Realistically, how many Battletomes do you think AoS can support?

[Lucio]

My gut instinct  based on the shelf space of a typical one man store is we're reaching saturation point for factions, which is why we're seeing more consolidation since Beasts of Chaos.

 

We've got 3 major "known" factions left, Aelves from Hysh, Aelves from Uglu and Ogors (which I think will see the Beastclaws folded back into Gutbusters)

 

On top of that we seem to have one more Death faction left.

 

All told that's enough along with Warcry to take us to the end of 2020

[Barkanaut]

I expect lots of these consolidated old factions to maybe a decade down the line vanish in favor of completely new takes on all of them. GW is one company and can only work on so much stuff at once. These definitely mostly feel like placeholders until GW gets around to the real factions. 

[Turin Turambar]

On 7/22/2019 at 9:36 AM, Inquisitorsz said:

I can also see Tirion/Malerion's elves combined into a single book with 2 different sides of the same coin... Kind of like doing mortal khorne/demon khorne stuff in one book. 

very unlikely, every other god has atleast 1 dedicated battletome, why would the 2 most important aelven factions be 1 tome (even though they have never been mentioned together before, and come from 2 completely different realms) when daughters of khaine who are a re barely there get their own tome (if anything DoK will be absorbed by shadow aelves as both Morathy and Malerion rule Uglu and they both make use of shadow beasts and such and are mentioned as working together in the lore, a much more likely combination then light and shadow shareing a single tome)

[Tenshi]

4 hours ago, Turin Turambar said:

very unlikely, every other god has atleast 1 dedicated battletome, why would the 2 most important aelven factions be 1 tome (even though they have never been mentioned together before, and come from 2 completely different realms) when daughters of khaine who are a re barely there get their own tome (if anything DoK will be absorbed by shadow aelves as both Morathy and Malerion rule Uglu and they both make use of shadow beasts and such and are mentioned as working together in the lore, a much more likely combination then light and shadow shareing a single tome)

Because now it seems that GW is merging factions?
It could very well be a single elven book, and later phasing out DoK and merging it on the second release of the mixed aelves.

[Turin Turambar]

@Tenshi but none of the soup tomes have mixed the followers of different gods yet without those gods haveing their own tome (we have beasts of chaos as cities of sigmar, but each of the gods worshipped there have their own tomes in stormcaste and deamons. while the gits, orruks and LoN are all monogod tomes), if its actually teased then I'll believe it. till then it should be highly unlikely.

 

shadow-aelf DoK merger has been potentially teased tho...

[wayniac]

IMHO less is more.  Look at 40k where there is just gigantic bloat to see what we could have ended up with for AOS; I think there's like 20 codexes?  Maybe more?  Of course 40k has its wonky ally system, but I think AOS is coming on "too many" already.  The more books you add, the harder it is to balance things because you have so many things and combinations; there's a point where you're just throwing things out there to fit in.  40k is well past that point, I don't think AOS is yet and I hope it doesn't get to it because IMHO it will be terrible for the game.

Edited July 23, 2019 by wayniac

[zilberfrid]

3 hours ago, wayniac said:

IMHO less is more.  Look at 40k where there is just gigantic bloat to see what we could have ended up with for AOS; I think there's like 20 codexes?  Maybe more?  Of course 40k has its wonky ally system, but I think AOS is coming on "too many" already.  The more books you add, the harder it is to balance things because you have so many things and combinations; there's a point where you're just throwing things out there to fit in.  40k is well past that point, I don't think AOS is yet and I hope it doesn't get to it because IMHO it will be terrible for the game.

So you say GW should have just deleted the other armies at the start of AoS? Which is a viable point of view, but no longer relevant, because we're a few years down the line and they still sell them.

[wayniac]

1 minute ago, zilberfrid said:

So you say GW should have just deleted the other armies at the start of AoS? Which is a viable point of view, but no longer relevant, because we're a few years down the line and they still sell them.

No, what I'm saying is they need to not give every single army a new book, or there will be ridiculous bloat.  I actually like the recent consolidation they did, with Skaven, Grots into Gloomspite, now Human/Aelf/Dwarf into Free Cities, etc.  Those should NOT be individual books for each group.

[zilberfrid]

I think lumping almost all old elves, order humans and the disposessed dwarves together in a book would be a bit much, but then they added Kharadron and put Stormcast in, and now what will be the flavour of the battletome?

I do agree the Disposessed, Devoted, Freeguild, Ironweld and College could be in one battletome, but to put all the older elves with them as well is a bit much.

