The Rumour Thread

[Boar]

11 minutes ago, Celadoor said:

Does that make a difference as to how it works in the end?

Yeah because they are at same time Battleline, Leader and Behemoth. While in other cases while you become Battleline you lose other roles

[pnkdth]

Unit spam is here to stay. I'm thinking I won't.

Edited February 25, 2022 by pnkdth

[PJetski]

7 minutes ago, pnkdth said:

Unit spam is here to stay. I'm thinking I won't.

Not really any different from the Stegadon spam that is possible with Thunder Lizard

[AngryPanda]

So, idk if anyone else feels the same way, but I personally don’t like the direction the game is going based on the recent rule releases. I’m a Slaanesh player, so I may be a bit biased when saying this, but I feel the game is becoming less strategic and more “one trick pony.”

For example, I don’t like how the Beastmen were updated. I 100% believed that they were deserving of an update because of how outdated their army was, but the update they received makes the army very simplistic. Having their scenery piece give the entire army increased rend without any prerequisites/strategic planning is silly because it doesn’t require the BoC player to do anything, and yet is such a powerful bonus. It’s parallel to when OBR were first released and had Petrifix Elite give a blanket +1 save to a sub faction. As a BoC player, you can spam Minotaurs with great axes, and delete the opposing army with some of the highest rend attacks in the game. 

 

Now, Fyreslayers get a blanket ability to spam monsters, and Idoneth also get the ability to spam their biggest monsters as well.
 

What happened to balancing battleline with heavy hitters? It’s similar to the mistake they made with Imperial Knights that dominated the 40k meta, where players spammed them at tournaments without repercussion. It removes the fun of building balanced lists with a strategy behind how their played, and instead guides players to building armies that are basic/simplistic without deeper thought. This sort of game design, to me at least, is really boring  

[Ogregut]

4 minutes ago, AngryPanda said:

So, idk if anyone else feels the same way, but I personally don’t like the direction the game is going based on the recent rule releases. I’m a Slaanesh player, so I may be a bit biased when saying this, but I feel the game is becoming less strategic and more “one trick pony.”

For example, I don’t like how the Beastmen were updated. I 100% believed that they were deserving of an update because of how outdated their army was, but the update they received makes the army very simplistic. Having their scenery piece give the entire army increased rend without any prerequisites/strategic planning is silly because it doesn’t require the BoC player to do anything, and yet is such a powerful bonus. It’s parallel to when OBR were first released and had Petrifix Elite give a blanket +1 save to a sub faction. As a BoC player, you can spam Minotaurs with great axes, and delete the opposing army with some of the highest rend attacks in the game. 

 

Now, Fyreslayers get a blanket ability to spam monsters, and Idoneth also get the ability to spam their biggest monsters as well.
 

What happened to balancing battleline with heavy hitters? It’s similar to the mistake they made with Imperial Knights that dominated the 40k meta, where players spammed them at tournaments without repercussion. It removes the fun of building balanced lists with a strategy behind how their played, and instead guides players to building armies that are basic/simplistic without deeper thought. This sort of game design, to me at least, is really boring  

It gives people choice. 

You don't have to spam magmadroths, turtles, dragons or any other type of spam list but you can if you wish. 

I'll rather have a list that allows multiple builds than just one. 

I love the direction AoS is going, it's simple, fun and exciting. 

I'm going to an event in May and trying to settle on a army. I'm thinking of taking Nurgle and can't decide on a list, I've got 3 so far, each different and plays different. 

I'm looking forward to getting my hands on the new battletomes. 

[AngryPanda]

13 minutes ago, Ogregut said:

It gives people choice. 

You don't have to spam magmadroths, turtles, dragons or any other type of spam list but you can if you wish. 

I'll rather have a list that allows multiple builds than just one. 

I love the direction AoS is going, it's simple, fun and exciting. 

I'm going to an event in May and trying to settle on a army. I'm thinking of taking Nurgle and can't decide on a list, I've got 3 so far, each different and plays different. 

I'm looking forward to getting my hands on the new battletomes. 

I disagree about the choice element. For example, OBR gave you the choice between Petrifix Elite and Ivory Host. Why did (and still do not) nobody play Ivory Host, and everyone play Petrifix Elite? It’s because the rules are terrible for Ivory Host compared to the other subfactions. 
 

Why field Namarti Thralls, which have a lower damage output and low survivability, when you could field an army of turtles with the new monster table special rules? 
 

Why field Slaangors for 130 points, when instead I could invest those points into something that Is much more cost-effective? 
 

