuckles]

I completely agree that less booking-keeping and less complexity is always preferable.

I'm honestly don't know what to think of the LoN mechanic.

There's a part of me that thinks people are reacting more to the idea of the mechanic than the actual state of affairs.  Resurrecting a big unit for a CP sure seems offensive.  It's obnoxious on paper.  It feels bad when it happens.  But the heart of the matter, I think, is how consistently does it happen, how often per game?  And are education and smart counter-play enough to balance it out, or does the ability actually need adjustment?  That's the part that's genuinely unclear to me.

I don't know.  It's never felt terrible when I play, but I am the first to admit that I don't play nearly as much as I'd like to, so it's not a good sample.  

I do know that  I always roll my eyes a bit when someone like Rob says on his podcast that "the Death ability is stupid, 400 points on the table, every turn, for a command point, end of discussion."  I enjoy Rob's podcasts a lot, but when he says things like this it just feels... lazy?

[CaptainSoup]

39 minutes ago, Lemon Knuckles said:

I completely agree that less booking-keeping and less complexity is always preferable.

I'm honestly don't know what to think of the LoN mechanic.

There's a part of me that thinks people are reacting more to the idea of the mechanic than the actual state of affairs.  Resurrecting a big unit for a CP sure seems offensive.  It's obnoxious on paper.  It feels bad when it happens.  But the heart of the matter, I think, is how consistently does it happen, how often per game?  And are education and smart counter-play enough to balance it out, or does the ability actually need adjustment?  That's the part that's genuinely unclear to me.

I don't know.  It's never felt terrible when I play, but I am the first to admit that I don't play nearly as much as I'd like to, so it's not a good sample.  

I do know that  I always roll my eyes a bit when someone like Rob says on his podcast that "the Death ability is stupid, 400 points on the table, every turn, for a command point, end of discussion."  I enjoy Rob's podcasts a lot, but when he says things like this it just feels... lazy?

I couldn't agree more on all points.

In my anecdotal experience when running nagash, I'm always spending my recurring CP on his command ability which is way to useful to pass up. If I used all of my other CP in previous turns and I want to bring a unit back I have to decide to either not bring them back or forgo nagash's command ability, which makes my battle line that much more vulnerable.

[Fulkes]

2 hours ago, Lemon Knuckles said:

I do know that  I always roll my eyes a bit when someone like Rob says on his podcast that "the Death ability is stupid, 400 points on the table, every turn, for a command point, end of discussion."  I enjoy Rob's podcasts a lot, but when he says things like this it just feels... lazy?

That's because it IS lazy. We're not getting new units for a CP, we're only getting dead units back for a CP. Which means our opponent would be killing 400+ points of models per turn since turn 1 for that to be true. And if that's the case the LoN army will NEED the ability to keep cycling back in dead units because it's the only thing keeping us from being tabled!

Seriously, it's not like (for example) the Khorne blood tithe table where you can get a model or unit that wasn't part of your original list, we can only bring back very specific units if they're completely wiped out and even then with very specific circumstances.

I mean, thematically we should just be getting new models every time anything dies (assuming we have a wizard on the table that is) but that'd be broken and dumb and no one would play against that. We have a nice balance between that and crumbling into a pile of broken bones the second a Witch Elf army looks at us funny and somehow we're the ones at fault? BS. Sometimes the answer really is "get good" because unless you're facing a tournament Nagash list that is every flavor of cheddar we can bring the mechanic works just fine and doesn't break the game.

[Arkiham]

needlessly complicated?? have you seen other factions summoning ? ..its not hard.

nurgles/tzeentch seems the most book keeping and thats not particularly hard. 

they even provide you with a nice little table of the unit size and quality of unit you can summon for your points gained.

so there is president. its not hard to use those existing systems so having a similar system for death based around cp points required to summon units wouldnt be hard to create and implement... 

for instance.

10 zombies -free (once per turn) 

5 dead doggos - free ( once per turn )

10 skeletons free (once per turn) 

20 skeletons - 1cp

5 spooky ghosts 1cp 

30 skeletons 2cp

10 spooky ghosts 3cp

 

etc etc etc. or what ever cp values seem fair, so trash units are still trash and represented as such, but bigger more deadly units such as 40 skeletons arent treated the same as 5 skeletons.  

khorne finds it just as difficult if not more so than death as their faction ability is directly tied into their summoning effectively replacing it.. each other faction has gained it as an addition to their faction "stuff" gravesties, fate dice what have you. 

[Fulkes]

I'm going to be blunt: ef the book keeping nonsense. Death has the most built in restrictions to how and where we can return dead units. Don't lump us in with the way others can gain free units that weren't a part of their armies at the start of the game and tell us that it's "only fair" we work the same way unless you're going to give me some kind of means for getting stuff like a zombie dragon on the table via summoning.

[CaptainSoup]

2 hours ago, Arkiham said:

Stuff

If you're dead set (pun unintended but it should have been. Ho ho ho!) on creating a list of summonable units for Death like other armies, then let's get rid of using CP altogether since doing that would forever cripple Death as a CP hungry army which is a terrible, terrible idea. Think about it, if that were the case, death would have to purposely nudder themselves in points to give themselves enough CP to summon units, which at that point we might as well go back to the AoS 1.0 system of spending flat points for units. That or restrict yourself from using command abilities for Half the game to summon a unit. I would also agree with Fulkes in that you would have to give us a strong unit to summon to make even that somewhat viable.

