The Rumour Thread

[KingBrodd]

1 hour ago, Ganigumo said:

This is spiderfang. That spearhead may look "clean" but its shaped like a spider's leg. That spike ring is destruction as well, Ironjaw brutes have it on their gore hackas.

Oh yes please!! I'd love for Spiderfang to be expanded!! I even say this as an Arachnophobe. 

39 minutes ago, silverstu said:

Yeah.. someones going to be disappointed! 

I'm waiting for Horticulus TGA to weigh in - he's usually good for sniffing out rumours and suggesting hypotheticals.. he seems very quiet too at the moment... 🧐

I shall summon him from upon my hurricane shattering bellow @HorticulusTGA!!!!!

[drcrater]

1 hour ago, Ganigumo said:

This is spiderfang. That spearhead may look "clean" but its shaped like a spider's leg. That spike ring is destruction as well, Ironjaw brutes have it on their gore hackas.

Don't do that, don't give me hope...

[HorticulusTGA]

@silverstu and @KingBrodd well well 

I have to say I am enchanted with the last two Previews, but they certainly have put the schedule I had in mind into..CHAOS.

I didn't expected Soulblight so soon (well, in 2-4 months I guess ?). And Broken Realms : Be'lakor and Kragnos were unxpected ; given the short stories and rumor engines, I thought Be'lakor could appears in BR, but as a (main) protagonist, not as a title...

Krganos is an even greater surprise (but a welcome one), and falls in check with the Kurnothi Rumors OR with the first BR short story where an Orruk saw a god in the clouds.... Speaking of which, the lady Kurnothi in Cursed City has the Sylvaneth Keyword, just like the WHU Kurnothi Warband, so maybe the three are linked with a new wave for Sylvaneth (i.e. one of the Kurnothi Rumors) and Alarielle involvement in the BR story line ? 

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/03/23/how-to-get-even-faster-tougher-or-more-murder-y-in-warhammer-quest-cursed-city/ 

[Rhetoric]

New LRL rules are nice, thematic and simple.  All around win on the Wind temple.  Without even seeing the attack profile, the Windchargers are an amazing unit. 

[willange]

The new Hurakan rules are really creative and cool.  Not sure why some people are all up in arms about it. Like sure, they can run away from fights, but we've seen stuff like this before in old skinks.  In skinks it was mostly just strong because they were so cheap and spammable and made it difficult to get them fully off of objectives.  With the kangaroos, their bases are large and they're likely going to cost 150+ points (assuming they have 3-4 wounds and 2-3 shots each on the bows), so I don't think it's going to be a major issue since the model count will be lower/more expensive.  

Of course, it all comes down to points in the end.  If they have 3 wounds, shoot 3 times and then only cost 120, then obviously they'll be a problem.  Same statline at 200 and they'll probably lean more toward the "bad" end.

 

[HorticulusTGA]

1 hour ago, Neverchosen said:

What are those OBR scenery pieces?

Are they custom terrain that appeared in their Battletome or is it a possible hint of something new for them?

When the Battlatome was released, WarCom said on Facebook it was 3d Printed, but that they would "pass it on" (that people were interested in those scenery).

[Ganigumo]

 

40 minutes ago, whispersofblood said:

Its quite a strong meta artefact. It lets you take the first turn knowing you can quite powerfully influence the opponent's double turn. Meaning if you win the roll off you can actually give the turn away if you are incontrol of the board state. 

LRL are the control faction I think we've needed for awhile. Force people to really contend with what they do on the board and not just rely on warscrolls and damage. Of course some people will call that NPE but alas.

There's a huge difference between controlling the board, and dictating the flow of the battle, and just stopping your opponent from doing things. The former is the healthy form of control that the game could use more of, the latter is toxic NPE that prevents your opponent from playing. Yes I know this is how MTG does control, by just stopping your opponent from doing anything, but it isn't a good experience for the player on the receiving end and isn't something AOS should try to emulate.
 

NPE can generally be split into two categories: removing interactivity (i.e "fights first", and overwhelming shooting) and preventing your opponent from playing the game (i.e blocking pile-ins and magic doms). LRL dabbles in tons of these effects.

Generally some amount of NPE effects are tolerable, you can play around them to an extent, but issues arise when they are combined. Teclis + Total Eclipse is a good example since unless your army generates a LOT of CP it basically turns your heroes off entirely.

[MitGas]

32 minutes ago, whispersofblood said:

How about the fact that they don't do much damage really? Take a look at the games being played there are lots of battle reports and tournament games and they all kind of have the same themes. Low damage. Like a d3 heal is nice, but come on mate it's 2 wounds from what is likely either Teclis or the new Wind caster(probably a one cast wizard). It's not exactly bringing back a unit of Flamers on a cast from a full range of heroes. 

