CP having more variation

[Arkiham]

1 hour ago, Arkiham said:

its only death stomping the meta atm, not the other summon armies,

not all armies. 

excluding sylvaneth who no one seems to really have a issue with, and whose win % i suspect is less to do with summoning than the changes to their forests etc etc ( i cant confirm ) and again FEC who again no one seems to be moaning about, the win % of a LoN army compared to all of the chaos forces, and the seraphon force who are claimed to be equally abusive are 10% points and lower than LoN. 

seraphon who can summon like 800 points of models on to the table are 18% lower than LoN.

 

so, this leads us to a few questions

is LoN summoning is alot stronger?

the others are alot weaker and need buffing?
is there other aspect of death that need a bit more balancing. ( ie nagash point increase ) 40 skeletons are alot less scary when they start taking battleshock tests after loosing ~20 dudes. 

[Lemon Knuckles]

52 minutes ago, Arkiham said:

so, this leads us to a few questions

is LoN summoning is alot stronger?

the others are alot weaker and need buffing?
is there other aspect of death that need a bit more balancing. ( ie nagash point increase ) 40 skeletons are alot less scary when they start taking battleshock tests after loosing ~20 dudes. 

I guess I'm not following your point then. 

Does it really matter whose summoning is stronger?   I had assumed your issue was that the meta was broken due to Death summoning, not that Death summoning was stronger than, say, Seraphon summoning.

99% of other armies' shooting is stronger than Death's.  Does that need balancing too?  What ultimately is the point of having different factions then?

[Fulkes]

I'm still trying to wrap my head around people trying to justify getting back an easily crumbling unit that we've not already paid extra for just for the privilege of getting back in the late game being the same as being able to bring extra stuff that wasn't paid for onto the table. I'd really love to know how getting a block of 40 skeletons (which my opponent has already completely killed) is comparable to getting something like a Bloodthirster. 

I feel like there is a massive bias that because a particular list focused on Nagash is too popular/strong that everything in the army is too strong and instead of looking at the pros and cons of how a mechanic works they just look at the mechanic in its strongest state and call it broken because of it.

[LLV]

19 hours ago, Lemon Knuckles said:

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).

Nice Stats 

[RuneBrush]

18 hours ago, Fulkes said:

I'm still trying to wrap my head around people trying to justify getting back an easily crumbling unit that we've not already paid extra for just for the privilege of getting back in the late game being the same as being able to bring extra stuff that wasn't paid for onto the table. I'd really love to know how getting a block of 40 skeletons (which my opponent has already completely killed) is comparable to getting something like a Bloodthirster. 

I feel like there is a massive bias that because a particular list focused on Nagash is too popular/strong that everything in the army is too strong and instead of looking at the pros and cons of how a mechanic works they just look at the mechanic in its strongest state and call it broken because of it.

Just to put the context into this, it's not big units of skeletons that (some) people have an issue with being brought back.  It's the faster and more resilient Nighthaunt Units (specifically Grimghast Reapers).

As I said a few in one comment, the simple solution would be to increase the cost of Nighthaunt units when included as a part of Legions of Nagash army - as with many of the other units you "hard-bake" a tax into that unit for things that "could" happen to it.  For Reapers, dropping the hoard discount for LoN would be a good move.

I can see both sides of the argument when bringing back things like Grimghast Reapers - however what I would say is that the vast majority of arguments seem to think that bringing a unit back is simply a matter of spending a CP, when it couldn't be further from the truth.  It's also not summoning - it's resurrection, Legion armies have no way to exceed the number of units they place on the table beyond the ones they brought.

[angrycontra]

One fix (even if it made no sense lore wise) would be to simply remove summonable tag from grimghasts. Unlike LoN, nighthaunt aren't overly reliant on summoning/resurrecting models so this would be a minor nerf for them (plus if you keep summonable on bladegheists/harridans, their value in comparison to currently superior grimghasts would go up) but for LoN it would be major nerf while still retaining that unit's overall usefulness. I don't like this kind of nerf too much but honestly, I just don't see many other options that either do not ruin LoN as a non-nighthaunt army or do not nerf nighthaunts to the ground.

