Attack 2x command abilities

[Zanzou]

On 5/30/2019 at 8:13 AM, Dead Scribe said:

I believe the polls that they take show people want fast games, but also want larger amounts of models. 

At that point to accomplish both, it's no longer the game you were wanting to play to begin with.

Edited June 2, 2019 by Zanzou

[Dead Scribe]

I think thats what they are trying to figure out.  How to have a larger scale non-skirmish sized game, but have it be able to run as fast as a skirmish-sized game.

Edited May 30, 2019 by Dead Scribe

[Kairos Tejedestinos]

The focus on CA is counterproducent to the argument to be honest. It's not only the CA, but everything around it.

The problem with such CAs or abilities that alter the regular flow of the combat phase (you go / i go) is that it will be lead to broken gameplay really fast once you start to give it to units that can evaporate half or more their points per turn. I won't say that FEC are OP because of their terrorgheist, but it's a very crappy mechanic to be in the game in such state. Not only the CA, but attacking at the beginning of the phase.

Another example are the hearthguard berserkers completely buffed. I won't say that block is OP, but sure as hell it makes everything possible for trash  one dimensional gameplay.

Imo, attack at the start of the phase shouldn't exist as CA or ability. Only spell, or gimmicky allegiance. Also the attack twice CAs should be like the slaneesh one, where you don't get to attack twice inmediatly. And sure as hell i wouldn't give both at the same time to any army because then he is likely to attack 4 times before his opponent gets to attack one completely breaking a core mechanic in the combat phase that is players taking turns to attack and making important choices in which order to activate.

 

Edited June 5, 2019 by Kairos Tejedestinos

[Dead Scribe]

but sure as hell it makes everything possible for trash  one dimensional gameplay.

  

Again though, I don't see that as an unintended negative bug in the system, I see that as a known and desired feature for some of their armies to possess.  The same development mindset exists in magic the gathering cards.  To be desirable by everyone you have to appeal to everyone, and like it or not, some people want really competitive forces without having to go through a lot to learn how to use them properly.  What we'd call one dimensional gameplay.  

For people that want more of a challenge, other B or C tier armies exist.

[Chikout]

I wonder if there is room for certain powerful abilities to cost more than one command point. There are rumours that command points might become harder to come by after the new ghb. This would also help with the imbalance. Gloomspite who have great command point generating engines would instantly become a better army. I think there is room in the game for very powerful abilities but they should have a very high opportunity cost.

[Kairos Tejedestinos]

40 minutes ago, Dead Scribe said:

 

  

Again though, I don't see that as an unintended negative bug in the system, I see that as a known and desired feature for some of their armies to possess.  The same development mindset exists in magic the gathering cards.  To be desirable by everyone you have to appeal to everyone, and like it or not, some people want really competitive forces without having to go through a lot to learn how to use them properly.  What we'd call one dimensional gameplay.  

For people that want more of a challenge, other B or C tier armies exist.

In magic you don't have only one dimensional decks on Tier A, S or however you want to call tier 1, and even extreme aggro decks require interaction between both players while playing, being card draw randomness the one limiting factor.

[Dead Scribe]

I was referring more to a mindset.  There is a competitive mindset in miniature tabletop gaming that is attracted to one dimensional play and they are catering to that with some of their armies.  Thats what I believe anyway.  I don't think it is unintentional or an accident.

[Kairos Tejedestinos]

1 minute ago, Dead Scribe said:

I was referring more to a mindset.  There is a competitive mindset in miniature tabletop gaming that is attracted to one dimensional play and they are catering to that with some of their armies.  Thats what I believe anyway.  I don't think it is unintentional or an accident.

Sure, but you are changing your mind. First you said that you have to appeal to everybody. That would mean making different archtypical army lists to work with varying degrees of expertise required to compete, not only to one type of player. 

And my point is that the one dimensional play is reaching excessively simple and rewarding levels of competitiveness by bypassing core game mechanics.