That one combat character is a special character of one of the most influential badasses of the Old World a warrior comparable to mortal Tyrion, who's soul has been armed and armour individually by a god of magic, It's not... Some aelf.

I don't want to put you in a box, but it just kinda sounds like grass-is-greener syndrome. 

Put me in a box all you like... and no, the grass isn't greener.  I'd rather stop playing Warhammer than play Lumineth! 

I'm merely not a fan of them getting this much special stuff, from rules to models, when so many others got nothing and/or got way less. There's a serious lack of balance and since they're not the poster boys SCE are, it feels really off. It would be like in 40k if Orks suddenly got as many kits as Space Marines (which they'd deserve but still.... would feel kinda unfair to all other Xenos, especially poor Eldar). Perhaps all new releases will now be bigger (since Slaanesh also went from the fewest mini Chaos faction (well, apart from Skaven...) to the 2nd spot now) but I'd rather see them keeping things "fair". We got a lot of armies that consist of a few kits, some of them horribly lame and Lumineth get kits and more kits.... 

[BrocknerTheBear]

As a pre cursor to what I'm about to say, I have no problem personally with the lumineth rules. I've played these games long enough to know there is always a way.

With that said, from what I've seen here and heard from others, the NPE seems to come from people seeing the lumineth as being comparable to "playing a game against a 5 year old" mentality. 

Ie: I'm going to blast you/I'm bulletproof. I'm going to catch you/I can fly. I'm going to magic you/I'm magic proof etc 

In the lumineth case its: I'm going to cast/no your not. Better hope you roll high enough/dont need to. So battleshock/nope no need. Good thing im in the woods/I ignore line of sight. Think hard about your combat choice/I get to use both. That's going to be a really carefully though out pile in step/nope get to ignore those rules too. 

As all most people have right now is the rules on paper, rather then tabletop experience against the units in missions, these opinions seem unavoidable.

[JackStreicher]

1 hour ago, yukishiro1 said:

Nobody cares about the Hurakan fighting, they aren't a melee unit. That's kind-of the whole point - the ability allows them to escape being fought. But it's only 3" unless they charge, so as someone else pointed out, they can't actually escape if they were charged (though they can likely mitigate the amount of models that can attack them), so that mitigates the NPE potential, though it doesn't remove it completely.

 

 

Not really: charging and then two Hurakan Jnits pile out of the combat straight onto an objective. This is pure NPE and for some reason LRL are hoarding NPEs 

 

@BrocknerTheBear no. You talk about counter play. NPE is a negative play experience. LRL Are already utter unfun to play against without the new units.

Edited March 23, 2021 by JackStreicher

[Ragest]

1 minute ago, JackStreicher said:

Not really: charging and then two Hurakan Jnits pile out of the combat straight onto an objective. This is pure NPE and for some reason LRL are hoarding NPEs 

Oh so you will get the same as moving to the objetive without charging. Pure NPE.

And if you are playing vs them you obviously are going to place your units out of the objective, becasue you are a super tactician and want that objective to be stealed.

[yukishiro1]

I dunno, that doesn't really bother me so much, because there is plenty of counterplay to it. On those huge bases, you have to position really badly to let them do that. It may let them get onto the objective, but it's not going to stop you from being able to fight them, unless you really screwed up your positioning badly. 

If LRL were more like that and less like "lol here have some 30" range MWs that ignore LOS that you can't do anything about" I'd be a lot happier with the faction.

 

 

Edited March 23, 2021 by yukishiro1

[JackStreicher]

4 minutes ago, Ragest said:

Oh so you will get the same as moving to the objetive without charging. Pure NPE.

And if you are playing vs them you obviously are going to place your units out of the objective, becasue you are a super tactician and want that objective to be stealed.

Indeed since the game is absolutely linear, with no layer of complexity and rules. Indeed there‘s no terrain as well m, or any other factors. Just guard your objectives and you win. I salute to you, Sir. You‘ve solved a complex issue just by writing a short text.

🤣

[BrocknerTheBear]

@JackStreicher I think you missed the point. 

Playing a game against a 5yr old IS a negative play experience because of the unfairness of the situation. (As a parent myself I've spent many an hour losing a game of anything with my son due to my needing to play by the rules whilst he gets to make up anything he likes on the fly with no regard for them at all)

So the connection I was making is that, beyond just having an answer to everything  they have one that removes basic rules we all have to adhere to, like rolling to cast, combat order, piling in, battleshock tests and line of sight. This in itself is the negative play experience.