[Fulkes]

Removing the summonable tag from them removes most of their access to healing and then nerfs them inside of their own book.

No, a points increase when run in a LoN army, or removing the Nighthaunt elements and making them an ally or grand faction Death army allowance only would be more appropriate solutions I feel.

[Nacnudllah]

It seems like the choice to make a handful of Nighthaunt units available to LoN was a poor one.  I'm still not real clear on why they did that.

[Fulkes]

7 minutes ago, Nacnudllah said:

It seems like the choice to make a handful of Nighthaunt units available to LoN was a poor one.  I'm still not real clear on why they did that.

To increase sales by increasing the chances of players picking stuff up to add to their armies.

It would have been better to make them allies instead.

[angrycontra]

Well ok one simple way to nerf them in LoN is to release FAQ that adds following extra line for gravestones and re-summoning: "this ability can't be used on nighthaunt units", this would obviously hurt hexwraiths and spirit hosts in LoN forces but I'd almost consider that to be worthy sacrifice to balance the game as a whole (And gravestone resurrecting is most effective on 1-wound models anyway).

I do agree that giving nighthaunt units for LoN was a mistake on hindsight but at this point taking them out would be very scummy from gw, since lots of players (non-hc players) have invested money on these miniatures. I also don't like idea of giving same unit different point values depending on the army it's in, that's like the ultimate way to confuse your player base.

[SwampHeart]

2 minutes ago, angrycontra said:

Well ok one simple way to nerf them in LoN is to release FAQ that adds following extra line for gravestones and re-summoning: "this ability can't be used on nighthaunt units", this would obviously hurt hexwraiths and spirit hosts in LoN forces but I'd almost consider that to be worthy sacrifice to balance the game as a whole (And gravestone resurrecting is most effective on 1-wound models anyway).

I do agree that giving nighthaunt units for LoN was a mistake on hindsight but at this point taking them out would be very scummy from gw, since lots of players (non-hc players) have invested money on these miniatures. I also don't like idea of giving same unit different point values depending on the army it's in, that's like the ultimate way to confuse your player base.

I mean making them allies isn't taking them away though. You're still free to use them in the list - you just can't use Endless Legion on them. 

[Fulkes]

8 minutes ago, SwampHeart said:

I mean making them allies isn't taking them away though. You're still free to use them in the list - you just can't use Endless Legion on them. 

Exactly. It'd limit how much Nighthaunt gets crammed into the list as well.

[chord]

 I keep seeing LoN summoning compared to Khorne summoning.  Very different.  A khorne player has to make a choice with blood tithe points on using it for a unit or an ability. Additionally if you had say 4 BT points and use any (even a 2Pt Ability) all 4BT points get wiped out. 

[Fulkes]

4 minutes ago, chord said:

 I keep seeing LoN summoning compared to Khorne summoning.  Very different.  A khorne player has to make a choice with blood tithe points on using it for a unit or an ability. Additionally if you had say 4 BT points and use any (even a 2Pt Ability) all 4BT points get wiped out. 

You also get access to stuff that wasn't in your list before, and don't have any other restrictions for bringing stuff back being tied to a using any particular point on the board that's set up at the start of the game before deployment. 

The comparison is made because they have a strong summoning ability that is less restrictive than the LoN version and has the potential to be a lot stronger than just bringing back a block of skeletons or chainrasps "every turn". And before anyone mentions the "every turn" nonsense again, I'm going to point out that means my opponent can kill a full unit of anything I've got every turn meaning without the resurrection style summoning that LoN has I'd be tabled as someone running the army.

[chord]

2 minutes ago, Fulkes said:

You also get access to stuff that wasn't in your list before, and don't have any other restrictions for bringing stuff back being tied to a using any particular point on the board that's set up at the start of the game before deployment. 

