Tzeentch win Cancon and the GW GT Heat 1

[RuneBrush]

OK, just to try and bring things back on track here as we're currently going round in circles a bit.  The errata doesn't state that "the result of that Destiny Dice is modified".  Here is the full paragraph:

Personally I treat modification is an actual in-game mechanic whereby you modify the result of a dice roll up or down based on something (slain models in this case).  Destiny dice (in the same way as a re-roll) are not modifiers because they replace the dice roll with a different one.

Edit:  I still believe some official clarification could be good as it's not quite as clear-cut as it could be

Edited February 10, 2020 by RuneBrush

[Drcrabs]

6 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

OK, just to try and bring things back on track here as we're currently going round in circles a bit.  The errata doesn't state that "the result of that Destiny Dice is modified".  Here is the full paragraph:

 

I'm sorry but I can't ignore the first paragraph above the one you quoted that you forgot to include. I feel the paragraph you quoted only further goes into more clarification of what it means to use Destiny Dice for a battleshock phase while the below, the first paragraph, starts the framework of the rules for Destiny Dice.

Page 69 – Battle Traits, Masters of Destiny Change the final paragraph to: ‘Each Destiny Dice spent only allows you to replace a single dice roll. If you want to replace a 2D6 roll (such as a casting roll or charge roll), you must spend 2 Destiny Dice. In addition, any rolls that have been replaced (with the exception of save rolls and battleshock tests) count as unmodified rolls and cannot be re-rolled or modified further.

[Forrix]

2 minutes ago, Drcrabs said:

Page 69 – Battle Traits, Masters of Destiny Change the final paragraph to: ‘Each Destiny Dice spent only allows you to replace a single dice roll. If you want to replace a 2D6 roll (such as a casting roll or charge roll), you must spend 2 Destiny Dice. In addition, any rolls that have been replaced (with the exception of save rolls and battleshock tests) count as unmodified rolls and cannot be re-rolled or modified further.

Yup, I said it before but if they had worded it as "In addition, any rolls that have been replaced count as unmodified rolls and cannot be re-rolled or (with the exception of save rolls and battleshock tests) modified further." I'd agree that they count as unmodified. As it is, I can't in good faith as a player, have an opponent show me that paragraph then look him in the eye and go "Nope, still count as unmodified because of they're not adding or subtracting to the dice roll." There is definitely logic to the counter-argument but at the end of the day you are trying to ignore a plainly written rule in a way that benefits you with an army that is already on the stronger side. That is too close to "That guy" land for me. Obviously, with all the arguments flying around a clarification would be a very good idea. 

On a different note, and hopefully to steer the conversation away from the deadlock its currently in, would anybody have a problem with all DD counting as unmodified and being subject to re-rerolls and modifiers? The errata mentions that the developers were trying to stop problematic situations identified in play testing by making them unmodifiable but for the life of me I can't think of an interaction that would be that negative. Obviously there is Mastery of Magic but that would still involve 2 DD (with at least one of a higher value and a low value dice that could have been useful for battleshock). Not to mention that Lord of Changes casting is strong enough you probably wouldn't bother with using destiny dice anyways. Making them subject to rerolls would definitely nerf their power in certain circumstances but I feel like they'd still be a powerful and highly useful mechanic on the whole. 

Personally, this whole DD mess, in my eyes, arises from the rules design team trying to fix a problem that doesn't exist and creating a whole mess of problems in the process. Regardless of the ruling on modified vs unmodified to the current debate I'd still describe DD as being a clunky and counter-intuitive mechanic due to them working differently depending on how they are used. Making them always count as unmodified but subject to rerolls and modifiers would have them act just like dice that were naturally rolled which seems to be the original idea behind the rule.

[RuneBrush]

1 minute ago, Drcrabs said:

I'm sorry but I can't ignore the first paragraph above the one you quoted that you forgot to include. I feel the paragraph you quoted only further goes into more clarification of what it means to use Destiny Dice for a battleshock phase while the below, the first paragraph, starts the framework of the rules for Destiny Dice.