Counter play is something we will all have to learn. But that doesn't stop the situation being a negative one. 

[Beliman]

10 minutes ago, yukishiro1 said:

I dunno, that doesn't really bother me so much, because there is plenty of counterplay to it. On those huge bases, you have to position really badly to let them do that. It may let them get onto the objective, but it's not going to stop you from being able to fight them, unless you really screwed up your positioning badly. 

I think that the rules are awesome too. Maybe there is some type of exploit there and that's what it needs to be FAQd, but this rules are really fun.

I hope the lethality doesn't scale too much (mortal wounds, I'm looking at you...) and I'm happy to see more utility.

[BrocknerTheBear]

I think perhaps my point would have been better expressed with the addition of "person A"/"person B" so as to make it clearer. With an audible sigh from person A in between 😄

Edited March 23, 2021 by BrocknerTheBear

[robinlvalentine]

I think if you guys are keen to keep chatting about the Lumineth rules you might need to move it into its own topic at this point. 

[JackStreicher]

11 minutes ago, BrocknerTheBear said:

@JackStreicher I think you missed the point. 

Playing a game against a 5yr old IS a negative play experience because of the unfairness of the situation. (As a parent myself I've spent many an hour losing a game of anything with my son due to my needing to play by the rules whilst he gets to make up anything he likes on the fly with no regard for them at all)

So the connection I was making is that, beyond just having an answer to everything  they have one that removes basic rules we all have to adhere to, like rolling to cast, combat order, piling in, battleshock tests and line of sight. This in itself is the negative play experience.

Counter play is something we will all have to learn. But that doesn't stop the situation being a negative one. 

I am sorry I misunderstood you completely. I agree with you.

[whispersofblood]

23 minutes ago, Ganigumo said:

 

There's a huge difference between controlling the board, and dictating the flow of the battle, and just stopping your opponent from doing things. The former is the healthy form of control that the game could use more of, the latter is toxic NPE that prevents your opponent from playing. Yes I know this is how MTG does control, by just stopping your opponent from doing anything, but it isn't a good experience for the player on the receiving end and isn't something AOS should try to emulate.

Let's be honest though the fan doesn't do that. Assuming it's locked to Wind heroes that is just this mage, and it's unlikely that you can use it offensively really. 

In most situations it requires the opponent to charge withing 3" and have no shooting or ranged damage themselves. 

But like I said before personally I'm very happy for the designers to introduce more difficult problems to solve in the game than such heady heights as; if you should or should not charge a screen or have you zoned against deploy from off the board or the thrilling can you do enough wounds in 3 turns.

Even the things you mentioned I think are actually good for players. If you want to just hit the spam bottom on your factions best command ability you can 23/24 times. But, if you want to be a better player, what if you built a list that did something slightly more challenging, and stimulating with less get out of jail crutches. But maybe this is all just because I'm a Johnny at heart.

7 minutes ago, BrocknerTheBear said:

@JackStreicher I think you missed the point. 

Playing a game against a 5yr old IS a negative play experience because of the unfairness of the situation. (As a parent myself I've spent many an hour losing a game of anything with my son due to my needing to play by the rules whilst he gets to make up anything he likes on the fly with no regard for them at all)

So the connection I was making is that, beyond just having an answer to everything  they have one that removes basic rules we all have to adhere to, like rolling to cast, combat order, piling in, battleshock tests and line of sight. This in itself is the negative play experience.

Counter play is something we will all have to learn. But that doesn't stop the situation being a negative one. 

Ok. But where does that become, not letting the fast kid as school play sports with you and your friends because you feel bad? If a Warden could hit like a Ardboy they wouldn't need any of the other stuff. Space Marine v. Space Marine is dreadfully dull. Also, all these things are either extremely limited (on 660 point Teclis) or are themselves more interactive than the ordinary mechanic (spells to ignore battleshock/and make Command abilities more expensive).

[Gothmaug]

1 hour ago, robinlvalentine said:

I don't think so - the design of that spiked ring bit is way too crude and battered to be Idoneth. Doesn't match their refined elven craftmanship aesthetic at all. 

The blade itself looks a lot like a real world Janbiya dagger, complete with the double curved edge and raised central spine. Those are traditionally from Yemen and the surrounding regions, so do we have any armies with a middle eastern flair? Slannesh mortals perhaps?

[BrocknerTheBear]

@whispersofblood Exactly! As I stated, I have no issue with it because I've been playing since the early 90's and nothing ever stays "Broken" or "OP" for long. 

But unfortunately, most will simply not enjoy playing against them due to a sense of unfairness in how they interact with the basic rules of the game. 