Disposessed being able to ally with other dwarves is fine and dandy, and I grudgingly accept that one or two Stormcast could sometimes fit a Freeguild army (but need to lose their shoulderpieces and get a better head before they fit aesthetically), but adding the 8 current old Aelves faction to that mix sounds a bit soupy.

So one could be Disposessed, Ironweld, Freeguild, Devoted, College with rules about Stormcast, Kharadron and Fyreslayer inclusions, a second book could fit the Darkling Covens, Eldritch Council, Lion Rangers, Order Draconis, Order Serpentis, Phoenix Temple, Scourge Privateers, Shadowblades, Swifthawk Agents and Wanderers with rules about Idoneth or Khaine inclusions (I don't think the Sylvaneth would want to play).

It looks like the book as proposed will try to fit rules for 16 current factions in it, which is madness, or more probably, blandness.

Edited July 23, 2019 by zilberfrid

[JPjr]

One thing that I'd love to see, and I'd say we're already starting to see examples of this, is for GW to look at being more creative with how the various factions can be put together. The Grand Alliance concept is one I kind of like, in general terms, but obviously at the moment those books are dead in the water and probably not coming back.

Let's say by early next year we have all the existing armies dealt with and for better or worse up to 2.0 standard, what I think would be great (and play into my belief that GW wants people to have lots of different factions of various saqizes on the go rather than just being a X or Y player) would be opening up more models to different books.

It seems like the Allies system whilst perfectly fine doesn't really get used as much as it should, Mercenaries is another way to try and push this but I think just making battletomes more inclusive would work even better.

So the Cities of Sigmar book looks like it will have, a lot of, the existing Wanderers units in. Good, I like that, it can stay around. 

Then let's say they, as is being hinted at, release some next level animal/beast Aelves models they could have a standalone Wanderers book too, with the new and old models (with the old ones still fine for your CoS army).

And lets say the new models are some kind of Wild Hunt fauna like equivalent to the Sylvaneth flora, perhaps tied in some way to Kurnoth, then then next Sylvaneth Battletome could also allow you to include a select few units of them (and of course vice versa).

Or when Malerion's Aelves get released, obviously they have their own new models, but also can include select units, the snakes say, from DoK and from some of the thematically appropriate Cities of Sigmar units, without overwriting or invalidating those books.

Likewise when Grungi pulls his finger out you could have a new Duardin book, that gets new core models but also, again, allows you to take select Kharadron, Fyreslayer, Cities of Sigmar units, without those individual books being discontinued.

You could do that with so many of the factions, and to me makes perfect sense if you want to maintain such a huge range of factions to make them playable across different, thematically appropriate armies.

To my mind whilst too many Battletomes has obviously problems, the real issue is supporting all of those with models. They can pump put 4-8 books a year without it killing them or us and would be much tighter and lore focused than just the Grand Alliances with the big benefit that players wouldn't have to wait years and years before new models are released that can fit into your existing armies.

[zilberfrid]

25 minutes ago, JPjr said:

One thing that I'd love to see, and I'd say we're already starting to see examples of this, is for GW to look at being more creative with how the various factions can be put together. The Grand Alliance concept is one I kind of like, in general terms, but obviously at the moment those books are dead in the water and probably not coming back.

Let's say by early next year we have all the existing armies dealt with and for better or worse up to 2.0 standard, what I think would be great (and play into my belief that GW wants people to have lots of different factions of various saqizes on the go rather than just being a X or Y player) would be opening up more models to different books.

It seems like the Allies system whilst perfectly fine doesn't really get used as much as it should, Mercenaries is another way to try and push this but I think just making battletomes more inclusive would work even better.

So the Cities of Sigmar book looks like it will have, a lot of, the existing Wanderers units in. Good, I like that, it can stay around. 

Then let's say they, as is being hinted at, release some next level animal/beast Aelves models they could have a standalone Wanderers book too, with the new and old models (with the old ones still fine for your CoS army).

And lets say the new models are some kind of Wild Hunt fauna like equivalent to the Sylvaneth flora, perhaps tied in some way to Kurnoth, then then next Sylvaneth Battletome could also allow you to include a select few units of them (and of course vice versa).

Or when Malerion's Aelves get released, obviously they have their own new models, but also can include select units, the snakes say, from DoK and from some of the thematically appropriate Cities of Sigmar units, without overwriting or invalidating those books.

Likewise when Grungi pulls his finger out you could have a new Duardin book, that gets new core models but also, again, allows you to take select Kharadron, Fyreslayer, Cities of Sigmar units, without those individual books being discontinued.

You could do that with so many of the factions, and to me makes perfect sense if you want to maintain such a huge range of factions to make them playable across different, thematically appropriate armies.