Page 69 – Battle Traits, Masters of Destiny Change the final paragraph to: ‘Each Destiny Dice spent only allows you to replace a single dice roll. If you want to replace a 2D6 roll (such as a casting roll or charge roll), you must spend 2 Destiny Dice. In addition, any rolls that have been replaced (with the exception of save rolls and battleshock tests) count as unmodified rolls and cannot be re-rolled or modified further.

Which is one of the reasons why I'm suggesting that it requires clarification and that this conversation keeps going round in circles.

The issue we currently have is that the paragraph you've quoted doesn't explicitly say that save and battleshock rolls actually count as modified.  This has caused two interpretations:
- one group is saying that because you are replacing the dice it's unmodified (in the same way as a re-roll would be)* and the errata doesn't state it is modified
- the other group is saying that by inference if the "other" dice are explicitly unmodified then the save and battleshock dice must logically be modified

There's arguable logic in both of these conclusions!

TL:DR nobody actually has the correct answer and the more we look at it, the more we're tying ourselves up in knots

* as I said, my own interpretation is that modifiers are an in-game "thing" that change the dice result.  Unmodified being synonymous with before modifiers as per the core-rules

[BillyOcean]

6 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

Edit:  I still believe some official clarification could be good as it's not quite as clear-cut as it could be

I think this thread serves as the proof that clarification is needed... For all those stating that the rule is absolutely clear to them, you should realize that there are other people who think that the opposite interpretation is absolutely clear. I find that both sides of the argument hold merit, and while I lean towards one interpretation, I don't think my opinion is very important - the only thing I'm interested is an official ruling one way or the other from GW. I encourage everyone participating in the debate to submit the question to AOSFAQ, which will hopefully force their hand to do that. 

Edited February 10, 2020 by BillyOcean

[Dead Scribe]

They updated the faq today.

 

[RuneBrush]

1 hour ago, Dead Scribe said:

They updated the faq today.

Just spotted that - hats off to GW, they listened and came up with the clarification we asked for! #ThanksGW

[Isotop]

1 hour ago, Dead Scribe said:

They updated the faq today.

 

So a DD-save roll can still only be modified by Rend (not by cover, spell effects, ...)? Does anyone know/assume the reason behind this?

Edited February 12, 2020 by Isotop

[RuneBrush]

1 minute ago, Isotop said:

So a DD-save roll can still be only be modified by Rend (not by cover, spell effects, ...)? Does anyone know/assume the reason behind this?

I'm guessing its the same reason that the Lord of Change's ability no longer works - because our Lord Tzeentch has determined the fate of that result...  In truth, it actually brings it inline with everything else (charges, magic, attachs etc) which can't be modified.

[Dead Scribe]

Thats why the RAI vs RAW debates, I don't really try to convince someone based off of RAI.  Because we never know what the RAI is, just what we feel it should be.

[BillyOcean]

Huzzah, the debate has been settled, thanks very much to the rules team and to everyone here who submitted the question to them - this seems like a great model for how we should proceed in the future when multiple plausible interpretations of a rule exist. 

[Acid_Nine]

Hmm, so now you really gotta try and kill that pink horror banner before the battle shock phase, especially if they have taken a lot of damage and don’t have any CP’s for inspiring presence.

[HarbingerGaming]

1 hour ago, Acid_Nine said:

Hmm, so now you really gotta try and kill that pink horror banner before the battle shock phase, especially if they have taken a lot of damage and don’t have any CP’s for inspiring presence.

Easier said than done. You gotta force 20 damage in before this happens. Unless you have a rule that will let you single out the banner this may not happen as often as we would hope. 

[Sinfullyvannila]

4 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

I'm guessing its the same reason that the Lord of Change's ability no longer works - because our Lord Tzeentch has determined the fate of that result...  In truth, it actually brings it inline with everything else (charges, magic, attachs etc) which can't be modified.

I’m honestly not even sure the LoC is worth the points outside of Changehost(or non-cost in Guild of Summoners) anymore. I only succeeded in 4 spells through a full 5-turn game last night.

[HarbingerGaming]

9 minutes ago, Sinfullyvannila said:

I’m honestly not even sure the LoC is worth the points outside of Changehost(or non-cost in Guild of Summoners) anymore. I only succeeded in 4 spells through a full 5-turn game last night.