The problem with “choice” that GW gives is that it really isn’t a choice, but rather it’s deciding on whether or not to handicap yourself when fielding an army. Most players are simply going to gravitate towards the stronger options in a battletome, while keeping away from the weaker options.

True choice is when you have the ability to choose between different subfactions, units, or lists, and having to make a balanced decision based on the way you want to play. The problem I’m starting to notice very clearly is that there are some obvious winning lists/units that are appearing, with other lists and units taking a very obvious weaker position. 
 

I can tell you from experience that if I were playing either for fun or competitively, I would never take Slaangors because how awful they are.
 

That’s a bit more of an extreme example because of how terrible Slaangors are, but if I were ever playing Idoneth I would never take thralls off I were playing competitively; I would take turtles mixed with eels because it’s very clearly the stronger option. Or, if I was playing BoC I’d take Minotaurs mixed with some Ungor Raiders because they’re far superior to the other options; I may take a small unit of ungors to hold an objective, but that’s about it. 

Edited February 25, 2022 by AngryPanda

[Gailon]

32 minutes ago, AngryPanda said:

The problem with “choice” that GW gives is that it really isn’t a choice, but rather it’s deciding on whether or not to handicap yourself when fielding an army. Most players are simply going to gravitate towards the stronger options in a battletome, while keeping away from the weaker options.

 

This rings very true for me. I believe the new direction puts more and more onus on casual players to find their own balance in the game. My real concern is when the 'handicapping' options aren't even interesting, they are just worse. I really feel this way with the new Stormcast book. 

It's not just that the bad units in Stormcast are worse, they also tend to be boring. Or they are so much worse as to be frustrating.

I play mostly stormcast and seraphon and the contrast is striking. The 'bad' units in Seraphon tend to be interesting, or have options that can be applied to them. Saurus warrior and razordons and ripperdactyls (not even that bad, but all worse than other options) can be used in interesting ways and make interesting lists. when I run them I don't spend the entire game frustrated at my choice to cut myself off at the knees, I am thinking about how to use them to their potential. This is because there are a lot of buffs and choices available. 

When I make handicapping choices in Stormcast I tend to just be left more frustrated. I don't feel like I have options that could be applied to make the list more interesting, I just feel like it's worse. 

I enjoy player choice, and agree that the game pretty much relies on people to choose to not always bring the filthiest filth. Leave that to the top tables at the tournaments, which is a small minority of players. But there needs to be nuggets of fun left for the people who do choose to handicap themselves. 

It's why I often get the most upset at the inexplicable nerfing or gutting of things that aren't really being used a lot anyway. 

[Kitsumy]

it would be true if those behemots would be better than other units, but they arent.

 

1 turtle is great. more than 1?? not so much. idk can field 3-4 turtles allready and noone use more than 1, so who cares about being able to field them as line?? it was only a fun enclave that noone will use outside some fun casuals games.

 

same with seraphon, they can spam 7 triceratops. but noone outside casual fun games uses more than engine and 0-2 more.

so like i said those abilitys to spam monster are useless on competitive, and only worth in fun games. tell me 1 army who use the maximun number of monsters, who could use a rule letting them spam more???

 

even more when only some op monsters get the count as 3000 minis for objetives, noone could win games with 4-6 monsters counting as 5? or 10 for objetives

[OkayestDM]

1 hour ago, AngryPanda said:

For example, I don’t like how the Beastmen were updated. I 100% believed that they were deserving of an update because of how outdated their army was, but the update they received makes the army very simplistic. Having their scenery piece give the entire army increased rend without any prerequisites/strategic planning is silly because it doesn’t require the BoC player to do anything, and yet is such a powerful bonus. It’s parallel to when OBR were first released and had Petrifix Elite give a blanket +1 save to a sub faction. As a BoC player, you can spam Minotaurs with great axes, and delete the opposing army with some of the highest rend attacks in the game. 

I'd like to offer a counterpoint here.

Yes, the BoC buff from the Herdstone is very powerful, but it absolutely requires strategic planning. 

Since all of the faction abilities are tied to a terrain piece, all it take is for 1 monster to slip into the BoC backlines and smash it to rubble, and suddenly the BoC player is in a world of hurt, because everything has just been turned off. All bullgors sounds great, but you gamble that you won't have the screening forces necessary to protect the Herdstone.

I'm not saying this is a mastercraft in design (competitivley I can see this being potentially problematic both ways) but I also don't think that this is BoC's final form. These are just the patch rules, whether they make it into the 3.0 book will depend on feedback.