Also yeah, nowhere i said it wasn't intentional. It's just how good old power creep reaches silliness.

 

[Dead Scribe]

No I don't think I'm changing my mind.  They do want to appeal to everybody.  They want to appeal to the people that like one dimensional easy armies.  They want to appeal to the campaign players.  They want to appeal to the hobbyists.  They want to appeal to the people that like challenges by making armies intentionally weaker.

It could be power creep, but I think the dev team is doing this intentionally.  I think they want a few armies really powerful, and they want some armies really hard to play and the rest in between.  Heck look at how they develop Blood Bowl which comes with a snippet in the book that they developed it with that very mindset.

[Kairos Tejedestinos]

So in your opinion a majtority of the competitive players only want to play one dimensional easy armies, correct?

Also, just stop with the intentionally, it does mean nothing. Yes, it could be intentional, but who cares about wether it is intentional or not. We are consumers,  we can criticize something wether it is something our plastic crack dealers did intentionally or not. 

Edited June 6, 2019 by Kairos Tejedestinos

[Dead Scribe]

I have no idea what the majority of competitive players want.  I know a lot of the ones I play with do go for the most powerful builds that are fairly one dimensional, and you can see in the tournament rankings that the lion's share of armies represented happen to also be the fairly one dimensional ones.  We can take that for what we will.  

My own tournament army right now is Daughters of Khaine.  It drives itself on the table, I don't have to do much, but I know if I show up with a more difficult list to play that I am at a huge disadvantage and my goal is winning the event.

Intentional does mean something.  It means that is the designer's intent.  As opposed to it being an accident that they can fix and we expect them to fix.

Edited June 6, 2019 by Dead Scribe

[sal4m4nd3r]

The time has come for SOME command abilities to cost more then one command point. We are essentially seeing the gap bridged between command abilties in Age of Sigmar and Stratagems in Warhammer 40k. 

[TMS]

Intentional unbalancing can be fine. Blood Bowl is a good example where you've got teams that start out strong, late bloomers that can catch up after some time in league play and the designated underdogs. The game itself is very open about who these are and competitive tournaments come with rule packs that hand out bonuses depending on what tier one's team is in. It makes for a great game with plenty of different things to try out. Such imbalance suits that scale of game far better than it does AoS, though. 16 models vs ... well, an army.

Edited June 6, 2019 by TMS

[Dead Scribe]

I think imbalance is imbalance if its 5 models, 16 models, or 100 models. 

Teams that are easier to play are the same to me as armies that are easier to play.  Teams that are harder to play are the same to me as armies that are harder to play.  

I'm not sure where I can see how scale of the game lends itself better to imbalance when you get the same experience regardless of the scale.

 

[JPjr]

31 minutes ago, Dead Scribe said:

I'm not sure where I can see how scale of the game lends itself better to imbalance when you get the same experience regardless of the scale.

Not exactly sure if this is what @TMS meant but for me, I'm more than happy to chuck €25 at something like a Halfling Blood Bowl team and paint a dozen models which I know are designed to be frankly a bit ****** but with the potential to be lots of fun because it's a small time & money investment and of course it's a quicker, less 'serious' game and then can easily change over to a better team if I wanted.

But whilst I have zero interest in running some ultra competitive AoS army I'd be less inclined to spend a several hundred quid and what can feel like months of my life painting an army that is just designed to be outright ******.

Saying that I do like and think there's a definite place for more, let'd say, unpredictable armies where they can be totally rubbish and do more damage to themselves most rounds or brutally, apocalyptically destructive and you just to hold on to the edge of your seat and see what happens. My one issue with the new Gloomspite and Skaven books is I feel they could have ramped that up a lot more but small quibble.

[TMS]

Yes of course, I forgot to clarify that the investment in time and money is the big difference between the imbalances of both games.

Blood Bowl markets certain teams as good or bad while AoS does not make it clear that some armies practically can't beat some others. The former is intentional and good, the latter is closer to a rip-off. And that's before you even consider the difference in cost.

