Army specific Scenery (OP?)

[Belakor]

Hello guys,

I'm pretty new to AoS, reading the battletomes I've seen that the army specific terrain such as the Charnel Throne, ad Moon Loonshrine, ... Cost 0 points. What is this? They are clearly a benefit for your specific army? Who wouldn't take them? Are they allowed in tourments?

Thanks!

 

[DerZauberer]

You should look at it as a Allegiance Ability (which also is pointed "0"), but with a requirement to place down a model, not as an actual model which needs to be costed. 

Theres plenty of army specific terrain (pretty much each book since maggotkin (with some exceptions) has some) and there will be much more to come i think. 

And yes, those are of course allowed in tournaments. Most of them are limited to one set of terrain pieces or they can be bought with points after the first free one. Sylvaneth for example rely heavily on their army specific terrain and can summon those via spell or artefact for example.

I like those as they give each battlefield some nice terrain which goes great with the army using it.

[The Jabber Tzeentch]

They’re just a physical part of the the army rules. Nothing about being OP. Nearly every army has its own allegiance abilities some with scenery some without. 

Yes they are part of the army and are allowed in tournaments. 

[JPjr]

7 hours ago, Belakor said:

Cost 0 points. What is this?

An incentive to buy/use them.

7 hours ago, Belakor said:

They are clearly a benefit for your specific army?

Yes?

7 hours ago, Belakor said:

Who wouldn't take them?

Someone who doesn't own the model yet, I guess.

7 hours ago, Belakor said:

Are they allowed in tourments?

Yes.

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Now to pre-empt some possible further questions such as, 'Why, god, why?' I'd say that...

• GW wants the game to be more visually impressive as that catches the eye of interested passers by or people scrolling through on social media and just makes games better. 
• Terrain (and Endless Spells) makes the game much, much more visually impressive.
• Ordinary terrain doesn't sell nearly as well though as normal fighty things with big weapons.
• Making them zero points makes them an auto-include for notoriously flinty matched play tournament types (who whilst I will to my dying breath say dont represent the majority of players, are clearly the most visible kind).
• Once you've played games with cool terrain you're much more likely to buy more as you realise how much better it makes the game (cf. Kill Team).
• Whilst it does offer armies with terrain a slight advantage for now, I think we'll soon see options for most armies with a fairly aggressive rollout over the next year or so.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

 

 

 

[Belakor]

Good points! I'm not against it at all! Encouraging players to play with good terrain is something I always wanted! I just didn't understand how could they just cost 0 points. Technically speaking you could fill the board with them right? That just feels kind of meh in my oppinion. That's why I would give them a cost or a limit.

Thanks for the answers!

[Kirjava13]

There are usually limits to how many can be placed. Skaven Gnawholes, for instance, come in three- no way you're getting more than that. The Deepkin aquarium decoration piece lets you take maximum two. And so on.

[JPjr]

@Belakor most armies have a restriction on how many they can include, looking at the battle tomes in front of me the Skaven one says 'A Skaventide army can include up to 3 Gnawhole features' and the Gloomspite Gitz one says 'A Gloomspite Gitz army can include 1 Bad Moon Loonshrine terrain feature'.

I don't have the other books here but I assume it's the same for Idoneth, Flesh Eaters etc.

As far as I know the only ones that doesn't apply to is Sylvaneth, who can summon more woods, and possibly Maggotkin as I think they can summon additional Feculent Gnarlmaws. But then both of those kind of pre-date the new terrain pieces and I suspect may be brought into line somehow soon (Sylvaneth certainly).

[Overread]

Yep basically GW has been making terrain for decades, but its never sold all that well. Many gamers make their own or make do with pretty substandard terrain; or they are playing at the GW store where the manager made the terrain themselves. So the number of net sales for GW has never been particularly high in terrain. 

They have tried to push it a bit more with AoS when they did the terrain Warscrolls in the Generals Handbook, but that never really took off, and again most people just used generic terrain not GW terrain if they wanted to use them. 

Now whilst the woodlands always sold well (due in part to sylvanath summoning) it wasn't (it seems) until the Gnarlwood terrain came out that GW really realised that if a faction has terrain that gives them a bonus then gamers buy that terrain. GW has now latched onto that idea fully and everyone is getting a bit of terrain; plus as noted much of it is free or easy to access and is much like an army wide bonus that they expect you to have and is balanced into the army. 