Is it right, No. Is it fair, Depends what side of the fence you sit. Is it going to happen anyway, Yep.

[Gwill_of_the_Woods]

4 hours ago, xking said:

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/03/23/the-rumour-engine-23rd-march-2021/

SAVAGE!!! 🤘

That has got to be Destruction!

I love that!

[DoctorPerils]

It says skaven to me more than it says gobbos, but I'll be happy either way

[Ganigumo]

47 minutes ago, whispersofblood said:

Let's be honest though the fan doesn't do that. Assuming it's locked to Wind heroes that is just this mage, and it's unlikely that you can use it offensively really. 

In most situations it requires the opponent to charge withing 3" and have no shooting or ranged damage themselves. 

But like I said before personally I'm very happy for the designers to introduce more difficult problems to solve in the game than such heady heights as; if you should or should not charge a screen or have you zoned against deploy from off the board or the thrilling can you do enough wounds in 3 turns.

Even the things you mentioned I think are actually good for players. If you want to just hit the spam bottom on your factions best command ability you can 23/24 times. But, if you want to be a better player, what if you built a list that did something slightly more challenging, and stimulating with less get out of jail crutches. But maybe this is all just because I'm a Johnny at heart.

I wasn't really talking about the fan, but the army in general.

These things do introduce difficult problems to solve, and you need to change your tactics to adapt to it. These aren't all bad in a vacuum, but when you start combining them it becomes way too much for some armies to deal with PERIOD. Not every army has access to good wizards, or CP engines, or lots of varied strategies. Lots of armies commit to one playstyle and if you put too much pressure on them they just don't get to play the game. Most armies don't have "get out of jail" crutches, its usually only the strong ones that do. The main reason magic doms are toxic is because there are plenty of armies that rely on their magic, but don't have strong wizards, there is no getting around it, your options are to not take the force multiplier or take it anyway and pray.

Like what is an army like Gutbuster Mawtribes supposed to do against Lumineth? They have weak wizards, low CP generation, no tricks, low rend, weak shooting... They don't have the tools to play around multiple of these kinds of effects.

I'm fine with these effects in moderation, like an army that stops pile-ins requires you to be more careful with your charges or Lumineths 2-1 activations mean you really only want to get involved in a single combat at a time, but when you start needing to ration CP and  make sure you charge deep and don't get a magic phase and don't get involved in multiple combats etc... Most armies just can't keep up with it.

[Neverchosen]

1 hour ago, BrocknerTheBear said:

@whispersofblood Exactly! As I stated, I have no issue with it because I've been playing since the early 90's and nothing ever stays "Broken" or "OP" for long. 

But unfortunately, most will simply not enjoy playing against them due to a sense of unfairness in how they interact with the basic rules of the game. 

Is it right, No. Is it fair, Depends what side of the fence you sit. Is it going to happen anyway, Yep.

I started Fantasy with 6th edition in the early 2000s and this has always been my philosophy as well. Our hobby has a living and evolving ruleset with changing balances. I think that a lot of these recent AOS books are being written with 3.0 in mind and what we see as power creep and broken rules are actually addressing changes with how certain armies will grow in the next edition. Even with powercreep in mind if your army is released early in an edition it will likely dominate against all the armies who are waiting for updates but it will eventually be their turn in the sun. So Lumineth, OBR, Seraphon and KO players rejoice and have fun dominating the meta but also be aware that in a year or two that people will rag on how midtier your armies are compared to the overpowered new edition Beasts of Chaos, Maggotkin, Slaves to Darkness and Nighthaunt. Going back to my Fantasy days I collected Warriors of Chaos and they were completely unmanageable but when their book was released I began to win occasionally... then I got Dark Elves who were slightly older and I had to work much harder for the win. However, my Dark Elves faired decently well against my cousin's Dwarves so they often went to war with each other as my Chaos fought against his Lizardmen (who upon getting an update of their own tore my chaos to shreds). Although, in all fairness it does feel a little sad when your personal army gets released and doesn't garner the same success of others.

I have however found their are certain armies that are so reliant on specific mechanics so their success and failures seem to always reflect how well those aspects of the game are balanced. Magic and shooting in particular seem to be more balanced alongside the game rather than along army lines. Wood Elves and Dwarves would often live and die by Shooting mechanics while Tzeentch, Lizardmen and Highelves were dependent on magic. But similarly if mechanics favour hordes or elites that will also dictate the success of certain armies. So some armies are hard to balance by design, simply through emphasizing a specific type of strategy, but they are not broken simply a reflection of the core rules needing some slight tightening or tweaking.

Edited March 23, 2021 by Neverchosen