I'll also say that making the Herdstone so central to the BoC is a marvelous case of . . . ludnarrative resonance? The rules compliment the lore here, as Herdstones are central to the BoC spreading raw Chaos, and their foes (even the other chaos factions) are incentivised to destroy them before they warp everything around them beyond repair.

 

 

[AngryPanda]

2 hours ago, OkayestDM said:

I'd like to offer a counterpoint here.

Yes, the BoC buff from the Herdstone is very powerful, but it absolutely requires strategic planning. 

Since all of the faction abilities are tied to a terrain piece, all it take is for 1 monster to slip into the BoC backlines and smash it to rubble, and suddenly the BoC player is in a world of hurt, because everything has just been turned off. All bullgors sounds great, but you gamble that you won't have the screening forces necessary to protect the Herdstone.

I'm not saying this is a mastercraft in design (competitivley I can see this being potentially problematic both ways) but I also don't think that this is BoC's final form. These are just the patch rules, whether they make it into the 3.0 book will depend on feedback.

I'll also say that making the Herdstone so central to the BoC is a marvelous case of . . . ludnarrative resonance? The rules compliment the lore here, as Herdstones are central to the BoC spreading raw Chaos, and their foes (even the other chaos factions) are incentivised to destroy them before they warp everything around them beyond repair.

 

 

But then you need to bring a monster, which means that if you don’t then you’re putting yourself at a huge disadvantage against BoC. It basically becomes a game of Cat/Mouse against a single terrain piece, which assume you bring the right unit for the right job. If you don’t, you’re being penalized against a very specific army which….I really don’t like the feeling of. It feels very narrowed, almost like the game is pushing you to take monstersC otherwise if you run up against a BoC player you’ll have no significant counters against the stone.

Against armies that utilize zero or two units of monsters, BoC are going to have a significant advantage, but against massed turtles or SoB, it’s going to be a big uphill battle if the herdstone is destroyed; this would force the player into an incredibly defensive play style. It makes the army feel very polarized against certain matchups.

When GW introduced point values to the game and army organization, I remember the army composition limiting the number of monsters and bro options you could take was introduced as a means of preventing players from abusing monstrous creature and hero spam. Now, it seems like they’re moving away from this.
 

Why introduce a limit on reinforcements, when instead you can take an army of single-entity monsters that are much more point-efficient, and don’t take up reinforcements-costs? There’s a reason why Seraphon have been dominating the meta as thunder lizards; you get to take a ton of super cheap skins to blindly hold objectives followed by large monsters to do most of the killing. In a way, it’s very similar to the issue that used to be very prevailing within 40k tournaments back when imperial soup was a thing: you had players take super cheap conscript units to hold objectives, followed by large imperial knights that destroyed everything they touched. The whole thing seems counter-intuitive to me, and personally I think it’s going to lead to balancing issues in the long run. 

Edited February 25, 2022 by AngryPanda

[novakai]

I call it the beastclaw raider syndrome, I guess GW found out a lot of people like small armies with fewer models to push around when BCR got first release that they do it for every army now, so that where we are now.

[Fyrenn]

2 hours ago, AngryPanda said:

But then you need to bring a monster, which means that if you don’t then you’re putting yourself at a huge disadvantage against BoC. It basically becomes a game of Cat/Mouse against a single terrain piece, which assume you bring the right unit for the right job. If you don’t, you’re being penalized against a very specific army which….I really don’t like the feeling of. It feels very narrowed, almost like the game is pushing you to take monstersC otherwise if you run up against a BoC player you’ll have no significant counters against the stone.

Against armies that utilize zero or two units of monsters, BoC are going to have a significant advantage, but against massed turtles or SoB, it’s going to be a big uphill battle if the herdstone is destroyed; this would force the player into an incredibly defensive play style. It makes the army feel very polarized against certain matchups.

When GW introduced point values to the game and army organization, I remember the army composition limiting the number of monsters and bro options you could take was introduced as a means of preventing players from abusing monstrous creature and hero spam. Now, it seems like they’re moving away from this.
 

Why introduce a limit on reinforcements, when instead you can take an army of single-entity monsters that are much more point-efficient, and don’t take up reinforcements-costs? There’s a reason why Seraphon have been dominating the meta as thunder lizards; you get to take a ton of super cheap skins to blindly hold objectives followed by large monsters to do most of the killing. In a way, it’s very similar to the issue that used to be very prevailing within 40k tournaments back when imperial soup was a thing: you had players take super cheap conscript units to hold objectives, followed by large imperial knights that destroyed everything they touched. The whole thing seems counter-intuitive to me, and personally I think it’s going to lead to balancing issues in the long run. 

