The Rumour Thread

[Ganigumo]

13 minutes ago, dmorley21 said:

This is probably for the best too, honestly, While I love 3rd and find it vastly superior to 2nd; I know a few players who don't like it and have stopped playing AoS. 

Do you know what they don't like about 3rd?
Anecdotally most of the complaints I've heard have been around things that don't need a complete rules rewrite. Mostly around secondary objectives, coherency, balance (forever a pain point but tighter than it used to be), and general complexity. 
Most of those things feel like they were just tacked on to the game though, and we could lose or replace them without too much hassle.
Personally I'd be fine dropping heroic actions, monstrous rampages, grand strategies and battle tactics for a start.
I will say I've hated the release schedule for this entire edition though. Slow to start, releasing multiple tomes every couple months, with a mad dash at the end, and at the moment it feels like things have slowed down a bit again. Its always been overwhelming or underwhelming.
I think the 1 book per month cadence they kept up for a lot of aos2 felt like the right pace.

[novakai]

I mean if they where to implement some of the changes that people like from 40K 10th edition like heroes being part of units or something AoS player been wanting like reducing MW in the game as a whole, I can see them resetting every army into index form so warscrolls and allegiance abilities are all fresh at the beginning with these new mechanics and restraints in mind but of course this is just my hypothesis.

[Kitsumy]

""The Idoneth Deepkin appear to struggle with damage output against particularly tough armies""

it cant be possible, sky is falling. gw aknowledged idoneths have a problem!!!! only took them 1+ year being always 37-50% haha

 

i guess we will get some points updates that wont be enough to take anything new to the list, making it worthless, like last points decreases.

or maybe gw be extra crazy and fix some core problems, like auras only affecting expecific units, only in melee. excluding mounts, only on the 5th day of the 7th month on an expecific hour if 3 planets are in sincro!! , and make them afect erything for x units , or even with 0 restrictions, like every other tome has.

Or tank eels being able to inprove his armorsave.

Or mortal ability of morsar being on every charge, not once per game.

Or giving us a propper fight first rule like elfs always had in warhammer.  lumineths can pick 2 units on every activation, cities elves atack first for having a elf hero cloose giving an order, maybe idoneth atack first when they charge? only works in idoneth turn, making it pretty balanced i think 

 

Edited August 18, 2023 by Kitsumy

[Ganigumo]

Just now, novakai said:

I mean if they where to implement some of the changes that people like from 40K 10th edition like heroes being part of units or something AoS player been wanting like reducing MW in the game as a whole, I can see them resetting every army into index form so warscrolls and allegiance abilities are all fresh at the beginning with these new mechanics and restraints in mind but of course this is just my hypothesis.

The problem with index rules is that even less time is spent developing and balancing it.
The last batch of tomes we had felt really rushed in the balance department, as did the warclan tome in the development department.
Indexes mean they have to write 25 armies worth of rules in the time it usually takes them to write a few battletomes, and its unlikely they'd double or triple the size of the team just to get them right.
40k is the flagship and the indexes were full of errors and poorly balanced, although possibly more balanced than the mess that came before it. There's basically no chance aos would be more balanced after an index treatment.
You basically give the bonesplitterz treatment to every army in the game, where you strip most of the rules because you need something you can roughly balance without testing much. Yes it will shuffle the balance of the armies around, and different armies might end up on top, but I doubt it will change that much. The top down design the AoS studio uses tends to lead to certain armies being created "greater" than others, as those concepts lead to more powerful allegiance abilities, and its often harder to point something abstract like an allegiance ability, than it is to point a statline. Its a big reason why certain armies fall through the floor too, often their allegiance abilities are often nearly worthless.


Now that we can't shoot heroes when they're near units, and so many heroes trigger units to fight anyways it wouldn't be a big stretch to just have them join units either.

[dmorley21]

55 minutes ago, Ganigumo said:

Do you know what they don't like about 3rd?
Anecdotally most of the complaints I've heard have been around things that don't need a complete rules rewrite. Mostly around secondary objectives, coherency, balance (forever a pain point but tighter than it used to be), and general complexity. 
Most of those things feel like they were just tacked on to the game though, and we could lose or replace them without too much hassle.
Personally I'd be fine dropping heroic actions, monstrous rampages, grand strategies and battle tactics for a start.
I will say I've hated the release schedule for this entire edition though. Slow to start, releasing multiple tomes every couple months, with a mad dash at the end, and at the moment it feels like things have slowed down a bit again. Its always been overwhelming or underwhelming.
I think the 1 book per month cadence they kept up for a lot of aos2 felt like the right pace.