 

P.S. I would also add that if Death wasn't the "big bully" In the meta right now we would instead be talking about the elves or the cheesy Khorne Bloodthirster builds I've been seeing around lately. Some so strong they could freely summon another bloodthirster in the first couple of turns army willing. Huh, fancy that.

[Tropical Ghost General]

There is a lot of butt hurt on here about LoN summoning but as a LoN player but mainly ghost player I can see the argument from both sides, one from the faction under scrutiny and one from a faction that has no summoning at all. 

LoN without grims has some weak summonable units. The point cost of these units takes the summoning/reviving into account. So taking the instant nerf bat to how their summoning works (as some would like to see) would require a serious review of the points costs of all summonable units. I've had my summoning stopped so many times by players countering my ability to summon, by blocking gravesites, not fully killing units, etc... It really is a tough decision whether to spend your 1CP on bringing a unit back or to use a command ability. If it did get changed then it needs to allow non summonable units to be included in the summoning chart and to be honest I think the butt hurt players are feeling at the moment would go up much more if a zombie dragon suddenly turned up in turn 2 or 3 and there was literally nothing that they could do to prevent it happening because the LoN player had earned those points in a gradually increasing summoning table like other factions have. 

Now from the perspective of a pure ghost player I hate summoning. I regularly play against various Chaos armies , LoN and lizards. Being an army that has a mild amount of healing that can be easily shut down and prevented going against armies that regularly bring an extra 500pts-1000pts of units on the table sucks serious plums. In one game against muly friends Khorne list, I got lucky after he brutally killed lots of my dudes in turn 1, by rolling a few 10+ charges and equally killed a lot of his stuff. Turn 2 happens and my friend wins priority, first thing he does is bring on a bloodthirster that I had just killed using the large amount of blood tithe points. He's managed to do this in a few other games against other friends as well. That happens without him having to instigate anything, there is no way of me stopping it happen. How is that situation any different to LoN resurrecting a unit for a CP? It's not. Now my lizard playing friend regularly brings on 800pts+ on to the table, considering that I if all my spells go off and all my other healing works, the average points I can heal units in a turn is around 50pts, so over 5 turns it's around 250pts of healing/reviving and that's only if I successfully get a single spell to go off and not get dispelled each turn. Now lots of other factions have access to healing/reviving as ghosts do, so while it's better than nothing it's not a unique mechanic that gives them a distinct advantage, though I'm also aware that some factions don't even having healing/reviving abilities, so I am thankful, but the imbalance I have with games against summoning armies is huge and games against mu lizard playing friend are regularly decided based on how many extra units my lizard friend can bring onto the board. Again, I have no way to counter this due to teleporting shenanigans. I've actually stopped playing 1k games with him as even in 1k he can bring an extra 500pts+ to the table and the games are so one sided. I personally believe a points cap on total summonable units for any faction will address the balance, stick it to 20% of points size, so 400pts in a 2k game, etc...because then all of these summoning armies can't just spam extra models on the board, which is fine if it's a summoning faction vs another summoning faction, but when it's a summoning faction vs a non-summoning faction the imbalance is horrendous. 

But in an attempt to get back on topic, stick CP to 1CP per ability, stay away from making AoS into 40k with different costed CP abilities. Some command abilities are strong and some need nerfing/tweaking but it's still really early days into the mass CP ability usage, so let the meta carry on in finding out which ones need addressing. And as I've mentioned before, the only immediate change that needs to happen is make taking extra CP count towards your overall points total, as when I play against summoning armies they go under on points by 100pts-200pts, get the extra CP, get the triumph roll as they have less points and then simple summon back their initial points deficit by end of turn 1 or 2, meaning they have a massive advantage very early on in the game for not doing anything. 

[CaptainSoup]

8 hours ago, Tropical Ghost General said:

A well written novel

You made some interesting points for sure. Your idea of a soft points cap in summoning sounds like a good idea, definitely something worth looking into if it's game wide.

As for CP, it most certainly is early to be tweaking the new CP changes. Like you said we need to be careful not falling into the 40k trap of farming then spending massive amounts of CP to gain an edge.

[Arkiham]

its only death stomping the meta atm, not the other summon armies, so even with all their extra stuff, they still get stomped by death. 

 

clearly , they are not the issue. 

 

it doesnt need a rehaul, just a tweak, using cp as a beta rule ito the current is alot easier than creating a entirely new system just to trail it. 

[Lemon Knuckles]

1 hour ago, Arkiham said:

its only death stomping the meta atm, not the other summon armies, so even with all their extra stuff, they still get stomped by death. 

Although I remain agnostic as to the brokenness or no of Death's summoning, the above statement needs context.  How much of what you call "stomping" is driven simply by the popularity of the army?  If you look at the current % chance a Death army entering a tournament has to 5-0 or 4-1, they sit 4th behind DoK, Deepkin and Sylvaneth (per @LLV's stats).