Mercenaries!!!

[Overread]

4 minutes ago, MrZakalwe said:

Sounds interesting to me - 40k's balance is currently significantly tighter than AoS's and they have far more far reaching systems than this in place for mixed armies. 

Look forward to it. 

Actually far as I'm aware most consider AoS better for balance at least for armies with Battletomes. 

40K suffers from the Imperial Soup problem which is basically because there are a LOT of Imperial and Space Marine armies which have their own powers and weak points, but which can all ally together very freely. So they can quite easily become overpowered compared to the rest of the armies (Eg xenos) because the Imperial player has such a far greater pool of units to pick from and can cherry pick the Best of the Best. 

That's basically what pepole want to avoid with AoS in terms of "soup" and mercenaries. Already teh Grand Alliance armies are not highly popular because they lack quite a few features and the 1/4 points limit on allies combined with the allies tables further helps

 

 

At its height in 40K you had armies like Tyranids who had no allies at all going against Imperial armies that were almost without any central design, they were purely pooled form the best all the imperial armies had to offer. 

[Overread]

2 minutes ago, hughwyeth said:

I just think the community is pretty sensible with this stuff. Most tournaments have some aspect of realm rules without the most unbalanced parts even though initially the reaction was "this breaks the game" from a lot of matched play people. 

The problem here is this implies the community does the balancing work to make the game fair. That basically hinges on people agreeing not to use certain things which are legally allowed in the game. That's fine in theory, but in practice it can fail, esp to new people who might biuld that broken army because it looks cool only to be told they can't use it "because its too strong" etc... It's FAR better for GW to balance it at their end

[MrZakalwe]

23 minutes ago, Overread said:

Actually far as I'm aware most consider AoS better for balance at least for armies with Battletomes. 

I started playing AoS playing mixed High Elves (Grand Alliance Order) and I'm now on Skaven so I've been on both sides of the power curve and the imbalances in 40k are just smaller. 

It's got as much larger player base with a much bigger competitive scene so the problems are a bit more obvious when it has them. I enjoy both games but AoS has  a powercreep issue on a scale that would make 40k players riot. 

Recently Imperial Assassins got an update in 40k making them much easier to slot into IMPERIUM armies and significantly more powerful and while there were all sorts of doom laden predictions they just ended up adding a fun bit of flavour without ruining anything - I feel Mercenaries in AoS could do something similar or open up the magic phase for the many factions that get trash/no wizards (assuming there will be a decent caster for hire).

Edit: I mean ORDER already gets this with the way a Stormcast Wizard with Objective Targeting Comet can be allied to anything. 

Edited May 7, 2019 by MrZakalwe

[hughwyeth]

12 minutes ago, Overread said:

The problem here is this implies the community does the balancing work to make the game fair. That basically hinges on people agreeing not to use certain things which are legally allowed in the game. That's fine in theory, but in practice it can fail, esp to new people who might build that broken army because it looks cool only to be told they can't use it "because its too strong" etc... It's FAR better for GW to balance it at their end

GW are better than ever at responding to balance, but they're still GW. The community will always have to decide on the final balance of the stuff we use in games. I haven't heard of a player demanding to use realmscape features in a matched play game- it's generally agreed to not use them.

 

[Overread]

12 minutes ago, hughwyeth said:

GW are better than ever at responding to balance, but they're still GW. The community will always have to decide on the final balance of the stuff we use in games. I haven't heard of a player demanding to use realmscape features in a matched play game- it's generally agreed to not use them.

 

Aye and realmscape rules are easy to add or remove because players have no investment in them either way. Mercenaries is a different issue because at least one player will have invested into a mercenary force. If that's all they've brought with them to the game club night then telling them not to use it is akin to telling them they can't play that evening; or they can only play a 1K point game or somesuch. 

Ergo it becomes far more an issue of conflicting expectations. 

 

That's why realmscape is great as an optional rule set because you can pick it up and put it down without any issues. The only army that might suffer is one that brought a LOT of allied mages to the game, but even then it can still function well. 

Edited May 7, 2019 by Overread

[Gareth 🍄]

I love the idea of mercenaries so I look forward to finding out more about this, though I can understand the concerns over the impact on game balance. Hopefully they'll do a decent job of it!

