The Rumour Thread

[Oak7603]

There will never be balance though as there are too many units and armies, with more coming all the time, let alone all the variables that each unit can have and could be invented in the future. Add this to the ability to update older armies all the time without customers complaining that they've had another rules update or they need to buy a new battletomes.

Spikes and troughs can be good to keep things from being bland although the pain of an army being stronger is something I feel being a BoC player. But I like having to think of new tactics and ways to play to sometimes just minimise my losses or maybe even scrape a win.

I'd rather lose well against a superior army than be that superior army and trample over everything.

[King Under the Mountain]

1 hour ago, Incineroar87 said:

the new army / army book imbalance and internal balance has been something that fantasy and 40k has struggled with in the past and still do to an extent.  We will never have true balance but I hope for AOS they strike a happy medium of sorts between healthy and potential growth.

I still have table top PTSD of 7th Edition Daemons 

[zilberfrid]

53 minutes ago, Oak7603 said:

There will never be balance though as there are too many units and armies, with more coming all the time, let alone all the variables that each unit can have and could be invented in the future. Add this to the ability to update older armies all the time without customers complaining that they've had another rules update or they need to buy a new battletomes.

Spikes and troughs can be good to keep things from being bland although the pain of an army being stronger is something I feel being a BoC player. But I like having to think of new tactics and ways to play to sometimes just minimise my losses or maybe even scrape a win.

I'd rather lose well against a superior army than be that superior army and trample over everything.

We know they do playtest, so why do things like Changehost, Petrifex, Locus and, well, Lumineth as previewed still make the book?

There is less need to write new books if the powercreep of half the new books (somehow there's a clear distinction) is curtailed.

[Oak7603]

Playing testing has no comparison to what happens in the real world, there just isn't the time to simulate every game and every play style and every unit combination and every artefact and on and on.  It's a benchmark but not a true indicator. They have a boundary for rules and mechanics, they've spoke about it a lot in the podcasts so there are some restraints. 

As for those armies that come out seemingly overpowered because of some brand new abilities or powers, I would guess that if that new army came out and it just had the same rules and powers as an older unit from a different army then there would be complaints that the new unit is just a re-skin of another unit and questions would be asked about where the progress is and what is the point of paying for something already in the game. 

New rules, new powers, new units will always be new and it just takes time to work out how to beat them or how to beat them. Tweaks come out in the GHB but every tweak will also change something else in the game... 

Petrifax is the main one I think that seems overpowered red. and yet I've seen games where they've lost. No one is invincible. Some are just bloody annoying! 

I've also said before that in my opinion, trying to get everything the same is not just a fools errand but it would also just lead to stagnation. 

Give me a new army to fight. Let it beat me. I'll learn. And I'll be even more satisfied when I get them back. And I'll enjoy working out how to do it too. 

[Black_Templar_Lad]

Really tempted to pick up the box. 

I'm wondering how to model Eltharion so it looks like arcane energy flowing through his limbs like his art. Is anyone planning to do this, I wonder if they tested that and it just didn't come out right on the model. 

Was thinking about snipping  bits of lightning bits and sticking them through each armour section. Hmmmmm. 

Edited June 16, 2020 by Black_Templar_Lad

[Matrindur]

New Lumineth article

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2020/06/16/lumineth-realm-lords-how-do-they-play/

[Arentius]

Wow the Lumineth seem extremely strong. Loving that everybody is a wizard . Huzzah for mortal wounds on a 5+ in melee for our battle line 

[BaylorCorvette]

Everyone is a Wizard & 3" pike doing mortals on 6s or 5 and 6 if they get their spell off. WOW...

[Kurrilino]

uhmmm.... after reading the Bonereapers and now the Lumineth i seriously question who wrote the Slaves to Darkness Book.

I guess the Janitor had some time to kill. This book feels more and more like an insult

 

 

 

 

[Mutton]

They look like the hard counter to Ossiarch.