The comparison is made because they have a strong summoning ability that is less restrictive than the LoN version and has the potential to be a lot stronger than just bringing back a block of skeletons or chainrasps "every turn". And before anyone mentions the "every turn" nonsense again, I'm going to point out that means my opponent can kill a full unit of anything I've got every turn meaning without the resurrection style summoning that LoN has I'd be tabled as someone running the army.

 Actually its not a strong summoning ability.  Blood tithe is the only allegiance ability the army gets and using any points wipes them all out.  

You are better off comparing to the Seraphon, than khorne.  

[RuneBrush]

Before we go too far down the route of comparing mechanics, I feel it's fairly clear that each mechanic is meant to be unique to that army, so comparing them isn't necessarily going to be comparing like for like.  One similarity though, is that many of them allow you to put fairly high point units onto the table.

One thing to bear in mind that the summoning/resurrection mechanics are all pretty new in the grand scheme of things - they're barely six months old and I fully expect them to receive some tweaks

[Fulkes]

Just now, chord said:

 Actually its not a strong summoning ability.  Blood tithe is the only allegiance ability the army gets and using any points wipes them all out.  

You are better off comparing to the Seraphon, than khorne.  

Comparisons are made to just about every summoning based faction as far as I've seen. Khorne just comes up a little more often because one of the biggest detractors against LoN summoning (someone who started a thread that was moved to the Death sub-forum regarding the way summoning could be changed to be even more restrictive and bad for LoN) played Khorne and failed to notice that while Khorne does have an "all or nothing" approach to using those points, it's still a generally stronger ability to summon than the LoN stuff is. 

I'm sorry, but any faction that can summon stuff they didn't pay points for is going to have a summoning ability stronger than what Death has. We have to pay points for what we get to summon, and even then it's all handled under a large list of restrictions that prevent us from just running roughshod with it every turn. We have a finite number of places on the table to resurrect units to, can't ressurect more than one unit a turn unless our general is within 9" of two points, we can't summon near enemy units, any summoned units that are unable to fulfill the restrictions with the gravesite and enemy units are destroyed, and we have to spend CP on it instead of spending it to buff our melee damage or make a unit we still have harder to kill. Oh and the unit has to be SUMMONABLE which locks out any of our heavy hitters like a Zombie Dragon, much less a Vampire Lord on a zombie dragon.

I'll admit it's still an incredibly versatile and useful ability but when you just look at how many points of models we can theoretically get back and call it broken because of that and exclude all the restrictions, exclude the strengths of much less restricted summoning abilities and generally accuse a game mechanic to be broken because of a single competitive netlist that runs Nagash and a bunch of Nighthaunt stuff.

I mean, go back and look at the win percentage for Death again. We're not even winning half our games despite being one of the most popular factions out there, meaning that not everyone is playing that list, not everyone is winning with that list and the mechanics outside of that particular list work fairly.

I've been wargaming on and off since 2004 and something I can confidently say is that there is a strong kneejerk reaction to basically anything that ends up in a netlist, regardless of the actual ability it takes to win with said list, or the fact that the list might only exist because it's cheap to get into (a Soul Wars box plus Nagash and you're basically aces) and it doesn't take a lot of skill to manage (almost everything has fly and ignores armour modifiers making it easier to pilot on the table, though it comes at a cost of not being able to deal out as many wounds due to a lower number of attacks than you can with a unit like skeletons).

I mean, I'm building a Legion of Blood army that focuses on hitting stuff with up to -5 bravery and then setting off multiple mortal wound sources in people's faces that could kill upwards to 11 models (12 if I can somehow make the target unit bravery 0 that turn, haven't double checked to see if it's possible) for each volley. I promise that if I somehow took that to the top tables of a GT the thread wouldn't be about resurrecting stuff but about how LoN bravery debuffs are totally bs and should be nerfed regardless of how carefully you have to plan everything in the army's movement to make it work.

[Captain Marius]

On 11/25/2018 at 12:29 AM, Lemon Knuckles said:

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).

Where are Clan Pestilens on this list? My mate plays them from time to time and they always run rough shod over me no matter what I take, i cant believe they dont appear in more tourneys, especially with shooting apparently falling out of favour.