[Dead Scribe]

I can see your point and agree.  I know where I am we try and steer the new players away from the ****** armies so that they don't feel like they spent their money on a lemon.

[Sleboda]

22 hours ago, Kairos Tejedestinos said:

In magic you don't have only one dimensional decks on Tier A, S or however you want to call tier 1, and even extreme aggro decks require interaction between both players while playing, being card draw randomness the one limiting factor.

In Magic, you also don't have an investment of $1000+ dollars in models, $1000+ dollars in paints and brushes, and 1000+ hours of painting, only to find that your time and money are wasted at the table because your opponent has decided you don't get to play with your collection.

I'm fortunate enough to have the funds and time to buy and paint new armies pretty much as I please, but man, I feel sorry for any "normal" customer who sinks a ton of cash and time into, say, a Khorne demon army, only to realize after the fact that they have a steaming pile on their hands. It might be the one and only army they can afford to sink time and money into, and now they are stuck with praying to whatever that they can get a lucky win now and then. Then they realize that they can forget about going to tournaments. That whole aspect of the hobby is lost to them.

 

If it ever gets out that GW designed some armies to be losers and didn't tell people that ('cuz right now with each army release we get lots of hype from GW about how good it is), well, let's just say that would be disingenuous at best.

Edited June 6, 2019 by Sleboda

[Arael]

7 minutes ago, Sleboda said:

In Magic, you also don't have an investment of $1000+ dollars in models, $1000+ dollars in paints and brushes, and 1000+ hours of painting, only to find that your time and money are wasted at the table because your opponent has decided you don't get to play with your collection.

Ehm... I find this numbers a "bit" overestimated. 

An army can be done with no more than 500€, a magic deck can cost even more, 1000€ in paint are something like 250+ bottle I don't think even a golden demon model need 250 color, and 1000 painting hour are 4 month of continuative painting every day 8h a day. 

Just to do some math nothing personal

 

[Sleboda]

52 minutes ago, Arael said:

Ehm... I find this numbers a "bit" overestimated.

Just to do some math nothing personal

 

I hear ya, but my own experience is what I'm using for my numbers.

Paints and Brushes

I do indeed own probably around 500 paints, and if I give in to temptation with the ones coming soon, that will be another 60+ (?) added. Those paints range from $5 to $9 each.

I use about 10 different brushes as standard and have another 12 or so that have uses in specific tasks. These cost $10 to $28 each.

As a bonus, I have 12 of the Citadel paint handles.

That doesn't count the hundreds of replenishments over the years or the multiple cans of $20 spray primer (1 black, 1 white, and 3 red for this army), glue, and other supplies.

Plus, I have spent about $500 in lighting for my new hobby studio as well as another $1300 on my tables and HobbyZone station.

 

Models

For my current project, I've bought 3 Bloodthirsters, Skarbrand, an altar, 2 priests, a Bloodsecrator, 15 flesh hounds, 40 bloodletters, a skull cannon, 12 juggers, Skulltaker, the judgements, a bloodmaster, Karanak, plus of course the book itself. That comes to $1306 before tax. This does not even include the rules and rule supplements, or all the Khorne mortal stuff I bought with the idea that I might want flexibility down the road.

 

Time

I have painted to Golden Demon standard for myself and for commissions (no longer doing that - it kills the love of the hobby for me), and I've speed painted. Now I sit in between and it takes me about 3 hours for a standard infantry model like a bloodletter, 7 hours for something like a jugger, 40-50 hours for a big thing like a bloodthirster, and generally about 12 hours for basic characters. By the time get all my demons painted (so, not even the just-in-case mortal half of things), I will have put a little over 550 hours into painting, and that's with lots of shortcuts and time savers (for example, my hounds and bloodletters are getting a lot of drybrushing, cutting their painting time roughly by 75%).