I mean were they just constantly unbound? Because that sounds more like you just rolled bad. The LoC is still great for their points given the scary amount of damage you can put out in the hero phase with it. 

Edited February 12, 2020 by HarbingerGaming

[Sinfullyvannila]

7 minutes ago, HarbingerGaming said:

I mean were they just constantly unbound? Because that sounds more like you just rolled bad. The LoC is still great for their points given the scary amount of damage you can put out in the hero phase with it. 

Aside from the fact that “being scary” is a terrible reason to nerf something, 8 mortal wounds is not even that scary for a 380 point model with no shrug.

The truly bizarre thing is that this ability was never nerfed when you could take 1 destiny die with it and it was obscenely more powerful.

Edited February 12, 2020 by Sinfullyvannila

[Inquisitorsz]

5 hours ago, Isotop said:

So a DD-save roll can still only be modified by Rend (not by cover, spell effects, ...)? Does anyone know/assume the reason behind this?

Yay I was right.... I'll be over here accepting apologies lol. 

 

But seriously, it's done this way because the FAQ was specifically designed to fix the problem of auto passing battleshock tests and auto saving high rend attacks.  

So they specifically and explicitly mentioned only those two things can modify the rolls while in every other case they remain unmodified and can't be modified further. 

Remember look at what it explicitly says not what it means logically or what is implied or what is ommited. 

It's also the easiest way to make sure you don't accidentally create some other rules problem when you open up those dice to all modification. 

The battleshock ruling makes perfect sense that was broken AF and had to be fixed. 

The rend one I'm on the fence about. I don't think it was a huge issue. Only really did anything for DD of 4 and maybe 5, you'd usually use 6s for all sorts of other things. 

[Kadeton]

5 hours ago, Inquisitorsz said:

It's also the easiest way to make sure you don't accidentally create some other rules problem when you open up those dice to all modification. 

This is the bit I don't understand in this whole debacle. What was the harm in opening up those dice to all modification? All the rules problems came up as a result of them being unmodifiable, and I can't see what problem that decision was intended to solve in the first place. They could have just treated them exactly like normal dice!

[Sinfullyvannila]

1 hour ago, Kadeton said:

This is the bit I don't understand in this whole debacle. What was the harm in opening up those dice to all modification? All the rules problems came up as a result of them being unmodifiable, and I can't see what problem that decision was intended to solve in the first place. They could have just treated them exactly like normal dice!

Sounds like stacking Beacon of Sorcery and Mass Conjuration on top of Destiny Dice was what they were trying to avoid.

[Kadeton]

13 minutes ago, Sinfullyvannila said:

Sounds like stacking Beacon of Sorcery and Mass Conjuration on top of Destiny Dice was what they were trying to avoid.

That seems like really poor design. Creating a set of thematic rules and then preventing them from working with each other is endlessly frustrating and confusing for players. (Not to mention that in a sledgehammer attempt to "fix" that incredibly minor potential problem, they broke the core mechanics of the game and created a huge mess.)

If they wanted to exclude modifiers from casting and unbinding rolls, they could have just done that specifically. Or better yet, exercised some basic creativity and come up with something more interesting for Beacon and Mass Conjuration than just slapping +1 modifiers all over everything and calling it a day.

[RuneBrush]

3 hours ago, Kadeton said:

That seems like really poor design. Creating a set of thematic rules and then preventing them from working with each other is endlessly frustrating and confusing for players. (Not to mention that in a sledgehammer attempt to "fix" that incredibly minor potential problem, they broke the core mechanics of the game and created a huge mess.)

If they wanted to exclude modifiers from casting and unbinding rolls, they could have just done that specifically. Or better yet, exercised some basic creativity and come up with something more interesting for Beacon and Mass Conjuration than just slapping +1 modifiers all over everything and calling it a day.

I think what we have is the best compromise between a thematic rule and an overly complicated rule - I still think it's thematic, Tzeentch is often portrayed as having it's plans foiled by overconfidence or weakness in it's minions.