I mean - it's not that I disagree with some of your assessment on the overall meta, and what might be over all trends of what might be good or bad... I honestly think the herdstone hill is a weird one to go after.

It's way, way too early to see how much effect it has on what has been a subpar army list. The way you write it, it would be as if they're somehow going to be top tier. I don't think they are.  I think that GW has some armies that now throw around a lot of rend (like BoC, which argueably they always should have been (and have historically) done in the past. Alternatively they have other armies that do a lot of MWs, which BoC does not do.

Again, I understand you're just using it as an example for your critique, and it is a recent change, but I don't really think it's game breaking as much as you think.  It's overkill for some things (Bullgors)  and it's just getting them to par positions for others (Dragon Ogors). 

At least, that's how I see it.  If my sad little BoC suddenly become unstoppable, i'll be happy to eat my hat for you 🙂  

[Ogregut]

4 hours ago, AngryPanda said:

But then you need to bring a monster, which means that if you don’t then you’re putting yourself at a huge disadvantage against BoC. It basically becomes a game of Cat/Mouse against a single terrain piece, which assume you bring the right unit for the right job. If you don’t, you’re being penalized against a very specific army which….I really don’t like the feeling of. It feels very narrowed, almost like the game is pushing you to take monstersC otherwise if you run up against a BoC player you’ll have no significant counters against the stone.

 

You don't need to bring a monster, just a wizard and use the realm of beast spell to gain the monster keyword. 

[Malakithe]

8 hours ago, AngryPanda said:

So, idk if anyone else feels the same way, but I personally don’t like the direction the game is going based on the recent rule releases. I’m a Slaanesh player, so I may be a bit biased when saying this, but I feel the game is becoming less strategic and more “one trick pony.”

For example, I don’t like how the Beastmen were updated. I 100% believed that they were deserving of an update because of how outdated their army was, but the update they received makes the army very simplistic. Having their scenery piece give the entire army increased rend without any prerequisites/strategic planning is silly because it doesn’t require the BoC player to do anything, and yet is such a powerful bonus. It’s parallel to when OBR were first released and had Petrifix Elite give a blanket +1 save to a sub faction. As a BoC player, you can spam Minotaurs with great axes, and delete the opposing army with some of the highest rend attacks in the game. 

 

Now, Fyreslayers get a blanket ability to spam monsters, and Idoneth also get the ability to spam their biggest monsters as well.
 

What happened to balancing battleline with heavy hitters? It’s similar to the mistake they made with Imperial Knights that dominated the 40k meta, where players spammed them at tournaments without repercussion. It removes the fun of building balanced lists with a strategy behind how their played, and instead guides players to building armies that are basic/simplistic without deeper thought. This sort of game design, to me at least, is really boring  

For one, its having options. One could argue being forced to take battleline takes the fun away from making lists. But when your battleline choice is anything you want then its a lot better.

And two, it sounds like 'balancing battleline' means you want traditional infantry backed up by larger stuff which is the WHFB mentality...which is dead.

[Boingrot Bouncer]

I think the big problem is the balancing issues (both internal and external). When one (or if you are lucky two) option in an army is better in pretty much everything it takes a lot of the fun away and it also make it a no brainer when making list. You should be able to make a list of mixed forces without feeling like your missing something.

I like big monster, but in AOS 2 a monster dominant list was pretty much dead in the water since it couldn't hold objectives. In AOS 3 it's much more viable, bit instead Zombie/skeleton heavy SBGL-list and Gitz-lists with a lot of reinforced units (which I also like) are punished due to reinforcement limitations (which I dislike).

In the best of worlds both kind of list would be good, and a person that found a good balance between units or a cool combo should be rewarded (instead of sentinel spam (I have a LRL-army but refused to go down that route) or dragon spam).

[JackStreicher]

14 hours ago, Ogregut said:

You don't have to spam magmadroths, turtles, dragons or any other type of spam list but you can if you wish

We are talking about people. The choice is: Yes I will spam.

The same goes for rules abuse. Will one abuse a broken rule? Yes.

🤷🏼‍♂️

It’s a pretty lacking game design imo that might be caused by a lack of choice inside the army. It also often causes issues (SCE Dragon Spam)

Overall I am not pleased with AoS as of late, that might cloud my judgement.

Edited February 26, 2022 by JackStreicher

[Kadeton]

5 hours ago, Malakithe said:

For one, its having options. One could argue being forced to take battleline takes the fun away from making lists. But when your battleline choice is anything you want then its a lot better.