 

Now, imagine someone new who thought something like "I'm going to Adepticon next year and I'm going to do everything to the best of my ability to win the tournament. Boy, those Khorne demons sure do look cool!  I'm all in!" They jump into the hobby with gusto and spend 10 months getting ready for the Big Day.

I feel very, very sorry for them.

Edited June 6, 2019 by Sleboda

[SleeperAgent]

9 hours ago, sal4m4nd3r said:

The time has come for SOME command abilities to cost more then one command point. We are essentially seeing the gap bridged between command abilties in Age of Sigmar and Stratagems in Warhammer 40k. 

This really is the best solution. A lot of the abilities are wildly less good than say Feeding Frenzy or Excess of Violence (or the Fyreslayer one I cant recall the name of). Look at them compared to Spectral Overseer on Knight of Shrouds, or Might Waagh! on Megaboss on Maw Krusha. These cost the same points and you can get 1-2 extra attacks per model, whereas the former bring entire combats for the same price.

[Sleboda]

14 minutes ago, SleeperAgent said:

This really is the best solution. A lot of the abilities are wildly less good than say Feeding Frenzy or Excess of Violence (or the Fyreslayer one I cant recall the name of). Look at them compared to Spectral Overseer on Knight of Shrouds, or Might Waagh! on Megaboss on Maw Krusha. These cost the same points and you can get 1-2 extra attacks per model, whereas the former bring entire combats for the same price.

Not saying you're wrong (I kind of like the idea of different costs for Command Abilities), but maybe the cost of the models or other units in the army reflect the potential of the various Command Abilities already.

[SleeperAgent]

11 minutes ago, Sleboda said:

Not saying you're wrong (I kind of like the idea of different costs for Command Abilities), but maybe the cost of the models or other units in the army reflect the potential of the various Command Abilities already.

While that could be entirely possible, we don;t actually have that from GW. Imagine a Gordrakk with Feeding Frenzy. Even is his points go up to reflect it, pretty sure every Ironjawz player would take that deal. Especially when you consider Terrorghiest who does 6 mortal wounds on 6's is 300 points. Gordrakk is almost double that. And in my group we have actually been theorycrafting the idea of a Maw Krusha with no rider at 300 points. It gets crushed by a Terrorgheist regardless even without feeding frenzy. We have started to believe that GW had a buttload of extra FEC that didnt sell and made the new book with the mind to sell of all the extra. I rarely if ever saw FEC in play, or tournament lists before the new book. 

EDIT: Too add to this, FEC is the problem. When they made attack with a command point then everything started getting out of Pandora's box. And it shows. Slaanesh is doing well, Fyreslayers are doing well, Khorne is kinda doing well, and Gits are left behind. Skaven are doing well for a whole different reason and that's because they are basically the new 1.0 Tzeentch. 

Edited June 6, 2019 by SleeperAgent

[Sleboda]

13 minutes ago, SleeperAgent said:

While that could be entirely possible, we don;t actually have that from GW. Imagine a Gordrakk with Feeding Frenzy. Even is his points go up to reflect it, pretty sure every Ironjawz player would take that deal. Especially when you consider Terrorghiest who does 6 mortal wounds on 6's is 300 points. Gordrakk is almost double that. And in my group we have actually been theorycrafting the idea of a Maw Krusha with no rider at 300 points. It gets crushed by a Terrorgheist regardless even without feeding frenzy.

I think we do have that from GW, though obliquely. They do extensive testing before releasing an army.  You may or not agree with the choices in the released product (and certainly we see adjustments after release since The World will break a book better than 100 other people can), but they do make a genuine effort to create balance (see the various Storm/Vox casts on this topic, plus articles in WD). It makes sense that the costs and abilities of models in a Matched Play environment include the Command Abilities.

As to the Mawcrusher vs the Terrorghiest, I don't believe there is much, if any, value in isolated comparisons like that, especially just pure combat ones.  An army, and the game, is about much more than 'this guy beats that guy in a fight.'