[Ravinsild]

18 hours ago, Overread said:

In fairness the whole "soup" issue with 40K is MOSTLY reserved for the Imperium.

 

Most Xenos are pretty safe from it or are only drawing in sub-armies of the same race. It's really the marines who have the insane number of alliance options without the allies limits that AoS has to keep things in line. Heck Stormcast can ally with anyone in Grand Alliance Order and yet the 1/4 limits prevent us getting the soup issue. 

That’s not really true though. Genestealer Cult can bring Tyranids and Astra Militarum units and it’s completely fine. 

Eldar Soup has been a big problem they just had to nerf a lot of the psychic powers interactions because people were using like Ynnari psyker powers on Drukhari and Harlequinns and people were just bringing total mish mashes of all the Aeldari factions in one army. They just cherry picked the best stuff. 

Theres also easy chaos soup because they get traitor guardsmen and traitor/renegade Knights etc... 

Edited May 7, 2019 by Ravinsild

[prochuvi]

We dont know anything yet.

Warhamer fantasy had a mercenary sistem if i remember so it isnt new.

For me,im torn because i like can get a box of my favorite unit as new squig knigth and play them with my dwarfs,that i never would buy it before this because i only have dwarfs,elfs and stormcast,so i wont get anithing that i cant play.

But i agree with people that it is ugly see armys of dwarfs with goblins togethers as they are enemys.

Waiting to see more info before get my opinion on it but for play games seems a bad idea but for modelling hobby i love it

[Skabnoze]

I'll wait to see how it is implemented before I cry foul.

Allies are not really the true problem with 40k (it has a fair amount of issues).  They are the visual symptom of a more underlying issue.  The main issue is the army construction system in 40k and how it incentivizes players.  Age of Sigmar and 40k have almost completely opposite army construction incentives.  Age of Sigmar has a simple set of unit requirements & restrictions that scales according to the size of the game and acts to keep armies somewhat relatively even in terms of what can be fielded.  You can only ever have a certain amount of Leaders (the vast majority of characters) in your army.  You can only have so many big behemoth monsters.  Your battleline options are generally restricted and you have to take a certain amount of them.  You can only field so much artillery, etc.  In addition, Age of Sigmar is structured so that the best army benefits are usually gained by investing in building for a very specific allegiance - rather than the broad soup-style Grand Alliance allegiances.  You get generic benefits for Grand Alliances, and if you narrow the focus of your force then you get more benefits with stronger allegiance abilities, specialized spell lores, tailored general abilities & relics, etc.

40k takes the complete opposite approach.  It builds using broad detachments systems which have so many permutations that you can effectively take whatever you want.  You can stack multiple of these build detachments into the army and that is used within list building to stack the primary game resource (command points) - which you simply maintain in a big communal pool.  In addition, 40k's version of Allegiance abilities apply to detachments and not to the army - which allows you to mix multiple forces while still keeping all of their distinct benefits.  In short, the system gives you no compelling reason to ever build primarily from one army or detachment and instead it heavily incentivizes you to simply mix together all of the good things you can.

So even if there is a balance issue with whatever the AoS team comes up with for a mixed faction mercenary system I don't think they will fundamentally change much of the army construction system and what it incentivizes.  It seems to me that most likely it will work like the existing ally system but just allow a broader set of choices (and probably allow them to simply remove the list of allies from each army).  If that ends up being the case then I am fine with it.

[Wraith01]

Wow... not at all what I was expecting... so much doom and gloom.

I am looking forward to the new mercenary rules. GW hasn't made a bad move in AoS yet. The game keeps getting better all the time.

And if this happens to be a bust, we'll just ignore it. Continue playing and have fun.

[Charleston]

Well, after a few of the 2.0 Battletomes already toyed too much with certain core rules and made the whole balance thing a bit more whacky in my eyes, I don´t know what to expect from mercenaries. When it´s all about having a rule back up for some cool medling of armies for fluff sake, it´s great, but I already know some people who will use this to find some broken synnergies if possible.