[Bayul]

8 minutes ago, Mutton said:

They look like the hard counter to Ossiarch.

How exactly?

[Jeremierty]

8 minutes ago, Bayul said:

How exactly?

I guess mortal wounds for sure and being able to displace models to gain control of objectives, to pick off targets like a mortek hekatos (entomb spell of the stone mage)...

But basically anything that has mobility can shoot or Deal mortal wounds is an hard counter to ossiarch bonereapers

[rbstr]

That self-buff spell is a pretty cool mechanic!

This is gonna be an interesting army - though by the rules we're seeing it seems very probable they're too strong. I guess the main thing is that they'll probably be a very slow army.

[Clan's Cynic]

3 hours ago, zilberfrid said:

We know they do playtest, so why do things like Changehost, Petrifex, Locus and, well, Lumineth as previewed still make the book?

There is less need to write new books if the powercreep of half the new books (somehow there's a clear distinction) is curtailed.

We know from Iron Hands playtesters that GW rules writers only really take things under advisement and that they'll ignore things if they think it's 'thematic' or 'characterful', which is why we can end up with abyssal balance much of the time.

Having competitive players chipping in is actually a very new thing to the studio, as it seems like they mostly playtest in a very casual environment among themselves, which is also why they're often so blindsided by combinations that seem obvious in hindsight.

Edited June 16, 2020 by Clan's Cynic

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

One note: from the Shining Company rule, one would think that the best way to do this would be two straight rows, but then you can't take units off the edges: I think a cloud formation is safest. Then you can take a unit off the edge, and its neighbours are all still touching 2+ other models. 

For other armies, abilities that let YOU pick the model to remove are more valuable now. 

[Grimrock]

1 hour ago, Mutton said:

They look like the hard counter to Ossiarch.

More like a counter to tzeentch I think. Trivial debuff against shooting, reduction of rend to neutralize their strongest subfaction, and a plethora of dispels and unbinds. 

[Mutton]

1 hour ago, Bayul said:

How exactly?

Mortal wound output in combat, versatility of ranged damage (which bypasses rerollable saves), and tons of magic (without Nagash Ossiarchs don't excel at it).

[zilberfrid]

6 minutes ago, Grimrock said:

More like a counter to tzeentch I think. Trivial debuff against shooting, reduction of rend to neutralize their strongest subfaction, and a plethora of dispels and unbinds. 

Save 3+ ignoring rend -1 and -2 that has access to 5++ ward save and +1 save is counter to just about everything.

[zilberfrid]

2 hours ago, Kurrilino said:

uhmmm.... after reading the Bonereapers and now the Lumineth i seriously question who wrote the Slaves to Darkness Book.

I guess the Janitor had some time to kill. This book feels more and more like an insult

Really? I'd think the writers of this, Petrifex, Tzeench and Slaanesh are the ones that lost the plot. StD is balanced a lot better.

Basically, if you use magic or command points, this will be a nightmare to deal with. If youn't have enough dispells, magic will be dribbling out your ears. Your to-hits are reduced, saves are high, rend and mortal wounds can be mitigated. So if you use weapons, it will also be a bear to tackle.

That leaves us with? Khorne or Fyreslayers maybe?

The only winning move seems not to play.

[EccentricCircle]

Its a little off topic, but in any discussion of balance its worth noting that player skill is also a massive wild card. In the grand scheme of things there are actually very few competitive players, who spend large amounts of hobby time working on tactics and list optimisation. Things have to be balanced for them, and for kids who've just picked up their first start collecting set, and for all the casual players who don't want to or can't spend the amount of time needed to play to a competitive standard*.

Something which will be really over powered with a little thought, and some careful combinations, might be just right for the vast majority of people playing the game. Equally a good player can get good results even with a "bad" army. Its all a matter of perspective really.