When your battleline choice is anything you want, then what's the purpose of having a battleline requirement in the first place?

[JackStreicher]

Honestly I don’t think we should talk about competitive gaming here, because most of us don’t care and comp. gamers are very few anyways, they‘ll manage no matter what. 
 

 

[Malakithe]

Well the solution to spamming is right there in 40k. Rule of 3 with the exception of Troops. But thats restricting list building by forcing you to fill in those non-efficient gaps with other stuff. Of course the only reason your having to make those hard choices is because this unit versus that unit. One is better then the other. But who wrote the unit warscroll thats making you think about efficiency so much that its restricting list building....  

Then you have those factions who have so little in choice you have to spam so theres that.

[Malakithe]

8 minutes ago, Kadeton said:

When your battleline choice is anything you want, then what's the purpose of having a battleline requirement in the first place?

Hey dont ask me I didnt write that ****** lol

[Kadeton]

42 minutes ago, Malakithe said:

Hey dont ask me I didnt write that ****** lol

That's a fair response.

It seems apparent to me that the original intent of a battleline requirement was to help make the game simpler to balance, by restricting army building away from excessively skewed lists. But all the conditional battleline entries that have been released since have progressively undermined that goal, so that now it's almost meaningless.

I actually think something like that would form a better basis for the division between Matched and Narrative play than the one we currently have. Matched play should aim to avoid skew and promote balance through very tight list-building restrictions; Narrative play should be the arena where stuff like "Oops, All Dragons" resides, because that makes for a cool story experience but a terrible competitive one.

[Greybeard86]

59 minutes ago, Kadeton said:

That's a fair response.

It seems apparent to me that the original intent of a battleline requirement was to help make the game simpler to balance, by restricting army building away from excessively skewed lists. But all the conditional battleline entries that have been released since have progressively undermined that goal, so that now it's almost meaningless.

I actually think something like that would form a better basis for the division between Matched and Narrative play than the one we currently have. Matched play should aim to avoid skew and promote balance through very tight list-building restrictions; Narrative play should be the arena where stuff like "Oops, All Dragons" resides, because that makes for a cool story experience but a terrible competitive one.

Spam does affect 40k too. Less than AoS but you do see skewed army compositions.  
In fairness, i think AoS has always been designed to be more wacky and play what you like to an extreme. Skewed lists are encouraged in the ads run in warcom. Factions were designed with very few options and the whole conditional battle line thingy.

Frankyl, as an older Wargamer, I prefer balanced armies that represent the lore. I know it is unfair but every time I see an all whatever army I think it is some rubbish luuulwot lelel kinda thing. I know it isn’t necessarily the case and that it is a matter of preference, but it feels cheap and bland.

[Clan's Cynic]

Seems the Eldar pre-orders had the price rises baked in.

£32.50 for the Codex.

£55 for the Collector's Edition Codex (lol),

£24 for the dice.

£17 for the Datacards (lol).

 

[Arzalyn]

3 hours ago, Malakithe said:

Well the solution to spamming is right there in 40k. Rule of 3 with the exception of Troops. But thats restricting list building by forcing you to fill in those non-efficient gaps with other stuff. Of course the only reason your having to make those hard choices is because this unit versus that unit. One is better then the other. But who wrote the unit warscroll thats making you think about efficiency so much that its restricting list building....  

Then you have those factions who have so little in choice you have to spam so theres that.

Honestly for me that is the problematic part on this topic, most of the factions lack unit variety (around 10 options) and the majority of tomes also have poor internal balance. When you have most of your units having exactly the same role in a game competitive lists will gravitate towards the best one. With bad internal balance, limiting how much of a given unit you can field can stop some factions from be able to compete with other that have a better balance between their warscrolls.

2 hours ago, Kadeton said:

It seems apparent to me that the original intent of a battleline requirement was to help make the game simpler to balance, by restricting army building away from excessively skewed lists. But all the conditional battleline entries that have been released since have progressively undermined that goal, so that now it's almost meaningless.

I wouldn't call it meaningless, its not like you can pick whenever you want and that is it. Most factions have 1 or 2 unconditional battlelines and if you want to have other option you have to make some concessions while list buildings (having a specific hero as a general or always taking a specific sub allegiance). You still have restrictions in place that stop you from accessing some rules combinations if you want to alleviate those restrictions. 

[Noserenda]

Ech, i like a broad selection of battleline but then id rather people collect the army they want rather than the army they want plus the absolute minimum expenditure on some token unit they are forced to take. I am however blessed by a fairly non competitive and older group these days, i can see how restrictions help pick up games.