To my mind whilst too many Battletomes has obviously problems, the real issue is supporting all of those with models. They can pump put 4-8 books a year without it killing them or us and would be much tighter and lore focused than just the Grand Alliances with the big benefit that players wouldn't have to wait years and years before new models are released that can fit into your existing armies.

It would be interesting to get an alternate take on how you can compose armies that have enough restrictions and boons in them to keep the game balanced. It would also boost sales.

"I currently have a slow shooty army, but if I use this allegiance, I get a buff to my speed, which will help put my army into postion. I'll need to add some units from faction Y though, but that's not too much of a hassle. " Then another book comes out, and with the inclusion of yet another few units, you can play the existing core of your army in yet another way. At some point, shifting the core army to the new models you purchased gets below the treshold, and you have two cores. If only you get a few units of faction Z, you can field them in allegiance 3 and 4...

I worry that they are going to state "There's your battletome, stop whining" for the 14 factions that received their first in this book though, and leave it at that for the next three years.

Edited July 23, 2019 by zilberfrid

[Aginor]

I think 24 or so is a good number, mainly for product life cycle and production time reasons:

If they renew their rules with new editions every 3-4 years or so, they will need to put Battletome releases of most factions into that timeframe.

So if they release two BTs every three months, that is 8 books a year.

Thus all factions would have a new book every three years.

They will do other releases as well so they might not make it in three years for everyone. That's where rules updates in the GHB come into play (like for Seraphon, still playable with the Battletome from 2015. Well, mostly)

If the rules in the new edition don't drastically change they can maintain a faction playable with those small updates, so they might only have to release 6 Battletomes a year.

 

So yeah that is what I think. They make ~8-9 books a year for AoS, of which 6-7 can  be Battletomes. If they want to renew their game every four years they can sustain ~24 major factions.

 

Edit: If I didn't count wrong we have 32 Battletomes since AoS release, making it 6.4 per year on average. Sounds like it could fit my above theory.

Edited July 23, 2019 by Aginor

[wayniac]

One thing I absolutely do NOT want to see though is the open-ended way 40k handles allies.  AOS at least has a limit, and I hope there remains very minimal ways to circumvent that.  There is no balance to even remotely be able to have when you can just take from another faction to cover your faction's weaknesses; at that point why even have a weakness? 

Assuming the design team are actually trying to create a balanced game rather than make things purposely unbalanced to do that Magic: The Gathering style of "system mastery" (which I feel is a ridiculous concept anyways, but that's another rant), then factions having strengths and weaknesses that can't just be removed by taking X unit from Y faction should be a key part of the system's design.

[Overread]

@wayniac agreed I think the way aoS handles allies works well and I'd hate to see the game end up like 40K where some arimes have infinite soup options and others are left with almost nothing. Plus I hate how sometimes soup systems mean that armies lose identity because the only way to compete is to mash all the best units together. 

[Aeon]

I would not be surprised at all to see a later down the line seperate books on Dispossessed, Free People’s, Wanderers & Darkling Covens.

They each have a decent sized model range coupled with Allegiance Abilities in the Handbook.

It would only stand to reason that they will redo Seraphon later this year and keep the others for next year (allowing them to ‘finish’ all the races by the end of next year.)

It will also remove the need for the Grand Alliance Books.

My prediction for release order this year;

Orruk Warclans Book

Free Cities Book

Ogur Book

Deathrattle/Soulblight Book (either would be cool, I’d prefer Deathrattle)

Everchosen-STD-Darkoath Soup/Seraphon Book (either one first, then the other)

Next year I’ll be guessing in no particular order;

Dispossessed, Wanderers, Free People’s, Kharadron Overlords, Disciples of Tzeentch, Light Elves (which could add in the old High Elf range  & Shadow Elves (which could add in the old Dark Elf Range)

[zilberfrid]

8 hours ago, Aeon said:

I would not be surprised at all to see a later down the line seperate books on Dispossessed, Free People’s, Wanderers & Darkling Covens.

They each have a decent sized model range coupled with Allegiance Abilities in the Handbook.

It would only stand to reason that they will redo Seraphon later this year and keep the others for next year (allowing them to ‘finish’ all the races by the end of next year.)

It will also remove the need for the Grand Alliance Books.

My prediction for release order this year;

Orruk Warclans Book

Free Cities Book

Ogur Book

Deathrattle/Soulblight Book (either would be cool, I’d prefer Deathrattle)

Everchosen-STD-Darkoath Soup/Seraphon Book (either one first, then the other)

Next year I’ll be guessing in no particular order;

Dispossessed, Wanderers, Free People’s, Kharadron Overlords, Disciples of Tzeentch, Light Elves (which could add in the old High Elf range  & Shadow Elves (which could add in the old Dark Elf Range)

I would like very much for you to be right!