Rules bloat is the most common I’ve heard. And that’s fair. I wouldn’t mind seeing some of the bloat go away.

[novakai]

13 minutes ago, Ganigumo said:

The problem with index rules is that even less time is spent developing and balancing it.
The last batch of tomes we had felt really rushed in the balance department, as did the warclan tome in the development department.
Indexes mean they have to write 25 armies worth of rules in the time it usually takes them to write a few battletomes, and its unlikely they'd double or triple the size of the team just to get them right.
40k is the flagship and the indexes were full of errors and poorly balanced, although possibly more balanced than the mess that came before it. There's basically no chance aos would be more balanced after an index treatment.
You basically give the bonesplitterz treatment to every army in the game, where you strip most of the rules because you need something you can roughly balance without testing much. Yes it will shuffle the balance of the armies around, and different armies might end up on top, but I doubt it will change that much. The top down design the AoS studio uses tends to lead to certain armies being created "greater" than others, as those concepts lead to more powerful allegiance abilities, and its often harder to point something abstract like an allegiance ability, than it is to point a statline. Its a big reason why certain armies fall through the floor too, often their allegiance abilities are often nearly worthless.


Now that we can't shoot heroes when they're near units, and so many heroes trigger units to fight anyways it wouldn't be a big stretch to just have them join units either.

Well I really not giving any army the Bonesplitterz treatment, ultimately it’s really what GW wants or schedule to do and all these things you listed are probably thing I except to happen either way. I have not really felt that the two system differ that much from a macro system perspective.

It not like a regular edition change doesn’t also cause the same problem because they probably do change a lot of the mechanics that also cause problems within the existing battletome lor create weird janky situation like OBR last edition

[Clan's Cynic]

Considering what an utter disaster 10th has turned out to be, I'd personally rather avoid IndexHammer if AoS can.

Obviously if they really were doing a massive shakeup that warrants it... fair enough, but so far 10th's reboot just felt like an extremely cynical moving of the deckchairs around to emphasise the Toughness stat - which was largely done to sell more vehicles.

I have more faith in the AoS team than I would the 40k one, but they're still part of GW.

 

Edited August 18, 2023 by Clan's Cynic

[Malakithe]

Factions shouldnt need to be balanced around BTs. A single sentence making or breaking a faction is super bad design. Similarly it was a bad design for 40k so they got rid of most of it and those stupid actions. 

The irony of 40k taking design cues from AoS then resetting and now AoS probably taking design cues from 40k. 'Resetting' both games closer to each other is probably better for them as far as planning and logistics go

[Gitzdee]

AoS isnt a perfect game but the core is pretty good. I would rather see them tweaking and perfecting the game rather than starting over again with a huge mess. Just look at Warcry and Underworld these have just been getting better and better imho.

Edit: They could still add a lot of things like better rules for casual play and support for smaller sized 750/ 1000 point games. Fix battle tactics and grand strategies and just overall rules bloat.

Edited August 18, 2023 by Gitzdee

[Boingrot Bouncer]

To be honest some rules could be taken away if they change warscrolls. Let's for example take monsterous actions that probably was added because frankly monsters was often useless compared to the same amount of points in regular troops.

The problem with it is that it interferes just as you are about to fight which is probably the most entertaining part of the game and since different actions demands different role on the dice you can't just role a dice and see if you succeed with an action before deciding what action you take.

Instead you need to carefully think and then roll and then in 33-50 % of cases nothing happens. 5 minutes wasted and the pace of the game slowed.

My suggestion would be to instead increase the power of monsters (and not hero monsters that don't need to be boosted as much) with for example better attacks or specific abilities. The downside of abilities is of course to remember them so there need to be some kind of balance between number of abilities and the power off monsters.

[Beliman]

1 hour ago, Gitzdee said:

AoS isnt a perfect game but the core is pretty good.

It's fun and has strategy, but I think it's far away from other games that sadly don't have the name "Warhammer" in it.