 

For GW it increases sales of a secondary product line; it also makes the game more visually appealing. It's also a second item most other wargames in fantasy don't really have much of. Now GW has Endless Spells and Terrain as faction features on the board alongside models. It makes for a much more visual game and its part of steadily increasing the quality of the board appearance. GW doesn't want the old pile of books with the table cloth over it for a hill any more! 

[JPjr]

It's fun to speculate what each army might get as, generally speaking, the army terrain models released so far have all been pretty interesting/looked good (I know a few people aren't that hyped by the Charnel Throne). Some seem obvious (though that doesn't mean they're dead certs) but some of the others its harder to call.

Right now I'm imagining we'll get...

ORDER
Dispossessed - Mine entrances, so a bit like the gnawholes basically.
Fyreslayers - Volcano forge. Imagine then smiting a giant gold rune into the ground that causes a volcano to erupt. Could be like the Bad Moon dealing out damage each turn.
Kharadron - Some kind of mobile advance sky port/workshop that can buff/heal their ships perhaps.
Seraphon - Spawning pools.
DoK - Tricky one, as something like the Blood cauldron/avatar of Khaine makes sense but, well, already exists so you never know.
Free Peoples - Maybe some kind of large statue of Sigmar or something like that, that gets wheeled out, somehow.
Stormcast - See above, otherwise no idea here, something involving a big hammer I assume.
Aelves - I reckon some kind of large crystal obelisks for Tyrion's lot if they ever appear. Not sure about the others.

DESTRUCTION
I assume most of these will be along the lines of tribal shrine or big idols, though already kind of done so who knows. A great big Sarlacc pit style maw in the ground for the ogors perhaps.

DEATH
I could see them revisiting the current, abstract, gravesite concept and making them physical models you can actually dot around. Obviously you have the Mausoleum already but I imagine they'll get something dedicated (and smaller). Or maybe a Scooby doo style haunted house/train ride...

CHAOS
Slaanesh - Pleasure Pavilions or a big menhir/totem pole shaped like a massive pierced ******.
Tzeentch - Some kind of Crystal Maze type shenanigans (with or without a leopard print sporting bald magister), be good to have something that does the opposite of Gnawholes, so instead of using them to teleport your troops around, enemy units that get too close can risk being sucked in and dumped on a random part of the table.
Khorne - Some kind of Golgotha'esque hill of skulls with a brass throne atop maybe.
Slaves to Darkness/Everchosen/Darkoath - A big sacrificial wicker man type thing.

[Overread]

DoK are tricky because, like you say, they already have a statue and shrine and blood pool all on a mobile structure. Of course GW could do some epic fountain of blood trickling down from multiple cauldrons into a huge lake; then again that's getting a bit closer to vampire levels of blood rather than heart sacrifices. 

[Belakor]

@Overread I agree it makes the game more visual, and I love it, but I don't like that, unlike endless spells, the terrain is mandatory, I think it should have aa cost just like the spells.

Cheers!

[Overread]

Just now, Belakor said:

@Overread I agree it makes the game more visual, and I love it, but I don't like that, unlike endless spells, the terrain is mandatory, I think it should have aa cost just like the spells.

Cheers!

I think right now GW is treating it as mandatory to encourage sales. Endless spells took off on their own, partly because they were nice to use, partly because they were priced reasonably and many were cheap enough to fit into corners of existing armies and partly because GW basically sold the core set of them at a steep discount. 

I think terrain just has such a poor sales track record for GW that they wanted to help push the issue forward. I figure for AoS 2.0 we'll see free/dirt cheap terrain as a feature for all factions. Once we hit AoS 3.0 and a full rebalancing of Battletomes we might see GW adjust it and give terrain points or some other army cost to take. By that point it will be a core feature of the game enough that it will be possible to do that without affecting sales. GW could also keep one core bit of terrain free (it does give another bonus to taking a "pure" army as opposed to "souped" grand alliance army) and then add one or two more bits of terrain that do have a cost, but might have more power to their name. 

 

I also figure that we'll see Skirmish Terrain and model kits like they've done for Killteam in time, to further drive sales. 

I just hope we get some fortifications/castle/structures that are not ruins for AoS. Ruins are nice, but darn it the whole Realms are not all in ruins

[Asensur]

Generic terrain should be part of army building.

Maybe modify the rules to include 1 terrain + 1 per battalion? 