From a gaming mechanic, anything more complex would have had the potential to slow down the Tzeentch players turn and one thing the new battletome has done is to reduce the amount of time it takes to play the army (which was a huge criticism with the old book).  Although it has caused a few issues, I think 5 weeks to get to where we are is pretty decent.

[NJohansson]

37 minutes ago, RuneBrush said:

From a gaming mechanic, anything more complex would have had the potential to slow down the Tzeentch players turn and one thing the new battletome has done is to reduce the amount of time it takes to play the army (which was a huge criticism with the old book).  Although it has caused a few issues, I think 5 weeks to get to where we are is pretty decent.

Just one minor comment regarding playtime - they have significantly made it easier to keep track of summoning and placing new units BUT the amount of dice that you are rolling for attacks from horror units is really becoming an annoyance for me. They should have just had an increased damage/hit potential and decreased amount of attacks (IMHO) since rolling up to 100 dice (Extreme case - but 50+ is a regular occurrence) at a time is not fun for anyone.

[Kadeton]

2 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

From a gaming mechanic, anything more complex would have had the potential to slow down the Tzeentch players turn

Just for clarity, I'm advocating for something simpler, not more complex. Currently we have unmodifiable rolls with two specific exceptions - being unmodifiable is also an exception to the normal rules for dice rolls.

If the original design was indeed supposed to avoid stacking modifiers on casts and unbinds (which is only speculation), then there's a simpler version: modifiable rolls (like normal dice) with the exception of casts and unbinds.

Given that I don't think allowing the bonuses on casts and unbinds would actually be a problem (you can use Destiny Dice for a maximum of four such rolls over the entire course of the game, no?), then they could just use the simplest version of all: Destiny Dice get treated exactly like regular dice, no exceptions. There's no way that's slowing the game down.

Quote

Although it has caused a few issues, I think 5 weeks to get to where we are is pretty decent.

I agree with this. To GW's credit, they have been quick to apply band-aids. I just think their band-aids are crappy.

Edited February 13, 2020 by Kadeton

[Sinfullyvannila]

2 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

I think what we have is the best compromise between a thematic rule and an overly complicated rule - I still think it's thematic, Tzeentch is often portrayed as having it's plans foiled by overconfidence or weakness in it's minions.

From a gaming mechanic, anything more complex would have had the potential to slow down the Tzeentch players turn and one thing the new battletome has done is to reduce the amount of time it takes to play the army (which was a huge criticism with the old book).  Although it has caused a few issues, I think 5 weeks to get to where we are is pretty decent.

I can’t think of anything it’s done to lower play time in actual practice.

Edited February 13, 2020 by Sinfullyvannila

[RuneBrush]

4 hours ago, NJohansson said:

Just one minor comment regarding playtime - they have significantly made it easier to keep track of summoning and placing new units BUT the amount of dice that you are rolling for attacks from horror units is really becoming an annoyance for me. They should have just had an increased damage/hit potential and decreased amount of attacks (IMHO) since rolling up to 100 dice (Extreme case - but 50+ is a regular occurrence) at a time is not fun for anyone.

Dice quantity is something that I've been really self-conscious about for the past couple of years.  In the past I've always tried to theme my dice - so I'll buy 50/100 12mm dice the same colour as the army I'm playing.  However when I played my Grand Host army at Brotherhood earlier this year (40 skeletons, 30 grimghast both provide a lot of attacks), I actually swapped over to 10 sets of 10 16mm dice (each set being a different colour).  This meant I could always work up/down in units of ten and probably sped my dice rolling up by a factor of twenty.

2 hours ago, Kadeton said:

If the original design was indeed supposed to avoid stacking modifiers on casts and unbinds (which is only speculation), then there's a simpler version: modifiable rolls (like normal dice) with the exception of casts and unbinds.

I don't actually think this was only the original intention.  Using destiny dice will ignore modifiers on To Hit and To Wound rolls (because Tzeentch says you will hit) - equally there are some artefacts/spells that boost damage or the number of attacks that will be skipped to guarantee the result, that's before factoring anything coming along in the future.

Appreciate your suggestion is more elegant and straightforward but it doesn't provide the same result that the Destiny Dice mechanic currently has.