To be honest, it has a lot of Parasitic designs (see post above from @Boingrot Bouncer ) and stuff that doesn't feel right.

[Gitzdee]

11 minutes ago, Beliman said:

It's fun and has strategy, but I think it's far away from other games that sadly don't have the name "Warhammer" in it.

To be honest, it has a lot of Parasitic designs (see post above from @Boingrot Bouncer ) and stuff that doesn't feel right.

I think GW has a tendency to put layers on layers on layers. I think they need to build a tight set of core rules. Make the layers optional like tournament play and maybe some advanced rules like add-on packs. Also makes it easier to fix parts of the game between editions if needed.

[MotherGoose]

One thing I'd love from 10th 40k is the card system for setting up games, been really fun and different.

[JackStreicher]

11 hours ago, Kitsumy said:

""The Idoneth Deepkin appear to struggle with damage output against particularly tough armies""

it cant be possible, sky is falling. gw aknowledged idoneths have a problem!!!! only took them 1+ year being always 37-50% haha

 

i guess we will get some points updates that wont be enough to take anything new to the list, making it worthless, like last points decreases.

or maybe gw be extra crazy and fix some core problems, like auras only affecting expecific units, only in melee. excluding mounts, only on the 5th day of the 7th month on an expecific hour if 3 planets are in sincro!! , and make them afect erything for x units , or even with 0 restrictions, like every other tome has.

Or ank eels being able to inprove his rend.

Or mortal ability of morsar being on every charge, not once per game.

Or giving us a propper fight first rule like elfs always had in warhammer.  lumineths can pick 2 units on every activation, cities elves atack first for having a elf hero cloose giving an order, maybe idoneth atack first when they charge? only works in idoneth turn, making it pretty balanced i think 

 

Idk issues go even deeper though.

on the surface our eels have been nerfed too much (too many points, less survivability)

we don’t have the tools to stay in the game for long enough

Our choice of units is too small, we lack units fir certain jobs (that don’t fall apart if you look at them funny)

that‘s just to name a few

 

 

Concerning AoS 4:

The rules should‘ve already been finished by now and the printing process might in progress.

Edited August 18, 2023 by JackStreicher

[The Lost Sigmarite]

38 minutes ago, JackStreicher said:

Idk issues go even deeper though.

on the surface our eels have been nerfed too much (too many points, less survivability)

we don’t have the tools to stay in the game for long enough

Our choice of units is too small, we lack units fir certain jobs (that don’t fall apart if you look at them funny)

that‘s just to name a few

This is where Duinclaw and his crab buddies come into play ! They will fix all of IDK problems with their thick shells.

[Nezzhil]

I think we can say that the Weirdbrutes are an elite unit of 3 spellcaster models on bigger bases, or is it still too hasty?

[Satyrical Sophist]

I'm mixed on adding leaders to AoS. I really like it in 40k but not as sure how it would go in sigmar. 

Here is one thing that I think might be an interesting one, the priority roll. I'd be interested in seeing what switching to a warcry style roll off would be like. To explain warcry has a roll off at the start of each turn where each player rolls 6 dice. Separate into singles, doubles, triples, quads. The player with the most singles gets to choose who goes first. The doubles, triples and quads can be used for abilities. They also have a wild die system for modifiying, but thats less important. Have something simple like a command point for each double and some other rewards for triples and quads. 

The other change I'd be interested in would be moving the hero phase to start of the battle round, and shared. 

[Clan's Cynic]

Not sure if it's been posted yet, but the "we turned it into an actual novel, not just a script of the audiobook" edition of Realmslayer is getting a hardback (and presumably paperback later) in October. Pretty sure some people were asking about it before.

Otherwise, just Warriors of the Freeguilds and Yndrasta: The Celestial Spear slated for August/September respectively as we knew already.

Edited August 18, 2023 by Clan's Cynic

[ArcLight]

1 hour ago, Nezzhil said:

I think we can say that the Weirdbrutes are an elite unit of 3 spellcaster models on bigger bases, or is it still too hasty?

Seems like it's confirmed they'll be 3-man 50mm based unit at least. Spellcasting or some kind of similar ability looks likely from the name, but no confirmation on that.