[Belakor]

@Overread Well you have this... 🙃

[Overread]

@Belakor true, but they've retired the central fort/keep/bloodbank that formed part of that castle (and was honestly the best looking part). Though the wall of dead bodies is very khorne! 

[XReN]

22 minutes ago, Belakor said:

@Overread I agree it makes the game more visual, and I love it, but I don't like that, unlike endless spells, the terrain is mandatory, I think it should have aa cost just like the spells.

Cheers!

Why should it? You don't pay points for allegiance abilities, nor for summoning. Terrain is in the middle, it's how GW sees the army and the game working atm.

[Belakor]

@XReN Because it's not an intangible rule but a set that costs money. Let people chose in what models they want to spend money. At the moment this costs 0 points it becomes an autoinclude. Endless spells are a good exemple of how it should be done IMO.

 

[Overread]

True but there are loads of bits that are auto purchase. Take Battleline models - most armies only have a few choices for battleline so those are akin to a mandatory purchase. I'd also argue that most of the terrain is pretty affordable by the hobby's current pricing standards. Sure if they were £50 for a single item there'd be more of an issue

[Belakor]

@Overread Yes I also think they are very affordable but money is not my point. For my forcing people to take this exact scenery without any option is not a good game design. But as I said, i'm kind of okey with it at the moment, I just hope they will end up giving those a cost  like the Spells.

[Jamopower]

In my eyes the main downside of "auto include" free army specific terrain is that it looks very odd on the table if you think any further than the actual gameplay. I mean somehow, when beastmen and night goblins are fighting each other, their totems, that happen look pretty time consuming constructs, happen to locate few hundred meters from each other. They have endured each other's until their construction work is ready. Then it's time to fight? 

[Overread]

1 minute ago, Jamopower said:

In my eyes the main downside of "auto include" free army specific terrain is that it looks very odd on the table if you think any further than the actual gameplay. I mean somehow, when beastmen and night goblins are fighting each other, their totems, that happen look pretty time consuming constructs, happen to locate few hundred meters from each other. They have endured each other's until their construction work is ready. Then it's time to fight? 

This is true, even more so if you've got an ambush type battle. Terrain like Gnawholes works really well because it can just pop-up anywhere; whilst the Flesh Eater Throne is pretty modest in size. 

 

That said don't forget many large battles are going to be pitched battles in a fantasy setting. So armies would often have time to entrench themselves or at least establish a rough camp. Then again don't forget you've got on the table a handful of units backed up by demi-gods if you take something like Morathi or actual gods if you take Nagash. 

[JPjr]

3 minutes ago, Jamopower said:

They have endured each other's until their construction work is ready. Then it's time to fight? 

What can I say, workers in the mortal realms have strong unions and so good working conditions. Rather than question it I think we should look at them as an inspiration.

[JPjr]

Seriously though, at the moment the Loonshrine is the only one that's really tricky and even then...

Gnawholes, Gnarlmaws, Sylvaneth Woods, Gloomtide Ship all make sense just popping up magically. The Charnel Throne I see in two ways, 1 it's a magical construct raised from the earth and/or it's actually just a rocky outcrop covered in some rotting meat and bones but we just see what the delusional ghouls see.

The Herdstone I can see either being carried around by a few giants, or massive cygor type beastmen or they just find a nearby menhir and co-opt it or whatever. Either way I can easily imagine it being erected the night before a battle in a wild chaotic ceremony and the chains and the like on it make it look like a temporary, just raised structure.

The Loonshrine is, yes, a little more far-fetched but in the lore it's created from giant pieces of loon rock that have crashed into the earth, that the Grotz hunt out and sculpt it into a leering edifice. I'm not sure that overall it's really that more farfetched than say *waves generally in the direction of everything else in this game of magic space frogs, angry sword wielding trees and cities that exist on the back of giant worms*

[XReN]

40 minutes ago, Belakor said:

@XReN Because it's not an intangible rule but a set that costs money. Let people chose in what models they want to spend money. At the moment this costs 0 points it becomes an autoinclude. Endless spells are a good exemple of how it should be done IMO.

 

Well models also cost money, but to play the game you only need 1 type of leader and 1 type of battleline all of it taken in certain numbers, why would you choose to buy other types of leaders and battlelines? People have a choice on what models they spend their money, and also any army but Sylvaneth and BOC can play without their terrain features just fine

[XReN]

My only concern about forced terrain is that I don't want to transport it, but thats life I guess, I don't have problems with buying it.