Edited July 24, 2019 by zilberfrid

[RuneBrush]

If we're looking purely from the aspect of "Battletomes that are maintained and feasible in a competitive environment", then probably a couple of dozen is about right.  If we look at it from a broader "tapestry of the mortal realms" then I actually think the sky is the limit.

Ultimately the more diversity we as gamers have, the better it is for the hobby as a whole.  It keeps sales going (a necessarily evil) and allows GW (and us) to explore more areas of the mortal realms.  The challenge for GW is making battletomes unique without creating rules that result in broken armies - which is something I feel we've been very close to with a couple of recent battletomes.

[Carnelian]

27 minutes ago, RuneBrush said:

Ultimately the more diversity we as gamers have, the better it is for the hobby as a whole.  

I agree. I say bring on the bloat! I want the Mortal Realms to keep expanding because there's a lot of cool stuff to explore and I wouldn't want to miss out on that just because they were afraid of losing some mythical competitive balance

[wayniac]

2 hours ago, Carnelian said:

I agree. I say bring on the bloat! I want the Mortal Realms to keep expanding because there's a lot of cool stuff to explore and I wouldn't want to miss out on that just because they were afraid of losing some mythical competitive balance

Sadly with how popular and often prevalent competitive play is, I think this would be disastrous in the long run. GW already has a very poor track record for balancing their games properly and a huge reason for that is the massive book bloat and myriad of options, most of which end up being blatantly worse than other options so are useless at best or a "newbie trap" at worst. 

AOS luckily doesn't have to deal with as many options as 40k but if there's any hope or desire to not have the balance all over the place, books have to be limited or it will spiral out of control.

[Dawnbringer]

Would rather see more cool stuff than watch GW chase the none existant ideal of perfect balance within a game as complex as a wargame.

Or make a new mode "tournament play" where theres like 5 units per faction to choose from and their rules and stats are basically identical to each other and the people who want balance over everything can play their freeform chess, and everyone else can get on with whatever mode they choose. Maybe then we wont see expensive models swing from handy to useless overnight.

[zilberfrid]

11 minutes ago, Dawnbringer said:

Would rather see more cool stuff than watch GW chase the none existant ideal of perfect balance within a game as complex as a wargame.

Or make a new mode "tournament play" where theres like 5 units per faction to choose from and their rules and stats are basically identical to each other and the people who want balance over everything can play their freeform chess, and everyone else can get on with whatever mode they choose. Maybe then we wont see expensive models swing from handy to useless overnight.

Handy to useless is internet-speak.

 

Having units cost a bit more isn't going to make them useless, it's just going to make them less desirable. If I have an army of Freeguild Guard and they lose their large units discount, I'd be annoyed, but they'll still hurt and tarpit enemies.

[HammerOfSigmar]

Well, one thing that worth mentioning is that while some player dislike the idea of cities of sigmar style soup tomb and want to get their separate ones, there will be a problem if all of them get their separate one--its about the update cycle. Even GW keeps the updating speed of this year, it will takes three year to finish a cycle once the cities of sigmar get separated again and some new fractions come out. If GW slow down the updating speed, it might takes four year or more, then it will just go back to the what happens before the cities of sigmar tome come out,  a lot people keeps complaining GW not updating their favorite fraction while waiting for a long time. Do you guys really want this?

[zilberfrid]

12 minutes ago, HammerOfSigmar said:

Well, one thing that worth mentioning is that while some player dislike the idea of cities of sigmar style soup tomb and want to get their separate ones, there will be a problem if all of them get their separate one--its about the update cycle. Even GW keeps the updating speed of this year, it will takes three year to finish a cycle once the cities of sigmar get separated again and some new fractions come out. If GW slow down the updating speed, it might takes four year or more, then it will just go back to the what happens before the cities of sigmar tome come out,  a lot people keeps complaining GW not updating their favorite fraction while waiting for a long time. Do you guys really want this?

We'll first have to see what a soup tome actually brings.

If it is interesting enough, I see no issue, but it's not that thick, and it needs to do 14 factions that have not received anything before this. That's going to be a tight fit, and then they also have stuff for Stormcast and Kharadron in it. Then again, typing up 5 batallion options, 5 general options, 5 ally options and 5 faction specific rules does not need to take more than three pages.

So, if the soup tome is only a halfhearted attempt to get a minimal amount of rules to a faction, and mainly tries to toss out old molds, more is needed. If it is fully capable of supporting the factions it is written for, we don't (for those factions, that is, and until the next version of AoS).