[Nezzhil]

23 minutes ago, ArcLight said:

Seems like it's confirmed they'll be 3-man 50mm based unit at least. Spellcasting or some kind of similar ability looks likely from the name, but no confirmation on that.

Well, we have a rumour engine that could be a Weirdbrute hand...

 

Edited August 18, 2023 by Nezzhil

[Mikosan]

16 hours ago, Morglum StormBasha said:

I really really really don’t want them to reset aos. aos 3.5 would be nice for 4th rather than any sort of reset. There is no need to invalidate all the warscrolls - I can’t see what benefit we would gain as we already have a near perfect format. 
 

sure they can rewrite battalions, add more about scenery etc but I don’t think the game needs a reset 

I agree with this.  For various life reasons, I haven't played as much this edition but when I do, I love the game as it currently is.  Some friends that play more are down on 3rd for its bloat but in my mind so much of that is the GHB layers.  The core rules, for my money are in a great place.  While I don't mind the seasonal changes a GHB brings, I'm not playing tons of games so maybe that has less effect for me.  

At this stage of AoS, I really hope to not see drastic changes but I could be swayed on a shared start of round Hero Phase or more alternating activations as I think it could make the game even more engaging.  

I am not at all sold on characters joining units.  I mean, why?  The new look out sir! rules seem to be enough protection for characters and having them join units feels like a step too far.  I used to hate untouchable characters on the corner of a huge block of infantry in Oldhammer and I really don't think I'd like it in AoS either.

I think its safe to say the priority roll isn't going anywhere.  Three editions in and for better or worse, love it or hate it, the double turn is quintessential AoS.  Pretty sure GW views this a fundamental part of the system and as such it stays.

The one thing I would like to see is an edition long design paradigm for the battletomes.  Every edition starts with slimmed down tomes light on allegiance and sub faction abilities.  What if the stormcast books allegiance ability was BOTH scions and stormkeep would that really be game breaking at this point?  What if you got EVERY holy command instead of just one?  They are only once per battle and all have restrictions.  Why does each subfaction have only one sentence for its rules?  It's like they start wanting the books and abilities to be simple and 3-4 books in they decide thats too vanilla and start doing more interesting things.  

I'm pretty excited for a new edition in any case.  As someone that was all in at the start of AoS in 2015, seeing the game grow and flourish through multiple editions has been awesome and I honestly enjoy the game more now than ever before.  

[Gitzdee]

16 minutes ago, Nezzhil said:

Well, we have a rumour engine that could be a Weirdbrute hand...

 

First time seeing a Whitefang sadface XD.

[Nezzhil]

3 minutes ago, Gitzdee said:

First time seeing a Whitefang sadface XD.

I love him/her for the reactions. XD

[Beliman]

36 minutes ago, Mikosan said:

I am not at all sold on characters joining units.  I mean, why?  The new look out sir! rules seem to be enough protection for characters and having them join units feels like a step too far.  I used to hate untouchable characters on the corner of a huge block of infantry in Oldhammer and I really don't think I'd like it in AoS either.

Imho, because it's easier to play. AoS have a lot of "wholly within" abilities that trigger in diferent phases. When you charge with your hero+unit, you need to roll for both charges, both of them need to succeed, and then you need to move both units to be wholly within and in range of your melee weapons. Exactly the same in the Hero phase (auras/spells/prayers/etc..) or the movement phase. No need to waste time in this stuff.

Add this ability to your attached unit, and move on from there. We don't have Thougness, so most of War40k problems are not here. Only movement characteristic could be a problem, but that's easy to work around.

Another thing is that we have a lot of abilities that are not ranged profiles and ignore this stuff and do mortal wounds. Attached units can be retinues, abosrving the damage for your Hero, and that will add another role to the game.

Of course it needs a lot of work because there are combos that are going to be insane, but that's why we talk about 4.0 and not just a FAQ.

Edited August 18, 2023 by Beliman

[dmorley21]

38 minutes ago, Mikosan said:

I am not at all sold on characters joining units.  I mean, why?  The new look out sir! rules seem to be enough protection for characters and having them join units feels like a step too far.  I used to hate untouchable characters on the corner of a huge block of infantry in Oldhammer and I really don't think I'd like it in AoS either.

It would really help little melee heroes. Just being part of a unit and not having to take turns to activate would be a boon for them.