Having everything fine tuned to be balanced perfectly for ultra competitive play would be great for the tournament crowd. However, I think GW realise that it isn't actually necessary for the vast majority of people who play their games, and that variety is more useful.

 

* And I'm not judging that group, I'm definitely part of it.

[Popisdead]

On 6/12/2020 at 1:19 PM, JPjr said:

Games Workshop truly the poster child for "Get Woke, Go Broke Gangbusters and Make Enough Money to Ride Out A Pandemic Like A ****** AF Boss"

In March some oldhammer twitter accounts were posting "GW is over, their stock just plummeted, finally the tyrants are over" hahahahaha.  Sure oldhammer people, go back to your 4th ed rulebooks and complain the world left you behind.

[amysrevenge]

I think I speak for everyone here when I say that we definitely have enough rules details and gameplay results to make loud declarative statements of the relative power of the new faction.  No new information of data can possibly be forthcoming to influence or counter these statements, possibly making us look silly in hindsight.

 

(Just putting this here so I can go back to it and copy-paste it during teaser week for every new army and look like a genius)

[Maddpainting]

They just seem like a conglomerate quirky melee rules. So far they don't seem amazing strong but more tactical, which imo is good.

[michu]

21 minutes ago, zilberfrid said:

Really? I'd think the writers of this, Petrifex, Tzeench and Slaanesh are the ones that lost the plot. StD is balanced a lot better.

Exactly. Ogor Mawtribes, Cities of Sigmar, KO, StD - those are the best battletomes. Nothing too OP, many interesting options, fun to play with or against.

But I don't blame the playtesters and rule writers of OBR and Lumineth -it's hard to balance something that was never done in your game before (ofc I'm not talking about global +1 to save but such mechanic as relentless discipline points). And you have to constantly innovate and explore new design space if you want your game to thrive.

[swarmofseals]

@zilberfrid especially, but I'm sure others as well.

Nearly every time a new tome comes out people start raising hell about the new rules and balance, typically picking out specific things and labeling them as OP before we have the complete context.

I have no idea if Lumineth will be OP, and I'm going to reserve judgment until I have the entire tome. Even then my judgment will have a big asterisk by it until we have a lot of high level results to help measure actual performance in practice rather than just theory.

One of the consistent patterns I notice in new-tome criticism is that most people who claim OP are focusing on combat stats and forget what a big part of the game movement is. Lumineth looks like a pretty slow faction so far, with only the cavalry (which we know little about) having a lot of speed. I don't see much flying. Some of the defensive bonuses require a unit to slow down even more, both by maintaining formation and giving up the ability to run. Movement really matters in AOS.  Everyone points to the ASF rules for FEC and Slaanesh as the reason why they are OP, but if those factions were really slow then their ASF wouldn't have mattered nearly as much.

AOS already has mostly unkillable units in it now. I don't think there is a unit in the game that can efficiently melee against Hearthguard. Are they OP? Not really. They are very strong, but their slow movement is a serious problem. If they were really fast then yes, they would be OP. But as it is you can play around Hearthguard by playing around their speed. The same may very well be true for Lumineth's infantry.

Also, I've noticed some people laying out a fully buffed scenario as the baseline without really considering the limitations of those buffs. Yes, we know that Alarith infantry can get a 3+ save ignoring rend 1 and 2 and possibly a 5+ ward. But that Ward requires Teclis, who is likely to be very expensive. We know he can autocast spells, but do we know how that rule works in full? It's entirely possible that autocasted spells will be unbound at the casting value of the spell, which means that the 5+ ward may be quite unreliable.  Furthermore, the immunity to rend 2 requires a subfaction or battalion (I forget which). On top of that we just learned today that the immunity to rend 1 (and quite possibly rend 2) only applies on the first battle round! 

So that gives you a bunch of options to counter them:

• Kill Teclis and then use mortal wounds.
• Hit them with rend after turn 1
• Just avoid them and kill softer targets

 

Edited June 17, 2020 by swarmofseals
typos