If I remember back the days when Endless Spells were announced I sensed also several people were afraid from possible balance issues. Right now a lot of people got used to them and an Endless Spell apearing in a list is nothing unusual anymore. I guess we will get used to it one or another way

[Xasz]

On 5/6/2019 at 9:05 PM, Overread said:

In fairness the whole "soup" issue with 40K is MOSTLY reserved for the Imperium.

It's similar for Chaos, although not on the same level.

I doubt AoS will go this way but as competitive player I really, really dislike being "forced" into models outside of my collection/faction.

The loss of closeness of factions and coherency of lists is what drove me away from that system and why I rather enjoy AoS.

[Mungrun]

Waiting for Dog's of War Battletome.

[Skabnoze]

11 hours ago, Mungrun said:

Waiting for Dog's of War Battletome.

I'd buy that.  I do miss Ruglud's Armored Orcs, Long Drong's Slayer Pirates, and the Richter Kreuger's Cursed Company.  Those were all very fun and characterful units.  I really enjoyed the Cursed Company because it had skeleton models for non-human races and a few box sets was a really cool way to diversify normal skeleton units.

I do hope that GW considers bringing the Dogs of War into Age of Sigmar in some way.  It was a great way to explore neat concepts without having to go all in on an army for them.

[Sharkbelly]

7 hours ago, Skabnoze said:

I really enjoyed the Cursed Company because it had skeleton models for non-human races and a few box sets was a really cool way to diversify normal skeleton units.

The Mordheim zombies were great for the same reason. 🙂

[MacDuff]

I loved Dogs of War. Small units with a lot of character. A dozen plus mercenaries isn't going to trash game balance, and introduces more minis and the visual diversity people keep calling for.

[kenshin620]

It's Narrative Games only.

 

*cue all the matched game players skipping the pages*

 

[flamingwalnut]

5 minutes ago, kenshin620 said:

It's Narrative Games only.

 

*cue all the matched game players skipping the pages*

 

The Mercenaries system seemed to be in the Forbidden Power expansion, this is from the General's Handbook. Funny enough, from THIS description, this sounds more like Dogs of War and probably just fun little special warscrolls or fancy units for Narrative play.

Pretty sure that leaves whatever system is in Forbidden Power as its own thing, and kinda leads towards it being the Matched Play addition. Curious how it all works, if this is really it for AoS previews, then I need more info on all of this ASAP!

[Lucio]

See, I'm reading the Mercanaries as "Dogs of War", specific units you can add into most if not all armies

[BobbyB]

They specifically said in the seminar it is for all three modes of play, it's a list of specific units that are narratively themed and balanced for.matched

[Skabnoze]

3 hours ago, kenshin620 said:

It's Narrative Games only.

 

*cue all the matched game players skipping the pages*

 

If they are going to try to claim they have different game-play types with open, narrative, and matched play then I think it is a good thing to see them put effort into actively supporting more than just matched play.

Not every game mode or expansion has to appeal to everyone so it seems fine to me if some people are not interested in Narrative Play updates and skip that section.  It seems like a potentially fun addition to the game for me though.

[the_master288]

4 minutes ago, Skabnoze said:

If they are going to try to claim they have different game-play types with open, narrative, and matched play then I think it is a good thing to see them put effort into actively supporting more than just matched play.

Not every game mode or expansion has to appeal to everyone so it seems fine to me if some people are not interested in Narrative Play updates and skip that section.  It seems like a potentially fun addition to the game for me though.

I definitely agree.  Having options is always the best for tabletop and I would love to see GW support more modes for those gaming groups that don't necessarily want to play Matched all the time.

[Mandzak-Miniatures]

Looking forward to seeing what units are mercenaries.

I imagine they all have to be fairly bland for balancing sake.

still a great opportunity for more themed lists and conversions. Rule of cool win

[Double Misfire]

17 hours ago, BobbyB said:

They specifically said in the seminar it is for all three modes of play, it's a list of specific units that are narratively themed and balanced for.matched

Thanks for this. Were any other exciting tidbits about mercenaries mentioned? Obviously we'll know all in due time, but as a huge Dogs of War fan, and someone who's been wanting to include a unit of Maneaters in my cosmopolitan Free Cities force for a couple of years now, I can't wait.

[BobbyB]

Not that I heard I'm afraid!